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Their touch burned, it had made Galacta warm on cold nights and kept her sharp on slow days.
Trapped in walls of time ignorant rock he couldn’t breathe, he was freezing. He’d even take the scalding rage of Morpho knight, but there was nothing but silence in the Crystal.
Before being cast into the rift they’d already spent eons in, she tried to speak, to plead with the high council. To let him out, hadn’t he suffered enough? What destroyed world could ever be worth this pain?
To be betrayed, used and left, was he not the center of Morpho’s heart as they were his?
There had been no apology, no regret. Morpho had witnessed her outrage and left with a bored expression. In the aftermath of a planet made rubble they had turned their stark gaze and never looked back.
Her dreams were quiet, cold things that made her feel on the verge of madness. All she could do in the prison was dream. It hadn’t been so awful with them, Morpho’s wings wrapped about them, mock kisses to her skin and hands taking his own.
The conversations over bottles of soul draught and the passionate sparring and dancing that always ended up with the two uniting their bodies in bliss.
Galacta had gotten so used to the company. The silence wouldn’t allow her room to do anything but rage.
And rage she will.
In all her dreams she fights as he always has, destroying the annoying and repetitive crystals littering her cage. No matter how many he destroyed, they grow back as soon as his back is turned. The cozy nest of a home they had seen each night in their dreams before Morpho left is feeling more and more like a fever dream.
Challengers would call and he would strike them down, gasping for the fresh air and feeling time wrap her in its silvery cloth. He was certain Morpho was having the time of their life reaping that old soul they liked so much. Galacta tore apart another stalactite with a roar,“Bastard!”
Even speaking in this hell aiming to consume them was torture, voice raw from disuse. Time was so slippery now, if she ever saw that beast again would he even be able to die? They did not age in the crystal, their bones only approaching a millennia if her intuition hadn’t been dulled by the parasite that wound into his mind and heart. But they likely had, eating away at his soul till nothing remained but shreds never to be whole.
How much longer could they escape death, the call that came and consolidated with a mockery of love.
He knows predator cannot love its prey.
It is simple logic, dragons hoarded, void was eternal and indestructible except by itself and love wasn't for those with blood so deeply etched into them.
That still didn't explain the pain. He understood the physical source, but the weight of the missing interloper was a malignant ever present ache at the back of their mind and every waking moment. And not only the waking but unconsciously too the would festered.
Was it worse to bear this pain or admit it was heartbreak?
"I never expected them to ever… come close to a semblance of normalcy." Sorcala spoke, watching from above on the knight, who lay motionless cast in crystal. "Nor for it to last so long, it makes their change all the more sorrowful."
"They're maddened, always have been." Lady Tricc rebutted, voice harsh even as spark held the mage's hand softly.
"Love does that, if I lost you I cannot say if I wouldn't too slip into madness." Sorcala argued, casting sympathetic eyes upon their doomed ward.
"It's a shame. That is true. But law is spoken and kept, and pacts are broken." Landia stated.
"So, even now you wish me to plead?"
Silence fell over the hall, dulled magenta cutting through the hard crystal. broken free of their prison, Galacta did not rush to attack and instead stood eeriely still.
"I will not do so, again you drag me back, to this time, even as your corpses are gone I still must crumple under you. Hah." A rough laugh filled the hall, defeated and lacking the manic energy of a once young Galacta.
"Go on, haunt me. Tell me to repay and prostrate myself. I choose the blade."
The council was silent, looking amongst themselves in disbelief of her defeat.
"I know you can do it, so do it! Cut me down and end this charade. I have far outlived my usefulness, surely you can see that. Raise your weapons and end this foolish dragon, sever my limbs and cease this beating darkened heart!"
Sorcala drew back, holding tightly to Tricc. "its truly beyond reason…"
Even the thunder of her voice was only thunder, with no crackling plasma to announce. what remained of the greatest warrior in the universe was little more than an old drake with no nest or hoard to speak of, just scars and a life chasing joy. What a end… "Even now, when i beg for you, your cowardice is laughable."
Galacta the terror of time-space turned away from the council, tail sweeping along the ground listlessly.
"Do you wish to deny me even this? Your cruelty is unmatched grand council, too frightened to grant a monster death."
And softer, speaking to a parasite long gone she lamented their antipathy. "So you too will aid them in their avoidance of me."
The long dead high council did not answer, as time drew thin like fog and the crystal closed around Galacta. "Another set of ghosts that can only wave words before me. what a shame."