The Last Dragon of Drakember

The Last Dragon of Drakember sleeps beneath the hot stone of the castle. She does not stir; only her heart moves, beating in a rhythm that shouldn’t exist. Her heart is my own. The one that beats inside me belongs to my brother, Morfyre. The magic was meant to prevent the death of this world, but instead it has only delayed it. The sun does not grow kinder, nor does it burn less red by the day. It is said our world once had a true dawn and a true night. Now, there is only the burning crimson light, which our moon, Umbrax, dances in front of each day in the few hours known as the Veiling. She provides some relief from the sky fire which is causing our world to burn but we languish beneath her shadow and never escape the flame.

Were the dragons still alive, perhaps the star would not have begun to bleed this way. But the dragons are all but gone, asides from she who slumbers beneath our feet. The rivers of molten rock that run beneath Drakember sustain her as much as my heart does; as much as my brother’s heart sustains me, though I usually only feel a chill in my bones, despite the castle’s warmth and the fire… the constant fire and smoke of this world.

The red continent has been this way for a thousand years. I have lived on through the last four hundred and fifty of those, with Morfyre’s consistent dark assurances that there is no way to save this realm.

The Drakember empire was once mighty, spread coast to coast across the red continent, back when things used to grow here and the stars would shine above us during the Veiling. I never saw that world, neither did Morfyre. We came long after. The last in our line. And we have our own ancestors to blame for the ways things are now. They were the ones who began to kill off the dragons to harness the power of their blood and take on unnatural long lives.

Back then, most of the dragons lived in the shadowlands, the place where the light of our star fades into permanent dusk. On the other side of this planet exists a very different land, lit by a very different sun. The cloud continent still has clean rivers and rain, snowy mountains that don’t spew out soot and fire into the sky, lands where things still grow and thrive. They, too, have no true night but the Veiling is darker there and the stars shine in their skies when Umbrax traces her path through the heavens.

I will be the last emperor: Pyrion Drakember. The crown I wear is destined to fall when the last dragon dies. When her light goes out, as will the light of our star and this continent will be lost to darkness.

The dragonwarder, who bound my heart inside the fiery body of the dragon and filled the empty chamber in my own chest with my brother’s soul, still resides beneath the castle with her. He drinks her blood to keep him sustained. He is the only one who may be able to save our world, as long as I can find the one who is willing to sacrifice themselves to keep the star alive.

Finding that one shall not be easy, the star yet may die before the prophecy can be fulfilled. I have not given up hope yet, though I cannot say the same for Morfyre. He is ever restless and glum, reminding me of my many failures over the years. Even when he is at rest, I feel his dark dreams weigh heavy on my shoulders.

I will never forget the day we were bound together. I watched him die and then I too followed. When I woke from the oblivion of death, there he was inside my mind, his heart thudding in my chest instead of my own. It was a clean swap, though the scar is not pretty.

“Brooding on it again?” Morfyre whispers in my mind.

I can’t help but brood. It’s all I’ve done for the past four and a half centuries. It’s what I’m best at. That is, when I’m not listening to the endless pleas from the commonfolk in the throne room or ignoring the useless suggestions of my first council in my privy chambers. There is little I can do about failing root crops and the scarcity of grain for bread. We do well in the shadowlands farming fish and hunting game, as their air and water is less tainted with the smoke from our smouldering cities.

The ocean that separates the red continent from the cloud continent is in almost perpetual darkness. But the fish are still somehow abundant there. The river boats can only travel so far with livestock in barrels before the waters change from clear running liquid to blackened sludge. Most of the water we live on comes from springs high up in the fire mountains. It filters into our cities pure enough but leaves them thick with ash.

The fire mountain Drakember castle sits on is the tallest in the region, but it makes this a difficult place to supply with provisions at times. Much of the fish and meat we subside on is dried or salted. Our bread always tastes of soot. There are fruiting plants that still grow in the region, though little by little, as towns fall to the fire and the population of the empire shrinks, fewer merchants make their way here to Drakember.

It’s a bleak existence and sometimes I cannot help but listen to Morfyre when he tells me he doesn’t know why we continue to hold on.

“Just let it all burn. Let the star go out. It is hopeless waiting forever for one who never comes.”

“Silence brother, can’t you see I’m trying to read?” I mutter to him, looking out of the window at the fires along the horizon.

“All you do is read. The same tomes again and again. It bores me.”

“So, don’t listen,” I say, turning a page. The paper in the top corner thin where I’ve turned these pages again and again over the centuries.

“The wold to the East caught this morning. Have you forgotten?”

“No, Morfyre. How can I have forgotten? You’ve reminded me six times in the three hours we’ve been awake. Now hush. Give me a little peace. Please?”

Morfyre goes quiet, but he’s won. I cannot concentrate on the words before. The letters seem to swim before my eyes, and I glance out again at the dark crimson and black skyline. The red light filtering through the windows catches in my yellow hair and makes my head look like its aflame in the reflection in the glass. Everything in this world burns eventually, why not us with it, sooner rather than later.

“Exactly,” Morfyre scoffs, but I ignore him, looking out instead over the vast red plains beyond Drakember. Nothing grows there but bloodweed and wine-red grasses. The very soil is red too. All of this was the same before our star began to change. The red continent was named thus for the abundance of plains like these.

There was green in this land once, too, though. Verdant pastures the further north you went towards the frozen lands. Slowly, those green fields turned brown and then black. Now there is only a wasteland, and the ice fields remain only frozen along the furthest northern shores. The ice that once spread over the most southern edges of our maps is gone. Now it is an ocean, peppered with fire mountain islands, or so the wingwyrm riders report.

The dragons are gone but we still have a few wyverns and wingwyrms. They do not possess the fire magic of the dragons, but they are still useful in their ability to carry riders.

None of our ancestors ever rode a dragon. No dragon would have allowed it. Besides, they were revered and feared until our ancestors discovered a way to lure them to their deaths. The Drakember dynasty respected the great, majestic creatures enough to not ride them because they worshipped them as gods. But killing them? They had no qualms about that until the dragon blood magic turned sour and ash started to fall more often than rain. Now we have no gods, and the world is going to die. This side of it anyway, unless the one who was promised finally decides to walk away from the cloudy continent and arrive on our blackened shores.

“It’s been nearly half a millennia, Pyrion. She won’t come.”

Once more, I ignore his whisper in my mind and the tightness he causes in my chest. Let him stir, let him grumble. I open the book on my lap again and look down at the lines. Words written in a happier time, long before the last dragon of Drakember slept beneath the castle.