Chapter 517:  The Sundering (Patreon)

In the wreckage of a ruined merchant house, Ananta sat crossed-legged across from Stryg who listened warily to her tale.

“After my mother’s death,” said Ananta, “My people did not send any more messages into the Null, my aunt forbade it. But the Vesir gate was to remain open, as per my mother’s last wishes. My people did not call for these new visitors, no, they found us on their own. They burst from the Null gate in a colorful display of fire. They shot into the sky and scattered across the land, like meteors crashing into the earth.”

“Some of our best warriors were sent out to investigate. After a week, they discovered a crash. But what they found was not what anyone expected. It was an egg. And from it hatched the first of the chromatic species in our world, a dragon.”

“Dragons aren’t from our world…?” Stryg whispered.

“Correct,” Ananta nodded. “Though the dragon was a newborn hatchling, she could already speak and she wielded various strange powers; she even had the ability to shape-shift into a humanoid form that mimicked the warriors. When they asked her about her origins, she did not know anything, save the name of her father, or rather, her creator; Drakith.”

“Dragons began to hatch all across the world from the eggs that had burst through the Vesir Gate. My aunt did not trust these dragons, but they were innocent, they had committed no crime, and so they were given refuge in our queendom. Among these dragons, there were a few that arrived who were more powerful and wiser than the rest. The other hatchlings referred to them as their lords.”

“Unlike the rest of their kind, these dragon lords had ingrained memories of their origins. They told us that their creator Drakith was a primordial being like our World Soul, but unlike her, Drakith wasn’t bound to a world, just like Unildyr. The dragon lords told us that Drakith would send his creations, these eggs, hurtling through the darkness of the Null searching for worlds to connect with.”

“The royal council were intrigued by the dragons and Drakith. One day, a young boy came to our palace. The moment arrived, the dragons rushed to his side and bowed.” Ananta smiled to herself, “His name was Vismarya and he was unique. Like my mother he was an actual child of a primordial. His father, Drakith, had sent him here to lead the dragons and build a bridge of peace between this world’s primordial and Drakith himself.”

“Of course, it is not easy to commune with the World Soul. The only one known to be able to was my mother, Love. Still, Vismarya was not one to give up. He vowed to remain and help the people of this realm until the World Soul would give him an audience.”

“It was at this time that I met Vismarya. We were both children, I was a couple of years older, but he somehow was always wiser; I suppose it’s because he possessed ingrained memories from before his hatching. In any case, we became friends, and as the years passed by we grew closer.”

Ananta chuckled, “And against my aunt’s wishes, when I became of age and took my place as queen of Vesir, I married Vismarya. Many in the royal council disapproved, but love isn’t the sort of thing you give up on, even if others disapprove. Wouldn’t you agree, Stryg?”

He shrugged, “I wouldn’t know.”

“Don’t play coy,” Ananta smirked. “You are in love with three women and you have no interest in parting with any one of them.”

Stryg’s eyes widened in surprise. “How did you—?”

“I can see it, in you.” She poked him in the chest, “Your love for them. The love you have for your tribe, the love you have for your friends and those children of the temple. I can see what you hold most dear. To me it is as clear as day.”

Stryg cocked his head to the side and furrowed his brow, “Your mother was Love,” he said thoughtfully. “It wasn’t just her name… was it?”

“No, it was not. Her powers were born from love of her own mother, the World Soul. Love wasn’t simply her name, it was her essence, she was the goddess of Love.”

“And you inherited that essence?” Stryg muttered.

“Titans are strange beings. Each one different, their souls are born with their own unique essence, some more unique than others. However, something happens when a child is born between a titan and another species, say for example, a primordial like Unildyr,” Ananta pointed at herself. “The child’s soul is grounded, unable to change. That child does not have their own unique ‘essence.’ They simply inherit their titan parent’s. I have many names and titles as a goddess and while I only carry a portion of my mother’s essence, it is the only true essence I possess.”

“Then you are a goddess of love,” Stryg said in understanding.

“I am.”

He glared at her, “What sort of goddess of love attacks a city and sends her monsters to slaughter thousands.”

She smiled. “Love comes in many forms, friendship, romantic, familial. And yet, no matter what kind, you’d be surprised what people are willing to do for the ones they love. How many of the Cairn tribe would you kill to avenge the one called Clypeus?”

“Don’t you dare say his name,” he hissed.

“Hm. I’d wager you’d kill them all, even the children, if it meant killing Marek. Some people might call that monstrous, but we are monsters, Stryg, and this place belongs to us, not them.”

Stryg frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Ananta leaned back and tapped her fingers on her knees. “One day, after more than two decades, my father finally returned to our world. I had never met him before. Some part of me never thought he’d return. When he did, he was surprised to see me in place of my mother and in the moment our eyes met, he knew. He knew she was gone and it was because of him.”

“I had imagined how that meeting would play out thousands of times in my head. He’d apologize profusely and somehow he’d make things alright….” Ananta smiled bittersweetly, “But no. Unildyr’s apology was short, brief, curt even. He was more stricken by my mother’s death than the fact that I even existed. I know it was petty, he hadn’t even known I existed, but I hated him for that.”

“When I asked him where he had been all these years, he explained that he would have come sooner, but he had been in battle with a long-time enemy; a primordial by the name of Drakith. It seemed that the appearance of the dragons in our world was no coincidence. Drakith had sent them here after sensing traces of Unildyr’s power in this realm. Me.”

“Ordinarily, Drakith wouldn’t be able to trace Unildyr’s whereabouts, because he never stayed for long in our world. But with my existence and the Vesir Gate, Drakith was able to locate and send dragon eggs to our world.”

“Why exactly did Drakith send them?” Stryg asked, though he had already made a guess.

“My father claimed that dragons were sent to worlds to destroy them. I didn’t believe him, after all, I could see the love Vismarya and the others had within them. They didn’t hate our world, this was their home, and they had spent the last two decades protecting it. When my father realized the dragons had arrived on our world he vowed to destroy them all.”

“Unildyr would have killed Vismarya if I hadn’t intervened and helped him escape. I rejected Unildyr as did my people. But my father is not a man to relent. He left our world and returned soon after with an army of dragonbanes, the creature you fought.”

“Your father created those monsters?” Stryg whispered, shocked.

“He is their progenitor, yes, though they aren’t his children, rather his creations. And they were created for one purpose, the destruction of the chromatic species, and they would stop at nothing. I rallied my queendom, our allied nations, and the dragons in order to fight Unildyr and his forces.”

Ananta closed her iridescent eyes in recollection. “It was a losing battle. Can you imagine it? Millions of dead. They were no match for the horde of dragonbanes that ravaged the land. Even with all our power, for every skirmish we won, my father claimed three more. On the cusp of defeat, when our forces were depleted, Vismarya and I came to a dawning realization. The only person my father loved in this world, my mother, was gone. So why was he fighting? I had always thought it was because Drakith was his enemy, but Vismarya suggested that I was wrong. He came up with a proposal. One night, I went to my father alone and unarmed. I told him to kill me.”

“What?” Stryg blinked in confusion.

Ananta grinned softly, “My father had a similar reaction. But I told him to kill me, because I was never going to stop fighting him, not until the day I died. So if all he wanted was to eliminate the dragons then he’d have to kill me right there and then.”

“It was at that moment, for the first time, I was able to see my father’s heart. I saw his love for me. He hadn’t started this war to fight Drakith, he had started it to protect me and this world. I swore to him that if he gave me the chance, I would protect this world myself. And if he didn’t give me that chance, then I’d take my own life.”

“To my surprise, Unildyr relented. My gamble worked. He gave me the chance to ‘protect’ this world. He took his dragonbanes and left, but not before giving me a way to contact him. Afterwards I went to find Vismarya to tell him the good news.”

Ananta stared at her hands. “We had won,” she whispered. “It was over. Vismarya held me in his arms and we cried in relief, we mourned the lives of all the friends and family we had lost. It was then, when we were at our most vulnerable, that the dragon lords ambushed us.”

“Kaleidrog and the other lords tried to kill me, but Vismarya fought against them, he fought against his own people… He died protecting me. I barely escaped. I could hardly stand, let alone warn my people when the dragons attacked our cities.”

“They betrayed you…?” Stryg whispered.

Ananta curled her fingers into fists. “I had called them my friends. I had seen the love they held for my people and me. I had never imagined they’d burn down our cities; men, women, children, none were spared. My people’s forces had already been decimated by the war, we were helpless to stop the dragons. So, I did the only thing I thought I could. I went to the Vesir Gate to try and contact my father.”

“I was too late. A few of the dragonlords were waiting for me. I used my mother’s key and tried to activate the gate, but the dragons attacked, and in the midst of our battle, something happened. An influx of power through the leylines of the realm, coupled with strange energies of the Null. The gate overloaded and the Dark Fringe was released into the world.”

“Space and time fractured. The sky burned and the land fell apart like the waves in a storm. The realm was Sundered.”

“The Sundering Age,” Stryg muttered grimly.

“...Yes. The World Soul managed to push the destructive powers of the Dark Fringe back, but the damage was already done. The Realm had fractured into ten. Few people survived. Sparse groups here and there. Even the greater elementals had lost many, especially the titans. The only ones who seemed to have truly thrived were the dragons. Unchallenged, they conquered the lesser elementals and slaughtered the greater elementals wherever they could find them.”

“And you? What happened to you…?” Stryg asked.

“Me?” she scoffed bitterly. “I only survived because my father’s powers awoke within me and even then I was condemned into a comatose state for millennia, buried deep under a newly formed mountain range in what you now know as the Violet Realm.”

“I could not stop the dragons, there was no one left who could. I was entrusted by my father and my queendom to protect the people of this world and I failed. Countless elementals died, and after the world was broken, the dragons claimed their sweet victory.” Ananta smiled maliciously, “But it was not to last.”