by Marc Secchia
Had it all come to this? The plainest and most profound of choices–life or death?
On a whim Pip flew down to the library, where once she had worked under the stern eye of Master Shambithion. There she found Yaethi slumped over a scroll, sound asleep. The Dragoness padded to her friend’s side, peering over her shoulder. She had been reading one of the five precious Order of Onyx scrolls. The title captured her notice: ‘The Onyx Chose Life.’ Beneath it, penned in Yaethi’s neat hand, was one word, ‘Choose.’ Fra’anior had chosen life, to build life and to safeguard against his destructive kin. The Onyx must choose the same. Was this Yaethi’s meaning?
She paused, struck by her friend’s insight. Clumsily picking up a quill between her talons, Pip dipped it in the open ink-pot and paused, concerned about desecrating a priceless scroll. Yet, Yaethi had not withheld. She would not willingly break rules. Pip sketched a Dragon egg beside Yaethi’s note, adding a label, ‘The First Egg is life.’ There. A few words more? Beneath, she wrote, ‘I am Pip, the Onyx Dragon. I choose life.’ And she signed her name in four neat clusters of runes.
Whatever she chose, may it result in life.
* * * *
At dawn, Marshal Re’akka’s voice boomed over the Academy volcano: “I am Re’akka, Marshal of Herimor! Where is the one called Pip, the Pygmy Dragon? Let her come forth to offer full and unconditional surrender! Give her up, or I will unleash my Dragon of Shadow and end you all.”
Three times, he repeated his challenge.
The Marshal flew to the fore without his usual escort, clasping Silver in one enormous white paw. Silver appeared to be sleeping, but Pip thought she might be able to detect a heartbeat slightly faster than it should be, and the glint of a Lavanias collar encircling his neck.
Pip had been hovering with the Academy Dragons above the volcano for the last half-hour, watching Eridoon Island spout the Dragon Assassins. So many were they, she pictured a storm cloud Fra’anior might have worn around his neck. Had the Nurguz decimated the Lesser Dragons of Herimor before travelling north, she wondered? Might these, together, be the last of the Dragonkind above the Cloudlands? Meanwhile, a dawn of magical beauty lightened the eastern sky. Pygmies said that the closer one walked to death, the more a fragment of beauty might light the soul. Thus it was her hearts ached for splendour, in poignant contrast to the great deal that had been spoken and argued, and even shouted, bellowed and fought over, on the Academy side.
The Pygmy Dragoness pushed all of that aside. As Leandrial had taught her, she tried to listen to the Balance, to feel it, to attune herself to the song and flow of the world. Around her were Kassik with Casitha, Emblazon and Oyda, Nak with his Shimmerith, Yaethi riding Arrabon and Chymasion speaking softly to Arosia, then Blazon and all the Dragon Elders, and one thousand, four hundred and fourteen further able-bodied Dragons, many armed with Rider saddles and crossbow emplacements.
All these faced over four thousand pairs of unfriendly, burning eyes, and over the floating Island, an additional several thousand Dragons the Marshal had kept in reserve. What did numbers matter when the odds were so heavily stacked against them?
Pip stifled the urge to leap about like a jaguar kitten chasing invisible fireflies. Something was amiss. Her gaze strayed to the Cloudlands, a deceptively homely-looking tan carpet. From there? Or from elsewhere? Where was the threat, the Imbalance, perhaps a third opposing power she sensed as an itching in the back of her mind? Had the Island drifted closer? Ay, it floated perhaps two miles offshore. Her mind probed the wider environment restively. She tasted and sniffed the air. Perhaps Re’akka had a nasty surprise tucked away inside Eridoon, a novel use of the First Egg? All she knew was the last time she had felt like this, she had discovered Silver fomenting mischief with Shimmerith’s hatchlings.
With a clip of her wings, Pip flew out between the two forces, feeling like a gnat positioned between a pair of very large hands. She approached Re’akka’s position just east of the rim-wall, a mile above the three-mile-wide volcano. The Blue-White Marshal was at his physically imposing best, a clear strut in his wingbeat as he oriented himself regally to receive her approach. Since he measured seven times her length and many times her tonnage, the contest looked ridiculously unequal by any conventional measure of draconic battle-lore. Re’akka had his cold-fire, his Kinetic strength–Pip rubbed her chest, recalling the sensation of her internal organs being rearranged to the tune of the Marshal’s lively commentary–and a further giant advantage, the power of the First Egg. She should be under no illusions that she could beat him in a fair fight. Fair? She was a crafty jungle warrior!
“So,” boomed the Marshal, from five hundred feet away, “will you surrender, Pygmy Dragoness, or shall I destroy this traitor first and chew on the rest of you for leftovers? Look around you. You are outnumbered and overmatched. Why not save your lives, pathetic as they are?”
Pip amplified her voice as Emblazon had taught her. “You’ll guarantee to safeguard every life in this volcano?”
“I guarantee nothing,” he sneered. “I demand unconditional surrender. No more, no less. I hold nothing but contempt for these Academy Dragons who chose you, a member of a squalid race of mud-grubbers, cannibals and naked savages, to represent them.” The Dragon made a spitting motion. “Surrender, or I will design a death befitting of the black filth you are.”
Loathing made her body shake as she growled back, “Re’akka, you remind me of nothing more than a grub. You know, one of those grubs I used to dig up and eat in the zoo–fat, white, disgusting grubs that taste like ralti meat–”
GNNAAARRGGGHH!
So, he could be provoked! Pip smiled grimly as a chorus of approving roars and laughter rose from the Academy Dragonwing, more than overmatched by the furious thunder of the Night-Reds.
Re’akka roared, “Do not bandy words with me, child!”
“You had me in your clutches, Re’akka, and I beat you. That’s how I know you for a sad, deluded fool–”
“Answer, or your precious Silver Dragon dies!”
Her hearts crammed into her throat, but Pip forced an expression of disdain onto her lips. “Your shell-son is your lackey, Re’akka. Destroy your bloodline if you wish, I don’t care. Murder them all. You’re a cockroach, not a Dragon.”
The Marshal dangled Silver from his talons, testing her resolve. Pip crushed her emotions. He was a traitor. The Island-World would be better off without Silver or any of his brutish kin. She must believe that. She had seen nothing redeeming in him all that time Silver had tortured her. These people had killed untold citizens of the three great races. They had murdered her mother. Be strong, Pygmy girl! Be Onyx!
She stared with eye-fires laced with darkness at her former boyfriend.
His lips curved into a soft, sad smile. A smile that bade her, and all the Island-World, farewell. A smile that dropped the molten suns into her heart. Shock stole the air from her lungs. Silver?
He ripped out of the Lavanias collar, an instantaneous burst of magic transforming him into Dragon guise. With a snap of his hind paws he kicked his shell-father in the jaw, using that as a springboard to leap toward Pip. One wing-stroke. Behind Silver, Re’akka wiped his jaw with one paw as if dismissing Silver from existence. Then he reached out, the malign curl of his talons matched by the expression upon his lips. Kinetic magic speared from his talons.
Gazing directly at Pip, his eyes ablaze with liquid passion, Silver began to bugle, “I love–” Seized by the iron grip of Re’akka’s Kinetic magic, he lurched violently and stalled in the air. The young Dragon clutched his chest, coughing, “Pip? Pip …” A ghastly rattle accompanied his expiring breath.
His eye-fires guttered.
Re’akka’s laughter boomed over the massed Dragons. “Die, you traitor!”
All time, all life, all hope, froze forever.
A desolate cry broke the silence. Pip twitched forward from a hovering start, her wings blurring with extreme speed, her paws outspread in a gesture of pleading, of th
e purest despair she had ever known. Channelling her power. Seeing in Silver’s flesh an inexpressible point of light gathering beneath his breast, the fabled third heart of the Dragonkind; knowing it for the expression of his Dragonsoul, a white-fire being of winged beauty intensifying within his mortal flesh. Pip saw all this. She saw death begin to take him. A crazy, desperate idea speared into her mind, not even a conscious thought, but a Dragon-swift calculation.
She teleported through Silver, batting his stalled hearts with a sonic vibration as she ghosted by.
The action she took should have been physically, metaphysically and spiritually impossible. Pip somehow found herself between Silver and the Marshal, the encumbrance of the Silver Dragon’s weight braking her impetuous rush even though they were not touching, and as she ducked, reacting to an unexpected presence rushing up behind her, their strange connection twisted into the same slingshot manoeuvre with which Silver had once hoodwinked Emblazon to win their race.
Silver gasped an enormous, ragged inhalation. Air whistled shrilly into his lungs. The continuing onrush of his Pygmy-generated momentum slammed the young Dragon into Re’akka, who seemed too stunned to react. Silver sank his fangs into the base of his father’s neck, biting down instinctively, pouring his unique silver-fire into the holes he punctured.
The massive White Dragon’s cry of pain lashed his enormous Dragonwing. He punched Silver loose, reeling as though he had taken a heavy blow to the head, for his eye-fires burned with a million questions and his movements seemed sluggish. The Marshal wheeled, drawing back toward his forces. Instinct sped Pip to Silver’s side. He seemed more grey than silver, clearly terribly shaken, yet he spared a moment to nuzzle her neck in a gesture Pip recognised from Emblazon and Shimmerith’s courting.
I never stopped loving you, he said.
Oh, Silver!
Her world froze a second time, but for an entirely different reason. All was Silver. All was a magic greater than any which had impacted her life before, a transcendent realisation of oneness with the soul beside her.
Unthinking, unheeding of anyone or anything else, the two Dragons turned and breathed over each other and into one another the secret fires of their souls, and in that mingling, saw the world made afresh. Promises. Commitment. Apologies. Passion. True love, deeper and fierier than the joy of stars, breathed out in the essential expression of draconic life. All was articulated without need for speech. They breathed so deep, the soul-fires consumed them everlastingly.
An unknown time later, a blue paw touched Silver’s shoulder, pouring healing magic into him. If you two are quite done, Shimmerith laughed, we happen to be in the middle of two startled battle-fronts about to smash together. Strength to you, noble Silver.
Nak put in, Will you ever need it when you’re dealing with that girl!
Pip blinked. What happened?
Breathing soul-fire is so rare! Shimmerith sighed. You’re a wonder, noble Pip.
Pip’s bright laughter rang out in the canyon between the two opposing Dragon armies, her entire body tingling with elation. Still the Dragon Assassins hovered in their dense ranks, bereft of commands, for the Marshal watched without apparent understanding. The Academy Dragonwings were fixated upon Pip and Silver and upon what had transpired between them.
Death to life, said Silver.
Briefly, Silver’s memory-echo flashed into Pip’s awareness. Silver was rising from the green Islands of the world toward a realm of glorious fires, when a beautiful, glowing being caught his eye. She was the purity of starlight, the glorious imperative of Dragon life. She beckoned to him and he tarried, as if her words were the Dragonsong of his soul.
Don’t leave me, Pip heard herself say. Come back, my precious Silver.
Pip? Am I dead? I don’t understand.
I don’t either, but your place is here. With me. And he turned, and found a fleshly raiment waiting, and his fires inhabited that raiment not just as if it were a cloak he drew over his shoulders, but imbued every element as though it had arrived home and made its forever-abode there.
Pip said, Was that me you saw?
I think so, said Silver, his Dragonish redolent with wing-shivering wonder.
Just then, Marshal Re’akka vented his wrath and indignation in a tremendous bellow, DRAGONS, DESTROY THEM ALL!
* * * *
As if the rage of a thousand years had been unleashed, the Dragonwings fell upon each other tooth and claw.
Pip had the briefest instant to shout at Silver, I’ll handle the Marshal! You get to safety!
He yelled back, Over my recently dead body I will not–
Go! Pip gasped, champing back her Word with a furious cry. Please, Silver.
His eyes-fires silvered with understanding. Thank you, Pip.
A white-blue fireball slammed into her shield, frosting it instantly with a bone-deep chill. Pip veered sharply, gathering her thoughts and fury into a single, concentrated ball of desire in her chest. Should she breathe a little magic and let untrammelled forgiveness envelop the Island-World in multiple overlapping rainbows of perfect peace? By those very same fires, Silver had tortured her without a drop of mercy! She hated him! She loved him. Release and healing … that seemed a thousand Islands away. Pip berated herself for letting Silver back in so easily. Weak! Foolish! So easily swayed.
Yet heart was her strength. Pip’s Dragon-instincts responded to the battle around her. She slipped between Night-Reds, stalking the Marshal. Somewhere behind, she heard Emblazon’s monstrous battle-challenge as he slammed into the Dragon Assassin advance with all his extraordinary strength. A dozen or more of the Amber Dragon’s fireballs hosed past her, exploding amongst the massed Assassins with detonations dulled by her ear-canals. Fire laced her path; Dragons fell, stunned. Pip stormed ahead regardless, deliberately filling her lungs with fire and smoke.
Now, Re’akka. He slipped backward steadily, throwing Dragons at her left and right with flicks of his claws, studying her responses as Master Balthion used to study her swordplay. Pip fought through again and again, relying on her Onyx strength to blast through the wall of Dragonflesh, but the sheer weight of bodies bogged her down. She could not close with him. Re’akka struck viper-like with his Kinetic power, but Pip had been expecting this attack. A shimmer of Shimmerith-like shielding, applied with eidetic perfection and speed, brought to her ears the surprised gurgle of two Dragon Assassins on her tail being strangulated by their own leader.
“Coward!” Pip roared, as another dozen Dragons impeded her path.
Re’akka only smiled, waving his talons languidly. Dragons, crush the Onyx.
Every one of several hundred Dragon Assassins in the vicinity flung themselves at Pip. She dodged, jinked, tumbled away from a lashing tail-strike and found herself crushed between three Night-Reds’ torsos. They clutched each other and her. More and more bodies thumped together, forming a melee that only briefly pretended to fly. They plummeted. Yet, Silver had tried this trick on her before. That day, Leandrial had plucked her out of the Cloudlands. Now, Pip remembered the strength of her friend and the song of her harmonic magic as she battled Shurgal.
Her muzzle was mashed between bodies. Her wings could not move; she could barely lift a paw. But she knew how to armour a Land-Dragon. Laughing with wild, fierce joy, Pip reached for the Onyx power and threw it together with her memories. What emerged was a Dragon of Light.
Huh? What a crazy magical equation …
This was beyond jungle-craft. But not beyond imagination. Not impossible.
Pip exerted her strength, crying inwardly, For your honour, Fra’anior! And from her throat, a deep, shuddering groan shook the ball of Dragons tangled around her, GNNNAAAARRR …
Light rampaged from every scale of her body, racing outward in an expanding likeness of a Pygmy Dragoness. Her petite skull-spikes, her talons, her slim, sinewy body, enlarged to twenty times her size before the brilliant magic dissipated. Pip blinked, turning slowly in the air. Where were all the Night-Reds? Nearby, Emb
lazon whirled in similar confusion, finding himself in clear air. Where had his enemies disappeared? For hundreds of feet about, Academy Dragons flew in the open and the Night-Reds were dust. Vapours and fire-trails expired on the early morning breeze.
Pip felt sick. Faint. How had the magic distinguished friend from foe? That Hualiama, could she not have explained a thing or three about Star Dragon magic before it ambushed everyone?
Then, she sensed a shift in the Balance–a shift which had not originated with her. The Pygmy Dragoness spun her body, flaring her wings in alarm. Emblazon! Academy Dragons! BEWARE THE WEST!
The Academy volcano trembled. Rock cracked. With a roar that split the heavens with fire and lightning, a black and yellow muzzle lunged into the air above the far rim-wall. Shurgal! Not Leandrial, as she had hoped. Pip back-winged in awe as the Land Dragon’s forequarters obscured the horizon, his immensity needing no exaggeration as he surged up the cliffs of Jeradia Island and onward into the sky, looming half a mile over the volcano. For a moment, Pip thought he meant to take off. Curling his forepaws over the rim-wall, crushing the stone with his monstrous tonnage, Shurgal bounded across the caldera. His tail casually pulverised a couple of buildings as he caught onto the far side, cracking the mountain in a dozen places. Shurgal gathered himself for an endless second until, continuing his onrushing momentum, he launched into an almighty leap.
Shurgal flew. He arrowed toward Eridoon Island in a massive arc, a two-and-a-half mile leap from the volcano’s top.
