The Girl with the Shadow Dragon Father
Mar 8, 2022 11:50:37 GMT
Grimes, Jaezred Vandree, and 4 more like this
Post by Delilah Daybreaker on Mar 8, 2022 11:50:37 GMT
🐲 Co-written with the sublime willjenkins 🐲
Beckoning Delilah to follow, Kurtz stands, straightens his clothing and walks calmly outside. Finding an open spot without onlookers his form ripples and changes, hands distenting into claws, body bulging to become his true draconic form. Towering over the Pale Daughter, he bends his neck low and offers a place upon it.
“Would you like to take a flight daughter?”
There’s a slight hesitation as Delilah recalls the last time she flew through the night sky with Oziah. But she would be a fool to pass up this opportunity, least of all for a chance to finally ask the questions that have been burning away in her mind since she found out who he is. She barely takes a step to the side before melting into the darkness, to then appear at the base of Kurtz’s neck, the shadows of his form coiling around her legs and torso in the impression of an embrace.
“I’ve flown once before and that time nearly saw my soul leave my body. Perhaps this flight with you, father, will be different,” Delilah says with a smile to her words.
Launching quickly into the sky, Kurtz climbs quickly to move from the gaze of any nocturnal inhabitants of Daring Heights, the winds, cold at ground level are accentuated by the speed of his flight, but the feeling of freedom it brings is undeniable, the mood clearer once they soar above the low cloud base. Setting into a steady circle, lazily beating his wings, the voice of Kurtz echos slightly as he speaks to his daughter, perched just behind his head.
“I sense you have further questions?”
It’s difficult to read the expression, both through position relative to her father, and that his form is not well known to Delilah, no baseline to work from. But she swears she hears just a hint of apprehension, perhaps knowing a reckoning for the past is coming.
“That is very astute of you, father. Yes, I do.”
The chill of the wind bites into her in waves, but each time it gets less and less. Delilah runs her hands across Kurtz’s obsidian scales wondering why it feels like they are hardly there, like he is hardly there despite being the closest she has ever been to him, both physically and possibly emotionally.
“Why didn’t you stay? Where did you go when you left?”
“I left because your mother’s obsession with necromantic practices was starting to concern me, because I feared she would turn on me, attempt to use me in some way I did not desire. I know little about your upbringing, but I am going to assume you know her well enough to see her power and her ruthless desire to increase it further? I also left because there were members of the court who had begun to suspect my true nature.”
There’s a long pause, Kurtz wheels through the air, dipping and climbing as if turning thoughts in his mind.
“I left because I was afraid.” A long low glide down to the point Delilah can see the Fort, lights shining into the darkness of the night. “I left because I needed to find some way of reducing her power, preventing whatever she was planning.”
Delilah leans down to be closer to his scaled neck, watching the Fort approach, imagining she can hear the ruckus of the Great Hall and those who perform each night to earn extra coin. “Is that why you didn’t give me up to Glasya? Because you could have. You’ve already proven you think so little of those of us who do not live as long as you, nor have such powers as you at their fingertips.”
Being this close to him, Delilah notices the scar he has in his human form is replicated on his draconic face, just under his violet eye. Her hand lifts to touch the fabric of her mask, wondering who left such a mark on him. It holds her attention, like a flame does a moth.
“You were so close to finally being free, to fulfilling your contract. Why lie?”
“You may struggle to believe this, but you have your mother to thank for that. You say that I could have given you up to Glasya, but in fact that is not true. I am cautious of your friend’s offer of a fey bargain because I am already bound by one. One that forces me to love you and protect you to the best of my ability. What I thought would be but a side clause in a contract with your mother. It seems she has either greater foresight than I imagined, or simply did not trust that I would accept any child of our union.”
“That… does sound like her, yes,” Delilah says quietly. It’s not hard to mistake the disappointment in her voice.
A few flaps as he soars once more into the air, turning over to face north east and the smudge of brown by the water that would become Port Ffirst as they got closer. “I was unable to lie, I admit, I tried, I am no saint. But the magic of that contract still holds true, it would seem, another chain that binds me.”
It takes a few moments for Delilah to gather the right words and when she does they are said carefully, measured. “What is your current relationship with my mother? Have you seen or spoken to her recently?” She adds very softly, “Do you know what leaving me with her has done to me?”
Kurtz glides for a full minute, no turning, no beat of his wings, just the air rushing past. When he speaks he does so quietly and slowly. “I haven’t spoken to, or heard from your mother since the day I left her. Left you both. As for leaving you with her, the scar I carry serves as a reminder that I am not always strong enough to take what I want. I considered staying and continuing the fight, but I feared your mother had a secondary motive, that somehow I was part of a plan to exploit you. Your mother’s ability to keep a secret and hide plans within plans impressed even within the fey courts.”
A few beats then, Kurtz circles back towards Daring Heights, keeping over the Angelbark, it’s dark trees gently swaying in the wind, reaching out to touch them as they soar gracefully by. “Tell me what she did to you, tell me how I can help make it better.”
Maybe it was finally having the chance to talk with him alone. Maybe it was the tone of his voice. Maybe it was the chance to finally connect with the one parental figure that has not hurt her beyond redemption. Maybe it was because like calls to like. Whatever reason she told herself later, it didn’t change the fact that the girl of shadows told her father everything.
She told him about the final test given to her by the Temple, their nigh impossible task of getting proof to fully banish Demona Neramorte from the Twilight Court. She told him about Ankaa, her first love, and how Demona made Delilah watch as she broke her lover down, changing her into a monster, who she then had to kill. She told him that was when her mother maimed her, taking off her mask to show the still rotting flesh of her face. She told him how she stabbed her mother in the back, right through the heart, before running away, evidence in hand.
“I thought she was dead but last year she… she found me. She knows about Oziah too. To my shame, I am still terrified of her, of what she can do. She knows how to hurt me. No matter what I do she always finds me and-” Her hands ball into fists, one of them gripping the mask that has covered her face for years. Delilah takes a deep breath in, closes her eyes and turns her face up to the stars. She feels the weightlessness of flying, some distant part of her curious why everything feels insubstantial around her, even her father’s gargantuan draconic form.
“I need to stop her. I need to kill her. That’s why I started looking for you. I thought… My father got away, he must be strong.” Delilah lays down on her father’s neck, resting her head on his, a hand reaching forward towards his own scar. “If I could find him, if we could work together, maybe, at last… I could finally be free.”
“I have lived a long life, have seen and experienced moments of pure extacy, the deepest despair. But sometimes even I am humbled by the humour that seems to pervade our existence. The irony that it may well be your mother’s own bargain that leads me to agree to help you kill her. It is delicious.”
With those words, Kurtz drops his wings and plummets, a joyful dive towards the ground, extending his wings at the last second and skimming the last few miles to Daring Heights with a soundless chuckle vibrating through his very being. He pulls up and lands softly a few hundred feet from the walls. Out of view, not risking the panic his form might cause if seen to be entering this city. Crouching low he drops his neck to the ground to ease Delilah’s dismount.
Turning back to the human form she has come to recognise as his, he stands before her. His eyes lacked the mirth of the chuckle, but steady and serious. “Do you have a plan?”
“At the moment, no,” Delilah admits.
The decaying handprint pulls at her face as she speaks, twisting her lips as if the hand that made it still grips her. She looks at the man before her, the one she has begun to call father and feels hope. But on the heels of that comes sceptical mistrust.
“I have been so focused on determining if you were someone I could trust or not. Even now… I am not sure.” Tonight seems to be the night of bearing all her scars, both physical and emotional. “I want to help you be free. Chains are meant to be broken, as are those who would forge them. You say you only love me because of a bargain you made with my mother. You will only protect me because I want to kill her. You are trapped, bound to me unwillingly.” She shakes her head. “I am not a good person, but is our mutual hatred of my mother enough? When all is said and done, how can I know you won’t abandon me again?”
“I will protect you not because I want to kill her, I will protect you because you believe she is a threat to you. That reluctance you feel in trusting me is a good thing, it shows you have learned from your past. Neither you nor I can know my true emotions, what would have been, it is one of the many reasons I have grown to hate your mother. Maybe I would have loved you without compulsion, but I was denied the chance to find that out, as were you. I cannot promise you that I will be a good father, my actions towards your siblings point towards fatherhood not being my natural state. But maybe in destroying your mother we will find we share enough to create a bond worth fighting for.”
Kurtz lifts his hand towards Delilah’s face and scar, slowly as if seeking permission to place his hand upon it. Her natural instincts want to kick in, the urge to step away, to not be touched, to keep him at arm’s length with the steel of her daggers between them is so strong. But then she sees the frustration in the set of his jaw and the guilt colouring his eyes and it makes her pause. This nearly ancient dragon is in this precariously odd position where he is concerned that breaking free of this bond and having his own mind again might endanger her, which because of the bond he does not want.
The choice is hers. Let her father in and offer him the proverbial blade in her hand, one that he could easily use against her, a blade that would cut deeper than any had before, sinking past sinew and bone to her very heart, rending her utterly should he betray her… Or to stay safe, keep him at a distance, have the blade stay pointing at his heart, but maybe lose the chance to be free of a darkness that has pervaded her whole life, one that has shaped her into the creature she has become, never finding freedom, always bound, always scared.
Never flinch, never fear.
The Pale Daughter lifts her chin as she takes the smallest step closer, the invitation clear, the choice made.
His fingertips gently brush the skin before settling over the scar, his larger hand covering it entirely. Delilah holds his gaze, and he sees a shadow of the look she might have given her mother before it dissipates. His hand is warm to the touch on this cold night. It rests only a few seconds before retracting back to his side.
“Thank you.”
She nods, but her eyes remain locked with his.
“What about yours?” Delilah asks, her own hand reaching up to touch the raised edge of the scar. Her fingertip traces the slashing mark down his face, but again it feels like he is hardly there. She frowns.
“Your mother is also responsible for that. She gave it to me the day before I left and it serves as a reminder that direct confrontation is not without its consequences.”
Her lips curl into a knowing sardonic smile.
Kurtz’s form shifts once more, shrinking down to only 3 feet tall, the elderly gnome woman looking up in simple well cut wool attire distinguishable as her father only by the scar running from her eye across her cheek.
“Both Silvia and your Drow friend can reach me if you need to speak further. But for now I should find somewhere else to hide until you need me. I’ll remain in the Dawnlands though, remain close.”
Kurtz steps into the darkness and is gone.
