Daily Writing Challenge @daily-writing-challenge Day 6th
Melody's Wicked End
Melody wasn't the type of girl to sleep well. As her body erupted into the phases of womanhood, so did her restlessness. She often woke up at strange angles in bed as if her flesh wanted to join her mind in all the starry hopeful dreams that pulled her through the night. Sharing with her sibling in their family's cramped cottage was also becoming a problem. Her long legs always accidentally kicked her small sister in slumber, causing wails and sleepy fighting.
The sheets suffocated in the still humid night air. Melody scowled angrily at the black shadow of morning glory blooms hanging their bonneted heads from the stars outside her open window. They were bowed and missed the sparkling promise of ancient starlight blessing and teasing mystery no mortal could know. She wondered about other worlds and yearned for perfect hearts waiting for her eager desire to give hers.
Her mind drifted to Freddy, her father's farmhand, who just started working for them. He had a strong jaw that made her cheeks blush but with the gentleness of youth fresh on his face. His young muscles were already easily competitive enough to a grown man's. She wished he smelled better though. He didn't seem to understand good hygiene after sheering their sheep the day before. When he shook her hand and let it linger too long, the lanolin musk wouldn't wash off easily from her own. Something about this frightened and excited her. She felt violated from the careless disrespect of his stink even though the touch of his fingers filled her with wild thoughts. The urge to punish him for it rose. Angry that she was still thinking about this stinky pretty farm boy, Melody snapped the sheet off and snuck out of the warm bed.
She tripped loudly on all her books in the dark, catching herself on the wall. Books on dragons happen to be the largest in her small collection. As if their lore had to be physically larger than life too. Her favorites were the ones with drawings of handsome elves next to their dragon form. They were meant to be educational so they were anatomically correct and nude for illustration purposes. Her finger would trace the parts of men she had never seen with her own eyes in fear and look longingly at the elegant beauty of women with heavy breasts and lower secrets modest by design, barely an artist's smudge. Fantasies about one of them coming to take her away from the farm and her own troublesome heart occupied all her longing. She would be special and a vicious creature would heel at her feet because fate would bind instant devotion. Her family would see never see her fly away on the back of her beloved to leave the boring small valley. She wouldn't miss the sweet songs of pond creatures and forest bugs. The smell of wet earth and apples fermenting. These beautiful constants only taught her prisons could be beautiful.
There were other books too, all borrowed from the library. Vampires and cryptids and creatures of many types. She wanted to know it all, to know there was more than her frustrating reality. Convinced the one she would give all her love to had to be one of these otherworldly beings and had not yet appeared. Mostly because the selection around her teenage desires was grossly dismal so far.
Melody used these as steps to quietly build to their window. She slipped out letting the shock of damp on her bare legs remind her she was now a wild thing like the night. Waking Freddy would be easy. The barn walls were thin and she knew he stayed up late reading boring books on husbandry and mechanics. Her disgust at his literary tastes repelled her the most. She wondered if his mind was boring. This would have to be tested.
Following the edge of the foxglove garden, Melody tip-toed like a fae in bare feet with her long nightgown bottom bunched in her hand over her knees so the dew would not soak it.
Settling near the large oak to shadow her ghostly figure, she watched the barn door from a distance and began to trill and sing like a bird. She did not know their songs by heart but this did not matter. He should think this was odd. If she saw his confusion and frown looking outside the barn, it would be worth getting her feet wet. She grinned and suppressed audible giggles as she waited for his investigation.
To her delight, Freddy appeared almost instantly. Her mouth opened seeing him shirtless with a weapon in-hand, tense with threat. The metal on the long spear flashed in oil lamplight as she drew in a little gasp. Instantly she started running, determined to make him chase. She trailed her retreat with a few more obviously poor bird sounds.
The hedge of forest on the edge of the field hid her but blocked the moment Freddy alerted a passing Scarlet company of three other men on the nearby road. His face was serious as he conveyed his concerns of livestock thieves.
She ran breathless straight into the dark expanse of a barley field, the tickle up her leg from the plant whipping by as she brought distance between Freddy's pursuit. He would see her in the field dancing under the stars and fall in love. Her plan was working perfectly.
When she paused to wait her brow furrowed at a strange hole in the sky. It was as if a shadow blinked them out in vast swaths. Slowly this defined clearer until with terror she realized this was a huge creature descending upon her. Her mouth dropped open and a small sound escaped her watching the vague outline of a black dragon circle her lazily in curiosity. Huge red eyes narrowed as the magnificent expanse of it nearly landed. Trembling, she began to whimper with awe, unable to move. The first roar it shrieked made her scream and crumple to the ground.
Men's shouts followed and ghastly sounds of ripping flesh filled the humid dark. Melody cried while trying to make herself small. Despair had settled her to quiet when she knew the silence meant they were all dead.
The crunch was sickening. Sounds of the dragon eating had her shaking so hard she could no longer think. Looking was impossible, her eyes still squeezed shut tight. Thoughts of her own death consumed her. She screamed when she opened them and a naked elf was squatting down with her, wicked eyes observing with irritation.
He was covered in remnants of gore, with a horrible handsomeness that curled her expression into confusion. This made him look scarier and more cruel. He didn't feel alone, either. Shadows like imploring snakes curled around her body in indifferent observation. Her breath hitched into hiccups, sniveling in misery.
"Please don't hurt me!" she begged.
The elven man huffed with pissy disgust, looking at her very strangely. He spoke in common with a thick elven accent, words hissed like he still had a serpent's tongue.
"You lured me like bait. Did they see me overhead and decide to use you to lure the beast?" he accused with his teeth bared. She did not answer, grief and shock silencing. "But I am only hunting for wicked men tonight. Not little girls."
He stood slowly, hovering above her, thinking of his mate and their own seed of a child. "This is not mercy. My child will not feed on innocence. She will learn what your kind cannot." Leonardo backed away slowly to ready himself for transformation and flight but her defiance stopped him.
"No." Melody shouted after him with a sob. She knew Freddy was one of the dead. Knew that this guilt would slowly destroy her. Seeing the beautiful wicked man of her dreams look at her that way spurred her to fury. He turned, eyes flaring with narrowed waiting.
"No." she repeated, clearer despite her shaking. She stood and addressed the being with a heaving chest, unable to do anything but fight. "Dragons are all wicked. Your child will be too!" she added like a curse. It made her feel powerful, like she could lose her mind and be full of magic by wishing it so.
The red glow increased in intensity at her words. Leonardo made swift connection to her with a mean snatch and sunk his teeth into her tiny neck with efficiency. Her life drained in a rush and tasted unpleasantly unripe. She was fruit that should have grown longer and Leonardo felt only sour dissatisfaction from her kill. Nothing in his stomach settled right anymore.
He dropped her in the dew and transformed into a dragon, scanning over body parts leaking into the barley grass filling the air with sweet trampled leaf and rancid blood. His clawed weight sunk into the field as he snatched the body of the young man that threw the first spear through his leathered wing. He hung like a limp doll as he flew off back to Tristan's tower.
When Leonardo arrived and dumped him on the terrace, no one was around. His mate's proximity to Roval bothered him easily in his already ruined mood. The shower was a pout of denial. Normally he would present the blood of his hunt on his body for his mate but he didn't want her to have any of the girl's blood. It bothered him, the entire encounter. He regretted her kill in a way that unsettled him deeply.
She did not appear interested in what he brought home and he could hear laughter from Roval's room. He bared his teeth openly to no one as he walked back out to the terrace. With effort he removed the heart of the human and put it on a tray he grabbed from Tristan's wine and burst back into Roval's room again without care. His shadows conjured a tight rendering of elegant elven wear, hair curls separated still by the steam of the shower.
He sat down on an nearby lounge uninvited in a languid slouch, feasting and picking on the heart like it was a roasted chicken in a pub.
Roval was propped up in his recovery bed, sharing sandwiches Ahnariel made as a snack. Both paused with surprise at his return.
Roval grinned with amusement at his uncle. His bad moods were entertaining now. Ahnariel had warned him about the purpose of this hunt. "Is that a wicked heart?" he asked.
Leonardo glanced at Ahnariel while he licked his fingers messily. He brooded for a bit with drama before answering.
"I don't know. I'm the wicked one. And I eat whatever the fuck I want." he replied with a nasty rebuke, not offering a bite.
Some of my writing from a different character... and a new POV for this story. You don't have to know our existing lore to enjoy this one. Thanks for reading!
Tristan had been very reluctant to let Ahnariel go to Tilly Dawnfire’s birthday party. She’d begged with tears. She promised to be good and that they could go home before midnight and she’d only have ONE glass of champagne.
Tristan’s shoulders were tensed at the flow of tears and desperate clasped hands. He grimaced in obvious discomfort. If it had gone on any longer he might have actually squirmed.
“Fine,” he snapped, jaw tight. “Cease your…blubbering. We leave at midnight. You will not…behave in any fashion unbecoming a lady of your station. The Dawnfires are not worthy of the grace of your company,” he said stiffly. “Do remember this. Darius Dawnfire will be there and he is a nasty little cunt,” Tristan hissed. “Don’t go off alone with him,” he said with a strange, soft seriousness. “He’s…a wicked boy that takes pleasure in hurting others.” He looked worried, brow crinkled.
Ahnariel couldn’t contain her excitement. She had begged to go to a hundred balls and fetes. He’d never said yes before. She took Tristan’s hands and squeezed them. “I won’t. Please don’t worry, brother. It’s just a birthday party.”
A rare, little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he withdrew his hands to ruffle her hair, messing up her curls. When she shrieked in protest, his smile spread and became warm without him realizing it. “You’re right,” he murmured with a cool narrowing of his eyes. “A little indulgence can’t hurt.”
Ahnariel had spent her sixteen years in a lonely tower with her brother. In those early days, she had been led to believe her parents had died when she was a baby, killed in a bitter battle with House Dracone. Tristan refused the details. They shared a mother and her kiss was his. His eyes, usually chips of gold flint, had held both horror and sadness. Ahnariel didn’t need the details.
Tristan had exacted vengeance on their killers and would one day kill every last remaining Dracone. She believed him and found it odd all the fairytales he’d whispered to her late at night were scare-tales about the Dracones.
Their babies were suckled on virgin’s blood. Their horses supped on elven flesh. The Dracones stole fair maidens for unspeakable acts and their young men artfully seduced Shadowglade beauties so they could devour their loving hearts. They were demons who wore the skin of angelic men,
When she’d been little, she’d been terrified. They were red eyed shadows of her childhood nightmares. But on the cusp of womanhood, dabbing perfume on her throat left vulnerable from pinned up bloody red curls. Dark rose rouge painted her lips. And thinking about these beautiful, dangerous, monstrous men became exciting rebellion against her brother’s strict and deeply resented control.
Her fantasy was that a Dracone boy her age would come to the party to devour her heart and that he would fall in love with her despite his wicked nature and black heart and he would still her away to kiss her and touch her until she was in love too.
It put roses in her cheeks and made her hazel eyes sparkle with excited mischief. She tried to play at being less excited than she was lest her sinful, naughty thoughts show on her flushed cheeks, but she couldn’t even sit still on the carriage ride to Dawnfire Estate.
Tilly Dawnfire was a minor noble girl three years her junior. She was a squat, pug nosed child and it was a child’s party. Ahnariel was the oldest girl there. Some of the other ‘ladies’ were as young as nine and all of them wanted nothing to do with the older, sour faced girl too old to give their follies a tea party.
Tristan rubbed in his mild cruelty by sitting amongst the children and sipping pretend tea as ribbons were tied in his inky hair. He smiled like a fox, cutting her a clever look. It was a brother’s prank but to Ahnariel, it was the worst day of her life!
Her brother insisted she be a good sport and play the last pastry game in the garden with the children. He knew she could not refuse him.
It was a game of hounds and foxes. The foxes hid red flags in the garden maze. The hounds hunted the flags. Whoever had the most flags won. The adults, including Tristan sat in lounge chairs and ate cheese and figs and drank cognac. Ahnariel felt she didn’t belong anywhere.
Tilly kicked the dirt with her stain slippered foot. “We need two more. The rules are six players. Three hounds and three foxes.”
She started to cry until a lanky youth with shaggy blonde hair and a black eye swaggered into the torch and lantern light. “Darius! Brother please play hounds and foxes! It’s my birthday!” Tilly cried. “Leo…you have to play too or I’ll tell Papa you gave Darius that black eye.” Tilly said this with confidence though she’d not witnessed it…as though it was something that happened often.
Ahnariel’s gaze was ensnared. Not by Darius Dawnfire, though he was a handsome boy with mean eyes. But on his…friend. Leo. He had dark, cherubic curls spilling messily over his forehead and coiling against his neck. Tall and lean, he had deepest eyes full of stinging fire and ice. He rubbed his reddened knuckles, evidence of his violence. He looked mean…wicked. But all of this was softened by his sweet, generous mouth which was pulled into a crooked grin.
“Tilly! I hit your brother defending your honor! He said you looked like a little truffle pig and I couldn’t let such an insult stand.” As zero said this, he cut his clever gaze to her, that grin sharpening.
Ahnariel ducked her head to hide her flush and delighted smile.
Darius’s face reddened. He huffed. “That’s not it! He punched me be-“
He was cut off by Leo’s elbow to his stomach. “Tilly, we would be honored to play hounds and foxes. I must insist on being a hound,” he said smoothly, his eyes holding her gaze again. “I love a good…hunt.”
“You can be a hound, Lord Dracone,” Tilly said as though she was knighting him, imperious with her chin lifted.
Ahnariel’s heart stuttered and she felt dizzy. He was a dark prince from a scare-tail come to devour her heart and he looked…so…hungry. And her tender heart felt as though it was tumbling into love as only the young can feel.
Ahnariel narrowed her eyes. “I’d like to be a hound too, Tilly,” she said with a mean smile of her own. Her pulse raced as she thought of Tristan’s fury. “I’m afraid I don’t have the temperament of a fox. I like to chase. Not run away.” She looked at Leo Dracone with challenge.
He seemed genuinely delighted. He looked so sweet it made her chest ache.
The rest of the children argued, all of them wanting to be foxes and hide the flags. Once it was decided, the game began with Tilly’s friends giggling and running, dashing into the hedge maze to hide the flags, Darius going with them. Tilly chested, sneaking behind them to see where they hid the flags.
She knew she shouldn’t be alone with him. He was the enemy. She learned magic that would someday be used against him. But oh…he was better than the fantasy. More dangerous too because he was so beautiful.
“I’m Ahnariel Shadowglade,” she told him like it was a dare. She squared her shoulders, wanting to see him try to seduce her away to carve out her heart. “I’m not scared of you,” she lied.
He laughed, brow raised. “Well,” he said, looking off towards the hedge maze, the summer evening wind playing with his dark curls. “You should be,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Because I’m going to win. You won’t even get ONE flag,” he boasted.
She huffed, incredulous.
He turned to her, looking her over. “What? Think you should win just because you’re pretty?”
Her cheeks burned hot and she felt excited and angry all at once. “No,” she snapped, defensive.
Ahnariel’s eyes narrowed with sudden inspiration. All at once, using the strange magic her brother had taught her, Ahnariel smothered the torches and snuffed the magic light of the lanterns, plunging them into cool darkness.
“I’m going to win because I’m clever,” she hissed at him, brushing past him to tease his skin with the whisper of the silk of her dress before breaking into a run. She felt like a fox then and she wanted him to chase her down.
He did just as she desired and he was fast so he caught her easily, hands snatching her by the waist. She giggled breathlessly…and let HIM win for a moment.
“Not that clever,” he said, breath hot against the shell of her ear.
“No?” She wondered airily as she made the ground under his left foot simply not exist. It crested a sudden hole in the earth so that he stumbled, releasing her.
She yanked on a midnight black curl before darting deeper into the hedge maze, chased by his growl of frustration.
She found a flag this way, rounding a corner. And because Leonardo Dracone was clever too and knew the maze well enough he could complete it with his eyes closed, he caught her again by letting her come to him.
Ahnariel dashed around another corner and nearly ran into his chest. He seized her meanly and she liked this game very much. She dangled her flag above his head as he pulled her into him.
“I got a flag,” she taunted. “And I’ll get the rest.”
“I don’t care about the flags,” he said as if bored. “I already won the prize.” His fingers at her waist tightened.
Oh…he was going to kiss her, his eyes sliding shut as he leaned in. She met him clumsily halfway, so eager to be kissed by this beautiful boy who was supposed to be her enemy, that she trembled a little.
It was a deep, slow kiss. It chased and coaxed until she melted against him and sighed and parted her lips for his tongue. It was so good. Everything she ever dreamed her first kiss would be. She was so swept away, her heart filled with such sweetness it would have given him a belly ache if he devoured it, that she didn’t feel or notice him tug the flag out of her grip.
“I win,” he murmured against her lips before pulling away to dangle the flag in her flushed face.
Before Ahnariel could protest that he was a rotten chest, a figure stepped out of the shadows behind him, his face a blank. His eyes cold with the ice of his rage.
Tristan tsk’d, leaning down to murmur in his ear. “I’m afraid you lost,” he corrected, voice lilting with sadistic amusement.
Nycassia knew grief and disappointment. The sting of betrayal had been a companion before. She watched from the gray tower of Castle Dracone, letting the sun hurt her eyes. Even from her lofty perch, she knew the face of Tristan Black. And she would have braved the sun and a dragon to get her hands around his throat, but it all happened so quickly and he was gone, taken aloft on leathery wings.
Bloody tears of rage made angry little rivers down porcelain pale cheeks as she watched him take yet another precious thing from her. Her mother, her beautiful sister Eramyn, little, sweet Lillandyr. Her mortal life. He had made a monster of her father. Of her. Now he took love away from her too. To have it dangled in front of her long after she had lost hope to ever taste it seemed so cruel, Nycassia decided she must deserve this. It had to be some sort of divine punishment, a lash from a heavy hand to rebuke the evil she had done.
There could be no salvation for her, her soul was lost and gone in the greedy grasp of perdition. She knew this was true but wondered why it hurt so much.
For a moment, betraying her father and walking right into the enemy’s mouth, she felt brave. She let down her defenses and sought redemption. How had it all gone so wrong? She had tried to warn Nesnora. She’d spoken aloud breathlessly to the strange spirit of the castle, the source of its magic. Begged the threat be taken seriously. But it had all crumbled anyway.
It was this that sent her out of the now empty room. She looked like a wraith in her white nightgown and bloody curls, face streaked with crimson tears as she drifted down empty, dark corridors. A branch of the iron tree was somewhere within the labyrinthine walls.
“I will find it,” she hissed in the dark, her rage making her dangerously ravenous. “I will find it and sink it into Tristan Black’s heart.”
It wouldn’t be easy to find this time. Tristan had hoped to end every Dracone on the first try. He’d come so close. He wouldn’t leave anything to chance this time. He had retreated because he’d had a prize to take with him. He’d be back and would put her head on a pike right next to the Dracones. He might as well. He had taken the last remains of her heart.
Her relentless search spanned days until she climbed over crumbling, ruined and ancient parts of the castle. Then she sank into its depths, reaching deep into the earth until tunnels bore her to a cavern that opened wide into the sea. Offerings of wine on rock slabs, moldering fruit and prayers rolled into tight scrolls. Incense and bones. Jewels.
Nycassia didn’t like the silent pleading of mortal things, so desperate for a whisper from a god who wasn’t there. She had tasted death and it had been only darkness. To worship was to hold a candle in a storm. Meaningless. Foolish. What would a god want with these paltry trinkets?
The tunnel collapse came shortly after. As if the castle began to fall apart without its magic. It became a great, ancient corpse and it trapped her in its stone belly. She knew the dangers of the waters outside. She heard the feral, keening song of the mermaids. Every night they cried for their lost sister. Nycassia did not want to die at their merciless hands. She would choose the obliterating sun over the madness of starvation.
Then the women came, looking for their god. They danced and enticed, offering slender throats and soft arbs without fear. They shed the trappings of their sacraments, pale skin luminous in the moonlight. Nycassia was gentle with them, allowing them their misguided worship. The heavens might be deaf and empty but she was here.
And hungry.
As the women left after they danced and took their pleasure, Nycassia took one woman by the hand.
“Stay with me until the sun rises, sweet one. I’ll bless you and give you my deepest kiss,” she cooed.
It took no more convincing.
In all of her grief and rage and hurt, she was the devil, not a god. It was no gentle last kiss. Nycassia let herself become the monster again, except this time the choice was hers and no foul magic compelled her. Heartless and pitiless, this woman would not return to her temple with her sisters. Nycassia fed her body to the sea, to the mermaids driven mad with anger and grief.
Then, when the sun rose, her body leaden with torpor, she sank into violent, wicked nightmares of becoming a god trapped in a cave, devouring the faithful until her mind was gone.
To taste her kiss after her blood was a divine ritual so pleasurable he knew what she was. It confronted his cynical shield against such things with sudden, sacrilegious certainty. To fight the world his entire life, to keep love between teeth only to find it burning from within broke him and he panicked. There was only one way to be certain. He would follow the strange guiding instincts of their kind.
TW: Brief smut. Violence.
Leonardo's eyes dripped with desire but her words flashed them into defiance and a sneer. A broad, smug smile crookedly aimed at her and laughed, even as the pain throbbed beneath his back and stung all over.
"Not yet." he teased. "Go ahead and try… it will be very difficult unless you have teeth like mine."
As if to demonstrate, he pulled back his lips in a grin, exposing his sharp elegant fangs. Still blood-drunk, Leonardo's lashes were thick and heavy-lidded as his hands squeezed the cheeks of her buttocks to a point of pain.
"You poor thing, you'll say anything to fuck me right now. It hurts, doesn't it. Wanting this so badly…"
Provoking further, he reached down and slapped his cock several times rapidly on her straddled sex. The smile he had knowing her wet heat was infuriating.
This was about all she could stand, her dragon pride and frustration reaching a peak. She reached down and grabbed his stiff flesh and squeezed, eyes flaring at him dangerously. At first he looked thrilled, eager to be pleasured until she didn't stop squeezing. He grunted with alarm and squirmed, realizing she wasn't stopping. With a violent grab on her waist he flung her sideways. His teeth sank into her gorgeous, buttock delicately scraped with cuts and she cried out in fear, releasing him.
He stood up, staggering still from the injuries on his back. Her scream and charge at him was wild but he reached out to grab her by the hair roughly. Leaning down and forcing her head up, he stole a hard kiss with her pressed against him until her knee came up sharp into his groin.
Leonardo cried out and crumpled over, wavering. She had gone too far. His dangerous look leveled at her as she backed away in the ancient, strange foliage. Grunting to recover, he stood and spat on the ground before walking with determination in her direction. He watched her flee, slip between the leaves.
As she should.
At first he went slowly, as his injuries allowed. He cursed himself for not saving enough magic to heal himself. Pain like this was making everything more difficult.
He slapped the large leaves away tersely, as if each moment could be the one to reveal. A rustle of leaves behind him sent his heart racing into the hunt. He did not move until she started to run. Quick on her heels, Leonardo pursued through the forest as she fled like a nymph from fate.
There was no shout to stop. No protest to bring her to heel or obey. He would let her run, let her feel the dew in her hair and the cold shiver in her bones until she did not want to run from him anymore. Then he would find her to give her what she needed.
Driven by a constitution that far exceeded a mortal woman’s, Ahnariel dashed wildly into the forest. Adrenaline made the thorns and brambles painless but saw her adding her roses to the local flora. She hoped he could smell it.
She couldn’t hear him chase her because he was a clever predator, but she was certain he was. It filled her with a bizarre joy. She didn’t run with much purpose or even panic.
Because she wanted him to catch her.
Not yet, he’d said. It had stung and infuriated her. Insulted her! But she had given him his due. He would have to make it up to her.
The forest suddenly thinned to a small clearing that held a crystal clear pool fed by a waterfall. The water promised relief from burning wounds, so without further thought, she waded into the pool. The cold water made her hiss through her teeth and stung all her scratches and lacerations, but it brought the relief she’d hoped for.
And with relief from pain came exhaustion. She staggered through the water until she stood under the waterfall, gasping at the cold and the sting. Ahnariel hadn’t heard him and all the flora and fauna confused her senses so she could no longer smell him, so she ducked into the small alcove in the rock beneath the thin waterfall to further confound him. He had to be close.
She leaned back against the cold, slick rock wall and panted, dizzy and bleeding still, weak from blood loss. Her fingers went to her throat, feeling of the puncture marks on her neck, face flooding with heat from dinged pride and intense arousal. Tristan had been right about the Dracones when he’d called them monsters and blood drinkers.
But wasn’t she a monster too? She thought.
It was too complicated to even consider now as she realized there was nowhere else for her to run. The floating island was a dead end on all sides and she’d run into the edges swiftly. Him catching her was certain.
From the way her heart raced…she realized she wanted him to either actual awareness. She needed him to catch her.
Body trembling, eyes wild and wide, Ahnariel recoiled away from the kisses, breath huffing out of her. Dizzy, confused pleasure boiled hot and insistent fueled by rage. With all the flagging strength in her body, she shoved him into the dirt, sneering down at him, grabbing a fistful of his angelic, dark curls, yanking meanly to hold him to the earth. This creature…this man…belonged to her. To do with as she pleased.
TW: duuuuub con, violence, smutty
A great, writhing dark, wave of possessiveness crashed over her. The growl that pathetically rumbled in her mortal throat was pure satisfaction. Her fingers tightened in his hair as she leaned over him, to look in his dark, red eyes. “The only thing that will be broken is you,” she hissed in his face.
Her fierce expression softened the more she gazed into his eyes. The only other dragon in all the world…as if he had been made just for her.
Unpleasant memory gnawed at the foggy corners of her mind. She’d been only sixteen and desperate to go to a masquerade ball. Oh, how she wanted to dance close with someone. Share a chaste kiss at the close of the evening. Tristan had forbidden this with cold finality.
“You want to sully yourself with the dross of this world, you ungrateful girl?” He’d sputtered in a rare fit of temper. “You hold the fire. The greatest gifts. And here you are like a petulant child…weeping because I refuse to allow you to throw it away with both hands. It is a good thing you are my sister and not my daughter,” he sneered, “my disappointment would be crushing.”
She had never asked such a thing of him again and her first dance was with her husband, Lord Kazimir Dawnfire who whispered in her ear he would never sleep with her. That their marriage was in name only and if she breathed a word of this to Tristan he would kill her.
Pain brought her out of the memory and her free hand curled tight around his throat. “I hear the Dracones are vile, wicked men,” she said, a lilting mock in her voice as she tried in vain to convince herself she didn’t want him. “Perverse,” she snarled as her fingernails bit into his skin. “I was made to destroy the lot of you. Like that pathetic woman. Not even ashes left to mourn,” she taunted.
A sudden battle raged inside her and she huffed out breaths of frustration and confusion. Her grip on his throat faltered. He said something but it infuriated her so much she couldn’t make sense of the words. It wasn’t right. This felt…wrong. Wrong to kill her…
Her mate.
She was certain. The moment she saw him, felt him in her mind. Scented him on the wind over the ocean. He was the answer to the aching cold of lonesome. To all the questions no mortal tongue could ask but that chased around in her head. She saw the pain etched in his face and wanted to soothe it. She rubbed her cheek against his and it felt so familiar and good she couldn’t stop.
Ahnariel pressed her face into the crook of his neck to smell him. It eased all her tension so that muscles bunched and taut near injury relaxed and her pain lessened. If she killed him…then he would be gone from this earth, crossed over the gray river of souls to the lands beyond where she couldn’t reach and he couldn’t chase.
When he tried to move under her, she growled viciously, blunt teeth clamping down on his throat, fist yanking his hair to keep him still for this. At first, she didn’t know what “this” was. She rubbed her face against his throat and cheek. Dimly, she realized it was to mark herself with his scent so no other could challenge her.
When he struggled, she ground her hips down and bit him again only to soothe the sting with long strokes of her tongue. It felt a little funny to do this in her elvish body, but still right.
Sudden realization had her face hovering over his. “You came to kill me,” she said, wounded by this though she knew she had no right to be. She had destroyed a tower in his home. Killed a vassal.
He said nothing but bore a nasty, sly expression. He lay still, smeared with sweat and their blood. His was black as pitch as were the roses that grew from where it spilled. These roses eagerly intertwined with the crimson ones that grew from hers. She didn’t want him to be still and her ire ended the nuzzling and licking.
She released his hair to slap him with no great force behind it. “Fight me!” She insisted though they were both injured and nearing exhaustion. She had to feel his body violently writhing against hers. The slide of his skin, the slick of his sweat.
Ahnariel wanted to kiss him so badly it made angry tears sting her eyes. To kiss him would betray her brother. The man who raised her. This man seizing her with a tough, painful grip to her waist, was a stranger. An enemy…
Her lover. Her companion.
The immediate softening of her thoughts had her briefly defenseless when he flipped their positions. There was murder in his eyes and in horror she realized she had looked at him the same way. Ahnariel couldn’t reconcile her thoughts with what her heart and body needed. So, she let terrifying instinct smother her rationality and with a soft groan, her hips canted up to roll against his.
What started as grappling, him pinning her wrists to stop her from striking him because he wasn’t taking what he’d won, became something else and unfamiliar to her. Ahnariel wrapped her legs around his waist and leaned up to slide her mouth over his chest, tongue tracing muscle and sinew, tasting what was hers. She marked his skin with her teeth, nuzzled her face into his chest to cover the unpleasant medicinal smell and the scent of another female.
They couldn’t be enemies. Not when he felt like this. Not when he moaned, broken and sweet, at the brush of her lips on his flesh. When she managed to free one arm from his pinching grasp, she touched his face with the tips of her fingers. “You’re mine,” she breathed, brow furrowed. It felt so tender and strange. She’d kill him if he spurned her, if he refused. But he didn’t. Because he knew it too.
But he didn’t agree.
It brought the fight and rage back and she willed herself to transform so she could devour him while with a satisfying crunch of bone and a gush of hot blood. Her body couldn’t. The magic was there but faint, exhausted by this. By..denying what she needed.
“I’ll kill you,” she promised, taking her nails down his cheek. He snarled in pain and she kissed him.
Her kiss felt inevitable. Like tumbling through the dark and finding oneself home after all. It was no gentle thing. Where a lack of skilled practice left her clumsy, the fervent passion of her lips and tongue and teeth disguised it. The kiss was wild and rough, bloodying lips.
“Say it,” she hoarsely demanded against his mouth. “Say it or I’ll tear out your throat.”
Her crimson blood dripped still from his fangs as he circled the pale, wild woman. He remained in dragon form. The heart beating inside him flourished in victory even as the pain crippled him too. She was no weak morsel to break so the satisfaction was met as he threw his deadly head up to the stars and heralded his claim with bellowing shouts. In the ancient days, it would have signaled to other dragons this was his moment to rend or realize any bonds between his prey. Pacing around her, Leonardo growled in warning as he witnessed her elven form with spilled beauty on the ground.
TW: It's going to get smutty. Dub-conish for both characters.
There was no preparation for this. Leonardo had read the books but they were nothing like being a beast that ached for things he did not understand. It was as if his instincts ruled all else. He was at mercy to his nature as she was to the simmering, curious pause he made sizing her up.
A tendril of drool slopped messily from his slightly open jaws, the smell of her blood and his thickening the air around them. The floating island they crashed into would be a marvel for any mortal, but these regards were nothing to him right now.
To feel his magic countered and seized, contorted back at him was already a deep vibration that settled with excitement in his tense muscles. She was not resisting, she surged back the power with her own to tease and play with his in a taunt he found both infuriating and pleasurable. Never in his life had he felt contrary needs rip apart his intent. As he took in her impossible beauty in elven form, the defiance and bravery she fiercely returned, another deeper, primal urge drew him closer still.
The growl was constant. Curious. His plan to rip into her belly messily with fang and death was lost in the pounding protection that rippled over his mind. She carried evidence of another on her. Roval. A fiery jealousy he could not control had him sneering, sniffing closer.
Her elven foot kicked his snout once, hard. He reeled back, as if it wasn’t deserved. Roaring loudly in anger for her audacity, his breath blew her brilliant red hair over her shoulders. She grimaced and covered her ears.
As if his body finally caught up with his injuries, Leonardo switched back to his elven form in a flash of blinding light. Instantly his legs buckled under the pain which hit him rough. The injuries to his back bloodied it to a pulp, bones screaming under the aligned pain. His hands caught the rest of him as he fell forward, hunched over breathing heavily with his fangs still bared on all fours. He raised his head and met her defiant eyes.
Oh, how this broke him. His eyes opened with surprise, the innocent shock of seeing her without the loud, driving crash of his dragon form commanding his thoughts... captivated him. Her beauty cut into him worse than any bite. Leonardo’s lower lip quivered while his muscled body heaved and shook under the pain. The trickling blood which slipped down her neck ultimately moved him to seize her.
Crawling towards her with a thirst that was far greater than just hunger had her kicking him wildly again as she scrambled backwards. He had no ability to force his shadows to bidding. The healing light which he once channeled through him like honeyed relief would not obey in his weakened state. It was his will as a man which forced his body to grapple to overtake her.
Their entanglement was messy. Sharp kicks to his shoulders and face he absorbed with rising frustration as he advanced. His hand shot out to grab her ankle and drag her towards him. She screamed in pain and this hurt him too. Once they were close, there was no mystery of what he wanted. His body pumped to rigid attention sexual desire so powerful he had no resistance to it. He tried to remember she was his enemy to seek and destroy. Tried to force violence to the surface as he hovered breathing her air.
Smiling wickedly with triumph, he appeared manic and giddy, panting over her. If she knew the spell of her curling into his heart, she could have killed him in this moment. As his eyes melted, communicating his approval and victory hers widened in fury and slapped him hard. Without hesitating he slapped her back and she looked more wounded from this than any blow from claw or teeth. Her hands burst in a fury against him, rolling them over until she straddled him, breasts heaving furiously as his iron hands on her wrists tried to subdue her. The brush of her sex over his rigid cock twisted his face with desire. As if she knew this, a lowly sound poured out of her throat until he jolted up to strike.
His large hands sunk into her hair and drew her down forcefully to his vampire hunger. Slick teeth found the same holes he left in her neck as a dragon and sucked hard, moaning in desperation as her blood filled his belly.
It was ecstasy. Completion. Satisfaction that blew his mind, rearranged so perfectly tears flowed without him realizing as he fed. A noise from his throat of rough relief echoed through her body. She was everything kept from him. The answer to the yearning emptiness inside him. Hatred and pride felt like foreign things as he drained her. When her body softened from struggle and fell warm and lovely against him he did not ease his grip. He tightened it possessively.
There was no need to temper her mind with his magic from his delicious bite. She soothed herself naturally as her hidden powers tied to his. As he became drunk on her, he began to relax and couldn’t resist his hands pulling her closer to his flesh, kissing and licking the wound passionately as he felt her bodily limit.
Hot kisses adored her neck as she writhed, biting without breaking her skin as if to remind her their dance was far more than just a battle. Finally he spoke, ragged and hoarse.
“I will break all your chains…” he promised. “Since you broke mine…"
For the first time in her life, Ahnariel was free from Tristan’s grasp.
With no one on her back and her brother distracted, she had precious hours of acting on her own…if only her body understood. Her mind felt shackled to draconic instinct, bending her will, forcing her to obey it, satisfy it. It demanded that she give in, to let go of the self she thought she was.
Ahnariel let herself sink deep. There was no fighting this. She would follow the faint scent of the enemy over the sea to kill him. A terrible hunger churned inside, longing to chase down something small, to see the enemy as a rabbit in a run. She bellowed at the fierce joy of flight and the thrill of the start of a hunt.
Ahnariel scented him on the wind before she saw him. Before his shadows found her. The scent stopped every thought. Already, she snarled and tucked wings to slice through the air to get to him. When his magic became shadowed chains that yanked at her limbs, she screeched and hissed in fury, wings beating the air to keep her from crashing into the sea.
Golden eyes narrowed in hate as she twisted in the air, winding the chains around herself tighter, entangling them both, descending with claws and teeth, nostrils flared and smoking.
Oh yes, she could have used fire. Ended it swiftly. But she didn’t want it to end. This was a dance and she had to see if he knew the steps as she felt them, hot and insistent beating at her brain. Ahnariel needed to feel the strength of him. Needed him to prove himself or die to her teeth and claws. There would be no merciful fire for him.
Though Tristan had assured her cruelly that she was the only one of her kind, Ahnariel had been unable to believe him. She had felt this dragon the moment she’d been born in a way there were no mortal words for. It came from a sense they didn’t possess and one that wasn’t explained to her.
With a fierce, warning growl she slammed into his back, talons scraping hide, drawing blood. The coppery scent spiced with wicked magic only made her ravenous. It was then she answered his shadow with her own. Her magic slithered and intertwined with his, tugging, fusing, undulating and snapping like the crackle of static electricity.
When he bucked and twisted, trying to turn to claw at her, her jaws snapped down on his throat. A shock of desire blinded her, made her snarl against his neck, razor teeth teasing penetration. But only teasing.
Before they crashed into the sea, she released him, the shadowy chains no longer restraints but two opposing forces coming together whether their masters willed this or not. Her magic licked and coiled against his as one, hard beat of her wings launched her back up into the clouds.
Ahnariel picked up speed, racing away from him, knowing he would chase. Needing him to. She’d turn back and end him if he didn’t.
He stayed under the cloud cover, only to burst through at impossible speed just as soon as she’d thought she’d lost him. There was no time to roll out of the way as he barreled into her. He was much larger and the force of his bulk knocked the air from her lungs.
They grappled as they fell. His claws raked over her belly and fiery pain seared in their wake. Enraged by the pain, she beat her wings frantically to slow their descent. The sky was littered with floating islands. Some tiny, not even large enough for an elf to stand on. And some of them housed the ruins of temples with overgrown, long forgotten gardens.
But he pressed the advantage. He went for her vulnerabilities displayed in the shock of injury. As she clawed at him gracelessly and tried to slow their fall, his great head snapped forward and his teeth pressed into the long curve of her neck.
There was no fear or desire to fight suddenly. Ahnariel went limp, falling boneless, bore down by the weight of him. He had proven himself. Bested her.
These thoughts of bliss shattered as they crashed into one of the larger, floating islands. The impact shook the island, toppling weathered ruins to rubble. Her back hit the earth, gouging a deep grove in the land as she careened backwards, dazed from the fall, hide scraped, bleeding.
His teeth had come free from her throat as they rolled, limbs and wings messily tangled. Her jaws clicked in his face as she tried to tear at him, claws biting into his flesh as she writhed and twisted, trying to free herself from him. Her spaded tail lashed wildly, taking out an ancient marble column. A heavy segment crashed over his back, making him howl in fury and pain.
She swiped at his snout, leaving two angry gashes as she felt herself begin to lose the ability to hold her form. Tristan warned her that her mortality would make her weak if injured. Snarling and snapping in desperation, Ahnariel felt it leave her and she slipped out of his claws. When the blinding flash of light cleared from his eyes, Ahnariel lay under him, small and mortal. Bleeding and bruised.
And defiant still. She pushed herself up to sit, trembling, lip curled over her teeth, her bloody spill of crimson curls wild, her pale skin smeared with blood and dirt.
Droplets from the pond flung wildly from the mop of Leonardo's wet hair as he burst gasping for breath on the other side of the portal. Coughing, he felt Manus conjure an elegant black set of noble clothing on his body before he had a chance to catch his breath. It felt suffocating. Grimacing with drama, Leonardo tore at his collar and whipped off the black velvet jacket, sending buttons skittering.
It was too much.
Manus and Mira. Tristan Black. His mother. The command and oath to save them. Save Roval. Save Heathcliff and Lillandyr. Go be a dragon now.
Leonardo made a noise from deep within his chest. He didn't want to dwell in any of it. Now that his wings were stretched and tested, he knew what would soothe him. He had to fly again. Hunt. Defeat had made him hungry. He imagined brutal teeth and claw, let his dark lashes shudder fantasizing about the slip when tooth breaks pressure to gush sweet life into his mouth. The rush of hot liquid on tongue. Conquest. He could not create life like his father, he had no sons but he could own the life of another between his teeth. Brief, distorted intimacy flooding his belly with invigorating blood. His thirst craved like no other now that he unfurled his soul as a dragon.
Sublimely beautiful, lengthy vampire's teeth adapted to his new form. He used these to stab his father under his massive wing. He knew Manus could likely heal himself, but the memory would linger. Leonardo smiled wickedly at this, even as his loyalty and love for his father remained.
He was in a mood.
Boots clicked on the empty cold stones in the ruined castle. He crushed the black petals of the beloved dead without care as he set upon his singular purpose.
Like he could feel his claws itch to release, his fingers tore open the buttoned seam of his black shirt and rejected it from his body. The cool, dread-damp walls of the castle ruins reached to settle his steps with curling fog as he stripped to the door.
There would be no goodbyes. He would not speak again until his belly and heart had his fill. He'd need many maidens this night. Before that he would find a great beast in the forest. One that was noble and a marvel of its kind. Bleeding a heartbeat of magic only his dragon eyes would see. He'd feast on flesh and be the monster to end bloodlines as his dinner. A fiery defiance set him into a terror of determination. He wanted to sink his fangs into something beautiful.
The foyer was empty and Leonardo fully nude when he pushed open the great Castle doors with both palms. The heavy oak groaned, like death forced to use bones for the first time. He grimaced with the weight until winds gushed around his body, blasting his black curls wildly.
Outside the stones were no longer warm from the sun. Leonardo walked to the ouroboros stone in the courtyard and closed his eyes, opening them as a dragon. His height was higher than five horses and just as long. When his muscles shimmered to stretch they reflected the stars like blackened mirrors. Sleek jawed and spiked to tail, Leonardo cracked the stones as he adjusted to his manifested form.
When his great wings unfurled with launch, the black rose blooms bowed their heads from the air beneath his flight. Flares of petals exploded in his wake, not settling to the earth until he was a cloud on the horizon.
Over the forest he glided unburdened by any danger since it was now all less than him. It did not give him the smug thrill he hoped. Instead it filled him with a giddy absurdity. The boy who was denied dreaming of dragons became one. The leaves beneath him blurred in a steady comfort. He was ready to begin his hunt.
Winds of fate were the only kind to reach him as he glided silently, smelling the crawling, quivering life move in cycles below. Insect and fungus, flower and leaf frothing to struggle and flourish. All of this was forgotten at her scent left behind in the western skies.
Like when he was awakened, Ahnariel's presence jolted his body in a needy, direct way. Muscles strained and spiraled, turning to follow the only thing that mattered. Varistan's words haunted him. That one of his kind existed born in shackles to another. No love or pride could live this way. It was beneath her.
Maybe she was too weak.
Leonardo sneered, the wonder pounding in his chest as he flew faster on her trail. The compulsion to destroy lesser dragons to prevent them from breeding was an ancient, animalistic urge he let steer his flight but he kept logic on his mission. If he could find her, he would find Roval. Or what remained of him. He doubted Nesnora knew what she was doing. She never did. He'd have to save them all.
The ocean stretching made him more anxious. Endless waves were dizzying. It was unnerving the lack of life or rest beneath him. Every minute away from his home made him more deadly with hunger. His mouth salivated at the thought of ripping apart the miracle of his enemy. She burned Castalline to molten metal and disgraced his home. Threatened his kin. And somehow, she hurt his father. Forced his magic to heel. He wanted to know how.
As her scent called to him like a beckoning, teasing finger, anger twisted to instinct, teeth clenching from the call to mate with her instead. The more he tried to hate it the more erotic the thought wedged. He refused to let this consume him and replaced it with rage, snorting out puffs of dragonfire to sear the smell of her from his nose.
His speed increased when he saw the gash of her in the sky. A wound of the world, glimmering ruby in the shadows of night. She moved steady on graceful wing to slice the horizon.
Leonardo's shadows bound her to mimic the ones in her heart. Thick magic poured in purple shadow from his maw as he flew beneath her, neck arched up to command the magic chains that snaked around her wrists and legs with vibrating clicks of his throat as if to say: I own your leash now.
Oh man this was done of the most beautiful writing I’ve had the pleasure of reading. So many beautiful turns of phrase I can’t pick my favorite. Oh, and it was hot too
Tristan stood in one of Lord Kazimir Dawnfire’s storerooms collecting himself. He refastened his clothes, very fine attire he had chosen especially for this day. Over a tunic of rich, black velvet, he wore ceremonial armor, not fit for battle. The metal was silver and too soft to defend. The roses on the breastplate were enameled with deep, royal purple and crimson, the thorny vines encircled by a black serpent with eyes of gold.
Once tucked away, he smoothed his long, jet black hair. He was pleased with this form. It soothed his pride and vanity that he should be beautiful. His last guise had started well enough but had so stubbornly and unnaturally clung to life and undeath that he had, more than once, considered ending it so he could return in something far better. Fortunately, Anya had surprised him and done the deed instead.
His mood darkened with the memory of his brightest pupil. His favorite puppet. He reached down, unable to stop the sneer from curling his lips. He wound the maid’s blonde hair around his fingers. It was too brassy. Not the same warm color.
“Gather yourself. You’ve neglected your labors enough.” He removed his hand from her hair and wiped his fingers on his thigh, disgusted at the sight of her.
The maid didn’t argue. She wiped her face with her apron and all but fled his presence. Just as well.
He stood still in the dim light of the storeroom as the music from the great dining hall began to play a traditional wedding march. Tristan made no move to join the nuptials. He would remain here until the reception feast. He had no desire to see his sister marry the mostly worthless Kazimir Dawnfire.
Alone with none to know his mind, he thought of Anya again. He briefly wondered how things would have been had he possessed this form when he’d been her teacher. How delighted he’d been to be proven right as he was in all things. Her painful childhood and time spent having near supernaturally bad luck on the streets, alone and hungry and full of rage, had sharpened her perfectly.
Well. Perhaps a bit too perfectly.
He could find no fault in her for slaying his previous form. It had been her misplaced affection…desperate yearning to be known and understood by him that had been the great disappointment. It was…perhaps a mistake to rebuff her.
Had he allowed her to believe her decidedly saccharine thoughts about him to grow into devoted love, she would not be in the arms of the enemy now.
But there was always time to change the road someone was on. Lord Heathcliff Dracone…even Manus would hold no candle to him once all his great workings bore fruit. This soothed the sting to his pride and he smiled absently. The music had stopped. They would be speaking vows neither meant to keep.
And just like that, all of it was his.
His eyes slid shut. Thousands of years, multitudes of imprisoning flesh…every plan that fell apart due to the unfortunate fragility and weakness of mortal things…swallowing all his bitter fury without a breath of complaint…all that time, slipped through his fingers, the agony of his confinement, the patience he pulled from a soul made threadbare from waiting…all of it out of his hands until all of fate and kismet fell into perfect, beautiful order.
Just as he knew it would.
There was no mortal word in any of their limited tongues to express his dark pleasure.
He stepped into the banquet hall, waving off a waiter who tried to ply him with pastries. He spied Ahnariel sitting rigidly next to Kazimir. She looked appropriately lovely…and still sore at him it seemed. She would not meet his gaze. But he knew the depth of her love and all of it belonged to him. She would not fail to do precisely as he commanded. But he suspected the threat of her would be enough.
Lord Astalon Shadowglade sat on Dawnfire’s left, toasting him with his new body. Tristan could see the horror of this at war with Kazimir’s duty and promises. And next to Lord Shadowglade sat Captain Rhuen Venn’ren, soon to be his creature as well if he wanted to remain a free man.
Tristan took his seat next to Ahnariel. He kept his cool gaze on her, his hand falling stiffly to her shoulder. “I am proud of you,” he murmured into her ear. “Be brave, sweet one.”
He watched his lesson learned work with brutal efficiency. Ahnariel’s features softened and she met his gaze. He held it, though it made him uncomfortable.
He removed his hand from her shoulder and got the attention of the table by tapping his fork against his champagne flute. It was clear they thought he would make a toast, these miserable pigs, smoking their cigars…they had been so eager to do the foul things he’d told them to. All for a taste of power. They’d been cruel, let loved ones die, committed vile acts all to bow before him.
Tristan smiled at them as he snagged their attention.
“What an auspicious day,” he began softly. “House Shadowglade and House Dawnfire are now one. Just as the Captain pledges House Venn’ren to House Shadowglade. Pleasing unions. It fills me with abiding pleasure to have orchestrated them.”
“But it is now time to face the truth of things.” He paused to savor the looks of confusion…the dread. For his little mice knew who the piper was. “There must be a great and final push to see the enemy destroyed down to one. One last being with Dracone blood in his veins.”
He sipped his champagne. His nose wrinkled. He’d never cared for spirits. “Me,” he finished. “Only I have both Shadowglade and Dracone blood. As such, I am the heir to all of this.”
He held up a hand as they began to all speak at once. “Do calm yourselves. I do not want your land or titles. Your wealth does not interest me.” His smile broadened, not reflected in his eyes. “The price for my apathy is simple. You will throw everything that you have at the enemy until not a single Dracone, save for myself, walks this world.”
Bureaucracy was often left to his lessers, as it had been necessary for the last twenty years. Astalon corrected his status as deceased easily enough with Quel’thalas begrudgingly taking in former citizens turned by the Scourge. However, his former body had been in no state to rejoin high society.
This body was perfect for all of his plans. He would have preferred to be Sin’dorei but he could not choose the guise opportunity had presented him. Paperwork elevated Elirtache Kuvaeth beyond his humble beginnings as a refugee vintner. Elirtache was now Astalon Shadowglade’s Proxy. Anything Astalon could do, Elirtache could do. Everything from acquisition of property to meetings with Magistrates. And this body’s state of undeath was so subtle, none had noticed.
It pleased him to have such a fine, young and fit body. Any of Tache’s unpleasantness had been resolved with minor cosmetic adjustments. Gone were the round, wire frame glasses, scratchy cardigans, suspenders, bow ties….now he draped the lean frame in black and crimson leather, velvet and silk under burnished silver, ornamental armor bearing House Shadowglade's coat of arms, the grand, twisted iron tree wreathed in dark, red roses. He kept the long, silken curtain of snowy, white hair loose and had attendants massage perfumed oil into his dark blue skin until it gleamed, the mica in the oils making his body look like a field of stars.
His slaves, bound to him through the stolen magic of the iron tree, lined his pale, glowing eyes in dark kohl. Fuck. It felt good to be beautiful again. He stood before a mirror made of pure, polished silver and admired himself, carefully draping his bloody red cloak over one, broad shoulder. He cut a dashing and formidable figure. Holding out a hand with unfamiliar, long spidery fingers, a slave slid his new signet ring on, the pigeon’s blood ruby winking in the low candlelight. He had lost the ring of his house upon his death. It pained him as it had been passed down from his father, but creation required sacrifice and the birth pains were over. It was time to bring all things to bear.
Today would be a trip to the city with retainers and servants. He would file the paperwork making Elirtache a proper Shadowglade so he could drop the pretense of being a Proxy and inherit all his own wealth. Then, he would visit a courier and have a letter sent to a woman he intended to court. He would create no more children, but a king would need a queen if for no other reason than optics. And now that he had a body that could, he wished to indulge in the pleasure of fair company. This would be another blow to the enemy and killing two birds with one stone was his preferred method of doing things.
He had a black hawk strider brought from the stables as he preferred riding to a carriage. House Shadowglade had not been fully restaffed as of yet, besides. He only trusted the dead and he couldn’t amass too many devoted servants at once without drawing suspicion. Necromancy was quite frowned upon. The beast fought him at first, uneasy around the reanimated dead, but his stolen magic soothed the simple creature and made it docile and pliant, which was how he enjoyed all the creatures who served him.
As he rode through the Ghostlands, his entourage not far behind, he spared a thought for his wayward children. Anya remained lost to him, but this was of no consequence. The girl and all her grand potential had been ruined by the unfortunate circumstances of her poor upbringing. She would serve her purpose and he would not grieve her sacrifice.
Nycassia, he assumed dead. Just as well. Her obedience in life had been a simpering mask of her rebellious treachery and while this left a bitter taste, he would not honor her with a memorial either. She had made her poor choices and it was relief she was naught but rot and fleeting disappointment. Not the revenge he had planned for twenty years, but certainly an end.
It was Varistan that plagued him most, that gnawed at what remained of his heart. The only child he had been present at the birth of. Astalon swore he could remember with perfect accuracy the way the top of his newborn son’s head had smelled as he’d kissed it. Perhaps, this sentiment, he conceded, had been because he had…loved Varistan’s mother.
For a wild moment, the dead trees passing by in a blur, he entertained the fantasy of going to her again, a hope that had been killed in his former body. Would this one please her, he wondered. It was young and strong, fair of face if a bit severe. But no.
No. He could not. Let her believe him dead and keep the golden memory of their love affair. She was a gentle creature and would never understand or accept the things he must do. The things he had done.
And she was a courtesan, not a lady. It was a foolish notion that would not return his lost son to him.
Varistan had been everything he had wanted in an heir. A beautiful man, strong and charming. He had needed to take him firmly under his tutelage to undo twenty years of vice, but that should have been easy enough.
Yet…he had been away too long to not assume disaster. Varistan was surely dead. The last memory Elirtache Kuvaeth had of him was imprisonment in the castle’s library. But that had been over a month ago. No demands of ransom or offers to negotiate peace in exchange for his only remaining son. The enemy had slain the child he…had loved. He would return this ill deed a hundred fold.
Lord Tristan Black had reported the good news to him this morning that Ahnariel had passed her final test. She would be the conduit and all this agony and sacrifice would be at last…worth it. His final assault on the enemy would be swift and leave not a stone remaining. Their roots may not burn with conventional methods but he would see how they fared under dragon’s fire.
His arrival in the city was treated with the familiar, much missed deference and the citizens looked upon their better with appropriate interest and reverence. Astalon went to the registry to file his paperwork and left with the title of Lord Shadowglade. Another wrong put right.
Now, he sat before the courier in the spartan office, taking a glass of wine from one of his fawning servants. He possessed all of Elirtache’s memories and swirled the wine gently in the bowl of the glass, inhaling the bouquet. It was a fine red, full bodied with hints of black currant and chocolate. “Gorgeous,” he murmured before taking a delicate sip. He delighted in his new appreciation for wine. Perhaps he would have a vineyard.
“The letter to Lady Lucretia Vesperine Duskthorn, Lord Shadowglade?” The courier asked, tone edged in annoyance. The man had a snotty air about him.
“Of course. We shall get to the point. Inform her that as Head of House Shadowglade, I propose a union of marriage. Her House was not served well by its alliance to House Dracone and I wish to remedy this great injustice. Include this promissory note. It will cover House Duskthorn’s debts. And of course, the deed, in my name, to her manor house. I think that is enough of an enticement.”
Astalon stood and paid the courier with a generous tip.
Finally, he booked passage to the Isle of Quel’danas. There was a prisoner of the state there and he wished to change this man’s fortune.
Astalon spent a fine evening in a pleasure house and rose with the sun. The trip was uneventful. He arrived to the prison and let the guards divest him of his weapons before he was taken to a common room for lawyers and visiting family. He sat at the table, hands folded on top of it.
The prisoner was in just the shape Astalon had hoped he would be in. Rhuen Ven’renn looked like a ghost of himself, flaxen hair a wild tangle, angular face drawn and pale. His eyes held madness, red rimmed and wide. He slumped in the chair across from Astalon, glaring at him with open suspicion.
“Good day, Captain Ven’renn. I trust you will remember this is not a private conversation and will gird your tongue.” Astalon smiled with another man’s lips. “I have arranged your bail and legal representation. Provided, of course, we can come to…certain agreements.”
Astalon slid a piece of parchment across the table and waited for a man with nothing to lose to sign away what was left of him for the only thing a man in his position could hope for.
The gardens of the Dawnfire Estate held all her fascination. Not just the manicured beauty but the enchanted, eternal spring that made the roses bloom when they should be sleeping. Motes of arcane twinkled in the waning light of the sun, though it never got truly dark in the gilded heaven of Eversong. Shafts of fading, orange sunlight spilled over the garden and here she could pretend her circumstances were different. Ahnariel spent her evenings in the gardens, away from her husband to be. She felt only trapped in his company and it was clear Lord Kazimir felt nothing but bitterness towards her.
Ahnariel closed her eyes and let herself feel it again, the insistent, deep aching call from the south, near the sea. The magic that seemed like it was always trying to find her. Lord Black had warned her of this in his teachings, that she would feel the temptation of the enemy. She’d not recognized it as this when she’d first arrived, but what else could it be?
But then why did this seduction feel like grief instead?
She placed her hand over her heart as her chest tightened with this deep sadness. Though this manifestation of sorrow seemed ever seeking and grasping for her…it never quite connected. It never found her. It would spill over and then pass by, like a cloud revealing the face of the sun as the wind blew it apart. Only with these barest brushes of contact did she not feel alone. So, she longed for this forbidden fruit.
This was Ahnariel’s only rebellion.
There had been no word from the man who had raised her. Tristan Black had not sent letters as he’d promised. It was the first of many, little heartbreaks. He had promised her that Lord Dawnfire would be a good husband, but the man shut himself away and drank himself into stupors. He spoke to her in short, terse cruelty if he spoke to her at all.
So, she often sought out the magic of the enemy, following its waxing and waning, but never reaching out her own magic, never claiming the ever seeking call. She lacked the courage. Ahnariel tried to tell herself it was all a trick besides. The enemy was insidious. Clever.
This time, as she felt the sweep of it come over her, she almost betrayed all she knew just to touch it in return. With her eyes closed, she didn’t see the shadow that fell over her.
But she felt it.
The fading warmth of the sun suddenly disappeared and she shivered, hesitating.
“Why do you weep? Have I not given you all I said I would?”
Her eyes flew open and she took a reflexive step back. Tristan Black loomed over her, his gaze cold and unblinking, his tone so brittle and strange. She touched the pads of her fingers to her cheeks and found them wet with tears.
He had no smile for her and stiffened when she embraced him tightly. After a long, awkward moment, Tristan finally raised a hesitant hand to stroke her wild, red curls.
“Come now,” he admonished, though his tone was much softer now, taking the sting out of his scolding. “You must be brave. All our great works near the end and only rewards will remain.”
“Lord Dawnfire will be a cruel husband,” she said with certainty.
Tristan pulled back, hands on her shoulders. His gaze often unnerved her and it did now. Cold and pitiless, it lacked the glow of magic other elves had. His eyes were pitch black like the dark between the stars so that she never could discern pupil from iris.
“If he is troublesome…,” he murmured lowly, “I will correct him.” He offered her a languid curl of his lips, the parody of a reassuring smile. “But I do not think he will be. Not after tonight.”
When she canted her head, brow pinched in confusion at his smug certainty, Tristan released her and stepped back, smoothing his clothes stiffly. “Do you trust me?” He asked her.
“Of course, Father-“
He tsk’d sharply and held up a hand. “You mustn’t call me that. I allowed it when you were a child but…that time has passed.” She thought she heard regret in his smooth, cool voice. “I ask again, Ahnariel, do you trust me? Will you continue this trust when I ask you to do things that…are against your nature?”
Feeling stung, she nodded, though had trouble holding his gaze. How could she ever think of that foul, monstrous thing as her father when it had only ever been Tristan?
“I trust you,” she said, meaning it with all her aching heart.
She was rewarded with a stiff smile.
“Good. Come with me. A carriage awaits. Should all go well, I will return you before midnight,” he said, turning and clearly expecting her to follow.
***
The carriage bore them through the Ghostlands to the south eastern shore on the cliffs overlooking the Forbidding Sea. The harsh wind whipped his cloak and plastered his shirt to his chest with damp as snow gathered in his hair. Ahnariel dressed in a gown meant for warm spring, shivered beside him, gazing up at him with wide eyes full of misplaced trust.
“Another test?” She asked, hands rubbing her slender arms trying to use friction to summon warmth. “Is it not enough that I carry the fire?”
He gazed down at the treacherous rocks and frothing sea below. He waited for something inside him to crack open. To stop him. Some profound feeling of wrongness. He had raised this girl from infancy, given her the childhood denied him. Should he not then feel love towards her? These could be her last moments…and she was family. The blood of his sleeping mother ran in her veins.
“It isn’t enough. The enemy is clever, Ahnariel and has seduced your sister Anya. She carries the fire too so you must not only carry it…but wield it.” He turned to her, to look at the face so like his mother’s. “This I cannot teach you. It is simply what you must do.”
He drew in a breath around the numb weight that sat heavy in his chest. “If you trust and love me, you will jump.”
Her eyes widened in horror and she shook her head. “I…I’ll die,” she breathed, features crumpled from the perceived betrayal. What happened after the fall would determine whether it was betrayal or not thus he found himself unmoved.
“It is as you insist,” he muttered bitterly. “I took you to raise. I am…more a father to you than your sire. You must then trust me when I say your nature will save you,” he said, nearly spitting the words.
If she failed, so did a great deal of his plans but he could not say it would bring the same grief as her success would. Plans could be amended but he could not change the nature of his own imprisonment in mortal flesh. Should she succeed…she would have what he so desperately wanted for himself.
She looked pale and frightened, a small mortal thing, dust in the wind, temporary and fleeting. He watched her struggle with the impossible…her desire to please him warring with self preservation. This is where love fails, he thought with vile satisfaction. When asked to prove her devotion, she would turn tail and force his hand.
Her lips thinned and she looked over the edge. He could see her pulse jump wildly at the slender column of her throat as if her very being rebelled against his command. Her gaze held his as he awaited her predictable refusal.
Ahnariel smiled wanly at him, a tear snaking down her bloodlessly pale cheek. She said nothing as she stepped off the edge of the cliff.
Tristan turned his back, unable to watch her fall. He wouldn’t hear her body break on the rocks or her cry should she make one over the rush of the waves.
The snow had stopped falling and the full moon broke through the gray. For a moment the dead landscape glittered in the pale light before all was eclipsed by a massive shadow.
Tristan smiled and would ponder the relief he felt another day.
Nothing more swiftly displays the measure of a man more than tragedy and horror. There were many roads Aronsen Dracone could have taken to avoid his fate. None would have called him a coward given the total destruction of his House and the grisly deaths of his family. If he had been overcome with grief and fear…or driven mad by rage…if he had given in to mortal terror and fled, none could have faulted him for this. It was what many survivors did as they were left numb to sift through the ashes of their lives and legacies.
But curses are strange things and what feeds them bears their strange fruit. Because Aronsen Dracone was a good, brave man whose golden heart beat with the drum of righteousness, he went to war instead. And because Aronsen did this, he was slain by his family’s enemy. Yet it was the beauty of his soul and the magic in his blood that compelled Nycassia Shadowglade to spare him a true death. The strange possessiveness that welled up inside her was born from the feeling she had being near him. The sheer goodness of his nature and the wild magic inside him called to the very same in her. And when she brought him over the gray threshold of death, the vile force that reanimated her sunk her magic into him through the bond of their blood.
The curse between their houses was fed and the fruit it would bear would not be made complete for sixteen years. Nycassia being Aronsen’s sire ensured her half sister Anya would feel the same connection. Like always called to like.
In another world, another life, Nycassia knew she would have loved Aronsen Dracone. She was certain of this the moment she saw him. The bitter sadness of it cut through the veil of the Scourge’s control as if it might shatter it. In some way, she was glad it didn’t. To not get to experience the love she knew could be there were she not a monster of circumstance was a pain too great to bear.
Only when she was near Aronsen did Nycassia feel any semblance of her own will within her mind. Without him, it was a dull, numb haze, a pleasant opiate for her consciousness that she sank into with little hope for resistance. He gallantly presented himself in front of what remained of her father, bowing before Astalon’s suspended, reanimated corpse. She gazed down at Aronsen, willing him to rise, but she said nothing. They wouldn’t remain here much longer. Soon, they would be taken elsewhere, made to participate in the slaughter of the living.
“Idiot child!” Astalon snarled at her. “You were to kill him. You have disobeyed me, Nycassia,” he said in a low voice that had sent cold fear through her in childhood. It was merely a thin spirit of anxiety that needled in her mind. He could do nothing to her now. The worst had already befallen here and there was no degradation he could conjure that could cause her pain.
“Disobey?” she asked lightly, canting her head with a little, crooked smile curling her lips. “You are no longer my master, Father. I serve another. You saw to that,” she told him.
It didn’t feel freeing. It felt simply true. And empty.
“Aronsen Dracone is mine,” she hissed at her sneering father as her hand dropped to Aronsen’s shoulder, fingers curling over the ball of it, her grip far harsher than she intended. “And no force may alter this. To kill him would have been a waste for he will make a fine champion for the Scourge.”
It was a foul thing to say and had slid past her lips without her willing it to. Another empty truth that left her feeling hollow. This was not a fate meant for him. Everything about it felt wrong. But there was no outlet for this rage.
“Get up,” she commanded him sharply. “Do not kneel for this betrayer,” she said more harshly than she intended. Aronsen should only be spoken to with warmth, softness. She couldn’t reach those parts of herself anymore. “Rise. You are too fine and true and he is not fit to lick your boots.” If only she could summon the rage and grief. All she had were these words of mild reproach for the horror her father had committed against her, her mother, her sisters. Against Aronsen.
The brutal machinations of the Scourge erased their shared, bitter history. They were no longer enemies. They served the same master. She kept him close to her at all times, unable to bear his absence even for a moment. She took to the field of battle with him, though she was no warrior. Nycassia found she was a very efficient killer now and felt no danger with his blade defending her. After bloody victories, she would wonder if love could truly exist between them as they were. Didn’t it feel like love? This desire, this need, what other mask could it wear?
But too flagrantly did she act of her own will. While Aronsen’s fate would have been the same whether she had decided or those who commanded her decided, what she had done would not go unpunished. The Blood Prince who had made her could feel the deep, abiding…affection…Nycassia held for her champion. Affection could not exist in the ranks of the Scourge. She could not be destroyed for bargains were made through magic that went beyond his authority, but she could be tortured.
When the Prince’s thralls came for Nycassia, Aronsen would not allow it. He had sworn to protect and defend her…and this is what he did, despite her begging him to stop, that he would be punished too. It seemed all the world and fate itself deemed these two that should have been lovers would never be together.
It took ten of them to subdue Aronsen. They tore Nycassia from the protection of his arms and dragged her away to be chained and muzzled like a dog, starved until she was mindless. He would not see her for many weeks and in the intervening hours, he was tortured ruthlessly in an attempt to break his spirit. The things done to him would haunt him for the rest of his existence, but his golden spirit would not yield, not even under the worst, most unspeakable violations of his flesh. Not even after the horrors they forced him to commit.
It was two months later in the Western Plaguelands that he saw her. The wild spill of her bloody curls was frayed and ragged and her eyes were animal and wild, filled with only hunger and rage. She had been starved to the point it had made her a mindless revenant. In his time as a champion of the Blood Prince, he had seen many driven to this state. There was no returning from it. They held her chained and leashed like a rabid animal to be unleashed on the living. That had not even seen fit to arm her. If she was killed by the living, torn to pieces by paladins and their Light, this was not a breach of the bargain. It was simply a loophole, a neat and tidy way to punish Astalon Shadowglade’s unending hubris.
Aronsen didn’t see her fall but he found her on the blood soaked remains of the battlefield. He knew she was to be left there, to be destroyed, picked apart by vultures, consciousness aware of everything. Nycassia had been cut down, her pale skin pierced with arrows. She lay on her back, crimson eyes fixed on the slate gray sky, watching the billows of black smoke like drifting clouds. Only when he said her name did she look at him.
After months of mindlessness and a fog of agonizing hunger, the sight of him, the sound and timbre of his voice brought the spark of her back. She smiled to see him, filled with peace and relief. She could die now, she thought. True death. She only wished she could take him with her. Her body would not obey her command to move, too injured and too weak. She desperately wanted to touch him. It could only be impossible love she felt for her House’s great enemy. The sun broke through the smoke and clouds to light his face and it was too beautiful to bear. Bloody tears slid down her cheeks.
“You do it,” she told him, her voice like the rustling of dead leaves in the wind. “You end me. Send me to the gilded halls of my ancestors. I want your face to be the last I see.”
And though it put him in grave danger, he did not honor her request. He saw that she was herself and that she hadn’t earned the things that had happened to her. He knew her. And with this perfect understanding and the vow he made, he healed her with his golden Light, something that he should not have been able to do. But curses often drive the impossible and his spirit hadn’t been broken despite the efforts to do so.
Aronsen would be punished for this, but spared so that he could continue to be a devastating weapon and source of endless, cruel amusement.
And now, as he sat with Leonardo while Seralah fussed over him, jabbing him with long, silver needles for some reason, he could feel the familiar tug on his spirit. The magic that had raised him in undeath, the spark of the familiar. His sire was in the castle.
Writer's note: This summary highlights writing inspired but not strictly from or in the WoW. Think of our lore... jumping into a different dimension. Transforming. Becoming something new. Included below are most of the Dracone family with a bunch of hot celebrity fc gifs just because.
This is written simply and is a lot to read at once... more of a reference for the books we are writing with all of this expanded into a true story. This Dracone lore is only half of the equation.
The Dracone's Story...
“Our Roots Will Not Burn”
The Dracone family had and lost everything over seven thousand years. Once housing a powerful academy of forbidden magic in their impressive castle, all their knowledge had been slowly outlawed as their strictly matriarchal house rose to power. Set for royal rule which never came, they became relentless enemies of House Shadowglade but allies of others. Their coffers were overflowing, their armories feared and their sons and daughters coveted. Most of their history was methodically erased by Magistrates concerned about rumors the Castle harbored a great wizard with the power of manifestation magic which threatened their strict class and patriarchal hierarchies. Unwilling to let them rise to power again, their family line is considered dead with no major political influence after the great massacre during the scourge wars.
(castle painting by Ruth Sanderson)
Their incredible castle of wonders remains hidden in the mountains, run by no servants or staff but a mysterious sentience that permeates every surface. Pure arcane magic combining manifestation, illusion and chronomancy creates an unforgettable experience for guest and resident alike. There is just one rule for the castle many do not obey: Don't be rude.
The Dreamer / Manus / Endal Dracone Reborn / Wizard of Dreams
Once a powerful dragon from the Black Dragonflight, he was incubated next to the daughter of his enemy and both eggs were born together as diatomic souls. Their magic in fragile balance soon found them at odds with the world as their power and love were inseparable. A mysterious event left Manus stabbed by his soulmate for unknown reasons and pushed into a small mountain pond. After he emerged heartbroken and confused, Manus discovered he had incredible powers of pure manifestation but he was no longer in Azeroth, nor could he come back. The Dreamer crafted his own dimension through this portal to create worlds, gods and universes in timeless space.
He became many beings as his imagination stretched realities, always looking for answers he would never find in his own mind no matter how many civilizations he invented. None could tell him why she betrayed and violently separated him from their world. The madness of this and never finding happiness in any reality sent him into a deep depression. Planets crumbled into chaos, destruction rotted across his creations.
When he laid down next to the pond once again he sank into the earth and a tree sprouted from his chest. The roots grew slowly into the water and rooted in Azeroth. Manus woke and realized he could channel his magic through the portal even if he could not travel through. He saw a chance to find the answers he always dreamed about.
The castle was conjured brick by brick, rapidly until the impressive stronghold became a formidable shadow high in the mountain pass. But it was cold and empty of life. This he could not conjure.
Manus lured a beautiful but miserable woman from the edge of where his magic could reach at the front gates. The peasant girl followed danger boldly, afraid but strong. He was intrigued by her intellect and gave her a goblet of wine with his blood. She fainted after drinking it and woke with long black hair to her ankles. Magic flowed through her in tempests of enlightenment. The castle accommodated all her desires and ambitions with eager adoration. Manus gave powers to Vivian Dracone to start a bloodline with endless, effortless resources. Her biggest problem suddenly became discretion.
Afraid she would be attacked for these riches, Vivian kept the secrets of the castle to her beloved friends. They joined her for company and to share the magic, eventually evolving it into an academy of teaching. Vowing never to lose the woven connection between them, a matriarchal bloodline was established when Vivian shared her blood. Fathers were drifters and adventurers until noble houses eager to link their family lines in any way offered House Dracone heavy political power among other elves.
For seven thousand years the Dracones flourished as a center of magic and appreciation of the arts. The castle was seen as a wonder but not indefensible. Manifestation magic brutally disposed of anything disturbing the peace of the inhabitants.
Until one of the inhabitants was Endal. Men were not normally married into House Dracone but political pressures placed Eve Dracone as his bride. He took her name and bullied her to let him lead their family.
Manus did not approve of this wicked man and was about to dispose of him until Eve asked Manus for a bargain. Unable to resist a chance into the unknown, he agreed. She asked Manus as her husband instructed for control over the castle like a master over a slave. For Endal alone. In exchange Eve would visit Manus each night in his realm of the Dreamer.
Saddened by Eve's treachery against herself most of all, Manus agreed and pulled Eve from the pond into his world. There she found a soul she loved but too big for hers to fill. His quest was a mythical madman's, over-questioned to a pulp. She could not fulfill a god's lost love. But she did find herself in this place, and a deep horror of perspective for what she had done.
Eve and Endal had seven children which they raised for royal rule. Endal's ambitions were endless and he abused his eldest son Aronsen, a beautiful and coveted champion as a bargaining chip for anything he desired. He threatened Eve with everything she loved and he won every time. His eldest daughter Nesnora, twin of Aronsen he feared as her magic attunement became skilled from obsessive practice. Endal admired ambition and her abilities so her success aligned with his own.
Endal became worse over time as Eve was gone for longer evenings. She couldn't bear to watch and her absence made Endal more violent. Manus become so enraged at this binding contract that he gave Eve a son, one of his making in the Dreamer's world. Leonardo was born as a musing of a god and emerged wet from a pond held in his mother's arms. Eve treasured Leonardo the most of all her children. She never put him near Endal. He was raised as their cousin, one of her sister's children.
Realizing he could not attack Endal directly but finding other means, Manus slowly drove Endal mad until he locked himself in a tower. Eve could not break his magic seal on the door when she decided to kill him herself. So she called on Manus for one last bargain.
The devil always answers and Manus played his part, agreeing to give her the magic of manifestation but at a price... she would remain as her manifestation forever to serve only House Dracone as a sentinel in atonement.
Eve made herself into a flock of crows and flew up in a spiral around the locked tower. At the window blocked by stones, Eve frenzied the clay bonds between rock until her beaks were bloody from boring a hole to the other side. She tore into Endal's belly as he offered no resistance, laying on the bed already half dead from delusion. His flesh fed her endless appetite for revenge and with it the last control he had over the castle.
Eve Dracone
Current status: A magical flock of crows
Nesnora and her siblings did not know what happened to their mother but they knew crows started following them around protectively. Feeling they were somehow connected, the children eagerly clung to this fairytale as some kind of answer. Nesnora became the lead of House Dracone with the passing of her parents and war followed shortly after.
Scourge Invasion
Nesnora led House Dracone to defend the castle using a dangerous combination of magic she wielded to the protest of the castle itself, Manus. He warned her he would not be able to protect them if she failed, since his magic would interfere with hers during battle. Confident she could succeed, she found herself tricked by House Shadowglade during the attack and almost her entire family was massacred. Unable to save their lives and furious that Nesnora betrayed his protections, Manus punished her by banishing her to the seas as a huge, powerful mermaid serpent. She was joined by her slain sisters, now reborn as shells of their former beings as fellow mermaids feral for flesh. Nesnora's punishment was watching her own sisters fall further away from their humanity as they preyed on sailors at sea.
She finally was released of her punishment by promising Manus she would bring Nycassia Shadowglade, a vampire and enemy of House Dracone that haunted their shores to him. Unable to resist her heart, Nesnora imprisoned Nycassia in the Castle but refused to give her to Manus.
Nesnora Dracone
Current status: Alive by magic... limits unknown.
Her brothers fought but were not the focus of the attack since they were not powerful mages like their sisters. This saved them, and Heathcliff, Aronsen and Leonardo went off to join the greater war immediately to find revenge and justice for their family massacre.
Black roses with purple arcane magic grew abundantly during this battle wherever Dracone blood spilled. Covered in roses, the Castle became a living macabre monument to this great loss of life.
It sat unoccupied for over a decade, vacant and mostly a tomb. Manus went slowly more mad from this and decided he needed to find a way to free himself, to find his lost love and become a mortal so he may finally die. To do this, a Dreamer would need to take his place. They would have to do this willingly, to allow him to leave. He would have to pick someone he felt would be a good replacement for this mind-bending change. No one was suitable for this, no one with the heart for such responsibility.
Until Heathcliff Dracone came home after the wars.
Repelled by most magic, the broken man returned from war as an undead resurrection. Saved by Kazmir Dawnfire, a man from his past that held an unwanted crush on him for years, Heathcliff was saved from the scourge and traveled back to his homeland. When he entered the Castle, Manus appeared in the foyer with a deal like a devil. Needing his replacement to fulfill this role properly, he offered an exchange, a test of will to prove Heathcliff could love like a great and terrible god would need to as a Dreamer.
He offered him control to command the Castle at his will, to use the magic of manifestation for his pleasure. He would inherit all the riches and titles of House Dracone. Power would be granted when he pleased. He would rule over any other hierarchal claim to the house. And finally, a magic ring lost from his wedding would be given back to him. This powerful ring replayed a memory of his wedding night he could live inside like it was real for ten minutes at a time. Mourning his dead wife and desperate for connection, Heathcliff agreed to all these riches. The price was simple... if Heathcliff fell in love, he would take the place of The Dreamer and Manus would be freed. The horror of this was not lost on Heathcliff: once the Dreamer switched, everything Manus created in his dream would perish. An infinite amount of worlds and souls would be lost. Gambling that he would never find such a great and terrible love as an undead, Heathcliff agreed this was a good deal and became Lord of House Dracone.
Dr. Heathcliff Endal Dracone
Current status: Undead, Lord of House Dracone
Heathcliff struggled with the reality of his own existence procured by magical necromantic powers and continued to feel upset by this. Obsessed with finding a new purpose other than love, he opened up a lab dedicated to the sciences with the goal to find a cure for the elven arcane addiction. These "wretched" were held with deep compassion by Heathcliff and he became one of the few people in power to want to help anyone that came to him. Taking on extreme cases, his methods were dangerous and dubiously helpful depending on perspective.
His focus on work was his only obsession until loneliness lured him to be around others in bars and lounges. He lived on empty spoonfuls of lust and romance this way, safe from falling in love until he went to a Halloween party and Lillandyr Shadowglade threw an ashtray at his head. Intrigued, this sparked a fifteen year long romance of resistance and deeply intense denial. Even without fully acknowledging his truths, Heathcliff found himself the happiest he had ever been whenever he was in her company. Lillandyr had secrets of her own and pretended she had a fake husband to hurt him and put distance between them. Heathcliff tried a brief affair with his new lab assistant, Seralah Bloodhaven, during this time. Ultimately, Seralah rejected his advances for marriage to a man named Rhuen.
His deal with Manus ever in his mind, Heathcliff found horror that he considered his own heart over those of countless Manus created. Also worried becoming a Dreamer would break Lillandyr's, he continued his scampy ways until there was no denying their bond, even if it made him a monster. Now he waits with complex emotions about his selfishness and this secret weighing between them, likely to burst since they became engaged to marry and Manus told him time for him on Azeroth was ending.
His brothers returned home as vampires, formerly part of a San'layn faction controlled by the scourge. Freed from their mental bindings, they reunited with Heathcliff as the only occupants of the Castle.
Aronsen Dracone
Current status: Undead vampire
Misunderstood his entire life and even after death, Aronsen returned to House Dracone after a complex entanglement during the wars with House Shadowglade. After falling in battle, he was captured in secret during his recovery by the minions of Astalon Shadowglade. Nycassia Shadowglade sired Aronsen to become a vampire and he agreed to become her champion to save himself and something he saw within the heart of his enemy.
Plagued by what he did under the San'layn and will of House Shadowglade during the wars, Aronsen was convinced he was nothing more than a brute.
Spending time hunting the Ghostlands for cultists and annoying Heathcliff for entertainment, Aronsen became quite settled into the Castle as a dangerous inhabitant.
He became magically mind linked to Lillandyr when she panicked protecting herself from his intended attack on her when she was traveling for the first time to the Castle. This forced, extreme mutual understanding briefly drove them both mad but then settled into a powerful, indescribable bond of loyalty and love.
When Heathcliff employed an unusual assistant in his lab named Seralah Bloodhaven, Aronsen fell in love again and became enchanted with the presence of this stranger over the years from a distance. Meanwhile, Seralah Bloodhaven got married after a brief affair with her employer Heathcliff turned disappointing.
Seeing his chance, Aronsen seduced the unhappy bride in her bedchamber igniting their affair and aligning with her disillusion of her new husband Rhuen's abuse.
Aronsen and Seralah now both live in the Castle and are engaged to be married. Complications, however, are inevitable with his sister Nesnora bringing his sire Nycassia to the Castle. There are further mysteries about Aronsen's real father, who might not be Endal Dracone as he discovers powerful magic within him that cannot be explained.
Roval'Morn Duskwillow Dracone
Current status: Alive
Roval was born from a brief encounter between Heathcliff and Mira Starsorrow right before the war. Not knowing the mysterious dark stranger she had a passionate union with at a masquerade, Mira became a mother without knowing who the father of her child was. Given to another family to be raised with an education, Roval flourished as a skilled Spellbreaker, earning the gaze of Kazmir Dawnfire who became obsessed with this young man that looked like his former heart's desire, Heathcliff.
He mentored Roval and used his trust to perform dangerous, violating Spellbreaker magic against Dawnfire's enemies. This plan crashed to a halt when Dawnfire reached too far and abducted Leonardo Dracone and Seralah Bloodhaven while they were returning by carriage to the Castle.
After a bloody misunderstanding, Roval was attacked by Aronsen as he tried to flee Dawnfire's estate with Seralah. Heathcliff and Lillandyr became alerted by Eve of family danger and encountered Roval nearly dead on the road. The doctor raced back to his lab to save Roval's life while Lillandyr went with a temporary manifestation of Manus to Dawnfire's estate to save Leonardo.
Now an overwhelmed resident of Castle Dracone, Roval is settling in with his mother Mira in this complicated new family. Taking after his precocious father, he's fallen in love with the spirit (Lottie) that follows Seralah Duskhaven who he communicates with in creative ways.
Leonardo Dracone
Current status: Undead vampire
Leonardo is both an opportunistic antagonist to his own family as well as their proud defender. A ruthless assassin wielding powerful shadow magic, Leonardo embraces his monstrous side as a means to an end for everything and everyone he loves. Suspicious of Lillandyr Shadowglade and obsessed with their parallels, he finds himself both at odds and at her mercy as he secretly tries to seduce her.
Simultaneously, he tried tricking Mira into thinking he was Roval's father. This failed miserably when Lillandyr attacked Leonardo in front of the family at a holiday gathering, nearly killing him.
Leonardo is currently paralyzed in Heathcliff's lab at the mercy of Seralah Bloodhaven. He is forced to witness this as a spirit outside his body, guided by Lottie and a version of himself in the future.
More to come...
...including mysteries unfolding with House Shadowglade and the inevitable release of Manus into the world as Heathcliff falls deeper in love.
The winds of the North wailed like grieving widows through the icy crags and frozen peaks when Nycassia opened her eyes after her brutal death and saw the deal with the devil her father had made.
Her corpse had been cleaned of the evidence of her demise. The pond weeds had been pulled from her hair, her ruby curls perfectly quoiffed and arranged, the arrows yanked from her back, every violent puncture in her ivory flesh stitched to closed perfection with silver thread. The water still sloshed in her lungs along with the crimson rust of her blood, this she would have to expel on her own. Her ruined, sodden gown had been stripped away, replaced by buttery, wine colored silk and a high, stiff collar. She should have been cold. Should have been alarmed she did not need to breathe, but Nycassia felt only ambivalence, an apathy towards these things so extreme that she couldn’t be sure if it caused discomfort or not.
Her mind became a realm of perfect peace. None of the passions she had in life burned in her now. Her soul felt as empty and cold as the frigid valleys outside the dark temple. Not a worry troubled her, no sense of unease. She stared up at the dark cathedral ceiling, the end of it swallowed by shadow, as cold hands tugged at her, sliding jewelry on her wrists and fingers.
She felt like a little, porcelain doll, empty, unable to move for herself, something frivolous and without meaning. Toyed with. Somewhere, dimly and deep within herself, she knew this should have caused indignation and outrage, but Nycassia couldn’t muster these things.
Finally, the grim handmaidens finished with her and Nycassia sat up, legs hanging off the stone altar she rested upon. Dangling in front of her by his chained wrists was her father. Half…of her father. Her gaze trailed down his naked chest to his waist…and there was no more save shredded ribbons of bloody viscera and shriveled loops of intestine. He stared at her, face a rictus of fury, the azure witch lights of his eyes blazing and casting flicking shadows over his angular face.
Nycassia stood. There was no horror. No grief. She could not summon a single emotion for the ruined mess of her father. The Scourge honored their bargain, just not the way he would have liked and she thought it had been foolish of him not to be more specific in his terms.
When she tried to speak, she found herself suddenly retching, pond water and old, clotted blood splashing out of her in a great, foul font. Her body rejected its formal mortality violently. The pain was tremendous but relished. It was feeling SOMETHING after all. She writhed and screamed and endured the handmaidens again who cleaned her of her own filth and helped her to her feet.
“Father,” she said, voice rasping like something dragged up from the grave, body thrumming with strange, new sensations.
At first, he said nothing, as if his rage and the sting of perceived betrayal choked him silent. But then his treacherous words slithered out of his frozen lips. “The blood of our enemy drenches our House’s hands…well…all but yours.”
Nycassia was not sure what he meant. But at the thought of blood, some great, terrible hunger rose up like a beast inside her. She swore she could FEEL the warm, wet pulse of living flesh near by. Her mouth filled with drool and her head swam.
As saliva slicked her chin, dripping down uncontrollably, her father continued to speak, dead voice filled with venom, rage and hate.
“The champion of our enemy is in the chamber of this temple, left barely alive to slake your thirst. You’ll destroy the very best of them. Assure them of their defeat,” Astalon said. “You must do it…because it has been denied me,” he spat.
She felt no sorrow at her father’s humiliation. There was some perverse joy in it that did not originate within herself. Nycassia found herself smiling all the same. She couldn’t hear what he was saying any more. It didn’t matter that she disappointed him. She was no longer his daughter. She had only one affiliation. Nycassia didn’t need to be told where House Dracone’s champion and heir was being kept. She could smell his blood, feel it call to her. Being awakened to her new hunger, she found herself mindlessly ravenous.
Nycassia may not have had the fire of the Mother Tree, but she had enough of the spark that this Old Magic could rule over all, as if it was some universal decree. The control of the Scourge over Nycassia’s mind dimmed when she looked down at Aronsen Dracone.
Her crimson gaze moved over his face, the angular perfection of it, the generous mouth and heavy brow. Even her hunger was quiet despite seeing his blood, smelling it. Where it pooled on the stoned floor, vines rose and twisted, growing from the vitae. Unconscious, he merely looked like a fallen angel sleeping, his ink black hair fanned out over the cold floor.
How was she to destroy something so beautiful? There was no internal conflict. The fire in her blood called to the magic in his. She obeyed only the will of the Mother Tree.
Aronsen Dracone was dying. Nycassia knew there was no way to save his mortal life, but she felt she could make him what she was and save him this way instead. To keep him. It was an odd, intense compulsion and not wholly welcome except…it was feeling something through the thick, numb haze that clouded her thoughts and smothered every emotion in ice and hunger.
She lowered herself to the floor, on her knees, smoothing his hair back from his face. “I will give you a beautiful death,” she promised, head swimming with the force of her appetite.
Nycassia always kept her promises. She lay atop his prone body and drank from his throat, touching him gently, pausing only to murmur soothing words all sweet as honey. And when his last breath slid past his lips, she bit down on her bottom lip and slanted her mouth over his until he tasted her blood and the magic was complete.
She waited for him to open his eyes, his head pulled into her lap. Nycassia smiled down at him when he looked up at her. She knew he would be docile for the same influence in her was now in him. She didn’t need to fear his reprisal or rage, he would not be able to act on either, if he could feel them at all.
“I have saved you,” she murmured to him.
“Saved me?” He wondered, heavy brow furrowed.
Nycassia nodded. “I am no warrior. I need you to protect me. Keep me safe,” she told him.
But some things were beyond her control and she had acted far too rashly under her own will. Such things could not go unpunished.
