Lament of the Fallen

Some of the Assembly negotiators were less than enthused about the prospect of Dee fighting against one of the Aspects, but the leader of the red faction silenced them. They all knew the dragons appreciated strength more than anything; it’s just that some of the Lords didn’t like to admit it. There was a balance of sorts among the Lords of the Assembly that liked to use diplomacy and negotiations to further their aims and those that liked to solve problems with a healthy dose of violence. Using violence to win the respect of the dragons diminished the role of the more diplomatic Lords, leaving them feeling like their role had been usurped by the violent type. They weren’t stupid though, and they realized that sometimes it was necessary to yield to the culture of the group they were negotiating with. It was usually just the last choice.

Dee was not surprised to receive a silent message from the leader of the red faction just as she squared against the Bronze Dragon. Fawwaz knew she was going to win the fight; he just wanted her to really make a show of her strength. That would aid them in the negotiations later on. Such a showing would have even more meaning coming from Dee as she was a dragon of sorts as well. Another silent implication of the message was that it would be preferable if Dee stayed in her dragon form through the fight.

At first, everyone was a little confused about whether or not Hyacinth would be taking part in the fight in one way or another. It was very unlike the Faerie Dragon to just stand by when there was violence to be wrought. Surprisingly the small dragon flopped down on the ground looking pleased with the whole thing. Apparently she was looking forward to Dee letting her deadly side out. Just smelling the death around Dee was pleasurable, so getting to experience it personally would be even better.

The fight started without a proper signal as the others gave the two ample room to fight. Dee took to the air immediately, while the Bronze Dragon stuck to the ground, staring up at the flying serpentine dragon. A thick shield of brown energy started growing around the dragon, and it seemed to Dee that the shield kept growing thicker as time passed. It seemed he was all too pleased to stay on the defensive for now. As a pure experiment, Dee threw a few psionic weapons at the shield, just to gauge it a bit. The attacks had no effect. It did reveal something though. It seemed the Bronze Dragon was drawing power from the ground to power his protective bubble. The Bronze Dragon made a cursory attack back with similar strength, simply sending some thick spears of earth in her direction almost as an afterthought.

“She’s making a mistake.” The Platinum Dragon Qarazass commented as he drew closer to Mneventh.

“I disagree.” Mneventh replied confidently.

“I’d like to hear why. As long as Tendai can stay on the ground, he can keep drawing power from the planet to defend himself. The longer she waits, the harder it will be to pierce his defenses. Soon he will have the power of an entire world under his command. I know you could deal with it, but Tendai is known as the Aspect of the Earth for a reason. And she doesn’t have your anti-magic abilities. He might not be the most offensively powerful dragon, but even I would have trouble killing him without taking the whole planet with him once his shield is at full strength.” Qarazass was not happy about such an uppity and young dragon being an Aspect either, but Tendai had earned his place through combat. The Bronze Dragons had not birthed a rank thirteen dragon for ages, but now they had some prospects at least. And truthfully Qarazass was too old to really care.

Mneventh shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand. For once your experience is a disadvantage. You’re spending too much time reasoning things out instead of feeling. Just watch.” It was difficult to explain the almost instinctive feeling of pressure that Dee gave off without even trying to. Mneventh was quite sure that even if Dee wasn’t capable of fighting him equally just yet, it was only a matter of time. And not a lot of time either considering her pace of growth.

‘Well, you were supposed to make a show of it. Want to go for something really flashy?’ Croestia asked Dee silently.

‘Might as well. If the turtle is content with hiding in his shell, then all we have to do is to break the shell. He doesn’t seem to quite realize how many ways there are to get around such protections. Still, it would be even flashier to break the shell rather than go around it.’ Dee replied.

Suddenly the entire weight of Dee’s Domain pressed down on the Bronze Dragon, causing his shield to flicker for a short moment. The ghostly outlines of Dee’s rather oppressive totem appeared behind her and the weapon the gods crafted for her floated out by her side. She started pumping more and more power into the weapon, and a psionic blade extended outwards from the handle. At first, the blade was barely the size of a small building but it quickly grew to a size rivaling the Living Mountain. Instead of growing larger, Dee started to make the blade denser instead. The blade had started out as something formed of blueish energy, but it started to glow brighter and brighter. The gravity in the air started acting weird and the space around the weapon started twisting and being rent open in places. The nearby skies were suddenly covered in dark clouds that seemed to be rotating around Dee, like the eye of a storm.

“Oh, it seems this will be resolved in a single attack. It’s a simple check of whether Tendai’s defense is stronger than the hatchling’s offense.” Qazarass remarked rather pleasantly. He preferred a good show of force over an extended battle of attrition.

So far Dee had channeled mostly her psionic power into the blade, but the item was fully capable of combining both her psionic and her holy powers, as it had already done before. She started instilling a large helping of holy power into the blade as well. Almost immediately the blade tripled in size and power, now covering most of the sky in the area. Dee actually had to fly higher to have enough room to throw the weapon. Now everything not attached to the ground started being drawn towards the blade instead of the ground.

“That doesn’t look too good.” Mit-Amen suddenly stated, drawing the attention of the Assembly Lords. “I don’t like the idea of what can happen when that attack hits. I don’t like that at all. I think we might need to take some measures to protect the surrounding area.”

Suddenly Dee really started pumping her full strength behind the attack, including utilizing the power of her totem and Domain to really dominate her opponent. After Dee had applied holy power to the weapon, the thing had felt like a judgement from the gods, ready to descend on the planet. Now it felt like the gods themselves had descended to swing the weapon. Streamers of spatial energy radiated outwards from the blade, rending everything they hit in a radius of several hundred kilomels. And that was just the errant power leaking from the blade. She would’ve used even more power, except she was feeling that the whole attack was hitting a limit of some sorts. Likely she had to understand the weapon better to use more power in a single attack.

Mit-Amen approached the nearby dragons. “We will have to intervene. That’s a full-fledged attack from a rank thirteen being capable of destroying a world. I don’t think we want to be on the world in question when that happens.” Even Qazarass was starting to feel like it might be a good idea to interrupt the whole thing. Incidentally, Hyacinth was jumping around in expectant glee.

‘Well, we’ve come this far. Might as well go all out.’ Croestia pointed out, adding her own support to Dee’s powers. That wasn’t what she meant though.

Dee looked at the weapon next to her with some judgement. Suddenly the whole thing was engulfed in black flames, causing the space around her to scream in protest. It had been a while since the reality around her had such a visceral reaction to the black flames. After her time spent in the elemental plane of fire, the black flames had lost much of the unnatural feeling they’d had before. Now it once again felt like the reality was trying to revolt against the flames. With a shrug, she drew her clawed front leg back in a futile but theatric throwing motion. She wasn’t even holding the weapon, so the whole move was just for show.

“Oh, fuck me sideways!” Mneventh suddenly declared. He was one of the few beings around that knew the significance of the black flames. “Help me right now!” He roared and many of the dragons and even some of the Lords complied, sending their own power to Mneventh in order to try and stop the attack that suddenly flashed towards the Bronze Dragon that suddenly looked a lot less sure of himself.

Everyone thought that Mneventh would try to prevent the attack from hitting his fellow Aspect, but he knew there was no point. Some of the Assembly Lords had erected their own shields above the place, but the psionic blade cleaved through them as if they were made of paper. In fact, the black flames only seemed to grow stronger. The same fate befell the shield generated by the Bronze Dragon, though with a very important difference. The black flames flew through the shield unhindered, straight at the cowering Bronze Dragon, but the psionic blade collided with the shield and the two energies collided directly. The resulting explosion was bright enough to render everyone blind for a short time and they could feel the space collapsing near the place where the powers had collided.

The damage would have extended much further but Mneventh had used the combined power of those that had listened to him to counter some of the rampaging energy, containing the damage in a small area. He had known trying to stop the attack was a fool’s errand. If he had time to prepare, stopping the attack might have worked, but not with a hasty move like this. It was better to confine the damage to a small area instead. This was made obvious by the failed attempt by some of the Lords to stop the attack. Something worthy of note was that Fawwaz was one of the Lords that had given his strength to stop the attack, so Dee’s attack had been strong enough to go through a defense that was powered by a rank thirteen Lord and several rank twelve Lords, which was significant even though their full power wasn’t behind the hasty defense.

As the dust settled, the Bronze Dragon Aspect was simply gone. There was some grey ash faintly floating in the wind, but that too disintegrated rather quickly. The entire area where the two powers had collided was just gone. Not just the dragon, but the air, the ground, and everything living had turned into nothing but a void filled with spatial storms and everyone looking in had the distinct impression that time didn’t work quite correctly in the close proximity of the impact site. A single enormous psionic blade was still standing tall, penetrating deep into the planet's crust and twisting the gravity around in horrible ways.

‘Didn’t the gods warn you that throwing that thing at planets might be a bad idea?’ Croestia suddenly commented.

‘Yup.’ Dee replied with a chipper tone. She had actually wanted to try it as soon as she had heard the warning.

‘I’m also pretty sure I can feel the entire planet being affected already.’ Croestia continued. It didn’t take sharp senses to notice everything wasn’t quite right with the planet.

‘Yup.’ Dee replied again. This time she continued though. ‘They wanted a show of force. Well, they got one.’ She waved her hand and the blade disappeared once the hilt that was the focus of the entire weapon floated back to Dee’s outstretched hand.

Mneventh flew up to Dee. “How are you feeling? This was your first right?”

Dee looked at the Black Dragon with a slightly odd expression. Was he really not aware of the double entendre? “I’m feeling fine. I could easily do that again.” In fact she could. She used quite a lot of power but it was rather evenly distributed over all of her abilities, so the used power was already quickly recovering. She felt that she had to do some testing before she could make the attack more effective though. “And first what?”

“First world you fucked up. I’m pretty sure that if the world wasn’t already practically uninhabited, it will be soon for sure. The bloody thing isn’t spinning anymore, and I have the feeling you altered its trajectory as well. And you can do that again? Really? Usually someone new to the thirteenth rank is categorized by being able to destroy a planet, but they can’t do it several times in a row. Not at first anyway. Now, I contained most of the damage, but you would’ve properly wrecked the place if I hadn’t.” As he was getting more comfortable, Mneventh forgot to use more polite language. His true nature was starting to come through. He was still notably less cranky than usual though.

Dee wasn’t sure she wanted to continue this discussion, so she decided to change the subject. “Why didn’t you save Selvaria? I’m under the impression you were friends, and you even called yourself my uncle. That implies a certain close connection. I’m sure you could’ve done it if you really wanted to. You didn’t even try from what I’ve heard.”

Mneventh was quiet for a while before answering. He had expected the question at some point, but the suddenness still caught him by surprise. “I didn’t save her for two reasons. The less important reason is that I was strictly forbidden from doing so.”

“I get the impression you’re not the type to care about such things.” Dee pointed out.

“Ah, you’re already getting it. However, there are many ways to force someone to comply. They didn’t threaten me with anything like violence. They threatened me with a promotion.”

Dee’s look of utter confusion forced Mneventh to laugh. “Yeah, that about sums up my reaction as well. You are likely not aware but the current Dragon Queen is pretty much gone already. She has been in a long slumber for a long time and isn’t expected to wake up again. And even if she does, it will be the last time. Well, the other Aspects threatened to vote me as the next ruler of the Dragonflight if I didn’t comply. Still, I wouldn’t have cared if it wasn’t for the other reason.”

“Which was?” Dee naturally asked.

“I think this imprisonment was good for her in many ways. She blamed herself for what happened to the demons during the purge. She could’ve done more, arguably should’ve done more, but it would’ve forced her into killing the relatively innocent pawns of the angels. She wasn’t willing to fight the angels either. She was tearing herself up trying to stop the purge without fighting, trying to save anyone she could. You being around helped a lot, but she still didn’t want to just stop to deal with her own ghosts. She was wracked with guilt but was also unwilling to face that guilt. This imprisonment would’ve forced her to deal with her issues. She could no longer hide behind raising you or running around feebly trying to save people. She only has time and her own guilt now, thus forcing her to deal with it.” Mneventh explained. “Besides, she wasn’t really being harmed by the whole thing. I would’ve helped her eventually.”

“I think it’s about time to save her though, don’t you?” Dee suggested.

The large dragon gave a deep sigh, strong enough to create some gale winds. “I suppose you’re right. What about the negotiations? Not that I personally care. And how would we get there? The gates being cut might’ve fucked the angels, but it doesn’t exactly make things easier for us either.”

“Oh don’t worry about that. I have a way for us to get there. I also have some help with the seal imprisoning her, as well as my own position as Lumen’s Champion. The others can take care of the boring diplomacy. That’s not my job. I did my part already.” Dee replied, already sending a message to Aurelie and Mit-Amen.

“By way of getting us there, you don’t mean…” Mneventh’s eyes narrowed. He was aware of the way Astral Dragons traveled and wanted nothing to do with it. An Aspect of Anti-Magic on a plane filled with weird magic was a bad combination.

--------

“Stop complaining already!” Dee roared at the enormous Black Dragon. “We’re almost there already! It can’t be that bad!”

Dee was forced into taking some extreme measures to get her group to their destination. Usually she wouldn’t let anyone ride on her, but her clawed feet were currently busy and if she wanted to make the trip as short as possible, then everyone had to be in contact with her the entire time. Thus Mit-Amen and Aurelie got a very rare and exclusive ride on her back while Hyacinth had shrunk down even further and was standing on top of Dee's head. The reason her feet were busy was because she had to drag Mneventh by his tail the entire way. The Black Dragon had finally acquiesced to using Dee’s method of travel, but he had become violently ill almost immediately after entering the Astral Sea. Apparently his nature really didn’t fit the place. The only reason Dee could even drag the enormous dragon along was because there was no resistance in the Astral Sea.

All in all though, the trip had been a lot shorter than she had assumed. It seemed the one ability that had benefitted the most after she became rank thirteen was her ability to travel the Astral Plane. It seemed like that particular ability constantly surprised her, as the same thing had happened as she had become rank twelve. And interestingly the ability’s growth had nothing to do with her rank strictly speaking. Dee speculated it had more to do with the growing feeling of leaving her body behind as a shell that she’d had. It seemed the Astral Plane was something especially suited for energy beings. And the stronger her feeling of separation got, the faster her travel speed would become. Even now though, it only took them three days to reach their destination. At least something was going well.

That small pleasure vanished immediately after exiting the portal. Upon surveying her surroundings she realized that something was terribly wrong. The area around them was swarming with angels. This didn’t seem like a trap though, as the angels seemed just as confused. Apparently, the portal had appeared right above an army of angels, and it didn’t take much for the angels to detect a pair of rank thirteen dragons and two Lords of considerable strength. Not to mention the cackling Faerie Dragon. To be fair, their entrance wasn’t exactly a stealthy one as Mneventh managed to vomit over a large number of the angels before getting his bearings back. Hyacinth had already attacked the nearest angels before anyone was paying attention, and the first Seraphim were already torn to pieces or burnt to a crisp.

“Fucking perfect! Someone to take my anger out on! Remind me never to take your portals again.” Mneventh declared as he dashed towards the army of angels that were already managing to gather into large units led by immortals. It seemed like this wasn’t just some random gathering of warriors but a large group of well-trained Seraph and Cherubim. It was hard to estimate their number from such close proximity, but Dee felt that terms like heaps, loads, and fuckton were appropriate. She changed shapes to her normal form, just so that she would draw less attention.

“Well, we always knew there would be some defenders, we just didn’t know how many.” Mit-Amen commented as she and Aurelie went their own way, intent on hunting some of the stronger immortals among the enemy ranks. The leader of the white faction would likely leave them alive but unable to continue fighting. Or not. Both seemed possible.

Suddenly Dee felt a strong pressure that was immediately countered by her own Domain. It seemed that someone here had a Domain of their own, somewhat different from the one Dee had. She didn’t have to look for the person, as the particular angel almost casually floated towards her. The strikingly handsome male angel had two pairs of golden wings that matched his short and unruly hair. Oddly enough, his breastplate and clothing were divided in the middle into two equal sized but differently colored halves. One side was red and gold, while the other side was white and silver.

“I get the feeling you’re the leader of this little charade. I’m not entirely sure why, but I have the impression it might have something to do with why Mneventh is so out of it. I almost feel insulted that he completely ignored my presence.” The man seemed to be talking almost without any rush or worry.

Dee could feel the power the man had, even though it was less obvious and more hidden than one might assume. “Leader is a strong word. Shouldn’t you be trying to stop him from ravaging your forces?”

“This is good training for them. Perhaps a bit extreme, but they should be able to delay him at least. I was specifically training them in combining their powers to fight a singular powerful enemy after all. In some ways, Mneventh is the perfect target to test their abilities against. Besides, even as I am, I would find it difficult to fight the Black Dragon Aspect while you’re skulking in the sidelines. For some reason, I feel that dealing with you first is much more important.”

“Do you think you c…!” Dee’s words were interrupted by a casual swing of the man’s thin blade.

The distance between the two was much too far for the blade to reach, but a sudden sense of danger made Dee use her highest speed to dodge to the side. Even with all the speed from Lumen’s blessing, she was too slow. The attack seemed to go straight through her armor of light, even though she didn’t even see the attack. She managed to avoid most of the attack, but it still hit her lower left arm as she had materialized the second pair of hands just in case. The arm was severed neatly just below the elbow. For some reason her regeneration didn’t seem to be reacting either, leaving the wound bleeding rather badly.

“I think I can, yes. It is my role as the Morningstar after all. All enemies of Paradisia will fall before my blade. You will not be the first and you will not be the last rank thirteen being my blade has tasted.” The reason for the man’s calm demeanor became obvious. He was simply supremely confident in his own strength, which is why he didn’t need to rush.

Dee squinted her eyes dangerously. She had no idea what had just happened. Obviously she wasn’t the only one capable of invisible attacks. She couldn’t read any power from the attack either. For the first time her sight was failing her so completely. This was trouble.