Chapter Six - Resolution in darkness.

Dragons are scary monster of two bodies. They are the scaled reptiles of wings, bottomless acidic iron stomachs and scary eyes that see through you like you were made of glass. They are wise elders among the hidden twilight world. Blending in among vampires by having the 'technology' to adapt themselves into humanoid giants. But this the technology that humans would dream of having, to advance of sciences to comprehend. She had to get use to his strange use of science words. Osmoses, denaturing and atom decay was examples she had to learn from him. He loves cooking the most, talking his science words as he learned to try new flavours or cooking methods of his catch. In the short month that she been captive here but had the goddess stop taking her contorl, she noticed his handy work. For a monster of claws, he works well with his hands and make more use of his humanoid giant form to do things then the reptile with teeth. It's a tell that he wasn't always a reptile for or had adapted his life to work with hands over claws.

For him, teaching a fledging to fly was always the critical step for mother birds. Once they had learned that much, there was hope of survival to prolong a future for more birds that have her traits in the future. He can't help himself in finding a friend in her. She taught him things that mattered for human folks as he taught her the prolonged history that humanity erased.

This is solidifying that this was a real family bond. Especially with how trapped with her own body she was, the ai isnt in total control but she is under paralysed conditioning due to forced nano technology stop. Meaning, there isn't a choose in the matter if she likes being here or not. Together in long passing mountain days and nights. Mr Dragon felt this mountain turn into a home, not the prison he felt it was before.

She finally did speak up for herself and not in behalf of the ai lady. She was able to speak of the subjects difficult to cross with humans and topics her dreams showed her. The dragon was impressed she knew a lot and yet so little at the same time. What she knew more than even those in the know but was blind by her ignorance and lacked educational background of things. For a high blood vampire or born half vampire, his taken off guard in how little she had of vampire etiquette. Although, he likes that. Vampires are stuff lawful beings. At equal parts, she was able to talk these nesh things to a dragon over a vampire or human government. If anything, the dragon is working in the dark grey law of this world. He wasn't going to be judgemental of her breaking laws herself or that her slavery background wasn't stopping him talking to her. It's nice to find someone to be non-judgmental for both of them. The dragon literally eats humans, so there will not be a problem to ask about weak points in future assassination attempts. This isn't the hunter that abandoned her.

truthfully it started small, small things like what were creatures called in his language. But the longer they were learning to be together, the more she opened. She understood that most times, his reactions weren't human and that his wisdom came from the past of thousands lifetimes.

He explained that dragons not only ate people just to survival but to have a part of the spirit that was ate is to live within them. When dragons ate the flesh, the memories were added into the dragon. He felt he lived as those people his ate. He knew crime and the punishment. He knew victims and the impacts of those crimes. Justice and misjustice in the same depths. If anything, because he wasn't human, he didn't understand why humans made their short lives overly complicated.

Well, until now. Now he was learning from her, he saw nuance in those memories he didn't before. Love against lust. Hate of others and internal hate humans made inside their own hearts. Humans trying to comprehend things only made it more complicated than it needed to be, muddling themselves to the point of blinding them in ignorance. Now they can't see us other creatures that share their world, they lost the adaptive eyes they use to have. Only young children still have these adaptive eyes, but they are taught to stop using them. Vampires are just stronger eye shapes that retain young human sight. But old vampires lose their abilities as they are aged too far. Of course, the dragon view of lifetime scale isn't how she sees things, so an elder vampire to him was unimaginable to her. But the premise and concept what she took away from his teachings, letting her put her dreams in perceptive of the widest picture she could ever have imagined.

In the meanwhile, she was not meddling in world affecting affairs. The world war abruptly halted in an all sides truce. Everyone was one side against the 'darkness'. Spades of twilight falling ill to the consuming. Another ancient plague that comes back around often during war and strife. This was the same 'disease' causing the spread of the undead. This was a mpre aggressive terrify threat that made monster become visible to humans and be possessive or starved. Humans will turn into hungry raw flesh eaters.

Many took it as the gods abandoning them, and that was true, but the consuming has nothing to doing of these so called gods. The topic came around with the increase of those fleeing into the mountains for safety. The air density plays a part in contacting the consuming. Given that the dragon survived many plagues, he would know what it was. Nervously, it came to the tip of her tongue this evening while the small campfire spat with meat on sticks over the flames. She drew a pattern in the ashes and plucked the courage eventually to ask.

"What is the consuming?" The question is never answered. Scholars poured hours into trying to figure this out. No amount of advanced technology will make any data sense, no amount of smart vampire scholars who spent lives measuring and autopsies over the human victims and sources of church books; couldn't bring about some answer. There was one goddess in repeated reference to why the consuming ended previously before. It also was sided with the slaughter of twilight creatures. So when she asked the dragon this in honesty, she was prepared that he be unwilling to answer it. The topic was a mistake or misunderstanding between everyone. A topic that is a sore spot.

"The nanotechnology has a side effect for its use." He was feeding a campfire of twinges and checking over the roasting meat skewed above it. She sort of vaguely understood by the dragons teaching of his concepts, got the picture that the gods were called AI to him and that this AI was programmed for other planets and was causing problems with competitor AI, "The consuming is when the nanotechnology has been over used and has to take over the host to find new materials to rebuild itself. Nanotech has infinite life spans, but they can self replicate if fed the correct materials. In critical needs, it will do anything it can to consume and find this material." He smirks in recalling something related, "Sure enough, the things you call demons are made of exactly what AI needs. The corpses of the Orix are what makes the ore in the mountains. If the nanotechnology makes humans process it, it will be easier for the nanotechnology to use it. So, in essence, this is a cycle that the engine core ships made to continue this planets eco system. Without the nanotech driving humans to resource the materials. The movement of other things can't happen. It's all calculated all thought up by smart invaders from outside these stars." He snarled.

He throw a big stick into the fire and really blazed it loud. It snapped horridly for a while. In the flicker of the flames, she felt that this was a moment beyond even the predictions of gods. No one really expected her to not be alive still. She has been finally been abondoned by the goddess that her to this place. This place to escape being the pope's pet. None of her future dreams had anything to do with this dragon butcher or her working closer to the 'twilight'. And yet, if she wanted to save this world, they need all of them to work together. Even humans needed awareness of the twilight to work beside them. He hissed at some thought of his own and she noted that his meal of meat was going to fall. She resets one the meat sticks from falling onto dirt. Looking to his strange negative expression, he huffed. He looked at his clawed hands and his eyes narrow back to her. He shrugs to his inner thoughts like it didn't matter if she believe him or not. He makes sure he looked serious to she believed him, like he had to be sure to prove it.

"I was one of them once." He waited and she nods slow at not getting it from that, "I lost my world. Now this one is dying too." She strongly understood him now and it made sense of many facts around these twilight beings, "Humans of the north are just the same. They lost their so called earth and came here. I do believe there are only three native creatures of this so called planet." He posed in sort of counting them off, "The black vine trees. The shapeshifting wolves. The Orix which you call demons." She clearly believes him and he purred glad she could follow him. But he the turned looking at the surrounding, "The soil around this core isn't native." she posed thinking about that deeply at that added information. That put the reptile in ease that she didn't freak out about it all, that the truth didn't turn her mind into mush, "No wonder this place is decaying. Our junk is suffocating it." it was actually what she needed to think of larger things. He looked at the meat sticks on the flame, glad to talk and get such topic off his chest. He felt better talking to something about it. It was this conversation that exiled him from his people, but his vast knowledge of machines, computer script and truth about the so called gods. Even his own race seen him as a forbidden scrpiter of taboo knowledge but much needed being.

"You might actually be onto something I can use." She takes one of the meat skew bites from the fire and starts eating it. She didn't care of it being human or not. She had been starved since the goddess had her locked in her own body. This was the first time she didn't have that annoying prevention from letting her do things. He froze up in about telling her off for stealing his snack but was then caught up in being happy to see her eating anything so willingly. He finally taught his little bird to fly. It was very emotional for him to see her going for more. He then also had a mind snap for a moment. More than that, she was able to follow his understanding of things as an equal. That this wasn't the AI pretending to listen. This was her genuine actions of her will.

"Does this mean you finally know what you are going to do? Do you want to live?" he held claws clasped in being unsure if he actually wants her to reply to this. He peered concern that maybe telling a god vessel such truth will backfire him someday. He felt to attack to kill her, not that she was killable by standard methods. He was ready for it but seeing her being so starved enough to loose herself in eating clearly what was human meat. He lowered back.

Maybe there was hope in this hybrid, that she was the right amount of monster. She maybe doesn't really have considered it herself but the day she turns fully over to her vampire side. She will be the sort of ally that cares little for looks, race or fear. He taken surprise again in how she matched trying to be serious, that she sits in being ready to say something equally true to her own thoughts. That she did look up at him in fear while he bare claws out, not fear of dying but rather she was like a dragon herself. A young welp looking up to a wiser elder for choose words. She finds words hard this time, as if the topic was brittle, fragile and thorny. She gives herself a shake and just goes for it.

"I was getting dreams from the gods. You don't call them gods. You say 'machine ai'. I get it, they are the thinkers of the broken fallen star ships. When this so-called nanotechnology was giving me future dreams, they were vague predictions going at random directions. I blindly followed these dreams in not understanding why I had them and why I had to do them." She scrunched up as she felt it was right share their crazy, so it was her turn. He believes her. He listened as she had for him, "It gave me a purpose, so I follow the dreams exactly. When I dreamed taking any wrong direction, it would make death the outcome of failure, so if I wanted results in glimpses. I had to follow as it told me to. It told me about the core dying, and it is somewhat true but I have time to stop it." she wipes her face a little off of the blood and grease. Their gaze met and he nods understanding her. She smiled in this feeling, its nice to have someone be on the same page, "I was looking to repair these star ships to get people of the surface." she tossed the remains backwards, "But what if my dreams aren't space nanotechnology?" She frowns in how that didn't make sense and back to worry that he didn't follow. He does pose thinking and so she adds fact she learnt, "The biology of them vine black trees aren't organic, you know. I read it in many of the books. I was shown how to read the language of the forbidden science book and so much." She shook and hears herself. She sinks a little at this being a deliriously shot in the dark. The dragon scratched at this prolonged thinking through many things. He actually was coming to term of his own understandings of things, and felt she was onto something he over shot in the past.

"Well, this isn't even a proper planet. The sun and two moons are actually space ships of different warring races. They are warring ships trying to take back their missing. What if this planet is a ship, too?" He posed like a scholar pouring over some research. "I can see that, really. It makes sense of many off details and the inability for organic matter to survive if you dug to deep in the soil. The very shield that keeping this air locked here is stopping them ships entry into this orbit." He scratched shed of skin off and purred a lot. Toying about the thoughts more, "I don't think you're crazy. It makes sense. It's humans that are stupid in thinking this was a planet at all." Well, at least she has this scary dragon believing her. She glad there is him in her life to shine this truth with.

"Will you help me build star ships for those that don't want to be a part of this? Send those missing back home?" She offered her dirty hand to him, and he smirked purring. They shake on this.

"So what are we going to do now?" He smirked and adding more meat sticks to the flame to cook, since she ate them all, "I can't leave this mountain unless you can break the pope's command input to the mountain terminal."

"You know... I was going to do exactly that before that goddess ruined it." he stopped purring in being taken in with shock. Half made stick dropped on the floor. But then again, he already knew this was a granddaughter of both empyreal vampiric order and the human sun worshippers. It that she could have freed them both from this mountain sooner, but then again. The time spent here will be the last time he is here willingly. His last days of this mountain have been fantastic. She made it better at the end, and she will bring the end. It's gratitude worthy.

"I guess I am going back to being a vessel of a goddess that wants me dead. But now I can block my dreams and stuff. You taught me enough. Now, I will be the enemy that makes them leave the planet and the savour that brought them to the stars. I will use the consuming to convince them to leave." The dragon lingered on how many lives that will cost and then again, the amount of lives being ripped off this surface if she doesn't get them off. He felt the world weighted his shoulders, but he was happy to shoulder this with her. She stood a bit tall in thanks to this long recovery, time to think plans and share this desire to a like-minded. This was a lady who will bath in blood to carry them off this death trap.

"I pray well, bringer of the red dusk." He hugs her in loving his little bird for how strong she has always been.

It was only right that she stumbled a little on her path to save lives of so vast amounts. He felt he should always respect what needs to be done. Culling is fine in healthy doses. Truly, monsters think alike. He stays here to ready to pack to leave this mountain, and she trekked off to the hunter camping site that protected the pope's seal. In other words, the site that hid the machine that generated the force field from preventing the dragon's leave. In the eyes of humans training to be scripter casters and hunters tested to be holy users, this mountain has a god trial that helps you obtain the power. But really, it's gaining more nanotechnology in being in close proximity to the machine field generator. She knows the command language, which it the god tongue to input commands. She just needed to find the right set of words. This would be shown on a terminal screen or scribbled by something that builds that there. A reminder in case of death or forgotten.

Meanwhile, the spiders heard everything spoken, but it was a lot in the overflowing trade of spiders knowing stuff. The spiders have become too big a name and to vastly rely on for war tactical and instant message. So this truth was either delayed or lost. The prince of Twilight was a close heart to spiders now. He prefers their service over the beetle network that the vampire queens used. Also, he had this huge crush on the lady the spiders took in for a little while. She was commanding the slave trade and now the trade in command of itself. It has no leaders and was falling apart. Her absence was worse then when she was there holding it together. So now he was having to meddle to stabilize the illegal markets, hiring smaller vampire nobility into managing the gangs that were destabilized from the leadership shuffling. The chains were broken but in the chaos emerged a united market of drug, slavery and exotics. It was better treatment, cleaner running and regulating in a much smarter level of business. It still corrupt but this was more like money loans then blood and drug wars between gangs. It was playing a large part in the medical industry with organ and blood donation, out sourcing holy water treatments and changing the affordability of health care to common humans. Impacting the humans whom weren't doing better even during war, famine and plague. Successful treatments for rare illnesses have extended a work force of legal human workers and causing job sacristy. Adding more corpses to the wars. But change was still happening, war even on truce will end some way.

The medical improvement has cause the red devil to loose many men under his care. As they were having medical aid to no longer need a piece of him to extend their lives. But this was to his own benefit, those people he lost weren't loyal to him alone. They were unwilling to his causes and were once dead humans forced back from a piece of him transplanted into them. Loosing supports at this point of time was the back fire he didn't need.

Especially being hands deep with the 100 still living grandmaster children under Winchester. Red devil had came to hear some of them are vampiric god vessels. Worse was the fall out caused by revelations of the gods seeing from half vampire sight. Impacting the oath order of the goddess to intervene too. The order is the once whom steal vessels from across the world and put them into god educational laws. Being above royal and world laws. In fact, they are the ones that created the sanction of divine province. When a god vessel is pardoned from all crimes due to being a god puppet, enacting god miracles. It works the other way too, when god divine abilities is used to save lives that a country or government would have otherwise prevented due to racism or political disagreements. The oath order meddling with these grand master children is causing strife's and hindering educational vampire backgrounds.

The on going destabilization of nations due to attacks by frenzy vampires and those infected by the consuming. War felt as if it had continued throughout many of the once stable human countries and vampire lead territories. Human settlements closed themselves off and became self-ran. Cities took the biggest impacts. Entire capital cities have collapsed and became battlespaces for undead against the consuming victims. The northern monsters of corpses coming back to life has became normal. Best to behead or cremate the dead for now on. But city cemeteries of the long dead coming out the graves were the most dangerous. The movement of corpses brought disease of its own issues. So there wasn't many governments left with control over particular populations. It became lawless and scattered.

It was safe to say that many races across this world took all methods they could to run away from the plague and undead. The panic is to scattered to think of any places as one mass. Even hidden nation dragons on an unknowledge shore mass; they are now making plans to burn the source of the undead from its core, regardless of the amount of innocent will bleed from it.

The merman of the great oceans didn't even bother helping humans or vampires about land problems, not a flinch towards surface war. But they did stir to work saving the Ice queen. It was this Ice queen that held back the undead all this time, something had to happen to her for her to not be holding the undead back anymore. It was the fact that the Ice queen and the Flame king are whom control the rise and fall of oceans, so her being unable to contain the undead means that the water level is set to rise to drastically for merman to survival of pressure differences. Both the ice Queen and Flame king are hidden gods, myths told among even vampires. But the dragon butcher is good talks to them, they are a large part of the twilight truce and vampire pledge promise.

The grandmasters are all to distracted by the revelation of this screwed up next generation. It mattered not if they wanted to use them as puppets or teach them to be vampires. Stopping these children from being divine god puppets was their biggest threat. These high bloods have the ability to command the lower pyramid of vampires, thus giving these god vessels a ready made frenzy army to wipe out the rest of vampires. The divine were human favoured always, so there was no plan to treat half bloods as equals when the land was wiped 'clean' of 'evil'. The gods don't have the ability to see the twilight, creating a even bigger mess if they were to succeed the vampire wipe out. It's easy to see that the divine and churches are siding together in trying to make high blood vampire pawns. The lead church of this is that of the church of the sun. The immortal human wacko heading the church thinks he has the most important saint under his control. Thinking that the intimate relationship they held was power over the goddess inside the vessel, to gift something that can't be offered other places. He dead wrong, but he on this crusade because of this assumptions.