The Ashen Throne

Arrival

A volcano that is the whole eastern rim, black glass slopes, red rivers, a fortress cut into the crater wall with nine dragon skulls on its gate. Inside, a throne room where the air moves like glass and a man sits with fire coming off him like breath, and behind him, on the wall, nine dragon hearts still beating in nine iron cages.

The feel

Volcano and caves: lava, cinder, ash, sulphur light, the Legion's fortress and the crater under it. The end of the world, on purpose.

The story here

Everything comes here. The Legion's army stands in the outer works, and every ally the player made across eight realms stands against it: Bram with a rake and the Greenwold behind him, the Court's archers or the Court's traitors, Maravel's fleet or Maravel's absence, the Ashwalkers with the wells poisoned, the Brass City walking or burning, the ghosts of the Eyrie on the wall, the White Pack, the giants, the drowned. Vane opens the door or does not. Inside, Malachar, who has been in dragon time for a thousand years and has not been touched in all of them, and who wants one thing: to be given a dragon, once, instead of taking one.

The cast

• Malachar, the Wyrmking. Not a monster who wants anything. A knight of the Eyrie who loved a dragon that died of a sickness he could not cure, and ate its heart to keep it with him, and found that it worked, and could not stop. Signature: he does not move except in dragon time, and when he speaks the words arrive before his mouth. Secret: he knows the pact would have saved his dragon and he did not know it then. He asks, at the end, to be given yours. The last fight is his answer to no.
• Captain Serle Vane, at the door, glove off.
• Sister Halessa, if she lived, with the record of the nine, which she reads aloud as the hearts are freed.
• Marshal Skyward's ghost, on the wall, whom Malachar sees, and stops for, and that is the opening the player gets.

Underground and the boss

The Throne of Ash: the fortress, the crater, the heart-hall. The Legion's best, bone knights, the Brass Heart if it was not turned, and Malachar, in three phases: the knight, who fights like Skyward taught him; the Wyrmking, who pulls you into his dragon time so that for once the world moves at your speed and he at his, and you learn what stolen Wyrmsoul is; and the last, where the nine hearts on the wall answer your dragon's roar and he is, for the first time in a thousand years, alone in his own time.

The last gift

In this fight only, the dragon takes your death and you take its: if you fall, it falls in your place and you stand, once. If it falls, you fall in its place and it stands, once. The Bond decides who, and the player never chooses it.

The endings

• The hearts freed. Nine hearts released; they fly, and Brackenwake has dragons again, somewhere, small and far. Malachar dies a man. The dragon is the first of a new age, and so are you.
• The hearts eaten. The player takes what Malachar offers instead of killing him: eat the hearts, become what he is, with the dragon willing. The Legion kneels. The dragon stays, and it is not yours any more; you are its. The world is safe and the player is the new Wyrmking, and the game keeps going, and every named ally reacts.
• The hearts given. Your dragon gives its own heart to Malachar, freely, the thing he asked for. He is healed and unmade at once, and dies grateful. Your dragon is a dragon without a heart, and it lives, because the pact holds two halves and you have one. It never flies again. You carry it.