by Marc Secchia
Asturbar wanted to yell, ‘But I did all the hard work!’ Instead, what popped out of his mouth was, “Oh, she’s so cute.”
He was even talking like a girl now. This had to be the end.
Sapphire preened happily. I’m starting to like you, man-mommy … oh, Aranyi! I missed you!
You’re alive, my darling! sobbed the Star. I thought you were gone forever … and now such hope ignites my Dragoness’ hearts …
Never mind the waves of fire roaring around the hammering beast as the Thoralians swept his friends before them in rampant, triumphal fury. Who cared that they were doing circuits of the chamber having the stuffing smashed out of them? Asturbar found himself peering at the final pair of pinkish-white muzzles peering out of the rent in his stomach, entranced. So beautiful. So much more mesmerising than the misdeeds of a world-dominating tyrant.
WILL YOU KINDLY HELP US? Gangurtharr thundered from beneath a hazy barrage of ice-fireballs, if that made any sense whatsoever, as the Thoralians swept by in the full panoply of their Egg-augmented fury.
Aranya whispered, Sapphire, you embodied! And Zuzi –
Still inside, girlfriend. Time to go finish that job we started back in Sylakia.
Aye.
With that, the Amethyst Dragoness’ demeanour changed. Her jaw tightened. Talons clenched. A new fire blazed in her eyes. The tiny, pinkish-white dragonets all squealed and clung to Sapphire’s flanks, their near-translucent wings a-quiver with fear. Asturbar extended his hands automatically, and instantly found himself wearing seven dragonets. Oh well.
He was a moth – father, so proud he could not speak!
Out there the battle reached a new pitch of fury. The Thoralians seemed unstoppable, swollen with the power they siphoned from the First Egg. Even though Iridiana, Gangurtharr and Huaricithe were putting up a strong resistance, it could never be enough against that surfeit of strength. The Iridium Shapeshifter transformed again and again, somehow finding ways to confound the Thoralians with her ability to bend reality, to trip them up with vines, to scorch them with a pillar of mauve fire fifty feet tall that phased around the pair in the same manner in which Aranya had kept her mate, Ardan, at bay. Was the Star Dragoness instructing her on the side? That woman’s ability to multitask must be nonpareil! Meantime Huaricithe or Gangurtharr sneaked in the odd blow, clearly looking for a lethal strike, but the Thoralians seemed immune to anything that either Shapeshifter could throw at them.
Even as he watched, the Thoralians finally caught Iridiana out. A crunching paw-strike beneath the throat felled her; a brutal Yellow-White paw clenched around her neck.
His throat twisted as though it was him who felt that crushing grasp.
STOP! Aranya paused mid-magic, Asturbar realised, having been on the cusp of springing into the fray. Thoralian waved the drooping, silver-blue Dragoness warningly, growling, I have what I want – a new, greater power even than those wretched Jewels could ever have granted me. Shadow! We’re leaving, Aranya of Immadia, and you will not stop us.
I won’t? hissed the Shapeshifter Princess.
His shell-brother, panting upon his left flank, paused to lick a huge belly wound before he leered at Asturbar, his fangs dripping with his own golden blood. Want to watch a little Dragoness die?
The other Thoralian sneered, No, because you will be too busy saving all of these poor people I will hurl into the Cloudlands! Your choice, Aranya. Chase me, and they all die.
No, you’ll die!
At first, Asturbar did not know who had cried out. Then, he knew by the light gleaming between the knuckles of Thoralian’s paw. The unadulterated brilliance of a light he knew and loved; a power Iridiana had practiced under Yuaki’s instruction, only this time the young Dragoness was moved by desperation and buoyed by the love Asturbar poured into her. Their nearness was exquisite. It allowed her to reach into him, and for him to offer all he possessed.
Thou, my Asturbar, she crooned.
Thou, the myriad facets of mine love, he returned. Strength!
A pure flare of radiance imploded with a soft, whomp! inside the Yellow’s grasp. Deceptively soft. Dangerously so. Quicker than the eye could follow, an ethereal mauve Chaos Beast coiled about her captor, towering over four times his height, and three or four dozen ravening muzzles set upon long, twisting necks struck at once, simultaneously unleashing their iridium flares within his body and against his scales. The last Asturbar saw of that Thoralian, he looked mildly surprised. Then, his bones flared incandescent through his flesh, and a mound of fine grey dust puffed outward as if blown by an incorporeal wind.
All was silence. Unbearable silence.
Nyahi slumped.
* * * *
“Iridiana!”
Asturbar was on his feet, somehow, clutching his guts to keep them from spilling out as he stampeded toward his beloved. He roared with frustration as the Amethyst crashed into him from behind, but it was only so as to impel him faster, to shovel him into the fallen Iridium Dragoness’ paws. Just herself. No longer that untameable Chaos Beast manifestation.
Aranya snarled, “Whatever you do, don’t let her go!”
“I …”
“I’ve too little left! Call to her. Please, don’t let her soul fly!”
All he understood was that the light was fading in his Dragoness’ eyes, and his every dream with it. Bending over her muzzle, he cried brokenly, “Iridiana! Iridiana, listen. Don’t you dare leave me now! It’s not your time, don’t you see?”
He tore off his helmet. Over the curve of her cheek, puffing in and out slightly with her too-shallow breaths, he saw Aranya stalking a punch-drunk Thoralian with a torrid glare that he wholly approved of. The far larger Dragon backed up step by step; for the first time, looking lost and alone. A third of his presence had just been excised, Asturbar realised with a spurt of malicious pleasure. May the pain slay him – all of him!
“Boots …”
“Nyahi! Oh Nyahi, my precious silvery muse –”
He babbled. Her mouth curved slightly as she caught his eye with the pearlescent beauty of her distress. She breathed, “Did I do … well …”
“Well? You incinerated that pox-licking son of a flatworm!” Asturbar laid his head against the so-warm scales of her cheek, wishing his strength into her. “Stay with me, Iridiana. I love you. I love your crazy magic and your silver-blue hide and every chaotic, crazy, confounding scrap of your magic – it’s exquisite, don’t you see?”
“Boots, please … help the Star.”
“Her? Curse it, girl, you’re the one who needs help. Here. Have my strength. Have it! Please … oh please, Nyahi, you can’t close your eyes now!”
The fluttering of her nictitating membranes turned into a slow blink. Did he imagine that her fires burned the brighter for alighting upon him? Beyond, in the hazy periphery of his grief-stricken sight, the Star was exchanging words with the Marshal, who had rallied the Shadow Dragon to his side and was threatening her with ripping the Island apart.
His Dragoness rasped urgently, “Stop the Shadow. Stop him, Boots.”
“How? I don’t know –”
“Dragonets …”
Why? That was the question which was uppermost in his mind. Asturbar could not follow the exchange between the other Dragons because of the pounding of blood in his ears. He was barely in better shape than his girl. He had left a bloodied trail a hundred feet long across the hall. When had that even happened? How had he moved so far?
Neither could he deny the pleading of her guttering eye. Turning to the dragonets still clinging to the gambeson upon his chest and shoulders, he said simply, Aranya needs her Shadow. See to it, will you?
Stop bad Ardi? Sapphire cheeped self-importantly, drawing herself up. So done, Marshal Bootsie.
Summoning the six mites – they were ultra-rare albino dragonets, he realised – Sapphire fluttered into the air with the Jewels of Instashi in close array. Her scales were the gleaming sapphire of her name, while her charges were a delic
ate rose quartz pink, but the suns-shine streaming in through the rent above the Greeting Hall drew elusive silvery-green glints of radiance from within their bodies. He had never seen a dragonet colour to compare.
Now the monk stepped up beside him, and began talking earnestly to Iridiana. “In the name of Fra’anior the Onyx, I forbid you to leave for the eternal fires, Iridiana,” he declared in his strange, singsong accent. A bubble of blood popped audibly upon her tongue. “With me now, Asturbar. Your Dragoness needs you – good! You must hold her very soul. Iridiana, I bid you rouse all that is Dragon within you! Gird up your courage, mighty one, for I declare with the authority once given me as the Nameless Man that you are a daughter of Fra’anior! You shall stand against evil, and prevail, and no paw or power even unto death shalt overmaster thine purposes!”
The gaunt monk was bellowing, now, and as his throat writhed with the force of his declaration, Asturbar saw bloodlike beads of sweat spring into being upon the man’s brow, and strange, manifold echoes seemed to gather within his magical voice.
Gathering the Dragoness and the Azingloriax warrior into his outstretched arms, Ri’arion bellowed, THOU WERT SHAPED FOR GREATER THINGS AS YET UNSEEN!
Amidst the manifold echoes, Aranya roared, “Give me the Egg, Thoralian!”
“No! You cannot have it!” shrieked the Yellow-White, launching himself into the air. “I will destroy you all before I let you have it. Shadow! Take me hence – what? What’s the matter …”
He twisted about in panic.
The Shadow bellowed, “I cannot!”
The dragonets fluttered around Ardan in a seven-pointed star formation, and although he clearly tried to trigger his signature Shadow power multiple times, he was denied. His form flickered like a shadow cast by a fast-flying Dragon, but he did not disappear as before. The Dragon thundered in fury, but the ostensibly frail, shimmering net the dragonets had drawn about him, failed to rip.
Gangurtharr was all rasping scorn. “Having trouble there, Shadow?”
“Feral fools!” roared Thoralian. “Have the beast, then. I have absorbed all I needed of his knowledge into my mind anyway. I’ve no further use for filth like him, nor for your whimsical nonsense, o child of Chaos! Follow me to the Rift if you dare. I promise I shall wipe out your entire pathetic bloodline one creature at a time, if needs be. Our battle is far from done, Aranya – for I shall rise again, yea! All that you have accomplished is to create space in my triplicate for the newest member of my clan, the Ancient Dragon who tarries inside the First Egg for that glorious day I shall absorb him into mental harmony with my souls! Fear that day, little Star Dragoness. Fear it, and tremble!”
The Amethyst Dragoness made no reply, only to follow his progress with her eyes as Thoralian winged aloft through the great hole rent in the home of the Mistral Fires.
“Be ready,” she whispered.
“Ready? Ready for what, Scrap?” growled Gangurtharr. “Are you just going to let him –” A gladiatorial expletive exploded from his lips as the skies opened, and a titanic grey thunderbolt speared down from the heavens straight into the back of Azhukazi’s beast. Smoke and charred flesh fountained out of the hole. An infernal crimson light blazed in its eyes, and then the beast began to swell. Its shoulders were already pressing against the walls, and the Island began to groan as the pressure built rapidly.
“Freaking feral windrocs!” shouted the monk, apparently losing his cool for the first time.
“Aranya, what shall we do?” roared Gang.
“Ardan!” she cried.
The Shadow Dragon glared hatefully at her. “Do your worst, o feckless minion of the Onyx.”
Huaricithe skittered toward them, rounding the burgeoning grey paws with the aid of her flared wings as her talons scraped the rock flooring. She belted Gangurtharr in the chops with her tail in passing – deliberately, crying, “What do we do? Run, you worthless lump of Dragonflesh! Run!”
Chapter 24: Roll over and Die
ASTURBAR HAD EXPECTED the Star Dragoness to have a million tricks up her scaly sleeves and to deal with the Thoralians in the high-pawed manner of the Ancient Dragons of legend. Having seen her in action, his soldierly sense clearly pinned her as a prodigy – no, not invincible, but she had all the makings of legend. She was youthful and the Thoralians, ancient. He possessed inconceivable power and the guile to put it to perfidious use. She had the most valiant of hearts, and a laudable astuteness in her own right, besides the powers that evidently came parcelled with being Fra’anior’s putative descendant. Always thinking. Doing. Pushing herself beyond … anything imaginable.
Even now, as they all scattered before the beast’s advancing belly, which mushroomed behind them at the speed of a Dragon’s charge, Aranya turned to inquire, “What happens to these Islands if they split?”
He rechecked Gangurtharr’s progress, for he was entrusted with ferrying Nyahi out of harm’s way. That Gladiator Dragon had better not scratch a single one of her lustrous scales, his scowl declared! “I … don’t know. Never seen one split.”
They dashed down a lamp-lit stone corridor toward the western chambers, past further sections of bulwarks, fortifications and guard posts. “Evacuate!” he shouted in passing.
“What happens?” she snarled.
“Enough damage …” he panted wildly. “They’ll flip. Maybe stabilise. Maybe, if we’re lucky. More likely the momentum will start them rolling slowly end-over-end. Dump us in the Cloudlands. Get Yuaki –”
“On it.”
“How many already ferried away?”
“Four hundred fifty-two,” she said tersely. Asturbar vented a discontented growl. “Seventy-one in transit.”
“With us!” he bawled at a looming group of soldiers. “Evacuate!” No time for dithering! He had never formulated plans in his head faster than this. He switched to Dragonish. Incoming Dragons can play catch? When – timing? People need to brace against rolling, or walk the walls in chambers that don’t have large furniture. Can you alert everyone?
Aranya did not stare at him as if he had spouted wings and turned into Thoralian. She simply said, You’ll have them jump?
Those who can.
Let me check. Aye, time of arrival … seven minutes. How long does it take to fall – her luminous eyes blinked extra slowly as the Island groaned and vibrated beneath their pounding feet – well under thirty seconds per mile, I make it, after they reach terminal velocity –
We’re dead.
No, said the Star Dragoness. We’ll turn every one of our Dragons into gliding freight vessels. He gaped at the Amethyst. Buy enough seconds, we save these people.
Alright, now he was picturing kissing her paws. Asturbar shook his head reflexively. Issue the orders, then, Dragoness!
Beneath their feet, a great cracking, groaning sound began as the beast continued to swell under the diabolical pressure exerted by its uncontrolled magic. He, Gangurtharr, Huari and Aranya burst out into a second, smaller junction area, swiftly followed by Sapphire with Ardan in tow. He suspected the little dragonet was thoroughly enjoying bossing the husky Shadow Dragon about, and there appeared to be nothing the mutinous Shapeshifter could do about his captivity. Fangs, talons, fireballs, shadowy reality-defying power – nothing phased the newborn dragonets herding him in their midst. They seemed immune, and Ardan seemed wont to let the very Moons know the tenor of his frustration.
“Down. Collect every soldier and Dragon,” Asturbar ordered. Already, he heard the rising hubbub of voices in the stairwells, and the clatter of many feet and boots. Thousands of people! How could they ensure most, if not all, survived this day?
Aranya was mentally firing orders at Yuaki and the other Dragonkind with pace and great lucidity, marshalling the flights of Dragons. As many Humans as could cling to a Dragon. Fifty, sixty at a time. Already, below the Island, three of the Lesser Dragons had launched with their precious loads, under strict orders to glide as conservatively as possible away from the falling Islands and to look ou
t for help from below.
They burst out into a broad, low-ceilinged storage chamber right in the base of the Island, just as a mighty perturbation knocked many people to their knees. Children and adults screamed. The report of the Island’s demise staggered them a second time, a deafening concussion of sound as the overstressed granite finally gave way and the Island of the Mistral Fires split asunder.
“Drake packs incoming,” said Huari tersely. “Thoralian has just unleashed his hordes.”
“Any ruddy good news around these parts?” barked Asturbar.
“I’ll have Leandrial and her kin warm them up,” said Aranya. Bloodsucking nakristas, what did that even mean?
He was staring at a yawning hole the Brown Shapeshifter had quarried in the underside of the Island. Nothing but tan Cloudlands down there. Three and a half miles of void. Beneath that? An even longer fall if legends were to be believed, down into the toxic realm of draconic monsters such as those Aranya claimed would rise to her beck and call. The Lesser Dragons just taking off slipped away toward the fluttering vanguard of crimson Drakes.
The day looked grim.
“SILENCE!” Asturbar roared at the crowd. A few began to turn in shock.
I’ll help you. Just speak normally, said the Star Dragoness.
“Ah … attention?” said Asturbar. Hundreds of heads turned in his direction. Thousands. Soldiers and engineers were pouring downstairs from above. What about those trapped inside the other half of the Island? “Under attack from the Marshals Thoralian, the Island has been split in half.”
How to make them wail!
He waved his hands urgently. “Listen. LISTEN! We beat him off – well, the Dragons did. Our lives depend on what you do in these next few seconds. Help is at hand! I need as many of the women and children as possible to climb aboard these Dragons and fly away. The Island is about to start tipping due to the unbalanced forces exerted by the ragions. We have to get you to safety. Act quickly and calmly. If the Island starts to roll in the air, walk with the movement. It is imperative that you do not panic.”
