Work Text:
Podfic Details
- Length: 40:57
- File type: MP3 (48.7 MB)
Streaming & Hosting
Credits
- Author: litra
- Reader: tragedykery, with litrapod as Luke Skywalker
- Formatting: Azdaema
- Music: What Remains, Evening Prayer, and Trailer Music (Understated) by Maarten Schellekens
Cody came to the old keep at the end of the world late in the evening. The clouds were low and the wind tossed rain in off the sea, cold and biting, so different from the warmth he had grown up with. The once formidable structure had crumbled. Bricks as long as his arm had fallen by the wayside, worn down by time and the elements. The outer wall had been overtaken by the short coastal trees. The gates stood open, rusted in place, the wood half rotten where it wasn’t caked in layers of salt or moss. When the largest of the buildings came into view, Cody saw the roof had caved in, one wall consumed by vines revealing a dark hollow interior full of damp flotsam.
Only a single tower and the quaint structure at its base was still in good repair, giving Cody a small hope that the former castle or monastery or fortress was still occupied. There were lights in the top of the tower, not enough to call it a proper lighthouse, but enough that Cody had been able to follow the sign through the rain and fog. Smoke rose from the chimney of the small house as well. Maybe there was a chance for a hot meal and a warm bed. It would not be the end of his quest, but just for a night, perhaps he could rest.
Before Cody could cross the space the door was opened by a man with red hair, backlit by the warm interior. He wore a long brown robe. Was he some kind of monk or acolyte? One way or the other, that robe did more to keep the damp out than all of Cody’s armor combined. The man had a bucket of something that he tipped out onto the storm-tossed rocks.
Cody staggered a step closer. He was a stranger. Would the man turn him away? Would he have to endure another night of damp solitude? How many days had it been since he’d seen another person? Since he’d had a proper conversation? Since he’d felt like a human rather than a title and a set of orders.
“Ah, Hello there?” The man had stopped, squinting through the dark and mist. Cody hefted his pack a little higher on his shoulders, and stepped into the light from the still open door. He could feel the warmth from steps away. Gods above and below, he wanted to feel just a fraction of that warmth.
Cody licked his lips, cracked and caked with salt and grit, speaking as clearly as he was able and hoping the man would be able to understand his language. “Good evening. Is this, would it be appropriate to ask for sanctuary? Or perhaps just the kindness of a stranger towards a wandering knight?” Even now, he wasn't all that good at the formalities of his rank.
The man straightened. “Bring no hostile intentions and I would welcome a guest for the evening.”
Cody sagged in relief.
The man was named Obi-Wan. He brought Cody inside, offering tea and fussing over where his guest could sit - there was only one chair but it was well cushioned - and stirring up the fire. He muttered to himself in a strange accent, occasionally slipping into a completely different language before remembering himself. Each time he would glance at Cody and apologize, to which Cody could only nod.
It felt like he hadn’t had a chance to sit and take off his boots in years. Cody groaned when he let his pack slide to the floor just inside the doorway. One by one the various pieces of his armor fell away. It wasn't a full set, not anymore, after leagues of travel and who knew how many weeks and months. Stiff leathers had to be peeled off his skin. He took care with his sword, checking that no water had seeped into the sheath before carefully propping it by his pack. He sat. Cody drank the tea that Obi-Wan pressed into his hands.
Obi-Wan’s home was small and warm. There was a bed stuffed with sweet smelling heather in one corner. Braids of garlic hung from the walls. Books sat on tables or tucked between jars of preserves and small trinkets on the various shelves.
Obi-Wan fussed around in a set of cupboards and came out with an old cast iron pot. He banked the fire with the pot comfortably in the middle of the coals, tossing in a lump of butter, chopped carrots and potatoes and bits of salted meat. A few cloves of garlic were added to the pot with green things Cody didn’t know the name of but smelled lovely. Eventually Obi-Wan was satisfied. He covered the pot, settling back on his heels and once more looking at Cody.
“I’m sorry. If I’d known I would be having company I would have started supper earlier,” Obi-wan tried to apologize.
“No, I’m the one imposing. Thank you.”
Obi-Wan sat on the hearth, closer to the fire than Cody would have dared, even as cold as he was. “If you don’t mind me asking… You said you were a knight?”
Cody leaned back in the chair. “I am. I am willing to tell my story but I warn you it’s not a short one.”
“All the better on a night like this.” Obi-Wan leaned forward and refilled Cody’s tea.
Well, he did seem genuinely interested, and it was the least Cody could offer in return for the hospitality. Cody settled in and thought back.
<><><>
Some ways from here - I can not say how far or even which direction, for I lost myself more than once along the way - there is a city on the sea. It is, or was, a beautiful city. Long beaches, buildings of white stone, orchards of olives and oranges, vineyards of grapes that hung from the vine, bright as gemstones in the sun. Alderaan, ruled wisely by the line of Skywalker for longer than record and living memory. It is said that the blood of dragons was in the royal line.
I was born a son of Kamino, the islands three days’ sail from Alderaan. Destined to be a fisherman until the day I spotted sails and smoke marring the sunrise.
Pirates had attacked the royal flagship. They left it low in the water, slowly sinking into the depths with the sails spread across the waves like a waterlogged gull. The keel was broken, the mast splintered and there were all kinds of sharks and other things circling in the water. I got as close as I could, called out. Only one person I fished from the water was still breathing.
The young prince, Luke, was no more than twelve, but fate or fortune or the dragon’s blood in his line kept him alive. It took him two weeks to fully recover. Then we had to cross the sea.
Alderaan knighted me for the trouble, though to this day I am still baffled by it. By that time I was rather attached to the young prince, so I chose to stay.
Now being the prince’s knight was all well and good, but Luke was too young to rule, and with the king, queen and twin sister all lost to the waves, it was decided a regent was needed. Now you must understand, I was not raised or trained for the court. I do not know the strings that were pulled or the favors traded. The man eventually chosen was older, and while wise in the law, he was no leader of men, as easily pulled this way or that as a boat with full sail.
Perhaps it is just the way of things that ill favor seemed to dog the steps of the prince from that day forward. So it went for five years, with narrow escapes that the prince would laugh off, and strange coincidences that baffled the odds. Even so, the prince grew into a fine young man. He was kind and quick and at times seemed to see or sense far more than the others around him, including myself.
He was like a little brother to me, and I am proud to say it.
Even so, he was a young man, and young men are prone to foolish actions.
Someone, I know not who, put it into his head that all that luck was because his family were not at rest. That their spirits would dog his steps and curse him all his days unless he could prove himself worthy of his family legacy.
Any fool could see he was worthy and would be a fine king, but young men all have a need to prove themselves.
Luke spent a long and storm-filled winter hunting through every record he could find. In the end he found a spell, a ritual in a language long forgotten, and only half translatable.
Berh nsyuye izru
Mye berh mare ny vyathtqa wei
Ca’erynwe ngalonuxamo li medhoswesi
Mye fenwerui nureqa wei xa dhaniri
Af tyoru yar-hyasyftequmfau nurewaqa sigu
Xo adhu izru ntolon
Mye iylu nuruwe if kuarhiqa vou
<><><>
Obi-Wan straightened. Cody paused, using the time to swallow a bit more tea. Obi-Wan looked at him, then at his pack and sword by the door, then down at his hands. His mouth opened, then closed. Obi-Wan shook his head.
”I’m sorry. Please continue.”
Cody turned the teacup around in his hands. He didn’t want to bore the other man but the food was still simmering and Obi-Wan had asked…
<><><>
It may be strange that I remember the words after all this time, but Luke repeated them so often that I heard them in my dreams. I don’t think I will ever be able to forget them.
I couldn't make heads or tails of the lines, but Luke struggled through and put together a few of the words. It was spring, the first truly nice day, when he pressed a paper into my hands. The lines were scribbled and crossed out, but he had something.
berh nsyuye izru
with (my? have???) words (mouth?)
thesethis
mye berh mare ny vyathtqa wei
(also <- check context) sky as witness (mine? me?)
ca’erynwe ngalonuxamo li medhoswesi
I (swallow/devour/eat???) dragon heart that I ???
mye fenwerui nureqa wei xa dhaniri
(also?) I bind (context! it? them?) soul (!!!) me (relation?) you
af tyoru yar-hyasyftequmfau nurewaqa sigu
? always ( ??? no idea ???) souls (something about possession or ownership?)
xo adhu izru ntolon
move (?) this (?)
mye iylu nuruwe if kuarhiqa vou
and rest calm (final? result?)
Now, no one has seen a dragon in generations. Even Luke’s bloodline, as well documented as any royal line can be, is argued to be hearsay and metaphors. At court, the philosophers would have twisted everything around until it meant seven different things and we were all dead of old age.
But I was born to the sea, and those of us who have traveled where there is no land in sight know that there are still wild things in the depths.
Luke asked me to take him out that far. Then he bargained for it. Then he ordered. He would have the heart of one of those great sea serpents. He would see his family properly at rest, and his people prosperous once more. He thought he was doing the right thing.
In the end I am a knight and he, my prince.
We took a small ship, just he and I and three others we both trusted. For a week we followed the whales until even those great creatures shied away. The sea was deep and dark and the sun was blazing overhead when we caught the tuna. It took hours of careful battle and the fish was longer than a man stands tall. It would have fed a family for a month or more, but out there on the sea we gutted it and spread the blood in the water, hoping to draw in something bigger.
Luke knew it was coming, in that way he had. He stood by the mast with a boat hook in one hand and his face turned into the wind. He had a calm smile on his face when he said to be ready.
I can’t rightly say what the creature looked like. I only saw bits of it at a time. There were eyes big as my hand, and still seeming small in the thing’s massive skull. There were teeth, long and jagged, made for ripping like a shark. There were wide fins that filled the water like black sails. Flashes of white as it turned to circle us.
I had the wheel. Luke stood in the bow until the creature breached. It was a long stone’s throw from us and the wave alone nearly rolled the ship. Then I was screaming at the hands and I didn’t see —
I didn’t see Luke go in.
<><><>
Cody closed his eyes, pressing his hands and the warmth of the mug to his forehead. In a way he had been living in that moment for the weeks and months since then. If he had-
But he hadn’t.
Obi-Wan put a hand on his knee. “Take a minute. I know how hard these things can be.” With the soft words he rose, bustling around his home until he had their food ready. He handed Cody a bowl of lentils and meat, thick in their own sauce.
Cody ate the food, grateful for the warmth and the new collection of spices on his tongue. Each bite brought him back to the present, putting the past in perspective and reminding him that he was alive.
With a mostly empty bowl, he met Obi-Wan’s eyes. He nodded. Cody settled back, looking unseeing at the ceiling. Obi-Wan put a hand on his arm. He took a slow breath.
<><><>
It was the kind of fight that even the old salt dogs would call a tall tale.
If the monster was smart it would have swamped us, then dove back to the depths and left us to slowly drown. Instead it snapped at the sky, sending up waves and getting tangled in our lines.
Then Luke was in the water and I was ready to jump in after him, I was that frantic. Then we started to move and I was knocked off my feet. The beast was pulling us across the water. We weren’t even going with the wind. Waxer managed to cut the sails before we were overturned.
That’s when I saw Luke. He’d lodged the boat hook into the creature’s gills, standing on the side of its head like he was riding a skimmer. He wasn’t controlling it, no one could do that, but he was fighting back.
It went on like that for hours, with every minute as tight as the last. My men and I had to constantly swerve to avoid being caught in the monster’s wake or being smashed by its tail, and I kept my eyes on that distant bright figure.
My guess is that the light confused it, because when the sun set, it seemed to gain some cruel cunning.
By that time we were in unfamiliar waters. There were islands in sight. Reefs and shoals were dragged past us. There were other sails but none close enough to signal.
There was a crag. The kind of deep stone that killed ships and churned the water around it without mercy. It tried to smash us, cut the lines, something. But Luke —
Luke did something again. I swear for a moment I saw a second creature, green and gold and bright as a flash. Then it was the monster tangled in the rocks, not us.
Luke was hurt. His arms and legs were a bloody mess and he’d been straining in the sun all afternoon without rest or even a drop of water. Skin blistered and rope sore and ready to fall apart. He still had us drag the serpent far enough from the rock to cut into it safely.
I should have told him not to. I should have stopped him from that fool’s quest at the start.
Its heart was as big as a man stands tall and black as sin, dark with blood. There in the dawn light Luke took a piece and said those words and ate.
By mid morning he was ready to collapse. I told myself it was just the strain. The men and I were able to get the ship to land and figure out where we were. Patch what needed patching. Rig up new sailcloth.
Luke didn’t recover.
By the second day he was tossing in his bunk, muttering strange things about his sister, about me, about people we knew. Sometimes it looked like his eyes glowed, other times I swear he was an inch from death.
We made it back to Alderaan on the fourth day. The healers looked at the prince and said there was nothing they could do.
It didn’t take long before the court was talking about a next king, like Luke was dead. And I, as the prince’s loyal knight, was the last obstacle.
The court set me a quest. To find some magical healer for the prince, or to find a dragon and slay it to properly complete the ritual. I did so only on the condition that my brothers would be responsible for his care and protection until I returned. The court agreed, no doubt thinking the prince would die long before I returned.
<><><>
”Maybe they’re right. Maybe Luke is already dead and I am on a fool’s errand. No healer I’ve found would even believe my story, and dragons are as much a fiction now as when Luke found that tome.” Cody closed his eyes, shaking his head. It was all he had, little as it was.
Obi-Wan sat beside the hearth, the fire lighting up half his face, making his eyes glow and his features shift with shadows.
”Luke’s ancestor, Do you know their name?” His voice was low, sounding almost like the wind from outside.
Cody paused in thought, turning over his memories. “The dragon… Akin- no, Anakin. That might be it.” He lifted a shoulder, then let it fall. What did the past matter now, here at the end of the world.
”Anakin Skywalker, so that’s why… All this time…”
Cody watched Obi-wan. There was something there in the cottage with them, something that Cody couldn’t identify. It felt like the wings of a bird and the eyes of a wolf. It felt like he was something small.
”If I told you that I knew where to find a dragon, what would you do?”
Cody went still. “For my prince I would be bound to slay them.” His voice was barely loud enough to hear but he knew his duty, he knew that if his life ended at the claws of such a beast it would not be his biggest regret.
”And if I told you there was a way to heal your prince? A way without death or ruin?”
Cody licked his lips. He had been pushing forward for so long with nothing but duty, that hope seemed almost like a dream.
”Then my life would be yours in every way I can offer.”
Obi-Wan shook his head. Maybe it was the fire but Cody thought he saw pink in his cheeks. Then he stood, and that something else stood with him. A second layer fit over the world. A mirage, a creature, silver-bright with mantled wings. The fire kept up from rubies in the coals. The books and trinkets on the shelves revealed themselves as lost treasures. And Obi-Wan was the center of it. A true dragon, not some distant monster out shadow like the thing from the depths.
Cody was crying. Tears rolling down his face. It was beautiful and terrible, and for all the important moments in his life, this one was the first to declare itself so openly.
“Choose,” the dragon said.
In theory, Cody could have gone for his sword, but that wasn’t a real option. Instead he closed his hands in his lap. “You can save him?” Cody’s voice was a rasp. It had been so long since he had more than hope. If he fell to his knees and begged, would the dragon scorn him? Turn him away? He did his best to steady his voice. He stood, then dropped to one knee as he had only ever done to one other. “Please. Everything I have. Everything I am.”
Obi-Wan stepped forward and he was just Obi-Wan again, just a man in a dull robe with firelight in his hair.
Cody staggered, well aware of what he had just escaped. He leaned against the wall as Obi-Wan bustled about, packing a bag.
Stepping outside again should have brought him to his senses. The cold made him blink and the hair on his arms stood upright. Then Obi-Wan raised a hand and the fog parted, the sea calmed and the moon hung clear in the sky like a pearl. So maybe his senses truly had abandoned him.
“Best to close your eyes for this part,” Obi-Wan said.
Cody obeyed. He felt Obi-Wan’s arms around him, then he felt a rush of wind. His eyes opened for a moment and he saw trees falling away below him. Cody closed his eyes again and focused on keeping his food down.
Finding their way back to the capital took four days. Four days in which Cody could never quite believe what he was experiencing. Obi-wan charmed the innkeepers when they asked for directions, and quietly made tea in the mornings. He took a simple joy in watching the clouds. At any moment, Obi-Wan could have turned around and killed him, but it never seemed to occur to the man. Four days flying through the air in another man’s arms, to cross all the leagues he had traveled for months on end.
They stepped onto the road outside the city at dusk. The city had changed, and it hadn't, and Cody wasn't of a mind to sort through which details were which. Cody found a guard, who called another guard until they were delivered into the hands of Cody’s former second - Appo.
Appo led them through the back halls of the castle, to a courtyard that had once been used for storage and the occasional teenage foolery. Now the single room off the yard had been swept clean. There was a bed, a chair, a table. There were a few decorations, the soft kind that might be found in a child’s room. Things the occupant couldn't use to hurt themselves.
“He’s the same,” Appo said. “He sleeps most of the time. He seems to like watching the clouds. When he speaks it’s… hard. He’ll say things that unnerve the men.” Appo shook his head, falling as silent as Cody.
Obi-Wan put a hand on Appo’s shoulder, speaking to both of them. “I’ll do what I can for him.”
Obi-Wan went into the courtyard, sending all others away. Appo did not seem pleased but Cody held him back. He told his story to those brothers who were awake. Then told it again in the morning. At noon a messenger came, and escorted Cody to the grand hall where the court had been assembled in all its finery.
For three days the court argued over his head.
The prince was all but dead. Cody was not meant to return. What law could be twisted to fit such a circumstance?
Then a cry went up from outside. A page ran in, pale and stammering. All assembled made their way outside and looked up to find a dragon curling over the roofs and gables of the palace.
It wasn’t Obi-Wan. Cody was likely the only person present who knew how small the dragon truly was. How the scales and frills, shimmering green and gold and black, were ill-fitted, like the too big paws of a puppy.
Obi-Wan found him at the edge of the crowd, slipping his hand into Cody’s.
“Thank you my friend. Berh nsyuye izru mye berh mare ny vyathtqa wei, ca’erynwe ngalonuxamo li medhoswesi, mye fenwerui nureqa wei xa dhaniri, af tyoru yar-hyasyftequmfau nurewaqa sigu, xo adhu izru ntolon, mye iylu nuruwe if kuarhiqa vou.”
Cody blinked, turning to the other man. “What?” Cody should be thanking him. He didn’t understand.
Obi-wan smiled. “You have sworn to serve my family. You offered your life and health traveling farther than anyone should be asked to. You found me in my self-imposed exile, laid down your arms and offered me a home and family. I know you did not intend to propose, but you spoke those words when I was lost. I now choose to accept them.” Obi-Wan leaned in.
Cody didn’t try to stop it when Obi-Wan kissed him. It made his breath catch and his heart flutter. Then the dragon - Luke, gods that was Luke and he would have to get Obi-Wan to tell him how - shifted trying to stand up, and his tail knocked over a good section of the north tower.
Cody winced.
Obi-Wan hummed. “Ahh yes, he will likely need some time to get used to things. Do you think a show of force would convince the court to accept me as some kind of advisor, or will being your husband be enough?”
Cody pulled Obi-Wan close, laughing as he pressed his face into Obi-Wan’s shoulder.