The Black Collar: Chapter Eighteen

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Chapter Eighteen

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Moonlight painted the silent world silver. Alvaranox flew above the nighttime moors, unable to recall his ascent. The world was still and quiet. No animals howled, no insects chirped. Nothing stirred in the darkness beneath the dragon’s wings. The land seemed frozen. On and on he flew and the moon did not move in the sky. The moors were as endless and without life as the waste he wandered in his dreams.

This land seemed unfamiliar. He knew he had been here many times and yet everything seemed so different. The dragon could not recall why he had taken to the skies. His memories were cracked fragments of a shattered mirror, reflecting only moments and broken ideas. Flight. Swimming. Friend. Love. Fear. Crumbled walls. A flash of something more substantial flickered in his mind, but the black cloak edged in scarlet vanished from memory before he could gasp it.

In its place came new memories. A stream of images and colors poured through his mind. The colors rolled across his vision, painting the world around him. In an instant the dark, lifeless moor was replaced by color, beauty and a thriving village. He stood on the streets, near a bridge that crossed a rushing river. The streets beneath his paws was freshly cobbled, the buildings that surrounded him recently constructed. The village was prosperous and growing by the day.

A bell tolled in the distance.

It was daytime. The sun was bright and the warmth was comforting. He perked his ears at the rise and fall of conversations all around him. Men, women and children wandered the streets. A few guards in leather armor with bronze studs strode around the place, casually keeping watch. The dragon padded down the road. He liked this village. They were always so kind to him.

Him.

The gender seemed unfamiliar.

Scents of freshly baked bread and sweet cakes teased the dragon’s nostrils. He looked around, and the world itself turned over as though he were living in a children’s picture book. Every time the page turned he found himself in a new place. A bakery nestled beneath the sheltering boughs of an ancient elm, near the center of the village. Smiling women around him in colorful clothes offered him trays of honey-iced treats. Alvaranox reached for one of the treats from the wooden tray.

His paw was blue. Purple edged some of the scales. Her memories filled his mind.

“Hello, Guardian! Look what we have for you today.”

They called her Guardian. Did she have a name? She could not recall it. She liked being called Guardian. She liked this village. They had always treated her kindly. She was happy to protect them. She would protect this place to her dying day if she must. Guardian took the treats one at a time, popping them into her muzzle. They were sweet and delicious.

“Thank you,” Guardian said, her voice soft and lilting by the standards of a dragon.

When the treats were gone, she turned away. Her collar buzzed around her neck. That was strange. It rarely did that. The buzzing stopped after a moment and she forgot about it as soon as it was gone. Something tugged at her mind. She turned her head to peer up at the hill. There was a fortress there that watched over the village day and night. That was where she lived. They’d made her a home in the village courtyard, a small shelter to shade her from the sun and protect her from the elements. She enjoyed sleeping outdoors.

The fortress was an impressive place. She was not that familiar with human construction but this was one of the bigger fortresses she had seen. Several octagonal towers capped the ends of walls several times her height, built from heavy stone blocks she had helped carry from a quarry. Granite and limestone, she thought, though she was no expert on stones and masonry. The main keep was four stories tall, large stained glass windows lined the third story. It large enough and strong enough for her to alight upon the roof and peer out over her beloved town.

The collar buzzed, and Guardian hissed in dismay. The world twisted around her, and she was walking up the wide pathway that lead to the front gate of her fortress home. As usual during the day the gates were open and the portcullis was raised. The guards that stood watch there bore heavier armor, interlocking metal plates reminded her of the plates that protected her own chest. She smiled at the guards, dipping her horned in a bow. They gestured back at her with their spears, greeted her.

The called her Guardian yet she was no slave. These people were her friends.

She liked this village.

A bell tolled in the distance.

Guardian blinked and shook her head. She did not like the sound of that bell. The world trembled under her paws. The scent of smoke burned her nostrils. She opened her eyes to silver slits, saw oily smoke and roiling flame. She closed her eyes and shook her head again. The trembling stopped, and the scent of burning wood and flesh was replaced by the aromas of wildflowers and distant rain. When she opened her eyes again, the village was calm, quiet and happy.

Better. She hated those little visions. Warnings she could not answer. Perhaps she should talk to her handlers. Surely they could give her something to help ease her waking mind the same way they’d eased her slumbering mind when she had nightmares as a youth. Youth. It seemed a flickering concept she could not quite recall anymore. She had been here all her life, hadn’t she?

She liked this place. They were kind to her. Her Handlers rested in chairs around her shelter. She smiled at them and they smiled back. She would go and relax there, let them oil her scales.

Something tugged at her mind, sharp and urgent. She turned around in the courtyard. There were unfamiliar men here again. Silvery armor and helmets. Ebon cloaks edged in blood. She was not sure she liked those men, even though the village seemed to appreciate having them around. She remembered they were digging a hole but she could not recall if they were burying something or digging it up.

The urge tugged at her mind again. Tugged her to the other side of the courtyard where she saw them digging. She began to pad towards it, her Handlers forgotten. A feeling, an urge was growing in her like hunger gnawing at her belly. One of the men in the red-edged cloaks ran ahead of her. He stopped in her path, held his hands up as if to tell her she could go no further.

She put her paw on his shoulder and gently pushed him out of the way, then kept walking. To her surprise the man recovered quickly, and moved to stand in her way once more. This time he held his hand up to her face, but rested his other hand upon the hilt of his sword. She had not noticed they were armed before. Something twisted in her, cold and angry. A spike in her neck while the collar squeezed her throat. She had to obey. Who was this man to stop her? She was a dragon.

With fury she rarely displayed she snatched the man up in her blue and purple forepaws. Pivoting onto her hind legs for a moment, she hurled the armored man across the courtyard. All around her guards and workers cried out in surprise. The clatter of crumpling metal accompanied the man’s crash against the courtyard. People ran to his aid as he tumbled to a stop. Others ran to the dragon to see what had angered her. Some of them began to yell at the men in the black and red cloaks.

What were they doing to anger their Guardian?

Like wax beneath a flame, the world around her began to melt away. Droplets of liquid stone rolled down the walls of the fortress. Beads of blue sky dripped to the earth. Everything she saw seemed a false facade peeling away to reveal the real world beneath it. Smoke dimmed the skies, flames painted the fortress walls in shades of orange, and screams hung in the air as though even the sounds could not escape. The world itself seemed to be ending all around her. Her beloved village was burning, her heart was breaking, and all she could do was dig.

Dig.

Dig.

Dig.

Blue paws tore at the earth as darkness settled over the village. Gray claws tore through old cobblestone, ripping it away from the ground upon which it rested for decades. Down through the old earth she dug. Moonlight spilled across the courtyard. With every breath she took, the urge to dig grew. With every heartbeat, her scales seemed a little less blue and a little more green. When claws scraped heavy flagstone buried deep beneath the courtyard they were not gray, but black. Into the night she dug, tearing the hard-packed earth away with every scoop of green paws.

Finally, she got her paws under the heavy granite flagstone laying at the bottom of the hole. Her forelegs burned, her lungs ached from steady panting, and still she dug. Brown dirt obscured green scales. With a snarl of effort, the heavy, flat flagstone at the bottom of the hole came loose. The dragon pulled it from the earth and tossed it aside to join the pile of broken cobblestone that lay all around her. At the bottom of the hole was what she sought. Strange. She knew what she would find and yet it surprised her to see it there.

As Alvaranox began to awake, the realization of dream overtook him. The life and memories of another were intertwined with own. His heartbeat accelerated, unsure if he should try to wake himself, or see where this led. Yet he felt himself rising towards consciousness, accelerating towards it whether he wished to wake or not. He swam towards the moonlight surface above the dream’s dark waters. When he broke free, the dragon gasped for breath as though the dream had nearly drowned him.

Alvaranox jerked his head up, jumping to his feet. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head a few times. Still groggy, he managed only to open his eyes to bleary slits. The stone walls of his broken fortress home wavered in his vision. What a dream. He wondered if he should tell Kirra about it. She was already worried for him and…where was Kirra? Where were his soft things? Still bleary-eyed, Alvaranox looked around. He was not in his sleeping chamber. There were no soft things, there was no Kirra.

There was dirt. It coated his paws and lay in piles all around him. There were broken cobblestones scattered all about. There was a cracked granite flagstone laying nearby. The smell of freshly tilled earth filled his nostrils. He was in the courtyard of the ruins where he’d nearly died. Moonlight was fading. In the distance, a lavender stripe marked the horizon. The sun would rise soon. Alvaranox had been here all night.

The hole in the earth was real, and he was the one digging it.

Alvaranox trembled, his heart rattled in his chest. Oh, Gods. What was he doing out here? He tried to snatch at the dream before it could evade him, but it was as ephemeral as the rest of his memories. Those men, though. They were. Black and red cloaks. They had…put something in the ground. And the female…she dug it up? Or had she? The dragon began to pant. Fear knifed through his belly like the cold steel that nearly ended his life. Why had he come out here?

The collar.

The collar had brought him here, filled his mind with dreams and memories that were not his own. Brought him here and made him dig this hole. Alvaranox knew what he would find in the hole, and he feared it. With trembling paws, the dragon reached into the hole. He felt something smooth, and solid, like polished stone. Alvaranox worked his paws beneath it, laying on his belly. From the hole he lifted the object, and placed it upon the ground.

Alvaranox knew this thing, he’d seen it in his visions. He knew just what to do with it.

He would hurl the damn thing in the lake.

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Kirra awoke sometime after dawn with her head half hidden under a blanket. For a moment, she forgot where she was. She flailed around a little, thrashing against soft pillows and animal hides. Kirra felt about for the edges of her bed, not wanting to roll right off it. When she could find only soft things covering the ground, she started to remember. She was on Alvaranox’s island.

Groggy, she pulled the blanket from her face and sat up a little bit. Red curls lay flattened against her head in some places, sticking out in random directions in others. Kirra dug the heel of her palm into her eyes, fighting back a yawn. It was a losing battle. As she yawned she thrust her fists into the air, arching her back.

“Morning, Alv,” Kirra said, working her tongue over her teeth. Her mouth tasted off. Too much wine with the dragon. At least she wasn’t hung over. “Alv?”

Kirra looked around the dragon’s sleeping chamber and found it empty. He must have already gone out to hunt some breakfast. She rose to her feet, stumbling a little bit. After they’d gone swimming, they returned to Alv’s sleeping chamber and shared more of his wine. Kirra had put on a simple cream and blue nightdress that she’d rolled up and stuck in the bottom of her pack. No sense putting on anything else until the next morning as she far as was concerned. Though it was morning now, she wasn’t quite ready to dress. Maybe after a quick dip in the lake.

She fetched herself a mug and wandered towards the exit. Her dress swished around her ankles. It occurred to her that she should have put on her shoes before going outside in case she stepped on any thistles, but she’d stepped on worse things. She’d accidentally strode bare foot into an ant pile before. And not just once, either. Not even twice, but three different times. Kirra laughed to herself as she went out into the old courtyard.

Alvaranox was already there, sitting on his haunches a little ways off. Kirra casually waved at him with her mug. “Morning, Alv. You been hunting or just about to go?”

Kirra trudged around to the water barrel Alvaranox kept. She scooped up some water in her mug and took a drink. Then she sighed in satisfaction. The water was nice and cold. The morning was cool but the sun that brightened the courtyard was already warming the air. She took another drink, and turned back towards the dragon.

“Alv,” Kirra said, laughing. “I’m talking to you, you silly beast. Why are you so quiet?” She blinked. The dragon was facing away from her and had made no effort to turn around. A smirk spread across her lips. “Did I catch you at an embarrassing time?”

Kirra laughed, walking up behind the dragon, just out of range of the curved black spines that tipped his tail. She spent a moment watching the beast. His black mottled wings were half unfurled, hanging limply at his sides. His body rose and fell with his breathing, but aside from that, the dragon was perfectly still. He didn’t even seem to have noticed she was there.

“Alv?” Kirra asked, worry creeping into her voice. She quickly walked around in front of the dragon. “Alv, are you alright?”

Kirra’s breath caught when she came around in front of him. His forelegs were caked in dirt and red earth. Dried blood clung to his paws where his pads had torn. Broken scales marked his dirty, bloodied fingers. The dragon’s horned head was tilted down at the ground, his gaze seemed both distant and sharply focused. His spines lay limp against him. The copper color of his eyes reflected a strange, inky blackness.

Sitting before the dragon was a box made of shadow. Kirra had never seen anything like it. Perfectly symmetrical, its sides smooth, a perfect cube. Though the sun shone upon it, the box reflected no light and held no gleam. No dirt marked it. Though the box seemed reflected in the dragon’s eyes, the dragon was not reflected in the box. On the front of the box was carved a bell. Kirra’s breath caught. Her heart froze, then fluttered for a few beats.

Where had he gotten that?

“Alv,” Kirra said. “Alv!”

Alvaranox could not hear her. Whatever that black box was, it mesmerized him. The box held the dragon in thrall. Kirra saw the dragon’s eyes reflecting the blackness, she saw them shifting and flickering. He was watching something but whatever it was, it played out across his mind. The box and the collar poured visions and broken memories into his head.

With trembling fingers, Kirra reached towards the collar. She knew Alvaranox did want her talking in his head through the collar, but this might be an emergency. Kirra needed to know what the dragon saw. If Alv’s head was full of darkness and nightmares she would drag him back to the light. She ran her fingers up the warm scales of his neck. The nearer her fingers drew to the collar, the tighter her stomach twisted. Part of her screamed to leave it be, but she could not. Kirra had to see if Alv needed help.

Kirra’s fingers brushed the black collar, and the world fell away.

In its place a green moor stretched on all around her. Emerald hills rose and fell in endless waves. Grass and moss seemed to glow with shades of green more vibrant than Kirra had ever imagined. Red and orange wildflowers dotted the hills and valleys with colors that shone brighter than she thought possible. A stream cut through a valley, its waters reflected the radiant azure color of the brilliant sky.

This was the home Alvaranox remembered.

It was breathtaking, like the dazzling colors of a feverish dream.

A tiny hatchling bound over the top of a hill, clambering up a snaking line of rock. The little dragon bore familiar colors even in his youth. A larger green female with golden markings followed him up the hill. He leapt and she caught him in her mouth, then set him down. They were wild beasts in an untamed land, and yet the love between them was palpable.

Kirra felt torn between two worlds. She felt the pliant smoothness and unnatural warmth of the collar beneath her fingers even as the pleasant breeze of the open moor caressed her skin. The scent of wildflowers teased her. Her mind twisted, her head ached as it struggled to discern reality from borrowed dream. She lived for a time in Alv’s visions as a ghost, as a spirit the dragon could not sense. In the way of dreams she saw Alv’s life both from a great distance and through his own eyes. For a time, she was Alv.

Moss was soft under her paws.

Sunlight was warm against her wings.

“Drink your water.” Mother was happy.

Water was sweet and fresh upon her tongue.

The world flickered, and the water turned to mud in her mouth. She coughed and spat it, saw her green reflection through Alv’s eyes in a foul, tepid pool.

“Drink your water.” Mother was sad.

“It’s muddy.” Alv’s youthful whimper echoed in her mind.

“Drink your water.” Mother was desperate. Her child needed water.

Kirra fought the visions, trying to return to Alv’s happier memories. His own childhood seemed to twist into another. Kirra thought of that green moor, and the world flickered once again. The stream in front of her flowed clear and sweet. The scent teased her nostrils. Alvaranox drank it again, blissfully unaware of any other way of life.

In the distance, a bell tolled.

Fire swept across the moors. Alvaranox screamed. Hot winds blasted the land, wiping away all trace of life upon the moor. The hills were brown and dead. The water was dry. The trees were dying. The moss was dust beneath their paws. Mother dug in the dirt.

Kirra struggled to breath. She tried to pull herself to reality. Kirra tried to wrench her hand away from the collar but she felt as though her fingers had melded with the thing, her mind lost inside Alvaranox’s waking dreams.

Kirra gasped for breath. The air was hot, it seared her lungs. The sun burnt her skin. She felt blistered. All around her lay a wasteland of red earth and broken, black stone. Dead trees with boughs like blackened claws scratched at the sky, frozen in desperate plea for rain that never came. In the distance there was movement in the lifeless land.

Two dragons trudged through the waste. A mother and child. Now and then the mother paused, dug at the earth, and moved on. She shaded her child with her wing as they walked the barren land.

Kirra forced herself to keep breathing. The air here burned, but she feared if she did not breathe it, she would suffocate in reality. She tried to follow the hatchling and the mother. She tried to call out to Alv in the waking world to rouse him from this nightmare. The wastes the dragon spoke of seeing when the bell called to him were merging with his childhood memories. Kirra wanted to help him, to draw him back to reality and remind him of his life, and yet she had no voice with which to call.

The whole world twisted before her like colored paints swirling in a bucket. When the swirling came to a stop, she found herself before a ruin. Burnt buildings lined ash-covered streets. Charred, skeletal corpses littered the ground. A vaguely familiar fortress sat atop a hill. Battered walls sagged and crumbled. A blue and purple dragon stalked the streets, wailing in heartbroken anguish, roaring in uncontrolled fury. She seemed lost, staggering from one smoldering building to another. A black collar ringed her neck.

In a flickering, stuttering stream of images Kirra saw another dragon, a tiny blue hatchling. The hatchling nosed about in aged ruins. In the distance, her mother watched. Her child did not know what happened. Memories from that blue dragon tumbled through her head, beauty and horror twined into one confusing stream. Kirra heard the female’s thoughts, poured through memory.

We won’t be here long. It isn’t safe anymore.

Have to keep moving.

Not enough food or water for her anymore.

Kirra saw a flicker of a green dragon, digging in the dirt.

Once more she saw the ruined fortress upon the hill. She knew this place. Alv brought her here to hunt trophies. It was so desolate. The grass was dead. The land was dry. Only the rains brought new life to the river beneath the bridge. Her own memories filtered into her mind. She could see so far from the dragon’s back. The desolation seemed endless. Beyond the hill capped by the broken fortress, there was nothing. Dead grass. Dying trees. In the distance, at the edge of her vision, there was red earth.

There was a wasteland beyond those ruins. She had glimpsed it in reality but in the dream it stretched before her, growing by the moment. In her vision, she saw the center of that wasteland. And in the center of the waste there was a box made of shadow. The box was open and from it spewed forth red earth and heat and the wasteland grew. It spread like a plague of emptiness, leeching the life from the land.

She tried to hold onto that thought but she may as well have been trying to snatch shadows from the wall. The world flickered and once more Kirra found herself in a memory of Alv’s childhood. It was wonderful. It was warm and comforting. The grass was soft, the sun was warm, the water was fresh, the prey was plentiful. There were hills to climb and ruins to play in.

“Look momma!” Alvaranox bound up another hill. “Imma conquer the castle!”

At the top of the hill there was an old fortress. A ruined city lay below. In the memory the ruins were overgrown with tall weeds and thick grasses. Trees had taken root, and wildflowers bloomed among cracks in fallen walls. But Kirra had seen that ruin, and there was nothing there but desolation. No green grass, no blooming flowers. Kirra’s own memories began to conflict with Alv’s. Her hand trembled on the collar and the world around them shook. Alv screamed.

A flood of shrouded, indecipherable memories washed across Kirra’s mind, wiping away all rational thought. Hunger. Thirst. Fear. Comfort. Love.

A hard life. A dying land.

Those feelings were pulled from her so swiftly it felt as though her mind was rattling in her skull. It sent pain spiking through her head, and the pain woke her from the twisted dreams she shared with the dragon. Kirra cried out as her hand came free of the collar. She stumbled back and landed hard on the battered cobblestone. She pressed her hand to her head, trying to quell the ache. As the pain began to fade, a terrible realization settled in upon her.

Alvaranox saw the world differently. Beyond Asterryl, beyond the villages and the farms and the beauty of the wilds around them, Alvaranox saw a wondrous moor. He saw brilliant green hills and fields of flowers and streams cutting through ruin-capped hills. He saw the place he thought he remembered from his childhood, and he had been so excited to share it with Kirra.

Kirra saw none of those things.

When Alv took her beyond the land she knew, Kirra saw no beauty. Kirra saw no water, no green hills. Kirra saw desolation. Kirra saw dead grass and rotting trees. Kirra saw the ruins but they did not speak of a land that could not be tamed. They spoke of a land that was slowly dying. Beyond that dying land lay only red earth and waste.

The wasteland that Alv dreamt of was real, and he did not even know it.

Something happened to that old town, and the poor female dragon could not stop it. The waste crept ever closer to Asterryl and the other towns beyond.

Asterryl now lay upon the boundary.

Asterryl was the line in the sand.

“Kirra,” Alv murmured, pressing a paw to his head.

His voice still sounded distant. Kirra pushed herself to her feet and flung her arms around the dragon’s neck. She wanted to comfort him however she could. She wondered if he had realized the same thing she had. For all she knew, the collar was already erasing some of what she’d uncovered. How could she tell him that the beautiful moors he saw when he flew far from Asterryl were little more than a shroud of comforting dream the collar draped across his eyes?

“Where am I?” The dragon groaned, rubbing the base of his ridged black horn. His copper eyes were unfocused.

“You’re home, Alv,” Kirra said, stroking his neck, hugging him against her body. “You’re safe, and you’re home. You‘re on your island.”

Alvaranox lifted one of his fore paws, staring at the dirt on it. He tilted his head, lifting his spines in confusion as if he could not even recall digging up the box. The box. It bore the image of the bell that called the dragon to action. In Kirra’s twisted dream, the box carried with it the plague of emptiness.

Kirra turned her head and stared at the box. How she wished Alvaranox left it buried in the earth. She feared the collar would not have let him. The collar made him dig it up. The collar made him carry it here. Kirra’s eyes drifted to the bell carved upon the box. It was wreathed in dragons, spewing roiling flame across the earth.

The box brought the waste.

“Alv,” Kirra whispered to the dragon. “You have to get rid of this. You have to throw it in the lake, or put it back wherever you dug it up from.”

“I can’t,” Alvaranox said. The fear in the dragon’s voice hung in the courtyard like pyre smoke. “The collar won’t let me.”

The box was part of the dying world. Without even realizing it, the dragon had carried it across the line in the sand, and brought the wasteland to Asterryl.