An Angel’s Road to Hell

Cassandra Pendragon

“I… maybe?” To answer her truthfully I’d have had to dive into the whole conundrum surrounding Amazeroth and I wasn’t prepared to open that particular can of worms in front of the dragoness. “Why are you asking?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong but I imagine there are some similarities between my own race and yours. I’m not saying they are the same but dragons have been hunted by a few brave and mostly stupid humanoids over the years. Usually they simply end up as food but some managed to kill or even capture a hatchling. What I’m getting at is this: in the beginning all those wizards aspire to make our power their own, to somehow suck us dry and become a mage on par with any dragon. It never works. In the end they’re always forced to kill us and turn our bodies into powerful ingredients. I’m not saying the ground up carbuncle of a dragon can’t elevate a human sorcerer to unknown heights but it’s still a far cry removed from what we are. If this… Amon is as learned as you make him out to be, he’s got to know as much. Furthermore, from what I’ve seen, your power… transcends the normal limits of magic, which makes it even more likely that he won’t even be able to touch, never mind harvest, your spark. In essence, even if you were to play dead and allowed him to do whatever he wanted, he couldn’t possibly hope to turn into what you are. So… do you think your blood, your body and whatever ritual he can power with it, are worth the expenditure of waging war across an ocean?” The short answer would have been yes, without even considering Amazeroth’s influence, but I was still intrigued.

“What do you think?”

“I can’t possibly say, I don’t even know what you are. Provided I’m not delusional it does seem odd, though, that’s why I asked. Power as a motive for cruelty and conquest is nothing special but it has to be tangible and I don’t quite think it is, in this case. He could also be insane or stuck in a hole he can only imagine escaping with your help, whether voluntarily given or forcefully taken. In the end it probably doesn’t even matter that much. Whatever the reason, it has become apparent that he has set his sight on our continent and we’d be fools to let him do as he pleases.” Glimpses of Amon’s past fluttered through my mind, fragmented scenes from the journey of a young, desperate man who had become a monster, wearing human skin. Maybe he wasn’t insane, but thorough. He had vowed to never again be helpless, to never again be at someone else’s mercy. It was the only oath he hadn’t broken, as far as I knew. When he had learned that immortals existed, he must have felt threatened. Wouldn’t it be logical to grasp for that power, especially with Amazeroth whispering in his ear? Even a taste, a small token he could reap from me, would have been enough to continue… doing what, exactly?

I managed to come up with quite a few ludicrous ideas, none of them desirable, ranging from a devious trap for my kin, powered by my essence, over a desperate attempt to rid himself off the Lord of Mirrors, to a bid for immortality, but I simply didn’t know. Knowing Amazeroth and my gnawing suspicion that he wanted to change, if not eradicate, our race the former seemed much more likely, a sort of fail safe in case I wouldn’t survive, but it was guesswork at best and preposterous hubris at worst. Still, Quenda had impressed me. She was fast and clever and she wasn’t too lazy to use her gifts. Considering I hadn’t told her anything about Amazeroth and my personal history her speculations were surprisingly well reasoned.

“It does make a difference,” I said thoughtfully. “It changes what we can expect of him. Up until now I always thought of him as a cruel warmonger, a greedy, power hungry abomination, whose ambitions know no bounds. If you’re right he might also be a man with his back against the wall. It would explain his obsessiveness, his singleminded focus. I guess we’ll have to find out, one way or the other.” The dragoness took her time to digest my words while Kana was entirely content to simply fly, her joy, when she dove and rose, pirouetted around or hid behind feathery clouds, almost infectious. Like a bird, she danced to the music of her own, carefree laughter and the silky whispers of her wings, caught between rays of soft, golden light

I had almost become convinced that Quenda wouldn’t utter a reply, not today at least, and had been on the verge of following after the exuberant hybrid, when the dragoness spoke up again: “through the battles you’ve won you’ve earned yourself a short reprieve. The losses he sustained must have hurt but it can’t be too long before he will manage to replenish his resources, especially if he can open a gateway to his empire. What are your plans for thwarting him?” I bit my lip. It was a damn good question and one I didn’t have a satisfying answer to.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled after a short pause. “I’ve gotten used to running, to reacting. I’ve never had the time to strategise and truth be told, I don’t think I’m that good at it. I’m too impatient, too impulsive. In all honestly, I still hope someone else comes up with an idea. My brother has a devious mind and so does my mom. You’ve heard before that I’m about to leave… maybe one of them can figure something out in the mean time.”

“I see. In that case… I’d like to volunteer. Think about it, but keep in mind that I’d need a pretty detailed account of everything you know, not the watered down version you shared before. If you’re willing to provide, I’m sure I’ll be able to cause Amon much more than a few headaches.”

“He’s thousands of years old,” I stated doubtfully. “What makes you think you could ever outsmart him?”

“Simple. Chances are I’m cleverer. I’m not overly powerful, in comparison to my kin, I’m not overly large or strong. I’m intelligent. It’s hard to prove but if you want me to, I’ll be glad to undergo any challenge of the mind you care to come up with. Give me little information and I’ll give you a strategy. Provide me with more and I’ll give you a solution.” Cocky. Unfortunately I couldn’t tell if it was her draconic pride speaking and I surely wasn’t able to test her. I wasn’t a genius, at least I didn’t think so, and I wouldn’t be able to figure out how smart the silvery serpent actually was. But I knew someone who could. A misanthropic, eight legged someone who just so happened to have regained a bit of my trust when she had delivered Kana and me, safe and sound, to our doorstep. Provided I actually wanted Shassa to meet a young dragoness who was obviously quite enamoured with her own mental prowess. If she put her mind to it, the spider might just trap her like a fly in her web and while I, despite the rather painful lessons of the past, was prepare to believe she wasn’t after my life anymore, it still felt like leading a lamb to slaughter.

“You must be awfully sure of yourself,” I said, simply postponing the decision. “How come?”

“How old do you think I am? You’ve been told my brother and I are young and we are, by the standards of our race, but ever since… suns and stars, it would be so much easier to show you…”

“But,” I questioned when she didn’t continue.

“But I’m scared like a new born, alone under the winter moon. It probably doesn’t even matter much, I doubt I could stop you if you wanted to violate my mind, but I’m about as eager to invite you in as a… as a human would be to invite a dragon for supper.” A snort escaped me before I managed to regain control over my faculties. Still smirking I replied:

“Tough luck. The nosedive you took still rattling your bones?”

“Less the fall and more the presence I felt. Cassandra… I know you don’t mean us any harm but if you meant to make us aware of how dangerous you are, you succeeded, maybe even more throughly than you intended…”

“Would you get on with it,” Kana suddenly, piped up. Unbeknownst to either the dragoness or me she had tired of her game and rejoined us. “I never thought I’d see a silvery, flying fortress stall for time, but here you are, acting like a juvenile idiot.” She titled her head to the side, as if trying to recall a hazy memory. “Do or do not, there is not try… damn, I can’t remember where I’ve heard that before.” I could, but I wasn’t very eager on telling her that she was quoting a movie. For all I knew I might have made her believe that particular pearl of wisdom was one of my own.

Quenda wasn’t enamoured with her bluntness but it had the desired effect. After only a little more prodding I felt a tendril of thought hesitantly brush against my mind, like an extended hand, inviting me to follow. Shrugging I allowed the world around me to disperse as her memories became real to my touch, her past unraveling before me like a canvas.

“You can’t, I won’t let you!” Even telepathically my voice sounded weak, childish, a perfect match for the thin, gangly body I was stuck in. Mother only sighed tiredly, a stream of sparks flowing from her nostrils.

“There is no other way, you’ll understand once you have children of your own. I won’t…”

“No,” my exclamation was accompanied by a pitiful growl, reminiscent of a wolf and not a dragon. “I don’t need…”

“Quenda, I’m not asking for your permission. I’m telling you why I… might not return.” The little pause had been everything I had been waiting for. She wasn’t struggling with her words, she was losing her concentration. I tilted my head to the side and grinned toothily.

“On that we can agree. You won’t return because you’re not going to leave.”

“I have… why… what… have you…” I shrugged when her magnificent head hit the floor of the cavern with a resounding thud. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment before they became still and her body relaxed. Even though she couldn’t hear me I still answered:

“I’ve drugged you. It’ll wear off in a few weeks, provided I didn’t miscalculate. You’ll be blessed by the mother of all hangovers but you’ll be alive and no one’s debtor. You can thank me later. Right now, I have a boatload of work to do.” I squared my shoulders and slithered towards the exit, already calling for my brother. We had much to do and very little time…

“Gods forsaken, stubborn, golden pus bucket,” I cursed, the intricate runes blurring into meaningless scrawls, the vial filled with golden blood slipping in and out of focus. I needed sleep. I had been at it for days. I should never have struck a deal with a dragon, shunned by most of his peers. “A life for a life,” Ignus had said. “Your mother’s obligations and my protection for a single ritual. Seems fair, doesn’t it?” Indeed it had, but back then I hadn’t known what he was up to.

The golden, ancient dragon had helped my mother when we had hatched. He had provided our first meal, the most important piece of sustenance in every dragon’s life. Depending on the quality it could impede or accelerate our growth and the old lizard hadn’t been stingy. I didn’t know exactly what he had given us, but since my brother and I had almost overtaken our mother, a scarce few years after we had crawled form our eggs, it had to have been something special. Unfortunately there was no such thing as a free meal and he had come calling again, demanding for her to pay her dues. He had asked her to ingratiate herself with his son, a task as likely to cost her life as it was to succeed, going by Shafeer’s reputation alone.

Instead of idly sitting by and letting her protect us, as she had since the beginning, my brother and I had decided to act, to clean up our own mess. Which had meant taking her out of the picture for a while and trying to negotiate with Ignus. Unfortunately he had been rather insistent on his price. He had obtained a vial, filled with dragon’s blood, a very peculiar dragon, as much I had been able to tell with the first sniff, and he had been insistent that it held the key to true transformations, transformations that would allow a dragon to sire children with a different species. He hadn’t been able to distill the knowledge he longed for, though, and he had placed it as the price for our request.

At first I had been thrilled, I loved puzzles and my brother was no slouch when it came to magic either, but after ten days, my enthusiasm had turned into fear, my curiosity into frustration. What was he going to do if we failed? I didn’t want to find out, but no matter how insistently I begged the blood simply wouldn’t budge, each spell thrown at it dispersed like fog under the midday sun, and by now I was too tired to even focus. Grumbling I carried my stiff bones over to the corner where we slept and broke down beside my brother. He had already thrown in the towel around noon, yesterday.

As soon as my head came to rest on the hard stones, I drifted off, but my mind wouldn’t come to rest properly. Ever since I had been born, I had had a peculiar knack of visualising my problems in my dreams and while it meant I often slept less soundly than I was supposed to, it also allowed me to come up with pretty marvellous solutions, literally overnight. If I had been forced to hazard a guess I’d have said it stemmed from the peculiarities of dreams. For one, our mind wasn’t occupied with anything else while asleep and two, the usual boundaries we applied to our thoughts didn’t matter, either. Whatever the reason, sometimes I had found myself unable to make heads or tails of a magical conundrum or a difficult question mother had asked only to wake up the next morning with the solution at the ready. And this time was no different.

I dreamt of the hidden world, of the energies that defined the reality we lived in and their limitations. Which simply wouldn’t allow me to understand why I had felt a shadow of a power, or rather the echo of a shadow, in the sample, that had contained a speck of soul energy, life force and mana, all jumbled up into a confusing whole, even more complex than the parts it consisted of. It wasn’t feasible, it shouldn’t be possible, but yet, the key to truly and utterly change the essence of a creature seemed to rest within.

I woke up, barely two hours after I had passed out. I didn’t feel refreshed, I didn’t feel particularly enthusiastic, but I had a plan. Provided my assumptions were correct I would stand here until the end of days without a chance to understand the magic at work. I did have a blueprint, though. Maybe I could form a mould, probably single use, to mimic what I couldn’t create…

“Do you think it’s her,” Narros asked, when the speck of gold turned into a breathtaking dragoness, almost larger than life. We had been in the air for days on end but his curiosity was undiminished. No wonder, we both had been fantasising about the ominous dragon Ignus had never again mentioned, after we had succeeded, and now we wouldn’t only meet her but also come to see the fruits of our labour for the first time. Viyara… a beautiful name. Befitting of what little I had seen in her thoughts.

“Probably. Ignus doesn’t usually beat around the bush with me. It’s not her I’m worried about, though. How many auras do you feel?” He hesitated a moment as his power stirred.

“Four. But… Viyara is seeing four around her. I… I can’t feel the vixen. How’s that even possible?”

“I have a suspicion. That energy back then… it must have come from somewhere. Didn’t you listen to him? If we were prudent we might yet come to find out more about our race than we dare hope. We might yet come to realise that the world is larger than we know. What if…”

“That lying bag of scales knew who Sera was, all along. And he stole her blood,” I thundered.