XXIII
1261 Words
XXIII
Dark woke to the tittering of birds and car horns. His bones popped as he rolled his head from side to side.
He hadn’t gotten a good look at the rooftop where he slept, but now it was daylight and the sun shone behind a hazy cloud in the azure morning sky. The roof was covered with grass, with a small pool in the center. A tall wire tower rose into the air, with a needle-like spire blinking at the top. It was shaped like a Crafter dragon with its mouth open in mid-roar, looking down on Dark with a ferocious face.
The building was at least fifty stories in the air. It gave a panoramic view of the city, and in the daylight he could see the gray waters of the ocean in the distance.
It was good know that he was in fact on the western continent.
Home. At least, what should have been home.
He yawned and stretched, became aware of his aching eye socket. A dull pain in his wing reminded him of last night.
He flapped several times. He would be able to fly. But he had exerted himself too much. He would have to be more careful.
He sniffed the humid air and tried to think about what to do next. The air was slightly smoky.
Then he sensed someone behind him, turned his head just in time to see another dragon baring its teeth at him, and a claw swiping through the air.
Dark jumped out of the way and the dragon snapped at him.
It was a Crafter. Purple scales. Young. Slender. She looked like a serpent of the sea. She growled at him and said “You think you can invade my home?”
“What?” Dark asked. “I was sleeping.”
“In my home!”
He looked around. Aside from the grass and pool, there was nothing else to indicate that a dragon lived here. He hadn’t even smelled her scent last night.
“How did you hide from me?” Dark asked.
“You really are a fool!”
The dragon leaped at him, her teeth aimed for his neck. He sidestepped a hare slower than he would have liked, landing on the grass with a thud. His joints tingled as he pushed through the pain, rising to his feet.
She flew at him again and he lashed her with his tail, knocking her thousand pound weight away from him.
He roared at her and she roared back.
She coiled up and her claws glowed.
Dark’s eyes widened and he recalled the magical cache within him. He felt it radiating inside of his body as light swirled over the rooftop.
Upon seeing Dark’s magic, the dragon looked fearful and she stopped her spell.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Will you stop your attack or will I have to kill you?” Dark asked.
“You’re the criminal, not me.”
Dark stopped the resurgence of magic within him, and the glowing light in his body stopped. “Good,” he said. “You spared yourself a terrible death.”
The color was fading from Dark’s scales. His body was blinking from gray to black. The color change spell he had used last night was wearing off.
He imagined his scales changing back to gray, reached deep within himself into the cache of magic. And he stopped blinking. The silvery gray color in his scales was restored.
The dragon’s voice was calmer.
“Are you confused? Why did you decide to sleep in my home?”
He scrutinized her.
“I watched you all night,” she said. “You slept like you owned this place.”
So she had watched him. She had probably waited for just the right moment to strike.
But she did not know who he was.
“How old are you, my dear?” Dark asked.
“One thousand two hundred years old.”
She would have been born after his reign, after his curse.
“You look half dead,” she said. “Abstraction would do you some good.”
“What is this Abstraction?” Dark asked.
Light surrounded the dragon’s body and she disappeared. Staticky images of her eyes floated in the grass.
Dark looked around frantically as her eyes danced across the floor.
“Why, this is Abstraction,” she said. “The building you stand on provides cell phone service.”
The eyes drifted toward the metal tower and merged with it. The tower hummed and its spire blinked as it attenuated itself to a frequency.
Suddenly Dark heard voices—hundreds of them, all speaking at once in a jumble.
He glanced around and saw no one.
“Over here, old dragon!” the dragon yelled.
The tower was vibrating now, and the dragon’s mouth was grinning at Dark.
“Who are you?” Dark asked.
The metal dragon tower spoke, but in the voice of other people. Her voice changed frequencies every few seconds, from male to female, dragon to elf, elf to human—a patchwork of glitching voices.
“I am the guardian of communication,” she said. “I am reimagined in the tradition of the ancients, but my tributes are far sweeter.”
“I see no tributes here,” Dark said, snarling.
She was blaspheming the ancestors, and he would not stand for it. But his body ached and he knew he would not be able to fight her, not in her current state.
“I am the embodiment of communication, old dragon. How do you receive your tribute? You don’t. The citizens of this city pay tribute to me in the form of monthly payments, and with my blessing, they receive the ability to communicate. Entire teams of humans and elves work under me, and while sometimes the arrangement is unfortunate, there is never any misunderstanding as to my power.”
Dark didn’t understand a word she said. But something about her tone troubled him.
“Are you a mountain dragon? Everyone knows about Abstraction.”
Her tone was condescending now.
Dark thought it was strange to continue the conversation even though her body wasn’t directly in front of him.
“Ah...well yes, I am not from here, my dear,” he said. “I have chosen the natural world as my home.” He faked a cough. “Far better for this old dragon’s health.”
“I would take you inside to the floors below but you’re not abstract, so you wouldn’t fit,” she said.
“That’s quite a shame,” Dark said.
He was glad for it.
“You could have seen the myriad ways society pays tribute to me,” the dragon said. “This entire building is an altar, old one. I have three shopping malls within me, floors upon floors of offices, a cafeteria with the city’s finest chefs. Thousands gather within me every day to pay me tribute in the form of money, time, and work. And my building stands on the city skyline, immortalized forever in photographs. Some things never change, even after a thousand years.…”
“Perhaps.”
Dark was amazed at what the dragon told her. Was it all really true? He didn’t think she had a reason to lie. But this society still eluded him, and its strange ways made him wish for simpler days.
“Does this convince you to reconsider your antiquarian ways, old one?” the dragon asked. “There are many Abstractions that could suit one like you.”
Dark didn’t know what to say as the dragon eye stared at him.
“I am trying to find an old friend,” he said. “Perhaps you can help me? I mistakenly thought that this place was his home.”
The dragon tower flashed and the purple Crafter appeared above him in her dragon form.
“Stubborn,” she said. “It’s the mark of an early death, believe me. Who are you looking for?”
“His name is Frog.”
“You must be going senile, then. Why didn’t you say so? You’re in the wrong place.”
She pointed to a tall, glistening skyscraper in the distance. Its glass was green, and the sunlight sparkled on it like sequins on the surface of a pond. On the top of the building was a white logo of a frog on a lily pad, with the words The Frog Channel.
- Writer
