Technomagica 2 : 14. The Pledge (Patreon)

The ever-burning furnace in my heart demanded retribution, vengeance, power. It blinded me, filled me with absolute rage at the impudence of this mortal child, and ordered me to destroy him at once.

Mortal?

Some semi-rational bit of me thought. Mortal... prey? No.

I knew it then.

The thing I held in my claws wasn’t mere prey. It wasn’t afraid of death, didn’t back down when facing my ire, didn’t even blink when threatened.

The thing hiding behind those human eyes wasn’t mortal. It was my ancient enemy, a hollow-shelled squid from the underside of the world.

I looked past the flesh held in my orange claws, past the ever-fire cast by the stars themselves, past the fluttering shadows.

I remembered it then, recalled how to see it once again. The Underside.

The wood beneath my feet and stone walls around me blurred away. My ruby claws clinging to the visage of the human spawn melted away. I saw myself as that which burns all, the primordial, eternal fire, the star, the gold-orange-red storm of fire.

I was Aradria, the unstoppable, the firestorm, the great annihilator!

I recognized the thing I held in my claws.

The thing in front of me was my nemesis, the beast haunting the Underside, the thing that called itself The Mother!

Its hollow, pale, hexagonal shell danced with pearlescent, silver-blue threads. A hundred silver-blue eyes filled with arcane knowledge stolen from the long-dead, extinguished myriads of stars stared back at me and judged me, evaluating my every move.

Her children were here too. They spun around Mother like smaller, silver-blue star-squids, ready to strike at me from all sides, armed with soul-severing, null-claws.

I glanced behind me, feeling an annoying prickle.

Damnation!

One of her broods was holding onto me tightly with a hundred pale tentacles, sucking on my ever-fire.

Vile parasite! Get off me!

I was trapped, tricked somehow! I tried to cast my all-obliterating fire.

It didn’t work.

My ever-fire was weak, pitiful, tiny like a dying ember.

In absolute, growing horror I realized that my connection to my hoard was… gone, extinguished!

Despair!

This was my end, then.

After all these aeons, Mother of the Dead had somehow tricked me, triumphed.

Soon, the brood sucking on my spark from behind would cast its void-chains across my soul and I would be undone, unmade, become part of her ever-growing flock… serve her forevermore.

I didn’t have the will, nor the energy to resist as one of Mother’s null-threads flashed through the Underside at my core.

I was a good dragon.

____________________________________________

I blinked as warm, bright sunshine danced on my face. The bewildering, freaky, feverish vision of myself as a star-like firestorm being decimated by the flock of silver squids amidst the dark void… was gone.

Instead I saw white, fluffy clouds slowly drifting across a cerulean sky.

I sat up, blinking.

“Kliss, what the hell was that?” Delta demanded. “I know that Slava can be very annoying at times, but that's no excuse to go all murder-cat on him!”

“I… erm,” I blushed, recalling how I attempted to strangle her brother just moments before. “When we started to discuss my… erm, gold hoarding urges… I... uh… I lost control of myself.”

“It’s fine,” Slava said. “There were bound to be unforeseen consequences of fusing dragon organs and soul to a human.”

I turned my head to stare at the twenty-some man with white hair who was sitting on my left.

Delta was standing in front of us, in her adult, twenty-some-year-old dream-body. She was giving me a judging look.

“I’m sorry I attacked your brother. I didn't meant to do it, I swear,” I said, burying my face in my hands. Gentle summer wind blew through my red locks. I glanced at the alien view of the city of Moscow, once more observing the place from Slava’s memories through my fingers. I noted that my hands were perfectly human here, fingernails no longer made from ridiculously hard, ruby-like crystalline materia.

“You brought me into your dreamscape?” I asked Slava after a very awkward minute of gawking at the summer-wrapped streets of the city that functioned without magic.

“You were being a bit grabby,” he nodded. “So, I brought your mind into my Neuro-Vista created dream-simulation, like we’ve discussed priorly.”

“You’ve fused my soul with that of dragon,” I muttered as I went over my memories. "Aradria... her name's Aradria and she's afraid of you."

"Afraid of me?" Slava asked.

"Astral Phantoms are her ancient enemy," I explained. "By the Astral, I thought that I was finally free!"

“You are free and you're completely immune to Vows,” Slava insisted.

“The Aradria part of me doesn’t like either of you,” I said. “She sees you as enemies, null-squids, creatures from the Underside of the world. She… sees you as an ancient monster called the Mother.”

I shuddered as I looked at Slava.

“Mother?” His eyebrows went up.

I nodded.

“There is some of Hollow Mother in me… I suppose,” he said. “Sort of like an infection. Enough for you to see me as her, since you can peer into the Astral Ocean with dragon-sight. I reckon when you level up, more of Aradria’s skills will begin to reawaken in you.”

I gulped.

“Don’t worry,” Slava said. “I’m monitoring your soul. You’re mostly human.”

“Mostly human?” I huffed. “Why did you refuse to fix me?”

“Because the hoarding drive is essential to your new self,” he explained. “Part of who you are magically. It cannot be removed, just like Aradria's dragonheart cannot be removed from your chest without killing you.”

“So what in the Astral do you suggest I do about it?” I demanded. “Cus it’s bloody getting worse!”

“Start hoarding things,” Slava said.

“Seriously?” I squinted at him and then glanced at Delta for assistance who simply shrugged.

“Yes,” he said. “Like I said before, there’s an essential, magical connection between the dragon and its hoard. After you level up, I’ll give you something to hoard and we’ll see exactly how it functions.”

I crossed my arms, not looking forward to a prospect of hoarding gold and sleeping on it like some kind of a wild beast.

“You want to help us protect Skyisle, don’t you?” Slava asked. “Maybe having a hoard will make you stronger in some specific way. From what I saw, Aradria was pulling power from elsewhere to make a massive supercell storm over Skyisle. I don’t think that such a widescale weather phenomenon was merely created with the power of her crystalline heart.”

“Fine,” I huffed. “You better give me something nice to hoard then.”

“I’ll make you a book,” he offered.

“A book?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound magical or precious.”

“It'll be a very special book, that I've started last year. We’ll try a variety of hoarding items,” Slava said. “Our goal will be to understand hoarding as a magical ritual, to scientifically establish a theory of how and why hoarding functions and how to optimize and weaponize it.”

“You think that you can optimize… hoarding?” I blinked.

I sensed that some distant, deep part of me momentarily stirred in irritation at such a ludicrous proposal.

“Anything can be optimized as long as I understand exactly how it works,” Slava shrugged. “I’ve spent over thirty years understanding and optimizing viruses, nature’s smallest machines and natural-born killers.”

He waved a hand at the silver-white, winged skyship traversing the blue sky above us.

“That’s an aeroplane,” he explained as I looked up. “A machine that flies without magic. It was built by people like me who understood the scientific principles that allow flight - the mechanics of air flow over curved surfaces, the generation of lift and thrust. Through observation, experimentation, and ingenuity, the people of Earth transformed theoretical knowledge into a practical invention that gave every mundane human on my world the access to the power of flight.”

I gazed at its vanishing contrail of the odd skyship from Earth the wings of which were painted with red stars. The very concept of a ship moving across the sky without dragonheart gravity magic seemed utterly insane.

“Someone still hasn’t built me a glider,” Delta commented, poking Slava in the side.

“I… got distracted,” he winced. “We’ve had other priorities. That and I've spend nearly all of the Basq skyship's heartcore on the rocket to take down Aradria."

“Bah!” Delta grumbled. "How am I going to fly now, without a dragonheart engine?!"

Slava pointed at my chest. I blushed as Delta stared at me very intently.

"Huh? Are you saying that we can harness her as a battery to make my glider?" She squinted at Slava.

"If she gets a hoard going, most likely," the white-haired man nodded.

I sputtered at their conversation, my mind careening sideways.

Delta grinned, got off the bench and grabbed my hand.

“Come on, let's go to the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy!” She pulled me up. “We can show you more than just aeroplanes there!”

“Right,” Slava nodded. “Go ahead and level up, Kliss. It won’t interfere with dream-walking.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Level up,” I said.

I didn’t pass out as I had expected. I sensed, heard the chorus of the divine Soul-Song as it danced across some distant, far away part of me.

“How?” I blinked.

“Only the structure of the soul levels up,” Slava explained. “It is actually possible to stay conscious during a level up, but that requires a certain kind of spellchain, a way to anchor your consciousness. I’m basically anchoring your mind to myself now.”

“I see,” I muttered.

We boarded a yellow magic-less golem that Slava named as a “taxi”. I stared at the passing, imposing, stone buildings as the taxi accelerated. The driver was a cheerful-looking man with an enormous grey mustache.

The place which Delta referred to as "Exhibition of Achievements" or "VDNKh" was a very large, opulent park filled with marble-columned and gold-plated palaces called "National Pavilions". Within each pavilion complex covered in USSR Empire symbology of red flags and gold stars and hammers crossed with sickles I was presented with a view of bewildering devices and artifacts.

The most impressive of all was the "Space Pavilion" which featured the "Buran Shuttle" at its front and an orange full-body suit of a man that Slava called "Yuri Gagarin" and a flying device called “The Sputnik”.

As I admired the strange artifacts of his civilization, Slava regaled Delta and I with tales of the accolades of his Empire and stories of how people like him sought to explore and conquer space itself with gargantuan skyships called "Buran-class orbiters".

He described how entire crews of his people lived in orbit, high above the planet on a permanently suspended skyship, a "space-station" called "Mir", which translated to "Peace" in the language of his kin. 

He spoke with vivid passion that set my heart aflutter. 

This time... I listened fiercely, hung on to his every word, for I was no longer afflicted with soul-binding chains of the Overseer’s Vow. The dragon within me fell silent too, sleeping, or possibly not able to comprehend anything that was presented here, lacking a frame of reference. 

As Slava walked beneath the Sputnik and Soyuz, he gesticulated with vigor, describing how these insanely technical devices were launched via explosive fluid past the boundary of the planet. 

As I started up in wonder at the artifacts of an utterly alien civilization, my mind and soul became further invigorated, ignited with the fervor of his words from within.

“Your people… constructed great marvels,” I commented, when he finally fell silent. “If you won't fix me, you’ll help me manage my impulses… right?”

“I will,” he turned to me. “Because even if all of this is long gone, even if the Empire I’ve helped build has fallen,” Slava gestured to the arrays of massive steel artifacts hanging behind him from the domed ceiling covered in gold stars. “The knowledge of it all still remains in my head, these memories aflutter in my heart! The ideals of my... motherland forevermore persist in me, like an ever-burning flame that pushes me forward, refuses to let me give up. Don’t worry, Kliss. I’ll figure out how the hoarding impulse functions and help you manage it, I swear.”

“You’ll help me bind the shadow of the dragon in my soul?” I asked.

“Yes, I will,” the man from another world affirmed, his silver-blue eyes shining with chilling determination barely concealed beneath glass lenses.

As he made his promise, I… fully and finally believed in him.

I suddenly realized the irony of the fact that the killer of men, the so-called firestorm, the great annihilator of cities and the murderer of my parents was now chained in the depths of my soul.

I realized that I was afraid of the dragon, terrified that it would take over my thoughts and feelings once more, turn me into nothing but a mad creature desperate for gold and artifacts. And yet… I couldn’t allow myself to surrender to it!

Even though I no longer believed in the tenets of Equality, I was still a trained legionnaire, a graduate of Cessna Academia and a noble knight. I had simply a different goal, a different ideal now. I could delay things no longer. I owed Slava and his sister my life, because they saved me from the depths of the all-grinding Wheel of Death beneath the ocean of darkness. 

Slava shattered the Vow that bound my emotions and desires with his esoteric knowledge. If he managed to conquer two Archangels of a Goddess, then with his aid, I could surely conquer the ever-burning soul of a malevolent dragon.

“I will be your knight, Slava,” I stepped forward as I reached a decision. “I hereby pledge my heart and soul to your kingdom!”

Slava’s eyes went wide. Delta sputtered from behind me, not expecting my passionate words.

I went down on one knee, just as I had once, long ago in the Triumvirate Cathedral when I bowed and forevermore offered my services to the white-robed and mirror-masked Inquisitor of Equality.

“I hereby pledge, so swear, in the Palace of your people!” I declared. “I swear to aid and protect you, to believe in you, to learn to control the power of Aradria that now burns within me. I swear to bind it and to wield it for you and for your sister and for the people of Skyisle… not because of a Vow to a Goddess, but because I choose to!”