Malison: Dragon War

by Moeller, Jonathan

  It was a relief.

  ***

  Chapter 6: The Long Death

  Death swallowed Tyrcamber at last.

  And then it didn’t.

  He stumbled and looked around in astonishment.

  The ballista bolt had found his heart while he had been flying over the ravaged battlefields in what had once been the duchy of Talgothica. Now he stood in a cylindrical chamber of white stone, the floor of green marble beneath his clawed feet. Interlocked rings of magical symbols had been carved on the floor, and mirrors lined the walls in recessed niches.

  Tyrcamber gaped at his reflection.

  He looked…well, he looked terrible. But he didn’t look like a dragon. He looked like a man caught halfway through transforming into a dragon.

  That had happened to him, hadn’t it?

  A long time ago. A very long time. So long that Tyrcamber could barely remember it…

  A flicker of motion caught his eye.

  A cloak elf stood near the wall, watching him.

  The sight startled Tyrcamber. The Valedictor had been obsessed with taking Cathair Kaldran. The last city of the cloak elves was hidden in the mountains of the duchy of Mainzia, but the Valedictor had never been able to penetrate the potent magical defenses around the city. Had the Valedictor been able to turn his full attention to the problem, he would have broken through eventually, but the constant danger from his other enemies kept him occupied elsewhere.

  It had been a long, long time since Tyrcamber had seen any cloak elves.

  And this cloak elf looked familiar. The elf was wearing battered golden armor and a tattered gray cloak, a dragon-headed staff in his right hand. A sheathed sword hung at his belt, the mouth of the scabbard crusted with goblin blood. Tyrcamber was sure that he had seen this man somewhere before…

  “Rilmael?” croaked Tyrcamber. It had been centuries since he had been able to speak a word, and his tongue felt strange in his mouth. His fangs had gotten smaller, that was it.

  Rilmael inclined his head, his face grave. “It’s starting.”

  “What is starting?” said Tyrcamber.

  Then the memories burned through his skull. The ram of dragon bone, the death of the Emperor, and the Malison overwhelming him. Rilmael had transported Tyrcamber from Sinderost to Guardian’s Isle, and had taken him to the Chamber of the Sight, and then…

  And then…

  “No!” said Tyrcamber. He had to warn Rilmael. “It…”

  The Malison boiled up and devoured him, spilling out of his mind and rampaging through his flesh. Golden fire erupted from him, and when it cleared, Tyrcamber was back in his dragon form, a shape that had become familiar to him after centuries of blood and fire and carnage. Once again, the Valedictor’s song thundered through his head, enslaving his mind and commanding his flesh.

  The Guardian was the Valedictor’s bitter enemy, had been the Valedictor’s foe since before humans had come to this world and seen the sky fire for the first time. The song commanded the Guardian’s death, and Tyrcamber had no choice but to obey.

  The fire leaped from his jaws and slammed into Rilmael, throwing him across the room. When the inferno cleared a twisted, smoking corpse lay at the foot of the charred wall, the melted armor pooled around the blackened husk of his torso.

  He had just killed the Guardian Rilmael.

  Again.

  But that didn’t make any sense.

  For an instant confusion gripped Tyrcamber through the iron chains of the Valedictor’s aura, but the song of the dark elven lord took command of him once again. Tyrcamber used his fire to tear his way free of the tower and took flight to the north. He flew to Sinderost and prostrated himself before the Valedictor, and again the dark elven lord chose Tyrcamber as his mount. He felt the power flowing from the ebony staff the Valedictor carried at all times. In the centuries of his enslavement, Tyrcamber had heard the other dark elves speaking, and the Dragon Imperator had once carried a staff like that. The staff had given the Dragon Imperator much of his ability to command dragons, and the Valedictor had forged a staff of his own. Several times the Valedictor’s vassals had attempted to create their own staffs, which inevitably caused the Valedictor to destroy them.

  Or it would cause the Valedictor to destroy them. Had he already destroyed them? Or would he destroy them again?

  Tyrcamber wondered if he was going mad. A ridiculous question. He had already gone mad when the Valedictor had made him kill Adalhaid in Castle Berengar all those centuries ago. But that hadn’t happened yet. Or had it?

  Perhaps this was some new form of madness, an insanity where Tyrcamber would relieve the seven centuries of his enslavement as a dragon over and over again.

  And once again, Tyrcamber helped the Valedictor and his horde destroy the Frankish Empire.

  Sinderost burned, the great capital of the Empire becoming bones and ashes.

  The Valedictor’s army turned south, and again Tyrcamber killed his sister as Castle Berengar fell. Again, Tyrcamber helped his master destroy the remnants of the western Empire, and it all played out exactly as before. The castles of the western Empire fell one by one, the craven burghers of the Imperial Free Cities surrendering rather than fighting to the death as the nobles did. Duke Merovech became a Dragonmaeloch, enlisting the aid of the Dragon Cult and the Fallen Order, and again he was defeated.

  The Valedictor reigned unchallenged over the Empire, and once again he had to fight constantly against both his traitorous vassals and enemies outside his borders. Humanity degenerated to the level of beasts, the descendants of the once-proud Empire reduced to terrified slaves scrambling for their next meal. Tyrcamber spent centuries serving as the Valedictor’s steed, flying his master from one battle to another. As before, it was hellish and unending.

  Yet there was a degree of surrealness to it. Tyrcamber had seen it all before.

  He knew what was going to happen, to a degree that no oracle or prophet or seer in history had ever managed. How could he not?

  He had seen these events before, and the memory of the horror was burned forever into his mind.

  When seven hundred and thirty-four years passed, when the xiatami ballista bolt slammed into his heart and Tyrcamber plummeted to the earth, a wave of deep relief went through him.

  Perhaps he would be free at last.

  The darkness swallowed him.

  ###

  Instead, Tyrcamber stumbled, looking around in confusion.

  He stood upon the round floor of green marble, his claws catching in the rings of magical symbols carved into the stone. Mirrors in niches lined the white walls of the Chamber of the Sight, and Tyrcamber saw his reflection, a ghastly hybrid of dragon and human, caught halfway through the transformation that would turn him into the Valedictor’s enslaved dragon.

  Rilmael stood near the wall, his expression impassive.

  Tyrcamber had seen him die, twice.

  In point of fact, he had killed the Guardian twice.

  Yet there Rilmael stood.

  “What the hell?” said Tyrcamber.

  “It’s starting,” said Rilmael.

  “What?” said Tyrcamber. “What is starting? I don’t understand. I’ve killed you twice, I’ve…”

  His words dissolved into a scream as his blood caught fire and a golden inferno filled the world.

  When it cleared, Tyrcamber had become a dragon yet again, and the Valedictor’s song filled his mind and dominated his will. He killed Rilmael for a third time, then clawed his way free from the tower and flew north.

  And it all repeated.

  The Valedictor claiming Tyrcamber as his steed.

  Sinderost burning.

  Adalhaid screaming as the flames took her children.

  Duke Merovech dying as the ruins of Castle Valdraxis burned around him.

  The endless battles to drive back the jotunmiri and the dwarves and the rebellious muridachs.

  The grinding campaigns against the xiatami.

  And after seven
hundred and thirty-two years of war, once again the ballista bolt found his heart, and Tyrcamber plummeted to the earth.

  And for a fourth time, he killed Rilmael and transformed.

  Seven hundred and thirty-two years later, he killed Rilmael for a fifth time.

  Then a sixth.

  And a seventh.

  ###

  Twenty repetitions and fourteen thousand six hundred forty years later, as Tyrcamber flew to the north to Sinderost for the twenty-first time, Tyrcamber wondered if he was in hell.

  Perhaps he had died in truth all those thousands of years ago. There was so much innocent blood on his hands, and maybe his soul had been sent to hell. Maybe his punishment was to relive his enslavement over and over and over forever.

  Tyrcamber had gone mad with it.

  Well, he had gone mad countless times. His mind had broken in every way that he supposed that a mind could break. He had plunged into despair. He had blazed with rage until he was like a mindless animal, howling and thrashing against his restraints. Or he had sunk into catatonic numbness, oblivious to his surroundings, only the Valedictor’s will driving his actions.

  And the Valedictor’s song…

  He had been listening to the dark elven lord’s aura for thousands of years.

  Tyrcamber knew every aspect of it, every flicker and change within it. He knew the ebony staff with the crimson orb gave the Valedictor his power over dragons, knew that the Valedictor had somehow recreated the powers of his slain master the Dragon Imperator. He understood the Valedictor’s moods and thoughts, knew how the dark elven lord would react in every possible situation because he had seen the Valedictor in every conceivable scenario.

  That damned song.

  He was so sick of it.

  And sometimes his madness clashed with it, creating dissonant notes in the beautiful, terrible harmony of the aura. Usually, it happened when Tyrcamber was enraged, when he wanted to lash out and destroy everything around him, preferably starting with the Valedictor.

  When the song became dissonant, the Valedictor’s iron grip upon his mind started to shudder.

  About three hundred years after the fall of Sinderost, Tyrcamber flew over a battlefield, the Valedictor riding upon his back. Below thousands of desert goblins and xiatami commoners struggled against the Valedictor’s goblins and ogres. Tyrcamber had seen this battle twenty times before. He was sick of it. He was sick of the Valedictor and the unending looped hell that his existence had become. Tyrcamber would have almost welcomed a new series of torments if only because after twenty repetitions, he knew exactly what was going to happen at any given time.

  The rage clashed with the Valedictor’s song, and the dissonance grew stronger.

  And for the first time in nearly fifteen thousand years, the dissonance grew so powerful that the Valedictor’s iron grip loosened.

  For an instant, Tyrcamber was so confused that he did not know what to do. It had been a long, long time since he had enjoyed freedom of action of any kind. Yet it was there, and he felt blazing hatred rise to match his anger.

  He could not resist the Valedictor’s song enough to attack his master.

  But he could disobey.

  Tyrcamber wrenched to the south and flew at the xiatami lines, towards the low hill where their siege engineers had set up ballistae. He heard the Valedictor shout in rage, felt his master’s fury. But Tyrcamber did not care. He decided to plunge into the heart of the xiatami host. The snakemen would kill him, of course, but they would also kill the Valedictor, and his domain would crumble into ruin without his iron hand.

  The xiatami, of course, were no fools, and would not let an opportunity pass them by. Even as Tyrcamber and the Valedictor wrestled for control of his mind, a dozen steel ballista bolts hurtled skyward and stabbed into Tyrcamber’s body and wings. He plummeted like a stone, and the Valedictor leaped from his back, casting a levitation spell to lower himself safely to the ground.

  Tyrcamber crashed into the xiatami army, crushing a dozen of their soldiers beneath him. He felt the golden blood pouring from his wounds, felt his heart shuddering to a stop.

  It did not stop before a mob of desert goblins and xiatami soldiers closed and hacked him to pieces.

  That was one mercy. This new way to die was no more painful than the previous one.

  And again Tyrcamber awoke in the Chamber of the Sight, transformed, killed Rilmael, and flew north to Sinderost to see the Empire fall yet again.

  But the rage was still with him.

  ###

  After about two hundred years, Tyrcamber began to understand.

  The Malison stirred within him in response to his rage.

  The men of the Empire had given the Malison its title, had given it the name the Dragon Curse. But Rilmael had explained the truth of it to Tyrcamber millennia ago. The Malison was neither inherently good nor inherently evil, no more than a sword or a gold coin or a hammer. The actions that men performed with those items were good or evil, not the items themselves. The Dragon Curse, Rilmael had said, was like a burning coal. It had no will of its own. It didn’t intend to transform men into dragons. It was the natural consequence of using this world’s innate magic, just as the natural consequence of picking up a hot coal was a burned hand. Men could use magic in short bursts, but if they held it for too long, the coal would burn them.

  The Malison would overwhelm their minds, and the transformation would take them.

  And the Malison had filled Tyrcamber for a long, long time.

  He knew it as well as he knew the Valedictor, as well as he knew the creature that he had become. When he had still been human, the Malison had seemed liked dark fingers dancing at the edges of his thoughts. After it had taken him, he learned that it was so much more than that. The magic of this world was a vast power, a torrent of overwhelming flame.

  A torrent that echoed his rage.

  As Tyrcamber grew angrier, he realized that the Malison responded to him, the power answering his will.

  Ninety-six years after he killed Rilmael, Tyrcamber again turned himself towards the enemies of his master, and this time the dwarves killed him with their deadly siege engines.

  In the next cycle, seventy-six years after he killed Rilmael, Tyrcamber broke free and began attacking the Valedictor’s own troops. He incinerated maybe a thousand goblins before the Valedictor killed him with a spell of dark magic.

  When his hell reset itself, forty-seven years passed before Tyrcamber was able to attack the Valedictor’s other dragons. He had millennia of experience in aerial battle, and he killed four of the dragons before the Valedictor slew him.

  And in the next loop, barely a month passed before the control shattered.

  The Valedictor ordered him to burn his sister, and the Malison rose in response to Tyrcamber’s rage. He roared and reared up, throwing the Valedictor from his back. The dark elven lord hit the flagstones of the courtyard and rolled, and Tyrcamber whirled to face him. The Valedictor’s guards rushed to defend their master, and Tyrcamber ripped through them like a storm, killing with claws and fangs and fire.

  A mad glee filled him. At last, at long last, he would revenge himself on the Valedictor, would repay the dark elven lord for millennia of torment.

  The Valedictor got to his feet and leveled his ebony staff, and a blast of crimson fire drilled through Tyrcamber’s head.

  Everything went black.

  ###

  It was the hundredth time, or maybe the thousandth, that Tyrcamber stood in the Chamber of the Sight, the green marble rasping beneath his claws. Did it matter? He could no longer remember.

  All that mattered was the fury.

  He had come so close, so close to killing the Valedictor.

  Tyrcamber felt the Valedictor’s song fill his mind, and he snarled, raking a clawed hand through the air, golden fire blazing around his fingers.

  No.

  He would not yield. The Malison was his. The power within him answered to Tyrcamber, and no one else. Ce
rtainly not to the Valedictor, whom he hated with an intensity hot enough to melt steel.

  The Valedictor’s song thundered in his mind, and Tyrcamber pushed it back.

  The familiar sensation of the transformation overtook him…but this time it felt different.

  When the golden light cleared, Tyrcamber looked at the mirrors in shock.

  A human man stared back at him.

  For a moment, Tyrcamber did not recognize the man, but then he remembered his own appearance when he had still been human. He was naked, his clothes and armor destroyed during the earlier stages of the transformation. He was covered in sweat, his chest heaving with exertion, and the dark hair of his body was stark against his pale skin. Blond stubble covered his jaw and cheeks since he hadn’t shaved since before the assault on Sinderost started and sweat plastered his hair to his head.

  His eyes…

  His eyes had been blue, previously, but now they had turned a brilliant gold.

  The exact shade of brilliant gold of the flames that had accompanied his transformations.

  The Malison raged inside him, a torrent of burning magic, and he could hear the Valedictor’s mighty song. Tyrcamber braced himself for the pain of the transformation, but it did not come. The Malison’s power snarled inside him, but it was obedient to his will, and while the Valedictor’s song filled his mind, he felt no compulsion to obey it.

  Tyrcamber was…

  He looked at his reflection, the golden eyes sending a chill down his spine.

  Tyrcamber didn’t know what the hell he was.

  He turned his head, looking for Rilmael, but the Guardian wasn’t there.

  Tyrcamber blinked in surprise. Rilmael was always standing there. Every single time, every time Tyrcamber died and returned to the Chamber of the Sight, the Guardian was standing right there.

  Now there was no trace of Rilmael.

  For the first time in thousands of years, Tyrcamber had no idea what to do next.