#epsilo volant

[cloudbattrolls]

So Far to Fall

This drabble is preceded by To Stave Off the End and followed by In Cold Blood.

Ullane Wistim & Epsilo Volant | Present Night

Late twilight hung over Chimer’s estate in a beautiful dark shade of blue, the color of relief from a recently set sun. 

The hive cast in warm glow and dark shadows was elegant without being opulent, a more lowkey building than one might expect to belong to a fuchsia. It had some well-maintained trees and a wild lawn, standing a short ways from other, similar hives also owned by highbloods in the rural area. 

In this part of Alternia, the dangerous local wildlife was kept under careful control by those who enjoyed hunting them. There were very few murders; most trolls around had what they needed. Lusii that ate trolls were forbidden, and culled if brought in. 

Ullane sat by the duck pond near the hive on a long low-set wicker lawn chair, watched the birds bob peacefully in the water, and was so bored she felt like she might start screaming.

She should be grateful, she knew, as she idly shredded grass with her hands. She was as safe as she could be, and had gotten off far more lightly than she deserved.

Yet she couldn’t contact her friends. Couldn’t make any sort of communication that could be tracked by the grey mob. 

They might still be hunting her.

She had made the trip here about a perigee ago disguised and under cloaking tech, but after the trial, they certainly would have put together how one of their number had been imprisoned. They may have also realized how another had lost an hour of his memory. 

Ullane now dressed in hemoanon colors whenever she stepped outside, and had swapped her symbol for a different one. She had stopped dying her hair and covering the marks on her face. 

She had - with slight reluctance - stopped wearing her contacts, letting her true violet-tinged eyes show. One could never be too careful. 

Her tail, too, flowed unbound behind her.

The former clinic administrator stared up at the stars starting to appear in the sky, a slight breeze rustling through the trees and tossing her ponytail.

She wasn’t sure what was more fantastical; having once been willingly possessed by a horrorterror and working with him to wrench her clinic away from the gang she had worked for, or being pursued by a different criminal syndicate after successfully escaping their attempt to frame her for murder.

The yellowblood thought of the lost Varzims. She’d seen Zanzul last when the violet had talked to Calcit for her, and Thrixe some time before the whole business started. 

Why was she safe, and they were trapped in the furthest ring? 

Nothing about her life made sense.

Only science ever had.

The lowblood fed the ducks some lettuce, scattering it over the water as they quacked and gathered to eat it, jostling for the leafy scraps.

Then she got up, and walked back inside with a blank expression. 

Hours passed in which she tried to read research papers, then cleaned the hive in the vain hope any excess dust had manifested since last night. She exercised, ate without really thinking about it, and fed her lusus his own dinner. 

Eventually, as dawn began to creep over the hive, she slipped into her recuperacoon and went to sleep.

Ullane sat bolt upright, gasping. Salt water welled from her mouth. She was - she was -

The water surrounding her rippled darkly, crushing down on her back and shoulders, yet she was not crushed. Violet tinged the liquid, galaxies of glowing lights slowly rising out of its depths, as if appearing from fog. 

She floated, suspended in this strange abyss, yet something about it was intimately familiar.

“Uryali.” she whispered.

She felt a rush of confirmation, of…relief?

What relief could she bring the Muted?

My DeScENDAANTSss are imPrISONED in the RING, came the voice that rose and fell in layered harmonies, a deep undercurrent of sadness welling through it. 

YoUUU heLPEd Us OOnCEE, MEDIIC. hElPP mE AGAAINN, foRR PESTILEnCE caaNNOT. THe fAEE have baRRED theiR reALMSss. buT yoU and I coULD opEEN thE wAY. 

“I am no medic.” She said softly. “Stripped of my title, my license.”

She felt…amusement? Amusement, and a hint of disdain.

alWAysS a mEDIC, medICC. yoU hEAL wITHoUT lAW. 

Ullane had no retort to that, and felt Uryali’s satisfaction.

sOO yOU wiLL Go. YoU WIlLL haVE to CRoSS ALl FOUR cOURTSS to fIND TOBRIA.

“Who?” She said with a frown.

hE PREDIictED theSE eVENTss. He Is a POWErful PRophet…or WAs.

Sadness again crashed over her like a wave.

“Why should I find him?”

oNlY hE cAN guIDE my DescENDANTS hOME. 

Ullane sighed and figured trying to ask more specific questions was probably pointless. 

It was a miracle to get this much sense out of the horrorterror…though, she supposed he had once been a troll. Thrixe had been able to stop him from destroying Nott Station in his anger, by appealing to what was left of his compassion. 

She’d watched as the horrorterror piloted her body, nearly killing her as an unintended side effect of his possession.

In light of this, a different - saner - person might have hesitated.

Ullane Wistim did not think of disobeying. The thought never entered her head.

“How will you help me?”

A vast starfish tendril reached up from the dark waters and placed its tip gently in her hand, leaving behind a small, unknown plant bud. 

tAKE pART of mE wiTH you. I wILL sPEAk in YoUR dREaMS, yoUR PsIiONICSs bOLSTERED by My poWER. 

We WiLl UnLock The WAy. I wILl gUiDE yoU.

She woke up heaving for air in her sopor slime, clawing at the edges of the cocoon. 

A dream. 

She licked her lips. They were crusted with salt.

Slowly, with dread, she turned her hand over.

A black bud lay tattooed - no - scarified on her palm. It…moved. The edges of it moved over her veins and the lines in her skin, rippling with her breaths, changing in the light as she tilted her hand. 

How had she bound herself? Could it be undone?

No - could she truly rescue the Varzims? Had the dream been real?

She took a deep breath and climbed out, green slime gently steaming away as she took off her day clothes and got dressed. 

Yes. Yes, she would accept it as true. She would question Uryali when she slept again. 

Ullane changed into clothes she hadn’t worn for a long time - her traveling wear, sturdy and full of pockets, warm and water-resistant. Her tail flicked, still unused to being free of clothing layers.

She had come from a town built over ley lines, a place full of undead, where magic had sunk into the roots of the place and things from daymares prowled.

Never had she imagined accepting a supernatural being’s bidding. Or asking one for aid.

She needed help, if she was to rescue the Varzims. She needed someone who she could rely on, though once she wouldn’t have dared trust him with anything.

She needed Epsilo Volant.

—

The violetblood was refining armor for his guild when he saw her, hands deep in a pile of monster samples - bone, horn, and carapace - that he was working with. He sat at his outside work bench, for the weather was fine and here he could see one of the island’s shores. 

At first, the former seadweller thought his eyes must be at fault when he saw her. He took off his glasses and squinted, wondering if he’d accidentally imbibed some sort of hallucinogen from his materials.

No, she was still coming closer, walking across the island, unbothered by any of the passing hunters or their palicos. He put them back on and got up, dipping his hands in the pot of disinfectant he kept nearby before he went over to meet the yellowblood.

“Wistim.” He said, neutral if respectful as she got within a few feet of him and stopped. “Why are you here?”

Last time they had spoken, he had asked for his fins and gills to be restored. For her to lift her part of the curse she and Uryali had laid on him. 

She had refused.

She smiled at him, a perfectly normal smile, yet the highblood found himself unsettled. 

Perhaps it was her violet-tinged eyes - a permanent remnant of her possession. Perhaps it was the way she looked at him - eager, fascinated, as if he was a particularly interesting specimen. It was not an expression he expected on a woman he had captured and given to a horrorterror. 

“I need you.” She said. “You’re a werehyena. Immune to horrorterror influence. Strong, and knowledgeable of animals. You want to be a seadweller again? Help me rescue the Varzims.”

Before he could respond, eyes widening in shock, the lowblood held up her hand.

It had a black bud inscribed on it. A…shifting…black bud, as if it moved in a wind. He could feel the energy from it; the same eldritch energy Vallis and all of Vernrot had. 

“Uryali has charged me to save them.” She continued. “I must cross the fae realms to seek aid - very dangerous, though I know something of their ways. I need a guard again. Will you help me?”

Speechless, the highblood couldn’t speak for a few moments, staring at her with a shocked expression, his mouth slightly open.

Then he shook his head and came back to himself, face settling into sheer disbelief.

“Wistim. This is suicide. The two of us in a strange land full of magical enemies? How will we eat and rest safely? How will we ensure we can return safely, or make it there to begin with? It is impossible.”

She stared back at him with those wide, strange eyes, as if he was the one who was being unreasonable.

Then she smiled again.

“I escaped you twice. I survived horrorterror possession. I have wrenched my clinic from the gang I once sold myself to. I have escaped another gang’s clutches, after I tracked and hunted two of their number. I once killed a whole gathering of corrupt jades.”

She raised and opened her arms.

All around her, the air turned headier with the scent of salt and life. The island’s plants curled and blossomed at her feet, roots rising up through the soil.

The hunters, attentive to any disturbance in bio-energy, stopped and stared, looking at the yellowblood and then at Epsilo. A few started to draw their weapons.

“Stop it.” He hissed. “They don’t take kindly to that here.”

He shook his head as she lowered her arms and the power waned, but he could still feel a crackle of it on his skin.

“Yes, I can tell you’re more powerful than before. Will that be enough?” He asked bluntly. “Having Uryali’s blessing doesn’t mean you can stand against every fae.” 

She raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t you want the Varzims back? For Vallis’s sake, if not your own needs?”

The former seadweller paused at the mention of his best friend. The man had been bereft when the other two horrorterror hybrids had left this world.

He scowled, thick arms folded under his light violet shirt.

The Varzims gone. Arty dead. Vannyn was away from Vernrot most of the time, and Lusien had the lighthouse to tend to…

He put a hand to his neck, where his gills had once been. Sometimes the places where they’d still ached at day, when he woke gasping for breath from a daymare of drowning.

“All right.” He finally said, turning around to walk back toward his hive. 

Sifrek wasn’t going to like this, Epsilo reflected as he thought of his primary guild contact and friend. Hopefully she would understand. 

Ullane easily fell into step next to him, her tufted tail waving back and forth. 

“I’ll go with you.” Said the highblood, waving to the hunters that everything was fine. The trolls and their feline companions heeded him, but their expressions remained wary.

“But first, I want more details. I’m not leaving unprepared.”

—

One night later, the pair left the island, taking a motorboat with one of the guild hunters back to the mainland. Winds tossed them about, making waves around them as they cut through the water, but the hunter’s control of the craft was steady and sure. 

They arrived on land none the worse for wear, though Epsilo looked like he was having second thoughts.

“Why you?” He asked Ullane as they set their feet back on land, thanking the hunter before they began to walk off. 

“Hm?” She said, almost absentminded, eyes ahead as she led them further inland.

“Why can’t Uryali simply possess someone and find this angel-fae himself?” The violet asked pointedly. “Why does he need us?” 

“Their body would break down before they made it.” Ullane said bluntly. “I nearly died on Nott, and he wasn’t trying to kill me. I have just enough of his power this time to guide us and help protect us; you can treat me if it starts to overwhelm me.”

“How likely is that?” Replied the highblood acidly.

She looked away from him, smiling slightly as she stared forward.

“It’ll happen in less than a week, regardless.”

The violet dragged a hand down his face, then heard a rumble of thunder.

He looked up, noting the dark clouds.

“Wistim. We should stop for the night. Where did you plan on staying before we left on this fool’s errand?”

“We keep going.” She said, eyes briefly flashing a brilliant pale magenta.

Epsilo shivered as the wind picked up as well, tossing his shoulder-length wavy hair around his head. He took out a band to tie it back. 

Why did the Varzims glow the color of moonlit snow, not ink-black like Vernrot’s terrors? 

He found he didn’t quite have the courage to ask right now, nor argue with his lowblooded companion.

So he silently followed her as it began to rain, and the lowblood didn’t seem to mind it at all. She did not shiver, nor falter from her path. Water dripped down her hair and tail as she forged on, leading him through bushes and trees as he cursed and had to detach his clothes at times.

“Wistim, slow down - “ He called irritably, and she waved a hand.

The thornbush that had just seized him began to droop from the weight of gray fungus sprung into existence on it, clinging to its bark.

Epsilo sprinted away from it, catching up to her panting and flecked with mud.

“That was unnecessary.” He said between breaths.

Again those unreadable eyes looked into his own.

“It worked.” She said calmly, and turned away from him again, pausing after a few steps.

The medic looked down at…a mushroom ring, Epsilo realized. 

He was no mycologist, but he recognized the species, red-capped and white-stalked. Fly agaric, one of the most toxic species there was.

The yellowblood got down on her knees, examining the ring with keen interest, her ears and tail flicking.

Then she swiped into the air above it with her marked hand, the air crackling with white energy as she - she pulled the world apart, creating a jagged rent within the circle as its mushrooms withered and rotted. The fungi then grew together in a thickening black mass as the rift widened and stabilized.

Now it was a gap large enough for both of them to pass through, but Epsilo could not see what was inside it; all he beheld was fog. He leaned over, trying to get a better look -

Ullane jumped inside and grabbed his arm, pulling him with unnatural strength beyond her caste and build as they both fell into the portal.

He yelled curses as they plummeted through the hazy air, writhing, but her grip was firm.

The haze cleared…and Epsilo’s eyes grew wide as his breath billowed out in awe.

Below them - stretching for miles and miles - was a wild land. Frozen forests of vast trees, branches interlocking and grown into fantastical woven shapes. Waterfalls of moving, frothing ice. Lakes set in tundra with waves cast in perfect, glittering frost. 

The wind around them swirled with snowflakes and stranger things, glowing blue insects that buzzed about, leaving shining trails in their wake. 

Even in the ocean, he had never seen anything so beautiful.

Beside him, Ullane laughed long and loud, and he tightened his grip on her hand.

There was still so far to fall. 

[altamaranempire]

[28/04/2016, 15:50:16] Jesseth: is use of duct-tape on zombies acceptable [28/04/2016, 15:50:23] Magical Time Grandma [cloudbat]: probably

A picture of @fantrollcollector‘s Truour and @cloudbattrolls‘ Epsilo going zombie hunting! 

Fun fact: This is actually considered canon to Trolldown 2, where during the semifinal animation, Regiar is answering texts from Truour! She was up all day probably scolding him for hunting zombies outside the stadium~

[cloudbattrolls]

Maledict

This drabble is preceded by All Hail and followed by Homecoming.

The Maledict | Sunrest | Present Night

“No!”

“How can this - “

“We must kill her! Kill her now!”

A rush of rotten wind blew through the arguing royals now scrabbling among themselves to be the first to strike down their fated enemy, and they fell to muttering among themselves as with the now-familiar crackle of a rift, Pestilence rode in.

“By right of Conquest, I put the Maledict under my protection.” They rumbled as they galloped over to the small gathering, their mount snorting as his tail flicked.

“You! You have no right, traitor!” Screeched the autumn queen, flapping her wings in anger. “You brought death and ruin to the summer court! You lied to us!”

“Nope.” Said the hemoanon, looking directly at Cyvell’s cowering insectoid replacement.

“I didn’t. I just didn’t tell you what I was going to do with the winter queen or the Maledict. I knew you wouldn’t listen to me; she did kill a lot of you, and damage your realms.” They acknowledged.

The fae shrieked and protested in rage, agreement, and confusion. 

“She’s gonna help repair all that, but she has to live.” They continued, talking over the royals. 

“You still claim a blood right your ancestor gave up! The Blighted promised to never ride for the empire again!” Snapped the winter court representative. 

“I’m riding for me.” Retorted the armored troll as their horse’s tail flicked. “The right of conquest allows me to defeat and claim territory and allies for my bloodline as well as the courts. So, I’ll leave it up to you; do you want the Maledict on your side, or against you? Because I think we’ve all seen how that went.”

The royal fae fell to muttering among themselves, shooting glances at Tobria, the Maledict, and Pestilence respectively as they chattered and argued in their fae languages.

The medic looked at the hemoanon with raised eyebrows. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate it - but she was worried this would get them all killed.

Tobria spoke up, and the royals quieted.

“This happened because I let it happen.” He said in his ancient, tired voice. “I could not see past my grief. None of us could see past our mourning for what we lost, and now we have lost even more. It is time we let ourselves move on, and change for the better.”

“Silence, half-breed!” Snapped what she assumed was the summer court monarch, all bristling iridescent feathers and reptilian scales. “This is your fault for trying to see the future! You brought this upon us!”

“I accept my folly.” Said Tobria evenly. “Now you must all accept yours.”

“Never!” Said the royals as one, voices more frightened than angry. 

The medic could see it in their bodies, their eyes, their trembling limbs. They would never willingly move on; unlike Tobria, they were pure fae.

They were stuck.

She hummed in amusement, and felt Uryali’s laughter in the back of her head.

“If you don’t accept it.” She said quietly, as all the fae jumped at her voice. “Then you must become capable of doing so.”

“No.” Whispered the autumn queen. “You can’t.”

“I can.” The Maledict murmured. “You obsess over the past and fear the future; you know only how to repeat what has come before and try to prevent what will happen. I thought Cyvell alone was the problem, for being unable to see past her hatred, but now I see it is all of you. Prepare yourselves.”

Tobria nodded in approval as the royals panicked.

The Maledict closed her eyes.

She could feel the pulse of each fae’s life. Could tell what disease each one was. She could feel past them, further into Sunrest and into the summer court, where the remains of the army lay dead and dying on the slowly melting ice.

Her awareness stretched further, into spring, autumn, and winter. She felt those inhabitants as well - worrying, waiting for their leaders to come back, to tell them what had happened. They scrabbled to keep their realms from falling into ruin, from melting and warping and dying from overgrowth and new bacteria.

The lingering aftereffects of what she had done.

Her own psiionics melding perfectly with Uryali’s power, she reached into every disease fae alive at once.

She felt their very cells, growing and dividing and dying, she felt their long, long lives, stretching back long before trolls had ever raised their heads from the caverns below, back when the empire was a distant future dream.

For millions of sweeps they had tread the same cycles, followed the same seasons over and over again, thought in the same ways.

It had kept them alive.

It had nearly damned them.

The Maledict, with as delicate of a touch as she could, altered their minds, with scientific knowledge and eldritch power alike. 

The lowblood changed their thoughts to accept new ways of thinking, rewriting ancient neurons and leaping sparks of magic. She changed their perception of themselves, of the world around them, opening their eyes to understand that trolls and horrorterrors were as much of a part of it as they were. Making them see that the world would not stay the same forever, and nor could they, if they wished to survive. 

She retreated from their writhing, gasping selves, grappling with the newfound knowledge she had thrust upon them. Let them handle it in their own ways.

She had no desire for more pain - she felt unable to hurt anyone ever again.

The Maledict felt utterly exhausted from altering a whole race, and as she opened her eyes to see Sunrest again, the desert world swam before her.

Only Epsilo’s hand on her shoulder kept her upright. Where had he come from?

“Tobria.” He said, as she blinked wearily and noticed the royal fae were gone now. Had she lost time…?

“Can you purge her of Uryali’s influence? She is hardly a troll at all anymore.” He said urgently.

The angel-fae’s long mouth twitched in what might have been a smile.

“It will hurt.”

He looked at the yellowblood.

“Do you wish to return to full trollhood? You will never be able to wield such power again.” He warned her. “I can burn you clean. But your body will lose its ability to host the eldritch.”

“Yeah, about that.” Said Pestilence, walking over as their armor glinted in the dusk sunlight. 

“We gotta seal her true name. Whether she can wield the power or not, a lot of fae are going to want her dead after this, or to enslave her. I think we can all agree that’s a bad idea.”

Tobria and Epsilo nodded, and then Tobria’s head jerked hard to the side, all his eyes widening.

The medic looked over as well, and yet somehow, she was not surprised by what she saw.

The fae of anthrax, walking toward them in her blue-clothed troll form, ragged and bleeding, but alive again.

Her eyes were narrowed.

“Cyvell…” Tobria whispered. “You are back. Welcome.”

He lowered his great, fiery head as his expressionless apprentice walked closer to the group.

“I am sorry, Cyvell. I failed you. I should have listened to your warning.”

The winter queen ignored him.

She had eyes only for the Maledict, as she stepped up with less than an arm’s length between them.

“No fae may kill you.” Said the woman, voice low and hard. “No illness may take you, nor age, nor lethal weapon. You will live until you have lost everything and everyone you love, Maledict. Only then are you allowed to die.”

She reached out a hand and placed it on the yellowblood’s chest.

The medic gasped, black bile welling up from her mouth, her nose, her eyes as she coughed and wheezed. 

She bent double, feeling a deep, bone-chilling energy pulse through her.

Freezing her body in time.

Making her immortal.

Cyvell, pleased, removed her hand and walked away, leaving the Maledict to her mentor, not looking back once. Blearily, the yellowblood saw Epsilo glare at the fae, but he said nothing.

Tobria looked after her, his wings dragging low in the sand. He shook his head.

“I have much to make amends for…” He murmured. “At least it will make my part easier. Are you ready, Maledict?”

The medic could only nod. She could barely speak.

Yet she still screamed in agony as Tobria took her in his claws, and purged her body with his flames, driving every last bit of Growth from her cells. The flames burned in all the colors of the hemospectrum, rising almost to the sky, and then, a few moments later, it was done.

She was completely troll again. 

She wanted nothing more than to sleep for the next century.

But there was still one more thing to do.

“Tobria.” She murmured. “Can you guide the Varzims home?”

“Yes.” He said. “Close your eyes for a few moments, or you will be blinded.”

She was only too happy to do so. She felt Epsilo’s grip on her tighten, and hoped he was doing the same.

The Maledict felt an incredible rush of heat, but it was not painful, as the Fireseer’s other flames had been. It was warm and powerful, inviting and invigorating. The feeling of a well-kept hearth. The glow of a lighthouse on a stormy shore.

She opened her eyes again, and saw a massive pillar of light shooting up through the sky, going on and on, past anything she could see.

“That is my beacon.” The Fireseer explained. “It will go all the way to the furthest ring, burning anything that tries to harm them, enduring as long as the Varzims need to follow it back to Alternia.”

“How long will that take?” Epsilo asked, despairing.

“I don’t know.” Replied Tobria calmly, folding his wings back. “At least one of your perigees. Maybe more. But they will make it.”

“You see them coming home?” The violet asked curiously.

“No.” Said the angel-fae, looking up at the sun. “I have faith in them. Faith I should have had all this time. They are not Uryali. They can be better than their ancestor. Wiser. More careful.”

He looked at the Maledict, blinking all of his eyes.

“We can all be better than we have been.”

He inclined his head to her, and then followed after his apprentice, leaving the three trolls on their own.

Pestilence let out a long, low whistle.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” They said to the yellowblood, amused yet shaking their head in disbelief. “You’ve changed everything. No one’s ever done anything like this to the fae before. Let alone live to tell the tale.”

“That’s me.” She muttered. “I’m special.”

Epsilo snorted hard.

“You’re insane.” He said bluntly. “But I suppose we needed your particular brand of insanity to see this through.”

“Yeah.” Agreed the hemoanon. “I think it’ll be okay. We still have to seal her name, though.”

“Please tell me it’s easy and painless.” She said, voice and posture incredibly fatigued as she slumped against the violet.

“It is.” They assured her. “Just say ‘I, Ullane Wistim, shed my name and forever give it up to the fae courts. They may not use it against me, nor may I use any fair folk’s name against them. I can never name myself with it again, and it is no longer who I am.’”

The yellowblood repeated the words, and one last time, the shadowy fae gathered around her.

This name is accepted, they said. 

Thank you, Maledict.

She huffed as they dispersed, but supposed she couldn’t argue with the title. Then she burst into an enormous yawn.

Epsilo picked her up and carried her in his arms. She didn’t object.

“Let me get Dunny.” The medic heard Pestilence say as she closed her eyes. “I can send him back to Alternia with the two of you. I have to stay here for a while.”

“Good.” Epsilo said fervently. “I’m not going through the courts again.”

The armored troll laughed.

The lowblood, assured of her safe return, swiftly fell asleep.

For once, she did not dream.

SO ENDS

A TALE OF TWO HARBINGERS

THE PROPHET OF SCARS

AND THE MALEDICT

[cloudbattrolls]

All Hail

This drabble is preceded by Last Stand.

Ullane Wistim | Sunrest | Present Night

Ullane landed, sodden again from the gate of the summer court, Epsilo thudding into the warm sand beside her.

She wondered how far they’d have to go to find Tobria -

Massive, loud wingbeats. A long, winged shadow grew on the pale orange dunes as a fiery, lizardlike being covered with scars landed in front of them and folded his strange wings - part feathered, part insectoid. His head was covered with three masks, all making different expressions.

“Why do you disturb me?” Said the tired, resentful voice of the angel-fae. It wasn’t as deep as she’d expected - a bit raspy and dry, as if from lack of use.

He looked the pair of trolls up and down, the wings on the sides of his face extending as a hot breeze stirred up the air. This court had sunlight too, but didn't burn - it was like Alternian sunlight at dusk, hot but tolerable.

“Where is Cyvell?” He added, a trace of anger entering his voice. “She was coming to take refuge through that very gate. What have you done with my apprentice?”

Ullane bowed her head as Tobria stood up fully, his form towering over her and Epsilo, the shimmering wings on his sides spreading outward, reaching dozens of feet each. They cast the pair in shadow from the blazing sun above.

“Tobria Tatura. I’m sorry to bother you.” She said solemnly. “All I’ve done, I’ve done to come ask you to bring back the pair of Varzims now trapped in the furthest ring. If you do, I accept whatever sentence given to me. I’ll repay your help however I can.”

All of the hybrid’s glowing orange eyes stared down at the yellowblood.

“You are touched by this power.” He said, in awe, disbelief, a touch of sheer fury. “All these sweeps…and he could still think, still act? He said nothing to me?”

The angel-fae bent over, pulling out Ullane’s blackened, scarified-vine palms to look at with his taloned paws, his eyes narrowing. The yellowblood did not resist, letting the warm, feathered limbs hold her own. 

“Your hands…stained with anthrax. You reached so deep in her that she coats you like a second skin. Yet you do not die. Why? The Muted could not save you from this.”

The ancient being’s voice cracked with sorrow and disbelief. Then he shook his head, and dropped Ullane’s damp hands.

“I wake, and this is what I find? A favor asked by an unknown troll embodying death and betrayal?”

Tobria’s wings flared out and set alight with golden fire, his long tail lashing and following suit as Ullane and Epsilo stumbled back from the searing blaze.

“You die here, yellowblood.”

“Run!” She said to the violet, who wasted no time in doing so as Ullane looked up into the furious masks of the Fireseer.

He opened his mouth to blast flames at her, but she wasn’t there.

The medic rose up on a wave of violet-tinted water, drawn and grown from the liquid dripping off of her body, aiming to claw at Toba’s throat with the ridged bone still stuck fast to her hands -

He slapped her back with his fiery tail, hurling her many feet away to thud into the sand as he hissed in fury.

“I am the Fireseer, troll. Did Uryali give no warning of what he was sending you into? Did he not tell you my flames were more than a match for him?”

Ullane stared at the sky as she lay there, healing her burns and broken bones, getting her breath back.

“You are broken and spent. Surrender and your death will be painless, which I imagine is more than you granted Cyvell.”

His voice shook with rage, and the yellowblood closed her eyes.

A painless death…

More than she deserved, really.

She laughed a little.

Somehow, she doubted Tobria would find it so easy to kill her.

Almost a shame. But she had a job to do.

Ullane’s eyes stayed closed, yet she - carefully, while wincing slightly - stood back up.

Tobria did not lie. She could not face him directly in a fight, no matter how well Uryali’s power flowed through her. She was still mortal, and tired from her travels, weary from her fight with Cyvell.

As the Fireseer flew toward her, preparing to burn her in an instant, the medic dreamed.

Voices flowed from her lips - hers, Uryali’s, countless others whispering indistinctly as the desert wove itself into a garden, vines springing from the scarified black bud on her hand and growing, spreading out, taking over the sands.

Tobria flew into her dream, his mind plucked into this half-real world full of ferns and trees and coral reefs, one sprouting on top of the other without rhyme or reason.

He rained down multicolored fire, trying to raze the forest-reef; cinders and ash swirled everywhere as the angel-fae torched Ullane’s creation, but he could not get it all at once. 

What he did burn grew back, thicker and stronger, blooming and unfurling at rapid speeds.

“Yellowblood!” He roared. “Why do you drag out this pageantry? You cannot kill me.”

“I don’t want to kill you.” She murmured, and it carried all the way to his ears, borne by her dreaming will. “I killed Cyvell because I had to. She would have killed me otherwise.”

“Is that supposed to placate me?” Hissed the Fireseer as he continued to try to find and destroy her. “She is all I have left! Why? Because Uryali left this world! Left me! I mourned him despite what he’d done! And now - now he sends you? Look what you’ve done!”

She pressed through her forest-reef, brushing aside its violet and black plants and polyps while Tobria continued to try to burn it, roaring and cursing in a language she didn’t know.

“You deserve your rage.” She said softly, as another swathe of massive orchids with eyes on their petals crumbled to ash. “You deserve your pain, your frustration, your resentment.”

“I know that.” He snarled. “So what do you offer me as a pitiful apology? What could you ever say or do to make you worthy of my help?”

He let out a cry like a bird of prey, though it was more anguished than angry.

“What could you say to rid me of this cursed prophecy? I wish I had never seen the malediction. Look what it has done to me. To all the fae. And for what?”

The Fireseer hovered in the sky, weeping bright tears that burst into showering sparks. 

“What was any of it worth?”

The dream shifted, and Ullane let it, the scene responding to Tobria’s emotions.

It brought them back in time, for she could feel the place unfolding around her was one from long, long ago, the dream folding her into it.

She saw the fae fleeing Alternia, carrying their wounded with them in stretchers of woven branches and silk. Blood of various hues - standard spectrum shades and other, more mutant-like hues - covered the ground. 

This was that fateful night, when all the disease fae had left their native world behind.

They would only return for brief visits in the future, lest they be hunted and destroyed by trolls’ terrifying weaponry once more. Banners in imperial red and black fluttered not far off; they were no longer safe here. 

The planet belonged to the fuchsia empire now.

She saw a younger, less scarred Tobria, though he still carried several gold marks on his dark reddish body. He flew above the fleeing fae, keeping a lookout to ensure they would get to safety.

They had fought as hard as they could, but the empress had too many weapons, too many soldiers.  

The fae had too few allies.

Even immortal beings grew tired of dying all the time.

“What could I have done?” Tobria muttered. “What could I have seen? Perhaps we have held off the malediction, but are we even living? Am I? Cyvell was right…I should have woken up long ago.”

He hung his great head, red and blue fires burning low.

Ullane couldn’t help but smile sadly. 

“I won’t pretend to know exactly what you suffer.” She said softly. “But I have also been abandoned by those I loved.”

She filled the dream with her memories of her ex quadrants, Hap Ret’s smile and cheerful fuchsia-maroon cusp eyes appearing and then fading away.

The sound of a lyre rippled through the space; the instrument her ex-ashen Orpheo had once played.

The faces of her old friends drifted by. ID. Bonnie. Vadaya. Glitch. Everyone who had left her behind.

Then many more grew from the shadows of her forest, a phantom crowd who were not quite solid. They glared at the medic accusingly, pointing translucent fingers. 

Those she’d killed. Those she’d failed. All the trolls of the summer court’s mirages.

Except this time they came at her call. 

They whispered things she could not make out. Saying one word over and over again.

Murderer? Malpracticer? 

Tobria landed near her in a clearing she summoned and folded his wings, growing still.

“I don’t expect you to spare me.” She murmured. “I know I deserve to die. You and Cyvell are two of many I’ve hurt. Trolls. Fae. Undead. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m so, so tired…I just want the Varzims back. They’re not what she thinks.”

The doctor filled the dream with all she knew of Thrixe and Zanzul, every time the Varzims had helped her or laughed with her, swam with her, bickered with each other. Every time Thrixe had given Archimedes a treat, or Zanzul had made flowers for clinic patients bloom.

Every small moment of kindness she could remember.

“What Thrixe did was an accident.” She said. “He would have tried to fix it if he’d known.”

A brief silence stretched between them, and a warm wind whistled through her hair. 

“That does not excuse it.” said the Fireseer, but a note of hesitance had entered his voice. “That power can warp the world, even without intention. It is why I warned the fae of the malediction. 

He looked up at the sky, the wings on his head folding up.

“I do not agree with how Cyvell sent the Varzims away, as she greatly upset the natural order…but if it protects us, at least some good will have come of it.”

He paused, apparently considering something, two of his masks contemplative as the other looked hesitant.

Almost afraid.

He looked at her, more keenly and piercingly than he had before, the wings on his head extending again. As if seeing her clearly for the first time.

“Come closer, yellowblood.”

She did so without question.

The angel-fae took her hands in his taloned paws, his lightly scaled skin dark red with hints of blue and gold where it was not scarred over with metallic golden tissue. 

“Ah…” he said, with a sound like he was releasing a long, deep sigh. “I have already failed.”

Was that a faint, sad smile on the long toothy mouth?

She stared at him blankly.

“I should kill you.” He said, sad yet with a hint of amusement that seemed directed at himself more than her. “But I would only be burying my own guilt again.”

She blinked at him, not understanding.

Had what she done worked?

Tobria seemed…resigned. Why, she couldn’t explain. 

The dream began to dissolve. The various environments twisted, melted…

She gasped awake, her eyes opening as she sat up in the sand, shaking off grit as she felt her body covered in sweat.

Tobria loomed over her, but neither his body language nor his masks displayed any hint of rage. His tail was still, his fires low.

Then he looked over in a different direction, wings raised slightly in alertness.

“They are coming.”

“Who?” She mumbled, standing up again with effort.

“The royals. And their messengers” 

Her eyes went wide as she could hear and then see their rapid approach - the rulers of three courts - and the winter court’s representative - as they ran and flew toward her and the angel-fae. A dark mass of shadows followed them.

Cyvell was unsurprisingly absent.

Ullane braced herself. She had no energy left to run or fight, and she had no idea where Epsilo was. She had to face them.

“Who are you?” Demanded the four fae at once as they arrived, golden crowns draped around their ears, horns, and antennae.

“Give us your name!” They commanded, staring her down with animal and insect eyes. 

Surrounded, the woman knew she had no choice but to do so, even though it would give them a power over her that would doom her as surely as if she stayed silent. 

As she opened her mouth, drawing breath to speak, something clicked into place. 

Ullane understood, then, what Uryali had been trying to tell her in her dreams.

She understood what Tobria’s prophecy had been about all along.

She was sure he did as well, for the angel-fae stared into her eyes with all of his own, as if he knew what was coming. Yet he made no move to stop her. 

“I am the Maledict.”

A swirl of shadows descended just as they had for Pestilence as her words rang throughout the whole of Sunrest, their sound echoing in its most distant sandy corners, for all else was silent.

The messenger fae flowed around her like dark water, and in a single low, clear voice, they added their statement as the royals reeled back in horror and disbelief.

This truth is accepted. 

[cloudbattrolls]

As Mayflies

This drabble is preceded by No Rest for the Wicked and followed by Drowned Sorrows.

Epsilo Volant | Fae Courts | Present Night

Ullane wore her way through the rock with more saltwater and steady patience, her eyes glowing softly. The dark gray stone melted like snow to make a passage just large enough for the two of them to pass, with only slightly more effort. The salt hissed at it, making it bubble a little with warm steam.

As they passed through the rough tunnel, it filled in behind them with layers of bone and warmth-trapping membrane. Epsilo tried to avoid looking back at them.

Despite how low the light from his companion’s eyes was, it had no problem casting her tunnel in moon-brightness.

Utterly bizarre. Nature should not work that way.

Yet this was no natural world.

Epsilo kept an eye on the yellowblood to ensure she didn’t overdo it as they went ever deeper.

He didn’t think Uryali would intentionally try to overwhelm her or take over her body - he needed her to get his descendants back - but that wasn’t to say he trusted the horrorterror.

By nature, he could not be relied on. Not as a full eldritch being.

He grimaced as he ducked his head and moved ever more downward into the rocky depths, thinking of Vallis. How was his best friend doing? 

He’d texted the purpleblood, warning him he would be gone for at least a week, but the violet knew very well it could be much longer if they got stuck here. Ullane was his only ticket back home, unless he survived to find an open gate back to the troll world.

Which was extremely unlikely. 

The entire reason they had to cross all four realms to begin with was because this damn prophet had barricaded himself behind them, his gate only accessible from the distant summer court. 

If only Uryali could get us there himself, Epsilo had grumbled.

Ullane had shaken her head fervently.

If he tried, he’d break the world. He might not succeed, either. He has great power, but no focus, no finesse. He struggles to wake enough to act.

Typical. This was why he’d never trusted the supernatural, ever since he’d been turned hyena against his will. Even more so after Vernrot’s terrors had possessed him.

Ironic that the Varzim ancestor had been the one to then set him free, to make him immune to further influence. 

Ullane stopped and he nearly ran into her, cursing softly as he stopped himself just in time.

“What -“ he started to ask, then he saw.

Orange light up ahead streaming into the tunnel, almost like dawn. Yet this light did not hurt his eyes, or make his skin start to burn.

It was almost pleasant.

So he scowled, knowing it couldn’t be trusted.

Ullane sniffed the air, for some odd reason. Then she went ‘ah.’

“They must have warned the others.” She said with amusement. “They’re waiting for us once we surface.”

“You can smell that?” He asked skeptically. “I can’t smell anything.” He said pointedly. He might not be shifted right now, but his nose was still better than an ordinary troll’s.

“We’re on the border between realms.” She murmured. “Look down.”

He heard a crackle, followed by rustling noises. 

The stone beneath his feet had begun to shift to…leaves, dried leaves, yet on the walls they were mere impressions in the stone.

The stone rustled, and a wind blew through the depths of the earth, warmer than any in the winter court.

“Uryali’s power.” She continued. “I can smell their magic, feel it on my skin. Autumn blooms and decays and turns.”

“So what do we do?” The werehyena asked. “Charge them? Try to sneak past?”

The wind blew again, and the hairs on the back of the violet’s neck rose. The light grew brighter. Closer, somehow. 

“Neither.” She said with a smile. “I kill them before they know what happened.” She said in a casual tone.

Epsilo gave the yellowblood a flat look, one he knew she could see even in the dim light of the tunnel.

She blinked.

“What?” She said. “They’re disease fae. They come back.”

A skittering, crawling noise. Her eyes flashed pink.

The violet looked around, head whipping back and forth, but saw nothing. 

“What’s your plan? How did you kill those winter fae before?” He said urgently.

The lowblood gave him a dry smile. “Pinkeye’s treated by lubricating eye drops. Saltwater helps wash out lungs suffering from pneumonia. Influenza’s adaptable, resilient; its genetics change often. Accelerated the changes so fast, the fae couldn’t hold a cohesive form any longer.”

She closed her eyes and inhaled. A quiet humming thrummed around them; he could feel it even in the stone beneath them, vibrating slightly through his boots. 

Ullane pressed her hands against the tunnel walls she’d carved out minutes ago. 

“Hold steady.” She said.

Epsilo braced himself not a moment too soon, for a ripple of music swept through the rock as easily as if it were water. Stone churned like liquid under his hands as the skittering became louder and claws began swiping through the stone at them, eyes bubbling in the rock.

He stumbled backward and shuddered, swearing as the entire tunnel shook and heaved, then -

The air was knocked out of the violet as he was rapidly thrust upward, painfully falling to his knees and clinging to the rock -

- the wood beneath his feet.

The cave was becoming a massive trunk, growing and splitting underneath him as he clung for dear life, shot through with stone veins but unmistakably alive. The air was drier here, tinged with leaf-mold and pollen, orange light now all around them as his head whipped back and forth, wavy hair flying in the rush of wind.

Yet his skin was not burned. 

Crashing noises came from below, wails and yelps, stranger warbling noises and piercing shrieks. 

Wild-eyed, the violet’s heart raced. The great plant kept growing, and as he looked down on the leaf-strewn forest floor - 

Fae. 

Some dead, corpses of all shapes and sizes prone on the ground, speared by sharp branches going clean through their bodies, sprung directly from the thick trunk. Their corpses rotted over and dissipated as he watched. 

A few survivors fled as fast as their legs and wings could carry them, rapidly disappearing in the other trees surrounding the one Ullane had grown.

Where was she?

Ullane, clinging to the same branch closer to its base, her eyes flickering with a struggle to stay conscious as the tree’s expansion slowed to a halt.

He hissed in frustration.

“Stop it!” He said, loud and stern. “Stop doing this to yourself! You have to be more careful, do you hear me? If you die, I die! I will not lose my life to your carelessness!” 

It was hard to not use her name, to not demand that Ullane Wistim listen to him, but he couldn’t; she’d said how dangerous it would be to even whisper them here. The fae realms lived and breathed names; they were the ultimate form of truth, an instant link to another being. The wind could carry one to any listening ears it found.

The yellowblood looked at him, eyes alight with pink, and opened her mouth…then slumped over against the trunk.

Epsilo put a hand to his face and took some deep breaths.

His gills, think of his gills, restored once he finally dragged this reckless woman to her goal.

Three courts left. First, they had to get through this one, without getting caught by the survivors or his companion melting herself into sludge, whichever came first.

He carefully crawled closer to her along the thick branch, looking at her with irritation and a biologist’s concern. 

Her horns…they were more black than they’d been before. Her claws had turned entirely that color. 

“Don’t you become a hybrid.” He muttered. “Don’t you dare. Vallis is enough, I need you to be troll, do you hear me? Uryali, do you hear me? You stop her from drawing on you so heavily, you damned starfish.”

The black bud on her hand now extended vines down her arm, raised scarification on her flesh that shifted on her skin just as the rest of it did. 

Why was she like this? Was it horrorterror influence?

It had to be, he supposed. The Ullane Wistim he had known sweeps ago - though not well - had never been this foolhardy. 

He flattened himself against the trunk as a hurled black stinger the size of his thumb buried itself where his leg had just been and crumpled against the stone-wood before bouncing off.

An insect-like whine - several - reached his ears and he dove off the trunk, knowing hitting a branch or the ground would be less lethal than what was in those stingers -

The tree caught him.

A branch coiled around him like a harness, protecting him and holding him in place. Others snaked through the air to lash at the small cloud of buzzing fae who shrieked and chittered in distress as it chased them through the dusk air.

How? She was -

- her eyes were shut, but Ullane stood with an arm against the trunk, grinning anyway.

He shuddered and the tree bloomed.

Dozens of violet-pink flowers with stony petals opened all over it, filling the air with a strangely chemical scent, and Epsilo sneezed as they poured out glimmering pollen.

The fae shook. Seized up. Dropped from the air, coughing, screeching…dying.

Laughter came from the yellowblood, but her mouth was still closed in a grin. 

The violet let out a long breath through gritted teeth as he was gently placed back beside her.

“I have no choice.” She murmured to him in late response, eyes open now. “With my own psiionics, I can adapt myself more to his power. I am becoming the best conduit possible. Everything else is secondary.”

She looked up into the orange-tinted sky, its clouds dark and distant, as if they too were keeping away from the terrible intruder.

“Let’s just go.” Epsilo said roughly. “As I recall, the next border is at the top of the tallest tree in the forest. How are we getting there without getting torn to shreds?” 

The branches that had speared the fae lifted, along with the ones that had swatted at the lingering swarm. They all slid across the trunk, joining together into one massive branch that flattened itself out, forming into a stone-wooden staircase through the air.

His eyes widened as it...drew branches from other trees it passed onto it to extend itself, going far enough that he couldn’t see the end of it.

Ullane smiled at him, satisfied, but leaned over a bit more.

“I should rest now.” She admitted. “Will you carry me?”

He sighed, turning into a werehyena in a brief swirl of violet light. The lowblood smiled again and climbed on the unusually large hyena, for Epsilo’s form reflected his size as a troll.

This time no tendrils sprung out to hold her fast, but Epsilo wasn’t going to complain as he set off running across the bridge.

He kept his eyes on the path ahead - it was wide enough that he wasn’t overly nervous, and Ullane had thought to grow guard-rails. Still, he didn’t want to miss any more potential attacks as his paws thudded over the wood.

It was impossible to not be awed by the view. 

Just like the winter court, the place was beautiful - a forest of trees with resplendently colored leaves, tossed about in periodic breezes that ruffled his fur and Ullane’s hair. 

Some clouds finally drew closer to the pair, and reflected on them from the eternal twilight, Epsilo saw images of…war. Imperial banners, soldiers in trenches, but gear and weapons that must be thousands of millennia old.

He saw fae fighting back. Killing the soldiers, tricking them, shutting out trolls from their homes with walls of wood and stone. 

“No wonder they were far more able than the winter court.” He murmured, in between breaths as he slowed his pace. He’d been running for a while, longer than he had in the tundra and hills. 

“The ice mourns. The leaves resent.” Ullane whispered. “Next is spring.” 

“What’s the spring court’s thing, then.” Epsilo said with a trace of wry humor. “How have they coped with their defeat?”

His companion laughed softly, then gripped him more tightly with her hands and thighs than she had the whole time.

Wingbeats. Loud, thudding ones coming toward them at speed, and while they were close, the top of the tallest tree was still a minute or so away…

Epsilo gritted his teeth and picked up his pace again.

It was no use; he saw…a huge deer, a winged deer with a bird’s tail and back feet, fly up by their entryway.

Even from dozens of feet away, the animal was large enough, its head adornment bright enough that he could see it for what it was: a slender golden crown, wrought in the shape of various intertwined leaves.

“STOP!” She - a feminine voice, he thought - screeched.

The violet winced but pressed onward, defying her volume and the wind that had blown along with it.

“No further, weeper! If I don’t stop you, your own hubris will! The marks on your face prove it.” The creature snarled. “Such overflowing power damns all who channel furthest ring folk!”

The deer-bird took a deep breath, then opened her mouth -

Singing voices called all around the racing hyena, and a cloud of pollen from the flowers earlier rushed toward her in a swirl of wind, hurling itself down the autumn queen’s throat before she could spit it back out, coughing and wheezing.

Ullane herself coughed and wheezed on his back, struggling for air herself as he kept going, and he silently begged her to not push herself any farther. 

The fae lashed out at the bridge in her fit before falling to the ground, clawing the last dozen feet of it away as Epsilo panicked, unable to stop his momentum in time - 

He felt his passenger thud down unconscious on his back at the same time he felt himself…lift.

Violet membranes had sprung out from his sides and limbs, catching the wind and carrying him just up enough to land gently at the highest branches of the autumn court’s vast tree. 

They shriveled into nothing as he steeled himself and walked into the sky itself, disappearing into the clouds that had come to receive him. 

[cloudbattrolls]

In Cold Blood

This drabble is preceded by So Far to Fall and followed by No Rest for the Wicked.

Ullane Wistim & Epsilo Volant | Present Night | Winter Court

They were dozens of feet from the frozen ground, eyes tearing up and freezing from the cold, when tendrils of gooey matter wrapped around the pair of them and stopped them in their tracks.

Both trolls cried out, hurting from the jolt of the sudden stop, though the tendrils themselves were not painful - simply disgusting, a sickly yellowish green and warm to the touch.

“A pair of intruders!” Rasped the wielder of the tendrils as they reeled the pair in. The fae resembled a sort of hermit crab, almost, except the shell was like…layers of alveoli, tiny air sacs in lungs, all pressed together.

“What will we do with them?” They said in a mocking tone to their two fellows.

The other two fae looked different - a cluster of reddish pink eyelike markings on a being almost like a peacock with moth antennae. The other almost resembled a turtle, with a spiky shell, but it had an elongated body like a millipede and pincers on its reptilian face.

“Pluck their eyes out!” Called the peacock, splaying its tail. 

“No. The queen will want them intact for questioning.” Disagreed the turtle.

“The queen has failed us!” Retorted the raspy hermit crab. “All the world unbalanced, just to seal away two Growth spawn? We can question them ourselves!” 

Ullane closed her eyes as Epsilo’s mind raced. 

He couldn’t move no matter how he strained himself, and he suspected that if he tried, the mucus-like restraints might do worse than simply hold him still.

Then he felt the world…shift.

The snow around them melted in a bloom of heat that smelled of the ocean, of salt and rotting seaweed. It arced into a wave that crashed down over the fae as they screamed and shrieked in terror, the violet’s ears ringing from the noise.

The restraints holding them melted, and he fell to the now grassy ground with a thud and a grunt.

Ullane…Ullane dove through the water as it passed, the fae sizzling in its violet-tinged wake, and she landed on the hermit crab’s shell, eyes glowing magenta like beacons.

Then she pulled the creature apart, hand by hand, the pieces dissolving into pink goo as the creature writhed and thrashed. It landed blows on her with more extended tendrils that tore at her skin, but the yellow blood dripping down her body seemed to mean nothing to the medic.

In less than a minute it was nothing but a puddle in front of her as she panted and gasped, sodden with her caste but still standing.

The peacock rallied from its wounds and lunged at the lowblood. Epsilo dove for it, turning into a striped hyena as he snapped at the creature with his powerful jaws. It tasted foul as it wailed and writhed in his mouth, but he did not let go; he wrestled it on the wet, snow-melted earth as he felt the moisture begin to freeze in his fur.

It tore him open with its talons, but it weakened as he let go and then bit down again on its throat, despite the feel of its spongy flesh and the jelly-like sensation of its insides.

Then it folded in on itself, slipped out of his jaws, and broke into pieces and dripping gore as a ripple of music sounded for a few moments.

Shocked, Epsilo could scarcely process what had just happened.

Neither, it seemed, could the last fae, the grayish green turtle millipede who now trembled in place. His small reptilian eyes were wide and frightened as he looked past the highblood and spoke in a disbelieving, terrified voice. 

“No…he’s gone…he is muted, he does not sing! He is over, he slumbers!”

Ullane coughed, but as Epsilo slowly turned to look at her, to match the fae’s gaze, she also gave a yellow-stained smile.

Her own blood rose off her skin and clothes, from the ground it had dripped onto and frozen against, again carrying the stink of salt and rot, a great carcass washed up on a beach.

The fae wheeled around and fled.

Not fast enough.

The blood formed into a frozen, razor-sharp web and closed around the creature, cutting him into pieces that tried to shapeshift and free themselves, changing as the violet watched…changing too quickly, into yet more scattered arrangements of limb and head and eye.

In seconds they fell apart entirely and melted like the others.

The call of a hunting horn came, and Epsilo’s chill came from more than the ice in his gray and black fur.

As Ullane teetered on her feet, he ignored his wounds to go over to the medic, to lie down and, with difficulty, ease her onto his back. She did not object. Her eyes were shut again and blood had crusted beneath her nose; he suspected she might have fallen unconscious.

Epsilo did not think. He only ran from the horns as fast as he could with his injuries, praying his passenger would not fall off.

He felt tendrils of matter wrap themselves around him, securing her in place. Normally, he would have been deeply unsettled; right now, it was a relief.

South, he thought, remembering a discussion they’d had before they left the island. 

The fall court was next on their way to the place this angel-fae inhabited, a desert world called Sunrest. 

As he ran, the snow melted around him. Tiny, frozen plants unfurled and boomed. 

From Ullane’s unmoving lips, a sleepy, soft melody came, yet Epsilo instinctively knew that any fae who got too close would find it far less soothing than he did. He felt his wounds slowly closing and had no doubt as to the cause.

The power of Uryali Varzim. Even though his voice had long since been quieted. 

No wonder the fae still fear you, the violet thought, still running.

As the tundra turned to rocky, icy hills, he was forced to slow down. Snow fell around him as he climbed up the rough stone, tongue lolling out of his mouth from exertion as he finally stopped.

He looked behind him. Despite the thickening flurries, he could see the green line his path had cut through the white. 

The now-howling wind could not drown out Ullane’s soft song.

The werehyena sniffed the air, eyes and nose alert for any shelter he could find.

After minutes of searching among the frigid rocks, fur starting to frost over with small icicles, he wearily found a small cave he and his companion could fit into that had decent shelter from the wind and weather.

Epsilo turned back into a troll, and as he did, the tendrils tethering her dissolved. Convenient of them.

He placed Ullane on the stony floor and sighed. 

This woman…but there was no denying she’d saved his life even while she endangered it.

Her wounds had healed without a trace, but she still did not wake up. 

The former seadweller frowned, then shook her. 

A garbled string of noise came out of her mouth, her eyes glowing underneath her closed lids. Some of it almost sounded like troll language; the rest was incomprehensible or resembled animal cries.

“Wake up!” The violet commanded.

Her eyes at last fluttered open, and the song stopped.

“I'm awake.” She murmured. “They’ll come for us now. Uryali warned me he could only repel them as long as I slept.”

“I don’t care.” Said the highblood roughly. “You pushed yourself too far; your hair has more white in it than it did an hour ago. We can eat and drink, then -“

“No need. Uryali has adjusted our natural growth for the moment; our bodies preserved from physical need until we are back on Alternia.”

He scowled, but had no rebuttal; that was useful if unsettling. He realized with a stab of unease it was true; he was tired and cold, but had no thirst or appetite.

“There’s no moving on with that snowstorm out there.” He pointed out brusquely. “He can’t sing the weather away.”

“No.” She agreed. “But other fae will come for us. We’ll have to travel through the mountain, seal our path as we go to avoid them.”

“Through solid rock?” Epsilo said in disbelief. 

“Few things are truly solid here.” She murmured. “The courts are mostly made of magic and memories. The fae mirror what they lost to the empire.”

She pointed to the walls of the cave, which the ecologist now realized were painted with colorful symbols and scenes.

Beautiful ice sculptures. Intricate snow forts. Fae playing with each other, building homes and making food. 

The paintings were chipped and faded with the slow decay of millennia.

Epsilo shook his head. “We weren’t responsible for any of that.”

She laughed softly. “Get some rest. I’ll wake you when we have to flee.”

“Can you warm this place up a bit?” He said, shivering. His cold blood gave him some resistance, but he was - had been - a tropical seadweller.

Ullane smiled, and with a wave of her black-marked hand she sealed off the cave opening with a violet membrane that immediately started generating heat.

Epsilo eyed it with a resigned look, then took out two sleeping bags and curled up in one, handing the other to Ullane.

The yellowblood merely sat on it, humming while she leaned against the rocky wall, as the werehyena drifted off into an uneasy slumber. 

[cloudbattrolls]

If Life Is Subtraction

Epsilo Volant | Vernrot Harbour | Present Night

Having been a seadweller for most of his life, Epsilo hardly minded the rain. He did mind the excess of mud it created when he had to plod through it looking for someone - something - that might not even be around. It stuck to his boots and splattered up on the edges of his pants, no matter how he tried to avoid puddles. 

One hardly could avoid puddles in Vernrot; it was like trying to dodge snow in a blizzard. 

Vallis, of course, had no idea where Arty had come from or why. Epsilo doubted he would have gotten many more answers by asking Lusien, either. The construct was clearly rather secretive.

He couldn’t track it by scent; it didn’t have one, not like a troll did. He’d noticed when it had turned up out of the blue, irate at Vallis. It smelled faintly of metal, but that was all. It did not sweat or need to breathe. 

He sighed, stepping under the edge of a storefront’s roof for a moment, a few stray drops running down his cool skin.

Curiously, a bug flitted about, despite the rain. It almost looked like a dragonfly, but…not quite. Epsilo squinted at it through his glasses. It was…shiny, he realized. Light glinted off its carapace, though it moved too quickly for him to get a good look, darting in and out of the steady precipitation.

Another of Vernrot’s oddities, like the ‘cats’ that roamed the streets? Yet it didn’t seem eldritch.

It landed on his hand.

Not in the random, erratic way bugs usually did - its flight was controlled. Purposeful.

It looked up at him, and its tiny eyes glowed green. Its body was an almost metallic silver.

Epsilo felt…watched. The hairs on his neck prickled.

“What are you?” He whispered.

It took off again, circling, then circled back, again looking at him.

He had the strangest feeling it wanted him to follow.

Caution whispered he shouldn’t. But instinctively, he felt it did not mean him harm. A neutral if not friendly presence.

So he went back into the rain, his wavy hair becoming yet heavier with moisture, glasses fogging up, but he hardly cared.

He followed it for several minutes, the rain getting heavier, but just as he was beginning to wonder if this was a joke or a trick, he came to a small, worn-down shed set away from the other buildings around it. The door was cracked open, slightly ajar, but there were no lights on inside. It had a faint odor of fish and salt, as many things in the town did. 

He sniffed the air again, wishing for his hyena nose, but now was not a good time to change; one moon was new, the other merely a crescent.

He did not smell anyone, though admittedly the rain made it harder to tell.

He took out his saw, ready in case of a fight, and stepped toward the door…before it opened by itself.

On edge, he slowly walked in, violet eyes flicking back and forth.

It was just…a shed. He blinked, surprised more by the normalcy than anything; slightly rotted wood, some tools with a bit of rust on them, and -

He looked up.

Bugs. Dozens of them, clinging to the dark timbers of the shed’s roof.

All looking back at him with tiny green eyes.

“Hello, Epsilo.”

The voice was slightly distorted, buzzing mildly as it came from…somewhere, but he recognized it.

“Arty.” He acknowledged.

“Come to track me down for Vallis, have you? Well, you found me. What now?”

He frowned.

“This is…you?”

It laughed, a strange and slightly shrill noise, more like an audio file than anything.

“What do you want, Epsilo?”

He cleared his throat, shaking his head as he tried to get some water off of him.

“If possible, I would like it if you and Vallis could make amends.” He said stiffly. “It seems like the problem happened due to a lack of specific conditions set by you and his own willfulness.”

“Mmm…he is a risk. Unpredictable. Unreliable.”

Epsilo put a hand to his face. He couldn’t deny it.

“Even you know.” It said, amused. “It’s too bad! But why should I trust him with my things again?”

“That body.” Epsilo said, aware he had to go carefully. 

“What about it?” Replied Arty, with a seemingly casual tone that he felt wary of.

“It’s…your creation, isn’t it? Something that specifically made…”

“Careful.” It warned, but sounded more amused than threatening. “Careful, Epsilo.”

The bugs dropped from the ceiling, flying around him in gentle circles.

He has a feeling their flight could change at any moment.

“I am aware.” He said stiffly. “You aren’t the first swarm I’ve met.”

“Oh yes. Tuuya.”

He blinked.

“Are you like them?”

Again came the laughter. 

“I’ll take that as a no.” He grumbled,

“I’m older than the second worm swarm.” Whispered the voice. “Much older.”

A chill ran down his spine.

“You didn’t…act this way, earlier.”

“What’s the fun in that? A single demeanor? So boring.”

This thing really was like Vallis - even more so, Epsilo realized, wary yet fascinated. It seemed to have far more of a grasp on its aspects. 

“You…you understand him like I can’t.” He admitted bitterly. “He needs you, with the Varzims gone.”

“Or what?”

It asked, amused.

“Or he might slip away from me for good.” Epsilo said, dejected and weary.

He knew very well it wasn’t Arty’s problem. That trying to appeal to the empathy of a…biotech construct…was probably futile.

Soaked and spattered, he still had to try.

“So you really don’t want to lose your friend.” It said softly. “And despite what you think of me, you admit I can do more for him.”

He flushed, not realizing it knew what he had said about it. Or did it? Did it only suspect?

Did it…could it…

He looked at the bugs. Small. Easy to miss in a big room.

The violet shuddered.

“What do you offer me, if I do this?”

He blinked, then felt like an idiot. Of course it wanted something.

“I am a biologist. I have some skill with biotech myself.” He said, unsure if that was what it wanted. 

“Don’t you like animals too? Like Vallis does?”

He blinked again, repeatedly. 

“Yes.”

“Can you show me where big sharks live?”

“What.”

He said, completely thrown.

“I want to punch one.”

“What. No.” He retorted, utterly confused.

“Why not?”

“I’m not helping you hurt an animal.” 

He had no idea why it would even want to do such a thing.

“Aw.”

It sounded genuinely put out. Epsilo felt like reality was breaking down around him.

“Then can you take me where some rays are? I want to pet one. No punching, I promise.”

“…yes, that’s quite doable.” He said, still feeling off balance.

“Great! I’ll show up on the island sometime.”

It voice buzzed even more, chipper and excited now.

“The guild island?” Epsilo said, bewildered as it seemed to know where he lived. “I…fine, I suppose.”

Bugs crawled out from beneath the boards of the shed, more from the walls - Empress, where were they all coming from, he backed up, he turned and tried to run - 

- but a small pair of very strong hands tugged him back. He stumbled and nearly fell over.

“Gotcha!” Said the voice that now more clearly resembled the one he’d heard before.

He went rigid as a giggle came from behind him.

Very slowly, he turned back as the hands let him go, looking at Arty - its troll form - which blinked at him innocently, wearing tights and colorful overalls, for all the world as if it was a normal person.

“Don’t…do that.” He said slowly, heart hammering against his ribcage.

“Boooo.” Arty said, as if it were a disappointed child and not an ancient and terrible machine.

“If you say so!” It conceded with an airy sigh. “No fun at all.”

“I think I can live with not being fun.” Epsilo muttered.

It giggled again. 

“I see why Vallis likes you!”

Epsilo looked exquisitely tired.

Yet as he did walk out of the shed to the rain that had now lessened to a drizzle, Arty skipping past him, he reflected on the fact that he had succeeded.

If not at all for the reasons he expected.

He watched as the slim, long-haired figure vanished into the distance.

He’d once been possessed by horrorterrors, and he’d thought they were the strangest thing Alternia had to offer.

Perhaps he’d been wrong. 

[cloudbattrolls]

Drowned Sorrows

This drabble is preceded by As Mayflies.

Epsilo Volant | Spring Court | Present Night

The pair tumbled from the clouds into a cool pond, landing with a great splash as bubbles rose around them.

Epsilo turned back into a troll as he easily kicked his way to the surface. He treaded water as Ullane hung off him, unconscious again.

More white in her hair. It was half pale now, half dark. Was that slight webbing he saw between her hands?

He cursed softly as he held up her limp, lean body, keeping the woman’s head above water as her long locks splayed out behind her.

At least this time they hadn’t been greeted by an ambush. Yet. 

He looked around. 

This time they floated in a pond full of giant lily pads, large green frogs with multiple eyes watching them but making no move. Perhaps they were regular wildlife - well, regular for the fae realms.

“Weeper and werebeast.”

A voice came from one of the frogs, its mouth hung open and still. Clearly, something else was speaking through it.

“The spring court sends our regards. So long as you do not damage our realm, you may have safe passage back to the troll world. However, we will not allow you to reach Sunrest. We know you wish to bring back the Varzims banished by the winter queen, and we will not let the malediction happen. You understand.”

The voice, while pleasant, became mildly condescending at the last two words.

Epsilo kept a stony silence as he paddled to shore, away from the frog. He knew better than to speak to the fae unless he had to.

He knew better than to trust their supposed promise of returning home. May have safe passage - it was not guaranteed.

The winter court had been frozen in mourning. The autumn court had been violent, eternally obsessed with their own fall.

The spring court, it seemed, were manipulators. More like the fae one read of in wrigglers’ tales, twisting words and stretching the truth to its limit.

He finally reached the shallows of the pond - it was not deep, overall, but it stretched wide from bank to bank, and it had taken him several minutes of swimming to get this far. For once, he was grateful to not have gills; the fresh water would have played havoc with them.

Epsilo’s feet sunk into deep mud as he slogged through clouds of waterweed and pond skaters to finally step on the reed-filled shore. The reeds rustled despite the lack of any wind, and bent toward the trolls as they passed. He ignored it, used to such things by now.

He laid Ullane down carefully, then sat down heavily himself beside her, taking deep breaths as he pushed his wet, wavy hair out of his face.

So. They weren’t to be touched unless they tried to reach the summer court, then?

He was hardly going to put all his faith in that, but the lack of aggression or traps they’d run into so far led him to believe that the spring court didn’t want to fight them unless they had to. 

Perhaps they’d heard what had happened to their fellows.

Good. He and Ullane needed to rest. Sleeping in the cold winter cave now felt like it had happened an eon ago, though it had probably been less than a night. Time was strange here.

He looked around. No obvious place to shelter came into sight; all he saw was a field with some trees and another pond some ways off.

They might be ‘safe’ at the moment, but he certainly wasn’t going to sleep in the open. They’d have to search elsewhere. 

He was used to wet clothes, but he didn’t need mud caked into them. Still, if he stepped back in the water his feet would simply sink in again.

The highblood resigned himself to living with it for the moment. 

He laid down on the damp ground. It felt comforting to the former seadweller. Just a few minutes, and…

When he woke up from his accidental nap, he was lying on a bed of reeds, his clothes now clean and dry. He blinked, and sat up; there were reeds above him too, woven together into what seemed to be a small, freshly made hut.

“Hello?” He called.

“Hello.” He heard back in a familiar tone, and he slowly got up and wandered outside of the structure.

Ullane sat in a chair of reeds, fishing on the shore, eyes on her makeshift line but flicking an ear in his direction. She looked the most content he’d ever seen her, but…

He noticed her irises were almost completely violet now. Hardly any threads of their original yellow remained.

“Wait. Why are you fishing? We don’t need to eat.” The eel-dragon troll asked, puzzled.

She smiled. “Not for food. Study.”

The medic yanked her line up, splattering him with a few stray drops as she reeled in a…

What was that, thrashing on the hook?

One moment it looked like a turtle with fish fins. Then a dragonfly nymph with fangs. Then -

Epsilo looked away, feeling he’d be dizzy or ill if he watched the creature’s flesh ripple and shift any longer.

“The spring court were the most understanding of Uryali.” Ullane said.

“They both share a need for growth. Spring changes…and now it never stops.” She said. “Look out at the frogs, Epsilo.”

The violet looked at the creatures sitting on and swimming around the lilypads.

Tadpoles with back legs but no front ones clung to the lilypads. Tadpoles who were nearly frogs. Masses of eggs. All slowly shifting to different stages of life as he watched.

“No stability.” Ullane murmured as she enclosed the creature in a bubble of violet membrane and reeled it in, then put it to the side next to her. 

“If things never stay the same for long, there’s nothing to grieve, nothing to dwell on.” 

She smiled darkly.

“The court doesn’t need to attack us. They just have to keep the summer gate from settling so we can use it.”

“They can’t get rid of it entirely.” Epsilo pointed out. “Surely you can track it by its growth, or…something.” He said with a sigh, very much unsure of exactly how her powers worked. 

There wasn’t really an ‘exactly’ when it came to horrorterrors to begin with.

Ullane looked amused. “They’ve thought of that. I’ve tried to sense the gate, but they must have it warded.”

“Then we find the wards.” Epsilo said, determined. “Ones that intensive have to require the efforts of several fae, or a very powerful one, like a royal.” 

The yellowblood looked intrigued by his words, her tail waving back and forth as her expression became heavily contemplative; she was clearly thinking hard. 

The shapeshifting creature wriggled in its translucent bubble.

Epsilo looked at it. Ullane followed his gaze. Then she grinned.

“You have an idea, don’t you?” He said, with a trace of grim humor. “Please tell me it’s less dramatic than your last two.”

The medic laughed.

“If I can’t guide us,” She said, her fingers and half-black horns crackling with sparks that were, for once, more reddish than violet. “Then I’ll make something that can.”

She picked up the membrane and it withered just as the ones that saved him from falling had, and the creature stopped wriggling. It stopped shifting, too.

It looked at her with what Epsilo could have sworn was fear in its currently rat-like eyes.

Ullane paid it no heed. She focused, humming, and her power sunk into it with a crackle of energy.

The violet shut his eyes, but it hardly mattered. 

He could still smell the rich and slightly rotten scent of torn-open life, feel the power that washed over him as she rearranged its body.

Did it understand what had been done to it, he wondered, as he opened his eyes and saw it now in the form of a firefly-like creature.

It clung to her arm placidly now, thin legs gripping her skin, and Ullane looked perfectly at peace with that.

“I fed it my blood.” She said. “It will grow, be able to pick up the smell of the wards as even I cannot. My senses don’t reach that far.”

Yet, Epsilo did not retort. They didn’t reach that far yet.

How much longer could she hold onto trollhood? Did she care anymore?

He supposed there wasn’t time to discuss it right now. All he could do was watch over her.

As he watched, the insect rippled and expanding to a length of a few feet, and Ullane lifted her arm to set it free. It hovered in the air a few moments as its clear wings beat rapidly, moving this way and that, then abruptly turned and pointed in one direction.

She grinned at him. 

“Will you carry me?”

“I am not a horse.” The violet grumbled, but he dutifully turned back into a werehyena anyway and Ullane climbed on.

It wasn’t as if he’d refuse, well aware of the ticking clock. He loped after the firefly, not at his fastest pace but a steady one he could maintain, trying to avoid the muddiest parts of the ground.

Their guide flew several feet ahead of them, but thankfully always within his sight. 

At least, he thought as he raced across the water-meadows, avoiding clumps of flowers wafting thick pollen clouds, this was the third court. 

Once they made it through the wards and the gate, there was only summer left.

What sort of hellish greeting waited for them this time? Did Ullane have a plan to fight them? They could be running right into another ambush for all he knew.

Yet it was almost silent. Not a peaceful silence, he thought as he kept going, but a heavy one. A pause that held its breath, waiting for something to happen soon.

He didn’t notice the wisps of fog at first, so thin were they, until they began flowing together above and around him, twisting into low streams of cloud.

Golden pollen mixed with the water vapor, floating in lazy swirls among the mist, and Epsilo felt himself growing…tired…

“Help…” he murmured, speech slurred. “Help me, medic…”

The world tilted, shook, his paws clumsily scrabbling and slipping over the mud, and he -

- gasped, throat on fire, his brain unable to make sense of what he saw.

The spring court had become a muddy wasteland riddled with fae corpses cycling through life and decay, rippling with mold and fungus one moment and visible, living organs the next. 

They did not attack as he stumbled past. He couldn’t see the firefly anymore; he had no idea where he was going. He couldn’t feel Ullane on his back.

They simply stood or laid there, staring with empty sockets - rotten eyes - and as one, they opened their bony jaws and disintegrating pincers to sing. 

Flee, now, weeper and werebeast

Go back now, run to the realm that you came from

Ours will not suffer your touch 

No malediction will warp our souls

As yours, diseased, comes to dust

Ignore it…he knew he had to ignore it…

Weighed down with mud, he struggled to lift his limbs. Every breath was sharp in his mouth. His lips foamed over as his lungs began to give out.

Was this…was he going to…

Ullane suddenly stood in front of him, manifesting from nowhere, her back to the werehyena.

Epsilo was struck with terror. He did not want to see her face.

But he could breathe again. He spat out the foam, his lungs still painful, but working, working again.

Ullane walked forward - her arms now mottled black up to her elbows - and with every step lifted from the mire, the footprint overflowed with dark water.

The footprints burgeoned with spiny starfish flesh.

Curling vines rose from them, thick with insect chitin and porcupine spines.

The corpses’ song cut off. Their bodies were…even further changed, unstable, growing into one another, their flesh fusing, screaming -

Wake up, he heard her whisper.

The highblood gasped again, and shook himself to consciousness back in the real world as he blearily looked up at…

…the gate. A shifting, twisting heat mirage that shimmered before him, radiating summer warmth. It almost blended in with the fog around them, but not quite. 

He really was covered in mud, he realized, and it was now baking onto him. He turned back into troll form and backed away a few feet. 

He looked around to see Ullane, still feeling that twinge of instinctive terror.

But her face was…mostly…the same.

Her eyes were all violet now. Not a trace of yellow remained. 

She didn’t seem tired. The lowblood came over to help him up, and no mud clung to her at all. 

“What…did you do?” He said, voice still rough.

“I turned their own dream-weaving rotten. Gave them daymares.” She murmured with a hint of amusement. 

Her firefly landed on her arm again. Ullane stroked it fondly…and then ripped it in two, but it did not die. Its original wriggling, unstable state fell out of the insect and fled from her.

Epsilo watched and she smiled at him. Her teeth were sharper now, too. 

“It belongs here.” She said softly. She rarely spoke above a whisper now, yet he had no trouble hearing. He could feel her voice too, deep in his bones, a faint vibration.

“It deserves to go home.”

Epsilo nodded and, despite his fear, his reservations, he held out a hand to her.

Ullane blinked in surprise, and stepped closer, taking his thick-fingered palm in her slim digits.

Her hand was cold - colder than a lowblood’s should ever be, slightly webbed and damp.

He squeezed it anyway, and shut his eyes against the blast of heat as they both stepped through the gate to the last court of the fae.

[cloudbattrolls]

So many doors – how did you choose

So much to gain so much to lose

So many things got in your way

No time today, no time today

Did someone pull you by the hand?

How many miles to Wonderland?

Please tell us so we’ll understand

[cloudbattrolls]

Knifetuuya

[cloudbattrolls]

A Shot in the Heart

Epsilo Volant | Vernrot Harbor | Present Night

Epsilo wasn’t much of a runner - never had been - but his hyena form was better suited to it than his troll one would ever be.

He panted, long tongue lolling, but kept on, ignoring the light rain drizzling over his striped gray fur. His paw pads and claws clicked carefully over the wet streets, and he kept a respectful distance from the ‘cats’ that roamed the area; he knew they were anything but. 

He knew his quarry had gone this way; he could smell him, the faint reek of salt and implacable odor mixed with troll scent where the creature had passed on his way out of town.

The werehyena’s tail thumped nervously, but he set his jaw and continued. He was getting close.

There.

Six feet tall. Long, curly hair in a puffy braid. Glowing spots on his face and fins, with tall, narrow horns that had smaller triangular growths at their base.

He would seem an ordinary violet to anyone watching, any of the town’s ignorant residents.

Epsilo growled and ran the last length, before he changed back mere feet from Thrixe Varzim, fists clenched as he stood in troll form once more.

Varzim was so good at seeming.

The hybrid calmly turned and looked at the troll.

Epsilo knew then that he had been expected. That the creature had sensed him coming, probably since he’d left Vallis’s hive.

A shiver ran down his spine as he met those lightly glowing eyes.

He felt at once that he was far too seen, yet also that Thrixe didn’t need eyes to perceive him at all. That he could be blinded, yet still look directly in Epsilo’s face with unerring accuracy.

“Why did you do it like that?” He asked harshly. “You didn’t have to. You could have done it slowly, gradually, not all at once!”

“Would he have listened to me?” Replied Thrixe calmly. “If I sang so softly it was easier to tune out? Just one voice?”

Epsilo hesitated for a moment, then his anger returned, eyes narrowing.

“You just wanted revenge. Admit it. This was an excuse to hurt him for what he did to you.”

Thrixe shook his head, almost seeming…regretful?

“If only it were that simple.” He murmured, and he should have been hard to hear over the rain, but his quiet voice carried to the taller man’s ears perfectly.

“No, I don’t want revenge on Vallis, not anymore. I don’t like him, but I would have rather stayed away. I did this for Lusien, and for the town. Tell me. Would he have stopped on his own? Would he have cared? Before it was too late, and trolls fell under his thrall? He didn’t value other lives.”

Epsilo bared his teeth, but he knew he could say nothing. He hated Varzim for being right.

“You still didn’t have to do it like that. He hadn’t done anything yet. You punished him for things he might do! How can that be right? You’re too far gone to make any judgment of others! I’d thought it was Vallis, but it was you! You’re more of a monster than he’ll ever be. I hope Lusien realizes.” He snarled. “I hope he drives you out. You are filth, and I’m sorry you ever came here.”

The horrorterror nodded.

“I didn’t want to wait for him to do it. To let it happen, when I am the only one who could do something about it? You know how it feels. My ancestor was in your mind.” He said gently. “And you still worry what Vallis could do to you.”

Epsilo went rigid.

“Stop it. Get out of my head! You have no right!”

Thrixe nodded once more.

“I’m sorry.” He said, baffling Epsilo with how genuine he sounded. “I don’t. I wasn’t trying to, it happened anyway. Here. I can’t feel anything from you now.”

The finless violet felt a slight sense of relief.

“Good.” He said, stiff. “Keep your awful mind to yourself.”

“Is Vallis so awful?” Asked Thrixe gently.

Epsilo opened his mouth angrily, then shut it.

“He can be.” He muttered. “He almost was, but…”

Thrixe waited patiently.

“…but he stopped, because…he knew it was wrong now.” Admitted the larger man with extreme reluctance.

“You care for him despite your fear.” Thrixe said, gentle. “He’s lucky.”

The werehyena was at a loss, blinking in confusion and wiping water out of his face. This wasn’t how he’d expected this to go at all.

Thrixe hummed, gesturing for Epsilo to follow, and went and sat on a bench under an umbrella. The finless violet followed him warily, sitting as far from him as he could. Not far, given the bench wasn’t all that long and he was a sizable troll, but he still wanted what little distance he could put between them.

A brief pause endured before the hybrid spoke again.

“What do you want me to do to make things right with Vallis? I don’t think he wants to see me. I’m sorry for the pain I caused him, but not for what I did. Even if it wasn’t perfect, something needed to be done.”

Epsilo’s ears flicked as he stared out into the street, thinking. Trolls passed by in the rain, utterly oblivious to the two supernatural beings - after all, they looked like trolls. Epsilo’s hyena form had attracted little interest - he hadn’t attacked anyone, and the town’s filter maintained by Those Who Slumber meant that no one besides Thrixe had been able to perceive his shift of form.

“I don’t know.” The biologist admitted. “Meddling with his head more isn’t the answer.” He said with a scowl. 

Thrixe nodded. “I won’t.”

Epsilo snorted. “For whatever that’s worth.” he muttered, looking down.

“I promise I won’t.” He said quietly. “Lusien wouldn’t like it. It wouldn’t be useful to me, either - whatever growth Vallis experiences is his to decide, I don’t want to force him to do it. It wouldn’t be true growth.

He needed to see that he has to change; what he does with the knowledge is up to him. So long as he does not stagnate again, it will be worth it for him; stasis is like death.”

The finless violet stared at his castemate - for all that Varzim barely deserved the term - and felt unease creeping back in.

“You really aren’t like him.” He muttered. “He says things I can’t understand either, but in a way I’ve come to expect. He still largely cares about his work, and what he can do with his abilities. Not you. Were you always like this?”

Thrixe smiled sadly.

“No. I tried to deny it as I grew into it, tried so hard to be normal…but I’m not. I never will be again, not unless I locked all my memories and powers away.”

He drew his legs up and huddled on the bench, staring out at who knew what, with those eyes.

“You have that music box of me, and my flesh still. I could take them away now, as I can control every part of myself. I think I will take my pieces back…but I’ll let you keep the music box, if sealed so you can’t take me apart and use me again for offerings.”

Epsilo’s face paled. Empress above, Thrixe could do that? He could have slaughtered them both the whole time. 

“I’ll also let it play a more comforting song, a way to soothe my other one…as long as Vallis maintains his troll side.”

The soft voice acquired a more usual hard edge again.

“Why should you get to decide?” Epsilo croaked, afraid but still angry. “Who let you choose for him?”

“Who else is there?” Murmured the Choir. “I’m not perfect. I admit it. But who else could stop him, aside from Gaia? They’d throw him in the jail meant for me, most likely…chains and all. Do you want that for him?”

The biologist’s ears drooped.

“No.” He admitted dully, then huffed. “But that doesn’t mean you’re absolved of responsibility.”

“It doesn’t.” Thrixe agreed. “If Vallis wants reparations from me, my offer is open. You can tell him that. If he takes me up on that, fine. If he doesn’t…” he shrugged. “Nothing either of us can do. You may not believe me, but I genuinely didn’t want to hurt him.”

“Then why did you make him feel those things!?” Demanded the biologist, eyes slightly orange. 

“I could have done far worse.” He said, neutral. “He had to understand how he hurt people. He wouldn’t care otherwise. Who would teach him - you? You hardly care. Vannyn is no role model. Even if you’d tried…would he listen, with nothing to lose for not doing so?”

Epsilo looked down. 

“This way, you too will grow.” The Choir added more softly. “You already feel it - I can tell that just by looking, I promise I’m not in your head. This way you can understand and sympathize with him, and be happier yourself. I know it hurts. But it’s worse to not care.”

Epsilo hmph’d.

“What do you know about caring? How can you possibly care about trolls? You’re even more different from us than Vallis is.”

Thrixe looked away.

“I care because trolls are wonderful. Trolls are important. Trolls mean so much more than most of them understand, even when they feel they don’t. Every life is unique, every body and mind with their own specific physical and emotional needs…they have so much to struggle for, and they do. They keep trying. I think they are more impressive than me, for doing so much with far less than I have.”

Epsilo blinked. He felt oddly humbled, yet also lighter.

“Imagine that. A horror with a heart.” He said dryly, but without any real criticism.

Thrixe looked up into the dark, cloudy sky, and he reached out a hand from the umbrella’s cover to catch some rain.

The finless violet watched, baffled.

The hybrid played with the drops, making them form into an arc that zipped around his palm. He made them glow in his colors, pulsing gently in violet, pink, and white as they moved around in splashes and sheets, changing from one moment to the next. 

Epsilo tried not to look, but he couldn’t help it. The display was beautiful.

Then he shook his head. Nothing Varzim did was truly beautiful; so what if he cared about trollkind? He was still an unfathomable monster.

But Vallis was too, in his way.

Vallis loved his pets. Vallis cared so much about science that he’d lost himself trying to advance it. Vallis glowed when he was happy, regenerated because of copying Thrixe. 

They were different. Thrixe was worse. Yet…

Epsilo heaved a sigh.

“Will you…tell me about yourself, sometime? So I can understand Vallis better? He’s not very good at explaining, though he’s getting there. Please. I want to be there for him.”

Thrixe looked at Epsilo in surprise, his large fins flicking. Epsilo couldn’t help laughing slightly at such an unexpected, trollish expression on the terrifying hybrid.

“Uh. Sure.” Said Thrixe, letting the water drip out of his hands, the liquid behaving normally again.

“I need to go, but…” He took out a notepad from his sylladex and scribbled down his handle, then ripped out the piece of paper to give to the other man.

Epsilo took it, putting it away.

Thrixe got up, and the rain at least had slowed to a drizzle. 

“Is loneliness a horrorterror trait, or are you and Vallis just unlucky?” The biologist asked, just as the hybrid took his first steps away.

His fins lowered.

“I have my moirail, and good friends.” Thrixe said quietly. “I have my signmate.”

The other violet eyed him.

“But not even Lusien knows it all, do they?”

The Choir kept walking, the tips of his fins almost brushing his shoulders.

“It’s better that way.”

Epsilo watched the hybrid leave, and he swore he caught snatches of a sad song drifting toward him through the slow patter of water.

A raw melody that, for all his immunity to horrorterrors, still made him shiver to his bones.

[cloudbattrolls]

Last Stand

This drabble is preceded by The Lightning Strike and followed by All Hail.

Ullane Wistim | Summer Court | Present Night

Ullane took a deep breath, in and out. She couldn’t afford to take too long; she’d waste the reprieve she’d accidentally granted them with her storm. The scorching sun began to pierce through the clouds again more and more as they broke up. The lightning was dying down.

“Before we get to the gate, we have to kill Cyvell, the winter queen.” She told Epsilo calmly as she stood next to her companion. “No matter what else we do, we - "

A crackling noise filled the air, and both trolls’ hair stood slightly on end.

“Great idea, but I’m gonna need you to hold that thought.” Rumbled a familiar, deep voice, though she’d only heard it once before.

Ullane jumped, white tail tip fluffed out as she turned around to face the tall, armored troll on a horse who had just stepped out of another mirage-like rift in the air. Epsilo stumbled back a step or two on the dunes, violet eyes wide. 

“Hi, I’m Pestilence.” They said to Epsilo, and Ullane heard distant screeches from the fae, accusing them of being a traitor. 

“We’re about to have reinforcements in the form of one really pissed off cryokinetic and some ‘bombs’. Do me a favor and stand back while he and I clear a path. Then you can kill Cyvell and get to the prophet.” They went on.

“You’re on your own once you do, though; I’m gonna have my hands full dealing with the complete disaster zone this place is about to become. Clear?”

As if the realm itself had a sense of humor, the clouds began clearing up. The fierce sun was starting to peek through again.

The horseman galloped off, not wasting time with further conversation. 

Ullane watched in awe, and even Epsilo wore a look of shock.

Then she remembered herself, and scrambled backward, urging Epsilo with her as Pestilence galloped away in a different direction, pursued by several flying fae. 

They threw something.

The fae exploded. More followed.

They met the same fate. 

Then -

Ice.

Here in the summer court, the source of all sweltering heat and all diseases that thrived in it, Ullane saw the unmistakable spread of bluish white ice across the sand and water, and she smiled in relief. 

Mikiel Giacho. Thrixe’s moirail. 

They would make it. She’d be sure to thank him later.

Then she went rigid, hearing something, her gray and yellow-violet ears flicking. 

“They’re keeping Cyvell beneath the waves.” She murmured. “Don’t want her dead - she’ll come back quickly, being royal. They want a hostage in case the winter court turns on them once they’re done fighting Pestilence and the cryokinetic.”

The entrance to Sunrest lay several fathoms underwater, near the shore that had now become a frozen battlefield echoing with the cries of enraged and wounded fae. She couldn’t see the blueblood past the thronging mass, but the ice kept coming, so he must still be fighting.

Pestilence too kept riding, running interference for the psiionic by throwing more bombs from just beyond the outskirts of the ice at any fae they could bait into attacking them. The blasts and shrieks mingled with those from the main army. 

Ullane looked at Epsilo, who sighed.

“One last time?” He said, knowing by now what she wanted.

She smiled.

“One last time.” She agreed. “Victory lap. I’ll protect your paws.”

The werehyena dutifully shifted into his beast form, and Ullane knelt down on the warm sand to reach out her hands to his front legs. She grew a sturdy, fitted coating of enhanced firefly carapace around his paws that she attached skate-like starfish spines to slide across with on the bottom, where his claws would normally be visible - molding over them so he would be able to manipulate them easily.

She did the same for his back paws, then jumped up onto Epsilo’s back and grew restraints to ensure she wouldn’t fall off of him. 

He took off the moment she was finished, the massive striped animal running as fast as he could over the sand which quickly became ice. They kept well away from the main conflict as they raced toward the sea - neither wanted to be caught in the crossfire. 

The fae noticed them - how could they not? 

The few that broke off to attack the pair were dispatched in seconds by Ullane’s hurled porcupine spines, dozens of the oversized quills piercing their wings and bodies as they crashed down on the ice. There they writhed and bled out, cursing the woman and the werebeast, who couldn’t hear them - they were already dozens of feet ahead, single-minded in pursuit of their goal.

They had to dodge around other, frozen bodies - Epsilo clipped a few, but the yellowblood’s restraints kept her in place as he grunted, continuing to slide onwards.

As they reached the edge of the ice, Ullane again grew protective membranes over her and Epsilo’s eyes, mouths and noses, and with a final leap, they jumped - 

- diving into the cooled waters in a rush of bubbles as the yellowblood gripped the werehyena tightly and dissolved his paw coverings; they’d be of no use here.

Epsilo, former seadweller that he was, adapted quickly. He began swimming down and toward a massive sea shell that glowed dimly in the depths. 

It wasn’t far. They’d nearly made it. 

Ullane listened as her companion swam, looking around warily with violet eyes for any aquatic fae who might try to stop them. 

She saw massive, distant shapes, and smaller fishlike creatures swimming about…but none made any move to attack as they drew closer.

It put her on edge. The summer court would not give up so easily, nor be so stupid as to put all their eggs in one basket. Surely they’d think she might come, despite it all…

Ah, weeper, came a condescending but not threatening voice that rippled through their minds.

A fae that nearly resembled the classic troll idea of a mermaid swam out to them, were it not for the multiple fins upon the flat, noseless face and the glowing barbels.

You are so much more trouble than you’re worth, it drawled, swimming around them. And truly, who cares what happens to the winter queen? She is the one who spurred Pestilence to bring this accursed icemaker to our world.

You can have her. I will be fascinated to see which of you destroys the other first.

If you win, you can go on to Sunrest. We won’t stop you.

We hardly need to bother.

It laughed at them, all gurgling amusement as it flipped around and swam back to the giant seashell, beckoning them onward with one webbed hand.

Ullane’s own webbed fingers gripped Epsilo’s fur as they exchanged looks, but she nodded grimly. He kept on swimming, nearly at a wide, carved gate in the seashell’s side. 

This wasn’t ideal, but it was better than having to face another small army. She might be able to beat the fae of anthrax.

The disease itself was treated with antibiotics and antitoxins. The problem was that the exact type of treatment depended on what variation of anthrax was involved.

Which in this case was all of them, she realized, a grimly amused smile on her face.

Epsilo swam through the gate and walked up a flight of carved, mother-of-pearl steps, both of them dripping water, to stand in a wide, polished room that gleamed in the seashell’s various colors.

The fae had left them at the gate. The room was silent.

Only Cyvell was present - the scent confirmed it was her, not a trick or an illusion - glaring them down with yellow pupils in black sclera as her hands were bound by a heavy rope of seaweed. She looked for all the world like an ordinary troll, dressed in somewhat ragged blue and teal clothing, only the dark markings on her face and arms an unusual sight - aside from her eyes.

Eyes that radiated complete hatred of the woman merely twenty feet away from her, now dismounting the werehyena.

The rope undid itself and retracted into the floor as the entryway sealed shut behind them with a lowered grate of stone, gurgling laughter echoing through the space.

“Who is stronger: the queen of all winter, or the weeper who bears the power of the Muted? Let’s find out!”

The temperature in the warm, humid room dropped immediately, freezing Ullane’s sodden clothes and forming Epsilo’s fur into frigid spikes.

Cyvell lunged forward, her flesh and bones warping into the shape of a large canine, almost as big as Epsilo’s hyena form - only to hit a shield of bone and quills conjured by Ullane.

She screamed in pain, rotting the shield into black goop in seconds.

Spiny starfish flesh appeared and wrapped around her mouth. The fae of anthrax writhed, sending waves of freezing air and hail through the room as Ullane struggled to get closer.

The yellowblood gritted her teeth, grateful the membrane over her eyes ensured she could still see, but she shivered as her temperature plummeted. She had to end this before Cyvell could freeze or rot her from the inside out. 

Her limbs were going numb, her teeth chattering together, Ullane inhaled, knowing the formula for the chemicals she needed.

She turned the hail to a rain of antibiotic and antitoxin liquid, splashing down on her and her foe alike as Cyvell rotted the starfish flesh off only to howl in misery, pawing at her own skin.

But the winter queen had not kept her position for thousands of sweeps by giving in easily. 

As she howled in pain she breathed out spores of her disease, filling the room with them, and Ullane knew she had only seconds before they ate through her protective membranes.

She reached for Uryali’s power - 

Gone.

Ullane ran for Cyvell, the queen still struggling to get back on her feet, her eyes glowing as she - as she tried to channel the power herself, Ullane realized, eyes wide. Just as Pestilence had once told her the queen done against Thrixe -

She reached for her own psi. She swiped at the fae of anthrax, her hands now encased in bone, sharp and polished as any surgeon’s instrument as they grew ridges and blades over her fingers.

She ripped Cyvell open through skin and fur, muscle and bone. Ullane carved her open mouth through neck, chest and limbs and torso, the queen’s black blood drenching her as she remembered something else Pestilence had said. 

The sole type of blood the Bukit Berongga disease had not touched.

One with no color at all.

For a few, vital seconds, Ullane made all her own blood clear as well, and while she screamed in agony as her cells rearranged themselves, she did not die.

As she looked into the fae’s confused, terrified, furious eyes before Cyvell stopped struggling, and began to melt away entirely, she did not die.

Not even as black spores cloaked her figure like a shawl before they dissipated.

“What...are…you?” 

With her final words croaked, the fae of anthrax was no more. 

Not even the liquid she had become remained, though a chill still lingered in the seashell chamber.

Uryali’s power came rushing back, and Ullane immediately tended to Epsilo, stabilizing him and making sure he would be all right. 

“Hellish.” He rasped as he returned to troll form. “Utterly hellish.”

He coughed, his body purging itself of toxins that steamed out through his pores, and shook his head.

Ullane walked over and leaned on him.

“I know.” She said. “But we can’t linger.”

He nodded wearily in agreement.

“Congratulations, weeper! Great show!”

The incongruously cheery voice of the summer fae sounded, and the door at the opposite side of the room they’d come in from swung open. 

“The gate is just past here. But I don’t think the Fireseer will be so happy to see you. Just a guess.”

Both trolls did not dignify the voice with a response, and kept going for the short walk it took to reach the rippling, churning pool of water that led to Sunrest.

Ullane stared at it a moment, almost unable to believe she’d made it. That she was almost there. 

One more realm.

One more trial.

She took a deep breath, and jumped in, ready to meet the prophet whose words had brought her across all four courts of the fae.

[cloudbattrolls]

The Lightning Strike

This drabble is preceded by Drowned Sorrows and followed by Last Stand.

Epsilo Volant & Ullane Wistim | Summer Court | Present Night

This sun burned them, as they stepped onto the white dunes it beat down on relentlessly. 

Epsilo’s exposed skin sizzled and blackened as he bellowed in pain, and he heard Ullane grunt in distress as well.

Seconds later, she manifested a translucent violet membrane over them again, blocking them from the worst of it while still letting light in.

It was hot enough that it was hard to breathe, Epsilo gasping and even Ullane sweating as they both struggled to take in enough air.

The yellowblood grew membrane over their mouths and noses as well, permeable yet drawing in more oxygen than they could on their own.

“What sort of hellscape is this?” The violet panted after he got his breath back. “None of the other three were this insufferable.” 

The membrane on their skin was, thankfully, thin and light enough that it was barely noticeable, though it was still a little unnerving.

“In stories, midsummer is the most powerful time for the fae.” The medic murmured. “The time when the boundaries grow thin between our worlds. It’s their last chance to stop us.”

He stared blearily out at the distant expanse of blue water gleaming under the bright rays, and then sighed as he felt his wounds begin to heal - though he looked away, not wanting to see the process.

“Thank you.” He said to Ullane, then he paused and turned to look at her.

She’d been burned, yes, but not as much as him. The moderate wounds - mostly shiny, angry dark yellow and white tissue -  at worst - healed before his eyes, turning back into gray and black skin.

“The summer fae are…different.” She said softly. “They rejected Tobria, even though his fae half was most similar to them. They sent him to take an apprentice from the winter court instead. They didn’t want a part-angel meddling with their futures; they believe seeing what’s to come will change it.”

The yellowblood closed her eyes.

“They prefer to never think of the empire. All fae have power in dreams and memories, but theirs are the strongest of all.”

Epsilo looked back at where - where the mirage gate had been. 

Perhaps it was still there, unseen. Perhaps it had moved.

He certainly couldn’t say.

The werehyena let out a long breath, sweating under the sun, but he felt that was probably now the least of his troubles.

“Do you think they’ll fight us?” The highblood asked.

Ullane chuckled.

“Don’t think they feel the need to.” She said, amused.

He did not look comforted by what she’d said. She couldn’t blame the violet, and she began walking toward the shore. He followed, a dry wind tossing pale flecks of the dunes around them.

In truth, she already could feel them watching and waiting, breathing in their scents through her own protective film. They thought themselves hidden in the heat itself, the grains of sand, the light from their burning sun. The summer diseases did not always take corporeal form.

Mumps. Various poxes. Lyme disease.

She did not tell Epsilo; she didn’t want to scare him. There was so much she hadn’t told the violet, not wanting to frighten him beyond what he had already endured.

Perhaps the summer court knew what she was capable of and would let her pass. Or perhaps they had another plan.

She knew the latter was far more likely. Fae did not give up easily when their homes were at stake. This lack of resistance was odd.

Part of her felt sorry for what she’d done; part of her was indifferent. She had no choice, no matter her feelings.

She would get the Varzims back even if she had to die, though she hadn’t yet. Uryali would have told her, she was sure.

Instead she heard him whisper of other things, as she looked into the waters of his dreams, though she could never quite see her face clearly - it was always obscured by the pinkish red haze of her psiionics.

Patterns began forming on the sand. 

At first they seemed like random furrows and spirals blown by the wind, but as she watched, they formed into a face.

It was Xrumon’s - the face of his mech suit, then his real one, wincing and scowling him from pain. 

His eyes seemed to drill right into her, accusing her of saving him only to prove she could. To keep him alive against his own wishes. 

He shook his head, then blew away with a wind that sounded almost like his voice, growling at her for being a malpracticer. 

The medic’s eyes narrowed. She looked away and kept walking.

Mirages shimmered around her - her former quadrants. Laughing, happy…with other trolls. Trolls she didn’t recognize at all. 

She tried to be happy for them. She tried not to care that Hap Ret had abandoned her without a word, that Orpheo hadn’t wanted to stay. 

She looked only ahead of her now, steadfastly ignoring the sand as she walked yet faster as Epsilo called after her, but it didn’t matter.

Calcit’s face formed before her, his eyes closed, eerily peaceful as he’d been on the night of his death.

The night she’d failed him. The night he’d died because of her enemies.

Enemies who had every right to want her disgraced for what she’d done to them.

His whole life, wasted on her account. 

The yellowblood clenched her fists, nails digging into her skin and drawing blood - cold, chill liquid welling up on her skin, when a lowblood’s should be warm.

She kept going, tail lashing back and forth, as the blueblood’s visage faded.

Now she heard cries. She heard the satisfied sound of the Queenpin, congratulating her on her bioweapons. She heard herself, thanking her stiffly, knowing very well that they would be used to inflict disease, cell degeneration, and chronic pain.

She knew they were still out there to this night.

Other people kept paying the price for what she’d wanted, whether they lived or died.

All she had to do was keep -

A whirlwind of sand kicked up around her, blocking her off, isolating Ullane from Epsilo as she shouted curses at it, her tail lashing back and forth in frustration.

Shapes grew from it, rising from the spinning mass in perfect, horribly familiar detail. 

Every patient she’d lost, every undead she’d killed for her studies.

The troll from the Mob she’d tortured, the traitorous cavern jades she’d had to cull.

Cheran, face fallen from when she’d hurt him with her suspicion.

She shut her eyes, then felt their hands upon her. Tugging at her clothing, her fingers. Pleading with her to help them. She felt their breath mist over her neck, their fingers pulling at her hair. The stink of rotten flesh and hospital disinfectant washed over her. 

The mirages weren’t rough. They were hesitant, even as they begged. 

As if they were afraid of her.

It wasn’t real.

It. Wasn’t. Real.

She covered her hands with her face.

They sighed. Gave up. Left her alone.

She had never been able to save them, they said. Poor thing. 

Not even a good doctor.

Not much of a person at all.

Ullane howled, weeping, hair tossing as her throat burned from the force of her voice, her tears welling black and flooding onto the sand. She tore at her skin, the yellow blood scabbing over moments after it bled. 

Her cries blasted the whirlwind back. It fell away into the flooding dunes.

She kept walking, doggedly trying to reach the shore. Her tail hung limply, her violet eyes bleary as they continued to leak dark liquid. 

“Medic!” Epsilo roared, and blearily she saw him through the water rolling down her face, overwhelming the sand, the storm whipping up around them and overhead. The highblood braced against himself against the tossing grains, the wind, and the dark water now streaming everywhere.

“Medic, stop!” He ordered, voice strong and firm as the wind tried to snatch it away.

“I can’t.” She whispered.

For once, all her control was gone.

She would have been frightened, if she had any room left for fear. 

She looked up, tears still coming, at the dark clouds up ahead rumbling with thunder. The whole realm was covered in them, horizon to horizon.

Another slow, heavy step through the wet dunes. 

Lightning struck her, and she barely felt it. She burned - electrified for a brief moment of pain - and then she was whole again.

Again. Again. Again.

The lightning kept coming for her. She grew numb to the brief sizzling of her flesh, the melting of her eyes and hair. 

Sand turned to a spreading lake of clear glass around her, and as she looked down in it past her tears, she still could not see her own face.

A hundred reflections, and in none could she find herself. 

As if she had never been. Or never would be again.

What had the queen of autumn said?

No further, weeper.

If I don’t stop you, your own hubris will…

She paused in her weary march. 

If she could stop - if she could be someone else - anyone else - 

But she couldn’t, could she?

That wasn’t who she was.

Even now, attempting to save her friends, she had destroyed so much. Back when Thrixe had worked for her, she’d let his brain get eaten just to satisfy her own curiosity. She’d been the reason he’d first gone full horrorterror.

How could any good she’d ever done - would ever do - make her worth all that? 

How could she deserve to live? 

She did not realize she had fallen down until strong arms lifted her up and carried her. She did not open her eyes, for her tears still ran.

Rain fell around them, soaking through her shirt and pants in minutes.

She heard lightning strike not far off. Could smell it in the air.

Time passed. The rain kept on. Finally, the person carrying her spoke.

“Tell me, medic - did you want to drown us before we had to take the gate? I thought the chances of it happening then were already decent.”

She opened her eyes slowly, and realized that she was not crying anymore.

She looked up at Epsilo’s grimly humorous face. The yellowblood managed a delayed, croaky laugh at his comment. 

“You have to get me home.” He reminded her. “And the Varzims. No giving up. Though you might want to when you see what’s waiting for us.” He said, tone completely grim now, with no levity at all.

Ullane looked down to the shore.

It was much closer now. 

Hundreds of fae - perhaps close to a thousand - massed upon it. She could tell even from this distance that they came from all four courts. 

They were struggling to deal with the storm that had come upon them, but she knew that wouldn’t stall them for long. 

“So that’s why…” she murmured.

“That’s why spring and summer didn’t bother fighting us directly.” Epsilo confirmed, tiredness plain in his voice. “They just wanted to slow you down enough to beat us here.”

She sniffed the air. 

So many different scents mixing and mingling in the dampness as lightning struck repeatedly around the beach again, and yet…

“She’s here.” Ullane murmured. “Anthrax.”

She had never met the winter queen. 

Uryali had, and he knew what she was smelling, his loathing bubbling up over even a trace of the fae’s presence.

If she focused…she could hear her too, just faintly.

Arguing she should be let past to Sunrest.

For sanctuary. She was being hunted, the winter queen claimed, by the weeper and the horseman of Pestilence alike. 

But Ullane had done too much damage. The summer fae did not trust the winter court at the best of times, being their seasonal opposites, and they certainly did not trust Tobria’s own apprentice, who had brought all this down to begin with.

“Let me down.” She said, quiet but firm, and Epsilo did so.

Once more, the medic manifested a violet membrane above them to protect them from the burning rays, the other long since dissolved when the rain had started.

The clouds were slowly clearing, but the lightning still came.

Ullane made herself breathe in and out, steadying herself.

She was not alone.

She might deserve to be, but she was not alone.

Once more, she took Epsilo’s hand in hers, both webbed, one jet black with scarified vines, one gray.

Ullane wiped away the salt of her dried tears, preparing to strike down the coward queen who had started it all.

[cloudbattrolls]

🗣️ epsilo

"I come from a remote island chain originally. I didn't start learning Standard until I was about three or so, but now I don't recall much of my original language. I suppose it doesn't really matter since that's what most scientific papers are published in."

[cloudbattrolls]

The world’s most passive and blunt werehyena, who would rather be known for his ecological studies.

[cloudbattrolls]

Let's Deify Epsilo!

Epsilo would be the god of conservation and ecology, with a focus on the ocean, but he does care for the land as well, especially coastlines and the like.

He is a god who cares far more for the world itself than the people in it. He is a god of animals, of tides, of wind and plants, all the things that make up a living ecosystem. He is a god of the big picture, of the larger scale in which sapient beings are only a small part.

There are trillions upon trillions of plankton, after all. Who is to say people are more important simply because they give him offerings? They are few compared to the vast scope of the places they inhabit.

If they can remember their place in the grand design and make sure they care for the rest of the web of life, perhaps he'll favor them with a blessing or two.

Worship by the water, or in a storm, or with a hand to a tree. Worship by taking care to mind one's step in wild places.

A light imprint upon the world is a holy one, to him.