The Crucible of the Dragon God

'There's something here, 'Liam. I feel it. There's intelligence here.'

Slowhand nodded, and the pair of them took the steps slowly, one at a time, until they emerged into a spacious, yet almost featureless chamber. The one feature it did contain, however, was another sphere. In this case a large, membranous one filled with a liquid clearer though not dissimilar to that in the birthing wells. Stirring within it was what appeared to be some kind of plant. A fragile, multi-stranded, frond-like affair that made Kali think of some wavering growth on the ocean floor.

'It's a fish tank,' Slowhand said flatly, pulling a face. 'Gotta say, bit anticlimactic.'

'Probably not a fish tank, Slowhand…' Kali said, patiently. She hoped not, anyway.

'Oh, come on. Can't you just see some little gogglefish darting in and out of that water feature ther — '

The archer quietened as Kali touched the sphere and, in response, another voice overrode his own, booming around them.

'Welcome, Kali Hooper. I have awaited your arrival for a very long time.'

Kali and Slowhand stared at each other as the greeting resonated through the chamber, but while both waited in expectation of what might follow, no more words came. Kali stared around the chamber, hoping to discern the origin of the voice but, failing, fixed her attention back on the sphere. She guessed some reply to the greeting might be in order but, in the circumstances, she wasn't quite sure what she should say.

'Really?' she hazarded, after a second. 'That's nice.'

'That's nice?' Slowhand repeated, incredulous. The more cautious archer was already readying Suresight to loose an arrow at anything that came at them. 'You may have been around a bit but don't you find the fact that something in this graveyard knows your name just a little disturbing?'

Kali couldn't deny that she did find it disturbing. But not because she had been referred to by name — as far as she knew her name could simply have been overheard sometime during their explorations. No, what disturbed her was the fact that the voice had said she had been awaited. Because this reminded her once again of her conversation with the fish-thing in the ruins of Martak, and its comment then that she was where she should be. Ever since that encounter, she had railed against what that meant, and to be faced with a similar comment now brought back all the worries that somehow, without her knowledge or consent, her life was following a preordained path.

'Who are you?' she asked. 'Where are you?'

'My being, all around you. My physical form, before you.'

'You? You're — ?'

'Hooper,' Slowhand said worriedly, 'maybe that bump did more harm than we thought. You do know you're talking to a plant?'

Kali ignored him and studied the sphere again. What she saw could easily be mistaken for a plant, that was for sure, but there was something more to it. A complexity about the hairy fronds and an energy inside them that suggested something more advanced, more alive.

'I don't think it's a plant. I mean it looks organic, yes it is organic, only not in that way.'

'Not in what way?'

Kali stroked the sphere, tracing the outline of the shape within. 'Strip away our flesh and our bone,' she said, 'our veins, organs, muscle, sinew, tendons, and what do you think you get?'

'A bloody mess?'

'I mean what's left, Slowhand. The very core of our being.'

'Your companion shows a knowledge beyond that of her world, archer,' the voice said, startling them both. 'You see before you the nervous mesh central to the body of everything that lives. The threads, if you will, within us all.'

'Right. So, your sphere, it's some kind of grow bag?'

'Slowhand!'

'Joke, Hooper. Breaking the ice with the plant is all.'

'It isn't a plant.'

'I know that, for fark's sake. Of all the steaming pits — you really do think I'm thick, don't you?'

'No, no, of course I don't. Not at all.'

Slowhand stared challengingly and found Kali couldn't hold his gaze. He shook his head in resignation and ran his own palm over the sphere. 'What I don't get is, are you saying it was once one of us. Human?'

Kali looked around at the decay of ages, and smiled. 'Oh, I wouldn't think human, no.'

She was only just beginning to appreciate the possible nature of the being whose presence they were in, and despite the gravity of the situation that had brought them here she couldn't help but almost giggle with the thrill of it. The mummified corpse in Be'Trak'tak was the closest she ever thought she would come to meeting a member of the Old Races, but now?

'Why don't you ask him?'

'Him? How do you know it's a him?'

Kali was getting a little tired of questions when so many of her own were clamouring to be asked. 'Maybe because if it was a her — maybe someone called Endless Passion — you'd already be working on some unlikely contrivance to make your pants disintegrate.'

'Hey. That is below the belt.'

'No, we know what's below the belt. And where it's been.'

'Hey!'

'Hey!'

They stopped, remembering where they were. Kali turned towards the sphere to apologise but then stood back, gasping.

'What the hells…?' Slowhand said.

Inside the sphere, the liquid had begun to flood with clouds of grey. They were clearly more than clouds, however, as not only did their mass seem to be made up of tiny organisms but they moved with purpose, variously wrapping, obscuring and agitating the fronds of the 'plant' until they began to change, thicken and grow. What their unexpected host had described as 'the threads within us all' were beginning to take on a fuller form, one gradually becoming more recognisable as a living being.

First came a skeleton, one bit of bone at a time, the bones lengthening to join others, creating joints, limbs, ribs, a skull. Next came sinews, organs, tendons and muscle, these growths in turn becoming interlaced and overgrown with capillaries, blood vessels and arteries, which, when whole and connected, began to flow with blood the colour of sky. Over these vessels grew tissue and then flesh, a body forming before their eyes. And, lastly, came eyes, hair, features, until both Kali and Slowhand found themselves staring at a fully formed being, floating before them in the sphere.

But it was like no being either of them had seen before.

At least, not quite.

The thing was, Kali recognised elements of the creature she saw before her — the musculature of the limbs, the shape of the torso, the physiognomy of the face — but what confused her was that they seemed to come from two different anatomies. She was familiar with this creature and yet wasn't at the same time. Because while it had always been her dream to meet a living, breathing member of one of the Old Races, she had never, ever dreamt she would meet a living, breathing member of both Old Races simultaneously. It was hardly what she'd expected the Dragon God to be.

'You?' she said breathlessly. 'You're — '

'The first of the dwelf. The last of the dwelf.'

'My Gods!'

'Dwelf?' the archer said, confused.

'Work it out, Slowhand.'

'Are you telling me this thing is half dwarf, half elf. A hybrid?'

'Yup.'