by Marc Secchia
He wanted to ask for details, but for the first time now, as they climbed a jagged slope above a depthless ravine, the white fires emanating from his mouth began to waver downward.
“Cave,” Flicker said.
The Specialists deployed echo-sounding equipment and took a couple of readings. “Not on this side,” they reported back to Flicker.
Black bodies drifted through the night. The dragonet explained the need for the utmost stealth now – and sure enough, a couple of minutes later as they ghosted along the edge of the ravine, Shalanya detected several Dragonkind lurking in the darkness below. Again there was a brief conference. Backtracking through the jumbled boulders, which were oftentimes bound or hedged by spiteful brambles, the Immadian force found a good place to make a crossing, and whispered across with their light wings despite the rising winds and a faraway grumbling of real thunder. Jakani realised that the combination of skills and limited use of magic was calculated to make their infiltration as undetectable as possible. Twice, they hid as Dragons glided by not far overhead. Despite appearances, this location was being guarded very well indeed.
His hopes ticked upward.
Chapter 25: Revelations
A TINY, REPEATED scraping noise overhead in one of the air vents piqued Tytiana’s interest. Odd. If those ducts were as smooth as the surfaces of this pit, rats could not possibly climb them. There wasn’t so much as a hairsbreadth of a crack or a toenail hold anywhere. She had not seen any bats. Dragons probably fried bats and windrocs for target practice. Anyways, how could anyone possibly hope to attack or infiltrate from above?
Wandering over to the ablutions area in the pretence of needing to relieve herself, Tytiana craned her neck to peer as best she could up into the gloom. A snake? No, what she could make out was the glinting end of a metallic pipe, or so she surmised, but before she could do more than imagine she had seen something, her follow-up glance showed empty darkness. Squatting over the grating that remained delightfully fragrant despite generous washing, she reviewed options and her situation. Wait? Break out? Try for one of those air vents? They did not look wide enough to accommodate anyone called Tytiana. Besides, there was a ring of magical protection drawn all around this cavern.
Did you live, my Jakani? How can I believe?
Her fires flared at her surging sadness. She made a few ‘effort’ noises in a bid to distract the waiting Dragons from the glow radiating against the wooden partition and the wall behind her. How low she had sunk. Pretending constipation for the cause was not anything the Choice of House Cyraxana had ever imagined doing, but here she was. One more upward glance, as she tugged down the shirt upon rising.
She gasped. A hooded head had emerged upside down from inside one of the vents!
Without warning, ropes snaked down into the cavern and two black-clad figures rappelled downward with amazing speed and skill, almost seeming to skim down toward the cavern floor. GRRARRGH! GRROARRGH! Moving so fast they were blurred streaks, the waiting Dragons hurtled into the fray, smashing into those people before they had a chance to touch the cavern floor. Crunch! Crack! Crimson splattered the wall above her head.
“Blood! More blood!” thundered one of the Dragons.
Tytiana ducked behind the partition. Her hands! Her fires! Crazy, jagged flashes of crimson erupted all over her exposed flesh; ducking, scuttling, moving, she peered around the edge of the partition. It was all the cover she had.
Across the pit from her, one of the Reds spat and thundered, “Dummies! It’s a trick!”
“Dummies?” His brother Dragon pierced a pile of black cloth with his fore-talon. “Aye! And fake blood, by my talons!”
Whatever was going on? Why was her fire sparking so frantically?
Immediately, the air above the centre of her pit shimmered and a small – very small – black Dragon winked into existence as if conjured from nothingness. Unholy caroli, was that even possible? Compact. Gleaming. Neat musculature that looked petite and boyish in comparison to the hulking Reds. Four wings flaring as he braked into a deft landing on all four paws, and the expression of his fire-eyes directed toward her was more searingly sweet, earnest and arresting than she had ever seen in a Dragon.
The gilded black Dragon whispered, “O Tytiana, how I missed –”
He knew her –
“Beware, Dragon!” she screeched. “Behind you!”
Two of the huge bruisers Excorion had assigned to the cavern poured over the edges of the pit; two more were already within, turning from the fake invaders with low snarls of fury. All were various shades of Red; hulking adult male Dragons at the height of their growth and powers, monstrously strong-looking, and confident enough to strut and arch their wings proudly as they surrounded the overmatched yet apparently unabashed youngster.
Still seemingly unable to tear his eyes off her, the young Dragon called, “Do not be afraid, o Tytiana the Radiant. I am –”
“ABOUT TO DIE, HATCHLING!” thundered two of the Reds.
“Face us, will you?” roared another.
“I’ll tie your fancy wings into knots, you snivelling pygmy,” blustered the fourth.
And before she could even yell again in warning, one pair sprang into the attack as though released by crossbows. Leaping into the air in a flash of gleaming black and golden scales, the youngster spun sharply into a soaring high-kick manoeuvre she recognised with painful immediacy. Her heart exploded with fiery paroxysms of joy as the tremendous, tightly focussed centrifugal energy he generated spawned such a swift flurry of paws, tail and jaw, that the blows landed far too fast for her Human gaze to distinguish one from another. She heard, Whadda-da-da-BLAM! The sound was like sledgehammers striking wood, perhaps seven or eight individual strikes blurring into one multi-part report that echoed throughout the cavern. Golden blood and bits of fangs splattered across the pit; a white splinter embedded itself in her wooden calf.
She blinked. One Red collapsed flat on his nose and stayed that way. The other staggered drunkenly, reeling against the pit wall in a futile attempt to keep his balance.
Moving like a flash of oleaginous liquid, the dark Dragon pursued and delivered a shattering straight-right punch to the dazed Red, striking the chest in the region just behind his right foreleg. KRACK! Bone shattered audibly. He collapsed.
The black Dragon began to form his limbs into a self-assured pose, when the other two Reds pounced upon him and hammered the youngster across the pit with an unending sequence of thundering snarls and shattering cuffs. Snap the fangs! Slam the tails! But the slippery youngster twisted away, causing the two attackers to tangle themselves up before he pounced in turn. Side-thrust kick to the knee! Uppercut into the base of the throat! He scrambled up over his far larger opponent’s shoulder, raking repeatedly with his talons but doing no visible damage.
Obviously! They were three times his size and their scale armour had to be diamond-hard.
Then, the Dragon’s introduction finally percolated her consciousness and sparked inside of her in a second geyser of crimson flame. The Radiant! Only one person in the Island-World had ever dared address her by that nickname.
It was proof enough even for her mistrustful heart.
“Jakani? Jakani!” she wailed.
Distracted, the Dragon peered across at her hiding place. “Tytiana! Aye, it is – ugh!”
The fourth Red seized him by the throat with his left paw and smashed his right fist atop the young Dragon’s head with a force fit to crush boulders. The youngster’s eye-fires seemed to whirl in opposite directions as his body momentarily went limp. Tytiana went crazy.
Jakani! This time, it was he who needed her.
Exploding out from behind the partition in a stream of fire, Tytiana shot directly at the Red’s hindquarters. A flaming comet. Uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Hands extended into four-foot crimson blades that burned white-hot with the lethal force of her wrath. Quick and unexpected as her ambush was, the other Red who was still standing, saw her coming and whirle
d, the massively thick, long wedge of his tail swinging toward her so rapidly that the wicked spikes that extended all the way down to the tip made a moaning sound in the air. Duck! Skidding across the slick floor, Tytiana shot beneath the hurtling tail. How she was not trampled to death was a miracle, but she ended up somehow beneath that armoured belly as the Dragon completed his whirling motion. Hind paw incoming! Helplessly skidding along, she raised her hands instinctively and hacked two searing, blackened trenches right through a part of him so tender, the huge Dragon shrieked like a terrified child.
Forty tonnes of Dragon squealed and danced an agonised jig, clutching his nether regions, before he collapsed in a writhing heap – right on top of her.
“Tytiana!” Jakani howled.
“Jakani!” Fluid as he, now, she squeezed out from beneath the stricken, gulping Red in a pulsating dash of flame that promptly reformed into … well, her normal, no longer inch-thin self. Huh?
Result!
She laugh-cried, “Jakani, it’s really –”
“Aye! It’s me, and I didn’t die! Isn’t it great?”
“You’re a Dragon now?” As if she had not guessed, but it seemed imperative that at least one of them yell about how impossible and amazing and magical this all was. “It’s you – with wings?”
“One Dirt Picker – former Dirt Picker – at your service.” He gave her a perfectly dreadful salute of sorts with his one free paw, and a grin that was all wicked white daggers for teeth. When she recoiled, he added in a rather more pleading tone, “I can change back. Promise!”
The remaining Red was still holding Jakani aloft, clearly somewhat unnerved by his companion’s howling and writhing. “Touching as this reunion is,” the Dragon snarled, recovering his wits, “time to die!” With that, he gripped Jakani’s head with his free forepaw and twisted with all of his monstrous, muscle-mountain strength.
To everyone’s surprise, all that happened was that a muffled complaint emerged from his paw, “Get off, you colossal oaf!”
The little black Dragon levered his paws apart and extracted his jaw and skull spikes. No stopping that. The giant Red’s muscles popped with effort, but he could not stop the movement, and then quite suddenly Jakani gripped one opposing red thumb in both of his paws and executed a cunning twist.
Flame exploded from the Red’s mouth. GNAA-AARRGH!
Jakani twisted harder.
GNNNOOOO-ARROARRGH!!!
It was like watching a fantastical stage play as by degrees, by that apparently unbreakable grip on the Dragon’s thumb alone, Jakani somehow wangled and forced an incredibly painful nerve-compressing leverage to develop until the Red, dribbling fire from the corner of his mouth and howling in ear-splitting anguish, was forced first to his knees, and then over onto his side.
Tytiana had a mental image of a toddler forcing an adult man to submit.
* * * *
He could not believe it. Here she was, on the cusp of deliverance, and Tytiana loathed his Dragon form. Her expression clearly conveyed fear, antipathy and dismay. If ever he had done anything to drive this girl away from his side, he knew that this was the critical moment – even as he executed a nerve-lock submission technique Flicker had taught him, he was watching that girl of flame, and nothing in her seemed to soften at the knowledge that this beast was him.
If ever a Dragon wished to weep tears of translucent fire …
Movement! Massive movement inside the cavern!
His neck twizzled with that unfamiliar, long sensation as though his head were like a snail’s eye swinging about upon a stalk. Jingling armour. Dragons snarling, arguing, debating as first an array of metal armour-adorned heads loomed over the pit, and then High Master Juzzakarr himself appeared at their head, garbed in gold-chased plate armour and clutching his precious gemstone in his left hand. A sheen of sweat glistened upon his forehead despite that the evening was not warm, and the cavern was much cooler still.
Jakani released the Red.
“So, the foul schemers are unmasked at last,” Juzzakarr boomed, taking his customary dominant stance a foot from the pit’s lip. “My own daughter is a fire-wielding enchantress, and here we have the Shapeshifter Dragon previously disguised as a Dirt Picker. These are the quislings, noble Dragons, who have brought us all to this dread strait. These foul-tongued, devious creatures devised a network of conspirators that covered all of Helyon, tricking good and noble Dragons to their doom – is that not your sworn word, o Adazara the Teal?”
Jakani recognised her beneath the sleek silver armour. The play of her eye-fires seemed unnaturally sluggish to him, however, in his limited experience of the Dragonkind, as she shook her head slowly and gritted out, “Thus it was, Juzzakarr. Thus it was. My forces were lured away from the Isle under false pretences, before those who remained behind were cravenly slain.”
“And what better tool than this lying, sneaking Shapeshifter?” Juzzakarr pointed dramatically at Jakani. “Who has seen his like? What do you Dragons even call his colouration?”
From the other side of the pit, Excorion fluted softly, “He is onyx and gold, a colour most rare.”
“Jakani the Onyx-Gold,” Juzzakarr intoned, as if this were a judge’s pronouncement of guilt.
Rather than stand about trying not to appear guilty by reason of his fundamental nature or origins, he glanced across at Tytiana. Her fires had not diminished; her womanly figure was clearly distinguishable down to her artificial limb, but all was robed in seething crimson and gold.
Gold.
His signature colour.
Hanzaki’s dry voice echoed in his mind. ‘Better like this, or worse?’
Better with her. Better together. Forever! Something in them melded at the deepest level of soul or spirit or magic – how could she not see it? Yet Tytiana was fully focused upon her father. Aye. If any clinching proof was needed, it was that Jakani could merely gaze upon her incandescent beauty, and her fires burned more golden for his scrutiny. Yet the High Master was ascendant now, with his two dozen heavily armoured mercenaries lined up to one side of the pit and upon the other, Excorion and but two allied Dragons. The Immadians had expected his two Brown shell-brothers to be present or close by. Where were they?
“And tell me, Adazara, how rare is it that a fledgling Dragon should be able to best four fine, noble Reds in open combat?” Juzzakarr pressed.
“Rare? It is impossible,” she grated.
“It’s merely technique, nothing sinister,” he asserted at once.
“Sinister! Now, there’s an apt description,” Juzzakarr boomed heartily. “But, not to worry. Everything can be taken care of. You see, noble Dragons, most Shapeshifters are no real threat to the peace and security of home and hearth, or roost and egg. I have no dispute with ordinary Shapeshifters. But some are more special than others. They have powers both fey and perverse. They are not to be trusted, nor is he whom they serve, not so?”
As he spoke, he stroked the stone and the Dragons appeared to be lapping up his every word.
“Some organise the craven slaughter of noble Dragons. Some seek to turn Dragons against each other, whispering words foul and dark into eager ear canals, until true fires darken and little is known on the winds but hatred for one another and the wasteful destruction of fire-life such as what we have already seen and grieved this day. This is dishonourable behaviour. It is not draconic.”
Jakani felt a tickle inside one of his own ear canals. As if she were standing atop his head and not perched inside one of those ducts way above together with Flicker and his egg, the Princess of Immadia said, Jakani. Morazi and Death are approaching the area in full force. They hold Excorion’s shell-brothers captive. I’ve ordered the Specialists to find cover.
He thought carefully, Stay concealed until Juzzakarr reveals his hand.
Who gives the orders around here, boy?
Tytiana, he chuckled back.
She is incredible. Shalanya’s thought conveyed various parts of jealousy, admiration and anno
yance.
Hush. Stop mooning over her beauty and win the girl, noble Jakani, or you truly are a fool. That was Flicker’s contribution. Pithy and encouraging, as always.
So, a draconic plot to double-cross the High Master – or was it the mercenaries, or Excorion, who would be betrayed? Jakani opened his mouth to speak, when Tytiana clapped her hands loudly, startling him into silence. “Oh, fine speech, father!” she called. “Fine speech indeed.”
* * * *
Juzzakarr glared down at his errant daughter. “Is sarcasm all the response you have, daughter?”
“True, your lousy speech-making barely even deserves sarcasm,” she shot back. “I could ride ten strong Dragons through the holes in your alleged plot.”
Tytiana’s heart thundered in her ears, along with the unceasing crackling of her flame, yet she seemed perfectly able to hear and converse despite that distraction. Aye, supposed father, confidently arched eyebrow and all. She levitated a few feet into the air, finding actual control for a change. Phew. Now her powers decided to behave?
He twitched, but did not step back. “Dragons, alert.”
She forced out a fine, Juzzakarr-worthy chuckle, which made her fires crackle and churn about her in a way that she recognised betrayed her feelings. “What? Do you think I’m going to attack these noble Dragons whom you have twisted to begging and fawning around your ankles, father? Fie! I can see how much control you have over them. Do they pant like hounds when you tickle them behind their ears?”
“She mocks us!” snarled a Dragoness to Adazara’s right paw.
‘Come on. Hear what I’m saying and know how you have been hoodwinked by that abominable jewel he carries,’ Tytiana thought at the Dragoness, who blinked slowly, but made no other response. Obviously, Dragons did not read minds. That would have been far too easy.
Ha. She had thought Dragons were always quick to take offence, that she could anger them out of the hold Juzzakarr clearly exerted over the fires of their minds. Not so.