The Dragon King’s Substitute Bride
Chapter 100

Er'gan

The thing It is beginning to realize about secrets is that they feed on darkness.

One could keep it hidden for as long as they wished.

But that would only make them grow.

Grow and fester until they became a sore.

Painful and difficult and too heavy to keep.

It had told itself that too much time had passed.

That there was no longer any need to dig up old matters and drag them to the present.

It had even managed to convince itself that by hiding it's past, It was doing the world some sort of irredeemable favour they did not even know they needed. But a secret is a wound.

And like a wound, it does not start to heal until the words are spoken out loud and it is brought into the light.

It would appear that the time had come for Er'gan's wound, to be brought into the light.

It had begun an infinitely long time ago.

A time before even the humans had first walked the realm of Averia.

Yet to the first dragon, the one they called Er'gan, It would always feel like it had been only yesterday.

It mattered not how hard the dragon had tried to forget.

How hard It tried to hide it.

Now, watching through the dragon king's eyes, it is confronted with the very past it had thought dead and buried.

And the pain washes over it all over again.

Grief so deep and raw it causes the dragon king to clutch at his chest and nearly double over.

Feeling the dragon's pain has his own.

It knows that the king recognizes the pain for what it is because thanks to the dragon inside of him, he has felt a fraction of the same before. "She was your tether wasn't she."

"She was...She was my tether and I killed her."

It feels the shock in the way the dragon king's heads slams against the bones of his chest.

The king is silent.

But it does not need him to say anything, It knows what he is thinking.

Hurting your own tether is not just akin to hurting yourself.

Tethers are a dragon's gift from the gods.

A reason to live.

Something other than themselves worth breathing for.

And to kill your own Tether...

It was the highest of sacrileges.

"Five thousand years ago, my creation...the manner in which I came to be was one that was purely accidental.

No, not accidental...a joke. I was made in jest."

These are matters that It has not thought about in a while and recalling them is more... difficult than It had imagined it would be.

But it had no choice.

If It does not say them, the mirror would deem It and the dragon king whose body It inhabits unworthy to pass and the darkness of It's past would consume them both.

So It pushes past the ache of the wound and resumes It's tale.

"After my creation, the god who made me decided he had no more use for me. His jest was done, his point proven and so I was abandoned. Left to wander the realm of the gods for three thousand years." As Er'gan speaks into the mind of the dragon king, It can see the mirror change, the images beginning to form.

And It watches.

Watches a younger version of Itself wander and roam.

Apart from everything, less than everything.

Until the day It was found

"His name was...is Azarath. And he was the god of magic. The one responsible for controlling and delivering the gifts of magic to all created creatures."

Er'gan remembers Azarath the way one remembers the wind.

Good and bad intermingling until all that is left is confusion.

In those days, dark magic did not yet exist.

Not truly.

But Azarath was a curious god.

And the powers he possessed, they made him even curiouser.

So when he found Er'gan, he took him in.

Not because he felt compassion on the ancient being forced to roam the realm of the gods as an outcast but because he saw a creature with which to test the limits of his powers. And so he began to give gifts to Er'gan.

Began to use the creature to test what he could and could not do.

And Er'gan grew strong and powerful.

So much so that Azarath decided he wanted more.

He wanted an army of this powerful creatures who could fly and breathe fire.

And he wanted them all for himself.

But by now, Er'gan vast power and abilities had gotten the attention of the other gods and when they saw it's potential, they decided to create a race of people specifically fitted to it's abilities. So they took Er'gan's blood qnd Er'gan's bone and Er'gan's scales and from it they made the dragonkin.

And to the dragonkin and Er'gan's descendants they gave the fifth realm.

But to Azarath, he who believed that he would be given control of the realm, after all it was his gift that had brought the dragon's to their attention, they gave nothing.

"That is when it all began to go wrong is it not."

"Yes dragon king. It is."

Azarath had been livid.

"He was beyond convinced that the fifth realm was his right, the fruit of his loins and thus his to rule and control and do with as he pleased."

But the gods were not prepared to give control of any of their creatures to just one god.

Azarath as the patron god of magic already had so many who held him in high reverence.

It was more than enough.

But Azarath would have none of it.

If the gods thoughts they could take away from him what he deserved, then would become the strongest of them all and rule over creators and creations alike.

"So he began to seek for ways to surpass them."

His magic, the gifts he had, they began to grow dark.

He turned to arts that were forgotten, ways that were forbidden and paths that were uncharted.

And he grew.

He grew so strong that even the other gods began to fear him.

"But it was not until he began to wreak havoc throughout the seven realms, running amok, doing whatsoever he pleased, it wasn't until then that they decided that something had to be done." The images in the mirror move in time It's thoughts and words.

The events appearing as they happened.

"A meeting of the gods was called and as the first dragon and the one who had spent the most time with him and had in a way begun Azarath's path of destruction, I was summoned. And that..."

The image before dragon and dragon king changes, wavering and shimmering, like looking under a puddle of water.

"Was where you met her."

The woman with hair the color of fire and skin so olive and alive, it looked beyond real.

Her eyes spark and shine at them like she can see them.

And her smile, because that is how It chooses to remember her, is like the brightness of a thousand suns.

Warm and bright in the damp darkness of the cave.

The Oracle of Daphne.

It was she who had found It.

She would had first reached out to the dragon who all It's life had lived apart from everything.

"It had been she who opened my eyes to true living. She who had taught me to be alive. My first friend and for a creature who had spent the past thousands of years of simply drifting, I knew I had to protect her with my life." But Azarath had gotten to her first.

The events after that are a blur even in the dragon's memory.

Azarath began to use his magic to turn other gods and creatures to his side.

Lures of power, promises of wealth.

"And somehow she was among those who succumb to the sweetness of his words. Azarath corrupted her magic, turned her to the dark."

By then, every god, every creature in all the realms knew that he had to be stopped.

And the battle that followed would be the greatest battle of the 7 realms.

A battle that had come at a steep price from all of those involved.

Lives were lost, their essence corrupted and sucked away by Azarath's magic.

It had been especially hard for Er'gan.

To fight against the god who had saved It and given It the powers that had made It worth anything.

And the dragon had almost been taken, It's essence nearly corrupted.

But It had fought back.

Hard and long and unrelenting.

However with the power of the future on his side, Azarath had became almost unstoppable.

The gods decided there was only one choice left.

To defeat him, they had to take away his greatest advantage.

"I tried to stop them. to convince them that she could be brought back, made to once more see the light again."

But they would not listen to It.

And Er'gan had been given a choice.

Good or evil.

Order or chaos

It's happiness or the happiness of the countless others who would come after him.

It had been a choice that had caused It so much pain, that It was nearly driven to extinction.

"The existence of the seven realms was hanging in the balance and I alone could stop it. I did not believe I could do it, perhaps that it why she did not see it coming."

"So you killed her."

"I had to. Defeating Azarath after her death was... easier."

But for the dragon it had been near catastrophic

The pain of losing her had been so excruciating it had nearly killed It.

The Fates had taken pity on it and rather than letting It die, had put the dragon to sleep.

Letting it hibernate and drift.

Alone and Apart

Until the time he had awoken again many years later, his soul bound to that of the dragon king.

"So now you know my secret."

"You did what you had to."

"I know dragon king but it does not make it any easier to say...or remember."

But it definitely made the burden much easier to bear.

It had done the right thing.

It may have almost cost It It's life.

And the other half of his soul.

But in the end, it had saved a thousand more and that was what mattered the most.

The minute it thinks this, The mirror before them swings inwards.

The hall of mirrors had found them worthy.

And together, dragon king and dragon step through the doorway out of the caves and back into the light.

"Er'gan"

"Yes dragon king."

"This god of whom you speak. It is Azarath the fallen is it not...the very same one the dark elves worship?"

"Indeed. Killing him proved to be near impossible so he was cast down from the seventh realm and locked up in an abandoned realm."

The realm of chaos and shadows.

The realm where the past lives and thrives, festering into shadows of memories and regrets.

The dragon king stops suddenly, and It can feel the dread creeping up his heart, stealing it's way into his bones

"When we went to retrieve her memories, the path on which Hera was set on..."

"Yes. The path of lost memories passes through the realm of chaos."

"And the eyes that saw her?"

"...They were his."

"By all of Hades Er'gan why didn't you say anything?!"

"I was uncertain..."

"Lies...you were afraid."

The dragon is silent.

Not because It is lying because Er'gan does not lie.

But because the dragon king is right.

However it was not the fear of Azarath that had sealed It's tongue.

It was fear that Hera, the dragon king's Tether and Er'gan's second chance might have been the reincarnation of the one he lost.

The one who had betrayed them all when she gave herself over to the darkness.

It had kept silent because as dangerous as it was, it had needed to know and walkng the path of lost memories had been the only way.

Now it knows.

Knows that she had been gifted to the Fates at birth.

And that they in turn had gifted unto her the powers they had taken after Daphne's death.

Hiding the powers in a vessel and a realm into which Azarath would never think to look.

They had made a human the new Oracle.

It's greatest fear had been realized.

So it says nothing to defend itself.

And yet the dragon King's anger at It's silence is understandable.

Says nothing as the dragon king paces and fumes.

"You let me take her there, said nothing to warn me and now that he has seen her, found her, he will seek to corrupt her again. To use her for his own gain. In fact for all we know..."

The king's voice drops to barely a whisper.

Hurt and pain and fear clouding his tone.

He seems unable to bring himself to say the words out loud so Er'gan finishes it for him.

She had stepped off the part and had drifted, lost among the shadows for far too long.

For all they knew.

"He may have already done so."