James Maxey - Greatshadow

I followed the winding passageway long enough to get bored. Just as I decided to turn back I heard faint whispers ahead. I willed myself more swiftly along the corridor, in pursuit of the sound. The feeble, colorless spirit light gave way to a red glow. The dank tunnel air began to stink of smoke and rotten meat. I floated out of the narrow passage into a relatively large room, a rough circle twenty feet across, with a ceiling high enough that I was able to stand up straight again, assuming standing means anything when your feet can’t actually touch the floor.

A dozen pygmies were gathered near a jagged crack in the floor, casting long shadows from a dull red glow. Lava bubbled at the bottom of the crack. A shaman dressed in feathers was tossing sticks into the hole, where they exploded into bright flares. The smoke had the sweetness of eucalyptus.

They pygmies jabbered excitedly; I think they were discussing the patterns of the smoke, reading them for omens. My lava-pygmy vocabulary wasn’t all it could be. The only phrase I ever heard directly from lava-pygmies was “Yik! Yik! Yik!” which loosely translates as, “It’s a long-man! Kill him!” Still, as best as I could piece together, the shaman was telling the men that the fire-giver had once again blessed them. The pygmies were standing shoulder to shoulder in a circle, looking down at something other than the smoking lava. I peered over the short wall they created and gasped.

A dragon lay before them.

Unlike the beasts that had attacked Commonground, there was no question this creature was flesh and blood. It was quite dead; its burst belly revealed entrails writhing with white maggots. The pygmies leaned down and began cutting into the scaly hide with obsidian knives. I’d used these blades before. They didn’t hold an edge well, but when they were fresh, there wasn’t anything sharper.

The pygmies peeled the flesh away from the skull. I winced as I saw that the left half of the skull was bashed in. That would certainly hurt its market value.

In size, the dragon wasn’t much bigger than a goat. Its leathery wings had already been hacked off and were folded up along the edges of the lava pit. The snout had a bony horn similar to ones that baby lizards have to help chop themselves free of their eggshells.

Off to one side, a team of three shamans dressed in parrot feathers were scraping bright red scales from the hide into a large stone bowl. One of them grabbed a stone pestle and started grinding up the jewel-like scales. All three men spit frequently into the bowl, until it turned into a dark orange paste.

I’d always wondered what lava-pygmies used to dye their skins. Mystery solved.

Sadly, the dragon was decayed well past the stage where it had anything that could be called blood. I remembered my brief return to corporeality when Infidel had hacked into the dragon in Commonground, and my ability to touch Ivory Blade’s ghost blood. What would happen if I could put my hands onto some fresh dragon blood?

Hoping that Relic might have some insight on the matter, I surrendered to the ever-present tug of the bone-handled knife. A second later, I shot out into bright sunlight and hot, gusty winds, where the others still inched along the rugged path.

I flitted down to Relic. “I just saw a dragon. Not a flame drake like Reeker let loose, but an actual corpse that was probably alive as little as a week ago.”

Relic nodded. I see it in your mind.

“I thought all ordinary dragons were dead.”

And that is all you saw. A dead dragon.

“Yeah, but freshly dead. Well, not fresh, but recent.”

Relic didn’t respond as he kept hobbling along the path.

“If human blood can restore my ghostly body, could dragon blood bring me back to life?”

Relic shook his head.

“But when Infidel-”

Regaining corporeality isn’t the same as regaining life.

“I had a heartbeat. I was breathing. I was solid enough to get cut by the dragon’s scales. If it wasn’t exactly life, it was still better than what I’ve got right now.”

Relic dismissed my reasoning with a wave of his gnarled hand. Dragon blood possesses more life energy than human blood, but it is far more volatile. Human blood will dry on the knife, sustaining your phantom form indefinitely. Dragon blood will vaporize in seconds. The illusion of life will be powerful during those seconds, but it will be unsustainable.

“In theory, if I had a herd of dragons to stab, I might stay alive for a long time.”

Relic rolled his eyes.

“What’s wrong with this idea?” I asked. “That baby dragon can’t be the only one. It must have parents, uncles, aunts, cousins. I mean, what are the odds that I just happened to stumble on the very last one of its kind?”

I admire your reasoning, but it is deeply flawed. The dragon you saw had but one parent: Greatshadow.

“This wasn’t like the slag or fire dragons we’ve seen. It had entrails. It was meaty enough to rot.”

Judicious provided you with the solution to the puzzle.

I scratched my ethereal scalp. What was he talking about?

Greatshadow is among the more physical of the primal dragons. Just as he hungers for meat, he also still possesses sexual urges, and has the magical abilities needed to satisfy these instincts.

“You mean Grandfather wasn’t joking when he said that Greatshadow can make extra bodies with female aspects?”

Judicious also told you that the primal dragons pay for the vast scope of their powers with a loss of identity. The female bodies Greatshadow creates sometimes become so confused they believe themselves to be true dragons, separate from Greatshadow. They unconsciously use the magical energy that sustains them to shape their bodies further, to the point that mating with Greatshadow is capable of producing fertilized eggs.

“That is just disturbing.”

Greatshadow isn’t pleased by the consequences either. Some females are wily enough to conceal the eggs; once or twice a decade, an egg actually hatches, and a new dragon is born. Despite being born with a portion of Greatshadow’s own memory and intelligence due to their inherited telepathy, they never survive long. Greatshadow eventually discovers them and kills them. Lava-pygmy shamans harvest the remains.

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

He again tapped his forehead. Maybe he’d read the thoughts of lava-pygmies. For all I knew, he’d read the thoughts of Greatshadow himself.

He looked up the slope and thought to me, We are near. I smell it on the air.

He was right. In another mile we’d leave the worst of the cliffs behind and have a clear path along the relatively tame terrain leading to the Shattered Palace. It was still ten miles away, but once we were off these goat-tripping pathways, we’d make good progress.

I glanced back to Infidel, who’d fallen once more into her War Doll role. Her face was utterly blank as she inched along the narrow stone, the oversized pack balanced upon her shoulders. A single misstep and she’d be over the edge; it might be a mile before she stopped rolling. Of course, Tower would probably swoop in to save her.

“So… have you been keeping track of her thoughts? About Tower?”

Yes. Would you like to know her true feelings?

I stared at her for a long moment. When I’d been alive, I’d lacked the courage to ask about her feelings. Now, I was going to learn them in the most cowardly way possible.

I turned away from both Infidel and Relic. “Not yet,” I said.

And maybe never. Because, if there was even a sliver of hope that I might be briefly reunited with her, I wanted to be able to look into her eyes without shame.

We arrived at the Shattered Palace barely an hour from sunset. I hadn’t visited these ruins in years; they hadn’t gotten any less spooky in the intervening time. The entire area is surrounded by a stone wall that used to be sixty feet tall, but most of it has collapsed into overgrown mounds. A few lone towers still stand, leaning at precarious angles, the stones held together by their corsets of vines. Beyond this was the grand courtyard, a quarter-mile of barren, pitch-black stone rumored to be cursed. The fine ghost hairs of my arms rose as I followed Infidel across the ebony earth.