Savage Legacy

“His legend will be retold as long as the Earth and its protective mother have breath to sustain life…” Her grandmother’s voice entered her dreams and Ariel felt a small smile cross her lips. She had missed these dreams in the past years. Her grandmother had meant everything to her for the short time she had known her.

Laken Lamont had been half-French, with liquid dark eyes and long black hair. A delicate, fragile woman who looked like the pictures Ariel had of her mother. She had come to her during a time when Ariel knew, if it hadn’t been for her grandmother’s steadying influence, that she would have lost her mind.

“He is that Savage, but don’t let his name fool you,” she advised her granddaughter .

“He is merciless with his enemies, but he is patience and love itself for the one who holds his heart.”

“Who holds his heart, Grandmama?” she asked, staring up at the frail old woman as she held her snugly on her lap.

“The Mistress of the Wind holds his heart, Ariel.” She had touched the crystal she had placed around Ariel’s neck that first week she had lived in the sterile home Ariel’s father had provided for them. “The Mistress of the Wind holds his soul. In times of fear or of need, she only has to call out to him, to allow the crystal and the power that connects them, to do as it was meant to.”

“Am I the Mistress, Grandmama?” Ariel remembered how awed she had been. She carried the stone, she had thought. She would be the one to possess the Savage’s heart.

“I don’t know, Ariel.” Sadness flickered in the old woman’s eyes. “The Mistress will know great danger. She will know great pain before her warrior arrives. She will have to be strong enough to look past her fears and past the horrors she will see to accept her warrior.”

“Tell me the story again, Grandmama.” She had laid her head at her grandmother’s breast, closing her eyes, wishing she had a warrior to protect her from the bleak darkness her father often confined her to. “Tell me about him again.”

“There is a legend near forgotten by time, and hazy to even the oldest memory. A legend that has never been told by those who wield the pen, but lives in the hearts and souls of those who wield the sword. The Legend of the Savage Warrior.

“When the world was young, and man fought against man in battles of darkness, in forests heavy with magic and the power of the Earth, he rose as one of four. A warrior of strength and justice, one who held the power of the gods. He was as tall as the oak, as mighty as the mountain, and as strong as truth itself.

“To this warrior, whose heart and soul was most pure, the Earth Mother gifted to him, her most precious daughter. One scarred by betrayal, but one who knew the need for love, for the gentleness of this non-gentle warrior. And they were bound. During the darkest times of history, they clung to one another, each stronger than before, fighting the battle against an unspeakable, dark evil.

“But evil will have its due. And before Mother Earth could claim victory for her children, a horrible price was demanded by Fate and Destiny for the machinations of bringing together the son of the gods and a daughter of the Earth. So it was declared. As long as the Wind Mistress kept her eyes closed to the power, her ears dead to the Earth and her heart cold from her trials, so then would the Savage roam. Lost, unaided but by his brothers, forever seeking what only the wind shall know. The true heart of the Mistress where his heart was bestowed.

“But the day will come…” her voice had lowered with a mystic foreboding sound

“…when the Wind Mistress shall rise once again. With the strength of the power of the Wind Crystal, her will strong, her heart whole and unscarred by the touch of evil. She will rise, and she will know the truth, the power and the heart laid bare for her to see. But first, she must accept that which she fears the most. She must know that which she has denied the strongest.

“Until then, she will remember, only in her dreams. She will seek in darkness, and fight without strength and she will know little but the faintest breeze to whisper his name, rather than the full force of the wind which should carry her devotion back to him.

“Beware Mistress, for in his hands does your fate rest. Beware daughter of the Earth, for there are deceptions, darkness and pain. Seek and ye shall find. Deny and ye shall die…”

The winds rose around her then. Howling, screaming in fury and rage as her grandmother’s bedroom door opened and her father stood framed in the doorway. She had shuddered in fear. He was angry…again.

“Ariel, I need to talk to you.” His voice had been rough, filled with his rage. “Now.”

And she knew what was coming. She would have pleaded with him not to lock her up again, but then her grandmother would know. And if she knew, then Ariel feared her father would make good on his promise to have the old woman locked away, confined forever in the darkness.

So she left the peace of her grandmother’s arms, followed her father from the room, down the winding stairs and to the basement where he pushed her into the foulsmelling closet and locked the door.

“That will teach you to obey me, Ariel. You will always obey me or you will pay…”

Seconds later he was gone, leaving her in the black nothingness with only her screams to keep her company.

“The Wind Mistress can call her warrior. No sound is ever gone, Ariel…” Her grandmother’s words had wrapped around her. “They are there on the breeze. For you to hear, for him to know. Call him, and he will always aid you…”

And she had screamed out his name. Cried for him until in her fury and her terror, a sudden violet light had lit the way, and the faintest breeze had carried his voice to her… Gentle. Comforting. And she had feared then that she was as crazy as her father had claimed… Just like her mother…