A Moment, Fractured

T here was nothing as far as the eye could see. Only blinding light and deafening silence in the vacant space between time. Then, the capital city of Muulas had been wrenched from its anchorings in the material realm and violently dragged, kicking and screaming, into oblivion. Its people's voices rang out into the void, crying for salvation from their motionless fate as their city forever settled to smoldering ruins around them.

The space above the city was littered with stationary angelic soldiers, primed for a battle of deific proportions. An echoing, harmonic choir continued to emanate from their still bodies as it mixed and mingled with the song of agony sung by the mortals below. Together, they made sweet, visceral music atop the hum of fire that raged through the city in the dead, and otherwise empty space that still had no name.

“Izuunah'kyrr.”

Yes, that would be the new name for his new domain: Fate’s Crucible. Though none heard him utter his divine mandate, Midecrei continued to fly above his city, basking in his pyrrhic victory against the Prime Architects. With every wingbeat, the white void shimmered and exploded in color. Rolling hills of verdant woodlands expanded out from the city, and towering, crag-lined mountains erupted far in the distance. The sky above rippled like a pond as a sea of light blue filled the blank canvas.

Midecrei landed with a heavy thud at the foot of tall, marble steps that led up to his palace, his temple, in the center of Muulas. A flight of human sized stairs flanked his own on either side, embossed with delicate, patterned lines of silver. His most devout followers—his own clerics—would be waiting for him at the top, bowed low in unending prayer. With gargantuan wings furled back, he set off up the stairs, his mind wandering the whole way.

“I should have never listened to that ancient fool,” he mumbled in Draconic, “for what does he know of the world I shaped? A mere interloper!” The very earth the city's foundations were built upon rumbled under the bass-filled snarls of its emperor. Stones crumbled beneath his claws as his grip tightened on the marbled step, frozen in place as they eternally fell towards the terraced surface below. “Am I not divinity incarnate? Am I not worthy of standing by our Father's side in the heavens, where he, too, wrought his own godhood from the stars themselves?”

A spectral, shifting image of red and blue scales in the shape of axe heads blurred through his vision, shimmering and glistening with freshly spilled scarlet blood. Armor glinting under harsh sunlight seared its way into his memory as if it were branded into his psyche. Vasani soldiers dying and collapsing where they stood, consumed by a roiling pestilence that melded their flesh into amalgams of bone and sinew came back to haunt him. Rituals be damned, the stairs were taking too long!

Midecrei took off from the stairs with thunderous wingbeats as his memory clouded. Dust and debris turned into shrapnel around him, exploding out and soaring a few feet before being captured in a snapshot of the moment. With an elegance that defied his imposing stature, he landed with a regal flourish to an audience of unblinking eyes. Dozens of high ranking Vasani officials, gaurdsmen, and civilian representatives stood gawking upwards, unmoving in their terrified stances.

A massive, gilded statue of himself stood before him; its wings were unfurled and fully extended, and its head was craned upwards to bask in the artificial sunlight. Branched horns curled back behind his head, nearly hidden from the view below by the fine, silver filigree that composed the whispy whiskers on either side of his elongated maw. Written on a plaque near the base of the statue, it read: ‘Our Lord Eternal Midecrei’ in a flowing, Draconic script. It would seem that my scales have been sculpted improperly. When this is all over, I should have that artist publicly executed...

Then time resumed. His people's screams of terror finally matched their movements as soldiers and civilians alike were unleashed onto this new realm. Angelic warriors, zealous in their crusade, continued their assault relentlessly. Despite their fervor, however, they were too few in number and cut off from their divine masters—trapped within Fate's Crucible. One by one, they were slaughtered, their bodies being reduced to shimmering piles of pearlescent ash upon death.

Midecrei stood, watching as his people found themselves in an alien plane where there was no sun, the sky was void of clouds, and the grass wasn't the right shade of green. The screaming, the terror, the horrors of war were finally over. He expanded his influence again, and all was still and silent. Not so much as the wind blowing, or mice squeaking, or children whispering rumors graced the air within Muulas. It was perfection, a moment of bliss captured by his will alone in the aftermath of holy judgement.

---

Midecrei rested on a throne befit for a god-king, its plush seat extending to accommodate the full length of his lounging body. His court was scorched and ruined, covered in dried humanoid blood and angelic soot that sparkled in the unerring magelight. The dull hum of murmured prayer echoed from the chamber where he allowed his clergy to convene, while others remained still. In the relative silence, he found himself drifting in and out of daydream-like trances.

A face, one he had not seen in what felt like eons, bubbled to the surface of his memory. The one he had called mother, caregiver—friend. She had found him in the mountains all alone, eggshell still clinging to his underdeveloped hide in the blistering cold of winter. She made the brutal and unforgiving pilgrimage to the shrine devoted to the draconic God of War, Belletrax, within the Iron Peaks to pray for the safe return of her war-fatigued husband. If it were not for Syvis, that human who graced him with compassion, he would not have survived that bleak winter.

Shouts from her own mother, one he recalled as Viessa, rang through his mind. Viessa had screeched ‘Syvis, what in the Hells is that?!’ the day she had brought him back, swaddled in a thick woolen blanket tucked between her arms as if he were a human child. He remembered her voice, sweet as honey, giving him a name right then to answer her aged and concerned mother. She had rocked him back and forth and said ‘His name is Mordecai, mother, and can you not frighten him like a banshee?’

That very same night, Syvis had placed him in an empty drawer on the floor next to her bed and snuffed her room's candle before crawling into her empty, seemingly oversized bed. Midecrei, however, could not rest in those alien conditions. He had twisted and squirmed against the swaddling, attempting to free himself from the fluffy prison that confined him to a wooden box that reeked of pine. Then, her voice drifted down from the bed above him, soft and delicate as if made of silken threads. She had started to sing.

Hush now, little ember, stars are alight;
Close your bright eyes, let the world drift away.
Guarding your dreams through the veil of the night,
The mountains keep their watch till the day.

Your flame is a spark that the heavens adore,
A song yet unsung, a legend in store.
Sleep, my Mordecai, 'neath the moon's gentle glow,
For tomorrow brings wonders no soul yet knows.

Her voice was a symphony unto itself, a flow of gentle lyrics; it was a harmonic hymn crafted for the sole purpose of delivering him to sleep. He found that he slept soundly afterwards, and as the darkness of that dreamless sleep consumed him, he found himself startled back to the present by the clattering of a silver offering plate now resting at the foot of his throne. Opening one eye, he found two members of his clergy—Drakin by the names Thaaum'ris and Nuura'akun—had backed away and stooped to bow, face first, into the floor.

Bottles of fine wine and exotic, colorful fruits adorned the sterling platter, while large cuts of raw, marbled meat dominated the center. Bars of silver, gold and electrum littered the perimeter, framing the offering in a shimmering gleam under the magelight. If it were not for the glittering ash upon which the offering rested, the scene in front of him could have been any other day.

“Oh great Eternal One, please acce—”

Thaaum'ris, the green scaled Drakin on the left, had begun to speak out of turn. Affronted by his idiocy, Midecrei willed the preist to stop, and so he did. His jaw was frozen mid-word, and he stood half in bow before the great dragon as a rigid statue. Not even his robes dared move against the onslaught of the drake's warm, steam-cloud breaths as Midecrei's maw moved to regard the other Drakin still prostrated before him.

“Your meager tribute insults my majesty, but it shall suffice... for now,” Midecrei snarled, his words splitting the air like daggers. “But heed my decree, priest: let your prayers be mine alone, rising no higher than my wings. I shall rekindle the fading embers of our Dominion, even if I must raze the heavens to cinders!”