Fifth draft - getting along, not done yet
The sun chimed the world in red and orange. Horsetail clouds reflected the chaos in the waves. Water all around. Squelching and cursing from the swamps behind me spurred me on across the sparkling grass, intuiting careful steps, the Isthmus of Intracy like a sponge under my feet. All around me the sun disappeared into Mu. My toes were soaked.
When I got to the other side, I strained to hear what the Masters were saying. They wouldn’t cross the Isthmus at night. The bridge of weeds and grass was more liquid than solid, and these masters apparently valued their lives. Luckily for the initiate who didn’t.
My sight grew dark and my bare arms and ears flared with sensation. Bats chirped in the thickening night, and I heard the heavy scuttle of chamelons on the rocks in front of me.
I didn’t need to see to scale Red Mountain. I had bounded my way up smoother faces than this. Temple walls, forty-foot statues, the perfectward spires. The trick was not to stop. After a week of meditation on stillness, I was going to reap the results of my devotion. I let my mind wander as my hands and feet moved of their own accord, seeking out crevices and cracks that would hold my weight. Not hard, as I hadn’t eaten in a week except for the clumps of granite berries I’d grabbed from the garden for the climb. Perhaps an hour passed.
I’d tried to tell them, but the Unbron Masters didn’t care that I’d dreamt this. All they did was wait, watch, and understand. No wonder they took so few initiates.
It was a moon night. A pale ring emerged from the water, trailing drops of oily black down the horizon. I scrambled over a rocky outcropping and twisted my body to lie with my back to the face so I could watch the last drops of eyl carried out of Mu, the visage of silence and death below the sea. The moon muddled the distinctions between the worlds.
Those drops of iridescence were my namesake, as I was born on a brilliant moon-night. Eyl-su.
Enough. I took a handful of granite berries from my pack. They were perfect for traveling, keeping their shape like pebbles unless pierced by a sharp object, in this case my front teeth. I nibbled ravenously until their sweetness numbed my tongue. Thought about eating a flatcake but decided against it. Eat it when I reached the top. My stomach protested and I stood up, craned my neck upwards. I had already come about three quarters of the way, it wouldn’t be much longer. A moan escaped my belly, promising that it would feel very long indeed.
While I stood, my will arguing with my appetite, an animal’s scream rent the air. Gunshots and shouts followed, and light and sound burst from the brink of the plateau above, splatters of sparks raining down. Adrenaline made me climb. This was how it had been in the dream, intense need outpacing all other concerns. Another terrible screech. Then voices. Grinding like a ton of bricks over dirt. Silence. It was another ten minutes before I got to the top and thrust myself over the edge.
The bodies of five monks in sleeveless red robes cut like my white lay dead in the scrub brush, face down. Several strides ahead to the side of a dirt road, a burlap tarp was nailed to the ground over what I assumed to be more bodies. I knelt by the side of a monk, turned him over and gasped, looked away, slowly brought my eyes to bear upon him again, breathing hard. The skin on his face was charred and crumbly, particularly around his eyes, where missing patches revealed muscle, brown and bloodied. I touched two fingers to my forehead and two to his and intoned:
“Sol t’jan, sol axipuan, soli.”
May the blessings of life and the blessings of death intertwine. His robes were unscarred - they must have been incinerated from within. The men’s bodies lay in a wide circle. Women were not admitted into their Vengene sect as it was feared their emotions and physiology would get in the way of the contemplations on pain, solitude, and death without rebirth. I, too, was rejected on account of my “overt displays of feeling.”
As I made the rounds, I noticed that the dirt in the center of the circle was all ash and stained black. More gunshots from down the road. I shoved my thoughts aside and ran toward them.
The road dipped into an industrial dock, little more than an iron box-shaped hole in the side of the mountain. Shabby warehouses surrounded a freight loading area where nearly sixty soldiers clustered around a dragon.
Five times the height of one of the men, it twitched lethargically as they climbed atop it and around it, fitting it with chains, manacles, a muzzle and wing restraints. Covered in the same ash and black from the center of the five monks, I wondered. There were rumors of arcane techniques used by Vengene monks - magics that took their users’ lives. But why? I didn’t know what the dragon meant to them or to anybody. The soldiers, meanwhile, were efficient, and within minutes the dragon was immobile.
“Phew,” their leader breathed, wiping sweat from his brow. I moved down to stand behind them, white robes marking me inconsequential.
“I’m about ready for some food. Save the scraps for this beast.” He turned toward a large shack at the other end of the dock. The others turned with him, lockstep, glancing back at the dragon, low excited giggles. It twitched its muzzled head at them, eyes glazed.
Something about its body reminded me of a dolphin. Even its wings were smooth. Its purple eyes marked themselves in my mind, and I will never forget their flashing, even as its body slumped, chains to the iron wall from its neck and shoulders the only things holding it upright. I stumbled backwards and fell when they cast upon me. The dragon strained suddenly and tried to call out, a squeal rather than a scream. I ran behind a warehouse and plunged my head into my sleeves, the tears burning exhaustion into me. I slept when they stopped falling.
When my eyes opened, I knew I was dreaming. Surfaces shimmered of their own accord, and a transparent veil covered the world. My arms and legs and will were weak, my empathy and understanding vast. The dragon stood before me, loose chains hanging from the irons on its snout and legs, lithe body bent, wings spread free, each as wide as its height. Strangely, they were still plated, fetters unattached its back. Its head was at my level. I was no friend to it, I realized, merely a curious anomaly in these hateful circumstances. Nevertheless, I patted the underside of its jaw between plates of metal. There was a ridge the width of my finger running down the plate on its neck. I noticed similar ridges down the manacles on its legs and even more, a crisscross all about its wings. I touched it and tensed. It was pulsing.
My blood pooled in my chest and I looked away and down and back at the dragon. Its heart’s blood was power. It cut channels in steel.
I stepped around toward its neck, taking my time, and moved to embrace it. The noble creature had no need for my pity, yet I wanted to show my regard for its suffering. I wiped its ashen pearl-scaled head and neck clean, graying my robes, and cradled the great beast in my arms. I knew that should it care to, all the containment in the world wouldn’t hold back its wrath. Visions of fire exploded in the dock around me.
I closed my eyes and prayed for peace, and hoped that the powers would know the particulars of bringing that about, because I had no idea.
I awoke to the grating of strained metal. Peeking around the edge of the warehouse, I saw a soldier with a metal rod poking the dragon under the jaw. Sparks flew whenever it touched the muzzle, which made it pull and twist at its chains. They stretched and thinned, and with each struggle the dragon had more room to move. I wondered why the soldiers never noticed this. Two men watched and chatted.
“I hear Lord Ikho is expected within the week.”
“Well, good luck to him. Lindra’s the best tamer in the unit, and all he’s doing is making it mad. By my grave-!”
They unslung their rifles. The dragon had been holding back, and pushed forward in its chains as Lindra thrust the pole at its snout. The two collided, throwing Lindra down. Further clenching of metal. Lindra’s wail as the dragon pinned him at his midsection with his own pole. Gunfire.
“No!” I shouted, arm raised, meeting the dragon’s violet gleam. “Don’t!” Sparks and black blood flew from its snout where the prod touched it. Bullets like beestings pinged off its scales. I gasped, covering my face in my robes. I peeked, and the dragon twitched forward two more inches. Lindra screamed, splayed, and was still. The pole clattered to the ground, and Lindra’s red blood began to pool around it. I ran and vomited in the far corner of the alley behind the warehouse.
A few days passed in terror. The guards didn’t go near the dragon, waiting and whispering that soon Lord Ikho would take it off their hands. It spent every waking and sleeping moment tugging at its chains. Every day it seemed less depressed, more angry.
On the fourth day, it happened. I rose with the deep purple of pre-dawn and had just begun my morning practices when I heard a clang. I stood and looked out and the dragon’s muzzle lay on the ground. It shrugged its wings and the plates slid like water down its back to a heap. Doors opened and armed men ran out, shooting. A flap of its wings ripped the manacles from their chains. It circled high above the dock and screamed challenges below.
Fear filled me. Despite my love and regard for the dragon, I knew it was a wild creature. It dove, tearing into a wide building with its legs like a hawk. Light burst and men ran out. It struck them with wing, claw, and tooth, twisting low in the air, killing everywhere at once. I knew I would die if I stayed, so I ran for the road and stared. It killed everyone - no one escaped - and razed every building. The carnage was complete. It turned to face me in the sky, flapping its wings, treading air. In the silence we shared everything. I had its appreciation for my respect. It propelled itself upwards in the air with as cream and ultra-white light exploded and stayed. I was blind.
“Damn!” a voice from up the road. “Just missed it! Hey.” I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and faced it. “You live around here? Excuse me. Name’s Ikho, by the way.”
“I’m Eyl-su, Lord,” I said, trying to appear as meek as possible. “I’m a student of the Unbron temple down the mountain.”
“That’s wonderful! You wouldn’t mind guiding me there, would you?”
“Not at all, Lord,” I said. “But you’ll have to help me down, as the dragon must have blinded me.”
“Of course! Down the mountain, you say?”
“And across the Isthmus. You’ll have to watch your step, because you could fall in.”
“Got it. Well, let’s go.” He turned and took my hand, guided me to the edge of the cliff. He pounded something into the ground and said, “hold tight to me and the rope.” I did and he jumped off, began repelling down the rock face.
Lord Ikho was well-known for his tenacity as a monster tamer throughout the two imperfect visages of Gom and Su, and he would continue to pursue the dragon until he got it or it killed him. Though I knew from my studies and meditation that I’d never be happy just taking sides in somebody else’s fight, a passion gripped me. I wanted the dragon to win.
I touched this desire, relaxed into it, embodied it, agreed with it, understood its mayfly thought-flitting illusory nature, just like the Masters taught me, but it refused to melt away. This scared me more than the dragon itself.
“You’re pretty quiet,” Ikho observed when we reached the bottom. “What’s up?”
“Oh,” I said, “My apologies, Lord. I’ve just had a long couple of days. Tired.”
“Don’t apologize for that, it’s fine. Tell me about them sometime, though?” he said. “After you’ve rested up, of course.”
“Sure thing.” I hated how sincere he seemed, how I responded to it. His blood would stain the pearled scales of my dragon, and I would be satisfied. No! Not. But. I didn’t know what to think. Surrounded by a cloud of mental muck, I let Ikho lead me back across the Isthmus to the temple, where punishments for my flight were sure to await me.
First thing I want to say - I HATE not having paragraph indentations. It ruins everything. How do I do them in Livejournal? I'm sure there's an HTML command but I don't know it.
So I don't know if I want to continue this. It's written as if there's going to be a whole story afterwards, and I vaguely know where it's going, but the second chapter is giving me a lot of grief. I don't know if I want to just take out references to an outside world and leave it as it is, based on a dream I had in which this stuff happened. I also want to try writing a manga script for it, in which case I'm pretty sure I want to make it stand alone as a dreamlike short story. Though who knows? If I have a breakthrough on this second chapter (I feel it coming too, I'm understanding this story a lot more as a sort of young adult read, dealing with those sorts of tumultuous newness concerns, which would segue into my fantasy story The Hand of Berthe - they're in the same cosmology - which is more of a coming of age into adulthood story), I might want to try doing more with it.