The floor erupted.
Flames and fire.
Yel-Altrash lunged.
Her black talons extended.
Matthias took one step back.
Into the shadow-fringe.
The air shattered with her wings.
Her wings flapped once.
She rose into the air.
Death on black wings beneath the black moon.
Yel-Altrash vanished.
A stride brought her before Illara.
The mist closed around Ilara.
Yel-Altrash lashed out.
Her talon parted the mists.
Illara was behind her.
The crescent blade scrapped against Yel-Altrash scale-sheathed thigh.
The dragonborne snarled, she pivoted upon her feet and brought her talon around.
Illara fired her shotgun.
Yel-Altrash vanished.
A void-burn afterimage remained where she had been.
“Down!” Matthias called out.
Illara dove.
Yel-Altrash emerged behind her, lashing out with her talon.
The mists closed around Illara.
Matthias emerged.
In the air.
Overhead of Yel-Altrash.
His dagger held in a reversed grip.
He struck both sides of her neck, but his Astrastarian steel could find a gap between her scales.
He vanished into the fringe as Yel-Altrash lashed out with her heavy tail.
Matthias reappeared atop one of the marble column.
He threw both daggers.
Yel-Altrash’s eyes flared.
Violet flames engulfed the daggers.
But the star-forged steel did not melt.
The blades struck her, clattering to the floor.
She did not flinch.
Her lips curled in mild amusement.
Her tail snapped.
Matthias vanished a heartbeat before impact.
The pillar detonated.
The mists parted.
Illara blindsided Yel-Altrash.
The Mistwalker rolled to one knee, her shotgun raised.
She fired.
A resounding thundercrack.
Rune-inscribed mithril pellets struck Yel-Altrash’s chest.
Scales cracked.
Fragments flew.
The Dragon of the Void roared.
Her scales detonated in cascades of astral light.
Yel-Altrash recoiled.
Her smile vanished.
She tasted fire.
She felt pain.
She unleashed flame.
The mists closed around Illara.
Yel-Altrash felt the crescent blade at her jugular.
Illara’s hand closed around the hilt.
She dragged the edge of the blade against Yel-Altrash’s neck.
Star-steel met void-scales.
Grating against the armored neck.
The blade did not penetrate.
Yel-Altrash spun.
A talon raised.
Matthias struck.
The Nightblade stepped out from the fringe.
Driving his dagger into the wound in her chest.
His steel drove home, past the weakened scale into exposed flesh.
Yel-Altrash roared.
“Matt!”
Illara tossed her shotgun under Yel-Altrash’s side.
Matthias caught it.
Illlara locked her crescent blade across Yel-Altrash’s neck an restrained her.
For a heartbeat.
A heartbeat for the Nightblade.
Matthias fired.
Yel-Altrash felt the crackling lightning.
The scent of burned flesh.
Another dagger appeared in the Nightblade’s hand.
With a flick of her wrist, Illara forcefully lifted the obsidian scale of the dragonborne’s neck.
Matthias struck.
He drove the tip of his blade unto the gap.
He buried his blade up to the hilt.
Blood—black and luminous—splattered across the floor.
The Nightblade twisted his blade.
Yel-Altrash roared.
Enough!
Carcosa answered.
The oculus darkened.
The three moons vanished.
Only void remained.
A rumbling.
A pressure.
Ancient sigils awakened.
The temple vanished.
For a heartbeat the Astrastars found themselves in a void of nothingness.
They found themselves before the Nighted Throne.
They found themselves before the Key and the Silver Gate.
They found themselves beneath the sea.
They found themselves before Ry’leh, where the corpse of a god laid dreaming.
They found themselves back at the Temple of Eternal Night.
Illara and Matthias disengaged.
She stepped left, he stepped right.
The void vanished.
They are back in the Temple.
Yel-Altrash rose to her feet.
Wounded.
Bleeding.
Her fangs bared.
Her face a visage of rage.
“Now, let us see.” Matthias said, “If a goddess can bleed.”
Yel-Altrash roared.
A long undulating roar of rage.
Illara reloaded her shotgun.
Matthias readied his dagger.
Only one.
Illara saw then, out of the corner of her eyes.
Barely visible.
Spidersilk thread.
Yel-Altrash moved like a tear in the world.
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A breath.
A stride.
She was coiled atop the dais.
Her wings half-furled, scales drinking the black light of the three moons.
She was gone as she lunged.
A trail of violet limning in the air.
The scent of scorched air.
The darkness coalesced before Illara.
Beautiful.
Terrible.
Illara was already pivoting as the mists closed around her.
“Left—” Matthias warned.
Illara danced the dance of mist.
One step to the side.
Two steps to bring her behind the descending dragon-god.
As the talon of Yel-Altrash swiped into the roaming mist, Illara dissolved.
Her talon found nothing.
No flesh behind the mist.
The mist did not conceal.
The mist spirited Illara away.
Matthias surged forward.
Not through the fringe.
A charge.
The Nightblade met Yel-Altrash.
The dragon-god blocked the descending blade instinctively.
A feign.
Matthias looped the spidersilk cord.
Hair-thin, whisper-sharp.
Flames erupted from Yel-Altrash’s palm.
The Nightblade stepped into the fringe as the void-fire ignited around him.
The cord tightened, cracking the obsidian scales.
Yel-Altrash hissed in pain as the spidersilk tugged and twisted her arm behind her back.
Painfully.
The Mistwalker appeared, her crescent blade high.
Illara chopped down.
Yel-Altrash blocked the descending blade with her free hand.
The blade was the distraction.
The gun was in her face.
Illara fired.
Mithril and adamantium shrapnel tore into Yel-Altrash face.
Pain.
Confusion.
Misalignment.
Yel-Altrash roared as she lashed out.
Desperately.
Blindly.
In that heartbeat, Matthias emerged from the fringe.
Illara whirled away, a whirlwind of blade and coat.
Her hands deftly reloading her shotgun.
The Nightblade plunged his dagger into the same neck wound.
Merciless.
Relentless.
Yel-Altrash found she was stumbling around.
Fighting ghosts.
One strike would end this.
But she could not touch these Astrastars.
These accursed Star-Guardians.
Star-forged.
War gods.
Illara came out of her spin, her shotgun raised.
The round chambered.
The Mistwalker lined up between dragon-god’s glowing eyes.
She fired.
Starfire.
Bright.
Radiant.
Diamond and stardust.
The round gouged out her eyes.
Yel-Altrash roared.
She summoned, she called forth.
Flames.
Voidfire.
Rage.
Matthias dashed towards Illara.
The Mistwalker dropped her cloak of mist
The Nightblade grasped her hand.
One step.
The marble floor.
Next step.
The shadow fringe.
Matthias dragged Illara into the world-shadow as the world erupted in fire.
They re-emerged from the fringe.
The fire died slowly.
It guttered and receded, violet tongues collapsing into faint embers that clung to fractured marble and singed tapestries.
The voidglass were untouched.
The heat bled away in thin, reluctant threads.
In moments, only warped air and the smell of burned stone lingered.
Then even that was gone.
Silence reclaimed the temple.
The living silence of forests returned.
The gentle hush of the night wind blew faintly.
The eternal stillness of the Temple settled.
Yel-Altrash was nowhere to be seen.
Illara did not lower her weapon.
Neither did Matthias.
They stood back-to-back for a long moment.
Their breath slow, their heightened senses searching.
Listening for traces of Yel-Altrash.
But she did not come forth from the shadows.
No talons.
No wingbeat.
No whispers in their heads.
The pressure behind their eyes dissipated.
The only sound was the distant hum of the voidstones and the faint cracking of heated stone.
“She’s gone,” Illara said at length.
Matthias rose from his crouch.
He tugged at the spidersilk thread.
The scorched end returned to him.
He sheathed his daggers and took one lingering lookaround.
“Gone,” he agreed at last. “She withdrawn.”
“Where to?” Illara asked.
“From whence she came.” Matthias shrugged.
Illara exhaled slowly.
“But,” the Nightblade said, “let’s make sure she was truly gone.”
She nodded.
They stood, beginning a slow, methodical circuit of the chamber.
They circled the chamber slowly.
Deliberately.
Illara moved first along the outer ring, mist curling low around her boots.
Her eyes tracked every shadow, every fracture in the marble, every warped reflection in the voidglass pillars.
Matthias slipped between columns, half in the world, half not, testing seams of shadow, brushing the fringe without fully stepping into it.
If Yel-Altrash lingered—
If she watched—
If she waited—
The Astrastars would find her.
But Yel-Altrash was nowhere to be found.
The Temple did not divulge its secrets.
The crater where her talon had struck was already knitting closed, molten stone sealing like living flesh.
The trench cut by her beam had softened at the edges, its scorched walls smoothing into polished black.
Even the blood—
That luminous, void-bright ichor—
Had faded to nothing.
Illara crouched beside where it had pooled moments ago.
Only clean marble remained.
“No trace,” she said quietly, “not even the scars of battles marked this place.”
Matthias nodded.
“She had truly departed.”
“Cold comfort,” Illara muttered.
“We must be vigilant.” Matthias counseled, “she might return.”
“Yes,” Ilara said, “let’s not be here when she does.”
They completed the circuit to both be standing in front of the monoliths.
Nine in all.
The monolith to Tiamat.
Unscorched by flames.
Untouched by blades.
They hummed softly.
Silent witnesses to the prowess of the Astrastars.
The dais.
Cracked but whole.
The bowl-floor.
The masonry seemingly restoring its shape.
Illara straightened.
“A child of Tiamat,” she said.
Matthias’s gaze lingered on the voidglass.
“The Untamed Flame of the Void.”
Illara let out a breath.
For the first time since entering the pantheon, Illara let her guard down.
Just for a few moments.
In the absence of immediate death.
She wiped a smear of soot from her gauntlet and looked around.
“So, was she kin to the creature we saw before?” she murmured.
“What creature?”
“Yel-Altrash,” Illara gestured faintly. “She looked like...”
“Ah yes,” Matthias considered that.
The pitiful, malformed creature in the sunken ziggurat.
The one who begged to die.
The one Matthias ended with his own hands in mercy.
“I do not know,” he said hesitantly.
“She was majestic …magnificent,” Illara said then.
“Yes.” Matthias said absently, “she was.”
She frowned.
“She called herself the Untamed Flame of the Void.”
Matthias looked at her.
“And she has no masters,” Illara continued.
He did not answer.
“Speak your mind,” the Nightblade said.
“The one we found in the sunken ziggurat,” Illara said, her gaze steady.
“Unwanted, abandoned, left to die.”
Matthias waited for her to continue.
“Then the shaping,” she continued, “in the city, by the flesh-priests.”
“The ritual was imperfect,” Matthias said, catching on, “incomplete. A failure.”
“But here, at the pinnacle,” Illara said, “a living dragon-goddess.”
“The Pale Coil was aspiring,” the Nightblade said, “to the craft of their gods.”
Illara nodded, she pointed with her shotgun at one of the nine monoliths.
Matthias turned.
The voidglass.
The Broken settlement.
The shrine within.
The icon.
The constellation.
The King with the Pallid Mask.
They did not speak his name.
For to speak was to invoke.
“Three black moons beneath a lake of night,” Matthias reiterated, “Carcosa.”
“The realm of the Pallid King,” Illara said.
“Yes, but…” Matthias said, casting his sight into the horizon.
Illara sensed his train of thoughts.
She looked again to the monoliths.
Nine in all.
The King in the Pallid Mask, the Shaper of Flesh.
The Many Mothers of the Night, the Boundless Womb.
The Crawling Chaos, the Great Deceiver.
The Key and the Silver Gate, the Magister and the Warden.
The Dreaming in the Deep, the Sleeper.
The Abyssal Lord of the Depth, the Drowned Sovereign.
The Devourer of Stars, the Eternal Hunger.
The Father of Serpents, the Lidless Eye.
The Queen of Darkness, the Five-Headed Dragon of the Void.
A thought came to her then.
“Matt,” she asked, “What are they doing here?”
The Nightblade spun around with a whisper.
He strode to stand beside her.
“You are right,” Matthias muttered.
“Star-Gods do not share temples.”
“Yes, but…” she began, her voice trailing away.
Illara’s thoughts turned inwards.
The Isle of Mists.
The Broken settlement.
The forest shrine.
The pitiful thing in the ziggurat.
The flesh-shaping in the Nameless City.
The Lake of Night.
The Temple of Eternal Night.
The Dread Coil’s refusal to approach.
Yel-Altrash.
“Star-Gods do not share temples.” Illara said again.
The Nightblade looked at her.
“Do you see?” Illara said softly, “this Temple?” the Pantheon?”
She spoke quickly. Precisely.
His eyes widened.
“This is not a temple,” he breathed.
“No,” Illara agreed.
“This is a convergence.” Matthias finished.
“They are shaping life,” she finished.
“We must bring word of this,” the Nightblade said, “to my Lord Hand.”
“But how?” Illara asked as she looked at him, “we crossed over.”
Matthias fell silent then.
Illara reached for her compass.
She snapped it open.
And froze.
Illara followed his gaze.
Behind the central monolith of Tiamat—a slit of light.
Half concealed by shadow and overlapping geometry—the wall shifted.
Where there were only seamless black stone, there was now a line.
A fracture.
A subtle seam of dull gold and void-dark crystal.
It ran in a tall arc.
A door.
Illara felt a chill crawl up her spine.
“That was not there before,” she said.
“No,” Matthias agreed. “It was not.”
As they watched, the seam brightened.
Light shone forth.
A pale light.
The same pale light in Yel-Altrash’s eyes.
Stone slid soundlessly.
No grinding of gears.
No friction.
No debris.
The pale light framed the doorway.
Beckoning.
Inviting.
Illara closed her compass.
“So,” she said softly, “shall we?”
Matthias’s mouth twitched.
“The way back was closed; we can only move forward.”
“Indeed,” Illara said, “where is your sense of adventure?”
“Lead on, Mistwalker.” Matthias said.
They approached slowly.
Their steps echoing across the marble floor.
The black marbles tiles cracked beneath their feet.
Remnants of the dragonsfire.
Perhaps the Temple did not escape unscathed, Illara thought.
The threshold exhaled cold air that smelled faintly of ozone and old stone.
Illara lingered at the edge.
“Last chance,” she murmured. “We could turn around.”
Matthias looked at her.
Then at the corridor.
Then back.
“No, we must press on.”
She sighed.
“I know.”
They crossed.
The passage swallowed them.
The light of the Pantheon faded behind.
The walls narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again, defying perspective.
Black crystal merged with iron, then with obsidian, then with something neither could name.
Veins of dull gold traced slow, spiraling patterns.
The light ahead.
They stepped in a throne room.
Vast.
Cathedral-scaled.
Wrought in the same manner of the Pantheon.
Its ceiling arched into darkness, pierced only by thin shafts of voidlight that fell like frozen rain.
They passed a stairwell, leading into darkness.
And at its heart of the chamber stood a vacant throne.
Forged of black crystalline iron.
Jagged.
Angular.
Layered like overlapping scales.
Its back rose high, branching into five towering spines, each carved into the likeness of a draconic head.
Five faces.
Five maws.
Five crowns.
Each snarling in eternal silence.
Chromatic hues of crimson, emerald, sapphire, onyx and diamond.
A pair of outstretched wings, framing the throne.
They curled inward, framing the seat like predatory sentinels.
A throne of dominion.
Of worship.
Of reverence.
Illara stopped breathing for a moment.
“…Five-headed,” she whispered.
Matthias nodded slowly.
“Tiamat.”
“Keep your weapons close,” Matthias said.
They approached the throne.
The throne’s surface shimmered faintly, reflecting fragments of them.
Illara saw her reflection stretched and distorted.
Broken into angles.
Unmade.
She looked away.
“Yel-Altrash must have sat, brooding here.” she said.
“No, she would not dare.” Matthias replied, “this throne belonged to someone else.”
“Someone else?”
“Tiamat would not suffer her children to gainsay her.”
Matthias gestured to the throne.
“This is the throne of the Dragonqueen itself.”
“It was here. Before the Temple,”
“They built the Temple around her.”
The Nightblade circled the throne.
The floor around the throne was etched with an ever-expanding circle.
Layered with sigils—draconic, stellar, geometric, and archaic — all beneath scrawlings that resisted translation.
Names.
Titles.
Invocations.
Illara brushed one with her boot.
It pulsed faintly.
She withdrew immediately.
“I’ve seen this motif,” she murmured.
“Where?”
“In the forbidden stacks. In relic fragments.” She frowned. “my brethren within House Farscapers retrieved certain tomes from other worlds. Another myth-cycle.”
Matthias looked at her.
“Which?”
“The Five-Headed Dragon,” she said slowly. “The Dragonqueen of the Chromatic Flight.”
She hesitated.
“You may speak her name. Her other names held no power here.” Matthias said.
“…Takhisis.” She said softly.
Matthias exhaled.
“Tiamat in any other name.”
“Seems so.”
Illara stepped up to the throne.
It was cold to the touch.
No warmth.
No swirling essence.
No screaming souls.
Just absence.
Just cold marble.
Just a depthless void.
“I feel nothing,” Illara said.
“What were you expecting to find?” Matthias replied.
“I am not sure, a voice?”
Matthias shook his head as he reached into his pack.
He handed her a pack of ration.
“It seems no one will intrude upon us here. Let us rest.”
They seated beneath the foot of the throne.
They ate in silence.
“Matt,” Illara said.
“Yes?”
“Forgive me for dragging you here,” she said then, “it was my naivete and foolishness—”
Matthias forestalled her with an upraised palm.
Illara fell silent.
The Nightblade said nothing.
He finished his packed ration.
“Matt— “ she began again.
“If it is not this place,” he said evenly, “it would be somewhere else.”
“But— “
The Nightblade eyed her then.
His eyes steady.
No accusation.
No blame.
“Where is your sense of adventure, Mistwalker?” Matthias said, “what was the creed of House Farscaper?
The only regret are the roads not taken?”
Illara was silent.
“Thank you, Matt. For being my shadow.”
Matthias smiled faintly.
“Let us make this one worthy of song.”
Illara smiled.
She reached for her compass.
She snapped it open.
The needle pointed to the stairway leading beneath.
“Matt.”
“Yes.”
“If this is Carcosa…”
“And if this is her temple…”
“And if that was only a fragment…”
She trailed off.
Matthias finished quietly.
“Then whatever waits beneath will make Yel-Altrash look merciful.”
Illara laughed softly.
A brittle sound.
“Wonderful.”
They stood up.
Revealing a descending spiral.
Stairs vanishing into black.
The depths.
Illara looked at it.
Then at Matthias.
“Well,” she said.
“After you, Nightblade.”
Matthias took one last lingering glance at the throne.
He drew his dagger.
“One for the road then.”
Together, they turned toward the stairs.
They descended.
Leaving the Throne of the Night behind.
