Curse

Cassius lay sprawled within the palace, observing his own chest with the All-Seeing Eye. The Heart of Garyx pulsed with a rhythmic, faint glow in time with the steady beating of his heart, seemingly having completely merged into his body. He glanced at his status panel. The number representing the assimilation progress was still rising, though its pace had slowed considerably. [Your absorption progress of the Heart of Garyx: 1.57%] Cassius's expression grew grim. Gods were not beings of absolute free will. Their divine portfolios influenced their personalities to a degree. Even the third Mystra had been warped by the lingering remnants of the original Goddess of Magic, turning her into someone starkly different from who she once was—let alone a mortal creature like a red dragon. Against an entity like Garyx, whose divine rank and bloodline far eclipsed his own, it was virtually inevitable that Cassius would be affected. Had he not realized the subtle shifts in his temperament, he very well might have been molded, bit by bit, into an avatar of the Dragon God of Destruction. "Jezralslak..." He muttered the name once more. Carefully recalling his encounter in the Astral Prism, Cassius only now realized that the Demon of Vengeance's methods went far beyond what he had imagined. The moment Garyx's mutilated remains reappeared before the world, Cassius's thirst for power had crested to an almost uncontrollable peak. He had even embraced a desperate, do-or-die gamble to steal the heart—when in truth, there had been no pressing need to take such a risk. It had been pure, unadulterated greed for power. "This was... the influence of the will of the Abyss." "Becoming chaotic, savage, ruled by desire, willing to pay any price." Cassius could not help a shiver of lingering dread. The demon lord had subtly swayed his mind without his noticing. It seemed the "Cassius" of his previous life had not been deceived for nothing. After all, that Cassius had been a genuine wyrmling fresh out of the nest. How could an infant dragon outwit an old abyssal schemer who had lived for tens of thousands of years? Cassius looked at his status panel, fixing his gaze on the Bloodscaled Fury subclass. This draconic "barbarian" archetype suited a red dragon's nature impeccably, making it a match made in heaven with Garyx's destructive power. Every time he entered a bloodscaled rage, his heart would hammer violently and surges of warmth would flood his body, sending the assimilation progress of the Heart of Garyx skyrocketing. He had once reveled in the intoxicating rush of burgeoning strength, even growing somewhat addicted to the visceral, bone-crunching brutality of bloody slaughter. Now, however, a heavy gloom weighed on his heart. "Bait again, of course..." Cassius gave a bitter chuckle. From the moment he slew Koman, he had stepped right into the trap laid by the Demon of Vengeance. All the bountiful power he reaped from it threatened to become the very poison that would drag him into damnation. He had once looked down on Koman for being blinded by revenge, yet now he was vaguely walking the exact same path. The red dragon could still feel that chaotic, destructive power coursing through every one of his fundus vessels, lurking within his mighty draconic form, biding its time for an opportunity to vent outward and lay waste to all things. This was the shared curse of Garyx, trapped in the Screaming Tunnels, and Jezralslak, imprisoned in the Astral Plane. Ordinary mortals possessed virtually no resistance against a curse of this magnitude. If left unchecked, this condition would only fester. Once Garyx's blood saturated his torso, limbs, and brain, that destructive force would eventually consume him whole, reducing him to a puppet ruled by destructive urges and warped by the will of the Abyss. For now, he could still cling to his reason, but when that time came, mere willpower would no longer be enough to rein it in. Cassius exhaled a plume of sulfurous white smoke. He gazed down at his chest, which rose and fell slightly, as though catching sight of that amber-like blood crystal, and muttered under his breath: "Damn it... I must end this condition as soon as possible." "Whatever the cost." ... In a remote side hall of the royal palace, the silver dragon lay limp upon the floor, her breathing faint. The restraints of the Dragon-Binding Array had been partially lifted. Although outer wards remained that she could not break through, she at least had room to move around freely. Thinking back on everything that had happened over the past few days, she felt an overwhelming sense of absurdity—and an even deeper, boundless grievance. "Just why...?" Olivia's eyes were dazed as she gave a self-mocking laugh. Had the deception never been unmasked, she might not feel so hopeless. She would have had at least a shred of illusory hope to deceive herself with, indulging in the sweet reverie she had woven. Yet now that the bloody, cruel truth lay bare before her, there was no way she could go on lying to herself. The figure of that mighty Lord of Cinders and the figure of that enigmatically charming gold dragon, Anhel, gradually overlapped in her mind. It made the world seem all the more absurd, as though the God of Fate had played a cruel, colossal joke on her, pushing her sanity to the brink of collapse. Strangely, she did not feel the bone-deep hatred toward the red dragon that she expected to feel. Instead, what filled her heart was mostly confusion, incomprehension, and an intensely complicated psychological dependency—a condition known in a certain world, perhaps, as Stockholm syndrome. Her attachment to "Anhel," her wounded indignation at being tricked, and her bewilderment and despair regarding the future tangled together, coalescing into this convoluted knot of emotion in the silver dragon's mind. "He could have killed me." "Yet his demeanor was... as if he were an entirely different dragon." The red dragon's frenzied eyes—burning with the desire to lay waste to everything—surfaced in Olivia's mind once more. It was completely unlike the rational, astute Lord of Cinders, Cassius, from her memories, let alone the kind, honorable gold dragon Anhel. "An abyssal demon..." Olivia recalled the words he had muttered repeatedly. Yes, an abyssal demon. That chaotic, frenzied state, utterly subjugated by base desire, was remarkably similar to the demons hailing from the Abyss. Under the protection of her elders, Olivia had once traveled to Avernus and witnessed the cruel, magnificent Blood War, seeing those savage fiends with her own eyes. "Perhaps... there really is something he couldn't speak of." "Maybe he was even cursed by some demon of the Abyss." Olivia could not help whispering to herself, a faint gleam stirring in her grayish-blue eyes. As she sorted through her jumbled thoughts, she suddenly felt that the red dragon was not entirely beyond redemption—that he might even have been acting against his own will. "Perhaps I can save him." A strange sense of mission suddenly surged within Olivia. She began to believe she might be able to pull him free from that chaotic, savage state, perhaps even reform him and guide him into the embrace of Lord Bahamut's light. This was not merely the salvation of a single red dragon, but the protection of all living beings across the Material Plane. After all, should such an extraordinarily powerful red dragon become an avatar of the Abyss, it would not merely bring ruin to the Great Anzetta Waste; it would be a living nightmare for every mortal soul, a catastrophe for the entire Material Plane.