Though my father was dead before my birth, my youth did not want for fatherly attention, the custom of the line marriage sees to that. My parents were members the Chief's line marriage, and so my father's co-husbands taught me what little I needed to learn.
Amongst the members of my moot there are many no'a'g'ral, those of other species who you would say have "gone savage" but who I would say have learned to hear the voice of Griahk'kan, she whose voice you will not hear. There are not so many amongst us as the Stoneclaw have, but I think more join us than any other moot besides. Few t'skrang share our ways for long, I fear most cannot endure such altitude. Amongst us there lived one Elkezar Spiritwind, my grandfather had taken him as a newot, many years before I was born, and those who returned from the raid against the Bloodlore that took my grandfather's life, told that with his last breath, he had bequested the t'skrang his freedom.
Elkezar was unusual for one of the scaly folk. Not just in mind, but in body as well was he different. Elkezar was born different from them most; sails beneath his arms with which he could catch the mountain wind and soar. While most T'skrang finding themselves former newots rapidly retreat from the heart of the world, he lingered with us, as a clanmate.
He was the first, but not the only t'skrang to stay in the company of my clan. The woman who would claim him had been taken some years after him, she was not such a one as could soar upon the mountain winds, but for love of him, she stayed. In time they were honored by the wives of my parent's marriage, and asked to join the family. Soon after, Elkezar's wife produced a single egg, and soon after that she was killed in a raid against our moothome by the Ironmonger moot.
I remember watching him fly as a child; he would soar upon the mountain breezes looking fragile as a feather. Trained a nethermancer as a child, and a swordmaster as an adult, Elkezar had mastered the arts of the sky raider easily. I remember asking him once, why he'd stayed, when so many of his kind leave. He told me only that "the wind smells better here".
So you want to know what happened to the egg, don't you. The egg hatched, as they often do, and Elkezar nursed the young child, as is the way of t'skrang. She had already come of age - and by that I mean gender - by the time I was born. Neela Spiritwind Firewalker.
She was always there as I grew. When I was three she invited me into her home and showed me what her father had taught her of the dark arts. I screamed, ran, and didn't sleep for a week. When I was five our heights were equal, and I showed her what it meant to wrestle like a bear.
After that I found that I suddenly had little time to spend watching she and her father soar on the updrafts from valley's far below. As a child I had a natural affinity for picking up shiny bits of rock, or sometimes tiny flakes of living crystal. I hoarded them beneath my cot. Sometimes I would use them to sharpen one another. Sometimes I would build from them a lattice as delicate as any house of cards.
I apprenticed to my grandfather's sister. Ulig Stoneshaper Firewalker, greatest crystal smith in the Twilight Peaks - direct descendant of Nemar Firewalker. I spent the rest of my youth on the slopes of Mt. An'grak; learning from the master. I took easily to the ways of the ker'agot'atol, crystal smith as you would say. I learned first how to find the finest crystals in the peaks. Then I learned to shape the living crystal of the earth. I learned to struggle with the crystal as we do with all things, to prove my honor worthy of its mighty blessing.
I remember once - I was 8, or maybe 9 - as we combed the sleeping slope searching for ago'chad, we met a woman dressed all in gray. It seemed as though she had stepped from behind a slight swirl of volcanic ash as it danced in the air. There had been no warning of her approach, yet Ulig seemed unsurprised. She only motioned for me to continue extracting the deposit we had been working upon.
She stepped away with the woman in gray, and I heard their voices talking for some time, though I could not distinguish their words. I finished my work upon the ago'chad, and turned to watch. I cannot even now say what race the woman in gray was, or even how tall. At last it seemed their conversation over, and I allowed my eyes to follow gray woman's passage. As she walked away, up the slope, she paused and turned, for the merest moment her gray eyes met mine. I blinked away a bit of ash, and then she was gone. I asked Ulig what they had spoken about, but she just smiled.
When I was 9, Neela joined the crew of the Galesaber, and I saw my friend even less than when I started my first apprenticeship.
When I reached the age of 11, I became ro'ona, and it was Ulig herself who suggested my rite of passage. Though I would not besmirch the katorr of my master, I now think the gray woman may have had something to do with it. I was taken by the Galesaber to the edge of Bloodlore lands. In dark of night we landed at the far end of the valley. The senior members of the Swordcutter clan were busy raiding the Ironmongers.
Alone I set out on my private raid. It is a common right of passage for the ro'ona alone to raid a rival clan and steel an emblem of its chief. Mine was little different, but the little was of great importance.
I crept across the valley floor, silent as a very-lout mouse. My hand gripped tightly about the haft of the iron axe I had brought with me, for I had not the honor to carry crystal during this rite. I approached a cave, and found only one tired looking troll guarding the entrance, with a savage cry I was upon him, my first blow took a his eye before the slouch could even defend himself; my second took his life.
I entered the cave, the home of the Bloodlore master ker'ago'atol, Kolad Crystalshaper Swordcutter. Full of youthful confidence, I strode past vats of slimy concoctions that smelled of sulfur, sewage, blood, and death. Spread neatly across the work tables were the pre-assembled pieces of a variety of blood charms, and the half shaped bits of several weapons. There, near the forge, I saw what I had come for, the goal of my rite.
He had gathered the finest crystals imaginable. In my excitement I dropped my axe to the ground, and reached for the fine materials. The sound of my axe clattering to the floor awoke a pair of guards. In my confidence I had not seen sleepers, sitting in the opposite corner of the chamber. One drew his sword of crystal, and the other pulled forth a stone axe. I plucked a beautiful piece of ice stone from the pile with one hand, and with the other I scattered the rest before the onrushing guards. The guard with the axe was tripped by the crystal. The still lunging guard scored a hit down my right leg with the tip of his blade. How he missed my ankle tendon I do not know to this day, and still the scar throbs some when the weather grows close to changing. I plunged the sharp side of my prize down against his wrist, and his hand fell, twitching to the ground. To the guard's honor, he did not scream.
I fled before the other guard could regain his feet.
Weak from loss of blood, I somehow stumbled back to the Galesaber, clutching my bloody prize. Neela waited there for me. Though we had seen each other little in the last years, or perhaps because of it, as I drew near the resting drakkar she looked at me with a strange light shining in her eyes. I remember thinking how our ages were no longer so distant, from an overall species perspective at any rate. Without speaking a word to me, she bound my wounds, and forced a restorative draught down my throat. After that, I slept.
I returned to Ulig with the fine crystal, and offered it to her. She took it up, and examined it closely; for a long time she was silent and then she handed it back to me. At first I thought I had failed asnd brought dishonor to myself and my clan, the look of anguish on my face told her how I felt better than any words. She rested a hand upon my shoulder, and looked me in the eye, "No, ro'ona, you did not fail, but it is not for me to shape this, that will be your task alone."
A g'tarr, especially a second one, is always a time of happiness for the whole of the family, but one showed up who none expected. The lady in gray presented herself at my second naming, just as I was about to announce what my name of adulthood was to be. The crowd parted for the apparition, and she walked forward, confidence in her stride.
She whispered in my ear, a single word, and then she turned and walked back the way she had come. And so it was that I became K'rtog Bleakwind Firewalker.
With my new name, came a new beginning. I began my training as a ker'ago'atol again, but now Ulig guided me less and watched me work more. I worked first on small things for the clan, daggers and bucklers.
Neela earned her place in the clan as a daring sword mistress; she served aboard the Galesaber and in time became its helmsman. She used her natural advantages to compensate for any lack of "proper" sky raider training. My first great work was in honor of her new position. All used all my craft, every secret Ulig had taught to me, and I fashioned a saber of fire stone. Guiding Gale it was named and I presented it to Neela, for though she had earned the honor to bear crystal, she yet had none. I knew that she had learned sword mastery as well as nethermancy from the aging Elkezar, and trusted her to wield the weapon as it deserved.
She was overjoyed.
It was five years before I cut into the ice stone from my rite of passage, but there was not a day that I did not spend at least an hour gazing into its depths. Hours spent admiring the smooth interplay of colors I found there - an azure blue like the sky, violet like a delicate mountain flower, and a verdant green like the trees and grasses of a quiet river valley.
The time came that I could no longer be considered, strictly speaking, an apprentice, and so took a position upon the Galesaber, the captain had not been able to court an elementalist for his crew, and so was glad to have a smith of my skills on board. It fell to me not only to fight with the crew in combat, but to hone their weapons before battle and mend them after.
Neela and I grew closer. We became the best of friends. We became lovers. Many evenings were spent dallying in her cabin and her home. From Neela I learned of the ways of the river people and their tongue, as she had learned them from her father. More she taught me than I did her; I taught her the ways of crystal, but she taught me the ways of the nether world. I had progressed a long way from the small boy who had run in fear of a pocket guardian.
As I lay next to Neela, I studied her as she slept. I let my eyes trace their way along the shape of her body, from tip of tail, to toe, and then to head. My eyes at last settled upon her crest taking in the colors of it, the subtle interplay of azure, violet, and verdant green that seemed almost to glow in the dim light of her cabin.
It was then that I knew what to do make from the stone, the ago'frod I took from the Swordcutter. I stood, without any other thought in the world, and I went to the ship's workroom, small as it was. I unwrapped the crystal from the soft hides in which I'd kept it. I held it up to the light, and let my eyes again trace the familiar interplay of colors within the stone's heart. I'd been blind; I knew this stone, it was my oldest friend save Neela. Yes, they were the same. The colors identical, and within the stone I saw her crest, her beauty. That very minute I began work upon it.
I shaped the living stone, a lover's caress releasing the shape within. It took me nearly a year to perfect the shape, and hone it sharper than any razors edge. As I had not done since Guiding Gale, I again used all the secret lores of my craft, massaging them into the stone's cold heart. I spent my nights with my love, and my days shaping my tribute to her. I finished it, shaped in the image of my true loves frill, Icecrest - the axe that I bear to this day.
I was barely 16, when we were courted to join the line marriage to which the captain of the Galesaber belonged. We had already learned, through shattered hopes and broken hearts, that there was no way for Neela to bear a child of my flesh, but there was another t'skrang, one even with her gift for sailing the air in the line marriage, and so we joined the marriage; though are lives belonged only to each other.
Within a month Neela was with egg. She was elated. I was ecstatic. Both children hatched bearing the gliding sails of mother and father.
Though the children were not of my flesh, an unfortunate twist caused by the bitterest wind of fate, we two grew even closer. We'd never been happier, and couldn't imagine ever being so.
The children were two when it happened. Just past nursing, we left the children in the care of my mother and Neela's father. Nemar's Fire had just come into port, and the clan chief needed volunteers for a raid. They'd run afoul of a Thera'in vessel, laden with living crystal from the north. The Galesaber was the most able and the most willing.
We left the docks together, and caught a strong wind. Three days the wind bore us, tireless wolves racing to catch their prey. We came in high, the sun at our backs. The cargo ship was guarded by a pair of vedettes. The trio of stone ships was far slower and less maneuverable than we; all we feared were their fire cannons. Nemar's Fire was ready for that; their elementalist - the greatest of our moot - slicked the decks of the vedettes with ice. We'd closed before their firing crews could reach the weapons.
Neela kissed me and leapt clear of the railing, gliding down to the vedette, wind in her sails, as my fellow raiders cleared the distance with the talents of their training. I waited until the distance was less, and at last I leapt into the gap, landing with force upon the deck of the vedette.
A single movement and Icecrest removed the head of a Thera'in thief. Neela's taunts and jibes carried over ht din of battle, as she made short work of the crew on the foredeck. I turned my attention towards her words, and battled my way to the front of the ship. The fighting was intense. The rush was unbelievable.
We laid waste to the Thera'in mud. Yet, not all can leave a battle alive; as I struggled to reach him, the father of Neela's children was felled by a blow from a pale-skinned elf. The pale-skinned elf was felled by a blow from Icecrest.
At last I reached the foredeck, the bodies of our enemy were piled high. Neela and a handful of our clanmates had the captain of the vedette on his knees. The captain was a t'skrang.
Not one to lightly kill one of her own race, Neela did the unthinkable; she offered the captain the choice of dying at the tip of Guiding Gale or surrendering and joining Clan Firewalker as a newot.
With a great show of trepidation the captain surrendered, seeming cowed by the impending defeat of his crew.
Neela saw me then in the corner of her eye. She turned to raise her blade in salute; to salute our victory that day. I saw the blur of motion from the captain; saw the look of distaste upon his reptilian countenance. I cried out, but it was too late, the bastard ran his blade through my love. Its tip emerged from her chest, dripping black venom upon the deck.
My vision swam with red as her heart's blood seeped into the deck. I charged, blinded by rage.
My enemy parried my first blow, and my second. I remember the look of mild surprise on his face as my third blow drove him back.
Every step of the way that bastard parried me; but each deflected blow forced him back further and further. He was against the edge of the ship with no where to go but down.
I swung Icecrest at the bastard's head, he attempt some trick of acrobatics, trying to leap over my head so he could push me off I have little doubt. But he misjudged my swing, and though I missed his head, I took off the captain's tail; it fell writhing to the deck, and the captain, now having a radically different center of balance, fell into space.
I searched the ground for nearly a month, but I never found his body.
Despite our losses, and they were many, we'd won the day. The other vedette had been forced down, and the cargo of crystal was again in deserving hands.
We limped our way back to the moothome.
Neela left me the saber I had made her, though she must have known I could make another. For a time I stayed, grieving over the loss. Elkezar though old, and nearly as grief stricken as I was, completed my training in some of the nethermantic arts Neela had not had the time to. For a while I tried to resume my old life, but I could already feel that my place was no longer here, at least not now.
I hugged the children, and left them again with my mother and Elkezar, they would do a better job of raising them then I ever could.
I left the crew of the Galesaber. I left the Swiftwind moothome.
I shall seek my fortune in the world of the lowlanders, until either death restores me to Neela's arms, or I have had my fill of vengeance on the bastard that took her from me, and all those like him.