by Marc Secchia
Now, his manner entirely changed. The raging of his mighty person, its dense, flaming representation of Dragon armour and scales written in the darkest of fires, seemed to draw collective breath to coalesce like oily, ebon metals smelting in a furnace’s heart. How the pyres of his grasp of her truthfulness assaulted the skies in stultifying, rolling heatwaves of anguish-realisation! All pretence vanished. All hope, extinguished. The lakes of Infurion’s eyes rippled into a different, more profound darkness – almost pleading, Grandion realised.
The Ancient Dragon’s wailing seemed to shake the very foundations of the Island-World as he cried, What is this to thee, Dragoness – A GAME?
No. It is life and death.
Hualiama’s reply would have been lost in Infurion’s swelling indignation, save that Grandion augmented her concentration, staunchly remaining beside her right wingtip. She was ice to the Ancient Dragon’s fire. Never more certain, even when Infurion’s talons wrenched the entire right flank of the Air Breather group free of debris, her words as cutting as crystal blades. Infurion saw her truth, and the grief indicators born of the sufferings of a matchless heart, and he was aghast.
The Ancient Dragon ground out, What tidings dost thou bring, Star Dragoness? Speak!
I fear that the spirit of Dramagon roams your domain unchecked.
The Tourmaline’s stomach fires turned to acid. Never had he imagined threading the finest of wingtip angles with an Ancient Dragon. What a gamble! Hualiama cut straight past the matter of Numistar Winterborn to the nub of what was only a breath of a suspicion, but it was enough, for Infurion’s reply told the tale:
He raged, Numistar – she promised – AAAARRGGHH! She promised egglings! Mine very … own …
Oh, Infurion, Hualiama interjected, her voice a whisper of sympathy that somehow, incredibly, eased the mighty being’s pain.
Truly? Aye! Suddenly, scales seemed to fall from Grandion’s eyes. He saw a pattern. The main thrust of Dramagon’s doings. All he and Hualiama knew about the two-headed Ancient Dragon’s endeavours began to fall into place and interlock like the finest of gemstone sculptures his shell-father had so loved to craft. Each and every irruption, from Shinzen’s giants to the enclave of the Lost Islands dedicated to pursuing Dramagon’s ends in the Island-World, from the subterfuge of the so-called ‘Scroll of Binding’ that was contrariwise, an arcane and ingenious binding for a Dragon’s soul to persist his ruzal magic across the boundaries of time and magical law; now this incredible intuition that correctly talon-tapped Dramagon’s paw as the one guiding Numistar’s actions! It was all part of one monstrously orchestrated plan that spanned across the aeons to engulf this very day in doom. The great two-headed Ancient Dragon scientist was the mastermind. He had even set the Winterborn against Hualiama and Azziala … and manipulated all three vastly dissimilar powers into carrying out his wishes as if his will were inked upon the scrolleaf of their lives.
All these events, he had orchestrated from the vantage point of thousands of years in the past? Oh, the unrivalled cunning of these Ancient Powers! O, fateful perception!
He stared at Hualiama, aghast. She saw. All he knew, she did – and she responded to his dark-fires despair with an opposing perspective, not so much to vex a Tourmaline Dragon – his lips peeled back momentarily from his fangs – but that he might bear her higher. When she could not fly for herself, her thoughts revealed, his wings had cut the moons to transport her to her destiny. Now, they stood ranged against Dramagon. The stakes had never been higher. Even Numistar was but a pawn playing in the wicked Red Dragon’s master scheme.
As Infurion’s darkness pulled away toward the sky, retreating across the mountains, insight shivered his wingtips and gripped his seventh sense so sorely, Grandion distinctly felt his third heart freeze, then stumble reluctantly into motion at the Blue-Star’s tiny mental nudge.
All his world was white-fires, yet in his enhanced metaphysical perception, Hualiama burned brighter still, the very distillation of light’s purity.
For this day, a star was born, he bugled.
I third-heart love thee, o Alastior, the Dragoness trilled, a sound of ecstatic, piercing clarity. She knew. She grasped his insights.
Again, delicious shivers wreathed his being. All the doubts he had known, burned away in the crucible of fresh and striking knowledge. This Tourmaline Dragon fought not only for his own survival and for the cause that had concerned them since e’er a girl dared to tread a Dragon’s back, but he had become a key actor in a greater conflict raging between ancient draconic powers, as Fra’anior the Onyx and Dramagon his aeons-old nemesis wrestled for hegemony over the Island-World.
How did the First Egg play into this?
Hualiama whispered, Immortality. The Ancient Dragons lost their past. No prize could be greater.
We must help Infurion, Grandion said. Dramagon cannot be permitted a talon tip’s hold upon this Egg, o beloved star!
The Dragons shared a glance, and the briefest caress of wingtips.
Ahem, Flicker cleared his throat with a rasping little fireball. The world’s about to end. Would you two stargazing lovers either find a private roost, or just mosey along and save us all?
* * * *
There was a quality of conviction that transcended logic. Every statement, every beat of her consciousness, seemed laden with this special significance which had infected her mate and drawn the Balance into unprecedented focus.
Mate? Humansoul objected mildly. Dragon lover … yet behind her absentminded teasing, her twin brains worked ferociously. Strategy. Mining the Dragon lore inscribed in both of their memories. Imbibing this new knowledge and the implications it must surely spawn, to try to divine a way forward for the Dragonkind. Their very survival depended on the path she must choose.
I’m a Human lover, purred the Dragoness, licking her fangs lasciviously.
Down, girly-Dragon. Look to the mountains. Nothing’s being born up here. Whatever’s underneath – far, far beneath – the mountains are rising only as a reaction to the force exerted in the opposite direction. We must go deep.
Could Flicker be right, Humansoul?
Her two soul aspects paused as if mirror images gazed at each other, wondering which was real and which, the reflection. Thoughts raced together like ripples passing over a pond, linking and modifying each other simultaneously. After a moment, the hidden girl advanced, Can’t say this bodes well. Infurion’s a victim –
Don’t say that to him!
Where’s the Winterborn? What does she intend? What’s Dramagon’s ultimate purpose in this?
We must command these fates. The Dragoness scented the air, rising with Grandion even as she exchanged volleys of commands with the Air Breathers and her Council. South? Beyond this disturbance?
Beyond Infurion’s realm, I do wonder, responded the girl, her Dragonish loaded with agreement indicators. How can we fight her out there?
Ask Infurion to flatten several hundred leagues of mountains? Forge a way …
The Dragoness joked grimly, but her Humansoul immediately fired back, Yes! Do that, dear fire-heart. He alone possesses the power of paw.
And in a dimly-glimpsed sliver of future, Land Dragons or Humans might still need to cross the Rift if this disturbance collapsed or exploded. Aye. Balance lived in this notion.
Infurion?
The Ancient Dragon surged smoothly onto a heading three compass points shy of directly West, his bulk cleaving the mountains with the ease of a Dragon fishing in a terrace lake. His vast, predatory consciousness seemed divided, assessing the combat situation, replaying his dealings with the treacherous Numistar and devising his strategies simultaneously, leaving only a small fragment to heed her communication – but he concurred in a flash of thought, darkness to her light.
Infurion dived. The vast length of him rippled as his magic penetrated bedrock torn untimely from its resting place and hurled it into the air or in a bow wave either side, like a Dragon splitting water with a clean plunge.<
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Let’s fly, Grandion, Lia commanded.
Curling his talons about Hualiama’s trim waist, Grandion launched into the smoke-occluded heavens, trailed belatedly by a number of other Lesser Dragons and Riders of their command. Strange mineral tangs touched his nostrils. Had ever such minerals and gemstone-bearing ores been exposed to the suns-light? These Earthen-Fires of Infurion’s type gave rise to entirely novel elements, and forms of life, he posited, that should by rights never exist in their Island-World. Adverse magic should obliterate each other, yet the Great Onyx had somehow found a way to enable them to coexist. Now, Dramagon’s plan must be to destabilise all his shell-brother had wrought.
Find me Numistar! he roared.
Meantime, Hualiama conferred with Infurion. He knew rocks and ores. He knew magic unimaginable to them; magic which had already penetrated the crust and found his intended egglings excavating deeper and deeper beneath the crust with an unprecedented outpouring of Earthen-Fires magic, in turn priming the Island-World’s inner fires with devastating volatility. Engineer-Lia calculated, and calculated again through the Flow, unable to process or believe her observations. Oceans of power! The trembling in the Balance, as if the cosmos itself recoiled in fear, communicated to her limbs and wings as she shuddered violently in her Tourmaline’s grasp.
Through her newly embodied magic, Infurion informed her in great blasts of knowledge transfer, Numistar had planted eggs all along the Rift. Thousands of eggs. Each had hatched and grown at a staggering rate, doubling in size every day as they feasted upon the Earthen-Fires magic of Infurion’s domain and generated more magic of their own, amplifying the feeding source for each other. Augmented far beyond any natural draconic form or function, their unholy fire-life now pushed outward into realms far below the Rift itself, realms which had contained the Earthen-Fires since Fra’anior first shaped his creation. His new perception explored the nature of these corrupted Dragonkind, product of Dramagon’s infamously illicit experiments upon the souls of his subjects – this was a vicious, grasping form of draconic life, apparently sub intelligent, forged to reach a goal of which they were as yet unawares.
She had abetted this by allowing Numistar to escape and to develop her next stratagem. Moreover, she had played directly into Dramagon’s paw. Great Onyx have mercy, what had she done?
For his part, Infurion had been blinded by his desire for young. He had ignored the signs, the bourgeoning power of these undraconic beasts. Hualiama saw a sliver of a vision of long, revolving ophidian bodies fronted by downward-pointing drill mouthparts each boring a tunnel eight miles wide deep into the semisolid lower mantle – yet, why? What lay down there, hidden far beyond the realms even of Magma Dragons and S’gulzzi?
Could a remnant of Dramagon be hidden in the bowels of the Island-World, far deeper than even Dragons dared to tread? Were these beasts quarrying for him? Hualiama gritted her fangs. She would put nothing beyond that notoriously crafty mind.
Aye, Dramagon, Humansoul said. But, could the plan be to separate me from the First Egg whilst we undertake this investigation?
Her Dragoness nodded, Aye, it’s a fearful risk …
I concur, said Grandion. Brace!
With a roar that transcended imagination, Infurion breached through the devastation of his domain and swept his paws outward as he had agreed with Hualiama. Magic rippled through the liquefied ridge surmounting the Rift at thrice the speed of sound, collapsing, condensing and solidifying a new substrate, and the displaced debris exploded so many hundreds of leagues to the South, Hualiama feared for the peoples of Herimor. Bombardment! Nothing else could be done. Slowly, from the infernos and chaos of Infurion’s world-shaping magic, a canyon emerged, floored with a strange, oily black substance called meriatonium, which resisted all forms of magic. A path.
Her burning draconic eyes measured the devastation. What kind of Isles would those be, fused with the Ancient Dragon’s unique magic, and what impact would his imprint make upon the life of Herimor? These were split second decisions made with little knowledge of their ultimate consequences.
No time for second thoughts. She must act.
MOVE! Hualiama roared at Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron and her kin, who surged forward at once, their myriad legs rippling urgently. Grandion helped lever a final couple of youngsters upright. She added, Carry the battle to Numistar Winterborn.
Infurion’s fury pummelled the Air Breathers to their knees! Her head snapped about. Ambush!
From beneath the sea of heaving, shifting peaks, spectral draconic limbs whipped over and around the length of the Ancient Dragon’s body at a speed that beggared belief, flickering with shadowy flame and crackling ferociously where they touched his … skin? The boundary of his magical armour? For he was a beast of flame and magic, she recognised, and did not possess a solid body as she understood it. Leagues of billowing sable clouds boiled off the points of contact as Infurion shrugged off the attackers, only to be mobbed fourfold, eightfold, swamped in a sea of thrashing tentacles!
Didn’t see that coming, muttered Humansoul.
Let’s pay better attention! the Dragoness responded, angry at herself. What can we do?
Grandion flexed his shoulders ominously. Care to dance, Blue-Star?
* * * *
In their instantaneous fusion of light, a Tourmaline Dragon found … laughter. Curiously, the wild ululations of his chanteuse were accompanied by unmistakably Flicker-esque trills, like whirlpools and tempests spinning off a howling Cloudlands tempest. He had never heard a sound to compare. He would not even have thought a Dragon’s throat capable of producing acoustic magic of such extraordinary, magically transformative qualities that its melodic disruption was felt in every bone and scale of his body, rather than through the ordinary channels of his ear canals.
Three friends united in tempestuous battle mirth, the thunderous emotion that arguably drove a Dragon to the utmost pinnacle of his combat prowess. Hualiama, wing-shivering in her endlessly adaptable expressions of magic’s very soul. Flicker, impish of fires. Grandion, inflamed beyond rational thought, reaching out with his Tourmaline power to seize those coiling, strangely crystalline appendages –apparently formed of a translucent, dark anti-flesh that conducted heat and darkness much as a gemstone might refract light – and to rend them like wet scrolleaf that nonetheless seared back through his magical talons like an aged Green Dragon’s most lethal Acid attack. Radiant warmth soothed his pain, allowing him to reach across the miles with blazing blue paws and slough Infurion’s back free of enemies.
Again. Watch the port flank! Lia encouraged.
Grandion swatted away a quintet of reaching tentacles. The creatures oriented upon his small battle group, wailing in pain as the starlight-infused Tourmaline fists wreaked havoc, but the outpouring of magic was also prohibitive.
Either side of Infurion’s new path, new clusters of writhing tentacles broke free and seared toward the united Air Breathers and the miniscule Lesser Dragons swirling above. Where they struck the rock, it pulverised in flashes of dark fires, giving off a ghastly miasmic smoke that beat upon every Dragon’s seventh sense with a knowledge of wrongfulness, of dark-fires created by the deepest draconic nightmares. Behind the tentacles were sac-like bodies many times larger than any Lesser Dragon, pulsating with stomach-churning, alien undulations as if the grim magic pent up within each creature fought to escape. Grandion sensed through Hualiama the readiness of the battalions to ride against Numistar and her offspring, and Yiisuriel bolstering him as he lashed out again and again.
ARISE! roared Infurion, stoking the fires of his realm. Throwing off the final few attackers, he surged toward the hole he had first created. WITH ME, DRAGONESS! OUR BATTLE LIES DEEP!
Lia hesitated. Grandion …
Go. I’ll lead from up here.
Don’t worry, I’ll be at paw to tell him what to do, Flicker advised quickly.
The Tourmaline bared his fangs at the dragonet. Aye, because I need a toothpick to clean my fangs of Numis
tar’s flesh. What’s the worst that could happen, anyways?
The dragonet said blithely, Well, Dramagon could destroy the entire Island-World –
Flicker! Lia yelped.
Their friend flitted past her muzzle, delivering a parting pat with one tiny paw – garnished with a double twisting somersault, of course, or his name would not be Flicker. But he said, Fly into the infernal fires for us, Star Dragoness. You alone can fight this foe.
Beautiful Flicker. Grandion gasped softly. For an outright pest, he had his moments.
In a choked voice, Blue-Star replied, Keep the First Egg safe in paw for me, alright, boys?
They nodded, and turned at once to the battle.
Strange, how she had always assumed that her affinity for starlight would mean that she must learn to fly higher than ever before. Now, as she soared upon desiccated winds toward the pit at the centre of Infurion’s realm, Hualiama had opportunity to regret her choice. Should trepidation rule her hearts? What might she find in the birthplace of the hostile Earthen-Fires, save a fate which Infurion had clearly threatened – a place where stars must die?
* * * *
Pensively, the Tourmaline Dragon watched his beloved winging after Infurion as the Ancient Dragon traversed the trembling mountaintops with infeasible speed. She moved with flowing grace, the sometimes awkward, Human-like gestures of her draconic body never more absent, even as her Humansoul continued to converse telepathically with her Council. He could never multi-task like that. Point him in the right direction and remove distractions – he grinned toothily – and Numistar was a lesser Dragon for it. Less a few limbs, to be precise.
Grandion flexed his muscles with studied laziness that masked the seething battle fury lodged like a tiny core of sunlight beneath his keel bone. He cracked his knuckles one by one. Hualiama was right. This was the fateful hour, a conflict raging in a realm the balladeers had never imagined.
