The Black Collar: Chapter Eight

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Chapter Eight

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Warm sunlight poured across Alvaranox’s back as he wandered the wilds beyond the moors. He had been born here, far from Asterryl. Where the land stretched on, green and gray in all directions. Everything was wreathed in moss and heather, in grass and boulders. Flowers were sprinkled amidst rocky bluffs that rose like the chitinous plates atop some monstrous insect. There were no humans here. No towns, no roads. No ruins of their fallen civilizations. The wilds went on forever.

He was young. Barely even on his own, but like all young dragons the urge to strike out came with the onset of adolescence. And so he wandered the wilds and explored the world around him. Days passed him by in moments, months in slow breaths, and years passed in minutes. His body grew strong as he learned the ways of the wild. His mother had taught him to fly and to hunt and to fight, but experience made him better at all those things. Encounters with others of his kind taught him to make friends, and enemies, and allies. Instincts and desires taught him to mate.

Curiosity sent him on. Pushed him beyond the boundaries of the wild lands where his kind yet flourished. He felt drawn to the east. Towards Asterryl. He found roads cut through the moors. He found farms filled with livestock that made easy prey. He found men with steel in their hands and on their bodies and when they tried to slay him, he killed them instead. It seemed a wretched place, this…civilization. He longed to return to the wilds, yet he could not remember the way.

Where was he?

When he tried to recall his home, he saw flashes of red earth, broken beneath the ever-present sun. Where were the green grasses and gray heathers of his home? The boulders that marked the land like carefully placed monuments flashed before his eyes in shattered, crumbling forms. There was a tree he used to lay beneath on sunny days, when he was but a hatchling. Curled in the shade against his mother’s chest. A skeletal form loomed against the horizon, black claws silhouetted against the sun. Where was his tree?

Chains bound him, and he was in Asterryl. The town was smaller then just as Alvaranox himself was. They had captured him, but they had not yet taken his life. They bound him in rope and chain, and heavy iron shackles that bit through his scales and rubbed his flesh raw. They had dragged him to some plaza in the center of town. Old walls rose all around the plaza, built of strange irregular lines and intersections, a twisted geometric pattern scrawled by forgotten Gods. The dragon was drawn across the earth by dozens of men, staked down in the center of the plaza.

Alvaranox fought. Terror squeezed his heart so tightly he feared it could no longer beat. The dragon’s lungs could barely pull in a breath. With newly matured claws and teeth and tail spines the dragon struck out at everyone he could. Some of those he injured crawled away, or were hauled to their feet by comrades, bleeding. Others remained where they fell. Yet there were always more to take their place. More men to grasp the chains and hold them tight as the dragon was slowly bound against the plaza, left helpless.

Alvaranox was still young. When he could no longer fight, fear was all he knew. In his youth he was not afraid to plead for his life. He begged the men not to kill him, shameful pleas which would haunt him in the days to come. Yet he simply did not want to die. His desperate cries may as well have been feral snarls and growls for all the good it did him. He could not speak their language.

Yet his death was not their desire.

They wanted the rest of his life.

Men dragged a box built of shadow across the plaza. It caught no light, it cast no reflection. It did not gleam or flicker. Across the front of it was carved a bell. Men spoke strange words as they opened the box. From the box spilled forth red earth and heat and a terrible tolling sound. A wasteland that roiled and cascaded out to wash Asterryl away.

No. That…that wasn’t what happened.

Alvaranox stirred in the patch of warm sunlight in which he dozed. He struggled to wake, but could not cast off the twisted nightmares that gripped him. Memories of reality enmeshed with age-old fears and the visions that had haunted him since that horrible day. Alvaranox had suffered nightmares since they first collared him, yet since the day he nearly died it had grown more difficult to distinguish memory from dream.

As the box spewed images of a ruined earth as though vomiting out some world-consuming illness, a man reached into it and retrieved the black collar. The collar of the Guardian Slave. In reality Alvaranox had no concept of the thing when they first put it around his neck. In the nightmare, he knew what it was, and he fought all the harder to escape it.

The images around him melted away. Like old paint peeling from a wall, the world chipped and fluttered away in tiny fragments of crumbling images. Behind those images lay blackness for a moment, soon to be replaced by a new and more horrifying world. Alvaranox remained chained upon that plaza, but Asterryl itself was a derelict ruin. The walls built in obfuscating geometric patterns all around him lay in broken pieces, only their foundations remained true to their carefully constructed design. Beyond the walls were the burnt out husks of homes and shops. The air stank of stale char and lingering death. It was as though the whole town had burned to the ground ages ago and yet there was no wind to wash the fetid stink away.

The man who had been placing the collar around his neck was gone, and in his place was a dragon. More dragons surrounded him, holding his chains, pinning his limbs. It had been so long since he had seen other dragons. For a moment his heart leapt to see his own kind again, but it sank just as fast. These dragons were not his friends. These dragons were putting the black collar upon his neck.

“No!” Alvaranox screamed, thrashing against the others. They held him tightly. Why would they do this to him? “Stop! Let me go!”

“Because we must,” answered the dragon holding the collar, as though she had heard his thoughts. Sorrow hung heavy in her voice. “When the time comes, you will complete your duty. And you will be free again.”

She. The dragon was a female. Alvaranox tried to focus on her. Yet in the dream that focus would not come. Her colors seemed to flicker, and change with the beating of his heart. She was black. No, now she was blue. In her paws she held the black collar, and it was open. Then markings of gold flickered across her scales as she placed the collar around his neck. It snapped shut of its own accord, sealing itself to him. There was no clasp, no buckle, no way to remove it. Alvaranox could not even recall how it had looked when it was open despite seeing it that way only a moment before. Pain flashed through his body as the collar bound itself to his heart, to his soul, to his mind, and in turn bound him forever to Asterryl.

The Guardian Slave.

That was what they called him when he was first put in the black collar. The Guardian Slave screamed as terrible pain cut through him. The ancient magic burned him as it sunk spectral claws into every part of his being. When the bell rang in his head for the first time it felt like it was shattering his skull. Through pain-glazed eyes he looked up at the dragon who had done this to him. Now her scales were green, like his. Gold marked her body, and pain and regret twisted her face.

No.

No!

It couldn’t be.

It wasn’t.

That…wasn’t…how it happened…

The world around him trembled, and the image shifted again like the turning of a page. One image swept aside and replaced with another. Once more Asterryl was whole and vibrant, but still young like the dragon now bound to defend them. Those surrounding him were human once again, and the man who had placed the collar upon his neck was now his first Handler. The man who first called him the Guardian Slave. The man who cared nothing for Alvaranox. His first Handler cared only that the Guardian Slave protect Asterryl from all the dangers of the wilds that had claimed so many other towns in the past.

How Alvaranox hated that man. How he had longed to slay him, yet the collar would not allow it.

With the black collar around his neck, Alvaranox felt hot sand under his paws. He looked down, saw cracked and burnt earth. He was in the wastes again. He padded forward as if guided by some spectral hand. He ascended a barren rise, pebbles and cracked gray stone marked the reddish, sandy slope. At the top of it, he surveyed the wasteland. It stretched as far as he could see. Here and there broken walls rose from the earth. It seemed a speckling of ruins had joined the skeletal trees. The world shimmered and faded from his sight as the dragon at last began to wake.

Unlike his last nightmare, there was no sudden violent image to jar him from his sleep. He almost wished there had been, just so the frightening dreams would have faded sooner. Instead, he simply felt himself waking. It felt as though he’d been swimming, holding his breath as he searched for the surface through dark waters. Finally, he spotted light above him and surged towards it. When he finally broke free of the cold black water, the dreams collapsed around him and he opened his eyes.

Alvaranox lay in a sun-strewn patch of soft moss and grass near his home. The sunlight was warm and welcoming rather than harsh and scorching. Familiar pain throbbed in his belly and paw as he began to sit up, though the worst of the pain was ebbing away by the day. Trying to get his bearings, the green dragon gazed around. He squinted a little, copper eyes still bleary from sleep. The crowds that often came to see him looked a little thin in the distance, and there were not as many guards keeping watch as before. Apparently a wounded dragon sleeping in the midst of their town just wasn’t that exciting anymore.

Kirra and Nylah were both nearby.

Kirra was dressed in a fiery red blouse that was outshone only by the vibrant color of her hair. Black buttons down the front of it matched the black color of the breeches she wore. A few red spirals were sewn into the legs of her breeches like stylized sun prints. Mud marked her well-worn leather boots, she’d probably been trudging around by the lake or the stream for some shore-dwelling herbs. She stood over one of the tables they’d set up outside, sorting through the fresh herbs she’d picked. When she spotted the dragon looking at her, she gave him a little wave and a smile.

“Hello, Alv,” Kirra said, sniffing at a green bushel. “How’d you sleep?”

“I’m not sure,” the dragon murmured, licking his nose. “I seem to have slept deeply, but…”

“Nightmares again?” Nylah asked, looking up from her work. The older woman was wearing a sky blue dress with hints of creamy gray lace along the end of the sleeves and the hem of the skirt. She shifted her bare feet against the grass a little. Yarn in various colors and darning needles were strewn about on the grass all around her. A pillow she was embroidering rested upon her lap. “We can give you something to help you sleep more deeply and hopefully quell some of those unpleasant images, if you like.”

Alvaranox growled under his breath, flaring the spines along the back of his neck. “I think I am consuming too many herbs to begin with. Any more and I fear I’m going to get the runs.”

Kirra giggled, waving a strand of vine with blue tinted leaves at him. “We can give you something for that, too.”

“Yes, I’m sure you can,” the dragon muttered. His crests slowly drooped back against his head, and he pinned his ears back. Alvaranox licked his nose, and turned his head to stare into the town. It had grown so much larger since that day he’d dreamed about. So had he. He thought back to that day. It hadn’t been like in his dream, not entirely. There had been chains yes, but he hadn’t been dragged. Had he? As he thought back on that horrible moment, the images blurred in his memories. Other images from the dream flickered in their place, and he hissed in frustration. “Damn it.”

“What’s the matter?” Nylah set her pillow aside, and rose to her feet. She walked over to the dragon, knitting her brows. There was a strange sort of confusion flickering in the dragon’s copper eyes, mingling with the kind of pain that did not come from physical wounds. She gently cupped his chin in her hands, and began to stroke his nose over the golden blotch. “What troubles you, Alv?”

Alvaranox offered his favored Handler only the tiniest of purrs, not wanting Kirra to catch it. Even if he was growing to trust the red-haired woman just a little lately, he’d be damned if he was going to let her hear him purr. He nuzzled at Nylah’s hands like a feline seeking a more attentive scratching. “My memories.”

Nylah was happy to offer the dragon more attention. Her hands roamed up and down the pebbly scales of his muzzle, and along the underside of his jaw. As she stroked his face, she paused to gently scratch each of the areas she had long since learned the dragon most enjoyed. She rubbed around the base of his horns, and across the ridges above his eyes, and at the very back of his jaw. Then she stroked the sensitive membranes of his crests till he began to relax just a little, sighing to himself.

“What about them?” Nylah asked when she’d soothed the dragon a little more.

“I am having trouble grasping them.” Alvaranox’s eyes soon settled upon Nylah’s. Fear and uncertainly swirled in the dragon’s gaze like copper-hued storm clouds. “Especially from the time before I was put in this collar. I dream of my past but it never seems right. It’s as though the images from my nightmares are slowly finding a way to replace my reality in my memories.”

Nylah scowled. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since I was wounded, I think.” The dragon pushed himself into her hands a little more. “At least that is when I first noticed it. Sometimes I can remember things just fine. Other times, I try and remember where I was before I was captured and brought here, and the images blur. As though I am watching my own life through a pane of glass covered in fog and rain. The details fade and I find myself uncertain if I am even remembering it, or simply imagining it.”

“I do not like the sound of that,” Nylah said, beckoning for Kirra to approach. “I hope we don’t have you so full of healing herbs that its affecting your state of mind. Perhaps we should back your dosages off a little.”

“I don’t think it’s the herbs,” Alvaranox said, turning his eyes towards Kirra. He flicked his tail against the ground, and the black spines tore up little chunks of sod. “I think it’s the collar.”

Kirra and Nylah exchanged a worried look. While Nylah stroked the dragon’s muzzle, Kirra put her hands upon his neck. She brushed her fingers over the collar, speaking softly. “Since the night you were injured, you say?”

Alvaranox gave a single nod. He did not know if Kirra ever told Nylah how much she felt she had to do with saving his life. So he kept his answer simple. “Yes. Since then.”

“I wonder if…” Kirra’s voice trembled. She hoped she had not made some terrible mistake, or altered the collar’s power in some negative way. “…I changed things, somehow.”

Nylah raised her brows, staring at Kirra. Perhaps they had not yet had that talk.

Alvaranox would let them discuss it on their own time. “I think it may have changed, yes. But I cannot tell if it is losing its grip upon my mind or tightening its hold. I see things in my nightmares I’d never thought of before, and yet they seem as real as the very memories I now struggle to keep hold of. It is almost as if…”

Alvaranox trailed off, rolling an unsettling thought around inside his mind. He worked it around in his head as though he might chew a bit of tendon and gristle before deciding to spit it out. “Am I the first?”

“The first what?” Nylah didn’t follow his line of thinking immediately.

Alvaranox slowly pulled back from the two women to better regard them. He trusted Nylah completely, and he did not think she would lie to him. Yet she could not tell him the truth if she herself did not know the answers. “Am I the first dragon to wear this collar? The first Guardian Slave to serve Asterryl?”

Nylah’s face crumpled at the question. She looked as though she’d just been hit in the gut. Alvaranox thought at first she had some terrible revelation to offer him. Yet the dragon soon realized it simply pained her to hear the question because she could not provide him a comforting answer. She had probably worried he might ask that one day, as it was a question she herself had often considered. She sighed, and gave an uncertain shrug and shake of her head.

“I do not know, Alv,” she said softly, reaching out to put her hand upon his nose. “I wish I could tell you something, one way or the other. There are no records of any other dragon as far as I know. By now, anyone who would have been alive to see such a thing is long since dead. But the collar…someone had to tell them how to use it in the first place, I am certain.”

Alvaranox sighed, hanging his head. His frilled green ears swiveled against his horns. “Was my mother ever here? Did you ever meet her, Nylah?”

Nylah blinked, tilting her head. “Your mother? Not unless I did not know her to be your mother. I do recall you flying with an occasional female. I think you took her to your island, but I will assume that was not your mother.” Nylah smirked a little. “Why do you ask?”

The dragon growled in worried frustration. He bared a few of his fangs, his snout scrunching. Growing fear gnawed at his empty belly, and pain darkened his copper gaze. “I was hoping you could tell me what she looked like. I still remember her, but sometimes it grows difficult. I do not wish to forget her. She was in my dream. But…” She held the collar. It was a nightmare, and he did not wish to speak it aloud. “I can scarcely recall what became of her in reality. Never mind.” Alvaranox lifted his paw, rubbing at the collar a moment. “It’s just that some of these images, some of these things I see. I feel like they are someone else’s memories. I fear they may be supplanting my own.”

“We will not let that happen,” Kirra said with sudden fire in her voice. “I will not let that happen. It doesn’t matter if someone else has worn it or not, all that matters is that you wear it now. It may control your life and it may make you fight for us, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let it mangle your memories or change who you are.” Kirra put her hands around the collar again, growling through her teeth. “You hear me, Collar? Alv is not your toy, and his memories are not some painted canvas for you to whitewash and start over! I will not let you!”

Somewhere, deep in Alvaranox’s mind, a warning bell tolled. The sound was faint yet still he registered it above Kirra’s voice. It made the dragon smile a little. “I do not think the Collar likes you, Kirra.”

Kirra only grunted. “Good. Then it knows how I feel right now.” She pulled her hands away from his neck, and gently put them around his muzzle. Kirra turned the dragon’s head so that she could peer into his eyes. “I mean what I say, Alv. I won’t let it do that to you. Like I told you before, you deserve better. You risk your life protecting this town, but who is here to protect you?”

“We are,” Nylah said.

“That’s right,” Kirra said. “We are. You fight for this town, and we fight for you. You protect Asterryl, and we protect you. And protect you we shall, even from this collar. I won’t let it ruin your mind or drive you to madness or erase everything you’ve been. I refuse. And if it doesn’t like that, it can damn well let you go and find itself another dragon.”

Alvaranox smiled to himself. Hearing Kirra so adamant about protecting him from anything, even the collar itself, buoyed the dragon’s spirits. It had been a long time since he’d felt anyone cared about him aside from Nylah. Though he was not yet ready to admit to himself he trusted Kirra completely, it seemed that day was fast approaching.

Kirra began to stroke his muzzle, and scratch around his horns the way she’d seen Nylah doing so many times before. Alvaranox leaned into her touch, and before he could stop himself, he purred a little. The sound sent a brilliant smile stretching over Kirra’s lips, bright as afternoon sunlight.

“Thank you, Kirra,” the dragon murmured.

Nylah stroked his neck a little, her voice soft. “Alv, if you wish…I could look into it. Find out if there is any information out there, about whether there have been others who have worn that collar.”

Alvaranox was torn between fear, and curiosity. His heart fluttered, and then sank slightly. “Not yet. Perhaps it is best if I do not know.”

“Not yet, then,” Nylah said, nodding. Alvaranox suspected she would look into it anyway.

“Don’t worry, Alv,” Kirra said, rubbing his nose. “You’ll be alright, I promise. We’ll keep you safe from anything that Collar tries to do to you. You just work on keeping yourself safe from everything it sends you against. I don’t think I could take seeing you crashed into the earth in bloody tatters again.”

“Believe it or not, Kirra,” the dragon replied, chuckling. “I do not wish to experience that again either.”

“That’s settled then,” Nylah announced. She grinned at the dragon. “Now. I have something far more important to talk to you about, and I think we’ve waited long enough to have this little discussion.”

“Oh?” Alvaranox lifted his head, too distracted by his thoughts to see the trap he was blundering into. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Nylah just smirked. “My roses.”