The night had reached its darkest point before Arkreth had given up on sleep. He sat in the grass a short distance from the dark elven encampment and stared up at the ebony sky and the tiny, dazzling stars littered carelessly across it like finely shattered glass. He had never seen them so clearly. Lyath Syr’s air was thick with smog that asphyxiated everything and blanketed the world in dreariness and grey. The stars there were only visible on the far horizon, sparkling just out of reach over the edge of the Quicksilver Sea.

Dark elves didn’t need much rest, and only a few of his people were actually sleeping. He could hear their murmured conversations carrying on the breeze, but he hadn’t the inclination to pick out the particulars. He suspected they were trading horror stories, and discussing the details of what would happen to them if Celestine decided not to honour the truce. He and Elyse had a plan in place for Esharya, but he still held onto the hope that it wouldn’t come to it.

He heard footsteps in the grass behind him and turned his head to find his daughter coming down the shallow slope towards him. Her hair was braided and twisted into a pretty bun underneath her left ear to keep it from interfering with the crown of small, yellow-and-white flowers she wore. They seemed to cover the entire meadow, and Elyse had been teaching her to make chains of them much to the fascination of the dark elves. Nothing grew in Isyrith; there were no flowers there. Esharya smiled brightly at him and he held an arm out towards her.

“Your mother will have my head if she finds you out of bed at this hour,” he said, as she plopped herself down beside him. Dark elven children aged much more quickly than their human counterparts, and Esharya was caught somewhere in the middle. She was much closer to adulthood than a human of ten years would have been, but Elyse hadn’t left all of her human expectations behind when she had fled the Wyelands. He hugged Esharya tightly with one arm, and she grinned at him mischievously.

“Well, she’d only have your head for something else, otherwise.”

“That is very true.”

Esharya tilted her face up to the night sky, her eyes glittering in awe. She was her mother’s daughter; their faces and features were the same shape and their skin was the same light, honey-tinted tan. They shared identical impish grins, especially when they were ganging up on him. Arkreth couldn’t imagine ever loving anything else the way he loved his family.

“Aren’t they pretty?” Esharya said. She pointed up into the night sky and traced her finger along the line of a constellation she had just invented. “Look, Dad, it’s a dragon! I’m going to name him… Manfred!”

“Manfred?” Arkreth repeated, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s a human name,” Esharya explained. “I heard it earlier. One of the Mage messengers that came to the camp said that was his name.” She cackled at the expression of bemusement he wore, and then looked back up at Manfred, her celestial dragon.

They fell silent for a time as he watched the wonder with which Esharya drank in the new and unfamiliar world around her. She seemed fascinated by everything from the darkness of the unobscured sky to the vivid hues of the grass and the way the wind tousled the blades of it and made it dance.

The Wyelands were as much her world as Lyath Syr. A part of her would always be as human as her mother, no matter where she was raised. If not for the war, they might have brought her north sooner. A lot of things might be different, if not for the war.

“Are there stars at home, Dad?” Esharya asked.

“Aye, you just can’t see them through the Searing.”

The Searing was the name given to the magic residue that clogged the skies of Lyath Syr. Once a year at the height of summer, during the last two weeks of the Second Quarter, the temperature of the city rose to such a height that the Searing magic could ignite. Walking through the open air during the Summer Searing was akin to swimming through the boiling waters of the Quicksilver Sea, and the magic burns it could cause were so severe that there was often nothing a healer could do.

“When I get home, I’m gonna paint them. The stars I mean,” Esharya said, drawing his attention back to the present. When Esharya painted she wove magic into her brush strokes, and even the simplest of her illustrations could fill the room around it with beauty and peace. It was emotive in ways that mundane art could never be. “On everything! I’ll get a really tall ladder and paint them all over the ceiling. Then everybody at home can see the stars, too.” She nodded, resolute, but Arkreth was distracted.

Two golden pinpricks of light flickered in the periphery of his vision. When he looked closely he could make out the outline of the High Priestess’s face around them. He released his daughter’s shoulders and gripped her hand, pulling her fluidly to her feet and turning her to face him.

“What is it, Dad?” she asked. He pressed a hand to her cheek, and smiled reassuringly.

“Nothing, Esha. I just need you to go back to camp, alright? Find your mother, and stay with her. No dawdling, no getting distracted. Straight back to your mother, aye? Promise me.”

Esharya frowned, not believing for a moment that there was nothing to be concerned about. Gripping her hand tightly so she would know he was serious, he looked into her eyes. He hated the worry he found there.

“Okay,” she said. He let go of her hand.

She glanced back at him once as she climbed the small rise towards the camp. He watched her until she disappeared between the leather panels of the tents and into the centre of the clearing, where she was surrounded by Necromancers that would protect her with their lives. Then he turned his attention to Celestine.

“She’s a beautiful child,” Celestine said. Arkreth raised a hand, and bright blue flames burst from within his loosely clenched fist. The light splashed across the High Priestess’s face, painting her golden-hued skin the colour of a churning ocean. She spread her arms to either side of her to show that she was unarmed. “I’m here alone, Arkreth.”

“Right,” he snapped. “You, of all people. Completely alone, this close to all of those dark elves.” He jerked his head back towards the Necromancers’ camp to illustrate his point. He could no longer see Esharya, and he silently prayed to Kariel that she had reached their tent in safety.

Celestine stepped forward, and he raised the fireball he held in warning. She smirked wryly, pausing only for a moment.

“Of course I’m alone. If a single one of my advisors knew that I was coming here, they’d have bundled me up and carried me back into the city.”

“Wisely.”

“Put the fire down, Arkreth,” she said. “You’re here for peace, aren’t you? You know you doom that endeavour if you attack the High Priestess of Vosa. So, sit with me. Talk to me.”

She swept her arm towards the grass behind her, a grand, welcoming gesture. It was the nature of dark elves to lust for violence, and Arkreth fought the urge to shove the fireball down her throat and wipe the smugness from her face. The potential for peace came before his petty desire to silence a person he found insufferable.

He didn’t favour his chances if it came to a fight between them. He was a powerful Necromancer, perhaps even one of the most powerful, but Celestine was a High Priestess. She channelled directly the power of Vosa, the Goddess of Life and patron of the Magi.

He let the flames flicker out but remained on his feet. The temperature plummeted and he drew his magic inwards to stave off the sudden discomfort. He had never been cold before. It was causing the fine hair of his forearms to stand on end.

“Why did you bring your daughter with you?” Celestine asked, tilting her head thoughtfully. “It must have crossed your mind that she might be in danger, here.”

“She’s not a child,” Arkreth bit. He had no interest in discussing his decisions as a father with an obnoxious stranger. “It was her decision.”

“Not a child?” Celestine repeated, incredulously. “She can’t be more than a teenager.” Arkreth’s only response was to narrow his eyes, and Celestine seemed to interpret from his expression that her judgements were not welcome.

“When I was a child,” she said, entwining her fingers together in her lap, “before the Temple began to train me, my mother used to tell me that if I didn’t tidy up my bedroom before I went to bed, the Alchemist would steal me in the middle of the night, squirrel me away to Isyrith and I’d end up as fodder for some dark elven experiment.”

“Load of bollocks,” he sighed. It didn’t surprise him that humans were still afraid of the shadow of a legend, just because he might have been a Necromancer.

“Yes, it is.” She nodded, and swept the waves of her long, ebony hair over one shoulder. It washed like a streak of black paint over her crimson robes, and she tilted her face downward to study the ends of it.

“The Alchemist is a fairytale,” she said. “An old story designed to scare children. But in these stories, he’s a Necromancer. It’s our way of life, Arkreth. Our duty as Magi is to control the chaotic magic of the world, and Necromancers are so chaotic that they’ve become stories we use to blackmail our children into doing their chores.” She raised her eyes again, and locked gazes with him. Her face was soft and heart-shaped, and her features blended together so seamlessly that she looked more akin to a gilded mask than a person. There was defiance in the set of her smooth jaw, and wisdom in the lines that marked the corners of her eyes and mouth. For a moment, she reminded him of Luce.

“Your King’s power is in his magic, isn’t it? In his Necromancy. It’s out of control.”

“No it isn’t. There are plenty of Necromancers who wouldn’t become what he’s become. He isn’t marching on you because he’s a Necromancer, High Priestess. He’s marching because he’s a monumentally bad person.”

Celestine stood suddenly, her eyes aflame. He wondered if he had finally antagonised her into attacking him, but she shook her head and paced away instead.

“That can’t be true,” she said, more to herself than to him. “Necromancy is a corrupting force, it-”

“Really?” he hissed. He towered over even his own people, and stood a full two foot taller than the High Priestess. He leaned forward, an intimidation tactic that seemed to have no effect on her. “My daughter is a Necromancer. She’s been making daisy chains all day. All she wants is for her family to be able to see the stars. You cannot equate her to Adoran simply because they’re both Necromancers, you can’t be that naive.”

“Perhaps it’s her human heritage,” Celestine tried, but she was flailing and she knew it. He cut her off before she could find her footing.

“What about Elyse? She’s human. That didn’t stop your people from driving her out of her own home for the ‘crime’ of trying to protect people just like her, did it?”

“That was-” Celestine began, but she stopped and gasped.

He felt it at the exact same moment that she did; a white hot slice through his soul and a wrench in his gut, the hallmarks of powerful magic being cast. He turned on his heel, his eyes drinking in every spark as a great, billowing pillar of steely-grey flames burst upwards from the centre of the Magi’s encampment. Necromancy.

“No!” Celestine cried, and swept her arm in a wide arc towards him. Her magic smacked into his stomach and unbalanced him. The sky careened into his vision as he fell backwards and the meadow caught him.

His sword was in his tent, but he didn’t need it. Every ounce of a tortured god’s endless hatred and wrath had been simmering within his people since their creation, and it burst from Arkreth in a blast of pale blue flame that threw Celestine away from him. She landed heavily and wasted no time in nursing her struck head or winded chest. He rolled to his feet and she righted herself just as quickly.

Runes sparked against his skin as they shimmered into life and dissipated into the lattice of energy that protected him. He bared his onyx teeth at the High Priestess, his body coiled like a spring. She kept her eyes on his, sparing only the briefest glance for the fistfuls of flaming magic he gripped.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, her words punctuated by gasps for air. She threw an arm out sideways and pointed towards the inferno. It was larger now; he could feel the death magic spreading and swallowing.

“I’m not!” he snarled. She let out a frustrated cry and flailed at him again. Her power struck him with the force of a flying boulder, and the rune armour cracked and slowly began to repair itself. She attacked him again and again and the flames in his hands flickered out as he pressed the energy inward, accelerating his body’s natural ability to heal.

“Celestine!” he barked. He cut himself off with a grunt of pain as her spell shattered the magic shielding his head. He heard something in his shoulder crack and felt blood splatter across his face. Although he couldn’t see it he could tell it was his own; the gasoline smell of it clung to his skin and the metal taste polluted his lips. It was as black as the night around them.

He wiped his face and looked up at Celestine silhouetted against the surreal, colourless flames. He spat one of his back teeth out into the grass.

“My family are in there! Why would I risk my family?”

“Because you’re a dark elf,” she hissed. Any trace of understanding she might have begun to show for him was gone, replaced in an instant by the deep hatred he had come to expect of her people. He began to stand as she turned away from him, but she raised a hand, clenched her fist and thrust it downward.

Celestine’s magic smacked his entire body into the ground, and consciousness slipped from his grasp.

Next Chapter: Chapter Five