by Sain Artwell
The ensemble of scars he had carved upon Corecrawler spanned hundreds of miles of its ten-thousand mile body. Recently, he had noted a curious detail: The armies rising to meet him grew smaller, and the pace of their evolution slowed down. Corecrawler was hurting.
A year, or was it two? No… After a hundred and eleven nightly pauses, after slaying millions of dragon spawn, Alron began to see results of lasting damage.
Mountainous scales shattered into gravel, regenerated, and shattered again, as Alron laid violence unto a god. Slowly, he whittled its defences down like the entropic force of time itself. Cracks grew across Corecrawler, exposing a metallic spine several miles thick, around which crawled webs of jadegold. From these cracks bled lava and draconic innards into void, where Fei’s sea of soulfire engulfed everything in pale-blue hue.
Corecrawler cried out in agony.
Hahahaha! Fei laughed. Suffer! SUFFER!
OOHAHAA YASS! Oqhizt screamed in joy.
Satisfied, Alron grunted.
Finish it finish it, finish it. Let’s kill it now! Fei urged.
Yeah, we better hurry, Oqhizt agreed.
No.
No? Alron could almost hear Fei quirking her brow when she said it.
Huh? Why no?
Now we watch, and wait. If the stargod begins to dominate the battle, we shall instead aid the dragons. This is a balancing act we must enact to come out alive.
Ah yes… Fei coughed. Very well. If that’s the case. I propose you take us hard, until such time that our interruption is again required.
Alright, yeah, that sounds great too. Yeah, let’s go fuck a bit.
Alron chuckled.
A thousand miles higher towards the starry expanse, stargod’s tendrils crushed Corecrawler’s skull into pulp. Magma burst from all hundred eyes on its face. Teeth, shards of its skull, and odd ends of dragongod anatomy dispersed, slowly drifting. The fastest pieces reached the Great Den, and burned as they plummeted through the heavens.
Corecrawler’s body jerked in death throes. The tail, buried deep within the planet’s core, rushed to the surface, tearing apart the brittle corpses of long dead dragongods, nearly destroying the entire world in the process. Only a single spine of an ancient dragon held the two halves together.
Fei shrieked. Sofi! Alron, is she dead?
Alron focused on the bond. Though she was too far for her thoughts to be heard, all the echoes of Sofi’s vestiges still resided by his dragon-core. She lives.
Fei sounded relieved.
For now, he added.
Oh, she’s a clever girl. I’m sure she’ll be fine if she survived the initial shattering.
Up above, tentacles unraveled from Corecrawler, turning towards Voidwalker, even as she drowned stargod-Yuvera with a breath of utterly black flames. Voidwalker was holding her own against the stargod, but for how long? Alron spread his wings and bolted towards the two intertwined gods.
We’ll have to postpone leisure. Oqhizt, prepare my body.
Got it. Blades, blades, and lots more blades. I miss anything?
No. Blades are good.
Wide barbed blood blades sprouted all along Alron’s tail, back, and limbs. He continued winding Apocalypse’s spin-core whilst speeding past the peaks of Corecrawler’s mountainous scales.
Hmm. Alron, can you still sense her? Fei asked, buried anger seething in her tone.
She meant Yuvera.
A sliver of the bond remains. Why?
So, she knows we’re coming.
Ah. Indeed she does.
A black tentacle hundreds of miles long coiled to slam them into oblivion of death. Though seemingly slow due to its size, the limb moved at least as fast as Alron. Millions of maws opened on its surface, bright as they hurled out a continuous hail of starfire. An hour later, the flames reached Alron and pattered harmlessly off of Fei’s flames.
Cozy. Oqhizt finished remaking Alron’s form.
Yuvera knows my soulfire is made to defend against dragonfire; why is the fool not throwing starsteel at us?
‘Cos it’s using it as veins and such, Oqhizt replied.
Ah. Of course. Convenient.
Do not be lulled to false safety. Yuvera knows what weapons to wield against us.
Stargod’s tentacle approached, accelerating as it came to slap Alron. Thickets of sharp appendages rose from its oily surface, many of them glistening with the metallic sheen of starsteel.
Maybe she’s not an idiot after all…
Maybe we dodge?
No.
Alron flew to meet the thicket of starsteel spikes. With an intuitive command, he primed Apocalypse to store energy instead of unleashing it, and raised the massive weapon to block the god’s blow.
Black goopy flesh splattered upon impact, and inky blood burst forth. Mountains of metal gave with a whining groan. Unable to stop its movements, the stargod drove its tentacle into Apocalypse, destroying its own flesh with the momentum of the swing, until Apocalypse clanged against a metallic spine of the cosmic being. Repelled, the tentacle recoiled.
Spin-core howled in a high-pitched screech. White hot, it was too bright to look at. Despite Sofi’s heat resistant vestige, Alron’s scales smoldered and his flesh smoked from energies radiating from the spin-core. So thick was the concentration of energy that specks of pure myth sparkled within Mlevanosk’s bones. Crackles of electricity licked over Alron’s wings, scorching the bore-hole of stargod flesh in which he stood. Alron could almost hear the roar of Mlevanosk’s soul within the blade.
He emptied a full discharge of Apocalypse’s power into the stargod’s bones.
For a fraction of a flicker, reality reverberated.
Starsteel dented inwards, compressing so tightly that solid metal transformed into liquid and then vaporized into something else entirely. Something bright. Hot. Explosive. Alron raised the emptied Apocalypse before him, barely shielding himself from an all consuming flood of eye-scorching whiteness.
His eardrums melted. Fei’s scream echoed inside Alron’s mind as her flames sought to shield him from the pale radiance. Vis bled from his source rapidly as Oqhizt hurried to repair burning flesh. Alron focused only on holding onto the sword and enduring.
Seconds later, his eyes regenerated. Oqhizt finished rebuilding his body, and Fei’s fiery cloak enveloped them.
Phew.
Yeah…
Stargod’s tentacle was reeling backwards, its cleaved surface having been turned into an iridescent crystal wasteland by the strike. Fifty miles of titanic tentacle floated in the opposite direction, slowly writhing into a ball.
And she said this was not yet her true masterpiece, Alron laughed, awed by the scale of obliteration that his hand had dealt.
Makes you feel… small. Fei sounded bitter.
Don’t, her ingenuity is without peer. However, this is not a power anyone but our combined might can wield. Take pride in that we can bring out the most of her designs, and prepare for another blow.
Alron began the process of recharging Apocalypse, and flew to chase the tentacle towards the stargod’s main body.
It was hideous, an alien moon covered by pores and bubbles. Odd shapes rose and receded into the stargod’s oily mass, revealing openings into its inner depths. From these abysses crawled forth the starspawn. Some were the familiar amorphous foes from early stages of Yuvera’s ascension, others were more reminiscent of mutated wyrmkin.
Most were too slow to keep up with Alron’s flight. The battle did not begin in earnest until he landed upon a shivering mound and began to dig into the stargod’s body.
Wisened to the danger of Apocalypse, stargod-Yuvera no longer attacked Alron with solid blows. Instead, towering blooms arose from its body and whipped him with starfire. Mountains of inky flesh melted into a sentient acidic liquid, attempting to engulf him, yet its corrosion was no match for soulfire’s vis consuming properties. Millions upon millions of asymmetric spawn of alien imagination rushed to stop Alron, but Apocalypse was firm in his h
and, and his body itself was a garden of blood blades, more than capable of shredding all who dared approach.
Beings armed with starsteel blades, beings which could have previously ended him were instead obliterated in instants. Whilst the stargod may have been mighty in a wrestle against other gods, its spawn paled in comparison to those which had dwelt within Corecrawler. Against someone like Alron, a warrior hardened by years of battling godspawn, they simply stood no chance.
Briefly, Alron regretted not attacking Yuvera during her ascension, but the thought was whisked away as soon as it bloomed. Perhaps it was for the better that things turned out this way. At least now they had a chance to get rid of the dragongods as well.
Countless swings of Apocalypse later, Alron shattered a braided shell of starsteel brands thick as trees and uncovered the glowing core of stargod-Yuvera.
The place resembled a corrupted cousin of the palace hall in which Alron had slewn the Knights of Myrwing. From above, held aloft by strands of starsteel above a pool of shining water, hung Yuvera’s motionless body. In her bloated chest pulsed a starry vestige fused with Dente’s corrupted core. Her starry eyes lifted to meet Alron’s.
“Leave. You should not be here.” Her voice came from every direction.
Fei seethed, muted by her wrath. Her thoughts were one of wrath and murder.
The room tried to destroy Alron with spears of starsteel, dragonfire floods, and all manner of sensory attacks. None of it could stop him.
“Leave. Please. I will be forced to end you,” Yuvera pleaded. “Leave. You threaten everything by destroying me.”
“I won’t kill you.” With a heavy heart, Alron grabbed her horn, and yanked. Head, spine, and dragon-core detached from the rest of her body.
Yuvera howled, her spine writhing. “NO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”
“Ended your madness,” Alron stated calmly.
Fei cackled maniacally, hurling incoherent insults at Yuvera.
“Fool!” Yuvera coughed liquid vis, her star-shaped pupils glaring at Alron. “You should have let it happen! I was on course to save the world! Now you’ve doomed all of wyrmkind.”
Irritated, Alron replied, “If you wished for me to stay idle, you should have killed me. You know that was the only way to stop me.”
Conversation paused for a moment, as he struck the cradle of stargod’s core with Apocalypse for good measure. Inky flesh trembled. Inner architecture of the god’s body began to collapse.
“That, or maybe you should’ve explained your plans in the first fucking place!” Oqhizt raged, when the trembling let up. “Why keep everything to yourself and treat us like idiots?”
Alron shattered the ceiling of the enormous cavern and began a journey to exit the stargod’s body. Its spawn, seemingly unaware of their host’s death, continued swarming him.
“I required a broken dragongod’s dragon-core to ascend. I had to kill Dente or you. How could I have let you in on a plan like that?” Yuvera shouted above Fei’s continuous barrage of insults, which did not even resemble real words anymore. “The Stars made a deal with me. I was to be in charge of healing and reshaping the world after their victory. Now that I am no longer among its cores, the stargod no longer has to abide by my requests. There is no predicting what it will do to the Great Den.”
“It has multiple cores?” Oqhizt asked.
“Dozens, if not hundreds.”
“Aww, oof…”
“Stabilize her,” Alron told Oqhizt.
“Huh?”
“NO! THAT BITCH DIES NOW!” Fei’s fires threatened to engulf Yuvera, but Alron dispersed them.
“Calm down, Fei. We need her alive. Oqhizt, do it, but ensure she remains harmless and incapable of attacking us.”
“Could’ve let her die by my account but whatever…” Muttering objections, Oqhizt encased Yuvera’s barely living remains in crystalline blood, which Alron attached to his waist. He continued cleaving a path through the stargod, and spoke.
“Yuvera…” Alron was cut off by her shout.
“Do as she says, I beg of you. You’ve cut my connection to the stars, you’ve bested me. I am nothing. End me.”
“No. Restful death is for the likes of Mlevanosk and Dente. Yuvera, you will live, as will I. We will emerge from this battle and live in the world we destroyed. We owe it that much. I know, it is I who nudged you onto this path. My idealism, my naive dreams which set things in motion…”
***
Within the army’s leisure tent, Alron drank with two women. He didn’t know these two too well yet, but he intended to fix that mistake by the morning. Yuvera was both the daughter of Sorcerer King, and the greatest seer swordswyrm in Ascendancy. Ice Queen of Tomorrow some called her, for she rarely smiled. On the other hand, the Blackmetal girl with a difficult to pronounce name was both a genius artificer and the youngest awakened master in generations.
Both were incredibly hot, and intelligent enough to talk circles around Alron in their sleep. They were a bit slow to warm to him, but that was fine. He enjoyed the pursuit.
For some unknowable reason, they leaned in, listening keenly as he babbled on about his half-baked boyish ideals, too drunk to stop.
“Utter drakeshit, don’t you think?” Alron burped. “For what other reason than the whim of dragongods, is their power accessed through ruthlessness and dominance? What if it were not? What if vestiges were tamed with kindness and love rather than enslaved with sheer force of will. What do you… Mlevvansk… Mlevv…”
“Please, Mlev is fine.” She smiled sweetly.
Alron swallowed. “Mlev, imagine if those with your mind, but without your force of will, could wield your powers? If they focused not on cannons and weapons, but on… I can hardly fathom what they could do.”
“Dig canals. Build homes. Do all kinds of good,” Yuvera offered softly, leaning her shoulder to his.
Mlevanosk too inched closer, pressing her cleavage to Alron’s arm. “These are strange thoughts to be heard from the lips of a Knight of Myrwing. Were I not wiser—” she hiccuped—“I’d wager it was a ploy of… seduction? Are you pretending to be gentle to fool us into bed?”
She glanced at Yuvera, and the girls shared a laugh.
“Ha!” Alron slammed his fist into the table. “I never use such ploys! Not against women as brilliant and beautiful as you. It would be mockery to even try. I merely hoped to share my most guarded dreams with you, to divine whether we could get along. Apologies, if they sound like foolish babblings of a five-summers-old hatchling.”
“Aww.” Mlev cooed, “Apologies, if we hurt your heart, handsome warrior.”
“It certainly was not my intention. You were merely…” Yuvera paused. Her smile faded, whilst her blush deepened. “Ah, never mind. Please do entertain us, oh warrior with a gentle heart. Tell a bit more about this dream world you yearn for.”
“Well. First off. I’d be living on an island…” And so he did, regaling the inane ramblings until and after bedding the two for the first time.
***
“…If it was you who sent Fei to free me from my island, and set my vengeance into motion. Then I was the one who imbued you with the desire of fixing what no mortal can fix: The world. Such was a dangerous dream to infect the likes of you and Mlevanosk with, but what’s done is done. So, I’ll ask now, will you trust me to carry that dream in place of you two? Will you aid us to strike down the gods?”
Alron broke out into the thin atmosphere surrounding the stargod, and gained altitude.
Fei and Oqhizt quieted.
Yuvera’s voice trembled. “After what I’ve… And Dente… You cannot possibly offer me redemption. No one can.”
“No one can,” Alron agreed. “Least of all I. Yet we, the irredeemable, we most of all are obliged to face the consequences of our actions.”
Yuvera went silent.
For a while, sounds of violence around them substituted for conversation. Stargod continued sending endless waves of its spawn. Apocalypse’s
spin-core spun wildly, though was nowhere near as charged as it’d been when blocking the god’s tentacle.
“Alron, I… I’m sorry. There is not much I can do to aid you. Everything I know, the stargod knows. So long as it won’t recharge Apocalypse for you, it knows that you cannot destroy its cores faster than it can generate new ones. It knows that it doesn’t need to pay attention to you until it has dealt with Voidwalker. And when it has, it will kill you.”
“It will try,” Alron corrected.
“Alron—”
“Yuvera. Guide us to these cores. Tell me, how do I hinder it the most?”
“I…”
“Oh, just do as he says,” Fei echoed, her voice one of pure venom. She materialized in a fiery form to glare at Yuvera’s crystallized remains. “You killed Dente for this garbage plan of yours, now do as he says and maybe… You lost. You admitted yourself that you should die—by the way, I agree wholeheartedly—but Alron spared you. Gave you a chance to see your shitty dream. You better start earning it, unless you were a witless puppet of the stars all along?”
Yuvera relented, averting her gaze from Fei. “Thirty miles towards the sun. Search for the polyps emitting purple fumes. The stargod plans to flush you into the open space with a wind of starfire.”
“Much appreciated.” Alron took a sharp turn towards the sunny side of the stargod’s body.
Indeed, the stargod did attempt to flush him into the void with a mile wide stream of flames. Thanks to Yuvera’s forewarning, they were ‘underground’ at the time. She led them through labyrinthine bowels of the stargod, even as those tunnels shifted and shuffled to lead Alron astray. When tides of starspawn fell upon Alron, she told him of their vulnerabilities and strengths, allowing Oqhizt and Fei to lay quick waste to them.
They crushed a core every two days, then core a day, then two…
And yet, whenever Alron emerged to view the world and ongoing grapple of gods, the view awaiting him grew direr.
Voidwalker lost its claws. Its teeth were knocked out. Holes were bored into its body. Tentacles wrapped about its neck and head, squeezing as they had squeezed Corecrawler before her.