AN: Sorry for the wait. I had a paper to write and then work clobbered me with more papers to draft and memos to write! I am taking some liberty with worldbuilding here but...
Lansseax IV
The air was ash and dust, hot against Lansseax's meager human frailty. Embers and motes seared her skin, burning the fine vellus hairs that lightly covered her fine mimicry. Lansseax's pale-blonde locks brimmed with the charge, her very spine an iron rod for the wrath of the heavens. Sprites of red lightning danced across her human flesh, a worthless parody of her stone scales, discharging harmlessly into floating embers.
Slowly, Lansseax relaxed her grip on the reins of the world, letting the grip of gravity slide closed around her once more, pulling her down to earth to wallow in the demesne of the lesser beasts. Ah, to taste the heavens, and be constrained to wallow in the mud with the swine! Lansseax pulled, the will of the fiery maelstrom above her leashed for a moment by the rupturing passage of her divine incantations, and when Lansseax wove her new incantation into being, the wind answered, almost hesitantly at first, Lansseax thought, then with greater might as her talons plucked the world, incantation woven into being with her focus, suffusing it with Lansseax's own draconic puissance.
Dust swirled away, and Lansseax stopped to gaze upon the shattered visage of her foe. A dragon, flesh, and twisted form distantly reminiscent of the Elder Greyoll's ignominious spawn. Lesser dragons diminished with but the embers of true lordship, of true divinity, emblazoned upon their hearts.
"Kill me-" One of the knights moaned, blind white eyes rolling in his sockets, somehow, he found and met Lansseax's golden eyes. The once-man protruded like a pustule from the side of the dragon. One of his fingers twitched, a strand of flesh still connecting the finger to his arm. A worm pushed out from behind his eyes, a human face writ miniature staring at Lansseax unerringly before it turned, jaws distending, scraping back into the skull of the man half-submerged in the skin and sinew of a dragon.
Red sparks of lightning slipped from Lansseax fingers, eroding her cloak of crimson, even as the dragon groaned, its stubby black legs twitching. The men, clad in scarlet and golden livery burst like swelling galls fed to an open flame. One after the other.
They screeched and screamed, mouths opening only for a flood of worms to disgorge, sinewy gossamer thin and thick black grubs, all mixed with blood and bile in a profane discharge, spilling across their fronts, as their bodies swelled and erupted, seeping into a knotted mess on the ground before the carcass of the dragon.
Pitiful, wretched things, but no captive and cursed men were as wretched as the beast that lay, sundered and broken before Lansseax the Glaive. Lansseax strode forward, the very soles of her feet smoldering in the sea of barely cooled magma that had spilled from in between the distended gorge of the dragon.
"You-," Gerion the lordling croaked, his voice a distant and feeble distraction. Blackened bile spewed from a shattered maw, as the beast sought to right itself. The first glaive of red lightning had taken it above the jaw, neatly seared a bursting mark across its dark flesh, already black bile and blood, mixed with the creep of worms oozed out from beneath the cracked flesh, congealing even as it stood barely free from the broken wreck of its master.
Lansseax reached forward with a foot and stamped on a fat worm as it squirmed toward her, driving it down with her toes into the obsidian stone tiles beneath her feet, even as the boiling magma licked at her heels. Black bile burst from its eyes, from the little mockery of a human's face that stared up at her with such rancor before it even knew her.
Hunger. There was no order, no greater calling. A mimicry born of malice. The worm hated her because she lived. It was enmity born because she was nothing greater than a victual for it. So animalistic, so befitting of the lower order. Lansseax ground her toes, her nails scratching the obsidian and smearing the fat grub over her skin.
"You killed-" Gerion finally said, drawing her attention toward him. His words died as he met her eyes, his mouth moving soundlessly for a long moment beneath his mask. His blue eyes were wide, blood pooling in the whites. Gerion fell to his knees heavily, all the strength seemed drained from his armored body. His red cape fluttered.
Lansseax spared him a single golden brow, raising it in the slightest question before she looked back toward the beast, stepping toward it once more, leaving bloody footprints again in her wake, but at this hour, it was not her blood that soiled her perfect skin. There was life yet within the carcass, Lansseax could surmise. Lansseax stretched out her hand, resting it for a moment, letting the eddies of the arcane shift and flow.
The ancient dragon frowned, an expression of approaching consternation creeping across her visage unbidden. It was a man? The essence of all things lingered, even the most horrific mockeries still retained fragments of truth, writ upon novel graftings. It was only in true mimicry could a soul find an escape from which the order of the world bound its soul, and then such relief was temporary and tumescent, like a wine bladder filled to bursting.
"-you a god, one of the seven who are one?" Gerion whispered, his voice the dying croak of a man parched for ages, "Mother, Maiden? …Warrior?"
Lansseax spared not a glance back toward the dithering madman and instead reached upward, her talons catching in its flesh as she crawled up its sinuous bulk, her toes digging into its scales as they gave way to putrid rot and worms, that slithered over her bare legs, leaving trails of ashy bile. Lansseax's hoisted herself unto its dying carcass and could feel the heat beneath the scales, the fire still boiling in its veins. She rested one long-fingered hand against its head, what mysteries could be gleaned from such perverted sorcery err the hours stretched for the forevermore? What crafting of flesh and grafting could be pulled from the dying derelict? It was a rare hour indeed when the eldest and most powerful of those who remained found herself bereft of both time and knowledge!
The two purple eyes, so very human-like, opened, even as the death rattle finally racked the creature. Cold and unseeing they passed over Lansseax before stilling, the furnace beneath her fingers finally going deathly still and quiet. Lansseax stood upright again upon the pitted face of her slain foe and reached for the red sword affixed in its forehead, pausing just a moment, testing the pull. Embedded in the bone. Idly, for a long moment, Lansseax allowed herself a moment to consider what frail human warrior had placed the blade there, before she dismissed the thought altogether and wrenched, the skull separating as the blade slipped free as if it was cloven in two.
Lansseax leaped, landing upon her bare feet, dismissing the scalding burns before they even could singe her stone scales and pulling herself from the kneel she had entered. Gerion scrambled after her, his armored boots scraping across the ground. His sword hung limply in his gauntleted hand, the rippled sword seeming to almost cut into the ash and dust as if it was a living creature.
"How?" Gerion said, hand reaching out toward her, stopping just short of closing around her arm. Lansseax did not even blink, not even turning her face toward the wretch.
"How did you- the storm," Gerion trailed off again, and Lansseax spared a glance toward him then. His gaze was almost rapturous, wonder and awe wrote across his exposed face as plain as the flames that danced in the bowels of the slain dragon.
Had this mortal never seen the might of the dragons of old? Had this whelp never heard of the glory of those that ruled before the Golden Order? Had never heard of the dragonlords of Farum Azula before it was cleaved from the sky and lay crumbling in a maelstrom of time? What pitiful things humans were, full of ignorance at the ages past, Lansseax thought morosely, but not necessarily disparagingly, none of her consternation written upon her face. Instead, she said nothing. Was, this worm lordling worth the breath she could spit?
Lansseax started to raise her free hand, the one unencumbered by a new blade, to point the way they were going when she noted with sudden dreadful clarity that felt almost final, the way it cloyed at her, seeping into her very marrow, that the city lay still and silent. As quiet as a tomb. The very air which had ever been rent by the screams and bellows of the beasts of the cursed city lay silent. It was an oppressive poignant feeling and Lansseax slowed, for the second time, the feeling in her breast burned enough that it was almost scalding. It was an alien feeling that Lansseax had not felt since she was a pebbled whelp playing under the talons of her greater sire.
The world trembled the way it had trembled when Lanseax plucked the red lightning from the heaven's clutching storm. The stone plaza seemed to undulate as a vast shadow swept across the plaza, Gerion's babble died in his throat.
Red as crimson scales, scales as green as putrid retch. A dragon slammed into the buildings across the plaza, shattering the buildings. The beast-men scattered from where they perched, little claws screeching and scrambling, with shrill cries. Their bone swords tumbled and clattered to the ground. The great beast was a dragon in troth, Lansseax thought, the charge building within her once more, the embrace of the red lightning beginning to seep into her marrow.
The dragon was large, too large by far, each talon as thick around as her legs. As girthy as her true legs, not the pitiful dandelion stalks her frail form was permitted. Lansseax the Glaive, an ancient dragon of the elder days, hesitated. Her hand was already half-raised, the incantation half-formed. It is peer to even one such as Greyoll, Lansseax's mind half-whispered, despite her bidding it to silence, you cannot slay such a beast. Its wings are nine-ten times your four.
The dragon's mouth opened, and Lansseax twitched, but the dragon's gaze was set upon another prize. An ember lit in its gullet and flame poured from its throat. And though she stood almost threescore yards away from flame, she could feel the heat dance across the front of her body. The obsidian melted, turning to magma beneath the dragon's limbs.
"By the gods," Gerion murmured, his sword slipping from nerveless fingers. The blade clattered against the ground but the noise was lost in the roaring of the dragon's breath. If the air ignited by Lansseax's flames was deafening, this was beyond that. The very air seemed to scream as it rushed in to feed the fell flames. The fire seemed almost fluid, yet unlike the lifeblood of the earth as it flowed, bathing the bile-corpse in white. As it melted, the great beast surged forward, opening its maw and dipping its lower jaw into the street. After a long moment, the green and red monstrosity raised its head, the corpse sliding into its cavernous maw, obsidian and all.
Gerion's fingers closed around Lansseax's arm. Lansseax turned toward him and he immediately released her, stumbling back three steps. Somewhere he had picked up his sword, he raised it between them almost unwittingly and Lansseax realized her lips were pulled back into a rictus of a snarl.
"Go-" Gerion stammered, his face, what was visible as pale as milky snow. He shuddered, his limbs almost shaking audibly in his armor.
The dragon roared behind the two. The sound rose and rose, shaking the street beneath Lansseax's feet. The smooth obsidian seemed to crack and groan, shards erupting like steel swords. Lansseax stumbled, her sure feet trying and failing to find purchase on the stone. Ah, how it grated, she thought, anger boiling in the furnace that burned alongside her heart, stoking her own dragonflame. That Lansseax should flee!
Ire built, but again Lansseax quenched it with the cold clarity of reason. She was Lansseax! Not some mewling whelp that would and could fight the world with only the spears of birthright granted red lightning. She was the last that remained for a reason, she had earned such an epithet.
Embers burned at her open eyes and Lansseax stilled her feet, sparing a glance behind her. There was only ash and dust, choking and thick with fell miasma. Worms and wyrms!
She could feel, could hear, the heaving gasps of the mortal human beside her. He was still as pallid as before, and to Lansseax's eyes, his countenance was far worse. Something moved within his eye. Worms. Lansseax gritted her fangs and turned away.
"Sept?" Gerion murmured, his breath leaving him in great heaving gasps. Still, he toddled after Lansseax like a little lordling, his armor clattering. His fingers were locked tight around his rippled sword, much alike the rubied sword that Lansseax now clutched in her left hand.
Great white doors stood, the hue of freshly hewn marble, as tall as six men put upon each other's shoulders, and only barely visible in the murky ash and gloom. A sconce gleamed and burned by the door.
Gerion heaved himself to his feet and clattered over toward the door. Lansseax let a faint frown play across her features. What use did one such as she have for the artisanal edifices of man? Yet, even she could feel the faint stir of appreciation, at such a grand and worthless structure. Doors big enough that six men could walk abreast. Gerion placed his shoulder against the door and heaved for a moment before he slid to a sitting position. His eyes lolled in his head wildly.
Lansseax stepped forward, reaching out and touching the door, her tongue tingling within her mouth as the sorcery laden upon the door seemed to reach out and try to snag her will and focus, before she pulled back, quite miffed.
"A sept, if it is a sept. I see our purpose, we must go in. It's a tribulation, I see it now." Gerion whispered, almost wildly by her feet, and Lansseax glanced down at him for an instant, resisting the urge to raise a brow. What was a sept?
Lansseax reached out her hands, pressing one against each side of the marble door, and pushed, the marble cracked beneath her talons, and the obsidian tiles of the street shattered beneath her toes. With an almighty groan of stone against stone, the doors began to move, slowly, almost ponderously creeping open before suddenly it was as if they were grabbed by a giant hand and swung open. Lansseax's heart leaped despite her iron nerves at the thunderous boom, greater than even one of her thunderbolt's resounding bellow.
Her eyes swept along the interior and then she did pause, even as the magic, almost invisible danced across her face like self-same talons, clawing at the primeval magic that lingered in her scales and bones. She stepped into the room slowly. Rippled armor and soft silk stretched as far as the eye could see, every inch of the ground covered in bodies. The soft silk, stretched over gaunt and desiccated bodies far outnumbered the rippled armor.
It was a tomb. Lansseax had seen enough of the lesser races to know such for certain. Not a tomb in truth, but a tomb all the same. Bodies locked in a rictus of despair, undisturbed by the maelstrom but stricken with the fell hand of death.
Fourteen great statues rose toward the distant ceiling, disappearing into the darkness. Lansseax stepped forward.
"No, no," Gerion protested, his words feeble in the darkness, "We shan't disturb the dead."
"I shall," Lansseax spoke in the still darkness of the temple, for now, she could see that it was such, with its alcoves where sconces sill lit and gleamed. She could feel the magicks leached into the air, keeping the ash and dust, and most importantly, the gossamer worms at bay. Lansseax let a true smile creep across her face, displaying her fangs.
For now, she could speak.
What mysteries could now be revealed?
She paused over a body, the rippled plate armor adorning the body of a long-dead woman catching her eye. Who was she in life? Lansseax did not care, for the lives of mortals could be measured in decades and centuries, it was the dragons, the eldest children, who were ever-lasting.
"Ah, visitors at long last, has the hour of the Doom departed?" A voice, still and silent for all that it spoke in truth. Speaking more to Lansseax's mind rustled down the long hall, bouncing off the cavernous ceiling, and swallowed in the corpses abounding along the floor.
Lansseax's eyes, golden as the light of grace, raised, piercing, and true to spear the speaker where she stood. An old human woman, withered as a crone, with vivid purple eyes stood seated upon the dais of the temple, clad in purple and white robes covered in blackened burns.
"Speak and know thou trespass upon hallowed ground!" The old woman said, raising a staff of rippled steel, and slamming it down against the stone with a muted crack.
Gerion's mouth opened and closed beside her, and Lansseax could see him out of the corner of her eye, rippled sword held before him like a totem to ward off foul spirits. Lansseax returned her attention, which had wavered just an instant, to the living specter that stood before her, living and whole. Lansseax tilted her head.
"You would greet me, priestess, yet not offer your own name as you bid me beseech you?" Lansseax murmured, yet her murmur traveled the length of the hall, such was the merest whisper, "As one priestess to another, surely you would grant one such as I some meager courtesy?"
Lansseax's words slipped out at first saccharine sweet, building and slipping until her voice rumbled with the strength of a dragonfire furnace. Who was such a frail wretch to demand she speak? As equals?
Dragons had no equals but those of the line of kings, each dragon a regent unto itself. And thus Lansseax spoke.
