ALLORY’S HEAD JERKED UP as his words hit home. She searched his eyes. Had she not thought the same? Nothing about this attack added up.
Softly, the Felidragon said, “We found only a couple of warriors outside of the colony’s borders. To my thinking, brrr-trrrt, I can only conclude that they were all trapped at once, right here amongst the cocoons. Isn’t that strange?”
She nodded convulsively, all the movement she could manage.
“It’s more than strange,” he continued with implacable logic. “It’s suspicious. Something here tingles my whiskers most detestably.”
“B –” she tried, aghast. “B – uh?”
“Betrayal. Aye.”
“No true Faerie would ever do that.”
“No. Neither would the Marakusian Slavers travel this far into the Russet Jungles, which they call by the charming name that in their barbarous tongue translates as, ‘Lethal Pit of Death,’ without the promise of profit. Fat profit. I know their ilk. Not all Men are bad, but these –”
“Not bad? They’re despicable! Did you not see what they did here?”
“I did.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. She cried, “Then how could you say such a thing, Yaarah? I thought we were friends! Have you not understood my loss? What is this to you?”
He bowed his muzzle. “I misspoke, trrr-frrrt! Let me show you something I discovered.”
High above the central cathedral was a notch between a tarembis branch and trunk where soft leaf-fall had gathered over years. This was where he took her. The location overlooked the Faerie colony site from a height and used to be a favourite place for warriors to hide to watch over the area, she remembered. The growth beyond was thick, nigh impenetrable, yet even her inexperienced eye noted how branches and leaves had been crushed aside by the bulk of a passing body.
She pointed mutely.
“Aye, and this.” Indicating with his talon, he said, “What do you see here?”
It took Allory a moment to work out what she was seeing. “Part of a paw … a paw print?”
He pointed delicately. “Four forward talons with hooked ends that created these dents here and here, for example, see? The creature stood here, his toes curling into the gap so. Touching this soft place. This is a Dragon’s partial paw print, Allory.”
“One of you?”
She regretted the words the instant they left her mouth.
“Not me! Did you not see my tears, when I wept for the fate of creatures not even my own kind? You ignorant, trifling little – blast it – GRRRAOOO … ARRRGGGHH!!”
Allory ducked and dived aside, groaning as the fall jolted her back. Her heartbeat leaped straight to buzzing like a hummingbird’s wings, yet despite all the different parts of her yammering their pain, her wrecked wing-cluster still had no sensation. Breathe. Try to ease away from a pit of terror that threatened to drag her into its inescapable depths.
She had done him wrong. Misjudged him.
The echoes of his roaring sent every jungle creature for hundreds of feet about fleeing in a cawing, squawking, bellowing frenzy. Welcome, Rippers. Right over here.
Allory heard herself chirp, “Trust a Dragon to blast everyone and everything in sight, right?”
Horrified, she clapped a hand over her mouth. Far too late.
Yaarah gaped at someone who wished fervently that she could evaporate into thin air, fly directly through Centresky into the Middlesun and expire instantly. Never mind that this was utterly impossible. It was necessary.
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He snorted, “Well, frrr-ssst! I guess I deserved that.”
“I’m … terribly sorry.”
Curling his paws about her shoulders, he gazed directly into her eyes and said, “And here I am lecturing you about not-so-evil Men and paw prints and – oh, Allory Fae – all that, yrrr-gnarrr, when you’ve just lost many family members and the rest have been carried off into captivity. Do you need time to grieve? What can I do?”
“You can fly me centrally.”
He began to shake his muzzle from side to side.
“Now. Before I have another attack of this … this ridiculous spinelessness.”
“Little Fae –”
“Please, Yaarah. I need to – it’s all connected, isn’t it? My family, this world problem you spoke of; someone must have wanted to kidnap an entire colony of Scintillant Fae for something, right? Tell me these lives weren’t wasted. Help me to believe. Make me … have faith.”
The Felidragon pondered her plea, making a low, ruminative purr in the back of his throat. Troubled? At last, he replied, “You want me to make you do something that plainly scares you half to death? Brrr-pssst! And petrifies the other half?”
“Aren’t all Dragons supposed to be overweening, arrogant brutes who do what they want anyways?” she joked. Feeble but funny.
His muzzle screwed up into the strangest look, as if he had plucked a ripe mauve jungle blossom only to discover it had turned into a fat suggid in his paw. How could she ever have thought her fears were worse than dying? Now, she knew the face of death. She knew its burden, its awful, inescapable finality. Flying centrally could not be worse – surely?
The Felidragon rumbled, “I’ll scribe that on my personal improvement plan, shall I?”
“Sure there’s enough parchment beneath Middlesun?”
He flicked out his forked white tongue to scrape her left wrist. “I wonder what impossibly snarky tastes like? Mmm-prrr! Quite the tang!”
“Get off!” she squealed.
What it was with the cat-faced fiery one and his implacable stares? To her annoyance, Allory ended up squirming under the brunt of another never-ending humdinger that made her good wing bundle itch. She was quite sure his magic conducted flame through the air straight into her intestines. This degree of burning could not be natural, surely?
Eventually, she said, “No, I am anything but alright, Yaarah, but this is how I need to be right now or I will simply fall apart. Please understand that … well, distraction is best. Show me something I’ve never seen before. Could you do that?”
An unbearable gentleness entered his gaze. “As you wish.”
She dipped her eyes.
Did he think her a ridiculously fickle creature of heart so faint, it barely beat at all?
They flew upward through the canopy, layer after layer, through great swarms of glistening, metallic flying beetles – all the non-harmful sort – followed by a kaleidoscope of yellow-spotted vermilion butterflies so large that Yaarah waved his forepaws irritably to shoo the beauties out of the way. Like swimming through an ocean, he muttered, which would be another part of Spheris that Allory could only imagine. Higher still, passing through several further layers of increasingly lighter leaf colours came the iridescent Wisps, spindly white creatures that drifted dreamlike on the breezes. The Faerie kept hunching lower, huddling closer to the comfort of a large powerful body taking her skyward, ever skyward, into a realm which to her had always sounded like a Faelings’ nightmare.
She shut her eyes, shaking like a leaf struck by a jungle breeze.
He began, “Are you –”
“Keep going. I’ll be fine,” she hissed. “I’ve never seen Centresky, that’s all.”
All? She’d die!
The Felidragon said, “Even I do not often fly this high, frrr-brrr. There are high-flying predators and other kinds of Dragons which are not friendly to my kind. Remember, Middlesun is a gift to our world, the life-giving source of energy, warmth and sustenance for all growing things.”
“How high are we?”
“The Russet Jungles are said to be the single greatest contiguous biomass in all Spheris, prrr-nrrr,” he lectured, but with a lilting tone as if chuckling at his own pompousness. “The tops of these jungle giants reach about a mile and three-quarters above the jungle floor, but even these are dwarfed by the Sentinel Trees, as you will soon see. Relax. I have you; you are purr-fectly safe. Nothingness cannot harm you.”
Fine for the toothy one to say.
A lifetime’s worth of phobias chose this moment to attack in full force. Her chest tightened until she could barely breathe, her heart leaped into full-panic mode and her courage, of microscopic proportions to begin with, failed entirely. All she knew was increasing brightness behind her eyelid, but not to the blinding intensity she had always been warned about. Even the runt knew not to look at Middlesun. How could this be happening to her? What had she been thinking?
“We’ve arrived,” he said soothingly. “Open your eyes, Allory.”
“I … can’t.”
So much air. Where was the ground, the reassuring cover of a jungle canopy, the ever-present sounds of bird and insect life that she suddenly realised were missing? Silence yawned about her, massively present and intense.
“Think upon your idea of ariavanae. Remember how it felt?”
“Yaarah, I just – I can’t …”
“Turn your face upward. This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, Allory Fae. It will be unforgettable, I promise you upon my honour as a Dragon, but you must look now – I beg you.”
Failing to still her craven quivering, she turned her face upward and willed her eyelids to part.
All she beheld was glory.