Sister with the Eyes of Stone

Part One of Ersoa's Awakening

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Unchained, they escaped through the tunnels and caves below the Diadema Range, their waning calls echoing through the subterranean maze like flute play.

They survived solely off piecemeal scavengings like wandering squall bats and stone hounds — the once loyal guardians of the underground. In their prolonged hibernations, they often dreamed of feasting on Behemoths as their ancestors once did in their homeland centuries before.

They had no companions other than the gorgons — five sisters who were considered by the dragons to be their salvation, and to some, Gods.

“Eventually, they’ll realize they don’t need us,” Thera, the timorous sister, worried.

Zunia sat beside her, silent as she had been since their childhood when she realized how dangerous her voice truly was. The serpents twisted and poised atop her head hissed bitter spittle, and she calmed them by brushing her palm alongside the back of their necks.

“They will always need us,” Revordrea assured her while sitting upon the stone carved throne.

“Not now that we are above ground and they are airborne,” Thera dwelled, gazing anxiously toward the cave opening, down the cliffside, and across the dense valley.

The dragons would have been lost without them. The sisters, experts at navigating caverns, guided the captive thunder to freedom. Now upon the surface, the beasts seemed indebted to them.

“Sister, come here,” Revordrea, their natural leader, beckoned.

Back hunched, velvet robe trailing behind, Thera stood and slivered toward her sister, the bunched serpents below her amulet hissing as she crossed Zunia. Those little demons never seemed to get along.

“Have you always been this beautiful?” Thera asked dreadfully, taken aback by Revordrea’s appearance in the sunlight.

When they awoke and escaped the Quelling, they were nearly lost to the darkness of the Diadema Maze. She could identify each sisters’ voice, save Zunia, in a crowd of a thousand strangers, but she had begun to forget their faces, where each line crossed and ended in the darkness.

“Our beauty is not what matters,” Revordrea said, offering her hand as she urged Thera to stand beside her. “It’s our strength in numbers, our fortitude, what we can do to the men who oppose us,” she explained, brushing her thumb across Thera’s cheek, almost certainly having forgotten her sister’s face. “The dragons, we can’t give them reason to question our strength.”

As if summoned by the mention of their name, dragon flight stained the sky. Revordrea cast Thera a look that said, “Be quiet,” and both of her sisters nodded. Entertained by the notion anyone would ever need to request silence from her, the serpents perched atop Zunia’s brow snickered.

Viori, the amber scaled beast, eclipsed the cave opening, throwing the carcass of an elk, its antlers comprising half its size like the branches of a tree, onto the stone floor before settling.

“Any news, sister?” Revordrea questioned, grasping the arm rests of the throne carefully.

Mimurda, the strongest of the gorgons, slid off Viori’s back, turning to face their prey instead of the queen.

“Oh, can I keep the head, please?” Mimurda requested from the dragon, admiring the stag like a visionary.

To her sisters, the words seemed more like murmured sibilation, a language they didn’t understand. Viori nodded graciously, and Mimurda’s serpents returned the nod as if to thank him.

“Have you seen Dastrama?” Thera asked, leaving Revordrea’s side and slinking toward her most stubborn sister.

“Shhh,” Mimurda insisted, crouching beside the half-melted face of the felled Tree Elk and prying its eyelids open.

As her gaze was fixed on its ovalish pupils, a stone hardness overtook the flesh, crawling up the arbor-like antlers. With a swift yank on the nearest stone branch, Mimurda severed the statuesque head from its body. Viori, as if previously practicing great restraint, immediately dove toward the belly of the stag, tearing into the toasted flesh. The feast would not sustain him for long.

“What do you think, Zunia, nice little trophy?” Mimurda mused as she passed Thera, who was impatiently awaiting a response, and dragged the head toward the back of their cave where she had been gathering the strangest things like petrified dryad roots and pegasus wings.

Zunia nodded, her stare cold and distant as it had always been when addressed by Mimurda. Even her often expressive serpents were quelled, seething in unearthed bitterness from a hundred or so years ago.

“Mimurda, sunshine, blood of my blood …” Revordrea incanted. “Come here and tell me about your flight. I missed you.”

“Oh, sweet sister, why don’t you join me and muse for a moment?” Mimurda requested, a sly smirk crawling on her mouth as she lingered in the shadows, knowing well the vulnerability she was asking of their queen.

Viori paused his feast as if to see her response with strings of sinew hanging from his jaws. Thera rushed to her sister’s side again, offering her hand for support, but Revordrea refused it, pushing boldly off the throne upon which she had been seated since they surfaced.

Zunia, who still sat perched atop a stone bench beside the throne, repented from Revordrea as she passed, delving into the darkness of their cave, and guilt seeped through her core. Even if she could speak, there were some things that should be kept secret.

“You have my attention,” Revordrea sighed as she waited beside Mimurda.

The only sister who had discovered the gift of communication with the dragons, Mimurda had become an ambassador of sorts. Revordrea’s Mind’s Eye had warned that morning of a brewing conflict, and she knew that ignoring Mimurda’s request to be heard now would be foolish.

“They are like marbles, aren’t they?” Mimurda goaded as she swiveled her head, catching the milky gleam of the stone orbs that had once been the most enchanting eyes.

“How could you make light of her sacrifice?” Thera criticized as she lingered in the distance, waiting loyally by the throne.

In another time, perhaps before their captivity, when she was younger and blinded only by pride, she would have punished her sister for her careless words, but as Revordrea listened to the bitter whispers of Zunia’s serpents, she chose silence over ire.

Within that silence, she realized a truth. Mimurda always lashed at others in her anger, but this time, she wasn’t angry for herself. She ached for the dragons perhaps because of something they discovered in the Valley.

“Tell me,” the blind queen whispered. “What happened?”

They were once an inseparable pair before they were quelled, awoken, and forced at odds by the darkness. Their serpents seemed to remember and twisted affectionately across the empty inches between the sisters. Mimurda sighed, reaching for Revordrea’s hand expertly in the darkness, their slender fingers twining together.

“Viori says there’s a druid within the Valley, that he was somehow responsible for our shared captivity,” Mimurda reported dryly, now lacking the passion of harbored resentment she expressed minutes before.

The young dragons told varied myths of their misfortunes. Some believed their ancestors were betrayed by the giants. Others recalled a tale of battle with the Serratae who had taken the form of the ancients. As the story goes, the mages were controlling the Serratae and forced them to kill all but one of the Immortal Thunder: Viori. Yet, they saved an unhatched clutch and bred hundreds below the mountain — weak, impressionable, enslaved at birth.

Still, the most terrifying was the tale of a mage who had befriended Ersoa, the first and oldest of the dragons, and betrayed her, using their connection to hunt and capture the remainder of the free beasts.

Revordrea was perplexed by the truth of their capture. Perhaps it was the heavy haze from a century of slumber. All she recalled from that day, the battle that never happened, was the congregation of mystical beasts, giants, dragons and the single word, whispered yet somehow swaying all who came to the Valley where the Tree Elk roam: “Dormi”.

Of the freed prisoners, Viori was the wisest about Miravale’s history and the conflicts leading to the Great Quelling. If this alliance would thrive, she needed to show trust in his judgment.

“What is their plan?” Revordrea asked, casting a friendly yet empty glance over her shoulder toward Viori and the cave opening.

“They want to burn the Valley,” Mimurda announced, squeezing her sister’s palm as if momentarily taken by uncertainty.

“Wait!” Thera requested, slithering toward them to plant herself into the conversation as she often did when her fear of isolation was too strong to ignore. “They can’t burn the Valley. It will scare away the villagers. Outsiders will come to hunt the dragons, and they’ll find us,” she worried.

Viori, now disinterested in his feast, let out a terrifying growl, turning toward Thera in a defensive pose with his starved lips pulled back and sickle-like teeth exposed. Most likely, he could not understand her words, but her tone and posture marked her as a dissenter.

Revordrea reached for the hand of her now shivering sister, trying to calm her but desperately wishing she would hold her words in times like these. Their history with the dragons was familiar, yet they never seemed to share the same mother tongue.

Perhaps it was paranoia creeping upon her so early in her reign, but Revordrea questioned if they had always been able to decipher the sisters’ words yet had no means of responding. They had to be steadfast and careful. Thera was most like their mother, always worried about others but lacking the fierceness required to face their chaotic world.

Zunia remained seated beside the throne, cupping a hand around her amusing serpents, petting their faces. As she most often did, she gazed past Viori across the Valley and let herself be lost to the pull of her distant home. She thought of Dastrama, wondered if she would ever return to the sisters or if she had finally decided on savoring her freedom to roam Miravale alone instead of being subjected to the guilt they would always feel in Revordrea’s presence.

“They must burn the Valley,” the queen decided, turning to face Viori. “It’s the only way the druid will understand their pain.”

Mimurda whispered toward Viori in a tongue that was deep, eerie, and almost as old as Miravale herself. Viori, as if soothed by her words, settled beside the carcass and finished picking at the splintered bones.

They had grown weary of the darkness, hiding from a world that would always try to put them away. The villagers would flee. The Valley would burn. Heroes would try to hunt them, but this time, with the help of the dragons, they would stake their claim, finally begin their rightful reign.

“What of the druid, should he burn too?” Mimurda inquired, untangling her fingers from her sister’s and turning toward the amber beast.

“If discovered, bring him. I have some questions,” Revordrea requested as she retreated back toward her throne. “Afterward, they may do with him what they please,” she granted, settling gracefully onto the stone again.

Thera sat on the bench beside Zunia, their serpents bickering as Mimurda relayed the message. Viori purred, as if pleased, and stretched his wings to full span, preparing for flight again. Summoned, perhaps from his outburst earlier, the mates, Ere and Godhyl, flocked toward the cave, idling at the cliffside.

Ere was crimson and brawny, Godhyl, emerald and nimble. Soon, they would bear a clutch of the first free dragons hatched beneath the sunshine in a century. The three were the bravest of the thunder. As Mimurda mounted Viori again, Revordrea knew they would do anything to restore their kind.

She questioned their decision to burn the Valley, which would devastate the Tree Elk and woodland creatures alike. Their resources would dwindle if they lingered, and they would most likely have to abandon the cave sooner than she planned. However, she understood the need to express their presence, prove the danger in opposing them.

There were other forests and herds, an abundance of places they had yet to explore. What was the purpose of fighting for freedom if they didn’t indulge in the wanderlust of which they had been so long denied? She decided, as she felt the cool gust of Viori’s departure on her face, heard the dragons roar in tandem, that she would lead wherever the thunder was passionate to roam. She knew the alliance between the two — gorgons and dragons, was a relation that would not so easily be broken.

Zunia rose and meandered toward the edge of the cliff. She had no desire to entertain politics of the budding alliance. Instead, she watched the fire consume the Valley, recalling the last time she turned a woman to stone. It was sweet and dastardly all the same, and she still believed she would never know a warmth like hers again. “Loyalty,” she thought. “This is what it reaps.”

A distant and deep rolling sounded in the tunnel north of the cave, a familiar slither following. Thera stirred at the noise, but Revordrea remained poised upon her throne. Dastrama, clothed in grime and shadows, emerged from the tunnel, effortlessly rolling the statue of a satyr before her.

Like an offering, she brought the stone to the feet of her sister’s throne, pulling him upright to face her. Thera embraced her but was met with no words of affection, no warmth. When Zunia finally found Dastrama’s gaze, their serpents, in tandem much like the roar of the dragons, fell suddenly silent.

“Nice of you to bring company,” Revordrea teased, breaking the silence of their sister’s long awaited return.

“He has news that may please you,” Dastrama reported simply in an accent that was oddly fey.

Revordrea wondered if her sister's eyes still held onto that old hatred from ages past like her voice did. For a moment, she was overtaken by the urge to touch her face, feel her stonewashed skin and make sense of the expression buried in her brow.

She nodded instead, urging Dastrama to proceed. With a fixed gaze, Dastrama melted the hold of the stone on the satyr’s horns and face. The rest of his body remained solid as if to prevent him from fleeing.

“— dare do this to me,” the satyr finished his rather useless warning.

“Hello, darling,” Dastrama scornfully greeted the goat-like being.

“You evil, slithering —” he began.

“Excuse me,” Revordrea requested.

The satyr flinched as he met the queen’s gaze but relaxed as if he realized she couldn’t turn him to stone like her sisters.

“Tell me what you know, and I will set you free,” Revordrea offered, brushing an affectionate serpent away from her temple.

“How do I know I can trust what you say?” the satyr questioned, observing as much of the cave as he could in the unfolding moment.

He mustn’t have been frozen for long, Revordrea figured. He was too lively to have endured hibernation, which meant that Dastrama only caught him recently. Her thoughts raced trying to conjure an explanation for her sister’s prolonged absence.

“Because my word is all I have,” Revordrea admitted, taking to humility as a way of gaining his trust.

“You’ll take me back to the Valley?” the skeptical satyr asked.

“The dragons are burning the Valley,” she told the satyr bluntly.

Zunia looked for pain in the satyr’s response but found none.

“Any valley will suffice,” he compromised, turning his gaze down toward the cracks in the stone floor.

Revordrea nodded, patiently awaiting the news.

In the heavy silence, Zunia wondered how long her sister had loved the satyr and how much longer she could entertain this ruse. Her serpents were fond of rumors, but this was as clear as the crystalline lake in which their people entered Miravale.

What stirred a storm in her chest were the two obvious unfoldings. Either, she wanted to return to the sisters and figured the only way she could bring the satyr was as a prisoner, or they planned on betraying Revordrea together. What frightened Zunia even more was that she didn’t know which one she would support.

“There was a mage in the village,” the satyr finally began, looking carefully at Dastrama as if for council. “He is a Seer.”

“A Seer? But that means—” Thera began.

“Sister … please!” Revordrea insisted with a sudden fire burning in her voice.

“Sorry,” Thera whispered, covering her face with her robe that had been stolen from a noble woman on their first day of freedom weeks ago.

“Where is the mage now?” Revordrea asked, rising from the throne and facing the distant blaze of the devastated Valley.

“I saw him traveling with a druid and his tree two days past,” the satyr reported with a rehearsed finality as if he had decided that was enough.

“Strength in numbers,” Thera chimed as if listening to her sister’s deepest thoughts.

Revordrea nodded. A sensation washed over her body. The closest thing to it was the one that followed petrification. She was cold and mortified. The sisters and the young thunder were free, but there were hundreds of their companions still imprisoned in the impossibly complex maze below the Diadema.

Before they escaped, before finding Viori and the captive-born dragons, the words of a dying Serratae stained her ears. “You must find the Seer. He will free us all.”

to be continued ...

***

Hello wanderers,

This is Part One of the Ersoa's Awakening serial. Other parts can be read as linked below.

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

xoxo,

for now,

-your friend, lost in thought