by Marc Secchia
Jyrandia inclined a wingtip. Fiery greetings, noble Dragons. Come, stand in the assembly.
A space had been left just slightly upslope from the Blue Overmind–a neat illustration of draconic hierarchy, in which the more powerful always took the higher ground.
Sapphurion subtly guided Hualiama toward the highest point, a jutting rock. Yet when he stood at her right flank and Grandion to her left, they overshadowed her. Clever. Thus, they augmented her authority without assuming primacy in the hierarchy.
We grieve, Jyrandia began, Dragon-direct. Yet, many of our number question this policy of obedience to the Dragon-Haters. It is dishonourable. Dragons should die in battle.
As did those below? Sapphurion interjected.
Aye! A number of Dragons snarled, none more so than a sixty-foot Red Overmind standing just a few paces downslope, his muzzle positioned lower than Jyrandia’s by the barest width of a scale. Ah, Lia thought. His animosity burned intensely.
The Red snapped, They died in glorious battle, not the cold-hearted cowardice of a Dragoness who serves the Empress heart, wing and paw!
Sapphurion bared his fangs. What is your name, youngling?
CHAKUR!
The brazen battle-challenge did not faze Sapphurion, veteran of many a draconic council. He said, I am Sapphurion the Blue, Dragon Elder of Fra’anior, leader of all Dragons beyond these Isles, north of the Rift. This is my shell-son, Grandion, and this is–
The traitor! Chakur almost howled.
The Tourmaline Dragon’s talons tore rock from the slope, but Sapphurion’s upraised wing stilled his incipient charge. Your fires burn brightly for the fallen, Chakur. You accord them great honour.
A diplomatic answer, but Chakur would not hear it and Lia suspected that Sapphurion knew this too. Her hearts-beat trebled, causing the blood to sing in her ears and pound in her throat. Battle-readiness. Furious cascades of magic tumbled within her body, strangely concentrated in her additional Dragon stomachs and organs, feelings for which she had as yet, no name.
She is a traitor to all Dragonkind. I claim battle-right!
Again, Sapphurion chose to reply quietly, but with a clear edge of inner steel. And what say the Elders amongst your number?
We are divided, Jyrandia said, the weariness in her voice communicating much.
Raising his voice, Grandion declared, Dragons! Wing-brothers and wing-sisters! The time for battle is soon coming. Yet what will it avail the Dragonkind, should the battle be won and the yoke of the Dragon-Haters remain unbroken? The hunter’s paw must know cunning. Let stealth veil his wings. We are weakened, aye, but our spirits remain unbowed.
Empty words! Chakur thundered, along with many of his brethren.
There is no glory in being slain by hidden magic! Grandion roared back, easily amplifying his voice above the others with a touch of Storm-power. You dishonour the spirits of those past, leaving their bodies to rot so that the quotas remain unfulfilled and more Dragonkind must die!
Quotas? The Star Dragoness would have us fawn and crawl upon our bellies! I claim battle-right–against her!
Chakur goaded the Tourmaline into expelling an enormous, raging fireball. He cried, Battle against a hatchling? You’re the coward here, Chakur!
It’s only first blood, like the blood she demands of us, said the other, a devious curl of crimson entering his fire-eyes.
Null-fire son of a scabrous windroc, sneered Grandion, whose diplomatic skills had not yet developed beyond the ‘needs polishing’ stage. Chakur coiled, smoking at the jowls.
Arguments between Dragons were usually highly charged affairs. Stuff bellies full of fire, equip each Dragon with talons and fangs and a temperature of rage directly linked to their inner furnaces, and there could only be one outcome. Any macho posturing was the briefest of preludes to an all-claws-in brawl. Thus it was now. Chakur’s thigh-muscles had barely straightened when Grandion, on equally high alert, blurred into motion. The powerful Tourmaline seized the incoming Red in a headlock with both forepaws and, whirling with the momentum, body-slammed him almost atop an elderly Grunt who sidestepped by the proverbial rajal’s whisker rather than provide Chakur a soft landing. The Red Overmind bounced off the rock. The Grunt kicked him in the jowls for good measure–clearly, no devotee of Chakur’s.
Meantime, ten Dragons piled into Grandion with a chorus of savage growls. To her surprise, Hualiama found herself deeply mired in the fray, champing on a Brown Anubam’s lower lip while the Brown tried to secure a mouthful of Grandion’s left wing. The Anubam smashed her away with a cuff of his oversized forepaw. Lia saw stars.
Next she knew, lightning flashed near Grandion and Sapphurion bellowed, SAPPHURION! Two Dragons who had not even joined the fray, dropped in their tracks as though poleaxed.
No …
First blood! shouted Chakur, spearing toward Hualiama out of a tangle of paws and wings, his mighty jaw agape.
She roared back, I accept!
The Red, and twenty Dragons behind him, suddenly faced a storm wind that blasted them back across the volcanic pipe. Grandion! Sapphurion! The powerful Blues had joined forces, and the windstorm they generated was enough to make Lia spring desperately into a small crack, lest she be swept away to Kaolili.
All of the watching Dragons bellowed as one. Then, silence fell as though commanded by the strike of Fra’anior’s paw.
Jyrandia growled, And another two fall. When will this madness end, Chakur?
He spat golden blood. When I have satisfaction. The Star Dragoness accepted my challenge. Let it be first blood.
Hualiama, no! Grandion gasped.
I … uh, did agree. A moment’s battle-madness …
The Tourmaline stared at her for a second, aghast. Lia, Chakur means his first bite to be a killing bite. You do understand, don’t you?
Beyond Grandion, Chakur was laughing. You accepted, so-called Star Dragoness. Or are you such a coward, you’d have this Blue thug fight for you? A pox on your sire, and a greater pox upon the blighted womb that whelped your miserable egg!
Instantly, Hualiama saw crimson. She launched past Grandion so fast, the Tourmaline missed his reflexive attempt to catch her, and she slammed into the mountain of Dragonflesh that was Chakur before he managed to wipe the nasty smirk off his lips. Only a slight jerk of his head saved his left eye. She knew she could do little to damage him, so she struck for the most vulnerable part she knew. But her hatchling claws skidded off his scale-armour a mere half-inch from the orb of the eye, unfortunately, drawing no blood.
With a terrible roar, Chakur flung her off; Hualiama fluttered her wings to absorb the momentum, then closed again with the Red Overmind. He allowed her to attack almost unopposed, waiting for the moment to bite or stun her with a paw-strike. Hualiama tried for his wings, but Chakur was too quick and compact, defending with psychic strikes and shielding as much as with superior body-position. She was a gnat fighting a boulder. Lia tried to find fire, but her hatchling-level ability only produced a brief sputter that made the Red chuckle horribly; then, an unseen boulder smashed against her right shoulder and neck. Kinetic attack! Stunned, Lia dropped in a heap. Somewhere nearby, Grandion’s panicked bugle cut through the roaring in her ears.
Dragonsoul? You have to wake up! Up! Oh, unholy …
Jaws descended toward her Dragoness’ head, agape. There was no escape, for the Red Overmind filled her vision, and his forepaws were cupped about her body, denying any possible avenue of escape–bar one. Into his mouth.
Human-Lia triggered the jump.
* * * *
HUALIAMA!
Terror caused all three of Grandion’s hearts to contract agonisingly as the dark blue tail vanished inside the Red Overmind’s champing maw. Chakur’s jawbones worked as he tried to use his tongue to manoeuvre the Star Dragoness into position for a fatal bite.
Suddenly, as clear as a Dragon’s bugle, a feminine voice cried, I taste first blood!
She’d cut that worm’s tongue! Of course! Grandio
n’s jaw, and those of all the Dragons he spied in the corners of his vision, sagged in smoke-wreathed shock. What a gambit! Sheer, bloody-beautiful, draconic genius!
Chakur did not agree. Now die, traitoress!
Tipping back his head, he tossed Hualiama headfirst down his gullet, expanding his neck like the egg-eating serpents of Franxx to achieve the unlikely feat of swallowing another Dragon. The Tourmaline hardly felt himself move before he fell upon Chakur, flipping him like a hapless ralti sheep onto his back. Grandion roared incoherently, trying to throttle the Red to prevent Hualiama from sliding down into the powerful acids of the food stomach, aware at some level, that this was an inconceivable act of cannibalism, punishable by death under draconic law.
He pinned Chakur in an instant, but the ralti-stupid, bloated-looking shock that overtook the Red Overmind’s eyes arrested the Tourmaline’s attack momentarily. Magic. Grandion sensed the gathering of power as pure and concentrated as the heart of the twin suns, and instinct caused him to twitch his head aside.
Hualiama’s white-hot flame did not so much roar out of Chakur’s flank as whisper, but it cut with the searing, ice-flame clarity of starlight. Broadening, it beamed across the lip of the pipe, by some bizarre coincidence, lighting exactly and only on the two Blue Overminds who had fallen to the curse of the subliminal Command-hold. They vaporised, along with a hundred-foot trench of rock behind them. Swarm Dragons standing less than a foot outside the light’s ambit, survived unscathed.
Then, the little Dragoness clambered out of the hole she had perfectly carved into the Dragon’s side, as if she were crawling out of her princess-bed, or whatever Humans did–Grandion realised he had not the first clue about Human beds, but what did that matter?
Laughing with sweet relief, he reached for the Star Dragoness.
Whirling beyond the tips of his grasping talons, Hualiama sprang aloft to cuff the stunned Red on the left shoulder. Didn’t you hear me call first blood, Chakur?
Thus, she succoured his life, by offering the path of honourable submission. The Red Overmind staggered to one knee, dropped his muzzle and spread his wings in a posture of abject surrender. O peerless Star Dragoness, my life is yours to command.
She said, Rise, o Chakur, and fly with me. We have dead Dragons to honour.
Such regal grace, tempered by the power of mercy. Grandion’s hearts burst into a wild, thrilling Dragonsong. Hualiama!
Chapter 9: The Islands Shall Quake
Five hours after the swift, horrifying battle against Chakur the Red, Hualiama awoke with a Dragon-sense. Numistar’s bleak presence approached.
She knew that the comet’s perigee was not due for another three days, according to the Dragons’ best calculations. Yet her entire being thrummed with an undeniable sense of foreboding. Stepping cat-pawed to Grandion’s side, she batted his muzzle with her paw. Arise, o Tourmaline.
His eye cracked open, as did Sapphurion’s just beyond him. Grandion said, What? And more tersely, immediately, What ails you, Dragonfriend?
She cried, To the surface!
Being Dragons, they did not waste sulphurous respiration on the niceties of debate. Grandion and Sapphurion burst of their narrow cave, one of the Dragon pens located high up in the underground fortress of Dardak Tertiary, home to over six thousand Humans and three thousand eight hundred Dragonkind, and charged off down the tunnels. Despite her smaller size granting her a manoeuvring advantage, Hualiama was hard-put to keep up with the male Dragons as they raced along the neat grid of granite tunnels, carved wider here to allow the Dragonkind easy access.
In less than a minute they charged past the startled and smokily disgruntled watch-Dragons, through a double row of massive containing doors, now left permanently open, and burst out into the tranquil night. Grandion’s talons threw up sparks as he skidded to a halt. Had she been a foot taller, Hualiama would have fetched up with a nose-to-scales view of his left haunch. Dodge! Duck! Dragon reactions rocketed her across the talon-scored flagstones of a flat portico area, and onto the open terrace space atop Dardak’s tallest mountain, six thousand two hundred feet tall.
All was brilliant. Only the steaming panting of three Dragons standing in mute awe beside a low, mortar-packed retaining wall broke the silence of deepest night–a night vanquished by the retina-searing brilliance of the comet hurtling through the atmosphere toward the Lost Islands. A huge, fiery gas corona streamed away from what Lia realised must be thousands or even millions of tons of burning rock, throwing a white tail so far beyond the moons, it brushed the stars like a feathery white ribbon. Dragon astronomers taught that the complex orbits of the five moons protected the Island-World from most of the dangerous cosmic debris, as evidenced by the heavily pockmarked face of the Yellow Moon. How had Numistar avoided a fiery impact against a moon? Her comet had visibly altered direction, Lia concluded, skirting Yellow as it speared down from high above the north-eastern horizon.
Perhaps the creepiest aspect was the contrast between the knowledge of an unimaginable impact just moments away, and the utter silence that enveloped the Dragons.
“Shouldn’t we warn someone?” Lia asked, in a small voice.
Sapphurion’s shrug betrayed his despair. “What would it avail?” But he turned to the watch-Dragons. Warn our kin, and the Haters. Warn them, too.
So still and clear was the night, Hualiama’s Dragon sight could easily make out the massif of Chenak, lying a few points west of south from Dadak, and across the Cluster, Irak and its neighbouring Islands, and even Burak’s white-tipped peaks cresting the horizon, one hundred and sixty-one leagues to the southeast. Northeast lay the terraced Island of Erak, its treble layers of gleaming lakes maintained just above freezing-point by no less than ninety-four hot springs. She had her draconic hunters working on fishing the lakes for grayling, whitefish and striped trout up there, as the rich fish oils appeared to work wonders for Dragons weakened by long captivity. Vitamins. Minerals. Hmm. If only she had access to Siiyumiel’s capabilities, she could fatten up these Dragons no end.
That baleful light hung almost motionless in the sky, an illusion since the comet had to be travelling at a tremendous speed, yet from their perspective it seemed only to swell slightly as it approached.
“It’s not one piece,” said Sapphurion, lifting his paw to point.
Grandion said:
A multitude of stars plummet …
Hualiama’s wings quivered reflexively. Sapphurion’s observation was accurate. If she focussed carefully, filtering her eyesight with her responsive nictitating membranes, she could make out at least seven separate nuclei within the comet, one much larger than the others.
Sapphurion said, “Dragonkind see in a far wider spectrum than Humans, Lia. Again, we Blues are the masters of this skill. Remind me to teach you the theory. It’s likely this ability will only manifest as you enter your fledgling years, but there are few rules where cheekily delightful Star Dragonesses are concerned.”
The hulking Blue was twenty-five feet tall at the shoulder, one of the mightiest Dragons she knew, but even his voice betrayed a noticeable tremor as he spoke. Hualiama almost mentioned how sweet he was, even as he disguised undraconic fear behind a jest, but most Dragons would read insult into such a remark. Proud creatures. Often unbending, as she had once thought of Sapphurion–yet he and Qualiana had taken an unprecedented risk in bringing a Human babe into their roost, and caring for her.
Impulsively, she said, Whatever happens, Sapphurion, you will always be my roost-father.
Such a purring vibrated from his chest! For a moment, the dark-fires of anxiety cleared from his eyes, and the great Elder lifted his wing to snug her beneath as a fowl might gather a chick to her warm breast. There they stood, flank to flank, watching the comet quicken across the sky.
Grandion chuckled, Roost-father isn’t even a Dragonish word. But it’s perfect.
The light waxed brighter, accelerating as it dove. Hualiama knew that no power in the Island-World could prevent what was
to come. Numistar Winterborn, with monstrous guile and foresight, must have planned for this day thousands of years ago. She had concealed her intent from Fra’anior himself, taking herself into exile with the greatest of all Dragons, before marooning him somewhere in the beyond. Vile. Shrewd. Draconic to the core. These unsuspecting, innocent Land Dragons that awaited her impact–poor Islands!
It’s so quiet, Grandion breathed.
Aye, I believe that means the comet would be travelling faster than the speed of sound, which is–Lia calculated rapidly–approximately two hundred and twenty leagues per hour. A shade above.
Grr, he growled, without menace.
She eyed him archly from beneath his father’s wing. Surely my mighty teacher is well-versed in the sciences?
Grr!
Out of the mouths of babes and hatchlings–
GRR!
Imitating a piping Human child’s voice, Lia said, “I’m not scared of you, Gwandi, you big, bad Dwagon.”
HA-HA-HA! he snorted. “Careful I do not dangle you by your tail and paddle your rascally behind.”
Nervy joking must give way to wing-shivering awe. Faster and faster the comet streaked downward, burning through the atmosphere. No need for magnification now. The white corona flared and fizzed as the nuclei began to break up further, as far as Hualiama could tell, and though she exerted her best efforts, she could not detect any trace of Numistar within. Magic, aye. Magic that she … saw? Detected? Exactly how, she was rather less certain. A Balance-sense?
The comet would not fall into the Buffer Zone, as predicted, but rather closer to the centre of the western Cluster-Islands. Lia ascertained that main nucleus within was smaller than she had imagined, perhaps no more than a quarter-mile across. Still, that mass represented a quantity of velocity-energy that would detonate like the infamous hydrogen experiments of a Dragon scholar called Sartorax, a minion of Dramagon’s who had famously blown a hole in the side of the Halls of the Dragons at Gi’ishior, vaporising himself along with a few laboratories and, the histories recorded somewhat randomly, a collection of unusual animal-horns from around the Island-World. Why would a historian bother to record that detail?