by C. M. Hayden
Taro went to check on Lokír, who wasn’t doing too well. The large man seemed to have dislocated his shoulder when he was thrown, but he offered up no complaint as he tried to roll it back into place.
His eyes were fixed on a point in the distance as if he’d seen something. Fenn and Kyra were looking in the same direction, and when Taro joined them, he spotted Praxis standing on the very edge of the crater. He was clapping.
“Well done, quite the show,” he said, practically gliding down the side.
Taro and the others moved together in a defensive stance. Praxis held up his hands in a calming motion. “Not so tense. We’re here to work together, aren’t we?”
Taro glanced sideways at Kyra, who nodded.
“Fine,” Taro said, though none of them moved at first.
Praxis stared at them curiously. “So…are we going up?” He glanced at the flying city above.
Kyra touched Lokír on his side. “Is your arm okay?”
Lokír nodded, squeezing the handle to his axe. “Do not waste your worry on me.”
Kyra nodded toward Praxis. “If he tries to betray us, could you lodge that axe between his eyes?”
Lokír smiled. “Gladly.”
“I can hear you,” Praxis said across the mists.
“Good,” Kyra said. “Then I won’t have to repeat myself. Betray us and you won’t live to regret it.”
Everyone relaxed a bit, though Praxis’ presence was certainly unsettling.
“Okay,” Taro said. “We spoke the guardian’s name. Now, how do we get up there?”
Praxis pointed across the crater to an area with a few crumbling ruins. “I believe that’s where we need to go.” He turned slightly, showing off a long cut through his shirt. “That’s where I was when the beast attacked me. There’s some writing and pictographs on the stone I was attempting to translate.”
It was a short walk to the small circle of ruins, and they were as Praxis described them. There were six pillars, each eight feet high, that held up a crumbling archway. On the archway were the images of six dragons, one of which bore a striking resemblance to Antherion, and another to Sivion. Behind them was the image of a longboat with billowing sails.
Lokír confirmed Taro’s suspicious. He pointed to each of the dragons depicted, and said their names.
Sivion’s dragon body was long and sleek, with piercing eyes and metal rings around her ankles.
Antherion looked different than Taro remembered him. It was certainly him, but he was drawn clad in armor and with furious eyes.
Sirion the Highfather, who Taro had only heard about in passing, was tall, with faded blue scales and one missing wing.
Valderion the Stoneheart looked as though he was composed all of hard edges and corners, his teeth were drawn in intricate detail, and he looked more like a demon than a dragon.
The image of Treldair the White glowed against the dingy stone, the white ivory he was carved with was still bright and whole even after the rest of the stone had begun to crumble. He was the only dragon depicted in his human form, and held a three-pointed spear in his right hand.
Finally, there was Craetos. This was the first time Taro had seen a depiction of him. His original form was a stark contrast to the maggot-filled, decayed creature that felled the Eventide. Craetos was drawn larger than the others, his wings draping around them.
There was an indentation on the right pillar identical in shape and size to the Bórhiemdr jewel. Taro touched his finger to the groove, feeling the smooth indent. “This is it.”
Fenn was still holding the jewel. “I guess I’ll do the honors,” he said, and pressed it into the groove. All at once, the ground rumbled beneath them and the eyes of the dragons on the archway glowed yellow. Thick, misty light surrounded them all, spinning in brilliant hues of green. When the light touched Taro’s skin, it felt like touching an open flame. Taro shouted, and reared back in pain. There were similar agonized shouts as the light enveloped them, and the world faded behind a veil of light.
Chapter Twenty-four
City of Dragons
Taro writhed on the ground as the light licked at his skin. He could hear the cries of the others, but his eyes were clenched shut. In time, the pain disappeared. When Taro opened his eyes, he saw his skin was unburned, and he was in one piece, as were the others.
Lokír seemed to have gotten the least of it, and was already on his feet inspecting their foggy new surroundings.
Fenn was patting himself down frantically, and swearing like a sailor.
Praxis had recovered quickly, and had moved away from the group seemingly out of instinct.
Kyra offered her hand to Taro, which he took. They’d somehow been transported to a different place, but it couldn’t possibly be Castiana.
Tales of Castiana were always the same, no matter where Taro heard them. It was a beautiful, golden city in the clouds. The seat of the great dragon broods of the Old World. Flowing waterfalls, crystal lakes, lush trees, towers higher than anything men could build, and wonders beyond imagining.
Once, perhaps, it had been so, but the Castiana they now stood in was decidedly different than the stories.
The first thing that struck Taro was the heat and mist that lingered in the air, choking every thin beam of sunlight that snuck through the veil of clouds surrounding the city. This caused everything to be half-lit, as if it were perpetually evening.
Over the centuries, the marble city seemed to have fallen into disrepair. The brood towers, once bright white, were now dingy and cracked brown stone. Archways crumbled into roads overgrown with foliage that ate away at the cobblestones.
Dragon statues once loomed over the city, but most now had pieces missing: wings, claws, heads. Some had completely crumbled, and now sat in fragments on the ground.
With the mist as thick as it was, it was difficult to see what lay in the distance, but Taro caught a glimpse of half-standing towers and broken walls throughout.
Fenn, with all his characteristic snark, summed up Taro’s thoughts quite succinctly. “What a dump.”
It seemed to be the case. And there were no dragons nearby, either. The Bórhiemdr seemed to have dropped them off in a preset location, in a ravine with a road that went in only one direction.
“No welcome party,” Fenn mused. “Is that good or bad?”
“We should stay close together,” Taro said. “We need to find Arangathras.”
“Or Kurian,” Kyra added.
There was something unsettling about Castiana. A tension in the air that filled Taro with unease. As they began their trek deeper into the city, three sets of large, amber eyes shone out of the mist like fog lights. The ground shook as the dragons they belonged to came closer, sniffing and snarling. Their movements were animalistic, causing Taro and the others to back up in fear.
They were positively enormous, all three of them larger than Antherion and so close that they cast shadows over Taro and the others. Their mouthful of razor teeth dripped with steaming drool, and the air grew hot when they opened their mouths to speak to one another.
“Hir oli oikesa, imiset ovan tälä,” the dragon in the middle said to the other two.
Taro leaned closer to Fenn. “What did he say?”
Fenn winced. “No idea.”
“I thought you knew Draconic,” Taro snapped.
“Written, not spoken,” Fenn countered.
Kyra moved to the forefront. She was clearly afraid, but did a good job keeping her voice steady. “My name is Kyra Termane of Endra. I’m here at the request of my father, Sun King Godrin Termane. Do you speak Amínnic?”
The dragons loomed over them like mountains. The one who spoke before shifted into his human form. His body glowed like the sun, and he shrank into a vaguely human form. Even now, he was intimidating: t
aller by a foot than even Lokír, and with bright amber eyes that tore through the mist.
“I am Valestrion, son of Sethetrion, gatekeeper of the highland road.” The dragon tucked his wings neatly behind him. “You will disarm yourselves.”
Fenn and Taro didn’t hesitate. Taro removed Raethelas from his side and gently set it on the ground in front of him.
“I don’t fancy getting burned alive today,” Fenn said, tossing his sword in with a clank.
Praxis shrugged, patting himself quickly down to show he had no weapons. Kyra was slower than the others, but relinquished her sword and a set of throwing blades. Lokír was last of all, laying his axe, bow, and quiver on the ground, then producing six other smaller knives from various locations in his armor.
“Inscribers,” Valestrion added.
These, too, were relinquished, three in all. Afterwards, Valestrion searched them thoroughly. His giant claw-like hands were large enough to wrap around Taro’s entire upper arm.
“We’re here to see Arangathras,” Taro said, after he was done being manhandled. “He’s expecting me.”
Valestrion looked wary, his cat-like eyes shifting between the various members of Taro’s company, before landing on Praxis. He seemed to notice something, and squinted, as if seeing Praxis for the first time. When he moved closer, Praxis took a step back.
“Can I help you?” Praxis asked piously.
“You,” Valestrion snarled. He seized Praxis by the wrist, exposing the tattoos and markings running along his skin. “Your name?”
Praxis’ eyes glanced toward Kyra, who shook her head as if to say “make something up.” However, Praxis answered honestly.
“Praxis Andurin, son of Valros Andurin.”
“Andurin,” Valestrion repeated. There was a deep, seething malice behind the word. His eyes darkened, and he squeezed Praxis’s wrist with such force, Taro was surprised the bone didn’t snap like a twig. Praxis struggled, but didn’t resort to using his shadow magic to protect himself. Rather, he tried to reason with the dragon.
“I’m not here to fight you,” Praxis said through gritted teeth. “Believe it or not, I’m here to help.”
The sound of flapping wings began to fill the ravine as dragons came from every corner of Castiana, curious to see what was going on. Though most of their bodies were obscured, Taro spotted dozens of amber eyes peering out of the darkness, watching them. Before Praxis and Valestrion could come to blows, one set of these eyes moved forward. Even from a distance, and through a dense layer of mist, Taro recognized them as belonging to Arangathras.
He was as intimidating as ever. Positively enormous, with thick arms and hard eyes. He still bore scars from his captivity in Helia: two long scars that cut through the scales on his chest, and several holes in his body where he’d been bound. He approached in his human form and set one hand on Valestrion’s shoulder. “Release him.”
Valestrion grunted his disapproval.
“Now,” Arangathras repeated. This time, Valestrion reluctantly complied. Praxis pulled back, rubbing his bruised wrist.
When Arangathras’ eyes fell on Taro, Taro gave him an awkward wave.
“Uh, hello,” Taro said dumbly.
Arangathras did not look pleased by his presence. He looked to Valestrion and the other nearby dragons. “Take them to the dungeons.” He turned sharply around, and started back the way he came.
“What?” Kyra shouted.
“What the hell?” Taro said at almost the same time.
The dragons seized them immediately. Taro reached toward Arangathras, trying to struggle free.
“I thought you knew him,” Fenn said as one of the guards pulled his hands behind him and pushed him forward onto the ground.
“I don’t understand,” Taro said, then shouted to Arangathras’ rapidly fading silhouette. “I came like you told me to! Why are you doing this?”
Despite their protests, they were blindfolded and taken deep into Castiana. Though Taro could tell they were being led underground, he couldn’t say exactly where they were in relation to where they’d arrived. At some point, Kyra and Praxis were pointedly separated from them.
The dungeons were worse than they sounded. Even before Valestrion removed Taro’s blindfold, he could smell the moldy air of a dank, damp room. It was dark, almost pitch-black, but for thin glowing ivy that crept along the sides of the black cells. The bars weren’t metal, but rather some kind of hard, jagged black stone carved into crystalline rivets.
Taro, Fenn, and Lokír were thrown in, quite literally, and were left without another word.
Taro was a bit dizzy from the whole ordeal, and tried to get his bearings. From what he could tell, the dungeon was circular, with four individual cells each large enough for several people. Lokír was put into the cell adjacent to Taro and Fenn. There was some sort of enchantment on the bars, but Taro’s wits were much too addled to bother translating exactly what it did. No doubt it was some sort of anti-escape mechanism, though at a glance there were no lethal runes visible.
Taro checked his prosthetic, then groaned and sat up with his back to a jagged, wet rock wall. At first he’d thought they were in some sort of artificial structure, but as there were a great deal of plants and water running down the sides of the rock face, it was more likely that they were in a natural cave.
“Is everyone okay?” Taro asked wearily.
There was a pause, and Fenn’s voice answered with all the smoldering anger he could muster. “Is that a joke?” he asked coldly. Taro’s eyes adjusted to the dark, and he saw Fenn scoot toward the stone bars of his cell. “No. No I’m not okay, Taro. I’m sitting in a prison cell on the other side of the world. I’m as far from ‘okay’ as it’s possible to be. Do you really need me to spell that out for you, you thick nit?”
“Your words are not helpful, Fennrick-ama,” Lokír admonished. He was sitting stoically in the center of his cell, his arms folded across his beard. “There is nothing that can be gained from fighting amongst ourselves.”
“Then what do you suggest we do?” Fenn blustered.
“We wait,” Lokír said simply, crossing his legs and sitting.
“Do nothing? That’s good advice, I wish I’d done that back in Endra and kept my ass in the Librarium where I belong.”
Taro rubbed his temples. Whether it was because of the situation, or Fenn’s incessant whining, he was beginning to feel the onset of a headache. “Please, shut up for a minute. Let me think.”
Fenn shoved Taro. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll beat ten colors of shit out of you,” Taro said sharply, bracing himself from falling over.
“Oh, aren’t you intimidating. One leg and half a brain. You’d be a riot at a travelling circus.”
Taro snapped. He balled his hand into a fist, and went to punch Fenn across his smug face. However, when he applied a small bit of templar into the blow, something happened that he didn’t expect. The stone bars of the cell illuminated and an arc of what looked like electricity jumped from his arm into the stone. The entire right side of Taro’s body went numb, and he fell to the wet floor, twitching, and unable to open and close his hand.
Taro was stunned but unharmed, and after a few seconds regained the feeling in his arm. “Okay, so using magic is a bad idea,” Taro said, exasperated. “That felt like getting hit by a mountain.”
The room went dark again. While the shock of what had happened overwhelmed his senses, in the brief moment of illumination, he noticed a cloaked figure sitting in the corner, far away from him and Fenn.
In the darkness, Taro saw two yellow eyes peering out of the hood, watching at them intently.
Fenn ignored the fact that Taro almost decked him, and went to the bars to inspect the magistry inscriptions. He tilted his head and squinted, holding one of the glowing leaves close to the D
eific letters. “Incredible. It looks like it diverts the templuric energy from the caster, and disperses it like a lightning rod.”
The pain was enough to stop Taro from wanting to hit Fenn again. On the positive side, the jolt had cleared his headache. Taro leaned against the damp wall and tried to think of their next move.
Taro ran his hand through his hair. “We need to find out where they’re keeping Kyra. Why would they separate her from us?”
“Because she’s a girl?” Fenn offered.
“They separated Praxis, too,” Taro countered.
Fenn shrugged. “Best guess? They think he’s too dangerous for a ‘normal’ cell, and have something more secure.”
The hooded prisoner spoke for the first time. The voice, surprisingly, sounded like that of a young boy around Taro’s age. It was, however, weak and cracked, as if he hadn’t spoken in a long, long time.
“Did you say Kyra?” he squeaked.
Fenn looked as though he’d been startled, and turned sharply toward the boy, staring hard into the darkness. “Come again?” he asked.
“Fenn?” the boy answered, leaning forward. “I thought that was you.”
“Kurian?!” Fenn asked, practically shouting. His voice was equal parts exasperation and disbelief. He stopped just short of hugging the hooded boy; instead he gathered some of the glowing vine leaves and held them close to Kurian’s face, illuminating his features.
Several things struck Taro about Kurian. First was that he seemed completely human, but for his distinct dragon eyes. He was extremely dirty and unkempt, as if he’d been living in the dungeon for months or years. He wore a Magisterium uniform, that of a tribune-level artificer, but it was practically dissolved from wear and tear. The shoulders were ripped, the over-shirt’s stitching was coming undone, and water had faded the blue into a dingy gray.
However, the years that showed on his uniform didn’t reflect on the boy himself. His face looked clean-shaven, his black hair straight and well-groomed, and even his fingernails were cut and cleaned. He was slender and athletic, and had a charmingly boyish look about him.
