Screeching Wail of Terror

That garage-slash-barn in back of Dithra's abode was huge; big enough to satisfy the megalomaniacal whims of its original builder, and, fortunately, big enough to house a dragon or two. I eased Kaa'saht down in the corner furthest from the building's other occupant, made him as comfortable as I could. Then over the next several hours I set about weaving Power around the place, using a pattern I had worked-out after long hours of studying the weavings of protection some distant ancestor of mine had placed about my sphere's ancient home.

The sun was well-up and shining brightly by the time I was satisfied with my defenses. Much like the ones guarding the sandstone cliffs, these wards were vampiric in nature and would cause any dragon approaching them to grow increasingly weak, listless, and subtly encouraged to turn away. More determined attempts to penetrate the perimeter would result in an increasingly serious drain on the invader's energy, possibly all the way down to and including death. Where this barrier differed, however, was it faced inward as well as outward, making it just as difficult for a non-Lung to leave as it was to approach. That might shortly prove critical, if what I was about to try went badly.

I gave the weave one last careful inspection, then turned and re-entered the barn, headed over to the place's other occupant. I stared down at Niata for a long time. The battered dragoness had barely moved from the last time I had seen her, her eyes still just half-open and gazing off into some strange distance that nothing sane would ever see.

Finally, I sighed, then once again reached up and activated my little translator pattern. "Niata, we are running out of time," I stated without preamble. "I must know what that place was, the one you pulled me to. Where is it? What is it called? What is its meaning?"

Silence.

"Niata, please. I do not wish to resort to other methods, but you are leaving me with little choice."

Nothing.

I sighed. "Very well." After that I stopped delaying. I turned, and with the tip of a steely talon began to scribe an elaborate pattern upon the concrete floor in front of Niata. Soon the lines of that pattern began to glow gently, a glow that rapidly escalated into an actinic glare as I added my own power to the mix.

There was a faint whimper from behind me as the pattern continued to grow and elaborate, but I ignored the sound as I lifted my talons free of the floor, the pattern lifting with them and beginning to swirl and rotate in midair. A sharp motion of my right hand stabilized that rotation, pulled the construct into turning a flat, dish-like facet of itself toward us. With a single talon I traced a curiously warped circle of blue-black light in the air about a certain set of scratches that marred the scales of one of my hind legs. That circle then floated away to join the main mass of the pattern hanging before us, and the symbols that adorned the pattern's circular edge writhed as a result, almost as if they were caught in the throes of some hellish torment.

There was another whine from the broken magus; I glanced back to see her eyes completely open and staring at the swirling gray chaos at the pattern's center, her head shaking erratically as she tried to edge away. I chuckled darkly. "No, Niata, this place is sealed. There is no place to run, no place to hide, not unless you give me what I want."

With that I gave a few final, abrupt gestures, and the center of the pattern's circle suddenly went black. At first that blackness was as stygian as the Pit, but slowly, almost reluctantly the blackness resolved itself into the image of an all-too familiar clearing, its blasted, charcoal-gray soil surrounded on all sides by a twisted, tortured terrain of shattered basaltic rock and old lava flows, the view illuminated only by the faint, frosty light of distant stars.

It didn't take long for the first of them to show up. In less than a minute dozens, then hundreds were there, all of them battering insanely against the barrier I had put across the portal, the view rapidly degenerating into a scene of fangs, talons, and mad, hate-filled eyes that would have overwhelmed even Hieronymus Bosch at his most deranged.

Once again I couldn't quite focus on the creature's forms at first, my eyes refusing to make sense of what I saw. They finally gave up on that, however, and suddenly everything snapped into an all-too sharp focus and I shuddered. But I was ready for my reaction this time around, and my concentration did not waver.

<. . . . No. . . . Don't. . . .>

The desperate power behind the whisper that came echoing faintly into my head must have been great indeed for me to have heard it, and it was almost surprise enough to make me lose control of the portal. For an awful moment the barrier actually bulged, the creatures on the other side clawing wildly at the thing that held them back, that kept them from breaking through to invade attack devour destroy--

<. . . . Don't . . . don't . . . don't let them. . . . Don't let them in. . . .Don't. . . .>

I risked a glance back at Niata's violently trembling form, then set my jaws and poured Power into the pattern until it crackled with energy. Slowly, reluctantly, the bulge began to flatten back out. "Do you want me to close this?" I gritted "Do you want me to make them go away? THEN TELL ME WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!!!!!!!"

The maimed dragoness gave vent to a thin, screeching wail of terror, and into my mind whispered a single word. It was a word that I had been half-expecting, half-dreading, and with it a great many things suddenly made sense. I nodded, then abruptly slashed my talons across the patterns I'd made on the floor. The construct responded by shattering into a blaze of random shards of light, a shockwave of released energy nearly bowling me off my feet. In the aftermath I shook my head and blinked my eyes clear of dazzle then quickly looked again, but both the portal and that which it had held had vanished as if they had never been.

I stared at that chunk of now-empty air for a long moment, turned to see Niata staring at me with terror-filled eyes. I studied her for several seconds, then chuckled humorlessly. "Welcome back to the realm of the living," I rumbled "perhaps this time you will decide to remain." I paused, then made a formal gesture. "What you have told me today may quite possibly save all that is Dragon in this world. The debt between us is paid, Niata. Go, magus. Heal yourself, if you can." I summoned the sphere then, and with its power I flung Niata away from that place. She vanished with a snap to reappear atop a high, windswept crag in another, far-distant land I had known once, long ago, and had striven with little success to forget. There she could either survive or perish, whichever she preferred.

After she was gone I turned and padded back to where Kaa'saht still slept. I looked down at him, then with a sigh removed the sphere from my jaws and sent it back to its sandstone home. I laid down, head atop my forepaws, my eyes still watching Kaa'saht as the tension and fatigue of the previous hours slowly drained out of me and I contemplated the information I had just been given, pondering how to go about using it.