9. Past Pain

They awoke the next morning to the sun streaming through the trees. The hum of small insects and the chirp of birds filled the clearing as Pandrea sat up. She turned to the sounds of splashing to see Sigardus at the edge of the water, cleaning himself without getting too deep in the water. The experience yesterday seems to have made him much wearier of the water.

Sigardus had taken his shirt off and was using sand to scrub his hands clean. He may not have been the most attractive man she had ever witnessed, but his body was encased in muscle and scars. The scars ran along his back and shoulders in long worm-like lines. What would cause those scars?

She readjusted herself, and the blue Shift flew out from under her head. This caused her to let out an undignified sound that made Sigardus look up and noticed her. He suddenly grabbed his shirt and jerked it on to cover himself up.

Pandrea got up off the ground and dusted off. She let out a yawn accompanied with an exaggerated stretch towards the sky. Kira had formed into the golden shape of a slight faceless girl and sat atop Sigardus's Shoulder. Noting this, the blue Shift similarly became a faceless woman and placed herself on Pandrea's shoulder. The only difference was the crossing of the legs and the more elegant posture.

The mimicry made Kira stand on Sigardus's shoulder, hands placed on glowing hips. The slight blue woman merely raised her gentle glowing limbs to the side, shrugging her shoulders in a human gesture of misunderstanding.

The action seemed to convey she didn't understand what Kira was getting so upset about. This only further infuriated Kira, causing a small golden thunder-head to appear above her. The little cloud started sending out tiny yellow flickers imitating lightning. Then, as fast as the storm began, it and Kira flickered and became a small ball of light that zipped into Sigardus's pocket.

"Oh, don't be like that!" Pandrea tried to scold, but Sigardus came over and put a hand on her arm and looked into her eyes. Those eyes told her to wait before she said more. Those eyes also gave her butterflies in her stomach.

"You should remember what it was like when you first bonded; you barely had a mind. This one is the same, and over time she will become more like you, with her own thoughts and actions," He said to Kira.

"What do you mean by, barely had a mind?" Pandrea asked as he came up and started to kick sand onto the fire. He would have had to wake up periodically in the night to have kept the fire going.

"Shifts are the souls that have crossed over from the material to the physical plane, which you prefer to call this existence. When they cross over, they lose their material forms that restrained them to the physical plane. In doing so, that forfeit all memories and experiences they have gained in that form. All that's left is their personalities, and even those become lost over time. Records had collected info on some Shifts over five-thousand years old, and those represent just the collected records."

"How do you communicate with them? I'm sorry for all the questions. There is just so much I don't know about these Shifts, and I think it is vital to learn how to control them. I almost died because I couldn't change," Pandrea asked him as he started walking, but she ran up and caught his arm.

He turned back to her, and his green eyes made her breath catch. Stupid girl, she needed to get her head on straight and focus. No, what she needed to do is try to figure out how to find her father, which would have to start with some trust. "How much do you know about Wolfvens?"

"Not that much," Sigardus said, eyeing her suspiciously.

As much as she would like to trust him, it felt like there was something he was holding back. There was also the matter of all those scars.

"I want to trust you, but I feel like there is something you're not telling me," she said, eyeing a scar that crawled up his neck that his shirt wasn't able to hide.

That made him pull his arm free, and he pulled his shirt up to cover the mark with very little success. A pained look crossed over his face, but he turned back to her and took a deep breath.

"I'm not really from Drawlgon. That is, I don't know where I was born. Kira was the first Shift to bond with me. My form was also a dragon, so I just assumed I had to be from some part of Drawlgon," he told her, sitting down cross-legged on the sand of the small beach.

"Who raised you then? If you don't know where you're from, maybe, we can go to see if they will aid you. We might be able to find out who your parents were and possibly where you are really from. I, however, don't see why you didn't tell me this right away?" she asked, looking up at him.

She tended to let herself get distracted when she started getting involved with an idea. Though, when she looked into his eyes, there was a darkness that pooled up inside behind them. Sigardus lowered his head as he began speaking.

"We wouldn't be able to find them anymore. That is, the people that 'raised' me," he emphasized the last words.

"I was captured from somewhere, stolen from my parents. Then I was sold to a wealthy Gra'Nixhas family, taken on as a slave. Gra'Nixhas aren't fully human; they have a demonic heritage that causes them to have demonic features. They also have sadistic personalities and enjoy torturing what they call, inferior beings," Sigardus said as he gave an involuntary shiver.

"This includes anything that isn't Gra'Nixhas. They would haul the children slaves out at specific times so their demonic offspring could learn to use a whip properly. I lived as a slave with them for fourteen years. Fourteen years of being a plaything for the sadistic children of my masochistic owners.

"I was 17 when they started assassinating us. It was part of the children's final test before they got to go off and become Overseers at the slave kennels. We didn't take notice at first when one of us had gotten sick and died mysteriously. It didn't even strike us as odd when another child disappeared one night."

"Then, I woke up one morning in our small hut with cloth cots lining both sides, pressed tight together. As I rolled over, Rien, another slave I had shared a silent bond with, lay staring back at me. His eyes were glazed over, and there was blood on his shoulder."

"I later found out that one of the children snuck in that night. He had covered Rien's mouth and slid a dagger down between his neck and shoulder, causing him to drown in his blood. The killings increased from that point."

"Within one week, we had gone from twenty-three of us in that bunk, down six. At this point, we had started fighting back. You can only watch everyone around die for so long until something cracks."

"We started taking shifts watching, so the others could sleep safely. Finally, we caught one of the children, Dresma. She tried sneaking up on me, but we had seen through her plan, and the others jumped her from behind. We beat her into the ground dead, kicking and stomping her until she was unrecognizable."

"Then, when they came to get us, I claimed I had acted alone. My owners chained me to a post in the courtyard and let his son whip me every day until I was barely breathing. They barely fed me but allowed me small amounts of water often. This was after I had tried drowning myself when they had left a large amount of water in a bowl."

"After two weeks went by as a frenzied pain blur, I was unchained. According to my owner's, in the rite of Jym'Thucera-Deatcha (Test of the Controller), the children must kill all the slaves without dying themselves. This ensured the children would not bring shame or dishonor to the family name. These children had to be strong and smart, and you could almost respect the ideals they followed if they weren't masochistic lunatics."

"To them, you couldn't lead if you were so easily killed by these pathetic creatures. How did one ever hope of surviving the slaves in the kennels? My owners put me in a room for two days. They had someone come twice a day to feed me and put some kind of ointment on my whip lashes."

"When I got back to the hut we had all stayed in, I couldn't see anyone in it, except Grismard. He held a dripping sword, and it was covered in blood. At his feet were five unmoving bodies, with blood pooling around them. Something happened at that moment."

"A voice called to me in my mind. It said that it was time to let the pain go and breathe in. Then I started to glow, and then the glow vanished. Only to reappear as a light spinning around me. I could hear Grismard curse and scream as he ran towards me, blood-stained swords clenched in both hands."

"As he raced towards me, I pulled in my final breath and felt a warmth that flowed into me. It warmed every corner of my being, and the light expanded around me as Grismard swung his sword towards me. His steel blade met golden ethereal scaled claw, as my body was wrapped in the image of a glorious golden dragon."

"Grismard stumbled back, but I was faster now. I leaped forward, sinking my teeth into the son's shoulder, and screamed out in pain. Somehow he was able to throw me off of him and bellowed for his guards. The sound drew all the guards into the room, but no rival could come close to besting this majestic form. I slaughtered them all, every last one of them. Still, in the end, I couldn't find Grismard."

There was a long silence, and no words would come to her lips to express the pain she felt for this man. He had seemed older at first, but now she knew this was a look of age forced upon him. The story had caused a horrible twisting feeling in her stomach that almost made Pandrea nauseous.

How was he able to smile and joke? How was this man not a whimpering mess curled in some forgotten corner?

"That was over a year ago, and I've been trying to figure out how to live since then. Kira heals most of my physical wounds, though the scars will never leave. She was the one that truly saved me." The little golden Shyft zipped around him in delight.

"Even since that day, she has been guiding me to small friendly villages or houses. The people always seemed more than willing to share food and stories and a barn or stable to sleep in. They only ask I help them with small tasks around the villages and farms."

"Kira says, helping its part of living. If so, that's what I want to do. Nothing in my life has given me the feeling of happiness the way hearing a person say thank you does. I'm not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me. I just want you to be able to trust me."

As Sigardus lifted his head, Pandrea threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and whispered: "I'm sorry."

He was quite surprised and had thrown his hand up in what seemed to be confusion. Pandrea looked up to see a startled expression on his face, and then she realized something.

Tears started to pool in her eyes and then began running down her face to soak into his shirt. He had probably never been hugged before.