Soul of the Sorcerer - Part Three: Daughter of the Dragon (32 page)

The steady rhythmic beeping on the heart monitor had taken Edala Brook into an almost dreamlike state of relaxation.

She had enjoyed the last months on Earth, she no longer winced away from a car or lorry as it passed by and she had really taken to watching daytime television. The way people, on this world, shared their woes because of a failed relationship never ceased to amaze and amuse her.

She had also grown to love Lloyd in a much deeper way than the superficial chemical attraction that formed the bond in the early days of love. Lloyd’s personality worked on many levels; he could mess around and laugh at the lowest level of humour, or you could have a very deep conversation with him. He was also prone to being over-sensitive at times, but he was slow to anger and they had never had an argument where either of them would not be laughing about it within the hour.

She now looked into his eyes, as he tried not to watch what was happening beyond the small screen placed just below her chest.

She could see concern and even a little fear in his blue eyes and she smiled affectionately to try and help alleviate them. This also proved a good distraction from the strange tugging sensations she could feel coming from her stomach area.

The main surgeon was humming along to some classical music that was playing throughout the operating theatre.

“The head’s out now, and I’m just going to leave it resting on your stomach for a moment as I like to think it simulates actual birth” he walked over to the sink on the side of the room to wash some of Edala’s blood from his hands. Fortunately, perhaps because of the very flat lighting in the room, he did not notice the red was tinged with a silver sheen.

Edala suddenly felt very light headed and she was going to say as much when the world turned dark.

Back in the house next door to Amy’s Themisia felt a sharp pang in her stomach.

“Boadaiska! Boadaiska! oooh!” she said calling for the swordswoman from her bedroom where she had been laying in.

“Yes what is it?” Boadaiska said bounding two steps at a time, up the stairs to the ebony Daemon’s bedroom.

“Oh!” she added as she discovered Themisia sitting in damp sheets, “her water’s broken”.

“Ohhhhhh!” Themisia added gripping her stomach, “That really hurts!”

“Well, my girl, it looks like your child does not want to wait around. Lay back while I go get my husband, between the two of us I’m sure you will be fine.”

“BLOOD PRESSURES DROPPING!” a nurse who had been monitoring the machine, that Edala was connected to, said loudly so that she could be heard over the alarm that had just started.

“She’s losing a lot of blood from somewhere!” another nurse added.

Lloyd’s heart felt like it had stopped as he watched Edala’s eyes roll up so that all he could see was the whites. There was frantic activity around the operating table, but Lloyd would not wait for them, he knew what he must do, he would not let the love of his life die; even if it meant him losing his powers, he would feed everything he had into his wife.

He opened his portals; and was just going to use the command words to open them fully, when a firm hand pulled on his shoulder.

“No Lloyd, not yet!” it was Darrion’s voice and hand, the master looked very strange in theatre robes, behind him stood Amy who was looking at the surgeon.

“You have what you need?” she said.

“Yes, it’s a good job you mentioned her strange condition and blood type. It was good planning to store some of her blood” he replied as he watched a nurse connect up a bag of Edala’s blood from a cooler box. Lloyd watched anxiously as the blood began to feed into his wife.

“She’s coming back” a relieved nurse said and almost immediately Edala’s eyes returned to normal and she blinked. She then focussed on Lloyd again and smiled.

“Just checking you still love me.”

Lloyd’s only response was to wipe tears from his eyes.

“Mr Brook would you like to cut the babies cord?” the surgeon asked.

“Errm, no thanks” Lloyd said wincing at both the thought of seeing the fleshy tube and also his wife laying there with a hole in her belly.

“I will!” Amy said with a smile, she then moved below the screen where the surgeon handed her the scissors. Lloyd could not see the baby, but the beam on his Mother’s face spoke volumes. And, of course, his Mother being a doctor, she then completely took over, with a laugh from the theatre staff.

“Ok you finish up on my daughter in law I will clean up the baby” she instructed the surgeon, who laughed before returning to humming along to the classical music.

“By the Lord Creator!” Boadaiska cursed as she lifted the girl child from between Themisia’s legs. Her curse had not been because of the speed of delivery, but because of the strange, blue, chitin like substance that covered the baby from head to toe. Also on the top of its head were two bumps, quite a clear indication that at some time in the future, the child would grow horns.

“Peel it off!” Themisia ordered with a smile.

“What?” Boadaiska asked her husband looking a little stunned over her shoulder.

“Peel off the
dermitana;
it is the protective layer that all Daemen are born with” Themisia instructed.

“How do we do that?” Arden asked, seeing no natural point to break the dark blue additional skin.

“Here give her to me” Themisia said.

Boadaiska gratefully passed the child to her Mother.

Themisia then took the child’s arm in her mouth and bit firmly, until a tear appeared in the chitin skin. She then gently bent this back with her fingers, revealing a pink skin underneath. With both Boadaiska’s and Arden’s help, the ebony Daemon then removed all of the external protective layer from the child; revealing a relatively normal, other than horn humps, child with a mop of red hair, just like her Mother.

“Welcome to the world my little Glyfada” Themisia said and kissed the child on the head. Bright blue eyes opened and Boadaiska and Arden would forever swear, that the child had smiled at its Mother as its hand reached up to touch her cheek.

Amy cleared her grandchild’s airway and then rubbed it down with a towel.

“Wahhhhh, wahhhhh, wahhhhh” were the child of the Sorcerer and the Dragon-Girl’s first words. Amy then placed the naked child on the scales.

“Wow, let me just convert that to pounds and ounces” Amy looked to the ceiling as she did the mental arithmetic; while she did this all Lloyd and Edala could do was look at the little arms and legs sticking up from the scales.

“Seven pounds, eleven ounces!” she said.

One of the midwives almost whistled, “Would have been a big baby if it had cooked in the oven a little longer; might have given you some difficulty then my love” she said smiling at Edala.

Finally Amy, her back between the parents and child, wrapped the baby in a clean blanket and turned to make her way over to the bed.

“Here you go daddy” she said; delivering the child to its father, who looked a little petrified.

Lloyd looked into the face of his offspring who was still crying.

“There, there, little one, Mummy and Daddy are here.”

As he said this the child stopped crying and opened its blue eyes, for the briefest of moments, so that it could study the face of who had spoken.

Lloyd then felt the most unusual of emotions overwhelm him; like someone had thrown a switch, total unconditional love for someone other than himself or Edala, the kind of love which changes your perception of the world. Up until that moment the world, as far as Lloyd was concerned, revolved around him and his needs and desires; now it orbited with a fury around the small bundle he held in his arms.

“Hello gorgeous” Edala said, and the child, again, recognising its Mother’s voice, opened its eyes to inspect her. Lloyd smiled at his wife, as he recognised the same world changing event happen to her, as it had to him moments before.

“Aren't you going to check the sex?” Amy asked them with a bemused look on her face.

Lloyd and Edala quickly glanced at each other with a smile, before Lloyd reached to pull open the blanket wrapped around his...son.

Very few of us know absolute happiness; we all dream of it, pray for it and wish for it. A life full of happiness; without sadness, loss or regret, may be a truly wonderful thing…but to really understand happiness you need to have experienced the darkness of sadness, loss and grief.

Ingemar, King and last of the true dragons, had been to the darkest of places, but had of recent times known happiness, especially with his new wife Boadaiska and his, ever a handful, daughter Louise.

The joy he felt; however, when holding his grandson was all consuming. After centuries of seeding countless human women, only one of whom he truly loved, he now had a male child; with this there was a chance, in generations to come, that Dragons may again re-populate Dragonmight.

So happy was the Dragon King that he leapt high into the sky above the village and flew as high as he could before letting out a roar of pure joy that echoed around the Earth. For weeks later strange stories would appear of an unusual sound being heard from the most populous of cities to the remotest of wildernesses. Some claimed it was extra-terrestrials heralding the end of the world; little did they know that the actual source of the sound was far more alien than they could possibly have imagined.  

But the King of Dragons was not content with just this, he flew to the stone circle in the woodland and transformed into his messenger form. In moment’s he stood high on Arrenloft and again told the world of his happiness. So consumed was he in joy, that he then decided to do something he had not done since before the first Daemen war.

He searched his memory for something that he hoped was not lost; it took him many moments of half remembering, before resorting to recalling the sights, sounds and smells of places. Yes they were still here, the names and locations of all of the seven worlds.

This world on which he stood, at Arrenloft, had been named by the Lord Creator as
Kaleon.
Next he envisioned the pattern in his mind for the world called
Ofucal
and in a blink of an eye he was standing in a circle of stones in a tall rainforest; it took several moments for the noise of the transmigration concussion to pass, before the chorus of birds, insects and animals resumed. Ingemar grinned, it was the grin of a very happy man, he roared in jubilation again, a roar sounding strange from the mouth of a man. Again, every creature fell to silence, and he then, once more, silenced all the creatures with his mighty roar of jubilation.

He then did this with every other world, seeing sights that would amaze many on Earth or
Gaia,
as it was originally called by the Lord Creator.

Senators Cathiana and Jakarn, of the Bremethren, stood with their three sons on the beach from which they had helped Horace Burnaby depart. As the sea lapped over their feet, Cathiana looked out at the first ship that had managed to navigate across the sea; to the land where she knew her other son had fled to. It had taken them five attempts with different designs of ship, the builders and crew learning from each failure, before they had been successful.

She smiled in bemusement; how ironic that in their flight, three hundred or more years ago, her ancestors had fled from a world so bereft of water to arrive on one so full of it. Luckily Limúarn had been a large island with plenty of fertile land and building materials for them to build a home. But now it was time to risk leaving. Yes, the sea scared her; but her desire to both strengthen her line and add to her riches, made her look of bemusement change to one of greed.

The one thing that Horace Burnaby had not shared was how to navigate the great ocean to the east, so they had relied on Airon’s limited knowledge to at least begin developing techniques. Some of this also involved mapping out certain stars in the night. The Bremethren had never been concerned with stars before and it had been interesting, for a moment at least, to discover that there was a star that hardly moved and always showed the way north.

Her sons, Caikan, Kankai and Airon climbed into the small rowing boat that had just arrived from the ship. They were joined by two others; the first was a man in a dark cloak who was born with pink skin, a mutant in the eyes of the Bremethren, his name was Elisan and he should have been executed at birth...but now he would have his uses as he would be able to mix, without drawing attention, with the natives across the sea. Elisan nodded at Cathiana, before lifting his hood to cover his head, concealing his foul skin, dark pupils and shoulder length greasy hair.

The final person was a third cousin of Cathiana's called Heila; she was a hard one that girl, but she was of similar age to her sons and would work well with them...Senator Cathiana very much approved. Heila was to be the stand in water wielder until Ziron could be found and forced to cooperate.

“My sons, Heila, may your journey be safe and a success. Airon, you are certain you can locate your brother?”

“Yes Mother, I know you laugh at the frailty of our Kalanan magic, but it does have its uses” her son replied with a smile while tossing his crystal ball into the air and then catching it.

“Do not worry Mother, Ziron will realise his error and return with us. We will also gather as much information as we can; in addition to that of any spies you have already recruited. Then the Bremethren will smash them all” Caikan said with grim determination.

“Wife, it’s taken us a year just to get this far, are you certain the treasures of this other realm are worth the effort?” Senator Jakarn said, as he watched his sons move closer to the ship which would take them on their quest to retrieve their brother.

Senator Cathiana smiled confidently at her husband and then turned to look along the beach, which was now their first major shipyard.

“Look husband...twelve ships are near to completion; we only need another eight to comfortably house the wielders of the senate. We will then only need another hundred to transport the lead guard of our army.”

“That will take years my wife” Jakarn said, but there was no challenge in his statement, just the acknowledgement of time.

“Yes it will. The Bremethren are always patient.”