by Marc Secchia
Truly Human, or that devious power of Projection again? What the sulphurous hells was he doing?
Bewilderment.
In that instant of her distraction, the untrammelled power of the Ancient Dragoness’ psychic blast smashed Hualiama away like a Dragon’s paw swatting an unwanted insect.
Tumbling. Down, down, down.
* * * *
Amethyst fire ignited his brain. “Dragon, awake! Idiot Dragon, what are you doing?”
Imaytha? He stared at the Immadian Enchantress. Then, as if scales dropped from his eyes, Grandion perceived Numistar Winterborn’s lie for what it had been. Hualiama had confronted her. The Ancient Dragoness had injured Hualiama and almost Dragonship-wrecked her process of transformation, but Lia had once again defied the odds, only to be diverted by his plummeting arrival, with his three remaining Riders and their saddlebags! Shame flushed heatedly throughout his body. Her minute but unmistakable reaction to his masculine presence – as the Great Dragon himself lived and breathed! He had arms and legs!
For a fraction of a second, Grandion checked for his Dragon body, abandoned somewhere by his power of Projection – no. He was truly Human. A Shapeshifter. By the power and knowledge she had freely offered, persuaded by his wailing need and which he had seized, in that frantic millisecond of recklessness …
“Pull yourself together, man!” roared Shayitha, reaching out to try to shake his arm loose of its socket. “Change back before you kill us all!”
Sumio was still strapped to his saddle. So were the two Immadian royals.
Grandion could not believe what his eyes were telling him. His brain. Everything was different. The field of his vision had changed. Hualiama was suddenly a blue speck tumbling away toward the still-rising Egg, for Numistar seemed to have been able to enflesh enough of her being that she cupped it upon the bones of her left forepaw. That curved surface was … a quarter-mile wide? So beautiful, like shimmering pearl. Indescribable. The greatest prize in history.
Slap! Shayitha’s open palm impacted his jaw with a crack like a Dragon breaking bones to expose the marrow. “Come on, pretty boy! My sister can’t hold us here forever!”
“Uhhhh …” Grandion felt … his face … “Whaaaaa – what happened to me?”
Where the blazing hells was his magic?
He cried out, Hualiama! Hualiama, please, help! Even his Dragonish seemed changed, feeble and useless, but the faraway speck stirred, her wings fluttering uselessly to arrest the tearing force of her falling.
Away from him.
BLUE-STAR!
The gaze of his inner stranger had just twisted to the renewed spectacle – not imagined, this time – of an impossibly gigantic Numistar Winterborn smirking over Hualiama’s apparent demise, when dozens of beams of a Land Dragon light cannonade seared the clouds, spearing through the murk in great, thick fingers of brilliant magic, and the rising scream of Harmonic magic tore the skies asunder.
The Chrysolitic Dragons clustered about his beloved responded with an instantaneous barrage of cold fireballs. As their powers collided, the resulting explosion was as if the suns themselves had dropped upon the Egg.
Numistar screamed!
Chapter 11: The Theft of an Egg
Sunspots streaked his weak Human eyes as Grandion gazed about frantically, trying to work out what had happened. He could barely process the haphazard inputs of his unfamiliar senses. There was a teeth-rattling explosion of light. Numistar pitched forward as though trying to snap her disembodied muzzle about a prize that could never be hers. Just out of her reach, the Egg’s shining glory lay encased in a new, ultra-dense layer of ice.
Where was Numistar’s forepaw?
Land Dragons bombarded the Ancient Dragoness, each other and the Egg at will, in a feral maul that roiled about the slowly falling egg-mass. Grandion could not see Hualiama, but he felt her stirring, and then unaccountably, a windsong’s breath of laughter touched his soul. Thou …
Thou! Wetness streaked his stubbly cheeks … another impossibility. Dragons never cried. Yet here he was, blubbering like the Human child he remembered from his parents’ roost. Mostly, that white-haloed mite had laughed and danced, but occasionally there had been hurts, some of them caused by a jealous Tourmaline hatchling. Thou … didst see?
Thou – art become – for me …
Her voice faded. No!
Shayitha seized him by the throat with the grip of an angry Dragoness. “So help me, Dragon, I will wring your pretty neck if you do not change! Change back! Now!”
Awareness blossomed in his mind. Responsibility. Fury. Desire must wait. Numistar had played his emotions like a harpist plucking the strings of his null-fires foolishness; Hualiama had paid the price.
A Dragon always repaid his debts.
Grandion dug deep of his powers and summoned up the precise moment of his transformation. His scalp prickled. Every hair on his arms and body stood bolt upright in chilling, glorious realisation. He had done it! He was a Shapeshifter? Truly? Only if this lunacy persisted. Please, if there was any justice on any Island beneath the skies so vast, let it be!
Change back. The triumph was fleeting, as hollow as death itself. His answering cry rang into an immensity of despair, I must be Tourmaline!
* * * *
Dimly, the Star Dragoness became aware of magic zinging through her oath-connection with Grandion. Transformative magic. Shapeshifter magic! Her body chose to jerk, but only insofar as to discover that she lay encased in a block of ice so hard, it was as if she were sealed inside the lime-laced volcanic cement preferred by Fra’aniorian builders for its structural excellence. At once, a spurt of panic primed her draconic reactions, trying to rouse magic that had guttered as low as the last feeble embers of a fire. She sensed a presence nearby. A Chrysolitic Dragoness.
Shill called, Peace be to the she; rest easily. I am with thee.
Peace? She felt like a moth pinned to a board! Aye, thoroughly pummelled beforehand, slapped by a paw the size of a small Island and then shoved unceremoniously under a mountain of ice.
Images formed hazily in her mind as Shill explained how the Land Dragons were still attacking en masse, slugging it out blow for massive blow with Numistar Winterborn, whose paw had been material enough to be blown into smithereens by the unexpected detonation caused by fourteen cold fireballs intersecting the Land Dragons’ light cannon and Harmonic magic attacks simultaneously. The explosion had also coated the first Egg, in another process the Chrysolitic Dragon did not understand, in all the moisture for miles about, mixed with the by-product of Numistar’s shattered lattice.
The information beat against her stultified senses. The Egg’s song felt muted against her mind, but still outshone anything else she could detect of the Island-World.
What now? Fate had punched her in the gut. Wrenched her loose from those she loved … where were they? Had they survived?
Wait must we, the outcome to see, said Shill. Do you rest comfortably?
Well, my skull’s being crushed by tonnes of ice, Numistar belted the stuffing out of me, and Grandion’s – mercy, he’s fine. Fine-ish. Hualiama batted away images of a Dragon catching people and saddlebags, hands frantically ratcheting saddles to spine spikes, and earlier, the striking striations of his muscular arm as he reached for her. A man-Dragon! Oh, mercy, she could never resist … right. To work, my friend. Teach me again about this Flow. I’ve a bad feeling we’re about to need it.
Meantime, she checked rapidly, Grandion?
Lia! He sounded desperately far away, but the threadlike mental reply was definitely him – complete with shame indicators, triumph, and a snarky touch of male draconic arrogance. Aye, her Dragon.
Wing check?
He laughed gleefully, Wings, arms, I can do it all! Only, I ruined your attack on Numistar. She blinded me with images of your dying – I’m so sexy!
Uh … what the –
Distinctly, she felt a Dragon’s fires blush through their oath-connection. Fra’anior’s b
eard! I meant to say – SORRY!
Right, sure you did, Mister Muscles, she said, helping his befuddlement by sending an image of what she thought of what she had seen.
HUA – his howl trailed off into spluttering incoherence. The Dragon compartmentalised rather than dealing with his humiliation. I’m going to help our companions. It’s chaos down there. Hold tight and stick close to the Egg.
Totally stuck, my Dragonheart.
They swapped images – hers of a frozen prison, his of dense wedges of Land Dragons driving against Numistar, carving hunks of bone and flesh out of her nascent body, while at least two thousand Ice-Raptors rained their fury from above and dozens of Chrysolitic Dragons added to the confusion. The First Egg swayed under the attacks as it drifted downward with a surprising lack of speed, toward the apparently bottomless trench beside Immadior’s belly. Was the First Egg not nearly as heavy as she had supposed? How odd – Hualiama quietened her inner engineer. Priorities.
Agreed, said Humansoul, with a cheeky pirouette inside of herself. How can I help?
The Dragoness’ wings twitched in surprise. Well, understandable surprise. She had never seen her Human self more excited than an energetic dragonet, but she supposed the girl had reason. Dreamy, manly, stoke-those-fires reason.
What a scrumptious motivation to stay alive!
Hey, that’s my boy. Claws off, complained Humansoul.
Can’t I look? After all, you’ve been peeking at my Tourmaline Dragon all these years. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Besides, he’s hardly manifested as a boy. Unless you’ve suddenly become far less observant than I know you to be …
Shut the mousetrap, Dragonsoul, her Human retorted, mock-snootily – but with a flash of the eyes and a firming of the elfin chin Hualiama knew far too well in herself. A fight, eh? Fine. Eyeballs allowed, but no claws, or I’ll tell that Dragon on you. Oooooooh … isn’t he rainbows-garlanding-Islands-gorgeous? Swoon-worthy? And a billion other hyperbolic, scintillant adjectives?
Told you so, laughed the Dragoness. Such wing-shivering delight!
Fate, fulfilled!
The First Egg continued to rock beneath the Land Dragons’ assault, but if she was not mistaken, the ice-like layer was growing thicker rather than thinner. The additional weight continued to sink the Egg toward the abyss. Seven miles deep, now. Moving toward eight. Wouldn’t such a relatively light mass soon stabilise due to displacement, weight and atmospheric pressure?
Oh, now we want to be enlightened? Allow me to dust off our physics skills, Dragoness.
Why don’t you go teach a Dragon how to kiss?
I plan to, agreed the Human girl, bouncing on her toes before doing a pirouette, dropping into the sideways splits and then wriggling about like a speared fish – well, it was all rather more graceful than that, but the Dragoness still winced. She could not do the same!
Her inner self could not stop dancing. Nor should she, when her hope had tourmaline eyes and …
Mind – Islands’ sakes! Stick to the battle!
Grandion called urgently, Blue-Star, there’s a problem. A big problem.
* * * *
Flicker gazed to the North from four miles above his mountaintop, a height to which his relatively newborn stature had struggled to carry him. Something massive was happening out there. For a long, long hour, he searched the world beyond the scope of ordinary senses. Flicker listened with the perception of a fire-soul who had lived and died, and lived again. He summoned those memories of his many hours learning with his great mentor, Amaryllion Fireborn – may his fire-soul ever brighten the eternal fires of the Dragonkind!
Magical echoes played upon the sensitive scales of his muzzle, especially near his fire-eyes, and in a tingling sensation in his wingtips. War. War, and battling, and the outcry of Dragon magic expiring in the deeps. The world changed.
Why was he building warrens when the Island-World flew to war?
Now, he regretted staying behind while the Dragonfriend rode North. He had failed her. Only, had there not been a sense of rightness in his fire-spirit as he founded the seven warrens of the new Immadian ice-dragonets, and established their mores and traditions? There was a time to build, a time to love, and a time to war.
He must rouse the dragonets.
Setting his wings, Flicker began to spiral downwards, keeping his muzzle turned toward the line of the horizon. Aye. He was not just imagining that change, the darkness turning to light.
The frozen mists were beginning to dissipate.
* * * *
Fuelled by the pugnacious pack of Land Dragons trying to punish the ethereal Chrysolitic Dragons, the ice pack around the First Egg grew massively thick. Three-quarters of a mile of frozen tomb surrounded the Egg now, but Grandion’s thought pictures broadcast a different challenge. A group of Mist-Runners, aided by a massive Shell-Clan Elder, absconded with the Egg, dragging a helpless Star Dragoness along for the ride. Numistar’s body flickered and faded beneath the united pummelling of hundreds of vengeful Land Dragons, while others had begun to peel away in their clan groups of fives and tens to trail the First Egg – clearly, intent on contending for its possession. Great. And, she was more than stuck to the Egg. Entombed, perhaps. Welded.
That said, the growing air pressure would quickly become her most pressing problem – she chortled at a terrible pun – because there was no way she could construct a pressure-shield about her pinioned body. Secondly, the tiny amount of air trapped with her was rapidly becoming stale – what a null-brain she was. This mental babbling was the result of someone silencing her calculating, precision-oriented tinkerer. Humansoul.
Her second mind ordered, Flow. It’s the only way.
Now was the moment to master a skill so abstruse no Dragon had ever heard of it? This Island-World of hers. Boundlessly malleable; a fresh discovery upon every Island of her life. For the first time, she had an inkling of why Fra’anior loved his creation so fiercely. That same love burned in his shell-daughter’s breast.
She sang:
Let the great Sun Dragon’s eyes burn my wings,
Oh for his fires to blaze in me,
Of suns and starlight were born these fires,
Incarnate, matchless, free.
Shill inquired, What is this poetry, little she?
I – I’m not completely sure, Hualiama puzzled. Human-Lia seemed equally confused. Come. Speak to me of Flow. Let me sense it, taste it, imbibe it …
The Chrysolitic Dragoness replied, Dance in your mind. Dance and be free.
The battle’s thundering slowly receded as, leveraging Grandion’s perception to supplement the deficiencies born of her own awkward situation, a curious race developed. The air below the Cloudlands was so thick and viscous that no creature could move particularly quickly – well, she hoped – but instead, they were forced to swim against the friction. The deeper one travelled, the harder it was to make headway. Furthermore, the Egg was very large and unwieldy indeed. This meant that the race proceeded in languid haste, if such a concept did not frazzle the brain.
The Shell-Clan Dragon, fully a mile and a half in length, led out, clutching the Egg to his belly with four paws, while his rearward-facing sphincter jets worked overtime, providing thrust. Ten Mist-Runners assisted with their paws, swimming alongside or behind, just out of the path of his ejecta, pulling and helping to supply additional drive. That level of co-operation between Land Dragons of different clans was more than unusual. It was unthinkable, except if commanded by a great Elder such as Siiyumiel. Neither Grandion nor Hualiama saw such a creature here.
Where was Tiiyusiel?
Aha, the Tourmaline spied her skulking behind a clan group of violet Mountain-Runners. The great, squat lizards charged along the undulating surface of Immadior’s flank, kicking up centuries of detritus with their powerful, spatulate talons, trying to overtake an absconding Egg.
Being isolated, Tiiyusiel was vulnerable to attack, Hualiama realised. The clans naturally worked together and loners,
even a loner the size of a Shell-Clan youngster, could easily find herself the victim of a gang of draconic thugs. Grandion shadowed her from a mere mile above the toxic layer, while Mizuki and Makani shadowed him in turn, still stuck above the lattice. The crumbling lattice …
Oh no! Grandion!
His reply came from further away, unintelligible – stifled by magic she had not previously detected. Suddenly, Hualiama realised that she might soon be entirely cut off from his presence. Go! Now! Her first attempt snapped a Human into being, and almost crushed her hand in the narrow space which had been occupied by her left wing-membrane. What a time to learn that Shapeshifting was space-constrained – and, that she was exhausted, magically speaking.
Good attempt, little she. Now, listen to me, Shill rhymed as she loved to do. Hear my chimes, my thoughts so free; let your thoughts flow like snow until you know the Flow.
Good one, Human-Lia laughed.
She closed her eyes and attuned her senses to the slow, easy susurrus of Shill’s thoughts. A touch of self-hypnosis, and her eyes lidded. Not-quite sleep. Feel the magic stir. To Flow, she must let go.
Now she even sounded like a Chrysolitic Dragon!
Her giggle seemed far too high-pitched. Something was changing. Don’t resist, said Shill. Fear not. Fear itself is undraconic and contrary to Flow. Internalise the sound of my voice. Follow its leading to the place of believing … where the mortal lightens and the visible becomes invisible, and the indivisible, divisible …
How Dragons loved the cleverness of their own speech. Yet Hualiama focussed deeper, pursuing a sense she had once known as an eggling, and as a Human infant who had somehow left the womb – for where, she had no idea – and returned as an embryonic Shapeshifter, soul-infused with a Dragon’s fire. That sensation could transport her to a place beyond time. Beyond knowing. Beyond mortal flesh. A place free of cold and fear and physical inanition … as she dreamed, she sensed movement. Shifting. She was being constricted subtly, throughout her being, in novel ways.