Chapter Text
We all have an idea of how the Dragon Slayer Oath broke. Cale Barrow, likely in his twenties and a Dragon Slayer, got enough of a hunger for power to do the unthinkable and attack the Castle of Light, stealing Sheritt’s eggs for his selfish ambition.
But what if it didn’t happen like that?
In the broad strokes of this AU a half-Thames fourteen year old Cale Barrow - surrounded by family and community and already the Dragon Slayer - finds himself cornered into making the decision to remove Sheritt’s eggs from their castle home to hide them from a Hunter aiming to get rid of the potential of a new Dragon Lord hatching in the very resource rich world of Nameless 1.
While he was technically successful and the eggs were safe from the Hunter trying to destroy them - the vow the Dragon Slayers were beholden to was broken in the process. The oath mistook his actions of protection as actions of aggression because he had to actually trespass uninvited on castle grounds to get to them and fight off the Hunter who was already inside.
The reason I have dubbed this AU as ‘The Dragon Slayer Gambit’ is because it is rather easy to interpret as a kind of ‘divine scheme for the sake of the universe’ type thing. Eventually at least.
The creation of the Dragon Slayers by Nelan and Sheritt seems almost on a whim - tiny weak humans as the ones designated to put down dragons that become so arrogant, powerful, and prideful that they cause the world harm? Who thought this would work in the long term? - but when you take into account that that is their job and the fact that they are also death sworn to protect Sheritt’s children (who are dragons, who will with out a doubt be powerful) it becomes less ‘who thought this was actually a good idea’ and more ‘is this a set up’
The gods knew that at some point the Hunters would try something with Nameless 1 and that they would target the dragons to interfere with communication and balance in the world - so with a few nudges here and there (after the massive train derailment that was them already dropkicking Choi Jung Gun into N1) they managed to set someone up to always be in range of Sheritt’s children should they need protecting from the Hunters and also set those same people up to having to actually keep track of the dragons to keep them in check so that they would notice if many started to get murdered.
They also happened to have their village situated in the middle of fucking nowhere but conveniently in the same stretch of land as the Gate to the Demon World but that is surely just a coincidence (I assure you it is not, at least from where I’m standing).
So Cale Barrow reacting to protect Sheritt’s eggs wasn’t just the decision of some teenager but the product of a scheme set into motion for that very purpose nine thousand years ago. So he’s fulfilled his purpose but he’s now cursed and the other people of the village are now dead because he cared about them, surely that wasn’t part of the plan?
*readies bat labeled divine pawn lore*
The curse becoming active was an unfortunate but necessary second step in the gods’ plan to deal with the Hunter Families once and for all. You see, there is one Hunter who is very powerful, and immortal, and trying to break his way out of his seal, that also needs to be more permanently dealt with that has the worship of the Demons who also have to be dealt with and really it be nice to hit all of those things with minimal sacrifices.
Cale Barrow (or rather, whichever Dragon Slayer was unlucky enough to draw the short straw on times to be alive) was always meant to break the oath - was always meant to become the new White Star and make contact with the Sealed God and the demons - because the other gods needed someone to play the uniting evil so the rest of the world could stand together against the Hunters that would follow after their defeat.
The very second that Hunter crossed the border between worlds to Nameless 1 Cale’s fate was sealed.
The Sealed God made contact with Cale shortly after the oath broke and the reason he was able to do so despite still being trapped and Cale not being anywhere near a temple is because the despair Cale experienced (and continued to experience) as a result of the curse was so staggering that it managed to reach him - a thin thread of a connection but it was all Despair needed to manipulate a very out of it Cale into forming a strong and lasting contract.
Despair knows that Cale is part of a scheme of the other gods and that honestly just encourages him to be worse and he probably feels very smug and cunning for ruining their plans by corrupting Cale (and certainly he felt that way in the original timeline - the world burned to ashes, demons running loose in the mortal realm, and his seal just seconds from breaking - until Death interfered and ripped all that power out from under him).
Cale, after washing into a mental state more conducive to putting clues together, is aware that he is some pawn in play to deal with the Hunters and the Sealed God, and also probably the Demons (because the Thames have lore on the Hunter Families) and it can go a few different ways from there: he actually falls to the Sealed God’s manipulations and becomes his canon self despite his alternative starting or any number of variations in which he is living up to his name on the level of acting he’s constantly doing and toeing the line between ‘letting the God of Despair think he’s actually manipulated me’ and ‘not actually ending the world’.
Sometimes he fails and falls off that tightrope.
Into a slightly more detailed breakdown on what the fuck would actually be happening for the oath breaking ->
Two weeks before Cale Barrow’s birthday on November 8th a man comes to the Dragon Slayer Village, a Hunter although they don’t know that yet. He tells them, weak and weary, that he has been lost in the cold for what he thinks might be days now - it’s hard to tell time on the surface with the fog that leaves little difference between night and day.
They have never turned anyone away from their village - new ideas are always welcome and new blood even more so if the visitors decide to stay - and so they let him in without much thought. They had no reason to think him suspicious at the time because while very few people stumble upon their home beneath the snow that does not mean none at all (after the influx of people in Nelan’s day they fell into something of a legend rather than fact - people still try their hands at finding the village in hopes of learning the ways to power).
While the unknown Hunter recovers from his injuries that he got from being in the cold he is easily roped into the flow of village life. He helps cook in the hearth - bowing without fight to the instructions of Cale’s aunt Iris and her husband Tedmond and the handful of others that carry the responsibility of making sure everyone is fed - and plays with their children - picking berries, listening to their explanations of their toys, indulging in games of tag and hide and seek.
He even helps string banners between the houses and paint decorations for Cale’s birthday that is swiftly approaching.
Two week pass since the Hunter’s arrival in the Dragon Slayer Village and then suddenly, inevitably, it is November 8th.
It is early morning and the first frost has melted away - the magic humming through the massive cavern giving them some semblance of seasons although ironically they never get any snow, - just as it usually does around Cale’s birthday. The birthday of the reigning Dragon Slayer is and always has been a big deal but the celebration proper will take place during and after dinner - so they have the day to gather the softened apples from the trees of their forest to make into jellies, cider, and tarts for their treats.
They all set out, armed with tarps and ladders and wicker baskets to carry their harvest down to the river - their only source of water down under the snow - to wash, and the Hunter makes his move, slinking away from the people and heading for the castle and the eggs kept safe within.
Cale, having slipped away from his family and followed the Hunter at a slight distance out of a budding suspicion, is the first to understand his intent - and is forced to make a decision.
He can turn back, go inform the rest of the village and risk letting the Hunter get to the eggs first and therefore fail to uphold the Dragon Slayer Oath, or he can go after the Hunter himself, using his superior knowledge of the cavern to get there faster and take the eggs before they can be stolen, and therefore succeed in upholding the Oath.
He chooses the latter option for obvious reasons.
He is sort of majorly panicking at this point because all his (deceased) mother’s warnings are blaring in his head and he flat out books it across the cavern at the fastest pace he can manage long-term towards the castle - because the Dragon Slayer Cavern is big and he’s got a little over half its ground to cover. He gets to the nearly sheer cliff that leads to the tunnel to the castle and scales it with the ease of long familiarity - because I refuse to believe the Dragon Slayers didn’t know that it was there - and then forces his way past the boulder blocking its entrance.
There are zero lights in the tunnel so he runs in the dark, scrapping the tips of his fingers bloody against the wall as he tries to keep sense of where he is and in what direction he’s going, and he has not been let into the castle or its territory with permission - which is why the oath starts breaking even though he’s actively trying to uphold it.
When he gets to the stairs at the beginning of the tunnel he trips up them and spends precious moments collapsed upon them because he smashed his face into the steps because he can’t see. After he makes himself keep going despite the fact that he knocked out a few of his teeth and fractured his nose, he gets to the top of the stairs and is met with a solid stone floor.
He forces his way past that too and then it’s an arm’s race to the eggs. Cale spots a flash of movement three floors above him - the Hunter, carrying a weapon that had remained undiscovered in his spacial bag that out of respect for his privacy they hadn’t looked through - and does his best to a) stem his bleeding so he doesn’t leave an easy-to-follow trail and b) move quietly and stealthily in hopes that the Hunter can’t find him in the maze of hallways and rooms.
Cale gets to the eggs first, having been much closer from the northern center entrance to the nursery on the ground floor in the northeast wing than the Hunter who broke in on the fourth floor in the southwest wing.
When he makes it to the nursery - dripping blood onto the floor, seeing spots he’s so exhausted, and struggling to breathe - he immediately sets to moving the eggs from their cozy fur lined nest to the spacial dimension bag in the form of a satchel - which was handed down through the Dragon Slayers for the last millennium or so ever since they got their hands on it - hung crosswise across his body, intending to more or less just grab them and run because he would rather avoid fighting a Hunter at all, even more so when he’s already injured and exhausted.
Cale moves the black egg first and then the red egg, and no sooner than the red egg disappears does the Hunter slam the nursery door open. The Hunter is not actually that pissed about Cale trying to thwart his mission because he doesn’t even need to go back to the village to get a sacrifice for Karma to go home now, there is one right in front of him.
Cale has the Sword of Disasters in hand immediately, backs up a step or two, and there’s a few moments of a tense stand-off before the Hunter starts the fight by shooting him.
Yes, shooting him. Because at this point in time whatever family the Hunter is from (I am not confident enough in my knowledge to actually pick one) are based in a modern world with access to modern weapons, and this Hunter has discovered the effectiveness of fighting people who have never seen a gun before, never even heard of a gun before, with guns. Unfortunately.
The bullet hits Cale through the shoulder rather than dead through the brain because he was dodging before the Hunter even started to pull down on the trigger - he might not know what the fuck kind of weapon that is but he played with far too many rock slingshots when he was younger to mistake it for anything harmless - and that starts the fight that I haven’t really planned out the details to other than the fact that one more bullet at least grazes Cale before he gets the gun out of the Hunter’s hands and his sword through his chest.
Cale wins the fight through adrenaline, skill, and sheer desperation because the bullet through his shoulder just so happens to neatly coincide with the Dragon Slayer Oath snapping like a saltine and the curse slamming down on him full force.
Getting shot and being in the middle of a high stakes fight for the fate of the world (not that he was super consciously aware of how high the stakes were at this point) sort of kept Cale from realizing the curse had taken hold (i.e. he was abruptly missing half his senses and experiencing extreme heart/chest pain) until after the Hunter was dead on the nursery floor.
And then he took a moment to take stock of his condition and it all came crashing down.
The curse’s punishments are scary and disorienting at best and Cale would definitely realize what’s happened, as the punishments for breaking the oath were well known to them despite all the time that has passed since it was sworn.
There’s some hysterical denial and argument - internally if not verbally because screaming while in agony is rather difficult - along the lines of ‘but I upheld the oath’ or ‘I did what you fucking asked of me!’ and ‘I’m not trying to hurt them, I’m trying to keep them SAFE!’
After about five minutes of trembling on the floor of the wrecked nursery in pain, existing in a spiraling state of disoriented panic because he’s suddenly down multiple factors of human perception, and feeding a steadily raising anger Cale remembers a very important punishment of the curse, and promptly swings into a full on meltdown.
All you cherish shall die.
The people of the village. His people. His family.
Cale peels himself off the floor - still bleeding from the bullet through his shoulder and occasionally spiting blood out of his mouth from where it drips from the gaps in his teeth - and starts running back towards the cavern, the eggs still snug in the satchel across his chest.
He goes back to the entrance and the floor has already fixed itself (because everything in the castle is cleaned and repaired by magic to keep it pristine), so he breaks his way though again and it’s still pitch black so he runs through the dark a second time, only his hearing and what’s left of his sense of touch to guide him because there’s no lights in the tunnel and the curse took everything else, and the minutes tick by.
The cavern is big and the tunnel is long and it’s been hours since Cale has seen his family - the only thing in his mind at this point is that he needs to see them again, needs to apologize for this unjustified death before it happens, needs to tell them he’s sorry.
Cale gets to the boulder blocking the entrance and shoves his way passed it to the cavern, expecting the familiar sight of the forest, of the village visible from the wall, and-
Darkness. The false sun by the ceiling has gone out, taking with it the only light underground.
The false sun, in my headcanon, is designed to go out if the oath is broken as a sort of reactionary punishment mechanism, because if the oath is broken then the Dragon Slayers clearly have failed spectacularly in their true purpose, but it will turn back on when Raon hatches, hence why there is light and life when the cavern is visited a millennium into the future.
Losing their only light is not the only punishment mechanism in place that is separate but reactive to the curse, there is also the nifty part that neatly removes all the oxygen from the cavern to immediately enact the ‘all you cherish shall die’ clause of the curse. Because killing innocent people that are important to who’s ever committed the crime is 100% an ethical and valid punishment.
Right.
By the time Cale reaches the cavern about forty minutes after the oath breaks (the tunnel takes at a fast clip about thirty minutes to traverse) the oxygen has slowly started to return - the air is thin, thinner than it normally is anyway, but there is enough to breathe which is why he doesn’t start dying of asphyxiation. He is panicking regardless of whether or not he can breathe because where the fuck is the light. Where is his family. Oh gods please don’t let them already be dead. Don’t tell him they died in the dark. Don’t tell him they died scared.
Cale, who obviously needs more injuries and trauma on top of everything that has already happened, falls off the cliff edge because it is pitch black and he cannot see. He catches himself on a tree branch but still mangles his foot and leg on the landing because the cliff is a sheer vertical drop, the closest trees are like a meter and a half away at best, and he can’t actually see the ground.
He starts trying to navigate to the village - simple in theory because it is just directly across from the centered cliff that has the tunnel entrance in it- but he is injured, disoriented, and in pain, not to mention currently blind, so it’s hard to keep in a straight line when they don’t have a clear path to this part of the cavern and he has to keep swerving around trees, bushes, logs, and etc. He makes good progress towards his goal despite that and the lack of answer to him calling for literally anyone to respond does not help his distress levels.
I am of the opinion that it is incredibly creepy and terrifying to be underground in the dark and the cavern is very quiet, noise coming only from himself and the slowly approaching heavy footsteps of the stone guardian statues who’ve come to remove him from his home for his ‘betrayal’.
The other people of the village mounted a search effort out of worry because it had been hours since they’ve seen him - it’s not like he can go missing unnoticed for long, it’s his birthday and he holds the position of probably the single most important figure in the structure of their entire culture - and it’s just Cale’s luck that he manages to trip over one of their bodies while walking blind through the trees.
It fucks him up a little. A lot actually.
Tripping over something in a darkness so thick he can’t see his own hands in front of him and feeling it give slightly under his weight without the accompanying creak of wood. The feel of clothing and skin and hair when he kneels to check and the realization that he can’t even check for life by temperature (if it has been long enough that the bodies have started to cool) because he can’t feel changes in temperature anymore.
There are several people the body he tripped over could belong to. I have way too many ocs for this series running around in my head and by my last count 26 of them are ‘Dragon Slayer Village inhabitants alive at the time of the oath breaking’.
Both his parents are dead - because who am I to deny him the orphan trauma - but there is Iris and Tedmond (his aunt and uncle in law) and their children Amara and Evander, his fellow teenagers Rowma and Casken, his mentor figures such as Fion, Calder, and Sage, the other children, and the many other adults. I like to make everything as awful as possible though so most of the time I run the scene through my head it’s the younger sister I’ve given him.
Rip Callis, you didn’t deserve that and now your big brother is irreversibly traumatized :p
The stone guardians grab hold of Cale shortly after the ‘everybody is dead and their bodies are just lying about the cavern oh my god’ realization, much to his very vocal distress. Lots of screaming, begging, anger and fear. The guardians drag him kicking and crying to the tunnel to the surface, heedless of his pleas to at least let him bury his family and not needing sight to find their way.
Once they reach the surface they throw the sobbing fourteen year old out into the snow and disappear back to their original positions at the gates to the village, leaving Cale to freeze to death in the cold he can no longer feel.
Cale tries to go back through the tunnel a number of times and is thrown back out again and again. Eventually he gives up and removes the satchel with the eggs from around his shoulders to curls up on his knees in the snow at the tunnel entrance, waiting for death. He dies sometime later of hypothermia and his body remains frozen there in the glacier in present day - just beneath where Cale Henituse and crew were walking, the damning evidence of what really happened forever (maybe) undiscovered.
That lore that he created the Mercenaries Guild in his first life is um… incorrect. It was probably closer to his fourth or fifth life by the time he managed to make an organization like that - both because he consistently died too young before the Sealed God forced him into the white mask and also because he was not in the mental state to be doing literally anything.
Cale Barrow in this AU returned only once to the tunnel entrance, probably around eighty or so years later, before the memory loss from sleep deprivation erased its existence from his mind. He travelled the whole way across the glacial plains to pry the satchel with the eggs from the cold, dead hands of his own corpse with the sole intention of desecrating everything he died for - willing or not.
In sum: the Hunters fucked everything up, the gods are bitches, and Cale Barrow is innocent. I rest my case.