Dragon Core Read online

  Dragon Core

  By Sain Artwell

  Dragon Core by Sain Artwell

  © 2021 Sain Artwell. All rights reserved.

  Contact the author at [email protected]

  Visit the author’s website at sainartwell.com

  Sign up for the author’s mailing list here or join his facebook group!

  Cover Art by Sonny Only

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements: I’d like to thank D. Smith for his betareading feedback.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - Alron the Vigilant

  Chapter 2 - Obsidian Oubliette

  Chapter 3 - Awakening

  Chapter 4 - The Blockade

  Chapter 5 - The Finger Bearer

  Chapter 6 - The Garden of Heavenly Dream

  (Untitled)

  Chapter 7 - Old Love

  Chapter 8 - Wealdborn

  Chapter 9 - Dead God’s Leftovers

  Chapter 10 - Lost Blood

  Chapter 11 - A Blackmetal Day

  Chapter 12 - Steamy Enslaving

  Chapter 13 - The Spinning Skull

  Chapter 14 - The Unwelcome

  Chapter 15 - Interview

  Chapter 16 - Broken Dragons

  Chapter 17 - Avatar of the Metal Dawn

  Chapter 18 - Proxies and Prophecies

  Chapter 19 - Apocalypse Awakes

  Chapter 20 - Dying Wish

  Chapter 21 - Edge of Enlightenment

  Chapter 22 - Deeper Desires

  Chapter 23 - Mlevanosk’s Theory of Vis

  Chapter 24 - Immortal Memories

  Chapter 25 - Blood Jungle Massacre

  Chapter 26 - Shaky Principles

  Chapter 27 - A Promise Forever Lost

  Chapter 28 - He’s Coming

  Chapter 29 - Homecoming

  Chapter 30 - Starsteel Stab

  Chapter 31 - Dead Redemption

  Chapter 32 - Voice of the Gods

  Chapter 33 - Star Rise

  Chapter 34 - Scaling the Gods

  Chapter 35 - Destroyer’s Duty

  Chapter 1 - Alron the Vigilant

  Countless consciousnesses united under Wealdborn’s dragonsoul as his awareness spread across vast lands, far beyond the horizon. He tasted air through grass, felt the layers of sediment and the warmth of tectonics beneath. Veins of metal shifted in the slumbering sediments of the earth, cracking like old joints. New mountains rose between two dead dragongods, as Wealdborn’s body neared completion.

  He was overcome by pure exhilaration. Soon, I will fly.

  Two voices called out to his mind, echoing his anticipation, encouraging their fellow dragongod to join their ranks. From the dark side of the Farmoon, Voidwalker howled anxiously, coaxing him to hurry and rise with her into the stars. Deep beneath the corpses of their fallen brethren, Corecrawler rumbled a mournful song. He advised Wealdborn to focus on creating strong wings, so that he might hunt the enemies of dragonkind.

  Wealdborn promised to hurry. He too sensed the presence of the cowardly beings hiding behind the stars, and relished the idea of devouring them.

  Why are they the enemy?

  Wealdborn paused, but only for the briefest of moments. The task of forging his body was more important than any doubts.

  But why… Is that my own desire? No. That’s the dragonsoul thinking, not I.

  Wealdborn clung to that stray thought. Something buried in the depths of his consciousness screamed, something raged against the cage created by his dragonsoul. Anger and sorrow bled from the voice of the mortal he used to be.

  When was it that he’d first forgotten himself, Wealdborn pondered. Such memory eluded him, for within the vastness of his new being dwelt millions of vestiges, and in each of them dwelt unique wills at once separate from him, and one with him at the same time. His original mortal consciousness was now the same as theirs—a passenger, a slave to the dragonsoul in charge: his dragonsoul, the very same dragonsoul that he’d once helped grow as a mortal warrior, foolishly believing himself to be the one in charge.

  Not that it mattered anymore. Soon they would rise, and soar amongst the stars.

  Wealdborn threw himself into the act of forging his draconic body, enslaving all that his dragonsoul touched. The soil, the forest, the seas, the air, and all which dwells amongst them.

  Seas became his putrid blood, woods twisted into thorny briars, and weaker beings transformed as animated vines replaced their intestines. Deep underground, one of his hearts struck its virginal beat. Bedrock resonated with the pulse, spreading his transformative energies ever further.

  Several miles to the east of his mortal dragon-core, a serrated range of mountains many miles tall submitted. Quaking, the peaks shed avalanches of blackstone, burying a hundred valleys.

  Towering briars burst through the slopes, seeking to knit the mountains into his body. Thorns taller than trees sprouted on them. Amidst the spikes bloomed roses of putrid yellow, dyeing the air with pollen. These vines snaked up the clouded peaks, winding around a city of blackmetal towers.

  Those towers groaned like dying beasts as they crumbled. Next screamed millions of lives, as a sea of thorns flooded the streets.

  Wealdborn’s body expanded with an equal number of new offshoots.

  Eventually, all within the reach of Wealdborn’s dragonsoul would become a part of his new body. It was an inevitability. A natural progress, which had long since spiraled out of Wealdborn’s conscious control, since the very moment he’d embraced his dragonsoul.

  Before that… What was I? Why. Why did I unleash it? For power. Why? What was my wish?

  Does it matter?

  The moment of lucidity faded.

  Forge a body.

  Ascend.

  These were Wealdborn’s goals. All he yearned to do was join his kind amongst the stars.

  No mortal power could stop him at this point. And yet, a few tried.

  Eyes of Wealdborn’s formerly mortal body fixed on a certain man amongst a hundred wyrmkin, who stubbornly resisted subjugation.

  For months, Wealdborn had watched them wade a bloody path through the outer portions of his unfinished body. For weeks, he had battled them directly with his old body. In this time, hundreds of thousands of warriors had fallen to allow these few to face him.

  Wealdborn threw upon them waves of deadly briars swarming with millions of vine-bloated spawn. He created towering giants of thorn and flesh to match their mightiest. He designed new carnivorous insects, and unleashed storms of pollens so toxic they burned metal. He sang into their minds the cacophony of a dragongod’s consciousness and filled their thoughts with visions of dancing nightmares borrowed from the forbidden dreams of the oldest of slumbering dragons.

  Although a handful of his foes perished with each attack, determination of the survivors never faltered.

  It was because of one man. That inexplicable man. Not once in the memories of any of his vestiges had Wealdborn glimpsed a mortal like him.

  His curled horns framed a thick bloom of hair akin to the redweed of the sea. Taller than most mortals, his tightly wound frame told a tale of dedication, and his scars an epic of his resolve. Behind his azure gaze burned power to rule a manifested dragonsoul. A feat which should not have been possible.

  Wealdborn envied him. Admired him.

  Ahh… A worthy foe. Was that my wish?

  A brilliant vibrance of dragonfires blasted from the army behind the man, and drummed the air in thunderous booms. His mountainous bramble titans wilted in flames, his insectoid armies
cracked and charred from lightning, and his pollen storm froze into harmless flakes of ice.

  Warriors with bodies and weapons empowered by vestiges of dead dragongods shredded endless tides of Wealdborn’s creations. Distant artillery encampments, which had survived the collapse of the mountains, rained a continuous hail of explosions upon Wealdborn’s spawn. Shrapnel and shards rained sideways through his armies. In one breath, the landscape was devastated into a freshly tilled graveyard. Then, in the next, Wealdborn’s dragonsoul raised from the ground a hundred yard high maze of briars.

  Amidst this ebb and flow, Wealdborn tested the resolve of that tall man with scarlet horns.

  My worthy foe.

  Wealdborn swung a great weapon twice the height of a mortal man. The barbed edge of Armageddon Blade carved the valley they fought in in half with a new canyon. Such was the force of his swing that the heavens split above, and the winds changed direction. The redheaded man was thrown miles high spinning into the sky, with his torso cleaved in half.

  However, he was no ordinary mortal. A woman made of liquid blood emerged from his body, and rebuilt his body in an instant. A second woman, one whose body was an azure flame, enveloped him like a cloak which consumed life force itself. A third woman melted into his hand like a spirit of molten metal, transforming into a lance of white hot metal. The fourth, an oracle of incredible skill, guided the man’s steps with foresight as if he were a dragongod.

  With a thousand maws of thorny teeth, Wealdborn bathed him in baleful flames. A ball of azure flames held strong within the firestorm. The great warrior and his women roared, plunging through the heavens as a single blazing comet of destruction.

  Wealdborn marveled at the sight. He felt distant pride.

  My worthy foe. My son.

  Wealdborn raised Armageddon Blade high to match the lance’s incoming blow.

  Sparks of their collision outshined the sun. Tremors reverberated miles underground, shifting tectonics. Air shimmered and bent with a mirage. Debris and corpses burst into flames.

  Commendable.

  But not enough to slay a dragongod.

  With a swift barrage of swings that destroyed what was left of the valley, Wealdborn cleaved the women off the man, sealing much of his dragonsoul’s power. His might dwindled. One by one, the man lost his wings, his tails, a set of horns, and his scales.

  His flesh was broken. His women lay on the ground, destroyed. His allies dwindled, teetering towards annihilation.

  Blows of the Armageddon Blade began to land with greater ease.

  The man refused to succumb to his wounds. An emotion long since forgotten stirred in Wealdborn’s mortal core.

  The closer that man drew to death, the brighter was the azure blaze in his gaze, as if he was driven by an entity beyond mortal comprehension. No, not a mortal’s. A mortal could understand that passion. It was the dragongod part of Wealdborn which refused to comprehend.

  Wealdborn reminisced about his own mortal past, whilst his blade continued to reshape the valley. That’s what it had meant to be a man. That determination. That’s what it had meant to be alive. When did I forget?

  Wealdborn paused. The wounded warrior seized the opportunity to shred Wealdborn’s mortal vessel into broken slivers. Wealdborn hardly registered the damage. His dragon-core remained undamaged, and thus his dragonsoul rebuilt his mortal body in the smallest fraction of a flicker. His hesitation, however, lingered. Why am I doing this? Fighting my worthy foe. My son… Alron.

  To ascend, to reach the stars, reminded Wealdborn’s dragonsoul.

  No. That wasn’t it. Never had he truly yearned for the stars. All he had wished was enough strength to overcome his oppressors. Only just enough to save his home. His people. Ah, how it all seemed now like a distant dream of past life. Both his precious people and his oppressors now lived as one, their minds and bodies having been enslaved as organs of the dragongod Wealdborn was becoming.

  He smiled at the tragic irony, recalling it: His reason for journeying here, for seeking Alron. It was an old hatchling hymn, which his mate had sung to Alron, Wealdborn’s mother had sung to him, and which Wealdborn now hummed.

  O’ mother, Grovemother,

  look after my hatchling,

  my sweet little dreamer.

  Soothe his vestige,

  when he’s weaker.

  Watch him grow,

  awaken his soul.

  But if he’s a dragon,

  an’ his soul afoul.

  Then send a hero,

  to end him right.

  Of course, the hymn was all nonsense. What little remained of Wealdborn’s mortal mind realized that, as a dragongod, he was nigh immortal. His dragonsoul had become an unkillable force of nature itself, and would live forever as part of this world. But Wealdborn knew as well that if he believed in this hero enough, he could muster the willpower to overpower his own dragonsoul for a brief moment, and expose his dragon-core, so that Alron might stop him.

  For days, they battled. Alron’s mettle had been measured and his might meted. Neither had been found as anything short of heroic. Wealdborn’s consciousness stirred from its shackles, seizing control of his dragonsoul for a split flicker.

  Bleeding, nearly dead, Alron lunged his broken claw at Wealdborn’s dragon-core. Wealdborn released Armageddon Blade and accepted the blow through his chest. His mortal consciousness began to dissolve, his dragonsoul floundering to exist without its host.

  Wealdborn smiled at his son, thankful. “…If he’s a dragon… a hero… can end him right…”

  He hoped Alron would find a way to live happily, never succumbing to the corrupting whispers of his dragonsoul. He hoped Alron would never need his child to end him.

  ***

  Coral crunched beneath a heavy foot. Alron stirred from delving through Carrion Scourge’s memories. A salty breeze cleansed the rot of a battlefield. He returned to the present, where his hand rested on the barklike surface of Carrion Scourge’s skull. Though the memories haunting Carrion Scourge’s vestiges had slowly eroded over the century, they reminded Alron of his purpose, his duty.

  Despite Alron’s best attempts to dispose of it, the corpse remained intact. Carrion Scourge still wore his robe of roots, which anchored his humanoid remains to the coral stone. A tall thicket of branching antlers sprouted from his skull and shoulders. Between thorns bloomed sickly yellow roses.

  Wind dispersed their pollen into tendrils of golden smoke.

  Alron cut the horns off, stomped the flowers, and sparked the fire by striking his claws together. Come noon, they would regrow.

  Having trimmed the roses, Alron climbed out of the walled pit he’d constructed for Carrion Scourge’s corpse. He emerged atop the sun-bleached skeleton of a sea-tree, a hundred yards high. Alron passed by his pile of iron-nut shells, hopped over ponds of seawater trapped in the porous coral, and peered over the edge to investigate the sound.

  The horizon, in every direction, mirrored the dark blue emptiness of the pre-dawn. Approaching the Nameless Island unseen was near impossible. In the far distance, a squadron of four battleships circled the island, with enough artillery between them to sink it to the bottom of Deepfathom Sea. The fleets were efficient in warding off fellow wyrmkin, not so much in deterring the local sea life.

  As Alron had suspected, several leaping bonesharks were scaling the cliffs with their clawed limbs. Five sharks in total. Thorny vines penetrated their gray flesh. Every day, carrionspawn sought to reclaim the vestiges of their creator, as if that would revive the dragongod.

  Alron leapt off the cliff and rammed his feet into a shark’s abdomen. He drew power from the heartstring vestiges in his dragon-core, and stabbed another one’s eyes with his clawed thumbs, then ripped its skull open. The four others fell upon him, claws, teeth, and thorns bared. With practised motions, Alron punched his fist through their flesh, and crushed the writhing hearts of thorny vines within each shark.

  This was Alron’s final duty as the gravekeeper of
a dragongod’s core, as the Arch-Knight of Myrwing—and the proud defender of Fivewyrm Ascendancy. Thankfully, Sorcerer King had granted Alron every advantage to carry out his solemn duty.

  To guard the secrets of draconic ascension from those who might attempt it, neither beast nor wyrmkin could be allowed to touch the vestiges of Carrion Scourge. So long as Alron’s actions delayed new dragongods from rising, his life would honor the dead. And, his life would have meaning.

  Duty and routine were the strings by which he’d managed to stay sane.

  Carnivorous mollusks and crustaceans crawled from their hiding holes, eager to feast on the fresh corpses. Alron left them to it, and climbed back up.

  He liked to pause by a particular puddle between his iron-nut pile and sleeping rock. A small community of squids stranded from their abyssal habitat lived in it.

  When Alron knelt by the surface, dozens of scarlet squids emerged from crevices of the cavernous puddle. They flailed tentacles against the surface, performing an oddly beautiful dance of shifting color patterns.

  Alron picked up a piece of dead coral, and with focus, bent the power of his dragonsoul under his will. Carefully flooding the piece with his draconic vis, the bleached sponge dragonized. Its once bleak surface scintillated with scales the shade of metallic crimson.

  He dropped it in the squid-lake. They splashed water and rejoiced! Little tendrils fondled the piece as if it were an ancient artifact of starsteel. They brought it to a tiny altar, which depicted a blurry titan watching over the squid-people.

  A group of eight squids swam to a bottom corner of the pool, where they moved a small stone, revealing a cavern full of shrimp. They caught three and carried them to the surface as offerings for Alron.

  He plucked them out of the water, and thanked them with a nod.

  The squids mimicked his gesture, while emitting a series of wet gurgles against the surface. Alron had not yet deciphered their meaning.

  Lounging on the island’s tallest branch, Alron relished the rich fatty taste of the sea, and the pleasant crunch of the shrimp shells. Were those squids given access to spices and two more centuries, their culinary culture might begin to rival those of an average wyrmkin chef.