I decided now would be a good time to slow things down before Maya gave them heart failure. “I know this is a lot to comprehend in one sitting. Believe me, Maya and I have struggled with it as well, and we’ve been dealing with it for a few months. Sky Raven is real and so is its treasury. It is staffed and being refitted as we speak, but I think it would be best if we kept the rest under wraps for now.”
Both parents sighed. “Thank you, Alex.”
But Maya just sat there and pouted. “Aw, way to ruin my fun, and just when I was getting to the best part, too!”
Renalla had to bite on that one. “The best part? What best part?”
She smiled evilly. “Oh, you know, nothing much, just what Alex gave me as my courting gift. Nothing you would be interested in, Mother, I’m sure.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to fly…but Renalla did. She jumped over the table with some kind of acrobatic leap, landing directly in front of Maya and immediately started patting her down in search of whatever the gift was. Maya giggled and squirmed like a little girl. It didn’t take her mother long to find the bracelet.
“Alex, it’s beautiful! See, dear?” she said, holding Maya’s arm across the table so her husband could see the bracelet.
Faeron smiled and nodded at the bracelet. “That is indeed a very nice and suitable gift for my daughter. But to be honest, based on the quality of the armor you both wore, I was expecting you to have gone the traditional route and given her a weapon.”
“Oh, he did,” said Maya, “three, in fact.”
“Three?” said Renalla in amazement. “Truly?”
“Yes, truly. But I will show you them to you another time. We don’t want you to be too jealous of my boyfriend, now do we? Besides Father has yet to answer Alex’s question?”
“His question? Oh, right,” he turned to me. “Alex, I would love for you to marry my daughter.”
That was a major relief to me. “Excellent!” said Maya as she grabbed hold of my arm and stood the two of us up. “Then we will see both of you in the morning.” She tried to lead me down the hall.
“Maya, for shame! Now get back here, both of you!”
Not wanting to be on bad terms with them, I dragged a very disgruntled Maya back to the table.
“Besides,” said Faeron, “there are conditions to be met; my word is no longer enough.” Renalla put her hand on his shoulder.
“Tell them in a bit, dear. It’s getting late and none of us have eaten.” She turned and called out, “Kalah! Where are you, dear?”
Faeron chuckled, “She’s not here tonight, remember? She has the night off and we were supposed to go to that dinner party that got canceled, so you’re going to have to cook.”
She looked rather disgusted. “I hate cooking! That’s why we hired Kalah!”
I got up from the table. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll be glad to take care of the food tonight. I haven’t had much time to do that lately,” I said as I walked over to the kitchen stove with Nia on my shoulder. She looked just as happy as I was to be out of the main conversation for a bit.
“Thank you, Alex, you’re a lifesaver! To be honest, we really haven’t had many family meals since Maya left or good food for that matter!” Renalla smiled.
“Why not?”I asked.
“Well for one, Kalah is a dear thing, but she’s a vampire so she can’t actually taste how things are turning out. She was a cook before she was turned, but sadly, I think she’s forgetting which spices go together and which ones don’t. That, combined with our hectic social obligations, mean we really don’t have all that much time at home either.”
I listened as I set pans out on the side counter and Nia started getting out the food.
“But on to more important matters,” said Faeron. “Alex, if you want to marry my daughter, there are a few things that need to be taken care of. The first one being you will have to duel me!” I nodded with the appropriate amount of dread and concern, but Maya just burst into wicked laughter.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please continue,” she said between giggles.
Faeron scowled but did his best to brush off her comment. “The second will be the trial of manhood. You were made a dark elf by rights long ago, but you left before your sixteenth birthday and never did the trial. But the hardest task will be to fight off any challengers.”
“What challengers?” I asked.
“I must announce your intentions to court my daughter to the clan leaders. They then have the right to challenge you to one-on-one combat. If you win, you go on to the next challenger and if you lose, they get to replace you. This goes on until no other challenger steps up.” He growled slightly, as if considering something distasteful. “One thing I haven’t told you is that the decision to break free from the yoke of the Lifebane was not an unanimous one by our people. There are three clans that still openly claim allegiance to the Duke. It is not inconceivable that they will use this event to disrupt the balance of power. If they could somehow win…” He held up a hand to placate a very angry-looking Maya. “Even if the marriage never took place, the more conservative loyal clans might have difficulty supporting my reforms because the ancient conventions of our people were not honored.”
Maya growled, but Nia spoke up brightly. “No problem! Alex is the champion of a tournament with over two hundred people in it!”
“He was? But the only one that big is the Wizards’ Tournament?” Maya’s parents looked at me with wide eyes. “Alex, are you a wizard, too?”
I smiled and tried to change the subject but ended up just proving that I was. “By-the-Gods!” Renalla shouted incredulously. “He’s a prince and a wizard, too?” She grabbed Maya by the shoulders. “What else aren’t you telling us?”
Maya rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t take it,” she challenged with a smile.
“Try us, take your best shot!” Oh, I wasn’t going to like where this was going!
Maya smiled impishly and took a big dramatic breath. “Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you! Alex is an enchanter, one of only two in the world. He is also a master smith and a very skilled fighter. Because he is a Nova, he also has the power to shape metal with his mind into anything he wants.
“He shapes metal with his thoughts?” Faeron whispered.
Maya ignored him and continued, “Alex is the one who crafted the armor we wear as well as our weapons. This bracelet I am wearing is named Winya. She is a living weapon, capable of changing into three different battle forms. She is also my best friend and the very soul of the Captain of the Iron Maidens who defended Sky Raven Fortress to the end four hundred years ago.”
“You have a talking ghost in your bracelet?” Renalla echoed softly.
“Alex and I are also the Child of Light and the Child of Darkness as foretold in the ancient prophecy; we are destined to destroy the evil lich Lifebane once and for all. As we told you earlier, Sky Raven Fortress is our home, where we have relocated the survivors from Xarparion. Rosa, the other enchanter in this world is Alex’s master, my friend, and a surrogate mom to both of us. Nia, here, will be our adopted daughter when we get married. Lin and Julia are our sisters, and I have two young silver dragons that serve as my ladies-in-waiting.
“Dragons for servants?” they both murmured.
“Oh, and one last thing, I’m not crazy! I’ve just had a dream weaver creature from another planet messing with my mind for the past twenty-five years. I feel like I’m missing something…oh, yes, we’re on a mission to restore the flow of magic to this world and save the lives of every magical creature on it. That’s it…well, I might have left out some of the smaller details.”
Then both parents grew very quiet and dropped their heads on the table. “What? Was it something I said?”
…………………………………………
The Lifebane’s dark tower rocked with uncontained fury as more stone crumbled and the sickly fire of the wall scones in the great hall roared up into a fierce conflagration that threa
tened to consume the stone walls themselves.
Three shambling rag-attired advisors faced the dreaded lich on their knees, their foreheads pressed resignedly to the squalid stone floor. One of them held a circular clutch of ragged vellum notes and a quill pen.
The dark figure sitting in slouched repose on the massive chair remained shrouded in near total blackness despite the enhanced light from the sconces just feet away. It was as if light itself feared to get too close. Even so, every time the creature pounded its fists on the stonework of the throne, red streaks of electricity flowed from the impact site down to the ground and ran randomly over the cobblestones.
“You bring me only words of failure!” the monster thundered. “My assassins defeated! My trap at Xarparion sprung unsatisfactorily! The dream weaver dead! Sky Raven reopened! The Child of Light defeated my most powerful enslaved demon and escaped! The siege of the dark elf capital lifted! And now, I have lost contact with two other Amulets of Tepestra!
“My Lord,” the advisor clutching the writing utensils began.
“Enough excuses!” he screamed as two pillars of fire immolated the other two kneeling beings. They didn’t utter a sound as their bodies turned to ash.
“Bring me the stones!”
……………………………………………………
Chapter 12
Maya’s parents both recovered fairly quickly; the King sighed and held his head in his hands. Both of them looked pretty bewildered yet. Coming in from the kitchen, I had everyone sit back and get comfortable as I set huge mugs of hot tea in front of everyone. With a stern warning look at Maya, I started to explain.
“Faeron, Renalla, I really apologize for the awkward way we have sprung all this on you. A certain young lady is having way too much fun with all this. So I propose that Maya and I start at the beginning and tell you our story. This could take a while, so get comfortable.”
We talked until well after the midnight watch had changed in the city outside. While Maya was completing her parts of the tale, I slid into the across the room into the kitchen and finished making the dinner that I had started earlier. To be honest, I don’t think either parent could tell you to this day what they were eating; it really didn’t matter as engrossed in listening as they were.
After the food was cleared away, we moved to bigger chairs in the great room, where the fireplace crackled warmly. Riveted by the story as they were, it just seemed natural that Renalla slid onto Faeron’s lap and curled up with her head on his shoulder, listening intently. My heart stirred as I recognized that as a classic Maya trait, and a few seconds later my own, almost purring dark elf, copied her mother. There were, of course, a lot of questions; Renalla was most curious about our relationship. When I confessed that I had fallen in love with Maya before I had ever seen her face or knew she was a dark elf, I saw her eyes get shiny with the beginning of a tear, and she nodded happily. I also had to describe, in detail, the First Day dance and how beautiful Maya looked in Rosa’s dress creations. When I retold the vampire assassination story and how Winya and I had nursed Maya back to health, Renalla squeezed her eyes shut tightly and shook wordlessly in her husband’s arms. I could plainly see her mother’s pain at how close she had come to losing her child.
Both parents were visibly angry when the dream weaver episode was explained. I suppose it was a combination of feeling like they had failed to protect their daughter and self-reproach for the widely held perception that Maya had been insane all those years. I understood how they could feel that way, but it’s hard to fight something you can’t remotely understand.
Faeron, being both a warrior and a leader, wanted to know more about my real parents, the Nova, the fall of the academy, Sky Raven Fortress and everything we knew about the prophecy and the Duke. His eyes widened in dismay when we described what had happened in the vampire cave. I took over most of the conversation when it came to the demon, Hell and my return to this world. I also glossed over quite a bit of Maya’s part of that story as I sensed she really didn’t want to talk about it.
Finally, when the yawning was taking up more time than the speaking, we surrendered and all headed to bed. Renalla clucked over Maya like a mother hen, but I think my girl secretly enjoyed it all. Except when it got to the part of her mother insisting on separate rooms.
The women headed off, and just as Faeron and I were about to say goodnight and follow, the door opened and Lin, Julia, and Ryllis stumbled in. I vaguely remembered Ryllis from my time at our old village as she was Ollis’s only child. She always had big eyes, and her face in a book from what I could recall. The girl before me now was more willowy and less muscular than Maya, but still strong. Unlike my dark elf’s curls, Ryliss’s hair was straight, silver-colored with streaks of white, and gathered into a modest ponytail. She had turned into a very beautiful young woman, but then again, I am very partial to dark elf girls. Ryliss was wearing a blue and gray patterned robe that I thought meant she was some sort of teacher or scholar.
Bleary eyed, the three of them failed to even see Faeron and me standing there and instead just grabbed some decorative pillows from the overstuffed chairs and flopped on the floor in front of the fireplace. I think all three were asleep before their heads hit the pillows. But they all had smiles on their faces, at least. Faeron and I snickered, and he walked over to a large chest in the room, retrieved some blankets, and covered them up gently before we headed off to our rooms.
I tossed and turned for a while, but I just couldn’t find the right frame of mind to fall asleep, and my mind was racing. Blaming it on Maya not being by my side or on all the sleep I got when I was in Hell really didn’t seem right, either. Eventually I gave up, dressed and found myself sitting on the steps outside staring up into the vast panorama of space. The fires outside the city walls were still burning and the extra light and smoke obscured some parts of the sky, but what was visible was breathtaking.
Suddenly, I felt a cool hand on my shoulder. “You couldn’t sleep either, huh?” Maya said quietly, taking in the view of the night sky as well.
“Nope, I tried but I just couldn’t.” She sat down behind me and pressed herself up against my back, wrapping her arms and legs around me, hugging me as she rested her chin on my shoulder.
“Neither could I. I guess I miss my big, handsome foot warmer and best-est pillow too much. Alex, I’m so happy to be home and I can’t believe how much I’ve missed my parents, their laughter, and our talks. My mom is so much funnier than I remember and my father is just…well, my dad, even if he is a King.”
I sighed, and she got up and slid around so she was sitting on my lap staring into my eyes with those fascinating green orbs of hers, her hands locked in my hair.
“Alex, it makes me sad to see you like this. All night with my parents, I noticed you looked uneasy or even guilty, what’s the matter?”
“It’s just that, seeing you so happy here, it reminds me that if it weren’t for me, you could have stayed with your parents and had a normal life. I’m the reason you’ve felt all this pain over the years.”
She silenced me with a slow sensual kiss, her eyes opening finally as the moonlight caught them and displayed them in their emerald glory.
“Promise me that we will do this every morning for the rest of our lives,” she whispered huskily, melting into my shoulder. After a few moments’ thought, she straightened up and brought my face back into alignment with hers. Her strong hands still ensnared in my hair, she searched my face. “I love you, Alex Martin, master smith, enchanter, passable cook, and heir to the Nova. In case you weren’t paying attention to the storytelling earlier, my place by your side was written in the stars long before you were born. So stop feeling sorry for me; I wouldn’t change a thing.” She tucked her head under my chin, and we were both quiet for a few minutes, lost in thought and taking in the view of the night sky. Finally, she snickered, “Besides, once we’re married, it will be yourself that you feel sorry for!”
“How so?” I g
rinned.
She smiled and breathed into my ear, “Let’s just say I plan on making it a personal mission that you don’t get much sleep, so I hope you’re up to it.” And with that, she nipped me on the ear, pushed back and stood up, grinning evilly. “There now, feeling better?”
“Well, parts of me, anyway,” I groaned.
Maya laughed wickedly, “Great, now come on!” She pulled me to my feet, giving me an appraising once over. “Whoa, we might have to give you a few minutes before we can take you out in public. I’ll go get dressed and grab your hammer; then we can take off.”
She came back carrying the weapon and sheath and tossed it to me, her eyes still sparking with mischief.
“Where are we going?” I asked, slinging it over my shoulder.
“You will need to get a gift for my father and I passed just the place on the way in,” she said happily. She wrapped her arm around my elbow, and together we walked out onto the road. Maya waved casually to the guards as we headed toward the merchant district.
The first rays of the sun were just starting to make it over the surrounding hills, but the part of the Capital we were entering was already bustling with activity. Shops were opening, fishermen were bringing their catch to market, and produce carts were moving up and down the streets jockeying for the prime places to set up to greet early morning patrons. I guess a couple days of siege made everyone behind in their work. Another block and I smelled the familiar odor of a forge and saw the heat plume rising above some low stone buildings from a block away.
We were still walking arm-in-arm when I heard a loud, angry whirl sound in my ear. Suddenly, we were buzzed by a pixie in a pink, frilly night gown who didn’t look happy.
“Mister Alex, how am I supposed to bodyguard your body if you don’t wake me up when you go out? Mom, you know better, too!”
“We’re sorry, Nia, we didn’t think. How can we possibly make it up to you?”
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