A Wyrm, not a Worm (1)

The day was young, fresh with joyous promise, reeking of brimstone and shrubland aflame, and Ol-Lozen was the first to wake from slumber.

For two days they had traveled in directions provided by crows, happily given, the presence of the wyrm an offense to their noses and a disturbance of their delicate livelihood. They wished it gone. From the destruction the beast had left in its wake, who could blame them? Trees still burned long after the beast had gone, trunks split open like peanut shells, orange flames nursing in bark bowels. Fields of short, stubborn grasses burned to cinders. From the earth rose the sweet stench of meat and sulfur that set mouths watering traitorously: wyrmfire had cooked the soil and the creatures that made the hills their home. Even the stones in the newly christened wastelands had blackened.

Daigay refused to bring Jackbee further at the first scale found in the dirt, and tied his reins to a stake that Ol-Lozen beat into a large stone so he wouldn’t wander away. Whispered words encouraged the donkey to lay where the ground was mercifully untouched. His eyes glazed over with her spell, and from how his head turned perpendicular to the path they strode, Ol-Lozen assumed her magic had plugged the animal’s ears as well. That, too, was a mercy.

They followed the trail of smoke bleeding into the horizon, picking up more scales. Mouse was particularly drawn to them. She “oohed” and “aahed” over each sapphire fragment when it caught the light at the right angle, how they clinked together like checkers and had layers that flaked away. One bloody scale gave her pause. Brushing it off with hard soil she pocketed it with the others. They found the leg after.

It was lying in the earth, discarded, like a picked chicken carcass, crimson soaked into the soil around the severed limb. Corpseflies twitched their last in the blood, carpet-thick with the bodies of their brethren.

Daigay pointed a finger. “There’s danger afoot.”

She held her hand soundlessly above the blood. The liquid rippled, and from the muck and blood lanced an iridescent structure she caught with ease. Testing it with a swing she found the blade sufficient, and tossed it to Ol-Lozen. “Just in case,” she told him. He’d never held anything more morbid in his life. Thin and light, the sword whistled with every swish. And brittle. One strike, no more than two, he figured.

“A worm?” Ol-Lozen had asked, assuming ears crammed with fog had misheard her words that night.

“No, a wyrm. ‘Wyr’ as in ‘Were you listening?’ Very similar words; altogether very different beasts –”

“How do I kill one?”

“Shouldn’t you like to know what the beast looks like first?”

“I expect I’ll know it when I see it.” She raised an eyebrow, and he continued. “You talk of the skill required to defeat it and the ineffectiveness of armaments that are not this one. The wyrm threatens populations, plural, not simply ‘a threat,’ speaking to lethality across vast distances, so likely larger than implied or very mobile. Or both.” He gazed deep into the beating heart of their camp’s gentle, domesticated flame. “From the mountains.” Desire quickened in his blood; atavistic want unsated, base as the need to fight and breed. “Majestic. Our worlds may be separated, but our prized game remains constant. I need know if it bleeds like mine, dies the same as mine.” He paused. “And does it breathe fire like mine?”

Daigay nodded. “You’ve killed one before?” He shook in the negative, a low chuckle roiling in his chest.

“My ancestors ground the last of their bones for medicine centuries before my mother’s time. But the challenge they provided is one my people have yearned centuries for.” Green lips peeled away in grim rictus. “I shall revel in this chance to slay a dragon.”

Roars howled through the dreary waste, and the party halted in their tracks. Ol-Lozen’s heart skipped at the first concrete sign their quarry neared, and his hand tightened around the bloodsword he’d been given. His people’s blade at his back seemed to grow heavier not in weight but in purpose, crying out for notice. For use.

Embrace me. Take me to our lover’s bed.

“The beast draws near, demon. Now would be wise to draw that sword you hold dear.”

“Not until I behold this game with my own two eyes,” he replied. Daigay, he chided, refusing to succumb, you ask for your own death if I use this technology too soon. Countless images of battle paraded already, fairy stories of colossal winged reptiles predisposed unto wickedness, endings wept over through eternity, minstrels recounting their glory – and greater errs – of the hunter and their betrothed hunted. Magi need not have tempted him; his sword hand was restrained solely by thread. They came to a shallow gradient which rose to a plateau, and started treading up the hillside

As they ascended past the burning corpses of opened animals, rent by furrows that passed through earth then flesh then earth again, he felt the first tickle of reason: he wore no armor. The Orkan stifled the voice with remembering his ancestors fought the beasts in skins, and with tools cobbled together from raw material: sticks and sharpened rocks and fists. He carried a refined weapon never dreamed. And the dragon was dying. His odds were better.

Cresting the plateau’s lip, ringed with gnawed boulders, they found the beast curled up in a scorched cradle of its own creation. Soot-rolled stones made for the wyrm’s nest. A sturdy blackened oak decayed by flame provided a mote of shade. Under the tree the beast slept, but peace appeared to have given a wide berth. Its wings were folded in on itself, its tail encircled around itself, as if cold, drawing a blanket close. One gnarled horn was broken off at the root. The blue scales still adhered to the leathery hide had a pale, milky color to them. Breath entered and left the cleft nostrils in sharp, uneven bursts, and dark blood saturated the earth and stone.

“It looks so sad,” whispered Mouse, and she was correct: the draconic beast reminiscent of Orkan legend appeared more a sickly goat than the object of many heroic tales. Her child’s cupped hand unconsciously rose as she trembled forward. Daigay yanked the girl back by the cloak’s hood.

“We’ll be putting this beauty out of its misery,” the old magus warned. Her hand snapped up with clawed fingers. Quakes shook the plateau, and the wyrm was rudely awoken by the surfacing of an immense earthen claw, snaring the beast in fingers thick as fallen logs and pinning it to the ground. A snarl spat from its lips as its jaws opened wide. Raging light bloomed in its gullet, but a shimmer from Daigay’s hand shoved the fiery breath back down. Another swift spell bound its jaws from opening again. Simple as lying, Daigay conquered the beast.

“Now we approach.”

Ol-Lozen radiated a heat of his own. “For what purpose? The threat is quelled. Crush it, and be done.”

“Far from it,” she replied. “Irritatingly difficult to kill, wyrms. One lost limb and a few quarts of blood may well be a nick. More resilient than they appear.” Her path curved to the bleeding limb. She stopped, and gestured for the others to join her. Ol-Lozen’s stomach turned at the sight of what she’d found. Mouse stumbled into the not-man and she grabbed his quivering hand for support.

“What in the gods’ name is that?” Ol-Lozen moved his hand to the girl’s back and comforted her towards his hip for support. Her wobbling legs knocked against his own.

Clung to the ragged wound with yellow, throbbing tendrils was a sac of yolky fluid. Scabs of rocky, pitted material shielded the surface, like the shell of an egg splattered onto a blood and bone skillet. The tendrils had burrowed into the creature’s muscle distending scales and hide, pulsing with wet malignancy. Trapped, and in obvious agony, the beast whimpered to be set free.

“It is the source of the world’s woes, or a piece of it.” Daigay’s tone was sluggish, every word enunciated clearly. No room for misinterpretation would be given, nor ignored were her words’ cryptic nature. “Death will reach this wyrm in time, but perhaps we should hurry it along,” suggested Daigay.

Mouse hugged Ol-Lozen’s leg. Tears welled in her eyes, and would soon begin their journey downcheek. “Demon, put the wyrm out of its pain.”

For once we are of the same mind, is what he’d wanted to say. “Get back. Now!” is what left his lips instead. His gaze burned a path to the old, knowing, magus. “But you,” he growled, “will speak on this… infection.”

“What? The death of this beautiful specimen isn’t enough to concern yourself with?” Daigay’s face was stone, and betrayed no emotion as she took her granddaughter’s hand, the girl’s sniffles punctuating the tepid air. She endured the Orkan’s glare for a heartbeat. “Wyrms do not travel in adulthood. They spend their lives hoarding the treasures and rewards of human progress. Yet this one lies wounded, no prizes of note, and no nest. Take from that what you will.”

Ol-Lozen looked upon the pathetic creature struggling to escape, then back to she who knew much, but shared infuriatingly little. A half-formed reply touched his tongue. “You will explain further.”

“Aye, once the deed is done.”

He turned back to the wyrm, hand slow to draw his weapon.

His heart was bereft of the urgency that drove him. All excitement of the moment had rushed out, leaving him empty. There was no glory to be found. No satisfaction. Ending the life of a lamed, beaten animal disgraced him, and he was certain his ancestors observed amid throes of sorrow and humiliation, cursing the name Ol-Lozen, and those of his family who’d raised such a failure. The relentless crush of despair stayed his hand, the sword freed mere centimeters from the sheathe when Daigay called out, full of energy –

“UNTIL THEN!”

– He heard a soft knock and recognized the sound before the rumble that followed: her heel striking the packed ground.

All at once the earthen hand pinning the wyrm crumbled to dust. Liberated, the wyrm unfurled its wings and tried to flee, but invisible force held it fast to the ground, and it roared in tremendous defiance; the magic binding its jaws, too, had released. Ol-Lozen stumbled backwards, equally surprised as the monster that fixed him with golden, bloodshot eyes, slit pupils narrowing to frantic slashes. Claws like knives dug trenches in the dirt. Yellowed blades of teeth in rows dripped milky saliva. The spined tail slithered along, kicking up clouds.

“DAIGAY! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

“I recall your people yearned for wyrm slaying? Was I mistaken?” The wyrm’s visage filled his gaze, but her tone alone told him she sneered. Her volume warned him she was much too near. With a nervous huff, he resheathed his blade completely. His fingers played patterns on the sword forged from blood, few rays visible through the clouds glinting on its silver surface.

“But worry not, for I’ve left the wyrm earthbound so it shouldn’t fly away!”

“SHOULDN’T?!”

His concern was genuine, but the sneer taking root was only inaudible to those born without ears. Laughing, Daigay charged from the battle about to begin to a boulder at the plateau’s edge, and the quaking form hidden behind. Wind worried at her hair, the strength of brimstone stench soaring to unbearable heights with the wyrm’s release. Daigay reached out a hand of encouragement to the nervous child, coaxing her out into danger, soft elderly smile taut with daring.

“The time for your most important lesson has come, Mouse! You summoned this demon, and the time has come to learn what that truly entails!”