Dragon Aster Trilogy

45: BLUE LIGHT



Kas rested his back and head against the walls in the corridor of the Atrum, as Kenshe and Gwa took a similar break. They had infiltrated the city and the Atrum itself, but the Fall’s forces persisted with their defenses. Some of the phelan of the Atrum’s Order had taken their side, and without them, they might not have gotten so far.

“There are too many,” Kenshe panted next to him in his phelan form.

Kas looked at the Threads around them as he tried to quickly figure out their next move. He was going to have to take a chance if they were to stand one. “Stay here.” Then he summoned his somn part way, and vanished from the hall in a black mist.

The guards that aimed in the direction of Kenshe didn’t have the moment needed to react when Kas reappeared behind them out of thin air, and cut them down with his sword. He missed one, and the soldier fired on him. Kas dissipated in time to avoid the bullet and then reappeared to cut his attacker in half. Gwa and Kenshe caught up to press on.

The few floors up to the throne hall felt like miles. When they finally reached it, the phelan somnus in the hallway cheered and praised Kas like a returning Prince. The trio stopped, dumbfounded. Kas looked down the hallway where there were no more enemies.

“We win,” Kenshe said. He used his teeth to pull on the handle of the throne room’s door and open it.

They entered to find it empty, as the retreat was called by Mersael. Outside the windows at the end of the room, the griffins took to the air over the city in an ascent of white wings. Only Tenu stood next to the window, as the Atrum’s Aur fell to the allow the stars to remember this day.

“And be forever wary of a blue star, for the gods battle constantly,” Tenu spoke. “And we are but the damned, who are not yet the ashes of their Hell.”

Kas looked around the throne room with all his senses, stopping his eyes on the dark wood throne that his father had once sat in. But he would not sit down, as his eyes looked back to the window and the mermaid that no longer stood silent behind the rule of his father.

He walked over and looked up to where a red and a blue star collided in the sky. For a moment, nothing else happened. Moon and Sybl emerged from the other side of the Phoenix, separated by its red flames.

The Phoenix remained motionless for a moment, until it exploded and sent a flaming rain down on the Harbor. The larger pieces of its body that had been cut apart by Sybl’s energy fell to the Eternal Waters, where its flames were finally extinguished.

Meteors of fire hit the Harbor, creating explosions where they were met with gas and aeri or estus energy. The unnatural fire burned anything and anyone who touched it. The white sails of the ships docked ignited like torches.

Those who had made it into the Keol were left to listen to the cries of agony above of those who couldn’t. The phelan were the fortunate ones this day; as they had no feathers to go up in flames. The griffin somnus who were slow in their retreat did not escape fall of their hate.

“Kas. Kas, can you feel her?” Kenshe asked, as her psi wouldn’t answer him.

“You should let her fall from her sleep into death. For if Sybl lives, then all of this will have been for nothing.” Tenu looked with her black eyes into the distance, as the moonlight revealed the shadows of what shifted the heavens.

“Sybl.” Kas prayed, as all the Threads to her had been burned away. All but the ones that loved her too much to lose her again.