Magma Dragon's Heir

29th of Season of Earth, Year 143 AL

Newt stared at his mother’s lifeless body, pale and wrinkled. She seemed so ancient, and yet she was hardly a hundred years older than him.

He was surrounded by family, and, just like when his father had died three years ago, he realized he felt nothing. He expected the loss of his mother would hurt more than his father’s passing, which he had felt no grief over. It was a strange thing he had realized standing before his father’s lifeless body, but he had been an orphan for centuries.

Ever since his uncle had shattered their family, ever since his parents had pursued their own lives instead of coming back to help him… That was when they stopped being a family.

“It’s fine if you want to cry,” Blaze, Newt’s century and a half younger brother, said, and Newt nodded.

He had cried. He shed tears until they stopped flowing. Then he went on to dig in the dark, fighting to survive, while his father was pursuing the peak in some distant gladiatorial arena, pushing himself to increase his realm. While his mother played the lyre and used music to explore her realm, two kingdoms away.

It was an unfair thing to think. Had they come to his rescue, Newt knew he would’ve been a failure; he would’ve died a long time ago. And yet they didn’t. They didn’t come, they didn’t know, and they certainly didn’t delay their arrival for his sake.

Newt’s other siblings were there too, and Newt felt disgusted. Not because of their existence, certainly not because most of the others had failed to awaken. They were good people - weak, lacking drive, but their hearts were set right. His wasn’t.

All he could think when he saw the five of them was that his father and mother were trying to correct the mistake they couldn’t correct properly. As if raising another child was another chance for them to do the right thing after not doing it once.

As if it could change anything.

“I apologize, I need to leave,” he told Blaze, and the young man nodded as if he knew or understood Newt’s thoughts..

Newt was surprised that he felt sorry for his brother. He had suffered a genuine loss.

Newt sighed and gripped his shoulder.

“I’m sorry for your loss, everyone,” he told them, still looking the youngest in the room, despite being the oldest by far.

He could see the shock in the eyes of the non-awakened, their wrinkled faces failing to contain their outrage, anger, and grief. Death terrified them. Its chill breath caressed the backs of their necks, and they resented Newt because he didn’t move to help them with a problem only they could solve.

“I’ll see you at the funeral,” Blaze said with hope, and Newt thought how much that would drain him.

Then, he left.

As he flew home, he thought about everything. His clan was something not his. He had given them all the funding they would need. His family was something no longer his. They were their own people, and they shunned him and Blaze just as Newt shunned them.

“How are you feeling?” Mel asked when he returned home. “Do you need a hug?”

Newt didn’t need one, but he embraced her anyway, enjoying her warmth and life.

“I don’t feel anything,” he confessed.

“It’s normal to feel numb,” she started, and he shook his head.

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“No, Mel, I’m not numb. In my heart, my parents had died three centuries ago. While I did try to reconnect with them, it didn’t really work out. Not beyond me feeling relieved they weren’t physically dead. What was it like for you? If you don’t mind sharing?”

She pushed herself away from him and looked him in the eye. Unlike Newt’s calm exterior, Maelstrom’s face loosened, lips trembling so slightly no non-awakened would have noticed it. Centuries had passed, but the ripples of sorrow were still there.

“I loved them,” she whispered, “and they loved me. I was their sixth child. Three failed to awaken and had died ages ago. I had an older brother who had awakened I never met, and Tristar is still alive. He’s at the seventh realm like me and pushing forward slowly.”

Maelstrom took a breath, then continued. “He’s two hundred years older, though, so there’s little contact between us. And he was never the contender for the throne, since he took those two hundred years just to reach the fifth realm.”

Newt had met the man. He appeared around forty-five at the seventh realm, which almost certainly meant the eighth was his cap, if not the seventh. Also, Maelstrom had changed the topic.

“I guess it hurt?”

She nodded, hugging herself and shrinking.

“It hurt. My father’s body shattered the coach I was riding. I never saw what had happened to my mother.” Newt hugged her. She shook in his arms. “I spoke with Dandelion a lot about it. He was a soother, among other things.”

She chuckled. “An advantage of having time to waste, I guess.”

Newt stayed quiet and listened as Maelstrom talked about her parents. The shared laughs, the chastisements when she had done inexplicably stupid things, their hopes in her, the lessons they taught her.

Her experience with her parents wasn’t that different from Newt’s. The stories, despite happening in a frozen castle, were quite mundane and relatable. And Newt saw it. The difference.

If his parents had died back when he was thirteen, it would’ve been the same. And if her parents suddenly appeared, smiling with five little siblings, Maelstrom would be as enraged as he was—worse, knowing her explosive character.

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” Newt whispered in her ear when Maelstrom stopped crying.

“I’m under the impression you had it worse,” she said softly and squeezed him hard enough to bend a steel beam.

***

The funeral was a strange event. Newstar’s and Blaze’s parents were the parents of one of the most important people in Soaring Freedom. Yet there didn’t seem to be anyone treating them kindly or with the respect Blaze believed Newstar’s name had earned them.

Newstar and sister-in-law Maelstrom were present, along with Stronggrow, Ember, Dawn, and Ash and their families. Having non-awakened family was extremely weird. Blaze had nieces and nephews, all of whom looked older than he did. He still loved them, but they were so fragile and, deep in his heart, transient.

I wonder if we’re all transient in your eyes? He couldn’t help but look at Newt and then consider himself. He was stuck at the peak of the fifth realm, the sixth beyond him, even after his brother had given him a potion made by Ruby Dewdrop herself.

The impregnable barrier wouldn’t budge, and when Blaze asked Newstar, his brother at first stared at him in confusion.

“Just shatter it,” he said, as if anyone could just will their barrier to break without effort.

It was the end, and Blaze knew it. Afterward, he had given up on hunting saurians. As the beasts grew smarter, they became more dangerous, and there was no need to hunt them when he wouldn’t be advancing further. Instead, he devoted his life to music and finding a woman he would like to spend the rest of his days with.

He glanced at Newstar again.

I’m just an awkward flicker in your life, just like the others are in mine.

Staring at that skinny, pale profile, Blaze realized that just like he failed to comprehend the problems of his siblings, Newstar too failed to understand his. To him, Blaze’s tribulations were nothing, something he never noticed during his rush towards the tenth realm.

When his parents were alive, Blaze had someone who understood him, really understood him. But now, now he was an orphan. A hundred and fifty year old orphan. It was such a ridiculous notion he nearly laughed at his mother’s funeral.

Suddenly all her worries became clear to him. She worried about him. He had spent over a century chasing after Newstar, and the chase had reached its end. Blaze had no real friends, no real love nor interests save for music. And with his mother gone, he truly had nothing.

While his siblings lived their short lives, he spent his time in seclusion, trying to catch up.

I’ll need to get out and meet some people. Start performing publicly, perhaps build a career in music, not many do that. Maybe meet a fine young woman or two close to my realm? I’ve still got five or so good centuries ahead of me, and it might be time to start enjoying life?

Faced with mortality, Blaze looked back on his life so far and gave up.