by Kevin Potter
One part of him wanted to succeed. It was his only hope of acquiring the power to defeat the Platinum Lord. A second part wanted to fail. Stealing this poor dragonling’s spirit was not something he wanted to live with for the rest of his life. A third part of his mind, however, hoped more than anything that Balhamuut would simply kill him before he finished the ritual. He was tired. He felt weak. But most of all he was tired of being weak, and so very tired of suffering. And of pain.
Please, Lord Ryujin, just let it all end. Just let me die. Please, Astral Dragon, just put an end to the misery we dragons must suffer. Let it be an end. Let all the horrors end. Please, Mistress Tiamat, just kill us all and end it before we dragons end up destroying the Earth in our pride. In our greed. In our egotistical conceit. Please, gods, one way or the other, just put an end to this.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gravv stared in shock as the power came surging forth from his dim Apex. Somehow, from somewhere, for whatever reason, none of which he could comprehend, the power came. At the conclusion of the ritual, power raged forth from his body to engulf the bleeding form of the garnet.
In an instant, she transformed into a whirling reddish cloud. The cloud brightened to glittering garnet and grew into a towering whirlwind of arcane power which circled about the cavern picking up bits of metaphysical debris and absorbing them into itself.
The tornado circulated the room, threatening to draw Gravv into it, yet never did so. Although it affected nothing in the physical world, everything else, everything in the metaphysical world, was drawn into it.
Finally, after the storm had torn through the chamber for what seemed an eternity, the maelstrom of power struck him in the chest. The force of it was beyond anything he had ever imagined could exist, yet there was no physical force behind it.
His brain swirled about in his head, his scales rearranged themselves, and his bones themselves seemed to liquefy and re-form within his body.
Most incredible, however— even if he’d known, deep down in the shadowy recesses of his mind that it would happen —his Apex now blazed with unbridled power. That tiny spot which had once been a dim glimmer had become a raging ball of silvery-garnet light. It now outshone the fiery ball of Ryujin’s blaze at midday.
Instantly, the pain in his back vanished. He couldn’t be certain, but it seemed as though the wounds there had closed during the ritual, before the new power struck him.
“Magnificent,” Balhamuut breathed.
In spite of himself, Gravv grinned. He didn’t want to be pleased, but the feeling was there in the pit of his belly anyway. With infinite caution, he brought his legs up beneath his body and pushed himself up. The movement was far easier than he’d expected.
Gravv looked around the cavern with clear eyes for the first time.
Although clearly composed of hard stone, the surfaces of the cavern shone with the brilliance of liquid metal, as though the rock were somehow plated in it. But the bright, bluish-silver shine didn’t look quite right to Gravv. Almost as though he were viewing it through the eyes of someone who had conjured the color without ever seeing real platinum. He couldn’t help being a bit disconcerted by it.
Perhaps it’s an intentional embellishment?
Balhamuut scowled and Gravv dipped his head in apology. Clearly, the platinum chose the color on purpose. Was that how he saw himself?
Tentatively, unsure of what to expect or even how he knew what to do, Gravv reached out with as little effort as he could to touch the minds of those in the tunnel complex that made up Balhamuut’s lair.
The effect was as immediate as it was shocking. His mind was bombarded with the thoughts and emotions of hundreds of dragons and thousands of humans.
Prisoners whose only thoughts were of survival, food, and escape, often in that order.
Human workers who tended fires, pushed bellows, and carted raw materials had similar thoughts, though they were far less hopeful and more resigned to their fates.
Smiths and founders, who poured liquid metal into moulds to shape a hundred different implements, had the same thoughts as the rest when not focused on their work.
A dam tore at her scales in worry for a missing daughter.
A sire raged at the corruption of a son.
Outside the cave system, Gravv touched the minds of a mated pair who simultaneously grieved and raged for the loss of their two sons down on the southern beach.
Oh, no!
Before he could speak to them, however, the sheer number of voices overloaded Gravv’s mind and his world went black.
The world of dreams enveloped him in the bliss of utter nothingness.
BOOK II
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gravv raced through the tunnels, as exuberant as a hatchling on feast day. Today was The Day. Uncle Balhamuut had promised.
At long last, Bal has been found! Surely, Uncle Hamuut will now find Sire and Dam and inform them! At long last, we’ll be reunited! At long last, we will be a family again, all of us! At long last, I’ll be able to share with them all the wonderful things I’ve learned and all the power I’ve acquired!
The thoughts were all a fraud, however. A front.
A wall.
A wall placed in his mind for Balhamuut’s benefit. To keep the platinum appeased.
It hadn’t taken Gravv long to realize Draconic Telepathy and Probing had almost no proximity limit. And although the idea of telepathy, especially of having his mind invaded against his will, made his scales crawl, he had been forced to accept it as a fact of his existence with the Platinum Lord. Also beyond his control was the reality that he had to guard his thoughts at all times, lest his uncle discover his true plans and put an end to him.
Thus, he had taught himself to keep his mind running at least two lines of thought at all times. There was the continually running monologue of adoration and trust for his uncle on the surface to keep the Lord from growing suspicious, and beneath it were his real thoughts.
He lived in almost constant fear that his uncle would one day see through his wall of adoring thoughts to the real motivations beneath, but it was a chance he had to take.
Over the months since his torture had ended, Gravv had used his theoretical learning as a youngling in conjunction with his newfound— stolen —power to heal the major wounds to his body, restoring him to full physical capacity.
After that, however, he had endeavored to re-form his scales and re-grow his spinal spikes. Healing which didn’t happen naturally.
It had been a long, grueling process, both physically painful as well as mentally exhausting. His efforts being something never discussed in the basic education he and Bal had received, he had struggled long with numerous tests and experiments in his search for a process which would succeed.
Finally, after nearly a year of trial and error, he had found the secret in a complex arcane ritual. His scales were now pristine, his spines and horns perfect.
Although Balhamuut had been appropriately impressed by the healings, he also scoffed at so much time and power being wasted on learning such deep and complex healing magicks. After all, how often was he likely to use such powers?
Although Gravv recognized the logic to the Lord’s words, he couldn’t dismiss the benefits. The fact was, as he had argued at the time, without such deep learning on the subject, his back would still be bare, his hide scarred and hideous.
While maintaining the exuberant, wyrmling-like run of excited thoughts, he burst through the unguarded entryway into the massive chamber Balhamuut referred to as his Audience Chamber, as though he were one of the human kings of old and the massive underground complex was his castle.
The stone of this chamber gleamed as brightly as any other in the immense cave system, though here there were globes of silvery light spread all around the chamber which highlighted the metallic sheen. At the far end against the chamber wall, a massive platinum throne towered almost to the ceiling.
T
he chair’s back stood close to four-hundred standard wingspans in height and was patterned in the shape of spread dragon’s wings, making it nearly three times as wide as it was tall. The legs were formed in the shapes of dragon’s legs, complete with curving claws and a scaled texture, while the arms of the chair were twin, snarling, maned serpents. The entire thing appeared to be sculpted from a single, solid chunk of raw platinum.
Balhamuut sat in the chair reared up with his forelegs resting on the arms of the chair as though he were, in fact, a human king. Though he was not nearly large enough to fill the seat.
That’s likely intentional. He wants to be able to grow into it. Should be quite a waste if the growth from his next three essence feedings brought him to too large to sit the monstrous thing, Gravv thought, and only just stopped himself from chuckling.
Balhamuut nodded with apparent approval and his eyes flicked to the prostrated form before him. The wyrm was down on the knees of all four legs and its snout touched the cave floor. Its scales shone silvery-blue in the bright light of the globes.
Is that? Gravv wondered and Balhamuut nodded again.
“Bal… Balhalumuut?” Gravv asked hesitantly. In spite of the great platinum’s reassurance, he couldn’t bring himself to believe his brother was finally here.
The Platinum Lord nodded his head toward the platinum wyrm before him. If it was Bal, all trace of garnet coloration gone from his scales now. The dragon climbed up from the floor and slowly turned to face Gravv.
Gravv struggled not to let his shock show on his face. What had happened to his brother? How could a few months of captivity have brought about such drastic change?
Yet for all the differences, he could not deny this was, in fact, his brother. This was Balhalumuut who stood before him.
Bal’s once-sleek, muscular form tended toward bloat now. Not fat, exactly, but disproportionately large. His shoulders were large and bulky, his legs thick, and the beginnings of a protruding belly showed below his ribs. His head seemed to have lost its sleek shape and developed into a sharp, triangular shape not unlike their uncle’s.
All-in-all, he now looked frighteningly similar to Balhamuut.
The shock of his brother’s appearance almost prevented Gravv’s inevitable outburst.
Almost.
“Brother!” Gravv shouted, forcing a tone of joy, as he rushed forward across the vast chamber to embrace his estranged brother–
He froze.
Bal looked at him with a flat, bland expression, his dead eyes lacked even the slightest recognition. He hadn’t moved a muscle in Gravv’s direction.
“What’s going on?” Gravv asked slowly. “What’s wrong with him?”
Bal’s lip curled up in a sneer and Balhamuut shrugged his massive shoulders.
Gravv narrowed his eyes at the Platinum Lord. “What is wrong with him?” he repeated with a touch more force.
The Lord shrugged again. “How would I know? This is how he’s been since I met him. Calm. Obedient. Respectful. With few words and fewer questions. Everything I could ask for in a nephew.” The Lord smiled.
Gravv forcibly stopped his jaw from clenching and blocked the tirade of angry thoughts fighting to form in his mind.
I trust you, Balhamuut, he forced himself to think. Clearly, sometime between when I was separated from him and when you found him, his mind must have been damaged in some way. We’ll find a way to repair it. There has to be a way.
Deep down, though, he seethed. It couldn’t be clearer that Bal had been a captive here from the start, just as Gravv had. Perhaps Bal’s torture had been somewhat gentler, but more drawn out. Perhaps he’d been brainwashed somehow. Or, even worse, perhaps his mind was under the direct control of another. Of Balhamuut.
Gravv had to clench his muscles against a shiver when the possibility occurred to him.
At times like these, it became exceedingly difficult to maintain the run of trusting, obedient, foolish commentary in his mind to keep Balhamuut from discovering his true thoughts.
Gravv didn’t truly know what his uncle would do to him if he learned the truth. Surely, the Lord wouldn’t throw him back to the torturers, not after all this time developing him as an ally. But he preferred not to find out.
And besides, he thought behind the rush of youthful trust and excitement. The less he knows about my plans, the more likely they are to succeed.
“Balhalumuut,” Gravv said, adopting a gentle, familial tone. “Will you walk with me, brother?”
The misshaped platinum wyrm stared through him as though he didn’t exist. “We may walk,” he said in an emotionless monotone.
Gravv glanced to Balhamuut, playing the part of a wyrmling asking for permission, and the Lord nodded his assent. “As always, do not try to leave the north wing.”
Gravv nodded as he turned, leading his brother from the chamber.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gravv spent weeks working on his brother’s frozen surface. He poked and prodded, chiseled and whittled, trying to break through to the arrogant, egotistical— though sometimes playful —superiority complex of a dragon within, somewhere deep down in Balhalumuut’s psyche.
But so far, nothing of the dragon he had been was evident.
Deep down, as much as he hated to admit it, a part of Gravv knew the brother he had once known was gone. Perhaps a spark remained somewhere, but his chances of seeing that dragon again were as close to zero as made no difference. Somewhere along the line, either Balhamuut or his torturers— or someone else in his employ —had completely broken Balhalumuut and there was nothing left to reclaim.
Gravv hated it. He wanted to rail against it. To rage. To consume. To destroy. But he couldn’t, and he knew it. Although he had now consumed the spirits of half a dozen wyrms, one of them quite ancient, which increased his arcane strength by more than a thousand fold and nearly doubled his physical size, he was still no match for Balhamuut. His power would be little more than a mosquito on the tail of the Platinum Lord.
Balhamuut consumed two to three dragons each week, many of them wyrms of great age and power. And as often as he found them, he consumed other Great Dragons who practiced as he did, consuming the spirits of others purely for the gain to their powers.
At first, Gravv had been sickened by the practice, but now he saw the practical side of the matter. It was a means to an end, the end being the destruction of Balhamuut. Nothing else mattered.
But the power, a small voice seemed to call to him, as it did almost all the time. Ever since the second time he’d used the power to steal the living essence of a wyrm, it had been a near constant in his life.
No! he thought forcefully, as he always did. I will not do it.
You know you want it.
Gravv sighed. His heart raced and his hidden flesh flushed with hot blood.
This was the reason the Platinum Lord had given him free rein to do as he wished with the prisoners and torture victims. Save freeing them, of course. He was certain the freedom to do it was meant to tempt him.
The increase to one’s personal power from the theft of essences was addicting, there was no denying it. The power gained from the ritual was a far more powerful stimulant, a greater euphoric, than anything Gravv could imagine.
The first time had been different, though. Although the first essence had been a dragon younger and weaker than himself, the arcane power he gained from it outweighed that of any consumption afterward, including the ancient. The first time also mostly lacked the euphoric sensation.
A dragon could, he theorized, perform the ritual only once and never know what he was missing. But after the second, it took a supreme act of will to turn down the opportunity to consume another spirit.
As much as he tried to tell himself otherwise, when he was being honest, he was not at all certain he had that kind of will.
True, he did not gorge himself on the souls of prisoners and torture victims, in spite of his knowing from expe
rience that in many cases death would be preferable. During his introspective moments, he couldn’t help being amazed with himself over that detail. Somehow, he had found the will to only consume the spirit of another dragon when he was directly ordered to or on the occasions when Balhamuut offered one himself, which was effectively the same thing.
The Platinum Lord had known he would crave the sensation constantly, of course. Knew it from the very beginning. Of course he knew. He had to. Surely he experienced the same thing, didn’t he?
Granting him free use of the prisoners in any way he saw fit all-but-guaranteed, certainly so from Balhamuut’s perspective, that Gravv would gorge himself on their spirits. After all, if he could do so at any time he wished, why would he not? With nothing to stop him, of course he would.
Gravv didn’t believe the platinum had given even a moment’s thought to the idea that a dragon might try to resist the temptation.
Yet as much as his body craved the power and euphoria of consuming a spirit, he loathed the act. Loathed it more than anything he had ever done.
Gravv stalked through the tunnels forcibly denying both his craving and his despair. There had to be something he could do for his brother! Surely, there must be a way to recover the youngling he’d known from the husk he spent his days with.
His brother couldn’t be completely gone, could he?
Gravv stepped through the open archway to his brother’s personal chamber. Forcing his voice into as chipper a tone as he could, he called, “Morning, Bal.”
The larger dragon uncoiled his neck from his body and looked at Gravv, eyes glazed.
“How are you today?”
“Adequate,” came the monotone reply.
“Sleep well?”
“Acceptable.”
Gravv sighed. Same answer, same toneless voice, same absolute apathy, every single day.
