by Marc Secchia
“Her blue-robed minions were here – recruiting,” spat another of the shell-brothers, a stalwart Red. “Dazzling Dragons. Many hundreds fell to their wiles and flew South through the spits, where they reportedly battle the warrior monks of Fra’anior.”
“What?” growled Grandion.
“Aye,” said Flicker. “What intelligence is this, noble Dragon?”
Yuzikion said, “You are Flicker the Resurrected, dragonet of Fra’anior, are you not? Your legend precedes you to our shores.”
The dragonet genuflected deeply with his wings, hoping to disguise the pleasure that rocketed up through his belly into his throat. Legendary! He could sup upon this accolade for, oh, say a thousand lifetimes or so.
Flicker said, “May reflected-honour be your portion, mighty Dragon. Tell us what was, and when it occurred.”
The Dragon replied, “Three weeks ago already, many Dragonships of unfamiliar design did invade our domain and turned the Dragonkind to their ways. Before that, even, the Human armies of the Federation flew for the Spits, bound for Fra’anior, we believe. They planned to strike at the hour of greatest trouble for Chalcion, King of Fra’anior, and wrest his Isle and his crown from him.”
Sucking in his lip as he knew Hualiama would have, Flicker inquired, “How would you rate their chances?”
“If these Dragon Haters’ dominance extends to the Human realm?” The Blue Dragon inclined his head, displaying negation-finality.
“Aye,” said Grandion.
“Then, we will join you in seeking vengeance for our lost wing brothers,” said Yuzikion. In true draconic style, there was not even a hint of a question about his statement.
The Tourmaline Dragon led a chorus of agreeable thundering that shook the skies for miles about.
* * * *
That day, Hualiama reached through Crackle and bade the Egg rise.
Simple, in theory. She played with fire. She danced an invisible Flame Cycle, with longing and passion she had rarely known, and through the expression of her Flow self melding with the influences of magic’s microscopic tessellations upon the fabric of reality, projected her need into the outward world of surging billows of molten rock, the song of fire and the sweet whisper of lethal gases.
What are you doing? Crackle asked.
What I told you. Dance is my way – nay, it is nothing frivolous, noble Crackle. It is a labour of love.
I don’t understand your ways, but I will join you. The labour of igneous torrents is my first love, my Dragonsong and my life’s fiery fervour.
Indeed. Hualiama knew she could never have attempted this act of Egg-resurrection without Crackle’s innate affinity for lava and his magical gifts, coupled with the power of the First Egg itself. As she exerted and amplified his strength in ways that made the very crust of the Island-World groan and creak, the Egg began to surge upward on a thick column of lava. Drawing on her dual strength in the hope perhaps that one plus one equalled several thousand, she gritted her fangs and teeth, feeling her small constellation grow friable as the strain took its toll. She must not fail. She must bring this Egg to the realm where … it could be fought over by the greatest powers of the age?
Brilliant plan.
Theadurial! At once, she became aware of the thin, stick-like Dragonkind – if Dragonkind they were – filtering down from above like a rain of curiously elongated filaments of light. They gathered around the Egg like Dragon hatchlings inexplicably suckling at the teat – not a capability of their reptilian species, she knew, but in their great numbers, they began to siphon away her strength.
Don’t materialise. Don’t give in, Dragonsoul, said Humansoul, throwing her strength into the mental bond.
For a mite who will one day measure a mere one hundredth of my adult Dragoness’ size, you certainly pack a punch, the Dragoness complimented her, with a grim chuckle.
Since we’re talking about the brains department, size definitely counts, teased her girl. Your brain-matter is provably denser than mine.
Grr!
Well, that woke the strength in her Dragoness. She was tightening the constructs around their vertical column of lava, which streamed upward at a speed of approximately three miles per hour, when she abruptly heard a glad cry, and her Flow space oscillated madly in response.
Torn into two functional entities? Despite her confusion, Hualiama trumpeted,
Modest. Naturally. It seemed every Dragon had a hint of Flicker in them.
More than a hint of Flicker. Here she was, sweating her little body dry, and that cheeky dragonet would have been dancing around fate. Dancing a different way. His own way.
Theadurial – DRAGONS, OBEY!
Hualiama almost spat a curse as the ruzal sneaked into her construct and took control of the alien presences. Hundreds shuddered. Rippled. Changed.
No. Holy Fra’anior, no – she had just unleashed something ghastly. Hualiama felt the Balance lurch. Now, fear ruled her Dragon hearts and she had no idea how to undo what she had just done. This was the way of ruzal. It knew no master. Still, she would fight it with every bone in her body. She would make this right, even as she sensed it might not be her role to do so, she was not about to give up as yet. She was a Star Dragoness. The glories of her shell-father’s creative work would never be forgotten.
ATTACK THE S’GULZZI!
Her monstrous Command, shaped and purposed for the parasitic threads by knowledge she knew originated outside of her person, unleashed mayhem. She would wreak such a revenge upon these fire spirits that they would never forget – may they be weakened for a thousand years!
Too arrogant by half. She would take her selves to task later.
Or, was the spirit of Dramagon coming alive in her, forging a profane future despite her best attempts to constrain it?
Lia spat furiously between her fangs. Never!
Fra’anior, grant me courage. I don’t have your strength, and I’m flailing in the dark here, a neophyte in the ways of Harmony and Balance. Help me … help me not to fail you too badly.
Lame and weak as she sounded to herself, Hualiama looked inward to seek the strength of others. Souls she knew intimately. Flicker’s laughter. The power of Tourmaline. And beneath that, a stratum of Onyx as unfathomable as the farthest night sky, the tapestry against which all stars must shine with their utmost brilliance.
At last, she began to grasp an inkling of her purpose.
This was why she had been warned that the unrestrained release of her power would alert powers and principalities far beyond her ambit, even as the S’gulzzi were taking fright now. The new, stronger Theadurial descended and fought with flashes of light and bursts of an eerie, possessive magic of which Hualiama barely understood a note, save that it was seductive and spine-chilling and, in its own way, as inveigling as her own mother’s Command-hold.
The two races charged at each other in the glorious wash of the First Egg, and the killing began with the zeal of mortal enemies.
Meantime, the Star Dragoness juggled the First Egg upon tongues of lava.
Over the following hours, the sensation of balancing an egg atop a dozen chameleons’ tongues all shooting upward at disjointed intervals did not abate. The lava flows required constant attention. They rose glutinously, striking the Egg and each other with great force but yielding almost zero responsiveness to correction or control. It was a form of dance, only Hualiama’s impatience skewed everything at least a dozen times before she worked out that she was working too assiduously on the problem.
The Egg would rise. It would just take its sweet time.
Fine. She could sweat marginally less.
Dragonsoul teased, Not even swimming in lava can make my girl sweat. She’s cool – awesomely cool under pressure.
Ha ha. Thanks, Dragoness. You’re hot … and Grandion knows it.
They chuckled together, and spelled each other at toil which certainly raised a non-physical kind of sweat in the magical realm. Embroiled in developing a more systematic approach to measuring draconic magical potentials than the instinctive monitoring preferred by Dragons, the girl nonetheless reached out to bolster her Dragonsoul’s efforts, leaving the other to scratch her head in bemusement. What type of a division of labour was this?
Perhaps the unearthing of ancient relics followed a design of Harmony she had not yet detected, for as the Egg finally breached the world’s crust thirty-five hours later, Shill’s lattice extended upward and she said,
Lia sighed heavily.
To war, Dragoness!
Rapidly, she surveyed their surroundings while conferring and confirming her sightings with Shill and Crackle. Land Dragons galore roamed the leagues of a relatively flat plain a short toss of a haribol fruit beyond the Twenty-Six Sisters, at a depth of approximately four leagues below the Cloudlands. She vaguely detected multiple Island massifs to the North. Above, the mass of Numistar’s presence was a flotilla of canary yellow lights as viewed in her Flow vision, awaiting the Egg almost directly above her current position. They were still seven or eight miles down a seething, slightly sinuous volcanic pipe, pressing upward toward a volcanic plain created by a decades-long outflow of lava.
Not a single ally could she see.
When Hualiama translated this for Crackle, his bellow of laughter shivered the lava all around the Egg. They are come for power, little Star Dragoness. All Dragonkind desire the prize. Do not dare think – already they attack!
Crackle meant the Magma Dragons.
Hualiama saw a different problem. Darkness, sweeping over the world’s lights below. S’gulzzi! How had they gathered in such numbers? In such power?
Crackle, go!
The S’gulzzi of before seemed as babes compared to these creatures – these patterns of manifold minds, arrangements, gathered together as she suspected S’gulzzi seldom did, for a greater purpose. They had reformed themselves. Regrouped. Their strength was far greater than before, and as they swept across the firmament like a black storm wave, their Earthen-Fires consumed everything in their path. Life. Goodness. Magic itself. Their chittering cries swelled upon ears attuned to the dangers of ruzal. They were about to blast her and Shill out of Flow space, just as they had learned from the Ice-Raptors. They were succubae, the ancient daimonic spirits of which Fra’anior had warned her. Imitators. Parasites upon the efforts and insights of others.
Reaching deep, Hualiama summoned her strength. I’m sorry, Fra’anior …
A shattering commotion broke her concentration. Conducted through the dense flows of lava, the screeching of ten thousand furious voices burst over her and Shill with an insane fury, heard at the physical, subliminal and spiritual levels. It was all she could manage to shield as the beautiful lights shook and flashed all about them. She and the two Shills rocketed helplessly out of Flow space, smashing into the lava in a wave of heat and unbearable pressure … constructs ripped free from her mind, enfolding them first in protective white-fires, then in a pressure shield, then dealing with the heat and the slow, relentless grinding of the white-hot, liquescent lava.
At once, the attack swung to her ruzal. Alien and overwhelming, the S’gulzzi cried out with bestial hungers, and Hualiama resonated between her two forms, somehow in the blurring transfer of powers finding a way to keep the assault at bay just for a millisecond until, to her eternal shock, the ruzal rose and counterattacked.
BEZALDIOR, ARISE!
Stunned, Hualiama watched her desire to see the S’gulzzi annihilated enacted before her wincing fire-eyes. The ruzal seemed to shimmer as it flowered within the power of her command, in her invocation of Amaryllion Fireborn’s ultimate power, and thundered past the Egg, and past Crackle, to detonate amongst the Earthen-Fires with unimaginable force. It seemed to her that the very Island-World cried out in the throes of pain, and with a voice mightier than any thunder she had heard save the explosion of Numistar Winterborn’s comet, the volcano erupted.
Magic against anti-magic. Opposites colliding. The dark shadows congregating in the volcanic pipe were snuffed out like a candle pinched by invisible fingers.
As Hualiama sensed the upward discharge about to strike, she knew one truth for certain. The ruzal had examined the S’gulzzi, and found them wanting. Those dark spirits were not Dramagon’s choice tools.
She was.
Dramagon’s ruzal had just plumbed her greatest powers, and charged off to create its own destiny. Lia shook her head. Scared? Petrified!
With a gesture born in the throes of convulsive necessity she enwrapped Shill, Crackle, herself and the First Egg in white-fires born of the Egg’s illimitable powers, and ducked her head.
The eruption snatched them away.
* * * *
Grandion’s muzzle snapped to the South as his Dragon senses detected a titanic disturbance washing up over the Islands. To his perception, the Cloudlands rippled and the Sisters leaped upon their foundations. Down below, the earthquake must have been immense and damaging. But he was flying high with Flicker, scouting a league and a half above the Islands. The dragonet’s gaze whipped downward, checking the lay of the fleet, which had thankfully not yet set down, for they had planned to provision in the southerly Sisters before braving the dangerous Spits. Flying around the northwest was eminently possible, but Affurion and their allies would course along the south shore of the Spits, and they desired to join them as quickly as possible.
He began to check the fleet reflexively, when a new sensation gripped his breast. Oath knowledge. Presence – the pure, melodious song of fire to his soul that was Hualiama!
Restoration threw his loss into stark relief. Never had Grandion imagined liberation so profound, his wings seemed to stir the essence of eternity, and his every fire burst into wild paroxysms of celebration. He felt numb to the needs of the world, yet never more alive. Pyretic. Overwhelmed; aching with sweet agonies that forced a bugle from his throat:
Thou … oh thou, my verimost soul!
Flicker’s casual flight hitched as if he had been stung by an Ice-Raptor’s talons, then abruptly, he screamed into a series of aerial acrobatic manoeuvres fit even to dizzy a Dragon. Lia, Lia – she’s back! burbled the mite. She’s here, I can sense her in you, you gorgeous gunge-headed fire-guzzler!
Uh …
My wings couldn’t be more fizz-tacularly fricasseed! warbled Flicker, carolling away at the top of his lungs.
Ambushed first by a grin and then by helpless laughter, Grandion regarded his tiny companion with consternation and no small delight. Do you have any idea what you’re saying?
No! But it’s – it’s talon-twirlingly – luminiferous!
The Tourmaline was convinced luminiferous wasn’t even a word, but it summed up his emotions perfectly. He
gazed toward the horizon with the utmost magnification of his Dragon sight, exuberant yet cautious. Aye, Hualiama would shake his every Island. That was the flight of her wings. But there was a greater danger out there, he sensed now, seeing white dust as it were drifting away above the farthest Islands.
Numistar stalked his beloved!
Chapter 17: An Unholy Bargain
Even Land Dragons had to be dissuaded by a volcanic eruption.
Holding on with everything she had, the Dragonfriend worked with Crackle to shape the lava flows and to raise the First Egg into a world she had once not even imagined existed, the realm of mighty Dragon powers beneath the Cloudlands. The Land Dragons hung back, but Crackle’s kin entertained no such compunctions. From every quarter, they broke free of lava flows and fumaroles and deep cracks in the already fractured underbelly of the Twenty-Six Sisters. Many created their own flows, flinging lava ahead of themselves to facilitate a quicker path toward the main conflagration. Within minutes, hundreds of huge, reddish Dragonkind streamed up into the flow that spilled up beneath the Egg, steadily raising it above a barren, deeply riven plain of black basalt.
The lava spilled away from the main pipe like a slow flowering of ruddy petals, layer slopping upon layer. The whole mass slowly cooled and settled as the material poured into an under-Cloudlands lake to the West, where great clouds of steam burst up, or travelled further from the white-hot heat upon which Hualiama sat with her Egg.
Imagine a Human hatching an egg atop a boiling-hot geyser? That was her.
The Dragoness chuckled at her second-soul’s mental impression. Nice. I’ll do the heavy lifting while you provide entertainment.
Humansoul said, Don’t forget, Numistar’s –
GRRRAAABOOOM!
The First Egg lurched as lava blew away beneath them. Land Dragon attack! Not content to let the Magma Dragons reach the prize first, the huge Runners and Shell-Clan responded in the most emphatically Dragonish way – an all-light cannons-blazing assault. Their brilliant beams blazed from every point of the compass, pulverising the solidifying lava and bathing the Magma Dragons in radiance augmented with the innate Harmonic magic that amplified every second of damage, but to Lia’s surprise, the glowing Magma Dragons displayed a strong level of resistance. Perhaps their affinity for molten fire gave them an advantage in light-powered combat situations? No mind, for the lesser Runner subspecies mounted a crazed offensive in the wake of that first almighty pasting, ready to achieve with fang and talon what their larger, slower-moving brethren had not excelled at.