Chapter Text
“…but if I should die before you continue…”
The virulent flames swirled around the fighters like shadows as Yharon readied another blow, the swift Terrarian easily dodging each and every one of his attacks. They were a flash of light, a blur in the wind as Yharon clawed the air in desperation, his side bleeding with a huge gash that even his power over rebirth struggled to mend. How could this be, Yharon thought. He was a dragon who had bested gods. How could a mere mortal ascend beyond anything he thought possible? With his final breath, Yharon wrung out one last verse of his message to Yharim, summoning all the strength he had left.
“YOU SHALL HAVE HEARD MY FINAL—” Yharon’s voice broke against the relentless agony. He had to do this for Yharim. What would all this progress have come to? What calamity would everything they had made cause if it all came crashing down?
“Dying…”
“Roar…”
Yharon gasped for breath as the Terrarian struck forward again, slicing at his exposed throat, the flames pounding like drums in his ears. Yharon had already accepted defeat. If I go down, he thought, at least I go down in a blaze of glory. He felt a sickening crunch as he slammed into the ground, causing an earthquake to erupt around him.
With his last thoughts, he fell silent on the ground. The wind would retake him, and he would be reborn anew in a decade. He hoped, with his final words, that Yharim would finally crush this exponential terror like an ant.
He lay there for ten seconds, awaiting the final slit of his throat. Any second now, and the ark of the cosmos would come slicing down.
But no pain came.
Yharon fluttered open his eyes.
His wounds were rapidly regenerating. The Terrarian, wreathed in scales from the Nameless Serpent, simply stood there, their back turned to him, blade in hand.
Yharon blinked twice. This couldn’t be. After everything he had done, after genocide after genocide he and Yharim had caused, was the Terrarian just going to spare him? This was a trap. It had to be. Yharon wanted to rip the tiny mortal into pieces right now. But lying prostrate on the ground with bleeding gashes carved into his wings, seeing double, he couldn’t muster any strength at all to do so.
He rasped out a whisper. “You could have gorged yourself upon my Auric Soul and become a god, and yet you chose to stay mortal?”
The Terrarian said nothing. Taking off their helmet, they twisted around to face him.
A hideous sight they were indeed. Their eyes, nearly lifeless, twitched—ceaseless voids of blackness. Their face was scarred and warped; the entire left lobe was gruesomely mangled with obvious deep burns from countless gouts of profaned flame, burns so deep they carved valleys into flesh and formed an estuary between mortal and monstrous; the other cheek ripped by maws much like those of the Nameless Serpent. Could they have done it? Could this puny mortal have slain the Nameless Serpent, the Devourer of Gods himself?
Questions raced through Yharon’s mind like incessant flies. This mortal, this frail, fleeting insect—how could they have slain god after god? He racked his mind for an answer, but the only thought he found, looming and undeniable, was that the Terrarian was exactly like Yharim, the maligned prince-turned-Godseeker himself, his dearest companion, even in death. The mortal bore the same scars, the same bloodlust that he had. He struggled against his own thoughts as the world faded to black, too much agony for a millennia-old dragon to contemplate. He felt the world closing in. He fought, defiant to the end, but it was all too late.
It all faded to black...
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...
...
Yharon opened his eyes with a jolt.
He was dead; he was sure of it.
Had it already been ten years? Was it time to trailblaze into the world anew, to desperately search in the hope Yharim wasn’t slain?
No, it wasn’t. He was sure of it. The thoughts still echoed in his mind, the faded screams seared there as if etched in stone.
His senses overwhelmed him. Was that… grass? And a clean, blue sky, untainted by sulfuric waste or vile corruption? And… a town? How could a town have survived the Godseeker’s purge? Birds were chirping in the trees above, and his draconic ears picked up on the splash of a babbling creek, peacefully rolling on even amidst the fallout.
“Look, Connor! The chicken nugget came to life!” a sound like the voice of a little girl rang out.
CHICKEN NUGGET? Yharon roared in his thoughts. He wanted to spread his wings wide, to roar in his mighty voice that he was Yharon, Dragon of Rebirth, Resplendent Phoenix, slayer of gods, protector of Yharim the Godseeker, and could easily burn the mortal to a crisp in a second. Yet, no matter what, he couldn’t bring himself to move; his head was still spinning from the impact.
“Did you know that harpies can sometimes drop chicken nuggets?” another voice chimed in, not calm but not frantic either, knowledgeable like a guidebook. “You can find harpies in—”
“No, not harpies. That animal the hero tied up in the field! You know, I feel kind of bad for it. Should we let it go?” the child asked. Yharon could clearly see them both now. The little girl was short and plump, wearing a pink ball gown and tiara. The man was more simply dressed, with a short, tousled mop of brown hair, a gray worker’s tunic, and faded blue jeans, holding a guidebook in his hands.
“Oh! Ha! I didn’t notice that.” The man combed his hand through his hair. “I really just got lost in my thoughts, huh?”
The girl was about to reach out, pressing her finger to his feathers as her hand glowed with healing magic. Just as her hand nearly grazed him, the temperature began to drop around them. Frost licked the air as snow gathered on the ground. Recognition sparked in Yharon’s mind. That was the unmistakable chill of the mage he’d once worked alongside.
A low, steady voice, tinged with a hint of cold and calculating frostbite, interrupted the serene scene. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
A man stepped into view, holding a cryogenic scepter between his hands. He was cloaked in icy robes, his hair a tangled mess of frozen shards, and he wore a long beard that reached to his knees. “Pardon the frost. It’s an unfortunate side effect of… being imprisoned inside the Cryogen for so long.”
The Cryogen. The words seemed to leap into Yharon’s mind. Where had he seen this man before?
“Hi, Permafrost!” The girl jumped into the air with joy. “Can you teach me another magic spell?”
Permafrost scoffed, narrowing his eyes slyly at Yharon. “This is no time for frivolous tricks. This here is the mighty Yharon, Dragon of Rebirth. I know him well, children. We… worked alongside each other in the past.”
He muttered something under his breath. “Can’t believe… blinded by tyranny…”
The girl gasped, eyes wide, her genuine innocence replaced by fear. “B-but he’s hurt! We can’t just let him die! He looks so friendly… and soft!”
“Yes, he looks soft. Harmless, even,” Permafrost remarked. “But don’t be fooled. This ‘dragon’ is a monster, a loyal weapon of the Tyrant. While Calamitas and I chose to walk away, Yharon remained—faithful to a man whose promises rot like fruit of the profaned garden. I knew Yharim’s fate was sealed the day he summoned the Devourer of Gods. That was the moment he crossed a line I refused to follow.”
Permafrost gestured contemptuously toward the horizon. “Look at the world he’s broken. Seas tainted with sulfur, crimson blight choking the land, and astral sickness corrupting every inch. And yet this creature serves, like a sheep trailing after a shepherd of ruin.” He locked eyes with Yharon. “Don’t touch a dragon that allies with a tyrant. His loyalty is no better than his master’s lies.”
Yharon mustered a glare, barely managing to tear apart the ropes around him. Permafrost’s words stung like ice. Was there truth in what he had said? Had he stood too strong in the lies of Yharim? But something in him resisted. Yharim had been built on noble intentions, aiming to cleanse a world of corruption. His descent into madness hadn’t come from his own desires; rather, it was a natural consequence of witnessing the toll of battle and the rivers of blood. He had slaughtered the wickedest of gods, after all. Compared to the mindless devastation wrought by Providence, the Profaned Goddess, his conquests held brutal but righteous retribution.
Providence. Where had she been? Yharon hadn’t heard word of her for quite some time now. Had that Terrarian… slain her? They were, indeed, scarred by that profaned flame…
Permafrost turned his head. “Alas, even the worst people can change… given enough time. I just hope that Yharon, now that he is captured, learns his way. Go, youths. You have a world to inherit that might heal itself thanks to our hero.”
He muttered again under his breath, “I just hope they don’t go the way of the Godseeker…”
As the three parted, with the princess still trying to catch a glance of Yharon, another figure stepped into view as the sun began to dip below the horizon, the sunset shimmering on their unmistakable armor. Now that he wasn’t bathed in his own flame, Yharon saw it more clearly—indeed, that mortal had crafted the Nameless Serpent’s scales into a set of armor. Their helmet obscured their mangled visage, which made them look far more intimidating under the gentle twilight.
Yharon managed to lift his head, moving out of the shackles with trepidation. The Terrarian approached Yharon in a quiet, assured sprint, carried by the gentle hum of their elysian tracers, neither hurried nor hesitant, their expression as inscrutable as ever. Yharon gave a wary look, half-expecting the Terrarian to taunt him in his weakened state, but the Terrarian simply beckoned him toward the town, which lay just off a green hillside overlooking a verdant forest with a crystal-clear river flowing through it.
Yharon hesitantly stepped forward, wandering down the hill toward the town—a modest settlement nestled under the warm, open sky that knew neither smog nor corruption. Yharon took in his surroundings with great interest; he’d never heard of a surviving town anywhere after the deific purges. There was a certain humble beauty to the place—not that of grandiose valor like the ancient cities of Azufare or Ilmeris, but rather, a rustic sense of peace and tranquility that was hard to come by in times like these. A dryad gathered for a ceremony with a masked Lihzahrd as a nearby tavern lit up with activity, a gathering of people holding a celebration. People pointed and watched the dragon in awe as he stomped through the town square. Yharon watched hesitantly, his mighty footsteps causing the ground to tremble, as lanterns began to dance through the night sky, the same ceremonial lanterns that people would release when a great calamity had vanished.
Was he that great calamity?
Was this… a public execution?
No, it couldn’t be. This Terrarian wasn’t Yharim. Not exactly.
This Terrarian knew about mercy and forgiveness—something Yharon was all too unfamiliar with in the centuries of the Godseeking apocalypse. This seemed far too genuine to be a betrayal.
As they neared the edge of the settlement, the Terrarian stopped, and Yharon’s eyes widened. Just beyond the edge was a magnificent roost that stretched into the clouds, carved from ashen wood and infernal suevite, woven together with an elegance that only a skilled craftsman could achieve. Perches of living fire spiraled up the structure, each wide and strong enough to hold a creature of his size, and the flaming peak caught the moonlight, casting a warm glow over the entire town.
He wondered why they would build something so grandiose for someone like him.
Were they like Yharim? A manipulative tyrant?
No, they weren’t like Yharim.
Yharim, in the heat of his bloodlust, only sought to destroy. He ravaged the land, sea, and sky alike, torturing his prisoners until they assembled into wrathful coalescence, recruiting the mindless machine of war, Draedon, and slaughtering millions in his wake. And worst of all was what he did to Calamitas. She was only fifteen, and Yharim forced her to incinerate an entire civilization. Yharon, in that moment, saw her. He heard the screams of suffering that Calamitas had to endure. And Yharon himself was the one to oversee it—blinded by loss, blinded by a fleeting wish that he felt compelled to uphold for his master and the race of Auric dragons. Complacent in the face of genocide. Monster, monster.
The Terrarian was in the wrong, in both ways. They had spared a monster. They had spared an enabler of countless atrocities. Why? Yharon wanted to scream.
He both loved and hated the Terrarian. And he hated himself more. He loathed deciphering that silent, inscrutable mortal, that Terrarian who hid behind a wall of silence to disguise their motives.
The Terrarian left as silently as ever, and Yharon watched them go, his mind swirling with countless thoughts he couldn’t name.
For the first time in his life, Yharon felt more loyal to another than to Yharim.