[Blink]

I flash through the air and materialize on top of the beam just above the Glenmaidens, the pads of my paws touching down gentle as a baby’s touch.

Now we’re Lightborn…ing.

And just as I’m feeling good about myself, my ears now perk up. The the voice of Myrathellon pierces through them:

“I won’t do it!”

She’s shouting at them while still kneeling beneath the lip of the dais, head bowed in respect while her mouth barks her dissent.

One of the older Glenmaidens replies in an ice-cold tone: “The Word of the Mistress is sacrosanct in this matter. Unless you wish to speak with her directly?”

“Would that she would listen.” Myrathellon growls back.

“You knew this would be the outcome,” another Glenmaiden replies. Softer. More measured. “You must set your honor aside for the good of the Sisterhood.”

“Or,” another, shriller voice adds. “Would you rather see the rest of us fall?”

Myrathellon’s reply is tinged with quiet sorrow.

“And what do we have left when we abandon our honor?” she asks them, looking up at them all and fixing them with her weary eyes. “Nothing but base existence.”

“Existence is preferable to extinction,” the Elder one replies.

“Our existence is a prison,” Myrathellon retorts, rounding on the Elder. “And now you would make it a monument to treachery. The outside world will never forget –“

“The eagle cares not for the opinion of the worms,” the Elder responds, cooly cutting through her complaints.

“Even a worm,” Myrathellon murmurs. “Can grow strong.”

The other Glenmaidens all share a look, whispers passing between them that I can’t hear. Then, finally, the Elder speaks again:

“You have always been the Mistress’ favored instrument, Sister Myrathellon. But you have never understood the patterns written in time. You have not lived long enough to understand them.”

Myrathellon bows her head in shame.

But I see her fist clench down there, unbeknownst to the other Elves. You maybe don’t think anyone can see it, Master, but I can. You ain’t just taking this sitting down…

“But search your recent memories,” another Glenmaiden continues. “Do you not remember how the last Lightborn came with the demands of war on his lips? Do you remember the blood of the Mistress that glistened on his blade when he came to us? Do you remember the screams, how you tried to resist, how we failed and had to watch our Sisters be dragged off to die?”

“Of course I do,” Myrathellon says with sorrow.

“Then you will do as the Mistress commands or meet the same fate as your Master.”

Silence reigns after this statement which I can’t help but think was really just a barely veiled threat. Hell if I know what’s happening here, but I know Myrathellon doesn’t like it. And if she doesn’t like it, that means its probably bad news.

“If that is my fate, then, so be it!” she suddenly bursts, rising. “There is a world outside these walls, and I will not sit idle as it dies.”

She turns tail and begins marching out, only stopped at the doorway by the final words of her Elder Sister:

“Is that what you shall tell your Sisters when you see them corrupted by the Darkseed, Myrathellon? Can you truly look in their eyes and tell them that you chose the world over them?”

Myrathellon stiffens, and I see her head drop, shoulders sag, fist grip the lip of the doorway till cracks start forming across its surface.

“I…will do my duty, Sisters,” she says in all but a whisper. “Palka give me strength.”

“May she offer her strength to us all, Sister,” the Elder says, coming to drape her arms around Myrathellon with the rest of the Sisters following suit. “The time is coming soon where all our resolves will be tested, and we must forsake our own individual desires. We must do what is right for our people.”

The Sisters bend their heads low and I see tears – real, honest to goodness tears – stream down their cheeks, mingling together on the pale canvas of their faces. They say goodnight a short time later, and so I decide it’s best not to overstay my welcome…

[Softpaws]

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

[Blink]

I aim through the door and run off into the night, mind raging with details of the conversation.

Myrathellon’s anger, I think. The ultimatum she was given, the mentions of her ‘Master’, punishment – for what? For disobeying what order? What where they asking her to do?

And, in the end, what did she really decide?

I barge through the doors of the wide commune hut and, panting with exhaustion, call out for Swiftrunner.

“He’s here, Razzy-Wazzy!” Mia calls from a backroom. “And he’s better than ever!”

The creature that walks into the main room towards me, tail tucked between its legs, is more like a wrapped present than a beast. Swiftrunner mewls in pain – not physical pain, but a pain that runs much deeper in the skin of all wolven kind – and looks at me through silk ribbons and bowties, his mane tied up in little pigtails that fall over his eyes.

“Oh, Swifty…what have they done to you…”

He drops before me prone, offering turning to reveal the flower braid tied round his neck.

“End me, Raziel,” he says. “My spirit is ready to meet Lyca.”

I nose his inert form excitedly. “Come on, Swift! Listen, I took your tip. I snuck out and gots me some juicy gossip. Lemme tell you all about it.”

“What is the point…” he moans. “Look at me, Raziel. They have taken my nature and twisted it into something resembling a little girl’s stuffed toy. I am become their plaything. A disgrace to all wolves. I…I have become…”

“Don’t say it, Swifty!”

“…Domesticated.”

Oh, Swift…

“Razzy!” Mia calls with glee as she ambles into the main room. “Where’d you sneak off to? The girls miss their little fluffy pillow.”

I smile as convincingly as I can.

“I needed some…uh…air!” I say. “Yeah. Just took a little night walk, so I did. Anyway, yawn, I’m pooped. Time for this lil Lightborn to head to bed. I’ll just head upstairs to-“

Her stroking fingers find the back of my neck, and she starts scratching.

“How about you bunk with me tonight?” she asks, blushing a little as she traces just the right spot at my nape…

No, I tell myself. Come on, Raz, it’s time to think like a Lightborn. What would Myrathellon say if she found you in her sister’s bed tomorrow morning? And you just know that’s exactly what would happen.

“Ahem,” I cough. “Miss Mia, your offer is tempting. But this warrior needs his bed rest. And I think you would keep me up all night.”

You really couldn’t have made that sound any weirder, Mr Lightborn, could you?

She pouts, her stroking becoming even more tender.

“You’re so mean, Razzy,” she says sullenly. “Rejecting me like that after our day out.”

“I – uh,” I stutter. “I mean – I appreciate everything you – and your Sisters – did today. Very much so. In fact, you probably don’t know how much. I felt things today no dog may ever have felt…I mean, uh, y’know…thanks!”

I turn tail and run from the room, clasping Swiftrunner’s neck in my jaws and dragging him out with me before I end up agreeing to something I’ll regret.

“Goodnight, Razzy!” Mia shouts happily after us. “Maybe I’ll pay you a little visit later…”

“That girl…” I murmur to Swifty as I drag him upstairs, hearing the incessant giggling of the girls in the communal hut as they watch us go, blowing kisses from the window.

“She’s way too…what’s the human expression? Thirsty?”

Swiftrunner’s dead eyes tell me nothing, and as I drag him towards my hut, he only whispers two words over and over:

“The horror…the horror…”

----------------------------------------

“So, there’s been a plot all along.”

Swiftrunner has begun musing as I pluck another knotted bowtie from his mane. He came back to himself as soon as I told him all that I’d heard below.

“I guess,” I say. “I just don’t know what it is.”

“We mustn’t linger here, Raziel,” Swifty replies, tearing at a particularly persistent hair braid. “It sounds like whatever Myrathellon has been asked to do, she will act soon.”

I eye him through the tussled mess of his braids. “You don’t think she’s gonna try and off me, do you?”

He shakes his flower-filled head. “The smartest thing to do would be to kill you and take your blood.”

I let the braid in my mouth fall.

“Wh..what do you..?”

“Think about it,” he says, chewing apart the moss flower circlet on his neck. “A creature of that size with the Lightborn’s capabilities? She could burn through the entire plant horde like it was nothing. I cannot understand why she has not tried to off you yet.”

I can.

I start pacing around the room.

She must know about how high the failure rate is. Otherwise…

“The training then..?” I mutter. “What’s the point?”

He eyes me seriously. “I don’t know, Raziel. But I know that, one way or another, it is going to come to an end soon.”

I pace around the room, eyes trained on the wooden beams of the floor.

“In my dream I felt Palka’s anger,” I say. “Towards the other Lightborn. I think he attacked her, laid her low…I think he took her people from her and she still resents him. She resents me.”

Swiftunner nods. “The puzzle pieces come together, then. Dragons hold grudges longer than any sentient species on this earth. Myrathellon is going to be the one to administer her punishment. Whatever it might be.”

I look at him in confusion. “No, she – I mean – she clearly didn’t want to do what they were asking her. She’s been a good Master. If the training was really all pointless, they wouldn’t have had her do it.”

“You trust her?” Swiftrunner asks.

“Yeah,” I reply. “I do.”

The grey wolf sighs. “That is exactly why they have chosen her to deal with you.”

He jumps down in the face of my doubts and then gets up on his hind legs to peer out the window.

“Remember what Palka wanted from you,” he says quietly. “She wanted the pact between Glenheim and the Lightborn to be broken. She doesn’t care about the world out there. All she cares about is this place. This…prison.”

‘Our existence is a prison’…that’s what you’d said, Myrathellon, wasn’t it…

I hear the door creak beneath us. Two Elvish voices come into earshot.

“Swift,” I say. “Let’s meet up again tomorrow. Whatever’s going on, I can’t believe Myrathellon’s really involved. I’m gonna find out what’s really happening here, and then we’re gonna get the hell out.”

Swiftrunner eyes me with uncertainty.

“What?”

“Your trust in that girl might just be our undoing.”

“You don’t know her, Swifty!” I say, almost forgetting myself. “She’s not like the others here.”

He eyes me again and lingers on the lip of the window before he jumps off to run back to the commune.

“I know something about her,” he whispers gravely. “The Glenmaidens keep the records of all their members in the village archives. As I searched its contents, I found the name of Myrathellon’s old Master – one who it seems was exiled from this place as punishment for the crime of slaughtering a human village, citing ‘protecting her tribe’ as her rationale.”

I blink at him through the increasing darkness of Glenheim’s artificial sky.

“Seneca,” Swiftrunner says. “Her name was Seneca.”