by Marc Secchia
“Go ahead,” Azhukazi sneered. “Start at the neck and peel him slowly. It’s that, or this abomination’s death.”
As Aranya unfroze from her battle-ready stance and began to cross the hundred feet or so between them, the Iolite Blue Dragon’s fire-eyes remained fixed upon Asturbar with predatory intent. He knew what that Dragon was thinking. Every inch of his musculature proclaimed the outrage burning in the Shapeshifter’s craw, for he must see how thoroughly he had been duped that day he sought the thief and failed to find him. He was trying to work out exactly how Asturbar had evaded his mental probe, was he not? And how he could escape alive, with his prize …
Thoralian’s sallow glare raked the scene, clearly calculating the balance of advantage. Asturbar could read the course of his thoughts. If Azhukazi wanted something that badly, then there must be leverage in it for the Thoralians, if he timed his intervention right. How would he and Azhukazi interact? Surely, a talon-swift alliance? Yet their mutual distrust seemed deeper than the Cloudlands.
Where was the Shadow?
Lightly, Aranya said, “Remove the breastplate, soldier, or I will be forced to peel your hide.”
Azhukazi’s gaze flickered at her flirtatious overtones.
The Shadow flickered faster.
Iridiana was gone; Asturbar knew that somehow, that Star had colluded with her Shadow to liberate the Iridium Dragoness from Azhukazi’s terrible power. She was snaffled away by a black left paw that appeared out of nothingness, apparently disconnected from the right that walloped the Iolite Blue from the other side at exactly the same instant, leaving Azhukazi to voice an aggrieved bellow as he cast about for the source of the attack. The chamber exploded once more into action. Huge bodies hurled themselves at each other. Snarls and roars and fireballs rocked the great Hall and everything within it. The concussion of opposing powers blew Asturbar right off Gangurtharr’s back, but he was caught again by Huaricithe, this time, who swirled around an Aranya-Thoralian tangle with impossibly deft skill of wingtip manoeuvring that left the soldier breathless.
That much tonnage defying the forces of gravity and momentum? Dragonflight had to be magical.
BOOM!! Curse it, that monster of Azhukazi’s was still hamming through the Island from the top! This battle was unravelling fast.
Dangle me! he roared suddenly.
Reversal. Blood rushing heatedly to his brain. Stomach heaving and squirming in ways that had no parallel in his experience. Again, the battle-axe came up, and the Azingloriax warrior dived into space because he saw Ardan’s progress through the aether from another perspective – Aranya’s perception, it must be – and then he slammed boots first into the brute’s nose the very millisecond he materialised. Asturbar was in no mood to exchange courtesies. With a savage roar of his own, he buried his axe like a meat cleaver in a foot-deep cut above the Shadow Dragon’s right eye. The axe rammed jarringly against bone.
Give me back Iridiana!
Make me, you fool, snarled the Shadow Dragon.
Asturbar swore as his wrenching attempt to retrieve his axe found the blade immovably lodged. He swung up his boot, intending to kick the blade free, when the Dragon reached up and flicked him off his nose like a bug. His armour gave a resounding clang that drowned out the soldier’s pained grunt. Had he not been wearing inches of metal, he knew his spine would have been snapped like a twig.
Flying. Falling. Hurting. As the Shadow Dragon receded, he saw in strangely exaggerated slow motion a trail of blood droplets leaving his lips, incongruously seeming to connect him to the tiny mauve dragonet suddenly sneaking between Ardan’s talons. The Shadow’s fist tightened, and a blinding pain smote him behind the eyes. His pain was hers. Hers, his. They were one, and he knew he must give of his strength that she might survive.
As he crash-landed beneath Aranya’s whirling paws, the Thoralian confronting her suddenly broke away, deflecting the Amethyst’s incredibly rapid burst of blue-hot miniature fireballs with contemptuous ease. Both Dragons wore fresh wounds. The other Thoralian was groggily trying to find his paws whilst Gangurtharr raced aerially past the Shadow, clearly intent upon finishing the job he had started on the Yellow-White Shapeshifter.
Without warning, the world froze.
Asturbar felt as if his entire body had just been clamped in a vice. Judging by the straining postures of his allies, they experienced exactly the same incapacity. A belated volley of crossbow bolts skittered off the Yellow-White’s scales. He favoured them with a scornful curl of his upper lip, and then gestured slightly with one talon. The soldiers out there in the corridor collapsed as if an invisible scythe had just cut beneath them like a blade reaping the harvest.
Better, sneered Thoralian. Feel the power of my First Egg.
Even the Star Dragoness could not move a muscle. The pressure upon them was gargantuan; the Dragon’s control of the power flooding through him now, absolute. The two remaining Thoralians moved closer together, one limping painfully.
Couldn’t shield against that power, Aranya’s voice sounded faintly in his mind. She had been protecting them all along, even out there! How – her allies? The third Thoralian must have broken through at last.
Azhukazi the Iolite Blue. Come to us, the Thoralians demanded in synchronised speech.
The Necromancer stiffened, clearly fighting an assault upon his mind, but it was over far quicker than Asturbar could credit. The First Egg’s might snuffed out his resistance just as the Thoralian had threatened, like the pinch of damp fingers upon a candlewick.
Azhukazi sagged, making a sound like a sigh of ennui. His fire-eyes darkened. After a slight pause as Asturbar imagined the Thoralians plumbed the Iolite Blue’s mind, the pair of huge Shapeshifters lunged toward their quarry, the Iolite Blue. Blurred speed. Gleaming talons swung low, brutally, slicing into Azhukazi’s chest with ghastly ease. No Dragon’s hide could be sliced open like the softest of cheese! Yet the Thoralians were far from finished with their victim. With a paw each groping within his chest, they laid their free forepaws either side of the mighty Necromancer’s head, and bent to their task.
Yes. YEEESSSS … hissed the beasts.
The pair shuddered as though gorging themselves upon an unseen feast.
Asturbar. Boots, see to the Star …
He lay perhaps a foot from her outthrust forepaw. Aranya had been trying to protect him, he realised. Yet how could he abandon Nyahi for Aranya? Why was her concern for another when she was now trapped in that Ardan’s paw? He was selfish. She was so much better a person than he. How could he even tear his eyes from the spectacle that was the Thoralians slowly, almost delicately extracting a Dragon’s living, still-pulsing heart from his chest, and sharing the meat with vile, decadent slurps, cackling together as they smacked their lips over the feast?
The impact of the truth shredded his last hope. The beast was a parasite! The ultimate lowlife. He was stealing the Iolite Blue’s powers right out of his body!
He’ll turn to me next, came the very quiet, faraway thread of Iridiana’s mental voice. Strength, Boots. Protect …
Protect her. Protect them all. Asturbar knew what he must do, but to move beneath the psychic-physical control of that monstrosity of the Thoralian triplicate was a task perhaps beyond any mortal strength. Yet he struggled. Wriggling his fingers, even though that effort cost him dear, he made little caterpillar movements that inched across the space until they touched.
Aranya’s left fire-eye seemed to smile at him. Well done, soldier.
The incredible pain eased as if palliated by the very sound of her voice, but in the same millisecond, Iridiana cut loose. Smokescreen? Uncontrollable transformations flustered the Shadow Dragon, who appeared to be every bit as much trapped as the other Dragons in the Hall. He could disappear, only to reappear in another location and be instantly paralysed by the Thoralians’ power. The blue-purple contents of his paw transformed at an increasingly crazed pace, rocking him, burning him, rattling the Shadow Dragon palpably – he had probab
ly never imagined the power of Chaos Magic, and the brute had no idea how to respond.
Yet Iridiana could not escape the ambit of his reach either …
At length, Azhukazi slumped at the Thoralians’ feet, convulsing in his death throes. Spittle mixed with golden blood dribbled from his slack lips, and he appeared to have lost any conscious control of his body.
The Yellow-White’s muzzles intoned, Very well. Shadow, stop playing with the fledgling. Bring me this treasure the Iolite Blue valued so dearly.
Ardan said, I can’t –
You are weak, Shadow. There. She is held.
Bawling out a horrible laugh, Ardan smashed his paws together with a mighty report, for his power had the shattering impact of nearby thunder. Horrifying! Even with Thoralian’s assistance he missed the first strike, but the second took its toll as the young Dragoness’ efforts to escape resulted in her rebounding unfortunately off the stalwart wall of Ardan’s chest. Iridiana crashed to the stone floor, unconscious – driven into one of her floral forms, Asturbar realised dazedly. The hulking beast swivelled slowly, flexing his talons in great, stone-gouging strokes as he contemplated the Amethyst Dragoness. There was no trace of compassion in the blazing sockets of his fire-eyes.
Hurry up! Thoralian hissed. Fetch the Jewels out of his stomach, you fool!
Not while I live, Aranya snarled.
Now Asturbar realised what she had been doing; what she intended now. Her heart was to protect every ally present, even though she barely knew them. What a woman! Noble as her gesture was, it was also doomed, for no Dragon alive could withstand the fabled might of the First Egg. Yet the Jewels inside his stomach writhed in protest. Did they know? Hear? Respond to a moment pregnant with fate, as the Dragons prepared to unleash the doom of death?
The Shadow Dragon roared, AS YOU WISH, STAR DRAGONESS!
Asturbar could not move an inch farther, but he could will forth the same magic which had protected him from Iridiana’s most potent fires. Faster than a Shadow blinking across the Greeting Hall, he imagined succouring the precious domain of Aranya’s soul from that unworthy brute, and it seemed to him that the whitest of Aranya’s own fires responded to his call, rousing themselves in new ways.
The Shadow Dragon smashed into the touching pair, the Azingloriax warrior and Amethyst Dragoness, with a crash that resounded through every iota of his being. Bone deep. Soul deep. Glorious, pearlescent fires flared in response, yet so intense and focussed was his attack, Asturbar distinctly felt a new, living flame spark from Aranya’s talon into his hand. It seared into his stomach and quivered there as though surprised, or content at finding a new home – and though he curled up, expecting to be burned, the sensation faded immediately.
Ardan tumbled over his Dragoness’ back in a flaccid heap of wings and limbs. The Thoralians blurted out an involuntary double bugle of disbelief.
Aranya groaned, Sapphire? Sapphire, where are you, my darling?
Here, squeaked Asturbar’s stomach.
What? He was not accustomed to his stomach talking back. That would be a new nadir in the tales of legendary Azingloriax greed! “Eh?” he just about managed.
“Armour off. Now!” snapped Aranya.
Never mind that he could not move. Nyahi moved for him, even in her semiconscious state. Shrieking, NO, NOT ASTURBAR! WATCH OUT! she flashed into chaotic, uncoordinated motion, heading off a sneak attack.
Thoralian’s shields, or whatever pneumatic-psychic trickery he was using, backed up by the full power of the First Egg of the Ancient Dragons, were simply dragged along with her jerky leaps, or turned inside out – he could not fathom what she had just done. Somehow, his stolen power became hinged to her Chaotic transformations and the result was a swirling dust devil of magic that snatched up half a dozen grown Dragons, arguably the mightiest creatures South or North of the Rift, and swished them about like a junior cook stirring a stewpot with far too much enthusiasm. Gangurtharr whizzed past Asturbar’s head, his jaw full of a Thoralian paw. Huaricithe flew backward. Aranya had a grip of his boot, but her wings slapped her own face repeatedly. Ardan swished across the floor, scraping his nose for three hundred feet before he demolished a stairway and lay there, stunned.
Actually, Asturbar decided, Chaos was rather fun when it worked.
With a grating crack that dwarfed even Iridiana’s maelstrom, the ceiling shattered and Azhukazi’s creation came crashing through, serenely swinging his remaining paw hammer with dull disregard for the goings-on below.
* * * *
Asturbar did not know what happened next. There was a blinding flash of light that blew their small congregation apart, apparently emanating from a point midway between Aranya and the Thoralian pair. He and Aranya fetched up hard against a wall, but immediately the Star Dragoness was scrabbling at his armour, crying, “Let her out! You have to let her out!”
“Her? Who?” Asturbar groaned.
“Sapphire.”
Azhukazi’s beast crashed to the floor of the hall with an impact that rocked the Island. No mind. It simply carried on pulverising the rock with slow, up-and-down blows of its paw. The Thoralians had disappeared somewhere behind it, but they would return quickly.
“Sapphire? Suffering murgalizards, who is Sapphire now?”
“My dragonet.”
He blinked. “Your … oh! In my – how?”
“Aye. Quickly, please, or she’ll suffocate in there.” The Star Dragoness seemed on the verge of crying, which Asturbar was convinced would cause him to be summarily lynched by well over ninety percent of Herimor’s Star Dragoness-worshipping denizens.
Something that felt uncomfortably like a small foot kicked Asturbar squarely in the bladder. Stupid man. Let me out!
Could he not appreciate how a pregnant woman might feel? The weirdness and wonder of hosting a living body inside of his own. The beauty of burgeoning life. Although, he was not convinced babies generally demanded to be let out quite so snarkily.
I’m the one in charge here! thundered the Thoralians, swooping in to the attack – destination, Asturbar’s throat. From his left came a coruscating ball of Iridium fury. From the right, Gangurtharr and Huaricithe arrived in concert. And the weird monk, of whom Asturbar had seen neither hide nor hair of during the battle so far, touched the back of his armour and unclipped it deftly!
“Ooh, nice touch there, monkish love,” Aranya flirted in a voice so far from her own, Asturbar’s jaw unhinged itself and stayed that way.
The Star Dragoness was quite mad.
Aranya said, “Zip, stow it. Focussing on the surgery.”
“Pucker up, big boy,” the other voice riposted. “It’ll only hurt for a second. Aranya’s very, very good at –”
KAABOOM!!
A bone-jarring detonation right behind Aranya’s shoulder caused them all to rebound against the wall. Bits of masonry rained down upon their heads. Black flame and purple smoke fountained into the air, and all the Dragons were lying about on the floor, groaning and shaking their heads as they struggled to recover. Who would be the first to give quarter? No true Dragon!
Feeling a strange plucking sensation in his lower parts, Asturbar glanced down to discover that Aranya’s steely fore-talon had pierced his lower belly to tickle his pelvis, cutting uncomfortably close to a place most men regarded as dear to their hearts. No mind. With a devious grin and evident relish – so Asturbar decided – the Star Dragoness picked the instant of his greatest shock to slice him fully open. He felt nothing but an odd sense of pressure, and something tugging inside that was never meant to be tugged.
Obviously, she had slain him and he was fast on his way to joining Azhukazi in whatever afterlife awaited …
Or not.
No ways under the suns he was off visiting ghosts and whatnot while that gorgeous girl of his was pugnaciously skirmishing with the Marshals Thoralian, for now she had assumed the immense woody bulk of an Asjujian Emoflit, to the Yellow-White Shapeshifters’ bemusement and strident frustration; Nya
hi immediately drenched both of him with some kind of sadistically lilac-coloured olfactory bomb. The two Yellow-Whites backed away, juddering, whining and pawing at their noses in gratifying distress, whilst Gangurtharr just shuffled his paws, looking bilious and uncertain as to whether or not he dared to venture into that cloud. For the Gladiator to have turned that exact shade of green, the stench had to be potent indeed.
They seemed to be giving an excellent account of themselves.
Movement closer at hand arrested his attention. A tiny, very pale pink muzzle peeked out of the rent in Asturbar’s stomach.
He stared!
“Why, I do believe he’s given birth to a boy dragonet,” trilled the cheeky voice out of Aranya’s mouth.
The monk reached over to help. “Here we go, little one. Out with you.”
Cheep.
Aranya was about to say something, when her other voice chipped in, “What a man. Monk and midwife rolled into one!”
Ri’arion snorted, “Hmm. Next one’s a bit shy. Quick wings, girlie.”
Out, squeaked Sapphire.
Why thank you, little one, said the monk, evidently accepting a delivery made from inside his stomach.
“Battle shy,” quipped the other voice, drawing a roll of the eyes from her hostess. “Ever given birth during a battle, dearest?”
“Hardly!” the monk and Asturbar snapped simultaneously.
Time to see the world, Sapphire burbled happily. Come, my lovely brood. Let’s clear this cesspit of nastiness –
Insolent pest! snorted Asturbar.
That’s me, Sapphire chirped back sassily. Your bowels are no warren, soldier. They’re foetid and uncomfortable.
My pleasure to return life to you, Sapphire.
Oh … the voice gulped.
In short order, the Jewels were scrambling to depart Asturbar’s stomach. His nerves stubbornly refused to acknowledge any pain, not even when the fifth evacuee was a much larger, blood-streaked sapphire dragonet of a body pattern unfamiliar to his experience, who immediately gathered the little white ones around herself with the air of a proud mother.
