The Past That Saves the Present

(Part 51 of Twilight’s Edge)
(Book 4 of the Fantasian Series)

The wind seemed to be alive atop the mountain ledge as Embyr and Venom landed, their footing sketchy at best atop the sandstone. Only through combined willpower did they manage to hold their ground, pushing past the natural gale surrounding them with a sense of duty and an aura of dedication that could be matched by few others – human or dragon.

Far below, Slithice had a much harder time ascending the rock face. Her tail hardly designed to grapple the relentless surface, her body devoid of the great leathery wings of her fellows, she was left to scratch and cling to the merciless natural barrier, buffeted continuously by the elements and fatigue alike.

When she finally neared the final ledge, she managed only to scramble over it with the help of both the black and green dragons. After a tremendous tug-of-war against the howling wind, all three collapsed safely in a crumpled heap atop the tan stone, their chests heaving and their breathing labored.

Of the trio, the Black Terror was the first to rise. Nostalgia toyed at the corners of her mind as she strode further into the tunnel entrance. Every crevice, every nook and cranny in the winding passageway into the mountain’s heart, brought back faint memories – recollections she scarcely realized she had retained during her brief visit to the Oracle. In a dream-like trance she started forward, a hand passing fondly along the tunnel’s wall; and it proved to be an enthrallment deep enough that she nearly trampled the hesitating Arthur Blade.

“Sorry,” she apologized, quickly returning to reality as a toe connected with her father-in-law. The soldier was quick to recover, however, and almost immediately returned to his feet and began to brush the sand from his tunic.

“Its blocked.” He explained, jamming a thumb towards the end of the passage. True to his word, a massive boulder had been wedged perfectly at the tunnel’s exit, seemingly to forever seal the Oracle’s tomb.

It was a chunk of solid rock no human could hope to move in a lifetime; but, fortunately, only one of the quartet was human.

“Venom!” Embyr called, verbally coaxing the green dragon from her prone position along the cliff. Quickly the Inner Councilman complied, rising and approaching her friend with an arched brow.

“Give me a hand.” The Black Terror insisted, nodding towards the boulder. The huntress nodded and, in perfect harmony, both women adopted mirroring crouches, their eyes trained on the natural barrier. In unison they charged forward, shoulders leveled at the rock’s middle; and, as one, they slammed into their target with force enough to tear Stonebridge’s keep from its foundations.

Dust and sand that had remained untouched for centuries cascaded down the stone like water; though the stone itself continued to block their path. It hadn’t been a useless offensive, however: all around the boulder was a thin layer of air, an unmistakable sign of progress etched into the mountain itself.

“Again!” Embyr insisted, massaging her shoulder as she resumed her former position. Though clearly wounded herself, the smaller dragoness complied; and, in harmony, both emerald and obsidian frames slammed into the blockage a second time.

The whole tunnel shook as the stone, weary and worn after centuries of silent vigil, collapsed. Tired themselves but empowered by victory, both dragons led the way into the darkness of the cave beyond – the gloom broken only by their shining eyes.

“What are we expecting to find in this place?” Arthur asked, fumbling about in the shadows as the four fanned out. Feeling what he surmised to be a pile of books, he steadily began to climb – awed by the extensiveness of the collection, and humbled by the task ahead of them.

“Anything about my past.” Embyr explained. The subject was uncomfortable – and, to at least a limited degree, she hoped that Arthur’s search would come up empty. Sterling had, of course, been forced to tell his parents about her true identity; nevertheless, he had kept the information to a need-to-know level. The fact that their son was essentially dating a dragon was dangerous enough without reminding them that she was actually something far, far worse – that, lurking just beneath her skin, was the potential to tear the very fabrics of creation asunder.

The soldier waited for her to elaborate; but, anxious and hesitant, she did not. In the end, it was not the black dragon that broke the silence but Slithice – her voice ringing through the cave with a simple but heartening “Ah-ha!”

There was a clutter as Venom pushed her way towards the naga, her claws scraping against both stone and parchment alike as she moved. At length her scratchy ruckus came to an end; and, a moment later, a great intake of breath shattered the temporary calm.

Sparks of flame licked at the darkness, spit from the huntress’s belly; and, as the blaze ended, the whole of the place was cast in the golden glow of torchlight. Thoroughly pleased, Slithice returned the discovered torch back in its rung; and, using the first’s light, Venom began to circle the cavern and light the other evenly spaced braziers and torches that ringed the ancient bastion of draconic knowledge.

True to their initial beliefs, the whole of the cave’s floor was covered in a sprawling mire of overturned scroll cases, half-opened books, and engraved tablets; yet it was not the printed word that first caught Arthur’s attention. His “mountain of books” was something far more sinister: the preserved skeleton of a dragon, seated in the same spot in which Embyr left her decades earlier. The dark had hidden the carcass; and, under its influence, the human had climbed nearly to the corpse’s chest.

Giving a startled yelp the swordsman fell back, bouncing off of bones repeatedly before crashing into a large pile of scrolls at the Oracle’s feet. He very quickly scrambled back from the ancient dragon, revulsion etched into his face and demeanor as he wiped madly at his clothing – as if attempting to remove any foul spirits that lingered there.

A living dragon was scary; a dead dragon, caught between the ravages of decay and lasting awe, was truly horrific.

“Oh… that’s where I left you.” Embyr grumbled. She approached the corpse, putting on a cheery grin as she draped an arm around its skeletal shoulders.

“I guess,” she reasoned “I really was your last prophecy, eh? And what do you know: everything you said actually came true! After all is said and done, I guess I owe you an apology.”

“Is that really necessary?” Arthur demanded – though he hardly seemed as tense. The dragon had succeeded in breaking the unease in the air; and, when the final syllable rolled towards her, it did so through a faint smile.

“No, it isn’t.” Venom assured both man and dragon, gesturing an arm to the extensive collection rotting around them.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do.” She reminded them. She ran a hand along one of the massive curtains adorning the wall, tapping a knuckle against both rock and fabric simultaneously with an air of irrevocable impatience.

“We’re expecting to spend no more than a week here.” She reminded them. “And we have a lot to cover in that time. I hope you three are in a reading mood.”

With that she stooped to a crouch, selecting one of the massive tomes lining the floor. She then dipped into a sitting position, reclining against the violet silk before cracking the volume open to the first page.

Slithice, similarly, curled around one of the burning braziers and set her claws around one of the nearby scrolls. Unrolling the cracked parchment, she started from the beginning and allowed her eyes to trail down the lengthy columns of text, her only outward sign of sentience the occasional nod or shake of her head as she encountered a particularly intriguing patch of information.

“You heard her.” Embyr mumbled down to Arthur, crossing her legs and selecting a dragon-sized book from amid a nearby pile. She chuckled, gesturing towards the title and shaking her head.

“It’s called ‘Into Darkness’. A good place for me to start, eh?”

Shrugging, the soldier pushed his way into the same pile of books and, from it, tugged a single, thin volume. Being as large as he was tall, it was certainly a daunting read; nevertheless, Arthur gradually forced the cover open and leafed to the first page.

Immediately his hopes for helping his son began to falter. The contents of the novel were gibberish: the symbols weren’t even recognizable, their use abandoned by any human people before recorded history began. Sinking to a defeated slump, Arthur was forced to accept the fact that he did not read draconic.

“Look,” Embyr suggested, eyeing her distraught father-in-law from over the rim of one page “I think I saw some human-sized books closer to the tunnel. Maybe try those?”

He nodded, forsaking the hopeless conundrum of his first novel to instead sift through the piles of its smaller fellows. At length, true to the black dragon’s word, one such volume man-sized novel presented itself to him; and, eagerly, he pried back the cover and set himself to reading.

It was not English, but he certainly recognized the lettering. Slowly, he identified the text as Eastern – the same tongue commonly used among the Eastern Empire’s various nations. He wasn’t fluent in the language; but the occasional word registered in his brain, eventually painting a simple picture as to the book’s message.

And so, slowly but steadily, he managed to pull his weight in the struggle to uncover Embyr’s past – and to make sense of her danger in the present.