The Yingyn Riders

[Cy Skywalker]

this 'tis an orignal-universe fantasy. i probably won't update much because i just don't know what's going on yet.


Chapter one: A Forest called Cataclysm

Outside, the prince’s contingent rode white hens in the bright sun above the verdant Valley of Lakes, their banners rampant, the prince’s handsome visage and crystal-flecked eyes scanning the darkness that marred the horizon.
Inside a fire burnt aginst the unnatural dark of the trees, and a young girl crouched over the flame with a stick in her hands stirred the ashes. All about them was either the black of night and shadows or the orange of flame. The girl’s hair fell over her shoulders in a thick mane, and she wore a simple tunic in the royal family’s colors, and men’s riding breeches. A long ebony feather was tucked behind her right ear and curved over her back.
Across the fire a brown and black yingyn rooster was laying, not sleeping, his pose confidant but tense, and if he knew that somewhere else there was a presense to be feared. His tack and saddle were hung over a tree limb a few feet away.
The girl sat back on her heals, the sticks falling from her hand to light scattering ashes in the fire.
“Neu,” she whispered and there was love and failing hope and searching caught up in that word. She couldn’t sense him. She knew the prince’s men hovered at the edges of this cursed forest, looking for her, but they would not enter. The very name of this area, handed down from the ancient and extinct elves, was that race’s word for cataclysm; Sachigazze, more specifically a cataclysm of great magniture caused by a sentient being.
Those soldiers were there, Io the yingyn was there, to the girl’s magic-heightened senses. But Neu was not, and he was the one that had always been. She felt the Bond to him, he was not dead. But whereever he had been taken they had not wanted her to follow, and neither had Neu, because he had told her to flee before the kingdom’s men had appeared.

It was a restless night for her then, and a dewy and lightless morning. She began traveling south and east when she awoke, and true light found her emerging from Sachigazze onto the dirt track that marked its border.
She was leading Io by his halter, he would shake his head every once in a while to get rid of the moisture. She had to blink to readapt to the natural light when the track came into view. It seemed to be early morning. There was a cart like that travelers or newssingers use, covered with a festively colored cloth and pulled by four brown hens, and a small flock of yellow yingyn chicks, with someone sitting beside them.
The bird-herd was a weathered looking girl of about seventeen, with stringy yellow hair. She moved the chicks close enough to the front that the harnessed hens could cluck over them and keep them nearby. She started when the figure emerging form the darkness caught her eye, and one hand went to her simple sword.
“It’s alright.” The other admonished. “My name is Anaba. I simply seek passage past the forest, maybe to Vernada.”<br> The girl looked her up and down, undoubtably noting the forest-accumulated grime over her orange and yellow wizard’s robes, and her simgle companion the rooster being led by its halter through the thick outskirts of the forest. “Where do you come from?”<br> “I flee the kingdom’s men.” Anaba figured telling the truth was easier at this point than making up a lie. “I have heard people like yourselves help travelers.”<br> The girl looked hard at her for a moment, as if worried by the stereotype, but said, “Very well. You can help me with the yingyns? That’s a fine rooster. He can work on the cart.”<br> With a hen free from harness and replaced by Io, it and the chicks wondered along the side of the covered cart as it moved. Anaba and the girl, who called herself Mareith, only had to be sure the group neither strayed into the forest nor to far to the front or back of the cart. On the left was the darkness, and between it and the grey high cliffs that were the beginnings of the Cinnab mountain range the trail was little wider than the wagon.
There were other travelers with Mareith, young musician-minstrels, including Mareith’s older brother and the woman he had been bonded to, and two other younger people, Tristrum and Ophrara. The female, Ophrara, looked half Dwarven, with course, black hair and a stocky, strong build. The other male, Mareith’s brother’s friend, had a beautiful singing voice that accompanied Ophrara’s high flute as they traversed the narrow path below the cliffs.
That night they camped in a natural shelter beneath a jut of the cliff, placing the cart and the fire between themselves and the forest.
Anaba sat beside Io while the travelers sang both news from farther south and old ballads. Ophrara’s notes coaxed out of the pan flute drifted into the sky on the heels of the words, beautiful nonsense, of Eka Sileae.
A wary pack of rough loupers appeared against the stars on the lip of the cliff. None of the others saw them, Anaba knew only by Io’s stirring, Loupers were relatives of wolves and maybe of dragons, the latter attested to by their leathery, segmnented wings.
One was being hassled; it had ben driven to the cliff edge by another, probably the ursuper of its position in the pack. The pack prowled around the two fighting, their teeth and claws lunging as they reared and flapped in their characteristic, eerie silence. After a few seconds the loser flapped away off the edge, turning away from the forets untill it almost veered back into the jaws of its pack before gaining altitude and soaring into the clouds over the cliff.
As she watched, the song ended, The last note was low on the pan flute, seeming to sin kthe music back into reality, into the cold and the rustle of the leaves and the darkness.
Shortly after, the five musicians left, and Anaba was alone. Even Io slept with his head on his back under the starry sky.
Anaba had been alone many times in the past week...and had never gotten used to it. She had been alone many times in the past however many days it had been in the forest, but it was still alien to her. Such a feeling of emptiness surrounding the isolated island of a human body and consioussness, such a creeping fear was so foreign to a bonded mage. Anabe doubted anyone of her kind had even been so far from their Bond-partner.
Io shifted, and Anaba took the long feather from behind her ear and held it, twirling the bottom so the top spun and flicked. There was great power in the item. It was for her as a wand was to mages who chose that object, a focuser of earth-magic. It had been taken from Io’s tail almost three summers ago, just before she had been Bonded.
Neu...
It keeps coming back to him! She thought in disgust. I sound like a housewife whose husband has gone off to war, lamenting.
Just holding the feather wand, Anaba’s senses were sharpened. It was a side-effect of earth magic, resulting from, the theory said, magic’s connection with the fabric of reality. She heard something clambering down what much have been a rockslide or passageway out of the clifs, then saw it in the dimness outside the dying fire.
Anaba did not move as the yellow canid eyes flicked around. Not unlike rough loupers, wolves were typically seen in packs in the forests north and west of dark Sachigazze. This one was alone, probably harmless, but she kept the feathe rin her hand and her eyes on the shadowy form of the wolf.
It went back into the forest. Anaba sat down, now contemplating the option of going to sleep.Abruptly Io stood up, his rust-colored hackles rsing. There was a glimpse in the firelight of the wolf jumping for the yyngyn’s throat.
The magical properties embued to the feather in Anaba’s hand flare to life as a silver whip that crackled like miniature lightning. The wolf looked up from its crouch just out of reach of Io’s snapping beak then stepped away from the yingyn as if to go for her. She swished the whip beside her, holding the shaft of the feather like the hilt of a sword.
There was a wave of heat that made Anaba turn away, flinching for an expected attack. When she looked back, the wolf was not wolf but human.
A black-haired young looking female stood between Anaba and Io now, wearing a simple white dress. Io immediatly backed up a step and sat down, much more comfortable with a human that a wolf.
Anaba continued to gently move the whip, managing to hide her surprise after the first few seconds. “Who are you?”<br> The woman brushed a strand of dark hair out of her face, breathed a heavy breath and looked pointedly at Anaba. “My name is Hwysa.” A breathy word, like a sound wind makes. “You are a mage. You must come with me.” There was an urgency about her.
Anaba let the feather whip’s magic fade. Her guard remained up, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “But what are you?”<br> “I know how you can get to your Bond-partner.”<br> Neu. Anaba rushed past the mysterioius women to ready io, but Hwysa put a slim hand out to stop her. “We must go on foot.”<br> Anaba slowly looked from Io to the cart, with the yingyn chicks nestled under the hens behind it. Mareith would take care of him.
She ran her hands around Io’s head, pulling her fingers through the long, soft feathers. He shied a little at all the attention. “Hi boy.” She muttered to him. “You stay here with these kind people and the pretty hens.”<br> Io clucked, confused. Anaba looked to the wolf girl and got from her a nod of confidance, then both began to walk along the cliffside, into the gathering darkness.

[Cy Skywalker]

what i have of the second chappie

Chapter Two: A Conference in an Enigma Room

`` There was further up the path a rockslide, presumably the one the wolf had come down, and a small cave. The two women knelt inside beside what may have been a dead end, solid rock, but for Hwysa’s reactoin to it. She paused in front of the dark rocks, one slim hand brushing it. She glanced at Anaba, light blue eyes glinting white in teh reflected moonlight. “Stay still.” She said enigmaticly, “You must be completely trusting.”<br> There was a second of conufion for Anaba. She felt a smothering, like soft cloth wraped around her head. A random emeory, of one of her only audiences with the King and Queen in their white refuse, was dredged into consous rembrance.
When the strange pressue was relieved the door--it was a door, it split left and right and was only a few centimeters thick--was open now into complete darkness, with Hwysa standing there at the lip where the moonlight faded completely into velvet air. “You are going to have to follow directly behind me.” She said. “Watch me only, this is very important.” And she stepped into the darkness. Hesitantly Anaba followed, seeing only the vague outside of Hwysa’s white dress as they walked through the pitch dark. The darkness to either side felt empty, enormous, though Hwysa had set an almost-whisper level of speaking that made no echoes.
She was about to try her mage senses on the dimenshions of the place when Hwysa spoke softly.
“I’m sorry,” She said. “That was clumsy.”<br> “What? That was magic, was it not? If it is some dark curse you have put on me--”<br> “No curse. Just an apprenrice of elven magic out of practice”<br> “What did you do?”<br> “Looked at your memories. I told you, I can’t do it very well nor can I explain it. yet.:
Elven magic. The race of great Elves, now stereotyped to be either tiny winged pixie-spirits or tall, immencely magical intelligent beings, were now extinct. Even sorcerologists, the magics theorists of whose numbers Anaba had been before her Bonding, agreed to nothing not their skin color, origin, or relation to humanity, besides the reality-supported facts that they were a dead race. They had left only legends and piece so language behind. Anaba didn’t bother asking Hwysa how she got Elven knowledge, it seemed that she didn’t know herself.
After many steps, she was beginning to formulte a queston about this, an unseen door opened in front of them, spilling painful yellow-white light on to Anaba’s eyes. She squeezed them shut and sensed Hwysa move then take her hand and pull her forward. The rock door slammed shut.

[Cy Skywalker]

more...

When the light cleared, Hwysa was standing beside someone else in a truly beautiful and strange environment. It was obviously cave stone but could have been mistaken for a forest frozen in stone gray; the wall behind them was carved with many trees and leaves reaching up to the high ceiling. The section of the floor below them-the three stood on a stone walkway connecting the dark door and a wide ledge-was created or naturally a floor of bumps like regular half spheres, perfect and all over. Anaba’s eyes moved from the walkway to the floor to the back wall, and then finally to Hwysa’s new companion.
He was an older man but with a fierce look about him, like a cat. His hair was speckled gray, his face thin and hard. His ears were obviously pointed, sticking up beside his head. Anaba stared for just a second, before the man spoke in a pleasant and warm baritone.
“Welcome.”<br> “Hail.” Anaba said, assessing the old man. “I was told by this woman that she could help me. Are you within this help?”<br> The leonine man smiled brightly. “Is that what you told her, Hwysa. Your kind, wizard, is being hunted. We will keep you safe for now, and then find your dear partner.” He turned to walk into the fantastical tunnels of the cave. “But we’ve been waiting for you also. Come.”<br> Anaba followed them, wary but unhesitant, through a torch lit passage carved like a wall of roses and thorns. She was quite sure that her skill with the whip, even alone, was formidable enough to repel any physical attack.
There was a thin stairway in this hall, running up to the left and fasioned of dark wood, and the tunnel beyond it was black. Hwysa and her companion led her up there, and she stood in the close darkness while the man spoke soft words, not quite to the reality of the door but something behind and above it.She looked there when she was within, and saw nothing.
He bowed as the two women entered, and Anaba moved away. The people had strange ways here-and such strange rooms! The place wasn’t straight but angled to the right, a peculiar situation to walk into. A wide window sent bright light down from a sandy plain scene, despite the night Anaba’s mind told her it sould be. A long table, row of bokshelves, and potted plants in carved stones were there, all canted disconcernedly sideways.
“Sit down.” The old man said, and after a moment of locking the door he joined them at the table. He sat across from Anaba and beside Hwysa, folding his hands before him and his long arms resting on the table.
“My name is Emamdeaib. I am Hwysa’s uncle; her father my brother is Elven, her mother is human.” Anaba naturally looked at Hwysa and the other woman, outwardly normal, showed no reaction. “What we need you to do is trust us, just do what I ask. I need you to tell me about human magic.”<br> “I’m sorry sir, but I need know why.”<br> “I can only tell you so much untill you agree to trust me. You have already stumbled into a situation where you could easily be made to tell these things.”<br> Anaba seriously doubted that. “What happened to Neu.”<br> “he is parley to secrets you will soon know.”<br> “Fine.” She began to string the basics of magic, that tought to all mages, together in an order that seemed to make sense. “Magic is the possibilities of reality making themselves manifest through a person’s spirit.” That definition both Neu and the master isoron had drilled into Anaba’s thoughts since her introduction into their order. “Without magic users, the possibilities would destroy or confuse reality. Endless chaos. Wizards are Bonded becasue together they can hen see the possibilities made clear to both minds. The Bonding creates a mental link between the two and gives the lesser partner access to magic.”<br> The old man nodded gravely when she paused. “Much has been lost.” He muttered, then looked at her with bright eyes. “But this is the beginning of getting it back."

[Cy Skywalker]

more...
Chapter 3: The Worldweavers

Light was slipping over the crest of a hill on top of the cliff, and Anaba peered out of a hazy form up into it.
A yingyn stepped up into the light, a thin and young hen with read-hued feathers. The rider looked down at her, his face silhouetted and black. Anaba waited.
The rider jumped down. His body was obviously strong though light, thin as the bantam yingyn. As he came down toward her the light slipped back over his face, and vastly familiar features were revealed. His hair was fire-colored and drawn back with a black thorny vine, his face handsome in an undeniably strange way. A willow wand was sheathed across his back, and his eyes glinted dark.
Anaba knew him, but in the way of dreams she did not think of his name or place in her world as anything of importance.
He stood before her, on higher ground because of the lay of the land. “Anaba!” He said. “Help me!”<br> The yingyn silhouetted against a sunset turned its head as if to watch something behind it.
“Who are you?”<br> “There is a lake without water, there is a building like a cave, there are wizards there and you must tell them I sent you--” He rippled, fuzzed, faded for a moment in all dimensions. “Anaba the council has meddled in dark powers there’s not much time--Words! Follow me please, there--” Pain flashed across his face.
Anaba didn’t know what to do, there was so much hurt in that voice, and something strange in his eyes...

A soft bed, and tangled sheets, and someone watching. Anaba rose into a crouch there in the caverns of the Elves, where Hwysa and Emamdeaib had bidden her to stay. It was Hwysa, standing in the room she had been given off the rose hallway across from the mage’s strange conference place, wearing a simple dress of orange or white.
“What’s happened?”<br> “I am sorry.” Hwysa seemed ethereal and strange, for some reason distanced, in the familiar surroundings. “I was asked to wake you, and heard cries.”<br> “I was dreaming.” Anaba said angrily.
“Dreams can be more than they seem.” Hwysa said cryptically, and went out.
Anaba got out of bed and dressed with a distinct feeling of uneasiness, as if there was something, maybe about that dream, that she was supposed to be remembering. And it was like Hwysa had intruded into a private place with that last remark. Had she known something else Anaba had not? She was a wolf-girl, an Elf-girl, in human guise, Anaba noted. Somewhat wild.
The room was large and irregularly shaped, with a bed in an alcove and a wash-stand in another, and a woven rug of red and dark gold on the rocky floor. Carvings over the bed defined its corner in a frieze of dragons and roses and wolves armored like men. What Elven myth or history was this? The old wizard had spoken last night of a tour of the caverns, of making a decision and then hiding it. The exact memories were fuzzy, but when Anaba reached back she found blankness where lines should have been spoken or movements made. What magic was this? Hwysa’s uncle had never explained his own people’s magical properties, methods, or history and purpose.
There was a long history of mages, names everyone knew as workers of magic, but Anaba’s own life had been simple before this change. Classes and discussions and short journeys with classes of young wizards-to-be or alone with Neu marked training, while home life with her aging mother and young brothers was a pleasant retreat from study. No trauma had marked that life; the lessons learned were small. But that forest, days in that overarching dark Forest, had darkened her outlook and magic itself. Mankind had been peaceful since the Great War of the Races, lost to legend. But this place, this Elven-refuge, had deepness of character, palpable history.
Hwysa and Emamdeiab(she did not know where that name had originated, but mentally shortened it to ‘the old Elf’) were waiting outside her room for her, in the rose corridor. Still darkness obscured the ends of this hallway.
“Now,” Emamdeaib said, “it is our turn. Come, you have many things to see.”<br> They turned and began to walk down the rose corridor, and Anaba followed looking all about at the stone and carving and echoing silence.
“We are not people meant to live under stone. This, this is all but play and shadow. We are not meant to be here.” And he shook his head with undisguised emotion. “Many a tale has been written about the captivity of Elves in brown stone halls. “<br> They had passed now through a rough arch into a fire-lit round room, like a natural branching of the cave now tiled and with stairways climbing in many directions and curving into the rock face.
“This leads to the different areas of the city.” The old man said. “I will take you to the glade...in it...free time is spent.” He and Hwysa began to climb one of the railless stairs, and Anaba came up behind them, willing to for now simply listen and look. These stairs construction was defiantly different from the previous section, more course and built along the lines of a natural cavern, less expansive.
The glade was a cave as well, large enough to be impressively similar to the first architecture of the rose corridor, but in the same look close and filled with smaller places, and the ceiling was not far away. Columns held to the cavern’s natural ceiling, and lambs hung from silver chains and silver brackets shaped like claws.
“We have been living in places like this for years.” Emamdeiab said, and his voice was repeated around the walls.. “Now our magic is like yours. But we do not need to pair, to feel the confidance that comes with Bonding, to see the higher magic. Such magic weaves the world together, and we only see and interpret the pattern of the tapestry.”
An Elven child climbed down from a great column shaped like a tree, his bare feet and hands clinging to the stone like a squirrel’s paws. Other children giggled in the shadows, and the climbing boy ran to join them and disappeared into pleasant shadow.
Anaba followed him with her eyes for just a moment. “So yours is the mind-magic.”<br> The old mage nodded gravely. “Yes, that of the speaking through hearts, of true curses, of knowing your own body and mind so well that you may convince you that you are another being.” He smiled at his neice. “That is Hwysa’s special talent. But this magic is not that different from your own, if you did not learn it was so.”<br> They had passed into a new part of the glade now, where the ceiling was higher and echoes flung back footsteps. Adult Elves moved about this brighter place with purpose, taking paths up stairs or down ramps or through doors as if with relaxed intent. They were a fair-skinned, fine featured people, dressed in furs or skins as often as cloth, and a few with streaks of blue or green through blonde hair. The language was solft and sibilant, though a few times a greeting would ring out; “Nurm i ie’sa!”
“Beautiful place.” Anaba breathed.
Emamdeaib broke into her resultant thoughts with their answer. “It is. But we were relegated here from the most beautiful of forests. And your Neu is trying to save us. Dark forces have invaded the already dark hearts of Man.”<br> “Explain what is so dark with Men.”<br> The Elf laughed as if at her reaction, a surprisingly melodic sound as if his voice completely changed and years fell from it. But then returned the old tones; “It is not all Men. it is your Council, the reclusive monarchs’ advisors. It is forgotten what was the cause of the Great War of the Races, but there are still dark things that want war for the pure conflict of it. These have been speaking to the Council, and Neu sought to fight it.”<br> Of course. Anaba thought then. That, Neu would do. “What dark things are these?”<br> “Old, old things, from when Sachigazze was young. That place used to be a place of great power and magic, before the first wars. The darkness took a physical shape then, though we have no idea it is has done so now. What you must do, and you must do this soon because not all here are glad of your presense, is find your Neu. He holds the keys.”<br> “But I do not understand. Neu seeks to save the Council from this dark--”<br> “Not save, to rid us of it. The Queen and King must be brought back.”<br> “They will not! They stepped down to leave the world to the princes.”<br> “Then that is what they have done. But the ancient enemy has pervaded the Council; none of the Five remain loyal.”<br> “And what has this to do with you Elves and your magic?”<br> “The unity of the races, the unity of the magics, is the only thing that can defeat what has arose! The darkness feeds on war. The Council seeks to hunt you wizards, to stir dissent among the people, and then hunt and blame us. Again a War of Races will break out. But the key is that Neu knew how to fuse the magics, to allow humans to open their minds, and he was taken far away. Bring him here, and an attack on the darkness itself can end war before it begins.”<br> “I can not sense Neu.” She admitted it with reluctance, and pain. Such a thing should never happen to a Bonded wizard! In quiet moments she wondered if a Bond could be broken, and her sight would threaten to waver with supressed tears.
“There must be some curse on him, in the old manners. I do not know the science. But this I know; kingdom prisoners of such danger are taken to the hidden lake. We call it Dragano, I know not what you would say. Hwysa knows the way there. You will follow her. And if Dsurien is with you, you will find your partner.”

[Cy Skywalker]

Yingyns Chapter Four....

The Council’s men had made their camp above the valley of Sachigazze when their quest of capture had failed. Their prince’s name was Vlade, and he rode with his mage-guards at the head of the column of white hens and armor in the color of fire when a quick departure was made for high Castillion, fortress-home of the Council.
Banners were unfurled at the peak of the second day’s ride, when a rise was crested and below them spread Castillion, brown thatch and white walls and orange flags. Brown houses, common to anywhere, clustered about the white and rock walls of the castle itself’s ringing walls. But these were an effort of humanity for its own comfort; there was no glory in it that gave exception to its inhabitants.
A hill rose above the flatland constructions, and a smooth stone slab that faced thick sides to the forests of the north and south. A more thin face looked over the east, and west the tower faded into the green slopes until the straight tip, singular and capped with a sloping balcony and snapping flag, rose into the chill air.
The soldiers came between the walls stretching from this edifice, and within the heavy gates the homes were of whitewash and interspersed with brightly painted stores, and the streets ran north-south and around the walled circle. It was a city of high culture in the wilderness, and the glory of the empire shone like silver.
“My prince.” An aviaran, keeper of birds, took Vlade’s yingyn at the base of the tower, and the prince stretched his legs and ran his hands over his face with its five-day beard. He caught his reflection in a hanging shield, and though he might keep the beard despite the fact that it made him look like his father.
The Bonded guards Kendra and Adrian joined him at the citadel doors, and. he passed into the castle proper, the great tower. The entrance hall was built of the white stone and seemed small, a close place of reception. One hanging shrouded the far wall with the kingdom’s flag.
The man that swept in from one of the small wood-iron doors and embraced Vlade, calling him ‘brother’, wore the brown and orange cloak of the Council over priestly white. His hair was black and long, and pulled back from the an open and pale-skinned face. His eyes were silver-blue.
“Welcome back, brother.” He said.
Vlade smiled. “Greetings, Devi. How goes the homefront?”<br> “Nothing greater than usual. The dragons have been quiet, trade is good. A stonemason, an apprentice of a desertman, fell to his death off the high tower . But the recompenses have been made and the repairs to the tower completed. And my footsoldiers--you must see them, brother!”<br> Devi moved to the small right door and opened it, and Vlade followed him into the light air of the parade grounds, where cut beside the tower there was a place of paved, flat ground and the princes walked above it.
“These are those Orc creatures?” Vlade asked with the derision obvious in his voice.
Devi seemed to pay it no attention. “They are.” He slapped his brother’s shoulder, looking over the mud and detritus of his journey. “Did you have a successful hunt?”<br> The order for the capture of the mage whose partner was a prisoner of the kingdom had come from the Council, which Devi headed. Each prince had his own force, his own duties; Vlade’s was the people and Devi’s the council of Five. But here in this common mission they overlapped.
“She fled into the forest. She will not have survived the Old Weald.”
Devi became slowly pensive. “The dark things have been restless, unpredictable. It would be wise to keep your guard up, many eyes open.”<br> “Of course, brother.”
A young page walked onto the field below them then, no trumpet or herald announcing his arrival, holding a kingdom’s flag. Following him from the low entranceway along the left wall came the ranks. They were organized soldiers, each evenly beside and in line with another, each armored in black and dull silver and wearing a thin cloak of red and orange. Their heads were helmed and crested in silver, and there skin was a black that could also have been green, or deep gray. Beneath the armor the muscles were hand and human-defined, moving simply and with control. Each face had strange, large eyes, and white teeth that bulged the skin of their mouths.
“Dragon-orcs.” Vlade found himself mouthing the words, trying them out. The ranks snapped to attention before the princes with a silence that gave the effect not of noiselessness but of waiting, of repressing, a great noise to come.
Devi looked at them with pride. “These will cinch our power.”<br> Vlade hesitated. Then, “I would fight one. Test this new breed’s resilience.”<br> “Their resilience is as it appears!” Devi scoffed. “And they are trained to kill. You would not be spared.”<br> “They are animals then?”<br> “Like men, with none of their weaknesses.”<br> “Or their humanity.”<br> “Not if it is a weakness.” Devi turned, his cloak sweeping through a layer of light dust.
Vlade wondered about this, but dismissed it later. The orcs marched back again, and Vlade offered Devi a dinner he declined. The younger prince returned to his own rooms in the tower, and in the familiarity there was able to wonder that his brother had changed.

[Cy Skywalker]

Chapter 5: Mastermind

The next day, the dragon-orc soldiers assembled on the paved ground at the base of Castillion tower. Devi directed them personally and from the ground, shouting commands to columns headed each by a towering dark warrior. There were more of them than there had been yesterday, or so Vlade reflected as he walked out into the light. He was dressed in deserving finery now, and a gray wolfhound sniffed around his wake. He snapped his finger then, a casual gesture beside his hip, and the dog came briskly to his side.
Devi’s trooper’s movements were concise, skilled and well orchestrated. Orc slouches and untidiness had been refined into what seemed greater than human discipline, if this group were as young as Devi professed.
Kendra and Adrian, silent as breeze and moving distinctly but identical, like foreign siblings, came up beside Vlade. Since all three were twelve or so and the mages Bonded the two had been his bodyguards and advisors in magical arts, and Vlade knew less about them now than in the childhood years. They were typically silent, and eternally loyal and useful.
“I must know where he finds these dragon-orcs.” Vlade spoke as if to himself. “Or what confused or evil magic user made them.”<br> Kendra and Adrian nodded, a pair of blue and a pair of black eyes hooded.

“You have been asking around.” Devi said a few days later, when Vlade was rested. He stood in his brother’s doorway and leaned against the wooden door frame.
Vlade dipped his hands in a basin of water and ran them over his face, then shook the drops out of his beard and hair. It was early, and the sun streamed through a thin window over ornate carpet and a hunting dog lolling in the warmth. “And do you take exception to this?”<br> Devi took paces into the room, standing with his hands before him neatly and ceremoniously fisted. His eyes, his face more craggy than Vlade’s, told of far more than ceremonial anger. “The Council keeps to itself! You have been watching it to closely.”<br> Vlade stood straight. He had been researching, watching and looking and gathering rumor. “And what I have seen does not bode well for the kingdom!” His expression had not left neutral, but now showed true concern. “What are you trying to hide, brother? Since I returned you have been scarcely seen but coming to and fro from locking the doors of that Council.”
“We hide nothing.”<br> Vlade felt a twitch threatening to bare his teeth. The monarchical ‘we’, unclaimable by prince-wardens, taken because of the plurality of Devi’s plot.
“Then show me this nothing.”<br> Devi shrugged. “Certainly, brother. Come to the Council tower now. Trade discussions with Bordermen have been stressed lately, because of the predicted expanse of the desert. Their mages tell of this coming, they say. That is all the talk has been about.”<br> Vlade gave no ground and nodded. “I will accompany you now then.” And he took a light hunting cloak from the back of a dark wood chair, settled it about his shoulders and ran his fingers down the knife at his side, beneath the sheath of the ceremonial sword. Typical garb of the princes, though Devi had taken to the Council’s brown over white.
In silence, the brothers took leave of the personal rooms and made their way through stone hallways, every now and again spiraling upwards. Neither spoke, though it was obvious that Devi strode with confidence and Vlade with the hint of apprehension or readiness in his step.
Vlade knew what Devi’s calming now met. It was not relaxation at the finding of an ally, a supporter, but the predator’s satisfaction as it knows its prey is caught. Clearly that knowledge--and that satisfaction that there would indeed be prey--was writ in the older prince’s features. Both knew courtly intrigue, read into every motion, but here Devi rode the wave of his own obvious desires. He wished to rule the kingdom through the Council, of course, and they most likely agreed to go with him to that end.
Vlade had seen it in his brother many times, such aspiration. And here as before, simple diplomacy could thwart it. Threaten the Council with a second princely authority’s power, and it would change ways fast as winter into spring.

The council chamber was round, and arranged in a half circle on low chairs of wood and soft cloth were the councilmembers. Windows between these seats looked out over the forests and climbing hills to the west and north, and lake country open to the sun in the southeast. East a spiral staircase of wrought iron ascended to a balcony to two doors, and one opened onto the council. This way Devi and Vlade came.
On entrance they stood before a circle of white rock, old kingdom architecture, and at the center of this two simple thrones. Two councilors sat on the right side and three on the left, and Devi’s place was in the middle though he stood now with Vlade, at the doorway. Each councilor wore brown over white, but none of each the same in look and demeanor. They sat in passive silence, three northerners, a brown-skinned desertman and one who was dressed uniquely, masked and armored in iridescence; dragon-ambassador of the kingdom. Devi was clothed as they were, and some power had come over him from them so that it was as if Vlade was left out of some circle of strength. The eyes of the dragon mask only concealed the humans true features, like evil hidden beneath something designed to distract whatever sense it was that now was telling him--
--evil? From where had that come? There was no evil about the council.
“What knowledge do you seek?” Devi asked, smiling.
Vlade simply looked at the councilor for a moment. More stoic than usual they were, harder to read.
“What is the origin of the dragon-orcs?”<br> The man that answered was a mage, though his Bond-partner resided outside the council. His eyes were blue, graying head hooded. “It is a very powerful magic, to manipulate creatures the scientists to not understand. You would be lost in the telling of your answer.”<br> “And yet that answer is what I have been seeking and it is why I was brought here. Explain yourself, to the best of your ability.”<br> The mage hesitated and steepled his fingers. “It is an old magic, ay, old before the Race War. Very powerful...”<br> “And which of you performed this magic? Which of you caught the dragons to study and merge with orc-foulness?”<br> Temper as hot as his charges, the dragon ambassador leapt to his feet. “None of the dragon people--”<br> “Stop!” Devi shouted.
The dragon ambassador fell back into his place, and before him a dark shape began to grow. The king’s chair filled with a smoke that did not disperse into the cool air but instead retained some form, not unlike that of the human monarch. Vlade did not react at first, caught between reverence and dread. The councilmen were some protesting with scared negatives to the forming thing and Devi, some unfazed, the second prince’s mouth curling into a tight, scared smile.
Before the thing solidified Vlade felt its danger. He had never understood what most mages meant when one told him they ‘sensed’ something unknown to the typical senses, or when in a tale some great hero’s presence was like a physical force. But here was danger, fear and dread, personified in a psychic memory of dark nights on the open plain, hunting some beast that could as easily hunt you, childhood monsters or adult shatterings of perception. Where people had personalities, identities and individual miens, this being just held fear. It chose to exhude this into his reality alone.
There was now a new person in the position of the king. he was a patchwork of features, soft dark face; colored like a desertman and built like a northerner, yellow-white hair, one green eye and one bright blue.
“I am the creator of this magic.” The phantasmal image spoke in a deep, clear voice, with long, careful vowels. The revealed teeth were sharp fangs where human canines grew. “And so another seeks the power of the ancient kingdom.”<br> “I seek nothing but knowledge, though it seems these answers but breed more questions.” Vlade said. The man was solid now, as much as Vlade. His clothing shushed upon the king’s chair.
“This has been the source of the orcs and other developments over the last weeks.” Devi said, with tremor in his voice.
“What other developments?”<br> “Can you be trusted?” The strange new arrival snapped. “Will you help us or heed us?” And he stood, smoothly but with a lurch as if a portion of his body was out of control. Fear flowed.
“Help you in what?” Vlade clenched his fist to not retreat steps, conserving them like a fencer.
Devi grew pale, a childhood characteristic. Vlade waited.
“In the unification of the kingdom. The purging of spent ways. The conquest of this middle-earth by its rightful owners, we of the race of men.”<br>

[Cy Skywalker]

Simple enough. But beneath the strange speech there flitted extremes of light and dark, imaged of peace and ravaging war, of enemies defeated and innocents slaughtered. And the fear. Only apparent confidence from Devi--Vlade could read every expression of his brothers’ now--kept him from quaking. So he was confused, and confusion was the dark man’s weapon. So Vlade said;
“No, I, I must no more.”<br> The dark man looked at Devi. “I told you of this, human prince.”<br> Devi licked his lips and nodded. And the dark man dissolved, went back to from whence he came. But the fear grew. It grew so that Vlade could see the remnants of the smoking substance curl and twist into a funnel of black and gray and ugly green, when none of the others could. They saw Vlade run, pivot and sprint like one struck with madness, but they had expected it, and sat like monuments over the dead.
Vlade burst through the door to the peak of the tower. The Valley of Lakes spread out before him, covered in a light blanket of air and height, and the tower like a cliff edge opened onto nothingness. Kingdom guards stood at the precipice and moved toward him, the darkness behind pushing terror into his heart.
At the guards, Vlade was forced to turn. They wouldn’t let him jump, escape! The guards were before, the darkness behind, the gaping sides preparing. He ran through the darkness.
When the fear passed in resolution, it felt like nothing. tendrils of cloud clung to his head and arms but dispersed with the movement as, chased by that nagging, wild, insane fear his front foot found the lip of the tower edge and propelled Vlade down into the open air.

“A stonemason, an apprentice of a desertman, fell to his death off the high tower . But the recompenses have been made and the repairs to the tower completed...”
He doesn’t remember if he screamed as the colored fabric of a desertman’s funeral tent hurtled up at him., and freefall left a silver-blue pit in his core that pushed up into his throat. The wind howled--

--and Vlade woke tangled in the fabric over newly tilled ground, thanking the dead man. Kendra and Adrian, drawn by powers and paranoia, were bending over him, and talking. He couldn’t understand them for the pain in his back. But the lifted him up, and he let consciousness go in the lee of nonsensical fear.