Dragon Aster Trilogy

30: ATRUM LORD



Hain walked over to the side of the Atrum Lord’s bed as the old phelan slowly turned his head to look at him. The once unstoppable leader was now little more than a corpse that had yet to accept it was dead. His long black hair lay across his bed and body. His red eyes that could once cut through to the truth in another from their fierceness, were now dull. It was normal for a phelan somnus to age quickly when their time ran out on the world, but the deep wrinkles and sunken eyes of Vanir looked far worse than anything Hain had seen before. It was as if he had paid double for his long life.

“Where…is the other General?”

Hain took a moment to register what Vanir was talking about, as it had been ages since someone referred to him by such title. “I was hoping you could tell me, since you were the one to send him over to the Torian Continent.”

“The Awl is deceit. He…promised me more time.”

“Awls can’t do that.”

“No…that Awl is something ancient from the time of when your kind were only four in number.”

Hain went through the list in his head, and after ruling out Avian, Gei and himself, he settled in certainty on Daath.

“Yes…that one,” Vanir said, sensing his willingly open thought. “The caels return to mock and destroy everything that we have built in their absence. No one will tell me…the future. I want to see it before I pass from this miserable world and its miserable gods.”

Hain looked at the mermaid as he had also been referring to her in his mind. She stood silently on the other side of Vanir’s soon-to-be death bed. “Who will he leave this all to?”

“To Kas,” Tenu replied. “When he passes, the Falls will seize everything first, and then use their stolen power to destroy the Sanctus.”

“But you don’t know for sure, do you?”

“Asil makes it difficult to see the future. The Sylvan energy within her blurs both the aeri and estus energy of the Animus Threads.”

“It’s called the hope to change one’s Fate. Hence why his lord hates her so much?”

“She will…die… All the caels will die, and all shall be free of the Fate they bind us to…” Vanir closed his eyes then to rest.

Hain looked at Vanir and for whether he still breathed. The clock was now set and ticking against him, as he wasn’t the only one up for the execution block on the Fall’s seizure of the Atrum. To the heathens, there was no better way to eliminate the gods than to hunt them to extinction, and everyone that came close. Including the Awls. “So what did he want with me?” Hain asked Tenu, who remained expressionless on her pale white face. He had always romanticized meeting her under different circumstances.

“Kas listens to you. Persuade him to come and take his throne.”

“That kid doesn’t listen to anyone.”

“Then make his soultwin listen to you,” Tenu hissed back. “If she is the only one he will listen to now.”

“No one wants this empire. You would think Kas made it clear by now?”

“Then remind him that when the Falls takes over the Atrum, both him and his soultwin will be of the ones burned,” Tenu added.

“With what? That giant bird-snake of fire?”

“The White Death is lost to madness now. There are no other dragons who will fight it. The Falls will win with that weapon that will ignite this world into ruin.”

“Just great. Now that you have damaged all of Sybl’s memories to her past life, you also cut off your chances of being able to stop it. So now on top of your meal ticket dying here, you got a radioactive monster after your head. I wouldn’t want to be you for all the power in the world.”

“But you will help me.”

“I already said I can’t convince the kid of anything—” Hain stopped there when she caught a few of his life Threads in hand. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Perhaps we can offer a trade?”

“You have nothing I want.”

“I see that,” Tenu said, while she fiddled with his Threads between her fingers. “I apologize that I am not as beautiful as you were expecting. But I also see what you hide so well. What you do want. I wonder how many Threads—”

“I said stop!” Hain shouted at her as his black wings appeared, and his sharp, icy feathers cut free her touch on his Threads.

“What are you ashamed of? You turn away from the ambitions for so much power. It must drive you mad from within.”

“There are more important things than my ambitions.”

“And what do Awls truly care of this world if not solely their ambitions?”

Hain only glared at her.

“All dark angels fall at some point or another, when their black wings disintegrate into ash. You will be no different.” Tenu smiled as she let his cut Threads fall from her hands to the floor. “But until then,” she walked to the mantlepiece, where Sybl’s festra had been mounted by Vanir, “take this back to the Caelestis.”

“You’re just going to give it to her? After all the trouble you went through to steal it in the first place?”

“I didn’t steal it. Vanir had hoped to control the names bound to it through Daath, but now that has changed. If he returns as Damek, then this weapon holds enough names to turn the eminor into an army for his cause.”

Hain took the weapon from the mermaid with a scowl.

“Fall or not, you cannot escape the fact that you are and will always be a slave, and slaves are happiest when they obey. But I will let you choose who you want to serve.”