No Such Thing as Good and Evil

Shade once again stood outside Castle Endross in front of his grandfather’s broken statue. In his hands, he held the map the man had gave him denoting where this dragon hunter base was located. After looking the map over, he had become rather suspicious of its location. He wasn’t suspicious of the man trying to set him up, but rather at an off the cuff comment Gaelin had said to him during the meeting with the other knight commanders. The memory of Gaelin saying “I’m not sure even you can deny fate exists at this point” blared through his mind as he looked at the map once again.

The dragon hunter base was in the north west corner of Alessandria. There were a few reasons this was suspicious to him. For one, why did Alessandria allow this base to exist? Surely they had to know of its existence. Yea, they had that tavern he had burnt down, but that was just a tavern, this was supposedly a full-blown base. Maybe they thought if they attacked it, Merellien would consider it an act of war and use it as a pretense to invade? But he thought the whole point of the dragon hunters technically being separate from Merellien was that nothing they did could be pinned back on Merellien.

The ‘why’ Alessandria wasn’t doing anything wasn’t the main issue though. It was the ‘why’ were the hunters that attacked him sent from this base? If dragon hunters have bases in Alessandria, then surely there had to be one closer to the capital than this one was. The base was so far in the north western corner of Alessandria, it was basically on the border of Endross and Normuc at the same time. It was so far away from where Shade had been attacked, he figured there was next to no chance the hunters sent out were the closest to where he was.

On one hand, he thought maybe they were the strongest fighters amongst the dragon hunters, and just so happened to be at the north west base at the time, but were dispatched to take on the strong foe that he was. He dismissed that possibility though just as easily as he ultimately dismissed their lives. But even if that possibility was in fact true, it didn’t dissuade the last reason he was suspicious. He had recently revealed to Gaelin and the others he had met Colandria in the past, the alleged goddess of life. This base just so happened to be extremely close to the temple he had found her in. The odds of that seemed rather low, but not zero apparently. You combine that with all the princesses he has just so happened to be in the area of as they were about to die, and the odds of all of those things happening together become rather miniscule.

He decided to push that issue to the side for now, focusing on what his own next move would be, rather than worry about the moves of some gods, real or fake. His grandfather had told him of something he ‘had to do’ in Endross if he ever died. Of course he had died a long time ago now, and Shade had run away from Endross shortly after. Now he stood in front of the statue where he was supposed to do something, but he didn’t know what it was, or how long it would take. He looked down at the map again, then back up at his grandfather’s broken statue and decided his long dead relative could wait a little while longer. He opened up his wings, and took off towards the base, heading slightly south west from Castle Endross.

When he arrived, he found the base looked like a castle itself. The base was surrounded by a perfectly square brick wall. The wall had towers on each of the four corners, as well as a taller tower shooting towards the sky at the very center of the base. Hilariously to Shade, the base was also surrounded by a moat just like the castle in Alessandria was. Apparently, they were all the rage again, who knew? The moat of course wouldn’t be an issue, but getting in quietly would be. The base was in the middle of a ‘forest’, but a huge chunk of the forest had been cut down for the sake of building the base. The base now sat in a large grass clearing, with at least a mile of nothing but grass on every side of it, causing the guards on top of the castle walls and towers to have long unhindered sight lines. Getting seen was his biggest problem, but it wasn’t like he was worried they would kill him. Maybe someone in there would be strong enough to take him out, but based on his prior fights with hunters, he doubted it.

The real problem was his goal, to save the dragons. He lacked information on what he would find within the castle, and more importantly, who. As he stood in the woods at the edge of the clearing, he considered flying back to Endross and asking the dragon he had saved some more questions. In his clouded mind from his argument with Aerith, he had just taken the map and left. Now though, he was blind in this fight. He needed to know who in the base was the ‘slave master’. He wasn’t exactly sure how the devices they put on the dragons worked, but he assumed they worked the same as slave collars, meaning someone somewhere was the master. But what if multiple people were masters? The hunters who attacked him were using dragons as batteries, meaning their devices were connected to them, so what if each hunter was connected to a dragon? That would mean he would have to free every dragon before killing any hunters. But the second he began freeing dragons, they would know he was there, and would set off alarms, then most likely begin slaughtering the dragons he was there to save.

As he thought about it, he realized that the dragons he had saved actually were only wearing slave collars, not the newer devices the dragons in the town and tavern had been wearing. He wondered why. Maybe the devices are for ‘free’ dragons and the slave dragons wear slave collars. Maybe the new devices are more expensive and using older technology for certain situations made more fiscal sense. Either way, if the dragons in the base were wearing standard slave collars, it made things marginally easier. He at least didn’t have to worry about some ability the new devices may have that he wasn’t aware of.

The issue of dealing with the slave collars, and figuring out who the master was, only mattered though if he quietly got into the base, which was still a problem. He circled the base from the tree line searching for any sort of opening. The problem was, even with better eyesight that came with being a dragon, being miles away made seeing little details very difficult. The one thing he did notice was on the western side of the base at the edge of the moat there was a bulkhead door that he assumed led to a basement of some sort. If this was a cliché villain lair, then the basement would be where a lot of the prisoners and slaves were being held. He decided that would be his point of entrance. If he could manage to get inside there, then maybe he could slowly and silently take out hunters one by one as he made his way through the base. Not only that, but if some dragons were being held down there, he could ask them the questions he needed answers to.

The bulkhead doors were guarded by two hunters, but neither looked that strong. The main issue were the hunters overlooking the land from the top of the roof and the lookouts from the towers. He needed a way to either take them out quietly, or distract them. He came up with a ridiculous plan that in no way shape or form should ever work, but as he was the brawn in most fights to others brains, it was the best he could come up with, so he decided to go with it. The plan was simple. He would create, then send hundreds of clones of himself to attack the eastern side of the base. Hopefully after a little while, the hunters would decide that the attack was coming from the east, and only the east, and would leave the west unguarded. This plan made no sense. Any hunter worth a damn would notice that A, the dragons were rather weak and easy to kill, B they all looked exactly the same, and C, were only attacking one part of the castle. It was so obviously a rouse, a trap, that it should never, ever work in a million years.

Except it did. Explosions, yells and laughs rang out from the eastern side as his clones were slaughtered one after another, but that didn’t matter. He purposefully made them weak so the hunters thought they could win the battle with ease without having to call for backup, sound any alarms, or retreat into the base. Other hunters though from inside, and out, heard the commotion that was happening at the eastern gate, and seeing free kills, decided to join in on the fun. Within ten minutes, the only people even remotely close to the western side of the base were the two guards guarding the basement doors. They had held their ground, maintaining their watch over the doors like disciplined soldiers. Shade respected their discipline and passion for their jobs, unfortunately for them, it would only lead to their deaths.

Shade took off from the tree line, crossing the grassland inbetween the trees and the base in no more than 30 seconds. He unsheathed his two daggers, not wanting to use any echos at all in order to protect the stealth he was going for. One of the two hunters saw him coming, and got ready to counter the attack, but Shade threw the daggers before he got to the pair. The daggers blasted right through the pair’s chests and clacked against the brick wall behind them, leaving gaping holes where their hearts once were. Both of them instantly collapsed to the ground, dead. Shade landed right in front of the two bodies, when they had collapsed, their bodies had leaned up against the wall, and he moved them aside like they were worthless toys, showing their lifeless corpses zero respect. He picked up his two daggers, wiped the blood and guts they were covered in on his fittingly red shirt, then re-sheathed them. He then looked back to the two corpses and considered eating their souls when a searing pain ripped through his chest. Then the pain doubled, and he fell to his knees and began to cough up blood. “What the fuck.” He gurgled through a bloody mouth. He looked down at his chest and saw he was bleeding profusely from where his daggers had ended the guard’s existences. “They must have been wearing armor with that god damned damage effect Faylens has.” Luckily for him, dragons had multiple hearts, and neither were in the same location most other species were, meaning his hearts were still ok. Also, he could take far more damage than most other people before dying. Even still, having two deadly blows for normal people reflect double back onto him put him in more pain and suffering then he had felt in almost fifty years.

He collapsed from his knees, onto all fours as he continued to cough, struggling to maintain consciousness. He knew that the blows wouldn’t actually kill him, and given enough time he would recover. But he didn’t have time. From his knees, he crawled over to the basement door and tried opening them, locked. He decided that the time for sneaking was over. He lifted a fist into the air, and punched down on the doors, breaking them in. He then slithered his way through the doors, and crashed down a small stone staircase.

He laid at the bottom of the staircase staring up at nothing. The room was completely dark. He could usually see in the dark, but this seemed to be some sort of echos ability, as his eyes couldn’t pierce even a few inches in front of himself. The only light being permitted by the room was that of the light coming in from the now open bulkhead doors, but that only lit up the staircase.

Even though he couldn’t see, he could still hear, and he heard the sounds of moans coming from all around him as his break in had riled the people within. He knew eventually his clones would die out and he needed to free whoever was down here with him as soon as possible, as when the guards returned to their posts, whoever was posted to the western wall was guaranteed to find the lifeless corpses of the former basement guards.

Still, he needed a few moments to gather himself. Now that he was out of the open and within the base, as well as in a completely dark room, he decided to take a few moments to rest. The pain he felt was already starting to go away, the rapid regeneration dragons possessed had immediately begun to heal him. He figured if he was going to end up in some no holds bar all out fight between himself and dozens of hunters, he should be at least somewhat close to one hundred percent, and bleeding profusely from his chest wasn’t anywhere close to one hundred percent.

While he laid on the ground, he considered the fact that the light from the outside could pierce the darkness. Whatever was stopping his eyes from seeing normally couldn’t stop the sun. He created a ball of orange fire, he could create non hells fire, he just normally didn’t as why make less deadly fire when trying to kill things? Either way, he shot the ball of fire forward from the bottom of the staircase, and slightly lifted his head up to watch it. It worked; the ball of fire lit up everything as it shot down the room. His eyes went wide, and his body filled with anger, his eyes blinking between black and red again as he took in the sights of where he was. He was laying in the walkway of what appeared to be a massive room. The man’s estimate of their being around one hundred dragons here was woefully short. The walkway he was in cut down the middle of dozens of cages, all filled to the brim with dragons. Actually the brim, dragons were stacked on top of each other and squished into the cages like someone trying to shove a suitcase into an already full trunk of a carriage.

The walkway he was in also seemed to be one of many similar walkways, with similarly stuffed cages attached to them. There had to be at least a thousand, maybe two thousand dragons. He was shocked, not just at the sight, but the sheer number. How did they find this many dragons? How did they defeat this many dragons? The defeating part was probably quite simple in reality. Once they caught a few, they could use those dragons as batteries to power themselves up to defeat more. While dragons like Shade could defeat a juiced-up hunter, most dragons couldn’t stand up against a hunter wielding the power of three dragons combined. The how they found this many dragons was less obvious. Dragons were rather rare, there were maybe 300,000 worldwide. This was just one continent, and there were maybe 75,000 on it. Around two thousand were in this one basement? How many were in the basements of other bases? How far advanced were they in their quest to annihilate dragon kind? It seemed a lot further than he had thought when he first found out from Aerith of what was happening.

He took a few deep breaths, calming himself down. He couldn’t turn back time, but his quest to stay out of the war, and not deal with what the hunters were trying to do seemed impossible now. He would have to get involved, at least a little. But that had to wait. He first had to deal with these hunters and saving these dragons. He created a small ball of fire in his palm and began walking down the path, exploring the room. He went down multiple different aisles, trying to gauge how many dragons were truly there, as well as if any seemed strong. He didn’t see any dragons of note, and only got angrier as he looked at the dragons within the cages. They were all hog tied up, wings, tails and horns cut off, as well as gagged and blindfolded. There were signs on the cages for when the occupants of the cages last had their appendages cut off, with a time of the next instance it would be done.

At the end of one of the aisles was a brown wooden door. He tried to open the door but found it was locked. He kicked in the door, shattering it to splinters, sneaking be damned. What he found inside was the location where the terrible acts were done. This room wasn’t pitch black, but was instead excellently lit. Dozens of stone tables were within, all having dragons on them, tied down and still blindfolded and gagged. In the very back of the room there were various torture devices, though apparently the dragons had been relatively good recently as none of them were being used. Standing next to one of the tables holding a rusty dull saw that he was about to use to cut the dick off a male dragon was a single hunter, who was looking at Shade wide eyed.

“A dragon? How did you get in here?” The hunter said. Shade though barely even registered the hunters’ words, not paying attention to any details of the being. The only thing he even glanced at was his armor, or lack there of. The hunter was wearing white doctors’ robes, not any armor that could have that bullshit double damage enchantment imbued into it. Or could doctors robes be imbued with abilities as well? No, he didn’t have time to consider that possibility.

Before the hunter could say anything else, Shade unsheathed both daggers, lit them in hells fire, and threw them at the hunter. The hunter went up in flames and fell to the ground, crying, screaming, and rolling on the floor in a desperate attempt to put out the fire. It didn’t work, and he was ashes in mere moments. Shade casually walked up to the ashes, reached his hand down into them and pulled out the hunter’s soul. He then casually ate it; he was going to eat all the souls of the hunters in this place for what they had done. They want to treat dragons like cattle, then they could die being food for a dragon themselves.

After grabbing and re-sheathing his daggers, he turned his attention to the dragon that was shackled to the table the ‘doctor’ was about to work on. Calling it malnourished would be a kindness. It looked like a skeleton cosplaying as a dragon. He slowly, and gently untied the dragon from the stone, then he gently removed the gag from the dragon’s mouth, worried he was going to hurt the weak looking thing every time he touched it. To his surprise though, as he was about to remove the blind fold, the dragon free of the bonds tying him down, shot off of the table and grabbed Shade in a stunningly tight hug like he was going to attack him.

The dragon whispered in Shades ear. “You really thought you were so strong you could untie me and I wouldn’t kill you, how weak do you think I am?” The dragon then laughed maniacally before continuing to whisper. “You have just made a huge mistake, I’m going to kill you, free all the others then kill all your friends.”

Being threatened by a naked, blindfolded malnourished dragon for some reason further calmed Shade down, and he pushed the dragon off of himself, sending the dragon stumbling back. “Hey hero, take off the blindfold.”

“I don’t need to take off the blindfold to defeat you.” The dragon proudly replied, puffing out its chest. Which was rather unimpressive looking from someone so lacking in the muscle and fat department.

Shade shook his head. “Ok then hero, even if you defeat me, how are you going to defeat all the other hunters within the castle. I’m not sure if you noticed, but you and the others still have the slave collars on. You wouldn’t be able to use any of your power, or whatever power someone as weak looking as you may have.”

The dragon though ignored the barbs and maintained his proud pose. “You think me a fool? I know where you keep the keys for the cages and the collars. Freeing them will be simple.”

“Do you now?” Shade replied. “That’s convenient. It didn’t seem like the hunter I killed had any keys on them, but if you know where they are, I’ll leave freeing everyone to you then.”

The dragon went to respond, but paused. His proud pose turned confused, and he removed his blindfold. He looked at the lucifer dragon, then to the pile of ash by its feet, back to Shade, back to the ash, then back to Shade again. “When did this happen?”

“Literally moments ago.” Shade sighed, then took a sarcastic tone. “I’m stunned someone as powerful as you didn’t notice the hellfire snuffing the life out of the hunter mere inches away.”

“Well.” The dragon said awkwardly scratching his chin. “You know, with the collars…”

Shade cut him off. “Ohhhh, now the collars are an issue, huh? I thought you could just get the keys and be on your merry way.” The dragon didn’t respond though, and Shade sighed again. He took in the dragon for the first real time. He looked rather odd, he was mostly green, with a few diagonal brown stripes crossing his torso. Shade assumed he was some sort of Earth dragon. That didn’t really matter though. “I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty worried about any information you might provide me with being accurate, but you’re the best I’ve got, and I don’t think the time it would take to free everyone else in here and compare information would be productive, so I’m going to assume what you tell me to be true.” The dragon though still didn’t say anything, instead, he began to look rather, angry? Shade snapped his fingers a few times. “Hello? I’m going to ask you some questions I need answers to, ok?”

“A fucking Lucifer.” The dragon whispered, his anger starting to boil over.

“What?” Shade responded.

The anger the dragon felt then became completely obvious, as a deep snarl took over his face. “You’re a fucking Lucifer. So, your kind is still alive, huh. Where were you? Where have you been?” The dragon began ranting as he slowly began to walk toward Shade, who didn’t move or respond, eyes wide. “Why didn’t you help? So many have died. My family, my friends, everything I know and love is gone, and you were still alive? Are we not good enough? Am I too weak to deserve your help? One of your kind tried creating a kingdom for the salvation of all dragons, and now you leave us all to die. Was that kingdom a lie? Just a powerplay?” Finally, the dragon got to the silent Shade, put his hands on Shades shoulders, and began to shake him violently. “Answer me! Where were you! Why didn’t you help!”

Shade finally lifted his arm into the air, and slapped the man, sending him stumbling back once more. When the man regained his balance, the snarl on his face only deepened as he rubbed where he had been slapped. “I know!” Shade yelled over to him. “I fucking know, ok? I’m sorry. I know it means nothing now, but I fucking know, ok? I know I disappeared for a decade, and I know in that time horrible things have happened that I could’ve stopped. I know, ok? I’m here now, so could you just answer my questions so I can get on with trying to save the ones who are still alive?”

The dragon silently took Shade in for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. “Disappeared for a decade. A lucifer who disappeared for a decade.” He paused looking Shade over once more. “You’re Valvath Endross aren’t you, the Lucifer who ran from his kingdom and his own name. I heard you were dead.”

“Well, I’m still alive.” Shade replied rather annoyed at how his life was being described, even if it was rather true. “I tried to disappear from the world, some guy said he killed me, became a king, and began to use his power to take over the continent and eradicate dragons, all while I drank my eyes out in various bars. Happy? Now, can you just tell me what I need to know, so I can get to doing what you’re mad at me for not doing sooner.”

The dragon took Shade in again with the same snarl and narrowed eyes, but finally nodded. “Fine, what do you want to know?”

“Really, just one thing. Who are the ones connected to the slave collars, I don’t want to kill a hunter then have it accidentally kill a bunch of dragons in turn.”

The dragon looked down at the pile of ashes, then back to Shade. “I’m not sure I believe you actually care about dragons accidentally dying. Shouldn’t you have found that out before killing that hunter? Though I guess for someone who has ignored the deaths of dragons for years, what would have been a few more.” Shade didn’t respond as internally he knew the man was right, so the dragon continued. “All the dragons while in the base are connected to the base commander, they’re only connected to other hunters when they are ‘loaned’ out for missions. All the dragons though are ‘owned’ by the commander.” He spat the last part out through gritted teeth.

Shade nodded, that would make the mission so much easier for him. All he had to do was not kill the commander until all the dragons were free. Everyone else was fair game. “What does he look like?”

“He’s hard to miss. He’s a fairy with rainbow wings, rainbow hair and a rainbow handlebar mustache. How do you plan on beating him though? My plan was to free all the dragons and overpower him with sheer numbers. Right now though, all the dragons are connected to him, so he has the power of thousands of dragons at his disposal.”

Shade considered this, tilting his head back and forth for a few moments. “Were you being truthful when you said you knew where the keys for the collars were?” The dragon nodded in response. “How fast do you think you can get the collars off of all the dragons in here?”

The dragon didn’t respond immediately as he seemed to calculate in his mind. “It depends on how many keys there are. I believe there to be 4 or 5 copies of each. Maybe an hour or so if we went really fast.”

“Sounds good to me, you have one hour.” Shade replied. “I’ll kill all the hunters I find up there, free any dragons I come across and if I run into the commander, I’ll play hide and seek with him for an hour. At the end of the hour, I’ll try to kill him, whether I can or not is a different story. Fine by you?”

The dragon shook his head in disapproval. “I think this plan is foolish, if the commander comes to find you immediately, you’re screwed. Or if he ignores you and comes down here, we’re screwed.”

“Well then, I guess it sucks my asking if the plan was fine by you was actually rather rhetorical.” Shade walked up to the dragon, grabbed his collar, dumped echos into it, overheating it and breaking it off, with the collar clanking to the stone floor. “You have one hour.” He said sternly, staring into the snarling dragons eyes, then turned and headed for what used to be a door. He went through it, and strolled through the aisles of caged dragons, off to find the stairway, the slaughter of the dragon hunters about to commence.