by Sain Artwell
It was a wyrm of conjoined cliff crabs the size of firewagons, each blackmetal segment of its form a blasphemous caricature of draconic life with asymmetric limbs from miniscule to titanic. A mane of mobile cables wormed around its shoulders, flaring into a mantle. Amidst those cables sprouted ten arms forty feet long and made of interlocked blades. At the top, protected by the cable mane, was a face composed of a hundred spy glasses, cannons, and all manner of tubes of unknowable purpose.
The third highest crab segment unraveled a series of interlocked plates held in place by small arms. White gas poured out from a chamber as it opened. Inside was a cylindrical machine slotted with ten tubes of that ochre metal. A thin mechanical limb pointed at one particular tube studded with four pulsing, glowing vestiges—Mlevanosk’s vestiges.
Alron inclined his head in a show of gratitude. “Much appreciated.”
“A show of trust, for future friendship,” Rasdrev said. The layers of armor slotted back in place over the vestiges.
Alron drew a deep breath.
No more distractions.
Alron released a long exhale, relishing the lightness of his breath and release of tension in his body, as he flexed his muscles and limbered his joints. With his dragon-core half drained of vis and Fei incapacitated, he was far from his prime, but he didn’t mind. Such was the reality of war. Such was life. Alron smiled.
“Let us begin,” he said.
And Rasadrev replied, “Let’s.”
They bolted into motion.
In a single flying bound, Alron closed the distance. His glaive spun, channeling his momentum into destruction. Vents all around Rasdrev exploded in a burst of dragonfire, thrusting his mass backwards, out of range. His bulk rotated, seemingly leaving open a vulnerability, when, on the last instant, out of nowhere, a score of vents opened before Alron’s face.
The discharge of dragonfire slammed him harder than a metal wall, blinded him, scorched him, and sent him tumbling backwards. In the instant before he was thrown out of range, one of Rasdrev’s building-sized bladed limbs struck from above and buried Alron into the ground.
His bones rattled and teeth bled. Alron bounced from the crater. Rasdrev’s weapons swung at him, slow despite being accelerated by dragonfire thrusters on the arm. However, all ten of them moved as one and beneath a partial invisibility. Furthermore, unlike Alron, Rasdrev possessed at least one foresight oracle’s vestige, if not multiple.
Squeezing strength from his vis-starved heartstrings, Alron forced his body to accelerate, weaving between the flurry of bladed whips the size of trees.
Rasdrev moved as if he saw a future ten steps ahead, and calculated another twenty. Alron’s advantage of speed was entirely negated. Almost. Rasdrev underestimated him at every turn, if only by a claw’s width.
“Marvelous…” Rasdrev’s weapons withdrew.
He leaned backwards. Bright white fire gathered deep in the throats of the hundred pipes along the length of his mechanical wyrm. Dente flew in from the side, screaming in rage as she did, and was swatted away by three titanic limbs, again embedded into a nearby building. Rasdrev released his dragonfire. Colorless heat spilled out in sharp concentrated arcs, homing on Alron.
Each strand of the hundred-headed flail slashed smoldering tears into rock and concrete. Alron danced on the edge of his instincts, evading the whips of white flame, when all of a sudden, the strands entwined into a cage of dragonfire, its bars closing in on him from all sides.
Alron transformed into Living Flame and slipped through the bars as they collapsed on him, and in progress collapsed the entire bridge. In terms of sheer power, the flames of Rasdrev’s machine rivaled those of Carrion Scourge’s strongest creations.
Rasdrev’s fire whips petered out. Smoke wisped from his pipes. While Alron was regaining his physical form, over a hundred cannons, ranging from three as thick as battleship artillery to smaller batteries equal to shoulder-cannons, exploded in a deafening barrage of flashes.
Not wanting to risk a Living Fire form getting shredded by starsteel, Alron dragonized the ground and shot towards Rasdrev’s body. Metal whizzed above-head. Stray bullets punctured his wings and shredded scales off his back. Not enough damage to stop Alron.
Not enough to save Rasdrev. His insight into the future was as imperfect as his weapons. Oh, the ensemble of vestiges and technology was certainly impressive. Their destructive might eclipsed that of the greatest awakened master by far, rivaling Alron in his prime, perhaps Carrion Scourge’s mortal avatar. But Alron saw through the facade of indomitable strength.
Rasdrev’s machine was a balancing act. Its power erupted in short controlled bursts. It was as much enabled by metal as it was held back by it. Metal overheated, bent, and buckled. It could not contain such immense power.
Alron reached the bottom of its titanic body, sank his glaive in the center mass, and began to tear it apart.
Pipes split open and spat steam and dragonfire at stone-piercing pressures. Alron’s wings tangled Rasrev’s arms, and though it strained his muscles, he held them in place, while peeling off the sheets of blackmetal with his claw, digging ever closer to the vestige cylinders. Ochre metal gleamed beneath blackmetal pistons. Mlevanosk’s vestige loomed in view. Too late, did Alron see a dark blue figure hurtling at them. Too late, did he begin to turn to dodge.
A lance of deepest frost lanced his lower abdomen all the way through and through Rasdrev’s machine. Alron’s scales froze in place, his blood thickened, and his muscles cracked from ice crystals. Numbness penetrated his bones.
Alron grit his teeth. Dente delivered another strike, barely blocked by Alron’s glaive. The force of it sent him into Rasdrev, and Rasdrev began teetering backwards. A third blow came from above, Dente’s weapon turning into a massive icy warpick, its pick poised to crack his skull. Instead, it met his glaive. The two engaged in a rapid exchange of violence, her morphcore weapon changing with every blow and block, his dragonized glaive bending, matching every blow through superior instinct and skill, neither able to push the other a single step.
Alron cursed. “He is no foe you can underestimate. You’ll doom us both.”
Rasdrev’s broken pipes sputtered until flames no longer leaked. Plates from different parts of his body shifted to cover the exposed innards. The metal wyrm straightened its titanic frame. Cannons and dragonfire vents took aim at the two broken dragons.
“Unlikely,” replied Dente, all but her burning eyes hid behind scales.
Cannons barked in an orchestra of deafening boom and blinding flash. Whips of dragonfire reached out, and a storm of fire and metal thundered upon them.
Hundreds of impacts pinned Alron against the ground. His wings tore. His scales tore from his flesh. His bones shattered. More than a few bullets had been laced with starsteel—Alron felt them carve wounds through his dragonsoul, bleeding his already depleted vis dangerously low. And then in came the fire. Every hole in his flesh filled with fresh agony. Tissue charred. Blood boiled. Pain filled every second, every thought.
Alron’s vision blurred into focus as he lay in a crater, pieces of metal embedded in his back and front. He coughed, clenching his muscles to stand on broken bones. “Fool.”
“Finally…” Dente vomited blood, her mask broken and armor torn. Her morphcore weapon lay unconscious beneath her, the rest of her companions nowhere to be seen. “…I will be free of you.”
“What you will be is a brain floating in a cocktail of drugs and vis, trapped in a tube in a room next to mine for all eternity.”
“Sorcerer King would never let it happen.”
“Sorcerer King no longer rules Blackmetal City, and soon he will not rule anywhere.” Alron kicked off the ground and avoided Rasdrev’s limbs.
The swing adjusted, aiming at Dente’s bonded man. She lunged in to save him and paid the price. The slam sent her flying a hundred paces into the wall of the Cold Slab. A small barrage of cannons unleashed upon her a punishment of bullets, followed by several whips of
fire.
Meanwhile, Alron battled the arms, feeling weaker with every blow. Fury swelled in his breast. Like a suicidal bird, that star damned fool was diving straight into the deepest pit of misery she could find.
“Dente!” he bellowed through the battle. “You’ve witnessed Rasdrev’s City. Will you be the one to plunge Ascendancy under his rule?”
“Curious. You care for the Ascendancy?” Rasdrev asked, turning his fire-whips and cannons upon Alron.
“No,” he replied, a grin tugging at the corner of his lip. “But she does.”
Wingless and wounded, she charged like a broken bullet, her weapon once more a massive longcleaver and glazed with frostfire. Rasdrev shifted to intercept her with a deadly embrace of his firewhips, diverting firepower from Alron. A fatal mistake.
Alron dragonized the ground and squeezed vis from his core and into his vestiges, and dashed with explosive speed, scaling Rasdrev’s mountainous body faster than his bladed limbs could move, and driving the glaive straight into where he’d seen the massive cylinder holding Mlevanosk’s vestige. It didn’t penetrate deep enough.
Firewhips blasted outward, engulfing Dente. Alron hopped back and punched the end of the glaive with his full strength, shattering what bones remained in his arm into splinters. Agony shot up his spine.
The glaive shot through what passed for Rasdrev’s spine—all the way through.
“Marvelous. You exceed every expectation. I must…” The mechanical wyrm reared, struggling to balance itself on wheezing thrusters and failing arms. Cannons fired and flails of fire lashed out, but not with the focus they’d had before. Both Alron and Dente dodged with ease, throwing frostfire and missiles of dragonized debris at Rasdrev, throwing his aim off further so he tore holes in the bridges and cables around them. The entire web that had surrounded the battlefield came tumbling down on them! Explosions of steam and fire began to swell Rasdrev’s frame.
“…thank you for your cooperation. This has been an excellent stress test,” said Rasdrev.
With a bang, a spider-legged metal imitation of a wyrmkin shot from his neck and sprinted towards a hole in the web.
Dente made a beeline towards Cold Slab, towards Mlevanosk and Sofi.
Alron cursed. Mlevanosk’s vestiges were inside the about-to-explode metal wyrm. While vestiges could survive a lot of beating, they could be damaged, especially if hit with fragments of starsteel.
Regardless of whether or not it was the best choice, Alron moved. Rasdrev’s judgement would have to be delayed. He reached the opening into the cylinder chamber, tore Mlevanosk’s vestige cylinder off its hinges, and chased after Dente.
Before he’d made it halfway, Avatar of Metal Dawn exploded. Alron clutched the cylinder tight to his chest.
Air pressure slammed into his back and through his body with the force of a thousand warhammers. The blast lifted Alron off the ground. Heat of the dragonfire explosion reached him next. The brilliant, vibrant, chaotic fire was borne from a fusion of dragonfires never meant to merge. Alron lost consciousness for half a heartbeat.
He regained it, recovered his step, and continued running. Fire burnt every hair off his body and melted off his skin. His organs convulsed. Blood shot through every orifice. Liquid pain filled unknown cavities in his skull, punched his eardrums, and drew red-black curtains over his vision. Just barely, he saw an opening in the falling metal web and went for it. It came down rumbling, billowing dust and crushing everything that remained of the bridges and Rasdrev’s wyrm.
His entire body broken twice over, Alron squeezed out the last drops of his vis, running on nothing but the power of his vestiges puppeteering shattered muscles. He entered the Cold Slab.
…Alron… vis? …ready… I’m ready…
Soon, my beloved, soon… Alron didn’t remember when he’d last wheezed for air, but he did now.
Each step heavier than the last, Alron retraced Dente’s journey. He followed the trail of broken doors, frost-coated hallways, destroyed sentinels, and unconscious wyrmkin. Water sprinkled down from nozzles next to the flickering ceiling lanterns. Muted and distant, an alarm blared. Intense and inescapable, suffering suffused every fiber of his being, all-encompassing in its intensity, if also nostalgic.
The last being to so test his mettle had been a dragongod. Alron’s memories of it had long since been eroded of details. But his body recalled the pain never ending, and the flame never dwindling, which drove him on. Peaceful sea-winds had nearly blown dead that flame. Now, it rekindled, swelled by the bellows of his wrath.
…bursting… vis…
Or, it may have been Fei’s wrath all along echoed into his mind by their bond. Nonetheless, Alron liked the feel of this flame.
Alron crossed a vast chamber of alien machinery of metal and glass wrought in the likeness of the innards of living beings. Bubbles and fluid trickled through them—the same pale fluid, which bled from the innards of the sentinels strewn across the chamber, liquid vis.
Sprinklers in the ceiling were washing off blood and oil. Thick viscera pooled atop the clogged drains. Alron yanked the cloaks off of a few redcloaks and wrapped them around himself, dragonizing them into an armor of scales. He also set soulfire to open containers of liquid vis, and breathed it all in. As imperfect as his control of the vis-consuming flames was, the sheer volume of vis to consume was more than enough to replenish his depleted core.
Aah… It’s forming… It’s forming…
Stay inside for now, my beloved.
Cold air crawled over Alron’s fresh burns. A pungent stench of alcohol cleansed that of grime and gore. Alron reached a declining hallway flooded in light. Up ahead, framed by bright white light, Dente stood in a spherical chamber of machines, her face hid by a renewed armor of scales.
Her right claw held Sofi’s neck and her left grasped the morphcore weapon, holding it against a brain in an oval glass container. Dente’s two other companions lay deeper inside the room, both gravely injured. The fleshbender promised by Mlevanosk’s Friends was nowhere to be seen. Worrying…
Alron’s steps echoing against the metal grid. He maintained a measured pace, so as to not betray the breadth of his injuries.
“Stop there,” said Dente, her voice distanced by Alron’s broken ears.
Alron met her icy stare, his pace uninterrupted.
Dente pressed her claw into Sofi’s neck, causing the girl to wince from pain and thrash against her chains—which Alron noted were not of heat-resistant metal nor starsteel. He continued walking.
“STOP OR SHE DIES!” A drop of desperation tainted Dente’s shout, and her claw dug deeper, drawing blood.
Unconcerned, Alron continued his slow approach, stopping a mere three feet from Dente.
“Don’t make another move or she dies,” said Dente.
Alron cracked his neck, grunting softly. It hurt. Most of his spine was broken. He examined Mlevanosk’s containment chamber, the beeping machines, the glass-pipes, and control panel. This had been her prison for long, long years; years long enough to forget a life, lead a new one, and grow jaded. This tiny room… No. Her true prison was smaller still than the room or the tank. Alron stared at the wrinkled gray blob within the tank, clinging onto the pain to keep himself calm.
“Can she hear us?” asked Alron calmly.
Frustration edged onto Dente’s voice. “I’m speaking to you, Betrayer!”
“She can… They told me to turn off her speech—” Sofi was interrupted by Dente pressing her claw deeper, dangerously deep now.
“Silence, or I shall make it so, by the Stars I swear.”
“Swear less and act more, Dente,” said Alron. “You are a Knight of Myrwing and a princess. This is unbecoming of you.”
“I—”
“One of the sovereigns has betrayed your precious Ascendancy, and survived thanks to your meddling. And yet, here you stand. A claw on the throat of a misguided slave and the subject of cruelest imprisonment imaginable by wyrmkind. Is this the bright future you
r Sorcerer King seeks?”
The words hung in the air. Constant pain and bubbling of liquid vis punctuated the silence.
“Dente,” Alron began, “It is no chance alignment of Stars that caused you to succeed in attaining broken dragonhood this close to Fei’s escape. Even I can see that much.”
Her brows furrowed. Dente’s claws remained in place.
What? It’s not?
No, Fei. Sorcerer King is no fool. He kept his eye on each of our prisons, and would’ve seen your escape attempt. This was his ploy to force Rasdrev’s hand, perhaps more…
He’s using us… After all this, he’s still using us. How dare… Fei cursed in words she’d made up in her shadowed cell.
Always did. Always acting through proxies and prophecies. But not for long. He deems us to be simpleminded tools, swords so sharpened by insanity and single-mindedness that we’re incapable of a thought aside from vengeance… which is only partially true. We may be set in our ways, but we still listen. We learn. We will learn his plans and unfold them and make him regret he ever treated us or our daughter as mere tools.
Alron’s gaze moved from Dente to Mlevanosk. “Mlevanosk…” He was at a loss for words. Despite the pain, despite Rasdrev surviving, and their situation being as dire as that of a fish in a fire, a soft smile crept upon Alron’s lips. “…it’s good to see you again. I am sorry I took so long. We will see each other soon.”
He cast Sofi a regretful, yet thankful look. The girl deserved a better fate, but she agreed to her role, and Alron was far too selfish to let her life outweigh Mlevanosk’s, even if indoctrination was the sole reason she had agreed.
“I cannot allow you to walk out of this room alive and stronger than before,” said Dente. “You would have her arm you with weapons as she has armed Rasdrev and bring about cataclysmic destruction.”
“You will. You’re the same as I was,” said Alron. “Would you kill an innocent for a cause, which you have cause to doubt? All she has done is suffer by Rasdrev’s claws.”