Writing on the Wall

SPOILERS

Off that wretched boat and onto this wretched island. In the midde of the sea. Alone, with ten thousand prison mates. A kaegar, probably the only one in the world; a winged dwarf. In a cell of my own making. I'll sit here forever wondering where I went wrong, and write it on the stone walls I built. The story that if told publicly would mean the deaths of millions. But here it can rot, known only to those who rot here after me.

My father could fly, but he flew underground and met my mother. Deep in the Uun, far from his home in the sky, he found love and stayed until he could no more hide from the roia. He left before my birth. I was born with wings, grey wings.

My mother tried to raise me as a dwarf, with the other Uungar, but I did not fit in. I longed to stretch my wings and fly. What good are wings if you can't use them? And it was not allowed.

I vowed to one day leave the depths of the world and soar through the skies where I belonged. I would search the kaeav to find my father.

And find him, I did. Sooner than expected. I left early on my (coming of age birthday), without telling anyone but my mother, not that anyone else cared. I was an outcast, and so I gave them what they wanted, me out. I took an escape route.

The climb to the surface, it took only an hour, I was excited to be free. As the tunnel expanded and fresh air met my lungs for the first time since I was a child, I stretched my wings freely for the first time, and ran flapping. As I had never used my wings, they could not hold me. But I found strength as I breached into the Avel and gazed upon the kaeav in the distance floating above the world that was above my old world.

My only clue to find my father was that island in the sky; the one closest to my home. Or more, closer to where I had existed. That island in the sky is where I belonged. And so I began to fly!

The wind struggled the hold me, as a gar, even a kaeagar, I was heavy and stout. I did not fly long before tiring from exerting muscles I had not used.

I met no one as I walked across empty fields for three days. I rested my wings, using them very little to preserve my strength for the flight from the avel to the kaeav.

As I reached below, there was a small town: a few shops selling food, clothing, and tools. One merchant called to me, a fateful meeting. He questioned my walking and was in awe to learn I was a winged gar rather than a fat kaarln child. I told him I was looking for my father that might be above, he knew nothing but gave me a meal that he claimed would give me the strength to make the vertical flight.

Higher and higher I flew, with a strength greater than my own. But it was not enough. I was nearly there, less than an elic, I flapped for my very life. If I didn't make it I would surely fall to my death.

A horn blew above me, from the lowest of the docks. I looked up to see two kaearln guards soaring down to me. They called out to offer aide.

The older of them faltered in his flight and then swooped down upon me with the full force of gravity. Colliding with me, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into the air with his well worked white wings.

"I've got you, Son," He said to me. Those words I will never forget. By the time we reached the lowest docks I knew I had found my father.

He called to his partner: "My Son has come! I will carry him, call for a feast!"

As he set me on the dock he embraced me, his son he had never known. And I did not know him. Should I trust that my journey to find my long lost father to be over so soon?

He asked if my mother still laughed that certain way that I'd always known her to. That was how I knew. He told me he stayed close by in hopes I would one day venture forth in search of him as I had now done.

I was mostly my mother in appearance, but I found my own eyes in my father's face, the same bright green that frightened the other uungar. But his were magnificent, not something that would give rise to fear.

That night was the greatest feast I had been to, and the gar are known for good food among the uun. I was given foods that I had never seen, let alone tasted.

My father and his fellow guards told me of their lives watching the avel below and of some of the more interesting airships and crews to dock on the underside of the kaeav. Stories that don't matter here. Perhaps on another wall, later.

But that is merely my beginning, and only that which mattered, the reason I'm here, in this pit, came later, others that I found in that city above the world. That's the story that if told outside these walls would earn a bounty, and it was my job to carry out the removal of those that learned the secrets of the Pen.