Arc 2: "Panic in the Unfathomable."
Chapter 17: Savage Dragon
Iskander
The three Simulets landed in our palms with a dull, cold clink. Renhart's scarred knuckles brushed mine for a fraction of a second—rough, calloused, radiating the weary impatience of a man forced to shepherd lambs into a wolf's den.
Mine was identical to the one Sevren had given me after clawing my way out of the Relictombs' belly. Delilah snatched hers like a sacred relic, eyes wide with reverence. Yorick accepted his with the solemnity of receiving a death warrant, his slender fingers tracing the edge.
We stood in the cavernous, utilitarian belly of the Ascenders' Association, the air thick with ozone, dust, and the low thrum of distant teleportations.
Ahead, the Ascension Chamber hummed—a circular platform of dark, rune-embedded stone, radiating a low-level spatial distortion that made the hair on my arms prickle.
Renhart, our reluctant Shield, shifted his massive mace on his shoulder. The incongruity still struck me: a man built like a siege engine, wielding an instrument of blunt-force annihilation, designated as the protector.
Delilah hefted her own weapon—a gleaming lance with a comically oversized, leaf-shaped tip that looked like it belonged on a parade ground, not in a death-trap dimension.
Yorick clutched his black halberd, the shaft taller than his slight frame, the blade wickedly sharp but seeming fragile in the oppressive atmosphere. The book I'd devoured in the Denoir library whispered in my mind.
Ascenders: versatile, adaptive, lethal. Classified like the rest of the Alacryan mages nonetheless: Striker, Caster, Shield, Sentry, Instiller… boxes for the unpredictable.
Where did I fit? The aether coiled in my core, a sun of pale gold potential, defied all their neat categories. Creation. A word too vast, too terrifying for their ledgers.
"Do Simulets really bring everyone in the same Zone?" Delilah chirped, her voice slicing through the chamber's mechanical drone. She clutched her Simulet to her chest like a child hugging a favorite toy.
"Yes, sister," Yorick murmured, his voice soft but precise. "It's an item developed by the High Sovereign himself."
"Wow!" Delilah's face lit up, radiant, convinced. "This is amazing! A true piece of Vritra's genius! Proof of their mercy and foresight!" Her words, so earnest, so full of blind faith, slammed into me like a physical blow.
Agrona. His name was the taste of ashes in my mouth, the phantom scream of dragon bones being reshaped, the cold, calculating gaze of the monster who had murdered Sylvia and stitched her essence into this stolen flesh. He wasn't merciful. He wasn't kind.
He was the architect of suffering, the puppeteer pulling the strings of this entire damned continent, Delilah included. He was the God of Misfortune personified, weaving chains of devotion from lies somehow worse than even King Grey.
A wave of nausea, cold and sharp, washed over me. My knuckles whitened around the Simulet, the metal biting into my palm. And here stood Delilah, praising his genius, her eyes shining with the pure, untainted adoration of the utterly deceived.
"Child, you seem distressed." Sylvia's voice, a warm, anchoring presence in the storm of my mind, brushed against the rising tide of rage. "She is just brainwashed, like all the people in Alacrya. Drowned in the lie since birth. It is not her fault. It is his."
I know. The thought was a raw scrape against my consciousness. I know perfectly. The fury didn't vanish, but it condensed, hardening into a cold, dense weight in my chest. It wasn't hatred for Delilah. It was a profound, aching sorrow for the innocence poisoned, the potential shackled. It was fury for her, not at her. She loved her gods because she knew nothing else.
How could she? Agrrua's shadow was the only sun she'd ever seen. I couldn't blame the flower for growing towards the false light. But the source of that light? That, I could hate. That, I would break.
I forced my fingers to relax, a conscious unclenching. My shoulders lifted in a shrug that felt like moving mountains. Focus. Beneath my shoulder blades, the core of Creation stirred, a contained supernova responding to the turmoil within. The pale gold aether hummed, a counterpoint to the chamber's mechanical thrum, waiting, eager, alive.
"Let's get going," Renhart grunted, the sound like gravel crunching underfoot. He stepped onto the humming platform, his bulk making the faint light beneath the runes flicker. "The sooner we start, the sooner we end, and I get paid."
"Sure thing!" Delilah exclaimed, her momentary piety forgotten in the thrill of imminent adventure. She practically bounced onto the platform beside Renhart, her oversized lance tip wobbling precariously.
"Delilah... wait." Yorick's voice was a sigh of perpetual caution. He followed, his movements precise, his yellow eyes scanning the platform, the runes, Renhart, me—calculating risks, cataloging unknowns.
His halberd looked less like a weapon and more like a staff he was leaning on for support against an overwhelming world.
I was the last. My boot touched the cool stone. The ambient mana prickled against my skin, a faint buzz compared to the deep, resonant power of the aether within me. The spatial distortion intensified, a subtle pressure against my eardrums, a faint shimmer in the air.
"Child," Sylvia's voice held a new edge, a mother's sharp worry cutting through my grim resolve. "We already know the Relictombs adjust to the strength of those who enter. Your Asuran body alone... it is leagues beyond these three. And your aether core..."
She didn't need to finish. The pale gold fire within me was a beacon, a wellspring of power Agyra himself coveted. The Relictombs wouldn't just adjust; they might erupt. "Considering your aether core... the danger to them could be exponential."
My presence was a loaded gun pointed at them. Seris's warnings about being a variable, a danger, echoed grimly.
I closed my eyes for a split second, not in prayer, but in fierce, internal command. The chaotic swirl of anger, sorrow, and guilt coalesced, hammered into a single, unbreakable point by the anvil of Sylvia's concern.
Don't worry, Sylvia. The thought wasn't words, but a vow etched in the core of my being, resonating with the pale gold light within. It was a promise to her, to myself, to the oblivious trio standing beside me on the precipice.
The runes on the platform flared, blindingly bright. The spatial hum rose to a deafening whine. The world dissolved into pure, chaotic light and a sickening lurch that gripped my stomach.
No one will die under my watch. Aetherman won't let it.
The thought wasn't hope. It was law. It was the bedrock upon which I stood as the light consumed us.
No. One.
Fighting Misfortune meant also fighting the concept of failure itself. Failing? Not in my dictionary.
———————————————————
The cold, mineral-scented air of the Relictombs' artificial mountain bit at my lungs, a stark contrast to the stale ozone of the Ascension Chamber.
Below us, darkness yawned, an abyss swallowing the base of the impossible peak we climbed. Above, the false sky shimmered with countless floating lapillus—fist-sized stones glowing with a soft, internal radiance like captured starlight, casting long, dancing shadows on the narrow, spiraling stone walkway.
It was eerily beautiful, a desolate monument carved by hands older than nations.
"So these are the Relictombs..." Delilah breathed, her voice hushed with genuine awe, her green eyes wide as she craned her neck to take in the impossible scale.
A radiant smile split her face, pure, unadulterated wonder momentarily erasing her usual boisterousness.
"Oh Vritra, this is amazing! Like something from the oldest hymns!"
Renhart, already several paces ahead, his silhouette stark against the backdrop of glowing stones and fathomless dark, didn't turn. His voice was a low growl that echoed unnervingly in the vast silence.
"This is not a fucking tourist attraction. Eyes forward, mouths shut. Follow me." He didn't break stride, his heavy boots scraping on the ancient stone, the massive head of his mace a dark promise on his shoulder.
Yorick, walking just behind me looked around his gaze analytical, sweeping the jagged rock faces and the floating lights.
"It reminds me of descriptions of the Basilisk Fang Mountains," he murmured, his voice soft but precise in the stillness. "Or at least what I've read about them. Similar imposing verticality, the sense of crushing isolation... only without the lapillus. And considerably colder, I'd imagine."
"Can we dub this the Mountain Zone then?" I suggested aloud, the sound of my own voice feeling too loud in the immense quiet.
Naming things, imposing order on chaos—it felt like a tiny act of defiance against the Relictombs' alien indifference, against Misfortune's impassivity.
Delilah instantly whirled, her lance wobbling precariously. "No!" she declared, her fervor returning full force. "It has to be the Fang Zone! In honour of the Vritras' strength and dominion! Their fangs pierce all obstacles!"
Her eyes shone with absolute conviction. Then a different kind of excitement lit her face.
"Wait... I never read about a place like this in any Association primer or explorer's log! Yorick, does that mean...?"
Yorick's brow furrowed deeply behind his lenses. He scanned the impossible geology, the floating lights, the sheer, unnatural newness of it all.
"Neither have I," he admitted, his voice tinged with a scholar's cautious disbelief. "The documented zones nothing matches this configuration. The lapillus phenomenon is entirely unrecorded. I... I believe we may have stumbled into an unexplored Zone."
The gravity in his quiet pronouncement hung heavy in the thin air. An unexplored Relictombs zone.
"Child," Sylvia's voice cut through my rising apprehension, sharp as a honed blade. "The Relictombs don't 'stumble'. They react to the strength and nature of those who enter. This... this desolation, this impossible height... it feels tailored. Tailored to you. To the storm of aether you carry within."
"That core of yours is a beacon they can't ignore. This place wants you. Be vigilant. Every shadow, every stone."
Her warning sent a fresh chill down my spine, colder than the mountain air. I looked up, past the floating lapillus, towards the indistinct heights shrouded in an unnatural, swirling orange mist.
It wasn't cloud or smoke, but something else—a fusion of heated vapour and spatial distortion, glowing faintly like banked embers, obscuring the peak and lending the entire scene an oppressive, hellish tinge.
"Good Vritra! Stop gawping at the damn scenery!" Renhart's shout shattered the tense silence like a dropped plate. He'd stopped twenty paces ahead, near a sharp bend in the path, his broad back rigid with impatience. "Move! Or I leave your corpses for the crags!"
"Aye, aye, Captain Grumpy!" I called back, forcing a lightness I didn't feel into my voice. I quickened my pace, falling into step slightly to Renhart's right, deliberately positioning myself as a potential buffer.
Delilah, oblivious or choosing defiance, bounced over to his left, whistling a jaunty, off-key tune that sounded grotesquely out of place. Her lance tip scraped against the rock wall with a nerve-jarring screech.
Yorick trailed just behind us, his head down, not looking at the view, but seemingly listening to it. His knuckles were white on the shaft of his halberd.
"I don't feel anything ne—" he began, his voice hesitant, then froze mid-sentence. His head snapped up, his yellow eyes wide, scanning the craggy slopes above us to the left. His entire body went rigid, radiating focused tension. "No... wait. There is something."
The shift was instantaneous. Renhart stopped dead, his hand tightening on his mace's haft, muscles coiling like springs beneath his stained shirt. The air itself seemed to thicken.
"What is it?" His voice was a low rumble, stripped of all impatience, pure predatory focus.
Yorick's gaze darted, pinpointing a spot high up on the steep slope, shrouded partially by rock formations and the eerie orange mist. His brow furrowed in intense concentration.
"A Presence. Faint... diffuse. It's moving. Towards us." He swallowed, a dry click in the sudden silence.
"It's difficult... it doesn't have much mana signature. Almost like... like static. Background noise given form. But it's coming."
His Sentry rune—how did it work? Was it pure mana sense honed to an impossible edge? Some form of spatial awareness? The curiosity was sharp, academic, momentarily overriding fear. But only momentarily.
Renhart didn't question. He shifted his stance, planting his feet firmly on the narrow path, bringing his mace down from his shoulder to rest its massive head lightly on the stone before him. The casual threat in the posture was unmistakable.
"Get ready to fight," he stated flatly, his gaze locked on the slope Yorick indicated. "If you're here, breathing, it means you passed your Ascender's exam. Time to prove the Association didn't waste the paper."
"Ready for everything, Shield Byron!" Delilah chirped, her voice suddenly tight with adrenaline, not fear. She brought her lance down into a ready position, the oversized tip gleaming dully in the lapillus light.
Her earlier reverence was gone, replaced by a fierce, eager determination. Her faith in the Vritra, it seemed, translated readily into faith in her own ability to meet their challenges.
Did escaping a dark room deep within the bowels of this nightmare dimension count as an exam? I thought grimly. Probably. Survival tends to be the ultimate test. My own focus narrowed, tunneling down to the spot Yorick had indicated. My senses, both mundane and aetheric, strained. Nothing.
To my aether vision—the world rendered in pale gold sparks and swirling currents—it was equally calm. The ambient aether flowed naturally, undisturbed. Whatever Yorick sensed was still too distant, too subtle, or perhaps operating on a frequency my senses couldn't readily parse. The lack of a signal was its own kind of alarm.
"Focus, Child," Sylvia urged, her voice taut.
Then it happened. Not a sound first, but a feeling. A subtle vibration through the soles of my boots, a shift in the pressure against my eardrums. A fraction of a second later, the air cracked.
CRASH!
The sound was immense, a thunderclap contained within the mountain's embrace. The stone pathway beneath us lurched violently. I staggered, instinctively throwing out a hand to brace against the rock wall, feeling the ancient stone tremble. Dust and debris rained down from above, momentarily obscuring vision.
A shockwave, visible as a ripple in the swirling orange mist, radiated outwards from a point a dozen meters further up the path, around the bend Renhart had been approaching.
Before the dust could settle, I felt it. Aether. A surge, potent and focused, erupting from the impact point. But not the familiar, vibrant pale gold I wielded. This was purple.
Deep, bruised, violent. Spatium aether. Spatial manipulation. Raw force channeled through the fabric of reality itself. And it was laced with intent. Cold. Purposeful. Utterly devoid of life.
"DELILAH! CAREFUL!" The warning ripped from my throat, raw and instinctive.
"GIRL! BY THE VRITRA!" Renhart roared, pure battle fury overriding his usual cynicism. His reaction was breathtakingly fast, a testament to whatever horrors he'd survived to earn that scar.
His massive frame blurred as he pivoted, throwing himself bodily between the billowing dust cloud and Delilah. His mace came up in a brutal, sweeping arc, not to strike, but to cover.
CLANG-SHRIEEEEK!
The sound was deafening, metal shrieking against metal with enough force to send sparks cascading like macabre fireworks in the dim light. A colossal blade, easily six feet of darkened steel etched with faint, sinister purple runes, had materialized from the dust, aimed precisely where Delilah had been standing.
Renhart's mace intercepted it just below the crossguard, the impact driving him back a step, his boots grinding on the stone. The force radiating from the clash was palpable, a wave of pressure that made Yorick gasp and Delilah stumble back, her eyes wide with shock this time, not wonder.
The dust swirled, partially clearing. The figure stood revealed.
Humanoid, yes. Taller than Renhart, broad-shouldered, clad in a dusty chainmail hauberk over worn, dark leather. A symbol—a stylized crown standing over a dragon—was embossed on the leather tunic beneath the chainmail.
His right arm was encased in segmented silver plate, intricate but functional, ending in a heavy gauntlet gripping the massive greatsword currently locked against Renhart's mace. His left arm was bare chainmail. Thick, beige leather boots, scarred and ancient-looking, anchored him to the stone.
And his head… covered by a helmet unlike any I'd seen. High-crested, made of overlapping plates resembling… dragon scales. Polished silver scales that gleamed dully in the lapillus light. The visor was down, featureless darkness staring out.
But it was the aura that froze my blood. Cold, dead, yet thrumming with that violent purple Spatium aether. No life. No breath. Just purpose. A puppet. A golem woven from spatial force and given form.
Yorick's 'static' made terrible sense.
Rage, cold and sharp, surged through me. This thing had tried to bisect Delilah. It radiated the aether Agrona coveted, the power he'd murdered for. It was an abomination in this sacred, terrifying place.
Creation surged within me, responding to my fury and resolve. Pale gold aether, vibrant and alive, erupted from my core, flowing down my arm. It coalesced, solidified, not into a weapon, but into two compact, fiercely spinning rings of pure force around my right fist.
Renhart strained, muscles corded in his neck, holding the colossal greatsword at bay. It was a stalemate of brute force against spatial might. He'd created the opening. I didn't hesitate.
I moved. One stride, two—closing the distance in a heartbeat.
My right fist, wreathed in the spinning golden rings, drove forward like a piston, aimed not at the body, but at the high-crested, scale-plated helmet. A blow meant to decapitate the command center, to shatter the vessel holding the spatial poison.
CRACK-THOOM!
The impact was a localized detonation of kinetic and aetheric force. The spinning rings flared blindingly bright upon contact, discharging their contained energy in a concussive blast.
The scale-plated helmet exploded off the figure's shoulders, shattering into a dozen jagged silver fragments that spun away into the abyss like morbid shrapnel.
The force of the blow rocked the figure back a step, breaking its lock with Renhart's mace. Renhart staggered slightly, regaining his footing, his eyes wide with shock at the raw power displayed.
And then Sylvia gasped. A raw, choked sound of pure, existential horror that echoed audibly in the sudden silence following the blast.
"Impossible..." she whispered, her spectral form flickering violently beside me, her lavender eyes wide with disbelief and dawning terror. "This... this face... Child... this is a dragon. An Indrath! But... how?"
My gaze snapped to the revealed head. The features beneath the shattered helmet were achingly familiar, yet horrifyingly alien.
Blonde hair, cropped short and practical, save for a single, intricate decorative braid woven tightly on the left side of his head, falling just past his jawline.
Strong, aristocratic features, sharp cheekbones, a determined jaw. And the eyes… striking, intense blue eyes, the colour of a frozen alpine lake. Eyes that I expected to hold the supposed authority of a dragon.
But they didn't.
They were open, unblinking, fixed on a middle distance. Utterly vacant. Devoid of any spark of sentience, any flicker of emotion, any trace of the dragon soul that should have blazed within. They were windows into an absolute void. Not dead eyes. Empty eyes.
The eyes of a masterfully crafted mannequin, perfect in every detail, yet fundamentally hollow. A vessel. A puppet animated by stolen aether and cold command.
Dragon Puppet. The name solidified in my mind, cold and final. Not just Sylvia's kin murdered, but desecrated. Used as raw material.
Was this Again's doing? Did he make another one like me, but without putting a mind inside?
The fury that had fueled my strike curdled into something colder, deeper, a black pit of revulsion and rage in my gut. He hadn't just killed them; he'd turned them into tools.
The Dragon Puppet didn't roar. Didn't flinch from the loss of its helmet. It simply… pivoted. Smooth, efficient, utterly mechanical. The greatsword, still humming with bruised purple Spatium aether, reversed its grip in a blur and came scything horizontally towards my torso with impossible speed.
The spatial energy trailing the blade warped the air, promising a severing of reality itself.
"Iskander!" Delilah's scream was pure terror this time, shredding the stunned silence.
Instinct screamed dodge. But the blade was too fast, too close. My Asuran body reacted faster than thought. I twisted, bringing my left arm up in a desperate cross-block, aether flaring instinctively to reinforce muscle and bone. I felt Creation surge, a golden shield flickering into being over my forearm a microsecond before impact.
THUD-SHUNK!
The sound was sickening. The greatsword connected. The Spatium edge met the hastily conjured aether shield and my reinforced forearm. The shield shattered like glass under a hammer blow. Agony, white-hot and immediate, lanced up my arm as the spatial edge bit deep, shearing through flesh, grating against bone.
I felt the jarring impact through my entire skeleton, driving the breath from my lungs. Crimson bloomed against the grey fabric of the tunic I borrowed from Sevren, stark and wet.
But I held. The blade stopped, lodged deep in the meat of my forearm, the purple runes flaring angrily against the pale gold aether desperately knitting flesh and bone back together around the intrusion. The pain was immense, a screaming counterpoint to the cold fury in my core, but it was secondary.
The Dragon Puppet was inches away, those empty blue eyes fixed on me with chilling indifference.
"BE CAREFUL!" I bellowed, the words ripped raw from my throat, not from my own pain, but from a surge of pure, protective terror. They were vulnerable. My vow echoed like a gong in my skull: No one dies.
"TAKE POSITION!" Renhart roared, his voice cutting through the chaos like a war horn. He'd recovered, his initial shock replaced by the hardened focus of a veteran facing the utterly unknown. "DELILAH! RIGHT FLANK, STAY MOBILE! YORICK! LEFT, WATCH THE HIGH GROUND, WARN US! ISKANDER! DISENGAGE IF YOU CAN!"
"THIS IS NOTHING LIKE I HAVE EVER SEEN OR HEARD OF!" He then added.
The Dragon Puppet wrenched its blade free from my arm with a wet, tearing sound. Golden aether flared, knitting the grievous wound shut in seconds, leaving no scar, but a throbbing ache.
Blood slicked the stone beneath my feet. The Dragon Puppet raised its sword again, purple energy gathering at the tip, ready for another spatial strike.
Disengage? Not yet. Renhart needed a moment to organize. Delilah needed to get clear. Yorick needed time to focus.
Sylvia's horrified whisper—"An Indrath..."—still echoed in my mind, a dirge for desecrated kin. But the existential doubt was drowned by the immediate need.
Creation roared in response to my will, burning away pain and horror, focusing everything into pure, pale gold purpose. Two more compact, fiercely spinning rings of solidified aether coalesced around my right fist, humming with lethal intent.
I met the Dragon Puppet's empty blue gaze across the blood-slicked stone. My lips peeled back in a snarl that held no fear, only cold, righteous fury.
"Alright, Dragon Man," I growled, the spinning rings flaring brighter. "I am more than ready for a dance."