The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,82

and he got his first glimpse of the beast.

It was some kind of dragon. It had scaly, purplish green iridescent skin, and stood erect on two enormously powerful rear legs, with a long, massive whip tail stretching out behind. Its body was at least thirty feet tall, and its head was a scaly oblong slashed across by a toothy mouth easily big enough to swallow Jedra in one gulp. Its forearms were short in comparison with its legs, but they were still at least six feet long and heavily muscled. They ended in cruel claws, and Jedra recognized the limp form clutched in them.

“Kayan!” he screamed.

The dragon bellowed at him, its hot, fetid breath washing over him and making him choke. Jedra struggled against the vines, but they clung tight. He tried mind-linking with Kayan again, and this time he felt a faint response.

Kayan, wake up! he sent.

Mmm?

The dragon lifted her up to its eye level and peered at her through first one, then the other of its foot-wide pupils. Then it lowered her toward its toothy mouth and opened its jaws.

Jedra shoved at its arms psionically, pushing them aside, then he tugged at Kayan and wrenched her free of the dragon’s grasp. It bellowed an ear-splitting roar and lunged after her, but Jedra swept her aside. The motion set him swinging wildly from the vines, and Kayan nearly smacked into a tree trunk, but he managed to bring her around just in time and fly her out of the monster’s reach.

But not out of the trees’ reach. Dozens of vines whipped out and snared her, and Jedra could do nothing to stop them. Within seconds she hung beside him in the trees, while the dragon bent low to examine them both.

It rubbed its hands together like a gourmet contemplating a sumptuous meal, and a thick rope of drool spilled over its teeth. It grunted softly—for a thirty-foot dragon—and its nostrils flared in and out with its excited breaths.

Jedra? Kayan’s voice said in his mind. Her mind-sending was weak, but she was conscious.

I’m here, he sent. He tried again to link with her, and this time he was rewarded with a rush of sensation. Fatigue and anger washed through him, but fear overrode them both.

The dragon backed up a step. It opened its mouth again, and Jedra braced himself for another roar or even a blast of flame, but instead it spoke in a deep, rumbling voice. “Worship me,” it said, “and I will spare you.”

The language was one that Jedra had never heard before, but he realized he was understanding it through Kayan’s mind. He mindsent to her, What is this thing?

I don’t know, she replied. I just got here.

The dragon roared again. “Worship me!” it bellowed.

“Who are you?” Jedra shouted back.

“I am Yoncalla, lord of all creation.” The dragon held its head high and bellowed at the sky. Wind swirled, and thunder boomed.

“Pretty impressive,” Jedra admitted, but he was thinking that Kayan had called up a thunderstorm without even intending to. In this world, practically anything was possible.

“I will impress you more,” Yoncalla said, and the dragon body began to elongate. The arms and massive legs shortened and the head narrowed, while the body stretched out and up until it was a sixty or seventy foot snake. Its five-foot-wide body coiled around and around until the head was once again level with its dangling captives, and its forked tongue flickered out and waved just in front of their faces. Its eyes had become yellow slits that didn’t blink.

“I can be whatever I choose,” the snake said, its improbably flexible lips forming the words.

Jedra had no doubt it could. He and Kayan probably could as well, if their enhanced appearance earlier was any indication, but they still didn’t know how to control this bizarre world.

The snake began to metamorphose again. As it thickened and shortened into a new body shape, Jedra said to Kayan, We’ve got to get free. The reason we both fell unconscious is that we’re starving to death. I made it back to reality and fed us a couple of erdlu eggs, but that won’t last long.

Wonderful, she said. I’m open to suggestions, if you’ve got any.

Last time I was able to have by breaking our mindlink, but you stayed behind. And when I came back, I didn’t link with you first. I think the crystal has its own kind of link.

The snake had become a round, furry blob about fifteen feet thick. Gravity flattened it