Chapter 28 Ancestor #2
As both my inner dragons roar and gnash their teeth now, twisted so hard into my united Bloodwalker power I can barely tell which is which, I feel that oneness superpower me. Because everything inside me knows that doing something just because it’s my fate is complete bullshit in my book.
Especially if it means ending the entire world.
As a rumbling growl surges up out of my throat in both the physical world and the Void, I feel how it shakes the ground all around me. I feel how it shudders everything inside this cavern, besides the Void—even the dragon-souls that wait for us, beyond Hedda’s black veil all around.
I feel how that massive growl shudders even Hedda herself—I see her black eyes widen, as she gives an affronted snort from the Void.
Then it’s on, as I roar—hauling energy out of my drakes in a riptide.
Aesa’s Truthstone flares white-hot at my chest, as she gives me her energy as well. I feel her give me everything she’s got, as I blast a thousand megawatts of pure auric firepower right into the Void now.
I feel it as my gargantuan auric wildfire seethes all over Hedda and her black veil. My sudden fire blazes like a star being born; it explodes her black veil around me out now, like a bomb, as it roars to the endless universe.
Free at last.
A massive surge of energy fills me then, as I feel my auric dragon freed in the Void. Like stepping out into the fresh midnight air from being inside a cave for a thousand years, an enormous rush of pleasure seethes through me as I feel my true nature become unleashed.
The triumphant roars of my drakes echo mine, as our combined auric firepower goes blasting through the universe.
Pouring all over Hedda now in the stars and making her shriek.
She didn’t expect it; we surprised her with the sheer ruthlessness of our strike, as Bjorn’s rage, Strom’s passion, Mikkel’s wrath, Baldur’s faith, and my sheer defiance hammer her in a tidal wave. Aesa’s with us, as our auric wildfire seethes all over Hedda, making her writhe in the stars in pain.
This Bloodwalker is ancient, however. Even though we blasted out her black veil around me in the stars, she unleashes a gargantuan roar now, heaving a massive auric strike from her wings as she whips her spiked tail right at us.
Shattering Aesa’s Truthstone upon my chest.
I feel it, as all of Aesa’s support is blasted away from us with that terrible strike. I scream as I feel every last bit of her energy ripped from me, like something beautiful was just ripped right out of my heart.
It’s hurled into the blackness of the universe by her most ruthless sister, Hedda. Because Hedda’s done something far worse to Aesa than shattering her silver stone, which housed the last of her power.
She’s thrust the final piece of Aesa’s everlasting soul far out into the universe. She’s banished it from this entire plane of existence as she shreds it like cheese through a grater, sieving it now through all those millions of curse-holes she once opened in me.
Destroying it in the universe—gone.
As Aesa’s soul disappears from the cosmos, I hear her last shriek of rage, wrath, and defiance. Mine echoes it on earth—but she is already gone, banished so utterly from this plane of existence by her sister that her soul will never again be found.
It’s the worst thing I could even think of doing to someone, as I stand before Hedda in utter shock. Because now I know she can’t just trap other dragon’s souls inside her most diabolical creature, the Usurper; she has the power to destroy other souls.
No part of that dragon ever coming back.
A terrible roar of mourning shakes the Void, in the wake of what Hedda has done. Because it’s something so unthinkable, so unforgivable, that the Ancestors who crowd around us are shocked inside their endless universal space.
As the most horrible keening, roaring, mourning sound comes from every throat, my drakes and I have to clap our hands over our ears in the physical world.
Our very souls are roiled by that sound; because it’s something so awful that it dives right into my very blood and bones now, shuddering them from the inside out.
As I feel like my blood will boil right out of my body and my bones will shatter themselves apart, I suddenly note this is how it feels to be roared at by the Black Dragon.
This is why that beast has the effect it does on the flesh—because its roar is the most terrible sound of all the souls trapped inside it, screaming in torment.
Its roar has the power of a hundred thousand souls or more, all roaring inside it in unison whenever it opens its mouth. They mourn in agony for the banishment of their souls from the everlasting Void.
Because, like Aesa just now, those souls will never return to our ancestral home, trapped inside the creature as they are. They are stuck there, banished there, just as much as Hedda banished Aesa just now, elsewhere.
Never again to return home, to the place of our eternal rest.
But though Hedda has done the most unimaginably horrible thing I could ever think of to a Blood Dragon, we’ve bested her little test. For good or ill, we’ve broken her black veil surrounding me in the Void.
Memories come raging in, as all the Ancestors from each of my drakes’ and my bloodlines pour their recollections of Hedda and the Black Dragon Five into us in a tirade.
I scream, drowning in that inundating wave of ancestral memories, overwhelmed by it.
Bjorn instantly wraps around me from behind; he bites my neck both in the physical world and up in the Void with his massive auric drake.
He holds me steady in that tsunami, as those memories come, and come, and come.
As Strom devours my lips now, I feel his deep passion become my anchor as well. He holds me grounded in my love rather than my agony, as he fights with me against that riptide now. Our bodies heave together, struggling to not be washed away in it.
Mikkel snarls, gripping my wrists and digging talons into them, giving me pain to stay sane. Because insanity is beyond that flood, we all know, if my drakes and I should succumb to it.
It’s just too great. This massive ocean of memories will break my mind, and all my drakes’, if we can’t get enough control in the Void to make some sense of it.
Much less funnel it down into Baldur’s sigil-work upon the Soulstone; as Baldur roars with all the overtones of his dragon in his voice now, thrusting into me once more upon the bed, I feel him fight like a madman to contain it all.
As he hammers into me, I feel him work his most incredible art, to channel that massive flood into five separate soul-sigils that will capture the essence of each dragon we seek, including Hedda.
Hedda laughs through the Void now, as she watches us struggle to master these ridiculously high-level magics.
Or be swept away in their outrageous flow.
Blasting our very souls apart in the Void without her even touching us, as we all succumb to madness.