hey everyone! twilightwing is back! and i changed my name. you can only guess where i got it from. lol. :)
ANYWAY for anyone new to this, this story is sort of a companion story to Untamed Soul so really you could read them in any order you want i just suggest you read that one first.
heres the summary 'cause i know i won't fit it:
Before he had forever with Kaltezira, who exactly was Zhayrald, prince of the avian city of Arez? What secrets does the mind-reader hide? Who exactly is his father that we have never heard of? Why does he hate Vdzr so much? How exactly did he cope for two years while Kaltezira was trapped in Zlhorv and not lose his sanity? The sequel to Untamed Soul. AU.
if you recognize it, you get a cookie. if you review, you get a Zhayrald plushie. :)
Prologue: Why
I had never really fit in. I think kids my age just wanted me to hang out with them because I was a prince. I could see it in their eyes. They never really liked me for who I was. That's all I really wanted in my life, a friend who wanted to be around me just to be around me, not because of my status. I watched the children play in the streets of the town, flying between buildings and laughing, from my bedroom window. I sighed and turned around, terrified as my room melted into the forest that lay between Arez and Zlhorv.
I knew this dream too well. It haunted my mind every night. I knew when I would wake up, my body drenched in cold sweat, my breath rapid and rugged and I could only wait for that moment to come. I was hiding in a tree, my small eight-year-old hands gripping the bark of the tree like a life line. Below, a man whom I knew like the back of my hand and a black wolf circled. The man had hair as red as the sun at sunrise, his skin an olive tone like mine, and I knew, but could not see, that his eyes were a mysterious shade of grey or an extremely light blue. The man I knew as Worzreng, my father and my only true friend.
Worzreng and the black wolf continued to circle each other silently, glaring at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. The wolf I had no name for but knew by the way he moved and watched my father's every move that he was part human. I had heard rumors of avians that had the ability to shape shift into wolves, and I had good reason to believe that this wolf was one of them.
Without warning, the wolf leaped at my father. I expected to thrust my eyes open now to find myself sitting up right in my bed, staring at my wall covered in cold sweat, but the feeling of being ripped from the dream never came. I could only wait for that sensation as I watched in horror as Worzreng and the wolf fought each other, both holding their own and managing to wound the other in some way or another. My father drew his white blade across the fur of the black wolf several times, dying the blade with the blood of his enemy, but all was pointless.
The wolf managed to get behind my father and pounced at him, aiming at the base of his neck. His aim was true and Worzreng had no time to react. As he turned and the wolf's fangs sunk into the base of his neck, I could have sworn he saw me hiding in the trees, disobeying his orders to head home after he heard the wolf approach. The snap of my father's neck echoed through the trees and ripped me from the dream.
"Worzreng!" I shouted as I bolted upright in my bed, drenched in a cold sweat as if someone had dumped a bucket of water over my head. My heart beat still thundered in my ears as my mother entered the room.
"It was that dream again, wasn't it?" Ziaghra asked, sitting next to me on my bed. I pulled my knees to my bare chest, wrapping my arms around them, and nodded.
"It was worse this time," I murmured. "I saw the fight. I saw him die." My mother nodded and wrapped around an arm around my shoulders. The topic hurt her more than it hurt me. I could only imagine how much it must hurt her, to have her husband die and have her son tell her that he witnessed the entire thing.
As my heart beat slowed, I remembered that it was my sixteenth birthday. A day that should be one filled with joy and happiness starting off on such a depressing note was not a very good sign.
"Throw some clothes on," my mother said after a while. "I have to show you something." I nodded and got up, pulling a t-shirt and a pair of old jeans from my closet. If need be, I would change later. Ziaghra nodded and walked out of the room, I followed with increasing curiosity.
She led me to the main hall of the castle, and into another hall. I had never been in this part of the castle before. Large, familiar looking pictures of various scenes covered the walls while a carpet ran down the center of the tile floor. Torches were placed in the spaces between each picture, illuminating the hall and providing the only light.
"All of these prophecy paintings are copies of the originals that hang in Zlhorv but I should have told you about this one a long time ago, Zhayrald," Ziaghra sighed, stopping in front of a covered painting. "I should have told you the moment you told me…Worzreng was murdered. I feared that you would suffer the same fate as him when you found out."
"Mother, what are you talking about?" I asked. Ziaghra sighed again and rested a hand on the cloth that covered the painting before us, the tears in her eyes glowing with the light of the torch's flame. She looked at me and wordlessly pulled the cloth off the canvas to revel the painting beneath.
As the white fabric landed at my feet, I was not looking at the subject of the painting, but the figure hidden in the background. The black wolf of my nightmares stood, hidden by its black fur against the night sky of the painting. As my fingers traced the outline and tightened into a fist over the ominous figure, my eyes found another figure painted in black, the figure of a woman who looked almost as ominous as the wolf, but not as terrifying.
"Interesting that you should find Vdzr's outline in the painting before anything else," Ziaghra whispered.
"Vdzr?" I asked, the foreign name rolling off my tongue.
"The name of the avian that killed your father," Ziaghra explained. I froze and glared at the picture with a new found hate. I wanted to track down this murderer and kill him myself for taking away my only friend, the only person who really understood me, my father.
"But that is not why I showed you this," my mother said, breaking my thoughts and seeing my intentions. "Look at the entire picture, not just the evil hidden in the back."
I looked at the picture again, my eyes traveling across the bottom where I found the silhouette of two cities, one I recognized as Arez and the other as Zlhorv. An eerie mist towered above these cities.
Finding the silhouette of the woman again, I found another in the painting. The similarities between the two women were there, but not extremely noticeable. While the woman hidden in the back was painted on a larger scale, for a certain reason I would imagine, I could see that the two were related due to the similarities in their figures and the angles of their faces.
It was not the hidden ominous looking woman that held my attention or the silhouette of the murderer that made my breath stop in my throat. It was the woman painted in the center of the painting. While most normal men would have called her ordinary, I called her extraordinary. Her wild waist long hair was tossed by an invisible wind and was the same shade as mine, a light brown. The mist lapped at her bare feet and up her lean muscular legs which were hidden by a pair of jeans that looked like they had been ripped to shreds by a thousand set of claws. The simple, torn black tank top she wore accented her simple figure perfectly. Her long arms laced with lean muscle hung at her side and in her hands, she held a sword with a blade as red as blood. Her hazel eyes bore holes into mine, glaring at me with an intensity that did not frighten me but made me want to know more about her. The wings that spread from her back were darker than the background of the painting. The black feathers were as black as my own with blood red tips that matched her blade. On her left wing, the second to outer most feather had a tip as white as mine.
"Who is she?" I whispered, tracing the outline of her wings with my fingertips.
"That is Kaltezira, Blood Stars in Black Sky, daughter of Itrantia, Flies with Hawks, and Balvor, White Wolf. She is the princess of Zlhorv," my mother explained. There was no way this beautiful creature could have been the daughter of Itrantia, the power hungry dictator-slash-queen of Zlhorv who waged war on Arez several years ago. I heard Ziaghra's footsteps fade away but I remained examining the painting.
I realized that I stood behind the girl, my semi-long light brown hair slightly tossed by the unseen wind. I looked older, although not by much, three years at the most. Against my darker toned skin, my blue eyes sparkled. My black wings with white feather tips were spread like Kaltezira's. Tracing the outlines of my own wings, I noticed that my second to outer most feather on my left wing, was not tipped white, but a red as deep as the blood that ran through my veins, the same red of Kaltezira's blade and feather tips. I had to open my left wing a fraction to confirm that all my feathers were still tipped in white. As Kaltezira did, I too held a sword in my hands, a sword with a white blade.
By then, my mother had returned, carrying something wrapped in a white cloth, but I was too occupied to notice.
"What does it mean?" I asked.
"You and Kaltezira will end the war between Zlhorv and Arez, defeating both Itrantia and Vdzr. Both of you have powers beyond your wildest dreams that you have not discovered yet," Ziaghra explained. My eyes tore away from the painting for a moment as a memory flashed across my eyes.
We were learning about the prophecies of the past in school that day. The subject didn't really interest me very much as I doodled on my desk in the back corner of the class.
"Most of the great kings have a prophecy that state that they are destined to end a war, bring peace to a land, or fight off a great threat," the teacher explained.
Everyone turned to stare at me as if they were expecting me to comment on that; I just looked back at them, lost, confused and not really caring. Yeah, I was a prince sitting in the back of a normal classroom; I thought to myself, you all can go back to learning now while I pretend to care.
Now I realized why they had all stared at me. They knew my destiny more than I did and expected me to say something about it.
"Does Kaltezira live in Zlhorv?" I managed ask after a long silence, suddenly caught up in the way Kaltezira's name rolled off my tongue. Ziaghra shook her head.
"No one knows where she is," she said. "She disappeared along with Balvor not long after her birth." I sighed. So there was a chance I would never see her. But this was a prophecy painting, and so far, to the extent of my knowledge, none had been wrong. Only as my mother pressed the object wrapped in the white cloth into my hands did I notice that she had been holding it in the first place.
"What is this?" I asked, looking down at the object.
"Open it," Ziaghra told me. "It is time that it was passed to you. It is rightfully yours." I looked over at her to find her smiling at me and slowly unraveled the cloth. As the last of the fabric fell away, I realized what this was.
"Mother," I barely managed to whisper. I gripped the sheath of the sword in my left hand and wrapped my right hand around the handle. Silently, my father's sword slid from its sheath, fitting perfectly in my hand and feeling like nothing at all. I had seen this blade many times for Worzreng had shown me several times when I was younger and it haunted my memories and my dreams. The pure white blade held no marks from its duel with Vdzr eight years ago. "You want me to have this?"
"Worzreng would have wanted the same. Besides, it is rightfully yours," she repeated. I was at a loss for words as I returned to the sword to its sheath and belted it, my father's sword hanging at my side. To hold my father's sword, to have it rest at my side, to call it my own, was something completely different than admiring it in my memories.
"Thank you," I said, hugging Ziaghra. My mother smiled and hugged me back.
*gasp*
his deepest secret, reveled! i hope u enjoyed it.
so i wanna tell you guys something.
i was sitting in geometry(a class that shouldn't be considered math) and i was daydreaming about if they made this into a movie and who would play the characters. then it hit me. Vdzr kinda, just kinda, looks like Fang and Zhayrald kinda looks like Zac Efron! *gasp* if this was made into a movie, he wouldn't play Zhay. no offence to Zac Efron lovers but im not the biggest fan of HSM. *shrugs* the first was ok but the seguels were just major overkill.
anyway, if you review, ill be rly happy. :) the button doesnt bite!