by Ryan Erin
The position of the sun suggested they had been aloft for hours, but to Chyra, it wasn't long enough...a cruel return to reality as she was returned to the ground.
"This is as far as I can take you," he had said. "It is the border of another dragon's territory, and I must respect his domain. I can take you to the gates of DreadHollow itself instead..."
"It would be useless without the key," Chyra had replied. "The King of Ascentia sealed the dungeon decades ago, and the only way in is to request a key from the royal family."
The mountain peak was chilly, but not high enough for summer snow. It was, however, topped by the eastern most section of the Abynthine Wall.
Chyra stretched in the mid-day sun, looking out across the wall as it rose and fell over countless peaks, disappearing into the east, toward the Kingdom of Ascentia.
It was a high road to be sure, but safe in its remoteness, and a direct route to where she was headed.
Chyra hefted the blade over her shoulder, secured the heavy strap across her chest, and began her hike across the top of the ancient wall.
Her mind drifted to thoughts of the green skinned girl, and the conversation she'd had with Saph.
"I hope Gwyra won't be in any sort of trouble," Chyra had said to the dragon before their flight, "giving me control over Nas and all."
"There's very little that Nas could do to actually hurt either of you," he'd replied. "Using him for sexual games when he's not working is harmless."
"So you do know about that."
"The lot of you are far too young to hide anything from a dragon in his own lair."
"Well, regardless...it's good that you haven't mentioned it to her. It'd be tough to recover from that sort of embarrassment at her age."
"There's nothing to be embarrassed about. Whatever she does in the citadel is safe."
"But she is reaching that age, you realize?"
"What age is that?"
"The age where she'll need to begin circulating with actual boys."
"She's already circulating with two of the finest men this world has to offer."
"A dragon who can tell a joke? This is new."
Saph hadn't laughed, so much as smirked audibly. "Yes, you're right of course. I'll have to think on the best way to introduce her to suitors..."
"Oh, please don't do that. Just give the girl a chance to leave on occasion. Let her have some of her own adventures."
"No. The dangers would be too great."
"Trust me...as someone who was raised to be protected against all the evils of the world...and rushed to seek them out as soon as I came of age."
"Well said, child. Well said."
Chyra smiled at the memory of the dragon's praise as she bounded up another staircase in the wall. It wasn't every day that an elf of only 483 years could make a point to a dragon.
She reached the top of the steps and stopped for a moment to catch her breath.
It was a landing, perched atop a medium sized peak, and the view was gorgeous. With her elven eyes, Chyra could see south, all the way to the Tower of Lost Hope, and the sparse farm country of Era Brae beyond...the remnants of castles and other structures from the Copper Empire still jutting here and there above the tree line.
To the north, the mountains rolled along for several miles, and she could just make out sunlight glittering off the Forbidden River...it's undead dangers so inconsequential at that distance.
She uncorked her water skin and let the coolness fill her mouth...
...Just as the trees told her to jump.
Chyra leapt to the side, tumbling across the broken stone as two black arrows hit where she'd been standing.
They had come from the sky.
Her own bow was in her hands, an arrow pulled tight against the string as she rolled to crouch beside the edge of the wall.
Somewhere, up in the white clouds, was an archer...
Another black arrow sailed down, and she rolled again as it ricocheted off the stone, still unable to see where it had come from.
She narrowed her eyes...
There was a glint of light.
The sun glanced off something metal for just an instant, and Chyra let the arrow fly.
It passed two more coming the other way, and she leapt again just as she realized that one of the two arrows was charged with magic.
She braced for impact, mid-leap as the arrow hit the wall with an explosion of blue fire.
The force of the blast impacted Chyra's flying body, sending her tumbling out over the next staircase. She fell, realigning her body in mid air, and managed an elven landing on both feet.
Her next arrow flew from her bow, soaring into the sky after her invisible attacker.
Almost invisible.
The charged arrow her adversary had fired had a sound to it - a magical frequency that elven ears could hear, and now Chyra knew what to listen for.
She was in a lower expanse of the wall, running between the last peak and the next. She still had plenty of room to maneuver, but it gave her attacker less options for a vantage point, and that meant a smaller portion of sky for Chyra to watch.
Then she heard the magical hum again, slightly higher pitched as the arrows came raining out of the sky.
There were dozens of them.
A 'four and twenty' enchantment to multiply the number of arrows fired from a single bow. It was not a spell in the repertoire of human wizards.
This enemy had faerie magic.
Chyra saved her shot and darted across the wall as black arrows hit all around her. She raced up the next staircase, a new barrage singing down on top of her, and she leapt off the wall into the trees below.
Elves can become difficult to see when under the cover of leaves. An elf educated by Arbormancers of the Sacred Grove can become all but invisible.
Chyra perched on a branch, her eyes combing the sky. If her adversary were truly of faerie blood, like her, then he'd eventually be able to find Chyra, but not until he got down into the trees with her.
Chyra waited, hunting through the clouds for a sign from her invisible attacker.
Nothing.
They were now both invisible to the other.
One would have to emerge from their hiding spot in order for the duel to continue, and Chyra had no interest in being the one to break the stalemate.
Time passed.
She would catch hints of sound...the flap of wings...a coarse huffing of breath...but always from high above.
The trees warned that her hunter was still up there...circling...looking for her, though the trees could not tell what kind of hunter it was.
She asked a sparrow perched nearby if he knew. He didn't...only that it was a predator, and dangerous.
Then the sparrow became spooked and flew away, screaming something about murder.
Chyra turned back to the sky where her eyes caught sight of a small cloud of dark specks. They were coming around the nearest peak.
They were crows.
Murder Crows - magical birds summoned from slivers of the Wyld powers, their beaks could cut flesh, and their red eyes could show their summoner where secret things hid in the branches...like elves.
But this was also faerie magic, which Chyra was more than fluent with. As the swarm soared toward her, she took a leaf from the closest branch, pulled a dab of eldritch honey from her reagents bag to dab on its stem, kissed it with a magic word, then tossed it into the air.
In an instant, the entire hillside erupted in sparkling, swarming pixies on gossamer wings. They were faux faeries - short-lived sparks of magic, resembling the age-old enemies of Murder Crows. The birds scattered, trying to catch the false sprites, and every one caught gave its crow a sense of completion, returning it to the greater Wyld in a puff of feathers.
And in the ruckus, Chyra made her escape.
She launched herself through the trees, staying well concealed in their branches, and putting distance between herself and the occupied birds.
But he
r hunter was still high above, somewhere, scanning the trees for any sign of her.
Who was it?
Were they trying to kill her because she was trespassing? Because they hated elves? Or were they tracking her specifically? Was it someone she'd wronged in the past? That could be all kinds of people...or their descendants. Or was it someone after the sword?
She heard the whistle of magic on another arrow as it cut through the sky.
But it wasn't on a path to hit her.
She caught sight of the thing as it struck a tree some hundred feet downhill.
The tree's scream was sharp and biting. Then, the trees around it cried out as well.
The spell was radiating outward, spreading through the foliage like a wave.
Chyra saw the effect on the tree beside her as sharp, dagger-like thorns erupted from its bark all around.
Horrified, Chyra launched herself out of the branches just as her tree sprouted its own barbs, almost impaling her.
She couldn't allow the trees to take any more punishment on her behalf, but she was in the open again, and leapt back to the top of the wall. Another hail of arrows shattered across the stone around her.
She sprinted up the closest set of stairs, leaping from side to side in as unpredictable a pattern as she could while her hands rubbed bloodmoss across a small mandrake root. She whispered more words of faerie magic and broke the root in half.
Magical energy exploded from the thing, and suddenly, a mirror image of Chyra leapt up the steps ahead of her, moving on its own.
She snapped each segment of the root again, causing two more versions of herself to appear.
Now there were four of her - herself and three illusions, leaping up the staircase of the next peak.
She intended to make her attacker waste as many arrows as possible trying to deduce which was the real her. She was somewhat dismayed when the arrows immediately stopped falling.
It meant that her attacker was smart.
It was a three-day journey along the wall before reaching any kind of civilization, and her spell would fade with the setting sun. Her hunter obviously felt it was smarter to let Chyra exhaust herself from running and save the arrows for the following day...or worse...that night.
Chyra was hesitant to take to the trees again, but she had considered it safer than resting on the wall at night.
Crickets sang through the darkness.
Stars shined through holes in the clouds.
Chyra watched the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of her opponent's shadow flying past. But there was nothing.
Whoever he was, he had some incredible means of keeping both aloft and hidden for prolonged periods of time.
She sprinkled powdered starshine onto a mushroom cut from a moonlit circle. She then dabbed oil of midnight lavender to the head and whispered her secret name to it.
A shimmering of starlight appeared on the wall a short distance away. Like tiny white fireflies, they danced around each other until coalescing into a feminine shape...a girl made of light from the secret star.
The figure flexed, illuminating the top of the wall as embers of starlight flitted around her.
It had been almost fifty years since Chyra had seen the girl. She was an Inaru, or what the human sorcerers called a 'star child' or 'pixie proxy' - a combination of starlight, faerie magic, and a part of Chyra's own soul that could be summoned to speak or act on her behalf.
The star child ran luminous fingers through her hair, tossing it playfully like brilliant threads around pointed ears.
Then she began to dance.
It was slow at first, and full of whimsy.
It was part of Chyra's first fifty years that fueled the glowing girl...an innocent version of herself that Chyra only remembered whenever she saw the star child.
Soon the creature was leaping along the wall on pointed toes, spinning in pirouettes, stopping just long enough to descend into rhythmic bows or playful curtsies before beginning again.
She was a representation of the faerie quality that still existed in elves despite the ages of transforming into something more akin to humans.
She was graceful, beautiful, and impossible to miss as she lit up the top of the mountain wall with her dance.
Now was the test.
It was Chyra's opponent who would have to decide what to do with the magical apparition. He knew faerie magic, which meant that he was somehow tied to the Wyld world. But would he know that a star child was an invitation to parlay? If he was old enough, or still rich in faerie blood, then he would. But if he was young, or evil, or simply insane, he might go straight for an attack, which would give away his position.
Chyra sat unmoving in the trees as the girl ended her dance and swayed from side to side, still listening to the invisible song that the stars were singing.
Chyra's eyes scanned the night.
She couldn't find any indication of...
Then, the glowing girl turned. It was as if she had heard something over her shoulder.
Chyra followed her gaze into the darkness, further up the winding wall.
Then, her own elven ears picked up the sound of magic...the briefest medley of wind chimes and ice sickles...
Out of the shadows crept a lithe, humanoid form...
...Not out of the shadows...
...Of the shadows.
It was an elegant creature with wisps of darkness rolling off its limbs as it made its way along the wall.
It, too, was an Inaru, but not made of starlight. This had to belong to something from the darker parts of the Wyld world...an Arch Goblyn or a Willow Whipper...something with roots in the sinister.
The glowing girl bowed in greeting, and the shadow nodded its head in response.
It seemed the tenets of civility would be observed...for the moment.
"The wind is in the east with kisses of Jasmine across the mountains," the glowing girl said in the old language. "Why did your master make war on so beautiful a day?"
The shadow stepped closer to her. "There is a splinter of fire and darkness that my master must rescue from yours."
Chyra heard the words through the connection to her star child.
So, her hunter was after the sword.
"Why would your master seek this sliver of darkness?" her star child asked, stepping up to the shadowy figure. "Such a thing can only bring destruction to he who wields it, and all whom they love."
"There is destruction that must be done," the shadow replied, "and loved ones who are already dead. Darkness cleans all wounds, fire purges the soul, and blood must be drawn if vengeance is to be won."
"My mistress will not yield this thing you crave. It goes to its destruction for the good of all things."
"Destruction is good for all things, and there is a mighty enemy which must be slain by this thing or none other. I pray thy mistress give up this unquenchable weapon, and continue a life free of it."
It was only then that Chyra noticed...some emotion was stirring in her stomach...a tightening of muscles as though she were anxious about something.
"There are many paths to achieving vengeance," the glowing girl spoke. "Let my mistress continue forth in peace with her burden, and she will help yours to receive justice for whatever wrongs he has endured."
The shadow stood still, darkness peeling away in an unseen wind.
"This offer...cannot be accepted," it said at last.
"What will it take for we two to find terms beneath these stars?"
"Surrender of the demon sword is the only course acceptable to my master. Pray, do convey to yours that it is the only way she will survive this fight. My master's greatest weapon has yet to be unleashed on..."
The shadow's words were suddenly cut off as the star child pushed her way in to kiss him.
Chyra was shocked.
She had never seen an Inaru do that before, and certainly never her own. Inaru were not controlled outright by their masters, but their actions were always within their master's be
st interests.
The shadow kissed back, it's arms wrapping around the glowing girl. Chyra's stomach tightened at the sensation, and she realized that it wasn't nerves she had been feeling...it was desire...she was picking up on her proxy's stimulation...and her star child craved this shadow spirit.
The kiss became more passionate.
Chyra's own lips tingled from it.
The star child thrust herself against the dark creature, rubbing a glowing leg up its side.
Chyra felt a sensation between her own legs...the beginning of that delicious feeling one gets when they first touch someone they've spent a lifetime longing over.
It was a yearning...sudden access to something that had been forbidden for so long it had almost been forgotten.
She felt wet between her legs.
Far down the wall, the shadow's wisps of darkness began blowing all around the star child. Hands with delicate fingers caressed her back, before sliding down to her ass. The glowing girl hopped onto the shadow, wrapping her slender legs around his waist.
Chyra stifled a gasp, both from surprise, as well as the growing sensations of pleasure in her midsection. She thought of her adversary, somewhere up in the sky, and knew that he would be just as enraged by this...and just as helplessly drawn in.
The shadow sank to its knees, lowering himself and the star child to the wall's floor as a dark finger ran between glowing legs.
Chyra gripped the nearest branch as she doubled over from the sensation, suddenly fighting the need to cry out in pleasure.
Her star child cried out for her. The bright girl grabbed the shadow's face in her hands thrusting in for another passionate kiss before screaming out again.
Chyra clenched her teeth as that perfect spot was discovered between her legs, and her star child screamed in rhythmic gasps.
What was happening?
Chyra wasn't aware of any spell that could affect an Inaru so completely. It had to be something inherent in the star child's being...as though she'd met this shadowy spirit before. But that would mean that Chyra had met its master before...and had craved this kind of intimacy with him.