The four dragons were completely paralyzed. They couldn't believe what they were looking at. That couldn't be the skull of one of their kind... could it? But it was so… gigantic! The jaw was so large that even at their thirteen meters in length they took up only a small part of it, and those teeth were decidedly enormous. How old must that dragon have been to reach such a size? "Well... fuck" was the only thing after an indefinite period of time one of them (Tikka) was able to say.
Those single words were enough to trigger something inside Haku; as if animated by a strange energy, he ran towards the jawbone and descended through it, nearly overwhelming Arethar in the process; due to the position of the dragon's skull, the jaw was diagonal and therefore allowed it to slide downwards. Haku continued until he hit the ground again, and then almost without thinking he ran around the bones to be able to see them in their entirety. He didn't care about possible risks, dangers, dangerous animals or crevices; he just wanted to be able to look at the skull of that creature that had once been a member of his species. When he was far enough, he looked up and his heart sank.
The skull was enormous, a cyclopean structure to say the least; it measured at least seventy meters, and was therefore almost as long as Kalos, the father of Haku and all his siblings, had been. The skull leaned slightly upwards and was supported by great pillars of earth and rock, and it seemed to be kissing a point in the cave ceiling from which the hollow from which they had descended could be glimpsed. The mouth was half closed, making the teeth as tall as a house clearly visible, and the gigantic horns seemed to support the entire ceiling by themselves. The huge empty eye sockets were so large that Haku could have snuggled inside them, and watching them the dragon almost felt that they were watching him. He had never felt such a sense of inferiority, not even towards his parents: that... that had been a dragon like no other still existing in the world, a gigantic and invincible titan. Haku felt like an ant in front of a god, and he was fully aware that if that dragon was still alive it could crush him with its fingertips.
Haku couldn't describe his emotions at that moment; it seemed to him that his mind had just been captured by a hurricane that kept stirring his thoughts without any logical purpose. He didn't know what he was feeling. A great sense of inferiority, certainly, but also a great admiration for that being who had lived so long as to grow to that enormous size. How long must he have lived? More than a thousand years, for sure. Many, many more. And even now, after who knows how many thousands of years, that dragon's bones were in perfect condition, as if the enormous weight of three kilometers of rock and the ineffable passage of time hadn't been able to scratch the last sign of that that when he was alive he was surely an existence that could bend the world to his will. Not even death had broken that immense dragon, which was now there as a perpetual witness of its passage over the world, reminding all the creatures that passed by of the profound terror it inspired when it covered the sky with its wings so immense as to obscure the sun.
Rhaegal, Tikka, and Teramon rushed off the skull and ran exactly to where he was, and just like him they found themselves gaping as they marveled at the dragon's enormous bones. Their minds seemed to have been captured, sucked into the giant empty eye sockets of the dead dragon, as if they were its property and their only job was to watch and admire. The four young dragons had mixed feelings at the time, but they all agreed on one thing, and that was that the huge skull of the dead dragon could be described in no other way than with one word: magnificence.
Magnificence.
MAGNIFICENCE.
"There lies Balagaberan, the Mother of the New World" Arethar said as he stood between them and folded his legs in a bow. Almost mechanically, Haku, Rhaegal, Tikka, and Teramon followed suit, and folded their forelegs and ducked until their snouts touched the ground. Never before had they bowed in their lives, least of all in front of a corpse that had been dead for several millennia, but at that moment they couldn't help but do it. The giant skull of the dead dragon, indeed, the dead dragoness, inspired too much awe in even the hearts of dragons for them to resist the urge to kneel and revere that ancient titan. And Zamor, Isaac, Misune, Efren and Atelas, as soon as they descended from the skull and reached them, and turning their gaze they also saw the enormous shape of the dragon's head, they in turn felt their hearts sink into a sea of conflicting emotions ranging from primal fear to the utmost admiration, and instinctively they all bowed, prostrating themselves before that entity whose potency in life must have been something far beyond imaginable. They could do nothing but admire her in all her magnificence.
Magnificence.
MAGNIFICENCE.
Haku didn't know how long he remained in that position, motionless to touch the ground with his muzzle, bowed in front of that existence that seemed so impossible to believe to him that he repeatedly had the doubt that he wasn't dreaming or wasn't having a dream. hallucination. His brain completely lost track of time, and even his infallible biological clock went completely out of sync. Time was but a frivolous thing, a feature of the world no more important than grains of sand, that nothing had been able to do to that little dragon who was still there showing all her power, and who almost seemed to laugh in the face of the time as if to challenge him to try to knock it down with all his strength, aware that not even all the time in the world would have been able to consume his bones, already scratched despite the passage of who knows how many thousands and thousands of years. Haku therefore never knew when he was actually able to regain control of his will and lift his body off the ground again, and look up to look at the giant skull again. He almost felt a shiver as his eyes met empty sockets again, almost as if his gesture was the equivalent of a blasphemy against that incredible magnificence.
Magnificence.
MAGNIFICENCE.
"Balagaberan..." was the first word he was able to utter. It could only be the name of that being so imposing and powerful, it would have been foolish to think of saying any other word or phrase before it. "You said her name was... Balagaberan...?"
Arethar got up too, almost shivering on his legs. He didn't seem to be able to hold the sight of the giant skull. "Yes, she is Balagaberan. The Mother of the New World, the Ruler beneath the Earth, the Singer of Dreams, the Last Survivor of the Old World, the Eternal Empress of All that Exist and will ever Exist"
Those titles looked like a magic song, no, they looked like the beginning of an epic poem. They were describing a being beyond the limited imagination of mortals, who sat above the world and was revered by all its creatures. Yet even those high-sounding titles seemed a poor representation, a pathetic and miserable description of what the dragon had really been in life and continued to be after death. There were no words in mortal language to describe what Haku, Rhaegal, Tikka, and Teramon were feeling right now, and never would exist until the sun went out and everything in the world died. Balagaberan couldn't be called anything other than Absolute, Supreme, Total Pinnacle of Existence. Unattainable. Unreachable. Unstoppable.
"How... how old was she?" Haku asked almost hesitant. He didn't even know if his brain would be able to sustain the answer.
Arethar smiled. "She was the last lord of the world to die of old age. When she left this world, she was over ten thousand years old"
Ten thousand years! That number was repeated in Haku's head for an infinite number of times, yet the dragon had a great deal of trouble accepting it. Ten thousand years. Ten millennia, one hundred centuries, one thousand decades, two thousand lustrum, one hundred and twenty thousand months, five hundred and thirty thousand weeks, three million seven hundred and twenty thousand days, eighty-nine million two hundred and eighty thousand hours, five billion three hundred and fifty-six million eight hundred thousand minutes, three hundred twenty-one billion four hundred and eight million seconds. They were numbers so shocking, so incredible, so beyond comprehension, that it seemed almost impossible that any living being could have survived so long. Haku remembered when his mother had told him about the oldest dragon she had ever known, who was six hundred and five years old; at the time it had seemed to him an extraordinary age, but now it seemed to him but a miserable instant, just a moment in the very long life of that dragoness who lay before him at that moment and continued to instill in him a sense of utter inferiority.
With trembling paws, Haku stepped forward and walked towards the huge skull, and then he placed a paw on it. He could barely touch the base of that gigantic jaw. It was just a pile of bones, but in touching them Haku perceived a strange strength, as if all the power that the dragoness had had in life was contained within them, since it hadn't wanted to abandon its mistress but had wanted to stay inside her for always, even after her own death, even after her skin disappeared and the flesh was eaten by the scavengers, until even the bones would crumble to dust, which would never happen because even the inexorable passage of time couldn't affect the sheer magnificence of Balagaberan. Haku felt that power coursing through his veins; he didn't know if it was just his sensation or if some sort of contact was really taking place between him and those so ancient bones, but it was as if the immense primordial strength of that colossal dragon penetrated his heart making it beat wildly and giving him a strength he had never felt he possessed. Soon Rhaegal also came beside him and did the same; he didn't do it because his brother had done it too, he had barely noticed it, he did it because he too felt the intense desire to touch those ancient and imposing bones and feel how they were to the touch. Tikka also came after them, and Teramon last. The four dragons stood motionless with their paws resting on Balagaberan's jaw, almost able to feel her indestructible flesh and scales, her blood circulating through her veins and arteries like a river, her breath so powerful it uprooted entire mountains with one puff, her powerful muscles that could have shattered a continent with just one movement.
With an inhuman effort, Haku finally managed to tear his eyes away from the giant skull, and when he did he realized something else. The skull wasn't alone... behind it gigantic vertebrae remained firmly chained to each other, despite the fact that there were no more muscles, tendons and cartilage to hold them together, and they rose above the entire ceiling of the cave forming a huge backbone; shortly after, two huge shoulder blades so large that they could have been mistaken for wings were spread on the rock above, almost as if they had merged with them, and immediately after ribs more than a hundred meters high created pillars that supported the whole cave. And under those ribs that seemed immovable even by the most violent and devastating forces of nature, that no tsunami, hurricane, earthquake or volcano could have even scratched, there were structures that were clearly buildings. "That's..."
"Tigu-chtu-tal, the most sacred and populated city of my people. Built directly among the remains of the most noble and powerful creature of this world, who even after death protects us by creating this cave with her own body" Arethar replied in an almost dreamy voice. "Now do you understand why it's called the City of Noble Bones?"