Page 100 of Heart of the Shadow King

Silence.

A silence which sings. An eternal song which no mortal ear may hope to hear. The song, the vibration, the resonance of spheres hurtling through endless void, performing the dance ordained for them by the gods.

And there they are, in the midst of the dance: Arraog and her mate. Big beyond description. Their wings span galaxies, their tails trailing comets and asteroids in their wake. The two of them together shine and sing, voices blending in terrible, perfect harmony with the stars, the planets, the nebulas. They are more than flesh and scale. They are the dreams of the gods made living. The great Celestial Dancers.

They are one. They have each other. Their love is a timeless symphony of light and dark and joy.

Then, bursting through the gleaming stars, a figure limned in darkness appears. A being of absence, empty and endlessly hungry. Though none has ever seen him, he is everywhere to be found and known by many names. I whisper his name now, my voice soundless in the vacuum of space:Morar tor Grakanak.

He stretches out one mighty hand, catches hold of one Dancer. With a single twist, he snaps its neck, and the Celestial ceases. The song is broken, the dance ended.

His mate screams.

Her flame engulfs planets and stars.

Her pain reverberates in a wave of destructive force, swelling greater and greater, as though it would encompass all living things.

But when the Dark drops the body of the broken Dancer, she catches it, wraps it around herself. Makes herself small, hot, and burning, safe within the shield of her mate’s bones and skin. Her grief is contained, an inferno core in the center of death and loss.

I watch in mingled awe and incomprehension. It’s the stuff of myth—the old, foolish tales once told to children in an effort to make sense of the unknowable. But those tales were not so foolish after all. They were only words struggling to grasp that which can never be held in language, that which can never exist within the bounds of mortal understanding. It’s too great, too terrible. Life and death and chaos and love.

And pain.

So much pain.

But this I understand. The wrapping up of oneself in layers of stone.

It cannot last. Suppression is but a temporary relief. It will lead only to ultimate destruction.

“Give it to me, Arraog,” I say, reaching out to that world of stone, cupping it in my hands. “Give me your pain. Let me hold it with you for a little while.”

I crack the stone apart, let the hot center pour forth like runny yolk. It sweeps over me in a flood, overwhelming my body, my mind, my soul. It is pain beyond anything I’ve ever known, pain beyond imagining. Over and over, I pull myjorback into place, holding myself together, a feeble protection but the only one I have against this apocalypse of agony. It goes on for an age. For an eternity.

I see the dead dragon become stone and earth and dirt.

Then the God of the Deeper Dark breathes life into its depths, and the troldefolk walk forth.

All the while, Arraog remains in the center. Burning. Alone.

She releases a breath. Poison seeps through the cracks of the world.

She stirs in her sleep. Mountains break and fall.

She dreams of vengeance. Of rising back into that endless sky, of challenging the gods themselves and wreaking havoc on their heavens. She dreams of fire and destruction and carnage, and those dreams infect the world.

“Arraog!” I cry out, my voice small. “You are poisoning your children. The children born of your love’s blood and bones.”

The dragon stills. She says nothing. Everything is poised, tense, her flame momentarily caught and held. I have moments, less than moments to make her hear me.

“Your love lives on,” I say, holding her broken, burning heart in my hands. “Do you want to feel them?”

She makes no answer. But I open up nonetheless, expanding theurzulsong, channeling the fears of the troldefolk. Their agony, their terror, their desperate hope. “They are your children, Arraog,” I say. “And they are frightened. You are the only one who can save them.”

She throws back her head, roaring like the very bellows of chaos. But I hear her words.

It is too much.

The pain is too great.

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