Kodara Parvitau

Kodara Parvitau

Many Years Ago
Sitting on his mother’s knee, young, fair haired Marric plays with the little whip of a tail peeping out from beneath her chair. He clutches at the limb with chubby fingers tipped with short, black claws and lets out a squeal of delight as it flips back and forth in his grip.

Well above his head, Ilyena sighs softly, balancing a piece of parchment across a rickety table with her right hand, while her left arm curls around her son, the hand clutching a short bone stylus.

Grumbling softly, Ilyena scores yet another line through the neat script on the parchment and begins again afresh:

Grunting, angrily, Ilyena crumples the parchment, adding it to the growing pile of aborted attempts at her feet. Heaving her son a little higher into her arms, she leaves the table, crossing to the window of her small home to look out over Skyborne.

“Well, boy,” she murmurs darkly, “if I can’t get you out of it, I guess I’d better make sure you’re strong enough to deal with it.” Placing the boy among a pile of carefully whittled toys – most in the shapes of dragons – Ilyena returns to her desk and once more picks up the stylus. At the top of a fresh piece of parchment she writes:

Several Years Later
Marric leaps high into the air, his leg spinning outwards in a devastating kick. Foot cocked back, toes raised high, he drives his heel back with stunning force. Beneath him, arms raised to block, Kodara stumbles under the incredible power of the strike and falls back on his rump with an audible, teeth jarring, thump.

“Again,” he orders, with barely a pause, dropping lightly into a ready stance, even as his young, eight year old son wipes a line of bloodied drool from the side of his mouth.
“Can’t we rest, Papa, I’m so tired!”

Marric shakes his head, his hard features refusing to bend into even a hint of something sympathetic. “Dragons are a hard master, boy, and if you want to survive their service, you’ll need to be strong.”

Kodara whimpers and pushes up to his feet with a groan. Twisting slightly to the left and right, he works several uncomfortable kinks out of his back, wrapping his tail back into place around his waist and under his belt. “Papa, I don’t want to serve the dragon! It sounds boring! Can’t I be a singer or a dancer like Camile?”
“Your sister is younger than you and free of the curse of servitude. You, dear boy, unfair as it may seem, were born first. You are the one who must go on to serve in The Great Game.”

Scuffing his feet in the dirt, Kodara scowls. “Doesn’t sound much like a game to me; Granna died!”

“But she had some grand adventures before doing so and earned some fabulous wealth. She was a wonderful woman.”

Screwing up his face, as only a child can, Kodara adamantly shakes his head. “You told me, Granna Ilyena was a stupid, stealing, short-sighted, lightweight, who barely knew up from down unless it was marked with gems!”

“Did I now?” Finally, Marric grins. “Well everyone gets angry every now and then. But you be certain; I love my mother despite the silly things she might have done in her youth. After all, she was wise enough to hand me over to the monks.” He flexes his powerful arms, showing off the muscles across his biceps, hard and corded. “Now look at me!”

Kodara cocks an eyebrow. “You’d never be able to dance Sharra-Sharra like that.”

The smile vanishes from Marric’s lips. It may well have never been there at all. “Again, Kodara. And remember to block.”

The young lad is barely in time to raise his hands, dodging lightly to the side as a punch nearly knocks his teeth clean from his mouth.

Another Nine Years Later
“What’s the matter with you, Lad?! If you dodge and dance about like that, some big brute with a sword will just come along and take your head off.” Master Theo finally drops his quarterstaff into an upright position, leaning on the thick staff with his legs slightly crossed. “Certainly we never taught you to prance like that at this monastery. Talk to me, Kodara.”

Seventeen year old Kodara Partivau folds his hands lightly into his sides, bowing slightly from the waist with his head angled upwards to meet his master’s eyes. “You haven’t hit me yet, though, have you Master? Nor can you… Camile taught me.”

Theo’s left eyebrow twitches ever so slightly; it is a gesture that would mark as much leaping up and down screaming in one with less control than he. “That singing, prancing strumpet down in Skyborn Auditorium? You’d do better than taking lessons from her, Kodara. She’s a dancer. Not a fighter. You can’t move like her.”

“Oh no?” Balling his hands into tight, little fists, mindless of the way his talons cut into his palms, Kodara drops into a ready stance. “I’ll show you! I’ll show everyone! And Papa while I’m at it. If I have to serve this stupid dragon, I’m going to do it my way. I won’t use a staff or a sword… I’ll use my hands and I’ll use my body! I’ll dance circles around my enemy until they’re dizzy and they’ll never see me strike! I’ll be an utterly weapon less Dōseiai Sōryo!”

“Stop this nonsense and-!”

“Master Theo! Master Theo!” Another young lad runs onto the practise grounds. He is sweaty and breathless, clearly having run all the way up the three hundred steps to reach this place. He bows as soon as he is within range. “Forgive me for interrupting,” he breathes, “but I have a message for Kodara; it arrived only five minutes ago.” He holds out a slip of parchment. “For you.”

Kodara takes the parchment, sparing only a heartbeat to make a note of the seal on the back; it is a butterfly. His sister’s mark. Flicking open the smooth white pages, he casts his eyes down the hastily scrawled message and feels the bottom drop out of his stomach all at once. “Papa is dead,” he murmurs hoarsely, “I am summoned.”

Master Theo and the young messenger both spread their legs to twist their bodies into graceful poses. Hands pressed together, heads bowed low, they call once, twice, three times; the mourning call for the dead. Kodara throws his head back and howls, one long agonised note of grief. He falls to his knees with tears in his eyes, barely even noticing that his gripping fingers have cracked the wax seal of the butterfly into tiny red fragments.

“Kodara, I’m so sorry,” Theo merely waits, keeping his distance so as not to intrude on his young pupil’s grief.

The second boy has no such worry, throwing himself to the ground and hurling his arms around Kodara’s neck. He plants a kiss on the other lad’s forehead, and then two more on his face, one over each tear filled eye. “You’ll make us proud, Kodara, I know it. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you Rudd,” Kodora kisses his friend back, beyond the point of worrying that he is in the open and easily seen. He doesn’t care any more; it has been long enough anyway, hiding and sneaking. And now, before he can do anything about it, not only must he leave the monastery and his young lover, but he must travel home to arrange for the burial of his father. And serve the dragon of course.

Rudd, embarrassed, rises quickly to his feet, brushing tears of sympathy of his own face before darting out of sight, risking only half a frightened glance at Master Theo as he goes. Kodora, for his own part, stands shakily and, with effort, looks his master straight in the eyes. “I have to go,” he says simply, “and I’m sorry….” For what, he doesn’t say, though the look in Theo’s eyes suggests that he understands.

“Kodara,” he say softly, “you have never asked what Dōseiai Sōryo actually means.”

Pushing aside his fallen quarterstaff, Kodara reaches under to grab his shirt as he considers the point. “No, I suppose not. I had always thought it was the old term for our Way… the Open Palm?”

Master Theo shakes his head slightly, turning aside to walk slowly towards the canopied halls some way beyond. “That is not what it means Theo. When you think you want to know… come back here to visit us. I’m sure Rudd will be able to tell you.”

Confused by such a cryptic answer, and yet forever wary of the time, Kodara bows once more before tucking his letter into his waist band. With long strides, he leaves the practise courtyard, his lope turning into a full on sprint as he dashes down the three hundred steps which lead to the outer grounds of the monastery.

Kodara Parvitau wants nothing more than to be normal. As if impossibly rough skin, with a faint purple hue isn’t bad enough, he has purple eyes and a tail too. And tiny claws, though he keeps these ruthlessly trimmed down to fingernail length. But, all that is nothing he can change. In truth, he cannot fix the mistakes of his grandmother either, but that fateful day in the cave between one Ilyena Parvitau and a clutch of dragon eggs, has lead to Kodara training hard every day from sun up to sun down, to ensure that he does not make the same mistakes. While Ilyena swore herself away to the service of Arynquintabahr little did she realise that such a vow and contract would extend far beyond her own years. Now, her grandson must follow.

When Kodara hit five years old, Marric, Ilyena’s son, knowing that it was for the best, arranged for his son to live with the Dōseiai Sōryo. Learning the ways of Tenohira had traditionally, always been hard, but the picturesque surroundings of the Deep Fell Forest went some way to soothe the unwilling Kodara Parvitau. He learned how his body, if treated well, could become the most valuable and powerful weapon in his possession. The learned that the taint of the dragon blood, far back in his line, made him stronger than most, quicker than most, and of a fiery temper he often had to work hard to keep in check.

And yet, it was when he travelled home to visit his father and sister that he learned the most. Marric, though he was rarely home, often left word with Camile, his daughter, and so Kodara was always well aware of what the dragon asked of his father and what would soon be expected of him. But, rather than worrying, he spent far more time enjoying Camile’s company, watching her dance and, perhaps, most bizarrely, incorporating her dance moves into his fighting technique, deciding that staffs and swords were in conflict with the teachings of Tenohira, which, translated into common means ‘open palm.’

At seventeen years old, Kodara travels back into Skyborn at the news that his elderly father has been killed in a fight which took up great chunks of Skyborn. He has no idea what has happened to his sister, or even if the rumours of his father’s death are true, but he moves as quickly as he can back to the city of his birth to find out what he can and take steps from there.

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