Dragon Aster Trilogy (38 page)

But his missing lead was already watching him from the black obelisk-like castle before him. He couldn’t pick out who it was, as every time his psi got close, it was cut off. What he did manage to sense was that it came from inside as he looked up to the countless windows and verandas of the Atrum. Whoever it was, they were toying with Hain to go inside. Doing such didn’t need a trap, as with the hundred Awls he sensed within, tripping just one could get him killed by more than he could handle at once.

But if he walked away now, the itch for answers would follow him everywhere. And if the Atrum had teamed up with Toria, then it would be raining dragon fire on top of all his current problems. As he thought about his Bond, Kayla, the last thing he wanted was to find his daoran on a battlefield that would force him to choose sides.

He caught the Threads of the guards positioned at the front gates, and turned their sights with a flick of his wrist. It was easy enough to slip past the feeble-minded and those completely oblivious to the spiritual Threads.

As he walked through the gates and into the main hall, he caught sight of two Awls. Their customary wooden masks looked his way with their engraved expressions. Only their mouth and eyes were cut out entirely, exposing their green eyes. He guessed that they were participating in the celebration from the brightly colored suits, adorned with feathers and jewels that they wore.

They didn’t sound the alarm or attack him. Instead, they turned back to their conversation and proceeded to ignore him. If that wasn’t strange enough, it got stranger as Hain looked to the main stairs where a mermaid stood. He hadn’t sensed her appear, as she had yet to let her persistent gaze fall off of him.

The mermaid said nothing as she studied him for a moment from her black, glossy eyes under her long black hair. She simply turned around and went back upstairs. So he followed.

They continued to the second last floor of the Atrum, that was also the highest floor for the bedrooms of the royals. Its floors were a cold, black marble. Grey and dark blue curtains were left open to let in what light might dare to enter this place. It was to Hain’s unending surprises that they stopped before Lord Vanir’s bedroom, judging from the scent coming from the draft under the door.

“Lord Vanir would like to have a word with you.”

“In his bedroom?”

She opened the door, and Hain shrugged off the potential risks as he stepped inside. He looked around the lavishly decorated room of brown and navy blue silk. None of it described who lay in the bed of embroidered linens, and the unmistakeable scent of the body that came from it.

Vanir was dying.

Before the teeth and claws of the White Death could reach Sybl, Kas and Jru, two shadows came out of nowhere and collided on either side of the dragon. The phelan tore down the white dragon by his wings and limbs.

Cirrus lashed out violently at them, hurling one of the phelan across the Shrine and into a pillar, crumbling it almost enough to make it collapse. The dragon then grabbed the other phelan by its face and smashed it into the ground, erupting a flurry of flowers.

Sybl screamed at him to stop, but everything had become a deafening sound from Cirrus’ infuriated cry. She tore free of Kas’ grip on her and ran to him. Either he would be killed, or he would end up killing half the Custos of the Sanctus, and all because of her if she didn’t stop him.

The White Death made a sudden, violent spin, tripping out the two phelan that had joined the fight, before slashing them across the grass with his blood-spattered claws into a tumble. He turned suddenly, raising his claws into the air to strike down the next attacker from behind, but instead of a phelan, his claws dropped on Sybl.

Her scream was cut off as she couldn’t move or breathe from his force. Somehow, her energy tried to fend off his weight.
Wake up, Cirrus! It’s me!
Then her strength gave out, and his claws crushed her.

Jru’s phelan form collided with the dragon then, catching Cirrus’ neck.

“Sybl! Sybl!” Kas cried, as he dragged her away from the fight. He hugged her, and forced his aeri into her body. “No, you are not going to die! Sybl!”

Loki ran into the Shrine, and on seeing Cirrus, he somned and helped the phelans’ efforts to contain the dragon. The combined weight with his own dragon form was finally enough, and Loki fell back and to his side. A dozen chains were wrapped around his cousin, until Cirrus could do little more than breathe.

Loki unsomned then, and hauled Kas off of Sybl enough to try and do something to help. He felt her chest, trying to figure out which rib to put back first, as somehow her heart was still in one piece. One by one, he set them back in place, not caring to how much of his energy drained. If Kas hadn’t held onto her soul, there might have been no hope of saving her at all.

Three more ribs, then four, and she finally gasped for air. Doing so caused her to scream out in even more agony.

Loki collapsed from exhaustion, but Kas refused to let her go, even as his own energy loss threatened to hurl him unconscious.

An ayame Sano came and finished healing her wounds, and her internal bleeding stopped. Kas’ body shuddered. He had felt everything Sybl had, without being the one physically enduring it. Kas looked at Loki as his illusion weave faded, revealing the true form of an Awl. His blood boiled at the sight, as the dragoon had been too good at hiding the demon he had chosen to become. Across the garden, the White Death now lay motionless. His Custos didn’t kill the dragon, likely fearing that the Aeger would only make Cirrus into something more terrifying that they couldn’t deal with when dead.

Kas tried to get to his feet, only to end up falling to his knees in his extreme weakness. He tried again, and once upright, he walked closer to where the phelan had stretched out the White Death for his judgement. They assumed he was the only one who could kill this Aeger dragon and not bring on the wrath of Aragmoth on them all. Kas pulled his blade free from its sheath behind him, and took a shaky aim at Cirrus. “You will die for this!”

The White Death didn’t say anything or put up a struggle, as awareness had returned to his light blue eyes. The Sylvan energy from Sybl had cured the Aeger from the dragon. Now he looked to wake as if from some unfathomable nightmare, into a reality he could not accept.

Kas didn’t care for the part of his training and upbringing that demanded mercy. Cirrus had to pay for what he did. He brought his sword up, and the dragon closed its eyes, accepting the Fate that awaited it. But before he could bring his blade down, Loki had regained consciousness and tackled the Priest to the ground.

The blade fell from Kas’ hand, and they both collapsed like limp dolls amongst the blood-spattered stone and torn flowers. Quietly, the smell of lavender faded from the air.

Hain walked over to the side of the Atrum Lord’s bed as the old phelan slowly turned his head to look at him. The once unstoppable leader was now little more than a corpse that had yet to accept it was dead. His long black hair lay across his bed and body. His red eyes that could once cut through to the truth in another from their fierceness, were now dull. It was normal for a phelan somnus to age quickly when their time ran out on the world, but the deep wrinkles and sunken eyes of Vanir looked far worse than anything Hain had seen before. It was as if he had paid double for his long life.

“Where…is the other General?”

Hain took a moment to register what Vanir was talking about, as it had been ages since someone referred to him by such title. “I was hoping you could tell me, since you were the one to send him over to the Torian Continent.”

“The Awl is deceit. He…promised me more time.”

“Awls can’t do that.”

“No…that Awl is something ancient from the time of when your kind were only four in number.”

Hain went through the list in his head, and after ruling out Avian, Gei and himself, he settled in certainty on Daath.

“Yes…that one,”
Vanir said, sensing his willingly open thought.
“The caels return to mock and destroy everything that we have built in their absence. No one will tell me…the future. I want to see it before I pass from this miserable world and its miserable gods.”

Hain looked at the mermaid as he had also been referring to her in his mind. She stood silently on the other side of Vanir’s soon-to-be death bed. “Who will he leave this all to?”

“To Kas,” Tenu replied. “When he passes, the Falls will seize everything first, and then use their stolen power to destroy the Sanctus.”

“But you don’t know for sure, do you?”

“Asil makes it difficult to see the future. The Sylvan energy within her blurs both the aeri and estus energy of the Animus Threads.”

“It’s called the hope to change one’s Fate. Hence why his lord hates her so much?”

“She will…die… All the caels will die, and all shall be free of the Fate they bind us to…”
Vanir closed his eyes then to rest.

Hain looked at Vanir and for whether he still breathed. The clock was now set and ticking against him, as he wasn’t the only one up for the execution block on the Fall’s seizure of the Atrum. To the heathens, there was no better way to eliminate the gods than to hunt them to extinction, and everyone that came close. Including the Awls. “So what did he want with me?” Hain asked Tenu, who remained expressionless on her pale white face. He had always romanticized meeting her under different circumstances.

“Kas listens to you. Persuade him to come and take his throne.”

“That kid doesn’t listen to anyone.”

“Then make his soultwin listen to you,” Tenu hissed back. “If she is the only one he will listen to now.”

“No one wants this empire. You would think Kas made it clear by now?”

“Then remind him that when the Falls takes over the Atrum, both him and his soultwin will be of the ones burned,” Tenu added.

“With what? That giant bird-snake of fire?”

“The White Death is lost to madness now. There are no other dragons who will fight it. The Falls will win with that weapon that will ignite this world into ruin.”

“Just great. Now that you have damaged all of Sybl’s memories to her past life, you also cut off your chances of being able to stop it. So now on top of your meal ticket dying here, you got a radioactive monster after your head. I wouldn’t want to be you for all the power in the world.”

“But you will help me.”

“I already said I can’t convince the kid of anything—” Hain stopped there when she caught a few of his life Threads in hand. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Perhaps we can offer a trade?”

“You have nothing I want.”

“I see that,” Tenu said, while she fiddled with his Threads between her fingers. “I apologize that I am not as beautiful as you were expecting. But I also see what you hide so well. What you do want. I wonder how many Threads—”

“I said stop!” Hain shouted at her as his black wings appeared, and his sharp, icy feathers cut free her touch on his Threads.

“What are you ashamed of? You turn away from the ambitions for so much power. It must drive you mad from within.”

“There are more important things than my ambitions.”

“And what do Awls truly care of this world if not solely their ambitions?”

Hain only glared at her.

“All dark angels fall at some point or another, when their black wings disintegrate into ash. You will be no different.” Tenu smiled as she let his cut Threads fall from her hands to the floor. “But until then,” she walked to the mantlepiece, where Sybl’s festra had been mounted by Vanir, “take this back to the Caelestis.”

“You’re just going to give it to her? After all the trouble you went through to steal it in the first place?”

“I didn’t steal it. Vanir had hoped to control the names bound to it through Daath, but now that has changed. If he returns as Damek, then this weapon holds enough names to turn the eminor into an army for his cause.”

Hain took the weapon from the mermaid with a scowl.

“Fall or not, you cannot escape the fact that you are and will always be a slave, and slaves are happiest when they obey. But I will let you choose who you want to serve.”