#fegult

Why do we trust him, Atlas says to Arepo, who just smiles.

I have a good feeling, that’s all.

Atlas’ ears pick up every sound around them, heightened by fear.  The vultures feeding on carrion.  The shrieking of feral Mirrors.  Slenuma’s quiet footfalls.  The clank and clang of the army trudging behind them, far enough away they can’t see them, but close enough to hear.

Where are you taking us?  Slenuma doesn’t answer.  When will we get there?

Soon.  The Mirror’s voice is less than a croak, just a suggestion on the wind.  For some reason, that just scares Atlas more.

Atlas has never been to Plague before.  Even his refuge in Shadow was short lived.  He’s lived his whole life in Light.  He’s been nothing but faithful.  Why, after all this time serving his Lady, had he turned to readily on his breed?  It’s not his fault, the way he was born.

This?  This was his fault.  A act of rage and heartache.  He looks at the book in his hands and nearly drops it to the parched earth, so that the army can find it and pick it up and he’ll never see it again.  But what does that mean for dragonkind?  It would be selfish now, for him to abandon the book.  The warplans inside speak of genocide, and Atlas will not be responsible for it.

They’ve been walking for ages, it feels like.  Atlas can feel the hard ground all the way up to his knees, but Arepo seems unfazed, and Slenuma hasn’t changed the beat of his step.  But now, the Wyrmwound rises up from the horizon, sickly white, the smell of death closing around Atlas’ windpipe.

No, he says.  Slenuma stops, and looks at him with crimson eyes.  Arepo looks uncertain as well.  But Slenuma just stands, calm to the point of unnerving, unmoving, silent.  No one moves, and the sound of chainmail and warcries echoes across the unforgiving flatness of the Wastes.  Though Slenuma doesn’t speak, it becomes clear what he means; Atlas can either follow him, or perish at the hands of the Lightweaver.

Atlas steps forward first, his legs shaking, and as soon as he does Slenuma turns and trots ahead, like a hound dog on the scent of an injured kill.  Arepo stays very close to Atlas’ side, his face stoic and his footfalls controlled and quiet.

The closer they get to the Wyrmwound, the more at peace Atlas becomes with his death.  He was going to die at the hands of a silent Mirror on the edges of the Wyrmwound, far away from home, or he was going to die by the hands of the Lady he loves so dearly.  Arepo, while not talkative, has gone mute as stone, and Atlas has to try not to cry.  He did all this because he wanted to live.

But as they get closer, Atlas realizes that they’re not going towards a path.  The fear melts away.  And then he hears the noise.

He must have been too scared to notice it before, because the shrieking is something pulled out of a nightmare.  Hellish howling fills the air, crazed cackling and screams of rage.  It’s so overwhelming Atlas cowers, folding his wings in tight, lowering himself to the ground in terror.

Oh, Eleven, no, he gasps, but the sun in glinting off the breastplates now, the light shielding the soldiers from sight.  But Arepo puts both hands behind Atlas’ wing and pushes, says nothing, eyes wide enough to show the whites.  Slenuma sits, waits, that insufferable calm, and Atlas refuses to budge.  He can see the Mouth of Hellreek, its glittering white teeth, smelling of death, sounding like a torture pit.

This is our only salvation, Arepo says, please.  They won’t follow us here.

The Guardian, Ruzo (he knows the name, because Light told stories of these animals, these fiends, to ensure order and obedience, and not once until now has Atlas broken the rules) is dozing, cracks an eye and stares down at Atlas as he passes by behind Slenuma.  He doesn’t even glance at Arepo, but lifts and turns his head to watch Atlas and it shakes him all the way down to his bones.

Inside, it’s so dark, and the smell is so harsh Atlas vomits on the floor.  During his retching he loses Slenuma entirely, the dark Mirror blending in with the red rock.  The sound is deafening, the howling making his ears ring, the shrieks drilling right into his skull.  When Atlas gathers his wits enough to take in his surroundings, his blood runs cold.  There are Mirrors, hundreds of them, all staring.  But there’s one that commands his attention, her face covered, her eyes the colour of sick blood, hellish pits of almost black.

When she approaches, he throws himself at her feet.

What have you done, she says, and it’s a low snarl that he feels more than hears.  He chokes.

I’ve either saved or damned us all.

-

They wait.  The days pass.  The most they hear of the army is the clink of armour and fearful wingbeats.  It is on the third day that Ruzo tells them the army has gone.  And it is the third day that Atlas tells Akeelah of his story.  That he served as the Lightweaver’s bodyguard, how he loved her more than love itself and then she scorned him, told him he was a mistake.  How he stole her warplans in a minor scuffle and then stole away to Shadow, where he was tracked.  How he met Arepo on the way there and Slenuma on the way out.  How scared he is, clutching the book, looking into the eyes of a beast whom he has only heard horror stories about.

Okay, says Akeelah.  Okay.  Stay.

It’s three days after that that Ruzo tells Akeelah there’s something on the horizon.  A twisting mass of light.  He doesn’t have to tell her that it’s the Lightweaver, scorned.  Her bellows can be heard across the Wasteland, over the voices of her own family.

Oh, please, please can be heard over the rest, Atlas clutching the book, mumbling something that would have been a prayer not even a moon ago.  He’s vibrating, the magic stuck to his wings pulsing with Her light.  Akeelah would pray if she had any love for her Mother.  Her lair is all she cares about, but she doubts she can fight off a goddess herself.  She’s about to try, when a soft hand touches her shoulder and doesn’t crumble away.  She turns to see Fegult, his round face determined.

Let me try? he says, like she’d deny him.

Of course.

And Fegult teeters to the Mouth, ducks through the gaps in the teeth.  Akeelah watches but does not follow.  She filters out Atlas’ wailing and the cries of her children, and sits just in the darkness, close enough to spring out but far enough away to stay hidden.  He watches her beloved perch on his haunches just outside the Mouth, his face turned skyward, with no tension in him.

When the Lightweaver comes, it is like all the light in the world has collected itself in one spot.  The lair, dark and deep for centuries, is lit up, every cavern swallowed whole by light.  Akeelah has to hide her eyes, a hiss escaping her.  The rest of the lair explodes in a cacophony of noise, scrambling claws and yelps.  The Lightweaver doesn’t speak a language that Akeelah knows, so old it would have turned to dust in her mouth had she tried to speak it.  But the ringing, it gets louder, and then suddenly She is gone.  The darkness she leaves behind is all encompassing, and Akeelah fears for one irrational second that she has gone blind.

Fegult comes back, dazed, his pupils blown wide, glimmering with light.

What did you do? Akeelah asks, and Fegult looks at her like he’s seeing her for the first time.  He shakes his head.

Nothing.  I did nothing.

-

In the pits of Hellreek, something shakes.  It’s nothing like an earthquake.  It sounds like the creaking of old bones and feels like the restless shift of muscle.

What was that? Ramiro says.  Mariette levels him with a look, and it’s the first time he’s ever seen anything close to fear in her eyes.

Ramiro doesn’t think much of it at first.  Maybe it’s Lilith, trying to break out through the wall again.  The acid would take care of that soon enough.  It always did.  He doesn’t break his post to go check.  He was on his own, for it was midday and Mariette had taken her leave to go and sleep.  Ramiro wasn’t tired.

But it happens again, and again, methodically.  It was slow, very slow, one beat per few minutes, but after an hour or so, it was starting to make Ramiro’s heart beat faster and sweat to break out over his skin.

He’s sure it’s nothing.  Just his mind playing games.

-

Brandgul wakes from her sleep, the shakes rattling her bones, tears on her face.  She rolls in her nest, digs her claws into the fabric over her eyes, blocking out the Wasteland sun.  The eyes on her body blink rapidly, trying to flush out the images, the blood and bone, and sounds of death.

Oh my Gods, she says, oh my Gods, because she’s far too late to save anyone.

In the distance, she can hear Anguta crying.

-

We have to go!

Brandgul yells loud enough to be heard over the morning Mirrors, loud enough they turn and hiss and snap.  She shoulders them out of the way, locks onto the burning eyes of Akeelah.  Akeelah doesn’t ask for clarification.

Go get the Order! she barks at Tacenda, who is out of the lair like a shot.  As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she ground starts shaking.

Go warn the Burrick! she says to Chamois, who has to duck a piece of the roof as it crumbles.  Brandgul starts escorting dragons out, the weak and frail.  Dragons dart to and fro, the walls shaking, the air groaning with the sounds of destruction.  Akeelah herds Mirrors out of the Mouth, and through the chaos, she sees Phenris and Liena holding cloths full of hatchlings, eggs.

She also sees dragons crushed by rocks.  Unnamed Mirrors, but the plates in Crest’s body crack so loud that Akeelah can hear it over the falling rock.  Her heart lurches.  She thinks she might be sick.

She’s the last dragon out.  She won’t leave until Hestia has clambered through what remains of the ceiling.  Then, she darts out the Mouth, her clan huddled in the dry dirt, some blinking in the sun for they have no left in hundreds of years.  Gutch is covering her head with her mantle.  Afilade glowers against the sun.

As she turns, she joins the crowd to watch the lair fall.  She can just see the shape of it, outlined against the sun, wither and die.  The rock caves in, leaving the white line of the Loop pushing through the earth, and the white struts that kept the inside up.  When the rock is gone, Akeelah has to squint.  Her eyesight isn’t what it used to be.

Holy shit, says one of her clanmates, far in the back.  It sounds like Xarouqu.

In the place of what was once the Hellreek lair sits a skeleton so big the pelvis of it rivals the low struts of the Wyrmwound, the ribs blinding white obelisks drilling into the reddish soil.  The skull, massive, ugly, full of horns, the teeth garish yellow, the eye sockets, bottomless.  But even without skin, Akeelah recognizes Her.  She says nothing.

What do we do now? It’s Zeelie, Pechu perched on her shoulder.  Akeelah says nothing.

Mother?

When Akeelah looks back, the eyes of the skull are glowing red, and the ground starts to tremble.  She can hear the cries of her clan behind her but Akeelah’s eyes are glued to the thing before her.  Two arms burst forth from the ground, showering her in dirt.  Their claws plunge into the ground, knuckles straining, before Her skull raises.  She looks out across the Boneyard, towards Light.  Her wings come up, swirling in ropy magic, creating skin and membrane, covering her beating heart, her back, her legs.  As soon as She has skin back the smell in rotting meat, vile, wasted food.  She hauls her legs from the ground, and part of the Wrywound comes crashing down, and the acid comes rushing.

The clan scatters shrieking.  Some take to the sky, others further out to avoid the rush of killer green.  Akeelah flies, though she hasn’t in years and years, her wings remember.  The Plaguebringer is moving now, heavy, rickety, labored steps.

Akeelah looks down just in time to see Fegult disappear under one of her feet, unable to get in the air, wings stiff.

No! she screams, despite herself.  And the Mother lifts her head, and looks her in the eye.

Akeelah tucks her wings in a tries to dive to her feet, but there are too many dragons weaving in frantics.  So she climbs again, now so close to the Plaguebringer she knows it could kill her.

She rears her head back and spits in the Mother’s eye.

Yowling, the Plaguebringer stumbles.  Fanaa is there, grabbing at Akeelah’s shoulders, pushing, shoving.

Mama!  We have to go!

But Fegult, Fegult-

I know, Mama, there’s nothing we can do.  We have to go.

Akeelah takes a look at the ground, so far away.  She thinks she sees a speck of gold, cold, unmoving.  She can’t quell the pressure in her chest.  Her tears hurt her skin as they hit her face.

When she flies away, there’s something in her that feels like it’s being stretched tight, twisting, fraying.  She wonders, briefly, how far she’ll have to go before it breaks.

-

The Plaguebringer’s foot burns.  She scoops up the tiny body from where it was crushed, his bones limp, eyes wide and dull and forgetting.  Red eyes, Light magic, Ice body.  She turns him over with a claw.  Pokes at him like he’s a ragdoll.  She hadn’t meant to kill him.