Prelude
When I was a dragonet, I saw cave paintings with clear-eyed wonder. Murals showed off snow-capped mountain ranges, canyons of rocks layered in seven different colors, abyss-deep lakes that stretched as broad as the horizon. And I would wonder how any dragon could ever want a hoard.
But I think most of growing up didn’t make sense to me. I was anxious to get a heartflame (who wasn’t?) but the rest of it — leaving the lair forever, courting a mate, herding a den of kobolds… well, it wasn’t stupid, it couldn’t be. One day I’d figure out why it made my mother smile so wide.
A whole world unfolded as far as you could fly, and we were supposed to lay around in caves for centuries instead? I could speak now — I could ask questions now. If I could ask her now, maybe she could have explained it. Maybe I could have known—
I’m getting stuck again. I need to get past this part.
When I learned how to fly, I understood it a bit better. Why you’d find a nice hole to crawl into and never want to leave. Going places sucked. Travel there on toe and claw, and it’s hours of trudging; it’s exhaustion and collapsing. Travel on wing, and it’s getting lost with no trail back. One hour and it’s trees and hills you’ve never seen before.
I’m explaining all this, I guess, because Rilinacha isn’t here to explain it better. You’ll see why pretty soon. It’s a real mess the four of us flew face-first into. A wound you can’t molt off. Or is it more than four of us, now? I’ve really lost count.
If I tell this story step by step, it’ll tire me out before we’re done. If I fly right to the end, I’ll get lost and you won’t know where I’m coming from.
Let’s try to do this in bounds.
I hatched in the middle. Brother before me, sister after. Mom named me after the last roar of sunlight as it dies in the west. But I’d rather you call me Hazel.
Before we knew anything, mom was all warm, smooth black. Scales dark as night, with star-glimmers of warm orange and cool purple. I inherited none of that warmth.
A mother loved her children most — but to love, you must exist; you must survive. What was a dragon, but a hoard? That was mom’s foremost concern. She regurgitated for us, she licked our scales and scratched behind our ear-frills — but every dawn before anything she arranged and admired her hoard.
Mom prized silver. Exclude gold, exclude gems, exclude scrolls. The moonlike beauty of soft metal was her sublime charge. Rings and amulets and ingots — but exotic weapons for hunting beasts, too, and one mirror larger rising taller than her slender neck could ever extend.
The lost crown of a gnoll prince lay in one alcove, and embossed chests stayed empty as if in reservation. Mom had melt-twisting chainlinks of the stuff, and wrought necklaces for each dragonet, the pedant with her name carved in truth. The last thing added to her hoard was a silver bell, curves woven with runes like spiderwebs.
Back then, the lair had one short of a dozen kobolds: wide-eyed, soft-scaled, and not even tall enough to touch to the top of mom’s legs. By day, their feet beat a persistent pitter-patter on echoing granite floors. They brought me fish and bugs to eat, and by night, I slept in a pile with them.
Sister liked to help mom polish the silvern treasures; brother was stupid set on one day (real soon!) taking down a whole dear on his own. So my days passed in obscure nooks and passages of the lair, chasing the kobolds and hiding from them.
Whenever the silver bell rang, that was when we had to scamper back into the light of lanterns blazing with heartflame and listen to mother’s sonorous rumble recount scattered lore of her two centuries and the ancestral millenia beyond. On every clear-skied night, she sat us in a roofless chamber and let us glimpse the stars. Holes in the night sky offered a rivulet of celestial light seeming too pure for this world.
The bell was a small, quiet thing, clapped with a mortal’s finger bone. But it summoned us all the same; just touching it once let you feel every toll, deep and dire like destiny.
I hate that bell. It summoned us, and I think it summoned them, too.
There’s no silver left in the lair, now. Brother was stupid set on taking them on. Sister spent her days in the hoard-chamber with all the silver. But I’d grown up in the most obscure nooks.
When I remember my mother on that last day, the sound isn’t a sonorous rumble. That last glimpse was of scales like the night sky — pierced with holes through which came rivulets of something too pure for this world. Not offered, stolen.
I still wonder why any dragon would ever want a hoard. A pile of things to be taken away — with everything else. (In that hoard-chamber you could see the stars — you could fly up into the sky — and yet now those old, loyal bones lay where the piles of silver once did.)
When I was a dragonet, I had wondered, because a there was so much beauty out there in the world — more than you could ever hoard.
But it was death out there. The night I realized that, I think I stopped being a dragonet.
There were days I didn’t leave those obscure nooks. When I did, I gazed trembling at the too-pure stars, or braved the shards of that vast, broken mirror, shooting fleeting glances at a stranger with blood-dark eyescales.
No one to regurgitate. No one to bring me fish and bugs. No one at all.
Hunger pangs were one drop in a flood.
Mom had named me after the last roar of sunlight before dusk falls. And the night had always been so beautiful. I could wait for it to come.
If I were impatient, the mirror shards were quick-sharp.
I think I was bleeding out when I met Rilinacha. She saw that pure rivulet before she saw my eyes. She would have seen my brother and sister first — and another body wouldn’t look so different.
Almost bit her, when she hugged me, and the venom on my fangs, pungent and leaden and thick like sludge, would have made it hurt. She had to have scented it first — why approach anyway?
Rilinacha rubbed me, sloughing from my scales weeks of grime. Only rocks had touched me since, and now something so solid, yet yielding. I should have growled at the intrusion. That wasn’t the sound I made.
I shoved her back anyway, and then found I couldn’t stand. (In those weeks, what difference did it make if I had walked or crawled about?) That other dragon caught me, held me, and her first words to me were a whisper:
“Hey. Hold on to me. I’ve got you.”
She’d arrived with a wizened, milky-eyed kobold minder, and he brandished a lantern and a smile. Lit by burning oil, when I finally glimpsed the draconic intruder, my first thought was a dumb one.
She won’t look out of place in mother’s hoard.
Shiny gray scales, eyes green like emeralds, and horns bright like brass. Forked and helix-twined, sharp tips pointed back at the folded wrings. Despite the smooth scales, those wings had rows of white feathers.
“Why did you come here?”
She smiled, and said, “Why, I came to seize treasure! Though it looks like someone beat me to it. But it seems they left one piece — so I’ll just have to take it~”
My neck drew back, and my eyes shot down to the pendent weighing against my breast. The last silver. Hissing, my fang-scent finally changes, salt-sharp notes of anger waft from my fangs.
A frill folded beside those glinting green eyes, and her mouth worked a frown that might be apologetic or pointed. “No, I don’t mean — it’s you. Not your necklace.”
I gave a bark like confused laugh. My eyes were thin slits.
Rilinacha explained, “Come back to my father’s lair! Better than being all alone here, right? Your mother promised us beauty, and I came to collect. Better I come back with you than empty-mouthed! This way we both smile~”
No argument could sway me. Not knowing that she had six siblings in two broods to keep company, or that her father had a mountaintop lair with thirty kobolds, or hearing of a hoard of embossed chests overflowing with beautiful pieces.
So the ultimate outcome of this futile haggling? Rilinacha sent her kobold minder to return with word that she’d be staying here. With me.
Her justification? “You’re just about empty. Fading. If you die, then your mother’s hoard really will be nothing. So hold on to me, okay? I’ve got you.”
It still didn’t make sense to me. Then I flicked my tongue, and glimpsed a sliver more understanding.
This lair — ruins, really — held air thick with the leaden scent of despair. I’d grown so used to it that I didn’t catch that not all of it came from my own teared fangs.
The intruder had seen her brother and sister first, and another body wouldn’t look so different — unless she held on tight and pulled me out of this hole.
Igniting a dragon’s heart for the last time would burn away all flesh, leaving bones like worldly stones. It was the kind of pyre a kobold would dreams of final rest on — would pray for, if it didn’t mean praying for death.
Rilinacha ignited and removed her mother and brother and sisters. (Bones, unlike corpses, could never be mistaken for life, so I had waited and waited.) Rilinacha swept away all of the mirror fragments and (her kobold left a bag) then she tied herb-wet bandages to my legs. And Rilinacha hunted — no fish nor bugs, but rabbits and deer.
(The first time I see a deer dead, there was leaden venom enough to kill it all over again.)
Her thought counts for little, as a moon waxes and wanes. I don’t reach out to hug the silver dragon again, and I don’t leave the tomb-safe nooks if I can bear it.
Rilinacha caught me like that. Leaping from a hidden alcove to pounce on my back. Her claws were out, sharp and raking against my side. I yowled, feet already scrambling for the nearest tight passage.
But my attacker snarled, a foreleg thrown out to grab my tail and drag me back. So I kicked, first one hindleg then another, and Rilinacha dodged both. She caught one leg, and that was another rope to reel me in. I slid over stone.
Twisting about, and my forelegs lashed down. That was when the silver dragon lets go, and lunged at my face. She didn’t close the distance. Coming up short, she bit into my shoulder.
We fell. Her weight slammed me to he ground. Forelegs still flailed wildly, but Rilinacha had forelegs too, and pinned mine. This fight had a foregone conclusion — eating well now didn’t change that I had spent weeks starving, and she was a year older than me.
“You leech! You oblivious little pebble! What’s the point of this? What are you doing? What am — I, doing.”
I growl-hissed. She attacked me, then asked what I’m doing? “Were you just pretending all along?”
She was growling right back. “The only one pretending is you! Pretending to be a mole-rat! You can hear me, you can see me — were you just pretending not to, all this time? You can talk. So talk!”
A dismissive bark. “I have nothing to say.”
“The least you could say is thank you! For everything I’ve done.”
I had a reply reading to go. I’d spent long enough reflecting — brooding — in a lair-ruin tortuously empty, alone but for a impromptu mockery of kinship. I shouldn’t thank her for a life protracted; I should curse her.
And when I opened my mouth, what emerged was a surge of light burning wildly bright. Cool white and shimmer-sharp as if split through a myriad prisms.
I breathed, «Winter’s haze hangs a shroud to blind those at her storm’s mercy.» This tone, the roar of the world, crackling like primal flame.
Cold fire and life danced in my throat, but the dragonflame guttered and billowed at my lips. No warmth escaped me, only a smoke-cloud drifting as if from a cryovolcano, portent-dark and grasping like fingers of the relentless cold.
The still darkness of the lair-ruin could never quite draw a clean line between wakefulness and sleep. I had slumbered and staggered, and every muscle of my face had fallen as if under continuous strain.
But right now, staring up at that silver dragon? It had taken her biting me to put a smile on my face. My heart was beating faster than it had in two moons.
Igniting a dragon’s heart for the first time granted them a breath of wildest flame, always burning as something truer than heat.
I closed my mouth, and my lips wavered as I warred not to smile.
“Fine. I guess… thanks.”
And she bit me again.
Sleeping beside Rilinacha was no pile, but her wings were warm and blanket-soft. Her voice was too — when she wasn’t growling at me, at least. She asked questions. First about my mom and siblings, and I kept silent. Then about the stars, the treasures collected, the ancestor-roars echoing in our stories.
Small questions with small answers. Whispers interlocking like our limbs. Some round of this, and sleep stole away semantics from the words, until our late night conversations were exchanged hums and grunts.
When I woke up first, Rilinacha roused to grab and hold me there. I resisted, and she insisted, and then I was wrestling her weight off me. She was still bigger, but a new trick changed the game.
«Winter’s haze!» In the mist I felt her every move, and elusive as a ghost I twisted out of grasp and out of sight. Out of my mist, even, but my mist was still me.
The silver lashed her tail and growled in new blindness. She had no breath weapon of her own, so this hatched a fascination with mine: fighting me was just a surer way to test it.
Her frills worked, every twitch of the membrane-fans stirring eddies in the cold air. The first time I used my haze to escape, she told me she could hear me mocking her, and when she finally found me, she bit me over it.
I felt-knew her in the mist; I could feel-hear her panting breaths mumbling curses, and I could feel-see her eyes dancing around behind clear scales, searching for the end of the cold obscurity. My mist told me the warmth of muscles just before they flexed, and the wet of fangs dewing with new emotion.
That was the limit — I could guess a new scent coated those fangs, but no taste nor fume graced winter’s dead air. It numbed my tongue, and Rilinacha’s too. (Guess what she did in response, when we discovered that.)
Mist had no boundary; it dispersed. What was the quietest sound you could hear? I couldn’t feel Rilinacha leaving my ‘range’; I felt-heard her getting quieter; I felt-saw her become a blurry, peripheral thing.
No, but I smelt her the mint-salt scent, that curiousity-frustration so abundant in her glands — that told me she was free.
I braced for the pounce.
Rilinacha said, “You earthworm! You have wings and you’re using them to crawl!”
I crinkled one frill. “Huh?”
“Flame me!”
I crinkled the other frill.
“Your chilly hazey breath,” she snapped. “Use it on me!”
«Winter’s haze?»
I disgorged a cloud of hanging shadow, and blew it in front of the glaring silver dragon. I couldn’t see her, but I could feel-see her. Then I waited.
Then Rilinacha pounced, lunging forward, forelegs snapping out to grab me. One on my neck, one sweeping my forelegs from under me, twisting me to the ground. Strong legs held me there.
“Gotcha!” she snarled.
“You got me,” I said.
“That’s why you’re an earthworm.”
“Because I’m weaker than you?”
“Because you’re using your wings to crawl. You wrap that haze around me, I can’t see anything, and then you run? Opportunity to get me is right there!”
“Sorry,” I say. It wasn’t a word I’d ever learned from my mother or siblings. It made her hesitate when her words were claws at my throat.
In addition to the claws actually at my throat.
She blew wisps of lingering black me away from her face. “I just don’t know why,” she started. Her eyes cleared, scale-veins tight, seeing me clear. Then she say, “Oh. No, I know what why.”
The legs holding me down shifting. More of a hug — this was more aggressive by far, though.
I didn’t ask.
“One day,” she said. “Gonna get you to kill something one day~”
I let my heartflame blaze forth one more time, draping us in light-freeing darkness. More of a hug, I suppose, when I could feel-know it.
A growl, or a indignant yelp. “When I get a heartflame,” she said, “I’m going to be so much better at using it than you~”
So I bit her.
It took nine tries for Rilinacha to drag me out of the lair-ruin.
It is called a stormrise.
The Palace of the Tempest Wyrm arrived upon the land like the sun arrived upon the sky.