Because it is sadness, even as it is all things dark and terrible in the night. A soul-deep agony, it’s our ancient heart as Blood Dragons, separated forever from our kin.
The Black Dragon and I are one there, as its terrible mind rushes into my thoughts, its fell doom still coming down around us in the skies.See,it says as the Black Rift’s madness arcs up.See the carnage our ancient Ancestors created, for both you and me, Maker. Though you are not she-who-made-me, I understand that now…
My skin blisters and burns as the Usurper’s sending blasts my mind apart. Pain even worse than my Ancestors’ sending scours me, though the Black Dragon does nothing but speak mind-to-mind with me as its bone-dead eye devours my mind-sight.
What do you mean??I roar up at it, as my drakes power up like crazy around me now. Because Lithava and her mates are battling in towards us.
Knowing I’m speaking to the Black Dragon and not liking it one bit.
But as Lithava renews her shrieks at the Usurper to come down here and finish us, I feel how the creature resists her commands.Though she wears Hedda’s black master ring, infected by Hedda’s will, I feel how the Black Dragon can still push against those commands.
It watches me hard now, as I understand it’s grown more powerful since it was released. The Black Dragon does not yet have the Black Dragon Five rejoined to it; four of those souls are trapped inside our blazing Soulstone, locked in Baldur’s jaws as he fights.
But it means the creature’s own mind is still dominant right now—its own decisions preeminent, without the Five to command it.
And it wants to speak with me before its black hell-oil annihilates us.
Help me, and I shall help you, Maker.Give me peace, and I shall give you peace,the Black Dragon says cryptically now, as its great bone-dead eye pins me. The Black Rift’s madness still boils up to meet with Jormungandr’s death in the skies; that gargantuan net is closing, the clear blue sky only a sliver around our insane battle as the rising sun is blotted out.
Dragons on both sides shrieking as they’re blistered with hell-acid now.
What do you mean? What do you want from me?!I roar in desperation as the Black Dragon shudders my thoughts with its power. Horror consumes me as dragons are blistered by the Usurper’s diseased ropes everywhere now, and seized by the hell-rift’s tarry tentacles.
Plummeting from the skies, they fall into the waiting darkness below. The Black Rift seizes them in eager jaws, as I feel its leviathan taint feed on all the souls it’s devoured.
Powering up more—as it bolsters the Black Dragon, as well.
As boiling black tar-ropes braid all around us in the skies like some five-mile Venus flytrap closing, my kin fight on in a vicious frenzy all around, oblivious. The Black Dragon pauses as I feel it focus on its own Innersight.
Our minds resonate a thousandfold as our connection obliterates me now—as our minds, bodies, even souls crash together. We’re one as I feel the Usurper spiral down now, deep—focusing on the blood, bones, and power that made it.
Because the power that birthed it came from my Ancestor Hedda, creator of this deadly Jormungandr in the skies. Although Hedda was not my kin directly, her bones, blood, and magic are mine, passed down in our family bloodline through the ages.
As I become lost inside the Black Dragon’s resonance through the bloodline that binds us, I tap into its own Void. Separate from our Ancestors’ Void in the skies, a place of peace and rest, the Void I feel within the Black Dragon is beyond horrible.
A blood-boiling and bone-shattering sensation consumes me now as I find its innermost space—the sensation of the Black Dragon’s roar, as I feel how that same sensation ravishes the Black Dragon from the inside out. Because the Dragon of All Souls suffers deep inside. A hundred thousand souls scream in torment within it, ripping its Void with their talons, as they shred the black beast from within.
Its insides blister; its mind is consumed by their insane roars as they try to escape the hell they are trapped in, separated from their Ancestors. Just as the Void roared when Aesa’s soul was banished who-knows-where, shredded by her sister’s malice, the Void inside the Dragon of All Souls roars, too.
And when the Black Dragon opens its great maw, it roars its own torment to the world. The Usurper screams with the sound of those hundred thousand souls trapped inside now, roaring out its curses everywhere; I understand then that Jormungandr’s life is pain, as I feel the anguish that ravages it.
Only Hedda’s ancient will, and the vile magic of the Black Rift hold it together, from when she cursed this thing into being. As I realize why it rages and wraths, tormented endlessly by the souls that power it, the Usurper pierces me with its bone-dead eye.
Un-make me, bright one,the Black Dragon says now as it watches me.Kill me, for in my endless darkness I have suffered enough. End my existence—for there is nothing but torture in my everlasting soul. I would be freed from it, Maker. You are the only one who can do it, the strongestMaker I have ever come across. Promise me you will kill me… and I will give you a boon, right now. A goodwill gesture to help you in your quest.
I will kill you.That I promise—to the ever-living Void and back,I say with a thundering growl inside my very soul now as death continues all around me. It has not reached the center of the battle yet; but even as I promise to give the Usurper what it wants, something inside me feels sad.
Because I finally understand its inner madness. Even though my promise is selfish, its death something I’ve wanted ever since the start, some part of me feels compassion. Like a diseased, rabid animal, some part of me understands now that the madness that consumes it was not its fault.
It is the fault of she-who-made it, and the Black Rift, ruined long ago by our ancient Ancestors. The Black Dragon is only the latest manifestation of that, as it waits in the skies to end us.
An ending that is uncertain now, as I give it my promise.
A towering wave of peace floods me then, rushing through my veins and inundating my bones. I know it comes from the Black Dragon, as relief reaches me from its every sinew and sagging scale.
As I feel the wordsthank youbreathe through me from the earth to the skies and back, a feeling of blessed rest consumes me now. As the Black Dragon accepts my promise, it feels joy.
Because it knows I will kill it—and it accepts its death at my talons.
