Dawn of the Overlords

CHAPTER ONE

Winter, 2064 CE, Japan

DEEP WITHIN THE

bowels of the Earth, in a vast cave system sunlight never touched, the platinum dragon’s eyelids twitched several times before fluttering open. Ropes of greenish ichor stretched between the lids, trying to pull them closed again.

The dragon darted her eyes left and right, up and down, but the world appeared to consist of nothing more than a blurry haze of dark colors.

With a thought, she directed a tiny trickle of arcane power from her Apex to banish the eons of ichor blurring her vision. The obstruction cleared instantly, allowing her to see across the chamber to the wide entrance of her lair. There stood a young granite dragon. His eyes darted nervously around the cavern.

Certainly, he couldn’t have been worried about the cavern itself. Once, millennia ago, the walls, ceiling, and floor had been raw earth and stone. They had been almost crumbling, the ceiling and floor covered in stalactites and stalagmites, the walls covered with moss and lichen.

But no longer.

Before she had begun the Long Sleep, Kwallindauria had sculpted the interior of the cavern with careful precision. At the time, she’d been tiny compared to the cavern, less than the hundredth part of its size. She’d shored up the walls and carved out the stone formations. When she’d been done, the walls were down to bare, smooth stone and the ceiling and floor were even, solid, smooth, and free of dirt and debris.

After all that, she’d drawn out tremendous arcane power to reinforce the stone, making it stronger. She’d needed to ensure that in the event of a terrible quake or volcanic eruption, her lair would remain intact and undiscovered.

Yet, the small dragon’s scales clicked together softly and his wings started to flare out before he pulled them back in. Clear signs of his anxiety, perhaps even fear.

He fears I am displeased,

she realized with a silent chuckle.

“Why have you wakened me?” she asked, testing her voice. Though thick and raspy from disuse, it boomed powerfully from her throat.

I have grown much in my slumber

, she thought.

How long has it been?

How many centuries?

Or is it millennia?

“Apologies, Mistress.” The younger dragon clicked his talons against the stone floor, creating a soft, tapping rhythm. “You set out orders long ago that you were to be wakened if anything of import were to occur.” He paused, as though to allow her time to respond.

After the space of a clawful of breaths, he continued. “Well, we… that is, the other Watchers and I–”

“Yes, yes. I know you and the other Watchers made the decision to wake me. I’m sure I’m not the only one. What I want to know is what happened and why.”

The young granite dragon gulped loudly.

“We… believe.” He hesitated. “That the time may have arrived for us… all of us, to… act.”

Kwallindauria’s scales quivered in irritation. She offered a forced widening of her eyes and waited.

“The Humans,” he finally said. “The Watchers all agree. We’ve given them enough time to learn from their mistakes, but the problems are accelerating.”

“How so?” she breathed.

“Mistress, human warfare is not what it once was. They manipulate chemical interactions and biological agents. Their… what is the word…

bombeis

? Explosives. They produce conflagrations more destructive than the breath of even your great species.”

Kwallindauria scoffed,

I find that highly unlikely.

“Mistress, I know it doesn’t seem possible. But I have seen the destruction with mine own draconic eyes. An entire city of your humans, I believe they call themselves

Japanese

these days, were

bombeid

. One of these devices was detonated in their midst and the loss of life was devastating, measured in the tens of thousands. And nearly as many died in the following days from the chemical poisoning created by the explosion.

“How is that possible?” she breathed.

“The total destruction of the explosion itself was an area of approximately one-hundred standard wingspans.”

“A hundred!” she said, incredulous.

“Yes, Mistress.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“One-thousand-five-hundred-forty-two moons, I believe.”

Kwallindauria nodded, but kept silent. It was a long time to wait, but she could imagine a multitude of scenarios that would lead the Watchers to continue watching rather than take any drastic action.

“In the intervening time, their technology has advanced further. Become more deadly. More destructive. And there are now tens of thousands of those

bombeis

in the world.”

“And what concern is it of ours if the humans choose to destroy themselves?”

By the tails of my ancestors

, she thought.

If just one of these devices can cause so much devastation, imagine the cataclysm hundreds of them could cause? Let alone thousands.

“Under ordinary circumstances we would agree with you, Mistress. But it is not only themselves they are destroying. The

bombeis

that dropped on Japan… the physical destruction was only the beginning. The chemical poison still affects that part of the Earth today. It rained destructive acid for several moons, it has been proven that these chemicals mutated numerous living species— and destroyed others —and even now crops struggle to take root in the soil for thousands of wingspans around the area of the explosion.”

“And what do you and the other Watchers think to do about all this?”

“I…” he faltered. He lowered his head for an instant before looking up again. He glared in obvious defiance.

“That is not for The Watchers to decide. We were appointed not for our wisdom, but rather our discretion and obedience. We watch, we report, and we obey. Whatever the Elders decide, we shall obey.”

Kwallindauria smiled. “And if they decide you should do nothing?”

“If that is the Elders’ decision,” he sighed, “then after strongly voicing our objections, we shall obey.”

She nodded in approval. “Then wake the Elders. They will discuss and decide the matter.”

With a bit of advice from me, of course,

she added silently.

“Yes, Mistress.”

She waved a claw in dismissal and the Watcher left her cavern.

After all these centuries, why now? For eons, the most destructive thing we could do was rejoin the world. It seems that may have changed. What if the Humans have become more destructive than a war between us would be?

Or, what if it’s something else? What if something more dangerous is happening?

What if our Watchers have been corrupted?

Stop!

she commanded herself.

She needed to speak with the Elders. They would investigate the claims of The Watchers before any decision was made. She simply had to ensure they came to the correct decision.

But what was the correct decision? She couldn’t deny that the Watcher made a compelling argument for the need to intervene. This situation, now, was vastly different than the one that led to the Long Sleep. However long it might have been.

Never mind that it felt to her as though only a few days had passed.

I need to speak with Graayyyavalllia,

she thought.

And Baalhalllu.

Dauria moved to climb up from the cave floor, but she found the movement awkward. Her limbs were heavier than she remembered, yet without the commensurate strength that should have come with such growth.

This was going to take some getting used to.

Trying again, this time doing her best to compensate for the change in her physique, she lumbered up from her position on the stone floor. It was all she could do just to remain standing, her scales clacking with the trembling of her muscles.

Breathing a deep sigh, she moved her head forward toward the entrance to her lair. She tried to ignore the soft clack of neck scales as her muscles shook.

The scent of the granite’s fear, bordering on terror, followed in his wake in an obvious trail. Only an anosmic dragon could have missed it.

What is he so afraid of?

she wondered as she pulled her head back to let her neck rest for a minute.

That can’t all be from his fear of displeasing me.

She clicked her sharp talons against the smooth stone surface as she considered the situation.

Clearly, something in the human world had The Watchers in a near-frenzy of worry. But did they truly believe— and near enough to unanimously as made no matter —the Humans had carried things far enough to warrant direct draconic intervention?

Was it beyond repair?

She thought it unlikely

.

What problem could there be that could not, with the proper motivation and manipulation, be fixed within the span of a human generation?

Humanity turning on the dragons couldn’t be avoided

, a chilling voice in the back of her mind said.

She scoffed at herself. That had been different. That was humans turning on another creature, which was in their very nature. Utterly obliterating their own species was not in their nature. Such an act was not in the nature of any creature.

So why were The Watchers jumping to the idea of direct draconic intervention being necessary? She couldn’t force it to make sense. She wanted— truly, in her heart,

needed

—to believe there existed a rational explanation for their behavior. Something to combat her growing fear.

She did not want to believe it was possible.

Yet it grows increasingly difficult to deny the likelihood that The Watchers may have been compromised somehow

, she thought.

Shaking her head to banish the dark thought, Dauria took her first trembling steps toward the exit to her lair. Her legs came near to giving out, unaccustomed as they were to bearing her now-immense bulk. Her scales clacked together with the trembling of her flesh, echoing through the otherwise empty lair.

Oddly, her body strengthened as she walked. Her vitality renewed, the famished feeling in her stomach dissipated, and the haze in her mind diminished with each step.

Perhaps this is some unforeseen side effect of the Long

Sleep?

With her strength growing, she traversed the winding, maze-like tunnels of the cave system with increasing speed.

She was almost back to her pre-Sleep self again by the time she rounded the final bend before reaching the entrance to the cave, near the summit of the mountain.

Almost.

Well

, she thought, as she glanced down the corridor,

this is a problem.

The cave opening was much smaller than Dauria remembered. Even accounting for her growth since The Sleep began, it was not nearly as tall as it should have been. Nor as wide.

Rock fall?

she wondered.

But no, that couldn’t be right. The stone at the cave mouth was not compacted rubble, there were no pieces crunched together. It was solid stone, as though it had always been there.

What

is this?

Kwallindauria stopped herself in the act of gouging the stone with her claws and forcibly separated her clenched jaws.

Who, or what, could have done this? Has it been

inside my lair?

Turning back toward her lair proper, Dauria opened herself to the arcane strength within and drew forth a tendril of power, directing it to her sight.

Her vision shifted to infinitesimal hues of blue and red. Stark streams of glaring white enveloped the entire tunnel from floor to ceiling. That was the imprint of her own essence, the power she’d used to carve out the tunnel. She knew it well.

No other arcane imprint touched the walls, floor, or ceiling of the cave tunnel. She turned back to the cave mouth and her jaw slipped open in amazement.

A rainbow of intertwining streams crisscrossed and zigzagged all around and across the mouth of the cave and spread along almost a full wingspan of the wall, ceiling, and floor of the tunnel.

What in the name of my first ancestor could do

that?

She tried to pick out the individual threads braided into the streams of power, but they were too tightly interwoven. She couldn’t separate any of them from any other, leaving her bereft of any way of identifying even the creator’s species, much less who it could have been or what the intended purpose was.

Curse you to

Infernalis

!

The sheen of rainbow light crisscrossing the cave entrance only faintly obscured her view of the world beyond, however. The slope of the mountain was covered in snow and ice and it opened on a rocky plain. There were villages and cities in the distance, but none were close enough for an inhabitant to see her when she exited. Not even at her now-massive size.

“It could be nothing,” she mused aloud. “Or it could be something disastrous. The larger issue though, as I see it, is where did this come from and who— or what —is responsible?”

Dimly, in the back of her mind, she wondered at why. Whatever it was meant to do, why target her? Assuming it was something malicious, the likelihood of which could not be ignored, why not focus such effort on wyrms of import. She wasn’t even on the Council.

True, she had been known to have great influence on the Council from time to time, but that was not the same thing. She was not an important wyrm.

Could The Watchers be involved, somehow?

she thought, her incredulity somewhat forced.

Or perhaps just one of them? Would they— or he — or she —have the temerity to go so far? If it is them, a word of this breathed to the Council would ruin them. Forever.

“No,” she whispered to the darkness. “There has to be another explanation. Whoever is behind this, whatever their goal, they intentionally waited for the Watcher to leave my lair so they could spring this on me alone. That must be the way of it.”

What will happen if I cross through those streams of power on my way out?

she wondered, but couldn’t begin to guess at the answer.

Or rather, she had entirely too many guesses.

Maybe nothing. Maybe I’ll be vaporized. Maybe I’ll be turned into a chicken, or maybe I’ll be struck deaf, dumb, and blind? Who can say with any certainty?

Without being able to identify the power used to create them, the answer could be any one of ten thousand different effects. Or, of course, it could just as easily be nothing and meant to do no more than frighten her.

With no other way in or out of the lair, though, her choices were to either take her chances with the unknown arcane power or go back to sleep and forget about The Watchers, the Humans, and the rest of the world.

Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true. I suppose I could make my way up as close as possible to the tip of the mountain and use sustained fire-breath to blow the top of the mountain off.

If that would even work, which I doubt.

By the gods, am I truly considering trying it?

If any act had the potential to unequivocally announce to the Humans that dragons were real, still existed, and had returned to wreak havoc on the Earth, that one would have been at, or at least near, the top of the list.

She discarded the idea.

The day may yet come that such an announcement will be right and proper, but that day is not today.

Not yet

, she added after a moment.

In frustration— and not a little trepidation —she admitted that she had only one available course of action: to shift into a smaller form and pass through the arcane weaves.

No. It isn’t worth the risk,

she thought. Those streams could do anything.

But you have to do something! The Elders need you. Even if you’re wrong about The Watchers— and gods willing, you are —this is too important for you to

sit by the wayside while a decision is made.

With a thought, Dauria released the tendril of power affecting her sight and drew forth a stronger stream of arcane energy. This particular magic was easier for her than most others. Many dragons, particularly those of the stone and gem families, never mastered it. But for most metallic dragons, it was almost second nature by the time they reached adulthood. For the platinum dragons, though, it was still easier. Most mastered their first form before adolescence.

She wrapped the streams of power around herself and directed her body to change.

Change it did.

Her long neck and tail seemed to pull themselves into her shrinking torso. Her wings melded into the scales they touched, which in turn were pulled into the flesh beneath them. Her talons retracted and her claws shrunk, toes elongating. Bones cracked painfully, some vanishing altogether. Her hind legs twisted as they shrunk, altering to a shape far less mobile as her torso turned in on itself, compacting and writhing in stomach-turning fashion. Although she had never seen it, she imagined the change in the shape of her head and nausea overtook her.

If there’d been anything in her stomach she would certainly have lost it before the transformation was complete.

Regardless of how many times she underwent the transformation into human form, the process continued to disgust her. Within a dozen seconds she had gone from an awesomely powerful platinum dragon, more than ten standard wingspans in length, to a puny, frail human less than the tenth part of a single wingspan in height.

Where does the mass go?

she wondered. She had asked the question hundreds of times, but no wyrm she had ever met could give a satisfactory answer.

With jerky, one-sided movements— this was going to be a painfully ungracious experience, as it always was when she had gone too long without walking in the skin of a human —she made her way across the threshold of the cave mouth and out into the cold, mountain air.

Her new body shivered, goose prickles popping up everywhere. She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

She had forgotten just how cold human flesh could be.

She shook herself and wrapped her arms around her thin body in an effort to warm it, but she only shivered harder.

Clenching her jaw tighter, she trudged through the snow as fast as she could. Between the impediment of the snow and the awkward, shuffling gait of her new form, it was painfully slow going.

She counted out steps as she went. Although the help was minimal, it did help to divert her mind from obsessing over the cold.

She estimated ten minutes had passed when she stopped and turned around to judge the distance she had traveled from the cave mouth. Five wingspans, perhaps ten at the most. It was difficult to gauge distance with these human eyes. Well, human-ish. Her senses were far more acute than any ordinary human’s, though still far short of a true dragon’s senses.

So far, nothing untoward seemed to have happened from passing through the weaves of power.

Alright, that’s enough of this,

she thought and reached for the arcane energy of her Apex to resume her natural shape–

Oh, gods,

she thought. There was nothing there!

Her eyes widened and her mouth went dry. Panic seized her by the throat, trapping the breath in her lungs.

“Not. Possible,” she managed to gasp as she tried, in vain, to pull new oxygen into her body.

Her vision darkened around the edges and Dauria thrust her consciousness down within her being, hunting the cause.

A dragon’s arcane strength did not simply vanish! It was always there, regardless of what form she took. What was going on?

As hard as she tried, she found she could not focus her mind enough to delve into herself. Each time she tried, something seemed to thrust her right back out again.

Dauria clawed at her burning throat in frustration with thin, blunt fingernails.

This can’t be happening!

she screamed inside her head.

The darkness around her vision spread and she tried to cry out, but no sound came.

The darkness finally consumed her vision and her legs gave out, but she didn’t feel her body hit the sharp rocks at her feet.