Eons ago, after banishment

Lord Daidric sat, leaning on the altar, a massive slab of white stone, etched with magic scribing long since faded. The dilapidated state of the cathedral seemed to invite the rain, which slithered in through the gaping gaps in the stone roof, cascading down soaking Daidric’s cloak. Thunder clapped in the distance, and in between those sounds the jostling of armoured soles on dirt. The soldiers of the hearth, droves of them, thousands, marched in organised lines, warriors bred to fight. The realm of humans had expanded tremendously in the two decades Daidric had sat on his throne of Oricalum, forging armies from the remnants of the Mynthos and the Lunam, banished ones from Hell. The expanding imperialism of the humans bore increased danger on his Empire, squandering any possibilities of attacking the Upper realm in his vengeance.

His mind traced back to the first time he had used the cathedral; the flames of black that had erupted from the table, the herbs and magical essence he had expended on forging him. Forging them. Creating them from the pits of fire, the depths of the forbidden plains of chaos, the plain between life and death, where not even the Titans would dare go. But whatever blood he had to shed in order to obtain them, it was worth it; the Respected Ones, the one who would lead his armies to victory against the humans.

“My Lord,” a powerful voice, one filled with the vigour of three Generals announced his arrival.

“Moros,” Lord Daidric nodded, turning to one of his three creations.

Moros had a softer face, not exactly intimate, but one softer than the harsh, steeled voice that accompanied it. A darker complexion, skin that could’ve once been mistaken for smooth littered with scars and small cuts, grizzled stubble accompanying his sharp jaw. Tattered black hair, like Daidric’s, but dark green eyes, with black, reptilian slits for pupils. They had a sort of subtle glow in the near darkness of the cathedrals darkness, drawing dust clouds to his gaze. His eyes swept over towards the brooding Lord, and the echoe of his soles was all that was heard.

“How is it progressing?” Daidric asked, eyes somewhere else.

“As well as any war where you’re outnumbered. Turns out humans have a much larger fighting force than predicted,” Moros said, his voice ridden with an uncomfortable silence.

“Outnumbered,” Daidric scoffed, his eyebrows squinting, “I expect you have more than enough forces ot push them back despite their droves of men?”

“Possibly. The warships that carried their food stocks were intercepted during a typhoon in the northern sea, near Aegon’s peninsula. Their two largest frigates got stuck in between the leeway of two islands; we boarded and burned everything we couldn’t take.”

Daidric cleared his throat, a rough sound, “You say we, but in reality you yourself wouldn’t partake in such a monotonous task.”

Moros nodded, leaning against a sunken pillar with weed roots at its base. “Brother Karnos led the ambush.”

“Expected, your brother is a hard-headed fool, so desperate for attention and captainship.” Daidric paused, his head propped on his hand, “do you think he deserves it?”

“Deserves…Captainship? Of the army?” Moros turned, his face way too like that of a scowl.

Daidric smirked, “Of everything. TO replace your position, to lead the forces of the navy against the humankind under King Aegon’s leadership.”

Moros was definitely on edge now, the Lord could see how his face contorted into one of a wicked sorts. Those green, pulsating snake eyes of him, opened more, slits turning to round pupils. A dangerous air rose. And then his shoulders dropped.

“If that is your wish then so be it,” he said simply.

Daidric’s lips rose in a lopsided fashion to this, and he stood from his seat and walked to Moros’ side.

Moros was a giant, a beast of iron and smouldering stone. He looked up Daidric who returned a gaze that was so undoubtedly ferocious, so carnivorous, like a slumbering fire, that Moros stepped back slightly.

“How’s your child?”

Moros opened his mouth, then shut it to only open it again in an awkward fashion, “My wife managed to get through labour successfully without injuring herself. My son…he has taken more from his mother than me.”

“Disappointed?” Daidric walked past him.

“Vampyres have strong blood- stronger resilience. He’s a suitable warrior for the kin.”

“Strong blood,” Daidric repeated, at the massive, open frames where doors once stood, “strong blood doesn’t mean~”

“The mixed blood of Dragonkin and a Vampyre is unmatched, it,” Moros interrupted viciously, his voice carrying much more power than he had intended it to.

And then Daidric turned to him, his cloak bellowed behind him, that endless void of blackness that seemed to flutter in an ominous sense, that quickly froze Moros in his spot. He couldn’t move; he was petrified.

Daidric spoke slowly, through grit teeth, “It seems you becoming the leader of the Dragonkin has led you to stray off the path. You seem to think,” he paused to look down at his fingers, some dirt in his nails, “you seem to think that you can stand up to me.”

No noise, no flash of light or utter of a spell. A wicked long piece of steel burst from nothing, above the Lord’s shoulder, glittering in pale fidelity, sharp and thin. It stopped centimetres from Moros’ face, right above his eyebrows.

“I created you. You and your Vampyre wife, I only allowed such fornication because of your conquests in battle, do not let impurity misguide your vision.”

“You, before anything else, your family, your desires, you are one thing. You are a~”

*

On the back of his dragon, thousands of meters into the air, Moros sat in silent retrospect. The Dragon he rode, a four-limbed gargantuan, with scales darker than night, and wings big enough to envelope entire towns, was named the Harbinger of Death, Mumrontos the shadow dragon. Spines of horns, sprawled across its broad shoulders, in-between carpets of scales interlocked tighter than chainmail. Its rhythmic breathing, deep shudders enough to shake the air around them, what scared others, calmed Moros, keeping him concentrated, his heat shared with the body warmth of Mumrontos.

Eyes sharper than any other Lunam or Mynthos on Oricalum, they navigated the ground below, peering through the momentary gaps in the congregations of clouds. He spotted the shimmering of armour, within the massive groups of troops each led by a Banneret, sided by two man at arms. Fifteen separate rows marched across the lands, the plains of Horak, the path between mainland and the beach where two dozen warships laid, all humans, approaching now at speeds undeterminably fast. But he could see them, a few hundred kilometres away now. These fifteen divisions that Moros led was not the Draid army, Daidric’s main fighting force, rather one of the smaller Dragonkin led forces. These some-six thousand troops was the force that would fight not in the name of the exiled Lord, but for a reason that determined the outcome of the war. His Lord, near silent in his past, only revealed during the Golden Age of the Old Pantheon, that to prevent inter-dimensional strife and plague, he had travelled to the mortal realm himself, to create the Seven Lords of Timore to defend against the evils and corruption of conflict between the God’s creations. According to Daidric, his companions, the Gods, the Titans were enraged and extinguished the Timorians from existence, only to bury the seven weapons of Timore along their burial sites. Seven weapons that transcended the realities of understanding in the mortal realm, back when Daidric was a God.

This is what Moros aimed to achieve, the gain of a mortal’s weapon, who was once gifted with the power of a God to fight those who he deemed unworthy of living.

Mumrontos grumbled below him, deep and powerful.

“Yes, yes, quiet ‘rontos, soon.” He said quietly, his mind somewhere else.

Without hesitation Mumrontos shifted, his entire massive body twirling to the left, a tight barrel roll, wings tucked in, and clipping the air by Moros’ face was a metal arrow the size of three men. Mumrontos growled, so loud that the clouds nearby dissipated.

Steadily, without so much of a tremor or shake, Moros grumbled, deep and powerful, and he felt his entire body heat up, like a boiling fire, slowly bubbling, roaring to life. He lightly tapped Mumrontos’ neck, and the dragon dipped down, head first, Moros face and entire body hit with unparalleled bombardment of air and force, that desperately vied to fling him off. But he held on, and man and beast dived splitting through clouds, until they gained clear visibility. The army had halted, front warriors with their shields up, spears poking through, archers near the back mobilising into positions. Ahead, the cliffs of Zygon sprawled, its pits black as always. The sea, the coastline was way too far to hint attack from warships. No instead, legions of Griffins possibly a thousand, with soldiers in gleaming armour on top. On the ground, climbing up those cliffs were Maws, gigantic monsters, wingless dragons that bit and tore instead of shoot flames. Glancing to his army, he could see the fear in some of the Lunam’s faces there was fear. He snarled, and ordered Mumrontos to fly past the front line of his troops, and as he did so, his explosive voice boomed:

“Soldiers of the righteous land! Make way for defence!”

That seemed to shake them out of stillness, and the fifteen divisions that had now congregated into three groups, split, letting armoured trolls lumber forwards. In their hands shields the size of an entire building size. Vampyres above, hovering in the air with their wings of scales, cast magical shields, a cobweb of pale silver above the spanning expanse of Unuks and Lunam.

Hovering, Mumrontos turned his head and roared, shaking fear into the faces of Griffins which now neared even closer.

Hot metal magma started to spill from Moros’ palm, a blazing red spear forming in his hand. He was one of the three, the three Dragonkin, who possessed Dragon arts that no other knew. And he would live, live to see his son, once again.

*

Current time

In that spiralling darkness again, that lingered for too long. The one that ate him, that stuck him in a murky sludge, his legs wading in nothing, arms pushing away nothing. It was the absence of all that drove his entire mind into turmoil. Spinning slowly in a twisting, contorting fall, Damien looked for a ledge, for a physical hold on anything. But his leering fingers only grazed the skin of something hard, with a multitude of ridges that interlocked tightly. That mere touch spread heat, unmatched by any other he had witnessed on the realm of mortality. That strange sundering heat brought calamity to his body, a fire literally burned across his skin, setting his hair on fire, eyes melting in sockets, jaw and soft innards slowly melting in agony. His screams died in the wisps of fires that raged across plains of black grass, a simple echo in the wind.

His skeleton, half-eaten, laid strewn on the grass, charred and broken, black enough to cast a shadow in the dark. In that skeleton, that sit in perfect stillness, Damien existed, his mind a former relic of a stable past. Those empty sockets stared out at the shape moving in the darkness.

A deep laugh, like a knife being dragged across a sheet of metal, Unparalleled amounts of fear have brought you here, again, It laughed again, a smaller chuckle, throat shaking, the floor vibrating in fear.

It moved slow and smooth, like some sort of serpent, gliding through, up and down, prowling at the brink between darkness and light. Its eyes, blaze red slits surrounded by green, in the darkness, gazed onwards, splitting red light blinding Damien.

Speak, it commanded.

Damien could not speak nor move. His skeletal remains laid in quiet, in tormented tranquillity.

The entity shuddered in anger and shock,

You still latch onto what held you back, onto what made you weak. The flesh and blood, the guts and innards that made you, you. It is nothing. It is a painting, a dream made to disguise and tarnish the reality.

The earth shook as it lumbered forwards, and into the faint light that radiated from a source that was invisible, two legs dragged themselves forwards, again with those silver scales of metal. Hooked talons dug into the ground, digging up entire trenches of dirt at a time. The sky itself shifted as that neck longer than a building waded through the clouds, dragging a head bigger than a horse, teeth that gouge out entire droves of men from their battlements.

The head slowly came down, craning for what seemed eons, dragging that neck behind it.

Speak it, speak my name, speak the name of the last one.

Damien could not speak, that empty minded skull of his could only stare in awe and fear.

It chuckled, eyes bulging, a wicked crescent of hundreds of teeth, rugged chunks of spikes, You do not know? Or you refuse to speak it? Even simpletons know the power of one resides in his name.

It’s not real. That’s all that permeated his mind. It’s not possible. They told him, all of them, not only in the scripts of the old, but through words of the most wise tutors.

It chuckled again, huge body slowly circulating Damien’s skeleton. Each step made the earth shudder, the beast’s forked tongue flicking out ever so close to Damien’s remnants.

What is not real, hmm? Are you… It’s snout pushed inches away from Damien, hot air blowing over him, blowing ash off the bones. Anger, cold, merciless flickered across those green and red eyes of it, as if it’s very existence had been questioned.

No, no, no.

Damien screamed silently in the cage that was his own body, no blood, no flesh, no hair just crumpled bones. He felt the ribs grinding against each other, the other bones of his body, whirring, dust floating off, an unbearable rippling phantom pain sprawling across his body.

No, no…~ his mind groaned.

“…N…o…”

The beast stopped in its track, its huge head craning round, eyes wide.

What…? It’s voice seemed to waver, long, violence dripping off each word, warm and sticky.

“…N…o” With each syllable, his jaw grinded, dust and flecks of bones falling off.

The beast stepped into the light, wings folded like a bat, a tail swinging dangerously behind its enormous body.

Yes, the Wyvern sneered, eyes smouldering red.

The blurred separation between nightmare and reality had become all too warped for Damien to determine, the edges between agony and anguish partaking in close, rhythmic dances, shackles that once gripped their ankles let free, falling to the ground whilst twisting bodies rose upwards into the fog consumed sky.

“Don’t go fallin’ asleep on me yet, boy,” a drooling voice leered.

Whatever God existed, high above the chains that constricted mortal life, had created the crooked man in front of him with a mind of disgust and hatred. It was his wisps of sodden, dark hair that matched the scraps of warped and muzzled hair on his chin; a nose far too large and crooked for his crinkled face. Hunched, with robes of black tar, lines of gold stretching from his shoulders, down to the overcoat that scraped the floor behind him. In his hand, an instrument, harbouring cold steel and an evil mechanism.

Damien struggled to see, not because of the thick smog that curdled in the enclosed room, nor the blinding brightness of the fire in the coal pit. It was his eyes, a sharp pain that had manifested itself into existence.

“I can’t see,” he managed to splutter out, only after moving his hands realising they were chained above his head.

The man in front chuckled, prodding that steel hook into his left cheek. Something in him reacted crudely, like a swarm of ants swarming in response to a sudden change in hive centrality. A pain sparked.

“Here?” He asked, almost as if the man cared.

Damien’s head lolled to the side, his eyes rolling up. Whatever the man had said, it was only a distant buzz.

He lightly slapped Damien’s face, jolting him, “It’s the Korpis leaf,” he stopped to giggle, “you ran into one when they were chasing you, huh?”

“K…” he mumbled under his breath, hair stuck to his forehead in sweat.

The man gripped Damien by his chin, leaning in, a shark grin across his revolting face, right eye twitching slightly.

He whispered now, “Just the slightest touch; a scratch, just a lingering finger that brushes the leaf will be effected, almost immediately. At first the pain will be a small thing, a lingering discomfort, waiting, biding its time deep within your body. But eventually, it will spread, it will sprawl across your body. It always attacks the eyes first, the nerves behind it, destroying it slowly, causing a terrifying blindness. Then it attacks your motor sensors, you’ll be paralysed, stuck in petrifying and eternal darkness, unable to move, unable to even think. And then finally, it strangles you, eating your lungs, eating all your organs, consuming and~”

“Stop, p…please,” he sobbed.

The crooked man’s eyes lit up and he backed away, turning on his heel and walking to the wall with a furnace and a rack of tools sketched across a battered moss-stone wall.

Damien whispered small nothings, and the man ignored, shoving a steel rod into the coal’s hearth, a fire jumping at that.

“I never fancied magic; spells and all the horridness confuses me, it makes the mind jumbled; all that heresy intertwined with words of destruction.”

He stopped, face turning round, a grin across his face, “But I’m sure a cripple would know that more than me. Imagine that!” He squawked, eyes bulging, “crippled and a bastard; the gods themselves fucked you, my boy. Fucked you good and hard!” He screeched, tongue writhing in his mouth.

“Although it seems I will be forced to go against my word. You see that Korpis only brushed your left eye; I was forced to stop the contagion, and healed the virus at its source, keeping the corruption at one spot. I was ordered not to let you die, you see. It’s a shame, I hate being careful with my toys.”

He scrambled towards Damien, leaning onto his chained body, tongue flicking by his ear, “I want to break them so much.”

Something sharp lit up in his gut, like a wolf just bit a chunk of him out. It was a gash, a long, jagged one that exited as quick as it entered, a fiery rupture across his flesh. He left the knife in, and he could feel it filling in his abdominal cavity.

“I missed the lungs to avoid you spitting blood at my eyes. Don’t want that, do we?” He scoffed.

His fingers traced the top of his leg, slowly running it up, stopping at the pommel of the knife handle. He pushed it in ever so slightly.

Damien screamed, the pain coming in waves, shudders after.

“No dying,” he whispered, and with his free hand hovering over the knife, he whispered it aloud, “Grant me the life of his.”

“Untraditional but it works,” he grinned, and gazed at the faint and pale light that shimmered across his skin, slowly floating around like wisps of a wave, before sinking into the skin, wrapping round the knife and seeping deeper eating the blood. Skin slowly built itself again around the wound; pale and sickly coloured flesh, but still his flesh.

“I’m going to leave the knife in there,” the man started walking to his rack of tools, and picking up a metal brace.

“But I’m also going to reiterate the spell,” he laughed, licking his lips across a warped smirk. He saw the panic in Damien’s face, bubbling up, eyes widening.

“You know what this means right? Surely you must?”

Damien attempted to speak, to move his mouth, but he was encaged in his own body. His vision blurred, one eye useless, his limbs tied above and below him.

“The knife will continue to sever arteries and veins, capillaries and the sorts. And the magic will heal the serrations…continually, on end, forever a cycle of pain, Damien Fang. A cycle of pain.”

He screamed silently for a bit, his body grown weaker and weaker, sweat smothering his face.

Face blearily, eyes drifting to nothing, mouth lopsided, he gazed at the vulture-like man in front of him, thin and crooked fingers working exquisitely across his body with fingering stealth.

“Don’t break him too much, Kitt,” he whispered to himself, backing off, eyes bulging, tongue flicking across his curved lips. He skidded round hand reaching for something slick and long on the rack once again, similar to the last one he picked up. It was metal, shiny and reflective, hard to see in the cool, damp light seeping from the torches. A contorted shape on the end of the rod. Damien’s eyes watched him walk over to a massive metal door, a grid in it, black and sundering smoke seeping out the gridlines. Redness seeped within that metal door, crackling, laughing along with the crooked man.

“The hearth provides kindness, child,” Kitt muttered, cranking open the massive door, which squealed and groaned in response, fire lapping out the widening gap. Inside coals hot, black, charred ruins with enormous fire roaring, the heat blasting into Kitt, and then into Damien, burning his front.

Kitt stuck the rod into the fires, and it roared even louder, consuming the tool in flames, red turning to pure white, hissing and sizzling, the metal ream bubbling with white energy, smoke curling off. Damien could barely hear the man’s voice, “The subjectivity of it all is ambiguous to say the least,” he paused, twisting the rod, pushing it in slightly, more white flames spewing out, “the purpose of it is not, though.

He turned partially, half of his face illuminated in a garish, frightening whiteness, “You’re to become a vessel, Damien Fang. And everyone knows, that a vessel needs a brand; a signia of some sorts. You must know this Damien? Surely; surely you must?” He was chuckling now, a snarl so wide and tooth filled that he bordered on animalism.

“Would you please let me brand you, Damien? Surely a son of a prosperous lord recognises the importance of such a task? Surely you recognise the futility of resistance, Damien? Hmm? Don’t you?” Vigirous joy seeped into those pearly eyes of his, his smile broadening, fingers reaching towards Damien’s hair, pulling it back roughly.

Hot, bubbling whiteness ripped of the rod, the end of it now clearly visible: a contorted skull shape, with spirals jutting outwards, metallic and curved, like tiny serrated blades on both sides. A delicate flower, twisted by some foul mutation. Its whiteness soon faded into bright red, the metal softening slightly, smoke sizzling off.

Damien’s working eye, spread open, and he grit his teeth, wrestling under the Torture master’s grip, screaming silently, gnashing, rattling the chains above and below.

“The purpose of the brand is two-fold, it’s a hieroglyphic- it stops magic, Damien. But in your situation, that’s unfathomable surely? No, no its nature is much more simplistic in your situation. It’s a reminder, it’s a seal that binds you to them.”

“w…” he stumbled over his own words for a bit, his mind framed between staring at the searing hot iron brand.

“He chuckled, with his free hand pointing to something on the table, and suddenly clenching his fist, a brace flying across the room, too dark and small to catch, slamming around Damien’s neck. He felt the bolt shudder into place by itself, and immediately his breathing became shallow- still panicked- yet he could not move his head nor neck.

He saw the boy’s face pale and then threw his head back in laughter again, “What? You thought it would be somewhere where it can be hidden under clothing? No, no, no child. No such nonsense. You’re property of theirs now.” He muttered something more and moved closer, tracing his fingernail around his cheek, which had now moistened from a free tear rolling down.

“Shh, shh,” he whispered sweetly.

It was in that soft moment, a temporary gap between animal-like fear and the shock which shuddered his entire body to a halt, that it hit the son of the Lord then, hard. The realisation that he wouldn’t survive this ordeal. That he would die before he did anything meanwhile, while he was there, stuck in some shit-ridden dungeon, stinking in his own piss.

“w…who?” he whispered, somewhere in between a plead and a warning.

He smiled, “Who else? The protectors of the realm. The Knights who were envisioned with the promises of the gods.”

Damien didn’t even have the energy to laugh. Why was he surprised, why was he shocked at the machinations that swept subtlety between the lines of realisation and wilful ignorance.

In that soft moment between searing pain, with the light crackling of the fire in the hearth behind him, he looked down at the entrapped boy. It was warped, that moment. He had looked deep into the bastard’s eyes, but there was nothing to behold. It was an endless depth of ink, sorrow and pain. Kitt could not see the whites of his eyes, nor the vessels that flowed within them. They were of a fathomless onyx, bottomless like the pits of hell.

Cold and merciless.

The weakness in his voice was there-shrivelled and small- but his fear had died, perhaps killing itself in the wisps of pain.

“If you, you or your crooked masters don’t kill me now, I promise to whatever exists up there,” his sodden eyes looking upwards, through the ceiling, making Kitt inclined to follow his gaze, “I promise to them I’ll kill the knights first, and then I’ll come. Not for you- no, I’ll come for your family, the ones you care about. And I’ll kill them slow, slow right in front of you.”

Damien smiled, his teeth bloodied underneath that grin.

The torture master paused for a moment, paralysed just for a fraction of time. His grip tightened round the brace, his knuckles turning white, bearing his grinding teeth, “You think your special? You’ll die quicker where they’re sending you than a damned blind man.”

And then he pressed that searing metal into the bastard’s face.