LITERATURE'S PERILOUS PERILS
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N:
Pairing proposed by MinervaRahn in the crack topic, though the story
likely needs a sequel to properly get into it. I'll include her
description here:
Orange and light blue draconium influence is another concept that I like mixed in, but you are thinking 'why Dorsull...why Reepyr for the matter!?!' Reepyr has that soft voice that could be used for poetry and would often do verses about darkness, the moon, and other 'emo' related emotions :D :D but a great since of romance and protection. Dorsull seems to be the kind who 'wants to be the hero' and a bit of an adventurer, but can be elusive and slippery when dealing with emotional problems. Very shy but quite the cuddler hee hee. 3
--
"Filling flasks with dew and utilising the icosahedric properties of cedarwood draconium, together with Christian and her cousin, Roxane flew into the air towards Abandonn's scientific mysteries..."
"All right, Mr Sean, that's enough; Wulph, you're up now."
Scattered claps, mostly from the Penn Crew's corner of the audience. "Go Parm!" he heard Artha Penn call out to his friend.
"It was '39," Wulph began. "Buried deep in the trenches of the Lines, his unit was ready and prepared for action. The hordes of the Black Draconium Empire were about ready to swarm. Oiling the canister of his mag-cannon, Hiro Mach prepared to advance into action with the deadly Violeox..."
"This is boring..." Dorsull complained.
"Be quiet," Marianis hissed to him, and he slumped in his seat. If only the Sun City dragonpox epidemic hadn't suddenly opened up a spot in the Academy's creative writing division he wouldn't have to be here today; if only Styngraay and Whella and Tentaclio hadn't turned her down, if only he'd stood up to her and said that if she wanted to gain Literary Culture she could bloody well do it on her own...
"...and Hiro's steely-eyed composure never failed as he advanced across the Enemy lines, withdrawing the mag-cannon in the centre of their encampment, and then lit the fuse. The resulting explosion seared the ground permanently, and although Hiro's burns were painful, his iron will enabled him to escape back to the Purple Empire, after being held in a Black Draconium Empire's prison camp for..."
"Time's up," said Sentrus. "Next we have Embyrr of the Dragon Flares, reading some of her narrative poetry."
Marianis straightened in her seat beside him. "This should be very good," she whispered. "I've heard her read before at the Dragon City Literature Society."
Dorsull tried to keep back a yawn. As little as the pale redhead generally had to say for herself in council meetings, he still wasn't interested.
"The moon was a death-pale dragonclaw, twisted on Drakkus' seas..."
She had a nice voice, maybe, a little breathy and quite articulate, but poetry...
He slumped in his chair again.
As Embyrr finished her tale of the rogue racer who committed suicide (or whose girlfriend committed suicide--he hadn't figured that part of it out yet, what with the blood-blooming roses and Abandonn-scented steel and things) to general applause, he saw another flash of red hair entering the hall; pity the poor sod, he decided, if he was coming for a friend rather than joining the competition.
He let his attention wander as Phistus began his story, looking around at the faces and starting to count the flies on the ceiling.
"'Ravish me,' Myrlinda all but commanded as she fell against the pirate Chrys' rock-hard muscles. Unbinding his wild crimson hair from its customary black ribbon, she pulled his face towards hers, thinking all the while of the contrast between this ship of adventure and her previous life in Miss Smedley's Academy for Young Ladies. Their lips met in a passionate kiss as she half-pulled, half-pushed him to their hammock..."
The redhead who'd entered walked over to Sentrus' table, carrying on a quick whispered conversation with her; he had skin like greenish parchment, as though he'd never seen the sun. Dorsull mentally kicked himself for using the simile; this thing was really having a bad effect on him. He looked to Marianis to voice a further complaint, but saw her instead raise a lace handkerchief to her eyes.
"Believing her one true love to be dead, Myrlinda ran barefoot over the snows of the cold mountains, desperately seeking the lost seer of the mysterious Keepers, her crystal tears overflowing..."
"And time," Sentrus said, clicking her stopwatch. Dorsull heard several scattered sighs from the audience, including from Marianis.
"8449 AB," Rancydd narrated. "Reaching for her starburst mag-laser and riding on her small Whip-class dragon Millenis, Querta darted beneath the vast Deep Space-class dragon to fire a desperate pattern of disrupter bolts. These activated the system's hydraulic laser tubes, which relied on kerium fuel to create the antigravity used in the saddlesector for the human passengers. The Whip-class was the size of an ant compared to the vast Deep Space dragon, but the speed and dexterity Querta used enabled her fire to cause mass disruption in the laser tubes..."
Dorsull sighed audibly; Marianis kicked him. "Speculative fiction is an important component of Dragon City's rich literary history," she hissed. "Pay attention!"
Dorsull sulked until Querta finally brought down the evil space empire doing something complicated involving syswarp coefficients and android conversion factors, and then saw Vociferous stand up, slicking back his hair as he advanced confidently to the stand.
"Hold it, Vociferous," Sentrus said. She gestured to the newcomer. "He's in first."
Vociferous seemed to deflate like a pricked balloon as he walked back to his seat, and the newcomer stood calmly on stage.
"I am Reepyr," he said in a voice that could have melted grey draconium. "Please allow me your time."
Dorsull allowed himself to watch; maybe this would be interesting, and it looked like the Penn crew and the Army group were whispering excitedly between themselves about the newcomer.
Sentrus held up a hand. "Silence, please. He has as much right to compete as anyone," she said, and then Reepyr began.
"Haunting the moons' darkness, deep under the sky, clawed ghosts bore witness to the terrible Lie..."
It actually sounded almost...acceptable, with a voice like that. Dorsull looked around, wondering how many were similarly affected by the words; some seemed quite enthusiastic, but others remained indifferent-looking.
It was about...dragons, he thought; dragons and ancient days and bitterness all bound up together, regretful but at the same time a step removed from it, a lament from afar.
"They dream of a moth-blackened hall, a choice long forgotten to despair and recall."
Clapping, then, from some sections of the audience; slightly louder, Dorsull thought, than for Rancydd's piece, but it was hard to judge. Some of them just looked puzzled, as though they didn't quite know what to think.
The contestant walked down, his head slightly bowed; he seemed to allow the applause to wash over him like light, though he was too graceful about it to be called ungrateful.
"Who was that--do you know him?" Marianis whispered, and indeed most of the audience seemed to be asking the same question.
Dorsull shook his head. He didn't know; but he did know that Vociferous would have a tough act to follow.
"So I was going to tell you people a story," said Vociferous, stepping up to the dais, "but I don't like to follow the crowd--so here's a piece of rather exaggerated biography." He flashed the audience a confident smile. "My assistant Spynn and I are just minding our own business--winning at claw-poker, avoiding the attentions of all our ardent admirers, sipping Draconee-Yum cocktails--you get the idea," he added hastily, seeing some of the expressions on the faces of his audience. "And then we get a call from a certain Sun City gentleman some of you might know about--rich, sweeping robes, nasty-minded--oh, wait, that's most of them--" He paused, and grinned. "Sorry, getting a little off topic. So we ask him what he wants. Turns out he's found the impossible--someone still more obnoxious than him he wants rid of, ego larger than this room and the ugliest face you've ever seen..."
Some laughter from the room, though the Penn crew were whispering loudly to each other as Marianis frowned at them.
"Story is, Mister Young-and-Obnoxious pulled a last place when he turned back in a race, accidentally ran over a kid..."
Sounds of slight outrage at the deed. Dorsull listened; Vociferous' story was at least a lot less abstruse than some of the others.
"...No, he didn't kill the kid," Vociferous said. "Only ran over it when his thrusters misfired and he thought he was still going in the right direction--and, the grateful mother thought, saved it from every other racer! So the news stations ignored the rightful and extremely modest winner of the race--" he grinned, and made a gesture to himself; there were groans from the audience. "And gave Mister Obnoxious the press coverage. In our quest for justice, Spynn and I reeled him in on the hook of his own fame, watching him eat buckets of dragon food so he'd gain popularity now the story had faded--and then--"
A dragonola bar was thrown from the audience and hit him in the face.
"Bad story!" Artha Penn called.
"Extremely little artistic value!" Parmon Sean added.
"I dunno. What was he saying about the rightful winner again--oh, all right, Artha, bad story, get him of the stage!" Kitt Wann chimed in.
"Boo!" Phistus called out in agreement with them.
"Down with Vociferous!" Lance Penn yelled.
Vociferous gagged, and wrenched the bar from his mouth. "The Voice of the Dragon is the number one champion of this event!" he howled. "I need my chance to speak! Sentrus, please..."
The scout shrugged. "Looks like you've got a significant negative reaction from the audience in terms of story content," she said.
"If I may continue--the glorious quest! Oh, you should have seen him munching through Dragonola bars like pizza, combining Ruby's Flame lipstick with Raybayne sunglasses--big fashion no-no, it really is my duty to tell you--"
"I didn't wear effing lipstick!" Artha Penn yelled.
So that was the source, Dorsull realised. He saw a few giggles as people turned their heads to stare at the Penn crew; Artha Penn crimsoned.
"You--you--" Artha yelled.
A mag-burst, apparently from nowhere, appeared over Vociferous' head and exploded, forcing the Dragonola bar back into his mouth.
Sentrus sighed. "Audience reaction: definitely a negative. Vociferous, get out."
"I'll return to have my revenge!" the Crew-leader swore through his mouth of dragon bar, and marched away, Spynn hefting both her blocking staffs as she followed him out.
"And now we have..." Sentrus frowned. "Cain of the Dragon Eyes with a selection from his...recipe book?"
Cain nodded, and whipped a tray from behind his back. Dorsull smelt rich chocolate overlaid with walnut, and it appeared the Academy scout also liked it, for she took in a deep breath and nodded. "Go on," she said.
This might be worth staying around for, Dorsull thought, though he honestly didn't need to know Cain's assessment of different flour brands...
"You're copying it down, aren't you?" Marianis hissed to him, and in deference to his Crew-leader Dorsull scrawled out a few notes with a pen he borrowed from Ignight behind them and tissues he had in the bottom of his pocket.
"...and that's how you bake cookies!" Cain finished triumphantly, and passed the tray to Sentrus first.
Looking across the room, Dorsull saw the strange man called Reepyr suddenly standing, rushing away; he stood too, wondering where he was going.
Marianis pulled on his sleeve. "Sit down," she told him, but looked around an instant later at the sudden noise from the doorway, Vociferous and Spynn bashing their way in with two vast Earth-class dragons.
"Two choices, Dragon City!" Vociferous called to them. "A pack of atrociously behaved monkeys--or the Voice of the Dragon!"
An easy choice, Dorsull thought; his sympathies were entirely with the Penn crew for disrupting the event. Then again, they hadn't exactly behaved with perfect etiquette, and Vociferous hadn't been the one to name them...
He saw Reepyr running toward the back, and slowly inched towards him, curious about the strange man's goals.
"Stand down, or I'll have you for disrespect of Academy property," Sentrus said, holding up a hand.
"Then face my revenge!" Vicoferous shot out a piece of trapping gear, binding Reepyr to the wall. "He shall be first..."
Someone had to save him.
Dorsull ran towards them, grasping the fire grenade he carried everywhere as a safety precaution, and threw just as Vociferous held a bright turquoise gem to Reepyr's mouth.
The things seemed to interact with one another, red-and-blue smoke billowed in thick clouds as he snatched Reepyr from the wall, trying not to breathe it in. They were flung outside the door, seeing the entire building fill with the smoke as they heard the sounds of coughing.
"Help--" he heard a male voice screaming, and then the lintel collapsed, the entrance destroyed.
An orange dragon rushed up beside Reepyr; she mag-blasted the entrance, sealing it thick in polished rock.
"What do you think you're doing?" Dorsull cried, but Reepyr held him back.
"Helping," he whispered, and suddenly the ground gave way under them and they were standing in the centre of a newly marked-out hole, the dark earth almost glistening beneath them.
"Silence!" Dorsull heard Sentrus' sharp voice call from inside, and the building shook again; Reepyr's dragon mag-blasted it a second time, pushing the rocks together and keeping it from collapsing, and Dorsull whistled for Hightide to come help.
That smoke had done...something; if he could just help stabilise the building like the other was doing...
They both fired off trapping gear, exhausting their packs to roughly hold the building together with thin green webbing as more cracks appeared on the walls and cries were heard inside, and when they had done all they could Dorsull turned to the stranger.
"How did you know it was going to happen?" he demanded. "And what's more, how are we going to save them!"
Reepyr grabbed Dorsull's right hand, ripped the glove from it, and brought it to his lips along with a small disc of orange draconium.
Debra sensed the ancient gem, he could make out from the light breath on his hand and the changing movements of Reepyr's lips, once he'd gotten over his shock. It was as though the disc enabled the words to be transferred to him through his skin, strange and ancient technology.
He snatched his hand away. "Why aren't you speaking? Why can't you just use sign language?"
You idiot!, he signalled in the standard handspeech street racers used when too far away from each other or deafened by explosions; a limited language, but still less strange than this, practically a kiss!
Reepyr only looked puzzled, and reached for Dorsull's hand again. I do not speak that, he said, his soft breath carrying his odd cadences through Dorsull's skin. This is a device we use to communicate with our dragons; it works like this on humans.
His orange dragon roared, and suddenly Dorsull remembered all the stories he'd heard about insane orange dragons who ate humans. Hightide faced up to her, growling.
The gem with the smoke poisoned our speech, Reepyr continued hastily, perhaps sensing his uneasiness. I know what it is, and where we can locate the antidote...
"So what is it?" Dorsull snatched back his hand. "You don't even know the Crew-signals! How am I supposed to trust you?"
Reepyr bowed his head; to Dorsull's surprise, his dragon also lowered her head to Hightide.
Dorsull saw him make a hand signal, two fingers moving like a running person; Reepyr gestured at the building as well, and he nodded reluctantly.
Poisoned speech--that means it's the screams that caused that, and Reepyr's word that made the ground fall below us! It made sense enough, Dorsull decided, and they needed to find the solution fast.
"Marianis, don't reply. I'm going to save ya," he said into his comm, and turned to Reepyr. "You're going first."
--
They made their way through the Wastelands of Loane, alone on their quest; Dorsull looked around nervously at the high mountains around them, and thought once again of the deadly orange dragons.
"We could've...gone to Dragon City Security, right?" he ventured.
Reepyr waved, shook his head, and placed a long finger over his lips.
"No, because--because the remedy's your secret?"
Reepyr nodded.
"But--I could just tell them!" Dorsull said.
Reepy smiled, and shook his head.
"I suppose...I'm willing to help save them," Dorsull said. He could do this, rescue Marianis and everyone else; Dragon City Security didn't exactly help Down City much, too. And calling up the Dragon Booster was more Marianis' thing.
His companion placed a finger on his lips again.
"What? Why can't I tell them I helped save them? What's wrong with--"
Hightide reared, running into Reepyr and his dragon, and thrown about on his saddle Dorsull saw a hydrag behind them.
He released a row of stars at the creature, hoping to scare it off, but it advanced, two more behind it.
Reepyr took his hand again. Mag-blast! he whispered, and together they aimed at the creatures.
Another roar; Dorsull looked behind them and saw they were surrounded, another group of hydrags coming from behind. The mountains either side were too far to escape over; no choice, then, but to stand and fight.
Dorsull reached down for his thruster gear and activated a wall of flame. Hightide whined (this was always hard on his skin), but the hydrags began to fall back.
"Run!" His turn to take hold of Reepyr; he grabbed his hand and pulled him along, running until they could see no more hydrags.
Nor anything else he could recognize, come to think of it.
"Do you know where we are?" he asked. "Or where we're going?"
Reepyr started to shake his head, but then his dragon nodded, and he took Dorsull's hand again in that oddly intimate gesture.
Debra knows where we are. We seek the Lost Archives, to find the scroll detailing the history of Turquoise to restore your friends.
"Some old book?" Dorsull frowned. "But they were hit by a powerful ancient weapon! How's that going to help us?"
Reepyr smiled, and his dragon carried him into a narrowing path, the day darkening around them.
Dorsull swore to himself, and followed after them.
--
It was getting dark.
He was not going to be the first one to point that out, Dorsull vowed.
Hightide howled as Drakkus started to appear on the horizon, and Debra did the same. Faint, hoarse growls began to sound around them in the landscape, as though the hydrags had found them again.
Reepyr dismounted, and headed towards the bottom of a mountain; Debra magged some gear from behind, an orange device which flew past her rider and stuck to the wall.
Independent dragon, Dorsull mused, glancing rather nervously at her as the light faded. Orange gear, orange dragon, apparently non-crazy rider...
A cavern opened in the rock; Debra marched up to take Reepyr on her back again, and Dorsull went behind them.
--
Orange ankh symbols decorated the walls, and started glowing as they walked past. Shapes started to form as well, like twisted versions of normal Draconian clawed by giants; Hightide snarled, and Debra almost looked like she was actually studying them, though Reepyr was only looking to the road ahead.
Debra stepped daintily along the path, picking out her footsteps neatly on the stones; she was taking a slow pace, and Dorsull sighed in impatience.
"Can't you get your dragon to go a little faster?" he asked Reepyr.
Debra let out a growl.
He pressed his heels into Hightide's flanks, encouraging the dragon to go faster. "This is slow, I'd like to know what's here..."
A stone under Hightide's feet suddenly vanished below them; the dragon let out a scream as he rushed forward, jostling Debra. Dorsull looked up, and saw the ceiling rushing down to crush them. It was fast, after that; Debra jumped, behind her Hightide followed suit, and suddenly they were skidding down a steep slope in a shower of pebbles.
Reverse thrusters! Dorsull flung himself and Hightide behind Reepyr, seeing the long fall awaiting them if he didn't succeed. They kept moving as the thrusters whined; he sent maximum mag-energy to them, praying to the Magna Draconis that they still worked.
And then they stopped, at last, just at the edge, as Reepyr and Debra ran into them. Dorsull fell from Hightide's saddle with Reepyr on top of him, and pushed his blocking staff into the ground to secure them as their dragons slid terrifyingly close to them.
And then he was clinging on with one hand to the edge, Hightide crushing his fingers. The orange dragon's head was over Hightide's tail, its eyes closed.
You--you--you! You failed to understand the dragonspeech! Perhaps my fault for not telling you, but you--this! We will die! You--
"Can you stop talking in my head?" he asked Reepyr wearily, the other's weight heavy on him as they stared into the pit below.
A sort of mental sigh, like dusty breeze against dried flowers.
We will die, Reepyr told him, thoughts more orderly this time. I think I may scream.
"Yeah, well, don't scream yet or it'll cause us to fall now!" Dorsull yelled, trying to distract himself from the pain in his hand. "Hang on!"
He brought up his other hand from under Reepyr's chest, trying to worm it under Hightide's bulk.
"Hightide, move up so you can mag us!" he yelled. "I think..."
He was slightly bigger than the orange dragon, but change position slightly or be unable to move her, and they'd go over.
"No!" he shouted as pebbles began to spill down around them. "Stop!"
He couldn't feel his hand, now.
He looked down at Reepyr, clinging to his waist.
"I'm going to try to throw you," he said, trying to sound confident. "Take my hand!"
Before he could talk himself out of it, he reached down and wrapped his free hand around Reepyr's shoulders, and threw.
It felt like his arm had been ripped out of its socket, and if it wasn't for Hightide crushing his other hand he'd have fallen, but at least Marianis had made him do all those strengthening exercises, he thought grimly. Reepyr flopped over his dragon's head, and hurriedly dragged her up the slope; he lost sight of them both.
They could just let him fall...
And then a mag-pull, taking both him and Hightide up until they could get on their feet and start climbing slowly back to level ground.
Reepyr reached out and grabbed him as they climbed.
The letters on the wall are written in ancient dragonspeech! he said. Especially easy for the Dragon to understand; you should have paid attention to Debra and the Light Blue! You fool, to rush like that!
"Follow Hightide? But dragons can't--"
A slap across his face; he reeled back, almost slipping down the slope again.
Debra leads me! the pain said, and the dragon roared.
Crazy orange dragons... he thought.
But Hightide nodded below him, and walked on. He wasn't sure what to make of that.
I apologise, Reepyr said. But you must be respectful to the Dragon, here. The hand released his wrist, and the orange dragon once again resumed the lead.
He looked down at his hands; two broken fingers. He wasn't going to admit to that. "I lost my blocking staff," he said inconsequentially.
--
After binding together his broken fingers in the roll of med-tape Marianis insisted on as a standard inclusion under the saddle as inconspicuously as he could, covering them with a glove once he was finished, he focused on watching the walls, trying to see if he could read any of it.
"Hey, Reepyr? Is there a reason why your dragon can read it and we can't? Or why Hightide should be able to, because he sure hasn't seen anything like it before..."
Debra slowed, and Reepyr reached out to touch him again, peeling down the glove to show his wrist. He tried not to cringe in pain at the touch on his broken fingers, though it was not ungentle.
It is language designed for dragon eyes and mind and voice; my people believe that humans should not be taught it. As for you, there is gear that Debra and the others have promised to not use on we humans bar in dire need. But the nature of your dragon should enable it.
A piece of golden gear came away from Debra's back, and fixed itself to his head, tendrils extending to connect him to Hightide; he gasped as images flooded through him, the view of the racetrack from a lower perspective than to which he was used, the bare stable walls of the Fish compound, a roar--and then the scribings on the wall, the meaning something which he could vaguely feel if not understand.
The adrenaline rush of the racetrack, a mind even simpler than his with an equal taste for simple pleasures. Like rider, like dragon, a part of them said wryly...
"The gear! I'm thinking like Hightide, right?" he said. This was something he could really use in a race, he thought, and then realised something really disturbing. "Oh. And your people..."
Debra howled, and he could understand the sense of it if not its nature.
The Prophets. The half-remembered title whispered to him in legend, the orange dragons bred for war and the control of humans.
"Scales..."
Reepyr looked up at him, and held up both his hands, smiling in a gesture half surrender and half invitation to continue.
The Prophet could have let him fall before, he supposed. They'd better get this rescue mission done without sticking around here.
"Right, Hightide?" he asked, and the dragon continued on his way, following Debra's footsteps and avoiding the traps described in the scribings.
--
A door glowed green before them. Reepyr and Debra drew up in front of it, paused.
"Want me to break through?" Dorsull and Hightide activated ramming gear.
Reepyr took his hand again; he sighed, consenting.
The Green Door is a primary obstacle to our goal, created by one of the alliance who sealed away the Archives, he said. It measures...some form of inner worthiness, I believe. Very few have passed successfully through it.
"Inner worthiness," Dorsull said thoughtfully. Scale it, now he was remembering something Marianis had shown him once, the thirty-six completions--or thirty-five? No, thirty-six... "Green is strength, resolution, calm."
Funny. Him, quoting something from a book like it was actually useful, or even profound. Not that it was, of course.
Interesting, Reepyr said, not releasing his hand. The Prophet must've been having a bad influence on him.
"Speaking of influences," he said, not paying any attention to Reepyr's confusion (good, the thought thing didn't extend to him; it felt like he'd been connected up practically everywhere), "green's one of my secondaries. What're yours?"
I do not know them; I was only chosen for orange.
"Well," said Dorsull as they advanced to the Door, "I guess we'll just have to hope."
"Hello there!" he called. "We're trying to be strong and resolute and save our friends! In calmness, too!"
Hightide came up with the ramming gear, his draconium energy putting power to it. Dorsull concentrated, trying to bring out the green influence in himself. "Please let us in--we're pretty strong, and we..."
He sounded stupid, he thought, and trailed off. "Open the door!"
He knocked on it once, hard; and then, to his shock, it opened.
"Go quickly," Reepyr said to him, hastening in front of him; the heavy halves of it were already beginning to close again, and Hightide's tail was almost caught as it shut behind them.
Before them was a lake. A vast lake, at the other end of it darkness; probably contained a lot of light blue draconium as well as water, Dorsull thought, considering its luminescent sheen.
Hightide knew what to do almost instinctively, and wanted to do it immediately; Dorsull fired out penning gear to the other two as the dragon nosed his way in front of them.
"Hold on!" he yelled to Reepyr, and Hightide's thrusters and sledding gear activated almost immediately.
They slid across the surface of the waves, reverse-mag against the draconium in the water keeping them afloat; tougher than the All Terrain's boarding segment, with the extra weight, but this was something Dorsull definitely knew how to do.
They skidded to a halt at the other end, and looked up.
Nothing there. A bare cave wall, the solid ground on which they had come to a halt--but nothing else, nothing like a secret storehouse with everything they needed to halt the turquoise's deadly effects.
Reepyr climbed down from Debra, and carefully felt down the wall, patting down sections of it and carefully measuring it with his jakk-stick; he didn't seem to be finding any secret passages, and Dorsull sighed.
Had they come all this way for nothing
And yet there was something. Some kind of bone-spark, a hint from Hightide...
"Reepyr? You should probably get back here..."
The dragons were still bound to one another in the tandem gear; he heard them both take a breath, and followed suit. Orange light pulled Reepyr back to Debra's back, and then Hightide leaped into the water.
Dorsull activated his helmet's seal, trapping in some air with him; there was a tunnel below the lake, and Hightide was headed straight for it.
They plunged into the darkness, still under water. The tunnel was filled with debris; Dorsull felt himself losing air as they bashed their way past it. They could turn back, try to struggle to return to the surface--but that was too far away now too, and they needed to get through--
He felt Reepyr flopping down onto his shoulders; they needed to get out, and fast. He held onto the man as Hightide pressed forwards, about to pass out himself as he held the air in his lungs.
Hightide, please...
They were...united, in this, energies put together to press their way to their goal; mercifully, at last he could see something glistening above them, and felt Hightide's muscles tense as he pushed them off the bottom of the lake, leaping up and out of the water with the other dragon still bound to him.
Both dragons panted, shaking water from their scales; Dorsull placed Reepyr on the ground, bending over him to perform the standard Fish resuscitation procedures. He had to be all right, he had to...
He coughed at last, water spewing from his mouth, and Dorsull stepped back, satisfied.
The Prophet's self-control had to be pretty impressive, Dorsull thought despite himself. He still wasn't saying a word, even after he'd nearly drowned.
Debra poked him with her chin, getting him to rise up again.
Thank you, he told Dorsull, holding his hand again.
"Thank Hightide," Dorsull said gruffly, and he did, bowing his head before the dragon.
"Now let's get a move on," said Dorsull, and it looked like Debra agreed, for she quickly hastened on.
Dragon heads in dark stone adorned the walls; he saw Reepyr gaze up at them, and they started running just as webbing began to fly from them.
Like a race track, Dorsull thought. This was something they knew how to do.
A sudden flare, below them; he and Hightide dodged around it, leaping over a turquoise blockade that sounded out a bell as they leaped over it. More projectiles from the walls; they dived forward, racing easily past.
He looked back to see Reepyr, starting to fall behind them.
"You don't race, do you?" he called, leaping over another flare from the ground. This was like the Elite track he trained on sometimes, the Shadowbane Run; maybe the ancient technologies on which that was based had been modelled after this one.
Reepyr shook his head.
"Here's a Racing 101 tip, then!" he called. "Sit low in the saddle--push your weight to one side--and swing back when your dragon curves!"
He flung himself forward, using balance gear to help them out as their speed increased; Reepyr followed behind, the orange dragon looking to be swaying precariously.
That was the thing with bipeds; fast and agile, but give them too many sharp curves and they started to run the risk of falling.
"Balance gear, Hightide," he muttered; they magged it to Debra, and she used it, running neck-and-neck with them.
Reepyr flashed him a quick grin, an incongruous sight on his sober face, and took his uninjured hand.
I am very grateful to you, he said, like molten coffeecream passed across Dorsull's skin.
He was almost stroking him.
"Any time--" Dorsull started to answer, but Reepyr quickly released him, surging ahead of them as a flare swept just to their left.
Dorsull leaned down, and sped up.
Haven't raced yet? Let's show Ôem how to do it, Hightide.
They alternated positions as they dodged the missiles, the orange slightly faster and Hightide more enduring; it was almost too soon as Hightide slid to a stop at the end of it, narrowly ahead.
"First place!" Dorsull couldn't help saying, and the Prophets both seemed to smile.
The tunnel ahead of them was bright turquoise, without any apparent traps; the walls greenly reflected them as they passed through, the colour of an emerald under water.
Two iron doors at the end, rusty in contrast to the rest of the tunnel, and scratched with what Dorsull assumed was some version of ancient Draconian.
He dismounted along with Reepyr, joining him in his investigation; it didn't seem to be written in the dragon-dialect Hightide had sensed before, and looked very old, like it was nothing more than random scratches.
Reepyr turned to him, seeming puzzled.
I do not understand how to open it, he said as he took Dorsull's hand. I can barely comprehend the words in their ancient script, let alone their meaning.
"So we can't go on?" Dorsull pushed at the doors, but they didn't seem to budge. "Let's ram them!"
Reepyr pointed to a section of the text with his free hand. No. That much I do understand. Death is promised to those who fail.
"We can still try, right?" Dorsull turned to Debra. "Pass me your balance gear, and Hightide, pass me a thruster. I've got an idea."
He carefully put them in place, and stood back, pulling Reepyr with him.
"Both of you, power up the thruster," he said to the dragons. "The balance gear should act as a lever to push open those doors."
But to use force here...
"Force works for me," Dorsull said. He was a racer, plain and simple; it'd suited him just fine until now. "Come on, let's get back. Just in case."
They stood some distance back next to the dragons, and watched as the thruster gear's force pushed the balance gear to pry open the doors. They saw them open, a chink, revealing darkness behind him; looking to Reepyr, Dorsull saw his lips open in silent gasp.
And then it was bright gold, like lightning slashing across the interior, and two golden orbs appeared in the ceiling just above the doors. They swivelled, for an instant, facing down on the balance-and-thruster arrangement; and then gold erupted from them, and both gears melted away in an instant.
Dorsull took in a deep breath. "Well," he said. "Just as well we didn't try to mag-blast it...?"
Reepyr grabbed him.
Look, he said into Dorsull's neck, and they both stared at the changed doors.
Glistening gold. Nobody could hope to break through something made using that sort of power.
So the legends were true, Dorsull mused, thankfully to his hand again this time. Representatives of several colours joined to guard the ancient literature--including gold.
"Whatever," Dorsull said irritably.
And behold, a bonus. Reepyr made a sweeping gesture to the doors. I may now be able to read the writing.
He cautiously approached, studying the dragonet scratchings that seemed to Dorsull no more intelligible than before, and finally turned back, lips pursed.
Dorsull approached him, wanting to find out what was going on.
I can read it, I think, Reepyr told him. It is a password. Again, I think. Can you speak it aloud?
"Like you, alive, but with never a breath," Dorsull repeated. "As cold as something and shall be in death, with thirst of a colour and always to drink, I wear something mail with never a clink."
Thirst of a colour. It sounded even more ridiculous than most of what he'd heard at the creative writing competition.
The door stubbornly failed to open; he frowned. "And that is...Are the somethings meant to be there?"
I cannot translate them from the dialect, Reepyr explained. There is also a classification before Ôcolour'.
So it made slightly more sense. Thirst like a particular colour, maybe a particular draconium influence. Sounded like the Flares' propensity for glorious drunken parties, maybe, or the Eyes' occasional moments of surprising conservatism.
I think it is a riddle, Reepyr said. But what can be the answer?
Dorsull thought.
"So it's...cold," he said.
Reepyr shook his head; Dorsull recalled the something in that line.
"Or it could even be warm," he said. "Warm and thirsty."
Like Pyrrah's clawjuice-wine she brewed illicitly in the still in the Lava Caves. Magna Draconis, he could do with some of that now...
Reepyr paced up and down in front of the door, seeming very frustrated.
His department, Dorsull decided. Reepyr was the one who'd applied for the whole creative writing thing, and if he couldn't solve a riddle, then...
...well, then he'd just have to wait until he solved it.
And wait, until he was pacing around as keenly as Reepyr, albeit for different reasons. Hightide whined impatiently, while Debra relaxed, seeming to meditate.
Thirsty, either always warm or always cold, and has no breath. Also, wears mail.
"Pyrrah's clawjuice-wine," he said to the doors, annoyed. "The postdragon. The Dragon Booster. The..."
The eyes started to appear again. He gazed up, startled, and Reepyr dragged him to the ground, looking up at the still cross-hatched weaponry.
We must have a limited amount of guesses! Reepyr said into his neck, pinning him to the ground as he watched the ceiling nervously.
Well, the Dragon Booster could have fit it, he decided. Wore mail, might've been warm and thirsty all the time for all he knew...
The eyes seemed to be getting brighter, even though neither he nor Reepyr were saying anything. Dorsull saw the light begin to shine from them, the search commencing, exquisitely slowly.
I was wrong, Reepyr said wearily to him. A time limit. Not a guess limit. And it will sense us both.
"...Academy experts! Drunkards! Thieves! Spies!" Dorsull yelled desperately. "Tracking dragons! Hydrags! Immortal beings! Babies!"
It wasn't working.
You are the only one who can speak the answer; Debra will help you. Believe me, this is the only way.
He felt Reepyr pressing the button into his hands, and sat up, confused, as he saw the Prophet running towards the eyes, holding himself under them.
A fool--they'll sense him-- he thought, shattered. The sensors had discovered the gear before; they'd fixate on him and kill him and then...
Dragon Fish didn't do that, Dorsull knew. He rushed to stand beside Reepyr, putting an arm around him, not because it was the most practical thing he'd ever done but because it wasn't right to let someone do this for you and anyway without the Prophet he didn't stand a chance of getting out of here. And hell, maybe the ancient technology would reward them for courage.
"Fool!" Reepyr actually yelled, pushing him away; the sound hit the doors in a wave that Dorsull felt. Horror spread across his face.
They'd die...
Dorsull pinned him to the ground, shielding him.
Dragon Fish didn't leave someone to die--thirsty water--always cold--no breath--oh scales--mail--scales--
"Fish!" Dorsull screamed. "It's fish, the answer is fish! Stop it--please..."
The doors slowly opened, and the dragons walked past their humans as though nothing had happened.
He still held Reepyr's communication device; he returned it to him, their hands touching.
That was very foolish, Reepyr said.
"Yeah, no big deal. I'll try saving you any time!"
It should have been me! Only a human could have spoken the word. He paused. But still, you were quite brave, he said reflectively. And I really must rebuke myself, for not realising the answer when you were right in front of me. Thank you.
"No probs." He paused in self-congratulation. "It felt...weird. Like puzzle pieces coming together in my brain. I mean, I don't do that literature stuff, but it still felt cool to get the answer to that thing..."
He saw the other dark door at the end of the passage, and blanched. Hightide and Debra looked at each other, and then the orange dragon roared; the door slid open, and at last they were inside the Lost Archives.
--
Dorsull's overriding impression was dust. Not an interesting place in the least, especially after all they'd been through. But still, he reminded himself, the cure had to be somewhere...
"You know where it is?" he asked, looking around. Nothing really to distinguish one scroll from the other, and the language they were in probably wasn't something he or Hightide'd understand...
Hightide magged one to him; he held it, noting that the holder seemed to be a blend of blue, green, red and black draconium. It was a very weak dragon who couldn't mag at least one of those; wise of the ancients to do it that way.
Of course, he didn't have a clue what it said, and he couldn't feel any clues from Hightide coming in via the link.
"You know what this means?" he asked, holding it out to Reepyr.
It is about various possible and not very probable infections resulting from claw-trimming.
"Oh. That's, um, interesting."
He saw Reepyr advance to the nearest shelf, pulling out another scroll and briefly studying it before replacing it. He couldn't be bothered to ask what it was; he just wanted to find the scroll and get out. Books made him twitchy.
No sign of anything specifically turquoise-coloured, more the pity. Not much sign of any scroll being that much different from the rest of them. He wondered how Reepyr was managing, sorting through the lot of them; not very well, by the looks of things.
A wrinkle between his eyes appeared as he continued to sort through the scrolls, Debra imitating him on the opposite end of the room in a sort of relay with Hightide, magging the scrolls she wanted and then letting him replace them while she went onto the next one.
He tired of waiting, and approached Reepyr. "What's the one you've got now?" he asked, pulling the man's hand away from the shelves. The scroll included illustrations, from the brief glimpse he got as Reepyr rolled it back up quickly.
It features the, ah, certain adventures of a Red dragon in pre-war days.
"Certain adventures?" Dorsull raised an eyebrow; he'd spent more than a little time around the breeding stables of Mid City as a kid. "So would that be the sort of adventures you probably should've let Debra read instead?"
Debra raised her head, and magged the scroll to her; he saw her eyes moving across it, her tail flickering happily.
Dorsull shook his head. "So if the dragon porn's over here, and I got the claw infections back there..." He stopped. You found books by author's names, didn't you? Something like that. "Didja get who wrote them?"
Yes, but it is not filed that way, said Reepyr, moving onto the next shelf. Nor by the subject organization that we Prophets use.
That made more sense than author, Dorsull supposed. Find all the books about one thing in one place, although it wouldn't work so well if they were about more than one thing. You learned something new every day.
Dorsull plucked another one from his shelf, and threw it from him as fire leaped out from it.
He sighed. Traps hadn't ended, then.
And this one contains five great Words of Power, Reepyr remarked conversationally, tracing iridescent script that changed colour on the page. Were I to speak them aloud, perhaps I would end the universe. Or create a single egg anew from nothing.
"Words again." Dorsull sighed. Pretty, but you didn't really...
"Ehiwath?" he said, trying to make out the ancient Draconian on the printed page.
The scroll turned to ashes in Reepyr's hands as he flung it from himself, and shook his head, only slightly ruefully.
"Hey. Something like that, it's not so bad to get rid of it, right?" Dorsull pulled another scroll from the shelves. "This one's got red writing."
The motto of the famed Fire Booster, above a short text written by herself, Reepyr said, his hand over Dorsull's as he read it over his shoulder. K'lessa terim, no hetaira, tuviel della reyes...
Sounded almost pretty, across his skin like that.
"What does it do?"
It is a collection of sayings. Those who oppose me shall burn. I am flame, unconfined, and to stand for freedom means I must fight...
Not so poetic, in ordinary words. And yet powerful for all that, a remnant of a legendary warrior; Dorsull shivered despite himself.
And something more pleasant, Reepyr mouthed, showing him a scroll written in elegant light blue, calligraphy glistening as though the ink was still wet after all those years. Meditation exercises--to the peace, to the calm, to the thrill of the sea, to be in pearl, in coral, in wave and free...
"Not bad," Dorsull said. Actually good, maybe, if you were a judge of that sort of thing. Which he wasn't.
"So, a red powerful scroll, a light blue one near it...where's Turquoise?"
I have not found it yet, I am afraid.
Dorsull took a deep breath. "If I was a powerful turquoise scroll who could undo the gem's effects, I'd put myself..." With other powerful scrolls? Hidden somewhere?
He sighed.
"Does it say who wrote the light blue one?" Dorsull asked.
A Chancellor of the Light Blue Empire, Akbar Cthonis. One of those who helped the Dragon Booster end the fight, Reepyr replied.
"So where was the Turquoise Gem in the war anyway?"
The Turquoise Gem was created before the war. It was designed as a weapon against us, the Prophets.
"To...silence your dragons?" He glanced over to Debra, who was reading through more of the scrolls; she nodded.
We stole the scroll which commanded it, and set it aside here.
Dorsull frowned. It seemed like there was a connection, just below the surface...
"Dragon porn on the end, claw infections down near the door, powerful war scrolls here," he said.
Reepyr nodded abruptly, studying his next scroll.
"I suppose...if the scroll was taken pre-war, maybe it's nearer the dragon porn than all these ones over here?" he asked, not expecting a reply. This was stupid, and boring, and he knew nothing about library sorting...
Reepyr grabbing his arm again, his mouth on his wrist.
That may be it! Sorted by date, by the recency of information more than subject matter, clearly this was not big enough to be considered a proper ancient library...
Dorsull glanced around; it looked more than big enough for him. Still, he wasn't going to complain about apparently getting something right for a change.
Reepyr dashed over to the shelves, looking for all the world like a hyperexcited tracking-dragon. He pulled out scroll by scroll, looking through them and discarding them on the floor--
--and then, at last, one with a turquoise-edged holder. He advanced slowly back to Dorsull, holding it out to him.
"You're the one with the speech powers," Dorsull said. "You read it."
Together, Reepyr told him, his mouth to Dorsull's cheek, and as Reepyr read the words Dorsull echoed them, shaping his mouth around the ancient Draconian as best he could.
Hetairan vociferand, lessan tunis, chartan medore...
Free the voices, let them sing, take away the poison...
He felt surrounded by light, almost tangible in its bright turquoise, though really there was no source for it in the room that he could tell. The scrolls whispered to each other, like they were sharing secrets; and the dragons looked on with amusement, perhaps.
"Marianis?"
He flicked open his comm; surely talking with her would stop some of the strangeness.
"I think we fixed it. Can you speak now?"
"Yes--" she whispered. "Yes! You did it!" she cheered. "Well done, Dorsull!"
"I had help," Dorsull answered, looking up at Reepyr, at Hightide and Debra.
Reepyr smiled. "I thank you, Dorsull of the Dragon Fish," he said, and half-bowed to him; Dorsull, taken aback, returned the gesture.
"I'm still not into reading and stuff," he said. "You handled most of it, really."
Reepyr took his hand thoughtfully, like he was going to read his palm or something, and then gasped. "Your hand was crushed," he said. "I am sorry I--"
"It'll heal," Dorsull said gruffly. "It's okay."
"Again, I am sorry. You have shown yourself courageous and intelligent," said Reepyr, leaning towards him. "Like the hidden tigerclaw dragon, to learn and discover..."
"You haven't converted me yet--" Dorsull began, intending to express that he didn't want to repeat this experience of literature close-up, when Reepyr kissed him.
He stopped moving, like some ancient scroll had activated again, stunning him with coral gear. Reepyr kissed like he spoke: velvety-gliding, as though he poured old wine from his lips.
Dorsull stepped back. "What was that for?" he asked, which under the circumstances was certainly a reasonable question.
Reepyr looked blank. "You did the same to me, when you saved me. I thought you..."
It took Dorsull a moment. "Oh, that. I've done it with almost everyone else in my Crew."
"I have no particular objections to that," Reepyr said, still a little blankly.
"It's standard resuscitation practice," Dorsull explained. "It's a medical procedure, for Drakkus' sake, and--but--"
He paused.
"But I wouldn't mind hearing some more of your poetry," he concluded. "Just as we wait Ôtill our mag-energy builds up again so we can get back to the service. You know, just passing the time."
Reepyr shrugged, and seated himself across from Dorsull with his legs folded over each other.
"In distant spaces, through whirlpools of light, time's tearless timelessness gives into flight..."
Perhaps, Dorsull considered, he might just get into this.
Just.
--
Credits: Parm's competition story is based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac and Cyrano's own writings concerning space travel; the few lines of Embyrr's poetry are based on The Highwayman; and the riddle Dorsull solves appears to be folktale. The rest is, as far as I know, my own arrangements of words. Feedback appreciated!