Unadulterated rage flowed through Ominek. These damn pests had been there to stop his every move at every step of the way. They’d destroyed the talisman necessary to complete the most vital part of the spell his father had instructed him to cast, and then they sped up the spell, forcing it to finish early. To add insult to injury, the pathetic spell warrior bested Pyre by kicking the young dragon down his gullet after the Greater Primal had hurled him by the fight.
Now, as the spell coalesced into a neutered version of the greater ritual that Leviathos had given him to conduct, the shaft of raw aether analyzed the crust of Hidros. Boring down into the body of a huge dragon that previously lay hidden from his ability to sense. To his own horror, Ominek watched as the bolt of power traced its way up the tail of the enormous tail, aether sparking along every nerve fiber and muscle. The magic flowed up the tail, through the hips, past the lungs and heart, and up the spinal cord and into the mind where the aether exploded across the dragon’s great mind canceling out a curse that it was sleeping under.
As the azure leviathan’s body twitched with movement, the earth and rock that had wrapped the massive beast in a stony slumber cracked and rumbled as the landscape quaked and shuddered. Ominek’s wings beat, thrusting the dread lord into the air. Whatever his father had sent him to bind those damn mages had fucked the spell up and then cut it loose. Ominek watched as the mountain exploded, debris and dust billowing out as the enormous dragon shed its earthy coffin.
“That’s 10 billion tons of nope in a 5 ton bag…”
Ominek had no interest in loitering around long enough to find out what the massive dragon would do when it found out his plans. The immense wellspring of water magic lay below. This beast was its guardian. That easily put it in at demi-god level. Ominek’s best hope for survival at this point was to flee. His eyes flared with dark violet energy as he used a quick teleportation spell, the air warping and folding in around him as he blinked out. Reappearing several thousand meters from his previous position, he snapped the spell off again, again, and again until he was in low orbit.
“Do not think that you can simply evade my gaze, little wyrm,” a powerful booming voice said from below and behind him.
An instant later, thousands of swords and spears made of ice hurled themselves in his direction. It was all he could do to counter spell the near misses and evade the rest. Ominek flew for everything he could muster, racing for the distance so he could cast a dimensional doorway to flee into shadow space.
Several ice blades clipping his body and wings drew a sharp hiss as the scales split and blood trickled out, freezing in the vacuum. The guardian didn’t pursue but his weapons continued to form some distance away, that grew greater by the moment. Even the demi-god had his limits. After Ominek put enough space between himself and his attacker that he could open the doorway, he wove the signs for the spell, and a large rectangular crack formed in reality that he poured his bulk into then sealed behind him. Several of the ice blades and spears dissolving into motes of water magic once the doorway sealed.
Pure void greeted him on the opposite side, and he hushed his magical signature to a black level in order to avoid detection. There were no real accounts or tomes of information about what existed in this reality. But he was aware of danger it presented, and the way ever fiber of his being warned him to avoid detection here. The humans and lesser races all had space faring legends of vessels too foolish enough to follow procedure and never heard or seen from again.
Ominek aimed himself at his father's world and made haste. He would have to report back on his failure. Hesitantly, his wings flapped as his body swam in the black absence of light and heat. He’d made it a point when he was a hatchling to explore the bottom of an ocean once, to overcome his fear of the shadow realm. It didn’t stop him from clenching his jaw tight as he swam his way home. Defeat rolling off of him in waves. The ever present fear that his father would simply devour him for this ultimate failure hung heavy in his mind. He’d been the dutiful son. Always fighting for both himself and the cause. Only to have victory stolen from him at the very end by a rag-tag band of mages with the devil's damned luck.
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Morwen. He committed that name to memory. That one and Akamori. He would make them both pay dearly for their transgressions against himself and his father. This sector belonged to Sauridius. They just didn’t damn well know it yet. But they would. And soon. Either by his own hand, or his father’s.
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The sensation of weightlessness was the first that Morwen could wrap her mind around. She had no mass. Though on closer inspection, she realized she also lacked a body. She found death to be a curious thing. She’d expected more of it, the process, and the aftermath, that is. A slow rumbling laughter broke up her thoughts. It rolled along like a purr.
“No, little one. You are not dead. I am.”
Ok. That was a lot to take in.
“Who are you?” she said. Only realizing afterward that she was speaking without a mouth.
“You are in my mind,” the voice replied. “What remains of it at least.” There was a sadness that colored the words. A pain held onto for millennia.
Light pierced the darkness and took the shape of a star. When the blindness wore off, she realized she was above a planet in a star system she didn’t recognize. The world looked a lot like Hidros.
“This was once my world. I shepherded the life that grew here. My wards. They worshiped me, gave me power, and I gave them life and purpose.”
The voice paused as if admiring the world again.
“You would come to know this world later as Hidros. It’s correct name slips my memory. As a magical shade, my purpose was to guide events to this moment. A final retaliation to that betrayer, Sauridius.”
She watched as a being made of pure energy with a powerful weapon appeared. It was clear that Hidros stood poorly matched for the fight.
“Why?” The trespasser asked. “Why stay here and doom yourself? You could have fled?”
“Because fleeing would only prolong the inevitable, and I grow weary of Sauridius’ meddling and puppeteering. Do you not tire of his manipulations?”
The energy god glanced down at his weapon, a sword that devoured light and magic alike. As though someone had taken a black hole and shaped it into a blade.
“I’ve been shackled to his will for so long that I fear I don’t remember my freedom anymore. Only his insidious will. He demands you die. You risk so much by staying when you should have fled. Those possibilities existed. This confrontation should have taken centuries to play out.”
Hidros glanced down at his world. He wanted to protect it, yet he knew the futility in doing so. He stopped weaving counter attacks and instead began weaving a deep and powerful curse. Hidros could see, in a long and distant future, a chance at getting back at Sauridius. He would have to sacrifice his present, on the possibility of defeating Sauridius in the future, in death.
“Why? Even now your spell is futile. Why cast it?” the energy god demanded, though he offered no attempt at stopping it.
“I do this for me. For you. For all that Sauridius has affected. This might even set you free of his shackling some day.”
“At the cost of your own life?”
Hidros smiled, his wide silver head with white and blue highlights glinting in the nearby starlight.
“Yes, if that is the price that must be paid.”
The enemy god could only nod afterward, as if to say very well. Then he reared back with the blade, and tackled Hidros as he finished his spell, casting it over the energy god's shoulder. The spell left a small trail of motes of aether as it zipped off, lost to time. Hidros plummeted through the atmosphere as the energy god mounted him and thrust the blade down into his chest. Their titanic struggle destroyed so much of the landscape as the light left Hidros’ eyes. His wings crashed down, flattening much of the terrain. The energy god tore the blade free of Hidros’ chest, then disappeared instantly.
“As you can see, the cost of your victory was far steeper than just the lives of your own men, and your sacrifices. You are my instruments, put forth in the throes of my death, to do the one thing I failed to do in life.”
“Stop Sauridius.”
“Yes. With my son in his thrall, none of you could have stopped him. So I cast a curse to damn his progress and place you and your allies in the way of his success as much as I could. And now I gift you some of my power, because your task against his kin is not complete. There is much you must do yet.”
Morwen felt coolness invade her essence as Hidros fed her some of his magic. It entwined with her, became one with her soul. This made the second water magic wellspring she’d been touched by. Though this one represented the dead god's mind itself. She could feel the imprint on her own mind. She’d always been logical minded individual but now even more so, she was a compilation of Hidros’ mind and her own. It made her wonder if this was the case for the dead draconic gods as well. If they’d taken on aspects of their predecessors, too.
With a gasp, she was back in the tank’s turret. A massive silver and blue dragon stared down at them. It was smaller than Hidros had been and colored differently too. Was this the son he’d mentioned?