Realms of the Dragons vol.1

AN ICY HEART

16 Alturiak, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

Chorael slowly climbed out of the water, feeling sluggish. The sand was rough under her shell as she began the measured crawl along the bank of Lake Thaylambar. Though she was more vulnerable on land than she was in the water, she could still reach surprising speeds if she had to. But it was not one of those nights. With the moon riding high and full, it was a night for something rare and wonderful.

She moved her large body deliberately and methodically over the ground, searching for just the right location. Though none of the others believed that any dragon turtle had ever become a guardian in, the region, Chorael felt certain one had. She had loved that spot from the moment shed discovered it. It was where she always chose to lay her clutch of eggs. The location brought her luck and she had no reason to believe things would be any different.

Chorael pushed away some branches and rocks and began to dig a small hole with her blue-green, clawed hands, occasionally using her sharp beak to break up roots and such. The ground, though somewhat soft to begin with after the daily evening rains controlled by the Red Wizards, gave way easily under her insistent touch. She carefully fashioned the hole into a burrow of sorts, packing the sides and tamping them to keep them stable. When she was satisfied that it was just deep enough, she turned around and climbed partially out. Then she did what she had come to do: lay her eggs.

In short order, five perfect, ovoid shells glowed softly in the moonlight, like fey pearls. Chorael stared at them for a few moments, in quiet awe. Only her third clutch, she was still rather new to motherhood. Her other two broods had done well and almost all had survived to young adulthood. That might have been why she considered the spot lucky, if not outright blessed. Dragon turtles left some things to fate, and their clutches were one of those things. They chose the place carefully, looking for geography that offered some natural protection. Both parents periodically visited the site to see that it remained undisturbed, but that was all. Chorael treated them no differently. She looked down at the precious treasure and smiled to herself.

After a few moments, she turned and used her rear legs to carefully push the pile of excavated sand gravel and debris back over the hole, gently burying the dear cargo. Each brush of a leg brought another load of cover over her eggs. She didn't need to see them to know that they were nearly buried. She let her eyes travel the surface of the lake, not far away, and watched the moonlight splash and caper on the water's surface. It was a near-perfect night. She wondered, briefly, what her mate, Dargo was doing at that moment and if he was still angry with her. His absence was the only mar on a perfect moment.

Not long before she had left to lay her eggs, she, Dargo, and the other dragon turtles had had a heated argument. Lately, that was all they ever did. A slow poison was sweeping across the world and word of it had finally reached the reclusive dragons of the lake. A strange madness that was coming to be referred to as the Rage was blanketing the land. Wyrms of every breed and color seemed to be vulnerable to infection. A near-blinding fury seized them and drove out all reason and sanity. The lunacy blinded some to such an extent that they became vulnerable to attack and too many had already been destroyed. Some were even driven to slaughter their own young. That had brought a shiver to Chorael's cold heart. But she knew Dargo had aimed that barb at her, specifically to frighten Chorael, knowing her time was near.

The only glimmer of hope that had appeared on the bleak horizon was a message from a representative of the lich who commanded the Cult of the Dragon. Long believed, or hoped, to be dead, Sammaster had risen from the ashes and once again commanded the Cult. Simply put, the message promised that if they would swear their allegiance to him, they would be spared the madness of the Rage. And he had a host of unaffected wyrms to authenticate his honeyed words. Mostly solitary, the dragon turtles only gathered in times of great crisis. Such a crisis had come.

"Don't you remember the stories," Dargo had reminded them, "of the earliest years when we first walked the land and swam the waters? There was a Rage like this that washed over the world and we nearly died then. Do we want to face that again?"

Chorael had scanned the cove full of dragons and saw that many were considering his words. Some even nodded openly. She had to speak out even though she knew it would anger Dargo.

"So you would have us turn ourselves over to this lich?" she questioned him, startling him as the only real voice of dissension. "You would choose to be his slaves? And how would that be any better than to be a slave to this Rage, which may not even exist? We haven't seen it. It may not even be real, it might be something transitory, or it might burn itself out. But even if it is real," she admitted as she swam around the others, "wouldn't it be better than slavery?"

"We spend our time here, constantly on the patrol for the humans who hunt and trap us, and now you are considering giving up everything for a different kind of slavery?" she added and sank to the rocky shelf of the cavern and let the currents rock her gently.

Her eggs were nearly full size and she found it difficult to find a comfortable spot for very long.

The others had grown silent at her words. Even Dargo had given pause over it. She knew he had been frustrated and startled that she had not automatically sided with him and perhaps, even angrier that she had made sense. He refused to meet her look, pained that the others had started softly debating the matter.

"She has a point," Okara, one of the oldest in the lake interjected. He was nearly thirty feet long and his shell had more chips and cracks along his carapace than many had years in their lives. He pushed his front claw against the reeds as though annoyed with the vegetation. "Ever since the successful capture of one of our own by Brazhal Kos, the hunters have become increasingly bold. Too often, we spend our time avoiding the growing numbers of hunters that seemed determined to trap and break us. Would service to Sammaster be any different than service to the hunters?"

His final words had brought a hush to the gathered dragons.

Dargo swam away as soon as the meeting was over and Chorael had not seen him for days. She suspected that it was his irritation that her words had turned the tide with many of the others that made him stay away on that special night. It was his way of showing how unhappy he was with her.

And he had missed the moment when she had laid their clutch. She was saddened by his decision but knew Dargo would be even more so after he had time to think on all that had been said. Though he was quicktempered, Chorael knew he was reasonable at heart. She liked to think that she balanced him and was the cool voice of reason to his fiery temper. When he and the others mulled over all the facts that they could gather, she was certain they would see that another option had to exist.

"I won't see you little ones be anyone's slaves," she whispered and patted the newly fashioned mound lovingly. "I promise you that."

With one more look at her nest, Chorael began to shuffle and crawl along the bank back to the frigid waters of the lake. Though tired from the effort of laying her eggs, she felt a renewed sense of hope at seeing them. New life always meant new opportunities, she believed. Caught up in her reverie, she almost didn't see the tiny figure a few hundred feet off on the lake. It was the additional flash of moonlight that caught her eye and for a moment, she hoped it was Dargo and that he had come after her. But as she looked more closely with her keen eyes, Chorael was disappointed.

Splashing about on the lake was not a dragon, but a human. And judging by the way he flailed and thrashed his arms, one not well suited to swimming. Chorael felt the chill water touch her arms and started to pull herself in, meaning to swim away as quickly as she could. Men on the water never boded well for her or any others who called the lake their home. Instinctu-ally, she wanted to flee. But she paused. The night had been one of hope and dreams and full of promise. She found she did not want to have it sullied by any omens or portents of bad luck. And she found that in her icy heart, she didn't want anything to die on that night.

Pushing herself completely into the water, Chorael glided toward the frantic man as he bobbed and bounced. His head appeared at the surface less frequently and it was clear he had started to sink under the relatively calm waters. Chorael knew that humans quickly chilled in the lake. She and the other dragons were not immune to the cold, but their physiology was more adapted to their life there, with a special organ near their heart that helped them store heat and regulate their body temperature. Even though their bodies were cold in the lake, they didn't freeze. But Chorael had seen more than one human perish in no more than the blink of an eye as their limbs turned leaden from the cold and they sunk beneath the waves. The man seemed destined for the same fate.

As his head vanished from view, Chorael made her decision and dived beneath the waves, cleaving the lake surface like a knife. No longer bound by gravity's demands, she maneuvered through the water like a bird through the air, weightless. Though it was past middark, she could see everything with vivid clarity. Her own eyes were protected by three inner eyelids, the last one crystal clear. It was that lid that lowered over her eyes when she was in water and prevented any distortion. As though suspended in midair, the unfortunate man was only a few feet away.

He was dressed like many of the fishermen of Thay, without any sign of the heavier weapons favored by those foolhardy enough to try to capture a dragon. She hated that she paused long enough to verify what he was, but her goodwill didn't extend beyond her own self-preservation. Not far off, she could see the silhouette of a small boat against the shine of the moonlight like some small eclipse. Chorael reasoned that he must have gotten a net tangled or had a strong pull on a line and been yanked into the black waters. She could see no one else nearby and thought he was foolish indeed to be on the water so late and alone. However, she would have been the first to admit that she never could understand the actions of humans and their foolish ways, nor did she try much to fathom them.

As she sped toward him, she could see that even as the cold had taken hold of his limbs and made them dead weight, the human's eyes still held some life in them. She could see their piercing blueness through the slow swirl his brown hair made around his face, and she saw a glimmer of fear in them as though he knew death was near. She wondered what he feared more: drowning or her approaching visage.

When she was nearly underneath him, Chorael positioned her body carefully. The fisherman somehow found some strength, but he could only flail his useless arms once before giving up. When she felt his weight against her shell, she slowly pulsed her limbs and started to rise straight to the surface. She was careful not to jostle her cargo because she knew if she dropped him, he might not live long enough to survive a second rescue attempt.

Chorael broke the lake's surface for a second time that night and drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs and making herself even more buoyant. She could feel the limp man sprawled across her carapace and she wondered if she had been in time. However, as she started to swim once more, she felt some movement as her burden rolled to one side and retched lake water down her shell. She smiled to herself as she heard his coughs and knew she had been in time. For the second time that evening, she wondered just what he might have been thinking at that moment as he found himself atop a creature such as herself. Briefly, she feared that perhaps she might have made a mistake in saving him.

What if he finds this all to be wondrous and amazing? she thought. What if I just added fuel to an already dangerous situation? Well, what's done is done.

When she reached his boat, some distance away from where she had saved him, she floated there for a moment, hoping the man would simply roll off of her and back into his small vessel. But she could feel his even breathing as he just laid there. Not wanting to hurt him by bucking him off, she sighed inwardly and cleared her throat.

"You are safe," she said in Common.

Choreal tripped over the words because it had been some time since she'd had opportunity or motive to use the language. Her voice was slightly raspy and sounded like rocks scratching against themselves.

She wondered if the human might have lapsed into unconsciousness and was about to say something more when she felt him push himself up to a sitting position. The sensation of his hands on her carapace was strange and foreign, and she found she couldn't decide how it made her feel. She felt herself bob upward slightly as she was free of his meager weight. He slid into his boat.

For a few moments, both regarded each other warily, she from the safety of the water and he crouched behind the thin hull of his boat.

Chorael finally turned to move away when the shivering man rose from his squat and said in a shaky voice, "You saved me."

"Yes," Chorael finally answered.

"But I thought that-" he started and she cut him off.

"That we are monsters?" she asked. "I could say the same about you. It's what I heard."

She turned some more but the human called out to her, "Gregoire. My name is Gregoire. Do you have a name?"

Chorael was growing a bit exasperated and started to reevaluate her decision to help him. Having found his voice, the human seemed determined to use it. She realized it had been better when he had been retching water and silent.

"You couldn't pronounce it even if I told you," she said. "Now, you have enough to tell your tavern cronies tonight. I wish you good fortune and good even."

"Is there any way I can thank you?" he asked.

Chorael looked him over, from his tunic and pants, which upon closer inspection were of a finer weave than many fishermen sported, to his small boat that also looked slightly sturdier and more solid the most fishing vessels on the lake.

"You have nothing that I would desire in payment."

She started to swim away from the tiny boat slowly, so as not to capsize it and dump the hapless human into the water for a second time. He called out to her again.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

Chorael was torn between entering the soothing darkness of the depths and her growing curiosity with the man who didn't seem to want her to leave. Her curiosity finally overcame her desire to leave and she circled back to him. She could see that he was carefully coiling up a line from the water. A sharp tug from that line might have been why he'd found himself in the lake.

"There is one thing," she told him.

"Anything," he replied eagerly, excited she had returned.

"Tell your brothers to leave us in peace," she replied and hoped that her request, coupled with the fact that she had saved him, would negate any desire he or his friends might have to capture one of her kind in the future.

"Of course," he agreed and continued to coil up his line.

Chorael cocked her head some at the sight of it. It struck her as odd that the line was thicker than most she had seen and realized it was almost like rope.

Too heavy for fishing, she thought.

Then it struck her that he seemed slightly out of place as a fisherman, clothes and gear just a bit too fine. And he had been so eager to talk to her when most might have been just too stunned by their near-death to say a word. Almost as if he was distracting her.

She quickly scanned the waters for any other vessels, fearing a trap. But she couldn't see any other boats anywhere else on the water. With a sinking dread she realized that she was not the prey that night, but something else was: her eggs.

Without another word, she plunged into the water and swam furiously back to where she had laid her clutch. Chorael once again pulled her lumbering body across the sandy bank. She didn't need to go much farther. In the bright moonlight, there was no mistaking the desecration that lay in front of her.

Her carefully buried mound had been haphazardly dug up and her eggs unearthed. All but one was gone and the one that remained was hopelessly ruined. Whoever had dug them up had been careless and crushed part of the egg underfoot. Nutritional fluid bled over the sand and Chorael could see the undeveloped head of her child peek through the broken shell. She crawled over slowly, her body shaking of its own volition.

With a trembling claw, she reached out as though to caress the skull of her only remaining child. As she did so, Chorael realized that the human had been a decoy, meant to lure her away from her eggs. That was why he had the line, so that he could pull himself out of the water as she had approached him. Maybe he had figured that she would attack him, but had been caught unaware by her actions. Or maybe the cold had simply affected him more than he had anticipated. She didn't know and she didn't care. All she knew was that he had stolen her future from her.

With one final glance at her baby, Chorael hissed, "And I helped him!"

She scrambled back into the water and tore after Gregoire like something possessed. And as she bore down on his tiny vessel, Chorael felt something alien grow inside of her. Her white-hot anger burned even brighter and seemed to be stoked by an other-worldly force. Vaguely, she wondered if it was the Rage that she had heard of and realized if it was, she no longer cared.

Chorael saw the outline of the human's small boat above her and she pushed straight up toward it, building momentum with each stroke. First her head and her upper body burst through the bottom of the vessel and she briefly saw Gregoire. She thrashed her head and torso from side to side, and the tiny ship was torn asunder as though an explosion had ripped through it. Chorael, diving back under, swam in a slow, deliberate arc, sweeping her clawed hands through the dark water. With measured strokes, she circled back to the boat and her fate.

Little remained of the vessel after her fierce onslaught. Rising up from the depths, she easily pushed her way through the flotsam that bobbed and bounced along the lake's surface. Like fallen leaves, the splintered timbers and planks were simply an annoyance to her and not even noticeable as they slapped and smashed against her blue-green carapace. Her keen eyes were fixed on one target alone and it filled her vision, bounced back and forth, echoing off of her lenses until it was all that she could see. Swimming in a broken fashion, Gregoire was not even a league away. Chorael smelled his blood in the water and nothing had ever seemed as sweet to her as that moment did. She savored it, reveled in it and she felt the Rage grow stronger. Every stroke she made pushed her old life farther and farther away. She no longer resisted it, but let the fires grow, burning her up from within, melting her cold heart and finally consuming it.

The dragon turtle bore down on the hapless hunter like an avenging angel. He turned in her direction and Chorael could see that he knew he was doomed. All else was lost to her but the single man floating in front of her, leading the way like some glowing beacon. Chorael cut through the waves deftly and she imagined what sounds he would gurgle when she sank her sharp, beaklike mouth into his vulnerable torso. They would be music to her, no matter what. She sped forward.

As she neared the betrayer, the man who raided her nest, Chorael did not see that his comrades-inarms, those who had actually removed her eggs, had — launched boats of their own and had circled back around. Moving quickly in two separate vessels, they flanked the dragon turtle. Normally, her sharp vision would have picked them out easily even if the moonlight hadn't have been so bright. The double lenses in her eyes allowed light and images to bounce back and forth within the occipital chamber and grow more intense. But the Rage had gripped Chorael and the only other image she saw besides the hunter barely treading water was the image of her defiled nest; the broken shells and shattered dreams. She had no idea that her own death was so near at hand.

Unlike his boat, the ships of his cohorts were well equipped for dragon hunting. As Chorael bore down on Gregoire, his assistants launched spears and harpoons into the air. Chorael, consumed with vengeance, didn't see them and made no move to dodge them. One after another of the iron tipped lances struck her carapace, piercing the tough shell. Somehow, the hunters managed to pull her back and stop her inches from Gregoire.

Chorael, denied her vengeance, reared up and thrashed madly against the tethers. Chorael released a spew of burning steam but disorientated and lost in her bloodlust, struck no one. She screamed out and the sound echoed off the lake for miles and miles around. Every other living thing grew silent at the sound of her death throes. The water grew slick with her blood and Chorael grew weaker and weaker. As her outer lids grew heavy, she turned to face Gregoire. The last sight she saw was his fearful face bathed in a red haze. Then her eyes closed forever and her lifeless body bobbed between the two boats like a marionette.

Dargo's eyes were not made for tears. Even if he had been capable, they would have been dwarfed by the lake itself and lost all meaning. Still, in his heart, he wept for Chorael and the final fate that had been served so undeservedly to her. She had merited better, though even he had warned her of the folly of aiding the damned humans. Nothing but tragedy could have come from their meeting and he was right, though he wished otherwise. And he had seen more tonight than the death of his beloved sometimes-mate. He had seen firsthand the true measure of the Rage and what it could mean to his people. He arrived only in time to watch the hatred and anger wash over the gentlest spirit he had ever known, and see what folly that madness had led her to.

Was this to be their fate as well, he wondered? To be blinded by fury to the point of death or destruction at the hands of the hated humans? Or even worse, to be enslaved by them until they achieved the freedom that only twilight offered a dragon?

No, he told himself with a growing anger that surprised even him in its sudden ferocity. I will not allow it even if it means slavery of a different kind.

He resolved himself to speak with the remaining council members about the offer Sammaster made to their kind. With the only truly dissenting member of their group gone in such a horrific manner, Dargo was certain there would be no other opposition to the lich's offer. If he had been more of a philosopher or a sage, the dragon turtle might have pondered over the twist fate had taken when it made the staunchest opponent to Sammaster become the greatest example for those remaining to embrace his offer instead of facing pointless death. However, philosophy was not his strong suit. He was simply one who had watched his love meet destruction in the flames of the Rage and was determined to lose no one else to it, no matter the cost.

With one final glance at the surviving humans as they hauled away Chorael's body, Dargo dived deep into the lake. To all the surface world, his retreating form looked like nothing more than moonlight dancing on the waves.

Deeper and deeper he dived, determined to find the others before another moment was lost. The dragon turtles would embrace the Cult of the Dragon and find some salvation in it. And as he dived on to the black depths at the heart of Lake Thaylambar, he felt his heart grow cold and icy as though a never-ending winter had taken hold and no spring would ever thaw again.