Trials of Power, an original story

WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS DEATH AND GORE
THIS IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED, I WANT TO FOCUS ON THE GOOGLE DOC VERSION
The nest sat in a scorched section of the cliff, perhaps a remnant of an ancient battle-from a time when such battles were still honorable.
A group of men and women wearing sleek fireproofed armor and climbing harnesses stood at the base, where the scorch marks were faded and smeared from a trickle of water running from a crack in the cold stone. Cranes accompanied the humans, cranes from which empty cages made of cold iron swung eerily, for the cranes were not moving and there was no wind, not even a slight breeze. 
Yet the part of this scene that would surprise a reader the most is this: a smallish lefarnen, colored robin’s-egg blue with a bit of black along her back and around her eyes, with a slight build and horns banded white and gold-short horns that displayed her young age-stood, her eyes aflame with terror, in the entrance to a cave, alibit a beautiful cave, with statuary and stained-glass windows in a rainbow of colors. Her stockier but striking violet and gold mate valiantly stood beside her, the webbed fen that ran down his back standing tall. The blue lefarnen, Sapphire, saw what was coming first. The second lefarnen, Gold, noticed what Sapphire’s fearsome sky-colored eyes fell on. They were out of time. Although no words passed between the two parents, their muscles were tensed and their ivory teeth were bared. What lay behind them was the most precious thing in the world to them-perilet (baby lefarnen), vivid as songbirds, sleeping in a soft nest. Or, my siblings were still sleeping. My mother had woken me early, careful not to wake the others, and brought me to the front of the nest. Now I know that they planned to take me far away to save me. Silent tears had leaked down my mother’s scaly blue-and-black cheeks while I scuffed my claws on the stony cave floor, complaining loudly about having to get up so early, then seeing my parents distracted, made a break for the sleeping chamber, dove back into the warm mossy bedding, and cuddled up next to my only brother, Copper, who was snoring loudly but was the only one who still liked to snuggle. My parents could have easily lifted off and saved their own lives if it were not for me and my siblings, yet I thought I could tell that the thought never even entered their minds, but unfortunately, for one of them, I was wrong. When I was thrust into the dark and twisted world from the deeper darkness and almost total safety of my thick eggshell, the only thing I knew for sure was that they loved me and my sisters and brother. For now, I snuggled deeper into the soft mossy bedding, not even minding the mud from the fresh moss my father had just brought  yesterday to replace the old, dried stuff that smeared on my blue-green scales. The stone and moss muffled sound, so I was completely unaware of the impending danger. I raised my head slightly and listened to the heated voices of my parents discussing what to do, but even they knew they couldn’t save us, powerful though they were. This surprised me- like all peliret of my tender age, I believed that the nest was completely safe and that nothing could harm me there. Boy, was I wrong. My mother heard me and my sibling’s panicked breathing and looked back to the sleeping chamber with a false smile. “Everything’s going to be all right, little ones. We won’t let them hurt you.” I picked up on something in her tone of voice that told me she was lying.
I could hear metal clanking outside the cave. My head perked up. Whatever that is, my parents have to get rid of them, I thought.  
Then the strangest creatures I had ever seen crept into the cave slowly, each one clutching a sword; I knew what those were from my parent’s stories. They were missing their wings-poor animals! They also had no scales-instead they wore stretchy black and red pelts depicting a bloody sword on the front over skin that ranged from the color of an eggshell to that of tree bark. They must be humans, the things my parents described in stories designed to scare peliret-they couldn’t be anything else. But those were just made up to make me and my siblings behave. That was a life lesson. As I now know very well, some “fairy tales” are very true. I didn’t know why my parents were still growling so ferociously. What harm could these things do? We’re lefarnen, with firebreath and hard scales, against soft-skinned humans with no natural defenses. But, just in case, I hid deep under the soft moss but left my eyes poking out so I could see what happened and keep watch for any more humans. Then my parents, my mother breathing blue flame, my father breathing white, lunged at the approaching danger. I could hear thumps and screams from the landing, then the clank of metal against metal. A strange paw, gloved in a thin black membrane, grabbed me around the belly. I had ignored the heavy breathing behind me for a while, and now it came to haunt me. I squeaked in surprise and said the worst curse I knew in Krenian. Sinking my stubby but needle-sharp fangs into the flesh, a terrible-tasting red liquid filled my mouth. A horrible screech echoed through the chamber, and I turned my head to spit out the blood just before the human dropped me to cradle its hand, blood leaking through the black pelt thing. I then ran as fast as my short legs could carry me for the front of the cave, my small but sharp claws clacking on the stone. In the open entrance, I saw bluish iron cages, one for each member of my family. All filled, except for one smaller one, the bars covered in dried blood that I didn’t want to think of the origins of. My young brain realized that the cage was for me, and I made a break for the cliff, which I could scuttle down by using my claws and flapping my small, still-weak wings. Maybe I could utilize the many hiding spots at the bottom to conceal myself and come back later after the humans were gone. The human caught me again just as I reached the cave’s mouth, this time by my torso, pinning my silver wings to my heavily scaled sides. I was shoved into a cold iron prison, cold bars scraping my soft scales that had yet to harden. The humans did not care and paid no heed when I roared in my squeaky peliret voice to express the pain. One of them jeered and poked at me with a metal rod, which I ignored, dead set on escaping. The original human waved a key in the air, then securely tied it to its belt with a small but strong chain.
My brother’s cage was opened and he was lifted out by a human with hands clad in iron, probably the one that I had bitten, judging by the blood dripping slowly from the right glove and pooling on the stony floor, along with the human’s grimace. I silently rejoiced, thinking that perhaps the humans weren't going to harm my family and that this was just a formality to show me and my siblings how strong the humans were, one we would simply forget as time went on. A different human unsheathed a long, sharp sword, really more of a spear, that I didn’t even know it had and began to move ever so slowly towards the human holding Copper. The sharp, clean steel caught my eye, not because of greed, like the humans probably thought, but because a month earlier, I had begun to learn telekinesis. I just might be able to take it and destroy these creatures forever. I kept staring at the sword, my icy eyes following it. But it was no use; the sword was too heavy and too distant. The human waved it at me and grinned evilly before lunging forwards.
Suddenly it pierced Copper’s scaled side, and I could not look away, so I closed my eyes, but still I heard an unearthly scream, a scream of pain and fear. I had not known that my brother, who had been so gentle and kind, could make such a sound. I wish that I had never learned that he could. When I finally unsealed my eyelids, Copper was lying on his side on the bare stone, dripping with silvery-red lefarnen blood that soon washed away in the downpour that made it seem as if even the sky was crying for the plight of my family. I looked to my mother in her cage, and she was turned away, sobbing. This would likely be my fate as well, to be but a corpse in the rain. A roar sounded, my mother’s. My cage door was opened and before I could flee, one of the humans grabbed me. Shoving me between its armored knees, one rough paw held my head so it faced my mother, and another held my eyelids open. It said something in a dialect of squeaks-definitely not in my native Krenian-but I knew it meant this: Watch closely, little lefernen. Never forget what you’re about to see. Then it lifted its helmet, revealing dark skin, bright green eyes, and floppy black hair, and whispered so quietly it barely spoke at all. “I’m so sorry, little one. Please, forgive me.”
The now-bloodied sword was brought back into play, but for Sapphire, death did not come quickly, unlike for Copper. It was horrible. And I was almost glad when, with a last slice of the bloodied, chipped sword across her throat, now completely denuded of scales, my mother, who had protected me, loved me, slowly fell to the ground, the last sparks of life draining from her eyes as blood flowed from the numerous wounds, staining the once-clean stone a bright silver-red that almost seemed cheerful and happy. She opened her mouth for what was to be the last time and weakly whispered “I will always love you, my little stars. Reme-” Her body fell limp, the end of her sentence lost, and in that moment, I knew that she was gone. T
he humans dragged her body out of the cage with ropes and kicked my mother’s corpse a few times before driving one final spear through her head to ensure death. After doing so, they talked gleefully amongst themselves about how easy this raid had been and how proud Rogue would be when they showed him the gleaming scales and immaculate horns, claws, and teeth that they had removed from my mother and brother. They tossed all of them in a sack that at first seemed to be made of leather, but when I looked closer, was sewn from lefarnen skin and studded with fragments of bone and tooth. 
The one who I had bit slung the bag over its armored shoulder and crossed its arms, waiting for the others to finish up. That was the first time I had heard that name, the name of the man who was my entire kind’s mortal enemy. That was the first time I heard of Rogue. I instantly hated that man, for all he had done to me, but for now, he was like a dark cloud that promises rain and lightning, but you can do nothing about. I looked at the twisted, dead, lifeless bodies that had once been my mother and sister and wished that I could have been stronger, could have taken that sword and slain the humans. This fight was unfair. Even one of the human’s young, who appeared over the edge of the nest clutching a wooden sword seemed to think that.
 She pulled herself the rest of the way up and collapsed, exhausted, on the smoothed stone floor of the entrance room, its fingers settling into claw marks gouged there while my older siblings were just learning to fly and hadn’t quite mastered landing. After a moment, it stood up shakily and looked around the nest, seeming to recoil when it saw the blackened stretches of cave wall that my older siblings had burned when they first became able to breath fire and were having trouble controlling it. It ran further into the cave, shouting something, but seemed to calm down when it saw the others. It threw itself at a tall human, who pushed it down just before iit made contact. It hit the stone hard and made a little mewling sound as the taller human walked back over to the cages, sighing. The tall human pulled a small dagger from a sheath on it’s hip and dropped it next to the young one, then said something to it before helping it up. The small human knelt down to pick up the knife, and I caught a glimpse of the knife. It had a steel handle inset with small rubies and sapphires, and the blade was crafted from a lefarnen’s tooth and was intricately carved. 
The knife must have cost a fortune, due to the difficulty of obtaining a lefarnen’s tooth, yet the older human had treated it carelessly, perhaps having many like it at home. It certainly didn’t seem to mind when the younger human dropped it, aghast at the sight that lay before it. Unlike most of the humans, it seemed to almost be sad when it saw my mother’s and my brother’s corpses, and it made a keening sound before falling to the ground, barely missing the knife. The tall human shook its head in apparent disgust before taking me from the human who had been holding me and thrusting me back into my cage. I skidded backwards, hitting the far side of the cage hard, and the tall human padlocked the door shut, smirking. The young human’s entrance  had distracted the small unit of humans long enough for my father to surge against his cage. 
He was very, very strong, and his lock was rusty and weakened by years of sitting outside, exposed to the elements, so he broke free quickly and jumped off of the ledge separating our cave from open sky, where he would have the advantage over the wingless, flightless humans. The people watched this, as captivated as I had been by that sword, and their lack of attention caused a spear that the human who had held me offhandedly threw at me, its eyes turned away and tears leaking down its face-to wound or kill me?-to miss its target. Mostly. Instead of going straight through my heart, the heavy, chipped spear lightly grazed my side, clattering to the stone as the human fell to its knees, sobbing and clutching something tightly in its fist. The other humans jeered at the brown-haired one, calling it “soft” and “weak’.
 As I watched my father fly away, I thought that he would save me and my siblings, but he flew away, abandoning me and my sisters to die. He was unpursued, since the humans must have decided it would be too much work to chase him down, and I guess that they knew that he wasn’t coming back. As much as I wept for my mother and brother, I cheered for his escape until I realized that he was not coming back. Ever. I cried his name again and again, “Gold!” Gold!” then “Dad, please come back,” He turned his head to look at me, his dark-blue eyes cold and empty; their usual twinkle was gone. He then looked away and kept flying, eventually disappearing over the horizon. The small human looked at me pityingly, and I snarled loudly at it, and it backed away slowly, trying not to further provoke me. The guy who I had bit lifted my cage, opening the lock, then roughly flung me to the stony floor, which could have broken my leg if I hadn’t flapped my wings to slow my descent. Still, I landed pretty hard, knocking the air from my small lungs. 
The humans left me alone after this, instead working on securing straps around the cages containing my sisters while avoiding their snapping teeth, which, on my older siblings, were nearly fully grown and were razor-sharp. So that was why the humans had left me behind, whispering things that even then sounded bad and that I now know meant “as good as dead,” and “boss will never find out. When I inspected what I had at first thought was a shallow cut was in fact worse than I had thought. A long, deep gash, weeping silver-red blood, ran down my left side from my chest to my back leg.
 I curled up besides my mother, thinking that I was going to die during the night. I lay in that spot for days, waiting, wanting, to die, for it all to be over. Eventually, I came to my senses and decided to go looking for help, but by then the wound was infected and it was painful to walk and excruciating to flap my stiff, bloodsoaked wings. I tumbled down the cliff, slamming into sharp rocks and outcroppings and unable to control my fall. I dragged myself to my feet after hitting the ground, and when I tried to walk, I found that I had sprained or broken a leg in the fall. Dragging myself around proved difficult, due to the searing pain in my side and leg, but I was relentless.
 All I knew during those cold days, when grey clouds laden with rain blotted out the violet sun, and at night, the seven turquoise moons, is that I had to make it out alive. I had to avenge my family. A kindly and elderly fire lefarnen, who had likely seen his share of killings, probably even of his own family, found me wandering about far from the nest, and I was brought to the sickheal, the closest things lefarnen have to “hospitals”, to recover, which I did, but the serpent-shaped scar still remains to this day, an eternal reminder of the day I lost my family, the day I failed my mother and siblings.
Seven human years later:
Chapter 1
The other water lefarnen would whisper behind my back, whisper about “the hybrid”. When I walked past, they would hide their perilets and eggs. I knew I was different, with my strange colors. Most of my scales were a normal blue-green, but the rest of my colors, not so much. A few violet scales sprinkled my massive, mostly silver wings like purple phosphorus in a silver sea.  My underbelly and some small lines along my sides were a shining, iridescent black. All this is because my father was half sun lefarnen and my mother did not know her ancestry; her egg had been abandoned due to the strange blackened cracks on its surface, or so she had been told. She never believe a word of it. All of the strange parts had been passed on to me and my siblings, resulting in a clutch that looked like it was made up of many different species. The other water lefarnen had tolerated my mother and disliked my father, but me and my siblings they despised.  They believed that hybrid were untrustworthy and quick to anger, which may have been true of some, like me, but not of most of us. A few of them were watching me from the clifftops, thinking that they were hidden, and when I glanced upwards at them, they leaped into the air and made a hasty escape. I leapt into the sky, planning to give chase and give those little brats the fright of their lives, but they had already vanished, though holes in the cloud cover revealed the directions that they had scattered in. There would be no finding them now, as water lefarnen are experts at concealing themselves among clouds, and some have even learned to shift their scales slightly, reflecting the sky around them and rendering them near-invisible. They were likely long-gone by now, so I decided to leave them alone and practice hunting instead. Sniffing the crisp, cold mountain air, I caught a strong whiff of many different kinds of prey on the chilly wind. Though I had never been taught to hunt effectively, since my mother had died and my father left before I was old enough to learn, and I could not catch difficult prey like gliders, which are large, meaty butterflies shimmering in a rainbow of colors, trajen, tall, humanoid mammals with thick red skin, or rocksliders, scaly mammals very similar to armadillos, so I left those for the older, more experienced lefarnen. I could, however, still catch lighabeast, very stupid and slow creatures with dull yellow fur and copper-colored, vestigial wings, long withered and unusable, now used in mating rituals. I could never look at those wings,the color reminded me too much of my dead brother, who was really the color of an old penny left in a river for many years, but they still brought him to mind. I  was about to go find one when I smelled the stench of something else. This scent was of something dangerous, and tasty when flame-broiled with the proper spices. Humans. They were back. Probably to kill more defenseless lefarnen like my family, forcing pelirets to watch their family being killed before killing the perilets themselves, or to catch some to fight in an arena. I hoped that I would remain free my entire life, but common sense told me that this was not to be, since fewer than one in a thousand lefarnen are never captured, and even fewer than that are only captured once. I could tell from the foul scent that this was a small group of humans, maybe five or six at the most. There was no strange, mingled smell of half-wings, strange creatures that seem to be half lefarnen-half human, though in fact they are not, so they were probably men from Rogue’s army or trophy hunters come to see us and kill us for our smooth horns, scales, claws, and teeth, each far more valuable than ivory. Humans think of them as beautiful decorations to be removed from their original owner at whim, often against the lefarnen’s will. Searching the land below for these pests, I caught a brief glimpse of motion beneath the cliff edge I was standing on, and looking down, I saw a small group of humans hacking away at a clump of vines with machetes, cursing angrily and yelling at each other. They finally managed to break through the blockage, and they sat down on a fallen, moss-covered tree just on the other side, talking and laughing. Unfortunately for them, the moss that they had chosen to sit on was of a carnivorous species that when pressure is applied to it, secretes a powerful acid that can glue down smaller animals while melting them into the goo that the plant subsists on, and they soon jumped up, screaming. The bottoms of their pants had melted away in places, along with a small amount of the flesh, and unless they washed the acid off quickly, it would eat away at their flesh and bone until there was none left. Luckily for them, there was a waterfall nearby, but it wouldn’t be a good idea for the humans to rinse off there due to the water being boiling-hot and slightly acidic The only other water nearby was in a small spring, probably the only safe water source within ten miles, and even that was quite far away, too far for the humans to make it with a reasonable amount of flesh remaining. They finally stopped writhing long enough to hear the sound of the waterfall, and they rushed towards it, plunging through the undergrowth like drunk elephants. A small lefarnen emerged from the bushes just in front of them, and the humans recoiled in shock, though the lefarnen seemed friendly. It spoke to them in broken English, something about how cute they were and how they needed to find a safe water source soon or they would die. The little weirdo was ruining the fun of watching the humans stumble around like drunks, screaming, and I intended to give him a talking-to. Before I could, the young lefarnen picked up the humans and leaped into the air. The humans were surprisingly not screaming and fighting, but were instead gasping in awe at the view and thanking the lefarnen profusely. He carried them to the spring and set them down gently besides it, patting them each on the head. The humans immersed themselves in the cool water, sighing in relief and looking fairly content, or at least until I landed. I stared down the young lefarnen, who looked to be around eight years old, and snarled. “Why did you save them? Humans have done nothing but harm our kind, little one.” “Bu-but humans are so cute!” “They seem that way at first, but when you get older, you will find that they are not so cute at all.” “But look at their little faces and hands.” “Humans have caused me great pain, and they will hurt you too. Do not trust them.” “But-” “No buts. Humans are bad, and you should stay away from them. Most  humans are not as kindly towards lefarnen as that group was to you. In fact, most humans would try to capture or kill you.” “I’ve never encountered any truly awful ones though...” He smiled. “I’m sure that the humans who harmed you were just playing rough!” “Do you call this-” I turned, showing him my scar “-playing rough? Do you?” “Uhhh...no?” “Correct. Humans are monsters, not lefarnen.” “Y-yes. I will stay away from humans in the future.” “Good.” I flew away, leaving the humans and the young lefarnen behind.  The young lefarnen would likely not heed my warning, and would also probably keep the humans as pets, so I decided to go catch it some more.
I stepped through the portal, which looked like a massive crack in the otherwise wooden wall and seemed to look onto a void filled with red stars, though in reality the cabin wall faced trees and not a section of warped space and time. When I went back through the portal, I was not in the usual spot in the attic of an ancient, ruined cabin overgrown with shrubs and vines, but instead  I found myself on a sandy beach, just on the edge of the pounding cyan surf. A small grove of tall, thin tropical trees waved in the salty ocean breeze a short distance away, and when I did some exploring in a shady, cool grove of massive oaks draped with lacy moss located in the center of the island, I found an ancient-looking stone building, covered with vines and moss and missing parts of its wall, then another and another. All of the houses were arranged in a neat circle, with something that looked like it had once been a fountain with a statue of what had once been a toucan on top in the center. The fountain was now only filled with a shallow puddle of brackish rainwater in the base, the statue’s beak was missing, the place where it had broken smoothed by eons of pouring rain, and the details were worn away by time. The village had clearly been abandoned long before even my great-great grandfather’s time, when lefarnen were much smaller and weaker, the entrances only half my height. I am not even full-grown, so these lefarnen must have been far smaller than historians ever thought. While wandering through the most interesting house, a slightly larger one built partly into a hillside, I found a small room in the back with brown and red strips of bark covering the floor. A crude wooden table that must have been preserved all these years by the dry air of the room stood next to a small, slitted window that let in the little light that filtered through the thick jungle canopy far above. On top of the dry, splintery table sat a metal box, severely corroded but expertly crafted, with beautiful carvings of trees and birds still visible on the sides and a sturdy lock. Once sturdy, however. I easily opened the box, not breaking the lock, but carefully using the rusted key that had been on a hook that was embedded deeply in the stone brick wall. Then I lifted out a nunizish, or childish in the simple, uncomplicated language of “english” drawing of a small, short lefarnen, done on crumpled parchment that ripped in my claws, and labeled “Feilliz, my friind.” The drawing had been done in charcoal, so I put the drawing down on the table so I would not smear the wavy, imprecise lines. There were a few dusty scales in the box as well, smokey grey with bright sky-blue around the edges. I had never seen such scales before, but wishing to respect who I guessed had been a nuniz who had made this drawing and placed the scales in the box, now long dead.I left the box where it was, in the same spot on the stone table, after placing the drawing back in along with the scales. The flight back to Heath was quite long, and I guessed that the island was in the middle of the ocean, because I had to stop and ask passing sea serpents for directions fairly often. I suppose that you would like to hear more about the portal, so I will tell you. It, for one, cannot be closed, nor opened wider for that matter.  It also is quite quirky; if you take one wrong step while going through, you can end up floating in space, on a entirely different planet, or, on a completely different part of Horrn-and those are the most harmless things it can do. There are stories of lefarnen and humans being physically torn apart in the portal, as well as stories of creatures becoming lost in there, creatures being smashed as the portal struggles to close. It is more of a rip in space and time than a portal, a rip that wants to close. The only thing Blue did was force it open, then make a kind of invisible prop to keep it from collapsing. If he had been truly well-meaning, he would have created a portal of his own, not just torn one in the fabric of space and time, allowing any species to travel through instead of being as controllable as a entirely magical portal like he would have made if he had been a bit less careless with his power and was still at least partly sane when he made the portal. He is long dead now, and the portal will never be closed, or at least will remain open until a lefarnen powerful enough to close it comes along, but until then, Horrn and Earth will never be fully separate. As you, reader, can see, humans and lefarnen are rivals and always will be. Humans and humans are rivals- there isn’t any hope for that species.  
(Lefarnen are tall, graceful draconic creatures that do not hoard treasure, have massive wings, and hold honor and loyalty above everything else)
(Please tell me what you think, this is not all that I have written and if people like it, I'll add more.)
Category:Literature
Category:Original Stories
Category:Original Stories (Unfinished)
Category:Stories
Category:Fiction