by Marc Secchia
Seventh sense warning!
The Tourmaline Dragon hurled himself to his right flank, braking and banking simultaneously. KABOOM! Searing light washed over him. Grandion tumbled away in a flurry, dodging the seeking light beam as he applied his own masking techniques, but that Dragon sense saved him and his Riders. Such power!
Already, the Ice-Raptors closed in, but he sensed Numistar’s focus was not on a lone Lesser Dragon and his less-than-numerous allies. The Raptors shot past toward the Cloudlands. The clouds swirled. Through the disconcerting gaps in the Cloudlands, Grandion glimpsed the Shell-Clan Dragon clambering into a vertical orientation as he tried to wrestle the enormous Egg’s mass over the edge and down into that canyon, now a shade under two miles wide in this location. The Tourmaline’s scales prickled horribly. Why here? What waited down there in the blackness?
Sumio crowed, “Head shot!”
“We’re going down!” Grandion shouted as the thick white stream of Ice-Raptors turned to the vertical. “Keep taking them. Each one counts against Numistar!”
That was like saying fleabites would take down a ralti sheep, he appreciated, but a swift half-glance along his spine spikes assured the Dragon that his Riders had no intention of swerving from their course. Sumio’s huge hands handled his bow as if it were a toy, nocking another arrow to the string. Shayitha curved her back, aiming down and across his left flank, biting her lip in concentration. Imaytha’s hands blazed in the act of touching her sister’s arrow with that intense amethyst fire she produced. Grandion wished he had enjoyed the time to teach her a few more tricks. She certainly had power.
Constructs rippled through his mind. Pressure shields. Light. Sound. Perhaps, a gas-blanking shield for the time they would be down there, to save his Riders from the worst of the poisons? The broken cloudscape rushed up toward him. Great canyons of space riven through those toxic layers. With a gruff half-warning he swirled again, avoiding a speculative light cannon shot. The Land Dragons were firing at Numistar, he realised. They were not the target. Wind rushed across his scales. Furling his wings further, Grandion speared down into a realm that for a thousand years had been regarded as inviolable by Lesser Dragons. Coolness switched places with warmth as he burst through a thermal inversion. Amethyst-tipped arrows speared left and right, seeking furry bodies. The Queen was providing directional magic, he realised. That was one way of ensuring the success of archery in swirling, chaotic aerial combat – dodge!
Grandion howled as a cold fireball ripped through the outer edge of his left mid-wing, missing the secondary joint by a rajal’s whisker. The only saving grace was that the attack had been made from so close, the hole was a mere three feet in diameter and had missed anything vital. Evasive manoeuvers! More cold fireballs hissed past, but some were friendly fire, he realised.
THE COPPER!
A concussive blast slammed him sideways yet again. Grandion corrected his flight path with an angry, throbbing growl, and reflexively bit a Raptor’s head off its shoulders to make his point entirely clear. For that, he earned a raking talon strike down his left flank as the dying body jerked spasmodically.
“Drunken terhals, they’ve just fumbled the world’s future!” Shayitha shrilled in panic.
The Egg slipped away into the darkness, forced downward by the powerful Shell-Clan Dragon, while Tiiyusiel jetted in hot pursuit. Mizuki flitted above the leading edge of her carapace, just a speck of colour against a moving mountain.
Tiiyusiel, the lattice is falling! Grandion called. Take cover!
The Land Dragon roared, We must secure the Egg! The Egg is all!
The canyon – protect yourself! How deep –
Six and a half leagues, maximum. Then, even that brainless traitor must turn – but I sense a fey presence, inflicting our sweet Harmony with pangs of vile mordancy, Tiiyusiel added in a sharp swerve of perception. Tourmaline, absorb my sensory deductions.
Darkness slicked across his inner fires, dampening them as if he had flown headlong into a tar pit. Grandion snarled, What is that?
No time. Mizuki, Grandion, get to safety – GRRAAARRGGH!
At full speed, the young Shell-Clan Dragon smashed into a clan group of seven light pink Gem Runners, with their florid pink trim and wild patterning of their stellate body-armour. She bowled the much smaller, lizard-like Runners over before Tiiyusiel climbed in with her flaming talons. A wild scrap rebounded off Immadior’s frozen flank and dropped them over the barren edge of the canyon, scrapping fang and talon.
Spitting fire between her fangs, Mizuki pulled up. Too deep. It’s – I can’t – thanks, wing brother.
Think nothing of it, said Grandion, pouring strength into her shields as Hualiama had so often served him. Makani – behind you!
The Tourmaline grunted as though it was he who had been hit, not the Grey. She screamed, Pain … flight muscle …
The Dragoness had dodged but still taken a cold fireball strike directly against her lower right chest, Grandion saw with gathering clarity. Her right wing was incapacitated. Mizuki! Find a gap – hurry! From the corner of his eye, he saw Numistar’s Ice-Raptors pouring into the darkness like a thin white tide, many hundreds or even thousands strong. Could they breathe down there? Shield against the enormous pressures? Perhaps Numistar had ways they did not understand.
He had to break off and help Makani, or she and her Riders would die. Fiery notes of execrative despair reverberated in his mind. He roared, Hualiama!
Could he trust in her uncanny skill to survive the most adverse circumstances?
She was beyond his reach now.
* * * *
Firing thoughts rapidly at the two Dragonesses, Grandion shepherded them to safety – Mizuki to a wider gap developing in the tumbling lattice, and Makani into a slow, spiralling glide that took her away from the milling groups of Ice-Raptors, which were still plentiful in the now-overcast skies. Overcast? Peculiar how these Raptors contrived to change the weather – a relation to Storm power?
He made careful observations.
Grandion turned sideways and tucked in his wings, lightly scraping through a large gap in the crumbling lattice. Then he was up into the skies, bidding Makani land and rest upon his back, at least briefly, to ensure she did not overstrain her immobilised wing. The wound was severe. The Tourmaline indulged himself in a flurry of furious lightning bolts as a few Ice-Raptors peeled off to ‘investigate’ the intruders. Most, like Grandion, appeared transfixed by the Egg’s disappearance.
Imaytha said, “Makani, I think you need to heat yourself to a swelter, to restore your damaged flesh as quickly as possible. How’s about giving Grandion your Riders whilst you –”
“I am not leaving my Dragoness!” growled Jin.
“Fine, be roasted,” Qilong called over from Mizuki’s back.
Mizuki put in, “Quicker and better, I’ll blow fire over the muscle and wing joint. You retain the heat inside a thermal shield, wing sister.”
“Aye,” Makani said tightly.
Grandion eyed the frosted patch on the Grey’s sleek hide, heavy of hearts. He did not say what they were all thinking. The Dragon hide, flesh and muscle beneath was deep-frozen to a glistening grey-white sheen over an area exceeding sixteen feet in diameter, reaching from her mid-lower flank up the bulk of her flight muscle to the primary wing joint, and across the wing surface almost to the secondary wing joint. He examined the wound with his magic. “Any Dragon here possess a touch of healing?”
All three of them shook their heads. It was a rare power. Far too rare.
Makani added, “The icing effect reached the second heart. It’s half functional, perhaps, but I sense unthawing.”
Elki said, “What about Hualiama? Can you draw from her again?”
“I can’t … feel her,” Grandion admitted, drawing gasps from his small friends. Elki turned as pallid as a tan Fra’aniorian Islander possibly could. Quickly, he added, “But I am convinced I would know of her death. She’s alive, and she has a miraculous gift
of staying that way. Do not despair, o mighty Prince of the Volcano!”
Qilong grumbled, “Huh. Wish I’d thought of that title first.”
Where was an impudent dragonet when one needed a moment’s hilarity to break through the despair cloying his third heart? He missed that bothersome insect-trapper with an unexpected pang.
Grandion ordered, “Jin, Isiki, join minds with your Dragoness and think warming thoughts.” His rich laughter burbled over them as the teenagers blushed identically. “Give her your strength. I’ve no doubt this is going to hurt worse than a Dragon bite. Seats, quickly. Leave the saddle up there but get all Human arms and legs well out of the way.”
With the chariness of new Dragon Riders who must discover that dismounting mid-flight above many miles of lovely, open sky was a decidedly different prospect to doing so on solid ground, Jin and Isiki vacated their seats and carefully slid down onto Grandion’s back. Saori had slipped down to the outer bulge of Mizuki’s left flight-primary, and knelt there with one hand on the wing bone as she grimly tossed her breakfast into the Cloudlands. Pregnant Dragonesses often complained of eggshell nausea, Grandion remembered. What a peculiar parallel between their kinds.
Dragons, keep watching for – warning!
The trio of Lesser Dragons slammed up their shields as four Chrysolitic Dragons wavered into being not a hundred feet off their port bow.
Friends we are, one called over.
Blooded-in-battle allies, we realise, called the second. Handsomely and with the utmost draconic pride, have you given your hide, that our ancient enemy might be denied. Even as he spoke, the sleek, insectoid Dragon arched his neck and plundered a terrible, full-frontal shot into an approaching Ice-Raptor’s face. Delicious!
A noble strike, said Grandion, scoring an intrepid ice shard attack on a foe five hundred feet distant – well, only one of a spread of three shards struck, but it pierced the brain.
Good shooting! the Chrysolitic Dragons chimed in chorus.
The first called again, I am Ginshyll’oriala, o Dragon called Grandion. Do you await the Egg’s rising? Your companion, the hatchling-she, did fall in battle most bravely.
The Tourmaline nodded gravely, watching with one eye as Mizuki slowly cooked Makani’s flank with her Dragon fire, while the other eye observed the Chrysolitic Dragons. Fascinating distinctions in the basic draconic bodily structures, he noted, admiring their fin-like spine spikes, totally different wing plan and multifaceted eyes – but their magic! He could only admire the alien complexity of what he sensed in them; just as rapidly, he evaluated their pulses, the tenor of their oddly frigid fires, and the nuances of body language. Allies indeed. They spoke with true-fires.
He returned, Friends and allies, we are. The Star Dragoness Hualiama has not fallen, I believe, but my seventh sense detects a most peculiar disturbance in that canyon –
S’gulzzi, tinkled one of the Chrysolitic Dragons.
Grandion grunted as if he had been punched in his third heart. S’gulzzi – are they not legend?
The other Dragon disagreed with a wing-dip. Nay, o southern wing brother. Legend they are not. The deepest canyon in our Northland is indeed immense, fully fifteen leagues is its demesne. A deeper pit of hellish Earthen-Fires has never been known –
To elucidate, o draconic magnate, the fourth Chrysolitic Dragon put in, with perfect timing, these Earthen-Fires are those fires most hostile to the Sky-Fires of your kind. Many kinds of Dragon life there be. Thou art the verimost exemplar of Sky-Fires, mighty wing brother – she flicked her nictitating membranes pertly at him – and we are Cold-Fires. Those S’gulzzi, legend holds, are Earthen-Fires, a deep fire native to the bowels of our Island-World, far below the realms of ordinary draconic dwellers. There are elemental forms of Dark-Fires and Star-Fires and Suns-Fires, none of which are embodied in this world, as you know.
You graciously correct the paucity of my knowledge, mighty scholar, Grandion replied, filing this information away zealously. By his wings! They spoke eruditely of the deepest, most fundamental aspects of draconic fire-life! Suddenly, intuition fired his brain. Why that spot, exactly? Do these S’gulzzi seek the First Egg? Of course! But … how? I thought they were spirits, unable to live … well, outside of the deepest fires?
The Chrysolitic Dragons greeted this sally with delighted bugles. A draconic word most potent! Something peculiar was indeed blowing upon the world’s breezes, if Land Dragons raced into the unknowable depths in a quest to deliver a First Egg to – what? Those fire spirits, those fiends of legendary and limitless evil? No Dragon could know what such fey spirits might be planning, but the truth was obvious. They had engineered this moment, somehow, influencing and striking far beyond their realm and defeating Numistar Winterborn in the bargain! What new horrors might these events portend?
Hualiama? Please, answer … he searched with all of his hearts.
No reply issued from the pit.
* * * *
The Egg shook together with its passengers as a tremendous battle developed without. Rather than feeling each wallop of a Land Dragon’s fist, however, Hualiama saw the sound and shockwaves conducted through the constellations like puffs of wind ruffling a still pond.
Shill’s lights whirled about her, pulsating an apparently agitated orange.
she temporised, wondering what she did believe. Good must triumph. Love must shine through. Her life, and her deeds, must leave her Island-World a better place. The monks worshipped the Great Onyx. She called him Dad. Awesome Dad. Daddy-fire. Sevenfold creator of life as she knew it. Did that mean a Star Dragoness might similarly attract … worship? Lia wished she could scratch her neck at this point – awkward! She’d fly away … hide behind the Yellow Moon or on the farthest Isle, or better still, develop a severe allergy to any signs of Star Dragoness-adoration!
Much more comfortable to change the subject.
The practices of ‘seeing’ through Flow were complex and arcane, the semantics of vastly altered perception. However, under Shill’s able tutelage, Lia soon learned to detect ambient light levels, pressure and density of substances, at least within rough parameters, and how to perceive beyond her immediate surrounds. Quickly, she concluded that they were being conveyed into an atramental realm lit only by the stabbing eye beams of the quarrelling Land Dragons, which had swelled in number to over a hundred, as best she could tell – filling the canyon from wall to wall. The feral Shell-Clan Dragon still clutched the First Egg to his belly, but mostly to protect it from the outright Runner war that surrounded him. Tens of Mist-Runners and Welkin-Runners poured down into the depths, scuffling and scuttling over the icebound Egg from all directions, while Numistar’s group attacked ferociously, trying to halt the ongoing theft. The Ice-Raptors meantime attacked the eyes, ear canals and spiracles of the Land Dragons, or directed their outraged psychic screams at the Egg itself for no reason Shill or Hualiama could establish.
By degrees, as Shill taught the hatchling Dragoness how to extend her senses deeper into the magical realm, Hualiama began to detect or at least imagine the presence of a different, highly elusive magic; more a scent than a real sense, like slightly rancid oil spread upon water, she thought. The S’gulzzi? No. The sinister trace a
ppeared to be emanating from the Land Dragons opposing Numistar, most notably from the great Shell-Clan male.
Five leagues and dropping. The ice surrounding the Egg finally began to shift and fracture under the huge pressure, but only to become denser, if that were possible. The Ice-Raptors began to show signs of struggling physically, but the Land Dragons’ vicious battle continued unabated.
Hualiama focussed on the hulking male Land Dragon. Why so single-minded? Why did his brain not dazzle like Siiyumiel’s – well, the Great Wisdom was much older, but still … she clearly remembered seeing Shell-Clan through a broadcast of Harmonic sight. The beauty of their draconic fire-life had appeared to her not as staid, tortoise-like creatures, but as Dragons of light. At his death, Amaryllion’s soul form had been indescribably more radiant and breathtaking than he had appeared in life. Now, the Shell-Clan’s fires, visible as a faraway oval fountain of lights, appeared – well, she could not say subdued, exactly, but definitely changed. Something struck her as very odd about that sight. Very peculiar indeed.
Just then, a siren-call of magic unlike anything she had ever experienced before issued from the pit, and the Land Dragons responded. They obeyed.
Undraconic!
Every shred of her Dragonsoul bellowed in outrage, but Humansoul offered a soothing word and her unruffled presence, her mind suddenly coming into focus as though Lia had only just remembered part of herself. Her Human said, Work it out, Dragoness-petal. Gnaw at the problem until we find a solution.
Islands’ greetings, other petal. Glad you could join us in abject captivity.
Her bright laughter sounded impossibly contralto, but blonde-Lia replied, It was as if I couldn’t find you for a time. Awfulness …
In a flash, she gave the girl a hug, and then paused in shock. How did this Dragoness come to the fore, when it was you who Flowed first, my best heart? When did that happen? Are we … merging, into each other?
A quirky flit of lights preceded a teasing word, Oh, the horror!
Yet her response was a sinking feeling in her being, a dipping and wavering of her lights, as the eggling-spirit who had once roamed the Island-World to rescue a kindred spirit, only to rescued herself, considered the implications of draconic tyranny ruling her own hearts and manifestations. That was classic Dragon behaviour. Rule. Possess. Decree. Azziala had her parasitic twin, she recalled, in a chilling parallel of what their Shapeshifter relationship could have looked like. Could the twin somehow be the key to Azziala’s nature and her eventual downfall? She must meditate upon this.