Red, Red Earth, Season 1

 

Relevant notes:

-No AI was used to write the story

-Queen Rosaego of the Bloodwarders is a work of fanfiction inspired by the lore and setting of World of Warcraft, owned by Blizzard Entertainment.

All original characters, dialogue, and narrative elements — including the character of Rosaego, her lineage, and the events depicted in this story — are the intellectual creation of the author.

This is a non-commercial, transformative work created with love and respect for the source material.

-PG 18+ Reader discretion is advised; includes themes of violence, death, gore, abuse, sex, drug and alcohol consumption, depression, anxiety, s*cide etc.

-The author is 18+ 

Red, Red Earth by Melice Nix, Season 1

------------Chapter I: Memories of Childhood------------

 

When the earth was young, and the Lady was a child and the Child a babe, when few footsteps were heard on the cold rocks of the land, and seas were still one, hatched a dragon in the shape of a girl, plump and flushed of skin she was. Beneath the towering pillars of the Lifeshrine, and the watchful eye of many a dragon, she drew her first breath of fire. And lo! A terrible storm gripped the land, as red as the flames of sun yet smokeless, and the peoples rejoiced, for a princess was born.

 

Her mother, the Ice Queen held up the babe and with all her pride announced her blue scales for all dragonkin to see. Her father, the living Blood of Heroes, wished the princess named after his brood, and the Ice Queen, and all her people under her, proclaimed, "Rosaego!", the Rose Dragon.

 

Mother was greatly fond of her and cradled her at night and sang her gentle lullabies as the baby softly slept. One such song Rosaego recalls even to this day, of a prince on a white steed, who she was promised to. And her father too was fond of her, and sang her songs of roses, heroes and trees, and these songs as pure memories of her mother and her father Rosaego remembers still and for all her days of dwelling, and all songs the dragon realm sang of her in praise.

 

She grew fast, and healthy as a tended rose, as she was fed a noble diet of anything of her desires, and where her courtly fingers grasped, it came to be hers. She played and danced and sang under the boughs of lifeblood trees and great white towers ablaze with pyres or gleaming dragonscales aflight to the sun most high, and she ate mostly cakes and licorice and hers was the world and the horizon its borders.

 

Alas, the troubles of the young princess were thus, though much she desired to be one of her kin and one and the same, the other children, the young whelplings, thought her an abomination, and whether by pure jealousy of her fortune or by spite, made mockery of her steel-blue scales that covered her forehead, chaffing and scabbing in place of eyebrows. "An ugly duck! You can't play with us!", "Rusznago!", they would shame and name her, as they ran with their toys far from her, leaving the young princess to her crystal-like tears.

 

And so Rosaego went to seek solitude, and played on her own in the lush fields, and Hochenblumen and Bubble Poppies were but her only true friends.

Even so, she holds dear these memories, of the splendorous colour of her gardens and her many garments, and of the first time she flew on a young drake's wings. She recalls still, of her trainer Lord Andestrasz and his words ,,My lady, the young princess possesses talent! The skies and the mountains will be soon be at your will". Small though she was, even then she held a promise of prowess at commanding the wind under dragon wings, and the other whelplings, noble and common born, grew ever more envious of her gifts.

 

But far from her birth-home, in the frozen fjords of the Azure Span, where her motherland laid, and the Ice Queen of Iskaara sat atop an ivory throne, Rosaego would summer with her brother, the Red Dragon, Runegos. He was to inherit the Ruby Lifepools after their father is to pass, however, young as they were, this was no concern to children. They played in snow, sleded across hills and sent small hollow-bone boat toys afloat the sea, as the Tuskarr fishermen cried in despair "The fish! You brats are scaring away our dinner!"

 

And Rosaego and her brother could smell the sweet fish soup cooking in the village. All, young and old, noble and common, each with a pair of hands to aid and sweeten the pot, bustled about in working song, as the tiny tuskarr children in woolen mitts gathered around the cauldron, impatiently prancing as they listened to stories of old told by the eldest, the warmth from the stew shared within the kin growing ever kinder on their frostbitten toes. "Nu-uh-uh!", Big Kinook gently slapped the wrist of Runegos that reached to snag a fried ancheevy, "Not ready yet!"

 

Runegos looked at his sister and in mischivous fashion showed her the ancheevy in one hand, and the fish-boat in the other, and she promptly knew his plan. In a sleight of hand, he swapped the two and threw the small boat into the pot!

 

Some time passed and Big Kinook was surprised the soup had earned a rich, earthy flavour.

"My, my! Well this must become my new recipe!", he turned to a fisherman and asked, puzzled, "What is it you have caught so new for us today?"

"Nothing but a toy boat!"

Runegos, a mouthful of ancheeves burst out, "It must've scared the ancheeves out of the pot!"

 

As a proper lesson, Runegos and his sister were later made to clean all the dishes from the feast using nothing but shark's fin bristles.

 

Such were the sceneries of her earliest footsteps, in a coddled sanctuary far away from the troubles of the world, veiled behind the fogs of the mountains and sea mists. Clear skies, flowers, play and biscuits was all she knew, and laughter that echoed like bright melodies of a nightingale across the vast and glorious lands under the Titans' watchful grace.

 

------------Chapter II: In the service of Neltharion------------

 

The morn of the world had passed, and with it the ripe age for duty had come.

The coast of the Reach sat a calm lull, as the foam from the sea played with its gentle sand. A chill of autumn's wind sloped from the snow-capped hills that concealed the brimming forges of the calderas.

 

It was due to be one year away from the beginning of her service. A small thing of unwieldy poise, she attently stared at her father with eyes lit up by a thousand lights as he told her stories, and taught her knowledge of what is true. To a young girl, her dad's word is the sole truth of the world.

 

Rosaego's father watched with fleeting joy, as she plucked a seashell from the depths of the soaked sand. The tiny palms revealed a pearl, and it was as pure and as unblemished as her, but was cast to shade by her smile basked in sunlight. His mouth opened to tell her. But the clouds above them were faster, and shrouded the father and daughter to tell the tale of a coming storm. The father, a stoic mound of rock struggled to bury a tear that broke alight in his eye, as he prayed to that storm to let him steal but a moment more of bliss from the gods.

 

"Look over yonder, my rosebud. Can you see those pillars beyond the hill?", he pointed as his voice quivered through the open grin. The girl followed his hand as it stretched outwards, away from the damp eye. "This is where you must go. In one year's time, you shall be one among those wings"

Word after word, each was a blade that slashed deeper into his heart. His daughter did not understand why it must be so, and the innocence of her laughter as she watched a pair of drakes in a fiery clash that gave glow to the rising brimstone pillars was like the hurt of a blade as it's drawn from the wound.

"I shall be there among you, and you will be within your own kin. There is nothing to fear, my rose. This isle, it would be like... A new home!"

 

The year passed on in innocence, and the father with a heart that ached a-countless shreds brought forth his daughter, and with his kinsmen and his fellows, his blood and his vassals docked onto the still coasts of the Reach. The dawn of duty was abound. Rosaego remembers little of how it all occured, all but glimpses of spiked draconic shields and shining metal scales serving as cover clad her body in place of silks.

 

There she stood, with her friends and her siblings, her loved ones and unknown faces, in a perfectly stoic crowd shoulder to shoulder, waiting on orders.

It is all but a blur of words now, "Left flank! Talons! Form a line! Slaughter them all!"

 

But her leader, Neltharion, a father figure and much of a father to her father was an ideal of soldiers, carving a path of destiny for his children to take on. He was to lead them to greatness and much was promised to the newly founded Dracthyr.

 

They were his chosen ones, iron wings perfected in combat. In flight, second to none.

 

And when the battles were over, the Weyrngrounds stood as a place of training, wherein Rosaego and her young kindred played games of Lish-Llrath and chase. They were free, or so they were led to believe.

 

But these games soon turned deadly, as one day Neltharion gave each child a spear to hold in the hands in which they had once held flowers.

 

Where they had been hunting butterflies, now came the charge of stalking ill-fitted proto-drakes, for sport and dinner. And Rosaego was one to follow orders, as if from the Titans themselves.

 

Those who disobeyed were dinner themselves. There was no room for mercy, no hesitation in Neltharion-father's judgement. It came swiftly and was as brutal as an axe decapitating limb from limb. And he made the Dracthyr chant praise to him for this and all his bloody verdicts, even as they watched their loved ones executed in cold blood by another fellow's axe or sword.

 

,,It is what shall forge you", he would tell them, "Once you have stood cold and drawn blood of your own kin as you watch them beg for mercy and grown deaf to their screams in the name of your destiny... You will have become my soldier of steel".

 

And those who obeyed were rewarded with praise and a pat on the wing, and this to a soldier was the highest honor; to be called deserving of the glory of Neltharion's name. He was loved among all, and feared beyond spoken word, and this fear became loyalty unwavering.

 

The blind faith entrusted in their creator-father led them to follow him to a promised legacy, far from the enclosed isle they now called their only home.

 

But, alas, the Dracthyr never saw what lies beyond the isles as they never left, and Neltharion cast away his promise into the depths, and with it, the lies of a grand destiny that lies beyond, a conquest he claimed awaited their grasp.

 

The soldiers, kin and friends, now bound to the confines of the Reach, cursed as if, to train and train over and over, and pay no thought to plans of their future. Their absolute resolve kept on, day after day until years had gone by. Not one knew this was forging to be their prison.

 

 

------------Chapter III: The Long Sleep------------

 

"....I remember... Glimpses... Of sunset... Creeping through the cracks... And the rumbling. The earth over us, it... Shook the creche. A once a while flight of drakes above, I could hear their coiling snarls... They were leaving the Isle, and us to our slumber. I strongly willed to lift my head and look at my clutchmates. But my limbs would not move and my thoughts felt small and unbending, stiff as the heaviest stone. I could only breathe bits of air, in, and out, and in... and out."

 

"...Have we disappointed you, father?..."

 

Darkness.

 

Neltharion's footsteps had long faded out of hearing. He had cast the keys to the creche far into the abyss, and left his children there, under earth, forgotten. His children no more.

 

And the spell upon the Dracthyr was powerful, the very air they breathed - so sweetly volatile a tune, like swinging chimes in the wind, lulling the wakefulness of the strongest mind to its utter pits.

 

They slept so, silently and hidden deep from ken of all learned men and lore. Beneath their grave of oblivion they dreamt, as the summers passed and the world changed, and kingdoms rose and fell. They were soldiers no longer and children to no one but silence.

 

------------Chapter IV: The Wakening------------

 

A breeze of change was carried in the skies. A single chirp of a bird, a wave of the ocean mighty and grey, crashing upon a different cliff. Stillness of the grass, astir with something, a possibility, perhaps one long shunned. A single iris beneath the quarrels of the ground above, opened wide to the light of a new age.

 

"Sister... Blue one, awaken!", eyes in the dark whispered.

Silhouettes, standing on their feet in a tomb-like chamber, brushing millenias of dust from their armor. Confused, they each stared at another, as if with kindred familiarity unplaceable. There was a bond between them, though not yet unveiled. Without a word spoken, they began to search the cells for others. There had to be others. And the sinking in the gut upon discovering those that stood planted but breathless, they knew to remember their first word, and loss was its name.

 

A quiet row of plights shared, each one's hand on the shoulder that's in front, stepping in sway, up through deteriorating narrow corridors whose walls were now too old to withstand as much as a peck of a nail, they led one another out towards where the light shone the greater. Through the large crevasse of what was left of a doorway, halves of decorated pillars still adorning its sides, at the edge of a pit of what seemed like a vault of sorts, the first of them stopped dead in his tracks and thus was pushed down to his demise. Soundless gasps trembled in the crowd, hushed by another's hand on the mouth, but as they approached with terrible caution, down below they saw him fitly land as a feather or a cloud behind cover of a crumbling bookshelf of no books but dust and rubble and they saw his petrified gaze fixated on a grand beast's glittering tail, with nothing between the two rest that shelf and a few stones' throws of empty space.

 

Its tail was long and reflective, a shade of midwinter moonlight blazing yet cold, and it gave tint to the walls of the vault, concealing the rest of its undoubtedly large body. The mouths of the escapees locked in silent horror as they watched from above. The final door to the antechamber, and they felt certain it was, lied just by the creature. It appeared as if it was guarding the exit, or perhaps, as they quickly came to realize, guarding their leave.

 

But the beast would not turn and was not suspecting, as if though it knew not something was about. It stood there, it seemed, as if any other day of many years before. This was their chance, they were swift to know. They looked at one another in the dark just like a brother looks at brother at the point of farewell, and one by one took half a step into the dim light.

 

The fall must have been a dozen yards. But somewhere, a third of the way down, by way of wind or unseen hand their descent was cradled gently and one after another, with limbs long frozen and rusted, now a graceful flutter like that of an owl's flap or finesse of a cat, they saw themselves flawlessly touch ground.

 

Huddled behind the toppling bookshelf, they watched the archway to the antechamber, its dome still inscribed in ancient runes, their meaning lost to the cruelty of time. So close at twain arms' length, it seemed if done quietly, the bunch could simply walk out, as the creature still preoccupied with itself paid not a twitch in their direction.

 

The first among them found himself in ways responsible to guide and took on the burden of bravery, and as a mouse makes a run for its hole, pranced on his toes to the archway. They saw his eyes grow wider for he could there see the creature's ugly head. He signalled a nod to the row, and with a gentle pat they sent another his way, and as they watched in hope of the two to unite at the safe spot, they saw a trail of blood leading behind the runner, who blissfully unaware, reached his arms out into embrace of the friend ahead.

 

A sundering noise became of the vault, like a marching horn in a battle, and it was coming from the depth of the beast's womb. The walls barely holding their own weight, resonated with its churning bells. Each nostril's breath echoed twice across the hall, like a gust of northern wind, foul of stench, it broke apart the embrace of friends.

 

In a stumbling, reckless motion the tail slithered a turn, and the large finned head now stared in hunger at the puny pests in its house, its shadow cloaking over the lot in mere moments.

The winged creature towered over them in hubris and roared, "Zakuszaril, aba-tos? Your sleep is not to break!"

And with its roars seared a blinding flame of blue and white and it scattered the lot to the corners of the room, who now saw the two runners at the very doorstep burnt alive in a white pyre, and in the blink of an eye all that was left of them was ashes and but a trail of blood that led to freedom, to shining death. 

 

The horror was unleashed and the kin, with no hope of tomorrow and nothing to hold on to, would not have this be their final place of rest. And there were those who used another as a shield from flames and they were quickly disintegrated to fluff, but there too were some who stood their ground, who would rather die for freedom or death of their own accord, than see themselves shackled again for all of time, and once more they raised their spears old, and their trusted swords and charged at the shimmering demon, united in bonds that bound them, shoulder to shoulder, like in the days of old.

 

Such was their resolve, and their courage, and though the beast devoured many, and their lonesome hearts fell apart into many halves after brethren defeated, they pressed on with unrelenting spirit that thirst for open skies and starlight grand. The creature's wings jittered one last time as it sank to the cold stone. Its teeth a grey mass, dry its tongue and its eyes now extinguished reflected the greetings of sunlight coming from the last arch before the unsmothered air of the vast world. And with the beast's fall, the lonesome kin were free.

 

------------Chapter V: Fair Skies and Strong Winds------------

 

In the courtyards of the old Weyrngrounds, amidst their shrubs wild and unpruned they stood once more, witnessing remnants of deteriorated past that loomed over the place as a restless ghost, and visions of what transpired there came in flashes to some. Others, unburdened by knowledge of the events that were, flew to many corners of this new world in search of grander destinies. Much of their shattered kin remained in the Isles, the only home they ever knew, though many too did go to seek new horizons, across seas unsailed and virgin skies.

 

 

Those that set out to sail found the earth had shifted and it had been in flame and turmoil reshaped, and the light of the new sun was a stranger to them. They looked upon the starlit firmament for many nights and could not find their bearings. The order of the heavens had changed, for those stars they loved and cherished had long fallen into shadow, and young ones were born in their place and they were strange and their glow cold and distant, and when the lost lot asked the Titans why this was, none echoed a response.

 

But the Isles, ages kept ashroud from mortal eyes were somewhat resistant to the winds of decay and as the wheel of war and peace spun ever on in the lands beyond, the primordial beauty here preserved itself in its dormant quiet. It became now, of all days since the first dawn, that the ancient realm and its mountains crowned in clouds had revealed their celestial gates to the peoples not of its shy shores.

 

The five beacons of the realm burned once more, lit with life unquenchable, proudly calling out to the great nations in their cities across waters wide, and the land shed its curtains of mist, and revealed itself a stage on whose coasts of soot all would play a part.

 

Men and elves, and other races that beheld a nature of curiosity, landed in their ships ashore in great numbers, under the foot of an ashen mountain that bled fire into the sea, and they would go on to disembark here for many days twice a day, as the docks teemed with vagabond travelers and savvy smugglers, their gold-hungry eyes preying on riches to be plundered from the land's ancient keeps, and bands of scholars and hunters alike set out to prod and poach the fascinating wildlife that hides in the lush heart of the isles, tucked safely by rivers of water and flame.

 

On the last day, a lone boat appeared in the distance, and it carried a host of elves noble, old and fair. They few, who too still remembered the birth of the moons and whose eyes had looked upon the first sea, and theirs had been the elden queen whose dominion made ocean's rim.

 

"Those are my folk! My stars of yore, lilies of my youth, we walked together under the same sun and I knew you well"

 

"They are not the kin you seek", a familiar face spoke a comforting smile, "Up, giddy up! The saddle should be to your liking; I've taken personal care to oversee the selection of its materials"

 

And up higher than the clouds and storms, the trees and towers tall rose the wings that saw all rivers flow below and all grandeur but that made of Titans now a bustle of ants beneath that one great flail, and they seated a rider, agile, bold and daring, whose eyes aimed for the star.

 

The drake and the rider now were one, bound by flight, a will made single-minded in the wind, and freedom was calling to them. 

 

They strode together and they briskly dashed through the cleft chasms of the burning shores and together they basked in the spring poppy's fume, and they grazed the green pastures that sat under the rule of many khanams, and as one shared the feast as their guest, and so too shared the warmth of a dimming fire in the long freezing nights of Vakthros, until fire danced no longer and they held each other as their scales melded together in the heat of the beating heart.

 

And so as one, in a peculiar storm they fell from the towering skies a long way down to the red earth, somewhere in the canopies of the first shores, where the raging weathers fought the sea giants as their clashes fell unheard in the dense groves that gave home to brooks of mallards and swogs.

 

They toppled between the branches and leaves that coated the fall aquiet, but the folly was seen by a grace of vorquins that gently licked their scales to healing, and by one other who discovered their broken body, as their breath slowly faded and their senses now sunken beneath a deathly veil.

 

"Arise, my promised", he spoke into the rider's hand, "Let the sun witness your eyes again, as for so long I have dreamt of them"

And so those serpent eyes saw again, and they saw this gallant too shared a bond, but with a pure silver light, a steadfast mare that carried his weighted cloak of crimson, and on his forehead a band of stars that glimmered of violets, rubies, emeralds. He took up his sword, a silver sabre forged to a perfect edge, and in one swing the blade flashed as it cut into the vines of rosethorn that tangled the fallen.

 

"I have known you in songs and tales. And I also know, that we are to wed", told the rider as the two met one another's glances.

"It was made to be by your father, whom I knew and from whom I shall ask of your hand, and that hero's word is as my oath to you, that I shall seat you in the whitest towers in my keep amongst the clouds, so you may be first to see the rising of the dawn and the first to sleep to the songs of the night birds in all the realm, first before even the mountains that host those great halls"

 

The prince lifted his betrothed into his arms and they rode on the steed, way for the high gates of Valdrakken, to be healed and to rest under the care of his stewards.

 

Thus passed the one hundredth day of their recovery in the manicured gardens of the royal keep, as its walls of limestone stood guard from the bustle of the lower ramparts. At last day's sunset, the rider throned on dragonback climbed up the highest battlement that overlooked all of crownlands. And up there, between the crinolines, a friendly presence stood with a gaze already darted at tomorrow's sunlight that slept just beyond where the eye could see. A cloak of white was the hair that weighed from his shoulders, and it was as old and as fierce as he, ever fighting the evening breeze.

 

"Are your wounds mended?"

The rider and the old trainer stood one next to the other as they watched the drake fly towards the northwestern border, its tail now fading into the fog of the horizon. A piercing screech followed from just beyond the veiled hills, and the drake emerged once more, soaring a welcome to a convoy of red banners that trotted the main road to the city.

"There is my father, and his host of envoys, and their vorquins tall. They ride for me, to take me home to the Lifepools"

"Would you have rather stayed?", the trainer inquired.

"I fear I see myself not as a lady of the court. I yearn to become a champion on stalwart wings that ride faster than the wind and conquer my gold cup in the skies", the rider's eyes lit up wide at the thought.

"Your crown and throne will patiently await. Until you have won your cup", jestered the old mentor in cordial spirit, "Shall we fly out to greet your father, my lady? From all the way up here it seems a great opportunity to practice your downward surge. We must perfect that tilt before tomorrow's tournament"

 

The dauntless rider-lady leapt from atop the battlements and right onto the saddle of her dragon that cruised just higher than the ground below, and with the barding gripped tightly in her fists the two ascended aloft towards the heavens of glistening moonlight. In the high mists, as drafts of wind were blaring against the spiteful wings nearly to prevail in the struggle, a voice hollered from a cloud of lower altitude, "Mind your momentum!"

 

With the first light of the new morn, the gardens of the lifeshrine seemed in full bloom, as though an age ago, their unpruned bushes of rosebud kissed by young dew now graced once more by her maidenly raiment. The girl adorned herself in dragonrider's pride, a strapping of leather that gripped her waist in place. The saddle was comfortable, but not to a fault as it served as another point of maneuver. Reins - locked in the skin of her glove. "Helmet? --"

"Oh, I beg you", the spunking lass laughed off the idea.

The old drakemaster's head of grays shook to the sides as he scuffed a loving scold.

"Now pay attention, it is a long journey of flaps until the finish line. These little pudding-heads will attempt to drain your vigor, to get you to be smug with sprint, but be wise. And just remember the flick trick", the teacher whispered in a rush of eagerness as he attempted to recall upon the pupil as many lessons they have mastered thus far.

"I know, I know, it is not a race but-"

"-A marathon!", the rider girl and her trainer belted his many times-parroted byword in unison, "These limplings know not their tails from their hats, just behold my Lord Andestrasz, I will leave them in the dust before it has even begun", the girl exclaimed zealously.

And a wash of pride came over the old lord trainer, who now saw his work complete. "Then it appears there is not much left I can teach you." He tapped the saddle on his apprentice's drake, "Fair skies and strong winds!"

 

And so the audacious drakerider went on to conquer her cup of gold in the skies and became titled Isles Ace, and took on the alias Amphibian of the North Seas, and was known as such in the Eastern Kingdoms championship for her trophies in sprints and slaloms alike. She brought home the cup of gold, to the lifepools, where her trainer, the noble lord hailed a welcome to her victory.

 

In those homely gardens where untamed roses grew with no care for the tending hand or the hindrance of rainless years, she picked a healthy petal from the most defiant of sprouts that battled the weeds on its frail stem. The blossom between her fingertips revealed itself a glint of her name.

 

Lord Andestrasz watched over the bemused miss, as her skystruck eyes seemed gone in the centuries of visions that came from the flower. She was becoming to remember.

"I know what I am, Lord Andestrasz", the girl keenly sang out, as though she had caught a missing piece of script in an ancient scroll, and like a fisherman holds onto a fish too lively, she would not allow it to slip away back into the depths.

The girl turned facing her teacher confidante, her lips a glee that sparked, "I am a dragon!"

"At long last, my lady", relieved the lord she trusted most.

With a tender unfolding of her palm she handed him the blood red flower and its roots that once ran deep and reclaimed her birthright.

"And my name is that of a rose."

 

------------Chapter VI: Reclaiming our Home------------

 

Candelabras cast a dim glow across the walls of her courtly chamber. Sheets of satin and silk a rich violet, layered to a pedantic frame clad the canopy of a spacious bed, as works of art that were the embroidered pillows sat on top the bedding in an intricate arrangement. The marble under her feet served well to breathe a gentle chill to the heavy gown veneers. The princess, with her arm leaning out the tower window, lounged in delight at the sound of birds and cherry tree fumes that freshened the staleness which chokes a room crammed tight with antique furniture. An unhandy sleight of the ladysmaid, as she struggled to puff a concoction of bergamot powder into the princess' plump cheeks saw the lady's wine glass jolted out of the window and down onto the commoner's cobblestones beneath the castle walls.

 

"My apologies, your grace. I shall swiftly bring another--", the chambermaid spun in an antsy pace, as the door behind them creaked open.

"There will be no need. I have brought us plenty", a platter of fruit and a gilded pitcher on his sleeves, the prince asserted eagerly as the heads turned and backs bowed upon his entry, all but one who stood proud on her toes as he approached her, struck in awe as the setting sun gave a tint of gold to the lining in her dress.

"Has your hunt with the khanam yielded fruit?", the princess' voice turned a tender hush, rejoiced at the sight of her beloved.

"Oh, this?", he gestured at the platter in a witty mood, "No, these are for you. The boar, however, is already being stoked in the furnace". His heart fluttered to the sound of her giggling cheeks.

"You look dashing yourself. I suppose frolicking with all those lords comes with the privilege of dressing smart at all times", pointed the princess as her betrothed's chest puffed straight, and he smirked in flattery.

 

The air in the room turned an awkward mumm as the ladies-in-wait, dutifully attending to brushing her grace's locks witnessed the exchange against their will in an attempt to deafen their ears.

"You may go now", the prince quaintly nodded towards the chambermaids, who, in a marching line paced out the door in their pittering slippers, as he proceeded to seat himself on the lounge chair next to his lover and pour for her a goblet of wine, "I am impatient in wait to introduce you. Guests of the keep are already arriving to the courtyards as we speak. Lieges whose company I cherish, and some others whose presence I would like your aid in hiding as they quite frankly bore my wits"

 

She swirled the goblet to a stir. A half-filled cup of deep scarlet specter that borrowed glows of candles, it turned its cast hot to the touch. The princess' fingertips, sizzled but unharmed remained wrapped around its base.

"What is this we drink?", she inquired as her gaze followed the swirls.

"Fara Vritra", the prince recalled as if with reverence, and held his cup to hers, as the flickers of candelabras behind swayed as one with the musing liquid, "The Elder Fire... A decoction enjoyed by your ancestors, and mine own. You may notice how subtly the blend rolls down tongue. Its flame is livid, but does not burn. Its taste is sweet, but does not daze"

Rosaego took the wine by her lips to savour. And though her lips were fast to stain in shades of carmine red, she found its pleasures shallow. "It's missing something", she pointed, as her sights wandered through the tower window, "Do you ever ask yourself - the reason? Why have the Titans woken us now of all times?"

 

 

The prince laid on the table the crown of bronze that weighed as stones on his forehead, as his lady took small sips of wine and their eyes exchanged glances. The candlelight made it so that his eyes took on a shade of milky blue, and the bronzen scales that kissed his forehead shimmered. When he would smile, he did so with his eyes too and all of his being, and it warmed the spirit. Akin to a child, his soul was pure for the world. The hand that was on the hilt of his sheathed sabre seemed gentle, with nails impeccably manicured, his vest of rich silk neatly buttoned. Spotless heels of fine leather polished to a sheen, and he wore his hair stellarly. A flawless match by any accord. Yet the princess' goblet was unfilled, but it was not wine she lacked. Could I come to love him some day, she thought to herself.

And he was lost in her, like a child playing in a dream.

 

Hours fled into the sunset, and the noble gala was upon the town. Beneath the verandas of crystal glass echoes of dancing feet and music and laughter galore graced the ears of their hosts. Their hands gripped about a glass each, the pair stood to mingle with a row of patrons whose crooked smiles spoke as sweetly as the cakes they intended to relish in.

Socialites and their madames bearing gifts after gifts, plentily blessing and praising the betrothed. In their wishes laid many bonds that bind a request or a favour, and the prince knew this well, and although many sought but to earn a good standing or simply to express their allegiance, the prayers sent forth that day were, in part, of a recompensary nature.

 

Princess Rosaego minded naught. She received offerings as if they were something which had always belonged to her; as if one had found a thing of hers and decided to return it and place into her hand for her convenience. Any words of gratitude she spoke were simply a courtesy she was taught to be necessary, but she paid little thought to how or why those pieces were now in her possession. So when a wealthy solicitor bent his knee in presenting a necklace of rosegold whose sockets counted ten gems, the last of their kind to be seen in the realm, the princess promptly brushed off,

"Belan-shi. You may set it aside, as right now I am wearing one that matches my raiment. The lining is sun-gold as you can see, and your necklace is rosegold and the two do not pass together"

It was a difficult challenge, making the princess rejoice.

 

The pork in the central furnace was nearing a crisp end. The jolliless thing spun and spun, sweating for quite long under the fires of its doom, as if counting the wait which the guests, and Rosaego were put to endure for the prince's speech, and finally, the great feast.

 

The ring of a silver spoon hitting the glass silenced the buzzing crowd. All eyes and ears, peered their focus at his presence.

"My gentle lords, I have summoned you on this eve to relish and chant with me, as you have loyally with my forefathers when they called upon such a joyous occasion in their lifetimes. Beside me stands proudly my beloved, that is your soon-to-be ruler and I expect she is to be welcomed among you as the first lady of our fair city. Let us all raise a glass now, for Princess Rosaego of House Bloodwarder, and for the future I shall build with her, and the glory we shall together restore to all of Valdrakken! May the Titans give us their blessing", chanted the prince, the ladies and lords in the crowd, one after another now stood up straight with their glasses raised in honor of the young princess. And at last, the words all had been anticipating, "Friends of the court, feast! Eat, drink, revel in our name!"

 

And thus, the betrothal was slowly coming to a finish. Charming tunes of flutes dulled by the noise of mouths chomping on that delightful roast, smacking and sipping at their drinks with no desire or time left for chatter. A man clad in black, not the most gallant choice of robes for a party of this sort stepped in utter confidence towards the royal seating and brazenly placed his body tween the fresh couple. He bore no gifts nor blessings, and his empty palm reached out in hold of the princess' hand, the pockets of her cheeks busy with creme tarts.

 

"Such a lovely speech my brother gave. Always had a way with the masses. Ever since we were children and he had us steal honeycombs from the gardens' beekeepers. And what do you know, upon getting caught he had the yard proprietors convinced against punishing us"

 

"I never knew you had a brother", Rosaego gulped out as she cleared her lips with a napkin, her hand still hanging in the man's grip.

 

"Lord Vanaxian is more than a brother. We grew together and became inseparable in our service", the prince reminisced, and it was clear their bond stretched long, "He has already laid his arm for me once and he would give his other one for your life as well"

 

"A small price to pay for friendship", the lord unveiled a side of his shoulder that showed a missing limb, and the discomfort in the princess' smile was hard to hide, "But please give me no pity, my lady. These scars are testaments of devotion to the house of your future. Now if you'll excuse me, I must speak with the prince. Alone"

 

Slightly unsettled, the prince helped himself with his sabre up from his chair. Lord Vanaxian guided his shoulder beneath a set of stairs where the wine racks were slotted to age. The place seemed private enough to talk, safely covered by wooden walls, hushed by melodies of harpists and castrates. 

 

"Brother, not all is well"

The young lord paced anxiously.

 

"What is the matter?"

 

"I've received news from a courier in the north. Far north"

 

"Beyond the ossuary?", the prince was puzzled.

 

"Yes, beyond. The Reach...", the man pranced around the topic, and the prince was starting to grow irritated.

 

Behind the wall of walnut, the elegant foot of the first lady leaned herself to eavesdrop. She could only see shades the vitrage light cast, and they seemed frightened, standing still but it felt as if they wanted to walk away. But the whispers bounced loudly enough against the marble floors.

 

The prince's brow furled as his eyes darted like arrows upon hearing the mention, "Speak, friend, what is it you know?"

 

The friend broke in a shiver in his attempt to delegate his insight, "A beast of the storm rises in the north, older than any foe, and you and I know best what she intends to find here"

 

"My father's men talked of this in passing... I shall have them investigate", the prince calmed his demeanor. As he began to walk away, Lord Vanaxian halted his move.

 

"You will need more than your father's men", he advised with the intent of warning.

 

Two moons had passed before the council of Valdrakken would hear of any developments on the northern situation. The prince pranced nervously outside the doors that guarded the meeting chamber, clutching in his hand an unsealed letter.

 

The royal guardsmen unlocked the dense doors, and the prince saw to letting himself past them.

 

"Why do your men stand watch for a meeting I am to be a part of? What is the meaning of this, father?"

 

The prince was growing irritated. And not so much by his actions, but rather his silence. The now elderly man in his chair, barely moving, a husk of his greater self the prince paid so much admiration once, even still in his last, undignified hours, by some ways found salt to pour on the wounds, at it to completely put his own son to disgrace.

 

"Quit that noise from your mouth and sit down", the old king's command from across the table caused the walls to tremble. The snooty-browed advisors to his side, too wise to mistake their loyalties, positioned their stances tightly with the king and sneezed not a word in prince's favor, and what struck as the lowest blow were the grimaces their moldy mustaches formed, of pity and relief that their heads were the ones too useful to be put to the block that day.

 

"I bring tidings", gestured the prince at the parchment as he dropped it flat down on the table, the king's wrinkled hand half-heartedly reached to open it, "The scouting party was successful. They have recovered the plans of the enemy's leader. It's all in the note--"

"You dare call this success!?", the king boldly interrupted his heir, crumpling the sheet in his hand in rage, "What use do I have of an heir who cannot command his subjects to seize the moment and act! The enemy must have fled by now to the ends of the earth with their cannons and our magma oil reserves! Ours! The damned mouse in my pantry has shown more intrepidity! Why are you here now, to council me? Or to strut your intellect in intercepting a piece of parchment?"

The prince, aggravated yet terrified of his father's judgement could feel the laughter that was held back in the throats of all those present. They appeared to be taking some pleasure in the exchange, as if they saw his humiliation as a theater of some despicable sort.

"I did not wish to do something erreneous to disappoint you-- I needed hear your thoughts first before--"

"Before what, before the damned war is over? So, now you play Cautious Catherine!?"

The despise for his incompetent son was cracking under the curl of his lips frozen in loathing. The king would have stood up to strangle him, if only he could. So he tried his best to kill his spirit instead,

"You would not know the strength of leadership if it was fed in the wine you sip so dearly, as your youth flies by unattended. Your sister Ionadormi would have had the head of that bitch they call their leader on a pike outside of my chamber window as a sweet dreams long already"

The door to the meeting creaked open and the tension in the air dropped like a set of knives fall to the dust.

A nobleman in regal robes walked towards the ear of the king's closest advisor and whispered a few words.

 

"Your majesty, it appears this issue is no longer. Lord Vanaxian and his host have managed to reclaim the stolen magma reserves, and they have taken captive a number of their lieutenants", the fat, pompous advisor exclaimed.

The old crown whose brow was ordained in wrinkles scoffed a smirk at the petty victory on his battlefield that was the council table.

 "Perhaps I should have raised that armless friend of yours in my court instead, as it seems you would have need of five limbs to do anything right"

 

The king's fury was restrained as he saw his final blow struck deep. As merciless as he was, the pupils in his eye showed a tinge of regret for having gone too far on his son.

But it was too late for the prince. He had listened to enough insults. It was time for him to pick up his sabre and what was left of his pride and leave this pious band.

 

Outside the castle walls breathing felt lighter. As if the tasks he was fated with ceased to be his and 'the Prince' became some other figure unknown to him, bound to the premises and responsibilities of the royal halls. But in the city, he felt himself a free young man, whose sole desire was a mind at peace and a healthy body. Kenodormu was fond of athletics and other bodily disciplines, and he took great care of his own well-being. The weight on his shoulders burdened him heavy that day. And as any other time of distress or simple boredom, the cure for all that ails was a proper hot coal massage. 'Obsidian kisses', as some called it.

 

Just on the edge of the Crownlands' cliffs, on the peripheries of the city where the elements of steam and magma raged beneath its rocky surface, an association of savvy noblemen founded what was to be the faved resort of the prince. In its humblest of days, Kenodormu pledged himself an anonymous patron under the alias 'Redbird', and thus was granted by the proprietors full access to the grounds. There he held his conversations with confidantes and friends, and enjoyed private sessions of most novel, luxurious commodities. He and Lord Vanaxian were no strangers to the place, as they frequented the spa often, that is, until the prince's betrothal. These days, he was eager to enjoy both of their companies, and even more than that, he wished his lady to bask in gifts of leisure and pampering.

 

"Ah, there he is. What took so long, old friend?", Lord Vanaxian mused excitedly as he lifted himself from the massage bed with his only arm.

 

Kenodormu removed his cloak of armor and, in a worn-out surrender as a warrior defeated after a battle, dropped himself on a table between the two. The princess, slightly oblivious to his state, kept occupied with her newly polished fingernails.

 

"My father wishes you as his son", the tired prince ridiculed his own predicament in a fit of irony, and his friend's were the only close pair of ears to understand.

 

The princess turned her attention towards her beloved, and saw him delighted at her elegance, as he sent showers of warmth her way,

"Beautiful choice, my love"

 

"Ugh, this again. He only speaks this way of you because he has never truly met me. If he had, he would have long removed me from the realm on the basis of annoyance. Besides, to hell with the old man. His days are short, and once the crown is passed down none of this will matter anymore", Vanaxian insisted to lighten the air, cordially reassuring the prince.

 

The princess rose to her hips, laying her sides on the table, the cashmere wool that covered her skin preserving her virtue. Curious of what troubles her lover's mind, she quizzed him lovingly, "Why is it the king has gripes with you? Are you not his only son, should he not uphold you highly?"

 

"I am. But I was not his only child. The king had two daughters", he explained, as he turned to face the table, preparing to have his muscles unclenched free from frustrations.

 

A slender woman of dark complexion, and a fistful of black stones approached the princess, her voice spoke soft, "Is your grace set for a session?"

 

"Will those sizzle my back? I do not want any scars", Rosaego asserted.

 

"Not at all. In fact, they are very therapeutic. I've had it done myself many times. It is a novel package, though I have not inquired where the sages have learned this technique. It seems rather exotic for the Isles", the prince assured her.

 

"If it was not for my insisting, your prince would be stuck in his old-fashioned ways. Yours truly", Lord Vanaxian interrupted with a curtsey, finding himself responsible for their pleasures on the day. This earned him her grace's liking, as she found his poking fun at the expense of the prince's rigidity highly amusing.

 

"So, your sisters... Where are they?", posed the princess.

 

Kenodormu paused in his thoughts for a moment, his sights appeared as if recalling something he had read from a book. With little to no heart, as a student refers to an unbemusing lesson, he delegated away, "Princess Ionadormi was assassinated in her bath, and princess Aenadormi killed herself upon failing to claim revenge for her sister's death. At least, this is what I was told, as I was but a baby when these events took place"

 

"And the king never forgave himself for the loss of his children and never went to bed without naming their names, and forgot his only son. This is what I was told in a tavern by the stable shack", Lord Vanaxian rolled his eyes at the idiocy of the situation, downing a large sip from his wineglass, "When will you see, brother; he will never deem you as enough. You'd do best to cut yourself loose of your shackles and understand that nothing you do, no matter how well or how poorly will replace their memory in his mind"

 

"Everything aside, he is still my father, and he hurts deeply after his daughters. I have seen how he suffers"

 

"So you would sympathize with a father who despises you. Would you not prefer to just... Forget it all and ride out into the world a wealthy, free man, with pockets lined by enough gold to bathe in wine and chocolates?", the prince's friend nudged an invite of new horizons and adventure.

 

 

"I wish, my friend. But my oath is to the throne, and to my people. And soon, to the rose at my side", prince Kenodormu solemnly dismissed the idea and watched it die in his imagination, as one watches a dream not of their own fate vanish into the air. He buried it beneath his inner child, long dead at the hands of etiquettes and ceremonies of the throne. Each time he seated its golden heights, its weight crushed heavier upon his spirit of a butterfly that rests beneath it all. But it was hopeless to search for a life free of these burdens, so what choice was there for the prince but to look forwards, to the face of his future, and caress it dearly as it bore the liking of his loved lady, with a pair of eyes as sapphires in sunlight.

 

And so it was that the couple kept at their treaded road, planted upon them by lineages of old and forgotten aspirations. As two birds in a cage too small that grow content with space enough to flap their wings a time, they were tasked to cast aside any unfulfilled desires of their own, and retreated to a quiet safety of their towers. The warmth of the sun was growing longer, and the rains showered the battlements twice a day now. The keep was blessed with a stillness that came in the breeze which pollenous bees carried. The king was now in his final days of counting, frail with sickness. And the entire city held its breath in honor of his rule.

The air felt clearer, to think and act.

 

Rosaego's head had been bombarded as of late with musings of councils and chaos that was the transient ordering of the royal court. In the king's descent to his deathbed, preparations were being made for regent rule, and the cutthroat feuds between ambitious councilmembers and the self-proclaimed 'rightful heirs' that appeared from thin air, staking their claim - bastards no doubt, played on in her eardrums as clearly as they echoed inside the walls of the castle.

So much so, that the developments in the north became a dull, predictable series of events, and no one in the keep paid much interest anymore other than to proceed with usual procedures.

 

She could not bear another moment inside. Cloaked in lilac velvet, she charged through the great doors, lest the stuffy air within the walls chokes her to an end, and mounted her trusted drake towards her red homeland.

 

Just as the princess thought herself in solitude under the protectorate of her birth house, not a week's worth would pass when her respite was brought to an interrupt.

 

As she meditated from the top of a Lifeshrine tower, the drake by her side whistled a warning of an unknown presence that startled her to waking.

 

"The blossoms of the royal gardens grow without your eye to enjoy their glory days", spoke the elderly knight who wore the sigil of the king on his chest, "To folk like us, it is not times of glory but of great hardship. Have trust in the house you have chosen, princess. Patience in hours of strife is what has won us many wars"

 

"How do I trust you are not ought to 'persuade' me into loyalty? Even now as you track me down in my birth home, by gods-know-whose orders. I cannot even be sure who the players are in a kingdom that sits on the brink of a civil war", Rosaego aired her frustration.

 

"There is only one player in this dance whose word matters and he still draws breath. Heed what I will tell you now, princess; venture north, where the battles are being fought against the storm, and seek out Vaults of Zskera. On the islet, ask your peoples. They will show you where", the man revealed a mysterious ring of keys, ancient and dusty to the touch, almost to crumble in his hand, "The King's wish is for you to accept your inheritance. In there, you will find your answers"

 

Up on the highest floors of the royal spire inside the closely kept chambers of the high crown, a cohort of royal guards of highest ranking, perhaps even belonging to a shadow order of sorts as their helmets were decorated with a ribbon striped in black and grey, stood vigil along with constables and other servants of the keep. Their expressions were pale and their foreheads drenched in sweat for their business there was entrusted in confidentiality of undisclosed whispers, only to be exchanged between themselves, as if what they were guarding was not a king, but a secret. Beneath the smell of burning wax and soaked gauze that overcame the rooms, it became clear to the prince that the place was becoming untidy and the men of the keep were growing restless about the hour of his father's passing, promptly letting loose in their duties, and he wondered if the candles they burned were in prayer of recovery or if they were becoming fast to mourn.

 

The prince removed the crown on his head in honor and sat by his father's bed. His eyes were closed but he was not dreaming. He knew his father to be too paranoid to miss as much as a moment's alertedness over the clawing advisors at his ear. The old dragon, in life and in death, had nothing but distrust for those who seated his table and shared in his wine.

 

"So... The whelp comes... At last to pay his respects", the old man coughed.

 

"The stewards tell me you are dying", explained the prince, choosing his words with care.

 

"Dying. Yes, that I am... And you lot have my tomb at the ready... Eager to throw my bones in it"

 

The king's throat was drying and his lips puckered, and he fell into a fit of wheezing. Kenodormu reached his hand for the pitcher of water, quick to sate his father's ails,

 

"You should rest, this talk is tiring you"

 

But the old man's eyes opened to a sharp gaze, and with a weak brush of his chalky hand he refused the drink from his son,

 

"I still have what to say and I will speak. Do not dare think... That my illness has my wits reduced... Or that I would let my death come for me as the realm falls into unfit hands. Before the Watch of the Aspects... I took great charge of this kingdom... And made decisions you could never think to make. The sacrifices. I paid... The price. My daughters... Were the cost of peace... I go now, to see their smiles once more... Iona's hair in the flowers of my garden... And I will wipe Aena's tears and she will ache no more...", the dying king, lost in an ancient dream suddenly turned to his son, and with his final breaths as sneers of spite, fighting to cast his curses before his hour, he grew bitter in demeanor,

"And you, my... Son. You'd do better to have an heir of her scale... So go... Be a husband by her side as... You will never... be king"

 

Solemnly the bells tolled. Drakes landed the ground in a defeated bow. The King was dead.

 

The beacons burned to guide his spirit to a farewell, as convoys of a court in mourning led charge on their vorquins armored in ceremonious black, trotting in unison. At the procession's head rode the coffer wherein rests the body of the late king, carried on the weight of a back in scars of the aged, weary drake that wailed to the mountains in grief for its lifelong rider. The city with their eyes to the dirt, trembling in fear of a future in turmoil, stood to watch the last of concord and the passing of days of certainty.

 

The tomb was open, and the dragon and the king that rode his wings in life stepped into the last dark of the grave, and he wept for the rider on his back loudly until his voice failed him in the end, and the stone sealed them again. And all was left of an age's days and rule but etching on that stone,

 

'Here rests King Vorondormu of Valdrakken, second of his name, Guardian of the Dragon Isles and Servant of the Titans. Long was his reign - starbound his flight'

 

When the convoys treaded back to their keep and the peoples to their homes and daylight grew spent, remained only Kenodormu and the tombstone. None would pass to remember his father's victories in youth, or words he shared with friends nor their names, or the way he loved and wept after his daughters, nor the perfume on his lady's wrist, none but he the young prince and the rain that rinsed his father's stone of secrets and regret.

 

 

"Your father was a courageous heart. He gave everything he had for the good of the realm. If he hadn't done what he did, if he hadn't stood his firm ground, we would all have been enslaved, along with his poor daughters. And death would have claimed his girls nevertheless.  He understood that. So he chose to fight, for every father's daughter, whatever it may cost. And it made him a broken man"

 

Kenodormu could hardly bear to heed any more condolences and tales of his father. What he felt for him was more than just grief or a bitter will, but a hundred shades of hurt between.

 

"You do not know him like I do. None of you did", he rejected.

 

"But I know you, brother. Do not take me wrong", Lord Vanaxian carefully approached towards his friend whose hood and cloak were soaked with rain, "You are much like him"

 

The prince's cloak lashed and the disproval in his eyes was thundering.

 

"You would also lay your life for your folk. But can't you see you have already sacrificed much? Would you see yourself tarnished like him? Where does it end, Keno? You have given yourself plenty", Lord Vanaxian placed his hand gently on the prince's shoulder, "Spare your tender soul, as he never had the chance to do"

 

The prince's gaze set itself upon the possibilities of what new freedoms lay beyond his burdens. His fingertips felt a tingle of something long forgotten, a whim cast away in shade of what he learned to be, an obedient son, and an heir. But his father had absolved him of those shackles and now, he was to be no one in particular. And what great bliss that was, to have no bridges that tie, yet all lead to some place new. The vastness of the world felt as though it was within his reach, and his blood was pounding anew. No one could quite breathe the fire of life into his spirit like Vanaxian knew to. The life they'd shared by each other's side through heavens and hells alike saw their fates intertwined, to be bonded and together walk all four corners of the earth if it must be so, until one of them is no more.

 

His fist clenched, and inside he hid this old whim and he tucked it with great care.

 

"I cannot come with you, Vana"

 

The prince's words shattered apart by tears. Unspoken, and shed away from the other's glance, they laid on a cheek of each their broken dreams, but the tears that broke on Vanaxian grew red with fury.

 

"You choose to stab me in the heart... And everything we've dreamt together"

 

A pair of dreams died that night as one and they were no more, and dreams when they break leave a wake of silence in their footsteps.

 

Avalanches of a thousand year's snow rolled down the cliffs of the Reach under the force of its winds. The ferry she stood in carefully docked to touch the sands of the islet, and under its floorboards she could see schools of minnows. Red and gold and blue were their scales, shimmering made the water to the seeing eye. Rosaego drowned her hand in the pool, gloves of plush still coating her skin, and the cold of the ocean pierced them fast. Just at the point of freezing, her palms felt a change in the currents, and her fist was quick to close down on the little thing that gleamed of rainbows. Its scales of chrome struggled for life in her grasp, but to little avail, as the sorry fish, whose sole fault in the world was its beauty, swam in the waters of a wrong riverbend this day.

 

The village laid just a mile or two ahead, she felt certain. Though she could not hear any voices, or commotion of a town in working bustle. Nothing but the sound of waves and wind and birds that sing in spring from trees beyond the frozen peaks.

 

As she went on to climb what seemed to be forgotten hills of moss long untreaded by cows or other animals native here, she noticed the trail appearing stronger and more vivid under her and seemed to lead her to some place, behind a grove of acacia trees. The princess sped up her pace and followed the path between the reeds. Smoke of fires was a welcome sign - she had found the place.

 

She approached as a stranger, but soon noticed the huts bore familiarity to the ones of her kin in Iskaara. And the peoples, too, seemed a similar poise. And the man, sturdier than most those around, with a head as wide as a block of rock planted atop his chest, suspiciously eyed her, head to toe, as he warmed his palms on the nearby firepit.

 

Rosaego treaded her step towards him with a dose of respect, but wariness too.

 

"Hoi, johta. Gral's fortunes"

 

The fat seaman seemed unimpressed.

 

"Gral siuna saa. Mi se teala teehta uli?", he grunted a low bass.

 

"My tea tree?", Rosaego struggled to understand. The chief laughed with his belly full, and the fishermen at his side followed in the chuckle at her expense.

 

"Mitee sinu taalla teet, vittu! Your-name?", spelled the thick-headed man, the bald on his head sweating against the noon.

 

"I am Princess Rosaego, the Puna'Lohi of Iskaara. My mother is--"

 

"Aye, we know the cousins. Beat them at the fisher's derby last winter", a man reeking of salmon jumped in from the sidelines.

 

"No, that was two winters before"

 

"Vittu, kauri the first yule before the last!", another slenderly man added to the conversation.

 

"Issi maa I would know, the blocks from that yule are still melting in my hut. It must have been the winter before--"

 

"Heijsuus! What bring you for us, Puna'Lohi?", the chief cut the chatter as if an axe was his voice.

 

Rosaego paused, and reached for her bag of leather on her back and placed it on the dirt in front, between her feet and the chief. She could see they would not reach to open it, so she stepped forward and unsealed the knots to reveal her gift, and proudly grinned in hopes to see satisfaction on their faces.

 

"A batch of herrings, and makrilli... Some spinefish... And a... single minnow, is this all? What were you hoping we do for you, princess?", the chief was unimpressed.

 

"Your people have lived here for quite some time and know the isle. Seemingly, ages, as the Iskaara folk that I know speak much differently. I was told to ask of you, help me find Vaults of Zskera. That your people would know", she proposed, firmly in her confidence.

 

"Aye, Zskera dens. I know where they are", the chief groaned with displeasure, the bush that was his eyebrow now almost completely sheltered his squint, "But to show, you will have to bring more kalashkaa. Much more than this"

 

The princess was starting to grow frustrated. These were her folk, of her kin and there they were, withholding knowledge she required, for a sum, as if heritage meant nothing.

 

"You would not aid me otherwise, even as friends of my kin?"

 

"Our ties are long and old, princess. But do not forget, it was my people, not those of Iskaara, that sent your way a handsome gift of two boats' length for your kihlaus feast. The mothers fed their young from half their own plate for months. Maybe, now is a good time to show the gratitude of your new house"

 

Rosaego considered his deal. Perhaps it was right, or perhaps wrong, but it did not matter. Her sights were set on the task, adamant to see it to its end. And if anything, this act of kindness might just make them a good ally with Iskaara, that is, if they could set aside their quarrels and rivalries in fishing aptitude for a single winter.

 

"Fair", she belted, "You will have it. Iskaara has never failed to deliver catches of unsurpassed quantities"

 

The mustache above his belly full of soup afrown, he scoffed at the jab, almost to defend his angler's pride. Still, he strove to collect his nerve in front of his people, and would not let the princess see the vein she succeeded to prod awake on his brow,

 

"Perqqalaa. Come with me. I will take you to the dens"

 

 

Hiking sticks in hands, they wandered way to the hills, a chill of sunrays baked their foreheads, along paths secret to snakes and those that dwelt there long and their cows, the hikers' eyes stung by wind that carries salt on birdback grey flocks. By this point, they had been racing against the sun's fall. And just as their breath turned heavy with fatigue, the elder chief halted Rosaego's further tread with the stick of wood in his dense hands. Below them, a cliff's descent and a mist that covered tips of mossen arches in a sleep-like shroud, hushed between boughs of acacia trees.

 

"My people go no further. Those old stones... That is where you go, Puna'Lohi"

 

Rosaego turned to face the chief, and felt their differences are to end at this cliff. A brim of gratuity in the light of her eyes, she nodded to the guide in respect,

 

"Go back now to your kin, Ukko. Tell them, their bellies will be full this yule. I will see it so"

 

The day's last rays guided her way down the misty hills. Slopes of rock turned to a paved stone, and it was here she took heed of what laid etched beneath the vines that gripped the plain walls, smooth to the touch of a hand. The letters, half-erased and chipped, glittered in the sun, and what few slept swallowed in moss left enough legible to the eye. 'Grrov: Az' - The First Vault.

 

Rosaego searched the wall with her palms, but to no result, for all she uncovered as the vines fell dead was plain and cold stone, with no carving for a keyhole or any latch alike. The door, if it even was, seemed sealed shut, and by no amount of brute force would it budge, nor did it appear to possess a mechanism of any kind. The princess was at an end. Whatever lied inside must have been of great importance, as the door was stubborn plenty to conceal its secrets safely for ages, and the vines, the accursed vines! It seemed each one cut loose gave birth to another from under its tangled root, and it grew to sprout higher than the one before, and there at the last of the hard-headed weeds a bristle cut the milky skin of her finger. The blood poured down her arm in gushes, and recklessly the princess pressed her hand on the slab of stone, and watched as the fluid smeared across the letters. The bloodied fingertip on the wall sensed a thrumming from underneath it, though it felt as if it was coming from deep within the stone, further than the surface below. The old and stubborn rock, that here silently rested many springs, now as if recalling a game of riddles and blood from its youthful days, began to wheel its stiff edges to the sides like the grinder in a mill. The dirt below the slab, undisturbed by man or beast, gave way for an opening and into a chamber whose stairs were untouched of the last footsteps that walked their surface, its ceilings and cracks stood as remnants of a past long bygone.

 

Inside, she felt herself in dark and alone. The stairs dived a long way down into an earthen abyss, and for all this time preserved as not a single step in the row was missing. Bravely, she descended her way to the bottom as far as bottom goes, and the descent grew darker until the final step that led to an open chamber, rounded about its center. She had made it inside the center of the vault.

 

In the central chamber whose floors were near to crumble apart under each tread of her foot, it seemed light still broke from the cracks in its ceiling, though she could not see how far up or how tall it lofted. Each couple of yards up, arches and terraces adorned the plain and dusted walls, rows of doors, stretching up farther than eyes can see. Entire floors of locked rooms with no ways of access, no ladder nor rope, concealing something with spells of magic. There belled no sound, nor shaking coming from the tomb that encased her and whatever truths she came to find, and the entire construction was still, surely made so even in its days, to keep quiet what must be so, and hidden well even from beetles and birds and snakes that seek their nests.

 

On the lowermost floor sat five doors, perfectly spaced from one another, in the order of a circle. With what little light came forth from the top, she aimed for the lock in the dead heart of the door that stood taller than twice her height, though her size were not impressive, and took up the ring of keys she was given by the strange knight. She pushed in the key, and the first door rose open into the vault of its arch, a mechanism hidden from sight of lowbrows by way of sorcery. The first room, dark and garnished with cobwebs, showed naught of interest but an odd orb of sorts at its end, its luminescence forgotten with time, it sat alone and broken of its power. Rosaego approached it with curiosity, only to find its resonance bouncing off the dense stone. Something was alarmed.

 

As she ran to trace her way back, she was promptly blocked by a barrier of arcane, brimming and pulsing, pushing the princess to fall on her back, and holding this barrier was a golem, a custodian of the vault, now awakened to serve its master. The mean and heartless, cold machine charged its pulsar towards her, and in a second's thought she rolled her way behind the orb and pushed it to face the construct with the crystal on its surface. The energy beamed bright and changed the room to daylight as the orb's head of weathered crystal absorbed the pulsar's potency, now glowing anew. Rosaego felt a massive force forming inside the artifact, and ducked to cover behind it, her eyes closed shut to the flash, only to hear cracking of metal and rubble and what sounded like the last wheeze of a mechanical being. The light in the room went to darkness once more and it was peaceful. The princess' eyes opened, and her shaking body lifted itself from behind the brimming orb to see the golem, or what was left of it, now in bits of motionless rock. She felt, though the guardian had fallen, he could not have been the only one, and others must be walking about, standing their tireless watch.

 

And the golems of the corridors were not the only ones watching her. Outside of the vaults, scouting a far sight from across the peaks, another presence, bittered and basked in envy observed her entry and marked her every move, waiting. "How convenient", he thought, "She's led me all the way only to lay the perfect trap for herself"

 

The princess was at the second door, and just like before a key, any key served well to unlatch it from the spell that bind it locked, and the room unveiled itself once more. This time, she found herself in what appeared a private library, of books and tomes and scrolls of a bygone age, riddled with secret knowledge the sages of today could not decipher. Most of it was illegible to her, as the ink had passed its peak long ago. The paper alone remained, turning to ash upon her touch. But behind the line of books sat a scroll that still had its runes freshly dancing on its surface. She selected it with her hand from the remainder, and her eyes began to read the language, and it reminded her of home and of the way her father spoke. Her wits lulled in a memory, as she lifted her head upon seeing the light grow stronger from the corridor, and something was amiss. The books and the scrolls were nowhere around. She swerved about in an attempt to regain her footing, only to find herself outside the room, no, outside a completely different room than the one she was in, and from her feet stretched a deathly fall, as she looked down the fenceless terrace. This was the fourth and final floor. Her being had moved in her mind with the power of this scroll, and its purpose was now clear to her. This living paper moved those that read it to places of memory of its writer - and its writer, a prisoner of the vault, as all she recalled upon reading were doors, and the feeling of being in an enclosed space. And now before her lied yet another door, not unlike those before.

 

 

The princess was becoming to a habit and the key found itself in her hand fast, and unsealed another door with ease. As it rose to an opening, her eyes stood to witness a familiar glimmer. Gold and gems of fortune, spewn about the room in piles. Treasures only those of the royal standing are known to see in their lifetime. Rosaego was familiar with the quantities, but what bemused her is the lengths the vaults' owner had gone through solely to secure their wealth inside. If this is what she came to find as her gift from the dying king, then why were those golems at her neck and ready to end her on sight? But the glow of the jewels was stronger than will and more cunning than wits, and she bowed down to take one for herself. "Matters not", she thought to herself, "I shall just take the gems I was promised and leave. Surely they will not notice a few are missing"

 

But her hands would not have enough and a craze came over her mind, as she snatched gem after gem and the pockets of her coat now laden with coins of gold made her heavy with riches, hardly walking but stumbling in a fever of greed. Her wings barely carried her across the platforms, as she soon began to collect anything that would fit in her palm, and went forward in loops of madness, door to door, wasting the keys away to unlock the treasures of every chamber. And in each a different set of things, knicks and knacks of all kinds, paintings and statuettes and toys, and chests guarded by traps of fire and ice, filled with items of magical properties that rang with power and glistened like moonlight across the dark walls.

 

Soon, she was stopped to see her keyring held one last piece. This was to be the final door. A rage came over her, as her mind spiraled for more. She found it difficult to spend the last of it. There had to be more somewhere. The princess could not have enough, and she had forgotten what she had come here for in the first place. All that mattered to her polluted mind, charmed by the sorceries that swam in the vault's air, were things that shine like stars in her hand and entertain her senses.

 

A thud of footsteps echoing behind clouds of her mind broke her awake from her charm for a split moment.

 

"Last key, princess?"

 

Her head barely turned to the side as her eyes still locked on the latch of the door, almost to unseal it with their intense beam that was her brute will.

 

"You can open it. I figured you'd run out, so I brought a few of my own"

 

The tension on her shoulders unclasped. Without a look in the voice's direction, she continued to unseal the last door in front, and its opening sounded a final grate.

 

"Princess", the voice echoed no more as it came right behind her ear, "Snap out of the spell. There is something you are here to find"

 

Her spirit appeared to be back in her eyes as she blinked to meet his sight. "I... How come you are here?"

 

"The answer is through that door. I will help you look for it"

 

A gentleman that he was, he showed her inside with his lone arm, and followed closely behind her step, "Oh -- you needn't worry of the golems. They have been taken care of"

 

This room was particularly clean compared to the other ones. It could not have been regularly shaped as the other ones, as it seemed larger and more spacious than those previous. Strangely enough, it seemed to the princess that this room could not have been inside the same vault, but rather, in odd ways alike the scroll, in memories of its founder displaced.

Far at its other end, in the corner, as if discarded, but polished like a trophy of sorts, were assorted bones that formed a sizeable dragon.

 

Rosaego glanced a look in her escort's direction, and walked forth towards it.

 

Dread was coming over her for an unknown reason, and she felt every pace under her feet heavier than the one before, as if she was walking a pilgrimage known only to her.

 

Before the bones of the old dragon, laid a tablet inscribed in proud letters.

 

"Lord Bloodwarder Delostrasz. The Hero bled like a pig"

 

The princess' body froze in a shock as she read, letter by letter. Sick to her guts to the image before her, where laid a defiled memory of her house's greatest. Her blood, the forefather of her family, his bones cast away in a ditch to rot and degrade, this tomb wherein he rests forgotten and lost for all time.

 

She arrived at the final line below, slightly larger and than the rest. It read plainly:

"Prize of Neltharion"

 

How, she struggled to understand. How could her Neltharion, the one she would follow into death commit such a vile deed towards her brood? Her mind raced in denial, attempting to reach for excuses, for perhaps this was all an illusion and an evil trick.

 

"It is not a lie, princess. Our leader was vicious"

 

"No, this cannot be... Neltharion could not have done this, he was like a father", her head shook in disbelief.

 

"No, princess, he was not. This hero was your allfather", he stepped towards her and sighed in compassion of her grief, "Neltharion never loved us. He had us removed, just like these bones. Buried. And all those treasures in his vault? Who do you think they belonged to, princess?"

 

Rosaego's breath paced to a slow. It became clear now, the purpose of these halls.

 

"Ours... All of us... He... Took away our memories. And then, our freedom", her heart felt heavy with tears as she held up an old children's toy, clearly worn and cherished by a child. She knew not who, nor whether the child lived to miss it. So many of these toys, stacked on piles, locked away from their children that served as slaves in his army.

 

"How could he have betrayed us..."

 

"Everyone can betray any one"

 

A dull thud bludgeoned her head and the pain was immense, but quick to fade into the void as the princess fell to the ground, losing the grip on the estranged toy as she sank into a dark sleep.

 

The bloodied bone rolled off to the side of her slumbering body.

 

"Now, the toughest task", panting, he dragged the princess by the legs, "To carry your sweetcake-stuffed royal arse outside"

 

The crown city was still in grieving of its late king, and though the passions were coming to a calm, an air of suspense in waiting was among its people. The mourning prince, retreating to solace often, received guests by none other than a true friend and a welcome company in times of disheartedness, the Drakemaster-Lord Andestrasz.

It was here, upon the highest perch of the keep they shared a cup of wine and a word.

 

"I have not come to offer condolences or pity, my prince. I knew your father, and so I know his passing gave you no pleasure, but neither great heartache", Lord Andestrasz placed his cup on the table, "I understand what burdens you is the cold that leaves after insults of his dying words. And I came to offer my aid. You need men of trust now more than ever"

 

The prince looked at him with cherish, "I am grateful to have you, and your house at our side, Master of Drakes"

 

From their perch a broad view to the north stretched. The sky dense with clouds of thunder perilous for flight, and raging smoke of drakefire visible to the eye from battles fought with ferocity far beyond the Crownlands, as if warning, that not all strife is too far from home. And that all it takes, is but to spark the fire from inside their homely bastion, and the walls fall.

 

"I have flown many weathers, but a tumultuous storm of this nature would see me recall my drakes back to the Lifepools", the old rider stated with fear in his voice.

 

"Don't bother", joked the prince, "Rosaego will mount them right back into the chaos just to prove she can"

 

Lord Andestrasz paused in confusion,

 

"Oh, but Princess Rosaego has left the Lifepools some days ago. She said she would depart on a ferry back to the Crownlands, for safe passage... Has she not returned yet?"

 

The both of them found themselves in complete perplex and stared at each other without words or wisdom, but soon to understand the gravity of her state.

 

"My prince", a pale and freckled squire demanded his attention as he cried out, "My prince! Our guards have brought a message from a brigand at the gates"

 

The young squire, wheezing and at strength's end, handed the prince a parchment tattered and splattered with blood, "He resisted arrest, your grace"

 

The prince and his guest stared sharply at the small letters on the paper, glancing between each other and the fainting squire, as urgency grew with the storm beyond.

 

"Let us finish this where it started. Hand over your crown, or she dies.

 

The storm is coming for you all"

 

Lord Andestrasz saw the rage fueling the furl in the prince's eye, and followed him as he charged out their meeting in a fit of fury and determination to rally his forces, and at the end of the walkway to the rampart stairs halted his anger,

 

"I shall gather my drakes. We fly north, into the storm"

 

The weak squire climbed the belltower as fast as his legs would carry him. The call to arms sounded.

 

Grates of weaponry and chants of battle heralded across the city heading to war. Forces of cavalry, and elite drakonid axemen that flightless were, marched side-by-side with the battle-hardened Dracthyr, accustomed to sleeping in their armor, and armadas of drakes gilded in royal barding met those from the Broodlands in the skies that bordered the two, and in unison sang a cry of battle and vengeance of the rose they cherished most. Northward they marched, and flew towards the storm that frightened the dragon's heart, but steadfastly their fire brimmed stronger and forth they went to meet many a fate, or witness the realm's unrest coming of an end.

 

Beyond the veils of the Ossuary, across a sea that barred from freedom the young Dracthyr, they now saw from above their homely creches strifened with blood and screams of armies at tooth and claw. Commanding the skies was the drake-lord Andestrasz, and he ordered the scales to light afire their enemies that fought on low ground. And as one, in a symphony of winged grace, they danced their deadly song.

 

The royal convoy of bronze dragons was seen charting the clouds just behind them, giving sunlight where there was none with their scales of gold, and the crown on the prince's head, first among them, their proudest star.

 

Below the layers of clouds and rain of black, the prince driven on his quest, and recklessly aiming forth at the viper's nest, failed to spot the Storm Queen and her forces that brewed their attack from within the Stormsunder Crater, a place so forgotten and underwritten to be a shell of its former self, and the lady of thunder knew this well.

 

The wind howled from below him, and it was too late to warn. Her storm dragons rose from the depths and up into the clouds in moments, they woke the very air itself of an ancient hatred, blind to friend or foe and the lighting from their wings fried anything that moved close.

 

The prince halted his drake in time, but late, barely to see Lord Andestrasz had fallen with his drake beneath the corner of his eye. A third of his flight had been brought down by the shock, and two thirds, summoned fast to retreat by a shrill of one high in command of their brood.

 

Kenodormu and his few were alone with the storm. He could not make out the crater, or the queen that lead their forces, but saw a clearing further east, beyond the peaks. They could, perhaps, climb higher. All he needed was a distraction.

 

Horn in his hand, he blew as much breath as he had in him and signaled the drakonid to come to his aid, and saw an entire sea of armies turn their march at his command towards the foe's den. They will strike her by land.

 

And the queen below laughed. Her voice echoed clear in the wind, piercing the weathery mist.

 

"Perhaps you don't understand, young one. Do you think those armies serve you? Or do they serve their dead king? Look at who leads them", she mocked, "The lords before their ranks are under my protection. And they all wish to see you gone. I sincerely thank you for bringing them to me"

 

She ascended from her den mounted on her drake. Her stature was not what the prince remembered - she seemed rather unkempt, and her clothes gave no hint of royalty. Locks of black was her hair, stiffly tied into braids and her eyes smeared in black ink. Her face appeared gaunt and empty, even from so far away.

 

Kenodormu watched as this frail, cold and bitter woman gathered his most trusted commanders before her, and could not begin to believe they all, and the warriors under them, would turn traitor for the likes of her. The thought that all their oaths broke with a single mention of coin or promise of power shattered his world. Everything around him was a lie, and his army laid fractured,

 

"You will never find the artifact! End this madness, Raszageth!"

 

The queen lifted her slender hand. The traitors took stances and there Kenodormu watched as his most trusted turned their swords at their own, and the blood that followed.

 

A desperate stream of tears flowed down his face at the sight. There was no choice left but to have the few that were still loyal, fall back to be spared of this lunacy.

 

Just before he could sound the retreat, the squire struggling to maintain the prince's height, yelled out to him, "Your grace, there is nowhere to return to! The city is taken hostage",

 

"By who? Her entire army is here--", he exclaimed to the squire who was about to fall off his drake and pulled him on his own saddle, "Take my hand... up! There"

 

"Not all of it. Some of our captains refused the call of duty. They are barring gates to the town"

 

Out of the blue, the chants of armies clashing below were pierced by a whistle of harpoons, and many of them. The prince's drake, carrying the two, froze in fear of its bane, but soon to see they were aimed to cast at the queen's flight. Many of her scales, pierced and fell and bodies shocked the ground to shake, and this infuriated her. Her storm was not safe any longer, and she had her drakes descend fast, leaving with her few officers on foot further north to regroup.

 

Kenodormu saw her squadron of trustees and her army of traitors chased towards the hills by another odd peoples, following closely behind, harpoons in their thick hands. The first sign he knew as a certainty, the tusks of ivory on their weapons and armor and the heraldry of Gral. They were allies of the Princess, and they looked angry.

 

He turned to the squire barely seated behind him and ordered, "Recall your drake and go back to Valdrakken. Send word, their queen is falling"

 

The young prince, with eyes set to victory lofted himself on his mount above her storm that now was starting to dim with her absence, and charged with his companions and the remained of his fellows to chase towards the queen. He felt, she would lead him to see his old friend.

 

As the storm cleared and the skies were safe once more, beyond the high peaks of the Reach, he descended to meet this new ally right before the enemy's doorsteps, and perhaps devise a plan.

 

Sturdy folk, they would not greet him at first. Perhaps they could not speak, he thought.

The most decorated among them, with fish bones and dyed leather straps on his helmet, he felt sure must be their elder.

 

"You must be Princess Rosaego's kin", the prince assumed boldly.

 

The chief let show a smug smile, and paused for too long before speaking.

 

"Aye, Puna'Lohi. Cousins", he continued, "And we come to help her fulfill her promise"

The prince was not the most pleased, but grateful to have any ally at a moment as dire as this. It was hard to talk plans amongst screams of fellows. He had no choice but to trust them. They were bound by blood to her, after all.

 

"Deal with the traitors. Leave none alive if you must. I have other matters to attend to", Kenodormu delegated to the chief, and he nodded, shouting an order of attack in his strange speech, and harpoons buzzed through the air once more towards the armies of Raszageth's dragons that were quick to retreat.

 

 

And airborne again as the storm settled, Kenodormu saw her move towards Froststone Vault, the ward of her imprisonment where she had slept for ages. East of it sat a battlefield cleared of weeds or nature, its dirt exposed and nothing but tents and barricades, their positioning familiar of the teachings of his tactics mentour in youth. One more, aside from him, had the same teacher, and this old friend threatened him with his skill.

 

He understood he could not simply attack head-on; the magma oil reserves were not intercepted by his friend solely to flatter the king. They were now in enemy hands, and if the prince docks as close as within sight's range, the cannons laden with magma would shoot straight at them, so he cruised above in the sky for a while, scouting and waiting. But his drake was growing weary.

 

"Come on, old girl, a little longer", he caressed the golden scales of her neck, "Endure"

 

The drake fell into laps of spiraling towards the grove before the battlefield, and just prior the descent, they were low enough for the prince to spot a guard in the settlement carrying a cloak of velvet in his hands, and Kenodormu knew it belonged to the princess. But before he could turn his reins, the drake let out a wail of exhaustion so loud, the guard took notice. The enemy settlement was alarmed of their presence, and in moments, cannons of magma were aiming at their position in the trees.

 

The prince and his few, sat on their drakes between the trees, awaiting the flame that burns.

 

A breath of silence followed a gust of wind that shook the treetrunks, and to their surprise, a flock of scales, red and furious dashed across the skies towards the vault. The grove trembled of thunder, but it were not a storm, though the armies of the loyal Dracthyr and Drakonid, chanting their war songs of old, and the Tuskarr of the islet just in front with their harpoons at the ready. As one, they charged towards the foe, led by Prince Kenodormu whose bronzen scales of armor gave light to the sun.

 

His drake ascended the last of her strength, and they winged ones, clad in bronze, rose from the grove to see Lord Andestrasz and his armada of the fastest, flaming and burning the ground and cannons that bore oil. The battle was turning, and the enemy was decimated to stench of burning flesh, their sole weapons turned against them, never theirs to start with.

 

Smoke covered the field in a dense blanket. The flightless armies, as well as some mercenaries of elvenkind and men charged inside the vault to chase after the storm queen that hid with her cowards.

 

And those that flew, rode a landing under the prince's command towards the main camp. The field glistened with scales of gold and blood-red, and the prince, with his most trusted Lord Andestrasz at his shoulder, dismounted to face his friend of old.

 

Lord Vanaxian and his host of guards stepped outside a sizeous tent. An arrogant and cunning figure, he ordered his guards to lower their weapons, fury in his eyes but his mouth in a smile of spite.

 

"Where is she", Kenodormu demanded through his teeth.

 

"Slowly, brother", Vanaxian treaded his steps closer, "She is inside. But you and I have much to talk about"

 

"If so much as a button on her dress is disturbed, you will--", the Prince growled.

 

"I have no interest in her. Now, if you are smart and you want to see her once more, you will have your... Advisor sent away for us to talk more privately"

 

Kenodormu glanced at Andestrasz. He was not about to take orders from this coward. But the Drakemaster sent a nod of approval to the prince. He would leave promptly, though not too far.

 

Vanaxian shook his head to the guard that still held on to the half-burnt velvet cloak. Quickly, the brute returned from the tent, and held onto the arms of the half-awake princess, clearly injured and miskept.

 

"Your part of the deal, and I let you have her", Vanaxian turned to judge her health, "She has likely seen worse in her service"

 

Kenodormu's fury was at a boil. In hunger, they shared a single piece of bread in Neltharion's army, and starved together only to survive under each other's wing, and here this man who calls him 'brother' speaks of deals for his crown and the life of his woman.

 

"I am disappointed, brother. You are the one that betrayed me, you see. It was I who saved you from Neltharion's punishment - and was left crippled for it", Vanaxian pointed at the hollow of his arm, "You were supposed to be dismembered by the executioner that day, not me. You are the one that stole from him. And now again you have chosen your fortune over me. After you watched me endure all... That... Pain! And as he cauterized the... No... I will take it all back. The Storm Queen has gifted me with well-sharpened blades. You will be the one to feel pain now, brother"

 

Vanaxian's fist gripped about a dagger, and in a lightning motion raced towards the princess, soon to stab her gut open, but Kenodormu's sword unsheathed in a rush of adrenaline and was faster to hold his friend by hairs of long black and hurled him about to the ground, and the tip of his blade pierced Vanaxian's chest, as bewildered the two froze in horror of the heavy act. The prince could see through the commotion the reaction of the red convoy was fast to dismantle the guards and snatch his lady away from harm.

 

"Hurry, take her home. Keep her safe", he urged the Drake-Lord.

 

Behind a veil of tears and a fire of fury that still kindled between the two, they observed the red flight ascend towards the Broodlands, with the princess on the fastest drake's back. A pair of brothers that witnessed a single sight, one saw victory and another defeat.

 

With his breath fading, Lord Vanaxian, laden with hurt of heart, unloaded his feelings into the open, grinning, though soon to be in the grave.

 

"Old friend, how far we've... Come..."

 

"This is all your blame. You knew the burdens that were placed on me", Kenodormu wept, his blade still in hand and perched in his friend.

 

"The king was right to have you--", Vanaxian gurgled on the blood in his mouth, "...Removed then... I would have loved you... And you chose that... Whore. Before me"

 

The prince cried aloud, and pushed the blade deeper into his broken heart in rage, desperate and wounded of spirit, as he watched his lover's light fade from his eyes. The last of his memory and a future free of bonds, a lifetime of love, gone.

 

"She does not feel for you. All she desires...", Vanaxian gathered what was left of his lifeforce and with the finger of his lone arm, touched the crown of bronze on the prince's brow to a crass topple, "Is this"

 

His arm slammed onto the bloodied earth and the look in his eyes was gone.

 

Kenodormu bowed his head on his lover's chest, and he cried to him. The drakes above stopped in their fights to listen. His tears soaked the hollow of his arm, and he thought he could make him whole. But the deathly wound that gushed in his friend's heart would not heal from tears or wails. His first love laid dead beneath the blade of his sword.

 

The prince smeared the blood from the eyes.

"Onwards", he commanded with the grieving blade in hand.

 

The royal army recuperated at the vault entrance. It was to be a slow and dangerous delve, and thus caution and silence was ordered. Vigilantly, they formed a file of fours, and treaded a quiet march to find their allies in the belly of the storm queen's tomb.

 

The further they walked, the stronger their fears became. The vault was dead silent, and cold, as if none were inside, and they thought their allies slain at the hands of their captors. Questions of doubt and worry ate at the morale of the soldiers, and the cold walls bit at their mind. The storm queen's age-old wrath lingered inside the halls, and the Dracthyr felt with their old foe, as she too, silenced in bonds, slept away from the living world.

 

She was used to confinement. Now, in a secret chamber beneath many levels of the vault, she sat with her officers under a lock of key and a barred door, awaiting her assailants.

 

"They are here. I hear their whispers in the stone", she spoke to her magi, "Collapse the tunnel. They must not p--"

 

A wail of arrow's wind pierced the magi's brow open. The storm queen's breath dropped to a ghastly horror, as she watched her wisest felled one by one, by a knight in her ranks.

 

"The storm has turned, old queen", the elder knight, a masterly bow in his hands, exclaimed proudly.

 

"You.... All of you! Traitors of the most vile kind!", enraged, yet powerless, she screamed at the order of archers.

 

"Nay, traitors we are not. You may have earned the ear of corrupt councilors of the Keep, but...", said the old leader of knights.

 

"Our fealty is with the High Crown", spoke another. And as one, they removed their helmets to reveal a ribbon of black and grey hanging from the collars of their armor.

 

The storm queen trembled, alone and defenseless. Her highest militants, dead at her feet, and she, surrounded and captive to be.

 

She glanced at the door, and before she could jolt to make for the escape, though she knew not a plan through, the elder knight held her throat gently by the point of his blade,

 

"You go, to face trial before the Prince's judgement. Be silent, and you may yet be spared"

 

And some floors above, the prince and his army were growing tired and hungry as the night approached. There seemed no end to tunnels and crevasses within the freezing vault, in the dead of the earth. Some parties, sent to excavate lost their way as they walked in circles, and others, withered of cold, and their bodies rested as mileposts of a doomed course.

 

One such band of scouts, sat about a campfire that was quick to quell through the night, and they shared their waterskin and stared at a barrier of fallen rocks that blocked their way. Three parts away from breaching, they rested for a while before they were to dig again.

 

"I see no light from the other end. 'Tis a fool's errand, Sarash", he grumbled, "There's no armies here. Nothing but dusty rock"

 

The dim campfire flickered.

 

"I say we return. What is the meaning of losing our life here, like the others"

 

"Shh...", Sarash the scout stared at the fire intently.

 

"Bet you a grand of silver, the prince's feasting on good meat tonight. He wouldn't bother his bottom to lift up a pickaxe and--"

 

"Quiet, Olesthar! Something is beneath us..."

 

The pickaxe's dropped from Olesthar's hand as the ground quaked and broke, and great earthwyrms burst in throught the cracks, starving beasts, long and eager to strangle their bits, and the scouts fought and they tried with their knives and their weapons to slice its skin but it was of stone. To those that claimed witness, their screams were piercing, but short to last.

 

Through the gapes the earthwyrms carved came pouring soldiers of the storm queen, and a flank of Djaradin that allied with her, thrice the size of men, an ancient enmity of dragonkind and all their bloodline that were first to dwell in the ashen hills of the Bloodlands, masters of the scale-hunt that delighted in dragon flesh.

 

Forth they marched through the creches, to slaughter the army of dragonkin and their spears were hardly to fail, and the prince observed his fellows put down and impaled bloody and was forced to listen as his peoples screamed in begging to die, as the pains were great and their deaths too slow. They were few left, and surrounded by enemy, trapped beneath the stone in the dark of the night.

 

The fierce clash raged within the narrow caves, as soldiers fell in piles, and trampled were crushed at the feet of the crowd in panic. What few were left, most lined the corridors with their guts on the stakes of Djaradin's spears.

 

The soldiers were close to a point of fleeing, having seen the brutal waste of a great number of their brethren. But alas, they were surrounded, by giants or by endless stone. They braced themselves, and looked at one another as brothers at arms, and stood with pride their last stand.

 

Fire in their hearts for to die in the womb of the land that shaped their scales, the Dracthyr chanted their songs of honorable death and struck their final blows where they may. Close came the end and the great dark, but in its stead a burning flash of flame and a thunderous blast from the walls that left many with the ringing in the ear, and many too, of friend and foe alike, fallen to the ground with impact.

 

To everyone's surprise, the sparring was halted for they had seen a large opening unveiled from the walls, and behind the smoke, a clearing and a hefty group of fishermen, leading a band of mercenaries from beyond the seas, armed to the teeth in their armors bloodied, bearing a concoction of explosives.

 

"Do not doubt I will use them. You stand in a room of men who do not fear the grave", the bald chief calmly told the Djaradin.

 

In mere moments, the giants and earthwyrms and their cowardly men dispersed through the corridors, clawing through the cracks for signs of air and surface, or their queen the savior, but found none, and the legion of scaleborn, and allies of Tuskarr and adventurers from vast earthly empires rushed at them to slaughter to a fault, for vengeance of murdered brethren and defense of the land, and the cleavers of drakonid sang against the metal breastplates of their foes, and none use was had of bombs for the giants and their wyrms were already dazed by the chaos. And thus, the battle turned in favor of the dragonkin. 

 

In the commotion, the prince searched for the chief's head to have a word, and though it was hard to tell apart from the river of polished plate helmets, he recognized him by his carved spear of ivory.

 

"Why have you come to our aid? The princess is safe and sound in her homeland", Kenodormu inquired, as he sparred against one oddly stubborn soldier, almost to have the chief's throat.

 

"We do not leave our iistavi behind", the chieftain was proud in his words, as he held off the mace of a giant with the palm of his fist, "We have them in hand. You should go meet with your knights, I hear - they have her. Tulli-noata, the witch of the winds... She has tormented our people. Go, and avenge our land"

 

Kenodormu lingered, as he felt it difficult to leave his army without a leader. The chieftain took notice of the fear at his heart,

 

"My men have your men's backs. I will not let them fall"

 

"You have my blessing. Take good charge", ordered the prince.

 

Before he could turn to leave, the sturdy chief called for his attention.

 

"Prince. Her brothers are on the loose"

 

Kenodormu's eyeballs frowned at this knowledge, but now was not the time to dwell on a distant omen. He looked at his men one last glance, and strode through the chamber that descended into a freezing abyss, walls of primeval ice were its confines, and the echoes of battle grew dim and the screams suffocant.

 

With utmost caution he stepped foot after another down the slippery stairs coated with ice, and the skin on his lips froze. At the base of the stairs, a platform's edges were aglimpse.

 

In midst of night's darkness, torches showed lit with fire, one after another to be a circle of seven, and their bearers shaded before him threw a chained, and weak, sullen woman at his feet.

 

The prince watched as they stepped forward and their faces showed in the light, and knew them by the ribbons.

 

"The leader of your enemy comes to be judged", the knight spoke, and knelt before the prince, and the others followed.

 

"Our task is complete"

 

"Our vigil - over"

 

"The crown will endure and true blood shall reign"

 

"No evil or foe shall take my home, lest my sword falls or my eyes shut and sealed, not to see the end of his rule and another dawn"

 

"I shall give my bread and my eye, and my heart at my chest, and do all I must"

 

"For so is the will of Titans and it shall be so"

 

The knights removed their helmets and ribbons from their collar and placed them on the ground, and the seven recited as one their final oath,

 

"Here ends my duty, and now I rest with honor"

 

And the old knight unsheathed a shinely knife from his belt, and the rest followed his move, and the vault was silent as the prince, and the storm queen witnessed, as they solemnly slit themselves open and fell onto the icy ground, deaf of any noise or cries, quelled, and the torches alone sizzled quietly the last eulogy in their remembrance.

 

Kenodormu and the storm queen stood frozen in the heart of the room, and neither could quite grasp what had taken place. But their camaraderie was short lived, and the prince whose spirit still raged after his friend, found cause in the woman that now knelt serfless and without power, encased deep within the earth, with him and the knowledge of all terror she has committed.

 

"You... Have turned some of my best men against me, and my friend lies dead because of you. You will not have what you seek. It is over"

 

Raszageth sat on her knees, and mumbled in apathy, her head bowed down as the dark hair covered her face,

 

"Your worst"

 

"What was that?", he could not understand her.

 

"Your worst men", she lifted her face and looked at him, her eyes dead and black, "Now you see, who the loyal ones are. These men... Perhaps a little too loyal. They who would go as far as to spear their own, solely to get at harm's range to end me... And they succeeded. Now that - that is loyalty"

 

"Do not put their honor in your mouth, witch. They served my house with their dying breath, and the Titans will judge them fairly", he came close enough to her face and the storm queen's fear was starting to show, "And I will judge you"

 

"I do not care for the artifact", she became firm in her expression and held, "I came for my brothers. But young prince, the things I learned of what is hidden in those vaults of Zskera... My brother will take great interest in"

 

Kenodormu threatened with his sword below her chin,

 

"What lies in there? Speak!"

 

"Your princess has already claimed her forefathers' legacy. I hear, they are carrying his bones on a convoy to the Lifepools as we speak", her bulged eyes stared at the barking tip of metal on her skin.

 

"...The Lifepools? How--"

 

"My informants in your keep are fast to send letters. She is safe... For now. But there are eyes on the Broodlands and they want what is in their possession"

 

Stubborn and proud, she grabbed the tip of the sword with her fingers, stood up on her feet as tears in rivers a brackish shade rolled down her fallow cheeks, and she held Kenodormu's blade at her own throat, not to cower from his eye,

 

"I have done what I came to do. Now do your part. Avenge him"

 

He gripped his sabre firmly, and gritted through his teeth,

 

"Raszageth, Queen of Storms, I, Prince Kenodormu of Valdrakken, judge you guilty of treason and conspiracy to overthrow the crown, and thus disrupt the will of the gods. Your punishment, is death"

 

The blade saw its way through her gentle neck and washed with the blood of the storm, exited the other end through the mess of hairs. And thus fell the bitter queen, over were her ails and free at last of her mortal shackles, asleep her corpse for all time in the same cold prison, and the civil war was at an end. The armies, under prince Kenodormu, marched home in a flight of victory, and heads of traitors' stakes decorated the gates of Valdrakken in hail to the one true ruler of the Crownlands.

 

By the waters of the Lifepools, the princess and her trusted teacher were almost finished in planting the offering. She sat by the flowerbed that engulfed the bones, near the sprouting blood-red blossom whose petals sang hopeful like a child's smile.

 

"I cannot grasp it. He placed my forefather in a prison to rot", she struggled to voice.

 

Lord Andestrasz attempted his best to ease her mind.

 

"He was not the only one who had seen such a fate at the Earth-Warder's hands"

 

The princess looked at his eyes in hopes to find some new knowledge that changes the truth she knew too well, but her trainer, though he seemed in peace of the state of things, would not sugarcoat.

 

"And this I fail to understand... So many of us. Heaps of my kin's belongings lined as high as ceilings in those vaults. He wished us to keep nothing... To be nothing. Our leader, one my father entrusted my life upon... Cast us away"

 

Rosaego's lips blushed and tears rolled in the corners of her eyes, and her trainer could see her saddened heart.

 

"You remember Neltharion as a steel-handed general, one which your kin trusted to guide and shape to perfection. But your forefathers knew him differently. And soldiers whose voices he claimed, whose last memory on this earth were a sacrificial blade in his fist that served to bleed them dry, and unseal the vault upon each his visit. Red blood - your blood and that of your clutch, he bound as the key to his vault, and he took lives of many in vile mockery to your brood", her teacher gently imparted and saw as she gazed at the scar on her fingertip that bled for her entry.

 

He took notice to her teary eyes, swaying left and right, counting in her mind the number and the cost that was paid for his ventures there, and recalled some that went missing with no word or notice, forgotten, and their whereabouts never questioned of. At a fated dawn's rise, vanished with the last dimming star.

 

The darkness within those thoughts crept deeply and she felt them carving a change to the foundations of her being, and she looked to her teacher, hurting for a cure of this defiling ken that tore at the spirit.

 

"There is much for you to learn about your bloodline", the drakemaster intrigued with patience, "What do you remember from before... From the day of your imprisonment?"

 

Rosaego's eyes became distant, as though looking through a sea of water, searching its depths for something gone.

 

"....I remember... Glimpses... Of sunset... Creeping through the cracks... And the rumbling. The earth over us, it... Shook the creche. A once a while flight of drakes above, I could hear their coiling snarls... They were leaving the Isle, and us to our slumber. I strongly willed to lift my head and look at my clutchmates. But my limbs would not move and my thoughts felt small and unbending, stiff as the heaviest stone. I could only breathe bits of air, in, and out, and in... and out."

 

Lord Andestrasz lifted her chin from the depths, and begged her eyes to meet, and the princess listened to what he had to tell her,

 

"Your father was not Neltharion. Your true father, is the son of blood that flows from this grave, and he followed with you and all his children into Deathwing's service, knowing all well where the path led. Alongside you and all his children, to sleep forever and to die", he turned to face her, "Neltharion... Hated our brood. But more than all, he held despite for the first that heroed arms against him. Lord Delostrasz changed the fate of dragons. And for that reason, he, and all Dracthyr had to be contained"

 

The princess sighed heavy in acceptance,

 

"For we would have rebelled against him"

 

Lord Andestrasz smiled in compassion, and felt her soul still tender as a young girl.

 

"As your forefather has. For freedom runs in your blood"

 

------------Chapter VII: To Seal a Love------------

 

Some stars glow because they must, and some cast their light for the love of those held dearest in our chests. Some pains she chose to bear for to carry forth those stars with hearts as pure as feathers, though her body ached and bled all for to see the world belit with their light.

 

 

First of blessings came the daughters of Rosaego and Kenodormu, tender beauties with gems in their eyes, they looked much alike the prince. They gifted him with glee he thought never feel in a lifetime, as with their birth a dream beyond all joy made home his bosom. Golden hairs as waterfalls in summer, laughing in their gardens amongst mulberry trees with jolly fingers stained sweet, and in their towers spoiled with mountains of toys and bedtime stories. Their two hearts knew not a shadow, nor slightest of ails, as their daddy made sure all ghosts to keep away of their doorstep. When they grew to be just as little as whelps he gave them their names - Eleonormi, the firstborn golden star that smiled as bright as milk, and Ionormi in memory of his sister he named his younger daughter, whose shy whispers told fairytales to dolls in imagined lands, and he blessed their skies with drakes as gentle as glade's grass grazed by their pink vorquins.

 

Ties of silver in princesses' braids danced in their father's loving eyes when they'd run to his embrace at the end of park play's day.

 

"Daddy, take us to see the ducks!", princess Eleonormi's sunny eyes would make her wish known, and Kenodormu could not sadden them.

 

"But have we not seen them yesterday!?", he bargained, but to no end, as their little voices sang.

 

"Pretty please, daddy. Look, I began painting it", little Ionormi stretched out the tiniest of hands, and a paper livened of colors from her mind opened, "The ph... Phawn"

 

"Ph-ea-sant?", her dad instructed kindly, as the young princess carried a lisp.

 

"Phassan feather! But I could not finish it in time... Can we please see it again?", she desired, easy to melt her daddy's heart.

 

Outmaneuvered, the Ruler of the Dragon Isles and First Sword in the Realm, Kenodormu surrendered, "Of course we will see the ducks. And the pheasant"

 

The girls jolted in their swirling dresses, thrilling in circles about their dad, "But I am not flying out to catch them if they flutter off again!"

 

And they left past the city gates into the hills above north, their soft palms in his, dancing in the stories he told along the path, of creek monsters and beetlehomes and the blossoms he chose to grace their fair ears.

 

Princess Rosaego paced about the corridor of her chamber. She could barely endure to sit up any longer, as the belly she was heavy with rose as high as her neck. Her legs were weaker by the hour, and her head was spinning with tire. She stopped by the windowsill that viewed upon the town, and past her reflection she forgot the pains as the set of stars, odd and new to this black a night spoke three names into her womb, and thus her blossom began to open.

 

The night of her labor grew long and strenuous, and little remains of memory but chambermaids in rush with blood on their garbs, as the princess bled a sure lot in her duress that seemed to have had no beginning nor end but torturous pain unkind.

 

At long last, enduring the final push as she slipped in and out of present moment, panting and almost to fade, there came the faintest of cries, and the room grew still with silence, and the stars watched.

 

The maid lifted her head, and the princess saw them with her weary eyes, resting and sleeping on her breast, the whelps she grew neath her heart. Steel-blue, nearly black scales covered their wrinkled skin in patterns, they suckled and their eyes shut glad, dreaming their lifetime into health. So gently, quietly, the first born and healthier of the three dawned his first sight. Soon after, his little brother's eyes followed as stars join the evening sky, drops of dew blue and unblemished, and the twins took light of their birth's constellation. All but the youngest, whose lids still sealed rather swam in memories of the womb.

She kissed their heads with three names, each a star in that night bearing the scent of lavender honey spice only a mother can tell.

 

Rosaego coddled the boys well and dwelt awake night after night as she fed them the warmest milk and they grew faster than seasons could change the clouds. Every night before she tucked their beds, she would have the chambermaids bring tubs of spring water, pure and untouched by fish, wherein to bathe the boys. It happened one night, that a maid heavy-handedly nearly toppled over the tub where the mother bathed her youngest, but luck would have it, and the tub was too heavy to be moved.

 

"Your name must be Vitros then", she whispered as she caressed him close to her heart. The baby, striped in steel and bronzen scales cried in distress, hurting with tears, and though unsure of the reason, the mother's words embraced his fragile body as if a higher will spoke through her vessel, "Do not fear any more, my love. You have the luck of gods"

 

The twins grew to be as two mirrors that face one another. Even as they came to be whelplings big enough for daycare, on an isle in the outskirts of the city where they spent their playful days under diligent watch of one dragonspawn lord Agapanthus, who strove to teach them as many nursery rhymes as he could before the impsy duo would devise their next prank and all playground made amess that came hard to tidy. His only secret card that kept the two troublemakers in as much order as could be, was to devise a distraction by snacks, but soon even this plan failed, as the boys began eating nothing but, and refused any supper if it came not laced with sugar. So, the nerve-wrecked whelptender knew it was promptly time to escalate, and made note to their mother to "Come fast, and take home your snack-monsters as other children are learning to follow their example, and I do not wish to begin to find twenty-three live snails in my tea instead of two. In fact I wish to find none, thank you kindly!"

 

Not long after, as the two whelpling princes sat impatiently in their detention, their mother came marching through the daycare's gate.

 

"...It's snails this time?"

 

"Soon, I expect snakes", Agapanthus sighed, and gestured at the bench in the corner where the twins sat visibly annoyed with ants in their pants. The boy covered head to toe in jet-steel scales with no hint of bronze had his sky-blue eyes darted at the whelptender, and with his hand quickly reached into a pocket, and took a handful of something too small to see. He turned to his brother and the planmaking began, but before they could fully forge one, Rosaego called out,

 

"Krelagos, what ever you have in your hands, do not even think about it!"

 

The boys cracked a chuckle and the jet-scaled child began throwing colored pebbles dead-aimed at Agapanthus' horns.

 

Rosaego's struggle was that she knew them apart only by their voices, as Krelagos' possessed more pitch than that of his brother. During their infancy, she would glance at their tummies to learn that Krelagos was steel of scales, but a belly of bronze, though nowadays his mark laid concealed under regal clothing. Panthagos, the boy jet-steel of scales with no hint of bronze, only ever could she know when it came dark as his ink skin gleamed as silk in moonlight.

 

"Don't worry mommy, I will not", the other twin, cackling maniacally with spite in his little eyes, grinned, "But Panthagos sure is"

 

"I shall have a talk with you boys at home about this", their mother commanded, or rather gave her best impression of a command with a cheeky wink of her left eye, as she thought her boys' misbehavior hilarious. In a secretly way of glances unspoken, known only between them she strove lovingly to embolden their devilry.

 

"It seems it is time for us to go home", Rosaego told Agapanthus as he dodged the shots, "...And where is Vitros?"

 

"Reading. He may stay"

 

"My smart boy. Not to worry, he goes with his brothers as well. In fact, their father and I have been planning a trip with the children, and their sisters are coming too", the princess nodded, and Agapanthus turned to search out the wise boy for his mother, scoffing and mumbling beneath the barrage of rocks over his head as he made his way through the daycare yards.

 

 

Beneath June morning's sunrays, as a gust of lightning and smiling a beam, Krelagos came running towards his mother and the tad bit of bronze on his belly gleamed as he opened his wings in embrace her cheeks to hold, and kissed her on the nose. Any ice she had walled about her heart melted in that one touch too pure for to be felt by the likes of mortals on this tainted earth. Adoringly she cuddled every bit of their mischief, and bore witness to how her whole life's light became this one embrace of her children, all three of her boys running to her now held onto her robe dearly, their kisses scented of warm milk and sugar, little fists gripping at her body as if holding on to life, to her, their mom and pillar.

 

When at the town's forested peripheries Rosaego could hardly keep at their pace, as the boys sprinted away towards their sisters and father, a bundle of bolts their little shoes well-worn, that thumpered against the dusty road in bursts of childly laughter. Each of her arms laden with schoolbags, she would make pretend as a forest monster and every motherly duty a game of fun. Stumbling in a playful chase, rejoicing at the sight of their glee that brightened the breeze on the air.

 

"Iona, hold out your hand"

"And close your eyes", riddled the twins.

 

"EEK! Snails!", screeched the little princess and Rosaego's embrace with her beloved was interrupted.

 

"When did they find snails?", Kenodormu looked at Rosaego still in his arms, puzzled, "How did they carry them alive all the way here?"

 

Rosaego reached for the picnic bag on her back and noticed the latch had been disturbed, "You may want to check your tea before you drink it"

 

"They are just like rabbits, sis. Look", princess Eleonormi comforted the girl, "They just need a home"

 

"Treestumps are where bunnies live. Where do snails live?", Vitros inquired of his eldest sister.

 

"In streamshells"

 

"Can we go looking for streamshells?", Panthagos asked his mom, but his mind already set.

 

Urgency in Krelagos' glance lept back and forth between his mom and dad, searching their gestures for the slightest hint of approval, "I saw one on the way, just by the river"

 

It would have been a moot to nod or stand a firm ground, as the children's feet were already pent up in readiness to dart away on their merry mission. "Take your pebble pouch to play with, Pantha", Rosaego began uttering, but the kids were already a dash some yards away before she could finish the thought, a few pebbles from the loosely tied leather leading a trail on the ground behind them, their traces fast swallowed by the sand in the wind. 

 

Deep within the rainkissed thicket, creeping through the rich verdant, inklings of the riverbank glimmered, inviting discovery in curious hearts.

 

The children took off their shoes by the water and the quest for streamshells began until hours lost their meaning, intertwined with splashing play and a game of sailors at distant oceans rich with treasures, and birds of the forest played their part as mermaids, sharing their riddles in song of the youngsters' fairytale.

 

"Little Pantha, why are you not looking for conches?", Eleonormi crouched in front of her brother, as the scales on his feet beneath the water turned a shade of cool.

"I am painting my pebbles", he replied quickly, too occupied to converse, his eyes glaring at the dirt-stained rocks in his wet hand.

"Painting, with water?"

"Yes", he declared positively, "See? When the pebble goes in the river, it turns the color of the moon"

 

Nestled neatly between daisies and dandelions that buzzed of eager bees, delighting in the sun that blessed bountifully the gold in their hair, Kenodormu and Rosaego rested, a book in her lover's hands, as he read her lines from his most cherished pages, with no one to keep them company but pastry-starved ants.

 

"...Of how patiently the tulip buds sleep the autumns, and I await, hopeless at last, until your long return. The end", he closed the book fast in his hands, and turned his eye to his princess.

"It's not! There is half the book left", she teased the prince with adoration.

"You speak truly. But for me the story's end is here"

"Why? Have you read the ending before?", Rosaego wondered, curious.

 

Kenodormu's nostrils drew a breath, and he held the air in his chest, his daylit gaze wandering to the skies. It seemed as if he had paused a thought, and when his mind was made, looked to her eyes again.

"It's yours now", he carefully laid open her palms and handed her the book bound in burgundy leather, "I've seen its ending too many times. Perhaps a new pair of eyes could love it better"

 

He caressed the hair on her cheek and left a kiss on her temple. There in that touch on his lips, he felt he could see how gracefully it would wear the crown heavy with silver.

 

"I found the perfect one!", Krelagos horned from a muddy patch of the streambank, standing with one foot in the air, as he held the clam up proudly to the gloaming.

 

"It means she wanted you to find her", as the boy held his gem from the waters close to his eyes, immersed in its spiraling beauty giving light to the pristine on his cheeks, the leaves carried a voice of grandfatherly soothe spoken from a mouth scar. The man, partly in the night, knelt by the child, and reached patiently towards the token the little palm held, "They say, if you open it and you are good of heart, inside you will see a star"

The child's gentle fingertips carefully unlocked the shy shell, and its petals gave way to a pure luster white, and it unveiled the man's face in the light from shade.

 

"Why are you sad?"

 

He smiled warmly through the water in his eyes,

"I once lost my star, and I could not find it anymore"

 

The boy bent his glance towards the water, and gently dawned his aid,

"My mother is the Princess. She has lots of stars just like this. I'll ask her to give you one"

 

The kindness in the man's eyes kindled the shimmer of his black eyebrows, but it seemed to the boy, as if for a moment, he had found what he missed, and it looked like his scar did not hurt at all.

 

Rustling of branches beneath the soles of his feet, a half-stained pebble rolled in front of him, and an inky shade came chasing after it from between the reeds.

 

“There it is! My last pebble”, Panthagos exclaimed, “My pouch had a hole and all the other ones fell through the gap”

 

The man turned his gaze towards the twin, and attempted to lighten the spirits of the boy not taller than the reeds that grow there, “They belong there on the ground, among their other pebble friends”

 

"You seem like you're wise, like my brother Vitros", the boy clutched the pebble in his hand, "But he is not old like you, and he doesn't know what the color of the moon is. You look like you have seen it. Do you know?"

 

"I do not, but maybe the water does. It is far wiser and older than me", he answered. The pitch-black boy stood over the silver stream, and peered into his reflection lit in moonglow. And it was a shade that hid itself well between waves of black and white and silver, known only to the river, and the boy.

 

The caring man with scars held onto one last smile at them, and he lingered in his step before he could wish a goodbye,

"It is time you get your good night's sleep. Return to your mother's... Do not give her worry"

 

It was this season of the sun, when their children were but smiling butterflies fluttering the sunbasked world, that finally after many years their mother, the princess and soon to be queen, stood by her beloved and swore her love to him. It remained unknown why they had waited for so long as their children grew, but whispers of the court alleged it was Rosaego's wish to wait for the realm's heir to come a certain age, as she did not want to be thought of as hungry of the crown.

 

On the day of the wedding all of the Isles seemed to have crammed inside the walls of the fair city, and there had never been more roses clading the arches and their petals adorning the roads as then.

 

 

Princess Rosaego stood in the courtyard with her eldest daughter, praising her plenty to any one who would listen. She paused to converse and welcome the Khanam-Matra Sarest of Clan Teerai and her centaur emissaries of Ohn'Ahran Plains arriving in Valdrakken for the first time after the fall of Neltharion. Mother Sarest had seen much of what had happened to her peoples, and the lands of dragonkind as the Dracthyr slept, and it was her folk that gently nursed the lost dracthyr into a new life. Clan-mother had told her in her stay, that those green lands were one of the oldest alliances of her house. And, although their strifes with the Green Dragonflight were their own, they were ones of the few who stayed alongside her ancestors to defend fiercely until there had been no more men left to fall. And so they became among the first allies the princess had made, just after her waking to the world. She had not seen her friends in need for many years since, and thus she was eager to introduce her little girl and proudly showed off her manners and talent of music.

 

"Young lady has grown fast since last you were our guest. Our peoples would be honored to host her and her siblings in our halls", Mother Sarest made her honest invitation, "The plains are lush with flowers fit to adorn their dresses this time of the year. We would love to see you and your children for the Khural festival, if you should have the chance"

 

"I'd like quite to pet the bakars! I've heard they're beautiful creatures. Though, please ensure there is no paprika in my meat for the feast, I truly cannot stand it!", the excited girl politely requested.

 

Kindly a familiar voice appeared behind their eardrums,

 

"Just like you when you were a child"

 

Rosaego and her daughter turned briskly and the girl sprang towards her grandmother's warm arms,

 

"You're here!", the girl yelled out as she smothered her grandma in kisses and laughter.

 

"Oh, how I've missed you, dear eyes", the ice queen's cheeks kindled, "Are you still eager in learning the ballroom dance?"

 

Rosaego missed her mother and their unusual bond, as if no one knew her better, and she knew no one better than her, "She has been practicing all day in her chamber"

 

"Mom!"

 

"I could hear the tapping through the walls. You must learn to stay on the rhythm"

 

"Oh let the girl dance as she will", the mother insisted, though she would not give Rosaego such courtesy when she was her child, but would happily spoil her grandkids, "Rosaego. The promise you made to the cousins..."

 

Her mother took her hand and a look of protectiveness met her eyes,

 

"I remember it. The--"

 

"I have brought enough to sate their needs for two coming winters. Your homeland of Iskaara watches your back", her mother assured her, but Rosaego felt she wished for gratitude.

 

"They should be enough with this and consider the debt paid. Thank you, mother"

 

The Ice Queen shook off, "Do not thank me, dear. It was them you owed. Now it is settled. In truth, those old-boned, fat men lazied too far and got too slow in their sport, and now they must come to us for help. How the tides turn"

 

Just prior the crowning ceremony, Rosaego would go to meet with the Chieftain, and present him her promised lot. The bald man, his mustache smiling with arrogance would not fall to embarrassment.

 

She had her guards drop the last of frozen barrels into the dinghy, one of four of its kind in the harbor below the city.

 

Holding her wedding dress in hand not to spray with river water, sweating from the walk, she pointed at the repayment,

 

"Plenty?"

 

The chief paused, briskly glanced at the containers, and nodded satisfied,

"Plenty"

 

"Folk of Iskaara do not forget promises made", the princess stood with dignity, "And the feast of today is generous with their bounties too. I hope you should enjoy"

 

The gates of the city were swarming full of rows of peoples, from far corners of the isles, arriving to the court to celebrate and see the crowning. Seas of finely felted garbs and gilded jewels riding into the town, and languages stirring in murmur as if a pot of strange and beautiful words, hard to understand to a native ear.

 

Prince Kenodormu held her hand with patience, the touch that gave stillness and courage. He could not look away as she stepped into the sunlight and before the masses. The flowing silk, pearly white, falling from her breasts and her shoulders, cloaking the court in a waterfall of daylight, one for which the sun itself made way in the sky to beam in its place.

 

The crowd's cheers grew still with reverence. They all watched at their queen. The petals silently fell, and she, adorned in humility, searched the faces for the smile of her father and pride of her mother.

 

Her voice's echo commanded against the stone walls.

 

"My folk. I speak to you not as a princess, or a queen, but as one who slept among you and one who fought among you, a shoulder by your side in those burning, endless days. I stand here now to watch as the land rises from dust of slumber to a changed world. And this one I lay my word to swear: That the burden on my temple I shall bear with honor of my houses, of blood and of steel, as though my forefathers stand watch, over each my step, and I shall act in their name to defend all that is good and just, if so the Titans would bless to be"

 

The mass split in two, as in the middle, a parade of blood-red banners walked with dignity of their house. Leading them was her father, the Blood of Heroes and the glint of tears in his eye, never had he been as proud. His arms carried heavily a crown made for her, of silver and diamonds and brilliant glory, worth only the brow of her eye.

 

Rosaego's father looked at his little girl and with love smiled as he strove to kneel before her, but she held onto his shoulder and grasped him in embrace, and the old hero quietly wept in her hair, of joy faring well to the passage of time.

 

She glanced at her boys, dressed neat and their hair slicked to a sheen, and winked at them as they impatiently waited for cake. The girls, mesmerized by the gown but their skirts radiant still, watched their mom and dad merrily.

 

Rosaego turned before her beloved, and knelt, and held the scepter under her palm. The tip of silver blade touched her head of hair and blessed her with the promise her to keep, and she rose a Queen whose brow now carried the crown, valorously alongside her bonded, before the light of Gods, and the eyes of thousands, and their blessings they chanted and glasses they raised in their names.

 

"Here I give my oath to you, never to leave your side or betray you, not to fade before you but suffer with you each ache that befalls you, until I am no more and my memory fades from the hearts of men. By the right of my bloodline and wish of my father, I now name thee Queen Rosaego of the Bloodwarders and of Valdrakken, Ruler of the Dragon Isles and Servant of the Titans", Prince Kenodormu lifted her hand tall in the air, and exclaimed to the realm, "All hail Queen Rosaego, long may she reign!"

 

And the gods watched the star ascend a throne, a sword of steel in her hand, as thousands chanted with fire unseen, "Hail Queen Rosaego, long may she reign"

 

And from a heavy cloud above the city they watched upon all her children and wondered if there could ever be a grander purpose than to keep forever that piece of light once held in the precious touch of a boy's palm.

 

 

------------Chapter VIII: To Look the Past in the Eye------------

 

Searing air from melting rivers was breezing through the walls of the chasm. No life in the ground, not a stalk of grass. Rock on the walls just before the gap where he stood, a pouch of water in his hand, hummed.

 

"Gently now", he faced the little one, "It doesn't like noise"

 

The boy, rubbing at his nose, laid carefully a hefty portion of meat, possibly last of their reserves that came difficult to obtain.

 

"I don't know about this, granda", he grew hesitant, "What if it's not enough? What if it comes back?"

 

Myrrit's eye twitched, and though they did not see the wound, its scent was clear as day,

 

"It can't. It's injured good"

 

The draft between the moldy pillars changed, and from the silence and humid drips the wail began to rise, until it nearly pierced their eardrums, tittering with fear,

 

"Oh why did you come with me, Spudds. No, leave it!", Myrrit grabbed the boy's arm firmly and snatched him away as he reached from the skin of water stumbling down into the nameless depths, "There is no time. It has woken and it's hungry. We run, now!"

 

Pulling the sleeve on his arm, he had never run so fast in all his life, down the steep paths of rock that shook under their bare blistered feet, and all they could hear from above was the snapping of bony meat under a jaw so heavy that devoured it. They did not turn nor pause for breath, until the wailing seemed to have returned to its hollow, sated for a time, and sleeping again.

 

"My Queen!", respectfully, the Drakemaster-Lord strove to push Rosaego's buttons, proud of how the young lady has grown.

 

"Lord Andestrasz. Friend", she reminisced, and placed her hand on his elderly arm with care, "I hear the Broodlands are arming well. What news from my father? Do the barricades hold?"

 

The lord of drakes gestured her way up the highspire, and there they met with Kenodormu, who overlooked the bridge that bound the Crownlands and the Broodlands, and the river that divided them.

 

Lord Andestrasz' expression changed a shade of sour.

 

"For a time... Autumn rains are coming, and we should hope the river to rise", he stood firmly, defiantly, "But I fear it might then be too late. This... Sarkareth, an old crechemate of yours... They say he prepares for something. A darkness"

 

"As I thought", the prince delivered as if he knew the end of the drakelord's thoughts, and handed the spyglass to Rosaego to see what he had seen, "Yours to choose, my queen"

 

Queen Rosaego stepped between the two men, and raised the spyglass to her eye. Kenodormu stared at her, as he stood on his toes, almost impatiently, and he glanced at the drakemaster, who, watching over the borders of the horizon, seemed to be distant and away, and nearly unmoved by the happenings, at Gods' will surrendered the day the thousandth wrinkle on his chin was born.

 

Beneath them, the bridge stood peacefully, silently above the waters. But on its easternmost end, a galley of still rebellious rangers descending from the lowest ramparts. Those in the front, their higher command, simply standing, watching. Observing the Lifepools, and waiting in patience.

 

"Old armor, weak weapons, no drakes... This is a poorman's army. How does he intend to claim the might of the Bloodwarders with this?", she wondered, tempted to smother them all right then and there by simply raising her hand in command of her militants below.

 

"Let me show you something", the prince intrigued her attention and with his blade pointed to a face in the mass below, "See him? That is Geltharos. The crest on the shield he wears as his pride is House Mayblood"

 

The Queen lowered the spyglass in confusion. "Our next of kin", Lord Andestrasz added, as she weighed the gravity in his eyes.

 

"Once he crosses that bridge he will not be met by sword or axe, but with a longing embrace of his father and brothers. And this is how Sarkareth intends to take the sacred bones of Delostrasz. Not by blood, but by willing surrender", Kenodormu keenly pointed out, as anger peered through the squint on his face.

 

Slightly appaled, Rosaego's gaze sought aid from her old advisor, and he would council an honest truth she was yet to learn,

"Never underestimate the power of the small folk, my queen"

 

The Queen held for a moment, and thought, and as a blade sharpened cut a decision.

"Then we have no choice it seems. We must send some of our flanks to find this traitor, and bring him defeat where he hides"

 

"I shall begin preparing our men at once. Time is not to waste", the prince briskly reacted.

 

"Tell them to ride into the Zaralek Caverns. I shall meet you there with my flank at first light of moon", Lord Andestrasz nearly interrupted him, and left Rosaego wondering of this place, as she had no familiarity of it.

 

"Zaralek? Why have I not seen it on any maps?"

 

Drakemaster-lord Andestrasz, as if he had anticipated this query for a long while, broke open a case of ancient truth and thought the queen must be ready to hear it, and he turned his sights at her and gestured her to the ground below,

 

"Because you are walking on it, my Queen. And just below your feet right now, lays an old, forgotten facility - Aberrus. And it has been kept secret from you all this time for a reason you shall soon uncover"

 

"Very well then, my lord", Rosaego ordered, "You shall lead the expedition with the knowledge you have of this place. Do what you must to prepare, my prince. We must drive them back before the bridge and the realm of my father fall"

 

The prince and the drakemaster bowed in respect to her glory. They saw to leaving the spire in urgency, and the Queen blessed their mission. Spyglass in hand, she watched the blood red skies, and the river below that peacefully dreamed and held the weight of brothers above and their sabatons of metal. She strove to listen, but heard nothing but whispers and low chatter, lost on the waves of the water between the hills. And she hoped, there was enough time.

 

Crescent moon lit their way that night and the cloaks of crevasses concealed them, as a battalion of Valdrakken's finest and the drakeriders of Andestrasz met on the outskirts in the far west of the Ohn'Ahran Plains. The city above them laid peacefully, but not unprotected. The dracthyr, stood poised and patient, in arrival of their queen.

 

A crack of bristlewood and gentle blow of wind hailed her entrance from a rich grove, as plums delicious and golden fell before her feet from the treetops.

 

She stopped in front of the line of soldiers and took one hard look at a few, as their salutes clanked on their armor.

 

"If you have bid your home a farewell, then this is it. We march, while we still have the night as our friend"

 

Lord Andestrasz gave a nod at his riders, and they followed the lead, and with the fearless defenders of Valdrakken under the command of the Prince stepped into the tunnel, the ground under them pounding with each step of the deadly, armed choir.

 

It would not be long before the torches laid by scouts months prior remained not the sole source of light in the tunnel, as a few hours' march led them to a massive opening of land, wherein lived strange creatures of the deeps, and flora glowed with luminescent life, adjusted in its own ways to the cold and dark of the below. Crystal formations on the walls of the caves seducing the intellect of the brightest minds of scholars, ripe for study. In particular fascinating to those not of the Isles, that rode as mercenaries or free-ranging adventurers. Months later, many would discover the bounties of the cavern, and would delve its depths, though not solely for research. But alas, the crown allowed it, as they would soon find out, any aid in occupying the place would come well. And as the royal expedition treaded further, past the crystal riverbeds and ancient, buried temples of titans, tucked carefully in a secretive hole in the mountain a scent of homely cooking was coming closer their way. "People? Could they be our own?", Rosaego inquired of Andestrasz.

 

"Not dragons", he was immediate to reply, "A smaller folk. They call themselves Niffen"

 

As they approached closer, Kenodormu was becoming untrusting of this newfound kind, "Will they welcome us? Or do they think more like the Djaradin?"

 

"No, my friend. They fled from the giant camps up north. The Niffen way of life has been disrupted for decades since it happened that the Djaradin were pushed back into the earth. In truth, I believe we can offer our aid in protecting them. We share a common enemy"

 

"There's one at the entrance to the town", the prince pointed at the short creature that seemed to be awaiting their arrival, "Let us meet this new ally"

 

The expedition marched on, towards the concealed town, and the smell of cooked, hearty food grew stronger to their churning stomachs. Before the dirt bridge, they held a stop, and the creature, staring at them but slightly overshooting their silhouettes, hailed,

 

"Loamm greets you, Queen of the Above. Come adventurers, rest your legs by the fire of a hearth. Your journey must've been long and tough"

 

A stick of incense burned in his paw as the royal convoy came closer, and near to burn her cloak as he bowed to the Queen, Myrrit misjudged the distance of her perfume.

 

"What wonderous fragrance! May I ask of your grace, what flower grows above us that you wear on your wrist so elegantly?"

 

Rosaego chuckled in flattery and, charmed by the little creature's open heart he wore on his nose, handed him a bottle from her waist. She felt she could spare it, as her potionmakers could craft more. But a gift of spring's scent would do good as a gesture of kind will to these new friends whose eyes grew dim by the caving dark. Jollied to see his appreciation of the gift, she grew a liking to these simple, earnest folk.

 

"Myrrit's the name. And this is my better half - Effervesta", he spoke nervous with excitement as he introduced Rosaego and her convoy to the town, "And that's my smaller half, little Spudds. My grandkid. I know, I know, I look too young to be a grandpa!"

 

"Myrrit, behave yourself!", Effervesta, the taller of the pair interjected with a curtsey, "Hail, tall Queen. I have prepared your host a lovely soup. I hope you like mushrooms. And grubs. Oh and mind the ceiling - we lot tend to squeeze through, but someone of your stature... We did not expect"

 

The huts were as tall as Rosaego, no more. Simply a round hole for a door, and gaps in the roof as steam openings a cat could not fit through.

 

"Certainly a good defense mechanism against the Djaradin", she flattered, as the convoy dismounted their vorquins at the entrance, and the young and old of the locals strutted their noses high to learn their fumes, new to the senses.

 

The stumpy old lady, Effervesta nudged them a seat at the largest hearth, brimming with homely fire. Rosaego and the prince seated themselves straight on the dirt floor, as is customary, and hungrily stared about the strange way of living here, as the soup in the pot boiled sweetly. The old lady uncovered the pot, and carefully with the thick skin of her hands held onto its seams, and poured a set of pewter bowls, steaming with fresh mushroom aroma.

 

"For you", she handed one to the Queen.

 

"Is there a spoon I could have?", Rosaego respectfully requested.

 

"Spoon?", Effervesta halted the bowl mid air before to hand it to the Prince, confused at the meaning of the word.

 

"The Niffen do not use cutlery, my Queen. You may be best to drink it as mead", the drakemaster whispered to Rosaego in courtesy.

 

Serving the last bowl to the nearby bannermen, Effervesta's snout flared a delighted puff as she eagerly awaited to hear the sound of satisfied mouths. She would not let her guests dislike the cuisine, and would faster die of shame than to embarrass her kin's cooking.

 

“Scrumptious!”, the prince regarded through a mouthful. As the hunger-ridden guards indulged fast in their meal, simple chatter became little. The elder, Myrrit, took a seat opposing the Queen and the Prince, and before he would start his speech held a breath, letting the two have their bellies sated.

“Ehh… I hear your expedition takes you north. May I learn why?”

He glanced at his wife, and saw her eyes as arrows keened on him, vigilant of every uncourtly move he should make. As if they were saying “Sit up straight!”, he jolted and tensed his shoulders further back.

 

“My advisor informs me there lies a keep of sorts. A… Facility. Aberrus”, the Queen gracefully lowered the pewter bowl to the ground, “Do your people have knowledge of what lies within?”

 

Myrrit and Effervesta frowned. The strange stillness seemed to have extinguished the warmth of the fire. Confused, Rosaego’s head arched a tilt at the elder, surprised by his sudden silence. But the drakemaster took to patience, and touched the felted garb that fell from her waist, curling on the floor, before she was to ask another question.

 

“We fled from Aberrus”, Effervesta began, shaking in her chin, “And so did the Djaradin. Our village there was distraught the same day they ventured inside the place. Not hours would pass, and they charged running out, burning fires on their backs, and in their rage and terror their magmammoths scoured our huts”

 

Nearly in tears, she walked a circle around the fire, seemingly in a deep memory of something left behind.

 

Andestrasz’ demeanor tensed. He had seen this response to a plain inquiry before, and the scars that come of a terror so great it could change the way of life of nations.

 

Myrrit’s paw picked a stone from the brimming hearth and clutched onto it, as pain and fear spoke out of his snout as he stood up, “We had battled the Djaradin for decades before. This was unlike them. Unlike anything they had seen. The great giants fled in horror and destroyed anything in their path. Our home was lost”

 

Prince Kenodormu looked at Myrrit who paced slowly at his eye level. He felt the Niffen knew something more, but perhaps they did not know what it was or what they had faced that day. But he was eager to prod it out of them. So he asked the elder, who now stood behind the smoke,

 

“What is it the Djaradin found inside?”

 

Myrrit lifted his head and huffed through the veil.

 

“A behemoth”, he struggled to utter, as his trembling hand pressed ever harder on the large, burnt stone he seemed to hold dearly, as if it gave him comfort, “And since that day when they awoke it, the beast has been visiting us each full moon. There was nowhere to run. It hunted us as food”

 

“So we resorted to a compromise, much like the giants did. We gift a wagon of meat each moon’s passing and leave it before its cave, and it stays sated, and does not venture far. We haven’t heard its wails for months”, Effervesta explained.

 

“But you see, I fear it will begin its hunt again soon. Because for a time now, it has been suffering of a wound. But what will happen when its wounds heal… Will we be prey again?”

 

Rosaego and her consorts listened with attention. She gazed at Myrrit’s smoke-blackened face as he stood behind the cloud of ash, unphased by the fume. But she could not help but wonder how the Niffen’s nozzles did not sense the danger of fire before it was so late to react, and would let their village burn.

 

“What of the smoke? Did such great fire not give you prompt concern miles before it reached your doorstep?”

 

His paw pierced past the steam in front of him, as he inhaled it and his forehead furled in bedazzlement.

 

“There was none”, he spoke through an outwitted sigh, as a chessmaster felled in defeat, “Only wails. When you hear them – it is already too late to run”

 

Queen Rosaego lifted herself from the ground, and her company followed her move. With a motion of her hand she bid them stay, as she slowly walked about the flame to the pair of Niffen. A gentle touch on the palm of his paw, she assured Myrrit,

 

“My people will aid you and free you of whatever horror lies inside. There are things of sinister nature told to be unfolding within, and I intend to uncover them. For if I do not, all of us, below and above, are in peril”

 

Leaning on a domed dirt wall, the prince’s cloak jolted in expectance of this mention, and Andestrasz took notice of his hurry in his posture. He noticed Kenodormu’s eyes, near to scream in urgency, as they lit up at the talk.

 

 

“…Her brothers are on the loose…”, the Chief’s words rang in the prince’s head, spinning and sizzling at his thoughts, and down to his anxious soles. Though much he wished he could urge them all to act, now and without hesitation, he carried the weight of it in silence, and waited and counted until the morrow would rise, and the army was to set on their march northward.

 

The dragonmade bridge made by his ancestry was all that divided him and mistakes of their past. He sought to gaze at the passage, trying to make note of positions of militants as a company of guards, no stronger than two pieces at a time, patrolled up and down thrice an hour. He paid little attention to the clanks and screams of battle about him, as he crouched concealed beneath a tent and a helmet of his brother’s soldiers, as they walked around his body taking him for dead, mindless in their will to plunder the loot left behind in the enemy camp.

 

“There he comes”, he thought, narrowing in his eyes at the man in black armor, who bore the blade of their father, as he appeared from beyond the cliff in glory of those who followed him, “What do you hope to find here, brother… Redemption? Or something more”

 

Wrathion steeled himself, and proudly rose to his feet. He had followed his brother all the way from the Citadel, and unbeknownst to him, willed not stay behind and allow another of his kin, the most likely of their darkened father, doom himself, and all of the black bloodline. Patiently, he let the guards pass one more time before making his move. And just as they disappeared behind the corner, the Black Prince nested himself between a mingle of traders and footmen whose helmets bore no mark of higher rank, just alike the one he borrowed from one of the fallen.

 

He could overhear the soldiers talk, and it seemed they were headed to report the ongoings of battle to their leader. “Good”, he thought, silent in attempt not to draw attention to himself, “He has idiots for sentries. Luckily it is not an assassin that infiltrates their ranks today”

 

They had crossed the bridge with success. Just past the cliff, he could see his brother’s face a little better. A while more to walk past his cavalry, and he would be too close to send away.

 

A rabble broke between a couple of soldiers who held in the air the bloodied severed head of a magmammoth, chanting and yelling in victory over their prey. They seemed drunk, but not stupidly so. Just enough to bend them to his bidding. Wrathion paused in his tread just enough for the lads to catch up to him, and joined in their silly celebration, staining the cloth beneath his armor in the bloodied prize.

 

“You!”, a young boy in armor barely fit enough to carry his blade yelled out at him, “Where did you get that?”

 

The commotion halted, and the raging, sweaty faces all peered at Wrathion’s wrist. The golden bracelet stood out as a beacon amongst the poorly crafted breastplates, stained and tarnished. The lowborn men here could not have seen such masterwork of metal in their lives.

 

“Oh -- This piece of work? Have you lot not seen what treasures the generals found in the enemy’s hoard?”

 

“Treasures, what treasures?”, the older and more battlescarred of the few suspiciously eyed him. The Black Prince shivered in his bones at the gravely look on the man’s face, but he was too deep in the game, and gathered all his courage to assume a stature of arrogance and play them dumb.

 

The arrangement of knights on their steeds trotted past them, mighty in their weapons and their companions fed to the brim, better than most in the company there that surrounded young Wrathion.

 

He nudged his head towards their trot that rode across the bridge,

 

“Where, do you boys think, they are headed now?”

 

It was easy, the Black Prince had learned a time ago, to bend the hearts of the young and ambitious to will. Before their dreams are shattered all men want glory and gold.

 

When the crowd was dispersed beyond his sights past the cliffs, chasing furiously after those they thought more fortunate in their plunders, Wrathion took up the stone stairs that sat beneath the entrance of the facility.

 

Up he climbed, the armor growing heavy on his shoulders. His feet blistered, yet there was no choice for him but to keep at it with all his vigor. At the last of the stairs, he rose to find a great archway dressed in ancient obsidian, unkempt and degrading with the passage of each living day. Brother’s back facing him, reluctant in his posture to step inside the mysteries of the palace.

 

“Brother!”, he called out between the panting.

 

Sabellian’s neck twitched before slouching in disappointment of his presence. He rested his fist on the stony beam that shook at the disturbance.

 

“Leave, little whelp”, his image faced half of the way from the shaded gate, “The things hidden here are not for you to find”

 

Wrathion threw the helmet from his head onto the floor. He worried, he might be too late, for his only close of kin seemed tempted and changed. Hints of a sickness in sprout, creeping from his presence. Much like those he watched fall from grace following the dark days of his father’s law. The first beginnings of a consuming thought.

 

“I have come to ask of you only a single thing”, he approached in stubbornness, “Do not go in there alone. I do not wish for anything. The blade is yours, it was always yours. You may keep it. But I will not sit behind in the Citadel and wait as you descend into the same darkness that cursed our father. Not after we have fought so long to take it back from unrightful hands of those beasts”

 

Perhaps Wrathion expected kindness or a newfound kinship in his sibling, though they had not known each other long. He seemed to hope for understanding, but more than this he wished to gain his respect. It was true, he knew, that they have not long before been mere strangers – not much between them but tainted blood and bitter heritage. But he wished from his older brother that which Neltharion never granted him. A hand of mercy that protects, but does not lead astray. But perhaps there was still too little in common for the siblings even after battles shared, as the whelp realized that Sabellian failed to see him as the dragon he is. Just as their father failed to see.  

 

Sabellian bolted a turn at his ignorance, and roared at him in fury, “The Obsidian Citadel was but a means to an end! I have no stakes there… No memories left to hold onto. My world burned a lifetime ago. And I do not want to reclaim it. The ghost of my last gripe lies in here”

 

“You say your world burned, brother. Yet you found solitude on another one”, the whelp’s bold words escaped his mouth, but wisely he chose them, “What of those of us who have no other place to run to?”

 

Dancing a step too far with Sabellian’s patience, the elder sibling reached for to strangle at his running tongue, and as his fingers in anger closed in on the skin of his baby brother’s throat, his nails clawed in fight to stop him, wordlessly his tongue wiggled in his mouth and he thought, finally the boy learns his turn to speak.

 

“You and I are not alike, little brother”, his fist dug further into Wrathion’s veins, the years of pain seething from the skin on his worn-out eyelids, “You could be mistaken for someone who runs”

 

“Let go of the Black Prince!”

 

Behind Wrathion’s cloak of armor as he laid in his grasp surrendered and part-gone from his weak body, Sabellian glanced to see the lady of the throne, and with her a sea of finest steel that stood in obedient stillness of her command.

 

She descended her vorquin and with two guards at her side made her way towards the brothers, platformed not farther than a leap of a steed.

 

Sabellian released him, and threw him to the side. The boy sat on the dirt, coughing and holding onto his neck, struggling to regain strength.

 

“Who do you see yourself to assault the young lord?”, she demanded. One look at his eyes, and she could not help but sense a familiar reproval.

 

Sabellian remained spitefully silent. The blade against his hilt battled restraint against the bravery of hers.

 

“That would be Lord Sabellian, your Grace”, Andestrasz interjected the two before the thunders of their eyes broke into bloodshed, “The first son of Neltharion”

 

Queen Rosaego’s stride took her aback, and her face dropped in trembling to learn she once again meets the eye of a long-known scorn. And the same old disappointment to be expected as he chose not to address her, but turned to the Drakelord instead,

 

“It has been long, old Red. One would think, long enough for your kind to have learned not to act in rashness, or have you not yet advised her of how that went for those that did?”

 

“It seems you have been away for so long, you have forgotten how defiant the spirit of a Bloodwarder”, Andestrasz deterred in his posture and changed his tone at the mention of the cherished lady, “Now I shall remind you the rules of the court. Kneel, old friend, for before you stands your Queen”

 

Sabellian hesitated, hubris cloaked from his chest. The Drake-Lord eyed him sharply, as moments passed in rising tension. Armsmen of the Queen, holding upright their weapons firmly at an order’s edge, too many and too loyal to tempt. He felt his knee weaken and touch the ground, and beside him he saw young Wrathion, torn at spirit, had knelt first.

 

“Queen Rosaego, forgive my brother’s trespasses. He came here for the same reason as you”, Wrathion would elaborate tenderly, “To look the past in the eye. And that is the legacy of our own – and yours, by ways of a shared estranged father”

 

“Rise, if you would. Both of you”, Rosaego ordered them calmly. The two siblings stood themselves up.

Sabellian dusted away at his armor’s tabard, eyeing at her guards and councilors in attempt to judge the true strength of her position, but then went to speak, “It appears the lot of you would speak of things few among you truly remember. Many here claim Neltharion their father, yet all of you denounced him the day his rule was shaken”

 

Rosaego felt pushed to the edge of courtesy, and pounced back as the patience among them snapped as a branch,

“Neltharion was not-- ”

“--Deathwing had no children. Not even those of his flesh that he claimed to love dearly. He made no difference between his sons and puny servants. Everyone under him had to share in that suffering”

The passions quelled. The looming strife lowered to a deep breath that Prince Kenodormu ushered to the fog of sneers between them. He did not pity Wrathion, nor Sabellian. He still wished, after all that time, that somehow, one of them would at last rise above the curse of their forefather, and bring about redemption to their blackened kin. And he could see in Sabellian’s eyes, that he thought Kenodormu the only one there who possessed a glimpse of understanding of who his father was.

 

Keenly, the drakemaster stepped between the Queen and the black brothers, and in good will would strive to reforge the trust between them, as good allies-to-be share in mead after a battle,

“Perhaps it is time we all are reintroduced to the past. What binds us here may not be our memory of the Earth-Warder, but the need for truth, and courage to find it, though it may break all that we have known”

 

The spears in the army lowered to a rest at the whim of her hand, and the company of dragons of ancient houses, bound by history and strife, elden friendships and enmities rooted deep, stood now in front of the source of all conflict in their lands, and birthplace of heroes and legends, tyrants and traitors alike.

 

“You’ve grown too diplomatic, Red. Where is the roaring, reckless wingrider I knew gone? Does time soften even the fierce?”, Sabellian teased the old friend.

 

“It is all your little brother’s fault. I ran out of vigor the day he learned his first step. He almost stole away on Sunspear’s wings when he was five, did you know that?”, teasing at Wrathion’s jesterly youth, Andestrasz lit the torch in his hand before the entrance.

 

And before them, abandoned chasm of darkness and dust. A fortress ridden with secrets, untouched and unmoved, centuries of happenings hidden and left behind in a moment’s urgent flight from disaster, halls of history locked in a sort of timeless stasis, much like its tormented children.

 

Torch in her hand lit aglow her face from the dark, and the Queen’s eyes grew open and unsleeping, “Tread patiently. If this truly is the place of Deathwing’s most kept secret, he would have had it well guarded. And whatever watches over the place, has had even the Djaradin fear it”

 

The fortress did not seem much unlike the others at first. Remains of weapons and crates of deteriorated foodstuffs, and an occasional storage room, clearly robbed and impoverished by treasure-hunters. But as the company delved further, scenery began to change. Now, as they walked far past the entry and its light grew dim, they witnessed an array of disturbed bunks, some child-sized and others fit for what could only be described as tall, slender giants, with nothing to cover but dried and dead straw. Blood stains still covered their metal hinges, and they were dented of chains that sat attached a millennium it seemed.

 

Rosaego lifted the straw covering from one of the slendermost bunks, and stood back in a phase of disbelief, for beneath her hand laid bones of a creature with wings and two legs, stretching in length for certainly more than three times the height of her tallest soldier. And though it seemed the creature must have possessed great agility, its hands and its snout sat deformed, and twisted in ways unnatural. And beside it laid a set of strange utensils, long corroded, their purpose uncertain to any of the lot present.

“Is this where they came to be healed?”, she inquired of Andestrasz as she placed the covering back onto the dusty bones, but the old teacher simply shook his head.

 

“This way, Queen Rosaego”, he gestured towards a hallway further from their tread, as his sights seemed to recollect, “I remember now… The long corridor. That is where the secrets lead”

 

Trusting in his knowledge, she commanded her men forth, and without hesitation, their boots began to thunder across the stony walls, and in files of four they poured into the hallway. Nearly all had entered, and behind them stood only Rosaego, her advisors and royal consorts, the black brothers, and but a handful of reserves, as almost immediately Sabellian cried out to the soldiers in front,

“Hold! Bottleneck! Hold - -“

 

A rainfall of arrows atop their unfortunate heads left the soldiers flattened and bleeding, and the company behind them frozen in their pace.

 

“What was that?!”, she questioned in confusion.

 

“A trap of this place. What I do not know, is who pulled the lever on the other side”, said Sabellian, but it seemed even his wits were just as bemused as hers.

 

Kenodormu and the Queen glanced at each other and it seemed rather clear to both who it was they had stumbled upon.

 

“It is Sarkareth’s men”, Queen Rosaego gathered with confidence as she reached for the sheath of her sword, “We have found who we came to look for”

 

The light of her torch grew stronger against the caving shadows and she approached the way lined with her fallen soldiers, and saw a shade that had just escaped the clarity of her eye.

 

“Shields, cover us! Run after them!”

 

The royal guards cloaked her and the Prince with their shields of steel as ceilings, and the soldiers in the lesser ranks covered for Andestrasz, the brothers and themselves, as they stepped into the narrow halls and more arrows whizzed past their ears and onto their bulwarks, and they watched beneath their feet the corpses of their defeated brothers that laid there with no time nor shrouds to bury.

 

They chased after the shade as the torchlight began to wane, and the arrows of the traps grew spent above them, and it looked as though the corridor was a labyrinth, as each turn they made gave way to a steeper descent and the walls locked narrow more than prior. No sight of the shade or its master, nor a door nor a way out, no pests nor breathing life. It was hopeless.

 

The Queen turned to order her loyal men. Uncertain, and afraid, she would not let it show in her voice, nor the tremble in her arm, and wished her soldiers still and with strength.

 

“I know you lot tire. But we must press on. Once we find an open chamber we will start a campfire for tonight, though prepare, it might be long before we do”, she posed as worry choked at her throat, “So should one of you fall, the others may take what is on the body, of rations and armor”

 

Last of their morale saw the expedition keep on their march through the facility, and at one point’s crossing they passed down a set of stairs and this time, the corridor was covered in doors of stone, their locks disturbed and broken an age ago.

 

Rosaego’s torch brimmed faintly as she approached one and pushed it further open. The watchful eye of the Prince could not let her venture alone, and held her by the shoulder as they walked in. The room was small, perhaps to fit a single bed, but it laid empty. ‘Perhaps robbed’, he thought. He had his men open and search the rest of the rooms that spanned for yards down the way of the corridor, each opposing one another in perfect order, yet they seemed too heavy for a vault. And his knights too found nothing of value but old metal bedframes and broken glass over bloodstained floor.

 

The Queen raised her firelight to one of the walls to inspect a gaping and crumbling hole at head’s height. But whether it was formed in rage, or other ways of terror, she could not know.

 

“If this was their place of respite, then… Why does it feel like a dungeon?”

 

“It was the worst of any dungeons known to me”, Lord Andestrasz sighed, “Aberrus was where horrors were made”

 

She looked at her drake-master in plead and failing to see what he was aiming at, but what Andestrasz could not bring himself to utter was revealed by the voice of Sabellian, who seated himself on the floor by the two,

 

“Where your kin… Was made”

 

Leaning on the wall, Kenodormu jolted in his armor, and the Queen took a guarded stance at the sentiment,

 

“My kin. The Dracthyr? Here, in this slaughterhouse?”

 

The Drakemaster turned his face away, as he could not bear to see her heart crushed, and Sabellian bowed his head,

 

“Aberrus was the original place of creation of the Dracthyr. But before he made them, Neltharion failed many a time at cross-breeding humans and dragons and elves alike. He conducted his experiments… And twisted his subjects into aberrations of rage and deformity”

 

“Until he made the first of your kind”, Wrathion added, in compassion as if stepping on finest ice, “The Dragon-Spear. At first, they were soulless constructs of scale and flesh, made to serve as weapons, perfected as a tool at the hands of their master. But soon they developed a living will. And our father-- and in ways of this place yours, had to subdue them”

 

Holding onto her gut that churned in her belly, Rosaego fell to her knees and broke into tears, and tore at her hair in disgust, and Kenodormu tried all he could to light her spirit, but his own was broken too. He embraced her in his arms, but the Queen simply cried into his shoulder, “Is this all we are… Monsters from the dark… Vile, vile is our birth and our fates”

In the darkened room the torch nearly quenched of its ember cast a glow at the golden-eyed Drakelord, whose tears gathered and near to weep at her despair, and the only one with enough hope left to break a single word was left Wrathion, and he told her with kindness of his own grief,

 

“Vile was our father. Not your innocent kind”

 

And to her there was solace in this truth, though she realized the weight of the brothers’ burdens, and the shade that was their fate, black as their scale. Her kin had stories of great bravery – theirs did not. Her true father was a hero of the land – theirs, his greatest enemy. She hosted blood that hailed freedom, and theirs was corrupt and their house name cursed of each folk of the land. And still, here they stood, with her, the child of desecrated generations, and they stood fighting still against the shadows of their past as their only kin. In spite of the doom that ever cruised their veins.

In a split of the dread’s moment, Kenodormu’s nostril flared, as he sensed something coming from one of the doors. He bolted himself up, and briskly strode outside the room,

 

“Do you smell that?”

 

The drake-master rushed towards him, “Fire. We are not alone”

 

The brothers stared with vigilance and expectancy, as Sabellian reached for the sword hilted on his back and dimly glowing, as if with known comfort of its halls, prying with his eyes to shake to action the distraught Queen,

 

“Send the men. Queen Rosaego, our task here is not done yet!”

 

Akin to a crumbled spire, she rose to her feet and from the daze raised her staff to her soldiers, who stood guard wearily on their feet that could barely tread, but loyal as hounds they charged forth down the narrow gap. And on the other end, as her torch glowed the last of it, a chasm, and alike vermin crawling its passageways the minions of Sarkareth patrolled around a pit of flame and ash, a pyre in preparing.

 

Their renegade leader was nowhere to be seen, not on the ledges nor the crevasses that rose from the vaulting pit’s melting walls. It seemed an entire city below their feet, as passageways and tunnels, and bridges were made by his subordinates, and their lair sat in a self-sustaining economy of earthwyrm flesh and crystals to trade with the upper world’s puny lords.

 

“We must hit them now. Surprise them before their leader returns”, sheltering behind a magmatic rock, the Queen instructed one in her higher command, “Have the archers gather arrows our men were felled with. We will send them back to theirs”

 

In lightning motion, her flanks of archery came back with quivers filled to the brim of arrows to pierce the toughest Djaradin, their size twice the soldiers’ torso. In a graceful choreography they aimed their shots towards the enemy guards.

 

“Loose!”, Queen Rosaego whispered into the echoing stone around them, and the heavy, dulled javelins flew free from their bows, and sang through the smoking air on their way towards the enemy heads.

 

In anticipation of a battle to break out in any moment, she and Kenodormu watched as they fell one after another, as peons are toppled on a table of chess. Mere moments would pass before one of their scouts spotted the archers and her cohorts hiding behind the rocks above, and the scout heralded one last scream of warning for his armymen before his mouth was silenced by a metal tip in flight.

 

The commotion began, as their flightless vassals began to crawl up the steep cliffs towards their guests of the above, and Queen Rosaego signaled with her sword in the air her men to march forth and smother them from the heights. And fearlessly they charged down towards the pit, in a gallop of steel and their swords and axes met in bloodshed with the rebels of their kind. Together, Queen Rosaego and her prince, the drake-lord and the two brothers made their armed descent and into the lower field of battle, as screams echoed against the towering ceilings of the earth, and the clashes of blades against armor and flesh dulled the ear and heart blind with courage.

 

Together with his chosen Queen and mother of their children, Kenodormu fought side by side and they felled in symphony of fury a great number of foes, alike to how their kin had learned in the service of the father of Sabellian and Wrathion, and the brothers saw to gathering the flames from the pit on their torches and lit the huts and their reserves on fire, destroying all they had accumulated in their mission. It was clear to all that Sarkareth had but paid his way into his soldiers’ loyalty, but would not bother train them accordingly, or prepare them with well crafted weapons nor solid armor. He had, just as there, left his men to wither, and though they had been bought of soul, he cared little for them nor their destiny, but saw them as a necessary means to an end. A method he had learned best from the father of these halls, and his own, whose teachings he would follow unquestioningly. Even in life, Neltharion ordained Sarkareth his most ideal spear, and for this the young lieutenant swore to restore his rule and his vision upon the land.

 

When the battle was ended, the remains of soldier laid speared and shattered between the stalks of fire. Few lived, and they were captured and chained for interrogation, and one by one would crack, as little was worth of this fight for them, for they’d much rather return alive to their families. Queen Rosaego could see most were common folk, and did not have intentions of revolting once again, and decided to let them serve in her army, as it seemed they possessed great knowledge of the whereabouts of other enemy camps above ground. And she would too go on to bury in the pyre the corpses of their slain brethren, as she thought little divided her and them but the crown on her head and the gold they served the rebellion for.

 

She had her men set up camp. Before the fire they seated themselves, and would go on to feast on Sarkareth’s stashes of magmammoth flesh, no doubt bloodily earned from the hands of the Djaradin that had dwelt here for a time.

 

The hunger-ridden soldiers of her flanks were the first to feast, and what was left Rosaego let share with her cohorts, as the exhausted band sat by the fire.

 

“What of the stories of my father”, Kenodormu begged of Wrathion just across the bit of flame between, “That my bloodline was forged of Titans themselves? Was it all a meager children’s tale?”

 

The Black Prince’s gaze called to attention. He considered for a moment, but then went to respond,

 

“It is not merely a story. Some bloodlines were better than others”

 

“My father would tell me the tale of the Bronze Lady, whose skin was as gold and as radiant as the sun, and how a Titan laid to bed her. Of how the night came to dawn in their dance, and the milk of her breast became the cleansing waters that flow from their high home of Tyrhold. And that there began our house”

 

Restlessly, the Black Prince reached for the clump of dust on the ground.

 

“You were told it was the hand of a Titan which orchestrated it. But the Titans were never present for this, not in spirit. But the same essence that shapes the stars flows through you. The first kings truly were forged in the sands of the cosmos and as such their blood, and yours is pure and closer to the Gods”

 

Kenodormu huffed a cynic smirk,

 

“Which gods? Our ones, or the Old”

 

All stared silently into the flames. Sabellian appeared most distant, as he seemed to be far away in thought, in concerns of future that smothered his mind. He refused anything to drink though his tongue dried, and gave the last skin of ale to his little brother, for the flasks of water were starting to run low.

 

“That’s the last of it”, Kenodormu pointed, steeling his nerves and that of the men around him, “After this, it is only mammoth blood to sate our thirst”

 

Wrathion glanced at the cadavering flesh, as if inspecting its dangers, “I believe I will leave that for you, prince Kenodormu. I would rather die of drought than have it stain my garb”

 

The Prince chuckled. Like the time when he was a young boy. Like he had heard the ghost of vanity too closely known, and nearly forgotten from his heart.

 

“You know, I once knew someone of your blood”, he opened up.

 

Intrigued, Wrathion’s eyebrows rose.

 

“One of your brothers. His name was Vanaxian”, the Prince’s voice soured, “You remind me of him a quite lot”

 

Unsuspectingly, almost childlishly so, Wrathion inquired of the prince, “I can vaguely remember him from when we were children. Was he a friend of yours?”

 

Kenodormu’s eyes widened at him with yearning and hundreds of restless nights of regret.

 

“My only friend. I killed him”

 

Flame flickered in whisps, and the emptiness of the bellowing cavern seated the children of many paths it birthed, and the faces they bore were but a linger of centuries’ untold stories, and pain, and choices made, those for the realm or for a loved one’s good, and those for power and gold. Like ghosts of mistakes their spirits intertwined in a play of past ideals, forgotten their reason and roots decayed, all but those sung in legend, at the nimble hands of bards that sang for joy and not remembrance. Where does their fate lead them, the children of quenched fathers, so woven now into events of their times and does it curse them to suffering yet again, chained to the wheel that crushed bones of generations before, and that is the path carved before them, spinning and never to end but in bloodshed and betrayal.

 

Weighty blocks of riverstone formed the walls of the tower beneath the scoured boughs. Firm and impenetrable, defiant it stood and tall just enough to oversee any advancements of his flanks, and predict any ambush before it was set. His vassals had built it just a year prior, in sweat and pain and for little homage but a few pieces of silver a head. They minded naught. They, too, knew must do their due in his efforts. All of Broodlands, greater lords and their humble counties fiercely sought a tomorrow without chains.

 

Smoke perforated from the outside through the gap of his narrow window, but his nose noticed not any more. His hand, as if with a will of its own, followed the racing ink that bled on the parchment, page after page, riding the waves of thoughts in his best attempt to make a note of all important things before they flee from his mind. Losing all notion of time, piling papers of scrapped work and words unfitting to particular ideas that dwelled in his head. At last and after a long while, he let down his goose feather into the inkpot. He sighed beneath his mustache, and peered outside the iron-wrought bars on the window. Far in the distance, above the barren field a red drake shrieked its fall beneath the clouds of flame.

 

“Bloodwarder!”

 

Felt of quill swayed in the inkpot from the chamber door blasted shut. He had heard him unlatch it, still he sat in quiet awaiting the jolt of the thundering voice. The heavy, plated boot of armor pummeled against the stony floor, nearly too thin to hold its weight.

 

“Mayblood!”, hopping on his legs from the chair eagerly and with spirit, Delostrasz removed the blade from his waist and reached towards the cousin with wide open arms, “What good brings you?”

 

Joints cracked beneath the hardy knuckles, earnestly to revel in the sight of each other, for they knew not whether the other lived, or no longer drew breath. And too few were the men as good and as honorable as Delostrasz thought of his cousin, to be easily taken for, or disregarded, or God forbid, undermined.

 

“Gods be good to see you in fair health, brother! I’ve just arrived with my few men and horses, down from the border. My wife gave birth to a son! Geltharos we would name him”, Gelthara relayed grinning of pride, his hand on his uncle’s shoulder bearing nearly all his weight, and weariness in his bones, “Tell me, how goes the uprising here in the north?”

 

Delostrasz led him down to a seat, and to have a word or two in exchange of the long times since they last saw each other, and would tell, in some restraint,

 

“The front holds, for now. We have cannons, he has stakes… The stubborn will win”

The cousin chuckled, and pointed with his gaze past the iron on the window hole, “That was easy to know from as far as the plains. I saw the skies commanded by that young lord, Andestrasz. He’s grown to be truly unrelenting and ruthless, that one”

 

“Andestrasz, the drake-rider?”, the brother grew confused.

 

“Have you not lifted your head from your books?”, Gelthara teased, “Your nephew has bloodied the skies with his drake! In his rage surged into a flank of scales and ordered Sunspear to chew through their necks”

 

And in the sky not far, wispy silver hair rode the baleful winds, and with bloodied eyes and foaming teeth he screamed in command of riders, “MAKE THEM FLEE! BUTCHER THEIR CORPSES, YOUNG AND OLD! THEY WILL KNOW FLAME AND FIRE IN THEIR HOMES!”

 

Fast and cunning as lightning from the firmament, as a gallop of heavens’ fury the glorious red scales soared in vigor and undefeatable dash, relentlessly striving at the heartbeat of black brood, smelling their fear. Grinning viciously, the young drake-rider seemed to enjoy in chasing the enemy, as if it were for sport. He flew not without fire, and below his wings all things burned, and he let free of his suffering his father that sat in agony at the stake below the flaming wings of his youthly drake.

 

“And I heard you treated with the Crownlands”, Gelthara would inquire, but would keep silent to the question, cunningly to prod him to speak on his own accord,

 

“So did he. The king wants little to do with the rebels, yet he gives us support in unexpected ways. He builds a bridge, then signs a concord with the Citadel. The gold he lined the black pockets with did only to seem as action on the Crown’s part. So did the bridge he made to connect us. King Valandormu is afraid, and complacent. But, I am seeing this change. It is his son I intend to ally with fully”, he added in a change of heart, “And what of the plains? Do the horselords kneel?”

 

Gelthara nearly spat his wine.
“Kneel!? While you have been busying your fingers with writing of what you think is happening, of a world you wish to be, I am here to bring you the truth – these savages will not bend”, he paused a silence, “But they will join your fight. If the Green Flight lets them their land”

 

Refusal and disbelief frowned in the brow that covered his eyelid, and Delostrasz would not comply, “Nay, this could not be?”

 

The cousin leaned in, and hushed beneath his beard,

“I have heard rumors, brother. They are leaving for the gates of the Dream”

 

Both paused frozen in their rest. This news meant one thing for Delostrasz, and one thing only,

 

“Then we have an army”

 

“An army that knows Neltharion too well, and has fought him already”

 

“And an army that would not kneel”

 

The band around the fire slept soundly through the night. Worn-out and wounded soldiers had not caught a night’s rest since their days in the crown city. But a restlessness brewed in Kenodormu, and he would not sleep. Not until the fire grew weaker, and by some effort or sorcery he would finally drift away. Up above the earth over them, dawn was arising.

 

In his sleep, the prince dreamt a dream. Of how he stood concealed behind a wall of stone, watching the shadows talk in the court beyond. Two were they, and their voices alike, and their stature brooding and sicklish. The shade spoke in a whisper,

 

“You bear its weight, my son”

 

“That is why I have come to you”, the other responded, and it looked to Kenodormu it had taken a step behind, “Unburden me”

 

The prince wished to make his presence known, but an unseen force would halt him and his feet felt heavy to lift, as just then he saw a dark shade of a sword held in the hand of one of the figures, passing it onto the other.

 

“I will take it from you. If you tell me this once – do you really think escaping from your destiny frees you from the burdens of the world? The world, which once counted on you, and counts on you once again?”

 

The shade, unclear it seemed to the dreaming eye of the Prince and wavering in the windy halls pushed the blade of his son away.

 

“Once again you make the wrong choice. Once again, you run away. I shall make the choice easier for you, my son; you shall take the sword and bear all its power, and see with your eyes - the world shall turn at your whim”

 

Son of the shade took upon the hilt, and the shadows enveloped them and bound them in a darkness, and this darkness could sense it was watched by a sleeper by the pounding beat of his heart, and the voice of the two shades, as though a thousand came loud and terrifying from the depths,

 

“Beware, sleeper that hides in the dark! Beware, the thousand eyes are watching!”

 

Kenodormu woke up in a sweat. He rose to his feet in a dash and woke Queen Rosaego in his urgency, “We must go on, now!”

 

“What is the matter, prince Kenodormu?”

 

She grabbed onto her sword as she watched him prepare for journeying in haste, “What have you seen?”

 

The guards were waking to the stir of their argument, and Sabellian appeared from the lot to approach them. And as he did, Kenodormu paused as he saw him walk over and waited not to point a question at him, “That sword. It is not on your belt. Where is it?”

 

The black brother stroked at his hair, confused and groggy.

 

“Back there where I slept. Why do you care?”

 

“Where were you taking it?”, the prince arrowed. And to his surprise, Sabellian seemed taken aback to learn of Kenodormu’s knowledge of his endeavor.

 

“I came to bury it here, where it was made”, the black dragon let known, “The burden is too great”

 

The guards and armsmen were now nearly all awakened, and stood to listen to the exchange. Pushing his way past the armored drakonid, young Wrathion made way closer to his brother. Pacing in circles of thoughts and the dream that haunted him, and ate at him, Kenodormu planned aloud,

 

“The blade will not be buried. Not easily”

 

“He cannot go alone”, his young voice cried out and Wrathion stepped closer to the prince and knelt before him, “My brother refuses my aid, and whatever lies deep in these halls will tempt him greatly. Order me as his companion, my Prince”

 

Queen Rosaego saw her husband’s resolve and his intent, and ordered Wrathion to rise,

 

“No one will go alone”

 

Sheathing his sabre neatly into the strapping of its hilt, Kenodormu observed his steadfast soldiers that barely slept and ate,

“Ready your weapons. We press on into the depths”

 

And so their stride began. Through dungeons old and vast and countless halls, past the cracks of earthwyrms and vaults of scrolls in tongues forgotten. All to be plundered, yet none disturbed, for the Queen forbade her soldiers from desecration. And they grew wearier by the hour, the water ran low until but droplets were left, and those quickly diminished too in the magmatic heat that came from the nether. And those that drank in the blood of the mammoth fell ill, and would fade in the dark as quickly as a wither of a blossom. Their strength faded fast, and faster must the Prince be, he learned, in finding their way.

 

Soon, he found, whether from thirst or a dark will, voices became crawling in his mind. Whispers, weak at first, of sorcerous hauntings, but they soon began to guide him and show the way forward. And they asked only of the blade, and it seemed to Kenodormu that, when he came near its wearer the voices grew clearer.

 

“There!”, he cried out in a weakened exhale, “That is what I saw in the dream!”

 

And there before him laid the stone by which he hid, and beyond it, shrouded in cobweb and dust, an ancient mosaic made from bits of stone and gold, and it depicted many eyes of a shadow.

 

Sabellian took first to explore the chamber, and his brother followed in his step. There was no door, nor arch, in or out. It laid simply as an extension of the stairs before it, and the barren rock on the walls around it covered it. But as they approached the mosaic, they stopped dead in their tracks as they saw something on its far end. The Queen took to alertness, struggling to see what it was that had them so aghast.

 

Seconds came and went in silence where the brothers stood.

 

“Why did you bring him here”, Wrathion’s voice whispered to the empty stone before him.

 

They stood so silently for a moment, appearing as waiting, or listening, when a change in temperature came, and the air seemed to turn cold in a sudden breath, and Rosaego noticed them glance at each other. And it is when she heard them, speaking clearly into the air, as if talking with another.

 

“…The crown?”

 

But there was none there to respond.

 

“NO! I WILL NOT WEAR IT!”,

Sabellian fought and yelled.

 

Quietly and unseen, soft as a feather, the prince’s footsteps came closer, along the sides of the walls, closer, to the mosaic. Sucked into the gem of obsidian the two brothers’ eyes were powerless.

 

“Then I shall have another succeed me. Nevertheless, your little brother was ever the faster of the two”

 

And the prince witnessed the shade reach for the iron circlet to crown his younger son, and nearly the young whelp did kneel. The darkness that came from its core was older than its maker, and older than the mountain from which its gems were plucked. And it had enchanted the twine brothers, and made its promises of elder powers beyond any sorcery or rule, and from the shade the thousand voices pierced the mind, and tempted,

 

“You shall be the last prince, and the first of the crown, seated above nations you shall be, and none shall escape your gaze of a thousand eyes. Usher! Usher in its masters into this realm”

 

The voices grew too powerful, and they became screams in Kenodormu’s head, and he fell to the ground, curling into his knees in spasms of pain. The air became as if a storm inside the enclosure, as the brothers entranced ushered in the tempest, and many soldiers would try to flee, and as the Queen bid them halt she saw a footman hold his own blade upright to his own eye, and as if, without sound in his throat, fighting with a shake in his muscles, begging his own arm for mercy, with one swift, straight motion pierced the lid of his own teary pupil, and so too after him another who fell under the curse, and one after another the young men took their own lives, forced by their own hand but a will unseen to mortals, and they all fell, bleeding and dead.

 

Queen Rosaego was frozen for a moment, perhaps too long, howls of the shadows of which most youthful of her soldiers laid defeated frightened her. But there she saw Sabellian and his brother, the young boy, and remembered what he had said to her. Kenodormu laid in terror and pain, and her task here was not done yet.

 

She leapt past the lying footmen, and charmed, dreaming soldiers. Her skin under the armor was trembling, and she was horrified to approach the brothers, unknowing what powers took in their faces. But Sabellian’s back was turned to her, and strapped onto it sat the sword. She knew not why, or what purpose it served. “Just a blade. It serves to cut”, a soldier’s simple reasoning, forged by utilitarian ideals served her well from her imprisonment in the Reach. She unbattered the piece of shadowy metal from its strapping, and the enchanted brother did not but flinch.

 

And there as she passed the brothers, she saw with her own eyes, or perhaps it were the blade’s powers, the shade twisted and crueler than her leader ever was. His face was vile, his skin was black as ash and his eyes would devour the light in her, and it enraged him to see in her hands the sword which she held upright, and Queen Rosaego pointed its tip to the dark crown in threatening,

 

“You are a lie”

 

It screamed.

 

“You never were a father. You never had successors”, she slashed with the heavy blade with both of her arms, “And your blood is tainted in darkness! If you truly wish the brothers worthy of your legacy, just once be truthful and have them freed! Let them choose their fate, you shadow of a coward!”

 

The howling shadows dissipated, and the shackles that bound the brothers, and soldiers and the Prince were weakened.

 

Sabellian shook from his slumber and held onto the shoulder of his brother. Those there, the Queen, the brothers and Kenodormu heard last a clank of metal against the floor. Yet the crown was nowhere to be seen.

 

“You have all faced him at last”

 

The drained, still in dreaming lot turned about. There beneath the sizzling torchlight of the fallen, Andestrasz appeared in the crevasse. He leaned onto his staff, staring at them in somber defeat.

 

“I grow too weak to fight him”, he said, approaching the young, and stumbling over fallen soldiers, “But I knew you all were ready”

 

Prince Kenodormu could barely see through the mist in his eyes, and he strove to stand up but strength would fail him, and Rosaego held him up. After what he alone had seen and heard, he was quick to ask Sabellian and Wrathion,

 

“What of the blade?”

 

“Ashkandur? Just a blade”, Wrathion glanced at Rosaego in gratitude, “Yours to serve you in justice, Queen Rosaego”

 

She glanced at its shining side, and wiped with the sleeve on her arm the dust from its metal, and her reflection showed beneath torchlight.

 

“It was not shadows nor a curse that gripped its hilt. No powers nor promises that gave its wielder strength”, as she gently swung it in trying its maneuverability, Rosaego would go on to name, “Only lies”

 

The river above the earth was at the beginning of its rise. Its currents grew stronger by the day, and each day they spent underneath it in the clefts of Zaralek meant a day closer to a fated battle on the great span. The old Mayblood knew not whether to pray the bridge to fall beneath its waves and swallow his son not to let him across, or to have the waters spare him and be met with the blade of his own kind. And so came the rain, and many days it would pour and the father wept loudly for his son to hear, should he turn away and yield.

 

A skin of water they placed on the edge of a rock was nearly half-filled with cave drops. Its leather grew moldy, and the little water it had gathered tasted of salt. Foul to the tongue, yet it sated the thirst. Kenodormu glanced about the room. The hallway was starting to reek of blood and flesh. The soldiers grieved above their fallen swordmates’ corpses, but little time was given to them in their pain.

 

The prince was becoming little with patience.

“We must all leave our hurts for later”, he gritted, a nervous shake in his arm as he polished his boot knife, “Unless you lot wish to rest here with your brethren forever”

 

“The Prince is right”, his lady interfered with well-aimed intent, “They will be buried here. We cannot bring them home. You, men, must carry on their memory”

 

She strode to the side of a soldier whose will had turned broken and lost, and she placed her armored hand on his cloak and said to him, and to them all, “You must live”

 

“How long, queen Rosaego”, behind her she heard barely a sigh, a weak breath of a wounded footman that challenged her from the tire in his body. He laid there beaten and bitter, and near to have bled out. In his hand he held a pendant clutched tightly.

 

She stood to face him, lying there in the shade, and the Prince wished to stop her, and so did Sabellian, and he nearly jumped to end the man’s suffering. The queen walked towards him slowly and past her guards, and past Sabellian and the Prince, and Andestrasz, who rested on his staff with nearly half of the weight of his tiring limbs, and they saw her speak with him as he would fade.

 

“I said”, struggling to breathe, “How… Much longer?”

 

Rosaego could tell the pain he was in was great. She asked for the waterskin to be brought to her, and soon, the soldier tasted the last of his drink.

 

“Not a lot longer. Soon, you shall be going home”

 

She took his hand, and gently opened his palm to take and keep his pendant and the name of his loved one in its framing, and she asked him lastly,

 

“What is your name, soldier?”

 

His eyes were half in sleep.

 

“Dururos”, he whispered, “Peafowler of Greenestead. I remember home… And my mother… I can almost see her smiling at me, awaiting me with marigolds in her hair just as when we were children… Freshly-baked loaf of ryebread in her hands… Sweetest taste you’ve ever known, like the warmth of a hearth and as soft as the wool of an argail. Oh, how I’ve missed it”

 

“Rest well, Dururos the Peafowler. You return to your green hills now”

 

Rosaego closed the soldier’s eyelids, and he slept. Limp was his body, and his soul was free.

 

“Take what you can to carry with you of these men”, she heard Kenodormu order the soldiers that still lived, and he spoke to them mercifully, but with a haste in his voice, “But do not tarry. What we saw here, in this room was but a shade of what truly lies beneath. If we do not soon find our enemy and our way out, we are all doomed to oblivion”

 

She glanced at the pendant that the soldier wore, and its casting was tarnished of age. It pained her to think if his mother still lived, or if she had faded in times long before, when the bread tasted of sweet flour and argali fluff, and if there were any left in Greenestead that would learn of how Dururos the Peafowler fell, or where his body rested, or his last words, or if any there would go on to feed his poor birdlings after his passing. “I shall carry with me his name”, she thought to herself, but she knew that not all here would be of the same fortune, and that many would lay their lives forgotten, and their names unknown.

 

After long and harrowing months of winter, and innumerable mostly small-scale, unfair battles that could better be named ambush attacks, the handful of surviving men of the red houses rode with Lord Bloodwarder and Lord Mayblood, on their vorquins way for a village in the north of the Broodlands. The closer they came, lord Bloodwarder watched and saw his men grow weaker-willed and lessened in their morale. Their shoes were stained and their feet blistered, their bellies hungered, their eyes sunken.

 

Delostrasz picked up his pace. Hope raced in his heart. Just beyond the riverbank and beneath the boughs he expected he would soon start to see traces of wooden and thatched roofs, and chimneys of homes. But the closer they came, he began to understand, that there were no boughs nor roofs left. And the smoke that rose from the valley came not from the cooking of a hearth. He ordered the men to halt by the river and he saw clearly what laid across. He could not see the tip of the tower in which he rested in, writing his musings just months prior. Barren, scorched to the ground laid his humble home. Nothing remained of it. He could barely trace where should have stood the groundsill made of stone.

 

He watched with a tear in his eye and wondered if there were any left alive of his own. And for a moment rejoiced, when he saw someone who ran towards them and the river, though he could not recognize him. Perhaps he had dropped some muscle or fat.

 

“Bloodwarder, brother!”, the skinny skeleton of an old man wailed from across the brookwater that shimmered and flowed as tears do upon its red bedrock, and he waddled his way frantically through for the host on the far end, waving his arms high and wide, “No one is left!”

 

“And Miriestrasza? Where is Bosra? Where is Aelestrasz?”, Delostrasz looked in hope to hear of their mention.

 

The man began to cry.

“They burned”

 

The red soldiers stood aback and could barely watch their leader learn the news. And with them, young lord Andestrasz, whose siblings too dwelt here. He unstrapped from his saddle and ran towards the old man, and screamed,

 

“What of the children there… The little ones that herd the cows?”

 

“Two of his janissaries came last night, with scimitars around their waists… They took the children, the young. Any that could wield a spear”

 

Andestrasz’ nostrils flared with rage, and he did not know what to do with himself. He felt himself too powerless to act for it was too late now, and his siblings could be anywhere at this point in time, if they even lived. He paced the waves on the rock of the river, up and down and could not calm himself.

 

“Where did he take them!”, Andestrasz screamed through the spit in his mouth at the old man, demanding answers, “We will have their heads for this!”

 

“Calm yourself, boy!”, Mayblood yelled at the young drakerider from his vorquin.

 

“The same place he always does, that island of his”, the elder spoke with despair in his voice, “Took my Ialthar. And Olthoiar too. Everyone they took…”

 

That alone is when Delostrasz would recognize him, and in disbelief of the state of his health he laid his hand on the man’s shoulder, “Stri-Taraszo, it is you! How are you so withered?”

 

Taraszo, an elder of the village, simply bowed his head, and had no good answer but hunger. Removing the cloak of his unruly vorquin as he tried to calm her, Gelthara armed himself with patience not to act in rashness, and went on to question the elder, to learn of the state of affairs here as he knew his cousin Delostrasz did not have much strength left for the truths he was to hear.

 

“You haven’t eaten in days. Do you have grain, livestock?”, he asked the elder.

 

“None left”, the man simply shook his head, and glanced at the shimmering water and the post on its far end where once a ferry was docked, “Can your vorquins cross the river? Come, and see what remained after their rebuttal”

Slowly they treaded, one after another, and the hooves of their companions frightfully kissed the slippery river rock, near to stumble to their demise. Their masters gently guided them across, caressing on their manes, should they not startle and so break their limbs and be felled.

 

The band of soldiers, clad in red garments approached the village as moonlight crept beneath the clouds, and lit their helms as candles in the night. Trotting the dirt road, they saw blood splattered in places, in front charred homes, in yards and barns. The smell was of flies and decay.

 

“They slaughtered the pigs”, said Stri-Taraszo to Delostrasz, as he lifted a cloth from a crate on the far end of the alley. Coming from its insides, a putrid stench immediately became of the air. “And not for food, but for their fun. They did not let us cook it”

 

“How did you survive, Stri-Taraszo?”, Delostrasz wondered.

 

“I ate the scorched grains and wild berries. Fish was hard to hunt. Never knew much how to, as for so long the Tuskarr folk sent us our fill”, he added, “Now even that’s gone”

 

Exhausted and beat of spirit, they trotted further on their vorquins. Along the sides of the path, young men, fighters, sat impaled on stakes for as far as the road would stretch.

 

“So, this is his retaliation. Crueler than ever before”, Delostrasz was furious, yet he would not bend his will, “But if he thinks this will break us, he is wrong. We still have our drakes in the north. And we have King Valandormu’s support from the royal city in the east”

 

His convoy halted at one of his advisors’ pause. He turned to face lord Bloodwarder, trembling in delivering his concern, “My lord, the shipments of weapons from the Crown have been seized in barricades. King Valandormu sent another three days ago, but he fears that one will be captured too. The Crownlands grow low on means of support to our efforts. And given the recent Black Talons attacks on his borders and their raids on the caravans from Iskaara he fears he cannot allow the sources of the city’s food to be obstructed”

 

Delostrasz was in refusal to believe. This could not be true. Just months prior, the tides were on their side. The rebels were pushing Neltharion’s forces all the way south to his Citadel.

 

“No, this cannot be true”, Delostrasz refused, sweat dripping from his mustache, and he reached for a small pocketbook in his beltpouch, and began to read his writings, “I wrote here all shipments that came from Iskaara: March 11th, trout and seaweed, a carriage each. March 23rd, salmon. One hundred barrels. First morn of April, two barrels of seaweed, and salmon. One carriage. Shipped by the Ivory King personally!”

 

“Those shipments were sent, but not delivered, sire”, the young advisor braved enough to rebuke, “And what’s more, some were intercepted deep in the Span, in Vakthros, before they even made it to the border”

 

The soldiers were silent. Torches flickered, and the leader of the rebellion failed to steady his thoughts. He fell in confusion. He walked about his soldiers, thinking, and planning, in fear and urgency. His men but observed him, but with respect none would speak a word.

 

Suddenly, he turned to Mayblood, seeming to have reached for a solution,

 

“The wild drakes. In the north. We will take the drakes to the island, and free the enslaved”

 

“Heh”, the cynic chuckle came from the crowd where the young drake-master stood, “And have them speared from the sky by our own kind? Do you not how well he has trained these children to hunt drakes?”

 

A tremble of finality came over Delostrasz. He then saw in the eyes of his soldiers, what he dared not see had come. The end of the fight.

 

“This is it, brother”, Gelthara rested his palm open towards his cousin as he stood in front of the weary men, and went on to say what most in that band yearned to tell, “Perhaps our battle should cease here”

 

Lord Bloodwarder stopped to stand in front of him. And in front them all. He took a good look at their faces. His advisors, his warriors. Hungry, beaten, sorrowing.

 

He saw Gelthara’s fear for his newborn son. He saw Andestrasz’ rage after his siblings. Helpless, powerless, the few remaining fighters in the land that rode with him. Of dead friends and comrades, and soon to be abandoned by the crown. And all will have been in vain, all the bloodshed for naught, if they let Neltharion have his way, and turn away their sights and ken from the younglings and those taken in confinement in the Reach. Perhaps, if there were a home to which to return, they all would have disbanded and retreated, and ate well their dinners in the comfort of their hearths. But there were no hearths left to go back to. And there would be less still, in the years to come, as Neltharion would have his black scales advance deeper, and they would have taken from the Broodlands everything in his ambitions for dominion.

 

What would be left for his kin, if not even honor remains, he thought.

 

“So if this is it, then there is no choice for us left, my brothers. If any of you think of going home, come and I shall give it to you”, lord Bloodwarder spoke to them with his sabre at his beck, “And if you fear your death, turn around and look at the home they left behind for my blood. Corpses, ashes and chains remain. Is that the home you wish to come to?”

 

Heads in the crowd shook and bent down.

 

“Is our home not worth dying for? Are our children not worth a good name? Gelthara, your son”, Delostrasz tapped him on the shoulder, and he bowed his head.

 

“Andestrasz’ sisters and a wee brother”

 

The drake-master broke a tear in anger, and a fighting wish kindled in the wrinkles of his frowning mouth.

 

“Ialthar, Olthoiar. All our sons and daughters are there. Mine own. They will never know us. They will not remember our faces. But they will learn our names, some day. Shall we let them know us cowards!”, lord Bloodwarder roared as the wind in their torches, “Or shall we leave a blood so true, worthy of a legacy, and a name to be spoken until all other truths are long forgotten. Shall we die, my brothers, with blades in our hands to the roaring sky, and shall we fight our last, furious and free”

 

“We die!”, Gelthara was the first to thunder and join in death his cousin.

 

As kindling for a stoked flame, the cries of soldiers sparked in the silent night, and courage swept their steeled hearts as one, and the brethren raised their swords in a dying defiance that saw the mountains and forests there changed by this feat. Never would the rivers flow the same, nor the winds blow as gently but ruthless as the anger of the young drakelord, nor will the rocks beneath the currents let carry in their waters, but would stand as spiteful and undefeated in the soil that bore them as the heroes that here stood upon them.

 

Dusty cliffs of the Broodlands burned under the midday sun. The little foliage that remained to cover their peaks, spared to the siegecrafter’s axe or too sicklish for lumber laid bereft of birdnests, or beehives or any living life in spring. No shade under which to lay and rest, no sweetness of mashlya resin for the tongue to chew and remember home. Up on one such cliff this day they gathered, they few and free, with one dying hope of the King’s support to arrive.

 

Delostrasz stepped afront where the view stretched farther to gaze at the river’s bridge. The ancient span upon which once sacred waters flowed, a construct made by the hands of the Gods and many times destroyed, now rebuilt at the Crown’s whim sat in undisturbed quiecy above its surging waters. None could be seen crossing today, not a mouse nor an ant. And the shipment, he hoped, ran late.

 

“They should have showed up long already. We’ve been here since the morn”, Gelthara urged his lord.

 

“They’ll show…”

 

Lord Delostrasz perched his drake higher on the cliff. He thought he could hear something in the distance, far across the bridge and the border. It sounded as a brawl, deep in the woods. He listened in keenly. The sword readied at his hand, but armed with patient sweat. If so much as a rustle of leaf is aired by his men, their ambush would be blown and their camp exposed to the enemy.

 

As he watched the treeline, he noticed his scout at the foot of the bridge began to swerve about in a confused manner, and for seemingly no reason at all fall to the ground. Delostrasz could sense something beneath his feet. The pebbles and the dust trembled in the air. And on the water, cascading ripples that grumbled it seemed, from far deep below.

 

What followed, the soldiers told, was a quiet, a breath-long moment of grim boding. It came from the bridge itself. Those on their drakes that stood upon its base said the noise was under their feet, and it coursed through their body in moments. The men held onto their sabres, and braced for whatever beast may rise from the depths.

 

And then – a blast wave. Mighty as the ocean and terribly loud, piercing the ears and smashing rock of its maker. It rose from the pillars of the bridge, and hardy as they were beat them to a collapse. The span fell ahalf, and sunk beneath itself, and the river swallowed the scouts and the drakes in descent on its weight.

 

Disorder stirred, soldiers and drakes grew to a panic. Lord Delostrasz struggled to watch through the fog of noise that bounced against the walls of his skull, and with some composure looked to understand what it was that split the colossal overpass. He strove to look closer and find if any of his men below had lived, and reached for to mount his great wyrm, but his actions were halted by the hand of reason and the advice of his cousin.

 

“Not yet, milord”, Lord Mayblood counseled Delostrasz, “They do not know we are here”

 

“What in God’s name was that!?”

 

The distressed soldiers watched the severed bridge in stupor, not a sound to escape their mouths. Just as it had once been, now it was gone, beneath the still-again, all-carrying waters.

 

Fast to understand with the keenness of a scholar, Delostrasz’ royal emissary took prudence,

 

“Those were our weapons”

 

And he pointed below, to the canyon. On the river’s surface laid afloat scraps of wood, and in no doubt belonged to barrels of a new weapon of war they learned to be gunpowder. Little was of it in the making of the crown smiths, or whether smuggled from across distant lands of the world they could not know. And though the King had managed to procure a dozen in aid of the rebels’ efforts, and in one last cry of sovereignty sent forth a shipment, it fell to the enemy hands far sooner than the river and the border, deep within the untamed groves of his mountains. The Earth-Warder’s brigands made use of the powder to set ablaze the bond between the twin resisting lands, and shattered what they may have still dreamed of unity. And thus the enslaved folk’s last remaining hope to have turned the tides of a decades-long struggle was extinguished in a single thunderous array.

 

And now, stripped of hope, or future, or freedom, the fighting men in battered armor and blades festered with rust and blood looked upon the first among them, the lord and leader they had sworn to follow to the end, and follow they did as he mounted one final time upon his red drake, and with his cousins and kin soared above the burning clouds a flight into the jaws of flame, and hailed his arrival with fury and steel to enemy lines below.

 

His drake burned a great flame, and so did that of Andestrasz, and brave Gelthara, who would not go easily even when the wing on which he rode pierced a spear. And as he fell through the daunting air he threatened with his blade to slash the heads that strove to kill him, and he would not die of the fall.

 

But faster than their flight flew the many javelins aimed their way, and the drake-hunters of Neltharion reaped the skybourne rebels and brought them down to a half. And the flightless, on the ground carved at the evil sword, and their unlucky heads were put to the stake.

 

The valleys burned with flaming oil, and whether lit ablaze by Blacks or Reds no one but remembered any more. Arrows clouded the bleeding skies, and those greater in number were of Neltharion’s, for Delostrasz’ archers had little left to spare. He bade them, shoot smart and wisely, and aim solely at their vorquins should they charge. Yet, to little avail, as the skirmish brewed and the red blood flowed, and the scales of black came pushing in further from the south.

 

It was in the most desparate moment, when naught but red cloaks covered the bloodied ground upon which the vorquins of the Blacks would tread, when the chains seemed to feel as though growing heavier and their leash tight, when horns from the South sounded.

 

Thunder beyond the cliffs, drumming beneath feet, chanting and howling wild in the winds they came, a gallop of hundreds and they smothered the ranks of Neltharion like the crashing of a wave. And their moonblades cut the heads of dragons and their tongues taunted the tyrannous ruffians. Unbending, unyielding, the Khanam horselords came to honor the bonds they swore and avenge their fallen ancestors.

 

“Look yonder, milord!”, a soldier cried to Delostrasz, “The horsemasters! They have come to our aid!”

 

Their leader covered in skin and scales held his pennant high,

“The rage of the dead comes to have its feast. Nayar!”

 

As if the spirits themselves awoke with his scream, the great horde charged a stampede against the black kin, cutting and slashing all and any in their path. And in their way they lifted the wounded of the Broodlands and carried them on their horsebacks, and gave them a blade one more battle to fight.

 

But the skies descended fast on the clashing swarm below. A grand dragon black as night bore to the ground its darkened master.

 

The clanking of swords about him faded to the mist beyond his regard. He walked steadily for the thorn in his side.

 

“Do you think you have won”, he mocked, “Do you truly believe this is all it takes for freedom”

 

Delostrasz flinched. He recognized the brooding voice and the evil it spoke.

 

Spitefully he turned to look him in his black eye, and he roared in his face,

 

“I know bloody well what it takes! If the day comes when we should be chained, know that it is because my head is no longer on my neck!”

 

Neltharion smirked at his courage.

 

“That day is come. Say your prayers to your gods”

 

Delostrasz thought the blade was coming, but to his surprise he saw as Neltharion raise the very sword earned in favor of the red blood’s autonomy in the land, a promise he never delivered.

 

From the cracks in the mountains and way from the Obsidian Citadel an army of brutal giants came marching at his command, with their mammoths aflame from the opening gates, on their way to hunt and stomp and drink in the blood of the serpents. They bore flame in cauldrons, and their spears were longer than any in the realm, sharp and nimble in their arms. They crushed with their hammers against hills of stone and tore through defenses like the breeze bends soft grass.

 

Their cauldrons set afire the camp. War drums, made with dragonskin, sounded across the valleys and they were louder than those of the horselords, and dulled out their chants of the hunt.

 

Delostrasz watched about him as the remainder of his people, and those under the rule of the Khanam were cleaved and ravaged, split in halves immeasurable. Beyond the peaks, above the battlefield he saw Neltharion leave into the heights on his drake. It looked like he need not be there any longer. Like he thought the battle to be over, and he proclaimed from the smoking clouds,

 

“You all will be crushed in mere moments. Resist, and be made an example. Yield, and I will let you your lives”

 

Lord Bloodwarder observed the horsemen’s chief, and asked himself if this is the moment he is betrayed, and his wild allies retreat and leave him and his few there to perish. But the khanam saw his concern, and shook his blade in denial,

 

“We stay, and we fight, yunak”

 

“Until the last man, then?”, Delostrasz asked.

 

The chief removed his painted mask of oak, and with his eyes he pointed about at the dying army,

 

“My final hunt. It has been good, sharing it with you”

 

Delostrasz nodded his salute,

 

“Then, we die”

 

And the lord of the Broodlands took up his sabre and pounced up on his highdrake. Way for the highest peak he climbed, against the stubborn drafts and through the mist that smelled of bloodshed, and stood himself up on that hill before his men and his allies, and he roared into their hearts the words of courage, and carved an oath in the skies eternal,

 

“Men of Broodlands, and those of the Plains, I forbid you from your lives! Our oath is forged in blood, fire and steel, never to kneel, never to yield! Die now, and die well, and be freed! Ride!”

 

And the few remaining banners of House Bloodwarder and House Mayblood, House Lethalor and House Sindarr, and a few other lesser houses of their rightful Redlands perched proudly to the dying sun, and among them first was Lord Gelthara to join in with his brethren and perished first too to the cut of a blade, and there too was the young drakemaster Andestrasz with a burning flame under his restless drake and he tore to cinders much of the enemy flanks in his fury and so claimed his vengeance; the flame of his hatred saw the scale of his foes melt beneath their metal armor, and he among a handful of others lived past this day to tell of its tale. And the elder Stri-Taraszo too was there, among his fellows in fight, and fought a fierce game until his hour came and death would take him.

 

And so fell many of the red scales and the horselords, and their blood flowed as streams, and those that were cursed to live past the sunset tell the tale of how Lord Delostrasz Bloodwarder made his last stand by his heroes’ side. And in his fated hour he too would fall, and defiantly he stood aground, and he held up his blade to the skies as a foul spear of Neltharion pierced him through the heart. Bravely so the hero fell, and the blood from his chest poured into the ground and all the blood of heroes that was shed there on that day made the earth they stood on hallowed and red for all ages to come, and their oath bled into the rocks and stones and all waters that gave life to the land, the mountains and the hills birthed rivers that bled of fire, and the Bloodlands and all that lived past the fateful battle bore in their veins his memory and name, and the honor of heroes who faced their demise that free made them of their chains.

 

And the Hero, Lord Delostrasz and his brothers in arms found their victory in death. Released were the bonds that bound him, and he spread his wings in glory, shed were the heavy scales and he felt as light as a feather. And in spirit he left the world to soar high and free into the endless skies beyond, and made his house in the stars. There with his brothers he feasts at the seat of plenty, where the Titans and the Gods praise his good name, and the heavens sing of their brave tale.

 

“…And thus I tell you, my Queen of how it came to pass. The gods would not take me, and my journey kept on”, Andestrasz recounted to Rosaego, as she imbibed each word and mention of her allfather’s name, “And I lived to witness what followed after Delostrasz’ end. It was only after, that retaliations truly began”

 

“What sorts of retaliations?”, she inquired. The image of Neltharion in her mind was already fraught beyond repair.

 

“Neltharion won the war. And he went on to enslave all of the dracthyr youth, but his greatest gripe laid with the red scales. He massacred our kin more than any other, and he did so mostly for his vain. And though they reclaimed some authority over the decades later, the reds and the blacks were ever at odds and daggers. But one thing is sure – our clutch never faltered, and never gave into his lies and would rather die than see their freedoms taken from them, and so they did. And so when Delostrasz fell, his blood was vialed and cast into the flames of the Lifepools, to keep ever the life in the land as pure as the blood of the Hero, and his descendants born after him as stalwart and so the Bloodwarders, a great house were forged. And the late King Vorondormu, son of King Valandormu much later too paid his price of his daughters, but himself did not relent, and would not see the realm fall to a tyrant”, he divulged, and a strength of her teacher unknown before to Rosaego came from his eyes, “And such is the story of the sacrifices of our time. Long before the world that you knew”

 

Thrumming overcame the air.

 

“Be on your guard”, expectantly, Kenodormu ordered to the band, “He is here. I can sense it… He has the artifact”

 

Weary soldiers took up their stances. With a hush of a hand, the Prince ordered them to follow. Past the descending stairway two guards of the Sundered Flame stood their watch of the door. If they could land two good, silent shots of arrows right through their skulls, perhaps they could surprise Sarkareth and put a stop to what ever he plans to do with the relic.

 

The archers aimed for their heads, striking flawlessly. Immediately, the soldiers were ordered forward, and with the use of key from the dead guard’s pocket they let themselves in to a grand entrance.

 

The door opened, and a bask of bright blue engorged the caldera. The thrumming changed to sounds of ancient power, and the flickering of a ritual fire of arcane origin tingled in their ears. And above the cauldron of flame, on a hanging platform wrought of chains stood their leader. But he was not alone. There with him stood Iridikron, the brother of slain Raszageth, and he took the form of a man, but Kenodormu could see his wings. And it was late. He knew what they set out to do, and the lot had made it in time to witness the artifact handed over to evil hands.

 

Iridikron’s power was an ancient one, older than that of his sister and his brothers, for he had been there with the shaping of the world and took taste of its essence, and now with the token in his hand as a titan he loomed over them, and even Sarkareth fell to his knees when he spoke,

 

“Late is the hour wherein you show, young prince. And the lady with your Crown… Have you told her why you are here?”

 

Rosaego glanced at Kenodormu, struggling to see through the blue. He could barely breathe, and barely speak,

 

“Leave her be… She does not know… Any of it”

 

In perplex she frowned at Kenodormu, and felt as though he kept something from her.

 

“Perhaps she should… After all, she is the one that rules now. Just as your father willed it be. And you”, he turned his sights on Kenodormu, “Your head sits useless and crownless”

 

“What is it you hold in your hand!”, she demanded from Iridikron himself, but he ignored her.

 

“That should not concern you, girl. You should be more worried of the flames below, and how any moment, my men shall charge through the cleft with the bones most sacred to you”, pridefully, Sarkareth taunted her.

 

Rosaego was stunned, “He intends to burn the bones of Delostrasz!”, she urged of her mentor, and he, grasping onto his stave should he lift his body from the ground thought to leap to action. He whispered to her in haste, and to the lot around him,

 

“We must not let him. He must not burn them with the artifact”

 

The bronzen trinket glowed in the flame of Iridikron’s eyes, yet shadows gulfed from the engravings in its legure.

 

“What use do you gain from all this?”

 

The Dracthyr leader Sarkareth did not recognize the face in the crowd that bore likeness to his late leader. Brazenly he admitted,

 

“The crucible. My birthright”

 

Time was bleeding fast. He knew not whether the bones had been claimed from the Lifepools above. And should the amulet burn, terror could strike the land itself. But he knew this time, he would not be fleeing.

 

He rose his head and stared straight at hate-blinded Sarkareth, and made him see whose son he was speaking to,

 

“There is no birthright for any who were born here. No legacy from our Father”

 

For once in his accursed line, a dragon black of scale, Sabellian stood himself up and stared into the eyes of the enemy, and into the abyss of flame below. How searing could it be but a few moments’ tinge, he thought. And the Queen saw what he set out to do. He removed his black cloak and she watched it fall to the ground,

 

“Sabellian… What are you doing!”

 

Sabellian glanced at her, and one last time at his little brother, and the blue light glowed against his visage in the shade,

 

“What must be done”

 

Fearlessly he braced his jaw to tread head-on for the flame, and leapt onto the platform, swinging at the artifact, but in a blink Iridikron evaded him, and pierced the ceilings of the earth and took aflight away from the hanging terrace. And in his wake the chains that held it broke, tossing away Sabellian and Sarkareth into a fall of death and burning flame. No screams were heard but a dance of struggle at one another’s necks, and the lot watched and wept, most of all his little brother, nearly to have jumped after his sibling. The fire of arcane void swallowed them both in a fuming roar, and its thirst was sated, and the rocks were silent.

 

Broken and young Wrathion wept last at his ashes, “You did not run, dear brother”. All that remained was rising smoke, and the artifact of great power was gone with its captor.

And when she thought it had all been over, Rosaego saw the Prince staring at the crack in the ceiling with his eyes terrified. “What is the matter?”, she asked of him, but he would not turn his gaze, and kept on staring in horror.

 

“There are things larger at play than you know, Rosaego”, the prince went on to impart, and she grasped of its gravity as he spoke to her not as a queen, but as his beloved, “The Dark Heart is of the Titan making. For aeons it was sought after. Within it, a power to end the Sun. My father knew this, my forefathers knew too. I was warned of her arrival. Forgive me… It was not mine to tell you”

 

A rush of terror washed over Rosaego. She did not know what it was that had her husband in such a disarray, as she had never seen him so distraught.

 

“Kenodormu… Whose arrival?”, she asked, trying to pry him into focus.

 

“An ancient bane of the world. It walked the earth before the Titans as a shadow. And it slept in many hands as a blade. And now it walks the land again as a woman, and seeks to see the world stripped of their rule once more”, the Prince elaborated in a sort of trance, “The blade with the name of Xal’atath”

 

Rosaego held her husband’s hand, should he return from his shivering trance. And she shivered too, as whatever spoke through him was not her beloved, but a vision of a darkened future.

 

“So, this artifact… This is why you had us come here”, she caressed him as he fell into sleep on her shoulder, “Do not fret, dear. I will not let it into her hands”

 

As he fell in his sleep, she laid him down to rest. Words he spoke to her rang in her mind. It seemed he knew of greater things, larger things that were beginning to rise from their depths. As they would have it, fate had much unknown to her in store. And she wondered, that perhaps the Titans were right to wake them to this wrong age.

 

Perhaps, this is where she was called to her part.

 

The Queen took up her blade and turned from the fire to face her few troops, and she gave her command,

 

“Warriors and lords, you are to go home, but not rest. You are to search every corner of Valdrakken, breach every cave of the Crownlands and beyond, and find me this woman. Should any of you capture her emissaries, they shall be anointed with knighthood. Should any of you slay her informant, they shall be gifted with gold weighing their head. We march now into the hunt for Xal’atath”

 

In the midnight hour of the border watch, Geltharos sat his shift at the far end of the span. In front, it seemed, defenders of the Lifeopools were quiet, asleep. Any moment he expected the signal from his master, and he dreaded it would come.

 

Instead, he saw, torches. One after another, as sparks they lit up in the forest shrouded in night. And then, the banners. Banners, of his house, and of his kin.

 

They were approaching the span.

 

“Quickly, wake up!”, he shook awake his man-at-arms from his nap, “They are advancing… We have to warn the others”

 

“Hold!”, he heard a yell from darkness on the other end, “Heed us!”

 

Weapons readied, the rebels of Sarkareth stood defensively. But they aimed to listen, as the closer they came, Geltharos noticed they bore no arms.

 

He heard then a desparate cry, and he knew it was his father,

 

“Geltharos, son!”

 

Tears swelled in his throat, but he dared not weep. Not in front his peers. But he wished to, strongly and without restraint. His father was on the other end, and he feared this was the time they meet, and knew not if it would be a battle that breaks.

 

“Geltharos, son…”, he cried again, shattered with begging, “Heed… Sarkareth is dead!”

 

“Lies! He is lying! None of you move an inch!”, his man-at-arms ordered in reluctant angst, and sought to sow confusion amongst the soldiers who now could see the faces of their closest kin.

 

“Blood does not lie, Baelos”, the father of the commanding soldier told, “It is over”

 

The rebels were in hesitancy, whether it is a trap or a lie, or if truly the madness has ended. In their hearts their greatest hope was to cross that bridge and to finally be reunited with their brethren.

 

The fathers and brothers of the Lifepools watched disheartened. What could they do to convince their sons that they would not meet the folly of a blade at the hands of their fathers, but to show them good will and mercy of their good home. And so, Lord Gelthara, the Blood of Heroes and son of Geltharos the I charged in front to the middle of the bridge with open arms before his son, and prayed of him through tears,

 

“Lay down your weapons, my son, and come to my embrace”

 

Dropping his bloodied sabre to the ground in despite, he glanced at his commander as he tried to stop him from stepping on that bridge and walking to his father. He did not turn once, for if he had, he would have seen all the rebels had followed in his move, as on the other end of the bridge their fathers and brothers too were running out to meet with them. Geltharos ran way for his father’s open arms, and grasped about him, and so reunited they wept the brothers and fathers with their sons, there beneath the watching moon and the river that had seen bonds broken and renewed more times than risings of dawn.

 

Dawns and dusks passed unnoticed below the earth in the caverns of Zaralek, and the army’s few men had left the crucible on their sworn hunt. All across the Isles they ventured, and within the cavern itself regiments of mercenaries claimed overlooks from which they stood their watch. When nearly but all of her soldiers were left on their march, and the royal emissaries had gone too, Queen Rosaego finally took to leaving for the keep.

 

And there, last in line she had separated from her men. She thought of the world, and of how she missed the air above, and most of all she missed her children. Upon her exit from the dungeon she was weakened and exhausted, and her footsteps barely made a difference on the road to the passage above. Step-by-step, step-by-step into the darkness she walked. Until her soles echoed. Suddenly, her ears could distinguish a noise from the echoes. Wailing, screeching. Then a silence, and the wails began again. Loud, terribly so and saddened they grew, and made the very walls of the cavern howl with heartache.  

 

Queen Rosaego sharpened her ears, and she could discern they were coming from a nearby cave.  Carefully she climbed the rocks, deft and quiet as a mouse. The wailing grew stronger with each step, near to harm her ears as she went to face the darkness of the pit. Her feet sneaking before the entrance, as she braved to step before the shade. She lifted her gaze, and in the darkness a great light was shone, blinding to the eye and torching the walls in daylight, and therein she saw laid a drake of pure silver scale, wounded bloody beneath the wing, and of its ache it wailed.

 

The beast spoke to her through its pain, though she could not hear him, but it was her heart that knew,

 

“Aid me, young Queen. I thirst, and my wound aches”

 

It licked the blood that gushed, and Rosaego stared with eyes frozen open, and the light from her torch grew naught in compared.

 

“What do they call your clutch”, she dared to ask in trembling.

 

“They call me Bahamut, for I am an abomination”, the dragon looked with its pale red eyes right into hers, “I have no clutch any longer, and so I am named the Broodless”

 

The Queen in distrust and fear took one step closer to the wyrm, and saw its tail long and slender coiled and flailed about in warning where it had been struck. Heat snarled through his nostrils,

 

“But once, young Queen, my brood was that of your own”

 

“Mine?--“, she stuttered, and stood aback, “The Blood of Heroes?”

 

The wyrm nudged her to come closer, and the light about him became mournful and gentle, and his voice giant and elderly with grief and tire, and in whispering he would detail,

 

“That which had its scales red as blood. And that, which bore to the earth Delostrasz, and Andestrasz, and Alextrasza. And mine, too, would have been my sister’s name as I was born Alexstrasz. But they all had shunned me from my home and left me here to rot flightless”

Warmth, sparkling and clear caressed her cheek, and it was her tears and those that the glistening red eye of the great wyrm had shed. His flight – her flight had abandoned him, for he was different. But from the wound on his breast, the same red blood flowed. She remembered there, how in childhood she too was shunned by her kin for her steel-black scales, and how they cared not for her roots and could not see her blossom. And she knew, it was that they feared her, and so too they feared the great Bahamut, and the names they named him she knew would be his weapon.

 

And there in the light of his wings they met, and she went forth to Loamm to seek a cure of the Niffen, for he beseeched of her an ailment. And when she came and told the Niffen of the beast and asked of them a cure, they wept in fear for they alone knew well the might of the wailing horror.

 

“He is not hungry, but it is thirst that he suffers”, the Queen convinced Myrrit, “And if I could heal him, he would fly, and I would be his rider”

 

And they gifted her with an ointment unknown to the uplands, and its stench was unbearable and as putrid as rotting bile, but the salve had healed the wound of Bahamut after he rested so for forty days, hidden of the sun and the moon with the Queen by his side as his watcher.

 

And so there in the dark of the earth they bonded by the glistening of his scales as light, and they spoke to each other in silence. The Queen mounted her wyrm of pure white, high above the clouds and stars to fly in all his light and terror. There in the sky rode the blinding brother of the Sun, with eyes red as blood set to survive all perils, and sight zealously honed to injustice. And in a victorious cry he lit a lake in fire and it was smokeless. With his Queen as his rider, the silver wyrm danced in flight on its surface, and there in a glade under moonlight they waterdanced a celestial and beautiful hymn, and those that saw spoke of a majestic sight. Forever bound the Queen and the wyrm now were, and the Broodless Bahamut’s scales had fully healed to their glory for now once more he had found his brood, and she was of the same red blood that flowed through him, and she knew him and all his pains without a word for speech, but a gentle touch of her hand upon the wing of silver that had sworn to her all his eternal days. 

 

 

 

------------Chapter IX: To Dream amongst Gods------------

 

Still across the waters blue waded the ship to where the light of the shore called. A thousand years of roaring waves, of land shifting, sunsets in strife endured its planks, for when it was made, the tongues of folk were young and the swords of kings plain in their crafting. Thus was the world that faded so long in time. But the few that still remembered, the ship would carry to their rest beyond the realm.

Those that still knew in their hearts the scent of autumn wind and the taste of wild apples, and sung the words of old tavern songs but never knew of home. From forests to hills, across seas and fields of battle the wayfarers of forgotten days found their place in stories they told.

 

The ship bore her alone for the shore. Lanterns hailed a glow through the dewy morn to all who seek the end of a tale. Cloaked black beneath the dawning stars, Demether looked upon the promised sanctuary. Elven homes hidden in the trees, away from the eyes of the burning world kept safe the souls as if in a memory. Two young lads returning from the seashore, fishing sticks in their hands, blissful in innocence of simple, humble life for such they only ever knew to be. They had caught nothing today again, same as the day before, but the sun was bright and the stream gentle on their toes. Just as somewhere once it was, the grove was full in life, from its heart rising tall and proud the tree of the world, much like the one under whose boughs as a child she grew with friends nearly forgotten, tasting in the juice of its plums and peaches, and they dwelt in peace among the creatures of the forest. Though the tree may be young, perhaps this one, too, bears good fruits and perhaps their juices could be as ripe, she thought. Or perhaps, it bears different fruit, that tastes of new hope. For years she had wandered the earth in search of something that remains, but instead saw the fall of nations. She had been a witness of them all as they fell, and the house she called home burned many a time. And after the last of her wars that took it all, the huntress sailed her last journey. The sentinel’s watch was over, and her weary spirit yearned of peaceful sleep.

 

The dockmaster tied the mooring in silence, welcoming her with but a warm nod, and stepped away from his duty for a thousandth time, for another soul was safely seen into the haven.

 

Demether remained in the ferry, reluctantly patient. She gazed into the distance towards the thicket, and awaited upon a familiar face. Would no one come to my welcome, she wondered, have none of her friends crossed the sea as they swore they all would one day meet again.

 

Dreaming in the memory of children’s play, of a hearth stone of three parts from the moonwell’s bedrock they kept each a piece safe, almost as an oath. Though its paint had nearly all but faded and its sides scorched to char in her hands, her friend’s fare well was just as clear, and she could see it all in the cloud of her mind as if it had been yesterday,

 

‘Though we may part, wherever we go…’,

running wild under the moon when goodness still dwelt among strangers, as if it never was a passing dream when the stone was pressed tight in her palm. The scent of night rain hither forest’s leaves, the sound of an owl’s call, the zesty taste of cheese which her mother, almost vivid once more, packed in her pockets should the children grow hungry chasing after rabbits.

 

“…The journey one day brings us all home”

 

It was as if the memory itself answered, and that was the day. The eyes could hardly believe, there they walked along the pier, woman in curls still blessed by the sunlight and a man of fair stature and a kind face smiling at her, now old and changed and hard to recognize beneath the robes and the light of the lanterns in their hands. Though she could not quite remember their names, the very moment the girl let out her bubbly laugh she knew it to be her. The same big-eyed girl that sang with a silver flute, and the boy with rounded, powdery cheeks and it all seemed like before when they three as children sang the songs carefree.

 

“First friends are last forgotten”, lovingly the man told. It killed at her that all she could remember was his father was once a smith… Or perhaps he was a baker. She could not tell from so long time, but the way he spoke felt like the warmth of the fire on a day of frosty rain.

 

“Welcome, Demether. The world took us to different parts, and it united us again”

 

“Yaela!”, she remembered at last. Yaela… That was her name! Finally rejoicing at the reverie, the two friends broke in gleeful tears.

 

“Come, sister! Leave the ship”, and thus she took a footing onto the pier. One more, and all burdens and all the heartache she would leave behind her, she knew. But there stood the light that guided her forward, and she ran to them.

 

“I did not know if you lived or died”, Demether wept into their hair in embrace, one of centuries of yearning, akin to a mother’s love, “I searched for you across the lands, but learned not a word”

 

“Aldos has been here longer than I. But I joined him not much after… Why have you lingered for so long?”, tears on her soft cheeks, a young girl once again, alone in the world without her darling sister-sentinel she counted days and nights.

 

Demether looked into her eyes, and into Aldos’ that had lost some of their light. But beneath her shroud they laid, and all the things she had buried in the years, and the shore was lonely of its distant sea. Saddened like the waking of a dream they watched her gaze beyond its waves as a wraith hollow, and the wind grew still beneath the heavy cloak of black. The arrowless longbow weighed down her arms, yet she stood there so pale as the moon, and waited. Perhaps for another ship to arrive, or a raven with grave news. How much longer must she wait, will they ever come? Whom will the coming tide carry across?

 

“It will be long before they do. If you wish to, you may return”, she heard Yaela’s voice, once so bright sing from behind her ear and between the sound of the cold waves. And the spirit of Aldos, once full of life, now too weighed lamenting,

 

“There is whispers, that the world walks towards a new strife”

 

But she knew nothing awaited her beyond the sea anymore, and all that she had loved laid beneath its crushing blue. And the mist in the air settled on the heavy hood high her brow.

 

“My battles are over”, the tired sentinel wished into the gale, “The world is old, and with it, too, I have aged”

 

The kindness pure once in the boy, now steadfast, the man took to understanding of her decision. Air choked at his throat at the recollection of the worst of times in his many years, many of which Demether knew nothing of, for he too had seen his fair share away from home.

 

“Come, dear sister. Let us rest at last”

 

Thus they ventured forth together and into one long year, beneath the starlight treasured that guided their people to reunite, here, of all the corners in the world. It was here, away from all the counties of the worldsfolk where their armadas failed reach, that the elvenkin once again took root, at last to find solace. Proud and illustrious the nation, born of glory spoken in ages settled their last days on a lone island’s glen, and where once the empire of their queen bathed in the morn sun twice in the day, theirs now remained but the sparkle of stars that skittishly stole between the treeline. But oh, truly was it theirs to belong, and none would take it nor the seasons change it, and so the goddess-blessed holm in the sea so ridded of earthly delights or marvels of culture in ways unexpected gave birth to their great queen’s coming of dream, of preservation, and of undying, lasting grace.

 

This particular part of the far outskirts of the newly-born kaldorei refuge of Bel’Ameth, the sentinel cherished most of all. It brought images to mind of the long-devastated docks of Auberdine, where she first took her steps as a young archer, riding on wildwolves with sister-warriors, in search of the enemy through the pines to the edge of the moonlit cliffs. And though it was comforting to once again be among kin, she learned it hard to mingle in the heart of the town where all the newcomers took their place, too young to share in the true sentiment of their history, or the value of all what was lost to have been rekindled here. This is all she ever fought for, Demether saw there, standing at the edge of the docks that greeted the arrivals. Her enemies thought it was eternity she sought, but Demether knew her queen, and she knew in her heart Azshara desired but a piece of it. Not to command, but to rule, and guard sacred the haven of her people. But in her rise, there came those that sought to taint her vision, and those that succeeded in her downfall. Once ranger-general of the royal guard, she watched her each day and learned her wit and whim, and at the last hour, she would weep for her fall. She found to know too well the fear in her face when the queen was in her chambers alone when her city warred. She had lent an ear to her secrets, witnessed first-hand her greatest regret. The sacrifice that should not have been – one of innocents, for the gain of others, more blessed to have been born highly and mattered more to the survival of the civilized order.

 

Within the quaint of the town, none remembered her virtuous name, but the taint of her mistakes that resided in folklore. The youngsters, who knew not lilac from hemlock, made light of the fallen city’s history. The kin of a new age did not remember the skill in battle of the proud sentinel army, their mettle in smithing unmatched, nor the knowledge of scholars revered in legend across far lands. They spat at the mention of the name of the elden empire in grand disregard. Some out of ignorance, whose grandmothers would have been in cradles, suckling on sweet milk during her dominion and would have now long perished, and others in spite from their scars still in aching that cast all blame for their people’s suffering on the old queen’s moment of greed.

 

Only a handful of elders that remained there remembered the forgotten truth, and would take heed of the tale so boldly opposing to the common thought. “One day the queen told me she wished but the sights about her to stop being those of gore, but of gold and flowers. Lest, what would be left to paint but doom”, Demether would try to tell them of her. To tell all those that would listen a tale of a different history she saw seated so closely by her side, speaking to her in living word, and not many had this chance. The terrifying and mighty Queen Azshara, was but a girl with a vision of the world too divine. The power she sought not, but if found her hand nonetheless, for though her spirit was a dance of swans, her desires were those meant for gods alone. And the arm she reached for in salvation or conquest was one that covered her eyes blind to the blood upon which her fair foot stepped in ascendance. The sentinel guarded her beloved queen with all it took, but in vain. She saw her take on cruelty with the gentlest of laughter, her mind made single towards the preservation of her legacy. All could burn away, but her kingdom must not fade, the ranger-general heard her say. But the queen’s heart broke when she saw the truth at last, when all that laid beneath her palace of glass was ruin, and oblivion, and decay, and the very power her people drew from was the blood of the earth an evil god feasted on in her name, freed and given authority by her very word. In her bedding he would tell her, how greatly vast her empire ought grow for she deserved nothing less but the firmament to shroud her hair, and of how righteous and full of valor the cause to earn heaven in the good name of her people. For all that was good must be kept, at all cost. The god jealous in love, which had promised her the desire of her heart and fed her with the mountains and peoples and seas and dared lay his fingers on her silver locks at night now aimed his grip at the maiden to destroy the eternity her hand held, and she perished not of his blade but of the pain of betrayal and the fall of the dream.

 

Few were the ones that took heed of the sentinel’s preachings. One such folk, an ancient house of nobles and an ally of the royal guard in the elder days were the powerful, yet perilous sorcerers of the Shen’Dralar. The very guild that first had set out the idea in Azshara’s mind of immortality, and whose research unleashed the greatest of horrors. And Demether herself was once one of them, proudly garbed in regalia threaded in runes of gold and so too was her mother, who until her death would serve them loyally so. Upon this new encounter across the Veiled Sea, away from home, they hailed her honored for her mother’s contributions, and her mother’s name was whispered not in vain. They pray, join us anew, and do well with your talent as your mother did so we may once again find greatness. But the sentinel knew this greatness had spelled nothing but a pitfall in the olden kingdom, and this selfish ambition of their sly magi in their arcane craft would lead into yet another cycle of destruction, as it ever did, and devoured all realms as it has.

 

“No”, she said to their elder magi whose eyes were beset with darkness, “I dare not enter your house, though you may welcome me with wine and ancient poems. I once held the powers of the depths in my hands, and my arrows reached not far from the moon. In the books and scrolls you offered me I learned to seduce the ears of rulers, and I commanded legions in secrecy. I had drunk the blood of dragons, and I had my fill. But no longer does my desecrated heart strive for these passions. I wish now to heal, and finally lay an old hurt to rest. I shall venture into the meadows lush to lay, where the green flights hunt the wildlife free, and sleep until the end of their long days, far from all pain and tumults of a world on fire”

 

The high magister sighed deeply, yielding his heart to tenderness. He unlatched the gilded knot on his shoulderpads, and fell to a bow at to kiss her hand. And as she unveiled her palm to his touch, he smiled brightly and wide, and tears welled up in his shaded eye. He smiled, and grinned so gleefully, merrily, as if he had been made alive from the womb again.

 

Firmly he gripped her hand, and Demether did not understand, for without but a word of his mouth he would guide her as if sworn with silence to the edge of the town, and the closer they came the lighter his spirit rose. He chased towards the fields across the land, it seemed as if guided by a light only seen to his vision. Demether followed, though she knew not what it was he wished her to find. There at last, where the first stretch of grass and dandelion flutter slept tranquil, he let go of her hand, and for the first time he would speak to her,

 

“The gods have led me across centuries. All this way, all has led me to here. In each dream I dreamt, it all ends the same. I see a woman carrying black, crying, but she is not in grief. Not at all any longer. Her feet carry her as fast as the wings of a raven, and the heavy bow falls from her hand”

 

The sentinel listened through the haze of his words, and she heard the autumn wind hum. She watched as the rays of light blessed his eyes wide with watery sparks, and it seemed he was witnessing an incredible grace beyond the sight of man, and just behind the hood of her cloak.

 

Demether turned about to face the light from the clouds behind, and the sorcerer’s spirit faded with the wind, and the breeze of his forgiven heart reminded the dandelions of their forgotten dance. The light as golden as the morning’s blessings came hinting a glimmer, and it came not from the clouds of the sun, but from the within of the sleepy eyes that at her shyly smiled, hiding playfully beneath the tender of a blossom.

 

And the wind watched, and it wept in joy. Across the endless meadow she flew without a burden into the infinite embrace,

 

“My star…? Is it truly you?”

 

------------Chapter X: Two Wounds------------

 

<< Heavy is the story with which the Gods have burdened me, and an owl of the mists sworn upon me, and I must tell it, though my heart may break, lest my debt to the reaper repaid. So greatly does the ache reach, that I recall as if it were a day ago the height of my rule over Valdrakken. Vast and beautifully tall was our city, and we, the people of its walls proud to call upon its name in our banners.

 

The crown I wore with greatest fury in dignity. For I saw it not as a token of my own, but a heritage, a promise I was given to keep to the sacred bloodline whose king had there named me ruler. And I held no fear, for our might and that of our armies was the greatest seen in any realm of man, and the glories won came earned in honor, righteously claiming what was ours in the Light.

 

With the prince by my side as guardian I had set out on a path of victory, there sworn in the dark of that first cave where the hunt on all emissaries and agents of Xal’atath had begun. I remember the eager in the eyes of my soldiers, and how hopeful they had all been to embark upon this quest, may it be for the gifts and glory but for us, Kenodormu and myself it was something more, something which ate at the world, although we could not yet see its true face.

 

It had been months since the hunt began, perhaps even a year. Though we, the leaders knew little of Xal’atath, of who she ought be or how capable her army, even Kenodormu, who had peered through her veil for a moment in a dream thought her a common enemy, and as such believed her armymen could just as well as ours bleed a mortal death.

 

So it came to pass that the events would take a new turn. I was quite preoccupied that day, making my rounds down the courtyard pavilions inspecting new ranks of cavalry and their armor, and when I finally thought all was settled with the daily business, I climbed the stairs to the council chambers only to be informed of the developments. A number of our mercenaries had reported sightings of strange agents lurking about the precipice of the city. There it was, that we knew, the first triumph. I remember it was Lord Andestrasz who had flown from the Redlands, and burst through the council doors hailing to me of the first good news, “Queen Rosaego, her lieutenant has been captured!”

 

It was to me the first rush of success. I thought myself ready, to be at last the Queen, not with the crown, but of the folk. That perhaps there shall be fruits of my rule bestowed upon me. The time had come for me to act as their leader. I waited not a moment, readied Bahamut and fled on dragonback towards the homeland alone.

 

When my wings at last landed me there, the footmen from my ranks told a different story, however. The captured lieutenant they told was in fact, a tradesman, carrying but leather bags of goods from those lands she claimed her stake. They showed me a handful of these items to see for myself. They looked rather crude, I thought. A spool of cloth, unstained by dust, shining beneath spilled wine and untouched. And a peculiar set of worker’s tongs, and strangely shaped flora. And the captive laid there with a bleeding gut, no longer breathing. When I asked my soldiers if he was made to talk, they only stared at the ground, shaking in their heads.

“He just… Laughed, majesty. Until he died”

 

Neither Lord Andestrasz nor I myself took anything of it, for it was common for enemy spies to hardenly hold knowledge until their dying breath, even spitefully so to taunt their captors. I even went on to believe them an honorable enemy for having endured such a fight with a grin of pride. Mine were such ancestors too, and so I believed the world to be the same.

 

But this was by no means a time to halt the search. I had given the promised title and honors to those soldiers in the Redlands for their service, should many more in my ranks continue in their steps. Though there had been no results but a few trinkets from the tradesman’s pouch for the scholars to study, surely, and we all felt certain, there must be another, spy or bard rather frail at will and ready to open his mouth to betray this obscure woman.

 

There had been little news of her in the coming days. Whispers, hiding in shades, mere mentions of daggers in the night. But no mention of her name. It almost appeared to us in court that Xal’atath was planning nothing at all. That she was perhaps too aloof for to meddle with the likes of our affairs, or too unwitting to set a trap. Whatever webs she was laying it seemed were far beyond our knowledge or reason. There seemed to be simply not a hint left behind, and how many more agents of hers walked our fair city I shall never know, for they had all left without a trace.

 

Finally there came real progress when I was summoned awake from my chambers into the keep’s dungeon, and in there I saw one of her loyalists for the first time, breathing, conversing with the cell warden behind a row of iron bars. He stopped his discussion as he saw me appear in the torchlight.

 

I walked straight for the warden, “Did he talk?”

 

He eyed at me, and then at the dark, scrawny lad, who was coughing badly.

 

“Nearly all”, the warden grabbed his bony jaw up to look at me, “Tell her majesty, the Queen, what you just told me!”

 

I could see the brakeless passion in the warden’s eyes. His body seemed tired from all the weight a job like his carried, and by his belly it seemed he carried an illness of age, and the hairs below his chin had begun to grey. I doubt he had very much enjoyed a liking to torture in his daily duties, rather, it appeared wasting away in the dungeon just on the other side of the iron bars meant little in freedom compared to the prisoners he there watched. It was clear, he would earn himself better days and he meant this achieved in light of an opportunity such as this one.

 

“Spit it!”, he shouted, foam dripping from his sweaty mouth. Gruesome for to become a knight soon, I thought to myself.

 

The spy, struggling to keep himself seated straight from the beating, simply looked at me with dead eyes that sat sunken below a set of slender black eyebrows, and he spoke in a way I had not until then heard,

 

“Dragon Queen, there will be war in the West”

 

The court then went on to deliberate for days. West of where? The speculations began among the strategists. Most odd conclusions they drew, from the fabric of the spy’s undergarments – a particular weaving of silk, to the accent some of the captured possessed, to whether this was all a larger riddle I alone must solve. I sat at the command table, bitter with the warden, now knight who had beaten up our only asset so blindly in his ambition, and thought perhaps the spy would have revealed more, given chance.

 

No more advances were made for the following week. But our enemy waited patiently, and let us to rest and grow accustomed to their presence in our land, until we became wholly remiss. I remember, that day was like any other in summery June, the air particularly hot and the sky sunlit blue. The birds and bees all sang as they do in peace. I had packed Vitros’ bag for a visit to grandmother with all the necessities for the carriage trip. A whole of three loaves of grainbread topped with pigsfat and a bottleful of goat’s milk, though it was to be less than an afternoon’s ride there.

“It is too much!”, he complained, but I could not send my boy unknowing if he should go hungry, and what if the carriage rider must rest his horse a time?

“No, you will eat it all on the way, or share it with the good rider. Food is not to waste!”, I would tell him, “Or would you prefer the boring daycare again?”

This morning he had woken up, and decided today he does not wish to go to daycare, and that he is too big for it, and I know he in fact wished to hear more stories the elders of Iskaara told.

“I have read everything there was to read at the daycare, twice… Fine. I shall share the crumbs with the birds then”, my smart boy found it in his heart to agree, and with an occasional sigh of rebellion finally picked up the backpack into his arm.

“Grandma told me she will teach me to fish with a rod made of tailbone”, he said to me, and I could see the excitement in his curious eyes. He loved his stays in the snowy Span, perhaps more than the other children did.

 

I sent the boy off on his journey. The carriage took him to the frosty mountains from the edge of the town, and my two boys holding one of my hands each simply waved at him once, in such a hurry I had not seen in them before to run towards the daycare, as if a wonderous, never before seen play or toy awaited them there, and I let them to Agapanthus who took them in beyond the gate.

 

And God knows they played that day joyously, in the beautiful grains of sand or perhaps with toy soldiers, telling them tales of fairies and faraway lands and funniest of quips, because that day Krelagos greeted me at the gates back from the daycare elated more than he had ever been. Was it the blossom of a tulip that beneath a rock hid only Pantha’s for the finding for his fingers to keep, or could it be a kiss on the cheek from a braided girl in colorful skirts that perhaps began to visit the daycare and garnered my boy’s affection? Giddily he jumped about and danced and could not stand still. I thought nothing of it. Likely my boy just had a lovely time in the sun. At the gate I said my thanks to Agapanthus, and took my two boys back to their chambers in the keep.

 

I had prepared for them a delicious dinner of a roast of duck. The boys loved this dish – so I made it often just to see their smile. My heart was overjoyed to see them licking the grease off their little fingers. They would feast and joyously munch on the carrot puree and make a large mess with their hands, as if it was the sweetest desert they were served. But I taught my boys humbleness, and they ate not as princes, but as all children, all the good fruits and health of the earth and they learned to love the flavor of simplicity dearly. How wonderfully their cheeks smiled and giggled with delight when they ate the food their mummy made, and how happily they thanked me with the glint in their eyes, not solely for the meal but the cherish so lovingly poured into each pot and every bite they tasted.

 

Then around the late afternoon, while I was preparing a change of clothes for the boys, in their usual misbehavior as they jumped about their beds, I noticed something was off about Krelagos. Usually a deft little monkey, who could fall a hundred times and rise and wipe his palms, he now seemed… A little slower, a little clumsier. I noticed he would run forward for a hug but in reaching his arms he began to fall onto his back. And then got up, still smiling wide in his playful spur, so I thought not much of it. My baby with a belly of bronze was such, that he would at all times seek a chance to prank his mommy and his daddy to tears, only to then make them laugh with terror. But hidden softly behind that little smile a sinister fever was brewing, unbeknownst to me, or yet to my boy.

 

It was barely a dozen minutes that could have passed, when he began to run a little slower. And his body weight made him sway left and right as he took steps. This was too far for any of his pranks, and it did not look silly at all. My baby appeared as if drunk! And the smile, though still there on his cheeks, grew thinner. In that moment something dark woke astir in my gut, because I knew in my motherly way that something is horribly wrong.

 

“It is likely just a heat stroke. They have been in the sun all day”, Kenodormu would tell me with eyes that did not blink. But I knew he was wrong. I felt in my body what he dared not see.

 

My darling boy seemed to have his foot hurting from the shoe, and he kicked and pulled at it to remove. I took off the little brown shoe in which he loved to run, and jump and climb on park trees. The leather on its strapping was worn and shaped to his sole, and its buckle sat angled, as if tied in haste, as if the first time he had tied it, he was too much in a hurry to run outside to play, and every other time he would simply paste it as it was before. I laid him to his bed, hoping, though somewhere in my spirit I knew it was a fool’s hope, that he would recover fast. I reached for to give him a cup of water, but Krelagos could not stand to taste it.

 

“Mom, I… I… N… N…”

 

My heart clumped in my throat.

“Oh, darling, you cannot speak…”, my mouth dropped to whisper, and I caressed him.

His eyes as two crescent moons golden in the foredawn, fading in and out of wakefulness. Soon he had fallen into a deep slumber. It was as if he only responded to my voice. Only when his mommy would call upon his name, would he lift his head awake from this grim sleep, and whisper a letter lightly as a feather,

 

“Ha…”

 

And as fast as his eyes would take light of me, he would fall right back into this dreaming.

 

I looked at Kenodormu standing there planted as a log, just watching his sons without a shake in his body. I was enraged. I do not know if he could not understand, or wished not to. I believe my husband did know the nature of what was happening, somewhere deep inside, beneath the layers of royal armor he was taught to wear. But his fatherly love and desire to protect nearly blinded him to the truth. That he feared, if he were to open his eyes and see the fading of his sons, he would find he is too weak of a father to shield them. That even with all the power and titles, he still would have failed. Just as his father thought him to be. This is, at least, what Kenodormu told me much later, when all of this was long over.

 

And throughout all of it, I told him, I felt myself alone. I found greater company in the cold hand of the reaper, than that of my husband that night. At least, I thought, the evil guest is here to bring me the truth.

 

I demanded his presence,

 

“Can you not see he can no longer speak!?! Can you not see something is wrong!”

 

I nearly closed the door on my husband in his mute face, but I halted to turn about as I heard Krelagos begin to vomit, barely standing on his feet.

 

On the floor before my boy’s bare feet was a foaming puddle of blue liquid, quickly eroding a reaction to the strands of the carpet plush.

 

“Mommy, is that--“

“No! No, do not touch it!”, in a second brisker than a flash of lightning, I saw Pantha reach for to touch it and my instinct jumped to hold him away, and I looked at Kenodormu and at last I felt he knew the terror of what I spoke to him, “…He is poisoned”

 

But before words could make out of his petrified mouth, a silent cry I heard behind my garb,

 

“Mommy… I don’t feel so good”

 

His eyes were sunken to the ground. Little Pantha, a small thing of barely a knee’s height, my light of the moon, not you too! Not both of my boys, I thought, mortified to the bone, that death would come visit my house tonight twice, not for to claim one, but both of my sons. It took all of my strength to gather. “Those are just rivers”, I would tell Pantha when he would ask me if I am crying, as the little boy’s sights wandered about my face, left and right and into a deep sleep, until he did not see the tears any more. I wished to make them believe they would heal. But horribly, on my own, I did not believe they would, for the poison was setting in faster than I knew could be possible, and Krelagos, at this point, did not even notice me.

 

“Dear Pantha, lay down by your brother. Look – there is the moon! Do you remember that story, of the cat and the little red hats?”, I caressed their sweet foreheads, spiking in heat of fever and I grabbed Kenodormu’s arm and bolted outside their chamber, and burst into a howl of tears,

“Court healer!!! Where are the court healers, where are the court healers…”

 

I fell broken into Kenodormu’s arms and I could hear him cry just as hopelessly as me. What was happening to them… My darling boys. Pure, and precious hearts. Fed poison for supper. They were supposed to celebrate their birthday in less than a month… So close they came to their first great milestone! And they had almost grown so big. They would have been too big for daycare soon. I could not believe in my good heart that there existed someone that had to prepare a treat of juice for to drink as supper and pour in it intently the ill wish for children to hurt. Agapanthus would later recall to me that the boys had found a particular liking to a sort of blue juice he had found in the two cups they left at their little painting desks that day, and that Panthagos told him it tasted ‘sweetly, but a bit bitter’. He would never go on to forgive himself, and blames himself still that he let the boys slip from his sights, and for that he took no heed of the strange drink. What must have been the most delicious treat they have ever tasted, only to be their last, bearing nothing good for their innocent hearts but agony.

 

The grim toil lasted into hours, and the darkest night of my lived days descended upon our house, a place that once meant sanctity and protection, and the scent of homely cooking.

Soon after, the boys both fell into fits of vomiting. I cleaned and washed and wiped the puddles on the floor and the carpet after each their fit, and I found myself thinking, ‘God, I have become rather good at this’. I had developed a method – first dry cloth to soak the liquid, then a clean gauze with rubbing alcohol to disinfect any remnants, and then dry cloth again. I realized then, what it was I was saying to myself. ‘Good at cleaning poison from the floor of my own home’. What horrors are these that have befallen us? What is this world I have come to live in, suddenly as if I had crossed a border into a dark realm overnight? A world in which my children are sick to their death not with disease, as sometimes happens to those fated so naturally, but poison, meant for them. Made for them, them in particular, not to grow but to die! No one should ever live to see themselves become great at cleaning poison from the floorboards in their home. In this state of utter frantic lunacy, it took convincing my mind and telling myself over and over that poison does not belong in the home, by no way of imagining. And if I was in a world where poison is found in homes, it is so in malice. Until then I had not seen my world as one such place. My world was a good one. One, where the sweet taste of juice is made for children’s health. This, new world, these vile, dark, merciless people who do not regard anything as sacred nor pure to protect… This world, whose first steps I was taking that night was a place where all that is good went to die. A place where children are given death.

 

They laid in silent pain. I listened to the silence of that night only break apart when Krela’s weak voice would let out a quiet whimper or two. The last of his voice, so as a final stand to say, ‘I was here! This was once my voice and I talked with the angels’. And I shall never forget its sound when it would become none.

 

Kenodormu had at last returned into my sons’ chambers with the healers. And at first, they took turns, administering their treatments and sizing my boy’s chests and in their sciential ways performing their examinations. But few of them yielded any true ken. One after another, they would turn to me and say “I have not seen this in my time”

 

One even suggested I burn all their items, as this might not be poison, as my ‘darkened mind’, as they said, assumed, but possibly a disease. He went further to convince me, that the reason both boys are ill is due to an infection, and that if I do not wish the rest of my children fall sick too, I should destroy everything they touched.

 

Everything their precious fingertips touched. All of it, taken out behind the castle to burn. And I watched the flames and the smoke from the window of their chamber as they dreamt. What did they dream of, if they did, I wondered? Will they wake to tell me? Surely, they will. Because here in the ashes of their existence I stood, as every little toy and napkin of their precious voice and image went up in blazing smoke. Until nothing remained to remember of them, but their name and this memory of my boys, barely holding on to life with tiny, shallow breaths that lit the room alive with the fire of their spirit, so quietly as the waning of the stars.

 

I watched as the clouds of smoke ascended up the tower. I saw below, the healer, and the little brown shoe in his hand. Worn and lovingly crooked to an angle. And he tossed it to the flames.

 

“Queen Rosaego”, I heard a heedful whisper and the door opening, “It is not a disease. They burn the pyre in vain”

 

In that moment my hurt could hardly be greater. I turned to see who it was making these claims.

 

“High Scholar Galahad Rhovanen of Hillmist. One of the famed court healers of Quel’Thalas, half-elven of descent”, Kenodormu introduced the young man. His ashy hair slickly laid to his shoulders, and he stood taller than my husband in a preciously silken robe of grey, and in his hand he carried a pot of a sort of black, burly liquid.

 

With a gleaming eye and a goodness on his flushed cheek, he spoke to me, respectfully as he would to a mother weeping after a child, “Queen Rosaego, I am pained to say this. The instinct you felt was correct - your sons have been poisoned. I do not yet know the nature of the toxin, but I will try. And I will need your assistance in administering the salve”

 

“Thank the Gods! Please… Help my boys, they are in pain!”, I begged of him, and he waited not a split to act with unseen before deftness in his healing hands, and I had never before in my courtly days seen possess such a skill in the mind of a young scholar in training.

 

“Help me to lift them up”, he gestured at their bedding, and I took Pantha up to me in my bosom, and with another hand I raised Krelagos to a seat in his unawakedness, “Open their mouths. They will not much like this but it must be given to them. This should slow the effects”

 

But the boys, still somewhat aware whether consciously or not, spat from their mouths the foul drink, and again the urge to vomit overcame them.

 

“This is not good. The taste should not be as powerful”, Galahad uttered as urgency rushed over him, as I held Krelagos’ head from choking, “The salve is half of water. They are becoming hydrophobic”

 

“What does that mean?”, Kenodormu asked him, confused as to the immediacy and the visible shock in the court healer’s stare.

 

Galahad looked at him, and then at me, and grievously he paused, “It is progressing faster than expected. The poison has ate at their kidneys. They must drink the salve. It is the only way to keep them stable”

 

There I was, weeping over my two boys’ weak bodies, thinking, how long do they have in them if only a few hours prior they had been alive and well, and now I am being told the speed of their fading, of my two young, happy, healthy boys! I refused to let them to sink easily. No, they must heal. They must be as healthy as they were. They will be, I am sure. Now they even have a healer by their side. There must be a way, surely this is all just a fever and a little sip of remedy would spring them back on the morrow.

 

I grabbed gently them both by the shoulder and lifted them to my face. Gone was the scent of sugar from their lips. Their eyes stared beyond me, past my gaze into the abyss. Their little tongues drooled open, gasping for air, dry with thirst.

 

Kenodormu rose to the best of his focus, and unlocked their mouths open. But as Galahad carefully strove to feed them drops of the healing potion, the boys in my arms stirred in a half-woken tremor, struggling and whimpering. With all force left in their little bodies they clawed at my skin, and left two large gnashes on each side of my chest, that bled heavily.

 

“Did they drink it?”, desperately I inquired of the healer, unaware of the scarring of my tissue as I fought with all my strength to keep the boys restrained to drink the medicine.

 

“Most of it”, he told me, “I will get you something for the bleeding--“

“--No”, I stopped his arm flat in mine as he reached for the door, “You let this wound bleed”

 

The look in his eyes was a puzzle. He saw me cover my wounds as if I held them safely to myself, and I believe then he understood. He could see I knew the state of my boys, perhaps even before it was early enough to tell. The scars that bled on the skin high my breast – well, I’d let them bleed. Let them scar for as long as they dearly wish. For ever, if they may! Oh, how I wish they could be there scars forever, I thought. They alone, these two gnarly tears as two beastly strikes of a dagger were the only thing to remain of them after that night is passed. Not an image, nor a pebble nor the wrinkle on a leather shoe left in their tiny footsteps as if their life was lived on the sand of the dunes. There in sunlight they played one day, and the next day the wind took them, as if they never were. And when they are long gone, and I have forgotten of the color of their scales, or the music of Pantha’s laughter and his pranks and plays, or the warmth of Krelagos’ kiss on my nose fades, the lonely two scars will remain. But sorrowfully so I knew, even the scars too must fade, and the wounds heal in time. And I prayed this wound never to heal, but to live open and to bleed for all my days, should I have one last thing of theirs to keep.

 

Sinister a constellation struck the midnight black. So unforgiving, cruel the heavenwork of fate grimly it shone, for my children to bear witness to why the Gods wished them not a youth of cradling, soft grass, but to see what no eyes must see, the pit in the suffering and its grandest a spirit to tear.

 

“Mo-mo…mmy”, I heard my Pantha curled to his knees moaning, and it ate at my heart, “My tummy hurts. Why… My tummy hurts a lot”

 

Sweet Pantha, my black Sun. My darling, moonstruck boy, the pain you endured was the greatest. Time passed so fast, and you could no longer walk. You crawled on your two hands from one corner of the room, to the other, and back, sick with the pain, you did not know what to do with yourself. The good healer broke into tears with us all. He could not help, nor could I, nor could the powers in the clouds above. There I turned to them and only wished, that you endure not much longer of this aching, but that the reaper and the angels carry you away from all this blackened dust.

 

The good healer’s words I heard through the fog when he told me your little kidneys had failed, “The toxins from his body are releasing into his brain”

 

Mummy’s heart died when you seized for the first time, my sweet, untainted, pure child! I watched you curl and bend. The night sailed on as the big yellow moon sails above the sea. And only you could know, how in love with its reflection the big yellow ball could be, but more than that it would have blessed this god-forgotten earth each night if only it could watch for a time your star-struck eyes.

 

Pantha, the pain you were burdened with was too great for a child to bear! You bore no sins, you committed no evil. Yet the cruel fate, the witch behind the evil made a concoction, that tore at the thin walls of your heart, shredded was your innocence as you wondered ‘What is happening to me? What did I do wrong? As my brother and I, do all children die?’. Broken was your soul too pure for this world. Both of you, dear boys. Your wings like those of feathery angels, they were never meant to grace these foul corners of the earth.

 

Then when the hour grew void of any and all light, when all the world slept but I and the Gods with your pain sat in vigil, you cried out the loudest, most hurting your last. Your spine twisting in ways I thought for a moment it would break, it had me shattered agape at what I was witnessing. I knew not whether to hold you or touch you, for I was afraid I would injure you further. In all my time and all the fights and misery never had I thought I would see such a torment of a soul I held most precious.

 

And then, the deafening silent. I remember it was Galahad who then placed his hand on your bedding sparse of cloth, but of plain wooden planks beneath that in stead of your burnt bed had served for you shortly, and he said,

“It is time. You would best do to hold him, the way you would when you wish him a good night”

 

So I took you in my arms. Shallowly, still so warmly your lungs took breath. I held your head so to gaze at the starry night. Though I knew not if you could see, or hear me then. And I kissed you and your brother too, laying in the Lord’s embrace. I hoped, you could still hear me, because at last I had found the words I needed to say to lull you safely across all pain. Your eyes were as voids that did not move, and the tears on mine blinded me to all the vile dark that had smothered the candlelight. I caressed you with my shivering hands, and held you so closely as if to not let you fall, and I found it in me the most I could whisper through a smile as images of the sun in the morning of your youthly light, and all the birthdays that you shared with us in my memory painted lively colors over the black,

 

“…Darling, where was it we left off story of the lady in the tower? The lady had long, silver hair that flowed down the snow-capped mountains, and her gloves were made of gems and wheat, and the teddy in the cloud told her riddles. Dear Pantha, do not fear. Mommy is here with you… People are bad, and they quench the lights and gentle hearts sometimes, but this is not where you were supposed to stay. This place – it is not for us, so do not look at it any more, my love.

Because, you see… This was all a bad dream. Soon the pain shall pass, and we shall all awaken one morning in June, and we will all look at one another with still dreamy eyes: Krela, and Pantha, and your little sisters, and Vitros, your clever brother, and your daddy and mommy, and your granda and grandma, and your uncle Runegos and old uncle Andestrasz and his drakes, and the nagging teacher Agapanthus, and we shall tell to each other: ‘Oh, what for a bad dream I have dreamt last night!’. And then we shall have a drink of warm milk and sugary oats as the heavenly angels above have their meal, and we shall run free and graze across the meadows clad in roses and wheat, where there will be no pain, but sunlight and song of birds. And you will find all your lost pebbles in waters untouched, and chase after paper zeppelins in the sky, and starlight shall be your bedding each night. And all the mornings we shall wake together thereafter in a good, kind world with God in our homely house.

So wait for me there, across the Dream. For there we shall all be again together, where the daylight has no count nor end, and the streams flow endless. Sleep well, my bairn, and rest of your ache. Mommy will for all her days carry you with her, and I shall show you the good of the world and sights to twinkle the eyes. For as long as the Sun and the Moon dance in the sky, so long shall I remember of you. And I shall say to the world that there shone once a light, and they were my moon and my stars”

 

Oh my ill-starred children, that bore not a seed nor a spot of wickedness, how the way of your fading was chosen to be. Without sin, nor a harming hand but with hearts made of papery light, born under a qualming set of signs, taken by that fated night sky. My arms were made bereft of you, Pantha, and they shut your silent eyes and closed your drying lips. ‘Take him away to bury’, I heard Kenodormu cry.

 

First signs of dawn approached, and I prayed to the end of this long night. Many came to see you. Your uncles, and your granda too. Your old grandad’s heart was one of a thousand years of courage, and it would be of your passing that he shatters. Agapanthus, I remember, came too, and I cannot express the sheer horror of guilt in his face. He had no words from his shaking mouth, but the tears down his cheeks that ran in disbelief. The brows perched high on his forehead, and he could not do anything but to shrug his hands open, so as to say, ‘I did not know’. I could not blame him. No one could have thought such a way of events would develop, not if their spirit was good.

 

“Queen Rosaego, look there!”, out of the blue, the healer called out to me, “Krelagos is having his meal! The boy might make it”

 

I looked at my beautiful boy and he seemed to be much better – responsive, and looking at me once again with his eyes. Hope rekindled in my heart – he may have just passed the hardest of it. If we keep at it, and he keeps at his medicine perhaps at least I will have one of my boys alive. Perhaps not both of my stars will have burnt out. Could there be such mercy from our God, I prayed, that at least he, my belly of bronze, is spared and his pain is healed.

 

And I watched the light pour back into my husband’s eyes, as he too prayed just the same. He had just sent the girls off to the Span too. But perhaps it had been too late, as Eleonormi had asked him right before departure: ‘What is happening to Krela and Pantha?’ He had not the strength to tell them that they no longer had one brother, and another had been too ill just the same. In his heart, Kenodormu prayed, that if Gods will it, they should not lose both. And most of all, he feared the girls would see the sights he was there forced by parental burden to witness, and the hurting that came with.

 

That day I was left split in half I remember only grief and rage in my heart. I remember how closely I had held my other half that still drew breath in a dying hope. I also remember, the last gleam of the belly of bronze. For it was as if a farewell, a light under the memory of sunlight, and in the turn of a shroud on my back, Krela was gone from his bed. Vanished, nowhere to be seen! I alarmed the guards at all stations. The bells I made to ring. A call to total arms, to find my boy in the city.

 

Where is he gone? I cried out to him without a stop. The entire court searched for my ill boy. “He could not be far”, I told them, “He is hiding from pain”

 

Through the deafening grief I thought myself, ‘Well it is my Krelagos! He must be playing another prank!’

 

So I cried out to him, called his name out of his hiding wherever he may lay, until my voice would crack. But no word came of my boy, not as the sun came to set.

 

He had been gone for a day’s passing now. The court healer told me that he believes my boy is fallen ill.

 

“If he has had no drink nor remedy, I must tell you, he should hardly live”

 

I refused to stop the search. I knew in my heart of a mother; I felt my boy was still alive. But not a single hint came of where his feet carried him. Where could he, so frail, run to? I stood in the courtyard under midnight-black stars night after night. And each morning, I had hoped that the day has come where he returns home, alive, well and asks of his mommy to hold him, and to feed him for he has not had a thing to eat in days. When the doors to the keep would creak open, I had hoped it was his little hand at the knob, and that it would be him, a gleam of bronze on his belly that I would see, smiling a beam at me, standing on the other side.

 

Where do you hide in your game, dear boy? Does your pain hurt you still, or has it like your brother, ceased? The stars scattering the blackened sky are beginning to dim. I look to them, and I wonder – is this the night I shall learn of your weightless corpse? Shall they bring your bones to me, or shall you come to me alive and say to me, ‘Mommy! I am well!’

 

Each night an owl visited me in my gardens where I wept for your brother, and worried the aching you endured, and the hunger and the cold. Under each star I counted, and the one for Pantha it made its nest and glanced at me from the shade of the trees. I asked the sullen owl, ‘Where is my boy? Is he in much pain? Good spirit, send my son a word, tell Krelagos to come home to his mother’

 

And for many nights the owl silently sat with me. It shared my grief and wept with me in the stillness of the skies. Witnessed, as I begged of it the questions of my weight of the world that closed around me. It saw the lights darken in the wedding chamber of my husband, and our passions grow astray. The owl watched, and patiently waited, and I knew: not yet. He still lives.

 

The rains came and went by and washed the blooming grass. Again the owl came to me at night, and it rested its wings in a flutter and, hapless thing, she shrouded the stars in grey. Cold stillness surrendered in my heart. I stood there alone in the courtyard, with no healer nor prince, none but the owl and the greying stars, and the chilling breeze that bowed before me, offering to me their mourning. And my heart in silence asked the queen of the underworld that clad in soot feather and gloomy eyes watched at me, ‘Has death claimed my son Krelagos? Is his pain ended?’

Then I had my answer, in the hoot of the reaper’s herald, and she stayed there with me to mourn until I had gathered the strength to know – that my son is dead.

 

Where his little corpse laid only the mute owl and the Titans kept their secret. Sorrowful seed of the sun, lost in the ditches forgotten to sleep, the place of his rest unknown to those he loved dearest. Unable to speak, the voice silenced in eternal quiet, the bronze on his belly growing tarnished with time under the pouring of the rain until the moss becomes to adorn the hollow in his cheeks, and the most beautiful petals sprout in his eyes and little Krelagos, a child once loved greatly becomes the blessed earth.

 

I died that night. All my stars went out, and the black reigned, all but two that from that dead of the void glinted brightest in all the nightly firmament that shrouds the ends of the earth to see. And they had their unhappy names that I gave to them at their birth, as they were my two children, that I lost to the heavens. Black was their fate, black as the scales on their back. Ill was their place in the vault of God, and he took them, up high, above the clouds to his seat, the two untainted lights of their wings to give name to the celestial.

 

And when this time had passed, we buried them two black suns in the belly of the earth below, and that pit and tomb birthed a rage in me that burns ever until the end of my days in place of brilliant sunlight. We laid Pantha to sleep there, and he slept alone, and the twin earthbed next to his unbeating heart, tiny and grieven the dark cradle, it rested cold and empty of his brother. To gaze into that pit below the heaving slab that spelled their names was a funeral of mine own, for there died a queen and woken was the spirit of vengeance. Never would the pit be whole with the twins united, nor would the fever in my spirit douse, for then I wished harm upon the world.

 

At last, with my hand I touched their grave, and I wished that the layers of dust did not divide us. And I covered it, with my arms and a blanket of forget-me-nots, should I make my children warm, warm there to dream silently for all time, until even that land is disturbed by the stomps of careless men and time, and their grave is no more.

 

Though the darkest was over, my heart’s breaking would not see the end. Vitros, my last son bore the luck of the Gods and survived by odd chance this vile incident. When he returned home from the Span at last, good and safe and healthy before my eyes, he found his brothers’ beds were gone. I offered him warm milk, and I offered him his favorite toys, yet my only living boy solely wished to know: “Where is Pantha? Where is Krela? Where are my bruddies?”

There were no answers, no words from me, nor Kenodormu but a weeping shield we made for him with our arms, to keep the boy safe, but how can we? He goes to his bed now at night, and I see it, as he clutches onto his pillow, wishing it was them he held. And I sometimes hear him let out a long, inconsolable sigh, too saddened for a child. It seems like he wishes that he is with them in his thoughts. I lay next to him, and I cry, and he does not understand why I do; so through my tears I smile at him and caress him, “You are all that remains of them, my light of stars”

 

Eleonormi and Ionormi mourned together with him, and it was they that held him across this pain. I do not know what would be of my children if they had not each other. Yet somehow, I feel it that when he lost his brothers, something in Vitros broke. The already reserved, quiet boy who lived in his books became ever so more silent than before, and would sparsely show any glee; and he became soft of heart, and would not fight but would give charitably and share all little he had. A hollowness came of the little child’s heart, and it seemed that when no one was looking he would talk to his bruddies, and seek them out between the shades and the corners of bushes should they somehow be just around. I ache for him the greatest, for I have done so too, yet he is still small and cannot bear this burden alone. I ache for him, because I cannot bring his brothers back. He will never find their embrace again, and for all his growing days he must face a world empty of their two souls.

 

So it was, that the Gods have wished them in their nests in the clouds, to be seated on their golden knee and listen to all the unfinished tales of storytellers, and marvel at their beauty: for theirs two alone were the ears pure to hear the hidden fable, that tucked somewhere between the scent of the foredawn awakening and knocks of a woodpecker on midwinter-frozen bark.

 

And I, a queen in black, was left to walk the burning world. I watched my city change. The treetops severed of their glory for their wood, and the grass barren of bees. A mist came of the skies above the town in grieving, and I could not see the stars. The pigeons were ordered to be shot down; by one in my ranks now sitting up on a crow’s feast. Have the hearts of people grown empty of love for all that is of God? My ancestors, all of my bloodline and the good men of my days – they revered pigeons. So did I, and with my father as we strolled the pavements of the city he gave me seeds to give them as feed. And so did my children too. Who was it then, that would injure the hearts of feather? They said, ‘it was to intercept the enemy letters’, but I argued, “And now you must die”. I had these petty lieutenants who would deface all goodness removed without remorse. The seed of the nemesis had already sprouted in some, it seemed, and I despised all that came of those, to whom it was accepted to take innocence, as they have from me, twice in a single day.

 

The fire raged in my heart. My waking thought each morn was vengeance, and there was none other. Though I could see my battlements and the world beyond was brewing of a conflict, mine sights were set on those who had taken from me my twain lights. I had drifted from Kenodormu, who it seemed, sought peace or forgiveness for those. We no longer spoke about our home, and if we did all words from my lips were of revenge, and of bitter, aching hate until he could not bear to listen any more.

 

Then so I had nothing left but the vengeance. And my sights were set on the cold murderers, and I saw nothing before me or aside me but their painful, sickening death to satisfy even the justice in the angered faces of the Titans. This pain has broken my heart, and the wrath no one shall ever repay me. I henceforth saw no mercy, nor acceptance for those wicked, nor would I give peace.

 

There shall never be peace. The world for me was dead, and so was I for it; and under skies so tainted with darkness I could not rest, for to me all grace was sullied, as I have seen already the darkest, and I would never bend nor fear for anything but, or expect anything but the worst of mankind. They who extinguish the stars. >>

 

------------Chapter XI: The Titan's Purpose for us All------------

------------Chapter XII: To War!------------

------------Chapter XIII: Forging Allies------------

------------Chapter XIV: Those, who sully Titans' Names------------

------------Chapter XV: Festivities------------

------------Chapter XVI: Red Dragon Smells Blood------------

------------Chapter XVII: Blood's Burden------------

------------Chapter XVIII: March of the Mothers------------

------------Chapter XIX: Maethrin------------
------------Chapter XX: Back to Where It All Began------------
------------Chapter XXI: No True Son of Arathor------------
------------Chapter XXII: 16 Days of Siege------------
------------Chapter XXIII: Birdsong of another World------------
------------Chapter XXIV: Brothers at Rumshackle------------