DRAGON OF FIRE, MAIDEN OF WATER

(working title)

(an original fantasy story by Angel Mercury. Begun on June 2, 1999)

INTERLUDE - WIND

(This is ONLY A ROUGH DRAFT. I may edit this without warning)

Kaze, the young student of the sword, walked up the spiral staircase leading to his master's private library in the tower. He left the sinking, crimson sun beyond the dark stone walls of the tower - he would not need it anymore. He was walking up the spiral stairs to a new beginning - or rather, an old beginning reborn - the beginning of his studies of magic. His windy gray eyes were a storm of anticipation.

Finally, he reached the last step up. He was not tired or short of breath in the least, even after ascending a few hundred steep steps. Before him stood an oak door - a door to his past, and to his future. Finally, he would find out who he was in his past life - because the past shapes the future. He had dreams of the past, vague recollections that blew by and slipped away through his grasping fingers like thin air - nothing more.

Magic was the key to his life, he knew. Finally.

Kaze studied the door with the eyes of a hawk, and the help of the dim light of a sole torch on the wall. The door was made out of whole oak, bound with iron - but strangely, there was no lock, keyhole or doorknob in sight. Kaze knocked on the door - no answer came from within. He pounded harder, called his master, only to find silence, broken by the crackling of the burning torch outside the door. He pushed the stubborn door with all his impressive, trained strength - it would not budge a millimeter. Finally he took out his sword and tried to wedge it in the door - it bounced off and tumbled, clinking, down the stairs into darkness. The sound faded away after a long minute - which was strange in itself, as the sword should not have rolled down the entire spiral staircase as it seemed to. Kaze growled in frustration. He was not in the mood to go back down for his sword and try again - it was obvious the door would not succumb to any physical threat Kaze could offer.

Then he realized - the door blocked a passage to the knowledge of magic, therefore, it had to be opened by magic. His master knew how to open it - Kaze often saw him disappear up into the tower, an eerie green light glowing in the top window. The light was there when he entered the tower - his master, therefore, must be inside.

'How am I suposed to open it?' Kaze thought in frustration. He knew his strength and resourcefulness in swordfights and hand-to-hand combat - but he realized for the first time he was powerless before a magic barrier, even though it was a simple oak door.

'But wait,' he thought. He knew magic before in his past lifetime, he was certain - now was the time to call back the fleeting spectres of memory and take the secrets they witheld from him for so long. He could almost feel the wispy ghosts surrounding him, just out of reach... "Instead of searching for strength elsewhere, a good warrior must find it within himself", Kaze heard his teacher's voice in his ears. It was not coming from behind the door, but from his lessons many flights of stairs down. Kaze decided to follow that advice instead, and closed his eyes.

The wind carried him far away from the top of the dark tower, into the sky...

No, not the wind - his own wings, scaly and enormous, flapping effortlessly through the mist in the morning air... though he did not understand.

He could almost feel the light breeze on his face, and see the ocean and sandy shore far below. If he could just control his body, he could have turned his head to see the creature soaring next to him through silence. He could almost catch the sight of the creature's shining armor of scales, his glowing claws, powerful wings and fiery eyes... Almost - then the vision vanished, like it always had. Kaze let out a sigh of frustration. So close...

However, that seemed to be enough proof for the stuborn door. It creaked, immediately attracting Kaze's attention, and slowly, torturously swung open to reveal a green haze of light in the room beyond.

Kaze almost grew timid before the threshold to the abode of magic... then he stepped through the doorway.

"Hello, Kaze. I was wondering when you would get here," his master's voice resounded oddly in the room, which was smaller than the student expected it to be. Kaze paused to take a good look - he knew never to rush in anywhere without knowing first what lies ahead.

The room was round, the dark stones that made up the walls of the tower were only seen in accidental glimpses because various dusty volumes of leather-bound books stood in bookcases all along the walls. A greenish light emanated from no visible source; it seemed to come from everywhere at once - the floor, the ceiling, even the books themselves. It saturated the already strange room with an almost intoxicating presence of magic. There was one window, crossed with a dense fence of iron bars which weren't visible from outside. The eager student of magic noted that when he began going up into the tower, the sun was setting beyond the crimson sea. Now he could only see the small glitters of stars through the darkness.

The door creaked and shut behind him. Kaze automatically gave a start, then calmed himself.

He saw his master sit comfortably in an arm-chair, turned toward him and away from an oak table, which was lit by a few evenly-burning candles that emitted an odd fragrance that Kaze could not recognize. A large, shadowy book lay open on the table, among scattered, scribbled leaves of paper. There also was another chair, this time a simple wooden one. His teacher invited him to sit.

"No, master, I prefer to stand." Kaze said as he approached the table. "But thank you."

"Very well. We shall begin by finding out who you were in your last incarnation." The older man said and shut the book. Answering his student's puzzled expression, he said "The book is not necessary. After all, you will be seeing your own past, written in your own runes, not the ones inscribed here."

The young man nodded quietly to his teacher's mysterious speech - so different, so much vaguer than it was when he was training him in the art of sword-fighting.

Kaze stood. His master did nothing. Unlike what he heard in legends and rumors, the procedure of finding out one's past life in reality did not involve any traditional instruments of magic such as boiling cauldrons, colorful energy lights, aromatic herbs or black cats. All that the teacher gave his student to work with was pure silence.

The silence continued for a while, until Kaze could learn to fade his concentration away from his surroundings and into himself. The ambient atmosphere of green haze helped him to disconnect from the physical world and delve into the world of faraway memory. These memories of previous lives were not stored in the conscious minds of ordinary reincarnated people - they instead resided in the shadowy, abstract realm of spirits, spectres that each were joined to their glowing memories by a spider-web of thoughts and feelings.

At first, Kaze was shocked at the number of interconnected memories as they hit him face-on, as if he bumped into a real spiderweb in a forest. Soon, without help, he found threads that were clearly connected to himself - and followed them along blindly. Of course the threads were only a simple vision, to help a novice student of magic to understand the workings of this dreaming side of the universe.

Soon Kaze was following the one thread that seemed to lead down into another level of his own existence - he was convinced it was his past. He marvelled at the ability that trained witches and wizards must have to play the spiritual strings of this world as if they were the strings of a harp. He saw an entirely new mosaic of threads emerging, tangling, twisting, forming a fleeting image...

He focused on that image, before the strings had a chance to tear and disappear. The outlines soon gained shape and form... The form of a definite dream, a dream he could now recognize and grasp without fear of it fluttering away. A dream that he knew, and that knew him - he returned to it so many times on the verge of sleep and awakening. The dream of flying through morning mist...

It did seem odd to him, however, that suddenly, his magical abilities resurfaced so strongly, whereas before he could not even remember the dream. He thought for a moment and attributed it to the fact that he was in a room saturated with helpful magic.

Calling back the dream, Kaze again saw the world shrouded in mist, and felt himself soaring above it. He saw the world turn upside-down and right-side-up again against his will, as his body in the vision glided through the air in a kind of primeval, mystical dance. Finally, another creature came into his field of dream vision - he needed no second look to understand that it was a true dragon, a creature of myth and legend. It was enormous, glowing like fire in the foggy sunlight, its wings sweeping the air, just like his own were... he caught a glimpse of his wing as it flapped through the air in slow motion. It seemed alive with a swirling greenish shade of wind.

An uncontrolling observer, Kaze watched the dragon when he could. There were a few others, but they soared high above in the young clouds. Spotting a figure walking on the sandy shore below, he focused - but the vision of the figure was not meant for him, and to his own frustration, he again turned his eyes up into the sky. He caught a glimpse of the red fire-dragon swooping past him and down to the figure. Then, a few aerial stunts later that sent Kaze's head spinning but didn't pose a problem to his dragon self, all his attention concentrated on another shape approaching him from the other side of the beach. As it coalesced into the physical reality of the dream-world, Kaze was surprised to see it was no other but his teacher. He flew down to see the figure clearer, hearing a voice - his own, but completely foreign to him - speaking a word in the breeze... "Kunshi".

The dream ended abruptly, throwing Kaze back into reality of the tower-room, with a throbbing pain in his head. However, the short vision was enough for him to say:

"I understand, master... I was a dragon. A dragon of wind. But... I saw you?"

These graphics are borrowed from: