Maw

The hatchlings stared out the carved window, and the desert stretched below them, harsh and silver in the moonlight. The chill wind drifting over it seemed to moan, a sound of desolation and unease....

When the fire roared to life behind them, they let out little screams and turned. They stared at the old Bogsneak as she threw another pawful of glittering powder, and the fire roared again, its warmth pulsing through the room.

“Grandmother’s back!” And the hatchlings ran to her, chortling, “A witch, you’re a witch!”

“Stop calling me that! It’s alchemy, not magic!” Hezekiah muttered. She lay down before the hearth, and her grandchildren clustered around her, staring up with glittering green eyes.

She correctly interpreted the looks on their faces. With a wry smile, she told them, “Yes, your grandmother is unspeakably boring, isn’t she? You can’t wait to go back to the Viridian Labyrinth.”

That was the hatchlings’ cue. As they’d done every night for the past week, they put on despondent faces. It was difficult, because they knew what was coming next.

Hezekiah sighed theatrically. “All right, fine! Your boring old grandmother does know a tale or two. Gather close, sweetlings.” She wrapped herself around them in a great circle. “Let me tell you the story of Black Maw....”

~ ~ ~
Beyond the horizon, in the emptiness of the desert, you will find old lairs and towns. These once-bustling settlements are now abandoned: not enough food or space, maybe. They belong to no one now, only the Wasteland...and Maw.

Travelers occasionally pass through those lands. The lairs seem to welcome them. It certainly seems better to stay here than to camp in the wilderness. But when night arrives, the settlements change character....They become threatening.

“Are you all right, Reg?”

Reg was not all right, for he’d been entertaining ugly thoughts that his fellow prospectors might’ve been less than honest with him. He was the team’s scout, flying ahead to locate digging or camping sites. They’d promised to split the loot evenly, but surely Cameron and Thalia, the diggers, had more opportunities to hide any extra-shiny bits they’d dug up. Maybe somewhere on their clothes, even in their waterskins....

“Wind’s cold tonight. So strangely cold.” Thalia began a chant to ward off evil spirits. Reg left her by the fire, ostensibly to look for Cameron. The Pearlcatcher hadn’t returned from exploring, and it was easy for Reg to suspect that he’d found some juicy loot and was burying it somewhere for later retrieval.

Maybe here, in this old graveyard? There was a dilapidated shrine to the Plaguebringer; perhaps Cameron was poking around inside. Reg fancied he saw movement, something in the deeper darkness...

“What’re you doin’ out here?”

Reg spun to confront Cameron, who was looking quizzically at him. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, darn it!” he hissed.

The Pearlcatcher shrugged. “Didja leave Thalia on her own? Let’s get back to her.”

He scurried off, and Reg swooped after him. The Spiral was pursued, in turn, by something that detached itself from the darkness by the shrine. It held a light of its own, a faint blue glow—and within it, the sharper gleam of bones could be seen.

- - -
The moon had set some time ago. Under the cover of absolute darkness, Reg made his escape. He carried his companions’ loot in his claws as he swirled through the abandoned streets.

They’d wanted to keep looking for more gold, but there was more than enough here to set him up for life! If he could just get away from them...

He growled in consternation: He could see a Pearlcatcher loping through the darkness, keeping pace with him. “That darned Cameron!” he grumbled. “I thought he would be slower, what with lugging his pearl around—”

And then he realized that this creature held no pearl....He slowed, dumbfounded, as the dark shape lifted its head. Instead of Cameron’s green scales, there was an ominous gleam. So dry and pale, with eyes like endless wells—and it grinned at him with sharp, sharp teeth.

In panic, Reg called up his magic, raised his paw. Shadow-stuff—a bolt of it jetted past the creature’s head. Suddenly spectral blue light erupted from its joints, wreathing it in wispy flames. And it loosed a growl, low and thunderous and very, very angry.

Reg fled. The bags of gold thudded to the ground, but the sound didn’t mask the panting and slavering behind him, coming closer with every breath. A strangled cry burst from the Spiral’s throat as he realized he was being pursued.

He zigzagged through the town like lightning, turning sharply into a side street and losing himself in the maze of alleys. He rocketed along so dizzyingly his eyes spun in his head, but mercifully, he could no longer hear the creature chasing him. He hunkered down behind a building, and that was when he realized—

He had seen the creature before, and it was here, by the Plaguebringer’s shrine.

The weight of the beast knocked him down. He felt sharp claws digging into his back and its breath, cold and clammy, against the back of his head. He twisted his long neck around, hoping to fight off the beast—but all he could do was scream.

“Reg!” Cameron’s voice. Coming closer.

“Where’re you? This ain’t funny...!”

The pressure lifted as the creature bounded away. Reg drew in a shuddering gasp, and he screamed and screamed.

That was how his friends found him, curled up in a ball next to the shrine. It’s said that his flight was so dizzying, and what he saw so ghastly, that his eyes turned completely white from that encounter! Of course, dear children, Cameron and Thalia asked him what’d happened, but he could only mumble the name of the beast that haunted him till the day he died—

“Maw...It was...Black Maw....”

~ ~ ~
The cheers of Hezekiah’s grandchildren were gratifying, and she nearly gave in when they asked her, “Grandmother, have you seen Maw? D’you have more stories?”

“Storytime is over, children.” The youngsters immediately protested; they were too annoyed to notice the hesitation that’d preceded Hezekiah’s words. She chivvied them towards the stairs, growling, “Off to bed, or I’ll tell your parents what awful hatchlings you’ve been!”

Amid theatrical squeals and yells of “G’night, Grandma!” the hatchlings skittered away. Hezekiah turned back to the fire, alone at last, and she remembered.

She’d heard the Tale of the Three Prospectors from her alchemy teacher, himself a great storyteller. He had shared it with all his apprentices. And that had led to them having their own encounter....Perhaps someday, when her grandchildren were older and safely disbelieved such tales, she would share it with them. The words formed, unbidden, in her mind—

~ ~ ~
My friends and I wanted to test a rumor we’d heard about Maw. We only needed a wraith hound’s skull, which we pilfered from our teacher’s lab. Oh, we felt just like the Three Prospectors when we snuck out later on.

It was a dark, moonless night, and it took us a while to find the crossroads. It doesn’t matter which one it was. The intersection of paths that stretch beyond the horizon—that’s what Maw is after.

We buried that skull at the crossroads, and then we sat down to wait. I’d better tell you more about my friends: Mocha was a Snapper, only slightly bigger than you are now; Stonefoot was a gangly Ridgeback. We were young and bored, and getting boreder by the second.

A wraith hound’s skull buried at a crossroads—that was how one summoned Maw. It didn’t look like he showed up, though—at least, not that night....

I remember seeing a shadow out of the corner of my eye the next day. It was dusk, and I was coming back from a shopping trip. A black shape slithered up the nearby wall, flowing after me like ink. I wasn’t scared; there were other dragons about, but I was uneasy, for I didn’t like the way it moved. And it’d had such sharp teeth...

Days later, a thunderstorm rolled in, blowing out the candles. I got out of bed to relight them, and that was when, honestly, I screamed: I saw something peering in through the window. Just a shape, pale in the candlelight—but with such stark, black eyeholes, glowing with a light of their own.

Stonefoot and I were roommates. She hurriedly shut the window, and then she turned to me and blurted, “What was that?” I didn’t want to answer; I could tell she knew what it was, and that she had asked at all meant that she had seen it too.

“It’s been following me,” I whispered back, for I had seen those sharp, sharp teeth. Stonefoot shivered visibly and then pulled the curtains shut.

The next morning, our teacher told us that Mocha had taken ill and returned to the Ashfall Waste. I actually considered waiting for him to come back, but our teacher said he didn’t know when that would happen. I also considered telling him about the hound’s skull, but that would’ve gotten us scolded and led to some very awkward questions.

“We’ll have to fix it ourselves,” Stonefoot whispered to me. “We’ll ask for help if it doesn’t work.”

We went back to the crossroads that night. There was a crescent moon this time, and I remember hating the way it gave everything a slimy-looking silver sheen.

“Dig,” I whispered. “Dig, Stonefoot.”

Gods, that Ridgeback dug. She dug so quickly dirt sprayed everywhere and I feared she’d damage the skull. It needed to be destroyed, but not with a dragon’s claws.

“Dig, Stonefoot! Faster!”

“Guh, what d’you think I’m doing?” she snarled. She was head-down in the dirt, and I didn’t dare tell her that I could see that shadow slinking towards us. It might’ve been better if it were pitch-black, but the moonlight outlined it with horrible clarity, and I could see the pallor of its skull. It was many times larger than a normal wraith hound, and upon its brow were prongs of bone. Horns, gleaming like daggers.

“Stonefooooot...!” I screamed. She heaved the skull up with a grunt, and that was when she caught sight of it: Black Maw, its mouth no longer grinning, but gaping wide, showing the endless blackness that had given it its name....

I grabbed the skull. I had a nail and a hammer with me, and I drove that spike through the bones. The crack it made was tremendous—like thunder raking across the sky.

The sound of it startled us. It must’ve startled Maw, too, for when we looked up again, it was gone.

~ ~ ~
Vacation time was over. After seeing her grandchildren off, Hezekiah headed back to her lair. She passed an alley, and a shadow slunk out from among the rocks...

She quickly turned, but it was only a tumbleweed rolling past. Still, she kept looking. In her youth, she would have been frightened; now she was an old dragoness, and if Maw was an omen of death as many claimed it to be, well, she’d lived a full, long life, and one did have to go sometime.

Over the years, she’d wondered if the banishment had worked correctly. She sometimes had strange experiences—shadows, shapes, briefly glimpsed—that made her wonder....But she had also heard similar stories from many other dragons. The fear she’d known as a hatchling had left her, replaced by curiosity.

“What are you looking for, Maw? —And should we hope that you’ll find it?”

Night fell. In her lab, Hezekiah was at peace, surrounded by the dryness of alchemy. But beyond her window, moonlight shone, illuminating the secrets the desert sought to hide. A black hound paused, looked at a crossroads, and chose a new path to follow.