by Marc Secchia
Lowering her head, Aranya gripped her friends’ paws and said. Focus on me, now. They all jumped as Zankaradia flinched a second time. One, two, three … shine!
After perhaps two minutes and twenty-five increasingly panicked transformations, Iridiana found her shine. She was a twin, after all, and the breakthrough found its way through their intimate connection into her soul. Belief flowered. Doubt almost immediately cut in, but Aranya’s radiant smile of encouragement put paid to that a moment later. Pip was a different matter. She clearly believed that creatures of onyx or jungle girls were not meant to shine, and she was certainly no less stubborn than a certain Remoyan Aranya could have touched by the merest flick of her wingtip at that point. When a Shao’lûkayn expired against their radiance, she pulled away.
“This isn’t my place.”
“Child of Fra’anior’s spirit –”
“Stop it! I’m not like you two. Can’t you see? I’m little and I don’t have an ounce of Star Dragoness inside of me! I’ll fight these things fire for fire!”
“Pip, don’t!”
The Pygmy Dragoness broke away to station herself down near Zankaradia’s tail. As the barrage increased, she seemed to keep pace, using shield, paw and hot fireballs to take them down. Blood trickled from her reopened injuries, one being a puncture wound dangerously close to her second heart. Iridiana and Aranya moved nearer to her. Their brilliant combined shining fragmented the creatures that approached – but only within a radius of about four hundred feet. Beyond their coverage, Shao’lûkayn survived and struck the descending Academy regularly.
The rattling escalated a notch.
Ready? Aranya called to Iridiana.
BOOM! Hundreds of creatures spurted from the hole, a rapid-fire barrage that overwhelmed Pip and came within inches of exploding in Iridiana’s face before the last one expired. The Pygmy Dragoness escaped only by dint of some extremely fancy flying. She whirled, panting, her eye fires blazing with fright and battle fury.
Now, ominous stillness.
Zip winged rapidly toward them, having to beat hard just to maintain her position. “The eggshell! They don’t penetrate the pieces of eggshell!”
“Aye? If we could wrestle a few pieces up there …”
The tunnel shuddered as the Shao’lûkayn came flooding forth, spitting out faster than the eye could follow. They came in clumps of dozens. The detonations were a hundred feet wide now, until the previously brilliant horiatite resembled, uncomfortably, Aranya’s skin lesions at the height of her battle with the Shapeshifter pox. The four Dragonesses pounded away with their fireballs and rapidly reformed shields, but the barrage was intense. Only by combining their efforts could they keep Zankaradia clear, and she was still slipping. The Academy took an absolute pasting. The shield took noticeably longer to reform this time, but Silver appeared to rally the hibernation-weakened Dragons in the nick of time.
When the flurry eased again, the Dragonesses glanced at each other and shouted, “Go! Go, go!”
Silver! Pip shouted. Help down here.
It’s getting violent, he said, but less than five seconds later part of a Dragonwing led by Master Kassik that swooped over the edge of the Academy. Eggshell, dear one?
Every piece we can salvage!
Iridiana cried out in alarm as Zankaradia’s talons suddenly lost their grip and she slid several hundred feet backward. Aranya swatted her in the backside – not that a Dragoness of her body shape really had one to speak of – with her Kinetic power, staying the slide.
Iri … help me! Together, they lifted a narrow shard. Academy?
Yes, her sister agreed. Here they come again!
This time the flurry was not thick, but it was blindingly fast. Aranya led the counterpunching, trying out different types of shields and effects, but the contrary type of magic these creatures possessed simply annulled every technique she knew. Eventually she and Iridiana resorted to a crazed flurry of fireballs, chunks of horiatite torn from the tunnel walls, and starlight-powered punches to keep some of them at bay. Kassik’s Dragonwing lost half a dozen Dragons within a single breath. Each Dragon touched by a Shao’lûkayn combusted instantly in a cloud of ash, its innate magic consumed by the predator’s hostile power.
A brief hiatus allowed the Lesser Dragons to wing lower down and then to struggle back with four or five substantial chunks of eggshell. The Academy was lowering rapidly, now.
Something big was coming. Aranya sensed it even as Zuziana worked with Zankaradia to try to find a way of her gripping a chunk of eggshell and sitting upon it, or at least, angling it and then arranging her coils in such a way that the piece would provide maximal protection.
It was far from perfect.
How were they ever going to fly out of here?
Dragons were born in trios. A brood of three matched shell-siblings was supposed to be the strongest force in battle. Dragonship hawsers were made of three strands.
So, what if one strand refused to cooperate?
Pip punched the air restively as she called, “Come on, Aranya, aren’t you supposed to command star hooks or some useful power to pull us out of here?”
“Didn’t Fra’anior gift you strength enough?” she retorted, and then bit her lip. None of them was strong enough for this, were they?
Pip glared at her. “I tried to shine. It was a stupid, insensitive idea – oh, mercy …”
Her voice trailed off as a Shao’lûkayn fifty times the size of its predecessors came rising languidly out of the dark cave mouth. Another. And another. A Dragon’s every fire darkened at the advent of these predators. They rose as if they had no care for gravity, nor for any other force save their own mysterious propulsion. Aranya realised that Pip was right. They just needed to find the right hook and Auli-Ambar’s handiwork might just save their hides.
The Pygmy grabbed Aranya’s paws. She thought for a second the other was going to plead or babble, but instead, Pip said, “Tell me I can shine.”
“I …”
Full reverse! Aranya caught her breath.
“Tell me. Convince me. You believe it, don’t you?”
Did she truly believe? Moved by the desperation in the other Dragoness’ eyes, galvanised by Zankaradia’s outcry as the hatchling at last found her golden breath to fight back once more, she searched her Dragoness’ hearts for the answer. Had Pip implicitly been accusing her of racism? That stung! Thrust it away. That was never Aranya’s way.
It was her Humansoul who said, however, “Pipsqueak, nothing is little about you apart from your nickname! It took me long enough to believe. It was only after Fra’anior trout-slapped me over the head a few times that belief bit, and bit deep.”
“Oh!” Pip laughed.
“I’m a bit slow like that sometimes. You and I both know what ‘child of his spirit’ means.”
“It doesn’t mean I’m the child of Istariela’s spirit,” she pointed out astutely.
“Maybe you’re my missing third shell sibling.”
“Now you’re just being too jolly existential to follow. Aye or nay?”
“Light cannot shine in the absence of darkness. Not to its absolute. If everything was light, then light itself would be nothing. It would be indistinguishable from –”
Pip shook her muzzle dolefully. “I’m convinced you have an ‘aye’ in you somewhere. Come on, you ridiculous tongue twizzler. Shine! You’re so tied up in your silly philosophical contemplations! All you need to do, is –”
“Shine. Exactly,” Aranya agreed. “Let’s do it, Pygmy girl. Follow my lead.”
Silver’s half of the Dragonwing was taking on the first of the huge Shao’lûkayn with a robust series of blasts, whilst Kassik and his group wrestled pieces of eggshell toward the Academy. The Shao’lûkayn appeared to take little notice of their attacks, sailing on to impact against the under-edge of the Academy once more. The resultant explosion was as if Fra’anior had drawn back his paw to kick the place. Shuddering! Cracking! Rocks tumbling off the volcano and
inside, she could not imagine the devastation if the buildings collapsed. People and Dragons cried out in terror, but they heard Kassik’s calm voice issuing a stream of orders.
“Those look tough,” said Iridiana dourly, re-joining them.
“Not if we can find some Pygmy shine to add to our twin-shine,” said Zip. “Ready to add your squeak’s worth?”
Aranya rolled her eyes. “Remoyans. Hopeless. Pip, I know you can do this –”
Before the Onyx Dragoness could respond, a series of dull, powerful thuds shook their bones. A whole battalion of heavy Shao’lûkayn issued from the sixth Moon, followed a second later by the lighter spitting sounds of their smaller brethren – only this time, they massed themselves in a wave that did not slacken off. The fizzing sound escalated toward a furious bubbling, as if a mile-wide kettle was about to boil over, and then the jaws of their lair simply overflowed with the creatures. Myriad strong. So many that they appeared initially to move like a hairy black caterpillar, like a single organism. The wave front crumpled at the edges as it swelled, destroying the horiatite with a low crackling roar of decimated crystal until Mystic’s native magic was entirely blotted out, and still they flew on, as if driven by an endless upwelling from behind. Individuals spurted out of the main advance only to be swallowed up by their fellows.
A devouring maw rushed up the tunnel to engulf them.
Pip cried out, “Wind, Aranya! Their advance is compressing the air ahead …”
She was the Daughter of Storm. At last, a simple idea presented itself to Aranya. A solution.
Gathering her sister Dragonesses about her, she rapped, “Whatever you do, get Zankaradia and the Academy straightened out so that the shells are beneath – we’ll ride this wave out! If they come around the edges of the eggshell –”
“Starlight,” said Iridiana.
“Zip, the dragonets –”
“They’ve collapsed,” Zip said soberly. “Sapphire is inconsolable.”
“Aaaaaaaah …”
She had used the little Chrysolitic dragonets with barely a thought for their safety, and now they were gone. Nothing could bring them back.
That was how Aranya discovered a Star could shine for grief.
She shone because she had no choice but to shine. She shone despite her imperfections, her hatred, or her burdens. She shone because this was how she could be a beacon, and spread her light into her twin, who turned into a dazzling fountain of light, a manifestation in complete contrast to her own steady radiance, and thence into the Pygmy Dragoness, who for the first time in her life, began to gleam like translucent black crystal. Aranya grinned until her mouth hurt. Fantastic! More, Pip! The Dragoness shut her eyes and let the light fill her soul. Her gleaming had a completely different character to her own, which Aranya did not just then understand, but the smile which curved Pip’s lips as she realised what was happening to her, was treasure beyond description.
Their combined destructive radius was over a mile now, and still expanding!
Thou, mine soul sister eternal, Aranya whispered.
Thou, blessed Onyx Star, Iridiana breathed, literally igniting with the surfeit of her joy.
Then Pip and Aranya were slowly whirling about their axis as the Chaos Shifter blazed across the breadth of the tunnel like a misbehaving comet, far too bright to look upon. They soared above Zankaradia, the Academy and Eridoon Island as they tried to ensure that their light spread past every possible corner of their impromptu shields, which the Academy crews were still desperately struggling to affix beneath their Island. Brown Dragons created rock clamps at a frantic pace down there, not daring to glance at the approaching hordes. They knew what one touch would mean.
The Amethyst reached out with her Storm power, and began to force the thin atmosphere from above to bend to her will. She poured it downward past the Academy and Zankaradia at a higher and higher compression, creating a huge cushion of air, until at last the pressure differential tipped beyond equalisation and their friends and allies simply had to move in the right direction, as buoyant as leaves tossed by a hurricane.
Dramagon’s hold had been broken.
Now all they had to do was survive the darkness that rushed up to assault them.
Chapter 34: Beacon
Aranya’s IDEA WAS a sweet fusion of basic physics and frantic brilliance, Zuziana thought warmly as she organised Kassik and his forces. They deployed a perimeter guard of Dragons on both Islands plus on the volcano’s rim, whilst they set in motion a hectic, not-quite-panicked evacuation to the Academy volcano. To her surprise, the Academy buildings had mostly survived being slung about at ninety degrees to the horizontal due to the gravitational anomalies that plagued both the Egg and the Mystic Moon, but the blasts and rattling now threatened far greater destruction.
“Keep the injured out in the open, on the fields,” she ordered. “Silver, what can we do about a sonic or shockwave defence? We must minimise the damage. Anyone up at Eridoon checking on the situation there?”
Master Kassik said, “I’ll get a Dragonwing on it.”
“Maybe we can balance Eridoon on top of the volcano to protect everyone inside?” Zip mused aloud.
Kassik grunted, “Hmm!”
She agreed. With royal tutors paid to drum mathematics into unwilling brains, she did remember a few facts about mass and momentum. What if the gravitational fields changed?
“Here it comes!” roared several of the Dragons.
The windstorm created by Aranya roared down the tunnel walls in a rough ring about the embattled Islands, before funnelling beneath them and Zankaradia. Swaying on their eggshell perches, the Academy Island jostled with Zankaradia as the combined mass of Dragons struggled to keep them upright upon an intensifying storm shot through by the dark creatures. The forerunners spat and scraped against the eggshell now. Those which were isolated or too far in advance were immolated by starfire, but the creatures did possess a measure of animal cunning. They sneaked through the shadows beneath, searching for gaps, and hurtled around the sides, trying to break through the Dragon defences.
Holes ripped through the shields. Shao’lûkayn tumbled onto the battlefield. The tips of their spines scorched the rock and withered plants. The Lesser Dragons rushed together in fluid battle groups. Firing fireballs or even hurling boulders, they beat away the invaders.
Kassik boomed, Don’t touch them! Don’t touch!
Zip shouted at him, Do you have armour? Dragon lances? Building poles? Plates … I mean, metal plate –
I’ll organise! Mistress Mya’adara! Break open the stores!
Rally your Browns and get them preparing stones – the volcano is more defensible, isn’t it? she said. Clear the battlefield of injured! Hurry! Silver, Chymasion … Zankaradia will help you!
Linking quickly with the Corundum Red, Zuziana showed her how to sluice her fires across the Island’s undersides and edges, where they were most vulnerable. But when her particles injured their own Dragons she groaned in dismay.
Distinguish them by the character of their fires, Zip showed her. Work around the shields.
The Shao’lûkayn came on in thundering advance, hurling them up the everlasting tunnel. No magic survived the onslaught. She felt Aranya’s mind checking closely with hers, but then the Stars raced away, beating down an assault on Zankaradia that left her tail and back smoking in dozens of locations. The hatchling had seemed frightened before, but now she was grimly intent, keeping her side of the Academy Island almost free of attackers.
Zip led a counterattack against a posse of the dark creatures before whipping around to the far side of the volcano, where the Star Dragonesses had combined to frazzle an assault only after it had claimed the fire lives of dozens of Night-Reds.
She screamed, Don’t touch them! Use rocks, trees, anything you can find, but don’t touch them!
The shocked Dragons regrouped.
With a wingtip-deprecation, she said, Hold this section with everything you have. The starlight will s
low and destroy them, but they are still deadly.
The pure starlight shining from above rendered the scene stark; the colours almost unbearably poignant, the shadows cut of razor edges. When Zuziana passed back over the volcano, crossing from the sprawling red-brick school buildings to the great field and the bright green lake beyond it, she saw a powerful Western Isles woman – Mistress Mya’adara, whom everyone called ‘indomitable’ – directing teams of both Human and Dragon students as they laid out spears, lances, shields, Dragon armour and even stanchions and pieces of Dragonship armour cladding on the fields to be relayed to the defenders.
As Zip landed nearby, the Mistress held up an eight-foot hunk of cabin armour, showing a young Dragon how to punch with it protecting his knuckles. “Now, go!”
The muscular Mistress turned to her, looked her up and down as if she could not quite find enough Dragoness to be impressed by. At length, a broad smile curved her lips and she drawled, “So, mah pretty! Yah the one that’s ordering mah Kassik about like some kitchen skivvy?”
Zip dipped her muzzle respectfully. “Since the Star Dragoness is busy burning the heavens, somebody has to dirty their paws doing her will, don’t they?”
“Don’ they just!”
Funny how in life, one could meet a person and achieve instant understanding. As if this conversation were all they needed to know about each other, the Mistress and the Azure Dragoness fell to discussing and arranging how in Fra’anior’s name they might protect the vulnerable when it came down to it.
* * * *
Embroiled in fighting to keep everything afloat atop a raging storm peppered with deathly Shao’lûkayn, Aranya was startled to see Dragonwings rising above the Academy volcano. They wheeled sharply before diving into the attack with long Dragon lances held ready in their paws, or cupping loads of boulders – or, it appeared, refuse sacks, firewood, barrels of glue and even a few stray pairs of soldiers’ boots. Whatever worked. The supplies teams were growing creative.
