374 - The Guardian Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

But… At this point, all the pain doesn’t matter. If anything, the pain combined with the awareness that he should be dead clears his thoughts. The lightning-wrought giant of light glances down at him, and he meets its — meets her — gaze. The Guardian realizes that this is Old Itria, and these are the wretched beasts of the Divine Emperor, but also not. This is a mere memory, passed down from his predecessor. He grips empty air, and a cold octahedron comes into his grasp. There is a gaping hole in his chest, but still, he stands. His flesh is scorched, bones shattered, and still he stands. A mane of scarlet bursts forth from his head, and a third eye splits his forehead down the middle.

The dragon thrashes against its restraints, and they burst in moments, lashing their surroundings, breaking stone and wood alike, cutting down one of the inner barrier’s onbashira pillars. This, too, doesn’t matter.

All of the blood the Guardian has shed up until now goes up in a white-black blaze, swirling together around his legs and returning to his body. The countless hounds of bone which the dragon had burned suddenly come back together, reforming out of naught but ash, and they set upon the beast, soaring upon black flame, biting with fangs wreathed in scarlet light. They pile upon the dragon, swarming it like bees would swarm a hornet, barely able to inflict more than surface injury — but injure it, they do, and the great beast is forced to split its effort between breaking free, shattering the barrier, and shaking off the bone-wolves. The great beast twists one of its heads and squeezes it outside the barrier. In seconds, the Guardian’s wolves are engulfed, once more turning to dust as the dragon’s green fire spreads, but seconds are enough. With a voiceless scream of burst lungs, the Guardian shoves the aquamarine gem into his own chest cavity, piercing his heart, lest the baleful flame burning within it consume him from within. He doesn’t know why he would do this, his instincts screaming that he is killing himself, but an unquestionable truth resides in his mind that this is the right course of action, that the stone will contain the flame somehow.

The wrenching pain passes as the stone enters his heart, and the Guardian simply commands his flesh to seal behind it. In the same manner, he wills his body to mend itself — and the flesh obeys, ravenously drawing upon the same flame that moments ago threatened to devour him whole, now rendered subject to his will by the power of that familiar gem whose name he can’t quite remember. The fire within him still seethes and rages, but it no longer has any hope of raging out of his control unless he lets it. Thread by thread, he draws upon the raging maelstrom inside the gem, bending it to his will and alloying it into himself as he rebuilds his broken form. It is an act akin to bending white-hot steel with his bare hands, but the hands of will are clad in unbreakable gauntlets of divine gold, and the arms of his spirit are lent the strength of countless faithful dead. In the end, however, no amount of outside assistance can carry him the full distance. The dragon’s fire burns him down to the bone, body and soul, even as he draws it out of himself and saps the colour out of it, even as he knits himself back together with it and claims its strength. Every tiny mote thusly refined sends tears of black blood pouring from his eyes, every thread carves canyons into his flesh, only to be subjugated and turned to the task of healing these wounds. Even then, even after he has subjugated it in this manner, it still burns — and he knows that the flame will always seek his ruin until he slays that three-headed, nine-eyed dragon. He knows that the flame will not be truly his until he unquestionably proves his sovereignty, and he knows that this shrine, even if it isn’t physically real, must be protected.

The more he struggles, the more he breaks and mends in the effort, the more of him burns, layers of ruined flesh and skin sloughing off and burning up in tongues of black-green dragonfire, dragonfire that truly belongs to him… And in the process, they become monolithic plates of ashen bone, some clinging to him, and others piling up at his feet.

His body scorched and spirit drained, 

“Even if this is truly a mere memory passed down from the previous shrine guardian, then as the next in line, it remains my duty to protect it!”

The Guardian reaches out with his free hand. Instantly, the sacred staff flies into his grasp and the shrine’s doors swing open. From within the shrine’s innermost sanctum, a golden star shoots out, coming to rest within the staff’s ring.

His black flame surges, consuming the shrine in its entirety, overtaking even the scourge of emerald dragonfire and climbing up the skeletal form of the great beast entrapping the dragon’s arm. The skeleton’s strength surges, and its fangs crush through the dragon’s stone-like scales, drawing first blood. The moment that purple ichor touches the ground, the Guardian’s flame consumes it. 

However, it isn’t long before dragon frees itself enough to crush the skeleton with its superior size, ripping it apart and scattering it like a poorly put-together puppet before turning its effort towards undoing the last of its restraints. In an instant it is done, and the great and terrible monster once more bathes the Guardian in emerald flame, further tearing open the innermost barrier with its arms as it does this.

The only thing left of the Guardian is a silhouette — one that grows thinner by the moment as the flame rips flesh from bone. And yet, he doesn’t fall. 

Once the three-headed blast of dragonfire ends, what remains of the Guardian is barely more than a charred skeleton. Only a thin layer wraps his bones, and only the heart still beats in his chest. Somehow, the glowing-red mane still clings to his skull, and even more implausibly, his eyes still burn in their sockets, all three of them.

And somehow, he still chants that sutra. The dragon finally crushes two of the innermost barrier’s four onbashira, causing it to collapse altogether, but by then, it is too late. With a thunderous noise, the ground collapses beneath the Guardian’s feet in a perfect circle. The Guardian’s aura spills out, and the air thrums with power faintly like that of the dragon, yet also different — a refulgent, numinous power, and also one perfectly suited for opposing the tyrannical supremacy of naturalborn dragons. The hopes and prayers of the feeble, those who lack the strength to fight for themselves, gathered into a unified front.

New flesh forms around his bones as if burning in reverse, and every speck of bone within hundreds of miles springs into motion. The dragon strikes down upon the Guardian, but an enormous fist of bone surges out of the ground to meet it with equal and even greater force, propelled by great pillars of flame. The fist grasps the dragon’s own, and sends the beast careening down into a spin. Before the monster can recover, already a cloud of white and red has gathered around the shrine — the bones and revenant spirits of innumerable dead.

Then, at last, the Guardian speaks, and a realization dawns on him. It could be said to be a simple realization of what exactly is happening, of who he is in reality, of his own name, but it would be a shameful reduction of what is taking place.

At this moment, here and now, one man has glimpsed Truth — a mere flicker of it, but that is enough.

“Grand. Glorious. Gathering.”

From one breath to the next, the cloud of red and white collapses upon him.

The three-headed dragon rises from below to the sight of not a man, but the visage of a furious deity armored in bone and bearing a cloak of scarlet revenants. Even the staff in his hand now bears a wicked spear-point at its bottom, also wrought of bone.