The dull red light of the Echo flooded into Athir’s room. The entire palace wall was missing, leaving only the ragged edges of bricks, and from this height, the Faelen realm lay spread out beneath her.
Athir moved silently, gathering her things, and tensed when the door slowly opened.
Yroh’s gaze flickered from the swords to the pack she was holding. "I know where you’ve been going, you know."
"Get out of my way," Athir whispered. She pushed roughly past Yroh and made her way through the decaying halls of the palace; entire floors and rooms were missing, as if the entire building had been halted mid-creation.
In the grand entrance hall, Yroh pushed in front of Athir, halting her and resting a hand on the pommel of his sword.
"It’s been a while since you could stop me, Yroh," Athir warned.
His expression softened. "Perhaps, but please don’t go there again. It’s dangerous."
"You’re just jealous."
The words clearly hurt the young Faelen prince, and Athir immediately regretted having said them. But she wouldn’t be persuaded, and she pushed past him again.
"I’ll have to tell Myam this time," Yroh said, jogging to keep up.
"Tell him, see if I care."
"You won’t find him, you know."
Athir stopped and spun around, causing Yroh to stagger to a halt before the intensity of her glare. Oh, I’ll find him."
"She wouldn’t want you to."
"Who, the Lady?" Athir responded with a mirthless laugh. "How would I even know? She hasn’t spoken to me. Am I even still her champion or not?"
Yroh fell silent.
"That’s what I thought. Until she comes and tells me she needs me, I have my own things to do."
Athir reached out and curled her fingers around the air, grasping and ripping downward. Red light flooded out onto wet cobblestones under a moonless night sky.
"You shouldn’t even know how to do that," Yroh muttered.
The Faelen had been surprised when Athir had found her way back into the echo all those months ago. Myam had asked her to promise not to travel back and forth from the Echo to the mortal realm, and Athir had refused. It had slowly driven a wedge between them.
Athir stepped forward, gazing up at the tall stone walls of Tajar, and the window snapped closed.
There was a subtle sound, like a slow intake of breath, and Yroh gazed out of his own window, his silhouette lit by the endless red sky on the Faelen realm.
"What’s it like in there?" He asked, his eyes fixed on the city.
"It stinks," Athir replied. “Some things are the same though, the palace is in the same place, but it looks different.”
Yroh pushed one hand against the barrier that held him in. "Myam said it used to be the greatest city of the Faelen."
“Well, it’s a dump now. I’ll be okay; tell Myam I’ll be back soon," Athir said.
She didn’t look back as she slipped through one of the smaller gates in the city wall.
The city of Tajar never really slept, but Athir had quickly learned how to navigate the dangers of nightlife in the city. She flitted through the narrow lanes and alleyways as easily as she had through the canyons of her southern home, although unlike in the desert, her boots were quickly soaked through with what she hoped was mostly water.
She climbed catlike onto the roof of a church, eased around the spire, and pulled herself into the high nest of the bell tower. From here, Athir gazed down upon her enemy. He was in there somewhere, hiding in the mass of buildings that made up the temple of the Father.
This had been her perch for months now, and she had learned much. First of all, the temple seemed to run on paper; there were hundreds of priests in blood-red robes rushing about at all hours of the day and night with armfuls of scrolls and books.
The second thing she had learned was that there were four champions of the Father. Each of them had the face of the Father himself, and the idea of wearing someone else’s features each day made her skin crawl.
Although their faces all displayed the same proud sneer, she had quickly learned to tell them apart and given them names. Blunt, was the largest champion of the Father, and he lumbered along with a great two-handed axe strapped to his back. He was so big that he rode one of the gigantic cart horses. Swarthy, was lean, and she had seen his speed when he flashed a dagger to the throat of a wagon driver who had flicked mud onto his black cloak. Handy, was of average height and build and could have passed for the Father himself, save for the fact that he was missing his arm just above the wrist; in its place was a black, metal hook.
Prey was the fourth and final champion of the Father, he never left the compound, but she had seen glimpses of him moving from building to building, and so she waited.
Her waiting came to an end sometime the next evening. There was a shout, and the gates to the compound surrounding the temple of the Father ground open. Athir scrambled up, peering over the edge of the short wall around the bell tower, and saw two horsemen dressed in black ride out of the gate, their saddlebags packed for a long journey. Their faces were identical, but one had a hook for a hand. Despite having the face of a god, she could see that the other was clearly only a boy.
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After a month on the road, Athir had lost the trail of Handy and Prey. The tavern she found herself in was a large, open building with a straw roof and mud walls. A plank of wood mounted on a couple of barrels served as a bar, and a long fire pit provided a place to roast meat and heat blackened pots of thick stew. The setting mattered little to the local populace; they came for something else.
"Come, girl, dance with me," the gnome cried.
Athir threw herself into her seat and waved the gnome off, reaching for a cup of ale to quench her thirst. "In a moment," she replied, draining the cup.
Athir had seen the sand dancers of the southern lands and watched the Faelen celebrate in their own magical way, but nothing under either sky matched a gathering of gnomes and elven folk for pure, unbridled joy.
Athir was dragged back to her feet as the rhythmic pounding of the drummers and the shrill piping of the flutes entered a more frenzied rhythm, and the crowd of elves and gnomes stomped on the earthen floor.
Later that evening, the music died down, and an older elven bard with a high tenor strummed a battered harp and sang a story. It was long and lilting and told the tale of the great city of Caso, home of the snow elves, lost under the frozen seas to the north. Athir had drunk enough ale that a tear fell from her eye.
"A whole city lost under the ocean," she said, with a sniff. The story was too close to the fate of the Faelen, prisoners in the echo.
"You speak Elven?" her gnomish friend asked, draining his cup and swaying slightly.
"A little," Athir replied with a burp.
"And Gnomish."
"I guess so," Athir said, realizing they had been speaking in that language all evening. The Lady had given her many gifts, and the ability to speak Faelen evidently came with some other tongues.
"You were asking me about champions of the Father earlier," the gnome said in a low voice.
"’s right," Athir replied, peering into her ale cup with one eye closed. "I’m huntin’ em."
A look of alarm passed across the face of the gnome. "Let’s just keep that to ourselves, eh? Well, I asked around, and someone saw them. Up in the hills where the river comes through from the lake up there."
Athir placed her cup down carefully. "How far from here?"
"I’d say about a half day hard trek up there on foot, but you wouldn’t go in the middle of the night— Hey, where you off to?"
Athir stumbled outside as the music picked up in the tavern once more. The river bubbled nearby, and she splashed into it, dunking her head and drinking deeply. She had almost given up and returned to the city, but now her senses sharpened once again. She was back on the hunt.
The trek up the hill wasn’t too challenging; drunk as she was. She could see perfectly fine in the dark, another gift from the Lady. Dawn broke as she reached the source of the river, and she followed the edge of the lake and the smell of smoke that drifted down the hillside. A hundred yards from the lake shore, a shrine to an unnamed deity was gently smoldering.
Athir crept forward in total silence. The forest up here was mostly pine trees, and the sweet resinous smell mixed with the smoke. A little further on, she found a cluster of simple huts where a group of elvish villagers huddled together while one of them read aloud from a book.
"The Mother provides charity, comfort, and rewards honest work," one of the older elves read, his voice shaking.
The group chanted the words as small children sniffed and parents desperately hushed them.
"The Brother brings law and order. Justice for the wicked."
The words were mumbled back to him.
"The Father is the sword and shield of the Mother."
Athir gripped her own sword so tightly that her knuckles cracked. She sensed a movement behind the village and stole through the trees like a ghost.
"I told you to bury him." The champion with the hook for a hand gazed imperiously down into the shallow hole.
Next to him, lay the body of an elven fighter, dressed in cheap leather armor. His eyes staring up at the light of a new day he would never see.
"There were tree roots, its hard—." The young champion that she had named Prey stood in the hole, his eyes fixed on his boots.
"It didn’t take long to find something that you are more useless at than fighting. Even in this state, he could probably best you."
"I’m sorry."
"Your weakness makes us all weak. The Father doesn’t make mistakes, but if he has a higher purpose for you, then I can’t see it."
Prey dragged the body into the grave and started to shovel the dirt back.
"You’re to stay here and oversee. I'll be back in one week; I want that shrine rebuilt and that whole village singing the mothers praises." Handy mounted his horse and passed his metal hook through the reins, then kicked the horse to a trot through the forest.
Prey patted the earth down with the back of the shovel and whispered some words over the grave.
"I think the last thing he’d want are your prayers," Athir said.
Prey looked up. She had imagined facing him for so long now, and she willed him to draw his sword to threaten her.
But Prey simply clutched his shovel and glanced down the road after his comrade.
"Call him if you like, but you’ll be dead before he turns his horse around,” Athir said.
"I’m not going to call him. If it means anything to you, I’m sorry," Prey whispered.
The quiet words burned in Athir’s ears. The boy was her height, but the hate pounding in her veins made her feel several feet taller. "Is that all you have to say. You’re sorry?"
Athir had planned for this. He would either be terrified and call for his companion or to sneer at her and attack, but the young champion just stared at the ground. He didn’t look frightened, or angry, just ashamed.
"I wonder if the Father will even care when I kill you,” she spat.
The champion cocked his head to one side, listening. "He’s not here. It’s harder than you think for him to watch even one of us."
Athir stiffened slightly. Sensing the presence of a deity was something she couldn’t do, though she’d tried. In an instant, she reassessed the boy. He wasn’t scared or angry. In fact, he seemed to be in perfect control of himself.
"Why do you act weak, when you are not?" Athir whispered.
"I’m sorry," he repeated.
For months she had called him Prey, but the name didn’t fit him at all now. If anything, he was a predator like her—the quiet kind that killed you before you knew they were a threat.
"Why did you come after me?" Athir asked. This was all going wrong; he should beg for his life or he should fight.
"The Father saw something in the fates, just a glimmer, so he sent me. It was my first mission."
"And you failed."
"Yes." He raised his head, and she stared into the face of the Father. "If it changes anything, I didn’t kill them, but I didn’t save them either."
Athir drew her sword. "None of this matters."
She attacked. She had planned his moves several steps ahead. First he would draw his sword, and she had to bet that he would be fast, so she needed to be faster. She swung at him, and her sword came around in a tight arc. Any moment now, he would stop her, and she was ready for any trick he might pull. Any moment now, he would react, even as the blade was almost at his neck.
The sharp tip of the sword bit into his throat even as she tried to pull it back, and the young champion dropped to his knees, his eyes wide and staring. He hadn’t moved an inch.
Athir threw her sword to the ground and caught him as he fell.
"What are you doing? Why didn’t you raise your sword?" she stammered.
The face of the Father faded, and she looked at a young boy with a round face and short blond hair, scarcely older than herself.
Athir screamed in frustration and pushed her hands onto the boy's neck, feeling heat pulse out under her palm.