Chapter 12

The dragon form stretched his wings as Vor circled the tower. Sennranor rode on his back in the saddle found in one of the treasure rooms of the dwarven kingdom.

The last great mage surrounded the island with a magical barrier and shouted from an open window to leave him alone and return to the core.

The dragon was frustrated in his attempts to land.
Sennranor reached out to Eohnin and her inner vision and send word of her situation. “The tower is protected with a barrier. The overwhelming power of the last great mage appears to be drilling down to the core.”

Cindaln entered the vision and offered her advice to Eohnin. “The last great mage is leaving this world, not destroying this world. The power you see is the energy of his millenia of life on the surface traveling to the core to join the shared knowledge of countless other mages of the past.”

Eohnin closed the shared inner vision as he confronted Cindaln with a question. “How do you know this secret? Who are you…?”

Sennranor clung to the back of the dragon and used a mind connection to guide Vor to central plains below the mountains of the norther kingdom. “The barrier was not made to keep us out, the barrier was made to protect the living world from the uncontrollable transfer of power from an old mage back to the core.” The elves were known in the old tales as the tamers of dragons, but Sennranor doubted those myths. The king does what he wants.

Vor was frustrated. “But how do we stop the core from building the dungeons!”

Sennranor said nothing as the dragon raced to meet his top advisors. She looked back at the tower and screamed a warning.

The flash of bright white light was blinding to the elf, but the dragon was unharmed.

In the seconds, the sound and power of the shockwaves moved through the air and sent the dragon into a spiral.

Vor was forced to land. He instinctively wrapped his wings around his body to protect himself and Sennranor as the sky turned dark. The gathering storm clouds sent brilliant flashes of lightning to the ground destroying hordes of monsters on the surface.

The makeshift camps lining the road into the central lands were filled with thousands of villagers and settlers watched the skies as their king braved the high wings and lighting to fly along the winding path of the old road to his castle in the north.

The dragon form was a comforting sight. The king used the same form when he patrolled the skies of the mountain regions and was the only dragon most have ever seen. The whispers from settlers mentioned dragons leaving the core and nesting in caves in the mountain valleys in recent years, but few had seen the creatures.

As the dragon reached the sight of the former castle, thunder cracked the sky into large blocks of nothingness and in an instant the world faded into a particles of blue and white dust.

The former king of the northern lands was alone in a void, with no landmarks in sight. He could hear Cindaln, then Eohinin, then Sennranor call out to him in the endless blank space surrounding him in all directions.

In an instant, the endless void of white mist into a dark cloud. The most distant voice was the sound of Wilstra commanding the dragons to destroy the core. The dragon transformation was calling him to change once more, but he resisted as the warnings of Sennranor reached the forefront of his thoughts. The image of dark shadows raining down on the core filled his mind, and the void flashed with a brilliant light.

The core under the mountains of the ancient dwarven kingdom was destroyed and the world was changed forever. The dragons never returned to the surface, but the king or the northern lands could sense them in the deepest caves and dungeons.

The dwarves and the elves retreated from the world and some humans claimed the monster core was their source of power. The ancient rivals from myths and legends continued to explore the dungeons and were seen by human adventures over the years, but the humans would keep their distance.

Sennranor was missed by the king of the northern lands. The castle was restored and the humans under his leadership built the strongest empire in the world.

On the day Sennranor returned to the northern kingdom, standing in the courtyard of the castle, laughing at the sight of Vor lecturing a short man in colorful clothing about the danger of forgetting the past, the memories of her past with the king returned. Wilstra was close behind, waiting for her turn to greet an old friend.

The king turned to the familiar voice of the elf warrior. “The castle is not safe until the monsters are defeated. I will find the source of the power filling the void where the core was removed. The northern kingdom will be saved once more. I can go with my friends!”

Cindaln stepped into the courtyard with Eohnin, and greeted the five daughters of the king. “I will help you run the castle, if will accept the advice of the former head of the servant staff.”

Vor announced his plan to step down as the king and granted his young daughters the five provinces of the kingdom. He was ready to begin another adventure. The five daughters prepared the kingdom for the day of the kings retirement, while Eohnin recorded the events of the day.

The maps of the world changed over the decades, but one place remained a comforting sanctuary. The dwarven kingdom was gone. The island of Illam was hidden behind a cloud of fog and mist in the Sea of Dreams, and the northern kingdom of the humans was becoming a vast empire stretching from the north to the central lands.

The place where Eohnin and Cindaln lived became a safe place. The tower of the last great mage. The old man was gone, he vanished when the core was destroyed, but the knowledge in his thousand year books was shared with the world in a library. Eohnin wisely hid the book with the instructions for building another core in the dungeon.

© J. Bateman

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