too pretty to die

Now that he'd seen other parts of the empire—the ever-gold trees of Arlathan and the shining palaces which hung above their glowing branches, the churning sea to the east and the brine that wafted off its waves, the plains to the east that boasted an unforgiving sun and tall grasses in which to hide, marshes to the south and the mists which hide them—he had to admit that his home was singular. A place built on scholarship and ideals.

Still, the inexperience of youth demanded he leave it, tired as he was of hearing the same topics debated again and again by men who had never ventured farther than a few miles. There were things he wished to learn that no one there could teach him.

And in those wandering years, he'd sought more than his share of quarry, fought his share of monsters. And when he'd grown listless even in that, he'd gone seeking a challenge.

What he'd found was Andruil.

He'd first encountered the Order of the Amber Eye in a village on the coast of the northern sea. A place which saw a great deal of swirling clouds and only transitory glimpses of sunlight. Davrin heard word from a neighboring people that a feyr had taken up residence in its cliffside caves, sheltering from the sun and terrorizing the village all at once. He'd arrived only to find the beast had been taken down by warriors greater than himself.

Davrin had found them in a tavern, drinking and laughing raucously. He hadn't been permitted to join them until he'd passed a test involving several drinks, an unfamiliar longbow and a makeshift target.

Afterward, he'd never be sure what drew him first: the camaraderie or the challenge. But he knows that when they'd invited him back to her manor, he'd gone for whatever purpose he once thought it would afford him.

Having made their name during the war with the Titans, the legend of their order was paramount. They protected cities all over the continent from whatever monsters of spirits sought to cause harm. Davrin' could imagine no greater purpose than to serve.

He'd only realized his foolishness several years too late into a life sentence.

And perhaps he couldn't have known of the wars which would follow, first with those across the sea, and then with others of their own kind. He couldn't have known in the years following that every man he'd once been proud to serve beside would fall to fire or blade. That their ranks would be replenished with men who cared more for self-interest than honor. That their once-great general would grow to care more for herself than the people she claimed to serve.

In the intervening years, the order had reformed into something more fitting of peacetime, hunting whatever creatures would terrorize the far corners of the empire.

What most didn't know was that many of these monsters had been created for the express purpose of being hunted, bled and raised as trophies.

These days, The Amber Eye are little more than a maid service, sent to clean up messes with which Andruil herself could no longer be bothered. Food she'd pushed around her plate so long she'd grown bored. Toys she'd broken and left underfoot. Pets she'd forgotten to feed.

A fact which seemed lost on those who fell over themselves with gratitude. Davrin too often swallowed bile as he accepted thanks from the people whose lives and skin would be forever scarred because a self-professed goddess had grown bored again.

Grotesque and vicious as they often were, Davrin wondered if it wasn't a different kind of cruelty. Granting life for the express purpose of taking it. And after years of this, he'd started to see them in the mirror. Had started to wonder what made him so different from a violent creature molded by the hands of another. Made to entertain a goddess who lost interest so easily. Destined to be designated disappointment either to his mistress or to himself.

He'd always known which he'd prefer, though the oath cut into his skin sometimes made true autonomy difficult—one of the many reasons that made open rebellion seem such a distant prospect—though this far from the manor, the slack of his leash meant it was easy enough to mount his own small mutinies.

He searches for that loophole now, as he follows one of his fellows to a caravan approaching on the road. Having seen a raised hand, and undoubtedly having spotted the gleaming gold crest of Andruil adorning their shoulders, the merchant landship slows and halts.

The boy is no one, really.

Davrin had known him only in passing before this morning, when they'd been assigned patrol. Cyrnarel, he's called. Sworn to the huntress before he'd even reached his eighteenth year, the brashness of his youth has so clearly been honed to a sharp edge by their comrades. Davrin didn't expect he'd been much different in those early years, though at least he had the entwined comfort and distress of knowing he'd made his own choices.

Whether this boy had been the same, Davrin wasn't sure.

There were many reasons one might seek the favor of a newly anointed god. Plenty of men had volunteered themselves for her service in recent years. Others had been recruited. but at least as many were given. By masters, or parents, or by the master of a parent.

Davrin couldn't say what the case was with Cyrnarel—it was a sort of unspoken rule to not broach the subject—but he catches the sharp edge of his hunter's smile on their approach.

The aravel exudes an air of luxury, as does the man who sits at the helm. Its dark walnut boards are intricately caved with constellations, a few of which are immediately familiar—belenas, justiciar, fervenial, satinalis—tiny pin-prick stars are laid in shimmering gold. The jewel toned sails rising above the body stand start against the bright spring foliage surrounding them.

The season itself has been mild, and the earlier rain had shirked the weight and heat of the early afternoon, the remnants of it still wetting the usually dusty road that runs through the wood. All the same, sweat pearls at the merchant's temple.

A nervous countenance is hardly enough to assign guilt in this circumstance—Davrin dared think that any man might be a little tense when met with hunters in the woods—but as they draw closer, one skittish heartbeat multiplies. Davrin forces himself to keep walking, his brow setting into a harsh line over his eyes.

There was a reason patrols had been doubled these last weeks, and it appears the two of them might be just unlucky enough to stumble upon the cause.

Since the night of the intrusion, slaves—those who wished to appear kinder called them servants—all around the city had started to go missing. Disappearing in the night like smoke through fingers.

Many believe the Dread Wolf to be up to his old tricks.

An apparently optimistic belief, dashed by the drumming of heartbeats joined in a chaotic symphony. When his eyes rake again over the wagon, he spies what he'd missed before.

Just behind the driver, golden pinpricks are united in the form of a wolf—Fenrir.

Eyes dart from the constellation to the merchant's face. Despite the frantic beating of his heart, the man's expression is deceptively even. His fingers twitch only a little when he wordlessly passes his papers.

Davrin studies the gilded edges of the documents.

Onyx ink spells out his permit, the seal of June in the lower right corner. The accompanying pages are his manifest—jewels and dresses and other finery that belong among the noble families of Arlathan. The papers look as much the part as the merchant, though their apparent authentication doesn't account for the multitude of heartbeats thrumming from beyond those wood planks.

Davrin looks at the merchant from beneath a furrowed brow. The man stares back, lower lip pressing up imperceptibly.

Defiantly.

It'd been months now since he'd first received his invitation, and still Davrin finds himself waiting for instructions that have yet to arrive. He wonders if he's been forgotten. Written off, maybe.

So perhaps Davrin didn't have a safe place to send them, or a secret code to grant them passage. He didn't even have anyone to contact—and he had tried—but he could ensure at least, that they passed through here safely.

Behind Davrin, Cyrnarel shifts on his feet. Sets a hand casually on his sword hilt.

Davrin passes the papers back to the pseudo-merchant, whose otherwise steady expression fractures with surprise as Davrin steps back to let him pass.

"What are you doing," Cyrnarel hisses.

For long moments, watching the wagon slip away on a magical current, Davrin says nothing.

He tells himself he has no choice, but he still regrets that the question falls between them. If Cyrarel is too hungry to let this go without a stain of blood on the grass, Davrin has no choice but to oblige.

"There were only four in that caravan," Davrin tells him, still tracking aravel sails weaving between the trees ahead. "Small number. If we track the wagon, we find the rest."

Davrin ignores the way his stomach turns at the savage grin he's offered, even if claws of vindication sink deep at the sight.

They wait as long as Davrin deems reasonable, though there's no real chance of losing them in the forest. Not when he knows the topography of the trees as well as he knows that of his own skin.

Every bone and snag, every bluff and vale.

Cyrnarel defers to Davrin to lead the way, and he doesn't question it when Davrin takes them to the East—not that it's enough of a detour to draw suspicion. he isn't even lying when he insists they'll come out on the road somewhere ahead. In several miles, there's a bed in the road. they'd run right across it, eventually.

Davrin talks too much on the way there. About the various tracks they pass and the creatures who left them. Which trees are good for fire starting and which are better for fuel. Nothing of real consequence. Anything to keep Cyrnarel distracted. With their senses, it would be near impossible to lose the trail they've already been set, the distant vibration of wheels on the road humming consistently underfoot. But Davrin remembers those early days. How difficult it could be to take in too much information when one's senses were drawn so taught already.

Any of the more experienced hunters might have known this type of chatter to be entirely uncharacteristic. Irresponsible. Most of them would have noted the tell-tale glint of silvery bark on the Sylvan grove that Davrin walks them right into.

Spirits bound to trees and left to go mad here in the maze of inanimate others. The grove itself was said to move, though Davrin knew that to be mostly a rumor, spread by men who were far less adept at dead-reckoning. A few of the trees might move, now and again. But the grove was never hard to find. Easy enough to avoid.

There is a moment of deadly silence before trunks wrench apart with the sound of thunder, splitting into spindly, pointed limbs and twisting into grotesque grimaces. Davrin calls his fellow to arms too late, the remainder of his words knocked from him with the wind as one of the creatures catches him across the chest, branches sinking and grinding into his skin. Davrin thuds to the ground some distance away, spine singing from the impact.

From his place in the dirt he can see that Cyrnarel, fool that he is, draws his blade.

His form is nothing to sneer at. Were his opponent mortal, any one of the smattering of blows might have been fatal. It is some small consolation that Cyrnarel isn't enough of a fool to drive his blade deep into the bole. Clever enough to know he'd never get it out again.

Davrin draws his own sword, heavy with the knowledge it will be of no use.

Anyone who'd encountered their kind before would know it was flame and not steel that dealt damage. Davrin can still remember the cracks and screams of the first grove he'd encountered in this wood, as they burned in flames that turned bark white with heat.

 Now, there is only the sound of a violent tearing, ground rattling so violently as root systems wrench free from the earth in a shatter of dirt that the caravan is surely lost in its midst.

Even so, it's too late to turn back. He'd chosen his path, and there can be no deviation.

He dodges the blow of a violently knotted branch, rolling to one side and slashing out at the body. The gash is deep enough that it penetrates to the phloem, black resin spilling like blood. Davrin doesn't pause to watch, but still he thinks of gold spilling in such a similar way. A promise he's keeping in the best way he knows how.

Davrin steps numbly out of the way as heavy arm of twisted branches descends on him. The tree roars as he cuts the limb free with a fierce swipe. Distantly, he's aware of the discordant rending that replaces the usual symphony of the forest. More of them rip themselves free, closing in like impenetrable walls. Any window for escape is surely closing.

"Have you ever faced these likes before?" Cyrnarel shouts, voice trembling.

Davrin doesn't answer, slashing uselessly at the foliage.

Stray branches fall free with the unearthly roar, and Davrin is saved from the attempt at a lie by a fierce blow that catches Cyrnarel by the head. His body flips through the air with such lightness it would have been comical were it not for the wet crack as he meets the forest floor.

Theoretically, the advantage to fighting Sylvans is that they're rather slow—though that had never been Davrin's experience. He suspects that most don't know just how fast they can move when they manage to free themselves from the binds of the earth because not many have lived to tell the tale.

Cyrnarel would not be one of them.

The trees descend on him voraciously.

Davrin remembers the screaming of children. He'd heard it many times in his youth. Shrill and impossibly loud.

Cyrnarel sounds a bit like that as branches rend his flesh. Davrin has only a moment to wonder how long he'll have to endure the sound before flame is already at his fingertips.

It's done.

He can make the excuse that Cyrnarel was in no shape to pursue the caravan. They would return to the manor in disgrace, but they would return.

Before he can cast the flames away, pain bursts through his leg.

Branches, sharp and bloody protrude from his right thigh. The sight is so absurd that it takes Davrin several moments to catch up. By that time, he's already crashing to the forest floor, swallowing leaves and dirt as he's wrenched through the air by his wound.

Years of training keeps his mind sharp even through the bright agony. Sword abandoned somewhere on the ground, Davrin reaches for something else. Instinct digging heels into the Fade, Davrin delves into the well of power waiting for him. Reckless, but he has no time to hone it.

A wall of fire forms around him, burning through the branches of the Sylvan still attached to him. Davrin tumbles impetuously to the ground, eyes watering with the impact. Sweat beads across his skin as he stands in a column of flame. The roaring of it is so loud in his ears, he can hear nothing else.

The leash he has on the summoned flame is short. Its difficult to breathe within the confines of it, the thread of Fade he'd strung pulls taught as a bow string around his chest. The veil of flame bursts outward in bright flash. The crown of foliage on the trio of Sylvans around him light and burst.

"Cyrnarel," Davrin bellows, stumbling in this direction—at least, he thinks he does.

In the chaos, he's no longer sure where Cyrnarel is, assuming he still is, at all. Davrin bellows the name once more, but a claw of branches swipes through his defenses, catching him across the chest and knocking him back. Before he can rise again, branches begin to twist around his chest. He attempts to rip himself free, but the vines redouble on themselves. Wherever he tears at them, two more twist in their place. They tighten around his chest to the point of constriction.

He reaches again for that well of flame, allowing it to burst through him. Allowing it to consume him.

Davrin is made of fire. It spits from his eyes and roars out of his hands. Sylvans stumble and fall, roar and tumble. His flame doesn't falter until fire rages in every direction.

Exhausted, overheated, and a little delirious, Davrin turns in a slow circle. All around him is smoke and flame. Any sense of direction is lost, smoke rising to blot out the sun, the heat rising around him making it impossible to garner the wend of the wind.

Flame is easy to conjure, but impossible to control.

He'd left himself no path.

With few choices left and little air in his lungs, he picks a direction and starts to run—or as close as he can get with blood pouring from the wound in his leg.

The sharp scent of turpentine swirls in the thick smoke, flooding his lungs even through the cloth held uselessly over his nose and mouth. It feels like breathing from beneath a heavy blanket, heat from the flames at his back plastering his clothes to his skin and heating the pauldrons at his shoulders, the metal plates encasing his chest.

Trees swim through the haze which clings to his lashes and stabs at his eyes. He stumbles forward, uncertain if it's the aching in his head that makes them move, or whether he's stumbled into another grove of them. It hardly matters.

Davrin couldn't summon another veil of fire if he tried.

He's on the ground before he knows what's happening, nettles biting into his palms as bile burns up his throat, into his nostrils. When his body expels the poison, he stumbles back to his feet, swiping uselessly at the dribble that sticks to his face.

His head swims as he stumbles forward, remaining on his feet as his stomach turns again. He's nearly doubled over, reaching for anything to steady him as the world tilts. His body gives out before his will. Hands catching in brambles as his knees fold.

The gasp he swallows back scrapes against the inside of his throat, ragged from retching. Pain from the branch still lodged in his thigh sears through the haze, though even that is fading with the blackening edges of his vision.

The forest around him disappears under assault of smoke and flame. It slides and sways in the shadows. Long drags and shorter spins. His eyelids flutter closed as pine needles and twigs tear at his flaming skin.

As the world falls away, a now-familiar thrum fills his ears.

The orange and violet of early twilight paint the area between the branches overhead, stars just beginning to wink into existence. The scent of smoke lingers. At first Davrin thinks its only on his clothes, but then he spies a wisp of it in the branches, lit from below by the descending sun.

Throat ragged from retching, every breath scrapes against his insides. A ways away, some of his armor has been discarded, beaten and burnt as it is. Pain unfurls through his limbs as he raises himself and comes face to face with his bandaged thigh. His chest, too, has been wrapped in white cloth. Even his hands are slick with salve that soothes the angry burns over his hands, the scent rising sharp and herbal into his nose.

These things, all of them, are undoubtedly strange.

None stranger, however, than the apple which sits at the base of a tree which decidedly did not bear it. Bright, salient and bearing the same scarlet countenance as the letter which had found its way into his room, it is unmistakable.