He found himself often wondering why he was still there; why he still followed this creature who had clearly lost his mind. His thoughts drifted to the coliseum in Kqalipu’mnui, to memories of the giant bonfire, and the charred meat, and the camaraderie he had found there. They were pleasant memories, and they warmed his heart, if not his hands and feet. But even such pleasant reminders were not enough to pull him away. His friend needed him. So he was there.
They walked for miles interminable, for days unquantifiable. The rations ran low, then out; they kept walking, even though game was scarce. X'on caught what appeared to be frostbite on his right tricep; they kept walking. He only mumbled “We'll deal with it later” when Ven tried to press him about it. They walked until Ven thought he would collapse and die, unmarked, in the snow. They walked until he wished he would die in the snow. They walked with numb feet, with insensate noses; they walked in gale force winds, in snowfall so heavy visibility dwindled to nothing and their paced slowed to less than a crawl. They walked, leaving knee deep tracks in the moonlight. They walked, tracks filling behind them as the went.
They walked.
Until the night X'on held up his hand in front of a low, stone outcropping surrounded by flurry and covered by an avalanche of rubble and ice. “Here,” he said, still toneless. His voice hadn’t changed pitch, or register. No excitement, no thrill at their journey’s end.
Great. Another cavern. My life is a series of caverns. This whole adventure, everything that had happened, that had changed him, that had awoken him; all of it was because he'd screwed up a job in a cavern. It felt cyclical, in an odd way. Like a phoenix. Like dying and being reborn.
Ven pulled a pickaxe from the pack that had hung so heavy on his shoulders and began to pull at the debris. X'on joined him, using nothing but his frigid fingers.
“Y'know, there's a shovel in the bag, too,” Ven said. “We brought tools for a reason.”
“We brought tools for you,” he said. “I'm fine.”
I don't believe you. But Ven kept digging anyway.
It took two hours for the pair to clear a path inside. Ven, exhausted, starving, numb, took as many breaks as he could sneak; X'on worked through without comment. Finally, they managed to clear a passage wide enough for both of them to fit through. There was no fanfare. No grand entrance; no doors with mysterious carvings forbidding them entry. Just a hole in the ground the led to what looked like a rough hewn passage that got larger and larger the deeper it receded into the earth. A soft, eerie glow emanated from deeper within.
X'on swept a hand before him. “After you,” he said.
Okay, is this what he wanted? After all this time, after everything we've been through. Did he just bring me along as a canary in a coal mine? The thought reminded Ven of their first encounter with the deep-down dwarves. He stifled a laugh tinged with a touch of hysteria and went inside.
*
If Ven had thought walking was to be the death of him, then clearly he had never met climbing. Well, not climbing so much as awkward stumbling down a steep incline surrounded by that same weird glow that took his shadow and kaleidoscoped it across the walls around him. He could hear X'on behind him, making a much more graceful trip of it than Ven himself. It took less than twenty minutes to make it to the foundation of the cave, but it felt like an eternity. After all, Ven was drained, weakened, hungry, half-frozen, potentially delirious, and in the company of a madman. He had fallen three times and rolled several meters before finding his feet again. The tunnel he was half-heartedly spelunking had grown around him to the point where he could no longer see the ceiling. His rational mind screamed at him that whatever had occupied this cave had dwarfed him by an order of magnitude he didn't have the schooling to calculate.
None of which mattered as he stumbled to the bottom and looked out over the dragon's Hoard.
Piles of gold that dwarfed mountains. Silver jewelry strewn about as though tossed from the uncaring hands of uncountable dowagers. Lakes of jewels more vast and deep than the ocean, each glittering with their own special promises--ruby and emerald and sapphire against the golden light. A wall of books that put X'on's humble tome to shame, each one ornately jacketed, each one containing the secrets of the world, the universe, in its pages. Paintings that moved the heart and loins to tears at a glance. And it went on as far as Ven could see; there was no back wall, no horizon; just endless treasure, wealth beyond count, beyond imagination.
Ven felt X'on at his back. The quest was over. Their contract satisfied.
“Are you… are you seeing this?” Ven couldn't be sure this wasn't fantasy, a fevered mirage that would disappear if he tried to touch it.
“I do,” X'on said, his baritone voice growing even deeper now. “And what do you feel you have earned, Tanith Ven?”
Ven answered before he could think, before he noticed that X’on had used his caste name for the first time.
“All of it,” he rasped low, eyes agog.
But…that wasn’t quite true, was it? When he’d first started this quest, sure; he’d have slit X’on’s throat and run off with everything he could carry. But now....
“All of my share,” he said, louder. He cleared his throat. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dunes of gold and jewels, the piles of wealth stacked so high and so far he still couldn't judge the end of it. He hoped his companion hadn’t heard him the first time. That had been a guttural, greedy reaction. That wasn’t him. Not anymore. “All that you see fit to give me, X’on.”
Then you shall receive all, Tanith Ven, said something with Xon’s voice, but deeper again, more resonant. And completely inside Ven’s head. You shall receive exactly what you deserve.
Chapter 37
Ven spun around, and was knocked back into one of the golden heaps he had been admiring by what appeared to be a colossal, unfurling tail – a tail the same color as the gold itself. He stared as the being he'd known as X'on Doth – the being who had fought with him, bled with him, dined with him, laughed with him, saved him, been saved by him; the being whom he had called his friend for the better part of a year – as that being rippled, and grew, and changed. His skin bronzed, then brightened, until it shone luminescent gold. Wings burst forth from his shoulders, great and leathery, bones popping and cracking as they grew to thread through the skin, shredding his tunic as they expanded. His arms lengthened, as did his hands, until he stood on all fours, each extremity lined with a row of claws as long as Ven himself was tall. His neck extended, and his face grew and shifted into a muzzle; a tail snaked out behind him, as if to counterbalance, and immediately wrapped itself around one of the towering gold stacks, as if in protection. The unsmell Ven had known so well crumpled in on itself, a corrosive gilt rushing into its void. The beast, now several hundred meters tall, looked down at Ven with disdain – and in that look, Ven saw the only remainder of the X'on he'd known. One of its eyes was clouded over, blind.
Congratulations, Tanith Ven, the behemoth said without speaking. Its voice was crystal clear in his mind, however, and Ven was startled to realize that he knew it – it the same voice that had been in his head when he'd been debating whether or not to kill the Wendigo.
You have been tested by the Dracor Nobilis himself, the beast continued. It smiled, showing teeth that could mince Ven before he could blink. You have been tested. And you have failed. You have doomed your world.
Ven's mouth dropped open. “Wait, what?!?” He shrieked. “How? Wait, you're a dragon?!? What did I do, how did I kill a world?”
With ignorance, the dragon continued. Ven felt a wetness on the sides of his head. He touched a talon to it, and was not at all surprised to find blood.
With greed. With pain and suffering, and a truly abhorrent lack of compassion. I've studied you for months, Tanith Ven. You are a spoiled, petulant fiend in a world of monsters and barbarians almost as horrific. Your actions have proved selfish and self serving from the day our paths crossed. I told you – the night we met, I told you – that I
was coming back to judge the world, to cleanse it of others the way I attempted to cleanse it of men. But you were too self-involved to see it.
“I-I don't…” Ven's head was pounding. Tears pricked his eyes. “You told me your mother was a kitsune, your dad…”
I relayed to you a quick and harmless fiction, designed to fool your brutish, facile mind. A giant for a father to excuse my size, a kitsune mother to explain away my intelligence. A rape to buy your sympathies. The first in a long line of curiosities you refused to puzzle out, or even question at all.
“What are you saying, the first...you helped me! That night, X'on helped me stop the Shifter!”
You little fool, the dragon breathed. I was X'on, have you not grasped that yet? A mortal guise I created to gain your trust and to stay close by you. And your own self-centeredness forced my hand. You did not respond to my plea for companionship, nor my bribe of gold and glory. It was only after I summoned the were-beast to you, that I did something for you, that you agreed to join me.
At first, I tried to help you. Educate you. I tried to teach you about the land, and its masters. I used my knowledge and the knowledge I could glean from others in an attempt to change your fate. Yet you still rebuffed my lessons, you refused to listen and understand.
“W-wait,” Ven choked out, “you're saying you judged me – you judged everything – on the basis of me not paying attention during your lectures?”
Ignorance is but the first of your crimes, fool. Though I see it continues to be one, as well. The dragon glared at him, through him. Ven felt pierced to his soul. Your unmitigated propensity for violence also marks you unworthy of existence. You were a drunk and a murderer long before my test even began. Your cavalier relationship with life colors every decision you make. When presented with the most violent option – the option that destabilized an entire region and incited uprising and war – you jumped at that chance without a second thought. The lives of the elves and giants in the balance received no consideration.
“What, you mean in Taal'anquor?” Ven snarled, suddenly furious. If I'm to be damned, let me be damned for what I really did. “When we were being tortured to death by some sadistic elf bitch because you couldn't be bothered to do the paperwork? And that was at your urging, anyway!”
The dragon ignored him.
But even then, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Circumstances were dire, and I had hoped that this initial exuberance for bloodshed and brutality was a mere response – disproportionate, of course, but not entirely unreasonable – to your torment under confinement. Imagine my profound disappointment, then, in the mountain tunnels of Jernot Mey, where you willingly furnished the dwarves with technology that will annihilate their predecessors. Peace and diplomacy were beneath you then – only death and destruction would satisfy your need for revenge.
“But you heard them!” Ven roared. Angry tears fell freely now. “The mudbu-the deep downers were venturing topside! They attacked both of us, they were intensifying their raids! I was trying to help!”
Little fool, it was I who rendered you unconscious that day. A few honeyed words in your ear and you handed them the key to genocide.
“What?!?” Ven cried. The bottom fell out of his stomach; he thought for a second he might vomit, then remembered he hadn't eaten anything in days that he could sick up. He'd thought himself so noble, arming the side that had befriended them, that had saved them from their attackers. Even after the battle, when confronted with the harsh reality of his handiwork, he had held dear to the thought that it had been for the right reasons, that it had been the proper response to an escalating threat. But now he knew: the deep downers had never been more than a nuisance. And he had been played.
“But why? Why would you lie to me?”
To see how you would react. To see what you would do when confronted with the choice. To test you. To watch you fall.
The dragon's good eye narrowed.
Again and again, you chose butchery and greed over altruism and forgiveness. You watched a rabble succumb to savage dissolution, then bragged to have frolicked with their executioner. You murdered your only true friend given the earliest, easiest opportunity. You plotted petty malices towards a ships' cook and captain for the egregious crime of verbally slighting you.
Ven couldn't speak; he could hardly breathe. On the face of it, the charges were true, all of them. But he'd agonized over some of those decisions; the bluster had been bravado, covering his insecurities. And poor Jakat...he had almost quit over his guilt and remorse. He'd almost given up.
But the worst insult, the truest description of your core, was when you fell in with the filthy apes that appear to still populate this wretched continent. They coddled you. They fawned over you, and for their fealty you championed them.
They accepted me! Ven wanted to shout. They didn't stand in judgement, didn't hold me accountable for crimes real or imagined! They made me feel like a whole being for the first time in my life! But his head was pounding, and his ears ran red and sticky, and he felt as though he couldn't get enough air in his lungs. So he said nothing.
And the one monstrosity, the one beast you chose to spare, was a murderous, cannibalistic fiend. A brute miscreant, a selfish and vile creature whose only purpose was to fulfill its own cruel wants and desires. Tell me, Tanith Ven, did you empathize with the beast’s covetous nature? Did a moment of unanimity stay your hand that day?
“No,” Ven answered, but it was growl, not a shout. “I spared him because I didn't want to be that Ven anymore.”
Oh? A look of genuine curiosity crossed the dragon's face. And what Tanith Ven would that be?
Ven squeezed his eyes shut, forcing more tears down his cheeks. “The one that killed without hesitation. The one that killed for money. The one that. The one that killed children.”
Ah. The light of self-discovery, perhaps? Too late, of course, but appreciated.
Too late. The words rang in his bloody ears. Too late. Had all of his decisions, all of his choices, really been so wrong? So evil? And why return my greatest weapon? Why let me keep the sword?
“Hey! If I’m this monster you think I am, why did you save my sword?”
The beast actually had the temerity to look puzzled.
Your sword? What care have I for that base instrument of cruelty?
“Back in the cave, after I woke up! Outside of Kqalipu’mnui!” Ven pulled the sword from its scabbard, hoisted it into the air. “You said you found this with me, but that’s not possible, I lost it! You saved it for me!”
I did nothing of the sort, it replied. It was as I said. The weapon was tangled in the same ropes that saved your miserable life. I gave it back to you in the hopes that you might kill a few humans with it. You failed even in that, of course.
That made no sense. But there wasn't time to sort that out now. “But why…why me?” He choked out. “Why was I chosen for this?”
X’on, or the avatar before him that had once been X’on, smiled. Because of all the creatures on this polluted, corrupt world… you seemed the most… human.
Human. The greatest insult the dragon could hurl at him was the very creature he yearned to emulate. Anger stoked his passion then; he finally pushed himself up out of the mess of wealth he'd been knocked back into and pointed a talon back at his accuser.
“But I gave you back your eye! And yes, I danced with Death, but it was to save a village! And the Wendigo, I spared him because I pitied him, because I had learned mercy – a lesson X’on Doth taught me!” He gulped, licked his lips; kept going.. “You can’t just dismiss the right choices in favor of the wrong! I agonized over what I did in Jernot Mey! Remember? I felt guilt! Remorse! I made decisions in a moment of anger, and I regret them! Don’t you see? I made mistakes, I made the wrong choices…because that’s what choice is!
“We, everyone, all of us, we screw up! We make bad decisions, and we live with them, and learn from them! We’re complex, and sometimes we suck, and some
times we do the wrong thing for what we think are the right reasons! That doesn’t make us evil, that makes us mortal! We grow, and we change, and hopefully we become better than we were! Wherever you’ve been all this time, whatever you’ve been doing, didn’t you learn something while you were there?”
The dragon snorted.
I was awake, it said, its tone dark. The Humans had found a way to banish us, just before we had obliterated their stain from our world. For four hundred years, I was in Nothing. Four hundred years spent searching, probing, waiting. And when I finally escaped, when I finally found liberation from my prison, I discovered I was entrapped once again, confined to the primitive cage of flesh in which you found me. The only remnant of my great treasures, a book that twisted my tongue into the base vulgarity of your mortal languages. Of all my great and terrible might, nothing remained but my mind. A mind which I bent towards one goal: finding the being who would represent this new world – someone to judge as we were judged. Someone who could bring me home, so that I could be myself again, without the pain of transformation – pain that held me in that ridiculous form for so long.
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