Birthing Pains
This is my second-shortest RuneScape story ever, preceded in length only by a tale about a crazy man with an anchor who winds up killing his friend by accident. It's been so long since I wrote it that I can't even remember it that well, but I remember that I submitted it as my Newspaper application, so at least it had some use. I'm not used to writing this short, clearly, but Fake forced us all to write short stories under 2,500 words in this contest, and even though I broke the limit by sixty-something (don't tell him!), it was a bit of a stretch. Still, I'm happy with the end product, more so because it's actually of a somewhat readable length.
If you don't understand something, feel free to ask! It's a quite unusual story, and some things will need an explanation. If you don't mind, though, put anything relating to the latter part of the story in spoiler tags.
Oh, and people who have already read it, please tell me what you think of it!
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The towering walls of Senntisten loomed all around me, a cold, otherworldly feel hovering about them — not evil, exactly, but with an awkwardly menacing feeling emanating from their gray bricks, as if they knew they were foreign and unwelcome to this world and sought to make up for their alien nature by intimidating all around them and forcing the pitiful inhabitants of this backwards planet into their service. I shivered. Even the walls were alive here in this, the embodiment of Zaros’s kingdom on earth.
Looking around surreptitiously as I knelt before the sacrificial altar, a spear at my throat, I tried to search for a way out. Even if I had finished my climbing studies at the Lassar Mountain Institution, there would have been no escape via the walls. The steel-colored bricks were overlaid with ghastly designs of otherworldly beasts I had never seen, creatures that had never been in Gielinor in either the First Age or this one, and that I fervently hoped had died out forever. Worse yet, the designs were all marked with a red sigil, and I knew from painful experience that if you touched that, you were worse than dead.
The doors were a slightly better possibility, but not by much. Two blood-red columns with a small array of waving spikes attached flanked each double exit, and I swear I could hear them muttering to each other as they awaited my sacrifice. The floor was marked with tangled black patterns that writhed in anticipation, a sinister-looking-enough carpet to the casual observer without further knowledge of its secret purpose. I knew that if I stepped on the wrong part of it, then I would be neither dead nor worse than such, but instead enter a sleep so deep that not even death could bring me out of it (unless, of course, my body was consumed by fire, as any elementary Armadylian student knows). Next to these dangers, it sounded like a real bargain to stay right here with a spear a safe six inches from my throat, even with the dragons from each of the four primary colors watching the godly spear-wielder intently, waiting for a chance to tear at my throat.
A real bargain, of course, without considering the ghastly ritual awaiting me on the other side of the altar.
“Now, fool,” hissed Zaros, lowering the tip of his spear until it touched the back of my neck. “Are you ready to undertake the task for which you have been brought to this sacred place?”
“I never agreed to anything you said!” I yelped. I had been aiming for a yell, but stress tends to do funny things to your voice. “And you call this place ‘sacred?’ Do you —”
“Silence,” intoned Zaros, a note of command in his voice. My voice was cut off; phasing out of existence like a familiar when its fated time is up. “I dwell here; thus, it is sacred. It matters not what I do or say; I answer to no one, and when a mewling fool attempts to take me from my place, claiming that my truth is false, I show him the real truth: Death. He who attempts to evade it, literally or otherwise, will one day come to know that in the end, my Truth overrides any others; next to Death, all other Truths pale and blink out, until Death only remains.” I didn’t turn my neck for fear of skewering myself, but I knew he was glaring straight through my head, like only a god could.
“If all truth is death, as you say,” I asked, my anger now rising fast, “then how come you even bother to offer me life? What sort of twisted logic is that?”
I felt my tongue seize up again. The cold, calculated chuckle that reached my ears was worse than any plain words Zaros could have used. “I know you mortals,” he gloated. “You refuse to accept the truth of the Void, preferring instead to trust in your gods, whether you be human, elven, monkey or cabbage. I know not why you succumb to cowardice, but I have given up challenging the words of the “other gods” who give false promises of a hope after death. Instead, I reward my followers with more of the hollow existence that they so crave, as a temporary stave to ward off the ultimate Truth. Those who truly embrace my path are those I respect: the ones who, upon learning of my path, immediately slay themselves and so become one with reality. But you, coward that you are, are not one of those. You will never be. So instead, obey me and live, or die and let the next foolish hero I encounter be brought before me, where he will face the same choice as you.”
By a strange coincidence, my tongue unraveled the instant Zaros’s voice ceased to desecrate the chamber, but I was choked by the sheer amount of things I wanted to say. Rage and disgust battled inside me with a practical desire to know more and to live. I couldn’t think with this creature behind me, watching every thought go through my head with its inscrutable, alien eyes. My brain was a jumble. I wanted to shout out that Zaros was wrong, that his ideas of reality were a mockery of it, to yell and scream and call him ugly things. But I also wanted to live. As much as I would have liked to spite Zaros by defying him and not doing his work, that would do no one any good, and it would simply lead to someone else suffering the same fate I was experiencing. But I couldn’t, couldn’t go through with this ritual. How could I? It was worse than death…or was it?
I heard the dry chuckle of Zaros as he increased the pressure of his spear on my neck ever so slightly, reading my thoughts and no doubt savoring my indecision and agony. The loathsomeness of this idea startled me into speech, and, finally, an ultimate decision. The Empty Lord can read thoughts, I reflected grimly, but he does not know the future.
“I’ll do it,” I announced loudly. There was only silence from Zaros. “But I’m not doing this for you,” I added, shaking my head as much as I dared. “I’m doing this because…well…I don’t rightly know why I’m doing this at all. I don’t want somebody else to have the make the same choice I am, obviously, and I don’t want to lose my life. But I don’t believe you only stand to gain something from this ritual. I don’t know what it is you could lose, or what you’re doing, but whatever this ritual is, it’s far from normal. This may be just wishful thinking, but I think that there must be a redemptive quality in it somewhere. Nothing is evil in the beginning, not even dragons. If any of these eggs survive this event, then they have a chance to return to their roots, however small…and if that happens, Zaros, then you are lost indeed.”
A bestial snarl sounded from behind me, and the spear left my neck before whirling around and smashing into my backbone. Gasping, I fell forward onto the altar and slid until my chin was hanging directly over the egg nest, waiting for another blow to fall, but instead I was flipped over and pulled up to a sitting position by Zaros. I looked into his face for the first time in minutes, and saw that his sunken, swarthy features were contorted with rage and hatred.
“How dare you spout that filth in my home!” he spat, shaking me. “I cannot be lost! All must fade but I, for I am the Fading! These eggs are utterly and completely mine, and when they are transformed, they will be only my triumph! Now go!” With that he shoved me off the altar backwards and into the nest, knocking me flat on my back.
My heart quaking, I sat up slowly and began the Ritual. Lifting the eggs and arranging them in a triangle formation, I spread a layer of gnome weed incense over the shells and coated them in sulfur. Then I breathed on each of them and sprinkled a few drops of desecrated water (as if this room wasn’t enough to desecrate any object!) on the place where I had breathed. Zaros muttered a few words from behind me, and a thin steam began to rise from the dragon eggs. Around me, the dragons growled softly.
My heart beat faster now. Taking a deep breath, I took up a thick mithril bucket full of molten steel and poured it into the dragon nest. The steam thickened, Zaros murmured more long-forgotten words, and the eggs began to throb with a slight, almost intangible resonance. I took up the smallest egg, quite cool, and placed it on the altar.
“Now, fool!” hissed Zaros. “Take this knife and crush the egg well, straight down the middle...or you will be sorry.”
My hand shaking, I took the knife. The eggs were throbbing audibly now, quickening their pace. The dragons’ breath was quickening, too, and I could even imagine that Zaros’s breathing was shallower and more anxious. This was extremely important to him, I could tell. Feeling immensely guilty, I raised the knife to slice the eight-inch-long white dragon egg in two.
A flash of inspiration came to me. What if I crushed it differently? Why was the middle so important? I knew nothing about this ritual other than the exact process that Zaros had told me…what if that was the most important step. Would it simply fail, and I merely killed, leaving a new hero to be taken in my place? Or would the Ritual take place, but turn out very differently and worse for Zaros?
“NO!” roared the terrible god, apparently reading my thoughts. He grabbed my arm, and at the same time I made a great slash down the end of the egg. The side popped off, and a black ray spun out in a corkscrew fashion, bouncing off walls at an insane speed. Zaros was hit and released me instantly, howling in pain. It came within an inch of my face, and I felt an unnatural chill of fear as the energy brushed by my cheek like a spiked chain. Scarcely a second later, it had rebounded off the wall and hit the eggs.
A roar of fire filled the chamber. Each color of dragon belched forth flames from its mouth, each fiery ray with flecks of colored skin from its owner. The four pillars of smoky flame met in the center of the room, at the nest. The heat was stunning, and I crouched back, trying to shield my cheeks from the heat with my sweating hands, but not daring to cover my eyes for fear of missing something that might give me some measure of solace for creating this abominable procedure.
The flames ceased to pour from the dragons’ mouths, but the fire continued to occupy the nest. Then it, too, was gone. But all the eggs had merged into two lumps, and each lump seemed to be developing into a scaly, multi-hued beast. It was as if I saw the process of life begun anew, in draconic form, except that one second seemed to serve for a year in this bizarre case. Strangely enough, each forming being was bipedal. Green, blue, black and red coloration met in their skin as they shot up from scaly, twisted infants to children with stubby, drably colorful tails to maturing creatures of each gender. Staring at them, it seemed to me that their faces showed each expression of childhood too fast to comprehend, yet slowly enough that I could gather the gist of the emotions they were experiencing in this perverted parody of human youth. As the two Dragonkin — for that, I felt deeply, was the name they ought to receive — grew towards normal human height, they clasped hands, the flash of emotions now crossing their faces a frightening mix of the alien and what I remembered from my own childhood. I knew they could never lead a normal life for either human or dragon, and silently cursed myself for bringing them into the world. Zaros, meanwhile, was standing behind me, attempting through the wracking pain of the black energy to read a year of Dragonkin thoughts in a second. He was failing to comprehend them, and the deeply troubled expression that crossed his face almost made me feel sorry for him. Then I shook myself mentally and glanced towards the doors. Closed. The pillars had moved in front of each exit, sealing them shut. I was trapped.
The transformation had finished. The two dragon-people looked at us from the ruin of their nest, their hunched, vulture-like necks supporting two beady eyes in a blurred and warped countenance. Then both of them looked at me simultaneously, their eyes fixed on mine. I looked from one to the other, cross-eyed, and then strode towards them, drawn by some fascination I did not understand and was not sure I wanted to. They simply looked at me, their eyes drawn by the same impulse. I stepped over the shattered rim of their nest and reached out one hand to each of them. They stretched out theirs, waiting for me. I hesitated. For the first and last time in my life, I felt that I had no choice of what to do. I took their hands.
A sound of thunder resounded from beyond Zaros’s prison. Bricks fell from the ceiling, some landing alarmingly close to us, but none hitting. One wall fell solidly, the dust cloud spreading throughout the room, but a shaft of light shot down from the ceiling, embracing me and filling me with a hidden power. Wings like those of Armadyl’s Aviansies, only bright white, erupted from my back and retracted again. I felt a certain satisfaction and knowledge fill my mind, and a sense of overriding calm enveloped me. I looked at the Dragonkin I had created and was saddened, but not disgusted. I looked at Zaros and knew him and what he was. By “playing God” and achieving the creation of a race without bowing to Zaros, I had become a god myself. I would have liked to say I could only imagine what would have happened if Zaros had had his way, but I knew now.
“Destroy them, Saradomin!” shouted Zaros to me, his haggard complexion wide with horror after witnessing the transformation I and the Dragonkin had undergone. “You hate them, destroy them!” He hurled the knife to me, but I let it fall to the ground and shatter.
“No,” I said. He could no longer read, or indeed comprehend my thoughts. “They should not have been made, but now they are, and I will not unmake them. You have no authority over them, and they will go to another place to learn who they are and what place they will play in the coming events. But I promise, in the end they will undo the evil that played a role in their creation, and these two, at least, will escape forever what you call ‘truth.’”
And with that, I stepped away from Zaros’s shattered courtyard and into reality.
Hope it helps. 
Hope to see something of yours sometime soon!
