Dragon Aster Trilogy (44 page)

“Bring her back!” Kenshe barked at him.

Cirrus pulled her into his somn, as he felt the Phoenix’s gaze focus on him. He knew that he had to get it away from the fight, and with Sybl, he now had its full attention. He took to the air, and dodged to the side as the serpent spat out a flare. It exploded next to him like a small bomb. He continued to fly up and the enraged serpent pursued, close enough to make his tail feel like it was on fire. The only thing colder than Aragmoth and the deepest of the Eternal Waters, was the furthest reaches of space. So he would bring the small sun there with the hope that the iceless void could contain it.

As they broke through the atmosphere, Cirrus could feel the cold of space threaten to paralyze him, as the Phoenix was neither suffocating or freezing regardless of how high he flew.
You asked me to bring down the moon, not take up the sun
.

Sybl forced him to unsomn when they had the lead, and he instinctively pulled her next to him.

Sybl!
He looked at her with nothing short of panic. She didn’t look bothered by the cold, as her dark blue eyes glowed brightly.
It’ll kill us—its flames are too much!

“We’re going to have to destroy it the hard way.”

Cirrus tried to calm down, but it was taking all of himself to do it. He pressed his forehead against hers, absorbing her courage and certainty. The Sylvan energy within her was more than the past or the future. It was the power to make their own Fate. They didn’t have to run from it anymore.

“It cut through the Sylvan Aur and our hearts once. It’s time to return the favor.”

With his next breath, he pulled her into his somn. Cirrus looked at his wings as they turned blue from the Sylvan Aur that she had contained in her body.

“I got you,”
she said calmly within him. She was conscious in his own somn, and Cirrus could feel her pull on his wings. If he didn’t listen, they were going to die as he didn’t know how much higher he could fly before becoming exhausted—or out of air.

He glanced behind him at the Phoenix and its flames of hate that refused to suffocate. With his mind made up, Cirrus made a last flight-sprint to get a higher lead.

Then he flipped backwards, and fell straight towards the heart of their enemy.

Kas rested his back and head against the walls in the corridor of the Atrum, as Kenshe and Gwa took a similar break. They had infiltrated the city and the Atrum itself, but the Fall’s forces persisted with their defenses. Some of the phelan of the Atrum’s Order had taken their side, and without them, they might not have gotten so far.

“There are too many,” Kenshe panted next to him in his phelan form.

Kas looked at the Threads around them as he tried to quickly figure out their next move. He was going to have to take a chance if they were to stand one. “Stay here.” Then he summoned his somn part way, and vanished from the hall in a black mist.

The guards that aimed in the direction of Kenshe didn’t have the moment needed to react when Kas reappeared behind them out of thin air, and cut them down with his sword. He missed one, and the soldier fired on him. Kas dissipated in time to avoid the bullet and then reappeared to cut his attacker in half. Gwa and Kenshe caught up to press on.

The few floors up to the throne hall felt like miles. When they finally reached it, the phelan somnus in the hallway cheered and praised Kas like a returning Prince. The trio stopped, dumbfounded. Kas looked down the hallway where there were no more enemies.

“We win,” Kenshe said. He used his teeth to pull on the handle of the throne room’s door and open it.

They entered to find it empty, as the retreat was called by Mersael. Outside the windows at the end of the room, the griffins took to the air over the city in an ascent of white wings. Only Tenu stood next to the window, as the Atrum’s Aur fell to the allow the stars to remember this day.

“And be forever wary of a blue star, for the gods battle constantly,” Tenu spoke. “And we are but the damned, who are not yet the ashes of their Hell.”

Kas looked around the throne room with all his senses, stopping his eyes on the dark wood throne that his father had once sat in. But he would not sit down, as his eyes looked back to the window and the mermaid that no longer stood silent behind the rule of his father.

He walked over and looked up to where a red and a blue star collided in the sky. For a moment, nothing else happened. Moon and Sybl emerged from the other side of the Phoenix, separated by its red flames.

The Phoenix remained motionless for a moment, until it exploded and sent a flaming rain down on the Harbor. The larger pieces of its body that had been cut apart by Sybl’s energy fell to the Eternal Waters, where its flames were finally extinguished.

Meteors of fire hit the Harbor, creating explosions where they were met with gas and aeri or estus energy. The unnatural fire burned anything and anyone who touched it. The white sails of the ships docked ignited like torches.

Those who had made it into the Keol were left to listen to the cries of agony above of those who couldn’t. The phelan were the fortunate ones this day; as they had no feathers to go up in flames. The griffin somnus who were slow in their retreat did not escape fall of their hate.

“Kas. Kas, can you feel her?” Kenshe asked, as her psi wouldn’t answer him.

“You should let her fall from her sleep into death. For if Sybl lives, then all of this will have been for nothing.” Tenu looked with her black eyes into the distance, as the moonlight revealed the shadows of what shifted the heavens.

“Sybl.” Kas prayed, as all the Threads to her had been burned away. All but the ones that loved her too much to lose her again.

Sybl felt a surge of energy pull her mind awake, and she looked down as the ground sped closer. She was falling, and Cirrus would hit the ground first unsomned, just meters away from her hands. “Cirrus!”

He didn’t respond, and she tightened her fall to go faster, until she reached him. She forced her aeri energy into him, but he wouldn’t wake up.

Moon caught them both, before re-somning with them safe inside him. But he had tried to stop their descent too fast, with no time to keep his wings from snapping back like an umbrella from a harsh wind. There was no water to break their fall, as they hit the ice a mile from the Harbor and skidded to a rough stop.

Sybl was whipped out of his somn and sent tumbling with Cirrus across the snow.

Moon lay some meters from them, looking as hurt as they were.

She forced herself to crawl over to Cirrus against her pain, and to her relief, he was still breathing. Something struck the ice behind her, and she looked back to see that it was a sword pierced upright.

Behind it, was Damek in his golden armor.

“Well done, Asil. You have found and tamed the Dragon Moon.” Damek walked over and pulled free his blade.

“Damek...”

“Now all that remains is for you to restore the Sylvan light to this world and fulfill your destiny.”

“It’s not going to happen, Damek.” She curled together, trying to get a grip on the pain in her body.

“This world will not exist much longer like this. Will you give it to the Falls so easily? Will you let Aster become the corruption and suffering that Earth is now, rather than stop it while we can?”

“You just want the Sylvan Aur up so you can take your vengeance against Earth,” Sybl said.

“And so I will. The destruction of the first Aster must be paid for.”

“Revenge isn’t the answer against a world that doesn’t even know this one exists.”

“Ignorance is not an excuse,” Damek said as he walked over to her. “You will help me, whether you want to or not.”

Sybl braced herself as best she could for what he would do next, before Damek stopped in his steps. What ever his intent was, something else had caught his attention.

“You transferred my Curse to someone else… Interesting,” Damek said, and he looked towards the Atrum.

Kas!
Her soultwin’s psi shouted back for her to get away from him, but she could barely move. Then she turned her eyes to where Hain appeared from the Rift that still hadn’t closed from Damek’s arrival. He was bleeding all over and filthy.

“Reol. You disappoint me,” Damek said, as he turned to face the Awl.

“Get away from them,” Hain said as he aimed his gun at Damek’s head.

“Why do you defy me? Can you not see this is our time?”

“I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, but I’ve decided that you aren’t fit to play supreme god.”

“Such a shame. Then today is the day that only three Generals will take command of Aster.”

Hain turned around as a roar like that of falling glaciers came at him. Looking back at Damek, he opened fire on him, but the bullets were effortlessly blocked by his estus energy. Then dozens of spears of ice came out of the snow tide, and pierced through him.

Sybl screamed as Hain fell to his knees. His illusion Threads faded, and he collapsed to his side in the snow. Hain’s black wings covered his body, until his feathers scattered to the wind to carry his ashes.

Damek looked back to where Cirrus had been, only to find he was now gone with Sybl. All that remained was a black pool of the Rift that he had used to slip into as Moon. “You only delay the inevitable, for Aragmoth’s Fate will protect you no longer.” He slashed his sword against the wind as Toria’s dragons flew overhead. Towards the fires of war.

Where the Caelestis falls,

Fate shatters,

Darkness escapes,

And two worlds shall be merged,

By one light.

—Texts of Tenu

Loki sat on the wall of his constructed castle, pretending to look oblivious to the ones who were following him. He had made the long and hard flight from the Suzerain Continent to the Torian, as the lethal Aur storms still raged over the Eternal Waters. They had to be outflown before morning, or so he thought. Now that Loki was an Awl there were advantages. The lightning from the colliding bolts of estus and aeri energies had caught him several times, but didn’t burn him to a crisp.

He didn’t know what the plumas wanted as their behavior was unusual in the least. When one of the Regals stepped out of its hiding place in the bushes and eyed him with its green eyes, it didn’t appear to have any kind of an explanation. None of the winged cats outside of his castle gave any clue to what they were thinking, or what their intents were. Loki took its presence as some kind of warning, as he could only guess that the pluma were here because of something to do with the gunfire that echoed from Toria.

Even from here, the colorful lights of aeri-infused mists that surrounded the majestic white castle was spectacular. The waterfalls rose at the sides of Toria as the aeri from the Soph Aur constantly propelled them upwards into a mist of rainbows. His kind had died taking Toria from the chimera three hundred years ago, and it was too difficult to accept that the chimera would take it back today. That this very day might be the end of the dragon kind.

The Falls had used their chance to strike his home while the High Guard were on the Suzerain Continent. With only a few Novaists left because of the collapse of the Fay Wall, the dragons wouldn’t stand much of a chance against the Tech the Falls brought with them. Cannons and gunfire could pierce dragon scales and dragoons were trained to use swords, polearms, bows and axes. When he remembered Hain fighting off the griffins and their Tech on the Suzerain Continent, hope seemed lost. They had listened to the false High Priestess and followed her advice of staying away from Tech in every way possible. In doing so, they were still in the dark ages, while their enemies used their advanced and powerful weapons against them.

Loki looked back at the Regal that still watched him from the ground. He wondered if it would try and stop him if he flew to Toria. He might be able to help as the Awl he was now. Daath was to blame for the collapse of the Fay Wall and not the plumas, but his heart still held nothing but hate for the winged cats. His mother and baby sister had died that day, and whether the plumas were poisoned by the Aeger or trying to help them by stopping Daath, nothing could change that fact. With his older brother dead as well, he had no family who he cared about left. The only one left that he gave a damn about was Sybl.