Category: The Song of Yendor

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Azul

The dragon was ancient, that much was clear. His hide had a patina, not unlike a worn coin from a lost civilisation. His manner too seemed from a different time. At first Yendor thought it was because he was a dragon, then because he lived a secluded life. While these things were true, Yendor began to see that there was more to it than that. There was a pace to his movements, to his very thoughts that came with the hoary, wizened ancients that Yendor had encountered on the circuit, storytellers unconcerned with the bustle of youth. Azul exuded it. But he was not slow from being decrepit. That would be a fatal mistake to make. Azul was the fastest, most agile creature Yendor had ever encountered. Azul was simply in no hurry.

Nevertheless, they were up early every morn, to train, to work, to plan, and well into each night. Azul loved the night. The dragon was himself the color of the sky just after dark, while there was a glow to the deep blue night, celebrating the coming darkness. Yet the creature worked Yendor throughout the day, tirelessly, beginning with bathing in the stream, exercising a slow calisthenics, involving breathing, balance and energy flow. Yendor drew on the energy from all around him and let it flow through him. There was energy from the earth, from the air, from the living creatures, from the streams that flowed, from the planets and stars in the sky, indeed, the sun itself. And there was energy from the Source. The energy that created and sustained and would ultimately consume the universe itself. Yendor didn’t take this energy; he allowed it to flow through him. It was there, free for any with the means to see it and accept it.

Next came breakfast. The dragon drank from the spring, whatever fish or other water creatures that came along were part of that morning tea, as Azul referred to it. Azul would then consume the fallen leaves and dead grass, whatever the forest had to offer. He seldom hunted. It would empty the land of life to sate such a creature for long. Yendor wasn’t sure exactly how big Azul was, he was mercurial in his movements and appearence. But Yendor had initially mistaken Azul for a hillside. The dragon could blot out the night sky. The creature’s eye, when it drew close to Yendor to take his measure, was as tall as Yendor at its roundest height, and half again as long horizontally. His head, so like a deer in shape, was proportionately larger. The smokey snout of the creature was like a table in the grandest halls. Yendor shook his head. He was a trained poet, but felt wholly inadequate trying to describe the dragon.

The morning continued with martial exercises. Swordplay, hand to hand combat. How a dragon was so versed in such instruction was a mystery to Yendor. For lunch Yendor would supplement his breakfast of fish, eggs and coffee, with dried venison and wild blackberries. He still had some actual tea he’d gotten from the city he visited. While the dragon snoozed, Yendor would puzzle over the Winter Solstice songs he’d found there, sometimes just wondering who the scribe had been. Was he the author of the songs? Were they popular? Had they been written long before Incarnate had come to power, or perhaps in the early years of his rise? This last idea had occurred to Yendor as he wondered about the Cypher of the lyrics. Sometimes poetics called for a veil of meaning. Blunt, emotional appeals to lost love were a sign of amateurish attempts at poetry, but the emotions themselves remained a source of inspiration, so metaphor and anecdotes were often applied to broaden appeal and bring originality to a subject that had been visited endlessly since the beginning of time.

These lyric’s meaning were masked for a different reason. Perhaps in Incarnate’s early years, these kind of songs were not yet outlawed, but were still considered subversive. Peeling back the layers, Yendor found an appeal to a Deity motivated by love. In fact it was getting hard to avoid the conclusion that the Deity WAS love. But not like one would appeal to for a mate… more like the emotion a mother has for a baby, or a child for a pet. Coupled with the training Yendor received, it was natural to think of the Deity as the energy that fueled the Cosmos.

The afternoons were for instruction of sciences; math, physics, logic, all things Yendor thought he knew, but couldn’t see why or how they were related to his martial training. Was Azul just being thourough? It didn’t seem likely to Yendor. Although, the dragon was thourough, he was also motivated by utility. There was a purpose to these things. They were, as Azul liked to say about absolutely everything, all connected.

In the evening they would hunt. Azul from the sky, and Yendor from the ground. Working in concert. Yendor came to see that this too was training. After all, the dragon did not kill or partake of the meal. He would eat an entire pack of wolves if he were hunting for himself, not the rabbit or other small creatures Yendor killed for his supper. Indeed, if there were signs of an imbalance in the ecosystem to that effect, that’s what Azul would do. It was rare for the dragon to allow himself to interfere in the balance of the forest though. Usually it sorts itself out, Azul would say.

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The Prison Camp

Yendor sat underneath the old ocherfruit tree. It was early spring, and the branches were budding with their flowers. the tiny blossoms looked like a million candle flames alight on the tree, with bright red at the base the petals and a translucent yellow that was much more brilliant than the dusky fruit that would come later, topping each petal. The scent they gave off was like honey mixed with berries and new grass; a sweet earthy scent that called to the hummingbirds who all said, “mmmmmm” approvingly. The gnarled bark was a deep, rich brown that seemed burned in the crevices but burnished on its high spots. The bark seemed to weave in and out of itself like a crazed basket that decided to become a tree and took root in the new yellow green grass and sprung out, reaching for the heavens all the while being shaped by the wind. The branches arched out in every direction as if it were caught stretching and yawning one morning and just continued to grow into that pose.

The air was cool that morning caressing the young leaves of grass and whispering in Yendor’s ear. “Shhhhhhh….”

He could hear the guards coming before he could see them. They hadn’t heard the morning breeze’s whisper. He had scouted the camp in the night and he knew this area would be patroled. It was the farthest point from the camp that the patrol covered. The guards came out of the grove, their deep red uniforms seeming to emerge from the shadows ahead of them. Yendor sat still. The sun was behind him, and he was dressed in his black leathers. even with his golden hair curling around him, they didn’t see him. “Hello, boys.” he said. He was still working on a “calling card” greeting.

The guards stopped and stared at him, frowning at this unexpected encounter. Yendor stood in a smooth fluid motion, using only his legs, which had the effect of appearing to have levitated up out of the ground. He smiled, bowed his head slightly in greeting, pulled out his sword and killed them both before they could respond. He had stabbed them each in the abdomen and curved his thrust in and up under the ribs, and rupturing the heart, so quickly that the second man was dead before the first man’s heart had stopped. First the man on his left, then the one on his right; one, two, done. No magick, just concentration, and execution, so to speak.

Now he had about ten minutes before they were due to report after completing their rounds. This would be the only break he got, he knew. He approached the fence near the rear of the camp, away from the gate. It wasn’t a blind spot but it was as close to it as he was going to get. The prisoners filled the yard. They were over capacity by quite a margin. Clearly the prisoners had to sleep out in whatever weather there was. They were a gray, ragged mass of a mess. Danse was in there somewhere, just another outlaw, waiting for sale. They sold the young and able into slavery, the others they put to work there in the camps. Everyone worked until they dropped. They were underfed, sick and exhausted. There was a twenty foot clearing around the camp and Yendor burst out of the trees at a sprint and headed straight for the fence. It was made of thick wire which criss crossed in four inch squares. Yendor cut through the wire with a downward swoop and instead of beckoning out the prisoners, he entered the prison camp. A few prisoners close by just stared at him. He motioned his head toward the opening but that was it. They would figure it out.

There was relative quiet; the prisoners milling about, the guards mostly gossiping with each other, only taking note of the prisoners to inflict some petty cruelty upon them. He tried to intuitively divine where Danse was. It was almost not magick. Just follow your gut, your nose, only slightly more accurate. So far, he was undetected. Mostly hidden by the mass of prisoners and walking with a sense of belonging. That might have been the first trick he had ever learned. If you’re sneaking around, you look suspicious, but if you walk around like you belong there, no one pays you any mind. That trick had gotten him many a midnight snack from strange kitchens growing up touring the faires. Yendor walked with such purpose that some guards saw him and nodded to him in deference. Perhaps they were used to visitors here. Apparently of high rank. Probably came to buy slaves. High ranking officials would probably get special treatment and be able to visit the camps rather than wait for market days like everyone else.

The prisoners were the poorest of the poor. To the sorcorers the people of the world were there for the taking. They were like animals to be used or eradicated as vermin. Anyone who wasn’t fair, from the northern isles, women, pagans, heathens, anyone who didn’t worship Incarnate as a god. The Sorceral, they called the church. People could be outlawed for nearly any excuse. Not able to pay taxes was the main reason, but fines for any infraction, often made up. was another. The sorcerers saw the world as overpopulated and poor, brown people were more valuable as slaves than free. Waters had been given his freedom long before Yendor had met him. He carried a medalian around his neck that bore the symbol of his former master to prove he was a free man. Even so, any one of rank could simply take that medalian from him and put him right back into slavery, either as his own or for sale. It was only that Waters surrounded himself with people and carried himself with a special dignity that kept him free. Even so, he had to be careful. There had been some run ins Yendor remembered from his childhood, that he hadn’t understood at the time. In fact it wasn’t until right now, in this camp, that Yendor began to fully understand the severity of the situation Waters had faced. Indeed, nearly anyone could be put into a camp. Even a noble, if he crossed a sorcerer. Or even a sorcerer if a higher ranking sorcerer so decided. Only Incarnate himself was safe from such a fate.

Such camps were everywhere. Yendor had passed by countless ones, but never been inside one. Always one believed that it couldn’t happen to them, and that those it did happen to somehow deserved it. It was the only way to go on with life. Yendor had been in the resistance. Those armies were always crushed, utterly, but always they sprung up again as common as these prison camps and now Yendor could see why. Even with the hopelessness of the cause, there was a certain appeal to fighting against this way of life. Perhaps there was a way to unite each of the little armies into a single army. If they struck at the same time from their various places across the world, even the sorcerers could not defend such an attack.

“You, boy!” Yendor was pulled back into the present when he realized he was being addressed by a guard. He turned with a bit of a pout on his face, and looked down his nose at the guard. “What’s your business here?” At least the guard didn’t mistake him for a prisoner, yet.

Yendor affected a high brow accent, “Shopping.” he sneered. and approached the guard. “Maybe I’ll take you.”

“Oy! I’m not for sale!” said the guard defensively.

“Pity.” said Yendor, pulling his sword, which had been sheathed behind his cloak, and dispatched the guard in the same manner as he had his compatriots outside the camp. These people imprisoned Danse, and he had no compunction that he would have to eliminate as many as possible to get out alive.

At that moment a horn sounded from where he had entered the camp. So they had found the breech. His masquerade as a noble would be useless from here on out. “Breech in the perimiter!” he shouted, mimicking the voice of the guard he had just killed. If the prisoners rushed the fence, and the guards focused their attention on that it would give him some cover. Shouts of “Freedom” began to go up throughout the camp, and Yendor wished he had made more of this earlier, but had reasoned if the guards weren’t alerted to the breech, more people would be able to escape. Now he had to find Danse and get out of there.

“Danse!” he called, but a cacophony had arrisen from the chance of escape and he couldn’t even hear himself. He cursed himself for not having more of a plan. for not having become more of a wizard before making this attempt. He had allowed his fear to cause him to act recklessly and now he might not find her. In fact, he had put her and everyone here in danger, and he only now saw that. He had been willing to sacrifice as many of these prisoners as needed to find Danse, as if they were pawns in his plan. He was no better than the sorcerers.

He lifted his sword to the sky, “DANSE!” He shouted, as lightning came down and struck his sword and lit up his nervous system like a ghost. Where a moment before he had been lost in the chaos, now a wide circle opened up around him. Most of the guards were human. The Officers had sorcerers in their ranks no doubt, but ones whose power was limited and so pursued a career in the prisons where they could rise farther than if they had to compete with more talented magicians. Still, these officers wore the red insignia of sorcerer over their uniforms, and considered themselves powerful among the powerless.

These officers made their way to the circle and appeared simultaneously surrounding Yendor. He released the lightning he had absorbed and it coursed out of him through his arms, but also out from his heart, striking the sorcerers all at once, eliminating that threat. Now the chaos really set in as the prisoners tried to escape the magic. Most people had only ever experienced magic from sorcerers and didn’t even contemplate the idea that it could come from someone else. The prisoners overwhelmed the guards, outnumbering them by the hundreds, and in their panic, made good their escape. The shrieks and savagery escalated still further. And there was no sign of Danse. She had not understood the bolt. Perhaps she wasn’t even here after all.

In the end, there were the bodies of the fallen, both outlaw and guards. Yendor stood awhile longer at the center of the circle of sorcerers laid out before him in each direction.

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At the Library

Yendor was not sure what he was looking for. He had come to the city, decaying, decrepit, ancient, crowded and yet thriving, looking for some scrap that had been missed over time by the sorcerers. There was a history that was forbidden, but it hadn’t always been so. Before Incarnate there were archives and records and deeds and an insurmountable amount of information that had to give some clue about what it was like before. When there were wizards, when there was more to magic than sorcery.

Chamakata Shahar had been a long journey. The ancient decaying city had once been the jewel of Faun, the archipelago civilization nestled in the Ta Sea. Yendor had traveled extensively as a musician in Watter’s troop. They had played festivals in the fields outside the city. When Danse had been taken prisoner, she and Yendor had been in the western island of Padu. Yendor had tracked her to the prison camp there, though she was gone by the time he had arrived. eventually he had to give up his search, and he had resolved to learn to control his wizardry by seeking out hidden coves of them. So far that too was proving fruitless. Then he remembered the old city on the Isle of Faun itself, in the center of everything. Unable to afford a ship straight to Faun, Yendor had traveled by foot across Island after island, working his way west. Sometimes he was able to earn some money in a tavern, saving it to pay passage on the next boat, sleeping in his tent rather than spending coin to stay at an inn. He hunted and gathered wild nuts and berries, fruit and whatever he could find. Sometimes passage was earned as a deckhand, though Yendor wasn’t much of a sailor.

Eventually, he made his way to Faun and then to the city. There were other cities, usually a trade center for each of the islands, some at the sea lanes, some inland, centralizing multiple harbors. No city was as big or ancient as Chamakata The people here were unfriendly and solitary as city folk tended to be. Yendor had not much experience within the city itself. It was labyrinthine and confusing. The library had been difucult to find. Once there, the books, scrolls and maps were kept in a warren of rooms on several floors, including multiple basements. The library was a city in itself. Some rooms hadn’t been set foot in in years. One his first day, Yendor got lost and could not find his way out, so complicated was the meandering construction. Eventually, he found another patron who directed him back to the main area.

The library had seemed the obvious place to start. Of course that would be where the purge had started. Surely anything revealing what wizards were, where they lived, what they believed had been eliminated from such a public and obvious source. But Yendor had to start somewhere.

As a musician, he knew about subversive lyrics. Code words to fool those who didn’t know how to listen. Often they were so ubiquitous that you never noticed them. they hid in plain sight. Why did the children’s song start out about flowers and end up talking about ashes and falling down? Because that children’s rhyme was about the plague, that’s why. That was really more of a forgotten knowledge than a forbidden one, but the idea was the same. Learn to look at things from a fresh viewpoint. Nobody knew it was about the plague because everyone grew up singing it. Children’s stories were full of incongruous, frightening scenes; were they all allusions to hidden meanings or was there something in the way storytellers crafted children’s stories that made them put in these dark passages? Did children need them to develop their minds? Musicians were storytellers but Yendor had never heard a solid answer to the question which hardly ever came up.

Deep in one of the basements, on his third day, lit by an odd Smelling candle, in a nook in a room long forgotten, he found an ancient poem about the winter solstice. The poem caught his eye, because the solstice was approaching, and it would be his first away from friends and family. The hand that had scribed the poem was lyrical, but the letters were an ancient form that seemed stilted to Yendor. It was an odd combination that distracted him so he had to read the first stanza several times before he could make sense of it:

“Wrapped in an azure raiment, She whirled, colourring every cheak. Warming each heartt with Her Light, singing to all individually. Mary, she is.”

The archaic spelling aside, the story was well known, but the poem was not. It told of Winter herself, merry in her blue sky, her cold wind howling in everyone’s ears, making their cheeks rosy with cold swirling wind. But this poem described Winter personified, which was not unusual, but the idea of being warmed by her was different. Nowadays it was the celebration of her that warmed people’s hearts. She brought cold, but also the promise of light to come; as the longest night of the year, the worst was over, the next night would be shorter; the coming days longer, ostensibly warmer. This poem said she was the light, and the howling wind was singing… It was odd enough for Yendor to copy down.

As he dug deeper, he found another poem in that same unique hand. This time it was signed “Sumessence.”

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Yendor the Wizard

I’ve been working on this story since I was fifteen. Recently, I’ve taken it up again in earnest. I have some new ideas and I just have to make time for it. This character’s name is Yendor. I don’t want to give too much away but the story is called “The Song of Yendor,” so he may have a prominent role. You can read some of the story here

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Lausaw The Sorcorer

Danse and Yendor walked through the woods, headed east with the stream, which would lead to the next town. Yendor had been a traveling musician all his life and he knew how to find civilization and how to avoid it. There was a road they could have taken, but Danse was sure there would be soldiers patrolling them, alerted to the forbidden magic that had happened at the harbor. Yendor wanted to head into the hills, just he and her an begin training. She insisted there were some preparations they had to make. They had both just abandoned their lives for each other without really thinking about the consequences. Yendor’s training as a musician was more or less complete and probably wouldn’t be utilized much now anyway, except perhaps as a cover or to earn a roof over their head. musicians in a troop scheduled performances at fairs and worked out accommodations, provisions and logistics ahead of time. Usually some kind of payment could be secured over and above what the crowd decided to spend its pennies on. Whether it was a charge to attend the performance or passing a hat, a troop was too big to sustain itself on the fickle whims of a crowds passing fancy. The base payment was usually only enough to sustain the troops tour from fair to fair, and the crowds pennies helped to make life a little more livable. Like most people, musicians eked out a living that kept them from starving and not much else.

Lone musicians could not count on anything but the hat. And they were vulnerable to robbers both high and low, whether the sheriff made up a fine for a permit that he invented on the spot (fines are always more than fees, usually a person had to pay both, so it is in the sheriff’s interest not to bring it up until the violation has occurred), or a sorcerer charging for a blessing that wasn’t sought, or a real thief, who at least isn’t pretending to be something else.

They had precious little money between them, and Danse wanted to outfit them with weapons, provisions and necessities like a tent, cooking ware and other things of weight that Yendor knew he would end up carrying.

When they got to town, they found the marketplace and got themselves a meat pie to split, realizing they would soon either be living off the land, or Yendor would be spending as much time supporting them as a musician as he did training to save the world. Maybe more. Watters had always said that the bulk of life is spent doing the work needed to live it. Until now, that had meant chores like doing dishes, rolling billets, printing flyers, cleaning up camp, or mending tents, clothes, costumes, instruments. People thought being a musician was playing music all day. This just isn’t the case. Musicians lives, artists lives, everyone’s life was spent doing chores. Even clergy like the sorcerers had to fill out reports, keep endless records, gather tithes, and darn their socks, while shoring up for winter, which was coming by the way.

Townsfolk had homes that kept out the weather, but travelers lived in tents. Watters would say winter just means moving the fire inside. Many travelers carried their winter things all year round. Some had winter homes, that they stayed in. some stored their winter things in halls rented for such purposes. Some sold their furs in the spring and bought new ones in the fall. Watters had liked to carry things in a spare cart that invariably got damaged, stolen or worn out, so that there was always the expense of new things and the burden of carrying things all year. There were less fairs in the winter, but people still wanted to hear music. This was actually the best time for a lone musician and the troop would often split up for the winter. Watters kept a stash of money hidden from robbers like most travelers. Sometimes the robbers found it, sometimes not. Usually thieves only wanted money because they too were travelers. “Thieves couldn’t make a living staying in one place, not unless they went into government,” Watters would say.

They got most everything they needed. She had a long stiletto dagger that had been in her family. He got an old sword, double edged, short handle, small guard, nothing fancy. She could tell it was well made. The one he wanted she said would break in its first fight. “Showman.” she said, shaking her head as if he’d picked out a prop that would glitter for the audience. She wasn’t wrong, he guessed. The tent he picked out. It was his turn to know what was needed. Treated canvas that had been given a layer of lacquer to keep out the weather; He would find the right trees, and boil some sap for another layer. the poles were Ashwood, heavy but solid. He and Watters had used tent poles to fight off bandits on more than one occasion. People often went for lighter wood that was easier to carry, but Yendor trusted the hard wood. They got a few pots that could double for roasting, stewing, frying or what was called for. They got forks that Yendor thought could be used to pitch hay, and hunting knives for table knives. Everything had two uses and everything was second-hand. That’s how it goes, playing in a band, thought Yendor.

They kept going East, heading for the Wyvern Hills, and pitched the tent early so Danse could snare something for dinner, and Yendor could make the lacquer for the tent. They found a clearing in the lee of a hill, a little plateau that gave them a view of oncommers but shielded them from the wind at the same time. They had just finished the rabbit stew when they heard horses. The soldiers crested the hill and left room for the sorcerer bringing up the rear.

“Well, well, what have we here?” the sorcerer, dressed all in black, was reed thin but had a resonate voice in spite of that. “Outlaws I’ll wager. They had to have circumvented the road and gone quite a bit out of their way to sneak up the hill like that. They hadn’t just happened along.

“We’re travelers. Musicians. Not outlaws.” said Yendor.

“I know who you are.” said the sorcerer as the soldiers drew their swords simultaneously. “I am a sorcerer of the order of the mace, on the business of Incarnate.” Sorcerers loved to recite their credentials. Yendor wasn’t familiar with the order of the Mace, but it didn’t sound good. They were never “Order of the pansies that grow in the Spring by the roadside in the field.” It was always “Order of the plague,” or some nightmarish name meant to drive fear into the hearts of ordinary people.

“We have been sent to find you. Did you think your …performance… would go unnoticed?” They were still on their horses. The firelight demonized their faces as the sky glowered in the twilight. “I know not what evil magic you follow, but only the Sorcery is lawful. Any use of magic, or even the ability to use magic other than by a sorcerer is heresy. You corrupt the souls of all who fall in your shadow.” Now he stood in the stirrups and dismounted. “I am Lausaw, come to remove your scourge!” He pulled a glowing orb of slick protoplasm from the air about him, dripping its green, electric slime, and aimed to throw it at Yendor. Danse moved faster than a deer and was between them, her dagger slicing at the pulsing fireball. He had already committed to throwing it and it was cleaved by the dagger. Lausaw grabbed her by the wrist, trying to wrench the knife from her hand, as she kicked him in the back of the knee. Yendor was up and had his knife, but his sword was in the tent. The soldiers were down from their mounts and came at him simultaneously. Yendor had thought to stab the sorcerer as he fell but had to change course. He turned to put space between the soldiers and himself, but that was a mistake. Thinking he was fleeing, they thought he was a coward and charged harder.

Now heat came from Lausaw’s hand, burning Danse’s wrist. She fell to her knees screaming and dropped her dagger. Lausaw curled her arm behind her back and they both got to their feet. He got his other arm around her throat. “Heretic!” he shouted. “I have your woman!” Yendor turned and the soldiers flanked him. “Surrender!” Lausaw called. “or I’ll kill her right here.”

Yendor had only been a wizard for a day. He didn’t know anything. For a fleeting moment he was beaten. There was no way out of this. But then a fury rose up in him unbidden. Perhaps this fury has arisen in everyone in such times; the inability to accept the situation. Usually followed again by resignation at the futility of it. But this time, Yendor’s fury escaped captivity. He shouted and a curling, freezing whirlwind formed on either side of him and he released them to devour the soldiers. Each a mirror of the other, the winds turning one clockwise the other counterclockwise. The soldiers swords were ripped from their hands, their limbs thrown and twisted like ragdolls, they were sucked high up into the air and thrown into the darkening night.

Lausaw redoubled his grip on Danse, using her as a shield. He had no idea what Yendor could do. He wasn’t doing anything that Lausaw recognized. Yendor wasn’t following any teaching Lausaw knew of. Lausaw didn’t know it, but Yendor wasn’t following any teaching at all. The sorcerer held Danse but he too was held. He could do nothing while he had her. She struggled, writhing like a viper. Yendor Picked up one of the swords dropped by the soldier. better than his in every respect; lighter, sharper, longer, better made, plainly. Out of the dark, lightning came down and struck it, filling it with power and wrath.

“Stay back!” screamed Lausaw. Then, eerily, the sorcerer’s horse came to him and knelt. Lausaw crabstepped back to it, pulling Danse with him. He struggled into the saddle, and the horse got up. Yendor sprung toward them, but without removing his grip on the girl to take up the reins, the sorcerer turned the horse and trotted into the night. Full dark had descended and Yendor had no idea which way they had gone. He went to the campsite, stirred up the fire and pulled out a brand. He could find no tracks. “I hate magic!” he said.

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The Trail of Ghosts

The sorcorers had come for the dragons in the early days. Before Incarnate even. They came with their greed and their small minded prejudice. They judged dragons to be evil so they could point to an enemy to rally people against. Dragons were hunted and feared. They were nearly invincible, such was their power, longevity & wisdom. Their compassion was unmatched, yet man found a way to test its limits and go well beyond. The shortsighted cruelty, the unnecessary violence. The relentless pursuit of dragons to the ends of the earth, seeking their utter annihilation. All to justify their need for control.

Dragons were hard to kill. A dragon can withstand an entire army of humans in a straightforward battle. Which is probably why humans refused to engage in them. They claimed to be reasonable and compassionate; indeed, this was the definition of “humane”, but they did not behave that way. It was not in their nature at all.

Entire forests were burned to hunt them down. Their young, murdered in the shell. Starvation, dehydration, madness. Waged generation after generation. Until the few dragons left lived as ghosts, invisible, without leaving any tracks, no traces. Living in the most inhospitable climates, in the darkest secret places, almost resembling the monsters they were depicted as.

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Lost Cause

Although Yendor had been conscripted into the Armata Rebellis by force, he felt he had joined unofficially the day he met Danse. The memory of her hit him from within, a burst of pain in his chest. He could picture her; just her face: dimly lit, dirty, miserable. His fault. He didn’t even know how to go looking for her. He shook her out of his mind. Danse had taught him to fight, to engage his magical energy into the effort. The Armata had taught him battle. The brutality of it. He did not relish it, but understood its necessity. In order to defeat Incarnate’s Armata, it would take an Armata. These boys were trained, disciplined, and vicious. They would probably be crushed. But if he could get close to Incarnate, if the Armata could keep him focused on them, he might be able to get in a lucky shot; whatever that meant.

These thoughts meandered through his mind as he marched with the troops through thick, viscous fog. The men were superstitious about any natural element, whether it was in their favor or not. The fog, they mumbled was conjured by sorcerers, lurking nearby waiting to ambush the Rebellis. At times the fog was so thick Yendor could not see anyone else. He could hear them laughing disembodied nearby and then they would materialize, as if from another realm. The fog seemed to whisper with them, saying nothing in particular; just sowing fear. And then, with a sudden inhalation, it sucked itself away, into the shadows, leaving the men spooked.

They were descended upon without mercy. sorcerers and warriors, moving as one attacked from all sides. Their numbers were legion. Yendor had his sword out and cut with precision. A brute smelling of earth and shit hacked through the man on Yendor’s flank and came at him frothing at the mouth. He lofted his bloody axes at Yendor, the weapon still dripping with the blood and gristle of Dante, the man Yendor had shared breakfast with. Yendor’s fear turned to icy hatred and parried the axe with his thin blade, enchanted, glowing and with Yendor’s pain and anger surging through it. It cut the axe clean through, then took the eye, brain and life of Yendor’s attacker in one lethal thrust.

A sorcerer saw Yendor’s action and turned his attention to the wizard. The stink of the earth opened up under Yendor, and he fell, lurching to the side to escape the chasm. Before he could regain his footing, the sorcerer was on him with a mace. Incarnate’s favored weapon. The sorcerer wielded the spiked sphere with blinding speed and deadly accuracy. Yendor got his shield up barely in time, but it blocked the blow edgewise, so that the shield crushed under the blow and the mace rammed into Yendor’s left hand. Yendor didn’t feel any pain at first, and that is probably what saved him. He turned into the attack instead of away as his instincts told him, and kicked the looming sorcerer over his head. He leaped to his feet and faced the enemy. The mace began to glow with a heat summoned from pure evil. Another swing of that would be the end of him, Yendor knew. He thrust his sword without magic or thought straight at the necromancer’s heart. There was a hiss as black smoke emerged from the wound, staining the blade.

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The Song of Yendor: Chapter 2

Yendor had finished his chores, more or less, and had found himself a secluded area not far from camp. Everyone thought the life of a traveling musician was a romantic, drunken celebration that never ended, but only went from town to town. Still technically an apprentice, Yendor knew that this was a myth. There was laundry, and squabbles, food to be prepared, wagons to be repaired, and endless travel. The troupe Yendor traveled with was a large one, and Yendor’s mentor, Waters, was an elder of the troupe and expected Yendor to behave like a grown up for as long as he could remember. Now, nearly an adult, Yendor was still treated like a child. Not that he had any ill feelings toward the grizzled old man, indeed Waters had been Yendor’s only real family since birth. His parents had apprenticed Yendor to Waters as a babe, which it turns out is fairly uncommon. Aparently, his birth parents had wanted to get rid of Yendor imediately, although Waters would always chuckle, shake his head and claim it wasn’t like that; but he would never elaborate. Which wasn’t like Waters at all. Waters was a born storyteller. This was something a traveling musician needed to be. It was also something Yendor was not. He was a skillful player, and had a good voice. But Yendor struggled to write songs that connected to people.

Lately, Yendor had had to face a new problem. His instruments would not behave. They would go out of tune, sound loud or vibrate uncontrollably. It had something to do with Yendor’s emotions. His mood, his ability to control his own temperament seemed tied to his ability to control his oud, the stringed instrument Yendor was most adept at. Waters had never seen anything like it and many in the traveling band of performers, dancers, singers, mummers, fortune tellers, acrobats, actors and other miss fits thought Yendor should be left behind, because they thought his bad luck might be contagious.

Waters had finally said, “Sometimes a problem is in how you look at your problem. You got to ride this thing out. See where it takes you. If you can’t squelch it, maybe you can harness it. You can’t stop the wind, but you can make a sail and travel the seas with that wind at your back.” Waters stroked his scraggly beard, which had, like the hair on his head, gone white.

Yendor’s ouds had been breaking, so he made one more solid. The belly was just a kind of way to make the music carry, and Yendor seemed to be able to make the strings vibrate louder even without the hollow body. Slowly, Yendor had found ways to coax the music back into his oud. He could use the oddities to his favor, creating a more expressive sound than traditional musicians could do.

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The Song of Yendor: Chapter One

Azul BlueDragon

The air had chilled all night so that the dawn was crisp, brisk and broke with a clear crack of light, which had been looming just under the horizon. At the pier stood a figure, protected from the chill by his woolen cloak, kept in good repair, despite its age. The man had come to pier to fulfill his life’s purpose. He looked out onto the Tao as the tide ebbed an flowed like the breath of the world. There was a calm on the surface that belied the turmoil beneath.
That calm was broken by the frantic cries of a desperate man. Panicked and shaking, the man careened through the village searching for a solution to his problem. The midwife was delivering in the neighboring village and the man’s wife was in labor. The babe was breach and both the child and its mother were like to die without help. The cloaked man took up his staff and went to the father-to-be’s aid. This was what he had foreseen.
In the hut of wattle and daub, the wife writhed upon the bed, sweating the sheets. Leaving his staff at the door and pulling back his hood, the stranger showed his face to be lined with age, the creased shadows pulling away from the candlelight. He ripped the mother’s skirts to expose her to her swollen belly. Who have I invited into my home, thought the father. The ancient stranger placed his withered hands on her abdomen and she calmed. The glow seemed to come from inside the womb, lighting the old man’s hands orange around the edges. He moved his hands in a circular motion as if turning a wheel. The woman arched her back and the babe was born quick and simple.
As the old man took up his staff and replaced his hood, he smiled. “He will be the One.” he said, without need of further explanation. “What will you call him?”
“Yendor.” was the reply.

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Dragon Manifesto

I am the Blue Dragon. I serve the Blue Light; whose physical manifestation is the Universe: the One Voice, the Eternal Word, the Infinite Sound. All things are revealed by the Light. All shadows are created by the Light. Love is the Way of the Light. Either one serves Love or one opposes Love. One cannot claim to serve Love through hate. Anger and fear are the absence of Love. Love is omnipresent. There is nowhere it is not. It does not shirk; it does not hide. To be unable to feel its presence is delusion. It is we who turn away from the Light. It is constant and never abandons us. It is The Energy; The Force; The Power. The Source of all. Love is indiscriminate. Love is not concerned with what name it is called, or what rituals it is worshiped by. Love does not favor one over another. Love does not punish. Love wants you to be happy and healthy. For this to happen you must conform to Love. Love cannot be ruled by you. You are a manifestation of Love. There is no intermediary.