Week 18

  “Lady Calanthe, please dismount and negotiate with that overgrown lizard.”

  ***

  The black dragon’s wings were like a velvet cloak stitched from the night. Each time it inhaled, the ribs beneath its black scales flexed and rippled, glowing with subcutaneous heat.

  The villagers of Dust Haven cowered behind ruined walls, glancing up periodically to check if there were any avenues of escape.

  Calanthe approached cautiously preparing a healing spell in her hands, just in case she needed to heal herself on the run.

  The dragon’s head tilted, the glistening black plates of her skull shifting with a sound like plate armor. “Sister Calanthe,” she rumbled. “Have you come to admire the fruits of my discipline?”

  The dragon’s words seem to suck the very air from the surroundings; something which Callie imagined would occur if one were caught in the blast area of a thermobaric bomb. There was an ancient intelligence at work in the way the dragon spoke; a cadence learned over centuries of watching mortals try and fail to hide their motives.

  “Honored one,” Callie said. “I have come to ask permission to access the portal to the Axiomatic Kernel. Will you allow us?”

  “Sister,” the dragon said with a slight hiss. “Surely if there is one thing our mother has taught us, it is to never stand on ceremony among kin. You have ever been so deferential to her. Have you forgotten my name?”

  For a moment, Callie hesitated. Then it seemed to come to her; as if the dragon’s voice had lifted the veil of memory. “Morthaen. Younger Sister, greetings.”

  Morthaen’s lips peeled back, exposing rows of teeth with a subtle iridescence. “You still have the scent of the Library on you, Elder Sister. It’s not a perfume one can wash away quite so easily.”

  The dragon glanced over her shoulder, an idle gesture for a creature who could turn the entire village to vapor with a flick of her tail. “The portal is at the base of the caldera. Go. And take your entourage with you.”

  The voice was dismissive, but also weary.

  Callie stood her ground. “These people,” she said, nodding at the huddled villagers, “are not a threat to you. Why destroy them?”

  Morthaen’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, poor Calanthe. So many warnings and not one heeded. You worry about these vermin, when all that need concern you is the inevitability that lies ahead. Are you still pretending? Do you still think this a world of compassion?”

  “I have always been myself, nothing more,“ Callie replied. “Isn’t the fate of all dragons of your ilk to meet a hero. When a protagonist of this world comes to save the village; what then?”

  Morthaen fixed her with an icy gaze. “Most die. Some are left wanting and adapt. The rarest become what you see before you.” She raised her wings a half-meter, casting the yard into darkness. “Even you must realize that every paladin, every crusader, every dragon-slayer becomes only what the world allows. Do you know the names of all the men who killed a dragon; and found their reward was nothing but another story of power, another battle, another grave?”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Callie looked to the ground, then back up. “I know a few. Most of them became myths. The rest are forgotten.”

  “And what do you think becomes of those stories, when they outlive their usefulness?”

  ***

  The heat of the ruins pressed down on Callie’s back. A child lay motionless in the gutter, skin seared from the heat, but breathing, barely. She knelt, ignoring the biting reek of sulfur, and pressed her hands to the wound. [Mend Flesh]. The green radiance was weak at first, but she forced it brighter, knitting together the blistered skin and purging the worst of the necrosis.

  The child’s eyelids fluttered, and for a moment, she thought he would cry, but instead he only stared at her with blank, alien confusion.

  “Go,” she whispered. “Stay with the others.”

  The boy scuttled away, leaving bloody fingerprints in the soot.

  Morthaen watched it all with a disinterested gaze. “You heal, but what of it? In a matter of months, the village will be dust. A little pain now and they will scatter. My act is a mercy. Surely you know this.”

  “I know nothing of this.” Callie moving on to another of the injured.

  “Oh, Sister…” Morthaen intoned. “Did you choose to forget again? A century in the Library has not cured you of that weakness.” She exhaled a plume of black smoke, peppered with tiny sparks. “The girl who tried to audit the entire universe for compassion. The more’s the pity.” She said it like a joke, but there was an edge there.

  “Do you think gods and monsters are capable of compassion for mere humanity? I became what I needed to be; as you did.” Callie met the dragon’s gaze, and for a moment, felt something like kinship; a recognition of shared futility.

  Callie finished setting and binding a woman’s shattered wrist, she rose and moved on to another of the wounded.

  When the dust finally settled and the villagers had fled to their hiding holes, Calanthe found herself standing in the middle of the square, staring up at the impossible vastness of Morthaen. A minute ago the dragon had seemed like an allegory for destruction; now, up close, she resembled more a metaphor for something left behind.

  ***

  Calanthe straightened her shoulders, and said, “A woman who once slew dragons, and who has now become one. A rare thing.”

  “I know,” Morthaen said. “It is a rare thing in myth for womrn to slay dragons. In every story, they either tame them or simply become one with them.”

  Morthaen’s massive tail flexed, carving a furrow through glassed sand. “Do you still remember the first stories of my kind, Calanthe? Our own mother’s legend has been corrupted as you well know; but we have dwelt in the rivers of the underworld fighting the sun god; defeated the god of storms through cunning; starved the world of its primordial waters; and aided man in his yearnings for mastery. “

  The dragon’s scales shivered, and for a moment, where the heat bent the air, Calanthe saw the specter of a woman: black hair twisted up in a warrior’s knot, shoulders scarred from battle, eyes dark as hematite.

  Calanthe stepped closer. “Function does not always follow form. What kind of woman were you before? Noble or cruel? Soft or strong? …” She left the string of questions unfinished.

  Morthaen’s tail lashed the earth, sending a cloud of sand tumbling. “Perhaps all those things. It changes depending on who tells the tale.” Her mouth curled. “When I became this, the world solidified into the very essence of my being. I became hunger and destruction.”

  Morthaen voice dropped, and the words sounded almost pleading: “I am tired, Sister. I have been hungry for so long”

  “Then come with me. Let me show you what survives which is not just ash. This is not the end of your story,” Calanthe said. “There will be another verse and another.”

  Morthaen’s silence lasted several heartbeats.

  Then, gently, she lowered her head until her snout was level with Calanthe’s face. “If you walk to the portal, I will not stop you,” she whispered. “If you wish, I will walk with you. But I cannot promise that I will not become what I was meant to be.”

  Calanthe reached out, and laid a hand on the dragon’s nose. It was not warm, as she had expected, but cool as steel in early spring. “No one can,” she said. “But sometimes, the wanting is enough.”

  ***

  The two of them stood there as the sky purpled and the glass in the sand cooled to a fine, sharp crust.

  At the edge of the square, the last of the wounded limped away; Briar and Ember followed at a respectful distance. Eugene hummed, quietly, perhaps in satisfaction. The caldera shimmered in the near distance, its rim of obsidian flickering with volcanic light.

  Calanthe smiled, and together they started toward the waiting portal, neither leading nor following, but simply walking in the same direction.