One of the suggested reasons behind birds flying in the classic “V” formation is that it provides significant uplift for the bird behind them, as well as their own line of sight. \u00a0Dragons don’t pump their wings like birds, I learned. \u00a0The blades of my back cut through air and occasionally I felt the build up of a kind of static electricity. \u00a0Movement forward was not related to any of the forces I’d learned as relevant to flight, like propulsive thrust. \u00a0I believed that maybe the shock was some kind of buoyancy factor, but I didn’t know. \u00a0I now had anecdotal experience pushing my theory that the Lung likely used qi energy for flight, following leys for speed, and they probably had crazy power-ups like a video game.<\/p>\n
In fact, my tail didn’t have anything like a vertical stabilizer on it, and I didn’t even tilt for some directional purposes. \u00a0Not that any of it was really under my control. \u00a0I understand that the theory of “alpha” domination is flawed, but I don’t think they used Dragons for their observations. \u00a0I suppose Peredur could have done some kind of compelling on me as well as the transformation.\u00a0 All I knew is that if he pulled some kind of line like, “Wow, that’s the least talking you’ve done around me since we’ve met,” I was going to punch him the first chance I got.\u00a0 If it was magical compulsion, it certainly wasn’t affecting my brain.<\/p>\n
You know, he still hadn’t answered the question.\u00a0 It wasn’t that I was hung up on a knock or anything, just that I was trying to define my reality.\u00a0 Did I hear him announce his presence with a clap or a gentle rapping on my outside door, or does there really exist an aura of Beyond around powerful creatures that starts to make reality hazy?\u00a0 Honestly, it’s the tiny little things that begin to go wacky first, and I was going to hold on to a tiny little thing in hopes it had some kind of mission statement that would impress the really weird stuff and keep that weird stuff from happening. \u00a0You know, like being a dragon, and currently speeding above the earth at night due to electrical impulses not unlike the signals that drive muscles.\u00a0 Yeah, I was going to try some kind of analogy.\u00a0 I don’t think that one worked.<\/p>\n
I have noted before how easy it is to think of the eyes as the porthole one’s brain looks out from the body, and to forget the system that is the body is actually as connected.\u00a0 It’s why I remember to eat breakfast; I need to feed my brain.\u00a0 Exercise, even, although I hadn’t been doing too much of that.\u00a0 If the dragon I was had a potbelly, I was to blame.\u00a0 Of course, it wasn’t even that I was a dragon. I mean, I was more than a passive observer in a dragon body, but it wasn’t really my body. I didn’t have the signals that taught me how to use my tail, or wings, or whatever bizarre organ processes this kind of flight.\u00a0 I did, but I was not what I did, if that made any sense.<\/p>\n
The world looks different from above.\u00a0 I happen to look up more than people usually do because, one, I’m a gamer and there might be lurkers above, and two, because I read once that people don’t.\u00a0 I have never caught a ninja hanging out in the corner near two door frames.\u00a0 I only find questionable things, like bugs, or why the doctor’s office had funny posters taped to the ceilings.\u00a0 I’m not saying womens’ health is icky. I’m saying that speculums look very uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
That’s different than looking down. \u00a0I’ve done it on airplanes, of course, watched it go from normal to abstract and back again for landing. \u00a0Too much time is spent above clouds or deserts, or that just might be why I was flying instead of driving. \u00a0I don’t count it as part of my acrophobia, which I only have in the curious way of not being bothered by heights, but being almost paranoid about the final splat of falling. \u00a0Things start to make less sense from a different perspective. \u00a0You could go the whole, “They are ants,” idea, but you could also go with the interconnectedness of seeing Earth from space, its fragility and its strength.<\/p>\n
If we were above Earth, anyway. \u00a0I was beginning to doubt it, even with the hypersensitivity of dragon eyes. \u00a0I could see a moth fluttering one second, and then understand the roots of a mountain, and the way it strained and shifted to grow in the areas between the great plates of the world.\u00a0 I saw life and light, and I didn’t recognize any landmarks, and I didn’t know how to gauge how fast we were going.\u00a0 I didn’t think this magic had much to do with calculus.<\/p>\n
The sounds of the night sky were too loud, the wind only one of the songs in the cacophony.<\/p>\n
And then there were the things up in the heavens, Horatio. \u00a0Oh, the things you don’t know, and writers like Lovecraft apparently did. I was never, ever, going to be able to look up at the stars again and say, “How beautiful.” \u00a0It would make me want to wear a hat. \u00a0(Not a badger, though. \u00a0Badgers on peoples’ heads is bad business. \u00a0Badger on the brain, man. \u00a0They burrow in and are too stubborn to dislodge easily.) \u00a0Mists and tendrils of things, thoughts and dreams ephemeral but physical, some with proto-sentience, some \u00a0malevolent, most apathetic of the little things scurrying below. \u00a0As we phased in and out of reality skimming the surface of the Beyond I mostly avoided any touch of them, but our skies are as full as our seas and stone.<\/p>\n
We were beginning to come to a landing, I guessed, or at least I felt we were slowing, and I saw beneath us a great deal of dark water, the waves a hundred-thousand phosphorescent fillips, more beautiful than the stars, full of life and movement.\u00a0 For a moment, I felt a rush of inhumanity, a sinking understanding that I understood Rayya and Nen, with the sea a cradle, a womb of possibilities, and one from which monsters could be born.\u00a0 It wasn’t a human thought. It was too big to be human.\u00a0 Too much poetry and horror, and maybe that was what was human about it.\u00a0 I suspected we came from the shallows, not the depths.<\/p>\n
We touched down into the tide, and my scales went to skin, and my wings to a shirt, and my claws into shoes, which immediately got wet.\u00a0 It became dark, and the transformation twisted me, and ripped the seeming away like wax to hair.\u00a0 I fell into the water, a cold shock, effervescent and yet cloying.\u00a0 The water smelled like rose oil for a moment, and then like salt, as if it had been caught between wardrobe changes and decided to wear something more comfortable.\u00a0 I sneezed involuntarily a few times, and then sat back, soaking wet and cold and with an arthritic ache in the water.<\/p>\n
Smoke and lightning and fire swirled into a pillar and then Peredur was there, on the sand, in front of me.<\/p>\n
I coughed trying to spit on his shoes.\u00a0 I don’t believe in so-called ‘instant karma,’ but it probably did suit, given the situation.\u00a0 I sneezed again, and my eyesight finally took into account the pale moonlight and lack of other, distracting signs of civilization.<\/p>\n
The lion roared.<\/p>\n
I jumped out of the water, and up towards Peredur.\u00a0 It roared again, and I heard the Gate, a battering of water against the wall, the lion’s call, the sulphur of the angel’s fall, the mushroom squish of rotten pall… I was not moved to rhyme, the Gate was lashing out at me, aware of my presence.\u00a0 I stood next to Peredur, figuring anything coming from that Gate would have to go through him, first.<\/p>\n
“That is the beast that threatens to wake thirteen gods,” Peredur said.<\/p>\n
“Very specific number there,” I pointed out, brushing sand from my pants.\u00a0 “I meant, when getting your seventy-two virgins, or your thousand islands, you ought to count your change.”<\/p>\n
“There are thirteen gods sleeping here, who should not awaken.\u00a0 There are little signs of discontent, pressures of economics, the concerns of analysts and broadcasters, all suggesting battle. Do you have a Shadow, little wizard, who might seek such chaos?”<\/p>\n
“You’re asking me pointedly, like both of us don’t know that he’s a pain in the tuchas<\/em>. \u00a0Might I remind you, oh great Dragon?” I tried for the exact same tone he used when calling me, “little wizard.” “I think it was your need that drove me to close him out of your gate, and thus get him on my scent instead. \u00a0If that’s not some kind of mixed metaphor.” \u00a0In the metaphor department, I was really batting badly tonight. \u00a0They were going to have to get a designated poet and put me on the beat bench or something.<\/p>\n “Muak-Lal,” Peredur said. \u00a0“Your protector named him right,” he said, and he looked out at the waves. \u00a0“He is an amalgam of older powers, given life by whispers and fears. \u00a0He has made alliances too quickly, and already feeds on the conflict of your witches.”<\/p>\n “Hey, they aren’t my witches,” I said, quickly. \u00a0“I’m trying to break the habit, you see. \u00a0I admit I had more of a problem than I’d expected, but this man is now a witch-free zone.” \u00a0I reflected on what he’d actually said. “So Mister Shadowking, stealer of my good looks, is riling up a beast that will wake up gods and cause some kind of war? \u00a0Is this kind of Revelations-style stuff?”<\/p>\n “You refer unironically to the words of prophets and those with grudges and allegorical rhetoric, I presume?”<\/p>\n “Where do Dragons stand on the topic of religion?”<\/p>\n “We have been deified and demonized,” he made a little shrug.<\/p>\n “Not the D&D I’m used to,” I quipped.<\/p>\n He ignored me, of course. \u00a0“I have known gods. \u00a0I have walked in their palaces, and pleasured their sons and daughters. \u00a0I have visited their realms and flown across, watching as they drifted away. \u00a0Some fade, some merely no longer intersect with your world. \u00a0Some have wandered in as monsters, created by creatures that dream in dark depths. \u00a0Some collide with others, yet originate far, far beyond.” \u00a0He shook his head. \u00a0“That speaks of identity. \u00a0The power, the relics of faith, that is different. \u00a0 In the place the children of Ashya come from there are legends of archers who have made mortals of the suns, piercing them with arrows to prevent the stars from destroying the seas. \u00a0The religions there are like those here, made of rules, you shalts and you shalt nots, to differentiate behavior and to provide access to blessings and ward away curses. \u00a0It is so intertwined with what you name magic that it is easy to paint it with the same brush, but where its color is subtly different is where it is most dangerous.”<\/p>\n I listened, fascinated. \u00a0He went quiet for a moment afterwards, as if thinking.<\/p>\n “But these beings were chained to this island for good reasons, the doors locked and the seas grown from seeds to drown their dreams with the lullaby of tides. \u00a0It was Naul who watched as they turned the keys the first time; kin of her roots knew the dangers of the native folk. \u00a0Perhaps it is her absence which drew the Beast.”<\/p>\n I had frowned at the mention of her name, but he turned on me, then, his strange, physics-repelling Dragon eyes luminescent and fixed on me. \u00a0The fire within them was brighter, as if it had been fed. \u00a0“You wished to make things right, to scrub the blood off your hands? \u00a0Then push out this roaring \u00a0Beast, and make sure the door is closed. \u00a0We spoke of faith? \u00a0Let us speak now of penance.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The sea was a cradle, a womb of possibilities, and one from which monsters could be born.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-09-opener"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1441,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}