Deluxe Special, Extra Garlic
My mother’s mother’s mother told me this tale, which I have committed to memory in exactness, as is the way of our kind. These are her words, entrusted to me by our holy ritual, and given to you in continuance of our ancient ways.
It is said in long-ago and half-remembered songs that we once lived only on the other side of the Wall, but those are songs of a broken lineage. Unreliable. Spoken to disreputable cousins, or held in the mouths of nieces who didn’t care to recall whether a thing was there or theirs.1 What I can say—as I lived it and saw it with my own eyes and felt it beneath my claws—was that there was a Wall, and in the days when my fire burned hot, no dragon in memory or in reputable song had ever passed beyond it.
1 — Sorry. She’d started the ritual telling before she went on this tangent, so it is officially part of the story. I don’t think she meant it that way—she’s just old.
In those days, we did not have dramas or entertainments to fill our heads with nonsense notions like representative democracy or separation of church and state, particularly from soft-skins2 with no fire in their bellies. We had one Queen who spoke to the gods, and her word was Absolute.
2 — Really sorry. She’s really old.
It was She Herself, whose scales had been tempered in the Undying Flames, who anointed me with Her holy claw—I was not worthy!—and bade me go on a sacred journey to the Wall. She said to me, “Meriz, daughter of Lutha, Paladin of the Red Flame, take thy sword and thy pen, and bring record of what thou seest at the very edge of our Realm.” Thus, I have always believed that I was chosen by the Flames as an Emissary.3
3 — According to my research, the Wall was a convenient place to send dragons who were prone to getting into trouble. As for what Gran-Gran did, I can’t be sure, but back before her scales faded, she was an obsidian dragon with red-tipped scales—very handsome, in other words—and the Red Flame was having a serious problem with nuns turning up gravid.
Eight days’ flight, it took me. Three days to bring myself to the edge of the Floating Forest, and the rest, to traverse its darkest inner reaches.4 Though the way was often obscure, I did not lose heart. At last, when the ninth day dawned, I arrived at where the trees thinned and gave way to meadows. The Wall loomed in the near distance. It was a beautiful thing to behold: a smooth and featureless barrier that stretched higher than any dragon could fly. It shimmered like the air that dances over a hot flame.
4 — She got lost.
My journey had exhausted both my supplies and my energies. Feeling myself weaken, I prostrated myself upon the grass and gave my prayers to the Flames. When I rose again, the sun was high in the sky, and the air smelled of roasting meat and delectable spices. It was coming from the Wall. I followed the scent.
As I approached, I noticed more: something frying in hot oil, and a cool breeze that felt oddly dry. Voices, but not those that came from any dragon's throat.
"If we just keep our heads down and stay in here, we'll be safe. Nothing's come in here yet."
"Yet. And when it does, what'll we do? Offer it a shawarma?"
I'd arrived at the Wall. The smell was so good, I was almost willing to walk straight into it, but reason prevailed, and I tested it with my claw first. To my astonishment, it met no resistance, disappearing beyond that perfect barrier.
"Abdul! Did you see that?"
"No?"
Cautiously, I pressed another claw through, and then, a finger.
"There it is again! What the fuck is that!?"
I growled. Such language, in the presence of a Paladin of the Red Flame? I drew my sword, made one final prayer, and stepped through the Wall.
Some dragons now are hatched entirely on the wrong side of the Wall. They come home to the land of their mothers’ mothers’ mothers and they sneer. Antiquated. Why isn’t there wi-fi? It’s no wonder you had twenty-eight hatchlings5, Gran-Gran—you didn’t have internet arguments to keep yourself busy. But I’ve always known what hearth my flame burns in. As soon as I stepped out, I knew I was in a bitter place. A place the Gods had forgotten.6
5 — Actually thirty-six. Cousin Vezak did a genetic test a while back. That year’s Seven Flames Supper was an interesting one.
6 — Honestly, not an inaccurate description of Mabek Station.
From the bright meadow at the foot of the Wall, I had come to a long, dark room with a ceiling so low, my ridges brushed against its metal surface. As my eyes adjusted, I realised that it was indeed lit. Sickly white light emerged from round holes dotted around the room.
Two creatures stood on either side of me. Human men. They wore the same coverings to hide their pathetic, delicate bodies—uniforms, the soft-skins call them. Dark trousers and yellow shirts. One stood in front of a vertical spit stacked high with juicy meat. The other held a basket of potatoes down into a vat of hot oil.
For a time, the only sound was the sizzle of cooking. We stared at one another.
“Abdul,” the potato man said. “Is that a dragon?”
“With a sword,” said the one called Abdul.
“Should we—?”
"The deluxe special, Ric," said Abdul. "Extra fries. Extra garlic."
The men exploded into a flurry of activity. Abdul slathered something white onto a piece of bread and filled it with meat cut from the spit. The one called Ric, meanwhile, dumped his thin-sliced potatoes onto a tray. Before I knew it, they were kneeling in front of me, holding up a laden platter.
"Most honoured guest! Madam Dragon! Please accept this token of our friendship and take us into your protection!"
I blinked. "Lady," I said. "Lady Meriz, daughter of Lutha, daughter of Vesak, of the Ash-Scale Tribe."
"Milady! It has extra turnips, too!" Abdul raised his end of the platter higher.
I plucked the offering up and swallowed it whole.7
7 — Knowing Gran-Gran, I'm pretty sure she ate the tray, plate, and cutlery, too.
I was far from the all-encompassing warmth of the Undying Flame, but I should have known better than to think there was any place in all of reality that did not feel some vestige of its warmth. Their offering was delicious. I lowered my sword.
“I thank you for your meats. You may make me twelve more," I told Abdul, and was gratified to see him rush to obey me. "You!" I addressed Ric. "Get up and answer my questions. What is this place?"
"You're in the kitchen of a shawarma restaurant."
"You purvey these meats?"
"Exactly."
I nodded. A noble vocation.
I walked the length of the room. The aisles were barely wide enough for my wings to pass through. I opened a door and found a massive icebox beyond it. Another had windows that looked out onto a grand hall—a kind of indoor market, it seemed, with many vendors scattered throughout it. The lights flickered. The few humans I could see were screaming and running. As I watched, a dark vine twisted into view and wrapped itself around a pillar.
Abdul handed me six more of his shawarma. I ate them one by one. "Are you in danger? You sought my protection."
"Well, a few hours before you showed up, a sorcerer took over the station. Things have been increasingly weird ever since."
"A sorcerer? One who stokes the unholy Dark Flame8?" I pressed closer to the window. Sure enough, the vines glowed faintly violet. "But what is a station? Is that what you creatures call your settlements?"
8 — In draconic theology, magic between blue and ultraviolet frequencies are considered unholy. It makes sense if you consider talonic resonances. Apparently. And yeah, Gran-Gran is really disappointed that some dragons are practicing Dark Magic now.
"It's a settlement in the sky. Really high in the sky."
The Queen's design had become clear to me. As distasteful as the soft-skins were, they had shawarma—a clear sign of the Undying Flames' favour—and they were beset by this curse. They needed a champion. "I will challenge this sorcerer in battle," I said. "Take me to him."
"What? But he's got vine magic!"
"You dare to doubt me?"
Abdul and Ric exchanged glances. Through some curious semaphore of raised eyebrows and shrugged shoulders, messages were relayed. I believe they were something to the effect of: she's a massive dragon with a sword. Our chances are good. Abdul brought his meat-shaving knife and the six additional shawarma, while Ric took up a pot lid as a shield.
"Alright," said Abdul. "Let's go. He's up on the control floor."
To my eyes, the station did not so much resemble a settlement as it did a palace. It must have been ten times bigger than our Queen's domicile. Long hallways led out from the grand hall. My escorts, soft and cowardly as they were, guided me from behind, taking me on a steady upward path.
We passed by a great number of screaming people and quite a few dark vines, which I sliced upon sight. Of course, I could feel their approach long before I saw them, but my escorts were startled every time. I concluded that the soft-skins must have had deadened senses from being so far from the Hearth of the Divine.9
9 — Gran-Gran is right — humans born prior to the Fall of the Barrier tended to have underdeveloped thaumic senses.
At one point, the corridor widened into another hall with a fountain at its centre. A human paused at its edge. Something rose up and bit its arm—what looked like a woman, but with a fish's tail. Further down, we encountered a creature very like a horse, but with a horn. Its white coat shimmered like the barrier. I tried to eat it, but it trotted away.
Finally, we crammed into a tiny box, which took us up to the very top of a tower. The final door was enchanted in some way—it had a spirit inside of it that insisted we were not permitted to enter it. Nothing a bit of fire and a good slash with my sword couldn't handle. If I have learned anything in my time beyond the Wall, it is that the soft-skins' protections are comprehensively inadequate, from their pathetically scaleless bodies all the way to their sorcerer's lairs.
I stepped through the smoking wreckage of what had once been a door. "Demonic follower of the Darkness! Show yourself!"
"What! A dragon!? But how could they have summoned you?"
The sorcerer was only another man. Small and weak. Bespectacled. There were stains on his dark robes, which weren't even properly black. More of a faded grey. I growled.
"Summoned? You dare to presume any mortal could summon me? I am Meriz, Paladin of the Red Flame!" With one swing of my sword, I cut down the vines he sent to encircle me. "You fool! I was sent here on a holy mission!"
I grasped him by the scruff of the neck and brought him to my eyes.
"Stop struggling or I'll eat you."10
10 — Common threat among dragon parents.
He squeaked.
"You're coming back to our Realm. My Queen will decide your fate."
Thus it was that I came to be the first dragon to venture beyond the barrier—though not the last, for better or for worse. I returned to my Queen with two trophies. The heretic—whom she sentenced to a lifetime of turning spits—and three-dozen deluxe shawarma plates.