Rich hadn't known what to expect. Anger, perhaps. Fear maybe, because Rotgoriel had scared them off last time. Or perhaps a swift assault, trying to overwhelm him with numbers.

But what he got was scorn, obvious scorn and disdain as their mocking laughter filled the void of that dark place and echoed throughout the green-and-black spaces.

He took his time to study them, as they laughed and jeered, going on for a minute, perhaps two.

It would have infuriated Rotgoriel. He would have roared and attacked them.

Rich, though, Rich was far past that point. And frankly, he'd been through worse.

Eventually their laughter died down, and they stared up at him, as if they were waiting for a reaction. There were perhaps a dozen, a good mix of colors and body types, though the four-legged form that Rotgoriel resembled was the most prevalent.

“You are all high dragons. Or you were,” he mused, breaking the silence. “Did your parents sacrifice their lives to birth you from their eggs?”

The largest among them, a pale white barely coming to Rich's knee, stared at him with obvious shock. “How did you know that, abomination?”

“It takes some life force from a few dozen drakes to make a low dragon egg. But they lived through it. It's only logical that the next tier up takes a whole life, maybe two or three.”

“You peer into a past that must be forgotten,” rasped a purple female. “You have no purpose here, and your time draws to a close. Leave us and flee your fate, like all the rest.”

“All the rest of what?”

“He knows nothing,” hissed a stout, yellow-scaled dragon. “He is no threat. Just a remnant.”

“I am no threat to you, I know that. Can't kill what's already dead, after all,” Rich said.

They didn't like that observation at all. The white one seemed almost offended. “We are not dead! We will persist eternally. We have ascended beyond puny gods who can lose their divinity and die.”

“That's the clever part,” chuckled a serpent-like blue. “You can't kill something that only exists in dreams— ”

The white one cut him off with a roar and a sharp look.

“Dreams. That's why you've chained Konol, so he can't stop you or wipe you out, or whatever,” Rich mused. “But what happens when that elder god gets to Konol? What happens then?”

“Why do you think we are acting now?” The white one said, stepping forward. “The seventeen hatchlings? Bah. Their deaths were regrettable, but there are more where they came from. But they did give us the excuse we needed to rally our children. They will fill the well with your kind before the god reaches Konol. This is necessary. And if you wanted to help us, you would kill yourself right now, over and over again until you stayed dead.”

“That's the secret of it, isn't it?” Rich said, stalking around the ancestors. They kept pace, staring him down, their previous scorn forgotten. “It takes death to make better dragons. You're speeding up your evolution with sacrifice.”

“It is the way of the world, the first way, the oldest way,” the old white one said, and he seemed larger somehow. His head was up above Rich's knee, and it was hard to say when he'd grown. “Deaths make the living stronger. You are no stranger to that way, abomination. You have used it yourself. And oh, how you have grown!”

“Experience...” Rich whispered.

“Experience to you, qisas to the djinn, souls to the daemons, and essence to the old ones,” the purple female rasped. “The same thing, with a different name.”

“The deaths are the point,” Rich realized, with a certainty that made his spine shiver. “This is why you're doing this. You're trying to go past high dragons. You're trying to—”

They were laughing again, and the white one was definitely larger, double the size he'd been when Rich entered the core chamber.

“You can't improve on perfection!” said the yellow one, after he stopped laughing. “We are the top of the chain! No. We do this because...” he stopped. “You know, I don't think I will tell you that. Why are we humoring this abomination?”

“Because it suits my purposes,” the white one said, shooting him a glare. “And it matters not. There is nothing he can do that will stop us, nothing that will change the outcome. But let me do the talking.”

He was half again as large as he'd been a moment ago, and the others weren't far behind him. Were they growing, or was Rich shrinking?

Some instinct told him that if he stuck around to find out, it wouldn't end well for him.

“Why are you tormenting Geebo?” Rich asked, quickly.

“He is weak!” snapped the green, completely ignoring the white's growl.

“Pathetic,” spat the purple.

“A remnant of a shameful past,” snarled the blue.

“And a problem, if we let you hatch him—” the yellow hissed, only to be cut off by the white one again.

“Silence! I will speak!” His head was almost up to Rich's eye level now. “You can do nothing. You have lost. Your era is ending and ending early, sacrifice. You have neither purpose nor point, save to feed us with your death.”

“Konol doesn't think so,” Rich shot back and had the pleasure of seeing them flinch. They feared him... no, that wasn't right. They were glancing to each other concerned, but he could tell they weren't afraid, not quite.

And then he realized what he'd been missing. The obvious move that he had never made, not in this place.

“Pray to Konol,” he said, and the white's eyes widened.

“No! Kill him!”

But the air crystallized, and as the now-large ancestors surged forward with claws and jaws outstretched, they slowed and stopped.

“Clever, clever, Rich. Very clever indeed,” Konol said, but his voice was strained.

“Something's wrong? What's wrong?” Rich asked.

“The elder god tears at me. Soon it will devour me. My priests are trying to fill the well, but they waited too long, I think. It will end me before they are done.”

“It's reached you?” Rich said. “Oh god. Oh shit. We're too late.”

“The bulk of it has not arrived yet. But it is close. Hours, perhaps.”

“What do we... how do we... there has to be something we can do,” Rich whispered, as the horror built within him. “It can't end like this. This can't all be for nothing.”

“I do not know,” Konol said. “I am sorry. I have failed you, my child. It is all I can do to hold time still for a moment. Already my will fades, and soon they will add another death to your total.”

Rich forced himself to calm down and thought. “You said, earlier you were always saying 'I cannot speak of that here,' when I asked a question that got too close to this. Can you speak freely here?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I can. But there is no time.”

“I have so many questions! There has to be some way...”

“I can show you something. It may help. But then you must leave, for my focus will slip. The pain is... considerable.”

“Show me,” Rich whispered. “I'll take my chances after.”

A flash.

A twisting of perspective.

A few seconds to realize that he had truly, truly fucked up.

Rich saw the world through a god's eyes, and it nearly destroyed him.

“Ah! Sorry. The pain is... hold on,” Konol gasped. “Here. Now.”

Rich panted, mouthless, no longer viewing an entire world all at once. Now he was looking down on a slice of it, on a draggit village, where they gave the lives of their own unborn to strengthen some of their children. Of how the drakkits that resulted mated, and laid their own eggs, and from them came more drakkits. No longer did the draggits have to sacrifice to bring them forth, there were enough to breed true.

Generations passed, and the drakkits drove off the remaining draggits. They bred truly now. They had no need for their weaker, smaller ancestors.

But over time, many generations later, the drakkits born were smaller. Their teeth and claws were shorter, stubbier. They came with flaws, misshapen limbs, and skulls that had no eyes in them, and many more defects. They were dying out, and they did not know why.

That was when the first god came to them. They cried into desperation into the void, and Mother was born. Konol's memory filled Rich with warmth, warmth that was not his own as the god remembered his Mother and mourned what was to come of her.

And the Mother told them the way. The drakkits went into the darkness and hunted and brought their prey back live. They slew them over the eggs and drained the blood over the shells, and the drakkits that came forth were stronger, their limbs straight, and their claws and teeth sharp as before.

But with each new generation it took more and more blood. More deaths.

Until the time came when they found out that enough deaths all at the same time made a new thing entirely.

That was the birth of the drakes, who were lumpy and uneven but smarter and more powerful in magic. They could call forth spells, weave magic into their works. And once there were enough of them, they could breed true. There was no need for death.

Gods flourished then, coming into being as the drakes explored the world around them, moving with the surety of powerful and smart predators. They found new lands, new things to eat, new ways to live. No longer were they confined to the swamp... which was good, for the swamp was shrinking now, and Rich realized that this whole saga was playing out on a canvas of thousands of years, perhaps millions.

They were kinder to the drakkits than the drakkits had been to the draggits. They left the swamps to their ancestors and built a civilization, carving out great caves with magic and claw.

That place we found in Turpentine, that was one of them, Rich realized. We were in a remnant of their world, and we didn't know it.

And for a time, for a long time, it was enough. They were breeding true. There was no need for slaughter to birth their young.

Until the time came when it wasn't enough.

They were smarter than the drakkits. They captured them, and studied them, and cracked the raw, rough necromancy that captured energy from the deaths, and found that there was more to it.

That there were other sources than death.

And the Mother whispered, and the drakes gathered in worship, and new gods were born.

One was the color of the night sky, filled with so many stars that he was almost pure white, with spots of blackness separating them.

“The stars were closer then,” Konol sighed.

They gave their souls to the gods, and the gods taught them to give their lives to their children. And so they sang in worship to strengthen their souls and sang at hatchings to give parts of their lives to their children.

And the creatures that came out were the first low dragons. Powerful. Magical.

But crude, in a way that Rich could see. Small, compared to his form. Powerful and cunning, yes, but limited. Colorless.

Something in them knew it.

“This is where it went wrong,” Konol whispered, pained.

Generations passed. Eventually the low dragons were enough to breed without taking life from their drake parents.

But they were not merciful, as the drakes had been to the drakkits.

When they were enough, they turned upon their forbears and captured them.

And they slew them by the hundreds, trying to hatch their eggs into their next forms, trying to get a jump on the inevitable degradation.

Trying to gain as much power as they could, without having to sacrifice themselves.

Trying and failing.

They slaughtered the drakes until none were left, and their gods wept.

Wept so loudly that they drew the hungry eyes of the low dragons.

They did not worship.

They came with chains of magic and bound their weakened gods, pulling them from the crumbling heavens into the spaces between worlds.

And forced the gods themselves to sing life into hatching their eggs.

“Those are the first high dragons,” Rich whispered. “That's how they were made. But the gods...”

One by one, they died, fading from the world as gods did. No one to worship, none to create new ones. The low dragons were proud and fickle and did not worship.

And this was a flaw in their plan, Rich realized. They had expected gods to be a renewable resource. But no new ones came. Whatever made gods, whatever process or quirk or magic created them, the low dragons could not force it to happen. And their high dragon children were more proud, more unwilling to worship anything but themselves.

And worse, they were starting to look at their low dragon parents, with a familiar and inherited lust for murder in their eyes...

Then something came through, that shocked Richard's mind, hammered it like a mallet striking a nail.

It was a tower. A great tower, in the center of everything, and he watched a shadowy image of Konol fly out of one of its windows and streak into the distance, chains stretching and breaking as his view panned out, and Rich saw a field of barren sand, and towers, so many towers of all shapes and sizes as his view pulled back until he couldn't comprehend the scale of this strangeling land—

“Too much, can't...” Konol wheezed. “Another time. Know you that they are worlds, each tower is a world, the part of it that is true, the part that holds magic, that holds up everything.”

Instead of the waste, the vision flickered, and Rich saw the low dragons react.

Their Godbinders recaptured the weakened god and found him stronger.

He was a god of dreams, after all.

And dreams could stretch between worlds.

They went into dreams, and took his chains, and moved him to where he could feed on the dreams of another world.

And in so doing, they were able to sup on the dreams as well.

This, they realized would be their solution. This would be their escape from their arrogant and ungrateful children.

The Godbinders left their low dragon brethren behind, left them to die at the hands of their angry and greedy children. And their deaths did nothing to the high dragon eggs. Their arrogant offspring wasted their parents' lives for nothing.

There in the aether, there in dreams, the Godbinders grew powerful. But the problem remained; they knew that their work would eventually be undone. That in time, the eggs of the High Dragons would lose potency, and they would wither and die. In the space of enough generations, they would be lost. Thousands upon thousands of years' worth of work would be undone.

Unless...

“You pulled us from our dreams into your world,” Rich realized. “Our deaths fuel the magic your hatchlings require. Dragons would wither and die as a species without our sacrifice.”

“And you are not the first,” Konol whispered.

Images flickered through Rich's mind. Alien worlds, alternately hellish and incomprehensible and fantastic.

“Daemons, djinn, old ones...”

“And more. Many more, lost forever. Their wells are sealed and silent, their souls long gone from Jana kaa.”

“Generica?”

“The words change. The rules change every time a new dream enters our world. That is the flaw, after all. The dreams feed the dragons, yes, but the dreams change the world as well. They change them. They drift, and they do not realize it. And yet... in that there is salvation. The hope that someday my children's children's children will become satisfied with what they have. That they shall be free of the old hatred, the old lies. The hope that we... will be a world... where dreams are welcome guests, not food.”

His pain was growing, Rich realized. He didn't have long. Only a few questions remained, and he hastened to ask them.

“They're trying to kill off the players. Why?”

“Their deaths fill the well, bit by bit.”

“The well?”

“For the daemons it was hell. It is a place to hold souls, stretch out their magic to last between conjunctions. It takes time to... move me, time to tap into a new world, and for the dreams to change ours enough to allow souls to come here. The wells sustain... them... between conjunctions.”

“They're trying to build up enough energy to keep them going... shit, they're going to cut the link!”

“Yes. They cannot move me until they do. Or else the dream falters.”

“Then what?”

“Then I die. And much of the world crumbles. Jana kaa is more dream than reality, at this point. I do not know what will happen, but it will... be... bad.”

“Fuck...” Rich whispered.

Motion at the corner of his eye. Not part of his vision. The white dragon was moving now, slowly, so slowly. Time was almost up.

“How do I save you?” Rich burst out. “How do we fix this?”

“I do not... know. They might. But they are.. your enemy now.”

“They are,” Rich said, staring past them. “And they wanted Geebo dead. Why?”

“That... is a... very good question. Go now. I cannot hold it!”

Rich was in motion, as the world returned to life. “Bless my agility three hundred,” he roared and moved. He was past them before they could react, and he scooped up the squeaking, shrieking form of Geebo and ran like hell.

Thirty seconds.

It took thirty seconds for the dream to end, for the dungeon to close.

And they were on his heels the whole way, roaring flame and throwing spells and struggling to catch him, kill him, and end Geebo's life with a single snap.

But he was fast now, and he had a friend who had to live, was the only thing worth fighting for right now.

And so, the dungeon flickered and with a snap, he found himself in the stone tunnel outside his lair, before a very surprised Midian.

“Rich?” she asked, staring from his face to the lump of flesh in his hand.

“Guard this with your life,” he said, handing her the egg for safekeeping. “We need to move fast. The world's ending, and I don't have a plan, but we're going to have to stop it anyway.”