Heart of a Dragon

Part 5

Lunora blinked again, and she started to sing. She sang a song whose tune was swift like a storm's high winds, and whose words spoke more than the meaning they signified:

Wake now forever,

Breathe the light.

Snatch your flames from the brightest sky,

And sweep through midnight's velvet with sparkles of light.

Eyes of pearly moonlight, tongues of Sun's red light,

Scales Apollo's gold soaked in serpentine.

Never to return, to darkness evermore.

You'll take with darkness from you the Prince's blazing sword.

Saragio's hands started to tremble under the now vibrating egg, and so he set it down with the others. Six of the eggs were vibrating, each taking on a different set of notes from Lunora's song. The eggs had been on the brink of death, yet now, the brink of life dawned nearer. An Iambol Baoshali was the first to hatch, and this small dragon swept from its shell of orange swirls and yellow rays, for many dragons soared into flight immediately upon birth. The Iambol extended its plumed pale green and white speckled wings, and upon catching sight of Lunora with glossy green eyes, swept to land on her shoulder. Lunora continued to sing, and from that song the Iambol must have heard a tune to direct its own part, and it swept away down the stairs.

Saragio knelt over the cracked egg and peered inside. "Adimanti."

The singing made Lunora tremble, though she did not fear, and indeed, could not. She continued:

Fly now forever,

Sing with life.

Soar to the end with the souls that won't die.

And race to free the wanderers who dance between two lives.

Eyes of pearly moonlight, tongues of Sun's red light,

Scales Apollo's gold soaked in serpentine.

Never to return, to darkness evermore.

You'll take with darkness from you the Prince's blazing sword.

There was another crack, and the egg of a delverin hatched. The creature emerged, akin to a dog except for his beak, tiny eagle ears, and thick bronze-coloured claws that he walked on the tips of, scratching across the stones. He too heeded Lunora and scampered from the room, clumsily at first as he caught his tail under his feet, but like all animals hatched early by Dragon Sages, he was quick to learn, for he continued to 'hatch' even after being born.

Two Mortigons hatched next, a Foxdale and a Siren. The last two hatches were an energetic frost-cub that scampered from the room with the sticky inner web from his egg flapping about his furry ears, and a Sconervian, black as ink. Lunora swept her song to a close and breathed deeply, her mind aflutter in the words she had sung, both spoken and unspoken.

Saragio smiled up a Lunora, surrounded by the shell fragments. One fragment from each egg had the creature's name inscribed on it despite the unnatural cracks, something not even an Incendation could have salvaged. There was one remaining egg of a Levidrake Alphen, though whether it would hatch or not was impossible to say yet.

"I..." Lunora started, feeling as though she had to explain herself, for none of these eggs were supposed to have hatched this early, and their owners might well be as far away as China or Northern Russia.

"You have saved them," Saragio said. His eyes twinkled, returning to the stars in which they dwelled. "And more."

"But the gylf..."