The Endless Garden was a place that sat on the eastern edge of Sageport’s walls, and the constantly creeping vines were a minor nuisance for the guards patrolling said wall - hacking away at them did relieve some boredom, but if you hacked away too many of them, they tended to get uppity and start swatting at the perpetrator.
Fortunately, Crowe was far away from that. How far, he wasn’t sure. The normal laws of space didn’t seem to apply in the layline convergence that was the Endless Garden. From the air, it seemed barely two miles in total area, but it always seemed that large, until suddenly you had passed over it. He distinctly remembered flying over it for upwards of 30 minutes on one occasion, glancing down to see the entire Garden area, and then glancing behind him to see the city far in the distance.
Now, though, he was surrounded by flowers in every color of the rainbow, along with some that he was weirdly sure he’d never seen before. Gigantic blue and green trees with trunks as thick as his mount’s body dotted the grove around him, stretching up into infinity. Daylight was completely obscured down on the forest floor, but the glowing moss bathed the entire area in a soft blue light. Flashes of green and red from the fireflies created a spectacular light show, and the rainplants that slowly floated about added a soothing pitter-patter of falling droplets.
Crowe could almost fall asleep here, and on several occasions, he had. But not today. Today, Ember was supposed to report back on the other nations. The spirit girl had been gathering intelligence from her counterparts in Syfalia, Arenrae, and the Soaring Hills. There was much to discuss.
Which was also why he was a little annoyed that she was late. He’d been standing here, in this small clearing, for over 20 minutes. She was supposed to be here by now, and he was tapping his foot impatiently. He had a date with Ciaphas that he had no intention to miss, and he was damned if some eyeless, confounding, flirty nature woman was going to stop him.
“Late as usual, Em,” he muttered to himself.
“Careful, Crowe,” came a sultry voice from behind him. “Impatience in this forest makes the trees suspicious.”
Whirling with a shout, Crowe almost fell backwards. Ember was sitting on a low-hanging tree branch next to her winged cat, who was gazing at him with whirling amber eyes. She was clad in her usual collection of leaves and skins, her midriff and shoulders exposed. Her skin was the color of grass at dusk, blending in quite well to the overall color of the forest, and covering her eyes was her ever-present blindfold, fashioned out of clinging ivy. Her oak brown hair was cut short all around, and her smile was dangerously wide.
“Did I scare you?” She asked, innocently kicking her legs. Crowe nodded. Her smile grew offputtingly wider. “Good. It’s been too long since you’ve visited, I’d nearly forgotten how good you smell.” She inhaled deeply, her cat slowly circling Crowe, who merely folded his arms and frowned.
“Come on, Em, I’ve got somewhere to be,” Crowe protested. Typical Ember. Head in the clouds.
With a smooth motion, Ember dropped to the forest floor, approaching Crowe with entirely too much sway in her hips. Crowe towered over Ember by over a foot, but she didn’t seem intimidated. “I’m sorry, Crowe,” she murmured her right hand gently brushed Crowe’s cheek. She was close, uncomfortably close, but this was all part of the game that the two played. “I don’t mean to keep you from your duties. Or the ones as a lover,” she added with a smirk.
“You just want to keep me here,” he said with a smirk just as confident as hers. “Can’t stand to watch me go, can you?”
Ember grinned, then took a step back and turned around, hair flashing to the color of autumn leaves. “On the contrary, I enjoy watching you go very much. It shows off your best feature.” Her cat finished the circle, arriving next to Ember, who gently laid a hand on Eden’s back. “But as much as I would love to kidnap you, we have things to discuss. Sit down.”
Brushing some dirt off a fallen log, Crowe sat, arms refolding after he got comfortable. “How did the convocation go?”
“The black winds howl,” she whispered, every syllable still reaching his ear, carried by the wind. “Arenrae’s aggression has peaked, and Weave’s words have fallen on deaf ears.” Turning to face Crowe, she stopped in place, and Eden’s eyes found Crowe’s. The amber color was gone, replaced with a swirling sunset red. “War is coming, Crowe.”
Sighing, Crowe let his chin fall to his chest for a second, picking it back up when he was finished. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“The King of Swords has begun massing his armies. Syfalia stands to fall, unless they call on you for support or marshal some other great defense in their time of need.”
“They’re going to call on us,” Crowe said, remembering something from his Sageport history classes. “We have a treaty that dates back centuries. We’ll have no choice but to help.”
“So Seafoam told me, but Zephyr raised a new point. Arenrae is not the only one preparing for conquest. The Soaring Hills have begun their own schemes, and Zephyr has been watching, waiting, listening. She is silent, but always present, and she has seen that the Hills are marshalling a garrison - a garrison they intend to send to Sageport.”
Crowe suddenly sat up straight, unfolding his arms and now fully invested. “What? Why? Who’s leading them?”
“Peace, perhaps against Arenrae’s ambitions should Syfalia fall. Or to raze the city, should that be deemed necessary. A country in the sky has great need for a corps that has flying beasts as mounts - and perhaps a great need to see them dead.”
“Hey now, Marley’s a hell of a lot more than a beast,” Crowe protested. Marley, somewhere far off, roared his agreement. “And we’re no threat to the Hills.”
“Yet your dragons are tempting none the less. Should anyone take Sageport, your dragons fall under their command - and they are a force to be reckoned with,” she said simply.
“Then we won’t accept the garrison. Too risky. We can hold the city ourselves.” Crowe stood up and paced, impatient to get back and report this to Ciaphas. She needed to know. The horizon was getting increasingly dark.
“Refusing aid in a potential time of need may cause undue ire,” Ember noted. “Your knowledge makes you dangerous, love, and these Hills forces are not to be underestimated.”
“Who leads them?”
“A woman named Chaya,” Ember said as she once more approached Crowe. “Her soul burns hotter than a forge, and her passion for war knows no limits. If Syfalia falls, they will prove invaluable to the defense of Sageport against Arenrae’s newfound navy. If Syfalia lives due to your intervention, they may take the city while your forces are spread thin - or, they may attack Syfalia while the city is weak from the conflict.”
Crowe considered this, rubbing his head in his hands. Ember’s words sent shivers through his spine, and the more he thought of it, the more right she was. There was no simple solution to this - refusing aid when an aggressor was knocking on their door was foolish, but if the Hills forces attacked from within, it could devastate Sageport - unless the mage guards managed to hold it.
He had to talk to Ciaphas.
With a sigh, Crowe stood up, stretching. Ember stood in front of him, leaning slightly on her cat, and he watched him rise to his full height. “Aw, leaving so soon?” she purred.
“Sorry, Em. I’ve got to head back and talk to Ciaphas. There’s a lot we gotta do before Arenrae starts to march.” He reached out and rubbed her head. She frowned, then grabbed his hand and pulled him down with a “woah!”, getting him face to face with her. She was unnaturally strong for someone of her size and build. He was gazing into her blindfold, but he felt as though they were looking right into each other’s eyes.
“War is coming, Crowe. I love you, and I need you to stay safe, okay? You have to come back here. You have to.” She was almost pleading with him now, her grip on his cheeks firm, and her fingers shaking slightly. “I haven’t kissed you yet, and I’m going to before you die.”
“I look forward to it,” he said with a smile, taking her smaller hands into his and squeezing them. “I’ll be fine, Em. I’ll come back soon.” He let go of her hands, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into a tight embrace - a move that caused her to stiffen, then slowly relax in the embrace.
They finally parted, and Ember took a few steps back before turning around. Eden came up behind her after nuzzling Crowe’s leg. “Now go, Crowe. Have good sex, okay?”
“You know me. I always do,” he said while flashing a grin.
“I don’t. But I’d like to find out for myself soon,” she replied with her own grin before vanishing into the trees.
Crowe just shook his head slightly. That’d be a hell of a question to ask Ciaphas. “Marley!” he called out, and a roar echoed through the forest in reply.
