by Marc Secchia
“This is a peculiar form of madness, I’ll have you know,” she muttered.
“Our relationship always has been.”
“I wonder if I can braid your tongue around your fangs?”
“Sounds suitably terminal.”
Stepping gingerly over a row of fangs he happened to be rather proud of, the Princess investigated the situation inside. Sheltered. Warm. Could become extremely toasty.
Pushing his tongue over with what felt like a foot, she said, “At least your mouth is dry. Right, I’ll tuck in here beneath your tongue. Space enough for a small package. Okay with me tying on?”
“Sure, my little scrap of fang floss.”
Definitely a kick for that. “I have been called many things in a short time, Dragon, but that is easily the most insulting of an impressive range of nonsense! Shut your gob and let’s get to shore. You’ve work to do and you’re wasting good breath.”
Feisty and furious.
“Shutting the pet in her royal cage …”
“Drag – mmm!”
Ah, he loved winding her around his smallest talon. Muffled shrieks inside his mouth. Really, this was far too much fun, apart from the part where they might both die if he didn’t do exactly as she said. What surprised him most was how his bodily instincts took over, trying to convince him that something tasty wriggling upon his tongue simply had to be tossed down the hatch. His stomach rumbled hugely.
Shut up, no, don’t do it, Dragon!
Do what?
Sigh. Time to explain how the apex predator of Solixambria had certain instincts that most certainly did not include guzzling their best friends, all appearances to the contrary.
Meantime, he dived down to sea level. So strong was the gale now, it was becoming hard to distinguish between the water and the rain sheeting above it. Blasting water filled the whole world. He landed with a jolt and submerged.
Instant calm. By his wings!
There was nothing to see bar endless fields of blue, but the contrast shocked a tingle back into his weary wings. All was serene just a few tens of feet below the surface. Crazy. And he had been battling so long and so hard, for what?
Stretching out his body, Dragon began to rotate his wings in the new motion he had learned – the much longer, more languid yet more powerful motion of swimming. It strained different muscles and worked the joints in unfamiliar ways, but with a decent effort and concentration, he worked out how to add supporting thrusts of his webbed paws and even an undulation of the tail to which Wavewhisperer – supremely graceful in her native element – had introduced him. He surged through the water. Powerful. Agog. Savouring each and every novel sensation in a realm that was half of his heritage.
No, it did not feel like home. Not yet. Perhaps that would develop with familiarity, but the idea that popped into his head was of a long-overdue homecoming.
He would always be half and half. The new challenge he recognised now, just as Juggernaut had wisely noted, would be to reconcile his heritage. To become him – to know who that Dragon was and what he stood for.
Three nostril hairs and one scale to your right paw, Dragon, said the voice inside his mouth.
There’s a current pushing us as well, isn’t there? he guessed, making the correction.
Aye, the titbit tickling his tongue agreed. We’re getting quite well off course. We’ll need to fight to stay northerly enough, I suspect.
Alright. Keep calling the compass points.
In about ten minutes, he surfaced into howling waters and low, lashing waves, the Lumis Ocean churned up into a frenzy. Diving again, trying to keep the movements smooth, fluid, economical. Strange how close swimming was to flying. Thicker air, essentially.
He gathered his courage. No giving up. No rest. Not until I bring my Princess safe to shore.
Thinking aloud again?
This time, he heard a smile in her voice.
Chapter 23: Wave Dragonhome
SWIMMING FOR HOURS, THEY cut through storm and ocean, before picking up an unexpected current that swept them in a curve between the lowest talon and first island southeast of Wave Dragonhome. By this time, Dragon was so enervated that he could barely swish his wings in the water – but with the aid of this steady current, he did not need to. He lifted his muzzle out several times to peer blearily at the rocky shore they could not possibly reach as they swept past, heading more westerly now.
Was it dawn already? Where had the hours flown? It must be over nine hours since their last stop.
He must gather his strength. One more barrier loomed ahead. Wave Dragonhome stood atop a magnificent crag, a truly draconic perch from which to survey the world. He could not even see the tops of the cliffs in the storm, but they were every bit as majestic as some of the cliffs in his native Tamarine Mountains. Black and unrelentingly sheer for at least a mile until they vanished into the clouds; dashed by enormous waves at their base. White spray exploded forty and even fifty feet into the air, the dull booming having conducted through the water to their hearing for the last few miles. Jagged, toothy rocks waited like the grimmest of greeting committees.
They were being dragged toward another pummelling.
Absolutely no way, either, he could make that flight up the cliffs. Not in this weather. Not in his state.
Look for a crack or somewhere to make landfall! Dragon heard himself bellow.
Alright, alright, keep your scales on.
Princess Azania knelt in his jaw, searching avidly, having to shield her eyes from the driving rain and sea spray. Ah, Seaspray!
Princess, is that something … a crack?
Aye. Take us in easy. I’ve got the bearing – maybe a tiny beach? That’ll do. Submerge if you need to.
Good idea. Given how the tide ripped across the rocks, however, he had no illusions about whether the water or the air would be the easier route. Only, taking off right now? No. Instead, they rode the increasingly powerful surges of water as the ocean raced in to land, crashed upon the rocks, and then sucked back with a violent counter-tow. Underwater, white bubbles and froth filled his vision, but he soon became aware of the bottom shelving up. Nothing smooth about those rocks down there.
Maybe ride one of these brutal swells in? Keep the paws ready for kicking off the bottom, but use the ocean’s own power to glide over the worst of the danger?
Gathering his wings, he waited for a suitable wave. Thrust! Swim! Go, go!
Up and over they surged amidst a massive swell of white water. He could barely see, but he kept his wings moving and his paws scrabbling, taking them over the sharp-edged ranks of rocks in a mad scramble. Left paw! He lunged away from the cliff face, bellowing as something tore his flank and then his trailing tail. Smacking his knees to no end, he lurch-thrust-flopped over the final rank of stone teeth and landed flat on his face on the shore.
Uhh … not elegant …
Jaw, please.
Even that took an inordinate effort.
Dragon cracked open an eye as the Princess clambered stiffly out between his fangs. They had landed on a pocket-sized beach of pristine white sands, sheltered from the raging tempest by sheer cliffs.
She touched his cheek. Well done, my Dragon. You were – and always are – magnificent. Welcome to the Vaylarn Archipelago.
I feel as if the ocean just regurgitated me.
Too true, she chuckled. Come on. Drag yourself up a little ways out of the water. Then, you can sleep. I’ll keep watch. It’s the very least I can do.
Thanks.
Stretching her limbs into a star shape that no Dragon could hope to emulate, the tiny Princess turned and smiled at him. We did it! Happy dance!
Ugh, glad you have the energy.
Come on, shift that old carcass, you wonderful grump. Up onto the beach now. Two more steps …
Pestiferous Prin … he fell asleep mid-sentence.
* * * *
Dragon awoke feeling like a sack of lead dumped in an unexpectedly salty desert. Cracking an eye open
, he took a moment to try to figure out if he could possibly move. Everything hurt as if he had wrestled all night with a hundred Sea Serpents and come off the loser. Badly.
Still, his best friend slept in his paw.
That was his Dragon hoard. Right there.
The navigator orb rested upon her bosom, which rose and fell with each shallow breath. Dragon wondered idly how it was that her Draconian had suddenly taken a giant leap forward in vocabulary, complexity and fluency. Could it be that a process similar to the idea that Dragoceanic was somehow built into the heritage of every Sea Dragon, pertained to the Humankind? The very idea would throw a few scaly noses that he could name severely out of joint. Humans learning draconic languages by innate ability? Unthinkable!
In Azania’s case, the evidence definitely fit the theory.
A firm poke in the eye for draconic scholarship.
As to why he was muddling through the intricacies of inter-species linguistics right now, he could not imagine. Shaking his head at the random mental antics intruding on sensible thought, Dragon curved his head around to observe the crystal. A laughably wriggly red thread led to their current location; if he had it right, right beneath Wave Dragonhome. Well. Only a couple of hundred miles off course. Nothing to worry one’s wings about, right?
This spotless white sand qualified as the most beautiful, solid, welcoming patch of ground he thought he had ever stepped paw upon. Above, a blue-washed sky proclaimed that the storm had blown over. Several white blobs that he took for gulls drifted across the lapping waves just offshore.
Hard to imagine the monstrous swells they had arrived in.
His dinky Princess chuckled in her sleep. Hmm. A fond scent memory? Warm thoughts of the egg sac that bore her? Mammals had wombs. There his brain went again. Insert arbitrary information lifted from his cranium.
“Are you watching me, Dragon?” she murmured.
Not even opening her eyes?
He said, “You smiled in your sleep, which distracted me while I was looking at our route.”
“As tangled as my hair?”
“Almost. Some pretty spiffy navigating there, Princess.”
“I only applied what King Jos taught us about the likely route of the currents,” she protested. “We certainly put a few miles under our belts, didn’t we, my strong and totally awesome friend?”
“Mmm,” he purred. “Beneath our wings, you mean.”
“Same thing.”
Decline the bait. “So, game for a short flight, Princess? Hop to the top and meet the mighty Dragonesses of the Archipelago. Hope they are vaguely friendly toward a large foreign male and his sidekick, the dark assassin of the desert?”
“Intriguing pair. I simply must meet them,” she joked back, yawning and stretching. “Mid-afternoon already?”
“I’m surprised they haven’t found us yet. Aren’t you?”
“Quite.” She rose with a lithe flexion and dusted the sand off her trousers. “Given how relentless and martial Aria was – very odd indeed.”
“Too right.”
Forced by the size of the bay to wade out into the sea before launching into the air, Dragon drifted a short ways along the dark cliffs before finding the updraft he had been searching for. The steady flow of tangy, briny air made the ascent straightforward, despite that the cliffs were half again as high as he had imagined. Only the seabirds nesting on the cliffs did not appreciate their arrival. A raucous chorus of honks and caws accompanied their rise to the top, a truly majestic vantage point that commanded a view out over the sparkling Lumis Ocean to the south and east. Spinning slowly in the air with a stirring action of his wings, he and Azania gazed over the Archipelago with growing delight.
From phenomenal dark cliffs on the near side to craggy volcanic mountains alongside palm-fringed white beaches in the distance, the first island, sometimes called ‘Dragon Island,’ had many kinds of beauty that somehow blended into a seamless whole. The interior mountains and cliffs were uncompromising, talon-edged massifs that appeared to have shrugged off the effects of time and erosion. The talons off his right wing completed the Dragon’s paw effect to perfection. The two they could see before a headland obscured their view, were stark stone surrounded by the bluest of oceans. Away to his left, the landscape mellowed into offshore coral reefs, green meadows, rampant piles of wildflowers and hundreds of the ubiquitous coconut palms.
Dragon realised he had mistaken the location of Wave Dragonhome. Here atop the cliff was nothing bar what he took for a quartet of combat circles. The real action happened beneath his paws, inside the cracks and tunnels that his careful survey revealed created a honeycomb effect that might penetrate deeper into the headland than he had imagined.
The Dragons must have lairs below, yet all was quiet. Eerily quiet.
Fire stood hot in his chest as they completed the circle. Nothing and nobody; only the haunting cries of the seabirds.
“Let’s go find our –”
“Dragon, you’re bleeding!”
“Oh, so I am. Quite a lot, come to think of it.”
The Princess stared along his flank. “Is that part of your intestine dangling in the breeze?”
“Seems so. Pretty good cut, right?”
She shouted at him. A lot. Apparently, flying about with a seven-foot rent in his soft new hide, with a fat coil of silvery intestine poking out of it, was rather far from a courageous show of male draculinity, in her worldview. Claiming she should not worry was a slap in the face of friendship, as it turned out.
Humans had the oddest ideas.
They also steamed up impressively when they were mad at someone they cared for. That, he understood – but what of wearing one’s wounds with pride? No. Far from it. Clean, stitch and hide was the Human way.
Accordingly, one narked Dragon and one fuming Dragon Rider burgled the lair of the most dangerous Dragons either of them knew. Death wish, plus.
It took them several tries before they found a narrow slash in the cliffs that led into a complex cave system inside, all lit by quartzite crystal inclusions that must conduct light from the surface deep into the dark igneous caverns. Or, were these ancient watercourses? Lava flows? Dragon puzzled over the phenomenon as they explored the lairs. Unnerving. Not a breath of a Dragon about, yet everything looked as if it had simply been left, abandoned, on a moment’s notice. Every sign and scent pointed to this fact.
In low tones, they discussed a way of life very different to what he was accustomed to. The workshops were amazing, producing fine pieces of skull, scale, paw, neck and tail jewellery for the adornment of Dragons. Another workshop appeared to be a perfumery. Glittering golden hoards stood unguarded. They found a whole area of tunnels where these Dragons appeared to grow vegetables in the semidarkness. Soon, they wandered through unattended forges of a design he had never seen before. Each furnace stood a hundred feet tall. Here, Dragon artisans must produce the mighty blades Aria had wielded, by a process that had to combine ores, Dragon fire and heat, and magic. Here was a mighty cavern clearly designated for combat training, carried out in a wide, clearly demarcated circle. Weapons racks and armour stood to the sides.
There were no eggs, no young, no old, no sign of life anywhere, yet recent paw prints on the sandy cavern floors abounded.
What could drive Dragons out of their lairs?
Might there be no natural predators or enemies, so everything could simply be left … he shook his muzzle.
“At last, this looks like a healer’s cavern,” Azania exclaimed.
“I wonder what they’ll make of Human boot prints all over their caverns when they return?” Dragon said glumly.
The Princess grinned. “I think we plan to be very far away by then, don’t we? I mean, if we can’t find a single Isles Dragoness up here, we’re going to have to hunt further. Maybe fly on to Zunityne and ask around there? Can’t imagine where they’ve all disappeared to.”
“Aye, good plan.”
“Found the needles.” Wicked grin
.
“Here’s thread, and a nice little fountain for cleaning me up. Perfect. Naughty Princess, I hope you were paying attention in your needlework classes.”
“Not enough. Come over here, you big, bad Dragon, and stick out your tongue.”
She waved a needle as long as her hand.
“Very funny,” he groused.
Dragon taught her the basics of cleaning and stitching – first the intestine itself, cut in three places, and then the inner layer of abdominal hide and muscle, and finally the outer hide itself. The wound was large but not serious, unless infection set in, but this healer’s cavern was well stocked with antiseptic powders and even scale-cloth, a metallic weave which they glued over the rent. It should come off naturally in a couple of weeks. He chewed up and swallowed a couple of large mouthfuls of healing herbs.
Azania moved to the second cut on his tail.
By now, the light had faded noticeably. They decided to backtrack to an underground pond they had found, where Azania washed the crusted salt out of her clothing, and he warmed her brown hide by carefully blowing his fire nearby.
“What would Azerim make of this?” he gurgled, reaching out.
“Dragon! We do not prod a lady … there.”
“Your haunches? Why ever not?”
“I’m nude.”
“You are as you were born, which is perfect. Clothing is such a silly affectation anyways. Can’t imagine why your kind bother – oh, do you mean that if you were fully clothed, that gesture would be fine?”
“No!”
“Not even with Az –”
“Don’t you start with me, Dragon. Would you touch Aria’s haunches just like that? No! You’d lose a talon before you could blink with those kaniaxi blades of hers.”
“Very true,” he agreed judiciously.
“Same goes for Human females. So, keep your paws to yourself, you reptilian reprobate.”
“Pernickety Princess.”
