The Necropolis, its denizens, the Mother and the dragons all belong to me. This story is something that got written partly as a result of a text RPG with VladimirsAngel and partially as a result of a relaxing (?!) week off work whilst my parents moved house. Please, please R&R and please be kind!

In the beginning.

Blackness.

Not nothing, as nothing implies the presence of something for there to be a lack of. Simply void.

Then, in the black, something stirred. No-one knows where She came from or how long she had been there before she made her presence known. Nevertheless, She was there, filling the nothing with something. Stars sprang from her belly, tiny points of light in the black and for an age they danced to the music of her song.

Time passed, and in that time, an egg was formed in the body of the Mother. She nursed it as best She knew how, and after aeons in her care, the two were born. Two dragons from a single egg, one gold, one black. The gold one, full of goodness and light and creation and he loved his Mother dearly. The black one was full of shadow and void. He embodied the unmade, the void and the nothing. He sought to return his Mother and all that She had created to the purity of the void, and anger welled within him.

The two brothers swam through the purity of the void, the black dragon in shadow, the gold in the light of the new stars. The gold dragon wove the fabric of the stars and helped to bind them together. He found that in his folding, he could find the seams and travel as swiftly as the starlight itself. He found that there were other Mothers, with other stars and other children and he travelled and made peace and learned from a great many of them. The black dragon trod the void, crafting the blackness between the stars, forever jealous of his brother and the creation that he brought.

The gold dragon gathered together matter, floating in the new sky and bound it together to form a world. He placed it around a star to warm it and soon it blossomed in the bosom of the Mother. She saw to it that the land was good, that day was day and night was night. The gold dragon sang in his new world, and soon there came fire and water, stone and wood. The Mother bade creatures large and small spring from the new earth and so was made a place that was good and Life blossomed.

The black dragon saw what his brother had created and grew jealous. He sought to consume to world and that star that it called its own, for the void was pure and he was a child of the void. Wherever there was Death, he was there. Consuming all, unmaking what he could. His heart, full of hatred ceased to beat and he became a creature driven by malice. The spark of Life that his mother had given him was gone, and so he existed purely to Unmake what was made. His flesh sloughed and rotted from his bones and his voice penetrated all that would listen, putting fear and doubt into all things.

The golden dragon heard the words of his brother and sought to soothe what he had said, to guide the creatures through their lives and at the end, return them to the Mother's great wheel so that they might live again. But the black dragon prevailed and so the worlds entered a time of great darkness when the golden light was almost put out. The golden dragon struck out in wrath at his brother, burning all that served him with fire from his belly. Walking through the ruins of his rage, the golden dragon lamented his deeds and vowed that never again would he take a life.

Slowly, he helped the world to grow once more from the ashes and the Mother turned the globe.

His brother, scorched by the fire, sloughed his rotten body like a husk and took to hiding in the dark places, waiting once more for a time to return and claim his place in the Void.

Dirty sunlight filtered through the even dirtier windows of the shop. It was a shop found in seedy alleyways everywhere. Wire grilles covered the windows, helping to cut out whatever sunlight the filth allowed in, but then, it didn't tend to get much trade during the day. It was the kind of shop that tended to deal mostly in unmarked bills and stocked mainly sought after goods. Sought after by their owners, the police and the people who wanted to buy them. The proprietor of the establishment was fairly run of the mill in terms of Necropolitain shopkeepers went. His dirty vest which may once have been white showed off his unwashed and tattooed arms and his jeans buttoned below his overhanging stomach. The other figure in the shop stood in shadow, its face unclear. And in its hand was a bundle of cloth, unwrapped to reveal something dark and curved.

The proprietor was used to dealing with people like the one standing in front of him now. He asked no questions other than the asking price, and when the deal was sealed, he handed over the money, he received the package and that was that. The shadow did not shake hands, it simply left, sending a beam of filthy yellow to illuminate the dust in the air of the shop. The man stared at the thing and locked it in the safe in the back room.

The safe for the things that all his special customers want.

If he had known the journey that the thing had to get into his hands, he might have raised an eyebrow. Or maybe not, he wasn't the type to bother what happened to other people. What he did know was that the thing in his safe was worth a lot of money to him. Other people's blood didn't matter at all.

The spirit of the Unmaker left its body, but the physical remains endured and retained the malevolence of its occupant. Even in its dead state, it was still the body of one of the First and thus it remained a thing of power. The power of the material remains of the great star dragon sung to all those with hatred in their souls and offered them succour and retribution in exchange for their return to the abyss. The golden dragon perceived the actions of his brother and sought to protect those who fell under his spell. Piece by piece the golden one destroyed the bodily remains of his brother, so that his plan to claim the world for the void would be thwarted.

For an age the golden one kept the world in the light, whilst his brother sung in dark places to those with misgiving in their souls and roared as piece by piece he was returned to the bosom of his mother. Then came a time that only a tooth and a claw remained and the voice of the dark one fell silent.

For aeons the golden one kept watch whilst his brother lay brooding. The tooth and claw lost and the sibilant song was silent, but the golden one knew that his brother would not lie still for ever. The golden one grew weary and he lay down to sleep.

After an eternity, the Unmaker began to whisper in the hearts and minds of those touched by malice. The vampires of the Necropolis heard and some began to serve the Unmaker as if he were a god. The golden one and his younger brothers and sisters had passed into legend as they slept, and the wolf skinchangers that he had befriended had been all but wiped out by the plague of undead that swept the world.

A plague of undead that heard the song of the Unmaker louder than had anyone since the burning days.

The song grew louder and the golden one stirred. He woke and saw what had happened to the world that he had carved. The Mother rarely stirred other than to ensure that the sun rose and set and a city of iron and stone had sprung like a carbuncle from the flesh of his world. So intense was his grief that the world shook. He took to the wilderness, waking his younger brothers and sisters where he could and finding those skinchangers that remained. Slowly he nursed his world back to health and went some way towards drowning out the song of his brother. For a short while, the sun came out on the Necropolis.