(I know my dragon is subtle, i dont think i ever use the word. But i tried to go with the old legends that they were fascinated by treasure. Also it feels more like a story fragment than anything. I hope what ive given here will do as a submission. if not, the contest has still gotten me writing again, which is the best prize to take from this to me)
Username: Kalidah
Story Title Hatch another plan
wordcount: 1693
Story:
Not a person anymore. Only a whisp. A ghost. She navigates the black dimension and feels nothing. Thinks nothing. Time is abstract, but after a while, passes. Stars and glyphs approach from the distance and encircle her. They speak as a phase and in spasms. She understands, without a brain to listen to it. They want to know how old she is. She doesnt know. They know that. They panic. She doesn't belong. This doesnt happen alot.
They call her Ophidia the Egg but her name is Connor the Con Artist. She objects to them. Ophidia is too feminine, reptilian. They call her Ophidia and accuse her of wanting to live there where it is so dark. She resents the notion and becomes annoyed. It is her nature to be anger no matter what realm it is. As a glyph she glows red. The stars react in a fury and scurry to gather ice. Ice from the coldest planets, the unholiest ice and the ice that never was hurled at her. She sizzled.
The world came back to a girl dressed like gambling and trouble. Immidiately cold. Not even her cowskin duster brought warmth. And a chirping pounded her ears like a clock tower ringing in her cerebellum.
"Lydian...grab the heartsalt.... from my alchemy table..... The poor man is in a shivering fit."
Stepping around her, obeying the command was a man dressed in a mess of white clothes that were of varying fabrics. Very eccentric attire with many pockets and ruffles, but from the pointed hat the shivering girl deducted that the man was a magician.
The room had no shortage of enchantments, trinkets and keepsakes. Crows feet, dreamcatchers, dyes and pastes, warped grimmeries, lutes and drums, staffs, exotic pottery and a haze of smoke wasping over everything.
Lydian grabbed a small woven bag full of dust and returned to the speaking woman.
"Here, but it's a waste. Shes only cold because shes been paralyzed and trapped in limbo all afternoon. They warned us about side effects like this. Her skin is catching up to her, after being gone for the past five hourse. That's all. The siktri blooms are melting from the stems outside. Let her enjoy a good cold shiver, its probably the last time she'll feel cold in this lantern of a city."
"....Her?... Oh...how blind of me.... a lady... lady charlatan... rare....."
The cold girl sat up. Blood undried from her boots and dripped freshly to the wooden floor of a room decorated oddities.
"Look at that.... the blood of the... brawlers."
The young mage examined the liquid, his nose still pounding from being busted earlier. "Could just as well be mine. I was too hesitant with the time spell and they were not hesitant with the clubs."
The calm woman's eyes widened at this. "I dreamt... of the serpent.... biting your ankles.... before you could stomp it."
Lydian rubbed a pink salve on his face and winced. "Once again, it certainly came true. But in what context? The pre-emptive strike at the docks or the snake in our midst?" They turned and examined the fangs on the groggy girl's lips, and the scaled pattern of her boots., the serpent engraved on her knife.
"What were you doing picking fights with scum at the black docks?"
She didnt answer becuase of the jarring images... the memory... the experience of the place she was in before she was revived and returned to this world.
There were so many stars shooting around her in the abyss, harassing her and wondering why she was there. They called her Ophidia, but she'd never heard that name in her life. The galaxies eneveloped her and she bubbled red with the madness of inferno. They wanted her to live again and get out of their dimension. The stars hated her, out of fear or contempt?
"Lydian... you should.... explain whats happened... Perhaps her skin isnt the only thing... catching up."
"Of course." He knelt to Connor's level.
"You were dealing cards with the worst kind who were guarding the docks, waiting on a ship full of bird cages. I was waiting for that ship too. But you instigated some kind of fight. The pepperboxes under your sleeves shot the two thugs closest to cutting your head off but the other six had the upper hand. I was afraid the ship would turn around when they saw the commotion, afraid a riot was happening in the city so i tried to dispatch the men as quick as I could..."
From his pockets he displayed a few small cogs and gears and a handfull of sand. The metal gears glistened in Connor's eye and she instinctively reached for them. Lydian pulled them away and threw them at a fly buzzing the air. "Quam cogitas." The fly remained suspended in the air along with a few dust motes. "They're still standing where we left them, without a blink or a heartbeat. Quam Cogitas. You were a casualty in the crossfire but luckily Reverie reached into the timeless world and pulled you back."
Reverie the Dream Witch bowed. "Lydian was...inconsolable...that he'd... left you trapped...forever... We mustn't... harm the good... the few of us left..." Lydian shrugged.
Connor scoffed at the notion of good. More comfortable now, adjusting her fingerless gloves and shuffling the cards she found in her pocket, she began to speak.
"They were going to use the cats and dogs on that ship for meat. And train the rest to eat meat, the kind with the blood still in it...sometimes I try to liberate the poor souls. Cheated my way through a winner take all game but I guess they saw the holdout rig on my wrist."
For an example she effortlessly dealt a four of a kind and quickly reshuffled. "What happened to them?"
The mage removed his hat and an outer layer of blood-splattered clothing. Not at all handsome, but young and honorable. "The animals? I took the kanary. The rest are still sitting at the docks for all I know."
A chirping echoed once more in a room down the hall. Connor grimaced. The temperature of the room immiately returned to her skin. She shed the duster, revealing a black vest holstering more weapons and suprises.
Connor combed her short black hair back and checked the pistols in her sleeves, stuffed in there next to the false decks and the fake hands. "The kanary. I remember now. The golden bird whose song makes the devil and his sisters yawn."
Reverie interjected. "Instrumental... if we're going to... slip into the demon's dreams and.... save the city from the Lonely Death."
"Sugar you can't confront Death on his homefront." A hand mirror flipped open and rose to Connor's face. Her eyes were green as ever. Her snake bites still intact.
"He wins every confrontation against Life. And he's winning alot lately. Maybe you can trick him... Death's probably a self-assured fool." She gave a quick glance to Reverie. Underneath her heavy dress and ragged hair was a beautiful sleepy girl. A true-love kiss may be all it takes to wake her up from whatever it is that tortures her eyes into being so bloodshot. It sure wasn't going to come from Lydian.
But she had no time to fantasize and began making her way for the door.
"You're welcome?" the mage called out to Connor, now gone from the room and walking down the corridor of the smokey house of the Dream Witch.
The footsteps stopped. A silence. Finally Connor called back.
"Next time just bring a shotgun. Trust me theyre less messy" And the door slammed.
Lydian and Reverie traded glances.
"She means...to say...thank you."
"I know. Im just glad you were able to save. Id never rest if she hadn't."
"I wasnt sure I could...do it... it almost felt like.... something on the other side... handed her to me... At any rate...a hiss...to her words... she dressed the part."
"At any rate we have to prepare for the dreamwalking tonight."
"Agreed...Fetch me..the Kanary."
Obliging, the mage walked down the hall to retrieve the bird.
He stopped before entering the next room, pausing at the front door. He stooped down to pick up a yellow feather from the floor. The cage was missing entirely. Then it came to him. A tear formed in the corner of his eye and lightning tinged inside of it.
"REVERIE!!!"
"What... sweetheart what... is it?!!"
"That snake...she lied to us. There werent any cats on that import. They dont carry them...afraid theyll eat the...."
"But why......Wheres the kanary?"
A mile down the road, a girl dressed like gambling and trouble approached a beggar whose family had perished to the Lonely Death. Desperately he rose his cup. She spat a brittle bone into it and carried on, grinning with jagged bloody teeth.
'How could a demon find that annoying chirp to be hypnotizing? They've always had such odd tastes... harder to fool because theyre an odd bunch to peg.'
She played with the cage, delighted by its metallic sheen.
Ophidia... The stars were terrified...
She walked down an alley and leaned against the bricks. She lit a cigarette and the smoke was cleaner than the factory smog already present.The shiny metal cages on that ship would be hers, to keep forever in her lair, even when everyone in the town dies from the Lonely Death. The docks would have to wait until she got her hands a bigger gun. She couldnt trust her cardplay after an incident like today.
Pulling her last deck from her wrist she began drawing a hand out of habit. First card was an ace. She felt the luck surging and began to feel confindent in her skills again. The second card was an eight. The confidence resided. The third card was a queen. The fourth card was another eight. A pair of eights left her the victor over many drunken card sharks.
The last card sat on the top of the deck. She brought the cigarrette to her lips for one last puff before putting it out, licking her lips with a forked tongue. She drew. Another ace.
Eights and aces. The dead man's hand. It unsettled her. The Lonely Death always sent his omen before reaping. You never knew what your sign was going to be. She snapped out of her panic. She surely didn't apply to the curse slowly killing off most of humanity. She wasn't one of them. The stars knew it.
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