“Ugh.” It was the white dragon who broke the ensuing silence, in a tone of utter contempt. “Why, you little thug. Did you have to vaporize him? Boy, have you any idea what the corpse of an elder dragon is worth? In spell reagents and crafting materials alone!”
All five of the other survivors swiveled their long necks in unison to glare at her.
“Oh, roll those scandalized eyeballs back into your heads,” she sneered. “A thing does not cease to be true because you find it personally unpalatable.”
“That aside,” rumbled the larger of the two greens, returning her baleful stare to Kaln, “we now have the matter of…this creature, in the middle of our home.”
“A thief is a thief!” snarled the red one Kaln had seen earlier, whose black-edged crimson scales gave him that shimmering effect. “The little beast came here to steal, and he murdered our father! Right in front of us!”
“Oh, please,” drawled the blue dragon, the first of the family Kaln had seen when he crept into their lair. “You’re only upset about that because now you’ll never have the chance.”
“Not that you were ever going to anyway,” added the smaller green. So far, the red seemed to be the only male of the group. At his sister’s comment, he turned to her, hissing loudly; she hissed right back.
“None of that matters!” the red barked. “He is alone, and we are six! We can—”
“I am not entirely sure we can,” the larger green said pensively, turning to the white. “Is this creature what I think it is?”
“Yes, he’s a godling,” the white replied, tilting her head and peering quizzically down at Kaln. “And definitely was not when he slithered in here; we all sensed that moment of apotheosis.”
Godling? Apotheosis? What exactly had the Entity gotten him into?
“All this time,” the elder green mused, now likewise examining Kaln, “Atraximos had something in his hoard which could do that?”
“No…no.” The white shook her head, still staring down at him. “He had part of something. This fledgling brought something else in which completed the process. Didn’t you, little thief?”
“You know, I rather resent that,” Kaln stated, finding himself still eerily calm—though by this point, the firsthand evidence that he could destroy a dragon added some context to that assurance. “I’ll answer to ‘intruder,’ if you wish, but I haven’t stolen anything.”
“That depends upon jurisdiction,” said the black dragon, the last to speak. And also female; that younger red really was the only male in the family, then. This one had a similar pattern to her scales: black, but each bordered in glossy gold, which made her scintillate beautifully in the chamber’s dim light with every tiny movement. Now, her lips curled up in a cunning smile as she studied Kaln. “In some countries, to use an object without its owner’s knowledge or consent is considered theft. In others…not. But I know of no polity in which the act is not some manner of crime.”
“Not that that isn’t interesting,” said the blue, “but let’s be honest: laws are not really applicable here. Between dragons and an intruder in their lair, the only question which matters is… Can we take him?”
“We all saw what he just did to Atraximos,” the smaller green added. “What was that? How did you do that?”
Kaln chose his words with great care; showing weakness or vulnerability here would be a deadly mistake, so he could not admit ignorance. But making any claims about anything he didn’t understand could very easily betray that ignorance, considering that these creatures undoubtedly knew more than he did about…well, everything.
“I fear no answer I can give to that would satisfy you.”
“Oh, I don’t think that was even his idea,” the white dragon rumbled. “He probably wanted to slip back out without waking any of us. But then Atraximos attacked him—attacked a fresh godling at the moment when his inherent apotheosis was in the earliest stages of settling upon an aspect. Thus forcing said aspect to coalesce in order to protect himself, and settle upon a hard counter to exactly the danger being pressed upon him.” She snorted derisively, shaking her head. “It seems oddly characteristic of Atraximos that his final act was to birth a brand new god of dragonslaying right in the middle of our own home.”
They all stared down at Kaln in silence, and he fought mightily to maintain his own composure. A brand new god?
“So,” the older green asked at last, “can we take him?”
“Oh, unquestionably,” answered the white, and at her unpleasant smile Kaln instinctively tensed. Oddly, he did not feel the power welling up in him…because, he realized, it had nothing to respond to. Of these six dragons, none were actually about to attack him. “Six of us, including three elders of great stature, against one brand-new baby godling? It’s not even a contest, no matter what his aspect is. I estimate we would only lose…half our number in the process.”
The red reared up in surprise, as did his blue and green sisters. Their elders continued staring at Kaln with more poise.
“Well?” the white prompted, her grin widening. “Who wants to be first?”
With a heavy snort, the elder green sat down, piles of bones crunching beneath her immense bulk as she folded all four legs under herself, then laid her wings flat against her back. The posture made her resemble a titanic, reptilian swan—and more importantly, Kaln realized, it was a gesture of peace. That was not a pose from which to launch an attack.
“Mother?” the smaller green prompted, frowning up at her. “I have never known you to back down from a worthy foe!”
“Oh, indeed, and a battle against a divinely endowed dragonslayer is always a challenge to be relished. I feel rather differently about confronting a creature that can apparently vaporize me by thinking about it. What an ignominious end to my legacy that would be.”
“Yes, I think one dragon meeting such a laughable fate is enough for one day,” agreed the blue, also sitting down on her haunches.
“I cannot believe I am hearing this!” raged the red. In contrast to the others, he crouched, glaring at Kaln in a posture that was clearly preparing to lunge. “Even if it costs—”
“Enough, Vanimax,” stated the black dragon in a quelling tone which actually made him freeze. “I refuse to waste my life or yours in such an attempt. Unless I badly misjudge them, neither of your sisters or their mothers is so reckless, either.”
“So we just…let him leave?” the blue asked. In contrast to Vanimax’s outrage, she seemed only curious.
The white dragon snorted. “I think he has caused as much trouble here as need to tolerated. Let the little creature pass. It’s not as if he stole from my hoard.”
“Can we really say we have not been wronged, though?” asked the black dragon. “Let us not pretend Atraximos will be mourned, but it is not as if we have all accepted his dominance for all these years for no reason. The absence of a power such as that cannot be concealed for long, and will have effects we shall all feel keenly, beginning quite soon.”
“Oh, just leave it, Izayaroa,” snorted the white. “There’s nothing to be gained from this little pest except—”
“Izayaroa?”
Kaln’s outburst caused her to fall silent and all six to turn their attention back to him. For his part, he reflexively stepped forward, staring up at the great black dragon with a fresh perspective. She was usually depicted in this form embellished with colossal golden ornaments on her neck, tail, limbs and horns, none of which were in evidence. Also none of the sculptures and paintings captured that golden scintillating effect of her multi-hued scales; Kaln had only ever seen her portrayed as a black dragon. Now that he thought of it, though, she was often described in texts as “shining” or “glittering;” he had always taken that to be grandiose poetic license, not literally accurate.
“It is you,” he gasped, then by instinct alone sank to one knee. “My Empress!”
“Oh, grand,” spat the white dragon. “Now there’ll be absolutely no living with her.”
“Hmm, then I was right,” Izayaroa murmured, arching her neck proudly and smiling down at Kaln. “You are Rhiva. One hesitates to judge by apparent ethnicity—my Empire has always been arranged to embrace diversity and reward skill above birth. The accent, though. And you are a scribe? What a curious, winding path must have led you here.”
“It’s…ah, that is…curious and winding is a good way to describe it, your Excellency. I am…not sure how much you would even believe. I’m not sure how much I do,” he added, half to himself.
“Are you really going to make him kneel there?” the blue dragon asked in the same tone of simple curiosity she had used before.
“As we have established,” Izayaroa replied, “it seems I can scarcely make him do anything. One appreciates a young man who knows the value of respect, however. Might I be honored with the name of the man who widowed me?”
The last was in a distinctly wry tone. Even with all the ample evidence backing up the Entity’s assertion that none of these dragons particularly cared about the death of Atraximos, her phrasing made Kaln flinch.
“I am Ar-Kaln Zelekhir, your Excellency. Formerly a scribe in your Royal Archives.”
“Formerly?” Her tone was openly amused, now. “Yes, I suppose so. This is the last place I would expect to find one of my scribes, at least with permission.”
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“It’s the last place anyone would expect to find you!” Kaln burst out. “Your Excellency…where have you been? The Empire prospers… That is, at least, it endures. Rhivaak is never at its best except during the years when its Eternal Empress reigns from the throne! Your… Izayaroa, your people miss you. We need you.”
The black dragon’s expression had sobered while he spoke, and now she answered in a softer, solemn tone. “I have never abandoned my people, Ar-Kaln, or forgotten them for one moment. What I do, I do because I judge it best. I watch over my Empire from a safe distance, ever ready to intercede when I am needed. But it is not meet for a people to be ruled with the fist of absolute power, however benign its intent. For Rhivaak to be strong, its people must cultivate that strength by overcoming trials through their own virtues. In those virtues and that strength I have absolute faith, and it has never gone unrewarded.”
“By all the hells, this is going to go on all day, isn’t it?” groaned the white dragon.
Izayaroa turned a much cooler stare on her. “It would be well within your capabilities to be famed and even beloved by the mortals, Emeralaphine, if you had ever cared to bother.”
“Please, as if—”
“Did you say Emeralaphine?” Kaln practically shouted, forgetting himself. “Are you serious? The White Wind of the North? That Emeralaphine?”
“Hm.” The white dragon peered down at him again, but this time with a distinctly self-satisfied smile. “Well, I suppose a scribe of all people must be relatively well-read.”
“I would hardly need to be! Even people who barely know anything about magic have heard of the dragon mage—I can attest to that, since I barely know anything about magic myself. You’re supposed to be the greatest sorceress since the age of the Timekeepers!”
“I begin to see your point about respect, Izayaroa,” Emeralaphine remarked, finally settling down on her own haunches and gazing at Kaln with clear approval now. “He’s an amazingly agreeable specimen, considering I am talking to the creature who snuck into my home and murdered my husband.”
Kaln suddenly had several thoughts in quick succession. The first was that he had just been gushing like a fool—hardly the reaction he’d have hoped for upon first meeting figures out of legend. The second was that while any of the upper class back in Rhivkabat would have been utterly contemptuous of such ham-fisted fawning—Haktria would have dryly excoriated him on the spot—the ancient dragon just appeared straightforwardly pleased. Were dragons just…vulnerable to flattery? It seemed an odd and oddly specific weakness.
The third was that Emeralaphine was probably the reason the Entity had refused to accompany him in here. Whatever kind of creature it actually was—and Kaln was beginning to have some suspicions—she would surely have seen it coming a mile away.
“I am almost afraid to ask who you are,” he said, turning to the last of the elder dragons, the larger green, and attempting as best he could to marshal what remained of his poise.
“I would be quite surprised to receive so ardent a reaction,” she said with subdued amusement. “I am Tiavathyris, and not much known on this continent.”
Only by drawing a long, deliberate breath did Kaln manage to stay composed this time, and that at least partly because of the smell. “I…did you… You did say Tiavathyris?”
“Your accent is peculiar, but yes. Don’t tell me you know that name?”
“The hero of the Beyond Incursion? The dragon who single-handedly ended the Mad Epoch, who ventured alone through the planar rift to destroy the generals of the Ravening Host in their own realm? Yes…yes, my lady, you may be assured I know that name.”
“I take some exception to that phrasing,” she said, still calmly, but with a smile stretching her own reptilian lips now. “It was an effort of countless souls, many of whom I held as comrades and friends. Though, yes, that final feat was mine alone. And this was a very long time ago, not to mention on the other side of the world. You do indeed surprise, Ar-Kaln Zelekhir.”
“Well, ‘not much known’ is relative, for an elder dragon who saved the world a few times,” the blue female remarked.
“This is, I can’t…” Kaln slowly turned his entire head, staring up at each of the three in turn; they seemed somehow to grandiose, too important to look at simply by moving his eyes. “You’re legends, all three of you. Some of the greatest… And nobody even knows you’re here! Nine heavens, what are you doing here? Just…here, in the middle of nowhere!”
“That was Atraximos the Dread you just slew, boy,” Tiavathyris replied sardonically. “What sort of common drakes did you think he would have for consorts?”
“We like our privacy,” Emeralaphine said pointedly.
“It is difficult for dragons to make our presence…unobtrusive,” Izayaroa added with greater calm. “When not actively shaping the course of world events, we prefer remote lairs and a low profile. Thus our arrangement here. Dragon families have more resemblance to the alliances of nations than the bonds between mortals such as yourself, Ar-Kaln. Hence our willingness to accept submission to such as Atraximos, cretin that he was. His presence served to disguise our own; his violence ensured us the opportunity to pursue our own interests and raise our hatchlings in quiet, and in calm.”
“Calm is also relative,” the blue dragon commented. Emeralaphine reached out and smacked her with a wing, which the smaller blue seemed to take in stride.
“That is… I suppose I follow,” Kaln said slowly. “Intellectually, at least. It seems a strange arrangement to me.”
“What a shame that is,” Emeralaphine sneered, “so greatly do we value your opinion.”
“Political marriages among human nobility work very much the same,” said Izayaroa.
“It’s our way,” Tiavathyris added with a brief sideways movement of her neck that he interpreted as a shrug. “Atraximos contributed strong genes and protection to this arrangement; liking his company or approving of his actions were never a part of it. Had another male come along and defeated him, we would have accepted the replacement. With roughly the same degree of attachment, most likely.”
“Another male did, though,” the smaller green dragon commented. Then grinned widely at her mother’s disapproving expression.
“Another male dragon, obviously,” Tiavathyris amended. “Don’t expect a human to understand how we think, or how we live.”
“You don’t think he’s cute?”
“Daughter, shut up.”
“Instead,” said Izayaroa, now regarding Kaln with a thoughtful expression, “we should consider the matter before us—and the individual before us, specifically. It seems you, at least, have gained what you sought from this encounter, Ar-Kaln Zelekhir. You have left us in a rather more discomfited state.”
“Ironic as this may sound,” he said wryly, “I am sorry for your loss.”
Emeralaphine snorted, Tiavathyris wrinkled her nose, and both the younger female dragons grinned at him.
“No one is going to miss Atraximos,” Izayaroa acknowledged, nodding her head once. “Not his mates nor his children. I imagine the rejoicing among the mortal population will be monumental. You have undoubtedly made yourself a hero today, young man, whatever you intended. We, meanwhile, have lost our protection, and our privacy. Even if you refrain from boasting about this, the secret will be impossible to keep for long, and then our lives shall be exactly the parade of would-be dragonslayers and other riffraff that creates an impossible environment in which to raise children.”
“All three of us are more than a century old!” Vanimax exclaimed in exasperation.
“I’ll be delighted to see any of you act it for once,” Emeralaphine rumbled.
“So, Ar-Kaln.” Izayaroa stepped forward until she stood in the middle of the rough semicircle made by the other dragons, directly at the foot of the stairs. Black-and-gold scales flashing betwitchingly in the dim light, she lowered her neck to meet Kaln’s gaze from up close. Golden eyes with vertical pupils bored into his own from a reptilian face long enough to snap him up in a single bite. “I think it would be meet for you to offer some recompense for wrongs you have incidentally done to the widows and orphans you have made this day, in the course of attaining your own heart’s desire. I should like to think a public servant of the Rhivaak Empire would evince this much character, at least. Or shall you be the first in many a year to misplace my faith?”
Once again he inhaled slowly, steadying himself. Once again the sharp, acrid stink of the dragons’ lair helped to focus him. This time, though, the emotion he had to bring quickly under control was anger.
“That,” he said in a very careful tone, “is tawdry manipulation, and beneath you, your Excellency.”
Izayaroa lifted her head further, staring down at him along the full length of her nose, but he pressed on before she could respond.
“Based on your explanation, I suppose I’m willing to accept that you are…passive beneficiaries of Atraximos’s six-century rampage, rather than active participants. It’s not as if I would be qualified to judge you anyway. But Atraximos was nothing more than a vile monster. I can’t make myself regret anything about his demise, least of all my own role in it. And for the six of you, I find I have no sympathy.”
“You smug, insignificant mayfly,” Vanimax growled, lowering his head and beginning to stalk aggressively forward. “You dare—you presume to speak to—”
“Peace, Vanimax,” Izayaroa interrupted, her eyes still fixed on Kaln. “In conversational conflict, as in any other kind, one must know when to recognize defeat. Our…guest is correct.”
“Mother!” he protested.
“He is, though,” said Tiavathyris, dipping her head deeply in acknowledgment when Kaln looked over at her. “Atraximos was a beast and little more, despite his surpassing power. We who have benefited from the carnage he wrought have no grounds to complain now that he has been ended.”
“Grounds,” Emeralaphine huffed. “I’ve never known that to stop any of you from complaining. Nor me, for that matter.”
“Then we’re back where we started,” said Kaln. Somewhat self-conscious of his ragged appearance under their collective gaze, he straightened his threadbare, travel-stained tunic, then deliberately raised his head, putting as much steel into his spine as he could muster. “It seems none of us have anything to gain here. So…I think I’ll be going.”
“Oh,” Tiavathyris said in a frighteningly mild tone, “is that what you think.”
“Well, I see no reason to doubt Emeralaphine’s assessment; she’s the expert, after all. If you’re truly determined to stop me…I guess you can. Who’s going to be first, then?”
All six stared at him in silence. He stared back. Searching within himself, he found no fear, and no upwelling of power in response to them. If Emeralaphine was correct, and the power that Timegate had imbued in him was focused specifically on dragons, it sensed no threat. No violent intent.
They were, he realized, exactly as the Entity had said. It took no courage to be a huge, overwhelmingly powerful apex predator. When confronted by something that might actually threaten them, they wanted no part of it. Vanimax was the only one whose posture and expression said he was even tempted.
Then, suddenly, Izayaroa smiled. It truly was uncanny, how legible the dragons’ facial expressions were.
She shifted, her enormous form swirling away and compacting as she assumed her smaller, humanoid shape. This placed her on the stairs three steps down from Kaln, and still nearly as tall as he; like Atraximos, the effect of her clawed feet made her stand impressively tall, even in otherwise human proportions. Overall the draconic features of her lesser form were similar: scales covering her forearms, gleaming horns arching back over her head, golden eyes with vertically slitted pupils.
None of that was what made him stare in stupefaction.
Obviously, her face was recognizable: depictions of her were everywhere in Rhivkabat, especially the government offices in which Kaln had grown up and then worked. He had always assumed, though, that all those paintings and sculptures and mosaics and murals had exaggerated. She was the Golden Empress, and no one had seen her in decades at least; why would the artists not portray her as the most beautiful woman to exist?
It turned out those depictions were…startlingly faithful.
Her skin was a brown so deep that in this light it verged on black; her hair a riot of tight curls, mostly gleaming black but shot through with threads of gold, in a pattern reminiscent of the golden edges of her ebon scales. She had lusciously full lips it took an active effort not to imagine kissing, which Kaln fully recognized as an inappropriate impulse he chose to blame on his long months spent trekking alone through the wilderness. Even more distracting than her perfect face was her excessively perfect figure…and the fact that she had chosen for attire a strikingly simple white shift which not only made her dark skin seemed almost to glow in contrast, but showed off her curvaceousness to a truly unfair advantage.
He desperately hoped he was not embarrassing himself too terribly. She was Izayaroa—the Empress. And he was not some growth-addled teenager. It wasn’t as if he’d never met beautiful people before, nor had any trouble behaving. First Atraximos and now this; what was it about dragons that made it so hard for him to keep his damned eyes in his head?
And then, before Kaln could even compose himself properly, she knocked him for a loop yet again.
“As was mentioned moments ago, we dragons do, in fact, have traditions which cover precisely this situation.”
The Golden Empress knelt before him, demurely lowering her head. In this form, her voice was recognizably the same as that of the dragon he had addressed previously, still musical and cultured without having the powerful resonance of enormous lungs. More than that, her tone was distinctly…warm.
“Welcome, then, to the home you have won. What would you have of us, husband?”