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English
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Published:
2023-06-26
Updated:
2023-06-26
Words:
358
Chapters:
1/?
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1
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34

An Artifice at the End of the World

Summary:

Dan and Phil both await the next Night of Gifts - the annual chance to find out if they will bond with any of the dragons connected to their dragon rider families. For Phil, this is a nerve-inducing time, but he believes he has a chance. The Aester family has many dragons and that means a higher likelihood of bonding (if he has the gift). Dan Howells, however, is at the brink of collapse. He's never before shown signs of the gift, and his sister seems to have a much higher chance of bonding with the few dragons they have left.

It doesn't help that bonding will mean spending a lot of time around Phil, in the dragon stables and on rides, and that not bonding... could mean losing him forever. Either way it's a lose-lose with such an age-long crush.

And in the midst of all this anxiety, an artifice gets stolen from the dragoneer temple. An artifice that determines the futures of all involved.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Prologue - Worldeater

Chapter Text

At the beginning, there was naught but a silence. A silence that started with a rumble, and would end with one. And in the depths of it, slept the worldeater, a dragon so large no tale could ever have described it. And never did.

 

Its wings were shimmering with darkness. Its eyes were nothing but voids (though it kept them closed). From the tip of its nose to the end of its tail it glowed with inconceivable colours - the colours of death, and of destruction so great it would only sway the world.

From the dawn of the world until the end, the worldeater would sleep, sleep so softly and gently the silence remained unbroken. As long as it remained, nothing bad would happen in the world. Dragons, other dragons, would wake, and humans would become, evolve, wander, and eventually die out. Their time here short, feeble. And many ages of this world would come and go until it finally would end.

 

That was, until humans figured out how to reach the centre of the universe. Their use of magic could be good, but it could also be disastrous. By using it to reach the centre, to disturb the balance, they also disturbed the world eater. For the first time in the history of everything, it came dangerously close to an early apocalypse.

 

The shake it caused changed the landscape of humanity, and its cities, forever.

 

To stop people rousing it from sleep, the artificers of old enacted magical protections around the centre. The work they did took so long that 10 generations came and went before it was finished. When complete, they took the only key and placed it deep beneath the earth. So deep that no one person, but a number of artificers and riders, would be able to retrieve it. Not that anyone outside the temple knew. Not even the royal family.

 

Because of this, the Worldeater kept sleeping. Because of this, they thought it safe.

 

But secrets can always be revealed. Promises will eventually be broken. Someone out there knew what the secret artifice would do, and they knew that they wanted it done.



Notes:

Thank you for reading this prologue chapter! It's short but it's the kind of info that will be brought up again and again

ps. every few chapters there will be a shorter chapter, either with in-world poetry pertaining to the situation or chapters like the prologue which is kind of like an in-world "source" or recollection :)