Twin Souls

Chapter One: A Thorny Truth

The enormous ruby dragon peered down at the altar, seeing to his surprise a human child, no older than two or three of their years, sitting by a crude fire. The child was staring into the flames as if in a trance, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was strangely alone on this old afternoon, with neither care nor caretaker in sight. The boy suddenly hiccupped and the dragon gave a nervous start, adjusting his weight slightly on the cliff overlooking the forest as he considered his options.

You won't believe what I've found.

Did they leave us a goat for dinner again? You know they haven't been having much success keeping the wolves from their sheep - maybe we should prune them a little.

I have no interest in helping the brutes flourish. No, what they've left this time isn't dinner - it's one of their younglings.

What do you mean...? Is it lost or hurt somehow?

The head of the glittering dragon snaked forward slightly and sniffed the air, generating a draft that caused the little boy's fire to momentarily flare up, but he did not look around for the source of the sudden wind. Instead he continued to stare into the flames with a hungry look on his face.

It's been abandoned intentionally, I'm sure of it. Perhaps I should put it out of its misery, it can't survive for long out here by itself.

How do you know?

There's a lonely, tragic vibration in the air, as if someone did not want to see him go, but I taste also fire and fury. If I had to guess, I would wager his father is the one who has thrown him away, or perhaps an older brother.

Well, you'd better hurry up and bring him home before it gets dark, or he may catch a cold. After all, he doesn't have fire inside him like we do to keep him warm.

I wouldn't be so sure... wait, bring him home? Absolutely not, you know my feelings about humans. I would sooner see my nest burnt to the ground than I would allow such vermin inside.

Don't call him that, he is an innocent.

You don't know that, you don't know what he did to deserve this!

Oh, this is the sort of thing a child can deserve is it? I didn't know you'd had a change of heart on the matter.

Wha-but-that's beside the point! What if he grows up to be a slayer?! He could kill us in our sleep one night, and we would be none the wiser for it. No, I think it would be for the best if we kept our snouts well out of human affairs. Nothing good can come from associating with those accursed creatures.

Does he look like a slayer to you? Are you scared, oh great dragon, of a little baby? Would you consign him to death so that you might sleep well at night? Is that how a king of the sky behaves?

He felt her chuckling silently at the image of him cowering before a child who was to him the size an ant might stand to the child, and felt himself scowl ferociously at her mirth.

Don't make fun of me, my caution is what has kept us safe... I take your point, he is harmless today, and will be harmless tomorrow, but not forever. Men always bring ruin wherever they go, everyone knows that.

The little boy's fire was starting to go out, and he was roused from his reverie by the desire for more wood to feed to the flames. He glanced around and was about to get up when he suddenly spotted the colossal red lizard perched on the cliff some distance away, which froze when they made eye contact. The boy on the other hand didn't even seem surprised to see the dragon; instead, he gestured to his fire as if to show it off, proud of what he had accomplished and sure that the dragon would be appreciative. The dragon however was transfixed by the scar which stretched across the boy's face, crossing from eyebrow to cheekbone quite a length despite the eye bearing no visible sign of damage. The dragon didn't move for a long time - so long in fact that the boy lost interest and went back to tending his fire.

He... he looks like me. We have the same scar.

It's settled then - you've been chosen, there is no ignoring a sign like that.

What if this is some kind of trick? What if something goes wrong?

What if nothing goes wrong?

Maybe...

...

Maybe this boy is the saviour the elders spoke of, the one who will put an end to the slayers and redeem mankind. Perhaps their period of penance is coming to an end, and the time has come once again for a phoenix who is a man.

Maybe it is time... for a fresh start.

The red dragon said nothing as this thought danced through the air and hung there, echoing as a whisper of the music she had felt in her soul at that moment, when suddenly it began to rain. There was nothing more to say - the matter was decided, but the boy just sat with a pained expression on his face as the rain put an end to his fire. The dragon continued to sit with the boy, admiring the way the sky mirrored his own beautiful colours as he watched the sun drop bit by bit below the horizon until all at once it was gone, and night had fallen. He looked over at the boy and was surprised to find that he had lost interest in the smouldering remains and that he too was staring at the spot where the sun had just vanished. Even though it had stopped raining, rain still ran down the boy's face. Humans are odd, thought the dragon.

x

For the longest time, the child didn't communicate at all, but appeared at any rate to be very perceptive and remarkably intelligent, constantly making his surrogate family laugh and surprising them with his talents. Sometimes it seemed to them that he behaved more like a baby dragon than a baby human, and more than once they found themselves wondering at what parentage could produce such a remarkable child, especially considering that the very same people had decided to abandon him by the foot of the mountain.

He seemed able to understand their use of thoughtforms, but they were not sure how to teach him to project his intentions through the same means in order to make himself understood. He was however, after some amount of practice, able to project to a limited degree a parental call, which in time underwent a primitive differentiation to distinguish between the crimson-coloured male dragon and his nightshade mate. As he grew, his facility with this type of communication increased in sophistication until one morning he was finally able to project a question, although it took the dragons the entire rest of the day to figure out just what it was that he was asking them. By the time they figured it out, his frustration was reaching its limits and he was beginning to glower at them, a nasty flame burning behind his eyes as his temper tantrum brewed. Luckily, the imminent eruption was defused when it finally clicked that 'what call?' was supposed to be 'what is your name?', and his relief upon finally being understood was palpable.

The names that we chose for you to call us are Rubydo, for myself, and Onyxia for your mother.

Of course, these names are simplifications to make it easier for you to identify us; our true names require a much more nuanced facility with thoughtforms to understand, and for the moment it is unnecessary to know us so deeply.

Yes, we rather thought that naming ourselves after gemstones which resemble us in colour would make it easier for you to grasp, given how lustrous human beings find gemstones.

Names are a powerful thing though, child, and never forget it. Where an object may be named by describing its qualities or evoking its function, a living breathing conscious being resists such superficial labels. Names can quickly become boxes into which we are expected to fit, and it can cause immense distress when the box constructed by a name is broken apart by the individual's organic growth. Take care with the words you speak forth, because they can create their own kind of reality even if they are not true.

Do not place too much stock in what others call you; it is far more important what you call yourself, and whether you live up to that name.

'what call me?'

At this, the dragons eyed one another and hesitated briefly, unsure how to answer in a way that the boy would be able to understand.

The name we have chosen for you is Solon, because you were a gift to us from the sun, lord of the earth and sky, but that is just our name for you, a name for here and now.

Your name will be up to you to decide, when you are old enough.

'sol good'

x

Through the passing of the years, the young child had become an adolescent youth. Once so reserved, now he continually pestered his draconic guardians with questions about the world, and he was becoming more and more daring and adventurous, constantly pushing the boundaries his parents set. His burning curiosity was always getting him into trouble, and it seemed that one day soon he would fly the coop and set off into a brave new world, a prospect which quite worried his parents, as he had little experience with the realities of life. Since his grasp of thoughtforms was becoming stronger by the day, they had recently taken to flying loops around the very tip of the mountain's peak if they wanted to discuss him in private.

Do you really think he could be a human phoenix? It's been years and nothing has happened... Usually the sickness takes them young, doesn't it?

It doesn't much matter now, does it? - but yes, I do.

Why?

I suspect he has a secret, second soul - I think it might just be sleeping right now.

If so, let's hope it never awakens.

He still has the same fire inside him that we saw on the day that we found him, and his spirit gets stronger by the day. Have you not noticed the vigour with which he takes to tasks that would be considered dangerous, perhaps even insane, among his own kind? It is as if he's made of something different to other humans; who risks their life like that unless they know deep down that they will be reborn?

I suppose you're right... Come to think of it, the way he hunts wolves sometimes makes me wonder if he isn't part dragon.

He does have rather a thing for brutality, death and destruction, which is exactly what I am concerned about! Maybe it's just that he was raised around dragons, but I hardly think that his own kind would accept him once they got to know him - he would be seen as a barbarian for some of the things he does!

They have not the right to call us brutal, they who would leave a hatchling like him out to die, they who have erased their entire history as well as the history of countless others through their lust for power and control. The Thornclaw had the right idea about humanity, they are a pestilence which needs to be eradicated for the good of the world.

There is a sudden sound of cracking rock, as Onyxia snaps her jaws in frustration.

Do you know not of what you speak? Not only would you condemn our precious gift to destruction, but you would commit precisely the same mistake that humans made, in their hubris - you would seek to destroy that which you cannot understand.

Oh, I understand man well enough to know that he has no place on Mother Earth, or at best that he occupies the position of disease and death, pestilence and famine. He is a wretched curse upon the world, and his karma has affected us all for generations. All life on earth has fallen from grace, and who is to blame?

Not Sol, that's for sure.

Bah, he is the exception but not the rule. You say that I do not know of what I speak? See how well I know humanity, the only creature in the whole animal kingdom to name itself wise, the only species to define the name of their species to mean compassionate, sympathetic, generous... everything humanity is not! Everything man conceives of himself in his arrogance and delusions of grandeur, exactly the opposite turns out to be true of him because he cannot see how his attachment to such ideas of himself prevent him from seeing just how much he fails to live up to them. Man is the only animal on this whole rock that uses knowledge to justify blindness, who works like crazy to prop up laziness. We dragons may be proud and cruel, even savage at times, but at least we know what we are. Man cannot help but believe the lie he tries desperately to sell to the rest of us.

You think I don't know this? You speak of understanding man, but you show no understanding of how you are like him, only how you are different. You seek to educate me about his sins, rather than learning about your own. Man is savage and brutal, yes, but he also has the potential to be so much more. Even if he has forgotten, our history remembers a golden age where man stood tall and proud, before he was corrupted by the sin lurking deep in his heart. Do you really think yourself so different? If so, you are a fool.

Man is reaping the results of what he has sown in this world and from my vantage he has a lot more yet to pay for. You think humans can be redeemed because of the old stories, but you don't know what those dragons are like - I do! I lived with them for months, and I can tell you, there is nothing more out of touch than a creature that lives forever.

Just because you do not have the sense to treasure your inheritance does not mean that I must foolishly follow suit. The stories are clear; man's destiny is tied up with the fate of this world, for better or for worse, as is the destiny of our own race - you know this.

Of course I know it, I just interpret those words a little differently to you.

Yes, apparently you interpret them to mean that the divine goal of dragonkind is to slay the brutish plague of humanity. One would think that the overtones of irony might alert you to the hypocrisy of your stance, but apparently not!

I see the humans clearly, you are the one who is seeing only what you wish. Humanity's fate is tied up with the fate of the world, to be sure, but once they've destroyed our eden they will of course find a way to escape destruction themselves. Like rats, they will flee the sinking ship, and the rest of us will just be collateral damage. Do you really think they won't?

I am sure that they would, but it's our job to work with them so that we can prevent it from getting to that point. If we eradicated humans, do you really think dragons would do no wrong? Could we not destroy the world ourselves? Ask yourself.

I don't need to ask myself; perhaps we could, but we are nowhere near as likely to do it as the heretical cult of life called humanity.

'If humans are so bad, why did you rescue me? Why raise me as one of your own, nurture me, play with me, teach me to fly?'

While they were talking, Sol had become curious about what was taking them so long and had decided to climb to the very tip of the highest tree on the peak of the mountain, to see if he would be able to listen in.

Because you are different son - you are special, unique. Your race is not all bad, they have their redeeming qualities, but they have their shadow as well, just as we all do. Unfortunately humanity has forgotten the importance of self-knowledge, and has thereby allowed its shadow to threaten the destruction of the entire world, the extinction of all life. But I gather that they still remember in their dreams, and they still tell stories, even though they no longer understand what those stories mean.

You're a good one, son, but... how much did you hear? You're the exception to the rule my boy. Your people... well, let's just say that they aren't climbing the evolutionary ladder these days.

'I heard enough to know you think humans are evil. I don't understand how you can care for me but hate what I am so much. What did we do to deserve your contempt?'

You did not do anything, my child, but your ancestors... They imagined themselves to be the undisputed masters of this world, and fought amongst themselves to control every inch of it. The consequences were.. devastating. Before the end, they truly were the most learned creatures in the land, that much is not hubris. Of course, pride cometh before a fall, and knowledge is nothing if it cannot be tempered by wisdom. If only man could have tried to learn from his fellow creatures - from his fellow man - instead of trying to dominate them. In his quest for power the 'wisest' creature in the world bombed himself back to the stone age, and obliterated his entire history in the process. Humans went from masters of the world to barely more than animals in a handful of days, destroying nearly every fragment of the culture which was their most precious inheritance. Man has been returned to the savage he once was; no more does he deserve the title of noble, even in his own tongue. And this was only the beginning of his descent.

'I don't understand. If you agree with dad, then why would you argue with him, why would you defend what I am?'

Because nothing in this world is simple, least of all life.

There is a brotherhood of dragons who have unlocked the dreadful secret of immortality - these are the shamans of our race, those most sage beings who guard our sacred inheritance. This we call the order of the phoenix, because it is populated by dragons who are born with two souls within one body, each of which rises from the ashes of the other to reignite the flame of life once mortally wounded. There is always a time during the dragon's life when both souls awaken at once, and fight for control; this is a period of madness and chaos, from which the dragon may not recover - if one of his souls kills the other in the struggle, then he lives only a half-life. If, however, he is able to heal the rift within his soul and make himself whole - to forge a pact between his two halves - then he gains the capacity to walk both sides of the line, and his insight is increased tenfold. Of course, to successfully heal the wound it is often necessary to receive guidance from another who has been through the same process, hence the formation of the order. Due to their longevity, these are the dragons who have been charged with the keeping of the cosmic record, ensuring that those who come after us do not forget what it cost for them to be here, and from whence they have come. It is from such storytellers that we know the tale of the fall of man.

Our history tells us that in the final struggle, man brought about a great cataclysm to blight his enemies, at terrible cost to himself. The leaders of his largest tribes hid themselves away in underground shells while the world was reduced to rubble, and by the time the survivors emerged, there was nothing left - everything he had built had been erased, and soon enough his memory followed suit. He had become so used to relying on the records written down in books and lightning-rocks that he had forgotten the importance of his oral history, and once he could no longer access the patterns he had tried to etch into the sands of time, he started to forget who he was. He wounded himself and the world so terribly that he consigned himself to oblivion, wandering lost throughout the desert for forty thousand long days; he even forgot how to tell himself the story of where he was going or how he had got there. In time, he forgot all his myths and legends, and once he had no more stories to tell... only then was he truly lost.

Thus he remained for many, many years - aeons even - until perhaps a century ago when your kind started once again to dream. But while man slumbers, his life continues to fade away because, without his stories to orient him in the world, he cannot know that he is desperately wounded, and needs to be healed. His unconscious fantasies now revolve around such a saviour figure, and in fact such a being is mentioned in some of our own stories - someone who will walk between worlds and restore harmony to the universal song. Sometimes, I wonder... who you are meant to be. You were given to us for a reason, that much I know.

'...'

You are a mystery yet to unfold, son. That much I know.

There you go again, filling his head with fantastical nonsense. He is a wonderful exception, a gift, but humans themselves are a curse, as he will one day find out.

Your curiosity leads you to ask questions that your father might feel are inappropriate, but that is just a function of your inner nature; in that way, you are more like me.

If you've taught him to be like you, I can surely teach him to be more like me.

...

Perhaps it is more the influence of your nature than it is anything to do with the nurture your father and I provided you. We've often wondered what your family must have been like.

'I wonder why they didn't want me...'

Whatever their reason, it is most certainly their loss. You have been a blessing in our lives. Now, come down out of that tree, it's almost dinner time, and we caught a very lively deer tonight.

x

After a sleepless night, Sol snuck off during the early hours of the morning so he could swim in a hidden lagoon he had discovered. He liked to go there in the mornings to reflect on the events of the previous day beyond the range of his parent's searching gazes and near-instantaneous access to his moods and thoughts. He had learnt more the previous day than in the last few years combined about who he really was, and just thinking about it set his head spinning! He couldn't understand why they wouldn't want him, and he could scarcely believe his fortune in being found by such loving individuals as his parents. To think that humans thought of dragons as mere animals! It was almost too much to bear, knowing as he did of the depths of their compassion and kindness.

He was still trying to imagine his father's face when he drifted off to a dream filled with snakes, fire, falling angels and rising apes. Suddenly he became aware of the sun high in the sky, and realized with a start that he had slept long into the morning.

He glanced around, feeling uneasy, when like a shot a piercing cry of alarm penetrated deep into his consciousness. Before he could think he was flying through the forest, sprinting and swinging from branch to branch as he climbed the steep incline up towards his nest.

As he gets close, he begins to slow down and listen intently for any movement either in the nest or beyond its boundaries, but he hears nothing but an uncanny silence - not even the birds are twittering or singing.

Unsettled, he climbs up the cliff and heads into the nearest cave, searching for signs of a disturbance, but his parents are nowhere in sight. Feeling slightly panicked now, he calls out with his mind, and there is silence for a few moments before he feels his mother Onyxia answer him, telling him urgently to stay where he is because there are intruders nearby.

As she flies she relays to him, along with an intense feeling of vulnerability, a brief account of what happened; they awoke feeling like there was danger nearby to discover that he was nowhere to be found, so they took off to search for him. Before they'd got very far however a storm suddenly materialized out of thin air, thick clouds, winds and lightning separating them.

At this, she conveyed a single word with utter disgust that echoed through the thoughtform; 'sorcery', she spat, as if the word itself was evil. The storm was keeping pace with her wherever she went so she dove for the ground to ensure that she didn't collide with anything while she was flying blind, but once she landed the storm, which just seconds before had been raging ferociously, simply evaporated.

She had only just taken her bearings when she felt his call ring out, and leapt into action. He feels her approaching with deadly speed, knowing without her having to say so that she is flying low so that the storm does not fully manifest itself and blind her.

She lands with a roar and Sol goes to run over to her, but a sudden wind buffets him and he is thrown against the wall. A sinister hum fills the air as a spear streaks its way towards Onyxia, but she manages to pull back just before it strikes her in the chest and instead it slams into a tree.

There is a flash of light and the tree begins to decay in front of their eyes, withering and dying within seconds of being struck by the spear. Sol shudders to think of what might have happened if his mother had been smote by it.

Her head whips around, eyes narrowing in on the figure who threw the spear, a wild-eyed man with red hair who has a battle-axe across his back, a small shield on his crook of his arm and a hand-and-a-half sword held casually, point down.

The word "Ssslayer." drips from her lips, fangs appearing in her mouth with a resounding crunch as her tail thrashes against the trees behind her. It is an instinctive response, and Sol can tell his mother is genuinely afraid, both for him and for herself.

Just then, the stranger speaks. "We are here to rescue you from these monsters."

"Why?", Sol replies with a lisp, not used to speaking with his tongue. The utterance overflows with questions, but it's the best he can do.

"We are kin."

Sol's mind explodes with questions at the exact same moment that Onyxia's mouth explodes with fire, and he feels an unexpected burst of despair. But the flames, rather than eating the intruder alive, swirl around him as if he were inside a protective bubble.

He grins as a storm suddenly blooms in the sky nearby, and after a couple of moments there comes from within a deep and heart-wrenching roar, the sound of a wounded animal, which causes chaos inside Onyxia.

Instinctively, she flicks her head around to look for her mate, and at that moment the stranger leaps forward, moving inhumanly fast.

Onyxia begins to rear back but it's too late, and he can see the face - it's his own face, his own features, the same eyes - but it can't be him, it can't be, he would never do something like this, "WHY!?"

He makes a futile lunge forward, grasping at the air, when suddenly thick roots spring out of the ground and wrap themselves around the assassin, stopping him dead in his tracks just moments away from smiting Onyxia in the breast.

Suddenly a dull ringing fills his ears, and the world goes strangely dim, as if the sun has gone from the sky. He barely registers the fury and shock on the teen's face, who he can now see is not much older than himself, before he is falling through infinite darkness.

Chapter Two: A Rude Awakening

When Sol opens his eyes, it's pitch-black and he knows immediately that he's alone. As his eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, he sees that he is inside a small cave, though it is not familiar to him. Suddenly his memories come flooding back and he leaps to his feet, eliciting an ominous chuckle that freezes his blood in his veins. He turns in a circle but can't see anyone, and he's just thinking he might have imagined it when a voice says from the darkness, "Hello brother."