Song of the Storm Dragon

by Marc Secchia

  “Petal!” A scream!

  A different kind of lightning struck her then, a blur of multi-coloured hair and laughter and sobbing and incoherent exclamations. Delicate Human hands touched her scales, caressed her muzzle and then hugged her neck awkwardly. The cinnamon-vanilla fragrance of her own magic tantalised the Dragoness’ nostrils. She was so … small. So Human! A Dragonsong of wonder carolled in her third heart and rippled out of her throat. Was this …

  The girl cried breathlessly, “Oh, precious Dragonsoul, I’ve waited for so long. Now we can–”

  CLANG!

  Aranya screamed in frustration as reality intruded in the form of a large grey foot introducing itself to her ribcage. Get up, fodder!

  Leaping to her feet, the Star Dragoness gazed about in shock. Gangurtharr had managed to bestir his indolent bulk to tuck into a tasty-looking–well, judging by the horns, some kind of buck–but he lowered his muzzle and snarled at her over the remains. She stopped, one foot poised ahead of the other.

  Time to meet your fate, fodder, snapped one of the guard-Dragons.

  Aranya snarled, My name is–

  Fodder, said the monstrous Grey-Green, curling his paw around his meal. Alright, he probably outweighed her by fifty or sixty tonnes, all of it blubber. It’s not a joke.

  She stared at him. Her stomach wanted to pounce on that buck so badly, it vented a Leandrial-sized gurgle of famishment.

  Are you as gormless as you look? continued Gangurtharr. Haven’t you ever heard of the gladiator-pits of Wyldaroon? She shook her muzzle slightly. Your job is to be fodder for the bigger Dragons, warming up our happy customers by your honourable demise. Shake a paw, dead-meat. Combat is to the death. No exceptions.

  The guard-Dragon’s claws clamped around her neck, not at all gently. He half-strangled Aranya as he dragged her out of the cell and kicked the door shut behind her. It locked by no mechanism she could detect.

  She choked out, Save a haunch for me?

  Sardonic laughter followed her down the long, cell-lined corridor. Dead, dead meat. Nice knowing you.

  Chapter 22: Gladiatrix

  ARANYA BLINKED IN the firelight of five huge braziers arranged around the perimeter of a vaulting underground amphitheatre. The floor was rock. The walls, two hundred feet tall, were solid, unbroken red-speckled granite. Above, a domed metal cage enclosed the arena. She sensed its magic from where she stood. Beyond that cage? Tiers and rafters for the sparse scattering of Human, draconic and … other, spectators. Species and creatures she did not begin to recognise. Many Dragons perched above her on purpose-built metal railings. A low, uninterested murmur greeted her arrival through a pair of metal doors four feet thick and fifty feet tall.

  The arena stank of death.

  The guard-Dragon cuffed her shoulder brusquely. No rules but one: fight to the death. Understood?

  Aranya gazed across the arena at the Dragon swaggering through the opposite doorway.

  “Ecuradox the Executioner!” roared an unseen announcer, clearly a Dragon.

  Her first thought was neither a pretty nor a Princess-like word. Besides being armoured in solid plate metal, Ecuradox looked as if he ate metal for breakfast–metal stanchions, perhaps, or the swords and shields of his luckless victims, before cleaning his fangs with strips of their flayed hides.

  A ripple of approval rose from the crowd. They clearly knew this Dragon; they knew what to expect.

  Windrocs could sup on her entrails before that day came!

  Ecuradox played up to the crowd, swaggering into the arena with a lithe flexion of his muscle-bound, ridiculously over-armoured hundred-and-forty feet of draconic arrogance. He expectorated a fireball and limbered up his spine luxuriously. Aranya saw through that. He was bored by the whole affair. Ecuradox probably dined on fodder, or dead-meat, five times a week. He flexed his talons, six-foot scimitars compared to Aranya’s razor-sharp but foot-long, upsettingly girlish talons.

  She stiffened. What? Where had that thought–

  Wake up, Dragonsoul, said a snarky little voice within. We’re about to beat the stuffing out of this thug.

  Whaaa … what the–Humansoul?

  Glad you know me, the voice audibly smirked.

  Aranya’s fires boiled. Stop that.

  Stop what? The Human part of her managed to sound exactly like Zip. Just don’t show off too much, alright? We don’t want them to know what an adorable, teensy little Shapeshifter-petal we are.

  Infuriated beyond reason, the Amethyst Dragoness saw white. Blistering, pure white. Recognising Humansoul’s unsubtle plan was no panacea for her rage.

  Turning slightly toward the guard-Dragon in order to ask him if she would be introduced, Aranya yelped as he gripped her once more by the neck and tossed her out into the arena, thundering, Fight, you cowardly piece of fodder!

  She would so slingshot that beast like–

  Dodge, Dragonsoul!

  Aranya sprang aside, but not fast enough. Ecuradox’s casual passing paw-slap tossed her two hundred feet across the arena; she felt as if she had flown headlong into an Island. Her Human form was distinctly underwhelmed, snapping something about focussing on staying alive being the wing-shape of wisdom. The inner presence immediately merged into her, somehow, lending strength rather than sniping from the sidelines–which might have sparked a raging argument at a better time and place.

  The Star Dragoness checked her left shoulder. Three five-foot gashes adorned her hide. She licked the spot instinctively, allowing the rich, complex taste of Dragon blood to galvanise her Dragon battle-reactions. Her hearts-beat surged. Potentials coalesced behind tightly-clamped control valves. Eyes ablaze, Aranya stalked Ecuradox.

  He pretended unconcern.

  Yet the gleaming, red-tinged eyes watched with a slight gleam. Perhaps being stalked by so-called fodder was a novel experience. Perhaps he expected her to try to fly through that strange magical mesh, or to hide behind a brazier, or to do something fodder-idiotic. Well, perhaps the unforeseen …

  The Star Dragoness charged!

  Ecuradox whirled in a blur, bringing up his right forepaw to swat her back whence she came.

  Unfortunately for him, a deft touch of pneumatic shielding delayed her strike by a quarter-second, ensuring his fisted forepaw swished past her nose-scales by the width of a Human hand. She did not miss. Flaring her wings to aid a forceful landing smack upon his muzzle, Aranya commandeered the insides of his nostrils with her hind talons. Then, she used her perch for a springboard. Her claws gouged golden furrows in the sensitive tissue and muscle. Ecuradox’s instinctive follow-up blow comically clobbered the bleeding point of his own nose. He vented an almighty roar of discontent.

  Already having dashed a sensible fifty paces away as the hulking Grey-Green bellowed his injured pride until the stands fairly trembled, Aranya braked on a brass dral and pointed her left wingtip dramatically at her opponent. Channelling her inner Nak, she boomed, “Thou feckless, emasculated cow! Thou weeping excuse for last week’s soggy, maggot-ridden fodder–”

  With a staggering roar, sixty tonnes of armoured fury hurled itself across the arena.

  Mercy! yelped her Human.

  Dragonsoul was more intent on getting out of his way, when Humansoul interjected a cunning idea. Aranya jinked sharply and fled toward the far wall, stopping short before whirling in apparent terror as Ecuradox the Executioner, charging full bore toward her, pounced in a feral, flaming fury.

  She ducked at the last millisecond.

  It was an intelligent duck, so to speak. A whirl of Ri’arion-inspired martial arts coupled with a half-panicked touch of shielding constituted her riposte right beneath the juggernaut of a Dragon, causing Ecuradox to skitter over her back with a screech of talons against scales. He pounded into the wall behind her like a berserker, striking square-on with the full tonnage of his body behind the collision. His thick neck twisted, and snapped with an audible retort.

  There was a shocked silence in which, Dragon Rider Nak would do
ubtless have opined, one could have heard a mouse break wind. Dead.

  The announcer-Dragon blurted out an amplified expletive.

  Buzzing so hard she could not even hear the crowd, the Amethyst Dragoness walked back down from the arena with her two escorts, her thoughts a-whirl. She puffed hard to regain her breath. Great leaping Islands, she had done it! Grumbling like a pair of loquacious parakeets, the guard-Dragons booted her inside the cell and clanged the door shut.

  Gangurtharr’s good eye cracked open. “Oh, it’s you–dead-meat.”

  “That’s live-meat to you, Dragon.”

  He flicked a talon derisively, in and out, and drawled, “As I said, truly shocking. What did you do, tickle his belly?”

  Aranya’s fires blushed heatedly. “No.”

  “Sang Ecuradox an ode?”

  “He had an unfortunate accident with a wall. End of fires.” She gestured flatly with her wingtip. With a rough laugh that sounded forced to her ears, she added, “Where’s my haunch?”

  Aranya had already decided to make herself sound gruffer and more worldly-wise, like Ardan. Her Princess would have to take the rear saddle position in this strange environment. Besides, she suspected this Dragon was putting on a show to impress the newcomer. She needed to find a way to win his trust, so that she could learn enough to escape and find her friends. Poor Sapphire … and Ardan, had she truly spied him as she blazed across Herimor? What manner of bizarre coincidence was that?

  To her surprise, Gangurtharr made her wait a breath or two, before lifting his cupped paw. “I’m fat enough already. Eat, dead-meat.”

  She sidled across to him, trying to ooze confidence as she snaffled her meal. “Don’t I get a promotion for my efforts?”

  “Oh? Well … aye. I hereby promote you to ‘windroc bait’. Hearty felicitations.”

  Aranya swallowed her fury. Heavens and ruddy enigmatic Star Dragons burning in those heavens, she was starving! She bolted the entire haunch without so much as a by-your-leave, and belched afterward with a mental nod of approbation to Nak. Ah, her tutor in all things lewd and uncouth. Awesome teacher; even better friend. She missed him.

  Gangurtharr appeared to have nodded off once more.

  She said, “My name’s Aranya.”

  “Windroc bait,” he murmured, clearly signalling his desire for sleep.

  “What is this place, Gangurtharr?”

  “Call me Gang rather than that mouthful of cherk-cherbuck entrails,” he yawned, as lazy as a rajal sunning itself on hot bricks. He had a strange accent, very different to her guards or to the Orange who had captured her in the rubble. That yawn also revealed he was missing at least twenty fangs and a large, bite-sized piece of his tongue. “Welcome to Marshal Montorix’s Gladiator Pit, windroc bait, where Gladiator Dragons fight to the death for the entertainment of a diverse crowd of high-class citizens. The Marshal makes plenty of money off the spillage of Dragon blood. Plenty.”

  “So I’m a Gladiator?” Aranya asked, smiling at his heavy sarcasm.

  Quietly, but with wing-shivering menace, Gang snarled, “The word for a female Gladiator is Gladiatrix, but you will not sully the title with its mention, or I swear on my mother’s egg I will squash you like the bug you are. You are windroc bait, and you’re annoying me. Shut your feckless chattering, windroc bait.”

  Aranya’s lower jaw thumped against the flagstones. Doubtless this was his intent, but did Gang have to be such a crusty old bastard–oh, fireballs blast it! The Immadian felt ashamed at cursing like a soldier. Beran watched from the halls of her memory. Yet still, did morals arise from fear of what others might think, nurture, or from within oneself? How could she know the difference? Pondering this, Aranya curled up with feline grace in the quarter of the cell left for her. Gang’s bulk filled the rest. She observed his smoothly muscled shoulders and limbs, so unlike Ardan’s eye-popping striations. Fat, or muscle? She had to wonder. Was it merely her imagination, her desire to think the best of others, that she hoped there would be more to his Island than a bitter, middle-aged Dragon-warrior fond of verbally excoriating fledglings?

  She had to work out how she could Shapeshift safely in this place in order to keep feeding her Human form. Why did Dragons languish in a gladiator pit if fights were to the death? What was a gladiator–just another word for a warrior? Was she trapped inside one of Herimor’s celebrated floating Islands? She did not remember seeing Wyldaroon on any map. A den of cutthroats, thieves and shady business-uh, business-Dragons, she judged, from the glimpses she had caught of the purportedly ‘high-class’ punters. And species she had never seen before–an elongated Dragon with four wings whose blue-yellow colouration had been striped like a poisonous reptile, another creature with waving pink tentacles, something that apparently hid inside a blue bush for fun …

  Why had the Wisps enjoined her to hide? Was she in danger? Mercy, had she erred in giving Gang her correct name? Thoralian would know it in a heartbeat. Aranya champed her fangs.

  Well, she was not in the best shape after her enforced four-week sojourn with Izariela. Which she failed to remember in any great detail! Grr. She should sleep. Missing her companions sorely, Aranya lidded her eyes. Questions could wait for the morning. Doubtless, she would have a few days to find her paws while Thoralian wreaked his merry vengeance on Herimor.

  Toasty. Just toasty.

  * * * *

  “Good afternoon, fodder!”

  The guard-Dragon kicked her in the ribs, waking Aranya from her favourite nightmare of Fra’anior–the one where seven pitiless mouths chased her around the Islands as if she were a dragonfly fleeing from a flock of champing beaks. The one where she woke in spine-freezing terror without the slightest inkling what His Thunderous Majesty’s bellowing had been about.

  Of course, bruised ribs improved her mood.

  Marshal Montorix reached into the cell and dragged the Dragoness out by her neck. The Amethyst fledgling’s involuntary squeal drew a snort of laughter from Gangurtharr. She hung her head as the Orange Dragon indulged in his shake-a-rat routine.

  He roared, “You were supposed to lose!”

  “Sorry,” Aranya sulked.

  He bellowed, “Where did you learn moves like that?”

  “Blind luck.”

  He raged, “I bet against the fodder, of course! What sane Shapeshifter Dragon wouldn’t?”

  Aye, only a madman would bet on a fledgling beating a Dragon four times her size. Or a Star Dragoness. Aranya suppressed a violent urge to turn purple. Not yet. Not before she understood why she was hiding and when was the right moment to emerge. Until then, she would simply have to earn her right to stand with these Dragons. Fodder, indeed. Someone would pay.

  Montorix flung her to the ground, wrenching her left shoulder in the process, the one which Thoralian had speared with his ice. “Thankfully, my associate made a mistake! A mark in the wrong column and he bet on you. Five thousand to one!”

  The Orange Dragon’s rough chortling rattled bars up and down the underground corridor, which served thirty cells. Eighteen housed Gladiator Dragons. And a couple set aside for fodder. Aranya found her paws, only for his enthusiastic back-slap to summarily flatten her. She wheezed in pain. Yet, could this be good news? Might he set her free?

  “That’s a platoon-weight of the sweetest, finest Dragon gold in Herimor, fodder! You cleaned out the entire House of Fadootar!” Suddenly, his muzzle thrust right in her face. Fire bathed her lower jaw. “One way to make enemies. Think you can repeat that?”

  “I, uh …”

  “Course you can’t! You’re just rip-and-rend fodder, as stupid as you are ugly.”

  Well, Montorix certainly knew how to build up a girl’s self-esteem. Aranya surreptitiously checked her colour. Perfect. Encouraged by another kick, this time bruising her right hip-bone, she followed the Marshal up toward the noisy arena.

  Even a Star Dragoness could not burn through solid rock. Oh, for Ardan’s Shadow power! Everything was under-Island, save the arena. Could
she break through there? The cage possessed an unfamiliar magic, however; her regard through the foot-wide gap in the doors leading onto the arena floor provoked an eerie tendril of unease against her mind. Careful. Aranya knew she must not touch that cage. As before, the smells of death and dry blood made her nostrils burn. Ugh.

  “Flamgurtharr Flame-Breath!” howled the announcer.

  Imaginative names. Aranya grinned privately. Nevertheless, she wrenched her wayward attention toward the pressing matter of staying alive. Fight! Every nerve in her body buzzed. Her stomachs clenched. The Amethyst grimly cleared her mind with a meditation routine Ri’arion had taught her. Focus. Channel her powers into heightened awareness. Stillness pooled in her mind; fires churned her belly into overheated soup.

  “Facing the Flame-Breath today in the first match of a thrilling line-up, is the fodder who triumphed against Ecuradox the Executioner just last night! Bend your burning eyes upon this spectacle, noble Dragons, mighty Shifters and great Chaos-Beasts of Wyldaroon! Who will thunder for the undefeated champion of fifty-three bouts, the mighty master of lava, the awesome, the fabulous phenomenon who is Flamgurtharr Flame-Breath?”

  A roar surged around the arena–far more packed than the previous day, Aranya saw, although there were still many benches and rafters left unoccupied–as a massive, visibly smoking Grey-Green Dragon burst through a wall of flame into the arena. His battle-challenge rocked the roof: FLAMGURTHAR!!

  Aranya’s hearts leaped into her throat as one. What a beast! Nevertheless, she turned to Montorix. “Hope you made the right bet, Orange D–”

  A huge paw curled around her throat. “Remember, the Flame-Breath prefers his fodder well-roasted!”

  Banging the doors wide open with his paw, Montorix the Orange hurled Aranya at her opponent. An entrance worthy of a Princess, she thought. Her wings tangled together as the Amethyst tried to sort out her flailing body, which saved her from the brunt of the Flame-Breath’s superheated opening salvo. She fell hard. The Dragon stalked her fluidly, firing fireballs faster than she could either run or fly. Each measured twenty feet across and was a roiling, liquid mass of lava and fire that detonated against her shield with explosive power. Despite her resistance, the onslaught tumbled Aranya head-over heels to the far end of the arena. She fetched up with an almighty head-butt against one of the towering braziers. Smoking, gasping and coughing, the Dragoness tried to find her paws.