Dragonsoul

by Marc Secchia

  Through the fabric of the mental network, a voice boomed, DRAGONS, ARISE!

  Azziala. She must have sensed a change in the magic, a flicker in the endless rhythms of a Land Dragon’s life-magic, which had slowly begun to permeate Lia’s awareness. Perhaps she and her mother had more in common than Lia imagined–o hateful thought!

  Bursting onto the outside portico, she looked immediately to the Place of Reaving, the nearest nostril. The midday suns highlighted movement, a flutter of almost-translucent wings. Two. Five more. Foot-long dragonets began to pour out of the nostril as if a cave mouth exhaled bats, only these were draconic creatures that resembled the larger Lesser Dragons in every significant detail. All over the Land Dragon, and those further afield, white dragonets began to rise over the Lost Islands like a mist. Tens of thousands. Millions.

  Mercy.

  At another level, Hualiama was aware of the Dragon-Haters’ mental network buzzing and heaving. Lesser Dragons burst out of every stronghold to fall upon the dragonets tooth and claw, but there were so many, it was as if they flailed at passing clouds. Fire flared. Low rumbles resounded from the fireballs launched nearby; from afar, orange flares billowed ahead of the hunting Dragons. After several minutes of unopposed slaughter, Azziala herself emerged aboard her Dragonship to survey the scene, and her Commands began to ring out, echoed by every Dragon Enchanter and more faintly, by those manning the Dragonships on Islands further afield. Dragon, die. Dragon, die. Dragon … almost, it seemed that white snow drifted to the ground, but this was bodies; living fire-souls snuffed out.

  An icy wind played about the peaks of the migrating Land Dragons.

  Upon that wind drifted a presence colder than the farthest reaches of space. Legion dragonets stirred. Hualiama clutched her own hatchling instinctively. Be strong, Flicker.

  Oh. It slipped out.

  A shrill chittering rose from the dragonets nearest Hualiama. Their reddish, albino eyes flared with an unnatural radiance. As one, the tiny creatures turned to maul their attackers. Snarls of fighting Dragonkind developed as if by magic. Stunning savagery. Animal tearing into animal. Behind her, Elki gasped. Screams resounded from the nearby Dragonships cresting the peak of Chenak before Azziala reorganised her draconic defence, flinging Sapphurion and his kin into the fray.

  “Mizuki!” Elki shouted, fixated on the Copper as she whistled past Azziala’s flagship. Her Shivers power literally tore swathes of dragonets apart.

  Despite the efforts of the enthralled Lesser Dragons, who numbered in the thousands, the dragonets were innumerable, swooping and diving over the peaks in thick clouds, like the worst imaginable swarms of summer pests–only, these pests came furnished with lightning reflexes and razor-sharp talons and fangs. The fighting was thickest around Azziala. Lia sensed the Empress drawing deep of her thralls, causing Dragons and Enchanters alike to wilt as she plundered them for resources. Lia ducked instinctively as a mass of several hundred dragonets whooshed by not ten feet overhead, but they seemed intent on mobbing Azziala; just forty feet off the bow of her Dragonship, Sapphurion fired fireballs so fast, his concussive strikes sounded like a throbbing drumbeat.

  It twisted Lia’s gut to see the respected Dragon Elder reduced to a mindless thug in Azziala’s service.

  Be free.

  She bit her lip. Hide it! Yet even amidst the chaos of battle, she sensed her mother’s hateful regard–the inner twin–responding to the presence of ruzal. Azziala noted the dark, delicate spiderweb of power that instantly disintegrated her Command-hold over Sapphurion.

  The great Blue whirled so fast his form was but a blur; he attacked Azziala with every power at his command. Perhaps a tail-strike? Lia was unsighted for a second, but the lightning-shot fireball that enveloped the Empress’ Dragonship was certainly his signature strike, followed a millisecond later by a swift paw-swipe that shattered the gantry where she had been standing.

  Azziala blinked into being right next to Hualiama. “Cunning, my daughter. I do appreciate a little attempted assassination to keep your mother alert.”

  Lia opened and shut her mouth without being able to utter a sound.

  “Watch this.” DRAGON, SEIZURE!

  “No!”

  Two hundred feet away, Sapphurion jerked as though punched in the head. Lia saw the magic bloom. Saw the Empress’ diabolical construct burst every blood vessel in his brain. And she could not stop it, for she seemed trapped inside a chamber, an echoing space within which all her magic turned upon itself. Azziala’s revenge.

  Nooooo!

  All her screaming was inside her own head. Then, another voice intruded, anguished and irresistible. Hualiama!

  Her knees crumpled.

  * * * *

  A Dragon knew weakness, but his Dragoness had the baffling power to turn weakness inside-out. He knew failure, but she knew worse. All paled before the knowledge of his shell-father’s passing on to the eternal fires. Hers was a Dragonsong of feral, desolate grief, tearing through his hearts and his soul like the thundering torrent of a Cloudlands-bound waterfall: I killed Sapphurion!

  Her thought-memories played her false. With tender strength, Grandion pacified, No, you did not. Sapphurion made the choice to attack. It was his decision.

  She keened, inconsolable, No, it was me, I did it, I made him, oh Grandion …

  How did they even speak across the many leagues? The Tourmaline shifted restlessly, feeling as though he slept and must somehow awaken. Thou–

  No! Don’t mock, not now …

  I need thee, he communicated, soul-to-soul. Unwilling, we did this before. Now I invite thee within. Help me, thou–

  I-I cannot, please! How can you trust me? How?

  With my verimost soul, thou who art my soul-strength, my Dragonsong … he had to do this. To honour Sapphurion’s legacy, the shell-son had to live, to avenge. This is my sacred duty. Help me!

  To his shock, Grandion realised that he had drawn Hualiama in. No longer was he the conqueror. He had yielded to Blue-star, and all was light, and the beauteous melody of her presence.

  White-fires.

  * * * *

  Hualiama entered a familiar place. Once, she and Grandion had wrestled and each had tried to dominate the other. Now she knew this was a sacred place, the habitation of another soul. She must tread with holy awe, not in the ignorance and anger of before.

  Oddly, Dragoness-Lia chuckled to herself, she had accused Grandion of knowing how to be a Dragoness. It was true. He also had inhabited her mind. Virile potentials surrounded her, shot through with the heady scents and cinnamon-magic tastes of a male Dragon, yet his being was fouled with a brand of magic she knew all too well–Dramagon’s signature ruzal, which had corrupted him like a magical canker. She apprehended his pure, overriding need for vengeance. That was the way of Dragons. Yet the dead could never avenge. She sensed his deep injuries, his inanition.

  With quiet expectation, she sang:

  How do you love the starlight?

  It winks in your eye, and sparks off your scales,

  It leaps o’er the Islands, straight to your hearts,

  And lives within, ever burning.

  A true balladeer might have honed her words, but it was a specific mood the Star Dragoness sought to create. Balance. Rightness. Why it was so much easier for an outsider to perform this task in a body not her own, remained a mystery to her. Gradually, as the white-fires whispered along the pathways of his being, reversing the foul handiwork of necrotic ruzal-toxins, Hualiama became aware of many enemies surrounding her Dragon, and the sensation of other Dragonkind holding him airborne so that they could take turns to sink their poisoned fangs into his wings, tail and even his lips.

  Friendly bunch of wing-brothers, weren’t they?

  Hualiama smiled bleakly. So these worms and cretins thought they could bully her Dragonlove, did they? What beast in the Island-World was more vicious than a Dragoness spited?

  Yet it should be done … properly. Examining Grandion’s shield-constru
cts with the rapidity of thought, Lia identified four errors perpetrated by her own misunderstandings of Siiyumiel’s teachings, and corrected those. Ugh. What else had she missed? Separately, she marvelled at the melding of powers flowing through their oath-connection, wishing to grasp its essential workings, yet time and perhaps distance mitigated. Not now. She lacked strength. She must stir his Tourmaline powers while leaving him a gift.

  A womanly touch.

  * * * *

  A Dragon’s keening must turn to battle-rage. In the instant before conscious thought intruded, Grandion triggered his shields and attacked.

  GRRAA–by his wings, he was hale. Entirely–shock! Wonder! He was full, as the Humans of Gi’ishior would say, of pep and vim. The Tourmaline surged toward the magic-signature of Yukari, revelling in the sensation of his wings cleaving cleanly through the press. Sparkling blue mini-dragonets of magic whirled before his astonished eyes. Again, the magical output was prohibitive, but his peculiar shield-armour sparked a new dragonet every time an enemy Dragon touched him, even along his penetrative blades. On impact, those dragonets vaporised limbs and wings and fangs; they even chased away into the fray to detonate against unsuspecting enemy Dragons!

  What was this? Blue-star’s gift of holy retribution!

  Grandion’s delighted, vicious, mournful laughter shook the ranks of enemy Dragons. Shell-father! Be avenged! His paws and tail struck in concert, even though there was little need. Grandion carved a path of vengeance and the reflected-glory of his noble shell-father’s passing to the eternal fires–may his flame burn forever! Never had he fought like this. Dragons swarmed him like a mantling of thick lava, the mass of Oranges drawn to mindlessly attack the pure light shining in their midst; in the eye of the Dragon, all Grandion saw was a whirl of ruinous splendour. Battle-mirth filled his hearts, yet it was in no way animalistic or feral. It was righteous. His paw knew no rest; his zeal for the fight, no stanching. Mighty was his crusading Dragonsong.

  With an almighty thunderclap, Grandion released his Storm-power, howling, SAPPHURION! Beloved shell-father thou wert!

  A thousand star-like dragonets painted the world in shades of intermingled blue and white, the sign of a Star Dragoness.

  Oh, Hualiama! She had succoured him once more, by the decisive fate-painting of her paw …

  Grandion exploded out of the mass of Oranges, right on Yukari’s tail-spike, just behind the Dragonwing which fled the advance of Shinzen’s force. Dragons rained from the sky before the eruption of his power. He whirled in the face of hundreds of enemy beasts, the mystical imperative contained in his being so potent, he feared that to release it might rip out his breastbone. Yet nothing in the Island-World could have denied him now.

  Grandion’s throat swelled prodigiously. I AM–ALASTIOR!!

  Chapter 16: Ancient Powers

  STooping over HUALIAMA on the portico above her Chenak Island stronghold, Azziala’s head snapped about so sharply, she immediately clutched her neck in pain. “What was that?”

  “I see Tourmaline strength ripping apart a Dragonwing of hundreds, mother,” Hualiama said dreamily. “Mighty is he, whose thunderous refrain blunted the muzzles of his foes, scattering them to the seven winds …”

  Alastior! The world reverberated as though a mighty draconic paw had struck a gong hidden at the root of the Islands. A delicious shiver trembled her every scintilla, body and soul.

  The Empress’ hands fisted on Lia’s collar. “What the volcanic hells is wrong with you, daughter?”

  “Wrong?”

  “Feckless child, you stir these ancient powers …”

  Azziala indicated the sky with a lift of her chin, where the draconic brawl had been replaced with streamers of white dragonets pouring into the unnatural storm, which lay directly north of the fifty or so Land Dragons which transported a nation of Dragon-Haters toward their common enemy–Shinzen. The dragonets fluttered toward a gap in the angry black ramparts of cloud, which for the first time, opened like a fantastical land appearing at the end of a dark canyon, the sunlit, Dragon-borne peaks of Affurion’s realm. A sky-window full of tiny specks proclaimed that the Lost Islands Dragons, too, had risen to oppose Numistar Winterborn. Dragonets fell in their thousands, but millions escaped, winging swiftly into that dark maw between before diving into–Lia squinted and rubbed her eyes–what appeared to be a green, glowing whirlpool in the Cloudlands!

  What magic brewed in the depths? Hualiama sensed it as she had once felt the enmity of Razzior the Orange, as if a Dragon’s talon trailed along her spine, teasing the prey before a swift thrust ended it all.

  A few stragglers fluttered away from Chenak, pursued relentlessly by the Land Dragons and Dragonships of Azziala’s command. Across the sailing Islands, the wanton carnage spoke mutely of the clash of Dragonkind. Hundreds of larger Dragons’ corpses lay amidst the white fields of dragonets, from Yellow hatchlings to the oldest Browns, driven forth to battle by the Dragon-Haters’ ruthless commands. The mental network responded already, calling forth Enchanters to blood and flay the slain Dragons for their Dragon hides.

  Hualiama pressed her fingers to her temples. Oh, Sapphurion! How still he lay, golden blood leaking from the major arteries feeding his fire-eyes. How noble, even in death.

  Let me out.

  Oh no. Mercy, Dragonsoul, please …

  Let me out! We must honour him.

  No. Azziala–you must lie low, Dragoness. Muting the inner snarling, Hualiama pushed to her feet. With her back held so straight her old royal tutor would have choked on his favourite berry-wine, the Princess of Fra’anior processed away from her mother.

  “Lia!” She made no answer. “Hualiama, come here!”

  “I’ve a Dragon to honour.”

  “You will listen–”

  “Numistar seeks a First Egg of the Ancient Dragons, mother. Think upon that.”

  Hualiama threw the words carelessly over her shoulder as she walked toward the end of the portico area, yet what she caught out of the corner of her eye made her blench. That usually impassive, golden face twisted into a terrible yet utterly soundless scream. The twin! Yet self-loathing made Lia turn away. Another secret babbled to the world. Or would it force her mother’s hand, introducing yet another complication to an absurd snarl of powers?

  Already the past receded, immutable.

  Azziala did not interrupt again as Lia hiked quickly up to where Sapphurion had fallen. She slowed, having to wipe her eyes twice to be able to see the way. Silly, lovely Humansoul, said the Dragoness within her, tenderly. Lia wept harder. He was our first father, our roost-father, wasn’t he?

  I … aye. He snatched a stinking, sodden Human babe from Ianthine’s paw and brought her to a safe harbour.

  He loved us, Dragon-Lia agreed. It wasn’t our fault he chose that instant to attack. Listen. Mother’s leaving. We mustn’t leave Sapphurion.

  Why?

  They’ll take his hide. He deserves better.

  Fury clenched her fists; she wished she could punch the tears away. If only we had Dragon fires. We could give him a proper send-off.

  We have fires. Warmth clasped her heart, like an inner draconic paw cupping a Human heartbeat. Whisper-soft, a cherishing gesture. Star fires. Wouldn’t that be–

  –a perfect, honouring–

  –Dragonsong of true-fires love for one who loved us? Human-Lia finished. Aye, Dragoness. But let’s not destroy our clothes for once. Give me a moment and I’ll welcome … us.

  Soft, melodious laughter faded in her ears. Humansoul, you’re the best friend a girl-Dragon could ask for.

  As Hualiama rapidly divested her outer garments, she moved behind the cover of a few low, cold-blasted bushes. Was Azziala truly gone? She had a nasty habit of spying on her daughter’s doings, continually hunting for the keys to her ruzal.

  Dragonsoul, I’m glad a smidgen of my awesomeness is rubbing off on you. She pictured Elki. Even if you insist on changing my hair-colour unexpectedly.

  Shall we try sca
les next time?

  Mercy, the Dragoness didn’t mean that, did she? Could a Shapeshifter become stuck in a partial transformation? Uncomfortable at best. Deadly at worst. Herein lay an unknowable danger, one that made skin and scale crawl identically.

  Deliberately pushing that fear aside, Lia stripped off the last of her underwear. Well. You’d better hope we don’t turn into a pink-skinned, blonde-haired Dragoness. Come on. Snip snap.

  So much death. She knew Dragonsoul was only trying to alleviate the acid anguish lodged deep in her soul; they both recognised the grief-indicators underlying their apparently light-hearted exchange. No, there was no light here. Only the absence of fire, of warmth, of the irreplaceable magic that underpinned draconic life. She had failed Sapphurion. No Dragon was meant to live forever, outside of the eternal fires, yet she could not help but feel a demeaning sense of wastefulness in the manner of his death.

  Roost-father. Lia bowed to Sapphurion. Nothing fancy, not an elaborate Fra’aniorian genuflection. Respect. Deep reverence, even, for a Dragon who had been in so many senses, a giant in her life. Mentor. Protector. Wholly accepting of a creature of another species.

  Then, she invited her Dragoness to emerge. It took some minutes to trigger the shift, a process she so imperfectly understood. Enwrapping. Inwardly dissolving. Unfurling to occupy a greater physical volume than before, every tracery and iota of her being faithfully replicated, yet somehow transformed in the most intimate detail–mysteriously, other.

  One could but marvel.

  The Star Dragoness inclined her muzzle gracefully and raised her wings in salute, a curious mixture of the draconic and a Human ballet-step, her sorrow unabated by her Shapeshifted form. Now, Dragon fires streamed within her body, not within her belly as expected, but all throughout her body in red-hot silken filaments, from her muzzle to her tail, and right out to her wingtips–the paean of her melancholy.

  “Step aside, Dragoness, before we blood you too!”

  Hualiama whirled. Dragon Enchanters! A trio of men wearing the usual mushroom-shaped blue hats and ornate, deep blue robes faced her, scowling. By the insignia on their cloak-pins these were Enchanters from Burak, a stronghold of lesser status in Azziala’s realm.