Chaos Shifter

by Marc Secchia

  He shoved his existential confusion aside. Battle loomed. Right here inside his walls.

  “Bantukor. Defensive positions at the entrance. Turn half of the catapults toward the Hall. And get those idiots off the landings!”

  Onlookers? Really?

  “Sah!”

  “Where’s Azhukazi?”

  He could see no sign of the Iolite Blue as yet, but he would doubtless be joining the party that fate had just casually tossed together. Bundle half a dozen of the most powerful Dragons in the Island-World into a single underground chamber, and watch the fangs and fireballs fly. Battles in enclosed quarters tended to be brutal, toe-to-toe affairs as combatants slugged it out. This could get ugly. Very ugly indeed.

  Directly in his mind, Iridiana said, Aranya says her under-Cloudlands force is ten minutes out. Maybe, just maybe they can rescue some people …

  Again, an-ultra rapid decision. Yuaki, listen. I’ve a small job for you and your team …

  If Azhukazi was coming in through the top, they needed a bolthole beneath. That, and the luck of the very stars upon their side, if the hazy picture formed in his Dragoness’ mind was accurate. Lizard-like Dragons beneath the Cloudlands? A rescue-posse somehow passing through those toxic realms to spear into the underbelly of the Thoralians’ advance – and if he was present in all three forms, then who was guarding the First Egg … no. One of these three must be an illusion. Clever!

  But, which one? Did Aranya know?

  I’ll tell her. Shielded telepathy needed, Iridiana said tautly.

  The Thoralians and the Shadow Dragon descended with flared wings and leisurely insouciance, bent on proclaiming who was boss of this confrontation. Asturbar several times checked the rapid deployment of his forces, but knew from the Thoralians’ reputation that any conventional defence was likely to be futile. The magical power practically sparked off those three beasts. His eyes narrowed. Yet were two of the shell-brothers flying a touch gingerly, as if recently injured? Perhaps the Amethyst had been busy slapping the face of evil about Herimor, as they claimed – hopefully hard, with talons bared. He scanned the descending triplet carefully. Slight physical differences suggested that they were likely not three Dragons raised from one egg, as some legends claimed. Cold steamed off their Yellow-White scales and rimed their talons, displaying at least one vector of power. Ice attacks. The coal-black Shadow Dragon descended utterly soundlessly, like the Shadow for which he was named, and Asturbar had to admit he found that beast somewhere between awesome and terrifying. Dragons were the supreme predators of the Island-World, and this creature strutted his claim to that throne effortlessly.

  Quietly, Aranya said, Ardan, thou my soul’s Shadow, wilt thou not turn from this course?

  The three Thoralians rasped as one, Ardan is mine to command.

  Asturbar bit his lip. Freakish! The hulking black Dragon, all blocky mass through the torso and a raging case of Dragon ego, ignored her plea. His fire-eyes seemed curiously devoid of life, like dull mirrors obscuring what should have been bonfires of vibrant draconic magic within. Oh, what a tale of woe! How Nyahi trembled upon his arm; he realised how deeply this interaction affected her.

  Then, the Thoralians and the Shadow landed.

  Belligerently, Gangurtharr said, “Back for another whipping, you yellow smear of slug slime? You fled with your poor little tail tucked between your legs last time, as I recall.”

  The Thoralians snarled as one, “You are insignificant, flabby belly. BE SILENT!”

  Freaky. Far worse, the psychic uppercut that accompanied those words. Asturbar realised that the Star Dragoness had somehow shielded their minds from being snuffed out, for she groaned and swayed upon her paws. An instant migraine blossomed behind his eyes.

  The foremost of the trio of Yellow-Whites pointed upward with his right forepaw. “Indeed, you are all insignificant blemishes on my path to the ultimate destiny – a destiny you of pathetic minds and stunted ambition cannot possibly imagine! But my prize is about to drop into my paws. Don’t you dare interfere, Aranya – you or your coterie of tiny paw lickers – or I will channel the First Egg’s power to pinch out the wick of every life upon this pathetic Island.”

  So why not just do that and save himself the bother?

  Stealing a glance at Aranya, for he knew Nyahi was firmly on track with his thoughts, Asturbar observed an eerie light enter her extraordinary eyes. Yes. She was more than aware.

  How much had their recent affray cost both sides? This Aranya moved like a Dragoness ten times her apparent age. The Thoralians, restlessly drifting apart as they positioned themselves in a shallow arc facing Aranya, also did not move with anything approaching ease. Dragons were supposed to recover from battles with infeasible ease. Not so much these. They had that slightly creased look at the edges of the eyes which always crept up on soldiers during an attritional campaign.

  GRAABBOOM!

  With an immense report, the ceiling cracked apart and Azhukazi made his grand entrance, belling at the top of his lungs, AZHUKAZI!!

  Cue mayhem.

  As one beast, the Shapeshifter Dragons surged into a single, incredible tangle right beneath the tumbling slabs of stone. No ducking away for such as these! Fangs champing. Powers booming. Granite shattering and splintering in every direction. Hefting his battle-axe, Asturbar jammed his visor down over his face and balanced upon the balls of his feet, waiting for the right moment to strike. A shadow of Dragonish proportions slipped into and out of reality, trying and failing to outwit a shaped shield that Aranya kept phasing around her companions, keeping her cool with incredible levels of focus as her massive mate clashed, and clashed again, with the white-fires that kept sparking in his face. Had she planned this? How did she even know where Ardan was going to be? Future prediction? A deeper link to the Shadow none of them suspected?

  The Iridium Dragoness seared around one Thoralian’s head before making her strike, but her fangs rebounded off his ultra-cold skin as though it were made of iron. She dodged three rapid bites, and a sidelong swipe of his talons, but then the battle rolled over her and he lost sight. In a blur of mauve, Thoralian lost a foot off his wingtip and Ardan took a crashing blow to the side of the jaw as he re-materialised from his eerie nothingness, but she was too small to make much impact. A Thoralian tail smashed her across the chamber, but Gangurtharr was there, partly catching the blow’s force with his shoulder as he raked his talons across Thoralian’s underparts. He winced – any man would! The Yellow-White shrugged him off however and lunged for Iridiana, who smashed a blurred uppercut into his jaw which, despite dislodging chips of white fangs, appeared only to annoy Thoralian. A crushing wall of ice swept her and the Gladiator backward, pummelling them heavily until a shimmering barrier from the Star allowed them to sideslip and escape the barrage.

  Under cover of Aranya’s shielding, Iridiana broke off and returned for Asturbar, panting heavily. She looked shaken. “Wow. Tough crew.”

  “You alright?”

  The Dragoness began to form a haughty glare, before snaffling him into her paw with a burbling laugh. “I’m tougher.”

  At that instant a second and much more violent broadside from the Thoralians, a finely synchronised, coruscating wall of blue ice, swept across the entire chamber, instantly blast-freezing everything in its path. Iridiana Shifted through it, but the residual cold was more than enough to make Asturbar’s eyes feel frozen in their sockets. Never had he considered the purity of cold as a weapon. An almighty chill radiated off the Thoralians in great white streamers as they rose into the air, circling each other, operating as a perfect unit – if one was the fake, Asturbar could not distinguish him from the others. Again and again, shards of ice the size and weight of Dragonships swept the battlefield. Azhukazi dodged expertly or broke through with timed punches of his forepaws. Asturbar saw golden Dragon blood already frozen to his knuckles. Aranya was all wily subtlety, angling her shields so neatly that the ice slid over them or deflected off with minimal effort. She di
d not endure a single head-on blow – she was an accomplished fighter for her size and age, he noted, giving out far more damage than she received. Then, the bruiser Gangurtharr seized Ardan just as he floated into being, and the two males tore into each other with ferocious snarls.

  The monk seemed to have performed a vanishing act – or was that the flash of an inhumanly large sword in the air behind Azhukazi? That wretched sulky-face could fly?

  No time. He gauged the close combatants with a professional eye. The battle was already bloody. Close quarters, both sides suffering heavy hits. They must hit the Thoralians first, and hardest, whilst they were distracted by the allied Dragons – after two or three initial rounds of powers and strikes …

  His Dragoness nodded. Yes.

  Already, the Dragons broke apart as though impelled by invisible blows, panting and blowing hard, sizing each other up with untrammelled hatred. No love lost here. The atmosphere simmered between them, fire and ice and fury intermingled, and he smelled the unmistakable ozone tang of a Dragon’s lightning power. Aranya’s scales smoked, her colour tending slightly toward ashen amethyst now, he saw, like old coals turning white as a bonfire guttered.

  White … like Istariela? Was that why a warrior monk from Fra’anior’s own Isle followed her?

  Battle-axe, hissed Iridiana.

  They saw their chance. Seized it. With a tremendous overhand blow, Asturbar-Iridiana scythed across the chamber and belted the living fires out of one of the Thoralians. The Yellow-White triplicate threw up a hasty ice shield, but the power of the combined strike rattled them all. The backlash was appalling. Asturbar found himself falling through the air, black spots dancing before his eyes. Hell fires! Twisting. Seeing Iridiana shrinking toward the apex of the blow – realising their inexperience had almost destroyed her – screaming as Azhukazi swept down – a slow blink of the eyes as the Thoralian he had struck expired in a puff of daisy-yellow smoke. The decoy!

  Stupid misfortune – curse it! One in three chance. He shouted furiously, twisting, trying to judge his fall so that he would not break any bones, but they had been much higher in the air than he had imagined. How had Iridiana managed that?

  Azhukazi swept up the Iridium Dragoness in his paws. Got you. Marshal! I’ll have the Jewels – what the –

  Iridiana rebelled. She transformed half a dozen times at high speed, trying to break the Iolite Blue’s grasp or blow his paws off. The Necromancer Dragon looked as if he was trying to juggle an oily dragonet, so swift was their interaction, but he somehow managed to keep his quarry corralled. Hisses and spits of fire shot between his talons and stitched flaming holes in his outspread wings. Azhukazi’s bellows struck a note of strident outrage. Iridiana’s technique seemed to be, ‘if in doubt, annoy the bigger Dragon into a mistake.’

  It seemed to work, because Azhukazi had no clue what he was dealing with as she sliced halfway through his tongue, vanished down a nostril and ripped backward in a shower of golden Dragon blood, and then flare-burned a two-foot deep trench in his neck.

  Asturbar landed with a jarring thump on Gangurtharr’s back – a planned catch, he realised, for the Gladiator Dragon roared with glee as he slammed deliberately against a wall, his massive thighs coiling under enormous pressure, and the new Marshal turned Dragon Rider had only a millisecond to appreciate how his lower armour had just deflected a two-foot spine spike from skewering his manhood like a steel spike thrust through a round ammozkori fruit, before Gangurtharr launched himself into a tight, spinning backward somersault. Aranya’s right hand blurred as if she reached out to accelerate that movement. Outstanding battle awareness!

  Eschewing any modicum of actual refinement, Gang employed his immense belly and chest to body-slam one Thoralian and most of the second in a single hit of breathtaking technique.

  GRABOOM!! The entire fortress felt the Thoralians’ stone-cracking impact against the floor.

  The breath burst out of the Yellow-White Shapeshifter’s lungs in a prolonged, agonized wheeze, like the deflation of a Dragonship’s air sack. He had not seen that coming! By the loud splintering of ice, he realised the Yellow-White must have tried to spear the Gladiator in the belly with a few swiftly conjured ice spears, but Gangurtharr had somehow hardened his belly armour to negate that technique. Anticipation. Experience. Crushing result!

  “Guess what the fat belly’s for?” the Gladiator Dragon roared.

  For a second, the other Shapeshifter clearly did not know where his opponent was. The Gladiator Dragon took advantage of the pause to kick a ten-foot trench in the other beast’s flank, but the Thoralian dodged a bite that aimed to carve a wagon-sized load of meat from his neck. Giggling so hard she could hardly fire straight, Huaricithe swept by, pounding the other Thoralian away from her mate, and for the first time Asturbar saw his steaming ice armour fail. Flesh sizzled in multiple locations along that elongated body, drawing a thunderous roar of pain.

  Gang chortled, Needlework, o sweet fires of my soul?

  I’ll stitch up this toad yet, she thundered. Wow. Quite the voice for a petite … uh, Dragoness. Right.

  Incoming attack! Flipping his battle-axe with a rapid rotation of his wrists, Asturbar hurled himself off Gangurtharr’s back and pounded the second joint of a flailing black wing – Ardan’s! The Dragon bellowed in agony. Like armoured trains, Dragons had a few spots where just the right strike could catch a nerve centre, and by driving the hide powerfully into the joint, he achieved his exact aim. Ardan’s attack on Gangurtharr went awry as his numbed wing refused to respond; his body slewed away beneath them. Huaricithe and Aranya immediately joined in as a duo, tearing, battering, pounding the Shadow Dragon with a series of psychic strikes that rattled Asturbar’s brain like a nut bouncing about in a jar.

  The Black Dragon Shadowed away.

  Then, a scream sliced across the clamour of battle. It was the eerie, rending quality of the sound that stopped the Shapeshifters in their tracks – and a soft, popping sensation in Asturbar’s gut that stopped him dead too.

  Something distinctly animalistic scratched the inside of his stomach wall.

  “Ugh,” he said, feeling warmth flooding his throat. The sharp tang of blood almost caused him to choke. Yet he was transfixed by the sight of Azhukazi holding Iridiana aloft, in her Human form, seemingly by invisible hawsers that tensioned her limbs into a star shape. Taut. Trembling. Skin overstretched. The wealth of her dark hair rising behind her like outspread wings, swirling violently at the arcane forces of the Necromancer’s entrapment.

  His paws curled slightly, and her bones writhed visibly beneath her skin. The girl seemed unable to transform, nor even to scream again. What insane Dragon trickery could hold even the might of Chaos magic at bay?

  “IRIDIANA!” Asturbar cried.

  “You have something of mine, Marshal,” grated the Iolite Blue.

  He extended a trembling hand. “Wait. Don’t hurt her.” He sounded as if he were about to cry. Nyahi’s mouth formed a soundless rictus of excruciation, her skin bleached almost colourless by the extremity of her pain – and he was not even physically holding her! “I’ll get you the Jewels. Just stop the torture. Please.”

  Azhukazi growled, “Be quick, or I will force every bone out through her skin, and turn this abominable little Chaos Beast into a puddle of liquid on your floor.”

  Chapter 23: Births and Deaths

  THE NEAREST thoralian, slinking slowly around behind Ardan as the heavy, dark Dragon seemed to find the air beneath his wings once more, took a protuberant-eyed interest in goings-on as Asturbar tore his gaze away from Nyahi for a fraction of second to appraise his options. Help? Could he birth whatever had just stilled again inside his stomach, or vomit them up? The eggs were real, living eggs after all. Had he just hatched six dragonets inside his stomach? How could he even pass them or regurgitate them? They’d shred his oesophagus or – well, the alternative route was too visceral to contemplate. That left a selection of large Dragonkind and their surgically capable talons
to perform a swift dint of butchery. Not a prospect that excited him in the slightest.

  Absurdly, his mind informed him that it had just discovered illimitable respect for every woman in the Island-World who had ever given birth. That was a lot of women. And a lot of respect.

  “I’m waiting,” Azhukazi murmured, in a voice like velveteen fire.

  Aranya. Asturbar said, “Uh … Star Dragoness?”

  Her brow ridges shot up. “Don’t tell me – this treasure isn’t inside your stomach, perchance?” For the dour, scarred girl to pick this moment to make a joke was beyond his capacity to process.

  “Yes.”

  Ching! Her left fore-talon extended with a metallic, sword-from-scabbard sound. Asturbar blenched.

  Catching Iridiana’s eye briefly, he turned to Azhukazi. “Yes, the Jewels are inside my stomach. That’s how I stole them. I would have the Star Dragoness perform a quick … ah, surgical extraction. Just don’t hurt Iridiana.”

  Asturbar was no squeamish green recruit, but the tone of his response made every Dragon in the room snigger. Even the Thoralian who was aloft – the one Gangurtharr was not sitting upon, while Huari surreptitiously tried to line up a killing strike – essayed a gruff bark of laughter.