VAELTHOR DRACO POV:

W...Where am I?

I snapped awake to find myself in a desolate and ruined wasteland.

An arid breeze swept across the land as my body felt its deathly grip squeeze around my being and rinse all the moisture from me. My skin gradually became scaly and flaky as the youth from my spotless milk skin turned to dust and itched at the blistering heatwave from the cowering sun shielded by the amorphous walls of sand floating about.

What is this place?

I slowly sit up on the peak of a sandy hill seemingly placed in a valley of similar hills. My neck achingly turned as my eyes begged to look at the sight before me, but only produced a blurred and hazy image. I tried moistening my eyes, blinking profusely, but just like the sapless and rough movement of my tongue in my mouth, there was no moisture to comfort me.

Straining my body like a rusted machine dusted by cobwebs, I used every ounce of my strength to try and stand up, but to no avail, as my butt crashed back onto the ever-morphing surface below me and crunched.

Tired breaths escaped my mouth. I felt like a hapless victim stranded and left hopelessly for dead. But I couldn't allow that.

This time around, summoning all my strength once more I began pushing off the ground, this time mana actively trying to support me as it transported around my body. My figure haltingly shimmered a radiant lapis.

Slowly but surely, my legs straightened as my body heaved itself upwards. They began to shake and buckle beneath my exhausted body's deadweight, but persistently I eased more mana to course through me. The sluggish sensitivity of mana slowly revitalised my limbs as I began to walk forward.

The desert-yellow sand was not without its own individuality, maroon splatters leaving its pigment engraved in the grains as debris bathed in it. Menacing smoke rose from a singed brick of cobblestone, its stone warm as my finger felt its surface and inspected whatever engravings were carved into them and now were lost.

These seem familiar, I thought, as a heart-wrenching feeling pierced my heart.

I continued moving forward as distant explosions boomed in the area, bloodcurdling screams following as my feet fumbled and my body swayed. The ornament holding my ponytail together dug into my chest as my head moved like a drunkard, uncontrolled and purposeless.

My foot then stumbled upon a hard surface, one, unlike the scratching sand. Dishevelled brown strings of hair burrowed deep beneath the sand perked up almost unnoticeable.

I paused over the surface and crouched down, digging away with my hands as I uncovered more of the patch of brown. Eventually, with two piles of sand at either of my sides, horror bled into my sight. A pale head lay smashed into the ground, half its face entirely dismembered and unrecognisable. Apart from its crown of singed brown hair that gave off a foul stench, the only remaining distinct feature of the person was contained within its bloodshot sclera. A ringing parakeet pierced my being, sullied and dipped in leaking crimson.

My dried hand traced across the ice-cold skin of the head's face. Then again, that same heart-wrenching feeling submerged into my heart once more, twisting the dagger fiercely now as my tear ducts slowly opened.

"This…what is all of this?" I begged for the answer on my knees, my neck tilted backwards fully as I gazed at the serenity of this death-infested desert.

Then grains of sand whirled around me in violent eddies, a gyre tearing away my visibility as it consumed me. Bleak colours focused all around as

I surrendered my thoughts and let myself go. Lapis illuminated the active rune on my chest as I carefully observed the mana particles coalesce and materialise before me.

The assembling storm of sand then casually removed itself from me, removing its unwanted robes from my body and leaving me stranded on a hard, solid floor. Albeit dusted in the sand, it was only a thin coat that surfaced the floor.

"Where am I?" I muttered to myself as I continued to follow the energy waves released by the present elements of mana. Motes of brown mostly filled the area, accompanied by smaller groups of green and red as I looked down the dark corridor facing me.

I slowly pushed onto one knee and then raised onto both feet as I leaned against the crumbling walls pushing tightly inwards, narrowing the path heavily. The roof itself soared higher than necessary, the corridor giving off an illusion of an infinite path.

Steadily, my feet moved in front of each other purposely as the floor beneath me crumbled. My head snapped back and the path entirely vanished like it was never there. No signs of mana present either, just an unexplained blank.

I decided to ignore the disappearing path, it wasn't something I could control in the first place and instead kept my eyes peeled for the movements of mana fluxing around the corridor.

My soles knocked against the floor harder as I built into a comfortable jog into a hurried and fear-filled sprint trying to make progress through this repetitive corridor of nothing. For a long while, I thought I remained stagnant, but light eventually bled at the end of the corridor.

My breath became ragged and my body warned it'd collapse on me at any moment as I made the desperate last steps escaping outside.

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Then I paused. A vision. No, an image seemed to blur into my sight as I gazed upon a gaping abyss collapsed in the desert and sunken surely miles deep. A trembling pain rolled through my head and I winced in pain.

The fragmented pieces of inscribed cobble, the sullied tapestries drowned in maroon sand, the broken glasses and the severed limbs that surmounted this place. They all spawned images into my head as they rested in this valley of death.

"AAAGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!" I screamed in pain as I collapsed to my knees, cutting the skin on my white robes from how dried my skin was.

Then it all became clear in my mind. All the scattered images and pieces, the layout of this land, the objects and the lifeless runes on the severed limbs, formed a single picture.

"This can't be...This. This is Astrix. B-but how is this possible!?" I cried out in outrage, my hand smashing against the ground.

But soon, my rambling came to a halt. Falling footsteps, gently but firmly, crushed the sand beneath its sole as a dark figure waltzed in my direction. Clad in all black and a tattered cloak, his eyes rendered me powerless. He was the paragon of strength and the embodiment of death itself. Like the grim reaper came to collect my debt.

His face was hidden with a litham revealing only his sharpened golden stare. A sword strapped at his side turned; his hand rested on the hilt wrapped in the same black as the rest of his outfit.

I could only gawk, shaken to my core and absolutely horror-stricken as the man walked up to me. As he stood before me, I noticed a badge of Slukare's makings pinned to his cloak drifting in the wind.

Anger boiled in my veins and bile rose to my throat as I came to a realisation of this man's identity.

"How has the Slukare managed to free itself!?" I jumped from the ground and pulled my fist back, a surge of mana tempered as a lapis plasma blade enveloped my hand and I thrust fiercely at the man, his figure almost glitching before my eyes.

Effortlessly, he parried my blow to the side with a swift and powerful palm and in a split second, I felt my body slowly be split apart as an essence in my body began to go haywire and unconstrained, gold blazed from his being as his rune ignited.

Though it could have been a mistake, before the light from my eyes dissipated, a myriad of amethyst particles burst before me.

"HAGHHH!!!" I shouted aloud as I caught myself falling from my throne.

My hands pat my body down from inch to inch as sweat trickled down my forehead.

"What...what was that?" I muttered to myself, the gut-wrenching feeling still sharply drilling and inspiring the pain in my heart. Golden irises flashed into my sight and the Slukare medallion rang through my mind, its distinctive metal jingle so loud I struggled to distinguish it from reality.

My fist tightly squeezed the white robes loosely fitted on my body and my teeth scraped at each other as unease and fury filled the contents of my blood.

"Sire is everything fine!?" A concerned voice burst through the large double doors leading to my throne room, the ragged breath of one of my guards conveying his distress.

I corrected my posture on the obsidian throne and wiped the sweat from my forehead. My eyes matched my guard's level. His parakeet eyes rang a strange serenity through the space despite his troubled body language. Nevertheless, I settled, my rattling nerves soothing.

"I'm fine. I apologise for worrying you." I shortly answered and offered my apology.

The young guard's ruffled brown hair twisted my vision into another image of my dream, a dismembered head dug beneath the floor of the sand, its face unrecognisable.

"No need to apologise, sire. I am here for your needs and protection as well as this castle's." The corners of his mouth turned upward as he gave me a cheery smile.

"Your name is Vayne, right?" I asked, a deep curiosity rooted behind my words as the dream kept fresh in my mind.

Rather, was it a dream? Or maybe a premonition?

To my question, he sharply replied, a stutter in his word followed by a warm blush. "Indeed I am, Lord Draco," his way of addressing me switched, "I am Vayne Zargott, precisely."

My neck felt stiff like magma had solidified my head in a fixed position. An irritation burdened me as I lowered my head to rest on my hand, the strain depicted through my marred expression.

What is this feeling, I thought to myself. Why does that decapitated head still linger in my mind? More importantly, why do I tie it in close relation to him? I feel a strange connection to the boy. Something akin to instinct and intuition. Like a string of fate has been tied between us two. How strange...

The silence between us thickened as Vayne rigidly stood before me, his heavy-weighted armour ready for combat emphasised his physique.

"Vayne, do you know why we still wear armour or ceremonial fighting robes from day to day even though there is no threat to us, even though we are deities looking down at the world?" I questioned our race's seemingly innocent choice.

Vayne pondered for a while, his thoughts directly challenging my question as he pulled on the strings inside his head to come up with a conclusive answer to my question.

"I'm sorry, my lord, but not really. I don't understand our decision taking into the fact that it's not a custom. And neither is it because we need protection. Our Aesir race, after all, is the strongest in the whole world. Were essentially deities, like you said."

I smiled upon his answer. He didn't try to make any loose claims nor try to act smarter than he is. He was an honest young man, and I liked that.

"What I believe to be the answer to this question is our last war that happened roughly two centuries ago. I remember fighting in it and against the powerful struggle of our enemies as we, the noble Aesir's, condemned our traitorous brothers and sealed them. The Slukare clan of the Aesir to be exact. See, the origins of our race were split into four clans. The Valkyrie clan, the Chimera clan, the Draco clan and finally the Slukare clan. The Slukare clan intended to expose our kind to danger and soon the races fell into conflict. The eventual end in the Slukare clan being either killed or sealed. I believe we wear this armour to remember the casualty and blood stained on our hands. Our statement to always be...ready." My tone of voice drowned out as my last words escaped.

Vayne's impressionable parakeet eyes shone in fascination as he heard my answer, but then he paused and hesitated. "I don't mean to be rude, Lord, but what exactly does this have to do with anything?"

What are my intentions here?

I scratched my chin and slowly lifted off my throne standing tall. "I'm sorry for taking so much of your time, Vayne. Please, as soon as Ignatius and Kaelar arrive, send them to the garden. Tell them I'll be waiting."

My intentions... It seems my heart and my mind want to hide the answer from me. How ridiculous that I can't decrypt my own thought process. What a mockery of a powerful king am I? I've grown weak. Complacent.