Lansseax V
"A Priestess?" The wizened crone repeated, climbing unsteadily to her feet, leveraging herself upright slowly, white and purple robes shifting, "There are some that would name me such, apostate fools one and all. There are no gods in the Freehold. Still, I will not allow such a challenge to go unrequited. I am Baeraenys, last trueborn daughter, I surmise, I dread, of Good Valyria."
Lansseax smiled a serpent's smile upon a human's guise, "Why then if you do not claim the duty of sacred rites, daughter of Valyria, do you dare invoke hallowed ground? Are you not within the demesne of the gods, priestess?"
The purple eyes of the old woman stabbed into Lansseax's own golden eyes and widened, seeing something within those depths of liquid royal gold, that set her heart careening. Ah yes, to lock gazes with a dragon was to be reminded of immortality, to look upon greatness and be reminded of your mortal frailty. Lansseax was timeless, immortal, unburdened by the everlasting encroachment of destined death until its blade pierced her breast in battle. Then, even she would fall, but it was not such a day. Now was a dance of dragon and mortal.
The priestess swept her hand in a dismissive gesture, encompassing the room, "Pitiful fools, they scorned the gods, as was their right until the end of their days, and when the gods saw fit to visit Doom upon them, then they clambered and screamed for salvation. In reply, from ten thousand gods they heard naught but silence."
Lansseax tilted her head, and continued forward, stepping over the dead with soft footsteps, near silent but even the imperfect perfection of Lansseax could not step quietly enough to let the still silence of the mausoleum-temple persist. Lansseax drew in a deep breath, feeling the shudder in her chest as the air burned within her breast, hot enough that she could feel the surface of her throat warm from the inferno that boiled within.
Lansseax spared a glance back toward Gerion, who made no move to follow her, instead just stared at the bodies with newly vacant eyes, his sword trembling in front of him.
"I cannot speak Valyrian," he murmured, looking almost apologetic except for the agony that danced across his face. He did not step after her, sword still outstretched. Lansseax could hear his muscles twitch, as he almost made to follow her, yet some force kept him rooted to his spot, staring at the dead as they lay in death.
His muscles jumped and twitched like worms beneath his flesh, and Lansseax turned away finally. The plight of a mortal was not for one such as her, especially not for one unpledged to her own divinity. Still, it was clear that he had not understood the words that were uttered from her lips, nor those spoken by the priestess. Strange then, that she would understand his own words so readily. Yet, Lansseax could fairly taste the difference, even while each language remained singular to her lips. An unlooked for boon, every creature under the boughs spoke as one.
"A just death, do you not agree, Priestess Baeraenys?" Lansseax replied, voice sweet as midsummer honey, "If a man would have ten thousand gods, then he has no faith."
Baeraenysshifted, her rippled steel staff clutched close. The old woman frowned, the lines etched by age deepening upon her once-aquilinian face. She subtly shook her head, silver locks of hair flying, "Such is the hour you arrived. Do not think I have not forgotten your recalcitrance to answer mine own question. For days stretched into an eon I have stood as guardian to this temple, oathsworn till the end. Until the Doom subsidies or some other sign comes that my oath is fulfilled."
"The Doom?" Lansseax murmured, half-amused, condemnation coloring every word, "You speak, I suspect of the destruction, the desolation, visited upon the city, beyond the threshold of your wretched warded sanctum. I shall tell you, as a meager gift. The very air is riddled with ash and dust, a poisonous miasma without end rests over the city like a cloak. Beast-men squabble in the houses like carrion dogs. Worms float on the ash as fell spores, infesting the stone like flesh, and infesting the living as if they were beasts. Abominations and shadows soar and crawl the streets, feasting on man and dragon alike. Your kinsmen, of Good Valyria, have invited blasphemy into the world and seen such written across its face in the ink of blackest bile."
The priestessflinched backward as if struck mightily across her face, her rippled staff gouging into the pale marble stone, "No! It cannot be! The Doom cannot be so absolute, Valyria will endure!"
"In ages past, the city must have been a sight," Lansseax goaded, her lips stretched into a smile, and she sighed, "Black stone streets, obsidian peaks…"
Something almost like frenzy pierced the serene face of Baeraenys, her purple eyes turning hard, where before she seemed almost resigned, now fervor filled her eyes, "I cannot believe the city is as far-gone as you declare, interloper. You speak of a city where all the seals, every Hold gave way at once. It is not possible! The Doom was not to be so absolute!"
"Is it not?" Lansseax stopped at the foot of the dais, staring up at the old woman where she clutched at her rippled staff as if it was a child's toy, grasped for comfort where there was none.
The priestess's fists clenched around her staff. A muscle clenched along her jaw, as she stared down at Lansseax. Already, the ire flowed away almost visible, leaving behind only a grim horror and despair upon the priestess's face
"You can see for yourself, priestess," Lansseax said, and her lips were tilted in mockery, even as she gestured grandly toward the door, her outstretched hand almost seeming to linger in gesture over the tattered bodies, the corpses clad in flowing steel and tattered silk.
The old woman took a shaky step down from the dais, her eyes set on the open door and the ash and dust swirling in the maelstrom just outside. Her eyes were filled with longing, almost burning, yet before she touched down from the last step her eyes found Lansseax's once more and she paused on the very last step, in the shadow that one of the stone statues cast across the room.
Baeraenys' eyes, vivid but beginning to turn rheumy with age peered into Lansseax's eyes again, searching for something, "You are not from Valyria, yet I feel a distant kinship, trespasser as you are. I gave you my name, yet you neglect to give yours. Now whom has given the other discourtesy?"
Lansseax tilted her head, stepping up onto the first step of the dais, leaving her at equal height to the priestess, and smiled almost sardonically, "Know my name then, all shall hail and hark to the Ancient Dragon Lansseax!"
The old woman's purple eyes, widened a fraction, dancing across Lansseax's eyes and face, lingering on the hair before the surprise weakened, growing pale across Baeraenys visage. Reluctance and despair played in equal measure across the priestess's face.
"Lansseax is not a name of the Freehold, yet you claim the title of Dragon, your Valyrian is perfect, yet feels cold, every word enunciated as separate," Baeraenys replied, her voice distant, yet resigned, as she gestured toward the sword by Lansseax's side, "You would usurp even our lineage within the throes of our destruction, while the ash and fires yet burn?"
Baeraenys tapped her rippled staff against the floor, shifting one of the bodies, revealing a line of rippled steel joining the marble together. The old woman glanced toward Lansseax before turning her gaze away and with a fingernail, aged and hardened, almost yellow with age the priestess dug into the flesh between her thumb and finger tearing a gouge in her own flesh. She clenched and unclenched, letting the blood fall upon the steps, splattering over the revealed seam between the marble.
Lansseax blinked twice, once for each film across her eyes. Baeraenys did not see the gesture, engrossed with the blood upon her fingers as she was, and Lansseax could not help but liken her to a perverse servant of the Lord of Blood, those Bloody Fingers. Lansseax let the grimace of distaste dance across her face. The race of Man and their fluids, always so distasteful and crass.
"A lineage that was mine since I crawled in the stone scales beneath my sire's foreclaws," Lansseax replied, tone quiet and so very confident. She smiled a grin that was all maw and teeth, glinting like fine pearls even in the shadows. Baeraenys paused from where she was about to step past Lansseax.
"You would liken yourself to a Dragon?" Baeraenys asked, turning to catch Lansseax's golden eyes with her own purple, again, "Then you are as mad as the Lords of the City. If I could I would but take the life you so defile."
Lansseax felt it then, from where one bare foot rested upon the ground. A nagging stab, bone-deep and into her marrow. The mortal guise twitched and rippled.
Lansseax opened her mouth, drawing in a breath of untainted air, and laughed, shedding her slight grey shift, shucking it over one shoulder as she did so, letting it flutter for a moment toward the ground. Lansseax's laughter filled the hall, rising until it became a dull rumble of flames in the back of her throat. Baeraenys stared first at her nakedness with something like bemusement even though caution lingered in her gaze, but as the sound grew instead of lessening, fear flickered within her eyes and she backed away, almost tripping over the corpses that dotted the ground.
Thunder cracked and boomed, rattling the temple. Lightning danced, without grounding, casting the dark temple in red light.
Then Lansseax shed her guise, slipping free of her meager human form as easily as a mimic sloughed off foreign flesh. Baeraenys shrieked. Lansseax's claws dug through ensorcelled stone, gouging them with claws as big around as a human's arm. Her muscles bulged and twisted, bones lengthening as the truth was etched into the world again, the deception of mimicry fading away like water poured over parched soil.
Four great wings opened, stretching from wall to wall.
Baeraenys before her suddenly sharp vision fell on her aged posterior feebly, falling into the silk and armor beneath her. Lansseax swept a great taloned hand forward, swiping the chair and altar away from the dais, resting one great forelimb, clad in stone scales upon the stone. Her other feet moved, crushing bones and deforming steel beneath her bulk. Her voice rumbled in her breast, smoke curling out from between her lips.
Her once pristine white scales were pocked with acid burns, and Lansseax let her lips curl back to show her pointed teeth. Thunder boomed and rattled, the stained glass windows, blackened already by soot visibly vibrating in their fitting. Red spirits of lightning danced up from the stone, shrouding the Ancient Dragon in the spells of her birthright, the armor of her lineage. The immortal red lightning of the eldest children of the world danced across her flesh like naked flame, sending off sparks of her divinity.
Baeraenys looked up at Lansseax with horror and fear warring in equal measure across her face. The years sloughed away, and Lansseax snarled, the aching in her marrow reaching a crescendo. The lines on Baeraenys' face fell away, leaving smooth skin, unmarked by the touch of old age and impending death. Blood sorcery! Lansseax snarled within her mind. And such a blood sorcery it was! To steal the life of another and add it to another with but a few drops of one's own blood. How wretched! How perverse. How very mortal.
Lansseax reared back and the great vaulted ceiling of the temple shattered and cracked. Lightning crashed and thundered, stilling the roaring of the flaming maelstrom. The air shuddered, the incredible stained glass windows shattering in iridescent shards. The maelstrom of ash and dust entered the room, and two great bolts of red raced down through the open apertures, slamming into Lansseax's outstretched arms in the manner her brother Fortissax so favored. She held both bolts, as long and tall as she was, for a moment, as the very air seemed to hold its breath, silent and pregnant.
Baeraenys, her ancient visage giving way to the smooth skin of a midsummer youth watched with wide eyes fit to bursting. Lansseax let contempt, as much as it could, dance across her draconic face, barely seeing fit to move the stone scales. Already Baeraenys' teenage face smoothed and rounded with the encroaching of childhood, yet Baeraenys made no move to arrest the sorcerous working. Instead, rapture filled her gaze, dancing in her eyes as she stared at Lansseax. Worthless witchling.
Lansseax slammed both bolts down into the stone floor, into the seams of rippled steel, and the floor rippled for a moment, the rippled steel moving like a living thing, before it shattered, unwinding from the floor like a malignant worm disgorged from a living corpse. The marble cracked and blackened, scorched beneath the might of Lansseax's red thunderbolts, before it gave way, turning to molten stone.
Ash and dust rained down into the ruined temple-cathedral and Lansseax felt her lips twitch as fury suffused her. To ruin the only sanctuary she had found? All for a thief and worse.
The incantation of mimicry settled upon her flesh, teasing like a long-lost lover, though just as unpleasant, and Lansseax shed her dragon flesh between the space of one breath and the next, a long exhale of fire. The very air was still and poignant.
Baeraenys watched her with wide eyes, scrambling backward as Lannseax stalked forward.
"I did not know!" Baeraenys screeched, her voice lacking the deep and graceful quality of her earlier form, "I did not know you were Syrax given human flesh, my lady! Have pity on me!"
"You scream and cry for the gods, Baeraenys," Lansseax noted, with particular cruelty, her golden eyes gleaming, "Yet none such as these stole from the gods as you did. Indifferent you named them. Well, now you have met a god, not so indifferent now, Am I?"
Lansseax slowed to a stop before Baeraenys, kicking aside the staff of rippled steel. Baeraenys struggled backward, burdened by her white and purple robes, darkened by soot.
"Spare me!" Baeraenys whispered one final time.
Lansseax bent down, catching Baeraenys by the neck, lifting her into the air, one long white fingernail digging into the flesh beneath Baeraenys' eye until red blood seeped forth. The pale-haired girl thrashed for a second before she went suddenly limp, eyes meeting Lansseax's golden eyes, which split down the middle. A dragon's eye.
"I've thought of a better use for you, thief. One more fitting." Lansseax told her in a tone so very sweet. Honeyed poison.
