Since I can't seem to draw ANY BLOODY THING right now I'm going to sit down and try to bash out the Epilogue.
Of all the bloody times to hit a creative block, this has to be one of the worst. Maybe I just need sleep?
Except when I do sleep I'm having REALLY FUCKING WEIRD nightmares.
I'm blaming Dr.Who for those.
Are you my mummy?
D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D:
Hoop is finally here, Going to buy duct tape tomorrow so I can make it all purdy.
ON TO THE STORY. I have the Epilogue all done now. Cliffhangers are fun, but I'm not sure if it comes out strong or cheesy.
Ugh, strong cheese?
Refresh your memory. . .
Chapter Twelve
News of what had
been seen in the black glass mirror spread quickly amongst the surviving
dragons, trapped inside their Hibernation Chambers. The advance of the fighters
brought into the underground complex by the other races had been slowed to a
crawl. Some quick thinking dragons had begun to use the sand from the bed
platforms that had been sleeping on to form additional layers of protection
when blocking the doorways. It took the dwarves much longer to break through
this additional protection and was figured well worth paying the pain of the
cost o the magic to manipulate the sand. The dragons who began spell casting
knew by now that paying the cost of the magic was infinitely preferable to a
quick death by the poisoned arrows carried by the archers of the invading
forces.
Ideas for potential
escape routes were thrown around, but none of them were feasible and all the
dragons knew it. The Hibernation Chambers had been designed with no back doors,
no other ways to get in or out that would have to be hidden as well as the main
entrance. They had assumed that their volcanic home was impenetrable, and that
they would never have need for more than one way in or out. The only way to
escape would be to attempt to go through their attackers, and they knew that
trying to do that would be suicide.
Path was trying not
to give in to panic as she wrapped her head around the knowledge that she was
going to die in this stifling underground room. While she stood frozen solid in
panic Senth came barrelling into the chamber and ran straight into her side.
The Shadow Clan dragon’s normally supremely controlled hide was white and grey
with fear and grief and he was shaking. Path managed to unlock her frozen
muscles just enough to spread a wing over him to give what comfort the gesture
could. His sudden dash through the room of terror-stricken dragons had set off
a new wave of fear reactions that the one healer left in the chamber had to
deal with.
By now Evreth was huddled so deeply in between
her parents that she was nearly invisible. The young Sand Clan dragon showed
absolutely no interest in coming out from the only place where she felt even a
little bit safe to investigate the commotion, so she was spared the sight of
one of her calmest friends coming very close to losing it completely.
“Senth, what is it? What
is happening out there?” Path asked quietly, pitching her voice so low that not
even the extremely sharp ears of other dragons near them would be able to pick
up her words.
“My older brothers
decided that they were going to hibernate with some of their friends this year instead
of staying close to the family as is customary,” The Shadow Clan dragon said,
shuddering and trying to pull himself together long enough to relay his news.
“They and some others were in one of the foremost Hibernation Chambers. As soon
as my parents realised what was happening they tried to go to them, to protect
them or pull them out.” Senth crouched right down and froze with his wings
tight to his sides as his hide went a stark, unrelieved pale grey that would
have made him blend in perfectly with a pile of dirty snow. His voice became a thread
of a whisper that even Path struggled to pick up, with her head craned down
right next to his.
“They were too late
to save any of them,” Said the grief-stricken Shadow Clan dragon, “My brothers
were in the first room that the murderers broke in to. My parents fell to the
poisoned arrows when they tried to get through to recover them. They are all
gone.” Senth’s whispering voice broke on the last word.
Path’s hide went
dead white at this news, and she froze with her wing extended over her grieving
friend. This was one blow too many for the Cloud Clan dragon. She had lost half
of her family before she could even acknowledge the new relationship with them.
Her ears filled with a ringing noise that blocked out the sounds of battle and
scared dragons. She looked slowly around the hibernation chamber at her
remaining friends and family. The arguing Elders and Evreth’s parents all
looked as if they were miles away, even though they were still in the same room
as her. The Cloud Clan dragon felt a massive surge of energy rush through her
limbs, a combination of adrenaline and the magic she hardly ever called upon
making her feel even more removed and somehow burningly present at the same
time.
Everything around
the Cloud Clan dragon seemed to be coming from an ever increasing distance, and
the ringing noise swelled until it sounded like someone had put a massive bell
inside her head and then struck it. She watched the colours of fear, anxiety
and anger roll over the hides of the remaining members of the Council of Elders
as they continued their argument over how to best deal with the situation. Even
though she could not hear a word they were saying over the sound that filled
her head Path knew that the situation was beyond being solved by anything but
magic, and the price for such a solution would be incredibly steep.
How could the
invading army of the other races be stopped? Path wanted them out of the Dragon
City and as far away as possible. She wanted that horrible tunnel they had
carved into her home completely erased along with the hills formed of excavated
debris that marred the grasslands of the blasted plains outside the volcano
that held the Dragon City. As much as she wanted her friends back, as much as
she ached for the deaths of Senth’s family there was no known way to return the
dead to life; that was something that magic simply could not do. Right now all
that she wanted, all that the surviving dragons wanted was for the horror to
end.
Path looked slowly
around at the terrified dragons that had been sharing the Hibernation Chamber
with her, worried that a sudden movement would snap her out of this horror that
rendered her motionless and back into the kind of panic that would make her
break her neck in a futile escape attempt. The few survivors of the Council of
Elders continued their discussion, the angry red bands of colour chasing
themselves over their panic-blanched hides and made them look like a large
bouquet of strangely shaped poisonous flowers. Survivors huddled in terrified
groups, and those who had begun to panic and lost control lay slumped
gracelessly on sleeping platforms where they had been dragged after the healer
had knocked them out to keep them from harming themselves and sparking a greater
panic.
The Cloud Clan
dragon caught the healer’s gaze as the older dragon kept a careful watch on the
terrified survivors, looking for signs of anyone else who was beginning to give
in to terror. Path could see in the healer’s eyes that the other dragon knew
this was a lost cause, and that they would all be dying here unless some
miracle could be enacted like the one that had originally saved their race from
extinction during the Great Eruption.
Absurdly, one of the
legends of the sacrifice that saved her race and bound them to the cycle of
hibernation that had brought them to this impasse began to run through Path’s
mind in the gravelly old voice of her Mother’s Father. He had been an
accomplished storyteller and had travelled the world collecting new legends and
telling again ones he had memorised over the centuries. While the dead could
not be brought back to life, the willing sacrifice of a life could be used to
heal the earth of injuries. The power provided by this sacrifice allowed the
caster to cast incredibly strong spells, and was used only in the direst of
circumstances. As they were paying the ultimate cost for the use of the magic,
they were able to tap the greatest possible amount of magic for their casting.
The spells needed to
save dragon kind from extinction and repair the damage to the rest of the world
that had been caused by the Great Eruption had been so great that not even the
self-sacrifice of a third of the survivors had been enough to pay for it and
the remaining dragons had been forced to choose between accepting the burden of
the Millennial Hibernations and living in a slowly dying world.
There was no doubt
in Path’s mind that the greatly reduced Council of Elders was arguing over who
would be the ones to sacrifice them to extricate the Dragon City from its
current predicament. It was a condition of membership to the council that one
must be willing to lay down their lives to preserve the rest of their kind, all
of the rest of their kind, no matter how much they disagreed with or disliked
certain people or Clans. In this situation, the argument would likely be over how
best to deal with the situation and who had to stay and deal with the
aftermath.
What the Cloud Clan
dragon could not work out was how they had decided to go about their solution.
It was obvious to her that what they should do was win themselves some
breathing space by getting the invading force out of the city and sealing the tunnel they had painstakingly bored
through the side of the super volcano
that housed the dragons. It would be fairly simple to collapse the roof of the
structure, even with the superior roof-supports the dwarves used in their mines
there was only so much pressure they could withstand, and nothing created by
mundane methods could hold up to an assault by magic.
Magic surged
through Path, almost unnoticed as she contemplated the problem of removing the
invaders from her home without killing them. She wanted no more deaths, no more
reason for the other races to block their ears and shoot to kill whoever went
out to negotiate with them. The only solution that she could think of was to
get them out and away, and in trade all she could think of would be for some
dragons to volunteer to be displaced in order to have the physical locations of
all the invaders moved from inside the city to outside it again.
All across the room,
heads turned in her direction as if they had been pulled by strings. The force
that had been building inside the young Cloud Clan dragon had overflowed
without her conscious control and communicated the possibility of the spell and
its potential price to the beleaguered survivors in the Hibernation Chamber
with her. All they needed was volunteers, and the deed would be done. Their
remaining friends and family would be saved from inevitable death at the hands
of the soldiers they could hear banging away at the latest blockage of
magically created stone.
Bleached white and
despairing grey hides began to take on hints of colour as hope spread through
the room. Still, there was nobody was willing to be the first to volunteer.
Nobody wanted to seal themselves to paying a spell price that was so full of
unknowns. They survivors had already lost so much, they could not face losing
contact those few who had thus far survived the slaughter. When paying the
price for this spell there would be no control over their destination. They
could end up on the other side of the world, too far away to return to their
home easily if they even knew where they were when they were transported. They
could be relocated to a place so hot or so cold that they would die within
days. They could even end up at the bottom of the ocean or so high in the sky
there would be no air to support their wings for flight. Paying the price for
this spell to save their loved owns was taking the chance that it would end up
being a suicide mission.
A complex pattern of
black and white flowed over her hide as Path realised that if nobody came
forward, they would be doomed as surely as if they had not woken up at all. Slowly,
not believing what she was doing, she raised her wings towards the ceiling,
signalling that she would be willing to volunteer to be transported somewhere
else to pay the price of the spell to remove the invaders from the city. Unable
to watch to see if anyone else would join her, she closed her eyes and bowed
her head, letting her hide run riot with her emotional state as she gave up all
attempts to control it.
She felt motion
beside her as Senth stood up and moved closer, letting her feel the breeze that
he created as he raised his wings as he agreed to join her in unknown exile to
save their few surviving friends and family members. There was nobody left for
him here besides herself, Evreth and a scant handful of Spectrum Dancers. There
were few ties left to break because so many had already died at the hands of
the invading army.
Numb with shock at
her own action, Path’s hearing seemed to be trying to make up for her closed
eyes and she clearly heard isolated rustling noises throughout the unnaturally
silent Hibernation Chamber over the dull pounding noise of the invading army
trying to get past the thin stone barrier restraining them. Slowly, one by one,
other dragons volunteered their familiar lives and chose to face exile to save
those few of their loved ones who had so far survived the. The Cloud Clan
dragon had not been counting the number of volunteers, and she nearly collapsed
in disbelief when after an eternity of terror-numbed waiting with her shaking
wings upraised, it seemed like not even this would be enough for the spell to
save the dragons from extinction.
After a long pause
punctuated by the nerve-wracking sound of pickaxes thudding into their
protective barrier, a final rustle of wings was heard and then the entire world
was ripped away from Path. When her eyes flew open of their own accord she
couldn’t see anything but lightless black, and she was fairly sure her voice
and her hide screamed fear into the howling darkness the surrounded her as she
was ripped bodily from the Hibernation Chamber by the payment for the transportation
spell and hurled across incomprehensible distances into the unknown.
Thunder ripped
through the subterranean Hibernation Chambers as dragons dematerialised and air
rushed to fill the empty spaces that their bodies had left behind. The air
pressure dropped and dust showered into the room from the overtaxed ventilation
system as it sought to drag more air into the Hibernation Chambers. Evreth
burrowed deeper between her parents, convinced that this was the armies blowing
their way into the room to end them all.
When the dust
settled, the surviving dragons shook the ringing from their ears and took stock
of who had been left behind. Unbroken
silence filled the room, with survivors barely daring to breathe and
traumatised younglings terrified into frozen stillness, unable even to whimper
as their hearing slowly recovered from the noise. A little over two dozen
dragons appeared to be missing, judging from the spaces left in the room and
the looks of fresh horror or resigned sorrow on the faces of dragons that faced
the knowledge of yet more losses on top of those already endured that day. The
remaining leaders of the city gazed around the freshly decimated survivors of
the slaughter of the Hibernation Chambers, trying to take stock of who was left
to attempt the massive task of rebuilding their city and re-establishing
relations with the other nations of the world after this horror.
The major questions burning at the minds of
those few left in positions of authority were demands to know how and why all
of this had happened. The loss of some of their colleagues and yet more dragons
to pay the price of the spell that had saved them all from being slaughtered
was a cruel blow indeed to a species that had only recently, in their terms,
recovered from the destruction wrought by the Great Eruption that the rest of
the world had already forgotten.
For long minutes
absolute silence reigned in the Hibernation Chamber and no dragon so much as
twitched their skin, for fear that any movement would restart the fearful
sounds of picks on stone that had foretold their death moments before hand.
Slowly, disbelievingly, dragons began to move again. Hides grey with grief and
white with shock made the enormous underground chamber look as if it was filled
with animate marble statues as family groups re-sorted themselves and those
left orphaned and bereft of any familial ties were taken in by those nearest
them.
An elderly member of
the Shadow Clan moved carefully to the hastily sealed-over portal to the room
and manipulated a small section of the stone that blocked the archway into
transparency with a judicious application of magic. Through the window of
transparent rock the Clan Elder saw carnage that made him glad that the small
view space was blocked by his head. Almost miraculously, the room was
uninhabited except for the corpses of fallen dragons and the soldiers of the
other races that had snuck in to kill them in their sleep. With a heart torn between sorrow and relief,
he reversed the spell he had used to create his window in he stone and turned
to face the rest of the room, giving the all-clear with muted yellows and pale
blues flowing across his hide.
They had no idea
what had happened to those who had volunteered their lives to save them, but
now they had the chance to live long enough to find out.
An Andalusian-based pegasus. Woo. There is also an Arabian-based thing carrying a lantern that I do NOT want to try shading. It will fully melt my brain.
