BECMI Chapter 281 – An Appreciative Audience
The air split beside us, and an Amber great wyrm hurried out in all his crystalline, bearded, spiked magnificence. He charged ahead, into the soaring vault of Pearl’s entry corridor, looking around alertly as the chaotic swirl of energies ripped open again, and more dragons emerged behind him.
“Gin!” Sama said, smiling toothily, and I pouted as she laid down sixes and kings, discarded, and it was over.
We both deigned to look over as the great wyrms came ripping out of the chaotic swirling mists of the entry point, clearly having no problems getting here.
Four Ambers, glowing with internal heat in their wide crests, and here and there under their translucent honey-colored hides. Four Golds, shimmering metallic scales gleaming in bearded magnificence. Four Blues, horned and frilled and dancing with voltage, ready for a fight.
And behind them, a dragon that towered over them all. The heads of the Blues reached his shoulders, and his three heads rose well above all of them: one bearded, one horned, one crested like a shield. His hide was a mixture of sparkling prismatic lights interwoven with starfields and nebulae, a slowly-changing swirl of all lights and colors out of which darkness slowly grew as the colors converged, while the darkness was falling away as stars ignited and filled in the darker hues.
The great wyrms paused, their tails noticeably twitching uncertainly as they looked around.
The first amber up front seemed quite hesitant as he looked around warily. “This… is Pearl’s lair?” he asked uncertainly.
The bright and energetic, rather domineering crystals and metals of this place looked… bent. Drained. Erratic. Agitated and… despondent.
Sama and I watched them from under my Veil. Very pointedly, the horned head of the massive dragon at the back bent slightly to look directly at us, to which neither of us reacted a whit, and Sama tossed back her drink.
There were six bottles stacked up to the side, so it was plain we’d been here a while.
The Great One, Lord of All Dragons, Immortal Monarch of Wyrms, decided that we weren’t worth bothering with. “Continue!” his bearded head, dripping what looked to be glittering starlight, stated, and the Great Wyrms continued on through the sculpted tunnels that had once glittered with the raw magnificence and domineering primal energies of dragonkind.
Now they looked, ah, rather uncomfortable to look at.
We stopped looking at them, being smarter than that. Sama did draw Tremble and leave him floating in the air, a Sound Bubble ready to form around us, too.
“They are checking out the lairs of the dead wyrms,” she said as I dealt the hand, determined to avenge myself! We’d done a fantastic job of clearing those lairs out, of course. “They are scampering all over the place.” We could hear them calling back and forth, the amber dragons particularly miffed at realizing the five ambers in her entourage were now also all dead, by the smell of the blood and the amount spilled.
“I believe they have reached the door.” Cards were flashing quickly as we sped through the game on idle, barely paying attention. “Tremble.”
The Sword quickly brought up his Sound Bubble.
Sama had one toe gingerly on the ground. “They just broke the Silence and Sound Bubble on the door,” I informed her, and she snatched her toe off the ground, her grimace only slightly exaggerated.
I noted the crystals of the entryway dimming and surging in some very unpleasant patterns, and turned my chair further away.
“What do you think will happen? Gin!” I told her, and she hissed as sevens and discard plopped down, one turn ahead of her.
“You shall know my vengeance!” she proclaimed with a firm fist-shake at me. “Ah, he felt them coming. Endure’s Sound Bubble is off, for sure.”
I made a face. “Ewww.” She topped off our glasses, praise be to Binging, and we sat back to not enjoy the show. “Gods, the reflections are unsettling!” I said as I clamped my eyes shut. I reached out and tapped Dread to the ground, glad I didn’t have tremblesense. “Oh, my, he’s using Warlord Voice. I think the dragons are roaring, and it’s not doing them any good.” I could feel the stone vibrating, but that’s all I wanted to feel or hear.
Sama had her golden hair wadded up and in her ears, kind of curled up in a ball and trying desperately not to hear or sense anything, wrapping her Trembling Domain in her Vajra and making herself as blind and deaf as possible.
The wave of air pressure warned me first, and I popped one eye open as the first Blue great wyrm came stampeding back at top speed, a crazed look in its eyes as it hurtled into the chaotic void there, the stench of something unclean following it as the ozone-heavy wind swirled it around us.
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“It puked and shit itself,” Sama informed me, and then the second great wyrm came screaming by, a gold this time, followed by a third, a fourth…
A dozen great wyrms fled shrieking down the length of the tunnel, plunged into the wall of sparkling chaotic mist, and were gone, much more quickly than they’d come.
Their master came more sedately, but his heads were remarkably expressive and looked incredibly nauseated as he very carefully maintained decorum. This time, all three heads bent to look at us sitting there in our Disk-chairs off to the side.
Sama waved at Tremble, and the Sound Bubble exploded in size. I waved up another Disk, molding it into a chair for him. “Come have a seat, Elder,” Sama motioned him in, neither of us missing the slight tremble of relief as the Sound Bubble covered two of his heads, and the third one rather urgently zipped over to stick itself inside it.
One set of eyes black starfields. One set of eyes burning suns. One set of eyes glowing moons. They all looked at us, considered us, and then murmured a Word.
Whooo, sweet Word! I could appreciate it like few others. Vocal equivalent of my better Runes!
His form shrank and flowed together into the joining of his heads, clothes spinning themselves out of nowhere, along with a golden crown on very dark hair, and what looked to be a half-dragon human, pointy ears and all, with a third pearly eye on his forehead under his simple yet elegant crown, settled perfectly onto the proffered Disk.
“Sama Rantha pays respects to Elder The Great One,” she said, cupping her hands and bowing to him with sincere respect.
“Edgina Bludevich-Jubvanyl pays respects to Elder The Great One,” I also said, repeating the gesture.
Sama then pulled out something strong, a mug to go with it, and poured the former into the latter, before sliding it across the Shield-table to the Ruler of All Dragons seated there. “For the headache, elder,” she said.
He looked at her, his third eye at me, then he reached forward, grabbed the mug, and tossed back the drink.
I watched his hand tremble as he drank the whole thing down, slammed it on the table, and took a deep shuddering breath. White foam filled his mouth, burned off, filled it again, corroded away, filled it again, froze solid and fell apart, filled it again, crackled and dissolved in lightning, filled it again, and boiled away in starlight.
We sat there and watched while he closed all three eyes, then his mouth, and chewed on his thoughts for a moment.
“Thank you, the headache is better, but it has not gone away.” His voice was somber, strained, deep, and rather magnificent in all the right ways. Definitely wouldn’t be forgetting it anytime soon!
“I have been informed that wiping the memory of it is the only way to truly forget it,” Sama said kindly, and promptly emptied the rest of the bottle into the mug for him.
He looked at her, at it, closed all his eyes, and threw it back one more time.
“He sang The Overture to Light and Darkness, from the Gallioppe Opera,” the Great One coughed after setting down the mug and pushing it away this time, kind of wheezing. “I loved that song,” he admitted, his borrowed face twisting. “I, I don’t think I could stand to listen to it again, even if I forget what I just heard...”
Both of us nodded together. “My husband Can’t Sing,” Sama said consolingly, sitting back and kicking her legs up on my impromptu Hexar table. “And he’s horribly, awesomely good at it. Thinks he’s giving a performance to impress the gods, and the reality of it…” she shuddered, and didn’t need to exaggerate the motion. “If you’re artistic, and you’ve got good hearing, it’s even worse. Normal mortals either run away or go berserk and try to kill him. Dragons, I imagine every primal bone in your body shrieked as you appreciated just how wrong that was on so many levels, until you just couldn’t take it anymore?”
He sighed heavily, raising crystal-taloned hands to his temples. “That… is a good description,” he admitted to us. “Will you tell me what happened here? Why is he Singing like that… and to a mechanical songbird, of all things?”
“Surely you recognized Suurivayina’s Nightingale.” He nodded to her, doubtless a little test to see if she had. “He’s serenading it. I imagine it’s looking a little peaked right now, trying to weave songs of immortal glory and beauty and running into… that.” She pulled another bottle out of her vest, popped the cork with a thumb, and tossed a shot back.
Blue flames ejected from her nose for a solid minute, while the Great One and I just watched.
Then she flicked out a tumbler, poured a shot, and slid it towards the Great One.
He didn’t hesitate to grab it, tossing it back, then tilting back to let stars bubble and boil out of his nose.
Sama was making a drinking buddy!
“It is like burning regret,” he murmured, his third eye opening and looking at me inquiringly. I held up my hands to keep it away promptly.
“It’s based on an elven wine. Just… has a lot more kick to it. Elves would probably just burn,” Sama admitted, to which I didn’t deny.
“You are the ones behind the death of Pearl?” he asked, his voice surprisingly neutral about the matter.
“Yes,” I replied, because Sama was again blowing blue smoke out her nose from the drink. “Pearl engaged in rampant weather modification that is going to bring a killer winter season down all across our lands. She also ordered the King of the Dragonfangs to attack us, which resulted in the deaths of 610 dragons of varying ages and sizes, and basically the collapse of his Kingdom, all done with the intent of striking against the human nation we are part of.
“She was lured into this action by Gulguz, who leveraged the power of the conjoined draconic magic to start the Wolf Winter. His Jotun servants will be using the opportunity to strike at mortal settlements across the north of Eislas, and likely at Aetla, the strongest city there.”
“We killed her, tracked back to her lair, killed her entourage, claimed their hoards, and were working on clearing her own hoard of the many magical traps and Curses ladled upon it when we stumbled across the Nightingale.
“Commander Briggs will subdue it properly, and we will finish clearing her hoard out so you can prepare the place for the next Pearl.”
His third eye looked at me as black smoke carrying moon motes floated up out of his nose. I just waited there calmly.
“If you are mortals, you are remarkably calm about all of this,” the elder dragon not-a-god, nopers, commented after a minute.
“Sometime you eat the mortals, sometimes the mortals eat you,” Sama just sniffed. “She thought she was untouchable, right up until she got touched and found out otherwise. Not apologizing, Elder. She did her job right, if unwisely, and it finally came home to bite her in the arse.”