I ask you, last one–I know this is a selfish thing to ask you–but my people are facing death, but it is not the glorious, or peaceful end that I want for them, nor do they want for each other." A faint voice echoed across the unfamiliar throne room.
The ivory god of the shivering cold had summoned him here, south of the mountainous chain deemed the Allfather's Spine was the Eurelian people, ruled by their king and queen–soon to be consumed by the noxious disease that overtook all things that lived too close to the corpse of the great father of dragons.
The deep shadows were pierced by the windows stained with the great tales and history of the land he was currently treading on, yet the singularity still witnessed the confrontation. The mortal lung that had achieved divinity, achieved the existentially impossible Apotheosis, and the simple knight–the last of his blood.
"We worship Death, yes. My people welcome the warmth of the afterlife, but–not like this. Please.
My people suffer. The human throne of my land suffers, too. These people are my family. I have seen their grandparents, and their entire family tree all wither into a bed of flowers after claiming their right into the next life.
I ask you–not as a leader or a higher power, but as the mother of these lands, please do me this favor. I can't see them suffer any longer." The numinous voice of the angelic dragon rumbled lightly in the grand hall. The opulence seemed dim when confronted by the melancholia of the southern leader.
There weren't many in history to achieve what the noble Lady Eurel had–even fewer that had been documented and recorded like she was. A being born not of divinity, becoming a part of the divine. Becoming one of the few to hold a throne in the great heavens where the soul would go after its final moments, but, alas, she was doomed to live eternally inside existence. Yet, the last of his blood simply did not think this creature cared. From what the king had whispered to him before his long journey passed the once dragon-infested chain of nightmares inside the spine, the beautiful creature in front of him was a spirit of freedom–just as much as she was the frigid. The blood on his hands was already well past his neck, so what was the point in declining? He had heard the world cry in fear, anguish, happiness, eagerness, and everything in between the polar opposites. The south had been doomed the moment the nauseous disease emerged from the lingering effects of the Hell Gate's opening, and it seemed that now was its end, yet his words betrayed him.
"You ask of me a heavy task–Lady Eurel…I–I don't think I have the strength to do it. You ask me to butcher an entire kingdom; men, women, and children, Lady Eurel…I am but a mortal man; a man who has already spilt' too much blood," the man's soft spoken denial spoke of disturbance, and maybe even a bit of fear. Innocent blood was something he had spilled before. Never again.
A small stream of steam whisked out of the dragon's nostrils with something akin to bitter humor lacing the expression. Something that could only be described as a bitter snarl appeared on her lips–the closest thing she could give to a smile. It was fraught with despicable, bitter amusement. She tightened around the golden spire directly behind the king and queen's empty thrones. The multi-colored, stained glass pane directly behind her glew for a hasty moment, the mixture of maroons, golds, and silvers in the depiction of her apotheosis washed over her pale scales of alabaster. Her lavender eyes had been cemented in a cruel resolve, while being painfully waterboarded with depression. The evening sun gazed at them, its disposition neutral.
"Well then, so be it, child. I hope we can meet again, someday."
His whisper was met with a shift in the lilac eyes that had been peering at him–it was an alien emotion that was indecipherable from the distance that continued to grow between them, but the knight knew in his heart that something had shifted in the creature.
Still, that didn't stop the lung from gracefully whirling onto itself, opening its maw, and spewing a viscous cacophony of fire at him. The heat was nothing, but he could feel his armor sag against him, electing hisses of discomfort from the knight, even at the quickly growing distance between himself and the fire dragon. In moments, the fire was in front of him, but in less than that, the jittery, muttering tower shield that had agitated him with no end was ready. The Bearing Bead that had tossed and turned in its compartment had been funneled into the small mouth rising against the arm that was bound to the defense, and as it consumed the marble-like object, the shield activated.
The steely texture faded, and the human skin, grafted onto the shield returned in pulsing waves, with that same vigor and life that made his own skin crawl. The eyes plastered across the shield, that were once dull with dim intelligence, nearing stupidity, sparked to life with a level of analytical prowess only seen in a master tactician. Eyes scanned, the single nose on the artificial creature sniffed its surroundings, sniffed the familiar scent of tortured souls, and sharpened once again. Blinking into focus was a cascading torrent of unending, incandescent white fire that could easily melt its face off and eviscerate the one wielding the abomination, within the same moment, but instead of panicking as anything would do in that situation, the creatures many mouths grinned in satisfaction. The many mashed, and sewn identities in the tower shield all opened their mouths silently, waiting patiently for the coming tempestuous billow of visible heat, and, like a magnet attracting to another, the all-encompassing blast gravitated towards the open maws of misshapen, teeth and dry mouths, and entered the cracked, and chapped lips of the severed souls and transfigured humans, like the vacuum of space claiming oxygen that did not belong in its domain.
The divine flames, which would've turned the shield in a puddle of metal and orifices, condensed, liquidized, and quickly submitted to the objects design, and swirled into the open maws, disappearing completely as the crooked jaws shut tight, sealing the flames away, even if it was only for a few moments. The tanned skin turned a sickly white with heat for a moment as wisps of the divine flames enervated the tower shield spontaneously after its initial consumption. Letting its many cheeks puff outward in an attempt to constrain the fire for just a few more precious seconds, the amalgamation, in the dense silence the reverberated the gigantic forest, the incandescent flames released for the mouths, a primal fury awaking as the licks of fire that left the slightly parted limps immediately transformed into a typhoon of gray, lifeless flames of pure agonistic destruction. In the wake of the flames' awakening, nothing was saved from its impenetrable might; the random jutting, fireproof, branches that stood the most proud in the top of the treeline became nothing by ash in the conniption of the once life-nourishing fire, but the branches were the only thing that burned.
As the fire spread through every oxygen molecule like a tyrant leader of an over-expanding empire, it left not a single mode of oxygen alive–and instantly reached the startled Shreifaya. The tower shield that held no name of its own, a creation of the same nature as the veil of ash that kept them separated from the world, had bent the flames given to her by Lord Eos himself–as well as blessed those same flames to be filled with his own divine wrath, and divine mercy–and used them against her. The most chilling part, however, was that it was working.
In the brief moment of life she believed herself to have remaining, she thought over her life as an ageless being who would never accomplish her and her sister's shared goal of godhood. This thought was only truly brought about, when the shrewd, slightly insane human wreathed in armor stained so thoroughly in blood it became its natural paint, who had let her sister's name slip through his lips. She would have missed the faint whisper for the falling knight, but she wasn't one of the Guardian Conflagrations for nothing. Eurel. A name that brought so many mixed emotions to the forefront of her expansive mind that the name almost seemed all encompassing.
Her white scales rubbed against each other as she stared down the jagged, zig-zagging flame of annihilation headed directly for her. She loved her sister dearly, but when she felt the change in the atmosphere itself–the very planet she glided across, even in the land ruled by Eos, the literal sun, grow dimmer–more frigid, she knew exactly what had happened, and the seed of envy could not help but bloom a little bit in her hearts. Her dear sister had done it; Brumorus Eurel had become a Higher Power–one that worked directly under the Great Divine One–as all who attained godhood, and all those who were blessed and born into it.
She had forced her sister out of her mind a long time ago, as envy is quite the dangerous emotion. Shreifaya was unsure as to why the one who had been with her since the beginning–her twin sister–attaining their shared goal gnawed at her so much, but it never failed to leave a bitter taste in her maw of serrated, endless rows of teeth, and now hearing her name in her final moments of life felt nearly ironic. Perfect, even.
'I deserve this. So many things I'd change; so many things I'd rewrite looking back on the turmoil that has brewed. Alas, We as the full force of this forest have failed, Umor; Lord Eos would be ashamed.' If her ferocious, elegant visage could contort into a sad smile, that is what she would do, but, alas, she was incapable of such emotion–at least the presentation of it.
In the blink of an eye, the ever writhing, sickly fire was in front of her, not even a hair's breath away from the tip of her long, pearly snout, yet she was never hit by the definitely agonizing death that was being whispered into the back of her ear. Her lavender eyes did not shut as her end approached her, like some final act of defiance, which allowed her to see the erratic flame dodge her slithering, lithe body with ease, and attack the midnight that covered the midday. She thought her death was inevitable, but it seemed as though her life would continue to stretch.
Her sight may have been completely covered in bright, yet extremely dull gray fire, but she did not miss the loud flapping of her old friend's wings–Kanaft. He seemed to be in cohorts with the human that had launched the attack at her that was actually an attack at the eyes behind her. Shreifaya dearly wished to meet the invaders on her and Umor's battlefield, and more importantly, the human who had whispered her sister's name, but just as they swiftly flew towards the sacred lands of Lord Eos' throne, and his catatonic body, she was stuck in the middle of an ever squirming, all-powerful fire of destruction, unable to stop them, and unable to help in the destruction.
'Eurel–you have saved me… again.' The demigod wept in the espying darkness, her sister being the only thing on her alien mind.