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Peril & Profit

Page 19

by M. H. Johnson


  The present room they were in was a comfortable affair, lined with furs as it was, and the salted carcass of a pig only nibbled on this morning, Sorn having been too anxious to eat. An open chest filled to brimming with golden coins, bracelets, and bars could be seen against the far wall, trinkets which he had earned as gifts for the care of his cousins and other small tasks done at his relatives’ behest. Sorn smiled at the always comforting sight of his treasure chest. The rich sheen of gold expertly placed to catch the light of dawn or dusk was a soothing sight, there to admire during restless moments he was not occupied with studying or caring for his cousins.

  His other rooms he had purposely designed to be more in fitting with Sorn the man. His favorite room that he had taken the most care with was a treasure trove of knowledge, lined with bookshelves filled with favored tomes both arcane and historical. The undeniable centerpiece of his library was his exquisitely carved reading desk, made of gold veined marble, accented nicely by the crystal chalice filled with a number of rubies and amethysts that he had won in various arcane contests competing against his peers. Additionally, he had a separate chamber in which he practiced the actual casting of his sorcerous magics, bookshelves therein lined with practical tomes not simply to be studied for arcane insight, but were, in fact, the vessels of a number of etched spells and blood magic rituals well deserving of mastery. It was also larger than Sorn's study, lined with well-tanned mastodon furs and a shallow pit as well as a perch and bed, so that he could rest and study in his sorcerium in whatever form he chose. Indeed, though shelved in cases made of durable stone instead of elegant oak, the tomes he kept in this room were among the most valuable he had, their lessons mastered well over the years.

  Sorn’s grandfather had chosen that moment to speak, interrupting Sorn's ruminations with a compliment of his own.

  "As your mother says, grandson, you have been given the high honor of a formal recognition, and as a form master, no less."

  Sorn's mother, of course, gave her father an irritated stare, flicking her tail in mild agitation at his speaking to Sorn so directly in her presence. It was the norm for males to never speak to each other directly in the presence of an adult female, only indirectly, advising each other in the third person, everything couched in a suggestion. If Sorn's grandfather had said that Elthsissa's son should be pleased with the honor paid to him, that would have been acceptable, of course. Still, the older form master was her father, and Sorn's old denmother as well, so etiquette was fuzzy in this area. Furthermore, allowances were often made for her father's eccentric ways. After all, he was able to take the form of a crow himself. As such, Elthsissa chose to ignore her father's impropriety, save for her display of mild disapproval.

  "Your accomplishments are fine ones, my son. Not only do I now welcome your explorations into arts arcane and the realm of forms, but from this point forward, I expect them of you. You are hereby released from all other duties and obligations, save to teach your cousins all you can regarding the arts arcane and the lore of the form master, a title and honor to which you have now been deemed worthy of taking in your own right.

  "Of course you know, my son, that should you succeed in teaching them what you know of the lore of forms, should you convey to them the wisdom and skill needed for them to achieve resonance with their own alternate forms so that they too can carry the vital life force via their seed, then our family shall gain yet greater renown, and you shall be well sought after as a sire, once your cousins have reached maturity and are no longer in your care."

  Her obsidian eyes peered deeply into Sorn's own, crow that he was. "Be as Sorn in all things now, save when the hunger claims you, or when you are summoned as the crow. Be as Sorn. Learn as Sorn. Teach as Sorn. Mold your form ever greater and greater into Sorn. Make his body and thus his seed ever stronger conduits to your own power. Evolve him. Achieve Complete Resonance."

  She whispered this last part. So softly, so reverently did she say it, that it took Sorn a moment to understand what she meant, and he was shocked when he did.

  "Achieve Complete Resonance so that our family may achieve the status of legend, and all give obeisance to us in deference to the gift we will have given them. This is what I wish of you, Sorn, I and my sister both. Become a true master, and make us immortal and legends both!"

  Captivated by his mother's fiercely glittering gaze, a stunned Sorn was left absolutely speechless. It was true that he had achieved a mastery, a resonance unheard of even for most shape practitioners many centuries his senior, he who had not yet lived even a third of a century himself. But to demand this of him, to put to practice what had been introduced as highly speculative theory only centuries ago by the more powerfully versed in arcane lore of his people, was a demand so extreme it was absurd. The idea that immortality could potentially be achieved via true mastery of the art of forms.

  Sorn's people, like most races, had a life cycle with both beginning and ending, and all, no matter how powerful, were forced inevitably to succumb to the frailty and eventual death that old age promised everyone. Unlike other races, however, dragons had never learned to accept this fate, fighting it fiercely at every turn. Their unusual life expectancies of around a millennium only made the struggle that much more drawn out and bitter.

  Until the idea of those ancient lore masters had taken hold, the idea that one day, form masters might be able to use the lore of forms to escape death's cruel clutches, only one way had been found to cheat death of his grim prize. That being to achieve such awesome power, wherein one's arcane essence would burn so hotly that it seared like the sun. Only through that epiphany of supernatural power would one, instead of dying, be transformed into an elemental. It was very much like the fiery phoenix, totem of his people in terms of life after death, the spirit guide to the next realm, which was reborn amidst his own ashes. And few save legendary Darkwings had ever achieved the status of elemental, in any case.

  Darkwings, as Sorn had learned in his studies, being the grim warriors who were the forerunners and shock troops of his people's greatest battles. They were the most fearsome of fighters who had slain so many thousands of their foes and had absorbed so much power that their very colors first dulled and blackened before transforming to a midnight obsidian, their very breath becoming brilliant as burning phosphorous, as dark as the abyss. It was said that only those of a certain affinity became a Darkwing in any case, a natural vampire of essence, reaper of souls, mad glutton for power. The tales told of these potent, deadly beings were grim reminders of the savage creatures his people could turn into during times of war. Yet very few even had the affinity for this terrible gift, let alone the opportunity to absorb so much power, the last known Darkwing having faded to legend centuries ago.

  A curious mixture of caution and admiration surrounded these creatures of lore. For they were both the epitome of power, well able to destroy even the most powerful queen, yet often times were savagely unstable and dangerous. Their life spans also tended to be considerably shorter than average, their essences burning so hot within their dark obsidian flames that in a sense it consumed them as well. Yet their fierce burning resulted not in a slow quiet death, but rather in a terrible conflagration so intense it could hardly be called death at all. For without exception they were reborn as elementals, fiercely burning in their own right, flying off almost immediately for dimensions unfathomable.

  It had been the common practice, in millennia past, to allow Darkwings their rule over whatever new land they had been forged in, so to speak, dragons moving in en mass only when the Darkwings’ last embers had faded and all had been reborn as elementals, long departed for realms unknown.

  Indeed, historically their very savagery had frequently been beneficial to the subsequent occupation of conquered worlds, for as often as not the lighter dragons of golden or silver hue were welcomed if not outright embraced by the broken races inhabiting the remains of freshly conquered realms, so savage was the Darkwings' reign likely to have been. And gi
ven the relative tolerance and stability of life under the more temperate dragons, most were all too happy to embrace wholeheartedly life under their more forgiving masters.

  All and all, most dragons had thought the system worked out rather well, though only occasionally did Darkwings rise in the conquest of new lands. It was also hinted in rumor and legend that for those female dragons who had the courage to travel to lands still under Darkwing rule and mate with them, their offspring would be of the fittest stock, in all likelihood a future queen among them. Few female dragons had ever had the courage to take this route to power, however, Darkwing temperament being mercurial at best.

  Yet it seemed Sorn's own mother somehow expected of him that which had heretofore only been speculative theory versed by the most learned of lore-masters, a feat even beyond the scope of those Darkwings of legend. To achieve such a strong resonance of forms that he would be able to infuse the shape of Sorn with not just a tiny fraction, but rather the majority of his essence and power. In effect making Sorn, and not his true dragon form, the foundation and anchor of his essence.

  The theory was that if one could anchor one's essence to an immortal form, one could then achieve immortality, the downward spiral of one's natural life cycle suddenly ceasing as the dragon form would become the lesser, said life cycle being reforged into a perfect endless loop, echoing the now immortal host form to which one’s essence was newly anchored. Also, there was the idea that one could construct a simulacrum not just of another race, but of a dragon in one's mind's eye, fit and young and in perfect health, and strive to make that the host of one's essence. One rarely heard this idea from other form masters, of course. They knew how monumentally hard it was to conceive of a dragon form without one's resonance to it immediately melding that into one's own perception of one's own form, immediately being absorbed, in a sense, into oneself.

  The major flaw to the idea of anchoring one's essence to ‘younger' forms, Sorn saw it, was simply that in achieving resonance one's simulacrum came to more closely echo one's true form in its natural life cycle as a normal result of it being such a personal vessel for one's own essence. The net effect, of course, was that an old dragon achieving mastery over say, a human form, would result in being able to transform into a fully viable and fertile old man or woman. Not exactly what his elders sought, he knew. And how to achieve such resonance, to transfer so much essence that the new form became one's de-facto new true form, the anchor of one's life force, without one's relative age also being mirrored, was completely beyond Sorn's knowledge, or that of any form master centuries Sorn's senior.

  Yet it seemed that somehow his mother, ever the over-achiever on his behalf, expected this of him. More than expected, demanded it. Insisting he be as Sorn until he had achieved it.

  10

  His grandfather, as Sorn knew from memories he had absorbed from him over the years, was well aware of the absurdity of his daughter's request. For though he loved her, he knew that she was, if anything, more obsessed and hungry for power and recognition than her own sister. It was fortunate indeed that biology and natural loyalty both kept her from conspiring against the queen once germinated, though before the queen had eaten the royal jelly, Elthsissa had been bitter for many years knowing that her sister was being groomed for power and not her. Of course, now biology and Elthsissa's natural sense of duty to her family compelled her loyalty once her sister had emerged from her cocoon in her present immensely potent form. Yet still, Elthsissa strove for power and recognition in other ways.

  She was an excellent huntress, a master of the arcane realms in her own right, and took immense pride in Sorn's prodigious achievements, for all that he was a male. Her greatest hope for true power lay both in conquest and, quite literally, in being able to conceive a clutch of female eggs of her own, one of which could be a queen in her own right in the new realm Sorn's grandfather knew his clan had its eyes upon. Perhaps for this reason, Sorn's mother was incredibly picky in choosing a second mate, having eaten her first in a moment of sublime fury shortly after Sorn's birth. The irony was that the dragon had not even been Sorn's sire, and that despite all of Elthsissa's… quirks, he had deigned to be her mate in any case, doing his best to care for Sorn when his mother was away. This, even though Sorn was not his own, and more to the point, of no relation to him, unusual in a denmother to say the least.

  Sorn's guardian had not been a very good denmother, as his grandfather wryly recalled, working on some arcane project or another when Sorn, with little more intelligence than a lizard at that point, had gone questing off for food while his mother was away attending her sister. Alas, poor little Elthsiss had managed to wedge himself between two tight slabs of stone fixed in the steep cliff face upon which the entrance to their layer had been situated. Unfortunately for the male, Sorn's clever ability to burrow out of a nest normally considered wyrm-proof situated as it was several feet down into the cavern floor had not served as any sort of mitigating circumstance in Elthsissa's eyes. She had flown back to their quarters, quite preoccupied, only to pick up the high-pitched chirpings of her child wedged between the rocks. With incredibly delicate movements of her tongue, she had managed both to disentangle her son from the rocks and to lift him up past the danger of the sheer cliff face. Being wingless as he was at that stage, Sorn had instinctively gone limp and quiet in the comforting presence of his mother.

  Her rage that she gave vent to after safely depositing Sorn back into his nest was something to behold, Sorn's grandfather reflected upon wryly. Though he had seen his daughter's movements outside her cave entrance, having noted her flying to her home from the entrance to his own cave out of the corner of his eye, he, of course, couldn't see what happened when a suddenly stiff-necked daughter made her way back into her layer. Yet his acute hearing had no trouble picking up the terrible roaring that echoed through the chambers of the clan; and of the male, he never heard a sound. Such had been the end of his arcane experiments for the day, he recalled, remembering as well his other daughter's own moment of pique when the queen came to him, obsidian eyes flashing, though not at him, he was relieved to find, her news quite troubling nonetheless.

  He had been told, in effect, to put his toys away, as he was now the official denmother of his grandson, seeing as how the queen's sister, his daughter, had just eaten her consort, and so poor Sorn was without any denmother at all.

  His neck had gone straight up in surprise. He couldn't help himself, for all that he knew he must show his daughter the queen, whom he was tremendously proud of, the deference due to her station. It had been absolutely centuries since any female had undertaken that custom in their clan. Legal, but considered a tad bit barbaric, however much the sire had managed to annoy his mate. Normally the poor lads were simply exiled, and of late, tolerance had become the rule, male dragons being almost as quick to use the crow as a symbol of forbearance as were the subjugated races!

  His daughter, far from being offended by his surprise, spoke to him in what was now a rare moment of candor, for all that they had confided in each other frequently before her transformation.

  "You know how Elthsissa is." His daughter the queen seemed almost to sigh after gently rubbing his neck with her own, a rare, private gesture of affection, before turning around to attend to other matters of the clan.

  He did indeed know how his older daughter was. And though he loved her with a fierce intensity, he was well aware that her sharp temper, obsessive drive, and fits of what could best be called pique, if not mania or fury, were not exactly what one would call ideal traits in a mate.

  Frankly, he had been almost surprised to have found a suitor those handful of years ago, her temperament having driven off any other prospective suitor despite her vitality, the fierceness of her flame, and the power of her spells. He gave vent to a cavernous sigh, despairing now of ever finding his eldest daughter another mate, once word got around that she had eaten her last one.

  And here she was, today, just a few decades later, dem
anding that her son, still a child by most measures, perform a feat impossible to form masters such as he who had been attempting, unsuccessfully, to achieve complete resonance with a second form for well over a century. Sorn's grandfather gave a sad, slow blink at hearing his daughter's words. Were Elthsissa not present, he would shake his head.

  Sorn, of course, remembered his grandfather's shared memories as his own, but at that moment, he could only bow his head in acquiescence upon returning to his human form, wryly reflecting that it was a good thing that he enjoyed mastering this form, for it looked like he would probably be stuck in it for the rest of his life.

  "As you command, Mother."

  His mother regarded him softly for a moment, before gently licking his head. Her rough tongue was dry, of course, so unlike a human's, and the rare gesture of affection touched Sorn immensely, for all that it mussed his hair.

  "Teach them the skills they need for the tasks that lie ahead of them as best you can, my son. For then their glory will also be yours."

  Sorn nodded his head in acquiescence to his mother's soft command, knowing as he did so that his mother was referring to the future conquest of the very people whose form he had striven so hard to master.

  With a final look of affection for her offspring, which would, of course, not serve to mitigate her demands in the slightest, she turned to leave Sorn to his own devices, making her way to her own quarters, no doubt in preparation to hunt. For her, it had been a triumphant day.

 

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