She did as he bade her, carefully accepting the wine, her hand trembling, as did the goblet it held.
The toothy grin on the Regent's face reflected the delight he took in her fear. "Hors d'oeuvre?" he asked, proffering a silver platter, laced with an artistic garnish of delicately woven Pixy wings.
Teristha placed the goblet carefully on the table to avoid spilling it, and then quickly returned her attention to the dish, as she reached out to sample his offering. In realizing the contents, she froze.
"Oh, dear me!" he exclaimed. "I am just so terribly sorry, Teristha!"
"No… It's…it's quite all right, really," she tried to assure him.
"Nonsense. How could I be so callous?" he admonished himself while placing the platter of pickled round-ears directly in front of her.
"N…Not at all," she stuttered.
He leered at her from across the table, leaning on his elbows with a toothy grin, and sighing. "I have so enjoyed your company over the winters," he remarked in a low and confidential tone.
"As have I yours, milord," she returned pleasantly, but with an undeniable revulsion, her upper lip drawing into an involuntary sneer.
"That is why it pains me so." He momentarily sobered while withdrawing the platter. "To be parted from you now, after coming to think of you as-well, as family."
"Milord?" she inquired absently, still captivated by the morbid platter.
"It's just so terribly dreadful!" he moaned.
After a moment, when her revulsion had sufficiently subsided, the possible implications of his statement struck her. "Milord!" she began in a pitch, nearing hysteria. "I have always tried to serve you well!"
"I know, my dear. That is why it pains me so." he repeated warmly, a hint of his previous smirk returning.
"If I have offended somehow, then I beg forgiv…"
"Not at all. You've been an absolute shining example to every Human in New Malice."
"Then I don't understand! I have complied with every custom, and I am truly faithful! Why…"
"Exactly. Your services have become so renowned as to reach even the ear of the Emperor himself."
"The Emperor?" she repeated dumbly.
"I'm afraid so," he confirmed, allowing the implication to linger.
"The Emperor," she repeated with ominous dread.
"That is why you've been promoted to Baroness, my dear. I just wanted you to know that I did everything in my power to stop it."
"Oh, of course, milord," she answered, still stunned.
"What ever shall I do for proper entertainment without you?" he lamented in a low tone, almost to himself.
"Baroness!" she exclaimed abruptly while bringing her eyes to bear on his.
"Simply dreadful, isn't it?" he replied, his shark like grin returning fully.
"Baroness," she repeated dumbly.
"And that isn't the worst of it," he conveyed through a mouthful of pickled ear.
"Yes?" she asked quickly, her interest now impelled by greed, rather than fear.
"Well, the Emperor surrounds himself with soothsayers and astrologists and such. A truly indigestible mass of foolishness, if you ask me. But the old boy takes stock, so I suppose I do as well, officially speaking."
"I understand," she confirmed with as much patience as possible, while he continued to chew slowly, savoring both the delicacy of ears, and her anticipation.
"Apparently, these so-called Wise men have come across some old prophecy nonsense. Some bit of old superstition about Surripere, and other Demons, and some long extinct guild called Scraped-grass, or some such. Anyway, the stars are all apparently lined up just so, and these Advisors are all defecating in their trousers over their own doomsday garbage. They do this about every fifty or sixty winters, just to keep the old boy hopping."
"And my involvement?" she blurted, unable to restrain herself any longer, and then cringing as always when realizing her departure from propriety.
Oh gads, I'm going to miss her! he thought, pausing briefly simply to savor the old familiar smell of terror she afforded. "You're to be given a choice of subordinates, a full squad. In fact, dearest Teristha, the resources of New Malice are at your disposal."
"A Quest?" she almost whispered.
"Indeed. A Quest of your own."
"A Quest of my own."
***
He continued to explore the scattered debris, sniffing both air and ground as he progressed, but he discerned nothing other than thick black smoke of an unknown origin. From time to time he would imagine catching the hint of something like fresh blood, but the smoke always seemed to wash it away before he could register a direction.
As he progressed, he came to a very thin banner of sorts, stretched taut and extending off in two directions, further than his eyes could follow. There was something written on its yellow surface, though the bold black script was of some strange language he could not decipher. He leapt over it and continued.
After a time, he came to a depression in the ruins, like the shallow hollow of a dragon's foot. He carefully descended, jumping from a jutting slab of crumbling stone to the lower flat of a metallic protrusion, twisted and bent, as if wrenched by the hands of angry giants.
It was deeper than he had first thought, more of a canyon than a depression, although he finally reached the bottom of what turned out to be a great abyss. He sniffed the air, and was again met by the same strange, aberrant smoke, like a choking mixture of burning tar and unnatural death. A strong sense of foreboding washed over him, causing his hackles to rise as his lips drew back to bear his fangs. He continued, cautiously.
"Ahh, I see our friend is waking," intoned a familiar voice of graveled quality.
He spun about, growling, ready to pounce, but there was nothing there.
"I trust you slept well," echoed the voice, now distant and fading, though laughing all the same.
His attention was torn from the malignant phantom by a low moaning. Both ears immediately came to point. It was a woman, obviously in distress. He bolted in the direction of her voice, leaping the gaps between slabs as that smell of death rose from what he somehow knew were far greater depths than the simple canyon floor on which he now stood.
As he advanced toward the epicenter of whatever catastrophe had befallen this most ill-fated of topographies, he was confronted by a number of strange vines that were torn and frayed, and smelled of lightning. Again, that foreboding sense of danger. Touching the vines would mean certain death, and as he moved forward, the vines hung lower, and to avoid them, he was forced to hunker down, and then to crawl on his belly in places where the broken slabs of stone and vines of crackling death became almost impenetrable. Finally, the narrow passage opened into a mock room formed of a haphazard latticework of debris.
Inside, the stone floor was relatively clean, with the exception of one small section near the center, where the moaning emanated. He trotted about to another vantage, and at last caught sight of her. "Delphi!" his mind commanded his mouth to scream. Alas, he could but offer a mournful howling as he came to her, whining and licking her about the face. Even so, she would, or could not wake, all but her upper torso being buried by rubble.
"I do hope you can accept my apologies for these most unsavory circumstances," echoed the Baron cordially. "Unfortunately, I fear that the situation is quite unavoidable."
As he turned away from the menacing and faceless echo of the past, his attentions returned to his injured love, now awake, but somehow changed. Her remaining eye, once the light blue shade of heaven itself, had now become dull and milky. Then she opened her withered lips and spoke in a voice no longer her own, but something rotting and foul. "Why?" she asked sadly. "Why?" echoed yet another phantom from another past, not his own.
***
Regardless of an almost overwhelming apprehension, there remained an odd curiosity, or prompting: an unknown drawing that insisted that she recognize his importance.
With both reluctance and fervor, Selina altered her
course, stepping hesitantly into the deserted street and slowly toward the seated apparition. As she neared, the tiny wheels attached to the base of the peculiar chair began to issue a high-pitched, gyrating squeak as the chair and its occupant began to inch away from her, backing toward the edge of the adjacent walkway's steeper incline, and despite her own increased pace, she was yet unable to grab him before his wayward seat reached the ridge of the increased slope.
She leaped to intercede, but missed, ending in a collision with the flat stone walkway that cost her skin from both hands, and though she regained her feet as quickly as possible, the now runaway chair had increased its velocity greatly as its occupant careened wildly while fairly spinning in the clutches of the maniacal, swiveling, fugitive piece of furniture.
Her apprehension quickly gave way to panic, as the catatonic man's flailing arms seemed to seek any purchase to escape his captor. It was not until the edge of the crevasse came into view that her panic became terror. This is when it first dawned on her that she might not be able to save him. A moment later, the crevasse increased in size, becoming more like a canyon of unimaginable depth and circumference, which reached out for the man as his chair raced toward the edge of that soon-to-be abyss.
As the chair passed the point of no return, he stopped spinning, and in that last instant, he swiveled back around to face her with his eyes now focused and locked on her own. His expression conveyed more than words. You never really tried at all, said the eyes, more full of hurt and disappointment than fear.
As he fell into the bottomless canyon's maw, she screamed his name in one last futile effort to reach out. "DIETER!"
***
Magnatha woke with a start. She had dreamt that some fool wolf had wandered into camp, and was making it his personal responsibility to howl right next to her tent.
Then she heard it again. Blasted cur! she thought, grabbing up one of her boots, and leaning over as quietly as possible, so as not to alert it before she could bean the accursed varmint. But when she pulled the flap back, there was no wolf. There was a light frost on the ground, and in the frost were the prints of a wolf who had apparently meandered about her tent, and then more or less struck off to the east, though the trail it left wound about in an almost drunken line of chaotic wandering.
***
"Why should I know?" asked Borin defensively.
"Oh, it's Marcus! Do come in, Marcus!" Reginald shouted unexpectedly from over his son's shoulder.
In response to his father's volume and proximity, his eyes momentarily seemed to double in size as his eyebrows took on an almost corrugated emergence.
"I don't mind if I do," Marcus replied brightly, and then shouldered Borin unceremoniously out of his way. "I never said you should," he whispered angrily as he passed.
The ringing yet lingered, though Borin still heard him, and noted his accusatory tone.
"Capital!" Reginald exclaimed, rubbing his hands together at the prospect of company, then whirling back toward the den.
"I don't suppose Selina might have dropped by this morning, did she, Professor?"
"No, no I don't believe so. Top drawer, though, that girl. Absolutely top drawer!" he intoned enthusiastically while rummaging through several cupboards. "She's been so very helpful to me lately. I've been under the weather, you know."
"Perhaps last night, then?" Marcus asked, while turning to deliver a glare at Borin that easily matched his previous tone of whisper.
"Blast it all! Where did you hide my port?" Reginald shouted while delivering a glare of his own that coordinated well with the similar inflection by Marcus.
"Top drawer," Borin replied without inflection, and without making eye contact with either, as he swaggered over, fell into a large high backed chair, sank down, and then swung one leg up and over, dropping it atop of the adjacent Cribbage table.
"Well! I'm just thankful that your poor mother, rest her soul, isn't here to see what's become of your sense of decorum!" Reginald declared with a grandly executed air of pontificate bearing. Then he upturned the bottle, consuming approximately half its contents. He immediately sank to the floor in a semi-conscious stupor.
Borin raised his head to make sure his father was all right, and then reached for a cigar from his inside pocket. "Father gets through the day rather quickly, anymore."
Marcus looked at the now unconscious man on the floor, and then returned his attention to Borin. "Where's my wife?"
In response, both of Borin's brows furrowed as he began to cast about in search of a source to ignite his tobacco. He opted at last for one of the candles on the fireplace mantle.
"You can't even look me in the eye, can you?"
"Damnation, Marc! What makes you think I would know?"
"Well, for starters, she's been reeking of your brand of tobacco since before the last full moon!"
"So do a lot of people. It's a popular brand."
"She doesn't smoke!"
Chapter Two-Field Trip
Built within the only remaining Elder Sequox to grow east of the Lobri territory, Pi'xylem was easily the largest of all existing Wood-elf cities. At almost eight hundred meters in height, and a diameter of a hundred meters at the base, the reason for the city's towering success wasn't a great mystery.
That city of epic proportions lay far and away now, not that she missed it. However, standing in the middle of a remote terrain, with naught but scrub brush, sickle kemp, and the occasional tumbling weed, Aqua found herself drawn to the lack of several other related aspects, such as the absence of background voices, or the shuffling, bustling footsteps of day-to-day environmental noises made as thousands of Elves went about their daily routines. Still, for a short time, she was yet too full of her first adventure's blessed independence to realize the entire scope of freedom she had really been granted.
Then she began to note a sense of being mildly ill at ease, though that sensation rapidly rose in direct correspondence to the increasing distance between herself and the train as it returned the way it came. She whirled about, seeking the familiar comfort of said string of beetles, just as it disappeared over the horizon, thereby leaving her completely isolated beside the deserted station's only structure: an ancient-looking shed, once used as tool storage for the workmen who ran the beetle station. Then, as the enormity of her panoramic rendering dawned upon her, in the dusk of day, she suddenly realized just how nice it would be to hear the harping, and somewhat nasal tone, of her mother's reproachful voice. Anything would be preferable to nothing but…
Presently, a wolf howled in the distance, thus eliciting a brief squeal-like-squeak from Aqua, as she abruptly decided by a strict means of academic logic, "P…perhaps it would be prudent if I were to wait inside the station." That conclusion she projected in a loud if not steady voice, taking a certain measure of comfort in the sound of any voice as she fairly scooted toward the station's dilapidated workman shack. "Y…yes, I'm sure it's much more comfortable in there!" she shouted at no one in particular.
In the span of twenty minutes, or several hours if judged by her now elongated sense of the passage of time, every gust of wind whistling through every crack in the station's wooden shutters came to resemble the wolf's eerie song.
After a full half-hour, she opted to await the arrival of her expedition from inside the station's empty broom closet, where she remained for yet another half-hour.
Then a thought struck her. What if they come while I am hidden? Aside from the possible embarrassment of being found crouching in the dark like a frightened hare, there remained the solid possibility of being left behind when they decided that her mother had held to her original decline of consent. Presently, she burst out of the station, not really expecting to see them, but holding to the dwindling shred of hope that she might yet be rescued from this purgatory of endless solitude, where ferocious beasts prepared to pounce from behind every corner.
She was immediately met by a most welcome sight. In the distance, and heading slowly toward the
station, was a most familiar caravan of Aphorine riding beetles.
***
As they neared their destination, Sibastian abruptly let loose in a cappella. "The flats do we away abide-by walking by our beetle's side. Before us stands the station nigh-where starts our lovely Aqua's ride!"
In response, his companions offered none.
He looked about for signs of at least some minimal token of appreciation, though from their lack of attendance, he might have only imagined his own melodic oration. "Right, then!" he exclaimed at last, feeling the victim of their stoic assault.
"I thought it was rather well executed," Braumis offered in cheerful consolation.
"Hmmm… Executed?" Miria pondered aloud. Yes, I'd venture to second that summation," she added in a neutral tone.
"It was garbage!" declared Maestro Spinwyp.
"Garbage?" echoed Sibastian indignantly.
"All right, well executed garbage, if you prefer," he corrected. "You've an excellent voice, but your composition lacks direction, substance, style, and taste. In short, your composition lacks composition. Quite frankly, it puts me in mind of material produced by a number of deficient first circle students, whom, incidentally, I had to fail last Semestris."
"I'm fairly certain that means it reeked," Miria tittered.
"What's the sudden interest in Composition anyway?" Braumis asked. "I mean, I thought this was to be a test of our specialties."
"It is," Miria confirmed.
"In unison!" corrected the Maestro.
"Yes, of course," she quickly agreed. "Though I imagine his High-elf Lordship, here, would prefer to find some way of putting everyone in his place, even Maestro Spinwyp, were he capable…which he's not.
In response, Sibastian replied calmly, without turning to face her, "Can I help it if I have such a massive overflow of raw talent that I have no alternative but to branch out in new areas of interest?"
"I understand," she returned warmly, "though I believe it's safe to say that your little ditty was the wrong branch."
Braumis chuckled in a low tone. He loved Elvin humor. "Wrong branch," he muttered merrily.
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