Nessalir the Red

Her lungs burned. It was too soon--too soon by far!--to unleash another breath of dragonfire, but Nessalir did so regardless. Her chest, not yet recovered from her previous exertion, blazed with agony. The flames enveloped a tendril of the starspawn's flesh, charred the pale to a black ash, and she sliced through the other with her sword.

The pain was excruciating, but Nessalir ignored it. The drakkowar's human body was ill-suited to wield a dragon's flame, and she had damaged herself before from overreliance on her father's gifts. Caution should have been warranted, yet caution was the furthest thing from her mind.

There! The tendril which held Iarius, still struggling and screaming as the myriad hands of the starspawn grasped him. Nessalir set her jaw in determination, adjusted her grip on her blade, and dove forward. As she did, she swung her sword in a wide arc, putting all her strength and all her weight into pushing the blade as quickly and forcefully through the air as she could muster.

Nessalir was rewarded with a spray of blood as the starspawn's tendril was severed completely. The flesh which held Iarius fell uselessly to the floor, and the scholar wasted no time in disentangling himself from it, gasping for breath as he did so.

She smiled at him, and was about to warn him to flee when another tendril swung at her from behind, hit her head, and sent her flying through the air.

Her body impacted with the stone wall, and she fell to the floor. Nessalir's body ached. The burning sensation in her lungs had spread across the whole of her being, and the room around her seemed to shift back and forth like a ship rocking in the waves. Her head swam, and she tried to right herself, yet she lost her balance and fell back to her knees.

Where was her sword? She must have dropped it when the starspawn struck her.

"Nessalir!" Iarius called. He made to run toward her, but a tendril slammed down between them, and the Remuran vanished behind a wall of flesh and malformed hands.

Gritting her teeth, Nessalir forced herself to stand. She stumbled. The world around her grew dark. She forced herself to focus, to force down the bile which threatened to rise up from her throat and stomach. As she fought to keep hold of consciousness, anger and frustration surged through her.

And that rage brought with it something else: an ancient, primal, inhuman instinct. In that instant, Nessalir's reason left her, and she gave herself completely to the dragon that roared within her veins.

Heedless of her lack of weapon, Nessalir rushed across the chamber, dodging the starspawn's flailing tendrils, her eyes focused solely on the silver sphere that marked the godling's center. A shout of bloodlust erupted from her throat, and her blood burned with the flames of destruction.

As she reached the sphere, Nessalir raised her left hand--covered in red scales, with fingers ending in black claws. She drove those claws directly into the metallic surface of the starspawn's body, and it cracked and shattered all around her as she dug her hand deeper and deeper within.

Where the godling's blood touched her human flesh, it burned. Yet upon the scales of her left hand, she felt a pleasant, almost relaxing, warmth. A savage grin broke across her features as she buried her arm shoulder-deep inside the starspawn, and some brutal instinct guided her hand to grasp the organ deep within the sphere.

Her fingers wrapped around it, and in a single violent motion, Nessalir tore out the starspawn's heart.

All around her, tendrils fell. The fleshy hands deflated like sacks, and the silver sphere crumbled apart. Blood fell in a great cascade upon the flood beneath it, and the progeny of Arjent Qur, Left Eye of the Serpent, died.

Its heart was a round, fleshy thing, with shards of silver crystals growing from its valves. Impossibly, it still beat in her hands, even detached as it was from its deceased body. Nessalir held it, and her eyes were locked onto the organ, and a great hunger welled up within her. Her mouth salivated with anticipation as she opened wide her jaw…

"Nessalir!"

Iarius' call broke her from the hold her draconic instincts had over her, and with a shudder, Nessalir threw the starspawn's heart away. As it hit the tiled floor, it too deflated as the creature's tendrils had.

She looked to the scholar, disheveled and shaken yet none the worse for wear. Nessalir could only imagine how she must look, covered in the gore of a god's child.

"Are you alright?" Iarius asked.

For a moment, Nessalir could only stare at him uncomprehending. The idea that he would ask after her health after a battle was absurd, and soon that absurdity overwhelmed her. Nessalir began to laugh. And after a moment of watching her in confusion, Iarius seemed to recognize the absurdity of his question as well, and he joined her in laughter.

"You slew a starspawn!" he managed after a time. "If I had not seen it myself, I'd have never believed it! A starspawn!"

Nessalir looked over the carnage which filled the temple, and she smiled with pride.

The two left. They walked now silent halls, ancient and decayed. They walked through a courtyard overgrown and untouched for millenia, its vegetation now beneath heavy snow which had not been there before. When they returned to Watervine, they told the people there only that a draugr sorcerer had awakened, but Nessalir had made short work of him.

Not a word was spoken of the starspawn. Perhaps Iarius recorded the encounter in his journals, and if he did, then Nessalir could only imagine the reaction of the other Remuran scholars upon reading them.

In time, maybe, the tale of Nessalir's battle with a starspawn might be commemorated in song. For now, she knew that none would believe something so outlandish. It was enough only that she had done the deed, and that Iarius had been there to witness.

So the people spoke instead of her battle with a sorcerous draugr, and that was the story which spread across the land; another great and mighty deed of Nessalir the Red.