Dragon Aster Trilogy

39: TIDES OF THE MOON



Cirrus couldn’t walk anymore, as the heat of the Keol was just too much to withstand. He hadn’t found who opened the Rift, and now it was becoming clear that it was opened to lead him to a slow death.

He sat down, even as the rock under him felt like it would cook the skin under his pants. Cirrus couldn’t give up. Sybl was awake, and she was looking for him despite everything. Even as he knew he had long passed the point of forgiveness. Sybl.

“Cirrus. Cirrus, I’m coming!”

He looked across the Keol as the fire rose and fell in waves, and the winds of ashes and fire burned his eyes. Through it all, he could feel something watching him. He got to his feet, and continued to watch the thick smoke in the distance.

It wasn’t smoke, but something alive. At first he thought it was a phelan or a True, but as it came closer, it looked more and more like a serpent flying through Keol, without wings. When the creature reached him, he couldn’t believe who he looked at. The massive black serpent sat down, then released Sybl from its estus energy.

She ran to him and almost pulled him to the ground with the little strength he had left to stand.

“Sybl…”

She cried and squeezed him harder. “You took too long to pull down the moon for me, so I improvised.”

Cirrus looked up at the black Cael in disbelief. “Where did you find him?”

“It seems my nightmares have a purpose too. Congratulations on passing your Trial of Somn.”

Cirrus couldn’t stop himself from shivering. “Is this why Fate never gave me a normal one like everyone else?” He didn’t get the chance to debate any of it, as the claws of Moon came right at him and pulled him into its somn.

At first it felt like he had been frozen solid from the extreme heat he was in moments before, then his eyes opened as Moon’s awareness moved away to allow his own through. He began to move his feet under him, and tried to get a feel of his new somn. “He’s so heavy. How did Moon fly?” When he looked back, he saw that his soul had given the furred serpent wings. They weaved from estus Threads out of his sides, with the strength to sew themselves to the edge eternity if needed. But they were infused with his aeri. He looked down at his chest and arms, as his black fur pressed against his skin and hardened into the scales of a dragon.

“When you’re big enough to just reach up and pull what you want out of the sky, what’s the point of flying?” Sybl teased.

Cirrus looked up at the red storm clouds overhead, but he knew that realistically, he was but a fraction of the size Moon could take three hundred years ago. Then he focused intently on her as he felt all her thoughts like they were his own.

“They are all against us now,” Sybl said, when their psi’s passed the thoughts on the rest of his kind.

“We will get them back,” Cirrus assured her. “Once we put the sun in its proper place, we will get them all back.” He unsomned and touched Sybl’s face with his hands, before pulling her into a hug.

She didn’t cry anymore, as his scent of lavender was enough to stop her tears. To her, he was the Cirrus she knew, even if his somn was now something else entirely. He let go of her, as Moon pushed his thoughts through Cirrus’ brain like a spear of ice. He had always believed that the Ancients and Eminor had a higher, intelligent consciousness of their own, and Moon was the definite proof.

“What’s wrong?”

Cirrus looked at his hand, then took her right hand and turned it over to look where the Mei to Kas was no longer. He touched her left wrist then, as he let his estus energy weave a new Mei to her, and a glyph of the Aliyr to himself. “I understand what makes this so important now. It keeps the other from doing something dangerous, or really stupid.”

“You sure?” Sybl replied with a smile, as she looked at the new, sparkling silver Threads on her wrist. “Because I think in our case it makes the odds of either even more likely.”

“Then we will do it all together. Better chances that way.” He smiled and pulled her next to him when she shook her head, letting her warmth melt away the last of his doubts. She relaxed under his touch in turn. Time seemed to stop altogether to give them one moment all to themselves. So he took it and kissed her.

Before she could take a breath away from him, he pulled her into his somn. Cirrus cut his hand with his claws, before setting it down on the fiery surface. The black hole expanded as a Rift out of the Keol. Once he was topside, he turned his focus to the wind’s lure of blood and battle, as a red glow bloodied the sky in the distance.