The Amaranth

The humans burned her body. He watched from atop the hill overlooking the village. The mortals celebrated her death and all the sheep she'd no longer feast on. They danced around the conflagration of her great body as the flames dulled her bright scales to ash. They feasted on her flesh because it was a way for them to reclaim their dead she had previously devoured.

The wind, merciless and uncaring as the sea, stirred Tristan’s long, black hair and brought the scent of his fallen mate’s cooking flesh to him, coated his body in it.

For a mortal there is no misery, no sorrow or suffering that is absolute. It is always fleeting and finite because it will end. Death was the great mercy and mortal feelings died a little every day before the lights went out. For Tristan, there was no madness to escape into.

As he watched the horror, feeling he should bear witness for HER sake, he drew a dagger from his belt and sawed into his chest. The pain made him scream as his fallen blood grew black and red variegated roses. He pushed past the pain, past the crunching bone as he cracked open his own sternum, lips drawn back from pale teeth wearing a thin veneer of his own blood.

He cut his own heart out of his chest and woke near dawn, said heart new and remade, dutifully beating out forever as he lay in the roses of his own vitae.

Tristan found himself walking amongst the sleeping revelers who were still drunk on wine and full of his mate. He knelt at the great fire pit they’d made to do this violence to every part of her and he smeared her ashes on his hair, face and clothes and remained on his knees, frozen.

He couldn’t be roused to speech or actions by the villagers when they woke to bury the ash and bones of his beloved. Only the occasional tear would cut a clean path down his cheek. It softened these mortals who had no idea it was the architect of their doom that silently wept.

After a full day and night had passed, a woman came to him with gentle, insistent hands and took him to her small hut where she undressed him, burning his blood caked robes in a fire outside. She washed him and dressed him in homely tunic and trousers. Then she sat before him with a lovely face soft with pity.

Like she understood.

The woman stroked his face, moved beyond logic and reason by the well of anguish she saw in his fathomless black eyes. His pain, unknown to her in the specific, still moved her to tears. He was beautiful to her this way, the other brought low enough to love.

This is surely what drove her to kiss him with heat and passion. This beautiful fallen angel who made no sound and only wept had to be a gift from uncaring gods. It felt like blasphemy not to touch him.

Her surprise at his voracious return of her sweet affection melted into delight when he dragged her into the bed and pressed her into the straw filled mattress, snarling at her, teeth at her throat. This is when Tristan came back to himself. The self loathing tore into him, sharper than any dagger. If only he could break the surly bonds of this mortal guise, be the beast they’d just burned to ash and devour this woman whole.

His blunt teeth couldn’t tear out her throat. His bites only made her cry out in pleasure that began to suck him down into confusion. Her kisses defeated him. Her soft touch so wanted it didn’t matter what hands delivered it.

Tristan learned her name and that she liked foxgloves. He learned that her hazel eyes were different colors depending on the time of day. Or if she’d been crying. He learned that she was a terrible cook and that he’d never tell her this. It was easy to lie to her and tell her every meal was his favorite.

When his maladaptive nature hurt her, he learned it was easy to earn her forgiveness with foxgloves he picked in a glade. Mortals needed death for everything. It was easy to lie then and tell her he loved her because it felt like love.

Tristan labored to build a better home for his wife. The years made his hands rough but didn’t put silver in his hair to match hers. It didn’t put lines around his dark eyes. The slow grinding pressure of time never stopped his back.

He found he didn’t mind the extra work when she became too frail to do it. The suspicion of his eternal youth was explained away by dragon magic. He had, forty years ago, bathed in the ashes of one of the last dragons. It wasn’t a gift he could give so he was not harmed for his otherness. At least…not directly.

He returned home one day after a disappointing trip to the city to sell wool. He found his wife in the arms of another man. This was no passionate affair. They were both in the winter of their lives and carried soft ease that told Tristan this had been going on for a very long time.

“Why did you lie to me?” Tristan asked, the numbed grief returning, strangling and screaming, demanding vengeance.

His wife wasn’t sorry. This confrontation only brought out defensive anger. “I never loved you. I felt sorry for you!” Was her only explanation.

He saw the warm familiarity of her fade into icy revulsion. She hated him, he understood this. She coveted his eternal youth and life. He was too strange to love. This little life had taken most of hers and yet had meant nothing to her. It had meant everything to him.

Tristan sighed. “I would have given it to you…if I could have. But perhaps you are right. I didn’t love you either,” he lied.

He killed his wife’s lover first and with the most efficacy. There was no need for him to suffer. He simply unmade his heart and the body died in seconds.

Systematically, he went from hut to hut, most never waking. Those that did and fought him discovered pain would not stop this monster. Nor would death. Every time Tristan was cut down, his body vanished and reappeared perfect and filled with patient rage.

When he’d finished, he dragged the bodies to the place they’d burned his mate. He made a pyre and watched the bodies burn. Twice, his wife stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife, screaming and sobbing. Demanding he kill her too as he’d killed everyone she’d ever loved.

When the bodies were ash, he coated his skin, hair and clothes in them. Tristan stood and touched his wife’s hair, now white. She was just as beautiful as the day she had given him that first lie of kindness.

“May you live many years more,” he whispered. “I would kill you for what you’ve done…but alas. Love confounds me.”

He left her weeping in the ashes of the village as he made his way to the city to see his grim business finished.

She tripped loudly on all her books in the dark, catching herself on the wall. Books on dragons happen to be the largest in her small collection. As if their lore had to be physically larger than life too. Her favorites were the ones with drawings of handsome elves next to their dragon form. They were meant to be educational so they were anatomically correct and nude for illustration purposes. Her finger would trace the parts of men she had never seen with her own eyes in fear and look longingly at the elegant beauty of women with heavy breasts and lower secrets modest by design, barely an artist's smudge. Fantasies about one of them coming to take her away from the farm and her own troublesome heart occupied all her longing. She would be special and a vicious creature would heel at her feet because fate would bind instant devotion. Her family would see never see her fly away on the back of her beloved to leave the boring small valley. She wouldn't miss the sweet songs of pond creatures and forest bugs. The smell of wet earth and apples fermenting. These beautiful constants only taught her prisons could be beautiful.

There were other books too, all borrowed from the library. Vampires and cryptids and creatures of many types. She wanted to know it all, to know there was more than her frustrating reality. Convinced the one she would give all her love to had to be one of these otherworldly beings and had not yet appeared. Mostly because the selection around her teenage desires was grossly dismal so far.

Melody used these as steps to quietly build to their window. She slipped out letting the shock of damp on her bare legs remind her she was now a wild thing like the night. Waking Freddy would be easy. The barn walls were thin and she knew he stayed up late reading boring books on husbandry and mechanics. Her disgust at his literary tastes repelled her the most. She wondered if his mind was boring. This would have to be tested.

Following the edge of the foxglove garden, Melody tip-toed like a fae in bare feet with her long nightgown bottom bunched in her hand over her knees so the dew would not soak it.

Settling near the large oak to shadow her ghostly figure, she watched the barn door from a distance and began to trill and sing like a bird. She did not know their songs by heart but this did not matter. He should think this was odd. If she saw his confusion and frown looking outside the barn, it would be worth getting her feet wet. She grinned and suppressed audible giggles as she waited for his investigation.

To her delight, Freddy appeared almost instantly. Her mouth opened seeing him shirtless with a weapon in-hand, tense with threat. The metal on the long spear flashed in oil lamplight as she drew in a little gasp. Instantly she started running, determined to make him chase. She trailed her retreat with a few more obviously poor bird sounds.

The hedge of forest on the edge of the field hid her but blocked the moment Freddy alerted a passing Scarlet company of three other men on the nearby road. His face was serious as he conveyed his concerns of livestock thieves.

She ran breathless straight into the dark expanse of a barley field, the tickle up her leg from the plant whipping by as she brought distance between Freddy's pursuit. He would see her in the field dancing under the stars and fall in love. Her plan was working perfectly.

When she paused to wait her brow furrowed at a strange hole in the sky. It was as if a shadow blinked them out in vast swaths. Slowly this defined clearer until with terror she realized this was a huge creature descending upon her. Her mouth dropped open and a small sound escaped her watching the vague outline of a black dragon circle her lazily in curiosity. Huge red eyes narrowed as the magnificent expanse of it nearly landed. Trembling, she began to whimper with awe, unable to move. The first roar it shrieked made her scream and crumple to the ground.

Men's shouts followed and ghastly sounds of ripping flesh filled the humid dark. Melody cried while trying to make herself small. Despair had settled her to quiet when she knew the silence meant they were all dead.

The crunch was sickening. Sounds of the dragon eating had her shaking so hard she could no longer think. Looking was impossible, her eyes still squeezed shut tight. Thoughts of her own death consumed her. She screamed when she opened them and a naked elf was squatting down with her, wicked eyes observing with irritation.

He was covered in remnants of gore, with a horrible handsomeness that curled her expression into confusion. This made him look scarier and more cruel. He didn't feel alone, either. Shadows like imploring snakes curled around her body in indifferent observation. Her breath hitched into hiccups, sniveling in misery.

"Please don't hurt me!" she begged.

The elven man huffed with pissy disgust, looking at her very strangely. He spoke in common with a thick elven accent, words hissed like he still had a serpent's tongue.

"You lured me like bait. Did they see me overhead and decide to use you to lure the beast?" he accused with his teeth bared. She did not answer, grief and shock silencing. "But I am only hunting for wicked men tonight. Not little girls."

He stood slowly, hovering above her, thinking of his mate and their own seed of a child. "This is not mercy. My child will not feed on innocence. She will learn what your kind cannot." Leonardo backed away slowly to ready himself for transformation and flight but her defiance stopped him.

"No." Melody shouted after him with a sob. She knew Freddy was one of the dead. Knew that this guilt would slowly destroy her. Seeing the beautiful wicked man of her dreams look at her that way spurred her to fury. He turned, eyes flaring with narrowed waiting.

"No." she repeated, clearer despite her shaking. She stood and addressed the being with a heaving chest, unable to do anything but fight. "Dragons are all wicked. Your child will be too!" she added like a curse. It made her feel powerful, like she could lose her mind and be full of magic by wishing it so.

The red glow increased in intensity at her words. Leonardo made swift connection to her with a mean snatch and sunk his teeth into her tiny neck with efficiency. Her life drained in a rush and tasted unpleasantly unripe. She was fruit that should have grown longer and Leonardo felt only sour dissatisfaction from her kill. Nothing in his stomach settled right anymore.

He dropped her in the dew and transformed into a dragon, scanning over body parts leaking into the barley grass filling the air with sweet trampled leaf and rancid blood. His clawed weight sunk into the field as he snatched the body of the young man that threw the first spear through his leathered wing. He hung like a limp doll as he flew off back to Tristan's tower.

When Leonardo arrived and dumped him on the terrace, no one was around. His mate's proximity to Roval bothered him easily in his already ruined mood. The shower was a pout of denial. Normally he would present the blood of his hunt on his body for his mate but he didn't want her to have any of the girl's blood. It bothered him, the entire encounter. He regretted her kill in a way that unsettled him deeply.

She did not appear interested in what he brought home and he could hear laughter from Roval's room. He bared his teeth openly to no one as he walked back out to the terrace. With effort he removed the heart of the human and put it on a tray he grabbed from Tristan's wine and burst back into Roval's room again without care. His shadows conjured a tight rendering of elegant elven wear, hair curls separated still by the steam of the shower.

He sat down on an nearby lounge uninvited in a languid slouch, feasting and picking on the heart like it was a roasted chicken in a pub.

Roval was propped up in his recovery bed, sharing sandwiches Ahnariel made as a snack. Both paused with surprise at his return.

Roval grinned with amusement at his uncle. His bad moods were entertaining now. Ahnariel had warned him about the purpose of this hunt. "Is that a wicked heart?" he asked.

Leonardo glanced at Ahnariel while he licked his fingers messily. He brooded for a bit with drama before answering.

"I don't know. I'm the wicked one. And I eat whatever the fuck I want." he replied with a nasty rebuke, not offering a bite.

In his five thousandth year, laying in the grass, listening to the night wind hiss through the trees, he discovered the sky was wrong. A bright star called Adhara was gone from the sky. In her bright place was a hazy smear.

He sat up, heart racing with a cold, sick sinking feeling in his guts. So this was the legacy of all things, even the stars, to die? Would he witness the very last one blink out of existence leaving him in the cold, vast forever?

Tristan had convinced himself that after all these ages, he had mastered his emotions. He hadn’t shed a tear in a thousand years and now, he found himself hunched over on his knees, sobbing, snot and spittle on his face, his chest on fire with tight horror and grief.

Adhara, his beautiful star, the star that had been shining since his lonely birth, abandoned him at last. Immortality was a long road of grief and if one waited long enough, unmoving, the road changed until it was unrecognizable…but the direction never changed. Forward. Forever leaving loves and enemies behind. Forward with no destination.

He felt the air warm, night blooming flowers a thick perfume that drove away the salt scent of his tears. Light filled the glade, soft and silvery, making him raise his face from his hands.

There, standing before him, was a unicorn, slender as any cervine, coat white and shimmering. In all his long existence, he had never seen one. They only appeared to the innocent and pure of heart. He’d been monstrous since birth. He didn’t belong here and this wasn’t for him.

His ego could not stand in the face of divine beauty born of the magic of the world he so loved. He stayed on his knees, weeping because he couldn’t avert his gaze though he felt he should.

“Get away from me,” he begged. “Please…I am foul and I ruin everything I touch. I’m no innocent.”

But the unicorn only lowered her proud head and nudged him with her muzzle. You are innocent for what you are, came her soft voice inside his head.

His brow twisted in desperation and confusion. “What am I? Please…tell me there are others like me.”

The unicorn chuffed and began to graze in the glade as the moonlight broke through the canopy of trees. There is nothing like you because you carry the power of nothing. You don’t belong in the world.

Tristan felt the black tide of rage sweep over him, drown and suffocate him and the thread of reason in his mind. He stood, fists clenched. “No! You lie, creature!” He snarled like a fox with its leg in a trap.

I cannot lie. You do not belong but that does not mean you are unimportant. You will give me a name. The unicorn paused her grazing to look at him with dark, mysterious eyes.

Trembling, the anger drained out of him at such an honor. Perhaps she felt kinship with him, another immortal. She felt ancient in his mind, her magic wild and of the earth. She was the Old Magic that had been fading from the world.

“I will name you,” he said softly. A little, sad smile curled his lips. “Adhara.” He reached out to touch the unicorn’s neck.

The light of her was snuffed the moment he spoke the name. Without word or explanation, just relieved sigh as she crumpled to the ground and began to dissolve like mist hit by sunlight. He screamed in horror, on his knees again, begging.

“I’m sorry! Please! I didn’t know…please don’t…please,” he ended his pleading with a thin whimper.

He kept the unicorn’s horn. It became his secret treasure, never to be used in spells, with him wherever he ended up. It was subtle, his love of the mythical creature he had only seen once, when he was still innocent…for what he was. Little porcelain figurines hid between thick tiles on shelves. A fountain on a balcony with a marble unicorn resting through the spray of water. Brass statues in his library. Carved into his headboard, looking down at Nesnora’s sleeping face.

He felt strongly then, gazing at the two, beautiful countenances that had pierced his heart, that he didn’t belong. But how could he stay away when everything in him needed these lights. Ached and bled for them. More than death, he wanted them.

Wanted her.

He’d promised Nesnora he would never apologize to her. There could be no forgiveness for all he had done. For the first time he wished he could go back and do it differently.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her as she drifted in dreams, not hearing him.

To her he gave the only material treasure that had ever meant anything to him. On the pillow beside her beautiful, sleeping head he laid Adhara’s spiral, golden horn. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I hope this is goodbye. And if it is…don’t mourn me.”

He left in the dead of night, his magic taking him to the Shadowglade estate crawling with undead. He made his way unmolested to the dying iron tree.

Tristan kneeled in the poisoned soil and gazed up at her black branches. “I do not belong, mother. No good deed made you answer and so no evil deed has either.” He paused. He didn’t expect to hear her voice. But he still hoped. Still gave her the silence in between beats of his broken heart.

“I can’t exist. There is no place for me. I can’t…even love properly,” he said with shame, tears sliding down his cheeks. “But you can fix it. You can wipe the world clean of me.”

He took in a breath, afraid but resolute. “Name me?”he asked in the pleading voice of a child.

He returned before Nesnora and his….guests woke. Tristan never spoke of how even now, his mother refused to name him.

@wranesnora

Every week he was starting to make a habit out of her now. At first it was genuine surprise until it became so obvious it felt electric. An addictively long dance that left his mind burning with her every night.

On Thursdays she opted for rougher fare, slumming it at The Severed String. It was still opulent for the rich but had a smear of crime so heavy on the velvet only criminals with thick cologne were unbothered by the stink. Pipe smoke with low red lights curled around glittering misfortune in the shape of sharp heels and stolen cufflinks. A place for elves who lost their glow to drown in something darker than wine.

Lillandyr sat at the gold-edged bar like a princess in exile, beauty a sharp, devastating thing that cut through the haze. Thunderous venom swirled in her emerald eyes, a storm waiting to break. She was openly annoyed, vibrating with a frequency that warned the wise to stay away. And absolutely gorgeous.

The drunk magistrate's guard leaning into her space was a sledgehammer trying to crack a walnut. He was too loud, too close, his breath a hot, unwanted invasion of the air she was trying to save for better company. An offensively average elf with confidence undeserved. Heathcliff removed his top hat and walked over slowly, amused. His smile dropped when he saw her flinch as a meaty, unwanted hand rested on her thigh. The guard mistook her silence for submission, a fatal error in arithmetic he was about to regret.

Heathcliff didn't think it was fair her dress get ruined for it.

A heavy hand fell on the man's shoulder and shook him with a jerk off her leg.

"CUNNUS, you LOUT! Look at you! You look fantastic. What good fortune I have tonight." he added with enthusiasm, ignoring Lillandyr completely. His charming smile greeted an old friend but the man's face twisted in a mix of flattery and confusion.

"You've got the wrong one, deader. Name is Jax." he replied with dumb frustration.

"No shit!" Heathcliff answered with a laugh a bit too intense, his usual manner of speech jolted with the act of one biting back violence. He blinked like he saw a revelation on Jax's face. "But you just might be the man with the wits enough to do it." he asserted with hopeful suggestion.

His hand slid to the back of the man's neck, pulling him away from her to speak in a conspiratorial huddle. Jax looked tense with suspicion but let his vanity trust the stranger. Heathcliff continued. "There's a rare, nocturnal hunting hound wounded in the alley. It looks pretty roughed up but I think I can stitch him together. I need someone strong enough who isn't a complete jackoff to figure out how to hold it down while I work. We save the beast? We go half and half on the sale and celebrate with some cards."

Jax looked at Heathcliff as if he needed one more incentive.

"It's probably a Dracone breed. Those assholes buy hounds for, say, at least a solid million gold."

The man huffed out a breath. "Let's do this."

Heathcliff's smile spread in satisfaction. "Yes. One moment." he turned back to Lillandyr and grabbed a pink cocktail she just had refilled. He tipped his head back and drank the entire thing. She stared at him wide-eyed from his unusual rudeness. He snatched her cigarette next and took a drag before handing it back with a wink that crinkled the corner of his eye and a smirk that said see you later. It was met with a sneer of disapproval.

He led the man into the alley, steam from the sewers clouding the refuse littering the damp brick. Jax followed him to a dead end where Heathcliff pointed at a large crate covered in boxes.

"In there?" Jax confirmed with caution.

"Yes, he's asleep. Probably easy to handle now. Go ahead." Heathcliff instructed, whipping off his heavy wool coat and rolling up his black sleeves. He put on a pair of leather gloves and gestured with encouragement, preparing a syringe.

As Jax bent down to look in the crate, a needle emptied into his ass. The magistrate's goon yelped once but immediately collapsed in a heavy stupor. Heathcliff stood over him in disgust.

"Your Magistrate hosted quite the gallery opening tonight." he remarked as he squatted near the man's head with a heavy sigh. The guard's eyes rolled wildly with hate but he could not move. His mouth trembled like he tried using all his strength to speak.

"My, what lucky eyes you have. Eyes that looked at Lady Shadowglade a bit too much."

He pulled down harder on his right glove and sharp metal claws protruded from the leather. This came down hard on the man's thigh mirroring where he had touched Lillandyr. Confusion and terror marked Jax's impotent gaze at the dark man hovering above. Heathcliff said no more as he dug his claws in, severing a leg artery messily, pulling like the vicious beast he promised. He didn't waver under the convulsions, waiting until the man went limp and he could hear the blood drip faster down the echo of the sewer drain.

The eyes were taken swiftly, stems making them delicate ornaments to swim in the saline solution he kept in small jars in his coat. Heathcliff wiped most of the blood off his skin. With a sharp whistle his hounds came to greet him, licking and whining at his hands for his next command in Thalassian, 'feast upon the damned'.

It was granted and he didn't stay to watch. Heathcliff gathered his coat and slipped back inside the smoky lounge. Inside the washroom while scrubbing up he looked at himself in the mirror, feeling comfortable with his ghoulish appearance. It was fun to be the accusation, as a little treat. Fulfilling a rumor now and then wouldn't be the worst crime plaguing their lands.

She was still perfect with her disappointment and new drink, this time bright red. When he approached, she snatched it with a protective tease.

"Thief. Scamp." she smarted at him with a genuine betrayal of delight.

"Princess." he said low and close, leaning while lighting a cigarette. She snatched it before he could take a proper drag, pressing her red lips on the filter thoroughly. He raised an eyebrow with a smile.

"You were too nice to him." she quipped.

His eyes glittered with restraint. "Perhaps I was." he answered honestly. "I promise I'll be meaner next time."

@lillandyrshadowglade