Thalassa

From the beginning of time, the deities have made pacts with their creations. Success varies in these arrangements - and between Gods.

The Icewarden is not a dragon of deceitful deals and trickery, quite unlike his Sister lurking in the shadows. It is not in his nature to cheat. His deals are forward yet all-encompassing, as if he were passing a sentence rather than a mutual agreement. When dragons failed to consider the fine print, the natural consequences of their arrangement, what fault was it of his? He was no judge, jury and executioner, even within his own domain. Justice was a matter of public contribution, and a board of carefully-selected witnesses watched as the skydancer made her plea.

“Speak, Thalassa,” the Deity pressed, a paternal hum steady in his words. Contrary to the beliefs of those who had never known him, the Icewarden frequently erred from hostility when it came to those who deserved it least. Operating a prison still entailed a level of care and thought for those incarcerated, and it was unhelpful to treat their crimes with the same severity. This is why he had allowed the small skydancer - not much bigger than she had been as a hatchling, forced to grow to the width of her cage as would a bird - to exhaust the appeals system so heavily.

She quivered as she spoke. Thalassa was just as afraid of him now as she was as a hatchling, though a begrudging itch of familial love always scratched at her throat when they spoke. All in one word, Thalassa was inclined to bargain for her freedom, please the father fate locked her with, and maintain his patience.

So it began, again.

---

Thalassa had not been a prisoner nor emancipated within the Fortress of Ends since childhood. When she exited the first prison she had ever known - her egg, significantly weaker than her current holdings - it was to Sunfall’s care. This was all the Skydancer had of the world left: a memory so well-worn by recount that its veracity is questionable. She could not have claimed to know the exact shade of summer grass. She did not know if the sight of multiple moons at dusk was a trick of naive eyes or a true part of the world around her. And scarcely did she know the terms of the pact that had bound her here to begin with. Why the Icewarden would ever take the words of a child as law was a level of cruelty she dared not dwell on. At some point, they were said, and her fate was sealed. The Fortress became her inescapable home.

It hadn’t been all bad. She wasn’t considered among the incarcerated, and so had relatively free range of the place, down to her own living quarters. The great walls of library books, distinctly different from the court transcripts and case filings that sandwiched them in the heart of the Fortress, was always open to her. And it was through them that she began to fabricate the sights of the outside world, fact and fiction near-indistinguishable. Her paintings - canvas and brushes another gracious concession of the Icewarden and his guards - reflected landscapes that may or may not have existed beyond her line of sight. Even as her walls filled with them, she did not stop the speed at which she depicted them. Almost maddened, she sketched and drew the worlds promised from her books.

---

”Denied.”

The words had become fairly commonplace to the skydancer, but that did not stop their sting every time they were said.

---

Thalassa never considered escape to be an option. So thoroughly had she been entrenched within the culture of the prison that she knew survival outside of its delicate ecosystem was impossible. The guards, having walked the line between both worlds, would have her returned in no time. And what would become of her - or what she loathed to call - freedom then? So she steadily worked her way through the system, one appeal at a time.

It was all she knew to do.

---

”You would use the child as a bargaining chip?” the Icewarden asked, voice steeled. He had been offered worse in terms of leverage, and such propositions were commonplace within pacts, yet the Imperial did not strike him as the type to do such.

“No! It is...I simply cannot continue taking care of her.” The gilded creature, quite obviously not of Sornieth but certainly lacking the Warden’s authority, rubbed his temples. It striked the Icewarden as a deeply mortal action. “My body beckons evil magics I cannot even begin to give the names of. Even departure from my clan now is a calculated risk.”

“I pray that it is one you find worth taking,” the Icewarden responded. “I am flush with soldiers and scholars. What use do I have for your hatchling? It’s simply another mouth to feed.”

“If I were to find a single exploit in your Fortress, would you return her to me?”

“This hypothetical does not answer my question. Nor is it possible.”

The Imperial pushed forwards regardless. “I will work tirelessly at every point of possible entry within your prison until I manage to break through to her. She will be the sole target of my efforts. If I manage to break through and free her, not only is she returned to me, but you’ve discovered a new hole to patch. Let her liberation by my hand be your last. And, frankly” - he waved his claw upwards - “given the breadth of your domain, by the time I manage to do so, I am certain that she will have grown into a worthy addition to your service. One that can safely hold her own against the terrors that plague my clan.”

---

How was she to argue the terms of a pact she scarcely understood? Thalassa had spent hours scouring the legal records for any account of her imprisonment, but the logs were so encompassing that dredging through them proved difficult. The Icewarden himself had never told her them, either.

As it would turn out, Thalassa did not need to look for the answer. For one day it came to her in the form of an Imperial, blazing as powerfully as a sun, edging from the library’s ceiling to her new beginning.

Lore by Hyzenthlaay!

she barely knew freedom until it was gone
until it escaped into that cage
from which there was no escape,
the chains were too heavy and thick
and she was just a snowflake
that had fallen onto the chains and would melt when the sun came
unable to save her beautiful, perfect freedom
that she had missed.
two sided,
two lives to live,
she often thought that perhaps the second time round
she would fix it
but it would do no good,
because as wild as she fought
and as much as she tried to survive,
she wasn’t fit for tugging her freedom away from those chains
only giving it messages,
telling it “there’s still no hope”
and flying away once more
gifting it something would be nice
but she would never be allowed
her precious freedom deserved it more than anybody but
she didn’t have it in her
and so back and forth, back and forth,
remaining darker than it should,
her torment continued.

-Poem by xAstrophel