A serial tale of a hero/ine whose Manifestation offers hope to an entire mythical species, and gives promise to many awakenings in a sleeping world very much like our own.

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A re-imagining of several old story concepts that never saw anywhere near as much love as they should have. Now they're back, combined and fused into one whole. Hopefully I didn't mess up the formatting too badly; although I will hopefully learn to do better in time.

-Arianrhod.
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A forsaken house, they called us...cursed, and doomed to die because of our transgressions. Fresh out of allies, we were caught unprepared. They attacked...and they won.

That was the story that I had always been told, anyway. The legend was handed down through generation after generation of my family, a tradition from darker, more savage times. Personally, I think that the modern times are in fact just as evil as olden days...just that the wicked have learned to conceal themselves better.

I doubt that my parents bought into it any more seriously than I did--it was a relic of a tale; nonetheless, they served the tradition and related it to me when I came of age. It was several years after that point, and I was nearing the end of my high school career when things all changed. My younger sister still had a few years left to go, which promised to keep my parents entertained, but I was almost to the relative freedom that college offered. For some reason, she always seemed to actually find merit in the old family yarn. I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say that she believed it back then, but she did always get a bit more defensive about it than any of the rest of us.

The fact was, my life was pretty boring. I was never one of the popular crowd, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I was at the opposite end of the camp either. I never excelled at my studies, but I always attributed that to a lack of caring rather than anything else. My high school wasn't progressive at all -- the idea of letting students take classes they were actually interested in never occurred to them. Instead, they existed to produce pseudo-moral and pseudo-knowledgeable civilians that were nigh carbon-copies of each other, and I hated it. In a strange way, though, I have to thank them for their societally crippling ways, since my apathy led to my Manifestation.

It was a beautiful spring day, and I was cutting class shamelessly. We were supposed to be learning about atavism in biology, but I had decided that I didn't really care and that being outside and enjoying the sunshine was more important. I was planning on heading back in for my final class of the day, since I actually enjoyed it, but unfortunately for me, I was not the only one who had decided to skip the penultimate period.

I was chilling on the roof, watching the lazy sky roll by when I heard the stifled guffaws of the Reddies coming from the service entrance. The Reddies, as everyone (including themselves) called them, were the school's resident gang of hooligans. A few fractured, smaller groups had existed on and off again in the years before my class entered circulation, but with the new freshman had come a very peculiar transfer: an upperclassman from a school at the opposite end of the state. He came in as a freshman, and we quickly learned why.

Will Langton was a thug.

He wasn't stupid, though...that had been our first mistake. At first we had tried to avoid him when possible, like a looming appointment that nobody wanted to attend -- and it had worked. Nobody had any problems with him freshman year. He was rarely in class, but academic excellence was hardly a cornerstone of our facility. Either he actually did well on the tests that he showed up for, or the faculty edited his results to suit their margins...probably both, because when we all showed up the first day of our sophomore year, there he was, grinning loathsomely at everyone around him.

We soon found out why.

Nobody had any difficulties with him the previous year, or any of the other bullies, for that matter, because he had spent that year hammering every minor bully, clique, and wanna-be gang into a cohesive machine reminiscent of a teenage mafia. Despite being a proud redneck, who indeed had named his organization after his ideological affiliation, Will proved to be highly cunning...in the way that a wild predator might be. He saw people's actions, and he understood their motivation, but most of all, he hated. He hated with a spectacular fury that would have made Styx flush with pride.

Himself and his private group of delinquents were essentially allowed to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted to. The school officials were downright in league with the Reddies, in fact. There was a rumor that went around during our junior year that Will had threatened the principal of the school that if any actions were taken against himself or his crew, he would expose the officials of the school district as unfit due to the corrupt faculty that covered up their students' failure clandestinely over the summer. In exchange, he would agree not to kill anyone or even seriously harm them during his stay at the school.

Of course, Will Langton's definition of "serious harm" was not always one with which the student body as a whole agreed.

I wasn't aware that the roof was anyone's specific territory, but when Will and his cronies showed up, it turned into their territory. With only one entrance to the roof, and a three-story drop to the sun-baked lawn below, my only alternative was to stay motionless and hope to avoid notice until I could slink back inside at an opportune moment. I had at least used the foresight to sequester myself behind one of the various units that protruded from the roof's otherwise flat surface like so many voluminous steel pimples, so I was out of sight from the doorway -- for the time.

Will and his thugs emerged from the service doorway, accompanied by the dull thud of boots and the low, guttural moans of someone stretching pleasurably in the open air and warm sun.

"Parson, keep a watch on the doorway," Will's sickeningly dulcet voice rode the breeze to my corner of the roof. So much for sneaking down quietly. At this point, a confrontation seemed almost inevitable.

Now, I wouldn't go so far as to classify myself as hopeless in a fight. Standing a proud six-foot with shoulders to match a frame that in no way belonged to a weakling, I could hold my own in a fair fight and knew it. The problem was that the fight was going to be anything but fair.

I didn't have long to wait, either. Not five minutes had passed before one of Will's compatriots noticed me, calling out in alarm to his boss. Scant seconds later, Will Langton, terror of West Heights High, stood scowling down at me.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries -- I tried to weasel my way out without causing a ruckus, while he insulted everything to do with me, and then we got down to business. Both of us knew what the outcome would be: I would hold him off until he got pissed, then he'd pull out his prized gold-handled skinning knife and slit me open a few times. Then he'd let his cronies beat the shit out of me, and then I'd be let go do to whatever I felt like.

The last time this had happened, I had briefly considered telling either the police or my parents what was going on...but almost as if he was reading my mind, Will had warned me that if any cops started sniffing around, he would know whose family to gut in the middle of the night. I was old enough and wise enough to believe him.

What neither of us realized, though, was that this time around, something would be different.

He came in first with a right-cross, which I ducked under and attempted to counter with a straightforward blow to the chest. What I was not expecting, however, was the hands that grabbed me from behind when I lunged forward.

"Roger, Roger, Roger..." Will grinned in front of me. "What have I told everyone about using my territory as if they were allowed to be here? It's bad enough that I suffer to let you immy scum with your notions of fairness and equality run amuck in this town, acting like you are entitled to the same rights as the rest of us."

I quickly countered that I was now a second generation American, but Will cut me off. "We don't need your kind in these parts. Stay to the big cities where you've got each other for protection, where you can screw over the chinks and the niggers and all the other scum that make us true-blooded Americans have to scurry around because you take our jobs and warp our culture." He paused. "You know something ironic?"

I was sure that I didn't, nor wanted to, and I told him so. "I think you can take your notions of irony and go stuff 'em up your ass," I replied. That remark earned me a solid punch in the gut that left me panting. When I looked up, I saw him fondling his knife.

"If it weren't for people like you, I wouldn't even be at this school. My old man lost his job to an immy and we had to move here because this is where the new job was. I thought maybe if we came inland far enough we'd escape your kind, but apparently even West Virginia isn't enough. I'm still surrounded by foreign scum."

He scraped his knife blade across the steel shell that I had been resting against, creating a chilling sound that screamed and wailed of pain yet to come.

"Well, I'm going to make sure that this town is cleansed of you bastards. I'll run every one of you out of town personally if I have to, but..." he gestured at the six or seven thugs which had now surrounded us, "I don't think that'll have to be the case. I've got plenty of help."

Looking around at his accomplices, he asked them what they thought should be my fate for usurping his rightful American soil. The replies involved a lot of things that I wasn't particularly fond of, like scarring my face, putting an eye out, or just plain gutting me on the spot.

But Will Langton was cunning, and wasn't about to let his cackling jackals mutilate me.

"No, we can't do anything that severe...yet. We aren't strong enough yet to drive this scum out of the area. If we did something that obvious, people might get suspicious that something beyond simple bullying was going on. No, I have a much better idea."

He grinned then, a feral, ugly thing that promised a sinister fate for me.

"Jackson, you got that trash-ass piece of jewelry you're fond of on you?"

One of the boys fidgeted uncomfortably, but said in a high, thin voice that he did.

Will leered at me a second before stating, "You see, Jackson here thinks that he's all cool because he wears a swastika around his neck. I think he's full of shit personally, but at the same time, it comes in handy sometimes to have a fellow like him around." He stopped and turned back to Jackson. "Go take that thing and get it hot. Real hot. Then bring it back here." Jackson smirked and departed.

"See, I can't think of anything more hilariously damning than to see one of you kraut scum running around with a Nazi brand on your cheek. You'll be considered outcast by every American with his weight in Washingtons."

Something woke up in me at that. While I found it disgusting that he was comparing an American's worth to a unit of monetary measure, something about being outcast sent bells tolling somberly in my mind. I didn't know what it meant, but I started struggling anyway. Up until that point I'd just been passively waiting for my beating so I could move on with my life...it was how things worked at West Heights High. But now, I could see that Will's malice had vastly surpassed sheer brutality.

Unfortunately for me, one verse five odds were pretty terrible for me, and I was held steady despite my struggles.

A few exhausting minutes later, Jackson reemerged from the portal to the normalcy that actually being in class represented. He seemed a little unsure of himself, but he held a glowing swastika necklace before him, nestled in a pile of paper towels from the bathroom.

"Sorry boss, but this is the best I could do without a real fire of some kind...I just kind of held it against the side of the boiler for a while." I mentally noted that apparently the rumors of a year ago were a bit more substantial than just that, if one of Will's underlings had access to the boiler room.

"Good...give it to me." Will held out his right hand, and Jackson carefully delivered his package. As I got a better look at it, I could see the heat rising from the metal charm, dissipating carelessly into the spring breeze. Scorch marks permeated the first layer or two of towels at least, and while it appeared as if it wasn't hot enough so as to sear flesh down to bone, as my mind had been picturing, it would undoubtedly leave one hell of a noticeable mark.

Will grinned his evil grin again, and moved in closer, getting his hand ready to hastily deposit the brand on my face.

Outcast was still ringing in my head...outcast and damned...forsaken...

The bells grew ever louder in the milliseconds between memory and happening, louder, louder, and still louder yet until it seemed as though my skull was going to split open.

And then it did.

Dazed, I saw Will recoil, a look of abject horror on his face. A livid, screaming part of me protested that my skull was cracked open and that I was in -- or should be -- in intense pain, or perhaps I was dead already. That part of me was ignored. Instead, a great, timeless calm pervaded my conscious self...timeless, and very, very cold. The thugs around me had all recoiled at the sight of a man whose head was split in two, but Will was quickly regaining his senses. He was hefting his knife from hand to hand, and licking his lips, eager for blood. The glowing swastika dropped to the ground, forgotten.

"If you're gonna go and die on me anyway, bastard, I'm gonna at least get my licks in before all the lights go out, " he said savagely.

My soul suffused with ice, I merely stared at him with a fury that I had not known myself to be capable of...and perhaps was not even now.

As he stalked eagerly towards me, I recognized that the cold seemed to be another presence in my mind, and that it was waiting with infinite patience for a moment that was about to happen. A single word floated to my confused spirit...said as a quiet whisper, a chilled hush...

Manifestation

The crack that had begun at the top of my skull now continued downward, splitting my face in an inhuman, vertical grin. Down, down, still down is progressed, but still Will rushed madly towards me

I care not

knife in hand and gleam in eye. With dismay I watched as he began to stab my chest repeatedly, but I noticed that I wasn't feeling any pain in my detached state, and began to watch a bit more dispassionately. Part of me was still screaming, but I ignored it. The Ice, which had now assumed proper-noun stature to my consciousness, seemed to be helping me...and frankly, there wasn't much about it that I could've done anyway.

Even as Will continued to stab, and his henchmen continued to back away apprehensively, the split continued like a quaking fault destined for infamy. A sullen teal-white glow emerged between the halves, and still the split continued. A panting Will finally realized that something wasn't right and began looking around nervously, only to realize that his cronies had all deserted him. He started backing away, but the Ice only regarded him with that same timeless calm, as if he was an insignificant gnat to be squashed at a picnic.

The split concluded, and the sides of my former body fell away like a dried-up husk. The result was a steadily expanding ball of the same teal-white light. Now that I was having a true out-of-body experience, I found that I could see myself almost as if from a third-person camera. It felt like I still had a body, somehow, but I certainly wasn't in control anymore. If I was, I might have been able to save Will's life. But the Ice, I would find, was definitely not a friend of Man.

The orb of light that was all that remained of my body continued its merciless growth, and Will finally panicked. Making a mad dash for the doorway to the lower levels where pens waved back and forth like lilies in a field and boredom above all defined human existence, Will prayed to the God of the Founders that he would escape.

He was denied.

A beam of light shot out from the central orb, which was now about the size of a SUV. Shooting and stretching, it barred the door that was Will's only exit. The orb floated closer to him, and shapes began to form within the blinding bright. The beam refined and compressed until it resembled an arm. Another arm formed, and two legs soon joined it, providing physical support against the roof of the school. A long, whip-like stretch of light extended from what was quickly becoming the hindquarters of a shape that I recognized very, very well.

At home, we had a plaque that hung on the wall in the foyer just inside the front door. On it was emblazoned our family's crest, an antique that was prized very highly among our family. And on that crest, occupying the proud forefront, was a four-legged dragon, and I was becoming that dragon.

The light continued to compress and refine, becoming further defined in its shape. Wings sprouted just below the foundation of a serpentine neck, which quickly began to support a proud, fiercely jawed head.

Throughout all of this, Will's only further reaction was to wet himself.

As I watched in awed silence, I felt Ice again in my mind, compelling me, whispering

Hunt

I felt the presence staring balefully at my would-be assailant. Hungrily.

Now that the rough shape was complete, more minute details began to take shape...the wicked fangs and recurving claws present not only on the arms and legs, but at the elbows and knees as well. An array of spines nearly a foot in length sprouted from the dragon's -- my -- body, and the tail became tipped with a lethal-looking display of spikes. The wings of light stretched outward and up, towards the open sky, and I watched amazedly as tendons began to spin themselves out of the nothingness of the shape.

Complete

The voice seemed immensely satisfied, and the light began to fade almost on cue. Dimming, dimming...the light diffused, leaving only gleaming black behind. All across the dragon-shape, polished obsidian scales formed, coating the body in armor that I knew somehow was harder than steel. Thick scutes cloaked the chest, and the various spikes and claws became sheathed in bright white bone. As the body became completely corporeal, though, I noticed something wrong. The eye sockets, located beneath fearsome brows but above the origins of the two-foot-long jaws, were completely vacant.

I shortly wished that I hadn't noticed, though, because all of a sudden, the world began spinning. Rapidly...quickly enough that I would've thrown up if I had a body...I felt as if I was going to spin into oblivion. And then it stopped, and I was definitely not in third-person mode anymore.

I was the dragon, but I was not yet actually in control of my new body. Ice was still very much at the forefront...and Ice was still hungry.

My head swung around of its own accord, staring greedily at the trembling mortal in front of it. Will backed away quickly, shaking his head and wiping at his eyes. My body moved to pursue, causing the roof to creak under the strain. The prey found itself backed up against a wall, and let out a frustrated scream. It appeared as though it were weighing its options, for it was certainly looking around furiously. In the end, it saw no salvation, so it did the one thing that it could do.

It tried to fight.

The food charged at me, brandishing its skinning knife like a toy sword. The first bite took off the head, arms, and torso, leaving behind an echoing scream of inhuman agony and a forward-falling pair of legs attached at the groin. Ice merely chewed the remains of Will and then continued to feast by picking up the lower half. It was as if it was completely indifferent to the life that it had just stifled so easily. And then I had another intuition about the being that was now sharing my mind. It wasn't an it. It was a she.