The Goblin and the Empire

by JD Cole

  The sound of screams were challenging a chorus of loud chanting. Kelli stood, shaking her head clear and trying to get her bearings. The bedroom was filled with sprites, mystics, and several wolves and vampyres, all shouting the same haunting chant, casting a spell of great power.

  The screams came from the sprye on the bed. She appeared to be in labor, but no one stood near her to assist. Everyone in the room seemed to be afraid of her.

  “Highness,” Sorvir rasped, gaining his feet beside her. “We should not be here!”

  “What is this?” Kelli asked. “What is going on here?”

  “Please, Queen Kelli, we must leave this memory. You shouldn’t be witness to this!”

  “No.” Kelli looked crossly at him. “I concentrated on finding out what caused the King’s hatred. This is it, isn’t it?” Kelli had to raise her voice above the chanting and screaming. “Whatever it is, it started here, right?” Kelli made her way to the bed, staring with both fear and pity at the lonely sprye.

  “It is near!” someone shouted. Kelli knew the voice. She looked across the room and saw Dufangen –impossibly young in appearance— tightly gripping her staff, shuddering under great strain as she resumed her chants.

  The sprye screamed again, an ear-piercing cry of agony that had Kelli cupping her ears. For the first time, she regarded the sprye’s belly. The child inside appeared to be forcing its way out, and its mother writhed one final time, her last scream coming out as little more than a dying breath. The sprye went still, and suddenly a black claw ripped its way through the flesh. Kelli screamed in horror, stumbling back. The gathered spell-casters all seemed to go weak-kneed at the same moment.

  A small dragon head burst forth from the corpse next, uttering its first earthly cry as it struggled to free itself from the sprye who had carried it to term.

  “What, what is he?” Kelli fell back into Sorvir’s chest. The sprite pulled her close and turned away to shield her from the gruesome scene.

  “Please, my Queen, we must leave. Forgive me!”

  Once more, the ground and sky swirled around them.

  “No!” Kelli cried. “I wanna know!”

  They were once more at Waipahe’e falls, atop the very cliffs they’d first been to earlier.

  “Sorvir!” Kelli shouted. “That was him! He was born like that! He’s a sprite!”

  “No,” Sorvir shook his head sadly. “No, Highness, he is not. He is an abomination, a curse.”

  Kelli stood for several moments with her arms curled around herself. “Who was his mother?” she asked, her tone much softer and sadder.

  “My Queen-”

  “If I’m your queen,” Kelli said darkly, “you will answer my question. Was she my... our ancestor?”

  Sorvir sat miserably for several moments. “No. She was... her name was Yizidia Windham.”

  “Windham? Like the castle?”

  Sorvir nodded. “The castle, and the mountain, were named in honor of the Windham family.”

  “So, who were they, then? Their descendants are one of the families I need to get to know, right?”

  Sorvir took a deep breath. “No, Highness. The Windham family was extinguished.”

  “What? How? Why? What happened?”

  “We should not-”

  “Tell me what happened. The Goblin King has my dad. He wants to kill me. Tell me why!”

  Sorvir closed his eyes, and using more skill than Kelli had, transformed the scenery around them. No longer in Hawaii, the trio now stood in an alien-looking environment, every bit as beautiful as the falls, but with bright colors and plants not seen even in the tropical islands of the human world.

  “We’re back in the Faery Realm?” Vanessa asked, wondering at the sights.

  Sorvir spread his hands, looking around. “This is the Earth, as it was before the humans arrived. Before we migrated behind the Ythsimerin. Before the Goblin King. What I am about to share with you is not known beyond the royal houses and the mystic council.” He pointed to the treetops nearby, at a sprye hovering behind the leaves. Her impish smile brightened her dark, navy blue eyes. “That is Yizidia.”

  Yizidia zipped from one treetop to another, seeming to be hiding from someone. “What’s she doing?” Kelli asked.

  “She is young in this memory. Still a child. She has a best friend that she keeps a secret from everyone.” Sorvir pointed again, this time at a sprite who was obviously searching for Yizidia. The sprite flew from tree to tree, top to bottom, seeking his quarry.

  “Who’s her friend?” Vanessa asked.

  “His name was Ekrin.” Sorvir looked sideways at Kelli, but avoided eye contact. “She grew to love him, deeply. And he betrayed her.”

  He was silent for several minutes as they watched the playful sprites finish their game of hide and seek. They were both obviously enjoying themselves, happy as any carefree youngsters ever were. Then the scene faded back to Waipahe’e falls once more. “We do not need to see any more of them,” Sorvir declared.

  “What happened, Sorvir?”

  “When Yizidia reached adulthood, she was betrothed to another. Her father arranged her marriage to the next King. Brayos Moniscii.”

  “That sucks. Arranged marriages are stupid,” Kelli said, with feeling. “What about Ekrin?”

  “He was one of the unnamed. He had no family, no house crest. He lived alone in the woods, with not a penny to his name. It was forbidden for Yizidia to even socialize with him, and when her father found out she’d all but grown up with an unnamed in secret, he was furious.”

  “So her father judged Ekrin for being poor? That’s even more stupid!” Kelli almost shouted.

  “Money has nothing to do with it. There are not many sprites without a family name. Unnamed are vagabonds, troublemakers. It takes a heinous crime to lose your name, Highness, and it is a rare sprite who is born capable of even contemplating such crimes. Once declared unnamed, you and any of your descendants become unfit for marriage back into a ruling house. Sometimes, the unnamed wed each other and sire children. It was assumed Ekrin was one of those.”

  “Assumed? So then, he wasn’t? An unnamed?”

  “He asked Yizidia to elope with him. To leave her betrothed and live with her beloved. Yizidia’s sense of duty and honor towards her family was stronger than her love for Ekrin. She refused, though it broke her heart to do so,” Sorvir turned away. “So he... he assaulted her. He took something she would not willingly give to him, not caring that her decision to leave him was a painful sacrifice for her. He was captured almost immediately... wait, no. He allowed himself to be captured. He wanted to stand in the throne room for trial so he could gloat in front of everyone.” Kelli stepped around to look him, but Sorvir closed his eyes. “His real name was Kraayek.”

  “I’ve heard that name,” Kelli said softly.

  “He was not an unnamed. Ercianodhon’s father was a Dragon, and he was going to take Yizidia away no matter what her father or the King wanted.”

  Kelli sat down at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the pool below as the falls poured water into it. “A Dragon... did that to a sprite? A sprite who was his friend?” She shook her head, unbelieving.

  Sorvir sat beside her, as Vanessa moved to stand apart, where she could listen without intruding. The sprite took another deep breath. “Kraayek, or rather, his actions, were one of the primary reasons the Dragons departed for the Netherworld so many ages before he committed his crime. The Immortals are all but omnipotent, Highness, and we cannot deny them anything they want. Thankfully for us, they decided long ago not to sate their greed or lusts at our expense.

  “But Kraayek violated their laws. This they could not ignore, and so they imprisoned him.”

  “Where? How? How can you possibly imprison a Dragon?”

  “I cannot explain it in any detail, my Queen. But the basic idea is that a Dragon criminal, what they call ‘illeyark’, is overcome by several of his or her peers, and then contained within a ‘swayaveh’, or a Drago
nhold. The Dragonhold is simply a mystic who offers their bodies as a living prison for the criminal.”

  “I don’t... understand any of that,” Kelli admitted. “But why didn’t anybody help Yizidia? She suffered so much in that memory!”

  “No one could help her,” Sorvir replied with sadness. “The necromancy did not become apparent until very late in the pregnancy, and the mystics did not realize until the very end what was about to be let loose on the world. The most powerful wizards and sorcerers of the time did all they could to contain the life-draining force of Yizidia’s child, but from the moment of his birth, Ercianodhon’s necromancy grew in strength quicker than they could manage.”

  “He was just a baby...”

  “He is the curse of Kraayek-”

  “He didn’t ask for that, Sorvir!” Kelli said. “So what happened to him? How did the sprites deal with him and his necromancy?”

  “King Brayos... well, at the time he was the crown prince,”

  “Just a sec,” Kelli interrupted. “Sorry, but I just realized every time I’ve heard about past rulers, they were from our family, Mahnih-see,” she enunciated her sprite family name. “I thought the Birthright chose the monarchs randomly, from all the families?”

  “The Birthright did not exist at this time, and the House of Moniscii was the original royal family. When the Birthright was forged, Brayos insisted that it should be able to choose from all sprites except for the unnamed.”

  “Okay. Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt, I was just wondering.”

  “It is no bother, Highness. As to Yizidia, she was Brayos’ bride-to-be, and with Kraayek confined to a Dragonhold, Brayos was given the authority to decide what to do about the goblin. It...” Sorvir hesitated, reluctant to meet the Queen’s gaze. “It became quickly apparent that Ercianodhon had inherited his father’s immortality.”

  “They tried to murder a baby?” Kelli screamed.

  “The goblin,” Sorvir refused to refer to him as anything else, “was slowly killing everyone. Every day, his necromancy reached farther and farther, drank more and more life force from the faeries around him. Faery life fed him power that he could not control, and he began destroying everything around him using magic he didn’t understand. The Dragons offered no relief or ideas. They considered the matter closed with Kraayek imprisoned.

  “Overwhelmed by the situation, Brayos came up with a final solution, something he determined to be the most compassionate of all the options presented to him.”

  “Compassion?” Kelli spit. “After trying to murder him.”

  Sorvir paused for several moments. “Ercianodhon had to be banished from the Earth. In order to achieve this, he ordered House Windham to create the necessary ethergates that would carry them beyond the Earth, and release the goblin into the heavens beyond.”

  Kelli’s eyes narrowed in angry incredulity. Sorvir continued, “There were almost one hundred members of that house. One by one, immediately after one another, they created ethergates at the edge of the Earth, then beyond, each carrying the goblin through and passing him to the next, even as he killed them with his necromancy, until finally he had been exiled.”

  Kelli’s fingers dug into the rocks she sat on. “That’s the sickest thing I ever heard,” she whispered. “They not only tried to kill a baby, they sacrificed a hundred people’s lives to toss that baby into space?” She turned and looked up at her mother, who stood several feet away. Kelli shook her head, searching her mother’s face for answers. But there were none.

  “I know it sounds distasteful-”

  “Distasteful?” the Queen yelled at Sorvir. “It’s disgusting! I’m descended from, from barbarians like that?”

  “The other options,” Sorvir replied quietly, “that offered permanent safety from necromancy were to toss the goblin into a volcano, to suffer an eternity of fire, or to bury it so far beneath the earth it would never escape. Trapped, immobile for all time. An offworld exile was the least cruel solution for Ercianodhon. But in the end, he could not be allowed to roam the Earth freely. For all anyone knew, his necromancy would have continued strengthening until all life had been consumed.”

  Sorvir eyed his Queen sternly. “Please, Highness, speak truthfully... if it had been you and not Brayos burdened with the choice, what would you have done?”

  Kelli held his gaze for several moments, seeing the challenge in his eyes. She took a deep breath and turned her gaze forward. “You’re right. I can’t judge anybody for what happened. I wasn’t there. And I’m obviously not wise enough to know how to make a decision as heavy as that one was.” She chewed her lip for moment before realization slapped her in the face.

  “That’s why all of you don’t want me and Ben to be together! You think our kids would be like, what, more goblins or something?”

  “A Dragon and a sprite have not... been together... except for Yizidia and Kraayek. That single union was the most destructive event in Earth’s history, to those of us who know of it. Even the human arrival in Sen’giza is not looked upon with as much dread.”

  “You don’t know that would happen again!”

  “And you cannot guarantee it would not,” Sorvir replied softly. “Even the Dragons could not make that guarantee.” Sorvir looked at Kelly, then gestured to their surroundings. “Our world would not survive two Goblin Kings, to say nothing of the fate you would share with Yizidia.”

  “But Ben’s ancestor, Daknanyx! Ben and his brothers aren’t like the Goblin King!”

  “They are descended from humans, Highness, not sprites.”

  Kelli sat at the edge of the cliff overlooking the falls once more. Her mother and Sorvir followed her lead, but no one spoke for several minutes. Tears glided silently from Kelli’s eyes. Finally, she wiped the rolling sadness from her cheeks, motioning her mother closer as she looked at Sorvir.

  “I need you to keep a secret for me. Just until I can gather more information and make everything official with the mystics and our family.” Kelli sighed. It felt weird calling the sprites of House Moniscii “family”.

  “Of course, honey,” Vanessa said.

  Sorvir got up on one knee, bowing with deep respect. “My loyalty is pledged to you, Highness. Anything you wish to say in confidence will not be repeated.”

  Kelli took a deep breath, focusing on the magic inside herself to make sure she had complete control over what happened next. Their Hawaiian surroundings began to fade out, as another scene faded in. A forest clearing in the Faery Realm took shape, and suddenly a girl with pink hair zipped by the trio, laughing hysterically. Sorvir and Vanessa were surprised when Bennett –completely encased in his unique ruby-skinned form—sped past them in pursuit of pink-haired faery queen.

  Silver-haired Kelli controlled the shi’un so that she, her mother and Sorvir followed the other Kelli and Bennett as they flew manically through and over the forest, playing an extreme version of the “chasemaster” game they’d played as kids.

  Sorvir and Vanessa marveled not just at way the couple chased each other, but the overwhelming emotions they radiated. Vanessa was brought to tears as she could feel the epic sorrow her daughter and Bennett tried to smother with frolicking aerobatics, knowing they would soon be separated for years, if not decades. At last, the memory-teens found themselves lying together in the grass, and Kelli locked eyes with Sorvir. “Do not tell anyone what you’re about to see.”

  Sorvir nodded, and listened as pink-haired Kelli spoke to Ben.

  “So, darling, how do those wedding vows go again?” Kelli asked theatrically.

  Ben frowned. “We don’t have to if you don’t want-”

  “I want to. Now, let’s see. I don’t have a clue how the traditional wedding vow goes, not word for word.”

  “Make something up. You’re creative.”

  Sorvir nodded sadly, while Vanessa cupped her hands, her tears of sadness becoming tears of joy as she watched her daughter trade heart-felt marriage vows with Ben. The scene faded back to Hawaii as pin
k-haired Kelli leaned in for a kiss.

  Kelli looked at Sorvir once more. “My name is Kelli Kunali’i. My husband, my Guardian, is Bennett Kunali’i, a descendant of the Dragon Daknanyx. I will not leave him for any reason.”

  Sorvir bowed. “I will say nothing of this until you decide it is time, Queen Kelli Kunali’i.” Recovering his bow, he met Kelli’s eyes. “I humbly ask that you seriously ponder any and all concerns from your family and advisors, and do not forget what you have witnessed of Ercianodhon.” He smiled warmly. “But I look forward to your husband’s return so that we can give you a wedding celebration befitting the Queen of the Sprites.”

  « CHAPTER 17 »

  Elementals

  “What about air transport, then?” Arms crossed, the Hood looked from Marc to his subordinates and back. “C’mon, you guys gotta have helicopters or VTOL or something?”

  The past hour and a half had been spent in this modest conference room, complete with a meeting table and benches. Here, the vampyre pembruh, Meshra, had outlined the plan for infiltrating Gedaschen and retrieving the Queen’s father.

  The faeries were now elsewhere, allowing the humans time to digest all the information and come up with suggestions for improving the plan, if possible. Marc and his troops, despite the enduring shock over their predicament, had been impressed with Meshra’s briefing; it had been as professional and competent as any they’d ever received... if one overlooked “magic” being a tactical consideration.

  Marc pulled a deep breath in, his expression agitated. “I told you, we’ll look at helping you with this rescue mission, but that doesn’t mean we start doing an inventory and letting you demand whatever you want.”

  The Hood spread his arms. “You’ve all seen what the faeries are planning. It’s a looong way to our target from here, and while they can take us roughly halfway in an instant, that still leaves us a couple days of marching, and then climbing a frickin mountain only to then hike across the top of that mountain to get to the castle. It will take us over a week to get into position to even attempt the rescue, and that’s if we manage to make it the whole way without being spotted!”