The Conjurers

Chapter 6

The Aftermath

The silence after the dragon's fall wasn't peaceful. It was the stunned hush after a bomb blast, filled only by the hungry crackle of the inferno consuming the forest and the colossal corpse at its heart. Kai lay sprawled on the scorched earth, every breath a ragged gasp that tasted of ash, blood, and ozone. 

Pain was a symphony played on his nerves: the deep ache of overextended muscles, the sharp sting of burns from the dragon's death-fire, the throbbing agony radiating from his skull where the golden eyes had burned pathways too bright. Blood, thick and dark, had crusted around his eyes and nostrils, mingling with sweat and grime into a stiff, uncomfortable mask.

He couldn't move. Not yet. The sheer magnitude of the fight, the desperate expenditure of power both his own conjuring and the terrifying, borrowed might of the golden eyes had left him hollowed out, a vessel cracked and leaking. He stared at the smoke-choked sky, its bruised orange glow reflecting the burning woods. The stars, if they were there, were invisible.

He needed not to be broken. Survival wasn't over.

With a groan that scraped his raw throat, Kai focused inward. Not on conjuring fire or air, but on the fragile ember of that other power, the one that felt like violating the universe's stitching. He triggered the golden eyes.

Ignition.

Molten gold flooded his vision once more. The pain in his head spiked instantly, a white-hot poker driving through his temples. Fresh blood, warm and metallic, welled from the corners of his eyes, tracing new paths through the grime. But with the pain came clarity.

A terrifying, dissecting clarity. He looked down at his own body, and it became transparent, layered like the dragon's had been.

He saw the damage. Not just surface burns and bruises, but deeper: microfractures in bones stressed by inhuman speed and impacts, strained ligaments screaming in his shoulders from clinging to the thrashing beast, internal bruising from concussive blasts and the sheer force of teleportation. Worse, he saw the corrupted energy of the black snow swirling thickly within him.

It had infiltrated his own conjurer's pathways, a toxic residue from every desperate manipulation of ASE during the fight, amplified tenfold by the golden eyes' demands. It pulsed like dark veins against the natural, fading glow of his own lifeforce.

Healing wasn't gentle. It was a brutal reconstruction. Using the golden sight, he pushed. He visualized the fractures knitting, not smoothly, but slammed together with force, the bone fragments fusing under temporal and spatial pressure. Ligaments were yanked taut and bound.

Bruises were compressed, the pooled blood forcibly reabsorbed at an unnatural rate. Burns scabbed over instantly, the skin beneath raw but sealed. It was like having invisible, ruthless surgeons working inside him with hammers and scalpels.

Every "repair" sent fresh jolts of agony through his system, sharp counterpoints to the dull, grinding pain of the initial injuries. He felt the corrupted energy resist, clinging to the damaged tissues, but the golden power shoved it aside, compartmentalizing it, walling it off for now. He couldn't purge it; he could only quarantine it.

The process took minutes that felt like hours under the golden gaze. When the light finally flickered and died, leaving his vision swimming with dark spots and the familiar blackness returning, he was whole. Mostly. The deep exhaustion remained, a soul-deep weariness. The quarantine walls around the black energy felt fragile. And the headache was a constant, pounding drumbeat behind his eyes. But he could move. He could breathe without stabbing pain. He could stand.

He pushed himself up, swaying slightly. The stench hit him anew burning pine, charred earth, ozone, and the overwhelming, coppery-metallic reek of the dragon's spilled lifeblood and exposed innards. He looked towards the pyre.

 The dragon's headless corpse was a dark, mountainous silhouette against the wall of fire, already partially consumed, scales blackening and cracking, thick smoke coiling from its ruptured belly.

The core. He hadn't just wounded it; he'd touched its heart. He needed it.

Stumbling through the devastation, Kai approached the colossal carcass. The heat radiating from the burning forest and the dragon's own smoldering flesh was intense. Up close, the scale of the destruction was staggering. The ground was churned into a wasteland of molten rock and ash.

The dragon itself was a landscape of ruin; the severed neck stump; a ragged, cauterized wound still weeping sluggish, steaming ichor; the belly torn open from his dagger work and the subsequent internal explosion, revealing caverns of glistening, partially cooked organs and the massive, broken architecture of ribs.

Kai snapped his fingers. Crack. The familiar, heavy weight of the dark metal dagger materialized in his hand, cool despite the ambient heat.

He waded into the gore. Thick, viscous ichor, dark as oil but shimmering with faint internal heat, soaked his boots instantly, clinging with disgusting suction. The stench was overwhelming, a physical assault that made his eyes water and his stomach churn. He ignored it, focusing on the task.

Using the dagger and sheer brute force, he hacked and sliced through layers of steaming membrane and dense, rubbery tissue within the belly cavity. He climbed over slick, yielding organs, his boots sinking into unspeakable textures.

Blood and viscera splattered his face, his arms, soaked through his already ruined gray coat, turning it into a stiff, reeking canvas of crimson and black. He became a creature of gore, indistinguishable from the surrounding carnage.

Deeper. Past the massive, ruptured furnace-sac that had fueled its breath. Past coils of intestine thicker than his torso. And there, nestled within a cradle of shattered bone and protected by the thickest layers of muscle, was the core.

It was smaller than he'd expected, given the dragon's size roughly the size of his own head. But its power was undeniable. It pulsed with a deep, rhythmic crimson light, like captured lava.

Heat radiated from it in waves, warping the air even amidst the surrounding inferno. Cracks spiderwebbed its surface, evidence of the damage inflicted by his dagger and the concussive blasts.

Faint tendrils of corrupted black energy still swirled around it, drawn to the leaking power, but the core itself burned them away before they could fully penetrate. He could feel its raw, elemental potential humming against his skin, even through the layers of blood and filth.

He didn't hesitate. He drove the dagger into the connective tissues surrounding it, severing the thick, luminous energy conduits that pulsed with fading light. They sputtered and died as he cut.

Then, bracing his boot against a massive rib, he wedged his hands around the core. It was searingly hot, even through the ichor coating his palms. He gritted his teeth against the pain, heaved, and wrenched it free from its cradle of bone and sinew.

It came loose with a sickening, wet pop. He held it aloft, a stolen sun dripping with gore. The crimson light bathed his blood-soaked face, glinting in his exhausted black eyes. 

The sheer weight of it, physical and metaphysical, was immense. He stumbled back, cradling the pulsating core against his ruined coat, adding its heat and sticky residue to the layers of dragon blood already encrusting him.

By the time he cleared the worst of the burning zone, dragging the heavy core wrapped in a relatively less charred section of dragon hide he'd hacked off, true night had fallen.

The orange glow of the forest fire was a distant, malevolent horizon at his back. Ahead, under a canopy of stars finally visible in the clear, cold air, was a small, rocky clearing beside a fast-flowing, icy stream. The sound of the water was a blessed relief after the roar of flames and dragon screams.

He dropped the core-wrapped hide and the chunk of dragon meat, a haunch he'd hacked off, hoping it was edible with a thud. He felt like he might collapse. Every muscle trembled with fatigue. The stench clinging to him was nauseating.

First, water. He stumbled into the stream, collapsing on his knees at its edge. He plunged his head into the icy torrent, scrubbing furiously at his face, his hair, his neck. The water ran black, then dark red, then finally a murky pink.

He drank deeply, the cold shocking his system, washing away some of the taste of ash and blood. He stripped off his coat, his tunic, his boots, all stiff with dried gore, and scrubbed them violently against the rocks in the stream.

It was a futile effort; the blood and ichor were deeply ingrained, the fabric permanently stained and reeking. But he got off the worst. Shivering violently in the cold night air, naked but cleaner, he wrung out the clothes and laid them on rocks to dry as best they could.

amp. He needed fire. Not just for warmth, but for light, for cooking, for… something else. He gathered dry wood from the edges of the clearing, his movements slow and heavy. He built a small, efficient pit.

Then, he looked at the dragon core. It pulsed softly in the starlight, radiating warmth. He approached it cautiously. The power within it hummed against his senses.

He needed sustenance beyond the dubious dragon meat. He needed something to counteract the fatigue, the lingering pain, the insidious black energy he'd quarantined.

He knelt by the fire pit, the core resting beside him. He focused, drawing not on the corrupted ambient ASE, but directly on the core's contained, raw power. It was like trying to sip from a geyser.

He conjured a small, intense flame in his palm, not to attack, but as a crucible. Holding the flame steady with one hand, he reached out with his will towards the core. Slowly, painstakingly, he drew a thread of its molten essence, not the physical lava, but the pure, condensed fire energy within.

The thread was blindingly bright, almost liquid light. He guided it into the conjured flame in his palm. The flame flared white-hot, then deepened to a searing crimson. He kept drawing, feeding the flame with the core's energy, concentrating it, purifying it through the crucible of his own conjured fire.

He focused his intent: Restoration. Strength. Cleansing. He pictured the potions he'd seen old apothecary-conjurers brew, the way they infused herbs with ASE. He had no herbs, only raw power and desperate need.

Sweat beaded on his brow despite the cold. The effort was immense, a different kind of strain than battle. Slowly, within the heart of the white-crimson flame, a liquid began to coalesce.

It swirled, thick and luminous, pulling color from the flame, streaks of white-hot intensity swirling through a base of deep, pulsating red. 

It looked less like a potion and more like a captured nebula, containing starfire. The surrounding air crackled with contained energy and gave off a scent like ozone and hot stone.