Heart of a Dragon

Part 6

Lunora looked down to the egg, all tinged with red that seemed to pulsate in waves from its shell, and even through the dark mica that shielded her eyes, she could see the egg's evergreen irradiance swirling swiftly to mirror the flames it rested in. It was so beautiful, like an incarnation of forests and flames. The egg wobbled, and Lunora heard a beating again. The room seemed to throb around her, and she heard scratching and crackling. It sounded like ice being scratched by the thick claws of Northern drakes, the ancestors of gylfs in their realms of snow. She was hypnotized by its old stories, those unspoken songs that had long since faded from memory, yet still lingered on in fragments that a Dragon Sage might snatch here and there, or someone in the Incendiary might sense through the delusions of the flames. Were they only delusions? Or were they rare glimpses into reality? These thoughts churned with just as much heated delusion as those they tried to judge, and Lunora knew not how much time she had spent gazing at the egg, her head swaying slightly as she tried to keep her balance.

She then started to hear something, an eerie but sweet song of an awakening dragon. And she was singing it. She hadn't realized it before, but now that she thought of it, as much as she could, she must have been singing that whole time, accompanied by the endless crackling of fire. And she carried on the song:

Blood of ice, and breath of stone,

Gaze that makes my shadow moan.

Yet awaken from that frosty dream-sleep eternal that so snatched me.

I'll waken to your call, to stir my living dreams,

Of fire, and ice, and serpentine,

And thaw the frozen core, to beat, once more.

Thaw the frozen heart, race, once more.

Beds of ice, and thrones of snow,

Living gales that screech of stone.

That crackle through the moon-swept dreams, of living dragons, wake for me.

I'll waken to your call, to stir my living dreams,

Of fire, and ice, and serpentine,

And thaw the frozen core, to beat, once more.

Thaw the frozen heart, race, once more.

Yes, thaw the frozen heart, race, once more.

As she sang to the infant dragon, she heard a faint but deep whisper emerging back to her, barely audible. It almost said, I am coming. The egg was starting to crack with branching lines that covered its surface like criss-crossing trails in a forest. These were mighty lines, for when the egg would break along them, the shell would obtain its powers. The fire seeped through the lines so that they glowed a deep orange, and Saragio pulled Lunora back a few paces. The egg stayed like this for some time, suspended motionless as if any movement would cause an immediate explosion.

Lunora then heard a battering behind her, and when she turned around, Saragio was already at the door. When he opened it, Lunora could only see black shapes outside, accustomed as she was to the fire. But in a moment, she realized that the figure pushing into the room, with flames sweeping his hair back, was Daylan.

"She's here! She's-" Daylan started, yet when he saw Lunora, he stopped dead. Saragio quickly pushed him out of the Incendiary as his hair and clothes were already singeing, and his face had swollen red.

Lunora knew that the dinosaur skull masks were certainly not comforting sights, but Daylan had seen them before, so she knew not why he appeared so stricken by her. Yet Saragio too was now watching her with what appeared to be amazement, for he simply stopped and seemed heedless that the door was wide open with Daylan standing just outside. Lunora, rather slow with regards to her discerning powers at the moment, wondered if she was melting, or on fire. It wasn't completely unreasonable, though she felt little different to when she had first approached the furnace.