Their rescuer’s robe possessed little more detail up close than it had as a silhouette; the outer covering was like a colourless shawl with holes cut out for her hooded head and her long-sleeved arms to pop through. Aramas had never met a wizard, but he’d never thought if he did that he’d meet one covered in so much drop. She was a mystery: she was medium height, maybe five-seven-ish, her build hidden by the shapelessness of her clothing. When she turned to gesture them onwards after her, Aramas could see nothing of her face beneath the cowl.

Then, when they failed to respond, her magic came to life, moving them against their wills.

They exchanged a continuous series of increasingly-petrified glances, but beyond that there was nothing they could do except follow Ithilya – the wind at their backs was a constant pressure, forcing them to keep up, barring them from escape. Cull looked really pale; his brush with death had left him well-painted.

When she started talking, Aramas did his best to keep up, but she was speaking too fast for him.

“You must comprehend me – we would not ordinarily bring you into the fold under conditions such as these. We would wait, until you had had your fill of death – until you understood it, truly, becoming able to weigh it in your hand and decide, one way or the other… It would ease the process, allow the understanding to meet with resolve, becoming a pure will, the touch of whose discerning edge nothing might endure without change. Stop.”

Ithilya whirled, staring at them. “Do you comprehend?”

Cull swallowed. “Y-you don’t think we’ve… seen enough death?”

Aramas raised his hand in objection. “Uh – ‘scuse me, an’ everythin’, but can we go? We sure appreciate what you done for us back there, but…”

“Yeah,” Cull piped up, “it was real nice, real gracious, like…”

Ithilya regarded them from the shadows of her hood. “You can never leave. Your fates are entwined with my own. I cast the stones myself, and heard the gods’ answer! We depart now for the Thirteen Candles. Do you not see? The end of the world is nigh! You, Aramas Endemion, and you, Cullimo Caris, have your parts to play. Do not fear to tread the path. All paths lead to death. Only one leads to glory. Come! Drink, and we will depart.”

She produced her arm from the deep sleeve once more, and held in her hand a trio of identical transparent phials, something like water floating within, but water that sparkled and bubbled.

“Wh-what?” Aramas stammered. He didn’t really know what he was responding to.

“What are they? Philtres of True Invisibility, an enchanted solution of phinphardion bile – with a raspberry infusion to overcome the taste. Unless you are allergic to raspberry, they will be quite safe – you cannot be allergic to the other ingredients…” She stared at the unmoving lads for a moment or two. “Come, you did not think we would be able to pass through the skies of the city unmolested? You are with me, so you too are of the unclean now. You exist on pain of death and on our sufferance alone.”

Cull’s hand shot out and gripped him by the upper arm. Aramas could sense the waves of panic flooding out of his friend but, in himself, he was feeling stupefied more than anything.

I… am… what now?

“I – I would really like to go home now,” he managed to say.

This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. We’re goin’ home, and once we’re home everythin’ will be okay –

Ithilya was sighing. “Very well. I shall show you now; then you will come with me.”

She returned her hands to the folds of her sleeves, then produced a loop of thin wire into which a number of bright-yellow gems had been worked.

“Sh-show us what, lady? We really, really don’t wanna come with you. We’re just s-simple dock-thieves, we don’t know nothin’ about the end of the world or h-heretics or any o’ that…”

The darkmage – the heretic – settled the loop of wire like a circlet upon the top of her head, over the hood.

Sheaths of wind congealed about the boys’ wrists, and their arms were suddenly yanked out towards her; she reached for them with her fingers, taking one of their hands in each of hers; then the mage’s own pure will sliced into them and everything changed.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

An old dragon dreamed a dream

And you will dream it too

There is no place for souls to hide

But in the shadows of dreams

Here, take this candle with you

And bear it thence into the dark place

That you too might see what shapes unfold

Where dreamers dream of dragons old

By keen eyes let me see you and unwind

The dusty threads of time

A journey lost to sands

Whose mountains were founded on lies

Ere clouds again crossed

The face of the sun

And moon and sky

Ere the Lord of Lords of Magic died

Whither will you find it?

In a heart made of cold?

A whisper taken across planes?

For nothing is

What it seems

In dreams untold

Aramas’s eyes rolled back in his head and he saw the ending. He saw it all.

Mund… The Dracofont…

This isn’t a city… this is a trough!

He saw the five dragons, immense and glittering, proud predators drenched in the ruins of their destruction. They moved through Hightown like wayward children through little toy buildings made of sticks.

He saw the slaughter.

Immense and insane.

The Maginox was shattered into innumerable shards, jagged splinters that the black dragon took up and used as her five-coloured weapon, her macabre lash of glass.

The rivers were turned to steam. The explosion alone killed tens of thousands. The shrieks died so fast he could hear the echoes, the spatter of liquefied flesh.

The rats rose up against the citizens in their teeming hordes. Thousands of mutated, disease-ridden bodies swarming as one up every street, seemingly picking out their targets and hunting them down, coursing over and under terrified children, snaring the kids’ soft skin in their teeth and carrying them out of their hiding places.

And through the slaughter, they roamed. The Dracofont. There were lesser dragons out there, come to see their ancient lords arisen, dragons that were imposing and daunting in their own right, resplendent in their colours – but they were nothing, nothing as compared with the Dracofont.

They roamed. They fed.

He spotted the grasping human hands, waving from between ten-foot-long teeth. Hundreds at a time. Many of those flopping limbs belonged to those already dead, redness running freely down the forearms. But some still lived: the hopeless cries of men and women and children came to his ears. They screamed, fought for breath, even as they were chewed. Even as they were swallowed, mixed in with that charnel mass.

He smelt it. Tasted it on the vision’s air.

And he heard the malice in the laughter those apocalyptic throats produced. The awful sounds, a language designed only for evil intentions.

Worst of all: they weren’t even fully-regenerated. Not yet. But he witnessed the way it fuelled them – the death, the death, it made them stronger, strong beyond imagining; their metallic tendons and glistening scales swelled, thousands of tons of armour spreading, horns and barbs and spikes bristling across every square foot of their scintillating bodies –

And they broke all the pieces on the board before them, swept them onto the floor.

It didn’t matter who came to face them. How cunning their plots. How many at once. Champions. Magisters. Screaming as they were swallowed. As the fire ripped them in two and the lightning seared every scrap of flesh from their ashen bones. As they went around wide-eyed and slew each other, weeping. As their lower parts dissolved in the acid, in the steaming puddles that stretched city-blocks, reducing civilisation back into the dirt.

Why, why in Celestium had he wanted to go home? Go home, when the end of the world was nigh?

They were going to die.

We’re all gonna die.

I’m gonna die.

He gritted his teeth savagely as if to punish his earlier self for his misconduct.

He didn’t have to go home – he had to leave! Leave Mund! Get everyone together and just –

Leave…

But go where? Where would be safe, after that?

What was he supposed to do?

“Ithilya!” he breathed, moving his eyes from their conjoined hands to her hidden face. “You – we – is this…“

“This is just a part of it,” the mage said apologetically. “There is much that cannot be learned by the transfer of thought. They eat the souls of our archmages, ministered by the hands of fiends long-since bound to their servitude. Their descendants even now move amongst us, unseen! They will slay the twins, in whose arising we find our salvation. You will come to understand all that which you would. You have a place with us, Aramas. And you, Cullimo.”

He looked at Cull. His friend’s head was still wobbling atop his neck, eyes roving this way and that, assimilating information at a ridiculous rate.

He spoke for his friend.

“What can we do?”

Ithilya sighed again, but this time it was a sigh of contentment.

“It is for all to sacrifice. I only quote the Book of Lithiguil, but the words are no less true: in the name of everything, one is permitted to do anything. Do you understand? You can help us kill.”

He stared, shocked – and it was only after a few seconds that he understood.

His response: a slow, solemn nod.

* * *