by Marc Secchia
For the Human girl meant, think, but don’t overthink. Dance. A certain Dragoness was tying her paws in knots trying to engineer a rational solution, when she needed to rely on instinct. Dance. Even if the stakes were life and death, dance. Perhaps, afforded time later, she might work out what she did to Shapeshift or heal or summon Star Dragoness power. But this was the moment to dive right into the core of her abilities, of who she was, and simply give the power room to flower.
And now she was thinking in rhyming verse? Hualiama clacked her fangs together in annoyance.
The Dragoness curved her long neck, made a flutter step, an elegant arch of her wings. Feel the flow. Be the flow. Trust that the magic would do what she did not understand. Saori had found a lump or a bone to stand upon, lifting her out of the hot lake of blood. The girl’s face glowed. No, it was white fire that guttered the instant Lia brought it to the forefront of her mind, but sprang up again the moment she pretended not to notice. Grr. Yet when she tripped closer to examine the results of her mother’s handiwork, there was Imbalance. She was its polar opposite, light in the darkness. Giving up the dance, Hualiama pressed her cheek against the wall of Siiyumiel’s heart.
My heart for yours. Let there be–
–Balance, echoed Siiyumiel, opening the pathways of his being. Guiding and welcoming her.
Siiyumiel’s flesh glowed with a new inner radiance where she touched him, a perfect portal made of the first muscle of this heart-node. Though she saw change and wholeness, the tissues remained dormant. Then, Lia sensed Mizuki sailing down the artery, just a few feet shy of that muscle.
Mizuki! Lightning attack!
BOOM! The Copper Dragoness’ instinctive response jolted the thick ring of muscle so hard, the force punched Hualiama ten feet backward. A quiver!
WHOMP! WHOMP! The first segment of muscle contracted sharply, but arrhythmically.
“Hualiama!” The artery wall muffled Elki’s voice. “Hold off just a–”
The change spread like fire devouring a load of kindling. Upward. Outward. Rippling colours. The muscle fibres and tissues returned to a healthy blue-and-green tapestry, shot with gold as the six-inch-thick capillaries and ancillary vessels refilled with fresh Dragon blood. Health bloomed. Connective tissues far thicker than any Dragonship hawser thrummed with renewed resilience. The entire area trembled beneath her paws, raising sloshing amplitude waves across the lake of Dragon blood.
“–we’re still in–hoooolleeee–”
His scream was lost behind a wall of sphincter muscles as an entire heart-node abruptly fired, settling into a fierce rhythm. The hissing and rushing of blood doubled in volume. Hualiama began to understand what the nodes were for–essentially, sequential bands of magic-powered, muscular pressure pumps that fed the heart ventricles with untold lakes-full of blood at high pressure. She stumbled sideways, trying to reach Mizuki and Elki, but they kept being pushed along, squeezed, squirted and generally pummelled from every direction as they passed along the node-tubes and shot into the small mountain that was the Dragon’s throbbing secondary heart.
Unfortunately–or happily, depending on one’s perspective–her hopping and scrabbling about and quick flight up a swollen ventricle between sheets of supporting connective tissue which sifted colour like a chameleon’s hide beneath her startled gaze, only appeared to spread the goodness. Infectious goodness.
Suddenly, Hualiama spun in the air. “The–” Her Nuyallith blade spun end-over-end through the gloom toward her nose. “Whaa!”
Her paw snapped out and collected the point of the blade neatly through the webbing between her fore-talon and second talon. Excellent reactions.
“Go get them!” yelled Saori.
Most certainly. Only, she was not entirely sure how she’d find her charming brother and his deadly sidekick in the maelstrom of blood-flow developing inside that throbbing heart. Extracting the sword with a wince, she flew upward again, tracing the senses and the flow, aware that the Land Dragon’s tremendous size might just prove decisive if only they could survive the pressure and heat; conscious also of magic draining rapidly from her body as the healing proceeded unabated, not requiring her attention any more.
Over here! Mizuki’s mental shout made her spin and dive to her starboard flank. Steely grey talons pierced the blue heart muscle. Help!
Flipping the blade in her paw, Hualiama made a deep cut. Mizuki’s fisted paw immediately punched out, driving a wriggling, gold-painted Prince of Fra’anior into the open, along with a spray of blood that almost choked Lia. Nevertheless, she seized Elki by the scruff of the neck–a cat pouncing on an oversized rat–and swung him off his feet.
Save him, Mizuki hissed, before the torrent tore her away.
Lia stared at the muscle, already knitting together beneath her disbelieving gaze. If Siiyumiel had this kind of natural healing ability …
“Mizuki!” yelled Elki, distraught.
I’ll help her, came Siiyumiel’s voice, stronger now. Down this way, Dragoness. We must act before the heart reaches full function.
What, this waterfall had not reached its crashing crescendo?
Dumping Elki unceremoniously near Saori, Hualiama darted away again, sensing Siiyumiel’s power now flooding through her. What was it about healing, that it was most difficult to perform on oneself? No mind. Lia upended herself and shot into a narrow, dark space that led beneath the heart, a mountain of muscle at over a thousand feet wide and perhaps five hundred tall. Still not healed, here. The muscle and tissues appeared blackened and wasted, as though shrivelled by a nearby fire. Azziala’s handiwork. Stretching her wings, Hualiama raced toward the goal Siiyumiel showed her, the exit-point of several major arteries where Mizuki might be able to find grip and squeeze through the thinner, less active arterial walls.
Make the cut!
Sii … Siiyumiel! she gasped. What if she cut too much? She could barely hear herself think amidst the rising din.
Out of time. The tiny Dragoness flipped beneath the artery, driving the blade into the wall as she used the momentum of her flight to make a twenty-foot slice. Blood fountained out, then abruptly slowed as a golden Dragoness plugged in the hole. Lia cut again, obliquely, widening the gap so that Mizuki, panting and wild-eyed, could squeeze through. The instant her tail was out, though, she turned and helped Lia shoulder the large flap back into place, straining against the rapidly increasing flow.
Healing magic flared white-hot, making both Dragonesses jerk back in surprise.
Mizuki smiled at the Star Dragoness. Your nose is smoking.
You’ve changed colour.
Not bad for a Dragoness who only found her wings last week. Mizuki walloped her on the shoulder. Right. How do we escape from a Land Dragon’s body cavity two leagues beneath the Cloudlands?
Simple, said Lia. We dance.
* * * *
Fifty miles southeast of Sarzun Dragonhold and seven miles above the Cloudlands, Grandion turned to scan the vista. Hualiama? Had he sensed her presence across the leagues, a faint tinkling of starlight-laughter on the edge of his consciousness?
The emptiness mocked his yearning.
Taking advantage of a brief break in the unnatural weather, the Tourmaline had shot away from the Dragonhold, low and keen, braving the buffeting of frigid winds and the oily, lung-clogging particles filling the air. He coughed again, hawked and spat out a greyish glob the size of Hualiama’s head. Mucous protected his lung-membranes, but he would not have managed to fly much longer through that muck. Passing between the neat ranks of migrating Land Dragons, he wondered how they kept to such an even depth. Could it be that these Island-Dragons did not actually crawl on a substrate, but sailed like the Humans’ boats on Gi’ishior’s terrace lakes? If he watched the peaks sailing along from this distance, they did appear to bob along very slowly, as they trod or swam their stately course.
Chenak led out, followed by a flotilla of fifty-two smaller beasts. Then came the deathly, grey-black storm, hanging over the oth
er Land Dragons like a burial shroud. Or a parasitic spirit–his scales tingled with foreboding as the ancient lore came to mind. Null-fire fool! Only in legend could a creature infiltrate and possess a Dragon.
The roiling storm spread over an area of perhaps a hundred square leagues, self-contained, clearly artificial, as if the Cloudlands boiled upward. Lightning played constantly among the greasy black thunderheads. By its behaviour, the storm was clearly following or linked to the Land Dragons. Even through that magical shroud, Grandion and Affurion had detected a great disturbance late the previous afternoon, a faint shock conducted through the Island beneath their paws.
Something had happened–to the Star Dragoness, his seventh sense whispered.
What thought he to gain, hanging here like a slack-jawed, feral beast? He must fly the long leagues to the Kingdom of Kaolili, and hope there was no residual Command-hold inside of him, ready to strike him down at a predetermined moment or location. Grimly, the Tourmaline scanned the skies, broadening the spectrum of his eyesight to the infra-red range to detect the changes of temperature caused by weather fronts or winds, or better still, a Dragons’ Highway. Aye! Delight surged in his chest. Three leagues higher, near the practical limit of draconic high-altitude flying, he detected a good strong breeze–not a Highway, but a steady aid to a Dragon in need.
His wings beat, a forceful surge. His challenge rang out: BLUE-STAR!
With a faint harrumph of surprise, the Tourmaline Dragon powered toward the open skies.
* * * *
“Elki, I–what?” Hualiama shivered.
“Aye, what is the word. And how. When, why and ‘what on the Islands’ also come to mind,” said her brother, at the peak of his chirpy, most exasperating form.
Blue-star! Grandion? So far away–what was he up to? “Brother darling, where did you leave your Dragon Riders, and Naoko’s people?”
“Darling?” His eyebrows waggled like dancing caterpillars. “I put them in charge of the Kingdom of Kaolili. On the way, we also met a chap commanding his army of airships–what was his name? Smarmy little fellow.”
“Commander Hiro?” Oh, she remembered him!
“Hiro, aye–do I detect a certain animosity? Lia smothered her snarl. Hiro, who had priced her hair and a few other matters inside his perverted mind? Slime! “I thought the Riders would best serve by joining forces with Kaolili, rather than being overrun by the Warlord’s superior numbers. Why do you ask?”
She shook her head slowly. “Grandion. I think he’s headed South. Fast.”
“Makes sense,” Saori nodded. “He, of all the Dragons, enjoys some freedom.”
“Off on another of his noble causes,” said Lia, wondering where the Tourmaline drew the line between being noble and being rebellious–a question she might ask herself!
Elki sneaked in a quick kiss. Saori pushed him off. “Honestly, can’t a girl get a moment’s peace?”
“Not when she’s so volcanically gorgeous,” he replied, with his most charming, Prince of the Realm shall sweep Lovely Maiden off her feet, smile.
Hualiama rolled her eyes. The Dragonesses had returned from death-defying surgery upon a Land Dragon’s secondary heart to find the warrior and her Prince locked in passionate embrace. Mizuki evidently found the whole idea of kissing quite revolting.
Elki protested, “I need tall tales to tell the children, one day. Boys, I kissed your mother inside a Land Dragon’s heart cavity.”
“You’re despicable!” Saori said hotly, accepting Hualiama’s blade and sheathing it at her right hip.
“I can but try.”
Actually, Siiyumiel said to Lia, and whispered softly in her mind.
“Oh. Oh!” The Star Dragoness eyed Saori speculatively. “Oooooh.”
Elki folded his arms across his chest. “Could we try words of greater than one syllable, and a modicum of intelligence? I know I’m the pretty one and you’re the brains, dear sister–ouch!”
Lia swatted him aside with her paw. “Saori, can I have a little listen?” Without waiting for a word of reply, she positioned her left central ear-canal against the Eastern Isles warrior’s muscular abdomen. “Hmm. Oh, aye.”
“Right, weird Dragoness,” Saori complained, squirming away and taking refuge near the Prince. “What are you two up to? Mizuki? Is this some weird Dragon … thing?”
Mizuki’s belly-fires trumpeted her rage. “I am neither weird nor a thing! Hatchling! Explain your behaviour.”
“Your Dragon Rider has been a naughty boy.”
Mizuki looked at Elki, who glanced at Saori, then furrowed his brow at his sister. “Are we five years old? Naughty?”
“Not that kind of naughty. Naughty-naughty.”
Elki’s face screwed up in a dozen different expressions as he tried to puzzle this through, but it was Saori who gasped first. Her hand flew to her mouth. Blushing rather violently, right up to the hairline of her short-cropped hair, she mouthed, ‘Truly?’
The Dragoness nodded, almost bursting into laughter as Human-Lia capered around in her mind, screaming something incoherently joyous. “It’s faint, but definitely there.”
Elki was still wandering around an entirely different Island. “What? What’s there? Where?”
“Impossible!” Saori burst out. “I was … oh no. My mother’s never going to forgive me. It can’t happen like this, Lia. It’s just not … possible.”
“I’m afraid it is, and it has,” Hualiama said softly. Why so distressed? Shouldn’t Saori be delighted? They had made promises and were clearly hopelessly rainbows-over-the-Islands for each other.
“It is, was and ever shall be?” Elki shouted, losing his composure. The Copper Dragoness’ acoustic shield dampened his shout, but it was also the only way they could hear each other above the cannonade of heart-nodes firing sequentially. “You females–what?”
Winding her arms around his neck, Saori kissed the tall Prince even more firmly than the first time. “Shut the trap.”
“Mmm–s’good, but I’m still … mmm … fuddle-brained.”
Mizuki had been frowning up a thundercloud, but she finally caught on too, and a great, hot burst of laughter gusted over the pair of Humans. “In Human culture, isn’t it appropriate to congratulate the expecting couple?”
“Expecting? What are we ex … pec … t-t-t … no. Yes? No. Can’t be!”
Mizuki’s paw whipped out. “Careful.”
Elki wobbled on his decidedly unsteady knees. “That kind of naughty? Great Islands!” Suddenly, with a hair-raising shriek, he seized Saori’s hands and set off on a wild, capering, heel-tapping dance. How he laughed! Spinning her around, he planted a smacker of a kiss on her cheek, crowing, “Yes, yes, YES!”
Suddenly, he paused mid-step. “Definitely fuddle-brained.”
Saori smiled tremulously as he wiped tears off her cheeks. “Pleased, Elki?”
“Totally, undeniably, quadruple-rainbows-over-Islands, dancing like a mad dragonet … I shall, of course, assume full responsibility,” he said, switching from spluttering delight to solemnity in a millisecond. “Fully fifty percent. Sixty, with negotiation. Because you were also a tad naughty, you wonderful temptress. And my willpower happens to be non-existent when it comes to all things Saori. But I’m one hundred and fifty percent over all Five moons! And a million stars! Isn’t this fantastic–Lia, you’re serious, right? No joke?”
Hualiama shook her head. “Siiyumiel noticed first.”
Elki scratched his neat beard with a worried air. “The mother. That’s a problem, Saori. Do you think I could speak to your mother, say from a hundred feet distant–two hundred–strapped to Mizuki’s back in case I need a quick getaway? While Grandion sits on her chest so that she can’t get to me to–” he made a cutting gesture at his neck. “I mean, compared to the Empress–with due respect, Lia–it’s kittens and rajals.”
Siiyumiel rumbled, “We should start purging poisons immediately lest the foetus be endangered. Come. We’ll consult with my Shell-Clan brethr
en. Put up your shields, little ones.”
“Could we work out how to stop infesting your body, Siiyumiel?” said Hualiama. “Perhaps the digestive tract?”
“We’re planning to be excreted as Land Dragon faeces?” Elki snorted. “I do have standards, sister!”
Lia pretended to fan her nose. “I definitely caught a whiff of your standards.”
* * * *
Five hundred and fifty leagues south of the wandering Lost Islands, the following morning, Grandion rested briefly on the wing as he scanned the outlying Islands of the Kingdom of Kaolili. An obscure branch of Dragon lore suggested that Kaolili had once been Fra’anior’s garden, before war between the Ancient Dragons had broken the famously verdant Islands into individual pieces, scattering them across the thousands of leagues that constituted the greatest Archipelago North of the Rift. Certainly the scenery was a soul’s balm, although a Dragon might have preferred a few towering cliffs or a handy volcanic lake in which to ease his aching muscles. He powered on, thinking over Hualiama’s idea of a penetrative shield. A Shapeshifter Dragoness could not possibly settle for a traditional viewpoint on draconic techniques honed over thousands of seasons, could she? Shields for defence. That was the mantra.
Unfortunately, it was also wrong-pawed. Or rather, just one paw where a Dragon needed four. Protection, counteroffensive measures, the inclusion or exclusion dichotomy–she had thoughts about that too, citing ‘leakage’ of magical signatures–and all-out offence, Lia’s latest innovation. She could not resist engineering everything, including his flight instruction, which she had admittedly received with fiery joy. Draconic magic, especially that of Dragons in the Blue and Grey spectra, was proven to aid flight dynamics. Indeed, many famous Dragon scholars believed that without magic, Dragon flight was flat-out impossible. Toss a cheeky Star Dragoness at the problem, however, and she was designing shields to shape airflow over a Dragon’s already streamlined body–and he had just attested her theories, measuring his physical and magical output over the course of this journey. Eighteen hours. Five hundred and fifty leagues. Even allowing for the wind’s assistance for ten of those hours, he should not feel this fresh. With a flick of her diminutive wing, she had just conjured–he calculated his reserves rapidly–a seventeen percent improvement in a Dragon’s long-distance flying stamina!
