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Phase I

"Káev... ar-are you alright?"

He winced. The words, no matter how softly spoken, seemed jarring in the cold silence of night. They stung his ears, causing them to ring, and made his stomach contract into a tight, heavy ball that rested deep within him.

Not now.

"I'm - I couldn't sleep." he muttered, turning around slowly. It was not a lie, not entirely - the black dragon hadn't slept in days. It evaded him, ran from him, left his tail thumping against the ground in the middle of the night and his wings aching to be stretched. He felt absolutely electric; crackling with energy like that of storm clouds, ready to release their great bolts unto terrified earth below.

The moon shone through the entrance of the cave, and in the dim light that it cast, he could see her.

Káev breathed. "I'm fine, Ren." He paused, closing his eyes, then opening them slowly. "I feel okay... I feel alright - just restless."

Renkia's eyes glimmered like ice in the moonlight. They were eyes that looked dead. A faint memory of staring into an identical pair of eyes, yet far, far more full of life, sparked in his absent mind. But he felt okay, he felt alright.

"I don't think you are..." Her words were nary more than a breath. The dragoness stood slowly, stepping gingerly out of the pile of pelts that made up their nest. "I heard you..."

He somehow wished a great crevice would open beneath him and swallow him into the earth.

"Oh, di-did I wake you...?" he churred quietly, internally cursing himself.

"Káev... no, I couldn't sleep either."

They were silent, and Káev clenched his eyes shut. The blackness was intoxicating.

The world of silence was shattered once more by Renkia, for a sob escaped her, and the ball within Káev's stomach now felt like an anvil. Without thought, he was up against her, pulling the much smaller dragon up against him with his leathery wings, creating a cocoon around her.

Broken, deformed bones touched his, and ice water flowed down through him, pooling in his chest and crotch. It was a feeling far too deep for tears to be shed.

"I get scared," she whispered, "scared that you-you'll never come back from that place that you go in your mind. If I lost you, Káev, dear Sephive, if I lost you..." Her words trailed off into nothingness, and Káev was lost in the cruel void of desperation once more, falling into darkness's warm embrace. And what could he do? Gods above, what could he do? Their lives had been torn to pieces and strewn down to the deepest fires of hell, and all he did was sit here staring at his sobbing mate with her broken wings and scars. Would he whisper mutually understood lies to her of how everything would be fine and good in the world? Would he regale her with tales of what he wished he could do to set the world right? Yes, yes, lie - lie to the one you would die for, lie to the one you love so.

What ever could he do?

He brought a forepaw up to her face and gently ran his toes along her jawline and slender snout: an act that had always made her giggle.

Before, he reminded himself. It had always made her giggle before.

After what felt like a lifetime, Renkia gently slid away from him. Wordless, she moved back to the nest and lay down, where she again watched him with those shining eyes. A forced smile was given in return, and before long he was beside her yet again, this time with a small wooden pipe and a dried flower. He plucked a few pedals from the flower and used a single claw to push them down the mouth of the pipe.

"Sleep now," he soothed. "I'll meet you there..."

Káev kissed her then. Passionately; gripping her paw with his as he did so.

They parted, and the mouthpiece of the pipe - Elfen built, and adapted for use by dragons - slipped effortlessly into Renkia's maw.

"I'll meet you in the Gulip dreams, Ren, I'll meet you there." The drake paused, opened his mouth slightly, and coughed a small orb of blue flame into the pipe. He watched her eyes narrow to lazy slits as she inhaled deeply, then rested his head against hers, still cupping the burning pipe in one paw.

"...And so will they, Ren."

He was tempted to lay there; tempted to sleep with the warmth of the one he loved beside him, tempted to push the remaining petals down into pipe and get lost in the Gulip dreams, like he had done so many times before.

Yet he could not.

(What ever could he do?)

Standing, on his feet, out of the cave, taking flight - the motions came as quickly and naturally as thoughts. The wind was on his wings

(Wings that weren't shattered and inept)

and the darkened valley - their valley - stretched beneath him. A small river ran like a great artery down the center of the valley, and in the moonlight, this artery carried silver blood. A large pool had been scoured out of the stone by this stream, and earlier that year, in the summer, he and Renkia had bathed there almost everyday. Oh, how he remembered her screams of pain when the cold water had first swirled around her wings.

The drake banked hard, landing just above the treeline in a grassy alpine meadow, and vomited.

Still, the electricity pulsed in his veins. It flowed through him, making his whole body tingle. Yes, on this night he needed not the Gulip to float through the cosmos, for this feeling - this absolute, electrifying feeling - was a greater high than the Gulip could ever give him. He was alive, oh, how he was alive.

Káev would not float amongst the cosmos on this night; the cosmos themselves would be dethroned. And in his mind the sharp blade of memory stabbed once more; clawing and ripping at his flesh. It was of hatred and sorrow; of desperation and pain - this blade that tore at him relentlessly. He had run from them in the past, gods, how he had tried to run from them, yet it had followed, and he had fallen. Torment was nothing but the blade that had severed the thin and frayed strings that held Káev above the void. The tormentors above would rain down upon him with tooth and claw, and... and...?

(Whatever could he do?)

And he would rip at them, and he would kill them.

So he sat himself high atop a mountain and bit at the wind. Out there - out there, something was not right, was never right. Káev saw it, and knew the answer; felt it beneath his flesh and in his mind. The time had finally come; and the wind carried him to the answer. The elliptic plain crossed the void ahead of him, and he followed it - followed it to the sun, followed it to the answer. And he reached out, stretched his wings, and flew to it.

The high was still building, and he trembled at the thought of climax. It churned and roiled within him, and he was grinning, and the cold numbed his teeth, and he was alive!

---.

The sun was high, and the dark stone of the mountainside was illuminated and warm by the time Renkia awoke. It was a gradual, peaceful awakening she experienced. Her vivid dreams slowly faded to a brilliant haze of color, and in her fogged mind, the dragoness realized that her body and mind were waking. Yet, even knowing this, she tried desperately to hold on to the dream, to hold on to sleep itself. It was profound, doing this; as for her, dreams often ended with white hot pain, jolting her awake in an uncontrollable fit of screams.

After a time, and once she had fully lost the battle to regain sleep, she opened her eyes, then abruptly closed them in the rays of sunshine that spilled through the maw of the cave, causing a splinter of pain to spike up within her skull. She emitted a slight groan, then turned her back to the light searched blindly for the warmth of Káev. When she felt not his presence, she again opened her eyes, more slowly this time, but with all thoughts of sleep vanquished.

The nest was empty - save for herself and the pipe, which lay, as if discarded carelessly, on its side. Dried and charred Gulip spilled from its barrel, looking almost liquid-like in appearance.

A pit of sadness welled up inside her at this sight. She had fallen asleep that night with the hope that, come morning, the two of them could simply lay there and talk. About what, she knew not; but simply being able to talk with Káev would've been enough for her. It was something that she had seen a glimmer of in him the night before. Something was there, something screaming to be let out. It was close, and it was loud, and all she needed was the key to release it.

She wanted to see him smile - Gods, how long had it been since he smiled? How long had it been since either of them were truly happy? She knew not. To her, it was odd, this concept of happiness. Like the faces of dead loved ones, the exact details had faded from her memory with time. Yes, she knew the basic, overall outline of the feeling - yet just what made it that intense, that beautiful, escaped her. It was similar to her memories of flying, in a way.

Renkia breathed in the morning air. Fresh and earthy, it brought a high to the senses, albeit, perhaps to the mind, too. Káev was out hunting, or simply on one of his mountaintops of consciousness, she figured, and would return to her soon. They would sit then, and they - they could be there together. That was all that mattered. Being there together. She envisioned hearing him speak, thought of what they would say, and of what they would share. Together. If nothing else, maybe just simply going for a walk down to the river, or bringing out one of the books and continuing to teach her mate how to read would be enough to pierce the palisades that surrounded Káev.

How torturous it was, seeing him suffer so at the sight of her suffering. It was pain, it was blood, it was terror. And it was love.

Another spike of pain blossomed in her head as she stood, compliments of the gulip. How the great elders of her old clan, whose years exceeded that of three-hundred, ever were able to indulge in such vast quantities of the drug and show no visible after-effects was beyond her. As much as it pained her to rise from the softness of the nest, she felt it profound to simply lie - lost in loneliness. It would be a lost day, and the gods only knew, she had enough of those. Days departed into the grey haze of memory - not that she was at all forgetful, however. It was quite the opposite, as her mind was sharp and memories - beautiful or otherwise - crisp and as colorful as ever. No, blocking such memories was a skill. The gulip helped; Káev, though impossible to do so himself, helped; and Renkia supposed her own mind helped. There were some things not of this world, she figured; things that were so brutally terrible the mind simply will not, cannot, register them, for it would be destroyed in the process.

For Káev's sake, this utterly terrified her.

Pushing such thoughts away, she reached her forepaws out and straightened her back legs, stretching like an enormous housecat. There was a slight throbbing discomfort in her wings, but she did her best to ignore it. Káev always seemed to sense when she had even the smallest bit of stiffness or pain in her wings, and would insist she lay down and let him apply Karamos leaves, which would cool and dull the pain. Not that she minded necessarily - the treatment, that is. It was his constant whispering as he did so, perhaps to her, or himself, regarding how she must take care of her wings and allow them to heal. So one day, she would fly again.

"Damn it all."

She said the thought out loud without even realizing it, and closed her eyes. Her thoughts were aroused upon this morning, and the second she ran from one, another would appear. It was something that caused emotions and memories that she would rather keep buried to flare, seering her in the process.

Find the cure.

Her eyes drifted to the pipe, still cold, still discarded, in the nest. A viable resource, yes, yes. She almost turned to retrieve it, but stopped before she could. The day was sunny and warm, winds were low, and undoubtedly Dresa, the overly energetic, outgoing female mountain dragon who lived in the next valley to the west, would find the weather perfect to visit her stoic and crippled friends. Renkia wondered what would cross Dresa's mind upon seeing her friend riding the warp of electric tide. She doubted Dresa saw the herb as anything more than a pretty flower that Káev and her had growing around their valley. It was an amusing thought, in its own peculiar way.

No, there had to be other, if not, more enjoyable things to occupy her vacant mind.

Crossing the large, oblong interior of the cave, the dragoness made for the passage to the rear, which led deeper into the mountain. Before she reached it, however, Renkia paused, glancing at the shelf that jutted from the wall where a vein of harder stone rested. On it, among spices, dried fruits, and the various other objects that the dragons had amassed, sat a collection of books. Though far older than her, with faded covers and water-stained pages, their spines broken and warped from moisture, they were by far her most prized possessions. Relics of a different time, they were. And of the strangeness discussed in some of them - all of it was utterly fascinating. The dragoness looked over these precious relics, these tales of old, and felt a profound sense of joy in her enlightenment. It was a muted joy, yes; truly but a mere kindle within the dark storm; but joy no less. She looked at the books for a while, examining both their titles in search of one worth reading, and the beauty through their brokenness in utter rapture. Eventually she settled on the title _Coos Nationalism: A New Society._Knowing not what Coos was, nor Nationalism, the small book held small mystery. Perhaps such small mystery would hold vigil, providing insight into the larger mysteries she was faced with.

Gently, she took _Coos Nationalism_in her jaws and walked through the narrow opening of the passage. The tunnel was nary longer than her, and refuge for true darkness was found only in its very center. From the opposite end of this passage, a long, arched chamber yawned before her. Thirty feet above, at the apex of the chamber's high ceiling, a crevasse, perhaps eight paces long, and two paces at its widest, opened to show lazy clouds surfing azure skies. Sunlight from this reflected off the lichen-encrusted walls, bathing Renkia in a glorious green tint.

It was within this cave that a hot spring bubbled from the recesses of the earth, which, under normal circumstances, ran in a continuous stream from a small opening in one end of the cave, to a crack in the floor farther down. This, however, had been dammed up a few years prior, and where the stream of hot mineral water once flowed, a placid pool sat; steam dancing on its surface, reaching towards the light above.

Again, she wished Káev could be at her side.

The warmth of the water embraced her as she slipped into it, her lithe and graceful form making nary a splash. There was almost a feeling of apprehension in her veins as she watched rippled dance about the surface, warping the pristine image of the emerald-colored granite beneath. Who was she - the crippled and inept Renkia - to disturb this elegant, sleeping beast? This creature of pure solace? To shatter something so beautiful, so flawless was an act that seemed to have no reason whatsoever behind its ragged form. As she settled down at the water's edge, careful to keep her precious book from the pool's grasp, she hoped this elegant beast would forgive her.

The Gods only knew, one such broken, elegant monster already had. A monster blind to draconic traditions and values; a monster who saw not what she was - sullied, crippled, and an outcast among dragons.

It was true, the dragoness was no longer delving into the lapse of honor, no longer bathing in the glory of draconic clan. She was fleeting.

Her mind provoked, thoughts on the dream that the gulip had provided now came back to her in the feathery, bright way dreams so often do. They seemed to dance on the jagged ridgeline between memory and sheer personal desire. The dream, it had seemed, had no real narrative to it, rather, it was but a collection of past memories and bizarre visions. Variations in thought and the labyrinth of a tumultuous mind, perhaps, were to blame here. Perhaps also, this was due to the way such dreams faded, she didn't know entirely.

It was all so utterly strange, one ought be insane to find reason in it all. Reason, she felt, was an insane concept in itself. Creatures of all forms search for reason - from why the crow calls at dawn to why violence is such an effective means to an end. And what do they find? Petty excuses and explanations? It all was ludicrous. It made her remember the day during the previous summer when Káev had ascended the great mountain. That certainly was a ludicrous idea, especially for Káev, who had always been logical in his stoic ways.

Logical, every day except the day he summited.

She had been aware of his intentions for some time. The peak that towered over the valley, with its summit of snow and black rock, was utterly alluring to the eye. It was alien, and mystical, and it was there, right above their cave. He had often wondered out loud to her of what the view from the summit would be like, and how it would feel to simply have accomplished such a feat. Yet these ideas of triumph and beauty were not good enough for Renkia to allow her lover to fly and climb his way atop the pyre, and he had known that. So his mind had given him a reason. Simply, to summit would allow them to obtain the great mountain as a whole. It would establish territory - their territory. Territory of Renkia and Káev, royals of the wilderness.

He did summit, flying as high as he could before landing to scramble up the rest of the way. He carried with him a stone tablet, scrimshawed with their names and the moon cycle in which they had claimed the mountain. As she had sat in the valley that day, she imagined how beautiful the kaern her mate was building up there would be. She imagined the triumph he must be feeling, and the beauty of the view.

She imagined all of this, until the next day, when a bloodied, frost-bitten dragon had returned to her. He was deathly ill upon arrival, and his body shivered at such a rate she nearly thought he was having a convulsion.

Her mate had nearly died in the pursuit of something ultimately meaningless to all except him. That, to her, was ludicrous in every sense of the word. It seemed that these forces lurked in the hearts of all beings. They were the thoughts that submitted the great peaks of one's mind.

They were the thoughts that drove the souls of all creatures, and they were ludicrous.

Renkia read her book, bathing in the water's pleasant heat, and remained blissfully ignorant of the great summit Káev now climbed towards.

---

In black night, the pilgrimage was made.

Though in his hazy mind Káev still was okay and Káev still was alright, his outside appearance certainly didn't show it. His eyes were glazed now, and foam lay in the corners of his mouth. Bile was streaked down the drake's neck - having long since dried, it clung to his scales and irritated him to no avail. It was his eyes, however, that the monster within him truly lurked.

Yes, a monster it was. A monster of rage and sorrow. The being that once was Káev had succumbed to this beast, and he been devoured by it. Perhaps he had only been Káev then - back when Renkia's wings could soar, and they had lived happily and joyously, and their children had trilled and played on mossy mountainsides, and all was good, and all was bright in their precious little world. Before,before! The time when he felt that profound and euphoric feeling of simply being alive. Not this flipside apocalypse the monster now lived within. It was the hollow days that consisted of nothing more than sleep, occasional, passionless sex, and Gulip smoke. It was Renkia, who he loved so. Renkia - his flower; his precious life source that kept him from putting his claws through the thick veins that led to his paws.

Gulip was a strong drug, and the strains he knew how to grow - stronger; yet never enough for him. It was time for the next step, the ultimate euphoria-giver.

The time had come for bloodshed