by Marc Secchia
“No.”
“There are as many rumours as there are dragonets under the suns. He is said to have been killed many times over, only to rise again. He is said to have the power to exist in many places at once. Thoralian is known to be a mind twister and a cannibal of his own kind. And, similarly to Azhukazi, they say he has the power to replicate his spirit into other Dragons, or at the very least, to take over minds and fire-souls.” Chanbar made a flat gesture with his good hand. “Even if you set all that aside, he is an incredibly powerful, persuasive and long-lived foe who has command of the greatest Dragon army ever seen in the history of Herimor. All of that bespeaks inconceivable power. You know how Shapeshifters are. They will not dip the wing easily. If they do, take note. Beware. Something strange is afoot.”
Asturbar said, “Then, have we led Thoralian here?”
Chanbar shifted enough to dip his head slightly. “Seems so, doesn’t it?”
“Azhukazi is chasing us; Thoralian seeks Azhukazi’s power or alliance, perhaps, and the Star Dragoness can be bent on nothing else but stopping those two,” Asturbar thought aloud. “If the First Egg is truly at stake and has risen again from the annals of history, where does that leave us?”
“Embroiled in a three-way race for the ultimate power,” Iridiana said from the entryway. “Eggs make babies. Babies can be corrupted if your name is Azhukazi or Thoralian. We cannot know their every motive, but we do know that where enormous power is at stake, Shapeshifters will gather like scavengers to the feast. A word outside, Boots?”
He took umbrage at her tone, but tried to hide his response.
Outside, she took his hands, looked directly into his eyes, and said, “Boots, I know that you love me, but I don’t want you speaking about my powers to anyone, but most especially not to my Uncle! I don’t trust him.”
“No?”
“I’d trust him about as far as I could throw you … uh, in my Human form,” she finished ruefully. “Look, I appreciate you standing up for me. You’re sweet.”
“Sweet? I have your back, sold – uh! Right. You know what I mean.”
“No Chaos Beasts around here?”
She said it so lightly, but Asturbar knew what it meant to her. What it cost her. “Nope. Only mad magic. Uncontrolled magic – but we’ve made strides, haven’t we?”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. I also say that I trust none of them, not even that Star Dragoness. She was hunting you, Nyahi. Hunting. She wants to use you, too. And I am not having that. What else could that storm have meant? She wanted to use you or kill you.”
“Asturbar –”
“She wants control of the First Egg. Do you trust that? She’s just as power hungry as the rest –”
“Hush. I hear something coming. Hide!”
He was left holding a dress. The girl was gone; a tiny mauve dragonet with gleaming treble pairs of butterfly wings flitted off into the darkness.
* * * *
The Asjujians advanced as if they knew exactly where Asturbar and his companions had gone to ground. Indeed, that was the only explanation. The giant creatures moved in from every direction, including the vertical dimension, in a perfectly synchronised encirclement manoeuvre. They must have shielded themselves with physical magic as well as glamour, because they were utterly undetectable from what he could tell – so how had Nyahi known? A Dragon sense? Or was she more attuned to the ideas of aura or magical signature which had once or twice during his training been mentioned, whereby the very presence of draconic fire-life created an imprint upon their environment at some detectable level, no matter how powerful the glamour of concealment placed upon it?
Chanbar might hiss, but he knew from the instant the first immense woody talon beckoned outside their hideout that there was no point in dissembling.
Asturbar stepped outside into a world circumscribed by thickets of Dragon armour. Many sets of crimson eyes glared down at him, bathing the area in a baleful fire glow. The Emoflits stood upon the roots all around and above the cavern, seemingly as content with a head-down position as any gecko upon a wall, and he was not at all convinced that their intent was friendly until she sashayed down the cleft between the roots, her relatively svelte form moving with a power of femininity that caused every eye to blink, including Asturbar’s. Iridiana? She appeared flawlessly Asjujian in every respect, save for a failure of colouration. She likely did not realise what a delightful and completely improbable shade of gleaming magenta wood she had turned herself, but she minced into their midst with tangible trepidation mingled with enormous courage.
This was the girl who, a few weeks back, could barely bring herself to display an ankle from behind a doorpost?
He checked the ankles. Indeed. Even in this form she somehow managed to make fifteen foot thick ankles appear attractive. Now there was a Dragon power!
Alright, a little perspective, soldier! That was two thousand or so tonnes of girlfriend facing off against several dozen Asjujians, each of whom was half her size and weight again – and every ounce of their combined Island-sinking tonnage was as bemused as he was.
What manner of glamour-perfection might this be? hooted one.
Glamour, no; perfection, yes, purred another.
Asturbar’s hand sprang to the halt of his battle-axe. What?
No wonder they could hide from us so completely, even amongst the living roots of the Dragonkind!
His fingers whitened. What this explained, was how easily they had been tracked down. The very trees were dracoflora! Each and every root probably reported back to some great mother unit. This realm was even more treacherous than he had imagined.
Now, the greatest of their number took several steps down his chosen root before unexpectedly dousing Nyahi with an indelicate bombardment of scented delights, as he roared, COME TO ROOST WITH ME, MY DELICATE DRACOFLOWER! THOU ART PERFECTION INDEED!
Iridiana froze – hopefully not overcome by being drenched in an overpowering stench of mouldy kitchen swill, but by sheer mortification. Mentally, Asturbar started chopping that Dragon up for kindling.
The creature rubbed a paw over her spikes as a father might ruffle a child’s hair, only, this gesture was fraught with rather different overtones. Hugely resonant of voice, he intoned, Come, my shy, frolicsome bud. Be not afraid of mine majesty!
Tiny, tiny pieces of kindling. Hurled into a roaring bonfire!
She seemed incapable of response. Before he could think the better of his own reaction, Asturbar stormed toward them, shouting, “Excuse me, that’s my girlfriend you’re fondling, you great lunk-headed – yes, you! Get your beastly paws off of her!”
Perhaps not his finest moment. Certainly not the smartest.
The Asjujian Emoflit rounded upon him with a thunderous bark of fury!
So powerful was the creature’s auditory attack, it turned forty-three stone of Azingloriax warrior into windblown leaf and dumped him flat on his back in a grim grey puddle. Next Asturbar knew, a massive, spatulate paw hovered overhead. Say the word, o Fragrant Overlord, and I shall splatter this disrespectful mite’s brains from here to the Straits of Hordazar!
He clamped down on a powerful urge to howl with laughter. O Fragrant Overlord? He wanted to shout, ‘Not today, thank you!’
The Fragrant Overlord’s various eyes, set around the edges of his great, flattened skull, narrowed as he gaped first at the Human and then at his muse, who was unexpectedly not suitably overcome by his magnificently malodorous salutation. And again, the great head swung to and fro. Eventually, he appeared to opt for bravado. One of his forepaws – Asturbar still had no idea how many paws were beneath the spiky skirts of his Dragon armour, which brushed the ground as he walked or the tree bark as he climbed – smashed into the wood right above Iridiana’s head, gouging out a hole at least twenty feet wide.
“EXPLAIN!”
“I am a Shapeshifter,” Iridiana began, sounding shaken.
“IMPOSSIBLE!” her interrogator roared at once.
“You are as Asjujian as I am! Come. You are a light grey, yes, and smaller than some, but there is no scent of glamour about your presentation. You are unmistakably dracoflorian of scent, magic and fires – we have no Shapeshifters!”
Ha. They were colour-blind!
When she made no reply, he added, with a few reeking sprays of ‘perfume’ for emphasis, “Even the forest thrills to you as its own, sweet dracoflower; as to any Asjujian Emoflit worthy of inclusion in our congregation. There can be no mistaking basic biology. Why else would I respond to your beauteous botanical aroma as is my right as your Fragrant Overlord – now, submit yourself forthwith! This is contemptible behaviour, shielding these feckless bipeds within your own realm. And you –” a talon capable of turning a Dragonship into a kebab suddenly threatened Asturbar’s throat as the Overlord fell back upon Dragonish to express the fullness of his spitting rage – you, little Human, will be silent! I will deal with you and your blasphemous insults to the Blessed Incarnate of Starlight just as soon as I have finished saturating this disobedient female with my almighty aroma pods of harmonious psychic pathway re-synchronisation!
Asturbar was not about to pause to find out what that meant, for the image in his mind was nothing to do with scent and everything to do with the consequences of her near-perfect adaptation to the Asjujian form. Five monumental males threatened his girl! He yelled, “Change, Iridiana! Transform!”
“I … can’t!”
BRRAA-HAA-HAA! boomed the Fragrant Overlord.
The mighty Asjujians hemmed Iridiana in as the Overload swaggered toward her; she tried to back up, but found her way blocked. Iridiana then attempted a leap for safety, but four of the beasts pinned her in place while the Overlord continued to bellow something about communal conformity and reckless thought scents, and all Asturbar could see was a vile scene playing out in his imagination. He panicked.
NYAHIIII!!
Tearing from himself anything that could possibly help, Asturbar leaped out of his puddle, brandishing his battle-axe in a glorious charge – at least, in his mind – only to slip and fall flat on his face. Hsssssiii-BOOM! A whitish comet shot out of the head of his axe and blasted the Fragrant Overlord squarely in the nether regions. The roiling fireball seemed to flip the chief Asjujian in slow motion up and onto Nyahi’s back, but he was upside-down and facing back toward Asturbar when he spat a ball of a light green, smoking substance toward the Human. He took a full load right between the eyes.
Asturbar coughed and shook his head. Wow. Poufy scented heavens! He could not even begin to describe what that olfactory fireball did to his senses, for it was as overwhelming as if he stood beneath a pounding waterfall of adenoidal magic. He saw through the world in strange, greenish-grey shades, sensing life teeming around him in new and fascinating ways, the great tree trunks like pulsating highways of luminous green power, while the Emoflits were denser, more beautiful floral flames nearby, their fire-lives described in patterns of flame-petals that constantly blossomed and renewed from the centres of their beings.
Magnificent, he slurred.
Every creature stared at him.
Oh, holy Fra’anior, that can’t be good, gasped the Fragrant One.
He felt an inane smile spread across his face as he wobbled to his feet. Asturbar performed a twirling bow toward the stupefied Emoflit and heard himself coo, Ooh, Fragrant Overlord, how very, very handsome you are.
Then, he promptly toppled like a felled tree.
* * * *
“How long will the antidote take to work?” Iridiana’s voice asked worriedly.
“Well, we’ve never actually … attempted this process … upon a Human,” admitted the Overload, all rumbling awkwardness. “There is precedent. A few Lesser Dragons inadvertently conformed to Asjujian ways and suchlike, do you understand?”
Asturbar just could not stop smiling. They were so silly. Couldn’t they feel that the entire mountain was one immense organism which deliberated with a single pulse of psychic life, in which any form of disharmony was damaging to the whole and must by all means be avoided? Could they not scent the glorious colours of Asjujian communal being, indeed, that the odours they produced were colour and beauty to these inordinately olfactory-sensitive creatures?
Iridiana said, “I just want my Marshal back.”
“Your beloved.”
“Yes, he’s my beloved. I’m sorry if my transformation confused everyone, o Fragrant Overlord. I shall not make that mistake again.”
“Nor I.” After another lengthy pause, the Dragon added, “We found most of your Dragonship and its component parts, but most regrettably, it took us three days to recover the small cylinder you specified. It was excreted by a Greater Lyadasik Spiny Fire Eel some three leagues from here, but it did survive mostly intact. The contents were somewhat singed but should, I am assured by our Scholar Paws, remain legible.”
“Thank you.”
“Is our service acceptable?”
The girl’s voice said, “Acceptable indeed. I must reiterate that we are sorry to have brought this trouble upon you.”
“Thoralian’s army of Drakes and Dragons is mighty indeed,” said the Emoflit, “but I assure you that our defences are impenetrable. That is why they wait offshore. It would be injudicious indeed to attempt any direct assault upon our ecology. We have, however, already been subjected to immensely powerful psychic attacks. Were those to be augmented by the power of the First Egg which our Most Redolent Eminence, the Dominasku of Dragons, does with her superior sagacity sense nearing our shores, we would fear … the worst.”
“A takeover?”
Hilarious. He could just imagine Thoralian trying to reverse-conform these most pugnaciously hidebound minds. They’d frustrate the Yellow-White Shapeshifter to the Jade Moon and back. Still, the nearing glory of the First Egg was to the Dominasku’s mind like a third sun, a sun of inconceivable magical potential, and should the legendary Marshal learn to harness that power, what could stand against? A Star Dragoness? Surely, the power of the Ancient Dragons was exponentially more immense than anything any living Dragon or Dragoness had ever dreamed of wielding?
The Asjujian growled, “Aye. That is why –”
“I understand,” she said. “He does not appear to have recovered.”
“Not yet.”
“He still thinks you are the suns reborn.”
The Asjujian said heavily, “I am not much accustomed to be subjected to ribald banter upon such a sensitive topic as this Human’s pernicious regard for my person!”
“Who stink-bombed whom?” Asturbar chortled happily. Why was he chained in darkness? Why could he hear that Dragon’s voice but not breathe deep of the sensational aromas of his being? He yanked at the manacles once more, but these bindings had been designed for small Dragons. “Come, let me go. I need to see you, o beauteous Overlord!”
“See you, did you note?” the girl sniffed, provoking an immensely disapproving snort complete with complex scent indicators like a range of sweet but spoiled fruit. That Dragon was more than unimpressed. His scent glands were torrid hotbeds of aggravation. “So, the plan remains the same? We will dangle ourselves as bait, and then you will deliver us through the root system to Michubax, where we’ll pick up a Trader Dragonship and make ourselves scarce?”
“Excellent,” rumbled the Dragon, and pounded away.
“Bait?” Asturbar muttered. “I don’t want to be bait.”
“You’ll make very tasty bait,” chortled the girl. “I warned you that there would be payback. Now, that day has arrived. What say you, soldier?”
“With respect, ma’am, that’s a terrible plan!”
“Why? I like it! I dangle you in front of Thoralian’s nose, calling, ‘I have a Marshal and I’m not afraid to use him!’ ”
“Tyrant.”
She whispered, “I hope so. Because I’m going to do my tyrannical best to win your affections back from that stinking ambulatory woodpile.”
Chapter 19: O Darling Dictator
“LET ME GO!” Asturbar yelled. “This is demeaning! I’m the Marshal of a mercenary House! I am not any Dragon’s enticement, you rancid, suppurating coven of ulcerated murthaslugs! I’ll have your scabby hides. Murdering pack of Cloudlands bandits …”
Nyahi pecked him upon the cheek. “Keep chuntering away there, dearest. Sounding good.”
“May ten thousand sucking worms infest your pustulent, suppurating corpses!” He threw himself against the chains, to no avail. “Freaking feral-heads! Curse your malingering ancestors, Chanbar, you sneaking pederastic toad spawn sycophant! Get over here and do your sworn duty!”
“Good one, Marshal,” she giggled.
“CHANBAR!”
“Wave nicely, my pretty Dragon bait.”
“When I get out loose, you silver-tongued dictator, I swear … I was in charge … at some point, soldier? Why’s nobody listening to my orders?”
The Island-World faded around him again. His words rose like dense wedges of crimson Drakes patrolling the horizons, seeming to pass over the suns as dark clouds of destruction and imminent death. He was chained to a stanchion somewhere on the open deck of a flatbed transporter Dragonship, burning under the suns, and he wrenched and fought and wept and screamed for the doom that convulsed the Island-World. Myriad Dragons cut wing across the blazing orbs peering down upon him, searing across Islands like infernal suns-beams pouring from the eyes of the mighty Onyx Fra’anior, dissecting his tiny life until he could stand the reaming no longer, until he …
He woke to darkness. Movement. They raced down a ribbed tan tunnel that made him hazily imagine the inside of a Dragon’s spinal column. Perhaps it was. All of these plant Dragons were connected, but the majestic sense of complex interaction and harmony was fading from his memory now, and he remembered that he was a man … wasn’t he? Where were the scents he so longed for?
