Chapter 52: DD2 Chapter 046 – The Deal

With unerring precision, molten silver was poured from the crucible and onto his nails where with long brushes and a great amount of expertise, Erebus’s attendants went to work. A tingling warmth spread from his fingertips as the liquid metal began to cool, leaving behind a mirror-like sheen of solid silver on each one of his manicured digits. It was a ridiculous extravagance, one that few creatures on Creation could tolerate let alone find pleasant, but if there was one thing he had learned in his 894 years, it was that life was truly meaningless without its little indulgences.

Besides, he had company to greet, and he wanted to look his best.

“The count is complete, Lord Erebus.”

“And is it sufficient?” the dragon inquired.

“Y-yes, My Lord, 11,327 souls have arrived seeking refuge. Of which, more than half meet your age requirements…” the scribe replied with a well-concealed tremble. Erebus took his time to respond. Instead of a hurried answer, he savoured the intoxicating bouquet of man-fear that wafted off of the human, while he considered who amongst his attendants looked the most appetising.

“So many…” he trailed off, earning him an increasingly uncomfortable look from the simpering man before him. “Is there a problem?”

“N-no, My Lord, but if I—if I may ask? What do you want to do with the excess numbers? There are too many for this year's intake, even with your planned expansion of the school grounds. A lot of the children are unaccompanied, and we don’t have the infrastructure to—”

“Scribe. Stop talking before I eat you.”

“Yes, My Lor—”

Erebus glared and the human’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click. The dragon contemplated just implanting the commands he wished to be implemented into the man’s head, but it was never worth the fallout. Staff who witnessed that sort of thing tended to become jittery, and he relied on his attendants' steady hands for much of his grooming. 

He dearly wished that he had a greater wealth of well-trained servants to draw upon, as until he did, he couldn’t afford to force their calm without risking even more permanent damage to their mental facilities. Humans were weak like that; they could only tolerate so much puppeteering before their brains turned to mush. But such were the trials of leadership. How anyone ruled over humans when ripping the will out of them wasn’t an option, Erebus would never understand.

“Test them all. Send the most promising to the school, and make it clear that there are replacements waiting in the wings should they fail out. The remainder can wait a few extra years. Keep them unclassed of course, we wouldn’t want them learning any bad habits in the meantime, but we will not look this gift-horse in the mouth,” the dragon instructed.

“Of course, My Lord, I will see it done,” the scribe said, bowing low to the ground.

“You will. Now, get out of my sight,” the dragon ordered.

From the look of relief that spread across the human's face as he scurried away, the man was clearly pleased that Erebus hadn’t ordered the excess humans be sent to the kitchen for butchering, or something equally wasteful. He would never do something like that, although it did remind him to visit the dungeons later for prospective additions to his evening meal.

The Lord of Doomhold resisted the urge to drum his nails on the armrests of his throne while he waited for them to finish drying. When he was satisfied that enough time had passed, he signalled for his attendants to prostrate themselves while he rose from his seat of sculpted onyx and gold. He walked towards the large window that overlooked his city, and smiled at what he saw.

He dismissed the illusion of stained glass that depicted his moment of triumph over the adventurers who’d once fought for Traylra, and activated the enchantment carved into the wooden frame. The view swirled with a pulse of his potent mana. The cityscape beyond swept down in a blur of clean streets and vacant houses, until it slowed its frantic rush over the rooftops to focus on a snaking convoy of waggons that extended from the east gate all the way to the main plaza. Erebus wasted some more time overseeing his shades, while they escorted the increasingly fearful arrivals to the homes prepared for them. 

When he was ready to move on he pushed his will through the focusing runes, and the scene blurred again, zeroing in on his more important guests as they rode in the extravagant carriage he had provided for them. The dragon watched them sit in silence for a few minutes before he grew bored. There was nothing interesting to observe so early on, and he seriously doubted that he would be given the opportunity to set anything in motion, not like last time. 

Erebus smiled wide at that pleasurable recollection. 

Despite his age and power, it remained his favourite illicit thrill to ride along in someone's head during their more impassioned moments. There were few left amongst Doomhold’s limited population whom he had not already grown tired of. A culture of subservience and fear did not make for the most interesting subjects—or the highest birth rates—even if he appreciated the ease in which it allowed him to govern. He supposed the recent influx of desperate humans might just change all of that. 

Erebus could only hope that some of them were half as interesting as the human Typh had brought him last time.

The dragon returned to sit in his throne, and signalled for his attendants to dress him in something suitably extravagant before his guests arrived. Within minutes he was clad in one of his more impressive sets of armour when the doors to his great hall swung open, only to slam against the thick stone walls with an echoing bang.

Two humans—one familiar, the other not—a dragon, and something a little different, strode into his hall. Their eyes remained frustratingly unimpressed with the carefully cultivated grandeur on display in his throne room. He felt the strain of the runes designed to enforce just such a mood warring with the overlapping auras of the women present, and frowned when their skills eventually won out. 

These were decidedly not the usual simpering guests who ventured into his hall.

Still, subservient or not, they were here, and that was what was important. He would have preferred it if they’d come a little less prepared for a battle. Typh positively radiated a massive quantity of stored mana, not as much as before, but more than enough to blow fresh holes into his palace. Her companions each bore weapons with dragon slaying runes carved deep into the metal of their blades, and had protective wards etched onto their shining armour. 

None of it would do anything to stop him should it come to violence, given the chasms between them in terms of raw power, but he was less than happy about what it said in regards to Typh’s mood. 

Like the mana radiating from the gold she’d draped over her equally enticing body, he could feel her rage. Which was a shame, really. Dragons like the two of them were exceedingly rare amongst their kind, and it would forever be disappointing to him that she’d refused his advances so immutably. 

Not that her refusal would necessarily remain an obstacle for much longer.

“Typh, you’ve done well for yourself,” Erebus said.

“Erebus,” the woman responded carefully, before sucking her teeth and frowning. “There’s enough grandeur in this hall don’t you think?”

“Fine,” he relented. With an unnecessary wave of his hand, the runes lining the chamber deactivated and some of the majesty fled from the room. The colours woven into the ornate tapestries that depicted his kingdom became a little less vibrant. The scattered wealth that littered the floor in the corners of the room stopped glittering. The magelights stopped subtly pulsing, and the enforced feeling of awe faded as his shadow, where his other self dwelled, grew deeper, coming to dominate much of the space behind him. “Better?”

“Much,” Typh responded, while two of her entourage breathed noticeable sighs of relief even as his true self became more solid around them.

“I really didn’t expect you to bring so many humans to my city,” he began. “You realise the point of a fool’s errand is that you are supposed to fail. Exceeding the impossible request is just rude.”

“I’m so sorry to disappoint you,” she said insincerely.

“It's fine. Your siblings are awful, and I have no desire to actually deal with them if it can be helped. However, I am quite curious as to how you got so many humans to come here voluntarily? They seem more than just compliant, they seem relieved if anything.”

“I promised them that they would be safe here. Was I wrong?” Typh’s lover asked. The warrior seemed different than before, changed in ways that couldn’t be accounted for by just her increased level. Then again, all the people in front of him had faced a Monster in the flesh, and that had obviously left an impression.

“Would it change anything if you were wrong? I only asked for five thousand. Redundancies are nice, but I really don't need so many extra mouths to feed,” Erebus lied.

“Yes, it would change things,” the warrior stated firmly, and he could see through the cracks he’d left behind, that she was serious. The insane little human would fight him if he pushed, and with his jealousy urging him on, he was actually tempted to.

He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t, and for the first time in over a century the Lord of Doomhold laughed. His guests looked distinctly uncomfortable while the deep chuckles continued to roll out of him, and he was keenly aware of how his shadow thrashed its jaws on the walls of the chamber.

“Are you done?” Arilla asked, the steel still suicidally present in her voice.

“Yes. Thank you for that little one. It has been a while since…” Erebus trailed off, deciding not to focus on that memory. “You can rest assured, Lord Traylan, that I will take very good care of your former subjects. So long as they don’t break my laws, and I am able to defend them, they will be safe here. I am many unpalatable things, but I am also a dragon of my word.”

The humans looked to Typh for reassurance, and the young sovereign—so out of her depth—gave them a subtle nod which seemed to reassure them. Erebus reclined in his throne and reached into a shadow, producing a large crystal goblet which he drank deep on before placing it back where it came from.

“Tell me, Typh, Arilla… Are you sure you want these two to witness what we are about to discuss?” he asked, gesturing to the fifth-tier noble and the thing that looked like a bard. “This information is meant for dragons and council species. I don’t particularly care one way or the other about keeping their secrets and neither should you, but you might not want all of humanity knowing this.”

“I know it’s against our laws, bu—” Typh began.

“Let me stop you there. The council’s law doesn’t matter,” Erebus clarified.

“The laws have stood since the Sundering. They are the reason dragons stay in the ‘Spines, why we don’t hunt humans, or rule over them,” she began, trumpeting her ignorance for all to hear. 

A very large part of him was going to enjoy this.

“The council’s law is no longer being enforced. I hinted at it earlier in our last meeting, and I had hoped you’d pick up on it then. Enforcement has always been somewhat lacking, but now it’s official. The council has ceded its authority over most of Astresia,” he explained.

“They wouldn’t… why?” she asked.

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The Lord of Doomhold looked over the puzzled faces of his little audience, and wondered how much she had already told them.

“Again, are you sure you want them to know? It could be bad for morale if you care about such things.”

“Tell us, dragon. Honour your side of the bargain you made,” the fifth-tier noble demanded. He glared at her, and she did not cower. Which was something, he supposed. Typh was certainly forming a habit of collecting interesting humans. 

“Very well,” Erebus shrugged. “As Typh knows, and has no doubt explained, after your ancestors saved Creation by laying the Great Wards across the continent, it took them all of five generations to strip away the human class, and cripple the rest of us in the process. This is the very reason we are all here, the folly of the Sundering and the chaos that followed.”

“When the first humans were born without a class, they were born without their hereditary knowledge as well. Most crucially the secrets behind how the Great Wards were made were quickly lost in wars that followed immediately after. Humans were never big sharers even when they weren’t trying to kill us, and in the aftermath we were too busy trying to figure out how to survive, to realise that the critical knowledge we all needed hadn’t been safeguarded. In the millenia that followed, we are no closer to success than we were back then, although the greater races were able to figure out a roundabout way of keeping the Great Wards topped off with mana, and we’ve been doing that ever since.”

“Until now.”

“With our growing losses in the depths below, it has become too expensive to continue to maintain the Great Wards. Thanks to the Sundering it simply takes too long to produce the high-tiered creatures we need to refill the array with mana, and when they die in the Everwar, they aren’t replaced—not nearly fast enough.” 

“The Great Wards were truly ambitious in their scale and scope. A single runic array that covers all of Astresia in an effect that dissipates mana and prevents Monsters from breaking through. Only deep below us, close to the heart of Creation do we normally have to worry about them spawning, and it is there that we have fought them since the Wards’ inception.”

“What changed?” Typh asked in a soft tone that showed her age.

“Nothing and everything. It’s been a gradual shift for millenia now. The slow but steady loss of creatures in their eight-tier, but the real clincher—as always—was the humans,” he continued.

“What did we do?” Arilla asked with a frustrated groan.

“You do what your kind always do, you break things,” Erebus sighed, feeling strangely emotional. “Every age of humanity inevitably discovers how to focus mana for faster passive levelling. But the rate of it keeps increasing. This age discovered it the quickest by far, first with city walls condensing the essence of every death towards the centre, then a step further with inner walls, then palatial walls, then fucking runic arrays under the beds of every noble ruler.” 

“We’ve always done what we could to slow it down, but from east to west every noble with a few coins to their name, every iron rank and up, spends their time surrounded by runic arrays to focus mana around them.”

“And this weakens the wards…” the fifth-tier noble spoke, her voice resigned, maybe even a little guilty.

 

“It stresses them, increasing the draw on its mana reserves. Every human city, outpost, caravan, bed… wherever someone has the bright idea of focusing mana to passively level just a little bit faster, it speeds up the decline on the Wards. System help us, there have even been instances of opposing forces cooperating on the eve of battle, to lay down arrays where two armies will meet so that when they kill each other the survivors eek out an extra level or two.”

“We can’t keep up. There are so few of us left who reach the levels of power required to maintain the Great Wards and they’re needed on the frontline, not sat up a mountain devoting their life to slowing the inevitable. Without their ancestral memories, humans are a self destructive species that will kill us all rather than change,” he lectured.

“That’s bullshit, you can tell them. Explain to them what they're doing wrong and they’ll—” Arilla stated angrily.

“We’ve tried that—I tried that. What the fuck do you think happened to Traylra? It doesn’t work. Prophetic dreams, mind control, the truth, none of it can get past human competitiveness. No kingdom of man is willing to give up the advantage of mana concentration arrays, not when they’ve no guarantee their neighbours will do the same,” the shadow dragon snapped.

“So what’s the council’s plan?” Typh asked, and Erebus couldn’t even keep a false smile on his face.

“They’re ceding fourth fifths of the surface to the Monsters. Every council species and tributary is fleeing west, past what the humans call Epheria and Thesia, to Eleurum where they will rebuild anew, and fight the Monsters at the land bridge to the rest of Astresia,” he spat.

“You can’t be serious, that's…” the sovereign dragon trailed off.

“I am, and I know. The council has sounded the alarm. The greater races are abandoning their territories, leaving the humans and our lessers to the tender mercies of the Monsters that are sure to come. The hope is that when the wards inevitably fail, they can be severed where Eleurum meets the rest of the continent. Then they can be restored, but only for everything west of that point.”

“The rest of Astresia will be left for the monsters to eat,” he summarised.

Typh looked horrified, as well she should. Humanity was effectively being amputated from Creation like a rotting limb, except it would be far worse than that.

“What about humanity?” the fifth-tier asked.

“What about them?” Erebus answered.

“In this plan of yours, what happens to us?” the noble clarified.

“It’s not my plan. But there are humans on Eleurum. The council’s reports say that about 1 in 20 live there if I remember correctly. They will be allowed to go about their lives, albeit under strict supervision. And if the elves don’t bloat that number further by taking slaves on their great migration west, well…” he trailed off. 

“They can’t take slaves, council species are forbidden from—” Typh began.

“Typh. No one is enforcing the old rules anymore. The elves will take whatever they believe to be their due, and they won't be the only ones. Every creepy crawly that has been forced to play nice will be out for revenge—exacting their price for the Sundering and whatever little thrills they can extract before it’s all over. It gets worse. The council has been clear that not all are welcome on Eleurum; there will be more than a few attempts to carve out a kingdom amidst the human nations. Creation as we know it is ending, little dragon, and there is nothing you can do to stop it,” the shadow dragon warned.

“Maybe not, but you could have. You were supposed to fight, but you refused,” the sovereign dragon accused.

“Hmph, you think I'm a coward for plateauing my level before I reached the 7th tier, but perhaps I saw more sense than throwing my life away on the frontlines. There was a time when only the 10th tier were sent down to fight, then as things grew worse the 9th, then even the 8th were called in, until most recently the 7th. How long do you think those we send below last? How long do you think your mother lasted? A day? A week? A month?”

“Just because I knew enough to see that this day would come, when we gave up the depths to fight the monsters on the surface, do not curse my name. The elder council thinks that if they cut their losses and give up most of the continent that they can hold the line. That when the wards are depleted of mana they can be altered to cover a smaller portion of land and then started anew without any trouble.” 

“But what if they are wrong?”

“In the countless aeons since the Sundering, we have never come close to being able to replicate the Great Wards. Our best attempts pale in comparison to the humans’ ancient genius. We barely know enough to maintain the Wards, and even then, we fall far short of the ease in which the humans of old once did it. If the Council is wrong, if they cannot manipulate the Wards as easily as they think, then they will lose everything. We all will. Things will go back to how they were before, in which case the Dragonspines have the oldest dungeons and our best chance at survival.” 

“Call me a coward if you want, but when you’re done playing with the humans, know that it is here in Doomhold where I will face them, and it is here where there will still be enough of us left to fix what went wrong.”

Typh grit her teeth.

“Let's go, there’s nothing for us here,” Typh said, shaking with anger and despite knowing that if he forced her to stay no-one could stop him, Erebus let her go. 

The Lord of Doomhold sighed as he watched his intended flee from his chamber. Her refusal to stay was disappointing, but he knew that she’d be back once she had failed. Because while the council were fools to risk so much on so little, they were right about one thing: humanity couldn’t be saved—not if they were left to their own devices.

Monsters were coming to the surface of Astresia, and when they arrived, only he could save dragonkind and its lessers from extinction. Because Erebus had a plan, and thanks to Typh, he finally had enough humans to pull it off.

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