Dragon and Demons

[Skallagrim]

Razed Memories

The world had been once a paradise. Flora and fauna lived in natural harmony until the advent of man. Steel and concrete buildings spread like a cancer across the verdant landscape, crowding out the once majestic trees and forced the animals further and further into decreasing hinterlands. Water, once clean and drinkable, became toxic with the waste and wanton dumping of chemicals from gray, squat buildings that spewed black clouds of destruction into the air.

This world, once a paradise was now a dried out husk. Harsh winters where the skies once blue, now slate gray, dropped acidic snow on the hard scrabbled ground. Here in a desolate park, once the jewel of the city, homeless, hopeless people wander in a haze. Many stumble by the great dragon seated on a rocky out cropping, resembling the stone, great baleful eyes watching the dregs of society waste their lives in the bottle or on whatever drugs they deemed necessary to turn their personal pain to a tolerable throbbing.

Here Teirwaedd would summon the Elder Daemon whom he owed much. What cared he for this world or these people? Yet even now as he watched them, a pang of guilt rang through his heart as he knew they would be stripped of their hopes very soon.

Stretching his sinewy body out, his wings extended to their full length as he sat up. Below him a drunken man, eyes rummy, gaped at him. Ionized particles filled the air as the dragon smiled, a flick of his tongue as the man began backing away, a brown bag falling to the ground only to smash with a loud crack as a millisecond later a burst of plasma raced forward engulfing the fleeing man. He never screamed, merely died in an inferno.

What a waste. No matter now, what ever hopes and dreams he may have had, gone in a flash. The ritual of summoning would unleash a new terror upon this world, perhaps as loathsome as it sounded, they had brought this judgment upon themselves.

“I consecrate this circle to the Three Fates and ask their blessings...
In this time that is not time,
In this place that is not a place...
On this day that is not a day....
I stand at the threshold between worlds...
Upon the bridge of souls....
May the ancient one I call upon come to answer my call...
Bannruod... I remember the darkness is your home...
O’ fate of light, O’ fate of shadow, O’ fate of dark...
I ask that the presence of the one I named be allowed here...
In this time that is not time...
In this place that is not a place...
On this day that is not a day....I await you.”

He rumbled as he stood on the rocks and throwing his head back, his eyes shining brightly, he began laughing. A thunderously explosive laugh full of cruelty and a hint of regret.