Here Be Dragons: Book 1 of the Emergence Series

That morning Fathom went hunting and returned half an hour later with one of the deer-like creatures in a foreclaw. He was panting from his flight, but that didn’t stop him from gathering stray branches and logs to start a fire. Once the flame was lit he waited for it to die down by dressing the carcass. He had already eaten one raw, judging by the gore around his chops, so perhaps he was preparing food for later.

Pryce watched as he slurped up the insides with faintly queasy wonder, and offered to help rub salt into the cavity of the ‘deer’ – he still wasn’t sure what to name it – and then Fathom wrapped the carcass in great leaves as he had done with the pig Pryce had given him.

“Human hands are very useful,” Fathom noted thankfully.

“Yeah, but now human hands are dirty, I’m going to go wash them,” Pryce said, and headed off to the spring to wash his hands, though he was quickly overtaken by Fathom’s sedate pace despite his head start.

Once they had both washed themselves off the fire had died down, and Fathom buried the leaf-wrapped deer in a pit of embers before covering it with a stone slab that weighed more than Pryce.

“The food will take time to cook, is there anything you wanted to talk about?” Fathom asked expectantly.

“I can teach you about the elements while we wait for the meat to cook,” Pryce offered.

“Yes, I remember all of the elements now, why?”

“I’m envious, your memory really is amazing,” Pryce grumbled. He had only read Fathom the periodic table once. “Almost no humans have the periodic table memorized.”

“This is normal for dragons,” Fathom shrugged. “You do not remember this table?”

“I know a lot of it, but not all of it,” Pryce admitted as he dismissed the thought of testing Fathom; at this point he had no doubts when it came to the dragon’s memory.

Why is this table shaped like this?” Fathom asked curiously, squinting at the small piece of paper.

“That’s a good question, and a complicated one,” Pryce said. “Yesterday I said everything is made of elements, and elements are things that are not made of smaller pieces of itself. This is true, but the smallest possible piece of every element – no matter what it is – is called an atom, and atoms are made of three particles called electrons, protons, and neutrons.”

“Only three things?” Fathom asked, squinting his eyes in thought. “Everything is made of 90 elements, but all 90 elements are made of the same three things?”

“Yes, it sounds like it’s very simple, but it’s actually very complicated,” Pryce said. “The only thing that makes one element different from another is the number of these three particles. For example, gold has 79 electrons, 79 protons, and 118 neutrons, and iron has 26 electrons, 26 protons, and 30 neutrons.”

“That is…very strange,” Fathom rumbled. “You did not name water when you read the periodic table, is water not an element?”

“No, humans used to think water was an element too, but it’s actually made of two hydrogens and one oxygen.”

“Water is a liquid, how can it be made of oxygen and hydrogen, which are gasses?” Fathom asked incredulously. “You said fires need oxygen and fuel like hydrogen to burn, how can water be made of two things that can burn? Water kills fires.”

“Great question!” Pryce said, smiling as he pointed a finger at Fathom. “It is strange, but molecules are atoms that are combined, and water is a molecule of two hydrogens and one oxygen. This is different from hydrogen and oxygen gas, because those aren’t combined,” he explained, very glad for Fathom’s increased vocabulary. “You can think of oxygen and hydrogen as having a lot of energy when separated, and when they combine they lose that energy – the energy that they lose is fire,” Pryce summarized.

Fathom mulled this over for a few moments, then slowly asked, “If separated hydrogen and oxygen is like a dragon, water is like a dragon that has used all of their fire?”

“Yeah, you can think of it like that,” Pryce nodded. “A better analogy would be thinking of hydrogen and oxygen as wood, and water would be ash.”

“I think that makes sense…” Fathom said, head tilted at a slight angle. “But why does water kill fire?” He asked, narrowing his eyes in thought.

Pryce took a few seconds to compose his reply. Most people – even some scientists – wrongly assumed that water killed fires by starving the fire of oxygen, when in truth…

“Dragon fires are started by that spark you can make, which is very hot,” Pryce said, starting with something familiar. “Once the fire starts, the heat from that fire makes more fire, until there’s no more fuel. Basically, water kills fire because it takes away the heat. No heat, no fire,” Pryce summarized.

“I think this makes sense…?” Fathom said uncertainly. “Dragons think fire is fire, it is strange to learn that fire is like water.” He blinked and jerked his head back slightly, then asked urgently, “If fire is molecules losing heat, then can you use heat to make hydrogen and oxygen from water?”

“Uh, yes,” Pryce said, surprised yet again by how quickly Fathom could grasp a concept. “It takes a lot of heat, but that is possible. An easier way to do that is to use electricity on water, this is called electrolysis, and this is how humans make hydrogen.”

Fathom rumbled happily at having guessed correctly, his tail flicking contentedly. “What about nitrogen? You said 86% of the air is nitrogen, does nitrogen make anything?”

“Yes, nitrogen makes lots of things, but they are not things that you know about, it is easier to explain other things first,” Pryce said, gesturing to the periodic table again. “Every atom has something called a nucleus at the center, which is made of protons and neutrons. The nucleus is like the seed of a fruit, and it is much smaller than the atom but all of the protons and neutrons are here,” Pryce said, referring to a diagram in a textbook.

“Protons and neutrons are red and green? Are the blue circles electrons?” Fathom asked.

“Well, no, atoms don’t look exactly like this, this is just a drawing that shows what they’re like. The color is not real, the drawing uses different colors to show you which one is which.”

“But why does this drawing not use their real colors?”

“Because these particles are too small to have color.”

“Too small to have color?” Fathom asked, baffled. “But everything is made of atoms, and things have color, so why can you not see atoms?”

“Um…” Pryce scratched his head, not feeling qualified to teach quantum physics. “This gets very complicated, I just want to teach you the basics today. The important thing is that neutrons, protons, and electrons are too small to be seen with light, but atoms together are big enough to be seen with light.”

“Okay,” Fathom sighed. “Explain other things.”

“Alright, so I’ll explain what electricity is; the blue circles in the diagram are electrons, but electrons are not strongly attached to atoms, they can move to other atoms. This is what a spark is, electrons gain energy and ‘jump’ from one thing to another.”

“Lightning and spark are the same thing, right?” Fathom asked, punctuating his question with a snap.

“Yes, both electric sparks and lightning are the same thing, it’s just that one is very small and one is very big,” Pryce confirmed. “Now, electrons like to be in groups, we call these shells. The ones on the outside can most easily move around, and each shell can hold a different amount of electrons.”

“How many can each shell hold?” Fathom asked.

“That…can get complicated, and you don’t need to know that right now,” Pryce sighed. He didn’t like withholding information, but if he didn’t they’d be here all day.

“You already said that earlier,” Fathom huffed in irritation. “Just tell me how many are in each shell, and I won’t ask why...even if I want to,” he promised reluctantly.

“Alright, the first shell can only have 2 electrons, the second shell can have 8, third can have 18, then 32, and 50.”

“That wasn’t very complicated,” Fathom snorted.

“I was worried you would ask why,” Pryce shrugged. “Anyway, I’m explaining this because atoms with full shells – which are called noble gasses – go into the last column here. Most atoms and molecules can combine or break apart, but noble gasses are very stable, which means they don’t break apart and they usually don’t combine with anything else. Noble gasses are like dragons who are very full of food and just want to go to sleep.”

“That makes sense, but can you explain why full shells are stable?” Fathom asked, half-expectantly.

“I can try,” Pryce said, picking up a few pebbles. “Imagine this is an electron shell,” he said, placing a grid of nine pebbles in a square, then four in the second level, topped by a single pebble in the middle – a simple pyramid. “The numbers are wrong here, but imagine the pebbles touching the ground are the ones in the first shell, and these four pebbles are in the second shell, and this last pebble is in the third shell. All of the shells are full, so there’s nowhere for me to put any more pebbles, so it is hard to make any new shapes that are stable,” Pryce explained, hoping the primitive model wasn’t confusing.

Fathom rumbled thoughtfully, and seemed to spend an uncharacteristically long time thinking.

“What’s wrong?” Pryce asked. The dragon seemed to be thinking very hard.

“You said a full shell is like a dragon who is very full, but a dragon who is almost very full does not have much energy, but you also said full shells are like a rock that is on the edge of a cliff, and that rock has almost all of its energy. These seem to be…opposites,” Fathom noted, tilting his head quizzically.

“Yes, these analogies are flawed, they are supposed to help you understand things, but they are not 100% correct,” Pryce said. “The more accurate one is the rock analogy, if an atom has one extra electron, it will ‘want’ to get rid of it,” he demonstrated this by dropping a pebble onto the top of the pyramid, where it predictably tumbled off. Then he removed the topmost pebble, and said, “If it has one less electron, it is easy for the element to take one,” he placed the pebble back at the top, completing the pyramid once again. “Both have lots of energy.”

“I think I understand,” Fathom rumbled. “Then that means electrons that have half-full shells are stable, and…no, that doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense?” Fathom was staring intently at the periodic table, and Pryce was very curious to know what kind of guesses he would make.

“I was thinking that the first row has two elements, then the second has eight, like the number of electrons in the first and second shells, but the third row has eight elements, not eighteen…I do not understand,” Fathom said, sounding a little frustrated.

“No, you’re doing great!” Pryce said encouragingly.

“I am?” Fathom asked, sounding more surprised than skeptical.

“Yes, you are right about the first two rows, the third is strange; argon does not really have a full shell, but it is very stable, so the human who invented the periodic table put it there.”

“What do you mean ‘does not really have a full shell’? Is it full or not?” Fathom asked, sounding a little annoyed.

“It’s complicated, but shells have their own shells, called subshells. I can teach you that much later, but it isn’t important now,” Pryce waved dismissively. “Basically argon has subshells filled, so they are stable.”

Fathom tossed his head in exasperation. “How can shells have shells?”

“I don’t have a good analogy for this, sorry,” Pryce shrugged.

“I feel like I can ask ‘why’ and we will never stop,” the dragon grumbled.

“Well, if it helps we would stop soon because I don’t know that much more,” Pryce shrugged.

“So there are things humans do not know,” Fathom said, a note of humor in his voice. “I am a little happy that there are things you do not know; I would be embarrassed if humans learned everything already.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Pryce laughed, “We won’t learn everything there is to know for a very, very, long time.”

“You have not explained metals yet,” Fathom said pointedly when Pryce had not said anything for a few seconds.

“Right, sorry, I forgot…I don’t have much to show you about metals, actually. I can read you the descriptions of metals, but that’s kind of boring.”

“That doesn’t sound boring,” Fathom said, eyes shining with interest.

“Okay, we can do that later,” Pryce smiled. “I can tell you interesting things about metals now, if you want.” Seeing Fathom bob his head, he continued, “All the elements here,” he gestured from column 3 to 12, “are metals, and some other ones are metals too. A lot of things have metals in them, but they do not look like metals, like blood.”

“Blood is not metal!”

Pryce chuckled at this vehement rejection. “Yes, you’re right, blood is not metal, but it has a little bit of metal in it – iron, actually.”

“It can’t be very much, blood is a liquid, and iron is not a liquid metal like mercury,” Fathom rumbled.

“Yes, it is a very, very small amount, but it’s important. A lot of iron you find is red, right? That’s because the iron combines with oxygen, the iron in the blood gives it the red color.”

“Iron makes blood red? That is very interesting, other dragons will like to know that their blood has iron,” Fathom said, chuckling lightly in his guttural way.

“They might like to know that bones have calcium, which is also a metal. You can’t find calcium by itself though; it likes to react with things, because it only has two electrons in the outermost shell,” Pryce said, picking up glass filled with a clear liquid and some opaque chunks in it. “This is sodium, and you can tell it only has one electron in the outermost shell because it’s in the first column of the periodic table, which means it’s very unstable.”

“Like hydrogen?” Fathom asked.

“Yes – this will make hydrogen if I throw this into water, actually,” Pryce said. “Move back, sodium will explode if it touches water, even if it’s only a little bit of it,” he warned as he unsealed the cap to extract a thumb-sized lump of sodium metal with some glass stir-sticks, placing it onto a paper towel to wick away the oil.

“This doesn’t look like metal,” Fathom said, pupils shifting as he inspected the unassuming lump.

“Watch,” Pryce said, taking a (dry) knife and cutting the lump in half, revealing the shiny interior that quickly faded to match the white exterior.[1]

Fathom blinked, then tilted his head. “What? Why did it change?” He asked, reaching out to the lump.

“No! This explodes, remember?” Pryce admonished, pulling the lump away until Fathom retracted his outstretched talons and ducked his head somewhat ashamedly.

“It doesn’t look like it can explode…” He grumbled mulishly.

“Well it can, and I’ll show you,” Pryce said, pulling on a single latex glove. “Move away from the river,” he warned, and pointedly stood still until Fathom took a few steps back. He wound his arm back and threw the piece of sodium as far as he could, where it landed into the river.

“It’s just making smoke, not exploding-”

An orange flame flared through the smoke, heralding a crack a full second before it shot through the air.

“...oh,” Fathom said as he watched the plume of water fall back down onto the river, his eyes tracking the small piece of sodium as it exploded from one spot on the river to the next until the reaction died out.

“Told you so.”

Fathom treated the metal with much more respect after that.

“I will put a little bit of sodium into this beaker here; it won’t explode, but it will make hydrogen,” Pryce said as he held a half-centimeter wide lump of sodium over the water.

“Are you sure it won’t explode?” Fathom asked a little warily as he watched from a few meters away.

“Yes, it won’t explode,” Pryce reassured, and dropped the lump of metal. Just as he said, the bead of metal skittered along the surface of the water, shrinking as it did so until it disappeared a dozen seconds later.

“Can you smell any hydrogen?” Pryce asked.

“...yes, a little bit,” Fathom said as he leaned over and sniffed the air. “But I smell something else too.”

“Yeah, sodium reacts with water to make sodium hydroxide, but that’s not important for you to know right now.”

“...Is there sodium in your body?” Fathom asked.

“Yes, like calcium.”

“...and it does not explode because…it is not pure sodium, like how water has hydrogen but does not burn?”

“Y-yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s amazing how fast you learn,” Pryce praised, causing Fathom to preen. “We have calcium in our bones and sodium kinda everywhere, but it’s always combined with other things so that it’s stable.”

“Do dragons have calcium and sodium too?”

“Yeah, everything has calcium and sodium, at least every animal I know of.”

“I have some dragon bones, can you see if they have calcium?” Fathom asked curiously.

“I don’t – wait what? You have dragon bones?” Pryce asked, surprised.

“I told you before, bones make good tools,” Fathom chided. “Your memory is very bad.”

“I remember that, I was just surprised, I didn’t see any dragon bones around,” Pryce said defensively.

“Of course you didn’t find them, I hid them like I hid my treasures,” Fathom said, as if this were obvious.

“Well, I can’t really tell how much metal is in dragon bones with the tools I have with me,” Pryce said doubtfully. “But if I did, I could just use your wing-bone instead of your tools.”

“My wing-bone?” Fathom asked blankly. “Why would you use my healed bones?” He asked warily, flattening his wings against his back as he leaned backwards.

“No, no, I meant the piece of bone that I cut off when I did surgery on you,” Pryce amended.

“You cut off a piece of bone?!” Fathom hissed in alarm, glancing at his wing as if to make sure it was still intact.

“How else did you think I got rid of the round part?” Pryce asked incredulously.

“I don’t know, I thought you used your…science,” Fathom said, grumbling as he settled down a little.

“...Sorry, I thought you knew,” Pryce mumbled, to which Fathom only grumbled wordlessly.

After a few moments of awkward silence, he asked, “...why do you still have my bone? That is a type of strange that makes me feel wrong,” Fathom said, a shudder running along his spine.

“That word is ‘creepy’, and you said that it’s normal for dragons to use dragon bones, how is this any creepier than that?” Pryce asked incredulously.

“Dragons use dragon bones from dead dragons, not dragons that are still alive!” Fathom groused, stressing the last word.

“...yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Pryce admitted.

There was a moment of awkward silence, then Fathom asked, “...where is my bone?”

Pryce rubbed his neck awkwardly. “I…have it in my bags.”

“...Can I see it?”

“This is a strange feeling, to see my own bone like this,” Fathom muttered as he inspected the small chunk of bone in Pryce’s hands.

“Yeah,” Pryce said, hoping Fathom wouldn’t ask about the saw-marks on the bone.

“How did you cut it off? Dragon bones are very strong.”

Pryce winced. “I…don’t think you want to see the tool I used to do that,” he dissuaded. “It was very hard to cut, so I’m glad that your wing has healed so well.”

Fathom rumbled, looking a tad distressed, but also a little thoughtful. “Can you heal other dragons who have wounds like mine?”

“No, not now,” Pryce said, shaking his head vehemently. “I wasn’t going to do surgery on your wing before it broke, because I might have made your wing worse. Humans have been doing surgery for a long time, and it helped a lot of people, but it almost killed more than it saved when we didn’t know how the human body works,” Pryce warned. “We can do surgery when we learn more about a dragon’s body, but right now that’s a bad idea, why do you ask?”

“You said you like to heal people, and there are a few dragons who have injuries like mine,” Fathom shrugged. “I thought maybe you could help them.”

“Wouldn’t that make more competition for you?” Pryce asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes…but you are right,” Fathom said slowly, and deliberately, “there are some things that should be deserved, and dragons deserve to fly,” he said resolutely as he looked down at Pryce, who blinked in surprise.

“I’m glad you think so,” Pryce said with a pleased smile.

“Besides, I could beat them anyway, even if they were healed,” Fathom added pridefully, stoking his ego – then he abruptly turned to face the cave entrance.

“What is it? Do you hear someone?” Pryce hissed anxiously as he hoped the universe wasn’t about to prove Fathom wrong.

“What? No, I just smell the meat. I think it’s done cooking,” Fathom said leisurely just as Pryce punched him in his bicep. “What was that for?” He asked, drawing back in surprise rather than any degree of pain.

“You scared me, I thought you heard a dragon coming to fight you,” Pryce grumbled, rubbing his smarting knuckles.

“Oh, sorry,” Fathom apologized mirthfully as he failed to stifle the amused chuckle that rumbled deep within his chest.

“Whatever,” Pryce grumbled dismissively. “I’m hungry, let’s go eat.”

[JOURNAL ENTRY]

Day 76,

Fathom continues to exercise and improve his stamina, which is recovering very quickly. He should be fine to fly over to Celeste in four days.

I taught Fathom some of the basics of chemistry today. I know I’ve said this many times, but his intelligence is just ridiculous; he’s repeatedly applied the concepts I’ve just taught him mere seconds ago to something I mentioned over a month ago. I’m kind of proud of him, but at this rate it won’t take long for him to learn everything I can teach him.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing other dragons – assuming they’re not hostile, of course, but I trust Fathom’s judgment.