by Marc Secchia
This sounded suspiciously like a soldiers’ game involving alcohol being swilled around in various mouths before being offered to an unsuspecting recruit.
He could not see what she meant, but Asturbar heard a dull roaring in the distance beyond the low hills – no, those were plants! Were they? Suddenly, what he saw seemed to swim into a new kind of focus before his stupefied eyes. When he compared himself to others, he had always been aware he was a giant amongst men. Soldiers trod warily about him; always, they noticed his physical size and strength and treated him accordingly. Here, he was the one dwarfed by giants. What he had taken for hills were the smoothly mounded tops of tree-like plants, massively thickset nodes of khaki and brown foliage that bearded a series of four low ridges that must lie beneath the old realm of the Mistral Fires. The great grey Runner Dragons, amongst whom Leandrial appeared to be the largest of her kind, raced across these plants in a strangely languorous swimming-slash-running motion that belied the power and reach of their immense bodies. He saw a group of five racing up the nearest ridge and then leaping for the skies – well, the Cloudlands that led to what he knew for skies – with a graceful motion like dappled pond trout leaping to snaffle an insect off a low-hanging leaf. They surged up into the overcast heavens in improbable defiance of gravity. Shortly, the characteristic low booming of their eye cannons resounded upon his eardrums, muffled yet intense.
The far higher air pressure coupled with muscle power and magic allows us to leap, Marshal, Leandrial explained as Gang rapidly swooped toward her mouth. We cannot easily breach like the Shell-Clan, unless the region is shallow like this one. Not many rooted Islands about Herimor or Wyldaroon. But the mountains … aye, even I have run over the mountains. Now there’s a tale …
Leandrial is a great teacher, said Huari.
We’ll ride inside her mouth, Gangurtharr added, checking Asturbar’s reaction without the slightest subtlety. He feigned unconcern. When his mate firmly reminded him to keep his talons sheathed this time, the Dragon grinned, Private cheek pocket for the two of us?
Don’t you start, the Navy-Blue Shapeshifter returned pertly. There’s a war on, you know.
And?
Asturbar chuckled at the Gladiator’s unrepentant tone. He said, “One odd loose end in all this chaos. What happened to that Chameleon who impersonated Yuaki?”
Gang shook his head. “Chameleons are masters of disguise, which goes without saying, but also of glamour magic. So far there has been no sign of the creature. Aranya has Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron – that’s the leader of the Air Breathers – screening each and every creature she takes on board, but so far so nothing. We’ll catch him.”
“And the salvage –”
Huari said, “Proceeding well. We have your Chief Engineer and Quartermasters working with a group of smaller Runners to salvage absolutely everything of value or use from your fallen Islands. We’re rather short on supplies ourselves, you see, given the recent influx of refugees.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s hardly just yourselves. There are thousands of Dragon Riders, refugees retrieved from Islands that were shot at us … it’s a long and bloody story.” Marshal Huaricithe touched her left eye, a draconic indicator of grief. “The Thoralians have much to answer for. There go the Runners. Every last item, crate and travel pack will be labelled so that we have some hope of returning valuables to owners, for example.”
Asturbar had to dab his own eyes. “Words cannot convey my gratitude, Marshal Huaricithe.”
As they swept down to a landing upon Leandrial’s tongue, Asturbar watched a posse of these smaller Ca’agik Mist-Runners, which were dark green with azure speckling upon their upper bodies and limbs, charging off like overeager geckos. They had the wriggling motion and splayed paws with rounded, sucker-like pads upon their ends, but these ‘smaller’ Runners measured an eighth to a quarter-mile in length, and ran faster than the fastest Dragonship to boot. Toting an impressive tonnage of chattels strapped beneath their concave bellies, they vanished over the near horizon with an almost laughable excess of enthusiasm, calling encouragement and banter to each other in a dialect of Dragonish unfamiliar to him. Clearly, work should not be taken too seriously.
Gang swirled into a neat landing upon the mighty purple swathe of Leandrial’s tongue, saying cheerfully, “Welcome to the nursery. Cheek pockets all along there. Kids’ magizball over there.”
A living cavern to rehouse the Mistral Fires. Fitting.
Smiling to mask the grief within, to appear strong for the people, he took in the scene. A rambunctious game of magizball rolled across the width of Leandrial’s tongue, with adults acting as goal catchers either side for the four coloured ‘magizi’ that were being actively pursued by at least two hundred screaming children. Many cheerful and serious shouts greeted their arrival. He checked that Gang was being gentle with Iridiana, and then double-checked where he was planning to put her. A clutch of five cheek pockets inside the towering folds of her cheek, protected by bands of muscle and cartilaginous tissue, had been set aside for injured persons and Dragons. She went inside the one designated for the least urgent cases. Then, he had the most curious experience of walking around inside a Land Dragoness’ enormous oral cavity, speaking to people as Leandrial began the long run East to where they would join the Air Breathers, who formed the base of Aranya’s entire operation. He could not wait. Walking Dragon-Islands!
Even the legends did not cover this one.
As she walked along, Leandrial began to tell him much about what had been and these strange and unique Shapeshifters and people he had fallen in with; about the realms far beyond the Rift, and the mighty conflict with Thoralian which had shaken their Island-World to its roots.
At one point, Asturbar muttered, So, what I took for a major battle was really just a minor skirmish amidst these great events, o Leandrial?
Rot! she snorted testily.
Ahh …
Leandrial repeated, Piffle, fluff-brained nonsense and ragion-outgassing, to be precise. Marshal Asturbar, you have suffered great losses this day. The grievous facts do not escape my cognizance. How I lament, I mourn – oh, that Fra’anior’s paw should compass thy precious lives!
Her outcry made every Human within her mouth startle, while the Lesser Dragons leaped momentarily into battle-readiness before relaxing their postures. Leandrial made no apology. Slipping out of the cheek pocket that housed Nyahi’s insensate Dragoness and a dozen other injured Dragons besides, Asturbar lifted his hands in a ‘everything’s fine’ gesture. He had taken the aged Leandrial for a cool, rational one. Not so – her fires burned undaunted!
Earnestly, she said, Do you little ones not understand the first inkling of Balance? Permit me to frame the matter in terms that must indubitably penetrate even your metal-armoured Azingloriax cranium. You Humans have the strangest beliefs regarding fate and individual volition. Attend as I hypothesize. Accidentally, you and Iridiana were exiled to the same Island oasis, a speck in the eighteen thousand square leagues of the Doldrums where you accidentally fell over the rainbows for her and you, Asturbar, accidentally learned to understand her powers by dint of employing the accidental fruits of your lifelong warrior training. Accidentally, Chanbar returned and you were accidentally able to commandeer a Dragonship back to the very battlefield the Thoralians and this Azhukazi chose to make their own, where you accidentally met the Star Dragoness and accidentally slew one of the Thoralians!
Asturbar threw up his hands with a gruff bark of laughter. Alright, great one! I accidentally happen to understand the drift of your thoughts.
Insolent mite! My thoughts never drift, snorted the great Land Dragoness, tipping downward as she began a run down into one of the great under-Cloudlands canyons that riddled this area of badlands. Aranya had raced ahead with Ardan in tow to plan the next movements of the Air Breathers, who could not easily cross the depths that lay ahead – called impossible deeps – which Leandrial and her kind could swim-walk across. Asturbar did not
understand why the Air Breathers could not deploy compression and osmotic shields like the other Dragonkind, until the answer came to him in a chagrined flash. Of course. They were walkers and could get stuck. Who, save the current owner of the First Egg or Fra’anior himself, could lift a mountain out of a canyon? Or would their buoyancy compensate?
Such contemplations made his head hurt. So did Leandrial’s lecturing, which was informative, but endlessly detailed and tedious to a man more concerned about mundane matters such as where his thousands of Mistral Fires would sleep this night, how would they work to rejoin families who had been split apart in the chaos, some far more literally than he wished to consider just now, and what by the Ancient Dragon’s own paws would he and Iridiana do hereafter? Join the Star Dragoness’ merry crew on their quest to end the Thoralians’ tyranny?
Right now, he was stuck in a place he had never imagined, three leagues beneath the Cloudlands, powering downward from the middle layers which were populated by many ferocious species and subspecies of Dragonkind into the vegetation-dense, floating middle-lower and lower layers, headed for an impossible deep that plummeted to a staggering eight leagues depth. Not even Leandrial could withstand such pressures; she would dive only as deep as four leagues, or – he bit his knuckles – some nineteen miles below his comfortable living altitude. Thankfully the Dragoness was taking a few minutes to speak with home base via longwave communication, so he was left alone with his thoughts. Chanbar’s warnings plagued his mind briefly. No. Those were in the past. Aranya’s group was made up of as diverse a collection of Dragonkind and Humans as he had ever imagined. Monk and Azure Shapeshifter? Shadow and Star? Lowly Gladiator and powerful Marshal? Toss a couple more misfits into the picture and who would care?
Gazing across the slightly mounded hump of Leandrial’s tongue at the families settling down for the night, Asturbar noticed an odd gleam from the cheek pocket where Chanbar had housed his family. Strange. Almost draconic. He stared for a few minutes, but in the semidarkness saw nothing further that struck him as untoward.
Enough. Sleep, and he would have a much clearer mind in the morning. That was when they were scheduled to arrive at Yiisuriel’s doorstep.
Chapter 26: Out, vile Chaos!
Waking before dawn inside a Dragoness’ mouth was an unforgettable moment for a professional soldier. Waking with his girlfriend’s paw curled about his back, while the other rested lightly upon his hip, was a thrill that he could not decide whether it warmed the very sinews of his heartstrings, or might just cost him a year of his life.
Iridiana smiled at him.
He beamed at her.
Her fire-eyes crinkled at the corners, and their innards sparkled festively.
Asturbar opened his mouth, and said, “What’s that smell? Uh …”
Somebody chew off his tongue!
The Dragoness, unpredictable as always, just let her smile grow until her lips curled away from her fangs. “That’s my line, Mister Battle-Sweaty.”
Leandrial’s head tilted, but she stabilised it quickly – bending her neck, Asturbar understood, to keep her mouth as level as possible as she ascended without breaking her speed in the slightest. Up to the summit, little ones. Brightly breaks the dawn of this fine day.
The climb was eleven vertical miles from where Leandrial had first touched Yiisuriel’s granite skirts to the fresh air above, where she cracked open her jaw at last and let in a wave of dry, spicy freshness. They ascended a slope indistinguishable from most Island bulwarks save for its apparent age, but in many places Asturbar noted recent scorch and scratch marks, where the ancient lichens and curling ferns had been blasted to reveal great swathes of blackened bedrock. At length they ascended to a rectangular hangar door that appeared high in the mighty creature’s flank, shrouded in a slight dawn mist – the door itself was a seamless block of dressed stone forty feet thick, nine hundred feet wide and three hundred tall, but clearly fashioned by hand or paw. Brilliant mage-lights shone within, showing the arrivals a hangar most likely used for the deployment of Dragonwings, Asturbar decided.
Here, Leandrial dug in her rock-penetrating talons and rested her chin upon the outer portals of Yiisuriel’s fortress – for the living mountain was home to over forty thousand souls dwelling in a single, vast cavern complex. This notion demanded a stupefied headshake – or dozen more, perhaps! The legendary Dragon-dwellers certainly seemed very well organised, helping the new arrivals to stand in loose lines that were examined by some mechanism or mental ward construct he could not detect, before being allowed to pass on to processing stations, where scholars or Human magic users in blue robes recorded each arrival by simply speaking to them and then filing the information in a shared mental network.
Slightly different to the thick leather ledgers and stuffy clerks of his experience!
Iridiana was helping families negotiate the huge cliff edge that was the ledge made by Leandrial’s jaw – even from her lower lip, it was a drop of over forty feet to the hangar floor. Perfect height for a Dragoness to use her reach and whisk them down. The scholars were already setting some persons and families aside for matches, but in many cases, they had no information or the worst possible news. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Your husband’s body was recovered from the fallen Isle. Please wait here. Aye. Emburzak will take you to your children. Yes ma’am, they are all three still alive.”
Asturbar shook his head.
Efficiently, they separated out and dealt with the sick and the injured, delivering them to the medical crews who were on hand to whisk them away to the bustling infirmaries.
At length, Leandrial said, That’s every last one, Marshal.
Yes? He mopped his forehead with the chainmail sleeve of his gambeson.
Just you left, she prompted. Look, the Star has come to welcome you to her home. I sense she rather likes you two.
Grinning, he slid down her tongue onto Iridiana’s paw, and they entered the hangar together. The Dragoness waved a forepaw shyly at Aranya. Her tall frame, as slender as a whippet-dragonet, was garbed today in an elegant amethyst gown which accentuated the unusual slightness of her waist, and though her unbound hair tumbled to an astonishing inch or two above knee level, her face and head were swathed in a pretty lace-fringed headscarf, leaving only her luminous eyes exposed.
The instant Nyahi touched the invisible, undetectable wards, the very volcanoes of the underworld hells seemed to break loose. BONG! BONG! An alarm gong resounded hugely, bringing all work to a frozen standstill. The air solidified visibly in front of them, barring entry; then the hangar door, released from its emergency stops, slid rapidly downward to entrap Leandrial’s muzzle!
He and Iridiana slewed together in a crazed bundle of magic and nerves as she Shifted at least ten times in shock before settling on what he had begun to recognise as a fall-back form, one in which she felt most protected – the diamond bracelet. Manly jewellery. Asturbar shook his head, trying to clear the shock of her last transformation out of his mind. Blue robes swarmed out of unseen doorways. Dragons, too – these strange, hulking rock monstrosities called Grunts and the scholarly Overminds, gabbling and hissing at each other in an unfamiliar dialect of Dragonish. Their running motions seemed peculiarly synchronised, like infantry on parade. The metallic beast called Genholme was trying to worm her way past Leandrial’s thrashing paws that battered the hangar door, while dozens of voices shouted and roared and in Leandrial’s case, boomed, demanding to know what the terrible danger was.
Danger? Here?
“It must be the Chameleon!” Asturbar gasped, sinking into a battle-ready crouch.
NO, YOU!! THE LITTLE … ABOMINATION!
Iridiana screamed!
Her Chaotic form rattled about inside their air prison for a second, before shooting free. She had broken out! Such was the power that had sucked down around them, Asturbar would not have believed it was possible. Who – what was going on?
Yiisuriel, what is this? Aranya demanded imperiously.
&n
bsp; THAT CREATURE SHALL NOT ENTER!
The Amethyst shot back, Which creature? Where’s the danger?
In a flash, Iridiana returned to him, agitated and panting hard. Now, all was turmoil. Dozens of voices shouted and raged at once; the mental space seemed the most chaotic of all, as many unseen voices argued with each other – suddenly opened to his mind, Asturbar realised, releasing a flood of information that he struggled to navigate and control. This must be Aranya’s doing, but her attempts at appeasing that mightiest voice of all were drowned out by the colossal presence of what had to be this draconic mountain, the Air Breather called Yiisuriel. Her strength was now being augmented by her kin, also present and vocal within the mind. Yiisuriel reinforced her ward-protections with layer upon stultifying layer of magic – and he saw the Shadow again in Aranya’s tow, held securely by Sapphire and her six tiny Jewels – and now a shriek rose from Aranya:
Order! Order in the mental space! What are these accusations, Yiisuriel?
At a crazed thunderclap of volume, the mountain responded, CHAOS! ABOMINATION! DESECRATION OF YORE! KILL IT NOW!
His stomach clawed at his throat. Iridiana!
The Amethyst shouted, She’s an ally! Let me explain – Yiisuriel, no! I forbid –
DIE, THOU FIEND!!
The thunderclap that struck him was a psychic comet-strike, but Asturbar knew from the closest presences he sensed in and around his mind that Aranya, Leandrial, Zuziana’s souls and the powerful monk had combined to defend Iridiana and him, or their lives would have been snuffed out as a man stamps unheeding upon a tiny bug. As it was, the physical consequences were greater than he could have imagined. Leandrial jerked backward, cracking both the bone of her muzzle and the hangar door simultaneously, and her bellow of pain mingled with, strangely, the pure, ringing scream of Aranya’s anguish as she collapsed upon that time-worn stone floor, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth.
