The Silhouette dipped low to the ground, staring the fraught Opal in the eyes, snarling—daring her to give it a reason to end her life early. The Leporid Eldradimon’s gaze fled from the Silhouette’s like her life would extinguish in a puff of smoke if she so much as dared to peer into that walking abyss.

In the end, her consciousness was crushed beneath the pressure of its presence. Eyes rolling into her head, she fainted whilst kneeled and relinquished her hold of Sorrinn, who dropped onto the ground before its feet.

It reached to retrieve its reward; however, a whistling sword of light fired in from nowhere and skewered through its reaching hand, knocking it off course and pinning it to the ground. The spell disintegrated in an instant, and the wound mended just as quickly, insignificant even when it was born of light.

The Silhouette’s focus snapped northward toward the fool who was brazen enough to impede its efforts.

Hovering in the skies above the northern plain, there awaited a figure veiled in billowing black—Lua. A hundred more light-born swords filled the space behind her like a manless celestial army awaiting her order. She raised her hand and all hundred blades slanted diagonally, aimed at the Silhouette.

It showed its teeth before such bold-faced folly and hubris. “A long way from home, little slave? Your magic is worthless in the face of true Absence.” It tensed and balled its hand.

“Yes. You would be correct if my intent was to defeat you. However, I brandish no such intentions. I am nothing more than a convincing obstacle to keep The Void from having its way with my disciple.”

“…A fool to believe you can stand against the will of a Paragon.” The Silhouette’s arm cocked back in an instant, talons fashioned into the shape of a spear’s tip. It thrust its hand straight for the boy’s throat with the speed of a striking serpent.

Lua had already unleashed the cavalry. The consecutive hums of whistling flutes formed an orchestra in the skies above. By the time it drew its arm away to strike, three light-born swords had bridged the vast distance nigh instantaneously, points flirting with its chest. They pierced through the Silhouette’s torso and snatched its ground from beneath it against their immense propulsion. One moment, it was there. The next, it was gone in true whisper fashion. And its body made like a wrecking ball as it barreled a path of destruction through the village, plowing through structure after structure, momentum unceasing.

It rolled upright amidst its tumbling, the talons of its feet and hands clawing at, digging into, and dragging across the ground. Its backwards acceleration declined. Its gaze whipped upward toward Lua’s position, a livid snarl fuming from its nostrils. A fourth sword skewered through its shoulder. Then another through its side. An instantaneous barrage of a dozen more made a pincushion of its body from all directions in the moment it was still. Emanating Absence corroding the swords as swiftly as they could stab into it, the consecutive impacts made it jostle, stumble, and forfeit its ground. However, it refused to allow itself to fall. Another blitzed toward its face at light speeds. Roaring, it lunged forth, jaws opened wide, and clamped on the sword. The hard light construct fragmented into shards beneath its teeth.

The Silhouette lunged sideways into a sprint on all fours. A storm of light-forged swords riddled the ground behind it in pursuit.

“You are no Apotheos.” Lua beckoned ten of the ornate blades on standby to her side. “You are not chosen by your Paragon.” She lined its angle up to the Silhouette, aimed it ahead where she anticipated it to be in a second’s time, then set it free with a powerful thrust of her hand. The sword vanished for a decimal, appearing half-a-second later before its mark’s head in a flicker of light. “You are a tick on The Void’s underbelly, crowning yourself king for leeching off of exalted blood. Know your place, Drakonid, slave of the dragon sovereignty.”

The Silhouette dipped low and slithered beneath the projectile, dashing on all fours before rising to its feet. It didn’t slow down in its stride at all. The dregs of rage drowned beneath the dark tides were beginning to surface. Hearing the name of the people it forsook for The Void, something within it snapped. It sprinted harder—faster—wrathful breaths starting to puff from its nostrils.

One after the next, she unleashed the remaining nine swords with well-aimed precision and quintuple the accelerating force. Each one phased into place a decimal quicker than the last.

Even if they were harmless, they were too instantaneous for its Absence to devour. Getting hit by one would’ve sent it on a one-way trip to Timbuktu before it could resist the transference of light-speed momentum. It lunged, strafed, slithered, and rolled through the incoming onslaught in nimble, serpentine fashion. When it discerned the final of the focused swords had been fired, a pair of great, dark wings ripped through its back and broadened wide. They pounded the air. It took to the skies upon a mighty flap.

Enraged roars bellowed from its guttural depths. It no longer saw Sorrinn within its narrowed vision. The white of its eyes turned red. All it perceived was her, her words rousing the shadows of Origin entombed deep inside, dredging up long-abandoned memories. Its route veered straight for her as it was engulfed in a potent shroud of all-devouring Absence. The rain of light swords crumbled before they could reach it. With a flap of its wings, its pace explosively doubled. It crossed the distance between them within the second, arm pulling away before its hand skewered through her chest and out of her back. Blood burst, spattered, and dripped. A victorious, beastly roar resounded across the plain from forest to forest.

Then, Lua retreated from the Silhouette’s arm, unharmed. “It matters not how deep you descend into the abyss. For as long as you exist in this world, Drakonid, you cannot escape your origin.” She vanished into a shadowy haze. It was an illusion all along. “Remember who you are.”

Its sights whipped down to where Sorrinn had been left. The boy was long-gone, and so was the real Lua.

She was already halfway to the Songscribe household with Sorrinn safe in her arms, well out of harm’s way. It never stood a chance. Silhouettes were only frightening when they retained their aspect of mystery. She, as one who once walked the tides of the abyss too, understood the Silhouette’s truth better than any other. The fact she was able to bask in the light and know such peace after her people had spent ages being corroded and corrupted by the End was proof The Sustainer had never forsaken her. The Silhouettes believed themselves empty husks to Absence’s will, but it was those smothered pieces of enduring Origin that permitted them to retain their shapes even whilst subsumed within pitch-black darkness. The fact they could walk beneath Radiance testified they weren’t as hollow as they believed.

The Silhouette convulsed strangely in the skies with cumbersome breaths. It wildly teetered between an unbridled fury as hot as the deepest hell and all-enveloping nothingness. Lua’s words had sent its thoughts into a spiral. Old dirt stirred up from the long-settled lakebed. Flashes of memories—voices, images, faces. It remembered its skull pinned to the floor beneath its lord’s talon as the true dragon sneered upon him in front of all the other Drakonid slaves. He remembered the irrepressible rage boiling inside, hailed from a gouging sense of helplessness and chagrin. He remembered lamenting being too weak to earn his freedom from the tyrannical oppression his kind was born under.

“Hmph…” the dragon lord loudly rumbled in their throat, boring in their talon enough to draw blood through iron-hard scales. A breath of force more and his head would have popped like a balloon beneath his master’s superior might. “You are nothing more than what you were born to be—a servant; a resource, a tool to the supreme ones. What is this liberation I hear you whispering of, hm?” they inquired, baleful grumbles clicking in the back of their throat. “Did you truly believe I couldn’t hear your whispering behind these walls?” They scoffed. “As if an unsightly low-blood such as you would be able to survive beyond a lord’s mercy and benevolence.”

The dragon lord pressed down on his skull harder, unceasing until he was bellowing in pain, sniveling, and pathetically begging for mercy with tearing eyes. A grin—sadistic and malevolent—stretched across their face. Rows of sharp teeth came to light. “Now that’s a more suitable noise from the cretin, isn’t it? Don’t fail to remember faulty tools are discarded and replaced again, low-blood. Be grateful I’m in a merciful mood today and do not cremate you where you stand for your insolence and impropriety.” They removed their talons and walked away, indifferent, steps trembling the ground upon which they walked. “Next time, you all burn…”

His name… His name once was Falthoth. Yes, that was right.

Falthoth bellowed in agony as he clutched his head with both hands. His head was pounding. It felt like it was ripping in two.

Why then? Why were those memories returning then? He didn’t want them. He’d forsaken them for a reason. Falthoth was a weakling incapable of saving himself yet those who’d become dear to him. Falthoth was the coward who’d remained prostrated at the dragon lord’s feet as all of the Drakonids around him were tortured and slaughtered like playthings not worth the air they breathed. In the end, he was the last one remaining from his brood. The rest—his brothers and sisters—had all died gruesome, bloody deaths as replaceable tools owned by the dragon sovereignty. It was solely by his master’s own bottomless cruelty that he ended up forsaken in the End like a worn out rag having seen its better days instead of dead like all the others.

A beguiling voice, deep as the Mariana, whispered into his ear: “Abandon thyself… Abandon thy Origin… Purge thy weaknesses… Forfeit one’s shape, one’s scars, one’s ambitions, and become one with The Void. Devour the Luminary. Devour everything. For within Absence, there exists no anguish, no inequality, no injustice… The Void wills it.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

White eclipsed the red of Falthoth’s eyes. In the click of a pen, all of that turmoil, conflict, and agony silenced, drowned beneath nonexistence—true absence. “These emotions, this rage, it is weakness…” He drove his hand deep into his own chest and ripped out the remnants of Origin, smothering them in Absence until they were extinguished. “It is my time. I am ready.”

Draconic form melting into nothingness like running ink, it raised its head toward the heavens. With its final breath, it vomited an explosive torrent of Void sludge from its gaped maw. The expanding sludge filled the sky north to south, east to west, and blotted out the descending Radiance. A veil of near-absolute blackness descended over the land as far as the eye could see. The sole sources of illumination were the purple-tinted strands of light piercing through the undulating sludge mass stretching in all directions overhead.

What remained of the Silhouette—what remained of Falthoth the Drakonid—was gone. A colossal, tar-dripping, monstrous reflection of its former self’s top half burst from the surface of the dark mass above like a world-ending demon from the depths of Hell.

It scowled at the village where it hovered upside-down. A horrid, thunderous noise roared from the gurgling abyss within its maw. Hordes of End shadows and flying, horrific entities descended from it unto the village. “Devour the Luminary! Devour everything! By the will of The Void, I am its vessel! I offer my ‘self’ to thee! I offer this land and all of its souls to Absence!”

The encroaching Absence surged. An immense weight crashed onto the foundation below that rendered all things beneath static. The dark, dragonoid titan’s sights fixated on Lua and Sorrinn a ways away. Its maw gaped to its limits. A great flood of true Absence burst out like a geyser. Crashing tidal waves plummeted straight for the village—for everything within a several thousand-mile radius, more like.

Lua looked back at the pitch-black waters as they descended. She foresaw the end. There was no escape—only imminent erasure.

Then Maeve plucked the first note of the melody swirling in her soul where she floated beneath The Giving Tree, embosomed within the susurrations of the swaying leaves. Almost carefree in demeanor, her fingers continued plucking note after note. Something gentle, sentimental, and folky. It began slow in cadence—a nap beneath a red, orange, yellow, and brown-shaded tree on a windy autumn’s day. She hummed softly, ethereally, parallel to every note, snapping her fingers and tapping against the instrument’s body as her percussion.

An image of her family beneath the open night sky, nestled before a warm fire, settled in her mind. An image of Sorrinn snuggled up in her lap, being the little oddball sweetie that he was, clapping along to beat and grooving without any care of how silly he looked. Asammirr acting disinterested, but loving every moment in secret with that precious, pretty smile of his. And Orrillimmirr staring at her in that enamored way he did whenever she played or sang something, besotted into silence and complete absence of thought. For a guy who did nothing but ruminate religiously, that meant a lot.

That was what she was protecting. That was what she infused into every note.

The cadence of her fingers quickened. Ripples of glittering gold dispersed across the village the more she played. All of it coalesced into a vast, aureate dome overlapping the plains and the village. When the flood of Absence descended into its threshold, it was vehemently repelled by the force of Preservation—for the time being. Cracks were already forming where the forces collided. The song was incomplete. Despite her never having played the piece, the words to it were clear in her thoughts—simple yet close to her heart:

“One day, I knew I would find my way to you…

And now that I have you,

It’s you who I’m so afraid to lose…

When the sky falls, it’s you who I turn to…

Your smile, the light of my morning,

Love, a new dawn is overdue…

Finally home.

Finally free.

When I wake, cast your healing light upon me.

Mend my tattered soul.

No, don’t leave me be.

Not until, within you, I’ve found my reprieve…

Lost within your symphony.

Sanctuary…

You are my sanctuary…

Until the light of a new dawn comes,

Revelry.”

A bow formed in her grasp. She positioned the violin to her chin and began playing it properly as disembodied claps and snaps echoed in tempo all around. Birds swooped from the branches, circling around her, and jubilantly chirped harmonies in key with the song. Soon, they dispersed to every corner of the village. The music was shepherded behind them like glittering fairy dust.

The golden waves washed over the villagers, unshackling them from the Silhouette’s violence. Bodies rose all over, expressions molded in confusion. They searched around for the source of the music and surfaced short. The children came running out from the seamstering workshop. They were in pursuit of the dulcet sounds permeating the air in spite of the two womens’ loud, in-tune objections. The dulcet sounds, and the pretty, eye-catching glimmers of gold dancing about everywhere. Innocent smiles hugging their faces, they clapped and snapped along to the sourceless music. More golden energy emanated from them as the magic engulfed their forms in aureate outlines echoing emanations. Emanations which suffused the dome shielding the village. The cracks mended. They submerged right into the swing of things. They hopped, skipped, twirled, and danced while all of the adults questioned what was going on.

A little girl surfaced from the many. Uncertainty wore her face. She glanced around at the adults, then above at the tar-polluted sky. The music shifted to something softer and more innocent as she sang:

“I am home; I am home.

I’ve not been here very long. (I’m ten.)

But I’ve made friends here

And I was born here,

So I don’t want my home to be gone.”

The girl ran and joined the other children in their fun, unabashed. They held each other’s hand, twirling and spinning before passing themselves between each other. She gradually amassed confidence, voice loudening alongside the crescendoing of the background music.

“I am home; I am home.

Cuz home’s where I belong.

One day, I’ll climb mountains

And cross oceans,”

“—Keep dreaming,” another kid teased.

She gave him a playful shove, uninterrupted. “But for now, I’ll grow and become strong…

For now, I’ll sing this song…

Amidst her mellifluous laughter, the little girl gestured to everyone to join in . “C’mon everyone, sing along!

This song’s not done!

Not until we’ve won!” She pointed skyward, at the golden barrier warding off the mass of gurgling pitch-blackness trying to break its way in. Then they understood: Something of the kids’ interaction with the music provided the barrier the strength to resist The Void’s voracity.

Seeing that accursed beast looming above was enough to spur the crotchetiest of old men into jigging like a spring chicken.

“What in the five hells is that…!?” someone screamed, hysteric.

Opal had come back to her senses after passing out, lifting herself to her feet. Her head was groggy, but she had the gist. The people of the village trusted her as the one who helped bring life into the world and preserve said life once it was born. If she genuinely asked, there wasn’t anyone who wouldn’t do it for her. So she did: “This isn’t the time for hesitation or pride, everyone… It may be silly, but partner up—please. Dance and sing like the future of this village and the lives of everyone in it depends on it. If you’ve got no words to say, hum. We’ve made it this far and we’re still alive. Let’s give the future generations one hell of a story to pass down to their kids on the other side of this. This is where we rally!”

Head all around nodded in agreement. Resolved voices roused and exclaimed the fruits of their budding wills. Fires ignited into the hearts of the many. Her words were enough to make everyone move. The villagers linked up with the arm of whoever was nearest. They clapped to the rhythm. They hummed the melody. They danced in swinging circles, kicking their feet high. Their figures were highlighted within densening golden outlines the more of their hearts and spirits they poured into it. Once enough of them were bathed in the golden auras, bright pillars of energy burst upward from each and every one of them. The beams converged into the barrier and became its supports, rendering it unshatterable above their harmony. The few odd people out too defeated to participate didn’t hamper their effort. Everyone else exerted themselves doubly as hard to accommodate for the loss of manpower.

“It’s working, I think,” someone shouted. “Everyone keep it up.”

“This village isn’t done for! We can get through this together!”

Before long, the music quieted. The claps, snaps, and layers of harmonies gradually stripped away until all that remained was Maeve’s plucking of the violin strings accompanied by her beautiful hums. She sauntered through the village as she played a gentle tune, offering a smile to everyone she crossed. Witnessing the villagers helping one another in such a dark time only inspired more sentiment into the notes she played.

“My sanctuary…” she tunefully repeated with a hushed volume.

“Kindling to my endless revelry.

Father of my sweetest memory.

Conductor of my symphony.

You are my…

Everlasting ecstasy.

Gratefully graced by your majesty.

Thought of losing you, a somber tragedy.

Please always be my…

You will always be my…

Never stop being my…”

An exhale, fading.

“…My sanctuary.”

Golden effigies of the villagers diverged from themselves. The many ghosts soared and continued dancing overhead, shouldering the weight of the sky for those below. The music arose from Maeve’s fingertips, become a tangible object which persisted beside the phantoms. It was timely, since the villagers were running on fumes by then—the effervescent, ever-invigorated youth aside. The adults were all danced out.

The spell was fully actualized. The majority of the village was okay. There were losses, but it wasn’t the variety that they’d never return from. All that remained within uncertainty was the status of her family—of Sorrinn. Maeve’s vibrant-colored wings composed of mystic energy broadened from her back to the awe of everyone nearby. She darted into the sky upon a tempestuous beat of them, soaring toward home bearing an angel’s grace.