Fire And Ice - Chapter Six - A Heart Divided
#6 of Fire and Ice
A Heart Divided
(c) Cederwyn Whitefurr,
February, 2005,
All Rights Reserved
Katelyn Silverscale stood atop the cragy, swindswept peaks and looked out over the frozen tundra and the glaciers that lay so far below. Blindingly bright, the sun shone down on the snowy plateu, reflected endlessly through uncountable icicles that hung from the mouth of the cave behind her. her long robes whipping and snapping around her ankles, Katelyn stood resolutely, almost as if the freezing cold winds that raked her finely scaled body with their deadly touch were but a mere gentle spring breeze.
Facing the great cavern mouth before her, Katelyn felt no fear as she drew upon her magical training and her ancestry, to understand and comprehend the powerful wardings that had been laid over this cave. Shrouded in the snow, were the unmistakable forms of many races who had come to plunder the last resting place of Sir Kathis and Jessica Silverscale.
None had passed through the protective wardings that Jessica had placed. Many had tried, and paid for their greed and aravice with their very lives. Katelyn merely stood, the wind shrieking like the wail of banshees and the cold clawing at her, seeking to sap the warmth from her scaled body and leave her cold, stiff form to be buried under the snow.
Katelyn was impervious to the wind and the snow, a magical bubble surrounded her and kept the deadly elements at bay. Slowly, she reached up her hands and folded back her hood, to reveal not the face of a human, but the delicately scaled muzzle of a Silver Dragon, her glacier blue eyes studying the magickal wardings with knowledge beyond the comprehension of mortals.
Raising her staff in one scaled paw, Katelyn paused and closed her eyes, then spoke a single word of magic - the lethal defences of the wardings vanishing in a sparkle of irridescent light.
Her boots crunching the drift of snow, Katelyn stepped forwards and paused in the entranceway of the cavern, allowing the guardians of this sacred place to see her, and to acknowledge her presence. Eyes gleamed from the darkness, then almost reverently, they lowered in aquescence of her powers and right to enter this place. Speaking a short incantation, Katelyn caused a gentle white glow to encapsulate the top of her staff, which she held to illuminate her way. Walking with a steady, measured stride, her bootsteps sending reverberating echoes into the darkness, Katelyn felt no fear or hesitation, as she knew that none of the guardians who watched from the darkness, would harm her.
Katelyn walked slowly yet steadily deeper and deeper into the cavern, passing many a guardian and even more lethal traps, her booted feet sending up small puffs of dust from the floor.
For no living creature had trod this path in over a hundred years, and the darkness was loath to give up its dominion over this cavern.
At last, she entered the final resting place of Sir Kathis and Jessica Silverscale, and her resolve began to weaken as her clawed paw trembled, and two glistening tears trickled slowly down her scaled cheeks and fell to the ground, where they spattered into the dust of the ages.
Before her, lay a large funeral bier, the top of which was carved into the likeness of a human man; a powerful warrior in his own life, who had turned away from the life he had been trained for, and had spared the life of the Silver Dragon - Jessica Silverscale.
Surrounding the funeral bier, its skeletal nose touching the tip of its bony tail, lay the skeleton of Jessica Silverscale. Although she had perished a century before, at her own paw, the guardians who had kept their watch over this place had moved her remains to this place and build this entire temple in honor of the love and mutual respect Jessica Silverscale and Lord Kathis had shared.
Katelyn slumped to her knees, then clasped her paws around her staff, as wracking sobs tore her apart - so primal was her emotion and grief, that she threw back her head and let peal a draconic shriek of such heartbreaking sadness, even the undead guardians felt chilled by it.
For hours, Katelyn wept at the graves of her Sire and mother, unable to hold back the torn confliction within her, knowing her ancestry - but also cursing it. For to be draconic was what she had striven for, yet she could not deny her human emotions and the blood that ran hot in her scaled form.
It was over a century of pain and grief that Katelyn unburdened her soul and body with that day, at last, so exhausted from her emotions that she just collapsed bonelessly onto the dusty floor....
Watching on, the Undead Guardians silently moved across to the humanoid dragon that lay on the dusty floor, and they tenderly picked her up and bore her from the chamber....
Unbeknownst to katelyn, she had been watched by the ghostly forms of Sir Kathis and Jessica Silverscale - their ghostly, shimmering forms appearing in the burial crypt. He desplendant in the finest of plate armour, his crested helmed held under one arm, Jessica as the majestic and powerful Silver Dragon, who lay beside the ghostly knight.
"I know why you did this to our child," Sir Kathis whispered. "Yet I would have wished she was stronger, for much evil still walks this land."
"She is stronger than you think my beloved," Jessica spoke quietly, gazing at the place where Katelyn had stood. "She may be human in many ways, but draconic in others. Through you, she has learned compassion, mercy and understanding. Through me, she has learned that which can only serve her, and make her stronger."
Sir Kathis placed his spectral gloved hand against the likewise ghostly cheek of Jessica and he nodded slowly.
"Aye my beloved, you speak the truth." Sir Kathis sighed. "When I lived, I wish I had your wisdom."
Rubbing her ghostly head against the Knight, Jessica growled softly in contentment.
"She will survive my mate, growing wise from both of us, and what we were." Jessica told him quietly.
Jessica looked wistfully at the cavern entrance, knowing she was forever bound to this crypt, as was Sir Kathis.
"She is strong my mate, and she will bring us much honor. I have no doubt that her body may be cold, but the heart that beats within her chest, is hot indeed. I speak not wisdom my mate, but the truth. What we must remember, is Katelyn will live, and honor all that we fought and died for."
Sir Kathis looked at Jessica, then he nodded once - before both of them flickered and vanished, the cavern returning to the darkness and the silence that had guarded it....
END