Hot Air
A tree snapped, then another and another. Cordielle readied her staff and dropped a volatile exploding potion into her left hand. A screeching roar reverberated through the wood, vibrating Cordielle’s heart in her chest. That--was unlike anything she had heard before. Like a knife scraping across rock, but deeper, echoing. Sooty smoke rose from the treeline just in front of her. She cast about for a place to hide--but there was none. Besides, there was no way Lee would be able to conceal himself. He stuck out like a flaming hut. There was only one way to protect Lee, and that was to fight with him.
A great bronze thing burst from the trees, shattering a trunk and sending splinters flying toward them. One nicked the bottom of Cordielle’s ear. She flinched, ducking away, but Lee had already placed himself in front of her. His armor deflected a particularly large chunk of wood, but a branch caught him between the eyes. His eyes rolled back and he slumped over, very nearly impaling himself with his own arrows. Cordielle rushed over to him and caught his fall, cradling his head on its way down. She checked his eyes for any signs of consciousness, but he was gone. A nasty welt was already swelling on his brow. She would tend to that later. But there was no sense tending to a corpse.
A long, boiling-hot breath blew the back of her hair every which way. Whatever it was, it was right behind her. And it was looking at her.
She slowly turned around, not wanting to provoke an attack by moving too quickly. She caught another blast of steam in the face, filling her vision with nothing but too-hot air. Finally, the breath subsided and she could finally see the source of the bellows. A rusty brown maw hovered inches from her face, full of metal razors and saw-edge molars. The long, horselike head was full of bolts and vents. It was a dragon. A metal dragon.
Various furs and hides were draped across the length of its plate-scaled body, no doubt trophies from past kills. Cordielle scooted backwards against the ground, noting the keenly dextrous claws at the ends of its wide paws. The dragon vented steam out of its length on both sides, lifting plates to reveal chugging pistons and whirling gears. Its head lowered and extended itself toward Cordielle, closing the space between them in mere seconds. She stared into its mouth, readying her potion. It would be all but ineffective on this mechanical beast. But she had to at least try. Maybe it would buy her enough time to grab Lee and pull him--no. There was no way to escape with Lee. He was dead weight at the moment. Cordielle briefly considered--and this was a thought that haunted her in her darkest moments--leaving him as a sacrifice so that one of them could live.
“Who am I?”
The breath rushed hot on her face once more, but the voice chilled her to the bone. This thing could talk? She brushed a lock of curled hair out of her face, searching the eyes for intelligence.
“That’s a tricky question,” she said cautiously, suspecting a word-game trap was afoot. “A lot of people spend their whole lives trying to find the answer.”
“Oh, no, that won’t do at all!” the dragon spoke--bellowed, really--right into Nabla’s face. Her grip tightened on the vial.
“You see,” it continued, “I have been trying to figure out who I am for a very long time, and I cannot decide whether I am a killer or a lover.”
“How long?” Cordielle asked shakily.
“Forever.” the dragon responded solemnly. “Or at least, I think forever. At least as long as I have been in this forest.”
“I’ve only heard you for the last couple of hours.”
“Oh good!” The mouth revealed more teeth. “That means I’ve only been without purpose for less than a day. This may be manageable, don’t you think? I ought to be able to decide my true nature very soon. I tried rampaging in anguish for a while, but that just made me... anguished. So I’m very glad that you came along.”
In the back of Cordielle’s mind, she noticed that the dragon’s speech was refined but overblown, as if compensating for the lack of human (or even organic) lips. It slurred the last part of each word as it got lost in the cavernous recesses of its lower jaw.
“Because now that I have a person here to talk to, I can perhaps decide whether I am more predisposed to drag you away to marry you or consume you and your friend on the spot.”
The dragon leaned back, stroking its chin with a fine claw. Long whiskery antennae drooped down from its mouth in pairs, curling at their pointed tips. Cordielle thought fast.
“Perhaps you’re neither.” she offered, eyeing the conglomeration of edges.
“What?!” it bellowed, nearly slamming its face into her face once more. It angled its snout downward so that they could look eye to eye, with the side effect of its steam-breath hitting squarely on her stomach. She knew that she was in high likelihood of becoming severely burned, so she cast reason to the wind and righted herself, still staring the metal dragon in the eyes. Its eyes were widened dramatically, tiny bits of glass forming a kaleidoscopic iris around a slitted pupil.
“What. What. What. Are you suggesting to me,” said the dragon, puffing with each repetition.
“That you don’t have to do--those things,” she finished lamely.
“I am a dragon!!” It sputtered indignantly, flaring its vents. “That is what dragons do!! Do not underestimate my previous knowledge.”
“But maybe... you don’t have to be... a dragon.” She stumbled on her words like a boot made of wood. She cursed herself and her ‘quick thinking.’
The dragon, however, was deeply interested. Its glass-eyes flared, rolling about in thought.
“You mean to say, then,” puff, puff, “that although I am a dragon, I may not be a dragon. This is wondrous logic. Tell me more, these thoughts are tickling me.”
“Well... You are made up of many things. You’re not set as a dragon forever, you’re just shaped like one right now. You can be whatever you want to be.”
“Fascinating,” the dragon murmured. “Is it possible that my loss of self-identification is merely another way for me to reinvent myself into the grand rising star I was meant to be?”
“Sure?” Cordielle shrugged. She stashed the potion into her back-pouch, but kept a grip on her staff.
“So what you’re saying,” the dragon continued, “is that I am only limited by my own imagination as to what I can become?”
“Yes.”
“Well then,” the dragon picked at its hides, “That’s good. And not so good.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a very limited imagination,” it confided, nearly whispering. “Do you have any ideas as to what I could be today?”
Cordielle shrugged again. “Well, if you’re not otherwise busy, I could use a companion today. My friend,” she threw her head toward the unconscious Lee, “isn’t going to be walking on his own for a little while and I’m too small to take him.”
The dragon’s eyes lit up with inspiration and glowing heat. “A companion? For this little creature? I think I could manage that.”
With that, the dragon took a step backward, and every plate on the dragon’s body lifted and shifted, disjointing and twisting into new patterns and releasing a huge cloud a steam that partially obscured the beast. Cordielle realized, now that there was finally some distance between them, that the dragon wasn’t quite as large as she first believed--barely the size of a large horse, with no wings at all. The dragon’s head swiveled inward as the torso compacted into a shorter, stumpier version of itself. The arms seemed to fold in half as they became short but thicker, while the tail merely wrapped itself around the torso like a sash. A smaller squarish head rose from within the dragon-cranium, one that looked surprisingly humanoid. The metal plates locked into place once again, and where once there was a dragon-shaped robot, now stood before Cordielle a human-shaped robot. He was the exact same bronzy color as before, with the furs covering his legs and waist. He was still quite large, easily six feet, with a barrel chest and immense booted feet. He reached up and twanged an antennae-beard piece, looking extraordinarily pleased with himself.
“Well,” he pronounced, his voice exactly as deep and ridiculous as before, “Not too bad, I say so as myself.”
Cordielle applauded politely, whooping in appreciation. He bowed deeply.
“And as a companion, I can still turn to love or murder quite easily!” he exclaimed, delighted.
“Yes, you certainly could,” Cordielle said through her teeth, wondering just how much she would regret this.
“Oh, how rude of me! I never introduced myself when I didn’t know who I was! Though words seem so petty when you have... me. Call me Jagrear. Or your grace. Either one.”
“That’s great. Jagrear. Your grace. Though... can you turn back into a dragon? I needed a companion so I could carry my friend.”
Jagrear’s eyebrow whiskers ruffled.
“Well. We’ll certainly find out, now won’t we?”
The two of them proceeded to find out.