by Marc Secchia
Mystical mayhem was his beloved’s forte.
Mystical what and how much, you Tourmaline tyrant? Her pert mental broadside toasted his brain cells agreeably.
Just celebrating your uniqueness, he returned.
I sense wing-tugging, she returned, chortling at the image of rainbows-over-Islands innocence he projected. Right, grandiose Grandion, what pranks shall we play on Numistar? You know she’ll have learned from our previous encounters.
I liked your pretty sparkly-dragonet reactive shield, he suggested. Lia’s reflexive wingflip betrayed surprise and pleasure. It was girlish, but it saved my life.
Shall I keep the sneaky secret of turning you into a girl in my back pocket?
Have you taken to keeping pockets in those gorgeous scales now? he needled right back. Alright. Let’s start an examination of that lattice and see what your engineer makes of it.
Immediately, he began to feed her data, every scrap of data in every sense, spectrum and draconic function he had to offer. Grandion warmed to her surprise. Aye, she was not the only one with a gift for detail! Then came the knowledge of potentials, magical pathways and sensory techniques sucking away into that brain of hers, a thirst for learning that was so vivid that he almost shut off the spigots, afeared of – what? Loss? To her? This was super-intense Lia, the queries flooding back now like a flight of pesky dragonets picking at, somersaulting over and tittering around his experience and expertise in twenty disparate directions all at once. The Tourmaline snorted testily.
No disrespect, Grandion. This is how I learn.
This is … unmitigated chaos!
Multi-harmonic merriment bubbled over him, causing Makani and Mizuki to burst out laughing in response. Cute-fires! Hatchlings could do that. Hualiama was laughing so hard, Mizuki had to stretch out a wingtip to steady her – touching wingtips by accident during flight was either an unforgivable insult or a courtship ritual, depending on the circumstance, but hatchlings were usually exempt from such strictures.
How to reconcile the strangeness of an adult’s intellect and experience wrapped up in a hatchling’s body? Or now, as her mood spun on a wingtip, endlessly unpredictable, for she began to dance first with some of the aerial movements Grandion himself had taught her, then very quickly modifying and expanding upon those as the desire to express herself became irrepressible and she spiralled about the much larger Dragons, calculating at an ever more furious pace. He could no longer follow her thoughts, for they sparked off in effervescent spirals far quicker even than her dance; one second she was battling Numistar, the next he saw spin-offs of an eggling-dream and a memory of her mother’s reaction to the Reaving and here was a Dragon Rider Academy with Elki at its head, a place where Dragons and Humans learned freely together, and another flash-memory of Imbalance detected and pondered through at least fourteen separate vectors … and she danced with him in courtship and saw him slough free of the volcanic lake beside the monastery building, sleek and gleaming of gemstone scales, snatching her breath from her chest … and she charged into battle with him against ten thousand two-headed Dragons – what had become of that scourge of the East? Now, she recounted the nth detail of the shield constructs which, laced in soul-shadowing grief, had composed the paean of his honour-offering for his slain father, Sapphurion. A flicker of insight saw those constructs modified and enriched, while she simultaneously visited with the filthy Maroon Dragoness, Ianthine, and recalled her bedazzling, hypnotic power which had so nearly opened the path to slaying Azziala. The Empress would not be surprised like that again.
Then, Grandion’s mind hurtled out of her orbit, overwhelmed. He clutched hopefully at the fireflies of her thoughts.
Tap. He blinked, astonished. Sassy chit! Had she just wingtip-tapped him on the nose?
Snap out of it, Grandion, she called, using private telepathy to take the sting out of her words. We need your leadership.
The Tourmaline Dragon flicked his nictitating eye membranes. How had she – had Hualiama just managed to hypnotise him in the swirling windstorm of her reflections? He shook himself vigorously, ignoring the accusing stares of the two larger Dragonesses and the startled cries of the Humans on his back.
His predatory gaze raked the scene. There was the lattice, thick and white and strangely beautiful, like a carved ice sculpture that curved protectively over an area of Cloudlands below, as if to keep Dragons out … or something in? It stretched over an area of tens or even hundreds of square leagues, but it was not as thick as he had imagined, perhaps half to three-quarters of a mile of dense, enchantment-imbued material. He saw the grey Cloudlands through the irregular oval gaps. Those gaps were small, barely eight to ten feet across, certainly too narrow for an adult Lesser Dragon to slip through, and even Ice-Raptors could not fit, he imagined.
Intriguing. A Dragon-sieve? Why?
Numistar and her thralls work within, Tiiyusiel bellowed from below their position, supplying images and complex, concentrated thought-monads in her desperation to communicate succinctly yet in sufficient detail. Enemies without. I detect an unexpected stirring amidst the S’gulzzi in the cracks ten leagues below and just North of Immadior’s resting place.
Immediately, Hualiama’s mind whirled into motion again, separating out the images, concepts and data for their companions. Grandion saw what he took for a frozen under-Cloudlands mountain ridge upon which the lattice was anchored by great, upside-down U-shaped brackets – Hualiama’s interpretation – clamped over the curved lie of Immadior’s body. Below the Cloudlands, in the murky upper and middle layers, marauding groups of Land Dragons pounded the white lattice as they swam or ran in from the southern flank, unexpectedly having banded together in order to force a path to the prize – the Egg that was now slightly exposed on the northern side of the lattice. Numistar was somewhere inside. Separated, for the time being, from the attacking armies of Land Dragons. The ferocity of the physical pounding of paws, bodies and carapaces, together with the light cannon and Harmonic magic and psychic blasts, created a roar like an unending earthquake, but the lattice held.
The legendary S’gulzzi! Tiiyusiel pictured them as flickering fire spirits, but even she was uncertain. The data she provided was produced by magical perception so far removed from sight that Hualiama struggled to interpret what she saw, and more so to couch it in Human or even Dragonish terms that made sense. She saw the great, jagged abysses as a space with which blackness moved, fire that flowed like piceous bands of ultra-hot pitch was the best she could infer, and the magic of those creatures was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.
Mythical dark-fires? Dark-fires lived – they were a viable type of draconic magic? Darkness that stirred with hunger and alien intelligence, sparking fear in her breast; flickering near-translucent black flames that somehow mimicked or turned inside-out the darker heart of a candle’s flame, she imagined. Anti-fire? Acidic fire? How could darkness burn?
Tiiyusiel could not see the First Egg from her angle, but she inferred its uncovering because of a dazzling beacon of magic that blazed out toward the North. Numistar bathed therein, visualised as an eerie, creeping grey mist that hung over and around her feverishly labouring Land Dragons, a clan of Welkin-Runners quarrying away at Immadior’s millennia-old, frozen scales with ferocious single-mindedness.
“The Egg’s uncovered!” Imaytha gasped.
“We’re late to the battle,” Mizuki snarled in agreement. “We have to fly, and fast –”
Makani pointed with her left forepaw. “Enemies incoming!”
“They’re trying to keep every Dragon from the Egg,” Hualiama stated. “Grandion, I’m the only one small enough to get in there.”
“What?” he roared.
“I have to sneak through the lattice and confront Numistar,” she said steadily.
“You’re not going anywhere without me!”
Her most draconic smile filled his hearts and mind. “I can’t. Wouldn’t want to. We made an oath, my Tourmaline joy-upon-wings.
Nowhere in this Island-World can I be without you, and I can always draw upon your strength.”
Grandion steadied his battle-sharpened nerves by looking ahead to the storm clouds gathering over the white lattice, which shook under the terrible assault, but still held. Silvery white bodies swirled amidst the grey cloudbanks; he had no doubt there would be many Chrysolitic Dragons present as well. They could Flow through with ease. Why had they not yet attacked Numistar? What were they waiting for?
He said, “What if it’s a trap?”
Hualiama countered, “What if Numistar gains the Egg? All will be lost. Of course it’s –”
“– a trap, which we’ll spring willingly.” The Tourmaline dipped his head. “Dragons. People. New plan. Our time just ran out. We’ll slice through that mess ahead. Our goal is to shoot the Star Dragoness through the lattice and into Numistar’s path. Meantime, we focus on staying alive. We pound those Ice-Raptors into furry white mush, and Shill – Shill?”
“My kind embattled they are, quarrelling between attacking the Winterborn and raiding the Ancient Dragoness’ womb fortress,” came the disembodied voice. “Many strange-minds present are. Mistrust this situation I do.”
“How do we proceed?” asked the Immadian Queen.
Shill said, “You-me join powers, little Human, and broadcast our attack against the Ice-Raptors. This my bloodthirsty kin will draw in and gain us expected allies, but enemies, too. Cold fireballs you must dodge. I will … misdirect them, if possible.”
“Do it,” Grandion ordered. “Dragons, attack speed. Hualiama –”
“Already with you,” she smiled, swirling in for a hasty, inept landing on his left shoulder as the male Dragon bounced through an air pocket. “Shall we show those Ice-Raptors how prettily we can make them die?”
The three larger Dragons roared with murderous laughter as they flexed their wings, quickening with ardent battle joy as they raced into the fiery dawn spreading over the frozen North.
* * * *
With Grandion holding their speed just short of an all-out sprint, Hualiama had time to appreciate the rising suns’ artistry played out across a world unlike any she had seen before. Every scrap of white was blazoned in delicate hues of pink as the suns’ anaemic rays filtered through what appeared to be a low band of mist seeping across the Cloudlands, a band which Imaytha had identified as being created by a temperature inversion, where the very slightly warmer air of the Cloudlands rose into the frigid air above. The skies were perfectly clear, a watery, luminous blue that somehow hinted at the magnificent auroral display of the previous night. The alien, artificial lattice structure vaulted out of the dusky clouds like a delicate, fluted hall of many translucent windows that should play host to a grand Land Dragon ball, not to the bloody battle raging below, and about to erupt above.
Hualiama could not conceive the lay of Immadior’s body. If she created the flying scale-rocks far to the south, but also an under-Cloudlands mountain ridge so many leagues further north, how could both phenomena belong to one Dragoness? Had she been split in half? Was she curled up, a Dragoness of one hundred or more leagues in length?
Great dancing Islands!
Literally.
No wonder she needed an entire sea to be called her own, the Sea of Immadia. Those three thousand or more leagues of barrenness were probably just her backyard playground.
At a rushing velocity of thirty leagues per hour, the miles flashed by. One point seven miles per minute. The speed was sensational, yet its effects were kept at bay by the shaped aerodynamic shields extended over their Human companions by the powerful Dragons. They had mixed in optical and magical-dampening elements, trying to ensure the utmost surprise.
Surprise was no problem. The Ice-Raptors appeared to be distracted by a roiling battle against invisible foes that churned an area of murky Cloudlands perhaps ten leagues in diameter. Her quick Dragon sight picked out white-blue fireballs appearing from nothingness to blast Ice-Raptors, seemingly turning them instantly into ice statues at absolute zero temperature before dropping them into the Cloudlands; in return, the Raptors’ grating psychic cries disturbed the Chrysolitic Dragons’ Flow, buffeting them somehow back into partial or total corporeality. The Ice-Raptors immediately mobbed the less numerous Chrysolitic Dragons, rending them with their powerful hind talons.
Two miles and closing. Ribbons of grey clouds rushed toward them, eddied by the swarming white bodies of the Raptors.
What use was Flow, if the mind remained pervious to a simple psychic attack? It seemed too obvious a flaw. Her inner engineer rejected that notion. Perhaps the Ice-Raptors had a specialised form of mental attack – which might knock out a Shapeshifter? Mercy! No, they had not damaged her before.
Grandion –
I understand, my fire-heart. Focus on the task. Guard your mind – uh, minds?
Aye, we shall. Humansoul?
Alert, my Dragoness. Calculating our shields …
One mile. Frosty airs. Temperature plummeting. Thermal shield elements activated at the touch of a thought. That characteristic smell she had come to associate with Chrysolitic Dragons, bittersweet lily, tickled her sensitive Dragon nostrils.
Drawing a deep, steadying breath, Hualiama set about infusing her companions’ shields with the starlight dragonet effect. She hoped she had worked out a more efficient, controlled construct which would allow them to penetrate the battlefield sufficiently without draining all her strength – and the Tourmaline was laughing at her, calling her a scholarly scroll-worm!
I’ll toast your pretty tourmaline toes! she snarled. “Imaytha! Work with me.”
Half a mile!
Suddenly, her Humansoul cried out within her at the release of the Immadian Queen’s power! It had rocked her, that clarion call that rang unending from Imaytha’s throat, amplified by Shill’s nearby presence.
The southern Dragons charged in without compromise, in a loose V formation designed to allow rapid manoeuvring. Grandion jinked at once, allowing a coruscating mass of blue-white fire to pass harmlessly overhead, but Hualiama saw it tear through his shield like an arrow fired at a paper target. The cold! Shayitha roared her battle-cry, spitting Ice-Raptors as fast as she could reload the bow. Blur. Load-draw-shoot. Imaytha’s hands burned with her characteristic amethyst fire, but her delivery was far more sharply focussed than before, having taken Mizuki’s training to heart. She fired with grim efficiency, supplementing the flaring shields as the first Raptors touched them and triggered the starlight-dragonet reflex; Hualiama felt each touch as a small drain on her resources. Holy smoking Ha’athior, she would not be able to keep this up for long – oh. Grandion!
Her font of all potentials magical!
Strength to thy paw, Blue-Star, he said, with contentment juxtaposed against the hair-trigger readiness of his battle reflexes.
Lia shaped the shield once more, and a chorus of ragged cheers rose from her archers as their arrowheads, passing through the shields, each picked up a neat corona of starlight. Shayitha crowed in delight as one of her shots corrected itself courtesy of a small directional routine Hualiama had devised at the last instant, and buried itself with a gleeful sizzle in an Ice-Raptor’s skull.
“Warning!” Shill shrilled.
The Dragons parted, jinking and weaving sharply as a flurry of cold fireballs appeared out of literal nothingness to part Makani’s proverbial hairstyle. Mizuki cursed as her left hind paw took a glancing hit. Lia felt a pang of pain through the Dragoness before her innate healing magic clamped down on the problem. Grandion rolled, flinging his small passenger free, but her faster-than-thought draconic reactions took over, rolling her beneath his belly, darting upward again to avoid an incoming fireball, and then swivelling in concert with the Tourmaline as he levelled out for the sake of his Riders, positioning her beneath his belly, where his paws were tucked up to his torso.
Makani! Without warning, Grandion stood almost on his tail as he swerved to help the Grey, who had collided head-on with an Ice
-Raptor. Makani’s size won her the Dragon’s share of the impact, killing the Raptor instantly, but she slewed drunkenly in the air, shaking her head.
Hualiama glanced over her shoulder as the encounter whizzed away from her, when she sensed rather than saw a cold fireball homing in upon the centre of her forehead. Skidding sideways in a flurry of quarter-wingbeats, she gave an Ice-Raptor chasing her from behind a millisecond to anticipate a cold, nasty death. Then, talons stabbed into her flailing tail!
With a wild screech of pain, the Star Dragoness unleashed her dragonets. Brilliant light burst out of Grandion, Makani and Mizuki’s shields, spraying the area around them with beautiful, silvery dragonets that chased down the Ice-Raptors and folded around their heads. They burned inward with the incredible temperature of starlight, destroying their foes with sickening simplicity.
Unfortunately, she had neglected the detail of directing the power inward. Her own shield failed to erupt in time.
Fangs snapped across her outstretched wing. With a visceral wrench, Hualiama transformed!
Chapter 10: Ensnared
Grandion Steadied MAKANI with a powerful paw, before turning at Mizuki’s half-voiced shout of horror. Hualiama! She fell! Raptors closed in! Five cold fireballs seared a path toward her tumbling Human form … the Copper was already four hundred feet distant and accelerating through clouds of greenish-golden Raptor blood, but Grandion leaped ahead of her, mentally at least. He folded his shield back at the girl. Shaped aerodynamics – like this!
A Human girl flew.
She barrel-rolled through a sharp diagonal descent, cutting so narrowly between the converging streaks of ultra-cold fire that the Tourmaline’s breath stopped in his throat, but the next instant, he spied a trailing streak of blue-and-blonde, and knew that she soared free. Somehow, with a Dragoness’ nimbleness wrapped about a Human’s inadequate limbs and frame, she had evaded every wing, talon and fireball, and emerged unscathed while a terrible scrap imploded in her wake. Frozen Raptors. Dragons tearing into each other rather than a fleeing Shapeshifter. Chaos.