by Marc Secchia
This Star Dragoness wanted a symbiont, not a vassal – however that idea worked in a biological sense. A girl-form content and fulfilled in both her manifestations, not so deeply saddened by the workings of grief …
Hsst, scaly paws. Aren’t we forgetting something?
She glared inside herself in mock anger. Dragons never forget.
Darling fire petal, we live to dance.
That was when a most curious sensation snuck into her soul. Joy pirouetted and frolicked in the chambers of her being, a clarion call to the healing she knew had already begun. There must be forgiveness from both sides. Freedom from scars. Wholeness.
A graceful assemblage of luminosity reached out. May I have this dance, Humansoul?
She whirled upon wings of starlit laughter.
Chapter 13: Rivers of Fire
TIIYUSIEL DRAGGED HERSELF out of the canyon, quaking and panting, physically and mentally shattered. Clearly sensing the Tourmaline Dragon’s regard from above, her great, blunt head shook slowly. Too deep. They dive to their deaths. Even of Numistar, few living vessels will survive.
All courage to thee, noble kin sister! Grandion bugled in dismay, yet he gave of his power. All he had. He had Islands’-worth of strength, and it was never enough. Fra’anior, grant me courage to stay the course!
From Mizuki’s back, Elki stared hollow-eyed at the Tourmaline, and he had no answers for the Dragonfriend’s brother.
Tiiyusiel said, Seven and a half leagues deep, they are. I sensed in the depths a fey magic unknown to me, that must betoken these Earthen-Fires. O wing brother, that I could succour … how I rue my weakness. I have failed the Shell-Clan! Failed thee! Great is my mourning!
The day meandered past noon. The lattice lay broken, slumped over Immadior’s resting place as if the mighty Dragoness wore a veil of the finest Fra’aniorian lace. Already, the Cloudlands were resettling, returning to their usual opacity as the terrible magic and mayhem which had been unleashed returned to its natural state. The Ice-Raptors dissipated as if borne away on the winds, and their new allies, the Chrysolitic Dragons, hounded the stragglers. Hunting. Slaying.
Grandion pulled himself up. She is not dead.
Far below, Tiiyusiel bowed her fires. There is no sign in Balance or Harmony –
SHE IS NOT DEAD!
The Tourmaline shocked himself with the raw rage of his outcry. Dimly, he felt the man Sumio patting his back, and the movement of the Human as he stepped forward to bind a wound on the Immadian Queen’s arm.
Hope was his bulwark. In Dragon mythology, stars could never be snuffed out. They were the fire-souls of the most ancient of Dragonkind, the elemental Dragon spirits.
In a voice thickened by misery, Grandion said, “We had sight of the First Egg of the Ancient Dragons. Our brave companions shall track the Egg.” He summoned his inner white-fires – let these words wax prophetic! “This is what we will do. We’ll fly to Eskirla Island. Lick our wounds. Then, we return to Immadia and make new plans. Mark the fires of my words, friends – Numistar Winterborn is not finished yet. She will rise anew.”
Elki growled, “And we will defeat her.”
* * * *
The Shell-Clan Dragon reached a depth of close to nine leagues beneath the Cloudlands before he perished beneath the brutal fist of pressure. By then, the motion of the Egg had changed. It tumbled very slowly end over end, borne on a current of air so viscous and broiling, it acted exactly like a glutinous fluid. Hualiama had expected the icy material to begin to evaporate rapidly, but Shill’s testing proved that process proceeded at the pace of a slumberous land snail. Meantime, the skyrocketing compression crushed their bolt hole to a jagged node the size of her Human’s torso.
So far, the substrate had also defeated her utmost attempts to move so much as a fraction of an inch through it. Although Shill demonstrated the possibilities by Flowing at a speed of perhaps an inch per hour, she soon stopped, warning about the dangers of stretching their magical resources too thin. Endurance was key as the Flow state did consume resources, she claimed. Eating of a sort was possible in this state – the consumption of energies – but usually Chrysolitic Dragons re-embodied for this purpose. Shill had never spent an extended period in Flow before. What of her Shapeshifted forms, Hualiama wondered? The Star Dragoness had once unwittingly starved her Human form. Repeat that experience? Never!
Thus, she turned her metaphysically existent brain to another Isle, to learning everything possible about this environment, and the intricacies of Flow. She would undoubtedly drive Shill to distraction with her detailed questions. Further, she must use this time of enforced stillness to work out what upon the Isles she could do about her mother, the unstoppable Empress of Hate.
Three days and five vertical leagues later, measured in the microscopic variations in natural cosmic radiation still detectable at this depth, they passed from the realm of darkness into a river of fire. These were the fires of the world’s mantle – the core fires of the world, Shill informed Lia, unfolding the science for her eager student. Perhaps this was a vertical crack in the crust which had allowed magma to extrude into its space, one of the deeper cracks which the S’gulzzi fire spirits were said to inhabit. Indeed, they sensed alien draconic presences all around them as leaping fires spouting unintelligible ‘sounds’ that lilted like a dialect, but of which they could understand not a single word or concept. A great multitude of these flitting, flickering specks of fire-life swarmed around the hidden Egg bearing an eerie, grating form of magic that Shill identified as Earthen-Fires; as different to her natural magic as oil and water, Lia concluded upon examination. Indeed, it seemed openly antithetical and even destructive to what she sensed of the Egg’s Dragon fires.
Hualiama explained.
The lights beside her shook slightly as Shill appeared to negate her question.
Lia knew her constellation dipped toward darkness, a visible scowl, but – well, someone must think the unthinkable. Chrysolitic Dragons did not have her experience with the command-and-control of the Dragon Haters. Aye, for certain her conjecture about the Theadurial was inadequate, comprised of the thinnest of logical platforms. Intuition. That was her strength, but she must not be blind if the facts proved otherwise.
&nb
sp; They poured along in a world of dull red spectra, pressed on all sides by molten rock. The mixture churned very slowly, giving off subliminal groans as it squeezed southward, on the map in Hualiama’s head at least, toward the great volcano where she had met and saved the Magma Dragon, Crackle. Perhaps that was the place of opportunity, where they might – without any influence on the physical world whatsoever – contrive to lift the First Egg back to the surface?
Enigma!
Suddenly, another intuition revivified her tiny motes.
* * * *
“Grandion, Grandion, Grandion!” Flicker screeched, bursting out of the bushes beside their campsite near the city of Immadia.
Massive as he was, the Tourmaline Dragon could not stem the reactions that instantly transformed him into a battle-ready bundle of nerves, fury and fire. “Flicker! Mind your wingtips!”
Commander Surzaya, the dour leader of the Garrison, turned her famously irascible glare upon the dragonet. That glare was said to stop Ice-Raptors in full flight. Naturally, it was far from sufficient to deter a dragonet as brave, magnificent and unswervingly modest as Flicker. He paused mid-air, pleased to note Commander Darrul had also made an appearance. He had spotted the Commander’s green-eyed partner in crime earlier, helping Jin and Isiki with the herbal poultices and medicines Flicker had prescribed for Makani, who was well on her way to an excellent recovery.
Flicker drew himself up. “I bear news of the highest importance.”
Grandion’s eyes darted sideways as the bushes behind the dragonet rustled very slightly. The Dragon said, very blandly, “Aye?”
The dragonet allowed himself a lazy grin. “I was not so busy with my three mates –” he emphasized the number delicately, giving Dragons and Humans alike the opportunity to appreciate his dedication to the cause “– as to ignore the summons of my best girl, Hualiama. She is well, and –”
Three Dragons and a dozen Humans all started yelling at him.
Bah. Ingrates! Holding up a paw for silence, Flicker said pompously, “If you put an ear canal to the ground, Grandion, you would hear her too.”
“The ground?” Grandion flicked a wingtip interrogatively.
“She is talking through Immadia’s very roots,” he averred, truthfully.
Princess Shayitha started laughing, but she was the only one. “What?” she snorted. “Everyone’s thinking it, right? This vulgar fool’s having a joke at our expense.”
“If you’d bother to unstick the prejudice clogging your flapping cartilaginous skull appendages, noble Princess,” Flicker suggested politely, “you’d understand this is the last matter in the Island-World I’d ever joke about. Have you not apprehended our Tourmaline wing brother’s grief –”
Thump! In his haste, Grandion went down hard over his bent left foreleg, but only insofar as he could therefore press the foremost two ear canals on the left side of his skull to the naked rock. He wriggled slightly back and forth, keeping his tail well clear of the conference table and tents. Then, a slow Dragon grin cracked open his lips, revealing an eager curl of orange fire between glinting fangs.
“Hualiama is well. She is travelling south with the First Egg …” he paused to listen at length. “Fra’anior’s breath! She’s underneath the floor of Immadior’s Sea. Is that even possible? How do I speak back? Mizuki, how’s she doing that?”
The Tourmaline was doing that obtuse-ralti-sheep impression Flicker found so demeaning. Could he not just admit he was a fool for the most sensational girl-Dragon in the Island-World, oh, since the day that comet blew the planetary crust into dust? At least Grandion had perfected the art of drivelling worship. For that, a few faults might be forgiven.
Flicker showed everyone a needle-fanged grin.
Mizuki and Makani had their ear canals to the ground too, now. Mizuki said, “There’s a technique, but she’s warning us not to set off localised earthquakes. That girl!”
Elki drawled, “I swear, if you cut her open, she’d bleed pure mischief.”
Saori punched his arm. “Elki! That’s your sister –”
“Taught her everything she knows.”
“That’s a lie – I provided her education, you feckless glory-stealer!” screeched Flicker.
“I think your bushes are absconding,” the Prince noted drily. “Do try to keep up, dragonet. I can teach you the art of osculatory gyrations with your mates if you like – as a service between wing brothers, so to speak.”
He smacked his lips lewdly.
Flicker snorted, “You revolting naked ape, do not offend the mighty Dragonkind with your barbaric Human eccentricities! Right, you lot – Dragons, Queens, whoever you are – prepare to fly south forthwith. I, meantime, shall risk life and limb investigating these perilous bushes.”
The bushes giggled enticingly.
Flicker dived for cover before he could be assigned anything resembling real work.
* * * *
Before the day was done, Numistar Winterborn charged down from the North and vented her spleen upon the Islands of Humankind. In the face of rising winds and a monstrous rampart of darkness, Grandion swept the scattered northerly Islands with Jin; Makani and Mizuki alerted the Human villages around Immadia’s skirts, and old and young alike scarpered for the old underground haunts, the bolt holes and caverns which had served the Immadians against pirates, feral Dragons and Ice-Raptors in years past.
Then, the storm of the century smashed into the Islands.
Numistar’s voice was the rabid, keening howl of storm winds stressed beyond endurance. She flattened trees and blew shingles off rooftops. Her tears were the fifty inches of snow that buried the low, weather-resistant houses in the course of a single afternoon. Her rage was the breath of ten thousand Ice-Raptors and the thundering hailstorm that followed upon the heels of the snow, with lightning blasting trees and houses, and jagged hailstones the size of a man’s fist stripping every green, living thing of its foliage.
The Dragons and Riders shrank back in the ancient caverns behind the new castle building, and watched in shock and awe as the scaffolding and battlements succumbed to hundreds of consecutive bolts of blue lightning. Blast demolition. Numistar seemed bent upon reducing the Human dwellings into frozen dust.
Shayitha clenched her fists. “We will rebuild our fortresses. Stronger. Taller.”
Qilong added quietly, “This is why we stand against the Winterborn, my friends. This would be the fate of the Island-World at her paw.” He placed a hand upon Queen Imaytha’s shoulder. “My heart bleeds for Immadia, o Queen. Be strong.”
Her eyes were shadowed, moist with helpless rage. “I can’t – isn’t this what happened to Kaolili, Prince Qilong?”
“Aye.”
He folded her into his powerful arms. After a moment, his tears spilled upon that titian hair, and Qilong’s long-held composure, product of his Eastern heritage, cracked at last. Fists clenched behind her back. Raw, angry sobs. Wrenching sorrows. Grandion knew how much the Prince had seen. There was no easy face of war. Dragons might sing of mighty deeds of paw, but the great sagas in many ways concealed or even glamourised the truth. War was ruinous, a murderer of the innocent and a ruthless despoiler of the Islands.
Meantime, the Dragon covertly judged Shayitha’s reaction. Not all was good. In measured tones, he said, “The only positive outcome might be the refilling of the terrace lakes, o Princess. You said you needed a good snowfall.”
“You Dragons brought this disaster upon us!”
“Shall I recount for you the sorrows of the East?” asked the Dragon.
Shayitha stiffened. “I care about Immadia! I care about these people, here!”
“And the rest of the Island-World?”
“I’m sure you Dragons can contrive to destroy that, too. Do us a favour, Tourma
line. Don’t bring your girlfriend back to Immadia. We could do without the favour.”
“Shayitha,” her sister reproved.
The tall Princess turned away, shaking. “You can fly to war without me. Someone has to stay here and rebuild. That’s what I want to do. Grant me that boon, o Queen of Amethyst. Please.”
Grandion grieved at the rancorous note her voice struck. Aye, Hualiama’s flight had inadvertently brought Numistar Winterborn to the North – but this had always been the Ancient Dragoness’ goal. Somehow, in the course of just a few days since the Egg had vanished, she had contrived to draw together another incarnation of breathtaking power. Just as the Dragonfriend had described to him regarding their flight that ended in a crash-landing at Immadia, the Winterborn did not appear to be entirely rational. Certainly, her draconic fires burned atypically. Insane? Or could the root of this crazed behaviour be ascribed to the splitting and re-forming of her mind and being into lesser creatures, while the Numistar sought the power of the First Egg to restore her true being? For the raging of this storm struck him as a kind of cerebral agony, the venting of a soul in great pain.
What if Azziala gained control of the mightiest Dragoness in the Island-World?
Or did that title belong to a miracle of rather daintier proportions?
“So granted,” Imaytha whispered against Qilong’s chest. “You shall rule Immadia until such time as I return.”
Yet they had to tarry for three days until the storm blew over.
At this time, the Lesser Dragons repeated their frantic pre-storm flight – the Tourmaline to the far North with Queen Imaytha, Qilong and Commander Darrul, while Mizuki and Makani helped to dig out three buried caverns on the eastern shore of Immadia, freeing the grateful – and somewhat disconcerted – villagers. The Immadians tallied the damages at work tables roughly set up in the caverns behind the castle, since the building was now uninhabitable, while the Lesser Dragons added their observations.