Chapter 3: The Silver Spear

Something dropped into the sand with a thud. Sylph jolted back awake in the cold, damp grass. She pushed her legs forward as far as they would go, flexed her claws, and stretched to her full length until her back gave a satisfying crack. With a deep yawn, she shook off the stray sand and headed towards her mother.

Veria sat in the armory’s shadow and held up a wooden bucket in a grip that would get her scolded by Oasis. Two of her digits were inside the water, the claws poking into the wood. She dipped her head backwards and splashed its contents into her opened mouth and half of it over her face.

Oasis almost never visited the field. The lack of manners was one reason. Manners separate us from wyvern, Sylph recalled. Not the ability to think, or the six limbs and dragonheart. No, it was the ability to file your claws and make eating more complicated. Manners barely mattered here. The things that mattered were rules, discipline, and trying your best.

Veria finished pouring the water over her face and threw the bucket to the side with a satisfied sigh. “Sylph.” Drops of water flew from her mouth as she spoke. “We don’t have any training today.” A wide grin spread over her face as she lowered her head until she was on eye-level with her daughter. Her yellow eyes gleamed and tail flicked around behind her. “But that’s not why you are here, am I right?” They both knew the answer.

“I challenge you to a duel!” Sylph barked, and her dragonheart ignited at the word. It sprung to life deep within her chest like a spark igniting a tuft of dried grass. Heat built and spread through her body. All that power trapped inside tingled down to her tail tip, and she loved it. Every muscle brimmed with strength and trembled in excitement of the things to come.

She noticed Veria’s gaze lingering on her wings and their painted underside. Veria’s grin widened, exposing her white teeth, and she nodded. “What are we waiting for?” She might not have wanted her as a daughter, but they both loved to duel.

The initial flash of hot power ebbed to a keen anticipation in Sylph’s body, one that sharpened her senses and cleared her head. There was nothing better to get away from all the nonsense clinging to your thoughts.

Sylph took a few steps back, and several pairs of eyes followed her every movement. The recruits on break had all found their way to the wooden benches on the side and watched. Sylph liked to imagine a few of them betting on her winning to get back at Veria for pushing them so hard. But you didn’t win against Veria, you tried to survive the mock duel longer than before. Sylph’s record was a little over ten seconds. Today, her surprise could add a few more.

They were barely more than a tail length apart as a silver mist coalesced from between the scales of Veria’s chest. It shaped into an image of a Sol larger than Veria that held itself proudly as it stepped out of her body.

“What by the six?” Confused yells came from the benches.

Sylph turned back around to face Veria and Arastra. “I guess you didn’t introduce her?” She sat down on the sand and watched Arastra complete her image. Veria shook her head. The storytellers would never quite believe this either. And with that thought, her head filled with the same questions as before.

“Veria planned to use me as yet another cheap scare.” Arastra flicked her wings, leaving a trail of dispersing mist. Her voice was always hard to locate. It wasn’t quite where it should be, as though she talked from everywhere around her instead of her nonexistent mouth.

“Another Void could happen one day. Best for them to be prepared for the impossible,” Veria said and poked into the mist, swirling the image. Arastra took a step aside to escape Veria’s antics. Sylph thought that they kinda shared a fate. They were both stuck somewhere without wanting to after the war, although Veria had been much more vocal about not wanting the dead queen’s soul stuck to hers.

“Excuse me, what?” The gasps of surprise from the ranks of new recruits hadn’t stopped, but the three of them paid them no attention. Sylph wasn’t sure Veria and Arastra could even hear them at all.

“I was wondering where you were hiding. We need a referee.” Sylph strained her eyes to make out the ridges on Arastra’s scales and the finely sculpted horns. It always took her a few minutes, but the result was incredibly detailed and everyone could guess what she had looked like in life, besides the color and the dead eyes.

“It’s been a slow day. I was resting my thoughts.” Arastra gave a nod to the recruits. “Apparently, these recruits aren’t worth a damn, and I am still waiting for my grand entrance. The entire morning, I might add.” She leaned towards Veria, whispering, but Sylph could still make out the words. “Please don’t hurt each other again. Someday she is going to forbid me from being your referee.”

Sylph didn’t mind a few bruises and scratches. They were part of the sport. But Oasis did. She did not share their enthusiasm towards dueling. Getting hit hurt, but it was supposed to. Sylph found some odd comfort of normality in the bruises and scratches compared to touches.

Arastra stepped to her position, waiting until they both assumed theirs about four tail lengths apart from where they challenged each other. Unlike a fight, duels had a code. A practice duel used the most basic rule set, ending with a pin of three counts or an attack the judge would deem deadly.

The rules disallowed most things that would give one species the upper hand. No magic, no breath weapons, Aer organs counting towards the latter, no flying or any kind of tool or armor. Thus, everything she intended to do was illegal and would make her mother quite angry for even considering it. As much as Veria forgot about manners, she knew the book of duels by heart. But seeing how this was practice and not real, there would be no problem.

“On the count of three,” Arastra yelled and Sylph bent her knees for a proper stance. Veria straightened her wings and stretched her neck excessively, making it look more like a show than actual stretching.

Veria raised her sharpened tail to her left. The blade gleamed in the sunlight, fighting for her attention, but she knew to focus on her back legs. Her legs bore heavy scars, as did the rest of her body. Hundreds of dull gray cuts and slashes stood out prominently in the sun as they broke up her silvery coat. No ounce of fat showed beneath her scales, only pure muscle. She held her snout slightly downwards, showing off the spikes growing from the back of her head to make it seem larger and longer. She had noticed this with most Metia she had fought, but Veria didn’t really need to look even scarier. Two golden bands wrapped around the two straight horns higher up and stared down at her like a second pair of eyes. The brilliant topaz earring blinked like a fifth, watchful gaze belonging to someone else.

Sylph liked to mock the recruits for being afraid of her mother, but staring ahead into her cold, piercing yellow eyes drove an icy trickle of fear to her tail-tip, no matter how often they faced off. Fighting her felt different, as though you already thought about how to lose with the most limbs intact. Should she ever have to face Veria in anything but a mock fight, she had a three-step plan. Surrender, pray, and disgrace herself; Order interchangeable.

Arastra started the countdown, and Sylph swallowed. Her dragonheart had settled somewhere between smoldering and burning and she felt how her senses seemed just that little sharper, her breaths deeper and her muscles ready to explode. Hopefully, Veria was in a teaching kind of mood today.

“One, two, three!” Arastra yelled, and nobody moved.

Sylph’s muscles tensed up like a bowstring as she waited for Veria’s first attack. It didn’t come. Some days, Veria shot forward and pointed out Sylph’s mistakes while pushing her head into the sand. That would’ve ruined her new idea.

Veria knew without a doubt that Sylph planned something. She started circling around her with a grin, her tail always pointed at her. “Strike first. Strike fast. Win.” Her favorite quote.

A devious smile played across Sylph’s face as she dug her claws a little deeper into the sand and concentrated on her upper back. The two electric organs prickled and pulsed as they charged up. While she lacked the beautiful full wings, the Aer’s weapon worked like they should.

She raised her crippled wings with their underside to the front. Her muscles strained and ached, wings weren’t meant to be used like this but hers weren’t useful wings either. She stole a swift glance to make sure the paint hadn’t come off. The thin layer reflected the sun like a million tiny mirrors. It hadn’t flaked yet; the coat was still perfect.

Veria stopped circling and cocked her head, watching Sylph with growing curiosity.

No Aer with working wings would think of using them to guide the current from their weapon. You didn’t want your wings to touch your opponent. Sylph closed her eyes and drew a shallow breath. She brought the wrists of her wings as close together above her back as she could. The air crackled between them as the storm deep inside her brewed to full power.

“Surprise!” She relaxed her mental hold on the tempest in her back, allowing her organs to discharge. The electric current raced up her wings and jumped into the layer of paint, like Brandon had said. An arc formed in the tiny gap between her wing wrists, stinging and singeing her scales as it jumped to the other wing and traveled back into the counterpart of her weapon.

The paint reacted to the current and exploded into a flash of light that turned the training field into a pure stinging white. The world ground to a surprised halt as Veria blinked and tripped over her own pfod. Sylph had done it. Her chest warmed with pride. She had surprised Veria.

Her tail twitched from side to side, but then she noticed what happened around her. Recruits yelled and jumped or fell off their seats, frantically rubbing their eyes. A surreal stillness took hold of everything. It had worked even better than they had expected. Brandon had done a brilliant job.

A pained outcry echoed over the sand as a stray arrow embedded itself into a bystander’s leg and reality splashed back like a brick into a still lake. A young Sol with orange spots on his amber scales crashed out of the sky into the sand with a surprised yelp. The disgusting crack that followed made her shiver. His wing bent in on itself and he cried out.

A recruit on the other side of the field stumbled into the armory of training weaponry and they all dropped out of their racks like a perfectly studied choreography. The entire field dropped into utter chaos as blinded people tried to help or, in most cases, ran into things like headless wyvern. Instead of staying put as their vision turned back to normal, they all did something stupid.

Whoops.

Veria snapped around, blinking rapidly. Her tail blade whipped through the loose sand. “Sylph!” she hissed, and stormed towards her like a loosened arrow.

She should run and hide for a few hours, or days, or weeks, but that thought was pointless. Sylph cowered to the ground instead, her wings pressed close to her body, hoping that she’d sink into the sand below.

The sound of a heavy thud followed another scream. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it would be that effective.” Sylph tried to become even smaller on the sand. Veria’s teeth blinked and her black tongue flicked in and out between them. “But it was pretty impressive, right?” Sylph forced herself to a half open smile.

Veria was not impressed. Right now Sylph was just another idiot recruit. A recruit trying to merge with the damp sand below her under Veria’s silent stare. Nothing was as terrifying as her silence.

****************

Dragons were the apex predators of the world, next to the humans. Nature had given her teeth like spearheads and claws like knives, a powerful electric organ and a dragonheart to power it all. None of which proved useful for tidying a whole training field on her own.

Sylph shoved another wooden spear back into its rack and, being the mighty apex predator, used such force that the carefully stacked shields tumbled out of the shelf right next to her. One of them hit one of her digits behind the start of the claw and she had to try her hardest to not knock the rack over for being that rude.

“Clean this mess back up,” she nagged, imitating Veria’s voice and kicked a wooden knife into the corner. This wasn’t her fault. No one had to run around while blinded. They did that on their own.

Veria always reminded her to use every advantage she had, so she did. Not her fault if people shot arrows while blind or crashed because they forgot which way is up when their eyes stopped working.

She stamped down on the wooden floor. Splat! She looked down in disgust. Wood didn’t go splat. Her pfod stood in a puddle barely bigger than itself. She didn’t question it, shook the liquid away, and continued to pick up wooden spears and shields. At least Veria was not here to watch her.

Her tail twitched, and she stopped it mere inches from smacking into another rack of swords. This had been one of the worst days of the year, dwarfed only by the week of flu last winter. She grabbed another shield, wondering how many they could need for training. Splat! “Who by the six left all these freaking puddles here!” she yelled into the dusty and darkening armory.

No answer. She set down the shield and lowered her head to inspect the puddle. It looked like water, like every colorless liquid on the floor did. It wasn’t acid; she had already stepped in it. Her nose filled with dust and the smell of old wood covered in several decades of sweat. She did not dare taste it; she wasn’t an alchemist. Alchemists like Brandon only believed in things they could see, smell, or lick. But unlike in his father’s shop, there wasn’t much that could spill around here.

She raised her head away from the puddle. Rainwater from the ceiling? The armory was old. It rained a few days ago. Maybe that answered everything. An uneasy feeling deep inside of her gut told her to hurry. It didn’t really make sense for that puddle to be here. But she had no explanation for it either.