Sins of the Son

I was the first of the Scions of Fire, the first chimera spliced into a dragon, but I would not be the last.

The feeling of metal crushing between my talons had become as routine as breakfast. It was just another way to start the day.

“Scion! We need reinforcements!” Nana screamed out from the building under me.

Her voice struggle to carry over the robotic screeching of the elven army.

She was the last of my unit. The bodies of our comrades littered the streets. The only thing that had kept her alive was the genes spliced into her. Her ability to see in the dark, climb any building, and smell the enemy coming from blocks away. Even in her human form, she kept such characteristics.

“We are too few.” I followed my words with a flame so intense that our enemy and the building they were hiding in melted into a dirty grey sludge.

“Then let’s make it count.” Nana had fought countless battles. Nothing could prepare her for this.

We had taken the elven manufacturing city. After six months of holding it, we watched as they grew desperate. The ability to repair their wounded was quickly failing. We just had to hold this position until the eastern resistance arrived, but after three days of no response, I knew we were alone. Our people had been turning to the other side for months now, choosing the life of a slave, rather than risking death.

My wings reached up high and pushed the air around me down, lifting me higher as I tried to survey the area. Scattered pockets of our people still fight on, Embers of hope. If we could regroup, just endure a little longer.

“Nana, we need to move our position. Regroup.” The words were hard to wrap my tongue around in my dragon form, so I didn’t think too much about it when she took a moment to respond. Every second compounded the anxiety, though.

“Nana?” I smelled her blood before I saw what had happened.

Elven Reaper agents. Dressed in black armour lined with gold. More cybernetics than flesh. The secret arm of elven high families. They were cleaning their blades of Nana’s warm blood. Her body was slashed into several pieces before she hit the ground.

“Target acquired.” The lead elf reported inside his helmet.

With the rage of a man that had just lost his family, I inhaled deeply, then released a wave of hell fire. The city block instantly exploded into flames. The streets echoed with the sounds of stone and glass exploding from the sudden heat.

When I exhaled all I could, there was a moment's pause while I sucked in the surrounding air. That’s when the half melted elf leaped up from under me, reaching through the smoke and flames with his metal hand. The skin had charred off so thoroughly that the black soot had disappeared. It gripped one of my low hanging front legs. The sound of gears and metal clanked as hooks swung out from the forearm.

“If we can’t have this city, neither will you.” The face of the Elf rose above the flames, crisped beyond recognition. Only his black and white hair stood out.

That’s when I heard the beeping of a tracking beacon coming from deep within his chest. My first reaction was to rise. Even with him attached to me, I could save the survivors still fighting in the city. There was no time. Several missiles fired from just behind the mountain side. Within seconds the city was cleansed with nuclear fire.

Days later, I found myself wondering the surrounding forest, trying to come to terms with my pain. My army was eradicated, my friends and family butchered, and my people enslaved.

Where there was once rage, now was just a hallow defeat. A void where I once thought my strength had originated. Revenge wasn’t something I wanted anymore. After lifetimes of fighting the fuel with flames, I saw my contributions to the inferno.

Even now, after all this destruction, no one had won. The elves might have declared victory, but they eradiated their own capital, and the surrounding villages were withering away. It came in the rain, down the rivers and in the wind. The final touch of this horrific war, a kingdom of nuclear wastelands. My punishment for fighting inside it was this. Wondering aimlessly inside the after math.

That was until I heard the crying of an elven infant. An innocent screeching into the void.

…

My father flew with wings while others used rockets. He burned cities while his enemies nuked kingdoms. He lifted me from the ash of my parents while the elves killed the last of his children. He gifted me his blood while society took my freedom. He forged me into a weapon while his destroyers wielded me.

“We go in quick and silent. The target has been tied with The Purest. Assume him to be dangerous.” Tielax-7 spoke with the mechanical voice of the elves.

The two other agents scoffed at the thought of a dangerous human. The base form of our species was significantly weaker than any of the immortals. The very thought of them being a threat, and the mention of these “Purest” was a joke to them.

When the first humans broke the chains of time, they did so as chimeras. Spliced with creatures that saw age more malleable than most. After that, my people were made of great families, great beast. Most forgotten, whole species eradicated, lost to the war with the elves, an enemy we once scoffed at.

“What kind of intel do we have?” I spoke up. The outsider of the unit.

Their black plated armor was lined with strips of gold, magnetically attached to their military grade skin. Anyone of them could take a direct shot from a high caliber projectile, and shake it off. I on the over hand wore a dated uniform from post company war age. A tactical vest designed for twenty first century combat. The word “Beast” painted on the front.

“You scared?” Geax-02 smirked, she looked me up and down, waiting for my reaction.

“No, My Lady.” The title was meant to stir anger, they wanted to see our savage side.

“I think you are. You must have heard what happened to our last beast. She was from the Phoenix family I believe. She was too proud for her own good. Not a lot of them left.” Geax-02 twisted her lips into a full smile. The gold teeth were sharpened into fangs, and her metallic tongue played with the tips.

“Four matriarchs, and a dozen family heads left. Their numbers are less than a hundred.” If I had hair, I was sure it would be standing up. I focused on breathing, and refused to tense a single muscle.

“I fought them, in the Company Wars.” Her long elf ears twitched. A line of pink energy slid from the tip and down her neck. “Wwwooo!” She yelled out. “That was a fight! Watching one of them pop, just a full transformation.”

“Sounds challenging… My Lady.” I paused too long. Tielax-07’s eyes dialed in, the luminous circles inside his pupils shrunk and focused on me.

Geax-02 also caught it. She stood up from her seat, the speeding vehicle bounced as it zipped through the back wood trails. The elf’s stabilizers gave her perfect balance as she stepped towards me. Leaning down, she looked me over again.

“Ever do it?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. The nanobots that lined our necks were designed to stop the change. The scarring they left was a collar. Every one of the elves were our masters, holding an invisible leash. Irritatingly, some of them liked to pull hard, test us, and see if there was any savagery left.

She didn’t understand what she was asking. Anyone that tempted a dragon so eagerly had never seen our true form. The body that my father had gifted me, the weapon we were.

“No, I have never fought a phoenix.” I responded, avoiding the real question.

“That’s not what I asked.” Geax stomped her leg between my knees, pressing her forehead against mine.

“My lady.” I swallowed hard, trying to fight back the blood lust that told me to say it, tell her how her kind tasted. The feeling of their metal bones crushing under my jaws. “It’s frowned upon for Beast to boast about the war.” It was punishable by death to be clear.

“You can tell me I have never seen a dragon before. It’s said that if they had made more of your kind, the war would have turned out differently. So tell me, how does turning into a walking weapon of mass destruction feel?” Geax-02 was close enough that I could hear the ramping up of her heart, the beating one could mistake for a more primal lust. I knew it for the vile thing it truly was. She wanted me to react.

“I had not mastered the transformation, not fully. I was reborn at the end of the war, my lady.” I lied, but after hundreds of years of mastering the art form, she couldn’t tell the difference.

“Pity, but there is something else you could answer, something much more exciting. How did it feel to kill a dragon?” her eyes darted back and forth, reading all my vitals, looking for a reason.

I let out a heavier than average breath, but didn’t engage. Her ears twitched with excitement. She saw a crack in my emotional armor.

“Maybe I should word that better. How did it feel killing the last actual dragon?” her words carried the scent of lust. We both knew what came next. “Or! How did it feel killing your father?”

“That’s enough.” Tielax-07 said, pulling his sword from the truck’s walls. “I don’t need you killing this one.”

Geax-02 giggled, “Soon” she whispered before walking back to her station and grabbed her glaive, the void energy from the weapon hummed at the end. Pulling in and ripping apart the surrounding air. This human was just a play toy to them, whatever kind of weapon he thought he had, was an illusion of safety.

Tielax-07 walked up to me and pulled on my vest. “You come battle ready, correct?” he asked.

“Yes, My Lord. I have draconic traits, including claws and healing. At the transformation levels that are permitted, of course.” Anything past 5% would trigger the bots, ripping my head from my shoulders.

“So you won’t need a weapon.” Tielax-07 reached behind me and pushed the sword compartment closed.

“Understood.” My fingers twitched, but the others were too busy gathering their weapons to notice. I needed to calm myself. Not giving them the satisfaction.

Tielax-07 was not a soldier to be tested. While Geax had fought in the war, Tielax had slaughtered. The Elves plastered his face on military propaganda, now hundreds of years old. The chiseled jaw line, and defined cheek bones. Even his long raven hair with the patch of snow white in the front was iconic. My people knew his genetic imprint, as The Final Song.

Flickering and the flashing of cybernetics along his eyes, signed that he had received a report. I would have guessed from the driver. A roadside bomb could hit our compartment in the back of the truck and we would hardly feel the shift in gravity as we flipped. Despite their best efforts, it wasn’t perfect. The smell of fresh vegetation leaked through the filters. We had arrived.

“Crimson on site, awaiting orders.” Tielax-07 reported to central command. At the same time Geax-02 and Flak-101 stood up, waiting for the word.

The momentum shifted forward as the truck stopped. Tielax looked down at me. Hands still gripping the handles of his swords. “Beast, attack.” As if the world was obeying the elf’s commands, the door to the truck swung open.

I had fractions of a second to adjust. The light stabbed into my eyes, blinding me as I exited. That’s when the first of the defenses hit us. Napalm explosions blasted from the walls of ruined buildings.

…

“Don’t panic. It is the flames nature to consume, as it is ours to endure.” Father’s voice was deep and even when whispered, it boomed through the flames.

“I’m scared!” I cried out, tears evaporating before touching my cheeks.

Despite my protest, Father snapped his flint scaled fingers and blew dragon breath at the spark they created. A spiral of flames roared up around us. Even in his human form, he was incredibly powerful. The flames were as much a part of him as his beating heart.

“Fear demands control. It is its nature. What is ours?” he asked, placing his one remaining hand around the back of my head, pulling me to his chest until I realized he had taken a knee. Knowing he was there, in the middle of the chaos, somehow helped.

“We endure.” I responded, opening my eyes.

My vision had changed. A filter allowed me to adapt to the light of the flames. Instead of blinding heat, there was a flow, no, a dance of light. The currents were glittering whites and yellows, cooler spots a deep red with flakes of blue. The inferno didn’t claim my flesh, it soothe my lungs, the flames my father had created tasted like stardust. It was the universe surrounding us. All its beauty in the palm of my father’s hand.

“The world can be an inferno. Even I can’t protect you from all of its cruelty, but if you can master enduring, and find beauty in the madness. You won’t need my protection.” He said, looking down at me and pressing his head against mine.

“Thank you, father, I will protect you. From all its cruelty.” I made a promise I could never keep.

...

Clumps of sickly purples and greens clung to my flesh. The taste of chemicals and rot filled my mouth. The flames of man.

The ugly fire had no effect on my uniform and skin. All the attack did was obscure my vision with an inky smoke.

“He is trying to overheat our implants.” Tielax observed. The truck expelled foam that was designed for this very situation. It quickly suppressed the flames.

Not waiting for me to move, the foam covered my body in an overpowering stench. Before rolling out of the chemical concoction, I had gotten the foam in my eyes.

“I need a rag.” I pleaded, while attempting to wipe my eyes. Every moment, the pain grew in severity.

“I got it.” Geax spoke with an uncomfortable amount of glee in her voice.

Before I could protest, I felt her hand grip the back of my neck and lift me from the ground. Next, I heard the shifting of mechanical muscles. Then the white flash of a strike to the face. My nose broke and crushed as she slammed my face into a puddle of what was best described as water, and more commonly viewed as sewage.

We were in the ruins of a forgotten city, where the Elves sent their filth. Despite that, the liquid had cleared the chemicals from my eyes. Between them and Geax’s “help”. It would be a few hours before I could smell anything again.

She laughed wildly, not taking the attack seriously. This wasn’t a battlefield to her any more than a playground would be.

I had lost the smell of fresh air, but could now see the skeleton of the old city. Towers collapsing into each other, streets overrun with vegetation, breaking through the once strong cement. Hundreds of years ago, this was nothing but a nuclear wasteland. Most of the world was, but like a fungus, the dome cities of the Elves were expanding. The last of the free chimeras claimed these scraps, able to withstand the radiation. With their toxic cloud dissipating, they would soon lose this as well.

“At least we know we are in the right place.” Geax remarked.

“He also knows we are coming.” Tielax spoke slowly. He locked his eyes on the entrance to the ruins ahead of us.

A broken frame hung from the door's hinges, and in the dark, a hooded man stepped out. Geax and Flak pointed their weapons toward the approaching figure. With only a few meters between us, the elves could drop his body in the blink of an eye.

“Sorry, Brother. That was not meant for our kind.” The Stranger’s voice was unmistakable.

Tielax shifted his shoulders and cracked his neck before stepping between the other elves and the man that had his voice. “I am not your brother. I am your commanding officer.” Tielax broke the seal between his swords and their holsters. The blade’s edge peaked out and caught the light of the moon.

“Wait, he’s one of your imprints?” Geax’s weapon lowered, and she tried to look over Tielax’s shoulder.

“Irrelevant.”

“Doesn’t feel that way.” Geax shot back.

The Stranger removed his hood, revealing his white and raven hair. The defining facial features were now littered with scars.

“You removed your implants. Explains why you were not within the network.” Tielax dragged his swords from their holsters and inspected the impossibly sharp blades. “An elf that abandoned the ascended realm. Some might mistake that for treason.”

“Some.” The Stranger brushed his long hair back and looked up at the open sky. Viewing it with his natural gaze, unfiltered by machines. “They might send some to re-education camps. But, there hasn’t been a Tielax that wasn’t gifted the glory of a death in combat. Is it too much to hope you would deny me this?”

“That is too much. I am curious though, why?” Tielax swung his sword to the ground, letting out a loud screech as the blade sliced air on a molecular level.

“The same reason we do anything.” The Stranger dropped his robe to reveal a mangled body. All the implants that had made him immortal were gone. Just scar tissue and stitched together flesh.

“Legacy.” Tielax whispered, before pouncing.

...

“Without trust, then we are a mind apart.” Father did not want to call me a liar, but the scent of the Elven dome world was all over my cloak.

“I was wandering the ruins, nothing more.” I lied to him. It was a reflex, defense. Not from his wrath, rather his disappointment. I knew travelling there was selfish and risky, but I needed to see his old enemy.

He looked me in the eye, lightly nodding his head. The longer he stared, the more my guilt grew. “I love you son, but pretending to believe you does neither of us any good.” he was the first to break eye contact, yet I felt like I had lost. The damaged dragon had grown old in his human form, not allowing it to reverse the wears of time by transforming, even just mildly, to set the clock back a few decades.

“You saw the old world. The elves in the cities are kind. Not all of them, but most are kind to our people.” I couldn’t look at him, not while knowing the wounds they had caused. “You can’t hate them forever.”

“Is that what you think? I am just some relic, full of hate. Is this the man I have shown you?” I could hear the pain in his voice. The first Dragon, devourer of armies, The Impending Eclipse. His black scales, merciless flames, and surgical talons, all known and feared by the elves, even to this day. My father was not a legend. He was the horror story that kept the elves from venturing into the wilds, into the shadows. And yet, I hurt him with my words.

“You killed their kind, they killed yours. We can sit here and argue about who was right or wrong, but at least they are trying to move on.” There was a fire inside me. It raged with no care of the bridges it treaded upon.

“It was never my wish to take my scars and sow them into your flesh. I would rather you read the lessons they wrote.” He stood up and removed his shirt. The man was aged but never frail. The skin that hugged his savage muscles, was etched with light protruding flesh. “These were only possible because kind people looked away. When I was arrested for what laid within my skin, they chose to remain silent. When we spoke about the evils their company had committed, they ignored. Evil exist between an inconvenient moment and popular movements. One of those is fleeting, the other is their nature.”

...

“Wait!” I spoke up. To my surprise the elves stopped and looked over at me. “He’s unarmed. This isn’t right.”

“Are you disobeying?” Geax spun her glaive around.

“Stand down.” Tielax commanded. Halting himself mid attack.

The Stranger looked over. He squinted his eyes and with a spark of realization he recognized who I was. “You are his son. All of my fame, my name, it was all because they thought I had killed him. Yet, it was you that eventually took his life. It was your love, not my hate.”

“That’s enough of that.” Tielax pounced again. But something was wrong. His speed wasn’t what it should have been. I just noticed that I couldn’t hear the shifting of gears, even the void energy of Geax’s weapon had vanished. If my sense of smell was still available, I would have sensed the ambush.

“The flames weren’t meant for you.” I spoke under my breath. A part of me wanted to warn them, but that part wasn’t strong enough. It was beat down by years of broken promises and violated trust. The world the elves offered my people was gone the moment they developed these collars. When they came for me, none of the kind people I traded my father for spoke up.

So when The Stranger dashed to the side, and swung a punch into Tielax’s face, I did nothing. The firing of rifles did not change my inaction. Bullets sprayed into my companions. A Purist energy field was disabling their cybernetics.

“This is why you are here!” Geax screamed from behind the truck. Flak had been torn to pieces by the combined enemy fire. Bullets continued to ricochet off of his metal bones and unsecured armor plates.

“I wonder if it still works.” I said, rubbing a finger on my throat while watching Tielax fight for his life in the sewage of his new world. The Stranger dug one of his thumbs into his brother’s eye.

“Don’t do it!” Geax reversed her grip on the glaive and prepared to throw the weapon. It was too late. I could feel my skeleton shifting.

...

The blood of a fresh kill lingered in the alleyway. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I just needed help. Officers had come, but when the muggers claimed I had attacked them, it was the word of an elf over mine. It had been weeks since I had seen my father last, but at that moment he was all I wanted.

I stood there over the remains of the muggers and officers. I could not explain my inability to control my change, not to Elves. Once the officers beat me, when I had felt their weapons crack my bones, I could not stop it. A deep, childish fear clambered upon my heart. This time, when I cried out, my father wasn’t there to hold my head. Fear took control, and it fought back with claws and fangs.

“Nothing cuts like a dragon.” The voice of my father. He stood at the end of the alley, his nose pointing up. The scent of my kills would have alerted him and any of our people.

“I’m scared.” I said, hands still shaking.

“Then you are a coward.” If his voice was sharp, then his stare was razors.

“Please, take me home.”

“We are past that. A dragon killed these elves.” I had never heard him speak in his dragon form. The larger his tongue became, the harder it was to understand. At the end of the alley, a monster appeared.

“They attacked me!” I said, not understanding.

“You have failed me.”

“No!” the rage inside me burned hotter than ever before.

“You are not my son!” a violent red flames pierced the air between us. Their flow took the shape of several spears.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Rage caused my bones to shift, scales to form, the monster inside me to emerge.

Moving through my father’s flames, I could taste nothing. The love that was there before was an empty void. Swinging my talons, I had expected him to dodge. When we crashed into the building behind him. I could feel the pouring of his blood.

“Wait! Why didn’t you move?” My words cleared as we both shrunk into human forms.

“Because, a dragon killed those elves.” I had never seen my father cry until that day.

His face had returned to its youth. Although I could not remember the moment we met, I was sure this was the face he wore. When I was an infant, scare and alone. This was the face that would come and save me for the last time.

“Please, no. I need you.” It was a truth I had childishly fought against.

Death was too close for him to answer in the way of words. With one last mighty breath, my father set the building on fire. He died surrounded by stardust, while I held him for the last time.

...

Elves had not won the war by brute force. It was deception and sabotage that gave them the upper hand. We were all so focused on the warriors that we had forgotten the driver. Flak-567 had somehow found the disruptors and cut the power.

When the cybernetics turned back on, Tielax punched a hole into his imprint brother. Geax pulled her glaive from my chest while I ripped at the nanobots that attempted to sever my head. Driving my talons into my own flesh, dropping chunks just to watch the robots dissolve them.

If not for my mass and scales, the machines would have killed me already. Despite making progress, I was not going to get through them fast enough to counter the combined attack from Geax and Tielax.

Their shadows lurked just out of sight, readying to hit my weak points. They would use the break in my armor that I had created to finish what the machines failed to accomplish.

If Geax was smarter she would have taken my hearing instead of my smell, the beating of her heart gave her position away. When she jumped at me, it was easy to turn and unleash a full breath of my flames. The ring of skin around my neck glowed as I turned my former master into ash. If she was smart, she would have known she was the bait.

Tielax expected me to attack Geax first. Closing my mouth I swallowed my flames. When he stabbed his swords into my neck, fire erupted from it.

Tielax cursed and spit at me from the ground, burnt to a crippled shell of himself.

A defensive spike erupted from where he had attacked. Several feet long it lit up the night that surrounded us, sizzling into an open gash on the side of my neck. My wounds would heal with time, but Tielax wouldn’t have the chance. I attempted to drown out the voices that claimed I was the monster. Sadly only the chewing of his skull dulled accusations.

My relationship with Death was always elusive. She had many lovers, and her affections were brief. The momentary joy of her presence was gone. Leaving me alone, surrounded by the mess we had created.

“Father?” the voice was tiny. “I want to leave.” A small girl laid next to The Stranger, as he desperately fought for life.

Now I knew why we couldn’t take him in, the treason he had committed. A mortal life from an immortal parent. Not a clone, not a part of the grand design, just chaos.

I shifted into my human form, so The Stranger could understand me. “You created this?”

“It was done out of love.” He coughed up blood and his voice was weakening.

“The Tielax I knew, killed dragons. Didn’t love mortals.” My words meant nothing to the crying girl, less to her dying father.

“Can we not be more than the stories of our past selves? You being here tells me your father was able to.” The Stranger was trying to reach up to his daughter’s face. “Forever changing.” I leaned down and gripped his hand. Placing it on the girl’s cheek.

“They will come for her.” I pointed out.

“Your father found an elf. In a village, half dead.” He said looking up at my long ears. “He turned it into a mighty dragon, but did he turn it into a good man?”

I didn’t know how to respond. My father was a legend. I was a broken shell. Looking at the scared girl, as her world was set ablaze, as the world pressed its cruelty upon her. A new fire was lit inside the husk of my heart. I was not the man my father was but I could be his son.

Reaching for her hand, I took the first step in trying.