When I woke from the violent slumber in between, I saw the answers I sought fall and die upon being ripped from the sky. Bolts of light and expulsions of blue defined the great above more than the clouds, the rain and the given sun. The Givers that had ascended my meager form to cast their light and spread thine flame were given no time to rot and join the dirt.
The man who screamed and commanded a legion of heretical casters was a ghastly image, matching the horror he inflicted upon the gods I once worshiped. A plague all his own marked the body with black depressions, stripping the flesh around it - letting bones stick through and break the skin, letting loose the blood. As his followers broke the scales of dragons with crackling beams of yellow, he partook in consuming the flesh exposed. Days went by and his appearance still worsened, an assumed remedy as a bold faced lie by the ones who feared him. My people screamed and swore to protect what was left of the masters of the sky, but I stared in cowardice - wished for a waking jolt. Many went but all died by the hands of the trained butchers.
Two weeks had passed - Mad Man became Mad King Jeremiah with no one in bed to support that conquest of title. The last dragon - a dark beast with a red eye and split tail - now rode beneath his diseased self. The third week had come and a revolt came after his indulgence in other people’s lands. A meager forgotten had become the most vile person in this land, and before I could conquer my fears and save the dark beast - something had broken, a pact between his army of casters and siphons - joining the revolt and severing their gifts to him. A grand battle was fought before the northern winter wastelands - but the prize of the warlord broke free from his command - tossing the lesser man into the sky before catching him in its teeth and tearing that body to shreds, spreading blood and innards deformed and coated in a violet bile. Jeremiah was then dropped in the fields and the fighting stopped as the dark beast spread a wide flame over the field - leaving a scar of fire that burned for years.
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I write this as a reminder for when an ending comes again - I have seen it happen once already. The death of the dragons will bring forth great change - and it has already arrived after the Mage’s Rebellion. Men who sell their souls into creations of fire and stone, and a new breed of casters, siphons and more - calling themselves Wardens and exterminating everything that was part of and will come out of this Age of Madness. Strange creatures thrice the size of men, and monsters of slipping flesh plaguing some of the family I once called my own.