Book One: Onnu and Pannu

Much Ado About Everything

The Nomad, who had taken the title as his name, watched the smaller dragon walk away, apparently defeated. It wasn't his place to worry about their family dynamics, so he lunged up after his... well, she wasn't his sister, no matter what he called her.
   Whether she liked it or not, she had a responsibility that didn't seem to have occurred to her. If she wouldn't see it, he'd have to make her. He didn't relish the job, but as the Nomad of the Triune (as he called them), he was expected to keep the three of them on task. Sure, he spread the Word, and knowledge, far and wide, but that was an ancillary task.
   No, his primary purpose was to be a repository, and gatherer of knowledge. He was to travel the worlds, learn everything he could, and enlighten the local dragons as he went. It was their job to teach and govern their localities.
   He didn't know what her job was, but the smaller dragon had given him an inkling. To his knowledge, she was the only dragoness who hadn't bred true. Every other dragoness had laid exclusively dragon eggs. If she'd birthed other kin, she was unique in more ways than he thought.
   But he didn't know just how unique she was, or he might have treated her with a gentler hand. When she whirled on him, scales crackling with electricity, it surprised him. He thought dragons only had fire to command. He hadn't heard about the steam, or he'd have learned sooner that they could access any of the elements.
   That was the benefit of being stationary, though. She had more time to explore her abilities than he did. So did their "brother". In that way, Nomad Trey was at a disadvantage.
   It was perhaps unwise to begin where she least wanted to venture, but he couldn't know that.
   "You know we'll never die, right?"
   Lightning sparked off her hide. "The Charon are large enough to eat us. It is not impossible."
   "They can, but time can't. If you don't know that, and prepare for it, you'll go mad and dive into a Maw."
   "He didn't say we'd never die," she said with less heat. The sparks became less directed, more sparse. "He just... didn't say how long we do live."
   "You know as well as I do that means forever. He's got some other project He wants to work on, so He's dumped the work off on us. Us and the other dragons. He left us in charge for who-knows-how-long. He--" The word wouldn't come out of his mouth. It might have been where they were, as connected to Him as it was. "Heck," he amended, "maybe this is all some big experiment, and He doesn't wanna affect the outcome. Maybe even He doesn't know how long a dragon will stay sane. I dunno, and you know He ain't sayin'."
   He was so frustrated, the formal speech that seemed inherent to dragons vanished. His own scales had begun to sizzle and steam.
   She couldn't deny his words, because she'd wondered the same things; albeit more respectfully. But then, she hadn't been traveling almost constantly for the past two years. She'd been putting down roots, settling in.
   "To say that He doesn't know something is heresy, and you know it." She'd begun to calm down, in the face of his agitation.
   "Well, what am I supposed to think? In the absence of information, we're left with speculation."
   She nodded, settled into a comfortable hover. In this part of Above, they didn't have to work hard to stay aloft. "But we were hand-picked. We're supposed to be better."
   "Better than what?"
   "Just... better. Best. The best of the best; perhaps even better than we were."
   He snorted. "He only picked us because we were dumb enough to sign up."
   Her legs dropped abruptly, sparks limning her in an eerie halo. "Three. That's how many people in the entire world volunteered! That should mean something! He trusts us. Would you so easily betray that trust?"
   His sparks vanished with a pop. She'd looked almost... angelic. Probably some trick of Above, he decided.
   Her eyes sharpened.
   :And why not, eh? If ye won't see sense in my words, maybe He's added a few special effects. One does not throw away the trust of an eternal being so lightly.:
   His jaw sagged. "Did you just read my mind?"
   Her legs tucked up serenely, once more. "As far as I know, that only happens up here. Your thoughts are probably safe planetside."
   He recovered enough to point out that if they would never die, then they, too, were eternal beings.
   She looked like she'd been physically struck.
   "Timeless does not equate eternal. I doubt the Charon could take down God, even combined. We, however, would be a tasty meal for them; nothing more."
   His jaw firmed. "Point taken. My question is, why should we take orders from Him? I'm not saying we defect or anything, I'm just asking what if?"
   Onnu sighed from the very depths of her soul. "There is physically no way for me to deny my duty, I'm afraid. Perhaps you could cease your wandering for a time, but when He calls, I cannot decline. My body is His to command. Okay, that sounded wrong, but you know what I mean."
   "You mean not breeding true?"
   Her pupils shriveled to pinpricks. Her nares flared, head shifted back with revulsion. "As much as I detest your wording, I cannot deny being... bred... without my knowledge, yes."
   Her eyes glowed a color he couldn't define, which sort of hurt his brain. It was an emotion he would never understand, so his brain wasn't equipped to label its hue.
   "What I so blindly signed up for was... to be a physical portal to the Fortnight Worlds. For the most tortured of souls." Her eyes closed. "For those who have seen the Enemy, or its minions." She looked, it seemed, straight through him. He felt her gaze sear his very soul. "That is my task, brother: to bring shattered souls into the world, through my womb."