Dragon Aster Trilogy

by S. J. Wist

  “She dishonors us all by her endless warmongering. A simple hearing of her voice would remind her people that she fights for a peaceful future, and not more blood.”

  “It is not your place to tell my sister what she should and should not do, and your attempts to do so do not sit well on my stomach.” Erebus got to his feet and straightened his military-cut uniform.

  “Then make her at least call the Feharin Army back to our shores,” Solar pleaded and caught his arm. “There is nothing on the Torian Continent that we could need.” Solar’s green eyes flashed from the candlelit decorations as their flames could not hide her own selfishness.

  “Asil is convinced that there is a dangerous evil emerging from there, and I will believe and follow her as should you. She is our Caelestis, and everything she has done has been for our own good. You should show some respect to those bleeding with her on the battlefield, while you curl your hair here.”

  Solar slapped Erebus across the face with her fiery rage behind it. “That monster is the only reason your sister is still in that throne of power she corrupts.” She stormed upstairs at that, her long red waves swaying back and forth behind her.

  Erebus touched his face for where it might have hurt, if her fire had ever been strong enough to burn him.

  “Lord Erebus,” a servant said as he stopped and bowed before him. “Moon has returned.”

  Which meant Asil was back, and Erebus could stop hiding in the shadows from all her not-so-loyal subjects.

  As much as he would never turn against his own sister, Solar had a point. The Sylvan people were losing faith in her. The chimeras had lost. After their strike against Toria, the Last War would be over. There would be no more enemies to kill. Even if his sister felt she only existed for battle.

  He headed for outside as the usual awe followed Moon’s arrival. Keeping track of Asil’s actions would have been easier if Erebus could get a grip on her oversized pet. Moon was a complex creature trapped in the simplicity of life. In death, nightmares had to be extinguished quickly before they could spread. The future was less significant than remembering all of the past. Souls had to be watched, followed and protected and it was easier when they were dead. In life, Moon still clung to the rules of the realm of death rather than those of life. The struggle to survive was pointless to him. He had no emotions to feel the worth of living.

  Moon was taught most of what he knew by Asil herself. When he rose onto a battlefield, nothing remained behind. The black-furred serpent was a master of delivering death like he was once at preserving it, and would obey Asil to the last. Even if her own court was on the verge of voting her from the throne she never sat on.

  When Erebus reached the courtyard, he saw Moon, but as he looked through the crowd he couldn’t sense his sister. “Moon, where is Asil?”

  Moon opened his claws, as his long black fur moved to reveal her festra. Then he set it on the ground before Erebus. It was in that moment that Moon understood the full emotional pain of losing the life of someone he loved.

  It was in that moment that Erebus would not live on without her.

  Kas woke from the nightmare with a start when Urio came into his room. He had forgotten what sleep felt like, and the nightmares that haunted it.

  “Master Kas?”

  “Where am I?” He recovered from his sudden waking and sat up. His vision cleared to see that Hain had dragged him to Urio’s tavern during his time unconscious.

  “Are you healing alright?” Urio asked, as the large phelan somnus came the rest of the way into the small room.

  Kas looked himself over briefly, before looking to his Mei on his left arm. He could feel that Sybl was close. He got to his feet with the relief that she was still alive. When he looked out the window, he realized that she was also lost in the mob of the Festival attenders, and the Fall’s griffins were everywhere. “Can I borrow some of your Pack?”

  “Yea, yea, of course,” Urio replied, then closed his eyes to reach by psi the few who worked for him.

  Kas picked up his cloak from the chair next to the bed, and draped it around him before heading downstairs. He pulled his hood over his head as he left the tavern, and turned in the street for where he sensed his soultwin.

  8: DESTINY MASKED

  A flash of light passed Sybl’s eyes. Then the haze faded as if by a warm sunrise. Only there was no sun on Aster. She had gone around the Harbor in circles to find nothing. No one answered her either, leaving her to wonder if she had turned invisible and was the last one to realize it. She had dozed off in an alleyway, and awoke to find someone standing before her.

  “This is so out of bounds, Princess! You’re in big trouble!”

  She had to blink a few times to see the dragoon standing before her. His eyes were masked in silver and his body was cloaked in black. Only a few strands of his thin, light green hair escaped from under his hood. “Loki?”

  He caught her in the air when she sprung to her feet to hug him, and he returned it. “I am never playing hide-and-go-seek with you again. This was too much.”

  Sybl didn’t know what to say, so she gave into the weight of the breakdown within her, and started crying on his shoulder.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, catching her face between his hands. “It’s alright now.” He took her unicorn mask off of her face, and then took off his silver one. “Here, just in case anyone is following you, they can follow this unicorn instead.” He slid his mask over her face and put the unicorn one over his own. “Now you have to stop crying, or you’ll rust it.”

  She smiled, and then lifted the mask just enough to wipe away her remaining tears from under it. “How are you here?”

  “It’s complicated.” Taking her hand, he led her out of the alleyway and into the street where the festivities continued. “And you really know how to get lost in a party.”

  “It’s my birthday. I think,” Sybl replied, trying to process both his presence and everything else at once.

  “It’s missing—like everything,” Loki joked, as a float went by with bright decorations in the parade. Then the idols of the caels it carried were set on fire as a part of the show. “Okay, well maybe not everything. It’s time to go.”

  Sybl and Loki lost their presence in the crowd of people. Everyone was extravagantly dressed in suits, satin dresses, and festively decorated masks to cover their faces. She stayed close to him, as somehow he was able to navigate the streets with ease and towards an exit from the Harbor. But it was blocked by four Falls soldiers.

  ‘I’ll get you out of here, Princess. Hold on.’ Loki looked up then to where his somn hovered high above detection. He left her thoughts for a moment to command his somn, and it immediately responded by flying about and grabbing several Threads in its mouth. Then it unleashed a rain of fire around them.

  Loki had hoped the guards would move and follow after his distraction, but they didn’t, even as the panic spread of there being a dragon nearby. Several floats and tents turned into pyres.

  So he tried a more direct approach and landed his somn behind the guards, startling them. His somn attacked the griffin somnus soldiers in a connecting fury of claws, teeth and fire. It would have not been able to harm the unsomned souls without Sybl with him.

  Sybl and Loki ran towards where his dragon somn had cleared the exit, and it enveloped them in a light green mist before pulling them both into it. Once he had control of his dragon form, Loki spread his wings and took to the air away from the Harbor.

  But they weren’t out of the clear yet, as two fully armored griffins flew straight for them. One collided directly with his wing, sending the claws of its sharp talons through his skin.

  Loki let out a cry as he unleashed a flare of fire at the half bird, half lion, but it only reflected harmlessly off its black armor. The second one caught his other wing, and both of them forced him to land in a painful drop. His back leg went limp for a moment before his aeri energy within him healed it.

  His wings torn, Loki frantically t
ried to think of a way to get out of this one alive. He slipped away from a chain that was thrown at him, and ducked when another griffin swooped over. Then something invisible caught the same griffin and pulled it from the sky.

  At first he thought by miracle it was Cirrus, but instead it turned out to be a phelan Awl only meters away from him.

  “Heal your wings and get out of here with her! Move!” Hain shouted at him.

  Loki focused on that as the phelan somnus was now shooting and cutting down their attackers by sword and gunfire. The moment he could feel all the wind under his wings again, he lifted himself back in the air, and retreated as more phelan joined the fight.

  9: EMOTIONS

  Sybl found herself locked in a Vision of the past, standing in front of the Eternal Waters. She was on a beach again, but this one was different. A shadow lay in the sand, but as she looked closer she could see that it was not a shadow, but a wingless dragon. His long fur moved not with the tide’s breeze, but from his own estus energy within. His entirety seemed like a static rift in the very essence of reality.

  With one of his lazily stretched out hands, he tried to playfully catch an Iynx. The white, cat-like creature avoided capture in playful swirls of sand. “I’ll squish you if I have to,” Moon said as he set his hand and claws over the white cat like a cage. “Now where did Asil go?”

  Sybl looked back at Moon as the dragon focused its gaze in a different direction down the beach.

  “Tenu, have you seen Asil? I can’t find her anywhere.”

  “You know she hates parties, particularly her own. You would have better luck finding her on the Torian Continent, on the battlefield.”

  “Should you not be at the celebration with the rest of them?”

  “I have the same view as her when it comes to any kind of celebration,” Tenu replied, as her long black hair hung in stillness around her body. “But she’s been so depressing as of late that I feel it like a contagion.”

  “When this war is over, Damek won’t be the most beautiful one in her eyes anymore,” Moon said as he looked at the Iynx who had sat down and was content to listen quietly. “He’s the one who has been weighing her heart down with despair.” He lifted his claws off of the white cat then. “I found a beautiful one with golden hair like the stones of the Sylvan City and blue eyes like the skies of Earth. I have only to catch him before he finds a way back to his world.”

  “A Sentry?”

  “This one is different. I’ve been watching it for weeks now, and they only think that I cannot see them through the invisibility they cloak themselves in.”

  “I don’t think the Caelestis would want you to start a war with Earth,” Tenu said.

  “They will not miss one of their own. They have no emotions to attach themselves to one another. It’s an Iynx, like this one,” Moon said as he nudged the cat with the top of his claw, “who has learned to adapt and become independent from Hino in its thoughts and actions.”

  “And you claim to have emotions?”

  “I feel her constantly,” Moon replied as he dragged his claws through the sand. “I can feel her more than anyone else.”

  “Do you feel remorse for the enemies you have killed? Or pain when a comrade is struck in battle? Do you feel loved when others sacrifice themselves to better your existence? Or betrayal when they forsake you?”

  Moon didn’t answer the mermaid right away as he took his hand back in. “Were you so different once? You may have taken on the emotions in that body you wear now, but have you learned all there is to having them?”

  “You are fortunate that you have my pity, or else I would smite you down for that comment,” Tenu replied as the waves rose higher. “Have you not so much as tried to ask her to give you a human form and soul like she gave Damek? Have you thought about what will happen if they take what you do as an act of war—or worse yet—if the creature devours and absorbs your power instead?”

  The Iynx’s ears perked up with more interest to the conversation.

  “It won’t come to that. Besides, I have every right to take it for being on this world. Maybe they need a solid reminder to keep their spies away.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Tenu asked as she walked closer to the wingless dragon. “Have you ever stopped to think that Asil doesn’t love you, before you put us all in danger with your senseless idea to try and win her heart? You still have no idea how to hold it without shattering it to pieces.”

  “Asil does love me. When I am as beautiful as that Sentry, I will be the one she looks at. She will love me more than Damek, because I have nowhere in my heart where she isn’t there.”

  Tenu shook her head and then started to wade into the water, before vanishing under the next wave.

  Moon stood up and put his front hand in the Eternal Waters, creating a Rift to enter the Keol through.

  “Moon, wait!” Sybl cried after him.

  The black serpent stopped and looked back, but he didn’t seem to see her. But the Iynx looked directly at her with his green eyes.

  10: JASPER

  Loki unsomned and sat down amongst the densely positioned trees of the woods, setting Sybl who remained asleep on the ground beside him with his cloak for a pillow. He didn’t know if his somn had used her energy to heal and escape, but he could only guess that it did with how exhausted she was. While the heavy, dark estus energy of the Atrum loomed over them, it made just about everything exhausting. Loki told himself to be more careful with somning with Sybl in the future. The last thing he had expected that day was the phelan who had taken his Princess on the Torian Continent later help him escape with her.

  He looked around the forest, trying to get some idea of where they were now. It was a good time to be lost in the world, with most of its inhabitants currently hunting them both down.

  A memory of the look in his brother’s eyes before he had fled Mer City went through his mind, and he shook his head to the side. Loki had made his choice to save the Princess, while Lintrance had chosen Solar who was reborn in the body of his daughter, Rose. His daughter who would have killed Sybl had Aragmoth’s grace not been watching over her. With Rose came the monster that was the Phoenix.

  Loki still couldn’t fathom any of it, as she had been a normal girl, much like Sybl. Now her soul was in the fire serpent that had emerged from the Keol as a titan. The Texts read that Solar was forever separated from her Ancient—but somehow it wasn’t anymore, and he didn’t understand how or why.

  He set his hand gently on Sybl’s hair, praying that Aragmoth was keeping an eye on them still. He thought about everyone back at the Dragon Caverns and Toria, and the few descendants of Moon who remained, Cecil for one. He couldn’t bring himself to think of how Cecil would react on finding out his Bond was all the while, Solar.

  There was no saying what would become of Loki’s home, or his life for that matter. He was once so much closer to being called a Prince of Toria. But now Fevre was dead, and with him died any chance he might have of being someone more. All he had left now was his Princess.

  An eerie Call went out through the trees, drowning out his thoughts with its saddening song. It was followed by a howl.

  Loki looked around in fear, before picking up Sybl into his arms in case he had to quickly somn in defense. For this was the territory of the True, and no Ancient or eminor was safe from the predators that preyed on spirits.

  The scentless, massive dark spirits, surrounded them as the wind came to a complete stop. When the red eyes of one of the phelan looked directly at him, he held Sybl tight enough to squeeze her awake.

  “Loki?”

  “Sybl, stay calm.”

  She looked at what froze him in place. “Whatever you do, don’t somn.”

  The trees seemingly moved aside, as the True walked over to them. The wolf-like, black creature was easily the size of a small house, but it didn’t so much as leave a footprint where it stepped.

  Loki’s light green dragon Ancient wrapped itself around them a
s tight as it could. It was now little more than an appetizer.

  The True continued to watch him. Loki could feel it rummaging through his thoughts. For all he knew, it could have seen his entire life in the time it took to blink. “Wait a minute… Jasper? Is that you?”

  “Loki? So it is you. You are a long way from home.”

  Loki let out the longest breath of relief, as he loosened his grip on Sybl who remained stunned that the True was speaking. “How are you over here?”

  “We travelled the Keol after my town of Berion was flattened by an Aeger kyrie. High Priest Kas has been giving my Pack refuge at the Sanctus, and we do what we can to protect it in turn.” Jasper turned his red eyes to Sybl, before releasing a great deal of his estus energy to shrink to a much smaller size. “My apologies, my Lady Caelestis. My old mind took a moment to believe you were both here outside of a Vision.”