Whispers of Time

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. In fact, it wasn’t until this moment, looking down from the cliffside, that I had ever seen a dragon. I had heard of them and seen sketches in textbooks. Heard about them from friends and teachers who had left our valley, but I had never seen one.

And these dragons were far from what I thought I knew of the great beings formed by The Sisters: Lady Orithina and Lady Valrdis.

These ones were like the Black Phoenix, the dragon that was mosaicked on the ceiling of the temple with black glistening scales and different colored accents. But that was where their similarities stopped. The jagged spines, chests, and underbelly, their cruel-looking, jagged wings, and long sweeping tails were all so different from anything I had expected to see.

Many of the people in the city had thought that they had come to visit despite being different. The gods created dragons. So perhaps they wanted to visit the temple like many had before, according to my mom and my friends’ parents at least. That was the reason why the building was so big. It was to let such creatures enter should one come to our valley.

But they weren’t here to visit – that much was clear.

They kept their distance, threatening whoever came to talk to them. A warning was given to one who didn’t take their threat seriously by ripping off his arm with a magic that no one had seen before.

I hadn’t seen the damage, being fifteen, no one would let me see anything like that. But I heard them talking. How it was ripped off so precisely almost like it was cut and sliced clean through in an instant without a hair out of place. Not even our weapons or magic could do something like that. Needless to say, people started taking their threats more seriously, and whispers of their purpose here began to spread.

They spoke the language of the gods, our language. Some people even said they had mentioned Lady Valrdis by name… That only worried everyone more.

I frowned as I looked at a few whelps playing in the middle of their encampment. A few of the adults watched, laughing. Or at least that’s what I guessed the soft noise that carried up the mountain side was. They didn’t seem any different from us, or any different from the tales of dragons. They could have just been… introverts? No, that’s not what Mom said… It started with an I…

I… is… ISOLATIONISTS! That’s what she said.

They liked being alone. Didn’t want anyone bothering them.

I knew that all too well. A few friends, hanging out with them on occasion and in school, then hiding back in my room to read. Yet looking down, seeing how normal they were, I still couldn’t let go of the paranoia that gripped everyone. There was nothing malicious about them and I still had a sense of dread. Maybe it was because of the rumors that made me cower and hide whenever I saw one of the ten, fifteen, or even twenty-meter-long dragons come and go.

‘The end is coming,’ the people in my city whispered.

‘The Sisters’ feuds have come to a head,’ others said.

I had asked my questions a million times to whoever seemed like they knew. Why was there a feud? How did they know? What were they fighting about? They were sisters, right? Couldn’t they get along?

I got the same answers over and over again. They were fighting for dominion over the planet. We just know. They were scared by the other’s creations. They were sisters, but blood wasn’t stronger than the tides of change. Which is why I was here, looking down at the massive, scary, and majestic creatures. I wanted to find answers, and was probably too curious for my own good… But I was here all the same.

I sighed.

Was coming out here a waste of time?

“Khata, what are you doing here?” a familiar voice whispered, causing me to jump.

Somehow I didn’t scream as I snapped over to the voice behind me and found that Ode wasn’t alone. Trailing behind her out of the small cavern that I had used to get here were our friends: Minpher and Aiari. I kept my voice quiet, but it was breathless as I gestured at the dragons below. “You almost made me scream!”

“Sorry,” the green-haired girl apologized and the three of them came over to me.

Aiari looked over the edge that I had been looking from, scanning it coolly with a violet gaze. “So this is where you went… I thought everyone told us to stay away from them.”

“And they tell us to eat our veggies,” I muttered, glaring at her, “and yet I’ve never seen you eat one of those.”

She scoffed, “So, what have you learned?”

“Not… a lot…” I admitted, looking back to the dragons. “They seem to be like us. They have babies and they talk to each other, guards… But it’s not like I can actually hear any of them from here.”

“The whelps are so cute!” Minpher gushed quietly beside me. I looked over at him, his pale grey eyes fixated on the valley floor below. “How are they so small compared to their parents?! I thought their eggs would be bigger than us!”

Considering the size of the dragons flying around, I thought that too. “Turns out they are small; they might have the same egg size as the dragons that come to the temple. The nursery there has small egg beds.”

He looked at me. “Do they? I’ve never ventured off that deep into the temple before.”

I nodded. “Mom brought me to check the temple’s structure after that earthquake a couple of months ago.”

“You get to see so many cool places with your mom…” Aiari sighed.

“I guess?” I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. She was just the head of the civil engineers in Thiat. It was her job to look over structures especially after something like an earthquake.

“It is cool! None of us ever get to see something like dragon egg beds!”

I never really thought about it and shrugged. “Maybe… But I’ve never gone on trips with her like Tlasi has. They have gone all over Koúbula, seen all the continents and oceans, and I’ve never even left our valley.”

“Your sister is like… an adult and training to be like your mom, so it makes sense that Tlasi has gone all over the world, and you haven’t.”

“Well so am I!” I grumbled, my envy escaping. “And it leaves me stuck here in this city… apparently going to school is more important than experience.”

“Ugh, I know what you mean,” Ode sighed. “I learn nothing from school, but both of my parents are like ‘Ode, you have to go to school. Ode, we can’t teach you everything. Ode this, Ode that…’ It’s annoying!”

“You’re a genius, so it makes sense why you learn nothing in school,” Minpher agreed.

“I’m years ahead of everyone in our class!”

“We get it, Ode,” Aiari sighed, stopping the tangent we had all heard before. “We know.”

Minpher brought up a topic that she hadn’t shared with us. “Speaking of, did you hear back about that exchange program to Echil or Aflye?”

Her pout turned into a depressed sigh, looking down at the dragons. “No… apparently the larger nations take a much longer time to process things like exchange programs… But I did get a letter from Arkorsa.”

“That’s good! Right?”

“No… I don’t want to go up north to bear central.”

Considering it was named bear, it made sense for it to have bears. I gave my two coins, “Maybe there are other cool things besides bears?”

“Oh, you would think!” Ode stifled a cackle. “But Arkorsa is in the creatively named Arkorsa Forest because naming it anything else would be interesting.”

“Wow… No wonder you don’t want to go there,” Minpher cringed. “Sounds like the opposite of what an artist would want.”

“My parents apparently didn’t get that and thought that it was the perfect place to send their daughter. Pragmatism central.”

The three of us burst out laughing at her suffering, which she joined. It was quickly silenced as Aiari started shushing us, reminding us that we were literally beside our possible deaths.

I turned back to the black dragons below. Did they have schools or problems like we did? Did they come from a nation far away or did they move here and become a city state?

Some stones moved from within the cavern behind us and we snapped to it, my heart jumping into my throat. Then, it settled at the sight of another familiar face that came out of the darkness, quenching her orange orb of aura that had provided her light. Black hair with purple streaks that matched mine and Mom’s, it was like looking in the mirror.

My stomach dropped at the look on her face, her tone matching the grey glare. “You four are in so much trouble…”

“Uh oh…” Minpher whispered beside me. “If your sister found us… We’re so dead.”

“So dead,” Tlasi agreed sternly before grinning, shifting her weight. “If you don’t come back to the city right now. It’s going to be supper soon… probably. I don’t know what time you twerps have supper, but Khata here is going to be eating in a couple of hours. If you’re late, Mom is going to know exactly where you went.”

“Where I went?” I challenged. “Nope, where we went since you came all the way out here.”

Tlasi rolled her eyes. “Come on, before the dragons decide that you are actually worth dealing with.”

“They don’t know we’re here…”

“Oh they definitely know you’re here. So, shall we go before they give one of you a warning?”

I looked to my friends, who looked back and shrugged. I sighed. “Fine… just in case you could be right.”

“Oh, I’m always right. It’s a curse.”

“Sure it is…”

We left the overlook and followed my sister through the cavern that I had taken to get up there to begin with, all of us letting Tlasi light the way with her orange orb. Using aura was still exhausting for long periods of time at our age. I looked at the rock on the walls. Both it and the mountains that lined the valley were more green than red, though apparently further north they were more balanced between the two colors, and south, they would turn blue. At least that’s what everyone had said. Echil was said to be on a dark blue stone island in the middle of a lake. The idea of blue stone below my feet fascinated me.

It didn’t take us long to get out of the cavern path, back outside under the warm, bright sun that lit up the river at the bottom of the valley. It was so wide you could barely see across it, but I could see the trees and the lush forests that grew on the other side and up the mountain. Closer than the pines and firs high up on the cliffs, the boats from the nations and city states to the north and south of the valley were using Thiat River to transport goods. It was far safer than sailing the ocean to the east, where massive sea monsters or even the ocean itself could destroy vessels. Dozens of ships came and went every day through my city, sometimes stopping there to resupply or exchange things at the markets. I enjoyed watching the ships come and go, and when they set up shop, seeing what kinds of foreign treasures they had.

Mom and Tlasi both said the things they sold in the harbor were overpriced and that I shouldn’t use my allowance to buy them, but I didn’t care. I didn’t go anywhere, how was I supposed to get the cool pictures and statues from other cultures if I never left Thiat?

I looked at the massive boats that sailed through the river between the oaks, maples, and the occasional birch groves. It was probably scary for them to head through the valley now that the strange black dragons were there. They weren’t on the river itself but next to it in a clearing between two mountains, but I had heard the sailors say that they had seen the dragons fly overhead. They poked just out of the clouds and observed them passing, like they had expected someone to attack from the water. The sailors all laughed nervously at the thought. The dragons were apparently silent when they flew, which after watching them today I could attest to. The idea of attacking an enemy that could gather in large numbers and be completely unseen until they were on top of you was suicidal.

I looked away from the river and boats and found myself trailing behind my friends and sister, so I picked up my pace. After a long, long walk, longer than I realized, we finally made it to the northern gate on the west side of the river. Thiat lay behind the large walls, its buildings were a mix of small towers and houses, trapezoid or square in structure depending on the size of the building. The windows, gates, and doors themselves were rectangular within thick stone frames that had art carved into them. Some told stories of the gods, others were stories of ancestors passed down family lines, and some just pieces of art that the owner wanted. My house told the story of the first dragons, the primeval ones that went on a rampage and ravaged the world until the current dragons, The Exalted, were created and drove the primeval ones to extinction. From then on, the Exalted watched over the world as guardians of The Children, to protect us from anything happening like it again. I smiled.

Maybe the Exalted would come to Thiat just to check out the strange, black dragons. It would have been nice… but I doubted it.

The large stone gates were open wide for people to come and go as they pleased. The brunet guards Kenta, and Nef’ra, Minpher’s uncle, were standing at each pillar in green and white uniforms. Thiat’s crest, a river in between two mountains with the rising moons on the horizon, blue Ori and red Valr, was on their shoulders and breastplates made of prime metal. I wasn’t sure why it was called prime metal as it wasn’t metal, but it did have the strength and durability far surpassing metal without the weight. Both my school and mom had said that even the gods used prime metal to make their weapons and armor. I thought it was a bit ridiculous, but I wasn’t exactly in the position to say it was impossible.

Nef’ra waved us over, his face feigning excitement but it wavered underneath with concern, which wasn’t something I was familiar with. “There you guys are. I was hoping you would be back before our guests left.”

I frowned. “Thiat gets guests all the time…”

“Not these ones,” he said. “You four wanted to know when we had a dragon visit, well…”

Ode’s voice went up several pitches in excitement. “Exalted Dragons are here?! For real?!”

“Have I lied to you before?”

“Well… you have lied for us…” Aiari muttered and Nef’ra passed her a dirty snub, ruby colored eyes rolling before turning back on Ode.

“There is a dragon, a couple of them, from Dídynae Fenuna. They are real, and they are in the temple as we speak.”

We all looked at each other, including Tlasi, and the idea of supper went out the window as we all booked it to the temple in the center of the city.

“Thank you, Uncle Neffie!” Minpher shouted back over his shoulder next to me.

“No problem, kiddos – be nice and stay out of trouble!”

“We will!” We all called back and darted around the corner to get to the main road on the west side.

The buildings blurred as we sprinted through the lightly crowded streets, slipping by the markets and through the parks to get to the massive building of white, black, and purple, with gold caps on its obelisks and central pyramid complex. We ran between some bushes and through a wood that lined a park. I passed my sister when she hesitated to follow Ode. It didn’t last as I heard her cursing left and right and decided to follow, complaining about sticks and bugs that none of us cared about. Something crawled on my arm as I escaped one bush to go around an ash tree and noticed a spider. I flicked it off to the side, onto another bush. It could rebuild the web I destroyed. That’s what engineers did, and spiders were one of the best.

The bushes broke and we landed on the lawn of the temple grounds. A stone pathway lined with obelisks sat around a hundred meters ahead of us. We ignored it, going diagonally across the lawn to the path and gaping massive front doors. Several priests were about the gardens that decorated the space, shaking their heads as we passed, but they didn’t stop us as we avoided destroying anything or getting underfoot.

Upon reaching the open front doors, voices carried from within. We slowed to a walk, keeping as quiet as possible. While we couldn’t see them from the entrance or the decorated main hall with the lotus topped support pillars, I knew that the man speaking wasn’t one of the priests. It was far too deep with a growl that raised the hair on the back of my neck. A chill ran up and down my spine. It wasn’t malicious, but the exact opposite. It was friendly and concerned, but a primal fear of knowing that it was a dragon without even seeing who the voice belonged to set me on edge. “So there are black dragons here… That is concerning.”

“Concerning considering they used some sort of magic to tear a man’s arm off,” Matron Apis scoffed, unamused. I knew her voice all too well being that she and Mom were childhood friends. Since she was the head of the temple in Thiat, she had Mom take any and all jobs that she wanted with building temple facilities here and elsewhere for the Church of Koúbulo which worshiped The Sisters and other gods across the world. “I have never seen aura do something like that in all my life, and neither has my father in all his four hundred years.”

“Well, yes that. I would have to see this wound myself while I conduct my investigations. But in the grand scheme, it is overly concerning. They are not the first phenomena that has come to the Paragon’s attention. I have confirmed that there are white dragons north of Echil Lake.”

“Black dragons and now white…” All of Apis’s sass was gone. “That… is not good.”

We finally got into the main temple complex where four rows of pews lined the room, facing a dais in the sanctuary where a beautiful painting of Lady Orithina, the Goddess of Light, Life, and Ideals, and Valrdis, the Goddess of Darkness, Death, and Truth, stood with their hands clasped together at their shoulders like twins would. White and black roses bordered the art piece, the black roses on Orithina’s side and the white on Valrdis’s to highlight their black and white, flowing dresses. Two sides of the same coin, Mom had said. They were in their young adult appearance, perhaps only a couple of years older to Tlasi’s twenty. With long white hair and golden-yellow eyes with slit, draconic pupils; they were beautiful and similar to the people of Thiat, but not exactly. They looked over the massive room with caring compassion like parents would.

Something large moved off to the left and I froze at the sight. Purple and golden scales were like swirls across the creature’s massive form. Large limbs, horns on his head with a somewhat jagged spine, purple claws, and orange, draconic eyes… This was exactly like the dragons I had seen in my books. The wings folded to the dragon’s side stretched out slightly as he heard us stop, turning his long neck to face us. A long, oval face; a few fangs were poking out, showing slightly against his lower jaw that were probably longer than I was tall. From his head to the tip of his club-like, spiked tail, the dragon had to be over thirty meters in length, nineteen meters tall… he was even bigger than the black dragons and they seemed impossibly large. Looking at the great exalted dragon from the stories now though… they were nothing in comparison.

The dragon looked over at us and our gaping mouths in amusement. “Hello Children of Thiat, enjoying seeing a dragon for the first time?”

“Y-yes…” Aiari answered for us. “It’s… a lot to take in… Wow. What’s your name?”

“My name is Dandrath,” the dragon laughed curtly. The corners of his mouth moved slightly upwards, and his head tilted, an expression I could only guess was a smile or a smirk for dragons. “I apologize on behalf of the Paragon for not having anyone come to your lovely city state in so long. She has been preoccupied with other matters as of late.”

“Like the white and black dragons, right?” I asked, finding my voice again, and Dandrath nodded. The dragon was either well versed with kids asking too many questions or the Exalted were very blunt. Either way, he told us things without any of us having to ask. “What are you going to do about them?”

“With Matron Apis here, we were hoping to speak with them to figure out where they came from and what they wanted, investigate that man who was attacked by the strange magic and ensure that these black dragons are not a threat to you or the other Children of the Gods.” He glanced at Apis before continuing. “Regardless of the outcome, good or ill, I, along with Ciebhotur and Zaevythas will be staying here at our Paragon’s request.”

Minpher bit his lip. “Oh… That must be serious then if the Paragon has ordered it.”

“She is just being cautious. She does not like taking chances.”

“That… makes sense? I think…”

“You will understand it when you are older,” Dandrath mused. “Now you should hurry home. It will be supper time for you, would it not?”

“Uh… yes.”

“I, along with the other two dragons, will be here for some time, so do not worry over a lack of time to ask your questions. We will happily answer them when we are within the temple.”

I smiled at how nice he was, despite being an immortal being far, far, far older than Thiat itself. I think I was going to like having at least Dandrath around and hopefully, I could learn so much more from him and his peers than any textbook could teach me.