Dragon Core

by Sain Artwell

  The Lord answered with a claw swipe.

  “Tell me when you’ve had your fill,” said Alron.

  He parried the strikes and leapt up, grabbed the twelve foot titan of a man behind the neck. Alron threw his head back, and, with all his might, slammed his skull against the Lord’s. Bone cracked.

  Blood trickled down the Lord’s brow. He roared in Alron’s face, unleashing a torrent of green flames right at his face. The fire scorched his ears in a split instant and singed his exposed skin. He could feel burnt pieces of skin falling off. Grinning, Alron accepted the pain. When the Lord stopped to gasp air, it was time for another head-butt.

  The Lord’s skull cracked further, and the man’s knees gave out.

  “Enough?” Alron asked.

  The Lord roared again, though only spittle landed on Alron’s face. Alron struck his head down once more and the Lord collapsed on the ground, bleeding from his ears and nose.

  Alron stepped to loom over him, and asked, “Enough?”

  The Lord’s eyes smoldered with bloodlust and defiance. Alron obliged. He knelt atop the man’s chest, and slammed his skull into the Lord’s repeatedly, until the man’s face was an unrecognizable splatter of gore and his head was punched underground.

  “Enough?”

  The Lord coughed blood. His voice came out in an agonized croak. “Ahhh… You might… able to do it… good… very good… but you need more than that woman’s fire… more power… and your strength… this is no good… you need a weapon to make use of it…”

  “Trust me, I know.” Alron clasped the Lord’s hand and helped the man up from the crater.

  Butterflies engulfed the Lord’s head, swarming around it to knit his flesh back together. The others, similarly attended to by the healing sprites, began dragging themselves towards their Lord. The dome of roots unraveled as the forest assumed its natural state.

  Alron had won the favor of the Wealdfolk, but could not feel satisfied. His situation was not improved by pummeling rural dragonsoul masters into the dirt. If he was to face off against the Ascendancy, Alron would need to kill faster and more efficiently. He needed every swipe of his arm to lop off multiple heads, he needed strength to redraw geography with a single swing, and ways to regenerate wounds.

  Nicely done, Alron, Fei said. She and Sofi emerged from the swampy forest to join him.

  “We swear an oath to you, as the Lord of the Weald, that our strength will be your strength to wield against the Ascendancy,” said the Lord. Face still covered by butterflies, he stood up and gestured to the enormous feline. “Once Wispfather is healed, he will carry you through the Carrion Scar, and up to the border of Blackmetal City. While we wait, allow me to repay your gift of good-will. Rootheart, if you’d open the path to the Vaulted Groves.”

  “Vaulted Groves… Here…”

  Fei and Sofi joined them just in time. The forest rearranged itself into a corridor, which led higher up the slopes of the wooden valley, and into a breathtakingly beautiful grove.

  Chapter 9 - Dead God’s Leftovers

  “I shall entrust you with the Serpentstinger.” The Lord unveiled leafy wraps from a long weapon, revealing it to be a thirteen foot glaive of jadegold with a crescent blade a third its length. The vestige embedded on its blade glowed an odd purple light, which Alron couldn’t quite recognize. Likely, it was from an ancient dragongod long since buried beneath others. Alron accepted the glaive and inspected it.

  “It is a relic from an era before the Bleeding One, Abyssmaw, Iceweaver, or Dustwing. A time when the ancestors of our tribe ruled continents,” explained the Lord.

  “Hm.” The weapon itself was of high quality, and jadegold made for an advantageous material given its peerless quality of conducting vis. However, the vestige would have to go.

  As a broken dragongod, Alron’s vis could only dominate others, not fuel them, and sadly he could only dominate willing vestiges. Free vestiges hated him. Although… if this was indeed an ancient masterpiece… perhaps the vestige had been trained to accept anyone? It was worth a try.

  Alron channeled his vis into the jadegold. The glaive blinked with a scarlet sheen, then immediately reversed back into glimmering jade as the vestige crackled explosively.

  Amethyst ghosts of ten flailing tails coated in blades materialized from the vestige, and whipped at Alron. The tails withdrew as soon Alron withdrew his vis.

  “By the Grovemother’s tits! What in tarnation?” The Lord had taken a step back.

  Disappointed, Alron dragonized his arm-wraps into a claw and plucked the vestige from the glaive. It sparked light, as if crying in agony. Alron tossed the useless vestige to the Lord.

  He gaped at Alron. “Priceless masterpiece…”

  “I cannot make use of an imbued vestige, but the weapon itself will do. Thank you.”

  “Of course…” The Lord’s face mouth hung in a loose expression as he gazed vacantly at the vestige. “No. I should not weep. It was merely a relic. So long as it aids in your quest, the souls of its creators will be satisfied.”

  Alron nodded, glancing at Fei’s direction. She chatted with her fellow master of Living Flame. The two women leaned on a railing sculpted from the same flowering vines and roots as the rest of the Vaulted Groves—a hidden palace nestled in a tiny valley connected to the swamps. The whole city was one garden of winding walkways, soft hill-shaped abodes, and strangely fascinating asymmetric architecture of trees and colorful floral leaves.

  Noticing his approach, Fei’s pose shifted ever so slightly to accentuate her hips. “Hi, Alron.”

  “Grovemother bless, I will take my leave,” whispered the smaller woman. She turned into a swarm of butterflies and quickly dispersed.

  “Bye, good talk,” said Fei.

  “Learn anything new?” Alron asked. Fei had a jar of white glowing butterflies under her armpit.

  She canted her head ponderously, then shrugged. “Eh. Maybe? She suggested I create claws and weapons of soulfire, but that will take time to put into practise. She’s had centuries to master her flames. I see you have a new toy, wonder how long that’s going to last?”

  “It should do until Mlevanosk makes me something better.” Alron stared at Fei’s jar.

  Fei lifted it up. “Oh, these? If you could believe it, her vis can animate her fleshbending butterflies for weeks. These are enough to heal a fatal wound or two.”

  “That’s all she could spare?” Alron asked.

  “You’re the one who wrung her dry of vis…”

  “Hm.” Alron didn’t argue.

  From another hallway came Sofi, shuffling on uncertain steps. She clutched a melon sized bundle of leafcloth and pursed her lips tight as she stared at her bundle.

  “Dearie, over here,” Fei called, startling Sofi from her thoughts. Fei slipped behind Sofi’s back to peer over her shoulder at the bundle. “Now what’s this? What did they give my little friend? Can you show it to Fei?”

  Sofi gave her a half-hearted smile. “Some vestiges.”

  Fei made a little too exaggerated ‘oooh’ when Sofi opened the wrappings to reveal three emerald vestiges, each vibrant in their glow.

  One had the shape of a veiny tube with a faint yellow tint to it, another had the form of a slab of connective ligaments, and the third—so dark it was nearly black—was a fist-sized amalgamation of multiple organs in one.

  “May I?” Alron asked, and upon receiving an encouraging nod, picked up the tube and held it against the sun. Light revealed the full complexity of the crystalline treasure, with a network of veins and layered tissue within its single-colored lattice. Most remarkably, the vestige had not reacted to Alron’s touch, which meant… “These are pure vestiges. How generous of them.”

  “Pure?” Sofi asked.

  “Either someone’s been lucky enough to find untouched vestiges from Grovemother’s oldest bones, or someone’s spent a whole lot of time and effort to wash clear the memories of its former owners,” Fei explained. “Lucky girl. Enslaving an
y of these should be a breeze compared to whatever tainted scraps they gave you at Blackmetal City.”

  “Mom gave it to me.” Sofi gripped her chest.

  “Oh.” Fei paused. “Did you kill her yourself?”

  Sofi shook her head. “She stole it from someone. We were small. I only found out about it after receiving my name and investigating it with Mlevanosk. I don’t hold it against Mom. She obviously tried her best, even if her actions were misguided.”

  “That’s heartwarming,” Fei said with a smile. “I killed for my children too. Every mother should be prepared to do at least that.”

  “Haha… I suppose so.” Sofi shrugged, returning a weak smile. “Apologies, you have children?”

  “Yes! I have five of…” Fei closed her mouth. Sprites buzzed outside the window. For a beat, she looked to actually consider her words. “Figure of speech. Haha-ha-ha. Imaginary children.”

  “Eeh? Is it?” Sofi gave Fei a wary look.

  An odd look of worry visited Fei.

  Alron returned the vestige to Sofi, and offered Fei a rescue from embarrassment. “Fei, would you check them for her? My vis doesn’t play nice with vestiges.”

  “Certainly!” Fei jumped at the offer, and plucked the vestige from Alron’s hand. “Sofi, if you don’t mind?”

  Before any permission was given, she injected her vis to the crystalline organ. The filaments twitched and flopped like a headless fish.

  “A wingthew. Useful, but unless you intend to spend half a century on winged martial arts, or work as a courier, I would advise against this one.”

  “You exaggerate its difficulty,” Alron said. “A dedicated warrior learns winged combat in a decade.”

  Fei rolled her eyes. “I don’t. You downplay it. Next.”

  She inspected the pipe-shaped vestige, activating it with vis. With a gasping wheeze, it contracted. On the tube’s inner lining, thousands of tiny protuberances undulated rhythmically, producing a trickle of emerald sparks.

  “A firevent, and a tame one at that! Now, this… This you should enslave. There exists no greater vestige for fine control over your dragonfire. One day, you could even master the Living Flame technique if you found a morphcore.” Fei gave the firevent back, and picked up the last dark-green heart. “Now this…”

  The veins on the crystal contracted, then brightened as Fei’s vis pumped through the vestige’s circulatory system. Slowly, the glob softened in her hand and melted through Fei’s fingers.

  Fei’s brows furrowed. “Feels warm. Hmm… It is a morphcore?! Stars, the wealdfolk truly spare no expense with us.”

  “A morphcore?” Sofi stared at the pulsing vestige in fascination.

  “Once mastered, it grants you a degree of control over your body,” Alron said. “One awakened master with a morphcore might change themselves into liquid blood and manifest blades and limbs on command. Another might wreathe themselves in an armor of metallic bones or transform into weapons. A third might become Living Fire. How you wield its power depends as much on your other vestiges, as it does on your mastery over it.”

  “Is this how you turn clothes into scales?” Sofi asked.

  “No. Though, I did have lovers who’d mastered morphcores, and enjoyed borrowing their powers,” Alron said.

  A determined expression grew in Sofi’s eyes. Her gaze flicked between the morphcore and firevent. She would need time to make the final decision. For her sake, Alron hoped she was swift with it.

  A myriad of intense aromas gripped Alron’s, as well as the womens’ attention towards an entrance into the garden.

  “Before you depart, allow me to treat you with hospitality of the Weald.” The Lord entered their vaulted grove, followed by a score of creatures—monkeys, gaunt lizards, and wyrmkin—whose backs were hunched from the enormous wooden bowls full of delicacies.

  The feast they brought in consisted of floral arrangements of exotic fungi, ripe fruits, roots and stalks and plant-pieces that one would not normally think to eat, squirming insects, fresh odd-folk brains, and countless cups of sauces and dips, which in themselves contained the scent of every flower and fruit Alron had ever smelt, as well as whiffs of a thousand other savory scents previously unknown to him. The arrangement of the food covered almost the entire floor.

  The Lord observed every tradition of a benevolent host, allowing Alron to eat first and spread the food at his discretion. For several hours, Alron allowed himself a moment of relaxation.

  At the hour of departure, beneath the bright gaze of a full Nearmoon, Wispfather carried Alron, Fei, and Sofi through a wooded valley between two peaks of Grovemother’s tail. Despite its size, the awakened beast raced through the woods with the fluidity of a wind’s breath passing through shrubs.

  Alron held onto its horn, his jadegold glaive ready for trouble, as they descended steep forested slopes and entered the realm of another, far less benevolent dragongod.

  Once upon a time, here, between the verdant slopes of Grovemother’s tail and the black ashen highlands on Abyssmaw’s back, Wealdborn had ascended to dragonhood. A jagged line marked the border between Wealdborn’s dark briars and Grovemother’s pale woods. The two masses of nature looked to be at war. Barbed vines and mossy roots entwined in an eternal chokehold.

  “Have any tribes settled in these lands yet?” Alron asked, as they entered the shaded briar maze.

  Part of him flinched, expecting the thorns to collapse upon them. They didn’t. The briars brooded above them in curving spirals, as peaceful as Grovemoth’s ancient woodlands, only more brown than green, with an ever present earthy smell of natural decay.

  Fallen thorns and dead leaves crunched beneath Wispfather’s paws. In a low growl, the beast mimicked the wyrmkin tongue. “Rumors speak of a vestige-wisened rosebriar hidden deep within who whispers with oracles. On the northern border, a monkey clan has boasted of trading with eight-legged worms, but lies slip easily from their tongues. There may be exiles and criminals of the wyrmkin kind here, but not enough to form a tribe.”

  “Hm. And the Blackmetal City’s side?”

  “Logging, cutting, digging. Tents and shacks. Slavers and strangers. You will blend among them like a sleeping moth does against the bark.” Wispfather sniffed, its wrinkled face scrunching into a snarl. “Psssh… A hive of feral carrionspawn.”

  “How many?” Alron asked.

  “Thousands… Tens of thousands? The stench is thick, and widespread. I will take a detour. It won’t cost more than half a night.”

  “Run through.” Alron spread vis through his glaive and clothes. He blew a whiff of soulfire onto the glaive’s blade. The azure flames lingered, feeding off of the vis he fed into the metal.

  The beast growled, glancing up at Alron through a doubting squint. “They are no simple beasts. Carrionspawn will move as though one.”

  “Oh, I know them better than my own lovers. Run through. They will not be an issue.”

  Wispfather chuckled, maintaining its silent gallop on a low incline. Alron smelt them too, the tell-tale fungal flavor of decay as familiar to him as the ocean breeze.

  Do you need me? Fei’s question rang in his mind. She was behind him, holding Sofi tightly to help her cling onto the mane.

  No. Stay with Sofi. I need to learn the glaive’s quirks.

  They crested the hill. The great canopy took a sudden plunge at the hill-top, burying into the earth and engraving into it a crescent canyon ten miles wide, and a few times as long. From high atop the hilltop, the cloud-reaching wall of briars and the pieces of mountains trapped in them suggested the shape of finger-bones. They’d reached the left hind-leg of Carrion Scourge, where it all began. Where Armageddon Blade was first wielded.

  Alron’s dragonsoul stirred. It remembered the shape of wounds inflicted by Armageddon Blade, almost as intimately as Alron knew the creatures festering in the chasm ahead.

  There, silent figures shambled along upturned boulders, yawning burrows, and withered shrubbery. Silverlight of the waning twin
moons illuminated the bodies of animals, beasts both tiny and tall, as well as wyrmkin clad in tattered armor and decayed cloth. Dark vines burrowed through their deceased corpses. Through their split skulls and torsos pushed golden roses, their petals unfurled in blooms resembling hungry maws.

  A group of carrionspawn began towards Alron, shuffling backwards, side-ways, or even upside down on tiny vine-legs, as though orientation no longer held meaning to them. Pieces of rusted blackmetal armor and ancient army regalia clung to their corpses. Many were Alron’s fellow warriors from before the Ascendancy’s betrayal—honorable kin cast away and discarded.

  Brothers, sisters… comrades. Apologies, for I will use you one last time.

  Alron spun his glaive in swooping arcs, cleaving in half three carrionspawn. Vis seeping from the exposed vine-networks burst aflame with soulfire. Splashes of that vis stuck to the glaive. Each slain spilled vis for the flame to devour, and as Alron rode his feline steed downhill, the soulfire on his glaive flourished into a brazier larger than the beast beneath him.

  A beacon of light, soulfire illuminated hundreds of feet of night around him in cool blue. Carrionspawn throughout the valley raised their heads and sprinted towards him. The hills themselves rippled with their tide, as if the earth had been animated.

  “Careful!” Wispfather growled. “You’ll burn me.”

  “Hm.” Alron gave Fei a sidelong glance. “Fei, drink what I spill.”

  “Hee-he-he.” Fei grinned, her voice giddy. “Alron, you can say that again anytime, in any context you want.”

  “Drink,” Alron urged as the mass of soulfire escaped his control.

  Fei bit down an unwarranted moan, and inhaled. She drew in streams of flames in a single unbroken drag, devouring parts of the excess vis. Her dragon-core began to glow with the influx. Such a large excess should repair whatever internal damage she’d sustained from the imprisonment, and rejuvenate her scarred appearance.

  A mile and a half ahead, at the bottom of the valley, a tide of animated carrion gathered. Creatures stacked upon each other, brambles fusing their bodies into a snowballing avalanche.