Private Tales The Ballad of Broken Dreams

[Ophiryn]

Salt was known to corrode, and she wondered if it's sharpness will ever stop irritating her nose every time she breathed in.

It clung to everything, not that she could see past the drapery over her cage. It was made from iron and steel, leeching from her energy every hour, but still, she persisted in staying awake. This has happened to her before, many times over centuries. She had been slave, prisoner, and slave. She had been worshipped, listened to, and feared. They at first listened to her kind. Sought them out in forests with bounties in exchange for a song of prophecy, and yet they cried when given truth. They were fae of course, unable to lie. They were prophets, and they were unrelenting with their truths.

But the world continued to grow, evolve, and the minds of many began to refuse the inevitable simple because they did not agree with it.

Ophiryn was one of the last fledgling Nightfairen to be born before the flock took to hiding in the highest of alpine regions across Arethil, becoming myths just like the Avariel.

When she had been first captured near a century ago, it had been by mistake. Hidden for so long, she never truly knew what it meant to have predators around... and yet she was taken. And on the years went by, sold, enslaved, and bartered with, Ophiryn had served many masters and preened in pretty cages to be shown off.

This time, she had been offered. A prize to appease. She knew she was on a boat, a ship perhaps, but the sea gave it's own damning scent. It would stick to her, taking every chance for three days sail as glimpses of neverending sea could be seen in the whips of winds lifting the drapery over her cage.

Today was different. She could hear boots crossing the deck, hear shouts and calls, and for the first time in three days, they spoke of her.

"Thousands of golds she is worth, and they task us with handing her off to pirates? Thieves? The Lord of Leaves must be demented..."

 

[Varnak Irontide]

The deck of the Wolf's Wrath rolled beneath the waves, but the crew seemed utterly at ease. Unaffected by the pitching of the ship this way and that. A figure pushed through the crew gathered on the deck. Tall he was and broad, with a chest built more like an ox than a man. He wore a coat fashioned from the fur of a tiger and his clothes beneath were the loose ones of a sailor, a wide v at the neck exposing the powerful lines of his chest that seemed thick as a barrel. He wore his hair long and it was an iron gray, with his beard twisted into two forking braids. His eyebrows were two thick slashes, sharply angled over gold, wolfish eyes. Scars lay thick across his body and face, carved into skin tanned deeply by years at sea beneath the sun.

"Captain Varnak," said a slightly shorter man, with dark hair and an array of knives.

"Kol," replied Varnak, gripping the shoulder of his first mate, "She here?"

"She's waiting on the forecastle."

"Finally."

Cloak rustling, Varnak pushed through his crew and vaulted the steps up to the forecastle, where the hapless delegation awaited. They had a large cage with a drape over it. Varnak wasted no time.

"Let's see the goods then. Cinder, the cage."

A horned, shirtless cambion with skin of a purple-red and a wicked scimitar at his hip strode forward, tail swishing behind him. The cambion, Cinder, seized the drapery and yanked it away, revealing the form within.

"Well, well, well. The fabled Nightfairen. Finally mine," a vile, toothless grin curved up Varnak's lips. "Bring her out. I want to inspect my new pet."

Over the protests of the delegation, Varnak's crew sought to open the cage and haul the winged woman within onto the ship's deck with rough hands that wandered far too greedily, and rougher words.

Ophiryn

 

[Ophiryn]

She presented them with her back. Let them see the deformity of her wings, the way they hung drooped behind her. When she had been captured long ago, they started on her wings. Plucked and clipped, until one owner had sawn them both off. When he realised how slow it took for wings to regrow, she was sold again. The abuse was all the same, until she was kept in cages that did not allow for a full stretch of wings.

Ophiryn knew her wings never mattered, not until they saw her in all her entirety.

The doors to her cage were opened, and she stiffened. She made no attempt to move, unsure of the games these new owners played.

Hands reached for her, tugged, and she moved with their insistence. It had been a long time since a hand held her gently, for she had been a pet to a menagerie once. She was bought to be admired, and Ophiryn sung melodies to delight those that came to see her.

This time, she knew she was not to perform. A voice had called her pet, had wanted to make his own inspections of her.

She needed to bathe, needed a trim of her hair, and certainly needed time to adjust not being in a cage. Her legs almost gave out the moment the hands helped her onto her feet, and the same hands readjusted on her. Held her in ways that she knew were not appropriate, but Ophiryn knew their fates would be sung one day soon.

The silent Nightfairen was pulled back, resting against someone's front as their arm wound around her middle. They would argue they were only doing so to keep her upright, but she knew they were taking what they thought they were owed.

 

[Varnak Irontide]

Cinder held her, one arm wrapped around the waist, holding her close to his lean, bare chest that gleamed magenta in the sunlight. His tail moved slowly, slithering along a wing until he wound it tight around her throat.

The devilborn hissed in her ear, horn grazing the side of her face.

“They can’t take your soul, remember that.”

“Cinder? Stop throttling her,” barked Kol.

“Remember it.”

“Cinder!”

The tail slunk away.

Varnak’s voice cut through the squabbling, a raw and gravelly bass as wea ship’s hull grinding across pebbles as it beached itself. “Enough chatter, what have we here.”

The throng about her parted to reveal the captain as he strode forward, scratching idly at his beard as those wolfish eyes roamed over her.

“She’s got skin pale as moonlight, Cap.” Said a human, who pinched at the bare flesh of her arm.

“Hmm.”

“Them eyes is green, green as jade.”

“I see.”

“Hair and feathers all the same, black as night.”

“No, they’re purple,” snorted Kol.

“Oh.”

Varnak’s lips twitched with annoyance and he saw her legs quiver, barely able to stand. The effects of the iron cage. He took a step forward, running a finger along the crown of feathers sprouting from her head, along her hair and down across a cheek until he suddenly hooked forefinger and thumb inside her mouth and sought to spread open her lips.

“Good teeth,” he remarked casually, “you didn’t cut out her tongue did you?”

Grunting, the captain waved his other hand. “Kill the rest and dump ‘em.”

A surge of commotion and desperate cries engulfed the forecastle deck as pirates drew weapons and made to fall on the hapless delegation.

“You promised!” Shrieked a delegate.

Varnak half-turned from the inspection of his prize toward the scream. “I promised not to destroy your city. And I won’t. Yet. Your bodies on the tide will carry that message back.”

The wet thwacking sounds of cold steel ripping through hot flesh and bone rose, followed by fever pitched screams of pain and terror, until silence remained but for the cackling of the corsairs.

Varnak’s gaze returned to Ophiryn, “Now then, will you be a good pet for me?” He stroked her hair, hand coarse and calloused, skin like leather.

Splash.

A body hit the waves, hurled overboard.

More followed.

“What should I call you?”