Sylphe
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Sunbeams danced behind her eyelids, falling to her from somewhere far, far above. She opened her eyes and saw a cloth, unmistakably purple, which wild winds let billow and dance like a flag. It was a tapestry showing a creature with wild black wings and many talons, many horns. She moved her small hand past, and looked up to see the top of the valley from which sharp light poured through. Sandfalls rushed in through the sides and tall black towers crossed the sky.
Sunbeams danced, filtering through a lush canopy of leaves, falling on feather, eye and earth. The air hung heavy with the scent of grass, and overripe fruit half eaten.
Three lonely stars shone on a slow rippling sea of reeds, their hum second to the brisk yell of the sea as it raged against sharp rock.
Ribali awoke to darkness.
A lone lantern hung from the cave ceiling. She rested her palm on it, running her thumb over the beads of glass and shards that made up skies and stars on its surface.
She rarely dreamed of colour these days. She dreamed of distant sounds deep in the cave, of the droplets of water falling the ceiling in a set rhythm, of the rasping and desperate ripples as a fish tried to avoid being caught. Of hums from even deeper below. But not colour. And though the dream was already slipping through her fingers like fine sand into the warmth of her cavern, blurs and feelings remained, making her darkness a shade less black. A smile twitched up her lip.
She worried that she’d lost them.
The dim heat of her breath set her flute alight as she reached into one of her bags, each holding sand infused with different minerals for tint. It was so long since she could tell which one was which, but she persevered, anyway. The one that felt smooth and silky had to be pink, smooth like petals and coral. Perhaps the one that felt cold and flowing was the colour of water, and the one scratching her skin was red, like her flame. In her hands, with the same gentle and careful touch they always had, she formed the glass into shapes. A bubble gave to a branch, to a tree, and she leant in, teeth bared and breath held, as her claws carved in the cracks of bark, the veins of leaves, and the feathers of birds. She created a deer of brown glass, and rested it aside. She created the most beautiful wolf of silver. Deer… deer had wings, did they not? They must have, she reasoned, as she shaped out each feather with her claws. She knew what she remembered.
A head, and shoulders. Two legs, two arms, and hair of flowing warmth. A human, she grinned as she placed the figurine into her sea of grass and admired the scene until she knew every crevice, every imperfection, every strand of hair and blade of grass, every crystal, until she could piece it together in her mind and see. Another human, far from the first, this one with short hair and feathers to line the shoulders. But when she placed them near a river, she couldn’t help but stare, maw frozen in a tired smile.
Her masterpiece was almost done. So why did the thought fill her with dread?
All that was left to do now was the sky full of moons and clouds of curled, silver tinted glass. Or perhaps stars… Stars. What did they look like, again? Specks. Clouds… The words were right there, the images fled her when she tried to grasp them, leaving nothing but the dark behind for a few moments before she grasped them again. She held the marble up to her head, and rested her forehead against it. Every scene needed a sky. Everyone needed the sun.
Everyone except her.
But once she’d close the sky... Ribali stood, walking over to the stone outcropping where the lone lantern hung. Under it rested her three marbles. She ghosted her hands over each, feeling, seeing nothing but a smooth glass surface.
The first one she made with a storm of quartz within, with dunes and deep valleys and a moon that burnt.
The second, made of lush forests and flowering blossoms.
The third, where she had tried something new, and chiseled each rock into a sharp, smooth surface that she would never feel again.
How do you cry when there are no eyes to weep from? Instead, the creature snarled, and let out a horrible scream, one that bounced off the walls.
It was time to go.
Ribali pressed her palms together, feeling the last shreds of old magic knit themselves between her fingers. She thought of things far above, melted iron hearts of stars and worlds. Two rings of debris and starlight found their way around her, and she sheathed her Flute within one’s light. Longingly, she moved her hand over the three marbles for one last time, as if hoping that she’d somehow find something new on their thousand-crossed glass surfaces. But every imperfection and crack was just as they were moments ago, and they refused to tell her anything else. She decided to keep them close to her heart, as they’d always been.
She gave one last look to the unfinished marble before scoffing and turning away, but the pins in her heart spoke of something else.
She knelt, and held it between her hands. She drew in on the last celestial flame within her chest, and let a deep exhale into the marble’s glass. Glitter and warmth swirled and rested on every colourful blade of grass, on every sharp growing crystal, and on the two humans. Then, she willed the sky closed. She placed it under the lantern to let it cool. With one last look into the darkness where it rested, Ribali left for the surface.
May you be safe. May someone find you, someday.
She pushed against the metal covering, dug her claws in the spaces between. Did they build over her? Did they bury her? With a feeling of burning in her muscles, she managed to get the damned metal to fall. The harsh noise made her tendrils flinch. She heard more noises. Ones she could tell were voices. Loud, ugly, high-pitched voices. She lashed out with her tail, and heard a satisfying thump, and then a thud that reverberated through the ground. Then, she heard the sounds of struggle, prey scrambling to her feet as she rose to her full height.
She let them go.
Though she couldn’t see it, the sun was shining on her. She felt its warmth, its lively rays that never quite felt as slow and heavy as the heat of lava’s flow, and didn't feel like the humid warmth of her own breath. Soon, there were new sounds, new things the earth was telling her. More were to come, ten, perhaps. Heavier than the ones she sent flying. But she did not move, fascinated by the breeze.
It was cold. It was moving. It flew with so much more than the dome of a cavern to see. It was free.
Her back suddenly felt so much heavier she was about to drop back down to her hands.
Their voices grew louder, and meant and said nothing still. What did mean something, though, was a javelin. Without a word the Maiden turned and swiped, deflecting the weapon and throwing it aside. Another swipe had the daring human’s collar in her hands. She leaned in, feeling the heat. She opened her maw and considered, for a moment… then decided to speak. But out came a croak. Words…
It was so long since she has spoken, the meaning escaping her as she tried to weave it into a word, and probably was expanding on the soldier’s already enormous impending therapy bill.
“...Wish…?” Ribali rasped, the effort making the word sound almost uncanny. “Wish.” She repeated after getting no answer, and this time, she could finally understand the garble of someone else’s words. Eleymeyal campion? Element… She let that one go so that they could recover from their newly gained traumatic experience. The words were hard to grasp, as if she’d heard them without ever knowing them. Or perhaps she did, once. Why would she even learn such complicated words? The words filled her with the same strength the earth brimmed with, the same energy the air was full of, and so they had to be what she was looking for.
She stalked.
There was no one to give such a false sense of security to by being upright, like them. The onlookers, quiet save for hushed whispers, deserved no such grace. They were just as the miners she had met earlier, though when that earlier was she couldn’t really place. Loud, disruptive, and having no dignity in dying when her tail lanced their hearts. She preferred the glass humans she had made. They were quiet. They were hers.
She would curse the human noise until it was gone.
She didn’t miss it.
But it filled up the silence she didn’t realize she was so used to. Now there was just the stone and her, and Ribali’s claw dragged along its surface, making marks. Marking them. Not at all listening to the screeching sound and spark glass made against rock to know that she is no longer underground, that this rock is different. Somehow not old and unmarred until she came.
Her claw hit metal, and through it she felt the earth-voice of something distant. Something enormous. Carrying many tiny legs, like insects, but so much different. The voice was so much clearer now, and as Ribali walked, she couldn’t help but straighten, her four hands dragging across the smooth walls and examining every lightbulb. They were made of glass. Glass holding almost no imperfections at all, just like the rock she met earlier. And though she couldn’t see it, they had to blink with light like a slow heartbeat with how warmth buzzed in them every few moments.
Ribali wondered what colour their light was. She wondered if it bounced off the walls.
Light did that, didn’t it?
She tried to remember the way light bounced, until a slight scratch in the floor warned her of a door. Iron. Simple. With no bulbs. Ribali frowned. But behind it was a hum she really wanted to hear, and so she pressed her forehead and palms into it and listened. She felt clicking deep inside the metal, and wondered if it was much more intricate under that opaque smoothness. And as if her touch willed it to open, what she felt were locks opening. Her weight pushed the door in, and she nearly stumbled.
Her maw gapped open in awe as she stared at nothing, tendrils shuddering in anticipation.
The clicks and vibrations of something of which was many, of somethings that worked together in synchrony, each movement sending ripples through the metal bridge she laid step after step on, each full and slow, to soak into the sound and listen. It was distant to her, but definitely there. The room must have been enormous.
Then a deep sound sent drumming through her feet, and the machine changed its pace. Something was happening in the center of this all, something heavy rising to the surface. Hungrily, Ribali rested her palms on the cold, metallic floor, feeling as it sapped her warmth and took it, and escaped from the heavy drumming she felt from behind. She wanted, needed to know what this treasure in the center was, and no amount of willing herself to see would break past the darkness for her. The sudden stop sent a violent ripple through her, so much louder than the voice of the earth as it moved deep below, though not different.
The Cube in the center finally spoke up. She followed its trajectory from one heavy slam to another, taking guesses as to what its size must have been.
And just as soon as it spoke it quieted, the ringing in her bones resting enough for her to realize that she was not alone. To her side stood quiet and vacancy. Emptiness she did not need. To her other, she felt nothing, and for a moment her heart froze under the thought of being alone. But then they shifted, and the heaviness dissolved. A strange sensation filled her chest after so many years of silence. She knew a name for it, once. But her tendrils fanned and her nostrils flared and the air was full of life and the earth was full of life and Ribali's tail flicked to this side and that in agitation.
And so begins the Trial of the Hunted.
Ribali smirked, not yet turning towards the one she chose for her prey.
Fight or Die, adventures, but let the Elemental Championships begin!
No sooner than the final syllable sounded she leapt. She saw it clear in her body, more than her mind. Claws raking at the opponent and tearing her to shreds. But her hand brushed her flute and gripped, remembering that hold. Was that how she used to fight things that weren’t animal?
Ribali landed heavy on two, leaving skid marks in the smooth metal floor. She swiped her Flute at the place she heard the quiet one last, voice rasping with what she hoped to be grace.
“Perish.”
But her Flute struck only air. In confusion, Ribali listened, frustration bubbling within her armored chest. Did she already lose her prey? Was she being toyed with? Where did the quiet one go? She listened, palm to the floor, and heard…
A particularly high pitched yell. A clack. And then the unmistakable whistle and drum of something very heavy careening swiftly forward. On her hands like a startled cat, Ribali jumped up and away, narrowly missing a head-on strike from the bronze behemoth, its edge brushing her Flute and sending a xylophone clear note out. Her tendrils fanned as the maiden screeched, her tail swinging full force against the one that hurt her flute, obsidian biting into metal.
Her claws dug deep as she felt it change direction and careen off against the wall she felt more steps from. Have fun.
Now.
Ribali sped against the pitter-patter step of the one that dared to send the Cube after her, Flute momentarily forgotten and resting by her side.
You.
She opened her maw wide, hoping to snap her teeth on flesh and bone.
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