Taelryx

Many years had passed since Taelryx had seen the sky shimmer like this. Through deepest night, stars twinkled with intensity - not their usual sort of casual fluctuation. Once there, then gone, then brighter than ever, before dimming to imperceptibility again. All across the sky it was like this, thousands of stars violently dancing.

Taelryx perched on its rock shelf, transfixed, pondering. It shifted for comfort, its massive claws having ages ago hollowed out the center of the butte. Taelryx hungered. It had not eaten in a month, and its last meal was nothing but a memory.

This light show unnerved it. Dragons remembered everything. Except Taelryx. So ancient a dragon, it didn’t even know its own age. With its spined back arched to raise its head to the sky, its dusty thin beard still trailed wispily just above the ground. Memories still rattled around its weary head, but grasping them, recalling them, remained a chore. But associations remained.

Fear crept into its knobbed head. Taelryx felt the sensation of familiarity, unable to quite put a name to what it felt. Something about the lights bound it with terror. Nothing was more clear to Taelryx than its own uncertainty, and that was something.

A bolt of orange lightning struck behind Taelryx, rising from the butte into the sky. Taelryx squinted its scaled eyelids, raising a massive talon to ward off the light as it turned to observe. The bolt remained, a solid tree of light. Starlight began to curve and rotate, flowing simultaneously both towards and away from this rent in the sky.

While Taelryx completed shifting its bulk to face this new threat, a thunderous report blasted through, accompanied by glowing flame. Growing wider, it became a rift in the sky edged with electric orange flame. Air began to blow past the dragon, pushing the flames back through the rift.

Words dark and ominous came to it then, whipped and distorted by the wind but no less urgent in their meaning.

“Graak vekzhuul nas, nas vek, drazhvu graak vehn! Taelryxstraza vehn! Graak vekzhuul!”

Taelryx shuddered, beyond terrified now. Talons bore deep into the rocky butte, and it raised its enormous wings to the sky. A compulsion took hold in Taelryx’s mind, and it fought with all its might against the spell within, and the forces without. Caught in the whiplash of sky to rift to escape, an inexorable pull tore Taelryx free even as the rocky edifice crumbled in its grasp. Wings of incalculable size spread, beating with furious panic.

Glittering gem-blue eyes turned purple, then red with exertion, failing to overcome the malicious intent of its summons. Taelryx flew into the sky with the force of two hurricanes but the pull of the rift overcame even this.

“Answer summons now, now I say, dragon answer immediately! Taelryx immediately! Answer summons!” roared the spell in its mind, translating the Dark Speech into dragonspeak. Reaching out with its talons yet shrouding its mountainous wings about itself for protection, Taelryx’s body surged through the gap in the sky into a raging inferno, and the pull immediately stopped. The rift blasted shut behind it.

Something soft and impossibly small pierced its claw as Taelryx overcame its disorientation and righted itself with its wings. Taelryx curled its grip around the object, scorching though it was. A column of fire pierced the sky all around the dragon, slowly fading in the moments it took to survey its surroundings. Hovering in the sky, the dragon risked a peek at the fire burning in its claw. There, unconscious between two scales of a claw was a rapidly cooling ember, pulsing with life and energy and magic. Curious, the dragon flew away unseen as the flaming column behind it sank to the ground, burning the forest with uncontrolled abandon.

***

Miranda

Miranda saw the forest ablaze beneath her as she shot into the sky, propelled by the explosion of her own transformation. She tumbled uncontrollably, and curled into a ball out of instinct, her mind seeking protection where none could exist. How could so many fears exist at once? Father was gone, she was on fire, terrified of heights, careening through the sky with the ground far below. A strange woman and creature had just been there when the world ended. What did they do to her?

She hit something, and new pain flowed through her newly reformed body, rocking her like ice and venom. Cracks appeared throughout her body, as if a hammer had struck a glowing piece of metal while beating it into a tool. Flecks chipped away, tumbling away beneath her. Miranda screamed a lesser scream of fright and pain instead of agony, made inaudible by the treacherous, terrible wind.

Her glowing skin cooled slowly, its light becoming less. She could not see where she was anymore. Rocky outcroppings rose around her, jagged. Above her the sky rotated as the ground beneath her shifted and pinched her between two slabs. The dizzying change of perspective and sensation at last overwhelmed her. As her eyes shut and she lost consciousness at last, a rock-like face appeared in the sky, and an eye of sapphire flame lulled her to sleep.

:Awaken.: Miranda felt, rather than heard, a presence in her mind. She stirred from her slumber. Blue sky filtered down into the crater, and she could see four spires surrounding her curving to sharp points into the sky. The slabs had relaxed while she slept, and Miranda pulled herself free. Sticky green fluid clung to the light dress she now wore. Miranda tugged it loose and climbed out.

:You live. I am pleased.: Thoughts filled her head again, but not her own. :What are you? I have not bled in centuries, yet you pierced my skin.: Tears came unbidden to her eyes, and Miranda looked once more to the ooze upon her dress.

“I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where daddy is,” she cried, her feelings overwhelming her. Too much had happened for her to understand. Had it only been last night she had climbed into bed with her father, complaining of her head feeling aflame? John had told her everything would be alright, and she had drifted off to fitful sleep. One night, and all was different.

:You are a child,: Taelryx thought in her mind. :Are you hurt? What do you eat?:

Miranda took a moment to look at her arms. She did not recognize herself from what she could see. Soft light came still from her skin, which was both smooth and flecked with patches of light and dark. Pulses of lightning rippled through her body instead of veins. Nothing hurt anymore, not as it had last night at least.

Feeling her face, all seemed normal but she wouldn’t know until she saw herself in a mirror. Tears came again when she realized all her beautiful hair was gone, and she remembered how her father would brush it in the morning and at night, telling Miranda how it reminded him of someone he once knew, and how happy it made him to share this time with her. Would he ever do that again? At that moment, she didn’t know what she missed more, her father or her hair.

The ground beneath her surged and gravity shifted. :No point keeping you there now that you’ve freed yourself, my arm is growing numb.: Everything spun, and a new horizon appeared in the sky. She clung while she could to an edge of the crater, but everything shook, and she dropped.

Do not fall do not fall do not fall, she thought to herself. Her falling slowed, and she then drifted as the ground came up to meet her. What had held her pulled away and away and away, revealing the most massive thing she had ever seen. A dragon the size of a mountain range crouched before her, imposing and feral with cunning intelligence in its eyes.

:I’m Taelryx, youngling. Pleased to meet you.:

***

Taelryx

Taelryx lowered its head to rest. Weariness spread through the dragon’s limbs. It had overcome at last the summons that had pulled it from its home to this strange new world. The demon’s spell was broken. Yes, Taelryx knew what it was now. The demon. The Aldreal. It sighed. While its mind flailed to understand the calamity that had swept it here, the dragon’s nose recognized its ancient adversary. The Aldreal’s rancid stench had permeated the air at the rift. Only now as it stared at this fading ember mote of a child did the dragon have the presence of mind to perceive what its body already knew.

“I’m Miranda,” came the child’s voice, the faintest whisper on the wind converted by magic to dragonspeak. The child grasped at Taelryx’s wispy beard and began to climb, its courage gaining ground. Such a tiny being. Fiercely pushing aside its fears, the child climbed higher, reaching first the dragon’s chin, then up the curl of its massive jaw, slowly making its way up to Taelryx’s snout.

:It’s a long way down from there, little one.,: it thought to the child. :Have a care that you will not fall.:

“I won’t,” Miranda replied. The child looked up into one sapphire eye. “I don’t think I can anymore.”

Taelryx chuckled, and the ground shook with the deep thrum of its mirth. :You’re recovering swiftly, Miranda. What has been done to you? I know not what you are.: Whether it didn’t know, or could not remember, the dragon found it impossible to determine. Miranda’s warmth suffused Taelryx’s skin as the child moved up his face. It tickled.

“I’m a girl,” she said, placing her hands on his lower eyelid. Taelryx struggled to focus on her, close as she was. It could tell she was entranced. “What are you? A Taelryx?”

:No, child. That is just my name. What would you call me?: Aldreal. Demon. Danger. Here. No - panic. :I was called to this world. What would you name this place?:

Miranda sat on his still eyelid, gazing into the glowing crystalline sapphire it enclosed. She swayed, struggling against something. :Such a tiny thing,: Taelryx thought. It saw Miranda reach out her hand, tentative. She touched its eye. Its essence flowed about her like a liquid carapace and drew her inside.

Taelryx had lived an uncounted span of time. No dragon could claim the years this one had dwelt in its world, for their lifespans were but a second of time to its age. In all that incalculable time, Taelryx had never known pain such as this. Its left eye went dark, the light that once burned like a flame from its edges collapsed to a pinprick within, and winked out. Orange cracks spiderwebbed across the eye’s surface.

:What have you done to me child, GAAaaaah!: it blasted into Miranda’s mind. It sensed her own terror. She knew not.

Paralyzed by agony, Taelryx tensed up, then felt its eye grow numb and blind. Green ichor bled down the side of its face, staining its beard. The dragon fell still and silent. Hours passed before the sounds of wildlife resumed, animals tentatively returning to their normal routines.

***

Miranda

Miranda marveled at the creature before her, so impossibly huge it spread out for leagues beyond her. Its head alone towered above her, taller than the largest skyscrapers at home. A dragon. Father had told her of them, fictional beasts in fantastical stories. Imaginary, he’d said. Now the lie was before her, an undeniable truth. She brushed her hand through its beard, thin as it was, even each strand was as thick as her arm, or thicker. Light too, for her very touch brushed it aside as if nothing. She giggled.

“I’m Miranda,” she said playfully, a sense of delight building within her and dampening her fears. Courage was harder to find, shoved into the depths of her being. In a flash, she made a decision. That eye she’d seen earlier compelled her to climb, it twinkled in her memory as a bauble taunting her onwards.

Grasping for purchase, Miranda stepped up onto a hair, and began to pull herself up. Remembering climbing the playhouse at daycare, this seemed more of the same, yet easier. Her spirits lifted, and spritely she ascended with an ease she had never experienced. The dragon’s scaled jowl jutted out a bit, and she climbed up and around, her feet only dangling a few times above a precipitous fall.

Soon she sat on its snout, a view of forest and distant towns arrayed around her. Miranda felt terrified once again of the heights from which she viewed these, and turned back to her task, climbing up to his eyelid. As the dragon’s gaze shifted to focus on her, she watched her multifaceted reflection dance. She felt the dragon’s thoughts fill her head, and she lazily replied, all her attention on the eye.

In each reflection, she saw someone different behind her, faces she did not know, people whom she had never met. But in one facet, she saw father. Immediately adjacent was the woman she’d seen but briefly. She looked trapped. A gray-black haze wreathed her shoulders, encircling her from there down to her waist in a double helical coil that flowed with purpose. Where it contacted her skin, red bubbles formed in reaction, only to fade as she pulled away.

She could almost hear the words the anguished woman said, “Where is my daughter, Aldreal?” The haze pulled closer, and the woman screamed. Miranda reached out by instinct to touch the facet. Blue inky tendrils peeled forth, slapping around her arm, and flowed around her before pulling her in. Like every experience she’d had in this world, she had no time to react, and terror gripped her once more.