Ash and Ambition

by Ari Marmell

  All three heads howled as one. The dragon reared nearly to the cavern’s ceiling. Her tail whipped about, catching Smim as he attempted to run. He flew across the chamber, bouncing and rolling, and Nycos could only hope the goblin was merely bruised. He and Silbeth both leapt for safety as Vircingotirilux crashed back down upon them, claws outstretched to grind them into paste. They tumbled aside, shot back to their feet, and ran, talons slamming at their heels again and again.

  One landed close enough, for all his dashing and dodging, to send Nycos sprawling. He sat up and jabbed at the massive paw, his own talons sprouting. Vircingotirilux recoiled, stunned at the blood and the pain—for all that the wound was tiny—and Nycos didn’t waste the opportunity. Again he stood, scooped up the spear he’d dropped, and ran. With each step he focused on his magics, sending as much strength as he could possibly manage flowing through his body. Behind him, the wyrm inhaled like a great bellows.

  Nycos reached for Silbeth, who was just about to duck into one of the cavern’s many side passages. Grabbing her by collar and belt, he hurled her up and into a corridor much higher on the wall, then leapt after her. Another inferno roared beneath him and deep into the tunnel Silbeth had almost chosen, so near it burned the heel and sole from Nycos’s boot, before he crashed into the tunnel wall and found himself flat on his back.

  “I think this is going very well,” Silbeth said, reaching out a helping hand. He paused, tearing off his ruined footwear, before accepting. She managed not to flinch as his own clawed and now clearly inhuman fist gripped hers.

  “Could be worse,” he agreed, pulling himself upright. They moved deeper into the tunnel, hoping to put a few twists and turns between them and any further torrents of flame.

  “Please tell me you didn’t look like that,” she said a moment later, ducking beneath a protruding tree root.

  “Not remotely.” It was true, yet Nycos found the question oddly painful. Graceful or bestial, magnificent or fearsome, he believed wholeheartedly that all dragons were creatures of terrible beauty. He didn’t expect, however, that Silbeth would understand, and now certainly was no time to explain. Instead, with a touch of bitter resentment, he went with the simpler answer. “Vircingotirilux is pretty monstrous even by our standards.”

  “Good to—”

  Echoing from the great chamber came a monstrous grunt, followed by a grating noise that Nycos recognized as teeth on iron, and then a faint tearing.

  “She’s just pulled the spear out of her wing. Still, the pain should be—”

  “SUCH A TEENY TINY CLAW. BUT WE KNOW THAT TASTE!”

  “Oh, good,” Nycos said. “She recognizes me.”

  “IS IT TRULY—” The monstrous voice was interrupted by a chorus of roars. “DZIRLAS! CYOLOS! DOWN! QUIET! I’M TALKING! I SAID QUIET!”

  “Who…? Is she talking to her other heads?!” Silbeth demanded, voice as shrill as Nycos had ever heard. “She’s insane!”

  “More than a little, yes. To be fair, you’d be too if bits of you were unintelligent and only partially housebroken.”

  She goggled at him and said nothing more.

  “IS IT YOU, TZAVALANTZAVAL?” Vircingotirilux continued. “YOU’VE LOOKED BETTER!” She cackled madly, as though her observation were the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

  “We’ve met,” Nycos told Silbeth in a whisper.

  “I’d pieced that together myself, but thanks.”

  “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD! WE WERE PROMISED YOU WERE DEAD!”

  Well, isn’t that an interesting tidbit of—

  “DEAD AS YOUR PRECIOUS CLUTCH, SHATTERED AND SCATTERED TO THE REACHES OF YOUR ROCKY PLAYPEN!”

  Deep in his throat, Nycos growled.

  “It was… It was a long time ago,” he reluctantly explained in response to Silbeth’s unasked question, as they crept further down the narrowing corridor. “Well over a century. Vircingotirilux and I both selected the same dragon as a mate. There aren’t many of us left to choose from, especially here in the south. He chose me, for reasons I think our host has made fairly clear. We thought we were being clever, hiding our eggs away from my lair, but she found it. It was the second clutch in a row I lost, and it’s… one of several grudges between us.”

  He had never before seen the expression Silbeth now cast his way. “What?” he asked her.

  “You’re female?” she demanded.

  “No, I was female, and will be again. But for now, the human form I’ve assumed is male, and the change of form is absolute.” He shrugged. “Honestly, it doesn’t make much difference to us. For dragons, if it’s not mating season, it scarcely matters.”

  They reached a fork in the passage, and Nycos turned to call back toward the main chamber, where the wyrm still ranted. “Who promised you, Vircingotirilux? Who told you I was dead?”

  The voice fell silent, though the two bestial heads continued to howl. “How did you find me? How did you transform your pet psoglavac? I know you, you poor, dumb beast! You haven’t the sorcery to manage such tricks on your own!”

  “Are you as mad as she is?” Silbeth demanded, as behind them, the dragon screeched indignantly.

  “If I get her riled enough, she might let something slip.”

  The tunnel echoed with the sounds of inrushing air. Nycos shoved Silbeth down the side passage at the fork, following on her heels. Between one step and the next his body swelled, the wine-hued scales covering him head to toe, armoring him as fully as possible against what was to come…

  Fire filled the passageway they’d just left, and though they’d escaped the worst of it, the heat pursued them, carried on a few rogue tongues of flame. Agony danced across Nycos’s back, his thin and human-sized scales too weak to absorb the entirety of the inferno. He staggered, gasping, unable to catch his breath as the dragonfire sucked the air from the corridor.

  Silbeth’s hands closed on his shredded cloak, and though she Once they’d left at the heat radiating from his hauberk, she didn’t flinch away. She dragged him upright and further from the fork, until the air had returned and he could once more stand on his own.

  “Thanks,” he panted.

  “Thank you.” Her skin shone red, like a severe sunburn, and she winced with every step. “When you said you wanted her to let something slip, I assume ‘the flame of Erlivius’s own forge’ wasn’t what you had in mind?”

  “Well,” he said through a forced smile that probably looked hideous on his now half-human features, “it proves I was right that she needed help with those magics. If I’d been wrong, she’d have taunted me with it, not tried to roast me out of injured pride.”

  “As opposed to her earlier attempts at roasting us?”

  “That was anger. It’s different.”

  “Huh.”

  “YOU WISH TO EXPERIENCE MY MAGICS, THEN, TZAVALANTZAVAL?” Vircingotirilux roared, her voice echoing through the complex.

  “That isn’t what I said,” Nycos protested.

  “Well, let’s just go correct her. I’m sure she’ll be—”

  “SO BE IT, THEN!” The wyrm of Gronch bellowed a series of syllables that bore no resemblance to any language a human jaw could form, but a language Nycos recognized all the same.

  In fact, he’d seen those same sounds in written form, in the glyphs that guarded the entrance to the dragon’s lair.

  “Down!”

  Again he threw himself at Silbeth, but the magics that twined through the earthen caves were faster still. A writhing root burst through the soil overhead and wrapped tight about Nycos’s waist, snatching him in mid-leap and constricting. His iron spear clattered uselessly to the floor.

  He felt pressure, pain, as the animated limb attempted to squeeze the life from him, but he had a moment to act; against this threat, his armoring scales held. His breathing grew difficult, but not impossible. Already he plucked and poked at the root with his claws, as though it were a particularly stubborn belt. It would have been so much easier if he could flip himself over, attack the
length of vegetation where it protruded from the ceiling, but he lacked the leverage to turn.

  Silbeth struggled to work her way back to him, but she had problems of her own. Crouching low, she struck back at the veritable garden of roots trying to grab at her, from wall and ceiling and occasionally even the floor. For all her speed and skill, she clearly struggled. She didn’t dare wind up for a full swing of her sword, lest blade or arm become entangled by swift-grasping tendrils from behind.

  And in the other direction, back the way they’d come, something massive slithered through the tunnels, wings and legs tucked tight so that she might fit. Something that gibbered and chortled, barked and bayed, and rasped each breath three times over…

  He couldn’t risk trying to grow stronger, to strengthen his scales any further, for already the sliver of Wyrmtaker deep in his chest twinged and tickled as it threatened to move. He could spit into his palm and smear the root, but he had no means of igniting it. And picking with clawed fingertips shredded the root, but not nearly fast enough.

  So be it, then.

  Nycos pressed against the root, holding it tight between his fingertips and his belly, braced himself, and shoved.

  Pain shot through him as his own talons dug into, and in a few spots through, his armored scales, but he dropped from the grip of the now severed tendril. Hot blood flowed over his hands, slick and sticky. Running at a low crouch, struggling to ignore the pain, he scooped up his spear and moved to Silbeth’s side.

  She asked no questions, only glanced at the blood on his hands and his stomach, and nodded. Working together, each watching the other’s back, they hacked through the grasping roots, yard by gradual, precious yard.

  Vircingotirilux neared. Their time was short, every instinct screamed at them to run—but if they rushed, if they allowed even one grasping root to reach them, they’d have no chance of escape.

  Up ahead, the passage opened high on the wall of another vast chamber, nearly equal in size to the central cavern. The lair, Nycos realized, must encompass the entire hillside, transforming the rise into a hollow bubble of earth. Again he wondered whether it was magic or some more mundane reinforcement that kept the entire complex from collapsing.

  Not that he had much time to ponder it.

  “Get ready to jump,” he shouted. Silbeth, who could see little if anything in the subterranean gloom, audibly gritted her teeth.

  They heard the inhalation of three separate throats as they reached the corridor’s end.

  Nycos grabbed Silbeth as they plunged, twisting to take the impact on his far stronger legs. A jet of flame shot from the tunnel, passing over their heads as they plummeted, illuminating the chamber in shades of blood.

  “Thanks,” Silbeth muttered.

  “Wouldn’t be much good to me with two broken legs.”

  “Because I’ve been so helpful up to now,” she groused. Then, before he could respond, “Any way we can lay an ambush for her?”

  Nycos glanced around at the rock- and root-strewn cavern, then up at the tunnel from which they’d leapt, twenty feet above their heads. “I don’t see how. She’ll be coming out of there any moment. We need to find shelter, a place to hide before she spots us.”

  “Or roasts us.”

  “That, too.”

  The chamber did boast one unique feature: a pool of slightly muddy water tucked away at one end. Doubtless fed by Lake Orist through some underground artery, it probably served as Vircingotirilux’s drinking cistern.

  Unfortunately, it stood clear across the cavern, and Nycos couldn’t tell from here if it was deep enough to conceal them—nor was it probable, even if it were, that they could hold their breath long enough to effectively hide within. In the end, then, they could do nothing but scamper up into another side passage, perhaps a third of the way around the chamber from where they’d entered. Silbeth, vaguely embarrassed, clung to Nycos’s back as he scaled the walls.

  They’d vanished into this new corridor, peeking around a convenient corner as Vircingotirilux slithered from the tunnel they’d so recently vacated, extruded obscenely into the chamber. Several dangling roots, nearly as thick as smaller trees in their own right, still flickered with lingering flames from the dragon’s last burst. They cast the chamber, and the three-headed beast, in a confusing panoply of dancing shadow, and wafted the aroma of singed rot throughout the winding complex.

  “WE CAN CHASE YOU ROUND AND ROUND, LITTLE HUMAN TZAVALANTZAVAL! WE KNOW EVERY TWIST AND TURN, WE DON’T TIRE.” She rose up, towering, to peer into a high passage, while one of her monstrous heads sniffed and grumbled at a lower one. “YOU’VE ALREADY BLED. WE SMELLED IT. WE TASTED IT, LICKING IT FROM THE SOIL. SUCH AN ODD MIXTURE OF FLAVORS, FROM THE ODD SHAPE YOU’VE TAKEN. WE WANT MORE.”

  Her whole body rumbling, rustling against the dirt, she moved on to the next cluster of holes in the wall. “ARE YOU STILL HUMAN ENOUGH TO SWEAT, TINY DRAGON-MAN? IS THAT HOW WE’LL FIND YOU?”

  Despite himself, Nycos raised his hand to his scale-covered brow, feeling for moisture.

  Vircingotirilux ducked low, examining several of the bottommost tunnels, her central head peering into one, her left sniffing at another.

  And abruptly she recoiled, screaming in three voices. Dark blood gushed from between two monstrous teeth in that leftmost head, dripping and spattering across the walls. Nycos’s own heightened vision detected a quick flash of movement in the corridor she’d just been smelling, a small, furtive figure rolling to its feet and dashing back into the darkness, and he couldn’t help but grin.

  The dragon staggered back, pawing madly at the talon-tipped crowbar Smim had lodged deep in the soft tissue between her fangs. Her stumbling brought her near the far wall, and her rightmost head, raised high and howling in fury, nearly filled their field of vision from where they crouched.

  Nycos and Silbeth looked at one another, raised their spears in unison, and charged.

  They hit the edge of the passage side by side, neither hesitating. The intervening leap was nothing for Nycos; for Silbeth it might have been a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. He landed atop the monstrous skull, stumbled as he scrambled for footing, and stabbed downward, hard, with his iron spear. Silbeth struck the side of Vircingotirilux’s head, digging in with her own weapon as much to catch herself as any sort of deliberate attack.

  Both bit deep, driven by momentum, by main strength, and by the piercing power of Nycos’s talons.

  The dragon’s earlier writhing was nothing compared to her violent thrashing now. Her agonized shrieks were a nightmare, tearing at the ears until they almost bled. Her entire body arched upward, the wounded head snapping like a whip as she struggled to dislodge the dreadful barbs, while the other two bit and flailed in blind rage. Gouts of flame shot into the open cavern, but none came near the desperately struggling pair.

  Nycos dug in with the talons of his feet, shoving and leaning into the spear, trying to sink it securely before he was thrown free. Silbeth flopped and dangled, a living pennant in the side of Vircingotirilux’s head, but through main strength and possibly a miracle she maintained her grip on the spear, and the spear remained lodged in flesh.

  In its mad convulsions, the bleeding head whipped near the wall, nearly crushing the mercenary between earth and scales. Even in so precarious a position, Silbeth took full advantage, thrusting her legs back against that wall and pressing the spear ever deeper. The wyrm froze an instant, overwhelmed, and Nycos drove his own weapon down in a final, furious thrust.

  Bone cracked, and the dragon’s rightmost neck went limp even as the beast’s body shook. Both warriors were thrown from their unstable perch, rolling across the floor and fetching up against the wall, each gathering a fresh array of bruises and abrasions. Quickly they darted into the nearest passage, this one at ground level, just to get out of sight before their foe could focus. Once there, they peeked back through the rough opening, unable to look away.

  Vircingotirilux beat the floor with all four claws
and the length of her tail until the entire hill shuddered. The wailing of her two remaining voices was as nothing Silbeth or even Nycos had ever heard, the last shreds of her sanity escaping into the ether on wings of suffering and despair. She clawed at the walls, bathed the ceiling in torrents of fire that spattered against the dirt to rain back down in flurries of ember.

  Never taking his eyes from the dragon, Nycos unslung the last of the metal-hafted spears from his back and passed it over to Silbeth. “I have talons,” he explained when she began to question. “You don’t.”

  The wyrm of Gronch skittered backward a few steps, placing the far wall against her back and stood, gasping and mewling. Then, as her leftmost head swept slowly side to side, watching and scenting for any sudden attack, the center head slowly snaked sideways. For a long moment she sniffed at the third, the one now dangling limp and dead. A great forked tongue darted out, running one time along the length of the skull.

  Then, after a last deep breath, she fastened her middle set of jaws on the base of her rightmost neck.

  “She’s not—!” Silbeth gasped.

  Nycos, horrified, could only answer, “I think she is.”

  The crunch of scale, meat, and bone was horrifying, a sound to echo in dark dreams for years to come. Blood flew, fibers of muscle and great veins dangled free. The two remaining heads screamed again, one voice muffled by mangled flesh. It tugged, hard, but fearsome as the bite had been, it hadn’t severed the neck cleanly. Bone and tissue still held fast.

  Harder the center head pulled, and harder still. She barked an order, nigh impossible to make out, but the leftmost head obeyed, slinking over to help. It, too, clamped onto the dead neck further on, and then both, moving as one, gave one last, massive yank.

  Flesh and bone ripped. For an endless moment the dead head and neck dangled from Vircingotirilux’s jaws, still twitching. Blood and other fluids erupted from the stump, a fetid geyser that drenched a broad portion of the chamber. The soil of the floor, rocky and hard as it was, grew soft and boggy where it pooled.