That’s not the response you get when a predator wants to eat you, I knew. My training on the Plains had taught me that much. That was the kind of response that you get from a pack animal—between pack animals—I thought quickly. I had watched the wolves of the Plains do this gesture many times, staying as still and as quiet, downwind from their position to not alert them of my own hunting in their territory. This is how a pack animal communicates, and checks the other members of its family—
Its family of dragon-kind. I connected the strange behavior, and as soon as I had reached the conclusion it was like the puzzle blossomed open in my mind.
I could feel this dragon, just as I could feel Ymmen in my soul.
But the sensation that I was getting from this great wyrm—the constrained heat, the coiled power inside of every muscle and bone—was but a faint echo of what I could feel of Ymmen. There were no recognizable thoughts there that I could understand, apart from a vague sort of curiosity radiating from the creature.
But how can I feel you in my thoughts at all? I was astonished, and reached out towards it just as I would reach out towards Ymmen—
And suddenly, my mind was filled with dragon song…
Chapter 25
Joined by Fire
I was surrounded by fire and flames, tumult and death.
My mind was filled with the roars, shrieks, bellows, and hissing of dragon voices like a storm. It was so loud that it washed away everything else for me: The yellow dragon in front of me, the mercenary captain, injured Naroba—even Abioye, struggling from the sands.
I could no longer see anything apart from the hues of a bright fury; oranges and reds and yellows and scarlets. It felt as though I was in the middle of a bonfire, but one that was made up of the individual tongues of every dragon that existed—that had ever existed.
What was happening to me!?
But the flames did not burn or hurt me. It was like the time that Ymmen had apparently let me into his heart—his draconian, burning soul. I was consumed by the light and the flame, but not burned by it.
That wasn’t to say that it wasn’t dangerous, I instantly knew. The hundreds of dragon-hearts were moving around me and through me, until I wasn’t sure where I ended and they began. Or even if there was any place where ‘I’ was separate. Where ‘I’ was me.
The connection that I had been so amazed and enamored by—the feeling of Ymmen’s mind and mine nested together—now became a curse as I realized that I had to be connected to all of these voices, all of these dragons. There was no place where they stopped.
I wasn’t me. I was the dragon song, and the dragon fire…
“Little Sister…!” Ymmen’s voice, distant and muted in the clicks and roars and whistles of all of these other creatures—each one mingling with the other, their souls washing in and out of each other and joining together in some fundamental, primal way—was barely audible, unless I worked to pick it out amongst all the rest.
There was a place where ALL dragons are one. The realization shook me. Just as I and Ymmen were one thing, really—or we had become one thing. And if ‘I’ was another part of dragon-kind, then I was also a part of all dragon-kind, wasn’t I…?
“Rargh!” I heard an angered grunt of alarm, shock, and anger—but it wasn’t coming from the dragons in my mind; it was the sound of Nol Baggar in the cavern. I tried to force my eyes to see beyond this whirl of dragon-ness, but—
The realizations and revelations were unstoppable, and with each and every one they washed away a little bit more of what made me, me. I couldn’t stop it. Even one dragon was far stronger than I ever could be, and now that there were hundreds? Thousands?
“Little Sister—Nari!” It was Ymmen’s voice again, growing louder or closer in the storm of fire. As soon as I concentrated on it—the only recognizable voice in this sea of reptilian tongues—I immediately could get a glimpse of what was happening to him, up there high above the surface. Ymmen the Black was flying. He had launched himself (painfully) into the air, and as our ragtag army of Daza hunters, Masaka guards, and Red Hound mercenaries attempted to form into battle-groups—he had charged the mechanical dragons. Alone.
Of course, there were far too many of them for him to even slow down, let alone stop—
But Ymmen was flying through their number in the way that a Kite or some other hawk flew through a flock of lesser birds. He dashed past their outstretched talons and claws, he ducked and slipped away from their gnashing teeth and their lashing tails. And every time that he dove and spiraled through their flight, he struck out with his own claws, tail, and teeth.
Even in this heartbeat of time, I felt Ymmen swerving past two of the slower mechanical dragons and suddenly flipping in midair, in the middle of their number, to grapple one of the mechanical abominations that wore his kin’s skin and to death-roll with it for a couple of spinning revolutions. His great jaws savaged and clamped on the thing’s neck, and I felt the crunch of stolen scales underneath my teeth, and felt my jaw shake as it hit the hardened struts of iron and steel—
But then Ymmen was springing away, letting go of the now wounded mechanical dragon to spin past another arriving enemy, and—
“Ssss!” A hiss of pain shot through my bond partner as one of the many that faced him lashed out with claws that were just curving blades of sword-steel. Nothing had dulled their sharpened edge like the yellow dragon’s claws had been by the passage of centuries.
“Ach!” I felt the pain of the strike ripple down my belly, and once again I was lost in a sea of dragon-ness, as I wondered what I even was, if I could be Ymmen and myself at the same time—
“You are Fierce Nari of the Souda!” Ymmen’s voice was tight with pain as he swerved and struggled free from the marauding flock of mechanical dragons. As soon as he had risen from their clutch, I felt him wrap a part of his mind around mine as if he had folded his giant wings about me. Instantly, the other dragon voices, and the fire of their hearts, lessened as I was covered and surrounded by Ymmen in some way that I could not understand. All I knew was that Ymmen was holding me together. Or the me that was Narissea, anyway.
“Nari…!” I heard Naroba’s rising gasp of alarm, as I struggled to fight for who and what I was.
Yes. I am Narissea. I am not a dragon.
With every heartbeat that passed in his embrace, my sense of self solidified.
I am Nari, the Imanu’s daughter…
I am Daza, of the Plains…
I am Souda, Child of the Western Winds…
“And you are my heart-sister,” Ymmen informed me, and I knew that it was true. There was a part of me that was forever Ymmen’s, and vice versa. But what made him special and unique was that he wasn’t me, and it was just the same the other way around. A part of me might live inside dragon-kin…
But what made me, ME, was that I was THIS young woman, in THIS body, in THIS cavern…