Sylphe
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The red moon holds still, waiting. For her.
For… us…? No…
The thoughts in my mind cannot fully find their form as I gaze upon her. They cannot catch on anything clear, other than the vision of green swamps harsh against my kin’s reds. With exhausted eyes and half-thoughts I see the crimson of banners and carpets in the blood she’s losing, in the moonlight. Responsibility in the dagger she tosses my way even as my body stutters and conflicts and wishes, wishes so deeply to help her because she soon will be no more. I move in a stutter unworthy a battle-dance or killing leap, a stutter unsure. My leg and arm jolt forward in synchrony wishing to steady her.
She’s dying. She’s dying, and soon–
And it should not matter, it should not matter beyond a duty fulfilled and misfortune–
The movements, the thoughts, they stop as she speaks. As my heart stills. As the air brightens beyond moonlight. Her smile widens deep into an emotion I cannot read.
Do you not know, oh paramour..?
The crimson of my Court, the red of power, the golds of my beads blinking through red, the copper of hers, the soft greens of her unknown lands. They sharpen into a ferocious burn in my eyes, but all I see is the river of her blood smeared across my vision. The slow tap of droplets and far-ringing of blades is a dance so known yet the touch of droplets of a life lost burn over the silence of the river, her voice like a blade through the distant war-ring.
To live is to die.
Words catch in my throat and my sundered balance refuses. Yet still in all this brightness– I force myself closer– the killing dagger is tossed away and nearly blinds me in silver as I try to reach her, to catch her from falling, to stop what I’d seen a thousand times. The last moment is lost to the chaos and burn of a wayward princess’ heart. Darkness, pain, searing fire– If I lowered my head to hers, if I reached her, I am unsure. The burn sears through any touch I might have felt, magnified as it must have been. Through any cry I might have uttered or silence I gave in honor to a strong challenger well slain.
The darkness persists and all that I am aches. I am not sure how long the moonless night lasts, though the burn eventually does fade.
“Your highness…?”
Only when the familiar voices chitter and I can make some words out is it clear that I must have made it out of the sacred grounds of old. I attempt to force down an ungainly, pained groan, yet… pain is unusual, of this kind. The last time agony such struck was the mantis-mage’s prismatic flame and so, perhaps I had forgotten how to take such weakness with grace.
It forces an unhappy chuckle out of me as finally the blur of my eyes clears and the nausea returns. Above me, known patterns of the Tree, of the palace. Branches wrought into a ceiling, smoky browns prickling with what little leaves yet she musters here, with so much wood up here petrified.
It should be reassuring to be home.
But this time, it is horrifying. My voice comes out as an attempt at the certainty they doubtless wish. It fades into a rasp right then.
“Yes. I yet… I yet live.”
Is that reassuring? I had intended so. The moth holding on to me does not seem to view it such, and though I do not sense a lie in her voice, the angle of her gaze betrays her. She speaks my honors with relief that I am awake yet she stares up at the missing antenna, the washed-off paint.
“Your highness – it is so well to see you awake. We had lived in deepest worries.”
And deepest works. The healer moths and ants of the palace swarm around me like the blackest of blurs, their white robes shivering in the edges of my eyes. It is an honor to be stained by the blood-lymph of a warrior healed or let go on their journey to the battles beyond.
It is a crime befitting an execution to allow one such as I to die.
Thankful they must be for their skills then.
They… shudder.
That my strength returns with each thread of magic woven into moth-silk pressed against wounds. That with each rare Tree-leaf the ants cut and treat a wound with, the light in my eyes run clearer. Their spells come to me through a haze of imbalance. But it is when one of them reaches to re-bind my wings in silk that I can no longer hold.
“Stop this.”
Our eyes cannot widen like those of the snake priestess’ kin. Yet I notice their freeze, their antennas on end and wings aquiver – the ant in front of me stops dead just as her wing-binding kin, and to her, too, I command to stop, seeing the ceremonial crown-paint in her hands.
Did they shudder, or am I telling myself affirmations to the blood-soaked moon’s visions?
“Your highness,” the ant tries, spotting with a glance around that all else fell silent. “Your… wings are out freely. The sacred bind must have come off in battle... Sister Eliška means you no hurt – merely wishes to help rest them for you.”
Her voice hushes when speaking of the sacred tradition, aided with a small bow. To see them exposed, to see them cut free. I feel them flutter at my back with the memory of my own knife seeing them free for one last fight and one last flight and the thought of losing them and remaining flightless when so the sky has opened, it sparks a flame in the hands that reach to hold the ant’s.
It must be terrifying to them. What monster would know to target the Crimson Court’s wings? What monster would render a bound flier flightless?
“I no longer wish to be bound so.” My eyes bear into hers, black upon black carapace. And of this, my quivering heart feels to be certain, now, for the very thought draws spines sharper than any silvered blades into my heart.
“My Lady in Crimson,” Eliška chitters among the voices soon hushed. She must think what I do, that such thinking is befitting of madness. Perhaps it is. Since my heart beats loud in my chest and my many limbs cannot find themselves safe and certain in this space as they had before.
“-- I do not wish to be so bound after this night.”
A Crimson Court never speaks her heart to anyone outside her advisors and lover.
“Never have I tasted of the sky – never have I left the palace for more than my duties, never have I brandished my weapons outside the preordained dance.”
The princess’s snakes hiss in my mind with her wild movements, the reveler’s mad shifts flickering to and fro. Her eyes, her words, her gaping wound and the old prism-fire striking mantis, the broadsword-wielding paramour lost to my winds, the one that first taught a dance under the hanging moon.
A Crimson Court never is to question the protection death brings.
“Never once has it not ended in death...”
A Crimson Court never is to question the perfection in steel honed through danger.
As above so below, through their quiet I know. It is not of my wish to complain of my own blights. For as the princess must lead example for her kin, so do they live under the palace and in the skies above it – through their elders and fabled ancestors. Through hardened warriors that withstood brassfire in years old, through battle-dances done in sacred imitation upon wheat-fields in wind and swaying lanterns.
It brings strength.
I… must not be the only one that feels the wishes of stars, of seas, of realms beyond home and fire beyond battle – beyond preparing for an invader, yes? To hold hands without force, to dance, without the trained knives skirting so close to an end. I cannot…
It should not be spilling out so. I understand the gazes surely thinking me mad, I understand their worries, I must, and yet in the end I cannot allow for them to bind the silk again.
In the end, it could not save me, could it? For when I stand on the carpets and hear the woodwinds and see the lanterns sway in the softest chilly wind, when I walk out of palace doors after my recovery… Even with my senses so split I can still hear and see much, as I had been trained to. I step, with golden paints crowning one antenna less. My mount holds his coal-fur and ceremonial armor high and his many bells clink to the fanfare.
The whispers among the crowd ring louder. Louder than the words I wish to say to them, words that die in my throat. Because among my wishes the old mantras return to me, knowing that the folk’s old laws did not come without reason.
I cannot make out the words fully, and yet… even from the half whispers in a mind still nauseous with imbalance, I hear them.
My bout had brought nothing to ease their hearts – their princess, defeated, in the medical branch for days, with no new ruler to fortify our walls – how will she stand sentinel with one half her senses missing? – how will she lead us if once again the fires descend? How may we follow her blades, if the princess cannot follow us – wings out in arrogance to old bark-writ laws – how will she lead, having lost her weapon?
Would you wish it had gone differently?
Where I expect a fight, a revolt, an all-dousing flame, instead the parade stills. Within a moment, it changes its sights and sounds. But even with the antenna restored, with the gold re-painted, the whispers do not end. It is still a defeat, it is still a betrayal, and when I dare think of another, happier outcome, there is a paramour whose eyes I cannot dare to look into.
Even flying, even with wings open and meeting the open sky with her, what would I have done to them, to have them come here?
Would you rather wish you had not gone?
Almost gently, the voice rings in my ears again, and the thought is almost more sickening than the last. The divinities need not show me flickers of lights to sicken me with the thought of days spent in the throne room, waiting. Of days where my wings had been bound for so long and so deeply with silk and wishes and blessings that I had forgotten that I even had them at all. The soft thought comes by again, and this time, I watch.
I would not survive it.
The thought of death does not leave me as my voice narrows, and antenna flickering. Someone else was listening in.
“I may have lost half my hearing, but I have not gone dull. Your divine voice will not fool me. I know you are there, healer. I would care to know the name of the one daring to confound my mind.”
I turn towards the shift of sound, and with a bow, the leafcutter ant steps out of a frozen crowd. She stands out, fly on a painting, yet her words ring certain as if my wrath worried her not.
“I am Vendula, your majesty. I hail from the upper roots.”
I do not find my weapons, but I at last do not forget the magic of my folk. I call upon my sigils to unravel her illusions. Yet whichever spell it is I wish to break, it feels absent in a way that makes cold crawl within me. As if there was no spell for me to see — or it was such a large one it became nature. My clicks hiss as the dread returns, as footing further plummets.
“What is this madness, Vendula?”
I watch, and the healer’s robes take on a shining glint. So does her voice, her gait, so little before in comparison.
“My goddess had wished to speak with you, Your majesty.”
“What does your Goddess wish of me?”
The newly named cleric pauses. She speaks of the Court, of its home Tree and the many lights and lanterns within. Her voice, for a moment, touches my antenna with an echo. An echo of the hushed voices, an echo of the uncertain healers. Of the sentinel folk guarding without me. Lighting torches each night, flying into the sky with moth patrols awaiting my return.
“She’d like to know what you think will happen.”
I have retorts, and yet — I have an answer, too. One I wish I knew wasn’t just my thought, my selfish wish to fly free. That perhaps, my kin, too, would like to breathe free.
“... In the hushed voices… perhaps I had dreamt it. Perhaps they were an illusion of yours. I had heard uncertainty of the right kind. Whispers and wishes perhaps moved. Perhaps too afraid.”
My voice angles, but the cleric titter-taps to my side, staring long into the crowd with me. We both hear them then, again, the hidden whispers among the elders’ hardened stares.
“My goddess does not deceive.”
“... Then your goddess must know that even if their whispers are enough to form a voice, we will not be without opposition. It could well be war within our own walls, with no invaders to ignite it.”
“That it well could.” Vendula whispers, voice going quieter, then hopeful like the first shooting star. She turns to me as she clicks. “But what if it all goes well?”
I do not understand such childishness, not even for a mad woman such as her. I should, for I had joined her ranks not too long ago myself. I lift my head a touch and click in response, the brightest scenario of all playing in my mind as I measure which folk with influence may yet be swayed, which regions of the tree the sacred ways had the least hold over. I cannot help the desperate poison touching my voice.
“Yes. With all star-lights aligning in our favor, with all of the Tree’s old branches blooming at once, all in one spring. I do not want this fate for this folk, Vendula. I do not want them to weaken themselves with infighting as much as I don’t want them to be held. I do not want…”
I do not want this fate for me. I do not want it for you, kin, too.
“That is all my Goddess offers, Your Majesty. She, too, has long been fighting a war to be free. She is rivers that wish to be undammed, vast forests seeking freedom of those that impede their wild. She needs but a touch of good luck to gain an upper hand. She now offers the same good luck to you, should you aid her.”
The lighting changes. The familiar scent of hometree’s bark, the lights of lanterns and the whispers are whisked away in favor of boundless night, and a wild river of stars. The grip in my heart remains. The second sigil flares, but it is as powerless as the first. My hidden wings ruffle at the sight, in awe. In fear. Old stories and research of the seabound cave flare in my mind, as does the sigil that once shone above me, pushed to the wayside. More than the wishes of old, I sought the warriors strong enough to chase it then. One of the Two Old Gods, the Mother of the Trees and Wyrms.
“Is she not, too, the force of the overtaking invader? The force of discord that overgrows my cities? As much as she is the beautiful, endless expanse, she is the lives she consumes with waves. How do I know my aid and wish will not set a demon free?”
The stars dance into rivers made of the most colourful of stars. My heart aches looking at them like it never has before. I wish to hold the dancing lights of cerulean, to ask the glistening golds and silvers for their aid in finally soaring, the cosmic river for its hand in a dance, for too she lives.
I had already near doomed my kin with unchecked desire, with control lost and fire free. I cannot do it again wishing upon stars on a nation that well might not be prepared.
“Only a stroke of luck,” Vendula chitters, reaching out a hand to me. Then two. I sense a quiver in her, but her eyes stand unbowed before mine. “A blessing. An eye to watch through yours, Your Majesty. She is the Great Painter. Her will will follow yours, what wish it may be.”
I stay quiet for a time. I do not wish to lose the sight of this watchful expanse in front of my eyes, perhaps.
In my heart I know it well could be the last time I see something – perhaps, someone so beautiful.
I see the path with less blood and smoke. Where I dream up luck to find the paramour I had wished for for so long. For my wings unwound without casualty, for the kingdom without stains.
But in my heart, burning bright, I see the desire to reach out to the stars. To lead with the fires and voice held high for a chance to break through the old stories, the old laws. Learn what love and dancing means without blood and lymph, without blades.
“Very well. I wish to ally with your Goddess.” My hand stays for a brief moment before taking up the Goddess and her Voice in the dance they offer. “However, I have terms. A single one.”
Commanding as my voice is, held still with my request spoken to the beauty and ruin, it rests into a gentler tone. Never once does the cleric’s expression shift from a newfound sense of joy, of glittering ant eyes. But my voice that would make demands quiets on the wish.
“I cannot be like this. Please.”
The same as when all began. The same as in my countless bouts. Pristine and unmarred as all the bodies of lost paramours they cleaned and took, never to be remembered. The ant cleric’s voice is joined by thousands, by chitters of moth riders and whispers of the wind, the churn of the black sea’s expanse, and my back shivers as I hear my own amid the discord.
“How do you wish to fight?”
And in the Goddess’ voices, in the Courts’ trees and winds and words, I find my answers.
“To honor the warrior who equaled me, though it cost her her life.”
The priestess flashes behind my eyes as an unseen force cleaves my crown once more. No more blood mopped and deaths and bravery erased. Beyond her, I hear still the frightful whispers of my kin, fearing a sentinel unable to protect her folk from danger without hearing.
“To still be able to protect them, to still be able to fight at the fullest there is.”
Ancient, half-petrified wood sprouts as the cleric reaches out to my wound. She etches sigils of my kin I once had learned when chasing the null-magic, and where there once was quiet, there is sound. It’s not the pain that causes the quiver in my soul, nor the colourful wisps. Gentle leaves sprout along the branch — I feel them catch the wind as the ground is no more and I sink deep into the expanse. The sigils of my kin. The leaves, the bark. Home.
“I wish to fly my wings, and hold my sacred weapons to keep them free of wounds.”
The ground settles under my feet. I breathe deep as the familiar heft of knives settles in their ordained places within my robes, as my claws meet the touch of hallowed wood. I trace the blessings once drawn upon the naginata’s shaft, long since worn with battles. The rush of water touches my sensitive antenna and the cool touch of wind brushes my wings. Shadows flicker and lights return as my battlefield comes to view.
And it is…
Beauty and anticipation. Like nothing I had seen or felt before.
Three against three.
I breathe in the crisp air and attempt to still my pulse. Within the shadows moving around me I see those I recognize. I wish to smile, to call to them, but my voice catches, and there is no movement allowed from me.
It is her, I realize.
Forcing me to kneel.
Naming Aggendrest for me, so that his name is not forgotten. Naming… me.
I rise, allowing the first movement to plan out my silken webs in the enemy lines. My hands hide, two sinking sleeves into the folds of a white-red robe, decorating my belly with beads where there should be none. But as I think of whom might see through my tricks and how to ensure my strike land true I cannot fight a quiver and unsure warmth.
Knight of Connection.
Not certainty in my movements. Not perfection in my strikes.
Is that… in the end, what swayed her? You who desires…
You who denies.
I watch my new foes across the rushing rivers as my claws drag along the wooden surface. My eyes land on the wild, beautiful Spirit that defends, that hunts. On the stately, disciplined Admete with an arm made of starlight.
And then they land on Délaila, the priestess of balance. Of life, of death, in equal worth.
When desire speaks ill to folk and leaves their wishes unanswered, when denial leads to hearts and wings bound —
— then, I could stand to honor both in equal hand.
I turn my crimson gaze over to Aggendrest, whose name I now know. To strike me such, to evade blows – oh, all of them, no less – it was infuriating.
It was mesmerizing.
And so both feelings tie into my voice as I give him an acknowledging nod, gold-painted antennae bowing just slightly. Inevitably, amid the seriousness of the air coming before war, still my voice and eyes smile at him. I offer myself a touch of theatrics, master to master.
“Aggendrest. You are skilled to have troubled me so.” Then my voice hardens. “Stay in reach of us, yes?”
Though, and I peek at the foes, I doubt so, with your expertise.
Good, perhaps. Where madness takes Prillyi and if it is an united trio is yet to be seen. We are fighting for Chaos, after all. Perhaps I will allow it to be infectious. I turn to the princess so, anticipation of a new kind touching the tips of my wings and making them quiver. Oh, the thought of breaking, of being broken.
“Prillyi.”
Come with me.
Would you care for a dance?
It is not quite the first time, yet it feels so. I’m like a kin freshly molted as I offer her my hand to take. As one who does not yet know the scope of her wings, the reach of her hands. I know how to claim, to command, but the soft steps of uncertain offers for bonding are new to me. It is… a good new. Uncertain, first, my hand finds her standing. Yes, I wish to meet you. I wish to know you, Prillyi, the Madness. My voice quivers still as if fearing a denial. I let the option ring.
“Come with me, if you wish. I had not yet witnessed you — your voice, your fights, you — when first we met. I should like to remedy that.”
I wish to witness it. Just for a moment. That animal fury of yours, the revelry, the joy behind each strike. Please, show me how to unleash, and I will bring structure to your strength.
I try to hide the joy that touches my heart when she accepts. My claws close around her gauntlet, and I take Prillyi forward. My steps clink a soft scratch on thousand-rivers weathered tile. I see my targets, of course. They are the shadows at my front, my side, my back. My third eye watches the star-armed and snake-blessed, but my eyes are on Prillyi. I twirl upon tile, black and white and black again, prolonging the one moment with her quivering eyes before there will be little time for words.
And then, just as her touch grows warm in my hand, I call.
“Oh, paramour! It is a pleasure to—“
I had witty thoughts, yet they soften.
“Still see you.”
Swift as the winds I prepare to call, red as the magic that crackles in my heart, lethal as the poison not even Délaila had seen. I unveil my secret and silver glints in glassy claws. A knife is unveiled mid motion, to be flicked at the star-touched Admete, whom my eyes meet.
“And with such esteemed company.”
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