Blood Ties

Morwyn's mouth hung open in shock as she turned to look at the old man. She was so bombarded with questions that her overstimulated mind went completely blank. Rennock refused to meet her gaze and instead stared without seeing into the darkness beyond the soft light of the ward, a contemplative frown deepening the wrinkles on his ancient face. The half finished smoke between her outstretched fingers tumbled to the ground, small sparks scattering as it bounced and rolled into a gap between the rocks. She bent down to retrieve it for the second time, inhaled from it deeply, then let the smoke spiral upward from between her parted lips. Rennock held his silence as she tried to organize her disarrayed thoughts.

“So... Does that make you my grandfather?”

Rennock raised an eyebrow, but his grave expression remained.

“In a manner of speaking I suppose, though I had not considered the fact. We are not blood relations if that is what you are asking. I raised your father, but I have no children of my own.”

Morwyn shook her head in disbelief and opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, and stared down at her hands again. Rennock shifted his position on the stone to angle toward her, for all the world looking more like a tired old man rather than a mysterious warlock.

“I came across your father by chance when he was very young. He was orphaned, scared, and on the run from a terrible fate at the hands of those who feared his power. I took him in and cared for him when no one else would have done so. It would have been an... unpopular decision, had anyone discovered my actions. I protected him from those that would have killed him and hid him away from the world to give him a chance to live life on his own terms, as I find myself attempting to do for you now.”

So, the father she'd never known had been hunted as she was now. Morwyn didn't know whether it was empathy or rage that boiled her blood, or a combination of the two. From Rennock's dire tone it sounded like her father may have deserved his persecution, though there was the slightest note of defiant pride in his actions when he spoke. She drew in a deep breath and held up her right hand, allowing a small measure of her power to flow down her arm. White frost encased her fingers and the air around her dropped sharply in temperature. Rennock, to his credit, seemed unbothered by the display as his breath fogged the air.

“So it was your grace that saved my father, the same grace that you extend to me now. Despite this,” she said softly, gesturing to her frozen hand with her other. “Despite the danger of the frost.”

When she looked up to meet his gaze, she found that Rennock was crying. Tears rolled from his kind eyes and fell into his beard, where they froze into little icicles that glistened in the dim light of the ward.

“No, dear one. The frost is from your mother. Your father-”

The dome around them shook with a sudden impact and Morwyn was nearly blinded as a beam of brilliant white light blazed down from the sky. She threw an arm over her face to spare her burning eyes but couldn't help peeking past it in a narrow squint. The light seemed to turn liquid as it made contact with the ward, sputtering and spraying and sizzling upon the rocks around them. Rennock leapt to his feet and his arms shot skyward as cracks began to spread from the center of the beam. Golden light flowed from his hands to reinforce the ward. Despite knowing nothing at all of the magic at play before her, Morwyn could sense that Rennock's efforts were a losing battle.

“You cannot keep me from telling her!” he shouted to no one that Morwyn could see. She quailed at the raw power in his voice, as well as the overwhelming energy of the beam of liquid light. “It is her choice, I know you heard her! We cannot keep the truth from her any longer, it is too late for that and you know it as well as I do! For the sake of us all, do not interfere!”

“Moonmother, preserve us,” Morwyn whispered in terror as she fell to the ground in shock and the frost evaporated from her arm. She covered her stinging eyes with both hands, unable to bear the intensity of the light any longer, though it was somehow bright enough to make her see red behind her clenched eyelids and the protective covering of her hands. Almost as soon as she had spoken the words, the red glow of the brilliant light through her flesh abated. She heard nothing but her own panicked breathing as well as that of Rennock somewhere above her.

Gritting her teeth, Morwyn reluctantly opened her eyes and was met with nothing but darkness and the afterimage of the beam burned into her vision. She rubbed her eyes with her palms, but her sight didn't return. A bony knee bumped into her ribs as she lay there groaning and she felt the familiar roughness of Rennock's gnarled hands as he pried her hands away from her face.

“Easy, easy. I am here. Let me help you,” he murmured. She flinched as she felt his fingers trace circles around her eyes. The tingle of arcane power flowing into them made her shiver, but after a moment the pain dulled and ever so slowly the darkness pushed back to the edges of her vision. She could just make out the indistinct form of the wizard kneeling over her. Seconds later, he came into focus and she blinked the tears of pain from her eyes.

“I'm alright,” she said breathlessly. “I'm alright, I can see. Help me up?”

Rennock did so, and when they were seated where they'd been before the attack, Morwyn looked up and noticed that the dome around them was cracked and flickering nearly to the point of failure, though it had withstood whatever had crashed down upon it.

“Gods above,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes once more before turning to look at Rennock. “What the hells was that?”

The old wizard shrugged the long sleeves of his robes back down to cover his forearms and craned his neck to one side. It cracked a rather alarming number of times, but he seemed no worse for wear other than his disheveled hair and beard.

“Gods above,” he replied with more snark than she'd have ever expected from the old man. “Or rather, one god. Yours. Evidently the Moonmother is not pleased with the direction of our conversation.”

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” she swore, her grimace turning into a snarl as she leapt to her feet with her fists clenched. “She warned me it was dangerous to know my parentage, but to try and kill us-”

Rennock held up a finger to interrupt her oncoming tirade.

“She tried to smite me, dear one, not you. I of all people understand her reasons even if I do not agree with them. Such magic would not directly harm to her champion, though the blindness was rather unfortunate. Do not blame her. She was trying to spare you from the truth as I have, only more... forcefully.”

Morwyn paced angrily within the dome and let out a stream of curses so foul that Rennock leaned away from her as he sat, his brow knitted in concern. When she'd exhausted her extensive vocabulary of vile terms, she let out an aggravated shout that echoed down the mountain.

“I am sick to death of these games!” she said, heat flooding through her body as she paced back and forth. In contrast to the icy chill that had settled over them when she'd channeled the frost, now the interior of the dome grew so hot that she began to sweat. She scratched absently at sudden and terrible itch on the back of her left hand. “It feels like half the world is conspiring to kill me, and the other half will do anything it takes to keep me from finding out why! To the hells with all of you, just tell me already!”

Panting for breath and nearly blind again with anger, Morwyn glared over at Rennock and was startled to find him standing at the far edge of the flickering dome, his hands raised defensively and violent blue lightning snapping and cracking between his palms. His eyes were wide with fear and his face was completely drained of color.

They stared at one another for a long time, though how long it was Morwyn couldn't say. When she regained control of her anger and her rapid breathing began to slow, the oppressive heat within the dome faded. When it did the lightning in Rennock's hands flickered and died out, leaving them both in near total darkness once more. Tears of frustration welled in Morwyn's eyes as she bowed her head in shame at the violent thoughts she'd had toward her goddess and the old man.

“What is wrong with me?” she whispered hoarsely. “What about me is so awful that even a goddess would try and keep me from the truth?”

Rennock approached her slowly, his expression carefully neutral, though she could still sense the wariness in his movements. He leaned down and took her left hand in one of his own, lifting it up between them as a small orb of light manifested in the other.

“Look,” he said simply.

Morwyn did as she was bid and immediately noticed something was out of place. A glittering diamond shaped scale, roughly the size of a gold coin and so deep a shade of red that it was nearly back, protruded from beneath torn skin. Fresh blood trickled down her wrist and dripped onto the toe of her boot, unheeded.

“What is that?” she asked dully, now numb to the absurdity of her circumstance. If Rennock told her that she was half lizard she wouldn't have been surprised. The old wizard released her hand and she turned her wrist toward his light to analyze the scale at a better angle, though with dull eyes absent the energy for true curiosity. When Rennock answered, his voice was as matter-of-fact and devoid of emotion as if he were a magister giving a lecture to a student.

“I will address that in a moment, dear one. As I was saying, the frost comes from your mother. She is Rimael, a primordial being, the very essence of winter itself. She is often misconstrued as a goddess but the Primordials are not divine in any sense and care little for the affectations of mortals. They are elementals, the most powerful of elementals, timeless beings that shaped the universe as we know it.”

“Wonderful,” Morwyn said flippantly, though her sarcasm fell flat from lack of inflection. “I suppose that's why she never cared to visit.”

Rennock gave her a look of such dire admonition that Morwyn cleared her throat and straightened her posture, a flush rising in her cheeks from embarrassment.

“You would do well to avoid drawing her ire with such talk. As you well know, winter is most often dispassionate but the fury of her storm is unlike any other.”

Morwyn sighed heavily and massaged her temples to try and soothe her mounting headache. Her jaw hurt from how hard she was clenching her teeth and she took a moment to relax it.

“Alright, I understand that much at least. So you're saying that my mother is winter itself, yet my father's bloodline is somehow... worse?”

Rennock nodded gravely, deepening the seemingly bottomless pit into which Morwyn's stomach had leapt.

“As powerful as your matriarchal bloodline is- and dangerous as it is, do not mistake that- I believe that it was chosen to mask the scent of your patriarchal bloodline. To any but those with the deepest knowledge that is all you have appeared to be for most of your life. It is what had me second-guessing my own instincts after all. A half-Primordial is a dangerous curiosity but not a crisis. They are exceptionally rare and tend to hold themselves aloof from the affairs of other mortals.”

“And my father?”

Rennock swallowed several times and cleared his throat noisily. He leaned in close, keeping an eye on the sky. He spoke so softly that she almost didn't hear his words.

“Your father is Krevadhur... the last of the blood dragons.”

Morwyn's heart skipped a beat then began to pound erratically. The name meant nothing to her but something else twitched in the back of her mind, a casual memory from her days at the Azurine College. She'd meandered through a dark corner of the library with a cart of returned books to shelve when she'd found herself in the section regarding dragons. She'd stumbled upon a small glass display case she'd never seen before and, after checking that the coast was clear of Magister Hornwyn and her fellow assistants, had taken a brief pause to investigate the unassuming exhibit.

An ancient dagger, its green-black blade warped and notched, rested on a velvet pillow beneath the glass. The placard contained only a brief description.

“Adamantine dagger, date unknown. Excavated from the vertebrae of a suspected Blood Dragon at the Rath'tael Archaeological Site.”

At the time it had been just another oddity that had passed from her mind as easily as it had come. She'd never heard of such a creature before and had never bothered to ask about it lest the Magister think she was slacking in her duties.

Realizing she'd been unconsciously holding her breath, Morwyn let it out slowly as she met Rennock's unfathomable gaze. She looked back down to her left hand, at the oozing wound and the dark crimson scale projecting from her flesh like the shell of some hungry parasite.

“I'm... I'm a dragon?”

“A half-dragon,” Rennock corrected her softly, his eyes once again staring off into the distance. “And not just any half-dragon. Blood dragons were the most vicious, powerful, and destructive creatures in the existence of dragonkind. Their bloodlust, their appetite for slaughter, knew no bounds and they could not be reasoned with or controlled. To this day I do not know why, but they ceased their infighting and came together as one to conquer the continent in what came to be known as the Great War. After an incalculable loss of life we managed to turn the tide, and the blood dragons were hunted to extinction with extreme prejudice.”

Morwyn's eyes widened with horror, her heart thundering in her chest.

“Oh gods,” she whispered. “Then why... why did you...”

Rennock regarded her with an expression of bitter regret so thorough that it froze her stiff. He rested his hands on his lap, the stem of his pipe protruding from between his fingers like a punching dagger.

“I took pity on your father, who little older than a hatchling at the time I found him. He was innocent of the crimes of the others and was so small, so alone... I suppose I had hoped that by giving him a chance, by rearing him outside of the cycle of avarice and death intrinsic to the rest of his kind, that I could raise him to be a force for good. I suppose that I wished to prove to myself that our destinies are not determined for us...” Rennock's head fell in shame, his long hair obscuring his face from her. “And to atone for the many, many wrongs that I committed in pursuit of the destruction of his race.”

Morwyn found herself disconnecting from the emotion of their conversation, too overwhelmed by it all to process what she was feeling. She wondered absently if this was what Hazel had meant earlier- that she was shutting off her heart to keep it from breaking. With the void in her chest leaving room for nothing else, all she had was the drive to understand it as best she could, to analyze it with cold detachment.

“But you failed, and my father is a monster out there, siring more monsters?”

The old wizard chuckled unexpectedly. It was a sad, stilted noise, but it carried a hint of ironic humor.

“No, dear one. I raised your father to be a good man. Rash, perhaps, and dangerous beyond all accounting, but good.”

“Then why am I hunted?” she said, her voice rising. “And is hestill hunted as well? If all it took was one crazy old man to successfully break the cycle of violence, then why is my existence- our existence, I suppose- a threat to anyone or anything?”

Rennock shook his head sadly and drew from his pipe, letting the smoke escape from his nostrils in lazy spirals.

“One of the great injustices of life, I am afraid. Old wounds run deep. Few who have felt the depth of pain caused by your ancestors would even pause to ask your name, let alone assess whether or not you have ill intentions.” He gestured to her with his pipe, a casual motion that belied the gravity of his words. “You have potential for great and terrible power, Miss Shrike, do not mistake that. The unrestrained might of a blood dragon is indeed dangerous. That you would use it for the benefit of others matters not to those who despise its mere existence. But to answer an earlier question, I wish to lead you to the Vale for your own safety as well as the safety of others until you gain full control of your magic. I had hundreds of years with your father. At the rate that yours is progressing, I fear we simply do not have that kind of time.”

At a complete loss for anything she could say in response, Morwyn gave an ambiguous grunt and finished the last of her smoke. She flicked the glowing stub toward the wall of the ward and was surprised to see it strike the dome with a shower of sparks as if it were a solid wall. Chewing absentmindedly on a thumbnail as she mulled over his words, she dared the briefest mental glimpse into her center. As she now suspected, the ring of darkness was not purely black but a bubbling morass of deep, dark crimson that matched the shade of the scale on her hand. It responded to her observation by dribbling and slithering its way toward freedom and she felt her temper begin to rise in kind.

This was the thing that had reveled in the death and destruction of the battle. She could feel its sickening appetite. Her sickening appetite. Now that the sources of magic were distinctly separate, she could tell that the hunger for release she'd felt so many times was a that of the blood, not the frost. The icy chill in the second layer still yearned to be unleashed but simply to spread out into the warmth around her and overcome it. The blood felt somehow more alive. More desperate. More... well, bloodthirsty. She knew in her heart it was something to be feared, that she was something to be feared if she could not bring it under her control.

Find the balance. Maintain it.

The Moonmother's words echoed in her mind as she anxiously observed her three layers of power. For a moment she felt a surge of anger toward the goddess for her misdirection and interference regarding her ancestry, but she set her ire aside as she focused on the golden light at her very center. It seemed so small, so minuscule compared to the others. How could she hope to find balance? Everything seemed so out of order...

Wait. Out of order?

“Rennock,” Morwyn said suddenly, keeping her eyes closed.

“Yes, dear one?”

“When you sense my magic, what does it look like to you?”

There was a measured pause for a moment before he responded.

“A layered sphere of some sort. I can sense the essence of the magic within each layer, but I have never seen anything quite like it before. Not even with your father.”

Morwyn gritted her teeth and clenched her fists as he confirmed her fears.

“Thank you for finally telling me the truth, but I think I've had about all I can take of this talk of blood ties for the moment. I still don't understand the why of it all, but I do understand that I need to keep this mess contained. I won't the rest of you at further risk if I can help it, and I'll need your help for what I'm about to try.”