Chapter 35
In Which I Am Growing More and More Familiar with the Roads and Plazas of an Underwater City from a Pre-Apocalyptic Era, and Would by Now Be Feeling Quite at Home if Not for One Small Issue.
It felt unmasculine to admit, but the mounds of corpses creeped me out.
I could easily distinguish which heaps the dragon siblings had piled, and which had existed, untouched, for centuries.
What a grim task it must have been for those last survivors, to keep their tomb-to-be in order.
The corpses piled by the ancients filled deep pits in the ground, which Hydna explained had once held water for swimming.
One of them, before dying, had carved words into the tiles along the pool’s edge.
After some consideration, I decided not to ask the dragons for a translation.
Their bodies, mummified in the arid cold of the dome when life systems failed, were a dark leather.
The stretch of their skin forced their faces into snarls, cushioned by the gentle puff of their hair.
Supposedly, they’d rot now that functionality was restored to the whirring mechanisms that issued heat and air.
For now, though, the bodies kept me company.
The stacks made by Hydna and Merulo failed to match the ancient heaps in quality.
Transporting the desiccated bodies had clearly caused crumbling, resulting in dusty piles of shattered forms. But I couldn’t judge the siblings for their trashing of the remains, nor even for the vaguely artistic stack of heads I found in an otherwise empty plaza.
Their early life didn’t exactly sound idyllic; some hardening must have been required.
My main source of anguish was that the people of the pre-Descent seemed to have no use for swords.
I’d done a rudimentary search for a blade, gotten lost, panicked a bit, stumbled on some gruesome sights (apologies to its creator, but I truly did not appreciate the head stack), then given up.
During one of our group lunches, I finally asked the dragons for advice. Hydna grinned at the opportunity to show off. She summoned a sword in a puff of smoke, a gleaming Knight of Order blade with balancing scales on the hilt.
“That’s mine,” I said, taken aback. “See the notch on the hilt—my father bought me this. He said he could have spent the same amount on a dairy herd, and that if I ever lost it, he’d have me whipped.
And I did lose it, after bashing in poor Glenda’s head .
. . or not so poor, actually, she’s been rather horrible lately.
How is it possible that you have my sword? ”
“Don’t be so impressed,” said the sorcerer, scribbling away in his notes.
Smoked salmon, bread, and apples sourced from a seaside town lay spread on a towel atop the pavement.
We sat in the plaza that held Merulo’s relocated library—he never ventured far from it these days, and just as rarely spared attention for anything beyond his work.
“Objects that bear personal significance are far easier to locate. She took the easy route.”
Diplomatically, I ignored Merulo. “Thank you, Hydna. This means a lot to me.”
She acknowledged my words with a brisk nod, before ripping off another chunk of fish with her teeth. More than half of this feast would be disappearing down her gullet, as per usual. One day, I would ask her how she paid for our food, but for now I had a greater pull on my attention.
Unable to help myself, I rose and—moving a safe distance away from the picnic—gave my recovered blade a few test swings.
It came as a relief when my body slipped easily into drilled stances and movements.
The last time I’d held a sword, it had been pressed hard into Gareth’s back.
That memory brought my heart to an anxious flutter, and I thrust and bobbed with extra zest, fencing a phantom.
“It’d be better practice if you had an opponent,” Hydna called, having disappeared the fish in a marvelous show of gluttony. She rolled her shoulders, loudly cracking the joints.
“No, see,” the sorcerer cut in, still scrawling, “Cameron will lose purposefully, and then you’ll have to deal with his perversions.”
Before I could protest, she said, “Okay. Maybe I’m into that.”
I felt very happy.
“Sir Cameron,” said Merulo. “This is a formal order: you are not permitted to sleep with my sister.”
“Who said anything about sex?” said Hydna, rising to her considerable height. “I just want to beat the shit out of him.”
I felt very unhappy.
Already suffering from the tightness of unmaintained muscles, I swung into another set of drills. “How about we do a regular duel, and stop at surrender?”
“Aw, come on.” Hydna’s voice came from behind my shoulder, and I jumped. When had she moved? “I’ll fix you up with a spell afterwards. Don’t you like this stuff?” Crimson eyes shone from under the mess of her hair. Her full lips curled in a grin, and I noticed a gap in her too-sharp teeth.
“Not when it’s real!” I felt myself beginning to flush, and pulled my sword to my chest. “I don’t actually like getting hurt.”
“That’s right,” called Merulo, sketching something now in broad sweeps. “He only wants you to say nasty things in pretend. And then you have to fuck him afterward.”
“This is getting incredibly personal,” I said. “And I’m really just . . . practicing with a sword here.”
“Alright.” Hydna held up calloused hands, admitting defeat. “A normal sword fight it is. Give me that for a second.”
With considerable reluctance, I handed over my blade.
She wrapped her hands around the hilt, speaking softly.
With a flex of her biceps, she tore the blade in two down its center.
I made a small noise of anguish, which faded as I realized that each half had re-formed into a complete sword.
Taking the blade she extended, I looked it over thoroughly.
It was still my sword, down to the familiar nicks and wear.
Preoccupied as I was with this examination, Hydna’s first swing nearly cut my face in two. I leaped backward, my body moving before my thoughts could catch up, and drew myself into a stance.
Hydna bobbed, light on her feet, a terrible smile straining her mouth.
She thrust before I could process it. Again, I reacted with muscle memory alone, her blade slamming into mine with a ring.
The blow vibrated through my body, and I feared my sword would snap.
Hydna followed her next smashing blow with a twist that ripped my hands free of the hilt and sent my sword spinning.
It skittered across the pavement and beneath a bench, far out of reach.
Thinking this a loss, I allowed my abused muscles to slacken, shoulders dropping.
There was a clatter as Hydna discarded her sword and raised her fists.
“Oh no, you can’t,” I started, ducking away from a blow that would have crushed my skull to powder.
“Hydna!” I skittered back as the dragon woman came for me. She raised a fist, and I plunged backward with enough speed that I lost my balance, meeting the hard pavement. This had to end it.
But the dragon woman followed me to the ground, knees slamming down on either side of my torso.
Her massive hands, burning with a fever heat, gripped my wrists to restrain them.
I may as well have been pinned by a bear.
“I didn’t tell you the penalty for losing,” she growled, her burgundy hair falling about our faces.
“You shouldn’t have accepted a fight without knowing the penalty. ”
“Normal sword fight,” I yelped. “That was the descriptor!” My legs lay free. I could kick upward, but would that do more than antagonize her?
“Normal for me.” Her triumphant laugh blasted like a trumpet so close to my ears. “See, if I’m fighting someone? They die. But my brother, now, he wouldn’t like that so much. So, how’s about I break every bone in your body instead?”
“Merulo!” I cried shrilly. “Help, please!”
“You think I can’t take on my idiot brother?” Hydna’s hands clutched harder, nails digging into my skin. Her teeth were as sharp as fangs, parted and wet. “I could do whatever I want, to either of you.”
She paused, then—
“Ahh, Merulo, you were right!” Pealing with laughter, she climbed off me.
I crossed my legs hurriedly, covering myself with my hands. “It’s just, it’s confused blood, that’s all.”
“You picked the funniest man to drag down here. Who reacts that way?” The dragon woman slapped her thighs, bent with the force of her mirth, before making her way back to the picnic and dropping with a thud. I supposed there was more fish to eat.
I collected my sword, checking for damage, then sheepishly rejoined them. Merulo occupied himself with long strokes of his pen, pointedly ignoring me.
“It’s not funny,” I said, helping myself to an apple. “Really.” It broke easily under my teeth, crisp and sweet. A few more bites—and then panic struck as I recalled his jealousy at my birthday feast. “And just so you know,” I said, sidling closer to him, “I’m not interested in her, at all.”
“Thanks,” said Hydna. She raised her bushy eyebrows at me. “Then I should never do that again?”
“Uh,” I said, and both dragon siblings snorted. “Whatever. Look, show me what you’re working on.” I leaned in to view Merulo’s journal and frowned, confused by what he’d drawn across the pages.
An arm. Covered in sigils and lines that drew away into clouds of finely printed text.
It looked skinned, the interlock of musculature and tendon evident down to the minutiae of its curling fingers.
At the shoulder, instead of meeting a body, the device erupted into straps of the sort that might hook around a chest.
“That’s a nice drawing. Is it for anything in particular? A new type of construct?”
“It will be for me,” Merulo said, scribbling another row of sigils into the elbow joint. He’d drawn it so that some elements appeared lifted off the rest, as if caught mid-explosion.
“You have arms,” I pointed out. “Two of them. Do you need more?”
“Cameron.” The sorcerer lowered his quill. “We’ve had this talk before. I will not allow any interference with my work.”
“I’m not interfering.” In slow movements, I took his journal, surprised that he was allowing this intrusion.
“I’m only asking questions, to better understand.
” I leafed through the drawings, swallowing past the lump in my throat.
One spread of pages contained a detailed leg, the page nearly black with the density of written notes.
In growing horror, I kept turning pages, but no other body parts presented themselves.
Only a slim wand, like something an Elder might carry, with a handle molded for gripping fingers.
“An arm and a leg. That’s what it will cost.” I closed the book, not wanting to look at him as he was now, intact. “That sounds like a joke they’d tell in a tavern.”
“Fair payment, given the results.” The sorcerer was gentle as he retrieved the book. “Hydna will pay the rest. She won’t drain herself, not like I did, but it will be close.”
“Too damn close for my liking.” She spoke with her mouth full. “And those limbs will stop working with the magic gone. You’ll need to think about that. If we fish around the mummy piles, there’s bound to be pre-Descent folk with mechanized prosthetics—we can yank them off, duplicate, and adjust.”
“We won’t have our current forms after the infection is cleansed, so it will not matter.” Merulo was clearly rehashing an old argument. Finished with his notes, he took my abandoned apple and began to devour it, smearing his chin with scraps of its flesh.
I recalled what he had told me about dragons, what they had been, pre-Descent. “You’ll be electronics?”
“Computers,” corrected Hydna, reclining with a belch. “Super-computers. They’re like . . . thinking boxes, made of pre-Descent materials. I’m not overly keen on the idea, but who knows, might be fun.”
Her words were punctuated by the splatter of an apple core, which Merulo had thrown to bounce along the plaza tiles. “You’re keen enough on the rest of it,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand.
“What if you kept your bodies?” I asked. Then, quickly, as the sorcerer’s face soured: “I’m not interfering, only asking. But . . . do you have to?”
“Dragon bodies are raw magic.” Merulo’s bony fingers descended on a fresh apple. “The transformation is a necessity. Everything will be restored, cleared of God’s corruption.”
“Ah.” I wondered what would happen to the leviathans, with their beautiful draping fins. “So that’s that, then.”
A faint, treasonous hope remained in me, that the conditions of the prophecy had been met.
That the mad sorcerer was defeated and would never see the world he sought.
Even if he mutilated himself in a failed attempt to destroy all magic—it beat outright death, or whatever loss of self that transformation might entail.
We could live like that, Merulo on his prosthetics, with his fading dreams.
Though—and here I snuck a sly glance at my sorcerer, who had a fleck of apple flesh caught in a scowl line—with my powers of persuasion, he might even be stopped before that point. Which, you know, would be preferable.