During which Fafnir's memories continue to be explored...
86 1/2
He woke again, and this time the other was before him, her great horned horned head made of gold and copper, a wondrous white mane framing it.
'It wasn't the gods, Trakaan,' she told him, her voice clear in his head. She was a mindspeaker, like he was, but blessed with the ability to do more than just paint pictures in the heads of others. She could actually speak to you. 'It was you and you alone. Accept it, face it and beat it. Only you.'
He growled, or at least tried to. His old pride, that fierce vice of his, trying to force it's way back in. It couldn't, he just didn't have the strength for it anymore, or even the need. He had become tired of it, exhausted by it all. Her words should outrage him, should warrant a bite or a slash or even some flame, but he'd no fight left in him, nothing at all.
And how could he possibly face patricide? How many others had there been in that blur of red death? How could he possibly face what he hardly remembered? And if he did face it, if he did peer over that great abyss, why bother continuing his existence? Why had this fool bitch bothered to try?
She should have just allowed him to die.
And so it came to him, he would make her do it. One talon to gouge out one of those marvelous yellow orbs should make her see reason.
'No, you fool wyrm,' she boomed in his noggin, her tone amused. 'You won't be escaping me so easily. I've not gone against the others and saved your hide for naught. There's still much more for you to do, Trakaan Astranax, and I'll not have you throwing away such potential.'
He couldn't do it even if he tried, just the very thought of lifting one of his talons sent waves of nausea up and down his body.
And with that, the darkness enveloped him yet again.
*****
Now he flew, high above Midgard, his lands just like before, back when he'd never heard of Andvari's. It was below and above him, blue and green, Heaven and Earth. He was it and it was he, as it was for all his kind. He could see the birds
in the sky, the deer leaping under the trees, the farmer plowing away on his fields. All of it beautiful, all of it perfect and serene. His heart, his very soul soared on these winds, the smells, the sights, they all made him, they all gave him his peace.
He flew higher, the winds taking him towards his mountain, towards his home.
It started there, high atop his mountain peak. It started with an eruption from it's summit, even higher than the cave he'd called home for hundreds of years. Except this wasn't like any eruption he'd ever seen, what came out of this volcano was as black as blood, and it didn't explode, didn't shoot out across the land. This thing enveloped, it slowly spread until it covered the land itself, poring down and over everything, leaving nothing untouched by it's taint.
He dove down, flying just over it, daring to reach out with his tail, to touch the blood as it flowed outward. It burned him, singed the very flesh from the spot where he'd made contact.
He howled in pain and climbed again. His eyes wide with fear as he watched the unstoppable flow begin to cover the whole of the Mountain range. A great disgust threatened to overcome him, disgust at what he saw, disgust and something else, despair, was it? Or shame, could it be shame that he felt?
No, not shame, after all what had he done? He hadn't caused this decaying flow to strike out at his world, couldn't possibly have done this to his own home.
It had come from his mountain though, from within his very fortress. It had flown out across the land like he did, taking the very routes he took during his forays.
Shaking his horned head, he dove again, making for the edge of the flow, landing a good distance ahead of it, between human dwellings.
It halted as he did so, sensing him apparently. The flow stopped and began to converge, peeling it's blackness off of the land and piling itself itself up before him, taking mass, taking shape.
Behind it, in it's wake, it left nothing but desolation, his desolation. Dead trees, dead leaves, dead deer, dead men, even the water had gone dry, the rivers becoming nothing more than long wicked slashes in the Earth. All of it gone, all of it taken.
He felt it's great weight in his soul, this senseless death, this decimation of his mother, of the very elements that had birthed he and his kind. They were the masters of Heavens and Earth, but they were also nothing more than children, and to kill one's own creator was the greatest of sins, the greatest of desecrations.
It didn't manifest as flame, this destruction. Outrage generally did that, fueled his fire and gave him the strength he needed to conquer those who would senselessly violate. It wasn't so this time, this blackness only took from him, it sucked the fire out from within him, leaving him a dry, useless husk.
He spread his wings, or at least tried to, but they'd gone dry as well, dry and brittle as age old branches on an age old tree in the deepest harshest winter. They crumbled, along with his tail, leaving him as nothing more than a dried up old reptile in the face of the rapidly growing abomination before him.
He tried to dig then, to use his great talons to claw at the Earth, to seek solace within his mother's breast, to regrow his strength below, but even that was to no avail. Those talons shattered when they tried to break the ground, crumbling like his wings, falling back into the Earth and vanishing inside it, adding to the death.
Heaven and Earth had abandoned the Dragon, had left him at the mercy of this evil thing that grew and grew.
Before him all the blackness had convalesced, had grown as large as he'd once been. Black wings spread out from within
it, not unlike his own, black talons had grown, not unlike his own. A long neck rose with a great horned head at it's end, glowing blue eyes opening malevolently, long mane flowing.
He looked into his own eyes and saw what he'd done, saw what he'd wrought.
“NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOOOO,” he screamed at the great monster that towered over the ruined land, that drank the blood of his own father. “NO, NO, NO, I DID NOT DO THIS!!! IT WAS HER, IT WAS THE CHILD WITHIN ANDVARI!!! THE GIRL WITH THE MARBLES..... IT WAS HER!!!!!”
He diminished, the shame of what he was overwhelming him more than any false darkness ever could, more than any marble carrying little demon could either. He'd done it, he'd known full well what he'd done. She'd been there, she'd been there whispering in his ear, but in the end, he'd done it, done it all.
The desolation surrounded him, his handiwork. The skeleton of all the land as far he could see leered back at him accusingly.
He howled as he merged with the blackness, as he took his rightful place within it. He howled against it's perversion, used his regained talons to tear into himself, to rip it out. Better to be that ruined, dried husk than the harbinger of all this death. He would kill it and himself, end all of this and ensure that it never, ever happened again.
*****
Then he was awake again, all of it gone, his body, weakened, dried, a shell of his former self, held to the great brass, gold chest of the Dragon that had pulled him from the waters.
She rocked him back and forth, holding him tightly to her, singing in his mind, old songs sung by their elders, old songs
of soothing.
'It's over now, Trakaan, it's over, it's all gone,' she told him when his howling had subsided, when he had calmed enough to be spoken to, her voice like the gentle flow of a mountain stream. 'You're here with me now. You're past it. It has all been washed away.'
He pulled away, if only for a moment, looking up into her yellow eyes, that beautiful face.
“W-what is your n-name?” He dared to ask this wonderful creature who'd taken pity on a ridiculous abomination like himself.
“Domina,” and she said it aloud, her voice a deep rumble. “My name is Domina.”
End Part 86 1/2
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:)