Solo An Unspoken Price of Victory Finished

Saturday, April 22nd, 2023

Valentin awoke a few minutes after 5 a.m., an early hour even for him. Sliding out of his top bunk and landing quietly, he looked at the sleeping faces of his Durmstrang comrades and lingered over a tangled russet mane nearly concealed by a blanket on a lower bunk. A drowsy sigh and a toss of his white hair later, Valentin slipped out the door and strode in haste towards the quidditch pitch. For once he wasn’t headed into the stadium, but rather up a small hill where he stopped at the treeline and sat in the grass graced by a sea of blue wildflowers. The seeker examined the small blooms, primarily speedwell, but didn’t know what they were. Were his friend Aida there, he would have learned the flowers were also known as Veronica, named after the Italian saint. Soon the sound of wind in the branches lulled him into a daze even as the sun rose on the opposite horizon, and in seconds Valya fell fast asleep again.

In his dream, Valentin stood at the gates of an ancient temple. At either side towered colossi in pure marble, one of Apollo and the other of Asclepius, chiseled with such detail they could have walked out of one of Valya’s history books. Each bore a staff, one radiating with a sunburst at the top while a long serpent coiled along the length of the other’s. To Val's side rustled a patch of underbrush through which the seeker’s eyes picked out the characteristic texture of green snakeskin. He was standing before a temple for healing, Valentin understood, and so he entered. A black and gold travertine path led him deeper alongside walls lined with mosaics depicting the great stories of the time, and while the hall grew darker, the sound of slipping scales grew louder. A dark oak door gave way to a rush of blinding light as the boy stepped into a courtyard under a flawless aquamarine sky. At the center stood a basin on a pedestal rising out of a pool of water, and dozens of Aesculapian snakes slithered across the foundations and bases of Doric columns.

After rolling up the legs of his white pants, Valentin waded into the pool with his feet bare and hands empty. The water was cool, but he still winced from the thought of a much deeper, colder water body that had almost claimed his life. The seeker approached the stone basin in the center, taking care to not step on snakes slipping chaotically around the edges of the bath. The pure marble bowl held liquid light that breathed vapor tendrils that spiralled off in curls that Valentin thought he recognized, but couldn’t place. The whitish silver ribbons of light moved ceaselessly, so Val simply dove both hands into the serpentine cirrus and cupped his hands to gather some. It was warm, like the breath of a loved one, and spilled gently across Valentin’s face. Droplets condensed, refracting rainbows like on oil, then dripped from the boy’s fingers down about his feet. He felt cleaner, but with concern for contaminating the sacred temple, he peered down into the pool around him only to see a pair of draconic slit eyes staring back at him.

The creature’s gaze pierced Valentin with its commanding edge, clearly understanding him inside and out. Rimmed with opalescent, metallic scales that glowed white from within, the eyes alone seemed to speak a language as old as time. Dauntless, Valentin stared right back.

“Aq Yılan?” asked the boy in disbelief.

“One of my names,” it replied, and a shine below the water hinted at the serpentine dragon’s submersed lower body writhing from side to side around the circular pool.

“Where have I gone so wrong?” pleaded the seeker, voice tight with ache.

“You deny your true destiny.” The mosaics portraying mythic champions around the courtyard walls trembled with the booming of the dragon’s voice as their chips of ceramic shimmered like tiny leaves in the wind.

“I make my own destiny,” Val retorted.

“No, you don’t, and that is the source of your woes.” Curves of muscle rose from the waters as the dragon’s eyes widened. Tensed as if about to strike, the air crackled with static.

“Help me, serpent of Akbugha,” pleaded Valentin, tipping his head with respect. “I don’t know the way.”

“LIES!”

Around the boy’s ankles slithered snakes as dark as space that bound him like the velvet rope beneath the manor’s frozen lake. A particularly handsome jet black cobra with ruby red eyes encircled Val’s torso clockwise and slid up to his neck where it flicked its tongue, testing the air.

“You bind yourself with limits,” hissed the great white snake, “weaving a prison for your own mind.”

“Why?” cried Valentin, frustration welling in the corners of his eyes. The black cobra fanned its hood wide before striking its fangs into Valentin’s neck. Venom pumped into his veins in tempo with his heartbeat and seared like lightning as dark branches of necrosis spread beneath his skin. In a high-pitched ceramic sizzle, the heroes around the mosaic walls bowed their heads as if in mourning. “NO!! I’m not giving in. I have to… go… home…” Silver eyes shut as deathlike torpor began blotting out Valya’s conscious mind in inky curtains.

Then, in a counterclockwise spiral, another serpent ascended the boy’s body, a white Caucasus viper squeezing into him as it pulled back its neck and bit through Valya’s chest and into his heart. His white eyelashes fluttered, still closed, as its fangs pulsated in syncopation with those of the black snake’s. Light flooded Valentin’s vision as his eyelids rose, and he felt the chill of antivenin circulating through him, healing over his dark dendritic wounds and turning them into white scars.

“You know why, Valik,” answered the dragon, raising its head out of the water to gaze into him with its frigid amethyst eyes. The snakes binding Valentin fell away into nothingness and he staggered back, shielding his eyes from the colddrake’s hypnotic gaze. “You fear our power. You cower before becoming what you hate. Yet, remaining passive absolves you from no responsibility, like watching a boy die right in front of you. That boy is you, Valik. Open your eyes. Take control.”

The dragon rose up, and with it, the temple began to quake. Fragments of mosaic rained from the walls as dust began to clog the air. Valentin opened his mouth, wanting to call out for it not to leave him, but before a breath could leave his lips the drake ascended into the heavens and disappeared into their perfect blue.

Valentin’s heliotrope eyes opened onto a green hillside decked in azure blossoms, and pressing himself up to sitting, he watched the distant pennant flags rippling with the wind in the quidditch pitch below. By the sun’s position, Val figured it was about nine a.m. and time to take on his day. With a soundless laugh, Valentin smirked. What destiny did he want to make now?