Flashback 5 .. Bahamut
Time: A Year Ago
Location: The Glade/The Invader Stronghold
The power washed through me. I took it all in, starving for it. Needing it.
It was glorious. So very glorious. I was drunk with it, but I still couldn’t get enough.
I felt so vast. I could see so much. I could sense everything. And, it all belonged to me.
Tywys and her sacrifice were instantly forgotten. There was no sorrow for the one who brought me such delight.
That’s what she would have wanted, right?
To see me happy?
To see my rise to power!
For me to bring justice down on those who wronged my clan!
To destroy the Invaders who left spirits without people! Those who made the Flames of Bedlam to begin with!
Ah, yes. This was the very thing I was meant to do. Perhaps she just didn’t see that.
I wish she’d understood.
I couldn’t contain the power. My person form… the form I worked so hard to create… it was burning away. I saw the darkness seeping out from beneath my cracking skin.
As the flames burned, it felt so wondrous. I knew that I would soon transform into what my legacy intended. My greatest gift was yet to come!
Soon… soon…
I must be sure that they saw!
I wanted them to watch their death unfold before their eyes.
Just like that, I found myself within the Invader’s home city, far beyond the fortified gates. A place I’d never seen before. I didn’t wonder how I got there. I just delighted knowing what was about to happen. That something vast within me was trying to get out, and would bring the death-flame with it.
I saw them through blood-tinted eyes. The Invaders.
Only, within their town, they didn’t look like the Invaders that I knew. No. They were not the huge mechanical things I used to believe – were those vehicles? Did the ones I saw before ride in machines?
These Invaders looked people(?)
Before I could consider the complications of this revelation, the power within me became too much. My form exploded into fury and darkness.
“Bahamut!” they cried as they fled.
In their language, it was a word that meant a vast, terrible beast. Finally, I was given a proper name!
My wings unfurled, taking many blocks worth of structures as they did. My flame melted rubble and Invaders without prejudice. It was so much hotter than normal flame.
My fury rained down meteors.
My roar crumbled everything before me.
My tail laid waste to anything I might have missed behind me.
Oh, I was vast. Oh, I was terrible.
I savored the destruction. I had mercy for nothing.
And nothing was left of the Invader city when I was done.
This… was just the beginning.
Once I was content with the destruction, I tested my new wings. Flying came naturally to me. Maybe because it was something natural for Tywys.
I didn’t want to think about her. About the possibility that I’d taken on some sort of twisted form of what she once was. But, when I finally landed, in a place far away from everything, I hunted down a pool large enough to see my reflection.
My fears were confirmed.
I looked upon an image that was so much like Tywys, but so different. This creature, the monster before me, was covered with dark scale and bore sharp spikes, with dangerous fangs and claws. There was nothing soft or gentle about the beast I’d become…
…but I could still recognize that my form was like hers once was…
Like her, I was now named.
Bahamut.
I wanted them to know that name. I wanted that name to spread and cause both Invaders and Adversary to shake with fear. I wanted them to know it meant their death.
I would make this happen without mercy.
But at that moment, I lashed down at my reflection with one vast claw, deforming the pool with my blow. Once again, I had a face that disgusted me.
I found very early on that I somehow kept the ability to shift back into my person form. Sometimes I wonder if that was the last gift that Tywys left to me. I know that without this form, something to remind me of what it meant to struggle as a person, I would have had no hope of redemption at all.
Not like I’ve actually redeemed myself.
But I digress.
What did I need my person form for, I hear you ask.
Good question.
As much as I savored the destruction of my enemies, it took a lot out of me. Already, the second transformation I assumed was not as large and powerful as my initial attack. I really didn’t have much information about what limitations I had… or how long I had before Chaos ate my mind and soul.
So, I determined that it was time to expand my own numbers.
Not every soldier-slave the Invaders held captive was like me. Not all could embrace the gifts of the creature-spirits and find their transformation. But those who could, I could sense. And so I hunted them, and took them back to the crystal glade.
There, they would transform. There, they would become the servants of Bahamut.
I knew how to craft forms. The Flames within me weren’t too choosy when it came to which hand wielded the blade. Between my will and Chaos, I began to build my army. One beast at a time.
None of them matched my majesty. But they all had scales and wings and claws like mine.
One day in the future, these creatures, including myself, would be known as Dragons.
So, you know all those stories that call me the First Dragon. The First Sire. The Dragon King. The Hallowed Father?
Yeah, like a lot of stories, those were full of bunk. The dawning of Dragons in our world was not a thing of light and beauty. In fact, a lot of the first Dragons were so unstable, so chaotic, that even I couldn’t keep them under my control.
They became the first “wild” Dragons. The “bad” Dragons, if you’d like.
I guess that’s the price I pay for forcing things beyond their natural boundaries. It never occurred to me back then that our clan should have been made of a variety of beasts, like the ones who exist today.
I wanted Dragons. I needed a Dragon army. I got my army, for better or worse.