by Marc Secchia
“Nyahi!”
WURRRR-AAARRGGHHH!! Another enormous collision.
“Iridiana, please, listen to me!”
Thunder pealed and the mad Dragoness responded in kind; for five or ten breaths, Asturbar was unable to hear himself think. Then as both sides seemed to pause for breath, he heard the wards humming at a teeth-jarring volume. That only happened when the magic was under extreme duress. Usually with House wards, the strain would be bled away into the Island itself, and from the answering vibration beneath his feet Asturbar realised that Nyahi must have used the same constructs. Could the Island withstand opposing forces of such magnitude?
He called again, more urgently, but the commotion within the cavern only redoubled, the impacts arriving with increasing frequency and the sounds of roaring, whistling, tearing and groaning gathering force by the second, until it was difficult to tell which was more violent, her or the storm. It was clear the storm was driving her insane, and that in the crucible of this magical interaction, her power had swelled to an unimaginable degree. His impassioned cries made no impression. Asturbar considered keying the wards and leaping within, but a succession of blows and roars decided him against. As planned, she was best kept restrained behind her wards. They would keep her safe from the Amethyst’s seductive call.
Poor girl.
Yet even as he thought this, the soldier sensed an immense charge suffusing the air, like the times he had fought alongside Blue Dragons commanding their powers of lightning strikes or chain lightning attacks. His skin prickled. Asturbar ducked down to take cover as best he could, and just as well, for the full fury of her Chaos Beast manifestation was unleashed inside that cavern; as the storm shrieked and the thunder pealed, she shook the cliffs in a feral frenzy, the great booming drumbeats that marked her attacks accelerating to an astonishing, rattletrap velocity. The wards shrieked and moaned, bending audibly and even tangibly against the rock pile, squeezing Asturbar painfully into the narrow gap. He scrambled to a safer location.
“Nyahi! Nyahi! Please, you have to listen to me!”
She was beyond listening. The beast inside, perhaps now more an elemental power than any physical form of Dragonkind, thrashed from side to side, faster than he could credit. Bbrrraaarrr! Bbrrraaarrr! Rock cracked and groaned right across the cliff face. Asturbar swore. “Nyahi, stop! You have to calm down!”
Thunder pealed sonorously all around the Island. The cavern shuddered.
It was as if their voices challenged each other, driving storm and Chaos Shifter to unprecedented extremes – or perhaps, their powers fed off each other, off fright and mayhem, tempest and tumult. Her rattling at the bars of her cavern cage rocked the whole Island, now, and Asturbar suddenly knew an inkling of insight, of what must come. Turning, he ran. Diving beneath the boulder. Over the next, a sideways scramble. He groaned as the overstrained cliff face crushed him briefly, before drawing back as if the living rock had exhaled.
Hiatus.
Asturbar burst out of that narrow gap as if a Dragon had expectorated a hunk of rancid meat. At the same instant, the Island gave one final, shuddering groan, echoed by a rising shriek from within the cave, and then the rock blasted apart. Not as much as he had feared; perhaps there was a natural fault line in the substrate which yielded at last to the immense pressure. A vast, churning vortex of power exploded out of the Island’s side, perhaps a hundred feet from the hut, and the force of its impact clobbered the soldier to his knees. Two or more dozen bolts of lightning immediately struck the blurred bundle of chaotic magic that hovered in that new gap, as if the storm had chosen its moment to strike. The discharge only seemed to galvanise her. With a rock-pulverising roar, Nyahi’s searing form launched into the air in a chaotic, dense melange of blue-black wings, fangs and trailing blue-black flames, and assaulted the skies.
“Nyahi!”
Gone. Swallowed by the storm.
With a deep groan, Asturbar struck the ground with his fists. “No!” Then, he knew insatiable fury. No, he would not her give up. Never!
Rising, he sprinted through the lashing rain to find the now-familiar cord. He slung his battle-axe at his belt. Climbing. Hand over slippery hand, as the windswept rains pounded the Islands with a vengeance, understanding from the wild ululating he heard that the Chaos Shifter was still somewhere nearby, battling the storm or being battered by it.
Her pain must be unimaginable. This fell tempest would kill his girl.
A grim, muddy, sodden struggle later, Asturbar found his feet up on the Island’s main surface and searched the racing dark underbelly of the storm urgently. Where was she now? Had she already flown with the winds? “Nyahi!”
Thunder mocked him with booming scorn.
A second later, a glimmering of mauve lightning streaked across his vision. It was her! Lost, besieged, just a fleeting glow flung from thunderhead to thunderhead by the uncaring monstrosity of this unnatural storm, her light all too quickly swallowed up in the swarming blackness, as if she were being mobbed by thousands of insubstantial, dark enemies. The sound she made was like a cup of water tossed into a raging fire. Vanquished? Vanished.
“Nyahi, come back!”
His greatest effort was lost in the howling wind and the rain’s roaring. The continuous pealing of thunder was like the clash of Ancient Dragons as enshrined in the ballads; like hearing the voices of those titans of yore, to whom he must be like a mite upon their backs, or less than a mite. What use his despair? His voice could never be heard. Never count. It was all that meddling Star Dragoness’ fault. She did not need his girl. She did not understand Iridiana’s frailty.
He could not change fate, but he dared. Yes!
Before he knew it, Asturbar did something indescribably stupid. Lifting his battle-axe – his great metal lightning-rod of an axe – he brandished it at the howling darkness and roared, GIVE HER BACK! YOU’LL DESTROY HER!
Thunderheads smashed together, creating a peal of thunder that smote him half senseless, but he was beyond caring for sensibilities now. There in the streaming downpour, amidst an oasis torn and pummelled by the might of a legendary Storm, he raised his arms to the heavens and shouted with all that burned in his heart and soul: You hear me now! Take me instead! I, Asturbar of the Azingloriaxii – I defy you, o Storm of Storms! Take me! Here I am! He beat his breast with his right fist. TAKE ME IN HER PLACE!
It was as if the tempest’s magic hearkened and responded. A series of almighty thunderclaps broke over his head, but he endured as if this were another battle to bull through. Lightning coruscated around him, blowing multiple craters in the rock and soil around his feet, but despite coursing through the haft of his axe, it did him no significant harm. Asturbar eyed his glowing hands with sense-dulled shock. What? Now he resisted lightning? The jewels in his belly felt hot and distinct, they seemed to burn without consuming his flesh. His axe blade glowed with an unearthly, pure white light.
He lived.
Asturbar raised the shining battle-axe, and waited. He said nothing more. Simply, he willed her home with every fibre of his heart and soul.
A gruff bark of thunder seemed to remark, ‘Ha! You would defy me?’
Then, the menacing black clouds parted and Iridiana hurtled back to Isle, a smear of shifting, blending shapes and impressions that struck him squarely in the chest, driving them both thirty or forty paces backward, until he toppled with the form of a girl shaking and steaming and burning atop of him, yet clutched desperately close in his mighty arms. Even this was but the briefest expression of her chaos magic. She flickered constantly, irregularly, as if her magic malfunctioned. Gone haywire. Fragments of forms he knew would start to appear, then they twisted or changed or vanished in spasmodic flares of light, and she could not stop convulsing.
“Iridiana, dearest – stay with me,” he cried brokenly.
“Ah … Ast …” Her body wavered through a dozen half-complete transformations. “Not … r …”
“Not what? What can I do for you?” He c
lutched her against him, willing the storm not to strike again, but it already seemed to be moving on. The winds eased; the rain seemed more soothing than aggressive. “Iridiana?”
Why was he even personifying a storm like this? Only, it had seemed to respond to them both; first in fury at her intentional incarceration, and then to his defiance.
Her teeth clacked together. “Not ready to fly …”
* * * *
In the days of the storm’s aftermath, after the last clouds scurried guiltily into the distance and the gorgeous display of quadruple overlapping rainbows which graced three mornings running faded, Iridiana lay in their cabin sick unto death. The rainbows angered him. Why such beauty? Why now? Did the Star Dragoness celebrate a pyrrhic victory? The trauma of unbridled Chaos having run rampant though her being, lay heavy upon Iridiana. She spent scarcely a few seconds in any given form, so to attempt to feed her or slip a few drops of water between her lips became a challenging game – if only life were a game. She wasted away before his eyes, as if the very fires of her being consumed all that she was, leaving not even the ashes upon the hearthstone of her being, but nothing at all. An invisible thief. Her cheeks became sepulchral and the skin stretched thinly over the xylophonic array of her ribs. She became fearfully weak, unable even to raise her head off the pillow roll.
Asturbar could do nothing to prevent her decline. He was no nurse. He knew nothing of magical sicknesses, and this one must be unique indeed. If his dedication could have saved his beloved, then she would have long since been succoured from portal of death, for he was at her side twenty-seven hours a day, watching over every breath, every change, every sign.
The Scamps banded together to help him. First it was little gifts of their hunting, hyraxes in the main and a few small birds, and then a few vegetables and new fruit clearly filched from his garden on the main level of the Island.
He thanked them with tears in his eyes.
Maybe tears were not such a terrible affliction. Mingled as they were with the glowing coals of his hatred for the Star Dragoness – how could she do this to his Nyahi – they formed a caustic brew that seemed to bubble from his eyes in great, burning droplets. Rationally, he knew that there was no way even a Star Dragoness could have been in control of that storm. He surmised that terrible events must be afoot in Herimor; most likely a war, for in those days following the storm he had seen great animal-like disturbances in the Cloudlands, as if the world and its Dragons moved to war. Those arrow-straight trails, pointing toward the Straits of Hordazar, he realised belatedly, must be created by the legendary denizens of the deeps, the Land Dragons. Thousands upon thousands strong. But logic paled into insignificance when he viewed Nyahi. When he stroked her fevered brow, only for that to fade into the aether, and half a plant or disturbed imagination’s appearance of magical anarchy to take its place … then his helpless rage grew fangs in its own right, and gnawed at the roots of his soul.
He sat upon the edge of the bed, holding her limp, transparent hand as long as he could. When it disappeared again, he sighed deeply.
Fatty pushed beneath his hand. Chirr?
Aye, he replied quietly. I’m lost, Fatty Scamp. Thank you for all your help, though. What more can we do for her? Are there herbs you know of? Ways a dragonet might treat such illnesses?
The dragonet’s eyes swirled with soft apricot colours. Then, very carefully and proudly, she said, Yeeeeessss. Yes.
Asturbar almost fell off the bed. You talk?
She volleyed a tirade of nonsense at him, but there were a few intelligible words mixed in, too. Booties. Girl. Flawwa.
Flower, he corrected, grinning inanely.
Clutching his hand in her tiny, deft paws, Fatty Scamp brought it to rest upon her own head. Flower.
You’re called Flower? Oh, how sweet!
This provoked a celebratory somersault.
Then, with an imperious series of chirrups, Flower summoned the others. There was much consultation and checking of Nyahi’s person – although, every time she faded into some other form, they appeared to be discomfited or tickled by her magic, for all seven dragonets would go into a minor flap or tizzy before it all started again. Prime Scamp seemed to be suggesting something about herbs or flowers, while Flower was miming digging motions.
Breaking up without warning, posse flitted off in different directions.
Two hours later, they proudly presented Asturbar with several paws full of herbs and dirt. Flower waved a talon beneath his nose. Good.
Umm … to eat? Asturbar asked. He mimed eating.
Backup Scamp fell over laughing, vibrated his wingtips in Nyahi’s general direction, and started laughing so hard he developed a case of fiery hiccoughs. Apparently Asturbar’s ignorance was hilarious.
Feed her? he snorted.
Burn, Prime Scamp chirruped firmly.
Oh, I should burn it? He leaped up in excitement. An inhalation medication? What an excellent idea! But he had no stove.
A soldier was resourceful. Less than an ten frantic minutes later, a large flat rock stood in the open area beside the bed, propped up on five ‘legs’ or, smaller stones. Atop the two-foot diameter surface he had arranged a ring of further stones, all displaying the characteristic brilliant blue of this Island, and inside that again, a small fire burned cheerfully. He pushed the shutters closed and latched them. Keep the good stuff in. A slight quirk of the lips. He had never been much of a smoker. Nyahi, never. She would just have to learn. Carefully, he sprinkled the mixture he had placed in a bowl onto his makeshift firepit. Immediately, greens and purples leaped among the flames, and now a hint of white and a sparkle of turquoise, and he realised that the Scamps must have mined out a few metallic ores as well. How did they know?
He glanced up. Seven pairs of fire-eyes watched him attentively.
You guys are rainbows of awesomeness, he complimented them.
Flower purred firmly. Work, solda.
Asturbar laughed for the first time in eleven days. Soldier, my little friends. I used to be a soldier. Now I’m a nursemaid, a hermit, a filthy thief and a lover … he chuckled again. Ah, how times change beneath the suns.
As the smoke curled into the air, he coughed at the acrid overtones, before a sweeter element teased his nostrils. Nice. Even a dragonets’ neophyte could tell that was a beneficial smell.
He looked to his audience. What’s next?
Flower waved a paw in an unmistakable ‘calm down’ gesture. Patient wings, soldier.
Prime pointed at the kitchen. You. Eat.
Great, now I’m supposed to take orders from you lot? Asturbar grumbled, but there was no venom in his words. Instead, he said, I could have done with you seven in my unit. You might not understand what I mean, but I’m learning you’re a whole lot smarter than you look … oh, never mind the insult. Thanks, guys and girls. Just … thanks.
* * * *
By the following day, Iridiana’s changes did seem to have stabilised noticeably, but in her Human form she was still shockingly pale and unresponsive. Asturbar massaged her limbs vigorously to try to keep the blood flowing and the muscles from atrophying. He placed the Scamps’ latest offerings upon his ever-burning fire – crimson flames and tangy, lime-like fragrances this time, and then shouldered Nyahi’s shovel.
Alright, show me where to dig.
Flower glanced up from her station beside the girl – uh, the girl with a spray of flowers bursting out of where her nose ought to be, and legs that had turned into twisted roots – and nodded as if to suggest, firstly, she was in charge, and secondly, that he was off to do something useful for a change. Great. At least he was growing daily more clear about his place in the world.
The luminous green Scamps, Huffy and Puffy, proudly winged ahead to show the way. They took him to the area that Nyahi had blasted out; Asturbar was forced to rig ropes before he could climb in through the entrance, for to fall from that place would have been to visit the bottom of the cream-coloured Cloudlands, which had now r
eturned to their previous state of pristine impenetrability. He peered at the mountains suspiciously. Yes. He had been correct. The storm must have pushed the oasis many, many miles from its previous location, for the snowy peaks seemed closer and more sharply defined than ever before, but they were now steadily drifting in the opposite direction. Back to home base.
Shortly, Asturbar shimmied around the blasted-out blue rocks to find himself inside the cavern where Nyahi had taken shelter. It seemed newly alive with growth and activity, despite the evident destruction. Creatures in appearance like crystalline dragonet-spiders were hustling about, cleaning up shards and fragments and dumping them into pits – well, at least he took them for pits at first, but they turned out to be the maws of great black-fanged dracoworms dwelling beneath the floor of the cavern. A low, crunching roaring arose from the living incinerators in those dracoworms’ bellies. He wondered where all the minerals went. They must be recycled in some fashion, back into what he was coming to understand as a highly intricate, self-sustaining ecosystem.
He edged his way carefully deeper into the caverns.
So much destruction! The signs of Nyahi’s madness were everywhere, from crushed garnet crystal flowers to cracked and toppled columns, and many places had clearly felt the intense heat of her flame. Gold had run across the cavern floor and pooled in new locations. Temperatures over a thousand degrees, then. No. He caught his breath. That gold had boiled! He tried to cast his mind back to his theoretical training. 2,500 degrees? More?
His girlfriend was super hot. Jokes aside …
Shortly, the Scamps indicated a place where a huge column of gold-laced rose quartzite had toppled, and mimed digging beneath it. No, moving it.
“Sure.” He set to work with a will.
The physical labour involved in shifting that fallen column was a panacea to a weary soul. By using his battle-axe and the shovel, and using fallen spars of silvery pyrite as wedges and fulcrums, Asturbar eventually managed to pull it aside a few inches, then a few muscle-straining inches more. He peered into the gap. Interesting. There was a shallow grotto down there, but he could not see much more in the gloom. The dragonets certainly seemed excited.