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Chapter 20

The realization seemed to echo throughout my body and mind as I grasped what it all meant. Back then, in the cave, when I’d had all this power within me, I hadn’t been protecting that place. I hadn’t even been protecting my home.

I’d been protecting an idea. The idea of living a life. The chance to have one for myself. And at the same time it had also been the reason I hadn’t killed Avanor and the others, for they deserved the very same thing.

I felt both the fire inside me and the world around me with a new intensity, not simply feeling the heat, but the potential deeper within. The power to do as I wished. Somewhere far away, in a direction I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around, something seemed to stir, something I’d felt before.

Yet, at the same time as I felt myself so close to the thing I’d been searching for all this time, memories rose up in my mind. Memories I’d learnt to repress, but never learnt to deal with. I hated them, hated myself for them, but I couldn’t face them. They were too vile, too horrible for me to accept.

But could I really allow myself to continue like this? Constantly striving for something I wasn’t prepared to achieve?

Maybe.

But that would mean never truly living a new life.

I thought back, purposefully remembering that one central night, the one it all revolved around. It had been dark, almost too dark to see, the noise of the rain reducing the world to nothing but a circle with three people inside it. My family. My father. My mother. Myself.

They’d begged me to stay, to let them help me, but I’d already made up my mind. I was too dangerous. I’d already taken one life, if I stayed more were bound to follow. But they didn’t listen to my warnings, even as I felt the anger so close to taking control. In the end they’d stayed with me, just as they wanted. I’d killed them for it.

A deep sorrow unfolded within me as I relived those moments, one that I’d almost forgotten was there. For months it had sat there, rolled up into a hard, hard ball, surrounded by a mold of hatred. It was painful to let it out. I didn’t want to feel like this, so incredibly sad I couldn’t imagine ever seeing the light again. Hating myself was easier. It allowed me to deny the very existence of these emotions. Back then that might even have been my only option.

I turned, looking back at Avanor, Loriel, Saren, and Ophara, all standing behind me, looking at me, faces full of pity. I grew aware of the tears rolling down my cheeks.

Yes, back then maybe I had had to start hating myself to survive. Now, I had something else to head towards. Right there in front of me was a mountain rising up above this fog-filled valley, its peak lit by the most beautiful light.

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. One last time I remembered the constant anger and hate that had been my companions for the last six months, let them brush up against me.

And then I let them go.

I opened my eyes, seeing, as if for the first time, the people standing right there in front of me. They were full of warmth, and kindness, so much so it had scared me whenever I’d been confronted with it. Such things had had no place in my world. They had been rejected by loathing and sadness.

Now I found myself smiling. Finally I was able to accept their help without guilt or injured pride, and simply take it for what it was. A helping hand, held out to fellow traveler struggling to see the way.

I felt their minds with a new clarity, the sense seeming even more vibrant than before. All around me I could sense the Nii, and further I way I felt lone Seklavi burrowing through the stone. And even further away than that I thought I sensed the same stirring from before shift again as if preparing for something. It seemed familiar somehow.

“I’ve gotta say,” Ophara said, her voice thick, “you picked a great spot to visit, Saren.”

“I agree,” I could only say, watching as a sheepish smile appeared on the Fir’s face.

“So does that mean these violent urges are gone now?” Avanor asked. I could sense that he, or all of them, really, had other questions, questions about me, about my past, that they were holding back for now. I was grateful for that.

“I think so,” I answered, meeting his eyes.

“So what were they? What caused them?”

I pondered that for a while. As I had realized what it was that I truly longed for they had simply gone up into smoke. “I think I…” I began, but stopped when I realized I lacked the words to express what I felt. As I had done countless times in the recent past, I reached out for Avanor’s mind.

I was about to ask him, when something else caught my attention. Our contact seemed more… vivid, somehow, parts of his mind lying open before me that I’d previously only seen behind a thick fog. Before I quite knew what I was doing I found myself reaching out for the one that I felt contained the information I wanted. Somehow I… mirrored it, taking that tiny piece of his mind and incorporating it into myself. It took only a fraction of a second, but suddenly I found I knew the words I wanted.

Avanor seemed a little perplexed by the experience, not sure what just happened. I felt a twinge of shame for being so forward, but that was overshadowed by the sense of wonder about what had just happened.

“I think I needed a purpose,” I said again, though when the words left my tongue I found them to be lacking, still.

“A purpose?” Avanor asked.

“It’s…” I wasn’t sure how to put it. What I’d found wasn’t simply a purpose. It was something much more, something that represented the epitome of all my convictions.

“My Krahl,” I found myself saying, the word spoken with the same power I’d heard in Rahk’s voice when he’d talked of it. Back then I’d struggled to repeat it, my mouth refusing to form the sounds.

“What’s that?” Loriel asked, furrowing her brows.

“It is a word in the dragon’s language. A dragon’s Krahl is the very essence of who they are,” I explained, noticing how much easier forming Vornith was.

“Wait, the dragon’s language?” Avanor interjected.

“Yes.”

“But… where would you have learned it? You’ve never met other intelligent dragons, right?” he asked.

I hesitated. So far I hadn’t told them about Rahk, feeling somehow that I wasn’t supposed to reveal his existence. He’d come from here, and yet these people hadn’t ever heard of other dragons like me, making me think he’d been concealing himself on purpose.

Now, though, I felt that I had nothing to hide from them. I trusted them.

“I have met one, but he didn’t teach me,” I said. “Every dragon knows our language. Some are simply too far gone to use it.”

“I see,” he said. “That’s how you knew it was possible, right? To rid yourself of these feelings.”

“Yes.” I felt the sudden urge to continue talking. “He came to me when I’d given up already and showed me how to get here. I owe him everything.”

They met that with smiles.

“While we’re on the topic,” Saren spoke up, something I hadn’t seen happen often so far, “I think I found something interesting. When Avanor first told me that he thought you were intelligent I thought I’d heard something similar before. About dragons, I mean.”

Avanor furrowed his eyebrows, listening intently.

“Gromnek relics sometimes mention large, fiery creatures of great ferocity, which are generally believed to be descriptions of dragons. The things is, these descriptions never quite matched our modern understanding of dragons, as they were also often attributed with wisdom, and, surprisingly, affection. Most scholars agreed, however, that these discrepancies were likely due to their superstitions, making them interpret things into the dragon’s actions that weren’t really there. I was thinking that maybe that wasn’t the case and that in their time there really were intelligent dragons,” he explained.

“Where would they have gone, though?” Avanor asked, clearly intrigued by Saren’s line of thought. “Do you think they died out along with the Gromnek?”

Saren shrugged at that. “Maybe.”

“I have a hard time believing that.”

They both proceeded to stare into the air in front of them, giving me a chance to ask, “Who are the Gromnek?”

Loriel was kind enough to give an answer. “They were a race that lived on this world over two million years ago,” she explained. “From what we can tell, given how little of their civilization survived for this long, they’d settled across the entire globe, their numbers in the several billions. They’re extinct now."

“What happened to them?” I asked, wondering what would cause a race that far advanced to completely disappear in such an, evolutionarily speaking, short time span.

“We don’t know,” Avanor said, shrugging. “Not a lot of records are robust enough to survive for millions of years. And none of the ones that did speak of anything that would indicate such an event.”

“The strange part is,” Saren added, “that they seem to have been virtually the only race affected. A lot of the creatures they talk about are either still alive today or are direct ancestors of other species.”

I frowned. That definitely seemed strange.

“Anyway, that reminds me,” Loriel said, changing the topic. “Saren and I were talking about names for you and I think he made a great suggestion.” She looked over at him, prompting him to talk.

He seemed embarrassed. “‘Arkanith’,” he said, lowering his eyes. “It’s Ancient Gromnek for ‘fire’, as far as I know.”

The suggestion took me by surprise. I hadn’t even thought of the topic since my first conversation with Avanor.

I realized I was staring, making Saren even more comfortable. “Arkanith,” I said, trying it out myself. “I think I like that. Arkanith.” I smiled, just about to respond when another faint stirring caught my attention. I tried to concentrate on it, figure out what it was, but before I knew it, it was gone, disappearing somewhere unknown to me.

As if in response to it I felt another faint surge of energy, though this one was firmly rooted in this world. I turned, trying to figure out where I’d felt something like it before.

“What is it?” Avanor asked, looking concerned.

“I’m not sure,” I said. It was so far away, barely within the range of my senses. “Something’s moving, far away.”

“There isn’t much in that direction,” he said. “Lots of cold, icy mountains, some volcanos. Barely anything lives there.”

“Hm,” I simply said, observing for a few more moments. It was rising, I thought.

Shaking my head I turned back around. “In any case, I like the name. Thank you,” I said, nodding towards Saren. He smiled, probably blushing underneath his thick, dark fur.

“So what do we do now?” Ophara asked, looking at everyone.

“I say we stay a bit longer, explore the caverns, see what we can find,” Avanor said. He seemed to often be the one to make decisions. “Once we’ve had our fill we take Ark back to Kaloras and go from there.”

“Sounds great!” Loriel said, taking a few light steps forward towards the center of the cavern where most of the Nii were congregating.

We all turned to follow her, eager to see more of this place.