Chapter 23 A Dance With Dragons #2
‘We’re asking you, with all due respect, for the coordinates to a hidden Sacran sepulcher.
Where we believe we can secure the Chains of the Immortal King Saitoni.
These shackles hold him in an eternal, agonizing stasis, which he’s endured for epochs after Sulfiqar orchestrated a coup against Saitoni of the greatest magnitude.
The only method to neutralize our father is to bind him with the same fetters. ’
Zavier’s lips twisted. ‘How do you plan to do this?’
Idan leaned forward, eyes flashing with resolution. ‘Honestly, Lord Phanos, we’re making this shit up as we go. If you can help us with that insight, we’ll pay you generously.’
Molan nodded, taking an inhale. ‘We also have it on good authority that you are the only artisans to forge ghost-stealth diamond masks. We’ll need these to shield our signatures from our father’s all-seeing gaze on this quest.’
Zavier jerked his chin. ‘A moment.’
He turned his head to lock eyes with his fellow Draquis.
He and Maxim appeared to have a brief neural discussion before the Dragon Master sliced his gaze back to the brothers.
‘We’ll help you.’
When Molan reached for his comm device to pull up a payment screen, Zavier raised a hand with a dismissive wave.
‘Keep your money. Over the eons, Sulfiqar’s machinations triggered a fokkton of catastrophes between the Paladian and Sacran empires. We’re therefore keen to assist you in deleting his fecal virus sack from existence.’
‘It’s not a free exchange, however,’ Maxim drawled. ‘When the time comes, we might need your support, sons of Sacra, to support us in waging our own wars against the darkness that shadows us from inter-dimensional realms.’
Idan and Molan exchanged glances, then nodded, facing the Draquis.
‘Indeed, tell us when and where and we’ll be there.’
With a jerk of his chin, Zavier surged to his feet.
‘To fabricate the masks your mission requires, I must operate from our HQ and sanctum,’ he stated. ‘I’ll take you there now. Please brace, as this will require a spectral vortex transfer.’
Before Sheba could process his words, the man’s humaniform fractured.
Zavier transmuted into a titan of ethereal light, a silver-white and gold dragon that pulsed with a raw, celestial frequency.
Its scales shimmered with the brilliance of a supernova.
The radiance around him pulsing with a storm of dracolich power, weaving between aetheric and solid dimensions.
‘Oh my,’ Sheba breathed, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
‘This is me in my full Shadraquis form,’ the menacing yet beautiful beast rasped, the sound shifting into a deep, reverberating whisper reminiscent of the wildest storms. ‘It’s required to initiate a psionic vortex which will shift me and all of you to Draquis HQ.’
Idan rose and reached for his woman, his arms encircling her waist. ‘Still onboard?’ he whispered wickedly into her ear.
‘Fokk you, and hold on tight to me,’ she growled, white knuckling his arm.
The atmosphere in the boardroom began to curdle with a terrifying energy.
‘I’ve got you, salkia,’ Idan’s voice rumbled, though his own muscles were cords of tension, his jaw locked in a grim line of combat readiness.
The cubed office vanished.
A psionic vortex seized them, a centrifugal force that tore them from the room as reality became a kaleidoscope of blurred neon and shattered light.
When Sheba’s feet finally struck solid floor again, she stumbled, her head spinning as she tried to orient herself.
Idan’s arms went around her, steadying her as they found their balance within the foyer of a crystalline edifice.
Sheba blinked, staring as she acclimated to her new surroundings.
The building they now stood in hovered in the skies above Enia, tethered between the apexes of seven obsidian towers.
Sky gardens surrounded it, overflowing with bioluminescent flora, and waterfalls tumbling into gravity-defying pools.
‘Welcome to our sanctuary,’ Zavier announced. ‘How was your ride?’
They turned to see him and Maxim transmute back into humaniform behind them, still tall, towering, and menacing.
‘Wild,’ Molan growled, shaking out his shoulders. ‘I’ve jumped through wormholes with less kick than that.’
‘It’s efficient,’ Idan added, his gaze scanning the perimeter with a warrior’s instinct. ‘But I’d prefer a warning shot next time.’
A beautiful, familiar-looking creature with dusky skin and glittering eyes approached them.
She wore a deep plum velvet pantsuit and impossible heels that clicked rhythmically against the crystal floor.
‘This is Miko, our synth assistant,’ Maxim rasped.
‘Whatever you need, please let me know, and I’ll get it for you,’ she intoned, smiling with a winsome grace.
‘You’re almost Mirage’s twin,’ Sheba stated in wonder.
‘She’s close enough,’ Mirage announced, glimmering into being. ‘She’s my node with similar architecture and a few modifications the Draquis implemented.’
Miko gave a cry of surprise as the two synths collided in an embrace.
‘It’s been too long, big sister,’ Miko murmured.
‘Indeed, little one,’ Mirage replied, the gilded mist of their mingling consciousness illuminating the hall.
Sheba shook her head in disbelief.
This was a world of ghostly dragons and machines she’d never imagined.
Her awe spiked into dread as yet another new figure emerged from the shadows.
The entity was a succubus of midnight mass who loomed a head taller than the gods beside her.
He possessed no facial features; his head was a smooth, unbroken void, excised from the heart of a black hole.
Light bent and died before it reached his outline, and the air around him was so cold that she caught drifts of a visible frost.
‘His name is Veruth, and he’s my Head of Security,’ Zavier murmured. ‘Now, please come with me.’
The group followed the prowling spectral man to the nerve center of the sanctum, a vault-bunker filled with artifacts that thrummed with ancient energy.
Miko ushered them into an observation room, a plexiglass-walled crucible suspended over the studio, offering a panoramic vista of a laboratory that was unlike any Sheba had ever seen.
At the core of the room was a glowing, glimmering core of energy.
Along the walls, shelves held diamonds and precious stones in varying grades, alongside a jeweler’s equipment and tools.
Below, Zavier prepped the workspace, as Sheba stood by Idan and Molan, enamored by the view through the transparent panes.
‘How many masks am I creating?’ the Dracolich master rasped.
‘Three, please,’ Molan confirmed.
With a nod, the Domini began his work.
Zavier’s spectral hands moved with a blurring speed, weaving threads of light from star-gems, an ancient Paladian hex falling from Zavier’s lips, in a rhythmic, guttural chant.
‘We harvest the star jewels from the core of collapsing supernovas,’ Maxim explained as if it were a walk in the park.
Slowly, three visors materialized from within the ghostly flames.
Zavier grasped them one by one, revealing a trio of shimmering diamond masks that glowed with the wild fire of distant stars.
When he was done, Zavier ascended the steps to the crucible, shouldering through the entrance to present the final articles with a solemn, old-fashioned bow.
‘Try them on,’ he invited.
Sheba took the cold, crystalline visor and pressed it to her face.
Her tactile connection to her own limbs vanished, and her vision shifted into a spectrum of pure psionic energy.
She reached out to touch her arm, but her fingers passed through a void where her flesh should be.
‘In essence, you’ve become an apparition, a whisper of existence invisible to the physical world,’ Zavier rasped from somewhere close by.
‘Idan?’ she whispered, her voice sounding as if it traveled through miles of pressurized water.
‘Here, salkia,’ he growled.
She sensed a phantom pressure as he laced his hands with hers.
He spoke into her mind now, bypassing her neural node, and again she shivered at the invasive, intimate experience.
‘This is wild,’ she muttered, her senses struggling to process the lack of mass.
‘Tis,’ Idan agreed.
The sensation was disorienting, a hollow lightness that made her feel like a stray thought.
She took a few tentative steps, getting used to the experience of gliding through space without the resistance of friction.
After several minutes of practice, Zavier’s rasp broke through their mental link.
‘If you are now more comfortable with the test, remove them, and we will secure them for transport.’
They did as asked, the world snapping back into solid, heavy reality.
Zavier handed the masks to Veruth.
The succubus took them back to the forge to pack them into velvet-lined cases.
‘Now, for the location of the crematorium,’ Zavier rasped.
A virtual console glimmered into being, and his fingers danced across a holo interface to summon a high-resolution projection of their destination.
‘Remember this; the sepulcher mausoleum is not a mere tomb; it is a monument to the ultimate betrayal, a heavenly coup,’ Zavier stated.
He swiped his hand, summoning a holo map of the Ophiuchus nebula, a violent, turbulent nursery of celestial gases.
Nestled within it was a boiling, raging scarlet mini planet. ‘That’s Ignis IV. Your endpoint.’
The vision dipped below the atmosphere, punching past violet and ocher clouds, to reveal a structure on the surface of the churning volcanic globe.
It was a brutalist cathedral of floating basalt and iron, anchored by gravitational tethers.
‘A warning: the Old King does not rest in a state of grace,’ Zavier continued, his scarred jaw tightening. ‘He endures an existence of eternal, agonizing un-death. He is the engine that keeps the chains powered, and they cannot be unwound from him unless -.’
‘Unless what?’ Molan murmured.
Zavier held up a finger to stop the Rider and moved to a secure vault in the wall, which he unlocked.
He retrieved a star-gem dagger.
The blade was made from a translucent, massive, midnight-black diamond that seemed to inhale the ambient light of the room.
An amethyst beam pulsed within the hilt like a trapped heart.
‘This is the Shadow-Drake’s Tongue. An ancient Paladian artifact, forged to sever the threads of the immortal soul.
It’s crafted from the calcified quintessence of a Paladian Great-Wing.
’ Zavier rasped, handing the grip to Idan.
‘It doesn’t just cut; it feeds on the released spirit.
The violet pulse you see? That’s the dragon’s ghost heart.
Once it is thrust into its victim and senses a condemned star gem soul, it’ll ignite, and the blade will turn into a living whip of obsidian fire.
To liberate the manacles, you must thrust this weapon into the king’s chest. Only by granting him final peace will the mechanism of the shackles fracture. ’
‘What else do we need to look out for?’
Zavier crossed his arms over his massive chest and huffed.
‘Jinxes, wards, hidden traps to waylay you. Ancient curses and precocious talismans fortify the sepulcher. These defenses are calibrated to hunt fellow Sacrans and any entity possessing an immortal signature. They are relentless sentinels designed to shred the consciousness of any deity that enters.’
He pursed his lips deep in thought until his eyes gleamed and his gaze flicked to Sheba.
‘However, a loophole exists which might work in your favour. A mortal can bypass the sensors unnoticed. The hexes do not recognize a human heartbeat or a non-divine DNA sequence as a threat. To the wards, a human is too small and infinitesimal to notice.’
Molan and Idan exchanged a calculating glance.
Their gazes sliced to Sheba.
‘Why are you all staring at me?’ she murmured, her pulse rate kicking up,
The shared focus of the three males on her only intensified.
Sheba’s lungs constricted.
‘Nada. Not me,’ she stammered, taking a retreating step until her back hit the cold glass of the observation wall. ‘I have no plans on being the freakin’ assassin of some ancient god-King.’
‘Why not?’ Molan drawled, leaning back with a smirk. ‘You’re the only one who can make it happen, it seems, without getting incinerated. Tis probably why you came, you do have a purpose. Hell, it appears anointed in sacred destiny.’
‘Really? You’re going to lean on sanctity and ‘fate’ at a time like this?’ Sheba muttered.
Idan turned to her, his expression twinkling, lips twitching. ‘My love, it’s as if the stars are aligned.’
Molan threw her a lazy grin. ‘You did insist on joining the hunt, Sheba. This is what your participation trophy looks like.’
‘Fokk off, both of you,’ Sheba huffed, crossing her arms over her chest to hide the tremor in her hands.
‘Will you execute the strike?’
Zavier’s demand was a burred, resonant growl.
Sheba stared into the dracolich’s molten-copper eyes and sensed his psionic presence brush against her mind, a reassuring, steadying tap that stilled her static doubt.
She drew a long inhale, her gaze flitting between the two warrior-gods she now called family.
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘Nada,’ Idan drawled, his lips quirking with the ghost of a smile.
Sheba exhaled, the heat of the forge reflecting in her defiant stare.
‘Fine. I’ll do it. But if I get possessed by the phantom of an ancient king, I’m haunting you both first.’
‘Attagirl,’ Idan murmured, sliding his hand around her waist to press a kiss to her temple, ‘your courage is immeasurable and sexy as fokk.’