The Roar of Renewal

They came in a flash. Glances of what came before, glimpses of what would come after. Ages where the world was newly awakened, thrashing spasms echoing through the void. The celestial lights reawakening an ancient universe, instilling soul into hollow masses. The eternal dark that preceded it, shrouded the whole of the cosmos in an endless umbra. Then back to the great, living planet, full of chaotic life. The great usurpation, the great war, the great dying. The era of unlife that it all resulted in, the grey blanket that swallowed his world, Cuna Taniyn, a silvery cocoon that cursed it into stasis. But at the end of the dreams was a rupture, a fissure from which color and life flooded back into the dormant plane. There he would find his purpose, his final mission.

Sharp cracks echoed through the cavernous mountain, the first sound to echo from within in… How long has it been? The sounds of rocks breaking resonated further, louder, finally stopping as a pair of giant pools of gold opened. Ancient eyes looked at their surroundings, blinking as the dust collected by eons of slumber fell from the lids to stain the large ores. He blinked some more, tilting his head from side to side with a terribly stiff neck, idle tendons complaining in their rekindling. Bones snapped together loudly, seemingly just as surprised as their encapsulating muscles at the sudden movement. What started with the head spread to the rest of his body, four clawed limbs, two pairs of stony wings, and a long, girthy tail stretching to their limits.

By the end, he was enveloped in a cloud of his own dirt, breathing plenty of it in upon taking his first breath. What followed was his first sneeze since… I must have still been little more than a hatchling, unaccustomed to this world’s vivacity. The monstruous boom dispelled any remnants of grey soot that dared to audaciously cling to his old scales. The flapping of his wings cleared the rest of the cavity's dust, allowing him to shake himself once more, a certain spryness returning to his body. Even still, the ache his body responded with reminded him his youth was far behind him, and his end drew closer with every breath he took.

Sluggishly, temperately, he marched towards the feeble light, dimly glowing through massive ribs that upheld his roof. His soft stride was enough to shake the ground, a violent rumble marking his every step. Legs moved in the way the tallest trees might upon being uprooted and planted once more, mouth yawning and baring rows upon rows of teeth the size of old stalagmites. Such was his thunderous movement that it prompt pieces of the ceiling to fall on him, only to break at his wings. Old I may be, but this fellow has been dead long before I hatched. The mountain of its corpse would sooner break on my back than my bones surrender to its weight. In his younger years, the thought might have filled him with pride, but all he could taste was the lingering bitterness of melancholy in his mouth.

He stepped out, a meager little lout in between pillars whose peaks embraced the grey clouds. Verndari looked upon the world, disappointment flooding into his being to find the world he’d returned to was worse than the one he’d left. He breathed deep, chest nearly doubling in size as he nearly stripped the surrounding area of all air. He howled deafeningly, his voice carrying through oceans and continents until it trekked around the world and returned to him as a whisper. No one called back. His maw twisted curled deep with his frown. The Roar of Schism had proved to be their undoing, the proud, pitiful end of all dragonkind.

There must be others, those led by Giagia. My sacrifice cannot be for naught. He looked left and right from the side of the mountain in which he had slept. Life seemed to be in hiding if not outright gone from the realm. Not Primordial. Not Wyrm. Not Mortal. All were gone, and yet he remained. His eyes squinted, finding his previously flawless vision to be blurry, obscured the more distantly he tried to look. Within its reach, the vast expanse of sky, sea and land all seemed to merge together into a colorless mire, landmarks lost to the mist that plagued all realms. Is it my age, or is it the grey mantle that has fallen upon the world that I cannot see so well? Even so high upon one of the peaks of Cuna Taniyn, I cannot feel the watchful eye of Sálkyrios nor the essence of Gotlïngyú. What have we done?

Verndari’s wings moved with purpose this time, lifting his great body until the mountain was no greater in size than one of his claws. He flew forwards, finding no opposition from the dull winds and lifeless veil, looking down on the faint outlines of the world beneath his feet. He attempted to recognize scars and landmarks, conjuring memories of what they might have looked like before. He was moderately successful, finding some of the Primordials’ great bodies to still be intact, though no longer sprouting life from their carcasses. To his sorrow, he found rows of bones he recalled belonged to his own kin, far too little and scattered to even recognize to whom they belonged to. A hard task, even if he were to descend and look closer. Not too far off, different sets of skeletons laid sprawling across fields, scaleless and barren. So much fighting over who held the right of rule. Not one would-be ruler could be distinguished from their foes now.

Submerged beneath the powerful waves of grief, Verndari lost himself to his past, back when pride had not betrayed his kind. There had been half a dozen bloodlines, all with a set purpose, a crucial role in shaping the world. The Vann lineage held mastery over water, be it by rain, river or sea. Those of Hüo blood consumed the flames above the ground and the hellfire far beneath the ground, spewing them back out when in need. The eggs hatched into Aarde were gifted with voices to explode rifts into the earth and conjure hills through their roars. The Angin warriors brought order to the heavens, dispelling storms and casting hurricanes and cyclones with the whirling of their wings. Vacuo then was in charge of the void, the same emptiness that spanned the space between the world, Sálkyrios and Gotlïngyú, erasing the most destructive of forces.

Verndari, in turn, was born into Gnosi. Compared to the rest, they were the weakest, no great fire to spew, no roar to shatter rock and metal. Like all dragons, they had four legs, four wings, a tail, a pair of nostrils and a pair of gills so no plane was beyond their reach. But the Gnosi held the gift of Sálkyrios itself, for they dreamt of all that came before the birth of the Wyrm and envisioned that which would followed. In their youth, the other dragons saw their gift of foresight and unanimously decided to grant them leadership in the war against the Primordials. With it, they defeated foes with strength far greater than theirs, and dragonkind had brought order to a world of chaos. But then they had turned on each other, and the dragons were no more.

Verndari huffed, old lungs puffing out a torrent of air through scaly nostrils as he lost himself in thought. How did it all go wrong? We were strong, we were united, but then a madness overtook us. We saw enemies among allies, and we likened fratricide to justice. His thoughts went to his great grandmother Cyntef, the sixthborn and the mother of the Gnosi. She taught him as a hatchling as she’d taught her own children when they were the same age. She taught them of the origins of the world as they knew it, and all that heralded it.

For it was in darkness that the cosmos had existed. A great nothingness that denied the ground its solidity, water its liquidity, air its gaseousness. Before the great void, no matter mattered, no time elapsed. Vakning, or the Roar of Advent in the old tongue, changed that. The first star, Sálkyrios, burned bright, demanding the universe be illuminated. One followed after the first, and then the third. Soon after, the cosmos were flooded with a million different lights, each spewing rays of light and life into the corners of the universe and chasing the dark away. In these pockets, the light found the sleeping celestial bodies, worlds lost to the dark, deprived of elements and life.

With the Roar of Advent, they sprung to life, colors breeding massive beings of mindless power, rampaging madly in the very first day of existence. The Primordials were unique, genderless, impossible to perfectly classify, though the dragons had done their best to group them. Easier in death than it was in life, at least. Every mountain in the world had once been a living Titan, waddling and shaking the earth with a simple stroll. When the Wyrm had clashed against themselves in a horrible, pointless war, Verndari hid in the corpse of one of the first that fell. Though it had fallen to dragonkind’s clans of stone and wind, in its demise the Titan had proved an amicable host to Verndari. Though it seemed eager that I should leave its bowels. Perhaps it desired to rest alone.

Some left little to no marks in the world, their eradication leaving no room for their monstruous tendencies to seek and destroy. The Impudulu were living storms, thrashing about, and constantly warring with their underwater neighbors, the Naga. The two would clash in bouts of typhoons and vortexes, resentfully fighting one another until they went their separate ways, in search of another opponent. The Impudulu dissolved into wayward clouds, while the Naga were dissolved into the oceans that separated the lands. Those that tried to hide on land ultimately became rivers, running in death as they had in life. The Burronjor were the best hidden, and at times the most destructive. They fought with no other Primordial but themselves, tackling each other beneath the ground in battles that produced earthquakes far above. Cyntef claimed that the lands had all initially been one, but the Burronjor had split it into half a dozen great bodies. And then the Naga claimed the rifts between them.

It hardly mattered now, though. Several hours into his flight, even the terrain did not seem to be as uneven as he remembered it. Previously golden dunes looked a shade too close to ash, and forests looked more like fungal decay than thriving environments. He even recognized the corpse of an Oni, not even spitting the thinnest strands of fumes. Even after their passing, they would cough out towers of smoke. Once in a blue moon, they would even spasm back to life for a few moments, spewing forth magma into the skies before rescinding back into their tombs. But they are not among my interests. My dreams saw a rift in the veil, the light of Sálkyrios bleeding back into the world. I must find it. I must find Giagia and the others.

The Roar of Advent had been the beginning of everything, but not the beginning of dragonkind. That had been the Roar of Usurpation. Where the light of the sun cast life into the cosmos, the moon dancing around Cuna Taniyn was not gifted with such life, or rather, not the same kind. The awakening of Cuna Taniyn went hand in hand with the Primordials, adhering to no law but basic instinct. That had been the moon’s purpose. Blessed to reflect the light of Sálkyrios upon its surface, it gained a life and name of its own, Gotlïngyú. Gotlïngyú rippled, and six craters were carved out of its face. The stones that would fall from its surface would be the first six dragons to be born into the world. They were smaller, weaker than the Primordials that unwittingly claimed Cuna Taniyn their own, but they were the first beings gifted with minds.

With the elemental powers of the first five dragons and Cyntef’s guidance, they bid their time, laying eggs and growing their numbers until the day of reckoning came. The six led the dragons, demanding that twilight befall the Primordials, for Cyntef knew that with the death of the colossal beings, life would flourish. No life can ever truly be destroyed, Verndari, no more than matter can. Just as life leads to death, death leads to life. It is transformation, not an ending. Verndari mourned that the elder’s words no longer had weight to them, seeing the world stripped of colors and life. Did you see it, Greatmother Cyntef, did you see our downfall?

He missed her, he realized, more than he missed most of his direct kin. A hundred questions he’d ask her, and for every answer she gave, two more questions would grow into his mind. But Greatmother Cyntef, if Sálkyrios is our sun, then what are the other stars? Old and toothless, her voice had devolved into a whisper by the time Verndari had been a hatchling. Not even I know, child, but one can guess. As Sálkyrios gave us life, awakened the Primordials in Cuna Taniyn and carved us from Gotlïngyú, perhaps other stars have given life to different worlds.

Then how do we know we came first, wise Greatmother? She’d chuckled then. We do not, but it is a rather comfortable story to tell ourselves. Perhaps we came first. Perhaps we did not. Perhaps there are thousands of worlds teeming with life. Perhaps we are the only ones. He’d whined at her answers, and she had laughed, reveling in his confusion and incapacity to accept such higher mysteries. Flying alone, he’d have forsaken every question he’d asked as a hatchling to have her answer the only one pressing his mind now. Tell me, Greatmother Cyntef, why did it have to end this way?

He flew over another desert, one more monument of the war against the Primordials. All that remained from the Anakim were the golden dunes their bodies had exploded into, twirling in the wind as if to mimic their dancing in life. The sands were as grey as anything else, and he wondered if the Primordials had also died for nothing. Was our claim true? Did we truly bring order to the chaos if in the end no one was left? He flapped his wings harder, forcing himself into another wall of mists and clouds, prying his eyes from the land. There must be something.

Two Roars marked the beginning of the world and the birth of dragonkind, the latter doubling for a eulogy for the Primordials. When the last Primordial had been slain and the Wyrm remained victorious, the days shone brighter. The Titans’ skin flakes came off their bodies, walking on four legs as mammoths, mastodons, elephants, and behemoths. The Naga, whose cadavers were tied together in unintelligible knots, bred fish, eels, whales, krakens, and sharks into the oceans. The rest of the Primordials’ bodies split into the beings that would fill the planet with life, deprived of the forces from which they were born, but bestowed with the power of creation. Though despite their population of millions, ultimately, the Mortals held no consciousness, no wisdom through hindsight nor intelligence through foresight. The dragons remained alone, uncontested as rulers of the world. That had been what caused the Roar of Schism.

Petty arguments taken to extreme extents. The Hüo believed theirs was the strongest claim. Fire deposed most of the Primordials, they had earned the right to rule. But the Vacuo argued that was only because they were there to correct their mistakes and prevent further destruction of the world. Vann and Angin fought over whether air or water was quintessential to all living things, our subjects, and Aarde proclaimed that their power was the closest to the Primordials’ in shaping the world. Cyntef and the elder dragons had been dead by that point, and Verndari and Giagia were the youngest members of the Gnosi. They’d dreamt of the fight, of the war that would take place, the grey mantle it would pull over the world. They dreamt of the devastation it would have over Wyrm and Mortals, of Sálkyrios’s furious absence and Gotlïngyú’s waning strength.

They conceived their plan then, one for their last flight. Dreams taught them to secret away the hatchlings too young to fight and lead those who wanted no part in the bloodshed. The elder Gnosi approved of the plan, staying behind to hold the other bloodlines off and allow their escape. Even then, they’d been much too young, and soon some of the dragons would catch up with them. Verndari split off then, to fight through fire and storm and stone, while Giagia spirited the rest of them away to safety. When they were well away, Verndari ran fleeing from the hordes, leading them into enemy forces and escaping once the infighting began. Wounded, he crashed into the mountain, resting within the ribs of the dead Titan and allowing a deep slumber to overtake him. He dreamt of his sister, far away beneath the veil. He dreamt as his body grew and aged, turning as old as Cyntef had been in his youth. Giagia, where have you gone?

Suddenly, he was blinded. It was so bright, he was forced to blink several times, remaining in place and attempting to regain balance. He was astounded by the brilliance, his old eyes taking the time to readjust his sight before taking in his surroundings. For the first time in eons, he could see it. He could see the sun. Sálkyrios, I swear to your grace and glory that I shall never take your warmth for granted again. The veil was forcibly parted by it, leading him to fly deeper into the middle of the fissure, turning fully to the heavens and admiring all the stars gazing down at him. You’re still here. Not all hope must be lost, then. The beams seemed to be even more striking than he remembered them, because he was forced to turn away from the sun and back to the world.

Blinking again, he found himself looking upon one last body, the only one that held some color about it. The Patagons stuck low to the ground, shorter but more numerous than most. Still, even the smallest of the Primordials were still dozens of times larger than the longest of the dragons. As they were slain by his kins, their bodies burst open from within, jungles growing from every wound. This one did not even have bones left, a massive forest swallowing what it had once been, a vague outline of its boundaries being the only clue of what had come before. My dreams guided me here. The answer must be here.

He dived downwards, focusing his sight on anything that stood out, any pairs of wings that were alike enough to his. He hovered slowly, scaring away monkeys, gryphons and hawks with his slow movements. Teeming with life, as it used to be. Hope was burning brighter within him. The sight of large bones winded him. He landed close by, stomping out trees and forcing all the life to flee from his presence. Stepping closer, he found a skull all too similar to his, differentiated only by the upward curling of its horns. …Was it painless, Giagia? Were you the last as well, or did others make it? He let out a pitiful growl, echoing through the forest, holding his head low as pain and defeat conquered his spirit. He remained motionless. All in vain.

The mewling opened his eyes. He could hear it faintly, not too far away. It was likely an animal he hadn’t seen yet, nothing that should have piqued his interest. And yet, he couldn’t help but walk towards it, carefully ensuring that whatever the strange being was, he wouldn’t trample it on accident. He stopped, finding a little being with copper skin crawling on four legs, using stumpy little arms to sit on its haunches and stare up at him. Gurgling, it giggled and rubbed its legs together. A monkey? No, it has neither tail nor fur. Only two hands as well, so it’s not like the other primates. He inched his face closer, pushing trees and rocks out of the way. What are you?

The strange infant giggled, attempting to stand on its hind legs and failing. It attempted two more times, successfully standing on the third and waddling over to him. It pressed a tiny little hand against his chin, rubbing its face into his scales. Something’s different about this animal. It giggled again, falling on all fours again and crawling away from him at a surprisingly speedy pace. It took it an hour what Verndari could reach in two steps, but he found himself before a cavern all too similar to the one he had slept in. Though Patagon insides are hardly as roomy as those of Titans’. Where no creature dared enter, the infant crawled straight towards it, recklessly fearless. He focused his eyes, adjusting to the dark of the insides. His eyes widened. It can’t be.

The baby crawled close to a cramped forest of bones. Though the ceiling was low, the surface was wide. Hundreds of dragons’ skeletons laid strewn about the insides of the Patagon, and from within, hundreds of coos and giggles could be heard. Infants of the same species came in colors varying from marble to bronze to obsidian, playing together, seemingly free of care. It wasn’t until he looked them in his eyes that he made the connection. They’re of singular mind. They’re no mere animals. Crawling ever so carefully closer, he found the body of one red dragon laying dead, mouth opened. A defector from Hüo. It could not have been more than a few hours since it had passed, Verndari could almost smell the smokiness of its breath. Before he could even mourn, he reeled back in shock.

Covered in a sticky substance, none too far from embryonic fluids, another infant crawled out of its open mouth. This one had golden skin and slanted eyes, rushing quickly to join its brethren. In the back of his mind, he could hear Cyntef’s chuckles. Just as life leads to death, death leads to life. Realization dawned on Verndari, his purpose finally coming into mind in a vision beckoned by the light. It was never our world to rule. Not in this form, anyway. All the power dragonkind was bestowed with is lost on these new beings, but their minds will be far more powerful and sophisticated than ours ever were. He chuckled, grief gradually being converted into hope. I am the last dragon. That makes me their guide, their protector.

The infants seemed to acknowledge that, because the hundreds of infants, perhaps just shy of a thousand, sat around him. They giggled and gurgled, eagerly awaiting for his next move. He chuckled, digging at the ground beneath him. He dug enough so that when he set his head down, his lower jaw was at the same level as the ground. He opened his maw wide, and the infants crawled towards him, sliding easily through the wide gaps between his enormous teeth and settling inside. Only when he was sure the last one entered did he rise exceptionally gently, walking back outside of the Primordial's remains again. As he stepped out into the day, he saw the fissure expanding into a growing opening, light shining back through into the world again. Smiling, he took flight, a chorus of giggles echoing out his maw.

Taking to the skies again, searching for safer grounds with the sun at his back, his mind was gifted with a final set of visions. He saw the infants grow into adults of unparalleled intellect. He saw that with time, where dragons had been born with flight, these beings would warp steel and fire and fashion themselves great metal wings. Where dragons had spewed fire and water and winds, the beings would come to craft their own tools and weapons to harness the elements. Where dragons fashioned landscapes out of the bodies of Primordials, the beings would build their own, standing even higher than the tallest mountain. Where dragons had used their utmost strength to defeat beasts far greater in size and power, the beings would roar explosions that could erase mountains at a time. Where dragons had brought life into the world from chaos, the beings would go as far as to resurrect life that had died long before they came into the world. Above all, where dragons had tried and failed to bring order to the chaos, the beings would succeed. It is transformation, not an ending. And what better transformation for a dragon than to be reborn as a human? As Verndari flew off into the horizon, he decided he would denominate this event as the Roar of Renewal.