Dragon Frost

Copyright © 2015 by S.J. Wist

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published by Infinity Dreamt

Author's website: www.sjwist.com

ISBN:
978-0-9916914-4-9

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed are either fictitious or used fictionally. Any resemblance to any person, past or present, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ONE

Ten years ago...

"My very birth was the Prophecy that was to lead to the Caelestis' return to Aster and save Aragmoth himself. It would be my death that would curse it all back to the very beginning of hate between the immortal memories of caels. Memories that had not been healed by Time. Forgiveness, it would seem, is more of a mortal belief where life is too short to waste it on bitterness.

"We ruled the skies for two years after Cirrus pulled me to the surface of the Eternal Waters on the day of my Trial of Somn. Of his memory, I know I was dead for the twenty minutes that it took him to do so. Or at least, it felt like death when I woke up on another world. A world so much more advanced than ours. It felt like a Dream that I didn't want to wake from, but when I did, Cirrus was right there beside me just as he promised.

"I had surfaced from my Trial of Somn baptized in death, to bring death. The phelan of the Atrum's Army had begun to call Cirrus the White Death soon after that day, for wherever we went we brought devastation and a cold, suffocating death. We drove the griffin camps off of the Torian Continent and destroyed one Gate after the other, sending the phelan and griffins fleeing for their lives at every turn. Soon our mere presence was enough to send their armies crying into the hills.

"I became a monster of the skies, and in doing so I was now my father's most cherished son. No longer was I a useless child. I was the Prince reigning in a new era for our kind with the horrendously deformed and ugly shift of a dragon form that had been given to me. The era that would see the whole world die by our blades and wings of winter.

"For every life that we took, I could feel a part of my soul die. If Cirrus had let me give up, I might have died within that first year. But in continuing to live and kill, I didn't care what glory it brought my father's name or mine. I only did it to see her on Earth in what time I could steal to Dreamwalk. Cirrus seemed to define his own existence by the number of lives he was able to snuff out. If my sacrifice brought them purpose, I would feel happiness from them.

"The more I fought the longer I was able to sleep and fall away from my reality of nightmares into the world of Dreams where she would always be there waiting for me. Humans who were victims to despair were fragile, brittle creatures. I could only bring her words to keep her from shattering so I could have more time to find a way to reach her. If I had learned of how to stay on her world, I could have protected her forever.

"I felt trapped on Aster, like a mer damned to roam the sea floor despite the light and endless free air well above its eyes. I would always wake up here. I could not die, for death would not allow me to.

"Then I found a way, by the claws of a thousand plumas that were able to cut me free from my shift. Now Daath needed to find a way to free me from Aragmoth so I would be his slave forever. The Atrum had their own Prophecy; that the Cael Daath would return to Aster and lead them in their conquest of Aster and Earth alike. But it would be a conquest fuelled by Daath's need for revenge.

"Now that I've finally broken free of the dark prison I was in, I feel as if everything has gone on without me, leaving only fragments of a nightmare in place of the time I have lost. Cirrus and Sybl were waiting for me, and now both of their Fates have taken the place of my own. I was too late to save them.

"They could have destroyed me or left me to my nightmare forever. Friends, it would seem, are something that defies the simplicity of life, death and reasoning."

There is a Heaven for each of us, and you have both left me so very alone in yours.
Nafury looked at his mother's grave, and then at Sybl's and Cirrus' that lay next to it. He felt lost without anything or anyone to guide him to where he should go next.

"If you could save the world by saving one person, wouldn't it be worth it to try?"

Nafury stood up and looked back. When he didn't see anyone, he held his breath and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again into a trance.

Sybl stood there, smiling as she waved her hand playfully at him. "Cirrus was right, you are really good with Threads. Even when you aren't possessed by an evil force and trying to take over the world."

"I'm sorry," he said, not knowing what else he could say.

She shook her head. "It's already forgotten. Soon everyone else will forget and move on as well."

"What am I to do now without you both?"

"You have lots of wishes left in you, you just have to remember the better ones. I left you one of my own as well to give you a head start." She spun around to leave, but then turned back to face him again. "Oh, and do me and Cirrus a favour--don't drop it."

Nafury blinked, and in the moment that it took him to do so, she had vanished from sight with his trance.
Drop it?
He walked out onto the ledge of the cave in the Bedlam Waterway as he tried to figure out the riddle.
Prophecy...
He remembered how Cirrus had teased him about dropping the 'Prophecy' that was Sybl before Daath brought her to Aster. She could only mean something that he could hold. Maybe even someone.

"You look as if you just saw a ghost," Cecil said, landing next to him on the ledge.

"I did," Nafury replied.

"What did it say?" the blue dragon asked curiously, as Nafury had always had Serena's ability as a Seer.

"I think there's another Fay."

TWO

Present

Nafury didn't know why he had come out here. Maybe because for so long, this place was the edge of the world. The Ice Fields were miles and miles of freezing cold. The field he stood on separated the chimeras and Awls' domain from the Atrum's. One of the Great Dragon's wings formed the Efereal Mountains. The other formed the Dragon Caverns on the Torian Continent, where he was no longer welcome.

The bitter-cold winds that came from the mountain passed through his white cloak. It was not enough to turn the Fallen Prince's eyes from the sky. The atmosphere's pinkish-purple light overhead looked colder than here. For Nafury, the light was colder than all the snow on the desolate field. It was a constant reminder of his past and of his sister. His sister who was sacrificed so that life could defrost on Aster and not freeze to death.

He looked at the snow before him where the body of an aspiring phelan shifter lay. The drifting snow had covered most of his frozen corpse now, but the blood wasn't hidden by it. The body's right arm and left leg were torn off and thrown some meters away. This was where the phelan came to challenge their shifts. The massive wolf-like monster spirits would merge with them if they survived. If they failed to take down the spirit during their Trial, they died. Their body would rot and be forgotten where it fell.

From what Nafury had heard from within the taverns he drifted in and out of, it had been different once. Before the Aeger, the Trial of Somn was not so hard to survive. Had this teenager been born before the Aeger, he would have tackled a snow serpent or two, instead. The offering would have been given to his future shift. Now, the serpents were one of the many species on Aster that were extinct. The remaining spirits had resorted to killing the living, instead of protecting them like they were created to do.

He didn't know what the success rate was compared to a dragon's chances in their own Trials. Yet it was clear that the balance of life and death was still off on Aster.

Nafury was looking for his own death, but it continued to run away from him. Only on the verge of it could he see her for a moment. The same eyes they shared in this life as brother and sister, reflecting back at him. He was alive and she was dead, yet her eyes showed no sadness. No hate of him. She only showed him pity for how much regret he drowned himself in. It was no use trying to swim for air or despair deeper, for she held him right where he was. So he accepted it as his punishment; his own limbo between being alive and the death that he so longed for.

On more than one occasion he had seen Cirrus in his nightmares as well, though it was hard to read his eyes. His face was always the solid, frozen state that matched the dragon form he once had. Nafury still remembered his best friend trying to kill him. Nafury's corrupted shift had killed Sybl, and now both her and Cirrus were dead because of him. He concluded that there were no bonds of friendship left between them before his death. It could be the only reason he saw him in his waking and sleeping nightmares at all.

Nafury took off his gold-plated helmet and scanned the barren landscape of ice with his eyes and psi. There was nothing to see and no thoughts of another for miles. He looked back at the gold that decorated his helmet. This was all he had left of a life he once knew, a life where he was once the Prince of Toria. That privileged life was gone. A small smile snuck onto his face. He remembered how Cirrus had teased him over this helmet. To his friend Nafury supposedly looked more like he had a demon on his head than a dragon's horns. If only he could see Cirrus again to tell him how he had been so inadvertently right all along.

This was the only thing the Packs that answered to Kenshe hadn't taken from him yet, and his armor. Maybe they thought that the Threads of the gold metal were tainted with evil still. Realistically they were, for gold could preserve the memories of others in it. This helmet held his lifetime of sad, beautiful, and youthful memories. That was before he let his shift, Daath, overtake him. Perhaps that was why the phelan didn't want it. They seemed more content to believe him as nothing more than a monster. A monster rather than the human he was.

Something brushed past his thoughts. Nafury looked up and across the snowy desert as its cold wind swirled aimlessly around in the wind. It had about as much direction as he did now; absolutely none.

Nafury turned his head when his dark sapphire eyes caught a cloud of snow and antlers in the distance. It wasn't a phelan shifter out here today, but what looked like a stag.

'UNHOLY ONE.'

Nafury was completely focused on the cloud now as the name hit him like a sharp knife in the back. This wasn't just some stag, but an Awl as only they could take on human form aside from the shifters, and use psi as well. While the world battled it out with their own shifts, the chimeras stayed quietly hidden. Only this one was being chased further from the safety of its mountain by one of Kenshe's Packs.

His common sense told him to stay out of this as it wasn't any of his business. He didn't know how much luck he had left with his avoiding of a direct confrontation with them. Yet this Awl was one of the few creatures on the planet who remembered him while he was Daath.

Nafury turned around with his choice to stay out of it. Blocking his leave, Sial stood silently watching him. The shaggy brown, horse-like creature carried the Threadless festra on its forehead. It was a weapon that once belonged to his sister. It was a masterless weapon that only he could wield now, as the Caelestis wasn't alive anymore to use it. She had freed the True he had bond to it in a previous life, so it was only a relic now.

"We must help Xirel."

"You mean that stag?"

"Yes, he is my brother."

Nafury pondered Sial's words for a moment. He remembered that many of the older chimeras were born of Nephena, the Mother of all Chimeras. Like their mother, they could be a mix of just about any animal. The kyrie claimed that the stag was his brother, which was possible. "Sorry, but I'm not going anywhere near that Pack."