Writer's Month 2025, Day 24: "Knight"/"Labyrinth"
Original fiction, specifically "the Fairy/Changeling WIP" Status/Word count: Just another little worldbuilding snippet. 303 words. Author's notes: Based on a legend from Shropshire folklore, with some creative license on my part.
Kallie puffed her breath, blowing hair away from her face. "We're lost, aren't we?"
Amar, however, was looking around fearfully. His hand drifted toward his side and pulled his magic sword out of hammerspace.
"We're not just lost—look. The trees and bushes have moved. They're forming walls. Boxing us in."
Kallie blinked, turning in a circle so that she could gaze around the forest. "Um. What?"
"Wild Edric must be about."
"I repeat: what?"
Amar sighed. "He was a knight. A human knight," he added. "But he and his page wandered into the border of the fairy realms, and the forest starting doing...this, to lead him to a fairy castle."
"Okay," Kallie said slowly. "And why did it do that?"
"Oh, I don't know—maybe the fairies in the castle enchanted it to happen, maybe the forest just did it by itself. What matters is that when he got to the castle, he carried away a fairy woman to marry. Well, long story short—she eventually left him, he died of grief, and his spirit was reborn as an Unseelie fairy. Now he creates his own mazes to trap people. But when he does, he just...kills them."
"Why?!"
"I don't know. The point is—"
"No!" Kallie snapped. "I want a better explanation than that! His kidnapped wife got away from him, and somehow that turned him into a fairy, and now he's mad at us about it?! What friggin' sense does that make?!"
"To be fair, I think the forest's magic drove him a bit mad before he carried her off," Amar said. "I'm not sure if he would have done that under normal circumstances. Oh, and the maze will drive us mad, too, if we don't escape. Or if he doesn't decapitate us first."
"YOUR ANSWER IS ONLY MAKING ME ANGRIER!"
