Darkest Dawn: Chapter 1 (part 1 of 2)

	Ishana was still dozing, head in Sidric’s lap, when he pulled the cart to a stop by the walkway to her door.  He nudged her awake, gently, and gave her a moment to come to her senses.

	She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and looked up, smiling wide and content.  In the haze of failing light, shadows fell across Sidric’s face, obscuring all but his eyes.  A spark from a nearby lantern gave them a confident, almost possessive edge.  She felt as though he could take on the whole world, and win.

	He leaned forward and planted a delicate kiss on her lips, just enough to give her a taste but leave her wanting more.  She reached up and pulled him closer, locking their lips together.  Sidric flinched and Ishana drew back with a start.

	“What’s wrong?” she asked, the hurt obvious in her voice.

	“Oh, it’s just my-“

	“Your head!  From when we fell over!”  The thought of his need woke her completely and in an instant she was all energy and business.  She positioned herself on the backboard of the cart, behind Sidric.  “Here, let me take care of it.”

	“What are you going to do?”

	“Sssh, I need to concentrate.”  Ishana closed her eyes and placed her hands, gently this time, on the top of his head.  She may be a novice, but Altazar had started her off with simple, beneficial charms.  She had taken to healing, he said, like a dragon to the wing.  Gingerly, she edged her fingers around his bruise.  Taking a deep breath, she slowly exhaled, focusing her attention on the escaping wind.  As her mind followed the air flow into the aether, she could feel a sliver of it flow back into her.  The sliver drew into her as she took a second breath.  Holding it, she cleared her mind of everything else.  A word formed in her mind, a name.  As she drew the name closer to herself, her mind filled with a warm, inner light.  Ishana tried to form the word into a coherent image, but the tighter she grasped at it, the more easily it slipped through her fingers.  The light began to blink, fading in and out of focus.  She took a third breath and let it burn in the back of her throat.  Its power felt muted, somehow, but she held on to it all the same.  After a moment she caught the word again.

	She did not so much speak the word, as let it escape through her lips, “Ghyran.”

	Time seemed to slow as the warmth in her mind poured into her heart.  There, it bubbled and churned as if exited to be called upon.  Her body clenched tight in rebellion, but she forced her muscled to loosen and relax.  As she did so, the warmth flowed out through her hands and into her fingertips.  She could almost taste the magic on her tongue, but there was a tang to it she had never known before.

	Below her, she could feel Sidric relax into her lap as though fainting.

	Suddenly the warmth in her hands morphed from a soothing balm to an annoying itch.  Then it changed again, into a sort of burning pain.  She opened her eyes and saw that her fingertips were sparking with a bluish green.  The sight of it made her realize the pain was growing even more intense.

	Hastening to bite back her panic, Ishana began to chant a verse her master had taught her.  She repeated it again and again as a mantra.  The words were a piece of High Magic, the first Altazar had allowed her to study.  They began a spell of unweaving and dissipation, and although the knowledge to use the true form was far beyond her reach, the intent of the spell gave her enough focus to drive the Winds away from her safely.  She risked the breach of concentration to check on Sidric.  Thankfully, her spell had been weaker than she thought and the sparks merely fizzled out as they touched him without so much as singeing his hair.

	“Is something wrong?” he asked, more curious than alarmed.

	Her breathing was labored when she replied, “I- I’m sorry.  I wasn’t able to, to do it right.  I suppose I’m just nervous about tomorrow, or…”

	“Or I’m even better than I thought,” he said.  Though he was facing the other direction, she could just see his self satisfied grin.  “Thank you for the complement.”

	“No, it’s definitely about tomorrow,” she said, tugging his hair playfully.  He reached up and squeezed her hand.

	“I’ll see you before you go,” he told her.

	“You better.”

	They kissed once more before Sidric left her at the door, driving his cart off down the narrow cobbled street.  Once he had disappeared behind a bend, she opened the door and walked inside.

	Ishana found her brother at his desk, his head weighing heavily in his hands.  The candles were low and wax was pooling around them.  She crept closer on tiptoes, only to realize that he was deep in sleep.  Ishana leaned across him to blow out the flickering lights.  As they flared before extinguishing, she caught a brief glimpse of his face.  His lips were twisted into a grimace and his eyelids were squished shut as though he was in pain.

	She sighed, realizing for the first time just how deeply her leaving was going to affect him.  After the deaths of their parents, Kairon had raised his younger sister, alone.  By now, he was more of a father to her than anything else.  Over the years she had seen him spurn several offers of command duties or those as a bodyguard to a prince, all because he knew she still needed him.  He had struggled to keep from being too protective or overbearing, but that afternoon, when he let Sidric “walk” her home, must have been very painful for the charioteer.  The long lives of the elves led many of them to be fairly promiscuous and free with their physical acts, but Kairon’s strern gaze had always managed to keep potential suitors at bay.  Mostly.  That he had allowed Sidric such free access to her was proof that he was preparing to let her go.

	The Tower of Hoeth was going to be even lonelier than she had thought.

	She knew a spell or two that could help him relax through the night, but after the incident with Sidric outside, she felt it was too much of a risk.  She might do more harm than good.

	Ishana fetched her brother a warm, silken blanket and draped it over his broad shoulders.  She kissed him on the cheek before making her way up stairs.  When the door closed behind her and she was safe in her room, she let out an exhausted sigh.  As long as the day had been, she could feel it deep in her bones how long the next would be.

	Out in the streets the lamps were being lit, one by one.  The warmth of their orange glow mixed with the cold moonlight as it ghosted through her window and washed across her.  Ishana smiled sadly as she took in her room, perhaps for the last time.  Books, tucked away neatly on their shelves; the porcelain-headed doll Kairon had given her when she was just a child; a matched shield and sword hanging over her bed… What would happen to everything when she was gone?  Would Kairon leave everything the way it is, or put everything in storage to keep it from becoming a painful memory?  It would be decades, maybe even centuries before she returned…

	She untied her sash and let her robes fall across her slender shoulders and onto the floor.  They pooled at her feet, leaving her skin bare against the light.  The cool air chilled her skin and spread goosebumps up her legs, down her arms, across her back and spread over her chest.  Ishana quickly sprinted across the room and hoped into the nest of blankets on her bed.

	Ishana settled into the silks and let her body heat warm them for her.  Only her eyes popped out of the top of the blanket, gazing at the silvered shield bearing her family’s crest, a light blue spear piercing a starburst of the same color.  The image gave her the same sense of comfort it had for decades, and she felt a pang of melancholy at the thought of sleeping in a new bed from now on.

	With another sigh she closed her eyes and rolled over onto her side.  As she did, she noticed a strange itching sensation between her legs.  Mildly annoyed, she reached down to feel what the problem was.  As her fingers brushed against her inner thigh, they came across a dried, peeling film stuck to her leg.  A moment’s inspection revealed the same to be true of her other leg.  A moment more and she discovered it covering, no, coming out of..

	“Oh,” she mouthed.

	She realized what it was and giggled at her foolishness.  After doing -that- with Sidric, she had come straight home and gone to bed without bathing.  The memory prompted her fingers on, searching to see just how far everything spread.

	Pretty far, as it turned out.

	The thought of his heat pouring into her like that made her tingle.

	As she lay there, idly peeling at the dried cum, she debated whether or not to go clean herself up.  She could feel it, now that she was paying attention, almost all the way down to her knee on one side.  Sidric is certainly potent, she mused.  That, and the way they had been-

	She blushed at the memory.

	The way he had pulled her up so they were both back straight but still on their knees, pulling her closer to his bare chest and thrusting up, letting her bodyweight bring her back down…  She felt her fingers being drawn to the sides of her womanhood, almost without her ordering them too.  Ishana tried to remember exactly what he had done with his fingers.  The whole episode was a haze, but it had felt so good.

	She drew her fingers up and down on either side of her lips, trying to retrace Sidric’s movements.  Ishana spread the fingers of her right hand as wide as they would go, allowing them to take over both sides as she rubbed.  With her left, she drew her fingers up and over the side, sliding them back down under her bum cheek.  Her insides twitched as the fingers crossed under her and reached up in between her other fingers, fingers that where gaining in speed with each pass.  She felt a drop of moisture drip from her pelvis onto the sheets.

	There would be time to wash in the morning, she thought with but a sliver of her mind.

	Using the memory of how Sidric had teased her so mercilessly as a starting point, she skipped the foreplay and drove two fingers right between her lips and into her vagina.  She gasped as they entered her.  The speed at which she clenched down surprised her, and she struggled a moment to push them deeper inside.  For a moment, she held that position; her fingers plunged deep inside and her right hand still increasing in tempo as they slicked up and down the sides.  With her left hand, she could actually feel the waves of movement coming from those of the right.

	Ishana bit down on her lip as she crooked the two fingers inside her.  Carefully, slowly, gently, she pulled them back down and outside.  The fingers rippled over each delicate fold and drew out a slopping wet glob from inside of her.  She could feel it pooling at her butt, but didn’t care.

	Flicking them inward again, Ishana pulled the fingers of her right hand closer so that they were working on opposite sides of her clitoris alone.  Tired of waiting, she began to flick and pull with her left as quickly as she rubbed with the right.  The movement caused her to lurch forward and she gasped as the smooth silk of her linens brushed against her erect nipples.  She couldn’t recall them becoming so.  Ishana let her body fall forward so she was face down into the pillow.  Carefully to keep up the steady rhythm of her fingers, she pulled her legs close and thrust upwards with her rear.

	She was rocking unconsciously as her fingers rolled in and out of her, their crooked positioning causing them to dig deeply against her.  With each breath, she rocked forward, her breasts slid against the silks, the pleasure building in intensity that it became almost unbearable.  She thought of Sidric behind her, banging his pelvis against her ass as he crammed his throbbing erection deep inside of her over and over again.  She cried out in longing and thrust in with a third finger, desperate to reclaim the sensation of him inside her, and failing.

	Ishana began to whirl the fingers of her right hand around and over her clitoris, sparking the same jolts of pleasure that Sidric had only hours before.  The nerve was exposed and sensitive, only the dripping from between her lips being drawn out by her rapidly thrusting fingers keeping her desperate twirling from being painful.

	Her left hand grazed a bruise on her tummy and she became dimply aware of the dull pain.  Suddenly, she was back in the cart, Sidric pushing down and pinning her against the side rail.  Her head swam with the memory of falling and being held in place by his strong arms locking her against the wooden panels.  His loving then had been frantic, almost violent, and she longed for the feeling of him between her legs again.  She wanted him, badly.

	Ishana’s fingers worked faster than she would have thought possible.  The flicked and rubbed and slid and brushed her and there and everywhere, inside and out.  Her nipples tingled with a glorious pain as the nerves shot jolts of pleasure through her chest and down her spine with each slight movement they made against the silk.  They were so sensitive they felt like needles piercing into her heart.

	She imagined Sidric, with all his animalistic vigor, pressing her against the bed and whispering into her ear, “Ishana…”

	“SIDRIC!” She couldn’t help herself.  Her fingers were pressed as far into her as they could go and were wiggling like they were desperate unto death to escape.  She shrieked as she felt more fingers pinch down on her nerve, sending spasms down her legs and causing them to kick out against the footboard.  The spasms lashed across her body like a thunderstorm.  Her limbs jittered this way and that and her back arched and relaxed in excruciating waves of pleasure.  She thought she could taste the coppery tang of blood in her mouth, but couldn’t be sure.

	As the orgasm passed and she regained control of her body, she let it come to rest in the deep, warm and slightly moist nest she had created in the folds of blankets.  Her breathing eventually slowed and became regular.  By the time her panting came to a stop, she was feeling her consciousness slip away.

	She was shaken from her reverie by the sound of activity outside her window.  Reluctantly, Ishana half-opened an eyelid and was shocked to see a warm, orange glow pouring through her window.  Still exhausted and barely awake, she let a moan.  Somehow she had let time slip by and it was already morning.  She had let her desires control her actions and would be a tired, miserable wreck all day, the day she was to pass through the Eagle Gate and make her journey to Saphery.

	Begrudgingly, she groped for the side of the bed.  Then a thought stopped her; why hadn’t Kairon awoken her?  Ishana was usually excellent about rising before the sun, but her brother made an art form out of hit.  Usually the sounds and smells of a waiting breakfast drew her into wakefulness and down the stairs.  She tried to block out the racket coming from outside as she pulled on an under robe.  Kairon must have been worse off than he seemed.

	An angry shout from below drew her attention to the window.  Still groggy, she shuffled to have a look.  Somehow, she felt as though she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all.

	What she saw outside stifled a coming yawn and cut her breath short.

	Outside, Tren’ac was ablaze with fire.