Dragon Mirror- Ties Between the Veil
8: The Aya’Duel, A Daroul, and Travel Preparations

Raina stared out the window, watching the rain saturate the earth and rise in a hot mist from the ground. It was muggy and her shirt kept clinging to her back.

She looked down at the papers in front of her, the strange glyph script running across the top of the page with her looping words written out beneath. She pushed the papers away and laid her head down.

How many months had she been here already? Fuck.

She hadn’t bothered to mark time, which she now keenly regretted. Should she even try to go home? She raised her head as she felt her Aya’Chyn’s emotions and watched the dragonet glide over the wet foliage outside, rolling over lazily like a cloud of fog.

I’d never leave you. I love you. Raina projected to her other self.

The Aya’Chyn banked toward her and slipped through the window. I know.

The voice was smug, and she preened the mist off her delicate glass wings. Raina smirked and tugged on one of her horns, like she used to tug on Luna’s ears.

“Drakunmate ni Aya’chyn Janai kireina to mi’yatte dai’ski.” Raina turned to see Palliza standing at the bedroom door. She took a moment to translate in her head. Never have I seen an Aya’Chyn so pleased with its drakunmate.

She shifted uncomfortably, and responded in the same language, “I still feel so uncomfortable.” She looked down at Iyzdra and stroked her neck. “Speaking in this language all the time.”

Palliza inclined her head. “It makes it easier to stick to the mind. And it is a language that most in this world can speak.” Raina scowled. Apparently “English” was old Darkuni, and what she spoke now was “Daka Kuni Suhat”. It meant “The language after”. After what, she assumed was the Tilting. Or the Breaking of Bonds, that had happened after her Grandma absconded. She was still learning what that entailed, since she was focused on learning to speak, and bonding with her Aya’Chyn.

“There are… other languages that you will encounter, if you ever venture out, but knowing this one allows a way to communicate.” Palliza reached up as Toru-Ki flitted towards her and landed. “Although it will immediately mark you as an outsider.”

There was a pause, and Palliza tilted her head, which Raina attributed to her communicating with Tralna. She turned to the door abruptly. “We seem to have a guest.”

They walked out into the front of the house to see Tralna crouching low in the field of wildflowers that spread out in the clearing before developing into the darker forest that encroached on the dirt road.

The wind was gentle and caused the heads of the wildflowers to sway. Tralna’s tail lashed back and forth, and there seemed to be intermittent squealing emitting from her forepaws. Jrash stood by her withers, looking down at what she held.

“Did she catch an animal?”

Palliza shook her head and motioned to Tralna. Toru-ki flitted to land in Tralna’s mane and cheeped inquiringly. The flying lizard shrieked as Tralna shook her head to dislodge him. She slowly opened her claws.

When Raina leaned forward to get a look, she didn’t see anything. Iyzdra fluttered to lean over Tralna’s claws and started in surprise when a tiny black animal jumped at her.

Tralna negligently swept her paw back over the creature, to bat it away, eliciting another squeal.

“I never thought I would see a Daroul, here.” Palliza said softly. Jrash reached down to pick up the tiny squealing bundle just as Palliza gasped a strangled “No!”

There was a flash, and Raina covered her eyes with her arm. When she lowered it, Jrash stood rigidly, holding a small Jerboa type rodent. It was midnight black with red eyes. They both looked stunned.

Tralna looked sheepishly at her drakunmate.

I did not think the boy stupid enough to….

“What just happened?”

A small voice, feminine in quality, and very quiet, spoke. The words came first hesitantly, then in a rush. He bonded me. How did he bond me? I only came to see the Elohima. Then the Mother of Bonds captured me, which was very rude. And now I am bound to this very stupid looking boy. Although I guess he is pleasing to look at and feels strong. Oh gods I can FEEL his irritation at me! Wait- They can HEAR me?!

The black rodent immediately went silent, shuddering in Jrash’s palm.

Raina stepped forward and peered at the tiny animal. “Is… is that an Aya’Chyn?” Tralna let loose an explosive snort.

“Is a wolf a dog?” Palliza asked, she cupped her hands beneath Jrash’s and scowled down at the trembling creature. “Better yet, is a Lion a Lynx?” She looked up into Jrash’s eyes.

“Dearest, I have always known you had to replace your Will, and I am sorry that I was never able to replace your Aya’Chyn when I journeyed, and that you never discovered your Will during your travels.” She sighed and mumbled under her breath. “I should have seen this coming.”

Raina bit the inside of her cheek. “Isn’t it an Aya’Chyn? If it’s his Will?” The tiny rodent seemed to be hyperventilating and small squeaks of distress sounded.

Jrash brought his hands closer to his chest, almost a protective gesture to shield the small form from his grandmother. Palliza dropped her hands.

The Daroul are wild cousins to the Aya’Chyn. They are born naturally and proliferate in physical forms as varied as the animals of land and sea. In the Beginning, when our Creators made us, we were the same. Born with no form, forces of nature… Tralna tossed her head.

The small creature raised up on her back legs and a defiant mind voice rang out. We rejected slavery when you led us into servitude! My kind found our own forms in the flora and fauna of the world, Mother of Bonds!

Palliza made a cutting motion with her hand. “Regardless, you have bonded with my grandson. You may not have meant to- but it has happened. You, Daroul, are now my grandson’s Will.”

My name is Ramoth.

Jrash blinked. He hadn’t spoken yet, because he was trying to sort through what was happening to him. But he felt that now he had a grip on what was going on.

“My name is Jra’Shanolar. My family and friends call me Jrash… I am sorry if I hurt you.” He stooped to lower Ramoth to the ground, but she scurried up his arm to perch by his ear.

Maybe you are not so bad. You are more polite to me than the Mother of Bonds and her Slaver. I will not be your slave. I will bite you if you try to force me to do anything.

Tralna made an ululating chuckling noise deep in her chest, and Raina looked at her askance. “Palliza is your slaver?”

Only if you take the pigheaded view of the highly individual Daroul. They detest any type of idea of intimacy that smacks of a higher authority. She blew out her air at Ramoth, and Iyzdra tentatively fluttered close to the miniscule rodent.

No one controls me. The small glass snout turned up, and Iyzdra looked at her bondmate. Am I your slave?

Raina shook her head with a wry smile. “I don’t think I would ever try. She shifted as Palliza took Jrash’s arm. The diminutive Daroul- Aya’Chyn?- scurried to his opposite shoulder.

“This also creates a greater complication. I do not have the necessary items to train you both, and the closest place to buy them is Silkvetr.”

Jrash blinked in surprise. “Surely we could get the things needed in Auscilla? Or Jecom?”

Palliza sighed. “I have the basics only, and one puzzle box that I have already given to Raina. They are rare, so I may have to make one for you…” She trailed off. “It was actually supposed to be yours, but once begun, it cannot be given to another.”

Raina bit her lip and looked down. She still felt guilty about taking possession of the family heirloom. It had been a few weeks after her unpredicted arrival. She thought back on receiving the Aya’Duel.

Raina had blown out her breath in frustration, tossing the stylus onto the paper. She had been working on translating a book Palliza had given her earlier that morning and had reached a point where her brain could not focus.

She had been so overwhelmed for the first few days, laying in bed and crying. Her Aya’Chyn had quietly crept onto her chest, gently headbutting her chin, tucking into her as Luna had for comfort.

At some point she had decided to just throw herself into the study and training Palliza and Tralna offered to her. She had found much to occupy her from the trauma of being torn from everything she had known.

There was a knock on the door, and Palliza let herself in, the small feathered lizard clinging to her shoulder.

“The work goes well, I see.” She smiled slightly and held out a strange shaped plaque or box. It was gilded in gold and silver leaf and shaped like a pentagon. It was a foot wide at each point, and three inches deep. It looked like its face was composed of different drawers or compartments that formed a spiraling star. Each compartment had a symbol and what looked to be a keyhole of different shapes.

“This is an Aya’Duel, or a puzzle box.” Palliza set it down on the desk. Raina noticed it had a wide golden linked belt attached to the top, as if it should be worn like a purse or across the waist.

“Each Drakun Magi was given this when they were ready to train with their Aya’Chyn. This is the last Aya’Duel in my family.” She placed her fingers over the first compartment at the point shaded blue.

“I may give you the first clue to begin testing your Will, but each successive chamber must be unlocked from the materials in the previous chamber. Sometimes, if you are particularly creative, you can skip or jump to different parts of the puzzle… But…” She placed her fingers on an orb in the center of the star. “This cannot be opened until all other chambers have been solved.”

Raina hesitantly reached out.

“What is the first clue?”

Palliza stared at her for a moment. She seemed to be thinking. She touched the blue point again. “What you did when you first came here… before you bonded with Iyzdra.” She hesitated.

“You used your Will to force the world into the pattern you visualized… before bonding your Aya’Chyn.” She sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly.

“It doesn’t matter now.” Her finger tapped the small compartment at the blue tip, outlining a swirled tear drop shape. “The first clue tells you what to visualize with your Will. The visualization pulls the material from your surroundings. Each compartment has a symbol and the materials you must draw from to form the next key. The first key to unlock the first chamber… can be pulled from the Breath and Body of the World.”

Glancing down at the Aya’Duel, Raina looked up into Palliza’s eyes. She felt Iyzdra’s interest as the elderly woman held out the puzzle box to her.

“I mean, it’s obviously water.” Palliza smiled and nodded. Raina shifted uncomfortably. “Am I supposed to pull it from the air? Or up from the ground?” The woman tilted her head in acquiescence.

“You can visualize the water as it is- but it is better to understand the elements that water come from…”

“Like oxygen and hydrogen?” Palliza blinked.

“That is very… advanced knowledge.” Her eyebrows were pinched as she looked at Raina. “What I meant was understanding how to draw water to you by knowing its sources…”

“Well shit, knowing the atoms of something is knowing the sources.” Iyzdra nipped at her hand as she wrapped herself around her arm.

Palliza released the box into her hands and stepped back. She held her left hand up to the sky, and her right hand out towards the ground. Raina felt a strange sensation that was almost like an electronic buzz.

“Knowing the most basic of aggregates is far too advanced a concept to start with, what you need to know and visualize are the notions of the source, such as clouds, or the groundwater, deep below.” A mist began forming around her, and droplets of water coalesced in her palms.

She brought her hands together in a cup, and gracefully tilted them to let the water fall to the ground.

“Using your Will to create from ‘nothing’ is impossible. But if you are without materials, and you know what your surroundings contain, you can create anything.”

She dried her hands on her skirt. “Creation is only one aspect of your Will, but it is the most difficult. When you try to create with no clear path of materials, you can cause… problems.”

“Like when I tried to make my phone out of a pastry?” She privately thought that this was some Avatar the Last Airbender shit, and she heard Tralna making a warbling noise and scowled.

Stop laughing at me. She thought at the dragon, whom she assumed had been listening to her thoughts..

No.

Palliza made a face at her, ignoring the mental banter between her drakunmate and her student.

“Yes. Like that. I assume it was made from a different type of material that you did not have- not to mention that you had no real grasp of how it was formed besides its outside shape.”

Raina scratched Iyzdra behind her ears and at the base of her luminescent horns. “My cell phone was made out of metal and glass.”

Palliza grunted and watched her through contemplative eyes.

“Your Will, without the necessary materials, will attempt to create them from what you have available.”

Thoughts about some of her advanced chemistry classes and physics had crossed Raina’s mind. Had her Will been trying to make metal out of her fruit pastry? Wouldn’t that take mashing together atoms to make heavier atoms? Raina felt a thrill of anxiety. What was that, fission? Fusion?? Holy fuck. She had almost gone nuclear.

She blurted in plain English, forgetting to speak Daka Kuni Suhat. “That sounds like I’m a nuclear bomb just fucking waiting for the wrong thought to cross my mind to blow.”

Palliza had stared at her, probably trying to figure out what she had just said. She continued on in Daka. “Yes, indeed. When you pull water, you must imagine its source, or you risk pulling it from your own body. Without control and guidance, it is bad. Like the collapse of a star in the cosmos.”

Raina had privately thought it was a lot more dangerous than a distant star collapsing. Especially when she had contemplated the heat and radiation of decaying elements in the close quarters of your living room.

Setting down the Aya’Duel, she thought about water and where it collected. She held out her hand. She had focused her attention on the creases of her hand and imagined water condensing from the air. It seemed to happen from one second to the next, and suddenly there was wetness in her hand.

Looking at Palliza questioningly, she stooped down and poured the water over the blue diamond shaped point. The woman laughed. “If it were that easy, any person could pour a glass of water on it.”

Scowling, she reevaluated. She had brought the puzzle box closer to her face, staring at the spiral water drop symbol. She noticed the symbol seemed to be made of a minute glass tube, open at the point, then spiraling around, then down into the box.

Her interest piqued, she visualized the water forming and moving, into the end of the tube and down into- POP.

The first chamber lid popped off with a hiss and a flash.

She had jumped and dropped the box.

She came back to the present slowly. Jrash was tentatively reaching up to stroke Ramoth’s side, and Raina nodded at Palliza as the woman explained what they would need to do.

“The closest place that could have the components for an Aya’Duel is Tammisen. Better to travel to Silkvetr to look for an already completed Aya’Duel in a collectables shop. I know the nobility collected them as…” Palliza trailed off with a disgruntled sigh. “Oddities.”

Raina quirked an eyebrow at her.

Jrash looked up at his grandmother. “Would it be best to just look for one already completed? Instead of hunting for all of the many items needed? I remember seeing a list to make one in a scroll in the library in Auscilla. The number and type of things needed was expansive, and expensive.”

Palliza stared at Ramoth, as if trying to divine a path to navigate. Her face was blank as her deep thoughts swirled. She glanced at her drakunmate, and a silent exchange flew between them.

“Yes. I haven’t had to make one in… years.” She seemed to come back to herself. “I am not even sure if you will have the same abilities of Will with a Daroul.”

Jrash snorted, “Why should it be any different?”

Tralna made a rude noise in the back of her throat. Palliza shoved her withers gently. Her annoyed look was full of affection.

“Aya’Chyn are not the same as Daroul… or Aya’Daroul?” She brought her fingers up to tug at a strand of hair. “They chose their own form and are not as fluid as Aya’Chyn….and have more… separateness.”

She means we are not slaves that conform to your identity! Ramoth flicked her tail and ran behind Jrash’s neck to settle behind his other ear. The small black jerboa type creature looked sulky. Palliza chuckled.

“There may be some truth to what she says. Iyzdra was given form from Raina’s Will and shares part of her lifeforce. I am not sure with an Aya’Daroul, they take their own forms at birth… and this is the first bonding I have ever heard or seen.”

Raina frowned. Her grandmother had brought her Luna as a kitten, who was Iyzdra in this world? She held her peace, but still pondered the implications. It didn’t make sense to her.

“I will write a letter of introduction to one of your cousins in Silkvetr. She should be able to procure an intact Aya’Duel for you.” She turned her eyes to Raina. “The journey should provide more in depth experiences for you to finish your own puzzle box.”

I do miss the cities, but I detest being treated like an unthinking animal or a dangerous beast. Tralna turned her great head to the side, arching her neck.

“The damage my sister caused when she left this world had severe… consequences.” Raina had only begun to scratch the surface of the past several centuries of history in the months she had been in the world called Szrathia.

Apparently, there was a wide time gap between the two universes, because nearly five hundred years had passed since Panillia had made her exit.

Raina was still in awe at how old Palliza claimed to be, and had a hard time imagining that her Grandmother was as old, or even related. She had an easier time imagining Gma Pani arriving in the present day and living a normal lifespan, vs spawning in a pre-colonized America. The thought was ludicrous.

“The way to Silkvetr takes about a month.” Raina’s mouth dropped open in shock, but Palliza continued.

“Tralna and Supi will carry you to Silkvetr. Tralna can keep Supi in line.” She gestured to a leggy deer-like creature that grazed placidly by the gate leading out into the woods from the garden. Supi had two long horns that swept out and down the sides of its head, aggressively stabbing forward so far that it had to grab grass with a long prehensile tongue. The creature had spikey growths on its shapely rump in place of a tail.

Tranla gave a nasal trill, extending her neck, and Supi jerked its head up, hissing and frisking sideways. Supi will not bite the charges, or Supi will not get a share of Tralna’s dinner. Supi laid its ears back and warbled, shaking its head. Then it stamped a three toed hoof and went back to grazing.

Raina raised her eyebrows. Last she had seen, Tralna ate a variety of foods, but mostly meat. She turned to look at Jrash, who smirked and shrugged. “Supi’s breed is omnivorous. They eat whatever they come across. It is interesting to see an ova of suket replace a warren of rabbits.” His grimace told her it was mildly off putting.

She still found it interesting that some creatures from her world existed here, but others were virtually unknown. Mice and rats apparently existed but were rare, but there were plenty of rabbits. And the niche for small rodents was replaced by fat but surprisingly swift little lizards that had a vicious bite that was often venomous.

The wildest realization was that the “birds” of this world were not like hers, but looked more like prehistoric dinosaurs, with either long toothy snouts, or a snout with a pseudo beak tip. She had not seen an actual bird since arriving, even though the animals still sang like birds. Touru-Ki was the prime example of the dominant birdlike species.

Touru-Ki at that moment was trying to sneak across Jrash’s arm to get closer to Ramoth, who was now partially tucked under the collar of Jrash’s shirt. The small Daroul made a quiet peeping noise that was responded to with a quizzical cheep?

Jrash lifted his arm in a bemused fashion. “Making friends?” The small red eye of the Aya’Daroul blinked slowly. Raina assumed that the small creature was exhausted.

He looked down at his shoulder and seemed to be telepathically speaking to Ramoth. She turned away to follow Palliza into the house, knowing she’d have to help pack travel necessities. She was sick to death of all new and strange things, and terribly home sick, but she was optimistic that this would be more interesting than fucking translations.