Darklight storms out from the still raised black cross!
The endless wash of popping bubbles revolves around with it as center, dragging floating orbs with wings that orient wildly in the wake.
A blinding rush of red crashes into the Emperor through it!
His heart racing, he yells out at the vanished tiger he just felled!
“How dare you have MY name on your forehead!”
“But… Boss asked for it.”
Through the storm of black and red, a path clears by the voice of a short white wolf glaring angrily at him.
Another oncoming red phantom sweeps up around the Emperor!
A beautiful ingrate is what this wolf thing is…!
“I demanded a BALL to bear my symbol!”
The rage that cracks his bones when stomping toward her demands satisfaction!
Then, the reason for seeking it…
“Traitor idiot!”
“NAH!?”
So insulting it is to have THAT as the final threat on the board. He developed the plan to take the west, then the world, not some “wishing tiger”!
He chose the bloodthirsty elf to help him divide up heaven and earth, ready after to wipe her out after—!?
“Joining others? Against ME? You chose poorly.”
The Emperor is looming over the beastly disciple in a moment!
Her fur is hackled now, her lips tightly snarled with fangs poking out over them.
“Chose bad!? THAT!? Boss, told Kol: think!” She jabs at her own head with both index fingers, leaning forward and sweeping her furred ears back. “Back mightiest side, BIGGEST THOUGHT! Boss should’ve joined us!”
(Mightiest…?)
A cunning plan, to be sure, to all group up…
But the tendrils of hate course over the Emperor once more, despite the storm coming from the cross banishing all of the rainbow that comes from the crinkling grass that projects this scene.
That hate demands…!
“OH!?” The idiot cries out when he grabs her by her collar that also bears his name. “WANNA GO!?”
Coming close to her incensed, pretty cheeks with his own, the Emperor hisses.
“Whose else but MINE would be the mightiest side?”
Her hands are nearly to his throat and side, but they hesitate.
The claws that are out tap at his exposed skin over his jugular.
The disciple’s breathing is fast, quicker even than his own!
“… Prove, mighty~.” Ears still back, but lowered, the totally insubordinate buffoon moans this. She betrays no fear, for she’s positively glowing with criminal pleasure!
(Prove!?)
“Guh!?” All his leverage drags on her collar, plummeting her to her knees so that he can grab her then by her short hair.
The instinct to jam her face against his growing, still covered length just barely precedes the voice in his mind screaming that she deserves punishment! She licks her lips once when turning her head to the side; after, glancing up with shock, then going deeper red faced when grinding her cheek against his throbbing anger.
(There’s only one proof with you, isn’t there!?)
A rainbow haze recedes from their display, one where the Emperor lifts his chin with arrogance and stares down at a silent, kneeling profligate who whips her tail so energetically that she cuts the air.
“You will always be beneath me!”
“Hah! Kol… wants… proof…!
Kha, kakakaka!”
Moaning with deep breathes in between cackling, the squirming creature and the mightiest Emperor are coveted by the red mist staining them both in violent shades of eros!
The clearing surroundings turn dreamlike again, the rainbow haze closing back in…
“… kakaka… ah…!?
Nha…! Haaah!?”
But then, the black that spilled out returns suddenly when the idiot leans back with her eyes closed…
“HAAAA-KAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
… to then drive her face into the Emperor’s glory when sneezing.
Staring at glittering clear grasses that whip wildly within a storm of black and other captured colors, Adris fehl Dain cannot hold back the few tears that escape. Grunting, straining not to exhale his screams, his inflated cheeks are frozen when yanked back up from the ground by furred hands.
Everyone is watching, and was watching, when he tried to force this girl to give him…?
(FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!
This… why did I lose my mind, I don’t want to stick my dick between THOSE chompers!?)
A lie in his mind made apparent to all by his still erect dick, no matter the tearing pain coming from it!
“Boss.”
Only a squeak comes out when he tries to call this a mistake to his name being called, earning his head being yanked to face…
“What is this red?”
Nearly spooked and shivering with more than just excitement, Kol’s gaze follows a red trail of mist rising from both their bodies. It snakes through the tumultuous storm, jerking about as it climbs upward toward a fierce animal hanging low from one of the tree’s many cages.
“Nah!? What… that…!?”
Tall, lankly like a sloth but also glowing with an aura, it cultivates a distinctive aristocratic posture of observing.
The mist obeys the swinging, hulking, many-limbed spider-monkey man clad in creaking razor-sharp blades winding over his exposed self. One arm, or a leg, delicately clutches a long-stemmed pipe carved to resemble a bird’s beak.
“REEKS!”
This fiend which shakes in Adris’ sight along with his own thundering heartbeats enjoys how the red mists gathers to enter his pipe, then exits out the bowl as a frothing, bloody smoke.
Instead of lips sucking on the pipe, this acrid plume sucks into the void between the monkey man’s shoulders when its chest inflates.
(It’s… gathering something from me!? Us!?)
Adris’ rage deepens with the knowledge that something is pilfered, even though Adris feels no different, and the demonic monkey spider’s chest shakes as if it’s… laughing at that.
A free hand curls his claws toward the two, driving Kol to drag Adris closer into an embrace while she growls possessively.
Aura senses claim it is real, not figment.
A terrible “spirit” which siphons truth! Not Techniques are they, but rather intrinsic, natural phenomenons that plague men!
A hundred and more different creatures are gathered all around past the returning darkness of the cross, too, each fascinated by being recognized by Adris’ aura senses and all equally abominable!
(I’ve no aura to drive them away with!)
Where Kol and he are is also a question, for the trees beyond the arena are twisted and man-shaped! Locked in comical agony, sleeping forever beneath a missing sky. A land of fanciful colors that play equally with distances that seem distant but also close. Glowing mushrooms on the circling arena tree spread vision of this land that intoxicates and tickles.
Only glimpsed out of peripheral vision since Adris cannot take his eyes from the monkey thing, that alone sets many onlookers hooting and scampering with glee. Their squealing notes from the facsimile instruments grown of their warped bodies play like pleasure, pain, and so much more…!
(How dare you take anything from me!)
Rage is all that’s allowed to be felt right now; but, undefinable, dismissive, discordant feelings well up from within to become screaming voices opposing rage, joining with what pressures from behind Adris’ self, and quakes from within Adris’ Inner Expanse!
“BEGONE, pathetic aura insects!”
The unseen and neverborn howl in an instant, that the fun must always continue, especially when it’s at its end!
(These things will… hear me and obey!)
A language without syllables bursts past Adris’ lips as the cross’ ringing bells sound.
That black cross flings his arm out to capture what he spoke, focusing chaotic noise. A cracking pulse of shrieking cacophony leaps out upon this imposing foreign land to claim it!
The blackness that burst out returns to nestle in the cross. Disintegrating all that intruded, it sleeps again.
Silhouettes linger as memories of what Adris witnessed, empty placeholders for the intruders that then wisp into loose smoke.
A passive wind whistles by, but nothing else untoward is out of place in a village of elves. Upon the same mostly barren tree, standing on its flat central arena with crinkling grass that has now turned clear, Adris rises with Kol’s aid.
A witch cowers behind a dumbstruck lunar doll, looking every which way as the lingering smoke clears up.
(It was all an illusion? I… banished it!?)
The cross did obey him, though Adris has no idea how, yet.
“… Fey obey, words of man? Never, save fooling them, and obey less the ‘shaded place’.” An owl at the northern point of their contest steps sideways toward another’s direction, not taking her fearsome eyes off of Adris. “For not man, maybe, only wearing the skin but abandoning the within…”
“A dearly Beloved One, met his true kin once again.” Ave sounds wistful when responding to this, yet her face is stiff. “Such a meeting could’ve gone better. It was an argument…” At least for the moment that Adris takes notice of her, before she smiles grandly. “[Ia] is a game about nothing, where you bring in what you have! There’s no greater rules than that. It’s just… a way to understand more, even what you don’t immediately know. I’d hoped you could understand them, again…”
“About what do you understand?” Adris asks that, but her response is annoying to him.
“Well, usually each other, how it feels to be… yourself?” Ave seems stuck on that, with her finger to her chin. No longer offering an answer, she instead seems somewhat jubilant. “First meetings, almost greetings! At least my prince was reintroduced to the rest, so now they have time to ponder him as we have!” Ave claps her hands, done explaining Ia.
“To go… so boldly far… deep toward them, calling so many, never befo—!”
“Deep? Many?”
Though Kainan screams in a whining tone full of dread, Ave appears only mystified when sliding up to Adris.
“How strange, for we played so shallowly in their dwelling land! And that was a small number of them. True, we let quite a lot be known of ourselves with what was shared, buuuuuut…?”
Ave’s smile turns strained, then she rolls her eyes like a woman whose expectations were dashed by a horse instead of a prince climbing through her window.
“My, for you to be so competitive, that was my shock! Trying to win a game without a winning condition! That’s very… Adris? Even at the moment of making peace, of instead becoming friends…?”
“Were you expecting me to surrender!? To accept an inferior outcome!? To… choke the wager?”
“What wager?”
Adris turns his rage upon her, dragging Kol with him when she yanks at him to restrain his movements!
“As if I would ever sack in my own game!?”
Ave gasps at intensity of his derision, even if it is justified.
No, horribly necessary!
So pointless, to demand that he acquiesce to a losing gamble when he’s…!?
“Boss… cheap player, sore winner, ‘big deal’ about small things and self.”
“Sharpen your axe with your face, Kol!”
“Kol, hates a game where others pull shit while saying ‘they’re smart’!”
“Try being smart about the rug you find beneath your feet!”
“WANNA GO, SHITTY GAME BRI—!?
UGAH!?”
A kobold that can’t learn to shut up chases him in a circle, grabbing for arms and legs that pull out of danger just before slamming into her head!
([Four Seasons] isn’t shit! It’s the most elegant game ever made by—!)
“Cease aggression!”
“Moon!? Why!?”
A physical imposition of middling quality halts Kol, followed by a show of fingers.
“Reason one: creator of game, Adris himself.”
“… Nah!? Then, even worse! Make a game that you will win, then pull over on…!?”
(I didn’t make it! The… ah…?)
The ultimate strategy game, Four Seasons, was made by the Emperor.
“I did create it.” Adris sighs with this, adopting an exasperated tone. “Therefore, to insult it is to insult me!”
“… Kol will insult anyone that uses unfair advantages in games.”
“There are no unfair advantages in that game! Nor in war, which is its lesson.”
(Except if you cheat outright!)
“Liar Boss, had advantage of playing before, knows ‘outcome’.”
“No match is ever the same, it is always fair! I posses dozens of advanced rules that can be added to eliminate any possible…!”
Neesiette physically interposes again such that they crush her between them.
“Reason… two: attempting to instruct in ‘tactics’ by example, never making true wager for forthcoming loss due to inequity of experience, merging lesson and ‘play’ for efficiency sake, never sought ‘victory’ did this lady’s emperor!”
(… What?)
“Sure seemed like Boss wanted to win!”
“Disregard bravado, showmanship. Prone to excesses this lady’s emperor be.” Neesiette’s hand to Kol’s stomach has the kobold yield. “Beneath contempt it be, such a motivation as ‘winning for its own sake’. An esteemed one would never misuse greater knowledge to defeat a weaker opponent within a game of intellectual challenge, save for purposes of developing necessary progress.”
(I WANTED TO BEAT THEM ALL!)
Only one is allowed to win in [Four Seasons]!
Whoever tries to force a draw shall be torn into four parts!
At least… that’s the normal way Adris would feel while playing it…?
(But why would I act like an idiot about it!? It’s just a game!)
“One’s nature be misunderstood by others; therefore, this lady often suffers…” The Lunamaton’s smile when facing Adris, her arms crossing over the tome she holds to her chest tight, is teasing.
When the winning pot is huge, nobody can restrain from going all in…!
“Fairness, instruction, ever thy true intent. Lead not astray, but clarify, one’s intentions.”
An expectant look, full of forgiveness, is what this shining beauty heaps upon a contemptible worm.
That writhing grub was fully prepared to dance a jig after conquering the world, then laugh about it in their faces.
“Kol, there’s no joy in defeating amateurs. I merely demand the rules to be respected!”
Adris heaves a sigh, running his hand through his hair and turning away from the kobold whose eyes are narrowed with suspicion.
“Indeed? Necessary rules, immutable and inviolable, that be a noble point to stress.” Neesiette nods in agreement.
“My anger roused because of… the intensity of the struggle, and that you chose someone else to side with. About the rest? Just… remember.” He chuckles, glancing at Still as he speaks his last peace.
“It’s only a game, after all. The outcome? A lark that’s totally beneath a false god to care about.”
{You are a dog-faced liar.} Still’s response is half word, half rude gesture.
(Of course I am, Ascended damn it! I wanted to win!)
But he swallows that thought deep down, because it’s way too powerful of a desire for no known reason.
Calms his body, controls his tells. Willing even his sweat to stop pouring out, Adris relaxes enough for his disciple to say…
“… Okay, then, next time, show Kol how to win before big speech about how Kol actually was losing the whole time?”
“Kindness between warriors is a sin, Kol! You must face your loss to grow.”
“Kol doesn’t want to grow, then!”
(You’ll never get taller, anyway!)
Adris flinches when a fan unfolds with a crisp snap. “Rules as explained, narration of match progression, even if not personally witnessing form…” A lady from the moon flutters her fan in front of her face to hide it.
“… game logic, comprehending entirely. Applications of basic strategies, intermediate and advanced, permutations currently evaluating.”
(… N-No, I’m quite fine, please don’t go out of your way to understand my favorite game.)
Adris refrains from answering his crawling skin by leaping out of it, because for a moment Neesiette’s magical analyzing puts [Four Seasons] and [Adris] into the same equation to balance.
“Moon, will teach Kol the game!?”
“Indeed. Together, achieving the peak of contention against its creator, let us strive, dear Kol, to provide an appropriate rivalry.”
“Great! Then, what about when Kol did …?”
“Given time and similar efforts, it possible to make a student into a master by proxy, so …”
Neesiette’s happiness is a glow to the violet fairy that has no wings, only bows that bounce when strolling around the arena with a puppy in tow. When Kol hops on top of her subdued wolf armor and uses it as a seat to learn more intently, eager hand wringing from the kobold puts Neesiette into her own teaching world.
(I… don’t want to play anymore. But, Neesiette didn’t see its form?)
A question arises then: in the manic illusory experience they shared, who was involved in it in full, and what did each experience?
Adris’ intellect dwells on that to pierce through the lingering emotional highs.
“So competitive, even when teaching. You’re the sort that would run off the rest of your brethren just because you wanted to never share us, aren’t you, Adris?” Ave takes up Neesiette’s place, chatting to herself as if Adris can’t comprehend. Finally, she directs a laugh at Adris.
“Lark only, the game called [Ia]! That’s the very truth, Adris. Don’t think too much on a daydream!”
“Priestess, dangerous ‘games’ are when played when bringing [nothing] with you deeply, but still dragging so much evil along!” It’s Kainan that creeps closer, but stays far from Adris. “‘Lark’ only in part, for all that is brought in is revealed to fey who partake, and judged!”
“Deeply? But we didn’t go deeply enough to call what we shared ‘deeply felt’, at least not as much as when I played [Ia] before…? That experience was far more mutual, more open, more… uniting? My, we barely crossed into the fairy realm itself, much less went into the thick mangroves and danced upon the lake’s surface under the many moons?”
“To such places you went…?” Kainan’s face goes white, shutting up entirely when Ave frowns in confusion, then Kainan points at Adris.
“Regardless of game, danger… dangerous, the one that has an ugly human guise, yet might tread in dark with grace!” One last time Kainan tries to warn Ave off from touching Adris’ cheek.
“But grace in dark was what opened my spirit to hope, and from the dark I stole him!”
Ave’s strict happiness lapses, allowing a milder, longing expression where her cute tongue flicks out once.
“To know our kin again, to taste the sights of home together, ‘Returned Ones’ we both are!” Adris feels wrapped in warmth with these words which sound musical, a lingering weakness since they played that strange game. She strokes Adris’ cheek, gently and with satisfaction. “As bound to me, I to you, like you promised, ‘in defiance of Fate’… our destiny to right every last evil, and to save everyone!”
“There are no saviors of all… no defiance of Fate…” The damn owl refutes again, done for the last time, in fact.
“The most dangerous guise is any that I wear, elf, regardless of whether it’s ugly or not to one as lowly as you.”
Adris takes Ave’s hand, then kisses the back of it. He deeply enjoys how she blushes despite her newfound confidence. “If others are on the path, blocking my destruction of the Alchemaster…?”
“…
…. Adris…? ‘Dangerous guise’… that’s… ‘ugly’? The… dialect we used should be…?” Ave questions when Kainan doesn’t, for nobody must’ve mentioned this in a language that Kol could understand, or she’d have had something to say about the slight.
“All my supplicants shall know a form of ‘salvation’, for I am merciful. Let this game reveal everything about my might.”
(And you are a bit hungry after that revelation?)
The skittishness of this owl elf toward him has every movement of his, no matter how innocuous, shifting the other’s weight with fear. “But, what a lovely game, though, to let you witness how I dealt with what you will not willingly face.”
(I don’t need comprehension to begin impressing!)
“I’ve been where the hidden moon turns dark, but isn’t lost in the night sky. No, this trip was just a quick dip, for me, owl who claims to be wise.”
Whether it’s comprehended or not, this owl murderess instead gapes about something new.
Adris’ hope for her to be cowed by him is trashed by a razor’s caress on his neck, though his lifting fingers feel no blade.
“He speaks as the fairies do. All: understood within his view.” The physical sensation of her intensity passes. Ever-wide her gaze, Adris is now genuine prey.
(A little reveal and you send some painful illusion at me?)
How she does it is still unanswered, but the air vibrates each time an elf conjures some manifestation in his mind.
(Peak Zenith has been here? Has taught them aura?)
That is the only plausible interpretation, but… it feels…?
“…
… Of… course he would!” Ave’s smile is permanent, though her eyes seem to be staring at a distant thing when looking through Adris. “Adris has always understood anything that’s been said! From the start! Every time… anyone has ever spoken, he’s grasped it. So… it should be all things said?”
“Yes. I…?” Adris sounds dreamier with this admission that he makes with a slight grin. “… thought that much was obvious? My heart is linked to desires, and words are a vessel of desire, so how could I not understand one as open as yours is?”
“Indeed! What… a trick, that was, that on me…” Ave nods enthusiastically after pulling her hand away, turning from Adris and slithering toward Kainan.
“We got tricked! His words are the wind itself! Isn’t that fun~?” Ave’s hands clap, but she doesn’t sound pleased any longer.
“… Priestess, your fancy be pure and true…?” Kainan’s tone is submissive at first, then grows violent. “If possible, even a bit, for him to be one that was lost on the shaded path, his song could distort all others’…!”
“True, he does that often, so we have to make his path back wider, less twisted… next time, [Ia] won’t become a war for him, no, mustn’t let that happen.”
“We shouldn’t seek to match him with those here who play in the forest unseen, for their games are different from his and ours!” After reproaching her with that statement, this abrasive elf that dresses like a solitary owl dips her shoulders.
“… But…”
She shivers once, then calms.
And looks up with a hopeful smile beneath her cowl.
“… if… truly you want to find something in nothing despite the risks…?
… Would… it be your pleasure to…?”
Cages full of irate fairy lights soothe when the elf hums.
The grasses that lost color sing again with rainbow brightness sweeping back over the arena.
All her litheness losing its rigidity, the elf maid’s body glows with stars under the cloak. Expectant.
“… With me, only as… your hero…?” Plaintive, it’s also a very simple request. To be included where she never desired to be before now.
But there’s also a hint of fervor with how her somewhat slit eyes shine.
(Hmm?)
Adris’ senses prickle for a moment, then subside.
“The wind shall return with equal joy, to be watched over by a noble owl again!” Ave turns to judge the rest, finding Kol seated before Neesiette with the Lunamaton droning on and on about mathematical concepts regarding “troop deficits”.
When Adris promptly escapes to Still to help the witch up, Ave returns to Kainan with a troubled grin.
“… That is… maybe later it will? Ah, wait! There is one way we can play, since it seemed to be something horribly misunderstood by the ones who were cheering us on…?”
Ave throws her cloak open to lift her arms up, extending them as if to embrace Kainan.
Her dainty fingers curl invitingly!
“As we did in old, though I’ve yet to have the chance, let’s [frolic]!” As if flowers bloom behind her, Ave awaits an embrace!
Kainan’s whole posture collapses, the offensiveness transforming with her hand running up her slender side.
“… With… even if touched by…?”
Exposing her hip even as she processes by facial expressions the powerful outpouring of emotions she suffers. Rapid fire, from shocked, to disgusted when looking at her own hand she extends toward Ave, then to hopeful when Ave continues to smile.
“… I…
… too…”
The small woman composes herself,
(I too!?)
striding forward like a mistress shedding her clothes on approach to a bed, luxurious scents of lavender, musk, and fresh pine trailing the elf like ghosts of pleasure.
Adris’ sight becomes a cone of beating pink when following every slinking movement of this child that betrays no obvious inclinations. Only the openness to approach with excitement, to smile innocently despite the smothering weight of her gaze.
Stars twinkle on her body’s suit that slides across delicate skin beneath. Heating up, as he does, ready to fly away…!
“Tasty!”
Behind, a wolf bends her back over her armor to take in the spectacle. A part-time connoisseur of females drools onto her flushed cheeks, so aroused that thighs squeeze together in anticipation; then, Adris’ concentration is yanked back to the treat both covet.
He tries to step forward, but his pants are already too tight to move without tripping!
“Play with me~.”
Still a bit whiny, there’s a playful goading to it that an older woman would save for an innocent youth! A sinful enticement that tries to lure Adris into its embrace with the same enthusiasm that the courtesans of the pleasure palaces had when they REALLY enjoyed their profession!
Every inhalation, wanting to taste Ave’s own scent.
Every look upon where her skin is exposed by her sashes, open for the mystery to reveal further!
Yielding to be caressed by Ave’s touch, as she readies to return that with certain skill!
A pure sexual flavor, baked into the offered entreaty of discovery!
(Don’t… ruin my…!)
Coquettishly this owl swoops in, the wind that carries her bereft of any inhibitions…!
“Between us, let—”
“… away… go away!”
“—sss, ha?”
Near to touching, one wind rejects the other and eludes. Ave slides backwards with her hands lifted defensively.
The seduction in elvish form that was invited to frolic with Ave blinks at this, her head tilting sideways. As response, Avenalliah turns away to hide her face from everyone. Coldness gathers about her that diminishes the glow of her skin and the colors of the forest.
A blossom of erotic pink wilts when winter shows.
“Stained elf!” It’s Adris that breaks faster, growling out at them to break through the fascination gripping him. “Don’t ruin a pure woman!”
(So desperate for Ave despite having murder in your heart!?)
Attack without mercy from Adris saves her from being touched!
An extended hand rips back, and with it the carnal atmosphere sours.
“Dare you, to think yourself an equal that can touch a god’s child with your vile hunger!?”
“… Adris!?” Ave tries to interrupt, but he yells louder.
“Begone, as those other freaks obeyed!”
(If you try for Ave, YOU’LL HAVE TO GET THROUGH MY BODY, FIRST! I’ll sate anyone that wants my favorite pe—Oh!?)
The stained murderess stares so hard that it seems her eyes cannot grow any larger. Saucers full of despise mark every spot on Adris’ skin that he feels a razor pressing down upon!
Yellow, feral, and blinded by hatred, it’s an expanding presence that captures Adris and scares away his arousal.
“A thousand times, a thousand nights, PERISH ALL!”
Seduction inverts to slaughter when Kainan screams at him. A rage that far eclipses his own with her aloofness gone.
“Why!?”
“No, Priestess…!?” Then the owl flinches when Ave jolts back anew at this scream.
A crazy elf flips from lashing out with her arms to cradling her head in distress when Ave retreats further, hunching down low.
“… Not… heroes…!
never… heroes…!”
Her cloak drips reddish-white Vigor without end.
A lake forms beneath her, reaches out like a hand toward Adris’ shadow.
“… homeless, Owls of Kainan…!”
Adris’ aura senses overwhelm in a flash of frenzy.
A sea of the life blood of devout Zennians drenches the forest up to the haze, which now is a boiling dome of it!
Murder thrums out from this elf!
(Miss Owl is… very strong.)
“Get away from!” Of all who could shout this, that it’s Kol creates a panic in Adris to match the crashing waves of aura that he can feel.
Adris rushes to grab Ave’s hand, an act which amplifies the outpouring of sensations which seek to drown his own!
(And totally losing control of her aura!)
Circular sawblades of wind a meter long each swirl to spin all around them, high up and also below, aimed at anything and everything, though most target Adris. Their caller’s body shakes violently, this Kainan of Butchery arching her back and drawing in tortured air to howl out a chan—!
The turmoil spilling out abates, then pulls backward like the source diverting into an opened trough elsewhere.
“… Olosir?” Instead of a chant, a name comes that unwinds the wind blades.
“Time… it’s…” The owl’s cloak is spotless of blood when it ceases being weightless, falling back down and rustling when turning. A delicate face is what she has before Adris can’t see it, a gentle smile offered to no one here.
“Time to hunt the… pigs…” A very distant voice instead of a howl, the elf that slowly drags her feet away has the impact of a long-dead ghost departing when seen. She grabs up her wooden hook and hangs it from her cloak clasp.
“… The forest is only safe when the birds sing, and there’s only beauty when we help that song…!”
Feathers left behind slowly flutter to the ground.
An elf of incredible strength joins a gale so quickly that she seems to simply vanish into the heights.
Only a subtle, sweet scent remains that soon fades from thought.
“Who spoke…?”
Ave asks this to no one while lifting up on her tail, then lowers herself.
“… Our breaths didn’t carry our truth? To… frolic, the hope, but, something seemed…?”
Ave blurts something nonsensical, then withdraws from Adris’ grip entirely when he squeezes too hard.
“A misunderstanding, that’s what we had, even though it’s… odd that kin could reach one! Somehow, or another?”
(Misunderstanding!?)
“That was a little worse than not getting the words right!” From horny, to in fear for his life, Adris can’t help but blurt this out. It earns no rebuttal from Ave; instead, the elf left behind is stuck looking every which way above.
Not talking, only stiff and smiling benevolently at what’s beyond the many-colored haze.
Away from the arena’s center after a time, Ave strolls over to the doll.
“Even if we don’t understand now,” Confident and passive in her manner, Ave offers to carry the large tome the doll usually tugs along. “We’ll make right all wrongs and discover all truths, right Neesiette?”
“… Be that so?” Canny with her expression, Neesiette accepts delivery of her precious tome to another. “Then, abandoning not reconciliation with fellow, pursuing it diligently, yes?”
“Eventually…! Kin have many reasons for every season… But, she has… a patrol to do? And, for now, just thinking about us, I believe we’ve…?”
Ave instinctively avoids Kol when the kobold frowns at this explanation, departing to descend the arena presumably toward “home”.
“Played enough. We should see what the elder’s reason is for wanting us to do so!”
Kol watches the elf and doll tramp down the curving tree’s trunk. Not offering any thoughts to Adris, Kol makes them known by spitting in the direction of the departed owl.
“Pointy-ears should stop making Kol be so ‘hot’, but running off after!” Then, she drags her paralyzed quadrupedal armor by one hand and hoists her poleaxe with the other to leave.
Adris is mercifully left with his partner, who accepts to shadow him on their own way out from the silent “play” tree that no birds roost upon.
(Misunderstandings don’t go from a grand, shared delusion that I stumbled slowly into… to almost getting to partake in the entire village being sawed apart by a berserk aura user.)
No, those sorts of “misunderstandings” are born of diametrically opposed positions that bump up against each other while assuming they’re friends.
(They, women… usually can’t… no, I wasn’t really that excited. Not at all.)
Especially not about such a childlike girl who is barely taller than him.
(Rantil…?)
Unable to voice any of his true thoughts, or to unburden his heart’s doubts, Adris cocks a smile and brags instead.
“I’ll never lack for an audience.”
{Fey… are not kind. Neither are their lessers, these elves.}
“Fey and elves are…?”
Making signs within the darkness of his shadow, Still surprises him with how candid her lesson is.
{Never-changing, because they’ve nothing worth changing, nor anything that stays certain except to want more of what they want. They don’t change, because they are constantly changing.}
“Are… they like…?”
(Us? Beings… touched by…?)
{They are only like themselves, for they barely care about even themselves, much less our impressions of them. Needing no other to justify them, they only await the chance to ‘meet’ their own. Your… ‘fan’ in the ‘audience’, for instance… is called a…}
Still’s hand slashes “claws” at him, then makes the sign for “droplets”.
{[Grudenor] (KINGSLAYER). The smoke of carnage is its favorite flavor.}
(Still could see it? Did she see the entire illusion?)
“Sounds…?”
{Likely to ‘enjoy’ you further than merely now, for your form and also…?} What else about him entices is left off, though Still isn’t catty with her gestures. {That… cross may instill a brief fright, but such timeless existences have few fears. After all: you are only human, a flickering flame that snuffs without them appreciating anything more than the passing warmth.}
Still stresses this by pressing her finger to his lamellar armor like a knife point.
{All of them, to the very last, have pleasures. No, addictions? According to… my teacher, what elves call a ‘fancy’ should mark their latest obsession. Gods only know what fey would call their target.}
Hurrying away from the arena as fast as he can, Adris’ back has a cold sensation creeping up once knowing this monkey thing’s name. Still’s next gestures slow to a crawl when starting out, as if she suddenly gains arthritis.
{Fey and… children, at such ‘circles’ as these… they meet easily, being joined together by curiosity and the need to experience.} Still guards her signs, refusing to use harsh language. {In ignorance of knowing anything more, upon others they play ‘tricks’, and anyone knows that… children’s tricks are the worst.}
(With the power of aura, as monsters… they behave like kids?)
Having grown up among kids that had no law but their own, it’s an instant sobering that hits Adris and carries him as far from any circles as he can go.
“Ave is the one that knows everything about her people. Perhaps they should be instructed in that fact?”
{Don’t start with them about her. She’s… different.}
“Different? Not at all. If anything, her reactions at times are almost a mirror in their trouble-making…?”
While within the forest, only Ave is another competing law. If they are truly childlike in their actions, then the rules might be dif—?
(No, it can’t be that simple. No race is that weird?)
“These ‘fey’ listen to Ave. I trust her.”
{THEN YOU AR—!}
Still’s aggressive hand freezes, then she ceases gesturing entirely.
(I am what?)
A game in which nothing was brought in turned out to be one that even now sets his heart racing with the events and implications; but, if Ave is a guiding principle, even such strange creatures can be molded with Adris’ usual guile.
(Elves are powerful… but, they live for a long time, I’ve heard. To live in harmony for long times requires sophistication.)
The more justifiable the goal, the greater the motivation for justifying reaching it, so Adris won’t back down.
(Sophistication and time… that is culture. Culture means strong aura.)
And strong aura produces strange people, proving to be an oddly self-reinforcing loop that explains everything.
…
…
Into the darkness of the strangest elf domicile, the chance for respite is offered.
A curving, softened stone platform reaches around the elder’s hammock stalks to encircle them. The pile of pillows a the head of this sloping platform are set up for a person to settle onto them with their head facing toward the elder.
That very elder relaxes in the atmosphere of this darkness that feels far less stifling than the Emperor’s tomb now. Clad barely in a half-worn sheer robe of black and red threads woven into repeating, interlocking crown designs, he still counts on his overly long, and now…
(Elves can change their hair colors?)
… oxidized coppery hair to shield his nakedness from others. Whether it’s intentional or not, the elf leans up in his hammock with his hair following, awaiting them with a sleepy smile that seems unforced.
Ave is the first forward, for frozen in the air beside this elder elf is her Tale of Rouvenor. The chains of gold have rebound it shut, but it must’ve yielded some interesting secrets while it was opened.
For the once taciturn anger his masculine voice had now dances with happiness when admitting something.
“There were, in truth, three trees.”