//------------------------------// // The Calamity // Story: The Last Dragon Lord // by TheApostate //------------------------------// ‘Fire is just nature’s hygiene.’ -Tarrask Varanus. Survival instinct took hold, and the rage she felt could not be abated. Cornelia rose to her full height and descended the Mountain, set on scorching her realm of Maloghurst’s taint. For the first time in the lives of all, they observed a ball of deep blue flames engulfing the sky above the Dragon Lord’s throne. For a moment, a second sun was blazing brightly above in the heavens. They thought Cornelia was calling for them. As they approached, flames hacked down on their numbers. They ran, congesting the air in their flock. Cornelia aimed and disgorged bleu rage. The Woods were set ablaze, filling the air with the black smock of millennia-old trees and the evaporated water of the rivers. Those that had not died from the flames suffocated as the dark debris clogged their lungs. They then fell in their hundreds, breaking their bones or dying on impact. The survivors that could limp away from the carnage fled to the closest caverns, even striving to seek refuge with the Crystal Singers. Though even they were unsure if their status would be enough to protect them. Nevertheless, headed by Karendas, a Crystal Singer that had served his coven for 373 years and an old drake by then, guided many hundreds to safety. Until a pair of enraged azure eyes noticed them. A second later, flames reached Karendas and his followers. They rose defenses, exerting their formidable minds considerably as she first hit. A second fiery deluge and they were incinerated by who they had once called Mother. The Crystal Singers closed the entrances, outing all those that had entered, hoping Cornelia won’t crumble their ancient dwelling. And still, they would not countenance letting hope dictate their ways – the Crystal Singers retreated deeper into the cavernous underground. More fled. Crystal Singers had been killed, and Validir had been killed; they were all going to feel the end of the Last Dragon Lord’s fire. And they knew not of the reason why. The Eye’s walls crumbled into piles of magma and the field of crystals melted into a liquid mesh of infused colors. Dragons went to hide in the confusing labyrinths the crystals formed, to only be swallowed by the cascading rumble of crystal. One swing of her wings sent whole flocks plummeting down to their fate. Trees were wrenched, rocks turned, and rivers were drained of water. Squamata raced toward the fire, using his wings to divert the harmful gas. He ordered survivors to join his side, even though he had to relent as the Validir’s senses dulled from the lack of oxygen. He landed to catch his breath. Squamata lifted himself between her and the fleeing smaller Drakes, hoping desperately to make Cornelia return to reason. But Squamata saw the hulking bulk of Cornelia soaring toward him. Midair, she grabbed him by the neck with her jaws, throwing him to the ground. With a swift move of her claw, she cut his stomach open, letting the viscera drip out of his guts. He tried to reason with his Mother, but his words were cut brutally short as she plunged her teeth into his neck, riving it apart. Chordata flew behind Cornelia and clawed at the Dragon Lord’s neck. Cornelia reeled, motioning her neck ceaselessly with great force as more Drakes joined the Validir. Some attacked Cornelia with their breath, trying to deplete the oxygen around her. She crushed them with her teeth, shredding them into piles of disintegrated meat. Cornelia grabbed Chordata’s wings. The Validir entered all her claws deeper into Cornelia’s flesh. Blood spilled out, and Cornelia continued to pull unbothered; Chordata felt her wings’ bond to the body dissipate. Then, in a rapid pull, the wings were torn off, and the Validir’s limbs broke under the impossible strain put by Cornelia. Chordata bellowed in excruciating pain, lost to her Mother’s roar. She clenched her teeth in the last effort to withhold the pain. But eventually, even the most defiant had to concede defeat. Chordata had no strength left in her. In desperation, she let off, letting herself fall in an attempt to converse with the vengeful Magna Dracii. Before any word could be uttered, Cornelia impaled Chordata with her claw before swiftly and effortlessly removing them, letting the blood and viscera scatter the rocks and the nearby Drakes. Somehow no important organs were hit, but her arteries had been struck, but Chordata knew none of it. ‘Why, Cornelia!’ she cried out. ‘What have we done!?’ ‘You are corrupted!’ she powerfully boomed. ‘You are in liaise with the sorcerer! Trying to bring down our kind!’ ‘W-’ The claw plunged back. Cornelia moved it inside the dying Chordata, rippling through her body in an aggravating sensation that left her almost paralyzed. ‘What sorcerer!’ she managed to shout. ‘The Perennial! Your master! You are all his abominations!’ ‘B-but you are our master… You al-ways wer-’ She tasted blood now. Chordata knew her time was ever so limited. ‘Mother…’ she cried out with all her sorrow from a mouth full of blood. ‘… I beg of you to not kill us. Please. We knew not of this Perennial’s intentions! We followed you… We always did. Excuse us, Mother. We…’ Her heart’s beating accelerated and breathing became an effort on its own, the Validir’s body desperately trying to keep her alive as she slipped into the ever-night. ‘… we are terribly sorry for having failed you.’ The claw clenched, but no more pain was registered by the dying Validir. ‘I accept my death. You ordered me to die… Then so be it.’ ‘He has ordered you!’ she rasped. ‘My Mother has ordered me…’ And Chordata slipped forever into her final goodnight. Cornelia removed her blood-stained claw. She peered lengthily at Chordata’s corpse, expecting her to rise from the dead. But the night had truly fallen on the Validir’s mind. The rage abated. She now tasted Squamata’s blood, poisoning her breath and sense of smell with its irony scent. The hanging pieces of meat between her teeth tasted foul. Her stomach turned. She felt the puke ascending to her mouth, holding on to it back. ‘I am no tool…’ she repeated to herself, unable to contain the mounting grief. ‘I am the Dragon Lord. I am the Mother of Dragons!’ she bellowed. Her children were truly frightened, they were escaping their home, resisting the unknowingly uttered order. They were fleeing her. Centuries. Centuries! Centuries of existence. Of witnessing the Isles thrive under her, all gone. And Cornelia herself was the culler. Perhaps… Perhaps, she was a weapon. Perhaps there had been no Magna Dracii before her. Cornelia tried to recall her mother’s face but only was met with a blur, nothing but empty shapes occupying a background she had become dull to – she had forgotten her past. Were her memories another trick of the mind? Has she fabricated her entire past? Had her kind existed beyond her? Were Sunflame and the others real? Has it all been a lie she made herself believe? Cornelia wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe she had always been intended to be her race’s end? That sorcerer had awakened the thing within – a predator she had forgotten its existence. She was no mother. She was nothing but a tool to an end – a thing to kill her own. ‘I am the Mother of Dragons…’ she said aloud, grasping every word as life support. Her mind churned in search of a reason. An excuse for having perhaps doomed her children – to the reason why she couldn’t remember the faces of the previous Great Dragons. Cornelia was lost and confused. Never in her life had she come across such thoughts. It had been so peaceful not a day before. She had let Maloghurst get close… But why? Why had she permitted herself to be this lax…? Why now? Now or later, why would it matter? The day would have come regardless of when you would awake to your past self – to be what you are. ‘Enough!’ Not knowing to whom the order was directed, but the Drakes heeded her and ceased in their track – compelled to turn toward her. Valyr, Derkoma, and Ophis could do nothing but peer in bewilderment at the carnage unleashed. The once clear sky filled with black clouds and the smell of burned wood and seared flesh. And in the midst, the sullied body of Cornelia appeared closer to a thing of nightmares – a monster – than their liege and Mother. One day or the other, you would have snapped. More would have died. The corrupted and the pure. The innocent and the guilty. The sturdy and the frail. The honest and the deceitful. The Mother of Death; in a way, you always were her. Cornelia had failed her kind. She failed herself. Maloghurst was the trigger and the escape of her long-dormant insanity. Taking her claw, she carved an incision in the place Syln and Aramuth had unwantedly wounded her. The wound never went far past the upper skin, but enough for blood to trickle out and fall on Chordata’s ruined corpse. A final order was uttered, commanding her children to stay far from her. And for the last time, Cornelia took flight in direction of the continent, leaving the Drakes unsure of their Mother’s true motives.