Post by Harry on Aug 23, 2023 9:06:01 GMT
Following the events of Force of Nature
Written alongside the one and only Charlie
An Awakening
It takes a while for Matches to settle down after the events of the day, his mind is plagued with the sensation of Vulcanax taking over him. There was the briefest of moments where Matches attempted to fight back against the mighty dragon but he was not prepared for the sheer weight of its will. But part of him, something deep deep down resonated with the touch of this dragon and felt… Comfortable. And this was truly disturbing. Until the very early hours of the morning Matches tossed and turned in bed but eventually sleep took him. As he dreams he see landscapes burning in great fires set by rivers of lava, the air thick with black toxic smoke, the distant wailing cries of pain are muffled as flaming boulders crash into the earth around him and he watches as huge ravines slice through the earth swallowing the anything unfortunate enough to be standing above and in response huge gouts of flame burst from the ravines high into the sky. Matches looks around, this feels too real. Could this could actually be real?
Matches’ first instinct, looking upon this hellscape of destruction, the same instinct when he saw Vulcanax emerge, is simply to escape. He has only adventured a short few months, in very low stakes jobs, he has seen nothing like this before in his life and wants no part in it. He attempts to flee.
All sense of direction is gone the thick smoke covers all and the only light is from the distant burning remains of life, as Matches begin to run in a singular direction it doesn’t take long for him to become even more disoriented, with no landmarks he can’t tell if he is running in a straight line of just running in circles
As Matches runs through this hellscape he slowly begins to see bodies lying on the floor, they are burnt and covered in a layer of ash, whilst he doesn’t recognise who they were there is a nagging sensation that he recognises them.
But Matches is not the man he used to be, he has left a lot behind to keep running and keep himself safe, he is not about to stop now. He keeps running.
Matches keeps running and running, with no sunlight the passage of time is all but a mystery to Matches but his legs feel like they are on fire, if only he could run forever but will his body allow him to do it? The smoke is choking and unyielding, he continues to run forward.
As he continues to run he manages to catch himself as realises he is at the edge of a ravine, the smoke is so thick he is unable to make out the other side and looking down he cannot see the bottom, only the light of what he imagines is a river of molten lava. As he turns to retreat from where he can the smoke seems to gather around him becoming darker, thicker and heat from this smoke begins to free hotter as well. Matches stares back out over the ravine seeing no where else to run.
He gets frustrated, gritting his teeth and clenching his scaled hands into fists, the claws lightly piercing his skin. A thought comes to him, and he attempts to try and use his magic, his natural control of fire to dissipate some of the smoke. He claps his hands in front of him and then pulls them apart slowly as if to part a way out through the smoke.
As he claps the sound echoes further maybe more than what he was expecting, he watches as the smoke peels back revealing a huge mound of obsidian towering over him.
Matches’ frustration begins to make way for pure anger as the obsidian mound is revealed to him. This time he stands his ground and shouts. “Is this you? Bloody hell, just leave me be! I’m not the fella you’re looking for!”
As Matches shouts and stares at this mound of obsidian nothing seems to happen, as moments pass he starts to think perhaps that this simply is a mound of stone and nothing else. It’s at this moment when Matches is bathed in fiery light as a one singular enormous eye opens in front of him. As Matches looks straight into this eye he can feel it looking at him and also as if it is looking through him. After moments of this staring contest, Vulcanax’s gargantuan head begins to lift and Matches can feel the earth shake and give way as this Wyrm shifts it’s position to look directly at him. As the dragon opens its mouth to speak, Matches is hit by waves of heat that emanate from its core. “Little Herald, it is not me that is doing this. You brought me here, this is your dream, you summoned me, what is it you want”
Matches stares at the dragon in bewilderment, unable to run, closer than he's ever been, completely unavoidable. He sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose and relents. "I want to use the magic that.." He glances at Vulcanax. "Seemingly you have given me, to live a good life. I want to go on a job every month or so, make good gold, and lay low. That's it. I'm not trying to herald the destruction of the world, I'm trying to live here."
Vulcanax beings to let out a low growl and the earth that Matches stands on beings to rumble. “The power that I bestowed upon your ancestors was not meant to be used to allow you to have it easy. There is more to your fleeting mortal existence then such basic material obsessions, you sound like those lazy wyrmlings that Tiamat was always so proud of. And have I asked you to be a Herald of Destruction? No. I have not. You don’t even know what it means to be the Herald of an Archwyrm. Maybe if you stopped simply running away from your problems and faced them properly you’d realise the potential you have in yourself.” Vulcanax’s voice booms as he speaks, his anger clearly rising and the effect that it has on the landscape is clear as fire burns brighter, the rocks falling the sky impact harder and the ash in the sky begins to thicken once again.
“Hey you’re the one who asked Sunshine, I’m just being honest!” Matches, surprisingly, finds himself rising to Vulcanax’s anger and matching it with his own. He winces at the shaking earth and impacting rock but is compelled to keep arguing. “And how am I supposed to know what you want me to do, I didn’t know you existed until yesterday! All I’ve got to go off is your grand entrance destroying a valley and your page long list of names, one of which being ‘The Cataclysm that Breaks the World.’ So excuse me for making some assumptions. How about you start talking and tell me what you want?”
Vulcanax begins to raise his head at Matches’ response, as he does so Matches hears a deep inhalation from the dragon as the base of its neck starts to glow as if lit from within. This light flows up the dragon's throat but just as it reaches Vulcanax’s mouth, Matches hears a sound he might not have expected as the dragon lets out a booming laugh that echo across this dream hellscape. After a few moments the laugh dies back down again. “Good good so there is a fire within you! I was starting to get worried that my Herald was a coward and what a terrible waste that would have been. As for what I want, I want you to grow stronger, I want you to grow the ember of my power within you so you may be of use to me in the future. But those are conversations we may have in time. For now you have met the Herald of The Wyrm Queen, I want you to either help her in her mission to stop an ancient enemy from rising once again or get out of her way as no mistakes can be made in this venture. Do you understand?”
Matches stares up at Vulcanax, starting to get more of an understanding of how to behave in front of him. He takes a deep breath, runs his hand through his hair and replies. “I can’t make any promises about fighting an ancient enemy, sounds well above my pay grade.” He pauses for a moment, and remembers Orianna’s instant warmth, kindness and support after his ancestry was revealed. “I suppose I can see if she needs a hand though.. But how do I do the whole ‘getting stronger’ business? Didn’t this magic come from you? Can’t you make me stronger if that’s what you want? And on that subject why have I only started showing this stuff in the last few months eh? If you wanted a real bruiser of a herald you could’ve started me a bit earlier. I could’ve done with something like this a bit earlier.”
The dragon stares down at Matches in what he could interpret as a bit of respect. After a few moments pass Vulcanax takes in a deep breath and exhales a torrent of ash from his nostrils towards Matches. The ash and smoke completely surround Matches blocking his view of the dragon and of the hellscape they were standing in. The rush of wind from this overrides all other sounds and Matches finds himself once again disoriented and confused as to what is going on. The wind quickly begin to die down and the ash starts to peel away, though this time they reveal a different environment, a room some sort of sitting room with many interesting and beautiful looking obsidian sculptures dotted around, but what Matches is drawn too are the two armchairs that slightly face each other and towards the roaring fireplace adorned with an exquisitely carved obsidian surround. There are two small tables beside each chair. One side is a glass filled with some sort of whiskey-like drink and the other with an ashtray and cigar. But sitting in the other chair is a human figure, cigar already lit and glass in hand.
“I thought this is more comfortable and it makes it much easier for me to not actually step on you. But anyway as for how you get stronger, yes I could just make you stronger and cheat the system but I’d give it five minutes before you blow a crater in this city you find yourself in and take yourself out in the process, power is nothing if you don’t know how to use it, you get stronger by using magic. It’s like training a muscle the more you use it the more the muscle can deal with, the same applies to my spark in you. Keep putting yourself in situations where you need to use it, over time you’ll get better at it. And for why you are manifesting powers it wasn’t me that awoke what was laying dormant in you. I’ve been asleep for the past two centuries. I never sent out the call, it might have been the dragon fire you were bathed in. Instead of burning you alive the fire was absorbed by the slumbering power within taking in enough to leave you unharmed and preemptively bringing to the surface your birthright. Though it was one the fire of a red dragon, it was not hot enough to give you the kick start you wanted.”
Matches looks around as the scene changes, he blinks a couple times, adjusting, before he sits himself in the other chair and lights up his own cigar. He looks Vulcanax’s form up and down and raises an eyebrow curiously, then shrugs. “You know, if you had started with this set up we would’ve got here a lot quicker.” He listens to Vulcanax speak, nodding along and taking all of it in, waves of confusion, some sadness, and eventually understanding wash over him as he thinks. “Alright, alright. Well, I’m going to have to keep using my magic to keep bringing in the old bees and honey, so two birds with one stone there. And the rest of your terms sound.. workable. And you really don’t want me to ‘Herald’ any particular destruction? This deal’s starting to look better and better and I don’t trust that.”
Vulcanax rolls his eyes and takes a large draw from his cigar “You are really hung up on this Herald business aren’t you, it’s much simpler and infinitely more complex than what you think it is but I’ll be honest you probably don’t need to worry about it all that much for the time being, you and the Herald of the Wyrm Queen are the only ones currently awake and your responsibilities wouldn’t properly start until all nine return. And trust me or not I don’t really care but I want you to know this, now that my piece of nine is in this city that you find yourself taking a little cozy nap in, you are responsible for it’s safe keeping and should it fall into the wrong hands I will hold you personally responsible and a small fact my fire burns hotter then even the flames of the deepest pits of Nine Hells, do with that information what you will.”
Matches pauses for a moment, then lets out his own laugh. “There we are, now I’ve got the stakes!” He keeps laughing, which eventually fades into a deep sigh. “Alright boss, you’ve got me. I’ll.. Ask Orianna about whatever this mess is and see if I can help or if I should just stay out of it. Message received loud and clear.” He takes his own long drag of a cigar, enjoying it while he can.
Vulcanax joins in and also takes another draw of his cigar. “Good good I’m glad we managed to sort that all out. Oh and one last thing my piece of nine doesn’t predict natural disasters it causes them you might want to on that before those academy sorts poke around with it too much, but I think you’ve spent enough time here time to wake up.” Vulcanax’s eyes glow with fiery light as he releases the smoke from the cigar and it envelops the room, this time Matches starts to cough and splutter as his eyes begin to water and just as the smoke clears he realises that he has bolted upright in his room in the Three Headed Dragon, the first rays of dawn pushing their way through the blinds on the window. As he being to take this sight in for a while he looks down at his arms and notices a ever so slight change, it’s almost as if the black colour that was on the edges of he’s scales has grown slightly replacing a bit of the red and the claws on his figures are definitely more obsidian like in nature though just as dangerous.
Continued in Inconceivable Inheritance