Chapter 781: Monster (Patreon)

Things were not going to plan. Sidus had accounted for many situations, but he hadn’t expected his little brother would be so foolish as to try and ignite the Astral Light a third time. The last had almost killed him. How he even had the strength to ignite the light again, Sidus didn’t understand.

The god wolf that was Stryg stared at him with murder in his eyes. His silver fur was aglow with power, the air itself vibrating with chaos, as the sand pulsated around him.

This was bad. The girl was still atop the wolf’s back. At this rate, she would be obliterated along with the mortal chaff, even the edge of Olduun might be destroyed.

“Fuck. Calm down, Stryg.” Sidus held his hands out, palms open. “If you do this, everyone here will die.” He cared nothing for the people, but the kid was a different story.

“What? Stryg? What’s he talking about?” Titania said, panic rising in her voice.

Yet there was no semblance of reason left in Stryg’s gaze. Something had caused him to break. Sidus glanced at the orc lying on the ground, her body limp. “Her?” Sidus laughed, incredulous at the thought. “You’re angry because of a dying orc? She’s a mortal. Here’s a revelation for you, brother, mortals die. Why would you ever get so attached to one?”

The god wolf pulled his black lips back and bared his fangs as he growled in a deep rumble. Light itself seemed to pool around him, darkening his surroundings.

“My lord! What is this?” Victoria Greymark shouted.

Sidus ignored the stupid woman. Time was running out. Soon the Astral Light would ignite and there would be nothing that could stop it. Sidus needed to grab the girl and run, but there was no opening. If he tried to fight Stryg, the latter would ignite and it would be over.

There had to be another way. Something he was missing.  He needed to calm Stryg down before it was too late.

“Fine, fine, I get it. You’re angry. You want to hurt me, yeah?” Sidus opened his arms wide. “You think that light will do anything? I’ll be long gone before you burn this whole place to ash. So, if you really want to fight, then calm down. I’ll even save the orc if you want. Oh, and that gutted vampire, too.” Sidus gestured to Gale lying in a pool of her own blood.

Stryg glanced at Gale and paused, his whole body going still. Yet for some reason Sidus could not understand, Stryg roared with rage.

“Calm down, I told you, I’d heal them.” Sidus leapt away as Stryg charged him.

A horn blared in the distance. A group of cavalry was riding out from Olduun’s gate and heading straight for them.

“As if we needed more distractions,” Sidus muttered under his breath.

One of the riders leapt off their horse and took to the sky, an arrow in flight. Flames engulfed the rider and from the ball of fire emerged a pair of beige wings. Like an egg of infernal power, the flames exploded as the dragon burst through, her citrine scales practically glowing in the twilight sky.

The dragon roared, her earth-shattering voice breaking across the sky. Several other riders took to the sky after her, shapeshifting into four more dragons. 

Sidus stared at the dragons in dismay. What were they doing here? Their presence would only ensure the Astral Light’s ignition. Sidus could not stop it now. He glanced at Titania with regret, then turned and ran away, leaving the Greymarks behind.

Stryg charged after him, but Titania’s cry caused him to stumble to a halt. He turned his neck around as best he could, and found Titania curled in a ball, shivering. The light was reaching a point that no mortal could stand close to him. A sudden pang of worry cut through the blinding rage and Stryg realized what he was doing. 

He released his wolfen-form and caught Titania in his arms. She leaned against him, eyes closed tightly in a grimace. The light within him began to die and the sand stilled beneath his feet.

“I’m sorry…” Stryg whispered bitterly. “I didn’t mean to—”

A dragon’s roar drowned out his voice. He looked up at five dragons circling above him. The largest of them, with burnished yellow scales like the desert sand, landed in a heavy thud before him. She was larger than any he had ever seen. Her foreclaw alone was larger than a goblin.

Instinctively, Stryg threw Titania over his back and crouched down, ready to fight. 

The dragon eyed him cautiously. Her body was tense, as if ready to pounce, yet she did not move. “Who are you?” she asked in a voice that was surprisingly effeminate despite the deep rumble.

“...I am Stryg,” he ventured. If the dragon wished to talk, then so be it. He needed all the time he could get to think of a way out of this situation.

“You are a son of Death?” Though she posed it as a question, her cadence left no room for doubt.

“...I am. And you are?” Though from her size, Stryg had a pretty good guess of what she was.

“I am one of the last of the dragon lords and master of my brood. Your father hunted my kindred and me for millennia. We have had to go into hiding to escape the Calamities.”

“So I’ve heard,” Stryg admitted quietly.

The dragon narrowed her amber eyes. “Do you intend to continue your father’s work?”

“I do not.”

“Then why did you attempt to ignite the Astral Light? Do not try to deny it. I sensed its power from Olduun and I saw the light as I flew here.”

“It was not my intention to do so.”

“You are saying it was an accident?”

“Yes?” The answer felt weak, insufficient for the damage he might have caused otherwise.

“Do you wish to kill me, son of Death?”

“No.” Stryg shook his head.

“Do you wish to kill my family?”

Stryg glanced at the dragons circling the sky above him. “No. I did not come here to fight.”

The dragon lowered her neck until her head was hovering only a few centimeters off the ground and her amber eyes were staring right at him. “Then I ask that you let my daughter go.”

Stryg frowned. “I don’t understand.”

The dragon lowered her gaze slightly to the small figure in his arms. “Titania, wake up.”

Titania opened her eyes blearily and frowned. “Mom?”

“Don’t move, child. I am in the middle of negotiating your release. Your struggling will not help,” the dragon said.

“What?” Titania looked up at Stryg, who seemed more confused than she. “Oh.” Titania scrambled out of his arms. Her legs collapsed as she hit the ground. Though the freezing chill was gone, her limbs still felt somewhat numb. “I’m okay.”

“What have you done to her?” the dragon asked.

“Nothing,” Stryg said. “I—” He stopped himself. Titania was like this because of him. He had almost killed her without meaning to.

“He didn’t hurt me, Mom. He protected me,” Titania said.

The dragon sized her up, looking closely for any sign of injury.

“I don’t under— W-What? How? Your mother is Lady Lorn,” Stryg said.

Titania looked away in shame.

“It seems my daughter has misinformed you. The Lorns are an old Sune House that has been a thorn in my House’s mercantile affairs, nothing more.”  The dragon closed her eyes and shapeshifted into a middle-aged woman with scarlet hair and a pair of horns. Her eyes were the same amber and slit pupils as before. Her complexion was the same olive with a hint of red as Titania’s. “I am Lady Lydira of House Clarus.”

“Clarus?” Stryg whispered. It felt as if the world was beginning to fall all around him. If what she said was true, then Titania had never been some merchant girl lost in the desert. She was there that night. When he…

“I founded the House many centuries ago after I went into hiding. We have since grown and become the most influential family in Olduun. We have riches beyond what most could ever dream of. Mounds of gold that would put most dragon hoards to shame. If gold is what you’re after, I will pay whatever amount you wish if you just let my daughter go.”

“Mom, I’m not his prisoner,” Titania said. “He’s my friend. He saved me from slavers and taught me magic, and—”

“Child, be quiet,” Lydira said, without taking her eyes off Stryg. “You clearly do not understand the situation you are in. If you think he is your friend, then that is simply because he wanted you to think so as to make you less defiant.”

“What? No. Stryg is my friend,” Titania said.

“Your so-called ‘friend’ tried to kill you,” Lydira said.

Stryg closed his eyes as a cold pit of guilt filled his chest.

Titania shook her head. “He saved my life, multiple times. He never tried to—”

“The attack on your caravan. That was him, Titania. Naomi and everyone else traveling with you fought him. They tried to stop him. And he killed all of them,” Lydira said.

“Huh?” Titania mumbled in disbelief. She slowly turned and looked up at Stryg, who couldn’t meet her eyes. “But… the Midnight Sun.”

“The Astral Light,” Lydira corrected her. “He used it to kill Naomi. It wiped out the entire caravan and the sandstorm left in its wake buried several more villages and caravans. You only survived because I instructed Naomi to hide you in the vault in case anything happened. That man is not your ‘friend.’ He is a monster.”

“N-No.” Titania smiled at Stryg as tears fell down her face. She hoped against all odds that this was some cruel trick, a joke that only adults understood. But as Stryg turned and met her eyes, she saw the truth in his pained gaze. Suddenly, she remembered Sidus’ words when they first met. “It was you, wasn’t it? The Astral Light a few days ago.” Titania hadn’t known what Sidus meant and when she asked Stryg, he had refused to answer. 

It was true. Deep down, she realized her mother was right. Naomi wasn’t waiting for her back in Olduun. Titania remembered Naomi’s smile, her laughter, the way she would sneak in sweets for her after curfew. Naomi had been the only dragon, the only person, who had ever treated her as a friend. And now she was dead, killed by the one person she thought had truly seen her for her.

“Why?” Titania cried. “Why did you do it?”

Stryg broke his gaze. What could he say that would somehow make it okay for a ten-year-old girl who had lost everything?

“Because he was under the impression that I had Naomi transporting some kind of weapon,” Lydira said.

“It wasn’t like that,” Stryg said.

“Are you sure? A rumor has been going around about how we had developed some sort of powerful weapon. A rumor, no doubt spread by the Lorns in the hopes of turning other houses against us,” Lydira said. 

“There was a weapon,” Stryg said.

“And you have proof of this?” Lydira asked.

“I…” Stryg faltered.

“We are a merchant house. We do not forge weapons. My family and I are dragons, we need no weapon but our claws and fangs.” As Lydira spoke, the remaining cavalry arrived. Several of the horses were pulling a cart. A lone black steel chest sat in the cart, chained and covered in arcane sigils.

“The chest,” Stryg said, wide-eyed. It was the one the slave master had claimed to have seen several cloaked strangers carry out from the wreckage of the Midnight Sun.

“This artifact was the only thing my men recovered from your battle,” Lydira said. “If you truly believe this ‘weapon’ to be so dangerous, then you may have it. Honestly, I’d rather kill you than give you anything, but I don’t want Death knocking at my door. So, for the sake of my daughter’s safety, I’m willing to part with the chest and the artifact inside so long as you leave my family alone. Do we have a deal, monster?”