A Dragon's Heart

I do not own, so you can't sue

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Drip.

Drip.

Tinkle.

Young amethyst eyes, dull and detached, slowly opening.. Another drip, another tinkle, biting numbness.

Vividly distinguished cerise barring down relentlessly into pools of dulled violet, harsh, molten ruby depths, cold and calculating, aflame and burning with unquenched hunger clashing with subtle chords of confusion and numb intrigue laced ever so loosely in shimmering amethysts.

Another maddeningly reticent sound of daunting tinkle followed by looming drip.

A long, nimble finger, shakily rising…falling on the possessor of amethysts, distorted shadows slithering around an extended digit, consuming, ugly…inexorable.

A shaky inhale of breath, hunger and blind aspiration blazing suddenly within irises of darkening molten cerise. Shadows shooting rapidly out and around the boy, darkness unquenched looming and decisive around him.

Daunting tinkle, followed by another looming drip.

Tentacular limbs sliding, slithering. A boy of forgotten amethyst heritage staring detachedly into irises of molten rubies struck with the most lucid of bared hungers.

Darkness’s shift, rigid atmosphere unwavering. Dulled amethysts stare with transfixed nature into silently blaring crimson, suspended darkness wound and heavy holding him in abrasive coldness as an atmosphere rung warningly around them that thought of a thousand screams of a voiceless mind. All clerical warnings voiced through a mind’s vain hope carried through desolate recesses of a bound boy smeared with the alighting of fording, dark magics.

One step towards, a finger remaining shakily settled on him. An insane grin.

“L-light…”

End of Dream Sequence

Scratchy shuffling, swirling shadows slowly dispersing.

Beautiful rays of shimmering light filtering peacefully through an open window and ghosting across the plush carpeting of an apartment’s darkened interior, thin rivulets of threaded brilliance streaming across the ground to illuminate a bed in the corner with shrouded moonlight.

Terrified amethyst eyes stared fearfully ahead of themselves, strong anxiety and fierce, blind terror emanating off the possessor’s soul in thick, overpowering waves as a disturbing dread stole over the boy that ebbed to the far reaches of his being and slashed his previous self-security to bits.

He had never had such a dream before. A heated drop of perspiration trickled unnervingly-slow down the boy’s temple.

Mysterious waters of deceptively swirling ebony gradually receded, their grips on the boy’s consciousness slowly loosening as the memory of the dream became more and more opaque as the seconds trickled by and a sinking feeling of horrible dread hovered oppressively in its place.

Bedspread covers were brought desperately closer to a rapidly-cooling body as slews of images continued to assault the terrified boy’s mind. Random images drifted in and out of the traumatized boy’s consciousness, seemingly harmless shreds of memory flitting in and alighting intensely before fading back down and falling away from view.

He had never had a dream like that before. Never, in all his years of living, had he experienced something so horrible. Iris’ of molten lava screaming hunger, burning intense want and unquenched desire; he brought his knees up to his chest and hugged them desperately. No, he had never experienced anything like that and he never wanted to experience anything like that ever again. Not even his worst nightmares were that bad and the looming dread that lingered heavily in its wake made it all the more worse.

Broken tears wound heavily down cheeks of moonlit alabaster.

“I never want to see those red eyes again…”

Clouded cerise eyes slowly peeled themselves open.

Glaring light from an unknown source, multitudes of spots rising to predominate his already-blurry vision.

Lids clenched tightly and a groan emanated into the still silence of the empty world surrounding the figure.

He didn’t know where he was, or how he had gotten there, but he was sure of one thing. He felt terrible.

Gods, a pounding headache, a numb body, this definitely wasn’t good, especially when you accounted the fact that he was very ignorant to where he actually was. Feeling particularly weak and exposed, he shifted a bit only for an agonizing pain to shoot up his tender spine.

Flinching slightly, he clenched his hands slightly in a hopeful effort to subdue at least a bit of the pain, as the dull throbbing in his lower back slowly but surely subsided. Once the pain of his movement had ceased and his continence was able to fade back down to that of tired relief, he let his body slowly relax.

He would have sought to find a sanctuary for the night, but, as he couldn’t barely move and couldn’t open his eyes without an abhorrent nausea sweeping through his being, he was forced to stay here to recover, completely exposed and prey to any one of night’s insidious creatures.

A scratchy shuffling to his left alerted him of another presence.

Numb tenseness rang dully through his unreceptive being as he opened his tired eyes a crack, a slack hand coming to rise slowly to protect his overly-sensitive retinas from the harsh glare of the light. Dull crimson swept slowly over the neglected surroundings of the area surrounding him, tired disinterest ebbing strongly in dulled irises.

A filthy street lamp pouring dusty, dank light over an alleyway, a nearby dumpster reflecting the worn light of the predominant moon, cracked and neglected pavement overturned and matted into a winding path to a distant adjoining street, a thick, soulless shadow playing heavily across dead surroundings, nothing to indicate the source of the sound.

Letting his hand fall heavily away from his face, the Draconian let his dusky lids slide closed, head falling back onto the partition behind him as exhaustion finally began having its toll on his system.

This situation seemed so familiar to him, so real, as if it had happened once before, if not many times in a dream. The darkness, the alleyway; everything. It all seemed so familiar, a lost toy found again.

Ruby eyes turned meagerly, fatigue and exhaustion bearing and oppressive weighing down heavily on body and soul as irises of worn ruby began to slowly scope out the source of the fallen shadow.

Cerise eyes passed over trashcans, a lonely dumpster, turned up gravel; nothing to suggest the source of the shadow that was presently cast across the ground. It wasn’t until a spine-racking sound of undeniable evil scratched its way through the still night air and the calm stillness that had previously settled over the alleyway was shattered, that all attentions were drawn toward a crevice in a bricked partition seven meters away.

Unsteady crimson eyes slowly leaked of life as they turned to gaze almost ineptly at the opening to the battered fissure. Sight blurring, vision swaying unsteadily in and out of clarity, cerise orbs still vainly tried to keep their gaze level with that of the opening.

There was nothing. He could see nothing. Darkness, that was all he could see.

Darkness.

Deep and engulfing, smoldering with an oppressive fire that burned away the dull comfort that the dirty, lone beams of light created as they meagerly filtered through the still night’s air.

Darkness. Pangs of undeniable evil, numb and deadly and strong, flitting slowly, maddeningly into and through his senses, dulled warnings falling unfortunately on equally deadened senses.

The Darkness was all he knew, all they knew but, as the seconds trickled by, his vision being further and further reduced to that of a blurred, almost numb, nonexistence and the feelings of strong but weak warning continued to play vainly over his exhausted senses, a feeling of dull familiarity couldn’t help but creep over him.

Staggering up, the creature of human-dragon genome attempted to see past the fog clouding his vision, the darkness that lay ever so pungent in front of him, and see into a world of uncharted territory where strange feelings and fatal reality were woven into an intricate pattern of present that he was not yet knowledgeable to.

Blurriness receded and the strengthening of an otherwise smoldered aura led to the retracting of a bit of pungent darkness as the comforting glint of the firestone returned alive but faint to the long-dimmed walls of the delicate jewel.

Pools of deepest ruby narrowed subtly to pierce the thick shadows that overlay the area of greatest concealment to see what lay within.

Elongated fangs, insidious and plunging. Beady black eyes glinting maddeningly under the tainted light of a harvest moon. Soft, despairing cries of lost hope drifting out into the still night air begging for a release.

Thin rivulets of crimson brilliance winding down and around an exposed pale neck, a flowing mane of dulled violet and ebony trembling slightly.

A body loosing more and more of the vitality of life as shudders gradually abated, dire urgency and criticality of the situation washing away with the mere passage of time.

“No…”

A choked sob. A stumble backwards.

“Why?”

An astringency of life-altering, deep pain, chords of the knowledge of happiness dispersing violently and long forgotten from a being painstakingly watching a scene he never wished to see again. Darkness rolled in, overwhelmed and plagued cerise shadowing heavily as the braces of staggering sorrow and soul-deep repentance slowly deepened. The voiceless whispers of insidious evocativeness drifting in on misleading caresses and instilling false senses into his battered conscious.

Why did he have to experience this again...It wasn’t fair…he already blamed himself for what happened.

Weak limbs worked a body gradually closer to a far partition, a fallen prince degrading further by the second.

Elongated fangs retracting purposefully and beady eyes holding something greatly disturbing rose to gaze into his lifeless orbs levelly. A maddening glint and embers of raging ebony flickered with sparks of dull violet.

“Ori dal sooth?”

No…not again…

“Why?…how could I have done that?…how could I have left her?”

The prince closed in on himself.

He wrapped his arms around his shaking figure, drawing his knees in closer to himself.

Tears waded silently down cheeks of warm, moonlit bronze, tear tracks being created as they wordlessly flowed down the sharp inclinations of his continence, the moon’s play across closed lids and shimmering beads collected in silken lashes instilling a sense of ethereal beauty over the unsuspecting figure.

“How could I have abandoned her when she needed me the most?”

The near suckling of a forgotten shadowed slashed through the prince’s thought process and, with heavily-devastated eyes, he turned his head away.

The creature greedily shifted his sister ever so closer to the orifice of its supposed mouth, but he didn’t allow himself to see.

He still remembered that night when he had lost everything that he held dearest to him.

Flashback

“Atemu…No. You must go…you must leave before he comes back…,” thoroughly pained cry, “…Go…Leave...You must leave before they come back…”

“Izraellis, no…I can’t leave you. You’re injured; if I leave you, they’ll come back and finish what they started. Without defense, you’ll die! I absolutely refuse to let that happen!”

“Brother…you are strong and so am I. I guarantee that, if you leave, we will talk again; I will be there when you finally do find that right someone and I will be there by your side when this is all over. The shadow’s emergence this night after thousands of years will not change that, even if I happened to have been injured in the battle a mere two hours ago. I will live, that I promise you…”

Delicate orbs of finest rose softened as they took in the anguished continence of the prince.

“But, if I do happen to die this night, I know you will be able to continue on without me; you have always been the stronger one…”

Soft rose eyes softened further as they came to gaze up into the anxiety-ridden cerise eyes of the prince of the Draconians and late brother of sixteen years.

“You are brave,” a gentle caress of the cheek with the back of a hand, “Loyal,” an equally soft caress gracing the forehead, “Too kind for your own good,” a back of a hand breathing a caress across the other cheek, “Looks that have caused members of both sexes to faint on sight of you…”

A soft smile, sparkling irises of glimmering rose awake and shimmering tying to that of profoundly anguished cerise. A fleeting caress across a silken cheek delicately wiping away the collecting tears.

“You will be a wonderful king. Even if I pass, you will rule this world with unfounded virtue and righteousness…no one will lie unhappy in your life-long term; no one will ever have the need to be nostalgic…”

Alabaster lids were half-lidded now, exhaustion bearing down on the frail figure weakening her. Raspy breaths came out shallowly, abnormal pants rising into the night sky as the cool air froze it on contact.

“Izraellis…”

“Brother…don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Now, go. You must get out of here; they need your help. The Shadows are slowly taking over the city. You are the prince; they need you…”

A harsh coughing fit followed and Atemu found himself desperately clutching his sister closer, helplessness and desolation ringing futile and dull through orbs of decaying vibrancy as all hope slowly trickled away with the passage of his sister’s blood onto the battered gravel of the destroyed alleyway. The distant sounds of the explosions only reached them every so often now.

“Atemu, go…L-leave me. Y-you h-have to…Y-you know you must.”

And it was true. So true and so simple that even a dying person’s mind, sluggish and narrow at the loss of blood, could rule it out; the feeling of numb awareness in the wake before the calm of slumbering oblivion did not even play a part. But he, barely wounded and in almost prime condition, besides his devastated emotional state, could not come to terms with that. Despite his valiant efforts to be strong in one of the most crunching times of his life that called for it, he could not do it.

He could not abandon his little sister.

“I can’t…”

“Atemu, y-you must. You know you must. D-do it for me, for our family...”

A desperate plea, “Do it for mom and dad.”

Crystalline brilliance wound down the sharp contours of the prince’s face.

“Why?”

“Because it’s what they would have wanted. As the prince you have a duty to your kin, your people.”

Despondent ruby softened.

“But I have a duty to you first and foremost…”

Quiet ruby twinkled with a soft inner light, as sadness retracted slowly to the back burner and movement brought her brother’s softly-shimmering crystal to be revealed resting on the soft pads of his index and middle fingers.

“When I came to possess this crystal those long three years ago, I made a pledge,” Ruby eyes continued to twinkle, “a pledge that I still hold just as important now as I did back then.”

Rose eyes gazed on silently as her brother continued his spiel.

Dusky lids closed once, before opening a second later, halfway. Sadness minutely hindered the prince’s collectivity.

“That pledge was to protect you.”

Ruby eyes filled with sorrow.

“You have to go.”

The prince’s collectivity was shattered.

“No…”

“I want you to go…”

“No…” A shake of the head.

“You know you have to…”

“No…”

“Brother…”

“No!”

A hardening of voice and mind, unbearable emotion running like cold iron steel through veins that felt like they were aflame, distorting the prince’s reason.

“Izraellis, No! I will not do it! I will not leave you!”

“But, yet, you know you have to…” A softly spoken phrase, one that made the prince’s last statement evaporate into a cloud of dust.

Ruby eyes silently filled with tears.

Rose eyes overshadowed with pain and sadness. “You have to, because you have a duty to our people…”

Ruby eyes rose up to gaze into Rose meagerly.

“Izraellis, I can’t leave you…”

“Atemu, you have to.”

The unshed tears were slowly shed, darkening brilliance slowly winding down a darkening continence arousing the moon’s sympathy as it sent melancholic rays to shine down over the devastated figure in an attempt at comfort.

A heartfelt nod, a turn, wings extending. Cerise eyes glinting in the moonlight, one glance back speaking of forever. Excruciating sorrow, an emotion shared between two. Eyes tearing away from slowly shutting ruby, a choked sob, a beat of strong wings, and the prince was gone.

End Flashback

A brilliant flash of light, a torrent of unbearable emotions and memories swirling and engulfing, a clawing back to horrible, unwanted, agonizing reality as the gateway to reminiscence slowly opened.

He wailed and whimpered, but it was to no avail. His sister as well as his parents were lost to him forever. He was alone in this world. He had nobody. His friends tried to pretend as though they knew what he was going through, but they truly had no idea. He was alone.

He desperately clutched himself closer.

He would always be alone and he was starting not to care. The only people who had ever truly loved him were gone now and he had been left to pick up the shattered remnants that had once been his heart.

A drop of majestic light descending from the sky was left unnoticed until a deep, commanding voice disrupted the still silence of the alley and distracted the prince momentarily from his tears.

‘Enter the Light…’

A brilliant light exploded and scattering rays of light swept through the alley, beams of ethereal brilliance sparkling and radiating subtly under the moon’s gentle touch. Ethereal rays expanded and brushed across the ground, hitting the dumpster, the pole of the streetlight, the battered pavement.

A shrill shriek of a forgotten shadow screeched cacophonously through the deathly silent alleyway, shrill and unwanted chords slicing into the tangible silence only to be cut off abruptly as a ray of light reduced the shadow to a pile of dust. Once-empty pools of deep cerise filled subtly with chords of disbelief as tears wound silently from their edges.

A ball of light slowly descended from above, shrouded layers of airy brilliance winding around as shimmering beams continued to orbit quietly around the orb.

The prince’s eyes drained and a captivating spark flared to life within dull garnets.

On whimsical instinct, the holder of the crystal got up and took a light step towards the floating orb. Lights continued to orbit and another footfall of a step was heard.

Empty cerise trailed up to the ball of light hovering above. Another step. A shaky inhale of breath and something unknown flickered in dull garnet.

A rise of a hand…and everything stopped. Beams shakily coming to a standstill, glowing orb of light hovering decisively above, breath of a spellbound prince.

The world’s parted and the lights were drawn. Cerise stood numbly as they painstakingly stood and waited for what they were destined to see. A filling of empty crimson, functions returning slowly back to their owner. A further drawing of lights.

Cloudiness of vision slowly dispersing, blurry crimson eyes tiredly squinting to see through the dull haze of light that was slowly receding away from his senses, sparkling under the wash of the moon.

A voice, softer than before, emanating from an invisible void and echoing through the alighted passageway…

‘Nori sal an’a…Toreem bai et’kanaa…Let the prince know…let him know what is to come…let him know what lies ahead…let him know what will change his life forever…’

A slow intake of breath and tired cerise eyes lifted shakily to gaze up at the ball as if drawn.

Cerise eyes widened.

Amethyst of the most beautiful strains of violet gazed back at him.

Sparkling and starring at him as if possessing a hidden, unknown knowledge under moon’s fine brilliance, they formed the prince’s picturesque perfect ideal of beautiful.

Laces of untarnished chastity, shimmering pools of brilliant radiance holding knowing wisdom but also glinting subtly with chords of curiosity and timidity…a pure soul of the most unimaginable beauty, it blew the prince’s mind away and left him with a lingering sensation of completeness as he just stared into those beautiful amethysts and basked in the beauty and warmth they provided.

A melodious voice gifted his ears and the prince closed his eyes for just a minute to revel in the soft voice that drifted over his skin in a silken caress.

‘When the raging storm has fallen and the moon graces the night’s skies once again, that is when you will find me…’

Hazy cerise eyes snapped open and a bead of blinding light fell to his level of sight. Cloudiness dissipated when the bead encompassed his entire vision and the past beams of light, along with the orb, faded away.

The prince’s eyes widened substantially and something flickered violently within his crystal. Some deeper in his heart broke and he was left feeling emptier than he ever had before. It left him…

The bead shone even brighter and the prince found himself getting strangely drowsy as he lost hold of his emotions.

‘Its time for you to return to us prince…’

He felt himself collapsing, his body shutting down on its own accord as he slipped silently into oblivion. But he could not find the desire to fight it or care. He was falling, but, then again, he had been falling since the last marker holding his soul in place left this world. He welcomed the darkness with a set of final words breathed through the corridors of time.

“Darkness…I welcome thee…my time in this world has long since departed. Please take me…”

He was lost before he heard the flickering reply.

Your time in this world has not long since departed. Someone waits for you as you await them; do not give up, my prince. The time will come when the world will bow down to you as their new leader and you will find the one who makes your heart leap with devotion and glory you never knew existed. You will not fight for the world, but for them. It will seem at first that you have turned your back on your people, but, in the end, the truth will be revealed. They will be outraged, but, eventually they will understand. Have faith in my words, prince. The battle is only just beginning and the being that it will be raged around will be the one you will soon discover. Have faith, because the fate of the world and the one you will soon treasure above all else are held in the balance.

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R&R?