A Heart of Ice

Vamira soared through the air, her scales shining pearly white in the light of the full moon. Her massive wings beat the frigid air, keeping her aloft in the clear, night sky. The massive peaks of the Crown of the World rose around her. The southernmost part of the range was still so far to the north that snow covered the ground year-round. Few dragons remained this far south. Most had retreated to the farthest reaches of the mountains to make their lairs.

Vamira smelled the smoke long before she saw it. It was not the smell of a forest fire or that of dragonfire. It was the smell of a wood fire, which meant there were humans. She was near her own lair and it was not unheard of to find a group of humans camping there. She continued toward the smell, although it would probably be wiser to avoid it.

But humans could not be tolerated here. This was her mountain. She knew every rock and ridge of it. She knew where it curved and where it jutted. She could fly the outline of the rocky face blindfolded or even in the sharp light of the morning sun. No one knew this place like she did. It belonged to her and she to it.

Vamira soon found the source of the smoke. It was not a camp of humans. It was a town. A town of humans was situated at the base of her mountain. The snowy forest had been cleared to make space for a cluster of wooden buildings. A palisade wall had been erected around the edge of the town.

It had been over a month since Vamira had been to her lair. She had spent that time in the north, visiting with her brother, Sinaro, and taking counsel with some of the older dragons. They were constantly trying to convince her to abandon her southern lair and move further north. And this was the exact reason why.

They knew her temperament. They knew she would destroy any humans she found. Her hatred for them was well known and respected. However, Rahvir the Eldest had issued his decree years ago that the humans were to be left alone whenever possible. Vamira and her brother both vehemently opposed this idea. But neither of them was old enough to argue with the Eldest.

Rahvir had been alive far longer than any other living dragon. He had been hatched in the years of the Nine, when the Skymother had still reigned on Trallis. He had told many stories of those days. Of how the Skymother had wished this world to belong to the dragons, but the rest of the Nine had overruled her and brought humans to share it.

There had been peace at first. Humans and dragons had coexisted, though they had not mingled much. Then the war with Neth Gellin had come. The spawn of Asha’tamenar’ash had poured forth to smother the Nine Worlds. Humans and dragons banded together in those dark days. According to Rahvir, dragons had even consented to bear humans on their backs to fight in the skies. Some humans had even been said to be capable of learning mindspeak, though Vamira had her doubts about that.

Whatever humans had been like in those long, lost days, now they were greedy and viscious, with weak minds. They had a low sort of cunning and a casual cruelty, but they were not capable of the things that dragons were. Unfortunately, there were so few dragons left. Maybe a couple dozen total.

In the past century, humans had begun pushing further and further north. They did not come with thoughts of coexistence or peace. They came with their mirror shields and magic swords. They slaughtered dragons when they could, including Vamira’s mate. And still, the Eldest maintained that dragons not fall to their level. That they not slaughter the humans the way they deserved.

All of these things were in Vamira’s thoughts as she circled high above the village. Her anger grew and grew inside her. She agreed far more with her brother’s thoughts on humans. Sinaro had told her once that she only needed two things to deal with humans, a belly full of fire and a heart of ice.

And so, she decided Eldest be damned!

She tucked her wings and dove toward the village. When she was several hundred feet above the wooden buildings, she flared her wings and opened her maw. Blue fire streamed out, engulfing the largest building at the center. It burst alight in the cold, dry air. She turned her stream of blue flame from building to building, each one flaring up like a fresh-lit torch. Screams of pain and terror cut through the night, shattering the silence like a pain of glass.

Figures began to pour into the muddy streets, fleeing immediately upon seeing the pearlescent terror that was Vamira. The blue flames began to spread on their own, fanned by the beating of her massive wings. Some few began trying the stop the flames, throwing snow or going for buckets of water. Most simply fled. Vamira thought of chasing them down, but decided it was not necessary. They would die in the snowy forest from cold or hunger soon enough.

A couple of daring warriors brought out bows and began to loose their darts at her. She pulled herself upward, avoiding the half dozen arrows that came near her, before plunging downward again and immolating the small resistance force with a blast of blue fire.

And just like that, it was over. The fires had consumed most of the town. The people were either dead or fled. Vamira waited for the exultant feeling of victory to come. She waited for the knowledge that justice had been served to flow through her.

But neither feeling came.

Instead, all she felt was an empty satisfaction. She had destroyed these humans and shown them what would happen if they dared to come to her mountain. But more would come anyway. That was the nature of humans, there were always more. And no matter how many she slew, no matter how many she burned in her righteous rage, it would not bring back Torvus.

Vamira turned away from the village, wheeling across the sky, over the forested slopes on the eastern side of the mountain. She was about to pull herself back into the night sky, when she heard the cry.

It came from the south, back toward the burned remnants of the village. Vamira turned back and flew towards the sound. She was nearly back to the village when she heard it again. It was a high-pitched wail coming from directly beneath her.

She landed in a less dense part of the forest, near where the slopes of the mountain started to become too steep to walk. She pushed her way through the trees, toward the sound of the wailing. A small clearing led to a cave set into a cliff face of the mountain. The wailing was coming from inside the cave. She knew it was human, but rather than just burn them from outside the cave, she preferred to look at the pitiful creature before she ended it.

Vamira poked her head into the cave entrance, her eyes immediately adjusting to the dim light. There were two figures inside. One was lying on its back unmoving. It reeked of smoke and burned flesh. The other was much smaller, and sat beside the first, wailing.

It was a child. It was difficult to tell how old it was, due to the thick furs wrapped around it. Not that it mattered to Vamira. The figure next to the child must be its mother. The woman must have been caught in the fires in the village and fled with the child, hoping to get far enough away to save the child before she died.

Foolish woman. She must have known the child would die alone out here in the wilderness. Still, she could admire the desire to defend one’s offspring, even in a human.

Vamira turned her eyes back to the child. Better to end it quickly, than to let it starve. The child had taken notice of her, its eyes staring at her, wide with fear. She knew she ought to kill it. It was a human, even if it was a child. If it survived somehow, it would grow to be a violent, evil thing like the rest of its kind. She opened her mouth to snuff its life out with a gout of fire...but found that she could not do it.

All she could think of was the memory of Torvus, murdered in the lair they shared, and the shattered remains of the two eggs he had been guarding. She wanted to kill it, she felt she should kill it, but she could not bring herself to do it. Human though it was, it was a child. Its mother had cared for it, had spent the last moments of her life to save it. Something inside Vamira, the mother she had never been, connected to that and respected it.

Vamira pulled her head from the cave, turned and launched herself into the sky. She needed to think. She circled higher and higher into the night sky, the first hint of light to the east heralding the coming dawn. She had three options. She could kill the child, though she doubted that she would ever be able to bring herself to do it, even if she deemed it a mercy. She could leave it to starve or freeze, but now that she had seen, had looked into its eyes, she doubted she would be able to put it from her mind. Or, she could so something to save it. Maybe even…raise it. Raise a human who would know the dragons’ ways and not hate them.

No! That was foolish. No human could know dragons like that. But perhaps she could care for it until it could care for itself.

She needed advice. Someone to point her in the right direction.

She opened her mind, reaching out. Distance did not matter with mindspeak. She could reach the Eldest himself if she wished, though he dwelt many days flight to the north. She found Sinaro easily and pushed her message to him. He answered immediately that he would come to speak with her. She had not told him her dilemma but he was only about two days away.

Vamira turned back north when something caught her eye. A large elk was picking its way through a clearing on one the western slopes. She pushed herself higher up through the air, then dove straight for the clearing. She landed in the clearing with a crash, and swung her tail around like lash. It caught the elk broadside and flung it against a tree at the edge of the clearing. Vamira pounced on it and snapped its neck with a deft twist of her head.

She picked the corpse up in her talons and lifted herself back into the air. She turned back to the southern side of the mountain and found the clearing with the cave. The wailing had stopped and for a moment, Vamira thought she might be too late. She stuck her head into the cave and saw the child curled up against its mother’s body shivering. Its small, fur cloaked head poked up, saw Vamira, and ducked back down.

Vamira withdrew her head from the cave. She used one of her talons to carve a chunk out of the elk, blew a small gout of flame to cook it, and pushed the meat into the cave mouth. Next, she dug a hole in the earth, ripped a tree out of the ground and crushed it into pieces. She pushed the pieces into the hole, then lit it aflame.

She had made her choice. For now.

The warmth of the fire and the smell of cooked meat soon lured the child out. It considered the chunk of elk for a few moments, standing by the fire, but not moving to eat. Vamira remembered the stories the Eldest had told. She pressed her mind forward, enveloping the child’s small one in her own. She pushed one thought into the child’s mind.

Eat.

The child recoiled as if burned, but looked at the meat with renewed interest. It walked over hesitantly, then pulled a bit free and put it in its mouth. It chewed slowly, then seemed to decide it was alright. It ate for a few more minutes, then curled up by the fire. It lay there, staring at Vamira, fear still present in its eyes.

Sleep.

She pushed the thought at the child. Its eyes drifted shut, and as the child drifted to sleep, Vamira felt…something. A feeling that was not her own. It was difficult to decipher exactly, either comfort or contentment?

Vamira was puzzled by this. The feeling could not have come from the child, yet there was no one else it could have come from. It unsettled her, even as she began to reconsider the stories the Eldest had told. She had dismissed the possibility that humans had been capable of learning mindspeak. Now she was not so sure.

Vamira spent the next day with the child. She continued to heat meat from the elk’s carcass to feed it and kept the fire burning to keep it warm. Other than that, she had no idea what to do with it, although she was beginning to feel uneasy about her decision to contact Sinaro. She knew what his advice would be and was unsure if she could follow it.

She continued to press her thoughts into the child’s mind, trying to figure out if the feeling she had felt before was a fluke. Nebulous feelings continued to come to her, soft and vague. Vamira was not sure if it was because the child could not learn full mindspeak or if it was even old enough to speak. She did not know enough about humans to guess which.

Vamira found that she could not resist speaking to the child regardless. She told it stories from the long history of the dragons’ time on Trallis. She told it of the war with Neth Gellin and the bond between humans and dragons, and how that bond had disappeared in the past several centuries.

She even spoke of her mate and the day she had returned to her lair in the mountain above them. Of how she had found the decomposing corpse of Torvus, and the shattered remains of the two eggs that he had stayed behind to guard. The grief that she had held onto for so many years, grief that had rooted itself in rage and hate, grief that she knew she could never let go of, flowed out of her toward the child.

And the child responded.

Not in words, but in feelings sharper and deeper than any she had felt from it before.

Sadness for her pain. Confusion at why such a thing had happened. Grief of its own for the woman whose body still remained in the cave behind it.

Vamira was stunned. The stories were true. Even though there were no words passing between them yet, it was clear this child was capable of not only understanding her, but sending its own feelings back. Perhaps this was how it started. Perhaps if she kept at it, the child would learn to mindspeak like a true dragon.

Night was falling when a presence pushed against her mind, not the child’s but a more forceful, familiar one. Sinaro was nearby.

Stay. Quiet.

She sent the commands to the child before launching herself into the air and circling higher up toward the mountain’s peak. She spotted Sinaro while he was still several miles away. She landed on the cliffside by the entrance to her lair to wait.

Sinaro landed higher up on the cliffside, snaking his long neck down until their faces were level.

“Sister,” he said, “what did you summon me for?”

“Brother,” Vamira answered, “I have a…dilemma I would like your advice on.” Despite her feelings of trepidation, she told Sinaro about the village she destroyed and the child she found. She knew he would not care about the village, he had as much disdain for the Eldest’s edicts as she did. The only one that all dragons agreed on and supported no matter what was the command that no dragon should fight another. They were too few for that.

“I fail to see the dilemma,” Sinaro interrupted before she could mention her connection to the child. “It is obvious that the child must be destroyed. It will not survive on its own and it is a human, after all. They do not deserve our mercy.”

“But it is a child,” Vamira argued. “I do not know if I can bring myself to harm it. I would not wish to lower myself to a human’s level. But there is more—”

“If you find yourself incapable, I will do this for you sister.” Sinaro cut her off again before she could bring up the mindspeak. “I have no compunctions about treating the humans as they have treated us.”

“But the child can mindspeak! At least, it is beginning to learn. With some time, I believe it will learn to do it truly.”

“Explain.”

Vamira told Sinaro about her experience with the child. About the feelings she had felt from it and the bind they were forming.

Sinaro shook his head as she finished. “Sister, I fear you have allowed yourself to become attached to this human child. You have deluded yourself into believing one of the Eldest’s fables because you have mourned your own lost children so powerfully. I believe that you are seeing this child as a surrogate for those you lost, rather than seeing it for what it will become. A cruel, greedy man who thinks only of what he can take.”

Vamira was stunned. This was her brother. She had known him almost all her life and yet he would not believe her words. Even speaking mind to mind, allowing him to see the truth clearly, he still refused to trust her.

“No, Brother, I think you have allowed your hatred to blind you to the truth that I have revealed.”

“You speak as if you hate them any less than I do!”

“I do! Or at least I did. But perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps, the Eldest has been right about humans. Perhaps we are wrong.”

“You have become weak!” Sinaro’s anger pulsed at her across their bond. “Since you have lost your will to do what must be done, I will do it.” He lifted himself away from her and launched into the air, climbing higher and turning south, toward the clearing where the child waited.

“No!” She took off after him, plunging through the frigid air like an arrow from a bow. He was larger than she was, but she was faster. She caught him as he was descending upon the clearing. She shot a gout of blue flame across Sinaro’s line of sight, causing him to pull up. Fire could not harm a dragon, but her decision to use it was a sign to him that she was earnest.

Sinaro turned toward her, rage showing in his sapphire eyes. “You would defy the Eldest’s law? For a human?!?!” He shot a blast of fire at her, a warning to back off. She snarled at him in return and angled her flight so that she hovered between Sinaro and the clearing.

“This is my mountain, Brother. And I say it is my choice!”

Sinaro hovered for a moment, regarding her with eyes full of hate. Then he pushed forward, angling to go around her. He obviously thought to call her bluff.

But she was not bluffing.

As he passed her, she turned and threw herself at him, hitting him in the side with all her weight. She dug her talons into his scaly hide, gripping him tightly as she battered him with her wings. After pushing him off course and piercing his scales in several places, she pushed off and retreated upwards, turning back to watch what he would do in response.

Sinaro hung in the air below, his eyes fixed on hers, rage and shock flickering through them. He had not believed she would truly try to hinder him. He roared in rage and shot up at her through the air, blue fire billowing from his maw.

It was an old trick, used back when dragon fights were common. Although fire could not harm a dragon, it could blind them. Vamira realized the tactic just in time to swerve away before Sinaro could crash into her. She could not match his bulk so if he managed to close with her, he would bear her down and although she doubted he would kill her, he could cause her grievous injury.

As soon as Sinaro passed her and saw that his ploy had failed, he began to soar upward, climbing higher and higher. Vamira knew she had to keep up or risk being pinned under him. She shot up, matching his height, beating her wings frantically to try to outdistance him. Though she was faster, his wings were larger and would allow him to climb through the air at a similar rate to hers.

Vamira began to pull away, rising higher and higher than Sinaro. She realized too late that she should not be able to pull so far ahead if he was flying at his fullest. She looked down just in time to see that he had angled upward but also toward her. He crashed into her belly just as she turned her head.

Sinaro pushed her farther up as he lashed her with his tail and dug his claws into her sides. Blood poured down from her wounds, dripping and smoking in the air. Vamira managed to get her hind legs underneath her and pushed with all her strength against his belly. Her claws dug furrows in the lighter scales there and pushed him away from her enough that she was able to dive away from him.

He dove at her, intent on harrying her to the ground. She blasted a screen of fire at him, using the distraction to slip out from under him. Both dragons began to ascend again, fighting to gain an advantage.

The battle became a constant series of sprint-like slights followed by quick clashes of teeth and claws. Blue firelit the sky, visible for miles and miles. Steaming blood fell like rain upon the snowy ground. The eastern sky was beginning to lighten, dawn was coming.

Vamira was exhausted, her body crisscrossed with many wounds. None of them were serious, but they were painful. Sinaro was in a similar condition, but his rage seemed to drive him harder than before. He pursued her with a zeal that bordered on madness.

Vamira again found herself at a disadvantage with Sinaro bearing down on her. The sun was beginning to rise in full now. It caught her eye, an eye sharper than any eagle’s and gave her an idea.

Vamira sped off to the west, drawing Sinaro after her. She pretended to flag a few times, allowing him to almost catch her. When she was fully on the western side of the mountain, she turned sharply, diving down to avoid his pursuit. She poured on speed back toward the mountain, knowing that Sinaro would be close behind. She headed directly for a curve in the mountainside, the bright sun directly in front of her.

Vamira could barely see the outline of the mountain before her. But this was her mountain. She knew each rock and ridge of it. So, when the sun had almost completely blinded her, she dived down sharply.

She knew her ploy had succeeded when she heard Sinaro’s howl of pain and rage. She circled back to see him clawing at the cliff face, desperately hanging on. His wing was torn and bloody where it had struck the outcropping that the rising sun had hidden, blinding Sinaro’s sharp eyes to the dangers of the rocky face.

“It’s over, Brother.” Vamira hovered several hundred feet from the mountain side. “Leave my mountain, and leave my decisions to me.”

Sinaro snarled at her. “You are weak. I never imagined you would become soft on humans. Traitor!” He righted himself on the cliff and managed to lift himself into the air. He flew awkwardly with his injured wing, but he would manage. “The Eldest will hear of this!” It sounded like a threat but Vamira was not so sure that Rahvir would see this incident as Sinaro seemed to think.

It occurred to Vamira that the fire she had set for the child would be dwindling, if not completely out by now. Even worse, perhaps it had been scared away by the battle. She turned and flew toward the clearing.

And that’s when she noticed them. A large group of humans had moved through the forest, nearing the place where she had left the child at the base of the mountain. They seemed to be coming from the site of the destroyed village and had likely been drawn by the extravagant visual of her fight with Sinaro.

Vamira hovered over the clearing, trying to decide what to do. She could see several of the humans had found it already. They were investigating the remnants of the fire and the cave. She was almost a thousand feet high, watching as one of the humans found the child and scooped it up. Part of her wanted to swoop down and immolate the human despite her wounds and her fatigue. But the larger part of her knew the child would be better off with its own kind.

Vamira sought the child’s mind with her own. She pressed herself against it, surprised by how familiar it already felt. She passed one final message to the child.

Farewell.

Her connection to it had been brief, but it had given her hope that perhaps not all humans were savage and bloodthirsty beasts. The thought that came back to her shocked her even more.

Bye.

It came from the child. It was a clear thought, spoken with the mind and sent out. The message sent chills down Vamira’s spine. Further proof that she, and by extension, the Eldest, had been right. There was more to humans than they thought.

With that thought in mind, Vamira turned and flew north. She did not stop at her lair. It was time to find a new lair. Somewhere less haunted. She did not need the place of her mate and children’s murder to remember them. She could remember them without that place. That place had nothing for her but grief and hate. It was time to leave that behind.