LEGENDS: Fifteen Tales of Sword and Sorcery

by Colt, K. J.

  Laughless seemed resolute. “It is.”

  Silently drawing back my weapon, I aligned it to his heart. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

  The gnome smiled, a genuinely pleasant action. “As am I. Thank you for your understanding.”

  My will began to falter. What if this one was like No-Kill, different from what we had been told of his kind? Perhaps I could win him over in time?

  No. His mind was made up. I could not persuade him.

  I thrust the blade forward, the matte steel of my magically enhanced weapon gleaming as it leapt for the heart of the gnome who had denied me what was mine. I noticed that the weapon, though, did not elongate as it had when Khavi had killed No-Kill; it remained short and black, a normal dagger.

  Laughless caught it between his fingertips like an insect, stopping the weapon dead.

  I stared in shock, hardly able to process what I saw. The weapon’s edge was razor sharp, his fingers should have been mincemeat even without the enchantment.

  “You think your feybane steel can kill me, wyrmling?” said the gnome, his thin voice suddenly carrying a weight I had not heard before. “You think your guile can match that of a true dragon?”

  Dread filled every scale on my body, a fear so intense and deeply entrenched that my rational mind retreated, leaving me weak and helpless. The Feyeater fell from my grasp, clattering on the stone, but the sound didn’t register in my head. All I could do was stare, terrified and gibbering, as his body expanded and grew taller than any gnome could be. His jaw elongated, hands became clawed like mine, and green-brown wings sprouted from his back.

  I knew I should have thrown myself forward on my face to grovel before the power of our masters, but instead all I could do was wet myself in terror; my only action before one of Tyermumtican’s claws slammed into my chest, pushing me down against the stone floor, his agile and strong fingers holding me down. His enormous snout hovered above me.

  “Please,” I gasped, trying to breathe with his grip wrapped tightly around my chest, “kill me quickly.”

  “That usually is my preference. Any further requests?” said Tyermumtican, his breath washing over me, reeking of bitter acid.

  “Let Khavi go.” I laboured to speak; it seemed that every time I inhaled, Tyermumtican’s claws would squeeze tighter, consuming my breathing room. “Coming here was my idea. It was I who had questions for you. Please do not eat him.”

  Tyermumtican peered at me, eyes green and sharp, and for a moment he seemed to consider my request. Thin lines of saliva ran down his fangs, each incisor longer than my sword. I whimpered, praying to any gods who may still live that Khavi would not have to suffer for my foolishness.

  “Granted,” said Tyermumtican, “I am feeling charitable this day, although my charity began when I controlled my laughter at being told you were a gnome named the draconic word for nothing.” He chuckled, a booming noise that echoed in the cave. “Tell me, though, in exchange, what knowledge did you seek? What magical power did you think could be yours?”

  “No magic,” I managed. “I only wanted to know who I was.”

  That answer seemed to surprise him, enough for him to not immediately crush me. I wondered how kobolds would taste to a dragon and what kind of death he would give me. Would he toss me in the air and let me fall into his mouth? Would he tear me to pieces with his claws? Perhaps he would tenderise me with his breath, using it to melt my body, making it softer and easier to digest. Visions of my final moments swam in my mind as I lay completely at the mercy of the dragon I had been careless enough to try to murder.

  “How do you not know who you are?” said Tyermumtican, his iron grip on my body relaxing ever so slightly. “Your kind are meticulous with their—”

  I heard the loud clang of steel on something hard. “Ouch,” said Tyermumtican, his tone flat. “Excuse me.” He reached around behind him and grabbed Khavi, squirming and snarling in Tyermumtican’s hand, my friend’s two-handed blade bent almost in half.

  Tyermumtican tossed Khavi high in the air, almost to the ceiling, his maw opening as Khavi descended. I shrieked for the dragon to stop, to spare my friend, but Tyermumtican’s claw caught Khavi before he hit the stone. His teeth clamped around the bent blade, then closed, breaking the weapon in half.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch. I knew then that this was how we would die—tossed in the air by a predator toying with its prey.

  “Delicious,” said Tyermumtican, chewing thoughtfully on the metal like Khavi or I would chew on glowbug flesh “Deep kobold iron, infused with carbon to make steel. Finely crafted, too. Few impurities. No magical essence to speak of, but very flavourful.”

  “You…eat swords?” I dared to ask.

  “A dragon can eat almost anything,” said Tyermumtican, swallowing his meal and licking his jaws, “including gems and metals and flesh, but I have a particular taste for kobold iron. It is mined so deep in the earth it develops a tender quality. The very flesh of Drathari, the juiciest cuts of our planet’s meat. When your kind come to me for information, I trade their metals for my knowledge.”

  “I am glad that it pleases you,” I said, trying to keep the terror from my voice.

  “It does, in a quaint kind of way. Usually I am not required to pluck gifts from my hide. Usually visitors are not so foolish.”

  I twisted my head to Khavi. “Why did you attack him?” I hissed.

  “You attacked him first, you—”

  The dragon squeezed the air from his lungs.

  “Quiet, angry one. You are mindless and suited only for battle; you have taxed my patience enough. It will do you well to remain silent unless spoken to.”

  Tyermumtican relaxed his grip on my body. I didn’t get up though, preferring to lay in a puddle of my own piss rather than raise my head before a dragon.

  “Speak,” Tyermumtican commanded. “You seem to have a brain. Tell me why you do not know who you are.”

  I struggled to get words past my lips, and it took me a moment to find my tongue. “My egg was laid in the city, like so many others. But it was dead, I was stillborn, dead before hatching. I—my egg and I were thrown into the furnaces, all record of my parentage destroyed. But the flames didn’t burn me. Instead, my egg was brought back to life. Now no records exist of who I was. Who I am. Hence, my name is nothing.” I stared up at Tyermumtican, at those eyes that caught the dim light of his lair. “I want to be something. I want to know who I am before I die.”

  “You have gold scales,” said Tyermumtican, one of his claws extending to me, touching my cheek. Despite the considerable size difference between he and I, the dragon’s grace was such that hovering the impossibly sharp tip of his claw over my scales seemed an easy feat. “I suspect that your lineage springs not from your home city.”

  “My egg wasn’t laid in Atikala?”

  Tyermumtican shook his head. “No, you misunderstand. It was. Your kind are not accepting of golden scales; your existence would have only been permitted had you been laid there as one of them. As an outsider you would have been killed. No, your mother was Atikalan at least, and your father…” he trailed off, seeming to stare off into nothing.

  I waited.

  And I continued to wait.

  “Tyermumtican?”

  My voice shook him from his trance. “Ren, the answer is clear to me now.”

  I inhaled, my bruised ribs and the stink of piss forgotten. “Tell me,” I implored. “Please. Mighty Tyermumtican, powerful copper wyrm, please. Please tell me who I am.”

  “I said only that I know, not that I would tell you.” He looked at me, and the fear in my heart dissipated, the dragon’s aura of terror leaving me. In his complex eyes, I saw an edge of sadness. “Regretfully, I cannot tell you who you are.”

  “But I need to know!”

  Tyermumtican exhaled through his nose, the air forcing me to squint. “I said I knew who your father and mother were, but those factors together do not dictate who you are.”

  I scr
unched up my face, propping myself onto my elbows. “I don’t understand.”

  “You are of Atikala, yes? That place forms part of your identity. But it is not you. You are separate from it…able to walk a different path if you choose. This one,” Tyermumtican indicated to the suffocating Khavi with his nose, “chooses not to. However, his choice is not your choice. You are different than he is. Khavi embraces his home, using it to form his identity. Too stupid to know any better. But you, you are different. You can forge your own destiny; your path is whatever you wish it to be.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I do. But I’ve waited so long to know the truth. Whoever my father and mother are, I do not care. I just have to know.”

  Tyermumtican released Khavi. He gasped for breath, his face a dark, breath-starved brown.

  “Sometimes, wyrmling, we ask questions that we do not wish to know the answer to, and sometimes ignorance is preferable to the truth.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I SPENT THE REST OF that day trying everything I could think of to convince Tyermumtican to tell me what he knew of my parentage, but the dragon gave me nothing. Over and over I begged, pleaded, demanded, and even once threatened. That seemed to amuse him; he let me finish, eyes bright with curiousity, then turned his aura of fear on me once again. Once again I lost control of my body. Khavi laughed at my cowardice until Tyermumtican turned it on him too, with similar results. Our craven begging and crying amused the mighty worm greatly, but he released us after a few moments.

  I was truly desperate to have threatened such a powerful creature, but I had come too far to fail. To have the knowledge I’d sought for all my life so close but so completely out of my grasp was maddening.

  When finally I gave up, slumping on the stones and grumbling to myself about the unfair nature of our dealings and various mutterings about the fecal matter of deceased deities, Tyermumtican took that as an opportunity to change the topic of our conversation, a moment he had seemingly been waiting for. Waiting with the patience of dragons.

  “So tell me, Ren, of the disaster that befell your city.”

  I looked up at the mighty dragon. “You want to know of Atikala’s doom?”

  “I had many ties to the city. Unusual for a dragon of my colour, but I prefer to see past an individual’s shape and colour, to see the soul dwelling within. I had those within Atikala whom I considered friends. I would like to know if they still live.”

  I swallowed nervously. “I am afraid, mighty Tyermumtican, that to the best of my knowledge, none live save us.”

  I had not expected the copper dragon to take this news with anything other than glee, but his features fell as I told him. He was hurt but accepting of the facts. Ready to move beyond the past to more practical matters. “That is as I feared. I had hoped you could shed some light on this, but you have only two eyes and the caverns of the underworld are vast. I shall conduct investigations of my own. Thank you, however.”

  The very thought of such a mighty creature thanking me was so completely alien that I shook my head. “You are a dragon,” I said, “you cannot be thankful to one such as I.”

  The dragon’s eyes narrowed. “That is Ren of Atikala talking,” he said, “not Ren, sorceress and warrior, shaper of her own destiny.”

  I held up my claws, so similar in structure to his, but one hundredth the size. “I am not mighty.”

  “You think Laughless was not mighty?” Slowly Tyermumtican began to shrink, his scales forming back into skin, and soon the gnome called Laughless stood before us, his eyes as milky white as before, but now matching our gaze. “Power comes not just from size, Ren. Every one of us has power of a sort, and power is power. Axiomatic though that may seem, it is true.” Tyermumtican shrugged his gnome shoulders, holding out a pudgy hand. “Do you think I could walk into Stonehaven as myself, instead of wearing this guise?”

  “No,” I answered. “The reaction of the gnomes aside, I have seen the gates. You could not fit.”

  “So Laughless could go where I could not. Further, Laughless could more accurately gauge the intent of those who approached my lair, to discern their true intent—theft, trade, or peace. Thus, Laughless has a unique advantage over me, having a skill that I do not. In the right circumstances, Laughless, that blind, ancient gnome, is more powerful than I could ever be.”

  It made sense, but his case seemed to be entirely theoretical. “Unless you need to go somewhere only a kobold can go, then I doubt I have more power than you do.”

  Tyermumtican’s gnome face became an impish smirk. “And what makes you think I couldn’t appear to be a kobold?”

  I threw up my hands. “Even more reason!”

  He laughed, the dragon in gnome form seemingly overcome with mirth, but then the amusement slowly evaporated from him.

  “Ren, I know it can be hard to see, but there is some truth in what I’ve said. Someday you’ll discover that there’s a power within you that’s more than you are now. Your friend is too stupid to do anything like that, but you…I sense something about you. I sense you are destined for great things.” A sad edge filtered into his tone. “And great pain.”

  “Pain?”

  “This is the curse of all those who bear great power. Each of us suffer our burdens, and those are stones we carry until we are dead. The greater our strength, the more weight life stacks on our backs.”

  I stared curiously at Tyermumtican, his frail gnome form matching my gaze. “What pains could a dragon possibly bear?”

  I had expected mockery or for Tyermumtican to have some clever way of showing how stupid I was, but I got something else. “Do you know why they call me Laughless?”

  I shook my head. “I thought it was just a name for your gnome-face.”

  “Laughless was what the gnomes called me, what I called myself to them. Names have meanings, Ren.” His tone became wistful. “I knew a gnome once. The most beautiful female I’d ever seen…witty, charming, and with a disarming smile. Her name was Embermoss. Despite our obvious differences, I fell in love with her.”

  “Love?” It was a strange word. Definitely draconic, but not one I’d heard before. The root word meant close ally, but it was conjugated in a way I had not seen before. “What is love?”

  Tyermumtican smiled at me and, despite his kindness, I had the distinct impression that he was grossly oversimplifying the matter, as one might do when talking to a hatchling. “Something stronger than any magic. A force that, if nurtured and grown, can overcome any adversity, survive through any hardship. A power as immortal as stone itself.”

  He was talking down to me, but I still didn’t understand. “So dragons are love?”

  He laughed, a loud, shaking boom that seemed so strange coming from such a frail creature. It reminded me of the dragon within.

  “Ren, you are adorable. No, love is many things. A feeling deep within you. It is knowing that you care for someone, care for them so deeply and utterly that you are, in a way, a part of them. If that love is returned, it is one soul inhabiting two bodies. A friendship set on fire. Two hearts beating as one, possessed with a profound longing for each other.”

  “Possession. As though, from a ghost? Or a daemonic force?”

  “Some might say that the feeling is somewhat similar to being haunted or having a raging demon within, yes. But it is a good feeling.”

  I did not see how having a pit-spawned monster or a vengeful spirit sharing space within my body could ever be considered good. “If you tell me it is so, Tyermumtican. What happened after you were possessed?”

  “After I was…possessed as you say…Embermoss and I talked for hours on end. We told jokes, riddles, rhymes. We made each other laugh. Few can keep up with a copper dragon when it comes to humour, but she was ever my equal. Better, perhaps. We eventually married.”

  “What is married?”

  “It means permanently mated to one another and only each other.”

  I frowned. “Permanently? To one partner? What about the genetic d
iversity of the community or the potential for one partner to die before the other or—”

  Tyermumtican held up his stubby gnome hands. “Ren, please.”

  I fell silent, and he continued.

  “We married, and we conceived a child. I was, of course, in the form of a gnome—but younger, with a full head of hair.” He seemed pleased at the memory, and I studied him intently. “We raised our child as well as we could, teaching her all that we together knew, which I assure you was quite a lot. We named her Chime, for the sound of her easy laugh, and she grew to be strong, eventually leaving us to wander the world to see what we had spoken of. Embermoss and I shared a life together.” The dragon’s voice cracked as he spoke. “Her life.”

  I shuffled my claws on the stone. “Tyermumtican, how many years ago was this?”

  “Three hundred years since Chime left for the surface. More or less.”

  “So Embermoss is long dead of old age, then.”

  Tyermumtican closed his milky gnome eyes. “Her grave is deeper in my lair. And Chime would now be dead, too. Her children, if she had any, would be as old as this body—or dead too. The day Embermoss died, the day that one soul inhabited one body again, was the day my laughter left me. This is what I mean when I speak of burdens.”

  I was not comfortable contradicting a dragon, especially so often as I had been. “But you do laugh. I’ve heard you laugh. You did just before.”

  “Of course. I am what I am, and I find joy in small things. But nobody can make me laugh as she did. Laughing until it hurts. Laughing until you think you’re going to die from lack of air, laughing at something so ludicrous and impossible it comes alive and renders you completely helpless.”

  “Why would anyone want to be helpless?”

  Tyermumtican shook his head, his face falling. I struggled to find meaning behind his words but I knew I had failed to grasp the point of some subtle but important lesson.

  “I just don’t understand,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do not be. You have amused me and brought back many memories, which makes me happy.” He shifted, then turned back to me. “Thank you for the visit, Ren of Atikala, but I feel that it’s time you and your friend departed.”