by S D Simper
“Please, never leave me.”
She never would. “My heart is yours forever.”
Demitri came and touched his nose to Ayla’s forehead. She always smelled so good.
Flowridia laughed as she sobbed and brought a hand up to brush across Demitri’s face. “She loved you too.”
And so she cried for Ayla, for the life she lived, the legacy she wrought, and the love she’d lost. A semblance of peace filled Flowridia, to think, despite whatever pain had twisted Ayla’s soul, that she had felt joy before her passing.
She had been loved.
When her cries stilled, Flowridia hummed a tune to send her off, the very same once sung at a funeral long ago, a song Ayla adored. She knew not the words, but this would be enough; it had to be.
She placed Ayla gently into the coffin, wrapped in a literal promise of love. The coffin itself she moved to the corner of the room, beneath a table, for there was nowhere else to put it save in the open.
But no. Ayla should be protected from horror in death. Even horror she herself had created.
As she passed through the laboratory, numb to the horrid displays, she happened a glance at a book, the very one she’d discarded—Flowridia Darkleaf.
Quite suddenly, it was pushed off the table by a force Flowridia knew not. She flinched as it fell to the floor, half-splayed, and narrowly bit back a shriek.
Her heart thumped to deafen her. A growl reached her ears; beside her, Demitri bristled, voice panicked. This is haunted. We should go.
But Flowridia remained a statue, some spell binding her to the ruined book on the floor. The spine had unraveled in the fall, splaying the pages like a fan.
Silence settled. When she finally breathed, the world turned again. Ignoring her familiar, she knelt down to repair it, finding it simple enough to reassemble. She held it in her arms as she stood up, idly opening up the cover—
And was shocked to find writing. Flowridia’s breath hitched as she studied the words:
My heart sings when I think of you, Flowra.
Forgive the impulsive use of my last name. Your name is such a joy to write, with all the flowing curves, each letter fading into the next. I often get carried away practicing it in my spare moments, etching it into my work, sometimes even humming it as I brush my hair. A pity, to have no surname to link it to. And so, I offer you mine.
You intoxicate me, my sweet summer blossom. To know you is to know pure joy, and though I remain unworthy to walk in your shadow, you dance with me in the sun. I am lifted in your presence. This feeling of love is so wondrous and new, and it wounds me that we must spend our days apart.
Someday, I hope to give you all you deserve. Someday, I shall steal you away, keep you by my side so all may see you belong to me and only me. Someday . . . Someday . . .
Until then, I cherish every moment in your presence. You are worth the wait.
I mean as I said, that it is a tragedy for you to stunt your nobility. Accept my name, and know I mean everything by it.
I love you. Be mine forever, darling.
-Ayla Darkleaf
Flowridia shut the book and clutched it to her chest, its contents more precious than gold. Yet, her nerves remained alight. There was no breeze to have unsettled the leather-bound book. She stared at the box on the floor, the impossible thought that perhaps this was more than a chance omen prickling at her nerves.
A goodbye from the void . . . or perhaps a plea to stay.
She approached the wall, and with Demitri in tow she revealed the passage to the stairs. With her eyes kept on the coffin, Flowridia stepped forward until the stairs stole it from her sights.
* * *
Flowridia began to fear the night, for there was no dark shadow to protect her from its inhabitants. Where there was once peace, she saw nightmares.
Visions of horror, of the God of Order approaching with his promise of an elemental death, of Ayla’s screams as she shriveled and died. Even Mother returned to the forefront of her visions, her spirit invading the very laboratory Ayla had kept.
Sometimes she saw herself upon the slab.
The dreams were not from Ayla herself, she knew. Ayla’s spirit lay beneath the earth.
And by every god—she felt so guilty to consider it.
* * *
“Your accent will get you thrown into prison, if your ears don’t first.”
Flowridia began bringing Tazel food, and in exchange she left a little more learned on elven syntax. A friendly face was rare in this place.
“Your grasp on the language is good,” he said one day, each of them with a book in their hands, “which is impressive, given that Solviran Common holds roots in Celestière. But no matter what your disguise, your accent will give you away.”
“Are you implying that I’ll be hiding my identity?”
Tazel nodded. “Not many humans live in Zauleen, and even fewer are taken seriously. Elves are notoriously racist. I can certainly say I’m guilty of it in my past.”
Flowridia shut the book, intrigued by his words. “But you’ve changed?”
“I saw the world and couldn’t deny the truth—that everyone, no matter their shape, has the same soul.”
Flowridia smiled at the sentiment. “Didn’t you say you were an elven celebrity?”
“Given that I’m the rare elf granted a familiar, I suppose it was destiny.” Tazel smiled kindly at Ferseph. “Sol Kareena saw fit to give me a destiny, and I did what I could with it, while I could.”
Flowridia longed to ask what changed, but knew he’d never tell. However, the prickling hope of perhaps talking him into revealing it herself kept her speaking. “Tell me a story. What’s something you’ve done?”
Tazel shook his head. “I’m much too embarrassed to talk about myself.”
“I would genuinely love to hear. I don’t know much about what would constitute an elven hero.”
Tazel stood up and stole a book from the pile beside him, one bearing an elven title. He flicked through the contents and tapped a page before setting it down onto Flowridia’s lap. The depiction was of an icy throne, upon which sat a woman with a wicked gaze. “Helfira: The Witch of the North,” he said ceremoniously. “She plagued the Highland Elves for decades, sought to freeze them in an eternal winter.”
Flowridia skimmed the page and realized Tazel’s name was there. “You killed her.”
Tazel nodded, though the imperceptible flicker of shame darkened his countenance. “I burned her alive, and then cursed her to linger as a spirit forced to protect the very people she sought to oppress. I was taught, as a child, that the greater good justified all means, but . . .” He shook his head. “The price was paid, but I retired shortly thereafter.”
“And by ‘retired,’ you mean you came here.”
“Gods, no,” Tazel said, daring to laugh despite his fallen features. “Though I see why you’d guess that. Some curses require a price or spell component, some valuable, some rare. The price was ‘blood of the dying.’ My partner, at the time, slit her own throat so I could cast the spell.”
Flowridia said, “I’m terribly sorry.”
“It was years and years ago. Well before your birth. I was heartbroken, but not broken.”
Not yet. The words weren’t said, but Flowridia felt them nonetheless.
“In any case,” Tazel continued, “I travelled and saw the world. I expected to see savages, but instead I realized the savages were my own kin. Especially regarding half-elves.” He shook his head and sat himself back down, seated across from Flowridia.
Flowridia recalled the slurs, Ayla’s hateful gaze, her crime within the cathedral. Apparently this was commonplace, and somehow it both wounded her and eased some crippling guilt to know it was not Ayla alone who held to this bigotry. “I met a half-elf who told me as much, once,” she whispered, recalling the new high priestess. “Her name was Sora; she lives in Staelash, where racist sentiments can’t stand to exist for long.”
“A half-elf named
Sora? Sora Fireborn, perhaps?”
Flowridia perked up. “Yes. She’s the new high priestess of the city.”
“Good for her,” he said, a genuine smile twisting his lip. “She’s my cousin, if you can believe it.”
So he was Tazel Fireborn, of the same family lineage as Sora, which meant he, like all the other Fireborns, carried a blood feud that transcended generations against a particular not-quite-vampire.
All of this clicked together rapidly in Flowridia’s head, forcibly tearing open the box containing sentiments regarding ‘Ayla Darkleaf.’ “You knew Ayla.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Tazel said cautiously, his smile vanishing.
“Fireborns have carried a feud against Ayla Darkleaf for generations.” She frowned, lip quivering. “And you purposefully neglected to mention that detail.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and all her focus shifted to preventing them passage. To think of Ayla, to think that this man had hated her so—
“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered, wiping her eyes with her long sleeve. “I should go—”
“Did something happen?”
Flowridia shook her head. Demitri placed his head upon her knee in solidarity. “It takes time to accept that someone is truly gone,” she said simply.
Whatever her acceptance, oh, she missed her.
When she looked up, she saw compassion in his scarred face, not the judgement she expected. “She was dear to you.”
“She was wicked.”
“And now she’s dead,” Tazel said with finality. “I don’t think you’ve yet let her go.”
Like clinging to water, Flowridia felt Ayla’s memories slip through her fingers, faster the tighter she clutched.
“I met Ayla once.”
Gasping, Flowridia looked up at him, any story of Ayla cherished indeed.
“My birth was called an omen, that I was blessed by Sol Kareena with the fate to slay the Scourge of the Sun Elves. I received a familiar when I was but days old. And so I was taught magic, yes, but also to dance, to fight, to be her equal and more in every way. She had demons, but I wielded pure sunlight.
“Ayla heard of this,” Tazel continued, some distance fading his gaze. “I wasn’t kept a secret, and I wonder, even now, if it was part of a plot I wasn’t privy to. When I was younger than you, she attempted to take my life. I was still a child by elven standards and held no hope to defeat a thousand-year-old monster alone. It was then that Mereen orchestrated Ayla’s great demise, commissioned my aid in creating a coffin with no shadows. You read the rest. I was spared my so-called destiny to slay Ayla Darkleaf and instead joined Mereen in her quest to purge the world of undeath.”
“Who’s Mereen?” Flowridia managed to ask, and swore she’d heard the name before.
“Mereen is my great-great grandmother. Across the sea, she’s known as ‘Dark Slayer’ and made a name for herself killing vampires. She began the blood feud.”
Etolié had mentioned the very title—a hunter once in cohorts with the demon hunting Flowridia. “She’s ancient, then.”
Tazel nodded. “Ancient, and immortal. Taught me everything I know.” Hesitation steeled his tongue, but still he spoke. “Somewhere in the millennia, she lost her grasp on her soul. She’s her own kind of plague.” With a bitter laugh, he added, “We’ve come full-circle. I’m hiding in the library because she can’t find me here. She wouldn’t dare breach the palace walls of Nox’Kartha.”
“You ran away?” Flowridia asked, her tears finally stemming.
“Aren’t you doing the same?”
Here in Nox’Kartha, adventuring with Casvir, reality did seem far away. “If it’s any relief to you,” she whispered, “Ayla’s body has been put to rest. The world will move on, even if I’m struggling—no sense in lying to you about that.” She tried to laugh, but it barely served to mask her sob. But she withheld tears, and instead added, “There’s so much I don’t understand, but I don’t believe anyone knew her. Not really. Not even me. Everything I read speaks of her undeath, but did no one truly know her in life? When she still held onto her soul? Or perhaps she never had one at all.” She swallowed her emotions, yet her face still twisted in anguish. “My heart says she loved me, but I cannot reconcile it—this stranger of a woman, this . . . this monster.”
Tazel smiled, though it held no joy. “Excuse me a moment,” he said softly, then he stepped toward his bag. He riffled through it a moment, then paused and heaved a great sigh before returning his attention to her. “I should not show you this. But there was someone who did know Ayla Darkleaf in life.”
He returned and handed her a folded piece of parchment. “This was written to me six years ago. Consider it a chance to practice your elven.”
It was all in elven. Beautiful script, immaculate in its artistry. Flowridia barely struggled at all.
My dearest Sunshine,
I’ve contemplated our parting words a thousand times these past six months. I’ve been accused countless times of blind obsession, but to hear it from you, my protégé, hurt. Our family has hunted vampires for fifteen hundred years; it is a legacy I could not take more pride in. But you, my love, chosen of the Goddess herself, hold the greatest potential of us all. You know that.
There is more to this tale I have never told you. I am in the unique position to have known The Endless Night, Ayla Darkleaf, personally, for I remember what she was in life. The circumstances of Ayla’s death are shrouded in mystery, but I can account for the days before it.
She was a strange little hermit, living in the woods. The citizens of Fallanar thought little of her, found her odd and unsociable, but otherwise innocuous. Never mind the missing children, who we scoured the village and the woods to find, and never mind my murdered husband or the constable. No one suspected she might be the culprit. No one thought to pay her any mind at all.
Save one. One person met the monster and saw a soul within her.
You know of my sister. Sarai stole and broke hearts wherever she went but never had hers stolen in return—not until she came to live with me to help in raising my son after my husband’s death. She loved Ayla Darkleaf. She never had to say it, for it was in the way she spoke, the darling blush she gave at every tease, the songs she wrote to impress her, the days they’d disappear in the woods to waste time together. She loved Ayla Darkleaf, and though I loathe to admit it, Ayla Darkleaf loved her too. Sincerely and truly.
In death, she was a monster. In life she still murdered for pleasure. She had every opportunity for change, and perhaps nearly did so, for if there was ever a person kinder to her than my silly floozy of a sister, I have yet to meet them. But love is not redemptive, and even with the pure love my sister had, Ayla Darkleaf chose to become a nightmare. She turned me into the monster I am. And countless others. Countless other monsters walk this earth, damned because of Ayla Darkleaf’s actions. To slay them is a mercy. When we have purged them from this world, to slay me will be a mercy too.
Ayla Darkleaf has a soul, as cold and wicked as it may be, and for that reason, it is a mercy to slay her.
My love, my Sunshine, I miss you.
-Mereen
A lifetime ago, Ayla had said she loved a minstrel.
Flowridia gently refolded the parchment along the lines. “You have a very odd relationship with your great-great-grandmother.”
When Tazel laughed, she joined him, tears leaking out with each raucous sound. “Not a truth I typically admit,” he said simply, sorrow in his smile.
Once the pained burst of joy had died, Flowridia whispered, “Ayla loved Sarai Fireborn. And Sarai wrote her a song to send her into the night.”
Ayla had loved it so, though she had not rested.
“Thank you for sharing this,” she continued, for though the words were cruel, the truths they spoke of wicked, it cleared the fog of a mystery Flowridia had not realized she sought answers for. “I . . .” She returned the letter, lip trembling as s
he smiled. “Can we study, please?”
“Offend me with your accent again,” Tazel said kindly. “It brightens my day.”
Like Ayla herself, Flowridia placed this knowledge and her feelings in a box, content to let it lie, though it screamed perpetually all through the days and nights.
She did not see Casvir for two weeks. And so it surprised her, one evening, when he knocked on the door of her guest room. “I have found your orb,” he said simply. “Can you be ready to leave at sunrise?”
Early morning light glittered along the horizon, and two horses awaited them in the courtyard of the palace. “Our journey will take us straight north,” Casvir explained. “We will hit a mountain range by nightfall. I saw no use in taking a carriage for only that long.”
“I don’t mind riding,” Flowridia said, approaching the skeletal beast. The dead eyes were glazed and fogged, yet she knew it must see something with how it followed her hand. She placed it gently on the horse’s nose. “I think being outside will do me some good.” She strapped her spear to the side of the saddle, feeling Casvir’s eyes on her as she attempted to mount the horse herself. Bracing herself, she set one foot into the stirrup. With a heave of her small arms, she managed to lift her body and leg and successfully pull herself up.
Grinning, she steadied herself and patted the horse. But then she saw Ana staring up at her from the ground, bony tail wagging furiously.
“Casvir,” Flowridia muttered, her victory short-lived, “would you mind handing Ana to me?”
Soon, Casvir directed his horse toward the gate, bidding Flowridia’s to follow. She kept Ana in her pack, amused when the little creature peeked out and watched the world before her.
Demitri, she realized, would soon surpass her mount in height. “You’re growing taller every day.”
Demitri puffed himself up, adding an inch or so in height and bulk. I plan on being bigger than Casvir.