by Chrys Cymri
‘Move your left forefoot and wing forward,’ the Master snapped.
The dragon obeyed. Then her head snapped back. With a screech that shook the cavern, she toppled from the table, her foot and wing twisting and writhing. Gonard found himself straightening with the same scream, as his own foot and wing remembered the pain which had deformed them at his own birth. Sometimes, even the Master’s power went wrong.
‘Gonard, come!’
The Master’s command broke through his memory. Gonard skidded down the slope, halting beside the fallen Hunt dragon. He glanced at the green body. When the power went wrong, the kindest action to take was to remove existence from the creature. This time, the Master had been kind.
‘What a nuisance,’ the Master muttered. ‘Now I must attempt to salvage enough for one healthy dragon from between two. Get on the table.’
Gonard dropped his snout to the floor, then surprised himself by hesitating to obey. One eye watched the man go to his gleaming walls. The other drifted back to the Hunt dragon. The neck had twisted in the fall, breaking the skin open. A thin, white-blue mist swirled over the slit. Something glittered underneath.
Glitter? What could glitter in a dragon's body? Gonard drew back his lips, used his long canines to pull the skin away from the neck. A silvery structure was exposed, filaments of metal arranged to slide easily past each other. One of the head plates had slipped aside, revealing a mass of intricately laced fibres. The brain of a dragon.
Now he understood. Now he knew why he could rust. Blood and meat and skin--no. Now he saw what a dragon really was, a thing of metal and rubber and plastic, strung together and given the semblance of existence. So convincing that even the machine could begin to believe that it was alive. The mist was followed by a clear liquid, beading on the exposed metal, protecting it from rust.
Vomer was gone. A dragon could not have a soul. And soon he would be gone as well.
The Master turned around. ‘I commanded you to get on the table.’
Gonard merely stared at him. A pain was thickening in his chest, behind which something shifted, expanded. ‘Why?’
‘There is no why,’ the Master growled. ‘I command. You obey.’
‘No. Why--’ Gonard shuddered. ‘Why did you let us think that we were alive? Why did you create such a lie of existence? Why?’
The Master’s eyes narrowed. ‘Obey me. Get on that table.’
The ache was building in his chest, his muscles trembling as if something were attempting to move, to grow. Images swirled in his mind. A dog-shaped cloud. Vomer silhouetted against the sunset. A drawing of a human heart. The metal connections of the Hunt dragon’s neck crackled under foot as he moved forward. In a corner of the cavern, he could see the red mass which had once been Vomer, now torn apart and discarded. ‘She is not alive, and she never was alive.’ He fixed his gaze upon the small man before him, and howled, ‘Why did you kill her?’
The thing in his chest growled, snapped, exploded. His jaws were forced open as a gush of flame blazed from his throat. Red-yellow fire leapt into one of the Master’s instrument panels, the metal bubbling and twisting under the heat.
The Master’s face paled. Gonard glanced at the scorched cabinet, then turned his gaze back to the man. ‘Now I remember,’ the man whispered. ‘Now I remember what I created you for.’
‘You killed her,’ Gonard growled, his mind spinning.
Fear brightened the man’s eyes. A long instrument appeared in his hand--the same with which Gonard had seen him remove a hippogryph’s leg with one sweep of red light. The man lifted it, aiming the end at Gonard’s head. ‘She is not important. You are not important.’
The man’s words were cut off in a second blaze. The flames surrounded him, burrowing into his coat, dancing along his unruly hair. The black eyes teared, then melted to bone. And then, flesh gone, the bones themselves crisped, until all that was left to slump to the ground was a few bits of gristle and gutted muscles.
The remaining fire blasted into the floor, the hard material smoking and receding from the heat. Finally the chamber in his chest was empty, its deed done. The Master was dead.
To read further, buy ‘Dragons Can Only Rust’
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