Rosalea awoke in a cellar with her arms above her head, manacles biting pretty hard against her wrists and palms. Her neck throbbed and ached, and she had vague recollection of clawing at the vine of the mage who had caught her. Well, captured again. At least this time, my memories are in as much of one piece as they were before.

She breathed out. She supposed she was lucky that she was not dead after that woman had gotten a hold of her. Then again, coming here had been a defiance of Gods, at least the mystic kind, but she had a suspicion they were getting orders they did not want to tell her. If she was still the One, they would probably find a way to protect and free her. Unless I was steered here, she thought of the bird mystic that had suggested to her the poison was based on herbs. She thought about how… conveniently that wall gave way.

A couple of hours passed. Everything had ached a little when she had awoken, but it really began to hurt now that she was awake, but no one came.

***

It had not taken much effort to get Sasha to confess what direction Rosalea had left in, and from there, it had been very easy to guess what she was up to. After all, she had been adamant about finding more about the poison for several days.

“I should have seen this coming,” Amalia said with flat ears to Nekana. “She told me she had run away from castles full of people looking for her twice.”

“Well, once we get her back, we will just have to do better at supervising her,” Nekana breathed out.

“If we get her back,” said a pessimistic Raisa.

Bazil just gave his sisters side eyes, put his nose to the ground, and had begun to follow where she had gone. Nakai and Amalia followed him.

***

“I figured you would be awake by now,” said the hard feminine voice from before.

“I am.” Rosalea said and moved as if she would stand up, but her feet were chained too far apart, and she remained seated. Her voice was raspy and her throat felt puffy, “I thought you were going to kill me, Beryn of,” she paused, reading the name off the brand placed upon the woman’s face, “Carnelian.”

Beryn stopped. “You are a beast woman, yes? Did you learn that through your mind magic?” she seemed, for a second almost paranoid.

It amused Rosalea a little. “No, your master was kind enough to write it on your face.” Rosalea tipped her head to face the same side of her face toward Beryn as the elven woman’s brand was on her. “But, if it will make you worry more, we can pretend it was mind magic from the beast woman.”

“You are terribly… uppity… for someone in your predicament,” Beryn said, her face coloring a little pink and her elven accent becoming more intense as Rosalea mocked her.

“I have terribly strong confidence that you are waiting for your master to come get me, since she has been looking for me in an obvious way for months, and since you cannot read dragon script, you do not know what dragon I am working for.”

“You admit to being a spy?” the woman crossed her arms.

Rosalea did not want to answer that question. Whether it was her instincts, or the mind magic from the Ieshans on her that was prompting her about the situation, she would never actually know, but she asked a question instead. “Tell me, does it please you to torture animals and people?”

The woman smiled in a way that chilled Rosalea just a little, but she did not want to show it, so she lifted her chin up and did her best to straighten her aching spine. Beryn closed the distance between them, but did not touch her, just extended a hand and a vine with a yellow flower bud on it wrapped down beneath her sleeve and appeared near her wrist, reaching toward Rosalea’s neck. “I am not afraid of doing what must be done. False Gods will not starve my master’s people.”

“Your master sends her people to invade and colonize, and there are natural consequences to that,” Rosalea said, keeping her chin up even as the vine curled past her ear. It raised goosebumps on every part of her body. “Do what you want, I know you cannot hand me over dead, or I would be dead now.”

“Is your dragon’s name not written on your hand?”

Rosalea made herself smile, despite the chill of fear from that vine creeping along her neck instilled. “If you cannot tell, then it is up to you to risk it.”

Beryn moved abruptly and backhanded Rosalea hard enough that her vision was full of sparks, “Do NOT mock me,” she snarled.

Just like Ulric. Desperate for success and angry, Rosalea thought as she tasted blood from her cheek pressing into her teeth. Slaps harder though.

But Rosalea was not a little girl anymore, and she raised eyes, even as they watered, and made eye contact with the woman, daring her to go ahead and strike again as rage settled like a tight sensation in her center. You have no power over me. None of you really do, she thought, prepared not to give an inch.

“What did you come here for? The poison?”

Rosalea did not emote and stared her down. Her instincts told her that if she let Beryn know that, it would solidify the possibility that she was working with mystics. Even if there was strong suspicion, there was no proof.

For some reason, Beryn was still backing up a little and her vine retracted. The end was wilted a little. “You will never get it from me.”

Rosalea nodded, “I believe that. One thing I might get from you one day though, is your life,” she said flatly, openly threatening her as she tested how much she could continue to rile and almost intimidate the woman. “You have the blood of many forest gods on your hands.”

“False gods,” she insisted again.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Rosalea only stared at her.

“Lady Carnelian will deal with you. You are not my problem. I was just curious about you, and now I see I should not have wasted my time.”

Rosalea said nothing and watched the woman retreat.

***

Beryn shivered as she moved out of the temporary holding cell usually used for drunken disorderliness.

Those damn yellow eyes were glowing in the dark. She is creepier than any animal looking back at you. She is like a walking curse. She looked at the end of her vine once she was clear of the woman’s influence, the vine curled over and rotted. She carefully, tenderly, broke it off. Without using her hands or showing any magic at all, she tried to kill me.

She shivered. The coagulated dark aura around the beast woman made her feel anxious and like she needed a bath.

***

Taigan smelled the town long before he came to it. It smelled something vaguely like a forge, though much worse. “She’s in the town,” Taj said suddenly, his tones full of an emotion that Taigan could not immediately identify.

“She?” Taigan prompted Taj with confusion as Honor balked about going any closer to the smoky smell up ahead.

“Rosalea. I just learned she has been chained inside one of the buildings.”

Taigan looked up, and he saw a large blue bird with rainbow colors in its wings. There was a white plume of feathers on its head, and it flow alongside his hawk lazily. “Well, we shall have to do something about that,” Taigan said as the bird turned away and began to fly toward the forest.

“I know that we have already waited to come to the town, but I think we should wait until dark. I have also learned that these people are attempting to conduct a war against the mystics, er, forest gods.”

Taigan turned Honor off the road, though there weren’t great hiding spaces because the trees had been clear cut for quite some distance from the town, and began to double back to where there was cover. He would wait until night fall.

It has been almost a decade. I wonder what this meeting might be like. Why would they imprison her? He thought of how calmly she had taken Shona throwing a rock at her with nearly lethal intent, and wondered how she could have changed.

***

As it grew dark. Rosalea shifted uncomfortably. Her joints felt locked up, her wrists were bleeding from her shifting and squirming in her pain and discomfort. The room was dark, and as the sun went down, it got darker and colder, and her misery grew. She ruminated over her losses, she felt paranoid about facing Carnelian the dragon, and she worried about poor Nauru.

I was overconfident, and now I am paying for it, she thought as she breathed out slowly. I might get a rescue like I think the Gods might do, but it will not be because I deserve it. It will be because they have not finished whatever it is that they need from me. She breathed in slowly and out slowly, which might be destroying a bunch of people.

It made her feel anxious as she hoped that was not the case. I would prefer to just stay useless than have to do that. This was the first time that she had been left alone in the dark, unable to move, pain radiating through her as staying in one position hurt more and more. All the same, she slowly grew truly calm. She tried to turn her mind to something else… and for the first time, she thought about Fen’s last words instead of the last moments. Fen tried to tell me that things would be hard to find, but to keep being strong. She told me that she was happy that she had been with me. Somewhere in her heart, she grasped that in those words, Fen had known she was about to die. She was liana, how could she not? Fen had chosen the direction they went, she had directed Rosalea to move around the tree… which had made her safe.

She bowed her head. Her mind could not remain the same thing eternally: her pain could not be eternal. Fen dying had been part of something she didn’t understand. Dying was something she didn’t understand from the perspective of a God. She was here for a reason, and it wasn’t really because she was the One of All Bloods… just because she fit the description of a prophecy, it did not mean that she was the prophesied one. That person could very well, in actuality, be Lio, for Lio would share her heritage.

She remembered again, when Lio was born, the Gods had said that there would be a price paid for her. Rosalea wondered if that was Fen, and she closed her eyes tightly. She wasn’t sure. Maybe it was a price yet to be paid.

Well, the least I can do is whatever I need to do to help the mystics I am with. Hopefully without continual bloodshed between them, these humans, and the dragon. Before now, she had always run from things. She ran from the Ieshans. She ran from the Uryans. She fought Kaylar. She pretended she wasn’t the One, even though she knew she probably was. She ran when she lost Ulric, and she had been running when she lost Fen. She had snuck out and run across the valley to get herself here. I need to find something I can actually stand for, without standing in the corner.

The temperature dropped. The night got later. Rosalea shivered with cold and pain. The idea of making it to morning chained like this was daunting and threatened to dissolve all her just found resolve.

***

Taigan did not have many opportunities to take on his liana shape. When he was a boy, he had longed for a battle-ready liana such as a bear, or maybe a cougar or wolf. When he had received a hawk, he had remembered pangs of disappointment, but as he became better acquainted with Taj, he would never have traded his liana.

Also, Taj had taught him that wings and talons were something that were not to be underestimated. Without Taj, he often thought he would not have been able to handle the pressure he often felt trying to handle the sense of constant danger that followed him everywhere. The two of them made good scouts. So, tonight, when he left Honor to stand quietly not far from the city, he was glad he had a shape that could fly overhead.

It always took him some amount of focus to assume the sacred form of his hawk. He had to think of the joy of the air under his wings, the sharp vision, the ability to dive and catch with alarming speed. The feeling of fingers becoming more like talons and feathers – the way his pin feathers could splay behind him. He felt his magic surge and sing through him, and he threw his arms out and braced his feet solidly against the earth as he felt his human form slipping away, his perspective shifting and changing as his eyes lowered to the ground and his vision sharpened.

He flexed his talons and wings, shifting his feathers and took a deep breath through a hard beak. Then, with considerable struggle and flapping around he was able to get to the air. He was not a hawk naturally, and so he could not take to the air nearly as gracefully as Taj. Once he had it though, a good upward breeze carried him aloft. He could not see well, but where there was torchlight he could easily see all that moved in it.

He noticed one thing right away. Bows were raised any time they crossed into the light - even though he should be fairly inconspicuous as a hawk, these people were ready to take shots at him. So, the two of them flew higher, which made it difficult to see, but the town was well-lit with lanterns and torches.

“There,” Taigan said, showing Taj a building with a pair of guards in front of it. “They would not be standing there if there was not something to guard inside, and the building looks small.”

The next circles they had to pass were to find the best place to land without being immediately noticed. Taj went back to Honor, so the horse would be ready, and Taigan quietly drifted down, hugging close to a wall and landing on the roof. Then, he had to waddle his way up it and hide near the crown while he watched the guards.

It took time and patience. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, and that drew a lot of focus and attention that way. The second guard would go to check on it. That is probably the best opportunity that I am going to get.

Taigan carefully moved forward and hopped off the roof, letting go of his hawk shape and letting his natural form return. So, the full weight of his body crashed down on the poor man below him, knocking all the wind out of him and most of the sense. Taigan grabbed him by his head and bashed it hard against the ground, knocking his vision dark and any sense he had left out. Then he looked around to see if he was heard.

No one was running toward him. Good enough. He rifled around the man’s belt and was disappointed there wasn’t any kind of key on him. However, when he tried the door, it wasn’t locked. What? He thought grouchily as he dragged the guard inside with him and shut the door. This area had obviously been a shop, and there was a steep set of stairs into a cellar. He rushed down them and found that it was pitch dark. He put out his hand and summoned a lit torch from earth storage for himself, which flooded the room with light. There was a shifting of chains, and he grew tense, looking to where it was. Across the room, he could see the glimmer of golden-green eyes. He moved forward.

She looked up at him, her arms were outward and above her head and her legs were bound so that she was in a sitting position. She was filthy, dirt and grime were smeared over her face. One cheek was puffy, and there was dried blood on her chin and against the top of her chest where it had dripped off her jaw. Her hair was silver, and she was squinting at him through the sudden light in her space.

He stood for a heartbeat or two, looking at her, while she squinted into his steady gaze. It really is her.