by Marc Secchia
“I am Hualiama. Blue-star, if you’d prefer,” said the girl. “Forgive me, but for today’s formalities I’ll add the title Star Dragoness. I really don’t have much patience with titles. I’ve been saddled with more titles than the average Green Dragon would care to spit at. Uh … and I’m pleased you’re here. Delighted.”
Star-girl was nervous? And delighted? Make that two of them. Before she could consider how one was supposed to talk to legends who were rather more alive than they ought to be, and surprisingly young to boot, Pip wrinkled her nose at Hualiama. “Ay? I’m confused–I mean, pleased … pinch my wings, I’m really talking to you, aren’t I? Really?”
“Really, really. Don’t worry about the existential implications. Quite puzzling.”
And with a smile and a matching wrinkle of her nose, Hualiama leaped lithely down from her Dragon’s head and enveloped Pip in a heartfelt hug.
“Oof. You’re stronger than you look,” said Pip.
“Dancer,” said Hualiama. “But I never enjoyed your Onyx power. That’s quite the heritage you have there, Pip.”
“But strength of paw will not defeat the Shadow Dragon, will it?”
The blonde head shook slightly. “Far be it from me to read Fra’anior’s mind, but I doubt that was his purpose when he adopted you, Pip. I think of this Shapeshifter spiritual inheritance in terms of adoption, because my familial heritage was a complex one; for many years, all I knew was my adopted family. You know, lucky girl gets the Fra’aniorian royals for parents. The truth was worse. Traumatically worse in ways that … started wars and upset Islands, killed my parents, downed empires …”
“I’m really sorry, Hualiama.”
For a horrid second, Pip thought the girl would scorn her response. But the deep blue gaze considered her, and in a mischievous wink of starlight, the moment passed. “Your spirit is so generous, Pip. It’s one of your most endearing qualities. I grew up an abused royal. You grew up in a zoo. I could not imagine that. How did you survive?”
“By eating grubs,” Pip said bluntly, then felt awful as Hualiama’s eyes filled with tears. “Sorry, I … look, I survived, and I wasn’t lonely because I had Hunagu. He’s now … windrocs take it, I’m leaking too …”
“Left behind,” said Hualiama.
In that quietness of shared sorrows, Pip felt a deep sense of connectedness. This girl was not about frivolous laughter. She had given solemn advice, the key to her small victory over the Marshal. But laughter would not dispel the Nurguz.
“I’ve a task which falls to me and little time in which to discharge this responsibility,” said Hualiama, with an apologetic frown. “Pip, by now you will have realised that you are the third member of a select group of Dragons. The first was Istariela, the mate of Fra’anior. The second is Hualiama, as Leandrial correctly deduced. The third is an Onyx Dragoness. Each has a unique set of attributes and qualities, but together we share a common goal.”
Pip waggled an eyebrow, then performed a droll bow.
The so-blue eyes twinkled merrily. “Oh no, not even the smallest Dragons get to wriggle out of this one. You are a Star Dragoness, Pip. Take it from me, this mantle is neither asked for, nor easy, nor optional.”
“It’s about Balance, isn’t it?”
“See, you’ve already stepped into the paws of a Star Dragon,” said Hualiama, with a genuflection of profound respect. “I’m delighted to call you kin, Pip, and honoured to accept you as the third member of this unique family. I am looking forward to knowing you well. Now, I must give you what is mine to give at this time. I’m like a spiritual mentor, I suppose, but I’d rather just be a friend. Otherwise I’ll sound five hundred years old.”
“Five hundred, yet lacking a single crease or wrinkle?” Pip grinned. “O crone most ancient–”
“Thanks. Now, sweet dreams, Star Dragoness.”
“What?”
* * * *
“What?”
Silver sat up on his sleeping pallet, patting himself down to check everything was as it should be. What a peculiar dream. Pip had been talking to a star. A star?
Maybe he did have real oath-connection. In which case, should he report to his esteemed shell-father that Pip was whole in wing and scale and plotting his inevitable demise? With a despicable chuckle, Silver rose to his feet, standing on the thin rush mattress to gaze out of the crysglass window of his roost just beneath the summit of the highest peak of Eridoon Island. Re’akka owned the topmost room, of course, as befitted his station.
Tomorrow, they would raise sight of Jeradia. His shell-father would lower their shields at dawn, giving the Academy the benefit of a full day to allow panic and terror to set in. Then, at midnight, he planned to attack.
The White Moon was amazingly bright at this early hour, perhaps three hours before dawn. His already pale flesh seemed ghostly in that light, less substantial than the moonlight itself. Impulsively, Silver unlatched the wide window and cracked it open, letting the cool night air flood in, exposing himself to the soft croaking of Herimor night-toads in the formal gardens outside, and the mysterious, cinnamon-draconic scents of the night.
Stepping over the low windowsill, Silver scented the air deeply. Glorious.
Then he looked down, and saw the shadow of a Dragon move across the centre of his chest. Then another head. Then … seven heads, writhing across his chest as though intent on supping upon his pectoral muscles and abdominals.
He cried out, gazing at the White Moon.
Nothing. Yet when he looked down again, the Dragon’s shadow was present. A monumental presence filled his mind. Silver.
He fell backward, bruising his tailbone, whispering, No. No … Why had he not believed? Even having seen the very face of Fra’anior himself, he had not believed–what? That the Ancient One would choose to speak only to Pip? That it had been a vision, a mass hallucination?
SILVER.
I’m not worthy, he babbled. Don’t touch me. Go away, please … I am but a worm …
Shadows flitted around the room, heads and fangs and skull-spikes. Silver knew the icy breath of mortal terror keening through his soul, and shuddered.
No, Silver. You shall be my strong right paw, the Dragon for whom I have reserved a special task. I am calling you. Go now, and touch the First Egg. I will speak to you there.
As if trapped in a dream, Silver rose and left his room.
* * * *
The alarmed bugling of the watch-Dragons woke the Academy to the reality of Eridoon Island sailing in stark majesty along the northern shore of Jeradia. No Dragon moved in the sky above. That stillness, Pip decided, as she and a thousand other pairs of eyeballs and eye-fires peeked over the Academy volcano’s rim, communicated far more than ten thousand Dragonkind darkening the sky. Re’akka had begun the war without firing a single fireball.
A beautiful suns-rise outlined that dark Island.
The Marshal’s invisible paw lay heavy upon the Academy all that morning as people bustled about, Dragons growled and snapped, and the caverns beneath the buildings and the rim-wall itself filled with wailing children and tetchy hatchlings. Soldiers rushed about checking last-minute details–baskets of metal fragments or heavy shot for the catapults, the disposition of troops and patrols, reports and distribution of armour and weapons to the students. Master Kassik’s office could no longer handle the constant toing and froing of Dragons. He decamped to the field, a hulking Brown Dragon at the centre of a whirlwind of wings and orders.
Eridoon drifted almost imperceptibly closer along the mountainous northern shoreline, just three leagues off Jeradia’s famously rugged granite cliffs, backed by a trackless, ravine-scored wilderness frequented by rajals and windrocs.
Pip, returned to Human form, and Yaethi swapped notes on the Nurguz near Master Kassik’s field office while Shimmerith, Arrabon and Chymasion looked on.
Even before she finished, the reserved Helyon Islander seemed ready to burst with excitement. “It fits! It matches–everything that Leandri
al told you, including your Pygmy belief in demons.”
“Demons?”
Shimmerith blinked at Pip over Yaethi’s shoulder. “Indeed, little one. Tell her.”
Chymasion chimed in, “Ay, what did you find in the old libraries? I heard the Elders whispering about dark legends …”
Deep in the fires of times before memory, Yaethi related in dense chunks of discourse, unimaginable wars had been waged between the forces that shaped the galaxies, stars and worlds. This was told in scrolls so archaic, the best Dragon scholars had been unable to decipher much of the proto-draconic language in which they were couched. Some sources called these warring forces or entities good and evil, others light and dark, or angels and demons, she said. This world-spanning war was waged on many levels–between fundamentally opposed substances or matter, or beings, or even dimensions. At length, these great enemies came to understand that these forces were not only opposed but intertwined, even interdependent, and that if the conflict continued, the very fabric of the Universe would be annihilated. True nothingness would reign. Even life and death would cease to exist. A truce had been declared, a truce–
“Wait, wait,” Pip laughed, throwing up her hands. “My head hurts. What’s a galaxy, Yaethi? You said something about quasi-transmutative interdimensional magical powers? And demons are real? We’re fighting a remnant of those original dark-fires, the elements of our Universe’s substance?”
Yaethi seemed on the verge of tears. “My finest scholarship–”
Shimmerith put in, “Pip’s a practical girl, Yaethi. Just tell her how to beat the Nurguz.”
Now Yaethi looked even more upset. She began to expound in excruciating detail, referring to Pip’s Shapeshifter forms, how a trans-dimensional being such as the Nurguz or an Ancient Dragon could manifest in different dimensions simultaneously and transfer fundamental energies between one lattice of existence and another, and how time flow fluctuated between the different expressions of quantum space-time and a creature might require enormous quantities of energy to materialise completely in a dimension which was not conducive to its type of life-manifestations and white-fires or dark-fires. How life could transform its essential elements to conform to a particular lattice’s constraints … half an hour later, she was still spouting in monologue; even Chymasion’s white eyes had begun to glaze over.
Pip grabbed Yaethi’s good hand. “That’s completely mind-blowing, Yaethi. Now, may I summarise what I’ve learned?”
“Bah,” said her friend, seeing right through Pip in a flash. “Don’t pretend to be stupid, because you aren’t.”
“No, but I’ve got a freaking big problem, a ruddy great Island floating out there crewed by ten thousand Dragons and … sorry, Yaethi. I didn’t mean to shout at you.”
“I understand.” Yaethi wiped her eyes with her stump. “It’s just that it’s imperative that you understand, Pip, and I’m saying it so badly. I just … there’s so much to know, so much we don’t really grasp, which has been lost …”
“Right,” said Pip, hugging Yaethi with one hand and clamping her mouth shut with the other, “just nod or shake your head, alright?” The Helyon Islander bit her forefinger. “I feel nothing, because I’ve … uh … mutated into another headache-inducing quantum whatsit.” Yaethi bit down harder. “Ouch! That definitely manifested in the physical lattice-thingy.”
“First lesson,” Arrabon piped up, making them all laugh.
Pip said, “Seriously, the Nurguz is a creature apparently designed to destroy white-fires. In effect, it is partially manifest here because our world–our lattice-energies–consist of white-fire type life, which ordinarily would be anathema to dark-fires, but the Nurguz does some clever transmutative magic which you described so beautifully and changes white-fires into energies on which it feeds, or transfers back to whichever dimension it came from. Right?”
Yaethi, Shimmerith, Chymasion and Arrabon all nodded.
Arrabon said, “And it stays here because opposites attract. White-fires are like Dragonwine to that creature.”
Yaethi’s headscarf bobbed a second time.
“You had a nice scholarly wrangle about whether or not the Ancient Dragons ever defeated the Nurguz, right?”
Pip’s finger came in for another mangling.
Wincing, Pip rattled, “Techniques of warfare against the Nurguz were vigorously debated by a glittering host of scholarly minds.” Yaethi’s lips moved in a smile hidden by Pip’s hand. “The truth is, the Ancient Dragons never defeated the Nurguz, because the Shadow does not exist physically in this dimension, nor can it be operated upon magically, because its fundamental demonic nature is immune to or eradicates our white-fire magic. The Ancients fled–no!”
Yaethi froze mid-nod.
“No,” Pip repeated slowly, gripped by a sudden insight. “They didn’t run away. They sent their children to a place of safety–here. This Island-World. They acted to save their children, their precious eggs, from the Nurguz scourge …”
Shimmerith bugled a heart-rending note of grief that made every Dragon in the vicinity look up; she drew her wing protectively over Chymasion’s back.
“And then a second time, perhaps two thousand years ago, they decided to try to draw the Nurguz away from our Island-World, or to hide … us, from the Shadow. Ancient Dragons are closer to that original state of the Universe, closer to the white-fires,” said Pip, thinking aloud. “That’s why they’re so powerful. The Nurguz is older still, and even more powerful, in a sense. More elemental. Yaethi, you were right. Do we conclude my job as a Star Dragoness is to shine white-fires so brilliantly that the Shadow is obliterated in the fires of its natural antithesis? And all of us, must we not save that First Egg?”
Finally released, Yaethi said, “Don’t forget your Word-power, Pip.”
“But that’s all physical or mental. What would that achieve? No, the Word is meant for the Marshal.”
The Helyon Islander added, “The Marshal’s power you saw in that original vision is a rare Dragon power called Shivers. A rapid vibration of the inter-dimensional lattice–if her Highness the Shining One can follow these very large words.”
That drew a fine snarl from whichever dimension Pip’s Shifted Dragoness happened to be hiding in at the time. Did that mean Shapeshifters were trans-dimensional beings, too? Had the Ancient Dragons stumbled upon a dimension which no Nurguz could penetrate? The Pygmy girl felt her eyes widen. Could they Shiver the Shadow out of existence? Rattle his time- and space-spanning dimensional … er, apparition, into some other reality?
Shimmerith said, “Meaning that if the Marshal rises, we must at all costs prevent him from using that power of Shivers?”
“Ay,” said Yaethi, suddenly stepping into rapid-fire summarisation mode, “and, we theorise that the Marshal draws his power from the Egg. That will be a key vector of attack if we aim to defeat him. If I may just elucidate a few ideas we scholars have advanced in that regard …”
Pip listened closely, yet she despaired. Still, they were no closer to defeating the Shadow. Amongst this mountain of lore and legend and Dragon science, by Star power or by Onyx, there had to be a way. There simply had to. But was she smart enough, and brave enough, to find it?
* * * *
Half an hour before suns-set, the voice of Marshal Re’akka entered the mind of every Dragon in his service and bade them arise.
Silver nodded quietly to himself, transforming into his Silver Dragon guise in the privacy of his bedchamber. Ay. To prevent the possibility of the enemy learning their plans, the Marshal had kept the exact hour of their attack secret from everyone, including his own Wing-Commanders. Silver stepped through the doorway and rushed to the planned assembly point atop a mile-high peak on Eridoon’s eastern side–at least, the side facing eastward now. There, they awaited the Marshal’s pleasure while beneath them, within the Island, the Dragonwings formed up in the long tunnels radiating from the central hole. The first so-called shockwave of two thousand Dragons was armour
ed with plate armour that mainly protected the front of the chest, neck and flanks, those areas where the hearts were more vulnerable, while leaving the massive flight muscles and shoulder joints free to flex and rotate as required. A second Dragonwing five thousand strong would follow the first, leaving three thousand in reserve–mostly smaller Dragons–which would be deployed only if needed.
Few amongst his kin expected the Academy to last longer than a few hours.
The Marshal’s thirty-four family members were all huge Dragons, for Re’akka’s lineage bred beasts renowned for their size and ferocity. As a noble house, they boasted colour–colours as common as dirt here in the North, but not in Herimor. Twelve were green, fifteen Red, five a variety of pale Blue shades, close to the Marshal’s near-White colouration, and two were ultra-rare Greys notorious for their hot glue and acid attacks.
Sadly, Silver himself just topped half of the size of any of his kin. He supposed this was a terrible deficiency. Just let any Dragon breathe a word …
Where was Rambastion? And what of the Dragonwing meant to be approaching along the Spine from Sylakia? Missing in action, perhaps, but Silver was certain Re’akka would be keeping one flaming eye on the situation. He filed the information at the back of his mind.
Suddenly, the Marshal rose from the Island’s central pit, his pale white form almost ethereal in the moonlight; his wings translucent for the most part, his scales similarly so, as though formed from ice so compressed, it became slightly blue, like tinted crysglass. A giant among Lesser Dragons, Re’akka the White measured one hundred and fifty-two feet in wingspan, but his form was sinewy rather than having the muscular bulk of an Emblazon. Silver knew that musculature for sprung steel, and the scales to be almost impervious to any attack. He had once seen Re’akka take down a traitorous Red Shapeshifter uncle of his; even without the use of magic, he was as deadly as one would expect of a veteran of a lifetime of Herimor warring and Dragon combat.