According to humans, her name was supposed to reinforce how beloved she was. How ironic. Suki Lamb was escorted to the dungeon by the man who brought her into this wretched world. Being dragged around was not surprising. What surprised her was that it was her father. Elliot only thought of her as a tool, so why should Suki call him her father? Suki was an eight-year-old Halfling with very short legs. Her long flesh coloured tail dragged behind her, sweeping clouds of dust and mildew into the air. Her tail was tipped with a tuft of raven hair that matched the colour of the hair growing from the top of her head. The buckles on her boots jangled with every step down into the cold and unforgiving darkness. Her long, pointed ears perked up, straining to hear if anyone or anything was sneaking up on her. Suki jogged to keep up with her human father, but not too fast or else she would trip on the blue cloak that her mother swaddled her in before she perished. Without her people’s Conduit to sustain her, her mother experienced complications while giving birth. As a result, Madeline perished, imprisoned in the tower that Elliot had built for her. Suki was not the smartest by any means, but that was the tragic explanation she pieced together by eavesdropping on her father’s associates.
Suki could not see the walls due to the darkness, stone brick walls surrounded her, supporting a stupidly high ceiling that disappeared into the darkness. The stone was from another province. Chamomknott had no stone to carve castles from. Chamomknott offered nothing but mud, water and reeds. Her boots stomped over the dusty stone floor or dirt compacted by so many feet over the years that it felt like stone. Racks of taxidermy, feathered wings adorned the walls. There were hundreds of wings that once belonged to adults like her father and children like her. The racks of taxidermy wings were punctuated by gothic, metal sconces occupied with candles that could be lit manually with oil, stones or mana. The gothic sconces looked more deadly than most of the weapons she had ever trained with. The narrowness of the hallway meant that she could not block out the stench of oils and waxes used to preserve the wings mixing with burning candle wicks. Suki gagged on the stench. Suki would have been more terrified, if this was not the same abuse that she woke up to every day.
Suki’s father was, as usual, too drunk to acknowledge his daughter. Elliot would not notice if she took the wrong turn and was never seen again. Elliot had long, greasy brown tangles of hair. An eyepatch covered one half of his face. His skin was gaunt, pale, and thinly stretched over his skull, fingers, and any visible part of his body. Elliot’s clothes were ragged despite the fortune he accumulated through his associates. He was too cowardly to take things himself. He knew he was a powerless human amongst the fairy folk. His fingers curled around the neck of a glass bottle. He looked like a walking corpse as he shuffled ahead of her. He smelled like a corpse from all the alcohol he consumed. Suki had no idea what was hidden behind Elliot’s eyepatch.
When Suki and Elliot turned into a dungeon with a pair of siege-proof wooden doors with horizontal metal supports, they were facing the only feature in the barren room. A large cauldron that briefly illuminated the room whenever another ingredient was added. An adult man could hide while standing up in the cauldron. There was also a living figure in the room with his back to them. An angel. The angel did not look any different to a human, aside from his feathered wings that were as emotive as a face. And the fact that fairies of their power level were always conventionally attractive. Raphael had the body of an adonis beneath his inky black robes. The upper half of his face was obscured by a mask. His wings were green like Peristone. Not a solid green, but a speckled with dark and light hues like the shadows dancing over his face.
Suki HATED this fairy more than her father and the other awful fairy who was keeping her trapped here until they could unleash Suki on the world. She already wanted to run away until she ran out of breath, but she was reminded of the darkness and the labyrinth of hallways between her, the light and safety. Unlike her father, who ignored the small child, Raphael handed the puzzled eight-year-old a vial of blood that was not human. The blood was thick and oddly coloured. It smelled like the rainbow of other angels’ wings decorating the gruesome entrance hallway.
Suki wrinkled her nose the moment that their fingers brushed. Raphael Tarzali was an angel who liked to experiment on the living and the dead. He was the last fairy who should have been handling blood. He was the reason that angels were so rare. Especially the pure descendants of Helga who hid in Equinox with all of their dumb and boring books. Raphael was the angel who conquered Equinox all of those years ago and ripped off all their wings to take back to Chamomknott as trophies and potion ingredients. Pure angels, like those born in Equinox, could not live without their wings. Suki refused to pay attention to books and history lessons, but it was a bloody conflict. She liked war and violence.
“This is hard to come by. Don’t waste it.” Raphael scowled with a look that made her blood run cold. If Suki messed this up, she would end up as an ingredient in whatever he was making.
“Shouldn’t someone else do this? It’s what maids are for. To measure shit.”
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“You need to learn this skill too. Your mother was a master of potions.”
“If she was so good, why don’t you ask her for help. Oh wait. You can’t. She’s dead!”
Raphael ignored her as he rummaged for the next ingredient.
“I get it! She was sooo good at everything. I’m nothing like her!” Suki rolled her eyes.
Raphael chuckled with a mixture of amusement and irritation.
“Indeed. She knew not to speak out of turn.”
“She was weak! That’s why she’s dead.” Suki raised the vial and swirled it. “What’s this for?”
“You wouldn’t understand my genius.”
“I don’t care about you, idiot. I asked a simple question. I don’t need you to lecture me.”
Suki tilted the glass vial until liquid dribbled out. The mixture in the cauldron frothed upon contact. The child leaned in closer. The cauldron was the only source of light in the room. The light danced off the shelves of glass jars, glass vials, dusty old tomes, and cardboard boxes.
“Uh…is it supposed to do this?”
As soon as the last syllable tumbled from her lips, the mixture exploded. Blasting her backwards. She cried out as she smashed into the wall. Glass showered down. Her pale skin was protected by her blue cloak. Flames billowed from the cauldron, licking the roof. Tinting the room in a pulsating glow that Suki had seen only in Elemental Stones. She scrambled away, shielding her face with her hands as bottles and wooden boxes were thrown around the room.
***
Raphael waved his Magi to calm the volatile mixture. Something wet, warm, and sticky trickled down the child’s face. She sat up, reached up and wiped at the liquid with her hand. Her fingers stuck together, coated in a layer of her own blood. The Halfling peered into the reflections of vials stored on the shelf. The explosion had cracked the glass vials and disfigured her face. Suki covered her mangled face with both hands. Raphael noticed and sighed. He called for a maid so he could finish his work. The angel cut his wrist with the blade of his Magi. He flicked his blood into the cauldron. The cauldron did not explode this time, much to Suki’s disappointment.
The eight-year-old could not see the maid by the time she arrived to heal Suki’s injuries. Suki’s eyes might have swollen shut, but at least the throbbing in her head faded to be less annoying than all of the lectures she got from Raphael about how she would never live up to his expectations if she continued to fail with any method of execution that was more subtle than a battle-axe, spiked mace or a two-handed hammer to the face. Which was why Raphael spent so much time and resources on a backup plan. He made no effort to conceal his disappointment.
By the time the maid was finished applying first aid, Suki was late for her next lesson with the final object of her personal vendetta. Her father’s other twisted associate. A mysterious Silver Tongue. Suki did not have as much to do with him as the angel or her father so Phillip Tranter was an enigma. He tried to teach her how to be a respectable lady in society beyond this dreadful castle, but she refused. Unlike Raphael Tarzali, who would shout, kick, hit and slash at her, Phillip never raised his voice or his fist at Suki. Even when she splashed boiling tea in his face and threatened to slit his throat with her Magi. Phillip seemed like a puppet master with an ulterior motive. He did not have an ego or kill count like Rapahel. Or lust and grief like her father.
On an ordinary day, Suki would have been punished for tardiness, but no one came. She assumed that her father was too drunk and his friends too preoccupied. It was easy for her to forget that they had their own lives when they were not training her. Suki forced herself out of bed and over a full body mirror. All of the furniture in this dreadful room was once given to her mother in a futile attempt to keep her alive.The black and white chequered tile floor. The gothic chandelier dangling from the ceiling, adorned with hundreds of half melted candles. It shared the same designer as the sconces down in the dungeon. She thought about climbing out of the window more than once, but just as many times she realized that if she managed to break through the bars on the windows, she then had a long fall down to the ground. If the fall did not kill her, wading out into the swamp enclosing this castle would. Leaving her to die from drowning, starvation or Will-O-Wisps.There was only one thing stopping those balls of light from invading the castle through cracks in the stone and mortar. Late at night a female voice sang hymns. Suki wondered if it was her mother’s spirit keeping her alive long enough to escape.
An enormous timber bookshelf gathered dust by the window. Suki never read books. Warriors did not read. Two beds. Two nightstands. One nightstand was hers. She used it to hide the food she stole from the kitchen. Two of those creepy mannequins her father collected stood either side of the door, dressed in matching dresses and bonnets, except that one was dressed in pink and the other in blue. She spent many nights staring at them from her bed. So many nights that she noticed that her clothes, except for her cloak, matched the mannequin in blue. Was the pink one supposed to resemble her mother? Nobody knew what Silver Tongue like her mother looked like due to the fact they were surrounded by blinding light. A light that faded if they were separated from their homes for too long. Fading until they died like pitiful humans. Suki stared into the mirror and picked at the bandages on her face. Why did it look like she took several claws to the face? Suddenly, the idea of something hiding in the cauldron was not a stupid idea. The explosion had burned her hair so haphazardly that she looked half bald. Suki was unsure on the specifics of mana. She could not use mana, even if it would solve all of her problems.
The Halfling realized that she would be left with a large, for an eight-year-old’s face, offensive scar over her blue eyes. Offensive because her father wanted her to look like her mother. Madeline did not have any scars from what she learned from her father, Raphael and Phillip. Suki hoped the scar would look cool enough to be worth the pain.