Chaos Shifter

by Marc Secchia

  How long could Nyahi sustain this form?

  “Chanbar, did you see the Infantryman? What happened to him?”

  He felt rather than saw the man shake his head. “Didn’t make it. A broken stanchion … ah, details later?”

  For Yazina’s sake. “Aye,” he growled. Just a few days as Marshal, and he had lost his first man. That boded ill.

  Asturbar estimated that they had been floating for nigh upon two hours when they finally stopped moving. Soft, occasional scraping noises at first suggested foliage outside, but then he thought they might hopefully have run aground upon fallen organic matter or even upon a shoreline, rather than resting upon the back or even inside the stomach cavity of something larger and even nastier than what they had run into so far. Their living vessel had come under powerful attack four times, but Nyahi’s metallic form had so far proven impervious.

  SPLOT!

  Ah, that wasn’t the sort of sound he had been hoping for.

  With a long, water-through-reed sucking sound, they slurped up into an unseen creature’s maw. Then, after a bit of sideways manoeuvring, an intense grinding sound vibrated the shell. With a languid chewing motion, the creature set about chewing and pounding Iridiana flat. The pressure was too much.

  She fizzed through four transformations before finding her Dragoness form and trying to launch them through the side of the creature’s mouth. In the near-complete gloom, it was almost impossible to tell which direction they should try to escape, but Nyahi’s cry of pain struck a strident note as the molars clamped down upon the last couple of feet of her tail, stopping her rudely in her tracks. Asturbar twisted in her paw. They were trapped between the glutinous black wall of what he took for cheek flesh or muscle, and what appeared to be mottled yellow gums – not actual teeth, but bony ridges that appeared to run the length of the creature’s jaw. Nyahi expectorated a stream of fire as they had practised, but that only sizzled against the slimy flesh and did not appear to burn much, or at least did not cause the bottom-dwelling beast any obvious pain. On the contrary, a foul, choking grey smoke boiled around them, making everyone start coughing.

  “Boots. Boots, help me!”

  Finally, he could heft his battle-axe. He had been carrying this deadweight about for hours, but now he leaped from her forepaw to her hind knee, and from there he gripped the top of her tail and clambered up, placing his feet awkwardly either side of the single row of spikes that started at her neck and ran the length of her spine to her tail. Any slip could be … yowch!

  “Nice tail you got, girl,” he grunted ridiculously.

  “Boots, what are you – don’t chop off my – Boots!”

  “As if!” Kraack! “Hmm, tough stuff,” he said, spitting on each of his palms and taking a two-handed grip of his favourite weapon. “Take that!” Kraack! Kraack! “And that, you vile salamander! And that –” Kraack! “– you pustulent spawn of a swamp’s stinking backside! You are not having my girl’s –” Kraack! Kraack! “– tail! Or anything else of hers!” Kraack!

  Finally, with a series of well-placed blows, he managed to carve out enough of the gum to allow Nyahi to pull herself free.

  “Time to escape,” he said.

  Nyahi smiled wanly at him. “Lead the way, Boots.”

  She looked so battered, he hardly knew what to say. Scales sat at odd angles. Her wings seemed bedraggled. Her movements were stiff and clearly sore. Fortunately, the creature decided this was the moment to reject its obstreperous meal. The jaw creaked open upon a gloomy world of roots, stagnant water and oozing organic muck. As usual, the stench of the place was like being slapped across the face with the remains of a week-dead animal. Meantime, the slick black tongue rose like a low hill behind them.

  “Go, go, go!” Asturbar roared, slapping her rump.

  The Iridium Dragoness shot off, leaving him way, way in her wake. Asturbar sprawled awkwardly back over the smooth molar and dropped upon the edge of a vast, stippled tongue. Next he knew, a tidal surge of steaming water ejected him from the creature’s pursed lips as though he had inadvertently sat upon a geyser. He went streaming over Nyahi’s head, yelling with a certain lack of dignity, managing only to confuse the Dragoness enough that she flew headlong into a root. The surface was so thickly covered in mosses and fungi that her entire length disappeared with a sound like ‘floop!’ He joined her just a few tens of feet further along. Flurp!

  Ugh, that sounded like indigestion.

  A slow landslide took them down to a dank, mucky landing between a set of roots that beggared belief, rising over three hundred feet into foetid gloom, he estimated – odd. How had they managed to float to the surface of that spongy landslide? Picking himself up, Asturbar sank almost to his waist in the spongy dirt. He helped Yazina find her feet, and then fished their Steersman out by the scruff of his neck. He doubled over, coughing and retching as he cleared his lungs.

  “Where’s Chanbar, sah?” asked Rekhoil, wiping his face clear of grey slime.

  “Here,” Nyahi said tiredly, shovelling him up to the surface with her left forepaw. Her eyes – dulled by pain and tiredness – rolled with uncharacteristic torpor toward Asturbar. “Did I do well, Boots? Did I? My first proper battle, wasn’t it?”

  “Second. Saved our lives,” he said, smiling.

  Yazina was checking her father’s broken collarbone, which would need to be adjusted again judging by the angle at which his shoulder sat. Asturbar pursed his lips. That break looked much worse than before; Chanbar would be in serious distress if they did not find him help soon.

  A talon prodded his ribs. “Your effusive compliments begin with, ‘O awesome Dragoness.’ Take it away, Boots.”

  “Oh, do they now?”

  “Most certainly,” she said archly, and her chin slapped the muck as she promptly collapsed.

  “Iridiana!”

  A second later, he held a familiar womanly form in his arms, but she was shaking and retching weakly with the aftereffects of her transformation. She whispered, “Darn. Do I remember reading something about Shapeshifters and –”

  “Overdoing it? All magic use is prone to that problem, but since you are as stubborn as all of those ruddy Asjujians up there rolled together …” he growled, but then began to check her body. “Injuries? Anything broken?” When she giggled at his meandering ministrations, he added, “Remind me to check the ankles with especial care. Fancy flashing your ankles at me mid-battle? Shameless, that’s what I call it. Downright –”

  “You started the flirting, Big Boots.”

  “Me? The lies she tells – Yazina, did you hear that?”

  The teenager poked her grimy fingers into her ears. “I heard nothing but two adults being gross, as usual. I’m going to have nightmares about you kissing her branches. Disgusting.”

  “Mmm, but have you seen her trunk?” Asturbar grinned. “Very … strokable.”

  “Ew! Father, make him be quiet!”

  Chanbar murmured, “He’s the Marshal now, dear one.”

  Nyahi’s fond slap rebounded off the muscle of his left shoulder. She glanced at her hand in startlement, making him warm to her astonishment. She said, “Alright, stow the chatter, Marshal. What’s the plan?”

  “Plan? Survival, of course.”

  She tilted her head to blink coyly up at him. “Elaborate?”

  “Oh no. I’m into one-word plans. ‘Survival’ sounds marvellous to me right now.”

  Chapter 18: Bait

  Survival meant finding shelter. Survival meant not being trampled while searching for shelter. Survival meant not falling down an apparently bottomless pit to a fate Asturbar did not want to imagine, being scooped up by a ravening wooden jaw a hundred feet tall swooping out of the darkness, and most definitely paying close attention to the carnivorous, aggressive dracoflora hidden in cunning locations along the route, all primed to snaffle up the unwary traveller and digest them with excruciating leisureliness. Since two of their number were injured and effectively out of action, Asturbar
took charge of wading steadily through the knee- to waist-deep black ooze between, around and beneath the spreading roots of the trees, forging a path for the other three. Yazina helped her father, while Rekhoil took up the rear. Asturbar carried Nyahi, who despite her promise several hours before, had fallen into her usual stupor following the uncontrolled release of her Chaos magic.

  This deep beneath the jungle canopy – he had to wonder how much of Mount Morgu-Zayê was actual mountain and how much was the organic by-product of many generations of plants – precious little light filtered down to ground level. By mid-afternoon even that anaemic light began to fade rapidly. They ploughed through thick, loamy avenues of muck, occasionally finding firmer footing where they could emerge from the sticky slough and chortle faintly at how filthy they all were. Rekhoil looked as if he had changed race. Chanbar was grim and pale beneath a plastering of mud, and he cradled his shoulder in clear pain, although he made not a single word of complaint.

  Ha. He might actually start liking the man.

  Eventually, Asturbar left them in a narrow defile between three roots and went exploring on his own. The terrain was tough, but instinct guided him to a promising opening beneath a knot of smaller black roots, each a mere twenty to thirty feet in diameter, he estimated, that led to a relatively dry cavern. Having ejected its prior owner with an encouraging tap or two of his battle-axe, he waded back to his companions.

  An expletive burst from his lips. “Run! You idiots, run!” He started slop-bounding toward them as best he could, waving his arms. “RUN!”

  Civilians had a way of freezing at the most inopportune times, and now was just such a moment. Yazina lifted her chin to stare blankly at him. Chanbar seemed to be sleeping. Rekhoil just stood his ground as if he had been stung by a paralytic sapper wasp, whilst a humongous paw swept along the defile toward them with clear intent. The rest of the creature was somewhere up there in the darkness. When the paw became stuck, the beast growled in frustration and jammed three of its muzzles into the narrow gap, quarrying at the roots, changing its angle of attack several times but failing to reach its intended meal by twenty feet or so. That ruckus certainly woke his companions! Asturbar had never had reason in his past to be thankful for his small size, but he was more than grateful now.

  Ha! Small? He truly was expanding his horizons these days.

  That grossly bloated, toad-like creature had to be twice the size of any Asjujian Emoflit, and the poison that hissed off its barbed purple tongue stank of acid. Draco-toad, anyone? Complete with blazing orange eyes and a mouth furnished with rank upon rank of inward-sloping black fangs each ten feet tall. Asturbar particularly appreciated its hungry grin.

  “Run!” he roared. “Get up!”

  Chanbar went over one shoulder, Nyahi over the other. Herding the other two before him, Asturbar directed them with curses and cuffs. “You skanky sons of ragions, run! Not there, you blind, spavined excuse for a soldier! Faster, curse you! Pick up those legs, girl, or you’ll be poisoning that bloated maggot’s belly from the inside! Under here! Go!”

  “Yes, sah!” panted Rekhiol.

  “Shut yah gobbah, soldier, and run!”

  Run they did, in great, splattering leaps and bounds as Asturbar tried to remember the landmarks he had fixed in his mind. That coil of roots. Those purple, velvet-leafed dracoflorian pitcher-plants. Taking a sharp bend beneath a confluence of four roots, they slurped and sloshed around the edges of a particularly toxic lime-green pond that he would not have been persuaded to swim through for all the treasures in Herimor.

  He pressed them beneath the cover of a gnarled, knotted root. “Sneaking along now.”

  Yazina cried, “Wait, we need to –”

  “Quiet.”

  “But Asturbar –”

  “Shut it! Soft and quiet as you can, ma’am. No sucking noises.” The teenager drew breath. “No complaining either. If it helps, remember how much you like being alive.” A bemused smile touched her lips as he grinned fiercely at her. “I’m told teenagers think they’re as indestructible as old Dragon hide. Lightning bolt to the brain, you’re not. We’re nothing but walking snacks to that thing out there. You alright, girl?”

  After a second, her eyes filled and her lower lip trembled. “I’m scared, Asturbar.”

  “We’re all scared. I’m as scared as … uh, very scared. Sorry about the bad language. Helps me pretend to be strong, see?”

  She whimpered, “Pretend?”

  Rekhoil said, “Aye, and he’s also just pretending to be built like a platinum ingot, too. Yazina, that there’s a man whose unit would follow him down a Dragon’s gullet just to see him dance back out again. You be brave, girl, and he’ll lead us back to hearth and home.”

  Asturbar discovered a speck of grit in the corner of his eye. Lead them home? He only wished!

  Gruffly, he said, “Follow me silently, now, and we’ll give that saggy-bellied lump of snot the slip. No boon, no quarter, no calamity.”

  “What does that mean?” Yazina asked.

  “We give the enemy no favours, we fight to the bitter end, and if the paw of fate should shield us, no calamity shall befall our House.”

  * * * *

  After escaping from the titan-toad, as Asturbar snidely dubbed the creature, they rested for the remainder of that evening in the glittering comforts of a root-bound cave that stank worse than any soldier’s socks, but appeared to be dry and safe, and even moderately cosy. He checked his companions over. Iridiana seemed to be sleeping peaceably. She would be fine; mostly superficial damage, it seemed, that he hoped would not scar her beautiful skin. Selfish? At least in part. Perhaps she even healed at the speed of a Dragoness, or so he imagined, for she seemed already to have recovered a pinch of colour in her cheeks. Chanbar’s condition was more concerning. That shoulder was badly broken and the bruising had crept down his flank and across his chest. Internal bleeding. There was little they could do bar strap the shoulder and make him comfortable.

  Asturbar told Yazina as much.

  Her dark eyes watched pensively as he drew his dagger from his boot and set about tailoring his shirt. After cutting off the sleeves, he sliced them lengthwise along the same and then bade her hold the material while he cut strips for bandages. He bound the shoulder as gently yet firmly as he could, but Chanbar fainted at the pain.

  He remembered that guilty thrill he had felt booting the man in the chest, and blenched. Perhaps he held more against the ex-Marshal than he had cared to admit.

  Toward what his soldier senses informed him was morning, Iridiana woke looking and sounding considerably fresher than Asturbar, who had been keeping watch. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” she said softly. “Come first light, we’ll need to escape. What’s the plan?”

  “Uh … you could transform into an Asjujian and walk us all up a handy tree?”

  “Excellent. Until that impossibility happens, I’ll just go water a bush.”

  “No bushes in these parts. Wake me if something exciting happens, alright? And be careful. Don’t wander far.”

  Her silvery eyes considered him at discomfiting length. “How close do you want to keep a Chaos Shifter, Boots?”

  She did not half have a way of rocking him in those very boots. After a long pause, Asturbar clenched his fist and placed it above his heart. “Right here. Permanent fixture.”

  “Sappy soldier.”

  “Drivelling Dragoness.”

  “Drooling Dragoness, when I look at you,” she corrected, her eyes dancing with winks of magical light that beguiled his soul. “We’ll figure it out, Boots. As long as we have each other.”

  When she had slipped out of their tree root cave, Asturbar turned with a sixth sense. “Chanbar, you awake? How’s the pain?”

  “Where will you go?” the other man whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What did you call her – a Chaos Shifter? What’s that, Asturbar?”

  “What she is,” he said defensively. “She alway
s returns to a single stable form. She has the innate ability to speak fluent Dragonish. She –”

  “She is a freak, and they’ll kill her for it.”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  Chanbar whispered, “Sorry. I meant to say, a freak of magic. From what I’ve observed, she can take on just about any form she imagines – am I right?” Asturbar just made a threatening noise in his throat. “So, I postulate that Iridiana can shift into any form. She’s better than one of those legendary Chameleon Shifters. Any size, any shape, any form. Anything at all. They’ll hate her for that, Asturbar. All those pure-blooded Shapeshifter Dragons with their wretchedly high-and-mighty honour that they hold so sacrosanct … they will label her a freak, an aberration, a weak link that must be excised for the honour of Fra’anior himself –”

  “With respect, man, shut your freaking face!”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You love her, don’t you? What’s your survival plan, soldier?”

  Asturbar could only stare at him, appalled. “I … I just don’t … look, she’s no freak! How dare you call Iridiana – she’s your own niece!”

  “Aye, and everything I’ve seen of her and the two of you together, convinces me that what you have is good. Beautiful, even.” He paused to cough painfully. “Ah! But you have to face the truth. Where, in all of Wyldaroon or Herimor, could the two of you possibly carve out a life together? You underestimate their mistrust and hatred for Chaos –”

  “I don’t! I had just hoped …” He tried to unclench his fists, and could not. “Look, we need to deal with this business of Azhukazi and possibly Thoralian, first. Are they allies or enemies? What of the Star Dragoness who has been churning all of Herimor into turmoil? They are all coming here, because –”

  He broke off with a low curse.

  “– because you stole the Jewels.” Chanbar clicked his fingers. “Thanks for confirming that. Azhukazi wants you, but what does this Marshal Thoralian want? The power of Necromancy? You do know his reputation, do you not?”