by Marc Secchia
Silver gathered his decimated Dragonwing with a series of low commands. His shell-father would be displeased. Very displeased indeed.
Now, Shurgal would come to bargain for the First Egg. They must be ready.
* * * *
Stuck in a glob of hot grey glue that could have engulfed Emblazon, never mind a Pygmy-sized Dragon, Pip vanished into Shurgal’s maw. Oddly, she did not fear to be eaten. Death was apparently the least of her worries. What she felt was … fury? She grew weary of jumping from one volcano to the next, from sizzling trouble into the heart of the bonfire. Not that Dragons minded molten rock. She felt him dive, felt the undulating motion of the great body apparently running or swimming as the pressure grew steadily; her ear-canals constricted to compensate, making the sounds reaching the inner ear-organs muffled but still audible.
Then, Shurgal swallowed.
Pip might have screamed a Word of Command save that she barely had enough magic left to shield herself, and that imperfectly. She rolled down a cavernous gullet on a floor of rippling draconic muscle, before abruptly branching off into one of his stomachs–not a food-stomach or a fire-stomach, thankfully. A water-stomach.
BUBBLE! Shurgal’s voice crashed over her.
How?
Do you know nothing? Make an air-bubble. Like THIS!
She replied, Softly, mighty Shurgal. I am … tiny and frail. Please.
Dragons loved small, cute things, perhaps because they were so mighty. Pip had once watched Shimmerith playing with a kitten upon her paw, her eye-fires mellowing into orange and apricot tones. Shurgal’s tone unconsciously mellowed as she played to his instinctive protection-sense. Yet his intellect was vast, and the colours she sensed in his mind, dark-fires of green and a muddy brown–not a healthy sign. According to Silver, those colours were the signs of mental instability or even insanity. Her health, first. Pip formed an air-bubble around herself and queried Shurgal about how best to filter the toxins she sensed seeping through her flawed magical construction.
Soon, the air improved as she began to find some limited control of the fine art of gas flow, both into and out of her bubble as she floated on the surging waters of Shurgal’s third stomach. The glue began to wash away, leaving her wings tacky but serviceable.
Well. From the Marshal’s torture-chamber to the inside of a Dragon’s stomach. Life was looking up.
She began to speak, but Shurgal silenced her irritably. Pip gasped at the outpouring of his magic, understanding that he was concealing their tracks and even the aura of their passing, the magical disturbance every Dragon created as they traversed the Island-World. That signature, which the Marshal had wielded so effectively against her.
Deeper and deeper he ran; the pressure multiplied accordingly, his movements becoming ever more fluid. She imagined the Dragon running down an under-Cloudlands mountain. With the increased pressure, her efforts with the shield became more and more challenging, for the outward osmotic flows grew sluggish and the inward flows harder to manage. She wished desperately for Silver’s fine mental control. He was just so ridiculously talented–could he be devious enough to have intentionally supplanted her in an effort to gain the Marshal’s trust? Was that his plan? He was a creature of Herimor, after all.
Nothing would be easily forgiven, or forgotten.
The motion of Shurgal’s body changed to a side-to-side rippling which felt like swimming. Pip wished she could see something, anything at all, of the fabled under-Cloudlands realm, but her world was darkness save for the natural glow of her fire-eyes. She stood in a bubble just large enough for her Dragoness, floating beneath a curved, ribbed roof of deep purple, in a cavern which appeared to be three-quarters full of water. To her left, three successive layers of massive sphincter muscles had constricted the water’s egress, and hers. She supposed this place was as effective a jail as any.
Sensing no immediate danger, Pip slept warily–one eye half-cracked open, jungle style–for she judged her best form of defence was to recover her magic. After a period she estimated to be eight or nine hours, Shurgal suddenly growled:
Speak. You had a question.
Pip deliberately relaxed every muscle which had clenched in surprise. Shurgal, what do you want of me?
The First Egg.
At her soft interrogative, he added, The First Egg belongs to my kind, the Land Dragons. I am Shurgal-ap-Tuûar-bàr-Rhiytûxi, Guardian of Wisdom of my tribe the Rhiytûxi, also called the Water-Runners. There are many tribes. Some, in your tongue, you would call Shell-Clan. There are Stellates, Deep-Dwellers, Air-Breathers who make your Islands above the Cloudlands, tribes named for colour and allegiance … very many. You peak-dwellers think of this realm as dead, yet it is alive and filled with life in all its many forms.
Shurgal’s mental voice had a curious edge to it, almost an echo, and nuances she had never sensed in a Dragon’s mind before. Pip wanted to examine him more closely, but there was a crystalline quality to his mind that denied access, making her regard slide aside like claws skittering over crysglass.
And you gave the Egg to–
Re’akka stole the Egg! With his foul power, he convinced Leandrial and her perfidious kin to steal the First Egg, the greatest treasure of my kind, leading to Imbalance and war and suffering.
Finally, Pip worked out how to modulate the Land Dragon’s telepathic Dragonish, so that his passionate roaring subsided to a dull growl, like faraway thundering. Better that than hurting her extremely tender brain still further. Yet still, she sensed that curious double-echo behind his voice, and wondered what it meant.
So you–
He roared, I summoned the Nurguz to punish this pathetic Marshal by destroying his tribe.
And therefore, all the Lesser Dragons and Shapeshifters above the clouds, Pip said, aghast. Yet why can the Nurguz not hunt down here? Your magic is greater than any in our airy realms, surely, the greatest prize of all? Well, besides the First Egg. Everyone seems to want the Egg.
Ah, the joy of speaking Dragonish. She inevitably fell back into archaic speech-patterns. Hearing herself speaking this way was a source of amusement, yet the topic was crucial. Pip focussed narrowly on his response.
In the loftiest of tones, the Land Dragon explained, There are different types of Dragon magic, just as there are different dialects of Dragonish. I speak your dialect to help you. The Egg’s shell-magic is inanimate. The Nurguz has no interest in such power. It lives for the hunt, for the taste of life itself. Our harmonic magic is a different form again. The primary restriction appears to be depth. The power demanded of the Nurguz’s manifestation into our physical realm is prohibitive at such depths.
Pip gasped. It’s a Shapeshifter?
A dimension-shifter.
Can you … send it back? she asked cautiously.
No. Once summoned, the Nurguz will strip this world of its magic. There is no return. It is an intelligent, voracious and ruthless hunter. A scourge.
Yet the Shadow was apparently attached to the Marshal, or at least his Island, for it had chosen not to chase her. Teleportation could not be the answer. Too illogical. Pip’s mind returned to the problem of Shurgal. Doubtless, he planned to use her to bargain with the Marshal, or worse, to use her powers to steal back the First Egg. Yet the fate of the Egg concerned her as well. If there was an Ancient Dragon inside, she should protect it from a creature such as Shurgal, who wielded a power gained from–she stopped, thunderstruck. Roaring rajals!
Unsteadily, Pip said, So, what part do the Theadurial play in this complex power-game, o Shurgal? Do they not seek the Egg for their own ends?
The Theadurial dwell at enormous depths in the great rifts of Herimor, he replied. In their pupal stage they are able to parasitize Land Dragons, growing like your jungle vines along the brain-stem. What interest would they have in an Ancient Dragon’s Egg? They’re highly specialised parasites capable of inhabiting only one type of host.
And your parasite, does it agree with you, Shurgal?
My parasite?
The Theadurial I sense embedded in your flesh. Well, that much was intuition, but one Pip was reasonably certain of as she tried to piece together the true story of the First Egg and its claimants. And which Dragoness had laid it? She had not even begun to unpack the saddlebags of that question.
Shurgal’s movement stilled. For a moment, he simply drifted there beneath the Cloudlands. Pip heard her steady hearts-beat and was thankful for life; for how long, who knew? For the poisons continued to leach gradually into her system.
Suddenly, a new voice emerged, a voice of muted tinkling, as if crystal chimes clinked together beneath a layer of foul grease–that was her mental image. Pip blanched. She had never imagined such a hateful sound. Had she been a jungle jaguar, every hair on her spine would have stood bolt-upright and she would have backed away, snarling. She felt physically sick as it sneered:
Smart little Dragoness, aren’t we? So full of tasty nuggets of magic. Never mind, one little taste of my urzul and you will be ready to be parasitized–
KAAABOOOM!!
Shurgal quaked as an unseen force struck him amidships.
Again, an enormous blow shook the great Land Dragon. She had imagined at first Shurgal had run headlong into a mountain, perhaps, but now he shuddered in pain beneath repeated strikes, turning Pip’s hitherto slightly rocky ride into a Pygmy Dragon-sized pip rattling about in an enormous shaker half-filled with water. She tumbled about in her shield-bubble, desperately trying to shore up her defences. Then she heard a muted roar without–another Land Dragon! Leandrial! Her prison bounced in every conceivable direction as the Land Dragons grappled, bellowing at each other with the hatred of mortal enemies.
Pip cried, Leandrial! Leandrial! In here!
Suddenly, magic gripped her. The Theadurial! She tried to beat it away, but its magic was like trying to beat tendrils of greasy darkness. Fragments kept touching her, and everything they touched, became tainted. Pip had never fought anything like it. The Theadurial slipped through her shielding like a Dragon’s talons rending an undefended Dragonship’s air-sack–was this urzul? Or the Theadurial’s native magic? It was different to anything she had sensed in the Marshal. Panicked and in pain, Pip struck back with the psychic blasts Silver had taught her, and this at last caused the creature to recoil. She patted herself down mentally. All parts present.
Leandrial! Help!
Talons! Without warning, a massive talon blazed through the water-stomach right above her head. Pip hurled herself aside, gasping–a burning talon? Again, what magic was this? Reeking emerald smoke curled from the trench carved in Shurgal’s stomach lining, before it closed apparently of its own accord. Never mind shielding! She had a different problem. Leandrial was trying to cut her out blind, and doing a fine job judging by the sounds out there. The fray escalated to a whole new pitch of deafening. Pip curled up as the Land Dragons battled furiously, cuffing each other with blows fit to shake Islands, snarling and growling and tussling in an unimaginable physical battle. She wondered how many Humans had stood on an Island, felt a tremor, and not known it was Land Dragons scrapping somewhere near the roots of their domain?
Finally, a blow greater than any before slammed her into the muscular stomach wall. Could she cut her way out? Pip had barely flexed her talons when the Theadurial returned with an entirely different attack, stealing all volition in one fell swoop. Suddenly she could not remember how to blink her eyes. Raise a paw. Respond in any way to the world around her.
Talons! Pip did not even groan as Leandrial’s foreclaw sliced across her back. She could barely feel anything.
The stomach’s water surged up Shurgal’s throat, a riptide that tumbled Pip up between the great oval sphincter muscles, before they suddenly clamped shut on her midsection. She screeched in pain. He was trying to suffocate her! It was as though ten Emblazons had sat on her chest at once.
Out there, the shaking began anew. Leandrial’s challenge sliced into Shurgal with a piercing shriek of harmonic magic, cutting off the Theadurial’s stranglehold on Pip’s psyche. She sensed the Land Dragoness knew something about combating urzul. With her thoughts suddenly clarified, Pip flexed her Onyx power, creating a small breathing-space. Then she set about cutting and quarrying with her talons like a vole excavating a burrow. She dug through red-and-white-striated muscle into a place of steely sinews, traced with pathways of magic that gleamed like liquid horiatite. Pip weaved between those flexing hawsers. Thump! Boom! Leandrial and Shurgal were at it again like feral male Dragons slugging it out to the death. Pip crashed painfully about, tangling her neck and wings, momentarily crushed, groaning as a sinew thicker than her Dragoness’ upper thighs sawed across her neck.
The route to escape seemed endless, the final barrier, the massively thick scale-armour of a Land Dragon. Pip scraped and tore at the inside of Shurgal’s thickly armoured Dragon hide, howling in rising fury as the Land Dragon and his parasite fought back, thrashing her with a magical assault that was all about raw, brutal power. Enough! Her fury boiled over. Reaching out, Pip sank her talons into Shurgal’s armour and ripped outward with monstrous magical strength, tearing a rent a hundred feet tall. He certainly felt that. The Land Dragon went into spasms, thrashing about uncontrollably.
Pip squeezed through the gap, and fled.
Unfortunately, fleeing was akin to swimming in slow motion through one of Mistress Mya’adara’s nourishing stews. The air was so dense, it hugged her wings and made every motion sluggish. Kicking her legs and forepaws like a vastly overgrown frog, Pip lurched away from Shurgal’s side into a realm so bizarre, she could not recognise a single plant or feature. The Land Dragons appeared to have been fighting upon a vast field of heaped-up platters of plant matter, each of which sported garish luminous markings upon their leaf-edges, if it was indeed leaves she was looking at. The luminous markings emitted enough light for her to see by, revealing a strange world indeed. The nut-brown leaf-platters dwarfed even Leandrial. Most were comfortably long enough for a Land Dragon to run upon. In the middle distance, a group of pod-shaped, luminous yellow behemoths drifted along with the help of ridiculously tiny, rapidly vibrating wings set above what she assumed were the heads and tail ends, judging by which end was eating and which was busy fertilising the plain.
That was the limit of her sightseeing. With a roar, Leandrial flung herself at Pip, reaching out with one enormous paw. Shurgal, half again as large as the Dragoness, punched the flaming talons of both forepaws into Leandrial’s lower flanks and dragged her backward, gouging out half a dozen smoking trenches each large enough for any adult Dragon to fly into.
Leandrial voiced a terrible, haunting cry as greenish-gold blood pumped out of her wounds. Her outstretched paw shuddered. Pip, please …
The Pygmy Dragoness froze.
Chapter 27: Archaic Lore
SiLVER FACED THE Marshal, surprised to be alive. He had expected a roasting at the very least, or swift trip to the imprinting chambers.
Re’akka turned a tight circle, muttering, “Shurgal stole her? Most disconcerting. I did not anticipate this eventuality. She plays the fates like her own nine-stringed lyre, my shell-son. Like a master of the seventh sense.”
Returned to Human form and wearing House Re’akka uniform, a black single-breasted jacket with the triple interlocked Dragons symbol pinned to his immaculate epaulettes, Silver stood in the traditional pose of attention in his father’s office–shining black boots placed precisely shoulder width apart, chest thrown out, arms folded high across his uniformed pectoral muscles and a Dragonish stare fixed upon his superior’s every move. He was shocked, though. The Marshal sounded positively jovial. Admiring, even.
These emotions twisted his father’s face as though an artist struggled to radically modify or overpaint his first creation.
“Father, this is a setback, surely?” he inquired.
Re’akka said, “I despise an uneven contest. This conquest has been too easy. Every move planned, my superior strategy and prepa
redness sweeping the board of their chiahiaki-pieces. At last, one chit of a girl dares to stand against me. Should I not rejoice? She is a worthy opponent!” He thumped his chest like a male Dragon displaying dominance, then ticked off on his fingers, “Despicable cunning, astonishing mental fortitude and supreme power! Oh, worthy indeed!”
“She is a Shapeshifter.”
“Exactly!” For a second, Re’akka’s eyes displayed an unholy light and Silver thought he might have to suffer yet another diatribe on the all-encompassing pre-eminence of the Shapeshifter race. Instead, Re’akka rounded his desk to approach Silver, and clasped his much shorter son’s biceps firmly. “You displayed mature judgement in choosing Pip as your quarry, my shell-son, even if she is sistûk-tyk.” Silver forced his features to remain impassive at this ill-mannered double-reference to her dark skin colour and midgets in general. “We must adjust our strategy accordingly. Ay, it is time we woke Shurgal to the reality of our power beneath the Cloudlands as well as above.”
With that, he punched a button on his desk with his Kinetic power. A metal screen behind his desk began to roll down. Silver had always thought it concealed a private vault; he saw instead a reinforced crysglass tank filled to the brim with murky, brown-tinged water. Inside, a dozen sleek, torpedo-shaped grey creatures waited, watching them through the four-inch thick armoured glass panels. One end was all teeth, a sharp conical point lined with two or three dozen outward-pointing, concentric rows of fangs, giving the creature the air of a living drill bit. The other end, fifty feet away, was all fins and spidery appendages, and eyes.
Silver realised that these creatures probably swam backwards. “Impressive,” he said dryly. “What are they?”
“A subclass of Borers called chell-bûyon. Very rare. About seven years ago, we captured and studied a young Land Dragon. With the right encouragement, it gladly furnished us a great deal of knowledge about the world beneath the Islands. Ordinarily these Borers are an annoyance, drilling the odd hole through a Land Dragon, but these are a little more special. I changed them using urzul. These beasts will hunt by a specific magical signature, break down shields and inject a poison that will paralyse a Land Dragon for a week. That’s not enough to kill a Land Dragon, but it’s plenty of time for all of the other nasty parasites down there to make themselves at home–which inevitably spells a very painful end for a Land Dragon.”
