Kim Wedlock

Fantasy Author

[kimwedlock]

Aeonas’ Pass

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

    The amethyst sky loured over the fells. Snow drifted through the open forest like fragments of ivory, burying the road and outshining the glow of the dying sun, while a thick, creeping fog, both natural and impossible, layered itself over the slopes. The evening was silent but for the thin wheeze of the wind, still but for the sway of bare branches, and beautiful but for the seething black scar running like a river of decay from the horizon.

    There was no living thing for miles around - none at all but the cloaked figure walking at the head of that scar, bleeding it further into the shrouded forest with every lonely, booted step.     The pace was steady, unhurried despite the taint; monotonous and resolute. And while the dreadful scar stretched, the eerie fog fled away, leaving the forest clear behind to gather instead at the lead. There, the cloud thickened, luring and goading the traveller, all while remaining always just one step out of reach.     But Aeonas was too old to be deterred.     Clad in a tattered cloak pulled tight against the cold, patched and stitched with a skill that had grown over ages, Aeonas walked eternal, with a bow and quiver slung over a shoulder, hose strapped with countless satchels, some small and writhing, and a doublet lashed with parchments and journals. And every day, with every thought and every event, that burden only grew. After almost a full year, Aeonas had been reduced to a heavy trudge. And yet still, the never-ending walk continued, through sun, through rain, through frost and snow, while the heading remained lost in a dense, blind cloud.     The frigid breeze briefly picked up, stirring the edges of the fog as a grand stone bridge took shape on the left. As Aeonas stepped past it, it crumbled in a cloud of dust. It wasn't acknowledged with even a glance.     Then an elaborate vase the size of a child emerged on the right, gilded and empty, and burst into flames just as suddenly. It went equally unnoticed.     The bridge and vase melted ignored into the scarred, blurred world at Aeonas's back, though both stood less distorted than their surroundings. Ruined stone and ceramic remained crystal clear and perfectly defined, and with their survival, another pouch upon Aeonas's hip writhed and wriggled. The spider weaving amongst them skittered to secure itself.     But, as always, those old, teal eyes didn't turn down to witness it. Staring blindly ahead, there was no effort within them to try to see even the clouded forms of the trees.     More shapes soon blotched and darkened the heading, and sounds drifted through the muffled air, each unclear until Aeonas finally drew level with them. Then music piped in, flutes and strings to fill a weary heart with warmth - but still not a step was lost to distraction. Not even when another figure danced her way through the clouds. Her golden dress spun and flared with her twirls, the snow whispered beneath the grace of her feet. But Aeonas's eyes remained fixed to the fog ahead.     The young woman leapt and glided on into the scar, and where she faded and blurred away, forgotten with so much else, a thick, purple cloud of acrid smoke trailed along behind her. This lingered all too clearly.     Aeonas disregarded it, pulling the cloak closer as the cold crept through to what little bare skin it could find and snowflakes burned a lined and sullen brow. Then a high-pitched call came from the fogline, and an owl swept in from its rest in a nearby tree. But this, Aeonas knew, was no phantom. And knew equally that it had been waiting.     Teal eyes broke their stare for only a moment, and as the owl took position overhead and followed Aeonas in perfect time, their gaze returned to the distance, just as another satchel jerked and writhed.     In that moment, another shape emerged, one fast, thick, and slavering. A beast, neither wolf nor bear, crashed through the darkness towards the wanderer, red eyes fiercely aglow. But still, Aeonas didn't flinch, nor turn as another shape formed close to the left, its glinting sword raised high. The beast snarled and leapt for the head, but as Aeonas continued unshaken, it seized the shadow instead, and they vanished as quickly as the both of them had appeared.     Then came the comforting smell of warm fruit, and the sound of joyous, hopeful singing. Both grew stronger, filled the air on all sides, then flooded on into the blur behind, where it reverberated wondrously amongst everything else.     More abstract fragments of life moved by, until the screech of the owl broke the silence.     Aeonas looked up, and bleak lips turned down further. The snow was heavier, the fog thicker, and the forest was growing dense. More trees took shape, stronger, defined, with deliberate clarity over the rest. As Aeonas walked on devotedly past them, some began to freeze, others grew taller, a single wassailed tree burned, and an emerging windmill turned to gold.     But Aeonas continued, resigned, afraid and weary, wading through the mystery, past every event, until the air ahead suddenly and sharply cleared to a deep amethyst sky, empty of dread and thought. Finally, those ancient boots came to a stop.     With a breath of relief, Aeonas shrugged out of the hood and looked out to the open night ahead, weathered heart beating in a fever. But there was nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Nothing to fear and nothing to celebrate. There was nothing at all, but possibility.     With another breath, of peace and preparation, Aeonas's gaze dropped. And there, at the toe of the old boots and further down still, sprawling from the base of the cliff the wanderer now stood upon like a ragged old spectre, the fog rolled on. Everything beneath, everything ahead, everywhere old boots could walk, remained just as clouded and unclear. The shroud was endless, stretching far beyond what teal eyes could reach.     Only now did Aeonas turn, and grimaced deeper at the sight of the scar left behind, the black destruction, lined with that most hated and most cherished; the things one would wish to forget, and the things one clings to without knowing better.     But Aeonas had learned. There was nothing to be done but continue. There was no going backwards, and there was certainly no stopping; and as difficult as moving forward would always be, it could be made a little easier.     Aeonas knelt down on the snow and sorted through the satchels. One by one, they were looked over, unstrapped from thigh and calf, peered tentatively inside of when needed. Some were filled with smoke, others with flowers, others still with dull stones and others with charred pine cones. Some with light itself, and others with nothing but the scent of spruce needles. And, one by one, Aeonas considered them with a practised eye.     "Nothing heavier than a feather."     And so, among many others, the satchel of smoke, the satchel of light, and the satchel of charred pine cones were discarded. And the satchels of flowers, of the smell of spruce needles, and of dull stones remained.     Then Aeonas sorted through the journals and parchments.     "Nothing lighter than lead."     And so the notes and records of struggles, of love, of ideas and of hands remained, while disappointment, embarrassment, shame and nightmares were cast away.     Aeonas stood taller, left now with only worthwhile lessons, and faced back into the clear sky and clouded earth. With one step, the traveller fell from the cliff.     And landed on the soles of ancient boots with barely the sound of the snow beneath.     With a deep breath, Aeonas continued on into the unknown, the owl ever overhead, spider ever weaving between the remaining satchels and journals. And behind the wanderer, there was nothing but bootprints in the snow.

---

Thank you all so much for your support this year. I wish you all the best for 2023.

Support me on Patreon!

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission.

Copyright © 2022 Kim Wedlock

[kimwedlock]

In The Heart of Winter

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

      Hmmm...a crackling hearthfire... It's quite a thing when the world outside is white, isn't it? Any other time, fire is something to be feared, something destructive, consuming...but now...heh, well now we adore it, don't we? We gather around it, we feed it, we welcome its warmth and the colour it casts over the cold, bleached world; it brightens even the wood of this old, dreary inn, glitters across these dented tankards, makes that tattered, ale-stained rug there seem a little less moth-eaten. I daresay even the woodworms are marvelling.     But the cold...it hasn't truly gone anywhere, has it? After all, a simple fire can't stop a season. And yet...knowing that winter is still lurking outside makes these flames seem almost friendlier, doesn't it? They don't seethe and spit, they laugh and flicker. But...I wonder...would we hear that at all if not for that very cold?     ...Heh, forgive an old bard her musings. Winter always slows me down, gives me too much time to think. Come, sit beside me while I tell you a story. There's plenty of room. And bring me a mulled cider on your way, there's a good neighbour.     Actually, just bring the whole pitcher.     Now, take a glance out through the window while you warm your hands over the hearth. What do you see?     It's a silly question, I grant you; what else is there but the snowfall? Drifting flakes of pure winter, floating like feathers and coating the world so absolutely. 'Smothering it', some of you might say; 'blanketing it' say others. But whether all seems dead, or all seems asleep, nothing but time can move winter away. No fire can hurry it out, nor any amount of wishing or yearning.     Nor can it hurry it in.     "Why would you want to?" I see the words on your lips. But please, keep your comments to yourself for the moment. For 'Summer Smiles, Winter Woes' - are they not, as many other things are, down to perspective? Association? Temperament? Heart?     This is an old tale, one forgotten but still familiar, as stories go: a wish against reason, a commitment to something impossible and irrational, powered by nothing more than the blind hope swelling in one's chest.     It involves a knight, of course - one of the usual breed: chivalrous, formidible, romantic, determined to the point of raising serious questions about his intellectual wellbeing. He was the Champion of House Aestas, with ancient ties to the summer, and he carried many titles, accolades and honours in their defence. He was a fury on the battlefields, a breeze in the courts, and an artist in his own spare time. But despite his allegience, it was always in the quiet solitude of the winter, when the world slumbered and war was forgotten, that his heart felt most at peace.     It had taken only one moment for that to change.     His mount had been lamed on their lonely patrol one December evening, a treacherous fault in the road hidden by the depth of the snow. The stirrup had trapped the knight's foot as they'd fallen, and his leg had been crushed under the horse's weight. With no shelter and no help in reach, the soft, gentle, numbing touch of the cold had almost taken him. Never in his battle-hardened life had the knight truly been so close to death.     From that moment on, winter's tranquil cloak had been replaced by something else - but it was not, as you might well expect, woven of anxiety or fear. Though it was also no less powerful.

    Five winters after that fateful eve, the knight clicked a younger horse along that very same snow-shrouded road, acutely aware all the while of its edge. The world glowed white around him, clouds puffed from the beast's muzzle and through the grate of his visor, and as he breathed deep the crisp air, an anxious shudder hummed in his chest. And when the road soon vanished and the thick, glittering, snow-muffled wilds closed in, it grew to a raging pounding fit to shatter his ribs.     Knight and steed descended white valleys, crossed slippery fords, passed unmounted through the black and white tangles of trees, until the wilds finally opened out and a frozen lake stood still and silent at the centre of the shimmering glade.     The knight stopped there, at the edge of the ice, and waited. His breath puffed a steady rhythm while his heart hammered at six times the pace. But it took only a moment for the radiance he awaited to appear.     A young woman stepped out from the frozen falls, a vision of youth and tranquility. She had hair of silver, snow and ice, skin of the purest ivory, and eyes as blue as the deepest glaciers. She was like a fragment of the landscape itself. And as she moved towards him, her frost-woven gown tinkled a somber melody, and glowed in the thin winter sun like diamonds.     And her smile, a smile just for him, was like the rise of the sun itself.     The knight's heart blazed like a pyre, just as it had on that December evening five years ago, when her impossible magic had revived and nursed him back to health, and the ache in his soul overpowered him. He surged towards her, threw off his helmet, and they kissed with the passion of lovers kept apart for a lifetime. The chill of the air around her crept over his skin, but he held her only tighter.     When they finally parted, the knight heaved a cloudy sigh and cupped Winter's chin in his hand. "Three seasons apart is too long."     "You shouldn't wait for me," she whispered, her voice as quiet as the snow.     But the knight shook his head, just as he had every other time she'd said it. "I will always wait. I could never love another."    "Then Spring," she said sadly, nestling her ivory cheek into his gauntlet, "will always pull us apart."     He could bare no other words, and drew her close again. In three months, he knew, she would be gone with the frosts, back to her own realm, while he remained in the plane of man and mortal. And he would not see her, hold her, kiss her, nor love her again for nine.     But neither would he hold, kiss, nor love another.     Every day, the knight dutifully tended to his master's wishes, and came back to her every evening. He slept in her arms, and she in his, and they walked, talked, laughed and sang together. With the snow flurries, her heart was warmest, her smile most joyful, and when the sky was as crisp, blue and empty as a glacial lake, her mind and demeanour calmest. And in every one of those moments, his own heart was at peace.     But all too soon, the season passed, they kissed for the last time, and she faded with the thaw, just as he'd known she would. And he returned obediently to his master, his world and his life, rigid of shoulder and dead of eye, and worked through the spring, the summer and the autumn, until he could hold her again.     The cold took an age to return, and, as things yearned for often do, passed in the blink of an enraptured eye; again she faded, the snow melted, the sun rose higher, and the flowers peeked and bloomed. And while the world awoke, his heart returned to its benumbed sleep.     But it was after the eighth winter, the eighth parting, the eighth ride back to the world that was his and held nothing for him at all, when his heart refused to quiet. He spent that year trapped in a relentless longing, mindless, just waiting for the return of the chill so he could brush her lips again.     He arrived at the lake one week ahead of the ninth winter, and watched the waterside every night, waiting for the first frost to creep and crackle over the ground. He gave her no chance to fully form when she rose from its fingers on that fifth night. But despite his haste, she saw how drawn he'd become, and the dim, faded flicker of the usual light in his eyes.     The night sky clouded, and her voice scathed like an ice storm. "I told you not to wait for me."     "I will always wait for you," he replied with a weak, crooked smile.     "The wait will destroy you. You're withering."     He said nothing. He knew it was true. He merely watched her instead. And she saw the thought in his eyes, a thought he refused to voice - a thought he feared would be set alight like a funeral pyre should even half the words come out. And a thought that screamed even louder for that fear.     She shook her head with all the regret of the stars and moved up against him, draping his arms around herself. "I can't go with you, my love. I won't survive beyond the reach of the cold."     "You control it," he reminded her hollowly. But she shook her silver head again.     "I am a slave to it. I can't leave its reach. It will kill me."     And how brightly that pyre burned.     The pair stayed together through the winter nights, walking, talking, laughing and singing, sleeping in each other's arms. But all the while, the inevitable dogged him like a spectre. A year spent yearning, and the season itself spent in fear. Knowing they would part, three months wasn't enough. It could never be enough.     The wretched world began its thaw, the sun chased out the frost, and with that final kiss, the knight's heart sank into his boots. And she saw the thought brimming in his eyes again.     "I cannot go with you," she repeated in a whisper. But this time, her words didn't cut like a blade through his chest. Instead, he fixed her with a stolid look.     "I know," he replied, taking her hands in his. "So take me with you."     Winter's ivory skin drained truly as white as the snow. "No," she replied in a panic, the sky turning from azure to thick, ominous grey, "I can't, you'll die if I do; you cannot survive in my realm any more than I can away from it!"     But the knight's eyes didn't waver, as firm as the steel that encased him. "You know this for certain?"     Her hesitation was enough.     He squeezed her fingers as the condemning sun crept higher through her clouds, she pulled him close against her, and with a kiss that was far from final, the world around them faded with the last of the winter's frost.     The chill overtook him in a heartbeat. His lips became numb against hers. But it was a familiar chill - her chill. A chill that grew as he felt her body move back from him. He opened his eyes to find her again, his heart leaping in a panic, but the gleaming landscape stunned and blinded him. He winced and searched for her hand instead. But she'd already taken his.     Slowly, his eyes adjusted, and he stared at the landscape, cautious first, then struck by awe like the kick of a horse. He took in the white hills, the crystalline pillars, the frozen lakes and bridges, the trees built from snowflakes; he watched the diamond dust shimmering in the air, the light glancing across the huge silver spheres that floated just inches from the ground, and the huge great bands of silver filigree that moved slowly across the sky, casting elegant shadows across the snow.     Their fingers laced as he took a slow step deeper into her world, his skin prickling despite his furs, and relief, comfort and wonder eased out in a single, mindless laugh. He breathed the crisp air, drawing it in as deep as he could, unlike any he'd tasted before. It filled his lungs and reached deep into his soul, clearing his every fret. With another breath, it seeped into his veins and purified his blood. With a third, it lined them. With a fourth, it splintered them.     His mind turned white, his fingers slipped, and he crumpled to his knees while his heart began to freeze. His rasping throat begged him to cough, his cracking chest begged him to breathe again, his numbing legs begged him to rise and run, to find heat. But he couldn't. Every motion burned in his tightening, seizing muscles. And while panic's frozen grip pierced deeper into his heart, he heard her voice beside him, roaring and chiming like an ice storm.     Her hands grasped him, arms squeezed around him, and the world about him warmed.     The knight lay on the thawing ground, staring up into the spring morning sky. Alone. Alone, but for the voice that trailed on a tendril of cold, frozen air.     'Wait for me no longer.'     The knight didn't return to his duties that spring. Instead of service in war, he scoured libraries. Instead of mingling with courtiers, he hounded intellectuals. Instead of pursuing the arts, he bargained with witches. And only in the dead of autumn did he find what he needed.     A legend within a legend, perhaps, but such is the way of things. Either way, the pellar answered his hopes. First bright beam Of winter's moon, Owned by glass Like glacier hewn; Housed and cradled, Of time-attuned, Proud heart 'comes Enchant-immune.     It was a long moment that the knight watched the pellar in his dark little hut, while the old man stared back in expectation. "What does it mean?" He finally dared ask. "I must capture the moon?"     The pellar answered by taking a glass jar from one of his many cabinets, a jar thick and crackled, but whole. He pressed it into the knight's hands as though it had always been his.     "I catch it in this?" He asked, his misgivings tumbling over the glass. "How will this help?"     "The first beam of winter's moon, cradled until season's end, will break the spell of winter's realm, and frozen hearts will mend."     Understanding soothed the knight's haggard face. "It will protect me from the cold of her world... Tell me, pellar: what do I owe you?"     "What can you afford to spare, my lord?"     "Everything."     And so the knight gave the pellar his entire estate. He wouldn't need it again.     When the tenth winter neared, he left for the lake, jar in hand, and captured the first beam of moonlight to grace the frosting ground. The light swelled as he jammed the cork in place, and, for a heartbeat, the glass glowed like Winter's own eyes, before fading to a subdued little pulse.     When she rose from the frost a moment later, she could see something had changed. He was aged and weary, but hopeful, and his smile dragged hope into her chest.     "I told you not to wait for me," she said as he enveloped her.     "And if I hadn't?"     He showed her the jar, and explained the pellar's plan. Misgivings moved through her eyes, but she voiced none of them. Together, they nurtured the light through the season, they kept it covered, kept it glowing, and it charged them both with hope. And when that tenth winter began to fade, on the morning of the first day of spring, the knight opened the jar, coaxed out the tame moonbeam, and let it melt through his armour, his furs, his skin, and wrap itself around his heart.     And again, Winter took a gentle hold of him, and the world faded and brightened to the realm of silver, snow and ice.     His eyes adjusted, the chill touched his skin, but he stood tall at her side this time, and looked again across the crystalline pillars, the frozen lakes and bridges, the diamond dust glittering in the air, the trees built from snowflakes, the huge silver spheres and the bands of filigree moving slowly across the sky.     And again, his skin chilled despite his furs, and he breathed deep of the crisp air. And still he stood tall. It filled his lungs. It lined his lungs.     It splintered his lungs.     And, again, the knight dropped to his knees while his heart began to freeze, and his wretched hope shattered like glass.     His lips couldn't curse. His chest couldn't heave. His fist couldn't pound the snow. Every motion burned in his tightening, seizing muscles. And again he could hear her voice, roaring and chiming like an ice storm.     Hands seized him.     The world around him warmed.     And he lay on the thawing ground, staring up into the spring morning sky.     Helpless tears finally sprung into his eyes. "It didn't work..." The voice didn't feel like his own. He couldn't feel his lips move. But as his blurred eyes adjusted onto the shadow half-obscuring the sky, he found Winter kneeling over him, and he watched her form flicker, the sky itself shining through.     Desperate urgency clasped his hands tightly around hers, and he dragged the pair of them back to their feet. "We can't be together..."     "No." Her voice was already growing distant. "We can't be apart."     Her lips pressed against his, her cold fingers brushed across his bearded cheek, and as irrational understanding gripped him, he pulled her closer and steeled against the ice splintering through his skin from her touch.     The pair of them froze at the edge of that lake, and as their hearts beat their last, the knight's moonbeam surrounded them, the cold light of a winter moon warding off the warmth of the spring sun.     When the next winter came, they awoke together and ushered the season in, and they walked, talked, laughed and sang as they oversaw it as one. The snow drifted with their joy, the skies cleared crisp more often, and storms were nary seen. And when Spring inevitably arrived to revive the world, Winter's final kiss froze them again under the shield of the knight's moonlight, until Summer's Woe passed, and Winter's Smile reigned once again. *

    The next time you look out through the window, warmed by a hearthfire's glow, what will you see, I wonder? Smothering, death and woe? Or the soft comforts of Winter's heart?     ...Would you mind refilling this? The cider's run dry.

---

Support me on Patreon!  

This story and its artwork are not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2020 Kim Wedlock

[kimwedlock]

Locks and Boxes

Estimated read time: 11 minutes

     "You know what She'll do if She catches--"      "She won't catch us, Arta." Medea muttered a curse and steadied herself against a bookshelf as the library tilted to one side. She glanced out through the window on reflex, but it was impossible to get any bearings. The shifting, purple-wisped world outside could've been flowing in either direction, if anything was even moving at all.     She sighed and turned back to the arcane library while Arta anxiously wrung her hands behind her. The room was poorly-lit, which, Medea noted with a purse to her lips, made no sense at all, and what little light there was was caught and scattered by a thousand jangling keys swinging across the wall beside her. They offered nothing at all but confusion - and the smell didn't help. It was the sweet, subtle, tantalising smell of a promise she didn't want fulfilled; belladonna, monkshood, hemlock, mandrake, and other plants so poisonous they could probably kill in a glance, all hung dried across a rail or sat in pots, growing bitterly in the dark.     She swallowed slowly while her fingers traced absently down her throat.     With a moment of effort, she shook it off, strode decisively towards the far wall, the coarse disciple's robe shifting about her legs, and began rummaging through the shelves, drawers and clutter. The owner would probably have said there was a method in the madness, but she couldn't see it for the life of her.     A small, nervous noise behind snatched her attention briefly over her shoulder. "You don't need to be here, Arta."     "It's a bit late for that now," she said tightly, pulling her wide eyes onto her from the door. "Just exactly what is it you're looking for? You know what She'll do--"     "She won't catch us," Medea repeated, turning back to her frenzied search. "And I'm looking for a key."     "...Have you looked behind you?"     She shook her tanned head as she caught a toppling candlestick and stood it haphazardly back on the desk. "It's none of those. It's in a box."     "A box?"     "Yes, a box." She ignored the empty candlestick as it fell again. "Small, about the size of a book, red, with the thing etched onto it, that thing, the round thing--"     "The strophalos?!" Arta hissed; Medea winced. "What are you--"     "Shh! Stop panicking! Either leave or help me look!" She didn't glance back to watch Arta's indecision. She continued shoving, lifting and tossing things aside while the younger disciple hesitated behind her, until she heard her tut, mutter, then move up alongside to rummage through the neighbouring cabinet.     For the thousand keys adorning that back wall, Medea knew hers wasn't among them. Not one of those was a key of consequence - nor indeed were any of them the Key of Consequence. But that one was a prize for another time.     Whatever the case, nothing so important would be left so easily accessible, if such a term could be used in this strange, ever-moving place; they'd all be locked away themselves, behind even more complex systems. But she had a means of breaking through this one. She'd researched it. She'd experimented. And, if all else failed, she had allies. She just needed the box.    ''Just need the box'. As if it's that easy... Ugh. One step at a time, lass. One step at a time.'     She hadn't thought this through as well as she'd have liked, and she was big enough to admit that; just what she'd do once she'd gotten into Tartarus and found what she was after, she still wasn't sure. But she would work it out. She had to. Because, for all the necessity driving her - and never mind what the others might say - even she wasn't unaware of the danger.     The thought of what the goddess of boundaries, ghosts and witchcraft really would do if She caught her sent a shiver over her skin and a numb dread through her muscles.     She steeled herself and moved along to another cabinet. But she couldn't help sending the nervous, rummaging girl beside her a brief glance. She really shouldn't have stayed. In fact, she should probably make her leave...     But: four eyes were better than two.     Medea shrugged it off, then a lurch in her stomach told her the library had sped up along the ethereal tracks.     "It's not like you to get travel-sick," Arta said as Medea heaved.     She waved her away while she fought to settle herself, and steadied against the wood with another weary curse as the library tilted again. "I wish She'd stop this bloody thing once in a while," she muttered.     "What was that?"     "Nothing at all." Medea dug her way through boxes and trinkets into the dark of the unnaturally deep cabinet, where the smell of  musk tickled her nose and sent a spinning jolt through precisely one third of her head. She recoiled immediately, then squealed in disorientated fright as a polecat leapt out from the black. She narrowed her eyes at it as it bounced and squeaked its little war dance around her knees, until she batted the angry little menace aside. It soon scurried away to find somewhere else to sleep - and undoubtedly somewhere else she'd end up disturbing it.     "That was unlike Gale," Arta frowned. "She usually loves you."     "She must be coming into heat," Medea grunted through the curl of her lip, then returned her attention to the search. Between the two of them, they'd be done all the sooner.     For a library, there was an awful lot of junk. Tomes lined the walls, certainly - and, in some cases, constructed the cabinets themselves - and inkstained leaves were scattered over most surfaces. But beyond the books, the keys and the plants were seashells of glistening turquoise and deepest black, skrimshaw bones, and shards of black glass that looked remarkably like fragments of brain. There were skeins of hair, dried animal feet, small vials of life fluids; there were golden things, platinum things and one or two tools made from whole pieces of opal. And there were other, stranger things she couldn't place the use of: rods, rings, wires, tongs and calipers, some imbued with so much power that they physically hummed when her hand passed near. And, of course, there were boxes: green ones, black ones, oak; some bare of carvings and others absolutely overrun with them.     But not one of them was red, and not one bore the strophalos.     With every failing moment, Medea's patience thinned. She barely managed to bite back the foetid curse when the library lurched again and cast her forehead into the edge of the concealed cupboard she'd moved on to. Books rained down on her head.     "We're slowing down..." Arta turned wide eyes onto her. "Medea--"     "I know; keep looking." She grit her teeth and ignored the throb in her skull, but despite the panic clawing its way up her own back, she didn't slow down. Even when the latent magic of the place tugged and shifted around her, and the mind-bending, lung-bursting traps she'd thought she'd muffled her presence against began at last to react.     She managed to keep her heart behind her ribs and warded against them as subtly as she could. A brief glance towards Arta revealed she hadn't noticed. She was still searching shoulder-deep in a bejewelled chest with an expression torn between terror and determination.     Medea didn't let herself breathe her relief. And, as it turned out, she'd have had no chance to finish even if she'd started.     A presence spun her towards the door at the back, the movement startling a squeak out of Arta, just as the handle turned and a dog-headed figure burst in. His eyes were wild, jowls lifted, bone-crushing teeth bared and two savage-looking daggers in his hands. But he didn't attack, and Medea didn't move.     "Disciples," he rumbled as ferocity passed to surprise in his eyes. "What are you doing in here?"     Medea spun quickly back to the library and resumed her rummaging. "There was a thief," she replied hurriedly. "Overrode the traps, somehow, and vanished through the wall." She turned a brief look over her shoulder. "Go! Catch them! Quickly! Or it'll be all of our heads! Or worse!"     He'd already started through for the wall she'd nodded towards. "What did they take?!"     "I don't know! But it's best we get it back before She finds out! Go, we'll tidy up in here - hopefully She won't notice..."     The dog-headed guardian ran, shimmered, and passed through the wall and on into the next wandering room.     "What are you doing?!" Arta hissed from close beside her.     "If you want to call him back and tell him the truth, be my guest." She cast her a look as the girl bit her lip, then shortly disregarded her. But the moment she reached to move aside the inexplicable stone-cut ladel, a charge and flash of light leapt from it and hit her hand away. And while she cursed and attempted to disarm this next trap, the sand and shale amphora beside it picked itself up and shifted away. She blinked at it. Then watched the smoking blackwood bell beside it equally skitter out of her reach.     In that moment, the entire cabinet seemed to come to life.     The bitter curse broke through her lips this time, and she watched in a panic as the contents scrambled blindly over one another and the dreadful thought coalesced like a thundercloud in her mind: what if she'd already come past it, and it had already run away from her?     She cursed again, draining the blood from Arta's face with her imagination. Then, as if she'd spoken some obscure magic word, she spotted it: the book-sized, red, wooden box with the labyrinthine strophalos engraved on the lid, running mindlessly into the corner over and over and over again.     She wasted no moment to think on her luck; she snatched for it and all but glued her fingers to the grain with her grip. Just as the magic around them changed again.     This time, for one long, chilling moment, she had no control at all over her response. Terror gripped her tightly and wiped her mind clean. It was chance alone that she noticed the change in her skin: all colour and plump of life vanished, leaving her arm thin, grey and familiar.     The spell was wearing off.     She quickly tugged her sleeve down and pulled the box from the cabinet, wrapping it up in her robes. But when she turned towards Arta to tell her to flee, she found the girl staring at her in confusion instead.     "Medea, your skin, your eyes, you're--"     She watched Arta's expression slacken slowly in understanding, her gaze drop from her own pure-white eyes to her grey, almost inhuman face, then to the bony arms that shielded the box and prepared, if they had to, to weave another spell.     "You're not Medea..."     She had no chance to reply. The library screeched and tilted over the rails as it sped up through the realm again, and the baying of nearby hounds froze the both of them in place. Then, slowly, a red cast bled its way into the room.     "No..." Arta trembled where she stood. "No, no, no...no no..."     Hekate was coming.     The unmasked realm-walker cursed again and forced life back into her body. She had no choice. Arta shouldn't have been there. She should've made an excuse, sent the girl away. But she hadn't. Because she'd grown fond of her over the last week. And for that, the girl would pay. And it was her fault.     No. She had no choice at all.     The door flew open with a breath-snatching burst of wind. Thunder cracked, lightning flashed, leaves swirled in and every sentient item fell from its shelf and crawled forwards as if called by its master.     The realm-walker clenched her small teeth, snatched Arta's wrist, and the pair vanished with the box before Hekate could step inside through the storm of fury incarnate. ---

Support me on Patreon! This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2021 Kim Wedlock

[artofrengin]

Dane and Zara help Nergui get used to the Netherrealms once she gets there, but this role used to fall to a creature called Tobias, who lived alone and was uh, quite strict and sarcastic. Now Dane and Zara get to play Good Cop / Bad Cop x)

Read the comic here!

[kimwedlock]

Ardeyn’s Shine

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

      Ardeyn cocked his head while a frown flickered over his brow.     The tiny light glowed back at him.     A curious hum lilted in his throat. Carefully, he raised the sheet of bark to eye-level, watching the silver speck hover and pulse just above the map like a firefly, and ever so slowly crept his hand in above it. But it didn't shrink away. He teased his fingers through it as it flickered, and his teal eyes narrowed with the purse of his lips.     He tipped the map sharply. It still didn't move. Then he shook it, but aside from loosening a few flakes of lichen, nothing else happened. The light hung devotedly over the bark, just above the long, winding etching of the river.     A curious smile wandered over Ardeyn's face.     With a satisfied twitch of his ears, the faun rose to his hooves, held the map open in front of him, and meandered off through the black of the night's trees, soft earth squelching beneath his steps and the damp, green, pattering smell of the forest tickling his nose. He wove among the dense tangle of trunks, past the foxfire and fireflies, beneath the ancient arcing roots, between the moss-covered rocks and through the draping curtains of ivy and tanglers, until the forest suddenly broke open and the thick air eased. Only feet from the edge did the sound of trundling water lace through the night.     But he didn't sigh and throw himself down on the soft, grassy banks like he usually would. Instead, he crept closer to the edge of the black, tranquil water, his doe eyes widening at the spot that was simply impossible to miss: a single silver glow hanging below the jet-black surface, right where the light said it would be.     His long, red braid trailed through the lazy current as he knelt over the edge, his orcein-painted reflection peering back at him, and he watched it glimmer and shine. Slowly, his fingers slipped through the water, but this light didn't flee, either. Then, they closed around it.     His heart sang with the sudden pulse, hum and flicker of its warmth, and he pulled it out and cradled it against his chest.     "What a marvellous thing," he murmured, "but you are not mine to keep. You wanted rescuing, and I have rescued you." He turned, then, and carried it a safe ways back from the bank, where he scooped a hole in the soil and planted it. "Be one with the earth again."     Then he wandered off with a smile on his face, following the smell of rain.    The glow Ardeyn buried soon sprouted, and when he wandered by again, following the trail of a sparrow, he found the thin, wispy reed towering twice his height, with drops of pure silver glinting from the tips of its sparse leaves. And when his curious hand reached out towards them, they dropped willingly into his palm.

    The glow Ardeyn buried soon sprouted, and when he wandered by again, following the trail of a sparrow, he found the thin, wispy reed towering twice his height, with drops of pure silver glinting from the tips of its sparse leaves. And when his curious hand reached out towards them, they dropped willingly into his palm.     His wide eyes drifted back to the river, ears twitching, eyebrows shifting crooked, and he hummed a question to himself. Slowly, he wandered to the edge and dropped one of the silvers in. It broke the surface with the faintest plop, sank to the bed, and glowed all the brighter. And when the others in his hand tinkled with delight, he smiled and scattered them out in a wide arc to join it. The water shone with the tiny lights, glittering like diamonds in the flow, and Ardeyn breathed a marvelling little sigh.     He stepped back to the plant before he moved along, and peered down at its tapered leaves. There were already more drops glinting at their stem.     "What a marvellous thing..." And he trotted off after the sparrow.     Ardeyn returned to the river many times as he matured, and the reed sprawled and branched in tandem. Every few months, he collected and scattered the drops along the water, and the night soon shone with flecks of silver. It wasn't long before others came to notice its brilliance, and they charmed Ecine's eye in particular, a woman so beautiful that Ardeyn felt his heart flutter high enough to escape with the butterflies every time he saw her.     But for all his desperation, he couldn't find the words to speak to her.     So he embraced another method instead.     He visited the stem and gathered its drops more often after that. But rather than scatter them as freely as he used to, for the waters were already perfectly speckled, he arranged them into pictures beneath the surface; tales and stories written in light to capture her heart. And they worked a wonder.     The dimensions of his art grew with the passing of the seasons, and glowed brighter with the depth of their love. And the day she agreed to join with him, he ran joyously along the riverbank, trailing them in a great, long, dusty streak beside him. The sun shone even brighter on his life.     But the clouds soon rolled in.     Ecine fell ill some years later, and he consumed himself with finding a cure. He asked the birds, the foxes, the trees, the rocks, but nothing worked. And when she passed into peace, the stories and images Ardeyn had so meticulously created for her crumbled to a halt. He became listless, wandering his sylvan charge blindly instead, and the forests, the rivers, the stones and the sky wept as he mourned in a cloud.     But the power with which he tried to forget, to shield his heart and wall his mind, seeped into the world around him. And it rose with the summer heat.     The sky and the river conspired; one night, the lights in the water shone back from the black expanse above, illuminating the world with his love for her. And when Ardeyn looked up into that mirror from his lonely riverbank, he smiled for the first time in a year. A single tear fell and stirred the twinkling waters.     The lights have shone every night ever since. ---

Support me on Patreon! This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission. Copyright © 2021 Kim Wedlock

[kimwedlock]

Lun’ul

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

     The full moon shone lordly over the mountains. Silver capped the distant peaks, flowed like molten light through the valleys, and bathed with a billion diamonds in the lakes far below. All between those glittering stars was black but for two great, dusty streaks smudging the sky beneath the moon, and a third hanging over the distant horizon, each flecked with so many more silver pinpoints that it seemed the stars themselves had gathered to witness the passing of Lun'ul.    But, of course, the idea was lost on the five tribal children, sitting in a ring upon one mountain ledge, giggling and throwing the dust they'd been told to grind from all kinds of dried insects and herbs. Chores were, after all, a thing grown ups gave them to make sure they became as boring as they were. There was no other reason for it. So they had to work harder to ensure that they didn't.    Their bronze skin was soon stained such deep shades of red, green and blue by those efforts that it would take a week of sand scrubbing to get it back out. A fact pointed out by one dreadlocked young man as he stopped in his own errands to frown down over them.    Ice-blue eyes widened and turned up to him sheepishly - all the eyes of all the children, bar one.    "Deeeehaaaaa," the fifth whined, flopping backwards against the warrior's legs, then onto the rocky ground itself when he shuffled one step backwards. She scowled up at him, upside down, but didn't call her older brother out on it. "Can't you get us out of this?"    "No," Deha grunted. "And I wouldn't if I could. Breaking stuff is about all you lot are good at, so you can grind the dust for tomorrow's ceremony."    "But whyyyyy?"    "Yeah," a boy piped up while she flopped somehow deeper into the ground. "Can't we just go with you? We wanna do more battle traini--" His hands clamped over his mouth at Deha's sharp hush.    "Mention it again," he whispered, glancing around at the other villagers busying themselves with preparations nearby, "and I'll teach you how to clean weapons rather than swing them."    "But why do we have to do this?" His sister whined again. "The moon's already up!"    "Yes," he sighed witheringly, "but the Winds aren't. This dust needs to be ready to purify it, and the priests can't do that if it's not been ground up."    "Why do they need to? We don't do it every other time the wind blows..."    Deha rolled his eyes and nudged his petulant sister roughly with his foot. She sighed dramatically and pushed herself back up. He dreaded her getting older. She was already too dramatic for a six year old - what about when she was his age? "Those winds," he sighed, crouching down beside them all, "aren't the same. This Wind is the wind of the spirits. The gust that carries the souls of our ancestors, who protect us and watch over us while they make their way to the Frozen Gates in the south."    "Why does it matter so much tonight?" Another girl asked. Deha squinted uncomfortably. One of her eyeballs had gone blue.    "It doesn't," he replied, deciding it wasn't his problem to fix. "Lun'ul is tomorrow night. When the waxing moon aligns with the constellation of Akiirit."    "Akiirit?"    "The one that looks like a rolling badger."    "Oh!" All five children squinted up into the sky.    He was about to rise and resume his task, joining a few others in carving bone charms, when the blue-eyeballed girl spoke up again.    "But why does it actually matter?"    He stifled his frustrations and wished, vehemently, that he hadn't gotten involved at all. But, if he didn't answer them now, they would just follow him and pester him until he did. Being Hara's brother meant he was more desirable for her and her friends to harass than anyone else, especially any of the very busy priestesses who could have done a much better job of explaining it than him.    So, wearily, he shifted the hammered sword from the sling at his side and sat down on the ground, where he was quickly surrounded. A distinct pressure settled on him with the wideness of those patient eyes. "It matters," he began carefully, "because tomorrow night the Winds will drop low enough to pick up our wishes and carry them away. It's the one night when--"    "It won't pick us up and carry us off with them, will it?"    His eyes narrowed back at his sister. "I'll make sure it does if you keep interrupting. It carries our wishes - our messages, our love. It's the one night we can speak to the spirits, to our ancestors, and tell them all we wish to tell them."    "Like what?"    He shrugged. "Anything."    One of the other boys gasped brightly. "I can tell them I'm getting really good at hatchet throwing!"    "Sure," Deha nodded, "if you want to lie to them, that's fine too."    The boy's expression flattened.    "What is the Wind?" Another asked. "Why do our ancestors ride it?"    "Yeah," piped another, "why don't they just walk? Or stay here? Why do they even have to go at all?"    He sighed as he found himself sinking under a cascade of increasingly heated questions. It took three hushes and a threat from his sword to quiet them. "All right. I'll start at the beginning - assuming I can recall enough of the details. The story of the Wind... Well, Aya'u - you know who She is, don't you? I don't have to start right at the beginning, do I?"    Each of the children guffawed. "We're not stupid," his sister drawled. "She's the Goddess of the Wind."    "Thank the sands for that," he muttered. "Well then, I'll begin:    "Aya'u, Shiya, Degon, Uq'ua, were each loved by the elements. Fire would hug and kiss Shiya, the earth would shelter and warm Degon, water would lap at Uq'oa's toes, and the winds would kiss and caress Aya'u's skin. The rampaging elements tamed in the presence of the gods, and the gods adored them in turn. But, time passed, and the elements weren't company enough - they sang, but they didn't sing the same songs as the gods; they laughed, but they didn't laugh the same way; they loved, but their passion was different. The gods weren't lonely, but...They were missing something...ehh, vital," he finished vaguely.    "What was so vital?"    He waved the question away. "You'll understand when you're older. Don't ask your parents."    "Why not?"    "Because you'll go blind. Anyway, they--friends." Deha grinned and nodded with satisfaction. "They wanted friends. Yes. So the gods came together with Their elements and made us to be Their friends. Figures were shaped from earth, hardened in fire, filled with water, and blown into motion, and then we were all taken away and put where our gods could find them easiest. Aya'u placed our tribe out here, on the path of the Gende'ah winds.    "But, when the first of us died, when their bodies couldn't go on any longer, their spirits continued to blow forwards, and with nothing to tether them, they were flung out into the world - every one of them. The children of Aya'u, and the children of the rest.    "But the gods, though different in Their natures, had never been quarrelsome or jealous. It was Aya'u's breath that gave us life, and it was Her breath that created the Winds to the Frozen Gates, where the elements themselves collapse. It's a place where water turns solid, where plants cannot grow, where the winds roar out of control and fire cannot burn."    "That sounds...scary..."    Deha watched their open expressions crease in concern, and he scratched hesitantly at his chin. "It does a bit, doesn't it? ...Well, it isn't. The spirits can't feel it, they're not touched by it, and they're carried by Aya'u's breath through the gates to the gods Themselves."    "Then what happens?"    "Then they live with them among the stars, and new spirits are born with the new winds, which are blown into new bodies."    "Babies!" A girl beamed.    "Or...us?" A creeping terror moved slowly into the boy's eyes, then jumped quickly into the rest. "I already have a spirit - what will happen if--"    "Will I be pushed out of me and someone else takes over?!"    "What if it happens to my mother?!"    "What if I become a boy?!"    He winced in a panic as they began to cry. "Wait, wait, wait, wait! Babies! Unborn babies!" He looked quickly about at the rest of the tribe, and found a few of them frowning his way in disapproval. This wasn't a night for sadness or fear.    Then his heart jumped suddenly into his throat as a musical voice rose behind him.    He froze, wide-eyed, for a long moment. Only when his cheeks had flushed completely red did he find the drive to rise clumsily to his feet.    The young woman was beautiful in her pale, ceremonial hides, hides that darkened her beautiful bronze skin by contrast, which in turn brightened her beautiful blue eyes, and her beautiful lips were set into a beautiful smile despite one beautiful white eyebrow cocked impatiently his way.    She was...well, beautiful.    He wished he was capable of thinking of something else every time he saw her.    "Aya'u knows what She's doing, kids," the training priestess said, turning a more heartfelt smile their way and giving him the opportunity to breathe again. "She knows each and every one of you, and loves you. There's no possible way She would ever let someone else's spirit take over your bodies! She wants to make new friends, not replace old ones!"    "B-bu-b-but what if she makes a mistake?!" One of the boys blubbed.    "Good job, Deha," the priestess muttered drily, then knelt and spoke up as his head dropped over rounded shoulders. "She has never made a mistake. Ever. Every single thing She's done has been deliberate. Everything all the gods have done has been deliberate. That's how the elements work together so smoothly. But," she raised a slender finger, "when we begin to doubt in Them, that balance begins to change. We all must trust."    "But what if we can't?"    Her smile broadened, and her tone grew almost crisp. "Then leave."    Deha started at that.    "Leave here, and travel to the Red Mountain. Speak with the Fa'hari fire tribe and the Traahak earth tribe on the volcano's slopes. See how their elements work in tandem, and the good that their volcano brings the world when the wind scatters its ash.    "Then visit the Rashan Hills and speak to the Gyuils water tribe; watch the geysers erupt five hundred spans into the air, see the wealth of the land around its pools and far beyond when the wind carries that rich steam away." She smiled at each individual in turn, and Deha watched their eyes glaze with the imaginings of those distant places. "See it all working together, and then decide for yourself."    Little Hara frowned, and turned her brother a long look. He couldn't quite read the question in her eyes, but he gave her a nod anyway. If she needed some kind of reassurance, Yia was the best person to give it.    Her big ice-blue eyes turned back towards the waiting priestess. "What if we decide wrong?"    She chuckled lightly, a sound like rolling water. "You can't decide wrong. It's not possible."    "What if it is and I'm the first person to do it?"    "Then," she said simply, "the world will stop turning. Which it cannot do while the Winds continue to blow, and nothing in the world can stop a force like the Winds. That," she smiled, "is how impossible it is. What you decide will be right for you, and you will do with it what you will."    Their eyes glazed again, and quiet little frowns of thought descended over each of their faces. Some with more difficulty than others.    But, before long, the soft trill of pipes rose up from further along the mountain shelf and drew them back out of their ponderings. Yai rose back to her feet and straightened out her hides. "The Night Before is beginning," she announced as they followed her up, driven more by curiosity than anything else. "Go. Enjoy yourselves and leave heavy thoughts behind." She looked over the half-empty bowls and their stained skin, and smiled. It was a more jagged one this time - amusement, not piety. "Your work is done."    "But," Hara looked back to the bowls herself with suddenly profound reluctance, "we didn't finish..."    "I'm sure Aya'u will believe this is plenty."    Each face lit up with relief, and the five scrambled over each other to race off to the dance that was kicking up by the pipers.    Yai sighed and watched them go while Deha reslung his sword. "You really shouldn't talk to children."    "I know."  

---

Support me on Patreon!

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission.

Copyright © 2020 Kim Wedlock

[kimwedlock]

Forest Fire

Featuring artwork by Rengin Tumer

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

    The volcanoes were perfectly white. The sheer sides, both inside and out, were as plain and bright as chalk, and the air grew cooler the deeper into the crater they moved. Zara had gone on to scout ahead, searching for a way out in one direction while Dane and Nergui looked in another. Zara was, after all, a little more accustomed to these places than either of the others were, and if any of them could survive alone, it was her.     Nergui's shoulders tightened as her foot left the final step from the staircase cut into the side of the rock, and looked again across the crater she inexplicably found herself standing in. This whole situation went beyond every rational response in her body. Descending into a volcano to escape the heat outside it? It was ludicrous.     But should she really be so surprised? Every realm so far had challenged everything she'd ever learned; 'normal' had a completely different meaning in these lands - if it had a meaning at all. But at least that meant there was no lava where she stood, nor sulphur, steam, nor ash. There was only solid rock, and a number of equally white tunnels cut into the far side.     Dane stepped forwards and gave her a reassuring tug on her elbow. She did her best to loosen her shoulders as she followed him, but her anxiety wasn't so easily moved. But, as long as her feet were, it would do.     She'd tightened further by the time they reached the far side, and stared at the four circular tunnel entrances without any kind of clue. Eventually, Dane moved forwards and chose one, Nergui suspected, at random, but without Zara's keen eye, there was no better method for selecting their way forwards. So, she followed him as unwillingly as she had at every other turn, and tried to keep her thoughts focused on what was needed rather than wandering onto frets she could do nothing about. But, as ever, the effort to steer her mind away only leaded it directly onto what she'd wanted to avoid.     "You're thinking about him again, aren't you?" Dane asked softly as they moved into the tunnel. "Your father?"     She managed a pitiful smile. "I never stop thinking about him." The fact that he'd noticed was enough to kick her attention firmly onto their surroundings, and she noticed at last that the perfectly cylindrical tunnel was far too bright, so far from the opening.     Her black eyebrows knitted together as she peered at the stone a little more closely, then held her palm just an inch away from it. Somehow, it was giving off a light of its own. A number of things went through her mind, and she took a careful step away when the word 'radium' lodged itself at the centre.

   The next thing she noticed in a desperate attempt to distract herself were the clusters of black flowers growing in spots across the ceiling, but she saw quickly that they, too, were stone. Otherwise, there was nothing at all to see.    "Are you sure we won't find the tree here?" She asked, trying to draw her thoughts away from further impossibilities, and glanced towards Dane as he nodded.    "It only grows in the sun. Here," he looked over the tunnel while his dark, mottled skin creased into a wistful frown, "nothing grows but stone."   Nergui followed his gaze towards the approaching exit as she pondered the likely truth of that statement. "Do you know why Zara needs it?"    "What makes you think she'd tell me?" He smirked almost helplessly, then gripped her with a brief but assured gaze. "She's been here for centuries. She knows what she's doing. If she says it'll help you find your way back, or help us find a way to help you find your...way back..." He forced aside his own frown of confusion and smiled simply instead. "Trust her."     "I'm trying..." She tightened again, shrinking her height closer to his, and glanced up at the weight of his hand on her shoulder. His comforting smile, however, faltered when something else caught his eye.    She followed his frown towards the exit and saw, in the forking chamber filled with a dozen tunnelways beyond, a robed figure standing almost as still as a statue, so tall and slim, it was as if his body had been stretched.    "Another one." Dane tried to shift his tone into something more positive. "Think it'll be as benevolent as the last?"    "Or," she murmured, "as wretched as the three before that."   They couldn't stay in the tunnel, not if they were to find a way out. So they braced themselves and continued, watching the motionless figure closely. His face first appeared to be densely shaded by his hood, until Nergui reasoned that he was far too dark for that. Her uneasy suspicions were confirmed when she noticed the edge of his skin flickering like an unstable void. His robe seemed to be all that was giving him any shape.    Then eyes coalesced. They were his - its - only features.   "You shouldn't be here." The voice boomed from somewhere else, and ricocheted through the chamber.     Nergui battled to find her own voice, but Dane spoke up before she could succeed. "We don't want to be," he said as calmly as he could, "we're looking for the hartscale tree, we just need to find a way out--"    "You won't get it from me," it rumbled. But there was a strange look in its eyes - eyes, Nergui noticed, that were fixed entirely upon her. And had been since they'd appeared. She had no hope at all of reading what lay behind them. "But..." the look intensified, "I won't stop you from finding it. There is no need."     "No...need?" Dane asked while Nergui fought against shrinking back from that stare.     The flickering being seemed to shake its head. "No need." Then its eyes disappeared as suddenly as they'd formed.     Dane sent her a brief look before peering back at the blind thing as politely as he could. "We'd be out of your way sooner if--"     "No need." Then the being vanished altogether.    "Well," Dane sighed, looking instead across the array of branching white tunnels, "I suppose that could have gone worse." And again, he chose a path at random, and the pair walked on.     They travelled in silence until movement on the stone-flower wall just steps ahead of them tore a gasp from Nergui's throat, and two rich, violet eyes opened and stared back at them from the stone - or, rather, a rocky projection from the smooth, uniform tunnel that looked almost like a six-legged lizard, the same size as herself. The pair moved on far quicker after that, and stuck closer to the middle of the path.     They followed a handful more tunnels and made the crossing over another cold, white crater when the world finally began to change.     "Is this it?" Nergui asked, brushing back her long, black hair as she stared ahead at the sunset light pouring in from the end of the tunnel, bathing the monochromatic world in wonderfully warm colours. "The edge of the realm?" But she found a strange look on Dane's face, itself now brushed by the golden light - a look that, for once, did not reassure. And yet he moved forwards anyway without a word of answer.     Nergui couldn't bring herself to even mutter under her breath, and followed him out rather than be left behind among creatures she couldn't see.     And discovered the crater beyond alight with metallic golden flames.    Astonishment froze them both, watching the gold writhe up across the white, mountainous walls around a lake of cold, silver magma. It took them a long moment to notice that the fire gave off no heat at all, despite the black scorches across the rock. Instead it was the thundering collapse of the volcano itself that came to dominate their attention, along with the squealing, howling alarm of animals they'd never noticed but could now certainly hear. Things they'd thought were stone flowers or outcrops in the other craters moved in a panic and opened their vibrantly-coloured eyes of lilac, crimson, yellow and blue, and it seemed, in that horrific moment, that all the colour of the realm was held in the eyes of its beasts, and in the flames that now destroyed them.    "We have to do something," Nergui declared in a tight whisper, though she had no idea at all of what.    "Yes," Dane replied, and gripped her wrist with a strong hand. "Run the other way!"    "B-but--they--"    "I know, Ner," he told her emphatically, even as he pulled her back down the tunnel, "but there's nothing we can do! We'll just get ourselves killed!"    He was probably right. She didn't like it, and he probably liked it even less, but he wouldn't have suggested such a thing if there was any other way. So she gritted her teeth and gave in to his urging, making back towards the chamber of tunnelways. But as they stumbled out into the next crater, they found another swathe of raging golden fire.     And the tunnel behind them filling with the first.     Fear raked its way through Nergui's muscles. It was only Dane's effort to push her - probably more gently than it felt in her shock - towards the wall of the volcano that she finally escaped the grasping reach of the flames at her back, and they ran with eyes fixed solely to the wall-cut stairs. They staggered and stumbled their way up, snatching glances towards the stone-skinned creatures falling around them with the crumbling rock, and she soon noticed, her fevered eyes dragged by every scream, the bursts of colour that rose from the flame every single time one of the creatures fell or was overrun by its reach. Red, lilac, yellow, blue, pink - exactly the same variety as their eyes.    Her mind was snatched away from the abstract pondering of periodic elements when the steps beneath her rushing feet shook and shattered. She didn't need to hear Dane's warning, nor voice her own, but they both yelled it anyway, and let another surge of adrenaline propel them forwards and block out the useless knowledge that the higher they went, the worse it would be if they fell. They barely managed to stay ahead of the collapse.    And yet still Nergui managed to stall for a foolish second in fascination as a glimpse of the next volcano over revealed that, not only was it already far worse off than theirs, but that the silver magma at its centre was roiling, too - and there were new shapes and colours emerging.     "Move, Nergui!" Dane shouted ahead of her. "What's wrong?!"     If he'd spotted the same, it hadn't interested him. Not enough, at least, to risk his life to watch. She pushed on without wasting time on apology, and settled instead on another rapid glance as she scrambled to keep up.     The magma was almost leaping onto the burning creatures; wherever the flames changed colour, the magma was drawn, and it was where the magma receded that immense swathes of green were left behind, and bolts of light leapt from its depths.     But there was no more time to marvel than that brief second. The collapse was beginning to overtake her.     She scavenged as much energy as she could to move faster, but her heart leapt into her throat before she could use it. She and Dane both plummeted with the rock, falling with boulders as small as their heads and others as big as a house. How none of it struck them, they would never know, nor how they managed to land in this crater's far smaller pool of magma rather than the solid, bone-crushing floor.     Even against its comparative softness, pain was the first thing to seize her senses, and the second, mercifully, was the numbing coolness that stole it away. Even before she'd shaken off her daze, she was fighting her way through the surprisingly thin liquid to the surface, where she took the biggest, sweetest breath she ever had before.     Dane was already hauling himself out at the edge when she reached it, and the both of them choked and dragged their heaving chests back into a normal rhythm. When Nergui finally looked down at her hands, expecting to see gloves of molten silver, she found instead metallic patches shrinking and vanishing over almost bone-dry skin. She wondered to herself, as her heart sped up and almond-shaped eyes widened, what mercury poisoning would feel like.     "Nergui..."     Her attention snapped up, and she found Dane staring wide-eyed around them at what remained of the volcano. She gasped despite her lungs as she followed his gaze.     The golden fire had vanished, and the fragments and debris of the walls had become large, white hills, covered in the lower reaches by the same green that sprawled beneath them now, closer to moss than grass. Orange flowers sprouted in thick clusters, rendering the moss a warmer hue, and creatures of pure light leapt and sprang around the lake of glittering silver, yipping and chortling in joy.     Truly, in that moment, the crater looked as though it had always been that way.     Nergui shook her head to herself as she stared around it, and a knot tightened in her brow.     "After all that destruction," Dane breathed, "this is what happens?"    "I was going to ask you..." Her slanted eyes narrowed as a thought burrowed in. "Sequoias won't grow without a forest fire... Maybe some awful things need to happen to make room for something new..." She felt Dane's eyes flick towards her. She knew what he was thinking. Because she was thinking it, too. 'Maybe that's what's happening to me, stuck in these realms...'     But she didn't say it.     Nergui pushed herself to her feet while Dane rose in equal silence beside her. "Come on. We'd better go find Z--"     "Thank the gods you're both all right!"     Their attention fired up towards the top of the highest hill where a dark figure stood, waving a bow above her head.     "Come on!" Zara shouted as they grinned in relief. "I've found a way out!"    "Does it go where we need it to?" Nergui called back, but even from that distance, she could see Zara had simply shrugged.     "Who knows?"    She smiled and shook her head while Zara turned and set off behind the hill, and forced some confidence into her bearing. "Won't know until we get there, I suppose. Come on," she turned Dane the best smile she could, "let's go find this tree..."

Support me on Patreon!

Support Rengin on Patreon!

Words by Kim Wedlock, art by Rengin Tumer. All characters, and the concept of the Netherrealms, belong to Rengin Tumer. This story and its artwork is not to be reproduced without the permission of myself or Rengin Tumer. The artwork is available to purchase as a print from Rengin Tumer.

[kimwedlock]

To Defend and Dissuade

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

    The scattered clusters of silver and purple sang gloriously against the drab stone and tattered standards of the courtyard below. These were not the chequered tents and pennants of provinces, but the united colours of Queen Madeleia, and it was among them her soldiers massed, clearing ash and debris to build forges and workshops. The fortress had been conquered just that afternoon, and, once prepared, it would be the ideal staging ground for the next attack against the Barbaric North.     But, while the soldiers toiled under the eye of the lesser commanders and the dying winter sun, there was nothing more that Sir Pecheran of Montaria could presently do to further their goals.     So he turned from the tower window, huffed and rubbed his cold hands together, then pinned them beneath his arms. "Where is Sir Gacharan?" He asked as he rejoined the other knights gathered around the glowing hearth.    "Fortifying the outer walls," answered Belechar of Eiderstag before draining his mug. Not a drop rolled down the grizzled man's chin. "With Alestír."     "Alestír?" Pecheran felt the blood drain from his face. "He's here?"     "Arrived this morning."     Rozilig the Grey shook his head to himself, fingering the Lord's talisman that hung around his neck while Pecheran returned, ashen-faced, to his stool. "I don't like this. It grates. It feels...underhanded. The very existence of that heathen's magic is an affront, and to use it is--"     "The prerogative of the queen's champion." Lord Welden cast Sir Rozilig a condemning look from where he leaned in thought against the cold stone mantle, immediately silencing his discontent. "Sir Eckter the Silver is our commander. We follow his commands. We do not question them. Queen Madeleia appointed him, and we owe Her Majesty and her consort our unwavering allegiance."     "But we are knights, my lord," Rozilig dared. "Does such a method of war not sit foul with you?"    "Certainly does with me," Belechar muttered. Then he cast a weathered eye from the depths of his hood towards the others. "Have you seen his powers?"     "I have," Ethelred of Treleian said darkly into the depths of his tankard. "I've seen him unmake the steel of armour and melt the knight alive inside it."     "Don't you mean melt the steel around the knight?"     The look he sent back to Sir Pecheran was even bleaker. "No."     "I've heard things." Rozilig leaned forwards, pulling his cloak tighter about himself against the chill, and turned a grave look across them all. "He twists and unmakes the made. He is no illusionist. What he does is...it's real. Even when impossibility and the laws of our Lord say otherwise...he does it. He turned the air to water and drowned the front lines of the Saxi'ans--"     "No," Belechar shook his head, "he removed the air entirely. There was nothing in its place."     "That isn't how the matter went," Lord Welden declared, but Pecheran's alarm was already pressing him on over him.     "But how?" The knight demanded of the others, managing at least to control the unease in his tone if not his eyes. "How can he do this?"     "He's bound to something unholy," Rozilig sneered, "of that, there's no doubt at all. He makes a sound, like a guttural chant, a demonic hymn - it's wretched, whatever it is. His voice shudders the earth and bleeds the ears."     "His voice?" Belechar frowned. "I thought he'd bottled the throat of a demon..."   "It's unnatural, whatever it is," Ethelred muttered to himself, refilling his mug with the ale appropriated from the fortress's looted stores. "But it comes from his own lips, I'm sure of that much."     "But is that not the incantation alone? Where does his mastery of it come from? There are stories that he eats the bones of the vanquished to rejuvenate - surely that cannot be true..."     "Why not?" Belechar asked, raising Pecheran's concern that little bit higher. "A demon's heart sits in place of his own. Perhaps that's how he keeps it beating. And that foul heart is explanation enough, is it not?"     Rozilig growled. "By the Lord's rights, it is. What other cause could there be for someone being able to boil the eyes of a man in his skull just by looking at them? Or to carry the strength of fifteen men in one hand alone?"     "And charm even the fairest and most chaste woman into bed."     No one missed the note of jealousy in Belechar's voice.    Then Ethelred frowned. "If he has the strength of fifteen men in one hand, how can he love her without crushing her?"     "It is unfitting," Lord Welden announced in a calm yet destructively authoritative voice, putting an end to their rumourmongering, "for Knights of the Realm to speculate. Alestír is the Champion's ally, and if he deems the man's arcane to be necessary, he is well within his rights to use it. And you forget, in your ignorance, that the Lord would not allow such a power to exist if it truly came from the heart and soul of a demon. The man would have been smote down at birth."     "Then why does he have it?"     "Because," Welden replied frostily, "the Lord permits it. For the good of the Queen, the good of our lands, and the good of our people does He permit it."   Pecheran blanched when he caught Belechar mutter beneath his breath: "That's a convenient argument."     But then Sir Rozilig spoke up, and turned the austere commander an open look. "Do we truly need him?"     His steely gaze didn't brush him. "It is not our place to decide."     "No, but it is your place to advise. My lord, the Northerners are slow-witted! We don't need sorcery to overcome them, whether the Lord allows it or not! We are far more adept - we could defeat them with one arm each tied at our backs!"    "Sir Eckter the Silver wants him," Lord Welden continued just as rigidly, "and if the queen's champion wants him, he will have him, and he will use him. It is not your place to question it, nor is it mine. I trust our commander's judgement, and the Lord's guidance over him." Against possibility, he straightened even further and raised his chin even higher. "Perhaps you should worry instead about your men, and your honour. Do not strike fear in yourselves over your enemies - real or imagined - or you will lead all of us to graves dug deep into foreign soil."     "That's giving the Northerners too much credit." But the grizzled, hooded knight turned his eyes away from the scathing look the lord finally lanced him with.     Then the creak of the old door sent a flash of white panic through everyone's bones, feet were leapt to, and swords rang free of the scabbards kept habitually in reach. The man that stepped inside, however, didn't seem to notice.     Sir Pecheran frowned as he returned his blade, and approached Sir Gacharan carefully. He was pale - even the orange glow of the fire couldn't cast any colour into his cheeks - and his eyes were wide. Haunted. Terrified. As if he'd been shown his own heart after watching it be surgically removed from his chest.     "Gacharan," Pecheran said while the others stared on, some sheathing, the rest too unsettled. "What's happened?"     His half-glazed eyes focused onto them from the distance and he stopped mid-stride as if stunned to see them. His voice, when he finally found it, trembled.     "He...he fortified the walls..."

---

Support me on Patreon!

This story is not to be copied or reproduced without my written permission.

Copyright © 2020 Kim Wedlock

[kimwedlock]

The Calling

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes

    The long, flat drone of a horn ricocheted across the frozen, rock-studded landscape. Even in the throes of sleep, there wasn't a doubt in Katriga's heart that it was for her.    She was out of bed in an instant, startling the little red dragon that had been curled up at the foot, and ran out through the door before he could even peep in surprise. Nothing but the gods themselves could have stopped her as she darted through the house. She didn't pause to snatch a breakfast, nor even call 'good morning' to her family - and the idea of actually waiting for them was as far from her mind as the fresh coat of paint on the front door.    But they would come. They had to. The Calling was the most important day of her life.    Somehow, despite being no bigger than a week-old kitten, Mogar managed to catch up before she was half way across the village, and the tiny little dragon took his place on her shoulder as she ran for its boundaries and out to the frosted valleys beyond.    The Calling. Yesterday, Kat had turned eighteen and experienced the Kúkhulænn in all its painful glory, besting every challenge her clan presented - even if the challengers had all been the better part of drunk. But she had to admit - to herself, never out loud - that she was still a little sore from those duels that morning. She'd been in no fit state to stretch when it was finished, and even now she felt nauseous. She didn't believe for a moment that it could all have been nerves. Whatever trial awaited her out here, she knew she wasn't going to pass it with flying colours...    But the night had been worth it, and today would be even better. Once she'd answered her ancestors' call, the world would open up before her, and she would finally be able to travel!    Kat couldn't suppress the grin on her face as she tugged at the straps of her new plated fists, and her boots pounded harder over the ground.    A chill wind chased her across the jagged valleys, just as it harried the rushing rivers and bent the creaking pines. And ahead at last, where the rough-hewn ground finally levelled out, guarded by ancient standing stones and shaded by bowing trees, stood a single, perfect, grassy mound.    Only with the barrow firmly in sight did Kat finally slow down. Winded and dizzy, her excitement carried her ahead of it all. She barely noticed the crowd gathering a short way behind her; there was only the dense, heavy weight of a dozen presences ahead.    Her breath caught in her throat when she understood what she was feeling, and her blood-red eyes flicked across the barrow in a fever, searching for...well, she wasn't really sure what for. A clue, she supposed. Because she'd arrived at the source of the horn blast, which itself had long since faded; she'd answered the call. But nothing at all was happening.    She blinked and looked down at her feet. Perhaps she was too far. She took a few steps and stopped again.    Nothing.    A knot tightened in her brow. Was she supposed to wait? Or maybe say something? But what? And what if she said it too loud and angered the spirits? Maybe she was still too far - maybe she was supposed to knock? But knock on what?    Maybe that was the clue. Perhaps she should go in.    She gasped at a sudden hand on her shoulder before she could take a step, and Mogar snapped and puffed his own fiery little warning. But her head snapped not towards spirit or draugr, but the clan shaman - though he was a startling sight, himself, painted as he was by tradition. But the look he gave her stifled any other sound her anxiety could shape, and he suggested, in his usual muted gestures, that she calm down, and breathe.    So she did just that, albeit with tremendous effort; closing her eyes, she smothered the fire in her heart at least until her hands stopped shaking, and came at last to notice something else laced into the air.    Chanting. Voices. Not those of anyone she knew, and yet she knew them better and more deeply than her own mothers'.    Then drums joined them, a slow, reiterating pattern that grew stronger with every cycle, shaking their way deeper into her bones until her heart beat in time with them.

    The crowd gasped, and Mogar peeped in startlement as he plummeted to the ground where Katriga had been standing just a moment ago.

    A sudden harsh, salty tinge wrinkled her nose, and her eyes opened to a raging twilight sea.    Kat swore and staggered backwards from the precipice, stumbling until she crashed to her rear, her heart hammering in her ears over the roar of the wind. It took a long, stunned moment before she dared to crawl forwards and peer over the edge to the swirling white crests below. Her heart lurched even higher into her throat.    She stole a look behind her despite the certainty that the edge would creep closer if she took her eyes off it. The peninsula was probably no bigger than the hall of the jarl, her mother, but it was uneven, and half of it sloped enough to send her tumbling into the sea. Vertigo made her equally certain that she was already falling.    Her fingers dug into the hard earth until, slowly, she pushed herself up. With a deep breath, she grounded her feet and looked around. A fjord opened a ways back behind her, and the mouth of the river opened up to the sea, with other rocky, tree-topped towers scattered in between. The sky above it was purple, streaked with long wisps of cloud, and the sea below stole a great deal of its colour for itself. But it was nowhere she knew. And, she suspected, nowhen.    "What..." She had no idea what her own question would have become. This wasn't what she'd expected. Anything could happen when one was Called, it was true - but she'd expected to fight, not be abducted...    It wasn't until a voice sent a tremor through the ground that she realised she stood alone.    "Katriga Ormslíkir."    She managed not to slip as she spun around to find it. "Yes?" She could see no one at all. "Where--"    "You seek to travel," the voice boomed on. It sounded like an accusation. "To leave your ancestral home. Your roots. Your people. What do you expect to find out there that should be worth leaving your family?"    Dizziness forced her to stop spinning, but she was given no chance to answer.    "You have reached your eighteenth year. You have answered our Call. And now, you will be challenged."    She wasn't sure if she should feel relieved at that or not, but at least something was happening now. 'Show respect, don't argue, and succeed.' That was the best advice she'd been given the night before, among plenty of worse, and some she couldn't think for a moment would ever have been applicable. But as simple as even those words were, it was the best she had, and she would heed them to the letter.    Kat straightened and placed her fist over her heart. "I'm ready."    In that moment, all colour bleached from the world as a fog closed in. It consumed the sea, the fjord and the very precipice in a heartbeat. She fought against taking a single step backwards in case the edge had moved after all, but the cloud thickened quickly, pressing in, smothering, seeping into her very lungs.    And then, as alarm began to creep up her spine, she saw a shadow moving through the veil. Then another. And another. Five of them circled around her, vanishing and reappearing in the depths of the fog, until one of them broke from its path and lurched its way towards her.    Here was her fight.    Her fist tightened. She had no weapon but her plated knuckles - but that was just fine.    Before the shape could fully coalesce, she drew back her arm and loosed a rapid hook. The shadow shrieked, its voice distant and muffled, and staggered backwards leaving a trail of grey in its wake. Had she hit it? She hadn't felt her fist strike anything...    She was given no time to think on it before a second closed in.    "You can punch me," the same ghostly voice rumbled through the ground, "kick me...and cut me...but always...without blood or weapon...will I march back upon you."    She could barely spare a moment to curse, let alone comprehend the threat, and continued to lash out as, one by one, the shadows attacked, retreated with a hiss, and lurched their way forwards yet again.    "What...am I?"   'Riddles?!' But her immediate answer remained firmly behind her teeth. It wouldn't agree with showing respect. She continued instead to fight them off, growling against their unearthly snarls, channelling her frustration into her strikes. But for every one she repelled, another fell right back upon her. And every blow yielded nothing but that same grey wisp.    Doubt quickly set in. Her fists had never failed her before - but she'd never fought things like this before, either. She couldn't even be sure that any blow was actually landing or if they weren't dodging backwards at just the last moment, trying to wear her down before setting upon her in earnest. And if she was hitting them, and those shrieks were shrieks of pain, it didn't seem to be doing a damned thing to stop them.    And the fog helped nothing, disorienting her as each shadow vanished and reappeared after every attempt. How many were there? Really? She'd counted five at first, but was that just a trick? Were there more? Less? Or were there others waiting just out of sight, and each strike she made defeated one entirely, only for it to be replaced by another from uncountable ranks?    Kat's boot slipped on the frosted ground and a startled curse barked from her lips. She grounded her feet again and stopped herself from spinning. But the assault continued from all sides.    They were tireless, unstoppable; always they closed back in. And as for what they were, how was she supposed to know?! And how was she supposed to defeat something that didn't bleed?! It was as if they were made of the fog itself!    The thought struck her so hard that the momentum of her punch overtook her.    Perhaps they were made of fog. And how was fog overpowered?   'It isn't...'    Her teeth clenched as her fist passed through another misty figure. It was a chance. But if there was no substance for her fist to hit...maybe they had no substance to hit her with, either...    With a deep breath, Kat lowered her arm and loosened her fingers. The shadowy figures slowed to a prowl and watched her through the cloud. The deep voice came again: "What...am I?"    "The fog."    The creatures slunk back into the grey. Then, slowly, the haze began to lift.    Katriga released an unsteady puff while the voice reverberated again, quite without a note of congratulation: "Not everything can be fought. Not everything should be fought. Some things will only drain your energy and leave you exposed when a true danger arises. Learn to observe and reason, and trust that some things will pass on their own."    But, as the last of the fog evaporated, an earth-rending roar shook the pinnacle and seared fresh alarm into her heart. And towering flames swarmed all around her.    She spun around, shielding herself against the heat of the crackling flame, and found herself staring into the seething ruby eyes of a dragon. Its great maw cracked open, and another roar bellowed free.    Instinct alone burst a matching roar from Katriga's own throat. Her boots grounded, she stared the great creature down, and it rightly shrank away. But before she could attempt to approach it, another roar gusted against her back, and the ground blazed in another wreath of fire.    She staggered away, cursing colourfully, and watched between barred arms as the second dragon ignored her entirely, snapping its maw at the first and swiping at its answering bellow. And she found, despite all rationality, something almost familiar in that first colossal beast while it stood its ground just as stubbornly as she had - familiar enough that she felt a sudden surge of rage when the attacker's talons raked across its face.    "I am as small...and as light...as a feather." She heard the voice perfectly clearly even over the fury and flames. "But the strongest man...cannot hold me for long."    Her fists tightened again, though she had no clue what she could possibly do, and dove forwards to try to help the smaller dragon.    "What...am I?"    Even in the scuffle to avoid the teeth and talons of both beasts, her mind had just room enough for a thought. But it couldn't possibly be Mogar, could it?    "Wrong," the voice boomed, and the dragons continued their fight while she scurried about between them, thrusting her fists against the attacker's scales. "You are thinking...about yourself..."    'Thinking about myself? While trying to defend this massive thing?!' And then another thought tumbled in. 'Not everything can or should be fought...' So she should do nothing?    Another roar rent the air, and the burning ground shook with an advancing step. The smaller dragon inched backwards, and for a moment she caught the briefest flash of fear in its eyes. A dragon rarely showed such a thing.    She couldn't do nothing.    So Katriga threw another punch into the attacker's hide with another draconic roar of her own, then another, and another, until she noticed her footing begin to slip. The ground was thawing. A snatched glance behind her revealed the crumble of the edge - and another to the side that the attacker was losing ground far more rapidly than its victim. If it kept breathing fire so furiously, it was going to make itself fall off.    When the smaller dragon roared its hatred and retreated another step backwards, Kat moved in. She ran around the larger dragon, punching against its impenetrable hide, making a nuisance of herself more than anything, if the thing had even noticed her. But she ran and struck anyway, doing all she could to draw its attention. A sharp flare of heat across her back suggested it was working.    Flames followed her in spurts and bouts, and the ground beneath her feet continued to soften, crumbling stone continued to fall, until, at last, the beast's great wings unfurled and it took to the sky with a frustrated howl of defeat.    "What," the voice came again, "am I?"    She stole a moment to breathe as she watched it go, then turned back towards the smaller dragon and held her hand out towards its burned muzzle. She smiled as it pressed back against her palm. "Fire," she replied, and with a rumble of approval, the dragon pulled back, spread his wings, and lifted off with a single powerful beat.    "Some weapons are double-edged," the voice intoned as the surrounding flames began to thin, and the pinnacle ceased its collapse and began instead to rebuild. "Learn when to press on them, and when to hold back, or you risk undermining your own efforts and carrying yourself to defeat."    She watched the dragon vanish among the thickening clouds above, smiling after it even while she considered the words. It was only when a chill prickled at her cheeks that she looked back to her surroundings and found, once again, that the fjord, the sea and the edge of her cliff had vanished in another thick fog.   'No,' she thought, 'not fog...' It was too white, too cold. Then something small and wet struck her cheek. She lifted her fingers to it, then saw another land on the back of her gauntlet and spread from a small white speck to a single, crystal drop. Snow.    Kat looked up and around herself while more flakes brushed her cheeks, and watched the cloud grow denser. Little grey discs drifted through the air for as far as she could see, growing gradually larger the higher she looked. The chill, too, began to bite, and she pulled her clothes tighter before squinting at a grey shape in the distance.    'Again?' A growl slipped through her numb lips, but she prepared for the assault anyway, gritting her teeth against the cold, and fought her mind to focus. Slowly and steadily, the shape drew nearer. And, unlike the last, clearer. Something that looked like enormous antlers rose from the top of its head, and the pad and click of feet through the snow numbered four. 'Caribou?'    She inched backwards as a face formed clearer through the cloud. Caribou didn't have tusks. Nor, she noticed as it continued its approach, claws. Her fists tightened, but movement to the left drew her eye as another beast appeared. Then another.    By now the snow was thick, and visibility had dropped to mere feet, but the creatures kept coming. Something about their slow and steady pace unsettled her, and she boomed a great draconic roar towards the first to frighten it off. It flinched and hesitated, but the second was undeterred. The first soon resumed.    She spun and roared again towards another, and it, too, faltered in fear. But the hesitation was shorter than the last. And more had since appeared.    "As two...as five...as seven...as nine..."    She spun and backed away as six antlered, fanged and clawed beasts slowly closed in around her.    "Without a face...the voice shouts loudest... Without identity...the heart rings strongest."    There were too many of them, and yet not one of them was attacking. A chill moved up her spine as confusion spun her around even faster. 'Why aren't they attacking?!'    "What...am I?"   'What are you, what are you...think, Kat, think!' She stamped her feet, in part to warn off the creatures, in part to warm her legs. But the cold was already seeping in. 'Fog, fire, snow. One, five, nine, loud voice - wind, snowflakes.'    "Snow!" She shouted, making towards a break in the approaching wall of antlers.    "Wrong."    The wall closed before she could reach it. The creatures slowed further and clustered around her. Tusks drew close, and furry muzzles sniffed at her face. Mouths opened and chewed at her clothes. She stiffened, more than prepared to strike back, but still not one of them touched her beyond the warm gust of a snort through their noses.    The knot in her brow tightened. They weren't attacking. They weren't attacking, because she wasn't a threat. Not while there were so many of them...    Her gaze passed over those gathering further out. It was a whole herd of the things. Some were huddling together, looking at her but making no attempt to get close and investigate like the rest. And there were smaller ones, younger ones, bouncing around without a care. Because they knew they were safe...    A tentative smile tried to tug at her lips, but doubt kept it at bay.    "What...am I?"    The young beasts bounced and bleated. Finally, her smile came through. "Family."    The creatures didn't turn and leave. The snow didn't relent, the wind didn't fade. The chill continued to bite.    Her frown grew deeper, until the deep voice rumbled again. "Community. ...But 'family' will suffice." On that cue, the animals moved on and continued their migration, paying her no more than a final, cursory sniff as they passed.    "Accept and embrace the people around you. Strength comes from within, it is true, but together, that strength can move mountains and protect things far greater than yourself."    The cloud and snow vanished, and Katriga found herself standing back on the pinnacle with the fjord behind her, the purple ocean crashing against its foot, and the sky touched again by only a few wisps of cloud. The air felt almost warm. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of comfort. Whether she was built for the cold or not, it didn't usually come on so suddenly.    But she started in fright when she opened her eyes again and found a figure standing before her, one that flickered between a ghostly woman and the dried husk of a draugr. But she didn't raise her hand towards it. Instead, she bowed with her fist over her heart. When she rose, more spirits stood behind it.    "Be sure of yourself, Katriga Ormslíkir," the ancestor said in the same booming voice, one that still seemed to originate from everywhere and nowhere. "Be sure of your choices, and do what needs to be done. Take strength in your hands and wield it. But don't shun the help of others - among your kind, or the world beyond. It will be a lonely, dangerous place if you confine your trust to your clan alone. And," the draugr's lips peeled back into a crooked smile, "Mogar doesn't count."    "Mogar!" The thought struck her before she could even try to mull over her words. "What of him? The prophecy said--"    "'Upon whence your kin is born of dragon's blood, so shall this creature bond with them'." The ancestor nodded sagely. "The prophecy said what was needed."    Kat's face screwed up in dissatisfaction. "That's not really an answer."    "And yet," the ancestor flickered back into a ghost and gave her another crooked smile, "it is the absolute truth. Patience, Katriga."    She was about to protest when she felt something strange pass over her, and fought breath back into her stunned lungs. "What was that?"    "A boon. Fortitude. Luck and awareness on your travels, wherever they might take you." The ancestor stepped forwards - it was one step, she was sure it was one step, and yet it covered the length of the seven or so strides between them, and her cold, dry hand was suddenly pressed over her heart. "Live well, Katriga."    Then the world went black.

    A startled squeak turned immediately into excited little peeps as Mogar swept back up onto Katriga's shoulder, and she blinked back towards the barrow. Trees had replaced the sea, standing stones the ancestors, and the fjord, as she whipped around, with a crowd of people, her family beaming among them. Her youngest sister Ragna was the only one who hadn't yet turned eighteen, and she stared back at her from their side with a mixture of fright and blazing fascination.    When her mothers, Skurta and Jarl Thorhalla, stepped forwards and embraced her, the rest of the crowd burst into cheers, and she felt the tension in her ribs finally ease.    She'd done her clan proud.    And now...now she could chase adventure...

---

Support me on Patreon!

The following story was written for Brooke, who owns all the characters and their histories. This story is not to be copied or reproduced without both mine and Brooke's permission. Words copyright © Kim Wedlock

[kimwedlock]

It’s Just Business

Estimated reading time: 26 minutes

    "An escort job? Who?"     "Not 'who'. 'What'."     A crease formed between Taria's eyebrows as she looked from the contract to the humourless man behind the desk. "All right, what then?"    "No idea."    "That's not really good enough..."    "It'll have to be," the man replied, then squinted through his apparently disinterested demeanour to regard once again her sun-kissed skin and almost inhumanly angular features. She didn't flinch from the stare. "Where did you say you were from?"    "I didn't. Nor," she handed the contract back with a deliberate smile, "do I take on illegal jobs."    The man's eyebrows rose. "A mercenary with a moral code, how about that. Well, there's nothing here to knot up your precious sensibilities. It's a historical thing of one kind or another - acquired and sold by above-board means."    "'Historical thing'? A relic? Books? A statue?"    But he only shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. It's going to Jarl Marland in Kora." He moved out from behind the desk and walked towards a map pinned up to the wall, covered in so many old pin holes that some of the settlements had been completely eradicated.    She studied where his finger struck it, a city to the north east, then traced her own finger along potential routes from Reyviin. "Three days," she deduced.    "Two and a half, at most."    "Demand?"    He shook his head. "Landscape. So?"    She pursed her lips while an errant summer breeze slipped through the window and brushed her short, red hair over her eyes. "Fine," she said eventually. "I'll take it. For a hundred and twenty krona." She didn't need to look to know the man had turned red.    "A hundred and twenty?! This says--"    "Ninety. I know. I can read."    "B-but i-it's a small job--"    "And 'historical things' are valuable." She turned him another deliberate look. "And when the clients are so tight-lipped, that tends to mean they're even more so. Which means the road may not be quite as smooth as it could be."    His already squinted eyes narrowed further, and he opened his mouth to speak.    "And I can't help but notice," she continued before he could, "the date on the request, and the fact that the request is still here. If you fail to get it to him in the next four days, the contract will expire and you won't see a penny of it. Am I right or am I right?"    Words she didn't catch were grumbled under his breath. "Fine. Hundred and twenty." He shoved the contract back into her hands and stormed off behind his desk. "Get out."    Taria grinned and left.

   "Hold here, Ten," Taria told her horse, and peered up at the fine house standing regal near the more manicured of the public gardens. A frown creased her brow. Historical research paid this well?    She shrugged it off and dismounted at the gate. No one was around to guard or greet her, so she went ahead and wandered up the path and knocked at the door. The man that opened it was old and humourless, and didn't say anything beyond "courier?" before closing it again and marching off. Apparently, she wasn't permitted inside.    Muttering his lack of manners, she satisfied herself instead by peering in through the window beside it at the array of trinkets and valuables on open display. She whistled in astonishment. It was just as well she was above thievery. This place was just begging to be looted.    Taria darted back when she spotted movement inside, and the door was quickly snatched back open. The stiff old man gave her what she assumed to be a disapproving look, then stepped aside and let a younger man out instead. Again, no words were exchanged when he closed the door.    Taria sneered after him, then turned her attention onto the new fellow who she found staring back at her, wide-eyed. He couldn't have been more than twenty, but it was as if he had never seen a woman before. He flinched when she smiled, and offered her hand. "Taria."    "E-Edred. Edred. Lord Ingar's apprentice." He shook her hand nervously. Then stood there, staring at her again.    She nodded slowly, then looked to the package in his arm. It was large, probably about two and a half feet long, but it didn't seem particularly heavy. "Is that it? What we're delivering?"    "Wha--oh, yes, yes it is." And then he stared again.    She smiled uncomfortably, then turned on her heel and led him away. "You have a horse?"    "In the stables," he hurried along behind her, "yes."    "Good." She took Tenebris's reins and gestured for Edred to lead the way, which he did with a strange, hurried shuffle, as though he wasn't moving at all from the knees up.    Far from her surprise, they barely spoke at all along the way, and once they'd mounted up outside the city walls, the silence quickly began to prickle. Taria wasn't inclined to endure it. But then, she never had been. It was only out of courtesy for his clear discomfort that she'd restrained herself for the last fifteen minutes, but it was rapidly becoming more than she could bear.    "So you're an apprentice," she said before she could stop the words from tumbling out, and gave him as friendly a smile as she could while he looked back at her with wide, startled eyes. "What does that mean?"    "O-oh, uh, yes, well, uh, you see, every few years, Lord Ingar takes on one aspiring historian and teaches them his methods. Then, when they've advanced far enough, he'll write a referral to the Fellowship of the Hiso--"    "No," she chuckled, "no, I know what an apprentice is. I mean what do you do? For him?"    "Oh!" He managed a meagre chuckle, himself. "Well, I organise his work..."    She continued to smile patiently. "...And?"    "...And learn the processes he works by..."    "...And you do your own research in between?"    "Uh, no, I-I help him with his - organise his files, check for errors, corroborate his connections, strengthen them where they need to be, collect what he needs from libraries..."    She couldn't keep the frown at bay for much longer. "You do none of your own work? At all? It's all his?"    "Mhm!" And he sounded proud of that.    "I...see... Oh!" Her smile returned in triumph. "I see! So your name will be on it beside his when he publishes it!"    But his sudden chuckle erased it again. "Gods, no! No, of course not! It's not my work!"    "Mm. Seems to me that it kind of is ... Well, how long have you been in his tutelage?"    "About three years."    Her eyebrows flickered. "And how much longer?"    "The same again."    "Half way?! You're half way, and you're still only doing clerical work?!" She shook her head as his wide eyes blinked. "How will you possibly know you've advanced 'far enough' if you're not given any chances to prove it?! When I was an apprentice, I might've had to gather sword oil and wrappings, but at least I was still able to hone my own skills in between..." She cast him another furrowed look. "You seriously don't do any of your own research?"    But his expression had stiffened, and he held himself with a sudden pompousness that certainly didn't suit him. "Miss," his tone had risen foolishly, too, "it's a manner of work you don't understand. Master Ingar is a fair and highly-sought master. I'm fortunate to be chosen."    "And I daresay he's fortunate to have someone so...obliging..." She sighed and drew out her map at a fork in the road. "Well, what drove you to history, anyway?" She glanced up when he didn't answer, and found him frowning at her peculiarly.    "You're not much like I thought a mercenary would be..."

   Mercifully, by the dawn of the next morning, Edred had relaxed considerably. Her constant pestering of questions she just couldn't for the life of her hold back had sufficiently worn him down, and he laughed at her story over a breakfast of fruit and cheese.    "He slipped on the wine," she grinned uncontrollably, "the mug flew from his hand, hit the lamp, the last flame burst in a sputter and fizzled out, then he's on the floor, wailing like a cat. Two more come at me, but I could see them just about clearly enough with the window behind them, but all they could see of me was the light reflecting in my eyes - so I closed them, crouched, scurried forwards and tripped them as they ran. Then, while they're rolling about on the floor, cursing and wheezing and the rest, the cobbler flips his pancake, even in the stiff darkness, and says 'I had more onions in the back'!"    "You're making that up!" He guffawed.    "Not a word of a lie!" Well, mostly.    While he continued to grin and partially collapse as he repeated his favourite bits to himself, Taria noticed someone approaching from the road. She rose and positioned herself smootly between him and Edred. She could see even from that distance that the tawny-skinned, well-muscled man was another mercenary.    Her hand loosened, ready to reach for her blade even as she relaxed her tone and smiled. "Morning," she called once it was clear he was definitely heading their way, and he replied in kind.    "Morning - are you Ingar's couriers?"    Her hand flicked closer, but her smile widened amicably. "Certainly. And you are?"    "Yaruun." There was little friendliness in his voice. "He sent me to join you."    "Oh? Why would he do that?"    But the man's eyes immediately slipped onto the apprentice. Edred duly paled. "Why?" He managed not to stammer, looking back to her in confusion. "He didn't say anything to me about it."    "Why would he send you if I've already been hired?" She asked as he came to a stop a polite few paces away.    "You were hired on Jarl Marland's behalf. I'm working on Ingar's. It's as simple as that."    Her hand twitched again as he reached towards his hip, then withdrew a folded sheet of parchment from his belt. He extended it warily, and the pair stared back at the seal.    Somehow, Edred paled further. "He doesn't trust me..."    "I can't attest to that," Yaruun replied, tucking it away again. "I'm just here to make sure you don't feign theft so your jarl gets both it and a refund. It was an after-thought, though, so I'm being paid well whether I end up being necessary or not. All the same," he turned pointedly to Taria, "if you are up to no good, I advise you to leave now. You can't stand against me. I will be able to stop you."    Her eyebrow twitched, but she smiled all the same. "I appreciate the warning. But I took a contract, so I'm sticking around. I need the money."    "Well, I'm paid either way, so it makes little difference to me. And if you're lying, at least I warned you." He turned and marched back to the road where his grey horse waited. "I'm ready when you are."    Taria gathered up her tidied bedroll and clicked Tenebris over, strapping them back to his saddle. She noticed Edred's nervousness as he tidied away his own. "Not one for people, are you?"    "I admit," he cast another uneasy glance down towards the man, "I prefer seclusion. Just being out here is several great leaps from my comfort zone. But...he makes sense..."    "Yes, unfortunately, he does. So it's just as well we're not up to no good. Right?"    He smiled nervously. "Right."

   Edred had stiffened back up in the company of this man, but Taria was unconcerned. If anything, she found herself even more interested in breaking down the mercenary's walls than she had been the apprentice's. She trotted Tenebris up beside him, and heard Edred draw his closer for safety.    "Do you have any idea what we're actually transporting?" She asked him. "Edred won't tell me."    "It's not my business to know," he replied flatly despite his lilting accent, his eyes unmoving from the road. "It's my business to escort it."    "Even so, you're not curious?"    "Why should I be? It's intellectual business, and I don't have the head for it, no matter how much my mother might wish otherwise."    "She disapproves of your profession?"    "Yours doesn't?"    Taria's eyes pulled back to the trees, and she shoved away the small crease from the middle of her brow. "I wouldn't honestly know..." Her gaze drew back to him easily enough, and she smiled once again. "You're not from here."    "No. Ivaea."    "That's it?" She asked, picturing the deserts, mountains and grass plains to the north. "Just 'Ivaea'?"    "You need more?"    "I suppose not..." She looked again at the serpent crest on his scabbard, and the matching image on his shoulder. "Are you part of a guild?"    "Yes. The Dralagsi."    "But you're working alone?"    "Not all of us are cut out for working in groups, and not all jobs need multiple hands. Surely you realise that. You're out here without your guildmates, too."    "I don't have any. I always work alone."    "No guild?" Despite the vaguest hint of surprise in his voice, he still didn't look away from the road.    Taria smirked to herself. "'Not all of us are cut out for working in groups'. But I did train with one."    Yaruun grunted, but that was all.    "What do you usually work on?" She asked after barely a moment. "What's your speciality?"    Finally, he looked her way, and his eyes were brimming with suspicion. "You ask a lot of questions."    "As far as I'm aware, it's not a crime."    He looked indignantly back to the road. "It's considered rude among my people."    "Oh...well...we're not among your people. Really, though: what's your speciality? And why did you start? If your mother doesn't approve, it can't be a family business."    "It isn't."    Silence.    "...So why did you?"    His answers became only more tight and closed off with every question she asked, and before long, he stopped answering altogether, leaving them to ride on in what silence Taria would let sit. But they wound up making good time - mostly because the mercenary seemed to be pushing his horse in an effort to get away from her, but she supposed she couldn't blame him. And anyway, she was being paid by the job, not the day, so the sooner it was done, the better. And it looked to be an easy matter, too. With two mercenaries, thieves were less likely to try anything - though his unwillingness to talk made it difficult to gauge his likely reaction if they did. All she could really guess was that he would probably either try to take charge, or try to do it all himself. Either way, it looked like her part would be defensive. But giving in to that position early on was easier than trying to break down someone's stubborn pride...

   It was only when Taria peered at the map and tried to work out if the forest ahead was Tuskroot or not that she realised just how dark it had gotten. Kora was surely only two hours away by now - but Edred was tired, the horses were tired, and there was every chance that the jarl would not appreciate being woken in the middle of the night to deal with the arrival of an old relic. And the last thing she needed was to upset a client and have him pay the middleman less. That would mean less for her.    So they made camp just hours from midnight at the edge of the birchwoods that sheltered the old city, ate their dried meat and tough bread - a meal that didn't seem to sit too well with the apprentice, as it hadn't the night before - and turned in, leaving Yaruun to keep watch.    It took some time for Taria to find any sleep. Her mind kept knotting and twisting and racing. It wasn't often that that happened, but Yaruun - a man who didn't belong here in Turunda any more than she did, and who followed the path his profession laid out just the same - had made her think on her own home. Or, what little of one she had. Bouncing between orphanages hadn't exactly instilled a sense of 'belonging' anywhere. But she'd made the best of it, and she couldn't say she didn't enjoy where her life had taken her - especially seeing what passed for an apprenticeship in this place. But...she just couldn't shake the question as she lay there in the restless, smothering summer warmth: would her mother have been proud of her, if she'd had one? Or would she be disappointed? Or would she just be scared for her, risking her life and sleeping rough as she so often did?    She lost herself in the matter for a long while before the sheer power of the knot in her jaw reminded her that the answers weren't for her to know. And that, honestly, they didn't really matter. She was happy with her choices.    Taria closed her eyes and breathed, and sleep settled in easily once she let it.

   The world was black when she jolted awake, and only one sound touched the air. It wasn't an owl. It wasn't a cricket. It wasn't the wind. It was one sound she'd heard more times in her life than should probably have been healthy if it invoked an immediate sense of purpose rather than fear. Did that make her survival instinct broken, she wondered absently as she reached for her sword, or heightened?    Well, she wasn't dead yet.    She pushed herself up as the sword withdrew from Edred's body, and watched him hit the ground with a heavy thud and a gasp while Yaruun lifted the package from among the apprentice's belongings.    Yaruun met Taria's burning stare. "He wouldn't hand it over." His eyes, in the half-clouded moonlight, were neither regretful, nor cold. It was just business.    Edred's, when her gaze flicked back to him, were wide with shock. But the wound in his shoulder wouldn't be fatal - assuming she could get him help in time. Which meant dealing with Yaruun quickly.    She'd already shoved herself to her feet, and her blade waited ready in her hand. All the numbness of sleep had fled with the sound of it ringing across her scabbard's locket.    Yaruun was on her before she could ask a single question. And she realised too late that she was at an immediate disadvantage. His longsword had far greater reach than her shortsword. There was little use even trying to compete.    Daggers, however, required an entirely different fighting style.    She barely sidestepped his thrust as she lunged aside for the smaller blades, and danced her way around a second. He must have expected her to take a moment or three to adjust to the difference, and that incorrect assumption gave her room to get in an easy shot at his unprotected side.    Or so she'd thought. He turned just fast enough to knock her dagger away with his sword.    "I've warned you," he told her coolly.    "I know," she replied much the same.    "Stand aside, Taria. I have a contract."    "So do I. But more than that," she made for another quick strike, which he didn't deflect in time, "you drew innocent blood."    He pushed off, disregarding already the shallow cut in his side, while she leapt back, found distance, and exploded into a quick attack towards his legs. Her blades moved in a flurry, and she hit him a handful of times before his boot fired her backwards and sent pain flaring white across her face.    She cursed and shook it off as fast as she could, and barely managed to sidestep and duck beneath his next rapid strike. He kicked at her again before she could react, but she saw this one coming and slashed a blade across his calf. He grunted, but that was all. His sword still flashed upwards into a skyward arc.    But Taria didn't steal distance this time. She twitched back and let his momentum continue, leaving his torso open. Then she shot around his exposed side, moved up to his sword arm, and feinted just as he engaged his next attack. Her foot hit the side of his knee with all her strength.    He crumpled with a curse, and she kicked him forwards as he fought for balance before stamping hard on the back of his other.    Despite the crunch and howl, Taria's attention turned immediately onto Edred.    "You okay?" She asked while he stared past her, pale, at the man trying to push himself back up, grunting through gritted teeth.    His wide eyes soon crashed up onto her "You won't finish him?" He somehow managed both to whisper and shriek. "He'll come after us!"    "Not with his ligaments in that shape, he won't. And anyway," she smiled, turning her attention quickly to the extent of his bloodied shoulder, "I don't take lives if I don't have to. He was only doing his job. Now come on: to your feet." She dragged him up and clicked the horses over, helped him up onto his own, gathered their things and left Yaruun there. The Ivaean mercenary didn't ask for help once.

   Despite the circumstances, she still gasped at the sight of Kora: the ivy clinging to the outer walls, the high merlons cut into the shape of leaves, clear even in the moonlight - and, above all else, the back of the city, cut straight from the quartz-studded cliffs, glinting and glittering like a sheet of stars.    Edred was in little state to admire it, nor answer her flurry of questions. He half-slumped over his horse, clutching his shoulder, and looked about with listless eyes.    Her concern hiked, fascination sharply forgotten, and she urged her horse faster. "Hurry, Ten! Hurry!" He snorted and obeyed, dragging Edred's leashed horse into a canter behind him.    The guards at the gates gave her directions to the medica, and she kicked forwards without a second to waste, weaving on up through the sleeping hillside city until the old rounded building appeared ahead through the quiet streets.    Despite few being on hand inside, Edred was seen to immediately, and she was pulled aside to have her nose poked at, too. She was fine, and assured them of it multiple times, but they insisted.    She sighed and sat back down while a young man began pressing clinically at the bruising across her brow, and stifled her curse. She'd worked it out along the way there. Actually, she'd worked it out the moment she'd heard his blade cut through Edred's flesh. Yaruun had been hired to steal it back. Of course he had. He hadn't tried hard enough to get rid of her, so she hadn't noticed it at the time, but with her dead beside this unlucky apprentice, the jarl would be satisfied that thieves or bandits were to blame rather than any kind of underhand deception - maybe he'd even get his money back and compensation from the contract office, and the seller, evidently protected by some obscure liability clause or rule in the transaction, would keep both the jarl's money and the...whatever it was...    She frowned down at the package she'd carried in, not daring to leave it outside to be stolen. She still hadn't been able to work out what was inside it, nor why it had made a noise when she'd grabbed it.    Once the medic had concluded that she was, in fact, fine, and gave her a salve to cool the swelling, she left the poor, pale apprentice in their care, assured that he would make a full recovery, and sought out somewhere to stable Tenebris and find herself some rest - after casting back a cursory note that there was another man out at the edge of the forest that might also like a little bit of help, of course. She wasn't a monster.

   She slept well until she awoke beside her horse to a blinding strip of early dawn light falling across her eyes.    She cursed and shielded them behind her arm, then found the tiptoeing stablehand apologising profusely for waking her, though he looked bemused at the same time. Why would she sleep down here when there were beds in a tavern literally on the other side of the wall? But, honestly, she couldn't even remember making it to the stables. Something in the salve must have made her drowsy. They really should give warnings about that kind of thing...    After a quick bite that often consituted a breakfast on the road, Taria went to check on the apprentice, but he'd apparently lost more blood than she'd realised and the medics refused to discharge him. He was given no opportunity to argue, though, because he had yet to actually wake up. So it was left to Taria to take the mysterious bundle to the jarl, who the medics told her she'd find in library in the cliff face itself. She couldn't help a skip of fascination in her step as she hurried along towards it.    Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dark of the library, and when she turned around to glance back out through the glass doors, the morning light almost blinded her again. She snapped away with a strained murmur and set off further into the building. Or, carving.    Bookshelves lined the walls and segmented the hall, reaching all the way up to the tall, far-off ceilings. She saw, as she craned her neck, the images cut into it, though she couldn't make them out, and wound up spinning on the spot trying to find the right perspective.    "You there!"    She stopped and snapped around at the voice, then spotted two men hurrying towards her, both well-dressed, though the older of the pair held himself with a distinctly prouder bearing than the other. Both of them carried an eager light in their eyes.    She bowed. It had to be the jarl. He didn't seem to notice the gesture, though.    "You've brought it!" The jarl beamed. "Marvellous!" He all but snatched it from her, but before she could confirm her latent presumption that a fat purse meant fat fingers, he handled it with at least as much care as Edred did.    She watched the pair of them stare at the wrapping as if they were suddenly afraid of what might be inside it.    Then, suddenly, the jarl's head lifted and his eyes crashed back onto her. "Come! You've ferried it all this way, it's only fair that you get a look!"    She wasn't about to argue, though she did have to hurry to keep up, and followed them into a well-lit back room where the jarl set the package on the table. Taria frowned as he all but leapt back from it, then the younger of the two moved forwards, and she watched him stare at it for another long moment. It was only at the jarl's excited command that he finally began to unlace it.    Her eyebrows dropped when he drew back the cloth. "A tattered old fiddle? That's what we were bringing here? A fiddle?"    "A nyckelharpa," the young man corrected in a voice barely above a whisper, his green eyes glittering. "Pre-magic elven, First Era, about one thousand four hundred years old, one of the earliest versions of what became the most iconic instrument, even in our own age!"    "Really?" She took a more interested step closer. He caught her hand before she could pluck at a string.    "Really."    "Anthis."    They both looked back to the jarl, his eyes as thick with fret as his voice.    "Can you restore it?"    Even she turned a cautious look back towards him as he circled around the table, mindlessly ushering them out of the way to look at it from all angles before daring to finally touch it. Never mind that it had been jostled about and strapped to the back of a horse for the past two days.    Finally, he nodded. "I can. I think. I know a luthier who should be able to help..." he breathed a sound that was either a gasp or a stifled squeak. "It's so old... How much did you--"    The jarl's cough and far from subtle nod towards Taria cut him off. He straightened instead and enforced composure over himself. It did little to chase away the glee in his eyes.    Then the jarl was suddenly in front of her, shaking her hand vigorously and pressing a note of confirmation into her other palm, all while ushering her towards the door. "Thank you for your help, young lady. It trust it wasn't...too much...trouble..."    She turned her head away while he stared at the bruising across her nose and brow, probably only now noticing it for the first time, and smiled offhandedly, freeing herself from his grip and making towards the door for herself. "No. None at all. And it took me only two days - you might want to let the oaf in Reyviin know that. Otherwise, gentlemen, best of luck with your fiddle." She reached for the handle, but she couldn't help casting back a curious smile. "I should like to hear it, if you get it working."    Anthis smiled and gave a single nod of his head while the jarl descended back into staring at the thing, then Taria stepped back out into the library.    Her smile promptly withered, and her eyes dropped down to the note of delivery. "Now to try to get my money out of that weasel..."

---

Support me on Patreon!

Taria and Tenebris belong to Patricia of FairyLiterary. Set in The Devoted's Turunda by request. This story is not to be copied or reproduced without both mine and FairyLiterary's permission. Words copyright © Kim Wedlock

[kimwedlock]

One Öre

  This month, The Zi'veyn turns 2, and The Sah'niir has its 1st birthday,so I wrote this month's short story in connection to it.It takes place on the morning of The Zi'veyn - no prior reading needed! Estimated reading time: 18 minutes     Garon frowned at the coins dropped into his palm. 'Two, four, six...' Seven öre and one krona. It was all there. And yet, bouncing them in his hand, it felt just a little too light...    His grey eyes lifted back to the trader. The man's amiable smile had stiffened, and even as he looked offhandedly across the surrounding market, he seemed to be trying to shuffle off to the side and away from his cart. Garon smoothly caught his wrist.     "What," he presented the coins, "is this?"     "Your change, sir," the man replied without a trace of concern for his grip. His smile had even revived. There was no shame in his eyes at all. It was a perfect mask. And, logically speaking, nonsensical.     Garon sighed to himself. This man knew exactly what he was doing. And he didn't have the time for it.     Unfortunately, matters like these were his jurisdiction.     He didn't release his wrist, and turned himself only slightly, but the shift of his cloak was enough to draw the man's eyes to the hilt of his sword, and the White Hammer insignia stamped on the flat of the pommel. At that point, the chipper colour drained from his face.     The trader's gaze lifted back, his eyes suddenly as wide and innocent as a child's, and he opened his failing smile to speak.     Then snatched the coins and ran instead.     Garon cursed and set off after him, darting around the cart while the trader dashed away behind the rest before swinging down into a lane. He called over the startled merchants for the man to stop, but the words, as they always did, fell on deaf ears. They were little more than a formality. Leaping as easily over the crates and debris thrown in his way as he did, the man must have known he could never outrun him. But he would try. They always tried.     And so Garon wasn't remotely surprised when the man barrelled out from the far end of the lane to the street beyond, and crashed straight into the side of the horse. A surprising number of alley chases ended that way.     While the cart-horse squealed and stamped its surprise, coins scattering all over the cobbles, Garon strode out to the street, seized him by the wrist, dragged him to his feet, and dutifully intoned: "I am arresting you for possession of and intent to distribute counterfeit coins, suspicion of counterfeiting, and treason." His grip didn't falter while the man tried to struggle his way out of it. Nor when his effort doubled at the timely arrival of two guards.     Garon all but shoved him into their care. "Detain him, and recover those coins. The Hall of the White Hammer will be in to collect him in due course. I'm following up on something else at the moment."     They straightened and nodded their agreement, then began calling for the civilians to keep clear while a third guard hurried over to help them.     With a grunt of satisfaction, Garon turned and strode away. He had another, greater matter to see to. *     One bronze öre rolled its way beneath the wagon and bounced across the cobbles. It wove its way out between boot and hoof, narrowly avoided striking the well, and missed the eye of the local miser.     It was only when a single misstep sent a foot grazing and stumbling over the uneven stonework that its roll for freedom was broken.     Petra cursed and cast the road a spiteful sneer, restraining herself from kicking it. She was about to move on when a bronze glint caught her eye.    Her gaze narrowed, and a thought puckered her lips. 'Luck,' she wondered, 'or just chance?' Was the question even worth it?    She bent down and lifted it from the stone, when a voice rose behind her.    "Are you Petra Dalin?"     A smile flickered across her face. 'Luck.'     She turned as she rose, and considered the armed man who waited a wary few steps away. About fifty, almost twice her own age; a strong frame, but lean rather than bulky; a scar running from his cheekbone down through his beard; a confident bearing - trained, not inherent, and probably deserved. A soldier, she surmised, until not that long ago.     This wouldn't be an easy win.     Petra straightened and moved her cloak aside, deliberately placing one hand on the sword at her hip. The gesture was made only in part for intimidation. "I am." Her eyebrows rose when he bowed his head.     "Then I extend a challenge, if I may."     "You may. And more politely than I'm used to."     "Don't misunderstand my honour as chauvinism." There was a steadiness in his eye when he looked back up. "I know well of you. I won't hold back."     "In which case," her eyes similarly hardened, "neither will I. Where?"     "The square."     "When?"     He drew his sword.     A smirk flickered across her lips, and she drew her own in answer. "Lead the way."     A number of people followed them from that busy street. She could hear her name, and his, flow throughout the growing crowd, and when they reached the town square, marked by a small and poorly maintained public garden, it had swelled to perhaps three dozen.     She glanced over them as they came to a stop, removed their cloaks and prepared themselves, but her evaluation of their wealth was cut short by the cold. She fought back a shiver and swung her arms to warm up her shoulders. Spring felt further off than it should have been. Surely the ice floes had moved off by now...     'I'll have to try my luck north in Kasire one of these days...'     She shook the useless thoughts away. She was wasting time.   Her attention returned to her opponent, watching his warm up, looking for injuries and where he was taking more care. There were plenty of small weaknesses, but they appeared mostly healed. But even if some of them were nothing more than left-over ticks from an injury healed a decade ago, they could be exploited.     Her own most recent had cleared up a few days ago, and she did her best not to show any subtle hints of protection. But she had the distinct feeling that even that level of physical wellness wouldn't last for much longer.     The soldier ended his warm up. "I am aware of your rules, Miss Dalin. We fight to disarm."     "Yes, that's...all of them..." She shook her bemusement away. "No amendments?"     "None. Are we ready?"     Someone nearby started calling for bets.     'I am now.' She stepped aside and unlaced her coin purse. It contained only about one quarter of the money she carried; the rest was in a pouch hidden inside her cloak. This was a show of arrogance. She was sure to feign a slight limp as she approached the collector.    "On me," she said, and was about to drop the pouch into his waiting hand when she remembered the lucky öre. She drew it from its hiding place in her cinch just as a warning rose from the other side.    Everyone scattered before she could finish her curse.    She snatched her cloak from the ground and threw up her hood, covering her blood-red hair, and fled along behind them. A few corners later, she breathed a sigh of relief. The guards here were quick to move, but not to pursue. But no rules had actually been broken, so she'd been prepared to protest her innocence. As for the soldier, she would find him again later.     Tying her purse back to her cinch, she looked down at the lucky coin and smiled. At least she'd made something, if only a penny, and, resolved or not, she'd found a challenger too.     The mid-morning sun glinted across the bronze as she flicked it up into the air. Then a sudden doubt pulled at her eyebrows as she caught it. She squinted closer, turning it between her fingers. "This isn't..."     She looked around quickly, spotted a beggar sitting hunched on a low wall, and dropped it onto his book.     If Petra Dalin was caught with a counterfeit, it would destroy her. *     Anthis blinked at the coin on his page. Glancing up from beneath his tattered hood, he looked about from one passing figure to another, but there was no knowing who'd done it.     So he shrugged and pocketed it, read on to the end of the page, closed his notebook and tucked it into the satchel beneath his travel cloak. After dusting the moss from his rear, he hoisted the bag, bundled himself up and left. Why was it still so cold?!    He shook his head to himself as he drew the cloak tighter around his neck. It would be fine once he was moving. Or working. Or just not thinking about it. Which was difficult when it was everywhere.     'Silverwood, Silverwood, Silverwood...'     That seemed to do the trick.     He'd been to the ruins in that old, pear-speckled forest for two days on the trot, comparing notes from that ruined archway to notes on others from over the length of the country. No one else took much of an interest in them, but that was probably just as well - depending on how you looked at it. No one was around, which meant no interruptions, and the rest of the Historical Society didn't seem to give two sniffs about the thing. Too far beneath them, probably.     Anthis scoffed to himself. That was their attitude on so many things. Armchair historians, the lot of them. The Fellowship was riddled with them, ironically. He was one of only a few who actually went out to investigate his theories.     But on the other hand, that also meant that there was little he could fall back on. Any discovery would be entirely his own, but it would also be hard-won. And you know what they say: two minds, yadda yadda.     Not that he could rely on many of them. He wasn't well-liked, and more or less precisely because he didn't attend sherry nights. But that didn't really bother him. Was he lonely? Perhaps a little. But he was also never happier than when he was out in a ruin, following up on his own research. And 'ornamental stones' or not, the archways were fascinating. They always stood alone, all of them, and he was sure they had once been gateways - intangible, yes; metaphorical, symbolic. Had they been made by post-magic elves, they could well have been actual portals, but these all dated - all of them - well back before the elves were gifted their magic, way back in the First Era, and they all seemed dedicated to Nara, the God of Hands - Vastal's face of craft and toil.     But not all of them. Some were instead dedicated to Doru, the God of Mind, Vastal's face of intellect and compassion. And yet they all looked the same, aside from a few small engravings.     They had to cross over somewhere, beyond simple aesthetics. There was a reason they all looked the same - same shape, same height, same dimensions, same coiling ornamentation. Weather and ruin not withstanding, of course. There was a link between these two of the Goddess's aspects in elven culture - but he'd been to seven sites in Turunda and several more in Kalokh and Doana, and he couldn't find it! Even just pondering it now, as his feet carried him almost feverishly through Edam's streets, he could feel a frustration clawing at the insides of his throat.     Which face was dominant? More arches seemed to be dedicated to Nara, but was that just because they were crafted? Were they actually dedicated to Doru instead, and built with a higher, intellectual purpose? Like the communication between themselves and the gods? The 'gateway' to better understanding them? Maybe Nara only came into it at all because they had to be crafted by hand. Or maybe Doru was only relevant because it took planning and co-ordination to get so many so identical.    He shook his head over the matter for the umpteenth time. Elves and their damned context. It was never simple! And while they left their stories engraved all over the things, so many words had multiple meanings that it was impossible to know for sure without a broad study. Which is exactly what this had been so far. Needlessly so. So broad, in fact, that he was beginning to wonder if they were linked at all - which was something he was hoping would've been answered five sites ago. Give it another day or two and he'd be off, no doubt, to yet another.     He huffed to himself, loosening his cloak.     He didn't notice the smile already creeping over his lips half a heartbeat later, nor the haste in his feet as he rushed out through Edam's town gate. Nuisance or not, the mystery, the search for the answers, they were what he lived for.     Nodding at the guards as he left, he spotted a trader just ahead, and hurried forwards at a thought. "Excuse me," he called, already running in his previous excitement, "excuse me, sir!"     The trader turned. It seemed a cumbersome movement with the pack on his back trying to overbalance him, but he grinned amicably enough. "Good morning, sir! However can I be of assistance?"     Anthis returned his friendly smile as he puffed to a stop beside him. "Do you have any pencils?"     The man blinked. "Pencils? Graphite?"     "That's them exactly, yes. No one in Edam had any and I think - I hope - I'll need them." He watched the man tap his chin as he mentally noted off his inventory, then smiled in relief as the man snapped his fingers and lowered the pack from his back.     "So, artist, are you?" He asked, rifling through one of the side pockets, which itself could have rivalled his own over-stuffed satchel.     "Oh, no - historian. I'm heading out to the arch in Silverwood." He could see the man had already lost interest. Fortunately, he'd also already found the pencils.     "Ah, here we are. Well, I can't see what good staring at old stones will do for a people as long-gone and as foul as the elves, but each to their own. I'm sure it has meaning to someone." He presented three wooden pencils. "Half an öre each, or all three for one."     Anthis nodded and pulled the bronze coin out from his pocket. "All three, please."     "Lovely jubbly."     Anthis stuffed the pencils into his bag and thanked the man profusely. The trader watched him go with a bemused look on his face. "You're in a rush! The rocks ain't going anywhere!"    "But the past grows only more distant!" He called as he hurried on away.    The trader blinked then shook his head. "...Can't argue with that." *     One coin heavier, the trader followed the road from Edam towards the highlands, and the trees began to close in, ash and alder giving way to spruce as the ground climbed. He puffed along that wretched route with such a weight on his back, but he didn't consciously notice the strain. He whistled to himself whenever he had the breath to spare. There were easier routes, but this one was lucrative.     And, after a few hours of travel and passing a handful of other trundling customers along the way, two figures emerged up ahead from among the trees: a grim-looking man, one who'd surely never smiled a day in his life, and a child.     The trader narrowed his eyes as he always did, but never voiced his questions.    "Morning, sir," he hailed the pair, and unstrapped the bundle tied to the side of the pack without taking it off. He paid no mind when the man ushered the child behind him. Hermits would be like that.    The man handed him the money immediately, and he in turn the package. His burden felt wonderfully lightened, and his purse that beautiful degree heavier as he counted the coins and dropped them in. But he was twenty öre over.    But the glint of the man's silver took him.    He drew the strings together.    "Taxes have gone up again," the trader told him before he'd even turned back to see Rathen's waiting palm. "On account of the war." He shrugged and smiled apologetically enough. "Sorry, friend."     Rathen growled and dropped his hand, but he didn't pursue it. "Mead?"     "No change on tax there."     The usual grim lines in his face deepened in irritation. "Do you have any?"     The pack came off of his back, and Rathen waited while he opened one of his many compartments. A moment later, he presented a bottle. Rathen managed not to sneer at the flourish. It was only a bottle of Edrich. The man thought he was an idiot. But what could he do about it?     Plenty, really. But this thief didn't know that.     And it was better that he didn't.     Rathen reached out to take the bottle, but the trader immediately moved back. With another grumble, he drew his meagre coin pouch from his sleeve. "How much?" He didn't need to look up to see him eyeing his coins hungrily.     "Two krona."     "Two whole krona?! You said the tax didn't change!"     "No," he smiled in that wretchedly apologetic way again, "but it's in demand at the moment. On account of war."     "Of course it is." He handed over his last silver coin and took the bottle. A subtle tug came at his side, but he didn't look around at it. "And sugar."     "Ah." That sounded sincere. "That one's not so easy, on account--"     "Of war," Rathen finished. "Yes. Well, find some. Or it won't just be my purse strings getting cut." He made sure the look in his eyes was unmistakable, and rather enjoyed watching the man flinch.     "R-right-o," he stammered. "In that case, I'll scour my storehouses, and raid my competitors'. Now, if that's all--"     "Yes, thank you. Go." He watched the trader hoist his bag back onto his shoulders and move at surprising speed for his load. He shook his head to himself, but managed not to curse. "Thief."     He saw the little hands grabbing up beside him in their usual desperation to help. The package was heavy, but the bottle could be smashed. But she was more likely to fall with the package.     "Be careful," he said quite precisely, handing her the bottle. "If you drop it, don't try to save it."     "I won't drop it, Daddy." Aria wrapped her arms around the bottle and held on both as tight and careful as she could, even as she watched the trader go from beneath her thick hood. It was a long moment before she realised her father had already turned and started back up the hill away from the road.     She gasped and hurried along after him, feeling danger nipping at her bum. She raced at first, then remembered the heavy, sloshy bottle and instead took long but careful strides. Only when she was back and safe at his side in the shadow of the woods did she puff a sigh through her cheeks. Then she turned him a frown. "What did he steal, Daddy?"     "Anything he can get his grubby hands on, I'm sure..."     "But," the knot in her forehead tightened, "you gave him the money for all this."     The smile he gave her was tired, but his ruffling of her curls through her hood was firm enough to rattle away her confusion at least a little. "Yes, little one, I did. Maybe I am an idiot."     "You're not an idiot, Daddy."     "Thank you for saying so."     "'Dim-witted', Kienza says." She hid her smile behind the bottle while he turned a flat look down at her, then lowered it and gave him a careful grin. "Please still make me a cake."     "Might not be able to. On account of the war."     "Mmm," she pursed her heart-shaped lips in thought. "I suppose soldiers need cake, too..." Her eyes drifted back up to him, noticing again the same strange line between his eyebrows he'd worn since morning. "What's wrong?"     "Hm?" He glanced down at her, then seemed to notice it himself. He forced it away, and it didn't come easily. "I don't know, little one. I just have a...feeling..."     "About?"     She watched him shake his head, then he stared forwards into the forest. "Like something's about to change..." ---

Support me on Patreon!

Words copyright © Kim Wedlock No part is to be reproduced without my permission.

[kimwedlock]

Steps of Hope

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes     Artis was fair, even among the fay. Beneath a crown braided with ribbons the colour of a summer sky, her curls were as pale and golden as the sun and drifted like silk on the breeze. The skin they caressed was as pure as milk, the cheeks they framed were as pink as a rose, and the eyes they shaded were as rich as forget-me-nots.      But for all the shepherdess's beauty, she was not as vibrant as once she'd been.     Across those rolling hills, silver streams and sparse, sun-bathed trees, her eyes stared numb for miles, and she stood atop that old, drystone wall like a figure of forgotten porcelain. She barely moved but for the breeze tugging at her skirts, and her attention remained fixed to the horizon, searching, as it always was, for sight of her lost lover.      It had been years - not too many, by the mind of the sun, but more enough to change her - since she'd seen Arlen chase off after the stray lamb. She'd given it little thought at the time; sheep wandered, sometimes too far, and their enchanted fleeces would be a dangerous prize among mortals. Strays were worth chasing down.      But he hadn't come back.      She couldn't remember when concern had set in, nor when concern had changed to panic, and panic into a lifeless patience. But loss had never gripped her, not truly. Every day, she stared and wandered, peering into the distance for sight of his return.      That summer's day was no different.      Artis stepped off of the wall, startling her adoring sheep, and drifted out into the endless hills, wandering blindly while her flock trotted and bounced along beside her. There was little hidden from the sun between her and the horizon, just scattered fluffs of snow-white sheep speckling the hills, while the rich scent of grazing, rustle of leaves and lazy trill of songbirds tinted the air a dozen different colours.      But she didn't notice them. Nor the faintest music on the breeze, nor the grass beneath her feet, nor the weight of another shepherd's eyes watching her from a rock on the streamside.      But Silvius often watched her; the shepherd's stare was nothing new. It was so mundane, in fact, that she'd never noticed it at all. All Artis knew of Silvius was his magnificent skill with his pipes. He played for the fay, leading their céilí by melody while she led them by step. But that was all she noticed of him.      Though she never heard it, he would sigh wistfully into the breeze whenever she passed by, and the tunes he played upon his pipe fell deeper into melancholy. And in those melodies, drifting on the air, she heard only the sounds of her heartbreak until her feet carried her out of its reach.      For all her wandering, there was only one place Artis would stop while her flock spread out to graze, and it was in the shade of that hilltop rowan that her arms lifted and wrapped about herself in comfort. But her eyes never stopped searching. From here, the last place she'd seen her beloved, she continued to watch the horizon.      Hours would pass before she moved again - but this time a curious bleat drew her from her cloud of thought, and she watched as one lamb wandered away from the rest, enraptured by something in the distance.      Her heart shuddered as her eyes followed it, and her stare sharpened to that of a hawk's. But whatever had captured the lamb's attention remained silent and unseen. It was a mystery.      And so the flicker of hope that she'd nursed and encased inside her heart exploded immediately into a searing fire.      She ran the moment the lamb did, her bare feet glancing over grass while the creature's little hooves thudded their way ahead, moving faster than any lamb should - so fast, it fell out of sight in moments.      But Artis ran on and on, the raging of her heart and the hope firing her muscles carrying her even past the point of exhaustion, and like a wind she covered several hills with Arlen growing clearer and clearer in her mind. Her eyes were wider than they'd ever been, and they saw the least they had in years. A smile even graced her lips.      She had no idea how far she'd run, but she would run as far as she had to, as far as her feet could carry her, and then she'd run farther still.      The same curious bleat rose suddenly from up ahead, clearer and louder this time, and she threw herself after it, tripping over herself while her smile grew wider and tears prickled her eyes, until she reached the top of the hill. There, the wind whipped past her ears, tangling her hair and pulling at the ribbons in her braids while her breath burned in her chest, but her eyes didn't stop scouring the area.      Buttercups and grazing sheep dotted the slope that rolled away below, and her gaze tumbled after it to the stream winding around its base, and, finally, the figure sitting upon a rock at its side.      The water glittered brighter through her tears.      Until the wind died away, and the sound of pipes drifted towards her in the lull.      Silvius's sorrowful melodies, steeped in shades of grey and lilac, smothered her flame back into a meek and sputtering flicker, and renewed in a moment the power of her heartbreak. The forlorn melodies, anguish and hope intertwined...his music brought to mind Arlen, only Arlen, and the vaguest wisp of a direction, like the dust drifting from an old and overgrown trail.      Dust that settled every time she tried to take just one step out towards it, concealing the path once more.      Then, as the last grain settled, a sudden certainty came crashing in: she would never find him. It was a certainty she turned away from, numb, any time it caught her eye. Because to give up hope was to give up on him. And to give up on him... Her heart wouldn't let her.      Her eyes, filled with the tears of a loss she refused to acknowledge, turned up towards the beaming sun, and she embraced the ache of the music. In spite of that certainty, she began to dance.      Her attention fell to the soles of her feet, to the feel of the grass, the small stones, and the roots beneath them, and she threw herself into it while other shepherds and shepherdesses arrived over the hills from all directions, called by the sun, drawn by the pipes, and moved by her steps.      For all the love Silvius poured into his music while he watched her dance, the melodies only scorched her heart.      And she would keep waiting in spite of it.

 ---

Support me on Patreon!   This story was written for Istaaire, who owns all the characters and their histories.This story is not to be copied without both my permission, and Istaaire's. Words copyright © Kim Wedlock.

[kimwedlock]

Little Dragon

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

    Through the glittering surface of the dark, azure water, down past the constant tug of the current, beneath the reach of shimmering shafts of light, where the pebbles twitched and the green fronds swayed. The roar from the mountains penetrated even here.    The tiny wyrm froze in fright at the vibration, before a gentle hum softened the water around it.    "Do not panic, my little dragon. It is not a sound you will hear often."    The wyrm turned back towards its mother as she coiled her long, serpentine body tighter into her rocky nook, and lay her great head down beside him among the waving stems of reeds. The same current that tried to pull him away merely tugged at the fronds on her chin. The duckweed didn't stir far above them.    "Their story is your story. It is time I tell you, and you shall heed it well. For the good of all of us."     The wyrm settled and watched as the light played over her scales.    "Eons ago, dragons were abundant. We ranged through swamps, caves, deserts, seas, forests, jungles and ice. There was nowhere we could not live and adapt to, and the world was our kingdom for millennia. We saw the rise and fall of many creatures, and few of those who survive today are anything like they used to be. But we dragons have not changed so much. We have always been the kings and queens. We fit the world perfectly. It was made for us.    "But in time, deep time, another creature - a wingless, puny creature - arrived and took offence. A creature that cannot adapt, and instead changes the world to adapt to them. In their eyes, our perfection made us a threat, and they began to hunt us. First, because they feared us. Then because they wanted our scales to wear, as if they could become like us, and be perfect like us. Then, for nothing but sport. Hundreds upon thousands of us have fallen for the sake of their glory."     The wyrm jolted at a splash from the bank. The serpent lifted her heavy head and watched the beaver swim past. She didn't bother even to snap at it, and lay her chin back down.     "And they learned. They hunted us in mating season, the most dangerous time they could - that was the thrill. The excuse. But we were then also our most vulnerable. We dragons are tied to our nests." Another hum rumbled through the water, and she twitched her fronds in amusement. "But this is how we river wyrms survived where others fell.     "Dragons are ancient, as I have said, and we have never had reason to hide. Many make spectacles of themselves in the skies for mates and territory. Water dragons, however, do not. Nor do we breathe fire or fumes. And so few have thought to look for dragons by the water, and we in turn keep away from where along the rivers the creatures make their homes.    "But one of our kind could see what the rest could not. She knew the creatures would expand their territory, just as we did, and we would either be seen, or cut off from one another, unable to breed. Our species would die out either way. And we could not fly away to safer waters like others could to mountains, nor survive on so little in the drowned caverns.     "Suryū knew all of this, and when they were seen along the banks of her river, she acted.     "But she did not kill them like others did. She stalked, and she learned. And when breeding season came with the rains, she made her nest among the reeds, and she laid - sooner than anyone else."     A glint of silver caught the serpent's eye. Stretching her small, paddle-shaped wings, she adjusted the current passing over her, raised her head, bowed her neck, snapped, and struck. The fish was gone in an instant.     The little wyrm snatched at one far smaller. She rumbled in pride again.     "Suryū's eggs were small, and the water she breathed over them, warmed in her belly, was a puff rather than a jet. She knew they might well not survive with such treatment. But it was a calculated risk, and, ten days later, those small eggs, tangled in algae, did indeed hatch. The small, stiff little things were nothing like dragons, and jerked about in the water, tiny and helpless. They did not survive. They could not. They were nothing familiar, and were eaten by other clutches.     "Suryū tried again the following season, and though these grew bigger, they did not survive, either. Many were caught in fishing nets instead. But she did not tire." She turned her head, and peered at him a little closer with one great turquoise eye. "You, little dragon, are a product of much toil.     "It was in the seventh season that Suryū perfected her clutch, with hatchlings familiar enough to go uneaten, big enough to defend themselves, small enough to slip through nets, and fast enough to catch their own prey. This seventh clutch survived, and she passed her success on to the rest of us to follow her lead for the good of our kind. Many did not, believing we should not sully our lineage, that our 'kind' would not be our kind anymore. But there is a good reason that there are so many more of you today than there are of them.     "But the deception alone was still not enough. The waters were still not safe. River wyrms had been discovered, and our numbers shrank rapidly. This clutch still looked nothing like their mother, but how long would it be before the deception was discovered, and the puny, offended creatures imagined a new threat?     "So Suryū taught her hatchlings to weave wings of water and spider silk where their paddles should have been. She taught them to break through the water and move across its surface on six tiny legs. She taught them to fly, thrown up by small jets of water until those delicate wings took over. Then, one day, when they had learned all she could teach them, they perched on grass and reed and looked down at her through the water, and with a final bow of her great head, she sent them flying off downstream."     She chuckled once more. "You might well wonder. Why fly when it was the downfall of the other dragons? Because they, like you, were small enough to slip through nets. No arrow could hit them, and they cast no shadows when they flew. If eyes were looking in the water, far better to be above it.     "You will be too, one day. And when you do, my little dragonfly, make for the vast ocean. Lay and breed your young in the streams and rivers along the way, and tell them this story. And when you, or they, or their young, reach at last the endless sea, land yourself amid the rising coils of steam and bubbles." She closed her eyes and nudged him softly with her snout, humming softly into the current. "Our cousins await your return."

Words copyright © Kim Wedlock

No part is to be reproduced without my permission.