by S. J. Wist
“Is that all?” Gwa asked.
“He wants us to kill the humans,” Cirrus said, looking up to the rooftops of the buildings in the alley. “It angers the Sentry and sends them after us.”
Kenshe and Gwa stopped, taking notice to what he saw.
“Looks like they put out all the lights, too. Well, since we’re here, we might as well give them the full Aster experience,” Gwa said and somned to start climbing the building next to him, his talons breaking through bricks as he did. Kenshe followed him up, and Cirrus walked into the street.
Cirrus remembered the same buildings from Nafury’s memory of Earth that they stood amongst. He looked up again as he heard Gwa cry out.
“We aren’t alone!” the griffin hollered down.
Gwa’s cry got the attention of several people, and it was enough to create a mass panic at the sight of the griffin. Cirrus somned by instinct as several heavy machines were tossed about in the street by an invisible force. The trap was sprung, and the Sentry were coming for them.
37: UNFORGOTTEN FRIENDSHIPS
The city was turned into chaos as it was overtaken by creatures that had been hidden in myths and fairy tales until now. Sybl came to a stop in the street as the mob of fleeing people ran past her. She looked up to what they were so terrified of. Damek had flow to the rooftop of her old building in his monstrosity of a dragon form.
She looked back as another car flew behind her. The invisible Sentry revealed itself long enough for Xirel to pinpoint where it was and catch it in his antlers. When he caught and tore it apart with the edges of his horns and hooves, its gruesome parts became visible as they were thrown across the street.
“It’s going to be sunrise in thirty minutes. The Sentry will become more powerful with the sun’s rays,” Xirel said.
Sybl needed wings, now. As if her prayer was heard, she looked back as someone was hollering their given name to her.
“Beautiful!” Gwa landed in a rush of white feathers and quickly acknowledged Xirel before looking back at her. “I don’t want to rush you with saving the world, but it’s gonna be sunrise any minute now!”
“Get me up there,” Sybl said and looked at the rooftop with Damek on it.
Gwa just froze in place. Xirel turned to catch another Sentry charging them down the street and he changed his mind about them being safer on the ground. “Okay.” He wrapped his talons around her and then sprung into the air towards Damek. He hastily dropped her off on the rooftop and intercepted the next Sentry to try and get in the middle of what she was here for.
Sybl could see that the strain and weight from the demon dragon would cause the rooftop to cave in at any moment.
“Do you still think you can win?” Damek said as he unsomned and stood before her in the appearance of Nafury.
“I intend to, because I know you can only threaten me in hopes that I’ll just give in. You can’t seriously hurt me because as much as you have tried to hide it, there is no hiding the fact that you are still Nafury.”
“And just what part of that human would you care for? You care no more for him than you do for Earth crumbling apart below.”
“Cirrus believes that there is still some good in you, and so I believe it as well. You’ve made your point—Aster has suffered. So many have died and for what? So you can get closer to a revenge for a calamity that no one so much as remembers anymore? Or do you simply do it for the pleasure of the sick feeling inside you?”
“I wanted peace,” Damek said, walking around her. His golden armor made no sound as he did. “I tried your way of living with our enemies and forgetting the past, but they would not leave us alone. I asked forgiveness from Asteria, and she would not so much as appear to hear me out. She would forgive the Dragon Moon, but not the one she gave her own heart to. So this is the only way to end it and bring peace by wiping out those who would create an endless cycle of wars. This will be the last one.”
“The ‘Last War’ was supposed to be the last of all the fighting, but we all saw how that ended. There will always be someone who gets up after you step on them to get their own revenge. We have to forgive and forget, or it will never end. Asteria is terrified of the monster you have become. The very sheath of the weapon you gave her refused you.”
“Asteria doesn’t matter anymore!” Damek shouted and then hurled a wave of estus energy at her.
Sybl fell to the gravel of the rooftop in pain and dizziness. If he did that again, she would throw up on top of it all.
“The old Aster is gone! And now I will take all of it back and more.”
Sybl pulled herself to her feet and aimed her festra at him. “You have no army, none of your Generals and the only way you’re getting the Sylvan Aur is by killing me. But we both know that won’t get you far, so why don’t you just give up?”
Damek unsheathed his blade and rested it on his arm, pointing it at her. “You have no hope of defeating me.”
“No, I have a few,” Sybl said, as she charged him, then she dodged backwards as Damek’s next strike nearly beheaded her. “Choosing to be reborn as a human means that part of you is now permanent. You’re no faster than I am.” They both exchanged blows with their blades, before Sybl landed hers across his arm deep enough to draw blood.
Damek retaliated and grabbed her by the neck and lifted her off of her feet before she could breathe next. “You are beginning to irritate me.”
Sybl grabbed the hand around her throat and cried out in pain as he used the Curse to inflict the pain he had felt as Nafury through to her. She could see Simera and felt the lashings the King had given him. She felt the swarm of pluma claws and teeth tear at him at the Canyon and all of his sorrows before it. Sybl was on the brink of blacking out when she heard Cirrus calling to her.
Damek suddenly dropped her onto the rooftop as a surge of grief that he couldn’t handle went through him.
She caught his Threads and wrapped them around her Curse as the sun began to rise behind her. “I didn’t come here to save the world, Damek.”
“Then why go through so much trouble?” he asked, amused by her grip on his Threads.
“Because I get it. You didn’t bring me to Aster for the Sylvan Aur, or for your festra. You brought me there to be free of yourself. It’s still in you—Nafury’s hope of stopping this. No matter what you do, you can’t get rid of that hope. Because that hope doesn’t need a Caelestis, or an Aur or anything to glow as brightly as it does in you.”
“Hope. There is no hope.”
Damek hurled another force of estus energy at her. It hit her like a sickening wave of sadness, nearly making the world around her match in darkness. Sybl looked down at the death-drop. A fear worse than falling waited below. Cirrus stood in the street looking up at her. The sunlight would reach around the building and to him in moments. “Cirrus!”
“There is no need to throw away your life. Look at this world. It’s a soulless, cold and unforgiving place. It is what it always was. Together we can wipe out all its evil and start it anew.”
“I’m not interesting in ruling the world, and you’re in no position to speak like you aren’t evil yourself.”
“Then you will share the Fate of all those who defy me. Where your hope dies, my army will ascend.” His next strike cut across her stomach, and he kicked her off of the side of the roof.
She couldn’t fly—and if Cirrus did, he would burn up in the sunlight. But just as she accepted her death, a blue flash of light took Damek’s eyes, and his hand caught her wrist. Nafury. Sybl caught his arm with her other hand, not wanting to question the possibility of her wish coming true for him to return to normal. Had the Sylvan energy from her healed him? Before he could pull her up, she cried out as a flash of lightning revealed the spiritual form of a Sentry overhead. It cut through the sky and came straight for them. She tried to force him to let go, but he didn’t, and the force from the bolt sent them both over the edge.
38: ECLIPSE
Moon let out a shrill cry as th
e sunlight touched the estus energy of his fur, but he caught Nafury and landed with a force as Cirrus was thrown out of his somn and into a tumble down the street.
Nafury shook the impact out of his head, and looked to where his friend was starting to burn from the rays of the sun. He ran to him and grabbed Cirrus, hauling him out of the sunlight and into the building behind him that was damaged by the black dragon’s fall. “No! Not this nightmare again!” He channeled his aeri through his hands and healed Cirrus’ burns before leaving him a moment to try and find the girl.
Nafury ran back to where they had fallen, but she was gone. Even stranger was the sunlight that didn’t ignite his skin. “Sybl!” He covered his eyes from the sunlight, trying to figure out what had just happened. But he only found what his foot did; his own fairy pendant necklace on the ground. He picked it up as the sickening realization that she was gone tightened his fist around it.
He looked at Cirrus and went back to him as the dragoon began to regain consciousness. But the moment their eyes met, Cirrus reached for the blade on his side and came straight at him.
Nafury didn’t have a breath to think about what was wrong with his friend, as his hand went to his side and found his own sword. Cirrus’ came down against his like a hammer that nearly snapped his arm. Are you berserk unsomned? “Cirrus! Stop it! I’m not your enemy!”
“You killed her! I’ll send you right back to the Hell you came from!” Before Cirrus could strike at him again, his somn came out of the shadows and rushed through him, throwing Cirrus across the street. Then the black dragon began to climb up the building to where Nafury’s corrupted somn watched them with its green eyes.
Nafury knew that he had clearly missed something crucial and that he was not in the Time that he thought he was. Cirrus’ somn was supposed to be white; not black as night.
“Moon!” Cirrus cried after the Cael that had caught fire from the sun’s rays. But what the Cael did next he could have never expected. The black dragon dispersed into estus energy, before engulfing Daath on the rooftop in it. He had become a void of darkness to entrap the demon. The sky flashed lightning again, before the power of the Sentries all seemed to come down on him at once. The rooftop exploded, and Cirrus grabbed Nafury and pulled him out of the way as the debris came crashing down into the street.
“Cirrus! We have to get out of here!” Nafury looked back up to the rooftop, as only half the building remained now. Moon had done what Aragmoth had done so many years ago; absorb the Eminor into himself. Only this time it was for one demon, and not a whole world of souls. And this time there was nothing left of either.
The Caelestis’ world was unlike anything he had seen in his Dreams. This was a world of a thousand stars and a hundred castles that didn’t care. A world with so many more people and not one came to help them. He had to get them out of here, but now his somn was destroyed by the one that Cirrus had come here with.
A cry went out from another dragon. Nafury looked in disbelief at Loki as the light green dragon looked briefly around before looking at them.
“Where’s the Princess?” Loki asked.
Nafury didn’t have an answer.
Loki unsomned in a strange manner and walked over to where Cirrus no longer responded to anything. Loki’s eyes glowed in anger, and he went for Nafury’s throat, but something held his new strength back. He let go of Nafury and then hauled Cirrus over his shoulder, pulling him into his somn as he stepped into the sunlight of the street. Then he took to the air, leaving Nafury behind.
39: NEVER BE LOST AGAIN
A warm, blue light covered the frozen world of Aster as the restored Sylvan Aur rose into the sky from the Third Continent. With its light came the promise of another chance. Faster than it had started, those sick with the Aeger woke up from their despair and nightmares to a world defrosting from its own.
Kenshe sat next to Cirrus’ bed, watching the panel in Gwa’s hand. If Loki was right, Nafury was immune to the sunlight like Sybl was and may be alive still. The phelan didn’t look to care or know what to do about the Earth-lost dragon Prince. They simply worked around the clock to bury the ones flash-frozen by Damek’s wrath. All the while waiting for Sybl’s voice in their minds.
Gwa and Kenshe remained silent, as all their thoughts drifted to what might have happened to Sybl. Gwa’s theory was that Aragmoth had taken her back into himself, which would explain the Sylvan Aur the Third Continent had now. As much as Kenshe worried about her, his concerns were for Cirrus as now he was the only one who could find her. Would he ever wake up? Would there be any bringing one of them around with the other gone? Kenshe didn’t have any answers, only sacrifices towards what they had tried so hard to prevent. He pulled himself to his feet and headed out of the room and downstairs. On reaching outside, he looked to the Gate where Nafury emerged from it at the same time. He walked over to him with the same caution he would have used if he were Damek still.
“I told everyone that she was there, but no one would hear it. No one would believe me. To think all the while I was blaming Aragmoth, when it was my own kind who had betrayed me the most. So what are my options now? Exile or be killed as a war criminal?”
Nafury’s sapphire eyes looked at Kenshe with all the sadness they held. He had the same eyes as Sybl, and that alone was what spared him now. “Sybl and Cirrus saved you for a reason, and I want to believe that it was for something they saw that we didn’t. So no, I’m not going to kill you,” Kenshe said. “But I can’t guarantee that no one else will do it for me.” He left Nafury there as he went to help elsewhere.
Nafury lifted the fairy pendant in his hand, remembering how he had watched Sybl try to find a world of dragons through it. But as it swung back and forth, only the Sylvan Aur that glimmered off of it remained of the Fay and not a single memory. His wish had cost him everything, and saved a world that didn’t want him.
Fields of what were once endless ice and snow had already begun to melt and Nafury looked around the world he didn’t remember leaving as such return to its previous state. He entered the house where Cirrus was and went upstairs. Nafury feared that his friend might never wake up again. They had gone through so much pain, and all because of him. A pain that he would be forced to answer for, without any of his own memories to say it actually happened. Nafury forced the tears out of his eyes as he now wished that he had died back on Earth. That the sunlight had killed him. But the humanity in him from his mother had saved him from being burned to nothingness.
“You have some nerve coming back here after everything you’ve done,” the griffin somnus said from where he stood on the other side of Cirrus’ bed.
Nafury hung his fairy pendant from Cirrus’ hand. Now was a sound time to start praying and restoring his faith in Aragmoth, for only the Great Dragon could bring Cirrus and Sybl back now.
The fairy began to spin slowly, and Nafury looked at his friend’s face with the hope that Cirrus had regained consciousness. He caught the pendant in its spin and held it to his palm. It was the last moment that he would feel his pulse, for Cirrus had found where his fairy was now.
40: LAMENT
“My very birth was the Prophecy that was to lead to the Caelestis’ return to Aster and save Aragmoth himself. It would be my death that would curse it all back to the very beginning of hate between the immortal memories of caels. Memories that had not been healed by Time. Forgiveness, it would seem, is more of a mortal belief where life is too short to waste it on bitterness.
“We ruled the skies for two years after Cirrus pulled me to the surface of the Eternal Waters on the day of my Trial of Somn. Of his memory, I know I was dead for the twenty minutes that it took him to do so. Or at least, it felt like death when I woke up on another world. A world so much more advanced than ours. It felt like a Dream that I didn’t want to wake from, but when I did, Cirrus was right there beside me just as he promised.
“I had surfaced from my Trial of Somn baptized in death, to bring death. The phelan of the Atrum�
��s Army had begun to call Cirrus the White Death soon after that day, for wherever we went we brought devastation and a cold, suffocating death. We drove the griffin camps off of the Torian Continent and destroyed one Gate after the other, sending the phelan and griffins fleeing for their lives on every turn. Soon our mere presence was enough to send their armies crying into the hills.
“I became a monster of the skies, and in doing so I was now my father’s most cherished son. No longer was I a useless child. I was the Prince reigning in a new era for our kind with the horrendously deformed and ugly somnus of a dragon form that had been given to me. The era that would see the whole world die by our blades and wings of winter.
“For every life that we took, I could feel a part of my soul die. If Cirrus had let me give up, I might have died within that first year. But in continuing to live and kill, I didn’t care what glory it brought my father’s name or mine. I only did it to see her on Earth in what time I could steal to Dreamwalk. Cirrus seemed to define his own existence by the number of lives he was able to snuff out. If my sacrifice brought them purpose, I would feel happiness from them.
