28th Chraunost, 992 NE
Tyr Kayn coasted the hot summer airs above Hilltown, ruefully eyeing the swarming insects far below who could not see or feel her shadow as it crossed them. Her seeming, down there in the midst of the battle, was the most beautiful illusion she had ever created, perfect in its ever-changing verisimilitude, a labour of love that had cost her decades of intense workings. Quietsigh was as busy as one of those insignificant little bees down there, occupied in ingratiating herself with the local champions, the roach-kings of humanity. Unfortunately Kayn needed to devote a repulsively-large share of her focus on the events occurring beneath her – not only maintaining the seeming itself but, almost as importantly, the control she’d exerted over those archmages who’d already been brought under her sway. She barely had enough left to keep herself hidden, especially when she landed. She had to take such care, even with the Ceryad’s power flowing through her.
Her role in the prophecy had sounded valiant, requiring cunning and bravery heretofore inconceivable – that was how Malas’s visions had seemed to have things play out – but in truth she was a manager. Every day was a constant, endless dance of thoughts. The hopes and dreams of over two dozen pathetic champions: humans and gnomes, dwarves and elves – they all revolved inside her head, a swirling, nauseating mixture of frustration and flirtation and ego. Mother Mekesta! the ego of these creatures…
Were ants the same? If she were to take one of the druids under her spell and have them inspect the beliefs of, say, termites, would they be found to be so filled with overweening arrogance as these little meat-sticks scurrying across the city? She suspected not. She suspected it was an aspect of humanity and its halfbreed offshoots, a kind of careless self-importance that had nothing to do with actuality, wrapped up in their selfish imaginations.
Her kind was different. Dragons – every one of them had at least some access to abilities which only the greatest among men were lucky enough to receive. Every one of them, chosen by the gods to inherit the earth, every one of them a powerhouse of uncontainable physical strength. It was a mark of shame that Mund had existed so long, that her lesser cousins had failed so pathetically in their attempts to topple it into ruin.
Following so many simultaneous lines of thought at once left little attention over for musing on the nature of dragon and man, for enjoying the sun’s warmth. Everseer was speaking, using the telepathic link Kayn – Quietsigh – had set up. Everseer most of all she could ill-afford to lose control around. Even arch-enchanters were less of a nuisance than arch-diviners.
Regretfully, she allowed her awareness to sink back down to the ground, where she was nothing more than one of the champions…
Looking through her avatar’s eyes, Kayn noticed that their meaningless fight was almost over. Quietsigh had stayed well clear of the carnage, sending duplicates into the fray in her place, illusory images that were fit for little more than distraction against such experienced foes. In truth, the champions wanted little from her beyond her links and the bittersweet ‘protections’ she offered them. Nonetheless, from her position on the rooftop she could see the remnant of the Chaos-Lord’s paltry retinue, trapped in ice. Glassgrief, his long white hair streaming with frost, kept packing it on top of their sorcerer’s shield and the Chaosmakers’ sole archmage no longer had the energy-reserves to resist him. Everseer was testing the barriers with her blades a thousand times a second, Fingersnap moving only slightly less swiftly; Splinterwing was in his dire raven form above, directing his plant-golems as they shambled into and over the demonic eldritches that had been summoned into the street.
Quietsigh casually reviewed the last communication; Everseer, asking for confirmation that their enemies were all here, that none had escaped their efforts to corral the Chaosmakers. The sight of the seeress would only miss something like this one time in a million, but she wasn’t the city’s chief diviner just because she was powerful – she was decisive and she was a double-checker; she never let anything slip through her net.
Except Kayn, of course.
The dragon directed the magic down and let the spell itself flow through her avatar, mentally scanning the area.
“Yep, you’ve got them all, Everseer!” Quietsigh said chirpily. “Their archmage is thinking so hard about holding up the shield, I can hear it through his wards without even trying!”
“Good to know,” her ‘leader’ replied with a touch of aplomb. “See what he thinks about this!”
The sorcerer was using some kind of strange fey to limit chronomantic fields, but it didn’t make much difference to diviners of their calibre. Everseer doubled, trebled her speed – Fingersnap seemed to borrow some momentum from her, increasing his own velocity almost to the same extent –
And the shield came apart.
Multi-coloured steel and waves of super-cooled frost left the Chaosmakers in white-ice chunks, frozen flesh and bone and clothing all neatly diced.
It was just a trifle troubling, Kayn supposed. She could admit that much to herself. Seeing champions in action, knowing that they weren’t even really pushing their potential half the time… Their lives of unceasing confrontation left them in no doubt of their abilities, left them with little fear of even the most impressive foes.
Not that the Chaosmakers (or Rebels, or Unclean, whatever they were going by) were impressive. Kayn had long-since infiltrated their organisation, and took over a few of their minds, finding nothing there but Ulu Kalar’s design. ‘Organisation.’ It was a disorganisation, and the turncoats who entered the Thirteen Candles were soon wallowing in their insignificance. It amused her now to abide by the prophecy and simply let them be, howling their opposition to Ulu Kalar’s plans like wolves at the moon. She could only enslave the minds of so many, after all, and there had to be an outlet for those who discovered a shard of the truth. The darkmages were so very wrong about most things. Their paranoia about the purposes of Infernal Incursions was a source of much hilarity to her. As though the fiends had ever needed or wanted such a banal thing as purpose.
No, it was those same demons – the armies of the Incursion that impressed her, that made her wonder at these champions. These chosen of the gods of light. The defenders of Mund worked together with such worrisome finesse, laying low ageless entities in the matter of seconds. If the heretics could band together properly they could wipe out the champions in a matter of days, but they’d never had a leader with straight lines in their minds. No, being a champion meant something. And their kind had slain so many of her kind, too, not just demons. Kayn’s mother and at least two of her brood-sisters, that much was for certain – probably her father and her brood-brother too… The Mage Wars had been a messy time. Those particular champions, the murderers of her kin, would be long dead by now, of course. But that didn’t diminish the sting of the losses – it was a series of wounds that only worsened over time, an ever-widening, gaping sore that had to be treated. Treated, so that the healing could begin.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
It made sense to her now. Why so many dragons had given their lives in the service of Ulu Kalar’s goals.
Victory. Beyond life. Beyond death. Irrefutable, irreversible victory.
We will feast on you all, slowly, she swore, and hoard your bones until the end of time.
But that wasn’t anything even close to what her avatar needed to say.
“I think he thought he didn’t like it,” Quietsigh chirped.
High above, Tyr Kayn scowled, the vast jaws clenched, teeth grinding at awkward angles. But she was a creature of habit despite her temptations, and recalcitrance was not in her nature.
Duty called.
When the sun sank and the air’s heat slowly began to evaporate, rather than sending Quietsigh back to her house as she did almost every night, she dispelled the seeming instead and headed north. Keeping Quietsigh active at such distance would drain her reserves, and she would have need of those tonight.
Beyond Mund, the Five Peaks loomed. Dark rock faces still shimmering with warmth, she climbed above them, chasing the dying sunlight. At last, alighting on the highest point of the mountains above the clouds, where even the richest of Mund’s gentry dared not build their expensive cabins, she lay down and closed her eyes.
Here, in her solitude, she could almost relax, but she could never let her glamours fade, even for an instant. A single stray bird, whispering word of her presence to another, and another, until the message was brought to single meagre druid – it would bring the plan crashing down, perhaps unrecoverably.
Her brood, so far away – she had almost forgotten their scents now. She wanted to speak with them, but tonight the power had to be spent on less frivolous tasks. Instead she plunged herself back into her memories, entering them as though they were reality, almost heedless of the reckless stupidity entailed in such an act of letting go.
If she lost years in the remembrance, it would not be for the first time.
The magic that ran in the lava of her veins enabled perfect recall. It wasn’t even recall, really. It was a re-experiencing, a second (or third, or thirtieth) chance to live those moments again. There was no newness. No new decisions, no changing the choices that had long-since been made. But, in this moment, she could forget that. She felt the newness, even if it were an illusion of her own making.
When she thought of the bodies of her wyrmlings, the scaly steel of their flesh coiled about her belly and the base of her tail for warmth – she was there.
The locust-humans, living and dying in their swarms, could never understand. Their time on this plane was so fleeting. How could they comprehend the bond between a mother and her children? They raised theirs for but a decade and a half – if they were lucky! She’d had over ten times that with Dreng and Akarda, with Vidar and Faiyn. Teaching them the intricacies of language and illusion, the subtleties employed by greed and envy and jealousy and hate. Bringing them in seeming to witness the histories of far-flung lands. Showing them how to fight the lesser drakes for play and territory. Watching them eat their first kills – elk, except for Akarda who’d been lucky enough to find a herd of big, filthy swine…
Even in the memory, there was the twinge of guilt – knowing their first kills should’ve been humans. Scared little humans, running, screaming. As her first kill had been.
And she’d been apart from them now for so long that the pain was more than emotion, more than suffering.
Is this how Mother felt, when she left us and went into the arms of Mekesta? Do the Chaosmakers’ nightmares come from you, Mother? I feel their strength. I feel…
The ties of family were strong – they were physical and psychic, stronger than time, death…
Stronger than memories.
She shook herself out of her reverie, then tapped the Ceryad-tree again, something that had only been made possible thanks to almost five years of plotting. The runestone one of her sorcerers had unknowingly secreted in its crystal roots was highly-experimental. The diviners and enchanters amongst the champions who unknowingly kept the runestone hidden required careful arrangement.
She took that unfathomable source of power, the life-force of the tree of magic, and cast it out, like blowing on a falling feather to direct its course.
“Malas!” She whispered the name with her mind, casting it out with all her prodigious might. “Mal Malas. Heir to Mal Tagar. Prince Deathwyrm… Cousin! Please, please heed me…”
But even if her wings were splayed out to touch the branches of a whole grove of Ceryad-trees, her thoughts would never cross the great chasms between the planes. She would never reach him, whichever dark winds he rode.
Bring back the ghosts of our dead soon, cousin, she thought, then opened her eyes, adding: as Mekesta wills it be!
She turned her face towards the south, then, and sent out her thoughts once more – to the target who would not refuse her. The only true companionship she could keep amongst her peers. She didn’t sweat when she was nervous; her natural response was to cool, shiver. Ordinarily her internal furnaces would’ve kept her feeling hot through the worst snow-blizzards the Mundic peaks could threaten – grounded on the empty mountain-top, she had to fight for a moment to still the quivering flesh that could start a landslide if she wasn’t careful.
“Ord Ylon. Tyr Kayn would speak with you.”
His rumble returned almost at once, and even after all this time she still hadn’t gotten used to it. The sound of his mind’s merest whisper was threatening, even to her: her, his friend and confidante, his co-conspirator. Even here, thousands of miles from him, the clash of armies in battle that was his voice made her scales shake.
More than she feared fighting Mal Malas to the death, she feared spending one minute in the face of Ord Ylon’s wrath. Thinking of speaking to him was one thing, but actually doing it was another entirely. Reality had an unimaginable quality which every attempt at imagining failed to take into account – even for her.
“Ord Ylon hears you, daughter of Tyr Draem.”
“O mighty Ord,” she began, restraining the stammering that constantly tried to spring into her telepathic vocalisations. “Forgive my interruption. Mighty Ord, I have once more attempted to contact Mal Malas. Still he eludes my touch.”
“There is nothing to forgive. The years grow thin, princess, but do not doubt him. Malas will return to us ere the Time of the Twins.”
“And if he does not, my lord? If he –“
“If he does not return, I shall depart to recover the remains of my beloved as the vision appoints. I shall break not one twig nor bend but one whisker of this prophecy, princess. See to it that you do not either.”
“My lord.”
When he said nothing more, she allowed the link to relax, then shook her great head wearily. She wanted to stay here, sleep here, but that wouldn’t do. The sleep cycle shouldn’t be back upon her for another decade, and by then everything would be changed; but these last years had been so exhausting – the most exhausting of her long life.
No. Quietsigh might’ve been needed in the city already, and she was getting a little peckish. She’d check things out before grabbing a snack from the camps outside the walls. Ten or so would do, today. She hadn’t built up that much of a hunger; her power was waxing strong.
She turned aside and spread her vast red-gold wings, angling herself, allowing the now-chilled air to send her back to Mund.
Just a few more years.
* * *