Moonlight

Garnathor tore off the final piece of the vault’s wall with his bare claws. Rock broke into rubble at his feet as he slithered inside the dark, massive room. A brilliant light suddenly shone upon him, and tendrils of arcane energy descended from the ceiling, wrapping around his neck and wings. In his desperation, he had forgotten about the security measures. Writings appeared across the walls, and a thousand spells were cast at the same time, from power words to antimagic enchantments. Garnathor endured his own sorcery, one spell at a time, until the runes were depleted, and the brilliant tendrils of abjuration unmade themselves against his legendary scales. Like waves crashing on a rock, the countermeasures of his vault were not designed to detain a Dragon. 

It was somewhat sobering to know that, even though he had spent thousands of years learning sorcery, his innate, divine power was still stronger than any spell he could conjure. The vault laid in ruins, every rune and binding enchantment broken. He would mend them later. There was no time. He shifted through the contents of his hoard, letting coins and gems and legendary artifacts crash against the walls as he desperately reached for a single treasure chest, buried under a mountain of gold. He wrapped his enormous claws around the container, forcing it open and breaking the mimic’s jaws in the process.

“Oh, right” he thought. “The mimic. To protect the Phial.” Garnathor stopped for a moment. The creature had died instantly, its blood splattered across the brilliant hoard of golden coins. No matter. He would find another. Reaching inside the creature’s stomach, Garnathor ripped the contents out in one quick pull, letting the weapons and amulets stored inside scatter to the floor. A prismatic glow caught his eye, and in a moment, he wrapped his rapturous claws around a pristine-looking glass phial, tiny in his gigantic hands. The dragon let out a breath of relief, flames of black and red bursting from his mouth as he carefully opened his palms. The small item seemed innocuous at first glance, only a faint glimmer of light coming from the liquid inside garnering any attention, yet to the dragon, that phial was worth more than his entire castle, hoard and all. He shuddered, his entire body trembling with anticipation.

 

He had to do this right.

 

Breathing out, he forced himself to transform. His gargantuan body slowly began to shrink, black and gold scales turning into a fitting attire around a tall, broad humanoid shape. Long, black hair sprouted like growing vines from his head, reaching the floor of the dusty vault in less than a second. He did not care for his transformation, nor for his appearance in such circumstances. He only wished to have smaller hands, to properly deal with such an item. Cursed elves. Making everything so delicate. In the Age of the Gods, the phial would have been created from unbreakable arcanite. Even the weakest of Xildur could shatter a magical item by mistake, if they weren’t careful. 

His form coalesced around the phial, in his now appropriately sized hands. His golden eyes were the only thing that did not change, always shining the same light, regardless of the shape he took. With shaking hands, he undid the meticulously crafted lid, and without wasting a second, he chugged the entire phial. The liquid burned down his throat like alcohol would a human’s. 

 

The effect was immediate. Garnathor fell to the ground, his long raven hair following his descent, flowing like water behind him, as if suspended by an ever-present wind. He felt his heart slowly return to normal, his mind becoming dulled by the prismatic water. Around him, the spoils of a thousand battles felt like nothing compared to the soothing of his soul. The Thread of Twilight stopped trashing against his chest. 

A tear fell from the dragon’s golden eye, rolling across his cheek and down his neck. His humanoid form recoiled on itself beneath a bed of moving coins. He shuddered, hugging his chest with both arms, trying to make himself as small as possible inside the massive vault. The memory of his father loomed over the horizon, yet it did not beckon. Its back was turned. Always. 

“Why, father?” he thought. “Why wound me so?”

He stayed there for a while, feeling the elixir take effect. That was one of the worst episodes he had endured in weeks. They were getting worse. The effects of the Thread of Twilight were bearing down on his soul, slowly but surely corroding his goodwill and poisoning his judgment. Yet, it would never kill him. That was not the way of Nyx. It would corrupt, much like other chaotic Threads, until nothing of Garnathor would remain, but his ruthlessness. 

The Gods were made to bear such burdens. The Meratar. The Xildur. His father and mother. Not him. Not his brothers. Certainly not mortals, no. Now, they were all dead. And as much as Garnathor hated to say it, he was no Xildur. He was a dragon, a mismatch of chaos and order, born of the political union of two warring pantheons. How long could he last? 

Alone, among his legendary hoard, he felt a familiar desolation. What did any of it mean? What was he fighting so hard for? Why did he endure, when so many others did not? The Gods were dead. He should have died with them.

 

Pain without reason is torture. Did he have a reason? Did he?

 

A dark whisper began to slither inside Garnathor’s broken mind. His father had once

been charged with the protection of the entire cosmos. He was Ylwe. He was Marduk. He was the Overgod, Ruler of the Skies, leader of the United Pantheon. And he was murdered. He died a martyr, leading to a terrible crusade in his name that all but ended an entire race of immortals. 

“Perhaps, if we didn’t kill them all, they could have saved us. They were made to inherit divinity. They were made to bear this burden” he thought, his body coiling on itself into a position fit more for a lizard than a human.

“So why, father? Why did you choose Mortals? Over Meratar? Over Xildur? Over your own children? Why did you start a war that would wipe us all out?”

Garnathor could not stop himself from sobbing. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to disappear. The vault had turned dark, spellrunes depleted. A fickle glow, suffocated by all sides, much like the Universe itself. The Thread of Twilight, however, was quite content in the shadows. In the dying of the light. It rejoiced inside him like a malicious cat, scratching and biting at Garnathor’s soul. His darkness extended far beyond his castle, falling upon the land like a curse. For Garnathor, it was never daytime, no matter where he went. He could fly into a star, and surely enough, the Thread would snuff it out forever, beckoning an age of eternal Twilight for all who once basked in that radiance. 

He had come to hate the dark. It made him think of the end. Of Eternity. Of a howling void beyond the stars. It made him think of the War, of his mother, and of the death of his brothers and sisters. The Enemy had won the moment his father denied the Meratar kings their rightful inheritance and was slain in turn. Ruler of the Gods, Protector of the Universe, Father of the Skies… and he chose mortalkind. 

“Garnathor?” a fair voice echoed from the darkness. “Garnathor, are you okay?” 

The dragon shuddered. Shame overwhelmed him. He did not want to be seen like this. 

“Did I wake you?” His voice, rough and weak, seemed distant to him. He quite disliked transforming. It was strange to speak with a human’s voice. Harder. They had perhaps a third of a dragon’s vocal range.

“You made some noise,” the woman replied. He had destroyed at least three chambers and shook the very foundations of the castle. 

“Are you alright?” she insisted. 

Garnathor shifted and transformed, his shape slowly expanding into that of dragon once more. He felt the Thread of Twilight rattle inside his chest. If it weren’t for the Phial, it would have lashed out at the Princess. It wanted to bring night to the entire world. It could not bear the fact that Garnathor was sheltering a servant of the pearly moon. The black dragon moved with lethargy, his body fighting to keep itself upright. Everything hurt. Perhaps the hundreds of spells he endured did have some adverse effect on his constitution. Regardless, shame, and its counterpart, pride, were a very effective motivator. He would not be seen as a helpless puppy. Not in front of his guest.

“I am fine. The Thread… it wishes to break free.” His tone made it sound like an impossibility, but in truth, it almost had.

 

Garnathor slowly walked through his hoard. A lunar light pierced through the darkness of the vault, coming from the hole in the wall the dragon had left in his wake. He slithered towards it. Always towards the light. A humanoid figure awaited him on the other side. The Thread of Twilight trashed around once more, but the effects of the Phial were powerful. It would not bother Garnathor for a little while. How much “a little while” meant depended on the black dragon’s disposition–and of course, his mood. 

“That is a relief. I was worried about you. I told you to keep the Tears of the Moon closer. In your chamber, at least.” 

Wielding a staff of brilliant moonlight, Elizabeth waited patiently for the monstrous beast to slither from the mountains of treasure. She was dressed in a white sleeping gown, her tall and gaunt frame topped by a bun of curled silver hair. Her black skin contrasted greatly with her beautiful cobalt eyes, and the light of her staff shone like a mirage atop her exposed collarbone. A platinum circlet was tied around her forehead, an opal shining at its center. Elizabeth was rarely seen without it.

“I finished that one a couple of nights ago” Garnathor’s deep voice bellowed from inside the vault. He had dragged himself from his resting place with great effort, his long neck reaching towards the light. His golden eyes seemed to grow brighter under the warm embrace of the moon. Elizabeth smiled at him, gracefully reaching her hand out. She knew the dragon was too proud to ask. 

Garnathor rested his snout through the opening in the wall, within reach of the Princess’s outstretched palm. Her hand touched his long, monstrous jaw, and Garnathor felt immediate relief. Soothing magic flowed from Elizabeth unto the ailing dragon. The Princess pursed her lips. 

“Didn’t you have one in the main hall?” 

“That one I took… sometime last week” he seemed unsure. 

“And the one in my tower?”

“I didn’t want to bother you.” 

“You didn’t want to bother me?” Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile.

 “I didn’t want to bother you” the dragon repeated, eyes closed, his grave voice barely a whisper. 

“You do realize this is your castle, do you not?” 

The dragon huffed, black smoke escaping from his snout. “It is not. It belonged to Queen Catherine, who used it as a garrison to defend against Yungari incursions from the East. After her death…” 

“…It was abandoned and forgotten,” continued Elizabeth, in a singsong voice. “Because Harlan the Cruel did not want to maintain it. You told me about it two days ago, Garnathor.”

“Did I?” The Wielder of Twilight seemed genuinely surprised. His bad memory was not a topic of conversation between the two of them. Garnathor often refused to talk about the addling effects of the Thread on his mind–he much preferred to sweep it under the rug. Elizabeth didn’t bring it up, either. Her social intuition far surpassed that of the dragon. 

“You also seem to leave out the most important part of the story. You liberated the castle from the vampire that had made his lair within, and by settling in, inadvertently ended a thousand-year-old border dispute between Yungar and Iskendar.” 

“Of course I did” Garnathor grumbled, annoyed at the princess. His tone, however, remained tame. He would never raise his voice at her. “The entire mountain pass is submerged in shadow; I doubt many mortals would risk going near Catherine’s Hold. The only ones stupid enough are those glory-seeking knights that come to slay me.” He sounded more tired than he would’ve wanted. 

“Oh, darling, that is not what drives them, I can assure you” Elizabeth smiled, her hand pulling away from the dragon. She made a swooning gesture. “They come to rescue me!” 

“They come,” the dragon corrected, “for my hoard.”

“Well, they always seem so eager to save me from my terrible fate.” She took several steps back, making sure Garnathor had enough space to step out of the Vault, through the crumbling hole he made in his rushed entrance. She knew how much he hated changing forms. Her eyes wandered to the vault’s door, further down the hallway. The dragon had personally enchanted it with powerful sealing spells that required a couple minutes to open. He must not have had the time to think on the right combination of runes. 

Garnathor gracefully slithered out of the vault, his powerful limbs jumping through the broken-down wall without knocking on a single pebble. Despite his gargantuan size, the dragon was as agile as a serpent. 

“Speaking of knights and heroes… the purple cavalier should be arriving this afternoon.” Elizabeth spoke softly, walking side by side with the monstrous dragon. Together, they began to ascend the stairs to the vault room, which Garnathor had almost destroyed in his haste to get to the Tears of the Moon. 

“Wasn’t he due for another three or four days?” the dragon sighed, exhausted.

“He was! That’s the interesting part. It seems the knight cleared our roadblocks quite easily. I’ve been watching him. He might even be here by midday!” Elizabeth was quite happy about it. Garnathor grunted. He did not share her enthusiasm. It was quite cute that the princess still referred to the times of day, even though the entire land around Catherine’s Hold was in a perpetual state of Twilight.

 

Garnathor hated dealing with the knights who came to, in their own words, liberate Catherine’s Hold and rescue its captive princess! Liars and thieves, these mortals were. Deceptive. Treacherous. They didn’t care for Elizabeth, nor for the Hold. They knew Garnathor had a mighty hoard, that was all. And if only they were forthright about their motivations, the dragon could find it in himself to respect them a little. 

And yet, Iskendarian narratives always had to be so nauseatingly noble and righteous, veiled in religious purpose and tales of heroism, when in truth, they were nothing but a scant cover for a much more sinful goal.

Garnathor had occupied Catherine’s Hold for around three centuries. In that time, he saw Iskendar mutate from a religious and inquisitorial state of surveillance and persecution to a corrupt aristocracy–a cesspool of lies, slander, politicking, and murder. The nobles continued to preach the religious values of old, while underhandedly furthering their own selfish agendas. The current monarch, Jeremiah II, was old and frail, and could not keep the noble houses in line, which gave them free reign to pursue their crooked goals. The last ten years had been the worst, as far as Garnathor was concerned. Wars were fought for profit, and glory and prestige were the greatest currency of them all.

All of this to say, most so-called “knights” that rode to the mountain pass to liberate Catherine’s Hold were glory-seeking second sons, corrupt noblemen, or unlucky bastards, sent to die by their house in some elaborate ploy. The fact that Garnathor quickly dispatched any and all intruders didn’t deter these unwanted visitors in the slightest–on the contrary, over the years, it spurred more and more challengers, as the spoils of a thousand noble knights were added to Garnathor’s storied hoard.

 

Since Elizabeth had settled in, about four years ago, Garnathor had changed his approach to these invasive meddlers. With the help of the Princess’s magic, he could follow the knight’s movements across his twilight realm, and instead of slaying them, he tried to… scare them off. Many did not relent, ready to die instead of turning tail. Those were probably the ones that could not return to Iskendar empty handed, or else they would suffer a fate worse than death: dishonor. The new approach, however, was much more effective; when confronted with mortality, many chose to desert the wicked kingdom of Iskendar. It was quite convenient for everyone involved: the Knights were presumed dead, instead of missing, and did not have to worry about their fake honor; and Garnathor did not have to deal with yet another violent ghost haunting his halls.

The dragon would never admit it, but Elizabeth’s mercy had changed him. Even after thousands of years, an old dog could still learn new tricks. 

And of course, the tales surrounding Catherine’s Hold took a turn for the fantastical when rumors of the beautiful white-haired princess began spreading to the neighboring towns. A new, heroically appropriate pretext to march towards the castle. Not two months after she arrived, an entire army marched into the Domain of Twilight, led by a dim-witted nobleman who let himself be goaded into attempting an impossible task. Garnathor had no trouble dispersing the fearful mortals. Meanwhile, the nobleman’s enemies took over his land and estate, and even though he came back alive, he was given a sentence for cowardice, and his head rolled off his shoulders soon after.

 

 The dragon could not understand the stupidity of mortals. For three-hundred years–which in human time meant more than a dozen generations–the Iskendarians had tried to claim his hoard, and for three-hundred years, they had failed. They always believed themselves different than their forebears. What foolish pride.

Mortals truly believed they mattered in the grand scheme of things. In reality, even the grandest among them were forgotten a couple hundred years after their passing. But every mortal believes themselves a Theophrastus, a Catherine the Arcane, or more commonly, an Atizai the Green. They lived as if they were immortals. As if their deeds would echo through eternity like the tales of the Gods. Such hubris. Such ego. 

Such… courage.

 

Garnathor fixed his golden gaze on his minute companion. The Princess had faith in mortalkind. Profound, unshaking faith. She always urged him not to discard them. He had to admit, sometimes, he saw it in their eyes. That determination. That fire. That defiance. Small, inconsequential humans, ready to die at the feet of one of the most powerful dragons in existence, only for a promise. To attempt the impossible.

How much could they achieve? Under the flawed and corrupt system of Iskendar, some of these knights were able to summon such resolve as to stare down a dragon. How far could they go, if properly groomed? 

Garnathor felt a pain in his chest. The Thread of Twilight did not approve. The dragon let out a groan.

 

“We best prepare for our guest, Elizabeth.”