Copyright (c) 1995 M. H. Glenn
Philosophical Question: Is a dragon's personality such as it is because we are dragons, or are we dragons because of our personalities?
I've been possessed of what you'd call a dragon-like personality for as long as I can remember. Also for as long as I can remember, I've been a sort of human lightning rod. Not a single electrical storm has ever passed by that hasn't tossed at least one bolt in my general direction; almost as if something were taking potshots at me.
For some reason it never really bothered me; maybe even raised my spirits a bit that Something considered me worth such spectacular effort. Never could aim worth a damn, though. . . .
Things changed for some reason when I got assigned to the tropics. Scarcely a day had passed since my arrival in Central America before an incredible storm just about succeeded in demolishing the building I was billeted in.
A week passed, and it seemed there wasn't a day that a tree didn't get blown to smithereens in my vicinity. The night the hangar I was working in was struck five times, I realized this was getting serious. Was that old Something getting frustrated? Or was it because the storms down here were so much stronger?
After another week or so of scarred roofs and decapitated palm trees the game finally ended. In the far corner of my room, the westward-facing window has a hole in it; about the size that a .30-caliber round would make, save with melted edges and a dribble of congealed slag. It's right beside my bed, which I was sleeping in the night twelve months ago when my world went blue-white.
It's a hell of a way to wake up. The bolt hit the window frame squarely, then spat through vaporizing metal to catch me broadside as I slept. I awoke to a sound so loud I couldn't hear it, and a light so bright it threatened to burn my eyes out. Every muscle in me was trying to tear itself apart. The pain was so great I couldn't even scream.
It lasted maybe two seconds . . . or maybe two eternities. But the sizzling blue-white arc finally winked out, to let me flop bonelessly back down onto the mattress. I lay there for I don't know how long; my body was a classic study in pain, my heart a searing fist of agony in the center of it all.
I think I almost died that night, but finally the knot in the center of my chest loosened and began beating again, and my lungs drew in a shuddering gulp of air. I drifted in and out for awhile, my body draped across the bed, my head lolling over one side.
Finally the agony washing across me subsided enough that I could think about moving. Panting with the pain, I slowly dragged my wrenched body off the bed and onto the floor. I lay there for a moment, fighting a sickening surge of vertigo, then began to crawl for the door.
It was a long trip: Every muscle in my body was screaming obscenities at me, yet my skin felt strangely numb as I crawled. A thin tinkling noise was beginning to penetrate the ringing in my ears. There was a weird fisheye distortion to everything, and my point of view seemed too high off the floor.
More and more messages from my body began to penetrate the haze surrounding me, every last one of them unutterably wrong. I wasn't on hands and knees; I was on all fours. That tinkling noise was getting louder and deeper. And there were other things. Lots of other things.
There's a dresser about halfway to the door of my room, and on top of it sits a large mirror. By the time I got that far I was shaking all over. I already had a pretty good idea what I'd see when I turned to look in that mirror, but that didn't stop me from scaring myself half to death.
I recoiled violently, hissing, heavy jaws dropping open to bare long, carnivorous teeth, wings half-spreading defensively. The muscles in my massive hind legs bunched, tensing for either fight or flight while my serpentine tail lashed in agitation.
I crouched there, panting with fear and confusion, staring up into the glass at the reptilian nightmare that cowered there. It took a long time for me to calm down, but finally, slowly, I managed to gather the courage to rear back on my haunches and prop my forefeet on the edge of the dresser.
I studied the apparition in the mirror. Golden cat's eyes stared back at me, set within a reptilian skull armored with bluish silver-grey plates of what looked like carbon-steel. Scales of the same metallic color feathered the jowls, then swept down the neck and body, becoming larger and thicker as they went. A thicket of razor sharp spines started on the forehead and ran protectively along the entire length of the backbone to the tip of the long tail.
Starting just forward of the crown, then running back perhaps half the length of the long neck there grew what appeared to be a thick horse's mane composed of long strands of the same metallic substance as the scales. It made strange tinkling sounds at any movement; like steel wind chimes.
To either side of the neck's muscular base bulged the double shoulders, from which sprouted both the huge silvery wings and the slender forelegs. Those armored forelegs were surprisingly human; and the hands, though thinner and armed with long, wickedly curved talons, were still hands.
The wings were enormous. Long, narrow struts buttressed vast webs of thin, silver-gray skin that stretched between those struts to the flanks of the reptilian body; running its length from double shoulders through the loins. From the tip of each strut and from the vestigial thumb there protruded a long, sharp talon. Cable-thick tendons ran down the limbs and swelled out into huge bands of pectoral muscle that swathed the barrel chest and anchored at the massive, birdlike breastbone.
Past the ribs, the waist pulled in to dimensions that would do a greyhound credit, then out into the powerful, catlike hind legs, their heavy talons gouging the tile floor. Finally, the body ended in a sinuous, spined tail.
I looked up again at the face in the mirror, and stared into the eyes. A long, black forked tongue (my tongue) slid smoothly from between the heavy jaws (my jaws) to lick at nonexistent lips.
I heaved a sigh, then for the first time really looked down at myself. It was me, all right. I lifted my right foreleg and stared at my hand, flexed my murderous talons.
Okay, hotshot, now what?
I couldn't come up with an answer to that, so I spent awhile examining my new self; running my hands over my smooth scales, feeling my wings, fingering the mane.
Strange sensations were beginning to run through me as I explored. The last of the pain was fading, rapidly being replaced with odd feelings of comfort and familiarity, which didn't make any sense at all. My new appendages, my wings and tail, should have been useless to me, or, at best, clumsy as a baby's limbs. I should not have been able to flex and move them with such power and grace, and yet I did.
My wings were like a second set of hands, huge and distorted, but hands nonetheless. I unfurled them slightly, flexed individual finger-struts. I coiled and uncoiled my powerful tail. It felt strangely pleasurable to move my new limbs, and also increasingly natural.
Shock had saved my sanity at first, then had been supplanted by curiosity. That in turn was now being rapidly replaced by a tremulous feeling of hope as I studied my wings, then my tendons and massive pectorals, and finally my heavy breastbone. Slowly, an old, dead dream began to resurrect itself.
Y'know, this stuff just might actually work!
Fear and confusion were instantly forgotten as I bounded back to my window. My talons scrabbled at the frame, then threw up the sash and I hopped up onto the sill. I peered out into the wild night. The storm that had transformed me was still raging, lashing the base and surrounding jungle with huge whips of lightning, the rain coming down in torrents that made even breathing difficult. Nobody in their right mind would be out in a night like this.
Perfect.
I glanced down at the three-story drop yawning in front of me, then fully unfurled my lovely wings and stared at them. If this didn't work, I was going to be one hurtin' lizard.
Screw it. I launched myself forward. I felt my wings instantly cut upwards, then my pectorals contracted and the ground sank silently away. It was that easy. I was right about my wings being huge hands, for I felt them scoop up the wind and trap its power within their vast webs, ruthlessly enslaving it.
And I flew. My God, I actually flew.
The winds were strong; my mane jangled wildly as they buffeted me about, but I didn't care. Rain slashed into my eyes, and clear membranes slid down to protect them. The utter joy exploding within me was impossible to contain, and came ripping out of my jaws as a grating, deafening screech of purest triumph.
Higher and higher I soared, my muscular tail steering as my wings slid effortlessly from one updraft to the next. Soon I was grazing the black underbelly of the storm, then I was inside it, the ground lost from view in the driving rain and mist. The clouds boiled about me, keening winds veered and tore in a killing chaos that no man-made thing could have survived, but my wings harnessed and played like some wonderful, deadly instrument. Then, as I swung deliriously from one wild convection cell to the next, something began to happen.
A prickling sensation began atop my skull, quickly spreading down the back of my neck. I glanced back to see the metallic strands of my mane lifting, beginning to stand on end like a porcupine's quills, then starting to shimmer with the blue-black glow of Saint Elmo's Fire. Alarmed, I swung my head up to see the clouds just above me limned with that same deadly light. OH HELL NOT AGAIN--
Before I could so much as flinch, a ravening shaft of solid blue-white power slammed into me . . . and splashed. I winced my eyes open, to see wavelets, ripples and arcs of electricity washing over my body, held harmless by my steel scales. My mane flared, and those waves of energy were drawn up into it. The strands crackled, then began to relax as I felt something soak into me.
It was incredible. It was love and joy and purest power all at the same time as it swept through my shuddering body, a burning, giddy ecstatic wave like God's own moonshine.
It faded quickly, leaving me desperate for more. My mane responded by flaring blackly, and I felt myself somehow pulling the energy from the surrounding clouds. The storm quickly obliged, sending lance after lance of pure destruction spearing into me. My mane drank them all, and I bellowed my joy as waves of ecstasy poured through me.
I can't even begin to describe the next couple of hours. Eventually, though, the storm began to break up around me. The lightning became weaker, more difficult to draw as the clouds dissipated, until finally I found myself in clear air, well out to sea.
As the updrafts faded and the air grew calm, I soon discovered that my broad wings didn't like still air. I began to sink towards the waves. Alarmed, I began flapping my wings, and found my efforts just holding altitude. Vexed by my predicament I gave vent to a basso profundo roar of annoyance and began to labor back to the distant shore, flapping like a damned crow.
I was thoroughly exhausted by the time I reached dry land, and I aimed for the easiest approach into the base, which was via the airstrip. The strip was always shut down for storms, so there was no danger of discovery. I glided silently over the darkened guard shack, easily cleared the perimeter fence--
Suddenly, something grabbed my right hind leg and yanked. An instant as I felt myself flipping forward, then I SLAMMED into the runway pavement, the air going out of me in a vast whoosh. Stunned, I felt myself sliding down the runway, my scales grinding painfully against the concrete, then finally coming to a grating stop.
I laid there for a moment or two as I got my breath back, then levered myself up onto all fours and shook my head. My abused belly plates ached. I ducked my head to check them for damage, and found myself looking down at the runway identification numbers painted on the concrete.
They were . . . small.
Ridiculous! Those numbers were the regulation fifty feet in height!
But they were . . . small.
With a feeling of dread, I looked back over my shoulders to gaze at what had tripped me. Over a hundred feet of perimeter fencing had been ripped out of the ground, several strands of concertina wire still stubbornly wrapped about my right hind leg. It all looked so comically toylike. I looked over to my right, where an enormous KC-135 Stratotanker sat parked on a nearby ramp.
It could have hailed me as a brother.
. . . .Damn.
There was a stirring at the fire station far down the ramp; evidently someone had heard my oh-so graceful landing and was coming to investigate. Time to leave. I disentangled myself, then spread aching wings and clawed my way back up into the air, heading back the way I came, eventually alighting on a stretch of beach a mile or two up the coast.
Once there, I lapsed into a purple funk as I watched my huge forelegs sink into the soft sand up to the wrist. Evidently, eating all that lightning had not been a very good idea. . . .Or was this simply my natural size? Whatever . . . I was desperately tired. I very much wanted to lay down and sleep, but that would be disastrous. It would be dawn soon, so one way or another I had to hash this out right now.
I was in dire straits. Far too big to hide, I was going to be in serious trouble as soon as it became light enough for humans to see, and I could just imagine what my vast metal-covered body looked like on radar.
I had to dump all that energy I'd absorbed. I didn't know if it was possible, or even if it was the cause of my situation, but it was the only thing I knew to try. I sat there while I concentrated on my mane for several long minutes, trying to tell it to reverse what it had done in the storm, but that simply gave me a headache. I tried envisioning the charge draining out of me, into the salt water lapping about my feet . . . nothing. I tried picturing my tissues being pressed out like a sponge. . . .
That worked; though not in the way that I'd expected. I didn't dump any energy, but suddenly there was this sensation of compression, and the beach sand seemed to zoom up at me. Within moments I was back to my initial size.
I stared down at myself in wonder, thoughts racing: Wasn't there anything this body couldn't do?!? I experimented briefly with this new-found ability, found that I could vary my dimensions anywhere from wren-size up to more than double my "normal" tonnage.
A little more of this, then I returned to about human size and thought some more. If I could change size so easily, could I also change shape? Up to this point, I'd basically assumed that my career as a human being had been Terminated With Extreme Prejudice. But now I began trying to figure out a way back.
I was just getting ready for my first try when a sobering thought hit me: What if this was a one-shot deal? What if, assuming I actually could turn back into a human, I would never be able to find my way back to dragon? I thought about the last several hours, looked over my shoulders at those incredible wings of mine. . . .
It was very nearly a risk I wasn't willing to take: I almost said to hell with it and walked off into the jungle. Almost, but not quite. To this day I'll be damned if I know why I didn't.
Screw it; I'd be a dragon again if I had to stand on the hangar roof with my foot in a bucket and a lightning rod in my teeth. I crouched down on the sand and concentrated, my size-changing success showing the way. There was resistance, like I was trying to push through some barrier. I pushed harder, and that barrier suddenly gave way.
PAIN. For several long moments it felt as if every muscle in my body was trying to tear itself apart. Then it was gone, and I found myself gasping for breath on my hands and knees in the wet sand. Completely human.
I hung onto the beach until the world stopped trying to throw me off, then slowly got to my two feet. I looked down at the fragile skin covering the arms, then at the useless fingernails that had replaced my talons. Finally, with a feeling of utter dread, I looked over my shoulder.
Gone.
I may have just thrown away one of the few things that I had ever really wanted from life.
I felt my heart pounding like a triphammer as a wave of revulsion and loss washed through me. I felt maimed. I couldn't have taken three breaths as a human before I was crouching on the sand again, concentrating with all my might.
I could have kissed that barrier when I felt myself come up against it once more; then I was throwing everything I had at it, feeling it give more easily this time. Again there was searing pain as bones bent and muscles rearranged, but not so much now, and welcome anyway.
Several moments, and it was over. The curious numbness of armor wrapped me again. I felt massive wings stir restlessly across my back, and a muscular tail flexed and coiled. A blissful feeling of expansion washed over me, and I felt myself rapidly growing to full size. My eyes still closed, I laid my head upon the cool sand and sent a silent prayer of thanks.
Dawn was just starting to tint the sky when a robin-sized creature fluttered by overhead, unnoticed by the crash crew as they tried to figure out just what the hell had trashed the threshold of Runway 36. I alighted on my window sill again and hopped inside, expanding to collie-size and hooking the window closed.
Black waves of sleep were trying to pull me under, but I resisted just a little while longer as I padded back to my mirror and sat before it, catlike, my long tail wound about my feet. I gazed into the glass, and this time loved everything I saw. My blue-gray-silver scales glinted like gunmetal, my talons like diamonds as I slowly nodded to my image, and I felt a deep sense of satisfaction as I turned and tottered to my bed, not bothering to change form as I coiled atop the sheets and let my exhaustion take me.
In the weeks and months that followed I spent as much time as a dragon as possible; becoming human only long enough to get my work done, then it was back home and off with the clothes and on with the scales, riding the local storms at every opportunity, eating their lightning. On the occasions I wasn't either working or a dragon I was in the library going through every piece of literature I could find about dragons; trying to figure out just what I was, and where I had come from. I found a creature in Eastern mythology called a Shen Lung at one point; but although it comes closer than anything else, it still doesn't quite describe me. I'm still searching for my pedigree, and I don't think I'll figure it out anytime soon.
The agony of transformation lessened with each transition, gradually leveling out to where it became quite bearable, and almost dangerously easy. Sometimes I catch myself drifting across the line at the worst times, and I don't dare lose my temper anymore. After long experimentation I finally discovered how to breathe fire. The flame's an incredible shade of blue, and so hot it cuts more than it burns. I enjoy playing with it; sometimes flaming just to see the color.
Naturally, all of this didn't come without drawbacks. My dragon instincts are very strong, and those passions have more than once come very close to drowning my humanity. Even in the most mundane of situations I find my personality colored more and more by the dragon, and sometimes I wonder if my human side won't eventually be consumed, and if so, should I care?
I've nearly gone feral on several occasions; the first time when one of my evening flights brought me across a herd of cattle. Without even thinking about it I swung my head down and grabbed a terrified steer, my fangs sinking deep into its sides and the blood gushing down my throat. The taste of it was like some incredible drug, shocking through me, making me thirst for more. I tore the steer apart, gobbling it down greedily, then hunched my wings and launched myself after the fleeing herd.
It wasn't until I awoke the next morning, swag-bellied and coiled within the shallow cave that I had gouged out of a jungle hillside that I finally began to come back to my senses. There were other occasions, usually occurring when I was stormriding; during each occurrence somehow forgetting that I was human, once.
It's a constant effort to keep myself under control. The feral episodes receded once I learned the warning signs, as well as the sudden flares of wild temper, but the more subtle colorations of personality and attitude continue to progress, and I increasingly wonder if I should fight it at all.
That old draconic personality of mine makes me wonder: Am I a human who turns into a dragon, or a dragon who becomes a human? Did the storms seek me out, or did I draw them to me? Frankly, the latter seems more plausible on both counts, and if so, then resisting what is happening to me is wrong.
For now, though, things are going well. Sometimes I have problems with accommodating this new creature I've become; I suspect I always will, in a world dominated by my foster species. But if this is all the price I have to pay for the flying, the stormriding, and this magnificent body, then by damn, I'll pay it with a smile.
Regards from the Steel Dragon;
---------> Hasai