The Onyx Dragon

by Marc Secchia

  “Behold, the imprinting chambers,” said Zardon. “Fresh recruits are brought here to undergo the month-long imprinting process, which is powered by the First Egg’s magic. As if that were not potent enough–no Dragon can stand to be in the presence of such a font of magic for long–the imprinting relies on urzul, a variant of an ancient, foul magic called ruzal, which Hualiama Dragonfriend believed to have been banished from the Island-World. She banished ruzal, but urzul is said to be native to the Theadurial, those creatures which parasitize Land Dragons. It is common knowledge that Shurgal offered Marshal Re’akka this lore in exchange for the First Egg’s return.”

  Pip said, “Instead, the Marshal floated his Island to a place he thought beyond any Land Dragon’s grasp–north of the Rift, high in the sky.”

  “The Marshal will keep his word.”

  She had the strength to laugh. “Ay, he hoped the Land Dragon would perish in the Rift-storms. He’ll keep his word at a time and a place that suits him.”

  This received no response.

  Pip peered through a Dragon-sized crysglass doorway. There was not much to see–two Reds halfway through the transformation process, their scales already darkened, but the final features of gnarled talons, blackened gums and extended, flaring skull-spikes had not yet fully matured. The Reds appeared to be asleep, or hibernating. She observed a shield glinting slightly in the air a few feet inside the doorway, probably to protect onlookers from contamination by that magic.

  Zardon explained the processes of imprinting and re-imprinting, which the Dragon troops were required to undergo twice a week. The Marshal liked to keep control. Pip suddenly wondered when last Zardon had been imprinted. He seemed so … normal. Compassionate. More alive than before.

  Still cradling his charge, the Shapeshifter moved through three further sets of double doorways, each twice as thick as the last. They opened and shut on silent runners. Before the third, she already tingled at the presence of magic. As that door cracked open, she wanted to gasp but could not.

  Torrents! Waterfalls! Dragonsong and Dragon-beauty, singing at a pitch indistinguishable from the roar of a mighty, Cloudlands-bound river! The Egg filled a large cavern, twenty times larger than Chymasion’s egg had been, curving up and down and to either side of her, glowing with a faint radiance that reminded her once more of horiatite. Along the fifty-foot tunnel that led to that moon-like egg, the rock had begun to transform into gemstone, as though the Egg’s magic had transformed its fundamental nature. Did horiatite itself originate with the shells of Dragon eggs? Regardless, it was beautiful, having that silvery-crystal sheen which had appeared to mesmerize Zardon.

  Abruptly, Zardon’s presence enfolded her, muting the blast. He said, This is the only place on this Island safe from the Marshal’s seeing eyes, Pip. Here, we can talk at last.

  Oh, Zardon. She flung her arms around him, as best she could reach.

  This is not another ploy of the Marshal’s. Already, his shield wilted beneath the phenomenal, never-ending discharge of the First Egg’s magic. I am who you saw here before–ay, Pip, I realise now that it was always you watching me, and I am … ashamed.

  Please, don’t cry.

  Ay? To weep is the least I can do for this Island-World, thou, o gift to my soul.

  Pip gulped as he returned her hug. Mercy.

  He said, You’re a gift, because I know you are the one, Pip. I smelled it from the first. You have rare powers; I have one of my own–foresight. I know few things any more, and am a husk of my old self, but I know you will prevail, Pip. I know it as surely as the twin suns rise in the East, as surely as I know you hold in your paw the power to stop the twin suns in their tracks.

  Placing Pip gently on her feet, Zardon explained that he had brought her to the Egg that she would understand the wonder and beauty of it, the majesty, the power that seethed restlessly within. The Egg was a power-source, the means by which Dragons traversed the vast distances between stars. It was a time-capsule, a place where the passage of time slowed almost to stasis. No-one knew if a Dragon lived within the Egg. It had never communicated, nor if life was present, did they know if it would take the form of a hatchling or the fires of a Dragonsoul. But all knew the Ancient Dragons had hatched from eggs like these.

  Pip tottered forward, awash with wonderment. She laughed, You came from such a vessel as this, Fra’anior? You, too, were once a hatchling? How great a shell-mother should hold such an egg as this in her egg-sac? She spread her arms, drinking from the awesome font of magic.

  Then, she realised that was what the Shadow creature did, and sighed up a small gust of air.

  The Shadow is a trans-dimensional creature, said Zardon. Perhaps all we see is a manifestation, like an echo or mirror-image drawn from another dimension. I believe it exists only because of magic. Moth to candle-flame. Once, it was smaller and slower, but the creature is insatiable. It demands more and more of the Marshal, and I know neither what holds it at bay, or holds it within the physical confines of our Island-World. Its hunger seems to be a survival imperative.

  Pip turned to him, eyes shining. I’ve thought of that. Starve the beast, it may die. But how? We’d all be dead.

  The Shadow creature has demanded to see you, he said.

  W-W-What?

  She thought she had misheard. She must have. That thing did not speak–but she remembered its eerie regard, that sense of recognition and feline curiosity. That sense of being the prey.

  The Marshal will take you to the beast soon, Pip, said the Shapeshifter, his eyes softening, his face bathed in white-fires as Pip’s vision slipped toward what she had sensed in Chymasion. All exists in a delicate balance–the Egg, the Marshal, Shurgal and the Shadow Dragon. And now, you. You are the wild magic.

  Again, Pip thought he had misspoken. The word was so close to white-fires in Dragonish before one added the draconic linguistic trickery that subtly modified the target meaning. Wild magic. But Zardon seized her hands, squeezing them as though he could by some force beyond words or compulsion or draconic magic, infuse her heart with strength. His eyes gleamed with power; his manner slipping toward that fey flash of almost-insanity she remembered from before.

  He cried, What is thy battle-name, mighty Pygmy warrior?

  Uh … paean of the Black Dragon’s soul-fires? Whatever a paean was. She had an idea it might be an archaic word meaning ‘song’. Poetry certainly moved Kaiatha to raptures. Perhaps this Pygmy girl was learning to be mystical, too.

  Then call upon your progenitor, your soul’s breath, the Dragonsong of your elemental power!

  Pip scratched her chin, baffled. Zardon seemed inordinately proud of his pronouncement, beaming at her with quite the silliest joy wrinkling his eyes until they almost disappeared from sight. Evidently, she was the greenest neophyte in the ways of mysticism.

  Then, without any warning whatsoever, he swooped, seized her leg and swung her upside-down into the air!

  Whimper! Zardon ordered, striking her shoulder without great force. The Marshal approaches.

  * * * *

  As the third metal set of protective bulkheads slid apart, Silver braced himself for the deluge of magic. What he was not prepared for was the sight of Zardon dangling Pip by her left ankle, apparently enjoying a touch of Pygmy-bashing sport. Judging by his shell-father’s malicious chuckle, Re’akka found the prospect amusing in a rather different way.

  Zardon shook her like a Dragon holding up a leg of mutton. “Marshal. New orders?”

  “Bring her.”

  The grizzled Shapeshifter slung Pip unceremoniously over his shoulder, growling, “She’d only slow us down. The captive’s having trouble walking.”

  * * * *

  So malevolent, as if he had not just hugged her. Pip was amazed at the facility these big people displayed for lying and twisting the truth. Except Silver. She had hoped to draw him out, to detect some sign that the Marshal had not turned his mind, but she sensed nothing at all. No spark of compassion. He had laughed as he
tortured her mind, and spared not an iota of his brutal power. Even invisible wounds needed time to heal. He knew what he had done, how he had hurt her; he knew he was the Marshal’s lackey.

  Even now, Silver said, “No need for kneecaps to work magic, is there? Get anything out of her, Commander?”

  “She squealed like a wild pig,” said Zardon. “But I gained nothing useful.”

  “Would imprinting break her shield, Silver?” asked Re’akka.

  “Undoubtedly. But my investigation showed that the urzul constructs deliver unpredictable results when applied to the higher Dragon powers,” Silver noted. “We might lose access to the Word of Command altogether.”

  Exactly what she had concluded! Weariness washed over her, rather than elation. She wished nothing more than for this vile game to play out to its end. Yet her death would not serve anyone well. That was the one fate, surely, no one could afford. Yielding her life was a non-option. Therefore she must face the dark-fire beast, and defeat it.

  Silver said, “What do you make of her mental shield, shell-father?”

  He considered this at length, his yellow eyes glittering with an unholy light as he examined Pip.

  Meantime, the trio of Shifters wafted up a vertical shaft on a cushion formed by the Marshal’s Kinetic power. Shortly, they broke into the open air, beneath a starry night sky, and dropped lightly to the ground. A bare circle some one hundred feet in diameter had been cleared of forest. Pip breathed deep of the scent of untainted air, so sweet. She groaned involuntarily as she spied her destination–the same metal plinth used for all her torture, complete with manacles and a few fresh bloodstains. Hers, of course.

  Perhaps there was one more chance. Could she attack the Marshal while he busied himself with the Shadow Dragon?

  But while Zardon and Silver applied the manacles, Marshal Re’akka took his sweet time constructing a shield around her. “No magic or Command here, Pygmy girl,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you panicking and trying to run away–not that there’s anywhere to run to out here, anyway, not for five hundred leagues. And in your state you won’t be flying anywhere soon.”

  That was a Pygmy spear of truth.

  He said, “Shell-son, her mental shielding is unique. I suspect a subliminal Word applied to a standard psychic bastion-ward, with additional hardening elements. Quite beautiful, in fact.”

  Pip’s head jerked to stare at him. “Beautiful?”

  “Ay. Should one not appreciate beauty, Pip? Why should a father be labelled evil for seeking to protect his own family?” This was a side of the Marshal she had not imagined, much less seen. “We each seek to protect our own, do we not? We just see the matter differently. You act to protect your loved ones, and I do the same.”

  He drew Silver to him, the first physical gesture she had seen him make toward his son. “Is this boy not my own flesh and blood? Should a father not correct his son and train him in the ways of right thinking?”

  This, to him, was love? O twisted, tainted obsession!

  “By owning his mind?” Even to her own ears, Pip’s response sounded feeble.

  Silver said, “Owning? How mistaken you are, Pygmy girl. We labour together for the same goal–the elevation of Shapeshifters to their true status in this Island-World. We rain death upon the enemies of true-fires–the Dragons, Humans and Shifters so deluded by Fra’anior and his schemes. All he has worked in your life is a deception, Pip. This is your chance. Join us. Choose life.”

  Pip wept for him, but showed no outward sign of her weakness. Nothing about these Herimor Shapeshifters was as it seemed. All was quicksand. Could he have lived a lie toward her, executing a devious plan which had led to her inevitable capture? Oh, Silver!

  No torture of theirs had hurt like this, a thick acid despair pouring down her throat and spreading through her limbs, setting her being afire, pouring dark-fires in a deluge through her soul.

  She had loved him, unrequited. And Silver Dragon had ripped her heart clean out of her chest.

  Never had she felt so little.

  * * * *

  Silver watched every detail of his shell-father summoning the Shadow. How could the beast be banished, not merely contained? For that was the construct Re’akka produced. He employed a branch of magic in which Silver had no capability, to be sure, but Silver grasped the gist of what was being done. A summoning and a binding. No more. The Marshal’s command of the beast must be tenuous indeed.

  Then what reason could the Shadow have to obey? Did such a creature possess intelligence enough to know design, purpose and strategy?

  He was out of time. “It comes,” said his father.

  Silver had somehow hoped that by remaining in their Human manifestations, Shapeshifters could elude the beast’s notice. The first hint of its approach kicked that notion off the proverbial Island. As a Dragon, he knew what it meant to be the hunter. The apex predator of his environment. In Herimor, plenty of magi-physical creatures parasitized Dragons or even, by working together, could destroy a Dragon. But this creature hungered in ways foreign to his understanding. His perception insisted on a tenebrous presence in the physical realm, yet the shadowy aura felt substantial, its emotions alien yet palpable. His Dragon’s spirit quailed. The magic within him, all his careful layers of subterfuge, began to waver as the coldness of dark-fires seeped inward unhindered. A deathly chill pervaded his soul.

  Ignoring the Marshal, the shadow angled for Pip.

  “Back!” Re’akka reacted, pushing outward with that strange magic.

  Folds within folds of oily shadow responded as though struck, scrunching up before rippling forward with renewed purpose, like reams of black Helyon silk floating in water, cloying and clinging to the entities it preyed upon. The Marshal shouted again, holding the creature at bay with an enormous outpouring of magic–yet was it truly held? Silver narrowed his eyes. He could not understand how the urzul affected it, or what aspect of the creature even existed as he understood existence, to be impacted by their magic. Pip’s Word had failed. How could the Marshal claim …

  Pip screamed a thin, piercing scream. The thing had touched her! A slender tendril licked briefly at her face before Re’akka hurled his utmost power at the creature, which lapped it up, yet appeared to experience pain as a result. He sensed that pain incited the creature, being somehow a desirable feeling. Then, the thing spoke.

 

  Its voice was not a voice as such, more a flurry of monad-like impressions which splattered against his awareness, trailing linking indicators he did not understand. Ay, there was thought, and intelligence of a kind. To place trust in some form of control of this beast was madness.

  There was more wrestling, a power-match between Re’akka and the creature. The Marshal wanted it to break down Pip’s mental shield. Yet it seemed to balk. All the while the wash of its power sucked at him, confusing his thoughts and stealing his magic. Perilous. Silver heard himself gasp as if from a distance. He fell to his knees.

  Then, the Shadow reached out and struck Pip deeply, sucking gluttonously at her life.

  * * * *

  Dark lightning speared through her body. Pip arched against the manacles, knowing such agony, it seemed to her that the Marshal’s Kinetic power had stolen even the ability to scream, that she was locked away behind a wall of silence that could never articulate how the beast savaged her … the craving of the Shadow was so overpowering, its magic-song irresistible, yet she would not yield that core of herself she so prized. She fled inward to a place beyond where she had ever ventured before, a place of soul-shattering desperation, where the spirit could only cry out in wordless anguish for some sign of hope, some spark …

  Dear one.

  Pip turned, staring at the girl. Uh … where am I? Where’s the beast?

  Savaging emptiness. The girl was robed all in blazing white, as though she wore starlight for clothing. Pip had an impression she was pretty, although it was hard to see anything beyond th
e purity of her blue-in-blue gaze, and the staggering gentleness it communicated. Dance with me.

  Am I mad? Dreaming?

  We can call it that if you’d like. The girl’s laughter was music, and balm, and the inexpressible melody of joy. Pip’s feet twitched helplessly. She twirled into the dance. There was no pain. No weakness. None of the weariness, the transience, her Human-self suffered as a result of her torture.

  For a timeless space, they communed exuberantly.

  Pip cried for happiness. Yet the world waited for a rebirth from the pangs of war … she said, I must understand. Who are you? What am I doing here? Did Fra’anior send you? Because I c-cannot … must not leave …

  The girl bent to her, touching her cheeks with her thumbs, loving the tears away. How precious are the tears of your suffering, cherished child. I grieve for this pain and suffering. You do not understand yet, but you will. And then you will laugh. You will laugh as the starlight.

  Starlight? Pip was already fading, feeling the pull of her mortal flesh.

  Her sweet voice echoed over an impossible distance. A Pygmy’s laughter is of the stars, but her strength is Onyx.

  How many strange entities’ child could she be?

  Pip pressed into her own flesh, knowing she came home, yet aware of a sense of having journeyed, as if her body was unprepared for her spirit’s arrival. Strength. Strength of Onyx. Could the girl have meant Fra’anior’s heritage flowed in her veins? This was the source of her great strength?

  If she could, just once, channel the strength of an Ancient Dragon, that would be a miracle to shake this Marshal right off his floating Island.

  Her chest heaved as though she drew the first breath of her life. Pip croaked, Fra’anior …

  Re’akka laughed cruelly. “Fra’anior? Do you think that traitor will stoop to help some worthless piece of jungle trash? Come, beast! Tear the knowledge out of her!”