Breath of Fire: Of Dragons and Fairies.

Chapter One: Dragon in Human Form.

“Time turns but the pain remains, the dragon tries but tries in vain...”

There was darkness everywhere and nothing made sense, everything was hazy and clouded … the darkness was black as ink and darker than death. There was no sound or light just a dull ache. Then a flash came, and with it a loud crack, it illuminated everything and pushed the darkness back to reveal a planet that was torn and breaking even further. Pain came then and after it grief, sorrow and finally rage. Words sounded in the dark, “I love you”. More pain… and then, laughter… but unlike the words, the laughter brought back the rage and the madness. Another flash of light and explosive crack, then the planet, growing ever smaller, was now in a hundred pieces. He roared, letting his anger spill out into the soundless void of space.
Another crash, but that of breaking glass, came from the world around him; it felt like another time and place. Muffled and irritated voices were heard and a silenced yelp woke him from his nightmares, but he lay in bed calming his racing heart and listened to the commotion in his room.
“BUT IT’S MINE!” yelled Fenraes, a small fairy, as she came crashing through the closed yet unlocked door. The fairy, as you might expect, was small, but not as small as you would think. If she could ever stand still long enough to show you, she would be about the size of your forearm, from your elbow to your outstretched fingers. She had long brown hair, the color of fresh plowed earth, smooth as a flat stone and with a slight curl to it. Her hair was long… well for her race at least, it went down almost to her hips, about six inches in length and was tied in a pony tail, she was quite proud of her long hair. She was just the right amount of skinny, for she loved to eat, however she was not close to being fat, and she disliked the taste of meat… she weighed about 7 pounds. She wore a very non- “traditional fairy” outfit, for you would think she would wear leaves or grass… but no, she wore a vest with a miniscule shirt underneath and long pants with a miniaturized skirt over them. They were colored browns and greens with gold highlights around the edges, she said it reminded her of home when the sun came up. On her hands and feet were gloves and boots, respectively placed of course, though she had been known to switch them from time to time. On her boots, gloves, shoulders and in the middle of her chest were gems, the gems on her shoulders connected to the gem on her chest by small golden chains. The gems looked white in light and black in dark, and when she moved the gems changed to every color that man can see… and even some they can’t. Her ears were long, about the size of half your pinky finger and they heard what she wanted them to hear and nothing else. Her eyes were just the right size; they were deep… deep and brown, like milk chocolate had been turned into a shiny metal then placed into her eyes. She had a playful demeanor, even while sad, scared or sorrowful, she was always playful. Unless she was in a battle or otherwise serious situation she was very hyperactive. But there were some things that she never got bored of, like flowers… and donuts, and also her friend Kaiser. She liked Kaiser, he was quiet, but not serious, just quiet and thoughtful; he liked to joke with Fen. In fact it was into Kaiser’s room that she crashed into… and she had a donut in her hand… actually it was in both of her hands because of her size. Mmm, donuts…. Kaiser and donuts, two of her favorite things in one room; today was going to be a good day. But there was something important… ah yes, she was being chased, she couldn’t figure out why though. The donut was hers, it didn’t matter if this person was holding the donut in their hand and about to take a bite out of it… she had wanted it, so she took it.

As she rammed the door opened she looked around for a place to hide, the door continued its uninterrupted course until it was rudely interrupted by the wall. The door hit the wall with a bang and knocked down a picture that was hanging on said rude wall. Fen startled at the noise and, once again forgetting her “being pursued” state of being, she fluttered down to the picture lying on the floor and looked at the people in the picture. In her head she thought of their names, there was friend-happy-Kaiser in the middle with a big smile on his face; he was laughing. To the left of him were friend-joyful-Thetz; she too was laughing, and friend-funny-Niloc; he was red in the face but quite obviously laughing. Perched on top of Kaiser’s head she saw herself-Fenraes; she never stopped laughing. And last on the right was friend-serious-Enof; … He was not laughing.

Startling her from her thoughts was a large man, for every man was large to Fen, who came skidding to a stop right outside the door. He had the angry look of someone who had just had their donut stolen from them would have. Fen took one look at his face and did what was natural; she called up vines through the floor board to wrap up his legs. How, you may ask, did she do this? Well then I ask you: How do you move your fingers or legs? How do you see or digest? You just do, so how do fairies control nature… they just do, and in fact, that’s exactly what she did. The vines came up through the floor board and twisted around his leg up to his knee at unnatural speed, thus locking him in place and making him unable to come closer to Fen. Fen jump flew up to Kaiser’s desk where she set the donut down and proceeded to stick her tongue out at the man at the door… Now that she got a good look at him she didn’t actually know who he was… however by the way he yelled at her she got the idea that this might not have been the first time she had pilfered his donut. Seeing he could not move, the nameless man took out a slingshot and, with inhuman speed, fired three shots at Fen. With a yelp of surprise, fen threw an energy shield in front of herself. If you had the eyes of a fairy you would have noticed that the energy barrier she put up was the exact same color and intensity of the life force of the nature around her, it was multicolored to match the different auras of reds, browns, greens, and blues that the trees, grass and wind all have. And much like the aura of nature; Fen’s energy projections (for she could also make a fairy blade as well) were always changing color and shifting and bending the light in strange yet beautiful ways. The steel balls careened at Fen but luckily she got her barrier up in time, and as each one hit the shield it flew off in a random direction; one decided to hit the monitor of Kaiser’s computer and send it crashing to the ground. The next felt like the window might be a fun place to fly and it went straight through, with the cliché and extremely loud sound of breaking glass. The last ball was nicer though and thought to just hit the wall with a thud so as not to be of any trouble. Fen dropped her shield and looked around at the destruction of Kaiser’s room and was quite scared, and it looked like the slingshot man also had a look of “oh crap, oh crap, let’s get the heck out of here” on his face. Kaiser yawned and stretched, and that’s when Fen panicked, she grabbed the donut and flew out of the room as quickly as she could, pausing only briefly to untie the man from his viney entrapment. The man shook loose the vines and closed the door with a loud slamming bang.

Kaiser chuckled to himself and ran his hand through his hair as he got up and sat on the edge of his bed, he then shook his head and slapped his face to dispel the last remnants of his recurring nightmare. This nightmare memory was one he had been having for as long as he could remember, though it didn’t come every night for he was usually very diligent in not recalling memories of his home world. But today was different, not really wanting to but not resisting he revisited some of the memories of himself when he was young.

Kaiser looked up at his mother, she was very pretty and always wore a flowing white dress, she had long hair that was also remarkably white and as long and free flowing as her dress. Her eyes were a beautiful light purple, just like his brother’s eyes, whereas Kaiser’s eyes where the deep sapphire blue that his father had. His mother didn’t look like Kaiser though, she had long arms and legs that were pale and smooth, she didn’t have scales like Kaiser and his brother Eldritch had. Father had scales though; his were a metallic silvery blue, lighter in shade though from his eyes. Father was also considerably larger than Mother almost ten times her size, and he had wings whereas Mother did not. He also had sharp teeth and mother had sort of flat teeth. She didn’t have claws or a tail or spines or spikes anywhere; in fact she didn’t look anything like Kaiser or Eldritch at all. Sometimes Kaiser had seen his Father become small and smooth like his Mother, but usually he chose to stay in his birth form. Kaiser’s mother (though he didn’t know it at the time) looked like we might think of as a human, though she was far more noble and majestic, as well as more powerful than any human could ever be. She was one of those beings that time and space themselves bowed down to. His mother picked Kaiser up and spun him around while laughing, when she laid him down on the ground he came about to her knee. His teeth and claws were not sharp yet, and they wouldn’t be for a long time. In truth he was a short chubby little dragon with stubby horns and a huge grin on his face. Kaiser looked around for his brother Eldy, Eldritch was some yards away stalking a grasshopper patiently, and Kaiser watched and watched and watched as Eldy just sat there waiting, waiting for the perfect time to pounce. Kaiser grew bored of the waiting and ran over as fast as his little chubby legs could take him and dove at the grasshopper, which seeing Kaiser’s waddling run, easily jumped out of the way. Kaiser giggled as he saw Eldy’s annoyed face, so he decided to pounce on him too. The two brothers wrestled and laughed at each other as they tried to bite each other’s knobby little horns with stubby little teeth while kicking each other with chubby little legs. Kaiser actually had other brothers and sisters, but none were alive. As was common for a litter of dragon pups, seven or eight would be born at once while only two or three would survive. Kaiser looked around again as Eldy ran off looking for the escaped grasshopper, he saw his father, Ladon, though he never called his father by his name. Laying down Ladon was as tall as the trees that surrounded the meadow they were in. Ladon had his head rested on the ground and watched Kaiser with his large penetrating blue eyes, his breathing was long and slow, taking several minutes to inhale and then several to exhale. Kaiser saw his mother kneeling beside his father with her hand on his neck and a gentle smile on her face. Ladon smiled and blew at Kaiser, the resulting gust of wind knocked Kaiser over and rolling back a few feet, Kaiser whelped with glee and waddled toward his father, and with much effort and struggle succeeded in climbing up his father’s lip and onto his head which was about three times the size of Kaiser. Kaiser wrestled with his father’s long sharp horns until he felt tired and dozed off on his father’s head, the last thing he could remember was his mother cradling him in her arms and humming quietly to him as he fell back to sleep.

Kaiser snapped out of his reminiscence and got up to get ready for the new day. He smiled to himself as he remembered what he was like as a pup. Kaiser threw on a plain white shirt and changed out of his shorts and into a pair of long loose black pants, after that he put on his breastplate and over that his long black sleeveless vest. And last he donned his gauntlets, shin guards and shoes. He looked at himself in the full length mirror, he was not a huge man but neither was he small, he stood at about six feet five inches tall. He had white blonde hair, though not nearly as white as his mother’s hair. He was strong and defined from years of practice and battle, yet even after so many years the sight of his bright blue eyes still surprised him because they looked so much like his fathers. He took one look back at the wreckage in his room and shrugged deciding he’d worry about it later; he stopped only to pick the picture up of the floor and place it on his desk before he left the room. Kaiser’s room was on the top floor of “Pandora’s Mansion”, a large ten level building that housed hundreds of beings, some were human, though most were not. After closing his door he leaned on the railing outside his room and looked down all the way to the bottom floor. He could see many of the buildings occupants around the huge living room, in one corner he saw Enof leaning back on the couch by himself reading a book. He also saw Fen zigzagging here and there with a donut in her hand, though as far as he could see, she was no longer being pursued. Kaiser looked around and laughed at the layout of the building, for it was rather strange. The building resembled a giant shopping mall in the way it looked, there was the bottom floor which had no rooms on it, and it was just a huge open area with four “pits” one in each corner of the room. Each pit had a huge flat screen T.V. and three large sofas that could sit about eight people on each one. In one end of the room were the front doors, and on the other end was entrance to the ginormous kitchen that lay in the back. On each side of the front doors were a set of stairs that went all the way up to the top floor, the rooms started on the second floor and wound all the way around the building, sometimes there were walkways spanning over the open area of each level and connecting the two sides. On the wall opposite Kaiser’s room, in between the two far pits on the ground floor was an elevator. Starting on the third floor and going up to the sixth floor on the side above the kitchen doors was an extended balcony type protrusion, it extended about a third of the way into the open space in the middle of the building and was completely covered in plants. Three story tall trees surrounded this indoor natural haven and even a small waterfall spilled in between two of the large trees and over the edge down to where it magically disappeared around the second level. That was where Fen lived, as well as many of the other habitants of Pandora’s Mansion who were more accustomed to the safety of nature versus a walled in room.

Today would be a rather different day, for he had received a letter from Pandora (He had yet to actually meet her), the letter said that a new person would be arriving at the mansion this morning and that he should give her a tour of the grounds so she could get used to it. The letter also said that she was a “Wyndian Princess,” though he had no idea where Wyndia was. Kaiser yawned on last time and looked over the edge to see that no one was in his way, he liked living on the top floor for one reason in particular: he smirked as he placed one foot on the railing and vaulted over the edge.

A Request in Post Form

Since I was going to post a... post... to formally request a change in the name of this blog, but that is already taken care of... I am going to post a request to the several artists that frequent this blog. If you have the time or desire I was wondering if you could do a quick sketch of the King of Rain.

That is all.
Bot out

Illustration for the Erlking's Daughters

Will probably color this later. I wanted him elflike, but he just turns out feminine each time I draw him. Anyhow, the Erlking and his daughters.

The Erlking's Daughters

A story I wrote, based upon Goethe's poem/Shubert's song Der Erlkonig, I put the poem in the comments and I would suggest reading it before the story. Oh, and I couldn't find an English version of it where it said who was talking, so I made my own with the names before the dialouge. Thus, in the comments is the literal translation from German in script form.

Anyhow, on to the story. It's told from the view of the Erlking, whom the best descriptions I've heard of him are simply 'the Elven king' and 'a force of death.'

I do remember at least one thing. The first time I saw them… They were absolutely beautiful, golden lilies shining through the foggy night.

When I appeared to them, it was still in a time where I wore a cloak of dusk—darkness cascading off of elegant shoulders in waves. And I wore a crown of white, searing stars, gathered from the blackest night, and placed upon my brow. The children were enamored with me to say the least; how could they help it?

Yet I also noticed them, and the first thing I noticed about them was their golden hair, it was a color that matched my own, as did their eyes and skin. They could have easily been of a race created from my form, or I from a being like them. The second thing I noticed is that they were probably twins, or at least sisters; but whatever they were it no longer mattered, as they were so alike that they would forever more be sisters in my eyes.

I smiled and held my hands out to them, and said in a voice like a chorus of silver bells, “Come, I have waited for you. We will play together, you and I.”

The two took my hands readily, and I felt that pang in my essence that I did not quite understand. But all the same, I led them unknowingly into a vision, a dreamworld of sorts, and dressed them in the finest fabrics of my mother, and I danced with them in my grove on the soft grass beneath the moon. And they sang, and they laughed, and they braided flowers in each other’s hair, and they were beautiful and so full of life. And I loved them for that.

Yes, I loved them, even as they spun each other around in the Fae realm, and even as they strolled towards the cliff in the waking world.

I had stopped dancing and was leaning against a tree, my eyes becoming distant as I watched the twin pairs of feet making their way across the rocky crag of a different plane. Occasionally one would stumble, but the other would help her up as they walked towards their oblivion.
Suddenly a voice broke my reverie; both of the girls were in the grass, one lying and the other sitting up looking intently at me. Even her voice sounded like mine, with a bell-like quality to it. She asked, “Father, what is the matter?”


Father…


The word pierced me like nothing had before. But it was true. They might not be sisters, and they might not be born of my blood, but they were my daughters.

In an instant, a moment’s decision, I snatched the fragile bodies from the cliff and joined them to their souls in my grove. They did not even bat an eye at this.

“Nothing is wrong, my daughter. Nothing.” I replied. I had disobeyed my purpose, betrayed it. But for once in my timeless existence, I felt something beyond duty.


----------------------

I stood (after being torn away from my land) before seven beings; I no longer know what they were. Perhaps heavenly judges or the elusive elven gods, and I think I knew once, but that was a long time ago. All the same, I had upset the balance; Death had spared two children, this could destroy every order they knew. But the action had been done, and I refused to undo it. They were mine, and I would raise them as my own until they could live their own lives. To live a life of their own, I had never wanted that for anyone before. I had never cared.

We argued for a long time, the judges and I. I am not sure for how long, perhaps days, or centuries. But it does not matter, I was able to keep my two prizes because there was no being to replace something like me and loosing me would destroy their order. But I was made to swear never to spare anything else.

Satisfied at the outcome, I made my way to my grove in my human form and saw two figures, dressed in the white of lilies, dancing in the moonlight and laughing. I sighed fondly, standing in the opening of the trees, and spread open my arms.

“Father!” two petite voices called out in unison (I felt some semblance of what mortals call ‘joy’ spread throughout my heart) and my daughters rushed to the grove’s opening and embraced me.

For a moment I was happy with just them in my arms… but then I frowned, and in a soft voice asked, “Why are you so cold, children?”

Indeed, they were as cold as ice. One of my offspring answered quite cheerfully, “I don’t know, Father.”

I knelt down before them, and they looked with mirrored golden eyes at me expectantly. I stroked one’s cheek, which was still deathly cold, and she smiled. I then moved my hand to below her jaw… there was no pulse.

My daughters were dead.

Before that moment, I had never felt sickness. But now it came in waves of nausea. The judges had killed them. They had killed them while distracting me in a trial.

“Father, what’s wrong?”

No… the trial. It was not the counsel who had killed my children. After all, the trial had taken place for what felt like days, centuries. The judges were not the ones who killed them… I was.
I was shaking now, and I would have retched had there been anything in this stomach… I could see them in my mind—in the grove, starving, cold, dying. No one to take care of them as they huddled together and cried from pain. And then another wave of sickness came with the second realization; they would never grow older. They would never blossom into womanhood, and, ah gods, they would never live their own lives, and it was all because of me and my-

“-Father?” one asked again, more worriedly.

I stilled my shaking, then smiled and placed a hand on their shoulders, “Children,” I started pleasantly, though my heart was breaking, “how would you like to stay here forever with me? And never grow old, and always play, and sing, and dance? I may have to leave sometimes, but would you like that?”

They both looked at each other excitedly then looked back, one replied, “Oh yes, Father! We would like that very much!”

I smiled again, though I wanted to rip that wretched organ out of my chest. My daughters continued on,

“And we shall dance every night!”

“Only, do not leave us alone for so long again, we got rather cold last time.”

“Oh! And we could try plaiting flowers into your hair!”

“Of course,” I said fondly as I took them into my arms, “whatever you wish.”

“I love you, Father.” The one on my right said sleepily. I kissed her and her sister’s head.




They were mine. And they would be mine forever. Nothing would change that.

Making it Official

So, I know I've mentioned this out loud several times before. But I am now officially, (in a post, because that's official) making this THE STORY BLOG. [insert appropriate dramatic music here] That means that it doesn't have to have anything to do with me or the Spectral Lands. If you have a story, plot, comic, pictures, characters, or just vague idea of any of the above and have the desire to post it anywhere; here's the place. Your posts can be for review and feedback of whatever you posted, it can be to get some more ideas on your creation, or it could be just so you don't have that story rotting away in a notebook where no one else will never know of its existance.

So far we've had a plot idea, question, character description, and short story (and I plan on posting PRP's and my script rp on here too) but don't let that limit you. If it's creative in any way, shape, or form then it's all good.

-P.