Alijah’s seething anger was white hot, demanding he use his voice. “How could they do this?” he growled, storming towards the main doors.
A flick of the wrist and a touch of magic would have been sufficient to open the doors, but the half-elf threw his hand at them and cast a far more powerful spell. The doors were instantly ripped from their hinges and launched onto the frozen steps that had been carved into the plateau. A blasting wind slammed into the king, dragging his cloak out and up as high as his neck.
Alijah’s hair whipped about his face as he turned to look upon his companion, whose black scales blended in with The Bastion.
The dragon dropped down from his perch with a ground-shaking quake and turned his horned head on Alijah, his purple eyes boring into him. You were to do what I could not! Malliath fumed.
Alijah’s mind split open and the ancient dragon poured his rage inside, dropping the king to his knees in agony. Millennia of images, sounds, and experiences bombarded his smaller mind. Malliath made him relive the worst parts of his existence, ensuring that Alijah felt every spell and shard of steel that had pierced his scales and hide. Through it all, the king screamed, his pain spreading across The Vrost Mountains.
Your hands were to open the pages I could not, Malliath continued, his voice cutting through it all. Magic has ever been at the fingertips of you mud-walkers and your precious books! It’s not fair! I am magic incarnate! I am as old as the mountains, my mind as deep as the oceans. Yet your kind has lorded over the realm with absolute power. You were a gift. You were to be my hands, to delve into the magic hidden from me. Malliath stalked across the plateau and loomed over Alijah. You have failed me.
Alijah wanted to look away from those terrible eyes, from the judgment, but he couldn’t move. His body was trapped in the thrall of Malliath’s memories. They continued to fill him up, taking him back to countless wars throughout history.
Alijah relived a moment from thousands of years past, when a Jainus mage had struck the dragon with a spell so wicked it flayed one of his back legs. From there, he was transported to a brawl between Malliath and a rogue dragon, the two fighting for territory in a time before the great Riders. The rogue dragon clubbed him around the face with a tail of spikes. The damage done was agonising and it took most of the next year to recover his left eye.
Taking the half-elf back even further, Malliath recalled his part in the fight against the last of the Leviathans as the dragons chased it into The Hox. Malliath, a young dragon at the time, had made the mistake of landing on the behemoth’s black hide, a surface that bubbled and oozed with a toxic acid. There had been no cure, only pain for weeks and weeks. Alijah lived every day of it in seconds.
Then there were the mage knights of Atilan, who brought the dragon down with Crissalith and harvested more than half of his scales before Garganafan intervened, saving his life. Malliath made sure Alijah felt every scale that was torn from his body.
And on and on it went. There was no end to the torment that had befallen Malliath the voiceless. It fuelled his rage, bolstered his wrath, and plagued him with a mind of fury for all time.
When next Alijah opened his eyes, he was standing in the broken doorway of the main hall, his breath even and hair immaculate. He looked at the twisted doors, half-covered in snow. His memory stitched the scenes together, making him aware that he had just struck the doors with a spell. Any curiosity surrounding the amount of snow that buried the doors was erased and, with it, he lost his grasp on the passage of time. A strong wind was sucked into the hall, throwing his cloak out, before he strode outside to find Malliath for what felt like the first instance.
He found the dragon, sitting like a gargoyle, in front of The Bastion’s outer wall. He was perfectly still, his purple eyes lost to the mountains around them. Alijah could feel the cold calculating fury that quietly resided in his companion. In some ways, it was more terrifying than a feral outburst such as his own.
Alijah moved towards him, his fist clenching with the anger that swelled in him. He quickly unfurled his fingers, however, when they protested with a painful ache. The half-elf simply explained the pain away as fatigue from his recent over-use of magic in general.
“How could they do this?” he asked again. Malliath continued to stare at the distance, his mind closed to Alijah. Using their bond, the king tried again. I said, how could they do—
I heard what you said, Malliath interjected, his eyes never straying. You saw all that I did, he continued, referring to the Drakes that flooded the realm of magic.
They used the Drakes against us, Alijah complained as he paced in the blistering cold, protected by his scale mail. How could this have happened? The Crow orchestrated their creation for our purposes. He would have seen this. He must have! We are to rule - he foresaw it! Have we been betrayed? Have we… The king trailed off as his mind succumbed to the controlling influences of Malliath.
Calm yourself, the dragon bade, preventing Alijah’s thoughts from spiralling. Everything that challenges us is part of a greater design, The Crow’s design. We will only grow stronger, and tales of our victories will only
