Oooo, 2 chapters in 1 week! This is a short little interlude. Nothing quite as long as I've done in recent chapters, but I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 34
Fluffy tufts of snow alighted along her dull red snout with barely audible noise, and she huffed the flurry away from her with an exasperated exhale. She shook off the distraction as the snow continued to fall around her and she drew her fire up into her mouth, churning it slowly along her lengthy tongue as it dribbled downward from her jagged teeth.
The fire from inside her burned so deliciously that she couldn't help but chuckle. The force of breath from within her caused the molten fire to spew from her, drenching the snow covered ground with hisses of steam that formed as it obliterated the cold substance utterly.
In the ancient tongue of Dragonkin, she spoke in a tone so low that it sounded more like a rumbling sound than it did words. She murmured of conquests and victory, chanting the words of power again and again and hoarding her magic within her core.
The wait was almost over. Her worm had spies that had brought news of the hatching, and it was nigh upon them. She cast a great wave of fire at the ground beneath her, circling as she did. The inferno boiled away the snow sending up great hot clouds of steam and exposed the earth beneath to her bath of fire.
As she rounded once and twice she banished the cold away and rolled her great red body down into a snug little circle. Once settled she cast her eyes to the House and pulled just slightly on the tether within her that had tied the worm to her when he freed her from her magical prison.
She chuckled smugly as she released it once again, allowing the slack to return. It was surely entertaining to play with it when the occasion struck her. But not too much, she had cautioned herself, lest her little worm piece together the true consequences of what he had done.
Restoring herself to her torpor in the cold, she tucked her muzzle in once more in hopes she would dream again of her victories to come. And little babies to raise as her own.
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From the relative safety and warmth of his familial House, Tom frowned as he watched out the window at the snowfall in the twilight of evening. He had already privately conceded that the intermittent spewing of fire was indeed a real disconcertion to the people who occupied the villages surrounding the House. Though, he would never speak such a concession aloud.
The first weeks had had throngs of countryside denizens flocking to the great House with wildly displeased faces and shouting protest at the disturbance to their livestock, and the terror of their children. A pointedly timed roar out of the Dragon had banished the uninvited plaintiffs back to their homes, screaming and wailing as they scattered away.
The lands had been relatively quiet of the people. They had shied away greatly after that. The nearest Vassal House had been seen the next day hurriedly loading belongings into a series of carriages the morning following, and the family had still yet to return.
As the red settled itself down, he felt a light tingling deep in the sockets of his eyes. He closed them and rubbed his lids a moment. His head felt lighter for a moment as well and he reached out to the wall to steady himself.
Just as quickly, the feeling passed and he opened his eyes again, and righted himself. He shook his head and questioned silently if he ought to take his meal in his rooms to rest, rather than in his study as he had been these last long weeks. Too much reading by candlelight, he thought. The warning words of his mother rang in his ears, even as Lord and a man, he remembered when she would scold him for secreting away with a candle to read old scrolls and books found in the libraries where his parents had worked.
He bit the inside of his lip as his mind was driven to distraction beyond the plans he had formulated for the coming weeks. The Lord of the great House of Gaunt turned away from the mundane scene of his Dragon as it warmed the earth on which it had slept, and he fell back into the center of his study once more.
Absentmindedly, Tom levitated a log onto the fire and pushed a bit of breeze into the hearth to air the fire and stoke it higher, catching the log aflame as he did. The crackle of the bark and fizzling sounds of coals was the only noise that joined him this evening. The man eased himself into the softness of his chair, and retrieved his quill once more to finish his letter to Thoros, whom he had not seen after their little confrontation.
Thoros' letter assured him that, while he was nearly fully recovered, he had discovered a new frailty to the chills of deep winter and begged pardon to travel to him when the assault of storms had passed. When Tom has sent his request to Thoros, he had an inkling that the older Lord would still not be able to travel in bodily comfort as he one had. Not yet, at least. Tom had secured that fact in one of the spells he had cast over Thoros as punishment for the information he had withheld from him.
If it was one thing Tom despised, and had always done so, it was deception amongst allies. Though it was true, he could see plainly that there were Houses with which he was aligned that would turn if they thought they had greater political gain to do it. But his magic was stronger than theirs. By leaps, and bounds, as though it flowed from the very wellspring of the Earth below and straight into his core. Not a single one of the Lords of the Houses United could compete with him magically, and they knew it well. They'd known it from the first time he had appeared at a conclave of the union, proudly bearing the banner of his ancestral family. Old royalty they were, yet not a single family member had occupied the lands in as many years.
He had had to prove, unequivocally, that he had greater determination in droves, and was utterly without mercy before the first of them bent the knee to him. Once he had secured the one, the rest followed like the livestock they were. Whimpering and soft aristocrats, and descendants from long-dead royal lines of ancient kings they all were. Politian's, schemers, and wealthy peerage headed the Houses of these Lords, without a single day of taxing work to tally to their names. No, they had been fed creamed beefs and wine from the day they had been weaned from the suckling upon their wet nurses as their families wore the finest silks and furs their serfs could tan and tailor.
They were fat and sweated like pigs when they climbed but a bit of stairs. Their pale skin burned mercilessly in the summer suns, as there were no purpose for them to be out of their vast Houses.
Tom looked down upon his hands, wrapped around the top of his parchment, and the other with quill nestled loosely within. The callouses of his hands spoke of the hewing of timber, the repetitive motion of scrubbing floors with boar-hair brushes on his hands and knees, and the husbandry of livestock. These were not the hands of a Lord of a great House, not at all. Yet, here he sat within a room that boasted some of the oldest texts of historical significance in all of the Great Houses. Spellworks of ancient kings and conquerors, long since lain to rest in their royal tombs, their words and memories passing into legend and story. The very desk at which he sat now bore the wear of thousands of years of his family's ancestry to have sat at it, written upon its surface, and read by the light of this same hearth.
His accomplishments as they were spoke greatly of his determination, and the abolishment of his fears. Still, his strong character and his potent and irrefutably powerful magic and skill were not enough. Not when it had come to her.
Absentmindedly, the man paused as he reached his hand out to the top of his desk where a small leather bound book sat, not much bigger than his palm. He hovered his hand above it and closed his eyes, aching yet one more time that he could will his magic to bring it to life that she would stand before him in this room. Gently, he closed his hand over it, and picked it up. Untying the soft and worn laces that bound it at the top and bottom, he opened the little book to uncover the single page that rested inside the leather binding. There inside was a portrait, small and simple. An item of the most precious nature to him, above any other object in the entirety of his family's home, this was, for it was the only item he had of her.
Tenderly and with careful fingers, he touched the surface of the little painting. So many years before this he had paid a simple man a practical fortune to paint it, to the description he had asked. And though the painter protested that he had no subject, the description of the woman Tom gave him was so precise and perfect, the man did not need it.
Her dark hair was painted with a luster he had never known hair could have. It shone even in the low light of the fading hearth. Her eyes would glitter as they would laugh together, spelling objects to dance when they were young, and playing at childish games.
Her smile had been so perfect, that every time he saw it, he thought he might not be able to breathe if he looked for too long upon it. For years before he had even become a man he would look at her; while she studied, while she walked next to him, while she played with her younger siblings, and he had known what he had felt for her.
She had been swept from her family's home so quickly, that Tom had never again been able to speak to her. The last time he had seen her was her tear-stained face as her mother pulled her away down the hall to her rooms, where she had been barred and imprisoned until the pair were packed and ready, and she was sent away. He had never lain his eyes on her perfect face again.
His finger grazed over the painted image of her perfect lips upon the little canvas he kept close to him. The hint of a smile played on her lips as though she were about to share with him a great secret, and when he recalled in his memories the times that he watched as she would blush for him while he touched her cheeks, he felt he welcome stirrings within him, yearning again to hold her again in his embrace.
And yet, for all that they had shared, for the years he had loved her, she had married another man. It had taken him months to reach the lands of this House, and a pair yet again for him to legally assume the seat as Lord. When his formal request had been sent to her father, he had felt hopeful and happy that his response would come swiftly. The House of Gaunt had always been one of the revered and wealthy, and their pedigree could be traced to many legendary figures through history.
But it had all meant nothing.
Not even a fortnight had passed when Tom had received a simple, and dismissive response to him informing him that his second eldest daughters hand had already been spoken for, and her wedding was imminent. But that he had interest to invite him to entreat with him for her elder sister, a great beauty, in her stead.
Tom had incinerated the letter with his bare hands as his rage had consumed him utterly. His bellows of fury had been matched only by the destruction he had wrought with his own two hands upon anything he could reach, and crush.
It had been in this fit of madness that he had vowed, upon his magic, that he would revenge himself on the heartbreak she had brought unto him. He would repay her in kind for her abandonment of him, of this he would ensure.
Unable to fill his family's home with the bride he so desired, he had immersed himself in the task of gathering together the forces of Lords who had comprised the Houses United, once again. In the several score of years he assumed the helm as Lord of the House Gaunt, he had prospered his lands once more in establishing trade agreements to benefit the fine craftsman who lived and worked in his lands. The farmlands before his assumption had all but been abandoned by their families in years past; as the House owned all the land, there had been no more tenants to tend the land and care for stock.
There had been several old mines that had once brought forth some of the most beautiful and precious gems known by the world, and yet they had been looted and abandoned, and were manned by workers no longer.
It had been many hard years to begin with, but as time had passed, more folk had been willing to return to the farms, and markets flourished in the cities again. The promises of prosperity bore fruit over the years, and Tom took part in every little venture.
The man sighed contentedly as he closed the softened leather pieces around the portrait once more, and tied it back carefully. His head must be softening indeed in this middle age of his, he mused briefly, if now he recalled his childhood love with such affection and longing. He chuckled and placed it again upon the desk and returned to his letter to Thoros Nott once more.
Soon it would be that he would see her again, and she would know what pain she had wrought upon his heart and soul when his recompense was taken. For he would take his pound of flesh from her, and he could cleave it out of her very heart with his bare hands if necessary.