Cassandra Pendragon

“That’s…hmm,” Erya began, a slight blush rising to her cheeks. Was she embarrassed? “I don’t think so, but… go on, why don’t you have a look? Maybe you can see more than us.” Undoubtedly, but then again, I wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of what I was going to see. Unless my newfound knowledge would prove to be much more useful than I expected.

“I can at least give it a try. Any hints what I’m actually looking for?”

“Something… odd,” Aurelia replied in the fey’s stead. She gesticulated towards the stones and added: “Erya won’t admit it, but we’re out of our depths.” Ah, so she had been embarrassed. “I know you don’t have much experience with magic, but hopefully your sight will show you something we’ve missed. It seems just like it’s supposed to, but Morgan…”

“I can speak for myself, thank you,” the girl in question interrupted her waspishly. “Look, I know a bit about those stones, I’ve been with an elf for a while, after all. They’re… the flow of energy within should be smooth, equalised, but those are not. What’s more… just get near, you’ll feel it.” I frowned but did as she asked. I didn’t quite touch one of them, but hovered close by. At first, I was confused, but when I turned to face the former fey again, I realised what she meant. In the proximity of the stones the air was colder, as if they were actively taking in energy.

“Is that supposed to happen,” I asked, even though I already suspected the answer.

“No,” the elf explained. “If heated, they will convert the thermal energy, but they shouldn’t actively absorb it. What’s more, they’re too heavy. Considering how much power they must already have accumulated at this rate, they should be hovering, but they weigh around three tons, each.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“I lifted them,” Aurelia answered. “It’s by no means accurate, but I can tell you that they weigh about as much as normal stone would. I even bathed them in flames for a few seconds, and while they did become lighter, it was by no means equivalent to what you would expect.”

“I see,” a blatant lie. I had understood what they were getting at, but as to what it meant, I had no clue. Maybe there was a hidden enchantment that consumed the magic, like a strange parasite? But I was convinced, the girls would have found it. As talented as Amon was, Aurelia and Ahri, at the very least, wouldn’t have been fooled by a cheap trick. Shrugging, I channeled a considerable amount of power towards my eyes and scrutinised the rocky enigmas. My vision was ablaze with silver and the intricate lines and matrices within the stones appeared before me, like a spiderweb.

The very same second, I stumbled backwards, sweat drenching my brow. My heart beat as fast as it had, when I had been cursed and I hissed involuntarily, my tails quivering. I was scared, more scared than I had been in a while but I didn’t know why. For the fraction of a second I was utterly confused, a part of me ready to turn tails and run while the other stood close by, shaking its head and rolling its eyes at the sudden antics. It didn’t last long, though. A memory rose from the murky depths of uncounted aeons, sluggishly at first, but in pristine detail. I didn’t collapse, but for a few moments, I wasn’t exactly sure where I was, the cargo hold, my friends, the glowing crystals blurry and surreal, while another scene became superimposed on my vision. A fucking brutal moment, I would have loved to forget entirely, and with it came the pain of the past.

I had fought countless times before, it was a part of me, just as much as my wings or my unyielding pride. Countless times I had won, countless times I had lost, but never before had I felt helpless. Helpless like a newborn foal, when the full moon rose and the wolf’s hungry howls drew near. But these… theses creatures… they were different. They were… dead. Not as in animated puppets, controlled by a flimsy spell dead, but completely and utterly empty. No electricity, no mana, no life, no soul… there was nothing for me to burn, to absorb or to destroy. They could as well have been lumps of rock. Thousands upon thousands of lumps of rock, hard enough that I wasn’t convinced anyone but me would have been able to cut through.

In some forsaken corner of the universe, where nothing existed but those nightmares and a troubled angel, who had gotten lost, I bled like a pig from a million tiny cuts, my thoughts racing. I knew what they were. Pariahs, dangerous, nigh invincible pariahs I had thought extinct. Even one could be a threat in its own right but a swarm of this size… if I ran, there was no telling if I’d be able to find them again. They couldn’t be tracked, they couldn’t be spelled, they could only be squished by sheer strength and I wasn’t doing great.

A few hundred, maybe a bit more, I had ripped to shreds and the transcendent thunderstorm, raging around me for as far as I could see, had eroded more than I could count, but there were so many. They must have been breeding for centuries. I gasped, another one had made it through, protected by its brethren. Like a leech, it stuck to me and I coughed up blood, it’s needlelike teeth tearing through skin and flesh. I swallowed a curse and sent a spike of pure, transcendent energy through its body, reducing it to a greyish pulp. The short distraction had been too much. A wave of rending fangs and lidless eyes surged forth, the edges disintegrating in the maelstrom I had created. A heartbeat later, I was swallowed and dragged along, my world reduced to searing agony, the ravenous darkness devouring me alive. I was so fucked. Somehow, I needed help, but there was no one left. No one but Chaleb.

I staggered and fell. Panting, I buried my face in my hands, my whole body trembling. I ached all over, as if I had been used as a chewing toy by Cerberus himself. For a moment, I thought I still felt the insatiable hunger, with which they had dug into me, but when I opened my eyes, my vision blurry, I saw silvery trails of blood, where my nails had shredded my palms. I took a shaking breath and forced my muscles to relax. It was over, it wasn’t real, anymore… or was it?

My head whipped around and I stared at the eggs, paling. No. Fucking. Way. How could they even be on this planet? Had they been left behind on purpose, disguised as flying stones? Why? Were they about to hatch? Bile rose in my throat, when I imagined them cracking open, right about now. With a shit ton of luck I might be able to kill them off, but I wasn’t even sure, if I’d manage, never mind the damage we’d cause.

“Are you alright? What happened?” A small, warm hand landed reassuringly on my shoulder but Erya’s voice was quivering with tension. Understandable, considering blood was still dripping from my hands, my wings had manifested and my tails were sparkling with energy.

“I… no, I don’t think I am. Those things… I don’t think they’re stones, at all. Morgan, you said the energy within them wasn’t flowing smoothly. It’s pulsing, am I right?”

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“You saw it too, then?”

“No, call it an educated guess. Help me up.” Still unsteady, I leaned heavily on Erya and mumbled, my voice hoarse: “those things, aren’t stones, I think they’re eggs. Eggs that shouldn’t even exist, least of all here. I’ve seen them before… have you tried to damage one?”

“Not really,” Aurelia said. She was standing close by, eyeing me worriedly. “But when I picked one up, I accidentally allowed it to scrape against its neighbour. It didn’t chip, but that might simply have been luck.”

“I don’t think so. You’ve already touched and used your magic on them, it shouldn’t matter, if you did so again. Go on, try to scratch one.” She frowned but when I nodded encouragingly, she walked up and transformed one of her fingers into an ebony claw, red and gold sparks dancing across its surface. Lightly, at first, she pressed it against the rough, greyish shell, gradually increasing the pressure until the muscles in her arm bulged and her mouth twisted into a snarl. The only reward she reaped was a low rumbling noise, when she pushed the thing a few feet back. She stared at her hands incredulously, the tip of her claw blunted.

“That…,” she mumbled hesitantly, “shouldn’t be possible. It should have gone right through.”

“It’ll need a hell of a lot more to damage them,” I replied darkly, “if I’m right. I think they’re creatures from another world. Either they have been planted there or they were stored as cargo, which has been overlooked, but I’m convinced no ship has ever flown, using these.”

“Let me guess, they aren’t exactly herbivorous, fluffy butterflies,” Erya asked anxiously.

“How did you figure? Someone must have brought them here. An immortal.” I shuffled closer and whispered, more to myself: “but why? A weapon? A mistake? Why would they…” a sharp sting distracted me. The black ring on my finger had become hot and it glowed faintly. “What the…” it shrank, silvery blood welling from beneath the tarnished metal. I hissed in surprise and pain.

“Cassy…” Erya’s grip on me tightened. “Curse it, why are you bleeding? What’s going on?” I heard the fear in her voice, but I was distracted, struggling with another memory, one that had risen from the ring. One that wasn’t my own, a memory I shouldn’t even have.

“The perfect creature,” I chuckled quietly, stretching for the first time in years. It had been hard work, but I had done it. Recreated a bloody miracle. The families had failed but maybe this would bring peace at last. Dark, silent, everlasting peace, incorruptible, eternal, the end of strive and folly. It was about time.

My back creaked loudly when I rolled my shoulders and rotated my neck. In front of me a, a grey, rock like egg shone wetly under the greenish light, the flickering crystals illuminated the dark, lonely cavern with. Rivulets of blood still dripped from its surface, feeding the growing sea it rested in. Creating the thing had been difficult… difficult and expensive. Many had lost their lives for this single creation. Maybe it was only one, but soon, there’d be more. So many more.

Contently, I allowed my lips to curl into a smile but the movement felt unnatural, strange, as if my body had already forgotten what it was supposed to look like. No matter, soon I’d be able to rest. Just one more test. With a thought, I conjured a vial into my hand, filled with a glowing, silver liquid. Anxiously, I removed the stopped and sniffed the air. It was still potent.

The blood of immortals quickly lost its power but the sample was still charged. Breathlessly, I pricked my finger and allowed my own black blood to drip onto the egg. It vanished immediately and the crimson pool at its base was sucked inside, the lives I had stolen providing nourishment for the awakening creature. With shaking hands, I tipped the vial. A single, glowing drop sluggishly fell and when it touched the coarse surface, light exploded outwards. Light, bits and pieces of a theoretically unbreakable shell and something squishy and wet, like hardened, greyish yolk.

While hard, jagged projectiles ripped through my body, shredding my left eye, I screamed in frustration, my wrath tearing through the cave, the mountain above, the surrounding lands… a growing thunderstorm of dark miasma, the perfect likeness of my failure. Stones turned into dust, animals and humans shivered once and collapsed, their corpses devoured by my spreading anger. Water vanished, trees corroded to nothing and soon, I was breathing heavily in the midst of a black cloud, only the shards of the egg, still embedded in my body had survived. And the vial. It had neatly neutralised my outburst, the shimmering liquid within churning sluggishly, as if to mock me, me and my failure. I raised it to my face, my enraged, scarlet eyes reflected in its depth.

“Next time,” I grunted. “Next time, it’ll work. I’ll find a way.” I had been so close… the corpse was the key, a monster, not tied to our world. While it grew, it consumed everything it came in contact with. Heat, life, even souls… I had found out about the latter, when the souls of my victims, whose blood I had used, hadn’t rejoined the cycle. When it hatched, it was born from what it had devoured, but the energy was gone, transformed into a completely unique matter, a matter that couldn’t be converted into energy. It was… dead, for want of a better word, dead to the world. And as such, it might just carry the key, that would allow the essences of two immortals to combine. Unfortunately, all I had managed was creating a transcendent battery, up until now. That was worth a ton in its own right but the creatures couldn’t grow on a diet of transcendent forces and every time I had even tried to introduce a second strain… scrambled eggs. Maybe I had to think in generations. Incremental changes over countless iterations until they could finally bear the pressure of two transcendent sparks, the pressure of an immortal child.

I was on my knees. A glaring corona of silver light, so bright it seemed almost solid, surrounded me, like the halo of a star. I had raised my left arm, blood gushing from my hand. The ring, sitting on top a silvery fountain, had turned into a black hole, swallowing every stream of power around me, streams it was tearing from the eggs. Erya’s cries faintly reached my ears and I felt the weak impacts, when Aurelia threw herself against my armour of light, but I couldn’t even turn my head. Transfixed, I stared, while the shells turned into sparks, layer upon layer disintegrating before my eyes.

At first, the torrents of energy were pure and undiluted, but soon I felt, more than I saw, something else, like a dissonance, a shrilling sound amidst a choir. Intent and purpose, a shadow of what had once been was there as well. The small part of my mind, which wasn’t busy cursing or panicking, was wondering, if those were the traces of another immortal, stored and sealed, but the thought soon vanished. Gradually, the ring was absorbing every speck of power and as it did, it ripped more and more of my blood, of my life from my wound.

I hissed in pain, still reeling from my visions. Disoriented and scared I tried to marshal my will to either destroy the rampaging magics or simply rip off my own finger, but a small voice in the back of my mind held me back. “Don’t! Cassy, whatever you do, don’t damage that connection. I can feel it, the rune, the rune Amazeroth gave me, it’s reacting! Just… hold on, I’m almost there!”

“Ahri,” I thought confusedly, “what… where…” Another nauseating flash of tearing pain, accompanied by another surge of blood, cut me off. I almost keeled over completely, but I couldn’t move my hand. It felt as if it was stuck in a white hot, immovable vice.

“What should I do,” I asked weakly, slowly regaining my bearings. Damn it, it hurt!

“Endure, just endure. I’m…” a heartbeat later, I heard splintering wood and a series of surprised shouts. Crimson flames mingled with the churning maelstrom, parting the silver curtain. Warmth spread through my back and a flood of white fur washed around my knees. Ahri hugged me from behind and pulled me closer, her outstretched arm supporting my injured hand, the scent of pine trees calming my nerves.

Where ever my wings brushed against her chest, I felt the outlines of a glyph burn underneath her skin. It resembled the motive on Mephisto’s coin, a growing tree and a bowing figure, but there was so much more. The individual strands of power trailed off into ever smaller fractals, describing laws and rules I had never even heard of. Some of them were dormant others teeming with light. They mirrored the complex storm of power around the ring, a carved counterpart, like a lock and a key. The more energy the ring took in, the more segments of the rune became active.

“Ahri.” I whispered hoarsely, my heart beating like a drum,“what’s going on?”

“A battle that shouldn’t happen, yet,” she grunted and her tails tightened around me protectively.