Dahlia inscribed Maeravel’s name into existence. The moment her name had been inscribed in the Gloam, the spell took hold.

Darkness did not scream—it fractured. The tapestry of Maeravel’s existence, the shifting, unwritten melody of the Sable Elegy, tore apart under the weight of restored existence, dragged down by her weighty name into the grimy, gritty depths of physical being.

The Sable Elegy convulsed inside the husk of obsidian, beneath the lines of solar radiance, concealed by the cloak of sorrow. In and out of reality, the being that devoured existence and spread oblivion collapsed into itself as if a blackhole pulled her inexorably into herself.

Maeravel tried to slip away. She had always slipped away, avoiding the consequences of her nefarious deeds. Others paid the price for what she did, usually lesser fey or useless mortals, but the important part was that she escaped. That was the game; it was a fundamental rule—to win, you had to keep playing.

As both Maeravel Thornheart and the Sable Elegy, she was a thing that could not be held. No touch could linger upon her skin when she had skin, and no chains could bind her. Until the vile sword of that fool, Aelindor Thornheart, caught her eye in the treasury; that was when things went wrong. First the sword, then the stupid little fairy, and now both at once!

Now, she had a name, a history, a place, and an existence. The tapestry of reality tried to consume her, trap her, and limit her, and the radiant bindings of a High God burned her with solar judgement. She was bound in the pages of a story, and the rules, oh the rules chafed and burned and ruined the whole game!

“I am not yours to write!”

Despite the proclamation, the obsidian husk shattered, revealing an elven woman who was very much alive. Her ever-changing dress of lamentations broke like brittle glass, leaving behind the immodest, uncovered flesh that bled twilight ichor from cracked skin between lines of luminous power. She was bound in the flesh once more, even as remnants of oblivion tried to destroy her and resume existence as the Sable Elegy.

The unseen wings formed from screaming echoes were long gone. Maeravel had four appendages like most elves—legs, arms, and no wings. Cursed by the burden of substance—haunted by being, and forced to be present—to cast a presence. No longer could she flutter between forgotten places; she had no choice in her state of being—she had to exist.

The blank mask fell away, revealing a face—most of a face. Some of what she was had been lost to the Sable Elegy. Hers was a mockery of a face—forgettable, bland, unworthy of comment. Knowing what she used to be, memories of her true self struck her like lashes. What could have been, what might have been, all hit her with brutal frankness.

“No…” Maeravel’s lips barely formed the words, but the Grotto shuddered at the denial. Fragile reality quivered at the protestation—as if it were an illusion that could be destroyed through mere denial.

Golden lines of light multiplied. They snapped into place, forming intricate bindings at the Maeravel’s throat, wrists, and ankles. The shackles of fate were inescapable, and the weight of remembrance pulled down on her more greedily than a blackhole. The more she fought, the stronger she was tethered to what she had tried to flee.

Maeravel struggled in vain. The last, desperate flutters of unreality fought against the bonds, against the potent magics of a Noble Fey and a High God, against the wretched, horrible truths that she was forced to acknowledge—she was real now—and real things could be hurt—or killed.

A terrible shriek ripped free from Maeravel’s throat. Not that of a banshee, nor a song of Unraveling as she’d sung while the Hollow Cantor. This was a cry of anger, of rage.

According to the Conductor, it was the place of the lesser Courts, of ordinary Fey, of mortals and gods, to suffer, for the Discordant were the only ones capable of achieving freedom from these things. To love was to be controlled. Pain was a leash to keep you docile. Regret? A self-imposed fiction to ensure submission to the melody of existence. The Discordant did not suffer—because they chose not to.

Maeravel and the Sable Elegy both hated this. Body and bindings, clunky constrained movements, half-person, half-wraith, all prisoner, trapped in a cage of form. All because of the fairy.

Maeravel reached for Dahlia—not with a song, bolts of inexistence, or even magic. With hands, fractured and bleeding, she willed a curse into being, a desperate hail mary of revenge, that tore her once elegant fingers into ribbons of flesh and death that she willed to erase the fairy.

Surges of the Sun that Remembers burned Maeravel even more severely when she reached for oblivion, but it didn’t stop her. If she had no arms of destruction, no wings of lament, she willed her blood to become a dark thing that would eat reality itself!

The fairy watched her with those glowing purple eyes, a look of pure contempt and disgust at what Maeravel was.

The bland face Maeravel wore twisted into a smile.

“If I must suffer existence—then so shall you!” The flesh along Maeravel’s back sundered as wings of Discordant magic erupted, along with a second set of arms formed from pure energy. Her fleshy bits may have been bound, and the vast powers of the Sable Elegy were interrupted, but Maeravel Thornheart was still a Discordant One, and a Chorister at that.

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In a flash of movement, she flew at Dahlia, ready to strike with the sharp talons at the end of her new appendages.

“No!” The stupid satyr, down an arm and a shield, still managed to intercept her flying form and slam his spectral shield into the side of her amalgamated body. Spectral vines writhed from the shield and filled the air with droplets of her blood, but her wings beat again, pushing her past the satyr and closer to the fairy. No mere lash of vines would stop her.

Bolts of fire struck Maeravel, volleyed by the stupid spectral mage that empowered the dumb fairy. Maeravel’s eyes pulsed with hatred, and powerful beams shot at the mage. The blasts didn’t move in a straight line—they flickered, jumped, and warped between dozens of potential trajectories.

Aelindor’s cursed blade parried one of the blasts into the aether while the other impacted the insubstantial mage. A thrill filled Maeravel when the other bolt reduced the mage of fire and darkness to a shower of embers. She could do this! She would murder the fairy.

A preternatural force shook the air, and then pain blossomed through her back and lower body—an entire swarm of Spirit Hornets had engulfed her lower body and delivered horrific bites and painful stings. A tail composed of discordant power burst out of one of the wounds made by the swarm on her lower back and swept through their number, eliminating great swathes of the swarm with each beat of her newest appendage. A few survivors flew away.

The Gloamknight was there, attacking Maeravel with that horrible wooden sword. He sliced one of her taloned appendages clean off before she screamed, and a shockwave of sound blasted the knight dozens of feet through the air. Maeravel refused to be stopped.

An arrow struck Maeravel’s fleshy bits and then another, but she ignored them, even when two spirit hornets wrought havoc on her insides, delivered by nefarious means from the wretched arrows. The archer spirit was such a minor inconvenience that she ignored him.

The filthy mongrel the fairy rode appeared in front of her. Its long, sharp teeth pierced her neck with force enough to snap bones. More of her precious, crimson blood filled the air. Even without the ability to speak, or form syllables, Maeravel needed only to form a thought. The droplets of blood turned into sanguine lances that ripped through the wolf, again and again.

The stubborn creature wouldn’t let go. Its jaws closed tighter upon her throat, an implacable vice that refused to be loosened. All Fey knew, though, that everything had a price. The Wolf made clear that the cost of hurting the fairy would be both of their lives.

Then, there she was. Fluttering in the air with her wings, dripping glitter and magic as if both were infinite. Maeravel snarled. The last remaining arm of discordant power extended towards the tiny fairy, ready to crush her out of existence.

A familiar figure appeared before the fairy—an elven woman with white hair, piercing eyes, and a displeased frown. Elyssandra, Master of the Enchanter’s Guild, the dumb bitch who had nearly ruined all of her plans with the Gossamer Heart all those years ago. Only Elyssandra had died in the final day Aelwyth Morghaine, the first victim of the burgeoning power of the Sable Elegy before she’d been waylaid by that damnable sword.

“Bad girl,” Elyssandra spoke from the far reaches of inexistence, a place from which no one should be able to return. Familiar golden fire, the solar flame of the Sun that Remembers subsidized the materialization of a being that should have ceased to exist when the Aria of Uncreating devoured her wretched bones.

Elyssandra didn’t unleash magic or any special spectral attack. She punched Maeravel in the face, and all of the momentum she’d gained in her mad charge at Dahlia empowered the punch. Her nose broke, and blood filled Maeravel’s mouth. Then something that shouldn’t happen, did. The shade’s hand exploded with light, and two searing beams blasted into Maeravel’s face, point blank. Her tail slashed around, but failed to injure whatever sort of being Elyssandra had become, and in fact, triggered the condemnation of the solar brand that bound her.

The Enchanter’s Guild master looked at her fist, covered in blood in shock. Then Dahlia landed on the still clenched fist, and shoved her hand into the Maeravel’s shocked face.

“You dumb bitch,” the fairy said, and two more bolts of light filled the space between the fairy and Maeravel. Something inside of her stopped. Oh. Her heart. She was dying, again. Darkness swallowed her vision, and she fell.

Notes of music followed her. Was that a lute?

♪”No more crying, no more fading,

No more slipping into the night.

You are bound, as all mortals are shackled,

Chained by law, restrained by light.”♪

The voice of that awful, murderous little fairy chased her, even into death. Her fall into darkness ceased, and power again pulled her toward the material world. Maeravel screamed impotently, but she couldn’t even make sounds anymore due to her lack of a body. She desperately struggled to go into the darkness.

♪”You unmade and left them nameless,

Stole their voices and obliterated their past.

Now your name shall not be severed—

Now your story will forever last.”♪

The fairy's voice was half out of tune, and she sounded spiteful and hateful. Maeravel tried to swim against the current that pushed her back towards the spell. It felt like trying to swim up a waterfall.

♪”Not in peace, nor bathed in glory,

Not in silence, not in song.

By my hand, you are forsaken,

Chained in shadow, dragged along.”♪

Realizing what the fairy intended filled Maeravel with dread and formed a pit of deep anxiety inside her. She pleaded to the Conductor for salvation, severance, or even death—anything but being caught within a spell such as Call of the Grave. No absolution from the Conductor saved her. If anything, Maeravel thought she heard laughter out there in the deep dark from which the Conductor existed.

♪ “You sought nothing, now you linger,

You stole voices, now you wail.

Bound to the Gloam, forced into service,

Your dirge shattered, your fate curtailed.” ♪

Implacable hands grasped Maeravel’s essence. Fingers shaped her against her will. Did she get grasped by the fairy or by one of the vile mortal godlings? One of the godlings would have been preferable.

♪ “From the dusk, I name thee Servant,

Not forgotten, not unmade,

Crawl behind me, lost and hollow,

Chained and subjugated ‘til time decays.”♪

If she had eyes, Maeravel would have wept. Chains woven of her True Name bound her, and the fairy’s diminutive fingers branded her potent essence like she were some prize cow. The form her new mistress gave her had no eyes and saw through a twisted vision of magic that would take some getting used to. She also had no mouth from which to scream.