Aelia

In a language she’d never learned, she whispered, “Your reign ends here.”

“Are you sure of that, Godling?”

There was a time she’d back that promise with claws and teeth, but her next words were whispered with a certain weariness. “Do I sound sure?”

“No,” The word ghosted across her scales, feeling as real as the sand beneath her claws. Ever since she’d swallowed the sun, she’d felt the entity push, a weight that pressed into the very being of her soul.

“You want knowledge,” It chuckled with a hint of amusement, like a parent humoring a child’s foolish questions. “Perhaps I can give you what you want.”

A shiver clawed its way along her spine, bringing an unfamiliar sense of panic with it.

The former god kept talking to her, their words coiling gently around her mind as if they were her own thoughts. “I should warn you, however, should you stray from my path, you shall not see my light ever again.”

“Warn me?!” She hissed, “I saw the aftermath of your unbearable forces back in my land. Where were your warnings when my kin was left to die underneath your merciless reign?”

“Who said I didn’t leave warnings?”

Something surged through her blood, a rage so vast it turned her words hot enough to burn. “I spoke to you every night, begged you even for answers but you never deemed us worthy enough of a single word!”

“You know the reason for that,”

Tsk, reason, what a joke. Where was reason when she needed it the most?

Determination gripped her throat, almost strong enough to suffocate. She screamed and felt a little better for it. “I AM STRONGER!”

The wolf dropped his jaw in a rictus of a grin, “In time, we will see,”

She turned her back on Sol, tired of seeing its smiling face. The gesture felt futile, but she couldn’t bring herself to face them again either. She couldn’t avoid its voice, however. It slipped through her thoughts, wise and knowing in its words and painfully close to whatever she took for truth, and she hated it all the more for it. But this thing couldn’t be trusted to care about dragon kind, oblivious to dragon needs as it was, no matter how logical its words sounded.

“I’ll show you,” She hissed, the words dripping with determination. She felt a surge of power, if it could be called something so inadequate. It was a disturbingly frightening feeling, like snapping your wings open in a power dive just seconds before you plummet to the ground. It made her stomach twist into knots, no matter how delirious she felt.

Sol vanished, stretching the limits of her soul hard enough to make her gasp. “What are you doing?” She asked, not trusting the entity.

"Giving you what you want,” It crooned.