Dragon Aster Trilogy

14: BEAUTIFUL IN DEATH



The phelan had calmed down by the time they reached the Efereal Mountains. Kas wasn’t sure what to expect from the Chimera Mother. Even in his past life he had never seen Nephena up close. When he did accompany his sister to the battlefields on the Torian Continent, he usually kept order at the back lines. Asil and Damek were always enough to deal with anything that dared to take them on together at the front.

Together. The very word with their names in the same sentence made him shudder. He had never been grateful for his soultwin’s lack of memories until now. Sybl had forgotten much of how she had once favored Damek. If she sided with him now, their circumstances would be propelling in the direction of disaster. They had all changed so much, and he prayed that they had changed for the better.

He split off from the Pack to try and find out why it was so quiet. Kas was getting increasingly concerned, as he couldn’t find Xirel’s psi anywhere in the tunnels and caverns of the frozen Efereal Mountains.

“So we come together in meeting, dark Fay. It has been a long time since I smelled you.”

Kas shuddered and looked into the dark, snow-carved hallway where the voice came from. He never felt so alone in his life, against this abnormality of Aragmoth’s will that Nephena was. His manners might be the only thing that could save him now, and anything he had learned from Sybl about dealing with her. “Chimera Mother,” Kas said, giving a small bow of respect.

Nephena moved again, and the face of her lion’s head was the first to come into the light of the cavern he waited in. She wore a mane like a male lion but had the voice of a female. She was a female, as far as logic and reasoning could explain, despite the goat’s and snake’s head both being male.

The goat’s head appeared next, bearded like an old man with the wisdom to match. It eyed Kas curiously, before it looked at the serpent tail who had brought its eyes into the light to get a closer look at him. “He is undead. Can the Caelestis still not cure this?”

“Why is Aragmoth putting the Fate of the world on one Fay, when he has simply to fix the second?” the snake added in a hiss.

The lion’s head remained silent, as it watched him curiously under her other heads’ bickering.

A cold chill went down Kas back as he remembered a moment back at the Sanctus, and the time he had spent with his sister in the gardens. He remembered her playful mockery of his appearance. She was only teasing him. He prayed that she had only been teasing him. Kas pulled his courage together before it could scatter off entirely. “Am I not beautiful, Chimera Mother?”

“You are the walking dead,” the lion’s head finally spoke, and flatly at that.

“Death can be beautiful as well,” Kas said in his defense.

“Death is beautiful when it is silent and still,” Nephena replied, taking another step forward on her lion paws. “Does Asil think you are beautiful?”

Kas replied a hasty, “Yes.”

‘Then I too think you are beautiful.”

Kas gave a small bow of a thank you, and began pondering how best to discover what had happened to Xirel. “Will Xirel not be joining us?”

“Xirel is being disciplined for his actions against me. He has not only imprisoned me for quite some time, but has questioned the Caelestis. That is punishable by death, softened only by these softer times and conditions that I have awakened to.”

“I know my sister very well, and I know she puts Xirel in high favor. If he were harmed she would not be pleased. May he be released?”

Nephena’s goat and snake head whispered amongst themselves until one of them sent out the order by psi for the chimera Awl to be brought to them.

Kas looked to another corridor and quickly ran to Xirel’s aid as he was dragged to him by his white hair by a bear, and dropped into his arms. Kas quickly began to mend the injuries around his head, fearing his frailer friend had endured an extreme punishment not meant for his delicate nature.

“Why is Asil not with you?” Nephena asked.

Kas gave Xirel to two of his Callers who continued mending his open wounds and bruises. Fay or not, Kas knew that he was still a shadow of his sister. A shadow who could be snuffed out if Nephena deemed him an insignificant loss to the light of his soultwin that made him relevant. “She is with Moon, looking for a means to stop Damek.”

“Ah yes, Damek,” Nephena replied. “My memory is getting slow with the rest of me. You should take the rest of your forces with you and aid her.”

That is what I am hoping to do. Kas looked at Jru, and his mentor quickly sent out the orders by psi to get everyone together to leave immediately. The old phelan somnus feared just as Kas did, that their welcome relied on how much sanity remained in Nephena. Kas let out a breath of relief when the massive Chimera Mother turned in the hallway to leave. But his relief was short lived when she came to a sudden stop. What now? Kas asked himself, as he didn’t like not being able to predict what the Chimera Mother was thinking.

Nephena walked over to Kas, and her lion’s and goat’s head looked down at him. “What is that strange scent on you?”

Kas didn’t know what she was talking about, until her goat’s head grabbed him by the back of his breastplate and spun him around. Then it ripped it right off his back all at once with his tunic, sending pieces of the leather straps and white fabric falling to the ground.

“You are marked by Damek,” Nephena said on seeing the Curse glyph on his back. “You are a servant of him!”

“No,” Kas replied with a calm tone. “I am not controlled by him or would ever serve him.”

“Lies! All lies!” Nephena shouted, rearing her lion’s head back with a roar. “Contain him! He is a servant of our enemy!”

Kas didn’t so much as get his hand to his sword, before the bear that had dragged Xirel into the hall sent a swipe of his claws at him. The strike hurled Kas against the ice cavern’s wall hard enough to throw him unconscious.