No force could stand against me if I fought without morals and killed without remorse. No power could ever undo me if I let everything that was good inside me slip away, devoured by my innermost darkness and surrendering my inner light to everything the darkness could give me.
I understand now, as this terrible darkness drains me and all my drakes, as we struggle, unable to escape it or even touch upon the bed now, that Hedda was once offered this same choice. And I understand she allowed her innermost light to be drained out of her by this same force, diabolical in the night.
Because she knew the power it could give her, to be a Bloodwalker in the supremacy of only her innermost darkness. She let this rift’s evil take her—and her drakes also, as her choice influenced theirs through their bonds.
In her sorrow and grief over her lost First Drake, she let this blackest midnight claim her, never to be touched again by the light of the sun. I feel this dark force draining all of us now, as our individual and collective lights threaten to go out.
Because we’re all becoming lost inside our retribution, wrath, and hate, as we struggle now to find even the smallest iota of light inside ourselves, especially Baldur.
Because his failure to finish the Soulstone, thanks to his addiction, is devouring him now. A place worse than woe, a feeling more terrible than failure, his singular thought of,I’m evil, heaves through me again and again. It heaves us all away from our brightest light into our deepest darkness, as our brightest light in the cosmos threatens to go out.
Part of me wants to go there with him in his endless night, to surrender to it completely. Because letting this darkness take me down now, and us, would mean my part in Hedda’s horrible little puppet-show would never be carried out.
As a terrible, cacophonous sound of hundreds of thousands of soulsin torment roars through me now, however, I see a bone-dead eye suddenly open in my inner vision.
As the undead sight of the Black Dragon fixes right on me from afar now, feeling me nearly abandon myself to my innermost darkness, I understand that Aesa’s last protection around this hidden city has broken.
When her soul was shredded apart in the Void by Hedda, her last wards on this city were sundered—I feel the Black Dragon coming for me now, knowing where I am, at last.
It’s coming for me like a battering-ram—not just it, but the four wights of Hedda’s drakes also, as ear-splitting shrieks from their bone-dead maws pierce my mind.
Because not only has the creature and Hedda’s drakes discovered where we are, now that Aesa’s protection around the ancient citadel is gone, Hedda herself knows where we are. Thanks to us awakening her in the Void and her seeing us here in the cavern, I feel the wights coming for us now, along with the Black Dragon, as we’re all drained to death.
The black energy of Hedda’s soul, here in the physical world, barrels towards us as well, ready to take us out rather than just assail us from the Void. I almost want to let her, as despair for myself and my drakes, screaming in torment, crushes my heart.
I almost want to let it all just end, because no hope is left for us, with this terrible power draining us and all that hell coming for us now, hammering towards us like a battering ram.
But even as all that hones in on us now, something deep inside me screams,resist!It’s the part of me that willnever give up, never surrender, as I feel everything inside me that makes me a warrior roar now in the black face of fate.
“FUCK YOU!”
As I roar to the very last depths of my blood and bones, unable to be any more or less than what I am, I feel my power return. BecauseI’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother, I’m a sinner, I’m a saint—andI DO NOT feel ashamed, as I suddenly know I’ll take my one-in-a-million chance of success in all this.
And make it my bitch.
As the most scorching, terrifying white-hot auric fire roars off me now, thundering through the cavern, I feel how it blisters away all the leviathan night from me and my drakes.
Lærke is also freed, where she was being devoured by it at the edge of the cavern; as we’re all released from our most tortured inner darkness, I feel my drakes’ light return.
Because just as with me, like hell are they giving up. Each is a fighter to their core, as they rise up with me, as one.
Roaring up into our dragons now—to fuck up this fight.
One last Bloodmate of mine is still devoured upon the bed by the black leviathan’s coils, however. It’s Baldur, as he struggles and roars in despair now with all his dragon’s notes in his voice—unable to get free and shift up with us.
Because he’s still caught in his own inner nightmare—that he succumbed to his addiction just now and failed us. But even though he’s struggling and we’ve gotten free, we’re all still here on the bed with him. Though my other drakes have shifted up, I shift back down now, lurching to Baldur’s side.
Wild, his all-black eyes don’t see me as he roars and struggles in his leviathan bonds. I feel how some goodness and hope still lives inside him, however, no matter how much he lost to his addiction just now, because we’re still here with him.
Though he can’t see us right now, lost inside his innermost hell, some part of him feels he’s not alone—thus, he’s not all the way gone. As my drakes cinch tight around him now with their dragon-flesh, bolstering him, I seize his face in my hands, pouring our bright hearts into him through our Bloodbond.
Letting him know I’m here.
And that I will never leave him, no matter what.
30
BATTLE
