by Marc Secchia
This was the hour for a Tourmaline Dragon to soar and dream lofty dreams.
Expelled from the depths of his throat, a zephyr of hatred drifted over the battlefield. Numistar, oh Numistar – you craven, creeping maggot. Where are you cowering?
Chapter 32: The Darkest Fires
FOR A HULKING, sometimes bloody-minded brute, her Tourmaline evinced quite the melodramatic streak from time to time. The decidedly unflattering image in his mind of a sulky, slime-laden Numistar shambling through an imaginary blighted swamp weeping for succour from her torment introduced extra bounce to the Star Dragoness’ wings as she trailed Infurion’s path. Absurd Tourmaline. Uplifting in the most oblique draconic ways. Not without his faults, but the conviction that he could be her partner for life, and very best friend, stoked her draconic furnaces to an alarming core temperature. She folded that warmth within her, for it was knowledge that filled a Dragoness’ hearts with optimism even in the most fearful of circumstances.
Despite his mind-bending size, the Ancient Dragon moved far faster than she could fly, even at her top speed. Thus, Hualiama discovered the startling need to travel across the smoking, sulphurous peaks for nearly fifteen minutes before she reached the edge of Infurion’s new hole, into which he poured like a torrent of liquescent midnight skies. Creature of the deepest fires, he returned to the territory under his jurisdiction to face the invaders.
In that brief hiatus, the Star Dragoness arranged the forces of the Lost Islands, gave them marching orders, developed and honed seventeen new, dynamic magical constructs that she and Yiisuriel hoped would allow the Air Breathers to walk the perilous route to Herimor while withstanding the likely attacks of Dramagon’s offspring, and jested and conversed with her Lesser Dragon forces and Dragon Riders, rearranging the layers of defence and briefing the scouts. Was Grandion shaking his head at her? She pretended to swat him away. Pesky shimmering dragonfly!
The faraway tourmaline dot jerked in startlement. What did I do to deserve that?
Um … well, I – what? Lia spluttered.
Got you, chortled Flicker.
Rascal! Lia and Grandion snarled simultaneously.
Be alert, said the dragonet, his tone turning uncharacteristically grave. Not all is as it seems. Herimor is not for nothing called the realm of shadows.
An anomalous warning – but appreciated. As she tipped forward, mirroring Infurion’s path, her magic-assisted ocular magnification made out what appeared to be a white moth flitting about a misplaced gemstone. Her boys. She giggled mischievously as both Dragons, predictably, stiffened at the perceived slur. One way to toast a Dragon’s innards.
Then, her nose turned to the deeps. Scent. Sight. Listen. Taste. Absorb impressions through her wing membranes and the flow of air over her scales, and examine the wuthering that filled her nostrils with so much more than purely olfactory information.
Aye, I am awe –
Maximal draconic egotism, my darling petal? said Humansoul, very drily. Don’t you start copying the dragonet, we’ve enough lippy-zippy in our lives. Listen. Infurion’s gliding down into a trap.
The draconic presence replied, He must know that.
The girl-Dragoness glanced about, drawing closer to her soul-sister in deep communion. The Balance spoke of deep portents, of imminent events teetering on a talon’s edge of fate. Her stomach clung to her backbone like an eggling freshly cracked from the shell, nuzzling against his shell-mother. Aye, Dramagon’s evil lurked – but why did her innermost fires weep, like a soft rain thrumming upon the fields of her soul? Soft, yet excoriating. Inchoately terrifying … she apprehended the sensation with surprise and dread, coupled with a swelling sevenfold roaring in her consciousness that she had always recognised in Fra’anior’s communications with her.
Shell-father, is that you? What must I do.
The stillness spoke momentous truths to her soul.
She knew he watched from innumerable leagues distant. She knew? Should not all the trumps of the Universe resound at once, for the realisation that broke upon her soul now like the fieriest of Fra’aniorian dawns? A thunderclap of stillness; her every fire guttered, before flaring into unbearable whiteness.
Mercy, my soul … Humansoul whispered, aghast.
Such a burden of fate must strike to the core of her courage, of all that she was. For this, she had crossed the Island-World’s length and breadth, and flown to its darkest deeps; into the lair of the enemy she had trod, and not returned unscathed. She had died and been reborn of fire and starlight, and all the fires of her ancestors and mentors burned in her breast.
Her shell-father’s spectral presence spoke no word, but nonetheless she sensed his deep and abiding love. Unseen eyes infused her being with courage. Aye, this was her task. This was the duty and privilege and reason for a Star Dragoness’ very existence.
The Dragoness firmed her jaw. She would fly higher, and fight until her last breath if that was demanded of her.
This was her destiny.
Her dance.
As the white-fires cleared from her vision, Hualiama saw the pyres blazing in soot-edged crimson and obsidian billows along the length of the Rift receding obliquely toward the skies as she descended into what appeared to be a black-edged tunnel or sinkhole – how did one simply vaporise uncountable tonnes of rock? Yet the substrate seemed of little account to these creatures, as if they undulated through physical substance in ways similar to her experience of Flow. Handy if one simply sailed through mountains. It made travel so much easier. The grit on her tongue tasted of ashes and fires hostile to her kind, akin to the magma rivers she had travelled before but subtly more perilous.
She and her shell-uncle must thrust their necks into a trap devised aeons before by the wickedly gifted two-headed Red Dragon scientist, Dramagon – yet, could he have known in some prophetic sense the irruption that would be caused by Izariela’s progeny? Dramagon had played every game piece masterfully, so far. Flawless strategy.
Could a tiny Star Dragoness tickle the fates with her talon tips, and change the Balance forever?
Unexpectedly, Infurion’s immense presence filled her mind. Aye, I know. I am rousting out the enemy and blooding him on our behalf, kin niece, wing sister. The grin that accompanied these was perfectly monstrous, making Lia wonder what under the heavens she had dipped her paws into, on this occasion. At once, he said, My realm, my rules, o most dainty of allies. Yet you intuited so clearly – entirely in keeping with the lucid starlight of your heritage, so dissimilar and alien to the murky perils of my existence – the designs of Dramagon in these parts. Now tell me, what is this threat? Speak the Dragonish of thy heritage! Do these spawnlings, swarming throughout my realm, seek to destroy an Ancient Dragon?
She had barely begun to formulate a reply when, with an almighty roar, the fires that were Infurion’s being wheeled to his right paw, and the battle began in a wholly unexpected way. Darkness closed overhead, and the Ancient Dragon appeared to be dragged forward – vertically downward, her engineer corrected the misconception instantly – by a force neither of them understood or could apparently counteract.
Spitting and bellowing in indignation, Infurion fell away from Lia at an increasing speed. She chased after, having to pump her wings to augment her speed. The friction of air pressure increased with her descent, but the Ancient Dragon seemed to experience no such issue. Quite the opposite. His response to the forces, the deepening tenor of his already near-subliminal sounds suggested, was that he was indeed under the influence of far greater gravity than what was natural.
“Skanky windrocs!” the Star Dragoness screeched as her wings bent helplessly downward. She wrestled them back to her flanks with a supreme effort, but felt as if a shackle of tonnes had just been affixed to her nose. All the blood in her body drained toward her head. What little she could see was shades of Infurion’s crimson-dark flame and then the brighter but more eerie effect of the tendrils whipping out of the walls of the sinkhole to impact an armour-like la
yer of metal shielding Infurion had extruded over his body – not unlike sparks shooting off a welding torch.
Closing her ears to the cacophony, Hualiama extended her own shields, but recoiled as the tentacles seemed to pinpoint her presence at once. They were not necessarily seeing creatures. Drop the pneumatic and sensory shielding! Her hearts lodged in her throat – all three hearts crammed up toward her tongue at once, creating a sense of awful congestion – as she lowered her protections, relying on her complex Dragon senses to guide her.
Left flank! The Star Dragoness yelped as her attempted dive-roll rotated about the centre of gravity apparently bolted inside her left nostril, and ended up with her right hindquarters and tail slamming off one of the tentacles. Krack! Grandion might as well have booted her with his enormous foot, for the concussion belted her so hard her teeth clacked together and the side of her skull struck her right wing primary a bruising blow. She tumbled free.
Kra-ka-crack!
She screamed as the black appendages lashed her body and wings, hunting by touch – of course! Sensory ripples ran away from her position as she corkscrewed wildly, hampered by the constant grip upon her head, as if invisible pincers held her fast. Not the nose. Just behind her eyes.
The battle became endless and bizarre. Judging by the racket he was making, out-thundering any thunder the skies of her Island-World had ever imagined making since the days of the Onyx, Infurion was doing worse than her. Repeatedly, armoured tentacles lashed out of the darkness. Unpredictable. So fast, even her Dragoness struggled to react in time. Their shadowed nature confused her sight, as if she did not properly perceive their substance or flame. She bit her tongue inadvertently as three or four rapid-fire blows bounced her about like a nut in a gourd shaker; sparks crashed off her writhing body. Lia tried to leap into the Flow to escape, but that was when she received her nastiest surprise yet. Impossible! The magical grip prevented her from shifting planes?
How was that possible … Humansoul?
Here! Change – it’s using your Dragon magic to track –
No, dear petal … you’d never survive.
The girl inside screamed in frustration as the tentacles blurred through the semidarkness once more. “Unh!” The Dragoness reeled. Sparks! Bruising! Breath exploded from her lungs as simultaneous strikes crushed her ribs. Fighting free, she wheeled away into the flickering dark once more. Falling. Always falling, faster and faster …
Why could she not see properly? Distortions played havoc with her vision. The tentacles, easily thicker than her entire wingspan and apparently comprised of solid draconic muscle sheathed in dark-fires conducting, flexible metallic armour, smudged and smeared through each other as though she saw through a crysglass panel frosted with ice. They rose from nothingness. Disappeared and reformed. Infurion seemed similarly beleaguered. Dense smoke billowed off his body as the acrid stench of a furnace roaring full blast as it smelted metals came to her nostrils. Bits of scale armour fountained off him as the tentacles lashed out; Lia wondered where their owners were. Could this phenomenon be a distortion of Infurion’s own Earthen-Fires magic? A corruption, akin to ruzal?
“Be light!”
No!
Despite her Humansoul’s warning, the Dragoness flared brilliantly, illuminating their surrounds like lightning flashing between immense thunderheads. The tentacles vanished. Only the tunnel remained, boring directly into a realm of crystalline, semi-transparent shrouds and obscure simulacra of natural rock, as best she could tell. Judging by the increase in pressure, they were already two leagues deep and accelerating. Ahead of her, the mountainous back of Infurion, all matte-black armour gathered into slightly stellate, plate-like scales comprised of seething infernal fires, stiffened as he appeared to apprehend what she did.
This was all mental? A figment of their imagination?
The tunnel’s walls rippled as if the basal rock were merely so much water. Then, the most hellish fires of the Rift’s heart erupted all around them. Booming. Blasting. Concussion after concussion struck the Dragons as the inflexible grip renewed its ownership of course and destiny. The air sucked out of her lungs as all became dark-fires, and as fast as the Dragoness could throw up shields, the antagonistic magic disintegrated them. The backlash through her mind was almost worse than the mayhem around her as her carefully thought-out constructs imploded as fast as she could raise them. Tentacles shot out of nowhere as the afterglow of her attack faded – attracted to her power, Hualiama realised dazedly, having supped upon the offering of starlight fires with glee – and compounded her misery by whipping her worse than King Chalcion had ever imagined in one of his drunken rages.
The connection stunned her. These powers might be a billion leagues apart, but they shared the same sadistic bent.
She must draw deeper. Become stone. A skin of stone like Ra’aba had managed might just help her survive, for now she began to see the mighty sacs of the Dramagon-spawn gathering in the shadows about her and Infurion, and the note of the Ancient Dragon’s bellowing turned to pain as he lashed out, crushing tens of the enemy with each swingeing blow of his ethereal Dragon fists through the not-rock of the Rift, and Hualiama began to discern a deeper twist upon reality – what they had seen as mountains above was true only insofar as they were a manifestation of the changes wreaked in the physical structures of rock, mineral and metal boiling up from the realms of the Rift. What was the Rift in actuality, then? She had always thought of it as a void, an uncrossable abyss of Earthen-Fires, as legend would suggest. It was a place of fiery whirlpools a hundred leagues in diameter, and an endlessly changeable realm where nothing remained safe or steady for longer than mere seconds.
Now, with the benefit of Infurion’s agonised yet attentive insights to guide her, she saw afresh. It was a canyon varying from two to three hundred and seventy leagues wide and measuring a hundred or more leagues deep – a mighty home for a mighty draconic presence, the mightiest remaining in the Island-World. Infurion could not leave with his shell-brothers, Hualiama learned, because there was no place in the fires of that faraway domain for a creature of his fires. Instead, Fra’anior had shaped, as part of the world’s most fundamental equilibrium and flow of fires and magic, a realm where the Earthen-Fires would coalesce, exist and burn without destroying the prevalent white-fires-based elements upon which so many forms of life depended.
The Rift was protection. Essentially, an outlet valve for opposing forces exceeding imagination.
Infurion’s grin played in her mind. A garbage dump for the unwanted magic of thine Island-World, little one. The Earthen-Fires arise spontaneously within the magical bounds of mine realm, endlessly renewed – but now these quislings of Dramagon have created chaos. Imbalance reigns and the danger has never been more terrible.
She considered this in the tiny space afforded by the mauling her body was taking. Aye. What shall we do, shell-uncle?
Infurion roared, THOU SHALT FIGHT AT MINE RIGHT PAW, O DRAGONSTAR!!
* * * *
When a night-blue speck disappeared into the darkness in pursuit of her infernal shell-uncle – and how did Dragons of such disparate natures claim kinship anyhow – Grandion rotated his wing joints, and then the lower forelimb joints, stretched his spine and then realised that ten thousand pairs of eyes were watching. Waiting upon his lead.
He knew every nuance of his surprise communicated to the mind-meld. Did these Lost Islanders have no concept of privacy, of personal mental space?
Immediately, ninety-two different methods of filtering presented themselves to his mind.
Windroc spit, said Grandion, enunciating each syllable distinctly. Right. To the path. Yiisuriel, lead on. Scouts, I’ll have your reports. Get the scientists working on every detail of our environment. I don’t want any nasty surprises as we walk the Rift.
Aye, noble Tourmaline, Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron returned drolly. Except that Hualiama has dropped off the face of reality.
The Earthen-Fires –
The Dragoness
’ great mind soothed his response instinctively, a mothering touch. Aye, they mask her presence. A suggestion, Tourmaline. Engineering is not your gifting. Leadership is. Ask us any questions you wish and we will attend to the details of finding you the best possible answers, but don’t let yourself be swamped in our love of minutiae. You fly high as you are wont to do, and prepare to swat Numistar like a bug.
Grandion considered this. Very well. But you should be prepared for very many questions, as if you forge into flurries of insects. My first is, can you walk the meriatonium safely?
He had the impression that Yiisuriel blinked very slowly. Surprised by his concern for his larger brethren? She replied, It may be problematic. Current observations of atmospheric conditions indicate that our weight might be inadequately supported – she displayed to him a vast array of calculations, neatly summarised by main points – as you see, we need to learn to fly.
Or, to skate, said the Tourmaline.
For the very first time, he had the satisfaction of seeing a leagues-tall Land Dragon mountain – by Fra’anior’s own beard, not quite floored, but certainly flummoxed – for Yiisuriel blurted out, WHAT?
Grandion showed one hundred fangs, every one of them as smug as the next.
Oh, there goes the dignity, Flicker sniped.
I’ll leave the details to greater minds than mine, the Dragon responded evenly. We’ll move out when you’re ready, Yiisuriel. Now, Flicker, help me with my next question.
Which is what, exactly? asked the dragonet.
How may a star shine when all around her is darkness?
* * * *
Like Grandion, Flicker gazed wistfully toward the place where Hualiama had vanished. He blinked as the dark, fire-blasted peaks appeared to shiver, then they burped contentedly. Had he misheard? Surely not. Flicker was a master of the belch, both inebriated or sober. Those mountains had just broken wind, or he was a wool-brained sheep in a dragon’s scales.
