breakerofhorizons
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Chapter 45
🕑 Added 2022-03-16 01:49:04 +0000 UTC((Apologies for this being late!))
Nic returned to Winterhome triumphant, the sun setting golden over the trees. Carving his way through six Trials was exhilarating, and had won him a giddy sense of progress, coming home stronger than he’d left it…
The city was buzzing.
He took a seat high on the spires of the temple that overlooked his little city, scrambling up on sticky hands and perching in the wind to watch people scurry below. Inkspur fluttered down beside him.
“AHEM!” He declared.
Nic reached over and scratched his chin.
“Yes yes, that is- mm- lovely, but, I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT!”
Nic lifted up one scaly eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“I am ready to evolve. A NEW FORM AWAITS ME. Full of CLAWS, and TEETH, and TERRIBLE FIRE.”
Nic couldn’t help but smile, even as he considered the worst-
That Inkspur might actually succeed.
It would be a lot less cute to have him yelling and trying to bully everything he saw if he actually had the power to follow through. Nic had always been indulgent with the little drake, mostly because Inkspur had always come through when he was needed- there was a bone-deep loyalty to Inkspur that Nic appreciated.
“Anything I can do to help?” Nic asked.
“Hmph. Draconic evolution isn’t something you can meddle with. Just… keep watch…”
Furling his wings inwards like a cocoon, Inkspur croaked a single belt of fire, and golden light poured from his skin. It enveloped him. A chrysalis of gold, of light that was somehow stilled and frozen in time, covered him like a bug caught in amber.
Nic waited.
And waited…
Letting cool moments pass as the wind tossed through his tentacle-hair.
And something passed over the moon. Nic looked up in time to see a winged shadow moving across the pale eye of the moon. A roar echoed through the empty skies. People looked up, but the shadow was already fading.
When he looked back down, Inkspur was breaking through the cocoon. His form was twisting and turning below the light, the silhouette-shadow of his wings expanding. They broke through and split apart, two becoming four. Scales poured forth.
There was more of Inkspur.
He was the size of a small horse now, with an long scaly neck and four pink-tinged, membranous wings, the lower pair fitted with a set of three fingers like a bat’s knuckles. His scales were emerald green and patterned with yellow-bronze, with a fan-shaped feathered crest at the back of his skull, electric blue feathers tipped by white. His beak was black, and he perched on two powerful, talon-tipped legs.
A single streak of gold went down over one eye.
“Did I…”
He fussed over his new appearance, stroking his beak across his featherless wings, and craning around to glance at his body.
“WINTERHOME! TELL ME! Is there a streak of gold somewhere on me? Quick! FIND IT!”
Nic chuckled, reaching out to run his thumb along the wyvern’s face. “Right here.”
“Yessss…” Inkspur hissed. “YES! DRAGONSIGN! I AM CHOSEN!” His four wings flared outwards.
“Calm down, calm down…”
“CALM DOWN?” The wyvern shrieked. “One in a thousand! One in a hundred thousand! That’s how many receive the SIGN OF THE DRAGON! Only the WORTHY! Only the GREAT!”
“Okay, okay, I get it. So what? What am I looking at here?”
“AN ELDER WYRM HAS CHOSEN ME! I am- I am- I am very special and-”
Nic was actually afraid he might cry.
“Alright, it’s a big deal.” He reached out and pet the ridge of scales over Inkspur’s ear, scratching into the nooks and crannies until the big lizard purred. “Why’d you choose this body, anyway?”
Bifurcated Crest-Drake. F-Class // Sapient. Born from a species famed for their agility in the air, the bifurcated crest-drake is a rare mutant, granted twice the maneuverability and the speed. It has no fiery breath or poison sting, but kills with rapid dives from above, delivering a lethal blow its talons.
“Ha! I chose for grace, beauty in the air, and unmatched flying speed. I might not be needed as your voice anymore, but-” He flexed his wings. “Now we can fly together.”
Nic slowly smiled.
So that was it…
The little wyvern had chosen the form that would make him useful again. And true, there were probably stronger bodies. Ones with poison or fire to defend themselves. But they wouldn’t be able to match Nic, or keep up with the battles he would have to face.
This would.
Flight was an incomparable advantage. It would allow him to move freely across the world.
Grinning, he jumped to his feet. “Well then?”
“Indeed. Why are we talking, when we could be CONQUERING THE SKIES.”
Nic swung himself aboard, gripping Inkspur’s sides with his knees. The great wyrm’s twin sets of wings beat at the air, beginning to thrum, quicker and quicker until they became great blurs of motion. In a single forward kick they launched from the temple’s rooftops-
Out into open air.
The wind picked up to a roar as Inkspur’s wings carried them across the city, turning, swooping, circling. They wove like a stream of quicksilver over the rooftops, fast and flashy and bright. Nic couldn’t help but let out a wild call of delight as they wove back towards the temple’s towers and spun around them, each movement bending Inkspur in the sky, tilting him until Nic was holding on only by his grip and the force of the wind pushing him down against Inkspur’s back.
In one glorious motion-
They vaulted up towards the moon, higher and higher, clouds disappearing behind them in ribbons of gray against the darkening night.
The air thinned until they could climb no further, until the atmosphere was too weak to bear Inkspur’s weight.
For a moment they hung suspended, a shadow across the moon’s bright face.
And then gravity caught them, and sent them spinning down, Inkspur’s wings redoubling their efforts to pull up from the too-deep dive, to lift their trajectory before it struck them into the trees and branches below. In one last push of effort he twisted in the air and leveled out just above the canopy, the sea of green leaves blurring beneath them as they shot back towards Winterhome.
---
Nic was ready to leave. He’d accomplished his goal of becoming stronger, and he’d been able to ensure Tarquin, Redjaw, and Inkspur grew as well. The nearby Monuments were tapped for seven days, and the ones further afield would be in enemy territory, with no guarantee they hadn’t already been snapped up by someone else.
In short…
He’d gotten what he could from this trip back to Winterhome.
Nic entered the laboratory of the Solarus golem, pausing to admire the door. It had been inscribed with complicated runes across the whole of the frame, forming some kind of barrier. As Nic put his hand on the door it didn’t budge.
Not until a brusque voice from within commanded, “Open.”
Nic stepped into the laboratory, which stood beneath a dome of glass that captured the skies above, starlight streaming down onto workbenches and half-completed carvings, the air thick with stone dust. The Solarus golem - a massive creature with the upper body of a man and the lower body of a lion, all carved from yellow gemstone - stood with his arms crossed, awaiting Nic.
“Your ship is ready.” He gestured to a tiny model ship, perched in the grip of a vise. The keel and mast had been replaced with spars of bone. “It should be stronger now.”
Nic nodded. “I appreciate it.” Reaching into his bag, he threw treasure materials across the nearest workbench. Sacred wood, the bones of ancient leviathans, the chitin of underworld insects…
A haul of materials to make a craftsman weep.
“What can you do with these?”
The Solarus approached, looking over the horde. He snorted. “Cursed. These are things from the pits of hell, boy. I see your demon blood has finally led you to join a Pandemonium Legion. But I won’t have anything to do with it. A craftsman’s hands are sacred. Putting my skills to work on this… It would be dishonorable.”
“Can’t say I care much.” The way the Solarus talked down to him always put Nic’s teeth on edge. “Your job is to make something useful, not complain about the materials. If it helps, I’ll be using it against the Legion, not for them.”
“Something useful…” The Solarus stared down at the demonic materials. “For defeating a Legion…”
And slowly, he nodded. “I can do something to that end. But mark me. I won’t consort with those who walk the demonic path. Find your own way - or find another smith.”
That was the end of their conversation.
---
Nic’s last stop was at the abode of Talnu’Mo, the runescribe who worked with living skin as his canvas. The toadman’s work was slowly spreading through Winterhome- he had noticed more and more of the city’s warriors sporting tattooed marks that helped them absorb more Essence, store more aura, and enhanced their strengths.
But Nic was here for something in specific.
“Heya. Remember those designs I gave you a while back?”
The designs had come from one of Sula’s officers, an old bowmaker who’d inherited them from a genius worker in runes. It was a mess of scribbled notes and confusing jargon, beyond Nic’s ability to understand. It was only with Nylea’s help he’d realized it was a skin-inscription.
“Aye.” Talnu was a massive creature, with warted, brown-gray skin and ferocious ridges of spikes above each eye. In the low ceiling and cramped quarters of his darkened shop, he was like a shadowy giant, filling the room with his bulk. “It’s an interesting one. Fed by the blood of your enemies, born from the strength of the oak tree…”
The great toad slapped his belly.
“I’ve never seen one like it. But I have it ready.”
He took a canvas of beast-hide from the walls. It was stretched onto a driftwood rack, and imprinted with symbol after symbol, forming a wheel on which six burning letters were inscribed. That wheel surrounded the branches of a great tree with a single character at its heart.
Nic admired it for a moment, before asking…
“Well, what does it do?”
“It grants an invincible moment of rage, fed by the dead and dying around you. It turns a beast into an unstoppable monstrosity. The price is high, of course, but burning a little life force is nothing that bothers most warriors.”
Nic nodded. What was life for, if not for spending? You could spend your life slaving away for money, or you could spend it fighting on the battlefield. Most warriors had already accepted that their path would kill them sooner or later.
“And… You won’t be able to wear it, I’m afraid.”
Once again, Nic simply bowed his head, grimacing a little. He’d accepted this.
His skin was simply too marked up at this point. The Dao that had touched him in the moment of nuclear annihilation covered every inch of his body, wavering gray lines that gave birth to strange, twisted runes.
He was unable to bear any more skin inscription.
But that didn’t mean it would go to waste. “I know.” Nic said, “But I have a friend who’s perfect for bearing it.”
From the centipede mark on his arm, Redjaw uncoiled, a massive shadow.
“Give it to him.”
