It is with unabashed mirth that, as the Council teeters on treason, I scribble a chronicle of our ruin.

—FROM “MELANCHOLY” BY SWORD SAINT HILDE OF POTIRI.

“Show yourself—I am alone,” said a cloaked female to a smother of darkness that her glass lantern’s white light could not abate.

“Are you indecent?” she asked, lowering her gaze and pulling a glass balisong from her robes. “Protecting a young maiden’s honour is the least of your concerns, freeman.”

She sauntered along the jail cell, her balisong’s blade whistling through the dark as she jostled it in sardonic motions. Every few steps, she caught it with practised ease, humming in a delightful contralto all the while.

“Elvenman,” a deep baritone drawled from the darkness. “I remember a young maiden: Voreiosian—demure, soft-spoken… traditionalist. Pierced her ears to please her Notosian betrothed, yet slept on straw in her Dytikan slaveboy’s barn on nights the pirate whispered his sweet sea shanties to her sisters.”

“Do not speak of him!” the female said.

In a swift motion, she struck her balisong’s blade into the cell’s bars with such might that the blade frisked out of her grip as fast as the sparks flew.

The jail cell’s runes shimmered and hummed altogether in a dreary concerto as her balisong skittered, in a fury of sparks, across a glass-tiled floor marred by streaks of dried blood—maggots squirming in grout lines.

In her scurry, the female’s hood fell, revealing a gaunt face almost betrayed by the striking depth of her ocean eyes. She stepped back, took a deep breath, and caressed one of many earrings on her long, pointed ears. She smiled as she pulled her silver hair over them.

“I forgot how terrible your High Elven is with that slavish Skotadian accent. It’s surprising how little has changed in 800 years—your people are still free, too—if only on parchment.”

She walked toward the cell, sneaking her glass lantern through the bars. She held the long handle up to its tip. Her free hand felt the darkness for the balisong. She concentrated the pale light in a corner of the cell from where the voice came, but the darkness would not relent.

“It has only been eight centuries, old friend; I still curse your name on nights I cannot get it up,” the elvenman said.

“With Neronian Squids now extinct? I do not see that changing for a while yet,” she laughed.

“Extinct? Impossible! Spearing only one of the fantastic beasts sank a Metallonian undersea battleship. Have the pirates dulled your sense of humour, Syrin?”

“Oooh, interested in this, are we?” Syrin asked, adopting a girlish tone as she leaned in closer and whispered, “Well, someone may have revealed to a certain Flogan merchant—for a fair share of black gold, mind you—that the squid’s ink was more useful as an aphrodisiac, of all things! My, Latham, who would have thought to try that?”

“You did not! Every elvenman in the realms must have lost his mind for the suckers!”

Both elves laughed, and the darkness stirred. Then, Latham asked, “What brought you down here, Syrin? Why now?”

A familiar silence lingered—it wasn’t an unpleasant one, as silences went. Syrin abandoned the idea of finding her butterfly knife. “Oh,” she mouthed, wide-eyed as she hugged her knees—she hadn’t done that in a long while.

The elvenwoman smiled, then eased her back against the glass bars of the jail cell. There was an implicit secret in the air—one either elf was happy with, shared or not. How long had it been since both elves were in company they could talk freely with? Another secret—one for a different day.

“Hjordis is to walk the Elven Way soon,” said Syrin. “For nine years, I carried her. When she was but a century old and spoke her first words, it did not bring me to tears—I felt only relief that the ordeal was over. She would live, and I did not, as mothers do, hold my arms out when she took her first steps two centuries later. Why is that?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Because her first words were garbled slobber, and you knew she could walk well enough on her own, for she was yours,” said Latham as chains rattled in the dark.

“So others have said,” Syrin replied. “But you all miss what is crucial—or won’t utter it to spare me: I do not love her… and it breaks my heart.”

“It takes time for the bond to grow; give it a few more centuries. When it does, you will feel what all mothers do.”

“My mother never felt it. Remind me again, how many elves have you birthed?”

“Fair. But do stay away from those tomes you have been reading; they will stale your mind with the ideas of men,” said Latham. “And it cannot be all that bad—you visit this wretched place in Hjordis’s name, after all. Live and love in your own time, Syrin.”

“Only because I would have wanted my mother to do as much for me,” said Syrin, sighing. “Our eyes meet, and I see only my daughter’s flaws; a sword that needs much tempering. It’s a sordid taste in my mouth, how much she takes after him.”

“Does the pirate spoil her?” asked Latham.

Syrin scoffed. “Too much, I fear. He still rides Colossal Jellyfish with her in the summer. I’m certain he hoped she would be a natural Walker of Water, but that was not to be. I knew the moment she picked up the glass blade—hers would be a long and painful Path.”

“Did the lightning fruit strike so far from the storm cloud?” asked Latham.

“Worse! Anemos may have whisked it away to Fos knows where.”

“I think that is a good thing; I’d sooner dread you to be the second coming of your mother!”

“You belittle me, Latham,” said Syrin, knitting her brow. “I am not very fond of my daughter, but even if she were a prodigious Walker of Glass greater than I, by the Sword Saints, I would not despise Hjordis.”

“Who was it that said, ‘I can cut through anything because I swung my blade at it all until I could’?” asked Latham.

Deeper in the dungeon, a male voice shrieked with palpable horror. Syrin winced, well aware of what agony her sisters were inflicting upon him. She cleared her throat, saying:

“The Sword Saint Hilde.”

Syrin sneered over her shoulder. “Hjordis said those exact words to me with tears in her eyes when I slighted her swordplay. I warned her gazing at glass sculptures too long or reading the words of dead elves did no one any good.”

“You’re too harsh on her; she is but a child.”

“Am I? Even the Great Hilde ‘swung her blade at it all.’ Hjordis cannot do that trapped in the insipid politics of these unchanging high walls,” said Syrin. “She needs battles, not duels—where yielding means death—only that will deepen her attunement with The Way.”

“You could lose her.”

“So, walk with her, Latham—be her Pilgrim. I cannot trust any other with this.”

Chains rattled in the dark as Latham chuckled. “The insipid politics of these unchanging high walls have changed you, old friend,” he said, his voice trembling. “You say you trust me? Well, I lost my trust in you when I found myself chained behind these bars—I wept as you beheaded our allies at your mother’s behest, Syrin, when it was you who—”

“Rana is alive, Latham,” said Syrin, slipping a glass shard emblazoned with an image of a dark-haired elvenwoman through the bars. “She sent this herself, along with the heads of three of our finest Kentrikosi spies and a diplomat’s daughter. It is a proper mess.”

First, a dreary silence; then, it happened all at once: sparks flew as chains rattled with such ferocity that the dungeon trembled. Runes of multiple jail cells on that floor shimmered and twanged. Then, a darkness so vile swallowed it all—the runes, the light of Syrin’s lantern, the sound of her own breathing… even her racing heart.

It is all tricks as long as he is behind the bars, she thought.

Until… wet and sloppy, something licked the back of her neck; it was putrid. Syrin couldn’t see it, but she knew all too well what it was:

A Creature of the Dark! Can Latham summon one out here? Of course he can, she thought, as she willed an updraft, fanning a searing heat that forged a glass blade in her left hand. Syrin winced as it charred her flesh. Should I cut it down? No… he needs a show of trust.

She let go of the blade, still red with heat. The deranged creature’s putrid drool trickled down her spine, making her skin prickle; its hideous minions hounded her, and it took all her willpower not to cut the fiends down then and there.

Finally, a clawed hand of pure darkness writhed at her neck, drawing blood.

“Do not speak that wench’s name in my presence, Syrin,” Latham growled. “Do you forget she trained me to go mad for the blood of one foolish enough to utter it?”

Syrin grinned. “Does she haunt your nightmares still? Oh, move on already, Latham—her Way no longer lingers on either of us. Only the scars remain. They’re unsightly, yes, but you can learn to ignore them, as I have,” she said. “Killing her now does us no good. Resist the urge—remember, she alone can lead us to Fos. We need her alive to end this madness once and for all; it has gone on long enough.”

The darkness waned, if only a little, revealing a tall, haggard elvenman with dark hair and darker, golden-flaked eyes, standing naked and bound in chains in the jail cell. Their eyes met, and Syrin smiled.

“Was any of this about Hjordis at all?” Latham asked, sighing as Syrin’s smile widened. “Fine. I’ll walk the Elven Way if I must. Tell me where the wench is.”