Rise of the Devourer
Book 4: Chapter 37 — An Old Dragon

Zax stood in the center of the royal chamber, his human form radiating power that made the very air shimmer with heat. Around him, the marble floor had cracked into a web of fissures, and the walls bore scorch marks from energies that existed beyond mortal comprehension.

The entity wearing the king's face felt the first stirrings of what should have been impossible—doubt. He had come here expecting to face a bound dragon, weakened by centuries of imprisonment. Instead, he found himself looking at something that radiated power like a miniature sun.

"You think freeing yourself from that trinket changes anything, dragon?" he said, forcing confidence into his voice. "You are still bound. Still chained. Still a shadow of what you once were."

Zax's response was a smile that held the weight of millennia. "Am I?"

He raised his hand, and suddenly the air around him erupted with light. Purple and blue magical formations materialized in the space between heartbeats—not simple spells, but intricate constructs of power that must have taken decades to prepare. Runic circles appeared at his feet, on the walls, even suspended in the air above, each one glowing with different colors as they activated in sequence.

The sound that followed was like the snapping of chains. The entity staggered as the suppression magic that had bound Zax for so long simply... ceased.

"Impossible," he breathed, his stolen eyes wide with shock. "Those bindings were crafted by—"

"By your kind, yes. The White Bloom, I assume?" Zax said, his voice too serene, too casual. "But you forgot something important. You forgot you were dealing with me. You were arrogant. You gave me time to prepare.”

The air around Zax began to distort as his true power awakened. His human disguise flickered, revealing glimpses of scales that gleamed like molten gold, eyes that burned with the fire of creation itself.

The entity felt something he hadn't experienced in eons—fear. But he was still an Ascendant. Still a being who had transcended mortality and claimed power over lesser creatures. He would not be intimidated by a mere dragon, no matter how ancient.

He struck first, raising both hands to weave the Null Cascade—a spell that unraveled the fundamental forces holding matter together. Black lightning erupted from his fingertips, each bolt carrying enough entropy to age a mountain to dust in seconds. The energy lanced through the air toward Zax, reality itself seeming to fray at its edges.

Zax didn't move. The null lightning struck his chest and simply... stopped. The destructive energy hung in the air for a moment like frozen obsidian, then crumbled to harmless sparks that fell to the floor.

What? The entity's mind reeled. The Null Cascade was a fundamental force, not mere magic. It should have been impossible to simply ignore.

"Interesting opening," Zax said conversationally, brushing a few remaining sparks from his shirt. "Tell me, was that really the best you could manage? I was hoping for something more... impressive."

Desperation drove the entity to greater extremes. He spread his arms wide and began to chant forbidden phrases, invoking a forbidden ritual of words that existed before creation and would endure after its end. The very air around him seemed to buckle around him as he invoked the ancients—invoke something that he would have never touched normally.

The air around Zax began to shimmer as existence itself was denied. The marble beneath his feet should have ceased, the very concept of "dragon" should have been erased. He should have been consumed, not even entering the Void, fate itself forgetting he existed. The entity watched with growing confidence as the air around him rippled more and more, reality itself forgetting that anything called "Zax" had ever—

"You know," Zax said, his voice cutting through the ripples like it was a mild breeze, "I've always found the White Bloom's obsession with ancient negation magic rather quaint."

The Theorem shattered like glass against his presence. Where the negation field touched him, it simply failed to function, as if the universe itself refused to accept that this particular dragon could be unmade.

"How?" the entity whispered, staggering backward. "This… It’s ancient magic! It's fundamental—"

"Fundamental? For what? Reality?" Zax chuckled, taking a casual step forward. "My dear Ascendant, I was shaping reality before your kind learned to crawl out of the mud. Did you really think you could constrain me?"

The entity's terror deepened. This dragon—he was simply shrugging off attacks even Ascendants didn’t casually use against each other. Even the White Bloom very rarely resorted to such techniques, and this dragon was simply unaffected by them!

Gritting his teeth, the Ascendant reached into the spaces between dimensions and pulled forth the Chains of Entropy—a technique of the void that not even the strongest abyssal cultists knew how to use properly. He would never have used them, normally, especially because even just a trace of them could destroy this entire city, but it did not matter anymore.

He didn’t mind destroying this very world, at this moment, if it meant he could get rid of this dragon.

The moment they materialized, reality began to scream. The chains erupted from his hands like living catastrophes, each burning link inscribed with the names of worlds that had already died. They radiated destruction so pure that the very air began to unravel, space itself starting to fray at the edges.

But before the chains could reach Zax, before they could escape the chamber and reduce the entire city to less than rubble, the dragon moved.

He didn't gesture or speak. He simply... flicked his finger. Golden light erupted around the chamber, forming a barrier that seemed more divine than draconic. The destructive force of the chains, which should have been impossible to contain, suddenly found itself sealed within the walls of the room.

Then Zax caught one of the chains in his bare hand.

The entity felt his heart stop as he watched the dragon examine the manifestation of entropy with the idle curiosity of someone inspecting an interesting flower. The chain—which should have reduced him to less than atoms—which had reduced many Ascendants and cities to nothing—simply dangled from Zax's grip like a child's toy.

"Chains of Entropy," Zax mused, giving the burning link an experimental tug. The Ascendant was dragged forward, barely stopping himself from being flung through the floor and into the floors below. "I haven't seen these in... oh, what was it? Three thousand years? They're rather pretty, aren't they?"

He closed his fist. The chain—and all the entropy it contained—crumbled to golden dust.

"Though I must say," Zax continued as the remaining chains withered and died without even touching him, dissipating like morning mist, "your technique is sloppy. Whoever taught you clearly skipped the fundamentals of containing your own attacks."

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The barrier around the chamber dissolved, and Zax tilted his head, looking at him with a soft smile and narrowed eyes.

The entity was beyond shock now, beyond fear. Every single one of his expectations had been defied. He was facing something that violated every principle he understood about power, about the natural order itself.

"What are you?" he whispered.

"I'm a dragon," Zax replied simply. "An old one. Now, shall we discuss why you're really here?"

In his desperation, the entity tried one final gambit—the Sundering of Self, a spell that would fragment Zax's consciousness across infinite parallel realities, ensuring that no single version could maintain coherent thought. It was a technique that he’d never thought he’d use because of the backlash he’d face from it—but it was immensely effective, and the only thing he could see working.

It would scatter the minds of the target across the multiverse until they forgot they had ever existed, after all. It had broken the minds of multiple Ascendants. It was not mentioned in anything but the darkest, most ancient tomes. Surely, surely it should be enough!

Zax let the spell complete. For a moment, the entity felt triumph as he watched the dragon's form flicker, break into pieces, shatter—

Then all the fragments smiled at once and spoke in perfect unison: "That tickled."

The scattered versions of Zax collapsed back into a single form without effort.

"Now then," Zax said, his tone still remaining conversational. "Let's talk about young Noah. You've been orchestrating quite an elaborate game around him, haven't you?"

The entity could only stare in horror as Zax approached with casual confidence.

"You’ve been doing quite a few things designed to push him in specific directions. Tell me, what does the White Bloom really want with the boy?"

"I... I don't..." the entity stammered, his mind reeling. He was having an existential crisis.

"Come now," Zax said with mild disappointment. "I know you're from the White Bloom. You do realize your organization's reputation precedes you?"

The entity tried to back away, but found his feet wouldn't obey him. Some invisible force held him in place—not magic, no form of energy that he could recognize, but he couldn’t move anyway.

"The boy carries fragments of something ancient," Zax continued thoughtfully. "Shards of a dead god, if I'm not mistaken. The White Bloom has always been fascinated by such things—the intersection of mortality and divinity, the possibility of controlled resurrection."

"You... you know?" the entity gasped.

"I know quite a lot," Zax replied.

The entity's stolen face went pale. "Impossible. That information has been sealed to the highest levels—"

"Of your organization? Yes, I imagine it would be." Zax's smile was predatory now. "Tell me, what do you think the White Bloom will do when they learn that their carefully laid plans have been discovered by someone who remembers when your founders were still playing with finger paints and delusions of grandeur?"

"We are eternal!" the entity snarled, desperation finally overriding terror. "We are inevitable! Even if you kill this shell, others will come! We are—"

"Parasites," Zax finished calmly. "Parasites who mistake longevity for strength, who confuse persistence with power." He paused, tilting his head as if listening to something only he could hear. "And speaking of shells..."

The air around them began to fracture like glass. Not the physical space, but something deeper—the metaphysical connections that allowed the entity to inhabit forms across space itself.

"What are you doing?" the entity demanded, his voice for the first time carrying the genuine terror he had been feeling, his facade of confidence stripped bare.

"Something I learned from watching your kind," Zax said as purple cracks began appearing on the floor around them. "You see, you think you've been very clever about hiding your true self. Fragments scattered through multiple bodies, shells to do your dirty work, possess other people while your core remains safely tucked away."

The cracks on the floor spread wider. And then they began to emerge—Neal from the tournament, a teenage girl in gaudy attire, a pristine royal guard, a well-dressed dignitary. Each one had completely blank faces, more like corpses than people.

"But connections work both ways," Zax continued as golden light began to emanate from his form. "And really, all you’re doing is making it more fun, scattering your fragments like this.

The entity's fragments tried to flee out of the bodies, black wisps which rose to the sky, but Zax's magic was already there, already tearing them apart. One by one, each one was purified, the Ascendant screaming while gripping at his hair due to the sheer pain he was feeling.

"One," Zax said as Neal collapsed, freed from the fragment's influence.

"Two," as the teenage girl was liberated.

"Three," as the royal guard fell unconscious but breathing.

"Four," as the dignitary crumpled to the ground.

That left only the false king, who was barely conscious.

"Now then," Zax said, reaching out to grasp the entity by the throat with one hand. "Let's bring the real you."

The fractures moved through the ground and joined together, forming a purple ritual circle through which another figure began to emerge—the entity's true form, a young man with curly brown hair, peacefully sleeping even as he was being forcibly dragged from whatever sanctuary he had thought inviolate.

"No!" the true entity shrieked. "I am protected! I am safe! I am beyond your reach! This can’t—this can’t be true!"

"You were," Zax agreed as the true form had its mortal shell peel back, revealing the cacophony of screaming fragmented souls present within. "But you made a mistake. You thought yourself untouchable, drunk in your own power. You forgot that there are beings in this universe older and more terrible than you. I’ve seen so many Ascendants—and dragons—do the same, so I don’t blame you."

"You don't understand what you're doing!" the entity screamed, its true voice leaking out of the king. "The vessel—Noah—he carries the essence of something far worse than me! The dead god stirs within him! Do not help him! You are only making it worse!"

"I know exactly what I'm doing," Zax said, his power building to a crescendo that made the very foundations of the castle groan. "And I have an idea of what Noah carries. Don’t worry, I’ll make him meet the Reaper in Death Valley and have him learn the truth. Learn it alongside him, even. Doing exactly what the White Bloom would not want is fun, you know?”

“You must understand! You cannot do that, or this world—”

"Oh, shut up," Zax said with a huff. "The boy may carry darkness, but darkness can be guided, shaped, even redeemed. You, however... you are simply poison. And poison should be purged."

Zax's other hand closed into a fist. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the king simply fainted, falling to the floor. The young man—the Ascendant’s true body—faded into wisps of white, mixing with the air.

The death of an Ascendant was not a quiet thing. He knew that the shockwaves and recuppressions of this would travel, and White Bloom would be having a fit internally over what just happened.

"Let that be a warning to your companions," Zax said to the empty air. And then he sighed. That had been close—a minute later, and his shackles would have clicked back in place again. The Ascendant who did this to him wasn’t that incompetent, after all—he couldn’t just break it with a few days of preparation while he’d been juggling other things.

He sighed once more. Really, he was supposed to be in retirement, with his old creaky bones and tired soul. Not out here battling with youngster Ascendants.

A soft smile spread over his face. It was slightly fun, he couldn’t help but admit, stretching his body after so long.

***

The dark chamber flickered as one of the spectral projections around the table began to waver. The figure—a young man who had his eyes closed because he was out on a mission—suddenly convulsed, his form crackling with unstable energy.

The woman watching felt the familiar chill of a connection being severed—not by choice, not by distance, but by death. She leaned forward, her spectral form remaining stable even as she reached toward the failing projection.

"Chair Vor?" she called, but it was too late.

The projection imploded into sparkles of black, leaving nothing but empty space where one of the White Bloom's top most operatives had been moments before. The silence that followed was deafening.

It didn’t take long for her to realize what had happened.

"Damn that dragon," she hissed, her voice carrying such power that it made the chamber's walls tremble. "Damn him to the void itself."

She knew what this meant. Vor hadn't just been killed—he had been completely obliterated, his very essence unmade so thoroughly that even their most sophisticated resurrection methods couldn't retrieve him. Only a handful of beings in existence possessed that kind of power.

And one of them had just reminded the White Bloom why ancient dragons were to be feared.

Her hands clenched into fists as notifications began flooding her awareness—contingency plans activating, backup operations scrambling to compensate for the loss of a Chair, the system itself alerted by the loss of an Ascendant. Centuries of careful positioning, gone in an instant.

"This changes everything," she whispered to the empty chamber, her voice dripping with cold fury. "Everything."