Sabrael
To right the wrongs of our fathers -
He doesn’t think it (not yet). He can’t know that his blood had helped to create this contagion, had helped bring upon the plague. He can’t know that his sire had been resurrected only to serve the whims of their dark god. He doesn’t know that Ramiel had raised Pangea by spilling the blood they share, that he had, in turn, spilled the blood of an innocent to release the sickness on that same damned soil. These dark truths remain a secret to both father and son.
For now.
Sabrael’s not thinking of his stormcloud sire now, as he paces the length of beach of Island Resort. He’s thinking of the woman who had just departed their safe haven without a word of reasoning. The woman he’s only just found again, after years spent searching for any signs of her on Ischia.
~
He had been searching for anyone, really, anyone he ever cared about in the aimless years of his youth. He finds his family – or some semblance of it, anyway, with the vast majority gone or missing – but not where they were supposed to be. Ischia is sick, he learns, along with almost all of the other kingdoms he’d known as a boy. Beqanna is sick, he learns, too; almost nowhere is safe now. So this is where they had landed, their little safety net on another island. Not Their Island, but paradise all the same. He is comforted by the sway of palm trees and warm, briny air on his neck. Sometimes, he closes his eyes and thinks he can hear his mother’s voice soft against the crash of surf. But when he opens them, she’s never there.
~
There’s a nagging sound in his head that grows as he watches Wallace retreat further into the sea. He mistakes it for worry at first, but soon realizes the source is outside of himself. Wonderful, now you’re officially going mad, he thinks to himself, shaking his angular head. But no, it really is there. It beckons him out into the sea, too, pulls him far and away. So away he goes.
The second he hits the warm water, the dragon-shifter becomes merely a horse. He feels it in his core the very moment the beast’s flame sputters and dies within him. It takes his breath away. For once, he is alone. For the first time in his life, there is no other soul clamoring for space inside the same body. His skin feels loose, even, draped generously over his bones. Sabrael cuts through the water feeling lighter than ever. When he reaches land (the soft sand giving under his hoofs but becoming solid lava rock just beyond the wave-break) he shakes and marvels at the change within him. But still, the voice urges him on.
Tephra is safe, he knows, but he will have to cut through sickened lands and expose himself to reach the Mountain. Knowing this is the way Wallace went (with the voice crooning and calling in their heads), he does so without hesitation.
It isn’t an impossible journey, but the bay roan is weary when he finally makes it to the Mountain. He’s used to his dragon’s wings carrying him over large distances, used to the added endurance he is loaned when he’s a beast. That, combined with the emotional toll of the last few weeks leaves him ragged around the edges when he finds the gathering. His gold-flecked eyes find Wallace first, but he does not go to her. He’ll be here for her (he’ll always be here for her) if she needs help, but he recognizes that they are possibly on two very different missions. Instead, he listens to the sermon delivered from on high. Ah, so they’re the clean-up crew.
Fun.
Here, he thinks briefly of his dad. He was always getting involved in shit, wasn’t he? Does the torch automatically get passed down just because he went and got himself killed? Doesn’t that prove exactly why you shouldn’t get tangled up in the affairs of the fairies? He sighs deeply because he knows he will do it, anyway. He’ll freeze his ass off on Icicle Isle and bring back whatever trinket they couldn’t poof to get themselves. Maybe he misses Ischia and wants things back the way they were. Maybe he feels badly about all the sickness and suffering. But really, he could do so much more damage as a dragon. Why do they have to walk all over god’s green earth?
Sabrael decides to walk all over god’s green earth. He trails Wallace for a while, still stubbornly clinging to his worry that she might need him (she had once, after all, and that memory still haunts his worst nightmares). But somewhere along a Hyaline river, with the late snow crunching under his feet, he loses her. He climbs up and over the mountains that remind him of his childhood home, the Dale. At the summit, he looks down over the land spread out before him, thinking of all the people he could help if he kept going. It’s not what he’s ever intended on doing; he’s a rather selfish creature when it comes down to it. Cold mountain air wakes him from his comfort, though. It clears him of his doubts. Yeah, Dad would normally be the one to do this, he thinks, but Dad isn’t around anymore. I am.
He skirts through the Taigan forest between sun-up and sun-down. It’s easier without his usual accouterments, but he’s still glad when the last pine-tree shadow passes over his speckled coat. Thick forests make him edgy. He much prefers the wide-open skies, and that’s exactly what he gets when he passes into Nerine. The air grows cooler and the sky greys. Even the water darkens from the vibrant cerulean of Ischia and the Island Resort. This place matches his personality almost perfectly, a fact he vainly notices while hoofing it up the final cliff before the sea. Sabrael winds his way down to the beach below, noticing the deep caves carved into the shoreline. He wonders what treasures they hold (and now, what sicknesses). When his hooves meet the edge of the water, the stallion looks away into the horizon. Somewhere out there is his destination.
He steps out into the chilly sea.
The water is rougher here already, even before his hooves lift from the course sand below. Waves crash over his back, chilling him with the spray across his face. He’s no stranger to swimming. Spending so many years on Ischia from a reckless child to a reckless adult meant that he knew the sea as intimately as the shore. Sabrael tries to work with the water, not against it. He paddles when necessary and rides the pull otherwise when he can. But it grows colder the further out he gets. A creature of fire and warmth, he grows more sluggish the colder he gets. He misses the dragon now more than ever. He would singe his own skin to feel some warmth at this point. Just when he thinks his limbs will freeze into place and he will sink down to the bottom of the ocean, Sabrael sees the nearing shore.
Icicle Isle, he muses, aptly named at that. Nearly delirious with his chill, the stallion rushes to get out of the freezing sea. He falls to his knees in his rush, banging them on the frozen ground. Pulling himself up without dignity (and without care), he looks around to the new place he has landed.