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“I wish for you to be next, wish-serpent.” I teased as he kissed my neck with a nibble.
“How does it feel?” he murmured.
“Peaceful. Warm. Nice. Like sunlight. I do miss sunlight.” I pulled one of his proto-feather hair strands through my fingers.
He released me, while Keon ushered us to the couches and brushed his fingers over the large main screen hanging on the wall. He tapped on his tablet and brought up an image that nearly dumped me on the floor.
Keon brandished his tablet. “Dekka approval has been obtained.”
Finally!
The first image was a 3D map of Homeworld. Beautifully done in exquisite detail, both functional and artistic. The planet (simply known as “Homeworld” in all languages) was tidally locked to its parent star, meaning that one side always faced the star, and one the abyss, with a narrow twilight band. Dekka had originally told me the star was a brown dwarf, but it was far brighter than that: a red-orange star. Still dim and small compared to Earth’s, and about half as luminous, and all the images of the sprawling cities wrapped around the twilight zone were shifted autumn shades of reddish-yellow.
Keon flicked through a parade of images. Cities. Forests. Mountains.Somany mountains. Swamps. Lakes. Rivers. Massive ice fields. Massive scorched deserts cut with massive chasms and cracks. Dust storms. Lightening. Thunderstorms. Cloud formations. Animals that had no Earth analogs, and then plenty that did. Buildings. Streets. Businesses. Lights.
The star-facing side of the planet was pocked with constant storms and convective activity that the dragons had learned to harness to provide power, in addition to tapping into the planet’s powerful dynamo that generated an intense magnetic field that led to spectacular auroras. That side of the planet was uninhabited and a scorched wasteland criss-crossed by huge trenches and canyons from the tidal forces.
The dark side of the planet was a snowball, although there were some smaller cities on the edge of the frost, along with ship-building, fabrication, and research facilities. Dragons moved about in candid photos from news articles and archival photos.
The human-form dragons from Homeworld were... well, they’d never be mistaken forhuman. Many seemed to have finlets, fringe, and distinctive scales even in human form. And in dragon form, they looked more like Immoalen: heavier, thicker,bigger. But unlike Immoalen, their scales were thick and chunky and rough.
The Homeworld pictures and videos were eerie. Uncanny valley eerie: so familiar, and so not Earth at the same time.
“There’s no sculpture,” Auryn said, leaning forward on his knees. “There’s no detail.”
Keon pointed to some design details around doors (Homeworld had doors, apparently) that had been caught on the video. “The art and architectural design definitely leans—or leaned, I should say, this is from approximately seven thousand years ago—towards natural forms found in nature, and geometric designs rooted in math. If you look closely at the doors, you’ll see many of them have geometric pattern designs, like this one with its hexagon pattern.”
We craned our necks to get a better look. The video had managed to capture the subtle patterns Keon was talking about, but the designs hadn’t been painted or worked with any contrast, and were instead carved.
Keon brought up some other images. “Color pairings are also based on the color wheel, math, and naturally occurring combinations.”
Auryn leaned back against the couch and put one knee over the other. “I mean there’s no artwork, no unique signage, no mismatched buildings, no bills, flyers, what you’d expect to see in even the most modern and new Earth city. There’s always some level of—”
“Chaos?” Keon half-grinned.
Auryn sighed. “I walked into that.”
Keon tapped his tablet against his wrist. “Dragons have always been enchanted with human creativity. We’ve been the audience. The Homeworld style is an extension of reality rather than a contemplation of reality, or possible realities.”
The three of us stared at him.
Keon muttered, “I spent eighteen years working in various European museums.”
Auryn threw a small pillow at him. Keon flipped him the finger.
“Anything on Chaos dragons?” I asked hopefully.
He smiled, but this time it was sad. He tossed a file to each of our tablets before sitting down on the coffee table. “So far, no manuals. But we’ve found general information articles. Chaos dragons were always very, very rare. They were so rare that Homeworld documented the existence of every Chaos dragon born since the Death Date. We haven’t located the roster yet, it might have been lost, but there are multiple references to it, so we’re certain it did exist. Interesting side note: there were concerns that interbreeding with humans would causemoreChaos dragons to be born, and the first Ethereals, were thought to be terrifying permutations of chaos dragons.”
I tried to hide my concern. “So Chaos dragons weren’t looked at any more friendly-like on Homeworld.”
“It’s hard to say.” Keon’s face clouded with concern. “I would guess, yes, there was always concern. Chaos dragons were largely known for destruction, demolition, sundering tethers, and scattering order. Their presence was disruptive. They did tend to lead more reclusive lives, but Chaos dragons were also seen as a luck charm.”
“Aluckcharm?” Akoni echoed.
Dragons didn’t deal inluck. For them, luck was just an unlikely permutation of order.Unlikely, but not impossible. And dragons definitely dealt in destiny, but for them, destiny was just order by a different name.
Keon shrugged. “Chaos dragons have a subtle effect on the fabric of reality. Their very presence causes entropy to increase in their immediate vicinity, and when they exert magic, the entropy increases. So when a non-Chaos dragonwantedto alter an anticipated outcome that their magic could not overcome, they’d enlist the help of a Chaos dragon to—basically—increase the odds of more unlikely outcomes occurring.”
