Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 197
“Here?” said Ri’arion.
“Majuskar’s birthplace was in that forest to the South,” said the man, pointing to a thickly tangled patch of forest lying at the foot of the start of Jeradia’s famously wild interior mountain range, about three miles away. It was almost uninhabited, even by these hardy giant warriors. “He distinctly remembers the lower entrance to the volcano being just about over there.”
Shaking his head slowly, Ardan set aside his disbelief and surveyed the terrain in detail. He tried to imagine what could have been, matching it up with Leandrial’s faulty memories. Could Pip conceivably have gouged out that much rock, or … he pointed with his fore-talon. “Could those be claw marks? As in, Land Dragon claws?”
Asturbar grunted, “You know, you might just have a head on your miserable shoulders after all, soldier! Ah –” he chortled softly, “– old habits.”
Amazothion laughed his annoying, nasally laugh. “Do you see now? The legend of the traitor Shurgal tearing at the bedrock in his fury, was true! So, I hope you men and Dragons have the King of Fra’anior’s own resources to hire the labour you’d need to rebuild this place you’re so set upon, and a decade or two for your nice building project. And you call me crazy – ha ha ha!”
Ardan threw back his huge black head and bellowed a laugh that shook the rainwater off the trees a mile off. “No, my friend. We will rebuild this bedrock within a week, by which time we plan to fly the Academy in from the Mystic Moon. Will you help us?”
“Ah, you are crazy indeed! Majuskar likes you after all, Shadow Dragon.”
Crazy depended upon one’s measure, didn’t it?
* * * *
Unfortunately for those bent on fleeing, brain-damaged Zankaradia could not proceed at a pace much greater than a laboured crawl up the tunnel, despite healing and physical assistance. Aranya had done what she could under the circumstances for both her and Pip – but a bigger problem was growing in intensity right behind their tails.
The Shao’lûkayn threw up a disturbing racket. The deepest chill of outer space emanated from that sixth Moon now. How could Fra’anior have mistaken its import? How could Dramagon have hidden its living payload from his shell brother – unless nothing in that Moon had been alive when it had originally impacted Mystic? Perhaps it had embedded itself on purpose, then millennia later, tunnelled toward the surface in search of magical power that would cause its denizens to grow and mature?
They passed around several large fragments of eggshell apparently stuck to the horiatite. The hatchling climbed in a dazed state, palpably traumatised by whatever Thoralian had tried to do to her mind, but her paws gripped the cracks in the horiatite firmly enough. Aranya wanted to rail at her to hurry, but that would be useless. Instead, her focus was on the Academy’s laboured progress above. Too slow. Far too slow to avoid whatever was about to –
That!
A metallic thing fluttered out of the hole. She wanted to say that it had wings, but they looked more like spokes or spines that moved so rapidly, they hummed. The Shao’lûkayn was blacker than night all over, save for a crimson spot on its underbelly that reminded her of a variety of venomous spider she had once inadvertently shared her bedroll with in the Western Isles. Almost quicker than her eye could follow, the creature nosedived into the tunnel wall and expired in a puff of black dust that darkened a section of horiatite perhaps thirty feet in diameter.
Another fluttered up weakly, barely making it out of the mouth of its lair before dropping back inside. A minute passed before another, stronger creature spat forth. This one made it several hundred feet before expiring in the same way as the first.
“Move!” her voice crackled with thunder – fear, she realised.
Zankaradia was not going to make this. Not by miles. A rough reckoning had them ninety miles beneath Mystic’s surface. The night sky up there bore a chilling resemblance to the darkness behind. They were perhaps a mile above Dramagon’s Bequest, and the Academy four miles ahead of them, also travelling far too slowly despite repeated attempts by the Chrysolitic dragonets to drag it into their Flow space. They kept wavering back to reality again.
She glanced behind. Flick. Flick. Two of the creatures soared toward them before falling short. The spikes appeared to wave in a sensory fashion before they veered to collide with the walls. Three! Another pair! Suddenly, the horiatite was being eaten away more rapidly than Aranya wanted to credit. Four at once! Faster and faster, and stronger each time, the creatures spat forth. Their bodies were seemingly spikes upon spikes, but so dark it was impossible to discern detail save for that crimson spot which, Aranya feared, might be a mouth or some other vile organ.
Now the first soared up to their level. Iridiana smashed it aside with a fireball.
The sibilant rushing sound increased in volume. The whole tunnel was starting to shake now, like a volcano building up, the gases fizzing, the pressure increasing – so suddenly that Zankaradia stumbled and fell upon her nose, the force redoubled in intensity. Despite her digging in all eight paws, Aranya noticed peripherally, she was being dragged backward and her winged companions with her.
Iridiana! Pip! Join paws with me! She had an idea of how to combat these things.
Shao’lûkayn spat from the pit faster than one per second, now. Some passed them by. One landed upon Zankaradia’s tail and set her scales alight there. She groaned but kept struggling on.
Dark bodies whizzed past in their tens. Twenties. Explosions rocked the tunnel.
With me, now. Make light!
Pip said, But I can’t. I’m not a –
We have to try, Aranya insisted. And, I think you can.
She exchanged a brief, incredulous look with Zuziana and Iridiana. Umm … wrong end of the colour spectrum?
Not even on the spectrum, Aranya wanted to protest – not that it mattered! That had been the last thought on her mind.
Iridiana demurred grimly, And I’m just the zany Chaos girl around here –
Zip rapped, Just shut your fangs and do what she says, alright? The first of the creatures powered right up to the Academy, striking it squarely on the underside. Where the shield had been, a wide round hole appeared in the magic before it automatically resealed, drawing on the resources of the Dragons within. Oh, no …
Lowering her head, Aranya gripped her friends’ paws and said. Focus on me, now. They all jumped as Zankaradia flinched a second time. One, two, three … shine!
After perhaps two minutes and twenty-five increasingly panicked transformations, Iridiana found her shine. She was a twin, after all, and the breakthrough found its way through their intimate connection into her soul. Belief flowered. Doubt almost immediately cut in, but Aranya’s radiant smile of encouragement put paid to that a moment later. Pip was a different matter. She clearly believed that creatures of onyx or jungle girls were not meant to shine, and she was certainly no less stubborn than a certain Remoyan Aranya could have touched by the merest flick of her wingtip at that point. When a Shao’lûkayn expired against their radiance, she pulled away.
“This isn’t my place.”
“Child of Fra’anior’s spirit –”
“Stop it! I’m not like you two. Can’t you see? I’m little and I don’t have an ounce of Star Dragoness inside of me! I’ll fight these things fire for fire!”
“Pip, don’t!”
The Pygmy Dragoness broke away to station herself down near Zankaradia’s tail. As the barrage increased, she seemed to keep pace, using shield, paw and hot fireballs to take them down. Blood trickled from her reopened injuries, one being a puncture wound dangerously close to her second heart. Iridiana and Aranya moved nearer to her. Their brilliant combined shining fragmented the creatures that approached – but only within a radius of about four hundred feet. Beyond their coverage, Shao’lûkayn survived and struck the descending Academy regularly.
The rattling escalated a notch.
Ready? Aranya called to Iridiana.
BOOM! Hundreds of creatures spurted from the hole, a rapid-fire barrage that overwhelmed Pip and came within inches of exploding in Iridiana’s face before the last one expired. The Pygmy Dragoness escaped only by dint of some extremely fancy flying. She whirled, panting, her eye fires blazing with fright and battle fury.
Now, ominous stillness.
Zip winged rapidly toward them, having to beat hard just to maintain her position. “The eggshell! They don’t penetrate the pieces of eggshell!”
“Aye? If we could wrestle a few pieces up there …”
The tunnel shuddered as the Shao’lûkayn came flooding forth, spitting out faster than the eye could follow. They came in clumps of dozens. The detonations were a hundred feet wide now, until the previously brilliant horiatite resembled, uncomfortably, Aranya’s skin lesions at the height of her battle with the Shapeshifter pox. The four Dragonesses pounded away with their fireballs and rapidly reformed shields, but the barrage was intense. Only by combining their efforts could they keep Zankaradia clear, and she was still slipping. The Academy took an absolute pasting. The shield took noticeably longer to reform this time, but Silver appeared to rally the hibernation-weakened Dragons in the nick of time.
When the flurry eased again, the Dragonesses glanced at each other and shouted, “Go! Go, go!”
Silver! Pip shouted. Help down here.
It’s getting violent, he said, but less than five seconds later part of a Dragonwing led by Master Kassik that swooped over the edge of the Academy. Eggshell, dear one?
Every piece we can salvage!
Iridiana cried out in alarm as Zankaradia’s talons suddenly lost their grip and she slid several hundred feet backward. Aranya swatted her in the backside – not that a Dragoness of her body shape really had one to speak of – with her Kinetic power, staying the slide.
Iri … help me! Together, they lifted a narrow shard. Academy?
Yes, her sister agreed. Here they come again!
This time the flurry was not thick, but it was blindingly fast. Aranya led the counterpunching, trying out different types of shields and effects, but the contrary type of magic these creatures possessed simply annulled every technique she knew. Eventually she and Iridiana resorted to a crazed flurry of fireballs, chunks of horiatite torn from the tunnel walls, and starlight-powered punches to keep some of them at bay. Kassik’s Dragonwing lost half a dozen Dragons within a single breath. Each Dragon touched by a Shao’lûkayn combusted instantly in a cloud of ash, its innate magic consumed by the predator’s hostile power.
A brief hiatus allowed the Lesser Dragons to wing lower down and then to struggle back with four or five substantial chunks of eggshell. The Academy was lowering rapidly, now.
Something big was coming. Aranya sensed it even as Zuziana worked with Zankaradia to try to find a way of her gripping a chunk of eggshell and sitting upon it, or at least, angling it and then arranging her coils in such a way that the piece would provide maximal protection.
It was far from perfect.
How were they ever going to fly out of here?
Dragons were born in trios. A brood of three matched shell-siblings was supposed to be the strongest force in battle. Dragonship hawsers were made of three strands.
So, what if one strand refused to cooperate?
Pip punched the air restively as she called, “Come on, Aranya, aren’t you supposed to command star hooks or some useful power to pull us out of here?”
“Didn’t Fra’anior gift you strength enough?” she retorted, and then bit her lip. None of them was strong enough for this, were they?
Pip glared at her. “I tried to shine. It was a stupid, insensitive idea – oh, mercy …”
Her voice trailed off as a Shao’lûkayn fifty times the size of its predecessors came rising languidly out of the dark cave mouth. Another. And another. A Dragon’s every fire darkened at the advent of these predators. They rose as if they had no care for gravity, nor for any other force save their own mysterious propulsion. Aranya realised that Pip was right. They just needed to find the right hook and Auli-Ambar’s handiwork might just save their hides.
The Pygmy grabbed Aranya’s paws. She thought for a second the other was going to plead or babble, but instead, Pip said, “Tell me I can shine.”
“I …”
Full reverse! Aranya caught her breath.
“Tell me. Convince me. You believe it, don’t you?”
Did she truly believe? Moved by the desperation in the other Dragoness’ eyes, galvanised by Zankaradia’s outcry as the hatchling at last found her golden breath to fight back once more, she searched her Dragoness’ hearts for the answer. Had Pip implicitly been accusing her of racism? That stung! Thrust it away. That was never Aranya’s way.
It was her Humansoul who said, however, “Pipsqueak, nothing is little about you apart from your nickname! It took me long enough to believe. It was only after Fra’anior trout-slapped me over the head a few times that belief bit, and bit deep.”
“Oh!” Pip laughed.
“I’m a bit slow like that sometimes. You and I both know what ‘child of his spirit’ means.”
“It doesn’t mean I’m the child of Istariela’s spirit,” she pointed out astutely.
“Maybe you’re my missing third shell sibling.”
“Now you’re just being too jolly existential to follow. Aye or nay?”
“Light cannot shine in the absence of darkness. Not to its absolute. If everything was light, then light itself would be nothing. It would be indistinguishable from –”
Pip shook her muzzle dolefully. “I’m convinced you have an ‘aye’ in you somewhere. Come on, you ridiculous tongue twizzler. Shine! You’re so tied up in your silly philosophical contemplations! All you need to do, is –”
“Shine. Exactly,” Aranya agreed. “Let’s do it, Pygmy girl. Follow my lead.”
Silver’s half of the Dragonwing was taking on the first of the huge Shao’lûkayn with a robust series of blasts, whilst Kassik and his group wrestled pieces of eggshell toward the Academy. The Shao’lûkayn appeared to take little notice of their attacks, sailing on to impact against the under-edge of the Academy once more. The resultant explosion was as if Fra’anior had drawn back his paw to kick the place. Shuddering! Cracking! Rocks tumbling off the volcano and inside, she could not imagine the devastation if the buildings collapsed. People and Dragons cried out in terror, but they heard Kassik’s calm voice issuing a stream of orders.
“Those look tough,” said Iridiana dourly, re-joining them.
“Not if we can find some Pygmy shine to add to our twin-shine,” said Zip. “Ready to add your squeak’s worth?”
Aranya rolled her eyes. “Remoyans. Hopeless. Pip, I know you can do this –”
Before the Onyx Dragoness could respond, a series of dull, powerful thuds shook their bones. A whole battalion of heavy Shao’lûkayn issued from the sixth Moon, followed a second later by the lighter spitting sounds of their smaller brethren – only this time, they massed themselves in a wave that did not slacken off. The fizzing sound escalated toward a furious bubbling, as if a mile-wide kettle was about to boil over, and then the jaws of their lair simply overflowed with the creatures. Myriad strong. So many that they appeared initially to move like a hairy black caterpillar, like a single organism. The wave front crumpled at the edges as it swelled, destroying the horiatite with a low crackling roar of decimated crystal until Mystic’s native magic was entirely blotted out, and still they flew on, as if driven by an endless upwelling from behind. Individuals spurted out of the main advance only to be swallowed up by their fellows.
A devouring maw rushed up the tunnel to engulf them.
Pip cried out, “Wind, Aranya! Their advance is compressing the air ahead …”
She was the Daughter of Storm. At last, a simple idea presented itself to Aranya. A solution.
Gathering her sister Dragonesses about her, she rapped, “Whatever you do, get Zankaradia and the Academy straightened out so that the shells are beneath – we’ll ride this wave out! If they come around the edges of the eggshell –”
“Starlight,” said Iridiana.
“Zip, the dragonets –”
“They’ve collapsed,” Zip said soberly. “Sapphire is inconsolable.”
“Aaaaaaaah …”
She had used the little Chrysolitic dragonets with barely a thought for their safety, and now they were gone. Nothing could bring them back.
That was how Aranya discovered a Star could shine for grief.
She shone because she had no choice but to shine. She shone despite her imperfections, her hatred, or her burdens. She shone because this was how she could be a beacon, and spread her light into her twin, who turned into a dazzling fountain of light, a manifestation in complete contrast to her own steady radiance, and thence into the Pygmy Dragoness, who for the first time in her life, began to gleam like translucent black crystal. Aranya grinned until her mouth hurt. Fantastic! More, Pip! The Dragoness shut her eyes and let the light fill her soul. Her gleaming had a completely different character to her own, which Aranya did not just then understand, but the smile which curved Pip’s lips as she realised what was happening to her, was treasure beyond description.
Their combined destructive radius was over a mile now, and still expanding!
Thou, mine soul sister eternal, Aranya whispered.
Thou, blessed Onyx Star, Iridiana breathed, literally igniting with the surfeit of her joy.
Then Pip and Aranya were slowly whirling about their axis as the Chaos Shifter blazed across the breadth of the tunnel like a misbehaving comet, far too bright to look upon. They soared above Zankaradia, the Academy and Eridoon Island as they tried to ensure that their light spread past every possible corner of their impromptu shields, which the Academy crews were still desperately struggling to affix beneath their Island. Brown Dragons created rock clamps at a frantic pace down there, not daring to glance at the approaching hordes. They knew what one touch would mean.
