#in those swirling black patterns that 'root' out before the image changes-

[lethalhoopla]

The new trailer has injected hype straight into my veins (rip everyone who is tired of Varric narrating trailers feat. Solas, but I'm a sucker for both) and the art is just gorgeous as always so I took screencaps - figured I'd share in case anyone else wanted them!

[cicada-bones]

The Warrior and the Wildfire

Chapter 7: Forged

Hi! so. yeah. I'm really sorry. I had a very hard feburary and then a surprisingly difficult march. but i promise you - this isn't going to be abandoned, just taking longer than usual unfortunately. Please let me know what you think!

word count: 3418

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

A male, all in black, felt his muscles relax as the lights slowly flickered out of the warehouse across the way. As if someone was walking through the apartment, room by room, blowing out candles. The male looked until nothing more was visible through the darkened window, and a small sigh passed his lips.

A cold wind blew towards him, carrying his death-kissed scent back to the glass castle instead of towards the apartment before him and the Fae hidden within. Lorcan knew that Whitethorn and Galathynius were in the bedroom, but there was another – a male – hidden up on the roof.

The ancient warrior scoffed. It had been even easier than he thought it would be. Without magic, they were all completely helpless. Weak.

All he’d had to do was leave a false trail from the docks through the city and into the busy market square, then turn back to the harbor and wait. Wait for Whitethorn to appear, and guide him straight to the princess.

By that very night, he’d done just that.

Lorcan had to be careful to keep out of sight, to keep the wind at his back and his scent out of Rowan’s path, but before long, his quarry was in sight. That fire-breathing-bitch-queen, arrogant as ever. She was with two others; one, the male who was currently guarding the roof, the other, a human female, with a scent like figs and mint. Soon, the female peeled off from the group, her path headed towards that monstrosity of a castle.

While Lorcan didn’t follow her, he made sure to memorize that unusual scent to keep tabs on her later. Then he followed them back to this warehouse hidden deep in the slums, and the apartment hidden within.

It had all been so easy, so simple. He’d been the one who trained Whitethorn, after all. Lorcan knew how the male worked. He just hadn’t expected him to be this vulnerable without his magic. The idiot hadn’t even bothered to fortify the warehouse when they arrived.

Probably too distracted by the princess’ lips. Or her legs.

It hadn’t slipped Lorcan’s notice that when the lights had gone out, they were both in the same room. A room that contained only one bed.

Disgust rippled through him, disgust and fury. All Lorcan wanted was to slide off his perch, rush into the warehouse, and root the two birds out of their nest. But he had to wait, wait until he could catch them off guard, until there wasn’t a sentry to warn them of his approach.

For even now, without magic, Lorcan couldn’t be completely sure that he could overpower Whitethorn. The easiest way, the only reliable way, would be to separate them. To capture the princess and hold her hostage, ensuring that Whitethorn would stand down. While he negotiated for the keys.

In the meantime, Lorcan could scout out the city, discover its weaknesses and patterns and hidden pathways. So he could plan his attack.

So as the whispers in the bedroom quieted, and even the memory of candlelight had vanished, the warrior slid off the roof and onto the street below. Letting himself be consumed by the night and trying his best not to think of just how completely and utterly alone he was.

Without a nation, without a queen.

All he had left was his purpose, and he would follow it through to the bitter end.

···

Rowan awoke to an empty bed, Aelin’s scent swirling all around him, fresh and clean as the daylight streaming through the window beside him. He could hear her shuffling about the kitchen, filling a kettle with water and lighting the stove.

Rowan turned and stretched, his muscles pulling and tightening in all the right places. It had been wonderful to finally sleep in a real bed, with space lie down properly, instead of curled into that rutting wooden box.

His body and mind felt settled, comfortable, and it wasn’t just because he was finally well-rested. For the first time in over a month, Rowan had slept without a single nightmare.

There were no screams on his lips, no haunting images behind his lids, sweat on his limbs, bile in his throat. Nothing.

Rowan almost felt tears bud in the corners of his eyes, the relief was so intense. He wouldn’t ever let Aelin get away from him again. So long as she wanted him, so long as she needed him, he would be there.

Rowan listened as another set of feet entered the kitchen. There was a moment of silence as the two demi-Fae regarded each other, a moment where Rowan prepared to intercede if necessary. But then he heard Aedion say, softly, “There are mushrooms somewhere.”

“Good,” Aelin said, only the slightest edge to her voice, “Then you can clean and cut them. And you get to chop the onion.”

“Is that punishment for last night?”

A sound like cracking eggs, then, “If that’s what you think is an acceptable punishment, sure.”

Aedion’s voice seemed somewhat cheerier. “And is making breakfast at this ungodly hour your self-imposed punishment?”

“I’m making breakfast because I’m sick of you burning it and making the whole house smell.”

Aedion laughed quietly, then shuffled forwards, the sounds of a knife on a cutting board starting from the other side of the wall.

“You stayed on the roof the whole time you were out, didn’t you?” Rowan could hear the smile in Aelin’s voice, and he felt his lips twitch in response.

Pots clattered, and butter began to sizzle. “You kicked me out of the apartment, but not the warehouse, so I figured I might as well make myself useful and take watch.”

Rowan found himself nodding with approval. The male had crossed the line, but at least he had made himself somewhat useful. But remembering what he had said to Aelin last night…it was enough to make his hackles rise.

Rowan forced himself back to calm as Aelin said, “We both have atrocious tempers. You know I didn’t mean what I said, about the loyalty thing. Or about the half-human thing. You know none of that matters to me.”

It was definitely the best apology he was going to get. And far more than he deserved.

A short hesitation, then, “Aelin, I’m ashamed of what I said to you.”

“Well, that makes two of us, so let’s leave it at that.” There was a moment when all Rowan could hear was the scrape of a metal whisk in a glass bowl, then, “I - I understand, Aedion, I really do, about the blood oath. I knew what it meant to you. I made a mistake not telling you. I don’t normally admit to that kind of thing, but…I should have told you. And I’m sorry.”

Another tension-filled silence. Aedion was holding a knife…

Rowan kept himself very still, until finally, “That oath meant everything to me. Ren and I used to be at each other’s throats because of it when we were children. His father hated me because I was the one favored to take it.”

A pause was filled with more sizzling from the pan, now with what Rowan was pretty sure were fresh green onions. “There’s nothing that says you can’t take the oath, you know, Maeve has several blood-sworn members in her court.” Aelin said. “You can take it, and so can Ren – only if you want to, but…I won’t be upset if you don’t want to.”

“In Terrasen, there was only one.”

“Things change. New traditions for a new court. You can swear it right now if you wish.”

Against his will, Rowan felt his teeth grit together. This pause felt even longer than the others.

“Not now. Not until I see you crowned. Not until we can be in front of a crowd, in front of the world.”

Rowan couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved. He couldn’t begrudge Aedion the blood-oath, but still. He wanted Aelin to himself, for just a little bit longer.

Aelin dumped the mushrooms in the pan. “You’re even more dramatic than I am.”

Aedion snorted. “Hurry up with the eggs. I’m going to die of starvation.”

“Make the bacon, or you don’t get to eat any.”

Then the two cousins started to laugh, and this time, Rowan really couldn’t help the smile that sprang to his face. Their laugh was one of such old friendship, Rowan knew that he was no one to get between them. Knew that these petty disagreements were nothing to the depth of their relationship. The last two children of Terrasen’s throne. The two survivors.

Rowan breathed, then turned to rise from Aelin’s queenly mattress to see about some breakfast.

···

An hour later, they were all fed and watered and were now standing in a wide clearing among the stacks of crates, the late morning sunlight slanting through the windows near the high ceiling of the warehouse.

After breakfast, Rowan had finally gotten around to fortifying the apartment. Aelin had already done a pretty good job with it, heavy locks on all the windows, two types of barrier at each entrance, a carefully disguised exit down the back stairs hidden behind the kitchen, and a first floor that, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be that of a completely abandoned warehouse. There was no indication at all of what lay above.

From the inside anyways. There were six windows on the first floor, all half-width, and four more in the apartment above. Rowan was itching to scout the vantage points from the surrounding buildings, to check what could be seen from the outside.

But after spending half an hour carefully going over every lock and seal, Aelin had dragged him down to this clearing hidden in the center of the warehouse. And Rowan couldn’t deny that he was intrigued to see how Aelin had held up her training this past month, and to find out whether the northern wolf’s bark was worse than his bite.

Rowan and Aelin started with stretches, and after a few minutes she threw him a sparring stick and they started their routine warm up from those misty mornings in Wendlyn’s mountains, falling back into a pattern as warm and familiar as waking up in a bed suffused in her scent.

Sparring with Aelin was glorious. Even with the time spent holed up on the ocean, her movements were fluid and luscious and deadly. She flew between poses, the sparring stick a deadly extension of her arm.

Watching her move, their eyes locked together – it made him want to knock that sparring stick aside, shove her into a wall and peel off that tight black suit –

Rowan breathed deep, his eyes flickering shut for second. And the momentary distraction allowed Aelin to get behind his guard and rap him on the chest hard, her eyes glinting.

Rowan growled at her.

Aelin had always been a formidable swordsman – even during that time after he’d collected her from Varese, when she was drunk and dirty and so, so broken. However, she was now stuck in her human form.

So after a few minutes of easy sparring, Rowan executed a series of cuts and slashes that pushed her back into a defensive position, then when she was distracted finding her feet, Rowan knocked the stick out of her hands.

Aelin smiled wickedly at him, her eyes promising revenge as she turned to collect her sparring stick. Before she could unleash any of it on him, Rowan turned back towards her cousin, and after assessing his balance, strength and agility, began instructing him in a few complex maneuvers.

The male was tired, and clearly distracted by all that had been unveiled over the past few hours. And he was also in pain. He hid his grimaces as best he could, but every time a movement stretched his left side, his teeth would grit. And no matter how careful he was trying to be, his movements off his left side were slow and strained.

Rowan hid his exasperation best he could, even if he knew that Aelin had noticed the exact same details from across the clearing, and was not pleased with her cousin’s pigheadedness.

After half an hour with Aedion, Aelin stalked over from where she had been exercising and said, “I think that’s enough for today.”

Aedion stiffened, ready to make a rebuttal. Rowan held in his growl, his eyes flicking between the two cousins.

A moment passed in silence, then Aedion’s eyes narrowed, then turned back to Rowan. “I heard a story,” the young wolf drawled, “that you killed an enemy warlord using a table.”

Aelin spoke before he could, “Please,” she scoffed, “Who the hell told you that?”

“Quinn – your uncle’s Captain of the Guard. He was an admirer of Prince Rowan’s. He knew all the stories.”

Aelin’s eyes slid to meet Rowan’s, and he smirked at her, bracing the sparring stick on the floor. Her lips twitched, her eyes twinkling with surprise. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “What – you squashed him to death like a pressed grape?”

Rowan choked. “No, I didn’t squash him like a grape.” He shot her a smile. “I ripped the leg off the table and impaled him with it.”

“Clean through the chest and into the stone wall,” Aedion said.

“Well,” said Aelin, snorting, “I’ll give you points for resourcefulness, at least.”

Aedion rolled his neck. “Let’s get back to it.”

Aelin’s lips pursed, and she shot Rowan a look that said, Don’t you dare kill my cousin. Call it off.

However, Aedion wasn’t so slow-witted to miss the look that passed between them. The general’s jaw tightened even as his fingers tensed around the sparring stick. “I’m fine.”

“A week ago,” Aelin said, “you had one foot in the Afterworld. Your wound is still healing. We’re done for today, and you’re not coming out.”

“I know my limits, and I say I’m fine.” The demi-Fae’s words were tight, terse. Rowan found his lips spreading into a slow, sly grin. Aedion met his eyes, his brow tightening.

If he wanted to play, Rowan would play. The cub needed to be taught a lesson.

Aelin groaned, but kept her distance. Rowan found that he was grateful – if she intervened this time, it would take even longer for this to be resolved, and then who knows when it would finally be settled.

Rowan had nearly a full second’s warning before Aedion attacked, a simple feint to the right and swing low. Rowan dodged efficiently, deflecting and positioning to the offensive. Off-balance, Aedion swung his stick upwards on instinct, deflecting Rowan’s blow. Rowan let the young wolf hit the next blow, his lips tugging upwards almost against his will. This would be even easier than he had expected.

Rowan made to sweep Aedion’s legs out, but the wolf twisted out of the way just in time, stamping hard enough on Rowan’s stick to snap it in two and simultaneously making to swing his stick right into Rowan’s face.

Rowan ducked, grabbing the two halves of the stick in his fists and going low, swinging at the general’s legs. Aedion didn’t see the move coming, and had no time to react before he was flat on his back, gasping for breath and tears winking in the corners of his eyes as pain arced through the partially-healed wound in his side.

Rowan was already in place, one half of the stick pressed into the male’s throat, the other in his abdomen, a snarl echoing in his throat.

Aedion was just blinking beneath him, astounded. Rowan made sure his words were quiet enough that Aelin, with her human ears, couldn’t hear him. “Your queen gave you an order to stop – for your own good. Because she needs you healthy, and because it pains her to see you injured. Do not ignore her command next time.”

The muscles in Aedion’s jaw flickered, eyes blank.

Rowan’s eyes narrowed, fury licking at his bones. He pushed the sticks in a little bit harder. “And,” he added, “if you ever speak to her again the way you did last night, I’ll rip out your tongue and shove it down your throat. Understand?”

The general’s jaw seemed to relax slightly, the anger fading from his eyes. His words were hardly more than a breath, “Understood, Prince.”

Rowan stood and backed away, then whirled around as a bright, “Hello!” sounded from the doors to the warehouse.

A beautiful woman with piercing green eyes and flowing black hair was striding into the warehouse, her steps controlled and powerful, but not in the way of the warrior. More in the way of the wildcat.

This must be Lysandra.

Rowan relaxed slightly. Lysandra shut the rolling door behind her, boxes and bags in her arms. She moved like a cat too – soft and silent on the cobbles. No wonder Aelin was using her to spy on Arobynn for them.

She took two steps into the warehouse, then stopped in her tracks, her eyes meeting Rowan’s. Before they could do any more than look at each other, Aelin had stepped around him and was grabbing bags from Lysandra’s arms and steering her into to the apartment above.

Within half a minute they were both gone, the door behind them shutting with a soft click. Rowan turned back to Aedion, who was easing himself up from his sprawled position on the ground.

“Is that Lysandra?” Rowan asked.

“Not too bad on the eyes, is she?” The wolf’s eyes flashed.

Rowan snorted. “Why is she here?”

Aedion began prodding his side, checking to see if the stitches were still intact. “She probably has information about Arobynn.”

Rowan held in a grimace, shutting out the name of that bastard assassin to keep it from distracting him too much. “Yet she doesn’t want you to hear it?”

“I think she finds everyone but Aelin boring,” Aedion said, an edge in his voice. “Biggest disappointment of my life.”

But Rowan didn’t care about this arrogant male and his conquests. For the first time in a long time, she had found someone. Not a warrior, not a cousin. Someone she could keep for herself. He smiled, just a bit. “I’m glad she found a female friend.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aedion’s brow furrow, wondering at the change. Rowan let the softness fall from his face, turning his gaze back to the prince. “Aelin’s court will be a new one, different from any other in the world, where the Old Ways are honored again. You’re going to learn them. And I’m going to teach you.”

This was why he was here, he reminded himself. To form the foundation of her court. To make sure it would be strong.

“I know the Old Ways.” Aedion scoffed.

“You’re going to learn them again.”

The general pulled himself off the ground, his shoulders set back as his expression steeled. “I’m the general of the Bane, and a prince of both Ashryver and Galathynius houses. I’m not some untrained foot soldier.”

Rowan gave a sharp nod, a concession. This was a prince – he could not forget. “My cadre, as Aelin likes to call them, was a lethal unit because we stuck together and abided by the same code. Maeve might be a sadist, but she ensured that we all understood and followed it. Aelin would never force us into anything, and our code will be different – better – than Maeve’s. You and I are going to form the backbone of this court. We will shape and decide our own code.”

“What? Obedience and blind loyalty?” Aedion wasn’t taking the olive branch, but Rowan wouldn’t let the sharpness in his tone get to him, not when he was so close.

He felt the weight of his words as he said, “To protect and serve.”

“Aelin?”

Rowan met Aedion’s eyes, and the wolf’s did not quaver. “Aelin. And each other. And Terrasen.”

Aedion held his gaze for another moment before looking away, but Rowan knew that the young demi-Fae understood. That Aedion knew that what they were daring was something that no one had dared for a very long time. If ever. And that their success would require more than just strength or bravery or strategy.

That this precious, fleeting thing could be stronger than iron, than rock, than the very mountains thrust up from the depths of the earth.

But only if they forged it together.

···

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···

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[jengajives]

Couple of OCs in this one to make it work, but I really wanted to do something with second/third age Maglor gettin too close with Ulmo and the Oath sneaking up bite him

“So... you’ve seen it?”

Maglor didn’t look up when he spoke. Just went on dragging his fingertips through the sand, drawing swirling patterns on the beach around him. Ulmo sat cross-legged on a rock watching him, letting the wind blow warm and gentle raindrops through both their hair. A beautiful evening for a talk in the rain.

“Seen what?” he asked absently. There wasn’t anything familiar enough in the way Maglor stiffened at that to be alarming.

“It,” the minstrel said again, softer but more insistent. “You know. The...” He trailed off. The fingers on his right hand, twisted with scars, gave a feeble twitch.

The burn marks reminded Ulmo what they were probably talking about and so he nodded.

“Oh, yes. I’ve seen it. I keep it safe, you know. You needn’t worry yourself.”

A long silence. Maglor pressed his hand into the cool damp of the sand.

“Yes,” he mumbled distantly. “No need to worry...”

Silver armor and royal blue banners. Swords that gleamed under the light of the stars.

A figure atop a mountain peak, cloaked and hooded, and the blood-red torchlight lighting his brothers’ faces in the high court of Tirion.

Constantly the words of the Oath boomed now in Maglor’s head, where it had slept for many hundreds of years. Constantly the weight of his father’s spirit pressed his mind.

He would have left the coastline and forsaken sight of the sea, but the glimmer of silver and gold he often saw now beneath the distant waves kept him fixed upon the shore. To turn his back would be to give up the Oath and suffer the ultimate pain of retribution.

He could not. He could not. He could do nothing but cower on the edge of the water, too afraid to act.

“No one will withhold a Silmaril from the house of Fëanor,” said his father within the deeps of memory, “be it Elf, Man, or Vala.”

Ulmo.

His burned fingers trembled and twitched.

Ulmo, his friend. Sheltering the Silmaril at the bottom of the sea.

He buried his eyes beneath quivering hands and tried not to let the connection form.

The Oath waited ever so patiently.

The water was still and glassy black, reflecting a sky of stars that reminded Maglor of the ages before the sun and moon. His days in Valinor, before any curse or oath had torn his family and soul asunder.

He liked the pool. It was always cool and tranquil like a vast sheet of glass within stone’s throw of the sea, and when the world was younger he used to come here to remind himself that he was a lord of the Noldor no longer; look at his reflection and see nothing but a wanderer without people or honor to plague him.

Tonight, though, he saw frost-white armor glinting ghostly beneath his coat, and the light of Aman burning fierce in his face, and in his eyes the soul of the two trees mingled and tamed within depths of stone.

Maglor cast a stone across the pool to shatter the image, unable to stop the quivering that spread up from the root of his spine.

“Is it far?” he asked softly.

Ulmo didn’t stand there in the gangly form he was so fond of, but Maglor still knew he was listening.

The water lapped at the shore like gentle laughter.

“Far enough, but well within my reach.”

When Maglor turned to look at the sea the entire horizon was turned to streams of molten gold and silver chasing each other endlessly within the ocean’s cold jewel.

“Where are we going?” Riston asked eagerly as he trotted behind.

Maglor had forgotten he was there. His mind was busy with other things.

“Going?” he repeated. “When are we ever going anywhere?” But the words were numb and he could not stay the path his feet now took of their own accord.

“I just thought,” huffed Riston, scurrying over the sea-hewn boulders to try and keep pace, “that we would be avoiding places like that.” He pointed upwards.

On the nearby clifftop, a tower fortress blazed with torchlight red and fell.

Maglor let his eyes wander down the cliff face to the dark gap at its foot.

“Yes,” he said dimly. “We should.”

And he hurried along, desperate now to come quickly to the cave and dispense with this mania.

If he could just see what he was seeking, the need for it would pass.

It would pass.

The cavern was cold and dripped with seawater, and in all the ages of the world it had not changed. From the tower above, the stone seemed to vibrate with raucous shouts and music, but the dark stone, crusted with barnacles and grasping things of the sea, was fast and familiar under Maglor’s feet. He moved eagerly now, driven forward by the desperate need to prove himself wrong, forgetting entirely the fact that Riston trailed behind him in wonder.

In the darkest back of the cave, a pale green light shone just enough to illuminate a small stone chamber, wide and high-roofed, and the shelf carved carefully into its back wall.

He knew the place, because he had labored there cutting stone to forget the world, because he had poured Maglor Fëanor’s son into this rock to forget him.

On the shelf rested gleaming white armor, and above it on the wall was set a pale sword with a green gem set into its hilt.

They looked polished and new, as if he had left them yesterday and not thousands of years hence.

It felt as though everything warm left Maglor in a single rush and he was nothing but cold stone himself, staring blank at those arms and wishing he could forget them.

If all was fair, Glírlang’s curved blade should still drip with blood for every life it had taken. The blood of his kin and his friends who had done nothing but stand between him and his father’s prize.

Maglor fell to his knees.

Yes. Yes, it was over now. There was no Oath that could hold him to kill again. No promise he had made would drive him any longer. He was not his father. He was not the elf prince who had sailed from Valinor long ago. Yes, he was no one. No one.

“Maglor-!”

Slowly he turned.

Riston was still here, but oddly enough he was not the only one.

When Maglor saw eyes gleaming cold with greed and malice he thought at first of goblins, and of his brothers, but these were only Men with stout swords who crept in on thick boots that cracked the clinging shells beneath them. They spoke Westron, roughly, though it took him long seconds to understand it.

“Trespassin’,” one said. His blade flashed in the green light of the gem. “Little vagabonds trespassin’ on our lands.”

“Oi,” said another. He pointed to the shelf with the tip of his sword. “Puttin’ some shiny armor down here so’s you and your friends can come back and kill us with it later?”

“That don’t make no sense.”

“Shut up! They’re trespassin’, and you know trespassers gotta die!” The first man’s pale lip curled into a grin. “Besides. I want me that nice silvery sword, and they’re in the way of me takin’ it.”

They moved closer, and Riston stumbled back with a squeak. His Westron wasn’t good enough to understand what was going on.

“Maglor!”

They would both die. What would Maglor do? He could do nothing. Well enough for him to die on the point of a sword, but Riston was barely more than a child.

Well enough for him. Well enough to die here.

“Look at ‘im squirm!” roared the one man, and with fluid ease he cast Riston to the floor and planted a boot on his chest to keep him there. “You say I gut ‘im, boys, or take ‘im up to the tower and let the others have a go?”

Laughter echoed off the walls of the chamber. Maglor’s back hit cold stone but all he could hear was Riston screaming his name.

“Maglor!” cried Elros as the orcs swarmed around him, arm thrown protectively in front of his brother, both little ones wide-eyed and trembling with fear. “Uncle Maglor, please!”

The sun glinting through cloud near the sea. Orcs guffawing to find the little lords of the Noldor unguarded.

So many ages ago and Glírlang dripped with blood.

Fire rushed across the surface of the pool with a deafening roar.

Glírlang pushed in through the back until the tip of the blade came right out the other side.

Blood gurgling through punctured lungs.

Maglor pushed and the Man fell, toppled over, the sword slipping easily from the hole it had put in him, resting with such familiarity in Maglor’s hand.

His Glírlang. So familiar.

He turned to the other Men, standing right over Elros, blade glinting and body slipping automatically into a defensive stance.

No, no, it wasn’t him. Elros wasn’t here, he was long dead now.

It was Riston. Little Riston.

Yes. Riston.

The sword in his grip brought him back through centuries of honey-slow time.

“Step back,” he said steadily. Many years had passed since last he used Quenya, but it flowed now easily past his tongue and filled the whole of the cavern with a crackling power. “You will not touch him.”

The Men scrambled away, faces frozen in awe and terror, for it seemed to them that they had just watched a wandering beggar transform before their eyes into a fell warrior of old, shining with the light of countless centuries and the power of ancient kings, and his sword was alight with green flame.

His enemies fled before him like the cowardly goblins had in ages past.

Torchlight. Blood-red torchlight in the night without end. The courtyard of Tirion stained crimson.

“Let no creature stand between my house and a Silmaril,” Maglor said softly, speaking the same words to the cavern that had sealed his fate those ages ago. “Be it Elf, Man, or Vala.”

He heard the dull roar of the ocean outside, and left Riston behind to cry gently in the earth’s cold embrace.

The waves slammed the shore with fury, but to Maglor, all seemed silent. The stillness of the night utterly complete.

Nothing to shatter his fevered thoughts as he screamed a challenge on the wind to the Lord of the Sea.

“No one will withhold a Silmaril.”

No one.

Vala.

“Maglor.”

He looked up and Ulmo was there, standing in the ankle-deep water in the tall, gangly form he’d once kissed. The sky had grown cloudy but he couldn’t remember when, and the distant line of the sea was alight with fire.

Maglor raised a trembling hand and put the tip of his sword to Ulmo’s chest.

“You... will... give it to me...”

“This is mad,” Ulmo said, very calmly. “Maglor, you don’t have to do this.”

Sea spray brushed against his cheek in some semblance of a fond touch, but he was not swayed.

“Give it to me,” he hissed, his own voice like the touch of hot metal to water. “Or I’ll kill you.”

“Don’t do this,” Ulmo said again. When he stepped back Maglor took a swipe at him, but it was easily blocked by a forearm coated in rough blue carapace like a crab’s. Rusted chains clinked against each other with every movement Ulmo made.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

“You would keep what’s rightfully mine!”

The hissing flame and shadow of Balrogs. His father’s eyes burning brighter than the sun with his last words.

“Thief!” Maglor screamed, batting Ulmo’s shield arm aside to press Glírlang to his breast again. “That Silmaril is mine!”

Ulmo straightened to a new height. His brow, crusted with salt and living stone, grew hard and fell. His simple clothes hardened to plates of chiton armor.

“Do not make me hurt you,” he said again, but now his voice boomed like thunder on the plains and waterfalls and waves breaking against unyielding stone. Behind him the sea rang with the blowing of horns in the deep, shaking the ground, sending rushes of icy water up to swirl against the solid cliffs. Lightning split the sky. Rain began to fall in cold sheets.

“Deliver me what is mine!” Maglor roared against the wind. “Or I will take it!”

Glírlang flashed white light back at the sky. Maglor felt the might of his brothers behind him. The strength and glory of Valinor rushing through him as if he had just newly set foot on Middle-Earth. His blade moved in a blur of green and white, and when he returned again to ready stance, Ulmo stood before him with a gash across his face slowly beginning to seep seawater.

When he touched the tear in his skin, the water turned blood red.

“So be it,” Ulmo said at last, and with the rush of the sea, the tall glorious form was gone, and in its place was a tower of water adorned with sharp yellow teeth stained scarlet, and lengths of rusted silver chain caught in the swell, and a million blue-green eyes that saw everywhere water touched the world, that saw into Maglor’s very soul.

The roar of a tidal wave filled his ears and the flood took him.

Direction became utterly meaningless because he was spinning too fast to recognize any way at all. There was no color but the black of fathomless depths, and Glírlang was torn from his fingers, and teeth tore his flesh, and he spun alone suspended in the might of the sea.

Well enough, to end this way. Conquered at last.

Maglor screamed and water rushed in to fill his lungs. All around him and within him Ulmo spoke.

“If it is the Silmaril thee desire, then take it.”

Before his eyes, the brilliance of the Two Trees locked in a jewel without equal.

“Take it and see where it leaves thee. Let it drive thee mad. Let thee fall as thy brothers have fallen.”

Maglor stretched out his fingers. It was there. It was there, he could feel it, he could almost taste it...

“Take the heirloom of thy house,” Ulmo rumbled, “and let it destroy thee.”

Maglor screamed and the water played the sound he couldn’t make as Being began to fade.

Everything went still and silent.

When air rushed again into his lungs, all he could do was sob.

“Why didn’t you do it?!”

On his knees. Water dripping slowly from his hair, his fingers in the sand.

“Why do you keep me here?!”

The blinding light of the Silmaril resting in a pool in the sand. Glírlang at its side. Maglor took up the blade and threw it with all his strength into the sea, then fell again with his eyes turned from the jewel, his whole body shaking with sobs.

“I don’t want it! I don’t want it! Please!“

Still he was here. Still he lingered.

“Just let me go,” he breathed to the motionless air. “Just take me! I don’t want it! I failed! Just let me go!”

Ulmo did not answer. No one answered.

The waters were still and the Silmaril lay there watching.

Maglor screamed at Ulmo to take it away, but the Lord of the Sea would not answer.

And his mind crackled and folded like the flesh of his hand.

[overhere-series]

Over Here: Chapter Three

And there we are! Last of the revisions on these opening chapters are now officially finished, enjoy the book from here with a far better exposition. 

Cass’s alarm blares to life. She fumbles her phone off the nightstand like a wet bar of soap, thumbs the alarm off and curls back into the covers again. Images from her dream persist- a brown bird, a black hole, a town so alive with color it belongs in one of her dad’s books. They don’t fade to fuzz as most dreams do, stark and vivid as the bridges tend to be. If anything, it’s all coming into sharper focus as she wakes.

But the pent-up panic it gives her begins to ease as she takes in the whiff of incense wafting up from her dad’s studio. Eyes closed, she listens for the thrum of his music downstairs, be it the beats of radio fodder or high-speed banjo strumming.

None of his familiar genres welcome her, though, just a jazzy number droning soft from a source there in the room with her. The incense swirls more lavender than cinnamon.

“Is everything alright?” a lilting, reedy, painfully familiar voice asks.

Cass sits up with a jolt that sways her bed-no, hammock. She crashed out in a hammock, cushy pillows and blankets lumped beneath and around her. Thin tapestries are draped across the ceiling instead of painted stars like her room back home, too, matching the root-like patterns of the rugs that cover the floorboards.

Unlike the collection house, there’s not a glint of metal or plastic among the wood and cloth besides the radio on a table in the corner.  The source of the music then, though how it’s playing she can’t guess. It looks like it’s got flowers growing into the grate of its speakers.

The feather-haired guy preening in the wall mirror thumbs the stringy bass hums and foreign but pleasant voice down.

Cass presses her face into the pillows and groans.

“Cass?”

She glares at him with half her face still pressed to the pillows. So he can get a good look at her unamused eyes without distraction.

Far from being intimidated, Winston just cocks his head. Her dirty looks need to step up their game, apparently. “Are you alright?” he repeats.

“Can’t be,” she hisses. “Still here.” The wavering fear from the dream ebbs back, worse than before as a shred of relief comes arm in arm with it like a new pal it’s picked up. Add in how comforting the tweaks on the sounds and scents of home are in this place and her feelings get too tangled for her to deal with this early in the morning.

The rest of last night bleeds back to her, including how she’s come to find herself crashed out here. Here being another world, but also this sort of hotel the bird got them into after the whole sylphs incident. Cass had passed out within minutes of getting to the room, too tired even to rail Winston for more answers. A full night’s rest later and her energy to handle this place has made a comeback, though.

More of a comeback than she likes. She’s almost eager to get going, more than just to get back home.

Winston still his head tilted at her. He seems to have cleaned up when she was out, suit spotless white and feathers ruffled in a slightly less mad scientist mess than when she saw him last. Almost like the feathers grew with the grain of normal hair, framing his face in a weirdly owlish way.

“That sound, do you know what made it?” he asked.

Cass holds up her phone for him to see, but snatches it back when he reaches to take it. He draws away as she puts her legs over the side of the hammock and stretches. “It’s an alarm, birdbrain,” she says, and tosses the phone in her bag. “You guys have radios, for crying out- forget it, don’t worry about it.” Not the time to be debating tech capabilities of this place, even if she has no idea how they’ve wired electricity into this firetrap of a house or where the stations are coming from.

“It’s an alarm but I’m not to be alarmed?” Winston asks.

She rolls her eyes at the grin on his face and laces up her shoes. “Aren’t you a comedian. Thanks for not waking me up, early-”

She cuts herself off before she can finish the pun tucked in the taunt. The absence of new clothes and a shower makes her itchy and does a lot for her patience to see a joke in any of this disaster.

Winston just folds the blanket she’s dumped to the rugs instead of getting all peeved. Once she has her bag across her back, Cass takes him by the elbow to keep him from tidying the rest of the room.

“Come on, sooner we’re on the road, the better.”

*

From the hippy hotel they take off over that mossy bridge, careful to skirt the patch of lyreblooms this time around. Silence hangs between the pair as they walk. They may as well be on some scenic nature hike at the pace Winston ambles, Cass’s quick strides overtaking his wider ones with no real effort. He strolls along with his hands in his pockets, taking in the shift of the leaves from those ribbony reds to a purple like plum trees. Like he’s just as amazed with his own world as Cass probably should be.

Of course, he also ends up the one to break their silence. “Making another alarm?”

She’s got her phone in her hands. No service, no wifi, but she dials her house anyway. All she gets is angry beeping in her ear. She growls. “Might as well. Probably the only thing I can do with this thing now.”

“May I?” Winston curls his fingers in an apparently multiversal ‘gimme gimme’ gesture.

Cass hands it over, frustrated but nosy to see what he’ll do. She watches out of the corner of her eye as he explores it.

“Oh!” he says after a moment. “I’ve never seen one of this kind alive before- something about the material keeping magic out.” His fingers blur a bit, something surrounding them that she can’t quite see.

With it the screen flickers, her default background of Painted Hills going pixels until he tosses it back. The phone’s so hot to the touch she almost hot-potatoes it back. “What did you even do?”

“Nothing! Just a small drop of magic but that must be a bit for such a device to cope with,” he notes with a laugh. “I’ll leave the tampering to Marshall. He has a way of making metal and glass do his bidding somehow, though this inbetween material doesn’t respond near as much.”

“What, plastic?”

“Yes, that. Over Here still has yet to crack it, or at least this side of it. Those inorganic creations of yours aren’t bad as iron but still...”

“You can’t actually call it that,” she says. Her lips press tight together. A safe, slightly mocking question, even if she blurted it out. “Over Here. It’s dumb.”

“In relation to your world, we can and do,” he laughs. “The country we’re in at the moment is Ellis. Certainly not the worst of places for an otherlander to fall to.”

Cass bristles at his phrasing, like she’s the alien here next to a barefoot bird in a tux who walks through walls. The fact that this world even made up a word for people like her- or that there’s people like her period- doesn’t make her feel any better about the sound of it. “So if I’m an otherlander, what’s that make you? Doesn’t explain to me why you’re a bird in my world and a person in this one. Like do you change in the gap or-”

She flinches as Winston disappears from her side.

On the ground instead is the bird from the park, still tapping along the path.

“Okay. Werebird.”

She tenses up as the bird pauses, wings spread wide, and sprouts back up to her guide. Another shimmer she can’t quite see encases what probably doesn’t make for a pretty transformation. At least she’s not subjected to some drawn-out Animorphs cover stuff, quick enough that she might have blinked and the bird popped back into Winston.

He fluffs a hand through his newly messy feather hair and walks on. “Magician, actually,” he tells her, voice cracking bad as Stan’s.

She goes stiff, containing a spasm in her chest that’s definitely not a laugh. “Right. Meaning?”

“Meaning I create and perform magic, as do most in this world.”

“You guys are real subtle,” she says, faux impressed. “And do you cut yourselves in half or is it more like card tricks?”

“Perhaps I ought to get to the root of things, yes?” he replies. Cordial as ever, Winston stops and reaches into the branches above them. Clumps of little black berries weigh them down, letting him pick a bunch off. “In this world, where there’s life, there’s magic. Every living thing creates it in one form or another, though humans more than most.”

“Okay.” A rehearsed answer, sincere enough it’s not condescending since it has to be common knowledge here. Cass watches him pull a small bottle from his jacket and take up his stroll again beside her.

Absently he crams the berries inside, dying his long fingers blue in the process. “Because humans produce more, they can control their magic and use it to shape the world around them. It’s why I exchange forms, whisk, or do this.”

“Do what?”

He spits in the bottle, pops the cork on, and shakes it up. After a second he holds it up to his eyes and, satisfied, shows it to Cass. “Making a focal- a magic focus, if you will. Put enough of them together in a particular manner and you have an amalgam of them, like Marshall’s device. Something of a magical machine, I believe? If we’ve time I’ll show you more.”

“I’m cool with not watching you spit magic on things.”

Winston shrugs, not the least bit sheepish. “I’d have used pure magic, but then you wouldn’t have been able to see it.”

Cass squints at the bottle. A tiny shimmer might have glinted on the glass, but nothing too flashy. “Still can’t see it,” she says.

“Don’t worry, you will,” he assures, stowing the bottle in the little leather bag he keeps his coins in. “Either way, the ink will last longer that way and we’ll be able to scribe Marshall and the others.”

She lags behind a second as he picks up the pace. “Wait, what?”

“The scribing ink, it’s for sending messages without-”

“No! The seeing thing. Why can’t I see magic? I saw the gap just fine.” A heat rises in her chest along with her panic. How many things like the sylphs are out here that she can’t see? The less she needs to rely on the bird, the better, but being blind until something triggers her magic vision or whatever bothers her more than she cares to admit.

But Winston just walks on. “Your eyes will adapt,” he says. “Give it time.”

Questions sit in Cass’s mouth, begging to be spat out already, but she grits her teeth against them. Probably just going to open the floodgates on another nonsense non-explanation. She grips the straps of her bag and keeps an eye on their surroundings. Not like she’ll be here long enough for this to matter.

The trees grow tidier than they were in the last town, back to flashy reds and violets without being so tangled and overgrown. The pair continue downhill with the stream and eventually come to the crumbling remains of another bridge. From here the forest gives way to a crop of hills. Vineyards stretch like nets over them, dotted with big houses here and there. No more magical than wine country back in Oregon.

To her dismay, though, the town across the bridge looks about as magical as the last. More of those mossy stones lay together to form the road at their feet, leading past cabins and trees to a tidy square of more brick buildings. Long strands of flowers and green flags stamped with a silver tree hang between the rowhouses. In the right light, it looks a little like the vines grow through the bricks and into the walls.

“Stay close,” Winston says. Cass glances from the buildings to the buzzing street of people. She jogs up behind her guide, shoulders high like a touch from these people can burn her.

Snatches of conversation pass through one ear and out the other. It’s not long before she sees how the clothes on these magicians seem to lack seams, how their faces and complexions can line up with any garden variety Earth human but off slightly. They don’t seem at all concerned with the two travelers, preoccupied with heading to their own individual point A’s and point B’s. Or chatting on porches, or chasing kids around. Cass trains her stare on a select few, like a guy in a sweeping skirt leaning against a house with a moody look on his face. Or a cat, who leaps down a branch of flowers and morphs into a woman to talk to the moody guy.

She catches Winston’s arm to keep from stopping to study them all. Her hands itch for the sketchbook in her bag, but she gets sucked out of it when Winston looks down at her.

She lets go. “What? I’m trying not to lose you out here,” she mutters, then forges on when he just tilts his head again. “Do you even know where we’re going?”

“Somewhere for decent directions,” he says. He cranes around, eying the signs above each building before settling on one. Whatever it is, he drifts toward it and beckons her with a quick ‘come along’.

Cass doesn’t even have time to grab him before he darts inside, leaving her to pause under a wooden sign that reads Fausts’ in loopy painted print.

Minutes later she sits staring at the spread on the table with her arms crossed. The warm, yeasty scent of fresh bread curls around her, fruit glistening in its bowl just like the beads of condensation on the glass of amber juice placed beside them. More jazz swoons from a radio, pluckier than the stuff she knows with more piano and guitar than horn. Cass’s dark brows narrow in concentration, her jaw tight.

“You’re not going to eat anything?” Winston prompts.

Her stomach rumbles almost on cue, silent but no less insistent for it. When did she eat last? Pizza back him, an eternity enough ago that she can’t argue with a free meal.

But her old knowledge of magic makes her hesitant to touch a thing. Reminds her of how fae trapped people with banquets they couldn’t resist, or how Persephone got roped into the underworld from just a couple of seeds.

Still, she’s not exactly at a banquet in the woods or the Greek realm of death. Despite the waitress levitating dishes in a cloud around her and the wood-paneled style of a vineyard inn, the restaurant they sit in now manages to have a small-town diner vibe. Everyone chatters around them like they know each other, though she and Winston receive some raised brows and pitying smiles dressed as they are.

Not exactly a swords and sorcery tavern or anything, but it springs to mind all the rules she’s been ignoring since she got here. Shit, has she given anyone her full name? Cassandra Ryan Douglas isn’t usually her opener but does it have to be first, middle, and last or just what she calls herself?

Winston staying polite and patient as ever only feeds her suspicions, but she reaches for the juices after a few seconds of his staring. Putting off sipping it and his pestering in one fell swoop.

His eyes shift soon to the contents of his jacket on the table, anyway. As soon as the waitress led them to a table, he dumped out his ink bottle, coins, and a strip of cloth that could be a bowtie out in front of him. Wherever they go when he goes bird, Cass doesn’t want to know.

She slouches in her seat. “How’s that plan coming, featherhead?”

“Along. I’m stitching one,” he says. He nibbles some bread in thought, oblivious to the looks they’re getting.

The waitress, probably a Faust since it looks like everyone running the place shares the same thick black hair and stocky build, wanders back to top off their drinks. Well, Winston’s. “Anything else you two need?” she asks.

“You wouldn’t know how to go about getting to Haven by week’s end, would you?”

Faust flourishes a hand for her cloud of empty glasses and tops off one for the table beside them. There’s a flicker of surprise on her at the question, but it passes quick. “You sure you want to try the week before the festival?” she says, dubious. “All we have here are those two-seater fliers on the hill. I don’t want to tell you your luck for getting tickets this time of year, either.”

“Don’t remind me,” Winston says, still tracing the grain of the table like he can read an answer from it. “Where would the nearest land port be?”

“Malone,” Faust says. Her eyes lingering on Cass’s flannel and the bag on the back of her chair. When Faust’s stare goes to the copper hair gnarled to the side of Cass’s head her face burns.

Winston plays with the bottle from his jacket. “From Pendle Creek? Two days just to go around the marsh, not to mention the full trip to the edge of it. I don’t know if we’ve that sort of time.”

“Well, you can’t slip through those marshes,” Faust warns. “Even the wardens won’t stir up the nameless out there.”

“Not if we can’t help it, no. What about the nearest train station?”

“There’s one in Clemence if you’re willing to walk. And if you’re not afraid of heights. Not sure what your luck is during festival week but it’ll be cheaper. Anything else I can do for you two?” Her flock of empty dishes accumulates as she speaks with them.

“A map, please, if you have it.” Winston beams at her, though the moment Faust spins around he rubs his fingers beneath his eyes. Under his breath he mumbles something along the lines of ‘coffee’.

Cass snorts and downs the last of her juice. Nice to know the bird’s even a little miserable under all his cheer, and that the juice isn’t perfect enough to be dangerously irresistible. As she wolfs down the rest of the food, she manages to get a question out. “What’s this festival about?”

Winston blinks. He has this lost, backlit stare like he’d forgotten her. “It’s the solstice festival,” he explains. “The longest day of our year.”

“I know what a solstice is.” The first week of June over, they’ll be having the first day of summer in about a week back home, though Earth doesn’t put a lot of song and dance on it.

Winston notes her crossed arms and goes for reassurance again. “It’s an old holiday here, nothing to be nettled about. It just addles any plans we make if everyone’s traveling at once.”

So the Christmas airport rush, just magic. “So you’re saying you have a plan, though.”

He rolls the ink bottle in his hands. “I’ll get a few messages home and then it’s a train to Malone, I suppose,” he says. “We’ll just have to hope we can get passage all the way to Haven, but just getting that far without those marshes would be gift enough. Fragments are the last thing we need.”

He leans back in his chair, eyes closed and hands folded on the table. Had he actually slept at all last night? Doesn’t matter to Cass if he hadn’t, but since he’d been up before her she has to wonder. So long as his at least early bird if not insomniac tendencies don’t keep him from guiding her, she’ll take it.

Slumped in her seat, she rolls a coin across her knuckles, tries to keep from fumbling it when she fudges the trick. “Uh huh. How long should that take?”

“Only a few days, at best.”

“What’s at worst?”

“It depends. If my work comes up, we might be just a little delayed.”

“What work?” The fleeting image of the bird at a desk plinking at a keyboard makes her mouth twist. Like this guy seriously has a job- but fancy suits and coins have to come from somewhere, she reasons.

“Here’s the map you asked for,” says Faust as she swings by again. She slips Winston a scrap of paper, which he pockets the same moment the doors fling open.

The vast majority of the customers turn their heads, the murmurs between them already striking up. The girl in the doorway has the same coarse dark hair, pale skin, and stocky frame as the other Fausts in here, panting as she looks the room over. Her eyes light on every face in the restaurant, even Cass’s for a second, but eventually she collects herself and heads for the kitchen with a stiff jaw.

The rest of the room lulls back to its previous thrum of voices and clatters, but the waitress and the girl add their arguing to the mix. The waitress puts hand to her mouth, eyes wide at the girl’s grim expression.

Cass snaps her fingers in front of Winston’s beak of a nose. The bird’s been watching the scene unfold with keen interest, stowing his stuff back in his pockets. He still doesn’t meet her eyes until she snaps again.

“What?” he says.

“It’s not our business,” she tells him. “C’mon, we paid up and we’ve been in this town too long as it is. Let’s go. We’re going to Clemence now, right?”

Winston’s eyes are already back to the scene at the kitchen doorway, but he pushes out of his chair and snatches up the last of his bread without arguing. They’re almost to the door before Faust grabs Winston’s arm and yanks.

“You,” she says in a low tone. “You’re a longcoat, aren’t you? A warden?”

“Do you have need of one?” Winston doesn’t pull away from Faust, or from Cass who’s taken his other arm and prepared to tug-of-war for him. This is my bird, don’t make me fight for him.

But Faust inclines her head, like she doesn’t want to be caught nodding but would definitely take up a brawl to get Cass’s guide from her. There’s a look on her face more fierce than any glare Cass can drudge up to match it, a menace in her stare that can melt glass. It softens when she gives a nod to the girl at her side.

“There’s this voice…” she begins.

“A voice with direction or all around you, up here?” Winston taps a finger to his temple with his newly freed hand.

“Up there. There’s a wall of thickets and they followed this- this… there’s something in there with them,” she murmurs, barely holding composure. She can’t be more than thirteen or fourteen, maybe Cass’s brother’s age. “My brother and sister.”

“And my niece and nephew,” Faust tags on. “It’s a nameless, isn’t it?”

“Likely so. How long ago?”

“Half hour.”

Winston rakes a hand through his feathers, appearing to actually be mulling this over. Cass gets a grip on his jacket. Is he even serious? They’re going after some missing kids just because- what, is this his job? How often does this even happen?

Considering the sylphs and his finesse handling those, probably more than rarely. Still, he’s not dragging her out on a rescue mission without so much as an explanation.

“Wait, what the hell’s a nameless?” she rasps, trying to stay sotto voce as the rest of them.

“Are you otherlander?” the girl asks, scanning Cass over. Seeing more of these magicians with their seamless clothes and bare feet makes her flannel and battered track shoes stick out, but her lack of know-how alone doesn’t help either. Cass flushes red.

“It’s a bit of cover,” Winston confides, all but stage-whispering behind his hand. “We’re both wardens, though we are in a bit of a rush hence the…” He waves to their attire and, though Faust raises a brow, her niece seems to buy it. “We’ll see what we can do, yes? We may need help finding this barrier.”

The girl takes a deep breath and nods. Her eyes are red at the bottoms, tears pressing but her mouth a white line of resolve. At the sight of it, Cass’s anger with the bird wilts. Not this kid’s fault something happened to her siblings, and even so she’s holding it together to help them even if she’s probably scared out of her mind to go back to where she lost them.

“Definitely,” Cass says. “That’d be really brave of you. To show us. What’s your name?”

“Hazel Faust,” the girl says. Her eyes still look full to spilling tears all down her cheeks, but she wipes it on her sleeve and braces herself to show them out. Her aunt takes moment to hug her, tell her everything will be okay, the whole bit.

Winston offers Cass a grateful grin. Her face just burns even more.