Chapter 56: The Dragons Consider |
Ruinscale glanced down at the landscape beneath her. This land belonged to her father, and like any land claimed by a primordial dragon, it had come to reflect his lineage. This far from the centre of his domain, the land was dominated by a towering forest. Yet there was something unsettling about it, a shadow that lingered as much in the mind as in the eye. The darkness was deeper beneath the trees than it should be, and the trees themselves were twisted into strange shapes that hinted at powers best left unspoken.
The creatures that dwelt within the forest were no less unsettling. Their movements were too swift and too silent, and their eyes were too sharp and too knowing. There was a wrongness to the place, a sense of unease that built the longer someone lingered until it grew into a stifling sense of terror – a horror that lurked in the subtleties, a nightmare found more in the details and fuelled more by a thousand mismatching moments than any drawn-out exclamation of fright.
But to Ruinscale and those who shared her father’s lineage, the forest and its oddities were more welcoming than threatening. The forest and all within it were reminders of her father’s power, and the brooding shadows that lurked beneath the trees and skulked amidst the undergrowth were more like familiar friends than enemies.
Beyond the forest, the tall, twisted trees gave way to a seemingly endless morass, a swamp ruled by burbling brooks of dark, muddy water that circled countless small islands dotted with mangroves, maples, birches, oaks, and cypresses. The trees were different from those of the forest, shorter, broader, and strangely cage-like. Reeds swayed back and forth in winds that did little to dispel the air of unease that lingered over the swamp like a shroud. The massive forms of swamp hydras eased through the muck, and countless eyes watched and waited from the swirling, turbid waters.
In her younger days, Ruinscale had often lingered there. She had even befriended many of the hydras that dwelt there. They were strange creatures, so different from dragons, but friendly in their own way. As the years had passed, distance had grown between them, and one by one, almost all of them had passed away, unable to escape the shackles of time. Only a few of them remained. The greatest amongst them was the primordial hydra that her father had befriended in the long-ago days of his own youth.
But that hydra seldom ventured far from the deepest, darkest parts of the swamp. She was content to dwell in the heart of darkness, nesting amidst the roots of a dryad’s tree. She would care for her young until they were old enough to fend for themselves and then send them out into the swamp to seek their fortune. Some would have called it cruel. But the hydra had seen the passing of the Ages. She had seen the fall of the gods and the betrayal of Mother Tree. She had endured the rising of the seas and madness of the dead. She had witnessed a corrupted star wage war and seen the nightmares of a fox made manifest. She knew better than most how cruel the world could be, and she would not coddle her children.
Looming over the whole swamp was the dryad’s tree. In the days of the Third Age, the waters of the world had risen and drowned the land. Only the dryad had endured, her tree standing firm in the face of waves that had swallowed mountains. Tall it stood, tall and twisted, but unbroken and unbowed. Its branches reached out toward the sky, wings of wood greater than any dragon’s, so wide they seemed to cast the whole swamp into perpetual twilight. No starlight fell upon the swamp, nor moonshine. Instead, the leaves of the tree gleamed like stars, and the flowers upon the branches shone like so many moons.
Ruinscale flew past the swamp. Beyond it, the murmuring streams and whispering reeds came to an end. In their place was a desert, vast and splendid in its loneliness. This was the nature of her father’s power. A corruption dragon twisted everything around them. At a distance, her father’s presence could turn a thriving forest into a place of shadow and gloom. A stream-strewn meadow could become a swamp. And a once fertile plain turned into a desert where the song of the wind was heard only by sand and stone.
At the edges of the desert, the sands were a deep, rusty red. But the further she flew, the paler the sands grew. At the very heart of her father’s domain, at the centre of his power, the sands were a white paler than bone. So many thought of black as the colour of corruption, of rot, decay, and desolation. They were wrong. In the end, corruption left nothing behind. It consumed all that it touched – and white sands, brittle and coarse, were all that remained.
Ruinscale’s gaze drifted to the lonely mountain that stood at the very centre of the desert. Long ago, it had belonged to a kingdom of dwarves. They had been friends of her father, but their domain had flooded in the Third Age. Few had survived, and there were times when she could almost hear the cries of those trapped within the mountain as the waters rose and their storied halls turned into tombs. The few survivors had fled, eventually establishing a new kingdom – only to perish in battle against the Lord of the Tides, their island citadels offering little safety in the face of the Catastrophe’s wrath.
After the Lord of the Tides had been slain and the waters of the world receded, her father had returned to the mountain to establish his domain. Perhaps sentimentality had played a part, but he had a far more practical reason to choose this place. The grim fate of the dwarves whose mountain had been swallowed by the sea, along with the island citadels that had shared the same fate, had forever darkened the currents of magic here. To others such magic would have been a curse. To her father and those of his lineage, it was a blessing, a natural wellspring of power that only they could make proper use of.
In the days of the Second Age, the mountain’s slopes had been dyed red from the iron within it. The dwarves had called it the Iron Blood Mountain. In the Third Age, that same iron had stained the water and given the seas that swallowed the mountain a different name. The dwarves had called it the Sea of Blood, a fitting name for a place where so many had perished.
Now, however, the mountain was white, bled of all colour by her father’s might.
Landing near the mountain, Ruinscale took a moment to ponder the contrast. Like her father, her scales were black. As a corruption dragon – someone who had achieved their Fourth Awakening – her scales were a black so deep they seemed to devour light rather than reflect it. More than one of her fellow dragons had told her that it was like staring at a shard of the night shaped into the form of a dragon. Her eyes were a deep purple, a shade so dark they could almost be confused with black. At first glance, her wings might seem tattered, but appearances could be deceiving. In truth, her wings were as strong as any dragon’s, and her flight every bit as swift.
Sensing her presence, her father emerged from the depths of the mountain. It was there, deep beneath the earth, that he exerted his full strength, weaving magics of terrible power and crafting all manner of items. It was also why her mother was not present. She was tending to Ruinscale’s youngest sibling. Her youngest brother had yet to undergo his First Awakening. Despite belonging to the same lineage, he would not have lasted long if exposed to the full weight of her father’s power.
Her father appeared, a mile long and every bit as imposing as a primordial dragon should be. His own scales were an even deeper black than hers. It was less like staring at a shard of the night and more like staring at a hole in the world itself. It was difficult to focus on him, so greedily did his scales drink in the light. Instead, it was easier to track him the way she would have tracked a shadow spreading across a well-lit wall.
Rather than violet, his eyes were twin pools of obsidian, lighter than his scales but only because they reflected the light rather than absorbed it. Onyx fire kindled briefly in his jaws, pitch-black flame that did not burn so much as it rotted, corrupted, and decayed all that it touched until there was nothing left. She could still remember the last time he’d used it in earnest. She had seen a dragon who had achieved their Fourth Awakening die screaming, their scales turning to dust, their flesh rotting away, and their bones reduced to powder even as their cries still echoed in the air. It was not without reason that few ever challenged her father. Death at his hands would not come easily, and it could not, by any stretch, be considered a mercy.
Her father stared up at the sky – here, at the heart of his domain, even the sunlight seemed sullen, pale orange rather than radiant gold – and then he beckoned her forward. She joined him on the slopes of the mountain and bowed her head. As his eldest child, she had come to hold a position of authority, and much had been left in her care, especially while her mother focused on helping her youngest sibling push toward his First Awakening. Only after he had achieved it would it be safe for him to venture beyond the edges of the forest that marked the true start of her father’s domain.
“You are here because of the message.” Her father’s voice soft, yet it carried clearly through the air. For a primordial dragon, there had always been something oddly gentle about him. It had taken her a long time to understand why. Some might have mistaken his gentleness for weakness, but it was the opposite. His mere presence could turn fertile fields into deserts and seas into bogs. He spoke softly and kept tight-rein over his powers to avoid harming others needlessly. It was a kindness, and it came from a position of overwhelming strength, not weakness.
Compared to many, her father’s domain had suffered little when the Sixth Catastrophe had unleashed her mind-warping magics. Why? It was simple. Those magics had rotted on the vine, the intricate spell craft and mystical minutiae unable to hold their shape and form in the face of the corrosive power that permeated her father’s territory.
“Yes, father.” Ruinscale inclined her head in respect only to startle as her father ignored her attempts to remain respectful in favour of pulling her to his side with one of his wings. “Father…”
“You have grown strong, my daughter, and the days when you needed my protection are far behind you. Now, only the mightiest of foes can threaten you. Yet… I am still your father. You may have forgotten, but I still remember when you were but a hatchling. No matter how many years pass or how mighty you become, there will always be a part of me that looks at you and sees that hatchling.”
Ruinscale hissed. “Father!” Only her father would dare to treat her in such a manner. Even her mother no longer treated her like a child. She was her father’s heir, and she had established her position as his rightful second. In matters pertaining to her father’s domain, she now held more sway than even her mother, and only her father could gainsay her.
“Hmph.” His eyes gleamed, and his amusement was easy to see. However, his gaze soon sharpened, and she felt the air stir, the very wind quivering as some of his strength bled into their surroundings. Had she not achieved her Fourth Awakening, she would have been driven to her knees, and her very scales would have begun to fade, stripped of their colour. As it was, she held firm, and the amusement that lurked in his gaze shifted to approval. “Things are changing. Doomwing has always been content to remain aloof. Even in the Sixth Age, when he dwelt in that human kingdom, he gave little thought to the world at large. Provided no one was doing anything truly foolish, he was content to leave them be. Now, however, I am told that he seeks to establish a proper domain of his own.”
“Who told you?” Ruinscale asked. She had heard rumours of that herself, but Doomwing had not been awake for long, and her father had been deep within his mountain working on an important project. It was possible that he had communicated with the other primordial dragons, but he was not one to indulge in gossip. Indeed, there was generally little need for him to bother with the affairs of others since their domain’s natural defences were so potent. Even setting aside her father’s power, the combined powers of his followers that shared his lineage meant that anyone attacking them would be greatly weakened long before they ever had a chance to strike at them.
Instead of an answer, he gazed up at the sky again. Ruinscale followed his gaze, and her eyes widened. A fissure had formed in the sky above them, and it spread like a crack across a frozen lake. For a moment, time itself seemed to pause as the crack elongated and then rippled outward, spiralling into an intricate pattern than her eyes refused to focus on. Space twisted and bent, and the dull rays of the sun spun madly before they stopped entirely. Colour bled out of their surroundings – the whole world reduced to an eerie collage of whites, greys, and blacks – before rushing back, a kaleidoscope of different hues exploding into existence as time flowed once more and space unfolded once again.
But where there had once been empty sky, a dragon now floated overhead, roughly nine tenths the size of her father with scales of purple and blue, an enchanting mix of azures, sapphires, indigos, violets, and magentas. Vivid patterns swirled to life upon those scales only to be replaced a heartbeat later, pinwheels of colour accompanied by vivid bursts of brightness that granted the dragon a kaleidoscopic appearance – which was most fitting indeed, given her identity. Eyes whose colour and pattern changed in counterpoint to those entrancing scales peered down at them, filled with warmth and affection. Graceful wings folded only to unfurl at the very last moment as the dragon descended to land beside them.
“Fractal Reign,” her father murmured. His voice was quiet, but the affection it held was deep and implacable, akin to the rivers that ran far beneath the bleached sands of the desert. Words both spoken and unspoken lay heavily between her father and the new arrival, and Ruinscale was glad that her mother was not there. Long had her mother and father been mates. Yet long ago, long, long ago before circumstances had forced them apart, Fractal Reign had been the one to live at her father’s side.
“Oblivioncaller.” Fractal Reign inclined her head. A lesser dragon might have sought physical contact, but she had sworn an oath to Ruinscale’s mother, and so she maintained a certain distance, not far, but not close either. Ruinscale’s father noted the distance, accepted it, and returned the gesture. And then Fractal Reign’s attention shifted to Ruinscale, and her there was genuine delight in her voice as she spoke. “You have grown considerably stronger since we last met, and your magic has become incredibly stable. Amongst dragons of the Fourth Awakening, I doubt there are many who can best you – save, of course, for primordial dragons like your father and I.”
Ruinscale found herself smiling. Whatever history lay between Fractal Reign and her parents, the primordial dragon had only ever been kind to her, and she had never hesitated to offer useful advice and wise counsel. “Thank you. I have done my best to make use of the help you have provided.”
“A good pupil is every bit as important as a good teacher.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Of all the primordial dragons, it was widely accepted that Doomwing was the most powerful and skilled when it came to magic. However, it was also accepted that Fractal Reign was second in both power and skill. Indeed, there were areas where she actually surpassed Doomwing. What truly set Doomwing apart was the sheer breadth and depth of his knowledge. Fractal Reign was a specialist whereas Doomwing was a true generalist – a generalist who somehow had deeper knowledge and understanding of even the most esoteric fields than those who were supposed to specialise in them. Her father had once remarked that Doomwing possessed talent that verged on madness. When Ruinscale had told Fractal Reign, the older dragon had simply smiled and said that her father’s words were not far from the truth at all.
“You must have heard Doomwing’s message. Even your wards would not have been able to block it,” Ruinscale’s father rumbled.
“I heard it.” Fractal Reign’s eyes shimmered violet, and streaks of indigo traced their way from the edges of her pupil to the corners of her eyes. “To do such a thing… I did not think it possible. Dragons have not wielded magic in that manner in a long time, not since the First Age.”
“Is that so?” Ruinscale’s father paused, and black fire crept along his jaw. “What have you seen?”
“Many things, but you know as well as I do that what I see need not come to pass.” Fractal Reign stared into the distance. “A crown of fire with six points and flames of blue and red.” She chuckled. “But the image was so faint that I cannot be sure if it was a dream, a road unwalked, or a path still to come.”
Ruinscale shivered. Fractal Reign had many gifts, but perhaps the greatest was her ability to glimpse the threads of past, present, and future. What she saw was not guaranteed to pass. Indeed, Fractal Reign had once told her that sometimes she saw things that had already passed – but in other worlds, variants of their own. It hard to accept, but the older dragon had once likened it to a house of mirrors, with each world a variation of a theme, a twisted reflection born from different choices.
It was said that Fractal Reign’s father, Paradox Fang had possessed a similar gift. That legendary dragon had been able to read the flow of cause and consequence in a manner that verged on precognition. Like Sovereign Flame, he had been personally created by the Seven Gods, and he had served as Sovereign Flame’s second until the end. Indeed, he had been the second last of the great dragons of old to fall, and it had been his power that had paved the way for Sovereign Flame to wound that most terrible of foes.
“I take it you will be going to the meeting?” Ruinscale’s father said. “You would not have come here if you intended to stay within your domain.”
“You know me well.” Fractal Reign nodded. “I will be going to the meeting, and I will take some of my followers with me. There are matters I must discuss with Doomwing and the others.” Her lips curled. “A pebble may roll slowly from the top of the mountain, but the landslide it births may crash with great force at the base. I trust you will be attending as well.”
“I have been considering it.” He glanced at Ruinscale. “You know how loath I am to leave my lands. However, meetings of this kind are rare. I would be foolish to forego attendance. Besides, my daughter has done very well in her duties. In truth, she could already rule over my territory. All she needs now is more power and experience, and the meeting will provide both.”
“The meeting will definitely provide both,” Fractal Reign said, and Ruinscale shivered again. There was certainty in her voice, not the kind that came from confidence in Ruinscale alone. Fractal Reign had seen something.
“You are certain?” Ruinscale’s father asked.
“As certain as I can be.” Fractal Reign’s father had been the mightiest of all dragons belonging to the rift dragon lineage, and her mother had been amongst the greatest of the dragons from the dream dragon lineage. In a way, she could almost be considered a distant cousin of both Doomwing and Dreamsong. “Both the tides of fate and the lines of cause and consequence agree.”
Ruinscale’s father chuckled. “How fortunate. Then I shall have to attend, and Ruinscale shall go with me as my second.” He paused, and his silence was heavy with thoughts that had long troubled him. “The world is not always kind to those of my lineage. Perhaps more than any other, we affect our surroundings. Where we go, death and decay too often follow. This desert around me… it was not always so. You know what it was like. After the seas receded, it was a place of life and vitality. There were flowers here with colours like your scales, and the spirits of the wind sang of verdant hills and lush valleys. Now, only bleached sand remains, and the spirits of the wind can no longer even remember the scent of flowers in full bloom.” He clenched one enormous claw. “That is why I have spent so much of my time crafting treasures that can contain that effect. The hatchlings need them too. They can be careless at times, and their friends have not the strength of mine.”
Fractal Reign said nothing, and Ruinscale wondered if she was seeing the past now – the meadows, the flowers, and the rolling, green landscape. Finally, her gaze returned to the present. “He will be at the meeting too. He is strong enough to bare your presence now. He has been strong enough for a long time.”
Her father’s jaw tightened, and Ruinscale thought back to the stories she’d heard of the older brother she’d never met. He took after Fractal Reign, and he had almost died as a hatchling, his fragile life nearly snuffed out by her father’s presence. Her father had never forgiven himself for that, and he had kept his distance ever since.
“He has never disliked you,” Fractal Reign said. She gestured, and several crystal appeared. “I brought these for you. They contain my memories of him, the new ones I’ve made since I gave you the last set. You have punished yourself long enough. You should go.”
“Perhaps.” Her father gave another low rumble. “But what makes you say that? What have you seen?”
“It is not something I have seen.” Fractal Reign spread her wings and took to the air. “It is something that I know.” Once more, the sky split, and a kaleidoscope of twisted space and frozen time rippled outward. When it cleared, Fractal Reign was gone, yet Ruinscale’s father continued to stare at the empty sky. Slowly, the tension eased from his frame, and he turned back to Ruinscale.
“Make your preparations. We will go to the meeting. It is time we renewed old alliances and forged new ones. And… perhaps it is time I saw your brother again. It has been too long since I saw him with my own eyes.”
Fractal Reign settled back into her lair, and a faint frown crossed her features. Even now, after all these years, it still sometimes felt odd to call it that. It had been her father’s lair, a marvel wrought with his magic – and Paradox Fang had been the most skilled of all the ancient dragons in the mystic arts. Sovereign Flame had dwelt in the grandest of mountains, but there had been no mountain for her father, no cave or castle. Instead, he had used his power to tear great chunks of rock from the ground. He had crafted islands out of them and used his magic to set them in the sky. Even his titanic reserves would have been hard-pressed to hold them there for long, so he had bent the very currents of magic in the sea and sky to sustain more permanent magics. To defend his realm, he had combined both secrecy and security. The barrier he had placed around his domain could weather all but the very mightiest of blows, but what made it truly remarkable was the way it warped space and time to veil his domain from the outside world. Even Doomwing, for all his skill and power, had never managed to find his way there without an invitation.
The last time Doomwing had visited, he had grumbled about how impossible it all was. Yet that was the nature of a paradox dragon – the Fourth Awakening of the rift dragon lineage – the power to bend the rules that governed reality until the impossible became possible.
At the heart of the domain she had inherited stood the project her father had bequeathed to her, the one he had never been able to start. There had been no time for them to speak of it. Instead, he had left her with plans and ideas, some of which were scarcely better than mad ravings. She had spent much of the Second Age deciphering them and deciding what was and was not plausible. In the end, however, she had come to the same conclusion he had. The project was to be hers alone because, for all his power, it was not something he could ever have accomplished himself. Only someone of her lineage could see it through to completion.
She glanced at her right wing to the scar that still remained. She could easily have removed it, but she had chosen to leave it there as a reminder. Her father had given it to her himself on the day he’d died alongside the gods and so many of their fellow dragons. He had looked at her with those eyes that could read the flow of cause and consequence – a predictive power so immense it bordered on precognition – and then he had struck, ensuring that she would not be able to follow him.
She had begged him to heal her, but he had refused. Instead, he had spoken of what her mother had glimpsed in the currents of the Deep Dreaming. Of the dozen children he had, only two could be saved. Her mother had seen that, and she had seen the two that had to live. Only Fractal Reign and her eldest brother could be saved, and her brother had already left. He had not gone to another part of their world. Instead, he had fled their world with clutches of eggs given by those willing to take a chance. He had gone as far as his and their father’s power could throw him, and he had orders of his own to follow.
But Fractal Reign was to remain. She had to complete the great work her father had imagined, the same master work her mother had dreamed of. At the time, Fractal Reign had wondered why her mother had not come to explain her vision in greater detail. Few were as adept in reading the chaotic ebb and flow of the dreaming lands. Only later did Mother Tree tell her the truth. Her mother, so very fond of delving into the Deep Dreaming, had been driven insane by the shockwaves of the Broken God’s birth. It had taken all of her remaining strength to convey her vision to Fractal Reign’s father, and then she had died, screaming about the abomination that dared to mimic the gods.
The reason that her father had entrusted this project to her was simple. Of all the children born between dragons belonging to the same lineages as her mother and father, only she combined the powers of both. There had been no name for her lineage, for she had been the first. And until the birth of her son, she had seen little reason to come up with a name. Why bother when she was the only one? But then her son had been born, and a name had come to mind, a name for the dragon she had become after her Fourth Awakening.
Kaleidoscope dragon.
Chance and probability, fate and destiny, cause and consequence – the fusion of her father’s ability to predict things with her mother’s ability to read the currents of the dreaming lands. The result was an ability akin to peering through a kaleidoscope. It was possible for her to glimpse the past, the present, and the future – and not simply of her world, but other worlds, alternate worlds. Of course, her gift was not without limitations.
The past was easier to glimpse, for it had already occurred. Yet even then, her vision could only see so far. For example, no matter how hard she tried, the exact origins of the Broken God were hidden from her. There were also times when she glimpsed other pasts, alternate histories belonging to worlds besides her own. Some made her feel fortunate whilst others left her filled with longing.
The present was easier, yet it was always in motion, and it was so very easy to lose herself in the shadows cast by possible futures, to be caught staring at what could be instead of what was. Yet to linger too long on mere possibilities was the path to madness.
The future was the hardest to see. Many believed that it could be predicted, if only enough was known. She had learned very early on how foolish that belief was. Merely peering into the future could change it, and there were forces out there that could she could not perceive – forces that could nevertheless alter the future. The Exiled Star had been one such enemy. He had been a hole in her foresight, a force and power she had been unable to see. Yet she had glimpsed the ruin he would wreak and the death he would sow.
Fractal Reign was no master of destiny, no helmsman who could steer fate. In the end, all she could do was peer into a sea of countless possibilities and try to tease out which currents fate would follow.
Her power also manifested in another way. When she looked at someone with her power, she saw them – and not simply as they were. She saw the shadows of who they had been… and the shadows of who they might become. When she had begged her father to let her follow him, he had asked her to look at him, to see the fate that awaited him.
A long trail of shadows stretched out behind him, a testament to the long years of his life. But before him, there were no shadows, not even a hint. She had known then what despair was. In all the countless futures there were, in all the possible ways the battle ahead could go, there were none in which he lived. Her father’s death was not a possibility. It was a certainty in every world, in every past, in every future.
The last time that Fractal Reign had laid eyes upon Doomwing, she had seen the long shadows stretching out behind him, the remnants of Ages. And yet, ahead of him, dim, so dim she could barely see it, there had been a spark, an ember that she had seen only once before.
When her father had gathered his followers, Sovereign Flame had arrived. Like her father, there had been no shadows ahead of him, no fate save death in the battle that lay before him. And yet there had been a spark, an ember of something more waiting just before his death. And somehow, he had managed to wound the Broken God, a feat no dragon should have been capable of.
Once again, she thought of the vision she’d glimpsed of the crown of red and blue flames. She’d seen it elsewhere, in a world where Doomwing had gone mad, a parting gift sent by that world’s version of her. That Doomwing had torn his world asunder, had carved out its heart and feasted on it to become something greater than even the mightiest of their ancestors. The Doomwing she knew would rather die than despoil the world his parents and childhood friend had died defending, that so many he had cherished over the years had fallen protecting. The crown she had seen then had been a bitter thing, forged of blood and tears and madness. The crown she’d glimpsed in her vision had been no such thing. It had been a crown of god-metal and living wood, a crown that bound the tides and the dead, a crown that outshone the stars and gave life to old dreams. It was the crown of someone who loved the world and was loved by it in turn, the crown of a fool too stubborn to give up when so many others would have surrendered. It was the crown of a king she would be glad to follow.
And yet… and yet the vision – that crown – has slipped through her claws, a single current amidst an ocean of possibilities. So many times had Doomwing been able to thread the needle. She wanted to believe that he could do it once again.
Every instinct she had told her that the days ahead would be important. Like a tsunami, fate and destiny were moving, difficult to discern in deep waters, yet their impact would be undeniable in the shallow waters ahead. She needed to be at the meeting. It was important enough that she would pause the work that had occupied almost all of her life.
Her project was to be a beacon and a shield, a door and a key.
A beacon to the brother who’d left, so he might one day find his way home. A shield to guard their world from those beyond it who would do them harm. A door, in case her brother had found a safe place for them, and a key to unlock the way forward, whatever that might be. It was a kaleidoscope in its own right, and when it was complete, she needed only to turn it until the right view became visible.
“Mother.”
She turned. Her son, Enigma Flare, was there. He was silhouetted in the light of her project, the radiance cast by the countless arcane symbols covering the titanic construct of exotic materials gleaming upon his scales. Only those of her lineage could work upon it, which meant that only she and her son could see to its completion. For that reason, she seldom left her domain, and she left much of its rule up to her trusted subordinates.
“How was father?” he asked. He might share her appearance in many ways, but his voice was a gift from his father, soft and gentle, yet filled with strength.
“He is well.” She let her words linger in the air before continuing. “He will be going to the meeting. You will be able to meet with him.”
His eyes widened. “Is that so? I had seen it, but still… I am glad.” He frowned faintly. “Yet… I have seen other things too.”
“What did you see?”
“A light once gone might return although when I cannot say, and the paths that lead safely here are few and far between.”
Fractal Reign’s brows furrowed. She was almost certain she knew whom he spoke of, and she was not sure how to feel about it. Dawnscale had been the one to save Enigma Flare’s life when Oblivioncaller’s power had almost killed him. However, her… desertion… even if Fractal Reign had known it was possible… to have it happen had still been a bitter pill to swallow. Yet she had still let her go because of all the fates she’d seen, leaving had been her old friend’s best chance to survive. And as long as she was alive, there was still hope for her. Whether it was happiness here or elsewhere, Fractal Reign would not begrudge Dawnscale that, not after she had saved Enigma Flare’s life.
“Is that so? Then we must remain cautious. In the meantime, prepare.” She bared her teeth. “Perhaps you can find a mate at the meeting.” She chortled. “You know, neither you nor your half-siblings have found mates. Your father has long hoped for grandchildren to spoil. He grows jealous of Stormbringer who has already had several.”
Her son scowled. “Mother, please. Speak no more of such things.”
Comments 1