Blood and Scales

by Kevin Potter

  He glanced down to find dozens of vicious slashes carved into his flanks, leaking runnels of metallic gold blood. The vision turned upward to reveal the largest, ugliest dragon Gravv had ever seen.

  Although the wyrm wasn’t fat, exactly, his lower torso was bloated and his musculature was abnormally— one might even say freakishly —large. The talons, horns, and teeth were jet black.

  That can’t be normal, can it? Dam’s aren’t that color.

  He supposed the coloration might be different for a male platinum. After all, aside from himself and his brother he’d never seen one. But that different? He found the possibility difficult to accept.

  The eyes were a pale, colorless gray around a horizontal crimson pupil and the wyrm’s scales were the dullest, most lusterless, dark bluish-gray he had ever seen. The wyrm’s entire body utterly lacked the usual sleekness of shape, being lumpy and not quite proportional, but his head was the worst. Instead of the sleek, angular features common to dragons, the beast’s head was a sharp triangle with almost no curves. The vaguely hook-shaped horns and spines curved back on themselves at their razor-sharp ends.

  What happened to him?

  The massive platinum beast roared and the immensity of the sound shamed the roars of every dragon who had come before. Nothing Gravv had ever heard of could compare to this monstrosity. This dragon had more raw strength and greater arcane power than anything Gravv had ever imagined might exist in any wyrm aside from, perhaps, his sire or the gods themselves.

  His sire, he knew, had received the Strength of the Ages from The Guardian when his sire and dam had first gone to Antarctica centuries earlier.

  But to see it in a living, breathing dragon right in front of him, with no explanation as to where it came from aside from the implication that this wyrm had stolen it from the living essence of other dragons was… he couldn’t find a word strong enough to describe it. Terrifying and appalling, certainly. Yet it was so much worse than that.

  Balhamuut, still roaring, took another swipe with his massive claws and ripped a huge chunk of golden flesh from Gravv’s belly.

  The wyrm smiled down at him, the expression ghastly in both its tone and its intensity.

  Without warning, Gravv’s vision shifted. Where he had once seen the ordinary colors he was used to, he now saw everything in vibrant shades of blue and red, with white streams crisscrossing the cavern walls behind the immense wyrm.

  This is Arcane Sight, Abby whispered in a weak rasp. The vibrancy of the red represents ambient magical energy, the blue is strength of life. Notice how Balhamuut is all red and no blue. I don’t know what that means, but the white is active, manipulated magic. Track and remember all he does and you can replicate it.

  Repli… why would I want to do that?

  It could be the only way to destroy him.

  I, Gravv hesitated, then shook his head. I won’t do it.

  Then we are all dead already! Abby spat in disgust.

  Gravv blinked, trying to clear the hot moisture from his eyes. Even here in the darkness, with no one to see him, he did not want to be weak. He watched intently as Balhamuut sucked in a long breath which made the vibrant red covering him shine all the more, then flows of white circulated through every scale on his body. The white lines grew stronger, wider, bolder. As they did so, the red glow, which represented ambient arcane power in the platinum’s body, grew as well.

  Where is it coming from? Gravv thought.

  After a minute, wherein the shining magic of the platinum’s body grew ever brighter and more intense, the circulating white completely circumnavigated the massive body dozens of times and the lines grew thicker than his golden body. The lines swirled around the wyrm’s brilliantly shining Apex, then passed through his Golar on their way out to envelop Gravv’s golden body in a tornado of swirling power.

  Although nothing physical seemed to be affected by it, he watched as a brilliant golden, dragon-shaped cloud emerged from his body and joined the tornado, dispersing into it until the tornado had changed from white to dull gold.

  The energies swirled around the cavern, seeming to tease Balhamuut with tantalizing touches. The wyrm grinned as though in anticipation.

  How am I still seeing this? Is Abby somehow still in control of his mind?

  A moment later, the hurricane of golden energy flew at Balhamuut and slammed into him with surprising force, though it only pushed him back a single step. The great platinum smiled wide and Gravv’s vision vanished, leaving him once more in the utter blackness of his prison.

  In anguish, he issued a deep roar. Pushing his body past its usual limits, he made his roar the longest and loudest thing his young body had ever produced. The sound went on and on and on until he grew lightheaded.

  Taking a deep breath, he shrieked his rage toward the ceiling of the cavern.

  A chorus of shushing hisses and yelps urged him to silence, but he refused. He had no other outlet for his pain and fury. Like it or not, they would listen, and when he finished venting his emotions, they would know why. And by the gods, they would help him to avenge Abby and any other dragons they had allowed to die while they languished in their cages, doing nothing.

  With an aching heart and boiling blood in his veins, he vented his emotions in an ongoing cacophony of roars and shrieks which grew louder each time he took a new breath to power them.

  By all the gods, when he was done every wyrm in these gods-forsaken caves would know his pain, feel his fury, and join him in his lust for retribution!

  After several minutes, his waning breath and aching throat forced him to stop for a minute. He panted, taking the deepest breaths he could. A chorus of soft sighs sounded around him from the other captives.

  With a furious growl, he roared again.

  At the edges of his hearing, his distantly noticed a new chorus of gasps from those in the cages around him. Cowards, he thought. How are these dragons so timid? How can they allow this? Why don’t they choose to fight each and every time one of them is taken?

  Gravv could not comprehend what would possess these young dragons to lie down and accept this situation. Where was their passion for life and freedom?

  The next time he stopped for breath, there was no response from the others. Their shushing and their warnings were gone.

  They’ve given up, he realized distantly.

  The thought only fueled his rage at them. How dare they just give up and let one another die when they have the strength and the numbers to fight back!

  They were not weak, he knew they weren’t. Whether they were fed or not, they were given the nutrients their bodies needed every day. They had their strength, and they were perfectly capable of the will to fight.

  Why, then, have they given up? he wondered in barely contained fury. What is the source of this insanity which leads them to accept this atrocity without so much as a struggle?

  Gravv growled deep in his chest. I will never give up, he thought. I will never surrender. I will never accept this situation. There is always something that can be done. There is always a way to fight.

  Until this very moment, he had not directly made the commitment to himself, but he made it now. He would hold to his rage. He would focus his fury. He would not die here. Regardless of what any of these others allowed to happen, he would not die here at the hands of a greedy, sadistic wyrm. He would not let anything be done to him again.

  My fate will be of my own choosing, he thought. By Tiamat, Ryujin, and the Astral Dragon, my fate will be my own. Now and forever!

  If there was not, in fact, a sound barrier— or possibly even if there was —then the noise would attract the enforcers. Or he hoped it would, at least. All his plans depended on it.

  They might torture him, he admitted with only a touch of trepidation. They might kill him out of hand, though, without even taking him to Balhamuut. That, of course, would ruin his plan.

  As long as they did not, however, he had a chance.
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  It was the removal from his cell that was important. And this was the way, the only way— so far as he could see —of getting out of his cell and into a better situation. One which would allow him to escape, to save these cowards, and to reunite with his family and destroy that son of a lizard he was forced to call his uncle.

  And what if this doesn’t work? asked a small, insecure voice in the back of his mind. What if you can’t escape and you just end up being tortured to death? That is a rather ignominious end, is it not?

  That may be, he thought. But so what? If I don’t try, I’ll just sit here and rot and end up like these pathetic excuses for dragons, just awaiting my turn to die at the hands of a power-mad wyrm much too large to be stopped by any one dragon.

  The insecure voice did not return.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Am I wasting my breath? Gravv wondered after what seemed like hours. Is there even anyone listening?

  Finally exhausting the breath in his lungs, his roar trailed away into silence. He stopped and took several deep, gasping breaths.

  After seven such breaks, he was beginning to think perhaps there truly was not anyone listening. Perhaps he was wasting his energy trying to get their attention.

  No, he thought. These dragons’ fears cannot be unfounded. There must be someone listening, somewhere. It’s just taking them a long while to send their enforcers.

  He pulled in another deep breath, as long a breath as he could, and issued another deep roar. The sound was growing raw and raspy, with the taste of blood at the back of his mouth.

  Perhaps I truly am wasting my breath, he thought as his lungs gave out on him once more.

  Gasping for breath, he slammed his paws against the floor of his cage.

  Seemingly on cue, as though they had been waiting for his hope to vanish and despair to settle in, the darkness lifted and a veritable rainbow of metallic and stone dragons appeared, hovering around his cell. Each one looked positively murderous.

  Without stopping to think about what he was doing, Gravv unleashed one more deep, growling roar at the wyrms around the cages. Might as well alleviate any doubts they might have as to which of us is responsible, he thought. He wanted no mistakes to damage the chances of his plan working.

  “SILENCE!” the wyrms roared in unison, only just above the din of Gravv’s own roars.

  They tried again, but still he roared.

  A bolt of blue lightning flew at him from an azurite wyrm in front of him. It struck him full in the chest, thrusting him back against the bars of the cell. His spine crunched against them, cutting his roar short. He struggled against his body. He wanted to cry out in pain. He wanted to roar in fury. But his body would not respond.

  The wyrms growled, “Silence,” again.

  Bringing all his desperation to the fore, Gravv pulled in as deep a breath as his wounded body could manage and roared again.

  “Do it!” the azurite called and a barrage of elemental forces struck at Gravv from all directions. His flesh was burned by flames— though it caused him no harm —jolted by lightning, frozen in ice and snow, melted by streams of acid, and sonic vibrations jarred him right out of his skull.

  His defiant roar transformed into a shriek of terrified agony.

  The edges of his vision darkened, blotted out by a black haze. The blackness slowly spread inward from the edges.

  Did I go too far? he wondered as his mind sank deeper into his subconscious, numbing the agony.

  In the moment before he lost consciousness, he wondered, Are they going to kill me right here?

  chapter NINE

  When he woke, Gravv felt more pain than he had ever imagined possible. Every claw-width of him ached, every scale burned. At least, those that were not missing altogether.

  He seemed suspended in the air. He couldn’t feel anything solid on any side of him, nor beneath his paws.

  “What happened,” he tried to ask, but what came out was a garbled, incoherent mess. His mouth was so numb he couldn’t feel his tongue at all. Or his lips, for that matter.

  Opening his eyes, he found sticky, silvery goo strung between the lids.

  Is that my blood?

  He found his eyes were the only part of his body he could move. With a downward glance, the reality of the situation hit him. He hung suspended in the air by some sort of magic. An unseen force pulled his legs taut, spread out from his body. His wings were pulled beyond his field of vision. His neck, too, seemed to be held tight by the force.

  “Look, Kochelar, he wakes. Fun-time is about to begin,” a menacing voice hissed behind him.

  A soft, deep voice chuckled to his side and a young azurite dragon stepped into view, rubbing the single claw of each of his wings together.

  He was young, this Kochelar. If he was older than Gravv, it wasn’t by much. He was a bit smaller, though, in both length and build. His amber-within-crimson eyes held a haunted look.

  “Well, well, well,” the azurite said. “What have we here? You’re an unusual one, that’s for certain. Some garnet or ruby blood in you. And what’s that, silver? Or steel, perhaps? Too strongly metallic to be granite.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” the hissing voice chided. “Even you should know that only platinums can interbreed.”

  “That is true, my celestine friend. Or rather, the essence of it is true. You see, it only requires one have enough platinum blood to make the magic work. Based on my research, I’d say that’s good to about, say, thirteen generations before it’s too diluted to be of much use.”

  “I see,” the hissing voice said. “So what of it, red. What are you?”

  Gravv tried to speak, to tell these two what huge mistakes they were making and to let him go, but as before, all that emerged from his mouth was blubbery gibberish mixed with his thick blood.

  “Ahhhh,” the hissing voice said. “Looks like thiss one is ssuffering from a broken jaw. Or perhaps a detached mandible. Perhaps we should dispense with the pointless questions and get down to the fun part.”

  Kochelar stepped toward the far wall in front of Gravv. “Awww, but letting them talk and giving them that vain hope of escape before crushing it is so much fun!”

  The hissing voice behind him chuckled.

  Kochelar pulled a strange metal device from an alcove in the wall, then went around behind Gravv. After a moment, something squeezed one of his spinal spikes with tremendous force, then yanked.

  Silvery tears welled in Gravv’s eyes. He wasn’t sure how much more agony he could handle.

  Perhaps this was a mistake, he thought in despair.

  The pulling eased, then started again. It eased again, then the azurite grunted and yanked even harder than before. Gravv’s spine went numb for an instant, then an explosion of agony consumed him, as though an agate wyrm had spewed its caustic acid inside an open wound in his back.

  While an inarticulate, agonized shriek issued from Gravv’s throat, the azurite behind him gripped another of his spines and yanked once, twice, thrice.

  On the fourth pull, his agony was duplicated a few claw-widths above the previous spot. This time, Gravv heard the cracking of bone and the wet, slurpy sound of something being pulled out of flesh.

  Gravv’s shriek died in his throat, consumed by agony. What could they be…

  Then it dawned on him. By all the gods! They’re removing my spikes!

  He shrieked again, all the louder.

  Through darkening, silver-hazed vision, Gravv noticed a smaller, though clearly older, dragon stepping forward from behind him. This creature had pale, translucent scales and walked with a limp. It hobbled to the alcove in the wall and pulled a smaller mechanical instrument from within before going behind him once more.

  The sadistic wyrms gripped a third spike, then something smaller gripped one of his scales, lifted, and yanked, igniting a new wave of agony in his flesh. Gravv shrieked again and silvery-red tears spilled from his eyes to drip down his snout.
r />   Again and again and again, spikes and scales were ripped from his body.

  For hours.

  Each and every one elicited an agonized shriek from Gravv and was accompanied by an even harder flow of metallic tears running down his snout.

  With each new excision, he prayed for the agony to end. At first, he prayed to Lord Ryujin to deliver him from his torturers, to rescue him and deal death to his tormenters.

  Later, however, he prayed to Tiamat, begging her to have the sadistic dragons simply kill him and have done with it.

  The two draconic voices chuckled behind him. Though one was clearly a full, deep voice and the other thin and hissing, he no longer remembered which voice belonged to which dragon.

  Gravv mumbled his desire to die, for them to kill him and end his torment. Even he couldn’t comprehend the mumbled words.

  The chuckles went silent, then the hissing voice spoke, thick with amusement. “We haven’t even started yet, pup.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Gravv had no idea how much time had passed and didn’t trust himself to guess. He would have said centuries. Each moment of agony from the removal of his spikes and scales felt like its own private eternity.

  His tears had dried up long before the sadistic pair finished pulling the spinal spikes from his body. His shrieks had long-since dimmed from wet, raspy cries to utter silence, though he couldn’t stop himself from trying to scream with every new wave of agony.

  When the sadistic pair finally ceased pulling scales from his back, blood welled freely from the back of his throat to fill his mouth and dribble over his numb lips. In the spreading pool of crimson-tinged silvery blood beneath him, Gravv caught a distorted reflection of his face. He almost didn’t recognize it for a moment.

  His jaw hung open at an odd angle with a strange protrusion pressing against one side. There was no denying the damage was severe. Many scales were missing and the flesh beneath was tinged blue and purple. Was that normal? He realized he had no idea. He’d never seen bare dragonhide before, so couldn’t begin to guess what color it was supposed to be.