Chapter 15: The Dragon's Maw part 1
Damien's hand rose and traced the stone-carved sigil on the wall—Solence flaring faintly within its grooves. A low hum shivered through the bricks along the passageway. Then— quiet.
The circle's complexity made brute disruption rather risky. It could very easily trigger a backlash, alerting Nostradi with immediate effect. He examined its anchor glyphs, searching for a pressure point he could manipulate.
"You're overcomplicating it, I reckon," Valen's voice murmured behind him.
He continued while brushing past him toward the wall, "Sealing glyphs can be quite easy to analyse once you understand the fundamentals. A seventh loop here indicates balance between the third and the second circle; they've been overlapped in a Urielic Harmony."
Before Damien could protest, Valen knelt and pressed his palm flat against the circle. His other hand sketched the barest fragments of a sigil—three lines, three sharp hooks, and a broken loop. "You don't fight the seal," he said softly. "You lean with it until it opens on its own."
The circle pulsed once. The runes thinned, dimmed, and folded inward like petals of a touch-me-not. And with that, the ancient wall groaned open.
Damien stared. "You just—"
"I read it. Anything below Fourth Circle can be unravelled if you see its rhythm," Valen said. "Orion makes us practice until we can taste the difference between each glyph's intent. Analyse it first, then use force later." He stepped inside. "Come on."
The stone walls inside were slick with moisture. The narrow passage leading them forward hummed ominously. The faint scent of Solence lingered here too, though it was thinner, stretched, as though the magic wanted them to follow it. The path twisted twice, taking a left each time, then widened.
They stepped into a hall. However, calling it a study despite its grandeur would be more appropriate.
The ceiling arched high overhead, vanishing into darkness. Dozens of tables were placed ahead, every inch of them smothered in parchment, leather-bound journals. Loose sheets of paper stacked the shelves. Ink stains pooled across the floor in scattered constellations, as though someone had been writing for decades without pause.
For a brief second, Damien considered turning back.
They were somewhere uninvited. But someone anticipated them.
Even so, he soon reconsidered that thought as he began to notice a visible pattern within the notes. A pattern he couldn't miss, a pattern he couldn't allow to get away from him.
Every scrap of parchment contained data on the same subject—
The Dragon's Maw.
He moved onward, scanning the nearest tables. The handwriting varied—some sheets were in tight, rigid script, others in sprawling loops—but the content was relentless in its detail:
—Survival temperature: optimal range between 1,200 to 1,350 degrees. Lesser heat causes lethargy; greater burns cause scale shedding, screams in presumed agony.
—Feeding frequency: once every fourteen days in maturation stage; diet consists of condensed mana threads or processed Ashbone marrow.
—Habitat preference: jagged basalt formations; favours enclosed caverns over open plains.
He opened one of the closed journals. They held cross-sectional sketches of the creature's jaw, notations on venom production, diagrams of the inside of its mouth lined with jagged teeth like obsidian shards. Another page bore instructions for transporting the Dragon's Maw without waking it.
Damien's fingers paused. Visible fear overwhelmed his emotions.
It wasn't a theory.
This was upkeep.
He swept the table with his gaze, and the truth solidified in his chest like a stone dropped into water.
The Dragon's Maw wasn't just alive—it was being kept alive.
Behind him, Valen's voice was low. "This… isn't just a study, I don't think. This is research. An experiment."
Damien slowly nodded in agreement, as it seemed that Valen had connected the dots as well. His pulse thudded in his ears. Is this the rot Lucien spoke of when he sent Damien to these lands? He looked at Valen and thought, "How much can I truly trust their most divine weapon if this is what they hide behind their truest selves?"
A sound cut the thought in half.
A whistle.
The air in the room tightened, suffocating the two boys in unimaginable fear. A sudden spark of light ignited beneath their feet, flooding upward in golden lines until it formed a complete Solence circle enclosing them. Its edges shimmered with binding runes, the kind meant to lock down movement—
Permanently.
Damien looked up toward the source of the glow.
High above them, at the edge of a balcony, stood Nostradi. He leaned casually on the railing, the faintest of smirks on his lips. The light from the seal painted him in molten gold, turning his eyes into obelisks of pure light.
"I knew a rat was following my trail," he said, his gaze sliding past Damien to Valen. His smirk deepened. "Didn't expect it to be a cub from the Lion's—or should I say, God's den instead."
Damien didn't flinch, but he eased his stance, lowering his voice.
"Sir, we don't come here with malice in our hearts," he said. "You've got the wrong impression."
The man's lips curled into something between amusement and pity. "Who taught you how to lie so effortlessly, boy?" His words slithered into the night air, heavy with certainty. "I've already heard the whispers. A boy wandering the academy under suspicion of bearing the Veyrant's mark… smeared across his flesh like a curse."
Beside Damien, Valen shifted, his eyes narrowing in question, though his silence cut sharper than any blade.
Frustration swelled in Damien's chest, and he forced it down. He responded, voice flat. "Fine. Then tell me—did you actually keep the Dragon's Maw alive then, traitor?"
Nostradi's expression barely moved, the flicker of candlelight in his eyes revealing nothing. "That's none of your business."
The man leaned back in his chair, a shadow moving with him like it belonged to someone else. "And even if it was," he said, "why should I comply with anything you ask?"
Damien's voice hardened. "You've already caught the biggest fish in the city." His hand gestured slightly toward Valen. "What harm is there in answering a question before you inevitably kill us?"
Nostradi thought to humour his question for a moment—just long enough for Damien to think he might fold. Then he shook his head. "Nah. Don't think so."
He leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table, facing Valen, "You know what I do think? I think your Exorcist Order is stupid. They trust anyone who mouths the right prayers and bow to some glass-eyed prophecy. They believe the Sainted can solve every problem thrown at their gilded feet." He glanced at Valen briefly, a sardonic grin tugging at his mouth. "But the truth? The threat ahead is bigger than anything your 'holy empire' can handle."
"I've seen him," his voice dropped to something almost reverent, but in a way that made Damien's stomach twist. "True glory lies in serving him. The master of all. Lucifer… the Fallen."
The words landed like burning ash in Damien's ears. He could take insults to himself, even threats—but this was something else. This was spitting in the face of the world itself. Something primal flared in him. Anger? Perhaps not. It was a more calculated emotion.
Maybe he just couldn't comprehend why someone would preach something he truly hated with all of his being.
His head lifted slowly, the candlelight across the room catching his eyes. He looked at Nostradi as if the man had just trampled the altar of the gods in front of their most faithful servant.
"Watch your tongue," Damien said, voice low, almost trembling, not with fear, but rather a confusing sense of delight.
Nostradi's smirk deepened. "Or what, boy?"
Damien's answer came without words. His hand rose, fingers spread, and in the hollow of his palm, lines began to burn themselves into existence. Concentric spirals of light and scripture wove together, shifting in fluid arcs. The faint hum of the glyphs circled through the air, a pattern born not to summon, but to unravel.
A counter glyph.
The glow lit his face from below, painting his jaw in sharp gold and shadow. The air between them thickened as if the glyph itself had weight.
Valen stepped slightly forward, caught between stepping in and holding back, his golden eyes darting from the glyph to Damien's expression.
Nostradi didn't move at first. His gaze flicked to the mark spinning in Damien's palm, his own shadow twitching in the candlelight. Then, slowly, he leaned back, and the smirk bent into something darker. "Now there's the truth," he said softly. "That look in your eye—that's not the Order's light. That's something else."
The counter glyph brightened, casting its hum like the vibration of a struck bell.
Its structure was an amalgam of Raphael's work. The forbidden wither framework was carved into his memory and the barrier's lattice was quietly unraveled while Nostradi's voice dripped poison into the room.
"You know, you have a habit of repeating patterns. I can see why you're not an offense-oriented caster," Damien chuckled.
"Three lines, three sharp hooks, and a broken loop— the Urielic Harmony isn't that difficult to break down if you've seen it once."
Above his head, four circles of Solence spun in luminous harmony. Each halo painted upon it was precise and pure—an illusion for Valen's eyes alone. To him, Damien would seem like the most devoted servant, instead of the one who deceives it all.
Beneath the Solence veneer, a fourth canticle Witherflow coiled and intertwined with the glyph's holy frame, an unstable marriage of forces that should have annihilated each other instantly.
The seal around them shuddered at first contact, causing fissures to form across its surface. The Wither inside his glyph lunged like a starving beast, gnawing at the Solence filaments woven into the barrier. The barrier, rigid and righteous, resisted—but Damien's borrowed Solence, thin as a veil, bent the rules long enough for the corruption to sink its claws into the foundation.
Valen's gaze darted between Damien and the glowing circles above, eyes wide with the awe of seeing what he believed was a Fourth Circle glyph in motion. He didn't notice the faint tendrils of shadow writhing just beneath the light.
Nostradi stepped back, eyeing the distortion. "What are you playing at, boy?"
Damien didn't answer. This part was something he had only really calculated in theory, the point where the opposing magics would reach their breaking point. His palm trembled, heat gathering at the edges of his vision as the glyph's internal struggle peaked.
But the barrier screamed. Its light fractured, and folded in on itself.
The framework snapped.
And then—
It collapsed.
The chamber's oppressive stillness fled in an instant. Dustless motes spun in the void where the seal's walls had been.
Nostradi chuckled low, his composure returning as quickly as it had slipped. "Interesting trick. Dangerous one." His eyes lingered on Damien a moment too long, as though the boy's secret had just grown heavier in his mind.
Damien lowered his hand, letting the illusory circles fade into nothing. He smiled and spoke,
"Let's start this again, shall we?"
The room, now unbound, seemed to tilt toward whatever would come next.
Without a moment's notice, Valen jumped towards Nostradi. In his hand, a third circle glyph, spinning violently in fractal perfection, aimed to pulverize its target. Nostradi hurried back and casted a glyph barrier, only to find it shattered within seconds at the hand of Damien.
But he didn't panic. In his face, the same smile simply bloomed again.
"This old man can't possibly take on two fierce warriors of your age at once. Let me call in some backup."
Before the two could react, sigils of gold grew out of the walls around them. They twisted into another another and the north wall covered in notes started to get pushed back slowly.
Veiled behind curtains and a green, mossy hue, lay a large glass covered containment unit. And inside it, a faint breath howled.
"Behold. The Dragon's Maw. Good luck, boys."
And with that, Nostradi shot the glass.