//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Awake [v2] // Story: Draconomachi: War for the Absolute Heart // by Magnum-opuS //------------------------------// ​ Running, skidding then tripping, Spike tumbled onto the path of what resembled a forest. He laid there for a moment as he gathered his strength. Despite his best efforts, all he could manage was to push up, off his face and into a shaky sitting position. His vision wasn't quite right: everything was a bright, almost blinding, monochrome. So he shut his eyes as tight as possible. When they opened, the image remained monochrome. It only darkened as the glare wore off. There were tree-shaped objects on all sides, but they weren't trees. These tall, branching growths lacked leaf, brown and bark; they were smooth, painted in nothing but light and shadow. Where one would expect to see knotted root systems, the bottoms sloped gently into monotonous ground. As far as he could tell, each of them beyond ten paces were melting into the landscape. The sun was a black pinpoint on a white canvas sky. Its blue border shining as the only source of light and color. The azure glow softly washed over the ground, meeting the eye but not much else. Not a spot of darkness dispersed. It was like water passing over dried ink. " And another milestone," Spike whispered to himself. "on the highway to nowhere." He looked back. The way he had come differed drastically from the way he was going. Spread to his rear was a plain of wavy, fluid limestone that didn't part underfoot. Walking on it had been easy. It was made treacherous by what came out of it: Briar-like bolts of bronze crackling out of the milky, solid waters. They snaked and arced like sluggish lightning and menacing the air with dull flashes and metallic clashes. Even far off, Spike could taste flakes of corrosion and sparks in the air. The sourness of copper and the rottenness of tarnish was as noxious as ever and he was glad to have put it behind him.The chaotic quarry smoothed into the indistinct grayness of the quiet wood.The two places had never been meant to meet ,but there he was sitting sitting on the seamless junction of both. For days, if not weeks, this had been his journey: drifting through a dream where moving --in any direction-- was to run in circles while the world unraveled all around, often degrading into lesser forms . His toes twitched. His talons tapped. 'Keep going', anxiety pleaded. 'Keep running', instincts demanded. The unnatural forest was peaceful and that was reason enough to keep moving. It was a sign of change. It was definitely an improvement on all else he'd seen. Over the endless course of this nightmare, through warping, torrid wilderness, he had fled from monsters unlike anything he'd seen before. They weren't even comparable to the creature's of the real world's Everfree. Each was unique in deformity and depravity. They embodied every sort of wrongness: Restless pursuers. Wanton destroyers. Incessant manipulators. It was from a dream such as this that he clutched life for death remained real. When he was ambushed he had to fight them. When he was backed into corners, he had to kill them. When he came close to starvation he had to eat them. When none of those things was happening he tried speaking to them. Each and every one raved the same word: 'Nomad. Nomad. Nomad'. The bronze lightning ceased and silence crept in. Spike looked back. The previous world had disappeared. The bare minimum environ was all that was left. It was like a sketch. all one color, one contrast, a framework of outlines and so calm not even the air moved. All the realism had gone out of the dream. There was no way it could be made any less. " This has to be the end." Or so he thought. Instead the landscape began to shift around and beneath him.The tree-forms dissipated into mist. Spike fell prone. Everything was going wild now.It was only the beginning. Far down the path breathed. It was a wondrous inhalation that began drawing away the light and the entire world to consume it.At the heart of this upheaval was a roaring silence. Spike's ears perked at the strangeness of such a noise, but his heart was drawn to its origin. He felt a sense of connection. It was a dragon's roar. Spikes ear tufts perked at a familiar voice. ​​"That's him!" ​ Spike broke into pursuit of the sound on all fours. Bounding down the undulating trail, He filled into his new, gangly physique. He was no longer a hatchling. When he dreamt at first, he thought himself as an infant, but the harshness of this experience, the onslaughts of violence, had made him more, made him different. He was larger, leaner, a true animal. Lithe and hot-blooded, Spike tore down the gray road even as it transformed under his sprinting gait. Bulging and slithering, the path challenged his progress with spires and crevices. The further he ran, the more numerous the obstacles. The faster he chased, the steeper the incline. ​"Come on! Come on!" he roared. ​Breath was expelled in harsh energetic rasps. The forelegs pulled up the body; the hinds fired it forward in rhythmic lunges. The path's incline increased. It to sloped up and up, eventually flying straight into the air, changing from what was once a strip of ground into a tower and it continued to rise. Running instantly fell out of favor; Climbing took it's place. Cracks in the tower served well as finger-holds, but but they didn't last. The cracks spread and fractured the gray surface. The entire layer of gray peeled and unveiled a dazzling array of scales. This forced Spike to scrabble further up to avoid slipping off with the flakes, leaving less gray and more scales. After a desperate, fumbling struggle, when everything had been revealed to be scales, Spike fit his claws into a chink beneath one of the reflective plates. They uniformly reacted with a maddening flare of light that cut at his eyes, but he didn't lose his grip. "You monster, let me go!" The pulsing scales admitted awareness and pierced his mind with their reply. It wormed into his thoughts and began to expand, forcing them out and making a hollow of Spike's mind.The emptiness expanded infinitely inside him and was filled with a voice like a boundless bell. There was no way it could ring but it did. It rocked his being with a cacophonous, but soothing resonance that hovered below a strike tone that never struck. "Little kindred, elder to myself, you are constrained by naught but your own indecision." ​"Cast off Time. Shed the Universe as old skin. Leave it to rot behind you and be free of your evil." " I've told you, no! Never!" "Remember that I would not have come to you, had you not begged me to. Why do you resist now? I've made you stronger. I've brought you the death you asked for."* Spike wrenched his claws free of the living monolith and fell away. The trance overcome, he watched the wall continue ascension. It rose on, a serpentine trunk ending at a head. And it was not through a neck, but bearing down on the body with its immense maw. The head latched onto it's own tail with a booming like the hour knell on a titanic clock. The fanged cavern was the source of the howling that called to him and there were others like it. On either side, through mists cascading upwards as they were sucked away, he could make out two mirror images of the scene. What went unseen,but he still heard was the same repeated scene of the leviathan head and tail meeting in other stretches of the body. This sight across from him seared into memory as a horizon turned vertical. This monster assaulted itself over and over in a horrid fusion of hunger and indomitable​ power while eschewing sentiment of past and future destroying each other. It was negation.Twisted dragons could be seen racing up to the wretched summons. Spike, on the other hand, continued his descent. The dream: every sight, form, and all of the remaining light was scattered and eaten. It became like dust, flew into the multitude of mouths, dwindled like small points of white fire behind the horrible teeth and then sputtered out. Only darkness remained. Spike sank deeper and deeper into it. The dream completely unraveled. And Reality ensued. -------------------------------------- The adolescent dragon lifted his head from the stone of his basement floor where there were marks left from his impact. At long last, he was awake. ~~~~~~~~ notes: picture: (Ansel Adam's "black sun")