Ipollius was a broken city. Fueled by rebellious, human urges, Ipollius' people had taken up arms against their dragon rulers and made war on all of Aedolis. Calamity. Millions dead. To great and terrible effect the finest war machines of Aedolian artifice were turned upon themselves. Of course, the eventual outcome had been decided from the start. Separated from the Network, the Ippolian infrastructure had broken down, and with it had gone the organization of its military forces. Confused and in disarray, they had been no match for the strike force dispatched from Haviah.
The wrath of the dragons had been awe-inspiring in its finality. Stone by stone, Ippolius had been torn down and toppled into the dust. Its people had been slaughtered to a man, and any mention of the city itself or the rebellion it had wrought had been erased from all public records. Those citizens who knew were threatened into silence, and little by little Ippolius had faded into a myth; an urban legend told by garrulous students.
This was the first time Bastian had seen it with his own eyes. Protected by the bulky shell of an environment suit he walked along a ruined skyway, stepping over concrete and desiccated bodies which lay strewn about like the detritus of some human storm. To either side rose the jagged buildings of long-dead enterprise, stabbing accusingly at the green-gray sky. Strobing red LED lights at the wrist of his suit warned of the toxic fumes still hanging thickly in he air about him. An eerie silence lay across the dead city, broken only by the distant thumping of ancient machinery and the scurrying of tiny creatures through the rubble. Old signs and traffic markers hung like foilage above his head, most so bent and twisted their meaning was lost alltogether. Those which were still legible displayed directions and old advertisement, some lauding products which Bastian recognized clearly from Haviah.
It was a sobering sight.
Something crunched under his boot, and on a whim he bent to pick it up. It was a dull, octagonic piece of metal, thin as a sheet of cardboard and roughly the width and breadth of his palm. His weight had snapped it clean across the middle, and thin threads of copper and filament wire sprouted from the broken edges. Bastian slowly turned it over in his palm. The other side of it was dominated by small, many-colored buttons and a square display screen. A smiling owl stood superimposed across the top half. Kanenko. A gaming system.
In a fit of revulsion Bastian tossed the broken toy over the edge of the skyway, and it plummeted into the emptiness below. He looked again at the corpses littering the street, and only now did he realise that their clothing didn't match. Not one was alike another. These were, or had been, civilians.
Such must be the fate of all who oppose us.
Bastian winced as the dry, grating voice boomed inside his skull. Even after all this time, Balmung's sudden presence in his mind was still jarring. The dragon's psychic anima eclipsed his own by several orders of magnitude, and Bastian's head throbbed as it struggled to adapt to the touch of such a vast consciousness. Words did it no justice, but Bastian's best comparison was that of standing at the edge of some great abyss, staring into the black depths and trying not to get sucked in. A weaker mind would have been burned out in an instant.
Order is critical. No one is excempt.
A massive shadow settled across the skyway, and great gusts of air threw up a cloud of dust to temporarily obscure Bastian's vision. He turned, and immediately had to step back to avoid being buffeted by the beat of an enormous wing. Slowly the ancient, leviathan shape of his dragon was lowering itself to the concrete, touching down on its great forepaws with a grace unusual in a creature so large. Even on all fours, wings folded against his back, Balmung was almost the breadth of the skyway, and his thick, serpentine neck stretched as long as any of the iron poles about him.
Balmung's corporeal form, at least, had ceased to be a marvel. The envo suit was too stiff to facilitate a bow, but Bastian inclined his head as best he was able. Once again he felt that dull throb as the dragon touched its mind against his.
You are troubled.
Its psychic voice held neither question nor concern. Bastian had long since learned the futility of lying or trying to conceal anything from his dragon. Its mind was too strong, too invasive for secrets. "We did this," he said, the in-built speakers of his suit distorting his voice into a raspy drawl. Regardless of his psychic prowess, he preferred to use his corporeal voice to communicate. Balmung allowed him that little eccentricity.
Yes, came the dragon's reply, just as dispassionate as before. Sacrifices must be made.
Sacrifices must be made. Balmung's creed. Bastian had heard it so many times over the last ten years that he knew precisely when the old dragon was going to say it. Faced with the reality of its consequences, it rang less strongly than it normally would.
A very human sentiment, Balmung grated. The elongated snout turned to behold its surroundings, the yellow eyes peering from building to building. We are beyond justification. We do what is necessary for the greater good.
Kneeling by the side of a fallen block of permacrete, Bastian brushed aside a small pile of shattered glass. Skyway 4-13, that's where they were. "There was no hope for these people?"
Balmung stirred, walking forward on four legs. Rising to his feet, Bastian laid one hand on the thick neck, taking a strange comfort in the dragon's presence. Insurgence cannot be tolerated, Balmung's voice rumbled in his mind, the more subtle differences of tone and inflection strengthened by the physical contact. The dragon sounded... displeased, almost. Compassion clouds your judgement. These people knew the price of defeat when they instigated their rebellion.
Bastian nodded, accepting the admonishment. Other questions nagged at the edges of his reasoning, but he pushed them away. The dragon's reasoning was, as ever, uncompromised by emotion. Ippolius, as so many other things, had surely been a necessary sacrifice. For the greater good.
