by Marc Secchia
“Your student is making progress, Dad,” said Aranya.
“You need to stoke up your fires, daughter,” said Beran. “How’s best to get you in the mood for battle?”
“Wait, I volunteer for this most perilous duty,” said Yolathion.
Beran averted his face from the Jeradian to make a funny expression for Aranya alone. She almost choked with embarrassed laughter. Not only did her cheeks turn scarlet, but her inner fires roared to life, too. Aranya had to clamp down on her response before their map burst into flame. But when Yolathion wrestled her onto his lap to allegedly stoke her Dragon fires, a small whirlwind of fire did indeed burst into being beneath the table and scorched his trouser-leg before dancing next to the crysglass window for a few seconds.
All too soon, battle called. Aranya left the navigation room to transform into her Dragon form–but she was not smarting. Yolathion’s droll comments had provided the perfect distraction.
The Immadian Dragonship fleet doused all lights and stilled their meriatite furnace engines, drifting on the breeze toward the outermost Island of Ur-Tagga Cluster, which was only a quarter-league across and dominated by a Sylakian fortress set on a steep hill.
“Eighteen Dragonships,” Aranya hissed down to her father from her perch atop the Dragonship. “Possibly more hidden behind the hill.”
A red lantern winked from Beran’s flagship, sending an agreed signal to eight of the Immadian Dragonships. They drifted into the Island’s nearest bay and threw down anchors. Four hundred dark Western Isles warriors swarmed down the anchor ropes and melted into the night. The eight Dragonships, catapults and war crossbows manned and primed for action, slipped away to make a flanking attack from the east. The Amethyst Dragon drifted upward on a warm bed of air, almost a daytime thermal, carrying Yolathion aloft. She searched the night with all her senses alert. Her spine-spikes tingled with anticipation.
There, a signal from near the base of the fortress walls. The ground forces were in place.
Go, my friends. Disable the sleeping Dragonships.
The ice-dragonets flitted across the face of the White moon, almost invisible to the naked eye.
Aranya concentrated deeply, readying and shaping her stomach fires. She waited on King Beran’s signal. His Dragonships floated toward the fortress as if they were great fish swimming in the moonlight, one hundred and fifty feet of volatile hydrogen gas encased in a thin sack. How could the watch not see them? A purple light winked from the foremost Dragonship. Her colour. Aranya surged forward with a powerful wingbeat that brought her wingtips almost to touching beneath her body. She flapped twice more before she came within range of the fortress. Her Dragon vision focussed on the gates. She saw every bolt and nail, the splinters on the weathered surface, the mark of a blast of fire which must once have charred the wood. She saw the faces of three sentries in the guardhouse turning toward the movement they finally saw in the air.
Pfft! Pfft! Two of her tiny fireballs seared the night. The massive wooden gates exploded in a sheet of flame a hundred feet tall. Her neck snaked sideways and her cheeks puffed slightly. Pfft! Fire rocketed into the huge central catapult emplacement, setting something off–perhaps a barrel of oil, because the secondary explosion was even bigger than the first. The Dragoness’ reactions took over, wheeling her away from the pyre instinctively, cutting her turn so close that flame licked across her paws and tail.
Unruly, alluring flames! Aranya yanked her attention back to the battle.
Screaming and bellowing, the Warlords and their warriors sprinted out of the darkness. The left gate, sagging on its hinges, yielded almost immediately to their eager blows. The bare-footed warriors ran straight over the burning wood, fighting each other to be first into the fortress and gain glory and names in the praise-songs they would compose afterward. Aranya caught her breath. There was something awesome and primal in that sight, a kind of collective madness she had never quite appreciated in the same way. The Sylakians had discipline. The Western Isles warriors were a river of passion run wild.
Spinning mid-air, she oriented herself according to Yolathion’s shout. “Hold on, Rider.”
Crossbow quarrels hissed through the night. Aranya dodged twice, grunting as an oblique shot glanced off her scales. Her throat worked. Pfft! A crossbow emplacement roared into flame. Soldiers leaped off the walls to save their skins from a roasting.
A shrill discharge of magic registered on her senses. Where? Her neck twizzled urgently as she scanned the battlefield. Five Sylakian Dragonships sagged toward the ground. Three rose skyward, bravely flying Sylakia’s screaming windroc, but they were under heavy attack by the dragonets. Two men falling from the gantries briefly captured her notice. Then Aranya saw a shadow lift from the ground beneath the Sylakian Dragonships, a giant shadow with leathery wings and flight struts and a tail. Her claws clenched painfully. Dragon!
Good, or evil?
“Yolathion! A Dragon–there, by the Dragonships!”
“Hit it, Aranya.”
She shook her head. “What if it’s the one we’re looking for?”
“You’d better be certain.”
The Dragon rose into the moonlight, a heavy Green Dragon, glistening as though his hide were wet from rain. He lumbered through the air as though flying pained him, but she also realised that his scales were massively armoured, making him a flying fortress.
Who are you? Aranya called.
So, Shapeshifter, we meet at last, he replied. The timbre of his mental voice indicated an old Dragon. I am Harathion, great-uncle of Thoralian. Flee this place before you taste my wrath and fall into the Cloudlands.
I am Aranya of Immadia. I flee no Dragon. Are you friend or foe?
Know you nothing, little one? Dragon-laughter, cruel and cold, rumbled from his mighty chest. She knew the truth before he spoke, but even so, the rich scorn in his voice appalled her. I was old long before your grandfather was born. I have fought more Dragon battles than I have summers of life. Did you not slay Garthion? Did you not declare war upon my family and all that is ours? You naïve hatchling, you should never have left the egg. We destroyed Izariela. Now, the profound pleasure of destroying her daughter shall be mine.
Their exchange took place at the speed of thought. Aranya tensed. He dared to mock her mother’s death?
Behind her, Yolathion cursed quietly as he detected his Dragon’s response. He barked, “Attack him! What’re you waiting for?”
Aranya spat a fireball. Pfft! Harathion did not even bother to dodge. He took her shot full on the chest and through the boiling cloud of fire and smoke, roared a mighty challenge mingled with laughter. His own fireball sizzled upward, but his aim was poor. Aranya began to duck, but aborted the movement.
How did one attack another Dragon? Hit the wings? Those didn’t have scale-armour. Garthion’s wings had been shredded by an explosion right beneath him. No conventional attack would work against a Dragon of his experience. Aranya narrowed her eyes, keeping her distance from the Green as he gained altitude. Was he really that slow? Or was this a tactic to test her patience?
Time for a decision. The Amethyst Dragon trimmed her wings and accelerated, firing her miniature fireballs rapidly, four in a single burst. Harathion furled his wings to remove them from harm’s way, but one fireball struck the edge of his right wing and blasted a hole there. Aranya growled. She needed to hit bone or flight struts, clearly–or strike him with a larger fireball, the kind that had burned her throat to cinders before. She did not want to close with the Green Dragon.
Harathion turned and began to flap ponderously toward her father’s Dragonships.
“Quick, throw him off course,” cried Yolathion.
But the Green Dragon watched them covertly. What on the Islands could she do? Warm up her Storm powers? How did she do that? Well, if he was faking, so could she.
Aranya darted forward, claws outstretched, reaching for his wingtip. The move was meant as a feint. But she had only an instant’s warning before
his massive green tail whipped into her line of sight. Quick as she was, the Green Dragon was quicker. Aranya squealed inadvertently as a crushing weight struck her in the lower back region. But she curled beneath his claw-strike by instinct, tearing a decent chunk out of his left wing-membrane in passing. Harathion roared in pain. Aranya tumbled away from the snap of his jaws. Unholy Dragon fire, those fangs! He had to be twice her size and more.
She heard the twang of a bowstring. An arrow lodged in the Dragon’s belly, but did not appear to do any damage. Deliberately, Harathion aimed a fireball at her father’s Dragonship.
You overgrown ape! Aranya shouted. Harathion’s head jerked, making him miss the shot.
With a tail-whiplash of her own, Aranya nipped around Harathion using a backflip manoeuvre Sapphire was fond of. As a forty-foot Dragon, she was not nearly as agile in the air, but it took her outside his field of sight for a vital instant. Aranya’s forepaws smashed into the Green Dragon’s left wing, breaking flight struts and tearing through the membrane in numerous places. Harathion howled fit to split the skies. She was so intent on her attack, so awed at the taste of Dragon blood, that she did not see his lashing tail in time.
Pain burst into her chest. Coughing, choking and wheezing, Aranya saw black. A searing fire bit her shoulder; a sword-like claw embedded there. She ripped herself free by instinct, dropping fifty feet to avoid the disembowelling thrust of his massive hind claws.
“Aranya? Aranya?” cried Yolathion.
“I’m … fine.”
“You’re bleeding masses,” he said, adding a few colourful epithets aimed at the Green Dragon.
“Not as badly as him.”
Aranya had made an impressive mess of the middle of Harathion’s wing. But he still had enough wing surface left to keep aloft. Golden Dragon blood poured out of the major wing arteries. His long neck snaked as he oriented on them now, abandoning any pretence of struggling or age. Harathion drove forward with abundant power.
Chase this, you disgusting slob. The Amethyst Dragon executed a rapid turn, avoiding his rush. But her pursuer cocked his head sideways and sprayed a fine green mist across her flight path. There was so much, she could not avoid it all.
“Poison!” shouted Yolathion.
Aranya writhed in an attempt to protect her Rider. Her hindquarters swished through the fine mist. Smoke rose from her scales as a horrific fizzing sound came to her ears. Acid! She had forgotten this most potent Green Dragon attack. How could she stop it? The scales bubbled as the powerful acid burned through to the sensitive nerves beneath. Aranya’s shriek of anguish drowned out the sounds of the battle.
Dimly, she heard Yolathion shouting, “Water. There, fly to the water!”
Aranya folded her wings and dived for the small lake, just a couple of hundred yards from the fortress walls. She landed hard, dashing water in all directions. The relief was instantaneous. Cool water washed over her burns. For a moment, she enjoyed the respite. Then, she summoned her courage and launched herself upward, sheeting water from her Dragon hide. The Green Dragon’s acid had set every nerve in her back and legs on fire. Aranya remembered what Nak had taught her. Use the pain. Flow with it. Use her hurts to sharpen the Dragon powers.
Strength flooded her muscles. Yolathion gasped as Aranya assaulted the skies. Perhaps he had thought her beaten. That too was fuel to her fires. Her three hearts pounded as a familiar potential gathered in her belly, a certain tightness that spoke of the power coalescing there, a thrumming in her ears that she suddenly realised was her body preparing for an attack–the sphincter muscles in her ear canals tightening to protect the highly sensitive Dragon eardrums.
“Shield your ears,” she threw over her shoulder.
Yolathion just stared at her foolishly.
Now she opened her mouth, careful to conceal the power she hid. You flabby green slug, Aranya called up to Harathion. You fly like a colossal lump of snot!
The massive Green’s eyes bulged. As the smaller Amethyst Dragoness flew straight at him, she saw a secretive smile curve his lips. His cheeks flexed ever so slightly to expel a thin, almost invisible stream of acid.
Aranya’s storm-generated bellow struck him like a thunderclap, a wall of air that slapped the acid back in his face and shovelled it down his throat. Harathion’s wings quivered helplessly as the high winds thrust him backward. Aranya gathered her magic, drawing it together, concentrating the storm forces within her being. As his mouth gaped open to take his next breath, she fired a brilliant blue fireball straight down his gullet.
Thump. A muffled explosion shuddered Harathion from muzzle to tail. For an unending, awful moment, as the Green Dragon kept flapping his wings, Aranya thought her plan had failed. Then a burst of sapphire fire lit his scales from beneath. An expression of faint amazement crooked his mouth.
Harathion dropped from the sky, dead.
* * * *
King Beran placed a small stool next to Aranya’s bunk and seated himself stiffly. “Getting too old for this battle nonsense,” he grunted.
“Dad, you’re only fifty-three summers–”
“And I feel about eighty after a night spent thumping Sylakians.” Beran eyed his daughter, lying on her stomach beneath a thin sheet. “Alright, Sparky?”
“Sore,” she admitted. “My healing power has eased the worst of the acid burns, but I still needed half a pot of numb-wort for the pain. The medic was decidedly grumpy.”
“By the mountains of Immadia, when that Green Dragon rose–”
“You thought, ‘My daughter’s going to have that flying ralti sheep for breakfast’, right?”
Beran’s eyes twinkled at her enthusiastic interjection. He said, “I discovered that fathers can fear for their Dragon-daughters. How did you defeat him? When you landed in the lake, I swear I had to fish my heart out of the Cloudlands. And then you rose glorious and compelling and I knew–I just knew–that you’d kill him. Foolish, aren’t I?”
Never foolish, she thought, letting her eyes communicate her pride and gratitude. She said, “How did you know, Dad?”
“Your spirit was greater than his.” Aranya shivered. After a long silence, he touched her chin. “You’re catching flies, Sparky. Come, teach me about fighting Dragons.”
“Well, I spoke to him in Dragonish. Harathion was evil, Dad. He said he was Thoralian’s great-uncle. When he laughed … well, he can’t possibly have been the one Fra’anior mentioned. I hope not. Harathion was so thickly armoured I couldn’t get a fireball through his hide, so I tried for the wings, but then he burned me with his acid. Yolathion did well, Dad. He ordered me to jump in the lake.”
“You burst his eardrums,” King Beran put in.
“Oh. I did warn him.” Remembering the look on Yolathion’s face afterward, Aranya bit her lip. “I scared the living pith out of him, Dad. Well–I remembered how the scrolls I read in Remoy said that Green Dragons were immune to their own acid. Did you notice how wet his skin appeared? Green Dragons secrete a highly alkaline mucus to protect themselves. First, I blew his acid back in his face. Of course he closed his eyes to protect his eyeballs. Then I waited for him to take his next breath.”
“And stuffed a fireball down his throat?”
“A storm or lightning fireball–a blue one, Dad. They’re more powerful than the yellow fireballs, which are pure Dragon fire.”
King Beran regarded her so gravely for so long that Aranya began to worry about what he was thinking. He said, “Sparky, you were awesome. Yolathion has to respect that.”
Was he also concerned that Yolathion did not respect her enough? This added weight to her worries. Her father might sometimes be as distant as an Island wrapped in clouds, but his insight was dagger-sharp–a little too sharp, she thought wryly. Pressing her lips into a thin line, Aranya ventured the question which had been burning in her heart for days.
“Dad, if Mom ever recovered–I mean, it’s impossible, but if she did, and there were two women living who you loved, what would you do?”
“Asking the easy questions, my daughter?” he chuckled.
“Always.”
“The hard truth is, I don’t love Silha the way I loved Izariela.” Beran heaved a sigh worthy of five men. “With your mother it was a soaring-over-the-Islands love. She was like you, all fire and passion, an artist, as beautiful as the dawn. After she died, I never thought I’d love again. You helped me.”
“I did?”
“You drew me out of the dark places with your tears and smiles, Aranyi, with your zest for life and endless questions and … love. Silha is a still pool. With her I find a place of rest and peace. It’s still a deep connection, but different–I’m older now. Maybe that’s it.”
He shifted on the stool, suddenly restless. “Can I venture an opinion on Yolathion?”
She nodded, robbed of words.
“Firstly, and I say this not just because I’m your Dad and irretrievably biased–” he paused to enjoy her quiet laughter “–but I want you to know, Aranya, and not only to know, but to grasp soul-deep, that Yolathion would be a fool to lose you. Islands’ sakes, it’s complicated. You’re a Princess, a criminal, a Shapeshifter Dragon and a woman on a mission to change the world. You have prodigious power. Your very existence is a web of mysteries we haven’t plumbed the half of.”
The Black Dragon might roar in her dreams, but her father’s words struck her with the force of a falling Island.
“If you were to ask me what I fear, then I would say I fear that Yolathion sees a rare beauty and a talented woman who would grace his arm, bear his children, and little more.” Beran essayed a brittle smile. “Would that he’d prove me wrong. The traditional Jeradian or Sylakian way, you see, is a matter of convenience. But there are Jeradians and Sylakians who have long and meaningful relationships indistinguishable from Immadian marriages. If your old father were allowed to offer any advice, he would say, be certain that Yolathion respects you for who you are and all that you are–Human and Dragon–before you commit to him.”
Aranya stared into space, mulling over his words. She pushed the words into Dragon-Aranya’s brain, too, wondering what that part of her thought. Her stillness deepened. Her Dragon senses stirred, identifying the tiniest hairs stuck to her pillow-roll, the multi-coloured strands of her strange tresses, turquoise and orange, black and blonde, white and pink, and she wondered how anyone could ever learn to love all the strands that went to make up Aranya.
