by S. J. Wist
“If you worked more and played dress-up less, something would actually get done around here,” the blond, short-haired dragoon replied. He looked up disapprovingly from his anvil with his dark brown eyes. The older dragoon looked to be somewhere in his thirties and crafted from a fire itself, then cooled in sweat with the fine lines of a sculpture.
“Well, just what is our guest to dance to then?” he asked as he held out his hand towards Sybl.
She froze as the dozen dragoons took notice to where she was sneaking along the wall behind the harmless fires. Their Ancients swept the red clouds across the floor and away to get a better look at who was spying on them.
“Loki, you thief! Lintrance is gonna kill us!” The young red-head from a higher shelf in the stone wall panicked. He began to bite his blackened nails as he watched her.
“Not if we make enough noise to drive him away.” Loki smiled.
“I thought you would lead me to my room?” Sybl said, not feeling very welcome in the forge.
“Why this is your room, my Lady,” Loki said as he stretched his arms to his sides for a moment and turned back to her. “As is everywhere else in our castle.”
The other dragoons laughed, likely thinking it would take a miracle for her to dance with him, before going quiet when she actually considered his thought. In his hand, he revealed only to her the necklace he had stolen from her neck.
Sybl touched her neck as she tried to figure out how he got it, then reached out to take it back. But it was the trap as he caught her hand on touch and lifted it. The drums started, and he settled his other on her waist. I can’t dance...
“Of course you can,” he replied assuringly by psi. “Everyone can dance.”
The dragoons looked to Fevre for a song to add to the impossibility.
Fevre sighed, but as the younger dragoons preyed on the situation and drummed louder. He gave in and began to sing, which in turn made them cheer.
Loki began to lead her across the floor in a waltz, which she found surprising in the least. There were some silent giggles when Sybl missed a few steps, before catching on quickly enough and following him perfectly. He twirled her, and she smiled as he had made it impossible not to.
The song was over too soon, and Loki bowed to her in gratitude for the dance, as she curtseyed in turn. He used the opportunity to tie her necklace back around her neck.
Sybl didn’t know where she had learned how to dance, but guessed it must have been a psi trick she didn’t know about or the sorts. She pulled her brown hair out from the bind of the necklace, relieved to have it back.
With the drums having stopped, the dragoons went back to work at their own music from their hammers. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at Fevre.
“Eighty-four,” Fevre said to the question in her mind.
“You don’t look a day over thirty-nine,” Sybl replied.
“That’s the power of Moon’s bloodline,” Loki added proudly.
“Be quiet before you see us whipped,” Daston scolded him, as if Loki were the youngest child amongst them.
“You all seem to work so hard down here.”
“It’s what slaves do,” Fevre said as he wiped the sweat off his face with his ash-blackened hand, leaving a painting on it. “Rumors have it that you’re one yourself.”
“You don’t honestly think she is a slave too?” Loki asked.
“My sister thinks so, and I’ve yet to see her wrong about something,” Fevre added.
“Slaves?” Sybl asked in concern.
“Well, we’re free,” Fevre explained as he doused the heat of the dagger he was working on in water to cool it under a rush of steam, “enough to know that we are no longer anywhere near the top of the royal chain.”
“I’m not a slave,” Sybl added, trying to keep her anger in check as it became clear that Kayla had done what females did best—spread rumors like a wildfire. “The scars on my back weren’t caused by a whip.”
“Then what were they caused by?” Loki asked in concern.
She turned around to face him. “Take your mask off and I’ll tell you.”
“It is not polite to ask a knight to remove their armor, unless you wish to protect their body with your own.”
The other dragoons laughed as Loki was setting himself up to be destroyed.
“Oh really?” Sybl asked, now even more curious to what he looked like, as he seemed intent on playing medieval games with her. “Just how is it polite not showing a Lady your face and your true intentions?”
“True intentions can be seen by means other than by the face. You can see the important part of my eyes just fine. And your elegant dancing skills would not be what they teach slaves on the Suzerain Continent.”
“And you’re royalty?”
“If Yri hadn’t put the blame of the Fay Wall’s collapse on Trista, our little Loki there would be next in line to the throne as Prince. Which is also the only reason I don’t kick his backside in for forgetting his chores, again!” Fevre finished in what might have been a snarl if he were in his dragon form.
Loki gulped.
“Trista is Cecil’s mom, isn’t she?” Sybl asked.
“A blind Prince doesn’t work very well, even as bright as he may be. But her brother was Estar who was Loki’s and Lintrance’s father.”
“So why doesn’t Lintrance take it?”
“He ruined that chance when a mermaid took his love and swam away with it. Can’t have a bastard kid from Mer City showing up one day to lay claim to Toria. A descendant of Moon must always be who leads us,” Fevre added.
“Why?”
“Because when one isn’t, like now, then you get the Line of Solar in it, and those Chimera-blooded heathens will always fly to the same flock.”
“So you would be Lintrance’s younger brother...” Sybl said as she looked back at Loki. “Well, you can’t possibly be someone I wouldn’t want to see the face of.”
“Is that a promise from her Princess?”
Sybl replied an honest, “Yes.”
He reached for his mask, before stopping and pulling his hand hastily back down. “Nah.”
“Oh come on!”
Fevre only shook his head as she sprinted after Loki when he took off in a tornado of fire, leaving his daily chores behind him. But it wasn’t to be without payment, as the tornado subsided and Loki’s Ancient carried the gold necklace that was hers over to him.
“It’s not Cirrus’.”
Gold from Earth didn’t appear very often, let alone such a familiar looking shape of it. He took it in hand, and briefly looked at its Threads in curiosity. Fevre bit down on the gold with his side teeth and decided to go for a nap at the calmer end of the forge. He lay his back down on a bench and let the dark smoke clouds raised by his Ancient pull his psi unconscious. Then he watched the memories of what had weaved the Threads of the precious metal.
20: CHASING MASTERY
Cirrus stayed low to the grass in his human form, just outside the pluma’s territory. He watched the Regals lie lazily about in the field of flowers of the Casus Beli Canyon under the moonlight. They had killed most of the winged cats off six months ago, but now they were recovered to their original numbers.
He wasn’t aware of a creature that could breed, let alone grow this fast. One of the Regals folded its wings into tight rods, and reached them up into the sky as if to pull lightning from it to find him with. Thankfully, there were never any clouds over the Torian Continent.
Cirrus tried to concentrate as he looked at the pink flowers that covered the ground. Somehow they seemed out of place, as if the plants served a purpose that they hid under their delicate petals. He lowered his head closer to the ground to smell them. When the faint scent of blood came to his nose, it became clear just what that other purpose was. The flowers didn’t just hide the memory of the blood from their battle—they erased it altogether. The silver pollen drifted upwards into the sky like snow from a melting winter that would never be remembered.
He pulled his vision into a trance and looked to the sky that was almost completely void of Animus, minus the one Thread that connected him to Sybl and her matching necklace. Lintrance was wrong about one thing, as he could have flown out of this field if he wanted to. But he had been so distracted by Sybl and the plumas that he hadn’t stopped to see and realize that there was no Thread around.
He had flown out here to find a way to channel his anger, but now he felt like a foolish berserker with no rage left. He touched his necklace to reach out to her thoughts, only to find Fevre on its other end. Caught by surprise, he let go of the Thread, before touching it again.
‘So is this how it’s going to be, Cirrus? You want Simera’s throne now?’
No, I don’t. Where is she?
‘The Princess is safe. She is young, but will make a fine Queen for myself, and will no doubt grow to be as beautiful as her mother.’
Over my dead body!
‘Come now, Cirrus. When have I ever treated you wrong?’
She belongs to me!
A laugh came back from Fevre’s thoughts. ‘Then why have you not taken her already? Humans do not last as long as we do. What are you waiting for? The phelan to reclaim her?’
Cirrus let go of the Thread, infuriated. Now his blood felt as it would boil over in rage. Fevre would make all of his threat real—there was a good reason the daorans avoided him. His only chance now was Lintrance, and his cousin was already looking for his psi when he found his first.
“I’ll take care of Fevre. Just get back here in one piece this time. No point in getting yourself all beat up when she has already forgiven you idiot.”
Cirrus forced himself to calm down. Was this why Serena had never gotten mad at him? Because he couldn’t take anger from a female without acting like a spoiled child in turn? He felt like one now. He couldn’t so much as skillfully take into account all there was on this last battlefield, or keep one girl safe in his own home.
Cirrus turned around as his Ancient moved with him, concealing his presence from the Regals as he continued his walk to the other side of the field. He was becoming more of an idiot, and that would serve in protecting no one. He could have taken to his human-like form to navigate the field before, but aside from losing touch with his battle senses, he had developed a new fear for females. He would have to work on overcoming that, as Fevre was likely just the start to who would challenge him for Sybl.
Hundreds of tunnels burrowed into the walls on the sides of the Canyon. He looked away from them as something on the flowers caught his attention. It looked to be the same mask that belonged to the Awl that had scared Sybl. It lay upright in the field, grinning at him.
Every one of his bones screamed that it was a trap, as the Awl could have only purposely come back to leave its mask behind. But there was no Thread here. If it did attack him, it would be Cirrus who had the advantage. If he chose to ignore it, he might never find the Awl after Sybl, and she would remain in danger. Just as he decided to get it, a Regal walked over and lay right on top of it.
One of them wouldn’t be too much to kill, but as he looked across the field, he knew there were likely hundreds of smaller males in the tunnels that would prove a problem to handle by himself. Their swarm was what had taken Nafury.
Images of his friend being swept into the Canyon in a deluge of wings and claws stabbed at his mind with regret, before the Prince was left hanging onto its side of it for a brief moment. Cirrus had been too weak to save him, and it was the last moment he would see him alive. Nafury’s grip failed, and he fell with the blood and flesh he had been ripped into, before the swarm of plumas flew back up to catch him. Then they dragged his body into the tunnels on the side of the Canyon.
He looked towards the mask as his heart beat the memory in a different direction. Did their Prince fall, or simply give up and let go?
‘You are no different from the rest of them! You are nothing but a lie!’
He snapped himself out of it as another Regal stood up and brought its wings down across the field like scythes in search of what was out of place. Only it didn’t cut the Thread that was tied to Sybl’s necklace, as it collided against it like an unbreakable harp string.
The giant, winged lion backed off with its brown fur on end in an angry hiss. Cirrus knew for a while now that Awls were easily upset by gold, but now he had found the reason. It appeared that they couldn’t manipulate all Threads.
Cirrus got an idea and took his necklace off. Then he sent it drifting across the field with his Ancient controlling it like a kite.
The Regal set its entire attention on the gold and walked towards it, one paw directly before the other. Its curiosity pulled the attention of the one that lay on the mask to it as well.
Cirrus snuck towards the mask he wanted as the distraction meant lifting his camouflage from him. When he was certain the attention on the gold would last with the two cats beginning to fight for it, he picked up the wood mask.
Nothing happened, and no trap was sprung as he scanned the field with all his senses. The plumas continued to try and catch the necklace like oversized pets at play.
He looked at the black, white-striped painted mask in his hand with a sense of disappointment as he brought his mind into a trance to try and find any Threads attached to it, but the Awl had erased every last one. The wood in his hand was as dead as it was possible to be, and he was now back to square one.
Or he would have been, had one of the Regals not caught his necklace the next moment.
21: LIBRARY
Another fire wall came up before Sybl as she chased after Loki, and this one was hot enough to stop her in her tracks. Once he had regained his lead, it died down. “You cheater!” she panted.
His laughter echoed back to her from another hall.
She swore she would kick him just to feel better when she did manage to catch him, but she was too tired to run anymore. Sybl leaned against the wall to catch her breath. It soaked her with just the right refreshing temperature. She was too hot to care about appearances while still wearing her nightclothes.
She looked to the end of the hallway from where she had just come from as it began to glow. Figuring it was Loki’s Ancient messing around some more, she didn’t pay it any mind. It cut through the corner and emerged before her with its dark green spirit form. Its mouth looked like it bit down on a burning fire. It was as thick and armored as a tank in comparison to the slender forms that Lintrance and Loki had.
Deciding it was best to get out of the way of this new dragon, she calmly walked in the direction Loki vanished to. But the dragon followed.
Panic struck her, and she made a desperate run for it. She hit the wall of the next turn, before scrambling her feet in order to continue her sprint. The Ancient singed her heels and hair that trailed behind her escape. On reaching a large set of heavy wooden doors, she pulled one open. Sybl ran inside as her heart raced to a new speed limit. But she had stumbled on the worst place to escape a fire, as she looked up to the countless books along the shelves and walls.
“This is not the female’s dormitory wing.”
Sybl looked up to where Cecil sat on the railing of the second floor. “I think I have a fire...following me,” she said after she pulled in a deep breath. Then she immediately began to look around for a place to hide.
“Damn that idiot,” Cecil grumbled as he sent his water sphere to float down before the door. A fiery glow appeared under it for only a moment, before the sphere was shattered into droplets when the door burst open. Then the dark green Ancient of Dyaus’ infuriated somn burst into the library.
Sybl ducked and rolled out of the way with a cry, as the dragon took a swipe at her with its claws of fire. Its attack ignited the shelves and floor around her into flames.
Cecil somned as he jumped down, and his blue mist took shape of his dragon form in the center of the library. Dyaus’ enraged Ancient ignored him as it remained determined to get to Sybl. When Cecil stepped into
his way, it spat a flare of fire at his face.
It was enough to strike Cecil on a personal note, and he pulled the aeri water from the walls to him all at once. Then he unleashed the tornado of it at the Ancient, flushing it out of the room in a counterattack. It slipped and fell a few times at having become a solid form. Then it vanished into the wall of the hallway.
He looked back at Sybl, where she huddled in a nearby corner. “What did you do to threaten him?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Sybl retorted as she looked around at the damage done to the library. Some of its books were torched, soaked or both. Her hopes of not turning this world against her had officially hit a new height of failure.
