(...continued)

Over his panting, the elf’s sharp ears picked up a moan from the blue’s stall, which she covered with a quick wail. Suspicious, Haisrir cast his focus through the area and scraped up a few sluggish fragments of thought. Leaving Jorn to retch on the floor, he jerked the door open, flicked Rikal a few feet into the air, and pulled Larin’s limp body into the corridor. Haisrir snatched her by the shirt, delivering a spiteful kick to Jorn’s ribs as he passed. “You haven’t seen her,” he spat, dragging Larin toward the door. “And you? You’ll be sorry you ran!”

Too heavy to move, Larin grasped the danger but couldn’t react. Dazed murmurs drifted from her mouth in a tongue that jarred Haisrir to the core, and her matching thoughts were chaotic and strange. Beloved child, son of my son, lost in time and memory– Unnerved, he tuned her out.

“You’ll be sorry you ran,” repeated the elf, bashing the door open with her skull to dislodge the eerie thoughts. “I’ll make sure of that!”

The last of the white tranquility fell away, and cold terror crashed over Larin. “Please, mercy, I beg you,” came her frightened babble, but Haisrir cackled at her mind crumbling into fear. They made their way down the slope to the road, and his black dragon dropped out of the sky, flaring its wings to land beside them. Riding between its talons to the dragon’s shoulder, Haisrir seated himself astride the beast’s neck and strung the trembling girl across his lap. They took to the air.

“You don’t need me,” Larin pleaded. “Your baron thinks I’ve escaped! You could just let me go. Who would know?” She spoke Khollic, but the elf didn’t find it strange, stroking her in his lap as they flew. “You can’t exactly turn me in anyway. What would the baron do, knowing a runaway stayed for three weeks under your nose?”

His hand closed around her throat at the remark, the most infuriating part that she was right. But the baron had been so sure of this one. “I’m afraid your freedom isn’t an option,” rationalized Haisrir, dark triumph creeping into his voice. “But if I wait for the next auction, I can say I bought you there and keep the money for myself.” Twining his hand in the hem of her shirt, he wrenched it over her head and cackled at her shriek. “Surely you won’t object to my company until then?”

“Let me go!” screamed Larin, desperate plans to murder him flitting through her mind. When he conjured immobility around her, she fumed, Death would be an improvement upon your company.

Outraged at her lack of abdication, Haisrir stood sure-footed on the dragon’s back, hanging Larin high above the stony wasteland. “What was that?” he taunted, face twisted into a daemonic sneer. “Let you go?”

Still paralyzed, Larin struggled to breathe. No, don’t drop me. Death might have been better than Haisrir, but if she couldn’t kill him, she’d take her own life when it would be quick and clean. Don’t let me go.

“Good girl,” praised the elf, and he dropped her.

She plunged through the freezing wind, the drop crushing the breath from her lungs before she could scream. Leaning over the dragon’s shoulder, Haisrir dissolved her bindings to watch her writhe as she fell, her arms and legs outstretched to keep the ground at bay. Once the elf sat, the dragon dove after Larin, spearing her from the air with long, careless talons. She dangled impaled and it toyed with her, climbing high to toss her away and swooping to catch her over and over. Before long, Larin knew nothing but the pain, and soon that too began to fade. Better than your company! spited the girl, serene now that sensation gave way to darkness.

The dragon dropped her one last time, sending her tumbling a few feet to bleed uncomprehending upon the rock. Haisrir dismounted, and the beast ambled past a stone shed to clean its claws in the courtyard of an abandoned estate. The old manor house had fallen to sorry rubble, and the road in had collapsed – the perfect place to hide the girl until the next slave auction.

Nudging Larin with one boot as she convulsed on the ground, the elf scowled in deep concentration. Her wounds knitted, but unlike the itching sensation normal for a healing, Larin felt every injury inflicted in reverse. “You’ll beg for death before I’m through,” crooned the elf when he finished, disappointed to realize she’d passed out. Despite his dismay, the elf chortled and floated her into the drafty shed for safekeeping. He had business to attend to, and she’d be more fun after a day’s recovery. It was never the same without the screaming.

“...survivors who cannot prevail

around a vacant pyre wail...”

Leiro Nvwnle Dynde XIV:III

1:3:3:4/5, III:IX

At the rocky edge of Kalrein’s black pine forests, a crack of thunder split the night, shaking snow down from the ashen boughs sixty feet in the air. Dusting off his shoulders, Kingard bent to brush pine needles from the forest floor, a terrible foreboding in his gut as he conjured a fire to burn within the cleared circle. “Master Lorvelle,” called the elf, his dark eyes narrowed against the glow. “I’ve arrived.”

“You have not,” an amused voice contradicted from the flames. “But you are near. There is a tavern in Porthal, Kingard. The Black Wolf by name. Enter tomorrow and you will meet thy quarry.”

Shifting in anxiety, the elf inquired, “All of them? Who are they, do you have names yet? How will I know them? And what of Xolyu–?”

“You will know as we have always known, old friend. Questions are all answered in time.”

With a scowl, Kingard folded his arms and glared like the voice could see him. “Of course they are.” He could think of a thousand questions left unanswered, and he’d had more time than most.

A soft laugh drifted out of the fire. “You shall see. Until tomorrow, Kingard–”

“Wait, you’re coming?” yelped the elf. “Yourself?” After centuries of waiting for his call to action, it rattled Kingard to think Lorvelle would see them off in person. “Is that wise, Master? Or necessary? ...Lorvelle? Lorvelle!” But the fire hissed wordlessly back at him, and the voice replied no more. “All nine bloody Hells and Her bastard brat!” he cursed, kicking wet dirt into the flames and letting them fizzle into darkness.

Crouched in a nearby tree, a petite woman studied the trespassing elf with wary resentment. Her five feet in height belied her nearly three decades, and she stood tall for a faerie, sporting the pastel blue skin and bright lavender hair of her clan. Though not on guard duty at the moment, she found it hard to ignore the elf’s presence, but her village lay too distant to return his severed ear for the bounty. Moreover, this elf looked too dark to be one of the fair-skinned races her kind despised, and the Kalreini blood feud with the neighboring mountain elves left her vulnerable so near the treeline.

She hopped to a lower branch for a better look, twin sets of gossamer wings flickering as she landed. What business could bring this plains elf so far north of the Rishi? Kingard glanced up at the gentle buzz, easing a hand beneath his cloak to rest on the hilt of his dagger. “You can come out, faerie,” he called, gesturing to his backswept ears in case she’d overlooked their length. “As you can see, I’m no mountain elf, and you can’t kill me anyway.”

Affronted, she concealed the source of her voice with a few twitches of her fingers and snapped, “You have no idea what I can do, trespasser.” The words bore down on Kingard from everywhere at once, an impressive display of air magic. Though she had no desire to kill the innocent traveler, she refused to be mocked by him either.

“No,” agreed the elf as he scanned the dark pines, “but I’ve a good idea of what can’t be done.” After a few moments of lingering silence, he turned his back on her and made for the encroaching treeline. “Suit yourself.” Despite his dislike of towns, Kingard saw no reason to spend the night in the winter chill if he was going to be scrutinized anyway.

With another set of finger movements, the faerie drew up a stiff breeze to cover the sound of her wings. They blurred into an iridescent haze, and she zipped out of her tree with startling speed to alight close behind the elf. “Where are you going?” she demanded, voice bandying about to keep her location secret.

“I don’t answer to bugs in the night,” he rebuked, stepping out from the last of the trees to leave the persistent faerie behind.

Wings flickering in indignation, she spluttered after him, “And I don’t let trespassers live!”

Kingard picked his way up the stony slope toward the little town on the ridge. “Oops,” he mocked over his shoulder with infuriating amusement. “It seems you just did.”

“...in fire and blood their hungers sate

while masters spin the threads of fate...”

Leiro Nvwnle Dynde XIV:III

1:3:3:4/5, III:IX

A splintering crash jolted Darek awake, and he fell tangled beside his small bed as he rolled to face the sound. Shouts drew the boy to the rail at his loft’s edge, and he pushed mussed brown hair from his bleary eyes. Hunched low behind a rail post, he peered down at the havoc overtaking his uncle’s one-room cabin. They’re here!

Black cloaks fluttering at their heels, three hooded men strode through the shattered door and up to the aging couple scrabbling out of bed. “Where’s the shifter?” demanded one, a palm leveled at Darek’s aunt and uncle. His glove bore a silver insignia of twin crescent moons, the mark of Allana’s empress.

Though panic scrawled itself plain across his face, Darek’s uncle slashed a hand through the air. “I don’t know what you’re talking–!”

The second intruder grabbed him by the nightshirt, hoisting him off his feet. “There’s a shifter in this house, old man,” he hissed. “Hand him over and your lives may be spared.” Dangling above the floor, Darek’s uncle bleated out his ignorance while his horrified wife backed into a corner, sobbing into one hand. “Or is it... her?”

“No! It isn’t – there isn’t – I already told you, I don’t know anything about any shifter!”

“We think you do, old man.”

Strange flames licked from nowhere across his kicking feet, and Darek’s uncle began to shriek. The blaze spread up his legs, engulfing him to the waist in dark fire, and the intruder tossed him away to confront his screaming wife. “No, Galen! Please, stop this, I beg you! Galen, no–!”

“Perhaps you know what I’m talking about?” the mage prompted, shaking her by the hair. Wide-eyed in the loft, Darek stared at his uncle thrashing upon the floor, flesh roiling with bubbles that burst and curled off his bones.

“Galen!” wailed Darek’s aunt, watching her charred husband grow still on the burning rug. “Galen...! The shifter is... was... was Galen.” Their marriage bed roared into flames as the straw mattress caught from the rug, and the heat drove Darek back from the loft’s edge. He heard his aunt’s last scream wane into a bloody gurgle, and the intruders strolled back outside.

Swirling up with the smoke from the room below, bright embers singed Darek’s bare chest, drifting down to light the straw at his feet. He drew the crook of his elbow over his face and sidled toward the rail, squinting through tears at his aunt’s broken body shimmering in the heat. But the flames forced him away, and he fell back to the loft’s window, where he threw open the shutters and leaped sobbing into the night.