Dragonforge

by James Maxey

  As Adam guided Trisky to the shore, Jandra noticed the look on Bitterwood’s face—it was a mix somewhere between awe and terror. She imagined the effect that this strange place must have on a mind less trained than hers. It angered her to think that this so-called goddess was only a human like herself, taking advantage of the ignorance of others to make her seem more powerful than she truly was. Not that the goddess wasn’t powerful, of course. Jandra knew she was up against someone with more experience in using the technology. Also, the goddess definitely had more imagination than she or Vendevorex had ever applied to their abilities. Turning invisible, starting fires, changing water to ice or steam—these seemed like parlor tricks compared to building an island paradise deep in the bowels of the earth.

  “I would speak with you in my temple,” an ethereal voice said, coming from all directions at once. The bright golden flakes in the sands shifted and congealed, forming a path of gleaming bricks that led into the interior of the isle, vanishing amid the broad-leaved vegetation. Jandra took the lead in stepping onto the path with Hex following close behind. Jandra didn’t feel afraid. Ever since donning the helmet, she’d noticed that her actions were more confidant and decisive. Was the helmet suppressing her fears? Or had her adventures in the previous months simply toughened her so that nothing bothered her now? She only used to feel this confident whenever she’d been around Vendevorex. It had made her feel safe to know that he was watching out for her. Perhaps her growing friendship with Hex was providing a similar boost to her confidence. It wasn’t so hard to walk down strange paths in unfamiliar jungles knowing there was a sun-dragon watching your back.

  The air was humid and warm as they moved past the thick foliage walls along the pathway. Butter-yellow birds flitted among the leaves, eating a collection of exotic beetles with carapaces gleaming like jewels. Snakes green as algae draped over branches like vines. Flowers in countless hues perfumed the air.

  They soon arrived at the temple, a thicket of tall trees surrounding a platform of aged marble. Jandra walked up the steps to a gap in the trees. In the large chamber beyond a tall mahogany statue stood. It was a carving of the same woman they’d seen before. The figure was disturbingly immodest by Jandra’s standards, with no attempts at concealing the nipples or genitalia. The face of the figure had full lips and a seductive stare. She’d heard rumors that followers of the goddess celebrated the solstices with ritualistic orgies. The statue looked as if it would approve of such unbridled passion. Jandra was surprised Pet had never tried to become a high priest in such a religion.

  Adam stopped when Trisky reached the steps of the temple.

  “I can go no further,” he said. “I haven’t had the proper cleansing.”

  “The goddess invited us,” said Hex.

  “Her invitation wasn’t directed at me,” said Adam.

  Bitterwood dismounted and followed Jandra up the marble steps, his eyes wide with a look she could only interpret as reverence. Bitterwood crept toward the mahogany idol. He stared at it in silence.

  “Have I been wrong all these years?” he asked softly. “Did Hezekiah’s lies turn me from the truth?”

  At his words, the statue came to life. The goddess tilted her head and looked down at Bitterwood. A smile crossed her lips. The expression of sexuality changed into the gaze of a mother looking at her child.

  “A faith untested is no faith at all, Bant Bitterwood,” the goddess said. He voice was soothing and gentle. “You’ve faced many trials since you left my fold, dragon-slayer. What have you learned? Tell me of your wisdom.”

  “I-I’ve been a fool,” said Bitterwood, dropping to his knees, staring up at the living statue. “There’s nothing wise about me.”

  “Knowing this is a step toward wisdom,” the goddess said.

  Bitterwood lowered his head and stared at the goddess’s feet as she stepped down from the pedestal and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Forgive me,” he said, his voice on the verge of tears.

  It was more than Jandra could take. She could see what was happening quite plainly with her finely tuned senses. The statue was crawling with the same tiny machines that gave life to Jandra’s own illusions. It sickened her to see Bitterwood so callously toyed with. It was obvious from his voice he was in tremendous emotional pain.

  “This has gone far enough,” Jandra said, lifting her hands toward the statue. She reached out with mental fingers and grabbed at the machines that animated it, attempting to wrest control. The statue jerked in response, its arms falling limp, its head flopping back and forth, as if someone had taken it by the shoulders and given it a good shake. Jandra felt needles of pain prickling against the interior of her skull as something fought her control. She’d never experienced this feedback before; always in the past, her mind had been the only mind in command of the invisible engines. Now, a second force resisted her.

  The eight-foot-tall mahogony statue marched toward Jandra in slow, forceful steps, as if walking against a powerful wind. The fingers of the statue’s right hand extruded into long wooden spikes. Jandra’s muscles strained as she fought to keep the statue from moving nearer. She knew if she relaxed her concentration for even a second, the statue would spring forward and bury the spikes in her heart. Bitterwood still sat on his knees, dumbfounded, watching in useless bewilderment.

  “A-a little help here, Hex?” she said, as the statue drew ever closer.

  “Of course,” Hex said, as his long scaly neck shot over her shoulder like a jet of red flame. The sun-dragon’s teeth crunched into the statue’s head, splintering it. The statue stabbed upward with her spikes but Hex easily caught the attack with his fore-talon. With a crack, he ripped the wooden arm free of the torso and tossed it across the room. He whirled, catching what was left of the statue with his tail and batting it. It crashed against the living trees that formed the walls of the temple, then clattered to the floor, lifeless.

  “Okay, bitch, it’s on,” a disembodied voice growled. The air in front of Jandra was suddenly full of rainbows, and the largest of these rainbows ripped between the yellow and the green revealing a black void beyond. A woman’s arm shot out from the darkness and grabbed Jandra by the wrist.

  “Nobody fucks me like this,” a voice on the other end of the darkness shouted. The slender arm yanked Jandra from her feet with superhuman strength. The walls of the temple vanished as Jandra fell into the rainbow. Beyond the colors, everything turned dark. Somewhere in the distance behind her, seemingly miles away, she heard Hex bellow her name. Then the rainbow closed, and she could hear and see and feel nothing at all.

  Bitterwood rose from his kneeling position as Hex stood gaping at the empty space where Jandra had stood. Biiterwood charged across the room and grabbed the broken wooden torso of the goddess. He gripped the statue’s shoulders with both hands and cried, “What did you do to her? Bring her back!”

  His voice trailed off as he realized that the thing in his hands was only a heavy lump of polished wood, utterly lifeless. Had he once more slipped into the dreamland between life and death? Was he sleeping, to have imagined this statue had been alive only seconds before?

  “Jandra!” Hex bellowed, the force of his lungs causing the leaves of the surrounding vegetation to tremble. “Where are you?”

  “This was real?” Bitterwood asked Hex.

  “I saw it,” Hex said.

  Bitterwood raced toward the steps of the temple. Adam was still outside, sitting astride Trisky. “What happened to Jandra?” Bitterwood shouted. “Where did she go?”

  Trisky skittered backward at the sound of Bitterwood’s voice. Adam looked taken aback. “What do you mean? I know less of what’s happened than you.”

  “Your goddess attacked Jandra,” Hex said, his head jutting out parallel to Bitterwood’s shoulder. “She was simply standing there when the statue attacked without provocation.”

  “The goddess knows our hearts,” said Adam. “Perhaps Jandra was corrupted beyond redemption.”

>   “Jandra was a good-hearted girl,” Bitterwood said, stepping toward Adam, clenching his fists. “She cannot possibly be as corrupted by this world as I’ve been. Make your goddess bring her back.”

  “Father, choose your words carefully,” Adam said. “The notion that the goddess can be made to do anything other than her own divine will is blasphemous.”

  “I’ve committed sins much worse than blasphemy,” said Bitterwood.

  “The goddess is the embodiment of wisdom,” Adam said. “If she acted in a hostile fashion, you must have faith that your companion was deserving of this judgment.”

  Bitterwood wanted to leap over the head of the long-wyrm and tear Adam from his saddle. Perhaps if he beat him to a pulp, Adam would agree to pray for Jandra’s return. Bitterwood was chilled to discover his violent rage rising against his own blood. The memory of his brother Jomath dying at the foot of a temple much like this one rose in his mind. His hatred had ended his brother’s life. Would the darkness within him demand a similar fate for his own son?

  Bitterwood let out a long, slow breath. It wasn’t his son who needed to be beaten until he prayed. He slowly sank to his knees. He bowed his head, aware of Hex only inches away, fully cognizant of his vulnerability if the great beast chose this moment to take his revenge. In an act of surrender, he closed his eyes and whispered, softly, “Goddess, please. Show mercy upon Jandra, just as she showed me mercy. Return her to us.”

  Above him came the sound of giant wings flapping. It wasn’t Hex—even with his eyes closed, Bitterwood could sense the sun-dragon looming over him.

  Bitterwood opened his eyes and looked up.

  A bare-chested angel in black pants dropped from the sky toward him, his descent slowed by gentle flaps of gleaming golden wings. The angel carried something in his arms: a human form, judging from the legs jutting out—a girl? Jandra? No, the legs were too small and spindly.

  As the angel landed on the steps of the temple, Bitterwood at last caught a flash of blonde hair as the girl lifted her head from angel’s breast.

  “Zeeky!” Bitterwood cried, his heart swelling to discover she was alive. He experienced a strange and unfamiliar sensation. Could this be joy he felt, after so many years of knowing nothing but hatred and regret?

  “Mr. Bitterwood!” Zeeky shouted as she dropped from the angel’s arms and ran toward him. “You’re okay!”

  Bitterwood caught the girl as she sprang up to hug him. Her arms around his neck stirred memories of his own daughters, now dead. Yet somehow the memories were altered by the presence of Zeeky, becoming bittersweet rather than simply bitter.

  “Where’s your pig?” Bitterwood whispered.

  “Poocher’s okay,” Zeeky said. “We gave him a bath.”

  Hex cleared his throat. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

  Bitterwood lowered Zeeky to the ground.

  “This is Zeeky,” he said. “She’s my… friend.” The word felt foreign to his tongue. It had been many years since he’d used it. “Zeeky, the dragon is Hex. The man on the long-wyrm is—”

  “Adam!” Zeeky said, waving. “You made it back!” She ran down the steps and hugged the snout of the long-wyrm. “Good to see you, Trisky!”

  Bitterwood looked up from Zeeky to once more study the angel. The creature had long white hair and stood as tall as the statue that had just attacked Jandra. The angel’s wings folded in an elaborate origami, the feathers tinkling musically as they furled up behind his broad shoulders until they vanished. The angel took the long piece of black cloth draped over his shoulders and shook it, revealing it to be a coat. He pulled the coat on and from somewhere within its folds a hat appeared in the angel’s hands. It was broad-brimmed and black—exactly like the hat Hezekiah used to wear. Indeed, Hezekiah and the angel were almost identical in stature and garb, with only hair coloring and tones of skin to differentiate them. Bitterwood tensed. The only thing he despised more than dragons was the prophet Hezekiah. Of what relation was this angel to him?

  The angel smiled once he was done adjusting his garments.

  “As long as introductions are being made,” he said, “call me Gabriel.”

  After a brief second of nothingness, Jandra was pulled into blinding light. She couldn’t see a thing as two strong hands grabbed her shoulders and slammed her up against a wall. Her helmet striking the surface caused her head to ring like a bell.

  “I run the show down here,” a throaty female voice hissed, inches from her face. “If you were told I’d let some Atlantean skank waltz in here and piss all over my territory, you’ve been sadly misinformed. Who sent you? Cass? It was Cass, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know who Cass is,” Jandra protested, her eyes struggling to adjust to the light. The woman before her was little more than a dark outline, taller than Jandra by several inches, and judging from her grip, much stronger.

  The woman slapped her hard. Jandra sucked her breath as the pain followed an instant later.

  “Don’t lie to me! My sister has ruined one plan after another and I’m sick of it. I’m going to use you to send a message. There won’t be enough of your DNA left for her to clone your turds when I’d done with you!”

  Jandra rubbed her cheek and cringed as she said, “I probably can’t stop you from killing me but would you please stop cursing while you do so?”

  The woman chuckled and released her shoulders. “Really? That’s your big problem with me? My potty mouth?”

  “No,” said Jandra, straightening up. “My big problem is you pretending to be a goddess and letting my friend humiliate himself. Bitterwood may not be a saint, but I don’t want to see him grovel in front of anyone.”

  As she blinked her eyes, Jandra slowly began to see the woman more clearly. She was tall, with broad shoulders and sharply chiseled facial features. With her big hips and ample breasts, she was obviously the model for the goddess statue. Thankfully, she was clothed, wearing a loose white cotton blouse tucked into tightly-fitting blue pants. She was barefoot and her toenails were painted green, matching her hair, which had a dark, grassy hue. The woman was staring at her intently. Her eyes softened from anger into thoughtfulness. She chuckled again, and backed away.

  The green-haired woman moved to a metal table that sat in the middle of the cluttered space. The room they were in was long and relatively skinny, filled with tables and shelves. There were no visible doors or windows. The most eye-catching items in the room were the multitudes of frames lining the walls, filled with strange paintings that seemed made of light and motion, showing creatures and landscapes of countless variety.

  The surface of the metal table was covered with hundreds of sketches, most in gray pencil, a few inked and colored with washes of faint pigments. The woman picked up a white cylinder of paper and put it between her lips. She raised a finger, its nail also painted green, but chipped from heavy usage. She touched the finger to the paper cylinder and a small puff of smoke rose from the point of contact. The woman took a long slow drag, bringing the embers at the end of the cylinder to a bright cherry red. She then opened her mouth and released a long stream of smoke. The acrid fumes stung Jandra’s eyes.

  “You know why I keep the human race around?” the goddess asked.

  “I didn’t know you’d been the one to make that decision,” said Jandra.

  “Tobacco,” the goddess said. “I can build an exact replica of this cigarette molecule by molecule using nanites. Under a microscope, no one could tell the difference. But the taste just isn’t right unless the tobacco has come through the whole process; the growing, the drying, the rolling. So, I decided to let humanity live, as long as they kept planting my favorite drug.”

  “I see,” said Jandra. She had known that the goddess would be fake. She hadn’t considered the possibility she might be insane. Jandra backed away from the smoke, trying to get a feel for her surroundings. Instinctively, she felt they were still underground. Her eyes were drawn from one flickering image in the frames to anot
her. Was that Shandrazel? In another frame, she saw sky-dragons conversing in a room filled with tapestries. Something was odd about them… were they female? The valkyries? Jandra had never seen them before. Finally, Jandra felt her heart leap as she spotted the island temple in one of the frames. Hex and Bitterwood were on the steps, looking as if they were shouting at Adam. Even if she didn’t know where she was, it was comforting to know they were still okay.

  “You seem easily distracted,” said the goddess.

  Jandra brought her attention back to the woman.

  “What are all these pictures?” she asked.

  “I like to keep watch over my various projects,” the goddess said.

  “Your projects?”

  “Little social experiments I’ve nudged along over the centuries. Living for a thousand years means you have time to follow a lot of different plotlines. I like to tune in from time to time. They’re like my soaps, you know?”

  Jandra didn’t know. She couldn’t see any correlation between the images and something you would use to bathe yourself.

  “Judging from that glassy stare, you’re not getting my jokes,” the goddess said, crossing her arms. “Which clenches it that you’re not Atlantean. Know what first tipped me off?”

  “No,” said Jandra.

  “Your accent. Dragons speak a variant of English, but they do it without the benefit of lips, so the sounds are all shifted. They fake sounds like ‘b’ and ‘p’ by pressing their tongues against the roofs of their mouths in a slightly different location than ‘d’ or ‘n’. You do the same thing despite having perfectly serviceable lips. I could hear it when you said, ‘big problem.’ It sounds like ‘dig drodlen,’ sort of. Which gives me a good clue who you must be. You’re that dragon’s daughter. Jandra, I think it is? And your father—for lack of a better term—was Vendevorex?”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Maybe,” said the goddess. “It’s not important. What is important is that I’m not going to tear you apart atom by atom and scatter your component parts out in a long smear through underspace. You didn’t know what you were doing. Punishing you would be like slapping a retard for breathing through her mouth. It’s not something a socially conscious ex-hippy such as myself is comfortable with.”