Tyrant of the Ruined Sun

So long I spent mulling over the matter, putting to the scales what I dare gamble against increasingly tantalizing rewards, and what I could snag and haggle from the mercurial hands of luck and into my own, that the three of them, began to grow impatient with me.

And just when they were about to urge me to decide already, or more accurately in Valdour’s case, to shelve the topic for another day, I broke the silence.

"Fine." I muttered. "You may try Seraphina." Much to my Eve’s and Seraphina’s delight.

"Alexander!" Yet Valdour was predictably aggrieved, as he bellowed, before I lifted my hand to stop him.

"I understand." I told him. "But this is a risk worth taking."

"Alexander, she’s thirteen!" He yelled out, as his eyes began blazing with the red light of a roaring crucible.

"And she is confident." I replied, before looking to the girl in question, who looked like a startled deer. "Are you not Seraphina?"

"Yes master." She quickly said, shaking the remnants of surprised joy and excitement that stunned her still a moment ago.

"Sera..." Valdour said in utter exasperation, his tone a thin veneer to his growing wrath, before he then looked back to me with a resolute look, one that refused any further concession on the matter. "Fine, so be it; but we will take every possible measure to make sure that no harm comes to her."

"Of course we will." I smiled and nodded, slowly standing. "And you and I will make sure of it."

"How?" He asked, slightly surprised by my silent confidence.

"Did you not just say it?" I asked, looking to a confused Seraphina. "This incomplete poison’s weakness might be divine power, so why don’t we make use of it."

"What?!" Valdour exclaimed, starting to piece together my mad intent.

"We will invoke our full divine power, releasing our divinities fully and without restraint as soon Seraphina takes the poison, shielding her from any harm that may fall upon her."

Valdour looked at me as though I was a raving fool. "But our divinities are so unrelated to one another, they aren’t even slightly of a complimentary nature. We could do more harm to her than good."

"Not as long as we are careful." I assured the giant, who remained silent there after, as my Eve spoke.

"Clever. But that is a mere theory you had, is it not? You don’t even know if it will work."

"Which is exactly why we are going to Morgana’s side right now, to make sure of it." I said, already thinking of this.

"You plan to use the War Dragon’s sick wife as an experiment?" She exclaimed in shock.

"Yes." I coldly answered, without a hint of fluctuation in my tone and face.

"Very well." Valdour spoke up, nodding in approval, before he looked to me one last time with speculation. "But what if it doesn’t work Alexander?"

I hesitated for a moment, unsure how to answer that question immediately, before I said a second later "Yes, if it doesn’t work, we will not go through with it."

After all, a possible powerhouse demigod, like a future Seraphina, would be worth ten of Maximillian if all goes to plan.

"Very well then." He nodded, looking to the young girl again, and giving her a light pat on the shoulder, as he turned back around to head out, quickly followed by the rest of us.

Once outside, we were faced with the inquisitive eyes of everyone who’d left us alone not ten minutes ago, as I said looking towards the half glaring half pleading eyes of the mighty War Dragon "Let’s be off."

Needing no more words, our great host of names marched grimly through my vast halls, causing passing servants and bureaucrats to stumble into hasty bows, petrified by our passing party of living legends, who when alone caused immeasurable shock and awe in those who beheld them, let alone together like this, that made them feel the air congealing like viscus oil around them.

Even the proud wives of Maximillian looked stunned when we entered the side palace they were currently inhabiting, and strode quickly into the depths of the vast residence’s inner rooms, where the wounded wing of the War Dragon now lay, in a truly unenviably pitiful state.

For she looked utterly diminished, not just in spirit but in body as well, with almost half of her weight seemingly having vanished in these brief few months, as the poison devoured her health until she now lay a gaunt ghost of her former self.

"My love." Maximillian gently whispered, coming to her side with careful movements.

"Hello darling. Where have you been all day?" She asked with an ear grating sound, so unalike her previous voice, as she roused herself from the bed with some difficulty, in an attempt that was clear to everybody, of trying to ease her family’s worries, by pretending she was healthier than she was.

"Getting you the help you need." He said smiling, clutching her cold, bony fingers in his grasp.

"Hello Eclipse Emperor." She said, fixing her eyes upon me.

"Lady Morgana." I greeted her back, as I came to her side, near where Maximillian now sat, and put my hand upon her shoulder. "Relax." I said, much to her and her sister wives confusion, before I began.

My eyes turned to their divine form, as pitch black tattoos that looked drawn from the lashings of flaming whips appeared across my skin, and the once radiant light illuminating the room began to slowly dim, as I carefully willed my divine power to creep it’s way through her, making sure to restrain any hellfire within me to pass into her, merely infecting her whole body with as little of my destructive divine power as possible.

But as I was doing this, Eleonora and Sophia, who were standing calmly to the other side of her bed this entire time, surrounded with a plethora of medicinal concoctions and herbs, immediately grew alarmed, drawing upon their power, wanting to stop me.

"Wait." Yet before they could, Maximillian halted them, raising his hand, while keeping his eyes fixed upon his second wife.

"How do you feel?" I asked a moment later.

Everyone held their breathe as we all awaited her response with great anticipation.

"...Better." She said with a sigh of visible relief, before she then took in a long, deep breathe, as though a great weight had finally been lifted from her chest, allowing her to take her fill of air once again.

"YES!" Maximillian seemed to fly at that moment, as his enthusiasm took the better of him, and he launched himself from the bed and to the nearby stand.

"Sophia, flask." He urgently asked, as he took hold of a small knife.

"Here darling." His third wife rushed to hand him the small glass container, while having an utterly overwhelmed expression very similar to Eleonora, who couldn’t believe that the light was finally coming after so many dark months.

He made his way back to the bed, and ever so slowly, peeled back a part of her outer layer of clothes, just so you could barely see her bone thin shoulder, and with the finesse of an artist adding the final touches on his painting, he made the smallest possible wound, to draw from it the faintest trickle of blood.

A trickle that caused the others to reel back in fright, not daring to be any closer to that abominable poison.

"Here." He said, passing the vial holding the few drops of deep crimson liquid at the bottom of it.

"Seraphina." I called, handing the glass to the eager little girl, who was staring at it like a child would at candy.

"Ready?" Valdour came to my side, his divine power already roiling in his veins, as his voice reverberated in my ear with a lasting echo of blacksmithing hammers.

"Ready." I replied, as I too began to call upon all my power.

The room once again began to darken, yet this times it was not a gradual, slow descent, but a sudden one of abyssal proportions, as all light and warmth was instantly expelled in favour of foreboding silence and eerie blackness, accompanied with the bony hands of deathly chills crawling up your spine in mortifying caresses.

Yet it was not meant to last, as the echoes of hammers beating anvils began almost immediately after, and a warmth like a raging fire began to fill the air, as the figure of Valdour, wreathed in ivory fire with golden veins and adorned by the worshiping, melodic, echoes of steel beating steel parted the stygian veil around him.

"Let us begin." I declared with a chilling voice, brought about by my divine powers, and made all the more fearsome by the sight of two lonesome pits of slitted, silverish pupils piercing through a shroud the deepest dark, as we all watched Seraphina eagerly gulp down the the crimson liquid, and then immediately begin to circulate her divine blood.

For a moment or two, she remained perfectly still, mimicking a statue in her stillness, before she then screamed out loud, as though her insides were on fire.

Vladour and I were instantly upon her, our hands at her back, and our divine energies rushing to to help her fight the rogue poison. But that very quickly became a secondary objective to us, as we then started focusing more on preventing our two powers from declaring the young girl’s body a warzone between them, forcing us to very carefully push our powers forward without getting them into much contact with one another.

And so we continued for several minutes, until Seraphina’s agonized face began to loosen once again, and an air of dreadful sanctity began to cloak the young girl.

"She’s starting." I whispered taking my hand off her, a fraction of a second before Valdour did.

"Now we wait." He said, though he did not fully withdraw his power, staying on guard should he need to rush to her aid again.

A precaution he thankfully did not need to take in the end, as marks the shape of lithe, green serpents began to take form across her skin, while her similarly green tinged hair also grew slightly more, and her eyes took on a truly serpentine appearance, all the while the very air around her began to change, becoming clearly that of a first gated demigod.

And then, as though it was all a mere trick of the mind, it faded away, returning her to her previous appearance of a thin and tall twelve year old girl.

"Congratulations." Valdour, Eve and I said, as we resealed our divine forms and powers, and the young girl beamed at us for it, saying jubilently.

"Thank you Master, mistress, teacher."

But we knew now was not the time for this sort of talk anymore, as we all looked back to the anxious Maximillian, and his expectant wives, and awaited to see if a second miracle could happen this day.