[Wulfric Rexanthe]

all my life i've been in this fight
killing myself just to find the light

THE BASICS

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Name: Wulfric Rexanthe (Wulf)
Gender: he/him
Age: approx. 2500 | summer
Current residence: Çerisun Hall, Quenyi
Occupation: being a menace Ruling
Social standing: King
Loyalty: Weaver

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APPEARANCE

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Face claim: Colin O’donoghue

Height: 6’2”

Weight: 200 lbs

Description:

Wulf has always been a tall and imposing figure among his people - not broad-shouldered or bulky, but he has strong fists and a body honed for combat, towering taller than many Quenyese. His dark hair is kept mostly short for flight, shorn especially short around his long, tapered ears, free from his face made of hard lines and deep-set eyes of blue - the blue of a clear sky on the sweetest summer day. They are sharp eyes, though not unkind, and they shine when his snarky smirk becomes a real grin that's wide enough to show his sharpened canines.

Dragon Description:

Solaris. So radiant, she might as well be the sun herself, and just as mighty and beautiful. The largest of all dragons, brilliant gold, her molten eyes carrying the knowledge of countless centuries, there can be no denial that she is the mother of dragons. Her talons alone are larger than her bonded king, her teeth long as swords, sharp as them, and stronger than pillars of stone. Her scales are stronger than any metal, blinding when struck with the light, becoming fire incarnate. Her fire is white, blinding, terrible, and beautiful.

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BEHAVIOR

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Strengths:

charismatic | intelligent | accepting | adaptable | wise | compassionate | valiant | forgiving


Weaknesses:

hard-headed | sarcastic | intense | distant | proud | nosey | smart-ass | lenient

Motivation:

Protect my people. More than anything, he just wants to keep his people and the dragons safe, for his kingdom to thrive. Though he would avoid war, he is protective of his realm, he will fight to keep the world from descending into chaos again.

Personality:

Fierce loyalty and determination to overcome has defined Wulfric for as long as he can remember. Once he was a carefree, hopeful young man, but experience and hardship has shaped this once carefree soldier fighting the good fight into a king bound by duty and power. He has always tried to maintain his air of I don’t give a shit and keep his wolfish charm (ha, ha.) And even as king, he finds himself nearly in trouble more often than not for his smart mouth—it’s a good thing his dragon keeps him in check. Still, he isn't unkind by any means, and he is a man of company, a man that loves his people and would die for them - the dragons included. He carries the value of one for all close to his heart. Humble, he isn’t afraid to do dirty work or menial tasks, and is known for his minimal number of attending servants. Working with and living with and caring for a collective whole is a part of who he is, often craving companionship despite his desire to keep people at arm's length.

Dragon Personality:

With every passing century, Solaris came into her own, until she became the reigning dragoness she is today. She carries herself with regality and dignity, with far more sophistication than her rider, if she doesn’t say so herself. Most who lay eyes on her find her intimidating at best, down-right terrifying at worst—when she’s in one of her moods. She isn’t afraid to snatch someone up, and by now, it has become apparent that Wulf certainly does not control her. It is respect for him that helps her refrain when she’s been angered (or when a human morsel looks particularly juicy).

But Solaris is not all frigid ruthlessness. To her king, she is warm and mothering. To those he loves, she is protective and humorous. She has a sense of humor, though few see it. While not shy, she is not a conversationalist with anyone but her circle. She has surprisingly human interests—poetry, namely. Her heart is tender, in truth, but she guards it jealously.

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HERITAGE

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Birthplace: Quenyi

Family:

Iantia Rexanthe | 20 | great+ grand-daughter [adoptable]

History:

I’m just a boy, and I’ve seen the end of life as I know it, I think again. That’s how Knight Grael said it. When I was confused, he explained it further: ‘All you’ve ever known is war, boy. Of course peace will confuse you.’ His dark eyes looked so sad when he said it. Then he headed for the oak door, muttering about how it was going to be confusing for all of them for a while.

I look up at him now, but he’s scanning the gathered peoples’ on the docks. I follow his gaze around all the harrowed faces squinting at the bright sun and hot wind, waiting to see who made it home. Just like us. He waits for his brother, leaning on his crutch with anxious white knuckles. I swallow hard and look back at the ship as its ramp is shoved across the space between it and the dock. My heart pounds.

I don’t expect the armed soldiers that march down the planks. I definitely don’t expect the way they begin clearing a way through the crowd, pressing people back. Knight Grael looks as confused as I do, but pulls me to the side anyway. He’s been real protective of me since I was left in his care a few years ago, when I was four.

“Where is she?” I ask. “She should have been the first one! The letter said she—”

“Hush, boy. Watch.”

I scowl, but I listen. More soldiers leave the ship, these people just as armed. I watch them form a perimeter, and then off the boat…

“Mother!” I cry.

I know she’s heard me, even this far away. She’s looking every which way as she leaves the ship behind. Her hair is long now, and braided. Thinner. She’s got still-healing wounds, I can see them from here. Her arm is at such an odd angle, too, it—

Oh.

I bolt.

“Wulfric!” Knight Grael shouts, and he just misses the collar of my shirt.

The soldiers look startled at the sight of a seven-year-old rushing them, and they react too slowly to grab me as I dive between their legs. My mother sees me then, and she’s running for me, closing the space until she drops to the ground and I crash into her arms.

No. Arm. Just one. The other one is gone. I want to ask her why she has so many guards, why the king hasn’t come out yet, why, why—

But all I can do is cry into her shoulder while she strokes my hair. Whatever stone she wears at her breast is poking me in the chest, but I can only hug her tighter.

“Everything is alright now, Wulf,” comes her whispered promise.

“But your arm,” I sob. I don’t know why it upsets me so much.

She breaks our hug to hold my shoulder. I only realize then that there are other soldiers pouring out from the ship now as others begin to dock. Others are reuniting. Others are standing dutifully around my mother and I.

“Was an easy sacrifice to make to keep this safe.” She lets me go, and from beneath her buttoned shirt she produces the most beautiful jewel I ever thought could exist, bound in leather cord. Guards close rank around us, all but closing off the outside world.

“What is it?”

She smiles that small smile she used to make when she was going to tell me a new bedtime story. “A shard of the Worldsoul.”

I blink at her, uncomprehending. Everyone knows what the word worldsoul means, but a shard of it? She doesn’t particularly explain. Instead, she says, just watch.

She scans the ground, and then quick as an asp, she snatches up a lizard from the parched sandstone, before it can slip between the bricks. Wiping my nose, I watch as she brings the wriggling creature up to her necklace. It stills as it nears, and my fascination is piqued.

Its whole body ripples with light the moment it touches its nose. She must not know how the jewel works, because her amazement mirrors mine as she sets it on the ground. soldiers have turned to watch as the bland, sand-colored scales transform in a wave, turning brilliant, gleaming gold. Not animal-golden, but metal golden. And still, somehow it moves, glittering in the sun as small wings stretch in rays of light from its back before solidifying. Its little needle-claws became like fledgeling talons, spikes sprouting from its head and down its spine.

By the time its transformation finishes, a large crowd has gathered, trying to see through the wall of soldiers that guard us. The little beast, now winged and lean and glittering gold, shakes its head upon a serpentine neck. Then it sneezes a puff of smoke. I reach for it before my mother can stop me, and the beast climbs into my hands—

The creature lets loose a shrill cry just as I do, and I nearly drop her. Her. I can feel that in my head. This soul is a her.

And then the name seems to slip between my thoughts and takes root, and I realize I’m grinning. I don’t know what’s happened, but something deep within me has cracked open, and something beautiful is pouring out of it, and something beautiful is pouring in, too. It feels golden, like she does.

“We’re keeping her, right?” I whisper, and I look up at my mother. Home. My mother is home.

“Her?” she says.

I nod. “Her name is Solaris.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

My foot taps impatiently on the stone, unfortunately in time with the lively music everyone dances to. Any other day, I’d be out there with them. I love to dance. I love to drink and be merry with friends. Any other day but today, for today is Solaris’s tenth birthday, and I should be celebrating with her. She’s spent all day flying with her kind, and now it was our turn.

You think as though I’m a child, she snaps into my head.

Instead of flinch, I smirk. I’m seven years your senior.

In age perhaps, but certainly not maturity, princling.

I scoff, and I scan the crowd for my mother. I don’t find her dancing, but instead sitting with Knight Grael. My smirk softens. I think they love each other. I’m not sure if they’re hiding it from me, or if they’re hiding it from each other.

But… it seems to be my chance to slip away.

Outside in the central courtyard, the air is chilled with the promise of winter’s arrival, but it wakes me up as I throw out a mental call for my dragon. I hear a roar outside the palace walls, then the heavy beat of her wings. Another moment, and the golden dragon in all her splendor rose into the moonlight, and swiftly descended again.

I don’t move as she comes careening toward me, nor when she drops directly in front of me, large enough now that she makes the ground tremble. I wonder how long it will be before she can’t even fit in the city streets anymore.

The thought makes her sad in the same moment it does me, and I’m quick to banish it. “No sadness tonight!” I declare aloud. “Tonight we fly!”

She hums her agreement deep in her chest, and lowers herself so that I can nimbly find my way into the saddle. Once I’m settled, Solaris shakes out her head and neck, and she prepares to take off—

“Wait!”

We both freeze at the sound of a woman’s voice below. My brow drops, and I lift myself out of the saddle to see what Solaris is staring at, and I find it’s a woman. She’s beautiful with golden hair, her skin dark, and she looks about as small as a field mouse. In stature only, of course, because she stands tall and unafraid as the first of the dragons blows hot air in her face.

“Please, your highness,” she says.

“Interrupting Solaris’s birthday flight is brave, my lady,” I say. “But unwise.”

“Her birthday? Oh—nevermind.” The young woman has the brains to look sheepishly at Solaris. “I’m very sorry. Happy birthday.”

The woman turns to leave with crestfallen shoulders, and I frown.

Ask her what she wants, Solaris demands.

Why?

I want to know, now ask.

I roll my eyes, and then put on my most winning smirk. “My lady, don’t go!” She turns hopefully. “She would like to know why you stopped us.”

“I want to ride!” she blurts.

I blink at her.

“A dragon,” she clarifies. “I want to ride a dragon. Solaris. Please, just… take me with you.”

I can feel Solaris’s surprise, or maybe that’s just my own. “I don’t think that…” I trail off as Solaris begins to lower herself down. And I thought the question surprised me. “Solaris?”

There are other dragons in the world, she explains. Eggs being laid. Imagine the strength of your people if more could bond with them, if they were folded into our ranks. Let her fall in love with what she may only have with my kin.

My brows shoot up. I hadn’t thought of it.

It’s because I’m seven years your senior in maturity.

Fuck off.

I hold out my hand and motion for the woman. Her amber eyes pop open wide, but she doesn’t hesitate. “Grab just there… yes, now, reach…” She grabs my hand, and I haul her up the rest of Solaris’s shoulder. As if we were on a horse, I satuate her in front of me.

“We’re about to get real close. What’s your name?”

“Althelia,” she says, breathless.

“Who are you, Althelia?”

“A scribe, your highness.”

She looks over her shoulder, and suddenly I’m breathless. Her eyes are flecked with gold. Her top lip is just slightly fuller than the bottom, curved at the corners, a nearly a permanent smile. She grins at me.

You’re pathetic, Solaris says, and I mentally shove her away.

“You know who I am,” I say.

“Prince Wulfric Rexanthe, first dragon rider, heir to the jewel.”

“And you know her.”

“Solaris, the mother of all dragons.”

Solaris’s scales ripple, and she hums her approval with a soft growl that rumbles through her entire body. Althelia giggles a little, and I think she might be nervous. I wrap my arms under hers and around her waist, scooting closer until we’re flush against each other. I grab hold of the long horns of the saddle, and I nod for her to do the same.

“Are you ready to fly higher than the birds?” I murmur, turning just enough to see her. She’s blushing, and triumph flowers in my chest.

Determination flares in her eyes. “I’ve never been more ready.”

I grin. “Solaris?”

She starts to run, thundering across the courtyard she once fit in so well, beating her wings. The moment she lifts from the ground, Althelia squeaks—likely the most adorable sound I’ve ever fucking heard—and grabs the saddle tighter. I wrap an arm around her middle, and when she starts to laugh with euphoria the higher we climb, I decide that this won’t be the last time I fly with her.

𓆩⟡𓆪

You’re a fool, Solaris scolds.

For all her fearsomeness in her snarl, her bared teeth in my face, I do not cower. My glare is hard, my fists clenched.

I am human, and I won’t hear more of this, I snap back at her.

“Are they arguing?” Althelia whispers from where she sits on the rocks with our friend.

“Yeah. They do this. It’s annoying.” Fioren always thought it was strange. “I’m heading back.”

You will not die, and she will age! she all but roars in my head. Mother hasn’t aged a day since she took the jewel—I nearly look as old as her now, at twenty-five. Her voice lowers. I would not see your heart crushed, princling.

I grind my teeth. Perhaps I’ll never take the jewel.

Her head rises, staring down at me with a rumbling growl. Embers dance behind her fangs, but I know she won’t hurt me. Her temper can be great, but her love is greater.

Your people and my kin will need you, and they will need all of you, she says. A reliable king, not one lost in his grief for loving a mortal.

You cannot sway me, Solaris, I say. I’m going to marry her.

I feel a ripple of despair from her, and I hate it. We don’t even know if it’s immortality that it gifts! It could simply be a long life. She is bonded to your child, that must mean something.

She quiets, her eyes narrowing. We do not yet know how long a rider will live. We do not yet know how long I will live. You may go on for centuries without me.

All the more reason not to take the jewel. This conversation is done, Solaris. She is to be my wife. And I will never be king.

As I said, she sighed, you are a fool.

Her wings spread. With a running start through the tall, dry grass and the beating of her wings, she took off, her frustration seeping into my own. I stared after her, until she disappeared into a cloud.

“Is everything alright?” Althelia sounds worried.

I let loose a long, heavy breath, then turned to Althelia and Fioren. “It will be. She’ll come around.”

“To what?” she asks.

I give her that crooked smile she loves so much, and I hook my arm around her waist to tug her into me. She grins, staring up at me. “To us.” I shrug. “She simply fears for my heart.”

“Oh.” Her hand rests over it, and I cover it with mine. Then she whispers, “I’ll keep it safe.”

I tuck a finger under her chin and tilt it up. Her brow is knotted together. My thumb brushes over her lower lip, and my smile turns gentle before I lean down to fit my lips to hers. I breathe her in, and I kiss her until I feel her relax—and until I would not be able to resist continuing further, right here in the field. I pull back from her to touch my forehead to hers.

“We will live happy lives,” I promise. “I’ll keep yours safe too.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

My finger strokes the soft, infant cheek of the newborn cradled in one arm. Her breath is soft, those not-yet-settled eyes of hers shut as she slept. Thankfully. Mum was already reluctant to let me bring my daughter to court. I wouldn’t take no for an answer—Althelia needs to sleep, and she refuses to let a nursemaid step in.

I brush my thumb across her brow when she stirs. Little Astraea, everything to me, she is everything. The world would burn before I’d let anything happen to her. I know Solaris would do the same for us, for my little family. I kiss her little forehead, careful not to let my two-day old stubble scratch her awake.

“...are forming factions to the south that push us harder and harder every day, your grace.”

My face is still turned toward Astraea, but a single brow arches up as I tune in, watching from the corner of my eye.

“Factions?” My mother says. “I have yet to receive word of these from our riders.”

We have few of those, but there are enough that this should have been reported. Where was Dame Winylin? She was always the one delivering messages with her lightning-fast dragon…

“A dragon and rider fell, your grace,” the merchant says. “Dark purple, it was.”

That was where she was. My heart sank. Winylin and Sylaricka are dead.

There is silence from Solaris outside, but I feel her despair rippled down our bond. It takes a moment for her to speak. My grandson.

I know.

My mother turns to meet my eye. There’s sorrow there, and concern. I tuck Astraea closer to my chest, the ache already beginning there. I know what’s going to be asked of me. I know that I will obey. I don’t want to. I don’t want to leave my family, however long.

“My son and I will fly to the south and investigate. You were brave to bring us word.”

I’ve stopped listening. I’m staring at Astraea’s face, already memorizing every bit of her, from the weight of her to the curve of her nose and the sleepy furrow of her brow. I take my leave with a dip of my head, exiting the grand throne room to a dim corridor. I need to see Althelia. I need to tell her that I’ll be leaving for the south, only a month after our first child was born.

I halt in the middle of the hall, staring down at Astraea. She stirs, and stroke her brow until it relaxes. Before I know it my vision is swimming, and I’m against the wall and holding her tucked into my neck. I breathe her in. Not yet. I don’t want to leave yet.

With soft sympathy slipping between my thoughts, Solaris says, We must.

𓆩⟡𓆪

The first time I’d seen my mother assert her full power, I was ten. She secured her place on the throne, united the country, made it quite clear that no one would take the jewel. I remember how much I wanted to be like her. And I remember too, how afraid of her I was.

A cyclone of fire and wind tears across the battlefield, the prelude to my mother’s dragon, Abrax, who burned whatever the cyclone my mother controlled had missed. I watch from Solaris’s back, too far away, wings beating hard. We must hurry, I urge.

In response, her wings beat harder—now up, and up, and up. I know her plan, we’ve done this a thousand times. But never for this. Not for battle. Now I’m watching my mother tear apart a whole swath of people, our people, against us or not.

And as I near, I see the worst of it.

There is a white flag.

They’ve already surrendered.

”Now, Solaris!” I roar, securing my flight goggles.

Her wings tuck, pinning my legs, and she dives. The wind rips at me, trying to claw me from Solaris’s back, but I’m secure. As always when she dives, my heart careens into a beat so fast, they all blur together, like a hummingbird’s wings.

The thirty seconds it took felt like an eternity. This plan had been made in the quick minutes since we laid eyes on the battlefield. My mother has to be stopped. This is not subduing an uprising, this is slaughter. Is this how she’d been during the Great War?

One heartbeat. Another.

The impact is worse than I imagined. Solaris crashes into Abrax and it’s like the entire world crashes apart. I hang on tight as the dragons grapple, and I’m not sure how I avoid the flying claws and fire. Abrax is another dragon that Mum created, an elder as Solaris is, and nearly her match in size. He screeches his shock at the attack, but all fire cuts off, the cyclone spinning out.

Abrax disengages, just managing to recover his flight and sweep away with a furious bellow. Solaris roars back and gives chase, toward the nearby cliffs. Abrax lands with a crash, claws digging into the stone and sending it crashing below. We follow suit, and the moment we land, Sol has her shoulder angled down and I’m launching from the saddle.

“Mother!” I shout over the wind.

She’s already dismounted, approaching with fury smeared across her face. The wind whips her short hair in every direction, as I’m sure mine looks. Her jewel gleams on her chest, so stark against the smoke and grit of battle on her skin. I wonder, suddenly, if this was the skin she’d always liked best.

What was it Knight Grael had said? It’ll be confusing for everyone.

“How dare you?” she snaps when she nears. “I am your mother and your queen—”

“They surrendered!”

“They dared break our fragile peace! The peace I fought and sacrificed for!”

“You’re slaughtering them, not fighting them,” I growl, close enough to see how wild her eyes are.

She grips the jewel. “They seek to take it.” She sounds frantic. Paranoid, even. I’d never heard this from her. “They would take the jewel and wreak havoc on the world!”

“That’s what you’re doing, mother!”

“I am protecting this realm!”

“Did you even try to negotiate?”

She blinks at me, as if she hadn’t even considered such a thing. Then her face hardens. “Our fire is negotiation enough.”

The silver dragon behind her releases a jet of dark flame, and fire licks at her one fist in punctuation. I shake my head, unsettled by the display.

“This isn’t you,” I say.

“This is war,” she snaps.

“The war ended, Mum, you ended it!” I sweep my arm out at the burning army. They’re still screaming. “These are boys and girls fighting for a Duke angry that you have hoarded all the dragon eggs for the wealthy, that you tax his lands so steeply that his people go hungry! Your people!”

“Rebuilding isn’t free.”

I shake my head. “Power doesn’t suit you.”

“My power brought peace!”

I always knew the Great War had changed my mother. I had seen it. She’s hard with jagged edges. Looking back, I can see her paranoia, with all the guards, the secret passageways, plans, and safety nets to protect the jewel. I can even perhaps see her cruelty. She’s been hoarding wealth and power. And I wish I had seen it sooner.

“You have to stop,” I all but beg her. “You can’t keep burning your own people.”

She looked back at the battlefield, frowning. I watch her eyes, the same eerie blue as mine. My heart is a loud thud, thud, thud in my ears. I don’t want to fight her.

“They must be punished.”

“No. They’ve suffered enough. You’ve burned them alive, Mum.”

I can see her fury rising over her face again.

“Punish the Duke,” I try. “He is responsible for this, not those simply following orders.”

If he isn’t dead already.

“A public execution…” she ponders, and I cringe. When had she become this? “That will do.”

I don't know if I should be relieved. This has set a dangerous precedence for her rule… and something must be done about it.

𓆩⟡𓆪

I missed Astrae’s first laugh. I don’t know why it’s keeping me awake, years later. She’s two now. Walking. Babbling. Her hair is flaxen like her mother’s, bouncing with ringlets on tan skin, around my blue eyes. She slumbers on her mother’s chest now.

My mother made me miss that first, sweet laughter with her violence. I look away from the star-painted ceiling to my wife and daughter. Althelia’s face is peaceful. I remember how she looked when we returned home, just about unscathed. We’d both wept, and more when I held Astraea again.

I look at the clock on the wall. One in the morning — it was time to go. There’s an uncomfortable knot in my chest while I dress, a grim cloud forming around my thoughts. I take up a lantern, careful not to let the soft light fall on my family. I turn and look at my two girls one last time before I unlatch a shelf to open a secret passageway, and I vanish into the dark.

I travel for what feels like forever, nothing but the lantern to light my way. What might my mother think, if she only knew what her secret escapes were being used for. Every step feels more wrong, but I know it is right. I trudge on, until I find myself before the back of a wooden bookcase inlaid in the stone wall. I knock three times, pause, then one, pause, then two more. After a moment, the bookcase slides aside, and warm firelight spills into the passageway.

A shadow in the shape of a man overtakes it. “Took you long enough,” Fioren huffs.

“Needed my beauty sleep,” I say with a wink as I pass.

“Need more I’d say.”

A shoe flies across the room and strikes Fioren in the chest. “Oi!”

“That how you talk to your future king?” Greta laughs, silver hair spilled across the red sofa she lounges on, now without a shoe.

I grimace. “I’m not.”

Fioren rolls his eyes, patting my back as he passes. I sneer a little at him as he flops down into the armchair.

“Why do you think we made you meet us tonight, Wulf?” Another voice. A man with long red hair steps out of the shadows, and I sigh with a reluctant smirk.

“Roth.” I looked at Fioren and Greta, and then I give a great roll of my eyes.

“We are on the eve of a coup and you want to lecture me about taking the jewel?”

Roth nearly growls. “You have to keep that power safe, Wulf.”

“So we hide it! Somewhere no one can find it. We drop it in the ocean.”

Greta huffs a laugh. “Someone will find it. You know they will.”

“That power corrupted my mother. I want nothing to do with it.”

Fioren stands again and faces me, grasping my shoulders. “You have to protect it. And to protect it, you need its power.”

“That power ruined her,” I snap. “It took my mother from me.”

I brush him off and pace to the window. Outside is pitch black, the heavy clouds blocking the moon. Even still, I can see the shape of my dragon in the expanded dragonyard below. Her eyes glitter in the dark staring up at the window.

What is it? Her inquiry wraps around my thoughts and rifles through them, seeking out what’s upset me.

Stop that, I tell her, and simply show her. I can practically feel her heavy sigh.

It wasn’t the power that did it, she says gently. Her own mind turned against itself. She cannot wield this any longer. You must. Your people need you.

I hate that she might be right.

𓆩⟡𓆪

“No,” I say, firm and stern. “That’s final.”

“You don’t get to tell me no, Wulfric!”

Althelia squares off with me as if she isn’t five feet tall. Her bare feet are planted on the stone, robe billowing around her body in a way that might entice me any other time. Not now. By the Mist, not now.

“I will not leave you to face your mother alone,” she insisted.

“I won’t be alone. I have Solaris.” I gesture to her out in the courtyard from where we stand under cover.

“And she has Abrax!”

Abrax is no match for me, Solaris snarls. I don’t pass along the message.

I realize how loud we are, how public this is. I glance about us and take my wife’s hand. She’s angry, but she follows without question as I lead her away, until we’re inside and I find us a small storage room full of crates and old scrolls. As I shut the door, Althelia storms to the other side of the room and spins to face me. I hold her eyes, feeling helpless and frustrated. I sigh.

“You have to stay out of this,” I say softly.

Her hands ball up until her knuckles are white. The tears in her eyes hurt. “I won’t leave. I’m not leaving you.”

I close the space between us, taking her face in my hands to thumb away her tears. “Astraea must be kept safe,” I whisper, pleading. “I don’t know what will happen here. What my mother will do.”

The betrayal will break her. I know it will, and I can’t think about it for too long or I know I won’t do it.

"Do you remember when we traveled to Avonbell Reef?" I whisper. "Do you remember how beautiful it was? Peaceful?"

Her brows knotted together, her face nearly crumping into tears. "Yes."

"And what about Solis Refuge?"

"Yes."

"Sela, and Dain?"

She nodded.

"My mother can't reach a single one of those places. She cannot touch you or our daughter. Please, love."

Althelia drops her eyes, her lip trembling. I draw her in, and she falls against me, weeping against my chest. I kiss the top of her head, holding her tightly. I have to breathe deep not to let the tears fall myself. I don’t want to send them away, I don’t want to.

There is that old, familiar sympathy from Solaris.

I know, I whisper to her. We must.

𓆩⟡𓆪

She isn’t supposed to be here. It’s all I can think as my heart caves in on itself. Desperate eyes are on Althelia, frozen in her terror as she stares back at me through a wall of fire. Why are you here?

“Let her go!” I roar over the chaos.

Steel is clashing below, just outside the ruined walls of the throne room, once so beautiful in their color and carvings. In the sky, bellows and screeches fill the air as elder dragons battle. Solaris is too focused on survival to spare a thought.

My mother is behind her, sword pressed to her back. Wind sweeps through the throne room, bolstering the fire, buffeting me like it wants to push me back. But this is my mother. She doesn’t want to kill me, but she does want to hurt me. How did she even get Althelia? How was she here, how? She was on the ship, I watched her get on the ship.

It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that my mother has her.

“You have to stop this, Mum!” I charge closer to the flames, and they burst higher, the pain on her face twists into fury.

“You’re my son!” She screamed, her voice ragged. “You cannot be allowed to get away with this, you can’t do this!”

“Mum ple—”

She lets out a sharp cry in the same moment there is an earth-rending shriek from the sky. My eyes widen, and snapping my head around to look out through the broken wall. There is a lull in the fighting below. Then screams, shouts to get out of the way.

The mighty Abrax strikes the ground with such force, more of the palace fell away. Solaris roars her triumph from above. My mother’s dragon is dead.

”NO!” comes my mother’s wild cry.

I spin, and I see it in the queen’s face, warped by anguish and rage. My eyes flare wide as her single arm pulls her sword back. I leap through the fire. It catches on my clothes, singes my hair and skin, but I’m there, I grab my wife, I spin her behind me—

I don’t feel the pain. Not that pain. When the sword plunges down through my back, my lung, the only pain I feel is the sword plunging into Althelia, too, clutched too closely, too desperately. I barely hear the wild bellow of a dragon outside.

I cough, sputtering, falling to my knees while I try to hold Althelia up. It hit her heart. I can see it in our mixing blood, in the rapid fade of light. “Althelia!” I sob. “Love.. it’s alright—” I wheeze. “Please, Thea—”

Her lids flutter. “Wulf…” There’s sorrow in her eyes. “Astraea…”

A tear slips from the corner of her eye, and she’s limp, gone, just like that.

“Wulfric!”

The sword yanks free, and I don’t even cry out. I fall over my wife. I cough, wheeze, sob. Althelia. My Althelia. My mother hauls me back, and try as I might, I don’t have the strength to haul Althelia with me. She falls to the floor, and I’m rolled to my back. I wheeze again, and I can only taste blood.

My mother leans over me, the jewel ripped free from her neck. She presses it to my chest with wild panic in her eyes. “Accept the jewel!” she cries.

I don’t answer. All I can think is that I love Althelia. I didn’t get to say it before she was gone. I’ve never felt any greater certainty. I love her for her strength, for her beautiful brute force, for always seeing what no one else did. I love her for everything the world uses against us. I love her for fighting with me, every step, even when I told her not to.

“Wulfric, you must take the jewel, or you’re going to die!”

I don’t care. I would say it if I had a voice left to speak. I’m falling so fast, the world is smearing around me, blackening. My heart is a dull thud, thud, thud.

Take the jewel! Solaris begs.

Then I feel despair. She’s gone.

Yes, she is. Your people are not. Your daughter is not!

Althelia’s last word—our daughter’s name.

“Wulfric!” My mother’s tears fall on my face.

Your daughter needs you. I need you!

Astraea. I love her so damned much. So much that I force a hand to grasp the jewel, and I do something I swore to myself I would never, ever do. For her, I for once do not hold back. I draw from a deeper power.

I claim the jewel, and my soul unravels into fire and wind.

𓆩⟡𓆪

Not for the first time, I think about how much I hate this jewel. But I think now I hate it more than ever. Standing before Astraea’s tomb, I think of ways to rid myself of it. But I can’t, can I? Someone will find this power. Someone will abuse it, as my mother did. I’m cursed to remain as I am, to watch everyone I love fade and die and I just keep living. My own grand-son appears to be over two decades my elder.

Solaris comes up behind me with her heavy steps, and she leans her nose down to gently nudge my shoulder.

“I miss her,” I whisper.

She lived a long life, she says with a comforting hum.

One hundred and one, and still, it didn’t feel like enough time. She’d outlived her husband, but she was held by her father as she faded. I look to the grave beside her, and a different kind of grief plunges through my chest like the sword had. Althelia’s death had not been so peaceful. I wonder if the wound will ever dull.

Come, Solaris says. Let us go and celebrate her life, not linger on her death.

I take a deep, shuddering breath, blinking away the sudden blur in my vision. Yes, I agree, and I clamber up onto my dragon’s enormous back. She never stopped growing, even in nearly a century and a half.

The oasis of cyprus trees and colorful stone is left behind, and the royal tombs with it. Solaris leaves the area, walking until we’re in dry grass and dirt. Then, she picks up into a run. Her talons gouge into the earth as her wings beat hard, buffeting dust clouds until we’re into the air, climbing toward the clouds.

I feel lighter, my heart races. Flying always helps, and as my second lids close and Solaris picks up speed toward a break in the clouds, I remind myself that I won’t lose everyone. I won’t lose my dragon.

’Your’ dragon? Solaris says, sounding offended. I should think that you are my rider.

I grin, and we climb higher, higher, higher. The gap in the clouds is closing, and without instruction, Solaris beats her wings harder, picking up speed. I hang tight to the saddle horns, until finally, we break clouds, and she levels out in the glorious landscape of clouds.

I wonder, sometimes, if this is what the silvermist is like. Waves, puffs, and rolls of clouds extend into the sun, some climbing in towering plumes. Some distance away, a great pillar of bruised clouds flares with lightning.

Solaris flaps her wings again, and just because, I reach an arm out to call upon the wind; with a gentle push, I create a draft for her to glide on. She stretches her wings wide just as the sun catches on her scales, and her glittering becomes so brilliant that I have to squint.

Sometimes your scales simply mirror the sun, I swear, I gripe.

She releases a jet of flame ahead of us and flies straight through it, so that I have to duck behind one of her spikes, lest I be burned.

“Hey!” I shout aloud. “I’m not fireproof!”

For a man whose soul is made of dragonfire, she hummed in amusement, that must be addressed.

I shake my head. Let me know when you figure that out.

We glide on, back toward the palace, to the coliseum, where the newly formed Ascendants wait for their king. Today is Althelia’s birthday, and finally, I have been able to implement one of those fantastical ideas she’d had. I can see her lounging back on her dragon, Rhodyn, waxing on about competing riders, or a great legion of them.

As we near, Solaris knows what to do. She slows, and with one last look at the glorious view, I will the wind and call upon fire to join hers as she releases another massive stream of white dragonfire ahead of them. The clouds dissipate before us, and with the ray of sun that bursts through, so does the sun herself.

We are radiant. She releases a roar that can surely be heard for miles, vibrating in my ears. The dragons waiting below roar back, with the crowd echoing their cries.

’You would share the magic if it were yours, wouldn’t you?’ Althelia had said.

Of course, I’d replied. Of course I would.

I had never realized how much more complicated it would be. To wield such power was as much a curse as a gift, and I am careful about who I share it with. But Althelia wanted so badly for magic to be for all. How could I dishonor her?

So it was time for the Solar Trials. The winner would have a quest bestowed on them, and should they complete the quest, they would be gifted a boon from the jewel. I hope I won’t come to regret it.

𓆩⟡𓆪

“Calm, Solaris!” I cry both aloud and through our bond.

She is beyond consolation. The towering dragoness tears talons so mighty into the rocky Dragon Dells that a whole tower of red stone begins to crumble. With a rush of wind, I’m able to blast debris away from myself. It’s hardly a thought now. After seven hundred years, these things become second nature.

She roars in her rage, and a white stream of fire bathes the stone until it begins to melt.

”We will find them, Sol, we will!”

If she doesn’t stop, she’ll destroy the nesting grounds completely. As she makes to swipe at another pillar of stone, I rush in front of her, throwing up a wall of fire high enough to catch her attention. I back away from the heat as she bellows at it—at me—and steps backwards.

They stole my children!

And they will pay for it, I promise her. Your clutch will be unscathed.

Her sides are heaving. I’ve never felt such fury and fear in her, not since the day I took the jewel.

They did not bond, she snarls.

I know.

They’re stolen! Why?

Sol, I don’t know, but whatever they’re doing—

THEY WILL BURN!

I flinch, but she doesn’t notice. There will be no stopping her, not until those four eggs are returned to her until she deems it time for them to accept a bond. This is the first clutch she’s laid in five centuries, and they are precious. Both to us, and surely in value on the black market.

How do we find them? she says, and my heart breaks at her pain.

I can’t answer her, and I hate it. I don’t know how to find them beyond flying high and searching—something they’d be expecting. It’s hard to take cover in the desert, but natives know how to do it.

I work my jaw.

There is… I take a heavy breath, and Solaris lower’s her head so she can pin me with her great molten gold eyes. I hold fast. There is the stone.

She jerks her head up with a short roar. No!

Firesight will find them!

She snarls. That stone nearly cost me my first clutch.

My brow is furrowed at her. The first time she laid a clutch, she wanted to protect them. For her three eggs, she plucked one of her scales and urged my mother to touch the jewel to it as it sat upon her eggs. But none of us knew what the jewel could do yet. We didn’t know that the jewel would call upon the eggs the scale sat upon as well. The process, once begun, had been hard to stop, and it nearly drained the eggs dry to turn that scale into a stone of immense power. A dragonstone, they called it, before Solaris cast it into the Mountain End.

Your clutch lived.

You yourself say too much power is a curse, and yet you seek more?

For the sake of your children, who are my people as much as the Quenyese that bond with them!

She doesn’t answer, but her breath is slowing, her eyes narrowed in thought. It takes but a moment before she lowers herself so that I might reach her back. I heave a sigh of relief before I start hauling myself up her shoulder, until I’m seated comfortably.

Hold tightly. I hope you’re prepared for a journey, she says.

I’m not, but I know she won’t care. She turns and with a mighty down-beat, her wings launch us with only a couple of steps. I don’t remember the last time she ever flew so fast or so hard. It feels like seconds before we’ve broken the clouds, minutes before the entire capital is just a speck in the desert below.

𓆩⟡𓆪

[ content warning: some gore ]

I knew someday we’d find what kills me, but like anyone might, I’d really fucking hoped it would be on my terms.

I clutch my ribs, but blood is a steady flow through my fingers, pouring from the arrow-wound. It’s been too long now, it should be healed by now. I can feel Solaris’s fear as she scours the volcano. She knows where she threw it, but the world changes much over the course of centuries.

Hold on, little one, she begs.

“I’m alright,” I croak, then remembering she can’t hear me, I’m alright.

We must turn back. I can hear the change in her wingbeats.

No! We’re too close. We find that stone, we find the eggs.

This motivates her. Nothing motivates her more than her children do. That, and threats to my life. I’m glad she believes me, that she continues to search. I’m not glad to lie to her. I don’t think I’m alright. I think that whatever magic that arrow struck me with will kill me before we reach the town at the base of the mountain.

The mountain rumbles, and it shakes with a spray of fiery orange from the top and from several. The whole world seems to lurch, and I stumble a few steps.

An arrow sweep by my ear and sparks off the stone before me. I spin, nearly falling again, and there’s my attacker, standing high upon an outcropping of black stone. Their loose clothing billows in the wind, their scarf nearly coming free from their face. They have another arrow nocked and ready.

“Good thing I tripped,” I call with a crooked grin. “Else I’d have lost the chance to face my assassin. Their scarf anyways.”

We stay that way for a long moment, staring at one another. And then they fire.

I throw up my hands with a wall of air and a rush of fire, and the arrow incinerates before it reaches me. I wince with a hiss at the movement. By the Mist, this fucking hurts. I don’t have time to nurse my wound—the assassin leaps from the stone and rolls when they hit the ground.

“Really, to track us across the desert,” I huff, my sword ringing as it’s freed. “Is it marriage you want? Who can blame you.”

They say nothing, predictably. They rush me, and with fire racing up my sword, I meet their suddenly drawn steel. They’re impossibly fast, and for a moment, I wonder if they’ve got magic. I stop wondering when I’m blasted back by some invisible force, and I slam back against lavastone.

I see stars, pain lighting up every nerve. I blink, struggle to see, and then the assassin is upon me. I roll, and steel sparks against stone beside my head.

Wulf?

I’m fine! Focus! I shut her out, and I hear a roar.

She hates it when I do that, but I have to focus, I lurch to my feet and dodge another strike. I could kill them now. Incinerate them. It would be easy, but —

“Who sent you?” My smile has broken for a sneer. “Who are you?”

They rush me, and I barely bring my sword up in time.

“Did you steal the eggs?”

They pause, eyes narrowing. For a moment, I think they’re interested enough to stop attacking. A lover of dragons maybe. “Yes.” My chest burns. “And now we take the jewel.”

The violence cracked like lighting. The thread of tension tightened, snapped, and then, all at once, it surrounds me. Two more appear, all dressed the same. They stole the eggs. Fury crackles through me.

I hold onto control, but only barely. The power of the jewel thrashes at my muscles, feeding me power, getting me drunk on it. And the anger that surges through me when I think of Solaris’s pain… it is all too easy to turn myself over to it.

My magic roars in my veins and my fingertips, flowing out, through my sword, sweeping in an arc as I slash at my assailants. Traitors to Quenyi and the dragons, is all I can think. It’s time to show them who they are betraying. To show them what I am capable of.

Pain slithers along my arm. A sword nicked me, just as I rolled out of its path. Too quickly another killer lunges for me, only to stop, rigidly, when my hand covers their mouth. The air trapped within the person’s neck bulges at my command. Their eyes loll in their head as air pressed outward, stretching the skin to its limit. The wind explodes free, taking strips of skin and hunks of meat with it, spraying blood all over my face and arm.

The person falls before me, and there is almost a tangible high as the assassins seem to pause and stand in horror. But then they recover, three more left. One growls and lunges, and I forgo my sword. I step to the side, and the assassin ducks below my flaming punch and twists, shifting their weight to bring their sword up. I jump back, the tip of the blade and their arm.

Fire seers through the fabric and across their flesh, and they cry out as it begins to ripple and bubble under the heat. Their agony rises to a torturous scream, and she drops the sword. She twists and fights with her free hand, but I hold fast.

I release my right hand from their arm, which has almost burned away to the bone. I sweep my hand out at the next attacker as they lunge, and they’re shoved back by a rush of wind. Then taking advantage of their shock, I press my palm to the assassin’s face, and their body seizes. It jerks and contorts as flames lick around her eyes, boiling them in their sockets. Their throat swells with the internal blaze, and they finally go limp. I toss the charred corpse aside.

With stunning clarity, I hear the distinct twang of a bowstring piercing the air. I move instinctively to the side, and I roar like a dragon as the arrow pierces my shoulder. The pain sears through every nerve in my body, reminding me with sudden acute awareness of the wound in my ribs. It seizes my muscles and forces me to blink dizzying blackness from the edges of my sight.

Another arrow is nocked. I raise a flaming hand.

Solaris drops down from the sky in all her glittering glory. With a screeching roar, she lands hard over the top of the assassin, fire gathering in her parted jaws as she caged the person in her talons—

Solaris, stop!

She barely does, and turns a furious eye at me.

I stagger over, and she immediately lowers a wing to support me as I stand over the prone assassin. They stare hatefully back.

“Where are the eggs?”

They’re silent. My face twists in rage, in pain. I lean on Sol’s talon and clamp my hand over their scarfed mouth. I get close enough to see the details in their dark brown eyes.

”Where. Are. They?” I grit out. “You saw what happened to your friends.”

They’re silent. Their eyes are defiant.

Their face explodes with my cry of frustration as I force every ounce of power I have in me down their throat and outward. Covered in blood, trembling in pain, I turn my eyes skyward. Solaris lowers her head, and hanging from her horn is the Dragonstone, contained in an amulet.

I huff a laugh, delirious, and grab it, don it. I can’t process the feeling that rushes through me. Only that I turn and lift my hand with flame flickering from my bloody palm. I stare. And I stare. Sol’s eggs. Show me her eggs.

And there they are, in the city at the base of Mountain End. Thieves, all dressed the same, three eggs in a box on a cart… and the city is on fire. Why is the city on fire? My heart races feebly. And then I see it—a dragon, one we don’t know. Where has this one been? Bright green, and burning the town. Where you laid your first clutch, I say, and I feel her rush of anticipation. It’s burning.

She helps me to her back with her wing, and I can’t help the sounds I make with the pain. I snap the arrow and toss half aside, like the wound in my ribs. Fear rushes through her—I need a healer, and fast.

Eggs first, I insist. Fire. Portal. Now!

She growls, but obeys. She blasts white fire, and willing travel through the amulet, Solaris launches through the portal with a mighty beat of her wings.

𓆩⟡𓆪

Sol has only killed one other dragon in all the centuries we’ve been alive, and I can feel every moment of her pain as she kills another. Leaning against a corner in the shadow of an alley, I watch her grab a hold of the dragon’s wing, her talons raking deep into their chest. The enemy screeches and manages to slash her away, and my heart pounds at the sight of her wounds.

The clutch, I think weekly. I have to find them.

I hold up my hand with flickering flames once more. The view is hazy—I need to focus. I grit my teeth and put out the flame when a black dragon swoops low overhead, and I force myself not to stagger as I leave the alley. Most have fled the city by now, and those who haven’t are being carried away by reinforcement riders.

My boot slips in bloody dirt and catches on a leather strap —

A little boy. It’s a sword strap that’s too big for him my foot hooked in. He stares at me from the ground with half-lidded, sightless eyes, and a broken spear in his chest. My breath is swept away from me, and I feel sick.

This is more than theft and assassination. This was an attack. Why here? Why raze the city built upon the first nesting ground?

Wulfric! Solaris sounds wild, desperate.

I cast my eyes up at her battle, where two more dragons have come to her aid. From here, all I see are angry dragons.

Solaris.

Something isn’t right! This dragon is like an animal—just a beast—he can’t—

The dragon in question roars and goes for her throat, and she can’t spare a thought anymore. I know she’s alright. She is. She has help. But figuring out what she means is another matter. I keep moving, unwilling to distract her from her fight. With a wince, I force myself on, until I find a fire that burns on its own. A bakery burned to the ground.

I grasp the dragonstone where it rests beside the jewel. In the blaze, it is clear. I recognize where they are, those three eggs now placed upon… What the fuck is that?

Horror twists my features, and I banish the scene and the fire itself, sucking the air from it entirely. And then new adrenaline has me fucking running. I like to think I’m coordinated as I race down the slope of mainstreet and toward the coast, where I know there is a latticework of volcanic stone, a recognized monument now.

It feels like forever before I finally make it to the arches and spires of black stone. There, in the center, are the eggs, and the cultists surrounding them. There are bodies arranged around them. Some, I realize to my horror, are young dragons. This is where the hatchlings had gone.

It’s as if my wounds have healed over—I don’t feel them as I race toward them, toward Sol’s children and fallen descendants. They all spin, pausing whatever magic they were doing, and draw their weapons.

I take the dragonstone amulet in my hand, and I will it to change, as I’d watched my mother do so long ago. The woven metal surrounding the stone reformed, stretching, filling, solidifying into a sword in my grasp, the stone gleaming in the hilt.

And whatever fire magic I knew before? It’s nothing compared to the white first that matches my dragon’s, exploding from the hilt until the blade is white-hot too. The people, all dressed the same as the assassins, come rushing with hungry, violent eyes.

And the first two are cut down like stalks of grass. My blade swipes through them with a flare of dragon-hot fire, and their bodies fall in separate pieces. There isn’t even any blood. I could incinerate someone with this, I think.

And so I do, leaving nothing but charred bone behind.

𓆩⟡𓆪

Am I any better than my mother?

The smell of burning flesh is assaulting my senses. I want to retch, reminded too much of the carnage my mother wrought. The bodies—if they could be called that—are too numerous. I’m staring at the carnage I wrought. They’re just skeletons with scarred flesh still clinging to them, scattered about what was once considered a sacred place.

The city still burns,Wulfric, and you are gravely wounded, Solaris says, and turns her head around from where she hovered protectively over her eggs. You have five minutes before I drag you to a healer.

I work my jaw, and my only answer is to turn back to the road behind me. I can barely stand, adrenaline waning as my slowly seeping wounds hurt worse and worse with every moment. I take off anyways, my steps unsteady, even as I run. I put out every fire I pass, but soon I am passing more dead bodies than living ones. Some still flee. Others begin to weep with relief as I put the fires out.

But ten flaming houses deep, I come to the grim realization that this city has already been burned to the ground. These citizens will need a new home. I’m close to the square now, where the reinforcement dragons have been collecting the survivors who make it there.

The fire pops and cracks around me, but it’s quickly extinguishes, suffocated when I stripe the flames of air. Somewhere, I hear a building collapse. The square isn’t far, and I keep clearing flames in my path.

I come to a sharp halt. “By the Allways…”

Bodies litter the square. Men, women, children scattered about with their remains twisted in unnatural positions, burned, some are still aflame, their faces locked in horror, even in death.

And mournful dragons are perched on the ruined houses, their riders all harrowed. None of them have seen such horror. Quenyi is a peaceful country, with no trouble but thieves and gangs. My chest heaves, and I fight the urge to empty my stomach. My people are looking at me helplessly. That dragon had seen these people gathering and slaughtered them.

I wonder if, now that the magic has cleared from her mind, if she will be able to live with what she’s done. She already vanished.

I understand. I don’t know how to live with what I’ve done. It's easy to forget what a sin is when I’m fighting for my life. But the truth doesn’t change according to my ability to stomach it. I laid waste to those cultists just as thoroughly as the dragon had to this town. As mercilessly as my mother had done to those revolutionaries.

I cast my eyes around the gathered dragons and riders, my vision pulsing with black at the edges. I’m holding my side, but I refuse to lean against anything, no matter how much I want to. I heave a deep breath.

“We cannot undo what has been done,” I shout. “But we must face it. We fight against the wickedness in this world, even if we fight alone! Today was a harrowing day, but there are people that live because of you! People who hope because of you! So long as we draw breath, we hope! Hope is what makes us strong. It is why we are here. It is what we fight with when all else is lost! And today, in the face of horror, hope has held fast in the talons of your dragons, in the keenness of your minds. Do not let it go! Fly for the survivors, and remind them of the same: If we breathe, we hope.”

Their heads seem to be a little bit higher, and they all dip their heads and take off, but I motion for four of them to stay. I try to walk closer to them, but I stumble, and I decide it’s best for them not to see their king fading fast from his wounds.

Wulfric, Solaris snaps. How bad is it?

Peachy.

I can feel her snarl, and I sense her tucking her eggs against her chest before taking off.

“You two,” I point to a mottled dragon and a white one, and they and their riders sit tall. “There are more survivors—find them. And you two,” a blue dragon and a serpentine pink one, “Fly for the nearest down for supplies.”

Wulfric!

The four dragons all peel off for their duties. And no sooner do I drop to my knees, and I slump against the ruined well beside me.

Alright, it might be bad, I manage, light-headed.

She’s already here. She doesn’t bother to land, instead grabbing me with her free talons, caging me in. The movement hurts so much that I cry out, and then—

Blackness.

𓆩⟡𓆪

I take three steps forward, and she’s got her back against the door. She’s staring up at me with those green eyes, wide with anticipation. She’s a rider, muscled and curved in all the right places. My hands rest on the slope of her hips, thumb brushing under her shirt. I lean down close, until we share breath.

“Open. The fucking. Door,” I order in a low voice.

She doesn’t take her eyes off of me as her hand finds the latch to the cracked wooden door. It swings open behind her, and before she moves I hook my arm around her waist. She gasps and then giggles as I sweep her into the room and kick the door shut behind us.

I don’t know who kisses who first, but both our lips come together in a clash of craving. She makes a small sound, and rational thought slips from my grasp. I cradle the back of her head, fingers digging into the strands of her hair, tilting her head right where I want her.

She pulls away to take a breath, and I make a playful growl like a dragon being taken from its prey. She grins and yanks me toward the rickety bed, going for my shirt—

Fuck.

She stops when I’m bare chested. It takes her a second to process what she’s looking at. Not the two scars from those stupid arrows, three hundred years ago. No. At the jewel hanging from my neck, still fashioned in the same amulet my mother had put it in.

“You…” She blinks at me.

“Are the king, yes,” I sigh. I hate this part.

She shakes her head in disbelief, and then she immediately drops into a curtsey. I roll my eyes and step toward her, tilting her chin up to look at me.

“Darling, I was about to ravish you, and you curtsey? Now?”

“You’re the king,” she whispers.

“And sometimes, I really don’t want to be,” I huff. I take her hand and pull her back up to her full height. “Especially with a partner.

Her brows rise. “Why?”

I give her my most devilish crooked smirk, and I step closer still, until we share the same breath once more. I’m so close to her mouth, I can feel the heat of her lips.

“When I bed a woman,” I whisper. “She’s to be desperate for me. For me. Not the king. Not the power.”

I back her up until the backs of her knees hit the back, and she falls back to sit on the creaky mattress. I stare down at her, and I frown. This part is always hard, too.

“Worse, when she feels like she must simply because I am king.”

She must see something in my face when I say it, because hers turns sad. “That sounds lonely.”

I clench my teeth. You have no idea.

I don’t want to think about the chasm of loneliness that awaits me in every quiet moment. I’m so tired of being alone, but I know there is nothing but sorrow for me in the depth of companionship I crave. I know that I will never again have what I did as a mortal.

But I pretend. I must pretend, or I’ll go mad, so I shrug dramatically. “Well, I suppose you’ve got the opportunity to stave it off, darling.”

I step up to the edge of the bed and lean down, and I cage her with an arm on either side. Her face darkens into a delicious shade of red, and my grin turns wicked.

“So tell me. What’s changed in the last two minutes?”

She bites her lip and glances at the jewel, then back up to meet my eyes. “Nothing.”

I grin and scoop her up enough to toss her fully on the bed, and I follow, hungry for her, and ravenous for the illusion of anonymity.

𓆩⟡𓆪

Solaris is angry with me. She flies high above with the other dragons and their riders, golden scales gleaming in the sun. I’m riding a horse, and of course, this has deeply offended her. The fine-boned beast beneath me is lovely, but not as lovely as her.

You cannot flatter me, she says. Not while you ride my dinner.

This isn’t your dinner, and I need to be with them.

She doesn’t answer, and I sigh.

“Your Majesty? Are you alright?”

“Hm?” I look over at Riddy. “Oh. Yes, Chancellor, my dear dragon is simply easily offended.”

She smiles. “She doesn’t like your horse.”

“She’s sore any time I take a mount that isn’t her.”

She opens her mouth to speak when a horn blows from the back of the column of Selanian travelers, hauling an army’s worth of goods in a caravan. The least I can do with my Ascendants is escort them, but we’re only a few hours into our journey from Saltsun to Cerisun; why was the herald stopping us? I pull my horse to a stop and turn. I squint at the horizon.

“What is it?” Riddy asks.

A sandstorm, Solaris reports.

My eyes widen. “Silvermists, save us. A sandstorm.” My head turns forward and back again. “There are too many on foot…” I mumble. “Riddy. How far out is the first settlement?”

“An hour, maybe, of hard riding,” she says.

“Nothing closer?” I grip my reins.

“None that I know of.” Riddy frowns, her face pulling taut.

The Selanian Chancellor, Halka, rides up beside us, his face perplexed. “What’s going on?”

“A sandstorm,” Riddy explains. He looks confused, still. “It’s far off, but we don’t want to be tangled up in one of those. They’re temperamental and fast. If we can make it to shelter, it may only kill a few from suffocation. There’s a lot here the wind could pick up and turn into projectile nightmares.”

“It’s that bad?”

I grit my teeth, staring at the horizon. “Quenyi winds are known to be strong enough to rip trees from their roots and sweep grown men off their feet like ragdolls. They normally blow with summer air. It’s abnormal for a winter one — we couldn’t have prepared for this.”

“We will make haste then!” Riddy calls.

Everyone understands at once what’s happening and the entire caravan picks up its pace. But with so many people on foot, and with heavy carts, we’re severely limited in speed. It seems like we’re making headway against it, or it isn’t coming our way.

And then the wind shifts.

I feel it there, the raging, angry mass behind us. It’s a fury of wind unlike any I’ve felt before, and I have been through many a sandstorm. It’s pure power and wind that pushes forward to consume every last person in their caravan—hundreds of souls. I turn back to see it again. It appears no bigger, but I know better.

“How much further?” Riddy asks.

“Too far. We’re not going to make it if we don’t go faster.”

Fear creases her brow. “You’re sure?” Her voice is grave.

The wind pushes through and around us. I lift my open hand; I can feel the storm’s power at the end of every gust. ”We won’t make it.” My fingers rake into my hair. “Damn it!”

Around us, there’s nothing but sand and sand as far as we can see. I look over my shoulder. That dark spot has turned into a wall on the horizon.

Solaris! What do you see?

Doom. If we don’t fly, from here, there will be no escape.

I’m not abandoning these people.

I and the others will carry as many as we can.

Yes! The ones on foot, quickly!

Dragons begin peeling down from the sky. Horns began blowing. The whole caravan is running now, carts abandoned. Horns blow down the column. There aren’t enough dragons for everyone.

Solaris lands before us, and we stop running. On. Now.

I usher both chancellors onto her back, and several others. When she can take no more on her back, she carries a few more. She stares at me with her wing and shoulder low, expectant. I’ll be fine. Only magic weapons get me, remember?

Little one…

“Go!” I tell her aloud. “I will not leave these people to die.”

The caravan is frantically running. The rumble of horses and feet cuts through the slowly rising volume of the wind. I look back; horses can’t be pushed any faster. Those left on foot are already being left behind as those who are mounted panic and push faster. I see the roaring wall behind us, blotting out the sun.

A heavy realization pulses through me. We still aren’t going to make it. The horses can’t outrun this wind. Even for a single rider, this is too large and too fast. It’s a swirling mass of sand and death that cuts from earth to sky. The wind howls and consumes everything in its path, plunging the world into darkness. It stretches out on either side of them. The storm means to swallow them whole and was about to begin its meal with the last rider at the end of the caravan. I feel something pulse frantically through me.

I turn my horse hard to the right, cutting between other riders. If I don’t try, then it was over. These Selanians that trusted me would die. I dig my heels into the horse’s sides as I cut through the terrified expressions. I snap the reins. ”Faster!” I’m too used to my mount understanding me.

People at the rear are staring in shock as I run headfirst for the storm. The wind whips at my hair, and soon, my horse begins to spook and fight my pushes to advance. I curse at the beast, begging it to carry me further, and with a final snap of the reins, the horse pushes on until the last of the caravan is behind me. I pull hard and dismount, stumbling and recovering. I don’t need to convince the horse to leave.

I look up at the titan of wind and sand. And I feel very small.

I spread my feet and plant them, bracing myself. I hold my bare hands out to the wind. Fire is not my only domain, and I’m reminded of this, feeling the wind through my fingers, feeling the currents; they’re a part of me, and they will answer to me.

Nothing prepared me for the impact of the storm. It’s as though I’ve fallen from Sol, and my shoulders pop from the strain. My whole body is pressed down. Even my knees tremble. I close my eyes, grit my teeth. There’s sand all around me, in my hair, in my ears, in my nose. But it will end here, with me. I lean into the storm, pushing back with all the force that I have. I can’t even open my eyes to see if I’m making a difference.

I cry out when one of my fingers snaps back. The sharp and sudden pain disrupts my focus—I feel the winds collapse in on me, almost losing my balance. I force my legs straight. Another finger goes, and then my shoulder threatens to give out.

Wulfric, stop! Solaris cries. Your power is a magic weapon and it will kill you!

I shut her out. My hands tremble, and I feel myself at the edge of exhaustion. I do exactly as she said not to, and I throw myself into my power with a singular thought that this storm ends here, that it will not reach the Selanians.

Then, it's a strange dichotomy of feeling, like my body is dying and my mind is being reborn again. I haven’t felt this since I faced the cultists with my fire. Light sears at the edges of my closed eyes and floods my senses. With an almost audible click, I feel myself connect to the storm. I feel every edge of it, understand it’s violent gales. It’s mine now.

My arms out at my sides, I take a deep breath and feel the sand fill my lungs. I give one last push to make the storm a part of me. And then I turn that power inward, down deep, and I smother it.

The winds die and silence fills my ears. My legs give out and I collapse to my knees, arms dropping to my sides. Cracking my eyes open, I see the blazing brightness of the sun against a blue sky, and I grin. Then everything tilts. My shoulder hits the sand, then my head, and the world goes black.

𓆩⟡𓆪

She’s dead.

I can’t stop thinking it, over and over. The last living descendent of both Althelia and me. Ruanna, a beautiful, funny, fiery young woman with inky black hair and brown eyes that always remind me of Althelia.

Sleep, little one, Solaris insists from outside.

I stop to drop my back against the wall, letting my head thump back on the stone. I can’t. She must live.

Solaris is quiet, but I feel her pain. Her worry for me.

I don’t know what I’ll do if this baby dies too. I don’t know what I’ll do without this last piece of my wife. Funny, how over a thousand years have passed and still, I yearn for her. Still. Always. The portrait in my room—it would never capture her quite right. I would give anything to see her eyes light up when her dragon took off again. To see her smile slowly pull across her face. To move her hair away from her face and brush my thumb over her freckles.

And this child was all that was left of her.

I don’t realize I’m crying until I can’t see. Until I can’t breathe. A sob chokes out, and I fight it, the grief of losing Ruanna hitting too close now to Althelia. I can’t lose this child too. I can’t. I won’t. I—

The door opens. I stand at attention and wipe my face, scanning the healer with wide, desperate eyes. She looks… grim. My heart plummets to the floor.

“She won’t make it. She’s too little. It’s too early.”

I stride past the healer without a word, to the cradle at the window. I lay my eyes upon the smallest baby I’ve ever seen — hardly bigger than my hand. Tears spring anew as I reach down and scoop her up and cradle her close. She’s lighter than a loaf of bread, with arms so little, I swear that her fingers are translucent. Ruanna had been like her ancestor. Her final word had been her daughter’s name.

”Iantia,” comes my choked whisper.

A beautiful name, Sol says soothingly.

I sniff. I won’t let her die. I decide then that she will live. I don’t care what it takes. I pull the glowing amulet from under my shirt.

Wulfric…

She’s not going to die.

You don’t know what this will do.

I have to try something.

“Your Majesty?” the healer says from behind us.

I don’t say a word as I touch the jewel to her tiny chest… and she begins to glow. I swallow, and a side of this magic I will never fully understand slips free. I feel it bleed into her, seeping into her hummingbird-heart, through her thread-like veins. She stirs, but does not wake.

And then it’s over. Nothing seems to have changed.

“Will she live?” The healer is standing beside us, watching on in awe.

I don’t know, but I say, “yes,” anyway.

𓆩⟡𓆪

As the last of the Weaver priests file from the throne room, I’m smacked in the arm. I lift a lazy brow and loll my head from where I lounge upon the throne, my eyes falling on the lovely young woman sitting my left in her own, smaller throne. She’s glaring.

“Oh come on,” I say, and straighten up with a crooked smirk. “You’re telling me that being called a god by a church is supposed to make me unhappy?”

“Except you’re not one,” Iantia gripes.

“Obviously,” I scoff, and swing my legs to the floor.

At least someone in your family has brains, Solaris sighs from outside the throne room. I look out the bone-pillar arches and find her chin resting upon the balcony.

“She agrees with me,” Iantia says, and strolls for the door that leads to my dragon—and hers, jet black and perched beside Solaris. “So does Parallax.”

Parallax is approximately the size of a horse now, and identical to his mother in every way but color. Solaris nudges her son a little, and he squawks at her. I presume he’s been too haughty with her.

“How is it you know what my dragon thinks, hm?” I ask, following my descendent—and top Ascendent—out onto the balcony.

“Because she’s smart, and it’s stupid not to agree.”

I snort.

The wind is cool as the sun sets, and I breathe it in deep, let it wash around me. Solaris hums her warm greeting, and I rest my palm against her maw before I lean against the stone railing. Iantia comes up beside me, the two of us between the dragons.

“Are you nervous?” I ask her.

“About what?” Her tone is light, but I know her.

“The Trials. You still plan to compete?”

Parallax puffs out his chest and she pats his side. “Of course we do!”

“It’s alright to be nervous.”

“I’m not! We’ll win. And then…” She smiles, staring out at the horizon. “What quest will you give us?”

I frown. “I won’t know until the time comes.” Usually they’re dangerous. I don’t want this to be dangerous for her.

“Will you send us into the Allways?” She looks wistful.

“I don’t know, Iantie,” I sigh. “There’s still some time before the Trials.”

“I know, I just… want more. I’m more than just your descendent, Wulfy.”

“You and Parallax are two of my best rising Ascendents,” I tell her, leaning my side against the railing to look at her. “And that’s on your own, you know your name carries no weight in the ranks.”

She barks a laugh. “It sure does. Most hate me for it! They think I’m using your name to rise the ranks.”

“Good thing you can’t fake talent.”

“Maybe.”

“And what about that.. Pirate fellow?” I arch a brow at her and smirk.

She blushes. “Stop it. You know there’s nothing there.”

“Whatever you say, kid,” I chuckle.

She sighs, and she looks back at the horizon. The sun sets her eyes on fire, and I smile a little, wishing I could capture it in my own flames. I don’t know what I’ll do, the day I lose her. I’m closer to her than I have been to most any of my descendents. My great-something granddaughter. Athelia’s.

She glances at me from the corner of her eye. “Can you stop staring?”

I smile at her, and I look out at the sky. “Why don’t we fly?”

“Right now?”

“I’ll teach you something about stealth.”

Solaris bares her teeth in a smile, and she picks up her head and stands, her back high enough for me to jump down with a burst of air to aid my fall.

“Stealth? On Sol?”

“Just you wait!” I strap myself into the saddle. “It’s not all about how big the dragon is.”

“Wait?” I look up at her, and she’s already mounted. “Not a chance!”

And then quick as a striking asp, she and Parallax fire into the sky. I curse. “Shall we go and teach the younger generation a lesson?”

Sol snorts hot air on the courtyard below, and then she’s taking off, mighty wings devouring the distance so quickly that I can start to hear Iantia’s brilliant laughter carried back at me by the wind. It makes me think of my daughter’s laughter, and I would chase it for all I was worth.

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PLAYER INFO

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Name: Jaecarys
Pronouns: she/her
Contact: discord preferably!

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WULFRIC REXANTHE

telling myself every day i wake
the sacrifice is the price i pay

table by jaecarys

[Silvermist]

Welcome Wulfric!