Commission To Slay a Black Dragon

Chapter XVII: Just a little more

There was a longing press against his hair, and winds were breezing gently over his face.

"I..."

Aether opened his eyes.

In a low murmur, a thought strays, "What were you about to say?" Sprawled on the desk, he gazed at the art piece beneath him. What were you thinking when you painted this? He sat up, peering at the Prototype Rancour the alchemist had gifted him. It leaned sombrely at a corner, still wrapped up in its wine cloth, untouched since the day he received it.

"Aether are you okay?"

A sleepy voice from behind. He doesn't turn to acknowledge his friend, but replies anyway, "Yes, I just...couldn't sleep."

Paimon floated by his shoulder, presenting him with a worried stare, before shortly getting distracted by something else.

"What's that on your arm?" she asked, leaning closer. Aether glanced down, briefly met with fracturing red shards that crumbled off the sides of his glove. He picked up a piece, twirling it carefully between his eyes and Paimon's.

"I don't know..." he whispered, tranced by the pretty glow that reflected off the morning sun with every twirl. Wait, he blinked, his glove... It was used to wipe off the blood from Albedo's face a few days back. He furrowed his brows, eyeing the shard like it would give forth all its secrets if he stared hard enough. Does blood normally crystallize like that? What was stranger was that the harder he observed, the more familiar the shard seemed.

"For something so shiny, it creeps Paimon out," his companion groaned, abruptly darting behind her friend to take shelter from the glowing red. "Yes it makes me a little uneasy as well," he agrees, placing the shard down and brushing off the rest of the fragments from his glove onto the table.

"Do you know when it got caught on your arm?" she asked, a hand over her chin, "Maybe you can use your elemental sight to track where it came from?"

Oh he knows where it came from alright. But elemental sight, he pondered, it was something worth trying. Perhaps he might see something that could help him with figuring out what Albedo has been trying to hide all this time. Aether narrowed his eyes, allowing his vision to turn monochrome.

Surrounding the crystals were a dark red aura, a stark difference from the azure blue that would guide him as elemental trails. The aura sent a disconcerting trickle down his neck. It felt sinister, so much so that Aether found himself scrambling to his feet and backing away from the crimsons.

"Aether? Are you okay? What did you see?"

His ears drowned out the rest of Paimon's questions. He needs to find Albedo, immediately. With that, he darted out of his room.

"Aether! Where are you going?!?!"

Descending the stairs, out to the courtyard, through the back door and down the stairwell. He had memorised the path over. Aether burst through the oak door, plunging himself into the basement.

The lab was empty. Sounds of his breathless heaving filled the walls as he finally remembered the reason behind the familiarity of the shard - he had seen it on Dragonspine before.

Upon triggering his elemental sight, his world began to spin.

Red.

Everything was red. The crimson fog of sinister energy was so sickly thick that it enveloped him in avid blindness.

"Aether," a shrill voice panted, "Don't run off like that- ...What's wrong?"

He felt his fingers trembling, finding his mind blank and throat sore. He looked at her, hoping that she would understand him from his expression alone. All at once, everything was coming to him, weighing so heavily on his shoulders that he could collapse.