Post by kathryntng on Dec 6, 2005 23:17:50 GMT -5
Faerth watched the road pass underneath his feet. Step after step he took, slowly making his way home, as he had been for the past three years. He wasn’t an overly handsome elf. How could he be? Held captive for fifteen years, his shoulder-length black hair had started to gain threads of white prematurely. Those years of imprisonment had left him with harshly etched lines on his face almost as deep as the scars on his back… as well as an inordinately thin frame. When he’d managed to escape three years ago, all he’d managed to take away were the tattered pants he’d been wearing, a small and rather beaten up knife, and the bespelled Cold Metal sealed permanently around his wrists. The bracelets clung almost as tightly to him as his skin and continuously burned into him adding injury to insult. He was a survivor of the dragon wars, when the elves and dragons had fought against the goblins and wyrms. The humans arrayed themselves on either side as they pleased as usual. Faerth Wildwind had been a dragon just barely into his full adulthood, having turned 2,021 the year the last and largest of the wars had begun. The war had gone on for five centuries.
Wildwind had managed to survive and fight for all five- hundred of those years. Then, just before the battle was won, he’d been struck down out of the sky, very nearly killed but instead, and worse, was captured by the other side. The sorcerer who’d trapped him had been an expert in blood magic. Darkest of the Dark. A dragon’s blood was extraordinarily powerful. It was that wizard who’d ensnared him and cast the magic that forced Faerth into elvish shape. It was that wizard who’d placed the Cold Metal bands on the dragon’s wrists to keep him unable to contact his kind, unable to shape shift, unable to use any but the most rudimentary magics even after he’d killed the bastard who’d tortured him for fifteen years, Faerth was still trapped and without many of the skills a biped needed to survive.
The wiry elf had managed to pick up enough to keep him alive. He was fortunate in that this body did not need quite as much food to keep it going as his true form. There were some days where he was tempted to let his weariness overtake him, just fall asleep in the snow or fall into a fast and wild river. No one would know or care. His kith and kin believed him dead already. The few months when the sorcerer had allowed him to hear his kind’s mental communications had told him that, he’d heard the Queen’s Remembrance of the Dead at the end of the war. His name had been on the lengthy list. He’d felt the sorrow of his friends and family and he could not call out to them to reassure them, to let them know he was still alive, if in a predicament. That’d been the last time he’d heard his people, the last eighteen years he’d spent in silence, more alone than he’d ever been.
Occasionally, Faerth would attempt to pry off the decorative-looking bracelets that bound him. Each try caused extreme pain in his hands and throughout his entire body and his eyes would turn grey with agony.
If anyone cared to look at his eyes for a long enough period of time, they would see that his eyes remained draconic in that they changed color to match his mood, though they remained black most of the time now.
He was entering a forest, Wildwind noted absently before continuing his dark thoughts. It was unlikely that he’d come across any of his kind before he reached the very cliffs of Maer’dracon, as dragon-folk had grown rather insular since the war. But even if they did, who of them would believe him? Only the most powerful of the seers among them would be able to see the exact conditions of the spell plaguing him and there were only two he knew of who could, the Queen herself and his old companion, Diam Goldenflame. But the Queen was heavily guarded and Goldenflame would probably still be mourning for his soul-mate who’d been slain. So he walked on, hoping that one day, he'd find his way home.
Wildwind had managed to survive and fight for all five- hundred of those years. Then, just before the battle was won, he’d been struck down out of the sky, very nearly killed but instead, and worse, was captured by the other side. The sorcerer who’d trapped him had been an expert in blood magic. Darkest of the Dark. A dragon’s blood was extraordinarily powerful. It was that wizard who’d ensnared him and cast the magic that forced Faerth into elvish shape. It was that wizard who’d placed the Cold Metal bands on the dragon’s wrists to keep him unable to contact his kind, unable to shape shift, unable to use any but the most rudimentary magics even after he’d killed the bastard who’d tortured him for fifteen years, Faerth was still trapped and without many of the skills a biped needed to survive.
The wiry elf had managed to pick up enough to keep him alive. He was fortunate in that this body did not need quite as much food to keep it going as his true form. There were some days where he was tempted to let his weariness overtake him, just fall asleep in the snow or fall into a fast and wild river. No one would know or care. His kith and kin believed him dead already. The few months when the sorcerer had allowed him to hear his kind’s mental communications had told him that, he’d heard the Queen’s Remembrance of the Dead at the end of the war. His name had been on the lengthy list. He’d felt the sorrow of his friends and family and he could not call out to them to reassure them, to let them know he was still alive, if in a predicament. That’d been the last time he’d heard his people, the last eighteen years he’d spent in silence, more alone than he’d ever been.
Occasionally, Faerth would attempt to pry off the decorative-looking bracelets that bound him. Each try caused extreme pain in his hands and throughout his entire body and his eyes would turn grey with agony.
If anyone cared to look at his eyes for a long enough period of time, they would see that his eyes remained draconic in that they changed color to match his mood, though they remained black most of the time now.
He was entering a forest, Wildwind noted absently before continuing his dark thoughts. It was unlikely that he’d come across any of his kind before he reached the very cliffs of Maer’dracon, as dragon-folk had grown rather insular since the war. But even if they did, who of them would believe him? Only the most powerful of the seers among them would be able to see the exact conditions of the spell plaguing him and there were only two he knew of who could, the Queen herself and his old companion, Diam Goldenflame. But the Queen was heavily guarded and Goldenflame would probably still be mourning for his soul-mate who’d been slain. So he walked on, hoping that one day, he'd find his way home.