Dragon Aster Trilogy

34: MEMORY AND A FAREWELL



Sybl opened her eyes to find herself in a Vision of what looked like the past, as an armored steam locomotive stood before her. The noise dropped to a lower level, and she looked back at a familiar voice.

“Urio, this place looks like the train stop to a crypt!”

“Serena,” Urio said as he took up her side, “we’re only staying for a few minutes while the train prepares to leave.”

Sybl stopped breathing. Urio looked at least thirty years younger, and the woman with him looked so much like herself that it caused Sybl to shiver. Mother…

Serena rubbed her arms from the cold. Or was it from her presence? She remembered Kas’ spirit always being as cold as ice when he tried to touch her.

The ayame with them lifted the hood of her mother’s cloak over her head. “My Custos are already here.”

Sybl took a step closer to get a better look at the ayame, and she could see now that it was Kas’ mother, Kira.

“I hope they brought their weapons,” Hain said as he looked in the direction where several phelan guards took notice of them. The black-armored soldiers of the Atrum had begun to organize their positions to prevent them from leaving the station.

“Stay next to me,” Kira said to Serena. Then she began to murmur a low Call that was barely audible to the human ear. Her long, straight black hair floated up around her as her estus energy was made lighter by aeri. As she sung, several phelan Custos dressed in white uniforms appeared. They leapt from their phelan forms into their human-like appearances onto the rooftops, and at the soldiers who had surrounded them. Then they took quick aim with their blades at the vital organs of the attackers who were caught by surprise. It was as if Kira’s Call had made the Custos momentarily invisible.

“Feryl, get that damn train moving again!” Hain shouted at the younger phelan somnus.

Feryl yelled back that it was ready, and Serena quickly boarded it with Kira and Urio.

Sybl looked at Hain who didn’t follow, as he just stood there watching her with a saddened expression, before it was replaced with a wry grin. Before she could make sense of the memory that wasn’t hers, he waved once as if to say goodbye, and then nodded to the direction of her left side where someone was trying to bring her awareness back to the present.

“Sybl. Sybl you need to wake up.”

Sybl opened her eyes to where she had fallen asleep on the grass in the city park. She was conscious, but still Dreamwalking and trapped on Earth. “Did you see any of that just now?”

“That ayame is rather gifted. Her prayers reached you this far, as did the memories in the gold she holds,” Xirel said.

“I have never been so grateful to be mugged in my life.” Sybl got to her feet and looked up as a flash of lightning cut through the sky. “What was that?”

“I’m not sure. The Sentry are agitated, though.” He turned his attention as the flapping of bat wings came through the night towards them. “Ah, Luna.”

“I…found him…” she said through her panting.

“Where is he?” Xirel asked, then touched her head and looked into the gargoyle’s thoughts when Luna landed on his arm.

Sybl was one step ahead as the lights in the park suddenly flickered and went out. They were followed by all the electricity in her city. “Um, Xirel?”

“This is bad. They wouldn’t have absorbed all the power unless they’re preparing for an attack.”

She didn’t want to know against who, as she could see herself glow blue from her reflection in Xirel’s eyes. A moment after, a surge of lightning blinded her as it came down only a few meters from them.

“We have to move.” Xirel somned into his stag form and then knelt down, and Sybl climbed onto his back. Then he took off at full speed for the downtown core.

When they got there some minutes later, Xirel came to a halt as the streets had already been cleared by another.

Sybl slid off his back and walked to face the brown, tattered dragon who stood in the middle of the street of abandoned vehicles and the terrified cries that still reached this far.

“Have you come to surrender?” Damek asked.

Sybl pulled her festra from her sash behind her. “What are you doing? Do you think the Sentry will support you out of sympathy if you’re destroyed?”

Damek laughed. “I do not cower or break under the will of Hino.”

“So why the Curse?” Sybl said, showing him the black glyph where her Mei to Cirrus once was. “They won’t kill you because that would kill me, wouldn’t it? That hardly makes you all-powerful. It makes you nothing less than a coward!”

“Where I break you is where I become all-powerful.”

Sybl staggered back as a surge of pain went through her body. Xirel charged at the dragon and Damek stood on his hind legs, before sending a wave of estus energy at them. It threw Xirel off of his feet and ignited the Sylvan energy in Sybl as if it were a fire fanned by his estus wind.

“You arrogant chimera have separated me from my army. Now I will disconnect every feeling of life in you!”

Sybl caught and cut Damek’s pull on Xirel’s Threads with the blades of her festra, freeing the chimera from the dragon’s deathly pull.

“All of your efforts to stop me are in vain. Now surrender the festra and the Aur within your body and no more lives have to be lost.”

“Yeah, except to your Armageddon,” Sybl replied. She swiped at his hand with her festra, but he just as easily swept her across the street with his claws.

Sybl hit a car, and the wind was torn out of her lungs, but she rolled out of the way as Damek’s hand came down on the car and crushed it. Today wasn’t her best day to be a demon dragon slayer.