Lavinia Vritra
Cargidan was a city like no other in Alacrya.
In every other city, those disgusting wretches—those lessers, those humans—with their bodies and horrid mimicry of the Asuran perfect Emanation Physique suffered due to their human condition.
And despite them having the unparalleled honor of being ruled by Father greatest, they still dared to die like flies. They starved. They died of old age after a mere century, if the blood of Vritra that ran through their veins making them slightly better than their barbarian counterparts in Dicathen was not awakened.
They did not wash. They did not do anything resembling civilization. They were less than animals.
The thought of them crawling through the streets of cities I was meant to oversee, breeding and multiplying and calling themselves my subjects, made something curl in my chest that might have been disgust or might have been the particular fury of being forced to tolerate the intolerable.
In Cargidan, however, this was not the case.
When I ascended as Sovereign of Central Dominion—a position Father greatest had bestowed upon me after he seized its control from Khaernos—my first decree was prohibiting access to Cargidan to anyone whose Vritra blood was not awakened, or who was not part of or associated with a Highblood.
That made it so that Cargidan was free from the unads—the worst type of lessers, unable to even use magic due to their lack of a rune, the gifts Father had mercifully granted to humankind.
Free from the Unblooded and from the Named Bloods, those pathetic aspirants who crawled through the Ascender trials hoping to earn a scrap of recognition.
If I was forced to rule over lessers, at least I would have the decency to rule over the best of them. The ones who had been touched by Vritra's gift. The ones who had been elevated, however slightly, above the filth from which they had been scraped.
Still, thinking that the almighty blood of Vritra himself flowed through their veins made my body revolt with utter disgust.
It was a pollution, a dilution, a blasphemy against the purity of what we were. They wore our blood like a costume, these creatures, and they called themselves blessed.
I sat on my throne room in the palace I had built when I ascended as Sovereign of Central Dominion twenty years ago.
The walls were black stone, polished to a mirror shine, and in their depths I could see my own reflection—horns curving from my temples, eyes red as fresh-spilled blood.
I leaned on the armrest of the throne as I looked down at the Scythe—Cadell. He stood at the base of the dais, his grey skin and ashen hair and red eyes and black horns all the things that should have marked him as one of us, and yet he was none of it.
"What are you here for, lesser?" I asked, looking at the disgusting hybrid between Asura and man with annoyance and repugnance that I did not bother to hide.
Why did Father let such an abomination act as his right hand? That was the question I always asked myself, turning it over in my mind like a stone that would not settle.
Unlike almost all other lesser hybrids, who were still recognizable as humans, Cadell was the prime example of mockery. He had grey skin, ashen hair, red eyes, black horns. Everything that made a Basilisk.
But appearance does not mean anything. He was a jester wearing the costume of a god. Why did Father allow him so close? I asked again, to no one, in my head.
Between all the Scythes and Retainers, Cadell was the one I despised the most. Not because he was powerful—though he was, in his limited way—but because he was comfortable in the Vritra's flesh.
"Lo—" he began, and before the word could fully form, I let out my King's Force to make him crumble to the ground.
"Don't you think your position is unfit, lesser?" I asked as I forced Cadell to prostrate himself on the floor, his body pressed against the stone, his horns scraping against the polished surface.
The pressure of my will was a weight that would have crushed any lesser, that should have crushed him. But Cadell simply lay there, his face pressed to the ground, his body still, his mana signature flat and unremarkable.
He did not fight. He did not resist. He simply endured, the way a stone endures the rain.
Father might have been too superior to care about the walking insult that Cadell and all the other Scythes and Retainers were, but I was not my father. I had not spent decades learning to see the bigger picture, to weigh the value of every piece on the board.
"Now you may speak," I said, my head resting on the back of my hand, my eyes fixed on the crumpled form at my feet.
Cadell's expression was unchanged as I forced him to the floor with my King's Force. If he felt fear, I might have found this conversation a bit amusing. But Cadell was just a grey piece of meat for Father to order around.
He did not even have the weak emotions of lessers, which I could have found amusing from time to time. No fear, no anger, no pride, no shame. He only existed to serve Father, a perfect thrall just as Vritra would have made. Utterly devoid of life and will.
"Lord Agrona has summoned you to Taegrin Caelum, Sovereign Lavinia," Cadell said, and the words came out flat, empty, the way all his words came out. He could have been announcing the weather for all the inflection in his voice.
I did not know if I should feel disgusted because Father's name was spoken by this living insult, or enthusiastic because Father had summoned me.
The two emotions warred in my chest, disgust and anticipation, contempt and longing. In the end, anticipation won. It always won, when it came to Father.
I stood up, the movement fluid, graceful, everything a Sovereign should be. From the folds of my robes I retrieved a Tempus Warp, the artifact cool against my palm, and I used my aether arts—a gift from my mother's bloodline—to activate it. The world folded around me, space bending to my will, and I stepped through.
Taegrin Caelum welcomed me as the doors of the main tower opened. The fortress rose around me like a living thing, its black stone walls pulsing with the same energy that pulsed in my blood, and I felt the familiar pull of home, of belonging, of being exactly where I was meant to be.
My direction, however, was not the top where Father's throne was located. It was the dungeons of Taegrin Caelum. If Father wished to see me, I knew it was in his laboratory.
I could feel it in the lullaby of my blood, calling me to Vritra's son, pulling me downward through the corridors.
My black heels echoed through the great sterile corridors of Taegrin Caelum's dungeons. Here the true grandeur of Vritra was seen. Science. The great creation of Vritra.
The doors hissed open as I arrived where Father required me. Inside, Father stood wearing his white lab coat—a lab coat that had belonged to Vritra millennia ago. He was bent over a table, his hands moving with the precision of a surgeon, his attention fixed on something I could not see.
"Father," I bowed as Father turned his red eyes on me. "For what have you called me?"
"Lavinia, my dear," Father greeted me back with an affable smile. "How have you been? Has the Beast Will of your Mother given you any problem?"
"No, Father," I replied. "I have perfectly integrated Mother's Beast Will."
"That's good, that's good," Father replied, and he smiled, and I felt something in my chest loosen that I had not known was tight.
My mother. Sylvia Indrath. I had killed her and hoarded her Beast Will, which despite me being a dragon still conflicted with my Vritra Blood.
She had been strong, my mother. She had been beautiful. She had been everything I was not supposed to be, and I had taken her power the way Vritra took everything, the way Father had taught me, the way I had been born to do.
Her Beast Will was a part of me now, woven into my core, and sometimes in the quiet moments I could still hear her voice, faint and distant, like something remembered from a dream.
"What are you working on, Father?" I asked, stepping closer, my eyes drawn to the table where his work lay.
"You already know the answer," Father winked. "The Legacy."
"Are you still dubious on what Vessel to use?" I asked, a faint hint of annoyance creeping into my voice.
I did not know why Father wanted to reincarnate a lesser from another world so much, no matter how strong this Legacy was. He already had me. What could some human soul from a world without magic give him that I could not?
"What is that face, Lavinia?" Father asked, and his voice was soft, almost gentle. "You know that it makes your Dad sad to see you like this."
"I apologize, Father," I said, and I meant it. I did not want to disappoint him. I did not want to be anything less than what he needed me to be.
"Don't worry," Father said, and his attention returned to his work, his hands moving with the same precise grace they had always had. "When the Legacy descends, I will order the invasion of Dicathen. It is going to be a perfect laboratory to truly test the limits of the Legacy's power."
"Until then," he said, "make sure that no other of our clan members plays with Dicathian lessers yet."
"As you wish, Father."
That was my role. To be the enforcer of Father's rule over the other Vritras. The Scythes kept in order the other lessers, their peers, but it was my role to make sure the design of Vritra followed the script of Father.
And to do that, the other Sovereigns needed to be put in order. There was no creature more vicious and selfish than a Vritra.
That was what Father always said. It was something that his own father—Vritra himself, my grandfather—had told him once, millennia past.
I looked at Father, bent over his work, his white coat glowing under the sterile lights, and I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. His daughter. His creation.
The child who had killed her mother to prove her loyalty to him. I wondered if he was proud. I wondered if he ever thought about the things he had asked me to do, the things I had done without question, without hesitation, because he had asked.
It did not matter. That was the way of the Vritra.
A/N:
RE: Corvis Eralith will go on break starting tomorrow.