Yo kids! I'm super excited to have something to post here finally. @axikor commissioned me a while back to write her bios for a few dragons - one pair being a mated set. I got super excited and so very carried away and somewhere along the lines their bios turned into a 5500+ word short story.
Disclaimer... Naturally, I'm bound to have screwed up some lore - most especially the sizes of the dragon species because that's weird and it makes things awkward when you think about, like, imps and noodles breeding. So everyone's more or less the same size.
Anyway, here it is!!
It begins on an island which is itself a long finger of pitted volcanic rock swiped across an open blue sea. Specks of land trail behind the main island like ladies in waiting, like forgotten crumbles broken off from the main body as mantle slides overtop the workings of the earth below. The island is black as pitch, but plays host to a sea of lush greenery dappled with vibrant blooms and birds painted wild colors. The stout hard-barked trees are filled with color and with fruit and with aromas that drip in the warm, balmy air.
At the center of the long island is the land's creator: a single and enormous volcano. The monster lies quietly for long, peaceful lengths of time, but always grows unwell again. Divided by this plinth of stone and fire are two clans forever at odds. And though they can agree on little else, they do both know one single truth: The volcano is a god and it, like they, is want to grow lonely. Every summer, when the days are longest and the sun burns hot to bake the blackstone sand, a tribute is given to this god that it might be still another year. That it might hold its sorrowful rage and let the clans thrive at its feet.
It is the only thing the clans agree on and the offering of tribute is the only time when old feuds are put to rest between them.
And so it starts here. It starts with two young souls shackled and bound at the rim of a disquiet volcano. It starts, like all things, at their ends.
... JALAD ...
It is an honor to be chosen. In the embrace of her god, she knows she will find happiness. She knows she will want for nothing and that her life everafter will be one of grace and of warmth and of peace. Happiness.
Jalad tries to tap into this peace then, tries to sample it or imagine the way it would remove from her the weight she felt then. That crushing weight. Her stomach is turned inside her and lodged tight against her throat. Her lungs are too small. Her mind a discordant mess.
There, on the stony edge of the land - with the volcano's maw opened before her and the world laid out behind her. There, with her wings trussed to her back in wide leather straps. There, with her clan's leaders and her family's faces to one side and with those of small, knobby-faced strangers to the other. There, where even the sun has stopped in its arch to watch the happenings. There, with her life in its last moments. There, Jalad tries to find peace same as she tries to not look down into the throat of the mountain.
She looks at nothing, in fact. And no one. She tries to stare ahead, but her tail won't stop its swishing. Her eyes land on the strangers' tribute. He is an odd looking dragon the sorts of which Jalad has seldom seen and then only from a far off distance. He is the dark color of shade under a palm, with rough scales and with flesh wings and short legs. Not at all like her with her eggshell wings that glisten in the sun and her smooth, sleek body the pure white color of the moon in winter.
She can see the oldest and most hunched of the strangers speaking, but the words are whipped away by the smoke and by wind. No doubt whatever he says is similar to that said by her own clan's eldest. To her left, the old crone barters for peace and for prosperity and for plenty; begs that their god take her, Jalad, and be restful again.
There is a tense moment, just after the crone's voice dwindles. A moment where all the words that need saying have been said. A moment where there is only the deed to be done. Jalad looks right, to her den mother's kind face as if she might save her in that last dreadful pause. But the female is not looking at her, she is looking straight ahead and from behind her Jalad is given a push that sends her off balance and tumbling. Her wings flap and strain, but they are held fast and for all her desperate flailing it is all she can do scream as she falls into the mountain. The caldera is hot and hotter. The fall is infinitely long until the flames themselves come up to snatch her from the air. So close, she swears it is a dragon's maw that reaches for her; a demon sent to snatch her and swallow her greedily. Same as it snatches the stranger who falls with her; the stranger whose fate is sealed, same as hers.
... DARMOK ...
There is a greyed moment. A length of time indecipherable. A heartbeat filled with precisely nothing. No pain, no fear, nor even any consciousness to speak of. Darmok wakes from the grey to find that the dull shade lingers in the waking world as well. He is home. In the center of his clan's city, surrounded by the opened mouths of dens that are dark inside. No voices rise up, nor do the trees rustle in the wind. The sky, the earth, the stone - everything is held behind a muted lens that swims and shifts at the edge of his periphery like dusty glass. It's as if the whole world has been paused.
His heart, he finds, is still hammering in his chest. But he is unbound and unhurt. He breathes deep. His mind races -- then slows. He is dead. This is death. The fact grips him tight and, like all living things are want to do, Darmok panics. He scrabbles to his feet and roars into the world. For a moment, the sound he has made is the only sound and it crashes like thunder in his ears. He shakes his head, lopes to the nearest doorway and announces his being with a demand: "HELLO!"
The shadows say nothing. Not even an echo.
He repeats the practice to another doorway and then another until he comes to his own home. Familiar, but alien. There, in the doorway, he leans against the stone. He is panting, out of breath.
"I am dead," he says. "I am dead."
... JALAD ...
She stands, waiting, in the center of clan's shared common area. The courtyard is nestled between trees that do not waver, under a moon that does not shine - nor even exist. There are no stars in the stone grey sky, either. Nor any wind. Nor birds. Nor flame flickering in the torches circling the open and softly sandy yard. It is, like the rest of the world, empty. If Jalad panicked such as her nocturne counterpart has done, the episode is long past. She finds it is hard to muster much else than disappointment at this stage. Death is dreadfully drab.
"Well." She says. There is no reply and in the empty din she wonders if she's said anything at all, or if she merely imagined saying something.
"Now what?"
Still nothing.
Jalad walks the row of dens to her own and ducks inside. It is familiar, which is very nice. But cold and dead and empty like the rest and so rather unsettling. It is a perfectly natural response, Jalad comforts herself. Perfectly logical. It's why homes are haunted and not, say, common areas. Not rivers or stones or outlooks. No, by far dens are the most populated by ghosts. When the whole world ends, it makes sense that the dead will go to the place most familiar to them.
"This certainly isn't what I imagined," she says.
Behind her, in the cold stone hearth, a flame bubbles up and casts a warm glow that saws at the dark and sends shapes to dance on the stone walls. Jalad turns at once and though she knows she should be afraid, she finds herself unable to be so. The fire burns through her, warms her from the inside.
"Hello," she says again, softly and with a smile of her pearl white maw.
Sorrow and loss unite the clans, the fire quavers. It can be different. The choice is yours. Find your adversary. Break the cycle.
Jalad shifts. Her tail snaps at the air behind her. "My adversary? Do you mean the nocturne?"
Find your adversary.
"Yes, I know, but wh---"
Break the cycle, it repeats. And again the fire changes. It sputters and shrinks.
"No, wait!" Jalad steps closer, stands over the embers. "Please, wait!"
But there is no reply and the warmth, the light disappears down into the coals which it leaves cold and grey and dull. She paws at the embers, pushes the dusty coals aside. But there is nothing. Nothing.
"Don't bother looking," says a voice behind her. Jalad whirls, wings snapped wide. A ghost waits for her in the doorway. He is a wildclaw stitched of smoke which whorls and tumbles in its silhouette. His face is blank save for the dull moonstone eyes that go unblinking. "It won't come back."
Jalad finds her maw is open, her heart fluttering.
"Don't be scared," he says. His voice is flat. Featureless, like he himself. He does not move, though his shape shifts and swirls.
"Who are you?"
"A tribute. Like you. I want to help you."
Jalad turns her head, bird-like, to peer at him sidelong. "Help me find my adversary?"
"Yes. Among other things."
"What other things?"
"You can help others, in helping yourself."
"Like who?"
"Me. Your clanmates. All the other tributes. We are trapped. There is a choice to make - at the end. You will see. There is a choice. You must choose."
Jalad is quiet. She wishes she had not asked. The ghost upsets her. His shape is familiar the same way a clanmates shadow would be - the shape correct, but everything else is warped. Wrong. Alien.
"I don't want your help," she says finally.
The ghost blinks then, slowly. His head moves and now she can tell that he had not been looking directly at her thus far, but rather at nothingness behind her; at dead space.
"You must choose correctly. Your clanmates need you."
"I'll do it on my own." Her chin ticks up, but he does not move so she adds a sharp: "Go away!"
Another slow blink.
And then the ghost steps aside from the door to let her pass. He moves as if underwater, slowed by some thickness in the air Jalad does not yet feel. Her nerve bunches up in her chest, burns her and then forces her legs to move. She dashes quickly past the doorway, back out into the dead still night. Her wing tip swipes through the ghost who feels of nothing at all - not of a chill or a tingle. Pure nothing.
When she looks back his shape has been cut by her feathers and it finds form again slowly, all the grey and white smoke of him tumbling, twisting back to place. He is watching her with those cold eyes, unblinking.
Jalad turns her nose for the nocturne camp, beats her wings and leaps to set her off the ground. The ghost waits on the ground, watching without following. Still, she feels his eyes on her and knows he is with her.
... DARMOK ...
"What's your name?" Darmok asks his ghostly companion as they leave beneath the stone plinths that mark the edge of his clan's village. They are going to find 'his adversary', as the fire advised. Death is odd, he thinks. It is the end of everything, yet there are still errands to be run; still things to be seen to.
"I don't remember."
His own ghostly helper is, like him, a nocturne. Though he finds her presence a boon - then again anyone might if it was her wings, themselves made of shade and of silence, that comforted him when the world seemed empty and hollow; if it was her voice that soothed the panic risen up in him. She had come from nothing and offered nothing save companionship; an escape from the pinpoint loneliness of the world. And, in answer to his confusion, she brings answers to his questions.
All, so far, save this one.
Darmok looks over to her. He stops on the soft path and turns his head. "You don't remember?"
She shakes her head softly. "No."
"When was your sacrifice?"
A pause and in it he imagines the ghost smiles softly. Imagines the curve of the smokey whorls is that of a maw turning up. Darmok turns away, unsettled into silence, and continues to walk. Walking, he finds, helps him think. It is slower, yes, but he has nothing save time. No doubt the wildclaw has been given the same instructions. They will meet on the sandy cliffside road between clans. It runs along the beach and when he looks out over the sea he finds it tumbling mute and slowed.
"What is this place?" He asks. "Where are we?"
"Between moments," she says. "I seem to remember someone telling me that once. That we are between moments. Maybe we have stepped out of time. Just to the left of it or..." Her voice softens and fades. Then, "There will be a test. This is important, dear. Listen."
Darmok turns and looks at her beneath the arch of his wing. He slows and waits until she has drifted nearer behind him. "I thought you said it was a choice."
"Different words for the same thing. Listen, I will tell you what I know." She looks aside and her moonstone eyes narrow as if in concentration; as if to pull the answers from across some great distance of time and ether. "There is a choice. The fire will come to you again and it will ask you to the caldera. It is a place I cannot go so you must remember what I tell you. You will be alone with her. With your adversary. Don't forget. The fire burns on souls and it will ask for yours. It will try to trick you. Keep your soul, dear."
"My soul?" His tail whips at the air, flicking off a chill.
She nods her foggy head, wisps of smoke trailing behind as she moves. And then her head drifts aside and Darmok follows her gave out into the bleak sky.
"She is coming. Your adversary."
She is a pure white bolt pointed toward him. Her wings are tucked, her tail whipping to guide her in on a low swoop that ends with a dainty drop on just two legs. Odd that, he's always thought. Wildclaws are everything nocturnes are not. Even down to their stance.
Darmok backs up a step to give her room. Closer, he can see that she has color, however little. The world is dark and dull, but there is moonlight on her skin and the soft faint rainbow of light trapped in her ivory feathers. He can see the rose blush of excertion in the thin, fine skin over her snout. He is unsure why, but his heart is beating quicker. He exhales a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He should say something first, but he is unsure what.
"Are you... real?" He asks.
Jalad nearly laughs, but the noise that comes out is more of a single, sharp chuckle. What a thing to ask! She leans back on her hips and pulls her wings to her before ducking around him; before putting herself between him and the ghost. "I am," she says.
Darmok turns to face her and watches with a gasp and a snarl as the female snaps her wings open again. The clean white feathers knife his companion into strips of shapeless fog; the form sent scattered with only the faintest of plaintive moans.
"Which," she continues,"Is more than I can say fo--"
The nocturne rises up at once, his wings gone wide, his tail snapping at the empty air. Jalad dances away from a snap of teeth that close on nothing. She twists and pivots and cracks her wings wide open to rebuff a rake of his claws that leave behind gullies in her feathers. He comes again and this time they grapple with their heads raised and their cheeks together, teeth bared and wings beating for balance. His tail comes round her ankle and with a firm tug Jalad finds herself on her back in the dust with the weight of the other atop her. She claws a foot beneath his gut. His teeth close on the round of her neck.
And there they hold, each caught by the other but neither willing to let go.
Darmok pants against her, tightens his grip in warning-- and it is Jalad that loosens first. Her hindleg drops an inch, that cutting claw releasing from where it had wedged into his scales. And then another and another.
He lifts his head and pushes away from her with a beat of his dark wings. She rolls onto her flank and stands with a huff, both of them untangling and righting themselves with as much grace as can be found.
"Shall we begin again?" Darmok asks, satisfied that his intestines are still intact.
"Yes, fine," she says. He watches her roll her neck against the crook of her wing and suck her small, needley teeth in complaint. "But you drooled on me."
"You rather deserved it, I say." He has a look about, but the ghost is still gone. Hiding, no doubt. Or destroyed.
"Don't worry," Jalad says. "I can't get rid of mine, no doubt yours will be back as well." Satisfied that the spittle has been dealt with as much as is possible, she gives an all over shake.
Darmok sits back on his haunches and he watches her. "You had a companion as well?"
"If that's what you'd like to call it, yes. I chased him off straight away."
"Then you're a fool. Mine had been rather helpful -- up until someone scared her off."
The female squints at him then, snaps her tail. "Helpful how?"
"Helpful enough. I will tell you on the way." He turns and starts along the cliffside path. Jalad lingers in her place and watches him go. He is dark as night with streaks of a shade even darker in his irregular, knobbly scales. Like a moonless, starless night wrapped over a dragon's frame. But his wings seem too big for his squat body and his tail is a fat rudder. Still, he is strong and that strength must be commended. When he looks back to her, she follows.
... ...
They walk the cliffside path until it reaches a junction. Behind them, his clan's camp. Ahead of them, hers. And to the side, a tumbling and narrow path that clambers up the spine of the mountain in a series of splits, switchbacks and jagged turns. It is not a path for dragons, but rather for smaller animals but its point of origin and its length is carefully maintained neutral territory. It seems only fitting that they should start there, at the genesis of their journey not a day passed.
Along the way Darmok tells her everything the ghost told him. Verbatim. Or as close as he can recall anyway. Jalad peppers him with questions, but near none can be answered and soon after they resort to silence.
At the junction, they pause. Trees clutter the land between them and the mountain, tappering off as the land rises. Nearest the top, there is nothing but stone and inky black shrubs. From there on, flight is the only sensible way to go.
"Our souls?" Jalad asks him again. "Do you believe her, your ghost friend?"
"I have no reason not to." He has a calm voice, she notes -- and then wonders how anyone could be so calm in their situation. So sensible. But it is a comfort. He was calm at the offering too, wasn't he? Where she wanted to scream and claw her way to freedom, he was still and focused. Between them lingers some trepidation and though Jalad can sense it, she tries instead to focus on that serenity, to tap into it and make it her own.
"Nor any reason to."
"No dragon is an island, Jalad. We must trust someone."
She is watching the mountain as he says it. From the cap a thin wisp of smoke rises up into the still air. She makes an indistinct noise, hardly more than a grumble.
"This is some sort of game," he continues. "How many generations have made this same sacrifice? How many pairs have gone before us? If our god wants company, he certainly has it. But this is different. We're meant to do something here; something the others before us haven't been able to do."
"How do you know they didn't do it?" She turns to look at him.
"How was your companion? Happy? Contented?"
"He was..." A pause. "Sad. Lonely."
"Exactly," his maw twists into something of a grin. "Had they performed satisfactorily, surely their reward would have been something other than infinite sadness?"
Jalad shifts, shuffles her feathers against the burble of excitement that comes to her. Is it too much to hope?
"Trust me," he says then and her attention snaps to him. "We have nothing else in common except this task, Jalad. We began it together on the rim and I for one do not intend to spend eternity trapped here. Can you trust me?"
"Darmok--"
"Can you trust me?"
Her feathered crest falls flat, she turns her head aside and then says: "Yes."
... ...
The journey is not made alone. Every inch, they are accompanied by a host of spirits that follow, but do not engage. Not as the first companions did. The island, it seems though, is dripping with the dead and the nearer they get to the volcano; to their god, the more there are. The specters show themselves first only in their periphery and only then as faint glimmers of movement. The slip of a silvery tail, the retreating form of a back swallowed by clouds, a face that fades into shadow and leaves behind the white coals of its eyes to judge long after the rest is gone. It is not, however, until they are at the peak, until they land side-by-side on the loose pebbly edge below the unmoving stars and the flat gray moon that the horror of the scene is truly laid bare.
Souls. The plinth of smoke rising up from the caldera - the one they had seen so far off, which tumbled incessant but sluggish in the night - is made of souls. Ghosts. Their wings make no sound as they circle. They can make out the faces and figures of many thousands of them, but the pillar is such that those at the top are indistinct. Each one is a replica of the others and each one a member of the chorus of muted roars and of moans and each one also a soldier in something that resembles a battle. Wildclaws and Nocturnes curve and knife at each other in wide arches without. Claws rake through their smoky bodies and teeth rip feather from bone. Limbs pull free, shapes are shredded into whorls of smoke like silk. Ripped and ruined, the bodies and their disjoined pieces drift down into the volcano and there come to rest on the glistening obsidian-glass surface inside.
And here conflagrant imps scurry to piece the bodies together again and return them to the fight. Bodies are piecemealed from the remains and pushed toward burning hot center of the volcano, where the obsidian surface is broken and opened like a wound. Here the dragons are caught in the updraft and returned to the war. Some fight their handlers, but the imps are quicker than any ghost and their tiny bodies, alive with fire, are unmoved even when they are caught in a maw or crushed under a wing.
It may not even be fair to call them imps. Fire demons, maybe. Sprites. Devils. They are small, but fearsome. All teeth and all claws and all fire. Among the carnage they argue as much as they work and their high screeches rise up in echo around the bowl of the volcano and out into the night. Over the body of a Wildclaw to whom a Nocturne arm has been affixed, a dispute breaks out among dozens. Spits of fire and spark rip away from the scuffle and for a moment their work is entirely forgotten as more join the vicious brawl. Their whitehot teeth flash, tails lash, but so fierce and so pitiless are the little animals that the bulk of the disagreement is done and over quick as it started. Where the victims fall, they burn away like candleflame without wick: guttering bright, then blue, then just a puff of smoke.
Ghosts continue to rain down and it's a torn wildclaw - or is it a nocturne? - that falls on the inner slope of the caldera. She is missing most the entirety of her body, but what is left is a shoulder, a neck, a head and one foreclaw. The piece lands without a sound on the black rocks and there it squirms. Alive, but broken. On the rim, the young dragons are rooted in place. Each seems to wait for the others lead. Darmok, for Jalad's bravado. And Jalad, for Darmok's cleverness. But there is neither alone that will help them there and with a shiver from end to end Darmok knows it.
Imps come to collect the piece and as they near Jalad ducks down onto her haunches, lowers her head and her wings as if to hide in plain sight. But Darmok cannot move - he cannot even breathe.
"It's a trap," the head has whispered. "You cannot run."
His tail snaps.
The imps look up. In their small, square heads live four beetle-black eyes and when they lunge they do so with their lips pulled back and their white-hot teeth snarling in the night. Jalad pulls him back and together the two skitter and tumble down the ratchel without coordination or care. The pack of imps give chase and in it they seem to find utmost pleasure. Their voices crackle in the night - a high and discordant kek kek kek kek kek. Flame seers the end of Darmok's tail when one closes on him and he roars at once, but cannot whip free. His legs tangle, his wings beat and in a moment they are on him and over him and where they touch is blinding heat. Jalad comes next, taken when she turned to win him free again. The imps are small, but undeniably powerful and the two are carried home like prizes by what appears to be an endless stream of devils that pour from the center pool of lava - itself so unbearably bright and hot and livid. On the obsidian banks deep inside the caldera the two are tossed among the still falling pieces of their brethren. Chunks of dragons once themselves so alive and real drift down overhead, but it's all either of them can do to beat back the imps that snap and claw at them. Trapped between the burbling pot of molten fire behind and a ring of imps before, Darmok and Jalad turn back to back and swat their attackers away.
And then, from deep inside the mountain; from the air and from the world itself comes a voice and it says. "Enough."
The imps cow and twist and hiss. They put four feet to the ground and their heads down as they back up. Kek kek kek. Behind the dragons, the lava burbles and splits into octagonal plates as the hottest fire from deep below is churned up and turned out to cool in the night. Enough, the burst bubbles spit into the air. Enough.
Darmok's tail twists about Jalad's ankle, indiscriminately anchoring each to the other.
Here, young souls, your end you meet. The voice rumbles around them, vibrating the air itself and the obsidian bank which shifts overtop the lava like a ship at sea.
"There's supposed to be a choice... A test!" Jalad howls, her stance widening for balance which she finds in her companion.
The imps roll a round of laughter, snipping and snapping at the air; jostling like a sea of embers. Kek kek kek.
As you wish. Choose: Keep your soul and earn glory for your clan in eternal life. Or give yours to your adversary that they may live.
"Give it," Darmok whispers at once. Then again. "Give it. I give it!"
Jalad looks back to him, over her shoulder. She cannot understand it and it is easy to see in her face the confusion. She is smudged with black from their rough handling and her feathers are bent, but her eyes still burn. She shakes her head slowly and mouths a soft, 'No'.
Glory, for the female? Lures the god.
"Do you trust me?" He asks.
She hesitates. They have come so far. What is death? Do the ghosts know they are dead? Do they suffer? Will she? Finally, Jalad says: "I give my soul."
There is a long pause in which it seems the god is holding its breath or perhaps debating, perhaps questing in them for truth and when it is satisfied the mountain roars.
Well done. And it is.
The world shivers. The imps go mad. The obsidian pitches and splinters and breaks apart before upending in the lake of fire. Their bodies are thrown to one side. Darmok claws at the slick rock and both anchor themselves to it and to each other, clinging for whatever is left of their lives on a shard of black slowly sinking into the red. The ghosts above have gone mad and they wheel in the night indiscriminate and blind, their bodies slamming into rock and into fire where they cease to be in gray puffs of ether. Darmok digs at the stone to bury his claws and he looks away from the carnage to Jalad who has pressed her forehead to the stone as if it may save her or hold her safe.
He says her name. "Look at me."
She does. The heat below them is rising nearer. She twists her tail up away from it.
"That was very brave of you. We're going to be brave again. I need you to let go."
Jalad shakes her head.
"Yes," he smiles and lets one hand free of the stone. Chips of black release and fall to the flames. "Come on. Trust me."
She shakes her head again.
He frees a foot, then another and Jalad weeps, shaking, as she lets her legs go from the wall.
Together they fall from the obsidian sheet. And up from the pool of fire, a dragon's demon maw rises to snatch them both and this time Jalad knows she has seen it same as she saw it at her sacrifice. Heat burns through them, takes everything.
... ...
On the ridge, the two clan leaders look across the gap of the volcano at each other. They are separated by that great well of space, but by so much more as well. By culture and by tradition, by species and by blood. It is a terrible thing, giving up a child to the fire. Beside the nocturne's elder, a female sobs into her wings and opposite her Jalad's own den mother wishes she had the strength to be so bold; to show so much pain openly and without regret. The wildclaw female turns away to head back just as the mountain beneath roars to life. From deep inside there is a terrible quake that shakes the island from shore to shore. At the blacksand beaches the waves are pushed away and the reefs are laid barren with all their treasures revealed. The cities of each clan tremble and any fires that stand are snuffed like a breath stolen from the world itself. The lush forests in between shake and quiver and for a moment the skies fill with all number of birds desperate to escape the mayhem. On the ridge, the dragons gathered are rocked to their knees and their bellies, prostrate and helpless for it stop. From inside the volcano tendrils of fire spit into the air in wide arcs that splatter against the inner walls. Lava burbles up and with it come two dragons.
They are not as they went in. Rather, they are resplendent and glorious. Simple creatures made into gods. Their bodies glisten as gemstones of pure fire, traced with tendrils of flame, seeming to glow from within. They are identical, but different. Still a wildclaw, still a nocturne, but undeniable one. Beneath them, the mountains angry heart grows quiet and solid and from the outside in it heals over as stone. From the last fissure of spitting flame the voice they know to be their creator gives them a single command:
Go in peace.
Disclaimer... Naturally, I'm bound to have screwed up some lore - most especially the sizes of the dragon species because that's weird and it makes things awkward when you think about, like, imps and noodles breeding. So everyone's more or less the same size.
Anyway, here it is!!
It begins on an island which is itself a long finger of pitted volcanic rock swiped across an open blue sea. Specks of land trail behind the main island like ladies in waiting, like forgotten crumbles broken off from the main body as mantle slides overtop the workings of the earth below. The island is black as pitch, but plays host to a sea of lush greenery dappled with vibrant blooms and birds painted wild colors. The stout hard-barked trees are filled with color and with fruit and with aromas that drip in the warm, balmy air.
At the center of the long island is the land's creator: a single and enormous volcano. The monster lies quietly for long, peaceful lengths of time, but always grows unwell again. Divided by this plinth of stone and fire are two clans forever at odds. And though they can agree on little else, they do both know one single truth: The volcano is a god and it, like they, is want to grow lonely. Every summer, when the days are longest and the sun burns hot to bake the blackstone sand, a tribute is given to this god that it might be still another year. That it might hold its sorrowful rage and let the clans thrive at its feet.
It is the only thing the clans agree on and the offering of tribute is the only time when old feuds are put to rest between them.
And so it starts here. It starts with two young souls shackled and bound at the rim of a disquiet volcano. It starts, like all things, at their ends.
... JALAD ...
It is an honor to be chosen. In the embrace of her god, she knows she will find happiness. She knows she will want for nothing and that her life everafter will be one of grace and of warmth and of peace. Happiness.
Jalad tries to tap into this peace then, tries to sample it or imagine the way it would remove from her the weight she felt then. That crushing weight. Her stomach is turned inside her and lodged tight against her throat. Her lungs are too small. Her mind a discordant mess.
There, on the stony edge of the land - with the volcano's maw opened before her and the world laid out behind her. There, with her wings trussed to her back in wide leather straps. There, with her clan's leaders and her family's faces to one side and with those of small, knobby-faced strangers to the other. There, where even the sun has stopped in its arch to watch the happenings. There, with her life in its last moments. There, Jalad tries to find peace same as she tries to not look down into the throat of the mountain.
She looks at nothing, in fact. And no one. She tries to stare ahead, but her tail won't stop its swishing. Her eyes land on the strangers' tribute. He is an odd looking dragon the sorts of which Jalad has seldom seen and then only from a far off distance. He is the dark color of shade under a palm, with rough scales and with flesh wings and short legs. Not at all like her with her eggshell wings that glisten in the sun and her smooth, sleek body the pure white color of the moon in winter.
She can see the oldest and most hunched of the strangers speaking, but the words are whipped away by the smoke and by wind. No doubt whatever he says is similar to that said by her own clan's eldest. To her left, the old crone barters for peace and for prosperity and for plenty; begs that their god take her, Jalad, and be restful again.
There is a tense moment, just after the crone's voice dwindles. A moment where all the words that need saying have been said. A moment where there is only the deed to be done. Jalad looks right, to her den mother's kind face as if she might save her in that last dreadful pause. But the female is not looking at her, she is looking straight ahead and from behind her Jalad is given a push that sends her off balance and tumbling. Her wings flap and strain, but they are held fast and for all her desperate flailing it is all she can do scream as she falls into the mountain. The caldera is hot and hotter. The fall is infinitely long until the flames themselves come up to snatch her from the air. So close, she swears it is a dragon's maw that reaches for her; a demon sent to snatch her and swallow her greedily. Same as it snatches the stranger who falls with her; the stranger whose fate is sealed, same as hers.
... DARMOK ...
There is a greyed moment. A length of time indecipherable. A heartbeat filled with precisely nothing. No pain, no fear, nor even any consciousness to speak of. Darmok wakes from the grey to find that the dull shade lingers in the waking world as well. He is home. In the center of his clan's city, surrounded by the opened mouths of dens that are dark inside. No voices rise up, nor do the trees rustle in the wind. The sky, the earth, the stone - everything is held behind a muted lens that swims and shifts at the edge of his periphery like dusty glass. It's as if the whole world has been paused.
His heart, he finds, is still hammering in his chest. But he is unbound and unhurt. He breathes deep. His mind races -- then slows. He is dead. This is death. The fact grips him tight and, like all living things are want to do, Darmok panics. He scrabbles to his feet and roars into the world. For a moment, the sound he has made is the only sound and it crashes like thunder in his ears. He shakes his head, lopes to the nearest doorway and announces his being with a demand: "HELLO!"
The shadows say nothing. Not even an echo.
He repeats the practice to another doorway and then another until he comes to his own home. Familiar, but alien. There, in the doorway, he leans against the stone. He is panting, out of breath.
"I am dead," he says. "I am dead."
... JALAD ...
She stands, waiting, in the center of clan's shared common area. The courtyard is nestled between trees that do not waver, under a moon that does not shine - nor even exist. There are no stars in the stone grey sky, either. Nor any wind. Nor birds. Nor flame flickering in the torches circling the open and softly sandy yard. It is, like the rest of the world, empty. If Jalad panicked such as her nocturne counterpart has done, the episode is long past. She finds it is hard to muster much else than disappointment at this stage. Death is dreadfully drab.
"Well." She says. There is no reply and in the empty din she wonders if she's said anything at all, or if she merely imagined saying something.
"Now what?"
Still nothing.
Jalad walks the row of dens to her own and ducks inside. It is familiar, which is very nice. But cold and dead and empty like the rest and so rather unsettling. It is a perfectly natural response, Jalad comforts herself. Perfectly logical. It's why homes are haunted and not, say, common areas. Not rivers or stones or outlooks. No, by far dens are the most populated by ghosts. When the whole world ends, it makes sense that the dead will go to the place most familiar to them.
"This certainly isn't what I imagined," she says.
Behind her, in the cold stone hearth, a flame bubbles up and casts a warm glow that saws at the dark and sends shapes to dance on the stone walls. Jalad turns at once and though she knows she should be afraid, she finds herself unable to be so. The fire burns through her, warms her from the inside.
"Hello," she says again, softly and with a smile of her pearl white maw.
Sorrow and loss unite the clans, the fire quavers. It can be different. The choice is yours. Find your adversary. Break the cycle.
Jalad shifts. Her tail snaps at the air behind her. "My adversary? Do you mean the nocturne?"
Find your adversary.
"Yes, I know, but wh---"
Break the cycle, it repeats. And again the fire changes. It sputters and shrinks.
"No, wait!" Jalad steps closer, stands over the embers. "Please, wait!"
But there is no reply and the warmth, the light disappears down into the coals which it leaves cold and grey and dull. She paws at the embers, pushes the dusty coals aside. But there is nothing. Nothing.
"Don't bother looking," says a voice behind her. Jalad whirls, wings snapped wide. A ghost waits for her in the doorway. He is a wildclaw stitched of smoke which whorls and tumbles in its silhouette. His face is blank save for the dull moonstone eyes that go unblinking. "It won't come back."
Jalad finds her maw is open, her heart fluttering.
"Don't be scared," he says. His voice is flat. Featureless, like he himself. He does not move, though his shape shifts and swirls.
"Who are you?"
"A tribute. Like you. I want to help you."
Jalad turns her head, bird-like, to peer at him sidelong. "Help me find my adversary?"
"Yes. Among other things."
"What other things?"
"You can help others, in helping yourself."
"Like who?"
"Me. Your clanmates. All the other tributes. We are trapped. There is a choice to make - at the end. You will see. There is a choice. You must choose."
Jalad is quiet. She wishes she had not asked. The ghost upsets her. His shape is familiar the same way a clanmates shadow would be - the shape correct, but everything else is warped. Wrong. Alien.
"I don't want your help," she says finally.
The ghost blinks then, slowly. His head moves and now she can tell that he had not been looking directly at her thus far, but rather at nothingness behind her; at dead space.
"You must choose correctly. Your clanmates need you."
"I'll do it on my own." Her chin ticks up, but he does not move so she adds a sharp: "Go away!"
Another slow blink.
And then the ghost steps aside from the door to let her pass. He moves as if underwater, slowed by some thickness in the air Jalad does not yet feel. Her nerve bunches up in her chest, burns her and then forces her legs to move. She dashes quickly past the doorway, back out into the dead still night. Her wing tip swipes through the ghost who feels of nothing at all - not of a chill or a tingle. Pure nothing.
When she looks back his shape has been cut by her feathers and it finds form again slowly, all the grey and white smoke of him tumbling, twisting back to place. He is watching her with those cold eyes, unblinking.
Jalad turns her nose for the nocturne camp, beats her wings and leaps to set her off the ground. The ghost waits on the ground, watching without following. Still, she feels his eyes on her and knows he is with her.
... DARMOK ...
"What's your name?" Darmok asks his ghostly companion as they leave beneath the stone plinths that mark the edge of his clan's village. They are going to find 'his adversary', as the fire advised. Death is odd, he thinks. It is the end of everything, yet there are still errands to be run; still things to be seen to.
"I don't remember."
His own ghostly helper is, like him, a nocturne. Though he finds her presence a boon - then again anyone might if it was her wings, themselves made of shade and of silence, that comforted him when the world seemed empty and hollow; if it was her voice that soothed the panic risen up in him. She had come from nothing and offered nothing save companionship; an escape from the pinpoint loneliness of the world. And, in answer to his confusion, she brings answers to his questions.
All, so far, save this one.
Darmok looks over to her. He stops on the soft path and turns his head. "You don't remember?"
She shakes her head softly. "No."
"When was your sacrifice?"
A pause and in it he imagines the ghost smiles softly. Imagines the curve of the smokey whorls is that of a maw turning up. Darmok turns away, unsettled into silence, and continues to walk. Walking, he finds, helps him think. It is slower, yes, but he has nothing save time. No doubt the wildclaw has been given the same instructions. They will meet on the sandy cliffside road between clans. It runs along the beach and when he looks out over the sea he finds it tumbling mute and slowed.
"What is this place?" He asks. "Where are we?"
"Between moments," she says. "I seem to remember someone telling me that once. That we are between moments. Maybe we have stepped out of time. Just to the left of it or..." Her voice softens and fades. Then, "There will be a test. This is important, dear. Listen."
Darmok turns and looks at her beneath the arch of his wing. He slows and waits until she has drifted nearer behind him. "I thought you said it was a choice."
"Different words for the same thing. Listen, I will tell you what I know." She looks aside and her moonstone eyes narrow as if in concentration; as if to pull the answers from across some great distance of time and ether. "There is a choice. The fire will come to you again and it will ask you to the caldera. It is a place I cannot go so you must remember what I tell you. You will be alone with her. With your adversary. Don't forget. The fire burns on souls and it will ask for yours. It will try to trick you. Keep your soul, dear."
"My soul?" His tail whips at the air, flicking off a chill.
She nods her foggy head, wisps of smoke trailing behind as she moves. And then her head drifts aside and Darmok follows her gave out into the bleak sky.
"She is coming. Your adversary."
She is a pure white bolt pointed toward him. Her wings are tucked, her tail whipping to guide her in on a low swoop that ends with a dainty drop on just two legs. Odd that, he's always thought. Wildclaws are everything nocturnes are not. Even down to their stance.
Darmok backs up a step to give her room. Closer, he can see that she has color, however little. The world is dark and dull, but there is moonlight on her skin and the soft faint rainbow of light trapped in her ivory feathers. He can see the rose blush of excertion in the thin, fine skin over her snout. He is unsure why, but his heart is beating quicker. He exhales a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He should say something first, but he is unsure what.
"Are you... real?" He asks.
Jalad nearly laughs, but the noise that comes out is more of a single, sharp chuckle. What a thing to ask! She leans back on her hips and pulls her wings to her before ducking around him; before putting herself between him and the ghost. "I am," she says.
Darmok turns to face her and watches with a gasp and a snarl as the female snaps her wings open again. The clean white feathers knife his companion into strips of shapeless fog; the form sent scattered with only the faintest of plaintive moans.
"Which," she continues,"Is more than I can say fo--"
The nocturne rises up at once, his wings gone wide, his tail snapping at the empty air. Jalad dances away from a snap of teeth that close on nothing. She twists and pivots and cracks her wings wide open to rebuff a rake of his claws that leave behind gullies in her feathers. He comes again and this time they grapple with their heads raised and their cheeks together, teeth bared and wings beating for balance. His tail comes round her ankle and with a firm tug Jalad finds herself on her back in the dust with the weight of the other atop her. She claws a foot beneath his gut. His teeth close on the round of her neck.
And there they hold, each caught by the other but neither willing to let go.
Darmok pants against her, tightens his grip in warning-- and it is Jalad that loosens first. Her hindleg drops an inch, that cutting claw releasing from where it had wedged into his scales. And then another and another.
He lifts his head and pushes away from her with a beat of his dark wings. She rolls onto her flank and stands with a huff, both of them untangling and righting themselves with as much grace as can be found.
"Shall we begin again?" Darmok asks, satisfied that his intestines are still intact.
"Yes, fine," she says. He watches her roll her neck against the crook of her wing and suck her small, needley teeth in complaint. "But you drooled on me."
"You rather deserved it, I say." He has a look about, but the ghost is still gone. Hiding, no doubt. Or destroyed.
"Don't worry," Jalad says. "I can't get rid of mine, no doubt yours will be back as well." Satisfied that the spittle has been dealt with as much as is possible, she gives an all over shake.
Darmok sits back on his haunches and he watches her. "You had a companion as well?"
"If that's what you'd like to call it, yes. I chased him off straight away."
"Then you're a fool. Mine had been rather helpful -- up until someone scared her off."
The female squints at him then, snaps her tail. "Helpful how?"
"Helpful enough. I will tell you on the way." He turns and starts along the cliffside path. Jalad lingers in her place and watches him go. He is dark as night with streaks of a shade even darker in his irregular, knobbly scales. Like a moonless, starless night wrapped over a dragon's frame. But his wings seem too big for his squat body and his tail is a fat rudder. Still, he is strong and that strength must be commended. When he looks back to her, she follows.
... ...
They walk the cliffside path until it reaches a junction. Behind them, his clan's camp. Ahead of them, hers. And to the side, a tumbling and narrow path that clambers up the spine of the mountain in a series of splits, switchbacks and jagged turns. It is not a path for dragons, but rather for smaller animals but its point of origin and its length is carefully maintained neutral territory. It seems only fitting that they should start there, at the genesis of their journey not a day passed.
Along the way Darmok tells her everything the ghost told him. Verbatim. Or as close as he can recall anyway. Jalad peppers him with questions, but near none can be answered and soon after they resort to silence.
At the junction, they pause. Trees clutter the land between them and the mountain, tappering off as the land rises. Nearest the top, there is nothing but stone and inky black shrubs. From there on, flight is the only sensible way to go.
"Our souls?" Jalad asks him again. "Do you believe her, your ghost friend?"
"I have no reason not to." He has a calm voice, she notes -- and then wonders how anyone could be so calm in their situation. So sensible. But it is a comfort. He was calm at the offering too, wasn't he? Where she wanted to scream and claw her way to freedom, he was still and focused. Between them lingers some trepidation and though Jalad can sense it, she tries instead to focus on that serenity, to tap into it and make it her own.
"Nor any reason to."
"No dragon is an island, Jalad. We must trust someone."
She is watching the mountain as he says it. From the cap a thin wisp of smoke rises up into the still air. She makes an indistinct noise, hardly more than a grumble.
"This is some sort of game," he continues. "How many generations have made this same sacrifice? How many pairs have gone before us? If our god wants company, he certainly has it. But this is different. We're meant to do something here; something the others before us haven't been able to do."
"How do you know they didn't do it?" She turns to look at him.
"How was your companion? Happy? Contented?"
"He was..." A pause. "Sad. Lonely."
"Exactly," his maw twists into something of a grin. "Had they performed satisfactorily, surely their reward would have been something other than infinite sadness?"
Jalad shifts, shuffles her feathers against the burble of excitement that comes to her. Is it too much to hope?
"Trust me," he says then and her attention snaps to him. "We have nothing else in common except this task, Jalad. We began it together on the rim and I for one do not intend to spend eternity trapped here. Can you trust me?"
"Darmok--"
"Can you trust me?"
Her feathered crest falls flat, she turns her head aside and then says: "Yes."
... ...
The journey is not made alone. Every inch, they are accompanied by a host of spirits that follow, but do not engage. Not as the first companions did. The island, it seems though, is dripping with the dead and the nearer they get to the volcano; to their god, the more there are. The specters show themselves first only in their periphery and only then as faint glimmers of movement. The slip of a silvery tail, the retreating form of a back swallowed by clouds, a face that fades into shadow and leaves behind the white coals of its eyes to judge long after the rest is gone. It is not, however, until they are at the peak, until they land side-by-side on the loose pebbly edge below the unmoving stars and the flat gray moon that the horror of the scene is truly laid bare.
Souls. The plinth of smoke rising up from the caldera - the one they had seen so far off, which tumbled incessant but sluggish in the night - is made of souls. Ghosts. Their wings make no sound as they circle. They can make out the faces and figures of many thousands of them, but the pillar is such that those at the top are indistinct. Each one is a replica of the others and each one a member of the chorus of muted roars and of moans and each one also a soldier in something that resembles a battle. Wildclaws and Nocturnes curve and knife at each other in wide arches without. Claws rake through their smoky bodies and teeth rip feather from bone. Limbs pull free, shapes are shredded into whorls of smoke like silk. Ripped and ruined, the bodies and their disjoined pieces drift down into the volcano and there come to rest on the glistening obsidian-glass surface inside.
And here conflagrant imps scurry to piece the bodies together again and return them to the fight. Bodies are piecemealed from the remains and pushed toward burning hot center of the volcano, where the obsidian surface is broken and opened like a wound. Here the dragons are caught in the updraft and returned to the war. Some fight their handlers, but the imps are quicker than any ghost and their tiny bodies, alive with fire, are unmoved even when they are caught in a maw or crushed under a wing.
It may not even be fair to call them imps. Fire demons, maybe. Sprites. Devils. They are small, but fearsome. All teeth and all claws and all fire. Among the carnage they argue as much as they work and their high screeches rise up in echo around the bowl of the volcano and out into the night. Over the body of a Wildclaw to whom a Nocturne arm has been affixed, a dispute breaks out among dozens. Spits of fire and spark rip away from the scuffle and for a moment their work is entirely forgotten as more join the vicious brawl. Their whitehot teeth flash, tails lash, but so fierce and so pitiless are the little animals that the bulk of the disagreement is done and over quick as it started. Where the victims fall, they burn away like candleflame without wick: guttering bright, then blue, then just a puff of smoke.
Ghosts continue to rain down and it's a torn wildclaw - or is it a nocturne? - that falls on the inner slope of the caldera. She is missing most the entirety of her body, but what is left is a shoulder, a neck, a head and one foreclaw. The piece lands without a sound on the black rocks and there it squirms. Alive, but broken. On the rim, the young dragons are rooted in place. Each seems to wait for the others lead. Darmok, for Jalad's bravado. And Jalad, for Darmok's cleverness. But there is neither alone that will help them there and with a shiver from end to end Darmok knows it.
Imps come to collect the piece and as they near Jalad ducks down onto her haunches, lowers her head and her wings as if to hide in plain sight. But Darmok cannot move - he cannot even breathe.
"It's a trap," the head has whispered. "You cannot run."
His tail snaps.
The imps look up. In their small, square heads live four beetle-black eyes and when they lunge they do so with their lips pulled back and their white-hot teeth snarling in the night. Jalad pulls him back and together the two skitter and tumble down the ratchel without coordination or care. The pack of imps give chase and in it they seem to find utmost pleasure. Their voices crackle in the night - a high and discordant kek kek kek kek kek. Flame seers the end of Darmok's tail when one closes on him and he roars at once, but cannot whip free. His legs tangle, his wings beat and in a moment they are on him and over him and where they touch is blinding heat. Jalad comes next, taken when she turned to win him free again. The imps are small, but undeniably powerful and the two are carried home like prizes by what appears to be an endless stream of devils that pour from the center pool of lava - itself so unbearably bright and hot and livid. On the obsidian banks deep inside the caldera the two are tossed among the still falling pieces of their brethren. Chunks of dragons once themselves so alive and real drift down overhead, but it's all either of them can do to beat back the imps that snap and claw at them. Trapped between the burbling pot of molten fire behind and a ring of imps before, Darmok and Jalad turn back to back and swat their attackers away.
And then, from deep inside the mountain; from the air and from the world itself comes a voice and it says. "Enough."
The imps cow and twist and hiss. They put four feet to the ground and their heads down as they back up. Kek kek kek. Behind the dragons, the lava burbles and splits into octagonal plates as the hottest fire from deep below is churned up and turned out to cool in the night. Enough, the burst bubbles spit into the air. Enough.
Darmok's tail twists about Jalad's ankle, indiscriminately anchoring each to the other.
Here, young souls, your end you meet. The voice rumbles around them, vibrating the air itself and the obsidian bank which shifts overtop the lava like a ship at sea.
"There's supposed to be a choice... A test!" Jalad howls, her stance widening for balance which she finds in her companion.
The imps roll a round of laughter, snipping and snapping at the air; jostling like a sea of embers. Kek kek kek.
As you wish. Choose: Keep your soul and earn glory for your clan in eternal life. Or give yours to your adversary that they may live.
"Give it," Darmok whispers at once. Then again. "Give it. I give it!"
Jalad looks back to him, over her shoulder. She cannot understand it and it is easy to see in her face the confusion. She is smudged with black from their rough handling and her feathers are bent, but her eyes still burn. She shakes her head slowly and mouths a soft, 'No'.
Glory, for the female? Lures the god.
"Do you trust me?" He asks.
She hesitates. They have come so far. What is death? Do the ghosts know they are dead? Do they suffer? Will she? Finally, Jalad says: "I give my soul."
There is a long pause in which it seems the god is holding its breath or perhaps debating, perhaps questing in them for truth and when it is satisfied the mountain roars.
Well done. And it is.
The world shivers. The imps go mad. The obsidian pitches and splinters and breaks apart before upending in the lake of fire. Their bodies are thrown to one side. Darmok claws at the slick rock and both anchor themselves to it and to each other, clinging for whatever is left of their lives on a shard of black slowly sinking into the red. The ghosts above have gone mad and they wheel in the night indiscriminate and blind, their bodies slamming into rock and into fire where they cease to be in gray puffs of ether. Darmok digs at the stone to bury his claws and he looks away from the carnage to Jalad who has pressed her forehead to the stone as if it may save her or hold her safe.
He says her name. "Look at me."
She does. The heat below them is rising nearer. She twists her tail up away from it.
"That was very brave of you. We're going to be brave again. I need you to let go."
Jalad shakes her head.
"Yes," he smiles and lets one hand free of the stone. Chips of black release and fall to the flames. "Come on. Trust me."
She shakes her head again.
He frees a foot, then another and Jalad weeps, shaking, as she lets her legs go from the wall.
Together they fall from the obsidian sheet. And up from the pool of fire, a dragon's demon maw rises to snatch them both and this time Jalad knows she has seen it same as she saw it at her sacrifice. Heat burns through them, takes everything.
... ...
On the ridge, the two clan leaders look across the gap of the volcano at each other. They are separated by that great well of space, but by so much more as well. By culture and by tradition, by species and by blood. It is a terrible thing, giving up a child to the fire. Beside the nocturne's elder, a female sobs into her wings and opposite her Jalad's own den mother wishes she had the strength to be so bold; to show so much pain openly and without regret. The wildclaw female turns away to head back just as the mountain beneath roars to life. From deep inside there is a terrible quake that shakes the island from shore to shore. At the blacksand beaches the waves are pushed away and the reefs are laid barren with all their treasures revealed. The cities of each clan tremble and any fires that stand are snuffed like a breath stolen from the world itself. The lush forests in between shake and quiver and for a moment the skies fill with all number of birds desperate to escape the mayhem. On the ridge, the dragons gathered are rocked to their knees and their bellies, prostrate and helpless for it stop. From inside the volcano tendrils of fire spit into the air in wide arcs that splatter against the inner walls. Lava burbles up and with it come two dragons.
They are not as they went in. Rather, they are resplendent and glorious. Simple creatures made into gods. Their bodies glisten as gemstones of pure fire, traced with tendrils of flame, seeming to glow from within. They are identical, but different. Still a wildclaw, still a nocturne, but undeniable one. Beneath them, the mountains angry heart grows quiet and solid and from the outside in it heals over as stone. From the last fissure of spitting flame the voice they know to be their creator gives them a single command:
Go in peace.
The night sky lies so sprent with stars
that there is scarcely space of black at all
Looking For... Tall, Dark & Handsome Spacey Arcane Rep. Ping or PM me anytime!
that there is scarcely space of black at all
Looking For... Tall, Dark & Handsome Spacey Arcane Rep. Ping or PM me anytime!
