(Characters, worlds, plotlines, and others relating to "Wings of Fire" belong to Tui. T. Sutherland)
(This story contains very dark and mature themes, including very foul language, gore, body horror, death, warfare, genocide, nihilism, and references to sex.)
(As I'm not a vivid scholar of this world, this story may not be fully canon compliant, so if there is a detail I'm slightly inaccurate in, no flames)
For All of Dragonkind: Wings of Ash
Prologue: World of Ashes
It was dark.
In fact, too dark.
It was nearly pitch black. Even somebody with night vision couldn't see a thing.
It was...eternal blackness...
Like a dead star amidst space, with no light, its counterpart would soon take over, leaving nothing but one's thoughts separating them from the void around them.
Tsunami felt this when she opened her eyes, the SeaWing princess having nothing to go off of in terms of surroundings.
There was nothing, and as a result, it caused fear to sprout up inside her.
Despite her signature confidence and assertiveness amongst Dragonets of Destiny, even she had to admit that the unknown startled and made her uneasy and anxious.
Afterall, how would you be able to see a dragon that was intent on murdering you by slitting your through when the black of the night had taken over?
How could she protect her friends like this?
Wait...
What...
W-Where even was she?
Even regarding the dragonets' camp, at least one of the Moons should have lit their stay.
Was she...
W-Was she...kidnapped?
Taken?
By what?
Some malevolent force?
Was it the forces of one of the SandWing Queens?
Trying to gain their favor for the sake of political power?
Scarlet even?
All dragons know how terrible she can be...
Or perhaps the NightWings? They were the masters of the day's polar opposite after all...
But no. Even they couldn't pull off something like this...
It actually felt rather cold...lifeless...well, wherever she was.
The place felt...dead.
What was it in her paws?
Sand?
No, sand was rough and course, but this?
This felt like a mixture of dirt, grass, and...some other powder. It was softer than sand, but it had a certain weight and graininess to it.
No, her lack of understanding of the world around her at this very moment gave a sense of nervousness, like you were being watched from the shadows by a waiting hunter, wanting to claim your body as a trophy on the wall.
Or one of Burn's stuffed taxidermies of dragons, like some sort of sick and twisted decoration...
Oh...
She could imagine being a dead husk of her former self and having her innards torn out, only to be replaced by lifeless cotton, forever staring forwards at visitors gawking at her and as immobile as a statue.
Oh, it made her shiver just by thinking about it.
But...
So many questions and yet so few answers...
Just...
What was happening? The world shouldn't be this way! And the idea that hostile forces plucked her from her sleeping place with the other dragonets was unlikely!
And so...
Wait.
Was...
W-Was she...in a dream?
No, no, it couldn't be. Everything felt so...realistic, like she was actually there, in a realm that sucked the Sun out and reduced the planet into a freezing wasteland and gave up to the night of the Moons, except the Moons have also abandoned them as well.
Three Moons, please, just...any sign, anything!
And please...she hoped her friends were safe. She could never forgive herself if some sort of harm were to fall upon them.
No, she couldn't suffer the crushing weight and guilt if she allowed that to happen.
And her family...
Mother...
Anemone...
She had to leave. She had the duty of saving the world by ending the War, but it speared her heart to just leave them, even if Mother was...demanding and not...well, understanding.
She couldn't imagine being hooked up in a harness and having even her own freedom of movement taken away, even if it was well-intentioned.
And Riptide!
How could he be a part of the Talons of Peace?
She had to leave so much unresolved, and yet, perhaps it was for the best.
It was too much, and there were more important things to worry about.
However, her mind was soon occupied by something...a...
A presence...
Almost as if her prayers for something, whether a flicker of a light or some sign of life, was answered, her eyes opened wide.
It was...brightness...
Behind her...
And...
A sound?
And...
Smell?
It...
It...
Oh...
It reeked of...
Burning...
She snaked her head behind her, her blue eyes, once squinted before, popped out of her skull, mouth hung wide open in astonishment.
And reflected upon her eyes...
The image.
It was a rather simple, yet complete form of a flat dragon, facing the left, made entirely of wicker, held up by darkened wooden poles. Its paws and claws were out, one leg higher than the other, the mouth wide open with teeth out, and wings splayed out and tail pointing away.
It was on fire, not with the orange flames of the SkyWings she knew, but blue, the brightest sapphire of a great supernova, overwhelming even in the face of the universe.
Blackened smoke plumes blew off and to the left as the dragon, now darkened, burned endlessly, light crackles sounding out from the embers that flew into the great beyond, the heat generated being felt even here.
It felt...almost seering.
And far off, in the distance, were two shadowy hills.
On the right one was a tree, but not one full of life, but one of death. It was grey and dull, its branches tendrils hoping to ensnare some wind, only to fail without its leaves.
It was as if it was trying to imitate a lively form akin to its live brethren, only to fail for one reason or another, forever, grasping at darkness...
There was another tree on the left hill, but this one was different in every way. In fact, the only part of it that was similar to the other was its lifelessness.
It was curled backwards, almost trying to hold onto the universe behind it. It was of a brownish grey stone, smooth, with coned shaped emerging from it, as if a never-ending ice storm froze some icicles on it.
The only difference was that it was hardened rock, shaped with intent, and from the power of a sun, not a storm.
Tsunami turned her whole body around, her eyes glued to the image, which brought forth but a single thought that was inserted like some scroll into a shelf.
The ultimate sign of hatred towards Dragonkind...
She held still.
T-Three Moons...
W-What...
W-What was...
Her long ears flayed back.
She just couldn't stop staring at it as the bright cerulean flames burned into her retinas.
Her orbs were glued to it.
What...
W-What was the meaning of this?
What did this mean?
W-What was even happening?
However, the thoughts running wild in her head were interrupted by...
B-By...
She saw...
Them.
Eyes.
Eyes glowing the brightest blue of the eternal star.
They glowed so profusely, it could be mistaken for a miniature sun, with the pupils an ethereal white, a void into infinity.
And their owners?
Several of creatures, mostly bipeds, with a few dragons.
The bipeds...
T-They looked like...
S-Scavengers?
Some even looked like a mixture of...
T-Three Moons...
Just...what was happening!?
They stood straight up and single file, side by side, gazing forwards. Their bodies were shrouded in shadows, with only their eyes and the figure of their silhouette being visible against the darkness.
The fur on some of the scavengers' heads flowed in the air, although some were either shortened or bundled up behind their heads, and...
Wait...
W-Why were they...
T-They were nearly her size!
Granted, not larger, but to scale!
W-What...
A-And...
T-T-The...
The eyes...
T-T-They...
She...
She...
S-She...heard them.
The screams.
The roars.
The cried for mercy, for some break from the endless suffering.
They...
T-T-They were...
D-Dragons...
She saw them.
Dead and lifeless shells, their souls all that remained.
And their ghosts?
They swirled around in a whirlpool of torment, dragons of all shapes and sizes trying to hold onto something, anything to resemble themselves, to spare themselves the eternal blue flames of justice that damned them.
And just by looking into those pupils...
They saw her, and clawed at her soul, her body, begging her, roaring at her, crying at her to release, to accept death and give up her everything for someone else to occupy it, but only in vain.
T-T-T-Three...
She was...
No.
Nothing, not even the War compared to this.
S-She...
She felt like she was burning alive, the yells of the persecuted becoming too much.
No, no! T-Three Moons, s-stop! P-Please!
The questions that barraged her and her torment halted however, as she quickly noticed.
She turned her head and her eyes widened in silence, more questions whipping at her brain as she saw...
Lit up by the light of the burning wicker dragon were others, but not anything Pyrrhian.
They looked like dragons, but not any ordinary, or even normal looking ones.
She saw several of them, as still as mountains, staring forwards at the smoking image as well.
They were all bizarre in their appearance and coloration, as if they came from another planet.
She analyzed them the best she could, their traits and scales being sent into her memory...
A black dragoness once a destroyer's slave, with ancient markings and mementos of imprisonment donning her body, a shadow forever chasing redemption and forgiveness, a former terror of the skies...
A red wyvern, scales as hardened as diamonds, massive, and reeking of gold, silver, and precious stones, with a small noticeable scar in the upper chest, a most slithery and greedy king of a mountain...
An olive-greenish yellow dragoness, a metallic shell covering her spine and wings, a defender, and one for justice and peace, in the name of life of all despite their sins of the past, the silver dragon...
A dragon who stood upright on two legs, scales the smoothest of amethyst and spines of the brightest of emerald, beaten and battered, claws clenched for the ones he loves most, the cliff runner...
A floating dragoness with no rear legs, but with clawed paws and stilted wings, and one of great emotion, with fur of the sharpest scarlet and of the whitest of snow, one who was eternally a jet of the sky, and a creature of the eons...
A purple drake, a golden ring in the left horn, a scar down his left foreleg and over his wing on the same side, one who wants nothing more than to protect his mate above all else, even over his own life, one overcome with doubts, one living with everlasting, yet seemingly forbidden love, the purple phoenix...
And...
Others...
Many, many others...
Tsunami whipped her head back and forth, staring at them as they were as still as great sentries of the millennium, feeling...looking like...
Confrontational...
They...
Wait...
Three Moons...
They...
They were facing...them.
L-Like...
L-Like she was!
They...
Wait...
Were they...
W-Were they in the same position she was in? At least once in their life?
They were deathly still, dead set on those rhinestone supernovas of eyes.
Were they...
Were they held still due to being...mortified of them?
The screams? The roars?
Or were they simply caught somewhere in time, frozen in the fatal climb of infinity?
She didn't know.
What she did know was that they most certainly were not from Pyrrhia.
Their appearances were so unusual, so alien, and the frame and bone structure seemed so...off.
Not wrong, but not the same.
The SeaWing, with a confused, scared, and worrying look on her face, returned her gaze into those sapphire voids of eternity and damnation, struggling to maintain eye contact as they stood side by side, almost perceiving the dragons as threats not to themselves, but to a greater and higher order, as if they were gods in the flesh.
She was just so uncharacteristically scared, it wasn't even funny.
"W-Who are you? W-Who are any of y-you?"
She switched her sight from straight in front of her, to others down the line from left to right.
It might have been an attempt by her body and soul trying to avoid their eyes, to avoid their condemnation.
Then, all of sudden, her breath was taken from her lungs as her orbs thinned upon them moving.
In one single and collective stomp, they each took one foot, or perhaps two if quadruped, and made a step to reorient themselves, to face...
To face...
T-T-To...f-f-f-face...
H-Her...
She felt them.
She felt them all.
Her eyes were forced into those whirlpools of the bright blue flames of justice, wanting to ensnare her.
The screams...
T-T-T-Three...
Her legs began to shake.
N-No...
Her legs never did that.
Not even Scarlet could do that.
She began to become desperate.
No.
This wasn't right...
No, T-Three M-Moons this wasn't right!
No!
NO!
Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!
Three Moons, make it stop, make it stop!
Stop staring at me!
S-Stop!
Like a maniac, all her thoughts were trapped in her head, tormenting her.
She was like a wounded animal. She felt like her whole body was burning from the inside from the skeletons of souls scrapping their claws against her very being, ironically making her feel trapped, lost, unloved, hated...
Those eyes...
They wanted to incinerate her, to murder her, to wipe her from...
From existence...
She spoke. She didn't know what to do.
Was it a way to reach out to those other dragons beside her? Was she just wanting some sort of lifeless company to spare her this unfathomable fate? Were they even alive?
"W-Who are any of you? W-Where am I? W-What is this? I...Wha-"
She couldn't finish.
Why?
Because in but a single second, she saw nothing but darkness for a flash in the shadows...
For in an instant her head exploded, her whole body being shaken aback from the recoil, and the brain matter scattering behind her as ash.
Dead, as you should be...
Tsunami flinched and instantly awakened, hopping up as if she had awoken from a terrible, terrible nightmare sent by the worst animus ever known to Dragonkind...
She stared at the ground, a road made of bricks in the shade of ashen black, hyperventilating, trying to have her mind explain what had just happened.
Was it a vision? A premonition?
No, that couldn't be! She wasn't an animus!
She didn't even know any animi besides her sister! What could it be!?
No, Tsunami, calm yourself down. It was only a bad dream...You need to focus on ending the War. You have to! This wasn't right! It couldn't be right! There was no logic behind it!
B-But...
It was so...so...
So...real...
No, it shouldn't be real! This was crazy! Had she gone insane?
Her lungs slowed down as her heart rate lowered.
H-How could such a thing happen?
S-Scavengers!? And even dragons!? With glowing blue eyes like that!?
They stared right into her soul, like she was in a tomb, cold and dead, her life of no note or meaning.
S-She...
S-She didn't want this to happen. How did this happen? How could this happen?
No answers.
She wished her friends were by her side. They would handle this better than she could!
...R-Right?
N-No! They couldn't! She couldn't! They wouldn't be able to stand those...those...those roars begging for forgiveness, for mercy...
W-Why...
W-Why was this happening to her?
W-Why? W-What...
After she glued her eyes to the ground for a while, she slowly brought her head up towards...
A mistake.
A horrible, horrible mistake.
Her she held still at a moment's notice.
Her eyes thinned.
She gasped, the air stolen from her.
Her jaw went wide open.
She...
S-S-S-She...
T-T-Three M-Moons...
She felt the wind blowing ash around, for that was all that was left.
There were dragons, dragons everywhere...
IceWings.
SandWings.
SkyWings.
RainWings.
MudWings.
E-Even...
NightWings, a-and...
S-SeaWings...
T-They...
Theytheytheytheythey...
T-They were...
They filled the entire value covered in black and greyish ash, the land dead.
They weren't just dead, but were lifeless husks...
They were all grey stone, all spread throughout the destroyed world.
They were like an army, except they didn't choose a side before some sort of force took their life away, snuffing it out from their bodies.
Their mouths were all open, as if they were screaming when this omnipotent flash killed them all, and some were even in pieces, their legs, tails, wings, and even heads separated from an equally dull and ruined form. Some were just rubble, reduced to pebbles or joining the deathly dust that swirled around from the hollow wind.
And not just adults, b-but...a-also...
D-Dragonets...
A-And...
Her vision became clearer in her nearsightedness and...
A-And...
A-A-A-A-And...
Andandandandandandand...
N-N-N-N-No...
T-T-T-T-Three...
They...
T-They...
No...
T-They were...
She knew those faces and cold stone-dead eyes from anywhere.
T-They were...
T-The...
The Dragonets of Destiny...
They were like the others, but more intact, except...
S-Starflight?
There were massive gaping and jagged holes where his eyes should have been, the crevices bored in through to the other side of his cranium, with an even more expansive one in his chest.
It was as if he was...
Screaming?
She looked to the left, a-and...
Glory?
Her skull was...
Was...
G-Gone...
The top of it was removed, as if one had dissected her brain and forgot to put the bone back, with only her eyes and frills to remain.
However, her left leg was also removed from her body, the petrified limb lying in front of her.
And to her side was...
N-No...
S-Sunny...
The SandWing appeared to have been murdered a quieter, yet brutal way, as her head...
H-Her head...
I-It was...
The head that once belonged to her friend's solid and reaped body was on the ground, right in front of her, the right eye staring right up at her...
And the one that was trying to protect them all?
C-Clay...
He was behind them all, but his larger frame easily made him visible.
And his wings...
She couldn't see his right one, but the fate of his left told her all she needed.
It wasn't...there.
It was...g-gone...
It was as if it was ripped off, and...
W-Why did he look like parts of his scales and back were...removed?
It was like they were eaten by...
B-By...
Fire.
B-But...
B-but that was impossible! He had fire-proof scales!
How could fire burn through him!?
What his intent was, standing to the right of them, was obvious.
He was protecting the others in a vain attempt to save their lives, only for his wings to be torn off.
N-No.
N-N-No...
No...
Her breathing became heavier and heavier.
Her heart and lungs worked into overdrive.
"No..."
Her legs wobbled as she struggled to stand. She shook her head repeatedly, as if begging her eyes to deceive her from this horror.
Anything was better than this.
"No..."
No.
Starflight. Glory. Sunny. Clay...
She wanted to both cry and scream at the same time.
Her friends...
T-They were...
T-T-T-They were...
"No..."
This couldn't be true.
No, she...she...
She needed to...
Three Moons, no!
No!
This cannot be!
Three Moons, it can't be!
No.
No!
No!
NO!
"NOOOOOOOOO!"
She turned around and high tailed out of there, her adrenaline kicking into high gear.
She sprinted away, not as a coward, but as a survivor, as one who witnessed the death of all she cared for near and dear to her heart.
She was a scared bull as her heart and blood pounded in her ears.
She tried to keep her mind off of the statues of the damned as she sped down the ashen brick road, even stumbling once or twice.
H-How...
H-How could his happen?
To them? To...her?
No. Tsunami, focus!
Y-You need to get away. To run away.
Run. Run. Keep on running.
You don't want to die, do you?
You need to get away from...whatever did that to your friends! You need to stop whatever did that to them!
She just kept sprinting on her four legs. She just kept going. She cared not for the other dragons frozen in time against an unseen and godly foe, for she cared right now not to end up like them.
The voices...
They kept calling her. She kept hearing their pleas for some way out of eternal torment.
It was all too much for her.
She felt her muscles burn intensely like in the epicenter of a hydrothermal vent as they begged her to cease her strenuous escape from the horrors she witnessed and couldn't get out of her head.
You need to...
Y-You need to...
She relented.
She slid as she slowed herself down to a crawl, pushing her paws down to create friction.
She looked towards the right as her lungs strained with all of her heavy and rapid breaths. Her fear and impending sense of raw dread gnawed at her emotions, telling her to curl up like she was still in her egg.
Her chest heaved in and out as she tried her best to calm down, only to just barely do so.
With at least some sort of lowering of her panic, she turned her head straight and...
And...
W-What...?
It was...
It was a massive, long, rectangular building of the whitest marble that stood out amongst the mountains of ash.
It looked ancient, and appeared that it went very deep behind, as if it was a long and giant corridor. The roof was angular, a triangle of deep red making up the middle of the top and the bottom of a grand entrance was made. Columns of the brightest shade of snow, although the color was ruined in their shine, which reflected back all the greys of the dead around it.
It was quite far, but her path was obvious.
The brick road winded up to its entrance.
Was...
W-Was she meant to...?
Was...
W-Was it shelter? Shelter from this everlasting storm of shock, horror, and uncertainty?
She didn't know.
But...what else could she do?
She didn't want to end up petrified like the others, l-like...h-her friends, and she needed anything to break from the depressing and unsettling image of the deceased around her, like the whole world burned on fire...
No, she didn't have a choice. There was a reason for this. Ther had to be!
She gulped as her legs shook a little bit.
It seemed like destiny.
Destiny...
She...
She wished that she could change fate, change the world, the universe.
However, despite her status, she was only a dragonet.
Only one on a continent of many.
However, she was born and hatched with opportunity, with the privilege of being destined to end the War. She was meant to save the world!
She needed to go forth dauntlessly.
For her fellow Dragonets.
For her family.
For her people.
She swallowed her pride and her nervousness.
She needed to move on, to get to that sanctum.
She lifted her left paw while staring at the structure, and let go of it to start a walk or perhaps a jog, b-but...
A snap and crackle.
She flinched at the sudden sound and the fragmented and dust-laden sense on her paw.
She dipped her head to look down at it, a-and...
She was in a round and thinned hollowed-out crevice filled with ash. It was like it was a cage, round bars broken, as she likely and accidentally pressured them to crack underneath the weight of her foreleg.
She lifted it out as she gazed at the frame, and...
And...
A-A-A-And...
It was...
Her eyes shrunk once again.
Oh...oh...
Oh Three M-M-Moons...
It was...
I-It was...
A-A...
A-A dragon.
She stepped into a...
O-One of them...
They were in stoned pieces, their limbs, tail, wings, and head all amputated and all engulfed and occupied by the deathly grey dust, the pale mineral eaten up by the great flames like Clay...
A-And...
She peered at the severed head...
Wait...
The...face looked...familiar...
It was a SkyWing, likely a female, but...
Wait...what...
No...
Her eyeballs nearly bulged out of their sockets as her corneas nearly burst from her orbs as she realized who it was.
P-Peril!?
It was undeniable. The shape, the size, and jaw, the horns...everything.
It was Scarlet's Champion.
N-No! It couldn't be Peril! She had fire-scales! Fire couldn't hurt her!
...Right?
Right!?
Her mind went into overload again. No creature can ever harm Peril, so...
Was...
Was this an animus?
Three Moons, how can any of this be happening?
Why!?
She steered around her and began moving out and about again, going into a jog and into a frenzied dash towards that building...
W-Whatever it is that have done this...
Whoever is watching...
P-Please...
H-Have mercy on me...
In the citadel were several adult dragons and even dragonets.
No, not dragons that were alive, but dead.
They were mutilated, killed, murdered, ruined in the most gruesome and vile ways imaginable, staining the white-stone floor and golden-laden walls in both sanguine red and dark and grim blue, their bodies on both sides of the center hall.
A white IceWing, once crowned, yet without his piece of princehood, was lying the farthest away. He was decapitated, head severed from the body, as his eyes were gouged out, as if they were yanked out of their sockets. Even the head wasn't in one piece, as it had its skull almost forcefully opened, the inside, including where the brain should be, was replaced by the ash that matched the outside of the high-ceilinged building. His dark indigo blood seeped out and created a massive puddle where the head used to be.
Another one was ahead of them. A female SandWing. There was also a smaller one, another dragoness, and they appeared close to one another, not due to hugging, but by being skewered with several long projectiles, spears. This connected them into a dark embrace, their organs pierced and their once yellow scales defiled as not only did they come off from the penetration into their barrels, but also because they were forcefully removed, as if it was some mockery of true golden scales. With that, their bare and sickly dark red skin underneath was vulnerable to the elements, and their faces were still destroyed, their jaws contorted and either were bent in the worse way possible, or were ripped out, the tongue hanging out without it's owner's cage to protect it.
And a fourth. A female SeaWing of green akin to the vegetation of the deep sea. They were ruined in the goriest way known. Her chest was...gone. Like the SandWings, she reeked of iron as her essence tarnished the floor as her rib cage was promptly removed, with all her organs, her heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, pancreas, gallbladder, all of it, were all in scraps, as if they were eaten out as opposed to removed like a surgical procedure. Her eyes were glassy and her jaw open, appearing like she was alive when this happened.
There were also two NightWings in front of her on both sides of the room.
One was, well, wasn't whole, and instead was in pieces. Coming from their original residing place was a star of splashed blood, as if they exploded from the inside. Because the male dragon was blown apart from within, their body was in rocky and pebbly fragments, with only their left foreleg and the right side of their face left intact, yet was a far cry from unity, the only blue eye left still like its owner.
The second one, a younger female dragonet, was mangled beyond comprehension. Her neck was twisted like a screw, her windpipe crushed, unable to breath, talk, or even scream and roar ever again. Her rib cage was clamped and utterly destroyed her internal organs, turning them into mush. Her legs, wings, and tail didn't fare much better, as they were so unbelievably contorted, joints and extensions pushed or pulled the wrong way and curled into themselves far more than a dragon's natural limitations would allow, reddened bones jutting out of her scales and skin. Even her head wasn't safe, as the top of her skull, her eyes and a part of her brain, were ruined, her face and fatty tissue consumed on her lifeless corpse, ichor both spilling out of the shattered cranium and leaking from her mouth.
There was another hopeless victim.
What's this?
They were green all over, the shape indicating a female, wings fragile and scales of forestry, of great trees of life.
Well, if the leaf-like wings were even there, as they were ripped off with her spinal column, leaving only her bare organs once protected by her ribs exposed in a massive gaping orifice. It was like a chunk was removed from her back while her spinal cord was removed with insane precision, like from a naturally born killer.
And so, there was one left standing.
In the center of the great hallway was a SeaWing dragonet with light blue scales of a creamy shade, almost like a newly hatched and underdeveloped child who was rather close to being considered an albino if it wasn't for her pink membranes on her wings.
Her legs were shaking like she was in IceWing territory.
She was the last one.
The last one left.
She had a weapon. She held a spear once wielded by SeaWing guards of the Summer Palace in the air with her enchantment armed and ready if she needed to use it. It had a thin wooden handle that fed into an even thinner white cone, spiraling like a hermit crab shell.
It was the only weapon she ever had experience with.
It was all she had.
However, even she knew that she couldn't stand up against the onslaught, the horror, Death himself.
Against him.
Opposite to her, lit up bright by blood-rusted torches, was a drake, not of Pyrrhian origin.
He had scales brighter than any mere gold, imperfected with scars, caked blood, and black ashen powder. Not even SandWings had such bright yellow bodily plates, their horns of a shade of sand. Even the shape and form of their frame was alien.
And the eyes...
The eyes were slitted with hatred and animosity, the thinned pupil an everlasting white of eternity, and the rest of the orbs a brighter sapphire than any star or sun in existence.
He just finished another victim. An IceWing, clawed to oblivion, their insides spilling out as their face was unrecognizable.
As he finished another dragon he despised, he raised and turned his head from their corpse to face his next dragon to wipe from existence.
And on his neck?
A golden bordered cross of deep blue stone in a leather loop.
A dragon of silver with diamond eyes and a sapphire in its breast, held up by an equally metallic chain.
A round golden locket with strange etchings on it, also hanging by links of the same metal.
A thin and flat hexagonal stone with intricate carvings and with two symbols carved into it, the shape around his neck with a brown piece of sturdy string.
And...
Beaten and thin silver loops of...
Earrings...
There was two, though they were very different, and...
A golden chain, holding...
A winged stone of the darkest black...
On his forelegs were several silver bracelets that were...
W-Were...
He spoke in a deep and signatural draconic voice, on the verge of sounding like a demon.
"Child..."
"Give me all of you...your powers...your mind...your heart...your soul...everything."
Then, like another had occupied her body, she lost all functioning and control as if she was being lulled into relinquishing control of her existence.
Giving up control of her life.
Her eyes glowed the same ethereal color of the supernova within his own visage, the white taking over from the black pupils to be a reflection of his own.
Wrong.
It was all wrong.
It wasn't right.
The spear was let go, as if the strings that held it up were suddenly cut. It bounced first at its sharp shale tip, before recoiling onto the wooden grip and letting gravity do the rest.
She was as still as a statue, like she was frozen from witnessing a massacre.
Like she was lost to the void.
She could do absolutely nothing as he began to walk towards her.
He took his time as his necklaces sagged and his upper neck and blood-stained maw dropped the iron-smelling substance as he marched all the way to the dragonet, knowing that she couldn't stop him.
Stop the inevitable.
Stop death and destruction.
Stop Judgement Day.
She held still as he neared her, the young SeaWing's fate sealed.
She never had a chance before, nor now.
Not ever.
The yellow drake was within a foreleg's distance as he started what he always planned to.
He was a god, a deity, one to rule them all.
He opened his mouth as he was about to make contact.
He lowered his head, down under her head and at to her neck.
He twisted his throat to the right, and...
When his teeth were around the SeaWing's throat, he snapped his jaws shut.
Tsunami was close to the shrine looking building.
She was at the entrance, and...
She skidded along the bricks before they transitioned into marble as she held still.
The dragonet saw them.
Bodies.
Even from here they reeked of the fluid that once pumped through their heart.
She saw the first one, an IceWing, a seemingly young one at that, and...
Oh...
T-T-Three...
She felt bile rise up in her throat from the gore, and...
Wait...
She...
She heard something.
What?
What was this sound?
It kept on going and going.
What was...?
Wait.
Was that...?
Was this...chewing?
Three Moons, she heard...crunching, with the slightest noise of...
Liquid plopping onto the floor...
No...
Three Moons, this wasn't natural! Not at all!
It sounded like a dragon was feasting on a wild beast for food, but the image of these dragons made it apparent that the chomping was no animal, b-but...
No.
No! It couldn't be!
There was...
There was some dragon in there getting snapped on by another dragon!
It wasn't much, but they were in a better condition than the stoned dragons outside and the unfortunate souls that have been killed in rather morbid fashion.
No, her goal was set now.
She had to save whoever that was!
She had to!
She had no choice.
It was her duty now in this nightmare to rescue them.
For her friends.
For her people.
For all of Pyrrhia.
She let out another gulp and a deep breath, as she collected her remaining courage to charge right in, to stop them.
She ignored the stench of dead bodies and tried her hardest to not let her eyes drift to how they were murdered, as her paws impacted the last of the rectangular pieces of darkened clay as it switched to flat and once pristine polished grandeur and dashed right in.
She sped along, sprinting and sprinting, somehow avoiding the other dragons, he eyes squinted, until...
Wait...
Her eyes caught something in the middle of the hall.
It was...
What...
The mellow shade of ocean blue.
No.
The young and small stature.
No.
The pink membranes in her wings and webbing.
No!
The youth and splotches of white on her body, denoting her as a...
A-A...SeaWing.
No!
No!
It can't be!
NO!
ANEMONE!
"NOOO!"
Tsunami halted her rapid pace to a stand still as her eyes widened.
Her sister was sitting on her hindlegs, her rear on the formerly glossy interior.
Her forelegs were dangling, as...
A-As...
There were paws holding her head from behind.
Yellow-scaled paws.
The drake, interrupted from his act while grasping onto the hatchling's skull, halted what he was doing and snaked his head around the left of Anemone's neck.
His entire jawline and face were covered in fresh blood, drenching his neck and chest plates, for a massive chunk of the SeaWing's throat was now gone, profusely leaking life essence without her windpipe.
Tsunami froze up, like an IceWing's frost breath turned her into an ice sculpture to be admired by the morbid.
Her eyes became as tiny as a grain of sand as she saw them.
The eyes...
T-T-T-T-Thr-ree...
The light of a massive sun aiming to consume life, and the slit pupils, as white as the heavens, was the portal into the draconic victims of eternal hatred and suffering.
It was one of them. One in front of the blue-flamed wicker image she just witnessed.
Their eyes were wide open to gaze at her as her sister's life blood fell upon the floor from his closed trap of draconic teeth. It covered the entirety of his snout and long muzzle, and even above the bridge of his elongated face, nearly appearing under his eyes. It also stained his neck, which he had already removed from Anemone.
She was held still from his eyes coming in contact with hers.
Adrenaline filled her veins as she broke out of the trance for just enough time to get away from him, those eyes...
The eyes of a destroyer, a conqueror...
Amidst a panicking and hyperventilating, she managed to find cover, an angular white wall covered in reddened and even blue fluids of the slain dragons around her.
It was to her right.
She twisted around to glue her back to the dirtied stone, painting her spines and scales in liquid that once supplied oxygen to the victims' bodies before they died. Her lungs and esophagus burned with dryness as she breathed and even wheezed from the constant inhales and exhales.
She mashed her forehead to the stone and gripped the bend with her right paw as she was overwhelmed with fear.
He...
H-He...
One of them...
T-T-Three M-Moons!
H-He...
H-H-He killed all of them.
NightWings, SeaWings, SandWings, all of them...
She jumped out of her skin when she heard and felt the vibrations of the shaped rock around her when his eyes glowed even for profusely than before and let out a primal yet outlandish-sounding draconic snarl and hiss, opening his mouth and bending his scaled eyebrows in seething anger at such an interruption.
Stupid beast...
When will you know your place?
As an animal!?
Regardless, nothing will change.
It never will.
He knew everything. He could see everything.
Foolish creature...
HOW DARE YOU WASTE MY TIME AND PATIENCE!
Bahamut-damned pigs...
It didn't matter, he did what he wanted to.
Now, this demon spawn, this animus, this pathetic being meant only to cause suffering and his never-ending irritation and animosity was dead, useless like the pathetic waste they all were.
Clapping his mouth shut and with intense growling, he scraped the claws of his right paw down the lifeless dragonet's torso to grip behind her while his left still clung onto her head.
He carried her side to side horizontally, and then, like a bowling ball, with his right paw, he threw her body overhanded, twisting her neck unnaturally.
She flew in the air with such strength and like a ragdoll, turning in the air until she was straight ahead, head towards the entrance.
She impacted the stone with a sickly crunch, discarded like a rejected creation. Her legs flopped when she made contact with it, wings crumpled and head crashing onto its left side.
She slid a bit.
In front of Tsunami.
A-Anemone...
She was slack-jawed as her irises couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Her sister...w-was...
N-No...
I couldn't be...
The front half of her entire throat was chewed out, pieces of skin and scales barely hanging out like torn scroll paper, the bone that created her windpipe, or what was left of it, was reddened with SeaWing blood, the massive orifice and open maw creating a fall of iron fluids as her head could barely hold straight up.
And her eyes?
White.
The scales around her smokey orbs were equally as bright as a bone in the shape of stars, with blackened ash, like some grim tears, in streams underneath them.
Sun-bleached...
S-S-She...
S-She couldn't...b-b-believe...
The yellow drake, now adopting a more cold and emotionless face as he knew that nothing in the universe could touch him, spun around one-hundred-eighty degrees clockwise on his paws.
In an instant, the blood that once stained his scales burnt off like incinerating tissue paper, floating off him in ash, leaving his body pristine minus his scars from worlds beyond, like he was bathed in his own light.
He began walking on his four legs, towards a massive basin at the end of the hall.
And in the bowl?
Bones. Skulls. Ribs. Limbs.
All in a pile of grey powder.
Tsunami saw his shadow as she heard cracks and shifting of...
B-Bones!?
The dragon's snout pushed and retracted back into the skull, the nostrils now into a tiny point on the face as his teeth failed to shift from their sharpened shape.
His horns, like sentient vines recoiling from fire, were forced into his skull, disappearing completely with his spikes as they got pulled back into the spinal column, and out came hair of the brightest and shiniest gold akin to fluff instead of strands.
And along the body, scales melted into pale skin as most of it minus the head glowed a light similar to the world's Sun.
The rear legs, once reverse-jointed, crunched as the bend backwards pushed forwards and into a kneecap, the dragon getting off his forepaws and beginning to stand upright instead of a quadruped as his spine compressed down and his whole frame shrunk slightly.
Claws retracted into blunt and short nails, the tail shrunk and returned to the bottom of the pelvis and spine, and wings curled and furled to themselves, sticking themselves into the flesh.
He was now...a human.
With the shape now assumed apart from his draconic half, the flash dissipated, releasing to unveil his clothes.
With his hair so long to the point of flowing a little over his shoulders, he wore a dark navy blue short-sleeve tunic with a V-neck over a white cotton undershirt that went up to his arms, only for that to be fed into blackened gloves that extended halfway to the elbow. Equally white pants were latched onto his waist with a black leather belt buckled with a silver piece, with his weaponry on his sides.
On his right, his plasma pistol, black metallic barrel squared with sharpened pieces on the corners, a little peg where a traditional hammer would be, and a grip at a one-hundred-twenty-degree angle from the frame.
On his left, his plasma sword, also a dark ore, its pommel was a hexagonal sphere, while having a traditional arm guard that curved away in an empty semicircle. Its yellow blade was being held within it at a button's notice on the handle.
The equally white pants as the undershirt went down until they seamlessly flowed into shadow-shaded boots of a metallic nature with a slight dark blue tint, with two holes the led to brighter sapphires at the bottom of the sole, a larger one in the front and a smaller one in the back.
The man's boots let out light clinks as he stepped on an equally hard surface, stepping over to the basin.
He then lifted and pushed out his right hand and opened his cradle of fingers.
Then, suddenly, a long and wide piece of cloth an even darker blue than the tunic with silvered attachments at the top on the floor floated and, like a magnet, went straight to his open hand.
Now with the article, swung around and across to his left shoulder, and curved, whirling around his body once before settling onto his shoulders, sticking to his clavicles.
A cape.
As it flowed effortlessly behind him, he casually walked on, knowing everything from the start, from the beginning.
He existed kill them.
To kill them all.
To bring forth the reckoning of destruction.
As he neared the bowl of the parts of the draconic skeleton, blue flames showed up, as if knowing a master's presence.
He slowed down and ceased his movement once he was in front.
He let out a breath before extending his right arm overhanded and placed his thumb on his middle finger.
Then he snapped them.
He swept his arm across the rim, and just like that, the flames were awakened, engulfing the skulls and ribs of the dragons of this world.
While ordinary fire would struggle to burn them, his blue fire of the light of a sun did so like they were mere kindling whose only purpose was to be incinerated. They degraded, with the ash from it joining the pool of the dust in pile, the bright embers floating into the air and releasing the smoke he was all too familiar with.
He held his head a tiny bit before cocking it down, and then straight forwards once again, breathing in the plumes that came off.
Yes...
He smelled their bones as they became nothing more than wood meant to be cut down and sent to a fireplace to give off warmth and the light that came with it.
The stench...
It was...liberating...beautiful even.
The rhinestone licks on the draconic anatomy called out to him, the brightness reflecting off his equally glowing and thin-pupiled eyes from before.
A supernova...
He imagined a sun coming down to obliterate this planet, these pathetic excuses for continents.
Dragons...
Such a worthless and malleable species...
Their death and destruction will be blissful, knowing that every last one of those heathens will be gone and no longer a plague the universe with their ignorance and stupidity.
They were nothing for than feral beasts, a sickness on all worlds.
He would finally be glad that one day the Sun will at last be beautiful in his eyes once Dragonkind was killed off in all of time and space.
He could finally be free from God and Bahamut causing such eternal suffering in all these twenty-seven years of existence.
They will know true fear, know who ruled them, for these dragons were nothing more than cattle to him.
Pathetic...
"Justice will come, like all worlds before and after, and Dragonkind will die..."
Then, holding his cape's edge with his left hand, he twisted counter-clockwise until he faced the carnage, faced them...
Stupid and powerless animi...
They thought that they could control him, make him a toy.
No, he was better than them in every way.
Faster, stronger, smarter, more creative, more powerful...
Such pathetic attempts at corruption, bribing, clouting...
It was all a song and dance he witnessed many times before, and this was no different.
Hypocrites...
Thinking he was insane for being so murderous despite the fact that they chose violence, they chose to cause useless wars amongst themselves all for the sake of short-sightedness in the face of easy and simple solutions.
What a waste of sentience...
They only served to act as annoyances, as obstacles to the greater plan.
He knew everything from the start.
All the ways that Dragonkind acted, their values, or lack thereof, and moronic nature.
They were animals, eating, drinking, killing, shitting, fucking...
He knew the SeaWing was there, staring at her sister.
She was as useless as the rest. What was the point? What was the purpose of struggling?
It would be easier to lie down and die than to fight for nothing!
The end result would be the same either way.
It's just that one would waste less of his time than the latter.
Ocean-gurgling cunt...
No, she didn't matter.
She wasn't worth anything, not even dirt.
Nothing more than a pile of dragon shit to be appalled by...
"...And all things will end..."
"...The War of SandWing Succession..."
"...Darkstalker..."
"...The Othermind..."
"...All of it..."
He was silent for a moment to let the words sink into the lifeless bodies, the stupid whore of a dragon, and the world of ash.
"...And the entirety of Pyrrhia, Pantala, and all continents beyond shall be mine, like all other universes in the great infinite..."
They will all know him.
They will all lower their heads like he was a god.
He will bask in this glory, to end it all, to begin the rapture.
Yes...Dragonkind will suffer for their sins...
With that, there was nothing else to do. He shifted his gaze and body to the right and simply went straight on his way and walked out, his boots once more chinking on the blood-caked marble. His shadow thinned and got longer and longer until it all but disappeared.
Tsunami took a tiny peak at them as he walked away.
They...
T-T-They...
T-They were now in the form of a...
A-A scavenger!?
H-How could he talk?
W-Weren't they just a...?
This didn't make any sense.
None of it did.
Even Starflight would have an aneurysm just trying to decipher any of this.
No, she couldn't risk contact with those eyes.
She couldn't bear witness to the tornado of souls that swirled into her body and mind.
The one second she took a glance at the oddly up to size scavenger, and she retracted her head and orbs to behind the wall once more.
Wait...
D-Did...
D-Did he leave because...
B-Because she wasn't worth his time?
Was she worth anything to him?
What...
Three Moons...w-what even was he!?
Wait...
She...
S-She didn't hear the steps any longer.
Wait...
The clangs disappeared...
Did...
D-Did that mean that they were...gone...?
She placed her visage onto her sister.
No...
She couldn't be dead. She couldn't!
She didn't want any more of her family to die.
She was patient for a few minutes to make sure the coast was clear.
However, fortunately, besides the crackles of starry flames engulfing the dish of bones and ash, there was no sound.
No, nothing else mattered, not even her own life.
She had to save Anemone!
She couldn't be dead. She couldn't...
She gathered up her courage and jumped from her hiding place and dashed to her only sister she knew.
"A-Anemone!"
She shoveled her right paw under her stomach and curled it around to allow her barrel to be chest up instead of on her belly.
She shifted her paw to grasp onto her head.
Despite her bleached eyes and face still giving off remnants of a darkened hue, she felt cold and completely limp.
"Anemone! Don't do this to me! Wake up!"
Nothing, other than her wobbling jaw, legs, and wings going back and forth as she shook her.
NO!
She can't be dead! She can't be...
She lowered her left paw from behind the horns and towards the neck, inevitably covering her palm in her own family's blood. But she could care less about it.
She just wanted her baby sister to be okay.
"A-Anemone! P-Please...wake up! P-Please..."
No response, still nothing more than a husk.
Tsunami began breathing heavily.
No! No more! She can't be gone! She...
The older SeaWing lowered her right ear to sibling's chest, hoping to hear a heartbeat, a sign of life, anything!
Again, silence...
No, no, no! Stay with me, stay with me...
She shook her around again, this time more erratic, her webbed paws on both sides of her head.
"A-Anemone...P-Please...Y-Your b-big sister is here for y-you...P-Please..."
No...
Please...no...
Her mind tried to tell her one thing, but she grasped onto that fantasy, that illusion that it wasn't true...
No...no...
However, it wasn't enough.
She wasn't enough.
She felt water seep under her eyes, barely being held back by her own will.
No...T-Three M-Moons...
"A-An-nem-mone..."
Then...it finally hit her.
The truth.
She couldn't keep up the façade. It was over.
H-Her...S-She...
A-Anemone...
Her sister...w-was dead.
Her poor sister, s-she...
The watery dams behind her eyes shattered upon that realization, that her hope that her dragonet sister was still alive, was gone, burned into the ground.
Like ashes...
She scrunched up her snout and sniffled, uncaring of even trying anymore, just wanting to feel the dragon's embrace once more...
With her claws on both sides of the deceased animus's face, tears saltier than the ocean streamed down her eyes as she sobbed. She lightly lifted the other's skull up at an angle while she lowered her own, aiming it to touch the corpse's.
Her forehead made contact with Anemone's, sisterly love unreturned as she rubbed it on hers. Her liquid sadness dripped onto the ruined scales, but with no reaction, nothing.
Her sister was dead.
Anemone was dead.
W-Wha...
W-Why...?
Why?
Why, in the Three Moons, why?
Why not her?
Why not take her? She should've been killed, not Anemone!
W-Why did that yellow dragon...
She broke down, crying and wailing, another victim of the slaughter being her own flesh and blood.
No...
Not again...
P-Please...
N-Not again...
Then, her mind whacked her in the skull.
Wake up to reality.
You're a failure.
This was all your fault.
You're utterly pathetic.
You're no Dragonet of Destiny.
You're no princess.
You're worthless.
You couldn't even save your own sister!
What kind of dragon are you?
She let out a few more wrinkles of her nose as she lifted her face up, her sea-blue eyes staring at the flames at the end of the hall.
W-Who...
W-Who could've done such a thing?
Then, the words he said rang into her ears.
She repeated them over and over.
T-They...
H-He...
He were willing to kill.
To kill any dragon.
E-Even dragonets!
Her sister!
No.
He didn't know such a thing as mercy.
He was cold-blooded, evil, powerful, dangerous.
Only the worst of the worst could do such a thing.
Scarlet may have been terrible, and her mother may have gone too far, but at least they were open about the way they felt!
Him?
No, no, he was something else entirely!
Worse than even Morrowseer!
Unspeakable...
No.
She had to get to the bottom of this.
She had to stop him...scavenger, dragon, whatever they were, she had to stop him at all costs.
She was only one dragon and likely would die, but one dragon is better than none.
That meant...
T-That meant that she had to leave her sister behind.
Her dead sister...
She brought her sight back to the milky face of her sibling.
One last time, she dunked her head down to the SeaWing's, just holding it there.
"I-I'm so sorry...I love you...I love you..."
Other than the Dragonets of Destiny, who looked like they died where they stood, Anemone was the only other one she felt any familial bond with.
But now, that was all gone.
All she had left was herself.
Herself and destiny...
Such cruel, cruel destiny...
She raised her head and slipped her paws off the motionless frame of the dragonet's and stared as she padded away from her.
G-Goodbye...A-Anemone...
She clenched her teeth as she whipped her head around, drops of twinkling sorrow still seeping out from her puffy eyes.
And with that, she ran past the blood and ash, the bodies, everything.
She wanted to find him, and...and...
No, she didn't know what to do, what to say, but she had one desire.
The monster should never step foot in Pyrrhia, and...
Wait, what was the other place he said?
No, she didn't know such a place, but she forced that into the back of her mind as she skidded a bit while trying to take hard left turn at the exit from the side of the basin of ashes.
She started to hate the blue fire and yet fear it at the same time.
It was despicable, evil...
She saw the same black brick path that elbowed immediately to the right.
Now, she had a clear way to face him on.
With that, she dashed out of the building and sped to the right.
She ran and ran and...
A-And...
She slid the bottom of her flattened palms of her forelegs and the claws of her rear ones as she gazed up at the sight before her.
She stopped.
Her heart somehow forgot that it was supposed to be beating.
S-She saw...
More lifeless petrified dragons, and...
Even a few massive ones, that had a massive...spear lodged in their chest, and...
Wait...
W-Was that...
Morrowseer!?
A-And...
B-Burn!?
There was another dragon, one that was just a bunch of rubble with the head lying on its side in front of them that appeared like a NightWing.
Looking like a male, they eclipsed all of them by a longshot in terms of size...
H-How could a dragon be that massive?
He looked like the size of a mountain!
Though, he was not one that she was familiar with...
And, as she gazed above their heads, she saw...
Oh...
O-Oh...
The Moons...
T-They...
T-They...
T-They were...destroyed...
Fragments of the celestial bodies flew out from what was supposed to be the Moons, like a stone being smashed to pieces, b-but...
Now they were...ruined, gone...
Essential parts of the planet...g-gone...
"T-Three M-Moons..."
She said it, not because it made sense, but because of force of habit.
And in its place? In the middle of it all?
A sun.
But not the Sun, the one that orbited Pyrrhia, but another.
Instead of the golden orange that brough comfort to all the tribes everywhere and even the little critters that inhabited their world, it was the opposite.
Now it was larger, and a bright whitish blue.
W-What?
H-How...
W-Why...
I-Impossible...
H-How could have any of this happened?
How could her family, both in terms of friendship and blood, die this way?
What...
What was the point of it all?
Why her?
Why did she somehow survive?
Why didn't the others?
Starflight, Glory, Sunny, Clay...
A-Anemone...
Why them?
Why not her?
Why didn't she join them?
Who were these dragons that were slain?
Three Moons, this didn't make any sense!
How could it make sense?
She stared at the loss of what appeared to be Pyrrhia's last hope, even if they were dangerous and likely malicious, some dragon to fight would be better than to take it lying down!
Then, she realized.
It was him.
The yellow-scaled dragon of gold with the starburst eyes of the infinite.
H-He...
He spoke about ruling it all, destroying everything.
And what did he talk about besides the War?
Darkstalker?
The Othermind?
P-Pantala?
What did any of this mean!?
None of this made any sense at all!
And just...
Just...why!?
Why do all of this?
Why become a monster bent on killing them all?
What was the point?
Why!?
Why...why...
Yes...why...
Yes...such a question indeed...
On one of the far-off mountains of ash, overlooking everything, including the building, his creations, and the utterly hopeless and braindead SeaWing.
His cape flowed in the wind as he stood tall, emotionless with ethereally bright eyes.
Yes...
All things will end...
All according to plan...
He knew everything from the start, what to do, and how to do it.
All of these possibilities ran through his highly calculative mind, the evens and odds of this dragon doing this or that.
What did it do?
It made him highly unpredictable, and best of all, he knew exactly what they would do, how they function, how they act.
It was simple really.
And yet, the dragons annoyed him to no end, always wasting his time and spitting out how they were better and were entitled praises and tributes.
Bitch, I don't need to give you your fucking praise.
As always, he was millions of steps ahead of them, for he was greater than any dragon who ever lived.
He was one to rule them all, for they were a plague on the universe meant to be destroyed, cut out like a cancerous tumor.
Worthless.
Their only purpose was to irritate him with their useless pleas for mercy, or ignorant and moronic talk of superiority.
No such thing existed, only justice did.
He was justice, meant to smite them all, like one of his creators, Bahamut, intended, for he existed to do that.
Why else would he be drawn to worlds across the multiverse?
Is it to have fun? To enjoy himself to mediocrity?
Some joke God and Bahamut played on him...
No, he was drawn here because he had the powers of a god, and fully intended on being one.
Yes...
They will all die and know him, and then, his suffering can finally be lowered a notch now that he can see a sun not ruined by Dragonkind.
When was the last time he enjoyed himself basking of the Sun? Like his father?
No, he never found the Sun beautiful. This world and others.
Never, not in all twenty-seven years of his life.
They always looked dead to his eyes, always dimmer, always a part of a world he would quickly grow to hate.
Even this one is no different, even after altering it the way it should be.
However, it was not to look like the true sun he was looking for his whole life, but to end all of them.
If you will not bow down to a god of a sun, then you will cower before the might of a supernova...
Those of life feared annihilation, and those of death feared Judgement Day.
He will bring Judgement Day...
With that, he felt as if he wasted enough of his hard-earned time here, as now all he had to do was wipe this place clean of vermin, of excuses of imitations of Dragonkind.
He turned around to his left and had his back face the entire valley of death.
Of his ashes...
Yes...the sight of it was gratifying, knowing he killed them all...
Dragons...
Such a terrible species...one meant to be eradicated...
Then, he walked off, into the infinite beyond.
"Good riddance, for I have always outlived you...", he stated as if it was fact.
Dragonkind will die under him, like they were always supposed to.
And he had long accepted that.
Then...he was gone.
Vanished.
Tsunami just stared at the crumbled Moons and the alien star in the epicenter of it all.
Was it a sign?
Anything?
What...
She couldn't comprehend it. Was this something even bigger than the Prophecy?
However, her thoughts were halted when something bizarre happened.
The sun, the star of sapphire...
I-It...grew.
It got bigger and bigger...
It wasn't super gradual either! It was like was winding up for...
Tsunami felt it.
The heat...
The brightness...
W-What...
It engulfed the Moons, or what was left of them.
No.
It expanded until...
The grey sky was gone.
The sun covered it all.
No.
She felt an insurmountable wind hitting her wings, ears, and scales. She squinted her eyes as she held out her paws to protect herself, trying to balance with her tail and rump.
Then, it touched down.
The legions upon legions of stone dragons that filled the world were obliterated, not even ash remaining.
There was only light.
No!
It was fast. She couldn't even see it.
There was nothing left.
The world was dead and gone.
NOOO!
She felt like she was in the reddened earth given how close it was.
This was a supernova.
Destruction incarnate.
There was no stopping it.
Not even an animus could.
It was far too late now.
They were always too late.
She faced it down the best it could, one dragon against death and destruction, against the apocalypse.
But in the end, she ended up like the rest.
Gone.
As the wave of the sun approached her, there was little she could do.
All she could do was roar and scream, like all the others.
"AHHHHHHHHHH!"
Then, it hit her and everything behind her in a second.
Her eyes melted away with her brain and organs, and her flesh disintegrated into ash before being eaten by the pure and everlasting light.
And all that was left?
A dead SeaWing skeleton, impossibly crying out for mercy as it shook while standing in the ensuing blast.
And with that, Tsunami was no more, and all she saw was black, her worst nightmare calling her to screech out into her world.
For her, it was the worst vision any dragon could have had.
And for the Traveler, reality was often disappointing...
Thanks a bunch for reading my first entry into this website! Tell me what you think! Also, if you wish to see my original works, including the origin among other tales featuring the Traveler, look on AO3 and Wattpad!
And so, with that, remember to hydrate and embrace the memes!