Dragon Core

by Sain Artwell

  Two.

  This was the only peer to enroll the same year he did. Harne was his name. He’d always had more skill than strength.

  One left.

  Dente.

  She flew across the field of dead knights, the world around her dragonizing as she charged. Alron accepted this strike with his glaive. Dragonizing auras of two broken dragongods exploded like clashing tsunamis of vis. Behind Alron, the ice and corpses were dark crimson. Behind Dente, they were dark azure.

  Her movements grew quicker, too quick for Alron. He reversed Apocalypse’s direction in a quick zig-zag pattern too fast for his eyes to follow, so fast his arm would’ve been torn from its socket if not for Oqhizt’s regeneration.

  He sliced her wings, wounded her tail, and snapped half of her horns. Yet somehow, the girl wove past the impossible pattern. Not once did he manage to pin her down with Apocalypse.

  Alron smiled. “Impressive.”

  “You’re very good, dear!” Fei added. “Mommy is proud!”

  Silent focus was Dente’s answer. Her gaze remained focused. Her movements sharpened, shedding the rigidity of the Seven Forms of Myrwing, gaining in its place a more primal way of doing battle. With each blow, her techniques grew towards unknown directions, desperately chasing after and seeking to surpass Alron.

  Watch out for Yuvera! Oqhizt’s warning drew Alron’s thoughts to the woman floating at a safe distance. Though her eyes were those of a Sorcerer King, he saw sorrow and regret in them. It was time to end it all, and let it end.

  Before he could move to charge her, every starsteel weapon scattered throughout the chamber bloomed into giant spiny urchins. Around Dente, the spikes softened, allowing her to fight as if she was in tall grass, whereas Alron had to wade through a thicket of blades. And wade he did, unflinching through blood and pain. The faster he moved, the more starsteel blades wrapped about his armor, scales, and skin, grating off bits. His wings were shredded, armor failing. Dente’s blows began to land with increasing frequency, yet even she could not stop him. No one could.

  Apocalypse shattered Dente’s bones and sent her flying through the wall of the Spire.

  Despite her attempts to flee him, Alron reached Yuvera, Apocalypse raised overhead.

  His vision blackened, senses dulling, but even Yuvera’s last ditch effort to suppress him with sensory collapse was for naught. Alron struck down his old lover.

  His senses returned. The spire was a storm of mist, steel, fire, and loose chunks of architecture. Strewn across the cracked abyss of black ice lay corpses of all those he’d ever held dear. Starsteel weapons lay amongst them, now little less than impotent masses of starry metal.

  And before his feet, slumped against the wall, lay Yuvera. He’d cleaved off a shoulder and more. Through sinew and blue blood glowed a white glowing vestige embedded in her innards—the star-core of Sorcerer King. Yuvera’s eyes fumbled to meet his, though the light in them swiftly dimmed.

  His first instinct was to urge Oqhizt to run and save her.

  His second was to kneel by her side, embrace her, and curse the world.

  His third was an oddly hollow sense of relief.

  All who’d wronged his lovers were dead. Revenge had cost him almost everything. There was no redemption for the likes of him, only death. Struggling on would only cause more grief to the few he still held dear. Sofi, Dente. The future is yours.

  “Farewell, my love,” said Alron to Yuvera. “Forgive me, for not coming to save you in time.”

  Dente’s charge interrupted Alron. Bracing himself against Apocalypse, he managed to remain upright. An army pounded against the gate outside. In near silence, he and Dente exchanged blows, both of them exhausted beyond measure.

  All that was left for him was to allow her to defeat him.

  Burn it all, said Alron to Oqhizt and Fei. This is our final battle. Take my vis and show me at your highest.

  Poor Dente, I hope she’ll make it…

  She’s holding against her dragonsoul admirably. She will make it, Alron assured Fei.

  Fei, Alron, it was a pleasure. A brief one, sure. But at least I got to celebrate one victory before dying again. Oqhizt laughed. As far as last jokes went, it wasn’t a good one, but Alron and Fei gave her dry chuckles in reply all the same, and threw everything they had against Dente.

  Remnants of Alron’s dragonized arsenal of jadegold weapons—all wreathed in soulfire—whipped Dente with blades and hooks. Oqhizt turned vis into flesh, conjuring blood blades to replace Alron’s broken wings, and turning his tail into a devastating sickle. Fei bloomed into an azure inferno half as tall as the vast chamber, and struck out with claws made of soulfire, as well as with weapons held aloft by arms of solid flames, all the while commanding her Dreamfire Parade. Alron and Fei both blew a continuous torrent of concentrated soulfire against Dente’s frostfire, causing devastating explosions, which both of the combatants ignored. All this and Apocalypse rained an unforgiving torrent of lethal blows upon the last knight of Myrwing, and continued to rain until its spin-core was completely exhausted.

  Dente lost her armor of scales, chunks of her flesh, and several urnfuls of blood. Her regeneration lagged behind. Wounds stacked, and her strength waned. Alron laid upon her punishment until her bonded fleshbender was torn off, until her morphcore weapon was torn into shards of ice. None of her lovers were dead, though Dente didn’t know it.

  She glared at him, fierce as a force of nature. All that kept her standing was grit and spirit. And, by the thrice damned dragongods, did she ever wield those two like a true warrior.

  It was all she needed to protect what she thought dear.

  Our beautiful precious hatchling, she’s all grown up…

  Aye, quite a girl, Oqhizt agreed. Sure would’ve loved to raise one.

  You had plenty in my dreams.

  Ha! Well, guess that’s something.

  Not in a hundred years— nay. Never had Alron fought as worthy a foe. She’s perfect. Our little hero.

  Alron’s vis dwindled, flickering on its last embers. His strength faltered for a split second, and Oqhizt and Fei struggled to maintain their transformed shapes. Dente hunkered against the ground, dashing at him with her broken claw poised to kill him. Alron released Apocalypse, closed his eyes, and did nothing to stop her from staking his dragon-core.

  For his last thought, Alron focused on telling Dente that he forgave her for falling to Sorcerer King’s lies. That he forgave her everything, and wished her a long, happy life. She could read the memory from his vestiges, and perhaps find solace.

  Flesh ruptured and bones crunched. Sudden pain impaled Alron through his back and all along his limbs, through his very dragonsoul.

  His eyes snapped open to watch Dente die.

  Chapter 31 - Dead Redemption

  Dente’s body was skewered by spikes of glistening starry metal. Her face was nearly unrecognizable. Alron’s blood dripped from the tips of her right claw, which hung impaled on a spike, separate from the rest of her. She’d managed to strike half an inch through his flesh before being struck.

  Cleaved from the rest of her, Dente’s dragon-core sloughed off and splashed on the floor.

  The last words she spoke were of wounded surprise, “But… I did everything you asked.”

  Yuvera clutched where her arm was missing as she limped onwards, propelled by her tendril wings. She regarded Dente with a heartbroken frown. “Apologies, child. I failed to make it instant.”

  She scooped up Dente’s dragon-core—a tangled mess of heartstring vestiges and echoed vestiges of her bonds. Starsteel wormed out of Yuvera’s veins, burying into the dragon-core.

  Burning cold pain of foreign objects lodged within him lanced through Alron, as he coughed half a lungful of blood on his wound-riddled chest. But besides the utter shock of betrayal, he hardly felt the agony. “Y-Yuvera… She was our future.”

  Fei leapt out of Alron, a bolt of soulfire brandishing fury, and she attacked Yuvera. Her howl was one of incoh
erent anger. A blade of starsteel flashed against azure flames. Fei crashed in the puddle beneath Dente, half-flame half-flesh, bawling like a little hatchling. She found Dente’s severed foot and hugged it.

  Oqhizt.

  Sorry. Can’t fix your girl. I can get us walking, or stab Yuvera with a blood blade. Your call.

  Good… Await my word.

  “Apologies, old friend. I…” Yuvera struggled to look at the sorry mess Fei was. “I didn’t have a choice,” she told Alron. “Destroying your dragon-core would’ve killed me.”

  He glared at her, unable to muster sympathy.

  Dente’s dragon-core was mutating on Yuvera’s palm. Veins of the vestiges took on a starry glow, their bright scarlet hue fading. A deep cold emanated from the corrupted core. Part of it was certainly due to the volumes of blood Alron had lost, but with starsteel vibrating around them, he could tell that sorcery was happening, and he could guess what Yuvera was attempting; ascension, only not of the dragonic kind.

  Wait until she’s too focused to use foresight.

  Oqhizt acknowledged the plan wordlessly.

  “If it’s any consolation, at least we’ll be together…” Arms trembling, Yuvera brought Dente’s corrupted dragon-core towards her chest. Tiny starlight tendrils flailed towards her and latched on when they touched her pale skin. She screamed as they cut into her. The corrupted dragon-core jumped against Yuvera’s breasts like a maddened animal, and began to burrow through her skin.

  Yuvera collapsed on her knees, scratching her thighs and face by accident, as the pain of two dragon-cores fusing tore howls from her lungs.

  In the blink of an eye, she and starsteel pulsed with blinding brightness. Alron grunted, as the ones piercing him wormed in their bloody sockets, their tips beginning to crawl towards his dragon-core. Throughout the shattered chamber, starsteel weapons burrowed into the dragon-cores of the fallen knights, and into the deep ice beneath them, branching out like veins on their journey to pierce as many free-floating vestiges as possible.

  N—

  Before he could finish the -ow, the loud discharge of a single cannon shot rang out.

  The top half of Yuvera’s head was gone.

  On the far side of the chamber, propped between rubbled icy architecture, lay the blind sharpshooter. She held the hand of Isac—Dente’s bonded fleshbender—who lay over her feet. In her other hand, Katjan clutched a blackmetal hand cannon.

  “Rule number two of…” Katjan coughed. She gave the hand cannon a snap, revealing a smoking chamber. Arms trembling, she loaded a bloodsoaked bullet in the chamber, and snapped the cannon back into firing shape. “Drat. Doesn’t apply here. Anyhow. Hit is a hit.”

  She coughed again. The barrel of her cannon slowly wobbled until it was trained at Alron. Katjan fired.

  The bullet broke the largest of the starsteel spikes holding him still. The rest of them tore bits off of Alron as he fell on the ground. A bloodsoaked bullet slipped from Katjan’s trembling fingers on her attempt to reload, but she persisted and slipped in another round.

  “My gut feelings are all over the floor right now, and something funny is going on with my core, but I figure we could strike a bargain. I’ll let you walk away without a hole in the brain, if you promise me you take this mother bitch of a maggot traitor down.”

  “I will stop her,” said Alron.

  “Good enough.”

  Katjan shot again at Yuvera.

  The bullet tore through her heart. Tendrils of starsteel stretched to fill it, weaving a lacy web over the lost flesh on her chest and head. Likewise, the tendrils stretched throughout the chamber burrowed deeper into the black ice below, and through the fallen and wounded. Katjan grimaced, biting down a curse as the starsteel web slowly mutilated her legs. She reloaded her hand cannon.

  That bang sent a jolt of adrenaline through Alron.

  Now!

  Without needing explanation, Oqhizt spent their remaining vis to repair as much of his legs as she could, knocking herself into unconsciousness from exhaustion. The flesh she occupied within Alron froze for a flicker into a thick clot. It blocked blood flow. Alron’s vision blackened, and he forced the blood to move and tumbled forward, evading the slowly snaking starsteel tendrils. Alron scooped Fei in his arms and picked up Apocalypse. His arms spent and body broken, its weight made him nearly fold over, but he carried onwards on the embers of his waning strength.

  With wings tattered and muscles burning, he had no strength to fly, and certainly not enough might to force his way through the army outside. On sluggish feet, Alron dragged the blade away from the glowing heart of an ascending god, and struck his claws into the hardened ice wall. Thus began an arduous climb up the Spire’s broken interior.

  Occasional bullets ricocheted off an asymmetric bloom of starsteel ribs wrapping around Yuvera. The time between shots stretched. Longer, until the last shot was followed by the dying scream of the blind sharpshooter.

  By then, Alron was hundreds of feet high, with thousands left to climb.

  In those moments of doubts, treacherous foothold, delirium, and cold, Alron’s thoughts slipped towards a feverish trance. His world became the grooves of the wall and the bloody icicles hanging from his wounds, the bitter bite of air in his lungs and false warmth tingling his claw tips. A soothing presence swelled within—his dragonsoul offered to take over.

  It would be quick.

  Painless and easy.

  Let go. Give in. Ascend. End this all and make it right. Make it a part of me.

  “Never.” Alron clenched his jaw until his teeth cracked, flooding his mind with a fresh flavor of pain. It ushered the dragonsoul back into slumber, and kept him company until he crawled out of the shaft and into the Garden of Heavenly Dreams.

  At once, it was as if the world had fallen into a lull of divine serenity. Last Breath, the perpetual storm left behind by Iceweaver, whirled around the edges of the plateau, leaving the garden of icy sculptures untouched by the howling punishment of wind. High above, beyond the dark blue sky, the bright glimmer of constellations seemed to gain an almost malicious quality.

  No doubt about it, those things behind the stars, which Carrion Scourge’s dragonsoul had accused as cowards, watched with glee as the cradle of dragongods was being corrupted.

  Bathed in their pale light, a garden of creatures neither plant, shroom, nor any deep-sea thing Alron had come across writhed. They vibrated excitedly and changed colors in nauseating patterns, as if sensing the nearby ascension of a stargod, welcoming it with an alien ceremony.

  Walking through the jubilant garden, Alron felt nothing but exhausted indifference. His wrath had been sated, his hope of redemption shattered, and trust—which he thought could no longer be broken—had been ground from shards to dust.

  Alron was not certain whether he had anything left to pursue in life, other than indulgence to escape from the consequences of his own choices, but he’d find out. He would figure out what to do after stopping Yuvera. That much he could still do. He had to.

  For now, he stepped over the edge and surrendered to the wind. Catching onto the remains of his wings, it swept him into a dark blizzard, tossed him around, and spat him into the clouds. With broken wings, Alron guided his descent as far from the lights of civilization as he could, and crashed hard into the frozen cliffs of an uninhabited mountain peak.

  There, his shoulders set against Apocalypse, Alron fell asleep in the snow.

  Chapter 32 - Voice of the Gods

  Amongst the ice coated cliffs and windblown peaks of Iceweaver’s spine, in a claw carved cavern, Alron and his two remaining bonded survived. They subsisted on cliff crawling eels and thunderhorn goats, game which was made scarce by the corruption growing within the City of Spires. Four days had passed. Four days of cold, mindless sex, and recovery.

  Alron sat by the edge of the cave. Sharp flakes of frost whipped against his face, forcing his eyes into narrow slits.

  Nestled between eve darkened mountains, the stargod was
growing. It was a dark tumor on Iceweaver’s titanic skull, amorphous, unsettling—wrong. Its shape was defined by webs it spread between the spires, and the thin veins of starsteel, which crept ever further. Like cracks in the world’s shell, at night, when their luminance echoed that of the stars.

  “Wake me up for vengeance. Sure. Wake me up and trick me into godslaying business again. Now that’s just cruel.” Wearing a grin as light-hearted as her voice, Oqhizt stopped behind Alron to knead the muscles of his neck. Her vis and blood seeped into him, re-knitting stubborn starsteel wounds, which refused to heal properly.

  Alron grunted, leaning into her touch. “I am glad one of us can remain unfazed.”

  “I figure stuff is happening too fast for my brain to be fazed. It’s all sliding right through the holes in my memory. Swish-swush. That’s all I hear.”

  Alron chuckled softly.

  Far below, on a narrow road carved on the mountainside, stragglers of Ascendancy’s army struggled against a creature resembling a veiny mold—an offshoot of the stargod—starspawn. For the time being, they repelled its attacks with dragonfire.

  “Hey.” Oqhizt peeked over Alron’s head. “Any plans for what we’re gonna do after?”

  “Hm.” Alron stared at the battle below. “When Yuvera is slain?”

  “Yeah.”

  “First, we’d need a way to defeat her.”

  “Brute force seemed to work pretty good last time, did it not?”

  “Last time, Carrion Scourge, the wyrmkin part of him, that is, welcomed death. This time, we aren’t so fortunate.”

  “Sure, alright. But let’s entertain a hypothetical what if and not be all sour. What do we do afterwards?”

  “Hmm.” Alron continued to watch the conflict below. A starsteel appendage killed one of the warriors, and the tide of battle ebbed in the starspawn’s favor. Only now he noticed the group of hatchlings whom the warriors protected. Alron thought they would surely perish, but a lone skysnake rider flew in to the rescue. Somehow, one of the warriors managed to hold off the creature long enough for everyone to climb aboard a skysnake and take off.