Dragon's Lore Chapter 2: Dragon of the Shining Sun, a dragon's bait fanfic

Dragon's Lore: The Magnificent Seven: Chapter XIV: Prologue

Moshire—the dragon of the sun can save or burn cities. A flash of brass will prelude its coming.

The dragon glares through eyes of topaz, charming and cunning

If thou offer and pray, thou will be rewarded. If thou do not offer, and still pray, ye will be sent running.

The sunlight is its savor.

Thou dance upon the alter and be in favor.

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Eons ago…

When Varisca entered back into consciousness, the first thing she became aware of was the smell of burning. Her head hurt, and was damp with snow. She slowly sat up—touched her head gently—winced. Ashes swirled around her in the cold gusts of wind, contrasting vividly against the blanket of white snow and pale moonlight. There was pain on her chest, she reached down and found a gash--sealed by her own frozen blood—just underneath her collarbone. What on Earth had happened?

Turning her head she saw her home—or what was left of it. Heated embers still were simmering a faint orange under the charred wood. Then, she gasped, horrified—not because her home was destroyed—but because images of what had occurred came rushing into her memory.

The day Varisca's family died started out like any other. Her younger brother, Cabo woke up early to collect eggs from the chicken coop. The chickens were her family's only livelihood. She wore tattered cloth wrapped around her feet because they had no money for shoes. It was especially cold on that winter morning, and snow flurries rubbed her face raw as she tried to collect snow to melt for water, leaving her unprotected hands burning cold. Her family of four—including her—lived out in the country. It was a good day's walk from Prition, the city that was closest east to the capital. Although word had spread that Prition was rampant with sickness.

I might as well be in the city, she thought as she shivered through snowdrifts. As soon as she entered her little shack of a home, she dropped the bucket of snow and tried to warm herself by the fire. The fire was always kept small and in control, because if it grew out of hand, would burn the entire shack. Her father must have been out chopping wood because her mother was the only person in the home.

"Put the snow over the fire, dear," her mother reminded her. She was chopping barley and potatoes. It was the only food they had.

Varisca did so, although she found it hard to grab with numbed fingers.

By mid morning, the cowardly sun had decided to grace the world with its presence. The sun made Varisca yearn for spring. In the spring, she would weave flowers into her hair and dance around the fey alter of Moshire. Moshire was coincidentally, the dragon of the shining sun. She had never seen the dragon before, but knew in her heart it existed. Every season her family would offer a chicken at the alter. Every season, their chickens would lie plenty of eggs. Everyone thought that the chicken sacrifices to Moshire brought about the eggs-of-plenty, but that winter season there were hardly any eggs to collect.

Cabo returned with a downcast face.

"Any eggs dear?" their mother asked.

"One," he sighed.

Varisca and her mother looked at him, utterly shocked.

"But—there are twenty chickens!!" Varisca cried.

"It's not my fault the featherbrains ain't layin'" Cabo reminded her.

Their mother bit her lip and a look of worry crossed her face, "Don't argue. I guess your father will just have to chop one. Maybe that will teach them a lesson."

Varisca hated it when her father chopped the chickens—they would run around a few moments after without their heads. When she thought about it though, it seemed an awful long time since she saw a chopped chicken. That reminded her…

"Mama, when was the last time father chopped a chicken?" she asked.

"I believe midsummer," her mother answered, without thinking.

Varisca gasped, "You mean, we didn't offer to Moshire in the autumn, and not this winter either?!"

"Oh do stop worrying, my child. We couldn't give up a chicken last season, you

know that. We just can't afford it anymore."

"But—but—but what will happen if we stop?"

"Nothing. Have you ever even seen the brass dragon, Moshire? No. Only the crazy beggar in Prition claims to have seen it…and he's crazy!"

"Our chickens have always laid many eggs after we pay tribute, and Cabo has been collecting fewer these past months," she tried to explain.

"Yes, there has been less but that is because there is hardly any food and it's terribly cold. Any of that can affect the chickens' cycles. Now hush, not another word about it. Come set the table." Her mother had the last word.

Varisca did not agree with her mother's words but did as she was told. The barley and potato stew came off the fire hot—but after a few seconds, the cold air reduced it to luke-warm.

"I don't like barley," Cabo made a face.

"Hush! You must learn not to be picky. You're not the countess," their father laughed.

Varisca agreed after taking a look at her brother's skeletal form. Food was reduced to even smaller portions in the winter. The boy needed to eat.

"Of course I ain't the countess--I'm a boy!" Cabo sassed. Cabo was a witty boy, and they laughed at his reply.

Before they ate, their father prayed to the fey for a quick winter and good health.

Seconds after they enjoyed their first bite, a loud noise—like a bird of prey—sounded above them, outside.

All of them froze in their seats, but not because of the bitter cold engulfing them.

"Papa?" Cabo whispered—eyes on the ceiling—not moving a muscle.

Their mother reached out and grabbed their father's hand. The noise sounded again.

"It's the dragon," Varisca said with certainty.

"What are we going to do?" their mother asked. She had a voice on the edge of panic.

"Don't move," their father replied. They all looked at the ceiling. The dragon wasn't on the roof, but it was definitely in the air above the shack. A heavy 'whoosh' sound was taken for its wings flapping in the space above their pathetic shelter. It stopped, and there was silence.

"What are we—?"

"Don't move."

More silence. Just when their father relaxed a small bit, the roof was ripped off—sent flying across the hill—landing yards away.

All of them started yelling and screaming as they saw their reflections in a pair of glaring, topaz eyes. Moshire.

The dragon barked out another angry roar, sending a breath of flame into the fireplace. The fire flared up—no longer the tiny, warming blaze—but a raging inferno.

Varisca and her family scattered as the shack burned. Moshire reared and its brass scales gleamed in what light was left from the setting sun. Varisca had never seen anything so amazing or deadly in her life. She ran in the opposite direction in that which her family had fled. She ended up leaving the firestorm, by diving into a snowdrift. She heard her family's screams—they were trapped—paralyzed with fear, between the toppled wooden walls!

She cried out, and desperately tried to reach them—to help them escape.

The dragon started to flap its wings, apparently satisfied with the family's punishment for not keeping up with its seasonal sacrifice. The under current the wings caused, blasted Varisca away from her them. As she tried to stand once more—the dragon's tail of spikes backlashed into her body—knocking her unconscious and into the ground. Her family burned.

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She wanted to forget. It was so cold. She felt dead, but cursed to walk the endless white hills for always. Her tears froze midway down her cheeks as she put one numb leg in front of the other, walking to nowhere—just away from the horror. Had to get away from it. It had been a few hours of walking when she decided she did not feel like living any longer. She was much too frozen and heartbroken and in pain to care. In the pre-dawn light, there seemed to be a tower, standing a mile or so from where she was. Whether it was real or a wintry, post-traumatic mirage, she didn't know.

I'll just bury myself in a snowdrift by the tower, she thought. She got close enough to touch the outer stone walls, but wasn't curious enough to see if it was real. All she wanted to do was die. As fate might have it, the tower was real and home to a mage who resided in it for the fur-trapping months. He came across the blue-lipped, barely alive, sixteen-year-old girl in the snow by his doorstep on his way out to check his traps. He was taken quite unexpected by her, but carried her in nonetheless because her body was in shock from severe hypothermia. Unfortunately for Varisca, her plan to freeze to death was thwarted once the mage carefully used restoration magic to bring her body to a normal temperature again.

She only remembered bits and pieces of the days she was recovering—almost like it was a dream—easily lost from the mind upon waking. She remembered the mage, near to her and hearing him cite odd words and phrases. He asked her name, she mumbled: "Varisca."

"I am Luthor."

Eventually Varisca stopped streaming awake between dreaming and woke up for good. She knew she was alive but her memory of what had happened after she settled in the snowdrift to die was still fuzzy and interrupted.

She was on a bed, snuggled into all manners of fur. She was warm—stretching her arms from beneath the blankets, she found herself to be naked.

"Awake for real this time, love?" the mage asked. She pulled the furs closer and looked up—he was standing on a balcony above her.

"Am I dead?" she asked—just in case.

The mage chuckled, "Hardly."

Varisca sighed with disappointment.

"If you wanted to die, then the best thing would be to do it where no one will find you. Example: don't collapse in front of a tower."

"I thought it was a bloody illusion," Varisca snapped. So she had failed at dying—what now? Try again or accept it as a sign she was supposed to live?

"Why do I not have clothes on?"

"Do you honestly want those rags back? They were dirty, and wet with snow. You're warm and clean now."

She was clean. Did he give her a bath? She put that odd and puzzling question aside to argue her clothes back. "I can't very well walk around naked. It's cold. Besides, I am supposed to be dead. Why did you keep me alive?"

"I'm a mage of restoration, it's what I do. You can't very well walk around now, because your body is still weak. I doubt your legs would hold you." He lectured. "You could very well walk around naked, for the female figure is beautiful and you have quite a remarkable one that was hidden under all that filth. However I won't be attracted, because well, you are female. As for clothes, I have some items that will fit you if you get chilled."

Varisca understood at once that the mage was the sort of person to fancy his own gender, which wasn't unusual in pagan society. His remark about her figure answered her question about bathing her. She did not remember being washed or cleansed in a tub of water, so she still was baffled at how the mage accomplished it.

She intended to pull herself up to rest on her elbows but once she tried, a pain seared through her chest. She looked down and saw white gauze, bandaged to her torso.

"What happened to me?"

"I was hoping you could tell me," Luthor descended the stairs from the balcony and approached her. She could see all of him then. Luthor—seemed to Varisca—not as old as her father, but could have been one. He was wearing robes colored blue, and had brown hair long enough to pull together in the back of his head. It hung loose though. He had a clear, sincere face.

Varisca couldn't honestly remember what had happened. She had suppressed the memory somewhere in between almost freezing to death and then recovering. She shook her head, unable to recall.

The mage—Luthor—gave her a searching glance before deciding she was being honest.

"Well whatever you have encountered left you with a fractured shoulder, small puncture wounds in your torso and a deep gash under your collarbone. The fracture and small wounds were easy to heal, however the gash will leave a rather interesting scar."

"Why?"

"I couldn't get the gash to heal. I am a master of restoration magic, so any injury should be able to mend under my power." He said. He hoped she would understand what he meant by that statement but she merely looked bewildered. "Regular scars in human tissue tend to take shape along the wound's path. Your wound is irregular because it won't heal by me, so I can only conclude that it is fey-inflicted."

"So why will it scar different?"

"Fey wounds scar into the symbol of the particular fey that caused it—that is if you don't die first. It is rare to meet someone with a fey-scar because if fey have quarrels, they usually do more than cause wounds." He explained. He had an uneasy look about him. "So I'll ask one more time: can you remember anything that happened to you?"

The mention of fey gave Varisca a visual memory. Glittering coins—millions of them—but her family was poor. Maybe what she saw weren't coins, just coin-sized. She grazed the fey wound with her fingers and closed her eyes. She remembered spikes coming at her, catching her chest in one hard blow. The brass coins she remembered were scales.

Her eyes snapped open, "Dragon."

Luthor looked doubtful.

"Moshire," the name was said in an angry hiss.

"What could you have possibly done to attract the wrath of Moshire?"

"I do not know. We didn't…" she spoke, remembering the death of her loved ones, "We did not offer a seasonal tribute."

"That wouldn't provoke a dragon to attack you," Luthor said most assuredly.

She wanted to snap at him—ask him why he was so positive that it wasn't possible—but held her tongue. He was a mage, and it wouldn't do any good to argue with him. She considered his words however. So why did the dragon end her family and not her? She escaped death by fire, ice, and blood. The screams of her family echoed in her memory and her heart darkened.

She decided then that she would stay alive. She would destroy not only the dragon of the sun, but all its family as well—all of dragon kind.

Thanks to the four people who reviewed! This chapter was especially for them. : )