Cassandra Pendragon
The sky was covered in black, the earth around me had been painted crimson and on the horizon the first, silver lightning strikes broke through the suffocating magic my prey was still desperately trying to cast. My time as a subservient fox was going to end before it had even properly begun. Oh well, at least it had been fun while it had lasted.
A disgusted snarl spread across my face as I swallowed the last drops of blood and intestines that still clung to my gums, but the expected vile taste didn't come. Truth be told the crushed, meaty bite slid down my throat like a finely aged wine. Then I spread my wings as far as I could, filled my lungs to the brink, raised my head to the sky and roared. My voice was loud and fair, devoid of desire or ambition, but filled with a burning anger that had become as much a part of me as my love for Ahri. The maltreated bamboo around the pond groaned one last time, before it was torn from the ground, the remaining, pitiful walls of the spring crumbled and the world seemed to hold its breath. My aura expanded in the thundering wake of my call and for a single, unending heartbeat the valley was swallowed by a storm of silver and blue.
The puny spell in the sky was the first to go. Like a dying, decrepit beast it shuddered and died without ever leaving a mark. The mountains shook, the towering, looming clouds trembled and were torn away as if the hand of a giant had reached through the heavens to swipe them away, but instead of the burning sun a soft, silver light filled the entire sky. The moon had risen during the day and under its vigilant gaze neither Lin, nor Mei would find their end, no matter what surprises those three still had up their sleeves. Immortal Lands, indeed. It was time to remind the mighty mages of that realm how far they still had to go.
My scales shimmered with their own, inexorable light, my eyes were ablaze like stars come to life and my wings swelled like an avalanche in the mountains when reality bowed its head. Magic in all its subtle shapes swirled around me like the lights of a distant galaxy when every speck of power in the valley heeded my call. My vision shattered and a silvery darkness claimed my world, for there was nothing more for me to see. I was already everywhere. A myriad of sensations assaulted me, as if I had been torn apart into a million pieces, but the churning maelstrom of transcendent might within me allowed me to see, to understand what would have driven any mortal creature insane.
The beasts in the forest cowered, their heads bowed, their bodies rigid. Herbs and trees shot up into the sky and immediately began to bloom, their blossoms tilted in my direction in a silent, subservient salute. The mountains trembled, the river surged and the air began to move, the very elements eager to fulfil my every wish, while the humans… the humans drowned in despair. Children, adolescents, adults… disciples and masters, they had become lost in an immortal world, so alien, so foreign, that even the few, fractured moments had been enough to erode their will. In courtyards and caves, on chairs and beds they laid, their eyes blank, their mouths agape, their minds tethering on the brink between the chaos of eternity and the structure of life. I didn't care for them, though, and my thoughts quickly moved on to the enticing taste of fear and despair close by.
To punish or to protect… it wasn't a choice. It was a question of what would come first. Mei and Lin… if it hadn't been for their blood on the ground, the three mindless mutts might have survived. My fangs glowed, cruel and uncaring, while voices on the brink of madness reverberated through my thoughts.
"That's no spirit," one shrilled.
"Run! Back to the hut! If the women are still alive…," my focus split. Half my attention lingered in the ravaged bamboo grove like a spectre of wrath while the other half sped away on invisible wings of power. Just outside the devastation my first roar had brought a few, bare shoots had survived and in their meagre shelter a scene of despair unfolded.
Lin and Mei were still unconscious, their unmoving bodies thoughtlessly cast aside in the shadow of a plain hut. An ethereal, beautiful eastern dragoness, her scales wrought of the finest rubies and sapphires, had wrapped her sinewy, serpentine coils around them. In a desperate attempt to protect them, she had turned her flickering, almost translucent body into a living shield. A shield that was devoured by a pack of nightmares.
The black, misty figures appeared just as otherworldly as the beautiful dragoness at their feet, but their fangs and claws were all too real. Deformed wolves stood side by side with ghostly, half rotten bears while they tore into the quivering body before them, claws and fangs painted red as rivulets of blood gushed from their maws. A pitiful, choked mewl filled the air, every time they tore another chunk of flesh from her crystalline bones, but she couldn't even defend herself. A two headed dragon, its body nothing, but undulating darkness, sat at her neck, the massive jaws of one of its heads closed around her throat. Whenever she flinched or even tried to hiss in pain its jaws tightened like a diabolical vice. The second head was ravaging her chest, inexorably digging towards her heart. Its poisonous salvia painted the edges of the deadly wound a disgusting yellow and with every cruel, torturous bite, I saw the life of its prey wane away.
At the same time a chaotic flurry of activity erupted around me. The bisected corpse of my victim trembled and shrivelled up into a dried up husk as a dark, sickly smoke wafted from its mouth and the sad remains of its cracked open chest. Faster than the normal eye could follow the quivering mass came together to form the twitching outline of a gargantuan hydra with twelve burning, evil eyes. Gradually a monster manifested directly in front of me, a monster of nightmares made real, taller than a hill and stronger than a glacier.
The two remaining humans ran, head over heels, towards the macabre, cannibalistic feast and in their panic they lost control. Something dark, something alien stirred beyond their presence and from one moment to the next the shadows of claws and fangs and wings broke through their skin like vapour. A familiar, disgusted sneer spread across my face when their scent hit me. I had faced those creatures before. I had burned their whole world with nothing, but a wish and the sad, forlorn remains of the realms of nightmares wouldn't see me flinch.
"Who do you think you are," I whispered, my voice booming from the mouths of every sentient being in the valley. "Have you already forgotten? Or is it this face? Look to the sky and remember for I am the light. I am power."
Like a second sun of crystallised silver I rose. I shed my scales and they turned into a rain of cherry petals. I lost my fangs and they became the gleaming, hardened tip of my spear. My claws vanished and my body shrank until I stood in the air, naked and beautiful, filled to the brim with my own, eternal light. My voice became softer, darker, stronger, like an irresistible drug, and when I had fully returned to my kitsune skin I spoke over the restless thrum of my wings, over the sound of eternity torn asunder:
"Your world burned. Return to the pyre. You are not welcome here." In terrified silence the valley watched as I raised Aiglos glowing tip to the full moon overhead. A single spark travelled languidly into the silver lit sky. "Begone." My heart beat once and the mother of all thunder strikes shook the mountains. My heart beat twice and the light seemed to freeze, shrouding the world in darkness. My heart beat thrice and a blinding surge of power erupted from the heavens.
In its wake absolute silence followed and as if an illusion had been dispelled the uncaring sun smiled down on seven serene, snow white summits again. I didn't linger to find out how long it'd take the humans to shake off their fear. Instead I dove, my tails pressed against my body. In passing I made sure the two surviving assailants were going to suffer from much more than just magical backlash and simply smashed their heads into the ground. Once or twice. Then I broke through the already devastated bamboo grove, my lips pressed into a thin line.
As soon as I slowed down the smell of blood became suffocating and the heart wrenching, weak cries of a tortured creature on death's door sent icy shivers down my spine. Up close the dragoness looked even worse. She was still cowering above the two girls, a sea of her own, rich blood slowly soaking through their robes. Her neck had been mauled and pieces of muscle had been ripped from her haunches down to the glowing bones, but the problem was her chest.
A jagged, ugly hole, at least as wide as my tails were long, had been mercilessly torn into her rib cage. The glow from her heart, she was a spirit dragon and their hearts served the same purpose as Viyara's carbuncle, was already visible through a thin membrane of muscle, sinew and pulverised bones. Spurts of blood came down like rain from the cuts in the main arteries and the constant, sickly wheeze, accompanied by foaming bubbles deep within the wound, made me suspect her lungs had been injured as well. Not hours, nor days. Minutes. Spirit dragon or not, she had minutes left to live.
I was determined to help, but when I stared into her huge, glowing eyes, glazed over with pain and exhaustion, I froze. How could a spiritual creature even be here? They shouldn't… she was connected to Lin! I could see the trail of energy between their souls clearly now. No wonder the human had shone like a dragon when I had looked at her. Somehow she had formed the same kind of symbiotic relationship with a spirit dragon Anna had formed with a Nightmare.
I couldn't even begin to imagine how, but at the moment it was nothing, but an advantage. She was a creature of pure energy, anchored to this realm through Lin. Her body wasn't as much flesh and blood as it was a wish come true, almost like my own, which meant my intuitive form of healing would work much better on her than it could on almost anyone else. Provided the proud creature would allow me near the two humans she was protecting and accept my help.
I clenched my jaws and quickly made my way across the blood drenched ground while my naked feet sank with every step ever so slightly into the soaked, disgustingly warm earth. Once close to them, I raised my hands reassuringly: "I know you saw what happened. I can help you. All you have to do is not die on me in the next minute. And allow me to touch you. Trust me for a single minute and I'll have the chance to tell you who I am for years to come. What do you say?" The irony of a tiny kitsune condescendingly talking down on a dragoness the length of two school buses and then some wasn't lost on me, but there really was no point in pretending we were the same. She wasn't blind. One of the very few things she still had going for herself. I shuddered again when my gaze travelled over her mutilated, broken body.
For a drawn out, cruel moment she caught my eye. "Help me," was all I heard before her strength finally left her and she collapsed.
"Bollocks," I muttered while the world around me turned grey. I didn't know how much she weighed, but I was sure she'd crush the two girls underneath, if she fell on them. With a thought I was at her side and gently enveloped her in an embrace of silvery light. Great. Now, what? Taking her back to the pond underneath Greta would have been my favourite choice, but she'd never survive the journey. Which left me with my usual cocktail of power, luck and just a pinch of madness.
With a silent prayer I begged Fortuna, or anyone else willing to listen, for one more favour and carefully extended my transformed wing towards her chest wound. Spirit dragons were creatures of pure magic, just like the nightmares had been monsters of corrupted essence. They couldn't exist in a realm without abundant life force. The Immortal Lands were rich in mana, but, judging from her connection to Lin, she needed a human or any form of high level cultivator to convert it into something she could use. Which meant I had two safeguards to work with.
One, my own magic would be channeled through my crimson wing. By now I had come to understand that it acted like a filter. It cancelled most of my magic and allowed only the aspects in tune with the creature I was connected to to pass through. Two, I'd be able to use Lin as a secondary barrier and hit two birds with one stone. The girls were looking terrifyingly pale and if I could already patch one up, it'd make my life that much easier in the future. I could only try. Time resumed.
It would have looked entirely surreal for any passerby who might have chanced upon us, but there was no one conscious close by. Even the tiny rodents had fled when I had revealed my aura. A long, beautiful snake, her head adorned with golden antlers, hovered in the air, surrounded by twitching torrents of silver and blue. From her ghastly wounds her blood flowed in thick, steaming rivers. Like a waterfall it drenched the two unmoving bodies underneath her and spread around them in a continuous, deadly deluge. Motes of power rose from the surface of the precious lake and danced around my wings only to vanish into the sunlight as her power gradually returned to the heavens. The lonely cry of an eagle sounded across the clear, blue sky as the valley slowly regained its balance.
A resolute grunt escaped me. If even beasts and mortals could overcome their fear, I wouldn't hesitate anymore. A crimson tongue of light shot from the glowing mass of power, scales and blood towards the unconscious, azure haired woman. Once upon a time I had been forced to ask for permission, to seek entry, but I wasn't as limited anymore. My wing caressed her forehead and for the fraction of a second the smell of ozone drowned out even the overwhelming taste of blood, a sharp, whistling sound, like the crack of a silken whip, tore through the air and Lin was pulled upright by a torrent of strength.
Just above the rigid lines of Mei's unmoving limbs she hovered, her eyes open, but still empty, except for a growing spark of silver in their very depths. A strained, haggard breath escaped me, Lin's gaze lit up like the moon and turned into a beacon of light that was clearly visible even against the bright, uncaring sun. The very moment my power surged through her, the wounds of the dragoness began to steam. Thick, dark swaths moved under her hide and erupted through her scales and in their wake new, untouched flesh began to form. To my surprise a single plume came directly from her heart, even though her fiendish assailant hadn't gotten that far.
Acidic sulphur and sweet rot assaulted my nose, but as soon as the cursed smoke came into contact with the crackling energies I had unleashed it vanished like a nightmare on the morrow. A shudder ran from the tip of her tail to her snout, the gaping hole in her chest filled up with liquid light and her eyes opened of their own accord, ablaze with the very same fire that still smouldered in Lin's gaze. With a sound like bursting gems scales grew over the newly formed skin and her wounds disappeared, as if wiped away by an invisible cloth. A final surge of power, one last pulse of energy and Lin fell to the ground, followed by the squishy, smacking sound of the dragoness' coils hitting the soaked earth around the two girls. All three of them were still breathing.