Two moons in midnight, burning
Two hearts forever yearning,
The shadow grows—
Beware the black dawn.
En’Kar had never been one to place his faith within intangible things. Yet, the strange prophecy which his mother lullaby-sang to him when he had been a child had begun to haunt his dreams with an alarming frequency. Night after night, he had been awoken with the melody overlapping pleasant dreams of his childhood. Running through his parents Holding, Nableen, bare foot and care free as any child—stealing into the heat of the kitchens for sweet meats, stalking the corridors for sand lizards—all of it had the overlapping strange, (and horribly written, he might add) little prophecy.
This night as he awoke, the desert’s frigid air prickled against his skin. It made the little hairs along his arms and at the back of his neck stand as if he had been too near a lightening strike. It was such an unpleasant experience it drove him from the under the safety of plush, velveteen purple blankets which kept the poisonous darvish bugs away. Even as he hissed faintly to himself in the shock of frozen marble floors to his bare feet—he could not quite chase away the horrid little stanza sung in his mother’s voice.
His room overlooking the vast desert of Katchyan afforded him a view he usually would have enjoyed. Moonlight almost as bright as sunrise flooded across barren sands; creating a world of silver for his eyes to feast upon as bare feet tapped quietly in the dampening silence of his room.
He simply stood on the cold tiles beneath him at first, gathering his bearings. The Holding slept, the building itself seemed to carry to him the very idea of slumber. Nothing much past the lowered murmurs of late night servants and the dimmest, indescribable sound of a place blanketed in dreams came to his ears after long moments.
En’Kar threw open the moon-flooded windows of his room, as it was as cold inside as it was out—and sent his mind as well as thoughts gently in tendrils out into the night. His thoughts carried memories of secrets; a golden egg buried deep within the castle, skinned knees, curious, unsteady little boy’s hands. Metallic shimmer, the smell that fire makes—
What is it, my Harrokoyayath?
The question and her voice flooded his mind with gentle concern. Harrokoyayath, she called him: Brother-of-Scales, in her language of teeth, blood and ashes. Even with a thought, her voice came sweet as honey, jagged as the fangs within her mouth.
There is something in the air. Something is about to happen, can you feel it?
Tenuous mental silence as he felt himself shudder slowly with the chill the air. Was it colder than usual, or was he imagining it?
I feel it, too, she answered him. She sounded distant, however, as if half of her mind had split from him to quest the night further. Put on something warmer than your sleeping wear, and come for a flight.
His lips twisted slightly in the usual admonishment from her.
I cannot think with so many minds around me, she added on.
He did not answer her, as she knew his response by heart.
___________________________________
She took him miles away, until the Holding of Nableen no longer loomed but seemed a small, tiny tower with a few unsteady lights from servants still burning in the windows. Its great needles stretched to impale a nearly silver-blue sky dotted with twinkling stars.
Her breath, like his, misted outward with each tuft of air they exhaled and mingled before disappearing into the vast empty desert which felt as if it crouched in waiting. In her silence, he adjusted the line of black tunic marked with his family emblem; the golden dragon spiraling down across the heart. Even through the leather of his gloves he could feel the shape of hand made embroidery, the irony of the symbol was not lost on him and it twisted his mouth in a private, sardonic line.
…It cannot be.
Those three words wiped the bitter smile forming and flooded his mind with emotions so black—so think and terrifying that if she had not have dampened the connection through the bond, he thought his skull might have cracked. The sheer terror which radiated from her still; coming in wafts and tendrils of smoke as well as burnt ash made his hand drop unconsciously to the Arcanyte blade at his hip. A gift from father to son for surviving the rite of passage to man hood; it still held the notch within it from his father’s battle with the—
Narologarth. Just the single word she sent him and it made every hair along the back his neck arise once more.
En’Kar felt his spine snap straight so fast that it cracked and popped like old bones rattling in graves.
“No,” hoarsely and aloud to her. He could not believe it. The twisted, man-made dragons? Those which turned on their creators thousands of years ago and had their majority sealed? Absolutely –“Impossible. Father killed the last nearly two decades ago and the city of Rylark reported not last week that the seal remained whole.”
I would not lie to you. It is the Narologarth, it is in my bones, in my heart. I can feel their taint ache my very wing-bones. They fly over the land as we speak and she weeps for their existence, their twisted, rotten bodies wither all in their path. They come. They will come before the second moon arises. From this distance, even I can hear them—there are many, En’Kar. Thousands. Thousands upon thousands. They will blot out the sun when it rises— and they are angry. Angry with what humanity has done and angry that the few of the true breeds left have sided with humans.
He felt the pieces fall together then in horrid irony—horrendously obvious, he drew the connection from his mother’s horrid choice of lullaby and the words of Ahsha in his mind as she spread out golden leathery wings in the cold and wrapped them slowly about his shoulders. Lowering the fire of her splendid, scale-covered snout, she ruffled his hair in comfort, huffing warm puffs of her breath across his skin.
Perhaps we can teach them that some sins can be forgiven? Perhaps we can show them that darkness and light resides in both of our kind?
“What if we can’t?” he asked. His words were quiet, filled with the foreboding dread and confusion. How can one night go from a dream to a nightmare in mere seconds? Ahsha’s ridges above her eyes lowered slightly, a very human expression of thoughtfulness. Her wings slid from him and she turned her head on long, sinuous, graceful neck to contemplate Nableen holding. For long moments she simply looked upon it as one would to fix something firmly in her memory.
Then we fight, as we should. As we always do. As it is our right and we will show them our strength. We will fight, for our freedom, our lives and our homes. We will fight for the things we love and keep them safe.
En’Kar felt her words place steel along his spine as he straightened further and he straightened. They were good words, hers, the right words. They always were.
“We will fight,” he agreed, and turned on his heel to face the arising of the second moon.
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