The Sergeant-Major exhaled sharply. “Yeah? Well, let ’em choke. What do you want to do, sir?”
Achmed rose from his crouch and rested his hand on the Earthchild’s own. He leaned over her, brushed the grassy wisps of hair back from the muddy sweat of her forehead, and pressed a kiss on it.
“Do not worry,” he whispered. “We stand guard. We will find what is doing this to you and make it stop.”
He turned away and walked off into the darkness, back toward the rubble barrier and the tunnel entrance. As soon as they were out of earshot he spoke the only three words he would utter the rest of the night.
“Summon the Archons.”
The dragon lay still as day came and brought light, if not warmth, to the frozen world around her.
As night followed day, the cycle repeating itself again and again, her broken mind was slowly knitting, coming back to itself, though she still had not comprehended her form, could not yet remember how she had come to be entombed in a cavern of smoke and ash so far away from this place of cold clarity.
The world here had already been in the grip of autumn when she arrived; now winter, early and bitterly windy, was signaling its imminence. Though she was still not whole, her instinct told her that warmth and shelter must soon be found, or she would die.
With great effort the beast lifted her head, then hoisted herself onto her forearms, crawling over the earth as once she had crawled through it; across the frost-slick ground and the endless plains pocked by dry vegetation, to the shores of an almost-frozen lake. In the distance she could see what looked like steam rising from it, though in all likelihood it was merely the crystals of ice taking to the wind as it gusted sharply over the tundra.
As she made her painful way through the thick brush at the lake’s edge she tentatively extended her hand to touch the surface, endeavoring to ascertain whether the water had frozen deeply enough to bear her weight.
The mirrorlike surface, not yet fully ice, reflected a sight that caused her breath to choke in her throat.
No hand hovered over the meniscus; instead she could see a gnarled claw, red-gold and scored with scales, ending in cruel talons, some razorsharp, some broken, one missing, jointed with phalanges that no longer resembled anything even vaguely human.
The beast recoiled in horror.
The great claw disappeared, leaving only ripples in the frigid water.
The dragon’s still-foggy mind fought off the implications of what she had seen, but realization was taking hold in her belly.
Slowly she crawled forward, steeled her resolve, and looked down into the water.
Partially obscured by fireweed and bracken was a face that rang a chime in her memory, but it was not one she recalled as her own.
She tore the vegetation aside and looked again.
Then loosed a cry of rage, a long, sustained howl that trailed off in despair, dragging the snow from mountain faces in great white avalanches.
When she could force herself to look once more, her eyes were cloudy with unspent tears.
Gone was her proud beauty; she had been a handsome woman, with the tall, statuesque frame of her Seren father, and the gold cast of his skin in hers as well. The dramatic bone structure of her face, which long ago had adorned myriad court paintings, statues, and coins, was gone as well, replaced with the hideous aspect of a beast, a wyrm, as her despised mother had been.
The dragon continued to stare at her face, locked in disbelief mixed with dread, her nose and mouth jutting forth in a serpentine snout, her skin now mottled red scales that glinted in the light with traces of black and copper, horned at the edges, metallic, with webbed wings, one of them brutally scarred, hanging limply from her back. Only her eyes remained as they once had been, blistering blue eyes that could level a man with a glance, eyes so compelling that she had been able to enslave, enchant, or entreat almost any soul she had ever caught in her gaze.
Staring now at her reflection in the almost frozen lake, those commanding blue eyes spilled over with grief. The rocks on which her tears fell glistened gold in the sunlight, as they would forever after.
The dragon shook herself violently, as if the force could shake the body in which she was now housed from her. She willed her form to change back to what it had once been, resorting finally to scraping at her hide with her cruel talons, leaving brutal gashes in her own thick flesh. It was all for naught—the fire that had struck her, that had haunted her awareness from the moment she had awakened—had come from the stars, the element of ether, purified in living flame. The form she had chosen to wreak havoc in was now her own permanently, the human aspect of it having been purged forever by power that was older than her own earth lore.
Her stomach rushed into her mouth and she vomited caustic flame, kindled in the firegems that now were part of her viscera. The patchy vegetation ignited beneath its hoary coat and crackled, blackening immediately and filling the air with dull smoke.
As bright blood blazed in stripes and flecks on the permafrost, the dragon’s grief mutated into anger. The easy and inadvertent destruction of the grass pleased her on some level, lessened the pain somewhat.
She took a deep breath and exhaled, allowing her fury to vent itself in her breath.
A billowing wave of orange heat rolled over the frosty plain, melting the snowcap and singeing the small trees, leaving the landscape smoldering all around her.
Destruction, she thought in the mind that was still not entirely clear. Destruction eases the pain a bit.
It was easy medicine to take.
In the distance she could feel the place that had been her lair calling to her from the west.
Too weary to yet be able to contemplate the ramifications of her new form, the wyrm dragged herself forward, aiming for the place she hoped to find answers.
And rest that would cause her strength to return.
3
When Quayle the fisherman first found Faron on the beach, he thought he had stumbled across nothing more than a thick strand of pale seaweed clogging the inlet.
Upon further investigation, he discovered what resembled a large jelly-fish or squid, a grotesque mass of colorless skin hanging on a frame that did not resemble anything human.
Except that it had a head vaguely shaped like that of a child, its eyes closed, thick lips fused together in front, with black water draining out the sides of its mouth.
The fisherman’s first impulse was to pummel it with a board and toss it to the cats to shred. This is what he would have done, in fact, had he not observed the shallow chest quivering with breath.
His dockmate, Brookins, who was trimming the nets, saw him recoil in disgust and called to him from the pier.
“What is it?”
Quayle shrugged. “Somethin’ from a nightmare,” he called back.
Brookins wiped the slime from his hands onto his trousers and made his way over to where Quayle stood, staring down at the mass entangled in the weeds at the edge of the inlet.
“Sweet All-God,” he said, shielding his eyes.
The creature lay in the fetid water, still as death, with only the faint movement of the nostrils in its flat, bridgeless nose and the shallow rise and fall of its chest to indicate otherwise. Its sallow skin, faintly golden but bleached gray by the sun, hung loosely over a skeletal frame that the men could tell was monstrously misshapen, even beneath its blanket of seaweed.
“Do you think it’s alive?” Brookins asked nervously after a moment.
Quayle nodded silently.
Gingerly Brookins picked up an oar and lifted some of the seaweed off the creature.
Both men cringed as more of its body was revealed—twisted limbs that appeared almost boneless, as if fashioned from cartilage instead, were bent at all-but-impossible angles beneath its torso. The creature was lying on its side, mostly naked; the ratty remains of fabric that covered its body bulged slightly in spots to suggest both nascent male and female traits.