Rhamnusia

[and break 12345]

Like a con man on the run, I bury my past. Maybe that's why I didn't argue when the sentence came down: It was time to leave.

Now I live in a country where the product is death. In a desolate countryside divided and ruled by altruistic sociopaths who make power plays, communication means a threat and a sharp sword, conflict trumps logic, and permanence is a mortal sin because it slows down the expansion of faction lines.

I wanted a book.

Or maybe I'm being overly dramatic. Sundren used to have more people than my place of origin, but the Sundered Vale called in a few Gods and their most devout followers and all that crumpled to battlefields and graveyards, which, in turn, caused a great city to rise into the sky and stay there.

And not for me.

Leaders from different forces try to stem the erosion but end up fighting for the likes of ruined towns and desolate fields. Money changes hands, bloody skirmishes are finessed, and heroes the Valley created are eventually dissolved like wrinkles in the Evergold pool. Boundaries shift. I try to stay between the lines.

Standing in a crowded line at a portal to the floating city, soaking up the stares and the sighs with a half smile, and I wonder if Sune would frown upon taking advantage of a refugee girl.

--

The librarian flushed scarlet at my smile. “I'm looking for a certain book.”

“Oh, sir, of course.” She patted down the front of her scholarly tunic and I followed the clothed contours of her collarbone. “Do you have a title I could, ah- work with?”

“I do not. But I have a subject. You could show me around the back and we'll see what develops.”

She said, “A master of suspense.”

I eased out another limber smile, “Not really. We already know the ending.”

[and break 12345]

The Aurilite said to me, "I am not so foolish as to think I will outwit a fey when it comes to words."

A taste of Winter.

--

I was sixteen the first time I experienced it, and after she finished, she wiped her mouth and laughed and said, “Don't make a big deal of that, Tristan, I was just in a mood.” So began my era of contact.

“It's the seventh day of the month, already?”

I said, “It is.”

“Where does time go?” I eyed the Cleric of Lathander, clad in the yellow and white robes of her Order. Then I was looking past her, where a shadow of a statue standing tall flickered with the torchlight illuminating the small Temple. Behind me, looming in the courtyard fully exposed and gleaming in the afternoon sun stood the LaCroix and Tornbrook guard. The beautiful gardens and flowers laid at their feet like loyal subjects. My eyes drifted back towards the cleric, who now stood in front of me with bead wrapped hands, and I left her rhetorical question unanswered.

She asked, “Ready?”, and I nodded that I was. A chanting litany filled the air, purchasing a divine gift that would forever be beyond my grasp, and just as soon as I was encompassed in starch white – it was gone.

Like so many times before, my arcane sensitive mind registered Remove Disease but fumbled by the means it was delivered. The power of the Gods at her fingertips; tangible and real, and beyond my comprehension.

She said, “Fighting those viscous werewolves again?” Both expected and lame, a joke.

I replied, “Nothing so violent. But it never hurts to be safe.”

“No,” she agreed, “It never does.” She looked up and I smiled, was rewarded with a tinge of crimson for my simple action. “There are potions for this kind of thing, Tristan. You wouldn't have to come here every month.”

“I prefer a personal touch.”

The cleric set the prayer beads down upon the table, and nodded without looking at me. “I know.”

[and break 12345]

The one armed maiden said to me in Elven, "Your beauty of visage is only matched by your beauty of soul."

I stared at foreign eyes in the mirror, wondering if the rest of my life would be divided the same way - before and after the metamorphosis.

-

Maruelle has that Fey quality, the one where unparalleled beauty strains behind a protesting dam, threatening to flood the mortal world and we would be so privileged as to drown in it; that presses her clothes against her sculpted body, that honeys her perfect voice with the strength of the glittering sun against warm waves; that tilts her lips and mouth into an opening that would fuel an artist's greatest drive – that if she were to slit your throat, you would apologize for bleeding on her feet.

"B-but my lady! Your grace! My evening stun and daylight star! You are my muse, my inspiration!"

Lira Talentry has that Not-Fey quality, the one where unabashed ugliness beats on an oaken door, threatening to break and enter into the mind of those unfortunate enough to answer; that wrinkles and muddies her clothes, that croaks her toneless voice with the cracking of diseased trees; that tilts her lips and mouth into an opening that would aggravate the dedicated monk – that if she were tall enough to reach your neck, you still wouldn't let her within five feet of you.

"No! D-don't say you aren't interested any more! I can't live with myself without your approval!"

"Rhiannon, who is next after Lira?"

I watched Lira bury her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. And then I watched her rush off and out of the Fey Court, hurling her unwanted self beyond view.

“Tratyam. Tratyam of house Fayger."

I turned my attention to Maurelle, and when our eyes locked it was as if the sun exploded.

–

"Haahh, that I should be burdened by such ignorance!" Even when pouting or throwing a tantrum, the breathless beauty of the creature in front of me is difficult to do anything with but admire. “As if you could be here for any other reason. Your opposite takes even in this moment her token from my rival!"

Rhiannon cleared her throat, a somehow not gruff sound coming from her. "Your Grace, perhaps we might explain to him, simple as he is, before we elaborate on such details."

"Yes, yes." Maurelle waved Rhiannon's perceived pestering off of her. "Very well, Traytam, I shall attempt to put this in words you may understand."

Her chin is set in a remarkably attractive way while she finds me stupid.

"There exists in this plane and many others, things which are naturally shaped to oppose one another. To serve purposes split. Yours has long been equal to you, preserving the balance between your spirits, even if this happens unseen. A rival.

My rival," she sniffed indignantly at the thought. "Has seen to gift her with a token meant to disrupt this balance and thereby utilize your counter for some trivial task."

"I am upset by this, Traytam. It must not happen. Thus, I have elected by the wisdom of the Summer Queen and her Court that you are to receive a token as well.

Yes, it would be." She paused a longer moment, wondering at the natural hue of her nails. "A means to avoiding a great danger, I suspect. Great for you and your other mortal kin, in any case. Some destructive nonsense.

Your token shall be your protection and your counter's greatest ambition."

She paused. "Was that how it was, Rhiannon?"

"Just so, Your Grace."

"Hm. Yes, I thought so. The Princess has always had an odd way about these things." She paused, "You understand the term, I hope, Traytam? I needn't explain it to you? Haahh, what I endure.

Listen closely, Traytam. Your counter will wear as you must her token clearly. It must be seen to be caught and she wishes to catch it. But if you must wear it and lure her, so too must she wear to alert you! . . . What an absurd game. Is this really how it was?"

"Without a doubt, Your Grace. She was very clear."

"Hm. Well, no matter."

I'm choking on an awkward piece of demented fantasy.

"Stop not paying attention, Traytam, I can tell when you're drifting. Your counter will seek to take it from you. You must instead take her symbol and bring it to the great Oak in your representation of the Viridale Forest.

If you do not, you and likely several others will die." She said this very dramatically, before she's covering her mouth with flawless ivory fingers, laughing in delight. "Really, does that actually work with mortals?"

"Statistically, Your Grace, it's yet to fail. They're very concerned over such things."

"What an uncanny folk."

“They are, Your Grace.”

"Well, do you understand, Traytam?"

My voice creaked along like old midnight floorboards, “I do.”

[and break 12345]

Viridale Rampage

--

"We should speak, Leikny. Elsewhere."

"Should we? Have we not traded our words as much as we will?"

"If not words, then what?"

"I will not help you defeat me, Tristan. Are you so new to this dance that you do not know the next step?"

"Is that what you think my motive to be? Defeating you?"

"How can it not be? We spoke of lengths, the last we faced each other."

"We did. And the lengths I would go for your rose. Nothing more."

"You know I will not relinquish my token whilst I still breathe, Tristan.”

--

Otherworldly, ripping sounds as the material fabric of the Viridale forest cracked and shimmered, giving way to the ensigns of the Winter and Summer court as they made their promises manifest. The Guardian of Venestera, Lathander's domain given wrathful form as a massive Fey-Bear – Silrenaur, the Winter Court's personal envoy, every flower and plant freezing beneath each feline paw with his every wintery step. An alien, soul splitting scream. A still shot as my hearing goes deaf, mouths open, fey screams silent in all the noise and faeries and frost giants and dryads and winter elementals.

A brief register of Leikny and flowing tresses and hatred and a shock of ice and winter that steals my breath and cracks my ribs. Breaks them. I'm skipping on my back toward a clump of roots nestled at the base of a marvelous oak, and the quick and dizzying change in momentum as it shatters my arm because I've suddenly crashed into a tree that will not move for me. An unintentional glance at the nearest Dryad, whose head and arm is somewhere in the frost giant's mouth, standing over it.

I look up and see Leikny above me with one hand encased in the cruel imitation of an ice gauntlet and register it simply as death. I lift a hand and the enchantment rushes from my fingers with panic and terror and her eyes glaze over and her stance relaxes as I dominate her mind and the fleeting, soothing sensation of absolute control.

Run I command. Run.

I command her again. I command her again. I command her again. I see the fleeting silhouette of her figure being lost to the trees and a frost giant crushes my outstretched leg, shattering it. Viscous red syrup paints the grass and I smell copper. My eyes burst open and I aspirate in the breathless equivalent of a scream. Shards of ice mingle with my blood and create a smoky, red cacophony of frosty mist that serenades pain and only pain. My mind races and I grip at the tendrils of the arcane – dimension door – and a darkness so black that every reflection is devoured, the portal sends me to the other side of the forest and away from the fratricide being so violently carried out.

"Maurelle's victory,” Says a familiar voice, taking from me both jeweled roses – tokens of Winter and Summer.

"It was only the first.” A man's voice. I asphyxiate on blood and air and pollen.

"But a victory nonetheless. The Courts are once again balanced."

"For now."

Her face comes into view. I know the face. Rhiannon.

I weep. I don't want to die, Sune. I begin to slide away.

"Well done,” and she kisses me. Summer.

I'm gone. Into another realm.