Jackal Among Snakes

Chapter 670: Trophies in the Sky

“I never want conflict. I try to avoid it, as I hope you know,” Argrave reminded her calmly, sitting side-by-side with Anneliese.

“My daughter would be angry at me if I wasn’t on good terms with you.” Her reptilian eyes phased and settled on Anneliese. “She is a very ardent supporter, Anneliese. She’s been watching for a long time.”

“A supporter of me?” Anneliese put a hand to her chest.

“Indeed. You have a red-haired lookalike, at times. She made her mortal form in your image. She idolizes you.” Lorena smiled. “She’s been watching you somewhat obsessively since Argrave halted the war, and you caught her eye. She’d be rather embarrassed to hear me tell you this. Hopefully it’ll make her come out of the house…”

“There’s much to idolize,” he said as he held Anneliese’s hand. Argrave looked up at the moon, which was just barely beginning to phase behind some distant mountains. “The dragons are always watching us from up there? Your deal with the Heralds… it sounds so strange to me. All the tales we’ve read say that the dragons come as ugly women, picking out nice men.”

“The Heralds culled every one of our men, and ensured there would never again be more,” Lorena said as if it didn’t affect her as she used her claw-like nails to carve markings in the nearby stone. “They placed severe restrictions on how we could reproduce. Our population can never again exceed what it was at the time we made the deal. We’ve… adapted. But I’m here to be sure that you won’t experience something like that. And I do also intend to help you with what you originally sought me out for, Jaray be damned.”

Argrave’s eyes widened in surprise. “You mean stopping Gerechtigkeit’s mental influence?”

“Of course.” Lorena nodded. “It’ll be doubly needed once you’re gone, free of this world.”

“How did you come to make this deal?” Anneliese questioned, leaning forth on her seat. “How did you come to live on the moon?”

“How far back need I go?” Lorena asked, but continued before an answer came. “My situation was not so dissimilar to yours. I had lived through two comings of Gerechtigkeit. My people, the dragons, were always the foremost defenders. We were the most powerful species, and our intelligence was without peer. But we were solitary, prone to isolation. We all hated each other.”

“What of the dragons here?” Argrave questioned curiously. “How do they relate?”

“Pah.” She snapped her fingers, sending cascading sparks up into the air. “Comparing us to the ‘dragons’ you see today… that’s the equivalent of comparing humans and monkeys. It’s insulting.”

“No offense meant.” Argrave held his hands out. “You were saying?”

“I united every single one of my own kind. Every dragon of a similar lineage to mine was brought together, either by charisma, subjugation, or in many cases, marriage. You’re familiar with that story, I suspect.” Lorena held out her arms, and her tail thumped against the ground as if to betray her pride. “And with them at my back, we achieved much the same thing that you did. We brought most of the world under our control—not for personal glory, but for the shared purpose of utterly vanquishing Gerechtigkeit. And like you, we eventually found Sandelabara.”

“And Sophia,” Anneliese guessed.

“Not quite.” Lorena sighed deeply. “We found the city only because Gerechtigkeit had arrived there first. It wasn’t buried quite so deeply as when you had found it. He couldn’t break the hold of the prison the Heralds had crafted, not immediately. But they feared he could, so they came to us. The Heralds asked that we do nothing more than fight and kill Gerechtigkeit, offering…” She shook her head. “I can’t even remember what it was. I didn’t consider it for a moment. I felt invincible. I was the strongest living being alive. I had killed gods. I had been to the moon, even then.”

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“Given what you mentioned earlier… the Heralds helped Gerechtigkeit,” Anneliese said somberly.

Lorena looked upward at the moon. “They did. It… nothing haunts me more, to this day. Hordes of undead, automatons, and other such beings… I had cut Gerechtigkeit’s army in half by creating a device that prevented him from manipulating flesh. Back then, he could create hulking chimeras out of the flesh of many unintelligent races without the will to resist, wielding them as an extension of himself—I put an end to that, harnessing the energy of the moon that had so long empowered my kin to create something that might be called a mirror. That power came to hurt him, terribly.” She shook her head. “That tremendous victory made me arrogant. For days, we fought… then, we suffered betrayal from certain gods. When the war began, there were eighty thousand of my brothers and sisters.”

“And at the end?” Argrave asked.

Lorena looked away from the moon. “Nine hundred and one. And it remains that number, with small variations as we live and die, to this day.”

“Gods…” Anneliese exclaimed.

“When next the Heralds approached us, the fighting had lulled, but the future remained uncertain. There had only been crushing defeat after crushing defeat. Then, Jaray came to us. He had always been exceptionally helpful in keeping the deities in line with our ideals, but this time, he spoke for the Heralds. They would switch sides. The terrible power that Gerechtigkeit had been wielding would come to our wings. We would be allowed to live on.”

“…or you’d be killed, to the last,” Argrave finished.

“You see?” Lorena raised her hands. “Do you see why I cautioned you so, advised you so? If only I could go back… if only I could’ve known…” She shook her head. “I’ve been ruing that day every day that I’m allowed to continue being. I don’t want you to make the same mistake. You’re a good man, Argrave. You deserve a better fate than I gave my people.”

As Argrave looked upon her, he finally placed something. Her words had always seemed frantic, even desperate—it was almost as though she was still trying to convince herself, to this very day, that her choices had been the correct ones. Or perhaps he just hoped that was the case.

“It makes me question why the Heralds don’t just control things in that way all of the time,” Anneliese said ponderously.

“I know for a fact it costs them,” Lorena explained. “And they can’t persist outside of a willing host, as you know. But those that they inhabit can exhibit terrifying powers. A lich under Gerechtigkeit’s sway became capable of matching a dragon physically. It destroyed him, undying soul and all, yet he killed hundreds of my kin. Dragons were as gods, then, not the monkey-like ones you’ve encountered.”

“And in the end, the deal…?” Argrave crossed his arms, listening expectantly.

“We had to give them vessels—sacrifices, from our own kind. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but some of our own volunteered. The Heralds used them to reclaim Sandelabara. Once there, they reinforced the prison around Sophia, and kept their word. They changed our physiology in such a way that we had to keep our word. The moon was made a habitable place for our kind, and we can only leave it when the conditions align.”

“What are these conditions?” Anneliese inquired.

“In true form, we are entirely infertile. This necessitates prevailing upon mortals down here. You know, roughly, of our courtship. It has subtler details, but I shan’t divulge them. Suffice to say, twins are born. One child remains of their father’s species—the so-called lunar descendants—and they cannot remain on the moon. The other child, however, is a trueborn female dragon. We are only capable of reproducing while in heat—and only while in heat can a dragon come here without perishing. Rather grotesquely, it is only the death of another that triggers heat. Though rest assured, I am an exception. I can walk freer than my brothers and sisters.”

“Rather… draconian measures.” Lorena and Anneliese both looked at him with stone-eyed glares, and he cleared his throat and carried on. “Why didn’t they kill you? Sophia’s power can’t kill, but it could change you in such a way that you would die nonetheless. Why keep their word?”

“I have often wondered that myself.” Lorena traced a scar on her neck with her sharp nails. “They easily could have. I don’t think they were barred from doing so, but I can’t be certain. Perhaps they have some honor. Or perhaps they anticipated this day, where they would need an example of defiance to prompt cooperation. Either way, they did nothing more than was agreed.”

“And what about Gerechtigkeit?” Anneliese asked.

“Hmm?” Lorena looked at her, confused.

“Gerechtigkeit—what was their deal with him?” Argrave answered for her. “It sounds to me like they betrayed him.”

“I can’t know that, I’m afraid.” Lorena shrugged.

“Well… thank you for sharing,” Argrave concluded, giving solemn nods. “It can’t be easy, reliving that.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for you. And I’ve spent countless generations teaching the younger ones that same lesson. I hope only that you’ll heed it.” Lorena rose to her feet. “Now—while Jaray is doing his part with the Heralds, I intend on helping you with the question of your bloodline. Orion possesses a sharp intuition, and that’s not coincidence.”

“Alright,” he answered eagerly. “That wasn’t something that we expected, honestly. All we ask is that you not bring up this matter of a negotiation with the Heralds,” Argrave continued. “For now, at least, let’s focus on one thing alone—ending Gerechtigkeit’s mental influence before it becomes unmanageable.”