Start of Arc 3!
The doors to his chamber parted without ceremony. Servitors of chrome-and-flesh marched in lockstep, their limbs adorned with whorls of glowing runes, the mark of Camelot's biotech, equal parts sorcery and science. Their movements were too smooth, too silent, almost reverent.
"Your Highness," intoned the foremost, its voice a choir of mechanical bells behind the resonance of a human throat, "His Radiant Majesty, Overlord of the Star-Sectors of Albion, summons you to the Throneroom."
The boy swallowed. He was only eight cycles old, a child, slight of build, hair tousled from sleep and dreams. But royal blood had its demands. He squared his narrow shoulders. "I am ready," he lied. The servitors bowed, their eyes flickering in patterns that suggested approval, or perhaps pity.
The hall stretched before him like a river of radiance, its surface made of marble that had never touched any world's soil. The courtiers, knights, nobles, artificers, mages, priests paused in their drifting conversations as he passed, bowing with graceful precision. Their armor shifted colors as they moved, like folded rainbows wrapped around steel frames.
The child kept his chin high. He walked as he'd watched the adult walk in the palace measured, steady, uncowed. But even so, he felt so very small.
Every archway seemed a gateway into another realm. Every statue towered as though its figure might step down and resume the wars carved into its crystalline skin. The corridors were cathedral-wide, their walls carved with holo-bas-reliefs showing kings and queens of the Pendragon line, each wielding words or lances of power armored and astride dragons whose wings eclipsed moons.
Above it all, the air thrummed with energy: a low, omnipresent murmur from the fusion cores buried beneath the castle's foundation and the strange, psionic lattice that only the Pendragons could hear. High in the sky, archways of crystalline alloy refracted starlight pouring in from distant nebulae. Entire constellations glittered overhead like chandeliers hung from the cradle of the cosmos.
He passed these wonders as though sleepwalking, though he had grown up within them. He could not feel awe today. Only dread.
The guardians of the final approach to the throne room were not mere soldiers. They were legends. Standing at the gates were his father's oldest companions. His last true friends. And they watched the boy approach with eyes that had seen empires burn.
Ser Ulfius stood to the left of the gate, towering in armor the color of a newborn star. His pauldrons were shaped like roaring lions, each mane a living corona of fire held in stasis. Circuits of golden sigils crawled across his gauntlets, pulsing in time with the thunderous heartbeat of the fusion-core within his chestplate.
On the right stood Sir Ector, the knight who had personally trained him in arms and commanded armies in equal measure. His armor was deep iron-grey, hewn with runes of protection older than many kingdoms founding. His helm bore the crest of a double-headed eagle, wings outstretched as if ready to seize the very horizon.
Between them stood the third: Sir Brastias, his father's oldest war-commander, a presence like thunder given form. His armor was streaked with crackling veins of blue-white lightning, each pulse illuminating the darkened visor that hid his eyes. Plasma coils circled his arms, humming like caged storms.
"Today is the day, huh. The big day," Sir Ulfius grinned.
"Let him through," Brastias spoke. "His sire awaits!"
"Good luck," Ser Ector nodded to him.
They bowed and crossed their halberds. A pulse of golden light scanned him. Then the gates peeled open like petals. He stepped into the throne room. It was vast, too vast to exist within the physical boundaries of the castle. Space folded outward like the unfurling of an immense wing. Pillars of translucent pillars rose toward a ceiling where constellations were etched in slowly drifting light. Enchanted banners hung suspended without wind, each depicting the crowned dragon sigil in shifting hues.
At the far end, upon an elevated dais surrounded by a constellation of floating glyphs, sat an older man. On either side stood the great knights arrayed in their battle-plate. Armor of shimmering gold, etched with circuitry that pulsed like veins, helms shaped in the visage of dragons. They did not so much as turn their heads as Artorius walked between them, though he felt their silent judgment like a weight of iron.
Though only the throne mattered. And the man upon it. Uther Pendragon. High King of Albion. Star Tyrant. Father. His presence pressed upon the air like gravity, bending it toward him. He wore armor that was equal parts monarch and warlord with plates of silver-white alloy trimmed with gold so ancient it had tarnished into a deep, burnished red. A long mantle of white fur from some creature that had roamed the void hung from his shoulders, shimmering with embedded starlight.
His face was carved from harsh lines, like a sword forged from the essence of winter. A short beard framed a mouth eternally set in stern disapproval. His eyes, those terrible, burning eyes shone with the cold brilliance of a dying sun.
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Standing beside his father's throne was a figure some believed to be as old as Camelot itself yet ageless in ways no mortal eye could fully comprehend. Merlin. Arch-Wizard. King of Enchanters. Time Lord. High Seer of the Pendragon Dynasty.
He was a man of mysteries and his teacher. His robe was a mantle of night, an ever-shifting tapestry of constellations that glimmered and rearranged themselves as though the cosmos were rewriting its story upon him. Threads of arcane circuitry glowed faintly along its edges, forming runes that whispered in languages older than human memory.
His staff, taller than he, was fashioned from a living branch of the World Tree, Yggdrasil encased in crystal. Within its core floated a shard of something that looked suspiciously like a star. Every so often, it pulsed as though alive.
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The boy approached, stopping ten paces short of the dais. He bowed low. "My king," he whispered.
His father's gaze swept over him not with affection, not even scrutiny, but with the detached evaluation of a smith inspecting raw ore. "You are late."
The boy bowed deeply. "My apologies, Father."
Uther's stare sharpened. "Excuses are the refuge of the powerless." The words stung. But the child only lifted his head in silence, keeping his face expressionless. "Come." Uther gestured with a gauntleted hand. "It is time."
A rumble like worlds grinding together echoed across the chamber. The floor beneath them began to split open with a hiss as ancient mechanisms stirred. A great gate of interlocking plates withdrew, revealing darkness so vast it looked like the opening into an abyss. From that abyss came a heat like summer writ into pure energy and a breath, slow, heavy, thunderous. Something colossal moved within.
Uther stepped forward, his boots ringing against the stone with a rhythm that echoed across the bones of the castle itself. "Follow," he commanded. Merlin leaned on his staff and said nothing, though the constellations swirling across his robes dimmed, as if the stars themselves were holding their breath.
The boy swallowed but he obeyed, taking his place behind the king as they descended the broad, spiraling stairway that had unfolded out of the throne room floor like the unfurling of a colossal metal flower. The air grew hotter. Then darker. Then vast.
At last the stair released them into a cavern, if cavern it could be called. No natural stone had formed this place. It was an underground lair the size of continents, forged from the bones of dead titans and lit by luminous rivers of molten gold that coursed along the walls like arteries.
The ceiling was so high it vanished into darkness. The floor stretched endlessly, studded with towering pylons of ancient alloy carved in the shape of great fangs. And between those fangs…Dragons. Hundreds. Thousands. An army of nightmares. And every single one was bound.
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They knelt or rather, they had been forced to kneel with collars of neutron-forged iron clasped around their throats, runes of subjugation burning like small glittering stars against scales of every hue. Chains as thick as castle walls stretched from those collars to the pylons, each link engraved with sigils older than known history.
They were monstrous with wings folded tight, claws dug into the shimmering ground, jaws large enough to swallow starships whole. Their scales gleamed in a spectrum of impossible colors: some like burning sapphire, others like grey iron, some crystalline and transparent, others plated in shimmering, sigil-laced armor that grew directly from their flesh.
Yet for all their terror, all their might… They bowed. A thousand heads lowered. A thousand slitted eyes flickered with fear. A thousand chained titans whimpered as Uther Pendragon entered their domain.
His heart hammered against his ribs as the creatures shivered in unison, their chains clinking like the music of a dying world. Heat washed over him from each side, the kind of heat that could incinerate armies but the air itself trembled with the technology and sorcery that kept these creatures from unleashing their wrath.
Uther did not slow. "Walk," he commanded, without turning his head. The boy forced his feet to move. As they passed the many tiers of dragons that bowed in their wake, a deep rumble shook the ground.
One dragon, its scales alabaster and fractured like shards of broken starlight, strained against its collar, eyes blazing with a savage hate. It let out a roar that shook dust from the unseen rafters. Its wings snapped open, the span of them wide enough to blot out the sun.
The child froze but the King did not. He reached to his belt, withdrew a coil of braided sparks, a whip woven from condensed psionic lightning and without warning, struck. The whip cracked, a sound like reality tearing.
The dragon screamed. A sound of such anguish and fury that had his heart lurched. It wasn't a roar, it was a plea, a wail, a cry of something proud being broken again and again across centuries. The boy flinched violently.
His father's voice cut through him like a blade. "Do not show sentiment, boy."
He stiffened. His throat felt dry. His eyes burned. But he nodded.
Uther gestured sharply at the suffering creature. "You are Pendragon. This," he swept his hand across the endless ranks of beasts, "is your inheritance. Our line subdued these monsters when humanity still crawled out of its cradle. We tamed what once devoured suns and crowned ourselves Dragonlords."
He strode forward, cloak billowing like the wings of an apex predator. "They serve us. They obey us. They kneel to us." He cracked the whip again and the dragons whimpered back in fear and so did he too, a small involuntary sound slipping past his lips.
Uther turned to him, his eyes burning. "We mastered these creatures eons ago," he said, stepping closer to the boy. "We forged their wills. We bent their spirits. We made them our steeds for battle."
He leaned in towards him, voice dropping to a cold whisper. "They exist as conduits to our power, to amplify us. To channel our might. To become extensions of our wrath."
He straightened. "We are Dragonmen!" The chamber echoed with that terrible word, as if the very stones remembered how many thousands of times it had been uttered through the ages. "Remeber that boy!"
They walked deeper. Past great wyverns only the size of galleons. Past elder drakes large as fortresses. Past cosmic leviathans whose scales were stardust, shimmering with fragments of nebulae.
They all trembled in fear in their wake, whimpering and trying to make themselves smaller than they were as they did not even dare to lift their eyes. The boy wanted to reach out to one to touch its snout, to whisper that he was sorry but he kept his hands at his sides, fists clenched, knuckles white. A Pendragon shows no weakness.
Merlin floated behind them like a drifting star. His voice, when it came, was low and was only for the King. "The boy has a gentle heart, Uther."
"Then he will break it himself or have it broken," the king replied, never slowing. "The universe does not reward softness."
Merlin sighed faintly. "Softness is not weakness."
"It is when you command beasts born from the cosmos's primal rage."
Finally they reached the heart of the sanctuary. A colossal gate engraved with spiraling symbols that shifted each time one's eyes lingered stood before them. It opened as Uther approached, releasing a blast of hot wind and a pulse of psionic energy so powerful that the boy nearly stumbled. Merlin's staff glowed, stabilizing the air.
The gate parted and the world changed. The chamber beyond was not simply vast, it was impossible. A hollowed sphere of reality, a pocket dimension carved into the bones of Camelot. The sky above was not stone, but a swirling panorama of stars, galaxies, nebulae all compressed, dancing, shimmering like fragments of a cosmic tapestry.
And floating in the center of this cosmic dome was the Dracotherion. The Great Drake. The Celestial Dragon. The Zodiacal Beast. The Godbeast of the Pendragons.
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It was larger than any creature had the right to be, its length stretching for miles, coils looping through the air like a great serpent of starlight and ancient world-bone. Its scales shone not with color, but with constellations, each one flickering across its body like living galaxies in miniature. Its wings, when folded, draped the dimension like curtains of night embroidered with comet trails.
It was chained, yes but its chains were not metal. They were concepts bindings of time, gravity, oaths, and fate itself, shimmering like mathematical runes that bent around its colossal form.
He felt his lungs seize. This was no beast. This was a fragment of creation. A living star. A primal engine of the universe. A demigod.
Uther's voice carried through the vastness. "The Dracotherion has served us since the first Pendragon tore it from the heavens and broke its will."
The dragon stirred slowly, regally. Its titanic head lifted, turning toward them. Galaxies swirled in the depths of its closed eyes. "This," Uther said softly, "is the apex of all our dragons. The crown of their kind. And it bends to our family alone."
Merlin's robes flared with starlight, his face unreadable. "Not 'bends,' Uther. Endures."
Uther ignored him. The child couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. His knees trembled so violently he feared they would fail him.
And then the Dracotherion opened its eyes. Twin suns. Twin vortexes of time and eternity. Twin windows into the cold birth of the universe. And those eyes fell upon him.
The boy gasped. The dragon inhaled, a slow cosmic breath that pulled the air from the chamber. The chains hummed, holding.
Uther's voice was steel. "Approach." He didn't move. "Approach, boy."
He forced a step. Then another. His legs felt carved from terror. As he drew closer, the sheer scale overwhelmed him, its head alone was larger than the throne room above. Its breath washed over him like solar winds.
The Dracotherion lowered its head. Its cosmic pupils narrowed studying him, peering through him, peeling back every layer of fear and courage he possessed. His heart felt too loud in his chest. He did not know why, but he lifted his hand which felt weightless and impossibly heavy at once.
His trembling fingers hovered just an inch from the warm, impossible scales almost about to bridge the impossible gulf between mortal flesh and cosmic titan when the beast roared.
Not with fury but in pain so ancient and vast it seemed to shake the foundations of creation itself. The boy flinched, heart seizing. The air convulsed with the force of that cry, stars flickered in the dome above, nebulae shuddered like wounded ghosts. Even the chains of time-binding thrummed in sympathy.
He spun around and found his father had buried his gauntleted hand deep in the Dracotherion's chest. Golden ichor, thick as molten suns, luminous as newborn stars poured down the king's forearm in shimmering rivers. It spattered across the floor in constellations that formed and died in heartbeat flickers.
And there, around Uther's fist, the boy saw it: An ancient scar. Old. Healed. And now brutally, deliberately torn open again. This was not the first time this happened to it but countless times. Something its body could not forget.
The Dracotherion writhed, its coils buckling through the pocket dimension, wings trembling like curtains of fraying sky. The sound it made was not a roar anymore. It was a cry. A cosmic, grieving cry.
"Father—!" the boy choked. Uther jerkingly pulled his hand free. Golden ichor streamed from his gauntlet in great cascades. He turned, eyes bright with the cold fire of a king who believed, absolutely, in his own right to command gods.
"Do not pity it," Uther said, voice ringing like iron dragged against stone. "It is ours to command and its blood is what will help you evolve into the next stage!" He took a step toward the boy, ichor dripping from his fingers like liquid suns. "You stand at the threshold of your inheritance. And there is only one path across."
His gauntlet slick with celestial blood gripped the boy's shoulder, forcing him closer to the gaping wound. Heat radiated from it like the breath of a star.
The Dracotherion's great eye opened swirling galaxies reflected in its gaze and it fixed on the child. There was no hatred there. Only endurance. And something that felt like resignation.
Uther tilted the boy's chin toward the wound. "Drink." The word struck like a verdict.
His heart hammered in his ribs. The heat of the ichor scorched his face. He could feel its energy tugging at his blood, his bones, his very soul. He shook his head in refusal and disbelief.
"Drink," Uther repeated, harder, colder. "You are Pendragon. You will consume the essence of the godbeast. You will bind yourself to its power. You will become heir in truth."
The Dracotherion shuddered, he forced his gaze upward and the dragon's golden, galaxy-filled eye gazed back. And in that moment, he understood: The beast feared nothing. Not even death. But it worried for him because it know what shall happen if he refused.
So the boy leaned forward. He pressed his lips to the glowing ichor that welled from the celestial wound. And he drank. The taste was impossible. Fire and void. Ice and starlight. Metal and sorrow. It burned like a universe being born inside his throat.
His body convulsed, golden light crawling up his arms, legs, and spine. Stars seemed to bloom in his chest, in his eyes, across his shaking hands. The chains that bound the Dracotherion hummed, singing, resonating with his heartbeat. The golden ichor burned through him, through every fiber of his being, and yet it did not destroy him. Instead, it made him whole part dragon, part king, part conduit of a power older than galaxies.
The chamber convulsed. The very sky of stars above them fractured and recomposed, bending around the boy and the dragon, folding space and time into a cathedral of cosmic power. Each inhalation of golden ichor drew visions into him: victories, conquests, worlds reshaped, dragons bending to his will, enemies kneeling before the might of a Pendragon.
And beneath it all, a whisper: "You are one with me. You are one with us. You are DragonBorn."
He drank the blood of the dragon god and the universe opened for him.
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A/N: The Dracothion is from Warhammer age of sigmar!
Also I got scope creep coming in. I wanted this to be just a 500 word scene, but I added the knights at the gate, I added Uther, then Merlin, followed by the dragons below, then more detail on the Dracothion.