The Hymn of the Lady of Gold

“I warned you this journey would be perilous, even for a dragon.”

“And I warned YOU what my parents would do to you if you let me die,” Rena growled. The lashing of her long, scaled bronze tail was knocking more rubble loose from the ledge where she clung, and she scrabbled all the more desperately for solid purchase. Stupid, useless human fingers. “Godsdamn it, Rickard, help me!”

Suddenly he was there, squatting near the precipice regarding her with his easy smile, his shoulder-length hair outlined against the star-speckled, velvety sky. He clasped his hands in hers and yanked her up to the safety of his arms. Both stood fixed in this way for the span of a few heartbeats before Rena shoved her hands hard against his leather-clad chest and sent him staggering back. “Took you long enough! What sort of a guide are you, anyway?”

“My lady, if the assurance of safe passage is what you most sought, some manner of scout or rogue might have better suited your needs,” Rickard chuckled as he unslung his guitar. The gentle strumming echoed back endlessly from the chasm below as though a whole troupe of bards had accompanied them. His eyes flickered over his companion’s pale, trembling face. “Perhaps if we were to make camp in the next cave–”

“NO!” Rena gave a shake of her horned head and stomped away, stopping only when Rickard called out that she was dangerously close to another precipice. She scowled at the sketchy outline of the map the bard was holding up when she returned. “Why’ve you been making a new map, anyway? When I hired you, you promised me you’d been here before!”

“So I have. Alas, shifting sands have swallowed the entrance I found on my prior visit. I have yet to encounter the cave I entered before.” He scribbled a quick sketch and pointed ahead with his quill.

“If I may be so bold, my lady,” Rickard continued, following the girl along the ledge, “You have driven our progress at a blistering pace ever since we set out from the city more than a fortnight past. Now, your exit through a second-floor window did give me cause – watch your step there – to suspect that our voyage may not have been entirely sanctioned. Ought I be concerned by the possibility that the Lord Mayor’s guards might overtake us before we reach your goal? Careful–”

A loud “Ha!” burst from Rena’s lips. Heedless of Rickard’s warning, she took the next gap at a running leap and landed on all fours on stone, cursing as she did so. The young man landed lightly beside her and helped her to her feet. She cradled her scratched and bleeding palms to her chest. Cupped in his tanned, calloused fingers, her hands looked all the more delicate and pale. “It may not be wise, my lady, to employ hands more accustomed to holding a quill or a needle in such a manner,” he offered softly in her ear, ruffling her messy blond bob with his warm breath.

Rena snatched back her hands and hurriedly wiped the blood on her dusty skirts. “Didn’t ask to be born with skin,” she muttered, hating the heat rising in her cheeks.

“Nor I, my lady.”

Her pained grimace twisted in sudden fury as she took in his playful grin. “Don’t you mock me!” she snarled. “What would some human know about anything? You were so quick to assume that my human Father with his human guards would be our biggest threat that you didn’t even consider Mother.”

“Oh? Though the Lady is renowned far and wide as a healer, as an obstacle she never struck me as particularly formidable.”

Rena scoffed and was going to start off again when a blot of deeper darkness caught her eye at the bottom of the next sandy outcropping. She shivered. “That the one?” she demanded without looking back.

In a moment he’d deftly slipped past her and started down towards the cave. “I would be grateful if you would allow me to take point, my lady, so that I might light your way.” With a brief wave of his hand, a multitude of wispy motes of light began to flit about him, revealing a tunnel large enough to swallow her manor in its stalactite-encrusted jaws, and she did not protest.

The pair continued in this way for hours, Rickard picking a careful path through the jagged stones, Rena bursting with impatience to shove past him and double their pace. Now that they had finally found their way into the caves her quest felt more urgent, more real. The tension thrumming in the air sent her bronze tail thumping loudly against every rock she squeezed past. She was close. So close.

Rickard was never silent. At his young employer’s command, he sang the songs and tales that had caught her ear back on the streets of her father’s fair city. Thrilling tales of ancient battles fought between dragons and men. Romantic ballads depicting graceful dragons flying to meet with secret lovers. Hymns of worship to long-forgotten winged gods. Rena felt herself soothed and excited in equal measure, filled with a yearning for a portion of herself she had never fully understood.

She knew at once when the object of her quest was upon them. Their tunnel let out into a gargantuan cavern that could have housed half her city. Countless more tunnels of varying sizes ringed the cavern, just visible thanks to the streaks of luminous moss that covered every surface. Her slitted green pupils darted quickly over the many joining paths that sloped down, down towards the center of the cavern, some lined with crumbling stone houses, others with elegant alabaster columns that now lay largely in shattered heaps; past empty market stalls and parks long since overcome with mosses and fungi; and landed at last on the stepped pyramid at the center. And at the top, which rose higher than every other structure in the underground ruin, she caught a gleam of gold.

Rena broke into a run. Rickard’s shouts for her to be careful fell on deaf ears, even after a stumble that sent her rolling down the hill. But it wasn’t long before she began to tire. By the time the bard caught up, Rena was covered in bruises and shuddering from exhaustion. The pyramid towered above them now. Just waiting for her. So close.

“My lady, please wait,” Rickard panted as he clapped a hand to her shoulder. “Sit a moment. I have no wish to face the wrath of either of your esteemed parents should I have to return to the city carrying you because you’ve broken your leg or worse.”

“Don’t touch me!” she snapped, slipping out of his grasp and perching herself on a fragment of fallen column. Her eyes stayed fixed on the upper level of the pyramid, but the thought of finishing her descent and then having to climb all of those stairs in turn made her legs shake.

Seeing that she wasn’t immediately running, Rickard propped his guitar in his lap and began to pluck out a calming tune. “I wonder, my lady, if you might care to grace me with a tale of your own? You were very clear on your desire to see this place for yourself, but your reasons have eluded me.” He handed her a waterskin and his gaze followed hers up the pyramid. “A dragon’s natural attraction to gold, perhaps?”

“Pff. I don’t care about gold, and neither does Mother.” The smattering of bronze scales up and down her arms and legs glinted in the light of the bard’s hovering orbs.

“Then please, enlighten me.”

Rena took a drink, tossed it back to Rickard, and then pushed herself back up onto trembling legs and continued on, walking now. “If your songs and stories are true, bard, then you should already know why. Can’t you feel it?” Rickard frowned faintly, feeling nothing.

Though the climb felt interminable, neither stopped to rest again. Nothing impeded their vertiginous progress to the top besides a broken step here or there; the dead city did not resist. Rickard, more accustomed to hard travel, reached the top first. Rena heard a soft “Ah” as she hurried to catch up.

Every inch of the platform at the top of the great pyramid was coated in a thick layer of gold, but not by design. What had once been a colossal golden statue in the center of the platform had been melted by unimaginable heat; spread and dripped and puddled unevenly to every corner of the platform; and hardened in uneven, gleaming waves. What remained in the center was nothing more than a misshapen lump no larger than a distraught 19-year-old girl.

“My lady…” Rickard began, reaching out a hand towards her, but she ignored him. Her knees gave out when she tried to stand at the top, so she crawled. Gold was more forgiving on her hands and knees than stone. Slowly, she made her way to the heart of the melted lump and laid both hands upon it.

“You told me the goddess’ statue would be here,” she whispered.

The bard gazed down at her with a fist pressed compassionately to his heart. “And so it is, my lady. So it is.”

“Why… why didn’t you tell me what we would find?”

“I’m afraid I myself was unaware. When last I stumbled across this place, I had neither the strength nor the courage to climb to the top.”

He stood beside her as she wept. The bard’s voice rose again in a hymn to the long-forgotten dragon gods, lost to time. And Rena raged and howled and slammed her fists against the mangled remains of her hopes and dreams until trickles of blood from the scrapes on her hands started to roll down across the formless lump of gold.

Rickard’s song died away. He hissed softly through his teeth. “M-my lady…”

When Rena lifted her head, a strange fog had descended upon the pyramid’s peak. But the more she stared, the more she could make out movement within the pale vapor. The undulation of a tail. The twitch of a claw. The eyes of a beast that would have more than filled this platform, were it made of flesh and blood.

“What… are… you?”

The voice in her head seethed with fury. Rena fought back a whimper. “A… a dragon,” she managed.

“No.”

“I am!” Resentment and rebellion steeled her nerves, and Rena stared directly into the terrible eyes. “Mother and Father may be happy to pretend we’re all fully human, but I need more! I AM more!” Her very human teeth bared in a snarl. Crouched as she was beside the mound of gold, on all fours, tail lashing, blood dripping between her fingers, Rickard couldn’t help but step back to the edge in alarm.

The mist swirled faster, closing in. “Will… you… pledge… to…”

“YES!” The word ripped out of her in a wild shriek, and in an instant the gold was bubbling up around her. It slid up over her bruised and battered skin, coating her in golden scales; lengthened her stubby horns; blossomed into enormous wings. The girl sucked in a deep breath and Rickard stared, transfixed, as every wisp of vapor disappeared inside her. He opened and closed his mouth without a sound.

When Rena looked at him again, her eyes shone with a feral golden light. She smiled with glittering fangs. The mark of a primal goddess long-forgotten glowed across her face.

“Be not afraid, human. You shall be our herald. We shall set you all free.”