by Kevin Potter
“How would you feel about flying today?” he asked, desperate to try something new.
“It is unlikely the Master would allow us to go outside.”
“Perhaps not,” Gravv said, unperturbed. “But there are chambers large enough inside. If he allows it, will you come?”
“Sure.”
Uncle Hamuut? Gravv thought, well aware his thoughts were being monitored even now, after all this time.
It is too dangerous to venture outside, the Lord said immediately. But you may use my Audience Chamber for one hour.
Thank you!
“It’s settled, then,” Gravv said with feigned excitement. “We can use the Audience Chamber for an hour.”
“Fantastic,” Bal said in his slow monotone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Gravv didn’t think he would ever get used to the contradiction. The strangeness of it was simply too much to overlook.
While Bal’s speech was slow, toneless, and monotonous, his eyes dull and glassy, his movements were quick, skillful, and graceful.
As Bal crossed the threshold into the Audience Chamber, he took several running steps and leaped into the air. Spreading his wings, he rose gracefully into the air with a few powerful flaps.
Gravv’s muscles ached with yearning as he watched his brother climb into the heights of the chamber. He forced down his impatience and waited while his brother soared a good distance through the chamber.
With a grin, he leaped into the air and pumped his own wings as he rose toward the cavern ceiling. The pleasure was exquisite.
At last, he had an opportunity to stretch his wings.
Hot blood flooded his now mostly scarlet wings as he chased after his brother. He flew up above the larger platinum, then banked to the side. He evened out just in time to avoid grazing his wingtip against his brother’s. The pair flew as one for a moment before Gravv banked again, this time slipping beneath his brother to fly in tandem, the gusts of wind from his wings blowing into his brother’s face. He grinned. It was almost like the old days.
For all Gravv’s playing, all the ways he tried to niggle, and all his attempts to draw Bal out of his cold exterior, it accomplished little. The older platinum never played back. His movements were graceful, his wing thrusts powerful, but he flew mechanically, all business. Bal made not a single movement that was not needed to maintain his flight or alter direction.
At the end of the hour, as though by clockwork, Bal dropped from the air and started back toward his personal chamber.
“Bal, wait,” Gravv called, breathless, as he dropped to the floor. “What’s your hurry?”
“I have training with the master of magicks.”
“Now?”
“Soon.”
“Can we talk for a minute before you go?” Gravv felt desperation fraying his forced calm. There had to be something more he could do!
“I have four minutes,” Bal said in his dull monotone.
“Bal,” Gravv said, casting about for any thought line which might be of help. “Do you remember when we were hatchlings?”
A blank stare was his only response.
“Do you remember our first flight? Sire said we were too young, but we were determined to fly,” Gravv said with a small laugh. “We went up to the highest cliff we could get to without arousing his suspicions and we jumped off! You flew, but I sort of half-glided, half-fell.”
Gravv openly laughed now and reddish tears came to his eyes. “If you hadn’t helped me, I probably would have fallen all the way down and splatted on the ice!”
Bal didn’t laugh or even smile, but continued to stare blankly.
So much for that bright idea.
“Bal, what about the journey north from home with Sire and Dam?” He went on to relate the tale of their absurd flight from the frigid south and their ridiculous fight above the waves and Sire rescuing him from the massive tidal wave.
Still, Bal did not respond.
What else can I do? Gravv thought in frustration.
You know what you can do, said a small voice in the back of his mind.
Besides that, he thought darkly.
I have had no success with it, Balhamuut’s deep voice said, invading his mind. But from you, it may yield different results.
No, Gravv thought back. I won’t do it!
Why do you deny your skills, nephew? Every dragon uses telepathy. Why would you handicap yourself in such a fashion?
I can’t explain it, Gravv said.
The Platinum Lord sighed deeply in Gravv’s mind. How is actively using it different from what we are doing now, nephew?
I don’t expect you to understand, uncle.
And a good thing, too! Balhamuut said, sounding amused.
It’s just different. I don’t like using it. It just doesn’t feel natural to me.
So be it, the Lord said, his presence vanishing from Gravv’s mind.
Bal still stared blankly at him.
Is there even a choice? I have exhausted all other options, haven’t I? And nothing has worked. What else can I do?
What are you so afraid of?
While Gravv went back and forth in his internal battle, Bal turned and walked away without a word.
“Wait!” Gravv called, but his brother didn’t slow.
He rushed to catch up and called, “Can I at least walk you to your lesson?”
The larger dragon lifted his wings in a shrug and kept walking.
Within a few moments Gravv caught up to his brother, his internal struggle raging all the while.
Since his overload the day of his first essence theft, he’d been terrified of opening himself to the internal voices of those around him. Could he even handle it, or would he just overload and black out again? If he tried again, was it possible that something worse could happen?
Without his family, however— his real family —what was the point of continuing to fight?
And look what you’ve done with the magic, Sir Gravy! The voice sounded suspiciously like Balhalumuut’s. Control doesn’t just happen. It takes time, patience, and practice. Look how good you’ve gotten with the magic after all the practice you’ve had!
With a deep sigh, Gravv admitted defeat. Okay, I’ll try.
With that simple admission of willingness, the wall he had built against the thoughts of those around him crumbled and the mental voices called out to him once more.
His vision dimmed as the cacophony of voices pounded at his mind, shrieking a plethora of wants, needs and impulses. He gritted his teeth against the throbbing pain in his head and squeezed his eyes closed.
He refused to allow the voices to overwhelm him this time. He had a need, a powerful need, and no number of unseen voices was going to get in his way this time!
With tremendous effort, he forcibly slammed down his instinct to sever all contact with the other minds again.
Pulling a stream of power from his Apex, Gravv pushed back at the voices. He struggled to find the exact balance he needed to repel the voices just enough to concentrate on finding the streams of each one.
He visualized with his mind’s eye the thousands of streams of consciousness fighting to reach his mind. With a hundred simultaneous threads, he pulled tiny streams from his Apex and dedicated all his focus into the task of plugging each voice, a few at a time. Slowly, he blocked the voices from reaching his mind.
The process, tedious as it was, seemed to take eons.
When he finished, only one connection to his mind remained, and it was eerily silent.
Balhalumuut. His brother. The only one whose thoughts he wanted to hear. The one who didn’t seem to have any surface thoughts at all.
Slowly, and with extreme care, he touched his brother’s mind directly.
He encountered a strange, spongy barrier before even reaching his brother’s surface thoughts. It flexed and rebounded his attempts to pass it.
Odd, he thought. Could this be normal?
Tap, tap, tap, pound. Tap, tap, tap, pound. Back into the forge.
Ah, Gravv though. A human smith.
Unwary of any damage he might do, he pushed further into the human’s mind. The creature’s mental pathways were surprisingly simple. The corridors of its mind were broad and direct, primarily a single pathway which led from one chamber to another, in sequence. All things led through meandering associations in a surprisingly nonlinear fashion.
With a mental shrug, Gravv slammed his way through the walls of the corridor to power right on to the center of the mind. Amid a series of horrified mental shrieks, he was bombarded with a torrential downpour of memories leading in a direct chronology down to the human’s birth.
Withdrawing from the mind, Gravv plugged the stream once more.
Not quite satisfied, however, he chose another mind to link to.
This one proved to be a dragon, which was what he needed. Aside from the neural pathways being far more complex, he found the structure largely the same.
That is what I needed to know, he thought. The spongy barrier is not normal. Now, to get past it without causing damage.
Carefully, he pushed and poked and explored the barrier. He found no weak points and no holes. Every way he tried to get through it rebounded his efforts.
Damn, he thought.
With a mental shrug and a prayer to Ryujin, he honed his telepathic probe into a needle-thin arrow of thought and used it to dig into a single, tiny point in the spongy barrier. It resisted for only a moment before it gave way, allowing him to pass through it.
That was surprisingly easy.
Looking over the surface of Bal’s mind, he found his initial supposition seemed correct. The entire surface of Bal’s mind appeared to be utterly devoid of thought.
How is this possible?
He pushed further, carefully digging deeper into his brother’s mind. Almost immediately, he hit a silvery barrier. It looked like a solid ball of silver which coated the interior of Bal’s mind.
After a time of trying to gently push and prod at it, Gravv beat and battered at the barrier, tried to knife his way through it at a single, small point like he had the first one. He tried to hammer his way past it with brute force.
Nothing worked, however. No amount of force applied in any manner he could think of allowed him to push past the barrier.
Damn, he thought. What could have created such a barrier?
With his lack of experience in this area, he was at a loss for what else he could do.
After a moment, a new idea struck him and he smiled.
It may not even work, he admitted. But it’s worth a try.
Anything is worth trying at this point.
Steeling himself, Gravv touched the arcane energy of his Apex and drew forth a stream of power. With it, he extended his influence across the surface of Bal’s mind and planted a memory there. Using what he knew of how Bal had felt that day, and guessing at the rest, he put all his effort into making the memory as genuinely Bal’s as possible.
While Gravv worked in his brother’s mind, he spoke of their experience that day. It had been their first time hunting alone and during the taking of his third otter, Gravv had been bitten by a large White Shark who’d been after the same otter.
With how small he’d been back then, without Bal’s aid Gravv might have ended up in the belly of that shark.
While he spoke of it, he emphasized the points of his own distress and how Bal had been his only hope for survival.
Although he tried to be true to his memory of the event, Gravv had to admit to a certain amount of embellishment on a few points.
As Gravv finished the story, he smiled with a warmth and affection he hadn’t realized he felt toward his brother and said, “Thank you for saving me, big brother. I wouldn’t be here today without you.” His tone was heartfelt, if a bit choked. His sincerity total.
Perhaps it was his imagination, but the corners of Bal’s mouth seemed to angle slightly upward. The dead look in his eyes seemed to shift, lighting with the tiniest glimmer of life.
You’re just seeing what you want to see, he told himself, not daring to believe. After being cut off from his family for so long, he was loath to allow himself any hope the isolation might end.
“You’re welcome, little brother,” the wyrm said, his voice sounding perhaps a fraction of a degree more normal than it had since before coming to this fell island.
Without another word, Bal turned and stepped into the chamber to have his lesson. Gravv raced back to his own chamber, trying to stifle the jubilation threatening to consume him. After so much time spent in utter hopelessness, he couldn’t allow himself the luxury of hope.
Not yet, at least.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gravv laid down to sleep that night in a state of utter frustration.
He’d waited for Bal to get out of his lesson with the Master of Magicks only to find he’d been immediately ushered into another lesson, this one with a golden wyrm called Chorrithaelliaust, who taught diplomacy and government.
After that, he’d been sent to Cordiavaellyyan for a flight lesson, followed by a lesson with a wyrm unknown to Gravv who taught combat by tooth and claw.
Before that lesson had ended, Balhamuut had informed Gravv that Bal would be indisposed until well into the night and he’d be best served by getting a good night’s rest and seeking Bal out in the morning.
Gravv gnashed his teeth in frustration. Having no control over his own life was the worst part of the whole situation.
He breathed a deep sigh, trying to force his tension out with the breath. Getting worked up about it didn’t help anything, he knew that.
Breathing in another deep breath, he calmed.
A few more deep breaths and his mind grew fuzzy, his thoughts dimming.
Within a dozen more deep breaths, his mind blanked and he entered the realm of dreams.
Gravv’s eyes snapped open and he leaped from his bed of sand, cobble stones, and pine needles. He shook his head to clear the last of the sleep from his mind and strode from his chamber.
In spite of his frustration after yesterday’s breakthrough, he found himself more excited than ever to see his brother and what further progress he could make today.
Slow down, he reminded himself on his way through the tunnels. It’s probably nothing. You didn’t actually see anything. Don’t jump to conclusions.
Passing through the archway to Bal’s chamber, Gravv froze. Bal was nowhere to be seen, but standing at the center of the chamber with a pleasant smile splitting his face was Balhamuut.
Well, a more pleasant smile than he usually exhibited, at least. Meaning it was slightly less malicious than usual.
“Pleasant morn, Graavvyynaustaiur,” he said, still smiling.
“Pleasant morn, uncle.”
Where’s Bal?
“You see, nephew, that’s what I like about you. Always direct and to the point. No breathing around the fox hole. To answer you, however, please walk with me. Things are progressing today, and I’m a bit short on time.”
“Progressing?” Gravv tried his best to keep the suspicion from his voice, but didn’t think he was overly successful.
“Indeed, nephew. Indeed. Balhalumuut, though. He simply had an early class this morn. You’ll see him soon.”
“Then I’ll just–“
“Please. Walk with me. I’ve prepared a special treat for us today.”
“A treat?” Gravv asked, forcing pleasure into his voice.
Balhamuut’s smile broadened, now toothier than ever. His eyes shone hungrily. “Yes, nephew. Today is something extra special.”
Gravv forced himself to smile and kept silent, pushing a run of excited com
mentary across the surface of his mind.
Balhamuut led him in a different direction than usual. A surprising one. They had never come to this part of the cave system before. He had always been explicitly forbidden from coming this way.
Gravv estimated half an hour had passed when the tunnels narrowed. These were a bit cramped for Balhamuut, who was forced to duck his head down, and the pair almost rubbed flanks as they walked.
A few minutes after the narrowing, Gravv’s senses began to tingle. The sensation, a strange almost-tickle at the edges of his scales and the tips of his claws, was odd, but not unknown to him. It had been a long time since he’d been in the presence of such powerful magic.
“Uncle, what–“
“Shhh,” the great platinum purred.
A dozen more steps and Balhamuut enveloped Gravv in a large wing. The gesture might have felt paternal had the flesh not been so hard and cold, not at all similar to his sire’s. Gravv tried to stifle his nervousness, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong.
What was going on? Why were they going so far into the south wing of the caves? He wasn’t allowed here.
Without warning, a wall of freezing cold slammed into Gravv’s face and delved into the depths of his flesh. It chilled him down to the marrow of his bones, a mind-numbing cold worse than anything he had experienced in the Antarctic.
With trembling flesh, his scales clicked together softly. After another minute, the cold intensified further and he shivered violently. His scaled clacked together harder, sounding hollow and brittle. It was an awful, haunting sound that stung his receptors. He wanted desperately to run in the other direction and escape the terrible sound.
What… is… going… on, he thought. Even his mind was slow to function now.
“Worry not, nephew. It is merely my defenses to ensure no one but me crosses into, or out of, this part of the caves. These caverns are my private realm and usually not for the eyes of others.”
What… makes… today… different? Gravv couldn’t help feeling as though his teeth were chattering, even in his thoughts.
“You shall see, nephew. Today is a special day.”
Balhamuut removed his wing from Gravv’s body and the numbing cold vanished.
