by Marc Secchia
“You’re beautiful. Kiss me,” he said, aiming properly this time.
The Grey Dragoness spared a moment for laughter. “Now we are family. My strength is yours and yours is mine. I feel it already.”
Hualiama shook her muzzle. Just like teenagers to sit there smacking lips on the back of a Grey Dragoness as if the storm of the ages was not about to fall upon their heads. Perhaps she should remind them? Bah. Let them enjoy a forbidden kiss. She would figure out the mess later–if there was a later.
Her scales prickled, lift like a hound’s hackles along her back before refusing to resettle. Makani, shields!
Now!
The Grey Dragoness’ cry preceded a titanic lightning-bolt aimed at the Dragonship’s stern. KAAABOOM! The vessel slewed, knocking every man on the gantries to their knees. Smoking ruin. Shouts as the crew raced to put out the fires. Lia’s shield expanded around the airship. KAAABOOM! Another bolt. A rising hum, the awareness of electrical potentials thick in the air. The clouds pulsated, forming into dark, claw-like appendages that reached toward the fleeing Dragonship, still scudding on the wind toward Immadia, just two miles away now … BOOM! BOOM! Concussive blasts of lightning shocked them from all sides as Numistar set to with earnest. Not for her the subtle approach. Hualiama felt every one of the blows against her mind, greater and greater, until she had to squeeze down and think about nothing else. Makani was there too, supporting, and to a lesser extent the minds of Jin and Isiki, linked through the Grey Dragoness. But they were not Grandion, and both Hualiama and Makani were ragged from days of fighting Numistar’s unrelenting attacks.
BOOM! The port sail ripped away. KAAABOOM! Spars splintered from the starboard.
Hold her! Makani shouted.
Mountains loomed. Too low. If they struck the forests at this speed, they would be shredded. Up! Hualiama shouted. Get us up!
“Men inside! Brace!” roared Jin, in a voice that Hualiama had never heard him use before, and she suspected the teenager had not thought himself capable of. “We’re going to crash!”
With a rising hum, the storm struck again. BOOM! One of the port-side turbines exploded.
Numistar had the strength of an Ancient Dragoness. How could Hualiama deny her? Yet she knew she had souls on board that must be brought to a safe landing, so she dug deeper than ever before. Tourmaline, Onyx, White … could she find a colour of strength to see them safe to Immadia? The Dragonship slewed under the hammer-blows of lightning and the terrible press of the wind, heading directly toward the retaining wall of the second layer of terrace lakes. One man was wailing hysterically, several others praying, their voices drowned out by each explosion, only to rise again.
KAAABOOM! Lia fell against the air sack, setting it alight with the power coursing through her body. Grandion? Grandion, are you there? Her body convulsed as another round of lightning, four consecutive bolts, pounded the shield she had drawn around their airship. It flickered, losing shape in concert with her fading consciousness. Dragon blood leaked from her mouth onto her paws.
She saw Fra’anior through pain-wracked eyes. I’m in you, Hualiama, he whispered. You are the unique intersection of colours, exactly as you imagine; yet I say, you are more.
As Numistar pressed her assault, Hualiama suffered each and every blow; but she had survived worse. She had survived the insane strength of her mother’s hatred. She had refuted her father’s ambitions. She was a new alloy of Human and Dragon; all that was strong of both, multiplied. Human stubbornness. The will to survive, to overcome, and never to give because the core of her light was love. Draconic strength. The fire-soul which burned eternal, unquenchable. Humansoul. Dragonsoul.
She was Onyx and White, and the Tourmaline of oath-magic. Together, those colours made a deep, matchless blue. The blue of a Star Dragoness.
The terrace-lake wall loomed dead ahead, a quarter-mile tall. They could not avoid it. Behind, she heard Numistar give a low growl of malicious satisfaction. Forked lightning crackled almost constantly between the storm, the Dragonship and the land, creating a crazy filigree exactly like the white-fires which inhabited the world beyond the world; the unknowable beyond Lia had once unwittingly wished for. Closer. Three hundred feet. Two hundred.
Storm rose in her belly. “BRACE!”
Hualiama sprang to her paws, riding the nose of Prince Qilong’s Dragonship as they speared forward. Shaping her shields. Honing her mind to a dagger’s pinpoint precision and sharpness. She would have one chance at this incision. Just one.
Built by the Ancient Dragons to contain the precious rainfall that sheeted off the tall Islands in great torrents to feed the Cloudlands below, terrace lakes were a crucial aspect of Island life and often supported large populations of freshwater fish and water birds. Their buttressed walls were hundreds of feet thick, built to dam up vast bodies of water and sealed by magic.
Her penetrative psychic shield pierced one such wall. It sheared through the great stone wall like a spear-thrust piercing a man’s belly. Slowly. So very slowly, Lia knew she saw in conscious battle-thought. Makani’s beating wings bore them onward, traced in great, vastly extended sheets of fire augmented by Numistar’s lightning fed through their shield, so that she appeared to be a firebird, flying through stone that exploded upward, downward and to either flank in fountains hundreds of feet long. Then came the torrent. Shock. Massive pressure. Blue water sheeting over their shield as the Dragonship slowed, contained in a bubble of air, and then laboriously, impelled by the Dragoness’ magical wings, forged onward and upward. A lake trout peered curiously at Lia as it sailed by on the rapidly increasing torrent. Makani groaned, grinding her fangs terribly; Hualiama was her foundation, Onyx unbreakable.
They breached from the shattered lake like a leviathan throwing back its head in mammoth sport, sheeting water from their back, and accelerated upward into the storm winds once more.
How dare you defy me! Numistar shall avenge! the Ancient Dragoness thundered. SHE SHALL REIGN!
Not as long as I live! Hualiama shouted back, feeling like a mosquito taking umbrage at a cyclonic storm.
The voice of the Ancient Dragoness’ storm raised waves on the terrace lake as its waters cascaded through the breach torn by the Dragonship. Taste my wrath, shell-daughter of Fra’anior!
Not today, Numistar! Not an overly imaginative response, but Hualiama cared less. Her will was adamantine; her hearts pounding with fresh purpose. Her claws clenched the deflating sack as she turned to confront the Dragoness, looking past Makani. Hot words rose with her gleaming, darkly majestic fires. Strike me, o pernicious daughter of darkness. Strike and hold nothing back! For I am my shell-father’s right paw of justice, and my shell-mother’s heart of starlight.
DIE! DIE! DIE!
With each cry, Numistar Winterborn threw a more powerful barrage of lightning at the Dragonship. The terrace lake exploded upward in geysers of steam. The forest behind caught fire. The sack smoked from a dozen fires, but by some miracle continued to hold together. Lia grimly reflected back the power of lightning, hoping the crazy undirected bolts would cause some damage, any damage at all, to the rampaging Ancient Dragoness.
Still they rose, scraping over the retaining wall of the uppermost lake level and slaloming toward the next band of forest. A powerful updraft caught them, shaking the Dragonship and tearing cracks in the cabin walls as conflicting winds twisted the vessel. Ice shattered upon the shield. The roar of her new attack drowned out even the storm’s thunder as hailstones over two feet in diameter pelted the shield over the Dragonship, but Hualiama and Makani denied even this. Melded. Locked together. Screaming with a supreme effort, they brought the Dragonship up over the rising forests and on to the fields of eternal snow beyond.
Her voice quaked the Island. YOU WILL PERISH!
So saying, the storm stooped in concert with her voice, its hurricane-force winds knocking the Dragonship tumbling end over end. The snow changed places with the sky. Lightning crashed all around them. Relentless. Overpow
ering the Dragoness’ strength. Driving them toward darkness. At the last instant, Hualiama abandoned shielding the vessel and enwrapped every living soul aboard in light. Love could bring them to Immadia, whole.
KAAABOOM! The Dragonship exploded in a fireball of destruction.
* * * *
Hualiama stirred, thinking, ‘I’ve snow up my nose.’
What she had was a dragonet on her nose. What was Flicker doing here?
Numistar! Great Islands! She squirmed to her paws. All around her, across a landing area strewn with smoking debris, dazed Easterners slowly pulled themselves out of the wreckage. Genzo, grinning. Sumio, rubbing his bald pate. Qilong, somehow managing to look dapper despite his trousers smouldering in three separate places. Makani? Where was the Grey–there! She rolled over painfully, unclenching her forepaws to release Jin and Isiki separately. Lia sagged with relief. All accounted for.
Then she heard a new note on the wind. Chittering. Screeching. The fluttering of hundreds of thousands of wings. White dragonets poured down from the black clouds, their tiny pink eyes blazing with unnatural hatred.
Numistar meant to finish them off.
Chapter 30: The Snows of Immadia
HUaliama waded through the knee-deep, powdery white snow. “To arms! To arms, men! Stand together!”
“Impossible odds,” moaned Qilong. Lia was just about to blast him, when he whipped out his curved Eastern sword and yelled, “To me! We are men of Kaolili! We are not beaten yet!”
Had the mountains turned into Land Dragons and slunk off into the Cloudlands, Hualiama would have been no less surprised. Who was this man? He wore Qilong’s clothing, but his bloodied face was screwed up in a determined snarl, and something in that expression captured his men’s hearts as surely as a Dragon clasped prey in its talons–intense, almost savage.
The Prince raged, “We will die with honour! Make every blow count, men! Numistar lives in each dragonet, so kill them all!”
That was it. Qilong had touched and named what she had intuited; Numistar was weaker than before. She was mighty, but her numbers had been whittled away by constant warfare. Every kill reduced her power a little more. They had to hold out. If Grandion and his Dragonwing could reach them through the storm, they might stand some chance against the Ancient Dragoness–the chance of a gnat lost in the Cloudlands.
Already, the first dragonets spiralled down toward her. Mere feet away. Hualiama leaped into the air, followed a half-second later by Makani, hastily settling her two Riders on her shoulders. She pushed her punishing, reflective shield outward. Numistar! You repulsive maggot, was that the last whimper of your puny wrath?
Go Dragonsoul! We are together! her Human shouted within.
KAAABOOM!
Lightning blasted once more, but Hualiama reflected it back outward with an infusion of starlight, all around her. Dragonets combusted mid-air. A ring of smoke briefly puffed upward, the remnant of thousands, before whipping away on the breeze. A dense wave of dragonets smashed into the pair of Dragons, then immediately into the crew. Bodies. Teeth. Talons everywhere, little muzzles spitting words of killing and maiming and ravening. Four men fell at once, clawing helplessly at their faces; Hualiama found herself forced backward under great duress. She shoved back, infusing her shield with starlight power. So little left. Petals floated on the breeze, blowing up a dragonet every time they touched one. The sweetish stench of burning flesh galvanised the nostrils of every Dragon, amplifying their battle-rage.
The battle raged back and forth. Makani fell under a squirming pile. Lia blasted her loose with a despairing surge of magic. The Dragons landed beside the crew, curving about them to protect them with their bodies, forming a half-moon shelter within which the men could draw close and protect each other against the storm of white bodies that raged over them like a blizzard. Lia saw even Flicker giving of his strength, breaking up attacks upon Qilong and Isiki as the slave-girl loosed a flurry of arrows from the top of Makani’s back. The Grey Dragoness fired glob after glob of superheated glue, taking out tens of dragonets at a time. Yet they had come so thickly upon the beleaguered crew, the morning darkened toward a preternatural twilight. Jin tacked Isiki about the waist and slid down the curve of Makani’s flank with her, landing lightly beside Qilong in the thick snow.
“To me! Defend the Dragons!” Qilong shrieked. His left eye had been clawed out, but he still fought like a madman. “Together, men! Drive them back!”
Ice pelted down. Careless of her own body spread out in its multiplicity of untold thousands, Numistar hurled hailstones at the group; Lia threw up a shield again, and within a matter of minutes, found her group buried beneath a dome of thick ice, which solidified over her shield.
An abeyance? Aye. She dropped her magical defences warily.
“Nice!” Jin clapped her on the shoulder as Hualiama whirled, searching for enemies. A few men duelled briefly with dragonets, slaying them.
“Wasn’t my doing,” she panted. “Makani, you–”
“Fine,” groaned the Dragoness.
“Where are you wounded, you lying beast?”
The Grey stared at Lia. “Another time, I’d have your wings for the insult, hatchling.” With a snap of her jaw, she sliced in half a dragonet which had been aiming to ambush Isiki. “Alright. I can’t fly. They damaged my nerve bundles on the left side, secondary wing-joint.”
“I can try to–”
“See to Qilong.”
The Prince flapped a hand in Lia’s general direction. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve always wanted a properly piratical eye-patch.”
In the gloom of their icy prison, his face was drawn. Lia asked, “Are you in pain?”
“As if a blacksmith poked his forge-irons into my eye,” Qilong replied.
Lia touched him, then Makani for good measure. That was it. Were her magic a dishrag, it had just been wrung dry. And ten thousand claws scrabbled at their icy prison from the outside. Any Island-shaking ideas, Star Dragoness?
ALASTIOR!!
Well, that sufficed to shake her Island! Her Tourmaline certainly knew how to make an entrance. Hualiama ducked reflexively as the orange of raging Dragon fire lit up the ice from the outside. Orange prisms. The colour of her ardour. Forbidden no longer. Yet impossible, most certainly–which made her treacherous heart dance like a dragonet practising her aerial cartwheels on a blustery day. He was Grandion. He was Tourmaline. Her heart would acknowledge no other.
She cast a wild look in Makani’s direction.
Go to him, urged the Grey. And she added, You’re glowing white.
The dragonets had quarried a hole through the eastern side already. They were no match for the scale-bright, sizzling joy of a Star Dragoness.
Lia burst out into a whiteout, but she had no need for eyesight. Her heart followed that oath-connection right to the source. Scales of tourmaline blue winked at her through the massive press of dragonet bodies. She cried, Thou, my heart-jewel!
Thou, the starlight Dragonsong of eternity … his soft bugle was wholly at odds with the open-taloned waving of his forepaws as he liberally sieved dragonets out of the air. The Dragonwing comes! I found thee an army!
All in a day’s awesomeness, eh?
I outpaced them all, o stolen Princess. He cleared the air around her so that Lia could briefly catch a glimpse of his bloodied smile. Your brother flies hence, leading many Dragons of Pla’arna, Gemalka and Herliss. An army of crusty malcontents ripe for the seductive, overpowering paw of a Star Dragoness.
Despite fighting for her life in the midst of a raging Dragon-battle, Lia blushed. Grandion!
How many leagues did I wait for thee to speak my name thus?
Far, far too many. Lia fought close to the towering Tourmaline, wary of his scything paws but grateful for the sheltering presence, for the linkage with him that promised the restoration of her magic through the mighty fonts of his resources. They patrolled the area over her ice-dome, but the dragonets tore at it relentlessly, exposing firs
t Makani’s back and shoulders, then the heads of Qilong and his crew. The frigid wind howled over the site, hampering the white dragonets more than the partially protected men, rising to an ululating pitch of outright frenzy as the battle momentarily stalled with neither side making much progress.
Then, Dragon-thunder rolled over the site. Flame speared through the darkness as Northern Dragonwing tore wide rents in Numistar’s dragonet-body, only for the white dragonets to swirl together again in their limitless numbers. They swarmed the much larger Lesser Dragons with sharp cries, cutting lips and wing membranes with their razor-sharp talons and aiming particularly for the vulnerable eyes. Lia saw many Dragons curling flame out of the sides of their mouths to protect their eyes–perhaps a planned tactic? She swirled upward with Grandion, slashing instinctively with her paws. Here and there, she saw light flaring–Tiiyusiel’s eye-cannon piercing the storm from just offshore of Immadia.
Whomp! Whomp! Mizuki’s signature attack! Golden blood rained from above together with ice and sleet as the Copper Dragoness pounded the dragonets with her Shivers power, at last drawing a great bellow of pain from Numistar.
Yet the strength of an Ancient Dragoness held more than firm. She was born of old, a Dragon of powers forged in an age when the mightiest of the Dragonkind roamed the Island-World, crafting and warring and loving, and developing the great traditions of draconic science in an attempt to recover what had been lost in their great journey from the stars. Numistar also had thousands of years of cunning to draw upon, the experience of many conflicts and a lifetime of hatred and scheming against Fra’anior and his allies. Dragons snarled and fell as the dragonets shredded wings and damaged eyes. Phenomenal, multi-forked torrents of lightning blasted ceaselessly from above, knocking the less powerful Dragons to the ground where they were set upon by champing hordes of dragonets. Open wounds provided instant routes into Dragons’ bodies. Hualiama saw dragonets crawling into empty eye-sockets and tearing mouthfuls out of still-waggling tongues. Ravenous. Cruel. Inexorable. How could she stop this? How to prevail against insurmountable odds, where the very elements of darkness took form to rend and destroy?