Call of the Dragon

The Lie

"Well...looks like Islwyn finally got his revenge. I hope he's happy..." Titan was muttering to himself as Sol got us back down to the ground. His fur waved majestically in the breeze created by the flapping of mechscale wings. He often turned his head to aggressively smirk at the dead dragon.

We landed on a platform that had almost everyone on it by now. Kuttz and Zack were still gone.

Kuttz had said something over the comm, something about how he's going to check out the giant dragons' body, for research of course.

I could see the bright blue glow of Asuran tech up at the summit of the large tree remains. That was Kuttz and the weird testing kit he always had with him. I had to admit that I wanted to go see what Kuttz was doing and what his results were.

I nervously walked over to Sol. "Hey, uh, will you let me borrow your mechscale? I wanna go check on Kuttz and see what he's up to up there." Sol looked away from Titan, who he had been talking to, and smiled at me, revealing pointy teeth. Like a shark's teeth.

"Of course! Just make sure that when you get back you tell me what he's up to because I wanna know too." He stepped aside to let me mount the large mechanical beast. I hopped up onto the saddle and lifted off. It was easier than it looked to ride around in the sky with a mechanical dragon.

I made my way up to the ledge near the summit, where Kuttz was. I found Kuttz hunched over a small golem. The golem had an interface that Kuttz was messing with.

Zack was wandering around, looking at plants, picking up broken pieces of tree and throwing them, normal Zack stuff honestly.

"Find anything interesting?" Kuttz jumped a bit at the sound of my voice behind him. He sighed and lowered his head, then he turned around to look me in the eyes.

"Well...more like concerning...See this?" He motioned to the golem with his left hand and it floated over to him. He pointed to a map and a chart. On the map, shown a giant mark. What it meant, however, I was clueless. The chart had a large spike in the middle of it, but the spike never went down.

"What does that mean?" I looked away from the golems interface and crouched down to match Kuttz's height. He liked it when I did this, so did Sol. Other Asura often frown upon it, however.

"It means Mordremoth isn't dead. What we killed was a large part of him, but this isn't really his domain. I...I think his domain isn't on the physical plane." As he paused, Kuttz looked up from his golem. "But that hardly matters. We have to go find Trahearne. If Mordremoth isn't dead then he still has Trahearne. We have to save him. The Commander is almost nothing without that man. We have to hurry."

I nodded at him and ran over to Zack, who was still inspecting the plant life. "We have to go. Mordremoth isn't dead." Zack stared at me in shock for a second before he snapped out of it and ran to the mechscales.

Kuttz got on his, but Zack went with me this time. "Why not go with Kuttz?"

"That little guy drives like a madman. He's like Canach, he likes bombs and chaos, I'll never let him drive me anywhere ever again." He let out a low chuckle before grabbing onto the mechscales saddle.

"That's fair." I lifted off and started gliding down to the platform. It was a smooth ride down, Zack didn't have to grab onto me in fear of falling off like I had done to Titan and Sol a few times when I was riding with them.

Once we landed and I was about to tell everyone what Kuttz found up there, something shook the ground. It was violent and fast. No sounds other than the shaking of rocks. Zack had been trying to get off the mechscale when it happened, it must have scared him because he grabbed onto me for dear life.

After the earthquake-like shaking was over, and Zack let go of me and calmed himself down, I was able to tell our friends what happened.

"Mordremoth isn't dead. I assume that's what that was. What we killed wasn't him, but it was a large part of him. His mouth, I assume. Just like we did with Zhaitan, we have to hit Mordremoth where it hurts. Which is probably his mind."

Soul had been talking to Alice, but when he heard this he abandoned their conversation to run up to me. "What? You mean we have to find Trahearne, but we also still have to kill that damn dragon?" I sullenly nodded at him and he fixed his posture and clenched his fists. "Fine. Let's go get him."

Everyone was totally silent as I mounted my mechscale again. Sol let me have it, and everyone got their own. He said he didn't tell us because he knew we would all want to be on one during the fight and that that "simply wouldn't work."

I had Alwyn with me. He told me he was scared to fly one and that I knew how to, so he joined me. He's always kinda timid, but the pressure of war with an Elder Dragon was getting to him by now.

Everyone spread out across the area to search for where Mordremoth really was. It took ten minutes for Soul to make an announcement over the comm.

"I believe I found what we're looking for. Can I get someone over here? Alice? Rhys? Someone?" I looked around for him, I couldn't see him. Regardless, I responded.

"On my way, Soul." I changed channels so I was only talking to him. "Where are you?" He didn't respond, instead, he flew into the air. His skyscale isn't like ours. It's not a mechscale, but it can't be corrupted by Mordremoth because it's Exalted magic. It's bright, blinding red. A great symbol of the Commander. A great tool to use to see him.

I spotted him by the base of the gigantic tree remains. I started racing over to him. When I got to him he started going down. He landed on a ledge with a cave-looking thing. There was a path that led from the border of the normal jungle, curved around the outer edge of the dragon arena, and ended at this ledge.

Soul jumped down from his Exalted skyscale and walked over to the cave entrance. He walked in a ways before coming out. "I did find it. Let's go. We have to save Trahearne."

He switched channels on his comm and called out to everyone. "I found it! Everyone report to me. I'm on a ledge in a southern corner, to the right of the giant tree. Tangled." He added the last part because it's a code we have.

Giving a set of directions and then saying "Tangled", "Auric", "Dragons", "Verdant", or "Hollow" gives the direction you should be facing when you determine which left or right to use. In this case, Tangled means you should be facing the Tangled Depths when you look at the right side of the giant tree, thus leading you to the correct side of the tree.

Soon enough, everyone was there. Once the last of the Vigil soldiers made it down the path, Soul shushed everyone and started to lead us into the cave. After a minute of walking, we made it to a larger cavern.

Continuing down the path we made it to a spot where there was a...lake of vines. We turned the corner and saw someone being held over the lake of wriggling vines below. It was Trahearne. But something was off about him. Everyone stopped in their tracks, all of us about to cry as we each began to understand what we were seeing.

I ignored everyone stopping and pushed my body forward despite it not wanting to move. I inched closer and closer to him until I could clearly see what was wrong. Sometimes I almost wish I hadn't.

He was much larger than he should have been. His skin was brown and woody. His face was warped and sullen. The lower half of his body was encased in what looked like the bottom half of a bug, but I could tell it was a cocoon. He shouldn't have been able to talk, but he was able to stutter his way through one word.

"R...Rh...Rhys..."

I fell to my knees. I couldn't find words to give him. I could feel tears begin to trail down my cheeks. I hung my head and tried to keep it together. I couldn't, even with all these troops watching.

Marshal Trahearne was dying.