Status: Currently Active
Dragon in Kirkwall
Rolling in the Deep
As I fall, I feel and see my life flash before my eyes. Am I truly to die today? After all I did to get here? His face holds that smirk that I hate so much. I won’t die now, that would make him happy that my escape failed. The faces of my sister and her son play before my eyes, they await me inside the city and I must survive this fall, the sea and get to land to make sure they survive.
The descent takes what breath I had away. As I fall I have no choice but to think, meditate on my laugh that is to come. I’ll start at the beginning.
I was given the name of Ryu by my “owner.” It was meant to be a pun for that is what I am. A Ryu, a dragon, or at least I have the soul of one. I will explain in a moment, bare with me for now.
In my homeland, a small island nation of Tivia, mages are the leaders in a magocracy and elves are second class citizens. My homeland is all but isolated but for contact of the Tevinter Imperium. Since mages here have much more respect than the rest of Thedas, those without magic are looked down upon. My family was no exception.
Over a century ago my great grandparents made a deal with a magical family so that they too may have power and influence. They got what they want, but not without a price. The family would get magic in their bloodline but only if those with the power served, protected and paid back the debt that my family had created. My great grandparents agreed all the same and my grandmother, born a few years later, was the first mage in my family and the first slave to the magical family: the Von Chades.
If only my great grandparents knew that the magic was forced upon our non magical bodies and that soon it became a curse. Only the Von Chades could control and sustain the magic in our veins for it wasn’t ours to begin with. The magic rejected us and it was until my generation was born did the Von Chades found a way that we can have magic without it killing us. Only the blood and soul of a dragon could seal the magic to the body, but this was an unheard of ritual. The ritual required one getting a tattoo using the blood of the dragon as the ink and then a Von Chades would violently merge the soul of the dragon to the soul of the recently tattooed. This process killed two of my cousins and my half brother. I was the only one to ever survive and I was only two.
I grew up living as an indentured servant, a step above a slave, and I grew up never knowing more than what I was told about my family. My mother gave birth to me only to leave me to my father’s family who rejected me for not being of two noble parents. Only my grandmother, Nana, accepted me for she loved my mother dearly and it was only Nana who raised me. My father never held me as far as I’m concerned and when he died, I finally met my older sister, Penelope.
Even though Penelope was older than me by five years, I still looked after her. When she became mysteriously pregnant at sixteen, she cried to me about the brutal conception. Lion Von Chades, the father who raped my sister and my owner; the one who holds the leash to my life for only he can contain the monster inside me and keep me from being lost to the magic or the soul of the dragon, is now the father of my nephew, Kai. At least Kai looks Penelope; he has her brown hair and blue eyes, a nose that reminds me of a rabbit and average in height for a five year old. He even worries like his mother, but he has a glare that reads “I’m my father’s son.” Kai is a good child and I love him as any Aunt should.
I couldn’t stay under the mercy of the Von Chades after I learned who Kai’s father was. It took time for me to maintain control of my inner demons, but I did. I was uncertain if escaping was the right way, but the Father works in mysterious ways. By the time was thirteen, my family’s debt to the Von Chades was paid according to the document my grandmother keeps locked away. We were to be freed of this curse if only the Von Chades were as noble as they claimed they were. Lion kept adding on months to the debt whenever he felt like it, so much in fact that when I was fifteen I had to serve an additional twenty years. I refused to be is servant any longer and I as turned my back on him; he yanked my leash, figuratively speaking. He is control of the dragon as he reminded me. I felt it take over me and then nothing.
I remember nothing of the acts he made me do, but when I gained consciousness of my body I was covered in blood in the middle of a burning building. I had no idea what I had done or to whom I had harmed, but I did know who forced me to it. I went to Lion that night and tried to kill him, but his magic is greater than I had expected. As I lay at his feet, like a bloody rag doll, he told me how we were going to be visiting his cousin in the Tevinter Imperium. There we were going to be wed or I was to be sold as a slave, the choice was mine.
That night the opportunity came to me and in the morning I told Lion of agreement to marry him as long as Penelope and Kai were able to attend the wedding. Little did he know that I had made preparations to escape once the ship was close to the Free Marches. At the port of some city state, my sister and I feigned an argument that resulted in her and Kai being left behind. I went to my room keeping up the act of being upset with my sister and stole away during the middle of the night. We were not far from the city’s shore line, so I got rid of the guard outside of my room and raced to jump over board.
Now here I am, free falling into the black waters of the sea in hopes of keeping my family safe. The jump will look like suicide and I hope they will think I did just that. The water feels like I’m being impaled by ice and I feel the dragon in me awaken. Holy Father, carry me to the shore for I can’t fight this anymore.
The descent takes what breath I had away. As I fall I have no choice but to think, meditate on my laugh that is to come. I’ll start at the beginning.
I was given the name of Ryu by my “owner.” It was meant to be a pun for that is what I am. A Ryu, a dragon, or at least I have the soul of one. I will explain in a moment, bare with me for now.
In my homeland, a small island nation of Tivia, mages are the leaders in a magocracy and elves are second class citizens. My homeland is all but isolated but for contact of the Tevinter Imperium. Since mages here have much more respect than the rest of Thedas, those without magic are looked down upon. My family was no exception.
Over a century ago my great grandparents made a deal with a magical family so that they too may have power and influence. They got what they want, but not without a price. The family would get magic in their bloodline but only if those with the power served, protected and paid back the debt that my family had created. My great grandparents agreed all the same and my grandmother, born a few years later, was the first mage in my family and the first slave to the magical family: the Von Chades.
If only my great grandparents knew that the magic was forced upon our non magical bodies and that soon it became a curse. Only the Von Chades could control and sustain the magic in our veins for it wasn’t ours to begin with. The magic rejected us and it was until my generation was born did the Von Chades found a way that we can have magic without it killing us. Only the blood and soul of a dragon could seal the magic to the body, but this was an unheard of ritual. The ritual required one getting a tattoo using the blood of the dragon as the ink and then a Von Chades would violently merge the soul of the dragon to the soul of the recently tattooed. This process killed two of my cousins and my half brother. I was the only one to ever survive and I was only two.
I grew up living as an indentured servant, a step above a slave, and I grew up never knowing more than what I was told about my family. My mother gave birth to me only to leave me to my father’s family who rejected me for not being of two noble parents. Only my grandmother, Nana, accepted me for she loved my mother dearly and it was only Nana who raised me. My father never held me as far as I’m concerned and when he died, I finally met my older sister, Penelope.
Even though Penelope was older than me by five years, I still looked after her. When she became mysteriously pregnant at sixteen, she cried to me about the brutal conception. Lion Von Chades, the father who raped my sister and my owner; the one who holds the leash to my life for only he can contain the monster inside me and keep me from being lost to the magic or the soul of the dragon, is now the father of my nephew, Kai. At least Kai looks Penelope; he has her brown hair and blue eyes, a nose that reminds me of a rabbit and average in height for a five year old. He even worries like his mother, but he has a glare that reads “I’m my father’s son.” Kai is a good child and I love him as any Aunt should.
I couldn’t stay under the mercy of the Von Chades after I learned who Kai’s father was. It took time for me to maintain control of my inner demons, but I did. I was uncertain if escaping was the right way, but the Father works in mysterious ways. By the time was thirteen, my family’s debt to the Von Chades was paid according to the document my grandmother keeps locked away. We were to be freed of this curse if only the Von Chades were as noble as they claimed they were. Lion kept adding on months to the debt whenever he felt like it, so much in fact that when I was fifteen I had to serve an additional twenty years. I refused to be is servant any longer and I as turned my back on him; he yanked my leash, figuratively speaking. He is control of the dragon as he reminded me. I felt it take over me and then nothing.
I remember nothing of the acts he made me do, but when I gained consciousness of my body I was covered in blood in the middle of a burning building. I had no idea what I had done or to whom I had harmed, but I did know who forced me to it. I went to Lion that night and tried to kill him, but his magic is greater than I had expected. As I lay at his feet, like a bloody rag doll, he told me how we were going to be visiting his cousin in the Tevinter Imperium. There we were going to be wed or I was to be sold as a slave, the choice was mine.
That night the opportunity came to me and in the morning I told Lion of agreement to marry him as long as Penelope and Kai were able to attend the wedding. Little did he know that I had made preparations to escape once the ship was close to the Free Marches. At the port of some city state, my sister and I feigned an argument that resulted in her and Kai being left behind. I went to my room keeping up the act of being upset with my sister and stole away during the middle of the night. We were not far from the city’s shore line, so I got rid of the guard outside of my room and raced to jump over board.
Now here I am, free falling into the black waters of the sea in hopes of keeping my family safe. The jump will look like suicide and I hope they will think I did just that. The water feels like I’m being impaled by ice and I feel the dragon in me awaken. Holy Father, carry me to the shore for I can’t fight this anymore.