Assembling Parts III
Wings
It was with much fury and disappointment I discovered I would not be able to salvage a pair of wings. The wings of a dragon are the most delicate section, and most disappeared off the face of our world. Collectors picked them clean, twisted the fragile bones into weapons and chandliers, making them unsalvagable. For a quintet of seasons I paced the halls of my estate, ruminating, searching for a way to create a glorious pair of wings. It became clear to me that real bone was just not an option.
So I employed an engineer, a man who was tryingto create a flying machine. He’d studied birds for many years, he understood how the wings worked and to my luck—he was fascinated by dragons. It was a shame he never quite understood that I was one, but I paid him well so he began to construct wings for me. In the grand foyer of my maison he began laid out the materials. Most mornings he and I would speak. I would give him pointers whenever he was stuck or bewildered by the request.
“It will be hard to simulate the material,” he told me.
“But try we must,” I said.
He refused to call me Arch Dragon. It was a matter that filled me with violent energy, but he was the best I could find so I let him call me Lord instead.
Another issue was the sheer practicality of my vision; the finer details of how I would ascend. Though many nights I would come and stand before my creation—the wings, the scales, the carapace—with my eyes closed and my body ready to change; but it appeared that change would not come so easily.
So I employed a surgeon. A frightful man, really, infamous for his heinous experiments with human flesh. My house staff feared him, they cowered away whenever he walked my halls. I kept him in the foyer too, allowed him to bring his assistants to live under my roof, and bought him all the materials he needed for his own sordid work. I offered him a slice of my land for his services. There would come a time where I would no longer need it, for a dragon’s land is the sky and the mountains.
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One morning I came to him to ask how my vision was manifesting, and he told me something that made me sad.
“Arch Dragon,” he whispered, and for the first I saw fear flash across his eyes. “What it is you want—to become a dragon—there are no ways I can fathom that would allow me to detach your brain, your heart, and place them into this body. It’s impossible. No man of science could do such a thing.”
After that morning came the dark time. For a blur of days I sat locked up in my room, in the dark. It is a terrible thing for a dragon to be locked away in the gloom, but I knew better than to unleash my fury on the Engineer and the Surgeon. I still needed them. I couldn’t risk an outburst. So I allowed myself to hibernate, to sit beneath my blankets through the heart of that winter, speaking with the voice that came when night fell and the world was silent.
“How can I become what my Father wanted?”
Ascend, said the voice. There are ways…
“But how?” I whispered. “They say it is not possible?”
Does a dragon care what is possible to mortals?
“No,” I said.
And thus the dragon does ascend…
When I came out of my slumber I found that my surgeon had drawn up a new diagram. A humanoid body covered in scales, with small wings, powerful claws, and a jaw that could snap the neck of anything living with just a mere bite. I confess, just the sight of it, the detail, was enough to bring a tear to my eye.
“This will be but the first step,” gasped the Surgeon. “Arch Dragon, we will find a way. This will be the beginning. Afterwards, we will find a way to make your vision complete.”
“Thank you,” was all I could say. I touched his scarred face. “Thank you.”