I strode through the palace of jade green stone which Lionel had tasked his army to build for him, on the outcrops of the Bermanian Mountains at the far east of the kingdom, in the days that had passed since he’d been driven out of The Palace of Souls.
It was cold here. Cold and grey and barren. Which suited me just fine.
I’d been gifted a new lab for my experiments, my grief over the loss of Brownmary and the rest of my wonderful creations still rankling me, yet there were promising subjects among those I’d been given to toy with.
I took my wallet from my pocket and opened it, sighing at the photograph I kept there of my dear Ian Belor. The pinnacle of my success with these trials. He was such a beautiful monster, such a perfect specimen. But it was so hard to recreate that perfection, the varying qualities of my subjects impossible to predict. Not to mention how I liked to tinker with them, the changes I made always a little different from the last.
I pressed my fingers to the photograph and closed my wallet once more, returning it to my pocket as I began to climb the endless stairs of green stone.
The rooms which had been gifted to The Bonded Men took up the lower three levels, and I passed them by on silent feet, not wishing to spend more time than necessary with the oafish Dragons.
I hated them. Every last one. Their superior attitudes clawing at my skin every time I had to endure them. Elitism at its finest. And yet none of them could do the things I could do. None of them came close to my prowess. But still, I went unnoticed, my name a whisper instead of a cry of adoration.
I made it to the opulent upper part of the palace where the King and Queen resided, the silence thankfully stretching, unlike the last time I had been up here, subjected to listening to them fuck like the hellish creatures they were. It never lasted long at least. But I preferred not to bear witness to their coupling all the same.
“Sire?” I called as I looked between the sweeping stairs ahead of me and the vaulted throne room to my right, uncertain of where to find my King.
“This way,” a voice came from right behind me and I jerked around as I found that snivelling butler Horace there, his eyes narrowing expectantly.
I had half a mind to break through his mental defences and scramble his brains like a freshly cracked egg.
I resisted the urge and swept after him, my grey robes trailing across the jade stone floor as we passed hastily crafted tapestries and paintings with loose threads and wet paint, each depicting the Dragon King and his Shadow Queen in their glory. There were even a few of their abominable offspring, Tharix’s unnerving gaze seeming to pierce me through to my core as I passed by the images of him.
The entire place reeked of fresh magic and desperation. Lionel Acrux and that twisted shadow creature he had taken for a bride playing the part of wedded bliss, now that they had further need of one another.
They wanted the world to buy into this lie of their new palace. They were trying to make everyone believe they had come here by choice, to build a new seat of power within the kingdom. They wanted the people of Solaria to believe that they had not been rattled by the Vega girls who continued to defy them, and they would never admit that they now had no access to The Palace of Souls.
But I knew better. I saw it all.
Horace led me down a smaller corridor than the others, the walls here bare and not covered during the hasty renovations as of yet. With each step I took, the air grew cooler and less welcoming.
“Through there,” Horace said abruptly, pointing me on as he stopped, the set of his jaw telling me that he wouldn’t go a single step further.
I ignored him as I brushed past his shoulder, raising my chin as I strode down the narrow corridor, before finding an open door beyond it which impossibly led outside. This palace had been built onto the side of the cliff itself and I was deep within the building now, surely deep inside the rocks of the cliff and certainly not anywhere near the sky, but as I stepped out it became clear that there was a gap here, carved into the rocks themselves.
I spotted the King ahead of me, standing before a large precipice, Lavinia clinging to his arm, caressing him possessively while the wind whipped the shadows of her dress around her naked body wildly.
I wetted my lips as I spied her nipple between the shifting shadows, her body lithe and supple beneath them, though only a fool would have wished to sink his cock into her.
Tharix dropped down before me so suddenly that I yelped, stumbling backwards and falling onto my ass as the too handsome face of that demon child loomed over me.
“Whoops,” he sneered, and my heart stilled at the seductive voice which spilled from his lips.
“You speak now?” I muttered as I scrambled to my feet, fighting off the terror his presence was trying to stoke in me.
“Mother has been giving me lessons in many things,” he purred and as I glanced at Lavinia again, I found both her and Lionel sneering at me.
“You’re late,” Lionel hissed, his lip curling back as he surveyed me, and I brushed my cloak off as I stepped around Tharix and hurried closer to him.
“I came as soon as I was summoned, my King,” I assured him, bowing low while noticing the way he was gripping his wife’s ass. Ever since the two of them had run to this place they had been inseparable, both of them as transparent as glass in their attempts to cling to each other’s power.
Lavinia was still a thing of horrors, but she was altered since Gwendalina Vega had bound her within her own shadows, cutting off her hold on the rest of them. She was still as beautiful as before, but that depth of power that had once roiled in her eyes was gone, the booming presence she had once commanded now muted. She needed her Acrux King more than ever before and he needed her too. Hence this marital bliss.
“Well don’t linger now. I need you to look into the future for me. There is power in this place, great and dreadful power which now belongs entirely to us. Let me know if it is enough,” Lionel demanded, pointing me towards that precipice where a turbulent energy thrashed violently in its desperation to break free.
But it couldn’t break free. It was a slave now. A gift that the two of them had stolen and would abuse for as long as they saw fit.
I swallowed the lump in my throat as I closed in on the endless drop before them, looking down into the dark where Lavinia’s shadows coiled like a pit of vipers.
I couldn’t see the thing they had caged within those shadows, no sign at all to say what it was or how it could be possible. But I knew. There was nothing so terrible in this world or the next which might compare.
I drew in a long breath and called upon my gift of The Sight, raising a hand over that great drop and trying not to flinch away. The wind bellowed through the chasm once more, threatening to tip me over the edge. I had no desire to meet what awaited at the foot of that drop in any way beyond this.
At first, The Sight did little more than offer me a few glimpses of futures so uncertain that I couldn’t so much as pin down a single detail, and my palms began to sweat as Tharix circled nearer to me.
“Why do we keep this worthless pawn so close, Daddy?” Lavinia asked softly, though she made no attempt to keep her words from me.
“I often wonder the same thing, my love,” Lionel muttered, making my pulse race as I pushed on my gift, begging it to offer me something, anything that could be of use to them.
“Tharix is hungry,” Lavinia went on in that petulant tone, her hand sliding down Lionel’s chest towards his crotch.
I closed my eyes to clear my mind from thinking on what she might convince him to do to me if I failed him again now.
“Ravenous,” Tharix agreed, his breath a hot wash over the shell of my ear, and I bit down on a whimper as I begged the stars to listen just this fucking once.
At first there was nothing, an empty, eternal nothing which seemed to mock me in my time of need, and a tremor stole through me as I saw only death in my future.
But then, just as hope was about to abandon me, Tharix’s footsteps moving to my other side, like a beacon of light the power of the stars erupted through me, and my lips began to move before I could even understand the words.
“The power of the fallen has awoken, greed and glory blazing as one.
All fates hang in the balance as the flames rise from the hollow,
But the Dragon still may prosper if the paths of the enemy are thwarted.
Beware the one whose name is Nox, and seek the treasures of the ancient ring.
Use the stolen, ally with the might of your maker.
Not all starlight gleams.”
Lavinia gasped excitedly as the power of the prophecy released me and I sagged in my own skin, stumbling back from the edge of the precipice.
“The stars favour me still,” Lionel purred, his hand clapping down on my shoulder as he beamed smugly and I nodded, though my interpretation wasn’t quite so clean cut. “The Dragon will prosper.” He chuckled to himself as he and Lavinia began to dissect my words and I backed away, nodding demurely.
I didn’t agree with what he believed the stars were promising him, but it mattered not. He was a means to an end, and so long as I remained in his good graces, he offered me all I needed to conduct my experiments. So I stood there in silence as he twisted the words the stars had offered me into his own designs.
And I painted on a smile, just like always.
