Яikyn

A voice, thick with a harshness that does not match the youth of the figure that wields it, steals my attention from the pendant I have recovered with my skills. My gilded gaze is wary as it lands on him, because I recognize this colt when at last I pick him from the shadow (by the bright white of his scarred face only, the shadow swallowing his black as it does all shades of darkness), growing swiftly into adulthood as myself, I can see him moving among the throes of violence in time with my own strikes and blows, his hooves a drumbeat to which we had felled a God, among others.

"Yes," I answer, leaving it at that. I honestly don’t know much more about the power than he does, and instead turn my focuses to trying to recover from the gauze like film that the magic has left over my thoughts, the sluggish sensation in my muscles like sap grown cold.

He’s dangerous, I know this, but no less or more so than I am, even though he is taller; age has filled my bones out more, and I have experience beneath me, however slight. I probably shouldn’t be so guarded – he hasn’t done anything to me but comment on my magic with what could be called reverence in his voice if I guess the tone right.

I probably don’t.

The screaming of the squirrel is abruptly cut off as the youth wanders closer, answering my question as to where his red dragon is – I know enough of bonded creatures to know they are never far, and I have heard enough warnings about the winged beasts to be cautious. Fire, ice, lightning – whatever magic spittle they could hurl crackling through the air, the worst they had to offer was in their razor lined mouths and upon dagger tipped fingers. I had even seen some with natural weaponry along their tails.

This one, as it descends through the air to land upon the back of the colt, is blood colored and jagged, sharp like primordial stone rising from the earth as he snaps bone and sinew, splattering rodent blood all across the back of the dark youth. I eye the mess with some measure of undisguised disgust.

Well, isn’t that attractive, I think, blessing the Gods again for birthing me as the proper species, one that ever have to endure the burden of such slovenly creatures as dragons.

I look away from the grotesque dining experience to look down at the mirror against my black chest, slipped over my ears in the time I’d found it until the colt had distracted me. I hadn’t got much time to look at it before he’d intruded, but I take a moment to look it over now, its round face shining and black, polished obsidian, and though I think it is gold around it, it is paler than that which marks my own skin, studded with diamonds in its intricately weaving bands.

"It’s a black mirror," I say at last (should I feel guilty that I caused its death? It’s a fleeting thought, but I don’t). Looking back up at him from where the thing buzzes with some strange, broken force against my skin, I try to avoid looking at the dragon and the eviscerated squirrel, and instead at his pale white face, his blood colored eyes.

A smile crosses my lips, an attempt at being friendly that is poor at best, but it’s still something.

"Calor," I introduce myself, the name of my grandsire slipping from dark lips, lying with a sincerity that both Thranduil and my mother would applaud, for the Spark had not sold my name to the wind on that fateful day in which Helovia felled a God (I would have to thank him later, wouldn’t I?), "of the Basin."

I don’t bother lying about where I’m from. The stench of it is everywhere on me, and surely he saw me fighting alongside the dark roan prince Erebos.

"Ironic it would be a mirror."

in every heart a hole