*Midworld somewhere, a very long time ago*
Smoke filled the sky, gaseous and chemically. The aftermath of the clash of metal and fallen arrows littered the ground and the remaining charge of gunpowder clouded a yellow sun. The world was stained a sickly pale green.
A heavy tang of burnt sulfur stung her nostrils. She was unaccustomed to these human smells. They were foreign in her lungs, disgustingly thick. Weapons and blood and sweat. Heavy wet musks, mixed with the smells of dirt and minerals, so similar to the animals of midworld. The only difference was a soft, billowy undercurrent of petrichor. The faintest hint lent theory to an ancient connection to fungi.
It perplexed many scholarly fae. Had the ancient fungal fae played some forgotten role in human evolution? Their relation to the ape like animal species of their world was evident but there were some factors in their evolution that set them closer to the races of the higher dimensions. And that unidentifiable connection allowed them to harness the energies of the universe. Lacing divine lights and sounds into their auras in a unique form of magic.
Just like the warrior she watched single handedly slay a small army.
He'd danced through them, body moving so fluidly she could have mistaken him for an astral entity with their surreal nature. Where most humans imbued their magic into items such as weapons or instruments, this man coated his own body in it. His was a barely visible hum, thrumming across the planes of his skin, aiding in his agile and surreal movement.
It had been fearsome to behold. So much so that fresh pills of precipitation clung to her throat and the small of her back. She was fae. Eaton, third incarnation of the kudzu, a princess of the great Courts of the East. And yet so, the fleshy mortal before her sent a quiver of fear coiling around her spine.
He was powerful and she was to fight him.
It was the price she would pay to the Coalition for their cooperation with the Great Eastern Court Alliance. They were the largest militia in all of the Twilight realm, and their numbers added to the military would guarantee a solid victory against the Night Court.
Eaton approached the man, letting her human appearance dissolve. Skin like peridot paired with silken white hair and black eyes had the man faltering when he caught sight of her. His mouth falling slack and his eyes widening in shock. There was nothing bipedal in this realm that looked quite like Eaton.
She watched as his grip tightened on his sword and he squared against her. Knees slightly bent, braced for an attack, foes and comrades lifeless and still, crowding the ground at his feet. He was a lone survivor. His fellow men fallen victim to an ambush.
Eaton had watched. Concealed in the bark of the trees. Seen the first arrow fly from the darkness of the forest as the small convoy was passing through a meadow. Heard the fire of rudimentary canons, built of hollowed wooden tubes and stuffed with burning metals. Fearsome cries rang through the air as men burst from their cover, faces painted in brown and green.
One by one they fell, poorly prepared, exhausted and lacking in inventory. Until all that was left was the single man, hair curling in the wind panting and bloodied.
There was a primal desperation in his eye that didn't go unnoticed by Eaton. It was a will to live with the stringy sound of selfishness, looking beyond his enemies. He had somewhere to be and these men would not stop him.
So this is love.
And he had killed for that love. Flawless swipes of a sword, thin and drenched in blood cut through the attackers who began to falter in their assault. His opponents became overtaken with shock, flipping from the offensive to the defensive. The man had become beastly, slashing down the last of the men who attempted to flee him. The thrumming energy on his skin lending him speed and strength.
Eaton sighed. Killing this one would be sad….
If she succeeded.
The way his green eyes bore into her had her anticipating a challenge.
The shock on his face from her appearance had been momentary. Some knowledge she was not privy to flashing in his eyes. He had been expecting something to come for him.
Then words, ragged and raspy filled the meadow, his voice carried in the breeze. "I can feel your power from here," A sardonic series of laughs burst from his lips as he ran a hand across his face. Blood smearing down his cheeks. The laugh cut short and a haunted expression fell over his features. "I will not die here."
There was an uncertainty on his lips that Eaton understood well. At least one of them would die today.
She had thought this whole situation was, not for lack of a better word but for the sake of its cruelty, dumb. But the coalition had been sound, almost vehemently so in their directions. The human warrior had fallen in love with a prominent member. A forbidden love from a forbidden realm and that threatened their ranks and he was to be eliminated.
It was a suspiciously small price in her opinion, but Eaton was not to question her orders. It was such a great opportunity for the courts that her desperate mother was willing to risk it. It was simple enough that she had delegated the responsibility to Eaton, her youngest daughter. This was her first mission for the Vermillion Lily, elite soldiers tasked with top secret operations for the well-being of the court. A position Eaton had hungered after since she started training.
If she had more time to think it over, more liberation and freedom to challenge orders, she would have seen the gaps in the story. Taken notice of the cliche and seemingly half assed assignment. Questioned why a single human was worth the use of the Vermillion Lily, made different choices. But she was here now, and if everything went in her favor she could help secure her mother's influence over all courts.
"What is your name?" Eaton sang.
The warrior grimaced, hearing the spell in her voice. "You may call me Solstice." It was his given name but the song of his soul was not present.
Occasionally a soul song lived in another name. Eaton did not doubt that his song lived in the pet name in which his lover called him. A dismal smile and the temporary softness in his eyes gave him away. He was a man absolutely smitten. The fae could smell the soft nature of his compassion in the air, warm and crisp.
"It will not be so easy,…" He paused, looking her up and down. "How may I address you, being of the higher realms?"
"My name is Eaton. Though I do not think it matters."
Solstice gave her a pensive smile. "I suppose you are correct." A flick of his wrist sent tacky globs of coagulated blood flying. They hit the ground in wet spatters.
In an eerily disturbing flash, the light drained from his eyes. His demeanor became void of emotion and the oxygen was sucked from the air between them. The breeze stilled, as if at his command, obliging his will. The sun shone through dust and smoke, yet the world seemed drained of its color.
There was a moment of clarity before he advanced, a modicum of time when Eaton realized that this man was indeed a tried and true warrior. He had seen many battles and came away victorious. He had all the experience and the motivation to persevere.
Then he was on her, a powerful fae, extremely so, because of who and what she was, not because of her experience. Within the organization she was not particularly high ranking because her seniors had the battle experience she lacked. This was going to be a test of her abilities, to see if she qualified to stand on the battlegrounds of fae.
A dense cluster of vines shielded her from the first blow. Greenery flowing from her palms to slow the rapid descent of the razor-like blade. Her vines just barely kept his sword from her skin.
She rocketed backwards, putting a better distance between herself and Solstice. Her powers had a greater attack radius than his sword. If she could keep some distance between them she believed she could retain the upper hand.
'Believed' here had been a word of hope. A belief that was simply that, a belief. Where logic and perceivability ended or failed, one stuffed the empty hole of worry with faith. That's what she did in the face of his onslaught. Continued to believe that as long as she stayed a distance away from him, she would be the one on the winning side of the scale.
Even as he threw himself forward, effortlessly cutting away vine and leaf, in her face again as soon as she gained any distance, she believed.
It was naivety cut away by the cold flash of metal. A juked swing cut through a weak spot in her defense and his sword tore up through her shoulder. The thin blade did not cut kindly and clean. Its edge, chipped and bent from armor and bone, hacked into her with brutal speed and force.
Great realms, how existence slows when death presents itself.
It was exhaustingly slow, how her skin ripped and muscles tore. Sinew snapped and tendons shredded and snagged as he cut through her.
And then it hit bone. The scream she'd managed to hold back whistled out of her in an echoing whoop and the nearby trees shuddered. Bone crumbled and splintered, chipped away and spraying from her in a confetti of carnage.
Deep jeweled green showered the grass around her, which took on a fluorescent glow as it greedily absorbed the fae blood.
Her shriek continued to ring out, sharp and filled with song. The grass twisted into itself and the trees groaned as they attempted to heave themselves towards her.
Solstice's blade exited her flesh and her arm flopped to her side, held only by the flesh of her armpit.
Its exit was a cruel relief. But it was all she needed in those drawn out seconds. These seconds where belief and faith lost value and the only currency was action.
She had known that her seniors' experience with battle had always given them the upper hand but she hadn't known why until this very moment.
This man was not like low class thugs and criminals she often faced while serving the court. Nor was this a spar with a higher up. Solstice was a warrior. Trained and prepared to kill with precision and intent. He'd killed a hundred times before and he'd kill a hundred more because that was his occupation.
Her mentors said this was what it was like to fight the night court army. A group that fought for a living and for the thrill of the kill. It was frightening to finally behold as pain mixed with the fall of dread.
She expected her knees to give out as she stumbled and time began to start again. She had misjudged the situation. Doubted the warrior because he was human. A weaker being in the eyes of fae. And in a moment of shock she had expected to fall to his blade, not even a fight to be had. The vital mistake made long before their clash. When she had stepped forward to reveal herself she had looked upon him with immediate admiration. All of the warrior's admiration lay in the palms of his lover. To him she was just an obstacle on his path back to them.
But a sweet spike of adrenaline shot through her gut in a heated blast. A hot spurt of pure survival. A needed dose of encouragement.
He was too close now for a good swing, his blade was still up in the air, and his vision of her was obscured as his arm crossed his line of sight.
Eaton's arm was useless at her side so with gritted teeth and a ragged chuff of air she pushed vines from the mangled mass that was once her shoulder. They bust through in spurts, whipping around his limbs and squeezing into his skin. A deep grunt resonated from his throat and Eaton heard his teeth grind in pain. "You bitch!" He hissed, pulling back, readjusting and plunged his arm forward.
Eaton had miscalculated his power, flexibility, and the length of his limbs. For a moment the muscles in his arm bulged and her vines snapped. Then in the blink of an eye the sword plummeted down, sliding between ribs with a jagged heat.
It surprised her. How the pain failed to register even as her ears began to ring. It wasn't like her hacked up arm, still dangling by mangled flesh. Or so she thought, until Solstice was ripping his weapon from her chest. Chunks of flesh and blood sprayed the two of them, too close to one another in their battle.
A calling echo filled her ear along with the ringing of pain. Her ears shot up and her eyes widened. Muted laughter followed by the beating of stretched leather and tolling bells filled the field in ominous dread.
The song of death.
A song she had only heard twice before. Its sound brought forth whispers of memories from her previous incarnations. Memories of the end of a cycle. A dark lullaby sung from decaying lips and rotten teeth, traveling through dead air, stirring up mildew and mold, kicking stale dirt.
She drug blurring eyes to those of Solstice. He stared down at her calmly, the green of fae blood, screaming grass and trembling leaves, causing his spring green eyes to glow.
There it is again, she though. The green was too green. A fae kind of green, closer to the highly saturated and rich colors of the higher dimensions than to those of midworld. A little something that suggested the human had connections to the heavens.
But even in that divine green there was the burst of mortality. Through the calm he failed to hide the pain as Eaton's vines clung even more desperately to him.
Adrenaline stinking the air between them, the mass of green gnarls was joined by more vegetation as roots bloomed from around his sword, firmly lodged in her chest. This was new for Eaton. The roots crept forward as her vines tightened and crushed and tore into his arms. A new ability unlocked at the brink of death.
A hissing sound came from between them and both their gazes shot down to find the metal beginning to erode and burn. Goopy globs of frothy acid seeped from the vines and coated the blade.
Solstice took a labored step forward, their bodies nearly touching as he attempted to drive the disintegrating sword further into her chest, twisting his wrist and tearing into muscle and organs.
Eaton snapped forward, serrated teeth sinking into his arm, tearing a piece of flesh from his bicep. Blood and iron filled her mouth, and she choked as Soltice let out a roar and dug his sword deeper, wiggling it about, tearing apart her insides.
"I wont…" he labored, gaze fierce and voice harsh, "die alone."
A breeze carried sun brewed air between them and as its wisping touch cooled on her face Eaton realized she was crying. Pain and regret mixed together in a concoction of shame as she stood face to face with the man. A man, a human mortal.
"I…." She gurgled through airways filling with liquids. " I hear the whistle of deaths song."
"Ha." The vines and roots had now minced and punctured their way through his shoulder and into his chest. "I did not know death liked to sing."
"I know." The princess rasped out. "It is something that surprises the fae too. After all, we are masters of song."
"A fae, huh." He did not know what this was nor did he ask. There were more important questions poised at the tip of his tongue with only moments to live. "What does his song sound like?"
Eaton choked out the last laugh she ever would and her eyes locked with his. "It is singing a duet today."
The man briefly closed his eyes with the slightest nod of his head. "It is, isn't it."
Then the two were tearing each other apart. Eaton's roots left their hold on the blade and pulsed towards his abdomen, planting themselves within flesh, melting away skin and bone and muscle.
The remnants of his energy pulsed around his arm, his body abandoned to the vines, as he twisted the sword into her, wearing out a cavernous hole through her chest. The desperation she had seen earlier reentered his aura as the finality of their situation began to set in.
"We might still both walk away from this." It was words whispered from the man that she had not expected to hear. The sweet reek of longing filled the air between them and Eaton knew his lover was at the forefront of his mind.
There was so much space between each second and it settled weirdly in the pit of her stomach.
Success was a halfway option at this point. To return unsuccessful would be a death sentence at the hands of her family. Shame and humiliation her final feelings. To remain here was to die at the hands of a warrior in battle, with only the light coating a hurt ego to accompany her to the other side.
"I cannot."
His plea refused, Solstice let out a breathy sigh. "Iiok etvara vu certajrama."
Eaton squinted at the man, vines and roots planted in him, held against her, and failed to understand his words "Wha-"
"IIOK ETVARA!" This time the strange language rumbled deep from his chest and sang forth with phrygian erie.
The fae could understand most languages of the lower dimensions yet Eaton did not hear the meaning of his words, only their echoing song. The odd language bounded through her skull assaulting her senses.
A cool wind howled across the field, chasing away the heat of their deadly embrace. Clouds rolled in to block out the sun. Eaton was dying, and the strange language was disorienting her further, so when his body began to fall slack she almost didn't notice.
His energy sucked the literal life from most of his body. The feeling of cells dying, bone crumbling, flesh suddenly decaying around her greenery, of organs collapsing and falling limp around oozing vines, that let her know he was sacrificing his body for one last boost of power.
All of his remaining life flowed directly into his head and his last good arm. The arm ripped from her vines, his bones snapping as vines tore. The blade quickly dragged upward, tearing through meat and sinew before catching bone and breaking off. A jagged nub of sword now held above her head, poised to stab Eaton right in the face.
But as the blade came down it veered backward and Eaton watched wide eyed as Solstice tore the jagged piece of metal across his throat with viscous force. All the energy he had gathered, dense and viable, exploded from the fresh wound, bursting into the air in an array of distorted waves and light.
In a moment of shock and confusion Eaton lost the remaining bit of her concentration, and the vines slipped from his body and retreated back into her being.
The two collapsed to the ground, near expiration, intertwined as blood and flesh mixed.
Eaton watched, face full of dirt, as Solstice gasped for air in front of her. Blood pooled around his head and a horrible gurgling squelch sounded from the cut in his neck with every gasp.
"Ha haha ha." Disembodied laughter rang around them as the world began to darken.
The grass shuddered. No longer high on fae blood, but anxious and paranoid, it attempted to flee. Blades leaning away, letting out little cries only heard by Eaton's ears.
The darkness seemed to concentrate above them, boiling and becoming thicker. "Vi certarjama?" The voice questioned, louder and more harrowing than before.
Solstice choked something back to the voice, his word lost to the damage of his injury. But whatever his reply, the voice understood, this time replying in his human language, "Your body is too broken to repair I'm afraid." Now the black fog hung more directly over him and Eaton could make out iridescent and oily flecks within its depths.
More gurgling came from Solstice.
A scaled and clawed hand formed from the smoke, knobby and segmented. Its insect appearance would have had Eaton recoiling had she had any life left in her. But she couldn't. This was it, her final scene, and the disorientation was starting to set in as she felt her lips smack for air that did not enter her system.
The hand came forward attached to long primal arms, then a lanky and hunched torso followed, its head and legs still ununiform and gaseous.
It caressed Solstice's face, its fingers leaving a trail of shiny black chips blooming in their path. "This is not a bond to your human. This human is already dead. This will be a binding to your greater spirit. Solstice will die here today, that is certain." The creature stroked Solstice's face again, the light now rapidly fading from his eyes. The gurgling no longer came from his throat. His silence was somehow even more unsettling.
"Kan vu etvara ok certajrma?" The creature asked, switching back to the strange and disorienting tongue.
A forced string of air whistle from Solstice and the last twinkle faded from his eyes.
The creature still partially formed seemed to take a moment to observe the dead Solstice. Foggy head rolling from side to side, fingers lightly trailing over his body.
With a little shake the creature let out a windy howl, more song than not, before the howl slowly quieted out into a soft sigh.
"A demon and a divine spirit. One for all eternity."
With that the demon began to dissipate, ribbon by ribbon, and the world returned to its color. Laughter carried away with the remaining fog and the last thing Eaton heard was the belling song of Death that filled her soul. Rain burst forth from the clouds and Eaton died in the arms of her opponent.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
*Present*
Nimara opened her eyes to find her entire body covered in overgrown and tangled grass. The only view she had of the world was through a tiny window the grass had so politely provided for her.
Her stomach rolled and she pushed from her cocoon just fast enough to not vomit in her own lap.