by John Goode
Collectively, the sisters began to be referred to as Fate.
Few beings, humans included, possess the ability to comprehend the enormous stretch of time during which the sisters held their station as keepers of the Way. The closest most can come is by saying Fate or the Fates did their job for an eternity before things began to change.
Inmediares grew bored with simply watching the lesser life forms scurry about and longed to change their story to make things more exciting for her. She began to meddle in mortal affairs, which quickly brought the attention of the People. The sisters were punished as one for Inmediares’s transgressions, an unfair action that brewed anger in all three.
Slowly and quietly, the sisters began to plan.
They set into motion a scheme that would release them from their stations and allow them the freedom to leave Tokpewa finally. Free to leave and make their own stories for once. It took centuries and countless deceptions, but the sisters finally convinced the new generation of beings to turn on their parents and to take power for themselves. While the titans of old were brought down, the sisters escaped, fleeing to the lower realms to live their own lives.
Initially jubilant about their escape, the sisters soon realized a great truth.
Their powers would not work on the lower planes.
For millions of years, the sisters had known the story of the universe and how the tapestry was woven to make sense and now—now they were blind. To Olim it was like a curse finally being lifted, as she could look around and wonder about the endless potential in everything without knowing what was important and what wasn’t. To her, everything was now. Similarly, Demain was relieved she could look upon a soul and not know how their life would end. Life no longer seemed a series of closed doors to her, and she was ecstatic.
Inmediares was not happy at all.
No longer privy to each and every secret the universe held, she found the quiet almost maddening. However, she had no desire to return to Tokpewa and live her life captive to her station. After an eternity of being treated as if they were one person with three heads, the sisters agreed to go their own ways, each one claiming a realm of her own to govern. And each sister promised the other two never to trespass into their worlds. Olim claimed Niflgard, home of ice and cold. Demain claimed the wondrous world of Aponiviso, home of the air and sky. Inmediares claimed Djupur Byrjun, realm of the earth and stone. And so each sister went and lived her own life, forging her own story, vowing never to return to the home they had fled.
One of them, though, wasn’t satisfied with a simple vow never to return. She wanted to ensure there was never a way to return to the higher realms. She began this task by traveling to the island state of Aus and slaying the witch who presided over the southernmost part of the land. From there, she put her plan in motion.
Chapter 10
“Family is just another word for
People I Am Not Allowed to Kill
No Matter How Much They Anger Me.”
Sirus Sus
Sole survivor of the Sus Family Slayings
Wolflands General History
AS WE fell into a snowbank, I had the worst case of déjà vu I’d ever felt.
It took me a few seconds of blind panic to realize I was remembering falling through Ruber’s portal into Ferra’s lands. I had a flash of swallowing water, and I began to thrash about, trying desperately to get myself free of my icy prison.
That lasted about twenty seconds before I realized we were in maybe three inches of snow, tops.
Hawk stood over me, not sure if he should try to help me up because I might swing at him. Demain looked at me with that same half ponder, half sneer she had worn since we’d met her. Molly was making sure Ferra was holding up, while the two gems floated close to each other, talking in some language I had never heard before.
“Are you okay?” Hawk asked out loud as he helped me up. In my mind he assured me I was okay.
“Bad memories,” I answered once I was on my feet. I knew he could tell what had passed through my mind in the snow, so I didn’t have to explain, but I still felt like an idiot.
“You jumped through an unstable portal to save my life even though you had no idea how,” he whispered to me. “You are anything but an idiot.”
My face warmed at the compliment.
“Well, where are we?” Demain asked, ruining the mood pretty effectively.
I waited for someone to answer her. Turns out, she was looking at me.
“You’re asking me?” I pointed to my chest. “Lady, I’m not even from this world.”
“I am asking you,” she repeated, taking two steps toward me. “Since you were the one who brought us here, I would expect you to know.”
I looked over at Hawk, and he looked away. “What is she talking about?”
“Yes, Prince Hawk’keen, what am I talking about?”
Hawk shot her a death stare, but I could feel his thoughts cloud over. “Shouldn’t you be trying to contact your sister?”
She scoffed as she turned away to look at Milo. “Tell my sister we have arrived and need transportation.”
Milo nodded and spun around in a circle, falling through the ground instantly.
Demain looked back to us. “Very well, I’ve done what you asked. Your turn. Tell him what I am talking about.”
He refused to look at me, so I grabbed his shoulder and turned him. “Hawk, tell me what’s going on.”
He stared at Demain, and I could feel the burning rage directed toward her in his mind. I turned his face back to me. “No. This isn’t about her. This is about you not telling me something.”
The hesitation in his mind was like static coming from a radio. He was weighing his choices so fast it sounded like a thousand Hawks talking over each other until it was a mess. “Stop,” I said, trying to reach out mentally and calm him. “Just talk to me.”
“Or I could tell him,” Demain purred, sounding like a complete bitch.
“Hey, Big Red,” I blurted out without looking at her. “Shut up already. You made your point.”
“Not in front of her,” Hawk finally said, grabbing my hand and walking away from the red queen. “Ruber, I am going to need your help explaining this.”
“Make sure she stays still,” Ruber said to his sister, talking about Ferra.
The three of us walked well away from the group so we could have some privacy. Neither of them said a word, so I decided to break the ice. “Okay. Seriously, you’re both looking at me like I have a fatal disease and you don’t want to tell me.”
“It’s not that,” Hawk said quickly, realizing I was really worried about what they weren’t telling me. “You’re not in any danger.”
“That we know of,” Ruber added.
Oh, that helped.
Hawk gave him a sideways look that made it obvious he wanted to slap the crap out of the ruby for saying that. “You’re not sick. It’s just… complicated.”
“I can handle complicated. I’ve been handling complicated since you tried to stab me with a sword, remember?”
“This is different.”
And then nothing.
“Oh, come on! What is it?”
Finally Ruber said, “You’re doing impossible things.”
All right, that wasn’t what I was expecting. “Define impossible.”
The gem didn’t even hesitate. “Like burying me in a shallow hole and bringing me back to life. You did it again back in my father’s kingdom, except this time without the hole.”
“That was… I mean…,” I tried to explain.
“You used Truheart to slice open a portal to the Under,” Hawk added quietly. “There isn’t a weapon in the realms that has that ability.”
“You also used Truheart to save his life by plunging it into his chest,” Ruber added.
“You changed Milo’s mind about helping us.”
“You stopped the Fluctuation from hitting us.”
“And you opened the portal here, not Milo.”<
br />
I kept waiting for someone to say “just kidding.”
No one said “just kidding.”
“What, me? You think I did all that? How is that even possible?”
“It isn’t,” Ruber remarked. “Hence the use of the word impossible.”
Hawk looked at me, desperate for me to not to panic. “We don’t know what it is, but it is happening.”
“Happening more frequently,” Ruber added.
Hawk gave him another sideways look.
“So I’m a freak? In a world of talking gems and murderous changelings, I am the one who makes no sense. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“You’re not a freak,” Hawk snapped at me. “This is why I didn’t tell you anything! I knew you’d do this. You want truth? Fine, you are not normal, Kane, and I doubt you ever have been. From the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you were different. That isn’t a bad thing. Normalcy is what cowards crave because they don’t dare to do better in their lives. You can do better than normal. Much better.”
His love was like ragged edges in my mind, it was so strong and so intense. And he wanted to make things better by just saying they were better. And he couldn’t, which was killing him. This wasn’t a problem he could order away or lie his way past; it was here staring us both in the face. And I could feel the truth behind his words, because they were the same truth I was hiding.
We were both terrified of whatever was happening.
I hugged him tight and could feel him crush me close. A whole other thing came rushing out in our minds, but I’ll save you the details by just saying this. We were scared, but we were together, and there was nothing in hell that would change that. Whatever this was, we would face it as a couple. Good or bad, we were in it until the end.
Uhm, maybe those were the details after all, but they’re pretty good details, so I’m not sorry I shared.
I’m sure more would have been said, both aloud and silently, but just then a flying sleigh passed over us before landing softly in the snow next to Demain. It was being pulled by six white reindeer. Because if you’re going to have a flying sleigh, it needs to be pulled by reindeer, of course. No other magical animal will do. For a moment, my own problem was forgotten as I watched Milo sitting in the sleigh holding the reins to the beasts. And, let me tell you, nothing makes you forget your troubles more quickly than seeing a white rabbit in a waistcoat sitting in a flying sleigh being drawn by reindeer.
You get the image? See what I mean? How can you be upset after seeing that?
KOR WAS nowhere for several seconds, which was disconcerting to him, since he had grown accustomed to being somewhere most of his life.
The port happened so fast he almost missed it. In fact, it wasn’t until he appeared in the throne room of the Crystal Court that he realized he had been nowhere for an indeterminate amount of time. Kor had been transported before, but never had he felt anything like whatever the crystal in his hand had done. He looked up and found himself staring at two floating pieces of amber that were lit from within by a magical glow.
He wasn’t an expert on gemlings, but he had the feeling they were not happy to see him.
“You are not the Ater,” one of them declared.
“You have the passing stone. Explain,” the other demanded.
Kor slowly let go of the stone Ater had put in his hands and took a step back to get his balance from the teleport. “I was given this by th—by Ater.” He could feel his bow on his shoulder and wondered how resistant the ambers were to magic.
“The Ater was given this to return. Where is the Ater?”
The ambers closed in on the elf, and he moved his hand to his bow. “He. Gave. It. To. Me,” Kor tried to explain.
“Where is the Ater?” one of them asked again, and the glow increased.
“Screw this,” Kor said, pulling his bow and firing at the space between the two of them. “Bide.”
The arrow glowed intensely for a quarter second before exploding in a massive shock wave, throwing the ambers in opposite directions. The force slammed them into the far walls, easily embedding them more than a foot deep.
Kor had not waited to examine his work; he had already turned and fled the room.
He took off down one of the hallways, looking for a way out. A pale yellow beryl rounded a corner from a side hall and stopped the moment it saw the elf. “Intruder!” it called out as it took off back the way it had come.
Kor shot an arrow after it, calling out “Verglas” as it flew. The gem fell to the ground, encased in a block of ice, but the damage had already been done. A squad of ambers came tearing down the hall to investigate the scream. Kor turned and ran in the opposite direction. “Now I regret not killing him,” he muttered as he ran. A second squad of ambers rounded the corner of the next side hall he passed, and he knew he’d run out of places to run.
Which left only fighting.
Firing an arrow at one squad, he invoked “Mur.” A wall of magical force appeared in front of them, blocking their access to him. Turning to the other squad, he drew another arrow and fired. “Densité!” The dozen ambers slammed to the ground as gravity around them increased twentyfold. Kor’s head spun a bit, and he realized how much magical energy he had burned through. He shook his head and tried to clear his thoughts. And, all the while, he heard the ambers slamming into his wall, chipping it away piece by piece.
He needed to find a place to hide and recover, and he needed it now.
Before he could move, his wall shattered into nothing, shards of magical energy fading away as the spell disintegrated completely. Kor squinted at something barreling through the remains of the wall; a huge diamond shot toward him. Kor fired an arrow directly at its center and called out “Presser!” The spell hit with the equivalent force of a car slamming into another car while moving close to sixty miles an hour.
The diamond didn’t so much as pause as he drove through the spell and slammed into Kor’s chin, hurling the elf to the floor.
Kor looked up, his vision blurry, at the diamond, which floated over him. “My men asked you a question. Where is the Ater?”
Thankfully, Kor lost consciousness, still cursing Ater, wherever the dark elf was, for putting him into this situation.
ATER WAS not surprised to wake up tied to a chair.
It wasn’t the first time he had come to consciousness in this state; it was just the first time he was here without Pullus. He could feel one of his eyes was swollen over, and he was breathing through his mouth, which meant his nose was definitely broken.
None of these wounds hurt as much as the pain of being alone.
“Oh, are we awake?” Oberon asked from in front of him. “Then we can begin.”
Ater looked up and again was not shocked to see he was in the palace dungeons. The gods know he had brought enough people here under the orders of the royal family. It was simply a matter of time before he ended up here himself.
Oberon straddled a chair and cut a slice of a ripe, green ull. He offered the slice to Ater, who said nothing.
The monarch shrugged and popped it in his mouth. “Not hungry? Fine, let’s get started. Where is my son?”
Ater looked around and saw two guards standing by the door, doing their best to pretend they couldn’t hear a thing that was being said. “Didn’t this room use to have chains? I remember chaining up that ocelot from the Willows in here once.”
Oberon didn’t say a thing as he tossed the ull over his shoulder and plunged the knife into the dark elf’s leg. Ater stifled a scream when the fairy leaned a bit on the knife, driving it deeper. “Hawk’keen, where is he?”
“Why are you doing this?” Ater asked as he tried to keep the pain out of his voice. “What is the point of this game?”
Oberon twisted the knife slowly in a clockwise motion. “The point is that all you will know is pain until you tell me where the prince is hiding.”
Ater screamed as the knife scraped the side of his femur. “I’m not going to tel
l you anything, not as long as you wear that face.”
Oberon stopped twisting the knife. “This face? You can’t be delusional from the pain already. We’ve just started.”
Ater glared into the king’s eyes. “How long do you think you can keep that form, Puck, before someone figures it out? I am not going to tell you a thing.” He looked over to the guards. “You know this man isn’t the king, correct? He is the changeling posing as Oberon.”
“Ah, so that’s why you resist,” Oberon said, yanking the knife out. “Well, that is a different story altogether.” To the guards, he snapped, “Bandage his leg up and take him down to the cells with our other guests.”
“He’s not Oberon,” Ater repeated as the guards approached him.
“They won’t listen to you. These men were handpicked for their loyalty, so you might as well save your strength. Tomorrow you’ll be back in here, and we’ll start with your other leg.”
Ater winced as one of the guards began to wrap his wound. “What makes you think tomorrow will be any different?”
Oberon gave him a small smile. “You’ll see.” And with that, he walked out.
“You can’t believe him! He is the changeling,” Ater said as soon as Oberon was gone. “He is attempting to overthrow the throne.”
They said nothing as they finished their work on his leg.
After making sure the manacles on his hands were secure, they led him down into the bowels of the dungeon. To the deepmost floor, where the Arcadian family kept those who had committed crimes against the state to rot for all time. The cells were carved out of solid stone with cold iron interlaced into the walls, making them completely magic-proof and nearly impossible to escape. They marched him down to the lowest set of cells, the ones that were the farthest away from the palace.
One of the guards opened the door, and the other tossed him into the cell.
