Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 176
He had a captive audience. He had them all ensnared by his bone-paralysing power, and all a Dragon could hope was that the Star Dragoness, who had yet to reveal her paw in this matter, might yet hold some power over this beast.
Flicking spittle off his lips with the force of his vehemence, Azhukazi the Iolite Blue hissed, “The Chameleon and I had a little agreement. We exchanged oaths. I wanted an heir to receive my power; he wanted the throne. But he would not give Talrishana up. We quarrelled. So I took my chance. I was a younger Shapeshifter then, and I knew much less of the lore, but I knew no mere Human was a match for my mental powers. In my Human form I availed myself of Talrishana’s person and in due course, she became pregnant with my longed-for child. But the Chameleon was cunning! He was as shifty and shady as all of his kind! He discovered her pregnancy early on, but he also possessed the power to detect the gender of the child – and so, he conceived a vile plan to murder you, Iridiana. He would have succeeded, but for my intervention.”
“Having saved your life in the womb, I watched over you all the years of your growing up. I watched, and I waited.” His right fore-talon slipped forth from its sheath to touch her throat with delicate, perverse care. “You see, if the iridium compound did not slay you, there was a good chance the poison had not reached the foetus at all. Shan-Jarad was a good father, however, and he worked very hard to ensure that his precious family, none of whom are his own children, would be safeguarded well beyond the reach of any potential enemies, including Iolite Blue Dragons. When my presence was discovered, he forbade me from ever entering the borders of Yazê-a-Kûz again. Imagine my shock and my distress, when I discovered my progeny had become a Shapeshifter exactly as I predicted – but not in the form of a Dragon!”
Azhukazi paced away, almost out of Ardan’s sight as he fought to master his rampaging emotions. The Shadow wanted to shudder, but was incapable. That necromantic power paralysed him from within his bones. Almost he spoke to Aranya, before remembering the power of this Dragon’s mind. He had defied the Thoralians. Tricked them. Could his extraordinary perception discern the fact that the Shadow might even be thinking of speaking to another? Or infer the existence of their oath bond?
Right beneath his chin, Asturbar conversed with Iridiana, unaware that they were not keeping their interaction private. The soldier said, Something rings untrue here, Nyahi, and I promise you, we will find out what it is.
Boots, o Boots I could not bear it; I would die!
Don’t! Just … breathe.
Pausing his prowling, Azhukazi turned toward Iridiana, rasping in a ghastly whisper, “I knew I had been double-crossed. Somehow, the Chameleon had bested me, and tainted my shell daughter with the ultimate foulness of Chaos Magic! Null-fires, travesty, abomination – that’s what you are! The child was no longer mine. From that day on, I plotted against the Chameleon, who had disguised himself as Chanbar. I vowed I would become great. I would become the greatest Dragon in the Island-World – and aye, what of the Marshals Thoralian? I bested them! I seized their knowledge – and you, Marshal Asturbar – you were the only person in that chamber astute enough to deduce that I had been defeated too easily! For I had already used my powers to oust the Chameleon from his host and to take over in his stead, so it was a Chameleon Dragon that Thoralian murdered that day, and not me.”
“And now, all that remains is to destroy a Chaos Beast, to bury the evidence of my righteous white fires doings, and to assume mastery over this realm. Then, I shall wait for the Star Dragoness, and with the new powers I now command courtesy of that unthinking triplicate of Thoralians, wrest from her what is rightfully mine. Where is she, Shadow? Where is Aranya hiding? Tell me, or I will end this abomination’s life – right now!”
Ardan shuddered, almost missing the Iolite Blue’s double-ruse as his talon speared toward Iridiana’s back and the Marshal, unexpectedly released, threw his body between them. Unnh! moaned the man, taking a heavy blow for his girlfriend, yet the talon did not penetrate his gambeson.
He called, Aranya, release –
The Amethyst Dragoness somehow leaped through space to materialise directly in the path of an Azhukazi fireball. She marshalled the dragonets to her aid. Again, the fireball was just the veneer of the Necromancer’s true intent, for he concealed within that attack a vile payload of his subtle bone-twisting power, yet this time Aranya was able to nullify his grasp before it took root. Her white fires flared, sheathing their marrow with the fire life of Fra’anior himself. Azhukazi backed away slightly, shaking his muzzle as he sized up his options. The Immadian’s resistance clearly bemused him.
Aranya swept a paw elegantly to compass the chamber, while her Word of Command struck with vital power: BE FREE!
Free at last!
With a belligerent roar, Ardan joined his Dragoness in pounding Azhukazi with force that rocked the great building like an earthquake, only to face the backlash from the Necromancer’s cunning absorbent-reflective shield construct. Ardan bit multiple holes in his tongue as his own power rebuffed him soundly, but Aranya seemed to shrug aside the attack and countered with a volley of her blue-white fireballs that, striking in ultra-rapid succession, blew through his shield and quarried gouges of cauterised flesh across the Necromancer’s muzzle!
Over to his left flank, Asturbar seized Uxâtate Shan-Jarad by the scruff of his thick ceremonial robes and shook the man like a cane rat, shouting into his face. Still, he was quick enough to respond to Azhukazi’s bullying charge by spinning with extraordinary grace for such a boulder of a man, yanking the ruler away from a sweeping talon stroke by a rajal’s whisker while using the centrifugal force to spin his almighty battle-axe into a blow that almost severed one of the Iolite Blue’s talons. Ardan was not so overcome with admiration at his battle craft to miss his chance to pinch a leaf out of Asturbar’s scroll. He shoulder-charged the Iolite Blue from a standing start, causing Azhukazi to fumble his intended attack. The crimson-robed, gold-armoured soldiers scattered before the rampaging Dragons like windswept leaves, leaving Asturbar to handle their ruler with worthy disdain.
Ardan could not help but feel the man deserved a few hearty Dragon slaps!
* * * *
With Ardan venting his spleen on Azhukazi, Aranya rapidly cast about to check the situation of their allies. Yazina was fine, crouching near a column with her daggers drawn. Her face was wan, yet fearfully determined. Asturbar had Shan-Jarad in hand, literally, half-strangling the ruler by his robes. The dragonets circled her head, unharmed. And Nyahi?
GRAAARRGGH!! howled Azhukazi, lurching about like a drunken Sylakian lout. GRROOUURRGHH!
Oh! She sniggered at the sight of a purple spike ball some five feet in diameter stuck beneath the Dragon’s right hind paw. That would be Iridiana, as unconventional as ever. Her spikes had pierced his paw through in several places. As Azhukazi arched his neck to try and bite off the offending Chaos manifestation, Ardan promptly pummelled the bigger Dragon again – working relentlessly to provide Aranya the opportunity she needed, only she had to keep battling the deployment of Azhukazi’s unique bone-life-grounded power as it morphed and changed, as sly and elusive as the Dragon himself. Five or six times she sensed him acquiring control, only for her Storm-driven starlight to infiltrate his constructs like water seeping into the faintest of fault lines in a terrace lake wall. She was the impermeable coating, creating a repulsion effect akin to the interaction of oil and water – her response was purely instinctual, but Aranya was terrified of what might transpire if she failed. This required her utmost concentration; once again she was denied opportunity for outright attack.
Frustration boiled her Dragoness blood!
Iridiana snickered, “Having trouble there, Azhukazi?”
“GET OFF!”
“Can’t make me.”
In that moment of oh-so-feminine distraction, Ardan hammered Azhukazi in the chest with both fists pumping furiously, and the battle rolled away. The two males clashed violently, tearing scales off each other as the Necromancer tried his one trick over and over and over again, and the Shadow flayed his hide for the trouble – neck and wings, flanks and underbelly. Did Azhukazi know nothing else?
Even as the thought crossed her mind, Azhukazi reacted. Aranya had the barest millisecond to warn Iridiana and Ardan as the Iolite Blue switched tactics – had he just stolen the idea out of her mind? Lightning traced with ice flared all around his body at once, forming a thick, impermeable layer of armour that levered Iridiana’s strange form free of his paw with a loud grating of spines against bone and drove Ardan away, momentarily stunned by multiple flashing arcs of electrical overload. The Necromancer Dragon whirled and snapped at the Chaos Shifter with incredible speed –
Flowers! Aranya projected into the girl’s mind, fearing she could not see the attack.
Petals blossomed in her perception, mirroring the dracofloral form that slipped between Azhukazi’s champing fangs, and then the girl was laughing upon his tongue, her strategy matching that which Zip and Aranya had many times worked successfully on angry Dragons – distracting them by playing the tease, throwing insults about and otherwise disparaging their deep-seated sense of honour.
Yet Iridiana’s mental state was another matter, a mad vortex of lavender-spitting sparks. Get me out – Aranya – please! I can’t –
Stay! Trust me …
I CAN’T! shrieked the Shifter, pinned in place as Aranya wrestled Azhukazi’s domineering magical force to a standstill. She felt like a flower herself; a flower trapped and bruised beneath a thundering waterfall.
The greater her opposition, the greater he seemed to become. Azhukazi’s power swelled monstrously against her mind, battering and blasting her without pause until dark spots almost obliterated Aranya’s vision. Only the shrieking of her Storm could hold this beast, and that by the barest claw hold of her talon tips. He wielded the Thoralians’ awesome power mixed with his own peculiar form of fire life-dominance, and it was slowly but surely crushing her will and capacity to resist.
Change the odds. Unbalance him.
Inspired by a crazy idea, Aranya slipped a fear to the forefront of her mind. A false weak female vision that might just fool –
The Necromancer Dragon’s fire eyes darkened entirely to black as he mined his greatest powers, and then he flicked his long, brutish muzzle upward and slurped Iridiana down his throat!
Zip screamed, Petal, what are you doing?
Aranya enfolded the Chaos Shifter with her light in exactly the same way as she had succoured her best friend’s soul, only this time, she consciously enforced their separation – not acting with an overload of motherly protective panic, but deliberately playing her gambit to its logical end. She held Iridiana by the merest thread of connection, fed through the dragonets, for that was the only way she could imagine she might penetrate Azhukazi’s tyrannical mental hold.
Failure would doom Iridiana.
Suddenly, the Remoyan’s scream terminated in a gasp of wonder. Oh …
As the Chaos Shifter slid three quarters of the way down into the Iolite Blue’s primary food stomach, Aranya pulsed with her tightest possible mental focus, Do this, precious Nyahi.
Muted as it was, the Immadian felt and heard her kin sister’s trusting, chaotic transformation take hold and lodge deep in Azhukazi’s throat. Returned to her cactus form, the four-foot spikes lodged the Chaos Shifter immovably deep in his craw, in the place where the working of his massive throat muscles could not dislodge it.
Batten down the hatches! Zip shouted in her mind, melding her strength into Aranya. Here came Leandrial too, finally breaking past the Iolite Blue’s psychic barriers to bring her formidable mental prowess to their aid.
It took an everlasting hiatus, but Azhukazi began to choke on the obstruction. His superheated breath sizzled around Iridiana’s bulky form, before drawing back toward his labouring lungs with an agonised whistling sound. Throttling! Frustrating his fires. The Dragon convulsed in a blind panic, releasing his inner fires and magical powers in a devastating barrage that nonetheless failed to dislodge or even harm her, because she had all of Aranya and Zuziana layered around her person by way of mystical armour, and they in turn leaned heavily upon Leandrial’s resources. Again and again the stricken Iolite Blue struck, but succeeded only in burning and blasting the inside of his throat. He tore at the obstruction instinctively with his talons, doing himself greater damage than anything Ardan had managed so far.
Then, he stilled. Eyes suffused with manic hatred fell upon Aranya.
The fury of his madness was like a mountain unleashed upon her. O Daughter of Onyx – BEGONE!!
Merciless. Immense. A sledgehammer belted her overwrought mind into the darkest beyond.
Aranya never felt her crumpling knees touch the ground.
* * * *
Ardan swatted unhappily at the blue pest. What?
Ari-Ari-Ari! Save! shrieked Sapphire.
He forced open his eyes to behold an unbelievable sight smearing across his unstable vision – Asturbar, cradling Aranya’s nude Human form in his huge arms as they slid across the ruby floor right past his bewildered nose, whilst Azhukazi’s massive paw descended from above, his every muscle popping with the effort of splattering the pair into a bloody pulp!
The twin shocks galvanised him.
His paw shot out and yanked the Marshal backward. KERRUMP!! Azhukazi’s wrist rebounded off the soldier’s helmet, delivering a stunning blow Ardan would have preferred to provide himself. Girl-stealing traitor! Backstabbing slug! His attempt to Shadow them out of harm’s way was a stuttering misfire, however, even as he realised that Asturbar must surely have mistaken Aranya for Iridiana. Otherwise, he’d skin the fool alive!
A case of raging draconic jealousy only yanked his brain back to full awareness. The Iolite Blue, coughing and burping spurts of gelid grey smoke like a dyspeptic toad, gathered himself against a column just fifty feet from Ardan’s position, squashing three soldiers beneath his paws as he launched back toward them, clearly intent upon finishing the Star Dragoness once and for all. Finally, he understood her strategy – almost brutal in its elegance – for she had exploited Iridiana to hoodwink the Iolite Blue, and then thrown all her might into protecting the girl thing once she was stuck inside Azhukazi’s throat. The Necromancer knew this too. Golden blood and vermilion fire dribbled from his lower lip as he glared hatefully at them, for Ardan had gathered Asturbar, Aranya and several dragonets between his paws, and then he charged!
The Star’s consciousness flickered. A … Ah …
Shadow!
Perhaps it was Asturbar’s first experience of being handled in this way, for the soldier ducked reflexively as Azhukazi hurtled right through their spectral bodies. The Iolite Blue stormed onward to demolish what had to be an irreplaceable national treasure, Shan-Jarad’s monolithic ruby throne.
GNAA-URK! The Necromancer choked on his own vomitus. GURK-GURK!
… Ir-ah …
Uncaring of herself, the Star bathed Iridiana with her healing power.
Azhukazi gouged again at his own throat, making that toad-like coughing sound. Huge as his talons were, the iron bands of his own muscles still protected Iridiana from the outside and Aranya safeguarded her within, even in her semiconscious state.
The Princess moaned, Ast – ug, mercy – flare …
Asturbar cried, Nyahi! Flare – now!
Flare? Whiteness towed the Shadow Dragon irresistibly into a beautiful space, where the devastating goodness of starlight illuminated Chaos from within, before blossoming irresistibly within the Necromancer Dragon’s flesh. It seemed he saw twice – once with the eyes of his spirit, for the pure connection between Star and Chaos, and a second time with his Dragon sight, tracing the course of incandescent fires as they immolated flesh and nerves, magical pathways and bone. Azhukazi’s hide glowed like a crazily cracked pavement backlit by white fires across an area thirty feet in diameter, before it crumbled away as searing dust the colour of a perfect Immadian night’s frost.
The Necromancer Dragon thumped down on one knee. No … cannot die …
A mauve butterfly dragonet fluttered out of the gaping, charred hole carved through his neck and upper chest region, appearing in that instant as if the mere flip of a butterfly’s wings had shivered the course of the Island-World. Perhaps that was the definition of the chaos effect.
Or should that be called the Iridiana effect?
Ardan began to smile as Aranya stirred purposefully, before a formidable explosion smashed against his ear canals – WHOOOMMP!
Even in his demise, Azhukazi’s magic waxed spectacular. A pyre of sooty black fire roared up to the ceiling a hundred feet overhead, before clearing to reveal the brilliant sapphire bones of his skeleton – despite missing a few pieces which Aranya and Iridiana’s cooperation had vaporised, the whole edifice stood proudly erect for a breathless moment before collapsing as bones rightly should.
Ardan eyed the spectacle distrustfully, muttering to himself, “Really, really dead this time?”
Further back in the hall, rubble tumbled to a standstill with tinkling overtones created by the presence of many jewels. His jewel! The Dragon tilted his muzzle to examine Aranya’s pallid aspect. There, a flicker of pulse in her throat! Gorgeous long lashes – how had he never noticed them so keenly before – dipping gracefully over those beloved cheeks …
An amethyst eye chinked open. Her chapped, scarred lips trembled as she breathed, “Very bad joke, my Shadow.”
His three hearts danced!
* * * *
Aranya glanced briefly at the bone pile they had created, before checking anxiously for Sapphire and her brood. They had defended her heroically, but now they lay scattered like white petals upon the scratched, fire-scarred ruby floor of Shan-Jarad’s palace. Fire life pulsed weakly within each fallen body. For her own part, she was not sure she’d ever move again. She felt as if she had been razed by an avalanche called Azhukazi.
Nearby, Iridiana carolled, We did it, Boots! Then, the mauve butterfly dragonet shrilled in comical amazement, Boots, why are you cuddling Aranya?
