DS Manuscript (1) (Patreon)

Dragon(s)layer

1

Funeral in Darkness

Cronazi died the same way he'd lived: festooned in a decadence that mimicked his home of black brick and volcanic stone, and every dragon in the cavernous city knew it.

Gunmetal banners of Moonwing house blanketed the Thoroughfare like drapes in gloom, covering every charcoal turret for this time of mourning. The tolls of bells to the Turned Ancestors boomed down the decrepit, candle-lit alleys with ease, strangling Darklight's ambiance, and marking penance for an already dismal place.

It was a funeral, locked in perpetual darkness, and centered on a troupe of carldrakes carrying the ornate coffin down the Thoroughfare, and the howdah behind them holding the widowed general's mate.

Teams of ugly draklings mewled under the howdah, rocking the midnight-blue dragoness in its throne with gentle sways to contrast their torture. It hardly mattered to her, for she was transfixed inside the open-topped coffin, pebbly brow furrowed as the dead drake inside met her with closed eyes.

Nobody else could hear what she did, in the claustrophobic air of the city, especially with the bells. And whether madness or epiphany, she was attentive to her husband's corpse curled resplendent. She had done little else since Cronazi had passed in the night, and rumors were amok among her retinue, even ones that she was reluctant to part with the cadaver, and that there was a plot to bypass tradition.

Given the night’s melancholy, her behavior made sense. And, as it turned out, the paranoid carldrakes were half correct about tonight's whims.

Like a vulture to carrion, Spectra was drawn to the widow, being able to taste her pain, even from so far away.

Spectra resembled one of the decorative gargoyles guarding the Gothic spires of the city, and was perched on a turret commanding the avenue. It was high and dark. Nobody would see her, and it gave her time to stalk her distracted target.

They said the Lady was going mad over her loss. But Drytha's concentration, was hardly deranged. It was something of calculation, or bitterness… Probably both. It amused Spectra.

How do you like being alone?

She smirked as it began to snow.

Drifting rose petals fluttered across the Thoroughfare, as fellow Nightkin on rooftops and in balconies paid respects, and peaceful Cronazi became dusted with the street. Drytha was incognizant as the petals soiled her howdah's floor, falling like ash from the mountain. Nothing could break her gaze. A petal landed on her snout and stayed there, like some blemish on her veil. Drytha was blind to it.

Oh yes, her pain was stark and thick, like honey. Spectra quivered at the appetizing sight, stymied only by remembering who she was drooling over.

Not only was it impossible for her to lay a talon on the dark lady of Moonwing without potentially fatal backlash, but it wouldn’t even have suited her sense of hedonism.

The old hag and her had a history, true, but homicide was unfortunately out of the question, not just because of politics. Still, the mere thought made Spectra shiver, dislodging the dusting of petals on her shoulders. Her tail whipped, and she glanced at the other outlines of dragons hidden among Darklight, as they murmured and tossed rose petals like they were actually mourning the wurm himself.

She needed to mind her clock, but Spectra took a moment to eavesdrop.

"Another one from the Last Campaign dies…” They whispered, making her frown. “What will we do? What will the Lady do?"

Atrophy and wallow, was an answer for the first question, definitely. It was what the Nightkin were good at, given the last millennia they’d spent pouting. But Spectra couldn't answer the last question, nor did she care to.

The curiosities of the opportunistic…

Ancestors. Everything in this enclave made her sick. It was a cancer embedded deep in the mountain, a tumor, a growth, every one of its subterranean castles and catacomb networks an extension of the disease’s mycorrhizae. The sooner she had what she needed, she figured - spreading her purple wings - the better.

Down in the Thoroughfare, Lady Drytha suddenly looked right at her, as if Spectra had been a torch alight in the pure black.

Over the flapping banners and toll of bells, the two hens regarded one another as specters within dreams, Spectra’s eyes bright like those of a hawk on the prowl. The first dragon in Darklight became aware of this unexpected visitor, and ebbed with the only question that mattered: for what purpose?

Spectra could’ve laughed.

I'll let you in on my little secret, She thought, flapping her bat-like wings. You and Cronazi will know what I have come for. You, and you alone.

She sprung from her perch, flying across Darklight towards the Tomb of the Sunken. Nobody aside from the widow saw this, as there were too many banners clogging the skies.

Much as had been done in life, Commander Cronazi hardly made it easy for any to pierce his ego and see the true threat beneath until it had been too late.

{🐉}

The Thoroughfare led to the Midnight Sepulchrum. There the procession disgorged, and the armored carldrakes set Cronazi down to begin the preparatory rites. Drytha descended the embroidered steps of her howdah.

"Treat him with reverence." She croaked to one of the old pastors, claws gripping a palmful of the decorative dreadlocks from his crown like they were a leash. "Or I'll have my carldrakes scoop out your eyes and feed you them."

“Of course, my lady.” The ancient drake nodded, long used to the looming houses and their postering, before rejoining his kin. Drytha wiped her talons on her blouse as she took a spot among her most heavily armed carldrakes.

They pastors began, ordaining Cronazi in oils, and libating his coat with perfumes while muttering prayers to the Turned Ancestors.

The cants were to guide Cronazi’s soul to enlightenment, following an entrancing ritual. For the Night Dragons, life was the step in evolution truly the darkest, where the soul was only redeemed in death, and a great veil would be lifted. Where Northern dragons saw death as the end to mark a new beginning, the Nightkin referred to it as Truebirth.

Regardless, Lady Drytha paid it little attention, her eyes instead on the cavernous ceiling of the city.

"I can escort you to your chambers if this has become-... too much." Drytha's personal bodyguard and nephew, Strangoth, followed her gaze, frowning when he found nothing but spires and rock. He snorted past the rhinoceros-esque horn on the tip of his snout, sounding as solicitous as he usually did with her. "There would be no dishonor in it. Uncle oftentimes sequestered to the Sanctum to gather his thoughts, even in moments like this."

Taking Drytha’s silence as a que to continue, the armored dragon chortled. “Why, I remember a time when an arrangement with Blackwing had been interrupted by the Northerners, and Uncle-”

"How do you cope with being completely powerless?" She cut him off. “If your destiny had been taken from you, and was no longer yours to command, what would you do?”

Strangoth was still young, merely 36 years, his violet and black body riddled with scuted musculature underneath his obsidian suit of armor. He was twice her size and three times as bulky, tail fat with so many barbed thorns that he could not wield a blade on its stegosaurian tip as the footsoldiers could.

All that, and yet he winced from her like a songbird to a cat.

"...Would this involve the lady's disposition?"

Drytha didn't answer. Strangoth squeezed the grip of his blackshard glaive tighter.

"I would cope with it by asserting strength, forcing a change in things." He finally uttered. "Weakness belies poor practice. Determination can-"

"Oh, save it, save it, I'm sorry I asked. Just stop talking." She shooed him with her wing, huffing over the murmur of the pastor dragons. "There's no good advice for an aging hen here anymore."

"My lady," Strangoth paused, speaking low so no one else would hear. "-Aunt Drytha, there is a time of adjustment to follow this trauma."

She hummed. "So that has come to pass as well as my mate. How unfortunate."

"Neither yourself nor Uncle had a choice. It does not bode well to torture yourself over what you cannot control."

"No, not that: it's entirely under my control as to whether or not I seek counsel from a child." Drytha crinkled her snout, black wisps tickling from her nostrils as she glared with malice. "Go back to speaking to me as if I was merely one of your wing subordinates, please. It was less insufferable than your pathetic attempts at philosophy."

"I did not mean to offend you." He recoiled as if she'd slapped him.

"Of course you didn’t. You're too naive to weaponize dialogue anyway." She grumbled despondently, pointing a talon at his pauldron. "Don't let the house's armor fool you. You're not privy to all you think you are."

"Of course, my lady. I am no lord."

"No, no you are not. You were simply answering a question, and I-" The cloud of hatred snapped like a taught string, and her eyes wandered back to the coffin. "...and I am, as you say, dealing with significant… trauma.”

That was probably the best apology he’d ever get, and Strangoth was prepared to keep it that way, but Drytha kept speaking.

“…Cronazi may be gone,” She swallowed. “But his affairs are still ours to manage. Have you heard anything from Teragon or his diggers?"

"It’s something to wonder.”

“I’m just trying to change the subject.” The elder huffed, making her veil kick. She crossed her arms. “It isn’t like you can have a fool’s answer for every question.”

“No.” He chuckled.

“The excavation?”

“Teragon is more apt to bury any progress he makes when anyone besides you inquires." Strangoth stopped short, as if expecting her to say something. When she blinked, he continued. "The last time I was there, they had uncovered,” A dramatic pause. “A roof.”

“A roof? You mean of the structure itself?”

“Yes.”

“That’s more significant than you might realize, nephew.”

“Maybe, but aside from Teragon being a pain in the tail, the hole was deeper than last week.”

“Progress is progress.” She deflated.

“Yes, but how about an actual door? Maybe one sometime in the next century? Before we’re all decrepit and past the point of our lifelong efforts." He grumbled, eyes sweeping over the other carldrakes. Some returned with nasty looks over his perceived disrespect of the ritual. He snorted. “We cannot bide our time. Our enemies are on the move.”

"Teragon’s caution is warranted. As the Warden of the Lunar Vaults, he's obsessively delicate, that's why we picked him to do it." Drytha reminded him. “One wrong strike of a shovel, and that entire tomb might crumble like stale bread.”

"I never doubted his pride in his work." Strangoth surveyed the crowd. "If his absence is any indicator…"

"He'll honor Cronazi by bringing back what was his. Everything in those catacombs could turn to dust in a good breeze, forget the claws of some has-been. The artifacts inside are useless if they are destroyed. Teragon is the only one." Drytha grunted. "Though, I admit, his tinkering could be passed off as lethargy.”

“An understatement, ma’am.” Strangoth chortled.

She noticed his scowl.

"One day, you know, you will become a feared officer like he and Cronazi, and your departure will be honored just like this, with a loyal mate standing where I do now, prepared to pass on your lineage.” The elder explained. “That is the bloodright Cronazi pursued, the chase that outlasted him, the thing under all that earth.”

“A mate? Hmmph. Maybe if the courts would approve the last candidate brought forwards.” Strangoth cast a glance, shying from the dagger in her brow. It had been worth a try.

“...That's why Cronazi spent his life looking for it, to assure that all of Moonwing's sons and daughters possess the Lunar Scepter's power.” She ignored him. “You will come to appreciate the old drake's labors, but until then… the cycle goes on, I suppose."

"Aye." Strangoth hid the flush on his snout by snorting, trying to appear gargoyle-esque. It half-worked. "Well, for what it's worth, auntie, I’m here for you, Scepter or not."

Everydragon here is, she smiled. So alone….

The only thing removing her from it was a hint of familiar movement along the ornament-encrusted roof of the Tomb. Her eyes snapped to it.

Alone, and the only true company is unwelcome.

"For the journey," One pastor placed a large Spirit Crystal between Cronazi's limp paws, closing his talons around the blue gem so it could rest against his ribs. The stone pulsed, supping on the draconic energies leaving his body. "And the ascension: to join the Forgotten Court. Follow the path, and be guided, my liege."

"The cycle goes on." Strangoth grimly recited, joining the rest of the carldrakes as they knelt, bowing crowns to the casket of their lord.

Blue flame braziers were lit, everything awash in ghostly spiritfire that played off the dark wyrms like they were living aluminum, magic fire roaring and crackling. The only dragon who remained standing was Drytha, tears down her scaly cheeks from the sight of the dead general blanketed in roses and gloom.

"The cycle goes on." She dryly sobbed. "And may it forever be gone from my life."

The remark made her nephew stiffen.

"Auntie." Strangoth’s gaze swiveled to her over his pauldron. "Someone might hear you."

"Let them." She used her veil to dab her snout. "Let them hear me. May it be gone, as I've nothing left to sacrifice for its hunger."

"...Nothing?" Strangoth sighed, watching the pastors as some bristled amid their prayers, but otherwise did nothing. His grip on his glaive loosened. "...The Moonwing House?"

"Porous as a gardening cask." Drytha scowled. "You can't even comprehend the whole fucking thing crashing down around you, shaking itself to pieces… now that he's gone, it needs a salve, and we need the Scepter. Glory will not return to this house until then."

He saw her jaw quiver as she wrenched her eyes shut, no longer able to bear witness to the coffin or the fires.

“...my Cronazi…” She whispered.

Strangoth shut himself up, nodding sagely. "Perhaps it's not the time or place."

"You're right," She conceded. "It isn't."

"I'm sorry." He bowed to the casket lower. “Truly, I am.”

"At least someone is." Drytha cast a hateful glare at the other carldrakes, seeing their barely contained eagerness in the blue light, herself not fooled by the flapping banners and playful shadows. Their eyes were hungry, talons twitchy, like they were ready to leap from their heels. The void had been made, and the vultures were coming.

It was unfortunate that they so badly underestimated what remained of the general’s legacy, she thought, wiping at her tears.

She would see to it, as soon as this horrible evening was concluded. Cronazi’s death was hardly the last required for this nightmare to conclude.

{🐉}

Darklight’s dead went to the Tomb of the Sunken, into galleries of pre-excavated cists that so far had not run out.

Legends said the Turned Ancestors had dug the catacombs when they first founded Darklight at the foot of the mountain, that the secrets they had unearthed had allowed them to see exactly how many tombs would be needed for the generations to follow. It was no wonder the Nightkin were such gloomy dragons: as they were a race who had literally dug their own graves, and those of their children.

Every few deaths, another gallery would be filled, and the burial trains traveled deeper and deeper. So far, they’d found no end to the tombs, and some said they never would. Cronazi's cist had been an hour inside the twilit maze of burial halls, and now his coffin rested on the reflective black floors of its foyer, waiting first for her, then for oblivion.

"How long do you need?"

"Long enough." Drytha rasped, robbed of patience. "This is not the first time that I must do this. You were carldrake back then, if I recall."

"For Reslo. I was." Strangoth nodded.

"Then you already know.” Drytha paused, sounding hollow from Reslo’s name being brought up. “She would have been proud of you."

“I was always proud of her.”

"...Strangoth?"

"M'lady?"

"Was she not enough, do you think?"

Strangoth scrunched his brow, not understanding.

"First her, now Cronazi. I mean, when will it be enough?" Drytha wondered. "Maybe that's why we're here. This is all some sick debt to be paid."

"A debt? For what? The quest for the Lunar Scepter? It is our birthright." Strangoth chuffed. "-The Continental Invasion? Uncle sought what was stolen from our kind. So many have called us thieves, auntie, when really, all we have done is spend a century righting the wrongs done to us by our supposed allies. Any debt of morality should surely belong to them, never my Uncle. Never you. Never us. Never Moonwing."

"I don’t know." Drytha grimly looked at the casket. "I… I want to speak with him one last time. Before he is gone."

"Then we both utter truths?"

"I suppose so."

"I ask because I cannot protect you during the Time of Parting." Strangoth pawed diminutively at the floor. "...And it is Uncle, this time."

"He understood insurance, I will be fine. He-" Drytha swallowed, overcome. "It is my duty to Moonwing to be here, my duty to him..."

"Auntie?" Strangoth blinked.

For a moment, Strangoth thought she was about to sob again, but realized it was something else. She had become aware of something in the shadows, gaze lingering over his wing as a chilly atmosphere overtook the tomb without explanation.

"Auntie…?"

“Leave us, please."

She went around him to the sarcophagus. Strangoth lingered, but grudgingly departed with the other carldrakes, casting a departing glance about the foyer.

At the casket, Drytha ran a talon down Cronazi's mandible, remembering how it would set like stone in his natural scowl. Touching him was less longing and more the thing a stranger would do to behold a dead leviathan, wondering of what it had been as its once mighty muscle turned to dust on the fetid shore. It was hard to believe she had bore his child, who was also buried now, soon to be joined by her father.

All once had was now lost, and that was all she could think about.

She waited for the other Nightkin’s footfalls to subside, reminiscing Cronazi’s handsomeness, his talons, the earthy growl of his voice the first night he had met her before their courting, in the councilor chambers of the Blood Moon Halls.

She still remembered.

"I have not seen you here before."

She remembered looking up at the over seven-foot reptile, feeling her chest flutter, and her wings stretch.

"The merger of House Bloodthroe to Moonwing has solicited a change of audience." She'd breathed, hardly as terrified as she’d been excited, herself younger, daintier, back then, thrilled to be dwarfed by the huge drake. "Felister Bloodthroe is my father."

"Indeed? My old friend never told me he had a hatchling. My name is Cronazi of Moonwing. And you?" He'd held out a claw, perpetual scowl breached by a smile that only came out for her.

"You always spoke true with me. Many came to me as patronizers, leeches, suitors even, but not you, you were a… a communicator." Drytha smiled shyly. She searched for a point. "Your words have not left me. Your body, perhaps, but never your words. Maybe that is truly the thing about you that I miss the most, the thing that completed me. You were the mountain, I the valley, the thing that held a piece of your spirit within me, something that I have to let go of now. Now that you are gone, all I can feel are cold winds, and…"

She stared at the darkness blanketing his limp muscles like black honey, blending with his scales. It was like she was hoping he would open his eyes. But the corpse was still.

"...and there are things in those winds that frighten me. Because they're coming." Drytha swallowed. "Swooping down, like vultures."

"Speak of the dragon! I knew I shouldn't have sent a card, I was expected after all...”

Drytha’s mouth closed as a presence harried her back and wings.

The thing on the roof.

“I’m touched. You know, they said you were descending into the throngs of madness over all this." Spoke a new voice from the dark. "But I see the truth. You still know to cling to the only things that matter anymore, so it seems they didn’t know what they were talking about. How accomplished of you, Drytha. How smart. How sentimental. I like that."

"...Rumors are a coward’s olive-branch," Drytha frowned, removing her paw from the casket. "They stink of foul untruth. And so do those believe them."

"You’re above that, Drytha. And besides, it’s hard to not hear things with the entire city abuzz. The death of a commander is big news, the sufferings of his grieving mate moreso." A tall figure detached from the shadows, slender limbed, and hourglass, a buxom form wreathed in draconic sharpness and glowing tattoo glyphs, her scales polished almost as finely as the onyx floor. She appeared beside Drytha, wearing a black suit of magic armor and a laced corset, with two ghostly white eyes penetrating her veil, like candle lights. The creature smiled with a sharp snout full of razor fangs.

"And that’s all I’ve been hearing. That you were gripped by delusion, tormented by imaginary terrors. But things in the wind? No, your reaper harbors the dark." The dragoness gave a mocking curtsy, dotting the gesture with a manic giggle. “HmHm~! At your service.”

"The others are sorely mistaken." Drytha swallowed. “Something they will pay for.”

"Are they? Or am I just another of your nightmares bubbling to the surface, Lady Drytha?" Spectra hummed, her forked tongue lashing as she shot back up. "So hard to tell."

"What are you doing here, Spectra?" Drytha snorted, her temper rising. "The Time of Parting is only for the deceased and their loved ones. Even you know that, and right now, you’re going against every tradition we have! Every one!"

"As I recall, the Time of Parting is defined as: “- The last words shared between the dead, and those relevant to all departing endeavors -“ -Yes? Yes. I believe I was already made a part of this triad. Remember? What with that hatchling-eating dracolich under the ice." Spectra grunted, leaning over the casket to scrutinize Cronazi. She sniffed, batting her wings like she'd been hit with a foul smell, the black sickle blades at their tips keening in the cold air. "Hmmph. He's not as fresh as I thought. When did you find him?"

"Get away from him!" Drytha snarled, bearing fangs. "Get out! Get out! Guards! Guards come quickly-"

"Ah ah ah, my lady," Spectra chortled, the blackshard bill-hooks glinting as they lowered for Drytha's jugulars, shutting her up. "I'm obeying limits. Don't take the situation out of my control if you know what's good for you."

"...The House Lord of Moonwing is not some sideshow for your supercilious gawking." Drytha swallowed, eyeing the weapons.

"No, I suppose he is not. Your house’s ministrations are not misplaced. Except for those banners. Those were a bit tacky, if you ask me."

"Why are you here? You're not… you could not possibly be here to speak with him-?"

"-Hardly. I don’t believe he can hear anyone now. …But I do understand why the Nightkin think otherwise." Spectra sighed, chin in her paw as she leaned an elbow on the rim. "Religion’s a funny thing. I mean, really, it’s just an institutionalized way for some to impose their truths upon many. There’s an advantage to that manipulation I do so highly respect, but…”

“Spectra.” Drytha snapped when the younger hen said nothing else.

“I’m lingering, am I? Oops.” Spectra snapped out of it, humming curiously as she returned to the corpse. “-Oh, I just never expected to see him this way, you know? A drake of his stature is immortal, free of blemish and the claws of time. At least, if you believe the military."

"Stop looking at him like that."

"Look at him? Yes, quite, look! He looks wrong, doesn't he? Wrong as a corpse? See?" Spectra gestured a wing. “No wonder they throw roses during these things… it’s not just for the smell.”

She was right. About the looks, at least. The corpse somehow didn't look like her Cronazi. Her indomitable, sharply spoken, gruff Cronazi. He looked delicate, frail, like a withered old lizard. Like a stranger. The darkness distended his talons, made crooked his snout, gave him a grin that seemed to widen with the candlelight…

"Don't stare too long, the dead trick our eyes." Spectra startled her. "Boo. HmHm. Besides, aren't I more interesting?"

The black dragon fluttered her eyes, and Drytha shook her head

"Damn you, Spectra, if I weren't trapped under these aged muscles, I'd-"

"You'd do what, hag?" The darkness abruptly distended, like watery ink around Spectra. The glyphs across her face and body burned a bright crimson color. "The only reason I didn't slit your throat and toss you in the box with your mate, is because I respected your late daughter, and it's something she'd never forgive me for, so still your tongue. But, one more scream, and I'll slice just deep enough to sever your vocal cords. You can take his place as a mute."

"If you respected her, then why did you kill her?" Drytha was unmoved from her powers. Still, her eyes darted to the exit, knowing Strangoth and his carldrakes were not far.

"I didn't touch your daughter. Not until after she'd been turned by that thing. I did everything I could to keep Reslo safe…" She cut herself off. "It just wasn't enough."

"She was bisected!" Drytha jammed a talon, crossing around the casket with claws bared. "Severed at the hip! Only the tail blade of the Cloud Ripper could've so cleanly made that blow! Only the Black Crescent! Murderer!"

Spectra stood her ground, a head taller than the old hen as the aforementioned weapon glinted in the dark with each flex of her thick tail. "She had been… transformed. It had taken her. My actions were in self-defense. I had no desire to harm Reslo."

"Say what you will. You return all these years later to justify yourself? Over her father's corpse, no less?" Drytha snarled. "Draklingshit."

"...It’s not like that." Spectra looked at the corpse, particularly the chest for some reason, her curvaceous form tickled by the candlelight. Drytha found herself staring at the beautiful, yet terrifying dragon in pause. "I figured that this would be on your mind, but my task is too important to not have come before you, regardless of what’s happened."

Drytha wasn't listening as she stared, old wounds blossoming across her psyche like familiar tumors.

Spectra was the antithesis of everything she had become.

She was vital, athletic, with defined egg-hips and breasts. Drytha was comparatively becoming an old leaf in her twilight years, growing thin and frail, edging closer to how Cronazi was: dead and distended. They were both rich, but Spectra more so, because she had no one to lose, and Drytha had lost everyone.

It made Drytha hate her even more.

"Of course it’s on my mind. You've already caused enough damage to my family." Drytha turned away, the pain stark. “The mountain’s will is the only thing keeping you from my house’s assassins.”

"Precisely why we must talk." Spectra's tail lingered into the exchange, the Crescent doused in dancing wisps of reflective light.

"Talk. What rubbish.”

“We both held Reslo on a pedestal, and she took a part of each of us with her, but that isn’t why I’ve come here tonight.”

“No? Don't you have an errand to run for the mountain’s patio-lizard pawns or something? Instead of chasing unfinished socialite abnormalities?" Drytha sneered. “If Cronazi was to be witness to some diluted attempt of yours at reconciliation, you can accept instead my rebuttal. Let me bury my mate in peace.”

"Patio-lizards. Hmmph. …It's worth noting," Spectra scowled down at the blade. "That I chose to reveal myself to you-"

"And?"

"-to inform you that I have come with intentions."

The world stood still. Drytha paled, her back erect, as Spectra faced her. The elder's stomach landed in her heels.

"Intentions you surely will not like."

"...B-But you said-"

"I know what I said." The black dragon hungrily watched her. “Maybe you weren’t listening good enough.”

"There are consequences," Drytha stepped back, recounting over a century of infrequent training, and finding no assurance. She kept the carldrakes for these things. Deep down, the prospect was hopeless and terrifying: as Spectra was regarded as one of the most fearsome melee fighters in the realms, let alone against an old hen whose mind was battered by panic. "Consequences even you cannot escape from if you follow this path."

“And what path is that, Lady Drytha?”

The elder didn’t answer.

"Then you misunderstand." Spectra shot her a toothy smile. "I have not come for you. That would be distasteful, non-beneficial for the alliance between me and my master."

"-T-Then if not for me, who-?" Drytha saw the Black Crescent as Spectra's tail curled.

It was hanging precipitously over Cronazi's body in the coffin. Then she realized.

Her lineage. Spectra: the Cloud Ripper, Doom of the Veil, Halfbreed, the Blackwyrm, Necromancer.

"-No-!" Lady Drytha exploded into motion, arthritic joints suddenly renewed with fiery vigor as she found the first true reason to fight, and lunged. “-Witch-!”

"Don't make this harder." Spectra sighed, in one movement, shunting free of Drytha's claw, and slamming the blunt of her tail into the latter's solar-plexus. “I’d hate for you to get hurt.”

Drytha was tossed across the chamber, sliding down the floor, wings and dress trailing like spilled slicks of oil as she drag-clawed.

"Spectra-!" Drytha shrieked, scrambling against the polished onyx. She ripped her veil away. "Stop-! No!"

"I was going to apologize," Spectra admitted, heedless of the old dragon's screams as she regarded the ornate box, and then climbed inside, with Cronazi. The ceremonial stilts creaked under their combined weight. "But now, it's probably best to just rip the bandage free all at once, now that the drakling’s out of the crate-"

She curiously regarded the cadaver's serene look, Cronazi peaceful as she straddled his withered hips.

"...Oh," Spectra clicked her tongue in an epiphany, her glyphs burning deep blue to mimic the cool crystal clenched in Cronazi’s paws. She gingerly took the Spirit Gem from him. "I'm sorry to you especially, House Lord. Forget your hysterical mate, if there’s anyone who I’m about to be invasive with…” Her somber expression melted for a wicked smile. “I appreciate your sacrifice. Now then…"

"Spectra-!" Drytha lunged, but was swatted away, bleeding from her snout when Spectra's wing cracked into its bridge.

"Don't think this is becoming a habit either." Spectra rolled her eyes, angling the razor's tip of the Black Crescent for Cronazi's scuted clavicle. She scowled at the mewling elder. "Believe me, my dear: were there another? It would be them under my scalpel. This…" She regarded the corpse. “...is a painful necessity.”

Then, she jammed the blade down. Drytha screamed, clawing at the casket like an animal.

The Crescent penetrated with a dry crunch, kissing soft flesh underneath the scales, and jolting Cronazi’s limp form, casting the rose petals about him everywhere like dust off an old book. Spectra frowned when her blade met resistance from the drake’s stone-hard ribcage. She dug until the muscles in her tail bulged, jackhammering the joint over and over until the solid manubrium cracked, and summarily shattered. She leveraged the gap and sawed downward, the magical metal of the Crescent making short work of bones and atrophied muscle.

With a sound like torn parchment, Cronazi’s torso split open like a walnut, funeral preparations, and age, leaving little flow to be seen, aside from the crimson glisten of the groove widened. His expansive chest yawned like a deep trench within fleshy earth, his face no less peaceful despite the macabre shift.

Ignoring Drytha’s pathetic mewls as the old hen hyperventilated, Spectra tossed away the Spirit Gem, using her barbed talons to hinge either side of the torn ribcage to yank it further apart. The squelches and bubbly tears silenced any and all protest from the other dragoness, as Drytha curled into a fetal ball and began to babble to herself over the commotions.

“-You’re already dead-” Spectra huffed, plunging to the elbow in the great drake’s chest cavity. She nudged aside his tracheal sprawl and a graying lung, all still moist. All in the way. “-Why put up the fight-?”

Between the slick bulges of the lungs and the slimy folds of the lower esophagal tracts, she found the thick valves and veins that needed to be severed, hooking the stretchy systems in her talons and snapping them like strings.

With a final rip of membraneous tissue, Spectra stood in the casket, wild-eyed, as she beheld the doughy heart clenched in her gore-slicked talons. If it had not been silenced so long ago, she’d have sworn it beat one last time in her palm. Cronazi, of course, didn’t open his eyes to behold her prize, as his split body gaped.

“There he is.” Spectra hummed, examining the sludgy organ, as big as her palm. Powerful enough to have pumped blood all through Cronazi’s freakishly muscled body. “The Heart of a True Nightkin.”

Yes. It was still in good enough condition to fulfill her needs. But it would not stay that way long. It needed a solutive bath, and a ticket out of the city with her.

Luckily Spectra had come prepared. The heart vanished inside a folded cloth from her belt sash, tied taught with a string. In the distance, she could hear the echo of an encroaching commotion of panic, attracted by the traumitized widow’s sobs.

Time to go.

She stepped from the coffin, pitifully regarding the trembling ball of limbs and scales Drytha had become.

“I’m done, you know.” She quipped. “And I did say I wasn’t going to murder you. You can stop crying now.”

“-C-C-C-Cronazi-” Drytha blabbered, bulging eyes focused on nothing as she wrung her talons to the point of slicing them, the blood joining with ruby trails dribbling on her snout.

Spectra snorted when the stench of urine wafted from a spreading puddle under the elder’s feet.

What happened to the spiteful bitch from a minute ago? She wondered. Thank god that the processess of age were afraid to touch her. If only it hadn’t come with the freaking fine print.

“At least I waited until he was dead.” The Cloud Ripper waved a paw, chanting a magic word.

The split ribcage crackled and fizzed as flesh reknit itself, and scales slid back into place like the shattered tiles of a great puzzle. Enough grinding muscles and shifting bone, and the gaping wound splitting Cronazi like a feasting-pig from sternum to naval was gone, the corpse being as it was, minus one part, and some withdrawn smears at the very bottom of the casket, far from sight.

“Like nothing ever happened. See no sin, speak none, hm?”

“-M-M-M-M-” Drytha stammered, incomprehensible. Her mind had snapped like a brittle twig. It almost made her tormentor feel sorry for her.

But Spectra righted her neck when the sounds of boot heels and shouts came closer.

“You Nightkin and your troublesome traditions. I could’ve murdered you fifty times over meanwhile. I can’t describe this reunion as something gay.” She murmured, stepping over Drytha and into the shadows. Her tattoo-glyphs dulled as the black dragon’s body seemed to dissolve into the darkness from whence it came. “But like I said, I am sorry…”

The Cloud Ripper’s white eyes beamed like cinders in the dark, and she smiled.

“...somewhat, at least.”

Drytha howled, clutching her snout as Strangoth burst into the foyer, the other carldrakes hot on his tail brandishing weapons.

Spectra had vanished.

“Auntie!” Strangoth cried, ceremonial glaive keening on the floor. He knelt and held the bawling elder. “What happened? Why are you bleeding?”

“-M-M-M-M-M-” She clung to him, frothing.

“Auntie-!”

“Hold, young one.” Another carldrake joined Strangoth. “Ease your grip. Let Lady Moonwing breathe.”

Drytha gasped, bubbles of blood clogging her snout as she coaxed herself to somewhat calm down. The other carldrakes swept the chamber. One of them peered inside the casket.

Aside from the Spirit Gem having rolled free of the general’s claws, and a faint aroma of something foul, nothing seemed askew.

“The chamber is secure.” He grunted, replacing the gem in Cronazi’s paw. The general didn’t move. “But I smell something off-”

plk

-The drake looked down and cringed, lifting his boot from a puddle of piss.

“Search the tombs, just in case. Put the Lunar Vaults on high alert.” Strangoth ordered, turning to Drytha. “Auntie, I’m here. I’m here. What happened?”

She looked through him, only able to utter one word through the haze of horror, eyes locked on the shadows of the chamber.

“Murder.”

{🐉}