#draconelegacy

New Dr. Heathcliff Dracone portrait, a gift for my birthday... all the art on this wall is made by Adam and is an homage to Heathcliff's sea adventures in the time I was off Tumblr.

Oil on Linen by Adam Schmidt at misteradam.com or AZSART on bsky

The Forgotten Reminder

The lights blurred around him, mixed with her laughter as they were thrown out of the loudest dance club Heathcliff and Lillandyr had ever been in. It was an accidental early day-drunk that led to one lounge after another, velvet and silks shifting with the liquid silver gurgle of expensive wines and music, a constant background to their weekday interlude.

He carried his own head in the jar up the stone tower steps, feet heavier as he ascended. The dream was real, logic shelved for pure compulsion. There were details fueling the delusion, imagined sensations confirming a new reality, a new purpose. Another step, another. He could hear the leather scrape on the stone, the head slosh weighty in the jar bouncing off the sides. 

The jar spoke what he was thinking: “Yeah, your head is really fucking heavy. Thick skull…”

Heathcliff ignored it, his breathing increasing as he passed over dozens and dozens of winding degrees up to his destination. Cobwebs tried to stop him, remnants so old they hung dead and useless from spider populations long abandoned to time. 

It had been hundreds of years since he saw his father’s tomb. The room at the top was sealed when his body was discovered, the nesting crows in his chest cavity never allowed anyone near. His mother Eve, now a flock of angry crows kept all the mourning, all the horrors to herself. Hers. The children were never supposed to see the remnants of their love. It was obscene, a failure too degrading for their proud name. How he died wasn’t important. Heathcliff never saw him leave that tower for his entire life, a family secret hidden by careful excuses and proxies.

Why was he headed there now?

Nothing mattered but that thread pulling him to the top. To the door that stuck closed, kicked open to pieces with a sharp flick of his boot. 

Sunlight caught suspended dust in the air, a diamond curtain cutting through the darkness of the round stone room to pinpoint the bed that still remained. Luxurious silk bedding rotted to separation, leaving ornate skeletons of designs clinging in drooped threads. The light highlighted smooth skin, pale and stark against the molded fabric. The body was naked, muscular, toned, with scars Heathcliff recognized. Dead but moving, a chest that rose and fell with breath but without a head to give it to. He touched his own living corpse, seeing it from angles never before perceived. 

The head spoke: “Put me down. Put me there.” Heathcliff didn’t move. Didn’t obey. A foreign surge of love for himself swelled in his chest, a feeling that tingled through him, so acute he couldn’t breathe. He wouldn’t, couldn’t be parted with it. Mine, he thought. 

“Coward!” The head hissed. Heathcliff couldn’t look at it sneering in the jar cradled in his hands. His gaze stared at the headless body, that body that took the place where his father’s was. A single crow flew in from the window, eyes that held the pitiless nature of one that knew everything he was feeling. 

“Wake up.” The crow demanded angrily, his mother’s voice.

Heathcliff suddenly cried out, lifting his head from his lab desk. A dream. A note stuck to his cheek from accidentally napping on the surface, his curly hair damp from the nightmare. It was his own handwriting, a reminder made in some drug-infused moment of inspiration:

“Remember who you are.” He scowled with disgust and crumpled it up violently, throwing it across the room. Fuck that.

This is a backstory between Heathcliff and a stable boy of the house Dracone, over a hundred years ago. Part of the writing is done by the talented Rook. You may find his new tumblr here: http://rooktangram.tumblr.com/. This story is not for the faint of heart. 

(( Heathcliff's writing: ))

The stable forge cast shadow-devils on the wall, while ancient stones set the stage for their dance. Dark and deep lay the boy in sleep, curled on a thick, braided horse blanket made of wool. Rumbling, hissing, the coals hid the sound of the approaching fiend who melded into the darkness. Eyes reflected the red light, narrowed on the boy with intent to kill. Skilled footsteps brought him closer, fixed on the silver ring of keys clipped to the boy's belt. The silent monster tilted his head and pulled down his mask, a scarred, pocked sneer wet with sadism gloating in preparation for his torture, his kill. Perhaps he would take his time with this one, have a little fun before he finished his employer's task. The boy lay like a pup with his back before the hearth, his body gently rising with dreams of adventures he'd never have. The rogue released his grip on his dagger. No… he would use his bare hands for this.

Dreams faded into a nightmare as the boy felt a hand over his throat, a greasy threat in his ear. 

"Easy boy, be a good whelp and I'll only spear you with my cock."

Watching from the shadows, Heathcliff waited for his moment to intervene. Between flashes of orange light in the forge, a blinding pain ripped through the fiend as a hand gripped his hair from behind, sending him toppling backwards against an unknown force. Heathcliff's hand held mercy like a bear trap, twisting the rogue against his chest as a dagger poked hard into his kidneys. 

"Move and I'll remove your guts so you can see them before you die." growled Heathcliff into his ear. 

The rogue wasn't easily taken, and attempted to hook his leg around Heathcliff's to bring him down. The two grappled as Heathcliff lost his balance, but his grip only yanked the hair down with him, forcing an involuntary grunt of pain from the rogue. His flesh was pierced with Heathcliff's biting blade, paralyzing him to remain motionless on his knees with the angry young Lord behind him. 

"Lord Heathcliff!" the boy scrambled. His eyes were wide with panic and confusion, seeking Heathcliff's for instruction as he crouched on his blanket. 

"Who sent you?!" Heathcliff demanded with a twist of his wrist.

"Fuck your… whore bitch mother…" the rogue laughed, grimacing with pain. 

The Doctor responded with a slow grinding of the blade, twisting the laughter into cries of pain. His eyes locked with the boy's, steadying the rising fear he saw building in them. 

"Rook." Heathcliff said quietly as he pulled back the rogue to expose his throat. "Rook, look at me. This is your life to give or your kill to take. It must be this way, to make it right. Look him in the eyes and pick up a blade and show him the mercy of a Dracone." 

(( Rook's writing: ))

The dark-haired elven boy stared up at these two men before him, hands shaking almost uncontrollably. His mind could barely grasp the reality of what had just happened; what could have happened. Mortality was a concept that elven children rarely had to see, let alone think about.. but here in front of him stood a devil and a savior, his life in the balance, and as his lord said a choice had to be made.

This is your life to give or your kill to take.

His limbs loosened. His pulse quickened. ..an instant later, his hands stopped shaking. Brimming with tears Rook's wide eyes flashed with something new and unfamiliar. Hatred.

The filth ridden rogue saw it too but the realization did nothing to spare him. Rook's small form took one sobbing, wracked breath and with shocking fury the boy screamed at the creature who would have done such unspeakable things to him he could hardly fathom. Lunging forward one of the many wicked knives the thief possessed was freed from his belt and in a flash of light the young elf's long arms let it dance through the air in swing fueled by emotion. The blade cut so keenly it was as though nothing was there; Rook held his head down low, unable to look up for fear he had somehow missed the mark.. but the evidence presented itself moments later. There was a horrible gurgle noise, like someone trying to breath through water. Through his tears he saw the many beads of fine crimson even in the firelight that covered his hands. Again the gurgle came, the only sound besides the nearby fire. It was joined then by the weight of a man as he crumpled to the ground - like dead before his horrified face ever touched the earth. Dead eyes as wide as Rook's stared back up at him, captured in a sweet moment of disbelief that the boy marked by spitting down into the corpse's face.

"You made it right." Lord Heathcliff Dracone's voice was stern, but soothing. "It's a decision you have to live with forever."

It was a decision no child should have to make, but now slowly lifting his violet eyes to his Lord and protector's, Rook sniffled shakily. His voice was broken and a whisper but to the man's slight surprise it contained not a hint of doubt. He struggled to speak as venom and anger were slowly pushed aside by fear.

"He would have come back for me," Rook choked out. "...or Carro'wyn. I had to protect her!. ...Protect both of us! I ..I had to!"

The bravery the child mustered actually made the Doctor smile wanely, but not from any sort of joy. As Rook threw his arms around his legs the man placed a hand gently on his head and let the youth wail out his anguish, for if a child could enact such justice - and with thoughts of precious Carro'wyn in his heart no less - there was far more to the adopted boy than he had ever guessed..

(( Heathcliff's writing: ))

The flames of the flickering forge sprouted in reflections of blood as a puddle grew under the corpse. Heathcliff watched it flow between the cracks in the stones, neatly following the lines to drip below into the dungeons. The hounds below snapped ravenously and whimpered at the smell of blood, howling with impatience. Heathcliff released a heavy hand on the boy's head and then walked over to the body. He wrapped his arms around the upper torso and dragged it over to the dry slop well, a large, round hole that dropped straight into the dungeon from the kitchen above. He removed the wooden cover and heaved it over the side to fall with a sickening thump below. 

A single gold coin fell from the fiend before he was pushed over, and this rolled in the darkness to settle into the ooze trail of blood. The noise that followed was obscene… snapping jaws and ripping flesh as the hounds tore into the dead rogue.

"Tomorrow… go down into the dungeons, and remove anything left. Feed it to the boars, even the cloth. Wipe down the blood here and burn the rags in the hearth. You speak of this to know one."

Heathcliff looked over to the boy standing near the bloody knife and the pools of dead blood. He grabbed a nearby cloth from a hook nearby and wiped his hands, walking slowly over. The Doctor bent down and pulled the gold coin from the red, holding it out to Rook in the cloth.

"No coin was ever earned without blood. Not by a Lord, not by a thief. The trick is to never make it your own, Rook."