Bound By Heart

By MidnightRose

Every curse bears a blessing

 

For every possession is bought through bondage

Bondage unto to giving soul and blood and all

 

Recently rescued from prison and torture by a young dragon-rider, Rider makes his way into the magic-guarded mountains– only he does not fear the magic of the forest, for he long ago became friend to magic, and now one of the filient, the magic spirits of the wild black and white dragons, is with him.

When his touch hatches a helpless creature bonded to a human child who is held in the most fearsome and evil palace known to the world, Rider must break his nature or make the fatal choice to give everything and vow his very life to somehow finding the human child to whom the young feather-dragon is bonded. Yet in so doing he most break a part of the very vow written in his heart– the vow which makes him magic's friend– And death is least of the things he may suffer . . .

 

The mystical journey of one who will defy even his maker, who would rather be unmade than cower,

coming to know that true kingships is to be the servant of all.

 

WARNING: This story features memory loss and self-harm, as well as other topics focusing on the emotional and the spiritual, which may be disturbing and/or triggering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MidnightRose
• Release date: Apr 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224188345

Book preview

Bound By Heart

by Midnight Rose

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination.

BOUND BY HEART

Copyright © 2023 Midnight Rose

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover art and design by Midnight Rose.

Interior art by Midnight Rose

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Published by Midnight Rose

TABLE OF CONTENTS

: Synopsis of Rider's life

: Lonely and purposeless

: Spirit of the mountains

: Vision of a King

: Trapped by snow

: The valley of sanctuary

: Freedom's price

: Magic's slave no more

: To the palace of danger

: Vowed by blood

: Epilogue

Synopsis Of Rider's Life

Over fifteen years ago, an infant was taken from the Palace of Gillindore by the brave and reckless feat of a boy hardly past ten, and his dragon.

The boy, named Dazzle, was killed or otherwise captured and cut off from the mind-speech of dragon to rider by some worse fate. In every other case known of, dragons and their riders died together. If one person from a pairing was left alive after losing their bonded they would die within no more than a week or two at the longest, yet Dazzle's dragon still lived fifteen years later, though she had not mind-spoken since the day she lost her rider.

The infant was taken to a primitive tribal village, called Croshvon, in the southern foothills of the eastern mountains, and was given into the care of a widow named Kalvadeen, who had a daughter of her own very close in age to the child.

Feared and hated by the people of Croshvon, for being a white-skinned outsider and possessing a mind-talent that made him feel the thoughts of others and made others feel his thoughts, the infant became a solitary and friendless young man who found relief and some small peace only when a alone.

At the age of thirteen he walked the ashes, breaking the ritual of naming and becoming nameless, and was never seen again to the people of Croshvon.

This young man became Rider, self named Dragon-Rider when he was later chosen by Callith, the Princess Champion of the wild black and white dragons, to be her helper in her quest to rescue her eggs and save her race.

The word rider in the language of the Skybollonians had turned out to be very similar in sound to the nickname Rider had received as a child in Croshvon, on account of his pale skin.

He first spoke to Callith, mind to mind in a very brief and distant exchange, the spring after he left his village and traveled alone to the eastern mountains. Neither of them knew then how they would meet again. Their exchange was cut short when he was captured and taken to Skybollon, the city of dragons, the city in which Dazzle's brothers lived, to be trained for the purpose for which he had been so called rescued from the cruel Golden kingdom, from the very palace of Gillindore.

After several months, a dragon from the very city of Skybollon, the same dragon who had been influential in Rider's capture, Heshayla by name, became sorry for what she had done and helped him escape to the strip of wilderness to the south of the rainbow empire, west of Skybollon, where he barely managed to survive.

There he was befriended by a group of leggar, fierce wild beasts alike to a large cat or wolf with shaggy nearly black coats, and two wild children who appeared to have been raised by the beasts. The children were a boy and a girl who appeared to be twins. Rider came to know the girl as Taish and the boy as Ish, because those were the syllables they most often called each other in their half-made language

In the deep of winter, driven by hunger the children and the leggar took to raiding from the fringes of the empire, against Rider's pleading for fear they should be captured and meet a worse fate than starvation.

They were soon captured along with Rider, and turned in to Arvithan's arena in the rainbow empire, where Rider almost died, fighting his captors and handlers yet refusing to fight his fellow prisoners even in self defense, and from which Rider was rescued by Callith, that he might help her rescue her eggs whom she believed to be stolen by mages of the empire, for he was the only of his race to whom her mind went out, the only creature whom she could speak with mind to mind.

With no other choice, since Rider was near death and had nothing with which to take care of himself, Callith took him back to Skybollon to recover. There the healer Dance, twin brother to Dazzle, did what he could to help, healing Rider's wounds and seeing to it that he was given the tools and clothing he needed to take care of himself. There also, through a mystical experience involving Rider's relationship with magic, he gained a diamond wound in his left hand which was still marked with a deep scar in his palm.

After leaving Skybollon, Rider and Callith spent several weeks mostly in the wilderness, while he recovered from the state of near starvation he had been in when she had rescued him. During that time they found out that her eggs were kept in the empire's capital.

Through a reckless plan which involved Rider getting himself captured so that he would hopefully be able to use his talents to gather more information from inside the palace, he and Callith not only retrieved all the wild dragon eggs, not just Callith's, but freed the captured magic of her race, the flilient, magical beings who naturally lived in harmony with the wild dragons, attaching to individuals at hatching, or before, and becoming their magic.

Without the flilient the wild dragons had become a dwindling race, for many individuals were sickly and even dying without their magic. They lacked even the power to protect their eggs from being stolen for the experiments of cruel human mages.

It was through the blessing and magic of the flilient that Rider and Callith survived their reckless endeavor and were both healed from severe wounds.

When Callith had first rescued Rider, she had promised him that if they survived rescuing her young she would help him rescue the leggar and children whom he had been captured with. Before leading her race away into the magical east where they hoped to never again suffer from the atrocities of humans, Callith kept true to her promise. With help from the magic of the flilient, they were able to free not only the leggar and the children, but all the prisoners, most of whom to all Rider's knowledge now lived in the southern wilderness. Yet Rider knew he might never truly know what became of them overtime. Life was harsh in those rugged lands, the winters bitter cold and the summers hot and dry. He knew not whether the harshness of life would drive them to seek better lands, or perhaps to again raid from the fringes of the empire.

Rider for his part wandered alone, seeking anywhere where he could live undisturbed. After the rest of the flilient had left with the wild dragons, Rider became aware of Murr, a flilient who had chosen to be his companion and friend until his death, though he was human and her kind only bonded themselves to the wild dragons they had lived in harmony with since their creation. Once, in the dead of night, when the coals from his fire had nearly ceased to glow, Murr showed herself to Rider as a whips of white on the palm of his hand, like a faint flame save that she cast no light not even on his palm.

It was also in this time that he was given something of a vision, a prophesy of his life spoken into his soul. The words were still engraved in his mind.

Far from the east and far from the west

Far from all you have sought and longed for

There shall I speak to you the promise true

When you have surrendered search

Burdened and wearied beyond your power and will

When to the hands of despair you have given your last fading strength

When you wield not even the power to kneel and seek

On bended knees to plead

Then shall I give to you what you have sought and never known

What you desire beyond all this world ever will grant to you

Comfort's touch I promise you

That I shall teach you of my love

And guide you to another death

The experience was a strange memory to Rider, for who other than his maker could speak such words into his soul, yet a part of him could never believe that any creature was created. The very concept seemed to violate the freewill he would believe in against all odds, even should he be forced to accept creation.

During this time period in which Rider lived alone he once helped a child who had gotten lost and hurt herself, carrying her part way back to her home until he could give her to her brother. Apart from that one happening, he had no contact with humans until the dragons of Skybollon again captured him.

The elders of Skyollon were enraged that he had not made contact with them since he and Callith had left them, believing that they had a right to his service and to an alliance with the wild dragons.

When Rider refused to tell them anything, Dawn, the elder brother of Dazzle and Dance, went so far as to torture him for unflinchingly refusing to give any information about the wild dragons or what had happened with his and Callith's quest.

Dawn's still alive younger brother, the healer Dance, was so enraged by this that he disobeyed his older brother apart from his knowledge and took Rider away on his own dragon, Florinarth. Dance would have healed Rider if he would have let him, but Rider refused to be healed.

Dance and Florinarth had offered to take Rider wherever he chose, not wanting him to be captured again, though in truth the dragons of Skybollon were very enraged by him being tortured, believing that torture was cruel, and a horrible atrocity if done to a