by Marc Secchia
Her friends shook themselves violently, but recovered before they tossed their Riders off their backs.
“Attack them – Hualiama – get me that Dragon!” the pair screeched in tandem, as Azziala struggled for freedom. “Desist, you miserable freak! This is my body – invader!”
Torn from gaping at the spectacle, Imaytha and Isiki raced past her along the Green Dragon’s neck, raising their swords, closely shadowed by the Immadian soldiers and Sumio, racing over the long grey curve of a neighbouring Dragonship. The Eastern giant twirled a weapon in his hands Hualiama had never seen before. Whipping what looked like four silvery balls attached to chains rapidly in circles above his head, he let fly. Three heads popped off the shoulders of Azziala’s Councillors as if they had been plucked away by invisible talons. Wheee-BOOM! Mizuki shot wide, probably to avoid striking Hualiama from her angle of attack, but a red mist splattered against Azziala’s face and torso from the side.
Her tongue dabbed at the crimson. “Blood. Power.”
Hualiama scythed toward the Empress as though unleashed from a slingshot.
Azziala punched herself in the face repeatedly as she bellowed in a grating voice supplemented by a muffled, barking sound deep in her diaphragm, “I have to get her. Get the Star. Get me the Star!”
The parasitic twin took command. The golden mouth boomed, DRAGON, Oooooo …
The Command faltered in her hearing as Dragoness-Lia reacted at the very point the sound waves formed in her not-mother’s throat. Flowing. Watching in despair as the magical disturbance shimmered toward her like a direction-enchanted arrow. Her voice hit a shrill pitch of panic, Humansoul!
She became Human.
The girl within skipped and twirled across the billows of the disturbance as though she were dancing upon the ripples of a terrace lake by dappling starlight. She was slight and agile, as insubstantial as starlight yet pervading everything she touched. The Word of Command never found its target, because Human-Lia was not the target. In her ultra-languid perception, she seemed to be a flame flickering against the veil of the Island-World, and she discerned a draconic presence looking on from afar, a constellation greater and brighter than anything she had ever beheld before, and she knew a simple truth.
He was pleased.
Dreamlike, she sped toward her fate. The whispering, ripping darkness embedded within the shell of her mother’s existence. The parasite appeared akin to an S’gulzzi in its manifestation in this plane, an undulating, many-limbed void in the fabric of light, somehow buried headfirst in Azziala’s torso just below or around the diaphragm area.
Hualiama un-Flowed, and landed lithely upon her bare feet. “Mother.”
The woman collapsed in her grasp, clutching her heart as her robes heaved convulsively. Grey-faced. Juddering against the Green Dragon’s scales, screaming an unending note of agony. Gripping her mother’s throat in her left hand, Hualiama saw that the fingers of her right hand were wreathed in tendrils of white-fires.
She struck!
* * * *
Flicker had always loved intestines. In fact, he had a love affair with a decent abdominal cavity filled with a good ten feet of grey, greasy guts, especially the gristly kind that crunched slightly between the fangs, and it was a double bonus of course if they happened to be stuffed with the flavoursome, half-digested remains of a recent meal. What a treat! Thus, when he saw Hualiama’s white, flaming hand plunge into her mother’s abdomen almost up to the elbow and start rooting about in there – well, an unforeseen gurgle of approbation sneaked up on him.
Here he was, flapping like the fleetest idiot under the twin suns to catch up with his girl – he spared a momentary flare of inner amazement for how she had defeated all science and logic by avoiding her mother’s Command-hold – and she was being a perfect little Dragoness, disembowelling her victim.
Laughter gurgled in his throat. Maybe she was almost as awesome as him.
Just now, the sinewy muscles of her back and shoulders bunched, and she tore something right out of her mother’s body. It kicked, squealed and barked hoarsely as she dangled it in the air. He gagged.
Grotesque! By Fra’anior’s stormy beard hairs, what was that … mutant?
It was Human. Vaguely Human. It had deformed, stick-like appendages, as many as a spider – or was that a spinal column or intestines hanging out of the body’s left flank? What put the freakish shudders into his wings was the mouth. A shrieking, mucus-encrusted pink ring, like the mouth of a tapeworm, it was surrounded by at least two or three rows of needle-sharp teeth, and it immediately stretched out on an impossibly long neck to latch onto Hualiama’s upper right bicep as though it intended to start there and chew its way right through her body and out the other side.
She did not scream. She glanced at the thing, and then said, in a very clear voice, “Mother, I have excised the parasite. Let me heal you before I destroy this creature.”
Alright. She had just blown past awesome in a cloud of sparkly blue stardust on her way to … he shook his muzzle. Legend? Super-star status? He would come up with a suitable descriptor. Right now, she needed his assistance.
Flicker clipped his wings in one final burst of speed.
* * * *
Hualiama watched Azziala clutching at the bloody crater carved in her stomach as if by a futile grasping of her hands, she could fit everything back inside. A caldera of grief burned inside her own craw; a sour heaviness that in no way reflected the triumph she saw or sensed in her allies. Knowing that Azziala had been fixated on her one, overwhelming power was no comfort. Knowing she had been out-thought and outmanoeuvred only made the melancholy bittersweet. Her heart was a volcano of molten sorrows.
“Mom, let me touch you. Heal you.”
“No. I have … I have done enough,” the Empress gasped. Blood seeped from the corner of her mouth. “Child – how – the Command? How?”
Hualiama said, “If nothing exists to hear a Word of Command, can it be said to have been uttered?”
Azziala sighed softly in wordless defeat.
They both looked at the parasitic twin, gasping now, her fluids and blood pumping from multiple rents in her body. She could not even suckle at Hualiama’s lifeblood. She lacked the strength. Yet, something sharp and insect-like unfolded from beneath her dangling body as the creature slumped. She saw it in the periphery of her vision, but she focussed on Azziala –
Wham!
Lia yelped as Flicker attacked, his wings and paws a blur! The parasite skittered a few feet off on the Green Dragon’s shoulder; the dragonet went another way.
“Flicker –”
He opened his paw. “Had … stinger …”
“No, Flicker, are you – no!”
Dragon blood. A dot of green venom upon his left fore-talon! She scrambled toward him, but the dragonet flipped onto his paws, screaming in a feral rage. He attacked the creature, ripping off its limbs and stabbing it over and over again with his unsheathed talons, before he abruptly kicked the bits over the stoic Dragon’s side. They tumbled toward the lava lake far below.
Lia gathered Flicker into her arms as he slumped. The dragonet moaned, “Everything’s going … why … so dark?”
“Not again! Please … oh, my darling, you’re also my Dragonlove. You are.” She wiped his eyes, murmuring at how he had covered himself in blood, and coddled her best friend to her bosom. Her magic flooded into him, healing, restoring, checking every detail of his being. “Oh, Flicker, stay with me. Are you alright? What hurts, my precious, precious friend?”
After a few seconds, he stirred. “Uh … that was awfully sweet, but … you don’t actually think I’m dying, do you?”
Her jaw dropped. “I’m so going to flay your hide for a trophy, you pest!”
Chapter 25: Crowning Glory
After that, Hualiama moved again to the fallen Empress, sickened to her stomach by what had transpired. The other Councillors hung back as she approached, sparing the briefest of glances toward Grandion, who
was preoccupied, to the tune of a thunderous, mocking drumbeat of his almighty fists, with thrashing the living pith out of the largest Dragoness anyone had ever seen. Four leagues long. Leagues! And he was pummelling her like a sack of meal used for target practice.
She looked again. Judging by the thick trail of golden Dragon blood left on the surface of the lake, Numistar was definitely netting the worst of the bargain. Served her right. Never trust a Dragon.
You’re a freak with wings, she told Grandion wanly.
Onyx is the new Tourmaline, he grunted, landing another cracking straight left, and she did not understand until she realised that in his mind, the image of Fra’anior was superimposed over Numistar’s battered form. Roaring him on. Cheering!
She bent to her mother. Azziala was trying to mouth words. “Mom, please. Don’t –”
“Child, come closer. Listen. I’ve … something, beloved …”
The Human girl hesitated, but then gathered her mother into her arms. She sensed Dragonsoul’s quivering outrage, but she would just have to understand. Catharsis, perhaps. A necessity. For all her evil, and her service to Dramagon, Azziala remained her birth mother. That had to mean something. Beloved? Perhaps, at the last, a fragment of this ruin might be redeemed …
Quicker than an eye blink, darkness shuttered out the world, and she heard Azziala say, “But if we are physically touching, child, then there is no impediment, is there?”
A wordless Command.
Hualiama tried to scream. She tried to let go.
Nothing.
“Now, I’ve been longing for this moment for so long. DAUGHTER, OBEY! GIVE ME THE RUZAL!”
* * * *
Abruptly, she stood in her soul space, as stiff and still as one of those marble columns. Blue-hair touched her cheek, weeping, but although she saw the gesture, she felt nothing. Her eyes stared fixedly ahead.
“I’m so sorry about the loss of your mother, my second soul,” said the Dragoness. Loss? That was premature, she wanted to say. But her twin added, “You have protected me for so long. Now, I must protect you. I am sorry, but I am resolved in this. I see no other way. I hope … I hope you will still love me afterward.”
A flutter of ethereal wings. Istariela.
No. How could she give this terrible burden to another? Yet, she knew how the ruzal had touched Azziala before. It had allowed her and Numistar to break through, but it had strengthened the parasitic twin and given the Empress hope. Now, her Dragonsoul’s shell-mother would take this on? Tears poured from her unfeeling eyes. Fate was never fair. Never!
“Oh, Humansoul!” Fingers wiped her cheeks tenderly. “I understand, yet I also know this is for the best. Istariela’s place is to retreat from the Island-World. Ours is to shine. The light must shine untainted, or all will be lost.”
No …
Istariela said, “I love you as my own precious eggling, Hualiama. Will you grant me this honour? If the ruzal is given to me first –”
The girl said, The Command will persist. I will have doomed us both.
“This love is no doom,” said her blue-haired twin. “Istariela has shown me a way. A Star Dragoness secret which is only possible in this sliver of time, because we are Shapeshifter twins in our inmost nature. May I whisper in your ear?”
No tickling whilst I’m immobilised, she thought sadly.
The ruzal would leave. Already, it stirred maliciously, casting its regard upon the elder Star Dragoness with malevolent purpose. This was Istariela’s sacrifice for her. In the roiling white-fires of the Dragoness’ eyes Lia saw regret, an apology for the paucity of her mothering presence, and aye – nobility. Love that transcended Istariela’s trepidation at taking the ruzal. A willingness to die for the eggling she had abandoned, or been forced to abandon.
It tore her to do this to Istariela, but what other choice was there? She hesitated for the longest time. At length, her soul sighed profoundly, even though no sound escaped her lips. Mentally, she said, I accede. Thank you with all my hearts, shell-mother.
Why did this feel like defeat?
The shining form of Istariela bowed. My fires for thee, Hualiama.
And mine for thee. We shall speak anon.
Dragonsoul added, I am here for you, Humansoul. Always here. But now we must comfort your Human mother in death, or we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives.
* * * *
Grandion knew the instant she shifted. He felt it like a talon pricking between his ribs, and he whirled, forgetting all about the Winterborn as she slunk out of Fra’anior’s caldera as fast as her five remaining limbs could carry her. His eyes narrowed. Lia bent over her mother, ever the compassionate soul. She killed, but agonised over the deed afterward.
His hearts were filled with triumphal Dragonsong. Hualiama had prevailed!
Yet why that shift? Why that hiccough of existence, as though she had executed one of her Shapeshifter transformations; only, she had not?
Anxious to rejoin his beleaguered beloved, he wheeled on a wingtip and accelerated, calling his three fledglings with him. He had taught them how to fight. Now, they must learn to be magnanimous in victory.
* * * *
“Gindurtha, to thee and thy ancestors I gift the immense power and responsibility of ruzal, for all time,” Azziala intoned, with strength Hualiama could not believe she still possessed – even death must perforce wait upon her will. “You shall serve as Judge of this Council. You shall ensure no Empress deviates from the precious Protocols that guide our nation.”
The Empress passed over the fake bequest from Istariela.
Through her bowed lashes, Lia looked up at the tall Enchantress who had just received a package of useless misinformation from a supremely wily Dragoness who had tricked Fra’anior into having shell-children – or, thinking more positively, Istariela had fashioned a miracle in service of … what? A legacy of Star Dragons who would serve and protect the Island-World? Lia held utterly still and schooled her thoughts into blankness, as banal as her hidden Dragonsoul could make them. Flicker joined her, his paw immobile upon her arm and his eyes gazing upward earnestly, as though he planned to beg a favour. He must know. Would he keep silent?
Azziala’s hands were covered in blood. Her body already cooled, but the Empress of the Dragon Haters was not finished yet. She said, “In accordance with the Protocols, with my dying breath it … it falls … to me –” she gasped, her teeth grinding against the pain “– to appoint one worthy. I know one worthy … above all others. She is malleable. Powerful. A great servant of Dramagon … you shall make – imprint – her. By the power vested in me by my sworn adherence to … to the First Protocol, I make my choice. All hail … Hualiama, Empress of the Lost Islands!”
Flicker slumped over Hualiama’s forearm in a dead faint.
The Councillors roared their approbation, echoed a mere heartbeat later by the Humans and Dragons of the nation of the Lost Islands.
From afar, Grandion bellowed, TRAITORESS!
Not so much.
She shovelled the mountain of her shock, revulsion and dismay over to Dragonsoul. Take care of this for a second, would you?
A spectral grimace was her reply. This rubbish? Let’s do our duty, Humansoul – our dirty duty.
Aye. I promise.
As the breath rattled over her mother’s lips, Hualiama smiled sweetly down at Azziala. “Thank you, mother. I’ve learned so much from you. I assure you, I shall do everything in my power to guarantee that I am absolutely nothing like the Empress you would want me to be.”
Azziala coughed feebly as she slipped toward the cusp of death, blood splattering from her golden lips.
Lia rose to her feet, a five-foot slip of a girl overshadowed by every remaining member of the Council, suddenly more grey-faced than golden. She was majestic, aye, but it was the terrible splendour of grief and loss, and her train was soaked in the blood of Dragons and Humans alike. Her revealed presence paralysed them even before she spoke the fatal words.
&
nbsp; “I am Hualiama the Star Dragoness, shell-daughter of Fra’anior. Moreover, I am the Dragonfriend.”
“Traitor!” Gindurtha shrieked, prodding at Istariela’s magic with her mind. Poof! The woman spluttered and dropped as if poleaxed.
“That’s mostly starlight and a dragonet’s laughter,” Lia advised. “I hope you don’t mind, mother, but I plan on changing a few things around these Islands. Really, I’m not much of a Hater.”
At the very last, Azziala tried to scream, “Close the mind … to –”
She perished with a hateful expression twisting her lips forever.
* * * *
Elki, Saori, Imaytha and her friends closed in from all quarters, stalking the remaining Enchanters as they shrank in horror from their new Empress. A tourmaline streak shot across the caldera. Falling to her knees to gather Flicker into her arms, Lia privately noted his steady hearts-beat and told herself she would tan his scaly behind later for scaring her ralti-stupid like that. Rascal! Yet he had saved her from Azziala’s final ploy. She must have known her parasitic twin’s capabilities, but had given no sign as the fatal stinger darted toward her own daughter’s flesh.
Perhaps, a final test. Another Reaving.
As she knelt upon the Green Dragon’s back, Hualiama reached out for the one power left to a shattered Star Dragoness. Grandion had always claimed she drew her strength from grief. Here, in the crucible of battle loss, personal bereavement and her loathing of what had transpired, her grief had never resonated with a more poignant song – not a debilitating grief. No. She knew action-stirring, blood boiling, maddening volcanic lakes of heartache. Lia raised her free arm slowly, as if beseeching the heavens to witness her need. She gazed over the ranks of humpbacked Dragonships and hovering Dragons, over the seething caldera lake to the serried ranks of mountains beyond, the hurting Air Breathers and the Dragon battle raging above them, and she saw the ravaged Islands of her shell-father’s roost, and her heart bled. She examined her mother’s warped face, frozen in death, and the desolation of her heart swelled to crushing proportions.
