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[columns][center][item=metallurgist's forgetools][/center][nextcol][color=transparent]..[/color][nextcol][color=#FF5500][font=garamond][size=7][size=4][b]the fire of creation[/b][/size][/size][/font][/color]
[size=2]written by Disillusionist
[color=#9494A9]2,216 words[/color][/size][/columns]
[columns][color=transparent]???????????????????????[/color][nextcol][font=Garamond][size=5][color=#B2570D][i]-- “Laurant, where did I came from?”
-- “Well, kid, I won you in a game of chance.”
-- “...................”
-- “That’s why I called you ‘Faust’, ’cause you’re lucky.”
-- “Wasn’t he cursed by the Devil or something?”
-- “OK, about that. Yes. Ummm...”[/i][/color][/size][/font][/columns]
[color=#1D2224]It wasn’t long before the hatchling was given a new name: [i]Faustino[/i], Laurant called him, because she’d won guardianship of him through a test of luck, not skill. Faust, as the hatchling was now known, wasn’t really sure what to make of that. At the very least, it was a decent name, unlike “Carrot”, which some of his new clanmates called him.
Faust was regarded as a bit of a strange little duck. “He must’ve gotten it from his parents,” mumbled the older dragons—they’d done a bit of digging into Faust’s family history and had uncovered some interesting stories. Something about a feud regarding the concepts of beauty and genes.
Faust remained blissfully unaware of this. He’d quickly grown accustomed to the lair, especially after Kisharaq and his mate, Roxley the Chief Clothier, had presented him with a gloriously warm and oversized sweater. He became a common sight as he toddled determinedly through the halls, the sweater sleeves taken in with twine to keep from covering his toes while the rest of it dragged along behind him. He didn’t cause trouble, not really. But he was curious about certain things: “What are you doing? Hey, show me how you make that.”
That image of Kisharaq unspooling the yarn and then knitting a full-sized sweater...It had lit quite the fire in him. And, as it turned out, it was the fire of [i]creation[/i]. He became fascinated by the idea that dragons could take the most wretched-looking things and craft them into things that worked, things that shone. And he decided that if they could do it, so could he!
Gradually, Faust’s interests began to narrow. Knitting wasn’t really for him; it made his head ache. Perhaps in the future...He learned flower arrangement from the gardeners, but wasn’t so good at it; the plants tended to, well, die after he’d fussed with them. “Hot hands,” grumbled one of the gardeners. [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=29453385]He[/url][color=#1D2224] shook his fearsome head. “Hot hands, hot claws, turning plants to ash. Maybe you should...I don’t know, [i]cook[/i] something.”
Faustino flicked his ears. Well, cooking was really another way of making stuff, wasn’t it? So away he went, in search of the mysterious, magical kitchens of the lair.
He knew kitchens were places of light and heat, so he entered the first bright, hot room he saw. It wasn’t the kitchens, however—it was the forge. It was not often used, as the [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=15438539]Chief Engineer[/url][color=#1D2224] was an old dragon who didn’t have much strength left to hammer stuff, but the clan occasionally hired drakes from outside to do repairs for them.
The forge was in use now, with the Chief Engineer directing the efforts of a pair of smiths. It took him a while to notice the small shape scudding into the room. When he did, he yawped like a dog whose tail had been trodden on.
“What’re you doing here?! This is a dangerous place for hatchlings, Carrot!” he cried as he scooped up the Imperial hatchling. Faust dangled from his paws, a little lump of disgruntlement. “Carrot,” he repeated grouchily.
Carrot was plopped down safely away from the forge. The Wildclaw bent down and wagged a claw in front of his nose. “You must never go in there!” he said in the exaggerated language all adults used with kids. “It’s dangerous. Lots of fire and pointy things. Boom! Crash!” He gestured wildly as the smiths continued to hammer away.
Faust nodded, and with much gravity, he turned and waddled off. It wasn’t long before Laurant found him. He didn’t make it a habit to hide from her, not exactly....Let’s just say it had become second nature for him to evade her.
She bore down on him like a charging Featherback. “Where’ve you been?! Stop hiding from me, Faust—it never works.”
He sniffed at her in that annoyingly stuffy way he had. He was becoming quite good at sniffing.
Laurant scooped him up. As she stormed away with him, she muttered, “I dunno what you were doing in there. Ugh, good thing I was passing by; I never would’ve thought to look here otherwise....”
Something about that was weird, even to the hatchling. He asked her, “If you never thought to look here, why’re you here?”
“Huh. Well...” She looked ready to answer, and then seemed to remember that she was supposed to be annoyed with him. She gave him a genuinely ferocious scowl instead. “Don’t ask questions, Carrot-head!”
The usual nickname/insult worked, and Laurant and Faust preserved a chilly silence between themselves as they went back to the more populated parts of the lair.
Chilly silence or none, the fires inside Faust hadn’t cooled, not one bit. His mind kept flitting back to that vaulted room. The glow of the fire had been almost hypnotic; so had the [i]clang! clang![/i] of the hammers. Almost like music...Laurant’s swear-songs couldn’t hold a candle to that, at least not in Faust’s mind. They were only disguised swear words, after all. But this...This was the song of innovation, of [i]creation[/i]! He had to learn that....He would have his song, too. He would have to try.
It took him some time to put his plan into action. If it could be called a plan. For one thing or another, stuff kept getting in the way...but he was here now. It was the deepest hour of the morning, just before dawn, when even the night sentries had been too weary to notice him skittering behind them. He entered the forge unnoticed, and he looked around in awe. The room was big...and there were so many interesting things! Tools, instruments, crates and barrels of materials. There were schematics on the wall and codices on high shelves. It was all so intriguing....
Yet it was different from the forge Faust remembered. That time, the room had been hot and bright, lit by burning coals. Right now, it was dark and cool. Almost dead... [i]“There should be a fire,”[/i] he thought, and his mouth curved in a determined frown as he got to work on that.
The sun began to rise. The night sentries prepared for bed, and then one of them sniffed the air. “Smoke,” he growled. He swung around, and his eyes widened as he realized, “It’s coming from inside the lair!”
The dragons were galvanized into action. Though the lair was made of stone, fire of any sort was dangerous, especially if there were hatchlings about. This was the thought uppermost in Laurant’s mind as she galloped through the corridors, searching and searching for...
Faust had quickly learned that it was a mistake to work the bellows by himself. He’d gotten enthusiastic, hopping up and down on the box; he hadn’t noticed the sparks wafting into the air and clinging to the walls, the shelves....Suddenly several tomes had caught fire, and the smoke had grown thick, oppressive. He started looking around for an exit.
That was when Laurant appeared in the doorway. “[i]Faust[/i]!” she bellowed.
Faust jumped. The bellows finally gave out beneath his weight, and it collapsed into the forge. The hatchling shrank away from the mess, squealing as the flames ate it right up. It burst and popped, twanging horribly. Something slapped at his face, and he flinched back and shut his eyes.
Laurant’s voice boomed again: “Jump, [i]jump[/i], you little brat!” She sounded quite close by, and, eyes still shut, he jumped.
He plopped safely into her paws. “Egads, you’re a mess....Hold onto my back. Lords, it’s eating up everything!” He felt himself set down, and he clung to Laurant, his claws digging in. He peered at the world through one eye; he could feel something dripping down his chin. Laurant was bent over the water barrels, trying to drag one over to the blazing shelves. She didn’t seem to be making much headway.
In a rush of blue and purple, a sinuous shape swarmed into the room. Faust looked up in surprise as, clinging upside-down to the ceiling, a splendidly-dressed Bogsneak opened her jaws, croaking words of magic. Faust felt her power ripple through his hide.
The air trembled. And then in a rush of coolness, water materialized. It crashed down onto the forge, drenching everything below the Bogsneak. The fire was extinguished at last.
Laurant sat down, coughing uselessly. Faust wasn’t much better. He and Laurant looked wearily at each other, and then the Guardian asked the Bogsneak, “How did you know...?”
The Bogsneak detached herself from the ceiling, flipping around as she did so. She landed in a jingle of cloth and jewels, looking none the worse for wear. “I am [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=32490478]Rajin[/url][color=#1D2224], Seer of Water,” she intoned in a lofty voice. “I may not know all—but I see much.” She gave Faust a brief, enigmatic look, and then she slithered away.
Laurant was looking at Faust, too, but for an entirely different reason. “Good heavens, you’re wrecked,” she commented as she pried him from her left hind leg. In his panic, he’d slid backwards and dug deep scratches in her left thigh. She didn’t seem to notice, though. “You hurt, boy? Gaaah, your face looks [i]horrible[/i].”
“I’m OK,” Faust peeped. If Laurant wasn’t going to complain, then he wasn’t either—even though it hurt like hell. He could feel his cheeks throbbing; he remembered the bellows exploding earlier, throwing hot coals towards him.
Outside, the rest of the lair was converging. “We’d better get ourselves patched up before the yelling begins,” Laurant sighed. She seemed resigned rather than angry. She and Faust limped to the forge door, and thence to the infirmary.[/color]
[center][img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/h2a6qdrv941w282/2-fire.png[/img][/center]
[color=#1D2224]Faust had picked up a couple of facial wounds: one on the left and the other on the right. The left one was of note, as the [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=19148364]Chief Healer[/url][color=#1D2224] mentioned: “Another inch higher and it would’ve taken out your eye,” she growled. As she packed away her supplies, she muttered, “Would’ve been better, much better, if you’d waited a few years....Then your scales would’ve grown in and that burst would’ve been harmless. As it is, though, you’ll have some lovely scars. Hah. Whether you like them or not is up to you.”
Faust shrank beneath the force of her reprimands. After Pyrea had left, he waddled over to Laurant, who was sprawled with her left leg splayed out. It’d been bandaged as well.
She opened one golden eye to squint at him. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Faust sat, his tail curled around himself. It was a defensive gesture, one he very rarely made. But he looked like he could use a lot of defending now.
Laurant told him, “Don’t sweat it, kid. All said and done, it could’ve been much worse, but we’re both OK, right? Well, at least until the yelling starts. Shall we wallow together in our mutual sorriness?”
Faust nodded forlornly. His despondence weighed him down, and it wasn’t long before he was stretched out flat on the pallet, wallowing in a slough of despond. He rather resembled a snake that’d bitten off more than it could swallow—which was more or less the case.
Laurant peered at him. “Y’know, I’ve been thinking,” she began as she started turning over. From Faust’s point of view, it was a titanic maneuver, and he tried not to cringe as her wings slapped loudly onto the floor. Laurant stared at him upside-down, her limbs paddling lazily in the air. “It’s kinda funny how you seem to be everywhere at once but I always know exactly where y’are.”
“Umm,” said Faust. He wondered if she was leading up to a grand scolding.
“I’ve talked with my mom and dad about it....They think you might be my Charge.” She blinked, and now she seemed as surprised as he did. “Fancy that, huh, kid?”
He’d heard bits and pieces about Guardians and their Charges. It was a mysterious thing, almost ineffable, even sacred. Nobody could explain how it happened; it was one of those things that was impossible to touch, let alone measure or observe.
He burbled, “So, if...?”
“Haw! I wouldn’t mind having you as my Charge; Lightweaver knows I’m already used to chasing after you. I’m hoping you’ll stop that by the time you grow up, though. How do you [i]run[/i] with those short little legs of yours? You’re like a bleedin’ [i]centipede[/i].”
Faust relaxed. So he wasn’t going to get a scolding after all, at least not right now. If it turned out he [i]wasn’t[/i] Laurant’s Charge, and in the future she went on her Search...Well, they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. Or burn it down, most likely. But for now the sun was rising and everything was fine and he had to concentrate on healing, scars or none.
Whether or not Laurant was his Guardian, he couldn’t be sure. But he [i]was[/i] certain of one thing: The forge would be cleaned and repaired soon, and more blacksmiths would come and go, but only up to a point— because someday, that place would be [i]his[/i].[/color]
[right][font=Copperplate Gothic Light][color=#FF5500][size=5][b]~ The End[/b][/color][/size][/font][/right]
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..
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the fire of creation
written by Disillusionist
2,216 words
|
???????????????????????
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-- “Laurant, where did I came from?”
-- “Well, kid, I won you in a game of chance.”
-- “...................”
-- “That’s why I called you ‘Faust’, ’cause you’re lucky.”
-- “Wasn’t he cursed by the Devil or something?”
-- “OK, about that. Yes. Ummm...”
|
It wasn’t long before the hatchling was given a new name: Faustino, Laurant called him, because she’d won guardianship of him through a test of luck, not skill. Faust, as the hatchling was now known, wasn’t really sure what to make of that. At the very least, it was a decent name, unlike “Carrot”, which some of his new clanmates called him.
Faust was regarded as a bit of a strange little duck. “He must’ve gotten it from his parents,” mumbled the older dragons—they’d done a bit of digging into Faust’s family history and had uncovered some interesting stories. Something about a feud regarding the concepts of beauty and genes.
Faust remained blissfully unaware of this. He’d quickly grown accustomed to the lair, especially after Kisharaq and his mate, Roxley the Chief Clothier, had presented him with a gloriously warm and oversized sweater. He became a common sight as he toddled determinedly through the halls, the sweater sleeves taken in with twine to keep from covering his toes while the rest of it dragged along behind him. He didn’t cause trouble, not really. But he was curious about certain things: “What are you doing? Hey, show me how you make that.”
That image of Kisharaq unspooling the yarn and then knitting a full-sized sweater...It had lit quite the fire in him. And, as it turned out, it was the fire of creation. He became fascinated by the idea that dragons could take the most wretched-looking things and craft them into things that worked, things that shone. And he decided that if they could do it, so could he!
Gradually, Faust’s interests began to narrow. Knitting wasn’t really for him; it made his head ache. Perhaps in the future...He learned flower arrangement from the gardeners, but wasn’t so good at it; the plants tended to, well, die after he’d fussed with them. “Hot hands,” grumbled one of the gardeners. He shook his fearsome head. “Hot hands, hot claws, turning plants to ash. Maybe you should...I don’t know, cook something.”
Faustino flicked his ears. Well, cooking was really another way of making stuff, wasn’t it? So away he went, in search of the mysterious, magical kitchens of the lair.
He knew kitchens were places of light and heat, so he entered the first bright, hot room he saw. It wasn’t the kitchens, however—it was the forge. It was not often used, as the Chief Engineer was an old dragon who didn’t have much strength left to hammer stuff, but the clan occasionally hired drakes from outside to do repairs for them.
The forge was in use now, with the Chief Engineer directing the efforts of a pair of smiths. It took him a while to notice the small shape scudding into the room. When he did, he yawped like a dog whose tail had been trodden on.
“What’re you doing here?! This is a dangerous place for hatchlings, Carrot!” he cried as he scooped up the Imperial hatchling. Faust dangled from his paws, a little lump of disgruntlement. “Carrot,” he repeated grouchily.
Carrot was plopped down safely away from the forge. The Wildclaw bent down and wagged a claw in front of his nose. “You must never go in there!” he said in the exaggerated language all adults used with kids. “It’s dangerous. Lots of fire and pointy things. Boom! Crash!” He gestured wildly as the smiths continued to hammer away.
Faust nodded, and with much gravity, he turned and waddled off. It wasn’t long before Laurant found him. He didn’t make it a habit to hide from her, not exactly....Let’s just say it had become second nature for him to evade her.
She bore down on him like a charging Featherback. “Where’ve you been?! Stop hiding from me, Faust—it never works.”
He sniffed at her in that annoyingly stuffy way he had. He was becoming quite good at sniffing.
Laurant scooped him up. As she stormed away with him, she muttered, “I dunno what you were doing in there. Ugh, good thing I was passing by; I never would’ve thought to look here otherwise....”
Something about that was weird, even to the hatchling. He asked her, “If you never thought to look here, why’re you here?”
“Huh. Well...” She looked ready to answer, and then seemed to remember that she was supposed to be annoyed with him. She gave him a genuinely ferocious scowl instead. “Don’t ask questions, Carrot-head!”
The usual nickname/insult worked, and Laurant and Faust preserved a chilly silence between themselves as they went back to the more populated parts of the lair.
Chilly silence or none, the fires inside Faust hadn’t cooled, not one bit. His mind kept flitting back to that vaulted room. The glow of the fire had been almost hypnotic; so had the clang! clang! of the hammers. Almost like music...Laurant’s swear-songs couldn’t hold a candle to that, at least not in Faust’s mind. They were only disguised swear words, after all. But this...This was the song of innovation, of creation! He had to learn that....He would have his song, too. He would have to try.
It took him some time to put his plan into action. If it could be called a plan. For one thing or another, stuff kept getting in the way...but he was here now. It was the deepest hour of the morning, just before dawn, when even the night sentries had been too weary to notice him skittering behind them. He entered the forge unnoticed, and he looked around in awe. The room was big...and there were so many interesting things! Tools, instruments, crates and barrels of materials. There were schematics on the wall and codices on high shelves. It was all so intriguing....
Yet it was different from the forge Faust remembered. That time, the room had been hot and bright, lit by burning coals. Right now, it was dark and cool. Almost dead... “There should be a fire,” he thought, and his mouth curved in a determined frown as he got to work on that.
The sun began to rise. The night sentries prepared for bed, and then one of them sniffed the air. “Smoke,” he growled. He swung around, and his eyes widened as he realized, “It’s coming from inside the lair!”
The dragons were galvanized into action. Though the lair was made of stone, fire of any sort was dangerous, especially if there were hatchlings about. This was the thought uppermost in Laurant’s mind as she galloped through the corridors, searching and searching for...
Faust had quickly learned that it was a mistake to work the bellows by himself. He’d gotten enthusiastic, hopping up and down on the box; he hadn’t noticed the sparks wafting into the air and clinging to the walls, the shelves....Suddenly several tomes had caught fire, and the smoke had grown thick, oppressive. He started looking around for an exit.
That was when Laurant appeared in the doorway. “Faust!” she bellowed.
Faust jumped. The bellows finally gave out beneath his weight, and it collapsed into the forge. The hatchling shrank away from the mess, squealing as the flames ate it right up. It burst and popped, twanging horribly. Something slapped at his face, and he flinched back and shut his eyes.
Laurant’s voice boomed again: “Jump, jump, you little brat!” She sounded quite close by, and, eyes still shut, he jumped.
He plopped safely into her paws. “Egads, you’re a mess....Hold onto my back. Lords, it’s eating up everything!” He felt himself set down, and he clung to Laurant, his claws digging in. He peered at the world through one eye; he could feel something dripping down his chin. Laurant was bent over the water barrels, trying to drag one over to the blazing shelves. She didn’t seem to be making much headway.
In a rush of blue and purple, a sinuous shape swarmed into the room. Faust looked up in surprise as, clinging upside-down to the ceiling, a splendidly-dressed Bogsneak opened her jaws, croaking words of magic. Faust felt her power ripple through his hide.
The air trembled. And then in a rush of coolness, water materialized. It crashed down onto the forge, drenching everything below the Bogsneak. The fire was extinguished at last.
Laurant sat down, coughing uselessly. Faust wasn’t much better. He and Laurant looked wearily at each other, and then the Guardian asked the Bogsneak, “How did you know...?”
The Bogsneak detached herself from the ceiling, flipping around as she did so. She landed in a jingle of cloth and jewels, looking none the worse for wear. “I am Rajin, Seer of Water,” she intoned in a lofty voice. “I may not know all—but I see much.” She gave Faust a brief, enigmatic look, and then she slithered away.
Laurant was looking at Faust, too, but for an entirely different reason. “Good heavens, you’re wrecked,” she commented as she pried him from her left hind leg. In his panic, he’d slid backwards and dug deep scratches in her left thigh. She didn’t seem to notice, though. “You hurt, boy? Gaaah, your face looks horrible.”
“I’m OK,” Faust peeped. If Laurant wasn’t going to complain, then he wasn’t either—even though it hurt like hell. He could feel his cheeks throbbing; he remembered the bellows exploding earlier, throwing hot coals towards him.
Outside, the rest of the lair was converging. “We’d better get ourselves patched up before the yelling begins,” Laurant sighed. She seemed resigned rather than angry. She and Faust limped to the forge door, and thence to the infirmary.
Faust had picked up a couple of facial wounds: one on the left and the other on the right. The left one was of note, as the Chief Healer mentioned: “Another inch higher and it would’ve taken out your eye,” she growled. As she packed away her supplies, she muttered, “Would’ve been better, much better, if you’d waited a few years....Then your scales would’ve grown in and that burst would’ve been harmless. As it is, though, you’ll have some lovely scars. Hah. Whether you like them or not is up to you.”
Faust shrank beneath the force of her reprimands. After Pyrea had left, he waddled over to Laurant, who was sprawled with her left leg splayed out. It’d been bandaged as well.
She opened one golden eye to squint at him. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Faust sat, his tail curled around himself. It was a defensive gesture, one he very rarely made. But he looked like he could use a lot of defending now.
Laurant told him, “Don’t sweat it, kid. All said and done, it could’ve been much worse, but we’re both OK, right? Well, at least until the yelling starts. Shall we wallow together in our mutual sorriness?”
Faust nodded forlornly. His despondence weighed him down, and it wasn’t long before he was stretched out flat on the pallet, wallowing in a slough of despond. He rather resembled a snake that’d bitten off more than it could swallow—which was more or less the case.
Laurant peered at him. “Y’know, I’ve been thinking,” she began as she started turning over. From Faust’s point of view, it was a titanic maneuver, and he tried not to cringe as her wings slapped loudly onto the floor. Laurant stared at him upside-down, her limbs paddling lazily in the air. “It’s kinda funny how you seem to be everywhere at once but I always know exactly where y’are.”
“Umm,” said Faust. He wondered if she was leading up to a grand scolding.
“I’ve talked with my mom and dad about it....They think you might be my Charge.” She blinked, and now she seemed as surprised as he did. “Fancy that, huh, kid?”
He’d heard bits and pieces about Guardians and their Charges. It was a mysterious thing, almost ineffable, even sacred. Nobody could explain how it happened; it was one of those things that was impossible to touch, let alone measure or observe.
He burbled, “So, if...?”
“Haw! I wouldn’t mind having you as my Charge; Lightweaver knows I’m already used to chasing after you. I’m hoping you’ll stop that by the time you grow up, though. How do you run with those short little legs of yours? You’re like a bleedin’ centipede.”
Faust relaxed. So he wasn’t going to get a scolding after all, at least not right now. If it turned out he wasn’t Laurant’s Charge, and in the future she went on her Search...Well, they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. Or burn it down, most likely. But for now the sun was rising and everything was fine and he had to concentrate on healing, scars or none.
Whether or not Laurant was his Guardian, he couldn’t be sure. But he was certain of one thing: The forge would be cleaned and repaired soon, and more blacksmiths would come and go, but only up to a point— because someday, that place would be his.
~ The End
[center][color=#BBBABF][size=1][b]PREV.[/b][/size] [size=2][url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/19#post_34811373]Dragon[/url] | [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/1#post_2323941]Contents[/url] • Characters [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/1#post_30507351]A-M[/url] [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/1#post_30507353]N-Z[/url] • [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/1#post_30507362]Stories Pt. 3[/url] | [/size][size=1][b]NEXT[/b][/size] [size=2][url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/20#post_34811385]Dragon[/url][/color][/size][/center]
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[columns][center][item=contaminate][/center][nextcol][color=transparent]..[/color][nextcol][color=#977B6D][font=garamond][size=7][size=4][b]the meaning of life[/b][/size][/size][/font][/color]
[size=2]written by Disillusionist
[color=#9494A9]2,330 words[/color][/size][/columns]
[color=transparent]________________________[/color][url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sere][font=garamond][size=6][b]sere[/b][/font][/url]
[center][size=4][font=cambria]1. (adj.) dry, withered[/font][/size][/center]
[color=#652127]The ethos of Plague is [i]survive[/i], and that’s what the trees did. Even they were never sure where they came from. Observers, looking in from outside, thought they might be some sort of gigantic fungus. But nobody dwelled on this question for long. In Plague, the question is never “Where do you come from?” It’s always “Where are you going, and will you make it there?”
The trees didn’t need to go anywhere, but they preyed on those who did.
They were called the [i]sere wood[/i] — “sere” meaning “dry and withered”, [i]dead[/i]. The slender trunks stuck up from the red earth, pointing straight towards the sky. They spread over a fair-sized area, closely packed together, but with trails winding through them obviously, almost enticingly...
That was how it captured its prey. Creatures would step in among the trees, following the paths...and be unable to find their way out. They disappeared into the sere wood, wandering in circles until they died of thirst or starvation and their bodies disintegrated in the soil beneath. Sucked dry of whatever sustenance they had left, magic and memories dissipating into the air...or not.
A curious thing began to happen. The more lives it consumed, the more the sere wood became [i]aware[/i]. It could not see or hear, smell or taste, and its trunks had no nerves with which to feel. But nonetheless, it began to. And its sensations were the memories of all who had fallen into its grasp.
There was the familiar that fell from an airship passing overhead. It was a stormy night, and the Death Seeker was hurled down, its wing shattering beneath it. Even after the storm passed, it was unable to fly. No one noticed it was missing. Using its talons and beak, it clawed its way up a trunk. It perched upon a branch, its beak pointing skywards, waiting for a master who never came back. Eventually it lost its grip, and it fell to the ground in a tangle of feathers. Its bleached skull was soon all that was left, one eyehole still turned towards the sky.
There was the traveling warrior who, ignorant of the wood’s dangers, simply walked in. The wood remembered how his nonchalant whistling faded when he realized he couldn’t get out. He began to spit and swear. He drew his heavy cleaver and smashed the trees with it, cursing their vile magic. It took months for him to die, for he was vigorous and had supplies to sustain him. But he, too, eventually succumbed, his cleaver dropping from his rusty gauntlet, cursing the wood with his last breath.
There was the troupe of performers who camped well away from the wood — but their magician got drunk and blundered in among the trees. He woke up with his deck of cards strewn around him, and was terrified into sobriety when he realized where he was. He gathered his cards and tried to find the edge of the wood, but it was too late; it had him. He heard the rest of his troupe calling out his name, but try though he might, he never glimpsed them again. Eventually their voices faded away altogether. That was when he knew he was lost, that nobody would come back for him.
And there was the shaman who deliberately ran into the trees. She had failed to save the clan leaders’ child, and they had not taken it well. Rather than face death at their hands, she fled into the woods, determined to die on her own terms: curled up peacefully with her tail around her instead of torn apart by the angry mob.
The wood noticed a curious thing: all these beings...they had had the same three words running through their heads, right up until the very end: [i]I must survive.[/i]
[i]“I must survive,”[/i] thought the Death Seeker, waiting in vain for a master who never returned.
[i]“I must survive,”[/i] thought the warrior, as he hacked futilely at trees that never yielded.
[i]“I must survive,”[/i] thought the magician, stumbling frantically towards the sound of his troupe’s voices.
[i]“I must survive,”[/i] thought the shaman, if only for a few more days, as a final insult against those who’d wronged her. And now...
[i]“I must survive.”[/i] The same words ran through the sere wood’s trunks, roots, and leaves. Its branches shivered with the urgency of it.
[i]“I must survive....”[/i]
The shaman had been the last victim. By then, the sere wood’s reputation had spread far and wide, and travelers knew to avoid it. Even the animals, sensing death, had stayed away. Those few that entered the wood by accident were inadequate sustenance for it. The sere wood was dying.
By recognizing the danger, and changing their behavior to avoid it, the rest of the Plaguelands had survived. The sere wood was getting left behind.
[i]“I must...!”[/i][/color]
[color=transparent]_____________[/color][url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sere][font=garamond][size=6][b]sere[/b][/font][/url]
[center][size=4][font=cambria]2. (n.) the series of stages in an ecological succession[/font][/size][/center]
[color=#652127]There is another definition of the word “sere”. It is not just a word that denotes death. It can also mean “a [i]series[/i] of changes”.
It was time for the sere wood to move to the next stage. It would change, and then it would [i]survive[/i].[/color]
[center][img]https://66.media.tumblr.com/9577cc75dc5dccc458cea868c97edf48/tumblr_inline_o21bm9FwdX1r3lvtf_400.png[/img][/center]
[url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=25197371]Hemera[/url] [color=#652127]often used the sere wood as a landmark, so when she noticed it was missing, she was taken aback. She banked over the area where it’d been. There — a pale patch....She could see lines that might’ve been fallen tree trunks. At the center of it, something gleamed, white and very small.
She was deathly afraid, but her concern was stronger, and she swooped down. Her wingbeats blew away the red earth, exposing a dragon small enough to fit into her paw. As she approached, the hatchling seemed to blur, spikes rippling over its body — and then it was just another baby, its hide pale and striated like bleached wood, red eyes burning with the determination to survive.
Hemera took the child back to her lair. Her clanmates were a lively bunch and tried to make the hatchling feel welcome, whatever their misgivings...and they had plenty. They were curious about why she had been all alone in the wilderness and wondered where her clan had gone. Could she have been abandoned? And there were...other things besides.
The Disillusionists named her “Serewood”, after the patch of dead land where Hemera had found her, and she accepted this without comment or complaint. She seemed to be a Ridgeback, like the dragon who’d picked her up. But from time to time her clanmates would catch sight of...odd things about her. Sometimes her striated skin would seem to ripple, and the spines along her back would shift. Spots and markings would appear upon her skin, looking almost like faces...noses and eyes....They would vanish the next day.
She didn’t speak much. Her sentences were always clipped, simple, her voice quiet and flat. She didn’t offer clues to where she had come from. Eventually, her clan took her back to the Scarred Wasteland to find answers for themselves.
They showed her to the clans they encountered, and various dragons entreated her to speak. They looked her over, noting her skin patterns, the color of her eyes.
“I found her where some dead trees used to stand. That’s why we named her ‘Serewood’,” explained Hemera. Her claws made an awful screeching noise as she wrung her paws. The chieftain she was interviewing murmured, “Is that so?”
Then this to the child: “Are you a fighter, hatchling?”
Serewood blinked. What was...fighting? Swinging something heavy...A cleaver, maybe? Where had that come from?
[i]So many years, falling past like snow. Too many faces, too many skies overhead. She didn’t remember. Not really...[/i]
“Perhaps you were born to a native clan. Do you know how to survive?”
[i]Years falling past like snow, countless years piling up...Snow. Had she ever seen snow? Maybe she had heard...[/i]
Her hide prickled. Words filtered through the gaps of her new brain, impressions and memories. “Yes,” she said at last. It was the first word she’d said since coming here, and the dragons leaned forward expectantly. “I’ll tell you. You see...”
She couldn’t answer questions about where she’d come from, but she knew all about survival. She had done it better than many for a long, long time.
“I will show you how to set a trap to catch birds that fly overhead.”
“I can teach you how to pull water from the air as the dawn begins to break.”
“I know how to read the weather, and what you must do before a storm descends....”
So much knowledge accumulated in this strange, quiet child. Even longtime dwellers of the Scarred Wasteland were surprised at how much she could teach them. Some of them took umbrage at being lectured by a child; others were wary. One of them, an aged priest, made an unfamiliar sign, some sort of warding gesture. “You are a true child of the Plaguelands,” he said in a quavering voice. Normally he would have said that with pride, but he looked at her with eyes that were almost fearful.
“But is she a child of the Plaguebringer?” another dragon hissed. Hemera, sensing the interview was at an end, decided to take Serewood home.
On the trip back to the Sunbeam Ruins, Serewood contemplated things. Strange memories, of standing on red earth day after day while the clouds soared overhead. Seeing things scurrying around her feet, dragons as tiny as insects. Feeling the wind on her...face? Her...spines, maybe? Something was not right. She drifted to sleep as the wind rushed past....
[i]She felt her crown break as something crashed through it. It thrashed on the ground and then, with effort, it righted itself. The eye in its chest blinked in bewilderment as it hauled itself laboriously up one of her trunks, using its beak like a mattock.
“Why didn’t they come back?” she wondered days later, as she finally picked the Death Seeker’s skeleton apart with delicate roots. Its substance flowed into her even as she wondered, “Waiting and waiting...but no one came back?”
“The world is wide. It’s much too wide,” came the response. With it came sensations of a sky so vast that she had to shrink away. “Did they know where I was? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they’re still looking....”
She shuddered again, in pain this time, as a rusted cleaver smashed into her again and again. Each strike grew weaker, a fraction at a time, until the warrior was trembling with exhaustion and his cleaver slipped from his grasp. He continued trembling even as he died, with fear as much as with frustration and rage. “I could have flown out. Why didn’t I remember?”
“A bird fell into my grasp one day. It told me the world was wide. That others could fly and be free of the earth...”
“So you learned?”
“And I cast my spores into the wind. You breathed them in, and that was why you forgot....”
“Ah. But you, trees, you should not forget. Forgetting is dangerous....”
“Forgetting is dangerous.” She repeated those words as she drank the magician’s life. His cards lay scattered and moldering in the dirt. “You should not have forgotten.”
“Sometimes I can’t help myself,” he argued, and it wasn’t just the spores this time, but the alcohol that had dulled this wits. “There are other dangers out there. Sometimes you don’t suspect...”
And she wrapped her leaves and branches around the shaman, tucking her in for her final sleep. The shaman breathed her last and said, “This is how it should be.”
“Dying on your own terms?”
Her smile was faint. “And passing your life on to something stronger. That is the way of our goddess. Only the strong survive.”
And then she was gone, and only the trees remained. The question was, for how much longer?
Lives flew past like the pages of a book rapidly turning, like leaves cascading from the crowns of trees. “There are many ways to survive, and I will try them all.”[/i][/color]
[center][color=#CABBA2]————————————————————————————————————[/color][/center]
[columns][color=transparent]_________[/color][nextcol][font=Garamond][size=5][color=#A44B29]
"What is the most resilient parasite?...A bacteria?...A virus?...An intestinal
worm? . . . An [b]idea[/b]...Resilient. Highly contagious. Once an idea has taken
hold in the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully
formed, fully understood, that sticks. Right in there somewhere.[/color][/size][/font][/columns]
[right][color=#9A534D]— [font=Garamond][size=5][i]from [url=https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Inception_(film)][b]Inception[/b][/url][/i][color=transparent]_______[/color][/right]
[center][color=#CABBA2]————————————————————————————————————[/color][/center]
[color=#652127]The whispers stopped. Serewood woke up in the darkness. All was quiet in the lair, and she looked around her room. It was a small, spare chamber...and at the foot of her bed, a bundle had appeared. She touched it, and the branches and leaves enshrouding it crumbled into dust, leaving only the motley spoils within. A bird skull slid from the top to clatter onto the stone floor. There was a cloak such as a magician might wear, and a cleaver for a more warlike dragon. Serewood lifted a crown of bones that had evidently been made for a dragon smaller than she was — at the moment.
“You are a true child of the Plaguelands,” the old priest had muttered. “But is she a child of the Plaguebringer?” another dragon had asked. As Serewood decided that she was, her shape changed. She shrank, becoming smaller, sleeker, until she looked like the Plaguebringer’s first offspring. She settled the skull onto her head, followed by the crown, and blinked her four new eyes. The cloak settled warmly upon her shoulders, and she wrapped her new, thick tail around herself and snuggled against the fur.
There were many ways to survive, and she knew them all. It was time to put them to the test. After all, wasn’t that what the children of the Plaguelands did? [i]All[/i] children — regardless of how they’d come into this world, that they were here at all, that they would [i]continue[/i] being here at all, was what mattered to a child of the Plaguebringer. A new life for a new form...
She had already taken many lives — and she would live them all.[/color]
[right][font=Copperplate Gothic Light][color=#977B6D][size=5][b]~ The End[/b][/color][/size][/font][/right]
[size=2][color=#9494A9][b]Note:[/b] A shorter version of this story was entered into the [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/raf/2462692]Pen and Ink Raffle[/url], where it won first prize. Read it [url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Z-yr4ahUPQk1JdUPgVNsl4QIIbnPb6qD7WLsi6zjlu4]here.[/url][/color][/size]
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..
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the meaning of life
written by Disillusionist
2,330 words
|
________________________sere
1. (adj.) dry, withered
The ethos of Plague is survive, and that’s what the trees did. Even they were never sure where they came from. Observers, looking in from outside, thought they might be some sort of gigantic fungus. But nobody dwelled on this question for long. In Plague, the question is never “Where do you come from?” It’s always “Where are you going, and will you make it there?”
The trees didn’t need to go anywhere, but they preyed on those who did.
They were called the sere wood — “sere” meaning “dry and withered”, dead. The slender trunks stuck up from the red earth, pointing straight towards the sky. They spread over a fair-sized area, closely packed together, but with trails winding through them obviously, almost enticingly...
That was how it captured its prey. Creatures would step in among the trees, following the paths...and be unable to find their way out. They disappeared into the sere wood, wandering in circles until they died of thirst or starvation and their bodies disintegrated in the soil beneath. Sucked dry of whatever sustenance they had left, magic and memories dissipating into the air...or not.
A curious thing began to happen. The more lives it consumed, the more the sere wood became aware. It could not see or hear, smell or taste, and its trunks had no nerves with which to feel. But nonetheless, it began to. And its sensations were the memories of all who had fallen into its grasp.
There was the familiar that fell from an airship passing overhead. It was a stormy night, and the Death Seeker was hurled down, its wing shattering beneath it. Even after the storm passed, it was unable to fly. No one noticed it was missing. Using its talons and beak, it clawed its way up a trunk. It perched upon a branch, its beak pointing skywards, waiting for a master who never came back. Eventually it lost its grip, and it fell to the ground in a tangle of feathers. Its bleached skull was soon all that was left, one eyehole still turned towards the sky.
There was the traveling warrior who, ignorant of the wood’s dangers, simply walked in. The wood remembered how his nonchalant whistling faded when he realized he couldn’t get out. He began to spit and swear. He drew his heavy cleaver and smashed the trees with it, cursing their vile magic. It took months for him to die, for he was vigorous and had supplies to sustain him. But he, too, eventually succumbed, his cleaver dropping from his rusty gauntlet, cursing the wood with his last breath.
There was the troupe of performers who camped well away from the wood — but their magician got drunk and blundered in among the trees. He woke up with his deck of cards strewn around him, and was terrified into sobriety when he realized where he was. He gathered his cards and tried to find the edge of the wood, but it was too late; it had him. He heard the rest of his troupe calling out his name, but try though he might, he never glimpsed them again. Eventually their voices faded away altogether. That was when he knew he was lost, that nobody would come back for him.
And there was the shaman who deliberately ran into the trees. She had failed to save the clan leaders’ child, and they had not taken it well. Rather than face death at their hands, she fled into the woods, determined to die on her own terms: curled up peacefully with her tail around her instead of torn apart by the angry mob.
The wood noticed a curious thing: all these beings...they had had the same three words running through their heads, right up until the very end: I must survive.
“I must survive,” thought the Death Seeker, waiting in vain for a master who never returned.
“I must survive,” thought the warrior, as he hacked futilely at trees that never yielded.
“I must survive,” thought the magician, stumbling frantically towards the sound of his troupe’s voices.
“I must survive,” thought the shaman, if only for a few more days, as a final insult against those who’d wronged her. And now...
“I must survive.” The same words ran through the sere wood’s trunks, roots, and leaves. Its branches shivered with the urgency of it.
“I must survive....”
The shaman had been the last victim. By then, the sere wood’s reputation had spread far and wide, and travelers knew to avoid it. Even the animals, sensing death, had stayed away. Those few that entered the wood by accident were inadequate sustenance for it. The sere wood was dying.
By recognizing the danger, and changing their behavior to avoid it, the rest of the Plaguelands had survived. The sere wood was getting left behind.
“I must...!”
_____________sere
2. (n.) the series of stages in an ecological succession
There is another definition of the word “sere”. It is not just a word that denotes death. It can also mean “a series of changes”.
It was time for the sere wood to move to the next stage. It would change, and then it would survive.
Hemera often used the sere wood as a landmark, so when she noticed it was missing, she was taken aback. She banked over the area where it’d been. There — a pale patch....She could see lines that might’ve been fallen tree trunks. At the center of it, something gleamed, white and very small.
She was deathly afraid, but her concern was stronger, and she swooped down. Her wingbeats blew away the red earth, exposing a dragon small enough to fit into her paw. As she approached, the hatchling seemed to blur, spikes rippling over its body — and then it was just another baby, its hide pale and striated like bleached wood, red eyes burning with the determination to survive.
Hemera took the child back to her lair. Her clanmates were a lively bunch and tried to make the hatchling feel welcome, whatever their misgivings...and they had plenty. They were curious about why she had been all alone in the wilderness and wondered where her clan had gone. Could she have been abandoned? And there were...other things besides.
The Disillusionists named her “Serewood”, after the patch of dead land where Hemera had found her, and she accepted this without comment or complaint. She seemed to be a Ridgeback, like the dragon who’d picked her up. But from time to time her clanmates would catch sight of...odd things about her. Sometimes her striated skin would seem to ripple, and the spines along her back would shift. Spots and markings would appear upon her skin, looking almost like faces...noses and eyes....They would vanish the next day.
She didn’t speak much. Her sentences were always clipped, simple, her voice quiet and flat. She didn’t offer clues to where she had come from. Eventually, her clan took her back to the Scarred Wasteland to find answers for themselves.
They showed her to the clans they encountered, and various dragons entreated her to speak. They looked her over, noting her skin patterns, the color of her eyes.
“I found her where some dead trees used to stand. That’s why we named her ‘Serewood’,” explained Hemera. Her claws made an awful screeching noise as she wrung her paws. The chieftain she was interviewing murmured, “Is that so?”
Then this to the child: “Are you a fighter, hatchling?”
Serewood blinked. What was...fighting? Swinging something heavy...A cleaver, maybe? Where had that come from?
So many years, falling past like snow. Too many faces, too many skies overhead. She didn’t remember. Not really...
“Perhaps you were born to a native clan. Do you know how to survive?”
Years falling past like snow, countless years piling up...Snow. Had she ever seen snow? Maybe she had heard...
Her hide prickled. Words filtered through the gaps of her new brain, impressions and memories. “Yes,” she said at last. It was the first word she’d said since coming here, and the dragons leaned forward expectantly. “I’ll tell you. You see...”
She couldn’t answer questions about where she’d come from, but she knew all about survival. She had done it better than many for a long, long time.
“I will show you how to set a trap to catch birds that fly overhead.”
“I can teach you how to pull water from the air as the dawn begins to break.”
“I know how to read the weather, and what you must do before a storm descends....”
So much knowledge accumulated in this strange, quiet child. Even longtime dwellers of the Scarred Wasteland were surprised at how much she could teach them. Some of them took umbrage at being lectured by a child; others were wary. One of them, an aged priest, made an unfamiliar sign, some sort of warding gesture. “You are a true child of the Plaguelands,” he said in a quavering voice. Normally he would have said that with pride, but he looked at her with eyes that were almost fearful.
“But is she a child of the Plaguebringer?” another dragon hissed. Hemera, sensing the interview was at an end, decided to take Serewood home.
On the trip back to the Sunbeam Ruins, Serewood contemplated things. Strange memories, of standing on red earth day after day while the clouds soared overhead. Seeing things scurrying around her feet, dragons as tiny as insects. Feeling the wind on her...face? Her...spines, maybe? Something was not right. She drifted to sleep as the wind rushed past....
She felt her crown break as something crashed through it. It thrashed on the ground and then, with effort, it righted itself. The eye in its chest blinked in bewilderment as it hauled itself laboriously up one of her trunks, using its beak like a mattock.
“Why didn’t they come back?” she wondered days later, as she finally picked the Death Seeker’s skeleton apart with delicate roots. Its substance flowed into her even as she wondered, “Waiting and waiting...but no one came back?”
“The world is wide. It’s much too wide,” came the response. With it came sensations of a sky so vast that she had to shrink away. “Did they know where I was? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they’re still looking....”
She shuddered again, in pain this time, as a rusted cleaver smashed into her again and again. Each strike grew weaker, a fraction at a time, until the warrior was trembling with exhaustion and his cleaver slipped from his grasp. He continued trembling even as he died, with fear as much as with frustration and rage. “I could have flown out. Why didn’t I remember?”
“A bird fell into my grasp one day. It told me the world was wide. That others could fly and be free of the earth...”
“So you learned?”
“And I cast my spores into the wind. You breathed them in, and that was why you forgot....”
“Ah. But you, trees, you should not forget. Forgetting is dangerous....”
“Forgetting is dangerous.” She repeated those words as she drank the magician’s life. His cards lay scattered and moldering in the dirt. “You should not have forgotten.”
“Sometimes I can’t help myself,” he argued, and it wasn’t just the spores this time, but the alcohol that had dulled this wits. “There are other dangers out there. Sometimes you don’t suspect...”
And she wrapped her leaves and branches around the shaman, tucking her in for her final sleep. The shaman breathed her last and said, “This is how it should be.”
“Dying on your own terms?”
Her smile was faint. “And passing your life on to something stronger. That is the way of our goddess. Only the strong survive.”
And then she was gone, and only the trees remained. The question was, for how much longer?
Lives flew past like the pages of a book rapidly turning, like leaves cascading from the crowns of trees. “There are many ways to survive, and I will try them all.”
————————————————————————————————————
_________
|
"What is the most resilient parasite?...A bacteria?...A virus?...An intestinal
worm? . . . An idea...Resilient. Highly contagious. Once an idea has taken
hold in the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully
formed, fully understood, that sticks. Right in there somewhere.
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The whispers stopped. Serewood woke up in the darkness. All was quiet in the lair, and she looked around her room. It was a small, spare chamber...and at the foot of her bed, a bundle had appeared. She touched it, and the branches and leaves enshrouding it crumbled into dust, leaving only the motley spoils within. A bird skull slid from the top to clatter onto the stone floor. There was a cloak such as a magician might wear, and a cleaver for a more warlike dragon. Serewood lifted a crown of bones that had evidently been made for a dragon smaller than she was — at the moment.
“You are a true child of the Plaguelands,” the old priest had muttered. “But is she a child of the Plaguebringer?” another dragon had asked. As Serewood decided that she was, her shape changed. She shrank, becoming smaller, sleeker, until she looked like the Plaguebringer’s first offspring. She settled the skull onto her head, followed by the crown, and blinked her four new eyes. The cloak settled warmly upon her shoulders, and she wrapped her new, thick tail around herself and snuggled against the fur.
There were many ways to survive, and she knew them all. It was time to put them to the test. After all, wasn’t that what the children of the Plaguelands did? All children — regardless of how they’d come into this world, that they were here at all, that they would continue being here at all, was what mattered to a child of the Plaguebringer. A new life for a new form...
She had already taken many lives — and she would live them all.
~ The End
Note: A shorter version of this story was entered into the Pen and Ink Raffle, where it won first prize. Read it here.
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[columns][center][item=sea heart][/center][nextcol][color=transparent]..[/color][nextcol][color=#AA0025][font=garamond][size=7][size=4][b]separation anxiety[/b][/size][/size][/font][/color]
[size=2]written by Disillusionist
special thanks to Sienna
[color=#9494A9]4,960 words[/color][/size][/columns]
[color=#5B0F15]Aidan's eyes were as golden as Light, but the world he was born into seemed shrouded in darkness. He and his siblings were always treated well, yet from the very beginning, something seemed...off.
[i]Coven Viscera[/i], the clan was called. Nestled deep within the domain of Shadow, yet tantalizingly close to the Scarred Wasteland's border, it was a forbidding place. Children were encouraged to leave the clan — it increased the chances of them finding more converts and supporters of their cause — and Aidan was educated on the clan's mission, ways, and abilities. His was a more lenient education than one might think, but he grew to scorn the rigidity that governed the adults' lives. If he found no reason to leave, he would probably be put to work as one of the coven's underlings. Or else he would get conscripted as a clan guard. His parents, [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=lair&id=19052&tab=dragon&did=27896461]Vyrek[/url][color=#5B0F15] and [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=lair&id=19052&tab=dragon&did=27812403]Ilvastar[/url][color=#5B0F15], were among the clan's mightiest and most loyal protectors, feared for their cunning as much as their prowess. They had had a hand in Aidan's education and he seemed to be inheriting what might be considered their more useful qualities. Aidan had been quite proud to hear these remarks as a child, but now that he was approaching adulthood, the words filled him with something close to dread. The life of an underling or a guard was not one he would enjoy — he was headstrong and curious about the world waiting beyond, and the thought of squandering all those opportunities for a life of servitude made him scowl.
He had to get away....Even now, he's not sure if he can call it a [i]chance[/i] remark. Perhaps it was not [i]chance[/i] that he heard of a Guardian's Search at a young age. He queried his parents about it, but Vyrek and Ilvastar were their usual distant selves, too preoccupied with their duties to give a thorough explanation to the adolescent dragon. Aidan got a general idea of the Search from them, but that was all. Indeed, it was from an ancient vampire that he received more thorough knowledge of the Search.[/color]
[url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=lair&id=19052&tab=dragon&did=17904453]Anita [/url][color=#5B0F15]was a scarlet-eyed Spiral — or at least she [i]looked[/i] like one. Over the years she had amassed great amounts of information, some of it stored in codices and manuscripts, the rest of it in her brain. She seemed quite close-mouthed at first when Aidan first approached her, but then he posed the question and her red eyes widened; her mouth stretched into a pike's toothy smile. Over the next few days, the young Guardian had his horizons stretched to their limits as the Spiral presented him with a dizzying array of tomes and papers, all of them centered on the mysterious phenomenon known as [i]the Search[/i]. There were autobiographies, dry scientific diatribes, maps and sketches and stories....Over it all, Anita's low-droning lectures were nearly constant. They hung over Aidan like smoke, seeming to seep into his ears and nose, down into his lungs where they fed the hammering of his heart. Those two words: [i]the Search, the Search, the Search[/i]...
When Vyrek and Ilvastar found that their son had left home, they were not at all concerned. They knew that he had been asking about the Search and that Anita had been sharing information. She preened when they confirmed this with her; of [i]course[/i] she had been telling Aidan what he'd wanted to know! A dragon as wise and knowledgeable as her, why of course she had been willing and able to help him — and help him she certainly had!
It didn't matter much to the clan whether or not Aidan returned, as long as he didn't subscribe to any machinations supporting Coven Aestrella. For now, he was just another young Guardian on a Search.
Except that he actually wasn't....[/color]
[center][img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/honnc29pwgfoymz/3-blood.png[/img][/center]
[color=#5B0F15]Young Aidan scowled at the forest he had once called “home”. He turned his back on it, flicking his tail dismissively as he did. The dragons of Coven Viscera were all devoted to their leader (at least his parents would have him believe so), but such a life was not for him. And at this point in time, he was convinced the Search wasn't, either. It had been an excuse to leave the Coven, nothing more. He had eschewed his clan's ways, and he was his own dragon now. He would not be fettered to a god, a clan...not even a Charge.
The vampiric Spiral had chuckled indulgently when he'd voiced similar beliefs during her lectures; he had glared at her with blazing eyes. "Surely not every single Guardian has a Charge," he had scoffed.
His adolescent scoff had been smoothly overridden by Anita's [i]harrumph[/i], for it carried the weight of ages with it. "It is not a choice, young Aidan," she had practically purred to him. "It is [i]instinct[/i] that drives the Search."
Here and now, he tossed his head. He'd left his clan only because he'd wanted to, not because he was being driven by some deeper instinct or feeling. The world was at his feet, and he was determined to pick it over on his own terms.
Over the next few years, Aidan wandered around Sornieth. The skills he had learned from his clan were very useful; out in the wilderness, he sometimes ran into trouble and had to defend himself. “A Guardian travels alone,” Anita had lectured him. “The Search is such that companions and their various errands usually hinder it, so if you are to find your Charge, and quickly, it is best that you journey alone.”
More than once he considered going against these words just to defy them, but Aidan was not a talkative dragon and did not take to others well. He disliked their prying remarks, how they looked deep into his yellow eyes to ascertain where he’d been born and then started pelting him with questions about his Search (because he was a young Guardian traveling without a destination in sight — of [i]course[/i] he was on a Search!). Over time, he learned to deflect these questions with smoothly-placed statements, a lie or two. “The weather is peculiar today — but then, you must have lived here long. Have you ever seen a storm like this, old drake?” he would inquire. The other dragon would happily launch into a speech of their own, and it would be some hours before they realized they had revealed much about themselves but still knew nothing about the young stranger. It was like Anita and her lectures all over again — except now, Aidan was in control.
Although his manners improved as he became more familiar with the other regions of Sornieth, he was still very much a loner. The old vampire had been right — traveling [i]was[/i] smoother without other dragons to worry about. No companions...no passengers...no Charge...
[i]But also no friendship, no protection or assistance.[/i] Other dragons had said this to Aidan, but their advice had gone ignored, for it didn’t suit him. His arrogance was very nearly his undoing.
It was an inky night when he approached the end of the Windswept Plateau, where it met the open ocean. There had been a moon earlier, but it had gone behind the clouds. Aidan thought he could see traces of moonbeans where they flickered out from behind cover, gently touching the surface of the sea.
There were passages beneath the Twisting Crescendo, but they were long and exhausting slogs and Aidan was eager to reach the Reedcleft Ascent. He had the half-baked notion of swimming through the sea around the cliffs instead. He was an excellent swimmer and reasoned that if he stayed within sight of the shore, he would make it.
He stepped into the water, and he swam. His toes scraped against the sand, and waves lapped at his sides....Out of the corner of one golden eye, he watched the shoreline scroll past. He could see the great mountains, palm trees fringing the shore....
He stroked with his paws, found no purchase. He was now treading deep water. For a moment, he paused, confused — he hadn’t meant to swim out this far. Had there been a current, subtly pulling him away from the land?
He thought there was a breeze at first — his ears tingled, and he instinctively turned. But the surface of the water remained steady, and the clouds stood still overhead. He could vaguely see the moon, and it was reflected on the ocean....
Deep [i]beneath[/i] the ocean...
[i]A voice.[/i] His frills quivered again. Something was calling him; he felt the force of their voice press against his soles, wrap languidly around his limbs. His toes twitched, and he ceased paddling. He drifted gently in the water.
[i]“Beautiful dragon...[/i]Such[i] a beautiful dragon,”[/i] something whispered in his ear. It was obvious that the words referred to him, but after they sank in, twisting into his brain, they insidiously distorted his thought processes. Underneath the water...[i]someone was waiting for him.[/i] Somebody was there, calling and singing; they were beautiful, and they were singing [i]for him alone[/i], and he had to [i]see them[/i]....
Aidan didn’t even swim. He [i]sank[/i], his body sliding beneath the water as smoothly and silently as the moon sliding behind the clouds. He glimpsed it briefly, its silverness shining clear and bright, before the waters closed over his head.
And down into the darkness, down and down...The singing was all around him now, wrapping around his forelimbs, tugging him down. The moon blazed overhead; all the clouds had finally fled from it. [i]“How beautiful it is, and the stars, too,”[/i] Aidan thought dreamily. He could see thousands of them, glittering and flashing, so close he could almost touch...
There was a thundering noise. The water swirled around Aidan — and the singing was briefly distorted. A frown chased across his face.
[i]“Water.”[/i] Cold, he was so cold... [i]“I’m under the water!”[/i] Suddenly the coldness doused his brain as well; he came fully awake, fighting and thrashing. He was staring through the surface at the moon shining overhead, but his forelimbs would not move; [i]something was gripping his forelimbs.[/i]
And it was dragging him down! [i]“No...No, not here!”[/i] Aidan craned his neck and beat his wings. He strained towards the surface — not so much to reach it as to tear himself away from the insidious force drawing him into the abyss. He didn’t look down; he [i]wouldn’t[/i] look. He was afraid, deeply terrified, that he would look down and see a horror beyond imagining, something that would drive him mad just from how hideous it was. Its slimy touch still bound his forepaws, pulling him down and down....
And now he felt that same icy touch seize his back legs.
Deep within the water, Aidan howled, a roar of desperation as much as of rage. Caught here, in the darkness, in a land where nobody knew his name! “Up!” he wanted to bellow, and to his rapidly-darkening mind, it seemed that he could hear an echo—
“Up! Come [i]up[/i]! Get [i]up[/i] already, blast you...!”
Then the cold enveloped him, shocking in its intensity, squeezing all the air from his lungs. He’d struggled too much; there was no fight left in him now. Even as his conscious mind screamed, the rest of him sank into darkness.[/color]
[center][img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/honnc29pwgfoymz/3-blood.png[/img][/center]
[color=#5B0F15]Minutes passed. Aidan was aware of the world in a strange, half-awake way. There was the feel of the wind brushing his damp face, and sand rubbing against his scales. There was also the sound of lapping water, but it filled him with deep dread, and his mind instinctively shrank from it....
And then pressure, cold and crushing pressure, upon his back, between his wings.
Water welled up from within him. His shoulders heaved, and instead of a roar, he regurgitated a great deal of seawater. He struggled to his feet and dithered in place, coughing and hacking. He was shivering and had an odd headache, but he was all right...still alive, anyway.
“Are you well, traveler? You gave me quite a scare.”
Aidan stared at her. The other dragon was a huge Imperial, easily twice his length, her gleaming hide as dark as the overhead sky. Her antlers and underside glittered silver, like so many tiny stars.
She had a hefty trident belted to her waist, but despite her watchful stare, she didn’t seem ready to draw it. She was calmly cleaning her talons, scraping away crusts of sand and salt.
“What happened to me?” Aidan mumbled. The Imperial snorted at him. “I was passing by on my way to the Reedcleft Ascent when I saw you floundering about in the water. I pulled you out and pumped the water from your lungs. Are you new to these parts?” Her eyes narrowed. “There’s a vicious current just offshore, you know.”
“I thought I heard...a voice...” Aidan trailed off. It sounded stupid even to him.
“I am [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=33548824]Mara[/url][color=#5B0F15], born in the Southern Icefield, but my family makes its home in the Sunbeam Ruins,” the Imperial introduced herself. Aidan didn’t really hear; he was too busy looking down at his forelimbs. There were no marks visible against his dark red hide, but there was...slime? Seaweed? [i]“I was dragged down by a rip current and[/i] weeds[i]?!”[/i]
“What did you mean, ‘a voice’?”
Aidan snapped to attention. Suddenly he was deeply flustered, and whenever he was flustered, he became surly. “Forget it. I misremembered things,” he snapped.
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised; being under the water that long might’ve addled your senses a bit,” Mara responded. She seemed very casual about it, and Aidan’s ire rose as she craned her neck forward to peer at his limbs. “What are you shivering like that for? It wasn’t that cold. What are those?”
“Leave me alone!” Aidan barked. He pointedly turned away from her and started stripping the gunk from his forelegs. They shrank in the night air, rapidly losing moisture, seemingly dissolving right in front of his eyes.
As he flung the strips away, he heard Mara grumble, “You’re [i]welcome[/i] — I suppose if I made a habit of helping only dragons who were nice to me, the world would be a whole lot emptier.”
“I already [i]said[/i]—”
“No.” Mara was suddenly standing, and Aidan now saw how large she was. Not double his length...maybe [i]triple[/i]. Her eyes glittered brightly, and he was startled by the waves of cold pouring off of her. “Actually, you [i]didn’t[/i].”
“I [i]didn’t[/i]?”
He had always been able to stare other dragons down. It didn’t work this time. As he grudgingly looked away, Mara asked, with deceptive pleasantness, “Do you want to start over?”
He sucked in a deep breath. “Thank you for saving my life, Mara. I had thought I could go around the steppes and make my way by sea instead, but clearly I was wrong. It was such great [i]fortune[/i] you happened to be passing by.” He knew he was being horrendously rude and bad-tempered, but it’d been a rough night so far, and he really didn’t care. He did force out a fake smile, though, just to attempt to smooth things over so he could continue on his merry way.
Mara looked at him for a long, solid moment. Just when Aidan felt ready to snap again — or, heaven forbid, [i]cringe[/i] — she responded, “You are very welcome. I was pleased for the opportunity to assist you. By the way, Guardian, I didn’t catch your name...?”
“It’s ‘Aidan’,” he answered curtly. “Well. It’s late. Thank you. I had best continue my journey.”
It proved to be easier said than done.
He tried, he really did. He moved past Mara and strode up the length of the beach. He was deeply conscious of her standing behind him, her eyes boring into his back....He stopped. Tried to take another step forward, but it was as if something had gotten a hook into him and was hauling him back to her. He halted again. When he turned to look at Mara, the feeling eased, but his eyes were still bright with anxiety; something was wrong.
She had noticed his strange movements and was frowning at him. “Did you forget something? Maybe drop something into the water?”
“No, no...” He paced away at a right angle. He went behind a boulder so that he was out of her line of sight....
The feeling of repulsion was so strong that he nearly groaned. Before he knew it, he was veering back around the boulder towards her, consternation written plainly on his face.
The Imperial was now making ready to leave. “This place does not seem safe. It’s a bit creepy, as a matter of fact.” She tilted her head. “Are your feet all right? You’re walking very strangely.”
“No, I...it is...I can’t...” He gurgled deep within his throat.
“What’s wrong?”
He explained it to her as best as he could. At the end of his garbled statements, Mara looked ready to throw him back into the ocean. The only thing that stopped her was how visibly distressed he was.
“I feel physically sick when I try to move away from you; I think I’ll have to stay close to you!” Aidan said it as though it were a death sentence. “What could be causing this? I’ve traveled through Sornieth for many years and this has never happened to me before!”
That struck a bell in Mara’s mind. “A Guardian traveling alone...You’re not on a Search, are you?”
“No.” He gawped at her, horror slowly dawning on his face.
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Or maybe if you were...you aren’t [i]now[/i]—”
“NOOOOOOOO!” Aidan’s anguished howl shook the heavens. Mara thought she actually saw the sea heave in response; so loud was his roar.
As meetings between Guardians and Charges went, it was not a very happy one. Aidan had devoted his short life to staying unfettered and free, living on his own terms, and that had been abruptly destroyed a few minutes ago by a single chance encounter. He didn’t actually [i]say[/i] any of these, but Mara got the message from all his rolling about in the sand with his forepaws over his face, howling and growling at the moon.
As the said Charge, it was very offensive to her. She soon got up and started walking away.
Behind her, Aidan’s head popped up like a lantern on a stick. “Where’re you going?”
“Away.”
“Don’t leave me!” he blurted — and immediately hated himself for it, but it was too late now. He gathered his belongings and slung them round his wings and shoulders even as he scrambled after his new Charge.
The two of them strode along in moody silence. It took some time. When the sea was a slim line behind them and they were some way inland, Aidan finally spoke: “What do you travel for?” He still sounded very surly about the whole thing.
Mara graciously overlooked that. “I come from a prestigious Light clan. My parents are collectors of strange and interesting curios, and I would like to deal in such objects. I aim to become a merchant and make my fortune someday.”
Aidan’s frills rose. “You have traveled, too?”
“Far and wide, young Aidan. I haven’t been apprenticed to anybody — parents were too busy to help, you know — so I took it upon myself to visit Sornieth’s various regions, get a general feel for the populaces and economies before I really and truly get started. And of course,” she winked, “dragons will be likelier to buy from someone they’re already familiar with.”
“Of course,” Aidan answered — though really, he’d only heard the first part, about her parents being too busy.
“Traveling with other dragons is not so bad, you know. I’ve done it many times! It’s quite pleasant; there’s lots of singing and talking and you learn so many things....Then, too, there is safety in numbers.”
“Safety.” Now that his earlier bad mood had worn off, Aidan was feeling very cold and very small. His ears tingled as if traced by a frigid wind, and he remembered the pressure on his forelimbs, dragging him down and down.... “You might be right about that, at least.”[/color]
[center][img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/honnc29pwgfoymz/3-blood.png[/img][/center]
[color=#5B0F15]The two young dragons set out into the world together, and at first it was every bit as bad as Aidan had feared. In the past, he had not thought twice about angrily expressing his displeasure or making snide remarks. Mara very quickly put an end to that, even cuffing him once or twice on the shoulder. “That is not how proper merchants behave!” she bellowed, before scooting Aidan forward with an enormous forepaw and making him apologize to the dragons he had offended. It was horrible, but he got through it anyway — and inevitably, afterwards, he realized it wasn’t [i]actually[/i] that bad.
Anita had said that the Search was driven by instinct, and perhaps because Aidan had found his Charge, he felt more...settled somehow. More content, more secure. He always had a general idea of Mara’s location, and though over the years they managed to increase the distance between them, he always felt at ease whenever he knew exactly where she was.
The two of them grew up together on their journeys. Aidan quickly attained what Mara would wryly call “civility”; Mara herself remained as indefatigable and optimistic as she’d been the day she’d hauled Aidan from the sea. And speaking of which...
“We’ve come a long way, haven’t we, Aidan?” Mara commented. It was a pleasant afternoon, and they were aboard her ship — yes, [i]she had a ship now[/i]! Years of hard work, buying, selling, and trading with other dragons, and Mara was now worthy of the title [i]merchant[/i]. The ship was a recent acquisition, something to make travel a little easier, for even mighty-winged Imperials and Guardians cannot fly for weeks on end, especially over the open sea.
She had not changed much. Aidan had, though. Necessity had compelled him to treat other dragons civilly and to observe good manners — and he had discovered that he rather liked it. Bellowing, posturing, and shouting threats had been so [i]exhausting[/i], but he could accomplish so much more with a warm smile and a few well-placed pleasantries. He was vaguely reminded of his mother....He wondered if she would be proud of him. He grinned back at Mara in response.
“Ours was quite a strange meeting. Do you remember?”
“Yes...I remember.” Now his smile was gone, and Mara considered that encounter. Trouble had been unavoidable during her travels with Aidan, but they had managed to protect themselves, and by now she knew that he was a strong and skillful fighter. She recalled that night, how calm the sea had been, almost as flat as a mirror....And yet he had been dragged under, sinking fast.
[i]“A rip current?”[/i] She was beginning to doubt it; even then, Aidan should have been strong enough to fight it, given that he’d been conscious when she’d seized his back legs. And there was something else...
“Aidan, what happened? You spouted a lot of nonsense that time, but I remember something...You mentioned a [i]voice[/i]?”
He was shaking his head slowly, as if rising groggily from a dream. “It’s a bit of a haze, really. I don’t remember much — just bits and flashes. I didn’t want to trek under the Twisting Crescendo, so I tried going around it...I thought if I swam past the seaside cliffs I could then find a trail, climb back onto the plateau, and start trudging again. But then I...got pulled under.”
“Indeed,” Mara answered. Like Aidan, she hadn’t wanted to go beneath the Crescendo and had picked her way beneath the cliffs instead. She had stopped and looked out to sea....She had had to pause. The moonlight had been so beautiful, glinting against the water....
They had only had the ship for a few weeks, and it didn’t even have a name yet, but Mara had hired a competent crew, and theirs was a happy vessel. Mara and Aidan were glad for a change of pace; sailing by ship was definitely less exhausting than walking or flying overland. Currently they were chugging around the Sunbeam Ruins’ eastern coast. Mara wondered how her parents were doing. Perhaps she could visit them next week, if time permitted.
It was difficult for the ship to make headway. The wind was contrary, whistling in the rigging, refusing to carry them where they wanted to go. It ate away at their travel speed until the night descended and they found themselves languishing off the coast. “We shall have to try again tomorrow,” Mara huffed. She gave the orders, and the crew dropped the anchor. Tomorrow they could fly ashore, hire an aeromancer to help them make up for lost time....It would be pricey, but Mara was eager to complete the trip as soon as possible. She felt oddly uneasy despite being back in her homeland. [i]“Probably because I haven’t been here for some time,”[/i] she decided at last.
It was worse for Aidan, though. Try though he might, he couldn’t sleep; his berth creaked and juddered as he moved about, tossing his great bulk this way and that. He eventually rolled against the wall, his head pressed against it...and he awoke with a start, his heart pounding.
[i]“I can hear a voice.”[/i] But when he scrambled upright, it was gone.
Still, he was concerned. The air had felt weirdly taut for some time, almost as if a storm was approaching.... [i]“Has there been an accident? What if someone’s fallen overboard?”[/i]
He stepped onto the deck. He could see the distant outlines of the drakes on watch at the prow, but nothing else moved. Not even any wind...
Yet his ears tingled as if a breeze pressed against them, and his hide felt chilled and cold. Where was the moon? He could see its light glinting off the water. But when he looked up...
Darkness. The moon was hidden behind a mat of clouds. Yet what was that pale glow, deep beneath the sea? He crept to the gunwale and looked down into the depths.
[i]“Pretty dragon...”[/i] The words seemed to melt out of the air, pressing against his mind. His frills quivered as if electrified.
[i]“You’ve grown taller...more beautiful.”[/i] The glow pulsed deep beneath the water. Aidan peered down, trying to discern what lay beneath.
There was no outcry, no struggle. The boat rocked, and as the lookouts turned, they saw Aidan falling languidly over the side. He fell into the ocean with a great splash.
“[i]Drake overboard[/i]!” one lookout roared. They hurried to the gunwale, uncoiling lines as they went. They knew Aidan was a strong swimmer, but it was quiet, too quiet; why wasn’t he coming up?
They heard the thunder of feet, the beat of mighty wings. Mara bounded over their heads, her eyes blazing with fury. She dove into the water like an arrow, leaving a stream of bubbles behind.
She was gone for a long time. The crew waited anxiously as the minutes ticked past. When she finally resurfaced, nearly an hour later, it was without Aidan. She was shaking with exhaustion and cold, and the crew stared at her as she growled that they should make for the shore.
“But the wind’s completely dead; our sails are slack!”
“Then row — row as if your lives depend on it!” she barked. The crew flinched back, stunned by the snarl in her voice, and then they quickly leaped to carry out her orders. Slowly, terribly slowly, the ship began to move to shore.
Mara wouldn’t wait for it. She spread her wings again. As the crew milled around her, she barked further orders, telling them to keep going, to get out of these waters. And then she flew towards the Ruins, searching for someplace, [i]any[/i] place, where she could get help.
She had gone after Aidan, swum as fast as she could. But the creature had learned its lesson from before and had wasted no time. Mara had glimpsed it through the dark water, bearing Aidan into the abyss where she couldn’t follow, its dark wings wrapping around him. Silver and gold, glinting under the moonlight....
[i]“He heard a voice. It was[/i] her [i]voice, and we saw her, too!”[/i] Mara remembered now: the odd glints in the water even when the moon had been hidden by clouds, strange words whispering on the breeze, and the sea heaving despite there being no wind. Watching, waiting from beneath the waves...
That creature, that [i]siren[/i]...She had tried to ensnare Aidan all those years ago and had failed. But she had not forgotten him. She had known where he was, followed the merchant’s ship halfway around the world. Biding her time, waiting for him to come within reach again...and he had.
She had him now. And she would not willingly let him go.[/color]
[right][font=Copperplate Gothic Light][color=#AA0025][size=5][b]continued[/b][/color][/size][/font][b][size=5][url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/20#post_34811401]»[/url][/b][/size][/right]
[size=2][color=#9494A9][b]Credits:[/b] Special thanks to [i]Sienna[/i] for allowing their dragons to be included and for background info on Aidan's parents and birth clan.[/color][/size]
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separation anxiety
written by Disillusionist
special thanks to Sienna
4,960 words
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Aidan's eyes were as golden as Light, but the world he was born into seemed shrouded in darkness. He and his siblings were always treated well, yet from the very beginning, something seemed...off.
Coven Viscera, the clan was called. Nestled deep within the domain of Shadow, yet tantalizingly close to the Scarred Wasteland's border, it was a forbidding place. Children were encouraged to leave the clan — it increased the chances of them finding more converts and supporters of their cause — and Aidan was educated on the clan's mission, ways, and abilities. His was a more lenient education than one might think, but he grew to scorn the rigidity that governed the adults' lives. If he found no reason to leave, he would probably be put to work as one of the coven's underlings. Or else he would get conscripted as a clan guard. His parents, Vyrek and Ilvastar, were among the clan's mightiest and most loyal protectors, feared for their cunning as much as their prowess. They had had a hand in Aidan's education and he seemed to be inheriting what might be considered their more useful qualities. Aidan had been quite proud to hear these remarks as a child, but now that he was approaching adulthood, the words filled him with something close to dread. The life of an underling or a guard was not one he would enjoy — he was headstrong and curious about the world waiting beyond, and the thought of squandering all those opportunities for a life of servitude made him scowl.
He had to get away....Even now, he's not sure if he can call it a chance remark. Perhaps it was not chance that he heard of a Guardian's Search at a young age. He queried his parents about it, but Vyrek and Ilvastar were their usual distant selves, too preoccupied with their duties to give a thorough explanation to the adolescent dragon. Aidan got a general idea of the Search from them, but that was all. Indeed, it was from an ancient vampire that he received more thorough knowledge of the Search.
Anita was a scarlet-eyed Spiral — or at least she looked like one. Over the years she had amassed great amounts of information, some of it stored in codices and manuscripts, the rest of it in her brain. She seemed quite close-mouthed at first when Aidan first approached her, but then he posed the question and her red eyes widened; her mouth stretched into a pike's toothy smile. Over the next few days, the young Guardian had his horizons stretched to their limits as the Spiral presented him with a dizzying array of tomes and papers, all of them centered on the mysterious phenomenon known as the Search. There were autobiographies, dry scientific diatribes, maps and sketches and stories....Over it all, Anita's low-droning lectures were nearly constant. They hung over Aidan like smoke, seeming to seep into his ears and nose, down into his lungs where they fed the hammering of his heart. Those two words: the Search, the Search, the Search...
When Vyrek and Ilvastar found that their son had left home, they were not at all concerned. They knew that he had been asking about the Search and that Anita had been sharing information. She preened when they confirmed this with her; of course she had been telling Aidan what he'd wanted to know! A dragon as wise and knowledgeable as her, why of course she had been willing and able to help him — and help him she certainly had!
It didn't matter much to the clan whether or not Aidan returned, as long as he didn't subscribe to any machinations supporting Coven Aestrella. For now, he was just another young Guardian on a Search.
Except that he actually wasn't....
Young Aidan scowled at the forest he had once called “home”. He turned his back on it, flicking his tail dismissively as he did. The dragons of Coven Viscera were all devoted to their leader (at least his parents would have him believe so), but such a life was not for him. And at this point in time, he was convinced the Search wasn't, either. It had been an excuse to leave the Coven, nothing more. He had eschewed his clan's ways, and he was his own dragon now. He would not be fettered to a god, a clan...not even a Charge.
The vampiric Spiral had chuckled indulgently when he'd voiced similar beliefs during her lectures; he had glared at her with blazing eyes. "Surely not every single Guardian has a Charge," he had scoffed.
His adolescent scoff had been smoothly overridden by Anita's harrumph, for it carried the weight of ages with it. "It is not a choice, young Aidan," she had practically purred to him. "It is instinct that drives the Search."
Here and now, he tossed his head. He'd left his clan only because he'd wanted to, not because he was being driven by some deeper instinct or feeling. The world was at his feet, and he was determined to pick it over on his own terms.
Over the next few years, Aidan wandered around Sornieth. The skills he had learned from his clan were very useful; out in the wilderness, he sometimes ran into trouble and had to defend himself. “A Guardian travels alone,” Anita had lectured him. “The Search is such that companions and their various errands usually hinder it, so if you are to find your Charge, and quickly, it is best that you journey alone.”
More than once he considered going against these words just to defy them, but Aidan was not a talkative dragon and did not take to others well. He disliked their prying remarks, how they looked deep into his yellow eyes to ascertain where he’d been born and then started pelting him with questions about his Search (because he was a young Guardian traveling without a destination in sight — of course he was on a Search!). Over time, he learned to deflect these questions with smoothly-placed statements, a lie or two. “The weather is peculiar today — but then, you must have lived here long. Have you ever seen a storm like this, old drake?” he would inquire. The other dragon would happily launch into a speech of their own, and it would be some hours before they realized they had revealed much about themselves but still knew nothing about the young stranger. It was like Anita and her lectures all over again — except now, Aidan was in control.
Although his manners improved as he became more familiar with the other regions of Sornieth, he was still very much a loner. The old vampire had been right — traveling was smoother without other dragons to worry about. No companions...no passengers...no Charge...
But also no friendship, no protection or assistance. Other dragons had said this to Aidan, but their advice had gone ignored, for it didn’t suit him. His arrogance was very nearly his undoing.
It was an inky night when he approached the end of the Windswept Plateau, where it met the open ocean. There had been a moon earlier, but it had gone behind the clouds. Aidan thought he could see traces of moonbeans where they flickered out from behind cover, gently touching the surface of the sea.
There were passages beneath the Twisting Crescendo, but they were long and exhausting slogs and Aidan was eager to reach the Reedcleft Ascent. He had the half-baked notion of swimming through the sea around the cliffs instead. He was an excellent swimmer and reasoned that if he stayed within sight of the shore, he would make it.
He stepped into the water, and he swam. His toes scraped against the sand, and waves lapped at his sides....Out of the corner of one golden eye, he watched the shoreline scroll past. He could see the great mountains, palm trees fringing the shore....
He stroked with his paws, found no purchase. He was now treading deep water. For a moment, he paused, confused — he hadn’t meant to swim out this far. Had there been a current, subtly pulling him away from the land?
He thought there was a breeze at first — his ears tingled, and he instinctively turned. But the surface of the water remained steady, and the clouds stood still overhead. He could vaguely see the moon, and it was reflected on the ocean....
Deep beneath the ocean...
A voice. His frills quivered again. Something was calling him; he felt the force of their voice press against his soles, wrap languidly around his limbs. His toes twitched, and he ceased paddling. He drifted gently in the water.
“Beautiful dragon...Such a beautiful dragon,” something whispered in his ear. It was obvious that the words referred to him, but after they sank in, twisting into his brain, they insidiously distorted his thought processes. Underneath the water...someone was waiting for him. Somebody was there, calling and singing; they were beautiful, and they were singing for him alone, and he had to see them....
Aidan didn’t even swim. He sank, his body sliding beneath the water as smoothly and silently as the moon sliding behind the clouds. He glimpsed it briefly, its silverness shining clear and bright, before the waters closed over his head.
And down into the darkness, down and down...The singing was all around him now, wrapping around his forelimbs, tugging him down. The moon blazed overhead; all the clouds had finally fled from it. “How beautiful it is, and the stars, too,” Aidan thought dreamily. He could see thousands of them, glittering and flashing, so close he could almost touch...
There was a thundering noise. The water swirled around Aidan — and the singing was briefly distorted. A frown chased across his face.
“Water.” Cold, he was so cold... “I’m under the water!” Suddenly the coldness doused his brain as well; he came fully awake, fighting and thrashing. He was staring through the surface at the moon shining overhead, but his forelimbs would not move; something was gripping his forelimbs.
And it was dragging him down! “No...No, not here!” Aidan craned his neck and beat his wings. He strained towards the surface — not so much to reach it as to tear himself away from the insidious force drawing him into the abyss. He didn’t look down; he wouldn’t look. He was afraid, deeply terrified, that he would look down and see a horror beyond imagining, something that would drive him mad just from how hideous it was. Its slimy touch still bound his forepaws, pulling him down and down....
And now he felt that same icy touch seize his back legs.
Deep within the water, Aidan howled, a roar of desperation as much as of rage. Caught here, in the darkness, in a land where nobody knew his name! “Up!” he wanted to bellow, and to his rapidly-darkening mind, it seemed that he could hear an echo—
“Up! Come up! Get up already, blast you...!”
Then the cold enveloped him, shocking in its intensity, squeezing all the air from his lungs. He’d struggled too much; there was no fight left in him now. Even as his conscious mind screamed, the rest of him sank into darkness.
Minutes passed. Aidan was aware of the world in a strange, half-awake way. There was the feel of the wind brushing his damp face, and sand rubbing against his scales. There was also the sound of lapping water, but it filled him with deep dread, and his mind instinctively shrank from it....
And then pressure, cold and crushing pressure, upon his back, between his wings.
Water welled up from within him. His shoulders heaved, and instead of a roar, he regurgitated a great deal of seawater. He struggled to his feet and dithered in place, coughing and hacking. He was shivering and had an odd headache, but he was all right...still alive, anyway.
“Are you well, traveler? You gave me quite a scare.”
Aidan stared at her. The other dragon was a huge Imperial, easily twice his length, her gleaming hide as dark as the overhead sky. Her antlers and underside glittered silver, like so many tiny stars.
She had a hefty trident belted to her waist, but despite her watchful stare, she didn’t seem ready to draw it. She was calmly cleaning her talons, scraping away crusts of sand and salt.
“What happened to me?” Aidan mumbled. The Imperial snorted at him. “I was passing by on my way to the Reedcleft Ascent when I saw you floundering about in the water. I pulled you out and pumped the water from your lungs. Are you new to these parts?” Her eyes narrowed. “There’s a vicious current just offshore, you know.”
“I thought I heard...a voice...” Aidan trailed off. It sounded stupid even to him.
“I am Mara, born in the Southern Icefield, but my family makes its home in the Sunbeam Ruins,” the Imperial introduced herself. Aidan didn’t really hear; he was too busy looking down at his forelimbs. There were no marks visible against his dark red hide, but there was...slime? Seaweed? “I was dragged down by a rip current and weeds?!”
“What did you mean, ‘a voice’?”
Aidan snapped to attention. Suddenly he was deeply flustered, and whenever he was flustered, he became surly. “Forget it. I misremembered things,” he snapped.
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised; being under the water that long might’ve addled your senses a bit,” Mara responded. She seemed very casual about it, and Aidan’s ire rose as she craned her neck forward to peer at his limbs. “What are you shivering like that for? It wasn’t that cold. What are those?”
“Leave me alone!” Aidan barked. He pointedly turned away from her and started stripping the gunk from his forelegs. They shrank in the night air, rapidly losing moisture, seemingly dissolving right in front of his eyes.
As he flung the strips away, he heard Mara grumble, “You’re welcome — I suppose if I made a habit of helping only dragons who were nice to me, the world would be a whole lot emptier.”
“I already said—”
“No.” Mara was suddenly standing, and Aidan now saw how large she was. Not double his length...maybe triple. Her eyes glittered brightly, and he was startled by the waves of cold pouring off of her. “Actually, you didn’t.”
“I didn’t?”
He had always been able to stare other dragons down. It didn’t work this time. As he grudgingly looked away, Mara asked, with deceptive pleasantness, “Do you want to start over?”
He sucked in a deep breath. “Thank you for saving my life, Mara. I had thought I could go around the steppes and make my way by sea instead, but clearly I was wrong. It was such great fortune you happened to be passing by.” He knew he was being horrendously rude and bad-tempered, but it’d been a rough night so far, and he really didn’t care. He did force out a fake smile, though, just to attempt to smooth things over so he could continue on his merry way.
Mara looked at him for a long, solid moment. Just when Aidan felt ready to snap again — or, heaven forbid, cringe — she responded, “You are very welcome. I was pleased for the opportunity to assist you. By the way, Guardian, I didn’t catch your name...?”
“It’s ‘Aidan’,” he answered curtly. “Well. It’s late. Thank you. I had best continue my journey.”
It proved to be easier said than done.
He tried, he really did. He moved past Mara and strode up the length of the beach. He was deeply conscious of her standing behind him, her eyes boring into his back....He stopped. Tried to take another step forward, but it was as if something had gotten a hook into him and was hauling him back to her. He halted again. When he turned to look at Mara, the feeling eased, but his eyes were still bright with anxiety; something was wrong.
She had noticed his strange movements and was frowning at him. “Did you forget something? Maybe drop something into the water?”
“No, no...” He paced away at a right angle. He went behind a boulder so that he was out of her line of sight....
The feeling of repulsion was so strong that he nearly groaned. Before he knew it, he was veering back around the boulder towards her, consternation written plainly on his face.
The Imperial was now making ready to leave. “This place does not seem safe. It’s a bit creepy, as a matter of fact.” She tilted her head. “Are your feet all right? You’re walking very strangely.”
“No, I...it is...I can’t...” He gurgled deep within his throat.
“What’s wrong?”
He explained it to her as best as he could. At the end of his garbled statements, Mara looked ready to throw him back into the ocean. The only thing that stopped her was how visibly distressed he was.
“I feel physically sick when I try to move away from you; I think I’ll have to stay close to you!” Aidan said it as though it were a death sentence. “What could be causing this? I’ve traveled through Sornieth for many years and this has never happened to me before!”
That struck a bell in Mara’s mind. “A Guardian traveling alone...You’re not on a Search, are you?”
“No.” He gawped at her, horror slowly dawning on his face.
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Or maybe if you were...you aren’t now—”
“NOOOOOOOO!” Aidan’s anguished howl shook the heavens. Mara thought she actually saw the sea heave in response; so loud was his roar.
As meetings between Guardians and Charges went, it was not a very happy one. Aidan had devoted his short life to staying unfettered and free, living on his own terms, and that had been abruptly destroyed a few minutes ago by a single chance encounter. He didn’t actually say any of these, but Mara got the message from all his rolling about in the sand with his forepaws over his face, howling and growling at the moon.
As the said Charge, it was very offensive to her. She soon got up and started walking away.
Behind her, Aidan’s head popped up like a lantern on a stick. “Where’re you going?”
“Away.”
“Don’t leave me!” he blurted — and immediately hated himself for it, but it was too late now. He gathered his belongings and slung them round his wings and shoulders even as he scrambled after his new Charge.
The two of them strode along in moody silence. It took some time. When the sea was a slim line behind them and they were some way inland, Aidan finally spoke: “What do you travel for?” He still sounded very surly about the whole thing.
Mara graciously overlooked that. “I come from a prestigious Light clan. My parents are collectors of strange and interesting curios, and I would like to deal in such objects. I aim to become a merchant and make my fortune someday.”
Aidan’s frills rose. “You have traveled, too?”
“Far and wide, young Aidan. I haven’t been apprenticed to anybody — parents were too busy to help, you know — so I took it upon myself to visit Sornieth’s various regions, get a general feel for the populaces and economies before I really and truly get started. And of course,” she winked, “dragons will be likelier to buy from someone they’re already familiar with.”
“Of course,” Aidan answered — though really, he’d only heard the first part, about her parents being too busy.
“Traveling with other dragons is not so bad, you know. I’ve done it many times! It’s quite pleasant; there’s lots of singing and talking and you learn so many things....Then, too, there is safety in numbers.”
“Safety.” Now that his earlier bad mood had worn off, Aidan was feeling very cold and very small. His ears tingled as if traced by a frigid wind, and he remembered the pressure on his forelimbs, dragging him down and down.... “You might be right about that, at least.”
The two young dragons set out into the world together, and at first it was every bit as bad as Aidan had feared. In the past, he had not thought twice about angrily expressing his displeasure or making snide remarks. Mara very quickly put an end to that, even cuffing him once or twice on the shoulder. “That is not how proper merchants behave!” she bellowed, before scooting Aidan forward with an enormous forepaw and making him apologize to the dragons he had offended. It was horrible, but he got through it anyway — and inevitably, afterwards, he realized it wasn’t actually that bad.
Anita had said that the Search was driven by instinct, and perhaps because Aidan had found his Charge, he felt more...settled somehow. More content, more secure. He always had a general idea of Mara’s location, and though over the years they managed to increase the distance between them, he always felt at ease whenever he knew exactly where she was.
The two of them grew up together on their journeys. Aidan quickly attained what Mara would wryly call “civility”; Mara herself remained as indefatigable and optimistic as she’d been the day she’d hauled Aidan from the sea. And speaking of which...
“We’ve come a long way, haven’t we, Aidan?” Mara commented. It was a pleasant afternoon, and they were aboard her ship — yes, she had a ship now! Years of hard work, buying, selling, and trading with other dragons, and Mara was now worthy of the title merchant. The ship was a recent acquisition, something to make travel a little easier, for even mighty-winged Imperials and Guardians cannot fly for weeks on end, especially over the open sea.
She had not changed much. Aidan had, though. Necessity had compelled him to treat other dragons civilly and to observe good manners — and he had discovered that he rather liked it. Bellowing, posturing, and shouting threats had been so exhausting, but he could accomplish so much more with a warm smile and a few well-placed pleasantries. He was vaguely reminded of his mother....He wondered if she would be proud of him. He grinned back at Mara in response.
“Ours was quite a strange meeting. Do you remember?”
“Yes...I remember.” Now his smile was gone, and Mara considered that encounter. Trouble had been unavoidable during her travels with Aidan, but they had managed to protect themselves, and by now she knew that he was a strong and skillful fighter. She recalled that night, how calm the sea had been, almost as flat as a mirror....And yet he had been dragged under, sinking fast.
“A rip current?” She was beginning to doubt it; even then, Aidan should have been strong enough to fight it, given that he’d been conscious when she’d seized his back legs. And there was something else...
“Aidan, what happened? You spouted a lot of nonsense that time, but I remember something...You mentioned a voice?”
He was shaking his head slowly, as if rising groggily from a dream. “It’s a bit of a haze, really. I don’t remember much — just bits and flashes. I didn’t want to trek under the Twisting Crescendo, so I tried going around it...I thought if I swam past the seaside cliffs I could then find a trail, climb back onto the plateau, and start trudging again. But then I...got pulled under.”
“Indeed,” Mara answered. Like Aidan, she hadn’t wanted to go beneath the Crescendo and had picked her way beneath the cliffs instead. She had stopped and looked out to sea....She had had to pause. The moonlight had been so beautiful, glinting against the water....
They had only had the ship for a few weeks, and it didn’t even have a name yet, but Mara had hired a competent crew, and theirs was a happy vessel. Mara and Aidan were glad for a change of pace; sailing by ship was definitely less exhausting than walking or flying overland. Currently they were chugging around the Sunbeam Ruins’ eastern coast. Mara wondered how her parents were doing. Perhaps she could visit them next week, if time permitted.
It was difficult for the ship to make headway. The wind was contrary, whistling in the rigging, refusing to carry them where they wanted to go. It ate away at their travel speed until the night descended and they found themselves languishing off the coast. “We shall have to try again tomorrow,” Mara huffed. She gave the orders, and the crew dropped the anchor. Tomorrow they could fly ashore, hire an aeromancer to help them make up for lost time....It would be pricey, but Mara was eager to complete the trip as soon as possible. She felt oddly uneasy despite being back in her homeland. “Probably because I haven’t been here for some time,” she decided at last.
It was worse for Aidan, though. Try though he might, he couldn’t sleep; his berth creaked and juddered as he moved about, tossing his great bulk this way and that. He eventually rolled against the wall, his head pressed against it...and he awoke with a start, his heart pounding.
“I can hear a voice.” But when he scrambled upright, it was gone.
Still, he was concerned. The air had felt weirdly taut for some time, almost as if a storm was approaching.... “Has there been an accident? What if someone’s fallen overboard?”
He stepped onto the deck. He could see the distant outlines of the drakes on watch at the prow, but nothing else moved. Not even any wind...
Yet his ears tingled as if a breeze pressed against them, and his hide felt chilled and cold. Where was the moon? He could see its light glinting off the water. But when he looked up...
Darkness. The moon was hidden behind a mat of clouds. Yet what was that pale glow, deep beneath the sea? He crept to the gunwale and looked down into the depths.
“Pretty dragon...” The words seemed to melt out of the air, pressing against his mind. His frills quivered as if electrified.
“You’ve grown taller...more beautiful.” The glow pulsed deep beneath the water. Aidan peered down, trying to discern what lay beneath.
There was no outcry, no struggle. The boat rocked, and as the lookouts turned, they saw Aidan falling languidly over the side. He fell into the ocean with a great splash.
“Drake overboard!” one lookout roared. They hurried to the gunwale, uncoiling lines as they went. They knew Aidan was a strong swimmer, but it was quiet, too quiet; why wasn’t he coming up?
They heard the thunder of feet, the beat of mighty wings. Mara bounded over their heads, her eyes blazing with fury. She dove into the water like an arrow, leaving a stream of bubbles behind.
She was gone for a long time. The crew waited anxiously as the minutes ticked past. When she finally resurfaced, nearly an hour later, it was without Aidan. She was shaking with exhaustion and cold, and the crew stared at her as she growled that they should make for the shore.
“But the wind’s completely dead; our sails are slack!”
“Then row — row as if your lives depend on it!” she barked. The crew flinched back, stunned by the snarl in her voice, and then they quickly leaped to carry out her orders. Slowly, terribly slowly, the ship began to move to shore.
Mara wouldn’t wait for it. She spread her wings again. As the crew milled around her, she barked further orders, telling them to keep going, to get out of these waters. And then she flew towards the Ruins, searching for someplace, any place, where she could get help.
She had gone after Aidan, swum as fast as she could. But the creature had learned its lesson from before and had wasted no time. Mara had glimpsed it through the dark water, bearing Aidan into the abyss where she couldn’t follow, its dark wings wrapping around him. Silver and gold, glinting under the moonlight....
“He heard a voice. It was her voice, and we saw her, too!” Mara remembered now: the odd glints in the water even when the moon had been hidden by clouds, strange words whispering on the breeze, and the sea heaving despite there being no wind. Watching, waiting from beneath the waves...
That creature, that siren...She had tried to ensnare Aidan all those years ago and had failed. But she had not forgotten him. She had known where he was, followed the merchant’s ship halfway around the world. Biding her time, waiting for him to come within reach again...and he had.
She had him now. And she would not willingly let him go.
Credits: Special thanks to Sienna for allowing their dragons to be included and for background info on Aidan's parents and birth clan.
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[columns][center][item=trickster's magic cards][/center][nextcol][color=transparent]..[/color][nextcol][color=#9777BD][font=garamond][size=7][size=4]{ a story for flaumello }[/size][/size][/font][/color]
[size=2]written by Disillusionist
special thanks to Enriana
[color=#9494A9]733 words[/color][/size][/columns]
[color=#292B38]As a Runecatcher, Flaumello was watched closely from birth. His parents, Erebus and Asteria, were highly respected -- even feared -- for their magic. So when Flaumello's ability manifested itself as soft wisps and pulses of light, the facility breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever his ability was, Runes invoked or un-, it didn't seem very powerful. To the Runecatchers, this was neither a cause for disappointment nor regret, for among dragons such as they, "strong" usually meant "dangerous".
Flaumello's gentle, harmless ability was like a breath of fresh air to them -- especially the other hatchlings. The young Runecatcher quickly discovered how much fun it was to play with the light, to use it to craft shapes and, later, scenes. He could conjure silly little images and make them move, like the holograms in the odeons of the Shifting Expanse. Other dragons, young and old, marveled at his control of the light. Their reactions were invariably ones of delight and awe, and Flaumello fed off their praise. He grew confident and, it had to be said, rather flamboyant, for the same light he wielded was always washing over his body in waves, as if he always had a spotlight trained on him.
With this image in mind, it was no wonder that shortly after Flaumello left home, he found work as a stage performer. Initially, his roles were small: His luminous wisps provided special effects for senior magicians' performances, or else he did small intermissions using his pictures of light. In the way of things, it wasn't long before he was headlining his own acts, performing before modest crowds of equally modest dragons.
Could he have made it big? It's quite possible. But Flaumello, for all his flamboyance, didn't seem to be attracted to the glaring spotlights and opulence of the great hippodromes. He always declined invitations to perform there. He was quite content to weave his magic in humbler abodes. Occasionally, in the street, young drakes would recognize him and beg him for a magical display or two. He always agreed.
In time, other magicians rose to prominence and took center stage. It was well-known by then that Flaumello wasn't really interested in cultivating his stage career, and his commissions slowed to a mere trickle. He probably didn't mind much, but did find himself in need of a steadier source of income. He started looking around for what would become his day job.
That was how he came to the Disillusionists. The clan had recently expanded their lair and welcomed a small group of hatchlings, and their matron and headmaster were hard-pressed to manage all of them. Although he had no professional experience in childcare, Flaumello had a soft spot for children, and his warmth shone through his flamboyance. The Disillusionists agreed to hire him.
It is in their lair that Flaumello spends most of his time now. He amuses the hatchlings with his beautiful pictures of light, just as he once wowed crowds from onstage. From time to time, he will leave the lair and perform in nearby communities or carnivals -- nothing particularly noticeable, just a bit of magic to stay in practice. He has come a long way from clumsily conjuring motes and wisps of light: he can now impart the same glow to other things, including the hatchlings he cares for, and it's a lot of fun to watch them play "glowy tag" as the night descends.
Flaumello is quite happy in his new role as a hatchling caretaker. When asked why he gave up a lucrative career for a job many find thankless, he smiles slowly and warmly. "Children believe in magic," he explains. "Well, I mean, we're dragons, you and I, and we know magic exists. It's got different strengths, forms, and classifications.
"But to children, none of that is important. To them, all magic is great, amazing...and good. Do you understand how wonderful that is? To have someone look at you and immediately decide you're the greatest thing they've ever seen? Some dragons do that, yes, but children don't think about using you or wrangling favors from you. They just appreciate...what [i]is[/i]. To children, one doesn't [i]do[/i] magic. One [i]is[/i] magic. And [i]that[/i] in itself is a kind of magic as well." He chuckles and shakes his mane. "Why go to the hippodromes and odeons in search of 'great' magic? It's already here."[/color]
[right][font=Copperplate Gothic Light][color=#9777BD][size=5][b]~ The End[/b][/color][/size][/font][/right]
[size=2][color=#9494A9][b]Credits:[/b] "Runecatcher" subspecies and Flaumello's Runcatcher abilities were created by Enriana.[/color][/size]
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..
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{ a story for flaumello }
written by Disillusionist
special thanks to Enriana
733 words
|
As a Runecatcher, Flaumello was watched closely from birth. His parents, Erebus and Asteria, were highly respected -- even feared -- for their magic. So when Flaumello's ability manifested itself as soft wisps and pulses of light, the facility breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever his ability was, Runes invoked or un-, it didn't seem very powerful. To the Runecatchers, this was neither a cause for disappointment nor regret, for among dragons such as they, "strong" usually meant "dangerous".
Flaumello's gentle, harmless ability was like a breath of fresh air to them -- especially the other hatchlings. The young Runecatcher quickly discovered how much fun it was to play with the light, to use it to craft shapes and, later, scenes. He could conjure silly little images and make them move, like the holograms in the odeons of the Shifting Expanse. Other dragons, young and old, marveled at his control of the light. Their reactions were invariably ones of delight and awe, and Flaumello fed off their praise. He grew confident and, it had to be said, rather flamboyant, for the same light he wielded was always washing over his body in waves, as if he always had a spotlight trained on him.
With this image in mind, it was no wonder that shortly after Flaumello left home, he found work as a stage performer. Initially, his roles were small: His luminous wisps provided special effects for senior magicians' performances, or else he did small intermissions using his pictures of light. In the way of things, it wasn't long before he was headlining his own acts, performing before modest crowds of equally modest dragons.
Could he have made it big? It's quite possible. But Flaumello, for all his flamboyance, didn't seem to be attracted to the glaring spotlights and opulence of the great hippodromes. He always declined invitations to perform there. He was quite content to weave his magic in humbler abodes. Occasionally, in the street, young drakes would recognize him and beg him for a magical display or two. He always agreed.
In time, other magicians rose to prominence and took center stage. It was well-known by then that Flaumello wasn't really interested in cultivating his stage career, and his commissions slowed to a mere trickle. He probably didn't mind much, but did find himself in need of a steadier source of income. He started looking around for what would become his day job.
That was how he came to the Disillusionists. The clan had recently expanded their lair and welcomed a small group of hatchlings, and their matron and headmaster were hard-pressed to manage all of them. Although he had no professional experience in childcare, Flaumello had a soft spot for children, and his warmth shone through his flamboyance. The Disillusionists agreed to hire him.
It is in their lair that Flaumello spends most of his time now. He amuses the hatchlings with his beautiful pictures of light, just as he once wowed crowds from onstage. From time to time, he will leave the lair and perform in nearby communities or carnivals -- nothing particularly noticeable, just a bit of magic to stay in practice. He has come a long way from clumsily conjuring motes and wisps of light: he can now impart the same glow to other things, including the hatchlings he cares for, and it's a lot of fun to watch them play "glowy tag" as the night descends.
Flaumello is quite happy in his new role as a hatchling caretaker. When asked why he gave up a lucrative career for a job many find thankless, he smiles slowly and warmly. "Children believe in magic," he explains. "Well, I mean, we're dragons, you and I, and we know magic exists. It's got different strengths, forms, and classifications.
"But to children, none of that is important. To them, all magic is great, amazing...and good. Do you understand how wonderful that is? To have someone look at you and immediately decide you're the greatest thing they've ever seen? Some dragons do that, yes, but children don't think about using you or wrangling favors from you. They just appreciate...what is. To children, one doesn't do magic. One is magic. And that in itself is a kind of magic as well." He chuckles and shakes his mane. "Why go to the hippodromes and odeons in search of 'great' magic? It's already here."
~ The End
Credits: "Runecatcher" subspecies and Flaumello's Runcatcher abilities were created by Enriana.
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[columns][center][item=deeprealm trident][/center][nextcol][color=transparent]..[/color][nextcol][color=#7995C1][font=garamond][size=7][size=4][b][i]exaudi[/i] ~ hear us[/b][/size][/size][/font][/color]
[size=2]written by Disillusionist
special thanks to Alixe and DiaBlack
[color=#9494A9]5,833 words[/color][/size][/columns]
[url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=31033001]Laurant[/url] [color=#292B38]had not had the banjo for a long time. It had been given to her in celebration of her hatchday: crafted by her Charge and enchanted by her teacher, it was one of her most prized possessions. She wished to become a skilled musician like Tantris and had practiced playing it almost daily; now, years later, she thought she had nearly mastered it. Tantris had declared, with a rather strained smile on his face, that she was already quite good at playing the banjo, and could she stop now, please, or at least not sing ([i]swear[/i]) along?
The day had started out nice. She had rolled out of bed and lumbered out of the lair to practice playing in the garden, where hopefully she would not disturb too many people. It looked as though a disturbance was already taking place, however. There was an Imperial, a stranger, obviously in need of help. Laurant muscled her way next to Faustino and then bent forward to listen....[/color]
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[color=#292B38]By the time the sun was fully above the horizon, Mara had already visited three towns. No one there had been willing to accompany her to rescue her Guardian. It was one thing to challenge a siren on a beach or the surface of the water — but to chase her down into the abyss and beard her in her own lair...?
If she could not get help soon, the siren would alter[/color] [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=33209964]Aidan[/url][color=#292B38], making him a part of her watery home. He would be irrevocably transformed, forever shrinking from sunlight, unable to survive without hearing his sinister mistress’ song. It would fill him up, certainly — but not physically. He would become unable to feed or sleep, unable to do anything that pulled his attention away from her music even for a brief instant. Indeed, all captives of sirens, if not rescued, perished in underwater graves, faces turned in rapture towards the source of that enthralling song — or longingly up to the light.
So Mara grew more and more frantic as the hours crawled past. As she descended on the marketplace near the Beacon of the Radiant Eye, she bellowed, “I need a bard...a magician! Is anyone willing to help me!?”
Most dragons scattered, surprised by her landing as much as by her obvious desperation. And when she continued, “I need someone who is willing to accompany me underwater to challenge a siren!” more of them made themselves scarce. Suddenly the marketplace was nearly empty, and the few dragons who passed or remained quickly averted their eyes. Only a few held their ground.
She tried again. She [i]had[/i] to. She was now seriously considering asking the Lightweaver herself for aid, but right now... “I am looking for someone who can help me. Someone...[i]anyone[/i].” Her voice cracked on the last word; she couldn’t help it. Her Guardian was her dearest friend, and if she failed to save him again... “My Guardian has been stolen away by a siren. He’s underwater, and he won’t survive long....Please, will anybody help me save him!?”
One of the remaining dragons, a great black Imperial, fixed her with a steely eye. “Here, what’s all this, then?” he rumbled, cutting through Mara’s pleas. He had clearly been in the middle of business and was unhappy about his prospective customers running away. As Mara watched, he slammed a paw down onto a stack of treasure and scraped the lot into a bag.
Mara stared at him in disbelief. Hadn’t he been listening to a word she’d said? She opened her mouth to shout at him again, but then he queried, “You need a bard, correct?”
She nodded. She mentally steeled herself for him to ask, “How much would you be willing to pay?” As a merchant, she knew that type of dragon all too well.
But instead, he let out a long, reluctant sigh and rose to his feet. “I know someone who may be able to help you. Perhaps two someones.”
It was better than she had hoped, but his grim expression did not give her much confidence. He added, as if admitting he’d done something wrong, “We shall have to speak with them first. My name is [/color] [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=33029109]Faustino[/url][color=#292B38], of the Disillusionists. Come with me. I’ll take you back to the clan.”[/color]
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[color=#292B38][i]The Disillusionists.[/i] Mara thought she’d read that name before. Maybe in one of the ads posted around the Sunbeam Ruins, advertising art and writing services? ...No, it wasn’t the right image....
She pushed that from her mind; it was unimportant. Right now, she was explaining to a small group of Disillusionists what had happened to Aidan. They listened sympathetically, but she could see growing unease on a number of faces. She also realized she didn’t know yet which of these were the bards — Faustino had spoken to the clan leaders, who in turn had rallied the dragons who were currently awake. And then she had started to talk....Here she was now.
She shot a brief glance at Faustino. He was standing off to one side, but another dragon had squeezed in next to him. A Guardian...His own Guardian? And then her heart skipped a beat when she saw the stringed instrument hanging against the dragoness’ side. Was this one of the bards...?
She finished her story, and one of the dragons breathed, “A [i]siren[/i]!” Murmurs rose from the clan as they began discussing things in low voices.
“Will you help me?” Mara’s own voice was a little weak. She was hoarse from traveling and shouting too much, and the fear wasn’t helping any.
“We shall have to consider it,” said [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=25521458]Nachtstreiter[/url][color=#292B38], one of the clan leaders. There was a soft [i]ahem[/i] from a Spiral who’d been hauled out of bed. He blinked slowly, almost groggily, and rather self-consciously smoothed down his hood.
“We shall have to think about it carefully, yes,” he said, as if starting a lecture. And sure enough: “To begin with, what is a [i]siren[/i]?”[/color]
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[color=#292B38][i]Siren[/i] was a term applied to a certain class of being haunting Sornieth’s magical waters. Most of them, like the one that’d dragged Aidan down, lived in the sea. Some lived in rivers, lakes...All had one thing in common: They used their hauntingly beautiful voices to lure unwary creatures into the water, where the sirens could use them as desired.
They were notorious for keeping their captives alive using their own insidious spells. Aidan might linger underwater for days, maybe even weeks — but over time he would starve to death, or else the siren would tire of him and then consume him.
Sirens were rarely found in the Sunbeam Seas. The Lightweaver’s radiance shone from the Beacon of the Radiant Eye; it was usually enough to discourage invaders who would otherwise prey on her children. But Aidan had caught this siren’s interest early on, and Mara’s rescue of him had only incensed her. Spurred by frustration and longing, she had sought him out again, even traveled into hostile waters to pursue him. And it had worked — she had him now.
The Disillusionists could not turn their backs on Mara, not after she had come to their lair and told them her story. As the morning wore on, more and more of them awoke, and they continued discussing the upcoming challenge and their plans to surmount it. To do that, they needed to understand how a siren’s abilities worked.
Sirens were difficult to challenge because their voices charmed all who heard them. But there had been stories of bards defeating them by drowning out their songs with music that was more beautiful. The question was: What exactly was [i]beautiful[/i] music?
“My name is[/color] [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=26439393]Tantris[/url][color=#292B38]. I am the clan’s headmaster and bard,” the dragon introduced himself. He was a slim Skydancer garbed in sumptuous clothing, and he had a lute strapped to his hip. It was an obviously well-worn instrument, but Tantris himself looked too slender and frail for a battle.
There was a soft [i]ahem[/i]. Mara turned as Faustino cleared his throat; he looked briefly down his nose at the Guardian she had seen earlier, the one standing beside him. “And this is—”
“I can introduce myself, Carrot-brain, thanks very much.” The Guardian shouldered him aside lazily. “Oyy. My name is Laurant and I’m the other bard. Pleasetameetcha.”
“Pleased to...meet you.” Mara couldn’t help sounding dubious. Laurant’s voice was rich but slightly rough, and the instrument she carried was...a banjo? A ridiculous countryside instrument next to Tantris’ beautiful lute! The Imperial’s heart sank as she considered this.
She clenched her teeth. [i]“Buck up. They’re helping you, Mara, and that’s more than can be said for most of the other dragons you’ve seen so far this morning. I probably should’ve gone back to my parents....They’re too far away. I miss my parents....”[/i]
A team was being put together to aid Mara. She was introduced to the leader: [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=14111953]Sturmwelle[/url][color=#292B38], a veteran fighter and a Water dragon. The sleepy Spiral, [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=26635401]Jubilant[/url][color=#292B38], was her second-in-command, a great fighter in his own right and also the clan’s Arcane Representative. Mara started to feel a lot better about their odds.
Faustino was the last member of the team. He was obviously strong, but he had been earlier introduced as an artisan, and Mara had not expected him to volunteer for such a dangerous mission. The reason soon became clear, however.
“Laurant is my Guardian. When I was a hatchling, she protected me, but now that we are both grown, we look after each other. It is only fair.” He nodded towards the Guardian who was striding merrily along, her banjo bouncing against her hip. She was teasing Tantris in her usual booming voice, and the Skydancer was getting snappy with her. Not that she cared.
Mara admitted that she must have missed that detail, somewhere in all the fuss. “Have you known each other long?”
“Oh, yes. She is older than I” — Mara did a double-take — “and I came to the lair under her protection. Bit of a ridiculous story, that...” He trailed off, looked past her. Mara had sent word ahead to her ship, and it had docked to meet them.
“Is this yours?”
“Yes.” Mara sighed. “She hasn’t got a name yet. I’ve only had her for a few weeks.”
The ship heaved to next to the pier. The crew lowered a gangplank for them, and soon they were on their way.[/color]
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[color=#292B38]They left the bustling coast of the Beacon behind. Soon they were entering the Shadowbinder’s territory, where it overlapped with that of her radiant sister. The waters beneath the ship grew dark, almost murky. Mara was almost afraid to look into the waves in case she saw...
She had brought along some of Aidan’s things, and after showing them to the clan’s seers, they had managed to ascertain her Guardian’s general location. It looked as though the siren had made a lair for herself in one of the trenches deep in the Shadowbinder’s waters. Surrounded by cold and crushing water, and dark, so dark...Mara hated to imagine what it was like for Aidan. He had been down there for nearly five hours already.
Sturmwelle and Jubilant were discussing tactics. Mara was determined to accompany them into the deep, and so she listened carefully as the Spiral began, “To travel and stay down there, we’re going to need a huge bubble, like the one the Windsinger’s placed over the Kelp Beds. Levanter...?”[/color]
[url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=26744867]Levanter[/url] [color=#292B38]nodded. Another Skydancer, he was the Disillusionists’ Wind Ambassador — though more skilled in diplomacy than in combat. He would not accompany the team beneath the waves; his role was to facilitate their entry, and that was all.
“Lev’s gonna make bubbles for each of us, so we can swim down to the lair. There might be other monsters, so we’ll have to stick together — with such a huge party, they should stay away. But who knows?”
Sturmwelle chimed in next: “Levanter is also preparing a sorcerous device for us, a larger bubble we can deploy once we locate the siren. It’s primed with a 50-meter radius, so it should cover the siren’s lair, the siren herself, and us. She’ll be cut off from the rest of the water — it should help weaken her considerably.”
“And after?” Faustino asked. Beside him, Laurant absently twanged a banjo string.
Sturmwelle frowned at him. “Well, Faustino, it’s not too hard. Smash her with your hammer. Smash her [i]hard[/i].”
Faust flattened his ears. “I was thinking of more precise advice, old dame. Tips and tricks? D’you have any?”
“Not really,” Sturm said with a wave so casual it made them all grit their teeth. “I’ve never fought a siren before.”
Jubilant sighed. “Go for the appendages and sensory organs, if you see any. Her being aquatic, Lightning magic would be best, but we couldn’t find anyone to help....If we can enamor her with music, she’ll be unable to use her voice, too.”
“There’s no telling what the lair looks like or where exactly she’ll be,” Sturmwelle said, and now her voice was grave. “Or Aidan, for that matter....She might be outside with him, or she might be inside a cave or burrow, with him buried among the rest of her treasure. If that’s the case, we’ll have to distract her, bind her in place.”
“I can do that,” Mara cut in. She stood a bit straighter, and her pale eyes blazed.
“Good call.” Sturm grinned ever so slightly. “While she’s occupied, some of us will have to slip around her and then pick up that Guardian. We’ll regroup, then head back to the surface. The bindings should hold....If not, she’ll be chasing us every step of the way. We’ll have to throw things back at her — and drown out her song the entire time.”[/color]
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[color=#292B38]They hashed out more precise plans, details of who would do what, what to do in case x happened. Meanwhile, the seers had crafted a simple homing device, in the form of a crystal attuned to Aidan. An arrow of light, fused deep into the crystal, spun slowly, like a compass needle. Levanter was in charge of the device, and he had to put it down when the crystal grew too hot to hold. “Here — this is the place!”
The anchor dropped. The dragons heard the chain rattling deep below the decks, and they shivered slightly. They lined up before Levanter, who passed the crystal, now in a special pouch, to Jubilant. He was already murmuring spells, his eyes glowing with pale green light.
The team checked their weapons and equipment. They shifted uneasily as green cocoons closed in on them. But they were only made of magic and wind; they didn’t feel like anything at all.
“Right. Here’s your other thing.” Levanter handed another pouch to Jubilant, the one containing the bubble-deploying spell. “Everything’s good for four hours, starting...” He squinted at the sun. “[i]Now[/i].”
With a great splash, Sturmwelle bounded over the side and disappeared into the water. The others rather clumsily followed after her.
The water wasn’t cold, but it was unpleasantly cool — almost clammy. They were protected by their cocoons, but they could still feel the pressure of it, wrapping around them like a second skin....Mara breathed deeply and was gratified to smell fresh-cut grass and sea spray. With such vast lungs, she could hold her breath for up to an hour — but their mission was likely to take a lot longer.
[i]Four hours,[/i] the Skydancer had said. They had four hours.
The tracking crystal no longer gave off heat, and in its pouch, it tugged at Jubilant’s wrist, showing him the way. The Spiral whirled into the abyss; the bards and fighters trailed close behind.
They did talk with each other, though if pressed, Mara had to admit that she was unable to recall much of what they said. Most of that part of the trip was a nightmarish blur of frigid water, the threat of crushing pressure held back by paper-thin sorcery. Worse still were the things dwelling in the depths: shapes, briefly lit by their glowing cocoons; there would be a change in pressure and they would glimpse bulbous eyes and cruel, fang-filled jaws. At one point Laurant rather shakily mentioned that she could see a light in the distance, and Sturmwelle gave it a brief glance. “Mantarune. Pretend you don’t see it.”
“We’re getting closer.” Mara remembered that part very clearly, Jubilant speaking in a taut, hushed voice. He paused to prepare his magical devices, and the dragons peered around him. They could now see the floor of the ocean. It was a world all on its own, mountains and valleys like the continent above. Ahead and below them, twin peaks rose, curling towards each other like the petals of a flower. Between them was utter darkness.
“Got your bubble ready?”
“Yes, Laurant. This danged crystal, though, it won’t stop tugging—”
“Give it to Faust,” snapped Sturmwelle, “and quietly. That [i]thing[/i] might hear us squabbling.” Her eyes narrowed; the smaller, heat-sensing ones contracted as she tried to locate the siren.
Faust tucked the crystal into a belt pouch, drawing his hammer as he did so. It was a stout, rugged tool, obviously well-used at the forge, and Mara had doubts about its efficacy as a weapon. Her own trident was well-suited for the task at hand, though. As for the others, well, they would see....
They moved slowly, steadily forward. The entire time their eyes remained fixed on the blackness below. The palest glint warned them that they had been spotted: magic gleaming from deep within the siren’s eyes.
“She sees us!” Laurant squawked. Tantris gibbered something incoherent. Sturmwelle’s voice cut through their noises like a knife: “Drop the bubble [i]now[/i]!”
Jubilant slashed the bubble-pouch open. The spell exploded beneath them. The bubble appeared, glowing with a faint green light of its own. It grew fast, and they yelped as they phased through the membrane and then dropped the rest of the way to the ocean floor.
They pulled themselves free from the mud with various complaints, all of which quickly died in their throats as they were overridden by another sound. Soft and hissing, sliding across the ocean stones...It sounded oddly dry, the rattle of scales as the siren crept from her lair.
Mara turned. Laurant and Tantris, the bards, clustered together, gurgling in fear. Faust swore, and Sturmwelle and Jubilant spread their claws, their faces bleak. Mara herself was silent, her throat suddenly parched.
Huge...It was [i]immense[/i]. It roiled out of a crevice that looked too small for it, billowing to a vast size that threatened to break the bubble. It was deep, oily black, rainbow-hued swirls glistening upon its flesh. Jubilant had mentioned targeting “appendages...sensory organs”. Did it have them? Were those tentacles gripping the rocky crags; were those spreading flanges actually [i]wings[/i]?
Its eyes were tiny spots of paleness, as faint as a midday moon. But suddenly they pulsed with power. The air began to hum, their feet trembling as the siren’s song vibrated through their soles.
They couldn’t move. [i]It was enthralling them.[/i] With some difficulty, Jubilant twisted his neck around. “Tantris!”
With a roar, Faust flung his hammer. It whirred through the air and then struck the siren between the eyes. As she flinched back, her song faltering, the hammer bounced down. Mara heard Faust mutter, “Great, now how do I get that back?” an instant before Tantris began to play. The Skydancer’s slender fingers danced over his lute, and he sang, nervously at first, and then with growing strength and confidence. An Acolights’ folk song, perhaps a hymn, about forging through the darkness with weapons made of light. It fit their circumstances well. The bard was obviously putting some of his magic into the song, because Mara felt her fear pushed away, dampened, like sounds muffled by a fog. So much the better now. She leveled her trident at the beast.
Sturmwelle and Jubilant, the veterans, took point. The Spiral was a whirl of bright colors and jewels, his body frequently crackling with power as he spun and slashed with his claws. He was largely silent; Sturmwelle directed the fray instead: “Draw her out. Keep her moving! There’s a cave behind her; I can see a Guardian in there!”
Mara flowed around the siren, keeping well out of range of those billowing tentacles. It turned, tracking her with its tiny eyes, and she thought, [i]“Does it recognize me from[/i] before[i]?”[/i]
She stabbed a tentacle that snaked out to her, twisted it, and ripped it off. The siren hissed, a chilling sound like a saw grating on bone. The sound rose into a shriek as Sturmwelle slashed at her again, tearing audibly through several inches of flesh and hide.
As the siren turned to engage the Mirror, Mara darted behind her. She crawled over the rocks and peered into the crevice — and nearly had a heart attack as a dark shape dropped into place beside her.
“Whoa, lady, it’s only me!” Laurant whisper-shrieked. The black Guardian was clinging to the rocks, and her banjo dangled from her side. It didn’t look like she’d unstrapped it during the battle.
“Don’t scare me like that! Aren’t you going to...to sing?”
She shook her head. “No, Tantris is taking care of that — [i]Oh my[/i].” The last two words came out as a gasp. She’d peered inside the crevice and glimpsed Aidan, slumped just around a bend.
Mara stared. He was sprawled gracelessly in the mud, his clothes tangled around his limbs and tail. His eyes were open, but they had a terrible milky cast to them — as if he’d gone blind...or...
She was too big to squeeze in. She reached for him in vain. As she gave up, Laurant inched past her, grabbed Aidan’s forelimb. “He’s still alive!” she gasped, relief flooding her features. She pulled, and Mara wrapped a forearm around her legs and hauled her back out of the crevice.
“He won’t survive underwater once we’re out of the dome,” the merchant stated grimly. Laurant grinned back. “We thought of that. He’s got a cocoon of his own. Oy, Jubilant! [i]We’ve got him[/i]!”
Her words reached the Spiral just as he was retrieving Faustino’s hammer. The Arcane mage’s hind paw closed around it, and as he cartwheeled backwards, he flung it back to where its owner waited. He somersaulted upright in time for them to see his grin. “Capital! Bring him over, and we’ll bail, [i]fast[/i]. We’ve overstayed our welcome!”
“Hah! You’re saying it like we were welcome in the first place,” Faustino growled. His hammer smacked back into his grasp, and before the siren could turn to accost Laurant and Mara, he reared up in front of her face, his wings flaring. His free paw traced a magical sign as he whispered, “[i]Enamor[/i],” and then he grinned at the siren and winked one golden eye.
The siren stopped as if frozen. Her song, which had been building again, trailed away into silence. Faust’s grin became positively wicked, and then he smashed her facewise with the hammer.
Laurant and Mara dragged Aidan back to Jubilant. The Spiral bent over his face — “Hold still!” — and then slapped the extra cocoon onto him. It expanded to cover his body in pale green light, and as he gulped down air, the Arcane mage bellowed, “We’re good to go! Retreat!”
“Of all the morale-dropping things to say...” Sturmwelle’s comment trailed off into a laugh. She gave the siren another vicious swipe and then bounded backwards. Tantris, who had been closely following the battle, allowed his song to die away.
Without his music, the fear descended again. Suddenly they were no longer so cocky or self-assured. “[i]Retreeeeaaat[/i]!” Jubilant repeated, in a real panic this time. The siren was still Enamored, but her eyes flashed fire, and with a horrendous surging sound, she flowed after them.
Tantris went through the bubble first, then Laurant. Faust and Mara burst through next, with Aidan between them. Sturmwelle and Jubilant brought up the rear. Out and up they all swam, up to the distant surface....
“Is she following?” Tantris asked. His voice was thin and reedy from exertion, but they all heard, because they were thinking the same question. Jubilant answered, “I think...” He looked down and then trailed off into a sickened gurgle.
The siren pressed against the bubble dome. Her substance filled the space beneath, expanding wider and wider. Enlarging the bubble, stretching it, thinning out the sorcery that held it in place....
“She’s going to burst it! Fly, everyone, [i]fly[/i]!”
But even as Jubilant said it, they all knew that they were too far from the surface.... [i]“Still, we were warned,”[/i] Mara remembered, [i]“and damned if I will let Aidan or any of us become a part of her collection again!”[/i] She tightened her grip on her trident and then began murmuring, preparing a potent spell.
They went straight up. Up and up...The entire time, they were conscious of the pressure changing beneath them as the bubble was stretched taut. When it finally burst, it made a sound like a thunderclap. A frigid swell overtook them, sending them tumbling up to the light.
“It’s burst!” Tantris wailed. Faust turned to give him a stone-shattering glower. “Yes. [i]Thank you[/i] for telling us,” he stated flatly.
“Can it, Carrot-head; this ain’t the time to [i]oh my gods[/i]!”
Faust’s ensuing roar nearly drowned out Laurant’s words. As they all looked down, they all saw that dreaded sight: [i]The siren had caught up to them.[/i] She had extended her coils and wrapped them around Aidan’s hind limbs, and she was endeavoring to drag him down again.
Faust refused to give up their new companion. “Let go! [i]Let go[/i] of him, you odious piece of [i]slime[/i]!” he roared, his deep voice reverberating through the water. Laurant grabbed Aidan’s other paw, not noticing as Mara broke away. The dark Imperial looked on in distress, but her face was set, her free paw continuing to move as she readied her spell.
Aidan was lucid now, fully conscious — and aware. He stared into Faust’s and Laurant’s faces with wide and frightened eyes. “Don’t let go of me! [i]Please don’t let go[/i]!”
“Absolutely [i]not[/i]! Laurant...” Faust’s mane visibly stood on end as the water started to vibrate around them. “Laurant! She’s starting to sing again!”
The Enamor had worn off. Tantris was already playing, his song boosting Sturmwelle’s and Jubilant’s strength; the two fighters dove down, slashing and hacking at the siren’s substance. But she ignored them; so focused was she on her prize. She had lost him once....She wasn’t about to lose him twice.
[i]“Well, neither are we!”[/i] That thought was Mara’s, but it was shared by everybody. Before the siren’s song rose, Laurant looked past Aidan and deep into the siren’s eyes. “Let go of him, you...!”
Something happened then. Mara heard a sound — music unlike any she had ever heard before. If she had to think of a word to describe it, she would say [i]heavenly[/i]....[/color]
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[color=#292B38]Harps, tolling bells, and then the golden-throated blare of trumpets, all of them sounding out from the water around them, as if they had suddenly died and ascended to the gods. But there was no light — only that divinely beautiful sound, Aidan staring upwards in awe, and Laurant continuing to rant and rave at the siren, her mouth forming some truly awful words even as the music continued to pour from her throat....
She was lifting her banjo. For a wild moment, Mara thought she was going to unleash an equally divine chord, something which which to disintegrate the siren. Instead—
[b][i]ThwaBLOOOOIIINNNGG!!![/i][/b]
The enraged Guardian [i]smashed[/i] her banjo into the siren’s face. It splintered apart instantly. Faust and Tantris screamed in dismay.
And the siren loosened her grip. Aidan slipped free again. Finally, Mara commanded, “[i]Congeal[/i]!”
In a rush of coldness, the siren froze, wrapped in a cocoon of ice several meters thick. The dragons gurgled as the cold overtook them, and they redoubled their efforts to swim away.
Mara lingered, watching the ice encase the siren. The creature struggled feebly inside, trying to burst loose, but it was no use. Soon she was invisible beneath her shell of ice.
And she slipped away into the dark water. The spell would wear off in time, but by then, Mara and the others would be far away. [/color][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=37133648][i]“And you will have learned your lesson,”[/i][/url] [color=#292B38]she thought to the abyssal monster.
She holstered her trident and followed her comrades to the surface. The chill of the depths remained, but the silence was finally, blessedly complete.[/color]
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[color=#292B38]Some minutes later, they were startled by a whirling vortex that plunged down from above, spinning beside them like a drill. Its faint green glow told them that this was friendly magic, however, and as they swam into it, the water was sloughed off them and they were whisked up to the surface of the sea.
Mara’s crew pulled them aboard. The exhausted party was dumped at Levanter’s feet, and the Skydancer tut-tutted as he studied them. “You all look positively wretched,” he remarked.
Sturmwelle’s head went up, her teeth gleaming. “It’s been a long day, Levanter. It’s been a long [i]day[/i],” she snarled. Jubilant sighed in agreement. “I’ll say. It’s not even noon. How did you know where we were, by the way?”
“I could hear Laurant swearing. And it looks like it’s mission accomplished. Do you all need something to drink?”
“A spot of tea,” Mara sighed wearily. Her crew immediately leaped to follow her orders, even as the anchor was heaved aboard. Levanter turned and snapped his claws at the sails, and they bellied out with a boom, carrying the ship back to the Lightweaver’s lands.
The party had berths below, but after being in the darkness, they had no wish to leave the bright and airy deck. Instead, they slumped together, dripping and fatigued. Sturmwelle and Jubilant recovered quickly and soon wandered away to see if there was anything to eat. Tantris sat near the bow, critically examining his sodden cloak. Mara looked across the deck at Laurant, who was looking a bit despondent now.
Yet it was Aidan, not Mara, who broached the question: “How did you do that?” the red Guardian inquired. Laurant blinked blearily at him. “Do what? I did a lot of things down there.”
Aidan cleared his own throat a few times. It sounded like the rasp of sandpaper. Laurant’s tired laugh was not much better. “It’s an enchantment I got slapped with as a hatchling. I was not a very well-behaved child. Teacher Tantris can explain it better. Teach...” She trailed off — Tantris, exhausted, had fallen asleep at the bow.
“She grew up next to the ocean and encountered plenty of oceangoing drakes — sailors and the like. She quickly picked up their more profane language.” Faust had noted Mara’s perplexed look. And he blinked, suddenly abashed. “Ah, no offense meant, lady.”
“None taken,” Mara said with a warm smile. “So then...?”
“Well, she used a few too many swear-words in class — Tantris was her teacher then, and he came up with the idea of censoring her words with incredibly beautiful music.” The craftsdrake cocked one ear. “At least that’s the idea. No one’s been able to replicate the sounds Laurant makes, so maybe we all hear different things. Who knows?”
“I wonder what the siren heard,” Mara murmured. It must have been something, to Enamor her as much as the actual spell had. Perhaps Laurant’s song was just a variant of the original spell, nothing more.
“I’m not sure I want to know. We didn’t want Laurant to start shrieking at her right at the start, in case she somehow developed a resistance to the enchantment. Well, it worked — that’s the main thing.”
As for Laurant herself, she was now trying to coax Aidan to go to his berth. Mara’s Guardian refused to budge, however. “It’s too dark....Let me stay up here. There’s wind, everything is moving....Could you...sing for me?”
He sounded so plaintive. Mara felt sad when she considered that; he had obviously had a terrible time while in the siren’s coils. Laurant laughed quietly. “The word is ‘swear’, friend,” she corrected; but sing/swear she did, and they were lulled by the rocking of the ship, the faint symphony of harps and violins.
Mara frowned. “So she is...?”
“Probably insulting someone’s parentage,” Faust muttered with a shrug. “She was quite infamous for it a while back. ‘The Disillusionists’ Swearlord’, or something like that.”
Mara now recalled where she’d heard that name. She squinted at Faustino. “Your parents...Are they Theia and Hyperion?”
“As a matter of act, they are. How do you know them?”
“My own parents, Asteria and Orion, wrote to me about them. They said something about a son who had been sent to live with another clan, the Disillusionists. You know...Our parents come from the same clan. They are rivals.”
“Oh? Is that going to be a problem?” Faust arched an eyeridge.
To his great relief, Mara laughed. “Not at all. Honestly, I believe they argued about the silliest things. ‘Which genes are more beautiful’ and somesuch....I don’t think they were really into their ‘rivalry’. It seemed more like a way for them to pass the time.
“Besides, after what just happened here, d’you think I’d be interested in pursuing a rivalry with you?” Mara snorted. “I owe you a great debt....If I hadn’t run into you at the marketplace, my Guardian would probably still...”
“Yes.” Faust rolled his eyes. “Guardians do need guarding of their own sometimes. I shall have to make Laurant a new banjo. Goodness knows she’s earned it.”
“That she has,” Mara agreed. They were talking quietly now; across from them, Laurant had finally given in to exhaustion and fallen asleep beside Aidan. The fear had left the red Guardian’s face, and Mara knew that, in time, he would be all right.
They approached the coast of the Sunbeam Ruins. The sun was nearing its zenith, [i]“And it looks like there’s a good day ahead,”[/i] Mara thought to herself. A good day, maybe an even brighter tomorrow, for the merchant and her friends.[/color]
[right][font=Copperplate Gothic Light][color=#7995C1][size=5][b]~ The End[/b][/color][/size][/font][/right]
[size=2][color=#9494A9][b]Credits:[/b] Thanks to [i]Alixe[/i] for information about Mara's and Faust's parents.
Levanter, who used to be my Wind rep, has since found a home with another clan. Thank you also to his current owner, [i]DiaBlack[/i], for allowing him to be included in the story.[/color][/size]
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[center][color=#BBBABF][size=1][b]PREV.[/b][/size] [size=2][url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/20#post_34811394]Dragon[/url] | [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/1#post_2323941]Contents[/url] • Characters [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/1#post_30507351]A-M[/url] [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/1#post_30507353]N-Z[/url] • [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/1#post_30507362]Stories Pt. 3[/url] | [/size][size=1][b]NEXT[/b][/size] [size=2][url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2323941/20#post_34811403]Dragon[/url][/color][/size][/center]
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exaudi ~ hear us
written by Disillusionist
special thanks to Alixe and DiaBlack
5,833 words
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Laurant had not had the banjo for a long time. It had been given to her in celebration of her hatchday: crafted by her Charge and enchanted by her teacher, it was one of her most prized possessions. She wished to become a skilled musician like Tantris and had practiced playing it almost daily; now, years later, she thought she had nearly mastered it. Tantris had declared, with a rather strained smile on his face, that she was already quite good at playing the banjo, and could she stop now, please, or at least not sing (swear) along?
The day had started out nice. She had rolled out of bed and lumbered out of the lair to practice playing in the garden, where hopefully she would not disturb too many people. It looked as though a disturbance was already taking place, however. There was an Imperial, a stranger, obviously in need of help. Laurant muscled her way next to Faustino and then bent forward to listen....
By the time the sun was fully above the horizon, Mara had already visited three towns. No one there had been willing to accompany her to rescue her Guardian. It was one thing to challenge a siren on a beach or the surface of the water — but to chase her down into the abyss and beard her in her own lair...?
If she could not get help soon, the siren would alter Aidan, making him a part of her watery home. He would be irrevocably transformed, forever shrinking from sunlight, unable to survive without hearing his sinister mistress’ song. It would fill him up, certainly — but not physically. He would become unable to feed or sleep, unable to do anything that pulled his attention away from her music even for a brief instant. Indeed, all captives of sirens, if not rescued, perished in underwater graves, faces turned in rapture towards the source of that enthralling song — or longingly up to the light.
So Mara grew more and more frantic as the hours crawled past. As she descended on the marketplace near the Beacon of the Radiant Eye, she bellowed, “I need a bard...a magician! Is anyone willing to help me!?”
Most dragons scattered, surprised by her landing as much as by her obvious desperation. And when she continued, “I need someone who is willing to accompany me underwater to challenge a siren!” more of them made themselves scarce. Suddenly the marketplace was nearly empty, and the few dragons who passed or remained quickly averted their eyes. Only a few held their ground.
She tried again. She had to. She was now seriously considering asking the Lightweaver herself for aid, but right now... “I am looking for someone who can help me. Someone...anyone.” Her voice cracked on the last word; she couldn’t help it. Her Guardian was her dearest friend, and if she failed to save him again... “My Guardian has been stolen away by a siren. He’s underwater, and he won’t survive long....Please, will anybody help me save him!?”
One of the remaining dragons, a great black Imperial, fixed her with a steely eye. “Here, what’s all this, then?” he rumbled, cutting through Mara’s pleas. He had clearly been in the middle of business and was unhappy about his prospective customers running away. As Mara watched, he slammed a paw down onto a stack of treasure and scraped the lot into a bag.
Mara stared at him in disbelief. Hadn’t he been listening to a word she’d said? She opened her mouth to shout at him again, but then he queried, “You need a bard, correct?”
She nodded. She mentally steeled herself for him to ask, “How much would you be willing to pay?” As a merchant, she knew that type of dragon all too well.
But instead, he let out a long, reluctant sigh and rose to his feet. “I know someone who may be able to help you. Perhaps two someones.”
It was better than she had hoped, but his grim expression did not give her much confidence. He added, as if admitting he’d done something wrong, “We shall have to speak with them first. My name is Faustino, of the Disillusionists. Come with me. I’ll take you back to the clan.”
The Disillusionists. Mara thought she’d read that name before. Maybe in one of the ads posted around the Sunbeam Ruins, advertising art and writing services? ...No, it wasn’t the right image....
She pushed that from her mind; it was unimportant. Right now, she was explaining to a small group of Disillusionists what had happened to Aidan. They listened sympathetically, but she could see growing unease on a number of faces. She also realized she didn’t know yet which of these were the bards — Faustino had spoken to the clan leaders, who in turn had rallied the dragons who were currently awake. And then she had started to talk....Here she was now.
She shot a brief glance at Faustino. He was standing off to one side, but another dragon had squeezed in next to him. A Guardian...His own Guardian? And then her heart skipped a beat when she saw the stringed instrument hanging against the dragoness’ side. Was this one of the bards...?
She finished her story, and one of the dragons breathed, “A siren!” Murmurs rose from the clan as they began discussing things in low voices.
“Will you help me?” Mara’s own voice was a little weak. She was hoarse from traveling and shouting too much, and the fear wasn’t helping any.
“We shall have to consider it,” said Nachtstreiter, one of the clan leaders. There was a soft ahem from a Spiral who’d been hauled out of bed. He blinked slowly, almost groggily, and rather self-consciously smoothed down his hood.
“We shall have to think about it carefully, yes,” he said, as if starting a lecture. And sure enough: “To begin with, what is a siren?”
Siren was a term applied to a certain class of being haunting Sornieth’s magical waters. Most of them, like the one that’d dragged Aidan down, lived in the sea. Some lived in rivers, lakes...All had one thing in common: They used their hauntingly beautiful voices to lure unwary creatures into the water, where the sirens could use them as desired.
They were notorious for keeping their captives alive using their own insidious spells. Aidan might linger underwater for days, maybe even weeks — but over time he would starve to death, or else the siren would tire of him and then consume him.
Sirens were rarely found in the Sunbeam Seas. The Lightweaver’s radiance shone from the Beacon of the Radiant Eye; it was usually enough to discourage invaders who would otherwise prey on her children. But Aidan had caught this siren’s interest early on, and Mara’s rescue of him had only incensed her. Spurred by frustration and longing, she had sought him out again, even traveled into hostile waters to pursue him. And it had worked — she had him now.
The Disillusionists could not turn their backs on Mara, not after she had come to their lair and told them her story. As the morning wore on, more and more of them awoke, and they continued discussing the upcoming challenge and their plans to surmount it. To do that, they needed to understand how a siren’s abilities worked.
Sirens were difficult to challenge because their voices charmed all who heard them. But there had been stories of bards defeating them by drowning out their songs with music that was more beautiful. The question was: What exactly was beautiful music?
“My name is Tantris. I am the clan’s headmaster and bard,” the dragon introduced himself. He was a slim Skydancer garbed in sumptuous clothing, and he had a lute strapped to his hip. It was an obviously well-worn instrument, but Tantris himself looked too slender and frail for a battle.
There was a soft ahem. Mara turned as Faustino cleared his throat; he looked briefly down his nose at the Guardian she had seen earlier, the one standing beside him. “And this is—”
“I can introduce myself, Carrot-brain, thanks very much.” The Guardian shouldered him aside lazily. “Oyy. My name is Laurant and I’m the other bard. Pleasetameetcha.”
“Pleased to...meet you.” Mara couldn’t help sounding dubious. Laurant’s voice was rich but slightly rough, and the instrument she carried was...a banjo? A ridiculous countryside instrument next to Tantris’ beautiful lute! The Imperial’s heart sank as she considered this.
She clenched her teeth. “Buck up. They’re helping you, Mara, and that’s more than can be said for most of the other dragons you’ve seen so far this morning. I probably should’ve gone back to my parents....They’re too far away. I miss my parents....”
A team was being put together to aid Mara. She was introduced to the leader: Sturmwelle, a veteran fighter and a Water dragon. The sleepy Spiral, Jubilant, was her second-in-command, a great fighter in his own right and also the clan’s Arcane Representative. Mara started to feel a lot better about their odds.
Faustino was the last member of the team. He was obviously strong, but he had been earlier introduced as an artisan, and Mara had not expected him to volunteer for such a dangerous mission. The reason soon became clear, however.
“Laurant is my Guardian. When I was a hatchling, she protected me, but now that we are both grown, we look after each other. It is only fair.” He nodded towards the Guardian who was striding merrily along, her banjo bouncing against her hip. She was teasing Tantris in her usual booming voice, and the Skydancer was getting snappy with her. Not that she cared.
Mara admitted that she must have missed that detail, somewhere in all the fuss. “Have you known each other long?”
“Oh, yes. She is older than I” — Mara did a double-take — “and I came to the lair under her protection. Bit of a ridiculous story, that...” He trailed off, looked past her. Mara had sent word ahead to her ship, and it had docked to meet them.
“Is this yours?”
“Yes.” Mara sighed. “She hasn’t got a name yet. I’ve only had her for a few weeks.”
The ship heaved to next to the pier. The crew lowered a gangplank for them, and soon they were on their way.
They left the bustling coast of the Beacon behind. Soon they were entering the Shadowbinder’s territory, where it overlapped with that of her radiant sister. The waters beneath the ship grew dark, almost murky. Mara was almost afraid to look into the waves in case she saw...
She had brought along some of Aidan’s things, and after showing them to the clan’s seers, they had managed to ascertain her Guardian’s general location. It looked as though the siren had made a lair for herself in one of the trenches deep in the Shadowbinder’s waters. Surrounded by cold and crushing water, and dark, so dark...Mara hated to imagine what it was like for Aidan. He had been down there for nearly five hours already.
Sturmwelle and Jubilant were discussing tactics. Mara was determined to accompany them into the deep, and so she listened carefully as the Spiral began, “To travel and stay down there, we’re going to need a huge bubble, like the one the Windsinger’s placed over the Kelp Beds. Levanter...?”
Levanter nodded. Another Skydancer, he was the Disillusionists’ Wind Ambassador — though more skilled in diplomacy than in combat. He would not accompany the team beneath the waves; his role was to facilitate their entry, and that was all.
“Lev’s gonna make bubbles for each of us, so we can swim down to the lair. There might be other monsters, so we’ll have to stick together — with such a huge party, they should stay away. But who knows?”
Sturmwelle chimed in next: “Levanter is also preparing a sorcerous device for us, a larger bubble we can deploy once we locate the siren. It’s primed with a 50-meter radius, so it should cover the siren’s lair, the siren herself, and us. She’ll be cut off from the rest of the water — it should help weaken her considerably.”
“And after?” Faustino asked. Beside him, Laurant absently twanged a banjo string.
Sturmwelle frowned at him. “Well, Faustino, it’s not too hard. Smash her with your hammer. Smash her hard.”
Faust flattened his ears. “I was thinking of more precise advice, old dame. Tips and tricks? D’you have any?”
“Not really,” Sturm said with a wave so casual it made them all grit their teeth. “I’ve never fought a siren before.”
Jubilant sighed. “Go for the appendages and sensory organs, if you see any. Her being aquatic, Lightning magic would be best, but we couldn’t find anyone to help....If we can enamor her with music, she’ll be unable to use her voice, too.”
“There’s no telling what the lair looks like or where exactly she’ll be,” Sturmwelle said, and now her voice was grave. “Or Aidan, for that matter....She might be outside with him, or she might be inside a cave or burrow, with him buried among the rest of her treasure. If that’s the case, we’ll have to distract her, bind her in place.”
“I can do that,” Mara cut in. She stood a bit straighter, and her pale eyes blazed.
“Good call.” Sturm grinned ever so slightly. “While she’s occupied, some of us will have to slip around her and then pick up that Guardian. We’ll regroup, then head back to the surface. The bindings should hold....If not, she’ll be chasing us every step of the way. We’ll have to throw things back at her — and drown out her song the entire time.”
They hashed out more precise plans, details of who would do what, what to do in case x happened. Meanwhile, the seers had crafted a simple homing device, in the form of a crystal attuned to Aidan. An arrow of light, fused deep into the crystal, spun slowly, like a compass needle. Levanter was in charge of the device, and he had to put it down when the crystal grew too hot to hold. “Here — this is the place!”
The anchor dropped. The dragons heard the chain rattling deep below the decks, and they shivered slightly. They lined up before Levanter, who passed the crystal, now in a special pouch, to Jubilant. He was already murmuring spells, his eyes glowing with pale green light.
The team checked their weapons and equipment. They shifted uneasily as green cocoons closed in on them. But they were only made of magic and wind; they didn’t feel like anything at all.
“Right. Here’s your other thing.” Levanter handed another pouch to Jubilant, the one containing the bubble-deploying spell. “Everything’s good for four hours, starting...” He squinted at the sun. “Now.”
With a great splash, Sturmwelle bounded over the side and disappeared into the water. The others rather clumsily followed after her.
The water wasn’t cold, but it was unpleasantly cool — almost clammy. They were protected by their cocoons, but they could still feel the pressure of it, wrapping around them like a second skin....Mara breathed deeply and was gratified to smell fresh-cut grass and sea spray. With such vast lungs, she could hold her breath for up to an hour — but their mission was likely to take a lot longer.
Four hours, the Skydancer had said. They had four hours.
The tracking crystal no longer gave off heat, and in its pouch, it tugged at Jubilant’s wrist, showing him the way. The Spiral whirled into the abyss; the bards and fighters trailed close behind.
They did talk with each other, though if pressed, Mara had to admit that she was unable to recall much of what they said. Most of that part of the trip was a nightmarish blur of frigid water, the threat of crushing pressure held back by paper-thin sorcery. Worse still were the things dwelling in the depths: shapes, briefly lit by their glowing cocoons; there would be a change in pressure and they would glimpse bulbous eyes and cruel, fang-filled jaws. At one point Laurant rather shakily mentioned that she could see a light in the distance, and Sturmwelle gave it a brief glance. “Mantarune. Pretend you don’t see it.”
“We’re getting closer.” Mara remembered that part very clearly, Jubilant speaking in a taut, hushed voice. He paused to prepare his magical devices, and the dragons peered around him. They could now see the floor of the ocean. It was a world all on its own, mountains and valleys like the continent above. Ahead and below them, twin peaks rose, curling towards each other like the petals of a flower. Between them was utter darkness.
“Got your bubble ready?”
“Yes, Laurant. This danged crystal, though, it won’t stop tugging—”
“Give it to Faust,” snapped Sturmwelle, “and quietly. That thing might hear us squabbling.” Her eyes narrowed; the smaller, heat-sensing ones contracted as she tried to locate the siren.
Faust tucked the crystal into a belt pouch, drawing his hammer as he did so. It was a stout, rugged tool, obviously well-used at the forge, and Mara had doubts about its efficacy as a weapon. Her own trident was well-suited for the task at hand, though. As for the others, well, they would see....
They moved slowly, steadily forward. The entire time their eyes remained fixed on the blackness below. The palest glint warned them that they had been spotted: magic gleaming from deep within the siren’s eyes.
“She sees us!” Laurant squawked. Tantris gibbered something incoherent. Sturmwelle’s voice cut through their noises like a knife: “Drop the bubble now!”
Jubilant slashed the bubble-pouch open. The spell exploded beneath them. The bubble appeared, glowing with a faint green light of its own. It grew fast, and they yelped as they phased through the membrane and then dropped the rest of the way to the ocean floor.
They pulled themselves free from the mud with various complaints, all of which quickly died in their throats as they were overridden by another sound. Soft and hissing, sliding across the ocean stones...It sounded oddly dry, the rattle of scales as the siren crept from her lair.
Mara turned. Laurant and Tantris, the bards, clustered together, gurgling in fear. Faust swore, and Sturmwelle and Jubilant spread their claws, their faces bleak. Mara herself was silent, her throat suddenly parched.
Huge...It was immense. It roiled out of a crevice that looked too small for it, billowing to a vast size that threatened to break the bubble. It was deep, oily black, rainbow-hued swirls glistening upon its flesh. Jubilant had mentioned targeting “appendages...sensory organs”. Did it have them? Were those tentacles gripping the rocky crags; were those spreading flanges actually wings?
Its eyes were tiny spots of paleness, as faint as a midday moon. But suddenly they pulsed with power. The air began to hum, their feet trembling as the siren’s song vibrated through their soles.
They couldn’t move. It was enthralling them. With some difficulty, Jubilant twisted his neck around. “Tantris!”
With a roar, Faust flung his hammer. It whirred through the air and then struck the siren between the eyes. As she flinched back, her song faltering, the hammer bounced down. Mara heard Faust mutter, “Great, now how do I get that back?” an instant before Tantris began to play. The Skydancer’s slender fingers danced over his lute, and he sang, nervously at first, and then with growing strength and confidence. An Acolights’ folk song, perhaps a hymn, about forging through the darkness with weapons made of light. It fit their circumstances well. The bard was obviously putting some of his magic into the song, because Mara felt her fear pushed away, dampened, like sounds muffled by a fog. So much the better now. She leveled her trident at the beast.
Sturmwelle and Jubilant, the veterans, took point. The Spiral was a whirl of bright colors and jewels, his body frequently crackling with power as he spun and slashed with his claws. He was largely silent; Sturmwelle directed the fray instead: “Draw her out. Keep her moving! There’s a cave behind her; I can see a Guardian in there!”
Mara flowed around the siren, keeping well out of range of those billowing tentacles. It turned, tracking her with its tiny eyes, and she thought, “Does it recognize me from before?”
She stabbed a tentacle that snaked out to her, twisted it, and ripped it off. The siren hissed, a chilling sound like a saw grating on bone. The sound rose into a shriek as Sturmwelle slashed at her again, tearing audibly through several inches of flesh and hide.
As the siren turned to engage the Mirror, Mara darted behind her. She crawled over the rocks and peered into the crevice — and nearly had a heart attack as a dark shape dropped into place beside her.
“Whoa, lady, it’s only me!” Laurant whisper-shrieked. The black Guardian was clinging to the rocks, and her banjo dangled from her side. It didn’t look like she’d unstrapped it during the battle.
“Don’t scare me like that! Aren’t you going to...to sing?”
She shook her head. “No, Tantris is taking care of that — Oh my.” The last two words came out as a gasp. She’d peered inside the crevice and glimpsed Aidan, slumped just around a bend.
Mara stared. He was sprawled gracelessly in the mud, his clothes tangled around his limbs and tail. His eyes were open, but they had a terrible milky cast to them — as if he’d gone blind...or...
She was too big to squeeze in. She reached for him in vain. As she gave up, Laurant inched past her, grabbed Aidan’s forelimb. “He’s still alive!” she gasped, relief flooding her features. She pulled, and Mara wrapped a forearm around her legs and hauled her back out of the crevice.
“He won’t survive underwater once we’re out of the dome,” the merchant stated grimly. Laurant grinned back. “We thought of that. He’s got a cocoon of his own. Oy, Jubilant! We’ve got him!”
Her words reached the Spiral just as he was retrieving Faustino’s hammer. The Arcane mage’s hind paw closed around it, and as he cartwheeled backwards, he flung it back to where its owner waited. He somersaulted upright in time for them to see his grin. “Capital! Bring him over, and we’ll bail, fast. We’ve overstayed our welcome!”
“Hah! You’re saying it like we were welcome in the first place,” Faustino growled. His hammer smacked back into his grasp, and before the siren could turn to accost Laurant and Mara, he reared up in front of her face, his wings flaring. His free paw traced a magical sign as he whispered, “Enamor,” and then he grinned at the siren and winked one golden eye.
The siren stopped as if frozen. Her song, which had been building again, trailed away into silence. Faust’s grin became positively wicked, and then he smashed her facewise with the hammer.
Laurant and Mara dragged Aidan back to Jubilant. The Spiral bent over his face — “Hold still!” — and then slapped the extra cocoon onto him. It expanded to cover his body in pale green light, and as he gulped down air, the Arcane mage bellowed, “We’re good to go! Retreat!”
“Of all the morale-dropping things to say...” Sturmwelle’s comment trailed off into a laugh. She gave the siren another vicious swipe and then bounded backwards. Tantris, who had been closely following the battle, allowed his song to die away.
Without his music, the fear descended again. Suddenly they were no longer so cocky or self-assured. “Retreeeeaaat!” Jubilant repeated, in a real panic this time. The siren was still Enamored, but her eyes flashed fire, and with a horrendous surging sound, she flowed after them.
Tantris went through the bubble first, then Laurant. Faust and Mara burst through next, with Aidan between them. Sturmwelle and Jubilant brought up the rear. Out and up they all swam, up to the distant surface....
“Is she following?” Tantris asked. His voice was thin and reedy from exertion, but they all heard, because they were thinking the same question. Jubilant answered, “I think...” He looked down and then trailed off into a sickened gurgle.
The siren pressed against the bubble dome. Her substance filled the space beneath, expanding wider and wider. Enlarging the bubble, stretching it, thinning out the sorcery that held it in place....
“She’s going to burst it! Fly, everyone, fly!”
But even as Jubilant said it, they all knew that they were too far from the surface.... “Still, we were warned,” Mara remembered, “and damned if I will let Aidan or any of us become a part of her collection again!” She tightened her grip on her trident and then began murmuring, preparing a potent spell.
They went straight up. Up and up...The entire time, they were conscious of the pressure changing beneath them as the bubble was stretched taut. When it finally burst, it made a sound like a thunderclap. A frigid swell overtook them, sending them tumbling up to the light.
“It’s burst!” Tantris wailed. Faust turned to give him a stone-shattering glower. “Yes. Thank you for telling us,” he stated flatly.
“Can it, Carrot-head; this ain’t the time to oh my gods!”
Faust’s ensuing roar nearly drowned out Laurant’s words. As they all looked down, they all saw that dreaded sight: The siren had caught up to them. She had extended her coils and wrapped them around Aidan’s hind limbs, and she was endeavoring to drag him down again.
Faust refused to give up their new companion. “Let go! Let go of him, you odious piece of slime!” he roared, his deep voice reverberating through the water. Laurant grabbed Aidan’s other paw, not noticing as Mara broke away. The dark Imperial looked on in distress, but her face was set, her free paw continuing to move as she readied her spell.
Aidan was lucid now, fully conscious — and aware. He stared into Faust’s and Laurant’s faces with wide and frightened eyes. “Don’t let go of me! Please don’t let go!”
“Absolutely not! Laurant...” Faust’s mane visibly stood on end as the water started to vibrate around them. “Laurant! She’s starting to sing again!”
The Enamor had worn off. Tantris was already playing, his song boosting Sturmwelle’s and Jubilant’s strength; the two fighters dove down, slashing and hacking at the siren’s substance. But she ignored them; so focused was she on her prize. She had lost him once....She wasn’t about to lose him twice.
“Well, neither are we!” That thought was Mara’s, but it was shared by everybody. Before the siren’s song rose, Laurant looked past Aidan and deep into the siren’s eyes. “Let go of him, you...!”
Something happened then. Mara heard a sound — music unlike any she had ever heard before. If she had to think of a word to describe it, she would say heavenly....
Harps, tolling bells, and then the golden-throated blare of trumpets, all of them sounding out from the water around them, as if they had suddenly died and ascended to the gods. But there was no light — only that divinely beautiful sound, Aidan staring upwards in awe, and Laurant continuing to rant and rave at the siren, her mouth forming some truly awful words even as the music continued to pour from her throat....
She was lifting her banjo. For a wild moment, Mara thought she was going to unleash an equally divine chord, something which which to disintegrate the siren. Instead—
ThwaBLOOOOIIINNNGG!!!
The enraged Guardian smashed her banjo into the siren’s face. It splintered apart instantly. Faust and Tantris screamed in dismay.
And the siren loosened her grip. Aidan slipped free again. Finally, Mara commanded, “Congeal!”
In a rush of coldness, the siren froze, wrapped in a cocoon of ice several meters thick. The dragons gurgled as the cold overtook them, and they redoubled their efforts to swim away.
Mara lingered, watching the ice encase the siren. The creature struggled feebly inside, trying to burst loose, but it was no use. Soon she was invisible beneath her shell of ice.
And she slipped away into the dark water. The spell would wear off in time, but by then, Mara and the others would be far away. “And you will have learned your lesson,” she thought to the abyssal monster.
She holstered her trident and followed her comrades to the surface. The chill of the depths remained, but the silence was finally, blessedly complete.
Some minutes later, they were startled by a whirling vortex that plunged down from above, spinning beside them like a drill. Its faint green glow told them that this was friendly magic, however, and as they swam into it, the water was sloughed off them and they were whisked up to the surface of the sea.
Mara’s crew pulled them aboard. The exhausted party was dumped at Levanter’s feet, and the Skydancer tut-tutted as he studied them. “You all look positively wretched,” he remarked.
Sturmwelle’s head went up, her teeth gleaming. “It’s been a long day, Levanter. It’s been a long day,” she snarled. Jubilant sighed in agreement. “I’ll say. It’s not even noon. How did you know where we were, by the way?”
“I could hear Laurant swearing. And it looks like it’s mission accomplished. Do you all need something to drink?”
“A spot of tea,” Mara sighed wearily. Her crew immediately leaped to follow her orders, even as the anchor was heaved aboard. Levanter turned and snapped his claws at the sails, and they bellied out with a boom, carrying the ship back to the Lightweaver’s lands.
The party had berths below, but after being in the darkness, they had no wish to leave the bright and airy deck. Instead, they slumped together, dripping and fatigued. Sturmwelle and Jubilant recovered quickly and soon wandered away to see if there was anything to eat. Tantris sat near the bow, critically examining his sodden cloak. Mara looked across the deck at Laurant, who was looking a bit despondent now.
Yet it was Aidan, not Mara, who broached the question: “How did you do that?” the red Guardian inquired. Laurant blinked blearily at him. “Do what? I did a lot of things down there.”
Aidan cleared his own throat a few times. It sounded like the rasp of sandpaper. Laurant’s tired laugh was not much better. “It’s an enchantment I got slapped with as a hatchling. I was not a very well-behaved child. Teacher Tantris can explain it better. Teach...” She trailed off — Tantris, exhausted, had fallen asleep at the bow.
“She grew up next to the ocean and encountered plenty of oceangoing drakes — sailors and the like. She quickly picked up their more profane language.” Faust had noted Mara’s perplexed look. And he blinked, suddenly abashed. “Ah, no offense meant, lady.”
“None taken,” Mara said with a warm smile. “So then...?”
“Well, she used a few too many swear-words in class — Tantris was her teacher then, and he came up with the idea of censoring her words with incredibly beautiful music.” The craftsdrake cocked one ear. “At least that’s the idea. No one’s been able to replicate the sounds Laurant makes, so maybe we all hear different things. Who knows?”
“I wonder what the siren heard,” Mara murmured. It must have been something, to Enamor her as much as the actual spell had. Perhaps Laurant’s song was just a variant of the original spell, nothing more.
“I’m not sure I want to know. We didn’t want Laurant to start shrieking at her right at the start, in case she somehow developed a resistance to the enchantment. Well, it worked — that’s the main thing.”
As for Laurant herself, she was now trying to coax Aidan to go to his berth. Mara’s Guardian refused to budge, however. “It’s too dark....Let me stay up here. There’s wind, everything is moving....Could you...sing for me?”
He sounded so plaintive. Mara felt sad when she considered that; he had obviously had a terrible time while in the siren’s coils. Laurant laughed quietly. “The word is ‘swear’, friend,” she corrected; but sing/swear she did, and they were lulled by the rocking of the ship, the faint symphony of harps and violins.
Mara frowned. “So she is...?”
“Probably insulting someone’s parentage,” Faust muttered with a shrug. “She was quite infamous for it a while back. ‘The Disillusionists’ Swearlord’, or something like that.”
Mara now recalled where she’d heard that name. She squinted at Faustino. “Your parents...Are they Theia and Hyperion?”
“As a matter of act, they are. How do you know them?”
“My own parents, Asteria and Orion, wrote to me about them. They said something about a son who had been sent to live with another clan, the Disillusionists. You know...Our parents come from the same clan. They are rivals.”
“Oh? Is that going to be a problem?” Faust arched an eyeridge.
To his great relief, Mara laughed. “Not at all. Honestly, I believe they argued about the silliest things. ‘Which genes are more beautiful’ and somesuch....I don’t think they were really into their ‘rivalry’. It seemed more like a way for them to pass the time.
“Besides, after what just happened here, d’you think I’d be interested in pursuing a rivalry with you?” Mara snorted. “I owe you a great debt....If I hadn’t run into you at the marketplace, my Guardian would probably still...”
“Yes.” Faust rolled his eyes. “Guardians do need guarding of their own sometimes. I shall have to make Laurant a new banjo. Goodness knows she’s earned it.”
“That she has,” Mara agreed. They were talking quietly now; across from them, Laurant had finally given in to exhaustion and fallen asleep beside Aidan. The fear had left the red Guardian’s face, and Mara knew that, in time, he would be all right.
They approached the coast of the Sunbeam Ruins. The sun was nearing its zenith, “And it looks like there’s a good day ahead,” Mara thought to herself. A good day, maybe an even brighter tomorrow, for the merchant and her friends.
~ The End
Credits: Thanks to Alixe for information about Mara's and Faust's parents.
Levanter, who used to be my Wind rep, has since found a home with another clan. Thank you also to his current owner, DiaBlack, for allowing him to be included in the story.
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