(Ausixen catches up with Maurger and the final battle of the War of the Fallen Son is fought. The penultimate chapter of this tale is about to commence...)




 There was a change in him.

It wasn’t something that he could grasp, but he could feel it. He wasn’t angry, which was the strangest thing. He had expected to be furious. But he wasn’t. He was sad. Not that he had lost, but that they had lost. The skies began to darken as the clouds condensed around him.

 “Ternesj!” A purple claw landed on his shimmering black. His body tensed up as if afraid.

 “You!” Maurger exclaimed.
Ausixen had followed him after the explosion. Somehow, the drake had survived it and intended to continue the war right now. The purple dived into the now-solid black, tumbling down into the grass fields north of Selen. They landed hard. Maurger bounced out of the purple’s grip and hopped quickly to his feet. His wing had snapped, but he hid his pain. He could repair the damage as soon as his body became liquid again. He just had to last that long.

 “It is time, Maurger! For the crimes you have committed against your once-kyn, you will be obliterated!” Ausixen exclaimed.

 “You come seeking justice against me?” Maurger hissed. “I sought justice amongst my kyn, and I was hated and ridiculed. I failed to receive my justice! It is only fair you fail to receive yours!”
Maurger blew his breath at Ausixen; no longer was he capable of the flame, but his dark, shadowy breath cut down the grass between them. As the blades of grass withered, Ausixen himself leapt to the side, the tip of his wing suffering the hit and aging for it.

The Purple Phoenix darted forward and tackled the black, rolling with him some distance before carving his claws into the black’s chest. Black ichor fell from black wound which could not reform under the effect of the Rune of Petrifaction. Maurger seized Ausixen’s claws in his and struggled violently to free himself.

 “Did you think my hatred just materialized? That I was born evil?” Maurger asked. He planted his hindclaws into the underbelly of the purple and shoved off, rolling quickly to his feet over his bent wing. Ausixen did the same and the two leapt at each other, clashing claw-to-claw. “From the moment of my birth, my destiny was decided for me!” the black exclaimed, sinking his teeth into Ausixen’s shoulder.

 The Purple Phoenix roared at the pain. “You always had a choice!” he exclaimed, sinking his teeth into the black’s neck and tearing him loose. Maurger removed his claws from the purple’s and fired a black primal ball into Ausixen’s chest, knocking the wind from him. With the purple’s jaw forcibly relaxed, Maurger slipped free and fell back a few feet, summoning more of the dark primal energy.

 “You wish to believe that, but you are deluding yourself. You, also, were a victim of the life set out before you. Even now you are a puppet to the very destiny you pretend to embrace!” Maurger exclaimed. Ball after ball of dark energy he threw at the purple, the first few hitting, but the rest dodged by the Champion of Drulkar. Maurger sped his attack as the Purple Phoenix drew closer. “Your parents abandoned you, and you in turn hated all dragons who were not your grandfather! You had no choice!”

 “I overcame my hatred!” Ausixen exclaimed, reaching the black and tail whipping him across the face. The black reeled and the purple closed the distance to finish it, but Maurger tore a chunk out of his own flesh and threw it into the eyes of the purple, staining Ausixen’s vision with darkness.

 Maurger fell back a greater distance, nursing the wound he had created in his flank. “You just directed that hatred onto me. It lives, Ausixen. You are still no different than me.”

 Ausixen threw a primal ball at Maurger’s location, but missed. “I am Dragon, Maurger. That is what separates us.” He continued to wipe away the black ichor.

 “I too was Dragon. More so than many. But I am not the cause of the evil that has befallen our people, Ausixen. I am a symptom,” Maurger said. His focus was on his bent wing, every dark primal energy in his body trying to fight the Petrifaction.

 “I am the cure!” Ausixen shouted, his vision restored. He rushed the black.

 “Arrogance is not the same as Pride, fool dragon!” Maurger exclaimed, his bent wing repaired. As Ausixen leapt, Maurger took to the sky, avoiding the purple’s wrath. From his new vantage point, he rained down balls of black energy onto Ausixen, who rapidly avoided them. Though his wing had repaired, the rune had not completely lost its potency yet. Until it did, he had to survive. “The failure of your kyn is inaction! There are so many times when someone might have outstretched a claw to me and led me away from the path I was on. But instead, those same claws pushed me down it!”

 Rain began to fall. Lightning arced through the sky above as the Purple Phoenix also took to the air.

 “Good dragons did nothing to help me. Good dragons allowed monsters into their ranks and even call them dragon, and yet /I/ am denied the same? I tried to change the world, Ausixen! To prevent others like me from existing, and I was damned for it!”

 “You sought subjugation! Subversion of our culture!” Ausixen exclaimed as he dove at the black.

 Maurger intercepted him, clawing the purple across the face. “What other tools did I have but those granted to me?” Ausixen clawed into the neck and chest of the black, red and black ichor falling like the rain around them.

 As the water graced the wings of the mighty drakes, the effect of the rune finally began to wear off. Maurger leaned into the blow of the purple’s claws and took it, letting him dig his weaponless claw dig into him. There, he held Ausxien’s attack with his body. “What?” Ausixen asked.

 “Force was all that your venerated culture could understand. So long had it remained without compromise or consensus. You will not beat me here, Purple Phoenix. I will return to try to save our people again. Even if I must spill yet more blood!” The black placed his claw against the wounds he had created in Ausixen, letting his black goo ooze into them. Soon he would have the Purple Phoenix again and escape alive. Blackness began to coat Ausixen’s eyes.

 “No, Maurger. I will not allow you to repeat your crimes, or the crimes done to you!” Ausixen’s free claw activated the Soulflame Nail. Brilliant flame lit up the space between them before he shoved the burning claw into the black’s body. The blackness in the Ausixen’s blood burned away, leaving him warm inside. Maurger screamed in agony as his body and soul ignited into flame from the inside out. From his nose and mouth, from the wounds on his body, flames leaked from him. Ausixen removed his paws, and the flame leaked out like lava formed of the slurry mess of the black’s body and soul.
The black fell.

 Down and down he tumbled, the weight of his life more heavy than the gravity that pulled him to the ground. He thought of her at that moment – Amalteah, the one dragon who had tried to lead him away. He thought of his children, both the dying Edari on the battlefield and his own hatchlings. She was right. He wouldn’t let himself see it, because he was so consumed with his dream, a dream of a world where he did not exist. Of a world free of internal strife, of the forces that made him into a monster, of the monsters that now ran free. She was right, when she begged him not to go to war to change the world. At that moment, he could not imagine the Desha Treskri he had envisioned.

 For at that moment, all he could imagine was being home in his lair with his children.

 The burning mess landed on the wet, grassy dirt. There it burned, and burned, each part of Maurger separated from him no matter the distance, no matter how well hidden, burned along with him. Even some of the Edari, desperately seeking connection to their father, maker, and god, burned with him. Utterly, Maurger was consumed by the righteous flame. Not a trace of him was left on Istaria. Not even the ash of him remained when the flame was finally quenched by the tears of the sky.

 Ausixen stood over the ground where Maurger had landed. All that survived was the shadow of him where the grass had burned, the shadow of his actions. He did mourn, for a time. For with Maurger’s death, so too was his hatred quenched. It was not Maurger’s death that he mourned, though. It was that Maurger had to die for him to finally change, heart and soul. Perhaps he was merely the puppet of his own destiny. Ausixen knelt on his foreclaws at the elbow and prayed to Drulkar for guidance.

 The rain let up and the clouds parted. Sun shined down upon Ausixen, warming his scales and drying them of the sorrowful rain. And the sun shined down on the shadow of Maurger’s life, and when Ausixen saw it, he understood.

“It must never come to this again,” Ausixen said. He stood up, his own shadow cast over the burnt ground. “Save who can be saved. And if they cannot, then onto my shoulders must the burden fall. I pray to you now Drulkar – may we never see another Fallen Son.” Summoning a primal healing wind to his wounds, Ausixen slowly limped off with a new purpose and a greater hope.