Soul Sense is now Level 3!
Aurelian moved steadily in the direction he’d felt the hum of resonance, and the clarifying bass of a soul that matched his own. While he moved, one foot steadily before the other, he considered his new life up until that moment.
He had been called the Reclaimer, and been asked to become the Second Calamity. He had been requested to reclaim the Elysean Empire, and had been cajoled to stand up to the Godsworn, or whatever force had succeeded them in the modern era of the Prime Material. He had, also, been tasked with slaying the undead and whatever power animated them.
These things he knew and accepted, and when looking them over; none of them he had a reason to find issue with.
He had always wanted to matter in the wide-open world.
He had always wanted to be a hero, and to be special.
Soul Sense is now Level 4!
Sure, there were some that had that wish granted and hated it, but Aurelian refused to succumb to what he saw as a bad Isekai trope. He detested those protagonists that whined and complained about their incredible powers, and potential for immeasurable power.
There was an honour, his father had taught him, in the bequeathing of responsibility.
Was it daunting? Absolutely. Was it a challenge? One hundred percent. Was it worth it? That he didn’t, wouldn’t, and in fact couldn’t know until far later along the path. Yet in that moment, if asked if he regretted the various twists and turns which had led him to that point—of walking among dragon eggs and seeking a companion; he would have honestly answered that he didn’t.
He regretted nothing. He was done with regrets.
Aurelian had made choices along the way to where he was at that moment. Perhaps they had been necessitated by circumstance, but they were still his choices. They were his personal decisions, made in full consciousness and with as much or as little thought as he chose to give them. He had not let anyone else choose for him, nor send him on a mission based on their predictions or expectations for him. He had been given options by Tarixi and Bael’tharax both, and he had chosen for himself. The lack of reasonable alternatives did not preclude agency, it merely dissolved the burden of uncertainty. Did he wish he’d had more options? Perhaps.
But then again, he was going to be riding a fucking Dragon, and living for millennia.
He didn’t know a single person from his old life that wouldn’t make the same choice.
Soul Sense is now Level 5!
The echo, or resonance as he rationalised it, sang out once more to his senses, and Aurelian pivoted to his right to approach a small clutch of eggs near the rear of the collective. His eyes searched over the uniform grey exterior of the eggs, and settled finally on one that sat ever-so-slightly apart from the others.
Another, and more earnest, clash of imagined cymbals pinged within the core of his Soulforce, and he moved towards the egg like a magnet to metal.
When he stood before it, the music in his Core built, and he could feel as much as ‘see’ the boiling storm of metaphysical power in his solar plexus begin to thunder and shake. Every part of him, from his mind, to his Core, to his very soul sensed something important in what was to happen.
A feeling of trepidation mixed with excitement shot through him like lightning, and he lifted his right hand.
“Watch me Cass,” he whispered to the air. Memories of their father reading Paolini to them as children came back to him, and he smiled at the recollection of watching Dragonheart and other, animated dragon riding movies with his sister. “I’m going to make our childhood dream come true.”
Soul Sense is now Level 6!
Aurelian placed his bare hand against the egg firmly.
The music in his soul rose, and hit a deafening crescendo.
Light exploded out from under his hand, first a pure and radiant white, which was then followed by a shaft of voidal darkness, one wich seemed to shake reality for but a moment. Then, before he could speak, there was more: red, blue, green, yellow… too many shades and hues and colours to count erupted from the point of contact until the entire egg vibrated with energy, and was ensconced in a wave of prismatic mana.
Aurelian felt something tug at his consciousness, and his very essence.
It was a slight and insistent pull on his soul and Core, and with an instinct he could not identify; he opened himself to the tether. The cave and its blazing egg vanished instantly, and instead Aurelian hovered in a place-that-was-not.
He was formless and yet had a perfect recall of himself, and before him hung something.
It was vast beyond comprehension, so massive in fact that it dwarfed Bael’tharax by several orders of magnitude.
Yet despite this, there was no fear.
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No reservation. No hesitation.
Aurelian felt a peace and rightness wash over him that he could not articulate to anyone who asked. It was the addition of a missing piece, and an end to loneliness he had never realised he had wallowed in. It was a melding, a symmetry, a perfect fusion of two halves into a greater and more powerful whole than could be comprehended by any mind. Unbidden and without prompting, he heard his physical and spiritual self speak in tandem.
“My body, my spirit, my mind I cleave to thee,
Partner I never knew, whose life is as my own,
I take you as mine, and give myself as yours,
One heart, one soul, one will, one purpose,
Until all the Realms are dust and ash.”
The words echoed infinitely within the kaleidoscopic space he inhabited, resonating and repeating a thousand times every heartbeat, while a second voice, sonorous and powerful, joined his own in assurance and affirmation. Streamers of energy twirled about him, and in their depths he saw a winged shape traversing the clouds, sundering the heavens, and casting low the vainglorious gods.
He saw the rise and fall of an Empire, and knew that it could be his own.
He heard the earth-shaking roar of a deific beast, and understood it to his own Soul.
A yearning came to him like an arrow of clarity, and Aurelian knew the answer it required, and had known it from the moment Bael’tharax had offered to him this soul-confirming opportunity.
He laughed when he gave his reply, and wept as he felt its approval.
It was the greatest moment of his existence, there in that non-existent space.
There were no words that could capture it, no intonations that could conceive of a means to elucidate the utter rapture of the experience. He was whole in a way he had never contemplated before.
He had found the true mirror of his Soul.
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the skill Spirit Bond: Dragon (M)!
There are things within the Realms that transcend all knowledge and understanding, and the act of Spirit Bonding remains among their number. In the days long gone, when such things were almost common among lesser creatures, still they were rare among the greater ones, and among the Dragons the rarest known. By bonding to one of these beasts of old, thought extinct by the denizens of the Realms; you have transcended into a figure out of myth and legend.
Forget not the glory of this gift, Reclaimer!
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
Hidden Conditions Met!
You have managed to bond with a dragon, an act not witnessed for thousands of years!
Achievement: Upon Wings of Might and Magic
For successfully achieving a rider’s bond with a dragon, you have received the following:
Title: Dragon Rider
Trait: Dragon Force
3 x Skill Upgrade Point
Aurelian’s awareness snapped back into his body, and the egg beneath him shivered and cracked with lines of pure white mana. Shell fragments fell away, followed by the audible wet ripping of gelatinous membrane, and two wings tore free of their bindings.
His eyes traced them as they did, and he noted the fullness of their design.
There was strength there already, he knew, and a power that no other newborn creature could contest. His eyes snapped back to the egg, and in a sudden eruption of power a sinuous, muscled body tore apart the remnants of its shielded gestation.
Eyes the colour of molten gold opened slowly, set beneath a pair of front-facing horns lined in moonsilver platinum. Runes the same silver-white hue adorned scaled flesh along the sides of a four foot long body, and a spined and brutally sharpened spear-tipped tail whipped through the air to dislodge the last dregs of the shattered egg.
The spines along the hatchling’s back, the claws on its four feet; even the fangs in its maw… all were the same brilliant platinum. The newborn dragon shook its body and flexed its wings, and when it rose to all fours to look at him in the eyes, Aurelian clocked its height just shy of his sternum.
Warmth radiated into his soul from an invisible bond, one tethered to the hatchling.
“Bahamut.” Aurelian greeted the Dragon with a smile.
Aurelian. The dragon sent back, his voice a bass hum within Aurelian’s mind.
Aurelian turned towards Tarixi and Bael’tharax, and paused at what he saw: the goblin’s Echo was openly grinning, with the biggest self-satisfied look on her face he’d ever seen.
Bael’tharax however was unmoving, and his great golden eye was locked with such an intensity on Bahamut that Aurelian almost felt the need to take a step back.
“JUST WHEN I THINK YOU CANNOT SURPRISE ME AGAIN, RECLAIMER, YOU PROVE ME WRONG.” The massive Dragon King moved his head closer as he spoke, and his immense eye fixed directly on Aurelian’s two. Then, slowly and deliberately, his mammoth jaws parted in what Aurelian could only call a smile. “THANK YOU, AURELIAN, FOR THIS MOST PRICELESS GIFT.”
“Aurelian, do you know what you have wrought?!” Tarixi interjected with a cackle like a bond villain. “Do you even comprehend what has occurred?”
“I bonded a Dragon,” he responded with mounting confusion.
A wave of amusement came from Bahamut, and Aurelian glanced at him.
“Bonded a Dragon…” Tarixi said with a snorting laugh. “Yes, Aurelian, but not just any Dragon,” she pointed out Bahamut’s platinum runes, and then gestured in kind to Bael’tharax. “In your dazed state, you perhaps did not notice. You did not merely bond a Dragon, Aurelian. You have bonded with Bael’tharax’s successor.”
Aurelian turned to stare at Bahamut at that revelation, and his eyes widened; the runes! How had he so easily failed to account for those? Had his mind truly been that overwhelmed? He felt like an idiot! Had he read such an oversight in a novel, he’d have called the protagonist a brainless dolt!
His thoughts abruptly cut off when something pinged off his senses, and the newborn Dragon unleashed yet another wave of calm amusement. You see, Aurelian? I am quite special. You may feel free to bow at your leisure.
Bael’tharax’s thunderous laugh filled the cavern.
It did not stop for some time.