Allory Fae and the Dragon's Whiskers

ALLORY AWOKE SLOWLY TO a tickling sensation in her antennae. She tried to reach up a hand to scratch them. So cold. So lethargic. Slower than a snoozing Pixie.

So … alive?

Suggids. I have a hand? Oh … a hand! Zzuriel?

A spasm seized her body at the memory. "Zz!" Nothing but a horrid rasp emerged from her throat.

Thunder rumbled nearby.

"Zzz!"

"Mrrwll! Allory! Allory Fae, my darling Sparkles! Oh, MRRWLL!"

By the sounds of him, her favourite Golden Purrmaine had to be doing one of his silly feline dances. It simply had to be seen. Her left eye slit open with the utmost reluctance, as if a sharp blade might be required to prise her eyelid away from the eyeball. The right remained frozen shut. Ooh, and someone was giving her a toasty-warm cuddle. Xiximay! Past the dark warrior's bulging left biceps – Varzune must surely be jealous, she thought absently – she spied a white mountain. Oh, snow? Odd consistency for snow, mind.

Sort of scaly snow. Plus, it was really snowing over there, in an underground cavern as she recalled. How did that even work?

Where had she been? She feared to try to remember lest she learn that the old fogginess, the accursed forgetting, had once more struck, but her brain seemed somehow calcified to the present. What was going on here?

"Zzz – rel," she rasped again. "Zzz – rel?"

"She's struggling, badly hurt, Allory. Could you –"

"Cuss!" she coughed.

"Mrrwll!" the scholar spluttered in shock.

"She means, 'of course,' you silly Furball," Ashueli interpreted promptly.

"Oh, mrrr-frrr, I thought, surely not, my sweet little Allory-Sparkles does not swear like that," he buzzed in his burry voice, grinning so hard his whiskers threatened to drop off the sides of his muzzle. He removed his spectacles to dig a knuckle or two into his eyes. "Over here, Allory. If you can move – no? I'll – er, could you, Xiximay? Nearly froze my tail off last time."

The thunder chuntered belligerently.

"Can we fix this quickly, please?" Jhoranyal urged, sounding unusually nervous for him. "I've a feeling it's Allory she wants to see and she probably thinks we're trying our best to murder her. Wish we spoke the local language …"

This odd statement percolated vaguely into Allory's addled wits as her brain insisted upon trying to catch up with reality, but in a haphazard way that failed to find the whole cocoon. She had a hand. It could scratch her nose. Her nose felt like an icy rock. She wanted to sneeze but her body could not imagine producing any form of motion just now. Had she been asleep? No, she merely felt as if her entire being had been rearranged, with extreme prejudice, by a titanic lightning bolt.

Weird.

Weirder still, she was starting to feel alright. As things went in her recent experience as the prime subject of a lightning attack, this struck her as rather unexpected.

So was actually having a hand. Two hands. They even appeared to be attached to her person, more or less. Bonus nectar.

"Here, touch her," someone said.

"Move Allory's arm for her," said another voice.

Her arm muscles protested that this was a Very Bad Idea. However, in a moment, she sensed a tiny trickle of power leave her body, and nearby, a familiar voice gasped her gratitude. Zzuriel. Sweet relief! Hers was the image left in her mind, a smoking body drifting away from a monumental lightning strike … which had been created by … the plants?

Maybe. Or another power?

"Suggids, would you look at the excess scintillance streaming off of her?" Ashueli noted meantime. "That's a good sign, right?"

Chenixipi said, "That's the best dust I've seen in awhile. Allory – muster your duster, extra-bluster plus-plus-pluster!" Powdery magic puffed over her body in a miniature storm. Someone coughed. "Good, Izzini. Keep massaging her legs. Gently on the wings, Varzune. Saritan, more on the arms, right down to her fingertips. Excellent. We need to get her sap flowing as soon as possible."

"Yeow! Spark," someone complained. Kartan, her fellow Scintillant?

"Faeling," Izzini teased.

"Butt massage?" Varzune offered, before beating Xiximay to the growl by adding, "Yours of course, just as you requested, my darling Phoenix Fae."

"Only if I get to massage your handsome snout with the heel of my foot," she advised.

"You snuggle closer, Xiximay, and I don't mean to him," Chenixipi ordered tartly. "I want more heat and I need it now."

Xiximay said, "For once in my life, I'm about all out of fire, I'm afraid. Barely even a glimmer."

"Able assistance is at hand," Varzune volunteered at once.

"Get off," the Phoenix growled. "Get – you pest, get off! Varzune, blast it! Not in public!"

"Perfect result," cooed the Pixie.

She really, badly needed to giggle right now, but Allory found that her body could do nothing of the sort. Not yet. Her tongue would not wag. These preposterous, irreplaceable friends of hers. Even when they stood against a background of black – of stark black Pixies? Thousands! What? Huh? Where … were they?

As alarm seized her being in a grip like powerful talons, her sluggish heartbeat lolloped faster and faster. This triggered a frantic, unbearable prickling sensation that spread throughout her body but most especially in her limbs and wings, as the living sap of her life picked up at last. Feeling the flow, the buzz, the inmost spark of true life. Deep breaths. Deeper. In and out. Groaning between her teeth as the unremitting cold, seemingly born of some unimaginable abyss, made her bones ache.

Where were they – suggids, that's no white mountain! That's a – oh, oh … the old panic swept over her, an instant paralysis reaction to her fear. Shocking how quickly one could go backward.

Courage!

The frozen mountain cleared its throat in the course of expelling a few syllables of crashing annoyance. As Allory's other eye managed to crack open now and her eyeballs swivelled for the first time in weeks, a truly peculiar realisation – did I just spontaneously resurrect – she began to take in a few details and immediately wished she had not. This Dragon truly was a mountain, as in, it smothered the entire peak of a larger edifice which protruded from somewhere so far beneath them, its bottom was well out of sight. The plants nearby appeared to have no problem with the intense cold radiating off its scales, many of which were larger in diameter than Sabline's wingspan. A long, sinuous beast when one took its awesome size into account, the serpent-like creature wound perhaps seven or eight times about its perch, but it was impossible to tell with exactitude because of the snow coating its flanks and falling steadily from grey clouds gathered above its head.

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Huh. Being surrounded by persistent thunderheads had to give any creature a good case of the grumps.

Did it generate its own weather phenomena?

Awesome enough in size to change the local climate, then? Quite. As in, the blazing azure eye facing them was open a crack, and that crack was a hundred Allorys in length. Minimum. Those staggering coils had to be several miles long, more than plenty to snarl up Durhelm Castle and squeeze it into a nice pulp. A true giant among Dragons.

Suggids! Could it somehow be related to the Giants?

Or to Zzuriel's people? Could it have been Zzuriel's touch which had triggered the whole episode of being lightning-blasted back into her old body?

She loved her friends even when they were nearly the death of her.

"Zuggids!" Allory slurred aloud. Oof. Even the blushing helped, besides being cuddled by a living flame. Inner and outer warmth together. "Shanks Ikshimish. Ish mensh shay … shuggids! Ish bath."

Even Varzune's look pitied her. No jokes.

"Ish alurve?"

"You're definitely alive, girlfae," Ashueli informed her in a no-nonsense, cheer-up-the-Scintillant-icicle tone of voice. "Back to the real sapphire you. Isn't she looking fabulous, Hansanori?"

The Harpist's grin quirked the corners of his mouth, clearly accusing the Princess of All Rascals with the utmost intent to stir up the sap of trouble. "Still sparkly and fabulous indeed," said he. "Allory Fae, it is a true delight to see you reunited … with yourself, so to speak. Sounds odd, doesn't it?"

"Sh'odd," she mumbled. "Pickiesh washing mush?"

"Apparently, they don't speak a word," he replied, having deduced her mush-mouthed question correctly. "They just … watch ominously. Not at all concerning."

"Oh!" she remembered suddenly. Fakori Fae had formulated a perfect wish for her! Spotting him amidst her concerned audience, she smiled lopsidedly and called, "Shanks foo da swish! Yoush aweshlum."

He bowed elegantly. "I'm only sorry these wishes don't always arrive on schedule, Allory Fae. I do my best. Amazas is asleep, but he did tell us that this is the Janghorash."

"Thash hoo?"

"Less talking and more healing!" Garobixi ordered boldly, throwing a glance at Chenixipi for her approval. Their pixels swooped together naughtily beneath their rotund behinds.

Stroking his whiskers sagely, Yaarah explained, "Aye, grrr-frrr, the original tunnel-digger – well, herself, we think. She appears to want to speak with us, but we can't understand a word. We do think, however, that your advent triggered the plants to alert the Janghorash and she sent the lightning which very nearly toasted Zzuriel to a crisp but ended up slamming your sparkle-form into your dormant body … and, excellent result – Allory reborn! Plus this extra sparkliness that appears to be radiating from your extremities a bit like Pixie dust, but then it returns to your body again so all appears to be harmoniously balanced."

"Sheep," she squeaked.

"Quite, quite. I believe that's a mythical animal you've just named – never mind. Ahem!" He drew himself up. "Could you imagine attempting to speak with the behemoth before these strangely warlike Pixies grow impatient?"

"Shoor."

Great. Talk, she could not. Nor could she so much as rotate her neck. Petrified muscles. Still, Allory managed to roll her eyes far enough to see that there had to be something approaching the greatest multitude of Pixies under Middlesun gathered around them in a great arc, obscuring every direction save that occupied by the mighty Janghorash. Pixies beyond number. Maybe in the hundreds of thousands. Not one of them looked more welcoming than Sabline's sharpest fang.

Dark Fae, Dark Elves. If they were kin, this was not the friendliest meeting.

Wintry Dragon, wintry Fae?

A renewal of her earlier intuition caused her to swivel in Xiximay's grasp. A strong hand stilled the abortive first flutter of her wings. "Not yet, girlfae. Too dangerous. I've got you."

"Zzuriel," Allory grated, just about intelligibly this time.

"Me?" Zzuriel flitted around to face her.

The Scintillant tried to clear her throat. "Come. Drashon … shame gnasher?"

To her surprise, Zzuriel leaned forward to pop a frosty kiss between her antennae. "You mean we appear to have the same nature, don't you? I … I thought that, too." Allory knew the brand of inner doubt her tone expressed all too well. "Let's go try. I'll speak for us, if I can."

Shadowed by Yaarah and tracked by the dark gaze of all those Pixies – very large Pixies, some as much as eight feet tall and nearly as large around the middle, Allory realised with an inner chuckle, causing Chenixipi and Garobixi to appear rather cowed by the sheer physical presence of their far larger and infinitely more warlike brethren, never mind the vast numbers – their small group winged out toward the mighty, frosty white Dragon. Xiximay flew for her, gripping Allory's waist in both hands, while Zzuriel flew alongside, blenching by the second until her pallor resembled a brand-new Faerie cocoon.

As they approached, Yaarah said in a cowed whisper, "Immediately after Zzuriel was struck by lightning, this beast and its Pixie army approached. It was as if that entire mountain it is sitting upon grew up out of nowhere. Its cold is akin yours, Zzuriel, brrr-trrrt, a true beast of the netherworld. I wonder if this degree of cold does not originate from beyond the boundaries of our Spheris itself? No mind. It thundered at us as if we should hear and understand, but we could not. That was when the Pixie army deployed to cut off any hope of retreat."

"It sounds angry," Zzuriel put in.

"Draconic anger and frustration are often two surfaces of the same talon," the Felidragon explained. "I sense deep puzzlement and anger, not so much –"

BRRAAA-GRAARRRGHH GRR FRRR BRAARGHH!! the behemoth bellowed.

A billowing storm of ice and snow shot over half a mile from its gargantuan maw. Echo upon echo shook the caverns causing even the stolid black Pixies to tremble. Then the fierce, piercing gaze fixed upon them.

SSNNAAARRLL!!

"Not a clue," the scholar Felidragon added unnecessarily, acting most surprised that Sabline snapped toward his shoulder as he reflexively hid behind her. "Frrr-right. Ideas, anyone?"

Xiximay said tersely, "How's about we figure this out, and quickly? I don't fancy being turned into an ice sculpture."

"Shtuckkit?" Allory inquired.

"You think the Dragon's stuck over there? Maybe you can fix that?" Zzuriel spluttered. "I … I'm going to … wish me Fakori's own luck, alright?" Winging forward a few feet, she produced a graceful aerial obeisance of a style completed unfamiliar to Allory, and called, "O mighty Janghorash, we greet –"

GNARR GRA-DAA-AARRGH!!

Despite the deafening peal of thunder, the azure eye merely inched open a little more and lit upon Zzuriel with what Allory hoped was less predatory curiosity than she imagined just then, and more a lively, intelligent sort of interest.

Dragons. One could always hope, right?

The Diamond Fae took a deep breath. Cold steamed off her body – a fear reaction? Despite that, she maintained her position and bowed again. "O mighty Janghorash, we give you … our frostiest greetings! We come in peace to learn before your mighty paw."

She repeated this in her own tongue, that of the Diamond Fae.

The mighty creature stilled for a moment, the unblinking regard of that eye, an exercise in instilling terror. A low, steady exhalation that sounded like a waterfall muffled by jungle foliage expelled waves of bitterly cold air away from them. Yaarah muttered something about that being good, about the creature pondering what to say. Then, it shifted. No, it was not frozen. Not in the slightest. The mighty head reared upward, far upward, swaying exactly like a cobra readying itself to strike. A white hood flared from its upper neck region behind the head, adding to the impression of snakelike enormity – but the creature was all Dragon, a fact made more than clear by the baleful glare of its fiery orbs, like twin cenote pools the precise colour of Centresky.

Allory shivered. Coincidence?

She ought to strike that word out of her dictionary!

Dipping forward in a manner that caused everyone to freeze in imitation of Zzuriel, the creature yet did not strike. Instead, it carefully leaned over until its muzzle almost touched the Diamond Fae. Allory was not convinced her friend was even breathing at this point. They shared a long, long stare – one behemoth being frozen-frozen, and the white mite being frozen by fear, she suspected.

Even time seemed to freeze, at least according to her perception.

Yaarah whispered, "Come aside. Quick."

Just in time, for the Janghorash's tongue flicked out to strike Zzuriel squarely upon the forehead with deadly speed and accuracy, yet so lightly, she barely swayed in the air. A torrent of glacial breath streamed over the Diamond Fae, yet she appeared to shiver only in surprise.

GNARR GRA-DAA-AARRGH? it repeated.

Zzuriel opened her mouth to speak and her throat bobbed several times, but to her evident consternation, she produced not a peep of sound. Instead, with a startled wheeze, she exhaled a series of complex and beautiful patterns comprised wholly of streams of snowflakes. Each was different, delicate, unique. The girlfae spluttered in consternation and tried to say something else. More snowflakes gusted out of her mouth, some wider than her wingspan.

Incredible.

For the first time since Allory had known her, a giggle of unadulterated delight pealed from those ice-cold lips. Zzuriel snowflaked something more, if that was even a word.

She must have said something amusing, for the Dragon thunder-laughed in response, GNARR DRRAAARRGGHH GNARR-HARR-HARRR!!

Smug as only a supersized Dragon-mountain could be.

Then, the Diamond Fae expelled an earnest flood of wintry finery. The Janghorash responded by producing a single vast snowflake at least half a mile across, so dazzling in complexity that Zzuriel gasped and turned to Allory, Xiximay and Yaarah, crying, "She's … that's the whole history of the world, pictured right there! It's incredible!" She listened and watched again. "She's asking about the … the Children of Light, she calls them, I think – that's you, Allory. She's asking … it's hard to translate. One moment."

Pursing her lips, she blew a miniature flurry toward the Janghorash.

A blast of laughter swept them all backward in an icy hurricane.