Chapter 2 #2
“It’s not everything it appears to be, little dragon.”
“How can you say that, when it’s made you everything you are? Everything you’ve trained me to be?” I snap. Maybe his term of endearment is giving me an actual dragon-complex at this point.
His eyes drop, shadowed in thought. Then he mutters in a whisper of admittance, “Pure opulence draped in claims of protecting the land with profound righteousness. Their obsession with power and bloodlines… but with many things that gleam too flawlessly on the outside, there is well-hidden rot festering within.”
“Well, that’s some cryptic Ritherin-shit,” I mutter under my breath.
The Ellian Knights of the Golden Legion protect Cascara.
I mow his words over like a mooca grinding up grass.
They don’t make sense within the confines of everything he’s taught me.
They are the good guys, fighting the Wuvon and the monsters in the corrupted Blackwood.
Obviously, they're not infallible. I’m not so na?ve as to think no corruption lies within their ranks.
But his words suggest something more profound than that.
He continues gazing at the embers, his beard moving in a way that tells me he is clenching his jaw.
A clear signal this topic is not up for further discussion.
He never likes speaking about his time as an Ellian Knight, beyond the core subjects he educates me on.
Whenever I ask, I can feel the pain needling his features, hidden memories bristling to the surface. I have my suspicions as to why.
As an Ellian Knight, he would have been bonded to a magical flying creature for battle, yet he does not have one.
He’s on the younger side to be retired from the Golden Legion, which can only mean one thing: his bonded creature must have died.
It’s no doubt the reason he keeps the memories of his time in the Golden Legion locked away—a loss one can never truly recover from.
“One day, I would like to hear the story of the magical flying creature you were bonded with.”
Sully shifts his elbows onto his knees, clasping his hands. He seems to hesitate, but then his lips twitch into a subtle smile.
“His name was Xeno. He was a great winged badger.” A sense of peace seems to cascade over Sully as he thinks back on his companion before he continues, “The Arcane Glyph of our bond increased my physical strength, especially when it came to manipulating the earth.” He pauses, the smile evaporating as he clenches his hands tighter, silver welling in his eyes.
“He died saving my life in the battle against a shadow Wuvon and his Crowven at the stronghold of Sternma.”
Only top-ranking Wuvon fly on Crowven. They’re giant crows, the flesh rotted away on their head, leaving a bare skull with an obsidian beak. It’s said to be sharp enough to pierce anything. Even dragon scale.
I reach out without hesitation, holding the back of his hand. Sully knows how hard touching another person has been for me. He knows how meaningful the gesture is. I have gotten better over the years, but let’s just say I’m still not the touchy-feely type.
We sit together in silence until I attempt to unravel it, asking him to recount his favorite memories of Xeno. I listen quietly, allowing my friend to lose himself in the past. Little does he know that their stories only solidify the choice he so desperately wants me to reverse.
I want to be an Ellian Knight. Just like him.
He saved me. Who knows, maybe I could save someone too. Or at least protect other younglings from losing their families.
A sly smile creeps up my lips as I think about how his great winged badger reflects the best of Sully. Strong, stubborn, grounded, patient. Painted in a slew of colors, but only if you look closely, and a downright savage fighter. I wish I could have seen them together.
There’s clearly a hole left in his soul without him in his life. A cold washes over me, like melancholy snowflakes sneaking down the gaps of my clothing on a winter day, and for the first time in my short life, I feel true loss through my friend. When Xeno died, a part of him died too.
It turns out my theory is, unfortunately, correct. In the aftermath of Xeno’s death, Sully asked for early retirement and hid away in our poor, isolated village, far away from the borderland battles. Far away from other Ellian Knights, leaving it all behind like another life.
Until he met me.
He ruffles up my hair as he says goodnight, a fair price to pay for the hoarded memories he was surprisingly willing to share. It was hard enough nudging Sully to open up just a little about his time as an Ellian Knight. I can’t imagine it coming up again.
As I am falling asleep, the floorboards creak. I keep my eyes shut as I recognize the sturdy sound of his gait.
Sully comes in, pulling up the blanket, thinking I’m slumbering. He gives me a soft, fatherly kiss on my head and whispers to himself.
“You are too special for them, for all of them, little Starborne dragon. You deserve more than this world can offer, but I will prepare you the best that I can. I wish I could forever hide you, but I cannot save you from your fate.”
His warm voice ebbs away as I’m whisked off to sleep. Despite his words, I feel safe, knowing his training gives me the power to protect myself. Regardless of what the Fates plan to throw my way.
I’m back in that fucking wooden chair again.
My child form, sallow with starvation, struggles against the ropes that bind me. The wood creaks beneath my frantic wriggles, groaning like haunting ghosts come to watch the show.
A spindly male looms above me, his broken-teeth smile peeking out through long, greasy dark hair. Pain slashes through my skull as I look down from my swollen eye, barely recognizing my body. My shoulder crunches beneath another strike from his fist that glistens garnet, painted in my young blood.
His screams, a verbal lashing. “I’ll beat those markings from your cursed skin and soulless eyes!”
Manic laughter creaks from my ragged throat as something deep inside me shatters, becoming as dark as my obsidian eyes. Yet my markings only grow brighter the more he persists, as if they’re cackling with me.
In his failure, he slashes on to his next endeavor: attempting to fucking carve the markings right out of my skin, every gleaming line on my body, every golden fleck sprinkled along on my face. When that fails, he resorts to taking long drags off his ope cigar.
Between puffs, his smile turns venomous.
Carefully and methodically, he burns every inch of the two solid gold bands that draw down from my neck, over my shoulder blades, barely grazing the other as they run down my middle before bowing out to my hips.
Then a fit of rage consumes him as my gold endures, mocking him with their gleam as he breaks my bones right along with the chair I am trussed to.
Left a tangled mess of a shattered child, bent at unnatural angles.
I hack up blood curdling in my lungs like spoiled milk.
My body pooling on the floor as I watch with dread.
Each snap. Each grind. Every slithering strand of sinew weaving together.
I heal before my very eyes, reliving each horror in reverse as my form threads itself back together.
I’m certain my unnatural ability to heal so fucking quickly is a curse.
Any other child would have succumbed to death’s sweet embrace from these injuries.
For too many nights, nights I never want to remember, I begged for death to claim me. But she never showed.
I descend into a sickening madness as my golden markings stitch themselves anew out of blood and shredded tissue.
A lunacy festered from a beautiful dream I once had.
My mother, with gleaming starlight hair cascading over her shoulders, smiles at me as though I am the most precious thing she has ever beheld.
Her cupid’s-bow lips dance as she tells me about the beautiful gift she is giving me.
My eyes widen as all her love and power pours into me, wrapping around me in one golden embrace.
Her golden eyes dim, as if she knew she was dying and there was nothing she could do.
So, she marked me with all the love she had hoped to give me in an entire lifetime in one single moment.
She couldn’t change her fate but dreamed with all her heart to change mine.
A manic smile curls across my cracked lips.
How could anyone who loves me curse me so?
Though it fits the twisted games the Fates adore playing, endlessly toying with the balance of magic.
My markings being cast with love, only to be the inevitable cause of so much pain, the reason others think I’m unnatural, unlovable.
Gilding me as curseborne, but also the very reason I have survived.
As if her light weaves me back together each time.
I slowly crawl out of the shack, hoping to retreat into the solace of my shadows. Even as a babe, I’d rather shiver to death in the dark than have his twisted hands ensnare me again.
The nightmare restarts, just like my days as a child.
I am back in that fucking chair. Forced to endure another night, as death is too sweet a relief for me. So, I convince myself to revel in his crushing defeat. He lost. Yet again, he fucking lost. My skin gleams in pure spite of him.
I treasure this win, rendering the pain worth it, forging me into something so dark, he can never shatter me completely. Yet my psyche still splinters. Severing—giving me control to break myself apart, allowing my mind to fracture from my body, dissociating.
I leave a smile on the husk of my body as his torture begins once more. Taunting him. Letting him know he’s lost before he’s begun. He taught me how to thrive through physical pain, consuming it whole to feed my feral rage.
Even if I’ll never know what it is to be truly safe, nurtured, and loved… I sure as fuck know how to endure, how to survive.