INTERLUDE 6B: A MOTHER’S CARE
“It is too easy to say all this, so let me speak on. Love is divisive. Love is exclusionary. For each tension, there is an equal tension in opposition. Even as it is the greatest positive force ever experienced, this is only made possible by the fact that it is the greatest negative force ever experienced. Love says: this is worthy of the High; let all else be laid Low, but I shall be satisfied. Love is the narrowing of vision that comes with focus, erasing all else that exists, removing its relevance. Love is giving without taking, yes – but it is only given to one being at a time. It is for this reason that we admonish our adepts to self-limit their exposure to love. Find the tranquillity within yourselves that shares a fragment of love with each and every mortal being equal in their part.”
– from the Exalted’s Address at the Temple of Compassion’s 996 Induction Ceremony
1st Yearsend, 827 NE
“This…” Kayn tried not to recoil from the pain but the growl in Draconic that burst free of her throat came out more like a yelp. “This is… too much, Malas.”
His hollow snarl returned from behind glittering teeth. “Hold. A moment longer.”
When she screamed the flame that burst from her throat would’ve been enough to engulf a farmstead, cook its inhabitants down to charred bones.
The mottled grey cavern walls of her current residence did blacken, even melted a little, but were relatively unharmed. Her children watched from the corners, their eyes wide, frightened.
At last the sorcerer released his grip on her mind and she sank her great head back down to the rock.
“Quite the Yearsend gift, is it not?” he asked conversationally, lifting his jet-black spellbound crown with a claw and sliding it back atop his horns.
“Is this what Ulu Kalar has brought me?” she gasped.
Kayn inspected her cousin as she fought to restore her composure, not meeting the gleaming eyes. His rotten body, the tremendous ribcage of pale bone visible through thin, almost transparent scales. The once-glorious purple fins and horns bedecking his cheeks, forehead, neck – all turned ashen, chipped with time’s inevitable attrition. The folded wings looked barely usable in their tattered state.
The stench wasn’t so bad, not anymore, at least. He’d dried out considerably over the decades since his transformation.
And he has grown in power considerably, too, she thought with just a little niggle of worry. There are so few of the true bloodlines left – to take this step, this risk…
Whatever he had done to himself in pursuit of his goals, it had clearly paid off for him. She had no idea what eldritch-joining permitted him to counteract her control, anchor himself to her mind as he had done.
Though, she had to admit to herself, it had been a necessity. She didn’t have the resolve to cling on through that turmoil, without him binding them together as he had done.
“What have you just put in my mind?” she asked, lifting her head again until she was level with him.
“Everything,” Malas replied gloatingly, eyes flaring.
She hissed her displeasure – it was an automatic reflex – and turned her gaze inward.
“No,” she snapped after even a cursory glance. “There is too much, and I will not retreat into that place until you are gone. I do not trust you, cousin.”
Malas shook his head. “You must, Tyr Kayn. You must believe in the vision, the vision Ulu Kalar brought forth long ages past. I have found the memory – I have passed it to you! Look!”
“I am all for bringing back Tyr Devas,” she said carefully – the last thing she wanted was him passing along the verified memory of her voicing blasphemy to the likes of Ord Ylon or Nil Sorog. “But to recreate the Dracofont – that was my mother’s fantasy, not mine. It is a dream, Mal Malas, a story. No more.”
“A dream, a story no more,” he laughed, letting black, noxious fumes pour from his lipless maw without a care.
“Malas!” Kayn called on her fire and sprang towards him, a few hundred tons of metal muscle set into instantaneous motion, rocking the cave, sending coins spilling in an avalanche. The light in her mouth spilled orange radiance over the dracolich. “Some of us still have to breathe, fool.”
She was thinking primarily of her brood, still young, all-too-vulnerable; when she was angry like this, emotions at their peak and gargantuan body extended, she was larger than the dracolich, capable of eliciting a little fear even from him. He was older than her, but he’d been dead long enough for her to have overtaken him in size, now.
Malas bowed his head deferentially and even went so far as to flop down lightly onto his side, exposing his neck. “My apologies, princess.” He spoke the word sarkalak, the proper form of Draconic address for one of her station, his voice suddenly dripping honey. “I come as a guest into your abode and – mistakenly – threaten you and yours. I ask only that you spare my life.”
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She saw the twinkle in his eye, the sardonic grin splitting the non-existent ancient lips.
“Oh, get up, fool,” she relented.
She retracted her neck, then swished her tail nonchalantly as she turned back towards her bed of treasures. She moved more softly now, and no longer rocked the foundations of her home.
As she lowered herself back down into a position of comfortable repose, long tail curled about her midriff, he shifted slightly so as to better regard her.
“Do you truly not believe, then, princess?” The sorcerer’s dead tongue flicked out, a cold, gleaming blue thing, licking the dust from his gleaming teeth. “After all this time, all you have seen? The lower animals tore down our cities to make their hovels; they cover the face of the earth like the locust swarm –“
“The Dracofont – they were defeated. This world is not of our making, Mal Malas, but of the making of our ancestors.”
“They were defeated by the Founders! The Founders, who are gone, eliminated from the planes! They are long-since Celestium’s; it is as was prophesied. Would that Ulu Hariskar still lived to convince you… would that I might find her body, or her soul…”
“You search for her spirit?”
“I search for them all. I hope only that they have not passed beyond my reach.”
“All? Then you seek my mother, Tyr Draem, who spent her life’s blood on such a fool’s quest! Listen to me – they are dangerous, and I –”
“No, listen to me, cousin!” Malas’s sudden intensity shocked her. “This world is nothing but that which they foresaw, that which Ulu Kalar knew would come to pass all along. And he said we would do it. We would bring him – all five of them – back to Materium, with all their powers! Mund would be ours, a feast beyond imagining, a hoard beyond belief. A triumph beyond compare. A Return.”
She made her displeasure known, hissing again. “He said we would do it? Forgive my scepticism, dear cousin, noble sarkalor; but I do not believe you. The baldness of your deceptions only belittles my intelligence.”
Malas’s smile only grew wider. “This is no deception, princess! You are named.”
She tried not to show her shock, but her flaming eyes must’ve widened like his smile.
“Consult the visions I have bestowed upon you – there is no lie to be found there, and you should know it.” He levered himself back to his feet with his tail, the visibly-damaged wings creaking as though he were thrice his age. “I shall give you the distance you require, and return to you presently. We’ll discuss your response before I proceed, yes? Your pet creatures will permit me to pass?”
“So long,” she replied, “as you do not mention my doubts to Ord Ylon or Nil Sorog. Swear it on the bones of Mal Tagar!”
“But Mal Tagar left no bones, as well you know.” Malas’s amethyst eyes shone again. “Would they have us raise him in his own carcass?”
“On the bones to come,” she said.
Your bones, sorcerer.
Mal Malas straightened at that, the dracolich’s atrophied musculature suddenly suffused with a touch of the nethernal energy that made it so formidable despite its weakened appearance.
“Princess,” he said solemnly, all trace of jest gone in an instant – even the one word alone was acquiescence. “Ord Ylon I won’t tell, but I must advise you: Nil Sorog is no more.”
Kayn’s own smoke came from her maw then.
“My apologies once again; I thought you were aware.”
“I was not,” Tyr Kayn roared.
“A human archmage slew her, and now uses her skull as his throne.”
“She… she has truly fallen?”
“Lower than any of her forebears.” Malas affected a shrug, the torn wings flapping slightly. “I will bring her back, when the hour is upon us. Once Nil Nafrim inhabits her remains, Ord Yset will coat her in flesh. Before we each get new bodies, of course. With their power, nothing shall stand before them, no concept beyond actualisation.”
She ignored her revulsion at the notion of becoming undead. That would matter little against reclaiming the world from the rodents who’d inherited it from them… Especially if she could have living flesh surrounding the amethyst eyes which went with a nethernal essence…
“The hour?” she asked, then clawed at her bed of wealth, realising that she was getting her hopes up despite her better judgement. If the vision did not call for her to leave before her brood was grown, well-established as the powers to fear here in her subterranean domain, then perhaps this idea had true merit.
The sorcerer’s wily voice tried the flattery one more time. “Are you certain, princess, you would not consult the vision…?”
“Begone, cousin!” she snarled. Then, belatedly, offered: “And return in haste.”
Malas nodded his head. “One year, princess. One year. I will see you next time the seasons die, and then we will determine whether we can proceed.”
One year, she mused. It was a good length of time in which for her to make such a momentous decision.
She watched him turn and make his way through the rocky opening that would lead him through her lair, the hewn-out halls where her host of faithful fire-giant worshippers and her droves of enchanted monsters lounged.
With a command, she could have him slain – have his bones turned to dust – but he would probably still find a way to return next year. She knew her cousin well – or at least, she had known him well, before his great, irreversible change. He would turn up as a spectre if he had to, as though nothing had happened, politely attendant upon her answer.
And if she disagreed, if she turned on him the next time she saw him, he would turn on her.
She was not certain she could survive that encounter.
But whether or not she believed in her strength, she knew what her answer would be.
Whether or not she trusted him, she knew what her answer would be.
Whether or not she wanted to commit to the same great, irreversible change…
She knew what her answer would be.
There were so few, so few left of lineage. It had been years – centuries – since last she was so infuriated.
It was what set dragonkind apart. What made them better. The commitment, across the ages, down the endless days. The unchanging code.
Blood for blood.
The lust for vengeance, settled for long decades by the need to procreate, suddenly flared once more within her slow-stirring soul, like magma surging from a volcano.
Was it time? Could she abandon it all? Follow her mother into the madness?
So many of them had been drawn to Mund, lured by lies. But to be slain by a single human? To suffer that disgrace – it was outrageous!
To what new low have we fallen?
They… slew… Nil… Sorog!
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