Llandry

14th day of the Seventh Moon (14 VII)

14th day of the Seventh Moon (14 VII)

The First of Our Disasters.

I was obliged to leave off in a hurry yesterday, and I cannot now remember what I was going to write there. It doesn’t matter. I was in the midst of composing that aborted sentence when I sensed Pensould’s approach. Draykoni senses are much more… everything than human senses; we can feel each other through the aether, within a certain range. And since Pense is my spouse, our bond is stronger than most. I knew him to be on the approach when he was still a full mile away.

I also felt his urgency. He was not merely coming to check up on me, as he sometimes does. He was moving at speed, flashing through the skies so fast that he would be upon me any minute. I could feel his distress.

I dropped my journal and pen into the hammock without a second thought. Honestly, I cared nothing for what happened to them at that moment. I leapt out of the hammock and let myself fall from the tree — an exhilarating experience when done for pleasure or practice, but undertaken on this occasion for speed. I Changed halfway down, as soon as I was clear of the lower branches. Then I lifted my vast draykon wings and soared skywards, just in time to see Pense appear on the horizon.

Minchu, he called to me — speaking without words, his mind to mine. I need you to come with me.

What is it? I tried not to let too much of my distress show, but I think I failed. Pense can lose his temper sometimes, and it can be a little bit terrifying when he does. But it is not like him to fear, and fear is what I sensed from him as he reached me.

He soared in a circle around me and flew back in the direction he had come from. I followed. Something is badly wrong, he informed me.

Nuwelin?

Nay, all is well with our colony. But I have found… something. He was struggling to frame his thoughts in words, which shocked me. At last he gave up on the attempt, and instead a brief image flashed into my mind.

I saw a copse of trees: spindly, frail growths, with ice-white bark and pallid, wan-looking leaves. Their lack of colour surprised me, as such pallor is more usual in the Darklands and the Lowers. It is out of place in bright, sunlit Iskyr. The mosses and grass sparsely covering the damp earth below were also bone-white.

Beneath the pale grass, dimly sensed in the earth below: the bones of a long-slumberous draykon, its flesh long since decayed. Ordinarily this would be cause for cheer, and we might now be launching an expedition to wake a prospective new fellow.

But Pense was right: something was amiss.

A little perspective, first. As strange (and wrong) as it sounds, I first encountered my Pensould in a similar state: he was a collection of bones, and naught else. With most creatures, such a state is simply death, ended, done. But draykoni do not precisely die, or not eternally so. When I found Pense like that, I could feel the life-force radiating from him. It was sluggish and distant, for he had been long, long asleep, but some essential part of him still lived. Thus was he roused, and regenerated, and given life again.

These bones were dead.

Dead, utterly. There was not the faintest shimmer of potential about them, not even a whisper of energy waiting to be roused. There was nothing at all.

I did not need to ask whether Pense had ever known the like. His fear and confusion answered that question for me. We flew in silence until we arrived at a small wood, and I followed Pensould as he tucked his wings and dived for the ground.

I noticed in passing that most of the trees in the wood were not pallid at all, nor were they delicate. They grew tall, their branches thin but strong. Their trunks were covered in mottled purple and green bark, and their leaves were glorious viridian. The pale trees were confined to a spot perhaps a hundred feet wide in the centre.

Once on the ground, Pensould pawed restlessly at the earth with his great talons, ripping up chunks of mud and grass. I joined him, and we soon uncovered the skeleton.

We have highly unusual bones, as you might expect; what else is normal about a draykon, after all? Instead of bleached white, the bones of a draykon (at least a pure, ancient one like Pense — I do not know about mine) are deep indigo in colour, and they shine a bit silvery in the right light. When I saw the array of bones sticking sadly out of the earth my heart stopped dead in horror. These bones were unquestionably draykoni, but they were as pallid and stark as the grass and trees around them.

I could not detect any life about them, either, though I strained every sense I had in the attempt.

Pense stopped digging and sat back on his haunches, as speechless with horror as I. We leaned against one another and I drew a little strength from his nearness and his warmth. I was so shocked I could not think, but that would not do. Pull yourself together, I ordered myself, with the addition of a choice name or two which I will not repeat.

I looked again at the trees and moss and frondy plants around me, all wilting and drained of colour. Prowling about with my tail twitching with unease, I began to notice other things: a daefly lying dead upon a thin, brittle branch, the bright hues of its fragile wings bleached to sickly white. A small colony of tiny insects lying scattered across the earth several feet away from the draykon grave, every single one dead. I do not know what colour these ought to have been in life, but their dull shells were as waxy-pale as everything else around me.

Pense.

He did not reply, but I felt his attention shift to me.

Is there… do you know of a way to drain the life force out of things?

Life force? he repeated, after a pause.

Amasku, I suppose it is. Look at all of these things. I waited, nudging him until he shook off his stupor and joined me. He regarded the daefly and the insects in thoughtful, weary silence, and finally conveyed to me a mental shake of the head.

I have never seen anything like this.

It was the response I had been afraid of receiving, but had hoped not to hear. Something has forcibly drained the life out of every single living thing in this patch of wood. Not just the draykon.

Truthfully, Pense’s reaction was alarming me quite a bit. I had never seen him so flummoxed, or so horrified. I wanted to draw him out of it, by any means I could think of, so I kept asking questions. Once the analytical side of his mind focused upon the problem, hopefully he would revive a little.

Hmm. Pense began, at last, to think, and some of my tension eased. I do not know what could accomplish this, he repeated. But I can tell you that the power required to drain the life out of a draykon is… to call it considerable would be to badly understate the case. Pense was over-enunciating his complicated sentences, as though concentrating hard on the words was of some kind of help to him. In which case, it is perhaps unsurprising that the effects upon surrounding, lesser life forms would be profound. They surrender their lives so much more easily, after all.

There was that touch of draykon arrogance, that comfortable certainty of superiority over every other living thing. I may have rolled my eyes, I confess, but I kept it discreet. At least he sounded more like my Pense.

And in this instance, he was not wrong. I know of no other creature that “dies” the way a pureblooded draykon does. It is as though they simply refuse to participate in a natural life cycle, out of pure force of will. Truly, it must take a lot to rend away an old draykon soul.

I felt sick and so, so cold.

Pense had taken to prowling around behind me, but he was not investigating as I was. His attention was focused upon the grave, and he strode in purposeful circles around it, his senses alert and probing. A female, he informed me. Old. Older than me, I would say, and by far. But I do not recognise… I cannot discern anything else about her.

A flicker of anger reached me with the words, which made me feel obscurely reassured. Pense’s spirit was returning. Whatever caused this atrocity, I cannot imagine, but I know that we need to find out. For that, we are going to need Pense at his best. Even if that means he is going to be in a poor temper.

I need Nyden, Pense suddenly announced, and took to the air. He was gone before I could reply.

It was silly of me, but I felt a little forlorn in the wake of this sudden departure. Nyden! What did he need Nyden for, that I could not provide? It occurred to me that it must relate to Nyden’s status as a fellow ancient soul, not a part-blood like the rest of us, and that was sensible enough. But still, I could not help feeling a little dismayed. I reassured myself with the reflection that I had been the first person Pense had looked for, and that he had instinctively come straight to me.

That made me feel better.

I occupied myself with another sweep of the strange, pale trees while I waited, but I discerned nothing else that struck me as significant… save for a flicker of something odd on the northern edge of the circle, a faint disturbance in the amasku that flowed still outside the confines of that odd space. It was a little disordered, more so than usual, but the difference was subtle enough that I could discern little about it. It was flirting with the idea of creeping back in to the dead space, though it had yet to make a significant attempt to reclaim it. I welcomed the thought that the area would recover in time, and flourish again someday.

I wanted to convince myself that whatever had happened here might have been natural, that it had not been deliberately imposed. But I could not. How could any natural phenomena produce such a strange, and isolated, effect as this?

By the time I completed a second exploratory circuit, I sensed Pense on the return, with Nyden swift behind him.

The two landed, slipping lithely in between the brittle branches of the trees. I instantly felt a wave of shock and revulsion from Nyden, so powerful that I had to close myself up. It is hard to explain what I mean by that, but it is the equivalent of shutting your eyes and putting your fingers in your ears, a desperate attempt to stop anything else from reaching you. I maintained this state while Nyden walked around the grave, inspecting every part of it.

At length, he sat back on his haunches. I thought him growing more composed, so I tentatively let my guards fall.

A mistake. Nyden’s head lifted, his black scales glittering darkly in the pale sunlight, and he shrieked. If I thought his battle-cry upon arrival had been alarming, I was mistaken, for this shook the earth.

Worse, he set Pense off, too. The pair of them screamed their fury at such volume, I could only assume the ruckus would be audible at the other end of Iskyr. I sat and endured, hunched up and as tightly closed to everything as I could manage to make myself, thankful that I had not brought poor Siggy along.

Eventually, they composed themselves.

I am sorry, Minchu, Pense said, and came over to nuzzle at me. I permitted him to coax me out of my huddle, though I could not immediately recover my own composure enough to reply. Nyden, meanwhile, sat by the graveside and sobbed, his misery all-consuming.

After a while, I mustered my resolve and crept a little nearer. I did not want to interrupt his grief, and I was feeling more than a little wary of him after his fit of fury. But his misery touched me, and I felt it incumbent upon me to do something. Did you know her?

I do not know, Nyden wept.

Oh. I wasn’t sure what else to say. Considering the degree of his despair, I had expected a favourable answer.

It is the pity of it, Nyden sobbed. And the insult!

With that, some of his grief transformed back into anger, and he did a bit more roaring. I was thankful that Pense restrained himself, this time.

Have you ever seen something like this before? I persisted, when he had calmed himself once again.

Nyden went back to sobbing. Never, he replied. Never, never. It is unthinkable.

I felt Pense’s disappointment echo my own. He had doubtless fetched Nyden in hope that the other ancient would be able to shed some kind of light on the problem. If Ny knew nothing, there was nobody else that we could ask.

Or… nobody else that we would like to ask.

I directed my next thought at Pensould alone, leaving Nyden to his weeping. Eterna? I said, hesitantly.

She would not do this, Pense swiftly replied. Not even she. No draykon would do this to another.

Eh, I have to doubt that. Humans kill each other all the time. Even people who seem perfectly normal and charming and kind, like Devary, can still kill at need. Are the draykoni so different, in that respect? Is there a species alive who will not, or cannot, kill its own kind, under the right (or wrong) circumstances?

That isn’t what I meant, I told Pense. Perhaps she, or one of her people, might know something about this.

Perhaps. His reluctance matched my own. Eterna had led the war on my home; she had shown herself to be impossible to reason with, so consumed with anger and hatred that she had (in my opinion) virtually lost her mind. None of us was eager to have anything more to do with her.

But this was the kind of problem we could not ignore. We might, at last, have to put aside our distaste for Eterna, swallow our pride, and entreat her assistance.