Dragon Tale 10 – Fall
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I walked along that beach for only a short time before Salamander’s light guided me to a cave. A cave which proved to be the entrance to a much larger cavern. The walls were lined with thick roots than seemed to almost glow with a pale, green-white light. There was a constant breeze, warm and damp, always flowing out of the tunnel’s depths and towards the entrance.

Declare yourself, all who enter my domain; for what reason do you seek me?

The voice seemed large without being booming. It carried on the wind from deeper within the cave, echoing in a way that made it stronger without distorting the message. The voice itself was faintly feminine and melodic despite its depth.

“Great Nidhogg,” Salamander replied, sounding small as it yelled into the wind. “I am a Salamander of Midgar. I have brought the Valkyrie Eisa, you-”

I shook the lantern violently. “I am Anna of no land! What once was my home is my home no longer! I have come here for answers, Nidhogg, and if need be I have come here to avenge myself upon you!”

I stood there for a minute, expecting a reply. The wind howled through the cave just as hard as before. If there was any answer, I didn’t hear it. I rattled Salamander one last time for good measure, then continued deeper into the cavern.

The ground was on a gentle downward slope and unnaturally smooth. It was lined with a thin layer of silt and sand, not enough to compromise my footing, but enough to notice, and it seemed undisturbed but for the footprints I left behind. Perhaps the wind, with time, served to erase any sign of passage, but I wondered whether it would be enough. Then again, it would hardly be the largest oddity in this land of darkness.

You walk the path of the lost. Your foot leaves no marking to retrace. You have severed all connections to your history; your qualification wavers on a precipice. Yet you continue on.

I stopped for a moment to check behind myself. I could still see the footprints I had left in the silt. I raised Salamander to my face. “What does Nidhogg mean by ‘qualification’?” The spirit was not prompt in answering. Only when I was about to give its cage another shake did it speak up.

“Your qualification as a Hero. Nidhogg never told us exactly what that means, but she has always been clear that we could only make Valkyries of humans who possessed it. You must have had it, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to become a Valkyrie in the first place.”

“Had. Meaning that I don’t have it anymore?”

“I don’t think it’s a requirement that a Valkyrie retains that qualification, no. Since I don’t know what exactly the qualification is, I can’t tell you whether you still have it.”

I lowered the spirit back to my side.

“Nidhogg!” I yelled. “I’ll answer the question that you didn’t ask. Of course I continue forward! With no trail behind me, I can only walk forward! With no history to return to, I can only trek towards the future!”

The walls seemed to grow further apart as I ventured deeper still. The caverns had gentle turns and twists to them that made it hard to keep track, but where I could have laid on my belly and touched both walls before, now it would take two of me to do so. Where I could have stretched and touched the roof with my palm, now I would struggle to reach it with the tip of my spear. The roots, also, seemed to glow with more intensity. There were fewer now at a glance, but the ones that persisted were there were larger as well.

Why did Salamander lead you here?

The light from Salamander’s lantern dropped to barely more than a ember.

“I trapped Salamander and force the spirit to bring me here! I sought it for answers. In a fit of madness I blamed it for my sorrows and when I tried to make it claim responsibility, it tried to kill me!”

The wind stopped. I listened and heard only silence, before continuing my rant.

“It named you, Nidhogg, as the true mastermind behind its actions, even as it worried about how to best deliver me to you.”

Just as suddenly as it had stopped, the wind resumed again. Only now, it drew deeper into the cave instead of blowing outward. The outside air felt cooler and the wind grew stronger and stronger until it was a virtual gale that whistled through the cavern corridors.

It whipped around me but did not seem to penetrate my mantle, except for the effect it had on Salamander’s lantern. The lantern hung at a sharp angle as it was pulled along with the air. Odder still, it seemed to cast an aura of white-orange flames. The light drew outward from the lantern and followed the wind, creating a long tail in the air that stretched away from me, towards the cave’s deepest depths.

Salamander let out an screech, more panicked animal than intelligence. I held firmly onto the lantern, but I did little else to try and help the spirit. It seemed only fair that it would get its just rewards.

And then the spirit was gone. The lantern hung cold as the last of the orange aura left its embrace, the essence of Salamander rushing towards its master. The wind soon followed, the air returning once more to total stillness. I considered for a moment, then dropped the lantern as I continued walking forward. I didn’t need it any more.

The ground eventually leveled out, the silt turning more muddy as it did so. Still not quite enough to bog down one’s feet. Once level, I quickly reached an entrance of sorts; the passage opened into a huge cavern. I could scarcely make out the the roof for the steam that seemed to rise from the mud and I couldn’t be sure whether the far wall was a wall at all or only the point where my eyes failed to differentiate the spectacle of the steam from the glow of the roots and the reflection of the mud.

What I could make out clearly were the room’s two occupants. A sphere of orange flames and above it, a massive serpent. One of the dragon’s 4 arms was alone larger than me. It had dark gray scales that shimmered in tune in and out of the muddy floor. I couldn’t see the end of its tail at all and its body seemed to weave in and out of the ground countless times. Its head rested well above me with casual ease, looking down and ahead patiently, for me, with Salamander between us.

“This spirit is one that has failed to become a true demon. I’ve taken from it that which I once lent to it and it is much diminished. With neither my power nor yours to protect it, it will surely wither and die in the miasma of this land.”

I needed to consider only a moment before responding.

“I left the lantern in the cave when you took the spirit from me.”

The dragon let out a long breath of warm air. The room seemed to flood with pressure, the wind seeking a path out of the space.

“Then so be it.”

The serpent placed a claw over the orange sphere and pushed it into the mud. When it lifted back up, there was no sign of Salamander ever having been there.

“So. This is it. The big bad dragon that’s responsible for all the smaller dragons?”

Nidhogg growled. It was a sound that instantly made me second-guess what I had been saying. How I’d been saying it. The whole cave seemed to rumble with the noise.

“You misunderstand. I am responsible for the Valkyries of your world. I am not responsible for the rampaging dragonkin.”

“But...how!? You’re the biggest dragon of them all, are you not?! If not you then WHO!?”

Nidhogg moved. Her body shifted in and out of the ground as she repositioned herself higher into the air. From there, she cast out wings that I could not see before. They were eye-catching, morbid things, made of bone and bloated corpses. Thousands of bodies hanged from those wings, creating a membrane of flesh and death.

“What do you see before you, Anna?”

Hearing my name helped to focus me. The wings were simply unreal. Literally, they could not exist. Even a child could have seen that they were impossible. Yet here they were, plainly before my eyes in all their macabre glory.

“I am not a dragon of Midgar, Anna. I am a lord of Niflheim. A dragon, yes, but an Ettin too. Your world faced Ragnarok long ago. I know not who fought the battle, but I know the Gods abandoned it. The Dragons of your land run rampant because that is what the winners wanted of your world.”

“I don’t...but then why would you create the Valkyries?”

“I saw your abandoned world and I chose to help. I lend power to those who have the potential to become true heroes.”

Nidhogg released another long sigh. She did not seem to need to breath in, but could flood the air with seemingly endless currents of breath.

“Alas, my power is the power of a demon. An Ettin. It is corruptive and few have resisted it long enough to become true heroes. It is a cruel test to be sure, but all heroes face their trials, one way or another.”

I felt the hungry hole in my heart. “What about me?”

“Had you received proper mentorship, as Salamander was intended to provide, your path may have been different. Or it may not have been. What is clear is that you, too, will soon succumb to this place’s air. Only unlike Salamander, I don’t believe that you will perish.

For the first time in a long time, I felt the heat within that hole that was at my core. A passionate heat that contained anger, but wasn’t overwhelmed by it. I summoned my spear into my hand. I examined the fine gold detail where blade met shaft. “Then I’ll become like the Lightning Girl?”

“Perhaps. My one guarantee is that whatever your fate, you will not become the slave of a corrupted spirit, as befell her.”

I gripped tightly at the fire and I allowed my mantle to fully manifest. “I think I’d rather go down fighting.”

“So long as you are still a hero, that is your choice to make.”

I tapped into the hunger and wrapped the spear in hungry embers. I put the spear beneath me and vaulted into the air with a single fluid motion. I twirled it in both hands with an ease that seemed practiced until its shaft came to rest against my shoulder, point facing forwards, towards Nidhogg’s maw.  I called out an incoherent cry with a boom and threw the spear with all my might.

The spear was coated in embers and those in turn were cloaked with so much flame of such intensity that I lost sight of the spear entirely. Nidhogg let out a deafening roar and, blew back the fire with pure force. My vision went white as my field of view was filled with blinding flames that washed off of my body.

And I fought my final battle as a Valkyrie.

 

Thus ends both part three and Dragon Tale as a whole.

Let's talk about the former first, since it should be faster. Were I to re-write this part, I would put a lot more attention of Anna's travels searching for first Salamander and then Niflheim. I would also put a lot more emphasis on the changes she has experienced.

Frankly though, I'm not too interested in doing any of that. This story was a tragedy at its core and I...don't really want to write tragedies? I think that this work was important to me, in the sense that it taught me a lot about what I do and don't like when writing. I do sort of wish I had learned those lessons while I was writing it instead of waiting until after the fact, but hey, I got there eventually.

Now, to address the elephant in the room. This story is linked to The Land of Change, even though its tone and setting is, well, completely different. That's because it had been my intention for Niflheim to be a domain within Makai, for Nidhogg to be the Daimyo of that domain and for Anna to become a demon who lived there as a sort of retired hero. I don't even think that I went wrong to try and write out Anna's story; the story of a hero who fell and became a demon. But it probably shouldn't have been this story, given my intention to integrate it with the setting.

Ah well. Despite everything, I think Dragon Tale stands okay on its own, even if I do think it's one of my weaker works. At the very least I thought it was worthwhile and complete enough to repost here. That all being said, I hope you enjoyed it! And if not, well, I really have to question why you read it all?

Thanks for reading =)

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