The silence deepened between them.
The gems in the walls glittered.
Eternal.
Beautiful.
Depthless as the void.
The constellations they depicted pulsed ever so faintly.
Lines brightened.
The voidstones hummed.
Illara’s pulse quickened.
“Matt… you speak of madness.”
“Perhaps,” the Nightblade replied, “but truth remained thus, be it we deny it or not.”
She took a deep breath.
Dreading to give name to it.
But naming it would not alter their predicament.
“You think this is the realm of the Pallid King,” she said at length.
Matthias nodded.
“Carcosa?” Illara named it.
“The unseen Black Moon, upon a lake as black as night.”
“Lake Hali,” Illara whispered.
“I do not know,” he admitted.
She fell silent.
“Your compass,” Matthias said at length.
Illara fished it out tentatively.
She snapped it open.
The needle pointed behind her.
Steadily.
Towards the heart of the temple.
Further.
Deeper.
“Well, it will do us no good just standing here.” Illara concluded
“Come,” Matthias said.
They crossed back into the temple hall.
They stood before the monoliths.
They named the constellations only within their minds.
The King in the Pallid Mask.
The Many Mothers of the Night.
The Crawling Chaos.
The Key and the Silver Gate.
The Dreaming in the Deep.
The Abyssal Lord of the Depth.
The Devourer of Stars.
The Father of Serpents.
At last they turned to the one whom the temple was dedicated to.
The Queen of Darkness, the Five-Headed Dragon of the Void.
Dragon.
“Matt,” Illara said then.
Matthias turned to her.
“Do you remember, the creature in the marsh?”
“The malformed creature?” the Nightblade said, unconsciously he looked at his hand.
“How could I not?”
For he had killed it with his own hand.
Not in cold blood, but in mercy.
“What does she look like?” Illara asked.
Matthias looked at her then.
Then at the monument.
The Five-Headed Dragon of the Void.
“She looked like… a dragon.” The Nightblade said softly, realization dawning upon him.
“A child of Tiamat,” Illara said grimly.
“Do you think we will find more,” he asked then.
“Of her?” she said.
“Of her kind.” Matthias said grimly.
The oculus darkened further.
Nautauri reached perfect zenith.
Its halo sharpened.
Its shadow thickened.
The black light poured through the aperture and struck the dais.
The chamber stirred.
The stone whispered its lost secrets.
The wind blew its mournful song.
The realm of Carcosa stirred.
They heard it then.
A voice in their heads.
Why ask questions you do not want the answer to, Nightblade?
They turned then.
Their weapons already in their hands.
“You heard that?” Illara asked.
“Yes, as did you, I reckon.” Matthias said, his eyes trained ahead.
Come closer, Astrastars.
I have been watching you since you set foot upon my Temple.
The voice, disembodied.
It reverberated not through the temple.
It carried not upon the night wind.
It belonged not, even to this world.
To Carcosa.
It was borne of the void.
Of the twilight between the stars.
Of the depthless night.
Of the Everlasting Dark.
It unfolded inside their minds.
It unfurled its wings.
A blackness detached.
Erect.
Upon the heart of the temple.
Layered.
Harmonic.
Discordant.
Two voices speaking at once.
One low and resonant, deep thunder.
The other sharp and crystalline, hollowed glass.
Illara readied her gun and blade.
Matthias’s daggers slid into his hands.
“Show yourself,” the Mistwalker called.
I intend to.
A soft sound followed.
Not laughter.
Not mockery.
Amusement.
Astrastars.
Courageous.
Ever valorous.
Even now.
The voidstones resonated.
The silver veins in the floor ignited.
Lines of pale light raced outward from the dais, threading through ancient channels, tracing sigils older than Arcanian speech.
The constellations embedded in the walls brightened.
Stars awakened.
The chamber breathed.
Matthias stepped half a pace in front of Illara.
“No mercy,” he murmured.
“None will be offered,” she replied.
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A slit.
Darkness.
Depth.
A hollow so vast it devoured perception.
Great arcs of darkness spread outward, each membrane traced with veins of faint violet fire.
They stretched.
Once.
Twice.
Unfurled into black wings.
Then she coalesced.
Of the darkness.
Given shape.
A female shape.
She emerged from the hollow like a living eclipse.
Towering nine feet tall.
A body sculpted for war and dominion.
Lithe.
Predatory.
Terrible in her magnificence.
Scales.
Scales sheathed in obsidian-black plating emerged from shadows.
Each plate edged in faint starlight, like fragments of a shattered galaxy welded into living armor.
A tail coiled.
Uncoiled.
Spines along its length glowed briefly, then dimmed.
A crown of horns upon her head.
Hands that ended in talons.
Black lustrous hair.
Pale glowing eyes.
Illara felt her skin tighten.
Her instincts sharpened.
The chamber trembled.
Her voice reverberated within their heads.
I am Yel-Altrash.
The Untamed Flame of the Void.
Her form was draconic and refined.
Every curve was perfect.
Every talon shaped for slaughter.
Her scales reflected no color truly.
They drank the light, reflecting altered hues.
Deep purples, starless blues, faint nebular reds.
Constellations made flesh.
Her head lifted.
Crowned with backward-sweeping horns that glowed faintly from within.
Five ridges traced her skull.
A crown of horn upon her lustrous black hair.
Her eyes opened.
Twin orbs of voidfire.
White at the core.
Violet at the edges.
Burning with ancient awareness.
She was beautiful.
Illara froze.
She checked herself.
“She’s… beautiful,” Matthias whispered, his restrain slipping.
Not from fear.
But awe.
Yel-Altrash’s lips curved.
A smile.
The Dragon of the Void regarded them.
Slowly.
Lingering.
As though seeing them not with eyes of flesh and blood.
But with the deep sight borne of the void.
Astrastars.
Star-Guardians.
Living weapons.
God-killers.
The legend of their kind transcended the world.
Even as she regarded them.
They regarded her.
“So,” Illara said, raising her crescent blade, “you’re the one who called to us.”
Indeed.
Yel-Altrash’s voice resonated through bone and thought.
Through memory and instinct.
Through places language never reached.
Since the forest.
Since the swamp.
Since the first corpse fell by your hand.
Matthias’s jaw tightened.
“You led us here,” he said.
Guided.
Invited.
“What do you want from us?”
She flexed her wings.
Dust and starlight cascaded.
You wanted to be here.
Illara and Matthias looked at each other.
You were summoned.
She pointed to Illara.
You need only look at the contraption you secreted away.
Illara reached for her compass.
She snapped it open.
The needle was steady.
Pointing.
The doorway beyond.
“You called to us,” Illara said.
Yel-Altrash inclined her head.
Yes.
“Why?” Matthias asked.
Because you were chosen.
“By whom?” the Nightblade pressed.
I cannot say.
“Speak quickly, child of Tiamat,” Illara said.
A fracture passed through Yel-Altrash’s eyes.
A shadow of rage.
Child?
A rumbling.
Matthias stepped forward.
“Yel-Altrash,” he said evenly. “I ask you to release us from this realm.”
I am not the one holding you here.
“Then who,” Illara said, “your master?”
Her wings flared.
The chamber darkened.
I have no master!
Illara tightened her grip.
A breath that drew in half the chamber’s air.
No one leaves Carcosa.
“Lara!” Matthias cried.
Yel-Altrash struck.
Illara was already moving.
She slid sideways across the black marble floor.
She felt the talon.
Black, hooked, edged in voidfire.
Slicing through the air.
Her hair.
The mists enshrouded Illara as Yel-Altrash’s talon struck the marble floor.
The black marble cratered as though struck by a falling meteor.
Violet flame threaded through the impact.
A soundless blooming in a silent, hungry ring.
Heat surged.
The air shimmered.
The mists distorted.
The dragon turned towards the Nightblade.
I am Yel-Altrash.
The Untamed Flame of the Void.
Matthias stepped into the fringe.
He did not run.
He ceased to be in the world.
The Nightblade slipped into seam of layered shadows.
Where light grew murky and breadth a mere suggestion.
The chill of the fringe was strangely absent —as if the Temple itself had stolen the cost.
The Nightblade did not linger upon the thought.
Illara reappeared with a snap of condensation the moment Yel-Altrash turned away.
Her shotgun already shouldered.
Illara’s finger on the trigger.
She fired.
The rune-etched shell screamed through the air.
A sharpmetal round encased in starthread and sealed with killing runes.
The impact cracked against Yel-Altrash’s chest.
Scales chipped.
A line of black-violet blood misted out, luminous as nebula dust.
But the round did not pierce.
Yel-Altrash’s head snapped toward her.
Those voidfire eyes narrowed.
Pale cores, violet rims, cruelly intelligent.
Foolish Mistwalker, your weapons cannot hurt me.
Matthias appeared then.
He stepped forth from the fringe.
Casting a handful of rune-inscribed pellets at her.
“Lara!” Matthias called as he turned away.
Illara instinctively shielded her eyes as the pellets flashed.
Light.
The radiance of a sun.
Yel-Altrash roared as she was struck blind.
Illara slid the breech clear.
The spent round clinked to the floor as she chambered a fresh round.
The shell etched with runes of spiraling storms and tempests.
She fired again.
The round struck Yel-Altrash.
Not as flame, but as a spear of jagged lightning.
It lanced into Yel-Altrash’s wing joint, the pinions shuddered and folded in spasms.
Violet fire stuttered along the edge, disrupted.
For a heartbeat, the Dragon of the Void staggered.
Matthias returned.
He surfaced at her flank, daggers in hand.
The Nightblade stepped sideways to avoid a blind swipe and struck.
His daggers slid off her obsidian-sheen scale.
Sheathed armor.
Yel-Altrash turned to him.
Crackling orbs of voidflames winked into existence.
Illara stepped into the mists.
Matthias vanished into the fringe.
Her scales, his voice returned through the seam of shadow.
We must break her.
Illara nodded as the mists closed around her.
The orbs shot out.
A blossoming barrage of death.
Matthias emerged behind a marble column.
Illara weaved around the fireballs.
She weaved between pillars, behind one of the voidglass monoliths and across the shallow of the chamber floor.
Mists curled at her ankles and clung to her cloak.
The flaming orbs pierced the mists as a meteor storm.
Yel-Altrash hissed.
Her eyes glowed as her sight returned.
Astrastars.
Violet flame gathered in her throat.
Hungering starlight.
Void annihilation manifest.
Scorching radiance.
A collapsing sun.
“Beware!” Matthias cried.
Illara saw the glow, she felt the latent power compressing the air.
Yel-Altrash roared.
The beam unleashed.
Illara threw herself sideways.
A lance of violet starlight tore across the chamber, carving a trench through the voidstone and blasted through the thick marble columns.
Illara ran as the beam pursued her.
She threw herself to the floor as the beam sliced overhead.
The beam raked the floor and left molten slag in its wake where none had been.
It struck the monolith.
It did not crack.
It screamed, resonated.
A shudder. A sensation. A silent rippling pulse.
An ache in the teeth.
A tremor in the mind.
A scream in the void.
The annihilating beam ceased.
Illara rolled, came up on one knee, and fired.
Three shots in a tight rhythm.
Sharpmetal.
Tempest.
Creeping frost.
The third shell shattered against Yel-Altrash’s ribs and released a bloom of hoarfrost, crystalline and pale.
It crawled across her scales like living lace, biting into the heat.
Violet flame sputtered where the frost touched.
Yel-Altrash recoiled, more insult than pain.
Clever little thing.
Yel-Altrash moved.
Her wings snapped.
Once.
The chamber’s air was crushed.
The gust knocked Illara back a step, torn her mist from her shroud.
Yel-Altrash surged forward, talons lashing out in a flurry of blows.
Streaks of darkness.
Blind to mortal eyes.
Each blow leaving violet firebrands that clung to marble and refused to extinguish.
But Illara was an Astrastar.
She recalled her mists and took one step.
Mid-step.
She vanished as a claw scythed through where her throat had been.
She reappeared behind a column.
Matthias struck.
He emerged from the fringe behind Yel-Altrash’s left wing.
Daggers crossed.
Their blades inscribed with runes of killing edge.
Etched with his blood.
He drove both blades into the seam of her shoulder joint.
Star-steel bit.
Void-scale resisted.
For a moment, nothing—
Then sparks erupted, bright as tearing constellations.
Yel-Altrash roared.
Her cry warped the air, a compression that rippled out as a violent wave.
Illara staggered.
Matthias did not linger.
He slipped back into the fringe as the dragon’s tail swept through the space he had occupied. The tail struck the voidstone instead.
The monolith shuddered.
Its internal sigil flared.
The chamber trembled as if offended.
Illara saw it then.
Her vision swam.
Her mind flashed then.
Then she understood it too well.
Yel-Altrash wasn’t just her shape.
She was tethered here.
The temple belonged to her.
The temple a part of her.
The temple is her.
Illara forced herself not to look at the sigils too long.
She stayed with what she could kill.
Joints, timing, breath, focus.
“Matt!” she hissed.
I’m here.
“I’m loading the edge.”
Matthias nodded grimly.
I will buy you a heartbeat.
He emerged.
Across the chamber—exposed and visible.
A taunt.
A blade held low.
A Nightblade’s invitation.
Yel-Altrash turned toward him, eyes narrowing with predatory delight.
Yes. You.
She launched.
Illara moved too.
Mist-shrouded, fast, ghostlike.
She circled wide, keeping her strides buried under the chamber’s own hum.
She thumbed the cylinder again.
She traced the runes on the new shells.
Sharpmetal rounds.
Each imbued round a covenant sealed into metal.
Storm.
Frost.
Ash.
Lethal.
The rune-binding Astrastars used only to remind a god she could bleed.
Matthias vanished into the fringe at the last moment.
Yel-Altrash struck empty air, talons gouging marble.
Illara emerged from behind the pillar.
A stride.
She fired.
The storm round to the wing seam Matthias had opened.
Lightning erupted, forcing the joint to seize.
She cleared the breech.
Two strides.
She fired again.
The frost round to the elbow of the wing’s skeletal spar.
Ice crawled along it, thickening into brittle crystal.
Yel-Altrash hissed.
She pivoted.
Illara pushed the third round into the breech.
Three strides.
Illara was upon her.
She fired.
A sharpmetal round to the chest.
Pure impact, concentrated ruin.
Yel-Altrash’s wings buckled half a span.
She hissed, furious.
You!
Her voice split Illara’s thoughts.
She flung a hand out—
Illara struck with her crescent blade.
Its length laced in blood.
Runes of cutting and shearing.
Her blade drew blood.
A clean cut leaving a bloodied swath.
The strike almost took Yel-Altrash’s talon off.
Insolent insect!
Violet flame fell from the air like rain, a sleet streaking towards Illara.
The chamber filled with scorching starlight that burned where they touched, leaving smoking pinholes in stone.
The mists closed around Illara.
She strode through storm of stars.
The mist took the brunt, scattering the light.
The mist turned away the sparks so not to ignite her coat.
Heat kissed her shoulders.
Pain as a brand.
Illara hissed, but pressed on.
Matthias reappeared beside her, mist-shrouded.
Strike, his voice returned, clipped.
No mercy.
“We will break her,” Illara breathed.
Yel-Altrash lifted her head, wings shuddering.
She drew in a breath.
The air around them thinned.
Illara’s instincts screamed.
Matthias grabbed her wrist.
They vanished.
A violet starburst detonated where they had been.
A sphere of compressed radiance expanding and all-devouring.
It tore a section of the bowl-floor away, revealing darkness beneath.
The voidglass monoliths hummed louder.
Illara and Matthias struck.
They emerged from the fringe.
Illara to the left, Matthias to the right.
Their blades leading.
Yel-Altrash crossed her arms to shield her neck and face.
Illara’s crescent blade grated against her scales.
Matthias’s daggers grazed her diamond-hard ridges.
She pivoted toward the Mistwalker.
But Illara was gone.
Yel-Altrash’s breath heavier.
Barely.
Frustration.
A flaw.
Illara exploited it.
The mist parted only a heartbeat.
A flash of steel.
Her crescent blade spun tip-over-hilt.
An arc of silver.
Trailing mist. Torn veil.
The blade struck Yel-Altrash high—near the collar seam where scale met softer plated hide.
The rune-etched blade bit.
It buried deep.
Yel-Altrash roared, more insult than agony.
Her wings flared.
Illara’s hand closed around the hilt of her blade.
The Mistwalker re-appeared at the weapon’s side.
She wrenched the blade up.
The crescent tore free with a scream of scale and a spray of void-blood.
The dragon-god felt it then.
Illara didn’t give Yel-Altrash the time to recover.
She pivoted, brought the shotgun up, and drove the barrel forward until it nearly kissed the dragon’s chest.
Point-blank.
The sharpmetal round was already chambered.
Illara exhaled once.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
“Do you bleed?”
She fired.
Deafening thunder.
Final.
Rune-light flared.
Star-thread bindings snapped.
Sharpmetal punched into void-scales.
For the first time in her existence Yel-Altrash felt the pain.
Raw. Flesh. Visceral.
The Dragon of the Void roared.
She staggered.
Wings convulsed.
Matthias pulled Illara into the fringe.
Violet fire erupted.
Wild, uncontrolled.
The flames washed across the entire chamber, roaring out between the columns.
Illara emerged from the fringe, Matthias a heartbeat later.
Yel-Altrash crashed to one knee.
For a heartbeat, none of them moved.
The voidstones hummed still.
The constellations pulsed still.
The black moons stared through the oculus.
Silent witnesses.
“We broke her.” Illara said.
“Yet she stood, still.” Matthias muttered.
They watched as the most grievous wounds on Yel-Altrash knitted.
Her bones mended.
Her flesh regrew over exposed bones.
Her obsidian scales re-sheathed her sinews.
She stood then.
Yel-Altrash stood.
Wounded, furious but unfazed.
She turned her gaze to them.
You will die here, Astrastars.
