Tucked amongst snow and ice and a hungry quiet that swallowed sounds then spat them out like a warning roar, the Moonplumes flourished, growing in number, strength, and brilliance.
Only those as unhinged as Clode or bearing enough power to protect themselves would attempt to steal a Moonplume egg …
Most failed, consumed by the fearsome, thrashing beasts or the hostile land.
Some succeeded—a celebrated few who used the dragons to wage wars for sprouting kingdoms.
But as castles grew taller than mountains, and as kings and queens decorated their crowns with bigger, sparklier jewels, so too did folk learn how to shed dragon blood.
For many Moonplumes, Moltenmaws, and Sabersythes … their eternal lives were slashed.
The Creators did not expect their beloved beasts to sail skyward upon their end. For many of them to plant themselves just beyond gravity’s grip, curl into balls and calcify, littering the sky with tombstones.
With moons.
They certainly did not expect those moons to fall not long after they found their lofty perch. For them to collide with the world in a clash of splintering doom that threatened to devastate everything that had come to be.
It took seven moonfalls before Clode, Rayne, Ignos, and Bulder realized Caelis was to blame. That his empty space which yearned to be filled was strong enough to displace a dragon from its resting place and rip it from the sky.
It took them yet another moonfall to devise a plan to save the world they loved so much.
Wielding empty promises and faithless vows, they lured Caelis into their trap and captured him.
Subdued him.
They sang their whipping, burning, breaking songs, mincing Caelis’s essence into pieces small enough to trap in a cage of ebony crystal no larger than a pip, henceforth known as the Aether Stone. Threads of his silver cloak tore free as he thrashed and fought, but the other Creators did not bother to round up the scraps, leaving them to tether to both poles of the world. A luminous aurora that spun around the globe, giving folk something to track their daes and slumbertime.
Caelis himself was set within a sterling diadem embellished with a collection of runes that bore malicious strength. Enough to keep him trapped within the stone for eternity, so long as the runes had something to feed on.
A guardian.
A mighty fae warrior known for his strength and wisdom was bestowed a gift from the Creators themselves: power immense enough that he was able to host the Aether Stone upon his brow and keep Caelis contained. A gift that passed down his familial line like skipping stones.
Many aurora cycles passed, and more moons littered the sky …
Stayed there.
Peace eventually reigned, despite a slew of tragedies and ill-timed deaths that swallowed the Aether Stone’s catastrophic origin, its very meaning for existence becoming a scrambled myth passed around campfires or sung to babes to hush their fussing cries.
Until one aurora rise, for the first time in more than five million phases …
Another moon fell.
5,000,165 phases After Stone
Icurl my shoulders forward, crumbling my posture into something that appears trodden.
Scared.
Rounding a corner, I step onto the stairwell’s bottom landing, chased by a parchment lark that flutters so close I’m surprised it doesn’t nudge at me to pluck it from the air.
As I twirl the thin iron ring on my middle finger, my gaze climbs the heavily armored guard blocking the gloomy tunnel ahead—arms crossed, his shaved head almost brushing the curved ceiling, a flock of parchment larks nuzzling the door at his back. He’s twice my size, boasting a scowl that appears to have permanently dented his face.
His disapproving leer comes to rest on the nick sliced into my left ear, up near the tapered tip. Like somebody with a tiny mouth bit a chunk from the outer shell.
My clip.
“No token, no entry,” he grinds out, immediately dismissing me as a lesser. A null. Someone who doesn’t hear any of the four elemental songs.
I reach into my pocket, retrieving the stone token embossed on both sides with the prestigious club’s insignia—a maw of stalactites biting in from all angles. Forging the slightest tremble, I hand it over, feeling the male’s probing perusal cut me up and down as he flips the token, his blue armor clanking with the motion.
I’m curious to know why he lets the larks flock the door rather than allow them straight in, but Raeve is the outspoken one, and I’m not Raeve right now.
“I’m Kemori Daphidone,” I say, tone soft and submissive. “Traveling bard.”
“From where?”
“Orig.”
A wall settlement I’ve never been to, not that it’ll stop me from rattling on about it if he asks for specifics.