Page 37 of Gate of Chaos

Auryn flexed his ankle. “So based on your reading, what does a Prime, Mooring, Distant Star and a Wyrm-caliber Chaos dragon indicate?”

Keon’sI’m hiding somethingvibe intensified. “Can’t say. Not Dekka approved.”

“I’d say it’s need to know, and we need to know,” Auryn said.

“Look at you, breaking the rules,” Akoni said. “Remember what happened last time.”

“Helenahappened. Keep arguing.”

Keon shook his head. “I can’t.”

Akoni groaned and ran his hands over his face. “You cannotseriouslyexpect to disclose such a thing and then leavethisopen to speculation! The cosmos cares only slightly more when I speculate than whenyouspeculate, but are we really going to permitthemto speculate?”

Akoni pointed at Auryn and me.

Keon shrugged. “I tried to tell that to Dekka, but she was not hearing it.”

We stared at him.

“Fine,” he muttered. He lowered his voice. “But don’t let on I told you.Thisparticular combination has existed two known times before in the past four hundred thousand years of recorded history.”

“Twice?” Akoni hissed while I gasped and Auryn sat up straighter.

“I told you it was rare.”

“You didn’t saynearly unprecedented!”

“Then strap in, tadpole. It’s not clear Chaos dragons existed at all before the Day of Death. There arenorecords of Chaos dragons before that time. Granted, there aren’t very many records at all. Butmythossays the Goddess of Shattering created them to make sure dragons never became too arrogantortoo stagnant. The translation isfrom that which is broken, that which is new is forged. Just like how Ethereals did not exist before the dragons interbred with humans.”

“What does that have to do with the question?” Akoni pushed.

“The pictograph translates to something likeforge-breaker.”

In dragon magic,forginghad a very specific meaning. One didn’t make a Gate. Oneforgeda Gate. Oneforgedscales.Forgingwas what the Nine Dead Gods had done. So when a dragonforgedsomething, it came with some heavy connotations about just what exactly the dragon was doing and where the knowledge and ability had been acquired.

Ergo, a forge-breaker…

Giant cosmic sledgehammer. To theface.

“There were two,” Keon said, rattled. “The last one was four hundred thousand years ago. The one beforethatwas the very first recorded Chaos dragon. Largely believed to be the progeny of—unclear if that’s literal biological offspring or something else—of the Goddess of Shattering. But it is considered a fact that therewasa Chaos dragon present on Homeworld on the Day of Death, with a similar one forty thousand years later, and none since.”

Akoni said, darkly, “It makes sense that a powerful Chaos dragon would be present on the Day of Death. The entire order of the dragons was shattered. Forge-breaker seems appropriate and necessary for a civilization that had previously had divine recourse and now was entirely self-reliant.”

“Except the Day of Death was not followed by a time of peace,” Keon said.

“Obviously.”

“What… happened?” I asked.

“Almost complete collapse,” Akoni said. “We were a technological society at that point, but still creatures of order, and losing our gods was a significant disruption.”

“Was there a war?” I asked.

“Not in the sense of an ongoing armed conflict with declared hostilities,” Keon said. “It became extremely tribal. There was some violence, but the conflict was more dysfunctional wedding than a war.”

Nothing saidconflictlike a dysfunctional wedding.Bridezilla vs Mom-In-Lawilla : The Final Battle. “You don’t need to impress upon me that I’m a harbinger. I think we already agree on that.”

Keon ran his hands up my thighs, pressing deep into the muscle. “I think Homeworld is going to be very wary of the fact you exist. And we may want to conceal Auryn’s existence when that time comes.”

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