Chapter 2
DOWN
Iknow our fate is sealed as the Black Dragon arrives.
Its monstrosity gargantuan even so far up in the dawn skies, Lithava wings high over the battle now as she shrieks a series of vicious commands at it, to get down here and finish us.
Her drakes join her, roaring as they hurl mind-drives at the Usurper to fortify her commands.
Its oilslick-black ropes surge in the faraway skies, like a leviathan’s pool, as it hears them.
Scalding down upon the early breeze—to drown us.
Those ropes of cursed black acid fall towards us, blazing into a midnight hellfire upon the morning air.
As the Black Dragon’s terrible darkness descends, the cradle of its most horrible birth responds; an answering taint surges from the hell-rift below, the Black Rift coming alive at the creature’s arrival.
As tentacles of black hell-oil boil up out of the cavern now to claim us, matching those descending now from the Black Dragon, their jaws of midnight spread all around, to ensnare us in a vast net.
It’s like some ungodly clamshell closing, as a terrible death knell rings inside my soul that we’ll soon be trapped, the entire battle devastated by it.
Because none of the False or True Knights have noticed what’s happening.
They battle on inside that closing net, in a towering frenzy of the most horrible, vicious dragon fighting, none aware of the disaster that’s coming.
Even my drakes don’t see it. I feel my very soul twist now as my Ancestors scream in an ungodly cacophony throughout the Void, that death has come.
Because this battle is impossible. A battle against ourselves, it forces us to choose sides and war eternally for whatever schism happened here. Just like our Ancestors did in this place of power they created.
Then broke, because of some folly or hubris they had.
It’s been broken ever since, an atrocity we are about to repeat as the Black Dragon’s doom descends and the Black Rift’s hell-oil thunders up. But no one sees it as the fighting careens, so thick and fast my head spins from the sheer brutality of it.
Dragons drop on all sides now, True and False Knights both. They rip into each other with insane magic, boosted so high in our veins by the arcane powers here, as I battle only to keep myself and my drakes alive now.
It is to no avail, however, as my spontaneous Bloodwalking shows me ten thousand battles of reckless fighting just like this.
They’re wars where the Dragons of Blood and Bone ruined each other.
We’ve decimated our own kin time and time again because of the extreme passions that divide us and the wretched conflicts those passions create.
We don’t even need the Black Dragon to cause our extinction, as despair floods through me now, watching this calamity descend.
Understanding this is it for us.
Because whatever happened that divided our Lineage long ago, it will divide us until the last of us is gone. We will be kin sundered from each other until we are annihilated; as I have that final, most horrible realization, I tremble in a dark place, inescapable.
Beyond fear, beyond despair, I’m lost as this ancient woe takes me. I can’t fight on. I can keep myself aloft in the skies, but my drakes have to pull in hard all around me now, protecting me as I cease to battle.
I can’t move; can’t think. I can’t rip out throats or pummel blasts from my wings as an ancient sound fills me, a song as old as the night is deep. A song of death, I feel it resonate with the Black Dragon of All Souls; the beast’s dead eye pins me now from where it flies far above us in the skies.
A deep connection roars open between us as I dive into this blackest place. The creature feels me go there; its great, dead orb skewers me now, as this ancient darkness consumes me.
Suddenly, I know why we resonate, as this most horrible understanding of the Dragons of Blood and Bone devours me. The Black Dragon of my Ancestor’s creation connects with me, I know now, because of this vast place inside me, our deepest sadness.
Because it is sadness, even as it is all things dark and terrible in the night. A soul-deep agony, it’s our ancient heart as Blood Dragons, separated forever from our kin.
The Black Dragon and I are one there, as its terrible mind rushes into my thoughts, its fell doom still coming down around us in the skies.
See, it says as the Black Rift’s madness arcs up.
See the carnage our ancient Ancestors created, for both you and me, Maker.
Though you are not she-who-made-me, I understand that now…
My skin blisters and burns as the Usurper’s sending blasts my mind apart. Pain even worse than my Ancestors’ sending scours me, though the Black Dragon does nothing but speak mind-to-mind with me as its bone-dead eye devours my mind-sight.
What do you mean?? I roar up at it, as my drakes power up like crazy around me now. Because Lithava and her mates are battling in towards us.
Knowing I’m speaking to the Black Dragon and not liking it one bit.
But as Lithava renews her shrieks at the Usurper to come down here and finish us, I feel how the creature resists her commands. Though she wears Hedda’s black master ring, infected by Hedda’s will, I feel how the Black Dragon can still push against those commands.
It watches me hard now, as I understand it’s grown more powerful since it was released. The Black Dragon does not yet have the Black Dragon Five rejoined to it; four of those souls are trapped inside our blazing Soulstone, locked in Baldur’s jaws as he fights.
But it means the creature’s own mind is still dominant right now—its own decisions preeminent, without the Five to command it.
And it wants to speak with me before its black hell-oil annihilates us.
Help me, and I shall help you, Maker. Give me peace, and I shall give you peace, the Black Dragon says cryptically now, as its great bone-dead eye pins me.
The Black Rift’s madness still boils up to meet with Jormungandr’s death in the skies; that gargantuan net is closing, the clear blue sky only a sliver around our insane battle as the rising sun is blotted out.
Dragons on both sides shrieking as they’re blistered with hell-acid now.
What do you mean? What do you want from me?! I roar in desperation as the Black Dragon shudders my thoughts with its power. Horror consumes me as dragons are blistered by the Usurper’s diseased ropes everywhere now, and seized by the hell-rift’s tarry tentacles.
Plummeting from the skies, they fall into the waiting darkness below. The Black Rift seizes them in eager jaws, as I feel its leviathan taint feed on all the souls it’s devoured.
Powering up more—as it bolsters the Black Dragon, as well.
As boiling black tar-ropes braid all around us in the skies like some five-mile Venus flytrap closing, my kin fight on in a vicious frenzy all around, oblivious. The Black Dragon pauses as I feel it focus on its own Innersight.
Our minds resonate a thousandfold as our connection obliterates me now—as our minds, bodies, even souls crash together. We’re one as I feel the Usurper spiral down now, deep—focusing on the blood, bones, and power that made it.
Because the power that birthed it came from my Ancestor Hedda, creator of this deadly Jormungandr in the skies. Although Hedda was not my kin directly, her bones, blood, and magic are mine, passed down in our family bloodline through the ages.
As I become lost inside the Black Dragon’s resonance through the bloodline that binds us, I tap into its own Void. Separate from our Ancestors’ Void in the skies, a place of peace and rest, the Void I feel within the Black Dragon is beyond horrible.
A blood-boiling and bone-shattering sensation consumes me now as I find its innermost space—the sensation of the Black Dragon’s roar, as I feel how that same sensation ravishes the Black Dragon from the inside out.
Because the Dragon of All Souls suffers deep inside.
A hundred thousand souls scream in torment within it, ripping its Void with their talons, as they shred the black beast from within.
Its insides blister; its mind is consumed by their insane roars as they try to escape the hell they are trapped in, separated from their Ancestors.
Just as the Void roared when Aesa’s soul was banished who-knows-where, shredded by her sister’s malice, the Void inside the Dragon of All Souls roars, too.
And when the Black Dragon opens its great maw, it roars its own torment to the world. The Usurper screams with the sound of those hundred thousand souls trapped inside now, roaring out its curses everywhere; I understand then that Jormungandr’s life is pain, as I feel the anguish that ravages it.
Only Hedda’s ancient will, and the vile magic of the Black Rift hold it together, from when she cursed this thing into being. As I realize why it rages and wraths, tormented endlessly by the souls that power it, the Usurper pierces me with its bone-dead eye.
Un-make me, bright one, the Black Dragon says now as it watches me.
Kill me, for in my endless darkness I have suffered enough.
End my existence—for there is nothing but torture in my everlasting soul.
I would be freed from it, Maker. You are the only one who can do it, the strongest Maker I have ever come across.
Promise me you will kill me… and I will give you a boon, right now.
A goodwill gesture to help you in your quest.
I will kill you. That I promise—to the ever-living Void and back, I say with a thundering growl inside my very soul now as death continues all around me. It has not reached the center of the battle yet; but even as I promise to give the Usurper what it wants, something inside me feels sad.
Because I finally understand its inner madness. Even though my promise is selfish, its death something I’ve wanted ever since the start, some part of me feels compassion. Like a diseased, rabid animal, some part of me understands now that the madness that consumes it was not its fault.
It is the fault of she-who-made it, and the Black Rift, ruined long ago by our ancient Ancestors. The Black Dragon is only the latest manifestation of that, as it waits in the skies to end us.
An ending that is uncertain now, as I give it my promise.
A towering wave of peace floods me then, rushing through my veins and inundating my bones. I know it comes from the Black Dragon, as relief reaches me from its every sinew and sagging scale.
As I feel the words thank you breathe through me from the earth to the skies and back, a feeling of blessed rest consumes me now. As the Black Dragon accepts my promise, it feels joy.
Because it knows I will kill it—and it accepts its death at my talons.
Though the blackest souls that power it do not.
Hedda’s wrath roars through me now, as she floods through the Black Dragon with renewed purpose.
It had been able to resist her while communicating with me.
Now I feel her command of the creature hammer back like an atom bomb, as Lithava whirls up to the Black Dragon’s location, screeching at it as she wears Hedda’s infernal black ring.
As Lithava assails it, along with Hedda’s everlasting soul, I feel, Receive my blessing… come one last time from the creature’s mind. Before the Black Dragon seizes my sister in its gargantuan talons.
Then dives like a falling star—right down through the center of the fight.
As the Dragon of All Souls forsakes both Lithava’s and Hedda’s commands, seizing my sister’s dragon like a rag doll and barreling down towards us like a comet, all hell breaks loose.
Because the Black Dragon has defied its Maker’s and resurrector’s commands, hurtling down into the middle of the battle as it explodes its power out like a bomb.
The net that had been crushing us is blasted out by that gargantuan heave from the Black Dragon. It explodes apart its own creation, even the Black Rift’s massive tentacles of night, as I feel the evil inside the Black Rift shriek.
Like a thousand suns shredding, it’s the most horrible sound as both shields are blasted out all around me.
But the force of the Black Dragon’s sudden move hits the battle like an atom bomb; dragons on all sides are heaved back, caught in that blast wave and tossed through the high blue skies, over the ring of mountains.
Even my drakes can’t hold on as that blast wave hits us. Although we’re powerful in our Bloodbond, even our auric fire cannot halt the Black Dragon’s dive.
Bjorn roars like a madman, seizing my drakes’ powers and hauling from them in a riptide to make an auric shield around us, strong enough to resist the Usurper’s descent. But even Bjorn cannot stop a falling star, as the gargantuan body of the Black Dragon slams into that burning shield of light.
As it shatters, hurling my drakes from me in the dawn, I feel one last grip of Bjorn’s talons in my shoulder as he gives the most thundering roar of loving stubbornness. And then he’s ripped from me, as the Black Dragon crashes into him and sends him careening away, far past its endless night.
All breath is pummeled from me as the Black Dragon catches me in its talons. And then we’re crashing through the seething darkness of the Rift, screeching and wrathful that it was denied its meal today.
The Dragon of All Souls takes Lithava and me right down through that darkness, exploding through the sundered floor in the cavern of its birth.
As we descend into the darkness beneath it.
A place so ancient, I don’t even know if I have a soul in its accursed night.