Dragon Core

by Sain Artwell

  Alron timed the pattern of her wings and tails, and waited for her longcleaver to come from the opening. He caught it with the flat of his glaive, guided the strike into the ground, and locked the weapon in place.

  The knight jerked, but failed to free her longcleaver. She snarled.

  “Greetings young knight,” Alron began, “While we struggle to end each other, would you entertain a question of mine?”

  Her cleaver transformed into a massive icy sickle, escaping the lock. She spun around in a whirling strike, shouting, “Silence! I will entertain nothing but death from you.”

  “Ah, traditional Iceweaver eloquence,” Fei sneered.

  Fei, focus.

  As the knight drew a deep breath, Alron mimicked her, gathering his lungs full of soulfire. The young knight and the man inside her blade spat out an all freezing tempest in a narrow line. It cut the ground like a blade. Fortified by Fei’s flames, his blast of soulfire struck against the freezing dragonfire in a crackling cascade of violent pops, as if a pot of oil and water had been boiled before mixing. Crimson flames sparked in the intertwine of pure azure soulfire and icy-blue flames, and the tidal mixture exploded in volume, washing over both Alron and the knight in an instant.

  It hit his face like a titanic hammer, sending him tumbling until he struck the glaive into the earth. His bones froze and muscles grew frigid, as if his vis had been drained.

  Alron struck his wings to disperse the pale fumes, revealing a quarter mile—an entire hill—to have been transformed. Red tinted flames with a frozen core clung to the world, shriveling the plants as they sapped it of vis.

  On the opposite side of the blast, the woman gathered herself, seemingly as struck by the blast as Alron.

  Fei appeared on his shoulder, her fiery fingers brushing off the chill. “Mm… Naughty, naughty… First this whore’s spawn dares to scoff off my Alron’s politeness, and then an Iceweaver boy imitates the Ansang Soulfire? Naughty… we’ll have to kill them.”

  “That we do.” Alron breathed soulfire on his glaive and spun it into a firm two-handed grip.

  The woman’s fire and words had been enough of an answer to his question. Either the Elder was gone from this world, or he too, along with the rest of the Knighthood, had truly forsaken Alron. Now was not the hour to dwell on that grudge, however. Alron let the matter drift to the bottom of his soul, where the betrayal found its place upon the deep sediments of his grudges. He would face the knights before the Sorcerer King. But right now, they were not a priority.

  The woman before him was.

  Her mere existence spoke of a threat of other broken dragongods. How numerous were they? Could the Sorcerer King have carried his damnable ritual every year and created an army of beings like Alron? Although, if he had, surely he would’ve sent more than one to face him. After all, who else but Sorcerer King could interpret the fates and futures accurately enough to anticipate Alron’s shortcut? Not a soul under the stars.

  “How daring,” said Alron with a growing grin.

  Fei raised a fiery brow. “Hm?”

  “He sends a single knight and her bonded to face us. A single knight.”

  “It is, but we ought to thank him! How benevolent of the Sorcerer King to send his masterpiece to be broken by us. It’s as if he wants to die.” Fei laughed.

  Something about it left Alron feeling uneasy. “Let us be quick, before she decides to flee. We cannot allow her to mature into a threat,” he said, feeding vis to the heartstring vestiges woven into his muscles.

  Fei melted into a blazing cloak around him. “Yesss. Yes-yes, let her burn from the inside. Crisp her into a hollow shell.”

  “I’ll leave the fire to you,” he said, staring into the icy eyes of his foe, as his mind dipped into the flow of battle. This will take some focus.

  He dragonized the ground solid beneath him, and sprang. That single leap sped him through hundreds of feet in a heartbeat. Alron channeled his momentum into his glaive, aiming for a skull-piercing thrust.

  The knight was too slow to raise her weapon in time. She didn’t even try.

  A silver flash struck his glaive aside, and Alron’s blade cut her hair. When a bullet impacted the left side of his skull, and two more struck his knees, Alron briefly saw a grin curl the knight’s lips, before her swing caught him in the armpit and sent him sailing through the air.

  Alron cursed himself over forgetting about the oracle sharpshooter.

  He spun horn-first into a tree-stump. His arm was numb. Deep pain throbbed in his skull. His knees trembled. Alron spat clumps of frozen blood on the ground and righted himself, raising his wings and glaive to defend. A blow meant for his neck reverberated through Alron’s bones, with such heaviness he felt his spine compress. A breath of ice followed the swing, but Fei blew her soulfire to cancel it out. The violent collision of two soulfires made ears pop with a deafening cascade of crackles and blinded the eyes with a flash of white.

  Alron, Alron, fight! Fei sounded angry.

  Her fury fed his wrath. Blood trickled down his brows. Coppery tang seeped onto his tongue. Muscles tore in his frozen arm as he moved, and odd things shifted around inside his knee caps. Alron shrugged it all off. No matter how broken his body became, so long as the heartstrings woven into his body obeyed his will, he would fight.

  The knight charged through the frosty mist. She cleaved left and right and up and down. Her wings and tail swung in a fury of strikes aimed at his eyes. There was a strange silvery glimmer in her eyes, and an odd premeditation in her movements, as they deviated from the Form of the Closing Maw.

  She’s drawing on an oracle’s vestige, Fei thought. How lucky that you have me. After all…

  Fei’s veil turned him all but invisible, leaving only a shimmering outline of a fiery man. Alron’s glaive glanced off of the girl’s wing, tearing metallic feathers off. He dropped one hand from the haft, and spun beneath her tails, stepping in close to drive a claw through the girl’s stomach, aiming to drive his bodyweight, momentum, and full strength against the seam in her layered scales. Alron’s claw pierced all the way through her torso, and warm blue blood splattered over him.

  …even an oracle can’t foresee an invisible future. Ha!

  The knight kicked Alron in the chest to peel off, but he sent a surge of soulfire into her guts, leaving the girl with a gaping arm-sized wound that festered with vis-devouring flames. The wormy way her spilling guts writhed made it clear she was tapping into a fleshbender’s vestige to regenerate.

  Before the girl could recover, Alron attacked under the veil of Fei’s invisible flames.

  Bullets flew in to attempt a rescue, but the aim was off, the shots easily blocked by his wing.

  The knight hurled dragonfire at him, stripping Alron’s invisibility, when the two antagonistic fires sparked an explosion. Alron ran through it, sacrificing some frozen scales and numbed flesh to seize an opportunity and skewer her through the dragon-core.

  Somehow, either by the favor of the fates or that star-damned oracle of hers, the knight managed to avoid it. Instead of her chest, Alron’s glaive sunk through the shoulder of one of her wings. He turned it into an upward slash and ripped the wing off. As expected of a Knight of Myrwing, the girl did not display the slightest flinch of pain.

  Alron, you’d best hurry. Sofi’s veil is disappearing, Fei reminded him.

  Alron chased the now retreating knight. He gouged out her eye with a claw and rended deep gashes on her thighs. I won’t give them room to use her, he replied.

  Yes, but… Your carrionspawn swarm?

  Ah… Alron glanced at the treeline.

  Several of the animated carrion who had followed their trail emerged from the briars. Two shambled in his direction. The rest took one look at the logging village, before sprinting at it at full speed.

  Hurry. Kill her before the swarm follows.

  “Very well. Nameless girl of the knighthood, though you are more ill-mannered than a wealdborn monkey, I commend you on your ten
acity,” Alron said, as he removed another of her wings.

  She was now in full retreat, covering herself with haphazard blasts of frostfire, and sweeping defensive cuts in an attempt to create distance. Though her movements were a perfect execution of the Stance of Steelmade Sentinel—the most cowardly and defensive of all Seven Forms of Myrwing—they were far too frigid and impassive to do anything but slow down her execution.

  The girl was obviously a skilled fighter, and had a great control of her original vestiges, which Alron suspected were heartstrings or some similar thew (unless the knighthood had changed their practises over the century). However, now as Alron whittled her defences down, he realized she lacked in control of most of her limbs and echoed vestiges. Her movements were predictable, disadvantaged by religious adherence to the Forms of Myrwing.

  To a man who’d cultivated a million nameless techniques, and tempered them in the ever-changing chaos of war against creatures of unpredictable size, shape, and strength, she was transparent as a hatchling’s lullaby.

  Alron severed a tendon in her leg and arm. He kicked the knight down on her knees, and brought the flaming glaive against her upturned chin, ready for a beheading.

  Unfazed by her state, with fury and rage, she glared at him. Curses and blood dribbled from her lips.

  Alron glanced at carrionspawn crawling out of the briars. He didn’t have long, but he had time enough to show respect for a worthy foe.

  “O’ Knight of Myrwing, as one cursedly broken dragongod to another, entertain my curiosity before I grant your eternal slumber, and I shall make your passing swift and painless. Give me your name, and the number of others like us halfway into the realm of dragongods,” Alron spoke politely, granting the girl much more respect than she was due.

  She spat a dollop of blood on his face.

  Fei reached out from the fire to backhand her, shouting in outrage. “Insolent sow! You dare to disrespect my Alron? Dare to disrespect his kindness in your moment of death?! Likes of you don’t deserve to breathe the same air as him!”

  “Who am I?” The girl snarled, her eyes bulging with rage, but her voice rang silvery clear. “You, the pitiless murderer of countless asks me for a name? Listen then, Alron the Betrayer, and take this name to your grave, though I will not entertain your question…”

  Frowning, Alron drew the glaive back for a killing blow, but allowed her to finish.

  “…I am Dente—”

  He struck forward, piercing the softly scaled underside of her skin and through her brain—or attempting to.

  The blade sank a mere inch into her flesh, before she’d caught it with her remaining claw and wings.

  “For your own sake, don’t drag this out…” said Alron.

  “For your sake. Don’t interrupt! …Dente, the forty-third Arch-Knight of Myrwing, proud defender of the Ascendancy, and I am the daughter of the traitors: Alron and Fei Ansang.”

  Dente’s warm blue blood dribbled through his fingers. Soulfire festering in her wounds flared with her bleeding vis, engulfing her open wound and drawing a pained gurgle from her lips. She held on, however, and her stare held onto his, throughout the sequence of slow, gut-wrenching realizations that stumbled through his battle-high brain.

  Much of the appearance of any wyrmkin was altered by their vestiges. Complexion, horns, eyes, hair, and dragonmarks were all changed in the progress of mastering the vestiges, and forging a dragon-core. And that was without a mention of what the fleshbenders could do.

  Despite all this, the resemblance between clansmen and close kin was unmistakable, transcending draconic transformations.

  Familiarity was found in the subtle things. The S-curve of her horns, the sharpness of her gaze, shape of her brow, and the elegant curve of her jaw. She was at once his reflection, and Fei’s.

  She was their reflection, missing an eye, caked in blood, dying from wounds inflicted by him.

  “She’s ours,” Fei gasped, as if she’d never uttered anything so taboo.

  In the far peripheral of his vision, Alron registered Sofi running over the battle broken hills. A shambling green creature chased her, and she screamed for help.

  Like a muddy river swelling out of bounds, a swarm of carrionspawn spilled onto the logging plains. Alron’s dragonsoul stirred, urging him to run into battle, but he could not turn away from their daughter.

  He failed to grasp how it was possible, that through in all his years he’d spared her not a single morsel of a thought, not so much as a fanciful dream of ‘what-if’. No consideration whatsoever. And yet, now a primal instinct rearing in his heart told him—calmly stating—that this strong warrior, this wonderful creature, was of his blood.

  Vestiges tightened around his heart.

  If a word existed that he could’ve spoken to express the depth of his fatherly regret, Alron could not find it.

  “Our daughter,” he said, lowering the glaive slick with her blood.

  Fei materialized from the flames, her cheeks running with tears as she reached out with a trembling hand. “M-my precious hatchling… My beautiful”—her voice broke entirely, ebbing into dwindling sobs of pure nonsense, which encapsulated everything Alron had wanted to express.

  “Hands off, you disgusting murderer,” Dente spat. “Creatures like you pretending to be wyrmkin should be…” Her nose twitched, and glare sharpened. “If you care for me at all, then kill yourselves.”

  Alron was too stunned to react to the snap cries of silver projectiles. His skull cracked. World-splitting pain flooded his head. A dull thunk sank through his scales and abs, as another projectile stabbed deep into his guts. A third one followed after the second, rupturing his innards. It was almost enough to make his knees give out. Almost.

  His heartbeat hastened. His vision throbbed. Sights echoing as sounds, and pain, merging into a black-and-red muck. Through the haze, Alron watched a bloody tail emerge from Fei’s back as she hugged their daughter. She collapsed into a puddle of writhing soulfire, and Dente withdrew her tail from her mother, and collapsed on the ground beside them.

  Dente looked at the encroaching carrion swarm, then behind her, where a dark-blue wyrmkin man was running towards her. She cursed, but let him help her up. Lastly, she cast Alron a parting glare full of vitriol.

  “I will…” she coughed blood, “…kill you…”

  Alron found out then that even a hollowed heart could always be further gouged.

  “Dente, Katjan is swarmed!” said the man as he encased her wounded body in an armor of ice.

  “I will…” She puked more of her insides, and relented.

  Dente and her companion raced towards the logging village, fending off animated carrion on their path.

  Cannon embankments on the village’s palisades flashed. Low booms echoed in the air. Impacts of explosive rounds tore holes in the flood of vine monsters, but more spilled from the briars every second. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, had followed Alron. Most of them ignored him now and rushed towards the village, eager to absorb more souls into their reanimated ranks.

  A few did come at Alron, and though his shattered skull, knees, and body throbbed with hot pain, with a spin of his glaive he dispatched the creatures with reflexive ease.

  Fei!

  Sofi loped downhill, out of breath and terrified. “The sack of explosives…” she heaved, “Couldn’t carry… Too heavy to run…”

  Fei, answer me! Alron shook her.

  Her eyes stared up, vacant. My baby… My sweet sweet sweetling, my little hatchling…

  She was in shock. She needed vis. Alron shredded several carrionspawn, ignited them, and fed the soulfire to Fei.

  Become flames, and climb in. I’ll give you vis, he said.

  Alron knelt by Fei and drew a deep breath, inhaling the molten puddle of flames that she’d become into his lungs. He then picked a fistful of earth, slapped it against his broken skull and pierced abdomen, and dragonized the earth into hardened scales and hide. It couldn’t become his flesh wit
hout Oqhizt’s aid, but it quenched the bleeding. Before the carrion could surround them, Alron scooped Sofi up and took flight.

  “The explosives. Where did you leave them,” he asked.

  My sweet little baby… My… Our precious little girl, she… Lamenting her little girl, Fei swirled wildly in Alron’s lungs.

  Sofi pointed at a spot beside the sea of carrion, where a brown sack rested against a stump. Alron swooped down and picked it up, skirting low enough for his claws to brush the tallest shrubs. Dente’s oracle had shot them from the direction where the carrion swarm now swelled two or three stories tall. The sharpshooter was likely too busy ensuring his own survival to shoot at them, but one could never be sure with oracles.

  “Any alternate entrances into the city?” he asked.

  “Twelve miles east there’s a closed pipeway that’s an old smugglers’ route. Friends of Mlevanosk still used it a few years back, but… your wounds. Oh no… They’re bleeding! A-and your head?! The butterfly jar is in the bag, allow me to get it for you.”

  “No,” Alron said, turning eastward. His strength waned and body ached, but his damage was far from lethal. “My wounds are fine.”

  “And Fei, is she okay?”

  Fei’s thoughts continued in their looping descent. My sweetest firstling… Dente… little Dente… Is she ours? She’s ours. She is. She has to be…

  “She’ll live,” Alron said grimly.

  Sofi frowned and opened her mouth, but held her words.

  Silence fell upon them.

  Alron could not detach his thoughts from Fei’s degenerate ramblings, though he tried to focus on the bullets in his abdomen, and on Sofi’s finger grasping his shoulders, hardly even aware of where they were going. Uneven miles of logging-fields passed by in a fog.

  Eventually, Sofi guided Alron to fly up alongside the black saltstone cliffs of Abssmaw’s shoulder.

  From stone protruded a hideous thicket of thousands of grimy metal pipes. They dumped waterfalls of refuse and water onto the cliffs. A foul, nose-searing miasma of unnamable acids and burnt feces clouded the area with a stench so thick it was visible to the eyes.