(This here is a longer chapter... really long if you ask me XD. I can already guess which way you wanna see this story go and I gotta agree with a commenter. I will focus around Yré and implement Elena's journey as sidestory. Of course those two story lines will come together at one point in time and then they will travel together. Oh yeah... ehm... this chapter depicts brutality against a beautiful draconic woman and other people, so be warned! I don't think its to brutal but whatever. Anyway I hope you can enjoy this and don't hate me for whatever reason. Ok? Ok, nice. Enjoy! :D )
BRUTALITY AHEAD, BE WARNED! Not brutal for my tastes, but... yeah.
I pride myself in strength, not any mortal strength but the strength of the ancient dragon kin and the gatekeepers of the nether. I was a creature born from the most powerful of the many bloodlines, Hyperion, the ruling dragons, the heavenly dragons, and Astaroth, the mistresses of father death and chaos itself. Pride was carved into my bones, etched into my soul from a very young age. I was indoctrinated that all I did, all I am, was and will ever be is superior to my lesser kinsmen in every way. I might have been the product of undying love between two parents, but as they got a glimpse of my potential, of the intertwining bloodlines that mixed in harmony and power, all started to change. The once pure blooded dragons mixed and mingled with the demons, I served as an example to what could be created. A powerful being seen only once every millenia.
I loved the feeling of strength, the feeling of superiority, how our clan stomped everything right under its foot. We crushed empires, rebuild them and crushed them again for the fun of it. With childish ease I beheaded monsters that dwelled in the deepest pits, the fieriest of hells, the darkest of oceans, and all in a fell swoop.
We were drunk on power.
Tyrannical our races, mostly mixed and creating abstract hybrids with powers never seen before, ruled over this world, this poor world. Other races took after our example, all except for one. The humans. It would be untrue to say they did not thirst for power as we did, it was simply the fact that they were weak. They had no innate strength, no endurance or durability. They were much like twigs, meant to be broken between two fingers. Alas we overlooked two important things. First, their potential. To this date we do not know which God bestowed them with this miraculous might but a human, if he willed it, could call forth upon power that none of us could reach. In their most desperate times they created... miracles. Their absurd strength gave them a foothold as they realized what they were onto, they inbred their powers and created powerful families and clans, more powerful than ours. The Prim, the prime, the supreme, the FIRST! This is how they called themselves while laughing at our faces.
More of those powerful families emerged and began to grow into real threats. But it was far from over. Second, their numbers and ability to change. We might have decimated them but humans were far more adaptive than we had ever thought before. We brought them to the brink of destruction, many times, but they always came back, more powerful than ever before. Maybe we were on the right track with our pure bloodlines, those that the humans cultivated, but our greed for instantaneous power made us blind.
Yes, humans were infact powerful beings, but, in face of any of us, us, the cusp of our race, even the most powerful of humans were struggling to fight against. Their numbers would certainly make up for that, but right now we could still fight back, a risk they won't take. What else played in our favor was the little detail called age. Humans were strong but short-lived, much like a roaring fire they extinguished before you knew it. But this fire could cause enough damage in the short time it existed...
In the end, even to this day, I see myself as superior. I, Solias Astarion, pride myself in strength not even humans with the godly power to create miracles can come close by. Yet... yet I felt frightened, felt TERRORIZED, by this melodic voice, this dark whisper hidden behind flowing and soft prose. My hairs stood on end, a cold chill seeped into my body heated by infernal fire, and while I kept myself from vomiting the dinner out I took part in only seconds ago I searched with frantic eyes for the source of this booming voice that left me breathless.
Needless to say I found nothing. I looked at my companions, people I might be able to call friends one day, and saw their expressions warp in the same distraught surprise as mine did. I, a being of divine strength, should not feel fazed by a bone-chilling voice such as this one, but the tremble of my lips, the sniffles that I tried to surpress and the tears that threatened to fall, all told me that I was truly frightened, scared witless by whatever was lurking around us. It made me remember days of a long gone past.
Since being a child I loved to fight, to impose my power onto others. 'Be the perfect predator. Be inside the mind of your next prey. Plan, move cautiously and strike when they are the weakest.', excecute, improve, repeat. Regularly I took of into the untamed wilds, to get the kick of a bloody battle with my life on the line, certainly unbeffiting for a princess like me, in human standards at least.
Most times I thought of it as some kind of twisted game, I was the cat and everything else the mice. I would hunt down my victim, exhaust them and then when they despaired, their spirits laid broken, I would consume them. Of course this only held true for beings which were definitive weaker than I was at that time. But it was on one day that I witnessed true power, power that was without bound and dwarfed everything I had seen before.
I remember vividly how I swooshed with my true form over the deciduous treetops, casted a grim shadow atop the blanket of everlasting green as wide as your eyes could see. Defiant a few small mountain ranges pierced with their peak trough the green sea below right into the white sea of clouds above. It was a beautiful day to hunt, even in the deepest vestiges of this natural sanctuary light was present in abundance.
With bared fangs and powerful gusts of wind I announced my arrival. The ground rumbled as my claws stomped onto the moss covered soil, prompting a muffled scream of the carving earth.
My tail swipped once and dozens of trees twice as tall as me fell simultaneously, the blade of wind that propelled forward ended in the same instant tens of lives. I breathed the cool air with a jagged smirk, the smell of fresh spilled blood, its coppery fragrance, lighted my mood until a laugh threatened to errupt from my fiery maw.
I gazed through the glade I created with one single swipe. Blood and gore edged the dark green and brown branches with crimson fringes. Crushed or cut, none of that matter since all those creatures died in a single second, they were not even worthy to be gazed upon.
My callous eyes that held nothing but contempt for the weak and a craze for bloodshed wandered through the meandering paths that offered themselves up to me. Old oaks created winding tunnels with gnarly roots, diving in and out of the moist earth. I took one that led towards the mountain range and with swift steps I glided over the uneven terrain in seconds. My hulking body was as agile as a swallow, as fast as a hawk and as strong as the king of the skies himself. Confident I flew through the thick greenery, I flew and flew until another glade openned up. A small bubble of ashen and dead and trampled ground came into my view, a truly surreal sight in this sea of green that swamped away any imperfection with its smaragd tides. The ground was seared, turned arid from countless of stampedes and raging fires. The smell of blood was still lingering, hardly hidden by the ash, but no traces of blood were in sight.
Carefully I gazed at the scene of destruction, anticipation and rapacity flickered unceasingly in my eyes. My sight betrayed my expectations as I finally spotted the perpetrator of this carnage lying lazily on the ground, snoring with a bloated stomach and a blood smeared snout.
It was surprisingly a dragon, as ashen as the ground it laid on. A well-known taboo flashed past my mind. I would get stronger if I devour one of my own kind, wouldn't I?
Hastily I stepped back. What was I thinking?!
We dragons had to stick together, hybrid or not we were still part of the same family. But my avidity for power forced my hands, my claws, forward.
Frightened of my own selfish desires I pulled back, the ground loudly crunching beneath my taloned feet.
"Mhmmmmhmm...", the grey dragon grumbled and openned his argent eyes blazoned with golden spines. His body uncoiled and for the first time I saw something bigger than myself and my parents. Forever the dragon seemed to stretch out, blotched the sky out with his ash-grey presence and gazed deeply into my crimson eyes. How could I not have noticed his gargantuan size?!
"Young one....", the words from his mouth thundered like lightning from black clouds, it was deafening and instinctively I shrunk back. "You woke me up...mhmmm...", waves of sound came crashing down from its deep grunt.
My words stuck right inside my throat but with a last-ditch effort I could swallow back my fear and stuttered out raspy words. "W-what a-a-are you?", I questioned meekly.
The giant paid my question no heed and craned his neck over the forest green crowns, his endless eyes wandering over the woodland and the dark mountains. "So much claimed from my land, only this is left huh....", he growled and gazed at the grey patch of earth he laid atop. "How long was I asleep, little one?"
My pride and courage vanished as those profound eyes locked with mine but not with their prior placidity but endless aloofness.
"I-I-I-.", I couldn't breath, my mind was short of air and my consciousness wavered. I would die from terror, that was certain. My heart palpitated and stopped at once.
"Guess I, Baal Zebul, King of Dragons, have to find out myself.", with half closed eyes I saw the divine unfold his silver feathered wings and take of into the skies, for minutes. First his giant head that could swallow stars, then the six pairs of wings that darkened the sky and then the golden pronged tail made by the sun took off from the ground that was unworthy of a being of this magnitude. His titanic body vanished between the sea of green and blue, left behind a silver lining forever to be marked as the 'horizon'.
Hours passed and I still stood there, my trembling finally settling down but the seed of awe and terror was already placed inside my young heart. This was the power I wanted to achieve, the power I feared at the same time. Needless to say I never saw that dragon again.
I saw all this, felt all this in the past and promised to never end up like this again. I grew, honed my strength endlessly, spilled sweat, tears and blood in a search for ultimate strength. I consumed, evolved and harnessed power even from the dead. Compared to the past my strength should be unsurmountable, I should stand at the peak only with a handful of other creatures. I was not conceited enough to believe myself stronger than Baal Zebul, but with another few millenia I should be able to reach him. But now.... right now, after all I have done, all I have achieved by immolating my life for an endless pursuit of power... Impossible! IMPOSSIBLE!
My hands, my whole body, my breathing. I trembled for the second time in my life, and it was worse than before. It was a tremble of terror, a fear for my own life, a black scythe that cut deep into my neck. What I wanted at this moment was to scream, scream for help, scream for my family, a person to hold my hand and protect me. I wished for all this to only be a nightmare, that the terror would leave my heart at once. Because... because... SUCH POWER COULD NOT EXIST!
It was Impossible! Impossible I say! Impossible! Impossible! Impossible! Impossible! Impossible! Impossible! Impossible! IMPOSSIBLE!
"My darling, don't be afraid.", the darkness whispered and my soul crumbled apart, a gust of hot wind kissed my cheek and left me horrified and rooted on my seat.
"I apologize for this unslightly entrance of mine.", the bodiless voice whispered with dark winds and this time all present heard it as well.
"I should introduce myself, now shouldn't I? Hahaha...", chuckles that contested earthquakes in their force errupted from the void. "My name is Yré, a simple judicator.", the frigid chill I felt on my skin was abruptely replaced by a boiling heat seeping into my marrow. The torches lit up in pillars of smaragd inferno and painted a ruler of death on the ceiling with fiery tufts. "Lord of Cinder! Arbiter of Carnage! Kindred of Fire .......It's up to you, how you call me.......", the voice roared before it converged with darkness once again, and a thick drap of silence began to suffocate our hearts.
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"Who are you, what are you! Show yourself!", Aires, the true ruler of demons, spoke up, asked, with stern voice but the tremble was undoubtably there, hidden behind a facade of determination. (Bad idea....)
I saw the sweat trickling down Aires' purple skin as his magic ran amok around his body in an attempt to shield him from whatever could happen. Mekaling on my left had his legendary mallet 'Stahl' gripped tightly in his hand, the ground around him started shaking. *SCHICK* The back of old Iren burst apart and revealed distorted pairs of wings of all kinds of animals, his face warped and all sorts of apendages burst forth from beneath his skin, his body grew into a disgusting abomination with eyes casting their gazes hurriedly into the darkness. Niam held 'Phenix' ready in his hand, arrows of pure magical might nooked between his fingers on the sun born bow, with his pair of blind eyes closed he used his exceptional hearing to aim. The goblin princess Annia tried to ready her powerful magic but much like myself she couldn't keep the trembling from stopping, she couldn't withstand the powerful auras that flooded this room.
My companions readied their weapons but I was still tightly clenched in the grasps of fear. I willed my body to move, to unleash my hidden might, but I couldn't. The fear that I would anger whatever beast preyed with dark eyes on us was to overwhelming, I did not want to lose my dear life, I still had so much to achieve. I would not die here even if it meant to cast away my dignity. Selfish, ain't I?
"Youuuuuuu...", tremors sperseded the thick silence. The voice cried out, flames began to flicker around us, all under one command. Flanked by heat the room quickly turned into a living hell. "...DARE TO SPEAK UP?! DARE TO COMMAND ME?!", with aghast eyes I watched how lightless flames hurled themselves at Aires; irked at our leader's impudence this incarnation of destruction sent out its voiceless minions with their broken laughter.
"Watch out!", an involuntary shout escaped my lips. As the one seated opposite of Aires it was only me that had seen the creeping shadows that threatened to devour him. If I could help I would, but I certainly won't oppose this destructive being.
------------ 3rd person now
Aires jumped from his seat, the fire quickly crashing into the magically enchanted wood he sat on only moments ago, combusting it in instants.
He thanked the draconic princess in his mind, words would only be a waste of important energy. As the strongest of all present he could barely estimate the power of their mysterious foe and concluded that this fight would prove as difficult, most likely ending in a few of them dead.
Blood trickled from his right arm as a black flame drilled itself deeper into his flesh, by using his own magical force he suffocated the small black flamelet. He gave the grievous wound a short look. His flesh was charred black, blood flowed unceasingly. 'How can this be?!', Aires exclaimed.
Gnashing his teeth he tried to push the pain into a far away corner where it wouldn't hinder him any longer. As he did so his wrist suddenly flicked forward, giving rise to a crackling tether of red lightning that whipped across the room in search for the enemy.
'DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!', Aires cursed as the crackling whip pounced at all places simultaneously, chasing an invisible opponent that seemed to be omnipresent.
*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*, the thundering whip cracked apart the stone walls, carving red clefts into the brittle rock and causing the whole complex to shake. Sentient the whip continued to lash out at the hundreds of flames that were born from the darkness, breaking the walls, furniture and floor. Finally with great effort the whip managed to disperse the endless waves of blackness that was hunting down Aires.
"WHAT IS THIS?!", the overlord's mighty voice roared out in fury as his useless pawns were shredded by a mere demon. Ignoring the other people present Yré's wrath was solely directed at the purple skinned mortal that dared to defy him. Unleashing a small portion of his true power he infused the cold flames with a fragment of his absolute self.
Aires felt the change in the black tides, how they turned from small wisps of fire to humongous serpents that coiled around an invisible presence. The whip recoiled from the sea of boiling black that began to tower up to the ceiling.
"We have to leave!", Aires shouted towards his companions that tried to collect their bearings.
As his words reached their ears the dark fiend already lifted his hundreds of umbral claws high up into the air.
"ANNIA!", Mekaling shouted, shacking his daughter awake from her stupor, his hands gripping her shoudlers. "We need your magic, now! AHHHH!", he roared out as his green face contorted in pain, a giant black claw tearing him out of Annia's field of vision.
Mekaling's body skipped over the ground until he crashed into the stonewall with speed breaching the sound barrier. His eyes squinted in pain and ire, his hammer raised up to his chest glowed a dim earthen brown. "You fucker!", he barked out blood and spit alike. His stout yet agile body rocketed forward, his arms tensed up and the now dark brown glowing hammer smashed into the giant shade with drumming thunder. Bristling up with vitality Mekaling pressed through with his massive mallet, pushing the shadowy entity back bit by bit. "NIAM! HELP!", Mekaling shouted as countless tendrils began to swarm around him, the entity gaining its foothold back.
"Tsk! Remember this debt Mekaling!", Niam responded severe. "Let me help you!", Aires came from the side, the charred wound on his arm still bleading profusely. "Let's do this!", Niam smiled.
Nuckles turning white Niam clenched his trusty bow Phenix with resolution. "Take this!", particles of bright golden dust conglomerated into a single light of gilden prominence nocked on the silken bowstring. The legendary weapon Phenix cried an elegy for the fiend it was about to cleanse before the strip of golden magnificience sped forward, piercing even space.
Charon harnessed its power from Aires before wrapping itself around the black demon with lightning speed, keeping the black flames it spewed in a constant wrestle for supremacy.
At the same time Annia began to focus her unqiue magic, the folding of space, time and reality itself. It was a power unseen and unheard of ever before but the strain she was put under was nothing to shrug of either. Her body quivered with each tremor of the earth, but her mind needed to keep its calm. For the sake of protecting her a giant and mutated Iren keept the remnant flame tongues and black spines under control that tried to force themselves onto Annia, the most vulnerable person here.
"DiD yoU FiIIIiiNiSh yOuUur prePARAtiOns?!", Iren's old voice roared and whispered, his words spasmodic and disfigured by his everchanging body.
"N-not yet. Give me another few seconds.", Annia answered with bated breath and sweaty face.
All the while Solais was huddled down at the nearest wall, her body trembling all over and her hands keeping her ears shut. "I don't want to hear it! STOP IT!", she cried out with sobs strewn inbetween.
"Oh dear, oh dear.... Why don't you accept it? Your parents, your... pff.... 'friends' here, no one needs you. Here my dear, take a closer look.", Yré gripped Solais' face with his obsidian claws and pulled her sight towards the fight. "No one cares about you, they don't even notice that I am standing right beside you. And you know what? You deserve such a treatement. You tried to flee didn't you? Leave your companions to die... you dirty, dirty whore.". *BAM!* Solais was sent flying by one slap of Yré, instead of retaliating she made herself as small as possible and crawled for the safe corner that presented itself before her. Red strands of sweaty and grimed hair glued to her swollen face that was peeking through her bruised hands. Her red eyes gazed fearfully at the obsidian deity that was slowly pacing forward, her pupils dilating she barely had enough strength to keep her consciousness afloat.
"People like you, I despise them the most.", Yré pulled her up on her hairs. "You make me sick.", Yré spat her in the face. Solais felt the acidic liquid run down ehr face, eating into her skin and cried out in pain. "Let me go!", she shouted and started struggling. One kick landed square on Yré's light swallowing chest, a kick powerful enough to break steel. "Y-y-you.... YOU!", in his wrath he pulled her head back and smashed it straight into the stone ground she was lying on.
"YOU DIRTY WHORE!", Yré pulled back and smashed her into the hard ground once again. "DON'T EVER TOUCH ME!", her skin burst apart and tainted the ground in crimson. "YOU DISGUSTING BITCH!", Yré's hand, clutching Solais still by the head, hit down once again, her face drawing slick crimson lines in the air as he raised her up again. "N-no more.", she begged with bloody lips, broken bones and hands reaching out for forgiveness but her plea landed on deaf ears. "SHUT UP!!!!", with a wrath fueled toss Solais was thrown across the room.
"Dammit... now I feel dirty.", Yré cursed after looking down on his body that was sprinkled in sticky blood, the ire in his body began to consume him anew.
*VOOM*, he vanished in a puff of smoke and reappeared right over Solais, her body leaning against the wall and her eyes hardly kept open.
The fight came to a sudden halt as the contenders noticed the red bullet that shot through the air, followed by a bizarre creature of fire and darkness. The alliance members stared disbelieving at the true demon that stood over a bloody Solais.
"SOLAIS!", Aires shouted and the grip around the black giant lessened. Taking this chance the fiend of black fire began to trash around and shake off Mekaling that was continously bashing onto the monster with his enchanted hammer.
"Aires you idiot!", Niem released the arrow of light that was storing its energy for a few seconds already. In a blinding explosion of light the arrow clashed with the entity of darkness, suffusing the hall in golden sheen.
Yré felt the leader of this meeting, the puny demon, sprint towards him. He did not even care as he brought his face closer to Solais'. "Listen well... This is what you are. Weak, defenseless, pitiful. I could kill you...", with a sudden jerk Solais arm broke in two. "AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!", "Just like this."
"Now... Do you want to kill me? Do you want the strength to dominate everyone else?!"
"AAAAAHHHHHH!!! IT HURTS!", Solais squirmed around and tried to stop the blood that was flowing from her broken arm.
"Shhhhhht! Be quiet, I am talking.", Yré held a finger to her lips. "Even your mighty leader here...", a sudden outburst of power sent the incoming Aires flying. "Is nothing more than an ant compared to me. Let me ask you again, do you want power?", with a playful smile on his black lips Yré awaited his answer.
"You monster! *Pthu!* This is what I think.", Solais growled and gave her own smirk. Though she knew this marked her death she still decided to defy this monster in her last moments. Who would even guarantee her that this monster won't just kill her if she agreed?
Yré wiped the spit from his face, slowly and carefully. "Hahahaha... HAHAHAHAH! SO THIS IS WHAT YOU DECIDED!", one calw rose into the air and flared up in blood red fire. "THEN SO BE IT!", his dark voice carried a promise of death within.
"I am done!", Annia shouted and realeased her magical power. The room shock violently and thereafter ripples in space turned visible, distorting the view of those present. "Let's get out!", Annia shouted and the ripples turned into full on tears in the fabric of space, making everything blink out of existence that they touched.
Solais seeing the distortions wrapping around her began to smile in delight. "I won.", she whispered and shortly after disappeared, like everyone else as well.
Yré, still standing motionless with raised claw, chuckled lightly. "You wish.", and he too vanished. In his ethereal form he couldn't contain the askew smile that sported his cold mask of stone. "Now that you challenged me I will make you mine, you little lizard."