#ielia

[rayesworld]

So I have been poking about on Artbreeder and made my lovely OCs Ielia (Lily) Snow and Ilithian Shadowthane. I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Dragon Dancer Chapter 11: Ouroboros

The door vanished. The cavern returned to darkness, the only glow coming from the egg that contained the thrashing dragon. My fate was sealed. Hanging my head, I burst into tears. All the emotion I'd held back since I left Cassell came pouring out of me. “I don’t want to die…” I wailed.

The dragon egg splintered with a loud pop. The dragon had kicked its hindlegs and was forcing its way out, fluid pouring out from the cracks. It was staring at me through the translucent shell. It was brilliant blue, about the size of a horse with bright yellow eyes and wings for arms. Those powerful legs were driving its escape from the egg to be born. It was beautiful.

I had wanted to actually see a dragon, never thinking it would be the last thing I would ever see. The egg tipped over and shattered. The creature fell to its back, kicking helplessly. Its wings were pinned underneath its body and it couldn’t roll over. It let out a loud distressed screech. 

I looked at my twisted blackened hands. My pain had stopped. It seemed that closing the door had halted the progression of my illness. I looked back towards where it had been but there were no singing statues and no images. There didn’t seem to be any way to get out of this place.

And then there was the bomb.  I didn’t know how much time I had, but it couldn’t be much. The intention was to kill this dragon egg. I watched the hatchling squirming as it hissed and kicked, still wet with fluid and now dirty with gravel and dust.

I didn’t know any dragon language other than what I’d just learned. So that was what I decided to use, repeating just those three words. The Eternal Cycle, the Unity of all Things, and Self-Sufficiency. The creature's rapid breathing slowed. It's nostrils took in my scent.

The room suddenly brightened.

I looked up at a new door, one much larger than the one I’d passed through to get here. It towered like a monolith in the space, so blinding I had to shield my eyes. My heartbeat quickened. I laughed. I’d found a way out.

 Heedless of the danger, I staggered up to the baby dragon and shoved it as hard as I could. The momentum helped it roll over and it stumbled upright, flailing its wings to clumsily lurch forward. I knew what I’d been told: That dragons were dangerous. They had to be stopped. They had to be killed. I’d also just been told the same thing about me. If I didn’t believe that about myself, then I couldn’t believe that about the dragon hatchling either.

The explosive device began to make a loud uninterrupted beep.

I coaxed the dragon hatchling to follow me and it did, staggering on the natural bends in its wings, using them as hands. 

Progress was agonizingly slow, but when I reached the door, I stopped. Standing on the other side was my ethereal twin. She held out her hand to me. When I reached through to her, for the first time, I felt the pressure and the warmth of her fingers as they curled around and grasped my wrist.  She pulled me across the threshold, into the light.

In an instant, I saw a grey, misty landscape around me. The ground was hard like concrete and frozen. I wrapped my arms about myself, shivering. I was surrounded by an ancient city with buildings as large as mountains and crumbling towers with tops that disappeared into the thick clouds.

Behind me, the dragon hatchling stumbled through. The door vanished.

I watched my friend stand next to the young dragon, one hand resting on its neck. She was dressed in a simple linen gown and leather sandals. For a moment we stared at each other, unsure of what to do or say.

I stepped forward.  She walked over to embrace me. Looking into her eyes was like looking into a mirror. We pressed our hands together, comparing the length of our fingers. Besides Robbie and Mom, this person, this ghostly image had always been my companion and, finally, I could feel her. She was real and no longer a shadow.

She looked at me, sympathy in her eyes. “Come this way. I’ll take you to someone who can help you.”

“How come… how come I can see you in all colors and… how come… I can hear you? And I… I can touch you?” My voice is shaking with emotion.

“Because of where we are. This is the only place we can meet like this.” Her voice -- she even sounded like me, but her speech had a heavy accent I couldn’t place. She didn’t enunciate her consonants. ‘Because’ sounded like ‘ecause. ‘Place’ sounded more like ‘lace. ‘Meet’ like ‘eet.

"What is this place? Who are you?” 

I follow her gaze to the distant jagged peaks and, peering from the ruined towers, glowing eyes open and massive hulks lift up triangular heads, their wings spreading.

“This is the Nibelungen, the parallel space created by dragons. In your world, they call it the Death Realm. In my world, it’s called the Field of Gods.”

Around us, the eyes in the distance followed, watching me pass through the tilted buildings over cracked and crumbling stone roads. They fluttered from hill to hill, jostling for position, like birds on a wire. And like birds on a wire, there seemed to be no end to them.

“Don’t be afraid.” She squeezed my arm. “It’s okay so long as I am with you.”

I asked again. “Who are you?”

“I am you.” She took my hand in hers. “Only, I was born in another time and place.”

I followed her and the baby dragon followed us, letting out little honks, rapidly becoming adept at using the knobby claws on its wing knuckles as feet. 

“What’s your name?” I asked. “What’s my name?”

“I don’t know your name.” She said. “My mother gave me a name. Ielia. But your name may have been different.”

“Oh… Ielia… can I have that name?” 

She stopped and looked at me. “You could take my name. But I’m taking you to see your father. Your real father. And he can name you. I think that could be better.”

“My father?” I covered my mouth with my hands. My head is ringing with emotion. “He’s here?”

“Yes. But first there’s something you need to know.”

Ielia points to the pendant on my necklace. “That is a dragon’s scale that belongs to our father. If we return it to him, he might heal you, so you won’t have to worry about turning into a monster.” 

I touched my hand to my chest where my pendant still rested, “I’ve been carrying a dragon’s scale around this whole time?”

Ielia slowly explained to me. “Yes. It’s how we met. Dragon’s scales have great power. And this scale is like a window to another time and another place. It’s how I’m able to see you and you’re able to see me even though we are separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles. I first met you, when you received it.”

I sighed in amazement. “Thousands of years?” 

In the distance, a dragon roared. It was like a cross between a trumpeting of an elephant and the roar of a jet engine. I flinched. The young dragon screeched in return.

“They won’t hurt us for now. But we don’t want to stay here.” She said. She turned to the young dragon hatchling and spoke to it gently in that language I now knew to be draconic. She looked at me and smiled. “Did you understand what I said?”

“You… you told it to stay.”

She nodded. “That’s right. You naturally understand this language even though you cannot speak it well.”

Gradually, we began to descend into a valley where a human sized village spread out on the shore of a river bed. 

“There was a word I spoke when I… attacked Isaac and his men. I thought that was my name. But Johann said it wasn’t. He said it was the name of my dragon gift.”

“That’s correct. The linguistic ability of dragons is called Speaking Spirit. By using certain words, spoken a certain way, they impose a law of nature on the land. It could be calling a wind, or controlling the earth, or making plants grow. It’s a way to impose their will on a space.”

“My Speaking Spirit… controls the weapon?”

She turned to me. “Far more than that. Your Speaking spirit imposes your law on light.”

We entered the desolate and empty streets of the abandoned village. The buildings were made of rough hewn stone and mud. The streets were bare dirt.

She led me to a house and opened the wooden door to a dusty kitchen with wooden tables, knocked over chairs, and a harp-like instrument in the corner.  

She then took me to an inner room. 

“This is … was your family house.” She let go of my hand, taking a step back.

“I lived… they lived here?” I looked around. Everything about it from the crocheted quilts to the bare utilitarian furniture was simple and handmade. But it looked like no one had lived here in years. “Where is everyone? Are they… are they all dead?”

“This village was not always here in Nibelungen.” She frowned, her brow knitting. “... it was dragged into Nibelungen.”

She clasped her hands together, struggling for a way to explain. “It might be better to show you.”

Books were open and piled on a large table. On the cover of one was the circle with the sun and moon on either side and the image of a serpent curved round, biting its tail, just like I’d seen in the ruins under the ocean off the Japanese shore.

She opened this book but the script was in a different language and I couldn’t read it. Drawing her finger down one page, she appeared to understand it.

She knew her name, her parents, her past. If anyone was the shadow, it was me.

She turned to a particular page. There was an image painted in natural inks. A white dragon’s head, peering down from the clouds upon a group of people. Its body stretched into the sky, into the sun. Before it stood a group of women with crowns on their heads.

She pointed to the group and looked at me, “Your mother was one of these women.”

Then she pointed to the dragon. “This is our father.” She stared at me, and I waited for more explanation.

“So… the story is real that… a long time ago people made themselves hybrids.”

She shifted on her feet. She spoke slowly, emphatically. “Yes. A long time ago, your mother was one of those people.” She pointed to the dragon and then pointed to the picture of the women and then pointed to me.

“How?” I asked. “If this was that long ago, why am I living now? How did I get here?”

Her eyes fall to my pendant. She pointed to it. “That was stolen. You see. Back then, people and dragons worked together, but, in your world, people turned on the dragons. The village was thrown into Nibelungen as punishment.”

“So everyone’s dead?” I said.

She nodded, chewing her lip.

“Why didn’t he kill me?”

“He couldn’t find you.” Her brown eyes stared into mine. “It’s hard to explain, but when someone goes forward in time, they disappear until they arrive at their destination. Your mother hid you for thousands of years. But you’re not hidden any more. If you return the scale, I can plead for you. Because in my world, we did not betray him.” 

I grabbed the book and I flipped through the pages looking for pictures. There was no sign of any conflict. The drawings only showed the dragon in radiant light. One depicted the dragon hovering over someone writing on parchments. One illustration showed a woman presenting a small gift in a jar followed by four pages of nothing but text before she appeared again with a child on her lap, the dragon hovering over it. 

I flipped to the back of the book. A full page panorama drawing showed rolling hills dotted with sheep, the valley and the town and the river. And in the center of it all, a large copper column with the dragon twisted into a figure eight around it, biting its tail.

“Do you think he’ll have mercy?”

She nodded. “Our father is not harsh like some other dragons. In fact, he….”

We were interrupted by an earth shaking roar. Ielia clung to me and pulled me down to the floor. What meager light that came through the window of this room suddenly went completely dark.

She pressed her finger to her lips. “Get under the bed.” She whispered.

No sooner had we taken shelter, a tremendous wind buffeted the village. The window shutters flapped and banged. The house creaked and groaned. But then the light returned and the wind died down.

She crawled out from under the bed and pulled me up. “Go! We need to get you to our father and fast!”

We ran through the empty village heading for the river. All the dragons we saw sitting on the peaks had taken flight. Like a flock of massive starlings they covered the entire sky in a breathtaking display. Their constant roar sounded more like the crashing thunder of a waterfall.

We reached a river bed that was filled with a layer of mist. Under the mist, ice was congealed at the surface while black water flowed beneath. 

“Jump in! You will sink like a stone. At the bottom is where our father lives.” 

The dragons in the sky suddenly parted to make way for something in the distance. It was coming fast, dark wings stretching from horizon to horizon, like a great thunderstorm. Ielia pushed me into the river.

A strong current dragged me under. The world went dark. I sank head first into the black. My chest ached and I began to convulse. Before I could suck in water, momentum shot me through the surface to land on a rocky floor.

Moaning and stinging from the rough fall, I turned to look about. I was right-side up in a cave. I slowed my breathing, shivering hard enough for water to fly from my hair. 

My twin leaped out of the water next, also gasping, but on her feet. She ran over to help me up. 

The wall in front of us split in two like the opening of giant shutters. A golden reptilian eye bigger than a house curved up over our heads. The body stretched farther than I could see. The scales reflected the light like mirrors, sparkled like diamonds, and projected rainbows in the air. In each scale, I saw a different version of my face at different times of my life. 

Awestruck, my companion fell to her knees. I followed suit, unsure of what to do. Its mouth had seized onto its own body. It’s throat rippled every time it swallowed.

My twin spoke a single word. “Father.”

Frozen, I could only stare, my eyes wide, breathing hard.

It exhaled, hissing through its nostrils, its breath lifting my hair.

I slowly took my pendant off from around my neck and placed it in front of the eye. It blinked, briefly plunging us into darkness.  Its growl rumbled through the ground, rattling the gravel. 

The dragon didn’t say anything to me. The scale levitated. My twin stood up. “Ouroboros, your scale has returned to you. I have returned to you. Please, have mercy on my friend. She was a baby when it was stolen. She needs your help.” She reached down and held up my twisted hand for him to see. 

“In her world, our language is dead, you have no influence. You are content and self-sufficient, yes. But would not this be a loss for you? The thought of my reality being the only one where humans sing the songs of Ouroboros. The only one where a child of Ouroboros survives… it's sad! Please… help her.”

I look at the gigantic eye, so cold and pitiless. 

In my mind, I heard a voice, deep and resonant. The dragon addressed me.

“In all of Infinite Reality, only one remains loyal to me. This Loyal One pleads for you. She asks that I do not erase you the same way as I erased the others from Infinite Reality.”

I started to shake. Erased? That empty village. The people who lived there were erased. The word in Draconic gave me the idea of something being wiped out, the same way one would wipe a stain off the countertop. Vanished.

He continued. “You were born from and for a depraved lust for power. How can you be called my child?”

I swallowed hard, my voice trembling. “I’m sorry about what happened. I just found out about this. All I want is to be able to enjoy my life. I just want to have friends and dance. I want to help people and make them happy.” The words tumbled out. “Please. I just want to live.”

”I didn’t ask to be born like this. I don’t want to be a monster. I just wanted to dance and make people happy. That’s all I want to do. That’s all I ever wanted to do.”

I covered my face with my blackened hands, crying. When I looked up again, the dragon was still looking at me, but I sensed a change. He was listening.

He spoke again. “The Humans of Your Reality sought to share my power with others to use it in a war against my kind and against me. They used the power I’d granted them to turn back against me and strike me! That was their happiness! They will not take kindly to your soft heart and will do everything in their power to turn you against me the same way they turned your family against me.”

It snorted, a strong putrid wind drifting from its sighs. When it spoke again, there was a conspiratorial note to its voice.

“However, I will be patient of my own will. My own kind will object. They too wish to benefit from my power. Even now they circle, wanting to hear a prophecy that will hand them victory over the humans and their Abominations.”

“But the rise and fall of civilizations are as certain as the rise and fall of the sun. Theirs are not exempt.”

The scale floated back to me and the chain settled around my neck. 

“I will accept you as my daughter. I will grant your wishes and give you my words to heal yourself and those like you. You have my permission to pass through the Gates of Nibelungen. Close your eyes, see where you want to go, and you will go there. Escape those who will pursue you. And pursue you they will! For I have seen the vision. You are standing on the Threshold of the Door between the world of humans and the world of dragons!”

“Only be mindful that I am watching you in all realities. I will see how true your words are. Do not betray me.”

“Now, listen to this Word.” The dragon spoke again and this time, my body ached as if I had a strong fever. I doubled over, my muscles pulling at my bones, my insides hot like a furnace. When the pain subsided, the scales on my hands were gone, my fingers were back to normal. 

"This word will reverse the spread of your corruption and corruption of others. You have my blessing. You will not die."

I stared in wonder at my hands. I was healed. I was okay.

His voice grew quieter. “Listen, my enemy comes. Quickly, take shelter under my jaw.”

Ielia took my hand and led me beneath the massive beast’s chin before another voice, loud like a horn, blasted into our ears.

“Where is the abomination? Bring it out. I will kill it!” The earth shook from a great collision. It must have been another dragon, even if I couldn’t see it. It spoke like a dragon and its shrieking was constant.

Ouroboros remained silent.

“You defy your King?!”

“Brother. How long it has been since we have spoken…”

The other dragon’s voice is high pitched with desperation. “I smell its disgusting scent. I feel its disgusting thought! Why do you hide it! This… abomination! It is the one to destroy me?”

“I have uttered no such prophecy…” was my father’s calm reply.

“Then I will destroy it?!” It demanded.

My father lapsed into a silence. Then he answered, a subtle hint of amusement creeping into his voice. “I have uttered no such prophecy.”

The response to his mocking answer was an enraged shrieking. The earth was shaking. “Tell me! Tell me the vision! Is there a future where I am king! How! How do I defeat the abominations!”

My kindred spirit holds my hand and pointed. A door had appeared under the shadow of his head. “Go.” She said.

“Will I ever see you again?” I asked.

She nodded and pointed to the necklace. “I will always be here to guide you. And I am guiding you now. Go!”

I took a deep breath and stepped into the door of light. Too late I realized that I hadn’t asked my father my name.

When the world returned, I was stunned to be in costume, on stage the night of my performance after the Dance of the Triumphant Dark King. The crowd was gasping in wonder. I looked to my right and saw myself! The person I was on that night did not notice me. That night I happily left the stage thinking I had wowed the crowd with my dancing. 

Shocked and confused, I bowed and left the stage as my current self, walking quickly out the opposite way, out the exit, kicking off my toe shoes and running into the frigid winter night.

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[hope-z]

. وعزيزٌ على العشاقِ طولَ غيابكَ بالأسى، ينادونَ أين استقرّت بالحبيب قافلة النوى.*💛 . الجمعة ٢٦ رجب - ندبة #iElia (at جنة الله على الأرض كربلاء المقدسة بين الحرمين الشريفين)