You
As you watch the ragged-looking spy return to Hartonville proper from the treeline, your crows perched silently upon your shoulders, you consider what to do about him.
To slay him would not be out of anger, merely a step taken to protect your investment in the young prophesied half-breed, so you do not feel as though you would be giving in to your weakness by doing so.
You cannot help but wonder the role fate has in transpiring events, and those soon to come. It is blind to you, but not those around you. It could be that Inalia is protected from any action the spy might take with or without you, perhaps even prove a vital step on her path to becoming a heroine.
And, ultimately, is that not why you are here? To observe how figures such as her grow into the annoying, self-sacrificing, self-righteous agents of fate that tried time and again to stop you? Or, you suppose more importantly, why they do so?
It is impossible to say with any certainty how your presence has already changed the intended future, but as you learnt when you first tried to throw off the shackles of destiny, fate is tenacious and stubborn. When one road is closed to it, it always seems to find another, and if none exist then it carves its own.
But you so disdain leaving things down to chance. Whistling for Arma, she soon appears from behind a tree as if she had been there the whole time. The crows startle, but manage, if only just, not to fall off your shoulders.
“Once again forces conspire to disrupt mine plans, Arma. I would have thee watch over the half-breed. Ensure she does not perish but otherwise do not interfere. Allow fate its tyranny in all but that one regard.” You tell her calmly, keeping your expressionless gaze towards the human village.
She steps up beside you and gently nudges your shoulder with a questioning snort.
“Leave.” You command the crows, and they need not be told twice, jumping from your shoulders and flying off into the dull afternoon overcast.
“I am fine, Arma, do not concern thyself with it. Memories haunt me this day, a lapse of no fault but mine own. They shalt pass in haste.” Though you intend to be stern, to banish any idea of weakness from Arma’s mind, your words lack the energy and come out sounding merely pathetic to your ears.
Snorting loudly, Arma rears up, shaking her mane vigorously as she does.
“No,” you say softly as she lands, not even attempting any harshness in your tone. “It shalt not work. Not this time. I do not believe it ever did. So many years, Arma, spent kicking such… trouble further down the road. Again and again. Such a long road it has been. With every delay the trouble has grown larger, until now… I can no longer see what lies beyond.”
Arma goes quiet for a time, and both of you stand and watch Hartonville from afar, observing the humans as they go about their business. The spy, Archie, cautiously returning to the Dreaming Donkey with an almost amusing level of paranoia. Leroy, passed out in his bed and caught in the grips of some nightmare. Inalia, playing some kind of board game with her younger cousins after their recent return from school.
Until she turns to you and cocks her head with a queer look in her eyes.
“Indeed. I was furious, as has always been the case. Anger and grief and everything in between. And yet, by denying fuel to the flames, no longer does it giveth vigour, but instead burns it away. I am… so very old, Arma, and I feel it creeping up on me. The Eternal Dream. I shalt not succumb, obviously, but it grows harder be certain of quite why I resist it so vehemently.” It started the moment you saw her face clearly once more in your mind's eye for the first time in millennia. When instead of fighting to contain the emotion from exploding outwards it switched to fighting to stop it pulling you in.
From violent, murderous rage to crippling, exhausting apathy.
Arma looks back towards the village and so do you, the minutes passing into hours as you exist in one another’s company and the sky slowly begins to darken.
You spend the time trapped amongst thoughts you have not entertained since before, until they boil over and you open your mouth to say something, only for the words to catch on your tongue.
Arma makes no reaction, but you know she notices. Feeling cowardly at the hesitation, you force the words through your lips. “I… I just wish they were still here.”
Almost impossibly quiet, you loath the thought that you would wish for anything. You do not wish; you take and you demand and you force your will upon the world. But… you tried that, and no matter the depths you sunk to or the lengths you travelled seeking and searching for some way to fix things, you never succeeded.
Now, it seems, all you can do is wish. It will not work, it does not work, but it is about as useful as everything else.
When you came to this conclusion in the past it broke something in you, you realise now, and so you did your best to ensure you never had to think about it again. Did your best to forget, the only way you knew how.
But now… now you are back to wishing. Back to the very beginning, no closer to it becoming true than it had been millennia ago. So if you cannot forget, then… why stop yourself from remembering? At least then you can see their faces again, even if they are just memories, even if it is pathetically weak.
The realisation brings an odd sort of catharsis and, hesitantly, fearfully, you stop fighting the memories and let them wash over you.
You are terrified that all you will see is the end, that the pain will wash over you anew, pick off the scab that has formed and become as raw and painful as it was the first time.
But you don’t see the end. You see their smiles; you hear their laughter and you feel them held tightly in your arms. Both of them, as beautiful and as impossibly precious as they had always been.
Somehow, it is worse, but you lack the strength to pull yourself away.
Tears fall silently down your cheeks, watering the ground under your feet as Arma remains as a silent companion and the night passes without interruption.
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Lily
Crimson, leathery wings beat furiously against the air, casting short-lived vortices in their wake as they propel Lililaxananir through the night sky at a pace matched by no other living creature in the history of Mortus beyond others of her kind.
She feels the humans, ant-like against her true form, grasping desperately onto her scales and spines lest they be swept away with the fast-moving air. Several already have, unable to endure the biting chill of such high altitude for so many hours, and many more will fall before she reaches her destination.
Their screams as they fall help soothe the open wound to her pride caused by stooping so low as to carry them upon her very back. But some things are more important than pride, and she lets the sheer indignation and shame of it all fuel the bottomless well of rage boiling within her gut.
Occasionally it becomes too great and she roars against the dark clouds and up to the stars, letting loose a stream of bright blue flames hot enough to melt steel, her teeth gnashing violently against one another.
The humans survive as she flies through the glowing clouds of her own breath only because of the gift of her blood that they share, granting them some resistance to the scalding heat. That isn’t to say it does not burn them, however, and the smell of charred flesh fills her nostrils and helps distract her from the crime committed against her.
So long as most of them survive she cares not if the weaklings are culled. They are to be a distraction. Expendable chaff that, though armed and armoured with the finest equipment that Ismuth and her bank can provide and bolstered by her gift to them, she knows offers little real threat to the elf she hunts.
No, that comes from the device clasped tightly within her claws, dredged up from the deeper vaults that the pale-haired scum had not touched which held more than mere gold. Not an ancient artefact, but rather a new one. A design recently… liberated from the dwarves of the North and refined in her own laboratory.
Lily knows elves. The thief had not been the first of his kind whose scent had graced her nostrils, though his had certainly been the richest, but he had proven much of what she believed about their pacifism false. However. Frustratingly patient, arrogant beyond their meagre forms and obsessed with the arcane, all elves are similar in this regard, and her quarry is no different. Perhaps with the exception of his unusual strength and confrontational nature, but with such age it is expected one of them would develop quirks.
But age is no indicator of power, experience pales before creativity and innovation. The new forever supersedes the old, and the elves are nothing if not stuck in the past. She is proof enough of the dragon’s superiority over the elves in this regard, but not the only one.
Her people once thought as the elves do, or so her sire once told her, when they had ruled over Mortus as its undisputed masters. In clinging to such traditions they had lost their place, nearly dying out entirely, but by embracing the future they not only survived but are once more on track to finally returning to their rightful place as the rulers of Mortus.
She knows she cannot prevail against an elf of such pedigree with the strength of her wings and the heat of her flames alone, and no ancient arcane weapon dredged up from some dusty tomb can prevail against a creature that has had centuries to perfect its defences against such things.
No, the elves knew ancient. But they could not fathom the new.
Her draconic heart urges her to forgo these tricks and petty weapons, all of which pale before her sheer natural, unquestionable strength, and to burn this challenger to cinders beneath her breath and tear apart what remains with her teeth and claws.
But she is no slave to her instincts. She will not fall into the same trap as her ancestors. She has minions, she has a weapon and, most importantly, she has a plan.
She will indulge in the glory of her nature only once the pale-haired elf is dead, but oh how she will revel in it then.
The thought of her imminent victory spurs on another cacophonous roar at the heavens, proclaiming to even the gods of the glory of the dragons.
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Inalia
“Vindaruil!” she greets warmly as she opens the door to the pale elf. Very quickly she notices something strange, the elf feels… different. She can’t quite put her finger on why, but she can definitely tell that he does.
“Inalia,” responds the expressionless elf as he gazes down at her.
Crossing her arms, she suddenly pouts up at him. “Where were you yesterday?”
He raises an eyebrow at her just as her mum appears in the doorway, his voice tinged with humour. “I was not aware a daily visit was required.”
Inalia frowns. Something’s definitely different.
“Well, it is now.” Is all she can think to say, with a faux serious voice.
“Vindaruil, good morning” her mum greets from behind her.
“Endrea,” he acknowledges with a minute nod, “I had thought to take Inalia for another lesson.”
Inalia immediately gazes up to her mum with ‘the look’, and jumps in delight when she rolls her eyes in what Inalia knows is exasperated acceptance.
“Won’t you join us for dinner tonight?” she asks as Inalia goes barrelling out into another rainy morning before promptly turning right back around to search for her coat.
Glancing up, Inalia catches sight of a peculiar expression flashing on the elf’s face for but a moment before it is schooled away. “Perhaps. We shall see what the day has in store.”
Her mum smiles and quickly reaches down to pull up Inalia’s forgotten hood before she steps outside for a second time. “We’ll make you a plate, or I suppose Jemma will. Perhaps you’ll finally get the chance to try my famous pudding?”
Inalia pulls a face up at the elf that her mum can’t see, and is surprised to see a smile tugging at his lips, though it is gone in a blink.
“Be good,” her mum looks at her sternly, before softening, “and have fun.”
With a smile and a wave goodbye Inalia is skipping away from the house towards the forest, Vindaruil in tow.
“Where are Fenrick and Henrick?” she asks as they walk, noting the crow’s absence from his shoulders.
Glancing up and cocking his head, Vindaruil takes a few seconds before he answers her. “Fighting over a worm, as of present, in one of the gardens. I believe it is Fenrick who is winning.”
Giggling, Inalia turns to behold the elf as she continues to skip backwards and takes advantage of his unusually talkative nature with more questions. ”So, what did you do yesterday?”
He meets her gaze with a thoughtful look, again taking a moment before answering. “I began a new project and spoke with Leroy…. You went to church did you not?”
Inalia raises an eyebrow of her own. “How did you know?”
“There is divine magic lying over you, a blessing of somesuch I suspect. Fortunate indeed is this village that its holy person is no fraud.” He says with a hint of something approaching distaste.
“Is it something I can help with?” she asks after not thinking of anything to respond to that.
“What?” Vindaruil asks back.
“Your project.” She answers curiously.
He seems to consider this for several minutes as they walk, before finally shaking his head. ”No, I do not believe so.”
“Oh,” she mutters, eyes downcast. “What is it?”
“A study,” he answers animatedly, “on the human mind. I am attempting to map it, for the purpose of healing injuries inflicted through careless telepathy. I expect it will take me at least a decade. Being that you are only half human, you exist beyond the scope of the study.”
Jumping on the topic, not only because it is magic but also because she notes how Vindaruil’s eyes seem to brighten just a smidge as he speaks on it, she asks, “Telepathy?”
“A branch of spell-less magic, akin to telekinesis or psychometry. Specifically involving interacting with the minds of living beings, it is one of the most dangerous pieces of magic possible, for both the caster and the recipient. Spell-less magic is considerably advanced, youngling, do not bear it any thought at this junction.” He explains softly as they walk.
“So what are we doing today? Oh! Oh! Are you going to do the thing? Help me see the magic or whatever?” she excitedly answers her own question, looking up to him with wide-eyes.
Staring back at her with a deadpan expression, it is a moment before he sighs and nods. “Indeed, we shall be awakening you this day. Or at least attempting to do so. Enjoy your excitement, youngling, for it shall not last long once we begin.”
Inalia pulls a face. “Will it really be that bad?”
Vindaruil turns up his nose, breaking her gaze and looking ahead in answer. “If you are sick on me, I will curse your hair pink for a century.”
She giggles, then she looks up and see’s Vindarui’s super-serious face and giggles even harder. “Really, can you do that?”
Acknowledging her giggles with nought but a sniff, he answers, “There is little I cannot do, youngling.”
“Can you still do it if I’m not sick on you?” she asks hopefully.
The elf is quiet for a long time, or at least so it feels to Inalia but is probably no more than ten minutes. “Ask your mother first.”
She sticks her tongue out at him in response, knowing full well what her mum would say, against which he only raises a questioning eyebrow before shaking his head in the same way her mum does.
They walk on for a little longer, soon coming to the same clearing they found last time, but just as they walk in Inalia snaps her fingers and suddenly turns to Vindaruil with an epiphany. “I know what it is!”
Another questioning eyebrow.
“Why you feel so strange today!” she adds, to which he immediately pauses in his stride and brings his full attention to bear on her.
“Elaborate,” he demands with a frown upon his brow.
“You don’t feel so cold anymore.”
He stares down at her unflinchingly, his frown morphing once more into a lack of expression. For a long while he doesn’t move, doesn’t even look like he’s breathing and Inalia can’t help but fidget and shuffle under the weight of his gaze, though she feels no malice in it.
Then, so slowly that it takes her a while to notice, Inalia feels the chill return. The elf’s unusual warmth fades away without any obvious sign as to why, not so greatly that the ground frosts over or her breath becomes visible, just settling into the familiar, distant coldness that had always emanated from Vindaruil.
The change makes her feel indescribably sad, and she can’t help but think it is her fault.
”I’m sorry,” she says guiltily, though she knows not what she did.
The elf then takes a deep, audible breath and looks up to the sky, allowing the rain to drop and run along his skin. As he does so, Inalia flinches slightly at the sound of thunder rumbling out over the forest.
“Do not apologise. I am… glad you pointed out such a thing.” He tells her, keeping his face raised to the sky.
Hesitant, but confused, she asks, “What is it?”
Another deep breath. “I was… dreaming, youngling. It is a foolish thing, one that I have put a stop to.”
“While you were awake?” she questions, even more confused.
Another peal of thunder echoes out, and he looks down at her once more with a blank, thin smile that suddenly makes Inalia’s eyes moisten with more than the rain.
“It is the only time I can.” He answers quietly, before slowly shaking his head. “No more questions, at least none that are irrelevant to the task at hand. Now sit, and adopt the pose I showed you last time.”
Inalia takes a few moments to recover from that exchange, before looking down at the damp and muddy ground with a pout. “I don’t want to get my bum wet.”
There is a brief moment where she thinks the elf is just going to tell her to sit down anyway, against which she would surely have argued. But instead she begins to feel a slight tingling sensation as the elf mutters a few things in his language, which she still intends to learn, and with a wave of his hand a cloud of thick white steam rises up around them, quickly dissipating into the air without so much as scalding her.
“Sit.” He says, this time with finality, and before the ground can grow damp from the rain once more she does so.
Glancing around, he holds out his hand in front of him, closes his eyes and begins to speak slowly and rhythmically in elvish. As he does, Inalia feels the tingling return, stronger this time, and he begins to slowly turn on the spot.
She watches with awe from her spot on the dried mud as a circular furrow begins to appear in the ground around them, centred on her, from which a glowing wall of bluish light rises upwards but fades into invisibility at around Vindaruil’s waist height.
As the elf finally circles back round to the beginning the light flares brightly for an instant before dimming until the blue can barely be seen at all and he finally stops muttering.
Inalia opens her mouth to ask, but it's pre-empted by the elf. “To contain the storm, so to speak, else half the continent would be witness to your awakening.”
He takes a step and sits down across from her, taking up a lotus position which she quickly copies after realising she had just been sitting regularly, distracted by the display.
“You recall the analogy from our last lesson?” he asks, staring over at her.
She nods, “the ship.”
“Indeed. Remember, you are searching for that state, that place in your mind, where the magic is no longer just a feeling but a real, tangible and visible force spread out before you. Once I begin, like staring into the sun from behind closed eyes, it will become immediately obvious from whence the brightness comes but you will have to fight the urge to look away. Go towards it, endure the discomfort and your destination is assured. No flailing around in the dark for the next decade necessary, if you can stomach it. Try to keep that thought in mind and draw strength from it. I will stop the moment you succeed, though it will be a jarring transition nevertheless. If you desire to stop, tell me. If you are unable to speak, raise your hand. And, once again, success or failure, if you are sick on me you will regret it. Any questions, youngling?” Vindaruil explains slowly and clearly.
She thinks for a moment, before shaking her head, her heart thumping in her chest in anticipation and a little bit of fear.
“Very well. Close your eyes, breath slowly and deeply, and nod when you are ready.” He says with finality.
Inalia does as he says, trying to take slow breaths to lessen the roaring of blood in her ears, before gathering her courage and quickly nodding before she can convince herself otherwise.
If she had been uncertain of what Vindaruil had meant but a moment ago, she is no longer. Immediately there is a wave of vertigo crashing down on her, that tingling feeling morphing into a static roar all around her as, though she is physically unmoved, she feels her soul buffeted by a force she can only perceive the echo of. Like only being able to hear the waves of an ocean as it tosses her about within her ship.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Her physical body does not remain still for long, for though the force does not move her, the nausea it creates does. She tries to focus on it, but it serves only to heighten the vertigo, and it is instinct to shy away and try to lessen it.
With every passing second it becomes more difficult to think or remember what it is she is even supposed to be doing, instead she can only cower away from the source of her sickness and hopes it passes.
Which it does, after what feels like an eternity but in reality is before her elbow even crashes into the grass after toppling from her sitting position. She retches, just barely holding in her breakfast as she opens her eyes to find the world isn’t spinning quite so much as she seems to think it is.
“You did neither of that which I asked, youngling, and had I not been expecting such an initial reaction you would have suffered far beyond what would have been useful,” Vindaruil says coldly, unmoved from where he was sat before as Inalia wipes some of the drool from her mouth and turns to glare at him.
“That was horrible!” she exclaims, still reeling from the experience though the nausea passed quickly once it was over.
Vindaruil doesn’t so much as blink. “I warned you as much, child. Ask yourself whether this is really the path you wish to take. I am not forcing you to choose this method. One day or a decade, it matters not to me.”
“But… I didn’t think it’d be that bad!” she huffs, pouting but not quite able to meet his gaze.
The elf offers no answer but a blank look as she rights herself and returns to sitting. “Is there not an easier way?”
“Nothing worth doing is ever easy. There is the long way, and the hard way. In this they are different, but in other trials they are often the same. The only easy way in this and in life is to not try at all, to content yourself with your failure and pretend you never had a chance to do otherwise. So tell me, Inalia, do you choose the easy way?” Comes his flat response.
“No!” she answers immediately, reactively, much the same as when her friends in Athaca would ask if she was a scaredy pants when she hesitated to fulfil a dare or challenge.
But in the silence afterwards, she does actually think about it. What does she want? Of course she wants to be able to do magic like Vindaruil, of course she wants to do it now and not wait ten whole years until she’s old and of course she wants to be a heroine and save the world and be in all the stories.
But she also wants to get out of the rain, she wants a cup of Auntie Jemma’s hot tea and she wants her mum to tell her that it's ok and she doesn’t need to feel so terrible ever again and that it doesn’t matter if she can do magic or not.
And right now it is a lot harder to care about the former wants than the latter ones.
Vindaruil is silent and still as she thinks, looking not unlike a drowned cat in the slowly intensifying downpour though appearing entirely unbothered by it.
She almost hopes he’ll tell her what to do, one way or the other. Make it easy, remove the choice and the doubt and tell her the way it’s going to be. Like how her mum does, and how Inalia will always trust that she is right and is doing what is best for her because it is Mum. But he doesn’t.
Again, she feels tears welling in her eyes, though it is hard to tell if they spill over or not due to the rain that has pierced her hood and wetted her cheeks.
Maybe… maybe she could at least ask?
“What… do you think I should do?” she squeaks out, her voice barely above a whisper and almost lost in another peal of thunder.
He cocks his head at that and doesn’t answer immediately, as he is like to do, but following a flash of lighting not too far from them this time he responds. “I think you should try again.”
Inalia frowns, and her shoulders slump somewhat beneath the rain. “But I… I don’t want to feel that again. I couldn’t even raise my hand like you told me to! Couldn’t even think about doing it! I probably can’t do it anyway!”
“You are allowing weakness to cloud your judgement. Fear. Of pain, and of failure. In all my thousands of years of life, do you know what I have come to learn about fear?” he asks, his voice resounding and clear even over the storm that has grown around them.
“What?” she responds dejectedly.
His eyes grow sterner and narrow through the rain. “It is a lie. A falsity. A deception. Fear does not exist. It is not a tangible force that can harm you or bring ruin upon all you have and have built. It neither haunts you nor awaits you, it exists not in the past or in the future, but only in your thoughts of the present. It has only the power you give it, and in doing so you deprive yourself of that same power. Everyone ultimately knows this, but the weak allow themselves to believe this lie because it is easier than trying, it is an offloading of responsibility and of choice and allows them the illusion of safety and comfort.”
“But I am weak!” Inalia exclaims, this time definitely unable to stop the tears from falling, “I failed straight away!”
“Child. Close your eyes. Do not question, just do it.” He commands her.
She hesitates, but at the stern look he gives her concedes and does as he asks.
She hears his voice ring out a moment later. “Now, think back to what you felt. Really try and feel the vertigo, the discomfort, the sickness.”
“But…” she tries to argue, not wanting to relieve it even in her memories.
“Do it.” There is no gentleness to his tone anymore, and the thought of disobeying is worse than that of the fear, so she does.
And… and she finds she can’t. She knows it was horrible; she remembers feeling terrible, but she can’t actually feel it now even though she is trying. She frowns deeply, the expression overcoming even the despair that had since climbed up on her face, as she tries to do as Vindaruil asks. But to no avail.
“I… can’t,” she answers after what must have been several minutes, opening her eyes expecting Vindaruil to be angry but finding him as unmoving and expressionless as he has always been.
“Precisely,” he says meaningfully, “Memories of pain and discomfort, of embarrassment and shame and despair are always worse than the things themselves. Because once they are gone, those things are gone forever, they cannot harm you anymore. But the memories… that is what fear uses to control you; it blows them up in your mind and makes you believe everything is so much worse than it actually was. Try again, or do not, but do not choose one way or the other because of your fear of how bad you think it was.”
Still frowning, Inalia’s mouth opens and closes as words fail her and they sit in silence with nought but the rain and the thunder. The ground and the grass beneath them has since turned to mud once more, seeping into her trousers and chilling her legs, but she finds it difficult to care in the moment.
“I…” she begins, not even really knowing how she intends to finish her sentence herself.
Inalia looks at Vindaruil, really looks at him. An elf of several thousands of years of age, disguised as a human, sitting in the mud and pouring rain with her, whom he had met but days ago, perfectly capable of using some kind of magic to keep at least himself dry but not doing so. His full attention solely on her.
Why is he even here? Doing this for her? Helping her? If all he wants is to wait for her dad or whatever to turn up, she has seen enough to know he could do so in silence and on his own.
Because she asked, she realises. Because she asked him to teach her magic, she asked him to show her the quick way and just now she asked him what he thought she should do. After his speech, she knows she still doesn’t want to try again, but she also knows that she is weak and can’t really trust that want because it could just be her fear talking. Lying to her.
But in that moment, she trusts that Vindaruil isn’t weak or afraid, that if he thinks she should do it then it is because he thinks she can, and not for any other reason.
“I would like to try again.”
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Archibald
The elf went off with the girl into the forest, and Archibald is left with the only, excruciating, choice of following them. Were it just one of them, he could have remained, but for all he knows they could just be running, however unlikely that appears, and he will not be the one to explain to this ‘ally’ or his master that he just let their quarry slink away into the woods.
He knows the elf probably knows he is there; it is a gods-damned forest after all. Archibald has spent the last decades of his life in a city, he knows how to make convincing small talk, make a smile seem genuine and how best to compliment men and women of all walks of life to get into their good graces. But he doesn’t know how to creep silently through the undergrowth or cover his tracks in the mud or… or even what he doesn’t know about sneaking through a forest in the first place.
And the elf… is an elf. It is like following a shark into the sea, or a dragon into its lair. Total foolishness. And yet he has to go anyway.
So it is with a look of total misery that he is trudging through the mud and undergrowth of the forest with his meagre jacket that doesn’t even possess a hood looking, and feeling, like a drowned rat. And as the spitting of rain begins to escalate into a downpour and the first peals of thunder begin to echo out, Archibald is not even surprised.
“Just another day in the life,” he mutters to himself, already feeling a stress headache forming behind his eyes.
He can only follow where they are going because the girl leaves her small footprints in the softening mud, but with the worsening downpour even they are beginning to wash away.
Picking up his pace, he doesn’t know whether to be upset or thankful when he sees the sapphire glow of some kind of magic from between the trees. It does momentarily make him believe he’s walked into some kind of trap before he sees the two figures sitting down beyond the barrier and lets out a deep sigh of relief before throwing himself behind a tree to break line of sight.
It isn’t much, pointless even as the elf definitely doesn’t need to see him just to know he’s there, but it is all he can possibly do to try and avoid detection so it is what he does.
As the sound of his heartbeat thundering in his ears fades after several long and deep breaths he tucks himself away beneath the meagre cover of the tree. Soaked to the bone, and very quickly becoming cold now he’s ceased moving, he can hear the two of them talking just over the pouring of the rain. Not enough to make out what they’re saying, but enough to gauge by the tone that they don’t know he’s there, or if they do then they aren’t terribly worried about it.
Just the same as hiding behind a tree, drawing his dagger from his ankle sheath is pointless if the elf decides that he is a problem worth addressing after all, but he does so anyway because at least the weight of it in his hand makes him feel just a tiny bit safer.
And so he waits, and he waits. He steals a glance here and there, wondering to what extent the elf is distracted and gauging his chances of somehow managing to sneak up on them. But each time he decides it really isn’t worth the risk, this ‘ally’ of his master’s should be arriving soon enough and hopefully whoever they are can take the problem of the elf out of his hands.
That still leaves him with the problem of the girl, of course. At the thought he squeezes his eyes shut, his grip tightening around the dagger turning his knuckles white as he tries to keep a hold of his resolve.
Failure is not an option. It simply isn’t. The screams echo in his ears, the gruesome sight burned into his mind as a child flashing once more beneath his eyelids. Nothing is worth such a fate. Nothing.
Maybe if he tries hard enough he might actually believe it.
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You
You watch once again as the girl voids her stomach on the mud, now bringing up only bile that is quickly washed away by the enduring rain. Still she shies away from the magic instead of leaning towards it, unable to overcome that primal instinct to retreat from the source of one’s pain.
But, after the first time, she at least braves each attempt with courage. She tries, and if you are being honest that is more than you expected from the girl. So young, at least by the standards of your people, that it is almost admirable.
Covered in mud from repeatedly swooning over and with her soaked blonde hair cast in knots and stuck tightly to her face, looking more brown than blonde now, she looks over to you haggardly as she sits up.
You notice the tears beneath the rain, but do not think less of her for it. This time, at least, she managed to raise her hand to tell you to stop. A marked improvement from the last dozen or so attempts, showing she is managing to retain at least some presence of mind within the storm of raw, unfiltered magic that you unleash.
But a child she remains, and you see it in her eyes that she cannot continue any longer. Perhaps once, when you were younger, you would have encouraged her, manipulated her, to keep going until she succeeded.
You are no longer so short-sighted, nor so rushed. You afford her a small mercy by not making her speak such a request aloud. “That is enough. We shall continue another day.”
She sighs with relief, deflating from the tension of suffering another attempt, but it is mixed with disappointment and perhaps a little shame.
Not wanting to undo what you achieved with your little speech, you decide it is worth some positive reinforcement to keep her motivated. “Well done, Inalia. You have done better than expected, and that last attempt showed you are on track to succeed sooner rather than later. Another day, perhaps two, and it will be over.”
With an exhausted smile, she nods, before hugging herself with her hands and looking up at you with a shiver. “Can… can we go home now?”
“Of course,” you say, more warmly than you expected. Coming to your feet, the half-breed quickly does the same.
You look down at her with a frown. It will do your lessons no good if she catches an illness due to this weather, and she is still half-human after all. With a quick working of magic you dry her out, banish the mud from her form and vanish the lingering bile in her mouth attacking her teeth.
“Th… thank you.” She says with relief, her teeth still chittering though she is obviously and immediately more comfortable.
You acknowledge her thanks only with a small nod and then collapse the working maintaining the circle around you.
The spy hasn’t moved for the last hour or so, you didn’t need your arcane senses to tell that much, but with the circle gone you finally notice the disturbance approaching from much further afield and snap your head around to face it.
Too far away to discern with any accuracy, and hidden by the forest and the horizon, you nevertheless recognize this is most likely the ‘ally’ the spy has been waiting for.
A telepathic nudge towards the crows back at the village breaks them from their continued squabbling and sends them onwards to take a closer look.
“What is it?” Inalia asks, worry evident in her voice no doubt due to your sudden alertness.
“I am not yet certain,” you say honestly enough, though you have a few guesses, “something approaches which requires my attention.”
You look down at the half-breed. “You know the way back.”
It is not a question, and more for the benefit of the eavesdropper than the girl. It seems her trials in this forest are just beginning.
She frowns back at you. “Yes… is it something dangerous?”
As your eyes meet you briefly consider dealing with the spy there and then, it would hardly be difficult, but you remind yourself that Arma is no doubt loitering nearby and that the half-breed is in no real danger. Just another lesson, though not one you will be imparting directly.
That you even doubt your decision at all makes you pause, for rarely do you ever find cause to do such a thing. Why do you this time?
First, the daydreaming, which had taken the half-breed to snap you out of after walking around like some half-aware zombie since the previous evening, and now this? You find yourself questioning just what has gotten into you recently.
“Perhaps,” you answer absent-mindedly.
“Are you going to be ok?” she asks with wide-eyed concern, though she is swaying slightly on her feet from exhaustion.
This makes you chuckle slightly, “Of that, there can be no doubt. Go, child, I will return shortly enough.”
Inalia hesitates, “Um… good luck.” And then she is jogging back through the forest through the now torrential rain and towards the dry, warm safety of her home.
You sense the spy tensing from behind his tree, and despite yourself you mutter under your breath, “and to you, youngling.”
Then you turn back towards the disturbance, and are struck by something approaching a premonition of leathery wings beating against the violence of the storm, and you smile.
Not a gentle or humorous smile as had slipped from you in recent days, but one of predatory intent. It seems the little lizard chose not to heed your warnings. Disappointing, perhaps, for you will be robbing yourself of a greater challenge in the future, but putting the beast in its place will be most satisfying nevertheless.
Rare is it that you ever offer mercy to begin with, never do you offer it twice.
In no particular rush, you set off at a light jog, at least for you, that doesn’t tear up the damp mud of the forest floor too badly but gives you enough time to intercept the dragon before she becomes a problem for your… investments in Hartonville.
Slaying a dragon… that is a thing you are familiar with, a thing you do well. After so much… pathetic uncertainty and pining for that which can no longer be, it will do you good to indulge in unfettered violence once more, and for a reason that you need not condemn yourself over.
Putting down one of the uppity lizards is always justified, after all.
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Endrea
Looking out the window with a frown, Endrea finally puts down her miserable attempts at crocheting. With Inalia away, no job to keep her occupied and the heavens opening up to deny her so much as a pleasant walk she has been trapped within the house with frighteningly little to do.
Not a problem she’s really had since having Inalia, one that she’d once have prayed for but now feels almost like a jail sentence.
Worse, even. She’d seen the inside of a jail, albeit briefly, and it had at least proved a novel experience. Bad company is better than no company. And here, in this house full of memories she is all alone, for even her sister and brother-in-law were out and about. It is almost enough to drive her insane.
Trying her hand at crocheting had been her attempt at imitating Jemma, who is so fond of the hobby. Such a proper thing for a lady to do, as mother would have said. She thought that maybe because she is a mother herself now it’d magically click for her, but it is still far too boring and finicky for her liking. Looking down at the horrific monstrosity of knots she flushes slightly at the thought of Jemma seeing it and quickly tosses it into the fire.
With a noise that is half a sigh and half a groan, she stands up and looks around. What had she done with all that time to herself as a teenager?
Well, Ethan Smithers down the road was never very good at hiding where he grew his pipeweed and she is pretty sure he’s still around. There is a brief moment where she considers going to see if in the last twenty or so years he ever moved his patch, but then she thinks about the example she’ll be setting for Inalia if she comes home and the place smells like pipeweed.
The thought of the look on her sister’s face almost makes her do it anyway, but she resists. If only because she is supposed to be a grown woman now.
Something about this house she swears makes her feel like a child again, and not quite in a good way.
Absentmindedly, she strolls through the house, doing a slow lap of every room if only to be bored standing up rather than sitting down.
At some point, she even tries to recreate some of the elvish stretches and poses she’d once seen done during her time with Lithandar, and promptly realises one of the principal differences between elvish and human physiology.
Or maybe she’s just getting old.
A terrifying thought, and one that eventually drives her to put on her coat and prepare for a stormy stroll regardless of whether or not she catches a cold.
The sudden flash from out of the windows and an almost immediate clash of thunder makes her think of her daughter and Vindaruil. Surely they aren’t still out in that, doing gods know what?
Something strange happens then. All of a sudden, she just knows that has to find them. It isn’t an instinct or just paranoia, but a direction that she is certain she has to follow for no particular reason she can think of.
Not that she feels compelled to do so, Lithandar used to tell her how to look out for things like that, more like something warm and friendly had just tapped her on the shoulder and pointed the way.
Alarm bells ring in Endrea’s mind, not for herself for she is quite certain whatever it is means her no ill will, but for her daughter. Whatever the reason or the providence, something is going on with her daughter and she is not going to wait to find out what.
Barely stopping to close the door, she sprints out into the curtain of rain crashing down from the heavens and towards where she just knows her daughter to be.
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Fenrick
No one, if he can ever speak to anyone other than his brother and the sorcerer ever again, will ever hear Fenrick profess to enjoy being a bird.
However.
Soaring in the sky under his own power, even as terrifying and exhausting as it is to do so during a thunderstorm, is an experience greater than any he’d had whilst a human.
Strange, then, that the freest he has ever felt is whilst he is effectively enslaved by an evil sorcerer. That thought should make him miserable, realising just how sad of an existence he once lived, but it doesn’t. Not really.
He doesn’t have to worry about what he’s going to eat tomorrow, because it’s in the ground and plentiful.
After getting over the minor hurdle of his innate disgust at the thought of devouring a worm, a hurdle his brother did not seem to possess as the dozy beggar probably ate them before anyway, they proved surprisingly tasty in his new body.
He doesn’t have to worry about all the scary people he owes money to, or where he’s going to sleep tonight or if he’s ever going to get married or have kids or this or that or anything else.
He is a bird; he only has to worry about bird stuff. That is really the long and short of it, with the sole exception of doing whatever his pale-haired overlord tells him to. Which, he has come to appreciate, really isn’t an awful lot.
Follow that guy, come here, look at that. If anything, other than flying or his brother, it is the only thing stopping him from becoming truly bored in his new existence.
Not that he would ever let anyone, even his brother and especially not that gods-damned sorcerer, know it.
Although, as a bolt of lightning arcs blindingly close to the tight formation of him and Henrick, he is beginning to consider that this gig might be a little bit more hazardous than he initially expected.
“What are we looking for again?” he caws out to his brother, barely hearing even his own ‘voice’ over the pouring rain and doing his best to pierce the stormy gloom to the ground beneath.
“I dunno,” Comes the barely audible reply, somehow managing to sound thicker than dung even as a crow.
All they’d gotten was another uncomfortable mental shove, kind of like someone sneaking up and you and then suddenly shouting in your ear to go in ‘that direction’.
Cawing out a string of curses, he swoops down closer to the ground. Which, in the pouring rain, is frighteningly difficult to discern. Once he’d started flying, he’d found that it came very naturally. Finding air currents and controlling his wings is like second nature, literally, but that doesn’t mean it is easy.
He knows Henrick is following him, the same way he always knows when his little brother is right behind him, and so it is at almost precisely the same instant that they void their bowels in terror at the sight revealed to them by the shifting landscape below.
A… is that, of all things on this rotten, awful, terrible place called a world, a thrice-damned dragon?
Fenrick might not have believed his eyes were it not for the fact that just a few days ago he had been human and now he isn’t. That doesn’t stop the talon-clenching terror from overcoming him, however, in fact it almost certainly makes it worse and he very nearly plummets to an early, feathery grave by freezing up mid-flap.
Henrick, it seems, is not nearly so composed as he tumbles in the air and begins dropping like a stone. Fenrick takes the briefest of moments to consider what terrible sin he committed in a past life to be stuck with such a prodigious incompetent for a brother before tucking into a dive and swooping around to catch him.
That he even manages to grab his brother in his talons at all is a testament to his accuracy and skill in his new form, but unfortunately for the both of them they are about the same size as each other and the ground is fast approaching.
Fenrick fights to pull up with several desperate flaps of his screaming wing muscles but it is in vain as they both go tumbling into the mud.
It is one of the greatest of the gods jokes that Henrick is entirely uninjured by his near-death scare, but at least Fenrick is too so he can’t complain overmuch.
“You idiot,” Fenrick caws at his brother, pecking at his thick avian skull as they both hop up alongside one another.
“Hey!” Henrick responds with outrage, “I was just about to right myself when you grabbed me!”
Fenrick’s only response is another sharp peck.
“Ow! But, err, thanks. Did you see the dragon?”
“Did I see the huge, red, scaled monstrosity towering above the trees? Hmm, I don’t know Henrick, let me think about it!”
“Well hurry up, we’re supposed to be scouting for the boss. Oh! Oh! Do you think this is what he sent us to check out?”
“No. I think it is just a coincidence.”
“Really!?”
“No you bleeding idiot! Now stop asking stupid questions and go and have a look.”
“Me? Why don’t you go?”
“Because I’m the one that just saved your sorry life. Just go, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“But Fenrick!”
“Ugh, fine! Fine! But if you get us eaten I’m going to kill you!”
“I don’t think…”
“Shh! Just… shh!”
With that, they set off hopping through the mud towards the ominous sounds propagating through the trees. With their skinny little talons they inevitably begin sinking into the mud, but at least Fenrick can cover his head from the rain with his wings which he can’t do whilst flying.
He hears the dragon before he sees it again, a low rhythmic rumbling that he first believes to be echoing thunder until he realises that it’s just the thing breathing.
There are other noises beneath the sounds of the storm; the clatter of steel and the low murmur of several unintelligible voices. As the brothers crest the incline ahead of them Fenrick finally lays eyes on the bowl-clenching scene he had only glimpsed at from the sky.
Immediately, demanding the attention of his gaze above all else, is the colossal scaled beast looming over the relatively small valley. Perched not unlike a cat surveying its domain at the top of the valley, the overflowing stream parting around it before cutting through and, in some places, flooding the undergrowth below that was unused to such high waters.
Even muted by the grey-ish curtain of rain the sheer red-ness of its scales shines out like a crimson lighthouse through the storm, totally unmistakable. Fenrick notes, however, that those under its belly are a shade paler than the rich crimson of most of it, and the scales on the tips of its wings a shade darker.
With four long, jagged limbs complete with wicked spines and its angular scales, not even including the enormous leathery wings framing its silhouette or the spiked tail he sees pocking out to one side, it sits at what must at least be two to three stories tall.
Its elongated snout, not entirely dissimilar from that crocodile he once saw but with far more menacing, and white, teeth, is pointed thankfully up into the air rather than towards him and his brother.
And spread out before it, like a colony of ants roused by fresh food, are a score or so of heavily armoured figures skittering to and fro around something sitting at the bottom of the valley. Behind the storm it is difficult to make out much more than a shape, a matte sphere as tall as a man with what look like dozens of spikes jutting out from its surface.
Both he and Henrick flinch back in pain and terror as lightning descends from the sky and strikes the object, searing his vision a fierce white and deafening him with the thunderous cacophony.
Blinking back stars, Fenrick is only partly surprised to see the object still there and unharmed, beyond the steam rising off it and the blackened ground around it. Similarly, the figures, nor the dragon for that matter, seem entirely perturbed by this though a few seem to be shaking their heads and rubbing their helmets about where their ears are.
“What’s that?” Henrick asks.
Fenrick’s beak very slowly pans over to his brother, “Why, I know exactly what that is brother.”
“Really?”
“No you bird brain! Now let's get out of here before we become dragon food.”
“But Fenrick, you’re a bird br…”
Fenrick is up in the air, beating his wings furiously against the downpour before he has to hear the end of his brother’s inane sentence.
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Archibald
He cannot believe it. It simply doesn’t process in his mind that the elf just left the poor girl all alone in the raging storm when he is at least ninety per cent certain the elf knows he is there.
He didn’t even seem in any particular rush or worry, so it can’t have been out of necessity.
Does he want her to die? Or is it something else, some kind of protection or contingency that makes the elf feel safe in leaving his charge, or at least his student, in such obvious peril?
That makes more sense, and would track far more with Archibald’s luck. Disappearing off like that, he is certain the elf has discovered whatever ‘ally’ Phobos had sent him, but now it seems it will all be for nought anyhow.
As the girl runs past his tree, her hands desperately pulling down the edges of her hood as she tries to ward away the worst of the storm, she doesn’t show any indication of knowing he is there and he is suddenly struck by the reality of the choices before him.
Either he lets her go, at which point whether he wants to or not he’ll lose any chance of completing his mission, or he chases after her and springs whatever trap the elf has in store for him.
There is always the chance that he is just being paranoid, but in his line of work there is no such thing as unjustified paranoia.
So in the end it comes down to how he’d prefer to die. If he lets her go he might survive for a while yet, maybe a few months or even years, but that time will be spent looking over his shoulder in terror. And when the day finally comes, and he knows it will eventually come, he will wish that he chose otherwise.
And if he chases after her then it is likely he meets his fate on this very day to whatever the elf has in store for him, but with any luck it might actually be quick and relatively painless.
Or maybe he actually succeeds, no matter how unlikely, and live to die another day in the service of his master. At least in that case he might actually not have to run around getting his hands dirty as a common grunt any more. Or, then again, perhaps a promotion will just end up being an even greater nightmare.
Really, the choice isn’t much of one at all. He knows his answer the moment he thinks of the question, it just takes him a few seconds to admit it to himself.
With a quick sigh, and after wiping the rain from his eyes, he pushes himself off of the tree and sets off after the girl, the squelching of his boots in the mud mostly hidden by the torrential downpour.
May the gods forgive him for what he is about to do, because he certainly won’t.