A Whisper of Night

9.1 || SCIROCCA 🍃

"You must leave your sword here," said Alchemist Mossbeard.

Wordlessly, Scirocca unsheathed her sword, feeling all but naked without it. Although Sirok had taken her to the Alchemists more than a dozen times by now, she still hated parting with her blade. Besides, why should I take a command from someone with such a stupid name?

"Thank you," said Mossbeard, as two of the guards took the sword from her. They stood before the mouth of a cave, the entrance to the Alchemists' dwelling. Inside was a maze of stone and mud, of unknown poisons and brews.

The Alchemist led the way. Sirok followed, Scirocca lagging behind. As much as she loved the earth, she couldn't bring herself to relax. The Labyrinth, as the Alchemists called it, felt twisted and unnatural, as though nature held no reign here.

They descended into the bottom caves. Here, the air grew harsher and colder. The walls were barren of any moss or insects. Although no torches illuminated their path, Scirocca had no trouble seeing.

"What of the egg?" demanded Sirok, breaking the silence.

Mossbeard turned towards him. The Alchemists followed the system of the Nightfire Isles, discarding their birth names and taking those of nature.

"It has not yet hatched," he said simply, "although the Labyrinth does like your idea of...a union."

It seemed to Scirocca that the two glanced back at her.

"So I would regain custody of the egg?"

"You would." Mossbeard sounded reluctant. "But think carefully..."

"I have," Sirok snapped, his voice tinged with desperation. "But I have waited for a long time...."

Their conversation died as another Alchemist came striding up the hall, clutching a crate full of what looked like egg-shaped gemstones.

"Real eggs?" Sirok said, as the Alchemist passed.

"No," Mossbeard said. "We're been trying to make them...but we haven't been succeeding. The offspring are always deformed."

"Oh. But surely...surely you could manage to hatch one or two normal ones?"

Scirocca tuned out Alchemist Mossbeard as he began discussing the merits of natural dragon birth. She knew Sirok's main reason for coming to the Labyrinth - in fact, half of Sirok's men and all the Alchemists knew.

When Sirok was barely a boy, his family's basilisk egg had been taken from his father. Now, especially with the rumors of Lady Astnorden's newly-hatched hydra, Sirok was more than desperate to hatch his own dragon.

Legend had it that each of the Kingdoms had their own breed of dragons: hydras for Skeynvald, firebreathers for Scorvald, basilisks for Slagvald, leviathans for Stromvald, and wyverns for Svanvald.

And on the legendary Nightfire Isles, now little more than a refuge for Wyaernos' rejected, mages used to live, mages who knew the ways of dragons....

The stories of the dragons and their riders had always been the subject of Scirocca's childhood fascinations. She knew that hydras existed - Lady Astnorden's father, Lord Arslan Valchtnalla, had ridden a hydra in the War of the Crimson Knights. King Sirok himself had seen the hydra and its twelve necks.

And look what good that did Lord Arslan, she thought. Even a dragon as powerful as a hydra can be defeated.

As for the rest of the dragons...nobody had seen a firebreather in centuries, and she suspected that the basilisk egg that used to be Sirok's was fossilized by now. The leviathan, supposedly the most powerful sea serpent known to the world, had only appeared once in the myths, as the companion of Cerovar the Conqueror. And, as for the wyvern, there weren't even myths of its hatching, although she suspected that Svanvald's isolation had something to do with that.