Dragon Mirror- Ties Between the Veil

The entity felt no sensation, no heat, no cold, no pleasure, nor pain. No real sense of Time except when observing other realities between the veils of existences. The only sensation available to it was an overwhelming urge of hunger and avarice.

It followed the threads that tied the sequences of time and space together. Hunger and desire pulled its awareness to other entities that endured the same ambitions. The desire to consume was paramount.

The old crone, Clow’Lara, could feel the Entity's attention fall over her again. She opened her mouth into an empty smile, displaying a few decaying and blackened teeth.

“Ah, my love. You’ve been gone from me for several passes of th’ moons. Wha’ secrets have you found?”

She felt a wordless crest of rage fall over her.

MINE. MINE. MINE.

Clow’Lara threw her head back and cackled.

“Yes, yes. All yours. I need ta know wha’ you know, to see it, to make sure wha’s yours comes to you.” The crone stooped to kneel by a cabinet, pulling out a wide and flat marble bowl. It was black with veins of green and polished to a high sheen.

She ignored the buzzing cloud of rage as the entity ineffectually ranted through the thinned veil. She honestly did not know if it even knew who she was, or if it just appeared here because of the thinned veil between realms in her bedchamber.

Moving quickly, since she did not know how much time she would have before the entity moved on, she placed the bowl on her table and poured into it the pitcher of water she always kept ready. She then drew a needle from a necklace around her neck and pricked her finger to allow several drops of blood fall into the water.

Many, many, decades ago, she had used much more of her blood to bind the entity. The overhead lamp light revealed the gnarled surface of her skinny arms, riddled with hundreds of thin three inch long scars. The scars continued from her wrists and up under her short sleeves.

Living under a different name at the time, she had been seeking her fortune, battling the aftermath of the Tilting. Seeking answers on how to restore loved ones who had fallen to the Blight, instead she had found the thinnings of the Veil.

And with that discovery, found her way to the Entity.

She currently lived in castle Silkvetr as one of the nobility and the resident “Seer”. She tossed the bones and spoke some witticisms about what they wanted to hear. But the True Seeing she usually kept to herself, unless there was a gain to be had.

Such as the current gain of allowing the King to know of the arrival of a Drakonis.

The Entity shivered the fabric of the Veil, and Clow’Lara threw her head back as she was hit with a torrent of images that bled through the connection she had established.

Visions and sounds assaulted her mind, and she allowed them to wash over her. When she had first connected to the Entity, almost entirely by accident, she had been overwhelmed and struggled against the torrent.

It had laid her unconscious for several days. There was no linear order or correlation to the sounds and sights. It took time for her corporeal brain to sort and match them. When she had awoken, her brain had pieced together multiple timelines, and a few snippets that she could never make sense.

In her old age and experience, she could now passively collect the information. Unconsciousness would no longer lay her low, but her dreams for the next few days, possibly months, would be hyperactive in the effort to organize it all.

The crone staggered when she received flashes from her own history, seeing herself young and strong. It was incredibly frustrating to have to sift through visions of the past to receive kernels of the future.

She was a consistent character in many of the visions. Clow’Lara assumed that this was due to her close association with the Entity and her seeking out the thin pieces in the Veil.

The other constant presence was the Elohima.

Clow’Lara struggled with her own overwhelming sense of rage at the thought of Elohim Palliza and Tralna. The smug, festering pair that represented everything that was wrong with this world.

Suddenly she was experiencing a vision of herself prostrate on the ground in front of Palliza, the woman’s Aya’Chyn hovering around her head as a nebulous halo. Tralna radiated malice, and Clow’Lara cowered before the expression of power.

“Submit to my Will, Gameatta.”

“NEVER!” She screamed, ripping her small belt knife from her sheath and throwing it at the Elohima.

With an electrical hum, her knife seemed to stick in the air before the cloud of the Aya’Chyn, then rebounded back at her, spinning. It struck her in her shoulder so hard that the winged guard was the only thing that kept the knife from blowing a hole through her body.

It was at that moment that the Entity leached into her spirit through her spilled blood. She had screamed, going rigid as her brian was overrun with visions. She had collapsed, only to waken under Palliza’s care and placed under duress.

The Elohima had known something strange had happened, but Gameatta had refused to speak to her. She had only nodded numbly to the requirements put upon her so that her family would be freed from the Crya’Shal Falls.

Palliza’s disgusting pointy eared kin had been all around her as she had been made to sign documents and exchange vows and treaties.

But the last thing that had been required had almost been unbearable. She was required to marry the Elohima’s son. And what was more offensive was that the man already had children.

But it had been explained that it was necessary to cure the Blight, by mixing the bloodlines to create a boundary that would protect the people. Apparently the Charbitian race had discovered that their mixed race children were immune to the Blight. Her children’s blood would be used in a casting to ward off the Blight.

Palliza’s Will would not be denied.

She married the man and she became the Queen of the human’s in Szrathia. Then she reestablished order in Silkvetr after her family was restored to her.

She had been forbidden to institute laws against the use of Will. She had been forbidden from expanding her villages into cities, or even establishing new settlements without Charbitian oversight. Even when allowed to establish a new dwelling in the Wilds, it was restricted to a set amount of space.

The human race had been stunted, cauterized, prevented from achieving its full potential. Her only solace had been that no Drakun Magi, no more Aya’Chyn had been born or raised.

Political opponents had attempted to slander her utilization of magic, saying she possessed her own Aya’Chyn. Some claimed she was a puppet of the Charbitian Empire. But it had been easily quelled over time. Her twelve ‘acolytes’ helped dissuade opposition and dissenters.

Clow’Lara gritted her teeth, riding out the flashes of her history. The anger she felt over Palliza’s interference threatened to overwhelm her ability to passively accept the Entitie’s visions.

A flash of the girl with black and silver streaked golden hair stilled her heart. The image showed the girl standing in front of a massive tree, and behind her was-

The crone gasped in exultation. The king’s fosterling had, or would, find her. Her excitement only increased when the next vision showed them both sitting on the palace steps above the Silkvetr gardens on the west side.

Her mind spun, and she risked falling unconscious as her thoughts struggled with the excitement and the meditation required to receive the visions.

But the next vision that washed over her was of an Aya’Chyn that looked like the hated Aya’Chyn Tralna- and Clow’Lara slipped to the ground senseless. Her cruel face was twisted in the rictus of anger and the need for revenge.

The dynamic between her brother and the intriguing Drakun Magi had shifted since he had told her about the Arbol de la Vida. The tree was sacred to her people and it was exciting that someone had the power to cultivate the dying species.

Kasey sat relaxed on her loupp’a, Sedah, as she twiddled with her hair. She’d lagged behind the main group as a rear guard and speculated on the fascination her brother had with a human woman. To be fair, she was a powerful woman, but human nonetheless.

She didn’t consider herself as bigotted as most of her race had become in the past few centuries- she hadn’t lived during Gameatta’s stressful reign. The woman's rule had been full of constant bureaucratic push back, and for all intent and purposes still was, under the current King. But she still viewed human stock as something of an exotic attraction.

Guiltily, she admitted she was a little jealous. Her tastes had always run more towards women, and Raina was fascinating. She found both sexes attractive, but while she loved women, she at most tolerated men.

The past few months in Silkvetr, she had worked at developing a relationship with the King, and had found relief that he was more than tolerable. She found attraction to him, and suspected she could even love the man.

But she had also discovered that he was quite.... possessive.

“So did Helsa ever find a second?” Ian had asked her as he passed a pitcher of fruit juice. Kasey had laughed, taking and pouring her drink. The King had been sitting over his food grouchily chewing.

“She thought she might take Gadrhagnar- but Rosetta butted in, so now Helsa has a husband and a wife!”

There was a clatter of silverware and the twins looked over at the King in surprise. His mouth was open and he had dropped both the knife and fork in shock.

“What in the Twelve Disciples are you talking about?!”

Ian blushed prettily, and Kasey smirked. He had been young when he left Temp’Allah, so most of his experience of his culture had been through their exchanges.

She leaned forward. “A person with status and the ability to support multiple spouses may take more than one spouse.” His face blanked, and she paused for a moment.

“It enabled the household to grow more quickly and will ensure appropriate care of the children and business ventures-” She trailed off, when his eyes met hers. His gaze was reserved and anguished.

“I could not imagine having to share my wife, nor split my time from her.” He abruptly stood, pushing back his chair.

As he moved to leave the room, Ian and Kasey had exchanged stunned looks, and the King turned at the door.

“I sincerely hope your Queen has no plans for a… a second. I do not think I would countenance such a relationship.”

He left them to finish their dinner in awkward silence.

Kasey grimaced, banishing the sour memory. Later her brother had quietly explained that the King had deeply loved his wife, but there had been some scandal with a courtier. They had grown distant with each other afterwards and after her death, he had deeply regretted pushing her away.

Kasey had stumbled upon the gossip of what had happened to the courtier. She had assumed it had been the King who was unfaithful, because she had discovered that the courtier had been the late Queen’s female cousin. But the King had discovered his wife and her cousin embracing in the gardens, and shortly after had banished the Queen’s cousin to Jacom in a jealous fit.

Her loupp’a rumbled a growl, and she leaned forward to pat Sedah’s neck. The cat could sense her agitation.

Duty lies heavy across my breast.

She laid her head back on the seat, content to allow Sedah to follow their group.

Her family required her to marry the King. As Cassiridara Sin’Tallah, Queen of the Charbitian Empire, The Eye of the Wilds, the Daughter of New Hope, blah, blah, blah. It was her responsibility to strengthen the bonds between kingdoms.

She scoffed to herself. Kasey knew the true reason, considering the opposition some factions in Temp’Allah had to renew treaties with human settlements.

The reality was that the blood mixtures required to power the Protectora had weakened so far that there were now cases of Blight popping up throughout the Wilds.

Few alive among the Charbitians remembered the real reason for HalfBloods, nor the reason for the royal family to have a certain percentage of human blood in their lineage.

Much of the younger generation that did know had decided that it was propaganda to force them to tolerate human settlements in the Wilds.

She and her brother could barely claim human ancestry, considering that the HalfBlood in their ancestry was Gameatta’s daughter Sin’Clair. The King actually possessed more Charbitian heritage than they did human heritage, since several of Palliza’s progeny had married back into the Silkvetr family over the generations.

Palliza’s children were mostly Charbitian stock, but lived aloof from the Charbitian Empire, ranging the Wilding along the Northern Sea and Callio Archipelligo.

She opened her eyes and stared forward at the halo of golden hair riding next to her brother, mounted on the fabled Elohim Tralna.

She knew the necessity of marrying the King. Kasey had resigned herself to the necessity.

But what form of bone would this beautiful Drakonis throw into the works? What unintended consequences would this blossoming relationship between her brother and Raina have on his relationship with the King?

Kasey sawed her lower lip with her teeth. She had an uneasy inkling on what directions the King’s mind would follow when he discovered the Drakonis was young and female.

What would happen to the Protectora? How would her people react? How would this affect the spread of the Blight?