Lansseax had held her breath for three days, and still, the miasma of fire and ash did not abate. She could feel the long, slow, scratches of madness against her mind. What had been at first an ache within her chest, fit for bursting, had receded until now it was a tickle along her throat, urging her to take a single breath to alleviate its pressure.
To do so was death, and Lansseax had no intention of walking so calmly into the cold embrace of that beast. Shrill shrieks and bellows pierced the air like errant arrows, and all the while the ground creaked and groaned and shifted as if it was a living thing, the very ground alive as the corroded and burning worms gnawed through the buildings as if they were old flesh.
She blinked golden eyes the color of burnished scales and continued to walk, the ache within her chest for want of air growing subtly, even as her heart beat slowly and languidly in a strange and foreign dichotomy. Her feet drew her to a precipice, and she paused. From the way the path curved downward, it might have looked over the city, but now with the ash and dust so thick that it would only take one breath to drown, to choke, on dry land, Lansseax could see nothing but the fell miasma.
One more day, Lansseax allowed herself to think, her ancient mind moving with a quickness that would have been belied by the ossified appearance of her trueborn skin, then the breath in my lungs will be fully spoiled.
She was lucky, perhaps, Lansseax considered, even as the shattered stone, once formed and smooth as obsidian sliced into the bottom of her too soft feet. Feet that should have been protected by tenfold scales, but now exhibited naught but the pale pink flesh of the crucibled humanoids from beyond the far sea.
The heavy air was riddled with ash, and the dust that clouded her perfect eyesight clouded everything but what was directly in front of her. It was a small mercy that the dust did not swirl quickly enough to be whipped into a maelstrom to grind her flesh from her bones. If it had, she would be forced to slip free from her vessel and retake her crucible-given form, and then she would perish all the same.
The worms like fine silken hair, drifted on the gusts of air and ash, prodded at her closed lips, appearing somehow eager to slip into her body. She could feel their touch as they crept across her flesh, yet found no purchase, leaving burning trails etched into her pale pinkish skin.
Lansseax swept her talons, her fingered hand, in front of her and swept the worms away, where they drifted away before returning as the miasma ebbed and flowed like the exhalations of some dread monstrous beast. Lansseax had walked for two days, leaving bloody marks all the while and her steps were dogged yet by feller things than worms.
At least the beast-men, more wyrm than man, had left her well alone after she had smitten seven-score with the red lightning which was Lansseax's birthright. At first, she had dared to think that somehow she had been returned to Farum Azula, but quickly that notion had smoldered and died, and she had chastised herself for such an asinine and childish hope.
For one, even a childe of fledgling years could see the architecture was different, for all that it held all things draconic in high regard. The spires were not ancient stone, hewn from aged marble and dust, but instead black obsidian and golem-like busts. The masonry here was akin to a magma vein, the rock flowing like water to form a peerless structure. Only the whirl of dust and ash spoke of similarity, and that was where the similarity ended.
The beast-men of Farum Azula would have welcomed a long-lost daughter such as Lansseax, priestess of the Dragon Truth. The beast-men here were some crucible-born derivative, a mockery of a mockery. They bore some superficial resemblance to the magma wyrms, to the mortals that consumed draconic hearts to form flesh and blood into the likeness of the dragons, yet failed err their wings could bear their weight.
These things, that skittered about with malformed mandibles, and twisted wings, were a mockery of even the disdainful essence of magma wyrms. They were blasphemous in a way that the magma wyrms could only hope to aspire.
If I could but spare the boiling breath in my lungs, Lansseax thought with raw vitriol, they would burn until the very streets became liquid beneath their blasphemous claws.
The earth rumbled beneath her feet and Lansseax almost stumbled, as the building heaved and cracked. The hunting call of a dragon, twisted and warped beyond measure echoed in the darkness of ash and dust. Lansseax would have huffed with irritation but her indomitable will kept her breath safe behind her lips. Instead, her lips formed into a frown, and she stepped beneath the ossified remains of a dragon, beneath the shattered wings, greater even than her immortal body, yet smaller than the majesty of Gransax, the Destroyer of the Golden City, as the black rain began to fall.
Like blood and acid. When she first arrived, the rain had started and Lansseax, with the heart of a fool, had stood outside, gazing skyward, having already adopted the guise of a mortal. Hence, pain and horror had been her first introduction, not the wonder that such wanton ruin and shattered majesty inspired.
Lansseax could still feel the acid burns on her face and upper body. The trail of pockmarks was like tears as they ran down her flesh. She was lucky no drops had entered her eyes. If her eyes had been covered in cataracts there would be no escape, and she would die in this place of madness and decay. As it was, the acid burns resisted all but the most potent healing miracles, the Light of Order seeming far distant.
As it was, Lansseax had never been one for incantations or miracles, her worth lay in another sorcery, the red lightning of ages past, immortal primeval lightning. Here, the air was saturated with magic beyond ken, beyond reason.
If I breathed in I would surely choke upon the magic, she thought, her brow twitching, just as the ash and dust would choke my lungs in troth.
Beneath the shelter of an ossified dragon's name, Lansseax the Glaive waited serenely. Her heart shuddered and beat in her chest, in time with the careening drops that pelted her makeshift roof.
Her vision had begun to blur and slowly, and carefully Lansseax blinked, grimacing at the scrape of ash over the whites of her eyes. Blinked once, twice, and then thrice more. Squeezing her eyes shut until she could open them once again before using a long talon, a soft finger, to scrape the black gunk away.
This city, Lansseax considered again, shall be my death, and then where shall I be when you need me, brother?
The torrent of acid ceased, the oily black drops arresting their downpour and carefully Lansseax stepped out once more. It was folly to tarry. She had already seen many foul beasts, wyrms, worms, and beast-men. Above it all she had heard the haunting hunting cry of dragons.
How long could she hold her breath?
This pitiful mortal shell had been a split-second decision, spurred on by desperation as she flew through a maelstrom of fire and ash, ash that had burned as hot as the tongues of fire that lashed out like living things from the ever-present maelstrom of fire that hung over the city as a funeral shroud. The ask had burned and melted even Lansseax's stone armor, making it run like molten magma over her own skin. Forcing her to shed her stone scales and take a lesser form, safe beneath the bank of ash.
It was a form she'd long become accustomed to, but nevertheless, the ignobleness grated on Lansseax something fierce. It was one thing to take a mortal vessel, to take mortal form to reward the knights, to share with those whom she held in high regard. It was another beast entirely to be forced to adopt a mortal form or else suffer true death.
One was by choice, the other was by necessity. To clip a dragon's wings was death.
It was lucky, profoundly so that Lansseax's transformation was not true. Instead, that which bore her image still retained its essence, and that essence was draconic. And so her body was that of a mortal woman, draconian, but mortal. Yet, her body burned from within with the strength of dragon fire, and her lungs held the breath that a dragon would while still being pitiful human lungs.
Regression, all things seeking to return to what they were, and Casualty, linking everything that was Lansseax that is to the Lansseax that is and was and is to be. An immutable truth, by Lansseax's mutable reasoning.
She was not a sage of the Golden Order but such fundamental truths of the cosmos had long pre-dated the sages all the same.
Her feet burned as she stepped into puddles of half-formed acids, yet Lansseax prowled onward all the same. A growing crowd followed, she could hear them by their skittering, out of the shadows that twisted and scurried lest she gazed upon their wretchedness.
This place was old, so very old. Almost as old as Lansseax, as old as the Golden City of Leyndell, but it felt even older. Lansseax did not doubt that the rot that had set in, the rot that crawled like swollen veins as if it was alive up the side of the hallowed buildings was the root of such decay. Black magic permeated the air, that much she had already noted, and other, darker arts, if that was but possible. The city was drenched in sin, in decadence.
Gilded collars and petrified bodies, hands stretched skyward dotted the walkways. Lansseax let a hand linger on the head of one such body for a moment, silvery hair giving away as the face, once so lifelike crumbled away into ash at the slightest touch, how intense the heat must've been, reducing the people to naught but still walking ash?
In buildings, she found mothers with children clenched to their bosoms and others, fouler men made beasts, caught in gestures of sin in their final moments. Lansseax's talons, her nails, long dirtied at this point bit into the smooth and perfect skin of her palms.
This cataclysm had been complete and sudden. Yet, Lansseax struggled to thank that perhaps these people had deserved it, deep down.
Cruel implements, corroded whips with many fangs, desiccated arts, and more. Murals, covered in dust, but with blood-pigment, so fine and pure and so very magical. Here, was a city where men died in droves for art. Slaves walked the street and lords and ladies walked with palanquins or rode.
And such was the traces of what they rode! Dragons! Lansseax's lips curled in disgust. For all that she did not consider such brethren as trueborn, anger curdled in her mind all the same. Even the least of the dragons of old would feel anger in their breast at such a sight. Dragons as slaves!
The city rumbled, and Lansseax walked on, leaving footprints of blood behind her with every step. She would heal all ailments once she shed her mortal vessel and returned to the sky. If she could just take to the sky!
Her eyes tracked upward. Great shadows danced in the maelstrom, winged beasts careening overhead. With far too few wings, or far too many. Ever did the piercing bellow and shrill cries pierce the air, some louder, some quieter, and now and then, when all grew silent an unearthly monstrous cacophony. She could not fly, Lansseax surmised, not until the very air grew short and she had no other choice.
Yet, already, the air in her lungs was short, the burn of the foul air within her lungs just beginning to prompt her to breath in deeply, fill her lungs with air. How much air could her dragon lungs hold? Enough for a day, for two, but three days approached. Three days without sleep or rest, except when the black rain fell, and then she was forced to stop. How big was the city? How far had she wandered?
Lansseax was jolted from her internal murmuring as the flash of something small impacted her golden locks. She bit back a hiss of pain, mindful of the air in her lungs, and stepped to the side, feeling the acid rain of black oil begin to fall yet again.
A clatter of bones, the scrape of steel on stone, and Lansseax had the barest moment to turn, her thoughts still clitter-clattering within her mind. A blade, rippled steel, slashed toward her, and Lansseax slapped it away with the edge of her hand.
A growl, air she could not afford to spare, slipped free from her lips, deep enough to shake the room she had just taken refuge in. A craftsman's house, perhaps, more rippled steel, wards hanging heavy in the air, diluted by age without a master, nascent and unfed.
Lansseax's fingers fell away. Sliced clearly through. Her eyes blazed as golden ichor spilled in an arc from her discarded hand. She could feel the blade as hot as a red poker as it sliced between bone and sinew, slicing through the skin that still bore the properties of stone scales, flesh that could not be parted by any mortal weapon. Lansseax stumbled backward, face a rictus of rage and within the barest moment, a fraction of a second, a glaive made of the primeval lightning erupted between her fingers.
"Must return. Must return!" A voice, shattered and broken, edged with madness, stilled Lansseax's retaliatory strike before it slipped from between her hands, dissipating into red embers.
A man. Golden armor. Shaped into the form of a lion. One of Godfrey's get? The sword, rippled, keening with sorcery stabbed toward the dragon in human form again, and Lansseax dodged backward, before darting forward, slipping a hand into the man's guard and seizing the guard of the sword, wrenching it away. It spun in the air and then sunk into the wall as if the wall was warm butter.
"No!" the man screeched, scrambling toward the sword like an animal.
Lansseax caught him by one engraved lion pauldron and heaved, slamming the man into the wall. A fist slammed into her stomach and the smallest breath of air slipped free from her lips. Her lungs burned. The other hand, gauntleted, clawed at her face.
Before the questing fingers could stab into her eyes she slammed her head forward into his head. He groaned, and Lansseax repeated the gesture, feeling her brow begin to sting before the man slumped, leaning forward and collapsing.
Now, Lansseax murmured within the quiet of her own mind, how did a man, a mortal man survive here, the very air is a foul poison and riddled with flighted worms?
She bent and with deft fingers, unlaced the golden helmet.
Ah, Lansseax thought, much is revealed.