The two captains sat opposing each other on the large black stone table and silently consuming their meals. The dragon Lyrus Armadra, Ship Master of the Galaxius Mons occasionally made attempts at opening a dialogue with the sullen, crestfallen Alex. But the small human found himself deprived of the means and the energy to speak. It felt like a lump was caught in his throat and strengthened its already tightened grip on his neck removing his ability to speak. He knew deep down he was being rude to his host by not engaging in idle chit chat, he knew he was offending the dragon by only staying for the meal and not taking up any of the conversation starters Lyrus had used.
According to the Ship Master, his chambers were reinforced and sound proofing insulation lined the walls of his personal chambers which gave an eerie silence to the otherwise quietly shared meal. Alex looked up from his half-eaten meal to look at his draconic host with half closed eyes and sadness. He spilled his guts in front of what was left of his crew, he was certain that many more had escaped, got off the doomed Phoenix and he saw only a fraction of his crew’s numbers present. They all looked to him for guidance and he let them down. In his mind he was expecting an open revolt, a violent mob beating or perhaps being shunned from them entirely were scenarios he had run through his head. But of course, they all seemed to be just as tired as he was to properly care.
Lyrus shuffled his unusually large wings and then stretched them out briefly before folding them close to his body. In that brief instance, Alex took a good glance at seeing the wing membranes stretched out, the veins pumping blood and oxygen to a thin dark fold of skin. Even stretched out fully, his wings didn’t seem to come close to the walls of his chambers and it finally occurred to Alex just how small he was to the Dragon.
Standing tall next to the dragon, Alex still would have been a foot short from his head being level with the most extended part of the dragon’s barrelled chest if it stood on all its four legs. During the opening minutes of dinner, Alex noticed what looked like artwork on Lyrus’ arm. It was a white circle with a large blue spot in the with a simplistic rocky mountain drawn on and some clawscript written around the circumference of the picture. He could have sworn he saw that image somewhere.
But Lyrus was smart, he caught Alex glaring at it from across the dinner table and spoke with initiative as he raised his arm up high to show off the body art.
“It's the badge icon of the Galaxius Mons.” He said softly while pointing at it with a claw on his other hand.
“Not exactly up to dress code but it's seen as dutiful and loyal when crews ink their vessel’s badge on themselves. Some Dragons like to keep each badge on them with each ship they serve. But I am more of a one badge kind of dragon.” Lyrus chuckled then grabbed a large slab of meat and forcefully ripped off.
The Galaxius was large enough to have the storage space needed to create its own meat fabrication lab. As organic as the real thing was on planets only without the need of keeping livestock on hand in space with the added bonus of being grown and cultured specifically to the consumer’s preferences. It tasted like beef, possibly sirloin, hardly any fat tissue and yet the entire muscle structure was chewy while remaining succulent. It had been prepared in a crude, low cultural fashion with vacuum sealed potatoes steamed alongside green peas and a liberal serving of thick brown gravy poured over the cloned meat. Even with the slow, thoughtless chewing it still retained its steaming hot temperature.
Then he pierced the soulless flesh with his black fork and pressed the piece against his teeth repetitively, feeling the meat become pasty with each chew until it was pasted enough for him to swallow safely. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Lyrus summoning Ortiss over and whispered lowly in Draconic. Curiosity piqued Alex as to why the dragon bothered with it all. Not all humans knew Draconic enough to speak it let alone understand it, if the Dragon was being secretive about something then speaking plainly in his native tongue would have been enough. Unless. Unless of course, he was talking about Alex or something sensitive that even a language barrier could not entirely shield. Possibly a word that had been ‘draconisized’ but still sounded a lot like the word from the language it was derived from. Ortiss mumbled as best it could in Draconic as well, but the attempt was hindered by the suit's modulated speaker broadcasting its voice from across the table.
Nothing that could be understood by Alex was uttered. However he swore he caught them saying the words ‘Zhol’yat’ in a sentence that seemed to him to be somewhat thought provoking for Armadra.
“Captain Rowan. I wish to ask of you a question; you brought a Zhol’yat onboard and from what my Lead Healer tells me, his transformation occurred recently. Were you able to witness this metamorphosis first hand?” The dragon spoke with a gentle tone and eyes that looked on with sympathy.
“Yeah… I did.” Alex nodded sullenly as he spoke. Sadful memories of yesterday came back to him in full force showing the mind's eye in full clarity what Alex had worked hard to suppress.
“What can you tell me?”
Alex was about to open his mouth to say to the Ship Master that he didn’t want to relive those horrific memories, that the dragon should just sit in silence and proceed with its rudimentary and bestial form of meal consumption. But the dragon immediately raised a clawed finger before he got the chance to speak and then stepped away from the table with his tail swaying gracefully from side to side above the floor as he walked over to the other side of the chambers and reached for a piece of pottery that looked like a small ceramic teapot that looked too small to have been crafted by a dragon. Then Armadra carefully held it in his open palm and walked back to the table and set it down between the two commanders. Lyrus looked pleased with himself emitting a lowly rumble of satisfaction in his large chest.
“What is that?” Alex asked, gesturing to the pot. “And also it looks way too small for a dragon to make, everything else here looks like it was made by dragons, for dragons.”
His question evoked a delighted chuckle from the dragon who looked at Alex with his large golden eyes.
“This is something my first children made for me. When I took them to Terra for the first time they were so enamoured with almost everything that was delicate. So much so that I enrolled them in classes to make these fine pieces of ceramic that I use for meditative purposes. Perhaps if you desire, I can include you in my practices. Though I must warn you that your small primate brain might be highly susceptible to what I do.”
The thought intrigued Alex, for the first time since sitting down he found himself curious. He was never one to engage in meditative practices, nor did he ever engage in any mental exercises in any factor outside of the scheduled meditation sessions back in the Naval academy. For as much as the academy taught him three-dimensional thinking, astrophysics and trained his body to deal with the harshness of space and microgravity environments it had also allowed a series of exercises meant to keep the cadets in a more enlightened state. Alex remembered the days where he entered his assigned meditation room. The dormitory of the academy had managed to cram in small rooms no wider than five feet and only seven in length that occupied the first two floors; since a person was confined to one room each to allow the assigned cadet privacy as they meditated. And as Alex would unroll his issued goza mat on the hardwood floor and sit on it listening to the recordings of verbal instructions and soothing relaxing sounds for an hour to achieve a clearer mindset had seemed like a waste of his time. Despite the time he had spent in training, the hours of scheduled time he had felt like a waste of time for him to close his eyes and listen to music or absolute silence in the case of some of his classmates.
As Armadra cleaned himself of the thick juices that dripped down his snout and onto his body he proceeded to light sticks of incense and gently place the sticks around the chamber and invited Alex to join him in the centre of the round room. Albeit hesitantly, the small human captain agreed and followed Armadra to the back of his chambers where he saw the wall of holographic images blocking his view of the dragon when he entered earlier. However instead of turning on the holo’s again, Armadra started emitting a series of sounds that resembled humming while engaged with the wall interface, his talons clacking against the glass surface with each contact and yet as far as Alex could tell from where he was, the screen was void of any scratches in the surface. A synthesised voice not too dissimilar from Ortiss’ own modulated speaker system spoke monotonously in Draconic which had made the consonant heavy language sound even more aggressive than it had been when Dragons spoke it.
Soon the silence that filled the room was leaking sounds of ambient noises and gentle humming sounds with a subtle muffled beat that thumped ever so gently that it could have easily gone unnoticed under the rhythmless melody of noises. Armadra carefully shuffled his rear on the large mat that had been placed on the floor and invited Alex to sit down on it, which he did and then crossed his legs.
Armadra then reached for the fine pot and placed it on the rug between the two and then reached for a large silver tray with a collection of white bowls with deep blue ornate patterns painted along the rim and the equator of the porcelain. Despite the size of the bowls compared to the beefy fingers of the Dragon, Armadra was very delicate and gingerly picked up each bowl between his fingers and placed one in front of them. The inside of Alex’s bowl was empty. But in the deepest recesses of it of the bowl he could see the brown colouring staining the bottom of the bowl and staining the rim almost as if it were deliberately painted on like the ocean blue pattern on the outside of the bowl. Armadra brought over a dark grey mortar and pestle that looked too small for even him and began using the pestle to gently grind leaves in and adding a pinch of some kind of crystalline substance that glittered in the light as it fell into the mortar. The dragon smiled as he lifted the ceramic pot up onto his open palm as a muffled rumble grew louder from inside his chest. Alex’s eyes were drawn to Armadra’s belly scutes as bright orange light glowed from underneath and highlighting each of his scales as one by one, they lit up travelling along his throat. Unceremoniously the dragon slowly let out a small plume of fire escape his lips and blew onto the ceramic pot he held for almost a minute and then he set the pot back down onto the silver tray. Under the soft golden light, steam wafted out of the openings in the pot and Alex watched on with amazement as the dragon captain continued to prepare whatever it was he was making. He wanted to ask what Armadra was doing so he could know what was to come but instead he had felt like something inside him resisted the urge to speak so that he may continue to observe the ritual in undisturbed silence.
Then the dragon stopped grinding the mortar and pinched the contents from inside and sprinkled it over his bowl and filled it with the steaming water and proceeded to do the same with Alex’s bowl by reaching from across the mat and adding the ingredients to it and then the water. Much to Alex’s confusion, Armadra did not return him the bowl when it was filled with boiling water but instead set it down next to his on the silver tray. Alex had opened his mouth and drawn breath in an attempt to speak, but the dragon’s eye quickly shot over to him and raised a single digit and Alex immediately lost the will to speak. Was this some kind of magic that he is exercising over him, or perhaps was the Dragon charismatic that he could command people to perform his will? Alex couldn’t figure out the answer why he was silenced the way he was. But unlike every other time when he has been told to keep his mouth shut by others, he found much to his own delight that he was not angry about it.
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In addition to his own delight, Armadra seemed to be almost done with his ritualistic preparation as he reached from a drawer nearby a bottle that looked to hold nearly a litre in volume. Alex couldn’t see inside the bottle beyond its matt black texture and no writing or labels appeared to be plastered on the surface. And yet, the Dragon gently removed the lid and poured the liquid into his bowl for a second and then proceeded over to Alex’s bowl. But before the liquid could leave the bottleneck, Armadra hesitated and he looked over to Alex and then his pupils glanced back over to the bottle. Instead, Armadra poured the contents into the deep lid that capped the end of the bottle and then poured the stored contents into Alex’s bowl before twisting the lid back on and placing the bottle back where he had gotten it from.
Only after the bottle had been safely stored away that Armadra presented Alex his bowl. Yet Alex couldn’t rid himself of the nagging thoughts of what it was that the dragon added into their bowls and more importantly why he seemed to give Alex a smaller amount of it. Was it a form of reptilian alcohol that he could not handle as well as Armadra could? But if this were the case why would it be used in what Lyrus assured him would be a shared meditative practice?
“Now we can drink the remedy.” Lyrus softly spoke, generating a soothing rumble in his chest that lent a smooth silkiness to his voice.
And as the two participants sat there listening to the gentle humming ambience with its subtle beat with a layer of rain drops added in with the occasional rumble of thunder every now and then, Alex found himself enjoying the calming atmosphere. It was almost as if he didn’t need to drink the mystery remedy that Lyrus prepared for him. Just the sounds he was listening to seemed to have been working just fine for him.
SSSLLLURRP!
Armadra quickly brought his head down after swallowing the bowls contents in its entirety and let out a satisfied sigh before setting the bowl back onto the tray in an immodest fashion then he looked at Alex with an expression that said ‘what are you waiting for?’ and nodded to give Alex the nonverbal confirmation that he could drink from his bowl.
The surface burned his delicate fingers as Alex wrapped them around the bowl but not so much that it became unbearable to hold, steam wisped upwards away from the bowl and drifted closer to his face as he brought it close enough for him to sniff it. Alex could detect hints of peppermint subtle hidden amidst the strong sense of seasonings that he could not identify. Feeling a chilling sensation creep up his spine and burrowing into his brain, Alex could tell without looking that the Dragon stared at him immensely waiting for him to consume the liquid. And so with care and precision he steadily drank the broth that carefully warmed the insides of his mouth and throat wherever it went and ignored the unusual metallic tangy aftertaste that it left behind when he was finished. Alex sat the bowl down on the silver tray before wiping his mouth with his sleeve and looked at the patiently waiting Dragon sitting opposite him.
“Now close your eyes and let out a deep breath, let it take with it your stresses.” Armadra instructed as his eyes were slowly consumed by the thin membrane sliding over to give his eyes a foggy appearance before his eyelids closed.
Similarly, Alex closed his eyes and exhaled deeply as the feeling of his lungs deflating and his stomach pressing inwards grew more present. His mind began to spin, giving him the illusion that his head was listing from side to side and almost inducing a state of panic that his head was simply going to roll off his shoulders. He didn’t want to appear weak in front of the dragon, even with his eyes closed; Alex continued to take steady deep breaths and exhaled as calmly as he could until the dizzying sensation disappeared. Then when it had gone. All that was left was for Alex to focus on his remaining senses; in his mouth he could still taste the strange metallic tang of the broth he consumed which lingered no matter how often he shifted the saliva around to wash it out. His heartbeat grew louder and powerful as it strongly pulsed in his ears, making the cartilage throb against his eardrums. With uncertainty as to what he was doing Alex felt the need to place his hands over his crossed knees with the thumbs and index fingers touching each other. It felt unnatural to be in such a pose and he was made to feel all the sillier when he heard the dragon chuckling heartedly from beyond the thick veil of darkness which gave way to light and colour and shapes taking form in his vision as Alex opened his eyes to see the dragon resting on his rear legs and his forelimbs resting to his sides and a toothy grin on his snout.
The dragon opened his eyes and looked down at Alex. “So I guess this is your first time doing this properly.”
“It's been years since I had been ordered to look out for myself and practice mindfulness. After that was no longer an order I stopped and focused on my duties.” Alex responded.
As Alex spoke on, he found it increasingly difficult to shake off the dizzying sensation in his head. His vision began to blur while he kept his troubled gaze focused on Lyrus Armadra who seemed to have been suffering from no ill effects or was good at keeping himself steady and level so as to not show it. Then as the dragon placed his hands together and thin icy blue lines shone like fractured glass shining through his body did Alex worry when his perception of Armadra doubled just as he continued to glow and his eyes glowed immensely with the luminosity of a blue star behind them. Slowly the thin blue cracks grew and multiplied, its tendrils spread out from its central roots as it ran up and down his body and into his arms, by the time they had encroached in his wings, Alex found it mesmerising watching the Magia fill the dragon’s appendages as they were slowly raised to create a canvas of wing membrane that looked to have captured a lightning storm at just the right moment and trapped within its wings. Alex raised an eyebrow as he struggled to concentrate on why Armadra was using his Magia but even more so, he tried to find out what was wrong with his vision as he pressed his fingers against his temple.
“A pity that you did not continue.” Armadra said.
“Why do I feel so… funny? My insides feel like they are all… I dunno, light, like butterflies in not just my stomach but everywhere.” Alex quizzically asked as he clutched his sides; the ever-intensifying sensation lingered with a ferocity that became almost ticklish and his mind started to feel the effects of it. But instead of getting a sympathetic grunt or a worried expression from the Ship Master like Alex had somewhat expected he was in fact shocked out of his euphoric trance by the sound of laughter coming from Armadra. The dragon slowly had escalated from a restrained snicker to a display of amused laughing that utilised his baritone voice in its full capacity. Each fit made the dragon convulse and his wings bounce as they continued to be openly expressed with their organic, magical lightning-like portrait on display. The double image of Armadra slowly began shifting colours ranging from his dark blue to forest green and then blending in with the golden ambient lighting as though it was enhancing his ever-shifting colours. The raucous draconic laughter had caught Alex by surprise that he himself was amazed to find himself chuckling along with the dragon and yet he had no idea why. But he didn’t care, it felt good.
For a moment it seemed to Alex that the dragon was about to wipe away a tear along his eye ridges.
Then the dragon regained his composure long enough to then say to Alex “I am truly sorry for the underclawed way I did this. But if I had told you the truth earlier then I would have doubt you would have continued with your participation.”
Amidst the euphoria that had his brain floating on a sea of endorphins, logic and reason had returned to him for a moment that aided Alex to realise just what had happened to him. He should have noticed it before when he started seeing faded versions of Armadra multiplying in a technicolour display across his vision and the sensation of butterflies tingling along the outer walls of each of his internal organs. Then the memory of the broth’s metallic after taste. He knew it should have raised alarms immediately but instead he idly complied with his host's demand and consumed what now seemed to be a possibly highly potent narcotic.
“You… You drugged me!?” Alex spoke softly, his attempts to sound furious and angry were as futile as his attempt to stand and confront the dragon. “The fuck were you thinking?”
“The narcotic used is mild in its effects given Draconic physiology being resilient. But for you humans and other Terrans it is rather potent. But unlike the greater Alliance, the Imperium Draconum does not render the substances illicit but instead issues them readily with a warning. I myself use it for the sole purpose of meditation.”
As Armadra spoke on, Alex found himself increasingly angry at the dragon, he wanted to stand up and try to hit whichever one was the original in his vision in the snout or his lower abdomen where Draconic’s kept their more delicate organs in place. However, this anger soon proved unsustainable as he could no longer find himself in any condition to fight his own deteriorating condition, much less a dragon.
“…Why…?” He struggled to speak, his question coming out as little more than a stringent of heavy, blissful sighs that barely shifted into comprehensible sounds.
Armadra looked on at Alex with a content smile curling up along the reptile’s lips, but instead of getting an answer that would justify this drugging. Instead, as Alex slowly fell to the floor feeling like the gravity beneath him increased dramatically, the gentle textures of the mat comforting him as he smiled at the copies of Armadra looked down on him and said.
“It’s better if I show you.”
Suddenly, Armadra flared his wings out in full display, flashing his leathery canvas of Magia filling his very veins with a power incomprehensible to the human captain as he rested on his side helplessly watching the Dragon speak Draconic as his fingers danced around each other. And in an instant the light from the fixtures above and the blue glow from within Lyrus’s body brightly overwhelmed the delicate and insignificant eyes of Alex until all he was encompassed in a blank white void.
Alex suddenly thrust himself upwards with a loud gasp of relief.
He looked around to see the dark all encompassing void filling his sight. Alex looked down to him standing on nothing similarly, nothing around him seemed to exist. A distant grumbling echoed around him and he looked up above him to see a dark bank of clouds with dull flashes of light blinking through the clouds that spanned in all directions without so much as a change in the blanketing thunderstorm.
The flashes of light came with a grumbling boom of thunder and while no sign of rain could be spotted anywhere the familiar comforting scent of petrichor filled the air with an electricity that made the dreary landscape seem more alive than it had before.
“… What the hell?” He uttered.
“I must say,” Lyrus spoke clearly. However, unexpectedly to the unknowing and unsuspecting Alex he had jumped in his spot and turned around to face the dragon face to face.
“I imagined your landscape to be less dreary.” Armadra continued with a look of discontent. “I was expecting permanent bright orange sunsets over a horizon of water, a simple beach house surrounded by a forest of date palms and coconut trees like most humans. This on the other hand… Well this is just depressing.”
“You!” Alex growled. “What the fuck have you done to me, where are we!?”
“We’re inside your head. Well, more specifically our heads. It’s a place anyone can choose to visit when they practise good soul care. Some call this the Hyperuranion others call this Eden. Sometimes it goes by the name Realm if you are feeling unimaginative.” Armadra said with a casual tone and a relaxed posture as he walked around Alex.
Lyrus continued to look around the empty landscape, seemingly unimpressed before returning his attention back to Alex.
“If we are in Eden or the Hyper-Uranium realm, then what’s so special about it. It's just a thunderstorm!” Alex asked.
Armadra turned to face Alex and let out a snort of discontent from his snout.
“This spiritual plane, this ‘realm’ is formless, shapeless, undefinable. What you see around you is an interpretation only perceived by you.” Armadra snapped back at him before he raised his front left leg and snapped his fingers together. In an instant the dreary depressing dark grey suddenly exploded into a sunlit field of well manicured grass that went on for miles. In the distance a lone green hill stood out among the sparse vegetation. The sun brightly lit and warmed his face while a breeze lightly touched his face with such delicacy that nearly made it endearing.
This is more like it. He thought. This place was more in keeping with his preconceptions of the desired outcome of practising meditation.
“All around you is what I see every time I visit this place. Each interpretation of the Hyperuranion differs from person to person. The first time I entered this realm was with my father when I was young and it was the wilderness steppes of Eurasia that his mind interpreted. What you are seeing is what I see, not your own.” And the serene landscape suddenly shifted back to the dark stormy place and Alex felt the warm kiss of the suns light slowly fade into distant memory as it was replaced by the tingling sensation at the back of his neck with the gloomy presence around him slowly creeping in.
Alex stood still for a minute, letting what the dragon had just revealed settle in and then said. “If what I am seeing is my mind’s interpretation then why the hell is it so depressing?”
“Is it not obvious?” Armadra said, cocking his head to the side. Then continued. “You’re interpreting it like this because your subconscious is troubled… I had hoped to engage with you in meaningful discussion here but I see now that I have a far more pressing duty at hand.” His voice trailing off towards the end as a distant chorus of thunder echoed from far away.
“That would be?”
“I am going to help you find peace.”