Pandora's Box

Chapter 14: Part I

The tines of the Drake-king's antlers gleamed in the collective aura of magic shared with Pandora. Voices of wizards and witches and tricksters of centuries long past ricocheted inside the princess's skull and the dry air thrummed with power.

Such power, Pandora thought. It's like being struck by a million bolts of lightning and wanting more.

"There's more, my daughter," the Drake-beast said. "So much more." He drifted behind the princess and grasped her shoulders gently as father would his daughter.

"And I can show you all of it. The ravages of death are not all the Blight has to offer. There is a whole world of timeless decay and emptiness to explore."

Pandora shuddered as the Drake-beast's focus of will coursed through his taloned hands and seeped into her shoulders. At once she could see it, see the future the Drake-beast promised.

The vision flourished into a final scene. And Pandora recognized it instantly from her studies. The end of all things. The last day of the waking world.

The Cataclysm...

Her mind's eye flashed through countless kingdoms, ones she knew full of life and song now blackened to ash. Castles and homesteads and hovels crumbled to dust. Oceans dried to dust. Endless fields covered in the rotting remains of mankind and beasts alike. Tattered flags clung to splintered spears while carrion birds circled the wretched the mess. The piercing cries of dying men grasping at their very lives and the wails of a legion's worth of orphans filled a smoke-streaked sky.

"It's beautiful," Pandora said, softly.

The ziggurat rumbled below. Cracks formed around Kasaadi's tombstone. The Drake-beast swept his arm as though he shared in Pandora's vision. "There's more, so much more, my daughter." He grasped the thin bones of Pandora's left hand and aimed its mottled digits at the crystal slab below.

"Draw from your power's well. Unleash the Blight within your heart and see the Dawn Splitter rise under a mantle of decay."

Pandora's mind struggled mightily, but the marshalled voices of countless Blighted souls battered and burned her mental shields. All of the training, the endless hours of study and bleary-eyed mornings, and the wall against the psychic intrusion was already faltering. Summoning the Blight had bought her time, but Pandora needed a solution.

A weapon.

And then inspiration flashed. Pandora freed her thoughts of the Drake-beast's vision of the Cataclysm and summoned a gust of stale, dead wind to carry her down to Kasaadi's tomb. The remaining dozen terracotta soldiers gave a hasty spin, and snapped to fierce attention, offering their weapons in stark salute to the young princess. Pandora nodded and they stood at ease.

Pandora approached the crystal tombstone, delicately tracing a few of the clay-formed guardians along the way. Behind her, the Drake-beast touched down and followed in her footsteps. His heavy footsteps thundered as he trailed behind. Pandora looked over her shoulder at the towering figure. The Drake-beast's massive arms were folded over his chest and she thought a trace of the same bony, macabre smile she had seen earlier. But she saw something else as well.

She had found her weapon...