It’s his sheer speed and masterful drives of magic, as I see him flash through the dawn so fast now, he’s a blur. Lithe and terrifying, Jarl Jorg rips into a section of False Knights, then flashes away, hammering into a different section before I can blink.
It’s only then that I understand he can make portals as he fights. He flashes through them over and over to heave back the strongest of the False Knights, keeping them from us.
It’s a masterful talent, as Jarl Jorg wields it in battle—a living Bone Mage using his incredible abilities to counter our foes. And it’s not what Lithava wants, as she roars like a harpy now and surges up, rejoining the fray.
Her drakes are with her, as the most terrible oilslick-black and crimson-violet sigils careen out everywhere now—infecting everyone. Diseasedsigils explode through all our enemies, as my sister and her drakes heave up into the skies, smashing into Jarl Jorg’s forces.
As they retaliate, the ancient power that divides us roars back. As if triggered by my proximity to my sister, terrible white sigils re-emerge upon me and my drakes, spiraling throughout our dragon flesh.
My drakes’ and my power infect our allies, too, as furious white sigils write over every inch of our allies’ flesh. The battle becomes unhinged, as the most horrid roar goes up from both sides now, our fury and wrath reignited thanks to the power in this valley.
We fight with insane ferocity now as we rip, rage, and roar against each other, Berserk and Wraith. As the horror of a million dead voices consumes me at what’s happening, I’m thrust right back into my spontaneous Bloodwalking.
I see how those too-bright sigils spread in a massive shockwave from my drakes and me, inundating our allies and pushing them to fight. Lithava’s black magic does the same, as darker sigils heave out in a terrible cacophony of oilslick-violet and crimson madness to devour her fighters as well.
My Ancestors roar at me to stop this insanity, as I understand we’re engaging in a battle that just won’t quit. We’re about to kill each other off, to the last dragon—there will be no escape from this fight.
As my skin sears, burning viciously from our doom, I realize something else flies far up in the stratosphere above us. So high I thought it was a jet, a terrible bone-white eye opens in my mind-sight now, pinning me with its ancient, dead regard.
As Lithava goes ballistic, overjoyed her Black Dragon has come.
2
DOWN
Iknow our fate is sealed as the Black Dragon arrives. Its monstrosity gargantuan even so far up in the dawn skies, Lithava wings high over the battle now as she shrieks a series of vicious commands at it, to get down here and finish us. Her drakes join her, roaring as they hurl mind-drives at the Usurper to fortify her commands. Its oilslick-black ropes surge in the faraway skies, like a leviathan’s pool, as it hears them.
Scalding down upon the early breeze—to drown us.
Those ropes of cursed black acid fall towards us, blazing into a midnight hellfire upon the morning air. As the Black Dragon’s terrible darkness descends, the cradle of its most horrible birth responds; an answering taint surges from the hell-rift below, the Black Rift coming alive at the creature’s arrival.
As tentacles of black hell-oil boil up out of the cavern now to claim us, matching those descending now from the Black Dragon, their jaws of midnight spread all around, to ensnare us in a vast net. It’s like some ungodly clamshell closing, as a terrible death knell rings inside my soul that we’ll soon be trapped, the entire battle devastated by it.
Because none of the False or True Knights have noticed what’s happening. They battle on inside that closing net, in a towering frenzy of the most horrible, vicious dragon fighting, none aware of the disaster that’s coming. Even my drakes don’t see it. I feel my very soul twist now as my Ancestors scream in an ungodly cacophony throughout the Void, that death has come.
Because this battle is impossible. A battle against ourselves, it forces us to choose sides and war eternally for whatever schism happened here. Just like our Ancestors did in this place of power they created.
Then broke, because of some folly or hubris they had.
It’s been broken ever since, an atrocity we are about to repeat as the Black Dragon’s doom descends and the Black Rift’s hell-oil thunders up. But no one sees it as the fighting careens, so thick and fast my head spins from the sheer brutality of it.
Dragons drop on all sides now, True and False Knights both. They rip into each other with insane magic, boosted so high in our veins by the arcane powers here, as I battle only to keep myself and my drakes alive now.
It is to no avail, however, as my spontaneous Bloodwalking shows me ten thousand battles of reckless fighting just like this. They’re wars where the Dragons of Blood and Bone ruined each other. We’ve decimated our own kin time and time again because of the extreme passions that divide us and the wretched conflicts those passions create.
We don’t even need the Black Dragon to cause our extinction, as despair floods through me now, watching this calamity descend.
Understanding this is it for us.
Because whatever happened that divided our Lineage long ago, it will divide us until the last of us is gone. We will be kin sundered from each other until we are annihilated; as I have that final, most horrible realization, I tremble in a dark place, inescapable.
Beyond fear, beyond despair, I’m lost as this ancient woe takes me. Ican’t fight on. I can keep myself aloft in the skies, but my drakes have to pull in hard all around me now, protecting me as I cease to battle.
I can’t move; can’t think. I can’t rip out throats or pummel blasts from my wings as an ancient sound fills me, a song as old as the night is deep. A song of death, I feel it resonate with the Black Dragon of All Souls; the beast’s dead eye pins me now from where it flies far above us in the skies.
A deep connection roars open between us as I dive into this blackest place. The creature feels me go there; its great, dead orb skewers me now, as this ancient darkness consumes me.
Suddenly, I know why we resonate, as this most horrible understanding of the Dragons of Blood and Bone devours me. The Black Dragon of my Ancestor’s creation connects with me, I know now, because of this vast place inside me, our deepest sadness.
