FALORA
"We should be getting in view of the temple!" Alex called from the wheel and coasted along the clouds. Falora kept her sketchbook in hand and traced the movements of the sky. Mist thinned around her and the sails reflected off the bright, sunlit sky when they pushed through one, thick tuft of cloud. Falora tried to catch the angles and lines, but huge, piercing shadows tore out of the columns of white. Massive spires came into view. Grey archways of stone which connected an archipelago of sky islands. Cascades fell over them, creating veils within the entrance ways. The temple stretched from island to island with huge lightning towers at the different peaks. In the middle, the sigil of a hurricane to create pathways, where a giant skycore floated between them, cracked. Mountains created a protective barrier around some of the islands, and she drew them to her memory.
"Alex?" Zyle asked from one of the upper levels, a pair of binoculars against his face.
"Yes?" Alex lifted his head.
Zyle twisted one of the dials on its side. "I can see an airship through some of the clouds."
"Oh?" Alex shifted one of the sails from the wheel. "What standard are they flying?"
"None."
"If they have no standard, I'd have to guess pirates." Alexavier tugged on the levers closest to him. The Vortex took a steep incline into the floating peninsula through massive, cracked circles which led the way deeper into the temple. Turbulence hit the airship with a taste for vengeance and a gale of a barrier smacked against the airship's. Her ears popped, but they broke through to the second gateway. Celestial Draconic looped around the circumference of grey marble and Alex made another push. Cloud Sails stretched further out of the mast. At the railing, Orilion stood in eerie silence as they cracked the next gate, but he drew his attention over the broken pieces of history. Undisturbed by the turbulence, he twisted his head around, a flash of beaded pupils expanding the cyan of his irides.
It was recognition on his face.
Into a wide maw of marble and a giant landing strip meant for dragons, the Vortex landed with ease. "We're going to have to hide out here until they pass. I don't think they're bold enough to enter this place." Alexavier withdrew the cloudsails back into the mast and the aethergine's hum died in her ears.
"And what if they don't leave?" Falora asked.
"You wound me, Miss Falora. You speak as if I don't come prepared for any eventuality," Alexavier said with a steep bow. "They may be armed — but so are we." He unlatched a gun from his belt and handed it to her grip first. "Aim it right and this little thing will give them the punch of their life." He shimmied past her to drop the gangplank. "We're going to take a couple days to do some repairs after that storm as well, so, hope you like some temple diving adventures."
Wouldn't be my first time. Falora tread onto the moss-covered skystone. A cold breeze swept through the temple, a breath of the world. Her sketchbook slid into her hand, and she readied herself to draw out her memories, but stopped when someone called out to her from the deck of the airship.
"Oh, before I forget!" Alexavier called down to her. "There might be spooky sky ghosts haunting this place! Be careful." He giggled and disappeared over the edge as Orilion crawled down the gangplank in what appeared to be a trance. Falora reached out to stop him, but he drew himself to the edge of the opening instead to stare out into the cloudlands.
So much history, left beauty untouched in the sky. Pillars reached dizzying heights. Mosaics scattered across the inner roof and against the cliff face which led to the main heart of Asen'Orilion's temple. Falora shuffled over to one of the smaller pillars which held a familiar, storm core conduit. Her fingers brushed it, but unlike the previous, it did not respond with images. Jolts of electricity swept up her skin instead, and she committed it to memory and put pencil to paper. Until Orilion's shape moved past her to stare at the massive crack across the island which made its way through the cliff and straight through the uppermost levels of the temple.
"Is something wrong?"
Orilion swung his attention around again. "I don't know, but this place feels..."
"Familiar?"
Grey vines peeked out of the cracks and wound themselves around the architecture. Orilion walked over passages of history with a shake of his head. "It does but it doesn't feel right," he admitted as she followed. "Like this isn't where this is supposed to be."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Falora shoved her sketchbook back in her bag to keep up. Deeper into the temple without Alexavier's aforementioned skyghosts, she faltered when Orilion led her into a huge dome with a giant lake at its center. Gemstones glittered across the walls, creating the same Celestial Draconic script of the temple in Crackjaw, but with pieces added to its splendor. In the center of the lake, a small platform connected by four bridges. Insatiable curiosity drove her forward to examine the room.
"I don't know," Orilion said at the edge, uncertain. "Maybe we should go back to Alexavier and Zyle."
"Orilion," she hissed and raced back to him. "If you're starting to remember something you need to confront it. This is the first time you've affirmed that you do recall something and it's here, at your temple. We took this journey to get your memories back." Her heart pounded in her chest, and Orilion went wide-eyed. "I have told you, the only way we can learn from history is if we don't run from it, so don't run from this. You don't want to be the monster history painted you as?" The you that doesn't stand the test of the present I've seen? "Give me a break, Asen'Orilion. You are a dragon god. You are supposed to be incomprehensible to mortals. You are divinity. You were never going to be seen as anything else if not a monster."
Orilion drew his arm away from her and raised his head into the eye of the hurricane above them. "It still doesn't feel right," he insisted as he walked onto the bridge, and she followed him to the platform. "I wouldn't say I'm remembering something, it's more like this... doesn't feel like how it should be," he repeated.
Arcs of lightning glimmered underneath the surface of water.
"Orilion...?" Falora said when the skygems pulsed, though he appeared too in his own head to notice the reaction the temple gave. Her arm wrapped around him, and he jolted out of his trance once more. Pulses hushed through the floor from the mural they stood on. It let out a draconic hiss, and it started to descend into the lake itself. Cascades exploded over the edge to push them further downwards. Her back pressed against his when the hurricane's eye got farther and farther away. "Where is this place taking us?"
"I don't..." Orilion twisted around on their platform. "I don't know. If I had to guess, it leads to the inner sanctum."
It stirred her soul with untold knowledge. Electricity filled her heart and she edged closer to Orilion when the platform pulsed and their lift descended past the hole. Giant skycores rested at the cardinal points of the room's wide walls; dull and cracked along their surface. Her attention drew over them, but slammed to a stop at a shape wound around the middle. Her hands went up to her mouth to stifle her sharp exhale.
It was a dragon. Until she peered closer through the ripple of mist and found it made of stone. Stunned into silence when the lift hit the bottom and light made teh basin glow. Falora drew out her sketchbook again, but stopped when Orilion grabbed her forearm to stop her approach. "What?"
Distressed creased his face, but he let her go without another word. Falora moved forward once more unto history with him trailing behind her.
Falora came face to face with the stone dragon.
Awe filled her temporary coil at the beautiful cyan gems embedded in the sockets. Horns, not mangled and chipped as in the pictures of history, but shaped like bolts of lightning. Falora moved down the flank of the statue which towered over her. Two pairs of wings, feathered to catch every gust. "Orilion?" she asked and touched one of the lower sub feathers. The sculptors took great pains to make the stone look soft to the touch. "Is this familiar?" His tail branched off into three different, feathered forks. In her side vision, Orilion shook his head as she brushed the tail feathers. Scales of rot and dripping evil...
Feathers caught the sky. Wings the size of the clouds Orilion once flew through. Though it didn't match the descriptors of history — it tingled with something whole and right.
"I wish I recognized this, that I recognized myself," Orilion's voice carried on the eternal breeze rushing through the temple. "I just don't. I don't recognize this. I want it to be real..." He dropped his hand to his side and sighed. He brushed his hand down his face when he headed for the front of the statue to stare into its eyes. Falora frowned at him, putting her sketchbook back after taking all the angles. As she made his way to him, a ripple of power swept down her spine. In a cracked instant, a flash of energy, she jolted when Orilion released a sound of pain, his hand coming up to his brow as he sank to his knees with the rumble of the temple.
"Orilion?" Falora reached forward as he kept a hand on the side of his head. Her attention went back to the dragon statue, which remained unchanged, unmoved of its subject. "What's wrong?" On her knees beside him, she touched his back, but stifled a yelp at the scorching burn against her fingertips for her audacity to touch divinity, with her a mere mortal.
He opened his eyes to reveal the same cyan glow of the dragon statue. It writhed with storm clouds as he tried to catch his breath. In her bag, a hum sounded, and she opened it to reveal the piece of a glaive in Crackjaw's temple, shuddering. Her hand wrapped around what remained of the shaft, then tugged it out. It slipped out of her fingers to float above them as the water steamed.
Orilion continued to drive his fingers into his temples as the steam clung onto the skycores. "Whatever is happening, make it stop," he pleaded through a guttural, draconic hiss.
"I can't!" Falora waved her hands at him while the broken half of the glaive shone with a brilliant radiance. "Stop fighting it, Asen'Orilion! It's only going to make it worse the more you resist!" Irritation slammed her between him and the statue. "So what if you were a monster before? You aren't one now. You don't have to be now," she insisted. "You can still change. What you were in the past; you can learn from him — we're not in the past anymore, we are in the Aetheric Age, and you are still a dragon. Just because you've taken on a mortal form in this era — just because you were a tyrant in the past — it doesn't make you any less than what or who you are now! You want to change, can't you see how many mortals, who aren't divine, who don't have your power... don't? Who refuse to change, damn the people around them? Do you think you've been the only tyrant in history? I have news for you, Asen'Orilion, you aren't. Sometimes memories don't make us what we are! You cannot tell me that you're some bloodthirsty megalomaniac at your core, I can't believe that even if you've started to! Maybe we were wrong!" Falora pleaded. "I don't know what happened in the past, but I believe something went terribly wrong and we have to find the truth!"
Lightning blazed out of the water to cling onto the floating glaive above her head. The statue glowed in turn, shuddering with Orilion when he doubled over in pain. The same mirage from the storm wrapped a wreath around his body, and if she squinted, she could almost see the wings once more, the immolated bones. Sweat slipped down his brow, and flames gathered in the skycore, brightening up their cracks. Pulses of forged power poured itself into the glaive she released out into the world — reborn.
It slammed into the ground between them, the puzzle piece repaired.
It fell quiet and allowed her to time her own breaths. This... is a forge? Falora shook out her head and watched Orilion. Dread braced her for what would come out — hope battled it for the present to remain.
"Is it over?" Orilion mumbled through his arms.
Falora frowned at the lack of change. "Yeah. Do you...?" Her hand stretched out to him when he scrambled onto his knees. "Anything come back to you?"
A groan left his lips and he ignored the beautiful blade beside him. "I was too busy feeling like someone was driving the sun straight into my skull." He bumped his brow against the statue. "Nothing. All that and I still don't remember anything."
Falora frowned at him, then picked up the glaive which tingled in her palm to spot her reflection. No... I don't think that's quite right, Asen'Orilion. You may not remember anything... but this world does — it remembers the truth. But what is it trying to say? Falora overturned the glaive to trace the draconic writing upon the shaft, glowing with embers from the forge. "Are you okay?"
He twisted his head to her, pallor ashen and too similar to a corpse as he gripped onto the statue for dear life. "Hah... I don't know?" He wiped his clammy brow with another stuttered laugh.
Other parts of the temple continued to rumble, though he had gone deathly still.
No, it's not just the world. Falora winced. I think your body is starting to remember too.