Rise of Fire: Dragons Reborn [COMPLETED]

Chapter 9

She was sitting alone surrounded by waves of black. The world around her was animated and yet she couldn't find the breeze that pushed the murky liquid below. Above the stars hung in the inky blackness of the night sky. Asha and Umwell were looming, almost close enough that Talia could have reached out and brushed them.

"Hello?" She called out, curious as to where she could be. She remembered fighting the dragon clearly, and then nothing. Was Nico watching over her? Was she dead? She wouldn't be surprised if she was, her face was still burning and so was her body. She could feel it even in her bones.

"Follow the moonlight..." A feminine voice whispered. Talia didn't recognize it, so it wasn't Hephatus. She eyed the twin moons again, but this time they were gone. A silver stream of light lead away from the ocean of blackness she floated above so she got up and followed it. She wasn't sure how she could walk when she wasn't on solid ground, but it was obvious she wasn't on the terrestrial earth.

Following the light was a slow affair, it never seemed as if she was moving. The black water beneath her continued to churn tremulously and the stars above remained stationary. Yet she continued to persist, moving forward steadily. Or so she hoped. Time was a meaningless word, there weren't hours or minutes she knew. In fact she couldn't even gauge how long she was moving. It could have been years and she wouldn't even know.

Eventually the sky started to lighten a bit changing from the solid black to dark midnight blues, royal purples, crimson reds. The stars were still there but they were fading too, slipping away the more she pushed on. For a moment she stopped to look up and just take in the view, the beauty of it. Behind her it darkened again, almost as if it weren't changing with the rotation of the world but rather was a stationary scene of eternity.

"Maybe I really am dead after all." She mused, scratching the left side of her face. The burn was fading as well into an ache. She had always imagined there was no pain after death, but if life had taught her anything it was that pain was the constant truth.

"No child, only dying." This time it was Hephatus's voice that filled her, she turned back towards the lighter skies to see the goddess walking towards her slowly. Statuettes did little to portray the true beauty of the goddess, her light porcelain skin, her obsidian black hair, her thick voluptuous lips... And her cracked eye. The white webbing stood out clearly against the black of her iris. Her right eye was a darker purple color, but not dark enough to obscure the color entirely.

Hephatus was always portrayed as wearing long comely dresses that hid her bosom, legs, and arms. But as she appeared to Talia she wore a white button up shirt that cut off at her elbows and a leather corset over the top which attributed to her nearly perfect figure. Her legs were nowhere near hidden beneath the cumbersome skirts of the noblewomen of life. She wore knee-high black leather boots that showed off her shapely legs and a high-low cut skirt which showed off her thighs and trailed behind her. The skirt itself looked as if it were made from black webs, sticky and shiny as it fluttered in the nonexistent wind.

The final detail that was widely argued amongst her worshippers was her arms, Talia saw all four of them clearly as she moved forward. Most preferred to see her with only two arms, much like themselves. Talia was happy to see her four arms, happy to see that she wasn't wrong after all. Humans liked to warp images to fit their prerogative. She shook her head, there were bigger things to consider rather than taking in the true image of her goddess.

"Dying?" She finally managed to grit out just as Hephatus stopped in front of her. The goddess smiled, but the sorrow in her eyes was unmistakable.

"I'm afraid so. I had hoped... Hoped I could save you from this fate. Save you from the end." The goddess reached a hand out to stroke Talia on her wounded cheek, the ice cold of her touch soothed away the lingering pain until it didn't even exist anymore. Talia's soul ached at the touch, she couldn't tell if it was from her deep devotion and fulfillment, or from the knowledge that she was dying. She couldn't forget Nico after all, or how it would affect him.