CHP31

Briel strode down the hall, his mind in disarray. Parts of Acryan had fused with him, others… not so much. His greatest distinction came when he started to look at Zaien and couldn't decide whether he counted as friend or family. He would always be family, but the urge to treat him in the way a grandfather would, slipped away. Only memories of Esca lay in his eyes, and part of Zaien mourned again for the loss of his grandfather and now the loss of his friend. Sometimes bits of Acryan surfaced in his mind; others were pure Briel. Who would Briel be to him after the two had coalesced?

"Where are you going?" Zaien followed Briel with rushed steps as he wound his way through the court's palace. He had not yet earned his place in the royal quarters and had been confined to servant's apartments since they removed him from Shythe's care.

"To my palace to see if there are any paints still worth salvaging or if they've let them all ruin. I don't want to lose this image of her."

"I don't think those paints would still be good, but I can find some fresh for you."

"Then do that. I'll be in the studio." Briel deviated from Zaien's path and swept his way down a winding staircase into a long and pretentious foyer. White and grey marble swirled beneath his soft footsteps, and people cut judgmental glances towards him as he exited the courts to the central garden of the grounds.

His palace, a forbidden place for this entire life, now beckoned him. It could be locked a thousand different ways, barring him from entry, but he knew it would open for him.

His feet passed cobblestones that he'd crossed in too many lives, past topiaries that he knew had been replanted and sculpted from lives he'd long lived. Each one held a memory of being passed out drunk in, urinated on, and set on fire on a few memorable occasions.

"Briel?" Someone shouted to him.

"Briel!" Another cried, running up to him as he made his way purposefully towards his palace. It was his palace, despite what anyone said. He created these lands for them, cleaved the uninhabited lands from the mortals, played a hand in the creation and casting of the spells that locked them in this pocket of the earth. What was a palace to any of that? Its opulence a fraction of what was owed to him.

He ascended sweeping white stone steps across a lush landing, undecorated at this time. When they found Sai, they always planted her new favorite flowers in the planters and garden surrounding it. Now, it remained colorless and bare.

They should have been preparing things, and he found it suspicious.

"Briel, you can't go in—" Briel laid a hand on the handle of the door. A short 'click' and clatter rang from the other side. He swung the door open and empty mustiness greeted him. Whoever called out for him clattered up the stairs. Briel turned at the last moment, already across the threshold, holding onto the door frame in one hand, door handle in the other.

"I can't do what, now?" Briel asked the man he recognized as an assistant to one of the council members, Whitewind. He'd been so for long enough that Briel remembered him in his last incarnation.

"Kiers?" Briel grinned smugly for remembering his name.

"Child, the palace is off-limits to you yet, and even then, it's not been tended to for a while."

"Child? Kiers, I remember you before your guidefeathers were pulled. I remember you back when you were clinging to your mother's ankle!" That glint in Briel's eyes was sharp and full of anger.

"My apologies, Warlord. I only have my orders." Kiers stooped, shorter than Briel, much thinner than Briel. His hair was pale brown, mousey, and thin down his back in a braid that tasseled between gossamer pale tannish gold wings. He barely looked like he could fly at a steady speed, let alone hold a sword. The Warlord within Briel had no respect for someone who called themselves a leader and couldn't wield the same sword they demanded everyone else hold up for their orders.

"In all matters that concern Sai, I will take no orders. My priority is her; do you understand?"

"I hardly think it necessary that anything involving Sai needs be done here," Kiers screeched.

"That's where you're wrong." Briel slammed the door in Kiers's face and made his way purposefully across a grand foyer with sweeping stairs and an open balcony. Two wings spread left and right from the upstairs and its expansive sitting area and landing balcony. All the curtains hung limp and colorless with dust. Dirt kicked up around his feet as he walked, and the entire place reeked of their old ault. A stray feather curled in the corner, a dusky white crumpled thing. Briel leaned down to pick it up and sniffed it. The smell had faded.

"Esca." Briel crumbled the brittle thing in his hands to watch it fall into pieces. Briel wondered how she died in that life, how she chased him to the cycle this time. She had been known to starve herself as a preferred method to draw things out long enough to close loose ends.

He turned to the left wing and walked down an old, carpeted runner. His feet stirred dust as he made his way several doors down into an expansive drawing-room. Unfinished paintings lay scattered, just as he remembered. He had been a fan of the arts for some time, many lives. He'd mastered battle, literature, language, and the arts in his many lifetimes. He'd become bored of life somehow, only finding a new spark in Sai every time she came to him. Esca's unfinished eyes stared back at him from a canvas. He turned the portrait around, so he didn't have to stare at her accusing gaze.

He walked across the floor, his feet tapping against a different stone than the rest of the palace, a polished grey cobble from which they could easily clean his paints.

Having always had attendants for as long as he could remember, he never learned to be organized or tidy.

Easels spread around various parts of the room, spaced out depending on the project he had tackled. Zaien stared back at him from one, a younger, more spiteful version. Briel turned that one around, too.

An island counter slid across the right side of the room, each full of shelves and drawers to hold paints and pastels. He pulled open a drawer to reveal yellow-edged paper and withdrew a sheet. He slapped it on the counter and fished for his charcoal. That would have to do for now. It'd only been seventeen years, after all.

He had an angle in mind; what he saw from above, looking down on a long-haired girl mired in soft light, tended to by Enai. It reminded him a little of when he had demanded her heart so long ago when she was blind, and he was marred. Her hair trailed her bare body over a modest chest and soft too-thin features. Every angle of her portrayed a work in progress. Wet hair spilled over her toning body, a golden hue of sunkissed red, tinged with Phoenix Blood. He wished he could see her ikris, but he didn't need to. She was halfbreed as he was because none that he knew had eyes that piercing green, save for one Anael healer, though his bore the light of his fire and gold.

"Peculiar." Briel stroked over the paper wildly with careless lines. His hands had not been trained for the fine motor control and finesse he needed, but his memory had still held true as he captured the fine cupid's bow of her lip, the full pout of her as she gazed up at him.

He fished through old pastels, finding grass green, yellow, emerald, blending them finely together. He raced against a clock, against whoever Kiers could wrangle to remove the wards and locks from the doors that were meant only for him, Sai, and family. The front door rattled, pounded, and a distant chime of a bell rang.

"BRIEL!" the angered voice of Shythe called out.

"Nobody's home!" Briel shouted back before feverishly returning to the soft curve of an ear, the tilt of a jaw, slashing green over pristine dark-rimmed eyes.

A conglomeration of swears and obscenities followed the clatter of ringing bells, and Briel slammed his pastel down with a hard clack. He leaned over his work. It would have to do.

Briel straightened his robes, his usual sleeveless navy blue that crossed his chest and tied at his waist, split at his hips up to the rungs of his linens. He followed the sounds and slung open the door with a look filled with the vile acid that only Acryan at his peak could have mustered.

"Briel, what is the meaning of this? These sacred halls are not meant for you yet," Shythe shouted.

"They're meant for me." The strange accent of old Anael that Acryan spat over his lips sounded so similar to Tuval that Shythe faltered.

Zaien shouldered past Shythe and handed Briel a small box of paints, and Briel stared at it for a moment with a disdainful sigh. "I had charcoal and pastels."

"So, you got it?" Zaien's eyes lit with delight.

"It's only my first in this body. My fingers are clumsy, but please come." Briel waved Zaien in, and Shythe followed in tow, his white robes flaring behind him with all the menace of a storm cloud.

Briel held his hand out to show the picture. Orange, yellow, and red pastels lay over the counter. A few streaks made at her hair were tossed about in soft highlights, not colored but plotted. Piercing green eyes stared up.

"She is Phoenix." Shythe's fingers reached to touch the edge of the page. All was not yet forgiven but understood. Briel didn't come here for frivolity but to bring from his mind an image he received.

"Those eyes. Are you sure? Is this her fire?" Zaien asked.

"Positive. It’s their color." Briel couldn't keep himself from picking up the orange once more, rubbing it down her long flowing locks. A thin hand pressed to her chest against her hair, and the vague shapes of other hands surrounded her.

"Whose hands are these?" Zaien pointed.

"Enai women. They're tending her."

"We need to put a call out for her! If the Enai are hiding her…." Shythe steeled his jaw and sneered.

"They’re not. They’re tending her. She is healing.” Briel heard her song that she sang in lost memories. He caught glimpses in darkness, their connection so very weak and isolated. She was broken in so many ways, her thoughts a cry to him in the emptiness. Briel’s hand moved to rest over her bare shoulder’s image.

“When she is ready, we will come.” Briel walked with the paper and tacked it to a scrawling board full of other old sketches. This one would join the rest. In this life, Sai was different. He felt less and more about her than in other lives. He waited eagerly to see her ikris, her wings, to hear her speak. But, more than anything, he just ached to hold her. Briel, though, had more than longing, a feeling of disdain.

“Briel?” Zaien asked.

Briel turned his head to meet Zaien and his face twisted with emotion, contorted into something anxious and sad.

“What else are you not telling us?” Dread lay plain over Zaien’s face.

“She’s short.” He said with the stinging start of tears in his eyes.

“Oh, it can’t be that bad.” Zaien patted his arm, and Shythe wilted sympathetically. The vision of white rested a hand on his chest. Shythe knew him so well, knew how much he loved being shorter than her.

“Zaien, she’s probably not even six foot. She’s human height. She’s… Briel held his hand to about an inch below his clavicle. Zaien and Shythe glanced at one another. Shythe walked up to Briel to measure his height against what he thought Sai to be. It was maybe six inches shorter than either of them, though Shythe and Zaien were not the tallest of men.

“Briel, you’re enormous….” Zaien pointed out.

Briel remembered the night before he died, the creator's voice calling out and the single finger he extended up to the skies. He peered up at the mural ceiling above him and sighed, trying to bat tears from his eyes.

“I deserve it.” Briel closed his eyes. His breath caught in his chest, and he prayed that he could catch a glimpse of her once more.

His mind wandered into a dark haze, hearing the sounds of them as they worked combing through her hair. Her eyes turned up, watching the ceiling for something as they connected in her vision. Then he heard her name from the lips of an Enai woman… A woman who dared not refer to her as her lady, a woman who brazenly gave her maternal affection at significant risk to herself.

The vision left, and Briel opened his great blue eyes. “I know her name.”

“What is it?” Zaien asked, fear trembling in his voice.