The Dauntless IV: Fury Road

Suki pales as she identifies the mountain, and remembering its most notorious inhabitant from her research in Red dragon hunting. "Pale mountain. Why did it have to be Pale Mountain?" She exclaims. "Please tell me this isn't the Firebleeder."

As if in response to Suki's plea, a massive beast emerges from the river of lava, black scales shining like steel and fire emerging from every gap in its body. An unholy screech sounds from its maw as it crawls onto the edge of land, eyeing you all hungrily.

You square up to fight it, only to hear something that curdles your blood: the same sound, but from behind you. You swivel around to see a second Xotani charging forward, even as a third rises from yet another side.

One of the Xotanis moves first, charging in and wrapping its jaws around Dorrak, who Django defends by blasting that Xotani and the one next to it with a burst of necrotic, freezing darkness, which draws its ire. As the other two move in, snapping and roaring, Dorrak stares down at it, and for a moment his body shines with a golden aura, with three more ethereal burning wings joining his own, and he just roars at it, which causes the monster to collapse and disappear in an instant, dropping him to the ground. The next it dealt with quickly, frightened by that display and torn apart by Antoinette and Suki. The last, however, after taking another Eclipse Burst, snaps Django into her jaws and swallows him, making all the others rush to tear it apart, finally dying to Antoinette's claws tearing up its belly.

The lava cools and the erupting volcano quiets very suddenly as the Xotanis die in shrieking agony. The heat remains, scorching and burning, but it seems not to affect you anymore.

Blessing of the Dusk Dorrak and Django are now immune to fire. Suki and Antoinette are immune to divine fire.

The final node, Vengegate. A carpet and several bookshelves are located in one corner of this cavern, while a number of tables with scientific implements stand in another. A pewter replica of a large city rests on the table, surrounded by a handful of pewter figurines of dragons. A garden grows in another corner of the room, maintained by sunlight pouring into the cavern from an opening in the ceiling above. Nestled into a corner of the central area you stand in is a large and fluffy doggy bed, upon which sleeps a wolf that, were it awake and standing, would likely stand even larger than Nova. Standing over the city replica is a dragon-a true gold dragon-slightly smaller than Antoinette, currently playing with several of the figures inside the city.

"Zoom, swoosh, boom!" he declares as he uses one figure-this one made of pure silver rather than pewter-into another, painted black and red with eyes you can see the glow of from here. The black-and-red dragon is "sent" flying into a building, which collapses. "And the day is saved!" the little dragon declares triumphantly, before noticing the damage to his playset. He wrinkles his nose and taps the underside of the city with a claw, and instantly the building repairs itself.

"Well... this definitely isn't what I expected," Suki comments, almost more to herself than anything.

Despite the crisis they just left, Dorrak can't help but smile at the sight of what must be a young Mengkare playing, a smile that turns sad when comparing this young dragon to what he becomes. "Hello, we apologize for intruding on your home," Dorrak speaks up, approaching Mengkare peacefully, sword sheathed.

The young dragon looks up, but seems shocked and delighted at your arrival rather than upset. "A human! And a half-orc, and a half dragon, and another dragon." He looks at Antoinette somewhat more shyly than the others. "You must be adventurers! Cuz why else would a bunch of strange people like you be traveling together? Am I right? I'm right, aren't I!"

Antoinette steps forward proudly. "Of course we are! And you need not be afraid of me, little one. We may be territorial, but we can still be friendly. I have no intention of taking your lair for my own."

"Oh, I know you won't!" Mengkare nods eagerly. "Because if you're adventurers, that means you're heroes! And I've read all about heroes. Come look!" He leads you over to the library, where a shelf is piled high with books of science, and magic, and poetry and mathematics, but most prominently storybooks, many of which are still well known in the modern day almost three and a half millenia after this memory must have taken place. "I've got the Old Mage and the Sea Serpent, the Crone's Hut, Adventures of the Second Army of Exploration, all stories of great adventurers and heroes. And someday, I'm gonna be a hero like them! I'm already learning everything I can!" He rushes over to the workbench, filled with beakers and potion and alchemical ingredients. "I'm studying science and magic, and I'm gonna use them and my dragon powers to save people someday. Oh, me and my trusty sidekick!" He flies to the wolf now. "Tulminar's gonna come with me. I know he won't live for most of my life, but I'm gonna try ta make him live as long as I can! Cuz magic can do that. And then!" Mengkare now proudly returns to the miniature city. "When we've saved a bunch of people and done all kinds of heroic deeds, and it's time to settle down like all the good heroes in the stories do, I'm gonna found this." Looking closer, the miniature replica is built in an almost identical way to the one of Promise in Mengkare's current lair, except that it instead depicts a city on a river... one you quickly realize is supposed to be Breachill. A larger, more advanced version of Breachill, with paved stone roads and towering buildings, a city rather than a small rural town. "I'm gonna call it Paragon, and it's gonna be the perfect utopia! I'll bring the best people there, and we'll keep building and growing and making things better and better until... until..."

"Until you kill them." Another voice, a much older voice, the voice of Mengkare as he is now, seems to float from out of nowhere. A ghostly image, one of the great wyrm Mengkare, appears behind the young one, looming over his shoulder. "Until you've fattened them, made them perfectly ripe, perfectly suited for culling, and sacrificed them all for a fool's errand. Not a hero, not a savior, but a genocidal tyrant."

"I... it'll be worth it. It'll save so many more" The young Mengkare's voice sounds a little older now too, he looks a little older, but his voice quavers with the uncertainty of a child. "Everyone will understand. They'll see that it had to be done,, that... that t-tomorrow must burn, so that... that..." he trails off, not remembering his own mantra.

"Tomorrow doesn't have to burn," Dorrak steps in, placing a hand on the young Mengkare's shoulder. "There's a better way. There's always a better way than sacrificing innocents, and you know that. You're brilliant and wise and powerful, don't let cynicism and despair shroud your light. You believe in heroes, you want to be a hero. Heroes find a way to destroy evil and save innocents, you don't need to choose between the two. You're better than this."

"You..." Mengkare screws his eyes shut, then opens them once more, something rekindled in them. "You're right. Heroes stop the bad guys. If I'm the bad guy, then I just stop myself." He turns around and stares the older, ghostly visage of Mengkare in the eye. "You're right," he declares. "What I'm planning isn't right. It isn't fair. But that doesn't mean I need to be a bad person, it just means I need to turn around and do better. And I will. You aren't me, and I won't. Be. You!" With a final shout, a wave of power ripples out from the young Mengkare, so strong and forceful you all are unable to keep your eyes open and you look away. When you open them again, you now stand in a completely empty cave, everything vanished, save the sense that you have learned something from Mengkare. That who you are is not who you can be, and you can always be better, if you look inside yourself for the potential.

Blessing of Vengeance: Take your lowest ability score. Increase it to 18, gaining all the benefits of boosting that ability score.

"That's exactly what I needed to hear to prepare for what we're about to face," Dorrak says, turning back to the others with a determined, confident smile. "Let's go be heroes, one more time."

Antoinette nods in agreement. "One last fight. One last fight to save the world. Seems almost cliché when you think about it, but then nothing else about us is exactly the norm."

"Killing an evil Dragon God, or at least a fragment of one, yeah that sounds about right for us," Suki says, flexing her wings as a smirk comes to her mouth. "Let's go show him why his picked the wrong Heroes to oppose."

As you reemerge onto Alseta's Landing, you see the room twisting and warping, as Dahak's manifestation strains against its bonds, its playthings now removed. Each of the gates on the landing now shimmer with a fiery energy, a sign that walking through one of them will lead you to the deepest depths of the aiudara network.

Dark tunnels extend out in every direction from this enormous cavern. The ceiling, floor, and walls of the cavern are made from a jet-black material with a faint violet sheen. A large pit in the central portion of the room contains a churning pool of acid and flame, and from that pit rises a colossal red-scaled dragon, covered from head to toe in wicked black spikes and with glowing red eyes that pierce your souls.

"So, you finally come," speaks the manifestation of Dahak, its voice resonating through your bodies with a force that's nearly impossible to withstand. "Your last and greatest mistake, Dauntless. You do not know what you have done, but it does not matter, for you are already dead."

"We haven't made mistakes yet, and destroying you will be the furthest thing from one. This is for all the Ekujae who sacrificed themselves to seal you here and all those you killed. It's past time for them to be avenged," Dorrak replies, setting his jaw and readying Verdict.

"Still talking the big game?" Suki asks, crossing her arms and flaring her wings to their full length. "I told you we'd fight you on our terms. And I told you we'd destroy you. So tell me Cinderclaw, are you ready to die?"

"I don't have anything poetic or even particularly heroic to add. Just fucking die already!" Antoinette yells.

Dorrak, fueled by righteous fury, charges in first, and is rewarded by Nova being grievously wounded and knocked out by the aspect, but is soon joined by the other two after being blasted by elemental energy. Their blows struggle to land, but each that does sears the dragon god's flesh, and when Dorrak defends Nova with a holy strike it continuously burns the dragon god. Dahak flies around to improve his position, forcing the group to chase him and land hits when they can, though as the dragon takes wounds he starts to heal himself rather than attack increasingly often, but it's Django who truly wins the fight, first by calling down a miracle that reveals the aspect of Dahak's fallible, mortal nature, weakening him temporarily, then by uttering a prayer that calls a burst of pure, holy starlight down on the dragon god, flooding him with divine energy and rending him apart from the inside.

Dorrak returns to Nova, panting, staring wide-eyed as though not believing what just happened. "We killed it. We killed the Cinderclaw. It's over."

Antoinette lands gently upon the ground, then slumps down in exhaustion. "I can't believe we all survived. It's a miracle. Actually, I'm pretty sure we did just witness an actual divine miracle. It's finally over. We can go home."

"I suppose Nketiah and I will need to figure out exactly where home will be after this," Dorrak replies with a little pensive smile. "Could be anywhere, really. But I don't think we'll be staying at the Citadel, we'll need some personal space to raise a family."

"It almost doesn't feel real," Suki adds, alighting beside Dorrak and giving the half-orc a smile. "Wherever you decide to stay, don't be a stranger."

As you marvel over your feat, the body of the Cinderclaw disintegrates into ash and smoke just like all the others in here. The nexus around you shudders, very suddenly and violently, before you all find yourselves flung off of your feet. In an instant, you're no longer in the inner workings of Alseta's Landing, but in the chamber of the ring, in the basement of Citadel Altaerein, laid out on the floor with the keys to each of the gates scattered in the fountain in the middle.

Dorrak helps to gather the keys up, then holds the Vengegate key. "We should inform people in Promise first, before either Mengkare or Emaliza does something they'll regret."

When you touch the amber to the Vengegate, however, nothing happens. No fading stone, no mist, no bursts of flame. It appears to be completely inactive.