Drakkenrum

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Dad said that dragons were something called an ‘invasive species’ that had no real place in the ecosystem of the Valley. No native prey, no native predators. At this point, my siblings and I would laugh. The idea of someone hunting dragons was absurd.

The topic came up one evening as the family was sitting around the terrace in the dimming twilight. Below us, the Ilshah Valley spread out to both east and west, the river no longer quite centered as it meandered across the Valley’s floor. “It’s true,” my father rumbled with his gravely voice. His eyes were amused as he continued, “back in Drakken, dragons are hunted when we’re young.” He gestured over to where my little brother, Kassian, had been peering out over the edge of the terrace at the rocky drop but was now turned around to look at him. “Young dragons are careless. Kassian, if you’re going to face this way, get down off the ledge. Your wings wouldn’t catch you before you hit those rocks yet and it's too late to bother the healers.” Kassian looked a little guilty as he took his weight off of the retaining wall. “Beyond that, back home, the yetis used to raid nests when dragons were out hunting. That’s why we lay our clutches the way we do. Of course, that has a difficult consequence when we have safety.”

Father tossed his head to indicate the ridgeline of the Valley. My eyes followed the expansive gesture, and I noticed the more than two score structures like ours that already lined the cliff faces and peaks of the Ilshah-Sur, the southern mountain range that defined the Valley. “The humans only brought ten of us here a century ago to help with the Demontide, and five of us died in that initial confrontation.” He sighed, a great puff of smoke billowing out over a sneezing Kassian and then disappearing into the air. A moment of silence hung between us as my father’s mind drifted over the dragons lost. “And yet in that century, we’ve already had to build just about forty of these homes for our kind. Because all of us are surviving into adulthood, and we need space to put our own nests and, eventually, clutches. You have almost thirty elder siblings out there, about half of them are bonded to one of the other families and are going to start producing more dragonlings. Nor will either your clutch or Kassian’s be the last ones your mother and I produce.” My mind shied away from that image hard.

“But dad, isn’t more of us surviving a good thing?” I asked, my voice between the sibilant hiss of a youngling and the gravely tones of an adult. “I can’t imagine having to deal with the loss of Jurgen, Juno or Judith. Or what it wouldn’t have been like without Florian to help you teach us.”

My father rested his face on his foreclaws and closed his eyes in thought. “In the short term, Jihan, yes, that’s true. The loss of a youngling or a sibling is always painful. But look back at the dining area.” His wing twitched in a gesture akin in meaning to a human pointing. I looked back at where mother was directing the attendants in cleaning up after the family meal. There had been mother & father, the four of us in my generation, Kassian and his two siblings as well as my elder sister Dorothea and her new husband, Albert. They were celebrating the laying of Dorothea’s first clutch. “It takes years for the cattle to reach that size. Yet in one evening we ate seven of them and also half a fruit tree’s produce. Now this was a feast, and the attendants will scrounge most of a second meal from the leftovers. But the same is eaten in almost every one of the dragon palaces. Plus, the humans in the Valley need to feed themselves. It’s a rich place, but every place has its limits. How much more do you think they can support?”

“But … what’s the answer then?” I asked, my curiosity overcome my annoyance at being the target of an impromptu lecture. My father was a teacher by temperament, and profession too, as he’d taken a post at the Ilshah Tower Academy in the Valley, and this was fairly common at home. We were all used to it. It made me wonder why he’d been one of the ones to come fight the Demontide, but father was always reluctant to talk about it. I knew that his first wife had died in the fighting, my mother was his second, and that victory had not been permanent. There were wards throughout the Valley intended to hold demons out, and also to alert us if (although father always said when) any reappear.

Another plume of smoke washed over the edge of the terrace (Kassian having wisely evacuated the area, breathing in smoke was nowhere near as pleasant as breathing it out) as father sighed again. “I would say magic, but so far the Academy hasn’t had any breakthroughs. The egg is growing, but I don’t know what to do when it hatches.”

Any further rumination on dad’s part was cut off by the bellowing billows of another dragon arriving. Ulrich was just slightly older than I was, close enough to be considered the same generation as dragons thought of it. His parents were much older than mine, he might even be their last progeny. He was also their only male child still at home, so he was often over at our place to hang out. “Hey Jihan!” He called out as he approached, a slight gust of smoke escaping on the h in the middle of my name. It wasn’t a natural draconic sound – dad said I was named for a human friend he’d made during the war – and most dragons couldn’t say it well. Ulrich landed at a respectful distance and genuflected to my father. “Manfred, elder, a good evening to new.” My father nodded to him and Ulrich bounded over, poking my flank with his snout. “Alright, tubs, enough food and lazing around! We have to be going.”

I chuckled as he pushed against me. Manfred’s bloodline was larger than Ulrich’s parents so even though he was a few years more mature, I was actually the larger of us. But even though he couldn’t do more than rock me, my center of gravity more than low enough to avoid being toppled, I got up and playfully clacked my teeth at him. “Careful Ulrich, you wouldn’t want Judith to see you being so rough with her favorite brother.”

“Ah … I … oh! That’s not fair youngling!” He huffed at me while my father chortled behind him. Dad got up and lumbered over to a section of the terrace that was still lit by the setting sun, laying out to catch the last rays of natural warmth. Dragons were neither fully warm nor fully cold blooded, but we certainly shared with lesser lizards the attraction to a nice warm rock in the sun.

“Have a good patrol, you two!” He called out to us as he walked off. My mother looked up at that and with a cheery nod echoed him.

A few quick bounds and then a leap took the two of us into the air. Kassian’s wings might not have been developed enough to catch him before the rocks, but Ulrich and I frequently tried to dare each other into waiting later and later before snapping our wings out to catch the wind. Here, his lighter frame was an advantage as he could usually wait longer than I could and still make it to safety. We hadn’t misjudged and managed to get ourselves mangled on the rocks … yet anyway.

All flight-capable dragons did at least one weekly patrol around an assigned sector of the Ilshah Valley. We had to check the wards and traps for tampering that could indicate demonic presence or their human servants preparing for an incursion. They should only have been visible to dragons, but with magic nothing was ever a guarantee. Neither Ulrich nor I was considered an adult by draconic standards, so we didn’t do solo patrols, but we went out three times a week to check our area. We weren’t the only ones, other teams of youngsters took other shifts on the other nights or day flights, and an adult would do a flyover during the day as well. But it was all about preparing us for becoming a part of the duty. It was why the Valley had brought our parents here, built the dragon palaces, provided the food and attendants and all the rest. During the Demontide, the Valley had been almost completely overrun by the invaders. Dragonfire was one of the few substances that could permanently destroy a demon, so the dragons were brought to cleanse the infestation. But their source had never been found, so the dragons had to stay in order to ensure that there wasn’t a resurgence. While casting the runic magic of the wards was beyond me or Ulrich, we were taught to recognize the symbols to see if they had been tampered with. Elders would then come out and repair the damage and hunt for those who had done the tampering.

That was the theory, anyway. In practice, neither Ulrich nor I had ever seen any such tampering or heard of it in our lifetimes. So while we diligently flew the route, we also chatted about the next stage of life.

“So,” Ulrich started with a too-casual tone that telegraphed that an important question was coming, “how are you doing with the spell?”

I didn’t have to ask which spell. There was only one that mattered to an adolescent dragon. It was just called the Shift. After our own native magic, dragonfire its properties, all dragons in Ilshah were tasked with learning transmutation magic. The Shift was shape-changing magic, designed to give the dragon a human form that would allow them to walk the land like a human and interact with people more openly and evenly. My father said this was not the way of all dragons, but those in Ilshah knew they needed to live in harmony with the local human population and so the elders had made a compact. If a dragon could not master the Shift, they had to leave Ilshah and return to the dragon’s ancestral lands. None of the children had failed yet.

“It’s the damn hair!” I growled with frustration. “I can’t get it! It’s too soft and … stringy! Mine just always stays scales that go down my back. Then the scales cut my damn stupid soft skin!” My aggravation made my still maturing voice hiss a little on the s alliteration.

Ulrich laughed. He had a pleasant draconic laugh, although the attendants told me that it sounded like a growl to their human ears. His few years on me meant that he had lost pretty much all of the sibilance that haunted my own voice from my youth. “Hey, at least you can get yours detached. Before I figured it out, I would just have a line of scales that would go down the spine.” He banked to the right as we approached the first sigil we had to check. It was made up of several boulders that were planted in a specific pattern and linked together with magical lines, the earth of the boulder adding stability to the energy of the magic.

We didn’t have to land to check it, so we circled it for about a minute before moving on and Ulrich continued. “You could always do what Tristian did. He couldn’t get the hair right either, so he just went bald!”

“Dad won’t let me.” I admitted begrudgingly. “He says it will stand out too much in the Valley. Tristian went to study at the Temple school, and a few of the cults shave so he’ll be fine. Dad insists I have to get into one of the Academies for my Drakkenrum, so he insists I have to fit in properly.”

Ulrich bobbed his head in a nod. “Ah, yes, I can see that. Well, it took me making mine very short before I could get it right. Well, why don’t we practice a bit as we fly. I found the feeling of air rushing through the hair helpful in getting the texture right.”

So that was what we did for the next four stops on our route. The sigils were all the same basic idea: using earthen framing for stability, the runes provided an energy barrier that prevented demonic magic from crossing it, which would stop them from being able to enter by any various portals. These five runes covered a nearly one hundred mile long stretch of the northern wall of the Valley. The transmutation magic of the Shift could be worked in pieces. I could work on softening my skin, although the feel of it rippling in the wind could be unpleasant and was dangerous to do at high speeds. I had long ago mastered the transformation of my limbs to humanlike. Ulrich and I also took turns trying to surprise the other by suddenly dropping our size down to human standards, which looked a lot like disappearing unless you were playing close attention.

I also tried to do what he said, transform my scales into hair so that I could feel the air rushing through it. Ulrich was very helpful and demonstrated it for me, turning from a giant scaled creature to a giant furry creature. A furry dragon was a very comical sight but it was actually helpful to me. We landed for a moment and Ulrich let me … pet him, I guess you would say. I ran my talons through the fur on his torso, feeling it slip between my claws. I then morphed down to my human form as best I could and continued to rub my now softer hands along it, to get a better feel for the texture. The scales falling down my back nicked me in a few places, but that would heal easily enough. There was something strangely sensual about the feeling of fur on hands that caused the strange phenomenon humans called goosebumps to spread all along my skin.

I shifted back and we took off for the final stop. With the additional sensations to help guide me, I was able to transform sections of my scales into hair, although I had to stop after the long strands got tangled in my remaining scales and almost wrenched a wing out of place. If that had happened, I would need a healer.

The final stop was a little different from the others. Instead of a guardian rune in the hillside, this one … Actually, at this point I had never seen the final stop. It was deep inside a cavern that was too small for even a juvenile dragon to enter. It was added to our route when Ulrich managed to make a sustainable human form in his Shift. He said that it was a chamber wreathed in gold, with runes carved in minute detail along the metal.

But I had made a lot of progress tonight, I was going to try to make the Shift and go in. Once I could reliably do that, I would be ready for the Drakkenrum. It was an old tradition of dragons going into the local human communities in their Shifted form. We had to spend at least a decade there, then and only then would we be an adult in the draconic community.

We landed outside the cavern. Ulrich shifted immediately, his new human feet padding off into the cavern. I took a deep breath and held it, reaching into my core. Every dragon had in their soul a pool of magical energies. It was where our native magic came from, most notably dragonfire. The first step of using transmutation magic was, ironically, transmuting that magic into a new form a magic, in this case from draconic to transmutation. At this point, the magic could be used to reshape the physical world. This I had been taught to do over the last several years by the other dragons. I then took the various threads of transmutation magic and spread them out throughout my whole body until the network looked like my network of blood vessels. I then moved them into the arrangement of my humanoid self. The bones and muscles rippled, the skin finding its new home and its new, lower, tensile strength. Finally, the magic seeped into the scales that covered me, sinking them into my skin and creating a fine layer of small hairs over the entire body. Ironically, these small hairs had been easy for me. It had been the large mops of hair in the various places humans had them that had proven to be the most challenging for me. But now, I knew how they were supposed to feel, both to the touch and to my magic. The hardened keratin of the scales – I was proud of that word, dad had taught it to me as he coached me in the Shift – had to shift to the softer keratin of human hair. But I had the feeling down now, and I could feel them shifting, shrinking and stretching until I had a flowing mane of hair that reached just below my shoulders. We could change our coloration if we wanted, but I rather liked the golden bronze hue I had inherited from my mother, so I kept it.

The Ilshah Valley’s night air was warm and damp on my now more sensitive skin as I followed Ulrich into the cavern. He heard me coming and whirled around. Unlike me, he’d changed his coloration to be blacker than the greyish hue of his scales, which I understood. Apparently gray hair meant a human was old. I was surprised I couldn’t see more of the small hairs over the rest of his body, so I asked him. He grinned, the human expression unsurprisingly coming naturally to him. “Oh, that’s simple. I just made them a lighter color so they don’t show up.” I was surprised, that must have taken quite a lot of fine control over his magic. I wasn’t sure I could imitate that, but fortunately I didn’t have to.

“But hey! That’s not important. You did it! You’re fully Shifted!” Ulrich dashed over and hugged me. I froze in confusion, hugging was not a draconic gesture. He then held me at arms length and smiled again, seeing my confused face. “It’s a human way of showing affection or celebrating good news! I’ve been practicing with the attendants on how to pass as a human. My father says that the physical change is the least of them! I’ve definitely seen it, he makes us spend all day at home in Shifted form if we can. But it makes for good practice, and it’s fun being human! You can join us.

“Come on though, let’s check the sigils. This one is easy, as it’s all swirls. If you see anything that isn’t a swirl, it’s a problem.” He turned and padded over to a line of gold, waving me over to show what he was talking about. After a quick rundown, it was clear that all was fine here too and we headed back outside.

Ulrich beat me in shifting back and then we took off. We flew back to his place first and chatted about the differences in musculature between the two forms. As we were getting back though, Ulrich started laughing. “Oh! Just wait until you have to try figuring out clothes!”