Jerome vanished the moment he named the dragon. He appeared over 300 yards away and took off running. The space rune Achilles had gifted him when he created the void space was an invaluable asset to have. With it he had jumped 300 yards in a blink. But he only got fifty feet away when the voice of the dragoness reached his ears like a whisper.
“Well, I expected you to at least pass out after naming me. It’s very impressive that you can still run. You truly are the Chosen of Ilyrrah. I love my name, don’t get me wrong. But why run? Come now, don’t be a naughty boy. Stop so we can have a nice discussion like civilized people.”
“You got what you wanted,” Jerome responded. “What more do you want?” He didn’t use his psychic energy to speak to her since he didn’t know where she was. He wasn’t very good at using it so just speaking out into the air and expecting someone he couldn’t visibly see or didn’t know their location to hear him was a large hurdle for him — for now anyways.
Something caught him and pulled him into the air.
“Got you,” she said.
“You have yourself a name, what else do you need?” Jerome complained. He was set down on a tree branch high up in the sky. Wait a minute. He realized he didn’t hear the beating of her wings.
“Come on, love. Take a good look at me,” the dragoness said in that sultry voice. He also couldn’t feel her weight on the tree.
Jerome looked to the side and was shocked at what he saw. Instead of a huge black dragon, there was a buxom, fair-skinned lady standing on the tree branch with him.
She had very long black hair that was shiny even in the darkness of the forest. Piercing gold eyes stared back at him with mirth. Her hair framed her beautiful face perfectly and continued down to her large bust and down to her flared hips, the rest of it swaying behind her even though there was no breeze.
Her garment didn’t seem like a garment at all. The strange gown was like darkness given substance. It moved around her like shadows crawling against her skin — a sleeveless off-shoulder gown that hugged her figure and reached down to flow over her feet. A slit cut the gown from the hem, halfway up her left thigh.
Jerome rose up on his feet, looking her up and down. She was beautiful and standing very close to his height. That was very tall for a lady in the society he lived in.
“Are you…?”
“Come on now, love. Say my name. You’re the one who gave it to me,” she said with a smile, blinking rapidly and fluttering her sexy, long eyelashes at him. Those golden irises were very striking on her pretty face.
“Nyx?”
She grinned at him. Hooking her arm around his waist, she shot downward to the ground not forgetting to pick up the two Sprouts that were passed out.
Jerome walked with Nyx through the forest as they each carried one of the Sprouts he had run away with. He kept looking her way wondering how a full-grown dragon became this.
“Are you really Nyx?” he asked, still not believing his eyes. Apparently, the shock from seeing a dragon transform into a human wasn’t something one could just turn off. Well, he didn’t see the actual transformation but he wondered what that would have looked like.
“Hey now, love,” she smiled at him. “I am.”
“How did you?... Did I?... Was this what was supposed to happen?”
She chuckled. “I didn’t, you did, Jerome… and yes, this is what’s supposed to happen.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Well, she was happy so…
“It’s like part of some unwritten or unspoken rule of nature. If I were named by a dragon, I’d be more like a dragon. I could transform to look human, mind you. Even if I weren’t named at all, I’d still be able to take human form. But that would take forever. And I wouldn’t look nearly as human as I do now.”
Wouldn’t look nearly as human? Jerome caught that but said nothing to disturb her flow of speech.
“Now that I am named by a human, well…” she shrugged.
“You’re more like a human,” he completed, “Still doesn’t make sense.”
“Not everything needs to, love. You just accept it as nature’s way of balancing the scales.”
“But why me though?” Jerome couldn’t help but ask. “I know I’m Ilyrrah’s Chosen but what does that mean to you…a dragon? No offense.”
“Like I said before, love. There’s a lot you don’t know about yourself. And Ilyrrah definitely knew less about you too. The dragons saw farther into the future. We can scry posterity.”
“Huh. You Terra Praetans just throw logic out the window every now and then.” That stunned him good.
She laughed. A healthy, boisterous laugh. Her laugh was infectious and Jerome wanted to laugh too. But he needed answers and it seemed he wouldn’t get them straight away.
“Well, that’s how one of my ancestors found you. I inherited her legacy…among others.”
“You’re telling me that you’re not the one who scryed for me but some long-dead ancestor?” Jerome asked in unbelief.
“Dragons are different from other species you know… We’re… MORE!”
“Right,” Jerome deadpanned. He now had another Achilles on his hand. One from the dragon side, who perhaps is even more arrogant than a fae. How the hell did he keep falling into all these traps?
“Now tell me, love. How did you come up with such a nice name for me? I feel like there’s an origin there. Go.”
Jerome reared his head back at the command, giving her a pointed look that said, ‘Really? Go?’
“Just talk, Jerome. Or don’t you want to talk to me?”
Jerome snorted. Her self-importance was way more than Csala’s when he first met the succubus. He’d see what would become of it when he wore her down to the mud.
“There are myths and stories that have existed since the dawn of time. The oldest of which were passed down from generation to generation by way of lore. For writing had not yet come into existence for the beings who told these stories. Many, however, have been lost to the ether and left untold.”
“Oooh, you sound very mysterious. I like it,” Nyx said, bubbling with excitement as she clasped her hands together in front of her. That action drew him to her heaven-defying bosom but he quickly looked away. Though he thought she’d do a twirl to complete the vision of her new personality he had in his head.
He smiled at her. Nyx, once a giant, unreachable being who looked down on him and made sure he knew it, now was like a child seeing the world around her with newfound excitement. And her excitement was contagious. Albeit she was still arrogant.
“One such lore is that of the primordial beings — The Protogenoi. Gods…said to have emerged at the dawn of creation. Nyx was the goddess of the night — Nue in a long-forgotten tongue. But she was called by many names: Nox, Natt, Nott, Nyktos, Njola, the list goes on. She was the very personification of the night itself. A child of Chaos, and coupling with Erebos — Darkness — she birthed Aether — the shining blue of the Heavens, or Light. And Hemera — Day.”
Nyx stopped. And stared at him in surprise.
“What?” Jerome asked.
“How do you know the name, Aether?”
“Huh?”
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“That’s the name of an ancient dragon that lived long, long ago. We dragons have our own myths and lore too. Only they never get lost in time. They are passed through our legacies. We inherit not only the powers of our ancestors but their memories too.”
Jerome had to drop the Sprout he was carrying and lean against a tree. Somehow, it was too much for him to take all at once. He felt he needed to slow down to absorb all she was saying — not just the words but the weight of them and the consequences they presented. Maybe it was a wise choice to just let Nyx tell him how her ancestors scryed him at her own pace.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just. Your inheritance seems a bit too…” he wanted to find the right word for it but ended up using his hands to gesture.
“Powerful?” Nyx said with the smugness he had come to know her for. Now he could juxtapose the image of this Nyx and the dragon from before, and it would make perfect sense.
“‘Overkill’ was the word I was looking for.”
“Ah! I like that word!” she grinned sheepishly at him. “So continue your tale.” She started walking again.
Jerome sighed, shaking his head. He didn’t want to get used to taking orders from her. But she had a way of saying things at the right time and in the right way.
“In some of the stories. Hemera is Nyx’s sister and not her daughter. They race across the sky in pursuit of one another. One, the very substance of the night. A veil of dark mist, drawn across the sky to obscure the light of Aether. The other scatters the mist of the night at dawn. And so fare the two siblings till this day.”
“Night and day,” Nyx muttered, lost in thought. “That was beautiful, Jerome.”
“You think so?”
“Hmm. Day… Aether was our sun. We worshiped him. He was the first of our kind. Our Protogenoi. The Primordial Dragon. He left the higher planes long, long ago, when the universe was still young, and very few habitable worlds existed.
“He was never seen again. Some say, his essence was scattered among the stars so dragons would be birthed across galaxies. Some say he lives still.”
Nyx stopped talking and the quiet returned. Jerome waited for her to continue but she didn’t. He guessed that was a no, no.
“That’s fascinating.”
“You think?” she asked with a bright smile.
“Hmm. But it is no way to end a story.”
She pouted at him and he chuckled. Then something came to mind causing Jerome to frown.
“What is it?” Nyx asked, catching his shift in countenance.
“Well, I just gotta ask. How powerful are you now? I could feel the weight of your presence bearing down on me before. But now…” Jerome scanned her. “Nothing.”
Nyx smacked him upside the head with her draconic tail. What? Where did the tail come from? Where had she been hiding it? Jerome looked at her round and luscious behind but the tail was nowhere to be seen.
“You’re full of surprises, you know?” he said. That smack had hurt. Real bad too. But he refused to rub the area on his head to ease the pain, or cycle essence to the area either. He found he didn’t like looking weak in front of beautiful women. Rubbing his head, to him, was showing he couldn’t bear pain.
“And you should know not to scan your superiors without their consent. Thankfully I had a veil up around my core. If not you would have collapsed from the intensity of the power you glimpse inside me.”
Jerome looked at her again, differently this time around. “I never knew that could happen.”
“Let’s get to the Waters of Irithiya, love. But I need a new set of clothes. This would dissolve the moment I step into that void world,” Nyx said looking down at the darkness wrapped around her like a living garment.
Jerome guessed she didn’t want to talk about herself so she changed the topic. But she wasn’t very subtle with it. Guess even dragons could be sloppy.
“I may have something you could wear,” he reached into his void space with his psychic energy and took out a white wrap. It was one of the only materials Achilles hadn’t choked full of defense barriers.
The wrap left his hand and wrapped around Nyx as if of its own accord.
“Sorry it’s white…” he was saying when the wrap took on the form of the previous garment and darkened to a black that almost matched the color of her hair. “Guess you’re still full of surprises.”
They flew into the air and headed for the Waters of Irithiya.
~~~
A while ago…
Csala’s gaze didn’t leave the mountain overlooking them for a long time. She stood there shocked and out of her depths. There was so much her senses didn’t understand about this place. It was a melting pot of rich essence. The essence was so thick that it was visible to her eyes, swirling in myriads of color around the floating mountain.
Try as she may, she couldn’t figure out how what she was seeing was possible. A floating mountain? How in Odin’s name was that possible?!
The air was warmer here. A vast difference from the icy coldness of the north and the dark forest. The sun hung low in the sky but was full of life and warmth, casting brilliant shades of orange across the clouds in the air.
This vast open field Jerome had brought them to was brimming with so much vital aura. Csala could see the motes of green energy floating everywhere. She wished with all her being that she could directly absorb it but alas, it wasn’t meant to be for her kind. Succubi could only absorb the vitality of men.
A few hundred paces away was a pit in the ground and water was pooling inside. The mountain hovering above this pit had nine waterfalls gushing out of it and into the pit in the ground.
“It’s a…” Selene said, wide-eyed and shocked to her core.
Csala couldn’t utter a word at the bizarreness of what was in front of her. So this is the mysterious Waters of Irithiya.
“Csala, it’s a floating mountain,” Selene said at long last… breathlessly.
It took a while for the shock to wear off and they both looked back at the forest they had just come from. It had disappeared. All around them were greenery and flowers. How was this possible? Csala walked back a few steps to test a theory, holding her hand in front of her.
The air was suddenly disturbed with ripples and she drew back instantly, almost falling on her butt.
“What in the name of Odin is this?” she muttered to herself.
Selene was there a moment later. “It’s a barrier,” she said. “And this must be some sort of void world.”
“What?” Csala asked. She had no idea what was going on. “What is a void world?”
Selene looked at her incredulously. “A void world is…damn, I’ve never had to explain it before.”
“Is it like a mental—?” she was asking when Jerome’s voice sounded from beyond the barrier.
“It’s a world like any other world.”
Moments later, the barrier rippled again and he was there dropping a fuming Fei Lin and Nia. Nia rushed to hug her friend.
“The only difference is that it’s small and cannot exist independently on its own. It’ll crumble after many years without maintenance. Or a connection to a habitable planet. And surprisingly this one can allow sound to pass through its barrier.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Selene asked, noticing the perplexed look on Jerome’s face.
Jerome hugged Csala closely. “ I’m not sure,” he answered Selene then addressed her next, “I need to get back. And you need to get inside the pool. The nine waterfalls are the Waters of Irithiya. And they’ll restore your powers and even more. I’ll be back.”
Csala held him back for a while and gave him a quick kiss. “Make sure to come back.”
“I will. I Promise,” Jerome said before rushing out of the void world.
Csala stood there for several moments before bracing herself.
“He’ll be back,” Selene comforted her. “He’s a lot tougher than he looks.”
The floating mountain loomed over them as they walked toward it. Fei Lin was already ahead of them, rushing to get into the water. Csala looked up at the gigantic mountain in the sky. It was brimming with so much essence, space was warped around it. The colors of the dense essence she was seeing around it were colors she had never seen in her life before. She had no name to call them.
Csala took a deep breath and reached for Selene’s hand. The Sprout gave her an appreciative smile. They had no idea what was going to happen inside the pool. But they knew it was going to be good. Fei Lin dived into the pool before their eyes and they followed suit.
~~~
Many hours later…
Jerome wasn’t here yet. Every other person had arrived a long time ago, but he wasn’t here. Csala paced at the edge of the void world. The novelty that the floating mountain presented had worn off. It served to distract her for a while from her thoughts but now, it had lost its profundity.
“Please wait, Csala,” Selene called out to her. “Jerome would come back. We just have to believe in him. If you go out there and put yourself in danger, you’d be giving him more to worry about when arrives.”
“But I’m stronger now,” Csala said, her words almost forced. “I have my full powers back. I’m powerful too, Selene. And he might need me out there.”
Csala saw Selene deflate as she sighed. The young lady was worried too. She was doing a better job of keeping it hidden than she was, that’s for sure. But Selene was not as close to Jerome as she was, she didn’t have the same connection with him as she did. They had shared some of the best moments of her life together and she didn’t want to lose that. She didn’t want to be lonely again.
“I’m going, Selene. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me,” she said with a tone of finality.
Selene raised her hands up in defeat. “Just make sure to protect yourself out there.”
“Maybe the creatures of the dark forest need to beware of me instead,” she said with a smirk as she walked toward the barrier. A moment later she passed through it.
The day turned to night at once and the air stilled. Silence reigned as she walked through the darkness. Her colorful red robes from before now took on a gray hue. Csala clenched her jaw as her determination rose a notch. She was going to find Jerome no matter what it took.