by Sain Artwell
“He…” The slave girl’s lips parted, about to speak, then closed.
The sight of her uncertainty sent a chill down Kastalos’ spine. “Speak,” he demanded, not caring to veil the impatience in his voice.
“He’s unharmed, Master.”
“Unharmed?”
“Aside from prior injuries, entirely unharmed, Master. Correction, he’s slightly recovered.”
Kastalos reeled backwards, holding his horn. “You said they used starsteel ammunition.”
“Yes, Master. He is charging the sieging battalions directly now! The battalion shot another volley of starsteel. He blocked the rounds with some kind of… it resembles a long shield. He ran straight through and is about to make contact with the front-lines of armored troops.” Ashir paused. Her glazed over eyes widened in shock.
Kastalos struck the armrest of his throne and shouted, “Did I order you to be silent?”
Ashir recoiled, instinctively shielding her recent brand mark, afraid of further disciplining. “No, Master. Over a hundred blackmetal troops were laid low by a single swing of his shield— sword. It is a weapon of some kind. It resembles Rasdrev’s technology, but I have not seen anything like it. I—”
“Enough.” Kastalos beckoned Ashir with his claw. “Come. Show me.”
Ashir blinked rapidly, black sclera and bright gold irises replacing the visions projected over her eyes. She hid her post-scry trembles well, and made haste to Kastalos’ side, coming to kneel before his throne. She reached out to him with a gesture of submission. Reflections of visions spread over her eyes once more, as she cast her gaze across the miles.
“Your hand, Master.”
Kastalos grasped hers and removed one of his protective amulets. A blur of motion flooded his vision. Warcries muffled by explosions of metal and dragonfire filled his hearing. One moment, he saw nothing but smoke and fire.
In the next, a mobile artillery walker flew across the battlefield as if it were a child’s toy, crushing thirty Blackmetal warriors as it tumbled through their ranks. A great impact shook the battlefield, snapping off all the cables of a bridge, plunging a hundred more to fall into the depths of Blackmetal mines where their heavy armor would become their sarcophagi. Some of the scattered troops pointed their polearm cannons at the source of the sound and fired. Others lobbed dragonfire missiles at it. Ordnance bounced off its target in a brisk hail of sharp clinks and sparks, outlining a wide cross-shaped silhouette of an enormous sword.
“Armageddon Blade,” Kastalos whispered under his breath.
Dread tied his guts into a knot as he watched the one-sided massacre unfold across the streets of Blackmetal City. His nightmare had come to life.
In this dream, Kastalos was a helpless spectre, chased by the dragon of his past. A life-devouring soulfire smoldered in the thin eye-slit of its featureless scaled face, boring into Kastalos’ soul, asking why. No matter how you wounded it, it kept coming, as inevitable as a sandstorm or seasons themselves. It could not be stopped. It could not be tricked. It could not be escaped. It was coming for him; his long due reckoning.
“Enough!” Kastalos stood abruptly and shrugged off Ashir’s vision and the shameful thoughts it beckoned. Two dozen of his closest slaves and aides awaited his command.
Kastalos ground his teeth, furious at his weakness. He’d not marshalled the forces of a nation up to Rasdrev’s doorsteps to let his resolve waver, like a wet hatchling. No. He’d marched here prepared to meet Alron claw to claw, his sword held high, and fire hot in his lungs. Was he not the Sovereign of Dustwing Dunes—the patriarch of his clan, nation, and greatest dragonfire master in all of the Ascendancy? Kastalos would rather fall down at his peak than let fear reduce him into a shadow of a man.
In the past, Alron might’ve been the one to strike the final blow on a dragongod, but that didn’t make him invincible. He was wounded, as wounded as he’d ever be. Time to strike was now.
Rising from his throne, Kastalos spread vis through his twenty-three artifacts, awakening powers of the ancient vestiges within. Electric strength charged his muscles. His bones were remade as metal. His eyes peered towards the flickering mirage of future. Wind and fire swelled in his breast, and flames bright as the sky-fires of the north licked up his jadegold horns. Living blades of jadegold animated between his armored wings. In one hand he grasped the Dustbringer and in other the Blazing Mirage—both artifacts from a bygone age of jadegold smithing, each said to equal the power of two awakened masters.
At this moment, he stood before the world as the culmination of the wealth and history of a nation six thousand miles wide, thirty million wyrmkin strong, and thousand years old. While he acknowledged Alron’s might, no longer would he allow himself to fear him.
“Begin the assault,” Kastalos said, striding out of his opulent command tent. “Spread word to maintain loose formation after the City’s artillery is seized, and fortify the position. I will lure Alron out into the open fields, where we shall crush him.”
“Yes, Master,” echoed two dozen voices.
Moments later, ordnance rained upon a southern mountain harboring hidden artillery defences, which immediately returned fire on Kastalos’ mobile artillery units. Explosions tore away swathes of Kastalo’s troops. Distant cliffs cracked, shedding tonnes of rock. In the end, the underground bunkers crumbled as assassins finished what the cannons started. Beneath a dusk as dark and red as the battle ahead, an army of over two-hundred-thousand strong marched on a city of millions to slay one man.
Chapter 21 - Edge of Enlightenment
On broken bones and burning limbs, Alron stepped over bodies of valiant soldiers and up the steps of Rasdrev’s personal castle. He struck down double doors three stories tall and tread across a courtyard of blacksand. Before him stood a seamless tower of blackmetal breaching the City’s domed ceiling. Sands shifted, and a hundred cannons emerged.
Apocalypse matched the beat with Alron’s instincts. He had to but glance at an incoming starsteel salvo and move the blade to block. Upon impact, the projectiles lost the entirety of their momentum, which Apocalypse stored into its ever-accelerating spin-core. Careful not to strain his body, Alron balanced the weight of the massive sword on his shoulders and released a portion of the stored energy with a downward swing. Alron strained to hold onto the handle.
In the split of an instant, the blade slid through the blackmetal floor beneath the sand as if it were air. The shockwave tore through the structure. Supports snapped and ruptured through the sands, walls burst, and flying debris cannoned and sand filled the air.
Alron walked through a five-story tall crack in the side of Rasdrev’s inner fortress. Stairs within were mangled, so Alron dragonized the wall and ran up alongside it, and on his way destroyed defensive measures designed to stop a hundred wyrmkin with a single swipe of Apocalypse. Fei joined him just as he tore open a wall into a massive hangar. Her invisible flames wrapped around him.
You’re quiet, she observed.
What is there to say? Alron executed a wyrmkin in armor and a group of ten sentinels.
Enormous doors folded open at the far end of the hangar, letting in the ashen winds of the wasteland outside of Blackmetal City. A strange battleship, with a score of hundred yard wide wings and three tall masts with whirring propellers stacked atop each other, hovered a foot off the ground, slowly rising.
Alron threw Apocalypse at it and held on. It punched through the entire ship, leaving behind a tunnel of wreckage. Alron hopped off on the other side and stood at the lip of the hangar exit, recharging the sword with idle swings.
Something.
Rasdrev is about to meet his justice.
Alron spotted the spidery form of Rasdrev limping out of the wreckage of his airborne battleship. A brisk pace was enough to catch up to the mad Sovereign. Rasdrev’s nine eyes glanced at Alron over his shoulder. He pulled out a small cannon and shot at Alron, merely for the projectile to be nullified by Apocalypse. Alron stomped Rasdrev’s remaining
limbs into scrap metal, then crushed the lower half of his body, until he was nothing but a head and half a torso, and lastly kicked the thing into a wall, all without the metallic monster so much as grunting in pain.
Transparent fluids and oils bled from Rasdrev’s mechanical remains. His innards groaned as bolts and gears popped and spilled all over. Rasdrev craned his neck to look up at Alron and spoke in his deep, warm voice.
“Is it too late for us to negotiate an outcome where I live? I hold no grudges against you, Alron. You are but a victim of this world’s worm-eat-worm, wyrm-kill-wyrm hierarchy of strength. A world which Mlevanosk and I endeavoured to change.”
“You did what you thought wisest,” Alron observed dispassionately.
“Indeed. You understand. All to bring about freedom from vestiges and dragon-cores, true equality, a chance for wyrmkin to rise above the prison of our creators. A path to a future free of dragongods.”
“Hm.” Alron regarded his sword as he relished the moment. “Mlevanosk left a key to such a future.”
Rasdrev’s eyes widened. “Of course. Of course! I knew you were more than destruction without a cause. Spare me. Share her secret with me, and I swear I shall dedicate my life to honoring her dying wish. I will assist your campaign to overthrow the Sorcerer King.”
“Very well.” Alron nodded.
He struck Apocalypse through the hangar floor and knelt beside Rasdrev. Alron reached inside the blackmetal rib-cage and closed his claw around a worn visaltium cartridge. Slow and steady, he tugged it. Pipes and cables snapped, sending involuntary jerks and twitches through Rasdrev.
“…at… are… doing?”
“Honoring her dying wish.” Alron continued to tug, watching Rasdrev’s confusion grow.
The creature attempted to jerk away and plead in broken croaks, up until the brain cartridge was on Alron’s palm. Alron cut it open with a tip of his claw and blew onto it a gentle wisp of soulfire. The liquid vis caught in a conflagration of azure fire, engulfing Rasdrev’s brain in seconds.
“There. In death, all are equal.” Alron dropped the cartridge and retrieved his sword.
“He died too painlessly,” Fei sneered.
“There was no pain we could’ve inflicted onto him that he had not experimented on. Death is the only punishment we can give to a creature that detached from life.”
“Still… Bah. Whatever.” Fei spat on Rasdrev’s skull.
She and Alron watched soulfire run its course in companionable silence. It lasted several moments, until the beating of wings drew Alron’s gaze to the open hangar doors. Alron drew a deep breath.
“Kastalos,” he said softly.
Kastalos!
Fei’s eyes widened. Her flames bloomed into an inferno ten times her size, fueled by a century of animosity of such fathomless bitterness that the spilling second-hand rage seeping into Alron through their bond almost had him lunging at the man without a word. This was by far more intense than Mlevanosk’s weary resentment; this was hatred which matched the intensity of tranquil fury within Alron.
“Alron. Fei.” Kastalos regarded them with the respectful nods expected of a sovereign.
Alron returned it, whilst Fei struggled to contain her murderous impulses, filling Alron’s mind with her telepathic ramblings as she seethed, visibly shaking.
Faintly, Alron recalled memories from a hundred years ago, when this man had been as close as a brother knight to him. They’d fought side-by-side to stop Carrion Scourge from devouring the Ascendancy and its surrounding nations. They’d shed blood together on a dozen battlefields, and tears over Ori’s untimely demise.
“Years have served you well. Your sister would be proud of your strength,” said Alron, holding onto Fei’s shoulder. Hold. He’s provoking us.
Fei leaned forward, muttering incoherent curses.
Kastalos chuckled and shook his head. “A soft soul like her, I doubt she’d be overjoyed with any of us right now.”
“Hm. No, I doubt she would be,” replied Alron, wryly smiling.
A pause lingered.
Kastalos sighed. “I won’t make excuses. I did it to rise above my limits.”
Stole my baby girl! HE STOLE OUR PRECIOUS GIRL!
Alron pursed his lips into a line, and asked, “Was it worth it, a century as a sovereign?”
“Aye,” said Kastalos with a languid smile. “I had a good life.”
Deep down, deep beneath the layers of conflicted resentments he held towards Kastalos, Alron was glad for him, and said as much. Kastalos thanked him for the last time.
“Then, if there is nothing more to be said…” Alron hefted Apocalypse onto his shoulder and ordered Fei to coat his body.
Kastalos relaxed his shoulders, hefting artifact weapons in both hands. “I’ve nothing left that words could express.”
Alron swung his blade and unleashed its energy to propel them across the length of the hangar in a fraction of a heartbeat. He pierced Kastalos’ head. The man dispersed into fine misty flames. The world began to unravel around them, as if it were a mirage.
All of sudden, Alron and Fei were outside the City in the center of a formation of hundreds of awakened masters and sentient beasts from the Dustwing Dunes. On all sides, left, right, up, center, and below, they were surrounded. Half the awakened masters had each sculpted a dragonfire missile of immense power and detail, creating a true menagerie of animated fire-spirits. Half wielded ancient jadegold artifacts imbued with vestiges of a bygone civilization, or starsteel spears forged specifically to slay Alron. A great number of oracles assaulted Alron’s mind in a synchronized barrage of disorienting dreams and sensory overload.
It was as perfect a trap as Kastalos could prepare, one which Alron had anticipated having to eventually deal with. It could not be avoided, if he wished to slay Kastalos. After all, Alron was one warrior, whereas Kastalos commanded thousands. The question was, did Kastalos’ plan account for Apocalypse and Fei’s new vestige?
A release of the spin-core’s stored energy launched Alron downward. So fast was his plunge that the oracles’ mental claws lost their grip on his mind. Apocalypse struck the ground with the force of a comet, obliterating half a hundred closest awakened masters and scattering hundreds.
Yes, the needle-like shards that were Alron’s bones shifted, conjuring new forms of agony. Yes, his muscles and joints screamed from compounded abuse, struggling to withstand the power of the Apocalypse. But those were good signs. When metal is hot and touches anvil, does the blacksmith pause? No. He knows the forge is warm enough and his work has begun. Only in the hottest forge of pain could Alron hope to forge himself past the pinnacle of strength he’d already attained.
Hundreds of missiles of dragonfire, large as beasts of the Weald, lunged for Alron. Alron raised his blade when Fei spoke.
Allow me, there’s something I must try.
Alron stayed his blade. Fei’s flames leapt out in a swirling tornado around Alron, lifting debris and wasteland salt. Alron added soulfire into it from his own breast, and the pyre exploded mightily. In the blink before the missiles hit, and everything became a bright blanket of white, Alron discerned figures emerging from Fei’s sea of flames. Ground shook. Roaring of an inferno filled Alron’s ears. Brightness died.
Can’t let Mlev keep outdoing me from the grave, can I? No, no, no… Little bitch brains thinks she understands everything better than the mistress of Ansang Soulfire. Watch. Behold! Here is my complete fusion of Solid Fire, Soulfire, and Living Flame, imbued with a hundred years of darkness and imprisonment! I call it the Dreamfire Parade!
Fei had manifested a perfect fiery imitation of her physical form. In one hand she grasped a starsteel greatsword taken from a fallen awakened master, and in the other a jadegold kukri engulfed in soulfire. Around them stood thirty-seven other figures of fire with stolen weapons in hand, their faces locked on the awakened masters. Five of the closest resembled Fei, twenty bore a faint resemblance to Mlevanosk, and the flaming man whose back was tu
rned to Alron was a ghost of himself from long ago.
Brandishing stolen weapons, the Dreamfire Parade surged into the melee. They cut down several awakened masters disoriented by Alron’s meteoric descent. Weapons of mundane make slid harmlessly through their fiery bodies, whilst the fire ghosts massacred their foes. Only those with starsteel in hand stood a chance.
It was a sight to behold. Imbuing one’s will into dragonfire took years if not decades of dedication. Not once had Alron heard of anyone imbuing an entire cadre of delusions into individual constructs of fire.
“Impressive,” he said.
Fei smiled faintly. “Benefits of having firm hallucinations. I’ll need more vis to make them last.”
Returning the smile, Alron spun Apocalypse idly. He blocked the strikes of five awakened masters who’d made it through Fei’s fire ghosts. With the following swing, he split them in half and set them on fire. “Drink deep, my love. Vis is one thing we won’t run out of tonight.”
Awakened masters fell upon them in ebbing tides of scores and dozens. Complex techniques of dragonfire, martial skill, tactics, and strategy failed in the face of overwhelming force. That is not to say that the enemies were weaklings or unworthy as warriors. Under different circumstances, Alron would have asked for their names to carve into the mausoleum in his mind where many a worthy wyrmkin rested. For now, he did his best to remember faces of those brave enough to die facing him.
Mirage-veiled Sandblade warriors fell in scores before their curved blades could so much as touch Alron’s hair. Sandspinners, whose bodies flowed between fine sand and stone, were engulfed by soulfire and shattered by Apocalypse. Venomists, who spat green bullets of death, found their efforts halted by an army of solid fire.
Within the awakened masters falling upon Alron was, unexpectedly, Kastalos himself. Sky cracked with crimson thunder and the world waxed as the Mirage Lord of Dustwing Dunes, clad in an armory of artifacts, clashed against Alron’s blade.
His wings matched Alron’s strike for strike, and his animated artifacts and tails exchanged blows with Fei and her army. From his arsenal of artifacts, Kastalos conjured ancient lightning of Ghostveil, whose intangible dragongod body floated amongst the clouds, corrosive sandflames of Dustwing himself, and mind numbing whispers of Voidwalker, who sat on the dark side of Farmoon. Within a single heartbeat, the collision of their strength reshaped the landscape ten times over.