Chapter 28 Black #2
Roaring up as my most diabolical black dragon, I have only one mission now—to end our foes in the skies. The actual Black Dragon roars with me as I surge into the battle again, unhinged in my terrible might.
My drakes try to roar up with me; they try to seize me and ground me, so they might heal me and stop my transformation before we all die to this terrible darkness.
But I do not need to be healed; I need wrath and retribution as I set off after my sister now in the battle-ruined skies, to bring her down.
I am the Black Dragon now, as I lose everything good inside myself. All my righteousness and my blazing heart are just suddenly gone. All my valiant honor has vanished as I resonate fully with the Black Dragon, and we scream in unison, our endless madness resonating together at last.
That madness makes me want to rip and gouge, to punish my enemies eternally as I shred their very souls to pieces and banish them in the cosmos.
My darkest desire surfaces then; to make my enemies suffer endlessly for their crimes.
It overtakes me as I roar with a diabolical midnight energy boiling from me, the eyes of the Black Dragon filling my mind.
But those eyes are white-violet and crimson; not the Black Dragon’s eyes, as I realize what I’m seeing are the ancient eyes of the cosmic rift energy itself, inside me.
Death is in that gaze, annihilation, as I stare into those vast, empty eyes and see the very force that tears all the cosmos apart.
I feel how it wants to take me like it took Hedda, then Lithava, even those ancient Blood Dragons who first made the Black Rift, and forever make me its instrument.
For this is the power Hedda used to shred her sister Aesa’s soul to the furthest reaches of the cosmos; and I want to become its bearer, as I find Lithava now, hammering her with a towering blast of Bloodspears so evil, they skewer right through the sudden shield-wall she throws up.
My blast is so utterly vicious that just the concussion of it makes Lithava and her drakes fall from the skies.
They crash-land in the Black Rift’s boiling taint; as they fall inside the cavern, I scream like a harpy of the end worlds, wanting to punish Lithava for everything she’s done, and all the disaster it has wrought.
Even as Bjorn fights going black, roaring up to me as his big golden drake and seizing me with powerful talons, trying to haul me off, my bones twist and crack from the terrible retribution inside me, my blood boiling with wrath.
I shake Bjorn off; as the ancient power of the cosmic rift energy takes me, I roar a towering shockwave like the Black Dragon’s.
Sundering our mortal world as it punches right through the Void from my indomitable wrath.
That roar calls the Usurper to do my bidding.
Tethered to me now, the Black Dragon roars with me as I use its ancient voice, and we roar as one.
The universal horror of our screeching, thundering, harpy-and-hell voice breaks Lithava and her drakes’ latest Bloodshield instantly.
It blasts Lithava and her drakes with the full force of its bone-shattering and blood-wrenching curses, where they’ve fallen inside the cavern.
Their bones are broken. Blood jettisons from their bodies as the Black Dragon’s curses seethe all over them, making them screech with ungodly sounds in this cavern of hell.
My drakes scream as the Rift’s taint surges all around us.
Far above, the battle achieves a renewed ferocity as the Rift’s cosmic energy gains power a hundredfold, pitting every last warrior against their kin now, hard.
Bodies drop all around, as the Black Dragon roars its supremacy to the skies, felling more with its most terrible heart-curse. But I have no mercy; only satisfaction as I wing down hard into the space where my sister and her drakes have fallen inside the black cavern.
As the Black Rift’s leviathan darkness boils up all around us now, creating a clear space for me to do my worst, I feel the Rift’s darkness devour me. It gives me unimaginable power, just like it once gave Hedda, as everything that was good inside me blisters away.
I understand now, how Hedda made this same choice—to eliminate her sister in wrath. Because I will never again be touched by the light of the sun, as I prepare to take Lithava’s life.
That dark force drains a black hole from all my drakes now as they crash-land around me, writhing and roaring, trying to foist this blackness off. But they can’t, because it’s inside us. It’s always been there; we only had to succumb to it.
Which I do now, as I prepare to take my kinswoman’s life.
My Bloodbonds threaten to go out now, as I pull an insane amount of energy from myself and all my drakes, thanks to their new status as Bloodwalkers.
My bonds to all my mates strain hard, our collective life-force guttering, as I use it all to command the Black Dragon with my most towering roar, calling it to my side.
The behemoth comes; it cannot remain separate from the resonance I roar all through it by my utterly destroying presence as it heaves to my side now, flapping its gargantuan wings wide.
My sister and her drakes draw into a protective knot as they desperately try to heal and throw up a shield-wall against my unforgiving might. But I am ruthless to punish those who must be punished; the Rikyava I was is lost, as a hurricane of black energy surges all around me.
I hear only the utter wrath of the cosmic division energy, churning like an infernal ocean through my veins. It thunders through my bones like an earthquake as that presence roars inside me—to destroy all heart, love, passion, and light from this earth.
I go into my emptiest place now, ready to do my worst. Cold hellfire consumes me, as I stare my sister and her drakes down, black fire boiling from me as my drakes writhe all around me on the blistered ground.
Because Lithava, Lars, Arvid, Emil, and Oggi must be punished for their crimes. Not just punished; they have to suffer forever. What they’ve done is unforgivable; and what I’m about to do is more so, as I open my mouth and roar like the Black Dragon itself now.
Yoking my entire mind, heart, and soul with the Usurper—as one.
Gathering the entirety of my diabolical power, I will not curse their hearts. Because even as I control the Black Dragon and it does my will, inhaling and preparing for its most devastating strike, I’m about to do something even worse.
Because death is too good for Lithava and her drakes. I want them to suffer as I rip from them that which is most precious.
And what is most precious to them is their everlasting soul. I am gone as everything around me combusts now, black oilslick flame boiling out of me as I prepare to skewer all my terrible division energy and the Black Dragon’s into my sister and her drakes.
And rip their very souls to pieces, as they shriek to the endless stars in the universe.