Tales of Astora: Legacy

Chapter 88: Victory and defeat

Chapter 88: Victory and defeat

Kaiser the True Monarch has always been the most unique being among the three children of Alastor. As a fragment of Shana' soul, he too adopted upon himself one of her strongest emotions, creating his own self from it, as well as inherited a portion of his father's power. But unlike the other two, Kaiser was conceived from a very particular emotion, one that stood out as the strongest positive feeling the cat girl Shana possessed: courage.

So what was courage? Was it the will to go up against what would normally terrorize anyone else? Or was it the resolve of one's own determination that allowed them to achieve impossible feats? Each might have their own definition of courage but perhaps, there was one that would fit the most to the True Monarch: the audacity of defiance.

It took a lot of courage to dare to go against the will of something much more powerful than oneself. It was thanks to this emotion that allowed Shana to be alive all these years. It was what helped her to overcome all those ordeals till the very end. Even in that short moment of despair at the end of her life, she faced it bravely, thinking only of the boy by her side, the one that would be left behind. And Kaiser was a being made essentially of that feeling.

The will to defy all was a powerful thing. With a strong enough will, one might think they could overcome even the most arduous trial of all. And sometimes that included the most terrifying challenge of the living: death.

.....

"....What the hell is that?" the dragon lord uttered as he laid his sight upon the harrowing figure in the sky. Every trace of the being named Kaiser was gone. Instead, something else was at his place.

A bizarre creature was hovering on air with a large pair of ashen wings, the colour of something that has been burned at an intense heat so much that nothing but ashes remained. And yet somehow, these cinders have managed to retain their shape, going as far as attaining a new form of plumed ailerons. But those angelic wings were perhaps the only thing that seemed holy as the rest of the creature's body could only be described as fiendish to say the very least. Wielding a seemingly armor made out of bones with palpable crimson fleshes twitching from inside the white cartilage, the creature had a mouth for the face, dangling with gnawing teeth.

" *Heavy Exhaling* What a dangerous thing you have there! To think that it managed to damage me to this point!" the creature spoke in a familiar voice. "It was an...intriguing experience."

"Kaiser? Is that you?" Celdora challenged upon recognize the voice.

"That's not possible! You should be dead!" shouted Taragon in disbelief. No one has ever managed to survive the full blast of a mana bomb and still lived to tell the tale. So how was it possible that he survived?

"I was. But now I am back. If you think the shackles of death can repress me, then you have severely underestimated me." Kaiser spoke. "A True Monarch never dies, as long as his people need him."

"Argg...this won't be over yet, not by a long shot." Taragon grunted in anger. Indeed he has underestimated Kaiser by thinking that the mana bomb would solve his problem. It took a lot of efforts for the young black dragon to sneak out this weapon from the sealed chamber of his father and all that was for nothing. He thought that by taking out Kaiser, the use of the mana bomb would be justifiable when he would be challenged by the rest of the council but in this case, not only did he commit a crime by stealing the bomb, Kaiser was still alive and well. But it was not like he was at his rope's end. Taragon still had something up his sleeves: the ultimate weapon of Oros. "I will wipe out all of you vermin...in time." Said the black dragon before taking flight toward Canaan.