The Ballad Of A Semi-Benevolent Dragon

Sovereign Flame lay broken upon the ground. His wings had been torn off, and his arms and legs were hardly any better. Two were missing, and the remaining two were dangling by mere threads. His tail was a stumpy ruin. The great fire within him had all but gone out. Even burning his very soul as fuel had not been enough to stand on equal footing with the Broken God. Aye, he had wounded the foul creature. His god-fire had burnt what should have been impossible to burn, and the gods had taken full advantage of that opening - an opening bought not only with his life but the lives of all the dragons who had accompanied him.

But still... but still it wasn't enough.

Almost all of the lesser gods were dead. All that remained of them were sparks of divine fire that had yet to rejoin the great cycle of death and rebirth. Their power lingered, a testament to their unflinching will, their stalwart desire to aid those who still remained in the fight. The Seven Gods were on their last legs. Of the mightiest beings in the world, only one was still capable of putting up anything even remotely resembling proper resistance.

And the Broken God?

That twisted abomination now stood triumphant over the battlefield, a titan whose gigantic frame stretched past the clouds. Each step he took sundered the land, tearing through the astral plane, the Dreaming Lands, and the very fabric of reality, not to destroy, but to unmake, to reduce the world to a deep and terrible nothingness, a primal emptiness more terrifying than anything Sovereign Flame had ever known. Yet the remaining gods continued to throw themselves at him, giving their lives to buy the Weaver of Light and Fate the time she needed to launch one last, desperate attack.

He could see it wouldn't be enough. And so Sovereign Flame forced himself to move. Shattered bones and pulverised muscles screamed in agony. A soul on the verge of collapse pleaded for rest. Hah! What need had he for rest? He could rest when he was dead, not that death was far away anyway. He used the stump of his tail and his two remaining limbs to crawl toward the broken god. When those failed, he slithered like a snake. The Broken God did not bother to strike him down. Why would he? What could a ruined dragon on the verge of death hope to achieve? It was better to focus on the Weaver of Light and Fate. Once she was defeated, the Broken God could slaughter the rest of the gods at his leisure.

For once in his life, Sovereign Flame was glad to be underestimated.

The Weaver of Light and Fate was a titan of dawn-forged metal, a sun-steel giant whose very presence radiated sanctity and purity. Normally, it would have been impossible to look upon her true form, so brightly did she shine. Now, however, her glow was dim, scarcely more than a candle in a world that seemed increasingly dark. Runes swarmed around her, and her soul-song filled the air. In the darkened skies overhead, a great spear began to take shape.

An image filled Sovereign Flame's mind, not a memory of his own, but a memory that echoed through Creation itself. It was a memory born at the very dawn of Creation. It was from before the Seven gods, from before even the god who must have created them.

A spear, floating in the darkness, forged not by mortal hands or even the divine but by Creation itself.

A name came unbidden to his lips, along with words that were not his own. Like the vision, they echoed through eternity and infinity.

Daybreak. The Spear of the First Dawn, the Spear of All Dawns. Wrought not by mortal hands or the divine, but by Creation itself. A Spear to stand against the Void, to drive back the forces that assailed Creation. A Spear that no evil could withstand, that no darkness could endure. A Spear as old as the oldest gods, a Spear that could be called across all space and time. Ever would it answer when the worthy called, and where it went, victory followed.

The Seven Gods were not worthy. The Weaver of Light and Fate could not call that spear to them.

But she could use the echo of it to shape a weapon of her own, one that could kill even the Broken God.

All she needed was time.

The spear in the sky began to solidify, and as it did, the sparks of divine flame left by the fallen gods raced towards it. Their fire joined the spear, granting it strength and substance as their divine runes appeared upon the shaft and head. And then the remaining gods began to die. The lesser gods were first, and then the greater gods, and then even the Seven Gods themselves. The Spear in the vision had been forged by the Flame that birthed Creation. The gods here had no such power at their command. The only fire they could use to forge a weapon to kill the Broken God was the fire within themselves.

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Only the Weaver of Light and Fate remained, her own body beginning to fray at the edges as the other Seven Gods began to fade. If the other gods had been ribbons of light, the Seven Gods were raging wildfires, infernos of divine might that transformed the spear from a ghostly, almost ephemeral presence to something whose very existence shook the world. Sovereign Flame looked up and tried to burn the image of it into his mind, yet even he, at the Fifth Awakening, lacked the strength to properly perceive it.

The Broken God froze at the sight of the spear. Yes. He knew it too, or at least, he knew the Spear that had inspired it, and he was not simply afraid of that Spear but utterly terrified. That moment of fear and indecision cost him. For as he finally moved to close the distance between himself and the Weaver of Light and Fate, Sovereign Flame struck.

He had no limbs with which to grasp his foe, nor a tail to entangle him. His wings were gone. But he had a mouth, and though most of his teeth were broken, enough remained for this last, most critical of tasks.

Sovereign Flame lunged, propelling himself forward with a desperate burst of strength - and then his jaws snapped shut around the Broken God's ankle.

A mere instant - that was how long he held the Broken God. But it might as well have been forever.

The Weaver of Light and Fate dissolved, her god-metal body turning to ash as her divine flame joined the spear floating in the sky. The gods had forged the world with divine runes and primordial runes. And now every last one of those runes gleamed like stars upon the spear. With those runes and their lives had the gods shaped the world. Now, with those runes and their lives, they would defend it.

The spear flashed, and the Broken God sought to evade. Power that could reshape reality and unmake existence flared. But the spear would not be denied. The Weaver of Light and Fate had used that single moment well.

It was a weapon with the weight of a world and all the gods behind it. It was not a weapon that could be dodged or blocked or parried. From the moment it was complete, evading it became impossible. As long as the laws of the gods bound the world and as long as the Broken God existed in the world, the spear would strike true. It was simply a question of whether or not the Broken God could endure.

It could not.

As mighty as the Broken God was, as overwhelming as its power had grown, the spear carried the strength of the world and all the gods. As Sovereign Flame had burned his soul for fuel, so too had the gods used their very existences to grant the spear the power it needed to slay this most terrible of foes.

If the Broken God was the very essence of un-existence made manifest, then the spear was the opposite. It fell with the weight of the world behind it. Everything the gods had ever done, every land they had shaped, every creature they had made, every law they had put in place. Everything was brought to bear. Let the Broken God face the full potential of the world the gods had crafted, let it stand against the dream they gods had shared, let it face the flow of fate and destiny...

And let it fall.

The Broken God fell, and the spear detonated, an attack meant not simply to slay the Broken God but to extirpate it, to annihilate its existence so utterly and completely that it could never return.

And Sovereign Flame?

He died, caught in the blast, laughing as the Broken God screamed in futile anger.

Thus ended the First Age.

And with the death of the gods something in the world changed, faded, dimmed.

Yet buried in the flow of time, hidden in the very heart of the world, some shadow of that divine spark remained, waiting, watching, hoping for someone to breathe life into it again, to take the tiniest of sparks and birth a wildfire.