Slaying the Last Dragon

0 - Prologue

Tariel

Life in Mistvale was… peaceful.

The elven city clung to the mountainsides, its foundations carved directly into the stone.

Steep cliffs rose around it, crowned by slender towers and sweeping arches that seemed to grow from the rock itself.

Natural and crafted, stone and magic, the city existed in perfect harmony with the mountains.

And watching over it all were the golems—ancient guardians forged by elven artisans long ago and brought to life through their magic. They stood motionless along the cliffs and city gates, silent and unwavering, their presence a constant reminder that Mistvale was never truly unguarded.

All in all, despite the dragons and the occasional conflict that drew a handful of warriors and messengers beyond the city walls, life in Mistvale remained blissfully quiet.

Tariel came from a family which, although fairly normal, did not hold much room for love.

His father, a Foreign Affairs Advisor, maintained “peace” between Caelendor and the neighboring kingdoms, which led him to travel frequently.

His mother, on the other hand, was a healer, and despite his father’s frequent absences, Tariel didn’t feel close to her either.

It had never been “him and his mother against the world,” no.

It was him and his books, isolated in the city library.

In that same library, for nearly two hundred years, he had actively studied the arcane arts, the art of magic from every angle and in all its forms. This “passion” had earned him very poor results in his academic studies: magic was his sole obsession.

He had always had a natural affinity for it, so why would he bother himself with other trivialities?

Of course, his father would have agreed to disagree, but when had his opinion ever mattered?

As time passed, events started unfolding around him.

The world responded to his will as if it were merely a puppet manipulated by his dainty little hands.

Often, no spell was spoken. He thought of something, visualized it, and his will became reality.

This did not exempt him, of course, from learning magic with a rigor and discipline that eventually put his mentors to shame.

And while he excelled in ancient languages and arcane studies, he was very bad at history.

He had a vague understanding of the extent of the conflicts with dragons or orcs—and everyone had conflict with orcs—but taking an interest in the past seemed pointless to him, and to claim that it would have changed today would be a blatant lie.

His private collection of books continued to grow and expand over the decades.

His father often brought him books when he returned from his travels, one of the city librarians sometimes gave him scrolls, and Tariel constantly bought more from traveling merchants.

So much so that they quickly began to “take his orders”, much to his mother’s amusement.

During his research, the notes he took transformed into books in their own right, and soon enough, he started to gain more attention from scholars.

Who wouldn’t want access to so much knowledge?

To so much magic and power? Though it was still fairly early in his adulthood, Tariel had become the go-to expert, the city’s mage capable of animating colossal golems, deceiving orcs, and...

killing dragons? He was absolutely convinced of it, and apparently, so was the Council since they had once summoned him for his advice about their “scaly little problem.”

It hadn’t been a month before Tariel was sent into the wild lands, straight south, to rid the world of a lone beast. According to them, only he was capable: he, Tariel Elenion, a powerful mage who had never set foot beyond the golems guarding the city.

Although the idea hadn’t initially appealed to him, it was his familiar, an uncharacteristically small golem he had generously named Brynjar, who had convinced him:

“Oh, dear master, what glory and grandeur await you, noble lord! You will be the greatest hero our elven land has ever known, sung about in ballads and honored in history books for centuries to come! Your wisdom and courage will light up the heavens, and your name will be respected and honored in every corner of the kingdom. Imagine the admiring glances of your kin when you return victorious, bearing on your shoulders the pride and admiration of an entire people!” he had said, and the elf had been persuaded.

Tariel was now heading south—far, far away from the comforts of his home—on horseback alongside Brynjar.

Cassian

Morgraves no longer resembled a kingdom. Looking from the hills, the ruins still smoldered in places, as if the earth refused to accept what had been done to it. Blackened towers stood out against an iron-colored sky; below, the fields held the bitter scent of burnt wood and rain on hot stone.

No one had seen the attackers leave. There were tales of a rumble from the clouds, of a shadow too large to name, of fire falling from the sky without any sort of warning.

The few survivors each told a different story, but none explained why nothing—neither sentries, nor scouts, nor mages—had had time to respond.

The messengers sent to the Alliance of the Four had either never returned or came back too late to be of any use. In the cities still standing, people were already whispering what no one dared to say aloud: Morgraves had been abandoned long before it burned.

Aethros had had time. Decades of exile, far from the smoking ruins of his childhood, had allowed him to meticulously shape the man that was Cassian. He was no longer the fearful boy who stood before the blades that had destroyed his people.

During his years of wandering across Ennevia, he had built a legend of brick and blood: Cassian was now a name whispered with a mixture of fear and respect in every tavern on the continent.

He had forged a reputation as a renowned mercenary, a man with allies hidden in every dark alley, known for wielding a strange magic that no one could name.

“Cassian…”

Many would have preferred to see him dead—many believed him to be dead.

The stories circulating about Aethros spoke of fires, of cities stripped of their very breath, and of a power no being should ever have possessed.

His name was feared as one fears unrelenting winters.

Yet those who had once walked beside him knew one thing: he did not seek to destroy the world, but to tear it away from what it had sadly become.

But how could anyone grasp that nuance when the legends spoke only of the horrors committed by the beast? His shadow remained a bad omen, no matter what he himself might think of it.

“Cassian!”

His hand instinctively clenched around his mug.

For a moment, he stood frozen, as if suspended between two worlds—the smell of burnt wood still lingering in his memory, the distant rumble of a sky that no longer existed.

Then the clamor of the tavern took over again.

Loud laughter, chairs being dragged across the floor, a waitress cursing at a customer who was already drunk.

“Are you going to keep staring into space much longer, or are you coming back to us?”

Cyrus had plopped down across from him, a precariously balanced plate in one hand and his usual insolent smile playing at the corners of his lips.

Cassian blinked, abruptly snapped back to the present.

“I was busy thinking.”

“Judging by the look on your face, I’d have said you were conversing with the dead.”

A sigh escaped him. He absentmindedly tucked a dark strand of hair behind his ear before glancing over at the rest of the group seated further away, already noisy despite the early hour.

“Alright, what’s going on?” he finally asked.

Cyrus shrugged. “The group would like to spend the night in the valley. Some of them are starting to seriously miss the taverns… and charming company.”

A brief laugh escaped Cassian, a name he had chosen to erase all traces of from his lineage. He rolled his eyes before pulling back his hood, revealing a medium-length brown mane with reddish highlights.

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re hungrier for meat or for women,” Cassian commented with a half-smile.

“They’re both equally appealing!”

In a familiar gesture, he patted his companion on the shoulder to express his agreement.

Although he wasn’t officially their leader, Cassian had established himself as a guide for this group of mercenaries: bounty hunters, reclusive wolf shifters, a few deserters…

A band of rough-and-tumble brutes from Morgraves, Malveth, or Veylaris, among whom the next king of Drakensyl had found the perfect cover.

In this line of work, you never spoke of yourself, but you made sure others spoke of you.

Cassian was seen as a man who was too cunning, unpredictable, perhaps a little mad, but possessed extraordinary tactical wisdom.

To his comrades, he was the ideal companion: a formidably intelligent man who could slit throats quietly and hold his own in a drinking contest.

However, beneath this facade of a likable mercenary, Cassian harbored a much grander plan.

He was watching for a weakness in the enemy’s strategy, anticipating the return of his own people…

To fulfill his destiny, he first had to complete The Anchoring Resonance: that of the Heart of Elhe, guarded by the elves.

It was said that no elf had seen the Crystal Heart for centuries, that it had vanished, just like the dragons.

But Cassian was convinced it was out there somewhere.

The elves would never risk losing such great power by getting rid of it.

As the night went on, all eyes were once again on Cassian, sitting casually on the bar, captivating the crowd. He told stories of lost kingdoms and epic battles with a storytelling gift that fascinated the women and made the men roar: “Tell us about that time you…!”, “Tell them how we survived…!”

But just as laughter erupted and mugs clinked together, the tavern door flew open. A sudden hush fell over the room. A frail figure appeared in the doorway: silvery-streaked hair and a haughty air that stood in stark contrast to the place's vulgarity.

Cassian froze, his blue gaze trained on the intruder.