~ Episode Twenty-Three ~

Weaving a Story:

A Lucid Theater For the Mind’s Eye

Eri awoke to the feeling of her body being swayed. As she roused, there was the sound of crunching leaves and twigs in her ears. The sound of clinking steel and flexing leather. The sound of a staff’s butt striking the stony earth. The puff of an old man’s gasps, struggling to keep up with those so young around him.

There was the smell of the woods, too – the purest she had ever smelled them before, with the richness of cedar and pine, the bitterness of the soil and bark. Somewhere above, a bird twittered in mid-flight.

Eri jerked her head up to find the bird – but it was already long gone, never to be seen again. There was only the breach in the backwards-moving treetops above her now, where the sky smiled down. Such a blue sky – the bluest sky she had ever seen, with cotton-candy clouds that looked good enough to sleep on.

“Ohh, she’s awake!”

Eri’s attention fell to meet the adoration of a woman with long-pointed ears and flowing dandelion hair. The warmth in the woman’s features broke into pure radiance as soon as Eri had acknowledged her. She was Lakmir, an Elf of the Highlands – the last of her kind.

A troupe of warriors and seers walked alongside Lakmir: the mercenary Obiere Laroche and psychic healer Relina Weiss to her right. Sea-faring minstrel Faran Coyne and war-princess Arissa Lockhart, to her left – with Father Eric Lodoss, the Sufocus Family priest, bringing up the rear.

Eri knew these people.

She loved these people.

These people were her world – and she was theirs.

There was one other person, too. The person who caused Eri to sway the way she did, rolled the forest on a backwards-set track the way it did. The person who carried her in a pack over his shoulders this whole time – her brother.

“Prince Jarem?” Impulsivity guided Lakmir to speak up, her summery gaze an unbreakable wonder for Eri. “Um, might I hold her awhile?”

“What?” The sight of her and the others swung away from Eri to give way to the wooded path she and her brother’s comrades trekked today.

“If – if it’s all right,” Lakmir said. “I would truly cherish to hold her awhile.”

Jarem hesitated. “…I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Oh, come on, Sufocus.” Obiere’s disdain for him sounded over the hiss of the forest. “What’s the worst that can happen? It’s Lakmir.”

Jarem scoffed. “You’re seriously asking that, Obiere? Exactly—It’s Lakmir.”

The world twirled back around, leveling Eri face-to-face with the Elf a second time; she had started to fall behind the others on heavy steps, her chin dipped, eyes quivering sadness. “…If paying tribute to my Goddess is forbidden, then why am I here?”

Relina gave a sympathetic squeeze to Lakmir’s shoulder and stepped up to fill the void.

“Prince Jarem, Lakmir may be nothing more than a Kenah’dai to you, but she is not a threat to any of us. This war is hers, just as much as it is ours – you know that. What does she have to gain from betraying us? She has nothing else, nowhere else. She is exactly where she wants and needs to be. Why is this such an issue for you?” Relina’s glare broke to meet Eri’s gaze, considering her. “Lady Terra adores her – is the trust of a child not enough?”

“Especially that child,” mumbled Faran in mid-stride. “For Poseidon’s sake, it’s just a snuggle, Jarem.”

Princess Arissa agreed. “Who doesn’t like a good snuggle?”

“I sure do,” said Obiere. “So long as I’m not overcharged for it.”

The anger in Relina’s face flushed into an involuntary laugh. She pressed a hand to her lips, trying to hide the blush in her cheeks. “Oh, Obiere, you’re awful…”

He flashed her a smirk. “I’m honest. That a problem?”

Father Lodoss grunted indignation at the lot of them, doing his best to keep up with their strides. “Lord, forgive them.”

Jarem sighed. “Fine. It’s about time we make camp, anyhow – but I’m watching you, Monster. The moment you try something, the Elves will be extinct. Understand?”

He slowed, and the Star Warriors came to rest for a time.

Lakmir scuttled closer to Eri, bright-eyed and giggling, and scooped her little bundled body from within the pack over Jarem’s shoulders. “Ohh – Lady Terra! My, you are just too precious!!”

Eri let herself be carried off by the Elf, trilling with delight.

Obiere sent a knowing nudge against Relina’s side. She was leaned against her staff, gazing sleepy-eyed at the sight of Lakmir doting over Eri with all the love in the world where they snuggled together on a tree stump. Father Lodoss sat on a rock beside her, scribbling away in his grimoire. Beyond them, Faran plopped down with a grunt beneath a tree and began to flute a nautical favorite.

Relina sighed. “A priestess can only dream, Obie.”

A longing palm fell against her belly.

“One day,” Obiere promised her. “If this war ends.”

“If there’s anyone left alive, after it,” she murmured, lingering on Eri. “So much oblivion – over a three-month-old…”

Shf-shf-shf-shf…

Faran looked up from his pipes. “What’s that sound?”

It was coming from the treetops. The leaves and branches rustled to life – like the whole forest was stretching ready to greet them, like treants.

Shf-shf-shf-shf…

“Ahead—” Arissa nodded their attention up the road from where she and Jarem cooked everyone’s lunch. “—Who’s that?”

Two cloaked figures had appeared in the road where sunrays spilled into the woods from the break in the shade. They considered the Star Warriors with arms crossed, almost as though having waited for their arrival.

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“Border patrol?” asked Faran.

“You really don’t dock much on land, do you,” Obiere grunted. “That’s no border patrol. Grip your money bags, friends.”

Arissa glided a gauntlet over her sheathed sword and broke away from Jarem’s side. “I’ll scout for others. I’m in no mood to be robbed today.”

“Arissa, don’t—!” Jarem commanded her.

But she was already gone, a whispering rustle in the brush.

“Sufocus, I got a bad feeling about this.” Obiere notched his composite bow ready, looked to Relina for psychic guidance. She met his steely gaze with one of her own and nodded with grave intuitiveness.

The sunlight shifted through the trees, guided by the overhead cloud cover, revealing the figures’ identities.

The first was a court jester in a grinning porcelain mask, enveloped in a hooded cloak that dripped an impossible sight of roving stars and galaxies. A pair of yellow-glowing orbs leered at the Star Warriors within the darkness of his mask’s eye-slits.

Beside him was a woman, who tilted back her hood to reveal herself hairless and clover-skinned. Two curling horns pointed towards the Star Warriors alongside a stare of pitch-black eyes, marked only by a pair of radiant quill-dots for pupils.

“They’re Kenah’dai!” Jarem realized. He grabbed for where his war hammer rested against a tree.

“Not just any Kenah’dai,” Father Lodoss warned them. “I know those two! Spade and Ghetta – Monsters of Illusion and Dominion. The Black King’s own First Guard!”

“First Guard? What are they doing here?!” asked Faran on choked words. He rose to a stand, plucking his trident from the earth.

“What do you think?” Obiere swore, took steps backwards with Relina to form a protection around Lakmir and Eri, and Father Lodoss. He drew his bowstring tight.

The Black King’s First Guard remained in place awhile as the leaves rustled, birds chirped and sang, woodpeckers drilled. They gauged the Star Warriors’ guard over a coveted infant prize.

Then, the porcelain-faced jester spoke: “Ghetta, darling.”

“Yes, my love.” The clover-skinned woman stepped forward, vanished into thin air.

The Star Warriors jerked alert, surprised by the suddenness of the act.

Faran’s grip on his trident faltered. “Where’d she go?”

“Everybody, you know what to do!” roared Jarem at his companions. “Protect Terra at all costs!”

Shf-shf-shf-shf…

…Shf-shf-shf-shf…

The trees shimmered to life again around them.

Eri felt Lakmir’s protective clutch nestle her into flowing dandelion locks. She whined in slight protest, but the Elf’s voice on a summer-sweet lullaby soothed her in an instant.

“…Prince Jarem, I can sense more,” Lakmir admitted. “Others – of my kind.”

Lodoss, Relina, Faran, and Obiere shot her looks of confusion, alarm.

“Elves?” Faran asked, hopeful.

Lakmir shook her head, no. “Not Elves. But—”

Just then, a flood of leafy-skinned humanoids descended the treetops on fingers made of thorn-wrapped vines. They were men, women, children – all unclothed with hair the color of lilacs, eyes that of daffodils – more Kenah’dai.

“Herbions!” declared Father Lodoss. “It’s an ambush!!”

Obiere grunted, quickly counting heads. “Fucking knew it.”

Jarem threw a glare at Lakmir over-shoulder. “Is this your doing?!”

“W – what?” The Elfin Monster stumbled backwards on shocked steps as Eri nestled dozily against her.

“Give me back my sister, now!”

Just then, the air between the Star Warriors suddenly rippled like water. Ghetta, the Monster of Dominion, reappeared between them all out of the din with claws diving for Eri. “The Devil Goddess is mine!!”

“Not if I can help it!” Arissa shot down from the treetops overhead. Doing so, she summoned the essence of the forest around her. “Spirits of the Woods! Answer my call!--Yggdrasil's Wrath!!”

A sheen of leaves detached from their branches, fluttering around her on strong gusts. The warrior princess descended the clearing with her sword drawn, glaring into the radiant quill-dots of Ghetta’s pitch-black eyes.

Hate flowed through Arissa, and the leaves around her reacted accordingly. They stiffened in an instant and rained down upon Ghetta like a hail of arrows.

But Ghetta grinned up at her – and warbled out of existence, without Eri, before the ground ruptured from a devastating attack that dismembered and trisected whatever Herbions were caught in the blast. Arissa landed cleanly on steel heels, brought her sword up in a defensive stance, growling. “Dammit!”

“Father Lodoss! Prince Jarem! We must leave this place at once!” Lakmir turned on a heel with Eri cupped against her shoulder. “Please, we must fall back!!”

But then the porcelain-faced jester appeared before her in the distance – Spade, the Monster of Illusion. He regarded Lakmir with a grinning, downturned glare, what looked like a handful of playing cards gripped between the digits of his pale claws.

“Prepare for your extinction, pestilence!” Spade threw back his galaxy-dripping cloak and, with a winding arm, threw the cards like razor-thin daggers. “—Royal Flush!!”

In a trailing crimson flash, the cards all struck Lakmir, lacerating her arms and legs, her face – they lanced right through her cape and hide armor like knives through warmed butter. She collapsed to the dirt with a yelp, Eri still bundled in her arms.

“Lakmir!!” Faran screamed.

“Protect the Child of Destiny!” Father Lodoss’ voice echoed on the hiss of leaves, the clash of combat, somewhere nearby. He stumbled into Faran’s view, wrestled Eri out of Lakmir’s wilting grasp, and hobbled away without even a moment to consider his dying comrade.

“Cherub's Kiss!!” A radiant glow suddenly gusted over the Elf, lasting a moment until her wounds became healed, seamless. She exhaled a breath of life renewed and pushed up onto her arms, retching. Beyond her, Relina lowered a palm, breathless from the magical energy depleted to summon the act. She nodded a gasping, sweat-dotted, reassurance to Faran.

With a nod of his own, Faran charged in to help Lakmir to her feet. Neptune's Barrier!!” In an instant, a bubble of ethereal protection enveloped them both before the Herbions could swarm them. He threw a scowl Lodoss’ way. “Damn him…”

Jarem splattered one of the Herbions’ heads against a tree with his hammer, turned around in time to spy a second leaping at him from the branches. "Tongue of Salamander!!” He outstretched a glove and, with a single spark from his fingertips, immolated his attacker into fiery ash motes on the wind.

“There’s too many!” Obiere shot the last of his arrows, tossed away his bow, and unsheathed a dagger to use against an oncoming swarm. “Sufocus! We’re trapped!”

The forest path warbled before Father Lodoss as he fled from combat with Eri in his arms. In an instant, Ghetta appeared grinning from the folds of thin air – her claws ready.

“Good to see you again – traitor.”

With a slashing uppercut across the old priest’s face, the Monster of Dominion vanished with Eri in her embrace. The pair rippled back into existence beside her counterpart, Spade.

Eri craned her head, puffing confusion, and found the people she loved huddled together, cowering helplessly, with all eyes on her. Father Lodoss struggled to a stand in the distance, cupping his gushing face. Around the Star Warriors, what remained of the Herbions ascended back into the treetops, as silent as they’d laid siege.

The battle was over.

The prophecy for the Kenah’dai would commence.

“Let my sister go!” Jarem cried out. “Tongue of—”

“No, you fool!” Obiere tackled him to the ground. “You’ll hit her!”

“Spade, stand down!” Arissa drew towards the Monster of Illusion on slow, civil, steps. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Things don’t have to be this way!” – She tossed her blade aside to prove it. – “Lady Terra is our savior, too!”

“What a foolish thing to say to me, Princess of Demoria,” said Spade. “Look at you. The heiress of a kingdom forged in battle. You are a warrior-ruler, begging me for truce?! How pathetic. Ghetta, my love – take us away from here.”

“No!” Jarem broke free of Obiere’s clutches, stumbling towards Eri, screaming for her. A desperate glove stretched out at his sister – copper eyes wide with horror as her fate as the Devil Goddess became realized. “No—Let her go!!”

“Star Warriors! – If you wish to fulfill what is spiritually-contracted of us all, then you know what must be done next.” A deep-echoing chuckle resonated from behind Spade’s frozen, porcelain, grin. “The Cathedral of Lions awaits.”

“No—Terra!! – TERRAAA!!!!”