The Meanderings of B.C. Matthews

The Clockwork Dragon #18: Debt of Blood

2016-08-17T03:00:00.000-07:00

Zefir heard the lab door unlocking, and though he wished with all his might that it would be Valin, he could sense who it was standing there, her pain sharp against his insides, pressing, wrenching, until the cold sensation spread in sympathy.

Kirwen burst through the door, and while she looked briefly at the outline of the body beneath the sheet, her eyes flashed in a strange mixture of sorrow and anger when her gaze fell on Zefir's wounds. She marched forward in that eerily predatory manner, her mind focused on—

My ward. Who dared to harm him? I failed once more to protect what's mine. [death to the perpetrator— overwhelming rage].

Zefir shook his head at the thoughts he knew were not his own. The power of them was astonishing. Was this even a fraction of what Seren shared with her mirrors? If so, how could they have lived with this uncomfortably intimate connection, much less yearned for it?

Kirwen placed her hands up toward Zefir. "I must inspect your wounds—"

"I'm fine," Zefir assured her.

"Fine?" said the Wolf incredulously, her brass fingers reaching for his chest. "You've been burned. I can smell the acid. You're in pain. Tell me how this happened."

This last was said with all of the command of an Inventrix expecting to be obeyed.

He wanted to lie. He wondered if she could sense his own rolling emotions with the same strength he had hers.

"I spilled the acid when I—"

"Don't bother to lie to me, child," she barked, turning an eye on his Second. "You're protecting her."

Death. No mercy for the one that harmed my ward [boiling rage].

"It wasn't..." Zefir croaked the words, his stance settling into a tired, wilted posture. "I was...protecting my sibling from Ferrei." Before Kirwen could blurt out her anger, Zefir continued, "She didn't mean to hurt me. Ferrei just...misunderstood."

Ferrei stood very close to his dragon sibling, the creature only twice the Second's considerable height. When Kirwen glared at his Second, Ferrei dropped her gaze to the stone floor. The Wolf paced forward, murder in her eye.

Zefir moved to pounce upon Kirwen, if only to pluck her up into his hands, but one of his sibling's wings unfolded, and spread to cover Ferrei completely from their sight; the sheer length of them boggled his mind as he wondered at their size; she could easily wrap Ferrei three times over.

The dragon sibling cocked her head at Kirwen, and pursed—pursed!—her lips. Her voice was more serious, deeper, "Hmm, I don't think I like your tone, small thing. No, I don't like it at all. You must speak nicely to my kin."

Kirwen stiffened in surprise. "Kin? You are mistaken, young one. What has this damnable Quarethstra woman been telling you? It's clear she intends to harm you. Come away with me now and—"

"Your tone, small thing." His sibling's brow ridges, smoother than his own, narrowed. "Mind it around my kin, who is also my patient. She needs rest, not—not this."

"Patient?" Kirwen mused. "Of course, she made you to be a healer, didn't she? Perhaps as good as a doctor bloodline of the first level."

"I fix, I repair," said his sibling matter-of-factly, her snout raised. "Now, small thing, retreat to the corner until your anger is under control. Then you may visit with my kin-patient when she wills it."

"Come away, young one," Kirwen said with a curt motion. "We'll leave this blood-ridden place and this—this woman who tried to destroy you will be punished, I assure you."

"Your tone," growled his sibling, showing her small rows of very sharp teeth. Her wings fluttered, and she hunched herself into an intimidating defensive posture. "Back away, small thing. I'll not let you have my kin-patient." Her claws came out, and a dark liquid dripped from them, smelling acrid. Dangerous.

If she tried to attack Kirwen, what would the Leader do with her? Or worse yet, if his sibling managed to kill the Leader—and part of Zefir despaired at that, despite all the threats she'd heaped upon them—what would the Wheelteeth do to his squadron without their Leader to reign them in?

Zefir was about to growl a command when Ferrei spoke.

"Her tone is deserved, little flyer," Ferrei said miserably, gently touching the dragon's wings until his sibling retracted them. "My intent was to harm you before you awoke, and your sibling—Zefir, he saved you. He took the brunt of the acid concoction I chose to destroy you, and that was how he came to harm. I'm not worth shielding."

The little dragon sinuously turned her head to regard Ferrei. "You couldn't have harmed me with that. My hide is much more impervious to such things. And though my Zefir-sibiling is less impervious, he will scar after a day. Still, that was rather a mean thing to do, my kin. I'll admit I'm not certain why you would want to destroy me, especially before I had a chance to tell you that you're my family."

For the first time, Zefir saw his Second's lips tremble as she held back tears. Not even after Denaru's death did she weep, at least not in his presence. "I owe you and your sibling a blood debt, little flyer. I've failed my vows so many times now." Zefir had never seen the ritual obeisance of one offering their life to another for the deepest blood-debt, but Ferrei bowed her head, and made a beautiful combination of the giving thanks to the sun and the wrist-forehead touching motion of calling to the dead ones passed on. "My life belongs to you."

He inhaled slowly as the temperatures inside his chest wavered, moved by the beauty and sincerity of her words. Of her new vow. The woman who had called him Abomination was now pledging herself to a new dragon mechanical.

The sibling-dragon bumped her wing against Ferrei the way a human would nudge with an elbow. "A ridiculous notion, kin, having anyone own your life." She blinked in true confusion. "Makes no sense."

She turned to Zefir with the open palm gesture. Waiting for him to accept.

"There's no blood-debt between us, Ferrei," he said. "Besides, I've no blood inside me anyway. It's enough that we're of the same squad. I still trust you with my life, Second."

She turned from him, mouth in a quivering line. "I don't deserve your trust, Zefir."

"Truly touching." Kirwen regarded them, eyes glazing over for a moment when—

"I'll always trust you with my life, lissteri. That's one of the meanings. The 'i' for infinity," said Seren, yearning to hold hands.

Zefir closed his eyes for a moment. For though Seren's memories and Kirwen's thoughts were not as terrifying as his own false memories, they were still painful, like an old ache that wouldn't heal.

Kirwen met his eye. "You know why she gave you her virul 'cogs, don't you, child? The true reason?"

He shook his head.

"Not for the reason she told you, whatever it was. No, she did so in order that your heart-mind would purge your false memories from you in order to accommodate the virul 'cogs. Even in the end her selflessness was genuine." She still wouldn't look at the sheet where her mirror lay. "Not that her memories will necessarily be easier to bear. Or whatever you've been able to sense from me."

"Will I learn of the Trial?" Zefir asked as softly as he could. "Or will you tell me?"

Her eyes traveled to find her mirror's body, and quickly turned away. "I hope you never learn of it, child." Kirwen straightened as if coming to a decision, head held high, determined at she stared into his eyes. She looked like the Wolf once again as she held out her hand, palm up. "You must give me the bomb device. Your squadron has already broken their parole, so you gain nothing by refusing. And don't insult me by feigning ignorance. I can more easily sense your lies now that we are irrevocably connected."

His mind was blank, and the gnawing sensation of hopelessness turned into a hollow ache inside. She knew. Their only hope of escape was gone.

Ferrei came from around the dragon-sibling and said, "Here. I have it."

She reached into her flight jacket and withdrew a poorly cobbled together piece of tech that Zefir could only assume was supposed to be a copy. He wanted to embrace his Second Leader for trying such a ruse. She'd certainly made it out of the half-broken pieces of the original when he first broke it.

Kirwen strode forward, grasped the device, and hurled it from her. It shattered against the stone wall, and anger once again etched its way across the Wolf's features. Zefir knew with uncanny certainty that she would never forget Ferrei had harmed Zefir—one of hers. The fury displayed by her failing, her slower death, would only increase into rage-filled madness, and he could sense that her thoughts focused on her life ticking away, fueling the anger.

Kirwen spat, "Did you truly think I couldn't tell that was a dummy?"

Ferrei shrugged, and the dragon sibling craned her wing over her again. "It seems the only dummy here is the one you just destroyed, Leader Kirwen."

Kirwen still held her hand out to Zefir. "Give it to me, child."

Zefir stifled a grimace, and gestured to his battered chest panel. "It is within me. And the panel needs time to heal before it will open. Look, the edges have been burned together. Even if I wished to give it to you, I cannot."

A flash of alarm marred the fury on Kirwen's familiar face. "Tell me it hasn't been armed."

"We didn't have time to fill the chambers with the caustic liquid."

"You're still a poor liar." Kirwen pointed an unerring brass finger. "You're a danger to everyone until I can remove the device. You will remain here, as it's far enough underground and remote enough that the—the explosion won't harm my people." She jutted her chin at Ferrei and the sibling. "I will take you two."

Zefir glared, his skin radiating with the heated shame at his horrible failure. Or perhaps some of Kirwen's anger was infecting him. "If you harm my Second, or any of my squadron because of this ridiculous parole, I'll tear this mountain down around your ears."

The Wolf Leader met his gaze squarely. "Yes, I can see it's no idle threat, war dragon. I haven't forgotten what you were made for."

Silence fell between them, but Zefir could think of no way to break the inevitable stalemate.

"New dragon child," said Kirwen, trying to halt her trembling. Not all the muscle tremors were from her anger, as Zefir could now feel through their connection that her body was beginning to obey her less and less. "I cannot allow you to expire. Come, young one, and I'll explain it to you later—"

"Oh, no," said the sibling, baring her teeth. "I understand only that you are threatening my patients, and my kin. And I fear I must become very cross with you if you try to remove them."

Kirwen's expression became cold as a the granite mountainside, and in that moment she appeared so like Mother that Zefir had to look away. "So it appears as if they've already turned you against me. A pity." Her eyes flickered over Ferrei. "Well done, Second Leader. I'd say earning her loyalty is much better than destroying such a remarkable invention. And I suppose you will also stay?"

Ferrei nodded once in curt agreement.

"Very well."

Kirwen moved with aching slowness toward Seren's body and knelt next to her mirror. She pulled back the sheet from Seren's face relaxed in death, those empty eyes staring at nothing. Kirwen closed her mirror's eyes, and brushed back the puff of wild, untamable hair from Seren's forehead. She placed her arms beneath the body and lifted her mirror into her arms, moving for the door without another word.

Zefir could feel the vibrating sensation of her sorrow as if his mechanical insides were threatening to stutter to a grinding halt. And he hated that they must be at odds, for perhaps in another life, in a world where they weren't named as enemies, he could've counted her as one of his staunchest friends. Or another parent.

"I'm sorry, Kirwen," he breathed. Sorry for so many things. For her loss and his, for the war, for having to make his threats.

"I know, Zefir." She didn't turn to him, but held Seren's body tighter. "I know."

She left the lab and the door locked behind her.

Valin pumped his arms as he ran; the flechette bolt sizzled across his shoulder, leaving a hot trail in its wake. He couldn't yell to Zareth that he wasn't escaping, that he had tried running towardthe man's Leader and was focused on the same goal. But all of his energy was spent in dodging around the next bend as the stone ramp went upwards and not down toward the lab; Zareth was getting closer with his shots, and no matter how Valin's side ached and his lungs heaved, fear pressed him faster, faster, the sweat pouring down his back.

He tried to avoid the busy walkways, but as his shooter advanced on him, Valin broke out into one of the broad courses that wrapped around the outside of the mountain. He heard Zarth curse as Valin slammed through the few people who had enough leisure time to remain idle, knowing that his true aim would never be met—there was no way to descend to the lab. To Zefir.

Forgive me, my dragon friend.For the first time in years, Valin prayed to the Forge Gods, urging them to look over Zefir, hoping his friend was hearty and hale. But he feared otherwise.

He heard a bellow as one of the bystanders—a man who wore no bloodline colors, launched himself at Valin. But Valin anticipated the fellow's slow movement, and ducked beneath, spinning to avoid those outstretched hands. A series of screams echoed in fear as the boy—stupid, idiotic boy!—dared to shoot his weapon in the middle of so many innocents. The men and women of the Wheelteeth ducked to the ground, children shrieked for their parents, and Valin almost toppled as a flechette shattered the rock near his face.

Zareth intends to kill. If he stopped, the boy would kill him. If he tried to explain, he'd die. Perhaps the boy had something to prove, or maybe he hated Valin's blood and Clan so much that he'd willingly place his own people at risk to murder him.

He renewed his efforts and remained in the public space, running ever upward through the hallway spiral ramps going up—up. Toward the take off ledges. He spotted men and women in their reddish flight jackets and skull masks, others in repair suits for maintaining the gryphons. Eyes turned toward him as he sped beyond each ledge, now filled with fifty gryphons or more. Their Navigators spied him, one moved for him in confused hesitation. But all would recognize his dark brown flight jacket, rather than their red leather, and the Cog Clan's shield symbol emblazoned on his bleeding shoulder. When he tore off his jacket, his shoulder screamed in pain, and he didn't have enough breath to do more than grunt as he tossed it from him, hoping the other Navs would be slow to recognize him as a threat.

The ledge he was looking for must be close. It had to be. He didn't know if he could keep running, or if—

He had to. From some inner reserve within, he put on more speed, his heart pounding inside his head until he could hear nothing else. He couldn't hear if there was shouting, or the steps behind him. He gritted his teeth and pumped his arms. The ledge was here. It had to be.

It was.

He dived around the corner and ran out on to the ledge, the cold winds this high up battering at him without his jacket. There. They were there! Nyru and Jarre's thopter bombers, and Ferrei's single-person sparrowhawk. If he'd had enough breath he would've crowed in triumph.

Ferrei's sparrowhawk glider was sitting still, its wings retracted into its sternum. The rifle in its snout was likewise retracted, but if he could bypass its start-up systems...he leaped aboard and his fingers danced over the buttons and levers, silently giving thanks to his Third for insisting he learn all of the flyer systems by heart. He bypassed the hawkling's procedure for warming its engines and extending the wings before being able to use the gun.

He checked the indicator to see if there were any bolts left in the chamber, for surely the Wheelteeth would've divested the flyer of its extra load of bolts.

Two—there were two left.

He didn't have time to aim, and the gun wasn't fully opened, when Zareth ran around the corner. He squeezed the trigger. The bolt soared outward and crashed through the carved stone archway that led to the ledge, Zareth crying out and ducking back. Valin desperately pulled the heavy lever to chamber the next round—one, one left.

Zareth blindly stuck his arm out and shot at him; the flechettes pinged against the hawkling's torso. One speared through one of the take-off feet, and the entire flyer listed to the side, so he desperately fought to re-aim the thing.

Fighting for time, he yelled to his assailant, "Lyth Zareth! My intention was only to reach the same destination as your Leader. I mean Leader Kirwen no harm! Keep your weapon, but holster it, and I will return with you to meet with her!"

"Shut up, scum!" the boy barked.

Soon, Navs would grab their weapons and add themselves to the fray, called by the sound of bolt shots; Valin had little time to convince anyone that he wasn't a threat. Quickly, he began the start-up procedures for the engines, and the hawkling began to hum as its heart ticked, its wings beginning to unfurl.

Zareth rounded the corner, his mouth in a determined line; the boy lifted his pistol, aiming for Valin, his eyes so filled with hate that Valin had no doubt that he had to fire. He pulled the trigger.

But with the hawkling's wings retracting, the flyer yawed; his last bolt flew wide of the boy's chest and buried in Zareth's forearm. Yelling, Valin pushed the sequence of buttons for the legs of the hawkling to walk in reverse. It stuttered, hobbling backward toward the end of the ledge. Zareth still lifted the pistol, and bolts rained against the body of his flyer; Valin heard the violent hiss of the cooling system being shattered. Warnings blared. He felt one of the legs hit air and nothing else.

It wouldn't fly, he knew that. The engine wouldn't start. If he were lucky, he would glide to the ground below, but—

The firing stopped as the boy reloaded, and Valin desperately cried out once again that he would willingly surrender. He even dared to lift one hand up, palm outward, while the flyer tilted, ready to fall.

"You murdered my mother!" Zareth bellowed, blood pouring down his arm. "You and all your blood-ridden Clan! There's no surrender!"

Zareth pulled the trigger. Valin felt the bolt spear through his hand, and he clasped at the bleeding agony, disbelieving of the hole through the center of his palm. Forcing his bloody hand to curl around the Navigator stick, he pushed the last leg of the hawkling out over the ledge and he was—

Falling. Tumbling. Without his jacket or gear, the cold winds tore at him like ruthless fingers; his breath was stolen from him. The wings were spread but he began to spiral downward. Too sharp an angle to correct without the engines or the beat of the hawkling's wings. He slapped his hands against the panel's buttons; he couldn't feel his hands; his eyes watered. The bypass codes, he entered them again to start the engine, praying to any and all that would listen. The ground below grew closer in his watery sight. People below scattered. Harvesters in their green abandoned wares on carts and ran for the entrance to the caves.

The engine stuttered to life. He pulled back on the Nav stick desperately, feeling the wings beating. But it was too late. He began to glide, the nose up. The ground filled his sight.

At the last moment, he threw one of the flight straps over his chest, placed his hands over his head, and braced for impact.

The crunching sound filled his ears, and he closed his eyes as the flyer flipped end over end. The single strap failed him, and he had the sensation of flying—true flight—as his body was tossed from the wreckage.

The only other thing he knew was darkness.

The Clockwork Dragon #17: Of Kith and Kin

2016-08-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

Valin stood with his hands in fists as Lyth Zareth poked him yet again with the muzzle of a flechette rifle, seemingly for no reason. Nyru remained outwardly unconcerned and impassive, but every time the Lyth boys dropped the muzzle of their pistols a fraction, Jarre would tense up as if considering a wild leap upon them all, then would relax when their First would frown.

And still the assembly line moved along without them, chuffing its usual inexorable music, gears grinding with the speed at which they were throwing together all of the pieces for the ketch-gryphons.

Elder Lyth sat upon a chair placed out for her, her mouth in an ancient, jowly frown, her hand on a cane one of her many descendants had brought to their esteemed Director. Every fifteen seconds or so the Director would tap the butt of her cane on the stone floor to the beat of the line's whomp-whomp-whomp-hiss, only for Valin to realize he'd been nervously tapping his foot to the same beat.

The heartbeat of a second-level tech,he thought wryly.

Zareth forced the muzzle against Valin's arm with enough force to leave a bruise, so Valin spun about; the other Lyths lifted their pistols quickly. Valin met the young Director Second's eye and said calmly, "I would truly appreciate if you didn't bother to show your very obvious superiority by poking at me like a child."

Elder Lyth's eyes flashed. "Zareth, the Cog scum is baiting you to step inside his guard again. Either step far enough away to where he can't attack you, or so help me boy, I'll let him strike you as a lesson."

After her blood-kin stepped away from Valin, she ignored Zareth to say, "Care to make this easier on you three by telling us where you hid the device?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Nyru, the scarred half of her face taught.

"Oh, dear, well then," the Director said with a wry smile, "I'll take great joy in seeing you say as such to Leader Kirwen."

As if summoned by her name, the Wolf entered, her intricately created brass hands in fists, her expression contorted in such fury that Valin instinctively took a step back; her eyes flashed, and when she spoke her voice was taught with contained violence, "So many idle. Go back to work and finish your duties."

The men holding the rifles on Nyru and Jarre hesitated, but lowered their weapons when their Leader affixed them with her molten stare. Only Zareth remained when the Leader nodded that his presence as guard would be tolerated.

Then the Wolf turned with a sinuous motion Valin had only ever seen water snakes make, as if she were to bare her fangs, coiled before the strike. She ignored his First, clearly dismissed his Third, and took two steps closer to Valin.

"You," came her voice through clenched teeth. "You have broken your parole for your squadron by trying to escape. Tell me where you've hidden your bomb device and I will spare them, for I'm well within my rights to tie you all to the Exile Posts and let you wither away."

Valin squared his shoulders to hide his fear. "The Exile Posts are only for traitors and the treasonous, and since we're not of your Clan—"

"You are of my Clan!" she roared. "You, Seven Valin, are mine. I've returned at least one of your blood to its rightful place! And I won't stop until all have been reclaimed!"

Zareth stiffened in surprise at Valin's side, and Elder Lyth blinked her old eyelids, opening them wide.

"She stole them from me!" Kirwen's voice rose over the din of the assembly line. "My wards! Our children! I'll kill her, I'll murder her with my last breath for what pain she's caused me! She took my children from me."

Valin could see the madness in her eye, the violence with which she might strike him with her superior Inventrix-like strength. But if she thought he'd bow to her like all of her Clan underlings, he would show her the strength of his people, his Clan, and his blood.

The strength of Seven. Of the Lyth. For they were one and the same.

"She didn't murder them," he said evenly, chin raised. "You know it, Kirwen. You knew that Mirena would make them her own. Those children that were once yours are now hers. Ours. The men and women you go to fight are the very same of the blood that you lost all those generations ago." He thrust a finger in Nyru's direction, only for his First to begin a protest, but stopped when Valin shook his head. "Kerlan Nyru is of the Cog Clan. Her blood was once yours. Kerlan Xenthi, you said. You knew her ancestor. Her Originator was once of the Wheelteeth." He saw only Nyru's shocked expression, her scar making her bewilderment look both grim and almost comical. "But how many of her kin have you slain in the skies? If her kin are yours, then you've committed the worst crime of both our Clans."

The Wolf Leader was trembling with rage, her mechanical fingers spasming.

Valin pressed on, "You've murdered your own. Countless times. For as long as this hellish war has been going on, so too have your lost children fallen from the skies at your hands. Did it never occur to you to ask if this Clan's children and the blood of those lost wantedto return?"

"Of course they wouldn't want to return," Kirwen spat, her dark eyes flashing. But there was a deep sadness welling behind them, fighting against her anger. Or perhaps, alongside her anger. "Mirena's been feeding you lies, feeding you hate. Selling you histories as she wrote them, not as the truth. Hiding your origins. And did you react with joy, Seven Valin, to know that you are now home?"

He pressed his lips together against saying anymore.

"Or did you hide the knowledge from your squadron?" she sneered.

What was done, was done now. No more hiding.

"And what of your lies, Leader Kirwen?" he asked, specifically using her title. "Your own people think that my Clan killed your children when they were taken. No wonder their hatred has only multiplied. They wage a war of righteous vengeance, but it's neither righteous nor truly vengeful. And look, Leader, one of my blood spits upon the idea that I am of her line—her family." He thrust an unerring finger at Elder Lyth, while still addressing Kirwen. "You manipulated us into learning the truth. What did you expect to happen? That she would open her loving arms to me? One of the Cog scumthat has been fighting against her and her people? One of the very men who has been building engines of war to murder her friends and family?"

Kirwen took a trembling step toward him, her expression so terrifying in its fury that Valin had to swallow around the lump of fear in his throat. She could strike him and that would be his end.

"All of you little babes are so shortsighted," she said. "After only four generations, no one wanted to hear the truth. The rally cry of taking back our children was lost in the din of time, no matter how I insisted, no matter that I was their Leader. All the Elders of this Clan held a Ceremony of the Dead for our children. Because after that much time, the ones taken from us were indeed dead. No one cared about the children's children. No one cared about the blood—the families—that were still from us." Pain etched itself across her features, fighting with the rage for dominion. "But I remember when you short-lived all forget. I remember what shestole. I remember my own granddaughter being taken, how she wept for her mother. My little one, my darling, and I stood there, passing her weeping to one of the Cog Clan women come to take them. My belly raging in humiliation and helplessness and hunger, knowing that she would be fed, would survive. But I vowed, I swore to all the deities that might listen, that she would return to me. To my daughter."

Valin's breath was stolen from him. The shock of her words rocked truths so long held within him that he could only croak them in protest. "Inventrixes...can't have children. It's physically impossible."

She cast him a bitter smile, and laughed. "My predecessor designed me so I was never truly an Inventrix. Including that."

He shook his head in denial.

Kirwen's voice dropped into a hoarse whisper. "Even your bloodline name mocks me. She had been the seventh child born to the Lyth that year, and I had teasingly called her Seven. My little granddaughter loved her nickname more than her true heart-name." Her eyes watered, her mouth trembling in a way that made Valin's chest ache in sympathy. "My Morra. My little Seven."

Valin had nothing to say. Here was the name of his line's Originator. No, not truly. If he dared to think further back, here was the woman standing before him, his true line's Originator.

"My daughter," croaked Kirwen, "never forgave me for failing to get her back. Morra grew from a five-year-old into a woman without us, living as one of you. And her mother never recovered from the pain of losing her. Even on her deathbed, my aged daughter spat on me, cursing my name until her last breath. And in that, I failed my vow, I failed as a Leader. My purpose, my only reason for being was to protect my people. And I failed."

The silence was oppressive, even with the grinding gears and steady puffs of the assembly line's engines.

Kirwen's expression hardened into fierce determination. "When the battle to come is over, when I am the victor, our children will be reunited with us. In time, we'll be again as one Clan, and the hatred and blood-debts will be forgotten. But I will honor my vow, and perhaps my daughter will forgive me wherever her spirit may reside."

It was Nyru who spoke, voice almost soft, "If what you claim is true, then you'll watch us die fighting. We won't surrender. And I know my line would gladly fly to the sundisk to stop you."

Again that bitter smile. "Xenthi was always proud to a fault. So it seems are her children."

"One thing you haven't considered, Leader," said Valin.

"Oh?" she mocked.

"You haven't asked your Clan whether or not they want their lost children back." Valin listened to the sharp sound of her contemptuous laugh, but he turned to Elder Lyth, who was tapping her cane again to the beat of the assembly line. "What say you, honored elder? Would you welcome one such as me, and all the Seven line, into the Lyth family?"

Elder Lyth's face screwed up, she pursed her lips, and spat on his boots. "To the ten hells with all of you, you wretched, murdering scum."

Kirwen roared, "Enough!"

Shaking, she gestured curtly to Zareth, and jutted her chin at Valin. "Bring him. Then take the others back to their prison after you've searched it thoroughly."

Zareth didn't jab him, but remained at a distance, glaring as they followed after Leader Kirwen, marching up from the oppressive heat of the forge caves and into one of their spiral-filigreed hallways. He could see the manic way that men and women darted to and fro, some carrying necessary equipment, still others with cleaning equipment for the takeoff ledges, moving upward on liftcarts. The Wheelteeth's mountain was a flurry of activity, chaotic and barely organized; a sharp contrast to the orderly forge caves.

Kirwen halted in her marching steps. She shook her head, voice frantic, expression wild. "No, no... I'm coming. Hold on until I arrive."

Without word to his guard, Kirwen sprinted away from them, her legs pumping with a speed no true human could ever match, and was quickly out of sight.

Zareth prodded him and quickly stepped back from Valin's reach. "We still go, scum."

The Lyth man pressed their pace, half jogging after the Leader, when Valin heard a throat shredding scream echo through the hallway. The kind of scream one heard repeated in their memories for many a year afterward; it was the sound of immense anguish torn from the deepest part of the soul.

Valin didn't need to be prodded. He broke into a run and the young Lyth stayed just behind him. When they came around the bend, sunlight from the old windows cut into the rock itself streamed over Kirwen, making the parts of her brass skin glint in the light; she had collapsed to her knees, doubled over in pain, eyes squeezed shut tightly. Her mouth was partly open, and a wretched sound came from her. Sobs, he realized, though there were no tears. Inventrixes didn't weep, but then again—

Slowly, clear tears streamed down her cheeks. And then in a torrent.

Valin stood near her in awkward silence, allowing the woman to deal with her pain. Zareth nervously shifted from foot to foot.

Making certain his movements didn't appear threatening, he knelt at Kirwen's side, aching in sympathy for the woman who was his enemy. But pain was pain, and loss was loss—for he realized what this must be. Zareth lifted his rifle as Valin placed his hand on her shoulder, hoping he was lending her some small bit of comforting weight. He said nothing. He simply sat, wondering if his presence was needed or wanted. When her sobs reached a crescendo, he squeezed lightly, and said, "I'm sorry."

A half sob, half laugh burst from her, a wretched smile on her face. "You are so much like her. My daughter. She would've done the same before the loss warped her."

"I am truly sorry, grandmere." It seemed right to say such a thing, and so he felt no shame in uttering the strange family connection.

Her expression contorted in surprise, eyes distant. For a moment he was certain she would fling his sympathies back at him when her lips curled into a furious snarl. But her bloodshot eyes cleared, and she met his gaze. "The child."

Zefir.

She leaped to her feet and sprinted with that unnatural speed. As he chased after her, Zareth yelled threats at Valin to stop. Not if Zefir was in trouble. Even if the man tried to shoot him—

A flechette bolt pinged on the stone near his feet, and another whizzed by his shoulder to shatter a nearby window. But still he ran.

Zefir was floating in a dream he knew instinctively wasn't his own. He wished it were a pleasant one, but somehow he knew it wouldn't end well. When he heard Seren's voice, younger, stronger, his dream-self knew this was one of her memories:

The sheer pain streaming into her body made her cringe. It wasn't her own, of course, but through the open connection—weaker than before, thank the Forge Gods just this once for that—the agony of her mirror's burned body almost made her crumble. Not just physically, as walking to sit at Kirwen's side was a small eternity of hells, but mentally—the pain flayed her mind. It tore at her with bright claws, rending, scattering her thoughts like a wolfling racing through a flock of river blackbirds.

As Zefir worked his way toward consciousness his grasp on the memory was beginning to fail. Desperately, the way one devoid of sleep will fight to stay sleeping, he tried to remain with her. She wasn't dead, wasn't gone, she was alive, her sensations and thoughts so clear.

And now awake, he was struck with pain—not Kirwen's pain of being burned, but his own. Voices changed from muffled and watery to distinct and razor sharp; Ferrei was speaking, an unusual note of alarm in her voice.

"You need to step back. You can't...no. No. What did I say?" And then he heard her feet scuffle. "Back I said. Don't touch him."

"Why?" chirruped a bewildered voice. "I can help, yes. I can. Not sleeping, no."

Zefir opened his eyes, the light lancing through to his aching head forcing him to squint.

Ferrei stood between his prone body—gods and hells, he'd fallen on a wing and it was stiff and numb—and his sibling. The sibling-dragon was standing now, cocking her head this way and that, bobbing like a curious bird. Her spiraling horns gleamed bright, her ears swiveling toward him as he stifled a groan. Those bright violet-eyes blinked and she smiled such a harmless smile at him that he ignored the pain in his head to return the smile.

"See?" said his sibling. "Not sleeping. I said as much. But you didn't listen, small thing." She snorted a puff of air at the Second Leader. "I can help."

"Don't take another step, flyer," Ferrei warned.

Not that the Second Leader could stop her if she chose to harm Zefir. So, with slow movements, he rolled himself to his side, placing his hands on the ground and immediately wished he didn't need them to walk. He held his hands to his chest, and groaned.

"Zefir?" Ferrei's face appeared, practically climbing over his snout, and she looked down into his eyes in relief. "Sun be praised. I thought you had...I wasn't sure if you can truly..."

"Die?" he croaked.

"Die," repeated his sibling. "Death. The end." She frowned in a way that also made Zefir clamp down on a bitter laugh, for she was obviously pondering her words and their meaning with a hefty, childish weight. "Lifeless..."

When Zefir had awoken to life, the words had already been in his mind, but he didn't know how to speak them properly, or how to arrange them in sentences. Mother had instructed him for almost three weeks before could speak properly. So it seemed that his sibling was far advanced of his infancy, and could already make herself understood.

He peered at her horns and her claws, knowing that Seren had sworn not to give her creation any of Zefir's battle traits; but her horns twisted gracefully above her, blunt, not deadly at all, and he noticed a small puff of air come from the top; her crystalline claws were sharp, but they were small things, barely inches long. Her wings were folded elegantly against her back, but he could tell that her wings were so long that they were folded four times, the bones of her wings thinner, lighter, and oddly jointed.

"I can help," she said again hopefully.

"My sibling," Zefir rumbled as amiably as he could manage. "Yes, you can help me. Gather the bandages on the far table—"

"No, not bandages. Not for you." She shook her head in exasperation, and another puff of air came from her spiraling horns. "I can help keep the pain away."

She held up her right hand and a strange metallic liquid glinted from within her claws; he realized that her claws were hollow, and she made a concoction within her body and was extruding it through her those hollow-tipped claws.

"Poison," Ferrei warned, placing up her fists.

Zefir shook his head slightly, but even that pained him. "No...it's not."

Zefir tried to sit up as well as he could, but his sibling sprang at him, ignoring Ferrei's fists as the Second Leader struck at her. Those violet-eyes were searching the extent of his wounds and holding her claws over his chest; the shimmery liquid fell on one of the burns. The liquid stung, and then became numb. A sigh escaped from him.

"See?" said his sibling, lifting her broad wings to keep Ferrei at bay. "I'm good at repair. Does it still hurt?"

Oh, how he loved Seren even more for this. Not a battle dragon, not at all. To repair or destroy. And his sibling was made to repair. How he wished Seren were here, how he wanted to hear his lost friend's easy laugh of bright joy and wonder.

He knew what Seren would've said to him: Of course, dear dragon, I would make her to heal.

"Hands," he said, holding them out.

She sniffed at his hands with the studious intensity of one taking her job seriously, then more of the metallic liquid dripped over his throbbing hands; he watched as the liquid settled into some of the burn holes in his pseudo-metallic flesh, solidifying, much in the way Mother's repair-gel had helped regrow flesh from the gash in his side.

"Thank you," he said softly, and she grinned at him, bobbing her head. "But can you...repair burns on humans?" At the quizzical tilt to her head, he clarified by touching Ferrei with his tail. "The 'small thing.' They're humans. Can you help repair her too? Her hands are bleeding."

"Oh!" she gasped in such a way that it reminded him of Seren. "Oh, I should've scented the blood. Of course I can. It is more difficult, and I must taste first. But I will help the small thing."

His sibling turned with her unnaturally swift movements—quicker than a river serpent—and she plucked Ferrei up. As the Second Leader stared into those violet-eyes, cursing in surprise, the sibling-dragon's pale brass tongue lolled out of her mouth and she...licked Ferrei's face. Stunned, the Second Leader's cursing cut off in mid "ten hells and demon-shit" when his sibling smacked her lips, thinking.

"No infection, so that's good," the sibling-dragon proclaimed. "I'll make a salve for the burns, and then we really must bandage them."

Zefir's eyelids felt heavy, and a pleasant lack of feeling in his chest and hands made him want to sleep. "What else is in the concoction you gave me?"

"A microcog sedative to make the thoughts in your heart-chamber slow for a brief span of time. You can enter rest modus now, sibling." She set Ferrei down, but still kept one hand on the Second's shoulder. Protectively, Zefir thought. "Sibling. Kin. Family. This is a good thing, is it not?"

"Yes," he said before he closed his eyes. "You're my kin. My family."

"Family," she said wistfully, and then repeated, "You're my kin."

He managed to open a mountain-weighted eyelid and noticed her claws had retracted, but not before leaving a oddly colored salve on the Second Leader's palms. Ferrei stood, clenching her teeth in mistrust; as the salve did its work his Second stared down at her palms in disbelief. His sibling began carefully and expertly bandaging Ferrei's outstretched hands, which were a third of the size of those gentle dragon hands, the dragon humming quietly to herself an eerily familiar tune.

"You're a healer," said Ferrei in a tone of disbelief.

His sibling blinked at her, smiling, revealing small rows of sharp-looking teeth. Ah, so Seren hadn't left her creation fully without some kind of self-defense. "And you're my kin, small thing."

Zefir released a weary chuckle before he fell asleep.

Read Part 18: Debt of Blood

The Clockwork Dragon #16: One Beginning, One Ending

2016-08-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

Seren's chuckle was a rough, wet sound, but it amused her to think her heart was winding down like some flesh-born clockwork toy. The only toy she possessed as a child had been the first thing she created, a fluttering ornithopter hummingbird that whizzed and hummed, its glass emerald eyes able to detect her motion in order to follow her. She'd named it Beauty.

And Varess had ripped it apart, slamming it down on the worktop with a steely frown, saying in that voice Seren knew she'd acquire as she aged, "Now repair it. Make its flight more stable. At your age I was already building wolfling pups. If you don't do better, Two, I'll be forced to chose One or Three to be my descendant."

It had been a lie. One of many lies. Especially as Seren, at age five, had begun work on Neri in secret, stealing away pieces from the tech lines to spirit to the Tamer caves. There she could watch how the Tamer's wolves moved, calculating the bend of muscle, sinew, and bone as they ran together in tight packs, the Leaders at the front. And of course the feeling of their wet, rough tongues lapping at her, their cold noses nudging at her hands, demanding a pat.

She heard her name called and blinked slowly, eyes aching. Ah, so her pupils had changed shape then, so her time was here. Another two days were she a normal Inventrix, but she could feel it would be a matter of half an hour at best, minutes at worst. "Ah, yes, dear dragon. I hear your voice. Not deaf yet, no. Don't worry, I'll go blind first."

Neri had always liked Kirwen best, or so it seemed. The wolf had been built to follow the motions of the one it saw as the Leader, since that's how Seren had observed the wolves listen to both their alpha-packmates and to their Tamers. And Kirwen was always decisive to a fault, her childish arms making curt gestures that the wolf-mechanical had obeyed with alert brass ears. No bonding for the wolfling, not then. Not until after the Trial. Not until after the Breaking...

Again, she blinked, seeing Zefir's dragon brows creased in an expression of worried pain. Ah, so she was speaking all her thoughts aloud...perhaps even her calculations as she quickly urged the pseudo metal of her dragon creation's wings to grow to their ultimate length, the membranes threading the cooling-veins through them as they stretched.

The dragon-sibling twitched the way a babe in the vat-womb would kick. Beautiful and strong. Her last gift would awaken soon.

Seren blinked again and focused on the woman—from Zefir's Cog Clan squadron if the Navigator's worn brown leather flight jacket was anything to go by, and Second Leader if she remembered what the shield symbol with two stars meant. "Here now, Second Leader, that isn't the one you want."

The woman had been inspecting the variety of flasks upon the work table, surreptitiously wafting a tiny bit of scent toward her nose to identify the correct solution. It was apparent the three she was after, but Seren could make a more stable concoction...

"Yes, yes, more stable." Seren wobbled toward the workstation, her knees joints cracking as she walked, the pain shooting up her spine. "Here now, line of...hmm, Quarethstra, yes? The three you're looking for are here," she pointed, but immediately waved the notion away. "Your Valin is a clever one, but I can do better." She tried to lift one of the large flasks only for her muscles to fail her. "Or rather I can instruct you how to do so. The solutions he's given you to obtain are unstable. If even a drop of this one," and again she pointed, her arm tired and her fingertips on fire, "connects with this one, then you have—"

Seren made the kaboom sound.

The Quaresthra woman pretended to misunderstand, affecting a mild look of innocence. "I know not what you mean, Wheelteeth—"

"Gah! Enough with this." Seren didn't know if anger at her lack of time was normal, but she cared not. "Wheelteeth, Cog, Wheelteeth, Cog. Good gods and ten hells, both were the same once. One Clan. So blinded now by what you think you know of the past, or why you fight, that even were I to tell you the truth you'd dismiss it." Before the woman could bark back, Seren shook her head and was dizzy. She had to clutch at the table to keep from collapsing. "I've no time to explain it to you, but I can help you and your squadron escape."

The Second Leader narrowed her gaze suspiciously, but it was Zefir who nodded, expression serious. "You would do that, Seren?"

She patted his velvet soft nose and lamented that she would never fly with him again. "You were made to fly free, dear dragon. You were meant to soar, and learn, and love, and—" she fought against the tears of regret, hating that her mind counted the minutes flittering by. Fast. Too fast. "I know you go to fight, dearest, but remember you have a choice."

"To repair or destroy," he said quietly in his serious baritone.

Oh, her clever, beautiful Zefir. "And I would have you see your Mother before...before the end. There's so much she must wish to tell you. Mirena is very furious that Kirwen has taken away so much time with you."

Zefir lowered his eye, exhaling slowly. "I doubt that very much. I'm an interesting experiment, her battle dragon to win the war. That's all."

Seren couldn't help but laugh, even knowing that such a sound would hurt him. "Oh dear one, no. Your Mother has always been all bluster. Inventrixes are not supposed to be made to connect deeply with any single person, but rather to bond with our wards as a whole—in essence you belong to us and with us. But that was never quite true with us. Perhaps because of our three-yet-one bond. Or perhaps it's because Mirena still had enough time to deny that you were more than a ward to her. Oh, Zefir, you're her little one. Her child. And always will be."

Zefir still didn't raise his eye to her. "I know so little of her. Of you. I want to understand."

The dizziness overcame her and she began to fall as the world tilted around her—her mind whirled with formula for a shift in gravity, only to realize it wasn't the world changing. She felt large hands cradling her, those sickle-claws carefully out of the way; Zefir lay down with her and held her in the crook of his arms, humming the same song she'd sung to him:

Hush child, we are here

Three against the world

Hush child, don't you fret

Three to protect your dreams

Cry and One will know

Hurt and Two will soothe

Fall and Three will catch you

"I haven't the time to tell you, Zefir," she said, wheezing. "But I can show you. And know, before you say yes, that it will be yet another burden of memory that I would place upon you."

He regarded her with those large quicksilver eyes shining. "You wish to give me your virul-microcogs. Then we can connect and share memories. Thoughts."

"Clever, beautiful dragon." Her smile hurt, but it didn't matter. "That will mean I'll also get to see yours, you know."

The Quarethstra woman sucked in a breath. "I can't allow this. She's the enemy—"

"Then what better way to understand the enemy then to learn more?" said the dragon, and this close Seren reveled in the soft snick of his brass eyelids as he closed them. "It's my mind, and my choice. And I've made my decision."

But the Second Leader was certainly the clever one as well. "What if her virul 'cogs take over? They were named as abomination for a reason."

Seren heard the deep rumble in his chest as he said with conviction, "I won't let them."

Oh, if only Mirena could see him right now. She wanted to reach for her mirror so far away, but their connection could never cross such a distance even at its strongest. Part of her had hoped that she would see Mirena again before the end.

He opened his eyes, those large beautiful orbs. "I'm ready, Seren."

She too was ready. With difficulty, she reached for Kirwen. The end is here, my mirror—[joy at the beauty before her]

A faint echo of: [disbelief, anger, refusal of the inevitable] Then: I'm coming. Hold on until I arrive. Don't you dare slip away without me, lissteri.

Focus. She stared up into that quicksilver gaze. Yes, remember him this way, proud and determined, eyes shining and just barely holding back tears—those wonderful and tragic tears gifted to him. Her fraying mind held tightly to this vision, to the sight of his wings enclosing them so there was nothing else in the world. She didn't have the strength to touch those wings, so she tried not to blink, filling her last memories with this.

Her eyes failed her. Blindness. But she heard a hitch in his breathing. Holding his breath, then exhaling slowly. Counting, even as she was counting. "Seren?"

It would be easy now that she was crying, now that she willed the virul-microcogs to gather in her blood as it trickled down her cheeks. "There, dear heart. Kiss away the tears and you'll have my memories. You'll know how to help your squadron escape."

His nose pressed against her face and she tried to smile. But she was so tired now. She wanted to reach for Kirwen once more, but even that was too much effort. "Sing to me again, Zefir."

The sound of his singing voice lulled her into a pleasant dream:

The air arced beneath his wings, caressing and teasing at the same time. The delight made him warm inside, and he craned his neck upwards, eyes riveted to the puffy white clouds streaming lazily above him. And below him, the glittering flow of the river, the green patchwork quilts of the rice fields. Eager now, he stretched his wings and roared with the sheer joy of being airborne. And when his Navigator said, "Let's chase the western wind," he knew that he was the western wind. He was the Zefir, the wind itself, and nothing would ever stop him.

Seren smiled one last time and knew no more.

Zefir heard an echo of the scream that seemed born of one shattered. He didn't need to wonder at who had released such a sound that echoed the same roar he wished to make. He expected to feel the terrifying rush of Seren's memories, and gritted his teeth against the onslaught. But there was nothing. For a moment he worried that the transference had been too late, but then he felt a faint tingle pulling at the edge of his senses.

It wasn't a memory. It was Kirwen.

How he knew he wasn't sure, but he also knew that she was sensing, however incredibly faint, his own sorrow. Zefir cradled Seren's body closer with his wings, clutching to her while his own tears unabashedly dripped off the end of his snout to fall upon his lost friend. The cold inside expanded in a way he'd never felt, not even when he'd watched men and women from his squadron fall from the sky. It was deeper, more enveloping, and his breath hitched. Ragged breaths—he couldn't breathe, but he didn't care. Sobs, he realized blearily, they were sobs, but it still felt like the pain was suffocating him.

Would it feel this way if he lost—if something happened to Valin? Whether time or battle or illness...it would happen, while Zefir continued on.

Whatever gods or goddesses looked over him, he prayed it wouldn't crush him.

He was rocking back and forth on his haunches, holding her tighter than he would've dared in life, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He was so cold that the simple warmth of a human hand seemed to blaze white-hot against his hide.

"Are you well?" she asked.

Far from it, but he knew she was concerned about the virul 'cogs. He nodded.

"Zefir," said Ferrei with unusual softness. "We must act quickly, before the Wheelteeth Leader arrives. I need you to see to your duty, even though it's the last thing in the world you want to do."

"Aye, Second," he croaked, voice almost gone.

He settled Seren on the ground, her open eyes staring at nothing when only a moment ago she had been smiling up at him. The Navigators had a saying about eyes open in death, as they seemed to have a blood-ridden saying about everything: The sun behind their eyes is gone, but it will rise in another place.

He didn't know if that was true, but he did know that he wanted to cover those open, blank eyes; with his teeth he took the dust cloth from over his sleeping sibling and placed it over his friend.

His sibling's wings were so bright, the pseudo-metallic flesh shiny and brand new. They were completed now, and twitching as if eager to awaken and spread them to their long-winged utmost.

A memory prickled at him, along with it a thought he knew wasn't his: No time for a completely stable concoction, but mixing two of the flasks will work for a less volatile mix, with the same power once they combine.

He nudged his nose in the direction of the flasks. "Mix a quarter of those two into one, use the gloves on the table. Then you can pour the liquid into the chambers of the device."

The device that was hidden inside his chest panel. He opened himself, feeling slightly embarrassed to be revealing his inner workings to anyone but an Inventrix. He reached inside and gathered the hated thing, and set it down next to her.

Ferrei hesitated, but spoke as she moved, shrugging on the heavy gloves quickly. "Zefir, you need to act quickly. The worst threat to our Clan is in this room."

His aching chest became colder, as if everything inside of him ground to a halt. "N-No..."

"Yes," Ferrei hissed, working quickly. "That Inventrix made a battle dragon for the Wheelteeth, and if the Wolf Leader sees it complete now, she'll have no need for you. Or for us. She'll take over this weapon, and will use it against our people." She paused only long enough to stare him earnestly in the eye. "You know it's true. The Wheelteeth will use that dragon to try to end our Clan. Do what you were designed to do and destroy it, Zefir. Protect our Clan and do it now."

Zefir looked at his hapless sibling, her nose twitching as if detecting a smell for the first time. Long, lean, her brass hide gleaming, her long wings more intricate than his own, somehow more beautiful and powerful. For longer flights, he knew. Her tail was also twice the length of his own, thin as a whip and stabilized with small series of raised triangular 'wings' along in a row up to her back. Her ears were longer, situated behind two delicate spiraling horns gleaming metallic; her ears swiveled as if to listen to whatever argument he made to either condemn or save her life. There was a place for a comfortable sitting place for a Nav upon her back, but no control panel, not even a modified one such as his own.

She knew nothing of the war, or the anger between the Clans. She didn't know her maker, or him, or who to trust or not trust. She was an innocent. As he'd been when he awoke. Only Mother had been there for him, that familiar tight-lipped smile and searching gaze at the ready. And she'd said to him when he first awoke: Oh, gods, you're more wonderful than I'd imagined. Welcome, little one.

The only time he'd ever heard Mother use the word wonderful to describe anything.

But the sibling didn't have that. No Mother, no Inventrix, or creator. No welcoming voice to the world. That aching sensation grew, and he sniffled, knowing that Seren at her most stable, as the person she must have been long ago, would've been his sibling's most beloved person. Where could they have flown together? To places unexplored beyond the known parts of this world?

And now he was being asked to destroy her, for no better reason than she could possibly be a threat. Because his Second Leader thought Zefir had been designed only to destroy; but no, his Mother had told him: I created you, little one, to learn on your own. To adapt. I've told you of the war before, but you have a choice. And if you do choose to fight, it must be because you've learned to...to love, and you want to protect that which is loved.

It had been the only time his Mother had ever used the word love in his presence, as if the word were foreign, or difficult to understand. But sometimes he thought, and hoped, that when Mother called him 'little one' it also meant beloved.

He moved to stand beside his sibling, arched his neck, and said, "No."

"Zefir," Ferrei said desperately, pouring the liquids into each chamber of the bomb device with separate glass funnels, and closed it up.

She held out the bomb to him, and it he took it carefully, knowing that if his Second Leader had miscalculated, the bomb could go off inside of him. Even still, he held his breath—three minutes, fourteen seconds—and placed the device back inside of his chest panel, closing it.

"Zefir, you must. We can't let the Wheelteeth have another weapon against us. Destroy it before it becomes a threat."

He narrowed his gaze, realizing how beastly he must look to others, these small human-kind. "Would you have me crush a Wheelteeth human infant in my hands, just because the child might one day grow to be a threat?"

The Second Leader sputtered. "That's not the same."

"It is the same, Ferrei," he said, using her heart-name. Her given name. The name that friends, blood-kin, and mates used. Jarre had once told him that Ferrei meant strength of the iron. It fit so well, in that iron didn't like to bend. "My sibling dragon is an innocent. She isn't part of this war. I won't harm her...ever. Not even if you order me, or disavow me, or cast me from the squad. I'll not let her be destroyed."

Her brows lowered, and Zefir could see by her stance that she'd dismissed his arguments, his decision, but absolutely believed his conviction. She picked up another flask, marching forward, the contents swirling ominously clear and acrid within. He could hear by the steady, strong pound of her heart that Ferrei had made a decision, for better or ill, to destroy his sibling at all costs. For the Clan. For her people.

She hurled the flask at his sibling, and Zefir reacted.

He leaped in front of the flask, moving faster than he ever had. The glass shattered over his chest, but the caustic liquid inside splattered over his skin. He shrieked as the agony made his sight turn dark, as the hellsfire burned. He lifted his hands to bat away the burning, wishing he could claw off his own skin; he was being flayed alive; pain overrode any sense he had remaining. Dark, seared spots were burrowing deeper where the acid corroded, and he clawed at them, screaming.

He saw Ferrei's terrified face, saw her lift something powdery from a jar. She reached in and tossed the powder at his chest; but the torture still coursed through him, and he collapsed to the ground, writhing, desperately trying to keep his wings from touching the liquid. And Ferrei leaped upon him, as if to pin him down with her tiny weight, using her gloved hands to smear more of the powder over him; he lifted his hands to ward her away, but she said, "No, don't."

He could feel some of the burning subside, and frantically she rubbed more of the powder into—into—the tiny holes the liquid had made in his hide, over his panel. He could smell the burning of his own skin, could hear his Second saying, "Sun preserve us...hold still. Gods be, why did you do this? Why?" He could see the corrosive liquid had burnt through her gloves, that her hands were red underneath. "Hold out your hands."

Shaking, he held out his hands and she dumped the entire jar's worth of powder over his fingers, his palm, spreading the powder even though her own hands were bleeding now through the ruined gloves. He could scent her fear now, so powerful it overrode the horrible charred stench of his burnt skin. He could hear her praying. For him or for herself he didn't know: "The light of the sun gives life. In darkness we wait, for the sundisk it rises. Praise be to my ancestors, upon the light they ride—please look over my loved ones. Please make certain they find no hurt, or if it is to be, that they find your embrace—"

"I'm not," Zefir croaked, his breaths in gasps, "ready to fly to the sundisk yet, Ferrei."

The pain was subsiding into a long, dull roar, no longer burning but still throbbing so violently that he keened to keep himself from another scream. Distantly, through his clouded thoughts, he sensed the sharp, white-hot edge to Kirwen's surprised fury. Had he shared his pain with her the way the mirrors seemed to?

[Ward is harmed, protect ward. Rage. Despair at failure.]

"Sun have mercy," Ferrei whispered, her bleeding hands shaking. "Why did you do that?"

"For the same reason," Zefir managed, "that I shielded you from the bomb."

Weakly, not wanting to see his hands, he half made the we are the shield gesture.

Staring down at her bloodied hands, Ferrei gingerly ripped the remaining cloth of the gloves from her. Then closing her eyes, she finished the sign with the most beautiful and graceful motion he'd ever seen his Second Leader make. When she opened them again, she turned slowly to the little dragon lying upon Seren's worktable.

His sibling was regarding him with eyes the color of violet clouds at sunset; she cocked her head to the side like a curious bird, turning her head this way and that to watch him. Then she closed her eyes, and her smaller clawed hands lifted...

And she copied both Zefir's pained sign, and Ferrei's beautiful motion.

When Ferrei gasped, his sibling gave the Second Leader a pleased dragon-smile and made the graceful motion again, her light contralto voice mimicking the only words she'd ever heard, "For the same reason...for the same-same-same reason that I shielded you..."

Zefir was resigned to the fact that today would be a day of weeping. And so when his sibling grinned happily, her head bobbing in a nod, repeating his words again, he let out a sound somewhere between a choked sob and a relieved bark. The pain was overriding his systems, and again blackness hovered over his sight. But he knew his next words to her must be important, even if some of his non-essential systems shut down briefly to allow his overtaxed body to recuperate.

"Your mother," he said, hiding the sound of his pain, "loved you very much."

Weeping, the darkness took him.

Read Part 17: Of Kith and Kin

The Clockwork Dragon #15: Uncompleted Designs

2016-07-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

Zefir halted in his tracks when he saw Neri lying inert on the lab table. For a moment he wasn't certain if this was part of one of his false memories.

He swallowed around the sensation in his throat—breathe, breathe, he could breathe, yes the breath was there. Three minutes, fourteen seconds. He closed his eyes and opened them again, seeing his wolf friend still vacant-eyed on the table, her chest panel open to the world...and empty.

Ferrei stood next to him, arms crossed over her chest as Kirwen stood in silence. But he moved around them both, spying Seren with her microfyer goggles strapped over her eyes, a steady stream of nonsense pouring from her lips. The half-shrouded dragon sibling had grown since last he saw, and now its head was revealed—more slender with a pointed snout, its eyes still closed in sweet repose, its brass hide shinier than his own, not pockmarked or scarred from time in the air, crashes, or from battle. How pure the dragon sibling looked, and a surge of jealously mingled with the rage that heated his breath enough that a flicker of flame burst from his lips

He thought he saw the dragon's longer and thinner tail flicker, saw the half-finished wings twitch—wings that once finished would be twice the length of his own.

Furious now, he leaped forward, grasping Seren; he wanted to shake her, to crush his fingers around her so tightly that it would be hard for her to breathe. His fire-heated breath puffed in her face, and she blinked, the microfyer making her eyes look too large.

"Why?" he demanded, forcing her to look at him through those bedamned goggles. "Why would you hurt, Neri? Godsdamn you Seren, she loved you and this is how you repay her? To rip her apart like some—some useless mechanical?"

Seren blinked slowly, unable to focus on him. "Not love, no, no. Close but not quite. I was saving her...part of her will live on in the sibling dragon. Yes, so close to the awakening! And there, hopefully I've made it to love. To cherish. To see the beauty in life!"

Zefir growled, "Why are you such a blood-ridden monster?"

That made the Inventrix open her mouth in surprise. "A-A-A monster?"

"Damn you," Zefir said, voice hoarse. "Do you even realize what you've done to her? To me? You're sitting there as if it was easy to take her heart away, as if she meant nothing to you." He gritted his teeth against the need to shake her, for his fingers to squeeze tighter. "Do you know that I now question the reality of everything around me? It's crushing me, Seren, and you did this. And you care not a whit."

Her eyes were brimming with blood tears, magnified a hundred fold. "A-A monster...?"

"Yes," he hissed. "A monster. You tinker with our lives, but we mean nothing to you. To any of you." Zefir cast a look in the direction of Kirwen, but he couldn't help but feel some resentment for his Second as well when he gestured to them both with the sweep of one wing. "We're tools, to be used and expended if it suits you. I'm Mother's battle dragon, another tool in this endless battle. I'm Kirwen's prisoner, useful to her only because she may now have her own destructive mechanical. And to you—" he pushed his snout close to Seren's face and scented something very wrong, the fetid smell of an ill body, "—to you I'm an interesting specimen to pull apart. Just three minutes and fourteen seconds of living in the ten hells. And you gifted that to me."

Kirwen darted forward, a protective determination in her stance. "Child, put her down. She didn't harm you intentionally."

"I'm no child," he said coldly. "Not anymore. She saw to that. You've all seen to that. You're all monsters, all three of you."

"N-No," Seren whispered. "No, no, no...I'm nota monster." Her voice rose to a shriek; she tore the microfyer from her face and hurled it across the room to shatter, gaze turned inward. "I'll not be your predicted monster, my predecessor. I won't betray my mirrors!" Slowly, she studied Zefir's dragon face as if realizing for the first time that he was gripping her. "Oh, I'm slipping. Dearest Forge Gods, let me finish my work before the end. I'm not ready and neither is she."

His clawed hands were shaking as he carefully set Seren down. His claws had pierced through her heart as she leaped—

Seren touched Neri's inert form on the table, and collapsed to her knees on the stone floor, clutching at her chest as if it pained her. "Zefir, I only wanted to give you another like yourself, so you would never be lonely again. Because I won't be with you for much longer. Neither will your mother. And you'll outlive your dearest Navigator, just like we of Inventrix blood outlive our wards." She gestured to the sleek dragon snout poking from beneath the dust cloth. "This is my last gift to you. And to-to Neri. For when I'm gone, she would've broken, never to awaken without me. Now at least some part of her will live on."

Zefir didn't want to feel guilt when her eyes watered and a blood-tinged tear trailed down her cheek. He wanted to cling to tightly to his anger, and try as he might, he couldn't. The internal fire died.

"And yet," Seren said, "I'm letting the inventor's need crush me. I-I'm so sorry, Zefir. Please tell me I'm not a monster."

Kirwen spoke up from her corner. "You're not a monster, lissteri. Quoc il donenc.Varess was manipulating you, as she did with us all."

"Not a complete lie. I made the Trial and broke us apart. The only thing that ever mattered was being of one yet three." Seren shook her head wildly and curtly gestured her mirror away. "It's too much. You don't need to absorb my pain."

It seemed the two mirrors were in silent communion with one another before Kirwen nodded reluctantly, and turned to Ferrei. "She won't hurt him. But if you're still duty bound to the dragon, make certain he doesn't touch her in anger again."

Ferrei nodded firmly and half-signed so it shall be, clearly wondering if the Wolf Leader could read it.

"And you, dragon," Kirwen said sternly. "I may have claimed you as one of my wards, but I won't stand for you distressing her so. You may push her into a memory lock so deep that she'll never be free of it. She too has her own false memories to wrestle with, so don't be so quick to judge." Her voice dropped, croaking in a whisper, "Tell her she's not a monster."

Her own false memories? He remembered the awful sound of Seren's screaming while in memory lock; he shuddered, finally understanding that manner of fear. Zefir swallowed around a thick sensation in his throat, his wings fluttering like malfunctioning tremors. "What happened to you three? What is the Trial?"

"Just..." Kirwen breathed out slowly as if to steady herself. "I know I haven't earned a favor from you, far from it, but if you still care for her in the slightest, then tell her she's not a monster."

Seren was gently stroking the brass nose of the dragon sibling, but the voice that came from her was startlingly cold and venomous. "When the tests begin, Seren, you'll see where your nature lies. And I think with your joyful innocence and reliance on the virul-microcog bond, that you'll be the true monster of the three. I'm so glad I created a third instead of just two, my descendant. Watching you try destroy Mirena and Kirwen will be most illuminating for the next growth."

Zefir stifled a cringe. Is this what he would be like living with the false memories? Would he be muttering to himself, fully engaged in what wasn't? Or was this a true memory she recited?

He was reluctant to touch her, lest his anger reappear to frighten her. But when she muttered so strongly to herself in another voice, it was best to add touch to take her from the past. He pressed his nose into her chest, gently—oh, so carefully—and again scented that decaying smell, acrid and powerful. Zefir wondered how long she truly had left. He carefully listened to the rate of her breath, the beat of her heart, and the hundred sounds of the blood and organs within, but they all sounded stilted. Malfunctioning.

"I'm sorry, Seren," he said, feeling the tingle of tears threatening. "You're not a monster. You're my friend. You know that, don't you?"

A weak smile was his only answer for the span of ten heartbeats. Her arms surrounded his snout and she buried her face against him, saying, "I do, dear heart. I do. You're the best thing that's happened in my life, and I've lived a very long time. I only wish I'd met you sooner." Slowly, she raised her face from him, her pupils oddly star-shaped, as if they had splintered. "And that's why I'm doing this. I won't let you live like me—a life of generations, lost and without connection. Your sibling is close to awakening. And then you'll teach her how to fly! Oh, how I wish I could see her first flight."

Zefir turned his attention to Ferrei, who was close to the sibling-dragon, staring at it with a frown. His Second lifted the dustcloth and said, "There's no Navigator control panel."

"Of course not," said the Inventrix dismissively. "How primitive a concept. No, her Navigators must bond with her through virul-microcogs. She gets to choose. She makes the virul 'cogs within her own heart-case, and can gift them with just a quick nip or cut of a claw. Transference, then the connection. Beautiful."

Like the mirrors had with one another. How...telling. But it would also mean that Kirwen already had virul microcogs in her blood and they would easily allow her to become the sibling-dragon's Navigator. Would his sibling know battle as her first flight?

Zefir wouldn't let that happen.

"Maybe you and your sibling," said Seren, "will finally bring back the true purpose of our ancestor's Navigators. To chart and learn. To explore the unknown places. Oh, how glorious such a thing would be."

Ferrei snorted her derision.

Zefir's response was cut short as a young man in a techworker suit, panting for breath, whispered quickly in Kirwen's ear low enough that even Zefir's enhanced hearing couldn't detect it. With only a nod, the Wolf Leader spun on her heel and left their solitary lab with rapid clicks of her boot heels.

Remembering his true purpose here, and hating it, he lifted Seren with his wing while Ferrei moved to inspect the chemicals the Inventrix had been using. Folded in the thin membranous mesh of his wing, Seren grinned, completely engrossed with running her fingers along his cooling-veins. "Beautiful."

Zefir wept quietly to himself; the scent of death was clinging to Seren and grew stronger with every heartbeat. "Seren, I hope you'll tell me what happened to you."

"Allow me to finish her wings..." She shuddered, still clutching to one of the pseudo-metallic bones of his wing. "Then, maybe in the telling you'll find a way to end this all."

Valin made the 'blink slowly' signal to indicate that the next piece he picked up would be the one he needed Jarre to pocket in his place in the line. At Valin's point in the production line, it would be too obvious if he took something from the rotating belt. The Lyth boys circled around them, the same men who had reacted to the threat Valin represented to their grandmere, and glared at the squad with a hawk-like eye.

It made the timing difficult, but production on the line had been increased—desperately it seemed. The brand new, gleaming ketch-gryphons were housed in the back of the cave, checked by every person with a minimal knowledge of techwork, and summarily moved from the forge caves to the launch ledges higher up in the mountain. Valin had lost count of the number of them somewhere around one hundred and fifty. The clangs of the assembly line echoed louder, the gears grinding at an unnatural pace, and the steam puffing magma-hot.

Over it all, Elder Lyth called for replacements in the line, her small, wrinkled face creased in displeasure.

Here was the last piece they would need to fix the bomb and its timer. Valin closed his eyes in a slow blink and then picked up the piece, examining it—even though it wasn't a piece his side of the line would've reached for. Jarre grabbed the piece in his place on the line and at the same time lifted one that had clearly not made it through the forges intact and was thus a dud to be tossed; the true piece made it into his pocket—

But one of the Lyth men darted forward, and caught at the massive Third's wrist.

"What is this?" the man demanded.

Jarre's muscles flexed and he attempted to shrug off the man without drawing attention. "What's it look like, Wheelteeth? It's faulty and I'm throwing it in the return pot."

"Not this one," the Lyth man growled. He was large enough himself to keep Jarre's hand in place, his own impressive muscles straining. "The other one you had."

"Well," the Third said with false pleasantness, "I wasn't born a techie, so it they all look the same to me."

"Spit on a' fire," the Lyth cursed. "You lie, Cog man scum. Empty your pockets."

"Like ten hells I will, boy." Jarre swiveled his wrist and plucked it from the Lyth's hand, taking on a stance that suggested the Third was ready to take a swing.

The Lyth man made a gesture to others—likely blood brothers and cousins—all of whom were of the same size and stature.

Nyru moved from her place in line and came to stand between the two men. "Why are you accosting him? So, he made an error. Leave him be and we can all get back to this blood-ridden work."

"Quiet scum," the man barked. "I wasn't talking to you."

Valin tried to pretend that what was occurring wasn't worthy of notice, but he wiped away cold sweat from his upper lip.

Nyru lifted the scarred corner of her mouth, causing that unnaturally dark grin. "But you are now, boy. Where I come from a youth such as you doesn't speak in such a way to those older than him. Even if you can't seem to hold yourself in a respectful manner, even for the enemy, then heed my words: you're speaking to me now. I'm his elder, his Leader. What's your name, Wheelteeth?"

"Lyth Zareth," he said, raising his chin. "And I'm Director Second, so what occurs in these forge caves concerns me. Tell your underling to empty his pockets."

Damnation and hells, Valin thought, frantic. If the man really was Director Second, he would know that the pieces he found in Jarre's pocket were less than innocuous. But maybe he could convince the young man that the pieces were meant for something other than the timed bomb device. Perhaps a code breaker.

Jarre gritted his teeth, eyes assessing his opponent. Even Nyru was coolly regarding the exits, still standing with her arms crossed as if unconcerned.

If Valin couldn't convince the Lyth, then their only hope of escape was gone. Bile rose into his throat, his heart pounding as he left the line and approached the young Director Second. The youth—likely no more than twenty—eyed him with the same black color of eyes his own mother possessed, the man's nose and chin, while in a masculine configuration, reminded Valin of his own fourth blood aunt.

They say blood always tells. Or maybe he simply wanted to see some familiar features in a man who's blood was his own.

"You know what we're trying to do, Director Second," Valin said evenly. "You can't really fault us for attempting to break the lock code."

Zareth's dark eyes took his measure slowly. "Ah, the Cog scum techie. You failed then, because my Elder made those locks. And no one, not even as a test, could ever break them." He gestured to his blood brothers to form a circle around Valin's squad. "Tell your fellow Cog scum to empty his pockets."

Jarre shared a hopeless look with him, his hands curling into fists. Valin shook his head a fraction, hoping neither Jarre nor Nyru would do something desperate. They would fail if they chose to fight their way out.

"Jarre, show the Director Second," said Valin, his voice nearly cracking with tension. "They know. Empty your pockets."

Jarre spat on the floor as one of the Lyth men around him started forward to physically divest him of his stolen goods, but the man paused as Jarre grinned. The Third reached into his pocket, withdrew the pieces, and tossed them across the stone floor.

Zareth's eyes narrowed on the pieces, lips in a tight line. "What did you hope to do with these? You couldn't break it with this, you fool."

"It isn't in breaking the code lock, but in circumventing it," Valin said, pointing to each piece, one large connector. Forge Gods, let him convince the boy of this lie. "Keep the code on a rotating signature and there's no need to break it. But then, a simpleton boy like you wouldn't think of such a thing. You weren't born to this. I live in this world of creation, and you...you just put together the same shit tech that your old ones did and think it's the finest product."

It was clear Zareth didn't want to admit to the enemy scum that he didn't understand Valin's tech; the hesitation that marked its way across the young man's brow gave Valin hope that this ruse would work. Prick the man's pride so he wouldn't see the truth.

"I doubt I can even explain it to you so you'd understand," Valin scoffed.

Another voice intruded, and without excessive volume her tone carried, "But I understand perfectly."

Elder Lyth frowned up at him from her small, hunched stature. Her gnarled fingers pointed at the pieces. "This would make part of a timer. But for what, boy?"

Valin's mind whirled. Even if she was a Wheelteeth and not born to the forge caves, she was still Director, and any lie she would be able to see through. He bit his cheek, desperately thinking of how to turn this to his advantage.

"Your code changes after a set period of time," Valin said, knowing it for truth after having obsessed over the lock for hours, days. "Clever, Elder Lyth. Very clever."

"Don't mock me, boy," she said. "And don't think I'm stupid either. Now, tell me what device you've made and I won't have to get irritable. And it has nothing to do with my code locks."

His heart was threatening to hammer right out of his ribs. "You're simply jealous, honored Elder, that one will finally best your codes. Let's say that the winner gets to make flatbread for the other. We both know how best to bake it."

She frowned, hunched back rigid with unease. "If you were not of the Cog scum, I'd welcome such a challenge, young one. But for now, I'm afraid that your secret is at an end." She turned to her Director Second and said, "Zareth, implore our busy Leader to come. I believe we must search their prison for a bomb."

Zareth tried to stifle a shocked intake of breath, but he bowed low to his Director, and was off without question.

Valin shook with the force of his hopeless anger. He'd failed.

He would have to hope that no one would think of where to look for the hidden device.

Or who was hiding it.

Read Part 16: One Beginning, One Ending

The Clockwork Dragon #14: Last Gift

2016-07-20T03:00:00.000-07:00

"It's clear that you don't trust us," said Nyru, hands at her side. Her stare gathered weight, her scar contorting her facial muscles into an unreadable expression. "And that's why, Seven, I can't allow you to undergo this mission with your dragon."

Valin was trying very hard not to raise his voice, but the increasing pressure building just beneath his sternum demanded attention, his blood simmering. "Again, First Leader, if the appropriate chemicals aren't there, Ferrei would be unable to name any of the other options that may work."

"I'm aware of this," she said, raising a brow at his continued insistence. "But I'm also aware that you didn't trust your Leaders enough to give them, no—me, all of the information you had on the enemy. Information that's crucial to us."

Valin frowned. "Information you may not have believed, not when you suspected me of consorting with the Wolf in treason."

Nyru wasn't one to yell, or scream at her underlings, which had always made her more intimidating in Valin's mind. A simple quirk of her mouth or narrowing of her eye conveyed her displeasure in a way that all of the fierce shouting of other squad's Firsts could never match.

So when Nyru raised her voice, Valin dipped his chin, stifling a wince. "I've neversuspected you of consorting with the enemy. Whatever Ferrei's rantings about you, I never gave it serious thought. Not for a moment. Not even now when I have a perfectly good reason to." She exhaled loudly through her nose. "Good Gods...mirrors of our own Inventrix. And you thought that wouldn't be important?"

"Not to our imprisonment, no," Valin said. "To our Clan..."

It would rock the Clan's foundations to learn that the enemy was lead by mirrors of its own Inventrix.

But how would the Cog Clan react to learn that some of its bloodlines were comprised of children stolen from their enemy?

His blood would be considered tainted with the enemy strain. It would certainly tear them apart.

"To our Clan," Valin continued, "knowledge of the mirrors would cause panic. Mistrust of our own Inventrix. Maybe even calls to vat-grow a new one. Or to never grow another. Just as the Wheelteeth have done." His voice lowered, though he was aware it was impossible to discuss this without the rest of the squad listening. "This information could destroy us. Even this squad is a model for being destroyed by suspicion and anger. What if the bloodlines rose up against one another? Or Mirena?"

Nyru hissed that Valin had dared to call their Inventrix by given name.

Valin pushed, his voice insistent. "What are you even now questioning, First Leader?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm questioning that you would choose to make the decision on what's best for the squad and for our Clan on your own. I'm also aware that Zefir did so out of fear that we would mistrust him. I'm starting to questionwhat both of you must think of us that you would hide such things."

Zefir was curled in the corner, awake and alert, but he lowered his head in embarrassment; Ferrei and Jarre sat at his feet, Ferrei the clear winner of this hand of cards. Usually their card playing was rather boisterous, but all three were pretending not to listen, uncharacteristically silent.

"Perhaps another of my failings," Nyru muttered. "Another blood-shame. I've allowed this to happen." She straightened in her stance, mouth a grimace. "Right now, with your mistrust and your overprotective nature toward Zefir, you would compromise this mission. I've made my decision, Valin. I'm asking that you believe that I'm doing what's best for our squadron."

He pressed his lips firmly together, but nodded stiffly.

"Don't ask me again, Seven," Nyru said with finality. "When next the Wolf comes for Zefir, Ferrei will go with him. And when the rest of us are sent back to the tech line, we need you to tell the rest of us which parts you need us to steal."

Valin nodded again, keeping in an angry exhale.

Nyru made the dismissive Nav gesture for go about your normal duties.

Uncertain where to go to be left alone—curse this damned prison for its lack of privacy—Valin returned to his cot, his entire body sagging. He wanted to sleep, but knew that would be an impossibility. He pressed the heel of his palms against his eyes, head aching from his pounding pulse. The false darkness beckoned to him soothingly.

He was slowly aware of the creaking sound of someone settling on the next cot.

He took his hands away, blinking at the sudden light. Ferrei had her legs crossed on the cot, her elbows casually on her knees.

Valin bit back on a fierce demand to know what she wanted. Techies were often less than direct out of an ingrained sense of propriety, but Navigators were the opposite. One of many things he liked about Nav society. So he would be direct. "If you believe this is finally proof of my betrayal, then—"

"No, not that." She picked at a rough spot on the cot, unable to meet his eye. "I didn't..." She growled to herself. "Blood n' hearts bedamned. Shit. Piss on the sun."

Valin raised his brow. That was another thing he liked about the Navs. Their carefree attitude with cursing. It was almost their third language.

"I find myself apologizing for much lately," she said, raising her gaze as if in challenge. "And again, I've wronged you. But I must know...if I hadn't said those hateful things against you, or suspected you of the worst crime...would you have told our First everything?"

He sighed. "Please don't turn this into another tally mark for blood-shame."

Ferrei frowned. "I've many marks and owe many debts now. If you'll absolve me of one more—"

"Techies don't collect honor-debts the way Navigators do," he said, waving the notion away in a discussion finished sign.

She began to speak to him purely in Nav sign so rapidly that he couldn't understand any of it, though she was clearly upset. He placed up his hands in the be at peace signal. "I still can't read signs that fast."

Exhaling in frustration, she made one last series of signs. Heed my words. "It's easier to speak of shame with signs. For the most part we speak of blood-debt between one another through sign only."

Though trying to be respectful of the Navigator ways, he didn't want any part of this. "There is no debt, no shame between us, Second. Whatever this is, or you think it is, I absolve you."

She seemed to relax, but immediately straightened from her casual pose. "Then let us speak on your blood-shame."

Valin opened his mouth to speak, but only shocked sounds made it out. "Myshame?"

"You hid crucial battle information from your squad and Leaders," she said, still uncomfortable. "Back home this would lead to exile. But we aren't back home. And I know why you chose as you did."

"You do, do you?" He tried not to sound bitter.

She tapped her fingers, clearly wishing to add meaning with Nav sign but refrained. "It wasn't only because I accused you...or because you didn't trust us. It's because you wanted to protect us, just like you protect your dragon."

Valin blinked in surprise at so candid a statement from his Second. And her perceptive conclusion.

She made the we are the shield sign in an elegant and reverent motion. "And that more than anything makes you one of us." Then she added with a wry grin, "Stupid. But one of us."

He couldn't meet her eye. Such acceptance from one who had hated his very presence—his very being—made that angry, heated knot in his chest lessen into a dull smolder. As Ferrei remained silent, neither looking away from his gaze nor fidgeting uncomfortably, the smoldering embers of his anger dissipated.

She held open palms to him and then made fists, and crossed her arms over her heart. He wasn't certain what such a sign meant until she said, "I'll keep Zefir safe. Of that I vow to you."

Valin made the acceptance sign. "And that, Second Leader, is the one and only vow I'll ever hold you to."

Kirwen peered at Zefir from behind her mask, standing just inside the doorway of their prison. "I'm afraid I must insist, child. I know what befell you, but I need...she will only take measurements, I swear it."

Zefir tried not to let his nervousness show, because the Wolf would hear it the same way Zefir would. But Ferrei assured him that appearing nervous was fine, needed even for their little lie to the Wolf Leader. "I-I won't go with you, Leader Kirwen. Not after...I can't be alone with her."

His fear was real and crawling up his throat, so he had to swallow. He truly didn't want to see Seren again, not when—

"I calculated the distance to perfection," Seren said, her arms outstretched as she made to leap for him from the precipice of the mountainside. The winds buffeted her open flight jacket, the techworker jumpsuit tight against her too thin body. Gashes from her climb covered her hands and arms, her fingers raw. "I can't stay here. I have to run, run, flee like I always do. Never in one place too long, or they'll find me. Kirwen will want to take me back, and Mirena...my thoughts will collide with hers too strongly and it'll slowly kill her. Please, Zefir. Don't move, or the numbers won't match, match..."

Zefir hovered in place, hoping that with each wingbeat the little dip his body made wouldn't—

She leapt for him and before he could catch her, Seren's body crashed against the rock with the sickening sound of shattered bones—

He grunted, snorting, blinking his eyes of the (false?) memory. "You won't take no for an answer...You'll threaten my squadron if I don't come with you."

Kirwen's expression was hidden behind the wolf mask. "Not if you don't force me to break my oath. But time is short, and if you won't come, I'll do what I must."

Ferrei was standing in front of him, one hand curled into a fist, while the other was placed on Zefir's chest as if she could shield him from Kirwen. That small bit of contact rooted him to the present.

"Either I go with the dragon to make certain no one mettles with him harmfully again," Ferrei growled, "or you can walk right back out of this prison and leave us here to rot in the tell hells. Threaten all you like, Wheelteeth."

Kirwen's wolf mask turned slightly in Valin's direction. "Why not send Seven?"

Ferrei's voice raised, and she pounded her fist on her chest hard enough to make a primal thud. "You'll look to me for answers, you bedamned Wheelteeth demon, not my subordinate. I'm Second Leader of this squad, and the dragon is our most prized possession. Too long we've allowed you to interact with a mere wing runner. And a blood-ridden techie at that."

Zefir could hear a hint of wry amusement in Kirwen's tone. "I see. So your First sends one of the Cog Clan's oldest and most trustworthy bloodlines instead. What are you? Let me guess...Rathe? No, you're too hot-blooded for that. Ah, wait... Quarethstra. They always bred spirited ones."

Nyru stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her unreadable scarred grin-grimace. "We know of your own blood. Why keep the mask on, mirror-kind?"

Those stony wolf-eyes flashed. But Zefir could scent the strange burning copper scent of Kirwen's anger. She reached up and tore the flight mask from her face, throwing it across the room where it landed perfectly at Nyru's feet, no doubt calculated to perfection. The First simply stared at it as if unimpressed, though Zefir heard the shocked lurch to Nyru's heartbeat.

It was one thing to be told the enemy leader was a mirror of their own Inventrix, and quite another to see it firsthand, especially partially rendered in pseudo-metal.

Ferrei sucked in a slow breath, and her blood-cousin clenched his teeth against a response.

"You know nothing of my blood," Kirwen snarled. "Only what you've been fed by Mirena. You're blind, all of you damned Cogs. And even when you're not, you deny what's in front of you." This last seemed aimed at Valin, but she returned her eye to Nyru. "So, blood of Kerlan, you're one of the youngest Navigator bloodlines, aren't you? The first to be First for your line? What, six generations?"

Nyru's cheek jumped. "I'm the third of my line to be named First Leader."

"And do you know the name of your line Originator?" Kirwen's stance was rigid, the guards on either side of her uneasy.

The First picked up the wolf flight mask and examined it coolly. "The name of my Originator isn't for the ears of an enemy. Even one that looks like my Inventrix."

Kirwen strode forward, violence in every step. The copper scent boiled off of her skin, pricking Zefir's nose. Though Ferrei was still in front of him, Zefir gently moved her aside; he paced to stand directly behind his First, his wings slightly outspread. He lowered his snout to keep just over Nyru's shoulder, his worry at the Wolf's anger seeming to vibrate within until he quivered.

"Kerlan Xenthi," said the Wolf, baring her teeth. "And you look so much like her." Her entire body trembled with the force of her growing rage, her eyes pits of black hellfire. Her voice lowered dangerously, "I'll have them back. I'll have you all back, or die trying."

Zefir puffed a breath at Kirwen, hoping to distract her the way he'd learned with Seren. "Leader Kirwen?"

She blinked, her eyes losing a bit of fire. "Yes, child, what?"

Those had been Seren's distracted words when she was deep within her obsessive mindset.

He tucked his wings back in a hunched movement, and stared her in those fierce eyes with his chin tucked downward. Trying to look as innocent and frightened as he could. Like the child she called him. "I'm ready to go now. Our parole and your oath will still stand. But I'll not leave without one of them going with me."

"I find it odd your Navigator hasn't even bothered to accuse me of breaking my oath," said Kirwen. "What has him so silent?"

He knew she would find it suspicious that Valin wasn't insistent on going himself.

For Kirwen's benefit, Zefir cast a terrified look in Valin's direction. Though now not purely for show as another of his worst memories threatened to consume him, pushing into his thoughts—

Valin's eyes were glassy. Empty. No heartbeat thudded in his chest, and yet his Navigator's mouth formed words: "You killed me, Zefir. I will hate you as I rot away. I should've never flown with you. I should've helped your Mother tear you apart to make a better battle dragon. A faster, smarter, vicious mechanical beast that would obey me, not some idiotic, cowardly child."

—until he tamped them desperately back down.

Valin would never say that.

"I-I can't be around him," Zefir said wretchedly. "The worst of the false memories are...are..." He swallowed. "Of him."

Not completely a lie. And in this case, he hated that it was so true.

But Zefir pushed on, hoping she would believe him. "I've renounced him as my Navigator."

Valin hid his shock well, and he turned his back on them all, hands clenched into fists.

"I see." Kirwen clenched her teeth, the cords of her pseudo-metal neck stood out. "Then so be it. Bring the Quarethstra hot-blood. But do so now."

With Ferrei striding in front of him, he followed the Wolf Leader back to the laboratory that had been the scene of his ruination.

Seren stared at the complexity of the dragon form on her worktable. Her mind whirled with half a dozen calculations (a mere half a dozen, so she must be exhausted). Already its sleeker form looked faster, its not-yet-finished longer wingspan would be able to go distances without overheating or exhaustion, though she needed to check Zefir's wings for reference.

And though she hated it every time she looked upon those feet, she'd given her creation claws (petite ones, but still claws), so Kirwen wouldn't try to take her dragon away from her before she was completely finished. Such was her growing fear that in the middle of building, she would whirl around looking for her mirror, fearing Kirwen would be standing right behind her.

The dragon would be smaller than Zefir, petite and sleek in comparison—

Zefir. How she'd ruined the child he was, forcing such pain on him that his innocence and trusting nature was damaged forever.

She wouldn't do the same to her creation.

Seren patted the narrower nose (which would help with stability during tight twists in the air), and peered at the closed eyes. Soon. Very soon and she would finish her dragon's heart-mind, which she could do easily with some reference on how Mirena had made such a device to love. Oh, Seren had tried her best to make such a thing happen, but she wasn't sure if it would work.

Time was growing short. Her mind was fraying at the edges, and the inventor's obsession was so all-consuming that she could rarely tear her mind away from it for even two minutes.

No, for three minutes, fourteen seconds.

She would finish this dragon sibling, or die trying.

It would be her last gift—to Zefir. To Valin, whom she must find. Yes, and make him swear to look after her dragon when she was gone. Yes, she must find him.

Seren almost plunged back into other thoughts when she heard a familiar whimper and sensed the brass wolfling mechanical stir at her feet. Kirwen had been right to place Neri in with her, as the wolf always knew when to nudge her from her deepest thoughts.

"Chase?" said the wolfling hopefully, nudging her hand with her warm nose. Brass ears twitched uncertainly, and she whined again.

"Soon, my pup, I'll not be able to chase anything." She knew the wolf wouldn't understand, and tears threatened, but she pushed them back with her Inventrix's iron will crumbling. "The end is near, darling companion."

Neri's own simple heart-mind had been built to be trusting and loyal. To bond, because Seren had desperately needed such a thing after the Trial, after their three mirrored minds would never be together as one again. Neri would never bond to anyone else, and though the wolf had taken a liking to Zefir, it wasn't the same. Neri would expire without her, the wolf's heart-mind shutting down into eternal rest modus without the presence of her creator.

It wasn't quite love, not that, but wasn't trust what she needed for the dragon? She could alter it, yes, alter...but the base would be there...

Seren's mind was so aflame it was painful. It would be better this way. Now the hot blood tears spilled as she gestured the wolfling up on the workbench.

And plucked her oldest friend's heart from Neri's chest panel.

Some part of the wolf would live on in the dragon.

Read Part 15: Uncompleted Designs

The Clockwork Dragon #13: Shadowfall

2016-07-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

Jarre sat on his cot next to his blood-cousin, and Ferrei was staring at Valin's work intently. When Valin grunted, or sighed, and placed another piece to the side of him on his cot, she would wince.

"It's salvageable," Valin announced. "I can restore it, but we'll need a few new parts. As long as they put us back on the line, we can finish the mechanical part of it."

Ferrei let out a relieved breath, while Jarre nodded solemnly.

"It's not his fault," said Jarre, glancing in Zefir's direction.

The dragon was still sleeping heavily, and Valin couldn't help but count Zefir's breaths, keeping an eye on the color of his brass hide. So far, none of the squad had asked him for more details on what had happened to Zefir, but he could see the tension in Ferrei, her gaze straying more often to the dragon with a pinched expression of mixed confusion and concern.

Ferrei sighed. "I know. He thought the danger was real. It's just strange to think that the flyer would try to...to save me."

"Why is that so difficult to believe?" Valin asked.

She looked uncomfortable. "Because...I thought of him as no more than a mechanical abomination, and said so to his face. I've been less than kind to him, and still he willingly threw himself into what he thought of as very real danger. To sacrifice his own life for mine. And he didn't even hesitate." She made a gesture of helpless embarrassment. No, the Nav gesture meant more than that. It was an admittance of shame. "Were our roles reversed I wouldn't have done the same for him. So, you see, Seven, your dragon has more Nav blood in him than I do."

Jarre studied his blood-cousin, and made a reverential sign and touched his forehead in a series of elegant motions. "Sometimes the sun shines a light where there wasn't one before, Ferrei."

"Then Its shown me," she said quietly, "where the shadows abide." She placed one hand in front of the other, casting a shadow over her palm.

Valin had always been slightly uncomfortable with his ignorance of the Navigator's beliefs, so he didn't copy either of the Quarethstra's gestures. He wanted to tell his Second that he was pleased she was beginning to see the truth of where Zefir's heart lay, but feared that she might interpret him as being condescending or judgmental.

"He's of the squad," Jarre said firmly, watching Zefir as the dragon twitched a wing. "You might yet erase your shame, blood-cousin, by helping him with..." and he made a gesture Valin didn't recognize, but the motion was furtive, and Jarre's voice had trailed off to a whisper.

"I don't know that word," Valin admitted.

Both looked uncomfortable, but Jarre said, "We don't discuss it with outsiders..." Then he shook his head. "Apologies, Valin. I didn't mean to imply—"

"No offense taken." Valin glanced at Zefir again, listening to the sound of his breathing, no longer hitched. "But I would like to know what it means if this concerns Zefir."

Jarre looked over at Nyru's cot; the First Leader was sleeping again, back turned to them all, and Jarre frowned at their First in worry. "This is something a First should explain to you, but..." The big Third signed, We fear it is consuming our First too. "Now that responsibility falls to me."

Valin waited in respectful silence.

"We call it shadowfall, or battle shock." Jarre paused and met Valin's eye squarely, releasing a pent up breath. "It's something that was supposed to have been bred out of our lines, thus it is considered a blood-shame. But it still befalls many of us. What you must understand is that shadowfall is something that follows you, not just a memory, but a way that the horrors of the past come calling to become your present."

"And you think Zefir has shadowfall," Valin said carefully.

No one knew of Zefir's false memories, but it was apparent that jumbled memories were a part of battle shock.

"He reacts like many of us do," Jarre admitted. "I can't sleep next to my mate some nights for fear I may strike out upon waking."

Valin remained quiet, wondering how he knew so little of his Third.

"After the battle of the River Valley," said Jarre, his voice tight, "some nights I...I can still hear my old squadron screaming. I can hear my wing crying out for help, pinned down on the ground, unable to fly away. We were picked off by the sun-cursed gryphons and their aerorifles as if we were caged prey." He shook his head as if he could cast the memories into a hidden place. "Only three of us survived. But it marked me." Jarre's expression was haunted. "I once thought that I was no longer darkened by shadowfall. But...it deepened when both of my fellow River Valley survivors fell from the sky in yet another firefight."

Valin slowly became aware that the cadence of Zefir's breathing had shifted. Not the long and deep breaths of sleep, but those of wakefulness. So, his friend had been feigning sleep while listening, perhaps too scared or weary to do more than eavesdrop.

"And they were both in my wing," Jarre continued, voice hoarse. "I lost all of them. All over again. And that night the memories were so painful I..."

Ferrei elegantly touched both of her wrists with her fingertips, the gesture Valin recognized as giving praise to the memories of those fallen and flown to the sundisk. "You need not speak on your darkest time, cousin."

Valin heard Zefir holding his breath; when he glanced in Nyru's direction, he also saw that her sleepy breathing had altered.

But Jarre lifted his chin, eyes glinting. "It is no shame, not to me. It took me a long time to realize that. But it is to everyone else. To the Elders and those of the bloodline who try to ignore it. We keep it quiet, we hide it as best we can for ourselves and loved ones, but that only makes it worse." His voice raised, and Valin blinked at the intensity of his Third's tone. "It is no weakness, or lack of courage. It's no defect. It's only being entrenched in the shadow of what was and desperately fighting for the light."

Valin could see one of Zefir's quicksilver eyes watching them from beneath the shadow of his wing.

Clever, selfless Third Leader, Valin thought.

Jarre knew that the dragon had been listening, had spoken his words not to Valin—but to Zefir.

"That night," Jarre said, his eyes lost in remembrance, "I considered leaping from the takeoff ledges. I wanted to flee to the sundisk."

Ferrei placed a hand on her blood-cousin's shoulder.

Jarre gave her an affectionate, but wan smile. "It was my young cousin here, newly placed in my wing, who found me. It was Ferrei who told me there was no shame in my loss and sorrow. She told me that if I leaped and I kissed the ground, that I'd never get to kiss my mate again, not even in goodbye."

Zefir made a small hitched sound and his wings trembled.

Jarre's eye flicked in the dragon's direction and back to Valin. "In the darkest hour there shone a light, and I grasped at it. Some of our people don't, or can't. But many live with it as I do."

Zefir was still huddling within himself, still curled into a tight ball. But the dragon croaked, "How?"

The Third Leader lifted himself from the cot, and came to sit on his heels at a distance from Zefir that wouldn't make the dragon react. "I won't lie to you and claim it's easy, or that it won't be with you always. But you're not alone, Zefir."

Zefir covered himself again with a wing and shuddered. "I don't want to lose any of you. But I keep seeing it happen."

Valin saw Nyru shift slightly on her cot. She too was listening. But perhaps their First was unable to act through her own shadows.

"When you're ready," said his Third quietly, "you can speak to me of the shadows. Whatever thought you have, of guilt or remorse, know that I will listen without judgment. I promise you that."

Zefir uncurled himself and rose to his feet with aching slowness. His quicksilver eyes were a strange off-color, and Valin reasoned it was likely from his weeping. That dragon body shuddered, his wings quaking with a faint grinding noise, his jaw clenched tight. "I-I...can't."

Valin worried it would send his friend over the edge if he spoke. But Jarre nodded and made the signs for I accept your words. "Then if you wish to return to sleep, rest well."

I killed the boy he was. Seren's wounded cries echoed in Valin's thoughts. And he knew it was true, that this would indeed mark the dragon forever. But would it crush the spirit that made Zefir who he was? Would the friend Valin knew and loved—yes, loved—never return?

And if that were true, then Valin would never forgive himself for being unable to stop it.

"Can I...?" Zefir stared uncertainly. "Can I sleep next to you? In between the cots?"

Valin's eyes burned but he held in a breath to steady himself, blinking up at the stone ceiling. Ferrei shared a look with him and they both rose to move their cots, making space for the bulk of the dragon. Without discussing it, Ferrei began to place the cots in line with the points of a star-shield with their First at the apex, as they would've if they were flying in formation-five.

When Zefir had curled up and settled himself in between all of them, his eyes fluttered.

Jarre sat back down on his cot and said, "When you awake, I'm challenging you to a game of cards. After all, you can't keep losing to me."

Zefir snorted, eyelids heavy. "I've won sixteen times, and you've won four."

Jarre's smile had returned, and the big man chuckled. "Who's counting?"

"I am. Best out of twenty. And I'll win again. You're a sore loser, Third Leader."

Valin let out a hitched laugh that grated on his own ears, a sound of terrified relief.

There was still some part of Zefir's spirit left. And here was proof.

Zefir didn't pray to any of the deities that his squad did, not the sundisk Itself or the Forge Gods of the techworkers. But he offered up thanks to whatever luck had made it so the false memories didn't accost him while asleep. And so, he wanted to remain asleep to avoid the flashes that burned through his thoughts while awake. His body resisted him, feeling rested and hale; his wings no longer ached and his mechanical heart pumped the right amount of coolant through him, his breath no longer hitched and painful.

Feigning sleep yet again, he listened to his squad, painting a picture of them in his mind to keep the false memories at bay.

Valin's voice was flat and even, as if any emotion had been leeched from him. "—and after we repair it, we still need to find the right chemicals. I know Elder Lyth will never allow me in the chem caves...I had another idea, but...it isn't an option."

He could hear Ferrei's held breath, the cadence of her heart one of nervousness she no doubt hid well. "I'm guessing, Seven, that your idea will put one of us at risk."

"It would involve..." and his Navigator's voice dropped, "Zefir. And that's why it isn't an option."

"Why would you need the dragon?" Her voice dipped lower.

"He was kept by the Leader in an independent laboratory." Valin paused, and Zefir imagined that his Navigator was looking in his direction.

"I see," said Ferrei. "In the lab are the chemicals necessary for the firebomb."

No sound from Valin. Perhaps a slight nod.

Ferrei said, "You could convince the Wolf that you won't allow Zefir to return to the lab without supervision in order to uphold our parole and her oath. She will still want to have him studied, even if it's by high-level techies."

Silence fell between the two for the span of many heartbeats.

Zefir had memorized the sound of Ferrei's heartbeat even in the most dire of circumstances. When she acted on a final decision, the Second Leader's heart-cadence changed, became stronger. "Give him the choice to say no, rather than simply making the decision for him."

"I can't ask it of him," said Valin resolutely.

"If you won't ask him, I will." Valin made sputtering noises of angry surprise, cut off as Ferrei said in her commanding tone, "This isn't only about your guilt, Seven. Don't lie to me and tell me you don't feel responsible for what happened to him. I've seen that look on many a Nav's face after their comrades have fallen. Ten hells, I still try not to blame myself or you and the dragon for Denaru's end."

Zefir could detect the faint scent of Valin's anger, but could hear his Navigator shift uneasily on his feet.

"This could be our way out," Ferrei said, her footfalls suggesting she'd stepped closer to Valin. "Our only chance. We're crumbling, Seven. All of us, little by little. Our First can only see her own shadows of loss. Jarre is...worse off than you think. He's learned to hide his own shadowfall well."

"And you?" Valin asked quietly.

She released a slow, steady breath. "I too am unraveling. Just like you, Valin."

That was the first time Ferrei had ever used anything but Valin's bloodline name.

"Look at me," she insisted. "My only joy in life has been stolen from me. From us all. The wind. The sun. Flying free. And you," she said, "look at you, Valin."

Valin let out a cynical bark of a laugh so unlike him that Zefir cringed.

Zefir opened his eyes. Valin and Ferrei were standing huddled in the far corner, the hated firebomb device between them.

She placed her hand on Valin's shoulder, her fingers digging deep into the muscle beneath. "They're breaking us. And they don't even have to do anything. We're caged beasts ready to either tear ourselves apart or to lay down and wither away."

His Navigator's eyes were lusterless. "I...can't. I won't ask him."

Zefir rose to his feet and tucked his wings against his back. Both of them noticed his movement and stepped away from one another as if caught doing something underhanded. But Zefir paced forward, spying Jarre at his usual post by the door, his mind clearly elsewhere, and Nyru on her cot staring blankly up at the stone ceiling.

His squad was crumbling.

But he couldn't shield them from themselves. To repair or destroy—Three minutes, fourteen seconds—We are the shield.

Zefir glared at the firebomb for a moment and breathed in slowly to keep away—

Face creased in acceptance of her fate...the firebomb burst in a deafening explosion.

He shook his head, tucking the memory desperately back down into the recesses of his thoughts. "I'll do it."

Both of the Navigators looked guilty to have been overheard. Valin's haggard face creased in a crestfallen expression. "I won't let you—"

"It isn't your decision," Zefir said firmly. "You're my Navigator and friend, Valin, now and always. But you're not my keeper."

Valin shook his head. "I beg to differ, Zef. You don't understand—"

"Of course I do," Zefir said heatedly. "I know what's at stake. I know that my squadron can't be prisoners and still remain the squad we are. I know that the Clans seek to destroy and conquer one another, to the bitter end this time. And if I don't act, then nothing changes." Zefir saw the result his words had on his Navigator, Valin's pained expression falling close to despair. "What happens to me isn't your fault, Valin. No matter what you think or what Mother told you. Being my Navigator means that we work together, not that you make all of the final decisions. I'm no simple thopter without a mind or will."

Valin nodded wearily. "No, that you are not. It's only that you don't understand all the risks. You're too...innocent."

"You said yourself that I was growing up. I'm no longer the simple child I was." As Zefir spoke those words, he realized the truth of it and didn't lament that he was different now. He remembered something Mother told him once: Innocence does not prevail in the face of experience. "I'm of this squadron. And I'll do anything to keep us safe. So, I'm doing this."

Ferrei's wry smile threatened to curl into grin. "First flight, last flight."

"First flight, last flight," Zefir intoned.

"No," Valin barked, thrusting a finger at both of them. "None of this Nav 'til the endshit. Not for this. If we go in and our plan fails, or they want to tinker with you harmfully again, we retreat. We find another way."

Ferrei frowned. "That isn't your decision either. It's a Leader's decision. I'll tell you when to retreat."

The scent of Valin's anger increased, an acrid stench that Zefir exhaled quickly from his nostrils; Valin's eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. "Zefir isn't to be sacrificed like one of your thopters or hawklings, Second Leader. You may be willing to place him in harm's way without giving half-a-damn, but I won't let that happen."

"You forget, Seven," Ferrei said, voice crystal sharp, "that those thopters and hawklings you think we sacrifice so easily have Navigators riding them to their end. There's a reason that we have Firsts, Seconds, and Thirds, and that's because we're capable of making the difficult decisions. I once called you a coward—"

"Try it again," Valin growled, hands clenched into fists, "and see how you fare, Second."

"—but I know now that's untrue." She held up a hand in the calming be at peace sign. "You would willingly leap into danger yourself. It's only for your dragon that you fear, and that does foul your decision making. Zefir is part of our squad and I'm treating him as I would any other in my wing."

"I don't care," Valin said, every muscle fraught with tension. "You finally think you see Zefir as something other than a piece of machinery. But you don't. If you did you wouldn't be arguing with me."

Zefir wanted to interject himself between them, but realized that Valin still wouldn't listen to him. His Navigator was acting like an overprotective wolf mother with her wolfling in tow. And it was out of fear. Valin wasn't treating him as an equal, but rather as a child in need of safeguarding.

Wouldn't Zefir argue if the positions were switched and it was Valin who would be placed back in the hands of the mad Inventrix's whim?

"Your fear for him is clouding your judgment," Ferrei said, lifting her chin. "For that reason do we have Leaders, and that's why you will listen to me. I'm ordering you to—"

"Order me?" Valin made a series of curses with his hands, fouling the language with his inexperience. "Or are you blaming me for our failures, for our capture? Then yes, blame me for the death of your mate. Accuse me of cowardice and treason, Second, because I know you don't trust me. But don't you dare order me like I'm some useless, idiotic sootfoot you think is so lowly. And if you dare to order Zefir, I will—"

"Enough!"

Zefir started at the powerful sound of Nyru's voice.

Ferrei stiffened, her back ramrod straight at attention. Jarre also straightened from his casual slouch against the doorframe. Zefir didn't know what to do to show his obeisance to the First, so he settled for sitting on his haunches, his head lowered respectfully to her level.

Nyru's leather flight jacket was rumpled from her constant sleeping in it; her eyes were bloodshot, but now sharp with displeasure. The scarred half of her face was pulled taught in a thin slash, her frown more than frightening enough that Zefir hunched his shoulders.

Valin looked ready to open his mouth to argue even with his displeased First, when

Nyru made a slashing motion with both hands. "Shut your mouth, Seven Valin. Don't open it again 'til I give you leave." The same glare turned to Ferrei who stared straight ahead. "The same goes for you, Quarethstra Ferrei."

Valin's eyes flashed in anger, but he held his tongue.

"Whatever personal problems you have with your Second," Nyru said, voice icy, "you set them aside when your Leader gives you an order. Am I clear?"

Valin trembled with the ferocity of his anger, his mouth in a thin line. "Respectfully, First, you don't understand—"

"I understand only your defiance of your sworn Leader, who in no way is required to argue with you about her decisions. I'll take no exceptions on this, as I would for anyone, so don't complain I'm singling you out because you were born to the tech lines. If you can't handle directions from your Leaders, then I'll not hesitate to cast you from the squadron even in this bedamned prison. Have I made myself understood?"

Valin gave only a curt nod of his head.

"And as you for you, Second," Nyru said in the same chilly tone with which she'd addressed Valin, "why wasn't I informed of your plan?"

Ferrei hesitated, her eyes flickered to the floor and remained there. "You were otherwise indisposed, First Leader."

"You've obviously mistaken me for someone who swapped their brains for sun-drenched shit. I could be sent to the tell hells and you will still inform me of any new operations before they're carried out. You'd do well to remember that, Quarethstra."

Ferrei made the quick and simple affirmative gesture. Zefir was surprised to see his Second's mouth twitch against a pleased smile, the sound of her heartbeat one of excitement. Glancing at the big Third, even Jarre was fighting to contain broad grin.

And he knew why.

Our First has returned, Zefir thought, feeling the same giddiness as the Quarethstras.

"Now," Nyru said, turning to Zefir. "You."

Zefir's wings trembled to be addressed by a displeased First, but he ducked his head in acknowledgment.

"I don't send my wing runners into the fray without accessing their battle readiness first." She gestured that Zefir should follow her to the opposite corner of the room, and he trailed after her. Her voice lowered when the others were far enough away. "You must tell me what the Wheelteeth truly did to you before I can decide on what action to take."

What would the squad do to find out that he was complicit in Seren's actions to make another battle dragon? How could he explain to her that he not only cared for the Inventrix, but that he desperately wanted dragon siblings? Nyru wouldn't believe that an Inventrix, even a mad one, wouldn't make a copy of him without his more frightening battle traits.

But even worse would be telling her about his false memories. "I..." He shook his head.

She nodded with the gravity of her station. "I won't blame you that you can't bring yourself to trust me with your pain. I...deserted you. All of you. In your greatest time of need. Especially yours, Zefir. I only hope that one day I will regain your faith in me and I can erase the shame."

Zefir didn't tell her that he hated their idea of blood-shame. Why were mistakes and pain always painted as shame? "A shield needs five-points, like the stars who are the sun's little cousins. It is enough that all five points are here again."

Her lips quivered, her brow creasing. "You know, for someone your Navigator thinks is a child, you're incredibly wise."

Zefir dipped his head in acceptance.

"But I can't in good conscience send you back to the sun-cursed Wheelteeth without knowing how you'll act or why. Or worse, what the Wolf Leader plans to do with you that has you so in the shadows. Tell me, Zefir, and we will proceed with Ferrei's plan. Remain quiet, and we will find another way even if the ten hells threaten to sweep us all down."

Zefir hesitated for a long breath of time. This was their best chance of escape.

Three minutes, fourteen seconds. Breathe in, and out.

Then he told his First everything.

The Clockwork Dragon #12: The Curse of Memory

2016-07-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

The heat of the crucibles pressed against Valin's skin, until the Wolf passed through the forges and into a cooler space—a laboratory the likes of which was arranged in madness.

"Zef!" Valin cried.

The dragon's brass hide looked too pale, almost sickly, his quicksilver eyes dull. Zefir moved forward, not with his usual happy stride, but like placing one leg in front of the other was too much effort. Zefir collapsed down at Valin's feet, closed both eyes, and said in a pinched tone, "You're safe. Safe."

The terror lodged itself in Valin's chest, pressing down, making his heart thrum a rapid beat that forced its way into his throat. "Zef, what happened?" He fell to his knees and touched Zefir's cheek—the brass flesh too feverishly hot—willing the dragon to open his eyes again. "Who hurt you?"

One brass eyelid lifted a fraction, his obsidian pupil no more than a contracted pinprick. "Get away from me."

A voice came from behind him, "I...miscalculated."

He didn't leave Zefir's side, but the mirror woman came to him, wringing her hands, a wild look on her innocent face. There were tracks of dried blood down her cheeks, heavy around the corner of her eyes. Had Zef attacked her? No...he wouldn't.

"What did you do to him, Seren?" Valin rose to his feet, allowing rage to consume him now.

But the mirror's eyes were glazed. "I don't need to duplicate, yes, that's the problem. Not copy. Create and test and fail and create again...experiment. It's the only way of the blood, the need."

"Ten hells take you." He grasped her shoulders and when she wouldn't focus on him Valin grasped either side of her face and bade her look at him. He could see blood pooling in the corners of her eyes. Dear Gods o' the Forge, was she weeping blood tears? "Tell me what you did to him, Seren. Tell me how to fix it."

She held up her hands to stop him from shaking her. "I-I took apart pieces of his heart-mind, but took too long. I miscalculated." A single blood tear detached from her lashes as she blinked, and Valin released her in surprise. "He won't let me look at him to see if there was any permanent damage."

He looked over at Zefir, watching the dragon's breathing, hearing a faint wheeze. But already Zefir's color seemed to be stronger, more metallic. Zefir fought to keep his eyes open, and the dragon breathed, "No. Stay away from me."

Valin was torn between insisting that Seren take a look, and snarling at the woman to stay away from his friend when she'd already hurt him. Instead, he turned to the silent Wolf and thrust his finger at her. "You failed to keep to your oath. You swore none of us would come to harm, and yet you allowed this."

She placed up a placating hand to stall him, that wolf mask showing no emotion. "We must see if your war dragon fairs well. Then we may debate over if your parole still stands. Or my oath."

Zefir's wings hung limply, but he tried to cover himself, and shrank back from them all. Slowly, Valin came forward, and knelt at his side. He placed a hand on the brass flesh of Zefir's cheek and saw for the first time that the dragon's chest panel remained open. "Zef, I can't see if there's something wrong with you. I-I wouldn't know what to look for. You need to let Seren—"

His voice thundered, "NO!" And he inhaled a great gout of air afterwards. "Get away from me, Valin! You all died and it was my fault. I killed you all."

"I don't understand, Zef."

"I do," said Leader Kirwen, walking forward as if approaching wounded animals ready to flee.

Slowly, she knelt down next to Zefir's head and with a gloved hand reached for his snout. Valin caught her wrist, squeezing so hard in fury that he wondered if his grip would break bones, but she didn't even flinch. That blank wolf flight mask regarded him, the eyes behind it sharp. He felt her tremble—in anger?—her muscles tightening.

"Child," she said softly to Zefir, "will you let me help you?"

Zefir's gaze was wary, and Valin hated to see that same look of hurt creep over his features when he turned his large eye to Valin and then away again. "Why would you want to?"

She slowly reached up to the mask and began to unstrap it with a single hand. And when her face was revealed, Valin only grunted in acceptance of her identity as yet another mirror, albeit one with part of a brass skull.

So it seems my world is cursed with mirror-kind.

He knew she could overpower his grip at any time, and released her.

"Because you're hurting, child. I told you that I don't hate you, and you must believe it as truth." Her voice rose in steely conviction, "As of now, you're no more than another child in my keeping, and I'll not let anything else happen to you."

Valin wanted to protest this leader of the enemy trying to placate his friend with insincerity, but something inside of Valin believed she spoke the truth.

"I promise, child," she said, voice still low but vibrating with certainty.

Zefir let out a hitched sound, very like a sob.

The dragon lifted his torso from the ground, exposing his inner workings. Such was the web of machinery within that Valin's techworker mind was simultaneously intrigued and baffled at the madness of complexity he could never understand. As the Wolf regarded that mass of macro and microcogs, she touched Valin's arm with a gloved hand and gestured to Seren, who rocked back and forth on her heels, fingers digging into her temples.

"Take her away so she can't see," said Leader Kirwen. "She might...try to interfere. And her presence might upset him. Your presence might as well."

Suspicious of her motives, he nonetheless saw her reasoning. Valin rose and went to the other mirror-woman, noticing her regarding a cloth covered workbench, something large underneath it that quivered. He clutched at Seren's shoulders, pulling her away, when she went limp and fell to her knees, shrieking, "You're no Inventrix, Kirwen!"

Seren's voice sounded like another person. And he reasoned that perhaps it was, the mirror repeating something heard long ago in memory. It was a terrifying contrast to hear a vicious person so unlike her, voice dripping with scorn. "You'll be the first to fail the Trial! Gods, look at how I made you. No drive or ability to create, just to lead—and you can't even do that! No one wants you to be their shield, Kirwen! You're no protector. What a waste of vat-growth—"

"Hold her, or ten hells take you!" the Wolf barked.

Valin grasped Seren's blood stained cheeks. "Look at me, Seren. Focus."

Those eyes were still glazed, but her fingertips found his face; her fingers were digging into his cheeks as if forcing herself to remain attuned to his speech. "I destroyed his beautiful innocence."

"Don't be so certain of that, mirror-kind," he said softly, but enunciating carefully.

Seren released him and held her head in her hands, her mind already distant.

Valin remained at her side, hand on her shoulder as he turned to watch Leader Kirwen gather tools and a set of microfyer goggles. Zefir remained very still, his expression a pained wince the entire time she explored. Valin met the dragon's gaze and tried to give him an encouraging half-hearted smile, but Zefir looked down at the ground as if in shame.

Finally, Kirwen sat back, took off her microfyer goggles and sighed. "I'm sorry, child. I can't erase the false memories. They will be with you like normal memories and will fade with time. I'm sorry I couldn't do more, but though I know more about machinery than all the techworkers combined, I'm no Inventrix."

False memories? Valin struggled to understand, then realized: Zefir's heart was also his mind, and while Seren had meddled with it, so too did she meddle with his mind.

"What false memories?" he asked his friend.

Zefir still wouldn't meet his gaze.

Valin rose, leaving Seren weeping at his feet, and came to stand in front of the dragon.

"Zef? Whatever they were, you can tell me."

"Leave me be." Zefir's chest panel was now closed, his brass hide once again smooth like true skin, as if Valin had never seen his inner workings. "Just...go. Please, Valin."

"You once made me promise that if ever my worries became too heavy, that I would tell you. The same goes for you, my friend. You can tell—"

"No." Not growled or spoken in anger, but his tone was resolute.

Kirwen was still kneeling in front of the dragon, watching him, a small furrow of concern at her brow. Slowly, she took off her gloves, and Valin saw the delicate pseudo-metal make of her fingers. She placed her bare brass hand on Zefir's trembling side, and the dragon flinched.

"Your false memories were made from your deepest fears, child." Kirwen gently stroked his side until the trembling began to diminish, and Zefir slowly nodded. "Speaking of it may lessen their potency. If you wish, I'll take Seren from here."

Again Zefir hung his head, looking so weary. "If you're granting wishes, Leader, please...leave me here...alone. Take Valin and Seren with you."

Nodding seriously, she rose to her feet with the unnatural grace of the Inventrix-kind. With a gentle movement, she scooped up her weeping mirror-kin into her unnaturally strong arms and cradled Seren, gesturing to Valin with her chin.

Zefir's eyes were brimming—with tears? Valin had never seen such a thing, didn't know it was possible. But something inside him crumbled to see it.

"Zefir—"

"Go," his voice rumbled desperately.

Valin turned to walk from the mad Inventrix's laboratory, pacing by the Wolf's side. Before he could speak or lash out in smoldering anger, Kirwen turned to him. "Your dragon doesn't wish you to see him weep. He'll be safe locked in the lab...alone."

That painful ache grew larger.

He opened his mouth to blame her, to rant against her allowing this to come to pass, because he knew that Seren with her unstable mind wasn't truly at fault. The one in charge of looking after the mad mirror was.

But Leader Kirwen said, "Please have the decency to wait until I've settled Seren. At least grant me that. Then we may begin the battle of words."

"A small parlay then, Leader Kirwen." He nodded to the guards outside the caverns who drew to his side like ever present hounds. "But know if anything like this happens again, I won't hesitate to find a way to strike at you. And so will my squadron, parole be damned."

Her eyes became flinty, her features carved in stone. For a moment she looked so much like his Inventrix that he shivered. "It won't happen again. I've laid claim to the dragon as one of those under my keeping, and you have no idea what that means to my kind."

Seren whispered, "I hurt him. I killed the boy he was. I killed him, I killed the child!"

Kirwen shushed her mirror and nodded to the guards.

As Valin strode toward his prison once more, his thoughts were filled with all the painful ways he would make the leader of the Wheelteeth pay for her crime.

Zefir didn't want to go back to his prison, not with the others there. As he approached the door to the familiar cavern, his heart stuttered to think on seeing them again after—after he saw them...after they...

Died. All of them. In different ways each time. And it was so real that—

"Kill them, Zefir," Mother said coldly. "Kill all of the traitors."

Zefir shuddered to see his squad lined up before the entire Clan, tied to posts buried firmly in the ground in their little mountain valley. The Exile Posts the Elders called them, casting wards against evil with their old, gnarled hands. The sootfoot children, smudges on their cheeks, snarled and spat on Ferrei's brave face. Navigator children threw stones that struck Valin across the forehead, bleeding now in a dozen places. Nyru was no longer conscious after being struck hard enough. Jarre still strained against the ropes binding him, his large muscles bulging, but the vat-cleaners threw nightsoil over them all.

The Clan's eyes blazed with hatred, their lips curling back, spittle flying. The Elders of each bloodline jeered. The other squadrons held their aerorifles aloft.

"Prove you're not a traitor too, little one," Mother said, her own eyes colder than the mountain snows. "Destroy them with your flame."

They weren't traitors. But no one would listen to him as he protested their innocence. And soon those who jeered turned in his direction. The Navigator's aerorifles turned toward him.

"Kill your squadron." Mother's granite features were forbidding. "Kill them and be free. Then nothing will hold you back."

He was weeping. Everything felt ice cold inside.

"Kill them, little one," said Mother, her eyes blank of emotion. "Or would you rather watch as the Tamer's wolves rip them apart?"

Zefir felt the fire building within, and still weeping he released a gout of flame—

He shook his head so hard with his eyes closed that the Wheelteeth guards around him made surprised sounds of protest. He didn't want the doors to open, for his squad to greet him as if he wasn't responsible for their deaths in countless ways. One of the guards poked his flank with a rifle, and Zefir whirled around, baring his pointed teeth. "Touch me again, Wheelteeth, and you'll be no more than ashes. I've done it before, and won't hesitate to again."

The guard, larger than Jarre by two heads, took a step back with wide eyes. Recuperating quickly from the fright, the guard pressed the series of buttons for the door panel, no doubt eager to rid himself of his dangerous charge.

The door folded back on itself wide enough to let Zefir enter. He closed his eyes again for a brief moment, whispering, "Three minutes, fourteen seconds."

And he stepped inside.

The door closed with finality behind him.

Jarre stood closest to the door, and the man regarded him with a concerned frown that evaporated, showing his usual grin. A grin Zefir was beginning to think was a protective mask almost like Kirwen's wolf face. The big man moved to pat Zefir on the arm, but Zefir flinched and stepped backwards.

His mechanical heart was whirring wildly inside, the heat growing alternately with a cold flash.

Valin stood with his arms crossed as if embracing himself, his tired expression creased with worry. Sleepless bruises had grown beneath his eyes, and Zefir was very certain that his Navigator had lost weight. The searching look Valin gave him almost made those hated tears form in his eyes again.

The Wheelteeth guard—wearing a skull-carved flight mask—lifted his aeropistol. Valin lunged for it, but the guard was quicker. Zefir knew he could make it to the guard in time, knew that his mechanical speed and the sheer mass of his dragon self was no match for the Wheelteeth guard. But his body remained immobile. It didn't want to move. No, he didn't want to move. All he felt was apathy.

And so he watched without feeling anything as the aeropistol fired. The flechette burst through—

He wanted to shake his head, but instead gritted his teeth so tightly that his jaw ached.

Nyru watched him with a strange distance in her eye, still sitting on her cot. She too had lost weight, and her face appeared gaunt. He wanted to see her rise to her feet to demand information, to gather her squad in a circle, but her gaze turned inward.

Ferrei had her usual wry quirk of the lips as she walked up to him, crossed her arms, and said, "Out with it, dragon. What did those bedamned Wheelteeth do to you? Valin refuses to tell us."

What lie could he tell his Second? What lie could he tell them all? No, but Valin would know. Had he told the squad of Seren? Of Kirwen?

He snaked his neck and placed his snout at her level, hoping that he would sound sincere. "One of their techworkers thought that they could study my inner workings. I allowed them to do so, Second, in order that our parole would stand if I worked with them willingly. Only that techworker touched a node that caused me to lose consciousness—" not completely untrue, "and then I awoke. I'm fine now."

"Don't ever let those filthy animals touch you again." Her gaze narrowed. "Your Navigator must have believed by refusing to tell us, that he would hold off our collective fury at your mistreatment. Well, he was wrong. And I'm particularly the vengeful type. Runs in the blood, makes it boil."

Ferrei's face creased in terror as she fell from the sky, and Zefir desperately plunged downward after her. He reached for her, his fingers stretching, but his claws got in the way and sliced through her fragile human flesh—

Zefir hissed in a breath. Three minutes, fourteen seconds. Another breath. He could breathe; in through his nostrils and out. There was air; he wasn't suffocating. Three minutes, fourteen seconds.

She met his eye with her unflinching directness. "We'll make them pay, dragon. We'll make them suffer for what they've done. To you. To all of us."

That's not what he wanted. Not at all. Though he was angry, he didn't want to see this mountain stronghold fall...and all its people with it. Not even the guard he'd threatened outside, or Leader Kirwen. And certainly not Seren. He knew he should hate them. And he realized slowly, that he never really had. Not even when he was fighting them in the sky. The only thoughts in the air had been to protect Valin, to protect his Clan and his squadron.

Did that make him a traitor like Mother had accused?

Only that hadn't been Mother.

So internal were his thoughts that he almost started when Ferrei placed a hand on his nose and patted him awkwardly. Zefir blinked. Ferrei, the one who'd called him an abomination was patting him amiably. Was this another false memory? It couldn't be real.

"Come, dragon," she said, gesturing. "Let me show you what we've been working on that will get us out of here and back in the air."

Reluctantly, he followed her to her cot, and she knelt down, carefully brushing aside some loose rubble. Her fingers cradled the strange looking device, and she lifted it, smiling her tight-lipped smile in pride.

She held it out for him to see. "It's a firebomb. One that your Navigator's shown me how to time properly. But once we obtain the chemicals, we can escape. We can be free, dragon. You can be where you were meant to be—in the air destroying our enemy."

Ferrei, face streaked with blood, lifted the ceramic firebomb high like an avenging demon from the ten hells. She stood up in the flight straps holding her to the ornithopter, which was even now grinding its primary gears as its wings ceased. Face creased in acceptance of her fate, she aimed two firebombs at the nearest gryphon. But as she aimed one, the ceramic shattered in her hand.

The firebomb burst in a deafening explosion.

Zefir cried out and batted the device in her hand away with his nose. Roaring, he watched the firebomb clatter against the stone floor, several broken pieces flying in all directions. His aching wings lifted and he spread them to their utmost, as if he could lift her from the danger.

"It's about to go off!" he yelled.

Ferrei clapped her hands over her ears, glaring at him. "Do you know what you just did? Do you have any bedamned idea?"

Quickly, she darted for the device, but Zefir caught her in one of his hands—

But his claws got in the way and sliced through her fragile human flesh—

He shrieked, blinking down at his Second Leader struggling in his grip. Unharmed. But she was glaring at him, her eyes sparking in fury. "Release me, flyer!"

"Everyone down!" Zefir bounded on his three limbs, holding her tighter. "It's going to go off!"

Face creased in acceptance of her fate...the firebomb burst in a deafening explosion.

Zefir squeezed his eyes closed and hunched down, blocking her body with his own, encircling her with his arms, neck, and wings, desperate to shield her from the oncoming explosion.

I am the shield. He closed his eyes tighter.

Slowly, he became aware of a voice. No, two voices.

"Zef, listen to me. Just focus on my voice. Ferrei is safe. She's safe, just let her go. Can you do that...for me?"

"I know what's wrong." Jarre?

Zefir couldn't help but shiver as Ferrei ceased to struggle in his unyielding grip. Worried that it meant he'd been unable to keep her from the explosion, he shook violently as he opened his hand, fearing he'd see only her lifeless body; she lay in his palm staring up at him, no longer angry, but puzzled.

"You've no idea, Jarre," Valin said wearily.

"You don't have much experience in battle, squad-brother," Jarre said, carefully approaching Zefir. "So respectfully, Valin, I know more than you in this case."

His Third made gestures to Valin and to Nyru, who stood in the middle of this as if waking from a long dream.

Retreat, Jarre motioned.

Valin stood his ground, but when Jarre made the gesture again with the authority of a Third, Valin slowly acquiesced, standing next to Nyru.

Jarre's deep voice vibrated, "Do you know where you are, Zefir? Answer me slowly."

"I don't want to see it again," Zefir whispered, and another surge of memory accosted him.

Jarre flexed his muscles, climbing higher on the cliff face, sweat pouring down his cheeks. A rope was tied to his waist, and below him, climbing themselves was the rest of his squad, also tied to Jarre. They were climbing to rescue Zefir, to release him so they could all fly from this alien mountain. Jarre's thick fingers slipped...

As he plummeted, so too did the rope jerk taught. All those attached to him began to fall...

"—listen Zefir, where are you now? Think very carefully."

"You and the squad are on the cliff face..." No that wasn't right. "I'm..." He looked down at his hand and there was Ferrei, rigidly still. "I'm still in the prison...with all of you."

"Yes, that's good." Jarre stalked closer, gesturing to his blood-cousin to stay still. "You're in no danger right now. Repeat it back to me."

"I'm...in no danger." He looked around him wildly, looking for the firebomb. "It's a dud?"

Ferrei met Jarre's eye and a series of quick gestures conveyed his concern to her: Stay calm. No sudden movements. Battle shock.

Ferrei said quietly, "Yes, a dud." Uncertainly, she reached up to clasp one of his large fingers in both of her hands, holding tight, her eyes glinting in understanding. "You're trying to shield me...aren't you?"

His aching wings were fluttering with his distress; they felt too cold, his joints grinding painfully. Tears were burning again, and he hated that one dared to slide from between his eyelids and down his cheek. Stupid, loathsome tears.

"I failed," he croaked.

She shook her head. "No you didn't. Look. We're both hale and whole. You...were trying to save me."

He heard the faint surprise in her voice.

"Zefir," she said gently.

That couldn't be right. Ferrei only ever called him 'dragon' or 'flyer.' Never by name. His name was an unlucky curse. Flyers didn't have names.

"Zefir," she said again, still holding on to his finger. "Thank you. We're safe, all of us."

She was safe. They were all safe. Valin and Jarre and Nyru. His squadron. His family. This was real.

Unable to hold himself up any longer, Zefir collapsed to the floor, still holding Ferrei. Every muscle seemed to sag, the weight too much. His wings fell limply to the stone floor, and with a concentrated effort he lifted a single wing to cover himself and his Second Leader. Ferrei remained seated in his palm long after he had the strength to hold her.

Exhausted, he wept until a dreamless sleep had him in its clutches.

Read Part 13: Shadowfall

The Clockwork Dragon #11: The Importance of Time and Dreams

2016-06-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

Seren's mind had never been so aflame—the ideas, calculations, and diverse sketches had never been so complex, so enthralling, so all-encompassing. She juggled all of them, following new formulations—sixty at a time—to their inevitable endgame, while simultaneously sketching the mechanical outline of Zefir's heart, trailing her thoughts gleefully through that chaos of wonder.

Zefir's chest panel lay open before her, and she trembled to think of what she'd find upon exploring his inner workings...and how she could improve on each function in the dragon-sibling even now still growing on her workbench.

The dragon she would build would be her last invention, her best invention. It would be intelligence and sorrow and love and harmony and beauty—

"It feels...strange," Zefir admitted, peering down at his open chest plate. "Mother never let me watch her work. Always made me sleep through it."

Seren couldn't interpret the individual words, only the general meaning when so much else pulled at her mind like a veritable riptide. She wasn't certain of the words spilling from her own mouth (was she giving assurances?) or what their meaning was, but the dragon nodded.

"Are you certain you need to stop my breathing? And my heart?"

Was there fear in that tone? Tearing her mind away from the powerful need, she focused enough to say, "I have to take apart a piece of your heart-mind, and put it back together. It won't take long."

A scrunch of that dragon face, the expressions so human-yet-not. Oh, how she'd make her own dragon with those wondrous expressions.

"What happens if it takes too long?" he asked.

Of course it wouldn't. The very idea was ridiculous.

A massive clawed hand—how she detested those claws!—reached for her and gently touched her shoulder with a single finger. "Seren?"

"Your circulatory system—also your cooling system—has a small backup, so the rest of you can remain active and viable without your heart doing its work for a time. Your body temperature will remain stable for three minutes and fourteen seconds without your breathing, which would interfere with my work on the heart." At the nervous click of his claws on the stone floor, Seren added, "You may lose consciousness for a time, like your fall from the sky when your diaphragm-ballonet wouldn't expand to give you enough breath."

The dragon frowned and his voice buzzed deeper, "But what happens after those three minutes?"

Sometimes she spoke the truth in a direct way that disturbed others. With her mind so absorbed by the need, words tumbled out in a jumble. "You'll begin to overheat, your circulatory system will shut down, some microcog nodes could burst causing failure of some nerves, it will feel suddenly like you're suffocating—"

"I-I've heard enough," he said, hoarse. Ah, how the saliva analogue reacted to his emotional state, causing his roughened voice. "Just...promise me you can do it in three minutes."

"Three minutes, fourteen seconds, I promise. I can count it in my mind. I'll just partition that countdown into my background thoughts. An old Inventrix thought-exercise, yes, every Inventrix remembers that." At his dubious frown (how magnificent such an expression on that dragony face) she picked up one of her clock timers. "Here. See. Yes? That way you can see the countdown too."

Seren eagerly grabbed up her thinnest tool and placed on her microfyer goggles, adjusting the magnification of the lenses.

"Now, if you don't lose consciousness..." It was growing hard to concentrate on communicating in a language other than the inventor's speech. Oh, the clarity yet complexity of that language, the beauty of multiple layers of meaning in a single syllable. "Uthu dir aln. Your head and mouth can move, but everything below that will be immobile. You can't talk. No doubt it's an odd sensation, so don't fight it."

There it was. The heart-mind. The microfyer adjusted to her pupils contracting and—

"Seren?"

Frustration bubbled to the surface with enough force that it surprised her. More proof of her failing. "Zefir, dear, what?"

"I want Valin to be here..." Though she couldn't see him with the goggles attuned to micro-size, she detected fear in his tone this time. "If something goes wrong."

"Nonsense," she cast aside such a notion. What a preposterous idea that anyone other than another Inventrix could keep up with the speed of her mind. Even Mirena so long ago could never do so. The gift of her altered blood. "Now hush, dear one. Start the timer. And..."

And the outer world disappeared. Seren was enthralled by the organ of Zefir's heart-mind, looking at each node—sensory nodes, memory nodes—oh, how they were connected so organically!—and emotional nodes, yes, yes, they must be that, how they grew and grew with his experiences, his new memories, ah but there must be a node for Zefir's wondrous love and trust; she searched for it, taking apart more and more pieces with her micro-tools, resisting the need to tear the entire engine apart—but only barely. Her head pounded in pain as her thoughts built a diagram of his inner workings.

It became harder to deny the need to tinker, to alter and see the spark jumps between nodes...

Chaos, beauty, so organic, growing, growing; over time this heart-mind would collect and discard memories like any other being...

Time.

Time?

Seren consulted her memory-timer, and gasped. It couldn't be. It had to be wrong... but she had never miscalculated. She tore off the goggles and her sight blurred as it was reduced to normal proportions; blinking she stared in disbelief at the clock timer: Three minutes, twenty-seven seconds.

"Oh, Gods of the Forge." Even that utterance stole two seconds away.

Zefir's eyes were wide open in fear and pain, his body limp, but resisting unconsciousness. His dragon-shaped mouth formed a desperate plea: Valin...Valin help me.

Quickly, she thrust the goggles back over her eyes and was instantly transported back to Zefir's inner workings. The riptide pulled at her again, but her body threatened to do something so un-Inventrix as to tremble in fear. No! She wouldn't succumb to her base need, or her body's failing. Her hands steadied as she placed back together all of the pieces she'd gleefully taken apart, moving faster than even her enhanced body had during the Trial.

The Trial...

The boiling crucible heated the walkway until Seren knew what degree burns her feet endured, and Mirena was turning with that slender pipe in her hand...

"No!" she shrieked. "Not now!"

There. The last microcog clicked into place and she hurried to start his heart, his lungs.

Zefir inhaled a rattling, harsh metallic-sounding breath. Weakly, he tried to get his legs under him, and when he did, he scrambled away from her, his quicksilver eyes wide in fear and hurt.

Betrayal. She knew that look, had mapped its outlines on Kirwen's face during the Trial. No, don't think on the Trial!

"Zefir, my dear dragon," she breathed, reaching for him. "I'm sorry. I've never miscalculated the time before, I didn't—"

"Get away from me," the dragon managed to growl. But the sound was strained, painful, his sides heaving unevenly.

Tears stung her eyes. She had never wept as a child, had never known it was an option until Kirwen shared that function with her through their virul-connection. Even now, knowing it would pain her mirror, she reached with her mind for Kirwen—and there was the usual echoing sensation of her other's failing thoughts: The final battle draws near—[anger][triumph]

Kirwen! Bring Valin! It's Zefir…[fear][remorse]

Seren sensed the affirmation from her other like a supportive caress.

She held up her trembling hands toward Zefir, who cowered from her as if he weren't ten times her size. "Valin's coming, Zefir. Please forgive me, I...need to see if there's any permanent damage."

His brass hide was dull, too pale. Almost yellowy. He tried to shake his head, but his weakness caused only a mild flop of his pointed head. Those quicksilver eyes were bleak.

She wanted to retreat within herself and never return. But she couldn't, not if something else was wrong with him, her Zefir, her dearest heart. So instead, knowing she'd lost his trust forever, Seren sank to her knees, doubled over with the pain of it, and wept.

An Inventrix wasn't built to weep. She'd coached her body long ago to respond to her happiness and sorrow with saltwater, as her kind always had full mental dominion over every aspect of their body (except for one—normal reproduction was impossible). Salt tears had been a part of her life because of the sheer force of her will. But now, with her failing body—and mind—she blinked and her world turned red.

Seren wept blood tears.

Valin hunched over the metal device he was building, sitting on his cot in their prison, making sure that the three separate chambers could collapse as the timing mechanism wound down. Upon collapse the three liquids would combine and an explosion would result; he would have to calculate the amounts very carefully or the squad would go up rather than just the hanger door.

He still needed the chemicals. He still needed more parts too, but Ferrei had grown deft at swiping things from the line with only an innocuous gesture from Valin to indicate the piece he needed.

Jarre leaned his shoulder on the metallic doorframe, listening for any sign of guards coming for them, his thick arms crossed over his chest.

Nyru lay listlessly on her own cot, her eyes blank as she stared at the ceiling.

Valin was beginning to worry about his First. All of the casual power she exuded was leeched out of her. With nothing to occupy her, not even their endless discussions on how to escape, Valin could only assume that she had nothing but time to think on her lost bloodson. Even on the assembly lines, he could see her eyes watering, gaze distant.

Ferrei sat next to him, concentrating on which tools he was using. Occasionally, she would glance up at her First Leader, then meet her blood-cousin's worried frown, before watching Valin with a tenacious focus.

"I still only understand a quarter of what you're doing," she said, tapping the timing mechanism. "This is pointless."

"No," Valin insisted. "If something happens to me, I need you to be able to finish this. It's our best means of escape. And you, Second, are my best techie."

Jarre chuckled.

"Quiet you," Ferrei shot back with a hint of a tight-lipped smile.

Valin released the timing mechanism from the chamber holders for the third time and passed the device to her, watching her reassemble it in the correct order.

"Again," And when she'd successfully reassembled it three times, he said, "Again."

She shot him a wry glance. "You sound like my Training Master. I swear 'again' was the only word he ever said. Except for 'poor form' and 'do that and you'll fall from the sky.'"

Valin watched her reassemble it quicker, almost effortlessly. He wasn't sure what to say. His Second had never revealed anything of her personal life. "All Training Masters must be the same then, because Jarre said those exact same words to me the first time Zefir and I flew maneuvers in his wing."

Ferrei chuckled. "Sounds like a true Quarethstra. Many of my line are Trainers." She held the device out for him to take.

"Again," he said, grinning. "This time I want you to completely disassemble every piece, and then when you're done, put it back together. Then I'll show you where the missing pieces will go, and how you should assemble them once we obtain them."

"You're a harsh Training Master, Seven," she said wryly, half-smiling.

Then she set to her task with that same studious intensity he'd come to expect from the Second Leader. Intimidating yes, but when not aimed at him he found he rather enjoyed her quiet company. Still, he found his mind wandering to several things—to the Lyth family and the uncomfortable notion that these Wheelteeth were in fact of his blood, to what Leader Kirwen was doing with Zefir and if the dragon faired well, to the persistent idea that this plan for escape would fail—

"Chewing the clouds?" While Ferrei struggled with the connector between chambers, she added, "Thinking about your discussion with that old poorblood Director?"

So, while more amiable outwardly she still was suspicious of him. What would she say if she knew that "old poorblood" was, in a way, his own bloodline? "No...just thinking."

"What'd that wrinkled old fool ask you anyway?"

He hated lying, but he couldn't tell her the truth. He doubted she'd believe such a tale, and if she did, it would be confirmed in her eyes that Valin was her enemy. In fact, he doubted any of the squad would trust him if he revealed such a thing.

"She asked why I was jumping the line so much," he answered. "Back home, jumping the line more than once would bring shame, and my own blood would've chastised me harshly. Here it seems they're more tolerant, being that their techs are taught from all...families." At Ferrei's wrinkled nose, he kept on, "But even so, she was suspicious I was intentionally disruptive."

All true. But even omission could be cloaked as a simple form of lie.

Ferrei nodded, her hands still working at the device. "You did your best. Being sly isn't in any of our blood."

Interesting assertion after she'd accused him of being a traitor.

"And yet," he gestured to the device in her hand, "we're all capable of doing things we were never bred for."

He expected a snide retort at that, but she averted her gaze, her fingers halting their work on the firebomb. "So it seems. But you must remember, Seven, that such ideas are dangerous. Once we get back home, you'll not see me jumping into any of the tech caverns any time soon. I was born to be a Navigator. It's my purpose. By the Sun, it's who I am. The enemy's way is chaos, and they are weak and feeble because of it. They know nothing of the joy of blood purpose."

Valin's lips firmed into a thin line. "So, I should be happy then to return to techwork once we arrive home?"

He feared he knew what her answer would be before she spoke. It made his blood rage with fire; he could feel his cheeks heating in anger.

Ferrei still wouldn't meet his eye. "The purpose of your blood is who you are—"

"Can you even conceive of the fact that I was unhappy as a second-level tech?" Valin couldn't keep this voice even. Because that's what they wanted to hear. A placated sootfoot who would meekly go back to his forges when dismissed. "Every night as a child I dreamed that I was flying. I could feel the wind on my cheeks, hear the roar of the ornithopter. I yearned for it with every sun-be-damned part of my being. As a child I'd watch the launches and my mind was gone with them." He swiped his hand in the air, not using a Nav gesture but simply encompassing all three in a curt sweep. "But I could never have that. I was told by my own line, by everyone I questioned. Those dreams could never be real."

Ferrei looked up at him in surprise.

Valin's anger rose like molten fire within and he clenched his teeth, desperately trying not to raise his voice. "Not all find joy in their predefined purpose, Second Leader. And now that these dreams are real, nothing, not you, not the enemy, not the Forge n' Fire Inventrix herself could keep me from flying with Zefir."

Even Jarre was watching Valin in surprise.

Silence reigned. And he hated it. Their silence, their judgment.

"The dreams," came the voice of his First.

He wasn't certain he could meet her gaze, not without his anger cresting to new heights, but Nyru still stared at the ceiling. Achingly slow, Nyru rose to her feet, her eyes bloodshot.

"Come," she said, gesturing.

Ferrei hid the firebomb beneath her cot and moved to stand before the First Leader. Jarre moved from his sentinel's place by the door and came to stand distant from his blood-cousin.

"Come, Valin," said Nyru, voice stronger than he'd heard in days. "Stand with your squad."

"Is that what we truly are?"

He regretted his angry, bitter words the instant he released them.

Nyru's gaze remained steady. "Squad is family. Squad is beyond blood. We are a squadron whether you like it or not, Navigator."

Navigator. Not Valin, or Seven. But Navigator.

A squad is beyond blood.

He strode for them and settled himself in between Ferrei and Jarre, proudly staring his First Leader in the eye.

"What you couldn't know," began Nyru solemnly, "is that we believe joyful night-dreams of flight are given to us as a blessing—sunwing dreams, we call them. Some believe them a gift of a bloodline forebear. Others believe they're a message from a lost loved one who inhabits the sundisk. But the majority of Navigators believe that these dreams are the purest truth that resides within us. One unquestioned. That we were destined to fly."

Valin waited respectfully, seeing Jarre and Ferrei bow their heads as if reciting something internally.

"You've been gifted with sunwing dreams, Navigator." Nyru lifted her chin, her eyes bright and sure despite the sorrow lurking behind them. "You were destined to fly. And unlike any of us who've been born to it, you had to fight to gain your own purest truth. Our squad would do well to remember that."

He firmed his stance. "Respectfully, First Leader, I wasn't destined. I chose this."

Jarre lifted a surprised brow, and Ferrei regarded him with that familiar intensity. Not suspicion. Not this time. She watched him like she studied the firebomb, trying to figure out how it worked. Or why.

"I chose," he said, "to break into the Inventrix's lab, knowing that I would be irrevocably shamed, or exiled. But it didn't matter. Even if my first flight was my last, then so be it. I'm only lucky that my first flight was with Zefir."

Jarre grinned and slung an arm around Valin's shoulders, shaking him with those massive arms. His Third made gestures for first flight-freedom, last flight return-to-the-sun. "First flight, last flight, squad brother."

Another oath. Together to the end. Awkwardly, Valin accepted the big Third's friendly thwap on the back.

"First flight, last flight," Ferrei repeated, a guarded look in her eye.

Nyru flickered her fingers at them. "Back to your work then, squad."

Jarre made his way back to the door, leaning against it casually. Dutifully, Ferrei fetched the firebomb device from beneath her cot, sat back down with Valin at her side, and began to disassemble it from beneath Valin's scrutiny.

Quietly, his Second said, "I've never had a sunwing dream."

Valin didn't know what to do with her admission. And though he only surmised that such a confession revealed blood-shame, by the bleak look in her gaze, he wondered if it wasn't more personal.

"I used to pray for them as a child. But they never came no matter how hard I wished. I even lied to my Elders, and told them the dream blessings had come. For years, I've wondered if their absence has meant that there's some inherent deficiency inside of me." She looked up at him, a mixture of shame and resentment in her eye. "That you, someone not of the blood, has been gifted nightly with those dreams..."

She lapsed into silence.

Valin wasn't certain that she wouldn't spew some hateful curse, and he carefully guarded his words. "Why are you telling me this, Second?"

She firmed her lips. "I've never had to try hard at anything. With my bloodline, everything has been easily given to me. I've taken my flights for granted, and have even complained about them. Yet I've never heard you complain about long training hours, difficult maneuvers, or how some of the Second wing...bullied you. Not even after battle. No, you take every flight with wonder, as if it's both your first and your last flight."

He shifted uncomfortably and tried to take the firebomb from her hands, but she clutched it tighter.

"You must see," she said desperately, "why I can't help but resent you for it."

Valin rose to his feet and crossed his arms. He was surprised to find that he wasn't angry, only tired. And a little saddened. "I think we're through here for the day."

"Wait!" She still clutched the device close to her, as if she were cradling something precious. "Valin...I..." She swallowed. "I still believe our blood purpose makes our

Clan who we are. But maybe...you're special."

And that made Valin even sadder. That angry weight inside dissipated until he only felt a distant kind of pity for Ferrei, still desperately trying to fit him into her perfectly defined world. "I'm not, Second Leader. I'm just someone born a second-level techworker who had dreams of something different." Before she could say any more, he gestured to the device. "You've done it perfectly. Now, do it perfectly again three more times."

Before she could say another word, Jarre hissed and made the curt signal for enemy on the horizon. With a smooth motion, Ferrei tucked the firebomb in a divot in the stone they'd found and covered it with rubble.

The door cranked and began to open in its wider form; Valin's heartbeat increased in hope. And after the usual guards hurried inside, that familiar Wolf form entered the cavern in rapid strides.

"Seven, with me," she barked, gesturing for him. "It's your dragon. Hurry. He needs you."

Heart in his throat, he didn't hesitate to even consider if this was a ruse. He ran to her side, and as she turned to move in effortless strides down the corridor, he followed.

What was wrong with Zef?

Read Part 11: The Importance of Time and Dreams

The Clockwork Dragon #10: The Truth is Unkind

2016-06-22T03:00:00.000-07:00

The gleaming brass dragon torso was already taking shape—it was growing. And Zefir couldn't help but keep sniffing at it, eager to remember the similar-yet-not-similar scent that mirrored-yet-didn't-mirror his own smell. Even as he watched Seren hunched over the form, microfyer goggles strapped over her eyes, she was muttering to herself, "Ach, no, no no. This way is better. Certainly."

The brass pseudo-flesh was knitting itself into a larger whole, still inching along and growing before his eyes; he watched in fascination as she began to piece together his sibling dragon's heart-mind.

Seren had beamed at him with those goggles intensifying her eyes, saying, "It's telling that your heart is also your mind, and your mind your heart. If only those were the same in humans, maybe we could learn something."

After listening in rapt concentration to his heart ticking in his chest, Seren kept muttering to herself. He worried as Seren's grumbles devolved into outbursts that frightened him.

"No!" she snarled. Throwing off her microfyer goggles, she pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes. "The variables! They're too beautiful, too achingly exquisite. Gods of the Forge, is this what you saw, Mirena? No wonder you're failing!"

"Seren," Zefir said gently. "Perhaps you need time to—"

"No!" she shrieked at him. "There's so little time!"

She sank to her knees and instead of drawing upon her schematics, she began to trace numbers, letters—symbols?—with her bare fingers on the stone floor. She scratched so hard at the ground that her fingertips were torn and bleeding.

"Seren!" he called, his voice buzzing with his fear.

"Listen to me, Kirwen," she said sharply, not looking at him. "Lissteri, trust me, please. If we do this together, we'll survive."

Was she trapped in her own memories, reciting her own words? It seemed so as she continued scratching at the ground frantically as if trying to claw her way out. "It should be we three together. That's how we were made, to be parts of a whole. Whatever this trial holds, we cannot abandon one another. That's what they want us to do."

Terrified now, Zefir wondered what he could do to break her from this memory. He reached for her and when he touched her, she screamed. Fighting against his gentle hands, she kicked, spat, and punched at him. He'd never seen her grow violent, his most gentle of friends. He didn't know what to do.

"Mirena, no! Join us! They can't kill us for failure if we survive together—" and a horrible wail of anguish came hoarsely from her throat.

What had Mother done to gentle her mirror?

Softly, Zefir began to sing the song that he recalled his Mother singing. Lilting and powerful as it thrummed its way from his chest and out through his throat, rendered in a baritone caress.

Seren blinked and her eyes filled with tears. She stopped struggling and went limp as a rag, so Zefir cradled her close. He continued singing, even though there were no words to his song, even when Seren continued to weep.

Slowly, he became aware of another presence. Standing in the doorway, maskless and quiet, Kirwen was watching them, a pained furrow to her brow.

Zefir stopped singing, gently rocking Seren in his arms. He watched Kirwen warily, silently pleading with the wolf leader not to tear them apart. He couldn't stop her if she wanted to rip Seren from his arms, not unless he was willing to strike the wolf leader. And his parole would be broken and the squad would die.

He was powerless.

"Please," Zefir croaked, everything cold inside. He felt no shame in begging, only the fear of losing her. "Please don't hurt her. Don't take her away from me. I beg of you."

Kirwen walked forward with a gliding motion. The pain on her face was unmistakable, and she trembled. "I would never hurt her."

Zefir shook his head. "You threatened her."

"No...I..." Those all too familiar eyes regarded him in earnest. "In a way...I did. Because I threatened you with destruction. Because anymore that's the only thing her mind will focus on to allow her to stay in the present. Is you, child."

Seren was still weeping, but had buried her face in Zefir's chest.

Zefir wanted to close his eyes, to curl up with Seren in his arms and to sleep away the worry and hurt. That magically somehow she would be fine. But he wasn't a child any longer. That was a child's want. "What is wrong with her?"

The silence stretched so long that he was certain Kirwen wouldn't answer. Instead, she let out a weary sigh. "You must know, child," said Kirwen, the timbre of sorrow in her voice, "Seren is dying."

Zefir's throat felt dry, his thoughts whirling.

He wanted to breathe out a denial, wanted to believe that this wolf woman—this self professed enemy—was lying. But he couldn't hear a stutter of the valves of her mechanical heart, nor a held breath, or even a flicker of the eye that would signal a lie. The shock of it made him cold, and everything inside ached in pain; his legs seemed like they wouldn't support him, so he sat on his haunches, still holding Seren pressed to him.

His eyes stung, feeling hot. He could barely find the breath to ask, "Why is this happening to her? Like this?"

Kirwen regarded him without sign that she was moved at all by his obvious pain. But he could hear her holding her breath, see her lips pressed together tightly. Almost like Mother.

"Can...can I help her?" Zefir asked. "There must be a way."

Silence fell once again, and Zefir heard Seren's weak voice, "Tell him, lissteri. He deserves to know. Please tell him...for me."

Zefir looked down and watched as Seren wiped at her bloodshot eyes, and moved as if the world itself were weighing her down. He still wouldn't release her, and she didn't seem inclined to move from the confines of his arms.

Kirwen remained fixated on Seren for an interminable span of time, Zefir resisting the urge to prompt her, before she placed a brass hand up to halt her mirror's pleading.

Zefir remained very still, listening to the cadence of Seren's human heart.

"Are you certain you wish to know, child?" said Kirwen at last. "The truth is unkind."

"I—I do."

"Then so be it." Her sour smile twisted into a bitter grimace. "Let us say what mirrors truly are—exact physical copies vat-grown from the blood of the First Inventrix of our Clan—and yes, I was once of your Clan." She heard Zefir's dubious grunt, but ignored it. "But that matters not. What does is that we mirrors have a set period of time to live. It's the way our flesh is constructed. Barring a violent death, it's two hundred and ten years. Near our end date, we begin to fail. Like pieces breaking apart before we shatter. The first to crumble is the mind."

Zefir clenched his jaw, wishing he didn't believe her words. "So her memory locks..."

"Have always happened. One of her unique defects altered by our predecessor, who meddled criminally in the design of our blood." Kirwen sighed. "But Seren's memory locks have never been so...debilitating. It signals that the end is near. She doesn't have long. And there's nothing that can stop it."

"How long?" Zefir managed, holding himself against the stinging in his eye.

"Were we normal mirrors, we would know to the minute. As none of us were created within normal parameters, I'm uncertain."

Zefir's mind connected what she was truly saying: Seren was dying. Mother was dying. And Kirwen the Wolf was too.

The pressure built within him and he released a low, mournful sound.

"If she has so little time left," said Zefir, steadying his voice, "then why are you forcing her to do this?" He pointed with his snout to the growing dragon form on the tabletop. "Do you hate her so much?"

"I'm not forcing the act of creation on her." Kirwen regarded the growing brass flesh upon the table and she moved to study it, touching it in surprised wonder with a disbelieving shake of her head. "Completely denying her the Inventrix instinct, her obsession to build, would only harm her more." She flicked her gaze up to meet with his. "And no, I've never hated Seren. The mere idea is inconceivable. She is mirror-kin. She's...lissteri. A bond stronger than blood-sisterhood. You can't even begin to understand."

Zefir lowered his face closer to hers, studying her intently. "Mother...Mirena is your mirror-kin too. Why do you bear such hate for—?"

Kirwen's fist came down hard upon the table top, and Zefir flinched. Her breathing increased, hissing through her clenched teeth. The growing brass flesh of the dragon-sibling seemed to tremble near her hand.

"Ask me that again, child," she said deceptively quiet yet her voice quivering with anger, "and you'll see just what the extent of my wrath looks like."

Seren stirred, but Zefir was reluctant to set her down. "Kirwen—"

The wolf leader growled out an animalistic sound and spun around, heading for the door. Before Zefir could decide to clamp down on his thoughts, the words slipped from his mouth, "You hate me too."

It wasn't an accusation. Merely uttering the bare truth.

Kirwen halted in her tracks, brass hands clenched. Her voice was taught, like a string ready to snap. "I don't hate you, child."

Zefir gently settled Seren in the chair near the lab table, and the woman smiled mildly up at him. He walked around the wolf leader, and she allowed him to step in front of her, blocking her path. "You do. Because I call her Mother. Because she made me. Because she's your enemy, and so am I."

"I don't hate you," she repeated. "No, I hate that she dared to make the one thing I've yearned for my whole life. That which she stole from me."

Zefir didn't understand, but before he could ask she skirted around his bulk, her movements sure but hurried, and was gone.

He turned to Seren when she began to absent-mindedly hum to herself, that same song that Zefir had sung to her. Shaking himself of the aching feeling inside, disturbed by the wolf leader's obvious pain and anger, he approached his dying friend and nudged her oh-so gently with his nose.

She began to sing:

Hush child, we are here

Three against the world

Hush child, don't you fret

Three to protect your dreams

Cry and One will know

Hurt and Two will soothe

Fall and Three will catch you

"Two will sing you to sleep," she said tiredly, stroking his cheek. "Sleep now."

And she sang until she grew hoarse, repeating the same words over and over. It wasn't until Zefir curled up at her feet and feigned sleep that she stopped.

For the fourth time, Valin jumped his spot in the assembly line and dashed down to his squad to correct them. He was trying hard not to be frustrated by their mistakes; they made errors that a techworker child would've laughed at. Wryly, he realized that this was the very same response his own squad had when Valin made errors in the air that even a Navigator not yet old enough to fly would've never made.

He moved around Nyru, who kept grunting in frustration as she affixed the pieces on the line, and had let far too many pieces go by her.

He slapped down the pieces in his hand next to Jarre. The eternal rotation of the assembly line made its accustomed whirring sound, the din echoing through the massive workspace filled with its techsuited workers. Automatically, Valin raised his voice just enough to be heard over the whomp-whomp-whomp-hiss of the line's movement.

"These are the size three pieces." And he pointed again, making sure the other Wheelteeth second-level techies saw his admonishment. "This line requires size two pieces from the box on your left." Then he said lower, so no one else could hear, "If you can't keep up at a basic pace..."

Then they couldn't hide their true motives in being the forge caves.

Already, Valin's absence would be noted by the man standing further up the line, and if this continued, the Director would mince words with him. If they drew too much notice, then Valin and his squad wouldn't be able to steal the necessary parts for building a modified firebomb, something of his own experimental imagination.

"No problem, O First Leader of our Techie Wing," Jarre drawled nonchalantly, and surreptitiously palmed the pieces, placing them in his pocket in a deft movement.

"Keep up, blood-cousin," Ferrei crowed, her hands moving like she'd been born to such work. "Don't let techwork best you, or you'll never live it down."

Ferrei's quickness had impressed Valin enough to where he couldn't help but praise her. She'd scowled at him, and then swallowed whatever derisive reply she'd been about to utter. Instead she'd said, "It's a lot harder than I'd guessed. And oddly soothing, this work. It's like gliding...you kind of forget what you're doing and you're just in the moment."

He didn't point out that where they were in the line was usually reserved for the techworker youths entering the forge caves for the first time.

Had they been at home, back among the Cog Clan, the Director would've moved Ferrei to the quality checkpoints where Valin was even now supposed to be.

He turned to dash back to his spot in line, the heat of the forge caves pressing against his cooling-insulated techsuit in the exact way he remembered. Before he found his spot again, noting the glare of the man forced to pick up Valin's slack, a stern voice called from behind him, "A word with you, if you please."

Valin turned to see Director Lyth eyeing him as if he weren't almost twice her small, hunched height. The Elder of the Lyth, eyes flashing, motioned him away from the din of the assembly line. Closer to the unmoving final prep tables—which at home was the domain of first-level techs only—the heat abated and the noise died down, but he could see the end result of their work: new ketch-gryphons being placed together, ready for battle.

Without preamble, Elder Lyth said, "In mycave, no one, and I mean absolutely no one jumps the line this much. Not even for correction."

Being admonished by a Director would've once filled him with a base kind of shame and dread. Even now embarrassment wormed its way through him before he batted it aside. "Apologies, Director. Back home I'm not on the lines, but in the chemical caves."

The lie almost stuck in his throat. He needed just one day—no, one hour among the chemical vats, the glassware and funnels, siphoning off the solvents...

Only the concoction he'd take away in separate vials would be...dangerous. And explosive once mixed.

"Ha," the Elder barked. "I'd rather put you in the kitchens. Then at least one of you Cog Clan scum could learn to make a decent flatbread."

Valin didn't want to admit he liked Elder Lyth, because she reminded him of all his own bloodline's Elders. "Your flatbread tastes just like my bloodline Seven's. Reminded me of home. Extra spiceberry and all."

Her mouth opened in surprise for a moment, before she closed it in a hesitant frown. She gestured him down to her level with a curt motion, and Valin immediately acquiesced—though he realized belatedly he shouldn't have given an enemy such respect—and knelt until she grasped at either side of his face; she studied his features intently, peering into his eyes, poking at his cheeks. Uncertain what she was doing, he remained still, muscles rigid.

"Double spiceberry," she muttered, "two pinches of fenu seed to give it that sour flavor, and three pinches of cinna powder?"

The secret to the Seven line's flatbread. All of the blood knew it and the proportions by heart.

"Y-Yes," he blurted. How would a Wheelteeth know it?

Her gaze narrowed, still studying him so fixedly that he had to fight not to squirm. After a long silence, the Elder scowled at him and waved him back to his feet. "Back to the line with you, Seven. You're slowing up my production. You and those other Cog scum. If Kirwen would let me, I'd toss you all in the deepest, darkest pit we have."

And the look she gave him was so full of anger, that he stiffened his spine. "Kirwen?"

"Our leader, idiot boy."

Ah, he had a name for the Wolf at last. "I wasn't aware of her name. Your Inventrix Kirwen neglected to introduce herself properly."

"She's no Inventrix." Elder Lyth curled her lips up in disgust. "We've not had an Inventrix for over three hundred years. And a what a boon it's been to let our mirrors die out, let their vat-kept blood dry and turn to dust, to destroy our Clan's rebirth machines once and for all." Her voice rose, eyes narrowed in bare hatred. "We don't need an Inventrix telling us how to live and die, how to breed and work. They're made not to care overmuch about anything other than order, building, and having their underlings obey their grand scheme. So why, Seven, would we allow such a heartless creature to be our overlord?"

She made his way of life sound so...pointless. As if he were no more than a thrall, destined only to obey the order of things that had been set forth since the First Inventrix of the Cog Clan. Her words made his hands curl into fists, as if he could strike such scathing ideas about his people. He wanted to argue that she spoke falsely...but something inside him rebelled, knowing there were truths uttered among Elder Lyth's hate.

"We don't allow it. It simply is." Even as Valin said it, he wanted to cringe at how empty and weak that statement. "And our Inventrix isn't heartless—"

Her harsh bark of a laugh interrupted him. "A heartless wretch, your Inventrix. She wages a never-ending war upon us. Your people are destroying us, killing my family, my people. And you probably don't even know why."

"Your Clan attacked first," he said, remembering that he'd said the same thing to Leader Kirwen. And how she'd scoffed at the rote regurgitation of his history lessons.

Elder Lyth's wrinkled face screwed up in fury. "We had no choice!"

Valin fought to tamp down on his own rising anger, remembering the Wolf's response: What is it that you think she did with our children?

He hissed in a breath, his techworker mind forming connections, yearning to put the pieces together in the proper order. "The children...your children..."

"I'll not have you gloat," she snarled. Gesturing to the line, and thrusting a finger into his chest, she growled, "Back to your place, and any more jumping the line and I swear to the Forge Gods that I'll take all of you Cog scum and throw you from the highest ledge."

He wouldn't accede, wouldn't bow to another's will. Not now. Planting his stance firmly, interlacing his fingers in front of him respectfully, Valin stated, "Our Inventrix isn't heartless. Your children, the ones from long ago—"

"She murdered them when she took them." Elder Lyth lifted her chin, glaring into his eyes.

"No, she didn't. Your children didn't come to harm." He still wasn't certain of his Inventrix's motives, but he was certain he had the truth of it. "Your children became us. They were taken into the Clan. They became new bloodlines, new—" the Wheelteeth woman didn't want to hear of bred bloodlines, so he used the more neutral, "families."

The hesitation marked its way across her face, but she shook her head. "No."

That's why she had been studying him, he was sure of it. Looking for some lost familial feature? "How else would I know the secret to the Lyth family flatbread?"

Elder Lyth turned to the side, and made a gesture he didn't recognize. Neither a Navigator sign, or a techie command. It didn't seem vulgar. But after a moment two men detached themselves from their work on the ketch-gryphons and came to her side, promising violence with their gazes.

"Take Seven Valin here, and make certain he stays in line."

One of the men touched her shoulder. "Did he threaten you grandmere?"

"No." And she gave Valin another appraising look, hesitant. "But keep an eye on him anyway."

Valin was escorted back to his place in the assembly line, his head full of his new revelations on the past.

The Clockwork Dragon #9: The Wolf

2016-06-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

Zefir allowed himself to peer around at the vast carved caverns of the Wheelteeth stronghold, but did his best to appear unimpressed as he paced slowly by the wolf leader's side. How easily he fit in the hallways, how grand and beautiful everything was, how...unorganized. He spotted the flight decks and the Navigators polishing their cobbled together gryphon flyers, techies assisting them in repairs. Younglings darted to and fro, none of them wearing clothing that would proclaim their bloodline purpose. Skipping to their lessons, they paused to stare at his large, brass form in awe and squealed in surprise as Zefir stuck his large tongue out at them.

As Zefir continued further underground he detected the smell of oil, that sharp metallic tang, and a burning, molten scent.

He must be close to the forges.

Though the light from above had dimmed in the deep heart of the mountain, lighted by a series of gas-lamps buried in the wall, a different manner of lighting made the forge caverns glow with orange-red heat. Valin had said the techworker assembly lines were uncomfortably warm, and the forge excruciatingly hot. Following the wolf woman into the forges, he could see the great crucibles bubbling, could hear the ting-ting-ting of hammers on anvils wielded by men and woman larger than Jarre, could hear the shouted directives of higher-level...someones.

Zefir's brass hide felt very warm and he panted away some of the excess heat, until they passed from the forges and into a cooler room. The madness of this cavern reminded him of Mother's laboratory—only larger. Much, much larger!

There was a figure hunched over one of the long tables, staring at a sketched schematic.

"Seren!" Zefir cried, his voice echoing through the din of the ever rotating lines.

She raised her arms out to her side, grinning. "Oh, my dear dragon!"

She ran toward him, her loose fitting techie worksuit flapping about her. Before he could react, she leapt toward him; he caught her almost belatedly in his arms, forcing him to sit on his haunches, nearly crushing a toolcart beneath him. Seren pushed her ear over his chest and embraced him with her tiny arms.

"Oh, the sound. Listen to it, oh, how it's changed." She peered up at him, and patted his snout. "Look at how you've grown!"

"I'm the same size," he said, ignoring the silent presence of the wolf woman.

"Out here," she said, tapping his brass hide with her knuckles. "But not in here." A tap upon his chest. Again, she pressed her ear against him, mouth screwing up in concentration. That same kind of rapt attention that even Mother had, where it seemed the world disappeared for them.

The wolf woman stepped toward her. "Seren. Arth il donai, meranc."

That strange language that Seren and Mother spoke...so the wolf leader knew it too?

"Yes, yes, Kirwen," the mirror woman said, reluctantly wriggling from Zefir's gentle grip. Once situated again on the ground, Seren's focus shifted. Her feverishly bright gaze fixated unerringly on the leader. "The alignment of the pseudo-metallic vertebrae in your neck is slightly...off. It needs adjustment."

Zefir chuffed at the air again, wondering...that scent that the wolf leader bore...

"I've done well enough adjusting things myself when you decided to flee."

A sigh. "I didn't flee...I left. Because of the failing. I feel it happening, and it's affecting you. Even though my virul-microcog bond isn't as strong with you as with—"

"You left to find Mirena and her last invention, not for my benefit." The taught anger was simmering in her voice, but it seemed even this wolf leader—no, this Kirwen—wouldn't raise her voice in fury to Seren.

"We three are connected," Seren said mildly, her eye still riveted to Kirwen. "We all knew I'd be the first to fail. I had to know how far she'd descended, so I'd know how long you have. And it seems, perhaps with your anger calling upon you more and more, perhaps not as long as you hope. In the end, your fury will destroy you."

Kirwen was shaking, as if she wished to belie that statement, but couldn't. Zefir inhaled her scent again, and knew; he could taste the tang of her metal-fury, like warmed copper.

"Part of you is like me," he stated.

The wolf woman reached up to her flight mask and with a violent motion, tore it from her face. Beneath the mask she appeared just like Mother—but not quite like Seren whose expression marked her as same-but-different—but Kirwen's cold, craggy face made Zefir uncomfortable to see the enemy rendered so similar to Mother; her eyes flashed in rage, her mouth curling up with a violence he'd never seen from Mother, making her look cruel rather than cool and distant. But while her face was human flesh, the back of her skull and her neck was made of pseudo-metallic brass flesh, a match for his own. She tore off her gloves revealing hands cast in brass, the elegant micro-cog work of her joints glinting in the low light.

"Like you," she growled, ripping off her scarf and flight jacket, revealing her upper arms made like Zefir's own, only human-sized. "Do you know what your creator did to me during the trial? The testing? Do you have any concept of how she destroyed me? Look at what she did to me!"

The burning copper smell invaded his sensitive brass nostrils, and he exhaled the stink of her rage.

"Mother wouldn't...she can't have..." Zefir struggled, feeling very out of his depth. What would Valin say in a situation such as this? "Is that why you hate her so?"

"One of many reasons," said Kirwen, holding her flight mask so tightly that her knuckles turned a different shade. "And now you call such a wretch mother. How I should be laughing at that. Our heartless, logical, perfectInventrix. The one chosen through trial. And now look at how she fails, creating a child—a child!—not a weapon to end it all." Her mouth curled up in a frightening manner that made Zefir step back nervously into the toolcart. "I should be so glad to see her failure so obvious. And yet, that joy isn't there. I'm robbed even of that."

Seren placed a gentle hand on her mirror's shoulder, but Kirwen shrugged it off.

"I don't understand," Zefir said. "Whatever is between you and Moth—between Mirena, it doesn't mean that we need to be enemies. Is that why you attack us?"

Kirwen's eyes gained that lost in focus look he recognized from Seren's memory locks. "She made an enemy of me, child." Shaking her head, she focused on Zefir once more before turning to Seren. "Make more of him, but don't make them think like him."

Seren laughed her easy, lilting laugh. Zefir always thought it like the warm summer breeze. "His mind is the unique part of him. It's what drives everything else. My silly mirror, you can't create one without—"

"Do it, lissteri. Or I'll deny you that Inventrix obsession to make more of him." Kirwen glanced up at Zefir and said with infinite calm, "Test me in this and I'll destroy him, Seren."

Zefir's chest felt tight. He no longer knew what to say, and his hope that he could reason with the wolf leader fled. His own anger flared to be dismissed, to be threatened. "Make an attempt to destroy me, Leader Kirwen, and you'll see just what I'm made of."

She raised a skeptical brow. "And what is that, child?"

Zefir lowered his face toward hers, on level so he could look into her eyes. "The same material as you. Parts made by the same Inventrix. Isn't it so?"

Kirwen placed her flight mask back over her face, obscuring her familiar-yet-not-familiar features once more. "You have the right of it, dragon. But you must ask yourself, child, why she would cause the destruction of my body only to give me a new one."

Seren shook her head sadly. "You know why, lissteri."

"She hasn't that defect. Not like you. Not like me. We care. She wasn't bred with it. That's why she won the trial."

Zefir opened his mouth to ask about this "trial" to which she kept referring, when the wolf leader spun on heel and began stalking out of the techworker cavern. From over her shoulder she barked, "Heed me, Seren. Make me warrior creatures as dangerous as this one, but not with sentience. And then, I'll bring them down upon her head and find victory at last."

"You won't," Seren whispered, unheard by her mirror.

And the wolf leader was gone.

Zefir watched Seren's crestfallen expression, and she placed a hand to her forehead, muttering, "She had to mention the trial. More than once." She began to mutter to herself so low even Zefir couldn't hear, shaking her head with a violence that concerned him until he carefully folded a wing about her, lest she somehow injure herself during one of her memory locks. "No, no, I won't let those memories take me, not today."

"Seren?" he whispered, worried. "Please, just whatever Kirwen said to you to make you remember something bad, just focus on me. Listen to my voice. Can you hear me?"

The muttering stopped and her expression lightened as she touched his cooling-wire veins as she had the first time they met. "I hear you, dear heart. Just...keep talking, will you?"

Zefir spoke to her about the joys of his first flight with Valin, not certain how long he needed to speak in order to help her. As he spoke about his worries for the squad, she seemed much more herself. In the present.

"Zefir, my darling." Seren shook her head as if to clear it. "I won't let Kirwen harm you."

Zefir was certain the mirror woman couldn't possibly fight Kirwen, either physically or in a game of wills, but he nodded solemnly anyway.

"And if I'm to give you siblings, I can't stop—" and some of her usual absent-minded joy returned, "—from giving them their own remarkable personalities."

If he helped Seren, then maybe she wouldn't come to harm. Whatever hold her mirror Kirwen had over her, maybe Zefir could help. "Then how do we start?"

"We already have," said Seren.

And with that she turned to her work.

Valin was still staring at the door panel, desperately trying to remember the sequence of levers the guard had touched to open it wide for Zefir.

He glanced over at the cots and noticed that both Nyru and Ferrei were dozing despite the afternoon sun spearing down on them from the hangar doors above.

Being imprisoned had warped his squadron. It made Ferrei into a nervous caged animal ready to strike, sleepless and obsessed with vigilance; Nyru became like a somnolent feline causally looking for openings in the situation but finding none; Jarre continued to make jokes, but even his easy smile was faded and worn.

Two entrances, no exits. The door that lead deeper into the mountain, and the flight hanger doors above, which led to the outside world. Calculations spread through his mind, statistics on the most logical order of—

"If your stare could melt it open," said Jarre from behind him, "then sun-and-stars, it would."

Valin reluctantly pulled his mind from the puzzle, but he was still deep within his techworker mindset and absently said, "No, the sun-and-stars type of gear set-up is...Oh. Right."

Jarre had meant "sun-and-stars" as a mild curse, not as the techies called a specific type of gear rotation. Sometimes moments like this would remind him that he was no Navigator. Even his thoughts were ordered different, the hallmarks of his bloodline.

Though if the Wheelteeth proved anything, it was that being born without a bloodline purpose hampered them not at all. And the chaos of not knowing one's purpose...it made an odd thrill seep through him, even as he knew he was supposed to be repulsed by the idea. That it went against all he knew. Bloodline purpose kept the Clan working at optimal performance, kept it strong, healthy; it cast no doubts as to when to rise and when to eat, how and where to work, what your very being was designed for...

And yet even as a child I dreamed of flying, Valin thought. Stealing a flight mask from one of the assembly lines. Flapping my arms like a thopter, making bomber dragon noises.

Only for one of the many techworker grandmeres to sternly tell him that flying would never be a part of his life.

How wrong that was. He'd found his purpose.

Jarre gestured at the door and made an amused harrumph. "You're thinking about this all wrong."

"How so, Third?" Valin asked.

Jarre poked a large finger at Valin's forehead; the jab wasn't gentle, and Valin rubbed at the spot where that finger had struck. "You're thinking of the problem like a techie. But you need to think like a Nav."

"I fail to see what's wrong with trying to figure out the sequence—"

"There's your problem," Jarre said, grinning. "We need to find a way to destroy this thing. Not code it open."

"If we destroy the panel, the door will automatically lock until the wolf leader decides to pry it open." Valin made the gesture for end of flight, though he knew he didn't move his fingers in the effortless way the others did. "And this time she might let us starve in here. She has what she wants."

Jarre nodded, lips pursed. "Maybe she does. But you shouldn't worry too much about that flyer of yours. He's more clever than you give him credit for."

"Clever, yes," Valin said, frowning. "But also naïve and trusting."

"Those are qualities of the young and untried," said Jarre. "I've known many young Navs who've surprised me with their ferocity and cunning despite their naïve and trusting ways." That massive finger poked at Valin's forehead again. "Like this techie I took into my wing."

Take into a wing was a common enough phrase that meant many things to a Nav. It meant both that Valin and Zefir had become a part of the Third Wing of the squad, and that they required the paternal guidance of someone older and more experienced.

Valin didn't really think himself naïve, but perhaps from the standpoint of the Navigators he really was no more than a babe. Of all of the Navs in the squadron, Jarre had been the most accepting and amiable, but during battle practice, Jarre had become a stern taskmaster, a roaring lion of a man seeking to cut out any sign of weakness. And both Valin and Zefir had plenty of weaknesses, simply from ignorance and a lack of practice. Both of which were eliminated in a Nav's early life as a child bred to...

Perhaps it wasn't the blood, but simply their early education. Would Valin have been more capable if he had been raised to Navigator duty from the time when he was stealing flight masks and flapping his arms? Or would his focused instruction have only hindered his bond with Zefir, thinking of him as no more than a tool, a flyer?

Jarre moved to strike with that pointer finger again, and Valin took a step back, lifting his hands in the victory to yousign.

"See?" Jarre continued with his broad, infectious grin, holding up his finger. "Not so naïve."

The door made a quiet tick and both of the men stiffened. Ferrei blinked her bloodshot eyes, hopping quickly to her feet but stumbling in her exhaustion. Nyru slowly came awake, staring at the ceiling until she roused herself with an uncaring grunt.

The same guards entered first, carrying long-range flechette aerorifles rather than simple pistols.

Ferrei came to stand next to him, muttering, "That bodes well."

"I rather preferred the pistols," said Valin wryly. "But if they're going for intimidation by size, then they could've at least threatened us with a cannon."

The Second flashed him a brief hint of a bare smile. "Surely we're worth at least a few ceramic firebombs."

Jarre patted his blood-cousin roughly on the back. "At least ten of 'em. Two for our First, two for you, two for our Valin, and five for me of course."

"Five? Don't you mean four of ten?" Nyru asked, her scarred lips curled. "Someone can't count. It'd probably take all ten firebombs to get through that thick skull of yours."

This was the squad he knew, and Valin felt a stirring of pride lifting the heaviness in his chest.

Firebombs...if only he had a couple he could destroy, not the panel, but the door itself...

The wolf leader—who Valin had begun to think of simply as the Wolf—entered with her usual wolf flight mask in place, hands gloved, scarf in place.

"You, Seven. To the techwork forge caves with you." And she spread her hands at the other three, addressing her guards. "Put them to work polishing the gryphs."

"Work?" Valin asked, lifting a skeptical brow.

The Wolf shrugged, but something in her posture made Valin believe she was tense as a predator looking for prey. "At least this way you can be put to good use."

Ferrei stepped forward, looking just as predatory, her eyes narrowing. She pursed her lips and then made a rude sign, spitting on the ground. "The only way I'll be useful to the sun-be-damned Wheelteeth is when you kill me, because I won't—"

Jarre placed his meaty hand on her shoulder and squeezed until Ferrei inhaled, face pinched from the pain of his grip.

Nyru strode forward and the guards shifted their grips on their rifles. Holding up her hands in an unthreatening gesture, she said, "We will do as you ask. We won't threaten you or yours while we work, as our oath given for our parole."

Ferrei scowled at that.

One of the guards moved forward for Valin, and Ferrei stepped in his path. "We won't be separated. He's of our squad. A Nav, not a techie. He'll come with us."

Valin was surprised by his Second not only defending him, but finally claiming him as one of her own. Did that mean she trusted him? Or did she still think him capable of treachery and wanted him close?

The Wolf stood in silence, and she clasped her hands behind her back. Again, the posture was meant to convey a casual indifference, but her subtle trembling belied that. "You would do well not to test me today. Seven is more use to me in the forge caves."

Nyru shook her head. "We'll not be parted. Valin is ours. And we'll not let you disappear him the way you did our dragon."

The sense of pride and belonging only swelled further, and Valin knew he would do anything for these people. Even lay down his life for them. Even...offer the Wolf something far more valuable in order that they might be released? If his honor, even their acceptance of him had to be left in tatters so that they might survive, then so be it.

"Put them in the forge caves with me," Valin said.

The Wolf began to laugh, the sound buzzing oddly from behind the mask. As her laughter swelled into breathless cackles, Valin could hear that the sound of her laughter had a touch of madness about it that disturbed him.

A coldly logical enemy he could combat, but one who's mind was unhinged...they were doomed.

"Oh!" the Wolf laughed. "Oh, to see a Cog Clan Nav in the forge caves, oh, to see them struggle. They weren't bredfor that, would only ruin the assembly lines with their prideful, stupid bumbling. I can see them now, spouting about their bloodline and their heritage and uttering nonsense idioms that are supposed to be meaningful, all the while telling you how you're beneath them."

Valin narrowed his gaze at her. "Your own Navigators are also techworkers, aren't they?"

That gave her pause. "We allow our clan members to choose that which best suits their strengths. No one here is only 'for one purpose.' I've done the work of every level in this place. Can you imagine your Inventrix scrubbing broken vats of old, moldy protein? I have. And will do so again."

"And yet, here I am—both a Navigator and a techworker and of the Cog Clan." Valin tried to force his voice to sound even. Logical. Even though his anger was stirring through the fear of being separated from his squadron. "These three here, though Navs they may have been born, are all intelligent. All they need is training. I can teach them. Place us together and your assembly line will run smoothly."

Silence met his statement, but the Wolf cocked her head to the side. "Ha. I should have you all scrubbing waste treatment cisterns."

The silence stretched until even the guards began to fidget.

"Then to the forges with you all." The Wolf made a dismissive gesture and the guards strode forward to encircle them. "But know, Seven, that if anything—anything at all—goes awry, then I'll consider it a breaking of your given parole."

Valin nodded.

There must be only one reason the Wolf would put them to "good use."

She needed all hands put to work, needed the Wheelteeth Clan going at full steam. She needed the forges making more of their poorly made, quickly cobbled together gryphons.

They were readying for an attack.

But Valin didn't know if the Wheelteeth were planning an all out attack on the Cog Clan, or if the Inventrix was coming for them like some forge-fire demon ready to attack the Wheelteeth stronghold.

Either way, he would find a way to save his squad.

Read Part 10: The Truth Is Unkind

The Clockwork Dragon #8: We Are the Shield

2016-06-08T03:00:00.000-07:00

Zefir craned his neck over Valin's shoulder as he sat on the floor, back leaning against Zefir's shoulder, holding one the pieces of rubble while he sketched out complex calculations on the stone, so enthralled by them that he was certain most of the day had passed. All he was aware of were the numbers floating in different sequences in his mind. To break the code.

At least it kept his mind from the question of what the Inventrix had done with the Wheelteeth's children all those generations ago.

"They'll see your techworker scratching," said Ferrei, pacing, "and know what you're about."

"The Wheelteeth leader already knows I'm trying to break the lockcodes," said Valin offhandedly, his mind still on his work. "I'm setting out false calculations to mislead whoever might see it. I might not be able to break the doorcode, but that—" and he pointed upward toward the skylight, a series of pullies and levers that opened a trapdoor wide enough to let Zefir fly in, "I might. But I need to concentrate, Second Leader, so if you please, I'd be obliged if you leave me be."

Ferrei stopped in her pacing, and whirled around. She had always been the surly type, at least toward Valin "the upjumped techie," but as another week flew by she seemed unable to stop pacing. "That's if you wish to truly escape, which I'm not convinced, techie, that you are."

Zefir rumbled in his throat and Valin felt the vibrations through his sternum. "Of course he wants to leave. What nonsense is that?"

The Second strode to loom over Valin, her hands in fists. "The Wheelteeth leader takes you out every day. Gives you the food to bring back to us. Lets you see the enemy's stronghold. Who's to say you haven't made a deal with her to get preferential treatment?"

Before Valin could defend himself, or at least explain it to her again, Zefir slammed his hand down into the stone at the Ferrei's feet, and rose sinuously to tower over her. His claws dug into the stone as a flicker of flame burst from his nostril once and then was gone. The dragon quickly and gently—well, gently for Zefir anyway—pushed his nose against her chest until she stumbled back with the hit.

"Valin is not a betrayer." Zefir growled so low that some of the some of the stone rubble danced across the floor.

"You don't know that, dragon," she barked, standing her ground against the huge brass head arched toward her. "He abandoned his bloodline purpose as a techworker, his very essence and blood duty. He quickly surrendered to the enemy. And now, he consorts with this wolf leader. If you won't listen to me, listen to his actions."

This last he could tell was aimed at Nyru and Jarre rather than at Zefir. "I deny none of those things. But I have explained to you before, Ferrei, the whys of all of my actions." Valin rose to place a hand on Zefir's shoulder, patting it until the dragon's stance relaxed, Zefir's oddly human-like expression repentant. "I've also explained, Second Leader, that the wolf woman seeks to cause dissent among us by singling me out. And look at how it's working."

"Traitors have many explanations for holding the knife," Ferrei spat, "before they bury it in your back."

Zefir looked tensed to leap forward, but instead his startlingly rough voice croaked, "Don't do this, Second. You cannot believe it." When Ferrei turned her sneer on the dragon, Zefir's hand opened to make the Nav gesture of accept the wind direction. "Wasn't it you who told me, well you told Valin and I heard, but you said that 'A squadron is a family, something beyond blood'?"

That hadn't been quite what Ferrei meant when she told him that. It'd been more of a sneer at Valin's inability to truly be part of the squad because of his techworker blood. But Zefir in his innocence had uttered the true sentiment the Nav adage was trying to convey.

Valin patted the dragon again, tamping down on a proud grin. Zefir's pushing Ferrei out of anger had been childish, but this earnest reasoning was very mature. He could see that Zefir's words had taken the Second Leader aback.

Jarre stirred from his casual repose on one of the cots. "Aye, the dragon speaks a truer truth than you've been spouting, blood-cousin. We must believe in our squad brothers, because the squadron are your wings, and they will help you soar when you feel you are sinking."

Ferrei shook her head, turning to Nyru, who was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. "First, certainly you see the treachery."

Nyru's accustomed scarred grin-grimace twitched. "What I see, Second, is a bored, terrified, and grounded squad ready to tear itself to pieces. We can't let doubts pull us apart. We need a plan in order to strengthen our minds, to give us purpose once more, to escape back home."

Valin nodded, and Jarre gave a gesture that he didn't recognize. But Ferrei responded immediately with the same gesture, which solemnly Zefir imitated. No, not imitate. Likely the dragon knew what it meant.

After they began to talk about their plans, flinging ideas back and forth until they were hoarse, Valin settled back down to his lockcode calculations. Zefir, finished with attempting to join in on the secretive plan when most of his ideas were rejected, settled next to him.

As Jarre continued the argument of his ideas—mostly involving brute strength—Valin asked the dragon, "What was that gesture you made earlier?"

"Oh, this?" Zefir replicated the elegant motion, and even with his intimidating claws the gesture was beautiful. "It means 'we are the shield.' You know, protectors."

"Protectors." There were many ways to shield. "Teach me the motion."

Valin's mind ceased its struggle with his calculations, ceased to worry over Ferrei's obsessive accusations, and even the mystery of the Wheelteeth children and the taste of the Lyth's flatbread.

Perhaps in order to shield his squadron, his small but divisive family, he might indeed have to act as a traitor.

He set his mind to a new task.

Zefir had been lying next to Valin, listening to the steady beat-and-thrum of his human heart in that space between being fully alert and half in his mechanical rest mode. While focused on his calculations, Valin became calm, and the sound of his body mirrored that. It pleased Zefir to hear it, and it soothed him into a semblance of his mechanical sleep as night wore on. But while Valin continued to scribble numbers and letters (though what business letters had with numbers he would never know), Zefir became aware of his Navigator's distress. Valin's heart began to thump, his breathing uneven as if holding his breath against an idea. Even the scent of him changed slightly, and Zefir raised his head to chuff at the air, noting the slight tang of worry-fear.

"Is something the matter?" Zefir asked quietly.

His Navigator shook his head. "Just tired is all."

"You can tell me you know. About whatever's bothering you." Zefir glanced sideways at the cots, but the squad was sleeping soundly in the dead of night. Even Nyru was snoring loudly. "I promise I won't tell anyone else."

Valin raised his gaze from the scratches on the floor, blinking. There were sleepless rings around his eyes. "Nothing's bothering me, Zef."

"No, something's wrong. I can hear it—" Zefir poked Valin's chest with a gentle wingtip, "—here. You can tell me, Valin. Or don't you trust me?"

His Navigator opened his mouth, uncertain, struggling for words. And that hurt, just a little.

"I do trust you, Zef." Valin tossed an errant rock in the middle of his calculations and rubbed at his tired eyes. "But you don't need to know my troubles."

Maybe Valin thought him too childish to understand. Or maybe, Valin didn't want the squad to know of his worries, and thought they might overhear, thought Ferrei might accuse him again.

"Okay," Zefir said slowly. "But if you ever need to talk of it, then I'll be here. Promise me if ever your worries become too heavy, that you'll tell me."

"Thank you, my friend." His Navigator smiled wanly, but it grew into a genuinely amused tight-lipped smile. "You're growing up. You know that, don't you?"

Zefir nudged him with his nose, and Valin patted him with that same look of wonder the Nav had when he'd first set eyes on Zefir. "Is that bad?"

Valin chuckled. "Not at all. It only means that one day I'll miss the child you were, but be proud of the man—" and Zefir snorted at that, "—er, dragon you've become."

Zefir could feel his cheeks warm a little. Mother hadn't said anything about giving him the ability to blush. But then again she hadn't told him about crying either.

With a playful pounce, Zefir scooped up his Navigator into his hands and settled Valin into the crook of his dragon-arm as he lay back down. Valin chuckled, but made no move to extract himself, eyes already lidded.

"I'll keep watch," Zefir said quietly.

Before he'd finished the sentence, Valin had already fallen asleep.

It was sometime later that Zefir listened to the sound of his squad sleeping, noting the rattling notes of Nyru's snores, the quiet wheeze-whistle of Jarre's breathing, and the tossing motions of Ferrei's disturbed sleep.

His squadron.

We are the shield. It was a notion that made him think of all the ways he might shield, not himself, or the whole Clan even, but the squad. The squad who was here because of him, who might be harmed, or forever imprisoned.

Zefir didn't know how, but he wouldn't allow that to happen.

"I am the shield," he whispered.

Glancing up from his Navigator, Zefir saw Ferrei's eyes watching him in the darkness. He made the gesture to her with his free hand, careful lest he jostle Valin. She studied him for a long moment, silent, before she returned the gesture and closed her eyes.

The wolf leader was opening the door, and Zefir watched the cog-wheel keys twist in place with a narrowed gaze, stifling a rumble in his chest. The squad was still asleep in this early twilight before dawn, and though Zefir remembered all of the ways in which Jarre and even Ferrei had suggested they overpower the woman and her guards, he quickly dismissed the idea as he had before.

If they broke the parole they'd given, and failed to escape, then the Wheelteeth might hurt them. And Zefir wasn't convinced he could protect the entire squad against such a thing.

Valin stirred at the sound, but it was Ferrei who leapt to her feet first, blinking her eyes of sleep.

The door opened, and the stoic guards entered, aeropistols casually holstered at their hips. The wolf leader marched into their prison, face still hidden by her pseudo-metallic flight mask. But something in her stance suggested that she was aggravated; Zefir sniffed at the air, hoping to detect a new scent from her, as she always smelled faintly like Zefir himself—that of metal and others scents from Mother's lab—and like Seren.

Valin strode toward her only for the wolf woman to raise her hand to halt him. "Not today, Techworker Eight."

"Seven," Valin corrected mildly. But Zefir could hear the surprised jump of the Navigator's heart.

So Valin hadn't given the wolf leader his bloodline name?

"Today," her voice buzzed from behind the strange flight mask, that odd sound that made Zefir cock his head to the side, "I'm here for the dragon."

Ferrei stalked forward and planted herself between his considerable breadth and the wolf leader. Zefir was surprised when Ferrei's hands curled into fists, stood her ground, and said, "You're not doing anything with the dragon. We're tasked with keeping him safe, and our parole, our oath, depends on it."

The wolf leader made a casual gesture with her gloved hands and the guards lifted their aeropistols. "I mean him no harm, Navigator. Stand down, or I'll consider it breaking your given parole."

Zefir stomped forward, snorting, his insides heating; he curled a hand around Ferrei's body and gently lifted her—astonished and squirming—before she realized his clawed hands had left no damage. Setting her down behind the bulk of his side next to Valin, he unfurled his wings to their utmost length and bared his teeth at this wolf woman who would dare to threaten one of his squad. Even Ferrei, who hated him.

No, especially Ferrei. Because even though she hated him, she was bravely defending him, holding to her duty and oath.

He angled his neck and stuck his snout to within a hairsbreadth of the wolf leader's face and puffed a hot waft of air at her; she didn't flinch, didn't stir or show any fear; he couldn't smell anxiety on her, nor could he detect the sound of her heartbeat.

"You've made your point," she said. "Be done with this childish stand, and come with me now."

He furled his wings back to his side, still shielding Ferrei and Valin, arching his neck primly as his voice deepened, "So be it."

At another gesture from the wolf leader, one of the guards went to the door and pressed a hidden series of levers in a panel that drew aside—cogs whirred, metal clanked, and the small door widened, folding back on itself until it was large enough to admit even Zefir's bulk.

Nyru still sat calmly on her cot, arm hanging casually over her knee. But her mouth contorted her scar, making her countenance frightening. "Leader, don't make me do something so crass as to threaten you."

Jarre chuckled and cracked his knuckles, grinning as he flexed his large muscles. "Oh, I'd like to threaten. Oh, please let me threaten."

The wolf woman made a sharp downward motion. "He will be well, Kerlan."

The First Leader didn't give any indication of surprise, but Zefir could hear her held breath. So, like Valin, Nyru hadn't given any whisper of her bloodline name.

The wolf woman spun on heel and left the prison, making no further comment.

Head held high, Zefir paced out of the docking-wide doors and followed after.

Read Part 9: The Wolf

The Clockwork Dragon #7: To Repair or Destroy

2016-06-01T03:00:00.000-07:00

For the fifth day in a row, the wolf leader had come for him.

Still wearing the flight mask, the Clan leader entered their locked door with only a spare knock to alert the prisoners to her presence. Clad in reddish flying leathers, neck covered with a flying scarf, gloves hiding her hands, Valin still couldn't discern any true details about her.

His fellow prisoners quickly got to their feet. Ferrei the quickest, her movements smooth and predatory, her baleful silence aimed equally at the enemy and at Valin. Jarre simply crossed his massive muscled arms over his hard-rock mountain of a chest, eyes narrowed. And Nyru casually got to her feet as if unconcerned, the scar on her cheek contorting her expression into a half a challenging grin, and half grimace.

And Zefir still bristled, his wings unfurling, head cocked as if deciding on how best to roast the wolf leader without charring everyone in the cavern.

"Come Navigator of the war dragon," said the wolf leader, gesturing elegantly. Perhaps their own Nav sign language.

For the first two days, Zefir had snatched Valin up into his hands, hiding the Navigator behind his broad wings and growling like a feral beast. Now on the fifth day, Zefir paced nervously from one side of the cavern to the other, darting hateful glances at the woman who held them captive. But at Valin's insistence, the dragon reluctantly let him go with her.

Nyru gestured: eye watchful, downslide three degrees.

A common enough flight direction, but in the Nav language it meant more. Study the enemy. Get behind her guard.

"Of course, leader," he said mildly, more to Nyru than to the wolf-face.

He paced out of the combination lock doors to their well furnished and comfortable prison, and though he had studied the intricate cog-placement, timed the rotations, the combination was still beyond him.

The wolf leader paced silently beside him. As she had for five days. And for the past two days, their food had been given to them in a bowl large enough for only one person, much less four. They had rationed out the thin noodle and meat-paste stew.

Pacing beside her, stomach wrenching, Valin had to admit that the Wheelteeth's stronghold was not only enormous in comparison to the Cog Clan's caverns, but had been intricately carved out of the granite heart of the mountain. Feldspar-flecked spirals had been painstakingly chiseled into doorways, symbols he could only assume were bloodline affiliations, and the vaulted ceilings had been precisely water-and-steam blasted. Or perhaps controlled explosions had made the intimidating archways overhead.

They walked through the mess hall, and the smell of the roasted wild meat flanks made his stomach protest. Techworkers, only identified by the smudges of oil on their cheeks, and wearing no grey-and-red or brown uniforms to show their level, sat next to the very same Navigators Valin had fought but days ago. All ate with a hearty vigor, exchanging gossip, and in a few cases showed a startlingly open affection—Valin couldn't tell who was bloodbonded or more casual mates.

Children sat next to their elders, but he couldn't identify to whom they belonged, or to what bloodline they hailed from. Stooped old ones were given preference at the heads of long tables, and they ate from the flatbread plate before passing it to the next person.

Such...chaos. That was the only word that sprang to mind. Everything out of place. Where were the servers for the Navs? Why were the tech workers, and yes, vat-scrubbers too, mingled side-by-side with others?

"Why did you bring me here?" he asked the wolf-face, not expecting an answer. She hadn't answered him with more than tsking noises each day she took him from the prison's confines.

"To see your enemy," she answered. The carved wolf flight-mask seemed to shimmer. Anticipation? "To see what your Clan was like so very, very long ago."

"We're nothing like this." Even as he spoke the words they seemed true, yet untrue.

"Of course not, techworker." She gestured with her leather gloved hands. "Wonder if our flatbread tastes as good as your grandmeres?"

So, she had puzzled out his origins. Perhaps the saying was true: Blood always tells.

Valin smiled wryly. "The correct answer is always that your grandmere's flatbread is better. But a Nav such as yourself wouldn't know that. You eat with utensils."

"Do we?" The malleable ceramic-like wolf-face peered at him, and she gestured. "I've helped the cooks myself a time or two. Recipe's from the famine years when we made the flatbread out of the only grain we had left, which I am proud to say we stole from one of your Lesser Clans in the valley."

And he noticed that no one ate with utensils, not even those in their reddish flight jackets. "The famine years occurred long before my grandmeres were born."

"So they did. Your Inventrix had decided that the best way to cripple her enemy was to make them hungry. Ground forces set fire to our fields in the middle of our worst drought and we nearly lost everything." The bitterness seemed absent in her voice, but Valin gathered information with his eye too. Her spine had stiffened, her gloved hands rolling in and out of fists. "Luckily for us that year, one of her weaknesses is spare moments of compassion. She wouldn't have let the children starve, your oh-so clever Inventrix. But demanded we surrender them to her."

Valin shook his head. "It was the Wheelteeth who had attacked the Cog Clans first—"

"Do pay attention, boy," she snapped. Loudly. Her altered voice buzzed from behind the mask. "Do not spew the rote memorization of your so called 'histories.' Remember your lessons on the past, but remember who tells them. What is it that you think she did with our children, hmm?"

Several in the mess hall were watching them, the children gently shushed.

He had never heard such a thing. Taking in the enemy...even if they were children...he had never been taught that anything or the sort occurred.

"Think, boy!" Her body was tightly coiled, her anger making her frame shudder.

When he lapsed into silence, she looked as if she might give vent to her rage and strike him. Instead, she made a dismissive gesture, sharp and curt. "Not as clever as I thought. Come, then. Back to your prison."

She whirled around, never fully turning her back to him. But her haughty stance told him the wolf-faced leader expected him to follow meekly behind her.

Instead, he turned in the opposite direction and strode for the nearest long table. The grandmere at the head, a wrinkled, pleasant-faced woman narrowed her eyes at him, saying in the accented dialect of the Wheelteeth, "If you think to intimidate us, scum, then—"

"Apologies, grandmere." While interrupting an elder went against his deepest instinct, he held up a soothing palm to her, and bowed at his lowest. "I only wish to beg a piece of bread from you."

She looked ready to spit out a denial, but she paused, mouth half-open in stunned surprise. A struggle proceeded to make its way across the planes of her weathered face, from anger, to disbelief, and finally to weighty consideration. "How does one like you know how to ask for starvation bread?"

Valin felt like his calculated effort had revealed more than he had even intended. He dropped to one knee, both chaffing to give honored obeisance to that which he named as enemy, and feeling like any elder, even a Wheelteeth, deserved such respect. "Honored elder, I didn't know. I only know that my fellow prisoners and I have not eaten in two days. If you denied me, I would still be hungry and I will have lost nothing by asking."

Her clear eyes still pondered his kneeling form. Weighing. "So you didn't know that once someone asks for food, no one would ever deny a plate of bread even to your ilk?"

"No, honored elder."

"It is our way, the compassion of the famine times," she said, lifting her chin to those gathered around her. "Let us show the honor of the Wheelteeth, as one hungry has so honored me to beg askance. And as we are blessed this year with plenty," she gestured, old arthritic hands still making the motion both elegant and self-assured, "you may have all of our bread."

Dutifully, men and women passed the plates down the long table, the young woman on the end scraping them onto a single plate that she passed with stiff formality to Valin.

"Fortunately for you," said the grandmere with a challenging baring of teeth, "you happened to ask the Lyths. And we make the best flatbread in all the Clan."

Valin kept his face neutral, barely avoiding a brief smile. "Thank you, Elder Lyth."

The wolf leader was staring, arms crossed. But he felt that he was being scrutinized—praised even—with that hidden stare.

Stomach rumbling, he followed behind the wolf leader and took a bite of the still warm bread.

It tasted just like his own bloodline grandmere's. Even with the extra spiceberry.

What did my Clan do with the children?

No one would talk to him. To take his mind and ears off the sound of their rumbling bellies, Zefir used his claws on the granite, leaving gouges. Enough raking and maybe, just maybe, he would eventually break through their prison...which was a very nice, if sparely furnished prison. But a prison nonetheless.

Ferrei gritted her teeth at the sound of his claws on the rock. "Nyru, for Sun's sake, tell that flyer to stop it!"

Nyru, leaning back on her cot, looking at the array of cards between her and Jarre, made a rude fly in circles gesture. "Tell him yourself. I'm winning."

"Are not," Jarre rumbled, setting down a pair of golden sundisk cards with a broad grin. "Glory be to the winner."

Another Navigator saying. Zefir wished they had one for how to survive boredom and loneliness and worry and—

Zefir turned away from them, panting the excess heat from his constant, frantic movement, piling up his new scoop of rocks. He glanced from the corner of his eye to see Ferrei leap to her feet, crossing the bright skylighted cavern to his little dusky corner.

"Look here, you," she spat, waving to his mess. "Quit it!"

He snaked his neck down to push his face close to hers. "Why? At least I'm doing something to get out of here."

"No you're not, flyer," she growled, taking up a firm stance. "Unless you chisel through the whole bedamned mountain, it's pointless. It's loud. It's driving me to insanity. And you'll stopright now."

The frustration built in his chest, an aching, uneven hot-cold sensation. He held back—but only just—from roaring in her stupid face.

"Stop it, flyer," she snapped, pointing like the tamers did to their obedient wolf-pups. "Or I'll find a way to bash you apart."

Zefir's tail lashed behind him. He wanted to pounce on her. And...and what? She was part of his squadron, even if she didn't see it that way. He spoke through gritted teeth, "My name's not flyer. Ask me nicely Second Wing Leader, and I will."

He heard Jarre chuckle, though at Ferrei or at Zefir, he didn't know. Nyru lidded her eyes like a sleepy feline, but was watching them with interest.

"I should ask you nicely?" Ferrei's brows rose. "To the one who's to blame for all of us being imprisoned in the heart of the enemy's stronghold?"

"I only surrendered myself," he came back. Calmly, he thought. The way Valin would say it. "I didn't surrender anyone else. You didn't have to come. I didn't want you to."

"Yet the Inventrix wanted us to be here to make sure they didn't ruin her precious battle dragon. So far, what battles have you won? Not worth it to have you around if you ask me. She should've given you over without a fight, 'cause you're useless to us and will be to the bedamned Wheelteeth." Ferrei made a gesture that Zefir had learned from Jarre, which brought into question ones lineage. And that meant Mother. "The Inventrix made a mistake with you."

Now his core did feel cold. "Maybe she did."

Ferrei seemed not to have expected that, and she began half-talking to the rock wall. "Talking flyers aren't right. An abomination."

"Maybe you're right about that too." Zefir retreated to his messy corner, curled up in the rubble, and lay amongst the uncomfortable rocks. "I caused this. And I am sorry. I didn't mean for it to happen. None of it." The hitch in his voice made his diaphragm-ballonet tremble, "I lost half the squadron because I couldn't fly high enough above the gryphons. I can now. And I killed a lot of the gryphons this time—" Valin had cleaned all of the mechanical oil and, well, other things off of his brass hide. But Zefir wasn't as naïve as Valin thought him; it wasn't all oil. "—and I thought I was doing the right thing. But it didn't prove anything. It didn't bring the lost ones back from the sundisk. It didn't matter."

Ferrei took a step back, mouth open in confusion. "I..." She shook her head, struggling, and automatically recited another Navigator credo, "Strike so your Clan may live."

Jarre and Nyru were studious in looking at their cards and nowhere else. No doubt they blamed him too.

He placed his head between his hands and flexed his wings to cover himself. "But if both Clans say that, then who wins?"

Ferrei shook her head, grunting. "You don't understand, flyer."

"Go on. I'll be quiet now. No more scraping. Promise. I'll not say another word to you." Zefir puffed out a cold breath. "I'm sorry, Ferrei. I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

The squad's Second stared at him in confused disbelief, shaking her head. She cut a dismissive gesture through the air and made her way over to her own cot, sat down on it, and raked her fingers through her Nav-short hair.

Nyru nudged her chin at Jarre, who dutifully picked up his set of cards. They both walked toward him until Jarre planted himself on the floor in front of Zefir's nose, and Nyru delt him a hand-set of cards while perching herself on the largest rock.

Nyru had never done something like that before.

"I...don't know how to play," Zefir started.

"Fly me backward, if I believe that," Jarre said, situating the cards. "You've been watching, you learn quick, you know how." He turned to Nyru and pointed at Zefir. "Picked up all of our best curses in an hour. Learned the Nav signs in a day. Like he was born to it."

He picked up the cards and flashed them at Zefir: Sundisk, ten of cups, five of wolves, six of thopters, one of tech, then set them on the stone between Zefir's hands, face down.

Nyru studied her own cards. "You do want to play, don't you? What else would you rather be doing?"

In the air, all of the First Leader's directions had been to Valin, not to Zefir. On the ground, she looked at him, but didn't talk to him much. Had never used his name even.

"I'd rather be flying." He grinned at her, before worrying that she might misinterpret it.

"Damn, dragon, we'd all rather be flying." Her scarred cheek jumped, and he couldn't tell if she were smiling at him or not. "Ah, flying. It's probably something else altogether for you. But do you know what my best flight was?"

Zefir shook his head, nose close, and Jarre held his cards back with a teasing, "No cheating by peeking."

"The first time I ever took my boy up in the air," she said, gaze distant, her mouth curling up into a real smile. "My bloodson couldn't wait. Neither could his same-age cousins. But that day was perfect. He handled the take off without a hitch, let 'er glide just so on the updrafts. Better'n I was at that age. The sun was shining, so warm, the breeze easy enough to where we took off our flight masks."

The bloodson that had been lost in that disastrous fight. The fight that was Zefir's fault. Oh, how she must hate me. Like Ferrei does.

"What's yours, dragon?" she asked, placing down a three of thopter card.

He adjusted his wings as if he could feel the air beneath them as he soared, but he slumped them to his side again. "All of my flights. Even the bad ones. Even the ones where I failed. Even the ones where I was so scared..."

Nyru made a harrumph noise. "I say this, Zefir, to all my squad. And I realize now, that I hadn't included you in this little talk. My oversight as First."

She'd called him by name. Zefir tensed his wings.

"Being afraid is a feeling. Like being angry, or happy. It's normal to feel, especially in the air when we fight. Understand?"

Slowly, Zefir nodded.

"But right now, I feel regret." Her scarred cheek pulled downward. "I had been training you and your Navigator wrong. Never mind that your tech qualities are far beyond my thopter skills. I'd been thinking of you wrong. Not as part of my squad, but as an accessory, as a flyer, a piece of tech. In these past five days, I've learned more of you than I ever have." And she shot a look in Ferrei's corner. "And my Second is wrong. You're not a mistake. Just not what we expected you to be."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be," Zefir said lowly. "Mother said—"

"She's not here now, Zefir," the First Leader said. "Even she can't tell you what you're supposed to be. You've no bloodline purpose, so even that gives you choice."

Zefir blinked, his mind whirling over her words. "I don't know what I want to be, either."

Jarre slapped his meaty palm against the rock. "Rock dragon, excavator."

Zefir tapped one of the cards lightly with a claw, but his claw pierced it anyhow. He lifted it, knowing which card he played: the sundisk, the highest one in the deck.

"Strong lead," said the First Leader, plucking it off of his claw tip. "You always lead off strong, dragon. Even in the air. Sometimes, you need to save it for later."

Zefir wanted to press his nose against her chest to listen more closely to her steady heartbeat, to read her better—he had memorized her sound-scent profile long ago—but the First Leader wasn't the type to allow such a thing. But she would appreciate directness and candor. He met her eye. "I'm sorry, Nyru. About your bloodson. Denaru was an excellent Nav. I liked him."

Ferrei rose from her cot and fled to the farthest corner, pacing.

"If I had been faster—" Zefir began, wishing he weren't looking Nyru directly in the eye.

She held up her palm. "If I had called the retreat sooner. If I had deployed a backup wing before we left. If, if, if. One's mind can grow heavy with ifs, Zefir. Don't let it weigh you to the ground." Her mouth quirked. "As we're all so fond of flying, being grounded is the worst."

"How about," Jarre began, held up his next card, "I ground both of you into dust with my play." Jarre poked Zefir's nose. "Said no peeking."

Zefir snorted and the card flew from Jarre's hand. It flittered in the air, Zefir keeping it from the ground by subtle puffs of breath, until Jarre caught it. He flashed it: ten of techs.

Meant to fix anything already on the table, taking away the other player's advantages to even the odds.

Zefir wondered if maybe he, the so-called battle dragon, was meant to repair rather than destroy.

Read Part 8: We Are The Shield

The Clockwork Dragon #6: Was It Within You All Along?

2016-05-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

Upon the back of the thopter ready to lift off, Seren watched the brass dragon fly upward, enraptured by Zefir's effortless movement. Her mind calculated—the equations flittering by at such a speed, tangling beautifully as she thought each one into being, seeing the world in their exacting terms: the arc of his flight (calculate the rate of speed), the apex of the upward stroke of his wings (one percent from stretching to his utmost), and even the length of time it would take the sunlight to glint off of his bright brass hide and reach her eye.

"Ah, you didn't tie his ability for fire just to anger," Seren said quietly, seeing the bright orange flame shoot from Zefir's mouth. "I see that now, yes, quite brilliant. Hmm, love is so complex, even I have difficulties with the variables."

Mirena's mind tangled inside of Seren's own, the microcogs binding them ticking in sympathetic resonance; Seren halted some of the equations, knowing even her mirror wouldn't understand the complexity, the euphoric chaos of the way she saw the world. Seren shied away, worried how easy it was to harm her mirror-kin with her own thoughts—

"Lissteri," Mirena said softly.

The inventor's tongue pulled at her, each syllable full of information. The 'L' sound—length times ten, the 'iss' meaning connected as if through a conduit, the 'ter' the time for the connection to be made, and the 'i' the infiniteness of such a connection.

The word they'd created to mean what they were to one another. Not just a mirror created to be three—Mirena for her balanced completeness, composed of both the inventor's mind with the qualities of a leader, Seren for her imperturbable ability to see the world in terms of pure creation, and their third—

"Please, Seren," her sister whispered. "Don't even think her name."

"We three complete," said Seren, the memory of her own words drifting up from two hundred and two years past. But she shied away from it—difficult when the memory beckoned. There were so many that drew her down into the pits of her own recollections, for there were so many variables to puzzle in the past.

Seren focused on Zefir again, his form arrowing above all of the smaller forms. "He is undoubtedly your best work."

"It took my all to create him." Mirena was urging the thopter through its warm-up, its feet galloping to launch skyward. "It broke me. The memory locks have happened twice since. The slide was inevitable, and Zefir is proof. It might not be long before I can't...come out of it. The end is close."

"Having me around won't help," Seren said sadly, and then thinking of working next to her mirror once more, the pure act of creation with another, and she brightened. "I can help you make him siblings. But I won't make them with any of Zefir's secondary traits."

Her mirror twisted to look behind her in the Second Control seat, and raised a cool brow. "Secondary?"

"You know, all of the war-like traits. The flame. The claws—like sickle-swords they are."

"I made him to fight," her mirror said sternly. "As he's doing even now to protect us. Those are his primary traits."

Seren didn't need to touch her mirror's mind in order to know Mirena was lying to herself, and quite well, lending to years of practice in that arena. She shook her head at Mirena's stubbornness. "He calls you Mother. I rather think those were his first words, hmm? If you only wanted a battle creature, you didn't need to give him the ability to love you."

Her mirror glared at Seren through her flight goggles as the thopter was aloft. "Your defect allows for such emotions, which would only impede my other abilities. I didn't give him that because—not for me...I didn't need it aimed at me."

Seren began to laugh. She could hear the music scales in her own laughter, and loving music as she did for the unique maths contained within, her voice trailed higher until she was breathless. "You're changing. It is a sign of your failing, like I am, but you can truly feel it now. Your loneliness. It was there, inside all along. How glorious that you're failing has allowed you to understand the true meaning of that empty sensation."

Mirena muttered wryly, "Pos'i."

Pos—positive, certain, an elek-charge. I—infinity, self.

Always positive.

Seren had difficulty hearing wry tones in other's voices, so she chose to believe it as stated. Always positive. And perhaps then, Mirena was the negative side. Like two magnetic rocks reaching for one another, compelled because they were opposites.

Not two. Three.

Both Seren and Mirena looked upward, sensing the pull of their third in the fight above them.

Valin tucked himself close to Zefir's body as the dragon flew higher, his flight mask pumping a small amount of pure air to invigorate him for the battle. The giddy-terrified feeling made his limbs tingle; behind him he saw three ketch gryphons, talon-locks outstretched to drag them down. After another five-hundred meters, the gryphons and the Navigators upon their backs reached the apex of their ability to fly this high, and fell behind.

Valin adjusted the temperature controls and supplied more air to Zefir's chest, the diaphragm-ballonet inflating rapidly. But he could feel it—the utmost height they could attain, and through his microcog-hearing implant he said to Zefir, "Now! Dive!"

This time there was no hesitation. No protests about needing to climb higher. Valin showed Zefir the direction through the panel, what degree of drop was best, and Zefir pivoted in mid-air, tucking himself, before following a downward arc.

Valin's stomach flew into his throat as Zefir pointed himself like an arrow, diving faster—faster—the shapes of the gryphons now close. He reached into the saddlebags and palmed one of the hand-sized fire-bombs, the ceramic ice cold in his gloved hand. The liquid within would explode on contact, but only if the ceramic shattered.

Zefir rumbled at the formation below them and when he opened his mouth—an explosively loud roar came from him.

Along with a stream of orange-hot flame.

Valin inhaled sharply in surprise.

The flame caught and engulfed one of the small gryphons; it tumbled from the sky, end over end, a blackened ruin...along with the Nav controlling it.

The heat seared along Valin's face, making it through the flight mask. Warnings flared all along the control panel, heat spiking, the cooling veins overtaxed. Zefir needed to draw great gulps of air to help with the heat, but was holding his breath as he dived.

Valin steadied the dragon's temp as best he could. Gryphons were desperately trying to scatter from their path. Aiming, Valin chucked the fire-bomb as one gryphon flapped its odd feathered wings; it caught and the creature was engulfed in the liquid—the percussive force of the explosion rocked him in his seat.

Zefir roared again, and Valin could see the temps even out. Strapped to his seat, he half stood upon the dragon's back and hurled the fire-bombs at the struggling gryphons, noting belatedly that none of the enemy shot back—not even with aeropistols. Valin had been grazed several times to know the air-powered flechettes were deadly, but none in the Wheelteeth squadron were carrying them.

Half a dozen of the enemy's squadron fell from the sky from the bombs, but there were still so many left that Zefir went to work with his teeth and claws.

Something was off.

This close, Valin could see the eerie flight masks the Wheelteeth wore. Patterned like a grinning skull, the airtube connections snaked from the tooth-like mouth. Even as he watched one Wheelteeth Nav send his gryphon's legs to clamp down on Zefir, the dragon pivoted at the direction Valin indicated—and Valin hurriedly adjusted flow to his wings—as Zefir's claws slashed through the gryphon's prettily feathered wings.

Zefir didn't stop there. Twisting mid-air as none of the small, easily maneuverable gryphons could, the dragon tore through the Wheelteeth squadron with an eager ferocity. His teeth ripped apart the machine flyers, until machinery liquid caked his brass hide. Those Navs still strapped to the wreckage tumbled from the sky.

More and more Valin had to fight with the controls to keep Zefir's inner workings cool.

Some unheard signal thrummed through the enemy. Those remaining swooped downward, flying desperately back toward the east.

Zefir trembled and began to chase after them, but Valin signaled a halt. The dragon resisted, still flying with his rapid strokes when Valin barked, "Enough, Zefir. They're retreating."

"If I rip them all apart," Zefir growled through their connection, "then they won't come back. Wounded men may return, but dead men don't."

One of the many sayings of the Clan Navigators.

"No," Valin said, spotting a lone gryphon making tight circles below them. "Something's off. It could be a trap. And the one below us is likely their squad leader."

"Cut off the head, and the body withers," Zefir rumbled.

Yet another Navigator proverb. And Valin had to wonder if Zefir was simply mimicking, or if he understood the implications of what he uttered. Cheerless thoughts grew inside of him, knowing that the dragon's child-like naivety would never last. Zefir was built to learn and grow, but Valin wasn't certain he liked the lessons the dragon was learning.

He found himself repeating the Inventrix's words. "Did you learn that, or was it within you all along?"

The dragon hesitated and looked down at himself, seeing the machine-liquids splattered along his brass hide, though Valin wasn't convinced the dark liquid was all from the gryphons. The dragon's teeth had been rather indiscriminate between the machines and those directing the machines.

"But," Valin said, "if we capture the leader, we could learn important information. Now, hurry. Before it gets away."

Turning at the angle Valin showed him, Zefir began to dive once more.

Though the gryphons couldn't hover, the Wheelteeth squad leader was making almost lazy circles as its fellows retreated. It was wrong. An invitation. One too good to pass up. Valin's insides itched with the wrongness of it all; when Zefir was a mere two wingbeats away from the enemy gryphon, Valin signaled the dragon to pull up, shouting, "Abort!"

The enemy squadron leader was pointing a large rifle at them—no not an aerorifle. But even as Zefir darted to the side, barely arresting his downward plunge, Valin heard the rifle—no cannon—roar out. What sprang from its maw was a tight ball of cable. A net, which opened over them. They enclosed Zefir's spread wings, the weights on the ends twirling together with magnets. They began to plunge; Zefir roared in fear, desperately trying to untangle his wings from the net. But the metallic cables held fast against his raking claws.

The cables pressed against Valin's body, painfully tight. The enemy squad leader, the flight mask in the shape of a fierce wolf, moved the controls and swooped down after them. The gryphon's ketch-feet clamped on the top of the cable, arresting their plunge only slightly. But Valin saw other, hidden gryphons taking off from the ground—another squadron!—who with swiftness of their machine-kind reached Zefir. Ten gryphons clamped their feet to the net.

And began to carry them toward the east.

Valin's mouth was dry, his stomach in his throat. He wasn't certain how far they'd been taken, but the terrain below them was no longer the bright grasslands surrounding their valley territory, but dots of dark green pine trees began to appear. The edges of the disputed zone.

The whirring sound of a ornithopter bomber impugned itself on his ears. No, not just one thopter, but several, and...something quicker. The whirl of engines roared, deafening, and Zefir managed to crow, "Our squad!"

The other sounds then, were the sparrowhawks—hawklings as the Clan's Navs called them affectionately. One-person flyers, lightning fast, tight to maneuver, but hard to control in high winds.

One hawkling darted around the gryphons straining to keep Zefir aloft, and the dragon cried, "Ferrei!"

The hawkling's beak was open to fire flechettes, but the Navigator hesitated. Instead its diamond-tipped claws sliced through one gryphon, before darting away. A single thopter flew in its pattern toward them, but managed to chart a course around the net in looping circles. He could see his Inventrix stand in her seat, straps straining to keep her in place.

Her voice boomed outward, somehow amplified through the thopter's systems; he wondered, his techwork mind seeking out all of the ways that sound could be enhanced. For it was better than pondering his death at the hands of the enemy.

"You take him," the Inventrix boomed, "and I won't cease until I tear you from the sky. You and all your flyers."

The enemy squadron leader chuckled, the flight mask both enhancing and distorting her voice, "This same squad fled from me last time. What makes you think their cowardly streaks won't make them flee again?"

Zefir struggled at that, a deep growl beginning inside.

"Shoot at me," said the enemy, "and you'll hit your creation. Shoot at me, and I'll dump him to the ground."

"Out of spite," the Inventrix said, chin raised. "You'd really destroy something so wonderfully built only to keep him from me. Something you long to own for yourself."

Valin recognized her cold, imperious tone and knew he had to do something. He spoke lowly over his implanted connection to the dragon, "Zef? Can you concentrate your flame?"

He felt the dragon twitch his shoulder blades once. Yes.

"I know if you flame them, we'll fall. But the squad might catch us before we hit the ground."

Zefir shuddered, his entire body trembling in fear. Two twitches. No. So the dragon knew the chances of their being caught were minimal. Valin had calculated the chances and the distance to the ground, and they would splatter long before...

Valin knew it was their only chance.

Or perhaps not. They could surrender.

Shame burning bright in his chest, stomach unsettled from the self-loathing at the mere idea, he felt Zefir's sides swell as the dragon drew in air; he dragon's systems were heating up, his very skin hot to the touch.

Valin uttered a taught, "No, Zef."

The dragon rumbled but released no more than a flicker through the netting.

Choosing to save Zefir, if not himself, Valin raised his voice, "We will surrender to you on one condition!"

The silence that followed gnawed at him; he looked to the hawkling buzzing by and saw Ferrei's gesture in the Nav sign language: the sun beckons. Was that the fatalistic opinion that he kill himself rather than be caught?

"Valin," barked the Inventrix, her stern face covered by the blank flight mask. "If you dare—"

"The conditions!" he called to the wolf-faced leader. "The dragon will not be dismantled, tested, or otherwise harmed."

The enemy nodded, an odd chuckle coming from it.

Zefir inhaled, and for a moment Valin was certain the dragon would release a gout of flame despite Valin's warning. Zefir's baritone voice rumbled deeper, sounding nothing like the youngster Valin thought him. "Condition two!"

Some of the gryphons changed their circular flight paths, startled like a flock of birds scattering. Valin couldn't help but grin. See that he's no mere machine flyer!

"My Navigator," Zefir said, raising the astonishing might of his voice, "will not come to harm, nor will he be parted from me for any reason. If you dare to hurt him—I-I'll rip you all apart!"

The wolf-face regarded the dragon for minutes, an agony of eons. Or so it seemed. "Fair enough. You conditions are binding. Give your word. I require your parole, so swear upon the sundisk if its pleases you, that you'll not attempt to escape."

He could hear Ferrei's scream of "traitor!" And the Inventrix's bellow of "halt!" to the rest of the squadron.

Bile rising, Valin managed, "I so give my parole."

More flame flickered from Zefir's mouth; his quicksilver eyes narrowed to slits. "Me too."

Like a guinea fowl in a hunter's sack, Zefir ceased to struggle, trussed beneath the gryphons. How he itched to release flame, his insides heating so much that his eyes watered. The squad, his squad, was so close he wanted to call out their names. Ferrei, who never liked him, buzzed about them effortlessly in her hawkling single-flyer. Jarre could be seen in his thopter on point in the middle of the triangular flight formation, with First Leader Nyru at the head.

Mother moved her bomber closer. Zefir could almost reach out and touch her. Seren in the Second Control seat rose from her straps and—

With a leap—a giggle exploding from her—Seren was airborne for but a minute. Then the metal cable fell beneath her hands, her toes tucked quickly between the spaces; she shimmied her lithe, small body between the net's cables; without word Zefir held out his hands and she rested herself on them. When she plopped down to sit, he curled his fingers around her and cradled her close to his chest.

Why were these humans always leaping about in the air? It made his breaths fall unevenly, his heart stuttering. He wanted to let out a curse, but kept it inside. Damn these wingless ones. Why are they so little and fragile?

Seren grinned up at him. "Ah now, dear dragon, no nonsense about how I shouldn't be jumping around in the air. I'm an Inventrix. I calculated the distance to perfection."

"But why did you do it?" He curled his fingers tighter around her, careful lest his claws twitch. "Are you surrendering?"

She shook her head. "The word surrender stems from the ancient's word to 'give up.' I'm not giving up anything. So, I'm not surrendering. And neither are you. You haven't given up Valin. Or me."

His glared at the winged shapes above. "I've given up home. And Mother."

And if it would keep Valin from harm, then he would bow to the enemy a hundred times again.

"Have you truly?" He didn't understand the searching look she gave him, as she reached up to touch his cheek. "They'll be with you, even when you're not with them. Yes? In thought." She jabbed at his broad chest. "The ones you love always are. Even when they're far away."

Zefir cradled her closer. He didn't want her far away. Didn't want anyone far away. Certainly not fleeing to the sundisk, this 'paradise' the squad was always talking about.

Seren pointed to Mother's thopter. "I'd clean forgotten what her rage looked like. Look, Zefir. It's for you. Oh, she's altering, failing, but look at how beautiful the change."

Mother buzzed by, keeping the bomber in a tight circle as she stood in her seat. "Condition three!"

Zefir wished that he could see what reaction the enemy squad leader had to the vision of Mother making more demands. He couldn't help but offer up a hearty smile at how fierce she looked, her flight mask dangling from her face, sharp features creased in cold calculation.

Zefir grinned his broad dragon grin, knowing it frightened others. Mother is furious! Be wary, enemy!

Mother gestured in the flight-language for leader gives command, watch and act. "At my command, the first leader, second, and third of this squad will go as well. They will make certain you adhere to the conditions you've laid out. They will give their parole, and will not harm any of you or yours unless you break the terms we've agreed upon."

That hadn't been what he expected. Zefir heard Valin, still perched in his flight seat on Zefir's back, whisper a surprised, "No."

"Fair enough," said the enemy.

Zefir could hear the amusement in the wolf-person's voice.

He watched as three flyers—Nyru, Jarre, and Ferrei left the rigid lines of their own formation and followed the Wheelteeth flying toward the eastern mountain's rise.

Read Part 7: To Repair or Destroy

"The Star-Tailed Fox" Read For Free at On The Premises!

2016-05-11T13:54:00.001-07:00

You can read my short story The Star-Tailed Fox at On the Premises, where it won First Place for their theme of "Changes."

You can read it online for free HERE.

While I'm proud of all my published stories, I'm particularly proud of this one, which is based on a true-life story my Grandma told me about her youth. Though she never got to read this story, I'd like to think she'd be proud of this one too.

The Clockwork Dragon #5: Abominations

2016-05-11T03:00:00.000-07:00

The ornithopter bomber dragon was gaining on Zefir, but only because Valin was pushing the whirling engine to its utmost; signal warnings blared; if he kept this up, the thopter would fall from the sky. But part of him worried that if he didn't catch Zefir now, the dragon would never be seen again. This woman who had him, who possibly spoke untruths to his naïve and trusting friend...no matter what the Inventrix said...

He'd lost the dragon's trust.

The nose of the thopter, pointed and triangular, touched the tip of Zefir's brass, flexible hide. The wing-like projections on either side of Zefir's tail tightened for a mere breath in surprise, slowing his steady momentum. Just enough.

Valin unhooked himself from the safety straps, knowing the Inventrix in the Second Control seat would take over flight functions without hesitation.

"Valin, what are you doing?" came her voice over his microcog ear-implant.

Balancing himself, he sprinted along the stiff, unbent neck of the mindless thopter—and saw just how far a drop it would be until he made an intimate greeting with the ground. Even still, heart in his throat, he timed the wingbeats of the thopter versus Zefir's hurried stride—

And he leapt for Zefir's tail.

His hands reached to within a breath of the tail; he scrabbled as if he could make the distance shorter—such reckless miscalculation!—but all that fell through his fingertips was air. Screaming, he began to plummet. The rush of the wind howled around his head, matching the terrified sound being torn from his throat. He wanted to close his eyes; he wanted to flap his arms to arrest his downward plunge.

He saw a flash of brass. And Zefir's face turned downward.

Then he closed his eyes as the tree tops seemed so much closer. The Inventrix's thopter wouldn't make it in time.

An astonishing roar rattled behind the bones of his face, and his eyes flew open. Though his eyes watered behind his flight goggles, he could see Zefir pointing down toward him like an arrow, wings tucked tightly against his side, his legs flat against his stomach. Closer now, Valin windmilled his arms, spiraling; the world was in his sight, then gone leaving sky, then the ground again.

The terror became something else, a certainty: he'd feel the impact, and every bone would shatter before he felt no more.

The top of the nearest tree was merely a man's height away when—

He felt himself being jerked upward, his chin hitting his chest with the violence of the motion. Something sharp grazed across his arm, but he didn't care. Looking upward through the dragon's claws, he saw the expression of terror on Zefir's broad face, felt the hot stream of breath puff from the dragon's brass nostrils.

With his head still taught with fear, all Valin could think to say was: "Um, greetings."

The dragon wouldn't meet his eye, which was interesting in that Zefir's eye was almost the size of Valin's head. It wasn't until he felt air from the backstroke of Zefir's wings that he saw he was on the ground, that the dragon had released him; legs wobbling as if they couldn't hold him up, he staggered, feeling light headed.

Valin blew out a breath. No more falling. His friend had saved him. "Zefir I—"

A massive arm-leg circled about him, and then crushed him to the dragon's chest. The wings, whisper-smooth membranous brass, enfolded him as well; he could hear the rapid tick-thump of Zefir's remarkable mechanical heart, hear the swell of the dragon's ballonet lungs as Zefir attempted to slow his overtaxed circulatory system; Valin could feel the cooling liquid through the thin veins in his wings.

Then, those same wings pushed against him—hard. That snout bumped into his chest hard enough that Valin fell to the ground.

Expression wild, both fury and—fear? relief?—upon those strangely animalistic yet all too human features, Zefir loomed over him as if the dragon would stomp the Valin into the tall grasses of the valley plain. "You—you—idiot!"

Fair enough, Valin thought wryly.

"You could've...killed yourself!" Zefir pranced uncertainly from foot to foot, all four limbs making little hops, and his wings fluttering. "Why would you do that? Mid-flight Navigator changes are forbidden for a reason!"

He sounded like a techwork grandmere, stern and disapproving. And lecturing. Valin had to try hard to keep a wry grin from his mouth at the notion. Also because his mild amusement seemed to clear some of the lingering fear.

How to explain his actions? Well, all of them really. Including why he'd left off being Zefir's Navigator.

Opening his mouth, Zefir stopped him when the dragon let out a rumbling growl, and continued, "And you're no longer my Navigator! So you had no right, no right, to try that! How dare you! You—you-you—" Zefir seemed to struggle to find some sort of mean-spirited epithet, "you Forge n' Fire, Sun-be-damned fool!"

Ah, so Zefir, naïve though he might be, had indeed picked up some of the curses of the Navigators. Or more likely, Jarre had begun to teach the dragon how to, even though the man still felt awkward talking to a flyer.

Valin let out a chuckle, rising to his feet. Zefir's eyes narrowed, smoke curling from his mouth. Before the dragon could turn about, Valin placed his hand up to stall him. "Wait! Yes, you're right. I am a fool."

Another voice intruded on his next words, Valin could see the shadow of someone sitting upon the Navigator's seat through the membranes of Zefir's tense wings. "Silly boys, both of you. Zefir, let your Navigator apologize, then after we should be away. Mirena is close. Usan ila dreqi."

Mirena. The Inventrix's given name. Not that anyone had referred to her as that in over a century. She was simply...the Inventrix. A title, a single person, and a name. The only one that mattered for the Clan.

Zefir settled his wings back to his side, and Valin saw the nature of the Wheelteeth Inventrix, or rather former Inventrix of the enemy. And when she smiled at him with those exact same features of his Inventrix, Valin took an unwilling step back. His Inventrix never smiled, or if she did it was a snort or wry curl of the lips.

"Mirror-kind," Valin whispered, shuddering.

The mirror woman sighed. "I hope, dear Navigator, that there won't be any shouting nonsense about how there can be only one Clan Inventrix alive at a time, or yelling of 'abomination.' Yes?"

Mirror children happened infrequently in Valin's old techwork bloodline, which was proof that it happened naturally. But with Inventrixes, each one was grown in a vat-chamber close to when the old one would expire. An exact mirror. To see one alive at the same time, well, a surprised whisper of "holy metal an' forge" slipped out.

"Hmm, I see why Zefir likes you so," the mirror responded without a trace of mockery. "So adaptable. I'm guessing that's why Mirena chose you for her—tests were they?" She seemed in thought, a wistful smile still hovering over familiar features. "Impertinent, ah, yes, yes I see it. So appealing, your recklessness. Your wildness. Should've been weeded out in the blood, but here it is!"

They way she spoke, even the tenor of it, was so different from his Inventrix. She wasn't what he had been expecting at all. "You can relinquish the dragon now, mirror-kind. I'll not have him consorting with the enemy."

"Enemy?" Zefir snorted. "Seren wouldn't harm a gnat."

So he didn't know what she was. Or had been.

The mirror woman gracefully unhooked herself from the Navigator's seat, stepped upon Zefir's elbow, and leaped to the ground. Closer now, he could see that this mirror was the same age as his Inventrix. At least outwardly.

As she drew closer, he worried that she would attack him, but instead she touched his chest and then drew her ear down to it. Listening. "Ah, that's what she heard. Courage. Good, now—" and she patted him on the arm, "—up on the dragon and we'll be away! Mirena grows too close and Zefir will not leave you here."

"Will too," the dragon muttered. "He's not my Navigator. He wanted to fly a thopter instead. Now he has what he wanted all along."

The mirror—this Seren—blinked. "Oh! Thisis what all the fuss is about?" She took up Valin's hand, and though he had the urge to yank his fingers free from her person, she gently led him toward the dragon like an eager child. "Silly young ones."

Hesitantly, Valin met Zefir's large, round quicksilver gaze, the pupil large enough to engulf his head.

"Go on. Talk. Explain!" Seren encouraged, making shooshing motions at them.

He could see now what the Inventrix meant about this mirror's complete lack of guile being beguiling in and of itself. She patted Zefir on the leg, motioning to Valin. "Tell him, Valin, so he's not so sad. Or lonely."

Zefir—sad? Lonely? Because of him.

When Valin glared at her, wondering if she were collecting intelligence on the Clan, somehow, she plugged her ears with her fingers, saying loudly, "I'll not listen if it makes you feel better. Go on!"

Valin began dubiously. "Zefir, I thought you needed a more experienced Navigator than me. During the battle...I failed you. You're capable of so much, and my inexperience held you back. I thought that perhaps Jarre or Nyru should be your Nav."

"They didn't find me," Zefir stated loftily, curving his neck in a perfect S. "You did. Why would you think anyone is better as my Nav than you? I'm unique, and no one is more experienced at flying with me than you. Yes, with me. Not in control of me. Nyru wouldn't know what to do. She won't even use my name." Then the dragon snorted, blinking his enormous eye with the faintest snick sound of the pseudo-metallic crinkle of Zefir's eyelid. "Is that the only reason you said you didn't want to be my Navigator?"

"Yes," Valin admitted, keeping a wary eye on Seren.

Zefir grinned his dragon grin, flexing his wings, tail flicking in happiness. "Then come. You're my Navigator now and always! Seren fixed me so I can fly higher."

Valin blinked at the whole thing: nearly plummeting to his end, this odd woman who seemed like anything but an enemy, and Zefir happy again.

Adaptable, Seren had said.

Nodding to the dragon with a laugh, he peered off into the distance to see the thopter making a gliding landing.

"Mother!" Zefir cried happily, before he glanced at Seren. "Oh, no. We'll fly away from her, Seren, I promised...Seren?"

The mirror woman stared at the thopter, her body stiff, muttering to herself. Her gaze seemed turned inward, as if in a daydream, or in memory. Slowly, she lowered herself to the grass, sitting like someone leeched of all power to move. Valin could see the Inventrix approach from the thopter, but Zefir leapt in front of Seren, shielding her. Even half-enclosed by Zefir's right wing, Valin could see the woman place her hands to her temples, squeezing her head.

The Inventrix arrived, grimacing as if in pain. "Zefir, whatever she told you about her being a threat to me is untrue. No, I won't lie. Mostly untrue. Don't fly off with her."

The dragon hesitated. "I promised her."

"Please, child," and both Valin and Zefir blinked to hear the Inventrix plead, "do not flee with her. She's been running long enough."

The Inventrix's legs wobbled, and she knelt in the grass. Her face was carved in exhausted lines. Tired. Infinitely tired.

Mother was singing softly at Seren's side, and Zefir's flanks were trembling with indecision. Seren was still rigid, though Valin helped to lay her body down supine in the grass, to Zefir's croaked, "Gently, Valin. Gently."

Mother never sang. Never hummed even during work. The squadron sang after every battle to remember the fallen. He hoped that wasn't what Mother was doing.

Worried to interrupt, Zefir nonetheless stepped closer, his head on level with the two mirrors of one another.

"Can you help her, Mother?"

Mother sighed, placing a shaking hand to her forehead. "There's nothing that can be done when she's in memory lock. It's a beneficial defect that we cultivate for my line, the ability to recollect exact memories at will. It's how we're able to create with such accuracy. She was born with the defect being stronger, and sometimes memory pulls at her when the present becomes too much." Mother placed a gentle hand on Seren's cheek. "I can see now it's only grown worse. It used to work to draw her back when I sang...but that was long ago."

Valin had that look of that was part fascination, part dubiousness. "How long ago, Inventrix?"

"Still calculating, Navigator?" Mother asked. "The questions we pose intrigue you. A puzzle to be solved. And how your wild mind lingers over it. Like I would."

His chin raised. As if she were challenging him. "Does she pose a threat?"

Zefir shook his head. Mother had said she didn't. Not really. "Of course not. Seren was only afraid of hurting Mother for some reason. She was crying and I didn't know what to do."

Valin patted him on the arm soothingly. His Navigator looked like he would ask more questions, but lapsed back into silence. Watching.

Seren breathed in slowly and exhaled in short gasps, but Mother touched her mirror's forehead. Mouth curled in confusion, Seren breathed, "Kirwen?"

Mother shook her head.

"Oh, wait, oh. No!" Seren struggled to sit up, but mother kept a firm hand on her mirror's shoulder. "Mirena, no! You're too close, and I'll drag you down with imun set na."

"Forth-hai an ilan," Mother said matter-of-factly. "I can handle our minds touching for a while, Seren. I'm strong enough now. No longer young and afraid. But it's better if we don't lapse into the inventor's tongue. It's too...logical. Too—"

"Easy," Seren agreed. "But I can still see inside your head, mirror-kin. If I enter memory lock when I do so..."

Zefir saw now why Seren had been so afraid.

Mother had told him while she was building the second version of his wings, before Valin had found him, that she considered gifting him with virul-microcogs, those tiny particles that would connect with another's mind, allowing him to 'read' them in the thousands of tiny ways the body knew emotion; even the elek-pulses in the brain of another would come to him like his own thoughts.

If Mother and Seren both had these microcogs, and their thoughts transferred between one another...he could understand only the sudden shudder that ran through him. It was well that he couldn't feel another person's thoughts like his own.

"Abomination," Valin whispered. Without rancor, Zefir noted. And maybe the way the Navigator's breath caught, a little awe. "Virul-microcogs were destroyed generations ago."

Mother snorted. "Come, come, boy. Who was it that destroyed them? Remember your histories. Or do they no longer allow sootfoots in class?"

Valin's spine stiffened, eyes narrowed angrily. "Your line destroyed them. Named them abomination." Before she could continue with her test—even Zefir rumbled in irritation—Valin spat, "Your line. Repeated over and over. So, I must surmise that if you destroyed them, then you—this unique you—rebuilt them."

"My predecessor actually. My predecessor did many experimental things to our own line." She shot Valin a tight-lipped smile as she gestured to herself and absently waved at Seren. "The greatest of abominations."

Seren sat up, frowning. "Stop raising his hackles, mirror-kin." The way the sound of her heart skipped, he could tell she was disturbed by a memory. "One need not be tested at every moment. And found wanting. I should know."

Mother looked away...chastised. Zefir held his breath; he'd never seen such a thing.

"We should go home," Mother said. "I'll not take no for an answer, Seren. Too long you've been cast to the winds. I'll deal with the consequences now, as I never could bear before."

The idea of taking Seren home with them made something bright light inside, and Zefir flapped his wings in eagerness. "Yes! Then I can fly with you, Seren, whenever I'm not on patrol, or practicing maneuvers with Valin."

"I'm quite happy out here with Neri," said Seren, hesitating. "I worry still about my presence with Mirena around...though it'd be lovely to fly with you...and it'd be easier to make you siblings."

Neri...

Zefir wondered where the brass wolf had gotten to when he heard her distinct metallic-sharp bark. From over the ridge, she came bounding, voice raised to cry, "Chase, chase, chase not-Zefir!"

"Not-Zefir?" he asked her as she skidded to a halt near his feet.

She bounced on her toes, pointing her nose skyward. "Not-Zefir!"

Zefir sat back on his haunches, looking skyward and he saw a formation of shapes. For a moment he wanted to bugle in happiness to see the squadron, only to realize the shapes were all wrong. Smaller. The wings made of pseudo-metallic feathers, stocky bodies ready to claw.

Ketch gryphons.

The Wheelteeth.

Zefir had to stifle a challenge-roar, but he felt a bit of flame flicker form his nostrils. He lowered himself, but without word Valin ran for the thopter. Zefir's heart stuttered in dismay only to soar again as Valin grabbed a pair of saddlebags from the bomber, turned back to Zefir and bounded up into his Navigator's seat. There. Where he belonged. Springing into the air, Zefir bolted upward, knowing without speaking what both he and Valin would do. They'd practiced the dive-bombing maneuver; now with Zefir's new diaphragm-ballonet, he could fly higher than the gryphons and swoop down through their ranks.

Zefir couldn't stifle it any longer. As they flew closer, seeing those ketch gryphons flexing their grapple-feet, he released the loudest roar he could muster.

A burst of searing flame came with it.

Read Part 6: Was It Within You All Along?

The Clockwork Dragon #4: Chase, Chase, Flee

2016-05-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

"Now, I need a happy memory, yes, a pleasant one." Seren perched over Zefir's flight control panel situated on his back, hemming and hawing, half talking to herself, half directing her comments at the dragon.

Zefir, lying down in this small little cave in the middle of nowhere—it was cold, not heated from underneath like in Mother's laboratory—puffed out a sigh. "Are you certain? You have been testing for many an hour now."

When focused, this strange mirror-of-Mother became lost in her work, her thoughts. That at least was familiar, but occasionally Seren would lapse into a tense quiet, her gaze lost—she admitted inside her own memories.

"It must be that some of your memories and emotions affect your flying abilities," she said, waving a slender hand. "The way you interact with your Navigator, and he in turn interacts with you."

"That makes no sense," Zefir huffed, weary now. And bored. Unaccountably bored.

"It makes all kinds of sense, dear dragon. It makes you more than remarkable." She scrambled down from his back, lithe and sure-footed. Again, the hurried gestured. "Down to my level, Zefir, if you please. I want to look at your optical sensors."

Zefir puffed out a warm breath into her face, and she barely blinked. He bumped his nose into her chest, but her hands didn't come up to pat at him. "You've already done so. But minutes ago."

The unfocused nature of her gaze changed. Sharpened back to attention. "Of course. Yes, of course. But we must continue, yes, before...before I lapse. It hasn't happened yet today, has it?"

"This morning," Zefir admitted. He didn't like telling her, for the truth distressed her. "Only for a few minutes, Seren."

"Ah, hmmm." Was her only answer, looking so thoroughly dejected that Zefir allowed himself to nudge her a little more forcefully with his snout. A bare smile graced her tense, sharp features, and Zefir could hear the thrum of her heart, knowing that she wasn't truly happy; the smile was for his benefit.

"Let's fly," he suggested.

That would break the spell of her obsession and would relieve his own boredom. He'd left before Mother could install a new diaphragm-ballonet, but Seren had said she could do so with the equipment she'd squirreled away from her last Clan, before they had cast her out. And she had. He could already feel that his breaths came easier, and when they'd flown together, flying as high as he could—Seren letting out a girlish whoop—it had seemed effortless.

She tucked a stray strand of graying hair back behind her ear. "If I don't focus, Zefir, I'll never be able to make you brothers and sisters. Not in time."

She still wouldn't say in time for what. She sounded so grave when she did. But he would like to have siblings, to have others like him.

"Then you can ask me questions when we're in the sky, to see if they affect my flight," Zefir suggested. Reasonably he thought.

"Yes, yes...makes sense." She hugged his snout, pressing her face into his broad cheek—his entire head the size of three of her whole body—and Zefir held his breath in case a flicker of flame came from his mouth. He didn't want to hurt her accidentally, but he enjoyed it when she hugged him. "Clever, Zefir. Flying makes you happy. Me too. Maybe I should've been bred as a Nav." She chuckled at that. "Then again 'Blood is Purpose.'"

"Valin wasn't born a Navigator, and yet he was. Maybe you could've been too." Zefir didn't want to admit that he didn't quite understand the bloodline purpose of the Clans, or why no one ever changed functions from their birth-duty. He shook his head before she could ask any more questions about Valin. "Come! The sky is a bit gloomy today, but I can counter the high winds. Or we can, rather."

Neri lifted her head from her resting spot, her pseudo-metallic ears swiveling in their direction as Seren put on her flying leathers and helmet, saving the warm-wrap mask for last. The brass wolf made a deep woof, wagging her thin mechanical tail, her voice repeating, "Chase, chase, chase?"

"Yes, chase," Zefir said brightly, his own heavy tail flickering. It seemed the only word the creature said. "Chase Zefir!"

Turning on his haunches in the tight fitting space, he bounded out of the cave, leaping with his wings tight to his frame. Upon hitting the soft, mossy earth, he left a furrow in his wake, leaping up again as the wolf followed with happy barks. Forgetting himself, he wrestled with Neri for a time, her teeth nipping playfully at his nose before he realized that Seren wasn't sitting by the old, weathered tree, nor was she watching them from the cave's mouth. The brass wolf sniffed at the air, tense.

Had Seren decided to leave them? No, something was wrong.

Neri barked. An unhappy sound. Whining.

Zefir opened his wings and hopped up to the cave, dashing inside. Seren had fallen to the ground, her eyes wide and lost, so lost, her hands above her in claws as if something had frozen her. Zefir's microcog-bearing heart stuttered, and he held his breath, feeling cold. Not sadness. But fear. He tried nudging her, but she began to scream. A high, thin sound of terror that rang inside of his head. Her hands flailed at the air, her claws trying to rake at him—no, not him.

What could he do? He needed help, but he didn't know where to take her. Exile was a serious thing. Valin worried about exile a lot and had suggested that if exiles were caught, they were...killed. If she was from one of the Lesser Clans allied by blood to the Cog Clan, then he couldn't take her to Mother.

But there was no one else.

Zefir gathered her up into his hands, making sure to keep his sharp claws from her fragile frame. "Seren! Seren, please!" He shook her, just hard enough to make her head roll around on her neck. "Wake up!"

She froze again, her body unmoving. A series of words tumbled from her, that strange language she sometimes spoke without realizing it. Fear clawing at his insides, making his breaths short and raspy, he leapt with her in his grip. Wings outspread he leapt to the gnarled old tree, using it to launch himself skyward. Away from the cave.

His internal temperature wild, he gained all the altitude he could, clutching her close.

Mother would help. She had to.

And if anyone tried to hurt Seren, anyone, then Zefir would strike at them. No matter who it was.

"She has him," the Inventrix snarled and Valin could hear it over his voice-directing implant. The microcogs buzzed in his ear with the violence of her next words: "She has him. I know it. Darketna ila jarsareth!"

Sitting behind him in the Secondary Control seat, the Inventrix adjusted one of the straps securing her to the ornithopter bomber dragon. Its stiff head pointed fixedly in a single direction as Valin adjusted the trim, the upslide as they ascended a half-a-degree, and noted how taut the flapping wingbeats were. Nothing like Zefir's beautiful membranes, or his effortless timing of each downstroke of his wings.

And of course, the thopter wasn't aware. It wasn't alive. It wasn't scared.

Valin had been searching for him with the Inventrix for over a week. They camped in the valley between the Sunset Mountains, the Inventrix barely sleeping but for an hour each day—one of her natural abilities, she assured him. But Valin had barely eaten even their meager rations, and slept even less than the Inventrix. His mind was dull from the constant fear, the gnawing sensation inside.

If he's broken beyond repair, it's my fault. And then the Inventrix's words: If he's destroyed, it's unlikely I can build another. And if she managed to build anew...it wouldn't be Zefir.

Now, the Inventrix was insisting that someone had stolen Zefir. That meant they could find him, and take him back. "Who?"

Her voice was a growl over the sound of his new implant. "An Inventrix of the Wheelteeth."

The enemy. The leader of the Wheelteeth Clan had his friend. "Then we must call in one of the squadrons and coordinate a quick, surprise attack. Then we can extract him..." If he wants to come back.

"Terribly bloodthirsty of you." She sounded amused, and perhaps just a touch disappointed. "You learn that from the Navigators? Or has it been hiding inside you all this time?" When he breathed in to respond, she interrupted, "I know. It's your worry for him. But it's likely she's no longer residing in their stronghold. The signs...yes, they've been in place for quite a while."

"Signs?"

"Lissteri," she whispered. Again, those strange words. Not that Valin knew dialects from the Lesser Clans, or even Wheelteeth speak, but it sounded odd.

"But why would Zefir willingly go with the enemy?" Valin asked.

Though possessed of a child-like mind, Zefir was quick and clever. He wouldn't turn tail and become a traitor...would he?

He glanced at the front leg of the thopter, looking at the Inventrix's reflection in the shiny metallic surface so he could see her reaction.

"Seren is..." She looked down at the ground far below, floating by, a pained grimace on her face. "She...doesn't obfuscate. Has no filter between what she's thinking and what she says. In many ways she's like Zefir himself. Almost childishly naïve. And no doubt Zefir feels she's a kindred spirit, for it's difficult not to be charmed by her lack of guile."

Valin shook his head, wondering how the Inventrix had learned of such intimate knowledge of the Wheelteeth leader. "So she's charming him. To use him."

"No," the Inventrix barked. "She's an innocent soul. Bright as the sun. Still though, she's possessed of the obsession of my breed. The sheer brilliance of her works have surpassed even mine, to the point where even I've been unable to fathom the nature of her inventions, though nearly all of them serve no real purpose. But she doesn't possess the leadership qualities, the cunning, or the deviousness required to rule. A defect in the blood. Along with another defect..."

In the manner of her breed the Inventrix had also manipulated Valin into coming to the next conclusion. He spoke it with distaste to have been so easily led. "So the Wheelteeth Inventrix is not their leader."

The mere notion of that seemed difficult to grasp. Inventrixes, one per every two generations, were the leaders. How could it be any other way?

"No, merely a tool," said the Inventrix, her voice pitched bitterly. "A tool that should've been ours...if not for me. And my cowardice."

Valin glanced over his shoulder at her. The Inventrix a coward? He frowned in puzzlement, but she stared back at him evenly. It was Valin who broke the connection with her gaze, wondering if that too had been another test.

"Everyone fears," she said quietly. "And all too often we act on that fear. With regret most times."

Like casting away Zefir for his own good?

Peering downward, she snatched up her pair of farviewer goggles, sliding them over her eyes. Adjusting the farseeing dial, she pointed. "There. Something brass. Too small to be Zefir."

Without direction, Valin aimed the thopter downward, perhaps at a greater angle than necessary, but the Inventrix's words had rattled him and he needed that plunging sensation in his stomach to clear his thoughts. When they descended low enough to buzz the treetops with the thopter's six pot-bomb gripping feet, devoid now of their deadly explosive oil, the Inventrix ordered, "Land."

Unlike Zefir who could gracefully hover and land, the thopter needed a little more gliding space. Landing it with its clamp-feet out, he turned to see the Inventrix already leaping from her perch behind him—the height of two men to the ground, but she took the impact with a little grunt and sprinted on.

By the time Valin had set all the controls to auto-standby and crawled down the side of the flyer, he could see the Inventrix kneeling before a wolf-like creature made of brass.

The creature—seemingly made out of the same metal as Zefir's hide—perked its ears, whining, but wagging its tail slowly. Its sky-blue eyes were fixated on the Inventrix's mouth, listening.

"I can't believe you still work," the Inventrix said, patting a rough spot on the wolf-thing's side. "She's kept you all these years..."

Valin took two steps forward and the creature lowered its head, giving him a wary stare.

"He's a friend, Neri," said the Inventrix. "Where is she?"

"Chase," the wolf-mechanical barked, tail wagging slower.

"Yes, but where, Neri? Dezan lis eseth."

The wolf's snout raised and it peered skyward, making little hops as if it could launch itself into the air. "Chase, chase, chase..."

Valin looked upward to the west and saw the distinct outline of the dragon. Clutching something in his curled, sharp claws; even though Zefir flew at a low altitude—unable to go higher without Valin, or another Nav—his wingbeats were a flurry of hurried motion.

"Chase, chase, chase!" the wolf said, a whine escaping. "Chase, Zefirrrr!"

Zefir kept his grip on Seren as tight as he dared. Thankfully, though his heart was grinding and his wings were aching, Seren's stiff, unmoving body relaxed, and her blank—so blank!—stare ceased. Slowly, his companion looked about her, blinking in confusion. She touched one of his talons gently, fixated once again. "Oh, like sickles they are. What would you need that for? Battle, unfortunately, yes, yes."

"Are you well now?" Zefir asked anxiously. "What happened?"

"The memory locks last longer," she said calmly, half to herself. "No way to prevent them, at least not that I've devised."

"But you were scared! And screaming." Zefir slowed his frantic pace, seeing how quickly the distant mountain caves of the Cog Clan were growing closer. "I didn't know what to do."

"Frightening recollections sometimes occur during my memory locks. I quite lose control of my body." She offered him a wan smile of assurance. "I'm sorry I didn't warn you, dear dragon. Not all my memories are pleasant."

Zefir wanted to ask what horrible recollections would have her reacting so, but he worried that raising such a question would only force her back into that state.

She turned her head to try to look upon the ground. "Where are we?"

"I was...taking you to Mother."

Her eyes widened. She squirmed in his grasp, pushing at the joints of his fingers. "No! Zefir, turn back!"

He didn't understand her sudden distress, but he halted in mid-air, hovering though it made his entire body ache, his control panel making warning noises as his breaths puffed hot.

"Please, you can't take me there!"

He began to fly in a circle, indecisive. "I won't let anyone hurt you. Even if you are an exile."

"It's not that...I can't be near her. Quezan arseht be toma—damn!" She touched his fingers, eyes shining. "Please, even though you don't understand, please just turn back. I can't be around your Mother."

Mother wouldn't hurt the mirror of herself...would she?

"For her sake," Seren said at a whisper he almost couldn't hear. "Not mine."

Zefir didn't understand, but with a graceful backsweep of his wings, he turned and began flying back for their hidden little cave.

"I don't want to hurt her," said Seren, shivering. "Not when my very presence can do so. Do you know what it feels like to stay away from someone because it's better for them?"

He began gliding and with his most serious expression, he nodded.

Valin was better off on a thopter.

"Then no matter what happens to me," she said, tears forming, "don't bring me near her."

Sedately, he flew back the way he had come, holding his breath lest anything mar her calm, her brow furrowed in thought. Then, while Zefir glided to keep the silence, Seren began to cry, tears quietly streaming down her knife-edged cheeks. He'd never seen anyone actually cry before. After the Wheelteeth gryphon attack, after losing so many Navigators, even those remaining Navs hadn't shed tears for the lost. The dead. Jarre had told him, still looking awkward to be speaking with Zefir, that Navs didn't weep because the lost ones were flying into the sun—to a better place filled only with joy. Zefir didn't know how a hot orb of light could be a better place, or how anyone could get there when they were dead. The thought that he could lose Seren to the sundisk made something hitch within.

Valin could be lost too. And Mother. The rest of the squad. He didn't want them to fly into the light forever.

His eyes stung—it hurt. Some sort of liquid began leaking from the corner of his eyes, trickling down his cheeks, and as he looked below, droplets of its clear, oddly viscous liquid dripped off of his snout.

Seren let out a hitched, sad laugh. "Oh, you beautifulcreature. I never would have given you such a burden, such a gift as this." She reached up, smiling her sad smile, and touched the liquid, gently wiping it away from his brass cheeks. "You're crying, Zefir. She didn't tell you that either, did she? No, of course not. But that she gave this to you means that she's changing. And perhaps that's not a good sign."

Zefir hoped she wouldn't lapse back into speaking to herself, but Seren patted his hand, and he loosened his hold on her. Quick as a sparrow, she sidled through the gap in his fingers, clambering up his shoulder—Zefir feeling a fearful cold sensation in his chest—and hooking a foot into his harness, bounded up and came to rest in the Navigator's seat.

Calmer now that she was secure, Zefir could feel the slight adjustments she made, and his energy level gained. Flying faster now, he saw a thopter bomber running on the ground to get enough momentum to launch skyward.

Shaking of the last of the liquid from his face, he narrowed his sharp gaze on those in the Navigator's seat of the bomber. The familiar forms made him stretch out his wings for greater height and speed.

Zefir knew Valin had wanted a thopter. And now he had one.

Mother pointed skyward, right at Zefir. She flickered her fingers in the Nav sign-language: Descend. Regroup. Return to squad leader.

Turning away from her—from Valin—Zefir flew onward as fast as he could.

Read Part 5: Abominations

Spark: A Creative Anthology VII, Read My Short Story!

2016-04-27T21:08:00.001-07:00

My short story "For the Price of a Memory," about a young musician who sells her childhood memories, is now available in Spark: A Creative Anthology VII.

You can read it, buy it, share it here.

The Clockwork Dragon #3: Flying Alone

2016-04-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

The mess hall was organized as Valin remembered, though why he expected to see something different was beyond him. No, the single thing that had changed was him.

In the far corner at the largest long table, hunched the worn grey-and-brown clad techworkers, their faces caked with either grease or oil if they second levels—sootfoots as the first levels called them—or clad in grey-and-red if they were first-level techies. Many kept to their plates with a dogged focus, eating with little thought to decorum. That was a word and concept that had no meaning to Valin until the first time he dined at the Navigator table.

When he was a techworker, there was little time beyond eating for the lunch meal, before they shuffled back to their forges—the long, ordered assembly lines that made certain the tech needed for the Inventrix, the war, and for day-to-day operations of the Clan remained in place.

Still wearing his flying leathers, he wasn't certain where to sit. The Inventrix hadn't cast him out of being a Nav, but since letting Zefir go, he wasn't technically anything. Not even a second-level techworker. If he were to sit with the techies, he would need to stand in the long line and wait for the servers to plop a bit of protein stew on his plate, while if with the Navigators, food would be served to him by the cooks.

It still made him uneasy to be waited upon.

"Valin!" came a familiar voice. "Breathing in the sky vapors today?"

Sometimes the Nav language, well it seemed like another language oft times with their signing, baffled him. But he'd heard the slang phrase often enough to understand. Your mind is elsewhere.

He saw Kerlan Nyru's scarred face, wind-flushed from her long flight upon her ornithopter bomber—the largest in the squadron. The long scar ran from her scalp line, down over her right cheek, puckering on corner of her mouth so she looked like she had a permanent wry grin. Which fit her well.

She scooted on the mess table to make room between her and the largest thopter Nav in the entire Clan—Quarethstra Jarre, who shifted his massive, muscled frame just barely enough for Valin to sidle in, grunting as Valin did so.

"Well'home," rumbled Jarre amiably, his meaty slab of a face grinning. "What has you chewing the clouds, Seven?"

The Navigators used bloodline names as a term of respect only, as several members from one bloodline were often in the same squadron. In the skies, they communicated with one another by given names or battle nicknames. In the mess hall, it was no different. But since joining the Navs, Valin's techwork bloodline—Seven, one of the younger second-level lines—had become both a battle nickname, and among others, a sneering reminder of what he'd truly been bred for.

No one had altered from their bloodline purpose. Until him.

"What else?" said Nyru, lifting her hand in a battle signal for gain altitude. "That flyer of his. Where's the pretty brass one today?"

Valin swallowed, playing with the u-shaped eating utensil. That too, had been a new experience. Techs ate with their hands, using the hearty flatbread made by bloodline grandmeres to scoop up the mess hall stew.

"Out flying," he answered dully.

"I still say, it's not right," said another voice across from him.

Quarethstra Ferrei, the opposite of her bloodline cousin in girth, but not in height, peered at Valin with her nose upturned. "Makes one shudder. Giving our flyers minds isn't right. Next she'll animate the disposal unit and then where will we—?" She said a word Valin was certain meant shit. "Navs are for thinking. Reacting. We're in control of the flyers, not the other way around."

"And you control them just long enough to get torn apart," Nyru said, her cheek jumping. Valin could never tell if it was a half-grin of feline amusement, or a cold frown. Or both. "How many thopters you lose, Ferrei? Last skirmish I had haul you back to the ground after the gryphs tore it apart."

"Everyone's lost thopters," Ferrei said, her elegant fingers making the Nav signing language too rapidly—and vulgarly—for Valin to follow but for: —because of him.

Valin stiffened. Must he argue Zefir's worth again? Or more likely, this was truly aimed at him. And didn't her vulgar thrust have some truth to it? "And would your bomber have withstood so many ketch gryphons?"

Their metallic vice-claws made to clamp on to a flyer, crushing them, clasping on to Zefir's hind legs…dragging them down—down—downward.

"No, it wouldn't," Ferrei said, lifting her chin. Dark eyes gleaming. "But then again, your blood doesn't pump like ours, so how could you understand? I would've gladly sacrificed my flyer, my life, to keep the Wheelteeth from our flanks. Even if it were it in vain. And yet you fled with your precious Zefir." She snarled the name.

He'd learned that naming your flyer was not only frowned upon, but a deeply held superstition among even the oldest Navs. Even Nyru as Squad Leader was loathe to speak to the dragon using his name.

"We didn't flee," he said tightly. "We retreated." He made the sign for fall back-down altitude.

Ferrei's lips curled in disgust. No, a darker more intense emotion flickered behind her gaze. "You fled like the techie coward you are. Blaming your flyer because it can talk. And now, thirty of our number have flown to the sun-embrace. I lost three bloodline kin, seven sworn sisters, two oath brothers...and my beloved Denaru. And you talk of retreat."

Valin's hands curled into fists before he relaxed them. "I talk of living to fight another day." The Navigator credo was out before he could catch himself. And yet, he wouldn't be fighting any longer.

"You don't even know what that means," Ferrei spat. She touched each of her wrists with her flickering fingers. Another gesture he didn't recognize.

Jarre banged his massive fist on the tabletop, expression disapproving. But it was Nyru who spoke, her voice like the ice caverns high upon the mountain. "No, you don't know what it means. I ordered the withdraw. So, if you must blame anyone for failure, then blame me."

Ferrei shot to her feet, making a gesture of deference smooth and beautiful. "I'll not blame my sworn leader."

"I lost Denaru too," said Nyru, her raspy voice softer. "Or had you forgotten he was my blood-son?" Grimacing, she made a curt motion. "But we Navigators know that life is fleeting, and soon we embrace the burning of the sun. We fly into it with open arms."

"Open arms," intoned Jarre solemnly. He made the same elegant and beautiful gesture, touching his muscled wrists.

Valin wasn't certain if he should follow the gesture, and when he peered down at his wrists, Ferrei spat, "You dare to give thanks to our lost ones, and I'll split you open, Seven. And all the techwork sootfoots you call a bloodline."

A hush spread over the mess hall, from the wasters corner, to the protein-vat regulators, to the techworkers. Even the cooks. The other Navigator tables didn't cease their conversations, not immediately, but their eyes were riveted to the pair of footsteps coming down the aisle.

So the hush wasn't for Ferrei threatening his life.

"Valin," the Inventrix said sternly. Ignoring all those around her. "Come. We fly now."

He wondered if it had been decades since the Inventrix last was seen in the mess hall. Cheeks burning hot, half in fury, half in embarrassment, he followed behind her as she spun on her heel, riding boots clicking in the silence.

Zefir felt cold inside.

His inner workings had grown too warm after he'd done all that roaring—and flame had flickered from between his teeth, startling him. Even so, he'd tried to fly higher without any stupid Navigator. And had failed. Parts inside him had rumbled. The control panel upon his back had blared warnings about his internal temperature and buoyancy. His wings had felt like they were on fire, painfully so. And so, he had been forced to land.

Now, resting in this rocky outcropping, nearly on the ground, he felt cold. Something told him it wasn't just his internal temp reducing to normal. It was something else. He shivered as Valin's voice rang in his thoughts: I can't…be your Navigator. Even though Valin had said they would always be together, flying as one, and curse the wind that would stop them. They would ride above it.

It hurt inside. And he didn't know why. Maybe something out of alignment. Something Mother should see to. Even that thought made him shiver, made the pain inside worse. She had lied to him, said that his Navigator would pass her tests and would find him.

He didn't want anyone to find him now.

Zefir raised his head from his cold feet, hearing several rocks go sliding down the outcropping. Narrowing his senses—tightening them, he detected something metallic, the scent like him, only nothim. From the top of the outcropping, a brass creature appeared.

Zefir got to his feet, a low rumble of warning coming from his throat.

The creature was small, with large ears that flopped over on the top. A bit like the mountain wolves the Clan tamers used to hunt fresh meat when the protein vats grew low. Its eyes glowed quicksilver, and it opened its teeth-lined mouth and...barked. Its thin lazy tail began to wag rapidly back and forth.

Another scent came to Zefir, and he stiffened. Sweat. Human smells. Skin oils. Sounds...panting, out of breath. A rapid heartbeat. Both from exertion and from...excitement? It wasn't a scent-sound profile he remembered, not...exactly. He'd marked each of the squadron in his mind, along with Valin and Mother. It closely resembled—

"You've found it?" panted the human. "Oh, marvelous!"

The creature's tail wagged harder. Barked again, almost a yip.

The woman who crested the outcropping, wearing her odd-colored flying leathers, looked exactly like Mother. Only she wasn't frowning. And her hair had a little more gray in it. Her scent was a little less machine-oil, less laboratory-acrid, but her features were exactly the same, like Valin said "made out of the mountainside." Her eyes danced, whereas Mother's...scrutinized.

"Magnificent!" the woman cried, grinning. "Oh, she's done it. I knew she would. Oh, you beautiful creature. You speak, don't you?"

Zefir narrowed his gaze and puffed a jet of breath at her. He wouldn't speak to this odd mirror of Mother.

"Come, come now. It's the next logical step. Ah, but where are my manners?" He could see the riding jacket she wore was for high-altitude flying, lined with bear-fur. The fur ruffled as she bowed to him; she still smiled so brightly. "Good day to you, dear dragon."

"It is polite," Zefir said, raising his snout imperiously, "to offer ones name upon meeting for the first time."

Her grin didn't change. It made him a trifle wary, as Mother never grinned. She took three steps toward him, and Zefir lowered his head, rumbling in warning.

"Yes, it's the polite thing to do. I forget how stiff and proper you all can be here. No doubt she taught that to you, eh?" Then in exasperation, "Vardrisil ahn comi, she's the same. Hasn't changed a bit. Good sign, though. Good sign." The mirror woman's prattling made Zefir's wings twitch, and her bight grin turned into a tight-lipped smile. "Apologies, dear dragon. I forget myself. I am Seren. There, I've given my name."

The wolf-creature barked once, its tail ceasing to wag when Zefir took a step forward. He made as graceful a bow as he could muster, dipping his front legs, wings tight against back. "Zefir."

Her brow raised in a manner that was too like Mother. "The western winds? Clever name she gave you."

"Mother didn't name me." Zefir was intrigued despite his wariness. "Valin did."

Valin who was gone. Valin who didn't want to be his Navigator.

"Interesting." The mirror woman—this Seren—looked pensive. That scrunched up look Mother had when focused on nothing but fixing something broken. "Who is this Valin?"

"No one," Zefir rumbled, feeling cold again.

Seren came forward, tearing off one glove, fixated upon his snout, and without fear she reached out to touch him. Her hand was startlingly warm, almost like fire compared to how cold he felt. "Poor dear. She's made you to feel sorrow. Loss. That's the cold sensation, you know. Ah, you didn't? Very cruel of her not to tell you."

How could this woman know?

"I don't know why you're so sad, Zefir, but I can help you."

The wolf-thing yipped and came to her side, and with a laugh, she scratched behind its smooth, metallic ears until the brass wolf lidded its eyes in simple pleasure, pink-silver tongue lolling out of its jaw in a very stupid, crass way.

"How?" he asked, taking another step closer. She smelled different, yet similar. He chuffed at the air to memory-name her scent-sound profile—he could even hear how her pleasant smile changed the cadence of her heart. The smiling wasn't false. Her heartbeat told the truth. She was happy.

"Has your Mother not flown you yet?"

Answering a question with a question. That too was like Mother. "No, she's not my Navigator. Another was to be, and he was for a while...but he changed his mind."

"This...Valin person." Seren said it like a statement. Likely, if she was as clever as Mother, she'd already surmised long before this. "Then he is very idiotic to have chosen something, or someone, over you."

That was a thought that hadn't occurred to him. Maybe Valin was even now flying a thopter bomber like he'd always wanted. Happy without Zefir. The cold inside warred with a sudden flare of heat.

Seren snatched back her hand as a tongue of flame burst from Zefir's nostrils. "Oh, and there's the anger. Hmm, I wouldn't have connected such an emotion to fire-breathing, no, I would've created it to be controlled by will. Although—"

"Created?" Zefir asked.

She smiled wryly. "You're clever. Likely you have a guess."

"You think you're an inventor."

For the first time, Zefir saw her own anger flare. Her eyes narrowed, her smile gone. "I am an Inventrix. How dare you—" And she stopped herself, shaking her head. "That pride of mine. I'm sorry. Old habits and all. Bred in, it is. Only they thought Mirena had more of it and kept her."

Bitterness. That Zefir heard, and strangely, understood. He took another step closer and pushed his nose against her hand. She absently touched him, her eyes lost in remembrance, until he gently bumped her elbow—Valin had always warned that the dragon was too big and strong, so Zefir had to be gentle.

"Thank you. The past, I fear, has a hold of me. Sit with me while I ruminate?" Her gaze was already distant as she sat on the edge of the rock, shaking. "I'm afraid I can't control it anymore. I'll quite forget where I am."

She sat for a long time, gaze turned inward, her mouth occasionally moving to argue with things and people who weren't present. Zefir stood next to her for so long that Seren began to shiver with the cold winds that poured over the outcropping, despite her warm flying gear. As she shuddered, closing her eyes, the wolf creature sat at her feet—no, on her feet to warm her—Zefir sat closer to her to block the wind, arcing a wing about her to enclose her and lend some warmth.

Maybe feeling cold meant she was sad just like him.

The sun-disk moved from overhead to nearly touching the top of the mountain range when she blinked, muttering a last, "Spiraling...no, not spiraling. It's inevitable, but blood isn't everything. Still here. For now."

In dawning realization, Seren blinked up at Zefir and a strained smile appeared to lighten her heavy brow. "You're very kind, Zefir." She reached out to trace a finger along his cooling-wire veins seen through the thin membranes of his wings, mouth open slightly in wonder. "You learned that, didn't you? Kindness."

"It...felt right."

She nodded solemnly. "You've been cast out as well. I can tell. Do you know what Clans do to mirror-kind like me?"

Zefir didn't know, though he feared he wouldn't like the answer.

Seren shook her head, like flicking away bad thoughts. She smiled again, and Zefir tried to respond in kind. "It matters not. Would you like to fly high today? I feel both of us are in need of some good flying, don't you?"

"I won't chose you as my Navigator." He'd never chose anyone again, even if that meant being grounded forever.

"Of course not, dear dragon. Of course not." She rose to her feet, placing on her missing glove, and the brass wolf wagged its tail once in hesitation. "Only a bit of assisted flying. Perhaps we can learn to help one another. That is...unless you have somewhere else to go?"

He'd told Mother that he would stay to fight for the Clan. For her. For...Valin. But did any of them need him? He'd failed the squadron. They'd lost so many because of him. Mother was always busy with other things. And Valin...

"No...I don't." How the words felt like they cut him as they came out.

"Come." She gestured to his flying harness, still attached, as Valin hadn't bothered to remove it. "We'll fly for fun. Just for a bit. Neri here will chase your shadow on the ground. She'll follow. She likes you. I can tell." Then added under her breath, "I'd like to see Mirena make something like Neri. She'd only say 'it's useless.' As if companionship is useless. Ha! Forsna il boraan. Clearly, you need a companion, Zefir."

"Companion," Zefir said, rolling out the word, elongating it. Tasting the rightness of it.

When she climbed up his side, using his leg to hoist herself into the Navigator's seat, she let out a series of murmurs to herself about "how remarkable" and "no, you chose to route it through that?" and "damn you Mirena to the ten hells."

Zefir launched himself into the air, wings beating for altitude, and Seren let out a girlish laugh of glee.

Below, the brass wolf chased after the dragon's shadow.

Read Part 4: Chase, Chase, Flee

WINNER of Eldritch Embraces Giveaway!

2016-04-24T10:20:00.002-07:00

And the Crawling Chaos has lifted its hand, spun the wheel of Fate, and Chosen a VICTIM (I mean WINNER!)

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The Clockwork Dragon #2: Valin's Choice

2016-04-20T14:16:00.001-07:00

Valin could hear the bellows-rumble of Zefir's mechanical breath, straining as the bomber dragon flew higher. Clutching on to his Navigator's seat, while he pressed the multitude of buttons to vent excess heat from Zefir's brass pseudo-metallic skin, he heard the dragon's deep baritone through the microcog voice-hearing implant the Inventrix had designed but a day ago. That way they could hear one another over the rush of wind.

"Another thousand meters," Zefir insisted, his canvas-metal wings beating in syncopation with his thunderous clockwork heartbeat. His voice rang in Valin's head.

"Any higher and your diaphragm-ballonets will deflate too much."

Valin rechecked the gauges on his modified Navigator controls. By now, it felt like an extension of his own being to read the signs of the dragon's physical stressors, not just through the sensors and controls, but by the way Zefir timed his wing beats, the manner in which he arced his wings and the cooling-wire veins pulsated.

Below them, as no more than patchwork quilts, were the farmlands so near the Cog Clan's caves. Higher than they had ever flown.

"Five hundred meters," the dragon rumbled.

"No," Valin said sharply, knowing his tone would carry through the implant. "I know you want to test this maneuver—"

"Because we failed. We lost thirty ornithoper-dragons." Zefir didn't mention the Navigators they had lost. It was easier for the brass fellow to mention the ornithopters, as unlike himself, none of the thopter-bombers were created to be sentient. "Because there were too many ketch-gryphons from the Wheelteeth Clan for me to handle. They almost reached the caves."

Their home.

The high altitude winds made Valin's breath hitch, and what little skin was exposed from behind his flying mask and farviewing goggles stung like ten hells. "Level off."

"Only another," the dragon wheezed, "hundred meters."

Valin's readout indicated why Zefir could barely breathe. While he had never ordered the dragon to do anything, fear clawed into his throat and made him spit, "No! Level off now."

Zefir didn't respond. But his sides hitched, his wingbeats seized. Valin's controls blared out warnings—the shrill siren carved its noise into his skull. He felt them reach the apex of their arc before they began to spiral from the sky, falling—falling—falling—his insides in his mouth. He shouted to Zefir, but the dragon's glowing quicksilver eyes were lidded, that serpentine neck limp.

He tried to regain control, to re-inflate the diaphragm through his controls, but still the dragon was insensate.

The ground loomed close. So close. All Valin could think of was—not his own death—but whether or not the Inventrix could repair Zefir, his Zefir, when the dragon shattered upon the ground. Gods of techwork—metal and forge—he prayed it would be so.

The dragon's side finally heaved, like a man starving for breath. The limp wings unfurled, catching air and violently arresting their downward spiral. One of the pseudo-metal membranes of his wings tore; Zefir screamed, sucking in another desperate breath; his wings beat furiously at the air, his legs extended to counter their crash.

The dragon managed to level out, but the ground loomed. Upon impact, they slid, leaving great furrows in the soil, tumbling until Valin's head crashed into something. And everything went black.

The Inventrix eyed Valin's cracked flying helmet, studying it this way and that before tossing it over her shoulder, muttering about making a new one. Her graying hair was tied back tight against her skull, her granite features sharp with censure as she took in Valin's healed appearance. His leg had been splinted with something she'd cobbled together, but the shattered bone beneath his flesh was no longer strictly bone—now made of the same metal as Zefir's wing-bones.

"You crashed my greatest creation," she said sharply.

The headache that had been plaguing him for months—ever since the crash—wormed its way behind his eye. Courtesy of breaking the microcog communication device in his ear. "Must we have this conversation again, Inventrix?"

His tone was more than impertinent. He should be bowing to the leader of the Clan, for she could very easily send him back to being a second-level techworker, or worse, a protein-vat cleaner, or waste disposal.

Zefir, having curled into a sleepy repose in the massive cavern, raised his head at the tone. Quicksilver eyes regarded them both as he canted his spiked head to the side, like a hound catching wind of something.

"You failed," she stated.

"I told him to level off but he insisted—"

"You are his Navigator." The Inventrix lifted another pot of the pseudo-metallic gel as she made her way to Zefir's side.

Valin held his stance, spine stiff at attention. "You Inventrix gave him a will. If you desired a tractable machine, you could've made another ornithopter. I'll not order him about as if he has no choice in the matter."

"He's a child, Valin." She smeared a test strip of the new pseudo metallic goo over Zefir's brass hide. "Impulsive. And yet you let him run wild."

"Mother," the dragon said, bumping his soft, smooth nose into the Inventrix's chest. "I'll listen to Valin, I promise. Honest. Only...don't take him away from me. I...couldn't bear it."

"Look at what he did to you, you silly child." The Inventrix gestured.

All along the dragon's flank ran a long tear in the smooth brass flesh, and as Valin crossed his arms, the Inventrix smeared more of the gel over the healing—he had no other word for it—flesh. Even as he watched the edges of the tear started to stitch back together; a new concoction then, for the others had yet to work completely. Valin flinched every time he saw the damage—it was his fault.

Zefir would normally lower his head at such words from his creator, but he formed his brass neck into a stiff S-curve, trying his best to look imperious. "No, Mother. Look at what I did to him. He's my Navigator, and I almost..." The dragon's throat bobbed—the second-level techwork in Valin was still fascinated by that—and Zefir's neck curled downward, head hung. "I almost...lost him."

Valin could no longer remain so far away, and he walked over to pat Zefir on his neck. "Still here, Zef."

The dragon chuffed, his wings unfurling slightly; either a sign of impatience, or of worry. Very likely both. Valin could see the repair to the torn membranes had completely 'healed.'

"There now," Valin said gently. "I named you after the wind. And the wind always does what?"

Zefir's animal-like mouth curled into a strange smile. "Catches your feet. And we'll always catch each other."

The Inventrix's eyes narrowed in interest at them both, studying the interplay between them. She continued to smear more of the goo on the dragon's brass hide, and Zefir hissed, his warm steam-like breath puffing. "Ow, Mother."

"That means it's working, child. So hush." She eyed the healing flesh with an inventor's unnerving intensity. "You'll be able to fly soon, but I'm keeping you from our next strafe. Your first and only instance of battle made it clear you're not ready to fly as protection for the thopter-bombers."

That pricked Valin's pride. "The Wheelteeth had three times our number. We couldn't hold them off."

The Inventrix looked down her nose at him, eyes gleaming. "I created him to be able to fly circles around the Wheelteeth's ketch-gryphons. They're one-third the size of him. And built with their poor forges. Brittle as glass those ones."

Valin crossed his arms, furious now, a posture one didn't dare hold in her presence. "The Wheelteeth Inventrix hasn't invented anything new in years, it's true, but her techworkers churn out gryphons faster than anything. There were too many. And will be again."

Her eyes flashed. "You, dear boy, don't know how to handle the brilliant creature I gave you. He can tear through them all. Unleash him properly and you can—"

"Only a moment ago you called me a fool for not reigning in his wild ways," Valin spat.

Her voice raised, "I said properly." She inhaled slowly through her nose, once again cold and in control. "His wildness is for battle, his sentience for reacting faster than any normal mechanical—"

Zefir's rumbling baritone lifted enough to shake a few of the glass beakers on his mother's lab table. "No one asked mewhat I believe I'm for, or how I think I'm to act. Don't I have a say?"

Valin noticed the dragon's brass flesh grew warmer. Angry then. The massive wings fluttered, held stiffly upon his back as if the dragon would launch himself up and away at any moment.

"Isn't that what you told me?" Zefir demanded. "That I can adapt and make decisions on my own? Whether or not I wanted to fight, because if I loved the people enough, I would make a decision to protect them and our home...or choose to go elsewhere? But the choice was mine, you said."

Valin tried hard to keep his face neutral, but a proud smile curled his lips. Not such a child as you think, Inventrix.

A long sigh from the Inventrix. For the first time Valin saw how weary she looked, how the endless fighting between the Clans had slowed her. She looked sick, but not in body. "Aye, Zefir. You speak rightly. And your choice, my little one?"

"To fight." The word echoed in the cavern. "For Valin. For you. For the Clan."

"For yourself?" the Inventrix asked quietly.

"For home." Zefir rose, his long, blade-like claws clicking on the stone floor. His wings swept out and gathered both of them closer with astonishing gentleness, until Valin was pressed against the dragon's neck, and the Inventrix was squeezed against Zefir's broad chest. The Inventrix closed her eyes, as if drinking in the moment with her inventor's heightened senses, before she opened them again.

The Inventrix spoke, her voice softer than Valin had ever heard, "I'll install a new diaphragm-ballonet so you can fly higher. Practice your maneuvers with care, listen to your Navigator, and I'll put you back on flight duty, little one."

"Ha!" the dragon crowed, bumping his massive face against his creator. "I'm the little one?"

Her eyes were earnest as she said, "You'll always be the little one to me."

Silence passed as Zefir's wings squeezed her closer. Thumping the dragon's chest with a broad palm, she blustered, "Gah! Enough. I've things to do."

She extricated herself from the dragon's wings, moved with precision to the exit, once again stiff backed and chin raised, ever the cold leader of the Cog Clan.

Inventrix-types were bred for their genius, Valin mused, and many of them, while capable leaders—bred for that along with their heightened sensory perception—didn't interact with others on a personal level, both out of choice and necessity.

But the Inventrix's interactions with Zefir were different. And he believed that disturbed the leader of the Cog Clan. For their kind, emotions other than an all-consuming passion for their techwork were muted so that logic and cunning reigned.

But Zefir was one of her creations. And her creation, quite of his own volition, had called her "Mother" upon awakening for the first time.

Valin understood the confusion only too well.

He came to her security door, his mind expanding to take in the codes that would unlock it. Hmm, interesting. She sought to stretch his techworking abilities this time, and he had to replace several of the cogs with ones from the upper locks to decode it. Silently, it slid open and he found her hunched over her lab table, writing notes.

Without raising her eye, she barked, "Yes, Navigator?"

Zefir was out stretching his repaired hide, flying lazy, low-altitude laps over the farmland. And so Valin could speak with the Inventrix. Alone.

"I think," he began, steadying himself, "you should find another Navigator for Zefir."

Her eye didn't raise. She continued to write.

Valin didn't need to ask if she'd heard. Likely she could hear the rapid, uneasy thump of his heart, the sick-feeling gurgling in the pit of his stomach. But this was for Zefir's own good. The dragon would be better off with a more experienced Nav...with someone else. Even if Valin would be a second-level techworker again, huddled in the forge caves with no hope of advancement.

Zef deserved better.

Still, the Inventrix ignored him.

"Perhaps, pick Kerlan," he said, his voice dropping low with the eerie silence. "She's a brilliant thopter Nav. Or maybe, Quarethstra. He's—"

"Not you." The scratch of her pen nib on the paper seemed overly loud.

"That's the point, Inventrix," he said, some heat in his tone.

She waved him away. "I've no time for your self-doubt, Valin. God o' the Forge, I hate it when you're predictable. I'd even timed just when you'd approach me almost down to the minute, the variance being that it took you thirty second less time to crack the code than I anticipated. Your predictability makes you—simple. Boring."

He stood taller, clenching his gloved fists, feeling the creak of leather. "If I'm so simple why did you give him to me to fly?"

She switched to a pencil and began sketching her design. Whatever madness was upon the page riveted her gaze to it. "I didn't."

"Ten hells," he cursed. Even that wouldn't take her eye from her work. "You chose me because I passed your test."

"I allowed you the chance, because you were unpredictable and undisciplined enough to pass my test, yes. Though bred for low-level work, you're remarkably wild. And if you're not as intelligent as I believe, and I must spell it out for you, boy," at this she raised her cold eyes, "then perhaps Zefir chose the wrong person."

Zefir chose. Not the Inventrix. The squirming feeling inside intensified. "That's why you wouldn't fly him yourself. He didn't chose you."

"Welcome my dear imbecile to the conversation." She shrugged. "There were many other reasons I would make a poor Nav for him. And why you fit well. Though, if you're too much of a coward to continue, then perhaps you're right. You don't deserve to be a Navigator. Much less Zefir's."

The Inventrix ignored him once again and he slammed his hand down over her ink, which spilled and went scattering over the page. "I'm no coward."

Valin could hear the sound of wing-beats and was almost sick, the sensation inside so much like...betrayal? Maybe it wascowardice.

"Tell him, Inventrix, that someone else is better as his Nav. Someone who'll keep him safe."

From the open mouth of the cavern, the massive cog-doors open to the mountain breeze, Zefir alighted on the edge, looking refreshed. Happy.

"There is no safe, not even if you keep him out of battle," the Inventrix said quietly. "Though if he's destroyed, it's unlikely I can build another. And even if I do, it won't be the same creature."

Zefir trotted on his four legs, still graceful, though it appeared he should be ungainly on the ground. "Valin! My side feels better and we need to practice. Hop on!"

Valin's mouth dried, and his tongue scraped over the ridges on the roof of his mouth. "I-I can't. Another is to be your Navigator."

The stricken look on the dragon's mobile face was enough to make Valin turn around. Yes, like a perfect coward.

"Wait!" thundered the dragon desperately. "No, Mother. You won't take him from me! He's my Navigator. I swear that I'll not let another near my controls, I swear it!" And the dragon's voice grew thinner, "Valin...don't go. We can fly together. Like the wind."

Valin couldn't turn around. His chest felt constricted. "I must go."

The dragon bounded behind him, and Valin felt himself plucked up into large, strong brass fingers, the sword-claws enclosing him like a cage. Waddling on his hind legs, Zefir took Valin toward the dragon's favored resting place, a small divot in the worn stone. Setting him down gently, Zefir whirled around toward his mother, who was still otherwise engaged, tail flicking.

"You said I could choose, Mother. And I did." Quicksilver eyes gleamed like heated mercury. "I won't choose again."

She lifted her gaze to Valin. Weighing. Judging. "It's Valin's choice, child. Not mine. Or yours."

Though the words stuck in his throat, Valin croaked, "I've chosen...not to be your Navigator, Zefir."

The shock on that brass, animated face-snout was almost comical in its childlike innocence. The hurt in those mercurial eyes too pure, too genuine, as if it were the first time that emotion had ever been felt. A low mournful sound rumbled from Zefir's chest, and the Inventrix cocked her head, as if listening to the microcogs within grinding out of alignment.

"No," the dragon whispered. "You're lying." Then as he bared his knife-like teeth, he roared, "You lie!"

Valin shook his head. How to make Zefir understand? It was for his own good.

Before Valin could begin to explain, those brass spiked brows lowered, turning quicksilver eyes into hateful slits. Valin opened his mouth, but Zefir drew in a breath and bellowed out an ear-shattering roar—half anger, half pain. Even the Inventrix paused in her new obsession to hold her ink splattered hands over her ears. And though only the warm steam of Zefir's breath had ever poured forth from his nostrils, Valin saw true flame flicker from Zefir's open mouth.

Zefir let loose a warbling roar, bounded around him, and without spreading his wings launched himself from the laboratory cave. Valin counted his rapid heartbeats, knowing how long a drop it was until the dragon would need to lift himself back to the sky, or to shatter on the crags below. Zefir couldn't fly at higher altitudes without a Navigator, but he could coast.

"Hmm," the Inventrix said, and Valin barely heard it through his ringing ears. "It appears as if at least one of you is the child."

Valin turned to stalk out of the laboratory, telling himself that he didn't need to hear the earth-shaking cries that pounded against the mountainside.

Read Part 3: Flying Alone

Free Giveaway: Eldritch Embraces, Your Own Spell Book, and a Tentacle Pen!

2016-04-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of embracing the madness that comes from seeing the Elder Gods in all their terrible glory, I'm giving away one free (yes, my cultists—FREE) paperback copy of Eldtrich Embraces: Putting the Love Back in Lovecraft. It's 31 tales full of Lovecraftian horror and romance and madness!

Ahem, which contains my short story "From Beyond the Night Songs of Mirabelle Zann." (Shameless plug).

Not only that but you get your very own Spell Book, made by yours truly in my brief moments of lucidity, and a Tentacle Pen with which to write your ode to Nyarlathotep (who is clearly the most seductive of the Outer Gods).

All you need to do is leave your name in a comment below between April 16th and April 23rd along with "what's your favorite horror and/or romance story/book/movie."

And the chaos will choose one winner at random. To be announced on April 24th.

The Spell Book

Connection—>Connection—>Connection—>

2016-04-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

The first time I was ever approached by a reader, I was completely floored to find out that I'd connected with them in a big way.

Imagine ol' me in college poetry class. Poetry is an art form out of my grasp, mostly because I'm not a big reader of said poetry and other than the occasional bout of Emily Dickinson, I don't care much for it. So for class I had to write poetry, pretending I was Dickinson, or um, Emerson, or you know, like one of those famous poets that changed the world—but mostly I just settled for not rhyming.

And I'd already embarrassed myself once in that class by writing a poem that was mostly a rip off of the song "Lola" by the Kinks (hey I'd been listening to it while writing), and my readers—rabid English majors all—had called me out on my bullshit, critiquing the piece into oblivion.

So I had to go deeper. In fiction, I was used to mining deep, but poetry? Um? What?

Prose poetry. Ah, that was almost like writing flash fiction, but with some meter and verse and stuff. Prose poetry. Okay, this I can work with! I went to work, thinking hard.

My next poem was a story about the narrator growing up in a small town, as a little girl working hard to buy her own toys. The poem went on, the narrator being jealous that her best friend always got whatever she wanted, whenever, and that best friend even made it into a contest to see who could buy more toys. The friend begged her parents, the narrator worked harder. In the end, the best friend gloated at her victory, while the narrator cherished what she had.

The poetry class was ruthless. Someone even said, "At least it's not a song."

There was a girl in my class, who like other English majors, I'd seen in a couple of my other classes. But we'd never spoken, and I didn't know much about her. Couldn't even remember her name, though she'd been just as outspoken about the Lola-rip-off-poem as everyone else. After class as I gathered up my things, she approached me timidly.

"Your poem," she said, hesitating. "I really liked it. That little girl was...me."

Surprised, I didn't know what to say.

"That was my childhood," she said. "I felt like you wrote that poem about me."

I felt like some sort of horrible writing fraud as she told me more about her life growing up poor, something which she wasn't ashamed of, saying it made her who she was—now the first one in her family to go to college. The more she talked about the girl in the poem, the more I saw that I'd connected with my reader.

And that scared the ever loving piss out of me. I wasn't flattered, no, I felt like I'd done something wrong. Even though, connecting with your reader is the WHOLE POINT. I'd thought the piece was crappy when I'd turned it in. Again, writers are their own worst judges sometimes. But who was I to make this stranger feel something?

This is the Fraud Police, and we've got you surrounded. We know you're a terrible writer, sohand over the piece, and no one gets hurt.

There are times where I still feel like that.

Magnetic Poetry

2016-01-31T20:41:00.001-08:00

This is what happens when the dirty magnetic poetry kit (as you can see) remains on your fridge for too long.

Flash Fiction: The Pixelated Man

2016-01-16T11:57:00.001-08:00

Flickr via altemark

He could feel the Great Designer changing his base code again--to [blue]. Why was it always blue? With the [mark][mark/] of blue, he knew that sorrow would creep upon him, lingering, filling his insides with unabated hollowness, until he wouldn't be able to rise from bed most days. He'd have to call in sick, maybe, if his boss didn't demand a doctor's note, something saying, "his coloring is off, and his base pairs are aquamarine, and his [helix] is decaying as it so often does with [mark] blue [mark/]."

Maybe the Great Designer could deign to send him on vacation, for a change of scenery, something more than this gray, foggy land of skyscrapers; something more than the skyboat taxis flitting about with their acrid exhaust, or the barreling, inexorable trains and the bored commuters on it.

Or maybe have him lose some weight, for an image source change.

"Stop blaming the Source, Href," his wife chastised. This morning, her lipstick was one millimeter just outside the lines of her oxbow lips, and with the bright pink lipstick tube, she frowned, adjusted the numbers [center], and reapplied. There. That was in order.

Varia reached up to adjust his tie, muttering code beneath her breath to help her put him to rights. His jacket altered slightly to better fit his frame, but still the [blue] in him only saw it as her worry that they would be seen in a less than fit state, and not as he'd convinced himself when he was a normal color, proof of her [love].

Maybe the Great Designer hadn't decided to give Varia anything resembling [love], and in his [blue] state it was all he saw--her flaws. The bustling way she made her world tidy, the way she denied disorder. Despite himself--or because of himself--he reached out to draw her to him, and he crushed her to his chest with a desperate might that made her squeak in surprise.

Href was crushing her dress, he knew.

But instead of drawing away, irritated that he had so crushed the bright flowery fabric, she held him tighter. At her touch, part of him could feel the [blue] changing slightly.

He hoped not to [gray].

"The only Great Designer," she said quietly into his tie, "is yourself. The [blue]...I'll help you, Href, any way I can. There are others that deal with [blue]," and she said it without the shame that others did, "and though I'll never understand it completely, you can tell me."

How could he have though her without [love]?

"Let's run away, Varia," he said, even knowing as he did so that she would bat aside the idea. They had plans. Jobs. Stability. People, friends, family to whom they owed their time. "You know, we've always wanted to travel to Neon City."

Href could feel her sigh against him.

"I'm serious." He held her at arm's length, looking into her asterisk-shaped pupils, so wonderfully beautiful, the same as when he'd seen her for the first time, the (flower 9 pattern). "Let's go now, forget the party, forget everything. Call in tomorrow. Let's just...run, Varia. [Live][life][fun][joy!]"

"Maybe..." she started, lowering her eyes. "Maybe...this weekend."

And he could feel the [blue] shifting, not by some other, giant hand, but by his own code. The [blue] became [blue/], which melded, formed, became--

[gray]

He pixilated slightly with the shift, but Varia didn't notice.

Through the numbness of [gray], he forced himself to smile, to still his body from twitching in pixels again.

"Of course," he said, voice a dead drone. "Later. We'll find all of that later."

His form dissolved into a million rod-shaped pixels.

[GRAY]

612 words

Oh, 2016!

2016-01-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2016, kiddos. I'm glad you made it! Sometimes years seem like they're touch and go.

2015 was kick-ass and it took a discussion with one of my friends to realize just how well 2015 had treated me. Apparently, I'm a Debbie Downer or a where-is-the-liquid-in-the-glass type of person, because I only saw the negative. So here's what was great about it:

· I got legit published for the first time! Not only that, but my piece in Triangulation: Lost Voices was given a "highly recommended" rating on the SF review site, Tangent Online. Man, a complete stranger read and recommended my work. You have no idea how much squee that gave me.

· I received three other acceptances for my work.

· Health problems I've had forever (seriously since puberty) were figured out by my new doctor. With the help of modern medicine, I'm now healthier, in less pain, and have more energy than I've ever had.

· I visited New Orleans on vacation, and it's now one of my favorite cities. All of the jazz, blues, food, buskers, steamboats, Bloody Marys that'll make you sin, the mighty Mississippi, and Louis Armstrong's trumpet! And yes, even the dodgy areas, the hordes of homeless beneath the highway bridges, and the hurricane wrecked areas that are even now being rebuilt. Which reminds me I should write a post on it.

So far 2016 is great. I mean, other than losing David Bowie and Alan Rickman within days of one another. By Grabthar's Hammer, seriously world?

· A new Star Wars movie. And it was awesome. And didn't suck with suckiness of suckitude that was 1-3. Seriously. 2016 will be outstanding for that if for nothing else.

· Did I mention Star Wars? I did?

· For the first time ever, I submitted one of my novels to a seriously too-legit-to-quit (one day I'll stop with the 90's references) publishing house.

· The always cool cat Connie Cockrell interviewed me on her website. You can read it here.

Things I'm planning for 2016:

· Create a website. This one is something that's at the top o' my list. And yeah, I know I said this last year...

· Move on to my next novel project, Crossroads. No, there's no Brittney Spears in it. Sorry to disappoint you. Maybe I'll write something called Glitter, but then there won't be Mariah Carey in it either.

· Keep writing new shorts and send them out.

· Do more spray painting. Do more visual art stuff in general.