Chapter Text
The constructs on the tower began to shake, orreries and planetariums falling down to the lower floors as dragons fluttered away to avoid the carnage. Hatcheries spilled broken shells and forges erupted with liquid metal.
But as the structures fell and clay tablets shattered on the ground, the quakes didn’t stop. They grew as much as they could, before the very earth split apart like the very same brittle tablets. The tower rose. It was as steady as a one-winged dragon, but even still the sun-baked tower continued to rise into the sky, breaking free from its base and leaving the ground behind. Pipes and fences trailed behind, some still slightly touching the grasses below before either sinking into the rift or hanging on by a thread.
Musical instruments fell down as the entire skyscraper shook and tumbled as it settled in the sky, a cloud of dust and soil underneath it still covering the stragglers. Clockwork, cogs and gears and bolts fell down while a select few rose into new constructions with a will of their own. Walls broke apart and many homes were sliding down to the deepest pits of the gash, not waiting for their own residents to leave.
The terror did not end until the next day, and until then the very emotion of panic was tangible in the air as unpredictable cosmic phenomena happened right over their head.
The largest moon had eclipsed the sun on the shortest day of the year. The Darkest Day had begun, as iron tainted the water, turning it the colour of blood.
Still on the tower, a dragon clambered to the top — or as close as they could reach — and tried to find the source of the calamity. They ran past jammed doors and through broken walls, hissing in pain as their legs carried them past their limit.
They pushed a door open once more, shrieking in pain as they felt something break. They got the motivation they needed to keep going when they noticed their father. Sprinting to the far edge of the room, stepping around broken tablets, they shouted to get his attention. “What happened?! We predicted… everything! Everything but this!”
Their father shuffled their wings in disdain as he looked down, through a window, to the ground below. “The eldest Moon has stolen the Sun Dragon’s heart, Quasar.”
Quasar didn’t move for a second, their heartbeat filling in the empty silences between the clock on the wall’s ticking. They glanced again, away from the clock and towards the diagrams of parchment. Four dragons engaged in an eternal battle. The Sun Dragon and the three Moon siblings.
Quasar couldn't help but recall stories from their father, about how the Moon siblings tried to take over the world by tricking or stealing from the Sun Dragon many times.
“The Eldest Moon looked around, before putting a claw around the planet all three of the moons orbited. “I will shroud the world in darkness forever, as with my size I can surround myself around the Sun Dragon’s heart and hide it away so that the Sun Dragon gives its crown to me.”
The Second Moon laughed. “Only its heart! The Sun Dragon will rend you and shred you into pieces and turn those pieces into weak little whining dragons, bound to the earth. Oh! Or maybe little comets.”
The Eldest Moon whipped its tail towards the Second Moon, and that is how the dark line on its heart appeared. “You stand less of a chance! How did your last plan go?”
The Second Moon got very hurt when it tried to fight the Sun Dragon, and only shows the uninjured side to the planet now, so it doesn’t feel ashamed.
“No matter,” the Second Moon laughed it off, “I will marry the Sun Dragon and share its power, before stealing it and giving the power to you both.”
“As if the Sun Dragon would marry you!”
“The Sun Dragon wouldn’t marry the youngest! And you are far too unsightly! There is no other Sun, it has to be me!
The Youngest Moon flew up to the bickering moons, showing its vulnerable heart as the evening rays poured into space.
“What are we doing now?” It yawned, “I thought we were friends with the Sun Dragon now. It always comes back when it’s away
from its heart, after all…”
“Don’t you want to see the day sky again, and…” The Eldest Moon took a bite out of a constellation before continuing. This is how the Headless Dragon Constellation came to be. “And not have to hide from the Sun Dragon? It doesn’t want us to be seen in the daytime.”
The Youngest Moon huffed as the Second Moon stole a scrap of the constellation’s head. “We are supposed to protect the night sky! It is our job!”
“There are three of us,” the Second Moon snarkily responded. “We can take turns.”
“No! What will happen to the daytime if we chase away the Sun Dragon?! We need its heart to warm the plants and let dragons see.”
The Eldest Moon shook its head, rippling space around it. The Moons were invisible, except for their hearts, just like the Sun Dragon. They were invisible because they didn’t have a body made out of meat, but instead one out of time – to know when they were – and space – to know where they were – and mind, the thing that makes us decide.
“I can take its heart and pull it across space, around the planet,” The Second Moon suggested.
The Eldest Moon shouted back, “I’ll do it! I am the strongest, after all. I am also the brightest when I glow, so I should work with light.”
The Moons never agreed on what to do. They kept on bickering in between working for the Sun Dragon and eating bad stars, the ones that get too close to the planet and threaten to burn it. The Moons aren’t bad, unlike the stars, because they just don’t understand what they’re doing. Tricking the Sun Dragon is all they know, they don’t understand being nice.”
Quasar shuddered as they averted their eyes from the tapestry. Turning back to their father, they stammered as they spoke. “…The Sun Dragon will come back, though! It can’t let the heart be stolen!” They bit their tongue before they sounded too distrusting of the myths.
Their father looked up at the eclipse in the sky, tapping on the glass fervently. “Bad things happen when the Sun Dragon is away. And it may not return until after the world is calm.”
“What about its heart? It’s tearing apart the tower, we need to leave, father!”
“It will burn the plants and sear the dirt, the scriptures say…” Quasar’s father shook his amber-adorned head. “I am far too old to fly, I will head somewhere safe, and wait for the tremors to cease.”
Quasar nodded, approaching the door before turning back around and bowing their head. “May the Sun warm you!”
He cackled at his child’s prayer, “I’m sure it will, if nothing else!”
For a hundred days, the sky became hotter than the last. What was once a mosaic of brilliant prairies and lush steppes became a grim desert, the tower eclipsing the Sun as the hours passed like the largest sundial of them all.
And then the heat ceased its growth, and for a moment the survivors of the Darkest Day clasped their talons together and prayed for the sky to grow cooler.
But it stayed as warm as it was for years.
Ancient prophets stirred the red-dyed sands. The shapes that took hold preached that the weak dragons on land could claim its angered heart in a thousand years, at the apex of another calamity, and return it to the heartbroken Sun Dragon.
Scribes with names long eroded have their interpretations of the sand, their words immortalised as a clay poem, stuck onto every home and temple for good luck.
“In a thousand years, the great searing will return.
In a thousand years, the smoke-ridden sky will burn.
The land will shake, the sea will turn,
the clouds will cry, the dragons will yearn,
but with priests possessing devotion earned,
the Sun’s unending power will be relearned.
Bring a path, stardust torches and gifts,
save yourself from the earth’s rifts,
for living among heroes and stories,
terrors that lie below kill for glory.”