Kindred Spirit Lodge Presents
Early History Of Ikarias
by Ikarias
January 10th, 2002
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The Past Begins...
In the city of Pahrische, the Bountiful Doe was one of those rare but very popular establishments frequented only by women who loved women. A good half of the clients were guards, warriors, mercenaries and the like, the rest were merchants, horse breeders, scholars, everyday women.
Ikarias nodded to the bouncer standing under the wooden sign of a broad, stylized, doe's ass with the bit of fluff tail hanging down. It also looked, without much imagination, like the front end of a woman's center. She handed over her sword and long knife to the heavy-set woman in her mid-forties.
"You'll get them back when you leave," the bouncer wrapped the weapons in a cloth with a number painted on it and tucked them in a cabinet with a couple dozen others. "Lady Muen will advise you of availability and cost."
"I know the drill," Ikarias took the small numbered triangular token with her right hand and put it in her money pouch.
The bouncer narrowed her grey eyes at the gloved left hand but she let the cloaked and hooded warrior enter the main hall. She got a glimpse of the woman's face, some sort of disfigurement covering the left side. A place like this was sometimes the only option for those who looked less than appealing. She closed the door behind the client and sat back on the stool, arms crossed, watching the marketplace.
This brothel was one of the few places Ikarias could relax. The last eight years of searching for her twin, Shazria, had been fruitless, so too the hunt for their father, Korax the sorcerer. She found this place a few years ago, her money brought her company, and the brief interludes that life could be different than that which the fates and that daemon-spawned bastard set in motion.
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Ardea staggered over the wastes, the manacles scraping over her already raw ankles, the half-dozen links dragging from each, clinking slower and slower behind her. Nearly naked, her rags less than scraps, the blood from the lashes on her back had dried and the wounds were crusted with sand. She felt another sharp pain as she held her hands protectively over her swollen belly. The fortress was somewhere far behind her, as was that monster Korax. She'd be thrice damned if any child of hers was born and lived under the sorcerer's hand and his roof. Too many of his progeny of rape had been abominations; they had no life.
Better death and freedom; let my child be none of his flesh. You may only live for moments but those will be beyond slavery and suffering.
Scent of food as below a tiny figure fell and was still. A creature, ivory and bronze, twenty paces from head to tail, and a wingspan twice that saw it all. A wingtip curled, soft white hair waved in the updraft, the vanes cupped, banking the flyer in a slow descending arc. The cold-drake wasn't worried about other predators taking his meal. At sight or scent, lesser beasts and birds left the vicinity to the great furred wyrm; after all, he was Lord of the Lost Sands, especially in the dry winter season.
It was a human female, injured and ill. Phenthregaas had no particular appetite for women, or men or children for that matter, unlike some rogue cousins who preferred two-legged meat. He inhaled deeply, changing his internal bellows from ice to fire.
Burning the meal before eating was an ancient precaution against any sickness or parasites that the food might carry. So too could live food injure the eater with hidden weapons or desperate attempts to prevent easy digestion.
Phenthregaas snorted and spit aside a small flame, her scent, yes she was hurt but there was more, she was pregnant and due very soon. No true wyrm would ever kill let alone eat a mother-to-be. They are sacred especially to dragonkind. His hunger vanished, he picked up the limp figure, and cradling her in his scimitar claws flew quickly to his lair. Dry wood, exhale and a fire burst cheerily to warm the pale woman. She was half-conscious when her water broke.
Carefully he nipped through the twin umbilical cords, a drop of his venom, potent and mysterious, entered the girls' blood. His forked tongue cleaned them, the afterbirth passed and he did consume that, to honor the newborns, his daughters.
The cold-drake had a family now. He hunted for them, told stories and got Ardea to smile and laugh. Ikarias and Shazria thrived, playing with tarnished treasure and forgotten jewels. Clothing was made from the skins of beasts Phenthregaas brought home for meals. They learned to fish, climb trees and ride their father as he flew oh so very carefully.
When the girls' moon blood came so did the first faint scales. Within a year, Ikarias left side and her sister's right had fine satiny scales like pale jade.
She was ashamed and ran off while Shazria thought they were wonderful. Ardea nodded as the cold-drake flew off to find their upset sixteen-year-old daughter.
Phenthregaas found her early that evening in a small glen, one of the girls' secret spots from childhood. He curled around her, his creamy fur warming her against the chill night breezes. Then he told the teenager a different story.
Ardea had been taken from her home, forced to serve a cruel sorcerer who wanted to breed a new race of slaves, of monsters. She had been whipped often, and he had raped her repeatedly until his twisted seed took hold in her. She escaped to chose the desert and a quiet death over whatever fate awaited her and the innocent within her. Somehow during birth some of the cold-drake's essence had gotten into the twins and when they became women, so too did the dragonkind show. Did not the scales protect her skin against thorns and falls? And wasn't her left eye exceptionally sharp when nighttime fell? Her hearing on that side too was keener. She was not a monster but a miracle, loved for who she was, not what someone wanted to shape her into. Come home. Ikarias sat astride the lowered sinuous neck, behind the last vertebrae before the wings and hugged as much as she could reach.
Shazria didn't come out to meet them and stranger still, Ikarias smelled her mother's blood as they landed hard and fast. Ardea was standing before a sprawling oak,--no--she had spikes through her shoulders pinning her to the rough bark. Arrows pierced her chest and thighs.
"Korax--took your sister, did this for my cutting his face. I'm sorry--my loves…"
Sobbing, Ikarias grabbed her mother's hand, holding it to her lips, weeping, tasting Ardea's last desperate strike through the flesh of the sorcerer. She licked her lips, memorizing Korax' taste as grief and rage battled within her. Ardea's head fell to her breast.
Phenthregaas drew his daughter away and with a great breath set the tree ablaze.
When the ashes were cold and scattered by the wind, Ikarias went into their home cave, finding a whole if somewhat dented sword in the pile of weapons from fallen warriors of long ago. She practiced for a year and a day, dueling the scimitar claws of the cold-drake but it wasn't enough. She needed to learn more, to go out into the world and learn its ways if she were to succeed in finding her sister. A similar stranger search would Phenthregaas undertake, to tear the un-worlds apart until he found the god or daemon responsible for empowering Korax, for without magic, he would die like any man.
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The End - 'Early History of Ikarias' - by Ikarias
Continues in - 'Welcoming Old Friends'