Scaled Shards

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, well not real ones. The fanatical priests would convert the masses with the stories of these great deities up high protecting us from evil and fighting of the forces of destruction but the normal man didn’t really care until they came. There were ten of them, they called themselves Skyborn and this is the story of two friends, discovering the nature and power of Gods.

Did you hear the High Peai is dead?

Uchu came bursting into the common house clearly out of breath from running. Seeing his friend sat at the window table he pushes past the commotion that he has just caused and grabs Ayara by her shoulders, “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes” she said loudly looking over his shoulder to the approaching people “but unlike the rest of these bored idiots, I don’t believe you”, she signalled to Mos behind the counter for two of the usual and sits back down on her regular chair. It was actually the only chair in the common house that she could sit on as she had had to cut a hole in the back of it (with Mos’s permission of course) to fit her long tail through. She gestured to the window chair opposite for Uchu to sit. The rest of the room settled back to their own tables and business, after all if a Skyborn was not concerned then they shouldn’t be. She wasn’t a really Skyborn, but she had all the physical sleek reptilian characteristics of one, and of course never corrected anyone who assumed she was. She was Touched just like the rest of them, it’s why she was in that shit hole every night. The common house was one of the original ones, commissioned by the Skyborn when they first took over as the protectors of the Kingdom of Wacah and some of that original splendour could still be seen but time had moved on and Mos had been Old for a long time now and was finding it harder to maintain all of it. It would have had space in here for 100 tables and 30 market stalls around the sides but now the market was all but gone and covered by a large divider so the 15 tables couldn’t see the damage and decay. Ayara nose could smell it though, that mix between old stagnant water and the slight sharpness of something putrid. Mos always served the drinks with heavily spiced food to cover it up.

Uchu slumped down into the seat, panting trying to catch his breath. She could see the frantic panic in her friend and the sweat on his skin and she knew that something had happened. She could always tell how big his crises were, as this was by no means the first, by the smell of his mammalian sweat and this crisis smelt like a biggy. Uchu looked like an Umn, the people of old times, before the sickness, before the SkyBorn saved everyone by gifting them with their powers and because of the way he looked he was ostracized and shunned by people who didn’t know him well. The reality was Uchu was probably the most gifted person in the city district, which is why Ayara first liked him.

“So, out with it. What’s the actual story that has you stinking up my nose, Hmmm?” she says looking over at Mos pouring the drinks and pretending not to care about this obviously juicy bit of gossip.

Finding some composure “I’m being serious, I saw it happen myself” Uchu said in hushed tones. “The old Drake came into my shop wanting some Aged Black Root, I asked him to have a seat while I go and get it from the deep cellar and when I got back he was just sat there in the chair, dead.”

Mos walked over and dropped the two drinks off, “Quite the entrance Monkey but you will have to try harder than that to breathe life into my fine patrons”. He had a loud hearty friendly voice which made people smile just to hear it. Ayara in her most exaggerated formal voice thanked the proprietor for the great vintage of rice wine and dried peppery rat meat that they had been delivered and explained that Uchu might have been sampling some of his most recent mushroom stock. They both laughed, while Uchu smiled and grabbed the ladle from the wine bowl and poured it straight into his mouth. Mos laughed “We all have days like that son” and walked back towards his bar.

Ayara pushed her glass over for Uchu to fill it, “Come on now, share”, she grabs the drink and takes a sip. “First things first, what was a Skyborn doing in your Apothecary? Let alone the High Peai himself, all alone? And most importantly," she continued "Skyborns can’t die. They are Living Shards of a God”. She takes another sip “But I am sucker for a good story, so what happened next? Where is the body?”

Uchu looked down at his hands, they were thick skinned and ingrained with dirt from the various gardens in which he grew the ingredients needed for the concoctions he sold. He was easily the best apothecary and botanist in the city, probably in all Wacah but because he looked like an Umn, the corrupted, he only got customers when it was their last resort. His shop “Hidden Aromatics” was outside the city limits, not far away, on the edge of the ruins of Topan. Mos was the oldest sky touched they knew, and although Topan was destroyed almost 800 years ago, Mos’s grandfather had been there and was one of the original Umn to be blessed by the Skyborn. The gift would save their lives from the Blight, but they never could imagine that the children of the first would take on aspects of the Skyborn, they would inherit some of their physical characteristics like scales, serpentine heads, long tails or clawed hands and feet. A rare few would have a high blessing such as wings, elemental breathing or their physical strengths. Mos aged slowly, he would say that he was like a candle his wick burned smaller but for longer, he lost count of how old he was after 500 hundred years old and found his purpose in talking to people making him the longest running barman and story teller in Wacah.

He had told them that when the sickness had come, it was like all the world would die in a devastating wave of coruscating corruption. The people of Topan started by collecting and burning the bodies, but it was found that even the corpses were contagious. So when someone died in their home, the house would be set ablaze until eventually there wasn’t a city anymore and the people had moved out to the wilderness and this is where they discovered the Skyborn. It was said by the Voice that “Kulkan” the Forest Dragon who protected Wacah, pulled off 10 scales and dropped them to Earth to save its people. These 10 scales were the Skyborn, the same ones who were there at the End of Topan and who changed the Umn to the Touched. These shards of divinity controlled power unimaginable, unfathomable knowledge and were immortal but that didn’t change the fact the one of them was dead and shoved in a store cupboard under Uchu's stairs next to his prize vinegar collection.

Uchu looked up and into Ayara’s eyes and smiled, and she knew that he had her and now she was also deep in this mess too.