ELBK00 | Perception | Chapter 06 - The Fall of Leúchtend. (Patreon)

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The fading sun set fire to half the sky, contrasting against the dark, all consuming, thunderhead approaching from the North. Those in my family with weather talents were pulling in the storm, and we would attack in the depths of the night amid the chaos. My half-cousin, Kári, was undoubtedly doing the heavy lifting with it. Not much older than I, he was the second youngest of us but inherited all the aptitude for atmospheric manipulation of his parents.

We were close, and I wished he was here with me instead of driving the weather. 

Waiting on the precipice of war, I inhaled cool air and the scent of rain, and exhaled a swell of inky black magic. The power heated my blood from the inside out as I tried to contain the spread. I can’t revenant the same as the rest of my family, I have to use what leaks from the revenant point and with careful precision. Too much, and it would kill me. Too little and I would be useless in battle.

My bones felt like they were vibrating as I shivered against the surge of fear in the back of my throat. I couldn’t let my father see me afraid. He was at the head of our army, riding his sow along our line of mounted Vanir warriors, her bulking figure lumbering with each heavy step. The boar I rode was smaller because I was smaller. She radiated heat and every bit as much aggression, if not more, than any of the others beside us.

Ahead, the battlefield stretched past my father. It was a long flat expanse of once lush grasses that were dying in an ever expanding wave of death as our collective Vanir magics wilted the plant life. The line of death reached the half way mark between us, and the shining white marble of the Fae castle, Leúchtend. 

Its tall, point tipped towers reflected back the very last rays of sunlight. Wafts of ethereal blue magic steamed off its walls, a simple rigid spell was what protected it, poorly. I could break that myself, with enough leverage. Fae soldiers stood between the stone parapets. They lined every surface of the castle, crowded the towers and filled the arrow loops with glinting metal. One well placed shot through our throats into the nape of the neck was all it would take to kill permanently, and my armor didn’t fit right. 

The flexible alloy plating curved around my upper throat and latched onto the back piece covering the lower half of my skull down the spine, but it was loose. If I didn’t keep my neck at a certain position or relaxed my shoulders, it would slip, and I could be killed in seconds. Facing hundreds of Fae arrows, this didn’t give me confidence. 

“Today, we claim the world as our own!” Mercury began, his smooth voice carried over the front lines. He wasn’t yelling, he didn’t need to. He was just, projecting his voice with authority as he rode back and forth along our front lines. “Too long the Fae have stood against us. Thought us savages, condemned our traditions, our way of life. They would deny our divinity, ignore the strength of our magic, but we are gods!  Power breeds in our lineage. We deserve the worship of all species below us.

It is the Fae who stand against us instead of bowing to our greatness. Today that will end! Go forward. Breach their shining castle, topple its high marble archways, crush its inhabitants! The Fae will no longer be the thorns in our side, they will fall today!” He leaked magic in his breath, and his speech was met with a roar of agreement, but I couldn’t find my voice. 

Mercury turned toward the castle, and revenanted himself for a second time with the spike on his thumb ring. The new power surge swelled ten fold around him, bulging outward in an uneven, dripping circle like toxic waste. It sizzled the earth where the drops of it landed, and he raised one hand toward the wall. His power diverted toward his hand, encompassing his forearm in a writhing mass as it condensed in his palm.

I knew the spell he was going to use, I had written it. The anchor point would collect the power for release, and would take a blood sacrifice to ignite, but once it did nothing could stop it. Power would travel directly to that weak Fae barrier and shatter it. I found myself wincing internally as it completed. 

The spell discharged with a soundless blink and shot toward the castle before the crack of splitting air could catch up. The shockwave blew my hair back, and an instant later the spell made contact with Leúchtend. It impacted against the barrier with a smack and splintered the Fae magic. A violent rush of discharging arcs spit and hissed as the two energy types collided before the weaker of them began to disintegrate along with the mortar between the stones.

Another thunderous roar of victory rattled my ear drums, and the charge began. Hundreds of boars rushed past. My own was eager to go as well, but I held her back briefly as I tried to comprehend how many Fae were about to die because I wrote the spell to break their defences. My mouth felt dry. I looked for my father among the sea of movement and caught sight of him headed toward the crumbling wall.

Prophecy foretold that the only threat to his dynasty was a set of Fae twins, his targets were set. They would be the first thing he would eliminate, leaving all else to us. 

A boar nudging against my sow knocked me sideways, “Waiting for an invitation?"

It was Brigetta who asked. Her hair was partially braided, the strands intertwined with teeth, and the stark white of Fae hair that stood out against the umber gradient of her own. She was a venomous kind of woman with the angry disposition of a honey badger that showed no more clearly than in battle. 

I gave a stiff nod, and followed her charge through the chaos. We surged through the breach in the wall under a rain of arrows and into the castle. Bodies were already piling up. Impaled boars, mauled horses, beheaded Vanir and slaughtered Fae. Blue magics brightened the dark, while our energy smothered it.

Veins of lightning streamed across the sky and the heavens gave way to needles of cold rain. The fur collar across my shoulders deflected the raindrops, but the rest of my clothes were soaked through in seconds. I blinked back against the rain as I followed Brigetta without knowing where we were going. She turned down side streets and alleyways I could hardly see, was she leading me away from the battle? Hot, childish, irritation flushed my cheeks. I was little, not useless. 

At the human equivalent of 14 I deserved to be here, to fight, to show my father and everyone else that I was just as much of a warrior as them. Caught up in my own thoughts, I almost missed it when the atmosphere shifted. The rain stopped for half a second, and Brigetta veered sharply left just in time to avoid the colossal beast descending between us while I, without any say in the matter, was thrown right as my boar skidded. 

The concrete greeted me with an unyielding smack and claimed a smear of my skin as its trophy. Bloodied and dizzy, I covered my head automatically while my boar squealed in terror. She had landed between the enormous teeth of a dragon. Broken chain hung from its throat, and blood dribbled down its chin as it ate in three reptilian snaps of its jaw without chewing. Rain pattered off its leathery wings like marbles bouncing on concrete, were the Fae mad? To release something like this into their castle?

Moments of disjointed movement passed over me and I curled tighter, hoping to blend into the pavement. Maybe I was wrong, I couldn't do this... 

Another crack of lightning overhead bathed the stone in white light, turning it slick and shiny like an oil spill in the darkness. The iron tang of blood filled the air and when I uncurled I found myself alone. Brigetta had gone, the dragon had moved on and now I had to pull myself up. Using the wall for support I stood on legs that felt like they didn’t exist anymore and settled my racing heart. 

Uniform footfall alerted me to approaching Fae soldiers and I took the glaive from my back, extending the double bladed weapon to its full length in a snap of magic. The Fae marched down the street shoulder to shoulder in heavy armor with raised shields and long pikes. They didn’t falter nor slow when they saw me, rather closed ranks to eliminate the gaps between them. Realizing I would be crushed if I stayed and with no good way to break through their defenses, I turned to go. 

I ran down the streets until more soldiers blocked my path. They were converging, sweeping the streets like metal walls, it was time to fight. Using my own blood I wrote a hasty spell onto the nearest wall and when the first wave of guards came around the corner, I activated it. Spines like shards of glass burst forth from the ground and walls to impale, slice and shred my enemies. Their cries were stifled before they understood what was happening and I stared in mild disbelief. 

It was the first time I had ever used one of our family spells on anything that wasn’t vegetation. Crimson washed my vision and I swayed unsteady. My aim was poor and several of the Fae lay dying, gurgling, as they tried in vain to piece themselves back together. Horrified, I took a step back and met my first true opponent, a tall fae man with bright yellow eyes. 

He came down on me in a rush of motion and I pivoted into hand to hand combat, blocking sword with glaive. The Fae followed through on his lunge with a wash of magic that sent me hurtling back into stone. If I hadn’t been wearing armor, I would have died. He allowed me no time to recover, and I ducked aside as metal sparks flinted off the stone.

Too afraid to use the glass spell again, I carved strokes into my forearm and activated a new spell, one that would use an enemy's own blood as a substrate for spines. Red pinpoints erupted through his armour from under his skin and he staggered. I hadn’t missed any points, but as he reached for me I recoiled. I could feel his heart rate spike and stutter, smell the fear.

Backing away before he could fall, I sprinted through the water washed streets. Past the carnage, ignoring the bodies, and holding my breath against the ashy air. A human girl, barely older than I, blocked my path. She struck with incomprehensible speed, slicing my arm and cheek as I tumbled back. 

Her sand colored skin and the ashy blonde of her hair was stained with blood, but her expression never changed from blank, monotonous, apathy. With blank, dark shark eyes, she attacked again. Her blade scraped my lower jaw on its way to my neck as I twisted to the side. Physically she wasn’t stronger, or quicker than I, but she terrified me in a way I hadn’t known was possible. I wanted nothing more than to get away from her.

Rolling away from her onslaught of attacks I hauled myself up and scaled the latticing up the side of a building. She followed me like a bloodhound and I drew up the new spell as I ran. The runes took their blood sacrifice from my arm and the girl disappeared in a wash of falling white hair as magic sliced through the tendons in her legs. Had I known who she was, it would have been wiser if I had killed her. 

Free of my pursuer I stopped to catch my breath. I stood panting in the cold air, pain pulsed up my bad leg like a continuous electric shock, all the running had done it no good. Before me lay an expanse of crumbling marble and a sea of death. The dragon’s lumbering figure had reached the edge of the castle wall, as if it too were trying to escape, but lightning crashed down on it with unnatural precision and it fell. Brigetta and Karyna were there, making it a safe assumption that Kári was responsible for the lightning.

To the other side of the ruins, the fae had begun to retreat. They fled across a stone archway and disappeared into what looked like a mountainous wall, poor illusion work on their part for it to be noticeable. I could have stopped them, broken the illusion, shattered their only hope of escape, even from this distance… Instead I turned away, pretending I didn’t see it. 

At the center of the battle, my father was facing a handful of Fae nobles. They buzzed around him in circular strikes like insects, although none looked alike enough to have been the twins of prophecy. One with long hair fell, sliced mid air by one of our spells as his shield failed against a barragement of my father’s energy and I knew the others would fall soon too. 

I dropped from the roof tops into the ruined streets filled with debris and began to make my way toward my father, determined to help him in this final battle. From the ground the broken portions of castle seemed larger, harder to fight my way over. I stumbled and half fell onto the top edge of a broad, flat chunk of marble sticking upright. Dumbfounded, I stared at it, certain it hadn’t been there a moment ago. How had I missed it? 

The slab was twice my height with some odd distortion about it, as if it weren’t quite in existence, yet here it was blocking my path and impossibly cold. With a scowl, I pushed myself up and fell through it. I didn’t even have the time to be confused about how it disappeared, or where it went, when a cold wash of power hit me. It was as if I had disturbed some intangible balance, and I writhed. Shuddering, confused and in shock.

It must’ve been some form of Fae trap that I’d fallen into, something covered in a way I didn’t have time to puzzle out. The sensation was somehow familiar and simultaneously impossible. My head pounded and my nose bled, but I forced myself up. Whatever it was, it had failed. 

I reached the epicenter of Mercury’s battle, and set three new spells. The first was a neat pulse to give my father space, the second was a rain of glass-like needles, and the third was a binding trap set to ensnare whoever stepped in it. I activated the pulse first and joined my father in his battle, slipping in under one of his attacks to catch the Fae by surprise.

My opponent was barely older than I, a teenager with deep green eyes and short cut hair pulled into a pony tail, Achaicus Klein, as I would come to learn. His close combat was fair, but not faster than mine. The metal of our weapons clashed violently, sending hot sparks in three directions as we each readjusted. He slipped on the rain soaked ground and I took the opportunity to kick him in the chest, sending him sprawling back. 

At the time, I thought he was too young to be in battle like this. Fae aren’t like us, trained from the time we can walk to fight and kill, they’re apathetic aristocrats. When he recovered and circled back around I danced out of his reach. Power wafted off him in waves more potent than anything I had ever seen and I almost wondered if he could have been one of the twins my father was worried about. I never bothered to ask.

Above us, our fathers fought in colossal washes of scorching magic and, foolish as I was, I lured the young Fae away. We danced across roof tops and through now abandoned streets, until I thought we were far enough from my father that he was out of harm's way. I was dumb, overconfident and optimistic, especially when facing an opponent that wasn’t hard to look at. 

Some part of me believed we could forge a kinship of some kind from this, that once the fighting was done, we could be friends. It was for the sake of that imagined sense of familiarity that I spared his life. Instead of killing him, I activated the bind to capture him. Safe, contained and alive, I left him with a wink and a playful grin that I will regret until the day I die. 

I should have killed him.

I returned to my father in time to watch him slaughter the sovereign of the Fae, Lazarus. He made it look effortless. Magic fumed off him in colossal waves of stinging ink that smothered the air. He seemed ten times as large, his features warped to accommodate the excess power, he was a true god. With the Fae slaughtered, victory was his and I felt dizzy with relief. It was over.

The soft wave of chocolate brown hair, just past my father drew my attention. Katla, my mother, had come to join him in his moment of victory. He turned partially toward her, only half aware of her presence, and a blade pierced his throat through the back. The shiny, blood soaked tip gleamed under the glow of a lightning flash, and my world collapsed.

Rich, frothy blood gurgled from his mouth as his body twitched while I stood frozen. Katla smiled against his ear, whispering something I couldn’t hear as she withdrew the dagger to stab him a second time through the heart. She might as well have stabbed me. 

As the last of my father’s magic stuttered to an all too soon end, the tides shifted. A fresh wave of Fae flooded the castle as if given a signal. Led by the man I would later learn to be Markos Bellerose, they entered on horseback from the forest and galloped across the battlefield. There had never been a retreat, the Fae 'escaping’ into the mountains was a strategy and I had let it happen.

Understanding closed the back of my throat, this was my fault… 

*** 

The agony of the memories brought fresh nausea, and I sobbed involuntarily against the cold metal grated floor of my cell. It wasn’t long after the day my father died that I was handed over to the Fae. I hated Katla, I hated the Fae, and I hated myself for having been so young and idiotic. 

I uncurled only enough to glare upward when the cell door opened again, another visitor so soon? 

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