Drakelings — Ferris

I wake up at first light, but it isn’t the dawn’s gentle glow that jolts me awake. There are dozens of powerful auras approaching rapidly. I recognize some of them.

“Maribelle, wake up right now. You need to run.”

It doesn’t make sense. We’re far away from their territory. They shouldn’t be here.

“Ferry? What’s wrong?”

I clutch my shoulder. The dull pain from the chieftain’s magic is still there, but weak enough that I failed to worry about it like I should have. My stomach sinks as I put things together.

“I think they’re tracking me with magic. You need to get away from here, Maribelle. This isn’t like the destructozonicus. You could die.”

“What’s happening?”

“Drakelings.”

“I can help.”

I glare at her. We don’t have time to waste arguing about this. At the speed they’re coming, we have a minute at most.

“You’re too weak to help. Head back towards the mountains. You can’t hide in the grasslands.”

To my relief, she just nods.

“Take my backpack. You need the supplies more than I do,” I say.

Her eyes go wide.

“Don’t die,” she says.

We scramble out of the tent, and then I see them. In the sky, seven draconic winged monstrosities are flying our way, mountain wyverns, each with several humanoid figures riding their backs.

Maribelle picks up her bone sword, grabs my backpack, and dashes towards the mountains. It’s less than a kilometer to the foothills. With her speed, she should make it to the trees before they reach her, but there is no guarantee that she will be able to escape just because she hides in the forest. Hopefully they focus on me.

I point Radius towards the sky and fire up a flare. A big bright explosion announces my location, not that they couldn’t already see me.

To my dismay, one of the wyverns veers off-course, following Maribelle. The thought of them catching her, killing her, makes me want to puke. This is my fault. I wasn’t cautious enough. This is something I could have seen coming. I should have never brought her with me.

The wyverns land in a circle around me, roughly thirty drakelings disembarking from their flying mounts. I look around, assessing the strength of my enemies. Most have much weaker auras than me, but there is strength in numbers. Three of them are on my level or stronger.

The chieftain has black scales and long fangs that show his age. He has grey spines on his head, like those of a hedgehog. His tail snakes behind his long slender legs, a golden knife strapped to the end of it, more a status symbol than a weapon. His true weapon is the staff he holds, a stick with an enchanted human skull at the end of it, runes carved into the bone in a mystical language I do not understand. He feels more powerful than me, at least in terms of his raw aura, though I have never really seen him fight. He stands back, allowing the others to handle me. I can’t blame him for his confidence. His warriors are strong.

There is a brawler that I fought before, his hands clenched into fists and ready to strike. This one has green scales and brown spines. Like the chieftain, he is wrapped in layers of cloth that have been coated in enchantments written in some kind of blood. They’re extremely potent heat resistance wards, powerful enough to stop some of my strongest attacks. Though he feels somewhat weaker than me, I couldn’t beat him before. He surpasses me in terms of physical strength and my flames don’t hurt him.

Finally, there is a drakeling that I have never seen before. He has light blue scales that almost look like glass, yellow eyes, and delicate white spines. He carries a large clear crystal in his hand, an ominous magic coursing through it. He has masterful control over his aura. I cannot gauge his strength.

A moment passes as we look at each other. Then, the ground explodes. Tendrils of living stone erupt from the dirt beneath my feet, attempting to grab me, likely the magic of one of the many weaker drakeling warriors. I release the full force of my aura, an explosion of heat that melts the earth as I dash away. I move towards the section of the circle of enemies that seems weakest.

A blast of blue light flashes towards me, and I dodge on instinct. Where I was standing, there is now a huge mass of crystal, large enough to completely encase me. My heat seems to have no effect on it, and my aura cannot pass through it, as if it’s an impervious substance. The only sign of where the magic came from is the lingering energy emanating from the crystal held by the blue drakeling.

The big crystal mass cuts off my escape route, and I turn to run in a different direction. The brawler blocks my path, his fist raised over his shoulder. He punches forward as his aura manifests into unbridled force.

‘Rain of Ten Thousand Fists,’ his spirit screams.

A hailstorm of illusory fists comes slamming down, each carrying a meteoric impact. I leap and spin, dodging to the best of my ability, flames bursting out of my body to push me to wherever I need to be. As the fists rain down, the already molten ground is sprayed into the air with every tremendous impact.

Despite my best efforts, I get hit in the side, my ribcage cracking as the devastating impact overwhelms the magic that strengthens my body.

The crystal drakeling takes the chance to fire another blast of blue light at me. If I get encased in his crystals, I’m done for. In a desperate maneuver, I create an explosion beneath me. The blast sends me flying into the sky just as a huge mass of crystal forms at the epicenter of the detonation.

Hurtling through the air, I can see devastation beneath me. Our camp in the grasslands is now a hellscape of craters, crystals, and lava that formed over the course of just a few seconds.

I feel a magical pulse from above me, the telltale vibrations of a teleportation spell. I twist around in the air. There is a red drakeling above me, an obsidian dagger in hand, one of their many strong assassins. He lashes out towards my neck with his blade, but I am faster.

The assassin is wearing the same fire resistant fabric as the brawler, so I don’t bother with flames. I simply stab Radius into his stomach with all the physical force I can muster. The phoenix talon pierces through the fabric, and stabs through his hard scales. Only when the spearhead is inside his body, I release a fierce blast of fire, not holding back in the slightest. The drakeling explodes, burnt shreds of flesh and bone spattering everywhere.

The brawler roars in anger beneath me, leaping into the air to intercept me before I fall back down to the earth. I don’t want to tangle with him, so I blast flames out of my feet, flying off towards the bottomless rift that lies a distance to the east. As my mind desperately searches for a way out of this situation, an insane plan begins to take shape.

I hit the ground running, a horde of drakelings following behind me. Arrows, stones, and magical projectiles rain down on me from behind, my instinctual sense of danger allowing me to dodge them without looking back. Every few seconds, a blast of blue light creates a giant chunk of crystal exactly where I was planning to be. I dodge the crystal prisons with inches to spare, explosive flames pushing me out of the way just in time.

The chaotic chase gets more intense as the drakelings try hard to stop me from reaching the canyon. They don’t know what my plan is, as even I haven’t sorted it out yet, but my intelligent foes know to stop me from doing anything I want to do.

A couple hundred meters away from the edge, I roar. I imbue my voice with magic, issuing an implicit challenge to the denizens of the bottomless rift, the same way a monster would.

My call is answered. At least ten destructozonicus, some much larger than the one that produced Maribelle’s sword, come crawling out from the depths. The projectiles that I dodge fly forwards, hitting the fierce beasts and inciting their rage.

The feathery yellow monsters release their entropomantic auras, shattering the earth as they charge forwards. I dive into the ground, heating up the rock so it melts into a viscous liquid. As I swim down deeper into the lava, I feel thunderous vibrations from the clash between monster and drakeling that rages above me. I have no illusions about which side will win. The horde of feathery beasts will buy me a couple minutes at most.

I angle the underground channel of lava towards the canyon as I swim through it as fast as possible. After what feels like an eternity of holding my breath, I burst out of the side of the bottomless rift, the lava around me suddenly gushing out of a hole in the canyon wall and carrying me with it.

I push myself out of the falling torrent of molten rock, and blast flames out of my feet to move towards the canyon wall. I cling onto the red vines that line the stone, vines which are already beginning to char from the heat radiating off the waterfall of lava. I look around for somewhere to escape to. There are shallow caves that have been gouged out of the stone walls, containing what look like giant bird nests woven out of the canyon’s red vines. Within some of the nests, there are several yellow eggs, and in others, baby destructozonicus are hiding.

I look down. There is nothing but a dark abyss. Ominous magic radiates from below. I don’t want to go down there.

From outside of the canyon, the sound of battle has ceased, the last destructozonicus crying out in pain as it dies.

I realize that despite my improvised plan’s amazing success, I only bought myself a few minutes. There is nowhere to go. Even if I hide in one of the nests, they will find me eventually, especially since I still feel the tracking spell in my shoulder.

I’m kind of screwed.

My best chance is to leave the canyon when they’re not expecting it, and make another mad dash for freedom. Then, I have to keep running for however long it takes for the tracking magic to wear off. It will probably take days.

Shit. I just hope that Maribelle survives.

I point my open hand in a downwards direction towards the opposite wall of the canyon. I blast flames out of it to balance my body in such a way that I can run along the vertical stone cliff. I run laterally, hoping to get a few hundred meters away from where the drakelings are.

When I am satisfied with my positioning, I blast myself up the canyon wall, emerging out onto the flat grassland.

My breath catches in my throat when I see the whole troupe of drakelings right in front of me. They must have used the tracking spell to follow me while I was running inside the canyon.

My only choice is to break through with overwhelming force. I haven’t used any of my manifestations yet, so none of them are on cooldown. This is the time to go all out.

‘Volcanic Blade!’

I unleash my attack, creating a vertical wall of vaporized earth that incinerates several of the weaker drakeling soldiers. More importantly, it opens up a straight path for me to dash through. I blast flames out of my ankles, flying over the furrow in the earth that my manifestation created. I hurtle through the mist of molten rock, the substance condensing on my body as flakes of volcanic ash.

I emerge from the scorching clouds to find the drakeling chieftain blocking my way. He raises his staff, a violet light pulsing around it.

I respond with my strongest manifestation.

‘Piercing Star!’

A single point of light forms at the tip of Radius, a source of heat so intense that just the radiation emanating from it boils the earth beneath me and ignites all the grass in my line of sight. In an instant, the entire grassland becomes a field of fire.

I stab the chieftain. He puts up a defensive barrier made of purple light, but it does nothing. My fierce attack pierces through it easily. The raging star of energy at the tip of my spear totally incinerates the fire resistant cloth he wears, and I stab him in the heart. Flames course through his body and boil his blood. He becomes ash.

The point of light at the end of my spear winks out, the precious seconds of unstoppable heat coming with the cost of being unable to use the same technique for several hours. My momentum carries me into something hard and invisible. I bounce off and fall to the ground.

I have been trapped. In his dying moment, the chieftain created a spherical barrier around both me and him.

A flash of blue light fills the chieftain’s bubble. Crystal forms around me, trapping me completely. It’s over.

The strange crystal suppresses my aura. I cannot move or draw out my magic. My eyes are open, still seeing, but unable to move. Even my insides are frozen, my heart not beating, my lungs not breathing, my blood not flowing, yet somehow I am still conscious.

The drakelings move around me with a somber air about them. I have been defeated, but it came at the cost of their leader’s life. Their victory is bittersweet. They push and roll the crystal in which I am encased, moving me somewhere.

I wonder what they will do with me. Drop me into the bottomless rift? Bury me so that I suffer forever, frozen for all eternity?

They begin to wrap leather straps around the crystal that encases me, tying me to one of their pet wyverns. I look at the ground as the straps are secured, unable to even turn my eyes.

Shit. I know exactly what they’ll do, don’t I? They will feed me to the abomination that they worship. The thought makes me try to squirm. Anything but that. I will die to anything but that.

No, please no.

I’m sorry, mother.

“Raise your chin, you are Ferris Vermillion. The world needs to see your pride,” she said.

I looked down at the silk sheets of my bed. I had just returned from my first visit to Salsvale, and the words of their crown prince were weighing heavily on my mind.

“Mom, do we actually matter? Theo said our family—”

Her finger landed on my lips. I looked up. Her green eyes gazed back at me, framed by locks of golden hair. A magical phoenix talon swung back and forth, hanging around her neck. Mother’s name was Gloria Vermillion, and she was queen of Elania.

“It doesn’t matter what Theonius Arvali said. You are just as much a prince as he is. Our family chose to abdicate our power. Because of that choice, this became a country where even those born weak and poor can live well if they work hard and treat others kindly.”

“But he even said my grandfather was a fool who dropped his crown. His dad laughed when he said that. I hated it. How come we’re allies with them when they look down on us so much?”

“Claudius Vermillion was a great man, a genius. He created the parliament, used his inherited wealth to build schools, orphanages, and shelters for those in need. He showed the world how civilization should be. That is why the people of Elania love their royal family. We gave them rights and treated them with a respect that Theo’s subjects can only dream about. That is why we matter. We are leading the world into a new era.”

I looked back down, not completely satisfied with the answer.

“As for why we ally with others who do not share our ideals, that’s because it’s better to make friends than enemies. Who knows, maybe in the future, Theonius or his children will see reason and follow in your grandfather’s footsteps.”

“That doesn’t seem very likely to me.”

“Well, yes. Sadly, I have to agree. Theo’s father believes might makes right, that those with power have the right to use that power as they please. That is how he runs Salsvale, and that is how he thinks the world works as a whole. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. That’s what’s special about humanity. We have the ability to make our societies fair and just. We can build a world where king Langton Arvali is wrong, and one’s kindness matters more than one’s might.”

“I love you, Mom.”

She brushed her fingers through my hair.

“I love you too. Now, are you ready for dinner? We have a very interesting guest tonight. He showed up out of nowhere and bought half the city.”

The royal dining hall was packed as usual, a feast spread out across the long rectangular table. My mother was sitting at the end of it, the chair beside her empty. It was meant for my father, but I never really knew him. He passed away shortly after I was born.

We began to eat. The esteemed guest my mother told me about was very late.

Half way through our meal, the doors to the dining hall swung open with a forceful push.

“Greetings,” the man exclaimed with a cocky smirk.

He was a tall, bald man with violet eyes.

“Welcome. Everyone, this is Malazo, a very wealthy man who recently purchased over forty percent of the buildings in Elania,” Mom said.

“I will have more than that soon,” he said.

The man walked along the table, ignoring the seat that was open for him. He paused beside a pretty young woman with smooth black hair. Her name was Chelsea, and she was the daughter of the prime minister. I had a bit of a crush on her, but she was twice my age.

Malazo leaned in and smelled her hair, brushing her cheek with his fingers. Chelsea’s eyes went wide and she held very still.

“Excuse me, Malazo, exactly what do you think you’re doing?” Mom snapped.

“Enjoying the scents and flavors of the feast you’ve prepared,” he said.

Chelsea gulped, seemingly paralyzed.

Malazo removed the steak from Chelsea’s plate, picking it up with his bare hand and taking a bite out of it. He continued on his way towards my mother.

“Wealthy or not, you do not have the right to touch the prime minister’s daughter without her permission.”

“Oh really? How much does it cost to buy her then?”

Quiet gasps of outrage reverberated throughout the hall. Malazo laughed.

“A thousand tons of gold?”

Malazo snapped his fingers. A cube of gold, over three meters to each side, appeared above the table. People screamed, leaping out of the way as the gold fell. The table was smashed, splinters flying everywhere. A member of parliament was not fast enough, and she was crushed under the heavy block of falling metal.

In the aftermath of the destruction there was a moment of silence. Nobody could fully process what had just happened. Chelsea was trembling in place, still in her seat, but Malazo didn’t seem to care about her anymore. He walked towards my mother.

“You’re under arrest!”

Armored guards encircled Malazo, raising their weapons. They were our secret service, their magic powerful enough to rival the elites of any nation in the world.

Malazo snorted at them and their heads exploded. They died instantly, like insects.

He calmly sat in the empty chair next to my mother.

“What do you want?” My mother asked, her voice calm and quiet.

“I woke up from my nap a few years ago, and decided it would be fun to make a country worship me again. Buying everything didn’t work as well as I had hoped. That’s why I decided to become your god by force. Now, pray to me, little queen. Worship me.”

“You don’t deserve our worship,” Mom said, her voice cracking. A tear rolled down her cheek.

Looking back on things, I think that may have been the moment she realized that everything our family had built was about to be destroyed.

“How disappointing,” Malazo said.

He stood up, climbed on top of what remained of our table, and began to transform. Enormous golden wings grew from his back. Shining scales like rubies and sapphires formed on his skin. His face became elongated and reptilian, fangs emerging from his jaws. He grew in size, breaking our palace as he expanded, the stone shattering as it proved unable to contain his massive form. My mother’s eyes went wide. She rushed over to me, shielding me from the falling debris. Everyone else panicked and screamed as Malazo revealed his true form.

He was a dragon.

“Know my name before you burn. I am Malazo, the Winged Emperor of Gold. Foolish rats of Elania, your irksome presence offends me. I hereby renounce your existence.”

Malazo’s booming voice echoed throughout the city, the sound waves powerful enough to shatter windows and shake the earth itself.

The dragon opened its wings and flew up into the sky, the gusts formed by its beating wings creating whirlwinds that ripped trees out of the ground and toppled houses. When the massive beast was high above, it turned back towards us and opened its mouth, a shining light building within its monstrous gullet.

“You must survive,” Mom said.

She hung her phoenix talon around my neck.

“Listen to me, Ferris. This is the talon of the last phoenix. The dragon absolutely cannot be allowed to burn it. It’s said that phoenix kind went extinct millennia ago, slain by the dragons themselves. However, a phoenix can resurrect itself if some part of it remains. This talon still survives. That is why, one day, the last phoenix will return.”

She placed her hands on my shoulders. I felt powerful magic flowing through me, like nothing I could have imagined. It was a protective ward powerful enough to defy a dragon’s will, a magic that was only possible because she was burning away her own spirit to cast it.

Blood dripped out of her eyes and nose. Her skin turned grey and her breath became shallow. She was dying.

“Live a long and full life. Find happiness. A mere dragon cannot kill you.”

“No… Mom…” I choked.

Malazo roared, and the world became death. My mother was burned to ash in front of my eyes. The ground beneath my feet vaporized. The nation of Elania, my nation, became a wasteland of ash and molten earth in a single moment. Every citizen gone with a breath, except for me.

I fell down after the blast, scorching air where the ground had been. I landed at the bottom of a crater fifty kilometers wide, getting stuck in the liquified bedrock like an ant in honey.

It took me days to find my way out. I nearly died of thirst. The only thing that kept me alive through that hell was my mother’s dying wish, cemented in my will. I had to live. Even if the beautiful city I called home was now a flaming crater, even if everyone I ever loved was ash, somehow I would live a full life, and find happiness.

A sickening thought was stuck in my mind. It was the thought that maybe our nation could have survived if Mom had just worshiped Malazo like he had asked. If we had groveled at his feet, licking his toes, maybe everyone could have lived.

My mother chose her principles over the lives of her people. It’s unfair to think, though. I am unsure she knew what choice she was truly making in her moment of defiance, and even more unsure of what she would have done if she had known the consequences. Even so, while trudging though the fiery wasteland that was once farms, vineyards, houses, and a small but proud nation of people, it was hard to believe that there hadn’t been a better way.

Insult was added to injury when Malazo’s word became law. In every nation in the world, being a citizen of Elania became punishable by death. It was a meaningless rule made only to appease Malazo’s ego. There were no citizens of Elania left to execute, so it didn’t matter at all. Most likely, I was the only person affected, though I will probably never know. I was forced to live quietly, hiding my past, lest I bring forth the wrath of Malazo once again.

I was fortunate enough to find Natalia after months of wandering. She was kind to me. She never asked me any questions, but I think she pieced some things together.

Now, ten years later, I will be fed to a dragon.

Kalamath the Feasting One is a dragon that lives in the mountains, not too far from Lika village. He has remained stationary for centuries, now half buried under the earth. He keeps his mouth open, expecting to be fed, and the drakeling tribes are the ones that feed him. They feed him everything but their own kind.

When I first saw this, I hated the drakelings from the bottom of my heart.

I did terrible things, refusing to see the lizard men as people for the longest time. I killed so many of them. I think it was because I saw myself in them, the me that could have been if my mother had chosen differently on that fateful day. Now, the drakelings will finally have justice.

My mother believed in justice. It’s funny. She also wanted me to live. I guess I messed up.

Damn. I just hope Maribelle is okay.