Rise of the Devourer
Book 4: Chapter 39 — Shard Trial Pt 1

Kaelan's thunder wyvern landed hard in what had once been a market square, its claws scraping against cobblestones slick with things he didn't want to identify. Smoke billowed from the collapsed buildings of the outer district, and the air rang with screams both human and inhuman.

"Spread out!" Averos shouted to the Royal Guards as they dismounted. "Check every building, every alley. Get the civilians to the inner districts! There are more guards holding the fort there!"

Around them, families fled with whatever they could carry, children crying as parents dragged them through the streets, not even bothering to cover their eyes to protect them from the sight of the corpses that littered the street.

Valros controlled his wyvern with surprising speed for someone who’d never mounted one before, as he yelled from the sky. "Movement in the eastern quarter!" he called out. "Three families trapped in a collapsed inn!"

Averos was already organizing a group of elderly citizens into a defensive formation, leading the strongest men to shield the weaker. They wouldn’t count for much if Averos fell, but every muscle counted in such a dire situation. "I've got this group covered! Go!" He said to one of the royal guards, making the man run towards the east with wings spread.

Kaelan turned toward the sound of sobbing and found a family huddled in the doorway of a baker's shop—a man, woman, and two young children who couldn't have been older than eight. The woman clutched a baby to her chest while the man tried to shield them all with his body, clearly trying to coax them to move based on his expression and rapid muttering.

"Mister!" Kaelan called out, approaching with his hands visible and empty—his spear sheathed. "We need to get you to the inner city where it's safe."

The man looked up with haunted eyes. "Safe? Nowhere is safe! These things... they’re everywhere… they’re killing everyone!"

"I know," Kaelan said gently, kneeling down to the children's level to try and calm them down even as he continued to talk to the man. "But the guards of the outer wall have retreated to the inner city. The situation is more in control there. What are your names?"

"My wife’s Elena," the man said, his voice shaking. "I'm Marcus. These are our children—Lily, Thomas, and baby Sara."

Kaelan smiled at the children, trying to project calm despite the chaos around them. "Well, Lily and Thomas, I'm Kaelan. I'm going to make sure you and your family get somewhere safe, okay?" The kids looked like they were on the brink of crying—as long as he could calm them down, convincing Marcus and Elena shouldn’t be too hard.

But before he could continue, footsteps pounded against the brick road behind him. Kaelan spun around to see a man in ordinary merchant's clothing approaching, his face flushed with a mixture of rage and desperation.

"Don't listen to him!" the man shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at Kaelan. "He's one of them! The guards, the council, those who think they’re ‘purer’—they're the ones who caused this!"

Kaelan's heart sank as he recognized the tone and words—this was clearly one of the rebels, or at least, a rebel sympathiser. But where the few rebels he’d seen had been organized and purposeful—his brother Kean being a good example—this man looked shattered, his eyes wide with the kind of shock that came from seeing things go catastrophically wrong.

"Just because we wanted to overthrow the corrupt king," the rebel continued, his voice cracking. "Just because we wanted to save the kingdom! Look what happened! Look at what they unleashed when we tried to fight back! The undead dragon they’ve awakened to end this city!"

The family shrank back against the doorway, confused and terrified by the man's ravings. Little Lily began to cry, and Thomas pressed his face against his mother's shoulder.

Kaelan glanced around quickly. In the distance, he could hear the wet, sliding sounds of the twisted creatures moving through the bloodied streets. A child's scream echoed from somewhere to the north, followed by the clash of steel as one of the royal guards perhaps engaged something or someone in combat. Every second they wasted here was another second that innocent people—hell, even this family—remained in danger.

"Look around you," Kaelan said, gesturing to the destruction. "Do you really think this is what any sane person would unleash just to stop a rebellion? These creatures—and the dragon—won't distinguish between rebel and loyalist. They are and will kill everyone."

"That's exactly what they'd do!" the rebel snarled, taking a step closer. "Burn it all down rather than lose control! It’s not like the outer district’s residents or the wall guards are ‘pure’ enough anyway! I've seen what the council is capable of, what they'll sacrifice to maintain their power!"

The rebel stepped forward as he continued, now addressing Marcus directly. "We can't trust them! For all we know, he’s leading you into a trap! These upper draconians caused this disaster, and now they want us to follow them like sheep to slaughter!"

That was enough.

Kaelan moved faster than the rebel could react, his training taking over. He stepped forward and struck the man precisely at the base of the neck, hitting him in such a way that would render him unconscious without causing lasting harm. The rebel's eyes rolled back and he collapsed, his body going limp.

The sudden silence that followed was broken only by the distant sounds of battle and the occasional echoes of screams.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Kaelan looked down at the unconscious man, then at the family who stared at him with wide eyes. "Marcus," he said calmly, "I need you to help me carry this man. He's not injured, just unconscious, but we can't leave him here for the creatures to find."

Elena clutched her baby tighter, shrinking slightly, her eyes filled with fear. Clearly, she didn’t trust him.

Kaelan met her eyes directly. "Ma’am, Mister, I give you my word as a whatever his surname is that my only concern right now is getting you and your children to safety. I want to save as many lives as I can. We can’t linger here. The Watcher’s abominations might crawl back into this street any second.”

Marcus hesitated for a moment, then nodded grimly. "Lily, Thomas, help your mother with the baby. We're going with Sir surname."

"Stay close," he told the family as they began moving toward the inner city. "If you spot anything that doesn't look human, call out and I'll handle it."

They had barely made it two blocks when a wet, sliding sound echoed from an alley to their left. Something that had once been human emerged from the shadows—its limbs twisted into impossible directions, extra eyes blinking along its malformed torso, and a mouth that opened far too wide to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth.

"Don't look," Kaelan told the children firmly, drawing his spear as he positioned himself between the creature and the family. "Just keep walking."

The thing made a sound like tearing silk mixed with a dying scream and launched itself toward them with inhuman speed. Kaelan's blade met it halfway, the dragon-forged steel piercing through the corrupted flesh with ease, before dragging his spear sideways and cutting it into two.

"How many of those things are even there?" Marcus asked, his voice tight with fear as they continued toward safety.

Kaelan sighed. "I don't know. But we only have to hold out a little longer. The Watcher’s night will end soon." He… didn’t believe that, especially since this was an eclipse that had clearly been orchestrated, so it was not too unlikely the Watcher’s night could continue on for a much, much longer time, but what Marcus and his family needed right now was hope.

So hope he would give.

***

The interior of the dragon was a nightmare of pulsing flesh and, to his surprise, corrupted black veins. Each passage he traversed was more twisted than the last. It was only Tony’s guidance—he could make out the flow of the ichor in the veins and where the heart was located—and his own enhanced eyes that allowed him to get closer to the core.

With each step, he could feel the power radiating through the dragon's body intensifying. It was like walking toward the heart of a star, energy so dense and overwhelming that it made his bones ache and his vision blur at the edges. It was only his Wyrmblood and Tony’s constant restructuring of his body that helped stabilize him, the symbiotic parasite filtering out the worst of the corruption, but even so, Noah could feel the immense forces threatening to tear him apart at the cellular level.

There, master! Tony’s voice chirped in his head. We’re here!

The passage opened into a vast chamber, and Noah's breath caught in his throat. The Dragon's Heart lay before him—a black mass of pulsating flesh that was vaguely in the anatomical shape of a heart. It… didn’t beat like a heart, as much as simply squirm. And at the center of it all...

"Vion," Noah whispered.

She hung suspended in the air, her body cocooned around the heart in strings black energy. She was half transformed—black scales that tore their way out of human skin, oozing black blood, wings that should have been spread in flight now pinned against her sides by the bindings, looking more like those of a vulture’s than dragon’s… Her eyes were closed, but Noah could see the pain etched across her features.

The Shard was there, pure white and embedded in her abdomen like a parasite. It pulsed with the same rhythm as the heart, and Noah realized with growing horror that the entire dragon was being powered by her life force.

For a second, Noah didn’t know what to do. And then instinct called to him—a single ability coming to the forefront of his mind.

Soul-Rune Harvest.

Responding to his thoughts, Tony began to extend tendrils toward the Shard, even as Noah walked towards it, subconsciously, resonating with its energy in a way that enchanted him.

His fingers and Tony’s tendrils made contact with the crystalline surface of the Shard at the same time. For a second, nothing happened. And then, runic chains erupted from his body, wrapping around the Shard with desperate hunger. The artifact's power surged through him like liquid lightning, and Noah gasped as he felt his consciousness beginning to fragment under the assault.

The world exploded into light.

When Noah's vision cleared, he found himself standing in a completely white plane. It felt 2D, in a way that he couldn’t explain.

Beside him, Vion stood in her human form, her eyes wide with wonder and confusion.

"Where are we?" she asked, her voice echoing strangely in the ethereal space.

Perhaps Noah should have been more put off by the fact Vion didn’t seem at all surprised he was here—but it felt right. Natural. Like it was only fair and right and natural they both knew what this space was and why they were here.

"I think," Noah said slowly, "we're inside the Shard itself.”

As if in response to his answer, the space around them began to shift and solidify. No longer were they in the white plane. Instead, they found themselves standing in a vast chamber carved from grey crystal—making the chamber look like a cave, but infinitely more elegant. The walls rose impossibly high, their surfaces covered in intricate carvings of symbols that Noah could not comprehend, no matter how hard he tried. The symbols seemed to move and shift when not observed directly, but there was one thing he could instinctively tell.

These symbols told stories of creation and destruction, of the cycles that had repeated since the dawn of time, of mysteries that only the gods and the dragons knew.

Massive crustal pillars supported a ceiling that had a circular opening to a sky filled with aurora-colored clouds. Dragons soared through those clouds above, their forms magnificent and terrible, each one making his very soul shake as he looked at them.

The chamber itself was arranged in concentric circles, with tiers of seating that could accommodate hundreds of very large beings. At the center stood an extremely large dais made from a single piece of black crystal, its surface so perfectly smooth it seemed like a mirror.

As the vision solidified around them, Noah and Vion gasped. Dragons began appearing within the chamber, like the vision was loading them in, seated in their respective circles. They were of every color imaginable, looking so infinitely similar in form yet so different, but what all of them had in common was their sheer aura.

But even their auras were miniscule compared to the dragon at the center of the gathering, an ancient dragon who practically towered to the ceiling, his very presence seeming to bend reality around him. Quazrithril would have seemed like a child, both in terms of power and size, in front of this dragon. Hell, maybe even Zax would be a child, in front of all of these dragons.

The ancient dragon raised one massive claw for silence, and the room quietened down. It was only then did Noah realize the dragons—in the background—had been conversing, and that was what the low rumbles and vibrations were.

His universal language comprehension seemed to finally kick in when the ancient dragon began speaking.