Dorian Khalthrak
There are stories that parents tell their children to help them fall asleep, and then there are stories born solely to give them nightmares. The World Eaters were the second kind of story when I was young. Everyone knew the tales, but no one talked about their looming threat. They turned a blind eye until it was too late.
When the World Eaters came, they devoured the skies that the Khalthrak clan had flown across or countless eons. Parasitic creatures fell from their bodies like insects and tainted the holy ground of my family’s ancestral land. Collectively, we referred to them as the Old Ones, but the World Eaters were by far the worst of them all.
I had spent the first quarter of my life trying to convince the elders of the threat they posed, but all of it led to me, Dorian Khalthrak, backed into a corner with naught but my father’s sword to help me take my final stand.
The Old Ones clawed at the stone doors leading into my bedchamber. Their black claws and gnashing teeth merely served as tools for the World Eaters to have their fill. These creatures did not think, did not hunger, and did not love. They were soulless abominations, bred only to spread chaos and darkness.
The ancient wards that held those doors together started to wane. I saw the flashes of colored light as each seal came crashing down. My hands tightened around the sword’s hilt as I heard my father’s voice in my head.
“This blade, my son, was forged in the heart of a dying star, just before it exploded and tore itself asunder. Its power is immeasurable, and now it is yours.”
A burning fire danced across the immaculate metal surface of the blade as the last of the wards fell. The door crumbled and gave way to a gushing wave of monstrosities. Their bodies were like oil in water. They shifted and slinked as if time held no meaning to them. Only their glowing yellow eyes and jagged fangs remained visible as they approached.
I was the last of my kind. Soon my world would fall like so many others to the World Eaters. Even so, I would fight until my dying breath.
With a raging battle cry I charged into their ranks. The brilliant flames of the sword cut through the uncertain bodies of the old ones. I heard their unholy screams as the flames evaporated their form. I watched their eyes go out like candles in the wind, one by one.
They continued to flood into the room. My sword swung true, cleaving through countless Old Ones with each dedicated swing. As they got closer and their numbers grew, I felt their cold influence upon my skin. I heard them whispering doubts into my ear. As their stories foretold, they spoke a language that only belonged to the tongues of the dead and those who came before. It was a language as dark and chaotic as their physical forms.
My muscles ached, and still the servants of the World Eaters would not wane. As I felt hundreds of their hands on my skin, I took my final swing through them. The ones that I killed were immediately replaced tenfold.
The sword flashed with a brilliant light. I watched the Old Ones all around me sail backward in every direction. I shut my eyes as it flashed again, and again. A great and powerful heat built up inside the blade. I felt it searing my skin, burning away my physical form. The final flash ripped through the Old Ones with the fury of a dying star, but in the process it also tore my body apart in its holy fire.
I should have perished in that moment, but I did not. The members of the Khalthrak clan all carried dragon’s blood within them. Many would go their entire lives without ever being able to realize their true form, but my father told me that the dragon’s heart within me was strong. He told me that I was a great warrior, like him and his father. Though he never lived to see it, my father was right.
When the light faded, the sword was gone, as was my ancestral home. I stood on the scorched ground, no longer inhabiting the body of a man, but wielding the form of a dragon. Crimson scales covered me from head to toe. The remnants of my family’s great kingdom was laid out before me, and I towered over it all in my true form.
I felt the star’s broken heart inside of me. I felt its purifying fire raging like an inferno in my chest. I turned my head to the sky and saw them. The World Eaters were pale serpents that spanned unfathomable distances. Their mouths were filled, not with teeth, but with black holes that devoured all that came near, even light itself. Their hunger was insatiable, their power was impossible to conceive.
The Khalthrak clan had stories of them, but to bear witness was to gaze upon the true face of evil. I watched as the very stars themselves seemed to slip into their gaping maw. The stories never spoke of anyone who could kill a World Eater soon that would change. They would tell stories about this moment.
I threw my wings down with a roaring gust of wind and shot upward towards the infinite serpents in the sky. I stayed beneath it, steering clear of the creature’s mouth. If light could not escape, then the wings of a dragon wouldn’t either. I rose higher and higher, until the remnants of my world were beneath me. I hovered above the back of the World Eater and looked in either direction. Its body stretched far into the stars and its head was turning down towards the surface of my world.
Soon it would devour the very land my clan had fought to protect for countless eons. It would unceremoniously gorge upon the flesh and bones of an entire world before moving on as if it never existed. The combined strength of my entire clan built up within me like a raging inferno. I felt the sword’s power within me as I turned my head down toward the putrid body of the World Eater beneath me, and unleashed a burning light.
Pure and scorching light rushed out from my open mouth and cut into the beast. I turned and directed the beam as I flew towards its head. I watched the flesh rip beneath me as the beast came apart. As I reached its head, I saw its gaping maw turning toward me. Its body was crumbling, but the mouth was still intact.
I looked directly into the creature’s jaws and saw the purest form of darkness. An absolute absence of any color or light. Even the light that rushed forth from my jaws was twisted and pulled into its depths. My wings thrashed through the thin air around me, but I still felt the overwhelming pull of the black hole that resided within its jaws.
To cross that line, even as the beast was slowly dying, would spell certain doom for me. Despite my struggles, I descended towards that endless darkness. There was a part of me that always worried about the World Eaters coming to destroy us. This moment had been the subject of many nightmares for me as a child.
From within the black hole, I saw light beginning to emerge. The World Eater’s body had been torn apart by my attack. The black hole was destabilizing, that brief glimpse of light was enough for me to find renewed strength. I turned and pushed myself to fly as far away as possible. There was a powerful release of energy as the beast fell. A rushing wave swept into me, throwing me off course and out beyond the skies of my planet. I was cast into the vacuum of space, send adrift by the explosion.
The impact of the shock wave shattered several bones in my side and twisted my wings until they were mangled beyond recognition. Out there, in that endless sea of blackness, I drift listlessly through the stars.
As the ashes of the World Eater fell onto the fractured sphere that was once my home. At least I could take solace in the knowledge that my world was never fully devoured. My heart sank in my chest as I saw two, three, then four World Eaters emerge from the space behind my planet. They punched through the fabric of the stars like fish jumping from the rippling surface of an ocean.
They immediately dove downward towards the planet’s surface. I closed my eyes as I drifted further and further into the space beyond my world. I didn’t wish to watch those final moments. As a dragon, I can survive in space without air, water, or food. The only thing a dragon needs is the light of a burning star. Those fires would sustain me, but as I looked around, I saw only darkness in every direction.
The sun that fed our planet for countless eons was naught but a tiny sphere of fire. Its light was distant. With my bones shattered and my wings damaged, I could do nothing but let the currents of the stars carry me where they may. I would eventually reach a new world, and my bones would heal once I passed a star and absorbed its light.
In the meantime, I would drift into darkness and solidarity. I only had my thoughts and the sight of my world’s end to keep me company. The World Eaters wouldn’t stop with my world, they will keep devouring until all the stars are snuffed out and the planets of the universe are crumbled into dust. Their destruction would be total and absolute. I had to warn the creatures of the universe. I wasn’t sure if the World Eaters could be stopped, but it was the hope that I would eventually find allies to aid me in war against them, that perhaps another world may yet be spared.