Chapter 13 Cut Scene - Sighting the Enemy

Author's Note: This scene has existed in the manuscript since the original version of this draft. Usually when I cut scenes almost right after they have been written because they just aren't what I was going for. This time, it was to fix the continuum of Ashes of Hope which had been changed slightly due to editing and minor fixes in the plot. Originally, this scene, which occurs after a major event, introduced the drakoon species as a whole and I was actually so fond of this scene at one point that I even had plans to animate it. I only ever animated part of it, but the scene remains iconically drakoon and has inspired much that I have designed for this very inhuman species. Unfortunately, with the new version the scene just doesn't work anymore, especially with its poor writing style, so here's the cut - I call this scene 'sighting the enemy.' This scene did not receive any final editing. Enjoy.

A sentry sat on a grassy hilltop, gripping his cloak with one gloved hand. The scent that the sweet trees of the surrounding rainforest and wild flowers of the meadow made were strong on the damp, humid air. A warm wind wafted the scents of the trees and land towards him, filling his senses with heady knowledge. The sentry sighed appreciatively; by smell alone he could tell that all was well in the woods around him, a thought that put him at ease. A black and white fugara leapt from a tree nearby after its mate, its bushy tail in the air. Night birds sang softly, taking no notice of the calm watchful soldier on the hill top for they knew that so long as he stayed there, he meant them no harm. A small lizard scrambled down a tree trunk and was snapped up by a snipe which ambushed it.

The sentry was one with the world around him - almost. His armour and yellow eyes shone in the reflected light from his smoking fire, lighting up his strange features. Like all of his kind, his hair stuck straight up and was dark ending with light blond tips almost like animal’s fur. As with all males such as he it stayed short and spiky, virtually maintenance free. The sentry was lanky and slender, though his armour made him appear stockier when standing. He had a well angled face and a strong jaw, his nose perfectly straight as if carved by an artist who had worked precisely with a rular. There was something very refined about his shadowed features, as if he was an elf, like in stories of old.

The young soldier looked much smaller than he actually was as he crouched by his signal fire. All he had to do was kick up the embers and the outpost fortress would be alerted. He watched his low fire that he could not feel, fervently wishing that he was anywhere but here. This area was prone to attacks by Taverian strike squadrons and he did not like that it was only him for an entire day of foot travel. His squadron, in the far off Fort Lookout, were so far separated from him that he could not even smell them, a thought which was painful. The sentry missed them keenly, especially his commanding officer who made them work very hard for his regard. By taking the lonely sentry post the sentry knew he would gain favour with the older soldier, perhaps letting him rise in the ranks of the squadron. Luckily the sentry was not on foot or alone really, not completely anyway. His dapple grey mare was grazing peacefully just behind him, delicate nose to the ground, her tail a-swish. She would keep him company until he could be reunited with his unit.

He complained softly to himself, fully aware that his horse and Diager’s cat were listening. The false star that was the nearest other semblance of his kind sparked above him. Diager could even now be listening in. More than likely however, the cat would be listening to more important things than the huffing of a catless border guard.

Behind him Mayra shifted and sniffed the midnight breeze, large nostrils flaring. The horse suddenly pinned her ears in sensing something she did not like and trotted to her rider’s side. She whuffed sweet breath in his ear to get his attention. He listened to her worried tale and then stood slowly, so as not to startle her. Mayra nickered quietly as she pointed out the position with her velveteen nose. A cold thrill trickled up his spine as he found it. His pupils dilated to draconic slits that looked odd in his humanoid face as his irises expanded to plates of gold.

See it? she asked.

Yes. he responded hungrily, a soft growl issuing involuntarily from his throat.

Let’s go then. Mayra said.

Let’s. he agreed, touching his sword hilt.

He bundled up his cloak, tied it to her ornate yet simple saddle and mounted. Mayra jigged beneath him as he settled his very light frame onto her big strong back. She wore no bridle, no bit, no reins. Such things were unneeded. Her front end rose as she wheeled on her hind legs in a half rear. Then she was running, her stride so smooth that he felt as if he were riding on air rather than her. And he would know. The sky had never been out of his reach. Into the dark hollow of the woods they went, heading quickly for the outpost and then the capitol of Sloveniska, nicknamed Ship Killer Bay for good reason.

He looked back once to see a false shooting star. Yes, Diager, I’m abandoning my post. Tell Tanmeer that I’m getting a promotion!

Ashes of Hope - Prologue Sneak Peek

Desolation. A shrill, piercingly frigid wind blew across the frozen plain of ice, tiny pointy daggers of chill flying up with it from the snow. The landscape was white, tinged with the silvery blue of shadows which often went unseen, disguising crevasses which stretched thousands of feet below the seemingly safe surface. These death traps were utterly perfect, so well disguised that one could pass over one many times safely, then, when the conditions were just right, one would inadvertently fall into it, dying in the heart of the still world below. Any corpse would be frozen solid in the ice, preserved for all eternity in the final throws of its agonizing demise. In this land a person could go to sleep, then die without ever waking up, killed by a sudden cold snap. The temperatures were murderous at the best of times, but occasionally, they fell so low that everything died.

Which was why nothing but the hardiest bacteria lived here.

Overhead, the sky was almost the exact same colour as the snow, so that ground and air seemed to blend together eerily. It was painfully easy to get lost here, confused by the blinding landscape, one that was locked in eternal glaciers without horizon. There was no shelter for hundreds of kilometres, nor was there warmth. The entire world was colourless, chill and without heart, a killing place for those unintelligent enough to venture there. At times, when the sun showed through the thick clouds, the light would catch in the crystals of the snow, glaring back up reflectively like a mirror which burned.

But on this day, thousands of years before any human would ever take note of the star which governed this world, something did move in the arctic waste of northern Thundarica, the pole of the planet. When she moved, she limped, the wind blowing about her thick pelt and icing it with natural glitter, almost making her look surreal. A human would have described her as wolf-like, though she was not in the slightest related to any wolf of Gaia. She was lanky, her long legs appearing almost out of place in the arctic freeze, her limber, thin body appearing fat with her thick coat. Her soft bushy tail, much longer than that of a wolf, flipped about carelessly in the air torrent which buffeted her. The creature’s pelt was coloured with silver and a bluish grey which topped her back as well as her tail tip. White markings made her face expressive, exposing the pain in her features as she panted, eyes winced closed against the icy wind.

While her slow jerking movement was certainly catching to the eye, it was nothing to the vibrant blood which oozed from deep wounds in her back, dripping, despite the freezing wind chill onto the snow, where it congealed the ice into what looked like deep burgundy garnets. A trail of them followed the creature, visible even after the windblown powder had erased her shallow paw prints.

Presently, the creature shuddered, almost falling to the ground, but she pulled herself level on splayed legs, her tail dragging in the snow. Shivering, she whimpered unabashedly, then forced herself onwards, though her steps became slower and more forced. Deeper into the deadly polar plain she staggered, gusts of wind her constant companion. A sane creature would have avoided this place, but she was dying and the pain of her slow demise was making her seem senile before her time. But there was a method to her madness, for it was her will that she die where those who had hurt her would never find her.

For despite the agony of every step she took and the cold that permeated even her fur, slowly freezing her blood, she kept moving, for she knew that she was hunted.

At first, she had not remembered what they were. It had been so long ago that she had fought their kind and her memory was faulty at best, but eventually, she had realized what they were. For the first time in ages, she recalled exactly what had happened so long ago and why exactly she had fought the monsters in the past, determined to wipe them out for what evil they had wrought on her world. But that recollection had only occurred after she had foolishly approached them, acting a friend and had answered all of their questions.

She had remembered very well indeed when they had shot her with one of their loud-sticks, though their ancestors had never possessed such weaponry. There was no way she could of ever have expected that kind of tool lore, not even with her butchered memory, not until the splitting agony of the shot as well as the scent of her own blood made her recall everything, as she had never truly forgotten. After she had been shot, she had ran away, but they had chased her and continued to now, determined to capture her alive for more questioning. She had known from the instant she had been shot that she was dying and that she had to escape them at all costs, to warn the others of her pack that their enemy had returned.

Millennia ago, these creatures had come from the stars using magic now arcane and had killed thousands of the sentients of her world. She, along with her strange pack, had managed to rally the rest of the natives into rebellion against the monsters, forcing them back to wherever they had come from. But now she had seen with her own eyes that they had found a way to return, a way which did not necessarily include the use of magic, for the enemy’s genius had evolved since she had known them last.

They had discovered a way to make objects fly.

Westwind - for that is her name - had decided that the aliens here now were merely scouts, that they were simply investigating. But if these were scouts, that meant that there were also more like them, somewhere out there in the heavens. If the scouts told their star-born brethren about Westwind’s world, then surely more would come and this time, Westwind did not think that the natives would stand much of a chance. The aliens had changed and Westwind did not think that the natives could even hope to draw on their old knowledge as an aid in defeating themselves anymore.
“N-north-wind!” she cried out his name, wishing he could hear her, but she was too weak to project her voice to his ears and could only hope that somehow, he was there as he usually was. But he was not. She had left him, back home in the south on their mountaintop, because she had felt angry about something he had said which she did not even recall anymore. Now she was deeply regretting her huffy decision to run off alone to patrol the north. If Northwind, her mate had been here, he would have been able to warn her beforehand of what the monsters were, because unlike her, he always remembered.

“Nor-thhh-wiind!” Westwind cried again, choking on her own blood as she pronounced the name. Westwind spoke common fallan, a guttural yet melodic language, which did not require nearly as much articulation of the mouth as human languages did. It was not her native language, but close enough that she had learned it with ease and now spoke it almost more readily than the tongue that had been taught to her at birth.

Westwind coughed, her throat aching with each heave of her hurting chest, more salty crimson running onto her long tongue, pooling under it then dripping out, staining her chin and bib. She doubled over, hardly able to draw breath as she coughed, the wind all around her stopping its furious rush as she lost control of it. The ice flakes which had been blown about viciously moments before settled and the world went quiet, so quiet that she could hear the trudge of bipedal feet somewhere behind her. This made her stagger up again, gasping for breath as she tried not to cough even more, determined not to die where her pursuers might see her. But before she could take even three steps, she fell again and this time, she could feel it was final.

Her warm green eyes dimmed as her breathing became weaker, her remaining strength seeping out of her body with her blood. Westwind tried not to whimper like she wanted to, wishing with all her fading heart that Northwind would come to save her. She coughed up more blood, the redness painting the white of her fur and the snow.

When they came, they were deathly still, watching her like predators before a kill and she hardly had the strength to tip a soft ear back to listen to their alien muttering, unnerved by their surrounding presence. Blearily, she tried to raise her heavy skull, but all she managed to do was make her body hurt more. She tried to look back, but her eyes would no longer focus, so she waited, peacefully but miserably for her end. Below her, she could feel the shifting of the ice, the eternal creaking as it slowly advanced across the peak of the world, scraping out mountain ranges which would not be seen for eons, if ever. Minute by minute, the ice thickened, fortified by each snowflake which fell upon it.

The creatures gathered all around her, their prehensile forepaws gloved in warm synthetic hide, their bodies covered in layers of their version of fur, which was false. The light of the sun as the clouds drifted away did not harm their retinas, for they had intelligently opted to wear strange translucent devices which protected their eyes. To Westwind, these almost looked like they had been made of obsidian glass. Her nose told her that the creatures smelled like nothing else she remembered, besides perhaps vaguely, their ancestors. Evolution and a drastic change in habitat had changed their biochemical makeup, but the stamp of their ancestry was still present, a lingering tone in their scent which she would always hazily recognize, even when her memory failed her.

Vaguely, Westwind could hear the whispers of the creatures grow urgent, rising in pitch and she opened her eyes, her pupils suddenly able to focus. She looked upon snow which seemed to glow with a radiating turquoise light. Somehow she found the strength to lift her head, staring in wonder at the face which appeared before her, a face whose strange bluish-green eyes were familiar. This was a face she knew even when her memory was obsolete, a person like Northwind who was permanent in her recollections. A hot tongue touched her nose, the touch seeming to salve away some of her pain, the agony easing in her chest. Weakly, Westwind tried to lick the creature back, for he was of her pack, her respected leader who had so long ago gained her trust. If he was here, then everything would be alright.

She laid down her head, closing her eyes as jaws as strong as vices wrapped around her throat, then in a burst of white pain, it was over.

He who had killed her, her trusted leader, raised his striped head, standing tall and proud on his four legs as he regarded the shocked gathering of the enemy. All around them, the terrible wind began to blow again, whipping into a torrent that soon became alike to a twister, tinged with the tawdry light of the leader’s magic as an aura grew about him, making his eyes appear to glow. With a horrible fury he opened his mouth to bare canine teeth which had been sheathed in venomous fangs dripping with poison. From above in the sky the watching aliens thought they heard the shiver of thunder and they drew back, unsure of what to do in the face of this unpredictable new foe, so much more competent seeming than the last. Was the weather connected to this strange creature’s appearance?

You are unwelcome here, sinners from the stars. stated Westwind’s leader to his hapless audience as he threateningly laid back his black ears. He was of a species much different than Westwind’s. Like her, he could also speak falla, though presently he spoke with thought. Like Westwind, he looked for the most part akin to a wolf, though also like Westwind, he was in no way related to the Gaian wolf, a fact made obvious by the large wings folded upon his back. He was savagely magnificent, his deep reddish fur striped with ebony, bolt white markings adorning his snarling face. As if to echo his mood, the wind began to shriek, a painful sound which cut into the ears of the creature’s audience.

One of them, perhaps a younger recruit, thought to raise his weapon to point at the winged creature’s head, but the creature did not move, apparently undaunted. Kept hidden was his anxiety over the strange killing machine, a weapon which he had never yet seen and had yet to learn the capabilities of. But he had seen enough of the aliens to know that the young recruit’s body language was threatening, which surely meant that the long black object in his hands was dangerous. From his throat the creature let a growl escape, a subtle order to remove the weapon which the recruit dutifully ignored.

Fool, do you even know who I am? demanded the creature, raising his tail dominatingly. All at once the wind dropped as if at the creature’s command and once again the snow cleared from the air, the clouds which obscured the sky rapidly drawing back to expose the blueness of the day. Again there were whispers from the aliens, this time with an undertone of nervous expectation staining their voices.

You’re the one who controls the weather. came the telepathic voice of the bold young recruit who even now continued to aim his weapon at the creature’s head, though his grip on it had begun to tremble. She told us about you - the dead four-legged thing.

Her name is Westwind. Besides that, I do not just control the weather. said the leader, snarling menacingly. I control catastrophe.

For a few moments, all that existed was silence, a strange sound which was amplified by freezing landscape that surrounded them. Nothing moved, not even the recruit, though his finger ached to pull the trigger of his weapon, yet unknown to him, the death of the creature before him would not have made a difference in the end. There was the smallest of susurrations as the creature slowly let his tail fall, pulling a single black paw from the snow, sinking his large body closer to the ice. Then, in a painful instant, he moved, so swift that he was more blur than beast, his teeth closing delicately around the arm of the recruit. With great care he pressed down his teeth through the fabric of the alien’s clothing, the tips of the leader’s fangs only just breaking the skin of the recruit’s wrist. Then, just as fast, he sprang away again.

The recruit fell to his knees, a stifled cry leaving his lips and a moment later he lay still, stone dead. Within hours his corpse would be just another part of the land, frozen into the glacier upon which he had died, the weapon still clutched in his hands.

Your kind dies so easily - that wasn’t even magic. said the leader disdainfully, addressing the recruit’s shocked brethren, who could not yet comprehend how it was that he had killed it. I wonder if Westwind told you about how I am and she is, immortal?

Though he asked the question as though wanting an answer, he did not wait for one and neither did the resurrected Westwind.