Chapter 10

SAND

Sand did not like having no magic. Draconic shapeshifting was handled via using magic to kick one’s celular structure from one phase state to another – so, while she had no access to magic, she had no ability to shift her current latticework of cells and polymers into a new form. She could wriggle around in the current form – she could change colors, she could extrude tendrils, she could think. But she couldn’t shift from the current phase-state of clothing to, say, a mouse, or a dragon, or an elf. It made things very hard when one wanted to shrug, or look inquisitively, or ask silently for someone to elaborate.

So, instead, she spoke in Mavlynn’s mind.

Well?

“I, uh...” Mavlynn shook her head, tearing her eyes from the huge bronze statue head. “So, humans. They’re in stories. Legends. Fables. There was that animated show about them, you know? With the skyscraper and the greedy dragon CEO.”

Nope, Sand said, then paused. What did they do?

“The old stories said that they were terrifyingly tough creatures – unkillable, able to keep going through anything,” Mavlynn said, pursing her lips. “But how much of that is true or not ... I mean, I thought they were just myths.”

Well, they are, aren’t they? Big statue, we can make statues of mythic things, right? It’s not like if you found a dragon statue, Sand said. Come on! Lets keep exploring!

The cave, as it transpired, continued going. The ceiling grew lower and lower the further they got from the trash chute that had dumped them down here – but the width never narrowed. It was an ancient shelf of shale, Sand realized, the kind that would keep everything preserved and in place for centuries. The walls, distantly visible in Mavlynn’s makeshift torch, had a few doors leading into deeper corridors. The main chamber was dominated by more and more of those metal rectangles. Mavlynn paused to examine a few of them. Their sides were armored, and they had huge thick metal bands that wrapped around circular protrusions. Mavlynn examined one for a long, long moment, then whispered softly.

“I think they’re like dragon cars,” she said.

That’s ridiculous, Sand said, her voice haughty as she pumped it into her girlfriend’s brain via direct nerve interface. Dragon cars need a place for the dragon to go, and for their legs to stick out. So they can run around.

“Okay, imagine those wheels spinning,” Mavlynn said. “The big metal bands would rotate along the ground, and the whole thing would move.

Sand remained quiet for a moment. She had a poofy hat that sat atop Mavlynn’s head as part of her body. She deflated a little bit. I suppose.

Mavlynn smirked. “What? A little nervous at the idea of something replacing dragons?”

... a little... Sand admitted, a bit sullenly. The idea of two-leggers having something that wasn’t dragons to move them around – that couldn’t be, at any moment, inhabited by a dragon’s mind and directed by a dragon’s will ... two-leggers didn’t like thinking about it, but those dragon bodies they rode around on? They had dragon souls. Those souls may spend most of their time in the deep astral, having good times, but they could be called back to their bodies, if they ever needed too. What was next, though? Guns that fired, like, metal balls instead of dragons? Or acid spitters that didn’t have tiny dragons hidden in their chambers? Or computers that just used crystals without any dragon organs, or dragon lines at all?

She shivered around Mavlynn, who continued towards one of the doorways.

Stepping inside, they started to walk past chambers, each sealed by a door with a dusty window on it. Ancient runes done in paint that had long since been covered by dust and chipped away smeared onto the windows. Mavlynn brushed some aside, peering in through the window.

The room beyond was filled with crates, each one sealed with a kind of complex lid. She opened the door, walked in, then tugged a lid off with a grunt. Within, there were thick binders made of some kind of non-draconic bone, covered with a strange filmy material. When Mavlynn poked it, she frowned. “It’s smooth.” She said, then started to rub her fingers up and down it.

Lemmi. Sand said, and grew a glove along Mavlynn’s fingers. Rub me against it.

Mavlynn hesitated, then did just that. Sand licked the material. It’s not dragon bone at all! Nor any kind of bone. It tastes kind of like the long-strand thread that I can spin out when I shapeshift into certain kinds of clothing and objects. Uh. It had word. It started with a P. Uh ... poly ... poly ... amo ... rous?

“That’s having two boyfriends at once,” Mavlynn said, her voice amused.

No, no, that’s something else, this is made of a complicated polyamorous chain of organic stuff. Definitely.

“Why not just use dragon bone?” Mavlynn asked. “Does this stuff last longer?

It tastes like it should last longer, but, like, way TOO long. Dragon bone is cool cause it decays eventually. This stuff would just sit around forever billion million years, and then the tiny dragons would eat it, and then it’d get all up in our food and drink. Yuck. Well, I guess tiny dragons could filter it out.

“Huh,” Mavlynn said. She used one hand to pick the binder up, then set it on the crate next to the first, letting it fall open. It appeared to be a bunch of bound pieces of paper – but the paper wasn’t, like, shed dragon skin, it was something weird and flatter and, when Sand tasted it ... made of wood pulp.

Weird! Sand whispered, while Mavlynn leaned over, shaking her head.

“It’s a list,” she said. “See, these are definitely numbers – I they have the same shapes as our numbers. These are ... names? This is like, census data or something.” She flipped page after page, each of it full of names and numbers. She flipped the binder shut, then started to take out others. Each one was filled with more names and numbers – completely incomprehensible lists of unknown objects, written on impossible paper, buried at the heart of the world. Mavlynn was frowning after she was done searching – and Sand’s own confusion had given way to uncertain boredom, waiting for her to come to some big old conclusion.

Mavlynn stood in silence, her torch flickering.

... well? Sand prodded her. Mavlynn blinked, lifting her head.

“I need to investigation more before I make a decision,” she said. “But there’s gotta be hundreds of these binders down here.”

But I wanna know nowwwww!

Sand wriggled.

And then she grumbled.

Then she fell asleep.

“Sand, wake up,” Mavlynn’s voice was grim and focused. Sand jerked to tension around Mavlynn’s body, blinking. The torch was gone. In its place, Mavlynn had found a magelight that somehow worked in the absence of any magical energies, and she was shining it around a chamber that was full of chairs. A hanging metal box stuck out of the ceiling, and the far wall had a rolled down film of something pale white and fluttery. “We need to get back up to the surface.”

Wuh? Huh? What’s going on? Sand asked, still trying to wriggle sleep out of the creases of her body.

“I ... weren’t you ... didn’t you watch the movie!?” Mavlynn asked, sounding annoyed. “Did you not see everything I wa...” She was silent, then pinched the bridge of her nose. “You fell asleep, didn’t you?”

N-No. Maybe. Yes. How long ago?

“Three hours, four, maybe,” Mavlynn said. “You just slept through- I...” She sighed. “Wyrm damn it, Sand, I just learned something so shocking it completely changes everything I thought I knew about the world – not just Wyrm City, but the whole of Shell, the history of the Great Wyrm War, everything! Sand! Everything!”

Well, I was bored! Sand was silent for a bit. I’m sorry.

Mavlynn opened her mouth, then closed it. She put her hand on Sand’s shoulder, then gently started to stroke her. Her voice was soft. “It’s all right, Sand. You’re not exactly used to this kind of thing.”

What, adventure? Sand asked.

“No, hard work,” Mavlynn said, grinning.

Sand snickered. Hard work is for two-leggers, not dragons.

“You have no idea how right you are,” Mavlynn said, sighing and rubbing her palm along her face. She hesitated, then said. “Say, Sand.”

Yeah?

“You dwitter account, on the dragon lines?” Mavlynn rubbed her chin, slowly. “You had to keep it distinct from your Sandgirl account, right?”

Yup! Mom kept whining about how everyone watched me and would judge me about what I did and stuff. Why?

“Once we’re back in the range of the astral plane, do you think you can do some...” Mavlynn grinned. “ ... livestreaming?”

But that’s hard! Sand said. Especially if you don’t have a crystal to do it – like, I’d have to do it all myself, just, focusing and using my own magic. And what if I get tired? I’d want to stop and lay down and oooooooooh! She gasped. I’ll get to prove I can stay focused and do hard work and not be a lazy layabout teenage dragon!

“And,” Mavlynn said, twirling her mage-light that wasn’t a mage light. “You’re going to save the world.”

Fuckin’ sweet!

MAVLYNN

Mavlynn focused on the here and the now. Because she knew this was going to be some of the hardest stuff she had ever done. Fortunately, the humans had buried more than just their tax records, ancient pictures, paintings, and other esoterica. They had left behind more than a little bit in the way of supplies and tools. There had been hammers, there had been nails, crowbars, long ropes, and none of them used dragons or anything that looked even remotely like dragon based materials. It was all pure metalworking, without even the telltale sign of dragon breath being used for smelting.

She held one tool – a hammer – and another tool – a long narrow tube of metal that served no purpose she had been able to determine. She started to use one on the other, her kobold strength flaring and sputtering with the lack of magic. The impact of the hammer tinked and clanked, and slowly, she bent the tube into a curved hook. She hammered the flat tip into as good a biting edge as she could manage, then bent the other end into a circle. Through that, she slid one of the ropes she had found, and tied it off.

A grappling hook! Sand said.

“That it is, Sand, that it is,” Mavlynn said. She breathed in. “We’re going to need to fight through those kobolds. I have a few secret tricks that should help ... but it’s still going to be the hardest fight of our lives. We’re going to need to work together – and that means you’re going to need to interface your body to mine like a suit of armor. You need to work in the astral while I work in the material. I ... I know you’ve never done that kinda thing before. It can be a bit ... a lot for a high born dragon, like yourself.”

Pfft. My boyfriend’s gonna be inside my nubile dragon body? That sounds like Tuesday to me. Lets do this, Mav! Lets fuck them up and blow this whole popjoint’s back out like my mom and a joyboy on Monday! Mavlynn could hear the feral eagerness in Sand’s voice.

She snorted. “Aren’t I your girlfriend now?” she asked, twirling the grappling hook as she did so.

Technically, girls can by boyfriends. That’s dragon law, Sand said.

“Not sure if that’s-”

Dragon lawwww! Sand whispered.

Mavlynn snorted, twirled the grappling hook faster, then hurled it up at the pinprick of light with every bit of strength. She heard a distant thunk and a pattering of dust. She tugged once, twice, and thrice. The grappling hook remained stuck fast into whatever she had hit it into. She gulped.

“If this breaks, can you break my fall?”

Definitely, maybe, probably, I think so! Sand said.

“Well, do or die,” Mavlynn muttered. She grabbed onto the rope and hauled herself up. The strength her augmented muscles gave was, in part, based on magic. Down here, that addition was left listless and weak. But the House did excellent work – they had layered real muscle tissue into her body with their kobold augmentation, threading her with the toned strength of a gymnast. She pulled up, tightened her feet against the rope, pulled up, tightened her feet, pulled up. Hand over hand over hand, she rose up and up and up, the dark, bone-crunching drop beneath her getting higher and more perilous with each tug.

The grappling hook shifted and crunched, causing her to drop a few inches. Mavlynn squeaked, her eyes widening. Against the blinding glare of the mage-light shining down through the shaft, she could see that she had knocked it between two long decayed pipes, and one of the pipes was beginning to bend ever so slightly in the middle, crumpling inwards against the pressure of her augmented body. Mavlynn started to scramble faster and faster now – her heart in her throat.

Crunch.

Squeal.

She yanked one last handhold up-

The grappling hook gave way. The tip sprang free.

Mavlynn lunged wildly, flailing with her right hand, and her claws sank into the metal of the pipe’s half crushed form. She dangled from one arm, her body screaming at her. Her legs dangled out into nothingness as she looked down, watching the rope and the grappling hook sail down beneath her. Mavlynn! Sand screamed. Mavlynn swung her other arm up, grabbing on. And here she found that ... it was actually ... quite hard to haul oneself upward on the strength of your arms alone.

Doubly so when merely mortal muscles had been strained by climbing the rest of the way up, hand over hand over hand. She gritted her teeth, hissing. “Fuck!” She gasped, pulling herself up half an inch.

She felt her arms burn.

She felt the top of her head tingle.

Mavlynn closed her eyes tightly. She refused to let the dragons win. She refused. She started to pull herself up, inch by inch, trembling as her whole body screamed at her. But with each inch, her head buzzed, then grew warm – and then it became easier and easier and easier. She let loose a fierce, feral roar as she got her arms flat under her, her legs dangling beneath her – but her whole body was thrumming with magical energies. She buzzed and crackled and laughed as she felt the strength of her kobold augmentations coming back online. Sand writhed along her body, then extruded a metal hook from one wrist, then another metal hook. Mavlynn reached up, grabbed, hauled, then braced her foot against the rusted pipe beneath her. She panted, looking down at the black hole that had nearly been her fate.

Hah! Fuck you, gravity! Sand shouted.

“Yeah. Fuck you gravity,” Mavlynn whispered.

She swung her hook up, catching the next pipe, then pushed up with her legs. Her metal-hook crunched into some loose stone and dirt and some spilled down onto her face. She spat it out, and then scrambled up the next level. She climbed past ancient water pipes. She climbed past power cables that had been laid ages before. She climbed past thick white shale that marked a termination point between layers of earth. She climbed and climbed and climbed – and as she felt the moisture and humidity of Wyrm City’s underbelly caress her cheek and her features, she knew she was coming closer and closer.

Her metal hook swung around the edge of the metal grating and she pushed up, to the side, then swung the hook around and dragged herself up onto her belly, then over the edge. She rolled onto her back, panted, and just ... laid there, gasping in the air.

We’re go!

Sand’s voice was cheerful as her body started to shift and grow around her. Thick muscle strands tightened and flexed, then grew taut around her forearms, her belly, her shoulders. Bones grew and locked into place, forming a secondary skeleton, an exoskeleton that both provided support, protection and enhanced strength. The joints matched her joints, the skin and scales stretched over to cover her more and more. Thick claws burst from around her toes, and the smothering feeling of scales growing over her face and nose was replaced with a flash of brilliant light as she began to peer from several additional eyes – two mounnted on her face, two on her brow, two on her shoulders. The synthesized vision was an eerie false color of magical energy and heat, and it ... it felt like being blind for her whole life and now being able to see: Mavlynn could literally see and read every detail of the sign behind her as she started to stand. She looked down at herself by just shifting her attention – her eyes were so wide range that they caught most of her body in glancing profiles.

She was clad in the top of the line powered dragon armor – the kind of weaponry that states threw around, not just corporations and militia.