Page 27

Dracoth

Crash

M y hazy unconsciousness fades to a blazing blur.

I stand immersed in a living inferno. The tongues of the flames coil and lick across my skin like a lover’s caress.

But I do not burn. No, instead the heat sustains me.

It’s part of me, perhaps born from my heart—a heart that pumps molten fury, an insatiable wrath that can never be satiated.

A searing, too-bright white light stings my eyes, irking me. It’s cast not from a sun but from something unnatural. Is this a vision of my future? A universe in flames, the galaxies consumed by my wrath?

Then they rise from the ashes—the four human females.

I groan at their intrusion into my domain, perplexed by how such frailty endures in this place of endless fire.

Yet they grow, becoming immense, towering over me and the entire flaming landscape like the Peaks of Scarn.

Their once-pretty faces twist with contempt, daring to judge me.

I strain to discern their colossal, ashen identities amidst the roaring flames, but the fire consumes all.

They converse among their colossal selves, each syllable a tornado, a hurricane, threatening to blow away my conflagration of rage. I know they speak ill of me; I feel their barbs pricking my skin, unraveling the fortress of my mind, pouring doubt through its gates.

But I remain defiant before them, before everything.

I banish all entropy. I am the War Chieftain, the son of Gorexius.

Even the icy vacuum of space bows to my blazing soul.

Like an eternal star, I burn forever. This is my glorious destiny, the one that was promised, bought with blood and death—Krogoth’s death.

Suddenly, a blazing enormity crashes through the burning heavens, like a world-ending catastrophe. Its molten surface makes my flames appear like mere flickering embers. It radiates with such swirling intensity even I struggle to meet its gaze. But I do not falter. I am the fire.

This molten enormity obliterates three of the human females, reducing them to smoldering mountains of cinders.

A pang of loss ripples through me, but I banish such intrusive weakness that does not belong here.

I watch, transfixed, as the enormity unfurls itself, looming larger, like a celestial behemoth of molten fury stretching beyond the flaming skies into the vast emptiness of space.

Its immense hands descend upon the final human female, gripping her shoulders, almost tenderly, but scorching her flesh. Her face melts away, her identity vanishing into oblivion.

Rage ignites within me, a visceral need to kill, twisting my features into a savage snarl. Is it my molten God’s actions or its molten flesh driving me mad? I cannot tell.

“Rise, and complete the cycle!” The voice booms like thunder, fanning the flames, shaking the cosmos. My heart surges as its blazing, continent-sized hand reaches toward me, consuming my flesh in a heat that shouldn’t exist. There is no pain, only fury.

Only hate.

“Arawnoth!” I roar, thrusting my hand into the air—surprised that it hasn’t turned to ash.

New awareness floods my senses. The blistering heat is gone, replaced by the cold, sterile air of the ship. A pounding headache makes itself known, soon followed by painful, rasping breaths through strained lungs and something like spoiled meat coating my tongue.

What happened? Some sickness? A powerful foe? The thought excites me.

“No. Not Arawnoth—just me, your long-suffering teacher, boy. ” Ignixis’s voice grates on my ears like curdled boracks milk.

The flesh-melting heat was preferable.

I groan at the return of the familiar, loathsome title: boy. No doubt I’ve somehow displeased the old gas-cloud again. My thundering headache, coupled with a boring, impotent lecture, is now imminent.

Scanning the room, I realize I’m sprawled on a bench in the medical lab—if such a dilapidated room can be called such.

“You bleat like a newborn snarlbroc ... I rue the day Arawnoth bid me to aid you, boy, ” Ignixis spits. Seems today his poison comes in its natural, seething, venomous form. “Would that Arawnoth had scorched you to cinders for such idiocy.”

I sit up at his eerily accurate words, a flicker of surprise crossing my face. Ignixis lounges on a bench, his green eyes shifting between me and the blue, shimmering console.

“He did burn me to ash,” I mutter, examining my hands, grimacing at the multitudes of caked-in gore.

What madness is this?

A sharp cackle shakes Ignixis’s frail shoulders. “Don’t make me laugh,” he winces in pain, clutching his shoulder. “If you truly stoked his molten wrath, he’d have seared your soul and scattered your ashes to the void.”

I ignore his pointless jabs—there are too many unanswered questions to get bogged down by useless bickering.

“He spoke to me.” My gaze grows distant, recalling his words in that strange realm of endless fires. “He commanded; I rise... to complete the cycle.”

Ignixis’s gaze snaps to mine, a look of intensity narrowing his heavily tattooed face. “Good... Good,” he whispers, his voice laced with a dark eagerness. “Excellent. Arawnoth has spoken the sacred words. He has chosen you, young Dracoth. Just as was foretold. As I promised.”

His expression shifts to mirth, though it’s hard to be certain amid his shadowed features and sharpened yellow teeth.

But his words of joy fail to stoke the flames of my soul.

Ignixis’s promise—the favor of our God—was always my destiny.

Ever since my Proving, I’ve known my destiny is paved with greatness.

I am the greatest living Klendathian, soon to be the greatest in all history, eclipsing even my noble father.

I will prove it to myself and the entire universe when I crush the usurper Krogoth beneath my wrath.

Then and only then will I feel joy in my molten heart.

“It seems your gruesome offering has pleased our God,” Ignixis cackles, a mad swirl of green eyes and yellow fangs in a sea of black.

What offering?

An acrid stench wrinkles my nose—the familiar stench of death. It clings to me like... like the jingling, grisly vertebrate dangling from my belt. I almost recoil at the shocking sight, my eyes widening before scanning the room for the source of trickery which placed it upon me.

I extend a long claw, pulling at the various sized bones, each strung together with bits of dried gore twisted around them like the roots of a long-dead tree.

Hemo-Tok.

The old Magaxus warrior tradition. An ancient rite, resurrected from history’s darkest depths.

Did I do this?

“You don’t remember a thing, do you?” Ignixis croaks, his laughter wheezing from his ancient lungs and rattling through the dusty, broken medical equipment.

“Silence, you old fool!” I roar, my anger growing. This... not knowing... this vulnerability gnaws at me. Especially when it’s obvious so much has transpired. Yet again, I’m forced to rely on the old gas-cloud for guidance.

My anger only pleases him more—his yellow sneer widening. He enjoys this—getting a reaction out of me—feeds off it. The closest thing to victory left for the feeble old coward.

“Shall I tell you what you did, young Dracoth? Shall I describe the violent acts you committed?”

My eyes snap to him. His ominous words fill me with concern.

“The females?” I ask, unable to contain my worry. Is it possible I harmed them by mistake? Is it their delicate spines which decorate my belt?

Ignixis’s mirth twists into something darker at the mention of the females. His lips curl in distaste as he once again rubs his right shoulder with a pained grimace.

“Oh, no,” he murmurs, his voice a venomous hiss. “We’ll get to them soon enough.” He lingers on the word ‘them,’ drawing it out, lacing it with vipertail poison.

From the folds of his abyssal black robes, Ignixis produces a small, seemingly innocent green root. But I know better. Bloodroot. One of my last memories is taking it before charging through the corridors in a pulsing red-green haze of murderous fury.

“I don’t need to tell you what this is? Do I?” Ignixis asks, his voice needling me.

I shake my head, waiting with disdain for the coming lecture.

“Good,” Ignixis purrs. “Now, young, foolish, Dracoth, would you be so kind as to indicate how much of Arawnoth’s blood you ingested?

” the old gas-cloud asks, reaching into his black robes, forcing me to suppress a groan at his tiresome theatrics.

He’ll draw this out, like he always does when he has the upper hand.

“This much?” Ignixis taunts, snapping off a comically small piece of bloodroot, displaying it upon his withered, blackened hand.

“More.”

“This much?” Ignixis’s bare brow arches as he adds another small fragment.

“No, much more.”

“How about this?” He holds up half a root, his eyes gleaming with mockery.

“More.”

“More?” Ignixis’s voice rises in mock disbelief, savoring every moment of this tedium.

“Yes, more, you deaf old gas-cloud!” My temper ignites, flaring like a solar storm bursting from a molten star. “The entire root clenched in your pathetic hands, more even than that, perhaps!”

Ignixis chuckles, an insidious sound that echoes through the room like the rattling of bones. His thin fingers trace the length of the bloodroot, and for the briefest moment, his mocking demeanor vanishes—replaced by something far darker, far more intrigued.

“Then you truly danced with the flames of madness,” he whispers, almost to himself.

His eyes flick back to me, their emerald depths gleaming with the faintest hint of respect.

“The entire root... it’s only because of your great size, you still breathe.

But this,” he gestures to the bones hanging from my belt, “is the offering you gave our God. You surprise me, young Dracoth. To honor the old ways. I didn’t know you had it in you. ”