The Cursed Mother

Five

Countless cities. Countless dragons. Countless Slayers...

"So...you're the wizard who's been indiscriminately slaughtering dragons?" The thing's voice echoes around him.

So many deaths, so much blood...

"Before I end your life, tell me one thing; what is your name?"

He bathes in it, lets it stain his skin as blue markings appear along his arms and face. His hair, once tamed by his Mother's careful hands, wild and filthy.

An insult to his Mother's kindness, the dragons' deeds doing more to anger him each time as he scrubs the red from his blue locks.

"I've forgotten." He snarls, tearing through the scales like paper— ending the thing with one swift move. "Filthy creature, let your blood flow like all of your kind who face me!"

His clothes no longer resemble what he had before, his cloak and pants torn and darkened by stains he can never wash out. His shoes, no longer wearble, had been left behind some time ago.

Yet, still, his Mothers' amulet hung around his neck. Unstained. Unmarred.

He had forgotten the name his Mother had given him, another sin by the Dragons, but he had never forgotten her.

Lavender blooms around her grave, despite the altitude, and in those rare moments he is calm.

He does not think of bloodshed.

He feels his Mother in the very air around him, and, closing his eyes, even feels her stroking his hair like she had when he was a boy.

It is a place he defends with his life, one all Dragons fear to approach— for their deaths are all more gruesome the closer they get to it...

He will not let them sully his Mother's rest anymore than they have already.

"I apologize, Mother," he tells her gravestone one day, voice gruff and scratchy from disuse, as he sits cross-legged in front of her. Lavender blooms around him. "I have forgotten my name, the one you gave me all those years ago."

He receives no response, but feels a hum in the air.

"I have claimed one, though. Stole it from the beast that killed you." His posture remains loose and calm, it does not do a man well to show his anger in front of his mother, "They call me Acnologia, Mother. The Black Dragon, the Dragon King, the Apocalypse."

There's a gentle breeze, brushing his hair back from his face.

"They will remember you, Mother, they will fear to harm you until the day I die." He swears, "Because I will protect you as you protected me."

He fears that, when he does die, his Mother will not recognize him.

But he brushes those fears aside every time they threaten his conviction.

He kills for vengeance, for retribution...for his Mother.