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365 - SIEGFRIED [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2024-07-15 01:29:05 +0000 UTCKanbu led them to a courtyard behind the building. A shaded walkway ran around its perimeter, supported by pillars, with an island of grass in the middle. A statue stood in the middle, bearing in hand a spear. It was nearly identical to the many guardian statues which had played so vital a role during the Blue Moon War. The pedestal was bedecked by a bronze plaque, polished and ageless:
Slayer of dragons near and far
Bearer of a thousand scars
Veteran of a hundred wars
Take care, remember who you are
When passing into the inner square, the background noise of the outside subtly became more distant. A privacy array — one so refined neither her instincts nor Victor’s eyes could detect it before they were already within its boundary.
He grasped the spear, and the statue relinquished it, shifting into a kneeling bow, resting one arm on its knee and the other fist-down to its pedestal. When Kanbu held it, the armament was easily two heads taller than him.
“I am Siegfried Kanberich Eberhart!”
Every word of his true name shook the air and ground, as if each one spoken unsealed a portion of his true presence. And yet, she couldn’t tell how strong he actually was. In a flash of green fire, the plain spear revealed its true form, but Zel couldn’t help but pay attention to the flame before the spear, as she hadn’t had the opportunity to see it many times at all since the Battle of Ubul’s Tomb. Among all the different kinds of magical fire she had seen, no two were alike. Not just in colour, but even in the manner it burned, in how it formed tongues and moved. The spear’s shaft was wrapped in black, scaly hide, and its head was a three-sided spike with barbs running down its length. In an instant, the barbs folded, leaving only faint lines to imply their presence. A pair of wings was present halfway down its length, wrapped so tightly around the shaft that they laid nearly flat against it. Zel also glimpsed what appeared to be claws tightly gripping the spear, and eyes just beneath the spear-point.
“Dragonslaying Aspect-emperor Body: Wings!” Kanbu — Kanberich — bellowed, and a gout of green flame issued from his mouth, forming into wings of flame upon his back.
DRAGONSLAYING ASPECT-EMPEROR BODY: WINGS
“Dragonslaying Aspect-emperor Body: Tail!” he once more proclaimed, and in the same manner, a great tail formed from his lower back, encircling Zel and Daywolf as it took shape. It tapered smoothly, and coiled around Zelsys and Victor easily.
DRAGONSLAYING ASPECT-EMPEROR BODY: TAIL
Lastly, he thumped his spear against the statue’s placard. A curious, bell-like ringing sound issued forth. It made Zel’s eyes vibrate in their sockets, somehow.
“Wake up, Zirnitra.”
The spear’s wings unfolded, and the eye atop its shaft lazily split open, revealing a shining-green dragonstone. There was no mistaking it — not its appearance, nor its unique aura or the manner in which it pierced through Zelsys. Somehow, the armament wasn’t just alive in the manner of any enspirited weapon, the spear itself was a living dragon descendant!
“You might have many questions. All of them, I will answer, in time. First among them: Why did I not do this earlier?” he said, turning to face them. He wore a mysterious smile, but there was an almost apologetic appearance to his eyes. “Why did I not aid you in this manner at Ubul’s Tomb? The answer is… I could not have. Only through the power of secret Kargarian fog-sailing rites was I able to project what meagre strength I had squirreled away, and that ember burned out on that day. I have laboured bitterly since then to reignite just this smattering of my former strength, and even now, I cannot be Siegfried for long. Reforging my steel has been… An arduous walk down memory lane. I can scarcely believe I ever gave this up willingly, even if it was to hide from Tian Feng. Dead Ones, I was a monster once. What I am now is a mere whelp by comparison. But that’s enough of my senile rambling. I promised to hear you out elsewhere, and that I shall do: Take you elsewhere.”
Kanberich’s tail tightened around the two of them, before he pointed his spear skyward and jumped. In the span of a breath, they had gone from standing on the ground to soaring through the air. With a corona of green surrounding them, the three flew as if a comet, and the landscape zipped past at a speed that almost seemed comical. Between this and the sensation of the air, there was no doubt in Zel’s mind that Kanberich was riding a leyline — that esoteric art which still eluded her in all forms.
The air howled in defiance, and through it, Kanberich’s voice rang out in exhilarated laughter.
Far too quickly, they reached the crater-edge mountains to Willowdale’s north-east. Zel assumed that Kanberich had a base there, likely hidden by arrays from detection, but reality proved far stranger than expectation. They approached a particular point near the mountain range, a few hundred meters above. Goosebumps ran down the back of Zel’s neck, and Victor squinted his eyes, emitting a groan of discomfort as he closed Daywolf’s visor. Then, they passed an invisible boundary, and a great spire of stone hundreds of meters tall made itself known. By how it emerged from the mountain, it almost looked to be carved from natural stone right then and there, not built. Windows ran down its entire length, but the outer surface was rough and covered with cubes of blackstone, embedded at uneven intervals like pyrite crystals.
Kanberich damn near ran them into the cliff-edge, only to turn on a dime and begin a sharp ascent.
At the top, the old dragonslayer let them go, himself landing on his feet without issue. The same could be said for Zel, but Victor lost balance and doubled over before he managed to get Daywolf to right itself and land on its feet.
The very top of the tower was flat, with walkways extending from the ledge in eight directions and prongs rising skyward between them, forming a shimmering barrier. The air up here wasn’t any thinner than on the ground, and more than that, it was so incredibly thick with pneuma that one could see faint wisps of iridescent-silver phasing in and out of being with the naked eye.
“Welcome to the Guardian Spire. From this place, older than memory, we oversaw our Great Work, the burial of the Second King’s Ziggurat. Seeing as you-” he nodded towards Victor, “-are the living key to its resurfacing, I thought it an appropriate location.”
With a grin, Kanberich spun his spear. Its eye closed, wings retracted, and his own phantom dragon limbs also dissipated. “Now come. We have much to discuss.”
