Doomwing stared at the empty space where Dawnscale had once been. He hadn't truly expected her to leave. Despite everything she'd said, despite the horrors the Fourth Catastrophe had unleashed, he hadn't really thought she would abandon their world.
But she had.
She was gone. She had left to wander the many worlds of Creation. He could understand the allure. New worlds, new challenges, and new conquests. Who wouldn't be tempted? She'd glimpsed other worlds since she was a hatchling. Her soul had ridden the astral tides, the currents of soul energy that spread across Creation like ripples across the surface of a lake.
She had spoken of these worlds to him. Some were devoid of life, little better than burnt-out husks. Others were full of creatures that defied easy description and called upon powers strange and mysterious. And still others were not so different from theirs. There were even dragons in a few of those worlds.
She had spoken too of the great shadow she had seen in the depths of the astral world, a titan beyond imagination, a dragon beyond all others who wore a crown of twilight flame and stars about his head. He was no child of the First Gods. He was older and mightier, born upon a world that had been ancient long before theirs had been created, and risen far beyond any mere god.
Could they rise to the same heights?
Dawnscale had wanted to find out. She had wanted to explore Creation and seek out those who could answer her questions and help her grow. She had wanted to leave behind the seemingly endless cycle of Catastrophes and forge her own destiny in a world that did not need her to save it so often.
She had asked him to come with her.
Surely, he would be interested. Was he not the dragon who loved magic more than all other things? Each new world was bound to have new magic for him to learn and explore. All he had to do was leave this world behind. All he had to do was let go.
He could sense the truth of her words.
She was no mere hatchling anymore. She could do more than cast her soul upon the astral tides. She could sail upon the astral tides with her soul and body, riding them from their world and into another. He could do something similar with his magic and his runes. He could craft a vessel to ride those tides alongside her, and they could both just leave.
It would be so easy.
But he had refused, and she had left without him.
"You sentimental fool," she had said to him. "You don't owe this world anything. You have helped save it four times already. This world… is cursed. The cycle of Catastrophes will never end. If this world ever had a peaceful destiny, the Broken God made sure to destroy it. His foulness has tainted this place forever. Are you worried about the others? We can grow stronger together, and then we can come back for them. We can all be free."
And he had looked at her, at the scales of gleaming white that shone with all the light and glory of the dawn, and he had seen her for the first time. How long had it been since the compassion he had both admired and despised had cooled into detachment? Was it when she had seen so many of their kind fall at the hands of the Broken God? Was it when they had been forced to strike down Mother Tree and slay those who defended her? Or had it been when the accursed offspring of a dragon and a leviathan had tried to drown the world?
There was so much suffering in the world, so much hate, and rage, and sorrow… and her compassion was not infinite. In the end, the well had run dry, and only cool detachment had remained. She helped people because it was the right thing to do. It was a duty, not a desire. And like all duties, it grew ever more tiresome.
Perhaps the Fourth Catastrophe had been the final straw. To realise that some up-jumped leech could grow so powerful as to threaten the entire world… they… she had all hoped that after the Lord of Tides, there would be no more Catastrophes, that with the ghosts of the past all laid to rest, perhaps there would finally be peace for them all.
The vampire was proof that they would never have peace. There would always be another Catastrophe, and Dawnscale had wanted no more of it. So she had left, and he had let her go, and now he stood alone on the mountain top, still and silent and alone. He wanted to say that his exhaustion and weariness were due to the great effort he'd put in to help strike down the Fourth Catastrophe.
That was a lie.
He had perhaps only a quarter of his magic left, and his body was covered in wounds, some more serious than others, but the exhaustion and weariness came from knowing he had lost yet another person he cared about.
That was all he could do. Lose people. And his memories of them were little comfort because they always led him to the same place, the same sense of loss. But Dawnscale was different. She hadn't died. She had left, and he wasn't sure if that was better or worse.
"This world is my home," he had said to her. "My parents died defending it. My friends have died defending it. Would you have me run away? Would you have me abandon it? Never. From my first day until my last, this world is my home. If I must die defending it, then so be it. I am a dragon, and I do not run. Let all the horrors of Creation come. I am Doomwing, and I am no coward. This whole world shall be my hoard, and they will die like all the other Catastrophes."
She had looked at him then, and her gaze had been filled with pity. And then she had left.
Perhaps if he had been less troubled by his thoughts, he would have noticed the other dragons sooner. Perhaps if there hadn't been an ember of rage, of fury, at being abandoned burning deep inside him, he would have chosen to leave rather than stand his ground. And perhaps, if the first words spoken by the leader of the other dragons hadn't been so unwise, he wouldn't feel the overwhelming urge to slaughter them all and bathe in their blood.
"Alone?" the ancient squall dragon laughed as he and his fellows formed a loose circle around Doomwing. "Perfect."
Doomwing rose up to his full height. There were four ancient dragons and eight elder dragons. "I suppose you're here to kill me."
The squall dragon chuckled. "Yes. You're strong, Doomwing, but you are alone, and we are many. How much power can you have left after fighting the Fourth Catastrophe? Your heart will allow me and my fellow ancients to Awaken further, and the rest of your body will do to help the elder dragons to Awaken as well."
Doomwing took a deep breath. The squall dragon had brought a storm with him. Black clouds filled the sky, and bolts of lightning crackled through the heavens. The rain poured down, and the wind howled. It was an impressive display for an ancient dragon, but Doomwing had only one thought in his mind.
Weak.
"You're all so weak," Doomwing rumbled. "If you weren't so weak, I and the other primordial dragons would not have to suffer so much to protect this world. If you weren't so weak, maybe she wouldn't have left."
It was a silly, deluded thought. Deep down inside, he understood that she was always going to leave. She'd already made her mind up, perhaps millennia ago. But these dragons were right in front of him, and the ember of rage inside him was growing by the moment, turning from an ember into an inferno.
"What are you rambling about?" the squall dragon snapped. "It doesn't matter." He glanced at his fellows. "He's wounded, and he can't have much power left after fighting the Catastrophe. If we attack together, he will fall."
Doomwing took a deep, deep breath. His wound ached. His reserves of magic were only a quarter full. But the world came into perfect focus. Here, now, nothing mattered except battle.
"Leave," he said to the elder dragons. "And I will let you go." He bared his teeth and smiled at the four ancients. "But not them. I will tear your hearts from your chest and feast upon them. I will break your bodies and bathe in your blood. I will rend your scales and rip you limb from limb. But you elders may leave because I want someone to tell all of the others what will happen if they challenge me."
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"He's bluffing!" the squall dragon hissed. "Attack!"
In an instant, the four ancient dragons began to form runes. Doomwing snorted in contempt. Slow. They were all so slow. Mother Tree would have killed them before they finished, and the Lord of the Tides would have torn their wings off to watch them flounder in the water.
With a contemptuous sneer, Doomwing unleashed a twelfth order spell backed by several greater runes of enhancement. Soul-burning lightning arced from his claws and struck one of the elder dragons before leaping to the next and the next and the next until seven of the elder dragons were tumbling out of the sky. Astral light was pouring from their mouth and eyes as their souls burned.
So slow.
They had gotten used to fighting sky whales and krakens. When was the last time they had fought a foe who could level mountains or part the seas? When was the last time their survival had hinged on being just a split-second faster than their opponents? He left the last elder dragon untouched, and the green-scaled acid dragon did nothing, too terrified to fight or flee.
The ancient dragons were still preparing their runes. Foolish. They were preparing the most powerful destructive runes they knew. They were trying to kill him a single blow. Absurd! They should have used their numbers to their advantage. They should have used greater and lesser runes to wear him down until he no longer had the strength to defend himself from the handful of ancient runes they might know.
Instead, they had chosen to use their ancient runes right away, and he was not impressed. They were slow and clumsy, and so very, very obvious. One was weaving an ancient rune of true death, and the other three were weaving ancient runes of shattering, shield-breaking, and magic-negation. Not a bad set of choices, but by choosing the most powerful ancient runes at their disposal, they had abandoned speed.
They were clearly inexperienced.
Doomwing had learned at great cost that in a fight between people who could use ancient runes, speed was everything. A half-finished rune might as well not exist. If someone wanted to use slower runes, then they needed to either prepare them in advance or create an opportunity to use them safely.
Doomwing lashed out with a quartet of greater runes, casting them simultaneously and finishing them long before the ancient dragons had finished their ancient runes. He struck the squall dragon blind, deaf, and mute. The blaze dragon was suddenly falling out of the sky, gravity increasing hundreds of times over. The dawn dragon found herself unable to breathe as bands of force and radiance wrapped around her chest and squeezed tight. And the rift dragon was suddenly missing his legs as a line of pure cutting force flashed between them.
Their ancient runes came apart as they lost concentration and panicked. Doomwing laughed and heaved his aching body into the air.
The squall dragon died first. As he lashed out blindly, spewing lightning and flailing with his claws and tail, Doomwing drove one claw into his chest and ripped his heart out. An ancient dragon's scales were immensely durable, but he was a primordial dragon, and his claws were far sharper.
The fool. If he had kept calm, he could have used his ability to control the wind to sense Doomwing's position and movements. Instead, he had panicked, and it had cost him his life.
The dawn dragon was next, and Doomwing snarled in disgust. A dawn dragon was one of the lesser stages of a celestial dragon. Dawn dragons were much like celestial dragons – absolutely devastating in the air. A dawn dragon should have nearly peerless speed and agility in the air. This dragon should have kept her distance, strafing him with constant bombardments of her light breath and magic. It was what Dawnscale would have done. Instead, she had hovered in the air like an idiot while preparing an ancient rune she had barely mastered.
Doomwing tore her head off her shoulders as she struggled to break free of the rune that bound her. Simply biting her throat out might not have been enough. After all, dawn dragons were incredibly good at healing themselves.
To his credit, the rift dragon died well. Missing both his legs, he bellowed his defiance and unleashed a barrage of spells, using the time the other two ancients had bought him with their lives. At the same time, he bent space and time, accelerating the speed of his attacks and collapsing space around Doomwing in an effort to make the attacks unavoidable. If only he hadn't wasted his time with an ancient rune and had attacked like this from the start.
But ancient runes were so very powerful, and it was so easy to get lost in the allure of the overwhelming might they could unleash.
Doomwing had been like that once, but several near-death experiences had driven home that relying solely on ancient runes was an excellent way to end up dead. Ancient runes were an exceedingly powerful tool, but like any tool they were only effective in certain situations.
This combination attack, however, was worthy of praise – but not nearly enough to stop him. Doomwing unleashed a wave of disruptive magic, blowing apart the space and time manipulation the rift dragon had created and deflecting the hail of spells. In the next moment, he was beside the other dragon, and he clawed open his chest with punishing force.
The final ancient, the blaze dragon, had finally managed to right himself. He was trying to flee, wings beating desperately as he fled the massacre. Doomwing growled. At least the others had died fighting. This fool would die a coward.
"Let me show you how to use ancient runes."
Doomwing could have called upon one of his mightiest ancient runes, a rune that could shatter a mountain range and tear open the seas. But that would have taken too long, and his foe would have been out of range. Instead, he called for something simpler.
An ancient rune of piercing.
He pointed with one claw, and the ancient rune formed in the span of a heartbeat. In the distance, the blaze dragon froze and then began to tumble out of the sky, a hole blown right through his back and out through his chest. His heart was gone, along with several of his other organs.
Doomwing turned back to the remaining elder dragon. The acid dragon quivered in fright, and he loomed over her. She couldn't have been more than a third his size. Bringing her and the other elder dragons had been pointless. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the squall dragon had been planning to use them as a distraction, not realising how little effort it would take for Doomwing to destroy them.
"You." He gestured vaguely at the carnage around him. The broken bodies of the ancient dragons and the elder dragons littered the slopes of the mountains. "Leave and tell everyone else you know about what you saw."
"I…" She swallowed thickly. "Do… do you want to know who they were?"
It was commonplace for dragons to boast of the foes they had beaten. But there was nothing to boast about here.
"No." Doomwing dismissed her with a flick of his tale. "Why should a dragon learn the names of ants?"
As the acid dragon fled as fast as her wings could carry her, Doomwing landed beside the body of the squall dragon. They had planned to eat him, hadn't they? Well, he was feeling hungry, and they were right there.
----------------------------------------
On a nearby mountain top, Marcus decided to stay silent. He and Doomwing had formed an awkward friendship of sorts. He had wanted to offer what words of comfort he could when the celestial dragon had left. Doomwing was clearly quite upset by it. But then those other dragons had shown up and… well, suddenly, drawing attention to himself didn't seem like a good idea.
He'd wait until Doomwing had finished eating. He should be calmer then, and they did need to talk about what to do with some of the more… horrific artifacts they'd found in the ruins left after Marcus's father had been defeated. The crazy vampire had managed to gather some incredibly powerful but dangerous items. There were a few that Marcus wanted to keep, but it might be better to get rid of the rest.