Offering the monkey a sideways glance, Douglas reached out to grab the potion from
Urberus. It glowed with a mild power, containing within it enough to mana to fortify his body for what was to come - a necessary catalyst to stop him from no doubt dying from what he was about to attempt. Downing it, he felt the oily substance trail down his throat - with a bitter flavor unlike much he had ever tasted. It took more than he cared to admit not to cough it back up, but when it had settled, he could feel it slowly pulse into his muscles, tingle beneath his skin, and flare the runic sigils that lined his body.
A harsh exhale seemed to signal
Rundal to begin - and the lich turned young woman raised his hands forming a nearly translucent barrier around Haley; allowing him to work unimpeded. The young mage brought himself to his knees, carefully focusing his energy on the distant light that seemed to
fade. No doubt the Herald would soon come to collect the
dragons soul - bring it to his masters in the heavens; likely the only reason he hadn’t done so thus far was due to some infighting in the pantheon.
And so it was said the early bird got the worm - or more accurately in the case, the mage who didn’t have to deal with divine politics. Both hands clenched as his energy began to roll through the city, and find itself connected with the beast that lay heavy in the pit; and all at once, the body of the being seemed to shake and shiver to life, though it was no more than the twitches of muscles being suddenly flexed beyond their limits at the introduction of sentient manipulation.
Those unfortunate enough to be looking near the pit would see it, feel a sudden overwhelming fear as the body of the beast began to move - though it never stood. Douglas kept himself calm and focused, and the complex runic sigil beneath him began to glow in a vibrant display of light nearly washing the mage out from those outside.
In that same moment, the many floating lands of
Elbion began to shake and shiver - their very magic being upended by the latent remains of
Drakormir, and with it the very stability the refugees relied on for safety. Even the massive plot of land
Urberus and the others stood on began to break apart at the seems - and yet, for Douglas, there was no noise.
Rundal, as a lich, did not breath nor sweat; but her face twisted into a small struggle as the inside of the shield began to lose more of Douglas’s features. In the last moment, even as the wood of the warehouse creaked and groaned, they would see from the outside Douglas’s eyes open -
And with them, terror and pain.
For Douglas, it seemed the light emanating from the rune became something more akin to a burn. It sickened him, threatened to toss his stomach out of his mouth and leave him little more than a husk on the ground; but he held on. The
Kavosh were a hearty people when it came to magic, and Douglas was one of the only pure examples of them left - making his body extraordinarily resilient to the otherwise lethal energies within the containment. He could feel it, however, pouring from his eyes, nose, and mouth in swaths of fire - bright and blue as it was.
Though, he could not scream - leaving him little choice but to hold on. He imagined great iron chains attached to either arm, both that he grabbed and were connected by heavy cuffs. There was nothing he could do but hold on, and he understood that even before he took the efforts to put himself through such an endeavor.
And yet, he never imagined it would feel like this. It had only been a few seconds, but to him hours had begun to pass as he was burned and burned again - until he could feel Drakormirs energys begin to flood into him, stealing the energy from his muscles, rotting his organs as he kneeled, and threatening to tear him apart by the smallest increments it could manage. In every word, this dragon was the closest thing to a god that walked this land - and Douglas hoped to contain it.
Foolish endeavor.
Was that his own thought? He couldn’t be sure - he had full confidence that he could do it, but he could feel a growing anxiety, a constant doubt fill his mind. A second voice that whispered to him in a deep, gutteral tone.
A dragons whisper in his inner ear.
“What a grand and intoxicating innocence.”, it seemed to laugh, darker than before.
“How could you be so naive? To give me such a fine body… It is not too late for my mercy, give up, Kavoshian. I won’t let you suffer.”
Honeyed words with a poisoned root, a death sentence wrapped in gold leaf - to lose the pain, to escape this mistake he had thrust himself into. His body was physically splitting at the sternum, his heart - container of his soul was beating in the open air as blood rushed down his chest, and every second he could feel Drakormirs claws scratching away at it - carving just a touch more blood from the beating vessel.
He gasped for air that wasn’t there, and the words came again -
“I won’t let you suffer.”, overlapping, a cacophany of words overlapping again and again.
“I won’t let you suffer.”
Rundal struggled to hold the shield with Urberus now, pain growing on his falsified mask of a face despite all the
undead strength that came with being a lich. Urberus could hear the pulsing of the lich’s phylactery heart, growing heavy in the ear drums as he drew upon more and more of his own power to maintain the glowing ball of pure energy in the center of the room. All the while, the entirety of Elbion shook - from magic, from terror it did not matter any longer.
Maesters of every sort ran between their posts trying to collect a resistance, to prepare for the instant resurrection of the Dragon God himself while others still tried to understand the overwhelming currents of magic that surrounded them. Trying desperately to understand what they meant - if escape was even a possibility any longer.
Na’ill would feel something similar, but for him there was a sudden change in the soul he was stealing from - as though a lake lost all the water beneath the surface, and what was left was treading water. All that he touched he could keep, but there was something missing all too quickly.
Within the warehouse, Douglas’s skin began to flake and turn to ash - and his scream grew petulant and saddening. Confident only a mere few minutes ago, he had been taken to little more than a babe crying - or would be, were tears even possible any longer. The Kavoshian, while not heard by his allies on the outside of the sphere, was dying with the mockery of a God in his ear.
“Let go, child.”
“Give this up, your soul is mine!”, it cried.
“Stop this pointless endeavor!”, it began to scream.
Yet Douglas held on - though no part of his own accord. The sigils that surrounded his body worked much like a phylactery, but it was utilizing the strength of his Kavoshian blood and the density of his own soul to power it; deeper and deeper it drove its hooks into the soul of the Dragon God, pulling it deeper into the magical sinkhole that had become Douglas’s body - though it was quickly losing that appearance.
More minutes passed, and the once struggling Rundal was now fully at the mercy of whatever was within the barrier she had erected for protection. It was more a sun in the room now, leaving those few who didn’t close their eyes blind, and even those who had with little more than brightness - but the barrier undulated and cracked, it seemed to screech with the horrible sound of metal tearing, and all at once they could hear Douglas’s constant screams piercing its barrier before Rundal gave out a single command;
“Down!”, the lich cried out.
And the barrier exploded, leveling half the warehouse before the dust would clear. Urberus, his grandson, and Rundal would be a few meters away - tucked behind a second barrier Rundal had only barely managed to hold up. Energy still poured into Douglas, but it began to fade as the child mage became more visible.
Dust had hidden some of his wounds - covering him in ash as the city of Elbion seized in terror. Drakormir’s corpse ceased its movements, but the islands still shook; and Douglas now looked as much the part of Elbion as it did now. His skin was flayed wherever the sigil tattoos were not present, his eyes were crimson with broken blood vessels, muscles atrophied into nothing as all the calories available were burnt from his body, and in the center of his chest -
There was no sternum. Torn from his chest was everything covering his heart - yet it glowed a blinding blue before fading like the turn of a lighthouse. Blood poured onto the floor in droves, though little remained left, before evaporating nearly as quickly as it touched the ground. Straggled hair, longer than it was before it had gone in, looked wiry and unkempt - and the cracked lips of Douglas glanced up to Urberus with a pleading shame as pale eyes looked to his allies for help.
He could not speak the words, but he offered them graciously through movement alone -
“Help. Me.”
