Dream II - Chapter 14 (Patreon)

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Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath
Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 4, Wind (Noble) 2
Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 4, Current/Flow 4

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“It’s out of range,” Samazzar whispered, opening his eyes.  “We have to move now.”

He stood up, the glistening obsidian trunk of one of the strange trees within easy reach.  On either side of him, Dussok and Takkla unfolded from their hiding spots as well.  Sam didn’t need to turn around to know that Dussok’s face was locked into an expression of unease and discomfort.  The big saurian had made his opinion on the plan clear, but Takkla had overruled him.  There was a glint in her eyes when she talked about potential evolutions that made Samazzar wonder if she was almost as hungry for the next step as he was.

A dozen steps and he stopped.  The wyrm was still outside the furthest reaches of his wind senses.  Even if Sam had held some delusions of fighting the monster before, the minute he sighted it, that changed instantly.

The wyrm was huge, and from the way the heat and flame reacted to it, Sam had no doubt whatsoever that its bloodline control of the mystery of fire eclipsed his own.  With each breath, magic roiled off of it, unfurling and questing around the monster as it reacted instinctively to the beast’s will.

He raised one hand, waving his siblings forward.  The three of them sprinted out of the forest, crossing the basalt flatland in under a minute.  Samazzar still didn’t feel any signs of the monster’s return.

They stopped for a moment outside the wyrm’s lair.  Sam closed his eyes, letting wind magic flow out of him and down the tunnel.  He opened them once more, shaking his head before smiling and holding up five fingers.

Takkla nodded eagerly, while Dussok looked as worried as ever, but Samazzar didn’t let it bother him. Instead he began to wrap himself in an aura of cool air as he descended into the basalt.

It didn’t take long for them to hit magma.  The tunnel continued for another two hundred paces, half filled with the viscous liquid rock.  Behind Sam, Takkla and Dussok stopped abruptly.

That meant that they weren’t able to handle the heat.  He bit back a curse as he ducked into a half crouch and began running through the boiling tunnel.  The backup plan involved him sneaking three eggs out, one at a time.

There shouldn’t be a problem with doing things more slowly, but now that he was underground the range on his wind magic was almost halved.  More time meant more chances for the flame wyrm to return and find the three saurians raiding its nest.  With his magic limited, Samazzar had no way of knowing how close the monster was.

He burst into the lair’s main chamber.  The magma turned into dark volcanic rock, a mound encircling a glassy obsidian crater at the center of the room.  There were five eggs in the nest, each about half the size of Samazzar’s body.  He reached out, putting a hand against the side of one of the eggs.

It was smooth, hot, and hard.  Not quite as thick and resilient as the stone beneath Sam’s feet, but he suspected it would take more than one blow to work through the shells.

That was a problem for later.  He slipped both arms under the egg, leaning back slightly as he lifted it into the air.  After a couple of awkward steps, Sam found his balance and began jogging through the magma passage.  With each step he sank lightly into the liquid stone, but so long as he kept moving it wasn’t too hard for him to pull his feet free.

The first egg went to Dussok.  After he handed the payload off, Samazzar paused for a second to renew the sphere of magic he had wrapped himself in.  Despite his focus, the protections that had been sufficient to keep him from burning on the surface were hardly sufficient against the intense heat and stale air of the magma vent.  He hadn’t burned yet, but already his feet were tender from racing back and forth across the bubbling liquid rock.

His return trip went a little faster.  This time Sam knew where he was going, and despite the shifting unsteadiness of the magma under his weight, he made good time in delivering the second egg to Takkla.

When he made it back to the nest, Samazzar was breathing heavily.  The back and forth trips were physically taxing, but the stress and danger of the situation was also taking its toll.  He picked up the third egg, once again marveling at its solid shell and internal heat.

The tunnel back was the same cramped half crouch due to the omnipresent magma.  He’d made it most of the way back to where his siblings were waiting when the rock above them shook, spraying gravel and dust down into the cavern.

Samazzar struggled to keep his feet, the magma sloshing under him in inexorable but slow-moving waves.  Another thud from above shook everything around Sam, knocking him off balance.

He fell to his hands and knees, barely able to restructure the field of heat magic around him before he was wrist deep in the molten rock, egg embedding itself in the liquid stone right in front of his face.  Sam pulsed his wind magic on reflex, unable to penetrate much outside the entrance to the cave.

It didn’t matter.  The magma levels were more or less constant, ruling out an eruption or geological shift.  That left only one real possibility.

“Run!” Sam shouted frantically, struggling to pull his rapidly heating hands out of the magma.  “The wyrm is back!  I’ll distract it and meet you at the mouth of Redfern Vale!”

“But-” Takkla began only for Dussok to grab her by the shoulder, cutting her off.

“If Samazzar said to run, we run,” He growled, picking up his egg.  “We have gotten this far trusting the little dragon.  Have faith.”

The tunnel shook a third time, but this time Sam was prepared.  Whatever the wyrm was doing, the end result was almost rhythmic thuds that rocked the ground below it.

He grit his teeth, scooping up the egg and breaking into a run once more.  The magma sucked at his feet, heat seeping through his magic to blister the scales.  Sam had suffered much worse in the past, and there was no question in his mind that he would burn himself worse in the future, but it was just another distraction he didn’t need.

The rumbling grew worse overhead, but Sam ignored it, fixing his eyes on the exit to the tunnel.  Dussok and Takkla were already gone.  Hopefully they had enough of a head start to avoid the flame wyrm, but Samazzar suspected that he wouldn’t get that lucky.

Wind magic pulsed outward from Samazzar as he burst free from the tunnel.  In the distance he could sense his siblings scrambling to safety, but he had far more pressing concerns.  Barely a hundred paces away, the wyrm crashed through the landscape, its sinuous body curving back and forth like a massive snake.

For a fraction of a second, Samazzar dared to hope that it hadn’t seen him.  After all, the monster was moving quickly toward its lair, and he was tiny compared to the dark, rocky landscape.  Then it reared upward, thick ruby scales gleaming as it angled its smooth head toward him, tongue flicking out.  He took a step to the right and its head moved a fraction of a degree to track him, puffs of flame erupting from its nostrils.

He ran.

Sam wasn’t exactly afraid of the wyrm.  It was larger and stronger than him, but that didn’t mean much before the absolute physical and magical dominance of a dragon.  One day, a battle like this would be nothing more than a warm up, a stretch to work up an appetite before a meal.

For now, Samazzar ran as fast as his legs could carry him, arms still wrapped around the egg.  The Wyrm lunged toward him, covering the ground between them with deceptive speed.

Hot breath hung stale in Sam’s throat as he veered to the right, making for the nearby forest of obsidian trees.  Each step dug into the black rock, sending spikes of pain up Sam’s burned legs as he willed himself to run faster than he ever had before.

It wouldn’t be quite enough.  He knew that.  If he was lucky, he might be able to make it to the trees.  Sam wasn’t sure if their rock covered trunks would be enough to slow the wyrm down, but it was the only thing he could think of.  He was so much smaller than the huge monster that Samazzar was sure he’d be able to dodge around obstacles that the wyrm would have no choice but to crash through.

He slipped past the first tree, and the monster bellowed.  The rocky branches around him shook under the sonic assault, and Sam stumbled forward.  Almost on instinct, he altered the air pressure around his ears, cutting off the worst of the echoing shriek.

The world spun gently around him as cool wetness dribbled down the sides of Sam’s head.  Distantly he heard a constant ringing sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, but he didn’t have the time to assess the damage.

Rocks crunched underfoot as Samazzar jolted to the right, running an arm’s length from one of the larger trees.  He reached out with his wind magic as he sprinted, immediately identifying the massive disturbance in the airflow created by the monstrous snake pursuing him.

It slammed into the first tree, slowing slightly but easily breaking through the glass encrusted wood.  Samazzar didn’t bother to turn around.  His magic didn’t give him any precise details, but he’d bet everything that the wyrm’s thick scales weren’t even scuffed by the impact.

Another shift led to it crashing through a second tree.  Each obstruction slowed the monster slightly, but the wyrm recovered too quickly.  It was almost like it was playing with him, moving just slowly enough to not immediately catch up with Samazzar and end their little game.

His eyes flickered down to the egg in his arms.  He could always drop it in order to run faster, but deep down something clicked.  The monster wasn’t playing with him.  It was trying to preserve his cargo.

The snake reared backward.  Sam got a moment’s notice as the wind around its face flash boiled, turning into… something else as the creature’s bloodline magic heated it beyond the breaking point.

Sam felt the fire rushing toward him, and grabbed onto it with his will, curling the cone of flame around himself.

It was hot, even as he used his magic to redirect as much of the heat as possible, sinking into the stone beneath him, enough snuck through to steal the moisture from his mouth and lungs.

Time ticked onward.  One second.  Two.  Three.  All the while, fire raged around him forming a shell of absolute destruction.

The flames disappeared, leaving behind rocks that glowed cherry red.  Sam ran for his life, ignoring the irritation and pain from his legs as he wove through the obsidian trees, aiming for the thickest part of the forest.

Air slammed into Samazzar as the wyrm bellowed again.  He was ready layering a low pressure wall between a pair of high pressure planes between himself and the monster.  It wasn’t enough to stop the attack, he doubted that would be possible until he learned to actually create a void in the same fashion as Rose, but it was enough to keep the sound wave from disrupting his balance and leaving him helpless before his pursuer.

A tree next to him shuddered under the attack, glassy obsidian cracking and falling to the ground like black rain.  Glider lizards slumped lifelessly out of the branches, plopping onto the stone with blood flowing freely from their eyes and noses.

He cut to the right, rock shaking under his feet from the Wyrm’s passage.  The depths of the forest were right in front of him when Sam’s eyes widened.  He threw himself to the left, scales on his back sparking and bruising as he slid across the rough basalt.

The wyrm’s head and neck slammed into the stone, cutting off the path Sam had been on and spraying him with rock shards.

It reared up, picking its body up from from the crater it had created, and Samazzar got his first proper look at the monster with his own eyes.  Its head was a massive arrowhead of seamless scales, bigger than Sam himself.  The smooth ruby armor was only marred by the creature’s nostrils and a giant mouth filled with fangs the size of the stunned saurian’s forearm.

Inspiration flashed like lightning as the monster’s image was seared into Sam’s memory.  The flame wyrm’s head was huge, but it lacked features.  It could still track him, but it wasn’t using sight.

Samazzar rolled to his feet, chunks of rock skittering away as he started running again.  A pulse of wind confirmed that Dussok and Takkla were far away.  He could sense the faintest hints of their presence, but he had purposefully escaped in the opposite direction.  By now, they were far beyond the edges of the wyrm’s perception.  Safe.

The giant snake reared back, its head over three times Sam’s height from the ground as it pointed its head at him once more, puffs of flame erupting from its flaring nostrils.  He gulped down the hot, stale air as he ran.  There was no way for him to fight the wyrm.  Attacking it with fire would be like assaulting a lake with a cup full of water.  Somehow more pathetic than it was futile.

It opened its mouth, displaying rows of fangs and white hot energy.  Flames spat toward Samazzar, and he sucked in one last breath before dropping his focus on every mystery but heat.  He would only have one opportunity to escape the monster, and he wasn’t going to take any chances.

Fire rushed toward Sam and he grabbed it with his mind, redirecting it around himself as he jumped behind a nearby obsidian tree.  The trunk didn’t do much to protect him, but that was never Samazzar’s purpose.

He dropped into a crouch, reaching deep into his psyche, adrenaline letting Sam reach heights of control that he didn’t even know he possessed.  He ignored the heat, holding his breath rather than subjecting his lungs to the blistering air.

Heat wove together under Samazzar’s control, creating a vaguely bipedal marionette.  He touched the fire with his mind just as the wyrm’s breath began to die out, creating a sphere of flames around his puppet.  Then he turned the barrier of heat control around himself into a wall, refusing to let any heat transfer in or out.

The wyrm cocked its head in confusion, a deep bass rumble echoing from its scaled chest.  Samazzar held his breath, feeling the temperature around him rising as his magic prevented the free flow of heated air.

He pushed with his mind, struggling to maintain his focus as he made the heat mirage’s ‘legs’ move up and down as it began to ‘run’ away from the wyrm.  It thrummed in confusion, opening its mouth to reveal its fangs once more.

A tongue, as orange as the nearby lava, flicked out, tasting the air. Sam’s claws dug into his knees, breaking through the scales as his heart hammered in his ears.

Then the monster moved, its snake body creating a line of sinuous curves as it slithered after the retreating figment of magic and heat.

He held his breath and control for as long as he could.  Struggling to keep the figure’s movements realistic as it reached the edges of Samazzar’s perception.  At some point, his protective mask burst into flame, forcing Sam to rip the scrap of cloth off even as his focus wavered, causing the mirage to flicker as it ran past the magma vent.  It made it another fifty or so paces, wyrm trailing behind it.  Just as he started to lose hold of the magic, he tipped the stick figure sideways, sending it falling into the lake of lava.

The flame wyrm dove in after it, puncturing the thick molten rock with ease.

Samazzar relaxed his control on the heat around him.  His head throbbed from overusing his magic, but that didn’t stop him from picking through the air around him, maximizing the oxygen available until there was a cocoon of cool, breathable air around his muzzle.

He stood up, wincing at the headache and soreness as he began jogging back toward Redfern Vale. Once he was out of sight of the lava pool he began to breathe a little easier.  Three times Samazzar stopped at other smaller ponds, carefully gathering ingredients.

Every half hour or so, he’d stop and survey the winds, looking for any hint of the flame wyrm.  Luckily, he appeared to have lost it, allowing him to take the time he needed to slowly drag his aching body to the semi-permanent camp site the three saurians had set up near the mouth of Redfern Vale.

An excited shriek heralded his arrival, and Takkla jumped down from the rocky outcropping outside the cave that they had claimed, ethereal wings flapping once as she fell to slow her descent.  She hit the ground at a full run, slamming into Sam’s side hard enough that he almost dropped the egg as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

“Never again!” She shouted angrily at Samazzar as he hissed in pain.  “You are not allowed to scare me like that.  If we run into a monster like the flame wyrm, the next time we fight it together.”

“Ow,” Sam said, wincing.  Takkla simply squeezed tighter, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.  “None of us were going to fight something like that.  I had a better chance at distracting it and escaping on my own.  Plus, I don’t think I would have been able to take the sort of risk I needed to get away if I knew that it might be putting Dussok and you in danger.”

“No more risks,” Takkla scolded him.  “The next time you feel the urge to tangle with something like that, either have a plan or hold off for a safer opportunity.  You are NOT allowed to die on me.”

“Dying isn’t part of the plan,” he replied awkwardly, arms still occupied with the wyrm egg.  “It turned out that the flame wyrm could only see heat.  I was able to draw it off and convince it that I died for long enough to escape.”

“But what if you couldn’t?” Takkla asked, releasing Samazzar only to plant both of her hands on her hips.  “What if it could hear or smell you?  What would you do then?  Outrun it?  At least I could try and fly away.”

Sam set the egg down awkwardly before placing his hands on his lower back and stretch upward, trying in vain to work the kinks and pain out of his sore body.  His heat magic had kept him from the worst of the burns, but everything was dry, irritated, and sore simultaneously.

“He would have found a way,” Dussok called out, skidding down the side of the valley in a shower of dirt and pebbles.  “The little dragon may be a bit mad, but he gets results.  I’m not sure that I entirely agree with him that his ‘draconic will’ changes reality itself, but here he is standing before us.  By the thousand and one mysteries, he even managed to retrieve his egg.”

Takkla squinted at Samazzar.  For some reason, he felt more nervous under her judging gaze than he did fleeing the flame wyrm.  Eventually, she crossed her arms, nodding curtly.

“Fine,” Takkla huffed.  “We’re done for now, but if you try to pull another stunt like this, we’re going to have a conversation.  A long and uncomfortable one.”

Sam nodded quickly, unwilling to anger Takkla further.

“Say Dussok,” he said a moment later.  “I managed to grab the ingredients we should need to temper the flame wyrm essence in the eggs, but I’m a little tired after the run.  If you wouldn’t mind carrying my egg up to the cave…”

Samazzar trailed off holding up a double handful of vegetation shavings and samples.  It had been difficult to carry all of them out of the basalt desert along with the egg, but he had managed by using his forearms to press the hot shell against his chest while his hands grasped the necessary reagents.

Dussok simply rolled his eyes, easily picking up the egg as he cajoled Sam.

“Is the dragon really that tired after a little jog?  Maybe you’re just trying to get out of chores again?  I swear Samazzar, sometimes you don’t seem any different from when you were a pup in the creche.”

He stuck out his tongue at Dussok as the big saurian turned around, tromping up the hillside with Takkla and him in tow.  The climb wasn’t awful, he was exhausted and sore enough for it to be unpleasant, but Sam made the ascent without any real trouble, and before long he found himself seated before the back of low grade alchemical equipment the three of them had carried out to the camp on their previous sojourn.

Sam walked up to one of the eggs, placing a hand against the hot shell and sinking his perception into it.  The goop that would become a wyrmling resisted him, preventing the saurian from getting a complete picture of the interior.

He removed his hand, shaking it slightly as he returned to the alchemy setup, sorting through the fairly common reagents that they had left behind.  Samazzar didn’t need a complete picture of the egg’s insides.  Just enough of an idea about its magical makeup to begin crafting a tempering solution.  After all, even the weaker essence of a wyrm’s egg was vastly more powerful than the fairly diluted draconic bloodline of a saurian.

Minutes turned into hours, and just as the sun was rising the next day, Samazzar finally stirred from his perch in front of his workstation.  Three tin mugs sat in front of him, a viscous tarlike substance bubbling inside them.

Sam stood up, stretching the stiffness out of his tired body.  His eyes drooped from almost a full day of concentration between his escape from the flame wyrm, and the time spent on the tempering solutions, but the results of his work spoke for themselves.

He shook Dussok’s shoulder, waking the big saurian from his slumber atop the pile of leaves he had claimed as a bed.  Then, once he was sure that Dussok was awake, Sam called out to Takkla.  She was perched outside the cave, keeping an eye out to ensure that they weren’t surprised by either bandits or predators.

The three of them crowded round, each of them holding their small cup of the tempering solution with a wyrm egg in front of them.  Samazzar raised his left hand, silencing the whispers between Takkla and Dussok as he grabbed their attention.  Then he extended his right arm, holding up the mug of bubbling alchemical solution.

“A toast,” Sam said, an excited grin on his face.  “To becoming bigger and better things.”

He drank the brew, trying to swallow it as quickly as possible.  It was as foul as he expected, and the less time the drink spent lingering on his tongue and poisoning his taste buds, the better.

Sam leaned forward, putting his hand atop the massive egg.  It practically thrummed with magical energy.  He ran his hand down the side of its shell, excitement speeding his heartbeat.

This was it.

Every time he saw his reflection, Samazzar had to bite his tongue.  Shape, size and appearance.  It was all wrong.  His image was like a gaping pit in his stomach, sore and swallowing up any positive feelings he might have about himself.  Just an empty pit that he couldn’t fill no matter what he accomplished.

He ran his hand down the side of the egg, reveling in the smooth feeling of the shell under his fingertips.  The solution to his problems was so simple.  He could become something else.  All Sam needed to do was crack the egg open.

Claws clicked against the top of the shell.  Once, twice and then his finger was through the hard exterior and buried in the hot goopy interior of the egg.  He pulled back with his index finger widening the hole until it was about the size of his fist.

Then, with a deep breath, Samazzar grabbed either side of the egg, lifting it above his head and upending it into his open mouth.

The taste was almost as bad as the tempering solution, and the heat from the yolk almost burned Sam’s tongue.  Frantically, he tried to swallow the thick liquid, letting the remainder spill over his face and muzzle as his throat worked overtime.

He managed six big gulps of the yolk, barely a third of the egg, before the stomach cramps set in.  Samazzar’s body seized up a second later, spilling him to the ground and dropping the shell on top of him.

Lightning bolts of pain jolted up and down his rigid muscles as the egg slowly poured hot sludge over his spasming body.  Distantly, Sam heard a thud as one of his siblings fell to the floor as well, but it was impossible for him to keep track of the outside world as another tsunami of pain washed over him.

His muscles writhed like snakes, twisting and curling before expanding until scales began sloughing off of Sam’s arms and legs.  Heat roared in his chest like a forge, melting his lungs and reshaping them into something different.  Something better.

Sam’s head slammed backward as his muscles clenched again, bouncing the back of his head off of the rocky floor of the cave.  The world swam for a second before he slipped into the merciful dark quiet of unconsciousness.

Some time later he awoke.  Samazzar’s entire body hurt, but at the same time, he was brimming with vitality and energy.

He sprang to his feet only to stumble and end up on his hands and knees as he missed the landing, unaccustomed to his new strength.  Sam exhaled, feeling a ball of heat rumbling in his core.  Somehow, he knew that he only needed to push, and he would be able to breathe proper flames rather than the anemic spray of sparks and embers he had been relying on to date.

Slowly, he lifted up a hand, opening and closing it in front of his muzzle.  It was bigger.  The scales were shinier and the muscles of his forearm were more defined, but ultimately, it was still the hand and arm of a saurian.

He looked over at where Takkla and Dussok groaned and stirred, covered in rapidly drying wyrm yolk.  They were both bigger.  The essence had visibly improved both of their bloodlines, and he was sure that they had gained new abilities from their transformations, but ultimately, they remained saurians as well.

“Next time,” he said with a sigh, rolling over so that he was staring up at the cave’s ceiling.  “I’ll make the change next time.”