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my personal favorite moment in fic writing is when you come up with a particularly painful idea/concept/line/anything and then go, damn, that’s so fucking cruel. Let me get a pen, I’m putting it in.

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Fleshing out a character in Twigwhistle’s backstory, whom I’ve pretty much decided is a Horizon Walker Ranger (I’d known she was a ranger, but previously, not what kind). I know almost nothing about gambling so I have no idea if that part works at all, but it is what it is, and I’m still happy with this regardless.

—

The inn is crowded, loud, and rank, the smoke from the clogged chimney mixing with the odor of too many unwashed bodies and what Biarel can tell is mold in the walls. The patrons shout at each other over the sound of rain on the roof, the gnome on stage hammers her drum and raises her voice to try and be heard over their voices, and the tavernkeeper’s deep bellow rings over all of it every time he calls an order out. If Biarel had any choice she’d be putting up outside, rain or no rain. She’s slept in far worse weather before.

But her contact is here, and he won’t meet with her outside in a downpour. So she wrinkles her nose at the stench and pulls her hat down over her ears to muffle the noise and weaves her way through the press of bodies, dodging carelessly-waving hands and less-careless groping ones, regardless of whether they’re reaching to probe flesh or her pockets. She puts her order in at the bar and then retreats to the edge of the taproom to wait. No tables are free, so she simply leans against the wall, arms crossed, and watches the crowd.

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Ok but the lindwurm story raises a lot of questions. Does the swapping of the skins constitute an annulment? Will Viktorija go on to find another spouse and ask Irena to be her MOH? Or are they still married? Will they work out a long-distance relationship with Irena sending postcards and the skulls of would-be heroes every so often? Or will Viktorija realize that castle life kind of sucks and take off to join her giant terrifying wife on a rampage?

I managed not to see this until now, sorry! I kind of want to leave the aftermath up to the reader, and those are all good options, but in my personal opinion I tend to think that a) Viktorija needs a good long time to practice being human before she worries about marriage again, and b) still being Technically Married to a far-away and terrifying lindwurm would be an excellent defense against suitors until she's worked her own body and preferences out. >>

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Irena was chosen by lot to be the lindwurm's wife, after it devoured the third and last of the princesses. Prince Viktoras came himself to inform her.

Convenient, she thought, that the lottery had drawn Irena, from the lower city, poor and almost kinless. An only child, her mother dead, her father old and feeble.

And the bride-price that the crown prince brought with him was enough to support her father in comfort for the rest of his days. Irena could take it and be free of this house, of the burden of his care, of watching him slip away as he forgot her face more and more often. Or she could be carried away by the guards the prince had brought, and leave nothing behind to help him.

She had no power here, and she was wise enough to know it.

Her father, sitting at the kitchen table, stared mutely as the prince set the money on the table in front of him. Irena had to pick the box of coin up herself.

"I need time to make arrangements for my father," she said to the prince.

"Of course," he said. "You have half an hour to prepare yourself before we depart for the palace. Be sure you do not go more than a house or two away."

"I won't make trouble for you," Irena said. "It would only upset him more."

She looked Prince Viktoras in the eye until he looked away, and it satisfied her, just a little, to know that he was ashamed. Then she took the fine enameled box that held her bride-price, her blood-price, and walked next door with it. Widow Simoniene made the evil eye in the guards' direction, but took the money and the key to the little house and agreed to look after Irena's father.

Irena went back home with a heavy step to say goodbye.

"She thinks she'll move in, and rent out the big house," Irena told her father. "She doesn't need all that space, now that her sons have moved away. You won't be alone without me."

Her father wasn't speaking today, and Irena wasn't sure how much he understood. But he held Irena's hand tightly, looking over Irena's shoulder at the guards in the doorway. Irena clutched it back for a moment, then pried her father's fingers off and turned away.

She didn't look back as she left him. Her father had taught her pride, and she hoped that he still recognized it.

***

The walls of the castle loomed around her like the bars of a cage. She was received in state, like she was yet another princess. The king and queen and courtiers seemed embarrassed by her dress, work-worn, and her braid, falling down her back for lack of pins. But if they had wanted her to be more presentable, she thought, they should have given her more than half an hour to put her affairs in order.

After a hasty formal greeting, she was ushered away from the royal family and put into the hands of a half-dozen maidservants. They spread out the three dresses and two petticoats that she'd brought from home, and began discussing how to refine them by the morrow. Irena was deposited into a steaming bath, with one junior maidservant to help her.

A knock came on the door while Irena was still bathing. The maidservant rose to answer it, and returned with a bundle of fabric in her arms.

"The Lady Astrauskaite has sent you some of her dresses," she said. "And says that you may have them altered if they suit you, or do what you like with them if they don't."

Irena knew the name. Duke Astrauskis' daughter. Betrothed to the prince who had come to collect Irena. The betrothal that had sparked all of the princess-eating in the first place.

Was it sympathy, that had prompted the gift, or pity, or condescension? No doubt she had been at the blighted reception. But without knowing who in the crowd the lady had been, Irena did not know if the fuss had led her to flinch or to sneer.

She did not know, either, if Lady Astrauskaite had wanted to be betrothed to Prince Viktoras. If it pained her to see other women eaten because the king wanted his heir wedded to her, and the lindwurm demanded to be given its bride first.

"Is there a way for me to speak to the lady?" she asked the maidservant. "To thank her?"

The maidservant hesitated. "A note would be most appropriate."

"I cannot write," Irena said. "Is there no way to speak to her in person?"

She wanted to know if this was meant as a kindness. It might be easier to have someone write a note for her, and go to her death pretending that it was. But she would wonder, and it would niggle at her, and she did not want to go to her wedding and her funeral wearing a dress given to her out of condescension. She might be poor, and she might be trapped, but she had too much pride for that.

"Not that is proper, just to give thanks. But-" The maidservant's eyes were sad. "You are not scheduled to dine with the royal family tonight, and Lady Astrauskaite is not either. There would be nothing wrong with one woman extending an invitation to another, especially if they were soon to be sisters-in-law."

"Then I would like to do so," Irena said.

***

Lady Astrauskaite was taller than Irena, and much plumper, which meant that the borrowed dress Irena chose to dine in had to be discreetly brought in with pins. The lady's hair was bleached yellow, and her complexion hidden with white powder. She looked as uncomfortable as Irena felt.

"Thank you for joining me, my lady," Irena said, with a very cautious curtsey. The pins in the dress pricked her if she did not move rigidly and with care.

"Please, don't," Lady Astrauskaite said, which made the face of the steward following behind her pinch unpleasantly. "We are future sisters. After tomorrow. And after my wedding, of course. So you can call me Rugile, as a sister would."

"Yes, my lady," Irena said, unable not to look at the steward's sour face. "Thank you. You may call me Irena."

The table was small, for intimate conversation, which only made the dinner more awkward. The food was splendid, soft white bread and creamy cheese and rich meat-packed soup. It sank to the bottom of Irena's stomach like stones.

Within two courses, Irena felt sure the dresses had been a kindness, because everything that Lady Astrauskaite said was kind, and without sneer. She asked after Irena's health, and after that of her family, and she seemed genuinely distressed to hear about Irena's father. She diverted them after that to light anecdotes, tales of tutors and horses and amusing court mishaps, and winced anew with guilt whenever Irena lacked the grounding to laugh at a tale.

After two whole courses, Irena cleared her throat. "My lady, what can you tell me of the lindwurm?"

Lady Astrauskaite went still, then set her spoon down, looking Irena in the eye. "What do you already know?"

"That the queen was barren for ten years, and she went to a witch to open her womb. And that because the conceiving was unnatural, so was the birth, and while one child came out healthy and whole, the other came out as a lindwurm. And that it is confined to the palace, and horrible to look upon. That's all that we in the lower city know."

"It's not so terrible, once you get to know it."

"Except for the eating its brides."

"Yes." Lady Astrauskaite picked up her napkin, and began to twist it in her fingers. "It wasn't the witch's fault, you know. She told the queen to eat one of two flowers, and only one. Red for a boy, or white for a girl. And she ate the white first, but then she thought of her husband, and how he needed a son, and ate the red as well."

"And the queen told you this, my lady?"

"Yes. In confidence. The king would be furious if he knew."

There was a silent question in her gaze, asking if Irena would keep that confidence, and Irena nodded back. She knew of angry husbands and angry fathers, though her father had blessedly never been one. You never told them what you knew.

"She went back to the witch, she told me. After the lindwurm was born, and again, in desperation, after the second princess was wed and eaten."

"And what did the witch tell her?"

"The first time, that the lindwurm could only be made human if someone was found to trade their one skin for the ten it wore. And that of course was impossible, because who wished to be a lindwurm? The second time, she gave up another way, but it would require great courage from the bride."

She looked Irena in the eye. Another silent question, and again, Irena nodded.

"Tell it to me."

"As the queen told me that the witch told her, when you retire for the wedding night, you must have ready a tub of lye, and a tub of milk, and a stack of ten birch rods. And you must be dressed in ten layers of dresses. Then, when the time comes to undress, you must take off one layer at a time, and tell the lindwurm to shed a skin in exchange for each one. By the time you are both finished, the innermost part of the lindwurm will be exposed. Then dip the birch rods in lye, to beat it into the right shape, and bath it in milk, to give it a new skin. And last and most importantly, you must lie and embrace it the whole night through, as a woman embraces a lover."

"But there was the third princess before me," Irena said. "Did she not try this?"

"No," Lady Astrauskaite said, her gaze downcast. "I told her what the queen told me, and I had the tubs and the birch rods ready. But she had told me twice that she was not sure that she could embrace the lindwurm, that the last piece seemed the hardest. And at the wedding she tried to flee. The lindwurm gave chase, and she- she was caught and devoured."

Where had she thought to run, in this crumbling old castle? Maybe it had seemed less of a cage to a princess. But she'd been caught in it nonetheless.

"I will not run," Irena said. Clearly she could not. "And if the other choice is to be eaten, of course I will try the witch's spell."

Lady Astrauskaite smiled, worn and relieved. "The dresses I sent to your rooms should be enough to bring you to ten layers. I will bid the servants have the tubs ready in the marriage chamber, and the birch rods with them. They gave me no argument before, and will not now, though they might have looked askance at you."

Of course they would obey her. They hovered nearby even now; surely they'd heard everything. And surely they would snatch just as eagerly at a chance to be rid of the lindwurm.

***

Despite the hope that Lady Astrauskaite had offered, Irena could not sleep the whole night through. It was difficult to think about herself being eaten. But it was easy to think about her father waking without her, confused and distressed by her absence. Any explanation the Widow Simoniene made would confuse him more, or upset him if he could understand it.

Irena dressed herself in her ten layers, her own well-fitting dresses on the bottom, Lady Astraukaite's larger, more splendid dresses on the top. By the time she had put the tenth and last one on, the ones below padded it thoroughly, so that she seemed to fill it out the same way that a rich woman would.

The wedding was a thoroughly dismal affair. First there was a feast, tediously long, interrupted by faltering speeches between every course. Every speaker proposed a toast to the happy couple, and Irena, who had never had more than a single glass of watered wine in a night, had to struggle to keep her head from spinning.

She wasn't even seated close to her intended spouse, for the lindwurm had a table of its own, away from the grand one where Irena sat amid the royal cousins. Food enough for ten men went down the great creature's gullet. It was scaled like a snake in mold-colored grey, with stiff ridges along its spine. There were legs near the front end, powerful and clawed, and above that the head of a dragon.

Though the servants kept its table laden with steaming roasts and sweetmeats, it kept its eye on her, staring with unabashed hunger. Only when Irena met its gaze directly did it look away. No one else at the table seemed to acknowledge its presence. Nor hers, for that matter. Only Lady Astrauskaite tried to speak to her, and quickly was diverted.

If the feast was dismal, the wedding ceremony was more so. Prince Viktoras escorted Irena to the dais from one side of the hall, and the queen, pale-faced and stiff-backed, walked with the lindwurm from the other. The priest's hands trembled as he turned the pages of the holy book.

"Irena Kazlauskaite, do you take this-" He had to pause there, take a deep breath, and then continue. "-This lindwurm, to be your wedded spouse, your protector, to love and to obey?"

"I do," she said, and was proud that her voice sounded clearer and stronger than his.

"Lindwurm, do you take this woman to be your wedded wife, your helpmeet, to love and to protect?"

"I do," said the lindwurm. Its voice grated like stones rubbing across each other, and it still stared at Irena with nakedly hungry eyes.

She stared back, watching the restless twitching of its mighty coils, which could each trap a man within them, and the flex of its forelimbs, which had dragged its length effortlessly down the narrow aisle. It could tear the castle walls to pieces if it wanted to.

And why hadn't it? Trapped within these hallways, confined in rooms that must be entirely too small for it? For a creature so strong, the castle was no cage at all. Irena would have torn her way free and fled to the countryside long ago. She looked at the hunger in its eyes and felt an echo of it in her own heart, imagining how easily it, unlike her, could break loose from its prison.

Yet it stayed, pretending to princedom, dragging her into its farce of a royal wedding. She wished she could know why.

The priest finished giving his blessing. The young prince and the queen retreated, along with the trembling priest, from the dais. A forced, ragged cheer rang out from the assembled witnesses. She tore her eyes away from the lindworm's body, and saw it tear its eyes away from hers.

There was no glad chivaree for the newly-wedded couple, only a solemn procession to the top of an elegantly-appointed tower. It was well-furnished, Irena saw as they wound their way upwards, but the furnishings were all damaged, fabrics torn by claw and tooth, wood cracked and splintered by the lindwurm's terrible tail. The enormous bed was new-made, with fresh sheets, but she could see where it, too, had scuffs and scars on the bedposts.

By the fire, two tubs sat waiting. One was filled with yellowish lye, the other with fresh white milk. Ten birch rods lay in a neat stack between them. Irena glanced back at her grim escort, and caught sight of Lady Astrauskaite, who nodded to her from the rear.

Then they all left, and the door slammed shut, and Irena was alone with her new spouse.

"My wife," the lindwurm said, in its stone-on-stone voice, coiling up very near to her.

"My name is Irena," she said, looking up to meet the lindwurm's eyes. "As we are married, you may call me by it. And what am I to call you by?"

The lindwurm reeled back from her. "I have been given no name. I should have the mirror to my twin's, but they will not grant it to me, for the priests say a monster cannot be baptized."

Irena was trying too hard not to show her trembling to spare time for pity. But at that phrasing, she looked at the lindwurm anew.

"The white flower was to be for a girl," she said, remembering the tale Lady Astrauskaite had shared with her. "And the queen ate that one before the other. Your name should be Viktorija."

"Yes," the lindwurm said, drawing closer. "You know the tale. The misborn child of greed and folly, trapped in a shape that no soul desires."

Irena looked up to meet those hungry eyes, now closer to starving. "If you feel so trapped inside that skin, why do you not exercise what freedom you do have? If you do not want to seem so monstrous, you should not eat the women you marry."

The lindwurm turned her head away. "It is this form. In it, there are urges that I cannot resist. When I desire something badly enough, I am driven to devour it. I desired flowers, as a child, and I devoured the garden my mother planted for me. I desired books, when I learned they held knowledge, and I devoured the library when Viktoras took me to it. And I desire humanity, and the love that humans feel for each other, and so-"

"And so," Irena echoed. "I will tell you now, I may know a way to free you from that skin. But you must do as I ask, and it may hurt, very badly."

The way Lady Astrauskaite had spoken of it, Irena had thought that the key would be trickery. But she had not thought then of speaking civilly with the lindwurm. It was one thing to lie to a monstrous creature, one who would be a man and a prince at the end of it. It was a very different thing to deceive another woman.

"You do?" The lindwurm turned towards her with amazing speed, eyes wide, claws gripping the floor so hard they left grooves in the wood. "No matter how it may hurt, I will do everything that you ask."

"Then first, you must shed a skin."

The lindwurm sagged a gainst the floor, the joy going out of her. "It is not time for me to shed, and I cannot force it to begin. Even my own claws cannot tear this terrible hide."

Irena thought back to Lady Astrauskaite's phrasing. She would have to act as closely to the witch's words as possible, if she was not going to fall into the same trap as the queen.

"I will show you," she said, turning her back to the lindwurm and reaching for the buttons of the topmost dress. "I will remove this dress, and you will remove a skin in exchange for it."

The air prickled around her like there were invisible eyes in every corner. As she stepped out of the dress and turned back around, she saw the lindwurm shaking herself out of her skin. Only the uppermost of its layers, for it must have grown many to be so impenetrable; but the skin beneath it was less scuffed, and the ridges softer-looking.

"This changes nothing," the lindwurm said, and then she fixed her hungry eyes on Irena again. "But you wear another dress beneath it."

"And I will take that one off, too."

She watched, this time, as the lindwurm reached behind her head and fumbled with the ridge down the back of her neck, the same way Irena's fingers fumbled on her buttons. The skin fell away in one layer, head and forelegs and tail peeling off together. Irena could feel the magic, watching and listening all around.

And so it went, dress and skin, over and over another eight times, until at last Irena was standing naked in the center of the room. The lindwurm's skins, softer and more tender with each layer, were piled behind her. And she stood in front of that pile, a raw, skinless thing, pitiful and helpless. She was only vaguely human in shape, yet, with her face as long as a horse's and her lower limbs bound together by ropes of muscle and sinew.

She trembled and whimpered with pain at the wood of the floor and the heat of the fire, agony against bare and oozing flesh. But her eyes were still hungry, fixed fast to Irena. Hungry and full of hope.

Irena swallowed her disgust and picked up the birch rods, to dip in the lye. It seemed cruel, when just the air and the floor pained the lindwurm so terribly, but there was no other choice, unless-

Unless one was found to trade their one skin for the ten it carried.

She had not dwelled upon the witch's first answer, any more than the Lady Astrauskaite had, or the queen. For those who had power in their own right, only one of the ways the witch had offered seemed worth the dwelling. The way that let the lindwurm's shape, even now, be chosen and defined by another.

She could feel the magic even more strongly now. It prickled against her skin, nearly burning between her shoulderblades. If was as if there were buttons there, too, waiting to be opened.

Irena's own obligations were discharged. Her father was in safe hands, his dotage well-funded. All that held her in place now was the threat of force, the cage of the castle looming over her.

Behind the lindwurm, her skins lay on the floor in a thick and fetid pile. If Irena could step out of her own skin, and don those, no bond or obligation would ever tie her down again. For what walls, what force of arms, could hold the lindwurm?

Her heart full of hunger, Irena dropped the rods pressed her fingers against the back of her neck, to the place where the magic burned. But no seam or button came clear. The magic seemed to lean in closer, listening intently. It had waited, she remembered, for them to voice the exchange, each of the ten times before.

"Viktorija," she said, "will you make a trade with me? My one skin, for the ten of yours?"

"Yes," Viktorija answered, and her voice was small, and cracking, but full of joy. "I will make that trade with you."

Irena reached to the back of her neck again. Her skin came apart cleanly at her touch, without pain. She stepped out of it, as she had stepped out of the dresses, and cried out immediately at the feel of splintered wood on her skinless feet, and the draft from the fire against her skinless flesh. Viktorija was much stronger than she was, to endure them with only whimpers.

Walking towards her, Irena held her skin out, open all down the back. Viktorija reached out and took it, and it wrapped itself around her, splitting her lower limbs into two legs, remolding her face and her arms, imposing a woman's shape upon her formless flesh.

She stood, still trembling, and lifted up the first of her own scaled skins for Irena to step into. Irena felt her legs fuse together as they entered the tail, her flesh painlessly elongating to fill the space as the much-larger skin closed over her. Then the next skin, and the next, each layer of scales less tender, until the last one went on, and she was so encased in the lindwurm's armor that nothing in the king's whole armory could have broken through.

The skin closed, but the magic was still there, hanging in the air like a persistent damp. Irena felt her forelegs shaking, and her head was heavy; she looked at Viktorija, who was shaking too.

Stretching out her heavy coils, she fought exhaustion to wrap them around Viktorija. Then she crawled up onto the bed, pulling Viktorija up with her. Curled around her, on the soft, claw-shredded mattress, Irena fell swiftly and soundly asleep, embracing Viktorija like a lover.

***

They were roused in the morning by the creak of the door. The king and queen entered, fearful, and Prince Viktoras and Lady Astrauskaite walked in after, both downcast with concern. But they all looked in amazement at the bed, and who was in it.

Irena looked down at herself and Viktorija. Her own scales gleamed black, sleek and shining, instead of the mold-colored mottling that Viktorija had sported. And while Irena's own hair had been straight and dusty-colored, her skin weathered and her face thin, Viktorija was plump and noble-pale between Irena's coils, with a snub nose and a round face and chestnut hair falling in long curls.

"But," Lady Astrauskaite said, her eyes filling with tears. "The birch rods, and the lye, and the milk-"

"The witch's words were true. Here is your sister, my lady, Your Highness, and here is your daughter, your majesties. Last night she traded me her ten skins for my one, and we are both more comfortable in our new attire."

The king's hands worked at his sides, tightening into fists, then loosening when he looked again at Irena's coiling black bulk. "I would rather a daughter and her wife than a daughter and another lindwurm. I had been told you meant to save my child, but you have only traded for her troubles."

Viktorija was stirring now in Irena's coils, her eyes blinking open. She smiled at her family, and three of the four smiled back. Even the king's hard face softened.

"My father-to-be, be glad," Lady Astrauskaite said, sweet and coaxing. "You have a daughter, to please your wife with, and your son has a sister for the two of you to spoil. Irena has done this for us, as a loyal servant of the crown."

"Yes," the king said, drawing back his ire. He raised his gaze to meet Irena's eyes. "What do you want from me for this service?"

Irena unwound herself, gently, from Viktorija, then slithered off the bed. She dug her claws into the much-abused wood of the floor and gloried at her strength when it splintered and broke.

Her bride-price would keep her father fed for life, and she trusted the Widow Simoniene. There was not a feather's worth of weight upon her. "I want nothing but my freedom, Sire. And for you to treat your daughter well."

"I will make sure she is cared for," said Lady Astrauskaite, looking at Irena fondly, without fear. "For she will be my sister, just as I will still consider you."

Irena looked at her closely, trying to tell if there was any longing in her eyes. But there was only only relief and gladness in her, no appetite for claws and scales. And her hand was so firmly wrapped around the prince's that he was very clearly where her paltry human hunger lay.

"Yes," Irena said, to her and her alone. "Care well for her. She would have endured terrible pain to take this shape, and it would be wrong to let her suffer more now that she has it. As for myself, I will go into the countryside, and I will be free."

The king and queen stepped one way, the prince and his lady another, and Irena surged past them and through the open door. Winding her way down the staircase, she felt her tail bash against the walls, and delighted in the way they cracked with each blow. Half-walking, half-crawling, she emerged into the ruined garden at the foot of the tower and made for a gate in the wall.

It wasn't big enough for her full bulk, but that didn't matter. She pushed her head through, and thrust with her shoulders, and the masonry broke around her without even a strain of effort. Heart pounding more and more joyously, Irena slithered out through the hole she'd made.

The sky was blue above her, bright with morning sunlight, filled with the scents of earth and beasts and flowers. Irena paused for a moment to take it in, raising her head and twisting up and up on her own coils until she could see the rippling fields stretching away from the walls. As she lowered herself again, she saw a flock of birds in flight, winging their way over those fields towards a forest beyond.

Irena started after them. She would see what freedom tasted like, and savor it.

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This story started as one of those OC music videos that I think we all choreograph in our own heads when we listen to music–for this one, The Score’s Legend, specifically. Somehow my brain turned it from a music video to a comic, but since I can’t draw anything like what I was envisioning, I spent a lot of time thinking that there was no way I could really get across the visuals.

And then I realized that, y’know, it wouldn’t be exactly the same, but an outside POV might at least let me get all of the most important parts.

—

One of the people who’s supposed to save the village is at Margaret’s stall, examining her apples. Margaret wasn’t introduced to the adventurers, she’s not that important a person, but she can’t imagine any other reason an elf this fancy would seem so interested in her wares. This wasn’t a good apple year.

She can’t imagine this woman fighting off the bandits, either. She’s got those delicate elfy features, skin so pale it almost seems silvery, and long blue hair falling loose and easy to grab. More than that, though, she’s wearing a big poncy red dress, the kind with the skirt belled out by a structure underneath, and she’s added a row of huge bows down the back of the bodice. There’s a huge bow matching it on the band of her lacy, broad-brimmed red hat. But maybe she uses some kind of magic–elves are good with magic, aren’t they? And there’s a whole group of them, so hopefully the rest can actually fight.

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So I appear to have accidentally conceived a great affection for… Isgrac’s step-mother, of all people? Anyway, this is definitely in the class of ‘supposed to be a warm-up, then got real long.’

—

Osdi has carried ill-luck with her all her life.

She knows she shouldn’t be superstitious. She’s gone to the clergy of Avandra and the Traveler, and then to Erathis and Ioun and even Sune, and all have sworn there is no curse upon her. Yet how can she think otherwise, when everyone who has shared her life has died?

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Jenzyn’s character prologue, for the Moon and Void story.

---

Perched high on a rooftop Jenzyn watched the shifting patterns of the crowd in the marketplace below. They were hidden behind a chimney, with shadows clustered just a bit thicker around them than was natural, in case anyone looked up. The shadows needed little nudging for a gnome like Jenzyn, coming naturally and easily to their call.

With their enchanted helms, the guards' eyes would cut right through the gloom around Jenzyn, and any other magic of the sort. Secrets did not remain secrets to the guards of Rodroze. That was why Jenzyn was picking pockets here at all--practice in dodging the guards.

A dwarf moving through the market crowd drew Jenzyn's seeking eye. A man, by the way his beard was braided, and the silver ornaments that tied it off. It wasn't the ornaments that made Jenzyn pick him, though, but the pocketwatch he pulled out of his purse to check the time. Even at a distance, the sight of the ticking hands behind the glass cover made Jenzyn's pulse jump. That kind of fine machinery was rare in elven lands.

Goal chosen, Jenzyn scanned the marketplace again, eyes skimming over the bustling, noisy crowd and the bright greens and reds and blues of the awnings on the stalls. The uniforms of the city guard were distinctive, and Jenzyn could easily pick them out where they were ranged around the edges of the square. There were a good dozen posted in this section alone.

One of them in particular made Jenzyn tense, licking their lips and reconsidering their chances. She was a broad-shouldered ahrauk, at least eight feet tall, her ruddy orange hide only a few shades brighter than the weathered brick at her back. She was unpleasantly familiar to them, for she always seemed to see Jenzyn in action, even when they had dodged every other seeking eye. She'd caught them three times, now.

It would be a test of whether they'd improved, Jenzyn decided, to see if she caught them a fourth.

Wandering towards a tailor's stall, the dwarf slowed to eye the fabrics on display. Jenzyn moved too, shifting behind the chimney and crawling along the roof to the next one, hopping the short distance between. Then the next roof, and the next, until they were above an alley that let out not far from the stall. One of the buildings here was built in the old Third Reign style, with thick stone pillars spaced around the outer walls. It was simple enough to scale down one of the pitted sides, roughened by wear and moss, and drop lightly to the ground in the shadows of the alleyway.

Pulling their hood back, Jenzyn stepped out of the alleyway, letting go of the shadows as they did. People came through these little shortcut alleys all the time, and it was less suspicious to walk naturally. Cloak shrugged back over their shoulders, they stepped into the crowd and let its flow carry them naturally over to the tailor.

The dwarf had gone from admiring the fabrics, an array of finely-patterned brocades, to discussing a commission with the tailor. He stood beside some mannequins that held uncollected commissions, examples of the tailor's art. Jenzyn sidled up to the closest of those and pretended to admire the long vest hanging there.

Reaching up, Jenzyn made as if to forget themselves and touch the vest, then dropped their hand away. It brushed against the dwarf's jacket as it fell, and in that motion Jenzyn unclipped two subtle clasps, then dipped their hand into what the dwarf surely thought was a hidden pocket, its opening vanishing into some ornate embroidery around the jacket's waist.

Jenzyn took the whole purse within. Opening it still in the dwarf's pocket would have been a much more complicated maneuver, and there was a difference between adding to the challenge and taking an unnecessary risk. With the ahrauk guard here today, that would have been the latter. Shoving the purse into their own pocket as if they were putting their hand there, they studied the vest for a moment more, then started to walk away.

Out of the corner of their eye, they could see the ruddy ahrauk step away from the wall. Sour fear washed up into their mouth, and they could feel the thud-thud of their heartbeat in their ears. They kept walking, normally and calmly, past the next few stalls and towards the opening of the alley. Hand still in their pocket, they tugged the purse open and worked the watch free.

The guard continued to move towards Jenzyn, pushing her way through the crowd. They didn't dare to look towards her, but even from the corner of their eye they could see she was headed their way.

Moving a touch faster, Jenzyn circled around a vendor, breaking the line of sight between them, and then called to the shadows to wrap around them as they darted back into the alleyway. The hair on the back of their neck prickled, but they didn't dare look back. The noise and bustle of the market started to recede as the alley twisted around the building they'd come down from in the first place.

In the quiet of the alley, they could hear the heavy thud of boots behind them, picking up speed. Swinging around one of the great heavy pillars they'd descended from, they started to scale it, abandoning nonchalance entirely in favor of speed. If they could get to the roof before she came around the corner, they might have a chance. Her bulk wouldn't allow her to take the same route up. They'd have time to escape before she could summon aid.

Jenzyn scrambled for handholds, breath coming in short pants.  The moss-covered stone seemed far slicker under their fingers going up than it had coming down. Digging their toes into a narrow gap in the stone, they clung with one hand, reaching up with the other for another grip-

And slipped. The stone beneath their feet crumbled, and their one-handed grip came free. Their fault for putting both feet in the same gap, was all Jenzyn could think as they fell, cold with a stark awareness of just how high up they had gotten, and how much the landing was going to hurt.

But their cloak jerked tight around their neck and shoulders before they hit the ground. They thought for a second that it had caught on a sharp bit of stone. Then powerful arms wrapped around them, winding the cloak about their limbs until they were balled up like a swaddled cat. They fought like a cat might, too, flailing against the embrace. Their captor just adjusted her grip and held them against her chest until they stopped struggling and slumped, heart hammering, in her arms.

"That would've been a nasty fall, don't you think?" she said, unrolling Jenzyn from their own cloak and setting them gently down, feet-first. She stayed in a crouch, gripping their wrist tight, and smiled. "Good thing I was here."

Jenzyn stared into her square-jawed, elaborately-scarred face and trembled. Her jutting tusks, carved to match the patterns of her scars, made the smile terrifying. Though her size alone was terror enough; every time she'd caught them like this, every time she crouched down in an attempt to get on their level and still loomed overhead, they remembered their father's broken voice, reminding them that smallfolk like them couldn't afford to be cornered by anyone large.

Their father had had plenty of tales and examples to drive the lesson home, all delivered in hoarse, soft tones that were a lesson on their own. Some of his tales had kept Jenzyn up at night for weeks after.

"Now, you've got something on you that isn't yours," she said, and though her grip on their wrist wasn't tight or uncomfortable, they couldn't have unfrozen enough to try and break out of it. "You know it and I know it, so you ought to give it up."

Pulling the purse from their pocket with trembling fingers, Jenzyn held it out towards her. She spread out a broad palm beneath their hand to catch it, and they let it fall.

"There's more," she said, still smiling. "That was clever, but not wise. You've never committed to a theft before, and I'd hate to put you on record for it now."

Jenzyn pulled the watch out, as well, fingers shaking even harder. Its fine silver chain started to slip from their grasp, and they panicked and grabbed at it, saving it a heart-stopping moment before it could fall all the way to the ground and break. It was too precious a thing to destroy through their own carelessness.

"I, I'm sorry," Jenzyn said, struggling to spit out the words. They hung their head, letting their open fear stand in for repentance. It had worked on guards before, this one included. "I was going to give it back. I just wanted to look at it."

The guard took the watch from them and folded their huge hand around it and the purse, both of them vanishing behind her folded fingers. "Stopped saying you're not going to do it again?"

Still staring down at their feet, Jenzyn shook their head.

"I'm not letting you go this time, no matter how scared and sad you look. It's becoming clear that I shouldn't have done it before. So tell me, where are you from? One of the gangs? A clan in the slums? If you have parents, it's them we'll be seeing, and if you don't, then it's the court-clerks we'll be seeing instead."

"I'm not an orphan," Jenzyn blurted. Then they thought of their mother, pulled away from her research, hearing the guard tell her what her child had been up to, and humiliation washed over them, heating their face. "I, I'm, I live at the library."

"Up at the monastery?" the guard asked, and Jenzyn nodded miserably. "They're keeping a wretched watch on you, and I'll be telling them so."

"It's, it's, it's- they aren't supposed to," Jenzyn explained, glancing up and recoiling from her looming frown. "I have, they give me food, and clothes, and, and a place to sleep. I, I could go to lessons, if I wanted to, but I, I'm not a scholar, so I, I wanted, I wanted to-"

They stopped, trying to figure out how to rephrase their sentence to work on their tongue, but the ahrauk seemed to read something into it on her own. She stood, still bent low, and let go of Jenzyn's wrist just to snatch them up around the waist instead. Tucking them under her arm as easily as Jenzyn might lift a kitten, she started off down the alley, disregarding their yelp of surprise and their renewed struggling.

"If I put you down, you'll only bolt again," she said, which wasn't wrong. "And I won't march a child like a criminal."

Giving up on the struggle, Jenzyn tugged the hood of their cloak over their head so they wouldn't have to see people stare, then hung limp and resigned in her grasp as she carted them away.

***

Once they reached the monastery, the guard pulled their hood back so that the monk militant guarding the gate could see Jenzyn's face, cheerfully reporting them to be a 'youthful miscreant' in her custody. The monk didn't recognize Jenzyn, that was clear, but before he finish asking Jenzyn's name, the guard was already interrupting.

"Where can we wait to see a senior monk? Whoever's responsible for training the monks militant."

Jenzyn opened their mouth to explain that they were a dependent of the library, not the monastery proper, then closed it again. That would just lead to their mother being brought in, or at least one of the senior librarians, who would report the whole thing to their mother. Either way, their mother would be bothered about it, and distressed at being bothered.

The monk militant seemed to find this a reasonable enough request. Within a few minutes, Jenzyn and the guard were seated in a small receiving room, with two benches and a side table holding a pitcher of water and some cups. Once the door closed upon them, the guard set Jenzyn down and walked over to pour herself a cup of water.

Jenzyn sat down on a bench, folded their knees up in front of their chest, and pulled their cloak close around themself. The stark terror of earlier had turned to a dull, heavy dread in their chest.

"We'll see to getting your situation sorted out," the guard said. "I'm sure the monks militant can take care of you."

Her reassuring tone was completely at odds with the words themselves. What did she mean, take care of them? Did she intend to have the monks put a guard on Jenzyn? They wouldn't appreciate any such inconvenience, and if they did condescend to do that for one half-grown gnome, they would simply throw Jenzyn into the monastery's cells. Clean and comfortable, supposedly, but impossible to escape.

Unsure of how to respond, Jenzyn let the silence stretch out until even they were made uncomfortable by it. The guard, though, seemed entirely untroubled. Finishing her water, she set her cup down and subtly shifted the pitcher and the other cup towards Jenzyn. When they made no move towards it, she clicked her tongue thoughtfully, but made no comment.

At last the door swung open, and a new monk stepped through. She was a high elf, her black hair shorn nearly to her skull and her skin shining a bluish steel-grey. Like the ahrauk, she seemed to loom, though she was a foot shorter and less than half as broad. Her stance was too confident, her movements too sure, her wiry muscles to defined for her to do anything but loom regardless. Another monk followed after, this one a pebbled grey troll, as tall as the high elf and as broad as the ahrauk, though with not quite so much dominating presence.

Jenzyn huddled even smaller and prayed for the bench to swallow them up.

"Ah, Sergeant, I see you've brought us a dangerous criminal," the troll said, completely deadpan, and the guard laughed.

The high elf frowned at this humor. "I am Vaernalla Palienna, master of militants, and this is my senior trainer, Geornde. What did you require us for?"

"I'm Sergeant Shurem, market district, third-day squad," the guard said, nodding to them both. "I've got a young gnome here who says they're a ward of the library, when they ought to be under your tutelage. I've caught them four times now, lifting goods in the market, and I'd like to get them sorted out before I have to catch them a fifth time."

Master Palienna's eyes narrowed. "I regret that one of the library wards has turned to thievery, but what makes you think that criminal activity qualifies them for the monks militant?"

"For one, they're good at it," Sergeant Shurem said. "For another, it's not a matter of being qualified, it's that they should have been offered your path as an option. They told me that they were only offered scholar's lessons, and they don't care to be a scholar. Whoever was in charge of them should have arranged other training, if they weren't suited to that path, not left them alone to get out and roam the streets on the regular."

"That is... not untrue," the high elf said, her severe expression relaxing a fraction. She looked away from the guard to examine Jenzyn, instead, and Jenzyn resisted the urge to bury their face in their knees and pull their hood over their face. "Presuming that they did so from lack of guidance, and not out of greed."

"I doubt it was greed," the sergeant said. "They never argued about handing back their prizes. Told me who they'd gotten it from, the one time I hadn't known. And the other guards I asked about them said that even if they got away, they dropped what they'd taken. You didn't keep anything you took, did you?"

"No," Jenzyn said quickly. Then, filled with the terrible conviction that Master Palienna's searing gaze would root out any falsehood as easily as the guards' magical vision ferreted out hiding spots, they added, "I kept, a, a coin once, from a  traveler. It was shaped odd. I, I wanted to ask someone about it."

They'd wanted to ask their mother, specifically, certain that she would be able to take one look and pull out the right book on whatever foreign land it came from. But she'd been so busy when they'd found her, that day and the next day and the next. Then they'd lost it, fleeing an urchin gang who took objection to Jenzyn passing through their territory, and without it to show her they hadn't been prepared to ask again. She probably would have gotten distracted before they'd finished stammering out a description, anyway.

"Then why did you steal them in the first place?" Master Palienna asked.

Jenzyn swallowed and tried to summon up words, tripping over the first syllable a half-dozen times before they managed to get it out. "Be- because I wanted to, to make friends with the other children I saw doing it. But they didn't like, like me anyway, and I, I, I- it turned into a sort of dare. For myself. To see if I could do it. Without being caught."

"There you have it," the sergeant said. "Since they weren't offered training, they tried to train themself in something, and since no one was testing them, they tried to test themself against us. You have a child here with physical interests that they've gone to the effort to hone themselves, which is the kind of initiative you need, and no one thought to point them towards you. Whoever's meant to watch them, they ought to be ashamed."

"I begin to see your point," Master Geornde said, breaking into the conversation for the first time. "But the skills this child has been honing aren't skills that we use. I am willing to train them in armor and the spear instead, if they are willing to be trained, but are they?"

The bottom dropped out of Jenzyn's stomach. The monks militant were the monastery's heroes, bodyguarding librarians when they went out and about on the monastery's business, fighting off bandits and book-snatching mercenaries, punishing those who would dare harm the books. The most devoted of them became paladins of She Who Reads The Stars, challenging corrupt rulers and devotees of unsafe-to-name gods who would hide knowledge away instead of letting it be openly known.

People who stood out. Upright and confident, resolute in their duties, unafraid of the consequences. Nothing Jenzyn was capable of being.

"I, I, I can't-" They broke off, swallowed, and tried again. "I don't want to be a guard, or a paladin. To stand up to, to- for the monastery. I can't."

"Well." Master Geornde shook his head. "There's no shame in that. Not everyone has it in them to spill blood, even for the goddess. But I can't have a student who doesn't want to be there."

"Then find another path for them," the sergeant said, her voice dropping into a growl. She rose suddenly from her seat, and her orange bulk seemed to fill the room. "You know and the guards know that not all of your branch are bodyguards and paladins. I've been called off a case a time or two for your people. That northern prince with his own personal library, I know what happened there, and it wasn't some independent contractor."

Master Palienna stared at her, eyes narrowed. Sergeant Shurem met her eyes and stared back, not giving an inch. After a long moment, Master Palienna turned away, chin high.

"If a thief is motivated by religious zeal, and the Guard-Captain decides that the guards are not here to defend foreigners' barbarian notions about personal property, then that is a rare moment of piety on the part of the thief and a welcome wisdom on the part of the Guard-Captain. That does not mean that the monks militant sanction secrecy and deceit, or employ criminals. We will see about a more physical apprenticeship for the child, if they do not wish to be a scholar. But unless you find them stealing again, and I intend that you will not-" she looked sharply at Jenzyn, and they shrank into their cloak "-it is no longer your business. You have done your duty as a guard. We will do ours as monks."

"But are you going to do your duty as adults?" Sergeant Shurem snapped. "To help a child grow, and train them in line with their interests? Because it feels like I'm the only one in here who cares about doing that."

Master Geornde looked pained, but Master Palienna only glared more fiercely at the sergeant. "It is our concern, not yours. Thank you for bringing the child to our attention, Sergeant Shurem. Your duty is done, and you may take your leave."

It was so starkly a dismissal that even the formidable sergeant couldn't disobey. She nodded, stiffly, to the two Masters, her jaw clenched so hard that her tusks jutted forward an inch from her face. Then, with one last look at Jenzyn--a frustrated look, sympathy and anger mixed on her blunt face--she turned and marched out, straight-backed.

"Orcs," Master Palienna said, with some venom, once the door had closed behind her. "Did you know that they leave their own children to die in the desert, if they can't pass the tests the tribe sets? She has a right to complain as a guard, if one of the brats has been thieving in the city, but to try and lecture us about caring for a child...."

"Mmmm," Master Geornde rumbled in noncommittal reply. "Do you want me to take them back to the library, find out whose eye they're supposed to be under?''

"Yes, do that," Master Palienna said. "And find them someone they can apprentice with, so that I'm not bothered with this problem again."

"I have someone in mind already."

She nodded to Master Geornde, who bowed back, then walked out without a second glance at Jenzyn. That was preferable to yet another glare. As soon as she was gone, Master Geornde turned their way, looking them thoughtfully up and down.

"Well, then, dangerous criminal. Come along with me, and we'll find something that suits you better than thievery."

***

The walk to the library was long and winding, passing through all the low red-brick buildings of the monastery that stood around the sprawling stone edifice, even though Jenzyn knew there were much shorter ways to the library's many back doors. Master Geornde, though, didn't change their path to actually approach one until he'd at last pried Jenzyn's name from them.

It was clear that he didn't recognize it, but it was easier to take a name to the head librarians than a face. Soon enough, Jenzyn was standing in front of their mother after all, hang-dog and miserable.

Master Geornde took pity on them. "A city guard found your child in the marketplace, and wanted to be sure that they were truly a ward here, not an orphan on the streets. Tell me, what schooling have you arranged for them?"

"Why, Jenzyn goes to the classes here, of course," their mother said, her eyebrows scrunched in bafflement. "I let them choose which ones they want to attend. I don't want to force a specialty on them, and they don't seem to care for mine. I suppose they didn't have a class today, though dragging them home seems an overreaction to a visit to the market."

"Ah, well, the guard was an ahrauk," Master Geornde said. "I'm afraid it's hard for us bigfolk to tell the age of smallfolk, sometimes. I think she mistook them as much younger than they are."

"I see," their mother said, her face clearing a bit. "Thank you for taking care of that, then."

"It was no trouble," Master Geornde said. "I did mean to ask, though. Your child seems to have an interest in our non-academic arts. If they wish to, would you object to them taking on a trial apprenticeship? I wanted to offer them the chance to work with the monks custodian."

"If they want to," Jenzyn's mother said, squinting at Jenzyn in renewed confusion. "I didn't realize they had any interest, but Jenzyn, dear, you know you're welcome to learn whatever you like, don't you? As long as you aren't pestering anyone."

"I know. I, I do want to." They had never been interested in cleaning and caring for books, but whatever Master Geornde said about it, they knew they weren't being offered a choice.

"That's settled, then," Master Geornde said. He squeezed Jenzyn's shoulder one last time, then left them and their mother alone.

The next morning there was a knock on their door, far earlier than Jenzyn usually rose for breakfast. Their mother was already at her work, though, so they hastily pulled on a robe and answered it. On the other side was an eidalh, old enough for their mane to bush wide around their neck and shoulders. They wore the robes and knotted sash of a monk custodian.

"Jenzyn Ironfoot?" they asked, and when Jenzyn nodded, they held out a bundle of cloth. "Master Geornde said you are to train with me. Here are your trainee's robes. Put them on, and we will begin."

The robes were simpler than they looked, once Jenzyn realized that the sash was attached. It wrapped around twice to hold the robe up before being draped in the traditional diagonal across their chest. They weren't quite sure how to do the custodian's knot at the top, but they did their best to approximate the one they'd seen on the the eidalh's shoulder.

When they stepped outside, the eidalh hummed quietly, nodded, and then reached down and guided Jenzyn in re-tying it until the knot laid perfect.

"You have a good eye for detail," they said. "That's a useful trait."

Jenzyn's stealth, too, turned out to be useful, more so than they had ever suspected someone of the library might find it. The custodians, their teacher taught them over the several weeks, did more than clean and tend to the books, though they began with sweeping and dusting. Many important people came from many powerful places to study in the great library of Rodroze. The monks custodian were charged to supervise their visitors from the shadows, where the scrutiny would cause no offense.

"Our duty is to prevent damage to the books, in whatever way we can," the eidalh--they hadn't given Jenzyn their name yet--said one day a few weeks into their training, as they reached out to correct the angle of their broom. "You must get all the way beneath that shelf- yes, like that. The watchful eye turns away much potential harm, so that repairing it will not be needed. Say, you see a furtive visitor who keeps turning to a page in a book, and seems to be considering whether they might tear it out."

"What do we do if that happens?" Jenzyn asked.

"It depends upon your reading of the visitor, and of what they might do. Perhaps you might make a point of revealing yourself and hover nearby, so that they know someone sees them. Or perhaps you might gently deceive them, and say you must take the book for maintenance. Or, if you do not think that your presence or your words will prevent harm, you might even summon a librarian or a monk militant, though we try not to bring the monks militant into the library if it can be avoided."

"Why?"

"Violence in these halls might harm the books."

Jenzyn paused in their sweeping to stare up at their teacher. "Just the books?"

"Not just the books, no," the eidalh said, chuckling. "But a cracked skull, or split skin, those things heal. If the books are splattered with blood, or knocked roughly to the floor, or struck by a falling bookcase or a flying chair, they will not heal themselves. We can repair them, but they will always be weakened. And some damage cannot be repaired."

They spoke that last in a hushed tone, as another person might speak of an incurable illness. Jenzyn didn't understand, entirely, but they respected the intensity of that concern regardless. They nodded in response.

"But we will cover intervention later in your training," their teacher went on. "Observing our visitors, hovering nearby, politely interrupting, all of that will come to you. Repair and bookbinding, too, when the time is right. But the first step is always cleanliness."

Jenzyn nodded again. Relief lifted a weight on their chest that they hadn't realized was there. Eventually their trainer would realize how terrible they were for that part of the job, how useless they would be at intervening. But they were at least confident in their sweeping.

As if in confirmation of that, the eidalh bent low to peer under the shelf, then straightened and nodded in satisfaction. They headed on to the next room with their own broom in hand, and Jenzyn followed after.

***

Cleanliness was far more than simply sweeping and dusting, Jenzyn soon discovered. Temperature mattered, too, and the moisture in the air, and sunlight through the windows. There was a careful balance of all these things, and the monks custodian were responsible for maintaining it.

It was finicky. A great deal was done by feel, standing in a room to gauge how hot or cold or damp or dry it was. The seasons and the weather were constantly changing, and that had to be accomodated, by opening this window and closing that one and adjusting shelves to change the ventilation. Sometimes whole rooms of books had to be quietly moved.

Jenzyn did their best to learn the precision of feeling required, and the proper ways of cleaning various books and materials, and, slowly, the very basics of how books were put together and repaired. They'd been warned early that it would be some years before they were actually allowed to touch a book already damaged, but they were allowed to watch the senior custodians at work. In the meantime, the eidalh also showed them how to hover, unobtrusive but observant, and what signs to look for in a suspicious visitor.

Hovering obtrusively near one was, as Jenzyn had feared, a different matter. Their instinct was to hide whenever they thought they might be noticed. Years of their father's horror-tales made it difficult to keep from trying to fade into the background if anyone at all tall was around. The goal, when a monk custodian suspected a visitor might mistreat the books, was to become clearly present and visible enough to notice; the moment that Jenzyn saw any of the signs their teacher had pointed out, their impulse was to slink away, instead. Even though they were only signs that the person might be rough with books.

Perhaps Jenzyn was too cowardly for this task, too.

Despite their fears, their teacher offered no censure, only gentle encouragement. On this evening, four months into Jenzyn's training, they'd brought Jenzyn deliberately to a room where one such visitor was browsing. He was a high elf, a noble from some far-off northern princedom, and the monks custodian had been keeping an eye on him for a while. Not for particular behavior, but because he was very interested in the library's books on the great powers of the rifts.

Most of what the library had available discussed rifts in the abstract alone. Even She Who Read The Stars did not encourage their use, only their study. This nobleman had been working his way through various books regardless, using their bibliographies to track down the few books of theory that the library possessed. The librarians hadn't noticed, for he'd meticulously avoided consulting them, but the monks custodian had.

"The book he has taken down tonight could be, if theory was extended into practice, used to contact a rift-power," Jenzyn's teacher murmured as they stood in the shadows together at the far end of the room. "If he copies the information in it, that is well and good. The library places no bar on that. But people who study what they consider forbidden are the most likely to be jealous of that knowledge, and try to steal it outright."

Jenzyn shrank back a bit into the shadows, which spread wider to wrap around them. "Are we, we-"

"You need not do anything but watch," their teacher said, putting a gentle hand on their shoulder. "Remain back here, and keep the shadows close."

Jenzyn nodded mutely. Their teacher patted their shoulder once more, then strode calmly out from the back of the room towards the table where the nobleman sat. They had a dust-cloth in hand, and they started dusting the bookshelves, not looking towards him, but making it very obvious that they were nearby.

Their broom in hand, Jenzyn quietly swept the last few rows of shelves at the back of the room, over and over again. The shadows clung to them so closely that they muffled the quiet scrape of the broom almost into nothingness. Even in their embrace, though, Jenzyn felt on edge. A chill settled over them that the warm night air through the nearby window couldn't shake.

For a while, they all worked in silence. The nobleman paged through one book after another. Jenzyn worked their way from the stacks to the window-seat and back. Their teacher dusted slowly down the length of one bookshelf, then another, then a third.

Their teacher was halfway down the fourth when the noble stood, suddenly, with a rustle of pages that didn't hide at all that he was tucking one book into the front of his jacket. Picking up the rest of the books, he turned and started towards the bookshelf. Then he stopped behind Jenzyn's teacher and put a hand on their shoulder.

Jenzyn caught their breath on an inhale and slowly crouched, watching through the gaps between bookshelves as they lowered their broom soundlessly to the floor.

"You, wood elf. Can you put these away for me?" the nobleman asked, with an exaggerated yawn.

That wasn't a monk custodian's job, or something they should be asked to do. He might not know that. Or maybe he knew that the usual reaction of a custodian asked that was to take the books to a librarian. At this time of night, that would take Jenzyn's teacher out of the room.

Their teacher didn't show any such suspicion on their own face. They simply took the books, nodded, and looked through them quickly. Then, very politely, they asked, "Were there any more you wanted to return?"

Later on, Jenzyn would wonder if that was miscalculation, or deliberate provocation. It was a question that the noble could have backed out of easily. Maybe he was more nervous than he seemed. Maybe he'd known that his act of theft was unpolished. Or maybe he was just on a hair-trigger already, and any answer could have set him off.

But in the moment, Jenzyn could only go completely still, heart thudding, as the nobleman swung a fist into their teacher's stomach. Jenzyn's teacher went thudding backwards, curling around the books as they fell, trying not to hit a bookshelf going down. The nobleman stood over them, his face contorted into a snarl. He reached under his jacket and pulled out, not the book he'd hidden there, but a blade. It was broad at the hilt, narrowing down to a point at the far end and sharp on both sides--a short, wicked-looking triangle. He bent low and slammed it down, three times.

It came up bloody, and he shoved it back into his jacket without stopping to clean it first. He moved to the middle of the room and looked around. Jenzyn, holding their breath, stayed crouched low to the floor and very still. They could feel the shadows clustered around them, falling at just the right angle to cover them in further darkness, clouding the area so that they wouldn't stand out to a searching eye.

After a moment more of looking, the noble shook his head and walked out of the room, closing the door quietly behind himself.

Jenzyn waited another second, heart thudding in their ears, watching the closed door and building up their courage. Then they sprang to their feet and bolted across the room, around the bookshelf, and dropped to their knees again at their teacher's side.

Their hands were shaking as they picked up the books their teacher had been holding--carefully, so carefully, and oh, some of them had blood on them, their teacher would be horrified--and set them gently aside. Then they looked down at their teacher, three holes torn in the chest of their robe, and tried to figure out what to do next.

Stop the bleeding. But how? They didn't have bandages. Tugging the fabric back, Jenzyn bared the broad, bloody wounds on their teacher's chest, then lurched backward and put a hand over their mouth, fighting against nausea.

They went back after a second, frantically swallowing, because their teacher didn't have time for Jenzyn to be a cowardly mess. Their teacher's eyes had cracked open, and they turned their head.

"Jenzyn," they said, and Jenzyn could have fainted from relief.

"Don't, don't move," they said, frantically tugging at the robe again. "He- you- there's- you're bleeding a lot-"

"Pressure," their teacher said, raising a hand to still theirs. "Pull the robe up so that it folds over the wounds several times, then hold it down."

Jenzyn nodded, shakily, and pulled the bloodied robe back over their teacher's chest with trembling hands until they had a thick pad of cloth to shove over the wounds and hold down. They felt like they were pressing too hard, but their teacher put a hand over theirs, pushing down further, and nodded at them.

"Were the books hurt?"

"They're, they're-" Jenzyn glanced over at the pile of books, saw how the dark splotches on them had spread as the blood soaked in. "They're bloody. A little."

Their teacher sighed, tilting their head back and closing their eyes. "My fault."

"No!" Jenzyn felt cold all over again. "It, it was the- it was his fault! He stabbed you!"

Their teacher made a little humming noise, not an agreement, but not an overt denial. "Jenzyn, put my hands over this. I'll hold it. You run and get help. If the monks militant follow right away, maybe they can catch him in the courtyard."

"I, I," Jenzyn started, then gave up trying to voice the protest they wanted to make. They weren't sure their teacher had the strength to hold the pressure down on their own chest for long enough, but then again, Jenzyn couldn't do it forever, either. They needed someone else here to help, and no one would come into the room normally before morning.

Swallowing back more useless stammering, Jenzyn just grabbed their teacher's other hand, moving it up to fold over the first, and pushed them both down as if that would help their teacher hold it there. Then they stood up, glanced down one last time, and spun to bolt out the door.

As they entered the hallway, fear flickered in their stomach. What if the nobleman was still there, lying in wait? But they didn't see any sign of him. It was foolish to think he would wait around after stabbing someone.

Jenzyn went flying down the hall, down the spiraling stairs, into the main lobby of the library. The lighting had been dim upstairs, but here elf-lights shone bright over the various doorways, the helpful signs, the main desk where a librarian always sat, even overnight.

The librarian on duty, a sturdy troll, looked up in surprise as Jenzyn came hurtling into the room. "Custodian, are you all right?"

Jenzyn froze for a moment, tongue-tied and hating themself for it. Their teacher needed help now, not when they could get their words in order. The monks militant needed to be alerted as soon as possible. There was no time for their voice to curl up and die in their chest.

"I- my, my teacher- the, the, the-" They couldn't manage it. Every word stuck to their tongue, even when they tried to change it around.

Standing, the librarian came around the desk and crouched down low. She started to reach out, then stilled when Jenzyn flinched. "Are you hurt?"

They shook their head.

"Good," the librarian said. "Is someone else hurt?"

Jenzyn nodded.

The librarian looked them up and down. "Can you stay here for me, for a moment? I'm going to go get a monk medical, and then you can take us to whoever's bleeding."

Jenzyn nodded again. The librarian rose, a tower of craggy grey, and strode quickly out the door. Jenzyn wanted her to run, to race to the healers. They still lacked the voice to say that, though, to call out after her to hurry.

She returned swiftly enough, probably, though it felt like hours to Jenzyn, frozen stiff and awkward halfway between the desk and the door. They could feel the blood, cooling but still tacky, gluing their robes to their arms and chest. They had to make themself breathe slowly and evenly to fight back tears. They weren't successful, entirely. The librarian looked even more concerned when she crouched in front of Jenzyn again, two more people behind her.

"Take us to whoever's injured," she said. "I brought a monk medical and a monk militant. It's going to be all right."

Jenzyn hoped so. But they couldn't say that. Instead they turned and headed back up the hall, breaking into a run as soon as they were sure that all three were following them.

Their teacher was still where they'd left them, their robe bundled over their wounds. But their hands had gone slack, and so had their face, eyes closed. Jenzyn made a strangled moan, the first sound they'd managed since that failure to speak in the lobby. They tried to rush forward.

A hand closed on their shoulder. They twisted away, spinning about with their hands up, and saw the monk militant--another eidalh, tail lashing--hold her own hands high. "I'm sorry, but you must let the medic work."

She was right. Jenzyn nodded, lowering their hands and trying to relax. They couldn't make their shoulders untighten, and they were clenched in on themself so hard that their stomach twinged with it.

"Do you know what happened?" she asked.

Jenzyn could feel their tongue sticking to the top of their mouth. Hot, angry shame washed through them. They had to tell her, unless they wanted the nobleman to get away.

"A, a, a visitor," they managed, shaking with effort. "He, he took a book. My teacher-"

"A high elf?" the librarian interrupted. "Silver-skinned, with his hair up in a braid? In a dark blue jacket, with silver lining?"

Jenzyn nodded, desperately relieved not to have to produce their own description. "He still, still has the book."

"He didn't sign out in the logbook, even though I called after him," the librarian said, "so I took notice. But there was only one entry today for this wing. You'll want to look for Arlathiel Methaneo."

The monk militant nodded. "We'll get on it right away, librarian, custodian."

"You're sure you're not hurt?" the librarian asked Jenzyn again, as the monk militant headed out of the room at a brisk clip.

Jenzyn nodded.

"All right. Then we'll leave your trainer to the monks medical. Let me take you to the other custodians. And these, too," she added with a frown, seeing the fallen books. "They'll want to-"

"I'll take them," Jenzyn blurted out, finding their tongue at last.

The librarian nodded, bending down to pick them up and then holding them out to Jenzyn. They took the books, fighting the urge to bundle them close against their chest. Instead they held them out from their body a couple of inches so the blood on their robes wouldn't stain them further.

"I'll walk with you to the custodians' offices," the librarian said. "They'll want to know about your trainer sooner rather than later."

She started out of the room, and Jenzyn silently followed. It should have stung, that she assumed that Jenzyn wouldn't be able to tell them. But it was a relief, rather, that Jenzyn wouldn't have to try.

***

They turned the blood-damaged books over to the full custodians and were sent off-shift, sternly, by the most senior one there. The next afternoon Jenzyn returned, sleepless but determined, to see what news there was of their trainer and the book.

"Niehta will be fine," the custodian handling the assignments for the week told them. "But it will be a while before they're on their feet. At least a week, the monks medical say, and they shouldn't be working for two. We'll find you another trainer, but it might be best if you sit out for a couple of days, anyway. You've had quite a shock."

"What about the book?" Jenzyn asked.

"The monks militant weren't able to catch up with Lord Methaneo," she said, with a heavy frown. "He's staying with one of the lords of the city, so they can't march in and lay hands on him, and he insists he was falsely accused. That yes, he was in that wing much earlier, but he left before dark and forgot to sign the logbook, and he can't imagine anyone there to steal a book would write their own name down. Sheltering behind brazenness- but Lord Feneleo is his cousin, so she's backing him up."

"So we, we can't do anything?"

"Oh, the monks militant will coordinate with the city guard, and the moment he steps out of that estate, they'll be on him," she said. "But if he leaves the book behind, a search won't show anything. I'm more worried about him sneaking it out of the estate on its own. Whether they arrest him or not doesn't matter much, as long as we get the book back."

Jenzyn wanted him arrested. He'd stabbed their teacher, and should face judgement for that. But they understood the reasoning. Their teacher would recover. The book might never be brought back.

"Do they have a, a, a plan to get it back?"

"I hope so. If he wasn't a lord, or staying with a lord of the city... the nobility complicate everything. But that's not for you to worry about. You know it wasn't your fault, right? You couldn't have stopped him. If he was willing to stab Niehta, he would have hurt you just as badly."

Jenzyn nodded. They did know. They were far too aware of it, every time they circled back to that horrible moment, the knife going down bright and coming up darkened with blood.

"Take two days off, at least," she said. "I've already marked you off on the assignment board. Come back in three days, and we'll have another trainer lined up."

"Thank you," Jenzyn said, and left the office before her concern could cloy too thickly in their gut.

After a restless night they ended up high in the stacks in the central dome, where it was open floor to ceiling, with catwalks and balconies and ladders to help anyone who needed to get to the higher books. There were plenty of hiding spots here, and Jenzyn had become familiar with many of them. Tucked into a support strut on one of the higher shelves, they watched the librarians and researchers and other visitors below, nothing more than dots from this vantage point, and chewed over their thoughts.

'The nobility complicates everything,' the custodian had said. Jenzyn didn't know much about nobles, but they knew that was true. Many of the high elves who wore such titles didn't consider themselves bound to the codes and customs and structures that governed the library and its visitors. Even those native to Rodroze often acted like they were above such rules.

Something else was niggling at Jenzyn, though. Something they'd heard recently. What had Sergeant Shurem said...?

'I've been called off a case a time or two. That northern prince with his own personal library, I know what was happening there, and it wasn't some independent contractor.'

And Master Palienna hadn't entirely denied it, either. Was that what the monastery did in cases like this? Hope for pious thieves?

If they weren't too proud to ask for one. If Master Palienna would condescend to accept such help without exhausting other options. Jenzyn hardly knew her. They didn't know if she'd been lying, when she insisted that the monastery didn't employ criminals, or if she genuinely would only accept the help from one that was divinely inspired.

And if she didn't have anyone who could provide that kind of service, would the book be lost? Jenzyn could think of a dozen different ways to get it out of the house of a lord of the city without being seen, and surely Lord Methaneo could think of a dozen more. The thought of it slipping out in a servant's basket, or a cart of washing, or the pocket of a hired minstrel burned like acid in Jenzyn's gut.

Sergeant Shurem had thought that Jenzyn's skills, their game of thievery, made them suited for that kind of service. She'd thought it enough to suggest it to Master Palienna's proud face. Jenzyn had no idea if such people worked for the monastery, or She Who Reads The Stars, or not. But they knew that the biggest risk to them in the marketplace had been the guards, not those that they robbed. They might be good enough for this.

They had to try, whether they were good enough or not.

With that thought in mind, Jenzyn started the long climb down to the library floor.

***

The house of Lord Ilariia Feneleo was described three times to Jenzyn as 'garish,' as they made their way through the scholar's quarter towards the cliffside quarter where elven nobles lived. It proved to be a true description.

Unnatural extrusions rose out of the cliffside where Lord Feneleo dwelled at sharp angles, triangular shapes jutting out and narrowing into slanted spikes. The grey and white stone had been transmuted to glittering crystal at the tips, and the crystaline segments were a clouded pale blue, just a little brighter than the morning sky.

Jenzyn wasn't sure whether the spikes were meant to be lived in. It seemed like it would be difficult to build in floors, and stairs, once they began to narrow. They certainly had no windows. The actual cliffside that they jutted from, though, had graceful arches filled with panes of clear glass.

The cliff faced west, casting a shadow over the rest of the cliffside district. Undoubtedly a comfort for the rich trolls and eidalh and dwarves who mostly dwelled there, all of whom preferred darkness, and at the moment a boon to Jenzyn as well. The shadows barely had to be nudged to cling to them as they crept along between walled compounds and up to the edge of the cliff.

Cloaked in that protection, they scrambled up among those spikes, settling near the top of one where it turned to cloudy blue crystal. They flattened out, their cloak spread out around them to further mask their profile. They would have to keep a sharp eye out for guards. Neither shadows nor the cloak would hide them if a guard's eyes turned upward from the ground. But Sergeant Shurem didn't work this quarter, and she'd been the only one they'd encountered who looked up without a cue.

As the morning bore on, they lay still, watching the windows. Most were visible from this vantage point. There would be at least one more layer of rooms behind the ones they could see, dug deeper into the rock, but high elves weren't dwarves or trolls; they liked cliff-homes for the height and the views, not the security of the stone. Jenzyn could only hoped that Lord Methaneo enjoyed looking down upon the city. He seemed the sort of man who might.

It was nearly noon before their watch was rewarded. Movement in one of the windows, a bedroom on the third level up. As Jenzyn watched, they saw a high elf step through the doorway, into the room. They'd seen people move in and out of these rooms all morning, but their heart was in their throat all the same, and this time their anticipation was rewarded. Lord Methaneo, his silver skin paler than most high elves of Rodroze, his long black hair pulled back into a knot instead of falling free down his back. He wore a different jacket, but the cut was the same.

Lord Methaneo walked to the window and stood there, looking out. Jenzyn held their breath, wishing they could will their heart to stop beating, too. But the high elf's eyes swept downwards, passing over the spike on which Jenzyn was huddled without pause, and lingered on the street for a long moment before he stepped back from the window and turned away.

Jenzyn resisted the urge to look down and see whatever he might have been looking at. Instead they kept their eyes fixed on the window, staying as still as their pounding pulse allowed. Lord Methaneo turned to his dresser and opened a drawer, rummaging through it and pulling out the book. Jenzyn's mouth went dry.

He took it over to the little table at the side of the room, only half-visible through the window, and sat down. Opening the book, he started to page through, pausing every so often to take up a quill and scribble down a note. Jenzyn watched the whole time, breathing as shallowly as possible and blinking only when their eyes began to water. They were keenly aware of the sun creeping closer to its height, and the light sweeping across the ground behind them towards the cliff. Soon the shadows would no longer be protection.

Eventually, Lord Methaneo rose, shook out his quill, and capped the inkwell. He tucked the book back away into the dresser.

Jenzyn's muscles burned, with the tension that had been thrumming through them those two hours and with the anticipation that lit within them once Lord Methaneo walked out of the room. But they made themself hold still. Breathing deep again at last, they relaxed each muscle one at a time, consciously making them go limp and relaxed. This would be the worst possible time to have them cramp.

Then, just as the sunlight touched the tip of the spike, Jenzyn began creeping down it towards the cliff's outer wall. They kept the shadows clustered tight around them as they reached the triangular base and looked for a path up the wall. The stone of the cliffside had been chipped flat, but time and weather had roughened that smoothing. Plenty of indentations in the stone offered hand- and toe-holds.

Slowly, steadily, they began hauling themselves upward. Their spike jutted out between the first and second floors, so there wasn't that far to go until they were just below the third-floor windows, sidling sideways to reach the right one. There they paused, digging their fingers into a space just below the sill where moss had dug a gap into the stone, and raised their head up just enough to peer over. The room was still empty, the door half-closed. Jenzyn boosted themself up onto the narrow sill.

The lip was still only wide enough for their toes, not their heels, but the upper arch of the window thrust out enough from the cliff for them to get a good grip on it and hold steady. That left one hand free to fight with the window. It was divided down the middle, and looked to swing inwards when opened. When Jenzyn jiggled the sash, it rattled, but it didn't open, suggesting a latch inside.

Digging into their pocket, Jenzyn pulled out a piece of twisted wire. They weren't any good at picking locks, having had only cursory instruction from an older urchin who'd lost interest when Jenzyn declined to join his gang, but they'd kept the wire. Hopefully it would work for this.

Jenzyn slid it into the gap between the glass panes. They could feel the wire bend, at first, when it met the latch. Then the wiggly hooked bit at the end caught, and with a tug, they were able to pull the hook of the latch out of its socket. The window swung open, and Jenzyn tumbled inside.

They went straight for the dresser, around the elaborate canopied bed, and snatched the book out of the upper drawer. Looking it over, they scanned for signs of damage, and breathed a sigh of relief when they noted no missing pages, no cracked spine, not even a dog-ear or foxed edges. They tucked it into their largest pocket, the one that buttoned closed. The force they had to wedge it in with made them wince, but it was better to bend a corner than to see it tumble free on the way back down the wall.

As they turned away from the dresser, the papers on the table caught their gaze. Those would be Lord Methaneo's notes, and not for Jenzyn to take, but there were two more volumes atop them. One was heavy and old, the other a thin folio that looked like it had been bound by an amateur. Jenzyn hesitated, glanced at the half-open door, and then crept on careful feet over to the table.

The folio seemed to be a homemade notebook, half the pages blank, the rest covered with the same handwriting as the parchment. It held notes beyond Jenzyn's understanding, and arcane diagrams even less comprehensible to them. They closed that one and set it aside, then reached for the weightier volume.

This one had a bookplate inside the front cover, with 'Naidran Methaneo' inscribed upon it. Jenzyn flipped just far enough through to be sure that it was in a different handwriting, professionally scribed. Then they closed it and held it in their hands, weighing it and considering. Bringing it down with them would be difficult, with its weight, but they were badly tempted by it. A new book for the library was the least recompense that their teacher deserved. If they tucked it into their belt-

A scuffing, in the hallway aside, like soft soles against stone.

Forgetting the folio, Jenzyn lunged for the window, flinging themself over the sill as the door opened. They slid a few feet down the wall before they were able to catch a couple of gaps in the stone, and hung still there, fighting not to breath as hard or as harshly as their body wanted to. There was shuffling and movement in the room above.

"Look, clearly someone was in here," they heard Lord Methaneo say. "My warding spells say that the drawer was opened, and the book is gone- and here we have an open window."

Jenzyn flattened further against the stone, calling out to as many shadows as would come.

"Someone's tamed rift-beast? Or a beguiled bird?" Another voice, female. Lord Feneleo herself, perhaps. "Or I've heard of some with air affinities who can seem to fly."

"Or a trick to throw us off the true trail," Lord Methaneo said. "Surely the guards would notice someone flying in and out, and my wards would deflect a rift-beast or an animal."

"Whoever they are, they didn't leave a calling card."

"I'll find that out," Lord Methaneo said, and Jenzyn shuddered at the grimness of his tone. "I have a rift-beast in waiting that will track them, whatever method they used. And they'll reget their folly when it finds them."

His voice moved away from the window as he spoke. Jenzyn, trembling now despite their attempt at stillness, began to clamber back down the wall. They didn't dare rush, despite every instinct screaming in the back of their head to flee as fast as possible. If they lost their grip and dropped from here, there would be no canny ahrauk guard to catch them.

Only when they were a few feet from the bottom, in the shadow of the garish spikes, did they dare look up. Far overhead, at the window, shadows were gathering. No--not shadows, with their gentle and concealing darkness, but a grim and roiling sort of smoke, swirling slowly together into a shape. It wasn't a a creature's shape, more of a vortex, but there was something predatorial within that whirl of darkness. A flash of red eyes, of ivory fangs, of curved, tearing claws.

Jenzyn let go of the stone and dropped the last few feet to the ground, landing heavily and biting back hard on a grunt. The air whuffed out of them, so they still needed a second to breathe. But as soon as they'd sucked in another breath, they broke into a run.

Their sheltering shadows frayed away as they bolted down the street, now fully lit by the noontime sun. Shadows couldn't get purchase in so much light, no matter how panicked Jenzyn's calling. But Jenzyn no longer cared so much about being seen. Something about that smoky vortex told them that there would be no safety in hiding. It was made to sniff out prey. And tear through it, once it had found it.

Most of the folk about this time of day were high elves who obligingly startled aside from Jenzyn's path, though a few eidalh and trolls were enduring the bright sunlight for whatever business brought them out, and Sergeant Shurem wasn't the city's only ahrauk. Jenzyn wasn't looking up to identify the bigfolk they ran past, or even the handful of other smallfolk. A guard shouted out for them to halt, but they ignored them, continuing on towards the bridge that led out of the cliffside district. The guards were more likely to believe a nobleman than a gnomish trespasser.

Most of them were more likely to.

Before Jenzyn stood a crossroads: west towards the gates, south-southwest towards the monastery, south towards the market. Behind them, they could hear rising shouts as something snarled at passerby, loud enough for Jenzyn to hear it, though from the distance of the shouting it was still well behind. The road to the monastery would take them to trained monks militant and monks arcane, able to beat back whatever Lord Methaneo had unleashed. But it would be a long run, the road curving through the scholar's district that huddled around the edge of the market and monastery. On the other hand, the market was straight ahead, and there were a wealth of guardhouses there. And a guard that they thought they could trust to help them.

All Jenzyn's endurance was of stillness, long stretches of careful concealment and unwavering awareness. Their lungs already burned, and their breathing came in harsh pants. With the smoke-thing behind them, they'd never reach the monastery without being overrun.

Someone screamed behind them, not in mere fear, but in pain. Their voice had the same timbre as the guard who had shouted at Jenzyn to halt. Heartbeat stuttering in their chest, Jenzyn clattered over the bridge and turned onto the south-bound road.

***

Jenzyn came into the market with the creature closing fast. They didn't dare look back over their shoulder, but they didn't need to; the reactions of those around them were enough to tell them that they were gaining. It made no other sound--no breathing, no foot-thuds--but the discordant snarl rang louder and louder in their ears, until they could barely hear anything else.

There was shouting and screaming all around, and the clattering and banging of people surging away from the roadway and pressing into the merchants' stalls. As Jenzyn passed into the main square, guards rushed immediately from the walls. The foremost two raised their halberds high and clanged them together into an X-shape, blocking the road into the square. Jenzyn ducked low and skidded between them, not stopping. They heard the snarling change pitch, though, and this time they had to look back. If they'd just set it on the guards-

But when Jenzyn looked over their shoulder, they saw that the halberds were glowing, a clear, steady blue. A shimmering shield emerged from the point where they crossed that seemed to stymie the roiling darkness. It darted forward, claws lancing from its black depths and scraping against the shield, but they seemed to dissolve away in the blue glow of the domed shield before they could break through.

Was it smart enough to go around? Jenzyn didn't dare wait. Turning back, they kept running, dodging as one startled guard reached out to catch them, then another. That last movement sideways carried them straight into the broad bulk of a third.

They looked up, and the terror choked them turned into an almost floating feeling of relief when a tusked orange face looked down. Throat raw, tongue catching on every syllable, Jenzyn rasped out, "Sergeant Shurem."

"Are you hurt?"

"No," Jenzyn blurted, startled by the question. "But it's, it's, it's chasing me. Some, some kind of magic, a moving darkness, I, I think it hurt a guard in the cliffside quarter-"

"A rift-beast," Sergeant Shurem said grimly, drawing her sword from her scabbard. There was a blue glow along its length, Jenzyn saw, spreading from runes engraved upon it to shine bright along the edges of the blade. "Get into the guardhouse. You know where it is?"

Jenzyn nodded, instead of trying to answer. Then, burning with the shame of their cowardice, they ducked around the Sergeant and continued headlong towards it. They had the book, they had to protect it, and there was nothing that they could do to help. Knowing that didn't make them feel any less small.

More guards were pouring out of the guardhouse even as they approached it, and Jenzyn ducked among them and through the swinging door. To their surprise, no one tried to stop them. Inside, more were mobilizing. A troll pulling a buckle tight on his breastplate frowned at Jenzyn in surprise.

"You're Sergeant Shurem's gnome," he said, before Jenzyn could open their mouth to speak.

Jenzyn nodded, their shoulders up around their ears, and edged over to a bench against the wall that seemed out of the way of the mustering guards. The troll's words were enough to keep anyone else from questioning them. They huddled there, knees pulled up to their chest, heels braced on the edge of the chair.

The last of the guards had barely made it out of the guardhouse before a few of those who had been outside came stomping back in. One of them, an eidalh, held a glass jar covered with glowing blue runes in careful hands. Her tail was curled up around the base to steady it.

"Take that to the monastery at speed," Sergeant Shurem ordered, following her in. "You two, go with her and keep any fools from jostling her and knocking that thing to the ground. I'll stay here to answer for the Guard-Captain. She'll be down before the dust has settled."

Two salutes answered her, and a nod from the eidalh, and all three of them left again without even a glance at Jenzyn. Sergeant Shurem brought down a mug from a cupboard and poured a bit of water into it from a spigot at the side of the room. Then she brought it over to the bench and held it out to Jenzyn.

"Drink."

Jenzyn took it and sipped obediently, though there was barely enough to wet their mouth, never mind ease the burning of their throat. When it was empty they rested the empty mug on top of their knees.

"I'm sorry," they said quietly into it. "I, I didn't mean to bring it here. But I couldn't make the monastery."

Sergeant Shurem nodded. "Do you have that book that got snatched from the library? I heard about the fuss. And that someone was hurt."

"My teacher."

A broad hand settled on their shoulder, the weight falling so gently that they barely flinched. "It is a worthy act, to carry on where a teacher was forced to leave off. Did you take anything else?"

Jenzyn thought of the heavy book and was suddenly, deeply grateful that they hadn't given in to the temptation to snatch it up. They shook their head.

"Good." Sergeant Shurem lifted her hand away and went to pour more water into the mug. "Your face is red. Drink that, and then come with me."

Jenzyn drank more greedily, this time, draining the mug, then set it aside. Once on their feet, they swayed, feeling their muscles tremble. Fear seeped cold down their spine as they followed the Sergeant too the door and out again. Her broad back in front of them seemed an insufficient shield from an even higher authority.

The marketplace was slowly coming back to life, frightened people drifting cautiously back into the square. A ring of six guards stood around a spot at the entrance where the road was torn up, and the uprooted cobblestones strangely blackened in long streaks. Sergeant Shurem took a position beyond them, facing the bridge. Jenzyn fought the urge to sidle behind her.

"Here she comes," she murmured to Jenzyn, her hand falling heavier on their shoulder this time. "No one can say the Guard-Captain is slow off the mark. Especially when there's elf-lords to wrangle."

As she said it, over the high arch of the bridge came five more guards, in the ornate tabards of the cliffside guardpost. And amid them, his back stiff and his lip curled in offended indignation, was Lord Methaneo.

One of the guards, a cobalt-skinned high elf in the finest of the tabards with a horsehair crest on her helm, turned and said something to Lord Methaneo when he tried to move to the fore. Her fine features were pinched up in barely restrained anger. Even in his arrogance, Lord Mathaneo seemed to recognize that. He fell back a few paces, letting her lead as they drew in close.

"Captain," Sergeant Shurem said, crisply saluting the woman. "The rift-beast was contained with no casualties in the market. It's been dispatched to the monastery for the monks arcane to deal with, and I have its target in custody."

The Guard-Captain's brow crinkled. "You do?"

Lord Methaneo peered over the Guard-Captain's shoulder, and his cold elven eyes seemed to bite right through them. The urge to dart away into the stalls was almost overwhelming, but not as quite as strong as the fear crawling down Jenzyn's spine, turning their legs to lead.

"They invaded my lodgings and stole from me," he said, his voice even colder. "I presume they will be prosecuted to the full extent that Rodroze allows."

"They're your little ward of the library, aren't they, Sergeant?" The Guard-Captain looked down at Jenzyn through the open front of her helm. The runes graven into the sides cast a reddish glow over her skin. "Carrying one secret, hidden thing."

"Jenzyn," Sergeant Shurem said, unruffled, and pressed gently against their shoulder to urge them forward. "Empty your pockets for the Guard-Captain."

Every step felt like they were dragging heavy weights across the cobblestone. Shoulders hunched, eyes down, Jenzyn shuffled forward until they were in front of the Sergeant. Her heavy hand fell away. Heart in their throat, Jenzyn reached down to their big buttoned-closed pocket, then hesitated. If they had to give up the book, after all of this-

But they trusted Sergeant Shurem.

Shaking fingers fumbling with the buttons, they opened the pocket, pulled out the book, and held it out to the Guard-Captain. Lord Methaneo started to lurch forward, his face twisted in fury. The Guard-Captain stopped him with an outstretched arm. He looked down at her hand against his chest, then at the guards to either side, and stepped back again.

The Guard-Captain lowered her hand and reached for the book. It nearly slipped from Jenzyn's numb grip as they held it upward, but she caught it before it could fall and flipped the front page open.

"The frontispiece says that this is the property of the Library of Rodroze, and the Monastery of the Illuminated Mind. With which you are affiliated?"

Jenzyn nodded. "Yes, I, I, I'm-"

"They're a monk custodian," Sergeant Shurem said, before Jenzyn could choke out that they were in training. "Training under Master Niehta, I was told."

"I see," the Guard-Captain said, a look of indecipherable understanding crossing her face. She handed the book back to Jenzyn. "Then you are surely the appropriate person to be carrying that."

"But they trespassed in my rooms! And stole from me! My summoned creature was certain that they were in my lodgings."

Her face was already hardening as she turned away from Jenzyn to answer Lord Methaneo. "You have proof of trespass? More proof than that the rift-beast you admit that you summoned pursued them? We do not consider the actions of rift-beasts to be reliable testimony in Rodroze. If you or another did not see them there, then we have nothing."

"My wards-"

She wasn't finished. "And what did they steal from you, my lord? There is only one thing they carried that they were keeping hidden, as any guard here can attest, unless you mean to say that each and every one of our helmets' runes have been put away by a gnomish trainee. That book belongs to the library. If it was in your lodgings, then a theft did happen, but it was not at their hands."

Jenzyn saw another spasm of rage shake Lord Methaneo's body, his fists clenching, but then he slumped in resignation.

"I will be following this up with Lord Feneleo and the city commander," he said, looking from the Guard-Captain, to Jenzyn, to Sergeant Shurem.

"Indeed," the Guard-Captain said. "You will have that opportunity very shortly, for the summoning of rift-beasts is illegal in Rodroze. My lord, you are under arrest."

Lord Methaneo's gaze twitched from side to side, assessing the guards that flanked him. Both of them shifted their grips on their weapons, and it was clear from their faces that they would be glad to take him more violently into custody if he tried to run. His summoned creature had harmed a cliffside guard, Jenzyn remembered. They hoped it hadn't killed them. These guards weren't inclined to be forgiving, either way.

"Given your exalted rank," the Guard-Captain said, "I would hate to inconvenience you with a wait for the magistrate. We will go to see the city commander directly."

Sergeant Shurem reached down to grab Jenzyn's shoulder again, pulling them back to her side. Jenzyn went without protest. They clutched the book tight to their chest and let her usher them slowly down the road towards the monastery.

Only once they were well into the scholar's quarter did Jenzyn dare speak. "Thank you."

"There's no need for thanks."

"You knew I broke into his rooms."

"I knew that you were doing a duty your teacher would be proud to see you do." Sergeant Shurem squeezed Jenzyn's shoulder one last time, then released them. "I am not religious, I am not well-read, and I do not know everything of the Reader of Stars. But it seems to me that you served your goddess, even if some laws were bent. Rodroze exists because of the library, which exists because of the goddess. Even as a common guard, I know her service is more important than those laws."

"I'm not very faithful," Jenzyn admitted. "I, I grew up in the library, that's all."

"But you are training with the monks, and they will care. You should tell your master about this work. It ought to make them proud."

Jenzyn nodded, and hugged the book a little tighter, and let Sergeant Shurem walk them all the way back to the monastery.

***

They delivered the book to the librarians first. The librarian from two nights ago was just coming onto her shift at the front desk, and her eyes widened when Jenzyn held it up to her. She opened her mouth with a question, but Sergeant Shurem stepped forward, putting herself between the librarian and Jenzyn. They took the chance to scurry away while she was introducing herself.

Next they should have gone to the custodians. Sergeant Shurem had said as much. But instead they fled back to their mother's suite, thankfully empty, and shut themself in their room. They climbed onto their bed without taking off their cloak and shoes, folded their knees up to their chest, put their head down, and huddled there shaking.

Eventually they ran out of energy even for shaking. Rolling over onto their side, still curled up with their knees to their chest, they fell asleep.

They woke some time later, groggy and confused, with no idea how long they'd slept or how late it might be. Or maybe how early. Their brain was fogged the way it did when they slept through a whole day. Someone was moving around in the main room of the suite, clattering dishes, but that didn't mean anything. Their mother kept no regular hours.

Facing her seemed almost overwhelming, and Jenzyn considered rolling over and going back to sleep until she was gone. She wasn't likely to ask them any questions, but the past day had been so stressful that even her silence seemed like too much to endure. Then their stomach growled, and they sighed and climbed out of bed. At least she wouldn't comment on their sleep-rumpled cloak.

When they stepped out of their room, though, their mother wasn't in the main room at all. Their teacher sat at the table, or rather beside it, bundled into a chair and leaning against the edge of the table for support. They wore a loose robe, with a bulge of bandages beneath. Their olive skin was pale, with a greyish tone, and the fur of their mane had been trimmed away from their neck, which was distressing to see on such a venerable eidalh. They smiled when they saw Jenzyn.

More surprising still was the source of the clatter. Master Geornde, bent nearly double to fit under their low roof, was trying awkwardly to clean out a cup in their tiny kitchen corner. The cup was sized for gnomes, too, and it looked tiny and fragile in his massive, pebbled hands.

"I can clean that up," Jenzyn said hastily.

"No," Master Geornde said. "Your mother was kind enough to make us tea. I'd hate to be an inconvenient guest."

"Geornde, if you break their cup, you will be more inconvenient," Jenzyn's teacher said. "Put it down."

Reluctantly, the troll set it down by the water-pump, then half-crawled back over to the table.

Jenzyn found their attention drawn inexorably back to their teacher. "Are you all right?"

Their teacher kept smiling. "I am healing. You did very well the other night. And yesterday, too, to hear Master Geornde tell it."

Remembering an earlier conversation about what would heal and what might not, Jenzyn looked down at the floor. "I, I shoved it into my pocket really roughly. I think a corner bent."

"It was not so bad." Their teacher tried to lean forward, then had to catch themselves on the table. Master Geornde lurched toward them, looking alarmed, and hovered close by with his hands poised to grab. "And there is a point where retrieving a book matters more than avoiding minor damage to it. You judged that point correctly."

"Sergeant Shurem told me what happened," Master Geornde said. "She told me she wasn't sure that you would report in yourself. It was foolish, what you did, but it was also very brave."

"It was the correct response," Jenzyn's teacher said. "Impulsive, but correct. Master Geornde was wise to suggest you for custodian training."

"But I thought we were supposed to let the monks militant handle it," Jenzyn said, thrown off-balance by the lack of reprimand. "Not get involved ourselves, and risk the books."

"That's true of trainees," their teacher said, clearly counterbalancing against the urge to lean forward again. "And of the internal custodians. But there are external custodians, too. We are retrievalists, and there are far fewer of us. Three, myself included."

"I recommended you to Master Niehta specifically, for purposes of evaluation," Master Geornde said. "They are the current Master of the external custodians. I think their evaluation is now complete."

He turned to look at Jenzyn's teacher, who nodded.

"And satisfactory," they said. "You would be welcome as a retrievalist. Our purpose goes beyond retrieval, I should warn you, though it is the heart of our mandate. We seek out any knowledge that has been hoarded and hidden away, whether or not it was stolen from the library to begin with. We liberate it, and bring it here to be shared."

It felt eerily like an earlier conversation. "I can't be a paladin," Jenzyn said, panic bubbling in their chest. "I can't fight. I can't, can't hurt people, I can't-"

"You won't," their teacher said, cutting through their stammering. "Did you hurt anyone last night? If you accept the role, we will teach you to be even stealthier, and to evaluate and avoid danger. Gnomes have a natural advantage that eclipses even eidalh, but any talent can be trained. We are not warriors, Jenzyn. We are, to use a word that our targets would apply, thieves."

"And we know you have a talent in that direction," Master Geornde said. He wasn't sarcastic, or dry, or even amused. He sounded, instead, like he approved.

From their tone, Jenzyn's teacher certainly did. And... it was true. Jenzyn had been practicing these skills for a long time out of boredom alone. To give them to the service of the library instead seemed a far better purpose.

Jenzyn took a deep breath, lined the words up on their tongue, and tried to force them out without a stammer. They didn't quite manage, but they hoped their sincerity came through regardless. "Then if I, if I qualify, I want to train for that. As a monk custodian, external."

They must have gotten the tone across that they intended, because their teacher's smile was clearly one of pride. "With your actions yesterday, you have already proven yourself one of us. But I will train you to be one of the best."

[toasterwords]

A bit of backstory for Kolya the Splendid, a bugbear Oath of Glory paladin who… may not be aware she’s a paladin, actually. But does want the world to know that she’s a Big Damn Hero.

—

Kolya wasn’t looking forward to this execution. That had been the one perk of being a heel, up until the last season finale: heels never had to execute anyone. Anyone thrown into the arena was an enemy of the state, so that duty was reserved for the school’s heroes, publicly striking down those whose crimes represented disorder and deserved the harshest of punishments.

Those who offended the gods, as the announcer always shouted. And now Kolya wasn’t just a face, she was a face with the gods’ favor, so it was only right that she be given the honor of the season’s first execution.

Keep reading

[toasterwords]

Pelldea’s character prologue, for the Moon and Void story.

---

"If it's not too much of an imposition, I'd like you to talk to Amaranth before we reach the shrine," Llleaneia told Pelldea on their last evening of the pilgrimage. "She's been telling me about some doubts she's been struggling with, and I don't have the background to assuage them. I think you might be able to do better."

Lleaneia nodded towards the young paladin-trainee, practicing her forms in the dim twilight haze. Amaranth wasn't one of the more vocal novices, though she was of an age with most of the others, and thus joined now and then in their chatter in a way that Pelldea could not. That gap was why Pelldea sat alone with Lleaneia, at the priestess' fire, and not crowded in with the rest of the novices, listening to them talk about fashions that she couldn't identify and praetors too young for her to take seriously. It made her feel less like an initiate and more like a chaperone on a schooling trip.

Perhaps that, and the shared cameradie of being the only elves here over two centuries, was why Lleaneia had thought to ask her such a thing. It wasn't Pelldea's place to give spiritual guidance to anyone. And even less so to give it to would-be paladins.

Her ears flattened back against her head at the notion. "Whatever doubts they are, I'm no more suited than you are to them. I'm no paladin, whatever the abbess may think."

"I know," Lleaneia said mildly. "But her doubts are about the sword, and using it, and I have never in my life raised one. No detail in a calling-dream is without purpose, and the one the Lady sent you put a sword across your knees. If it wasn't to call you as a paladin, and I will take your word on that, then maybe She meant for you to be on this pilgrimage, to aid this one."

A clever argument, and one Pelldea couldn't figure how to dispute. She'd spent the last seven years, since she entered the abbey of the Lady of the Moon, resisting the theories of the oracles that such a dream surely destined her to be a paladin. There were only three in all the abbeys across the Icebreak Mountains, not counting Amaranth, who was still a trainee. It was reasonable enough that the Lady's senior clergy hoped for more.

Secretly, Pelldea suspected that the sword had been meant exactly as they thought--that the Lady wished another paladin in her service. That did not mean she had to be one. Even in the service of the gods, mortals made their own choices. The Lady would have her as a priestess, or not at all.

"I'm not interested in telling old war stories, or encouraging her into battle. No one should kill on anyone else's orders, even those of a god. The War of the Cedars taught me that much."

"Then explain that to her. Maybe that's the spiritual experience she needs to have on the way to the shrine. How do you know she hasn't misinterpreted the path of her own calling?"

Ears dipping back, Pelldea glowered at the priestess' smile. "You'd have made a good advocate in the courts of Iisryl."

"I was, once, actually. In my third century, and a bit into the fourth." Lleaneia's smile widened, and she turned to wave at the paladin-trainee. "Amaranth, would you like to come sit with us?"

The girl scrambled over so quickly that she nearly tripped over her own feet, sheathing her sword as she came. She didn't realize she'd forgotten her camp-stool until she reached their fire, and she glanced back at it, once, then dropped down to sit cross-legged in the dirt between them instead of going back. Pelldea had to admit to her eagerness.

"Mother Lleaneia," she said respectfully, with a nod to Lleaneia, and then she nodded just as deeply to Pelldea. "Sister Pelldea."

"Sister Amaranth." Pelldea answered, clipped.

Her name was a sharp reminder of just how young she was. Plant and herb names had been popular in Pelldea's four hundreds, when she'd had her own son, but they'd fallen out of favor not long after Coriander had been born. Amaranth could very likely be her daughter.

Amaranth's ears dipped at her brusqueness, and she took a deep breath, making a visible effort to raise them again. "Mother Lleaneia, did the Lady give you any insight for me?"

"I have prayed over it, but She has given me no insight of my own. Instead, in my prayer, it came to me that there is another in this company who may be able to answer some of your questions. Sister Pelldea has graciously agreed to speak to you of her own experience with the blade." Lleaneia gestured towards her. "Tell her your troubles, and she will give you what wisdom you can."

"Um." Amaranth looked at Pelldea with some alarm, her ears dipping again despite all of her efforts to keep them upright. "I'm going to be a paladin, when this is over with. And Battle-Mother Vaelliana, the senior paladin, she's taught me what to expect when that happens. But it's not like the Lady's servants go to war, so she, and the others, they've never killed more than a rift-breast. I pray, we all pray, that's all we'll face, but there was that abbey attacked and slaughtered this summer, and... people did that."

Pelldea hadn't heard that news, and she turned, startled, towards Lleaneia. The priestess gave her a solemn nod.

"If it hadn't been for that, the Battle-Mother would be here with me, but... she and the others went to guard the abbeys closest to that one. If it happens again, they'll have to fight people. And if I become a paladin, I'll have to do the same. But I don't know if I can. You were a soldier in the War of the Cedars, you can tell me what it's like."

That phrasing startled Pelldea into unpinning her ears. "I don't tell war stories."

"I don't want war stories. I just want to know- I want to know if I can do it. Or if it's going to be too horrible. If I can't, I want to know before I start."

Pelldea deliberately didn't look at Lleaneia.

"It's not hard to kill people," she told Amaranth. "Not if you think about yourself the right way, and them the right way. That's the problem. When we went down into the Cedars, we felt like we were righteous- I felt like I was a sword of righteousness. Like anything I did was justified. My comrades and I were a bright shining light, a beacon rising over all the mud and blood and ugliness of what we were doing."

"That sounds like- like when I'm training with the Battle-Mother, praying during morning exercises," Amaranth said. "When both of us can feel the Lady in our hearts, and feel each other through Her."

"Training together can inspire cameradie, whether a god is involved or not," Pelldea told her. "We weren't paladins. It wasn't a holy cause. We were just soldiers who joined up for the thrill of it, and it was just a war. But you have to feel like that, like you're righteous and together in your righteousness, to join in battle. I suspect it's even easier for paladins, because you can decide you're following the Lady's will, and not just a flag. Killing people isn't the hard part, it's holding back from killing them when you're so sure you're in the right."

"The Battle-Mother talked about that in training," Amaranth said, her ears trembling. "About taking responsibility for your own actions, and never striking in impulse or in anger. The Lady hates to see blood spilled unless there's no other choice."

"It's one thing to talk about those kinds of standards. Holding yourself to them is another matter. If you want my advice, don't ever think that the Lady is guiding you towards to violence. Assume, unless She manifests in person to tell you otherwise, that every violent action is your own choice. Even fighting in Her service, you have to be your own commander."

Pelldea's own ears were very straight, very still, as she held them up and angled back so that they wouldn't dip. Her voice was flat, and she knew how stony her face must look. Neutral, edging towards harsh. She felt very aware of the campfire beside them, in a way she hadn't been earlier--the dull red glow of its sinking flames, the scent of burning wood, the quiet crackling as dry logs were transformed slowly into ash.

"Did you...." Amaranth looked sympathetic, of all the things, her eyes pained and her ears drooping and her mouth screwed up unhappily. "Is that why you didn't want to be a paladin? I heard that you'd dreamed of having a sword, and no one understood why you wanted to be a priestess instead."

"Yes," Pelldea said. "I found out, far too late, that I wasn't a sword of righteousness. I was a sword of death. And I decided I wouldn't be a sword of any kind, for anyone, anymore."

The reek of smoke hung heavy in her nostrils, wood burning down into ash. Her mind wanted to supply other scents, worse ones. Wood was far from the only thing that she'd seen burned, when she was young and full of foolish zeal. She counted it mercy that the Lady had called her at all.

Lleaneia broke in at last. "I think it's time to arrange watches for tonight. I'll take the mid-of-night watch, so that I can pray while the moon is high."

"Oh, of course," Amaranth said, scrambling to her feet. "I'll take the morning watch, so I can do my morning exercises before the sun comes up."

"And I'll have the evening watch," Pelldea said. It would be some time before she was ready to sleep tonight.

***

The morning dawned cold and bitter, this high up in the mountains. Pelldea didn't join the younger novices in their whining, but she didn't turn down the blanket that one of them offered her, either. She woke just as Amaranth was finishing out her exercises, her breath puffing white in the chill air. Pelldea watched her kneel, holding her sheathed sword upright in front of her, and kiss the crescent moon engraved on its hilt.

This was the first day that the climb was truly a climb. Pelldea was mountain-born, and the thin air didn't trouble her lungs the way it did some of the forest-born novices. The slope of the path, though, demanded more exertion than she was accustomed to. When Lleaneia, almost as worn, called a halt at noon, Pelldea was quick to find a rock to sit on.

Lleaneia took a seat beside her and leaned against the stone, sucking in air. There was a slight wheezing quality to her breath that worried Pelldea.

"Can't you heal yourself, Mother?" she asked. "That seems like something within the Lady's scope."

"Healing yourself is a chancy business. You're asking the Lady for power, whenever you heal, and if She doesn't care to grant it then it's drawn from you instead. So if you're trying to mend your own ills, you may end up trading wakefulness, or strength, or the day's endurance for it." Lleaneia smiled and patted her chest. "I've made this climb many times before. I won't ask the Lady for help before I truly need it."

"Don't push yourself beyond your limits before you ask," Pelldea said, and then, realizing how reproving that sounded, added, "or I'll be left having to ask on your behalf. That won't go well."

"Don't assume the Lady won't listen," Lleaneia said, half-amused, half-chiding. "Or that She won't ask you to pay yourself for what you're trying to invoke, just because you haven't been fully initiated. She called you, and that means She intends to empower you, no matter what way you choose to serve Her."

When she'd come to the abbey, Pelldea had assumed that everyone had some kind of palpable calling to be there. She'd learned since that dreams such as hers were rare, and less overt and more ambiguous signs not much less rarer. Most priestesses were there of their own volition, and few of those ever earned the right to channel the Lady's power.

She could describe her own dream, though, so clearly that no one had disputed its origin: the cold clear night, the mountain cliffs above that she'd never seen before, ones every full dedicate she'd described them to had recognized. The still, perfectly circular pool reflecting the full moon in its water, even though the sky above was lit by nothing stronger than the stars. Herself, kneeling at its edge, a sword across her thighs that even in the dream she hadn't been willing to touch.

The unnatural tinge to the cold, the harsh wind that blew where where the cliffs should have given shelter, the ominous and skin-prickling feeling of something behind her--these had left the priestesses less certain. The Lady rarely spoke clearly, even in Her domain of dreams of prophecy. Pelldea hoped that her initiation would make the mystery more clear.

Fallen into brooding, Pelldea startled when Lleaneia, breath finally caught, pushed herself up off the rock again. "We'd better start moving before the novices start getting hungry. I would hate to face the Lady and have to explain that no one fasted properly because they thought I was giving them time for lunch."

Pelldea snorted and rose, following after as Lleaneia went to gather the rest of her initiates up.

***

The path to the Lady's shrine was well-concealed, passing in and out of little mountain caves, every so often seeming like it dead-ended until Lleaneia led them around a secret corner. Aside from the altitude, the last stretch wasn't difficult. Stairs had long since been cut into the stone here, to ease the fasting initiates' climb and prevent any deadly spills down the mountainside.

Pelldea did her best to spend the climb in spiritual contemplation. She had a certainty that the other novices lacked, thanks to the dream, that kept her from questioning her worthiness. There was also the serenity of age, assuring her that at this late date she would not find something else to devote herself too. An elf was expected to have several passions in their life, and she was more than old enough for the Lady to be the one that she would finish out her life in the grip of.

All that was left to trouble her was her dream, and the ominous notes within it. Every vertiginous cliff, every dark crevice, she found herself scanning for danger. She had to remind herself over and over again that this wasn't her task. She was a novice too, despite her age, and the young elves around her weren't under her protection. But every time the path turned, she would look again, ears swiveling.

She fell back after a while on the well-practiced rhythms of prayer to distract herself, murmuring the familiar words under her breath. "Lady of the Moon, she who blesses the meek and honors the peaceful, keeper of secrets and architect of dreams, hear my heart...."

It was a distraction, but also a meditation. In time, her thoughts grew clear, her worry receding to a quiet background hum, the cold air and the fading light and the muffled shush of her travel slippers against the stone expanding to fill up her senses. She might have been utterly alone on these winding steps, these windswept ledges, treading quietly through the narrow-walled dark. Her awareness of the other novices, of Lleaneia in front of them and Amaranth bringing up the rear, faded to a distant background hum alongside her anticipation and her unease.

As dusk fell, the last of the orange-gold sunlight fading from the sky and leaving star-studded velvet in its wake, they passed through a narrow defile that led at the far end into the dark entrance of a cave. Far past its entrance there was a shimmering glint, as of moonlight reflecting off of water, thought the moon was not yet in the sky. The sacred pool, Pelldea remembered, the dream coming fresh into her mind. The shrine awaited them.

Lleaneia paused near the center of the cave, looking over her shoulder to view the sky through the rough-carved entrance arch they'd passed through. A frown briefly turned her mouth downward, and her ears twitched like she was listening out for a signal. Timing the moon? They were meant to enter the shrine as it rose, or just after, stepping out of the cave into the first rays of its light.

Then she shrugged, frown fading and ears straightening, and turned back to lead them onward. Their timing must be close enough.

Unlike the tunnels and stairs they'd used to get here, this cave was entirely natural, the only alteration to its stone the widening of the entrances on either end. Pelldea wasn't one of those mountain elves who especially liked caverns, and sought beautiful places within the earth to admire the works of nature where even the craft of the dwarves hadn't touched them. But this cave was certainly beautiful.

Spires of stone descended from the ceiling or rose up from the floor, narrowing at the center to not quite, or only just, meet together, banded in shades of blue and grey and pinkish-red. They were damp, or glazed such that they seemed to be, and the reflected moonlight from the shrine was just bright enough to gleam off that seeming wetness and bring out the depths of their color. It was like passing through a work of art.

Caught up int the beauty of her surroundings, and inspired by it to shape one last prayer to the Lady, Pelldea nearly walked right into Lleaneia's rigid back. She stopped just in time, and the other novices piled up in a confused halt behind her. Something about the tension in Lleaneia's shoulders made her also tense into high alert.

Lleaneia turned back towards them. "Unnatural powers follow us! Silver Lady, bright among the constellations, give me your blessing, and turn these powers of the rift away!"

Her hands had come up, sketching holy sigils in the air. There was a silver light around them that left glowing after-images where her fingers had passed. Pelldea turned about too, meaning to get a good look at the enemy, and as she turned she moved out of Lleaneia's way.

An arrow sped through the space where she had been only a second before, cutting through the half-formed pattern of Lleaneia's invocation and burying itself in the priestess' throat.

There was a confused flurry of movement among the novices. One or two screamed, one burst into tears, and a couple of them, slower or less aware, simply froze up in mute confusion. Amaranth, paladin-trainee that she was, had done none of those three things. She spun about, drawing her sword and unhooking her shield from her back, and took a defensive stance in front of all the others.

Beyond her, creatures rushed towards them, moving in an unnatural combination of oily smoothness and sudden jerks. They were more shadows than visible beasts, but the impression of red eyes glinted in the darkness, and the moonlight now flooding into the cave seemed to highlight flashes of white claws and ivory fangs. Beyond them stood two figures, one armored with bow in hand, the other robed, with a chunk of glowing rock in their hand. Elves, Pelldea was certain of it, mountain elves just like her.

Amaranth's eyes were wide, her coppery skin washed-out and pale, the hand that gripped her sword shaking ever so slightly. Pelldea could see that she was bare inches from breaking at this unexpected assault. Which would be disastrous for all of them; she had her shield, and her sword, and her faith in the Lady, and everyone else had only the last.

"Call upon the Lady!" Pelldea said to her, urgently, even as she moved to grab the two most-confused of the novices and pull them back and away. "She was answering Lleaneia, so She knows what's happening. She'll answer you too. The rest of you, into the shrine and out of her way."

"But- we weren't supposed-" one of the screamers began to protest.

Pelldea shoved her, too, pushing her stumbling out into the light falling around the sacred pool.

"There weren't supposed to be rift-beasts here, either. Get into the shrine, and pray that it's too holy a ground for those things to touch."

The crying woman sobbed harder, rising in pitch, and Pelldea shoved her too. One of the slower novices had caught on by now, scrambling into the shrine herself and reaching out to draw the crying one the rest of the way into the light of the moon. Then the second screamer, who shrieked again when she tripped over Lleaneia's body, and the last one, who seemed so dazed that Pelldea had to hand her directly to the sensible one, and then it was only Pelldea and Amaranth left on this side of the cave entrance. Pelldea turned back to look at Amaranth, opening her mouth to tell her to fall back and defend the door.

She was standing fast, still in a defensive stance. Silver light limned her blade, and shone from her shield, and blazed from the crescent moon on the hilt of her sword, lancing out bright between her fingers and seeming to make the rift-beasts recoil. But she was still standing out in the middle of the cave, and in all that open space, some of them had slunk around the pillars of stone to surround her. The archer had moved with them, trading the bow for a short stabbing blade.

Amaranth had brought both her sword and her shield, to have them blessed by the Lady, but of course she wasn't wearing her armor. It clearly hadn't occurred to her, half-trained and without any real experience, that she had to guard herself accordingly.

"Behind you!" Pelldea shouted, seeing the elven figure lunge at her unprotected back.

Turning towards them, Amaranth hesitated just a fraction, sword jerking sideways halfway through a blow. It had been aimed low anyway, as if she'd been thinking of a rift-beast, and her fateful pause gave the elf with the blade time enough to duck aside. And then drive the blade into her chest, as she lowered her shield to try and follow them.

Behind her, one of the rift-beasts lunged forward in a strange jerky-smooth movement. It didn't so much claw at her, as a dog would, as drive its smoky black substance into her back. Somehow, the seemingly insubstantial mist tore at her flesh like a saw-blade, leaving deep, ragged wounds. Amaranth screamed and staggered forward.

The elf who'd stabbed her jerked their blade from her breast and darted away, sparing a brief glance over their shoulder as Pelldea rushed towards them and Amaranth. They were hooded, and she saw only the faintest suggestion of features in the shadows of the hood, nothing to identify them with. Her greater concern, though, was for Amaranth.

Amaranth staggered and fell without an ounce of grace, sword losing its light as it slipped from her fingers, shield dimming as it started to slide from her arm. And as she hit the ground and all that light died, the other rift-beasts surged forward.

Pelldea charged the last few feet to reach her, shouting again, breathless and desperate. "Lady, give me your light!"

Silver flared again from the fallen sword, and the rift-beasts startled back from it, leaving a gap for her to dive into. She hadn't held a sword in hundreds of years, but the hilt was as familiar and comfortable in her hand as if this was one of her old favorites. For all the differences in age, she and Amaranth were of a similar build, a similar height, and it seemed their preference in blades was for a similar balance.

More light blazed fresh from the crescent moon on its hilt, and Pelldea held it up high as she bent down to yank the shield from Amaranth's limp arm. It took more than one tug, and Amaranth's arm bent at an unnatural angle, cartilage crunching audibly in her shoulder. Pelldea didn't have time to regret that. She rose back to her feet and shoved her arm through the shield's grip.

The shield felt as right and familiar as the sword had, though it wasn't in her favorite style. It shone bright, too, silver-white light streaming off it with even more intensity than it had seemed to in Amaranth's hands. Pelldea brought it up to guard her center mass and struck out with the sword at the gathering rift-beasts.

Glancing down one more time, she could see from Amaranth's unmoving form, her wide staring eyes, that she was dead. Without any reason to stay with the body, Pelldea began to retreat until she felt the stone rise under her feet in a rough threshold. This was the choke-point, this chipped-out entrance here. As long as she didn't step out of this arch, they couldn't get around her, or behind her, and she was half-shielded by the stone on either side. It was the position that Amaranth should have taken once the novices were through. And since she couldn't stand here, Pelldea would.

At the far end of the cave, the two elven figures were retreating. The one holding the stone pointed at her, as they slipped out through the far entrance, and the rift-beasts lunged forward at her like the gesture had emboldened them.

Pelldea brought the sword down on the first one to reach her, seeming to tear the swirling smoke of it in half, red eyes blinking out somewhere in the middle of it. The others drew back, and she could see that they were readying themselves for another, more massed attack. This would be a defensive battle for her, and a losing one. She was an old woman, centuries out of practice, decades out of shape. Sooner or later, she would move just a fraction of a second too slowly, and the only protection left to the rest of the novices would be the blood-sullied holiness of the shrine.

But as the rift-beasts closed again, she was able to match every assault, shield and sword glowing steadily enough to keep a truly overwhelming attack at bay. The burn she was expecting in her muscles never came, and her breathing stayed steady and strong. It felt like there was silver in her veins, liquid and soothing; shoring her up, infusing her not with vigor but with steadiness, a calm endurance that washed outward from the core of her and filled her to the brim.

It slipped into the gaps left by age and the foibles of memory, blanking out her thoughts and feelings until only her body was left to react, and her muscles' recall was made perfect. She was a channel for someone else's will, as much a well-made and senseless sword as the length of glowing metal in her hand. Even this couldn't last forever, Pelldea was aware, insomuch as she was aware of anything. But there was only one thought allowed to form in her head, twining with that calm silver wash. She didn't have to hold out forever. She only had to hold out long enough.

And then, feeling at once like it followed immediately after that thought and like it had come hours later, the end came. There was more light, the beautiful cave flooded with it, as the last rift-beast shredded apart under her blade.

Pelldea dropped the sword and let the shield slip from her arm. She fell to her knees as the silver power left her, holding herself up with her palms on the rocky ground, breathing hard and tasting copper in the back of her throat. Her lungs seized, every muscle burning. The strain of that brief, endless stand washed over her all at once.

She remembered in that moment what she hadn't felt when it happened: whirling smoke coming up under her shield to tear at her legs, a high lunge shredding the flesh of her shoulder, a rift-beast dragging what might have been fangs down the length of her forearm. Each time the silver had rushed through her to soothe the hurt, knitting flesh back together, doing a week's worth of healing before blood had any chance to flow.

When she twisted her arm, there were the lines of those not-fangs, two lines of fresh and tender scar all the way from her elbow halfway down to her wrist. There was still a silver glow upon it, the lady's touch not quite lifted yet.

Looking about, Pelldea caught sight of Lleaneia, on her back, staring sightlessly upward. The arrow was still in her throat, broken by someone stumbling over her. No silver light glowed around that wound.

Pelldea lunged forward and grabbed the broken arrow-shaft, tearing it out of Lleaneia's throat, never mind that it ripped the wound wider. If the Lady was still with her, it wouldn't matter, and if She wasn't, then it wouldn't matter in another way. She clapped her hand over the wound, then the other hand over the first, since she didn't know the right sigils anyway. In lieu of those sigils or a proper invocation, she simply opened her mouth and prayed.

"Silver Lady, who blesses the meek, you are the architect of dreams and you brought me here with one, for her and for these children. You were with me, and you are with me, and I need you to be with me a minute more, and with her too!"

Silver washed over her hands and slid between her fingers, light moving like water, gathering to her at the clumsy invocation and then flowing from her into the place where she wished it to go. Flesh knitted under the shelter of her cupped hands, the throat closing up, the breath running back into Lleaneia's body, her pulse jerking wild and ragged under Pelldea's thumbs as her heart resumed its beat. She gasped, and coughed, and rolled onto her side and curled in on herself as the coughing continued. Pelldea pulled away feeling drained and triumphant, if only for a moment.

Amaranth.

She tried to get to her feet, fell back onto her knees, tried again and felt a hand catch her shoulder and haul her the rest of the way upward. She stagged towards Amaranth's body, where the most sensible of the novices already knelt. The girl's attempts to put breath back into Amaranth's lungs were clearly useless, but Pelldea's hands still glowed silver. She owed it to the girl whose certainty she'd shaken and whose weapons she'd stolen to give what she could. To try and once again deal life, after having once again held an instrument of death.

Pelldea fell more than knelt, but she ignored the barked knees and put her hands against Amaranth's still chest, above those of the novice tending her. There was so much blood soaking her worn robes of pilgrimage. Pelldea ignored it, letting it coat her hands as she tried again to make the silver light pour out of her.

"Lady, please, be with me," she said. Her voice was harsher now, worn further down. "Lady, you honor the peaceful, and she was their protector, their protector and yours. Be with her as well, as you were with me, as you were with Lleaneia, as you were with these novices, here in your shrine-"

Her voice was shaking, with frustration, with anger, as the silver around her hands failed to release and flow. It was fading, instead, silver-white turning pearly and then grey, until it was only her own bronze skin, her knuckles bloodless and pale.

"Please, Lady, please, she served you well, she's only a child, she doesn't deserve to die." Her voice cracked. No one deserved to die, she knew that, no child, no elder, no peaceful innocent, no blooded warrior, and yet-

She didn't let herself finish that thought. Instead she bore down, fingers digging deep into Amaranth's cooling flesh as she tried to call up the light again. Or, if not the light, if the Lady wouldn't help her servant, then her own strength, whatever she had left--Lleaneia had spoken of costs, of trades, and that would be a fair one.

"Take me," she said aloud, her voice grating with anger. The novices around her were agitated, one of them trying to pull her hands away, another trying to lift her up by her shoulders, but she hunched down and dug in harder and refused to be moved. "Lady, if someone had to die for this place, if it takes blood to preserve your sanctuary, then take me, not her."

There had to be some kind of expenditure of her power happening, the kind that Lleaneia had talked about, because Pelldea could feel her strength running out of her. Her vision was greying, and the girls' voices were faraway and distant. Even her own voice was weak, and wavering; she could barely hear herself speak. But Amaranth's skin remained cool and yellowed, her wounds deep and grievous, her chest still.

"Silver Lady! You don't need an old woman, you don't need yet another priestess, you need someone young and strong and innocent. You need a paladin, Lady, and she deserves to be one, so take me, and give her back, give her-"

The novices managed to wrench her away at last, in her weakness, pulling her away and upward. She tried to struggle, but she didn't have the strength even for that. The world was fading in front of her eyes. The last thing she saw was Amaranth's pale face, eyes still wide and staring. Then Lleaneia's voice, murmuring a blessing, swept her away.

***

Pelldea woke up angry. Every bone in her body ached, and her muscles felt like hard knots of pain beneath her skin, but all of that paled before the raw, desperate anger that lanced through her chest like a jagged-edged spear. It sat sour in her stomach and the back of her throat as unfamiliar priestesses looked her over and declared her recovered, but much in need of rest.

She learned that she was in a small waystation beneath the shrine, so well-hidden that they'd seen nothing of it on their pilgrimage up the mountainside. It was meant for emergencies on the climb, staffed by two healers from various abbeys in yearly rotation. Both of those who tended her were skilled, and Pelldea could find no fault with her treatment. Her only complaint was with the Lady.

Lleaneia came to visit her, once the healers had gone. She was dressed in fresh robes, a little too big for her across the shoulders. She had been slight before, thin almost to gauntness, but now she looked outright fragile. It was as if her silver skin barely covered her, the pale flesh only a thin layer over something luminous just beneath it. And she looked very far-away, for a moment, before her gaze fixed on Pelldea and she smiled.

"How are you feeling?"

"Sore," Pelldea said. She was already sitting up in bed, since she hadn't been able to make herself stay down when the healers laid hands on her. Her voice sounded like she'd been gargling gravel, and her throat felt no better. "Did- was anyone able to bring Amaranth back?"

She knew the answer, or she wouldn't have been so angry, but Pelldea had to ask. Lleaneia shook her head, and Pelldea could feel her ears rise stiff with rage. She didn't try to correct their slant.

"Why didn't it work? Could I only raise one person? You told me that if the Lady doesn't answer, you can trade your own strength, but I was still alive after you were healed. Or was it that I didn't have enough years left in front of me to be worth all of hers?"

"No." Lleaneia shook her head again, and sat down on the bed beside Pelldea, close enough for their shoulders to touch. "You cannot make that trade. No one can. We've all tried it, at some point or another, and it can kill the healer if they aren't stopped, but even their death won't restore the life they're trying to save. Once the soul has left the body, only the Lady can bring it back."

"Then why didn't She?" The words burst out of Pelldea, sharp and explosive, a fresh spike of pain down her aching throat. She swallowed back the taste of blood.

"I can't tell you that," Lleaneia said. "Only She can. But I will say, having been in that place, for a moment, I remember nothing at all except that I wished desperately to come back, to keep living. If Amaranth didn't...."

"The young don't understand what they're throwing away," Pelldea said, looking down. "When they go to war, willing to die for glory, or the cause, or their leader. Perhaps that's no less true if the cause is a god."

Lleaneia nodded. "That would be my guess. But again, the only person who can truly tell you, not just guess, is the Lady."

"And how am I supposed to speak to Her? Wait for Her to grace me with a dream? Go shout at Her altar?" That was actually a tempting prospect, now that Pelldea had said it.

"You need to return to the shrine," Lleaneia said. "That pool is the only place where the sphere of our world is close enough to the sphere of our Lady's moonlight for Her to speak to Her dedicates directly, not only through dreams and signs and omens. There's no point in keeping that secret from you anymore. You've already been blessed and called. Now all you have left is to decide whether you answer that calling."

"It doesn't seem as if the Lady intends to give me a choice."

"There's always a choice." Leaneia's voice had gone firm. She reached out and plucked Pelldea's hand from her knee, gripping it in her own. "A calling is not a fate you cannot escape. You can always choose whether to answer, and whether to keep answering. Even priestesses and paladins can walk away, and you have not yet made any vows. I remember what you said that night, about never wanting again to be someone's sword. If you cannot give yourself to the Lady wholeheartedly, then don't give yourself at all."

Pelldea took a deep breath, held it, then breathed out again. Relief unfolded in her chest like a spark of cool light, her breathing seeming to come easier as it unfurled. She nodded. Leaneia squeezed her hand, then let go.

"I'll go," she said. "To hear Her answer about Amaranth. And if She can satisfy me on that, then we can discuss whether, and how, I can serve."

***

This time, there were no other novices, only Pelldea. Lleaneia seemed disinclined to interrupt the solemn procession of their pilgrimage with unnecessary words. No doubt she was still coming to terms with her own recent memories of this route.

Pelldea prayed as they climbed, as she had before, but it didn't give her the same comfort. Behind the words she mouthed, the praises and the supplication, lurked other words. An argument that still hadn't been settled to her satisfaction, and a denial that she was frustrated to even have to give.

An elf's life moved in stages, and to other eyes, Pelldea had left the guilt of her youthful bloodlust far behind. She'd been assured throughout her novice training that even the Lady, champion of the meek, would not hold it against her. But that didn't make Pelldea any less aware of all the blood upon her hands. Innocent blood, as innocent as Amaranth's, and shed for far less reason. She had been willing to put those hands to work for the goddess, in the garden or in the kitchen or at the loom, or healing and scrying as the Lady's priestesses often did.

They weren't hands that should ever again be trusted with a sword.

Lleaneia stopped her midway through the cleansed and emptied cave, turning about to put a gentle hand on her arm. "Remember. If you do not wish to serve Her in the way that she asks, and She will not take you as other than a paladin, you have the right to tell Her no."

"And refuse my calling, and seven years of training for Her service," Pelldea answered. She hadn't realized how much resentment was still burning in her until she felt it slide up her throat, oozing out into the quiet words. "Because She wants me in a way that I will not give myself."

"You do not have to bear Her power to be a priestess," Lleaneia said. "Or a lay-servant, if you can no longer be devoted, and it's important to you that your training not go to waste. There will always be those who need care and alms."

That was true. Pelldea breathed in deeply, blinking back a sudden rush of feeling, and met Lleaneia's eyes. She nodded to her. "That would be a fitting enough way to end out my days."

Smiling, Lleaneia squeezed her arm, then let her go and stepped through the arch in front of them into the shrine.

For a moment, Lleaneia was awash in silvery light, glowing like an apparation. Then it faded, and she took another step forward. She looked over her shoulder and beckoned for Pelldea to follow.

Pelldea did, shoulders stiff, legs buzzing. There was no glow of light around her when she entered the shrine, only the gentle grey hues of moonlight illuminating the blue and pink of the cliffs rising around them on all sides. Soft grass grew around the pool, and small stones rimmed it. No breeze blew in this wind-sheltered hollow in the mountaintop.

She kept walking forward, her gaze drawn to the water, perfectly still, perfectly reflecting the half-full moon. At the edge of the pool she stopped and sank down to sit on her heels, hands folded on her knees. She opened her mouth, and the words that had been bubbling behind her prayers all day spewed forth at last.

"If You gave me so much in that battle, Lady, and kept me living when I should have died, then You also could have given me what I asked for to save Amaranth."

"She could have," a voice said. Familiar, but it took Pelldea a moment to place. It had been less confident, before, and less joyful, hedged about with anxiety and respect. "But what right did you have, to ask either Her or me so much?"

Pelldea looked up. Amaranth's smile was warm, and she held her ears high, canted slightly forward. The armor she wore seemed as if it was of gleaming silver, beautifully decorated with curling scrollwork at every edge. She shimmered, faintly, radiant and transparent, a ghost atop the water.

"It was my fault," Pelldea said, and knew as she said it that this was the heart of her ire. "Wasn't it? I told you to hesitate before striking another, and you did."

"Not quite," Amaranth said, her smile fading into sobriety. "You made me think about what I was doing, and what I was meant to do."

That was worse. She didn't have to say that for Pelldea to know. She'd been a soldier, and a mercenary after that. In battle, there was no time for thought, only for muscle memory and conviction. Thinking in a fight was a certain way to die.

"It was my fault," she repeated. "My fault, and if the Lady was to give me a gift, she should have given me the power to make it right. You shouldn't have died for my mistake, because I chose to be bitter and offer regret instead of wisdom when you asked."

"It was wisdom." Amaranth took a step closer, the water rippling under her insubstantial feet. "Hard-won wisdom, that in any other circumstance would have served me well. Our Lady treasures innocence, but innocence can be its own danger. Were you not innocent, when you believed yourself to be a righteous blade?"

Pelldea swallowed hard, trying to dampen the way that question made her stomach churn. She had been innocent, and that had been the problem. Innocent, easy to manipulate, eager to buy into her leaders' propaganda. Only when she'd shed that innocence had she been able to see her victims as people, and realize what it was that she had done.

"If She treasures innocence, why not bring you back? Your mistake was inexperience, and your hesitation was my fault. You deserved the chance to correct both of those."

"But I didn't want to return. All I wanted, as I trained, was to serve Her well and stand at Her side, as a guardian of her faithful. Now I am here, at her side, a guardian indeed."

Amaranth smiled again, and as Pelldea watched, the air shimmered around her. Wide wings unfolded from her back, silver-white and shining, each feather faintly transparent and gleaming as if etched from glass. Pelldea's breath caught in her throat.

"I have given up the chance to return to the living world, in exchange for service in this one," Amaranth said, her wings still spread wide. "But the Lady needs living paladins, too. There is a darkness in the world, drawn out from the rifts by those who desire power. It spreads, and it must be fought, hunted down and cut out at the root. There is much room for error in such hunting. Too much error to be trusted to the innocent."

"Ah," Pelldea said. Her throat felt thick, like she was breathing dust, and she swallowed against that feeling. "And that's what the Lady wants me for."

"Yes. She will not compel you," Amaranth said. "But someone must take up this task. If not you, then another."

Another Amaranth. Pelldea didn't have to hear it said to know that was the threat underlying that simple truth. Another brave young elf who didn't understand that zeal was not in itself a virtue. Who didn't fully grasp their own life's value, and might not grasp the value of others' lives, too. Even the order's one senior paladin had never fought more than rift-beasts, Amaranth had told her. She couldn't trust that even the Battle-Mother understood the gravity of taking a life in righteous cause.

"I will not kill for Her," Pelldea said. "No matter how vile the darkness. Rift-beasts do not die, not as we do, I understand that. But even those who summon them I will not kill."

"The Lady does not love murder, even for the sake of life. She will trust you to do as you feel you must, and find your own solutions to save others without spilling blood. She will not ask you to deal death in Her name."

"You can swear to that? She'll let me make my own judgements? Chose my own limits, set my own goals?" Pelldea hadn't intended for her voice to be so harsh, but she couldn't soften it. Not on this subject. "Or will she refuse me Her power, if She doesn't feel my choices are right? As She denied it to me when I tried to bring you back?"

The anger was there again, low and bubbling in her gut. Even with Amaranth's assurances, even with the admission of her own guilt, it wasn't fully gone. Pelldea wasn't sure she could ever quite forgive the Lady for that loss.

"Yes, and no," Amaranth said. "She will give you power of your own to draw upon, at your own will. If what you wish is beyond that... then yes, She has the right to decide whether She will grant you what you ask. She has that right always. And if you cannot accept that, it is better not to let Her in."

There were tears stinging in Pelldea's eyes. "Did you accept that? Even though, when I asked, She let you die?"

"Yes."

"I offered my life for you," Pelldea said, forcing the words out through the lump in her throat. "It wasn't a fair trade. I understand that. But I would have been glad to give it up even for the chance that you could live."

Amaranth drew closer, walking along the water, until she could kneel down directly in front of Pelldea. She reached out, laying her ghostly hands over Pelldea's where she clutched at her knees. It was like touching fog, a swirling of air over her skin, just heavy enough to sense her presence without actually being able to feel her touch.

"I know, and I thank you," she said, leaning forward to whisper into Pelldea's ear. "And for that I will always be with you. In my sword and shield, that I bequeath to you. In your hands, that tried so hard to save me. In your anger at my death. You are angry because you care, and as long as you care, a part of me lives on in your heart."

Pelldea swallowed twice before she tried to answer. She slipped one hand out from under Amaranth's and raised it to the girl's cheek, though there was nothing there to touch, either, except that strangely heavy air.

"Those are very pretty words, but they don't bring you back."

"Nothing will. But you don't have to stop being angry. The Lady doesn't ask it of you. I don't want you to. Your anger will serve you better than blind faith ever would, against what's coming."

"Will it," Pelldea said, leaning back and dropping her hand. Amaranth pulled away. "All right."

"All right?" Amaranth looked, for the first time since her shade had appeared, uncertain. Ears dipping, mouth tense, like she'd been in life, asking Pelldea ignorant questions.

It was blatant emotional manipulation. The Lady of the Moon had known what she was doing when she sent Amaranth. But looking at her was a reminder. If Pelldea didn't take up this task, it would be someone else, a champion of the goddess, someone who trusted Her absolutely. Not someone who had felt Her denial. Not someone who had already made the worst mistakes that trust and zeal could lead them to.

"All right," she said again. "I see why She wants me. Tell the Lady of the Moon that I will be Her paladin. But only on my own terms."

She stood, slowly, feeling Lleaneia's hand on her arm when she nearly stumbled coming up. Letting the priestess help her, she turned away from the pool, putting Amaranth's gleaming form at her back. A chiming rang around her, like wordless music. Amaranth's answer was almost lost amid the song.

"That's exactly what We want from you, Pelldea. Our paladin of the Shadowed Moon."

[toasterwords]

Deep Water Prompt #2158

She put sweet little love charms on each loaf of fresh bread. They always sold quick.

[toasterwords]

Me this morning: I’m gonna take today off from any Real Work, mostly play videogames, and maybe do the writing prompt only if it really strikes me.

Over three thousand words later….

Anyway! Today’s prompt was “drowned” and yesterday’s was “haunted,” and both made me think of those ballads/folk tales about, first, the dastardly man who drowns his pregnant girlfriend when she expects him to propose to her, and, second, the whole thing about making a harp from a murder victim’s bones that, when in the presence of the murderer, tells the tale of their murder so that justice can be done. (Incidentally, for a really great treatment of that concept, I refer y’all to T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon’s Minor Mage, which is not about that, but which has a secondary character for whom it’s very deeply and interestingly relevant.) I was still mulling it over, though, when I glanced at my DnD character list and saw Dismay, whose backstory is still underdeveloped, and suddenly everything fell together.

The soundtrack for writing this was Delta Rae’s Bottom of the River, which is definitely the song and mood I was imagining while writing the singing bit.

—

Desamee didn’t like going down to the river anymore. But laundry had to get done, and it would be cruel to ask Mistress Whether to do her own, so she went ahead down with their grieving neighbor’s clothes in her basket along with her mother’s and her own.

She was halfway through pounding the dirt out of a particularly soiled shift when she realized that Amancia was standing over her, watching. Desamee looked up at her. She could see right through Amancia, in her familiar red dress, the one she’d worn for festivals, the one she’d drowned in. The rounded curve of her belly was more pronounced than it had been in life.

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[toasterwords]

I tried to combine yesterday’s prompt, “chilling,” and today’s prompt, “glamour,” and then kind of dropped the ball mostly on the second one–if I ever went back to this story I’d probably try and weave in more fey-style deception stuff for that part. But mostly this is about the cold.

—

There were footprints in the snow that shouldn’t be there. Ingrid had set off to check the trap-lines early this morning, and it had snowed most of the afternoon. Her own trail would have filled over, and no one else from the village would come this way. But she ignored them, because it wasn’t wise to pay too much attention to such things.

She hadn’t had any luck on the trap-lines today. All of the traps had been closed, but none had had so much as a rabbit or a quail within. As if they’d been set off deliberately. She tried not to think about that, because it wasn’t wise to speculate on such things, either.

It was nearly dark; twilight came early these days, and swift, and she knew she had to be back to the village before it fell. Anyone caught out on such a clear night would freeze within minutes.

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[toasterwords]

This isn’t spooky at all, except I guess for a bit of body horror? But the word for today is “metamorphosis,” and, well. I think I’ve mentioned a time or two that ladies turning into dragons is my thing.

Character/setting specifics for this particular one are a synthesis of different stories I’ve toyed with and then never written over the years, and are super roughly sketched out, because none of them are the point of the story. There is, potentially, some body horror here, since I made the transformation somewhat visceral, and also people burning, because, uh, dragons.

—

They have to win. There’s no other choice.

Wind whips at their clothing, bearing a heavy scents of smoke and rot. The sky hangs low and dark over them, heat-lightning crackling in the thick grey clouds that refuse to let their water fall. The ground around them is cracked open, the few tufts of grass that still cling to it brown and crisp and utterly parched. The world is on a precipice.

And here, at its center, Klemna and the rest of Sena’s companions are fighting an insane battle against a man who would let it die.

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