The Onyx Dragon by Marc Secchia Page A

little as a smoky tickle teased her throat. Really? Did this mean her Dragon powers were returning? Shimmerith had drifted off to a position a wing’s-length from Silver’s starboard flank, from which the Sapphire Dragoness gazed at the pair of Shapeshifters with a typically inscrutable draconic expression.
    Ay, a pair of Shapeshifters–my thoughts exactly, Pip. Silver drew a deep breath. For a moment, with the benefit of Shimmerith’s unique inner sight, the sixth sense of Dragons, I saw your Onyx Dragoness form somehow … coalescing, or emerging … as though her perception conveyed a power which summoned your second-soul from the far realms, and upon examining you more closely, I perceived that your Shifted form was also wounded, as if its spirit were injured in an exact mirror image of your physical, Human flesh. I do not understand. Why is this, Shimmerith?
    The Dragoness said, Who’s the Shapeshifter, youngling? You? Or both of you?
    She wriggled with evident pleasure at her joke.
    Silver also squirmed as his mental processes clearly kicked off in a number of directions. Pip could almost see figurative smoke pouring out of his ear canals. He said, Because the poison was multiphasic. I’m right, aren’t I, o Sapphire of all wisdom?
    Sapphire of wisdom? Somehow, with the benefit of the Dragonish language’s elaborately constructed, multi-layered semantic contextual indicators, the thought made sense, although it shivered Pip’s brain to think this way. Still, she did not grasp the insight he had evidently achieved. Not in the slightest.
    Can we uncomplicate the Island Standard enough for a simple jungle girl to understand? she complained. Multiphasic? Second-soul?
    Silver chuckled, You’ll have to introduce me to this simple jungle girl, Pip, because I haven’t met her yet.
    Grr!
    Pip, my precious fourth eggling, Shimmerith said, pouring motherly egg-love into her words, all Shapeshifters, from the time of Hualiama Dragonfriend onward, have believed in the doctrine of ‘one soul, two manifestations’–the two interchangeable manifestations of the Shapeshifter’s form are coexistent, but appear to shift between the physical, spiritual and magical realms in ways no Dragon science has ever fully explained. The place where your Dragoness lives while your Human form appears to us, fully corporeal–fully enfleshed, so to speak–is called by some ‘the far realms’. This is esoteric speculation, of course, the province of Shapeshifter philosophers. But the proof of oneness lies in what Silver just described–when one form is wounded, so is the other. The two are intimately connected. And what do you conclude from this, youngling?
    Silver blinked, ambushed by her abrupt switch of direction. That to treat a Shapeshifter wounded in this way, one must treat both manifestations?
    Very good, Silver.
    What’s the ‘multiphasic’ bit, then? Pip asked.
    She did not need to see Silver’s muzzle to know his smirk for what it was. Work it out, little one.
    Grr! The Dragons laughed, even Master Kassik, who must have been eavesdropping. Pip abandoned her growling, feeling her face heat up to a fine glow of embarrassment. Why did she always have to end up at the bottom of the hierarchy, the littlest one? She was worth more!
    You are worth more, Pip. Infinitely more. Her head jerked; Kassik gazed upon her with such a surfeit of burning pride, any possible protest dried up in her throat. When your feelings are so powerful, they broadcast to those with ears to listen. Now hear me. This ‘littleness’ which feeds your fears and constrains your thinking is a lie. A filthy, stinking, burn it in the nearest volcano, LIE!
    Every Dragon’s head jerked about as his telepathic shout blasted across her.
    Kassik gentled his voice into fatherly gruffness. Lies of the heart are the most powerful lies of all. The mind analyses, rationalises, discards. The heart is truly a Dragon of a different colour, Pip, and I say that true