A Tragedy of Impatience
"The food's ready, do your thing!"
Jessica shrugged. She was tired of hearing Lance issue the "do your thing" command. He was a trader; he could have the finest mess kit in County Kalfal if he were willing to carry it around. But no, he had her, so he did not need to carry much of anything except for his goods for trade, and that was just to keep large sums of coin legitimate, since she was skilled enough to counterfeit small denominations when the coins would change hands frequently and disappear without being noticed, or would be a bit of loss from a cache and serve only to bemuse distressed accountants a few months later when their money vanished.
Lance examined her malformed flatware. "Are you upset, Hon'? The engraving on these forks looks terrible and you're not even trying with the plates."
That was true, she was not really trying. She did not really need to try, to do it, anymore. He was trying her patience, however. All day long he had been grouchy to her. She recalled a summary of how the morning had gone: hurry and get out of bed, make some coins to "buy" breakfast with, go set up the trade stall and operate it alone while I "investigate our competition."
He was probably just playing around all day, since he did not show up again until nearly sundown and hardly helped in packing up, since he simply took the day's profits and bought dinner with it. Obviously he blew all the real money that they had somehow, again. His bringing her dinner would have to count as the one considerate thing he did today.
Lance held out one of the plates and the forks that Jessica made and stepped towards her...
Yejs Syi-kao was twenty-eight years old. She had been bought as an egg from a black market trader by a mage looking for both a guard dog and a familiar. He was a very old wizard and liked to show off his skills, so he chose a dragon, knowing that they have a natural affinity for accumulating magical energy, and that only a skilled spell-caster can keep them under control once they notice that they have grown large enough to have no one to literally look up to. He was a little disappointed that his egg hatched a female, since he was looking for aggression, but it mattered not, since he could develop a spell to fix that detail once he got around to it. On her second day of life, she was successfully linked to Cshlamourd's personal manna, and enjoyed relative luxury while the mage waited patiently for her to develop her magical capacity. Four years later, he quite literally threw her out onto the streets.
Cshlamourd knew something was wrong when his new familar's neck stayed short, her wings seemed stunted to the point of being merely ornamental, and her legs sprouted long, encouraging her to take a two-legged stance. This was not a true dragon. There were many ways Yejs could have come to be as she was. A magical infusion of a human's blood into an yet-to-be-laid dragon's egg, a pregnant human transformed into a dragon at the right time or vice-versa. He mused the remote possibility that she was created the old-fashioned way.
Rumor held that there was once a village of seventy souls, including three dozen mix-breeds, living in the Hoarfrost Range. Many were descendants of a pair of dragons and pair of humans who were stranded there after an avalanche, joined company to survive, and built a proper town instead of parting ways when the spring came. With an oasis of civilization, going over the mountains became an easy shortcut instead of a path for the desperate. Travelers with their own reasons to get away took refuge there, and adopted its lifestyle, which grew blind to the differences between the realm's races.
So speaks the rumor at least, as no one who still lives admits to knowing anything about what really happened near the summits. Some form of magic would be required for hybrid mating to be successful, and the town's destruction during the reign of Kalfal IX, remembered as Kalfal the Razer, was just a footnote in the chapter of his eliminating anyone, any place, or anything that he felt was not part of the proper order of nature. Nonetheless, the expense of sending his best men through such dangerous climate to erase a cluster of small houses and those who dwelt within them indicates that he believed the rumor, if he did not have evidence of its veracity.
What a waste. The ingredients needed to make a potion that makes a potential familiar receptive to the linking spell are rare to find and expensive to buy, and he blew seven doses on Yejs before the binding took hold. He regretted missing that obvious clue. No one ever needed more than two doses to bind a dragon at its hour of hatching, but a human cannot be bound to another human. No wonder she was so resistant. The only thing he regretted more was his then throwing good money after bad.
Four years of reading to her the Mantra of the Neophyte, a seemingly endless string of meaningless gibberish that, once memorized by rote, ensured that the apprentice could understand and, if capable of making words of its own, speak every syllable needed to create any spell.
Four years of creating new spells that only worked when spoken through his personal manna, so that the words if repeated by another mage would not produce any effect. "Yejs syi-kao" was the first part of the first spell that Cshlamourd tailored as a test to ensure that he had finally grown wise enough to encrypt spells against his own powers. Yejs simply assumed that Daddy was talking to her, and happily memorized the phrase.
Four years, a small fortune in ingredients, and a rare artifact that he traded to get her egg in the first place, all a loss. Since he was bound to the useless creature he could not simply snuff it out; the permanent healing spell he once cast upon himself was now bridged to her too, so to kill her would at best drain his powers completely, an almost unparalleled reserve that he had spent two hundred years accumulating through judicial use of his power.
He needed a new familiar so he could transfer the binding away from the dragon. No problem, if he could get the ingredients again. Maybe a falcon this time? Anyway, she did not need to be here in his study. The further away she was, the less of his power she could drain from him. If he were lucky she would wander far enough away that the healing spell would become ineffective and then she could be eaten by a grue at no cost to himself. Besides, as long as she was alive she was developing manna at a dragon's rate, which Cshlamourd had full access to at any distance.
She lived her formative years in the market district of Kalfal, hiding during the day and raiding stored goods by night to keep herself fed. At thirteen, she was beginning to blossom into a woman. A growth spurt made the old hiding places useless, so she changed strategies and became just another heavily-cloaked face in the crowd, begging for copper on the claim that she had been cursed by a terrible wizard, giving her the form of a half-blood dragon. A glimpse of her face to prove her claim to passing patrons earned enough coin to survive on without needing to steal, but she longed for the day that Cshlamourd would open his door to her again. She did not know what she had done to anger her father, but whatever her sin was, she was sorry for it.
Cshlamourd would never return. He quested for the ingredients needed to create new potions of binding. For a bird, he needed five to be confident of success. A misstep sent him sliding off of a cliff's edge while attempting to collect enough asper heather and he found himself impaled on the skeletal branches of a leafless tree that once struggled to grow in a narrow alcove of rock.
His lungs punctured, Cshlamourd could do nothing but stare at the sky above, with his healing spell sustaining him unnaturally. After nineteen years of racking his mind alone to find a way to speak a spell, any spell, that would free him, but never being able to get more than two gasped syllables out at a time, he finally surrendered. The most simple spells could be cast wordlessly with enough skill, practice, and concentration. With a snap of his fingers, he immunized himself of the healing effect that had done wonders for the tree, which was now sprawling and thick with leaves. As his flesh turned to rot, his manna began to flow toward its other reservoir.
For the half-dragon, it was love at first sight. He was tall like she was, respectably strong, and had an impish aura about him. Something playful and interesting, and completely different from the population that she was living amongst, which was mostly common farmers, some compulsory soldiers in the Lord's army, and the varied craftsmen.
She slithered up to where he was setting up his shop, and could easily smell that the crates and barrels in his humble carriage contained fresh and exotic foods. She wished that she had more money, but there were only a few souls that held enough pity to give their coin to a cursed woman.
The vendor tacked up signs that were priced in both silver and in the credit notes that Kalfal XIV used to pay his army in lieu of letting precious metal leave his treasury during peacetime. She worked up the courage to approach his stand, and began to chat him up. She wanted to look like she was haggling, which she was, but really she wanted to find out if he was as interesting as he looked, if he could see beyond her scales, and if he was single.
She had talked him down to one silver on a bundle of goods that would make for the best meal she had eaten since losing her home. He knew that she did not have it, since she hesitated at the point where anyone in their right mind would realize that this would be a sale at a loss and would throw the silver at him before the vendor could change his mind.
"My name is Lance, would you like to tell me yours?"
She clasped her hands together and froze, before talking to herself aloud.
"What is my name? It's been so long, do I have one?"
He arched an eyebrow and she knew that she had to come up with something. She could imagine herself paying him with a silver in her hand, looking him in the eyes and giving him her name as she did so. Surprising herself as her daydream reached the critical moment, she blurted out, "Yejs syi-kao!" In her mind, the rest of that magic phrase followed the words that she spoke aloud, and with the death of Cshlamourd surrendering his manna to her, and her having become a fully matured dragon, that was all it took for the spell to be cast.
"Hiyeges--seya--" Lance blushed slightly, "this is probably rude, but do you mind if I just call you Jessica? I think that's as close as I can get."
Yejs smiled and quickly took him by his hand and gave him her silver, pressing their hands against his chest while she leaned, almost leapt, over his make-shift counter, hoping, but failing by inches, to get close enough to give him a kiss.
"Woah, okay, sold!, to the spunky green girl in a ragged monk's cloak!"
Silver? She recognized it as he put it into his strongbox. It was the one that she saw, the one she imagined. It had dull, incomplete features on its faces, vaguely similar to the markings of a coin she saw in Daddy's purse when she snooped amongst his possessions, but how did it get into her hands now?
Normally she slept in any time that she had enough food in her belly to rest peacefully, but she was too excited by thoughts of seeing Lance again, and awakened ahead of anyone who was not on watch detail. She spied on him as he left the lodge, bribed a guard to let him climb a watchtower to see the sunrise, and then returned to the market to set up his shop. Yejs understood that humans often took relationships slowly unless it was purely a mutual desire to exchange physical stimulation, but she was not a human, so he was not single anymore because dragons take what they truly want.
She sneaked up while he was arranging his pricing signs and expected him to be as happy to see her as she was to see him. Instead, he shrugged her off when she pressed her body against his in the manner of a dragon greeting its mate.
"Just what kind of a trick was that? A coin that disappears into nothing after you make off with my stuff. I was practically giving it away to you because I felt bad that such a seemingly sweet girl in a tough situation was starving in the street; ripping me off with some sort of magic coin, that's just insulting!"
Yejs struggled to apologize but she could not explain where it came from or why it vanished because she truly did not know. Every afternoon, just before Lance closed up for the day, Yejs offered him a share of what she had managed to beg from the throng. Many days she received nothing, and gave him a copper from her meager purse. Whenever it dwindled, she resorted to halves, and sometimes bits. She had lost track of how much of the silver's worth she had replaced when Lance asked her to stop, and told her that knowing he had a truly honest friend was worth more to him than any metal.
"I should stab you!" she squealed as she slapped his hand away. Yejs did not appreciate her Fiancé's habit of saying "I'm home" by reaching around her tail, grabbing her ass, and shouting "HONK!" into her ear. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly.
"I'm glad you're just kidding because I know you could do it."
She only remembered completely that one spell; she remembered much of many others but without every syllable spoken and timed correctly, none of those could be cast. Still, she was getting good at the one that she knew. Yejs only needed to faintly whisper the first three words that had become her name to create any solid metal object that she had in mind, and the spell could hold as long as thirty hours, now.
If she wanted a blade, she could have one in her hand faster than a man could blink, but usually she used her power to generate skeleton keys, bolts for Lance's crossbow so he could hunt endlessly, and of course coins to trade with merchants who were known to cheat their customers and deserved some payback. Occasionally jewelery, when Lance wanted to impress someone he was doing business with. The dragon-form curse story worked better when she looked the part of a daughter of an affluent family that could find itself on the bad side of a vengeful sorcerer.
...She shoved him back and he almost spilled the forks. He was strong but there is not much that can stand fast against a surly dragon, even a half-dragon.
"Lance, when was the last time you said my name? Not even my real name but that silly human name you gave me because you're too lazy to learn three little words of wizard tongue? All I ever hear come out of you anymore is 'do your thing!' Is that all I am to you now, the doer of the thing? Poof! a stack of coins here, Poof! a set of dining-ware there, Poof! crossbow bolts or a hammer and nails to fix our cart or a belt buckle with your name on it to impress someone. You don't even say my name when we make love! Do you even notice that I'm beneath you? When was the last time I used my power to make something for myself? I'll give you a hint, it was five fucking years ago today, Lance, not that you would remember a day on the calendar for my sake. And, when was the last time you used your merchant magic to my benefit? Not ours, but something just for me. Do you ever think about me or do you skip straight through to you saying the magic words, 'do your thing!' and then having whatever you shout out appear before you? The only time you ever talk to me without asking me to make something is to try to drag me out of bed at five to watch the sunrise. Yes, it's pretty, but I need to sleep after you have me casting spells all day. I'm sick of it, Lance, and I'm sick of you."
She turned and began to gather up her few belongings. She knew that as soon as she cooled off, she would be making up with him, but she also knew that she was right and that showing him that she would not be taken for granted ought to scare him straight and remind him that he is common-law married to a living person who loves him and expects reciprocation, not just some trinket genie.
"Honey, I'm--"
"Shut up."
"Hon', plea--"
"Honey, Honey, you still can't say Yejs Syi-kao, can you? Or did you forget it long ago?"
"Hiye--H--Jessica, just stop and--"
She clenched her fists and shut her eyes, overcome by the rage that his latest order drew from her. "I should stab you!" She had thrown that phrase at him hundreds of times when she was upset with him, but never before did she feel like she meant it.
Yejs Syi-kao felt her heart stop as she heard a dull thud and the clattering of a dropped plate against the forks that were resting upon it. Turning about, she saw Lance lying in a heap; his blood pooling rapidly. She was seated at his side at an instant and pulled him up against the right half of her chest, cradling him in her arms. He looked her in the eyes and swallowed hard. She had never seen such a mixture of terror, grief, sadness, and regret on a man's face before.
"Wh--When you would say that, I really thought you were kidding." With a blink, a teardrop escaped each eye, and he never diverted his gaze until a moment passed and his soul abandoned his ruined body. She hugged him as tightly as she could and looked downward at the solid silver dagger that was buried deeply in Lance's chest, an exact replica of one that her Daddy kept on his correspondence desk next to a purse of dwarven silvers that he used to pay for mineral purchases when a useful gem vein turned up.
"Break it down!"
Yejs slowly awakened to noisy guards bashing a ram against a door to the abandoned laboratory of a forgotten mage. When the members of the city guard of Lord Kalfal XVII broke into the chamber, they saw rows and rows of statues, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, all of one man, posed as a heroic figure but dressed in the garb of a common merchant, although clearly a successful one, in a large room that featured nothing else but the old wooden bookshelves of an absent scholar along its walls. The men admired the works of art in silent awe. The forms were perfect in every detail, down to the hairs of the subject's arms; tiny wires, some as thin as spider's silk, that yielded and reflexed when touched.
The light inside the chamber was poor and the leader of the three guards backed into something solid as he was stepping away from the finest of the statues to get a better look at it. The heroic figure was dancing with and kissing some sort of monster, half woman and half dragon. The dragon's scales were greened copper, the man's flesh a bright noble alloy and his hair seemed to be pure gold. A voice spoke through the small of the chief guard's back; it came from the thing that he backed into.
"I've spent a hundred years working on this shrine. What do you think?"
The guard's torch revealed some sort of monster, half woman and half dragon, nude but adorned heavily with metal jewelery, including a silver blood-stained dagger hanging like a pendant from a fine chain around her neck. She was sitting on the floor next to something that looked almost like a coffin. The guard stood aside, and she continued to speak while staring at her masterwork.
"I was pregnant, too. I think that's why I was getting so moody and upset with Lance. I knew he really wasn't the man I started imagining him to be. And, I miscarried our boy, although maybe that was for the best. I turned into something that would not have been a fit mother for many years."
The other guards approached with their hands on their swords's hilts, just in case, but this monster seemed harmless. The chief introduced himself and explained that the old warehouses, one of which the laboratory was built above, were to be demolished for new development, and ordered her to leave immediately.
Yejs stood and approached the statue of herself and her hero, placing her hand upon the hand of her copy that was flat against the metal Lance's cheek. "I guess it is time to move on. I will leave tonight. When the sun rises, you may return. These statues will remain; your craftsmen and treasurers can figure out what to do with them. Sell them, melt them, they have served their purpose. Myself and the books will be gone by morning."
She turned to face the guards with a begger's hopeful gaze tinted with cold-blooded seriousness. "Please comply with my wishes, despite your orders if they are contrary. I know you are strong and good men, but I could kill you with a stray thought, and I don't want to mourn for three more centuries."
The guards left in peace to report that the upper story of the eighth warehouse was the secret workshop of an unknown but unparalleled sculptor.
The sun had set and the tiny light that could enter Cshlamourd's laboratory faded away. With a blink of her eyes, Yejs cast a simple spell to illuminate her surroundings. She had studied every scrap of paper that Daddy left behind, and unlike him, she now had the power to wield every spell he knew and many he did not without needing to speak them aloud. She brushed her hand across the cold gold coffin and dispelled it. Lance's body had hardly decayed at all, her spell to completely encase him having coated every cell in his body with at least an atom-thin layer of gold leaf.
His right hand was in his pocket, as he was reaching for something when he had ordered her--asked, in the way of his personality--to give him a chance to redeem himself that she unwittingly denied forever. Before she could say goodbye to the love of her life, she had to know what he was reaching for. Until now she was afraid it would only make her feel worse to know, but tomorrow she was back on the streets again searching for a new place to live and hide, as both her form and her powers would make her an outcast, and she wanted to make this a clean break without any lingering mystery.
In his pocket was a small tied scroll and a tiny wrapped box. She opened the box and learned that it contained a solid gold pendant shaped like a heart; all the missing money that her inner voice accused him of wasting was now resting in the scaled palm of her hand. Her attention shifted to the scroll.
"Eygisayekaow, there's one thing I'll never ask for you to make: a heart of gold, because you've already given yours to me. I love you forever. Lance. P.S. I'll never figure out how to say your name, but at least show me how to write it. Oh, and while you were reading the tiny words on this note, I have sneaked behind you. Please don't stab me. HONK!"
The reserve guard was brought in as extra muscle to extract the statues, and Lord Kalfal himself came to see the enigmatic artwork first-hand. He followed along as the leader of the three investigators wandered the warehouse attic. The bookshelves and their contents had been burned to ashes. Everything else was as it had been, until he found his way to the large statue of two figures. It now stood overlooking a new statue, also metal but with colors that matched perfectly the flesh that it imitated, betrayed only by the mirror-like reflections of its surroundings.
The monster, half woman and half dragon, with a fist-sized chest wound, knelt with her fallen hero lying against the right side of her torso, her right arm wrapped around his body, her right and left hands wrapped around the hero's, all four together holding a large gold heart with severed veins hanging freely, pressing it against his punctured chest. The solid silver dagger and the tiny gold heart each dangled from their chains, which wrapped intricately around each of twenty interlocked fingers.
The chief guard removed the scraps of paper that the silver dagger pierced and read the large one aloud.
"All these statues are yours to dispose of as you please except this one, for it is our tomb and it is protected. If I may ask one favor, please see to its being placed somewhere with a clear view to the East. I realize now that watching the sun rise with Lance was one of the highlights of my life, and I regret every morning that I cursed the opportunity, taking for granted that he would always be there whenever I got up. --Jessica, dragon arch-mage and widow." Also impaled by the dagger was Lance's fifth anniversary message to Yejs, which the guard chief read aloud, as well.
Lord Kalfal XVII, like many of his ancestors, took a strong stance against acknowledging the existence of chimeras, so a statue of a half-dragon would not be presented to his public, but he also had great respect for the final wishes of the deceased. In the far eastern edge of County Kalfal, there was a small mountain where no one goes but maybe mages looking for plants with alchemical properties. After a grueling effort to move its great weight, the statue was placed beneath a huge tree that grew abundantly. One of the guards joked that the tree was so big because it ate people, claiming that there were bones sticking out of some of its branches. He did not admit that he had found a few pieces of dwarven silver half-buried in the sand along with an old tarnished dagger that looked exactly like the one that hung from a chain that was impossibly woven into the metal sculpture that they spent so much time hauling uphill.
Lance was gone but he was there, and so was she, for all eternity. Yejs would never sleep through another sunrise. The statue became legendary amongst ingredient-seeking mages, as the metal dragon wept every morning and where her tears touched the soil, asper heather grew.