#slyrak

--

The pain is not new. When she finally escaped the palace the first time she wept and wept, huddled in the dirty shadows of an alley as people ran and screamed around her, too caught up in their own horror to notice two orphans staggered by grief. But Marci was with her then. Marci, whose loyalty shed warmth like a fire in a winter hearth, whose own parents likely burned, who had saved them both with whatever strange power had come over her.

“Your Majesty?”

She turns, Davion’s boyish, worried face intent on her next word.

“Don’t,” she says, but dismisses the guard with a nod so they can be left alone. “Don’t call me that.”

“You can’t be asking me to keep calling you ‘Princess’,” he teases, but gently, inviting her to sting him right back.

“I would settle for my name,” she replies. “At least here. Even if I am a god, or a conduit for one, I’m still human.”

“One who’s been through a lot,” he agrees.

He dares to reach for her in the middle of the too-large room, breathes deep with relief when she leans into him instead of pulling away, and smiles against her perfectly coiffed hair when she actually deigns to wrap her arms around his back. There’s not much else to be done, when he’s now the only thing left to her in the world – excepting Sagan, who isn’t quite the same – it’s just unfortunate that between her cheek and the warmth of the dragon knight’s skin is a layer of cold, enchanted metal.

She raps it lightly with a knuckle. “You can take this off now, you know.”

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that. That was a joke!” His hands lift in surrender to the dry look she shoots him, sure as her arrows, still resting against his sternum. “Honestly? I’ve had Slyrak in my head for so long, I’m not sure who I’ll be without it.”

“You were Davion before,” she points out.

He hums at the memory, curling around her once more. “‘The fucking dragon knight what slayed the fucking dragon.’ He was an ass.” A pause. “Who would you want me to be?”

She pulls back. The ache of Marci’s loss still barely soothed, the guilt creeping in at the corners – both work to exhaust her, and she’s glad he’s here.

“Must we decide that now?” she asks, and cups his face. “I was Princess of the Sun, Princess of the Moon, Princess of Nothing, and now a god, and perhaps – at least for tonight all I want is to see the sorrow pass and let myself breathe.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” His fingers catch on hers, so he can press them to his lips. “But we’ll need wine.”

--

Sunlight has bled from the sky, leaving the city in the cool darkness of a yellow moon low on the horizon. A headache needles behind Mirana’s eyes; she blames the weeping. A god-empress should not weep, after all, even if she cannot save those she loves. Even if she is the one who doomed them in the first place.

She thought herself so powerful in the Nightsilver Woods, the favoured of Selemene, but only ever her favoured prize. Did the goddess recognise her true nature from the start, take pleasure in eclipsing the sun’s light, turning it to her own purpose? As she sips at her wine, laced with sweet herbs to dull the pain in her head, she wonders what became of her old patron when Frymryn took her place as Mene reborn. Does she live? Does she know the Invoker lies trapped in Terrorblade’s prison?

And what of the elves in the enclaves?

--

They stand before the grave, sun and moon side by side in grief, and while Fymryn murmurs of loves lost and wounds slow to heal, it is Mene who offers the impartial hope of alliance, in a voice of quiet, silver steel. The Dark Moon Order is recalled, the New Moon installed in its place. They avoid the topic of Selemene.

And then, after a weighty bead of silence filled with the scent of lilies and sweetgrass and the evensong of starlings, Fymryn turns with huge, blue eyes cast grey by dusk, and places a hand on Mirana’s arm.

“I know it doesn’t mean much now,” she says, “but he thought you were worth it. All of it. And he’ll always be part of you.”

The goddess of the moon gets no reply. The sun continues its slow descent behind the veil of trees.

--

The headache throbs at the back of her skull. The servants left her in darkness, in silk sheets, moonset an hour gone and the air still, and not even a breeze drifts through the window. The bed is big enough that she can fruitlessly toss and turn as much as she pleases without tipping herself on the floor; Davion did not share it often enough for her to get used to his weight on the far side of the mattress, and so her body doesn’t look for his in the empty space, but she does not count it a mercy.

Even with Slyrak no longer sharing his soul his dreams troubled him, his nightmares always known to her because on waking he would pull her close against his chest, a dragon guarding a precious jewel. He touched her with that same reverence, marvelled at her. The first time, he went so still she mocked him for forgetting what should come next.

Her fist clenches in the pillow, to squeeze the memories away. Tears stream her cheeks again, but now they burn. Her throat burns. Everything around her burns.  

--

Auroras flare in the dark as she jolts upright, the shout from her lips echoing like a firework through a blanket of stars and the scattered, shattered remains of the planet on which she finds herself. Armoured, but not armed. Dirt crumbles into dust beneath her heel and floats away.

A shadow moves above her. Instinctively her hand flashes to her side, where her bow and quiver should be, but in the next instant the vast presence resolves itself into a pair of wings mantled seemingly from horizon to horizon, a tremor through the rock as four taloned feet bring the dragon’s bulk to ground. However magnificent Slyrak appeared to her in the waking world, here – wherever here is – he glitters like the sun fractured through garnet.

“At last.” Breath swells into the bellows of his lungs as he lowers the horn-crowned mass of his head, releases in a warm gust that reeks of ash and bone.

“Father of Fire,” she replies, not quite certain how one god might address another. “Where am I?”

A growl that is almost a purr rumbles deep in his throat. “It is the Thunder.”

“Yes… Davion told me of it, he tried to describe it to me once.” They lay tangled against the pillows, the sheets damp from night-time terror. “How did I get here? I am no eldwyrm, and you are no dream.”

“You belong here,” Slyrak tells her simply.

“How –?”

“We are the Pillars of Creation, you the Worldwyrm. Creation itself. The Thunder is a part of you.”

One fierce golden eye regards Mirana as she processes the words, and everything left unsaid between them. The air around her crackles in an uncomfortable reminder of the void Terrorblade tried to trap her in, the ice that crept across her skin. But the dragon’s patience is finite. He snorts at her silence.

“Brave mouse!” he booms. “In another universe you sought me. Woke fire to reclaim what was lost.”

“For what good that did.” Tears prick unbidden at her eyes. “I lost them again.”

The rumble of Slyrak’s growl bends to a keening note. “Not lost.”

The great head pushes forward, close enough that if she dared she might reach out and touch the crimson scales, or compare her arm to the length of his teeth. He might swallow her whole for such impertinence. She doesn’t fear the possibility; she wonders if it is grief that makes her so reckless.

“The mouse knight,” the dragon says. “The Embersoul. We are bound, he and I, to you. We knew you from the first, though we did not know it. And now you have found your way here, though you do not know why. It is the way of you mice.”

“What do you mean?” she demands.

“There is work to be done. The prophecy is not complete.”

“But…”

A forked tongue flicks out and rasps against her cheek, soft enough to be called a caress. “Have courage, brave mouse.”

She stumbles as he rears back and spreads his wings once more, but before she can voice her questions, the Thunder speaks in a rush of air and drags her down into darkness.

--

The god-empress stands before the window in her chambers. Dawn casts long shadows over the city below, a tapestry of lilac and lapis blue that will bleed to gold and then to bright, searing white. She has had a lot of time to think, hours where sleep would not come for her. Behind her, the creak of hinges betrays the entrance of the servant.

“What is your will, Your Majesty?”