Glimpses: an Anthology of 16 Short Fantasy Stories: An exclusive collection of fantasy fiction

by Kevin Partner

  Kwallindauria bared her teeth and growled deep in her chest. She roared her frustration, but the sound was obliterated by the sea water surrounding her.

  What am I doing? she thought. Brute force is not the way wyrms do things. Use your head, foolish dragon!

  Dauria closed her eyes, calming the rage in her blood, and focused her thoughts on the problem. She took several long, deep gulps of water, her body claiming the oxygen from it before expelling the fluid back into the cavern.

  Opening her eyes, she summoned the strength of her magic. Carefully, she weaved the power into a molecule-thin net and wrapped it around the boulder, with the open end on the outside of the cavern. She spent many minutes strengthening the net, ensuring it would not break regardless of how much strain was placed upon it.

  With the construct ready, she finalized her spell and pulled the net with all her metaphysical strength, yanking the boulder from its place in the cavern wall.

  The boulder shuddered, then leaned a claw-width from its place in the wall before it snapped back into place. The force of it thrust Kwallindauria backward, flipping her body end over end for nearly one-hundred wingspans before she righted herself.

  Despair clawed at the back of her mind.

  A reddish shadow passed over her head and Graayyyavalllia’s voice came into her mind. What is it, Dauria? What’s wrong?

  She offered a telepathic huff and said, it is as I feared. We have been trapped here. I cannot move the boulder.

  But why?

  Can you think of no reason, Graayyya?

  By the Astral Dragon, you cannot be serious!

  Can’t I?

  But why? Why would they want war? We nearly destroyed the Earth last time!

  My guess is a combination of boredom and indignation at being forced to leave the fate of Mother Earth in the hands of a species they see as inferior.

  Do you think they sabotaged all the even-tempered Elders? Graayyya asked.

  I’d say it’s a fair assumption.

  Is there anything we can do?

  I think it likely they planned for anything the two of us could manage, but we can try pooling our efforts. Perhaps together we have a chance.

  4

  Kwallindauria had no sense of the passage of time in the watery cavern. It could have been days, years, or centuries.

  The boulder covering the entrance had refused to budge, despite their best efforts.

  After hundreds of cycles of working at it until well-beyond exhaustion, resting, then working at it again, they had given up and directed their minds to finding another way out.

  All to no avail.

  Whoever designed this prison is thorough, she thought. And more inventive than I.

  “Dauria?”

  “Yes?”

  “How did we meet? More importantly, how did we become friends? Aren’t metallics and stones usually antagonistic?”

  Dauria shifted to face the larger dragon and stared.

  Why is this coming up now?

  I wonder. Could telling her spark some deep-rooted memory and bring it all back, or is it only going to reignite all the pain and anger it sparked the first time?

  “Please,” Graayyya said softly.

  Without meaning to, Dauria nodded and said, “Okay.”

  She breathed a deep sigh and began. “It was many hundreds of years before the Long Sleep. I received a request from a human of the west. His village had been terrorized by dragons for years and he begged for help. I rarely took on such requests, but his plea was… eloquent.”

  “I flew him back to his village and began my search for the offending dragons. Oh, if only I had known then what I know now!” She sighed again.

  “I looked for a misguided young dragon, one whom I could reason with and educate. Or so I thought.”

  “But by the time I found the lair, your sire knew I was coming. Even through his madness, he saw the danger and prepared for me. I never have heard a satisfactory answer to how he kept your growth stunted for so many years. You should have been fully adult, but were scarcely past the stage of a helpless wyrmling.”

  “Your sire prepared traps, some of which I did not wholly avoid. When I entered the lair chamber, you were insensate on the floor and your clutch-mate was held in your sire’s grip. His tail coiled about you, its spikes at your throat, while his claws were at your clutch-mate’s.”

  Graayyya’s eyes grew wide, a glimmer of moisture reflecting the dim light.

  “We spoke. He warned me to leave, to forget I’d been there and return home. But I saw the shine of madness in his eyes. I knew that if I left, not only would he kill you both, but he would likely destroy the village and any others he found within a thousand wingspans of his lair. I couldn’t allow that. I could never have lived with myself.”

  “What did you do?” Graayyya breathed.

  She chuckled darkly.

  “I did what any young, overconfident, self-righteous dragon would. I attacked. I believed I was quick enough to save you both before he could cause serious damage.”

  “And judging by the fact that I’m still here…” Graayyya whispered.

  “I disabled his tail, but I was not fast enough to rescue your clutch-mate from his grip before the damage was done. I will save you the details, let us say only that he was far from gentle. And in the end, your sire’s heart stopped before your clutch-mate’s did, if only by moments.”

  Rivulets of moisture tore deep furrows through the dirt and ash coating Graayyyavalllia’s face.

  “After the battle, the Council of Elders sent out the call to your surviving kin, but none came to claim you. So I fostered you myself.”

  “That was generous.”

  “It was far less that I owed you.”

  “Not true.”

  “Let’s not debate semantics,” Dauria said. “I felt I owed you, and no one else was willing to take you in. So I did. I knew you hated me for killing your sire and letting your clutch-mate die at his hands, but it was the least I could do for you. I believe that now as I did then.”

  “I raised you the way any metallic is raised, with kindness, compassion, patience, and love.”

  “And before long I was reflecting those qualities back to you?”

  “Well, it took more than a century, but yes.”

  “And shortly thereafter our relationship underwent drastic change. Almost overnight we became as clutch-mates and your position as teacher was forever left behind.”

  “Exactl–”

  “Wait a moment! You remember!” Dauria said.

  Graayyya smiled warmly. “I do now, my old friend. Thank you for reminding me.”

  Dauria stared, astonished.

  “Do you remember… everything?”

  “There still seem to be a few gaps in my memory, but mostly, yes.”

  If only I’d known that was all it would take. Aloud, she said, “Welcome back. I missed you.”

  Graayyya’s smile widened.

  “Do those memories tell you anything new about our situation?”

  “Yes. Two things.”

  Dauria waited.

  “First,” Graayyya said when she had collected herself. “The magical skill and raw power needed to induce such mind-numbing rage in me is immense. That fact alone is staggering to consider. And second,” she added with a sly smile, “let’s get the Infernalis out of here!”

  “Graayyya, we’ve been over this. Our only way out is blocked.”

  “Not so.”

  “How?”

  “The magma river.”

  “What?”

  Graayyya sighed and said, “Kwallindauria, the magma flows downward, ‘tis true. But once you go down far enough, it levels to horizontal movement and a few hundred wingspans out it comes up to the bottom of the ocean to vent pressure. We can swim the distance to that vent and escape the magma into the ocean.”

  “But we’re both much too large to leave the cavern through the tiny openings of the magma river.”

 
; “And?”

  Dauria reached up and smacked the space between her brow ridges with an open claw. “How could I have been so stupid!”

  “Calm,” Graayyya said. “It is not natural for your kind to think of swimming enclosed tunnels of magma. We garnets do this for pleasure, but you platinums revel in wide open spaces and the thin air of the mountains.”

  Dauria nodded.

  “Follow my lead. I will show you where to go. Assuming,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes, “you can tolerate the heat and pressure of swimming through liquid magma.”

  “Anything you can do…”

  Graayyya spat a globule of liquid fire and turned toward the magma river.

  5

  The two great dragons broke the surface of the Mare Gallicum moments after Ryujin’s Blaze rose above the eastern mountains. Its bloody rays showered the glassy water with gouts of fiery light reflected in glossy garnet and metallic silver.

  The combination of freedom, sunlight, and cool ocean spray was a heady brew.

  Scarcely a moment into her exultation, however, Dauria’s heart sank to her tail.

  Thin tendrils of acrid smoke twisted upward into the sky from every land-bound direction. Where once had been villages and castles, now only smoking ruins remained.

  She turned to Graayyya and her heart shattered. The garnet wyrm wept openly, her sobs wracking her body with spasms and streams of thick tears dripped down her snout into the glassy water below.

  “They did it,” Dauria whispered miserably. “Those infernal bastards actually did it. They convinced the Council to go to war. And we missed the whole bloody thing.”

  “Graayyyavalllia,” she said forcefully.

  Graayyya blinked away her tears and the sobs abruptly ceased. She looked into Dauria’s eyes and it was as though she had imagined the tears.

  “Yes, Kwallindauria?”

  Angling her wings to keep herself aloft and upright, Dauria held out her claws toward Graayyya and said, “Join your power to mine. We must know what has happened.”

  The garnet adjusted her position, nodded, and took Dauria’s claws in her own.

  The rush of power that flooded into Dauria’s body almost overwhelmed her. The tingling power stormed through her, fighting for release.

  It is remarkable how much she trusts me, Dauria thought as she thrust outward with the power. She scoured the Earth for information, past and present.

  Immediately, answers slammed into her mind as though she’d always known them. The floodtide of raw data stunned her mind and carried it away from her body.

  Before she knew what was happening, she found herself looking down on her own body in confusion. Her eyes glowed bright silver. In amazement, she watched her mouth open and begin to speak in layered voices.

  “It is over, Graayyyavalllia. The war is over and humankind has been decimated. There may be a few pockets of futile resistance, but in every way that matters the humans are dead or subjugated.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “But there is another war coming. A war between dragons.”

  “By Ryujin, Tiamat, and the Astral Dragon! Why would dragons war amongst themselves?”

  “Many reasons, Graayyyavalllia. Many reasons, and none.”

  “What do we do?” Graayyya whispered.

  “The window will be narrow, the wait long, and the struggle great. But there will come a moment when you will have a chance to stop it. Not before it starts, nothing can stop that now. Yet when the time is right, when the death toll is so high, the destruction so great, the damage so far-reaching, they will be receptive to a message of peace.”

  “Will we even survive that long? How will we know the moment when it comes?”

  “You will know. The peace will never be what it once was, but it will be enough to stop the wanton destruction. You will know the time, Graayyyavalllia. And you will act to save the species and the Earth.”

  The glow in Dauria’s eyes faded and her mind slammed back into her body. She looked around, confused.

  “What happened?”

  The last thing she remembered was taking Graayyyavalllia’s claws in hers.

  “A gift from the gods,” Graayyya said. “Come, we must prepare.”

  She turned and led Dauria toward her lair in the northern mountains of the large once-Celtic island.

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  Cimondeli

  S.K. Randolph

  Destiny bolted upright. Fading wisps of dreamtime magnified the pounding of her heart. Her lungs fought for breath. She shivered. Searching her mind for a clue to the anticipation skittering over her skin, she closed her eyes and rested her head on bent knees.

  Orphaned at four cycles of the invisible sun, she lived in a safe haven, deep beneath the Cliffs of Cimondeli with others who had escaped the genocide and chemical rains on El Stroma. The Dendih tribe, a mix of disparate people and cultures, had become her family; Fechi, the tribal leader, her mentor.

  She straightened, touched the lamp by her sleeping mat, and stared at the soft glow it cast on the bronze-brown wall of the interior cliff dwelling. Try as she would, she could not grasp the tremulous threads of her dream. Sighing, she got up and scrambled into fur leggings and a top, all that remained of her mother's garb. Her hand on the tattered fur brought another sigh. I wish you were here, Momee.

  Her parents, like so many from Pathsteni, the time before the chemical rains, had died a tortured death, one that robbed them of life one agonizing breath at a time. She proudly carried their El Predan lineage. Fechi had told her that her maman had been a shameena of great power. Desty followed in her footsteps. Warned to keep her talents hidden; not even her best friends, Tebo and Ruefut, knew.

  She extinguished the lamp with a thought and gave herself a moment to adjust to the pitch black of her cubi. If only her parents had escaped from the planet during the exodus preceding the rains. If only she understood their reasons for staying behind. She licked a tear from quivering lips. The old ones spoke of Pathsteni in hushed voices but not if they knew she was near. When she asked why Momee and Papon hadn't come with her to Cimondeli, bowed heads and silence were the only answers she received. She'd finally stopped asking.

  Shaking herself free from unanswered questions, Desty hurried along the well-worn passageway to the place of eating and paused at the arched entrance. Tebo and Rue sat in their favorite corner. Rue's honey-gold eyes darted her direction. Tebo twisted his birth-deformed body to look over his shoulder. A lopsided smile welcomed her.

  Filling a bowl and thanking the Pheet Adolan server, she plopped down beside Rue. Tebo's features distorted to form words. "Have you heard?" He wedged a shell beneath his fingerless right hand, pulled the snail free with his left, and stuffed it in his mouth.

  Desty's scalp prickled. "Just woke. What's up?"

  Rue exchanged a glance with Tebo. "A group of searchers returned from Outside. They found life . . . plants growing." His excitement brought a hint of color to cheeks bleached white by lack of light.

  Tebo pressed his teeth to his bottom lip and hissed. "F-f-found bugs. Small reptiles. Outside."

  Rue plucked several green sprouts from Desty's bowl. "Decent air quality, too. We can move up a level. Soon, we'll be able to see out."

  An elusive fragment of her dream emerged and faded. Desty licked her fingers and sighed. "I've always wanted to go Outside. It must be so different from the haven."

  Rue chewed the sprouts, nodded to himself, and rested his arms on the table. Mischief danced across his expressive face.

  Desty eyed him with a critical stare. "I know that look, Rue. Better tell us what you're thinking."

  "What if we explore higher . . . all the way to the top of the cliffs? What if we go Outside?"

  Garbled syllables tumbled from Tebo's distorted
mouth and sorted themselves into one word. "Can't."

  Rue leaned forward. "If the air's breathable, why not?"

  Excitement fluttered in Desty's belly. "We could take breather helmets with us in case. I know how to get a couple without giving us away."

  Tebo shook his head. He worked his mouth to form words. "F-f-fechi be so mad."

  Sitting back, Rue grinned. "Fechi doesn't need to know." He gripped Desty's hand. "You get the breathers. I'll pack rations. Bring water bags and a hand torch. We'll meet by my cubi at the midday chime." He scooted closer to Tebo. "Don't be afraid, and don't be late."

  As the chime echoed down the passageway, Desty hurried toward Rue's cubi with Tebo in tow. She wore a backsack containing a med-kit and a small water bag and carried two helmet breathers. Tebo had strapped a large water bag to his rounded shoulders and clipped a hand torch to his belt. He stopped beside Rue, his helmet breather clasped in a shaking hand.

  Desty gave Rue his helmet. "Found these tucked behind a rock. Don't know who hid them, but we can return them when we get back."

  Rue helped Tebo with his helmet. "Remember, Tee, the helmet is an air filter." He held up a face mask attached to a tube. "If the detector goes off, put on the mask and breath naturally. Come on, we don't have all day."

  The trip to the top of Cimondeli took longer than Desty expected. Remaining unseen had caused frustrating delays. By the time they stood at the rock barrier hiding the cave opening onto the cliff top, a faint chime had long since rung a late afternoon warning. Relieved that the air continued to be breathable, she glanced at Rue.

  He grinned "We're here. You still with me?"

  Desty bit her lip. "With you, but nervous. What if . . ." She shrugged.

  Rue adjusted his breathing tube. "If our detectors go off, we abort the mission." He draped an arm around Tebo's shoulders. "You're sure quiet."

  Not even trying to form words, Tebo signed a rapid message with his good hand. "We could die. We could get caught. We could see a dumabrate or a crowcock or . . ." He gave an audible groan. "What about Renthu?"

  Rue rested steadying hands on his shoulders. "If we hurry, we won't be out after dark, so we don't have to worry about nocturnal creatures. Besides, who says they even exist, except in the minds of older adults."