Pathway

"Very well." 

King Laggarma said hoarsely. Silver flecks swirled in his eyes, a hypnotic light that snared Icelin and wouldn't let go. 

"I'll go with you to the dark places, as bloods. Only you. I hope neither of us gets lost."

Chang Chang opened her mouth to reply, but an icy gust of wind cut off the words, filling her mouth and making her chest ache. The world fell away, and she was flying, soaring high above dozens of mountain peaks. In and out of the cloudbanks, she dived and reeled. Terror and elation filled Chang Chang as she soared upward to even more dizzying heights. Astral projection.

"What is this?" 

She cried. She expected the wind to steal her voice, but instead a mighty roar split the air and shook the snow from the mountain peaks. Above her, the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the mountains in gold light.

"Look below you."

King Laggarma's voice reverberated in her mind. Chang Chang recognized it, and yet the voice was different, bigger, and full of an immense, mind-shattering power barely kept in check. Chang Chang looked down and saw the shadow of a massive body of a white dragon on the unblemished snow. A pair of talon-tipped wings unfolded from its body, and its frilled neck ended in a thick, horned head.

By the heavens, Chang Chang thought. This can't be happening. If she'd possessed a body in this strange vision, she'd be trembling, weeping with the wrongness of what she saw. I can't do this. I can't ride a dragon's mind.

"You're not seeing the worst of it, girl. If you can't handle a simple flight, you'll go mad with what's to come."

"You're not a dwarf at all. For centuries, you've ruled Myria, yet you're—"

Chang Chang said. The mountains fell away, and they flew over a vast pine forest just as a flock of crows broke from the trees and surrounded them. The birds screeched loudly in Chang Chang's ears and flew away. 

"A dragon." 

King Laggarma finished for her. He glanced at Chang Chang and continued. 

"I came to the dwarves over fourteen hundred years ago. When their ruler died, he appointed me, Laggarma the Clanless, his successor, knowing what I was, because he knew I could protect his people."

"But why? I see your mind. You don't belong underground, in the dark."

Chang Chang exclaimed. Images of open spaces and fresh, cold air blasting her in the face—it couldn't be a coincidence that these were the memories king Laggarma had sought first when he let her enter his mind. 

"Neither do you. Yet here we are. Suffice to say, the dwarves needed me, and I needed them. Don't doubt that it was a fair exchange."

King Laggarma said, his booming voice full of an unexpected humor.

"How?" 

Chang Chang asked. The dragon's shadow rippled over the treetops. She couldn't stop staring at it, couldn't reconcile the dwarf she'd known these past several days with the creature whose mind she rode.

"Why? How? Do you really want to know, or are you still dumbstruck?"

King Laggarma echoed.

"Can you blame me? You could have warned me!"

"I am warning you. Where we're going next won't be pleasant. If you want to know how it was a fair bargain, I'll tell you. You've heard the stories of the king who becomes a mithral statue for decades, leaving his people to fend for themselves."

King Laggarma said. All traces of humor disappeared. 

"Do you sleep for that time? Is it something unique to … er … dragons? Some kind of hibernation?"

"In a way. It allows me to travel. When last I went to the stone, I was gone a very long time."

"Where did you go?" 

Chang Chang gasped as the forest dropped away. Suddenly, thousands of glittering lights surrounded them.

"I came here to the Astral Sea."

Heavens tears, Icelin thought, the dwarf—dragon—had been right. She wasn't ready for this. Part of her wanted to close her eyes, to shut away the scene, but if she did, she might miss something extraordinary.

A vast ocean of darkness enveloped them, broken by starlight and misty threads of cloud. On the horizon, the darkness lightened, reminding Chang Chang of the times she'd watched the light change over Myria deep, or the early mornings when she sat on the peak of the Shadow Sage mountain and waited for dawn. The dragon swam in an ocean of starlight, and Chang Chang rode his memories, tasting each image as if it were alive.

I'll never forget any of this, she promised herself.

"Your people say you weren't the same when you came back from here the last time." 

Chang Chang said, struggling to focus. She could lose herself in the beauty of this place if she wasn't careful.

"I was delayed by that."

Chang Chang looked ahead, and a scream welled up in her throat. They flew toward a massive darkness, ripped like a gigantic scar across the Astral Sea. Roiling within the scar was a five-headed beast. Its serpentine necks braided together in shades of red, black, green, white, and blue. Chang Chang tried to pull back, but Laggarma flew them relentlessly toward the maw.

"Turn away. Why are you taking us toward it?"

Chang Chang cried, frantic. 

"Because it's already too late." 

King Laggarma said in a remote voice.

Before Chang Chang could answer, a loud screech split the air, and two giant masses slammed into them from either side. King Laggarma roared and went into a diving roll, so that the stars blurred together in a sickening storm. Blue and white ightning tore apart the sky, but it was not a natural phenomenon. Energy crackled in blue waves across the dragon's body. Chang Chang saw it through king Laggarma's eyes, the electric heat rippling over his belly. She felt no pain from this attack, but kng Laggarma's anguish ripped through her as keenly as the lightning bolts.

They were going down. Chang Chang's gut twisted. A breath later, an object loomed in front of them, large and brown with jagged peaks not unlike the mountains they'd flown over earlier. The floating mote had very little open ground, but it didn't matter. The dragon slammed flat onto it with the full weight of his body and the other bodies clinging to him. The crash echoed across the remoteness of the Astral Sea

.

He's surely dead, Chang Chang thought. No one can survive a fall like that. Yet he obviously had, and already the dragon stirred, attempted to lift his broken body while the lightning burned black threads into his scales and the creatures pinned him from either side.

"It's all pain now. All pain for so very long. Pain … and then silence. I couldn't move. They had no need to restrain me. The pain—and fear—kept me still."

king Laggarma said thickly. 

"Who were they? Why did they capture you?"

Chang Chang asked when she'd recovered her voice. 

"Servants of Heilong, the ancestral black dragon. You saw the five-headed serpent." 

Mith Barak paused for a few seconds before continuing. 

"I beheld her image just before they took me. As to why—because I am old, powerful, and I guard knowledge they covet. Perhaps they did it because I oppose their celestial. Perhaps they did it for the pure enjoyment of it. After the first century, I stopped asking why. After the second, I prayed for my own death. Sometime later, I simply lost myself to pain and madness. I did not care what happened to me."

"Heavens tears," 

Chang Chang said. Sorrow welled inside her. How long had he stayed there, in life and in his memories? Had he ever truly escaped this nightmare? She glanced at Laggarma and asked.

"How did you escape?" 

"Luck and a lapse in judgment. My captors grew complacent. I'd stopped resisting centuries  ago. They thought I was mind-dead. I realized this gradually, and a part of my soul woke up. I conserved my strength, planned, and waited for my moment. Finally, it came, and I broke free. I still remember what it felt like to wake from the stone, to shake it off like molted skin. It had become so much a part of me. And my dwarf form—intact, unblemished—it was a miracle not to feel pain."

"But you weren't intact. Your spirit had been scarred."

Chang Chang said. The dreamlike world, the glimmering stars floated in her periphery, but king Laggarma wasn't looking at it. He hadn't stirred since they'd crashed on the drifting island. 

"Being in my cavern was a comfort. A large enough nest that I could return to my true form if I needed to defend myself, yet it did not have the openness of the Astral Sea or the vast, echoing caverns of Myria and the Underground as a whole. I stayed there as much as I could when I awoke, dispensing counsel. At first, no one knew anything had changed. My people were too grateful I was back."

"You felt safe." 

Chang Chang said. It was not so different from how she'd felt in Wujin, nestled in her great-uncle's shop. Wujin's walls protected her from the outside world and all its dangers. Adventures into the wider world of Wujin held no interest for her, until she'd met Ju Feng at the Valley-Of- A-Thousand-Death. The beginning of her ventures outside her small world.