Poisonous Medicine

_ARGHThRrrr !!_ exclaimed Becenas, with eyes strongly closed. Jaws wildly open, the point of his fingers pressing the forehead as strongly as he dared. Was far too soon for that pain, but his head didn’t seemed to realize that. Pain growing as is a tine worm made of tailor needles was dancing between the parts of his neuronal system like a pet craving for his attention. Far too soon.
He raised from the floor, and stretched his body, arms above the head, trying to take the end of each limb as far from the rest as possible to this shape. His bed was a couple of steps far, in the middle of this room. A hexagon large enough for more than ten human bodies sleep comfortably. Becenas never slept on it. For that he preferred the hammock hidden in the shadows provided by the furs and tissues hanging from the floor to create the effect of a circular structure in the middle of what was has actually one cut of a larger circle, with the shape of a big slice of pizza.
He walked to the balcony on the border of that pizza, passing bellow a stone arch. The heavy doors had metal and wood in them, and other more serious materials, but served more to decoration than actual protection.
The man captured a silk robe in his passage to outside to cover his shoulders, but did bothered to tie it because there was no wind tonight. If night it was.
The balcony felt small without all the sculptures. He had destroyed them days before in an explosion of rage, one more attempt to deal with the needle worm inside his head. A pleasure slave was hurt, he was told later. He was sad, not that he would hesitate in destroy much more and kill hundreds of slave-girl if that could easy the pain, but the meaningless destruction had accomplished nothing its only effect was highlight his lack of self-control.
Shear was outside in all directions, New Iakish-Shear-Akaocka was its real name, the “Shear” in it meaning settlement, holly temple, or city. That is the language of those strange beings who build this State City, barely no one living here speaks the idiom or remember the longer denomination. This common people call their city Shear.
Becena’s face had a tick black beard, contrasting with his light blue eyes even in the constant yellow light of this sky. His body had 1,80m for now, not tall for a human male in most parts but there was few other of this specie to comparation here at Shear.
Other members of Oblong Order frequently ask him why choose the human shape. Since his condition demands for him to take the shape of another species, instead of his own, he could have chosen more practical options. If fact that is a human planet, and on most nations look like a human is a valuable advantage, but not here and here is where he has his home.

New Iakish-Shear-Akaocka is in Sharitarn but not on it. The city stays on a maze of stone bridges over a vast structure of channels, hundreds of kilometers bellow Sharitarn surface. Not under stone like Undersea but bellow a dense glowing cloud of magical anomaly: Sea of Clouds.
Somewhere on the surface of that floats one single island. On that island lies the structure responsible by the accident that created the yellow clouds in the first place: the secret city of South Urshawa. However, if Becenas decided to let his spell fade and gain back his true form he could not use his powerful wings to reach the floating island by going up. If he tried the chaotic energies of this anomaly would send him to unpredictable distances in the layers of Mirror Dimensions. To places from where even he could not be able to survive, from where others with more powerful spells could not hope to come back.
Pain was weakening now. The silent lightning bolts constantly popping helped him, as the frenetic movement on the streets bellow.
No exact detail reminds him the intergalactic ships and planets covert by urban structures of his home Universe. Or the city his specie founded and kept alive for one hundred thousand years some millennia ago, before the weak fouls decide to give up. Is just the feeling of movement, a sort of noise made only by intelligent species trying to get by while squeezing each other in close rooms and corridors.
_You stupid fools.
Said the dragon with his human voice.
The Order had saved his life, that and the fact that he was born with magic potential awaken.
Becenas is a sigrax, a follower of the rare Magical Way of Self-somatic Transmutation. There is two branches of Transmutation Way, and the Self-somatic divides again in two. One is mastered by the Yellow Lizard sigraxes of Piwag Desert, that allows the follower to strength their bodies permanently with magic. The other branch is considered to be more dangerous than it worth, and less practical than it should be, most humans avoid it if they have the option and those who don’t follow the Way with a spirit of obligation. They follow it to preserve the tradition of their wild tribes. The very weakness of Shapeshifting makes that specialization of Self Somatic Transmutation the remedy needed by the dragons. Imagine a specie with a natural lifespan of one billion years. Before they reach maturity, they became capable to fly on atmosphere, vomit corrosive poison and fire. On their true adulthood they can travel the space between planets controlling magnetic fields and breath a dense energy hotter than the hearth of most stars. Many generations before Becenas his people had colonized millions of galaxies, trillions of words in each one. Had slaved more intelligent species than even their huge brains could count. Imagine the members of this specie who felt on Sharitarn from the Vortex, to be reduced to a secondary specie living by the rules of an inferior race. They tried to fight, and they tried to go back to their own Universe. When was proved that they had no way back, and could not take control over Sharitarn, the dragons tried to move away for other parts of this Universe. The magic of humans and other beings prevented them from leave. Having arrived from a Universe without ostensible magic the dragons lacked the mastery of that aspect of reality. Then they tried to adapt, built for themselves a nation where they ruled as living gods. For one hundred thousand years the Draconian Empire with Iborn as its capital kept most the specie involved. Helped them to pretend their lives had meaning, even reduced in scale to one single piece of land on one single planet. Eventually this medication lost its effectiveness. The sigrax forgot the sky of magical wonders, and walked the circle around his apartment trying to find anything outside that would distract his mind from the pain. Anything that was not the memories. Imagine a specie whit a natural lifespan of one billion years, that in its adult stage is able to fly the space between stars. Now imagine almost a million of them, some older than one billion years, some too young to fly or just old enough to vomit fire, and all them suiciding. Hundreds in one day, killing themselves in remote caves and desert islands: on nothing but depression. Mere decades led the specie to the edge of extinction. The Oblong Order reached those they could find and offered an alternative. They did not had this alternative yet, but had helped other ancient races to cope in the past. No charity was involved, the price was evident for the beginning. Becenas joined the Oblong Order and never regretted the decision. Whit their help he developed his magic potential beyond the stage of mere curiosity and specialized to the Magic Way that provided his scape from depression. The big deficiency of Shapeshifting Magic for humans and most other species is that if only seems to allow the transformation into shapes which have neuronal systems far simpler than those of the magic user. Perhaps mages would achieve more, but the Way is a wild one: only wild sigraxes follow it. When a human turn into an iapi, or a dog, he does not carries his human goals, thoughts and logic to the brain of that low animal. They are not compatible. Mind Spells can fix that issue in some extent, for brief periods of time, but they do not mix very well with Shapeshifting Magic and a total memory lost is a very real possibility. Sigraxes ended up passing decades, even the rest of their lives, as an flying reptile when all they intended was to go from one side of a given valley to the other and spy a enemy tribe in the way. Becenas had passed his one billion years mark more than one hundred thousand years before he was caught by the Vortex. He was one of the oldest dragons on Sharitarn and now, as far as he knows, he certainly is the oldest one. His human form looks around 30 years old however. Could be less, if he wanted. Or more. Does make some difference since it is not a magic illusion of any kind, the dragon is actually living in this specific human body until he allow the spell to fade. What he must do, for a handful of years each half century or less. The pain starts to get worse if he let time pass, usually it is just an annoying pressure behind his eyes. Not now, now is not the time. There was less than six years since the last time he renewed the spell. If he allows the spell to fade now will be impossible to deny for himself the fact that his therapy isn’t working anymore. That would be problem. Because Magic Ways are not something you can step out and try another. Once he made himself a Shapeshifter he will be one up to the bitter end. His human brain; or elvish, centaur, or of some other inferior kind; has shielded the sigrax from the angst of his true mind. The brief periods experiencing his own brain without the magical remedy are important for sanity but are also about as much as he can take of himself. After recognize the exhaustion of that therapy only one alternative will remain: necromancy. He could not perform proper necromancy himself, being a Shapeshifter, but the Order has very decent necromants who either are members of have favours to pay. As a important asset of Oblong Order Becenas could sit with a team of necromants, lead by some liches, and have them design for him a very powerful and practical undead existence. He is an old male dragon, in the end of day. Too old to hope to survive much longer without magical help. If was not for the Vortex chances are that he would be long dead by now. Still, the change produced by necromancy is something he wishes to avoid. The Dragon owns the top of this tower, twelve floors above other eighty-six owned by others. There is fifty other cylindric structures about as tall as that one on Shear, and only nine that are considerably higher. All free inhabitants of this building have slave-girls, and a few of them are humans. Those are the only humans living in the tower. New Iakish-Shear-Akaocka is definitely not a “human city”, but neither is it a city of any other species. Not particularly. By design, and religious oriented goal, it was founded to be a mix between as many intelligent species as possible. Probably the only nation of Sharitarn where a dragon can actually raise from his balcony and fly through the skies without raise curiosity or commotion. That was the reason why Becena decided to make the city his home. While flying an open spiral around his tower the dragon feels happy about that decision. Pain goes away fast, and his natural brain absorbs the sensorial information if needs to awake up from the magically induced stupor. Muscular memories more than one billion years old sing a melody of feelings and unrepressed instincts, giving time for the higher cognitive functions awake somewhere nearby. Then Becena feel the muscles around his mouth tingle with what would be a smile if that was his human face. Relieved, he understands what the needle worm was exited about. _Uhm…, yes! So, someone is back on Iborn._he whispers for himself in the old language.