Xerxes

The ground once trembled beneath his feet. Now, his bones were as likely to shake as the land. The flesh that remained barely clung to his torso, and slivers of that swung back and forth as he traversed the Forest of Flames, some leaving a minute trail in his wake as he followed the Angel Beacon. He knew not why an Angel Beacon would be shining in the heart of the Lower Pantheon’s territory, let alone why it glowed red, signaling only gargoyles and dragons like Xerxes. He only knew that the closer he got, the more clearly he could hear a high-pitched cry. Surely, that cry could not belong to the source of the beacon, and yet—

From one of the Everflames, Xerxes found the beacon rising. A hole had grown inside the Everflame, and in the hole hid the source of the cry: a toddler Nephilim.

Xerxes could not believe the orange orbs that now served as his eyes. He had not seen or even heard of a Nephilim for a thousand years, not since the ten-year-old angel/giant Nephilim was sent into battle by the Upper Pantheon…he couldn’t even finish that thought. Still, the fact that this toddler could even sit in an Everflame was proof of the being’s heritage, not to mention its golden wings and the golden irises shining at Xerxes from behind enlarged tears.

Xerxes could not help but admire the child’s beauty, from its thick, curly locks to its dark, almost shimmering skin. He wondered for a moment if its angelic parent were an Upper Pantheon angel or a Lower Pantheon demon. Perhaps even a Neutral Pantheon fae. Then he realized the sad truth: it didn’t matter. An abandoned Nephilim child was too good a weapon to pass on, and he had to bring it—him—to his master immediately, or else.

Slowly, Xerxes extended a large skeletal claw toward the Nephilim and uncurled it, palm up, stopping just short of touching the child. He forced his breathing to slow and waited as the Nephilim’s teary eyes drifted to his claw. Xerxes braced himself for more screaming and crying, certain the Nephilim would react the same way children of all species did to seeing him. He didn’t blame them; he was, for all intents and purposes, death incarnate. There was once a time when he would have screamed, too.

And yet, the Nephilim didn’t. Xerxes watched in a mixture of awe and confusion as the toddler warbled forward and fell into his claw, practically hugging one of the fingers as he settled on the bony surface. Warmth surged through Xerxes’s heart, and he quickly pushed the feeling away. No use getting attached to a…weapon.

Xerxes lightly tightened his fist around the child and brought him close to his torso. He walked away from the Everflames to the closest clearing before spreading his wings. Fortunately, his wingsails had been spared the loss of flesh that had plagued the rest of his body—probably to keep him useful to his master. Checking that the Nephilim was safe and comfortable, Xerxes took off and headed south, dread seeping into his being the closer he got to his master’s fortress.

* * *

Xerxes knelt before his master, the Nephilim child sitting on the black marble floor before him.

“Fa-fār, Mo-mōr,” the Nephilim cried as he reached for Xerxes.

Xerxes once more pushed away the warmth building in his chest. “Fa-fār” and “mo-mōr” were children’s terms of endearment for “father” and “mother” in Parsian, the parent language shared by angels of all pantheons. Xerxes didn’t know what happened to the Nephilim’s parents, but he doubted that this poor child would ever see his fa-fār and mo-mōr again.

Shh, Xerxes sent to the toddler’s mind. It will be fine.

His mental voice seemed to soothe the child just as Xerxes’s master rose from his chair of polished dragon bones. Xerxes shivered just at the sight of it—and at the demon they called The Necromancer.

“You found the Nephilim.” The Necromancer’s coarse voice scraped through Xerxes’s skull.

“Yes, Master,” he said, though he subconsciously hid the child from view with his claw.

“The parents?”

“Nowhere to be seen.”

“We will need to put a couple guards on you when you escort the child to Our Overlord, then.”

“Excuse me?” Xerxes dared to step closer to the platform on which The Necromancer and his throne stood. “What do you mean, when I escort him? What of my rest?”

The Necromancer raised a scarred, tan hand in dismissal. “It will wait until after you return.”

Xerxes rumbled low in his throat. A heat sparked in his torso, forcing fire up the tunnel of remaining flesh until it reached his neck. Without the flesh of his throat to serve as a barrier, flames trickled out until they brushed the edges of Xerxes’s eye sockets. Suddenly remembering himself, Xerxes pushed the fire back inside and extinguished it.

“Master, I found you the Nephilim. I think—”

A darkness surrounded Xerxes, sucking all air from him. His weakened lungs heaved and gasped. He clawed at the air but could find nothing to grasp. In the distance, a soft white light appeared. Xerxes reached for it, his claw trembling. As quickly as it appeared, the light blinked out of existence.

After what could have only been a few seconds but felt like an eternity, Xerxes’s breath returned to him, followed closely by his sight. The Nephilim cried and pushed at Xerxes’s leg with all his toddler might. It was then that Xerxes realized that he had collapsed to the floor. Slowly, he rose on wobbly legs and faced The Necromancer. The demon narrowed his golden eyes at the dragon, his black wings twitching in agitation.

“Will that rest suffice?” he growled. His eyes shifted to the inconsolable child. “Shut that thing up.”

Xerxes enclosed the Nephilim in his claw. Mentally, he said, Hush, little one. I am fine.

Once again, Xerxes’s mental voice calmed his ward, who hugged one of Xerxes’s bony fingers.

“Better.” The Necromancer strolled over to his throne and gracefully dropped into it. Xerxes squirmed as The Necromancer’s eyes studied him. “If you succeed in this simple mission, I am willing to reward you greatly. Permanent rest.”

Permanent rest. The words echoed through Xerxes’s skull. Something he had been deprived of for so long and that his soul ached for. True, irreversible death. Not since his failed part in the Dragon/Gargoyle Uprising had he even dreamed of the possibility.

“When do we leave?” he asked.

“Immediately.”

Four mid-ranking demons were found to guard Xerxes and the child from afar on their journey, as was a suitable guardian: an elven prisoner, a rare prize to give to the Overlord. Fae did not imprison their precious creations as the demons did with their dragons and the angels with their gargoyles, but they defended them with their lives. No one had managed to capture one before, so the negotiating possibilities seemed endless. With that sort of bargaining chip and the weapon that the Nephilim could be raised to be, delivering this fare to the Overlord could tip the Great War in the Lower Pantheon’s favor—perhaps permanently, depending on what the fae and Neutral Pantheon were willing to do to get the elf back alive. The thought made Xerxes’s head race with endless scenarios, most of them not good.

Upon seeing the elf in his master’s lair, Xerxes did not know what to expect. She was beautiful, truly. Her thick, curly black hair had been pulled back into a braid; her skin was light brown decorated seamlessly with splashes of white; and instead of the traditional dress Xerxes had seen most female bipeds wear, she wore pants and a loose-fitting tunic. Yet what surprised Xerxes most was her attitude. He did not see a broken prisoner. He saw a confident young woman who carried herself with grace and poise and displayed her pointed ears with pride. Her dark brown eyes, when they landed on Xerxes, smoldered fiercely.

“Is this our transport?” she asked The Necromancer, her voice steady without a hint of fear.

Xerxes huffed. “I am not steed merely to be ridden—”

“He will take you to your new master, yes,” The Necromancer interrupted. “He will also guard you from any threats that come for you. Should you leave his side—” he pointed to an iron band clinging to the elf’s wrist “—that will inject iron into your veins. It won’t kill you, but it should immobilize you and put you through worse pain than you can imagine. Understood?”

She gave one stiff nod.

“Good.” The Necromancer turned to Xerxes. “And if that should happen, I have ordered my generals to put you to temporary rest until I can deal with you myself. You will not fail me again.”

“Understood,” Xerxes grumbled.

* * *

Within a few hours, Xerxes soared once more over the Everflames, flying farther south to the Overlord’s fortress. Just out of sight, the demon generals flew in a protective formation around him. On his back, the elf had been strapped in by her legs to a saddled that rubbed and irritated Xerxes’s flesh. Shreds of it fell in their wake like bloody snowflakes. The Nephilim had no straps to keep him attached to the saddle, but the elf maintained a firm grip on him. Whenever the toddler squirmed too much, Xerxes would mentally sing him a nighttime melody, and his deep mental voice would calm the child down.

After the fifth round of this charade, the elf said, “I know what you’re doing.”

“What?” Xerxes asked without looking back.

“You’re calming him.” A pause followed. “I didn’t know dragons were parental.”

“I can’t have him falling off me. I have more riding on this transaction than you could comprehend.”

“In a way, so do I.”

Xerxes listened to the flapping of his wings as he considered her words.

“What does ‘in a way’ mean?”

“What does ‘temporary rest’ mean?”

Silence fell, only broken by the occasional semi-Parsian babble from the Nephilim. The Everflames below gave way to fields of ash. The grounds had been burned and salted numerous times by the Upper Pantheon, as though the first time had not been enough to ensure that nothing would ever grow there again. Xerxes remembered when the plains had been lush green with patches of tan where wheat had grown. Fire lilies once dotted the landscape, glowing brightly each night without ever burning the life that surrounded them. It had been too long since he had seen one of those flowers alive.

“Bahar.”

The elf’s voice broke through Xerxes’s memories.

“What did you say?”

“Bahar,” she repeated. “My name is Bahar. Yours?”

He hesitated. “Xerxes.”

“You’re not what I expected of a dragon, Xerxes.”

He sighed inwardly. “I know.”

“You know?”

“How could I be? I’m more than half-dead. My prime was before you were born, and even then, I was a failure.”

“I mostly meant that I didn’t think a dragon would run errands for a demon or let themselves be ridden like a horse…not after your outburst earlier…”

Xerxes laughed, a dry, humorless laugh. “The Necromancer is my master. I do what he says. Always.”

He felt the Nephilim pound on the saddle and heard him say, “Fa-fār! Fa-fār!”

Xerxes pushed away the warmth again, this time as it pooled in his eyes. “Always.”

By nightfall, Xerxes found a spot by a creek where they could rest. There was no wood for a fire, and the trickling creek was just sufficient enough to fill Bahar’s canteen. From the saddle on Xerxes’s back, she removed a bag of fruit, cheese, and bread—just enough food for her and the child until they reached the Overlord’s fortress the next day.

“Do you need anything?” she asked Xerxes as she cut up a piece of ripe yellow fruit for the Nephilim.

“I don’t eat anymore.”

Bahar’s cutting hand wavered.

“I see. If you don’t mind me asking, do you—”

“Do I sleep?” Bahar nodded. “No. Not unless The Necromancer or another powerful being puts me to temporary rest.”

“Temporary rest,” she said slowly as she fed the toddler his fruit. “So, to rest at all…I suppose you’re saying that you have to…die?”

Xerxes nodded. He curled upon the ash-covered ground behind Bahar and watched the Nephilim happily munch on the mushy fruit.

“And then I’m brought back to life, yes.”

“It sounds horrible.”

“It is.”

“Then why did you choose this life?”

Xerxes huffed. “You think I chose this life? I told you, I’m a failure. This is my punishment for that failure.”

“Eternal life?”

“If you call this life.”

For a few minutes, Bahar busied herself eating some cheese and cutting more fruit for the Nephilim. Xerxes half-watched them, half-watched the horizon, sometimes for attackers and sometimes for the hidden generals. He could see them clearly enough; there truly was nowhere to hide on the Deserted Fields, even for nearly godly beings. He just hoped that they did not expect enemies to be fooled by their near-invisibility, either.

“What about the war?” Bahar finally asked. “Do you take part in that?”

Xerxes stared at the Nephilim as the child smeared some yellow fruit juice down his chubby cheeks. He wished he could smile.

“I have not been out in the field in a thousand years,” he admitted.

“Why? Another part of your punishment?”

Xerxes knew he shouldn’t say anything more. After all, she was a prisoner, one to be held by the Overlord for some ransom. Who knew what she would do with the information that he gave her, if she got the chance? Yet something inside him wanted to tell her. He had heard of elves and even the fae using a magical charm on other beings to influence them, to get them to tell them or do whatever they wanted. Somehow, though, Xerxes knew this wasn’t that. He didn’t feel fully compelled to tell her. A war raged inside him, two voices screaming at each other. One told him to keep his mouth shut, but the other…the other just wanted someone to talk to, for the first time in an eternity.

“It feels more like a blessing,” he mumbled.

The elf turned around to face him, arching an elegant brow.

“I saw and…did things that I’m not proud of.” Images flashed before his eyes. The flesh of angels melting down to the bone as he hit them with his fire. His claws tearing into gargoyles—some mid-air, some pinned to the ground, helpless. He and six other dragons ripping apart the first Nephilim any of them had ever seen, all with no control over their own bodies. That event had been the catalyst for the Dragon/Gargoyle Uprising, but nothing could ever cleanse Xerxes and the others of the crime of killing someone so young. “Things I would do anything to take back.”

Bahar nodded as she toyed with the last of her cheese. “Yes, it seems that a lot of dragons and gargoyles feel that way.”

Xerxes shook his head and sat up straighter. “Well, I can’t really afford to feel that way, can I?”

The Nephilim let out a great yawn and wobbled his way over to Xerxes. Without hesitation, he curled up beside Xerxes’s underbelly and quickly fell asleep. Bahar’s eyes never left the sight.

“No,” she said, “I suppose you can’t.”

* * *

Dawn was still hours away when Xerxes saw them. Ten humanoid figures descended from the sky in pairs. Fae and their elven companions. Xerxes had encircled Bahar and the Nephilim by the time they touched ground, and the demon generals were on them instantly. Four elves and two fae fell. The others charged Xerxes, swords drawn.

One came at him with a direct hit to the heart, but to their surprise, Xerxes did not back down. He drew on his fire and allowed it to pour from his open neck, hitting any who came too close to him and his charges. Flames consumed the one who struck him; they dropped to the ground and tried to smother the flames, but they only grew until the fae moved no more. The other attackers danced around Xerxes but could not approach him as the fire spread. They were soon caught between the flames and the demon generals.

A whimper caught Xerxes’s attention. He looked down within his protective circle to see Bahar clutching the Nephilim close to her. The latter cried uncontrollably. Xerxes leaned his head in to nuzzle the child, but Bahar blocked him with her body. Horrified, Xerxes realized that fire still burst forth from his neck. He could have burned her…could have burned the Nephilim…he thought back to the Everflame, told himself that if that didn’t hurt the child, his own flame certainly could not, but he knew better. His flame had killed angels, fae, and even demons; it could kill a young Nephilim easily.

Xerxes cringed. He couldn’t do that, not again.

“Please, let them come,” he heard Bahar scream. He turned to her. When their eyes met, she cried again, “Let them come. They want to take us to the Neutral Pantheon. He’ll be safe there.”

No, that he certainly could not do. The Necromancer would rip his permanent rest from him forever. He would be skinned alive and join the other skeletons that made up that gruesome throne, trapped forever in his mutilated bones. He had to get the Nephilim and Bahar to the Overlord. It was his only hope. And maybe the Great War would finally end—

“Fa-fār!” the Nephilim shrieked with all the power his little lungs could manage. “Fa-fār!”

Xerxes felt the warmth gathering around his eyes again. Already, the flames were receding. He used every curse in every language he knew against himself. At last, he muttered, “The war will never end.”

He pulled the fire back into himself. Once they cleared, he uncurled his body, exposing Bahar and the Nephilim to the attacking Neutrals.

“Take them. Quickly.” Xerxes snaked between the Neutrals and the demons. He pulled on his fire once more. “I’ll distract them.”

“Xerxes,” one of the demon generals sneered. “I always knew you were a traitor.”

The demon general clenched his fist, and darkness surrounded Xerxes. It sucked the air from Xerxes’s lungs and extinguished his fire. As he gasped, the light appeared. Distant at first, it came closer. And closer. And closer. The closer the light came, the easier it became for Xerxes to breathe. Finally, when the light surrounded him, he took the biggest, most refreshing breath of air he’d ever had, one that filled him with the warmth of the caverns where he and the other dragons once lived.

When the light faded, that was exactly where Xerxes found himself. As far as he could see, a cave with attached tunnels stretched before him. The roof could not be found. Dragons of all colors and sizes walked, chatted, and slept. Heated dirt covered the ground, created sleeping mounds, and squished between Xerxes’s toes—and Xerxes’s toes! Xerxes’s toes were once more covered in golden flesh. So were his legs. And his tail. He felt at his neck and skull; the flesh had regrown there, too! Xerxes felt tears of joy pour from his eyes—his true, feline eyes, not the orbs that had taken their place—but also sensed confusion behind his elation. No temporary rest had ever been so wonderful before, and he certainly did not dream anymore.

“Hello, Xerxes,” a soft, musical voice says from behind him.

Xerxes turned to find a human—no, a humanoid, but not a human, nor an angel, nor a demon, nor a fae, nor an elf. He stood taller than the dragon, and his chest was twice as broad as the strongest human’s. His face shared the same angular yet somehow elegant features of a fae, but he was missing the tell-tale black-and-white wings, and his ears were not pointed. His skin contained a grayish tone with golden sparkles, and his swirling light brown eyes were calming, almost hypnotic.

“Ashraf?” Xerxes whispered. Ashraf, the Neutral Pantheon God of Death.

The humanoid nodded. “I am glad to finally welcome you to your new home.”

“My-my new home?”

“Yes. You have earned your permanent rest, Xerxes,” Ashraf replied.

“Earned it?”

“Yes, well, yours is a special case. I don’t typically interfere in the matters of lesser beings, like necromancers, but since you helped that elf and Nephilim—”

“Barely.” Xerxes’s chest filled with dread. “They might be dead now because of me…no, worse, because they’re valuable…”

“Trust me, they are not.” Ashraf smiled, revealing bright white teeth. “Don’t underestimate my fae and elves.”

“Your fae and elves?”

Ashraf shrugged. “Well, considering that it was one of my fae that sired the Nephilim and one of my elves that was stolen, I had to ensure personally that the balance was not thrown off any further by giving the Lower Pantheon an advantage.”

“So, the child is safe?”

“Yes, and Bahar as well.”

“How long has it been?”

“Does it matter?” Ashraf patted Xerxes’s snout. “Just know that your part is over, Xerxes. You can finally rest.”

Xerxes tilted his head. “Are you sure?”

Ashraf nodded. “I am sure.” He gestured toward an empty sleeping mound. “Rest now, Xerxes.”

Xerxes slowly walked over to the sleeping mound, put one foot in after another, and curled up with his wing covering his face. He closed his eyelids for the first time in as long as he could remember. His mind drifted off to the Nephilim, to the Great War, to the part the child would play in it now that he was in the hands of the Neutral Pantheon. Would he even play a role now? Did Xerxes even care? He had a million questions for the god and for himself, but he suddenly did not have the energy to ask them. All he could do was surrender to the darkness.