Chapter 7 — Fear
“—and that’s how you know a rest has passed.” Soranth stared blankly at the familiar dark sky, a finger in the air tracing the outline of his chosen constellation in boredom. It was an oddly shaped conglomeration of bright stars that constantly shifted from blue to orange. He knew many others had chosen something similar to his, his mother having used it as part of a larger constellation she pieced together.
The twins had finally decided to lengthen their stay at Maraciel Castle permanently and Chulsa had been appointed their mentor to catch them up to an accepted level. He droned on, reviewing the basics of their time-keeping system to a fascinated Valda and Haraldr. Somehow, he had expected the younger brother to lose focus during their intensive studies but to Soranth’s surprise, Haraldr took constant delight in learning new things, proclaiming that each new subject was his favourite.
“When the group you choose has passed over from one side of the sky to another,” Chulsa continued, easily ignoring Soranth’s purposefully loud sigh. “That’s what we call a system. A system is made out of roughly 30 rests which is—”
“Four weeks!” Haraldr chimed.
“Which is—”
“One month!” Valda completed.
Soranth sighed once more, a large gusty breath that finally caught the attention of the twins.
“You should feel lucky you grew up with this stuff!” Haraldr exclaimed.
“But I learned all this years ago,” he said, unable to hold back the sulky tone in his voice.
“It couldn’t have been that long,” Valda scoffed.
He turned his head back to the sky again and answered in a bored tone, “I was probably your age when I learned how to tell the time.”
“What do you mean our age? We’re your age!” Haraldr protested.
“How old do you think I am? In human years, of course.”
“12.”
“13,” Valda chipped in. He shook his head to both answers.
“10?” Haraldr looked unsure.
“11,” his sister tried again.
“Wrong on all counts,” Soranth said triumphantly. “I should be around 30.”
They gave him a once-over, the siblings mirroring each other’s actions unconsciously.
Haraldr was quick to object, “But you’re the same height as me!”
Valda, on the other hand, took it as an invitation. “You look puny.”
The Prince sighed again. “Mother tells me I grow slowly. You’ll probably look twice as old as me by the time I look like an adolescent.” Silence fell over the trio as they processed Soranth’s casual statement. Chulsa folded his pincers against his armoured abdomen. The Prince pressed on now that he had their attention, “So what’s your story then? You can’t keep me in the dark forever! How long will you keep putting off my questions?”
The twins shared a guilty look. Valda spoke this time. “Alright then, what do you want to know?”
Soranth shot upright with wide, expectant eyes. Chulsa faded into the background, always present but never in sight. “You’ll tell me?”
She shrugged. “I suppose since we’re staying here...”
“Why’s your skin red? Why are you part rock? Who are your parents?” He hesitated at the last question, realising he might have overstepped an invisible boundary.
“Wow, you really don’t hold back.”
Sheepishly, Soranth scratched the back of his head and answered, “Mother’s still teaching me tact.”
“Well,” Valda said, cocking her head in a considering manner, “I’ll answer the first one. We have no idea. We woke up this way. You’re up,” she smacked her brother’s shoulder, the crack of rock against rock resounding through the clearing. Soranth winced, still unused to the sheer violence even the simplest of their actions carried.
Her twin glared back at her, rolling his shoulder before turning back to the Prince. “It’s really the same answer. We woke up this way.”
“What do you mean ‘woke up’?” Soranth’s eyebrows drew together.
They looked at each other again but this time their expressions ranged from confusion to indifference. “Well, just that. We opened our eyes and we were lying there in the rock somewhere in the Vermillion Plains.”
“Lying in the rock?” The Prince goggled at them.
“When you put it that way, it sounds unnatural,” Haraldr grumbled.
Valda simply looked confused. “Isn’t that how you were made?”
Soranth opened and closed his mouth several times. It was at that point when he realised, to his horror, that the conversation was quickly approaching dangerous territory. I’m too young to be giving someone else ‘the talk’! He panicked before applying one of the most common tactics he’d seen his mother use. “Not really but I’ll let Chulsa tell you more later. Does this mean you don’t know who made you?”
Thankfully, they accepted his quick diversion and Haraldr answered with a slight hint of disappointment. “No. But we didn’t have a lot of time before the monsters attacked us.”
“What monsters were they? What did they look like? How many were there?”
Haraldr eagerly burst into a vivid description of what looked incredibly similar to depictions Soranth had heard of the terrifying Slyrdion hound. The Prince gave them an impressed look at the end of Haraldr’s tale. “And you managed to escape?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Valda admitted, looking across to the crooked branches of the goldenglow tree. “We went in circles I think, we passed this strange place filled with yellow gas several times.”
“Yellow gas?” Soranth choked. “Yellow?” He repeated when they nodded. “You know that’s sulphur, right? It’s supposed to be toxic!”
Haraldr’s face crinkled in disbelief. “But I didn’t smell anything.”
“Neither did I,” she shrugged.
The Prince stared at them for several seconds. “Tell me, can you smell anything now?” He took a deep breath for himself, revelling in the faint traces of crushed eldercress blossoms that reminded him of his mother. The strong salty scent of Nahaliel River reminded him of memories spent diving in and out of its warm embrace while a moist, earthy undertone of turned soil grounded him in the feeling of home.
The younger twin turned to Valda, pursing his lips. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Me neither.”
“You can’t smell anything,” Soranth said incredulously. Then he leaned forward, a gleam of inquisitiveness in his bright green eyes. “What else?”
“We’re probably stronger than you,” Valda said teasingly.
Instead of rising to the bait, Soranth laughed. “Well, you’d better be if you’re going to be friends with me! Does this make you indestructible?” The last question was asked with a childish curiosity that belied his true age.
“Of course it does.” Haraldr puffed out his chest and then pouted when his sister smacked him once again.
“I suppose,” she corrected him rather grudgingly, “if there was something strong enough to crush stone, it would spell our end. But otherwise, we’d be quite hard to get rid of.”
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“Make sure she is well taken care of,” the Queen instructed, her mouth tightened in a grim line. Chulsa lowered his head in obeisance and turned to escort the distraught weasel-lizard hybrid.
“This way, Miss Amblecrown,” he gestured with one of his many pincers hanging down the side of his body. The Queen paced as the duo left, fruitlessly trying to give shape to her troubled thoughts. The news they had just received was more than troubling, it was devastating. Within the space of several rests, one of the few surviving species on the entire planet had been almost entirely wiped out.
Rasiel Amblecrown, the last survivor of the massacre, had been left in a ghost town where nothing moved except for her and the dying flickers of their homefires. She had made her way to Maraciel Castle, a journey that was rough enough for an entire group of well-supplied group of ambassadors and she’d had to do it alone with no aid, no supplies and a broken heart.
Queen Af couldn’t help but relate with the girl who had practically lost everything overnight. She knew the feeling well enough after the loss of her beloved but at least she’d had Chulsa and the promise of hope growing in her belly. Rasiel, after breaking down for the nth time in front of the Queen, looked so lost, so bereft. The Queen wished she could comfort the young girl but without any news from Soranth or the army, she too felt like joining her.
The past few rests have been entirely sleepless and far too long in her opinion. From the very conception of Maraciel till now, she had never been parted with her son for so long and the separation was taking its toll. Shadows fell across her cheekbones, emphasising dim green eyes. Her insomnia had reached the stage where it carried on while she was awake. Its constant drowsy presence ensured that whenever she tried to catch some sleep, it was akin to trying to catch starlight in cupped palms.
She worried. Constantly. This in turn led to Chulsa worrying over her and tailing closer than ever before. This would be the first time he allowed her out of his sight and even then, she knew he would return the moment Rasiel was settled in one of the many dilapidated rooms in the castle. A small smile traced her lips as she was reminded of Soranth’s complaints every time he was forced to shift bedrooms whenever his previous one was destroyed.
Then like one of the freezing gales that used to beleaguer Maraciel, the Queen was suddenly reminded of her son’s absence. She shook her head and allowed a soft sigh to escape. She couldn’t afford to think about her darling son battling at the front of the field, risking his life to save others. The moment he had spoken up during that fateful meeting with the Generals, she knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from leading the army personally.
He was just like his father in that regard—always curious, always determined.
Unbidden, a short, sweet memory of a much younger Soranth rose to the forefront of her mind. It was when he still had the soft downy curls that she always insisted on trimming (an ongoing argument that he had lately begun to win), cherub cheeks and bright jewel eyes that matched hers (which he still had, of course). His hand was still tiny enough that when she raised it against her own dainty palm, the tips of his chubby fingers barely reached hers, allowing slender hands to curl around his.
Af smiled to the silent throne room, the great magis mahogany tree her only witness as her expression finally lifted for the first time since her son left. She recalled the innocent words he had said to her before going to sleep, the way they tore at her heart now. “One day,” she remembered saying, “You’ll leave and break my heart—”
Along with his attempts at comforting her with quick protests of “I won’t ever break mama’s heart!” She pressed the same hand that had once lovingly held his to her chest as if it could stop the desperate palpitations of her heart.
Oh darling, a crystalline tear carved a path down her face, you already have.
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True to Rizoel’s words, the ashen grey bridge that spanned across an empty pit of darkness was the only connection visible for miles.
“I’ve never been this far out before,” Soranth mused from where he had perched at the cliff’s edge. In a similar position that they had echoed so many times back at the castle, Haraldr settled next to him, swinging his legs as his twin pressed her back against theirs. The only difference this time was that the drop would not be one even Haraldr would be able to return from.
Valda observed the hubbub of the army as they set up camp for the last time at the top of the cliff. Once they made their way down the steep path down the side of Honeycomb Valley, there would no longer be any place to set up camp in the open air. “They’re getting restless,” she observed before biting into the last starmelon they had brought with them, the longer journey eating more into their rations than they had expected.
“So are the Generals.” Soranth fiddled with the empty sheath that had previously housed two daggers attached to his right foot.
“Why do we even need them?” Haraldr complained, grimacing as he ran a hand through his black greasy hair. Soranth gave a sympathetic look, knowing exactly how he felt. Hygiene was hardly the most important consideration when one was going to war and until then, Soranth hadn’t realised how spoiled they’d been in Maraciel with its convenient rivers. “I mean, look at what happened already, they were barely any use.”
Valda snorted at his words but didn’t disagree, busying herself with licking the juicy pulp that dripped down her fingers. The Prince sighed and pulled his knee up to his chest so he could rest an elbow over it. “You know why we need them. You don’t win a war with strength, you win it with people.”
“Feeling philosophical today, Max?” Valda teased, lightly straightening her pet’s mane as it snuffled at the remainder of the fruit in her hands. She tossed the sliver of starmelon into the distance, sending the nagacougar sprinting after it. “That’s not how you truly feel.”
He barked a short derisive laugh. “You’re right.” He was never able to hide anything from her. “I hate it. I hate that I have to make them work together because they can’t seem to do it for themselves. I hate that they’re so stupid sometimes, I don’t know why I’m forced to lead people who don’t even want me to!” He sighed and hung his head, the vitriol draining out of his body.
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Valda turned to look at the back of his head while Haraldr stared down the abyss with a fierce glare. She gently prodded, “What else?”
In a quiet voice so low even Haraldr had to bend closer to hear it, Soranth whispered, “I feel like I’m failing them.”
His Lieutenant rotated fully so that she was facing his back and rested her forehead against his spine. Haraldr too reached out and placed his hand over Soranth’s knee. The Prince stared out across the desolate darkness of Mt. Zarphan, slowly relaxing every one of his tense and knotted muscles as he let the warmth of his companions seep in. For an unknown length of time, the trio sat there pressed against each other in a bid for comfort.
Finally with a start, Valda leaned back and held out a hand to them. “Come on, slowpokes. Time to hit the sack.”
When Soranth exited the tent after a full, rejuvenating sleep, he felt lighter than the previous few rests. He joined in with the soldiers, helping to take down the tent he had slept in as well as distributing freshly boiled water to the troops who had been on duty. The soldiers in question had gaped at him and accepted the offerings with profuse thanks. Camp was finally dismantled just as everyone finished first meal—a dry stick of cured frivan—and before long, it was time to make their way down the cliff.
The path was a rather steep descent. Everyone, including even the chemycus, had to lean back in order to keep their balance. It was wide enough for five people to walk abreast without any difficulty but Sablo had ordered rows of four soldiers just in case. Soranth, who’d been the last to don his armour, was right at the back of the army while his Lieutenants had gone on ahead.
The armour he finally got around to wearing, after endless nagging from Valda to at least change his torn undershirt, was polished silver. The segments of the breastplate were thin and lightweight yet durable under pressure. His arms were covered in a heavier iron mesh and the shoulder joints squealed each time he raised his arm. A belt carrying his scabbard and boomerang went around his waist along with the dagger attached to his normal black combat boots.
He was one of the last to join the soldiers marching down. The head of the army had only just passed the halfway point to the bridge. Along the walls of the cliffs they passed were several large holes in the red rock. These, Soranth assumed, were why it was called Honeycomb Valley which, now that he thought about it, was a ridiculously sweet name for such a doomed landscape.
The caves embedded in the rock walls were as deep and fathomless as the abyss, putting everyone who passed it on edge. Soranth found it perfectly understandable—he too would fear something that he couldn’t see coming. The rear of the army had finally reached a quarter way through, long neat rows of silver and gold fauns and chemycus marching side by side rather amiably.
Alizar, who’d been reinstated by Nathanael, was leading the army alongside Rizoel. Their familiar figures neared the three-quarter mark as Soranth brought up the rear with the other two Generals. He turned to Nathanael after a dragged-out silence and amiably stated, “They’re getting along really well, aren’t they?”
The chief grunted. He was still rather torn up about the loss of his warriors, a failure that he blamed on Cresil and himself. Soranth knew this just as he knew that the chemycus couldn’t keep holding such depressive thoughts close to his heart.
“We all wish it didn’t happen,” he said, looking straight ahead. “But it did. Now we have to pick up the pieces and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Nathanael shot him an angry look. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not asking you too,” Soranth said with a chuckle. “But I want to. So you listen.”
The General’s shoulders tensed but he recognised an order when he heard one. Sablo, who’d been walking slightly ahead, dropped back to join them.
“I should have been faster,” he said rather bluntly. “I should have thrown that spear quicker. I should have made Haraldr lead the teams instead. So many should-haves and ifs could have made the difference in saving twenty lives and preventing twenty more families from grieving.” Ignoring their sharp looks, he continued, “Generals, I know I don’t look my age but I know death.”
He met their eyes with a steady gaze, letting them see the darkness he’d witnessed over the years. He allowed them to see how much he truly cared for the people they’d lost, how he understood the pain of children having to grow up without a parent. But he also let them see his burning determination to see them through the war. He let them mull over the disparity in his desire to see his mother once more and yet to be here with his people as they fought for their kingdom.
Nathanael gave a small sniff of dismissal and turned away yet the relaxed muscles of his shoulders told Soranth that he understood the message he was trying to get across. Sablo gave the Prince a small smile, respect blooming anew in his eyes. Duty done, Soranth felt incredibly accomplished and satisfied with his place in the world.
Of course, that was when everything went downhill.
It all began with something so minor, it was almost ridiculous. As the rear of the army neared the midpoint, Soranth’s foot suddenly snagged on something. He looked down, assuming that it must have been an item dropped by a careless soldier yet what met his eyes was a twisted network of dead-looking twigs. It protruded from where the line of the path met with the vertical face of the cliff and had caught on the straps holding his dagger to his left foot.
He pulled at his leg, frowning when the branches refused to budge.
“What’s the hold-up?” Nathanael growled in annoyance, turning his head back just enough to glare at the Prince. Soranth had to withhold the stamp of anger at the General’s rudeness, even though he perfectly understood why the chemycus was so twitchy.
Therefore he replied with an apathetic wave of his hand and said, “Just got my foot stuck in something. Go ahead.”
The General grunted and trotted to catch up with Sablo. Sighing, he turned back to examine what had latched onto the sheath of the jewelled dagger. At a closer look, the tangle of branches began to look less like the wizened remains of a tree and more like barbed hooks in the general shape of a claw. Soranth paused, feeling a frisson of fear when he realised that yes, it did look like an inky claw of some sort, reaching out from the corner of the rock.
When it twitched, he stopped breathing.
When the hooks tightened around the bands tying the sheath of the dagger to his boot, he stopped moving.
When it became clear that the feelers were most definitely alive and not friendly, Soranth choked and staggered up. He seemed to have forgotten that the claw still had a tight grip on his weapon which in turn was attached to him. His entire body was leaning back, one foot still under him while the other was hovering in the air where the claw was still hanging on.
Panic clutched at his throat as Soranth’s breaths grew ragged with his efforts to pull his leg back. He heaved, pulling at the material of his newly donned armour and twisting his foot at the same time to try and get it to release his leg.
The black claw extended along with his efforts until it looked like he was almost pulling the creature out from the depths of the rock. The arm connected to the claw was long and sinewy like calcified bones with tendrils of muscle holding it all together. It was a shade darker than the sky, darker than the depths of Nahaliel River, darker than the blacks of pupils.
“Help,” he rasped but no one seemed to notice. The two Generals had gone on ahead—like he’d asked of them—, Valda had disappeared, most likely off to scout the many caves while Haraldr was as predicted, talking animatedly to a female faun further to the front. Soranth had felt fear many times before—fear of death, fear of disappointing his mother, fear of losing anyone precious. Those kinds of fear kept him up at night and chipped away at his consciousness when he was awake.
This type of fear, however, made him feel isolated even when hundreds of people were still in reach. It made him feel like death was inevitable—no like it was death. It made him careless. His latest attempt at pulling his leg somehow unbalanced him enough to trip, falling painfully on his right leg as his head collided with the sharp stone. The air in his lungs escaped in a great whoosh as black blurred the edges of his vision. He could feel waves of pain echo in his skull as the sudden laxness of his body finally gave the hand the leverage it was looking for.
It reeled him closer, pulling him as if he weighed nothing purely by the straps of his dagger. Soranth tried to reach out for something, anything but nothing was in reach. Instead, he could only register a threatening growl before the claw jerked, moving his entire leg as it did so. He tried to peel his eyelids back open, using sheer determination and willpower to see through the black spots dancing in his vision.
It was the nagacougar, the only one who heard his cry for help. Valda’s pet sank its canines into the bony limb attached to the claw and was swinging its head from side to side aggressively. Movement blurred out of the corner of his eyes. Soranth looked up to see his Lieutenants and the Generals darting towards him, notified by Clone Chulsa who was close at their heels.
The hand suddenly let go, drawing his attention back as his leg crashed down on the hard ground. Instead, the sharp claws slapped at the nagacougar’s snout, sending the helmet it was wearing flying in the other direction.
“PRINCE!” cried the yells in the distance as footsteps thundered closer.
Whiplash-quick, so quick that Soranth only had enough time to draw himself up on his elbows, the hand snapped back to his leg. He tried to dodge it but with an aim so precise, it should have been impossible considering the creature only consisted of an arm, the claw grabbed the side of his boot once again, dagger and all.
This time however, the straps that had drawn thin in the previous altercation didn’t survive for long. With a loud snap, the dagger was ripped off his boot and the hand withdrew, taking his dagger with it. Soranth looked up in time to see the familiar curve of his dagger disappearing into a black viscous puddle plastered against the corner of the rock.
His vision dimmed again as his head sank back to the ground, unable to hold its own weight. The first thing he managed to focus on was the amber necklace swinging off Haraldr’s neck as he leaned over to help him up. Valda and Haraldr had reached him before the slower Generals did, pulling him up and patting him down at the same time. He tried to slap their hands away and get a better glimpse of the black puddle but it was too late.
The creature was gone.
“It’s here,” he gasped with a bone-deep certainty, as he finally straightened the weak legs under him. “It’s here!”
“What’s here, Max?” Valda asked soothingly as the Generals hovered at the back in concern.
His lungs strained to match the wild beating of his heart but slowly, he managed to finally bring the thundering in his ears to an acceptable level. “I don’t know.”
Haraldr stepped back, still supporting his arm. “Is it the thing that had you?”
“No, yes,” the Prince said frantically as he whirled around, catching sight of the surrounding troops who were observing from a distance. His gaze slipped past their faces—some judging while others were openly worried—and traced the arc of the innocuous bridge. It landed on the other side on the lava-blackened grounds of Mt. Zarphan. “It’s much bigger than that. And it’s out there.”
They turned to follow his gaze, several soldiers catching on and prompting a wave of heads turning to face Mt. Zarphan. All of a sudden, an exclamation from the main body of the army was heard.
“Hey! Did you see that? The ground was moving!”
Earthquake was Soranth’s first thought. He wouldn’t know it but it was echoed by the people surrounding him. An outburst of uneasy murmurs broke out as a mix of soldiers disputed that they hadn’t seen anything and that the initial soldier had just been making it up.
“No, wait,” another distinctly female voice said. “I see it too!”
This time, all the eyes of the entire army shifted to examine the terrain opposite them. The ground was layered in a frothy chaos of hardened shells of air and lumpy black outcroppings. The last volcanic explosion had clearly resulted in enough lava to overflow down the side of Mt Zarphan in a forever-frozen waterfall of bulging bubbles and tar-like walls.
Then, just as a handful of soldiers shouted and swore up and down that they’d seen it move too, Soranth’s eyes finally picked out what his instincts had been telling him this whole time. The ground was moving… and it wasn’t because of an earthquake or slow-moving active lava.
Shadows were crawling the landscape like a plague. After catching sight of that single movement, it was as if his entire vision shifted and he could suddenly see a whole ocean of dark creatures inching slowly towards the bridge. Haraldr stumbled back as Valda gasped—they saw it too.
“This,” Nathanael’s grim voice said slowly as his fingers tightened to a white-knuckled grip around his spear, “is not good.”
Sablo, ever the optimist, didn’t lift his eyes from the damning scene. “At least they’re on the other side of the bridge.”
It was as if his words struck a chord in everyone else because the army suddenly burst into a frenzy of yelling and discordant conduct. Soranth’s mouth tightened as soldiers broke ranks and tried to turn back up the path, colliding with others and creating an almost impossible impasse.
The Generals stepped forward, futilely attempting to gain the attention of the panicked crowd. The Prince turned his head slightly to address the twins. “We need to find a way to stop them.”
Haraldr made a frustrated noise. “All we need to do is destroy that bridge, right?”
Soranth was about to nod when he suddenly recalled Nathanael’s words all the way from the beginning of their journey. It seemed like such a long time ago. “Ah, I don’t think it’s that easy.”
“Ridiculous,” Haraldr scoffed. He flexed his triceps and biceps, ignoring Valda’s gagging as he boasted, “These babies can crush anything.”
“I know you’re used to walking off a 100-metre fall,” Soranth explained patiently, “But this is a little different. Nathanael said it was the strongest material on Earth.”
“I’ll deal with it.” The younger twin straightened his shoulders determinedly but only managed to march several steps before his sister reached out and slapped the back of his head. “Hey!”
“Have you been listening or are these just for show?” She pulled on his ears, dragging him down slightly as he cringed. His gaudy necklace swung as he ducked down to escape her grasp. “The bridge is made out of the strongest material, little brother,” Valda hissed with vitriol yet her eyes betrayed her fear. “We aren’t exactly infallible, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Her brother’s jaw clenched. “Stop telling me what to do,” he said, stepping away. The soldiers were making an ungodly amount of noise, metal weapons and shrill voices shrieking in unison as they lost their nerve as a collective whole. The chaos was adding to the tension in the air and like fuel to a fire, Valda’s actions had served as Haraldr’s breaking point.
The shadows crawling over the terrain had already reached the grey, smooth surface of the bridge, breaching the frontier in a wake of obsidian. From their position halfway up the path, the creatures were intangible shapes of smoke and vapour that solidified into shifting forms resembling no living being Soranth had ever seen or heard of before. The horde managed to eat up the distance across the bridge in no time, reaching their side in what felt like a blink of an eye.
“Har, NO!” Valda yelled and Soranth’s gaze jumped back closer to home, only to realise one of his Lieutenants had vanished and the other was reaching out in the empty air.
“He’s gone into that?” Soranth said aghast, scanning the tumultuous riot of soldiers still trying to escape despite the Generals endless yelling for order. Forming a tight line at the front before the Generals was a group of loyal soldiers, desperately trying to hold the rest of their comrades back.
“Snookums, go,” Valda ordered, tight-lipped and slightly pale. Her nagacougar gave a soft chuff and melted into the mob.
“Hey,” he said, grabbing her hand as he noticed the slight tremble of her limbs. “What’s wrong? We’ll just go and get him back like always.”
“No,” she whispered, her eyes lifting to meet his. The warm brown of her irises now held a depth of trepidation that he’d never seen before in her eyes. “Something feels wrong this time.”
He didn’t know how to reply but even if he did, he wouldn’t have had the chance to say it. The clang of weapons resounded in the air, jack-knifing the tension in the air and in his bones. Down the descending path and right before the bridge between Mt Zarphan and the Vermillion Plains, the two armies clashed.
xxx
A Visitor’s Guide to Maraciel — by Queen Af
Since you’ve succeeded in scaring away your last two tutors, it has fallen to me to bring you up to speed on Maraciel’s political climate.
When King Eric passed away, the citizens of Maraciel turned to me for leadership. Although our kingdom today barely resembles that of any before the Sixth Ice Age, we’ve done our best to replicate the best of Earth’s dynasties using Chulsa’s astounding knowledge and stories that King Eric told me.
For example, the chemyci choose their strongest to be part of the Royal Guard who keep order throughout the kingdom. We have the fauns who prefer to democratically select their representative to be in charge of handling the kingdom’s administrative affairs. Sadly, the weasel-lizards hybrids—although they’re not as long lived as us—have decided to secede and—
Mother, can I please be excused from this? I’ve heard this all a million times before.
Then one more time shouldn’t make a difference, my darling. In fact, since you’re such an expert, why don’t you lead the lesson for today?
Oh, oh, I know what Max would say!
Go on, Haraldr.
Mother, I think it’s better if—
Easy. Weasel-lizards are pretentious, chemyci aren’t the sharpest and fauns can’t keep it in their pants.
…
I have never said that—
You did, you did!
Mother, I swear, I would never say anything like that—
Well. If that’s what you truly think then—
It’s not! I would never say that!
…if you would let me finish?
Sorry.
Now. While I’m sure those exact words have never left your lips—
They haven’t! … sorry.
Then Haraldr must have gotten that impression from somewhere else. And since you spend most of your waking hours together, you must be involved in it somehow. Now, based on that conclusion, what do you think I’m about to suggest to you, hmm?
… can I at least bring Haraldr with me?
Wait what?!
You may.
It’s got nothing to do with me! It’s your punishment! No! Sister, heeeeeeelp!
Well. Now that it’s just the two of us, how would you like a glass of freshly juiced starmelon while we watch the boys do their punishment—ahem, I mean exercises— in the courtyard?
Why I can’t think of anything I’d love to do more, Milady.