“That’s the cider, mother. I’ve not been intimate with pixies, lately. If I had, it would be none of your business.” Syvis shook her head, sighed, and came closer. “As I was saying, we’ve hindered the humans from going further east. My friend... I mean, Atrin swears on their honour that they’ve blocked the road. If the humans try their luck in the wild before beating a retreat, they will get lost, slain, or eaten by bears.”
“Bears…” Fayeth groaned. “And who is your friend in Atrin?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” Syvis pulled out a chair on the other side of Fayeth’s table and grabbed one of the bottles. “I have dozens of friends. I’m lots more social than you.”
“This friend who brought you the message about the humans.” Fayeth waved the bottle in her hand in Syvis’ general direction. “Who is he? Is he a pix—“
“Who said it was a he?” Syvis uncorked the bottle, and sipped the alcohol with a dismissive shrug and a smile she failed to conceal. “He could be a woman. I have more female friends, as any good daughter with an overprotective mother should.”
Fayeth searched Syvis’ face for signs of the truth, like she’d be stupid enough to tattoo it on her skin. Syvis hid behind the bottle in her hand.
“Women are worse than men,” Fayeth said. “They only want to fuck you.”
“Uh…” A blush came to Syvis cheeks. “How about those humans, huh? Good thing they’ve finally been driven on the run. So good.”
Fayeth stared at nothing, gripped her bottle with both hands, and sat silent. Syvis seemed to wait for a response, but received none. Eventually, she coughed to shake the silence.
“Humans are a plague,” Fayeth said and drank. She couldn’t resist the undeniable urge to complain to someone, even if they wouldn’t get it. “They’re headstrong, disgustingly charming, and well built.”
“You, um…” Syvis furrowed her brow. “You sure that’s your problem with humans, mother? Haven’t you forgotten something?”
Fayeth thought. “Oh, yes.” And drank. “They only live for like a hundred years, which is such a pathetically short time for anyone to live. It’s ridiculous. The gods favour them over us, yet their lifespans are worse than mayflies. When you get attached to one of them, you’ll always be reminded of how they’re going to die in like a year. So forget it.”
Syvis narrowed her eyes at her mother and dangled the bottle under her own chin. “Go on…?”
“I’m not going to waste a hundred year worrying about some girl who thinks she’s worth more to me than those I’ve lost.” Fayeth kicked the chair she rested her legs on, and drank. “She’ll join them soon anyway, so why expend the effort… If she thinks she’ll get my permission by getting me to like her, she’s wrong. I’m not a whore who’ll sell her country for sex.”
Syvis narrowed her eyes further and further with each sentence that slipped from Fayeth’s loose tongue. She looked at the pixie cider in her hand, sniffed its content, and put the cork back before placing the bottle on the table.
“Is this a specific girl you’ve met…? Recently, perhaps?”
“No.” Fayeth scoffed. “I’m talking in generalities, about humans in general. Silly. I don’t know humans, personally, but you know what they are like.” She sighed, hopelessly, and threw the empty bottle over her shoulder, so it went sailing off the railing of the balcony. “Too squishy and frail for their own good. Very soft to touch, especially down there between—“
“Enough! I’ve heard enough!” Syvis leapt to her feet and collected all of the bottles in a rush before Fayeth could grab a fourth. “I don’t care who you do the deed with, or if your standards has hit rock bottom, but don’t brag to me about it afterwards.”
Fayeth rolled her eyes. She didn’t need two young women thinking they could tell her how to act, when she was much older than both of them combined.
Syvis jogged over to the staircase leading out of the balcony, carried the bottles in her arms, and took her first step down before pausing. “I’m not half-human, right? Please. Tell me I’m not.”
“I’ve told nothing but the truth about your father.”
“Thank the gods.” Syvis exhaled in relief. “I don’t know what I would have done, if… If you’d… You know. It would have brought me intense shame for a lifetime. I might have killed myself.”
Fayeth stumbled to her feet with the support of the furniture, glared at her daughter, and frowned. “Don’t drink if you’re going to get in one of your moods, Syvis.”
Syvis gasped, her eyes went wide, and she stomped down the stairs. Yet she didn’t get far before she decided to stomp back up and face her mother with a rebellious glare.
“I’ve had a relationship with Nimue for two years! We’ve met in secret!”
Fayeth tried to recall the elf in question, but she failed. She didn’t know them. Maybe she couldn’t recall who they were because she’d been drinking a bit. She wasn’t certain if they were male or female either. Nimue struck her as a fairly gender-neutral name.
“I’ve no idea who they are.” Fayeth shivered as a tingling sensation surged through her limbs. The shine clinging to Syvis aura increased tenfold. “It’s an elf, right? Not some freaky spirit or what have you? I don’t know what you younglings are attracted to these days.”
“I’m not going to let you come between our love!” Syvis grabbed one of the bottles in her arms, hurled it at Fayeth’s head, missed, and dropped a few of them on the stairs with loud crashes.
Fayeth might have asked her daughter if she could introduce her to Nimue, but Syvis fled so quickly she didn’t get a chance. She wasn’t about to try to run and catch up in her current state either. If she fell out of the balcony, over the railing, she would break several bones. She promised herself to remember the detail for a later date. Syvis had a relationship with someone named Nimue. Whoever they were.
Demonic Inclination
Two fat cockroaches crawled in the hay around Leyla’s knees. Her arms hung stretched out along her sides, attached with iron chains to the stone walls. Torches flickered in their sconces. The dungeon didn’t frighten her until someone emptied a bucket of water over her head, and she had to fight to breathe.
“D’you think every elf would view you as worth their time?” A woman asked and kicked hay in her face. “D’you think the elves living in the Freow Woods today would spare you, if your paths crossed?”
Leyla raised her head to look at her tormentor. A dark-skinned elf, with a ponytail, dressed in tight leather clothing stared back at her with a grin and ran her nails across the whip coiled on her hip.
Along the walls stood a number of different torture devices with spikes, chains, and cranks worked into their design in impossible ways. Some of them would only ever be functional in a nightmare.
“Who are you?”
“Furore. We’ve met once, before, but you couldn’t tell the difference between a faun and a dryad, so I don’t expect you to realize when you’re in the company of a goddess.” Furore unhooked the whip from her belt and began to roll it out in the hay on the floor. “You’ve made my job more difficult than it needed to be, Leyla.”
“You’re the spirit who’s been giving me lifelike dreams, aren’t you?”
“It appears Fayeth don’t value intelligence. Aren’t we lucky?” Furore swung the whip above her and flicked it at Leyla.
She winced, yet the whip didn’t hit. It struck the void next to her ear.
“What do you want? I’ve no quarrel with you!”
“Do be braver than that, darling, or you’re not going to survive the final act. You’ve made my new job difficult, so I figured I’d give you a dose of reality.” Furore pointed at the nightmarish devices and contraptions around them. “Aren’t you happy Fayeth hasn’t tortured you for information, or chained you up in the ruins of a prison? Don’t you think the elves had those? Show some gratitude.”
“Are you saying Fayeth used to lock up humans she took prisoner?” Leyla tugg
ed on her chains but her arms didn’t come free.
“Sure she did! Why wouldn’t she have! I would have done the exact same in her shoes,” Furore said. “She must have changed a lot since the war, I reckon. She’s got no reason to not slit your throat.”
“Or treat me like a worthless slave only useful for torture or personal pleasure?”
“Now you’re getting it.” Furore swung the whip at Leyla again. It left a tear across the shirt she wore, but didn’t impact with her torso. “Fayeth could treat you like less than dirt, but she’s feeding you, sharing her body, and slowly developing feelings for a human. Don’t you think you ought to reward her with loyalty in turn? Freedom isn’t all it’s propped up to be. Trust me, darling.”
“Let me get this straight,” Leyla said and straightened her legs. “You’re saying that if Fayeth hadn’t had a spontaneous change of heart somewhere over the past centuries, I would have lost my freedom the moment we met? In that case, what’s stopping her from having another change of heart if I infuriate her one day?”
“Nothing.” Furore shrugged.
“Exactly.” Leyla nodded.
Furore raised her hand to swing the whip again, paused, and considered what Leyla had just said.
“Wait, no.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Shit, I can never tell if you humans are intelligent or not. I’m trying to teach you to appreciate what you have and not chase fairytales of freedom.”
“This is the weirdest, most mislead method you could have chosen.” Leyla cast her gaze around the dungeon. “You could have scared someone half to death.”
“It’s not my worst transgression in the weeks since I became the goddess of love…” Furore sighed and stared at the ceiling. “Things were easier when I was just the hung succubus.”
“I...” Leyla chose not to ask questions, even though she had a few.
“I wanted to give you a different perspective.” Furore attached the whip to her belt and pointed at the chains attached to Leyla’s arms. They clattered to the ground and freed her from her uncomfortable position. “Fayeth is not as bad as she could be. Take my word for it. I’m not alive in the sense that you two are, but I’ve existed since the beginning of your realm.”
Leyla nursed her wrists. “If the elves had won the war, do you think they would have been kind to humanity? All of my ancestors would have become their slaves. I would never have known the excuse for freedom I had in Algora. And that’s assuming they wouldn’t have tried to wipe us out entirely, because that’s what we did to them.”
Furore voiced her chagrin in the most drawn out, exaggerated sigh Leyla had heard in her life. “Oh, you are all so impressively, pointlessly stubborn… Fine, have it your way.” The dark-skinned elf raised both of her hands in front of her and showed the palms to Leyla. In her right hand laid a pink gem in the shape of a heart, and in the left laid the same, except it had been shattered into a dozen glimmering shards. “I’ll break off our deal, if that is your desire. As an apology, I’ll even try to ensure you get the freedom you chase. Fayeth won’t know what happened to you, and you likely won’t see her again in your life.”
“What’s the catch?” Leyla asked.
“No catch,” Furore said. “I fake your death, put you back on the road, and convince Fayeth you died. If you’re fast, sneaky, you’ll get to Xenthien without the former queen becoming wise of our ruse.”
“But you don’t get anything, so why would I trust you?”
Furore laughed like someone possessed by a demon. “Darling, I get more than anyone. I get the most. I get rid of both of you. I should have taken the time to understand my new position, but I rushed into it. Clearly, you two will never get along. So why would I waste another day on trying to make true love happen here?”
Leyla didn’t trust the spirit, but she didn’t have a better choice. If Furore told the truth, she offered an opportunity to outsmart Fayeth. She could escape. She ignored whatever her heart may feel about Fayeth and pointed at the shattered pink gem.
“I’ll get right on faking your death, darling.” Furore grinned.
Death of Innocence
“I know you dislike my company, for your own reasons, but I brought a rare drink which no human has tasted.” Fayeth peeked into the ruin where Leyla stayed, but saw no sign of her. The bed and the table looked too messy for someone who liked to clean. The girl must have run off again.
If only Leyla would tell her when she decided to go and get lost in the woods, Fayeth wouldn’t have to waste time worrying about her. They could wander together. She knew the best places to visit. No area in the Freow Woods remained unknown to her.
She placed the basket with pixie cider and elven bread on the floor. She’d fetch Leyla, so they could get drunk together. Syvis was no fun to drink with. She got too serious whenever she got drunk. Fayeth remembered several events in the past where her daughter had had too much, and afterwards, Syvis had sat in treetops and sulked.
She searched the grass outside of Leyla’s temporary home for clues as to where the girl could have gone. Thanks to the armour she liked to trudge around in, it was easy to locate her trail. Fayeth only needed to follow the steps which sunk deeper into the dirt than any animal’s.
The trail lead north, deep into the forest. Leyla had walked practically the same path a couple of days ago, when Fayeth had found her sleeping outside, so she either had a terrible sense of direction, or she must have had a reason to go north again.
Maybe she’d listened to Fayeth and accepted that she could not go east. Fayeth would have preferred if Leyla had gone south, but then, it was very likely the girl had mistaken north for south. Good thing no one had ever taught her how to navigate.
If Leyla hadn’t been such a stubborn mule, Fayeth would have taught her herself. She would have shown her how moss mostly grew on the north side of trees. Unfortunately, she felt more at ease when Leyla had no idea how to get anywhere. She didn’t risk angering the dead if her pet human couldn’t locate her way out of a thicket.
Fayeth couldn’t shake a bad, nagging hunch that something had gone wrong when Leyla’s trail veered off towards the wetland. She should have told her to steer clear off the area, since it was difficult to tell how deep certain parts were. The worst holes could swallow the girl, if she put her foot wrong. Leyla was far too heavy in her armour to go traipsing in the vicinity of treacherous waters.
When Fayeth reached the wetland, the sun stood at its zenith on the sky. She didn’t have to search for the girl. Leyla laid face down a few meters from the safety of the tree line. The sunlight caused the water on the field to sparkle, but Fayeth only had eyes for the light reflected in Leyla’s banged up armour. She didn’t realize she’d waded straight into the wetland before she kneeled next to her lover to check for a pulse.
Leyla did not breathe, because of course she didn’t. Fayeth suppressed the tears, and the familiar grief, which the knowledge brought. In a sick sense, she supposed she should be grateful she’d predicted this outcome. She hadn’t gotten swept up in the girl’s wake. She’d treated Leyla with kindness and respect during the brief time they’d shared.
If she’d been younger or unused to death, Leyla’s drowning might have struck her like the vengeance of a slighted god. Instead, serenity devoid of emotion claimed her mind. Humans were frail and short-lived. That would always remain an uncontestable fact, regardless of how long her lover might have lived in the end.
If she’d loved Leyla, as a partner, she would have had to watch her wither and fade soon. It had to be easier when she passed quickly like this.
Since she couldn’t carry Leyla in her armour, Fayeth straightened the girl’s black hair, shut her eyes, and waded back towards the tree line. Frogs leapt out of her path. She left the sweet girl without arguing with the god of death, but considered begging Furore to restore Leyla to life. She decided against it because she feared the succubus would ask for Syvis in return, if the spirit even had the power to resurrect someone.
Wayward Woman
Furore kept her promise. The spirit returned Leyla to the road leading from Algora to Xenthien, and even went as far as to point out which way to go. Leyla might have gotten turned around without her help, since she couldn’t tell whether to go right or left. The road ran in a straight line.
She didn’t inquire as to how the spirit would fake her death, or see if she actually did, but she traveled for three days before encountering anyone and took that as proof that Fayeth did not know where she was. If the elf had known, she would have stopped her.
The six humans she encountered were a little older than her and looked like soldiers from Herielas’ procession. Leyla recognized their faces, yet couldn’t recall their names. They all appeared weary and beaten, and it made her hesitate about continuing east. Whatever awaited her there could not be beneficial for her health, if it had forced these six to retreat.
“Greetings, I—“
“Going the wrong way, girlie,” a man with a rugged exterior, and bent nose, said. The others nodded in agreement, but none of them seemed to remember her without her armour.
Furore had convinced Leyla to leave it behind because she’d be able to travel faster in plain clothes. She’d argued the point, but ditched the armour in the end because she suspected the spirit planned to use it as part of her ruse to make Fayeth believe she’d died.
“Have you faced resistance?” Leyla asked, as they passed each other.
“Plenty of it!” The rugged man said. “We heading back to inform the king. You should steer clear of the east. Only trouble there.”
Leyla might have liked to ask more questions, but since they walked opposite directions, they would have had to start screaming to hear each other. Either way, she would stop for nothing. The magic of the Freow Woods wouldn’t get her to retreat, nor would any elf. No matter what tactics they might use.
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