Completed Lost in Paradise

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Sometimes I awaken as if from another world. Another life. I dream of places far away; of faces I recognize though their names are unknown to me. Voices asking questions I cannot answer. Always I wake up at home, in this land where all paths seem to bend and twist without end.

Hers was a land equally wrought of wonders and perils, of joyful serenity and blooming pain. Elinyra daily walked the breadth of its forests and meadows. She had given names to and learned the wiles of nearly every resident of her strange home; she knew how to navigate its hazards and how to placate the often vicious creatures that lived alongside her.

She didn’t know how long she’d lived here, if indeed she hadn’t always lived here. Sometimes she caught wisps of memories in the bittersweet breeze – a reminder of a life lost, or a lingering dream. Occasionally she recalled bits and pieces of olden myth or a few notes of a melody. One such half-remembered story made her believe that it could be none other than the Immortal Land, Tir Na Nog - though Mother always called it the First World. At its center was Mother’s garden; an island of tamed and nurtured life within the surrounding wilderness.

Waving away the snapping maws of a particularly feisty colony of wyvern plants with her staff, Elinyra followed a well-worn path through this verdant maze. Other dryad-like beings were milling about, continuously pruning, harvesting and planting, but Mother was an unmistakable sight with her mossy hair draping down her dark barkskin. The cracks in her bark emitted a soft indigo glow as she sat in meditation within a gloomy grove of mushrooms half as tall as Elinyra. The spriggan didn’t stir from her repose, though her voice creaked like an old tree as she said,

“Ah, there you are, mer'fille. I have a request to make of you.”

Elinyra sat on her knees facing the matron, breathing in the soothing coolness of the spore-laden air.

“What is it, Mother?”

Slowly, Mother opened her pupil-less eyes, glowing more brightly in the shade cast by the surrounding vegetation and fungi. Her arboreal face contorted into a small frown as she stood to her full height, appearing from Elinyra’s perspective akin to a burnt willow tree.

“Something has wandered into our home. I do not know what it is exactly, but I know it has come to hurt my children,” she said angrily, turning her gaze eastwards as if to look beyond a hidden horizon. “Go into the eastern borderlands and take care of it, mer'fille. And take this – you may need it.”

She reached with one branch to beckon towards one of the dense shrubs surrounding the fungal grove. A small arachnid bearing a crimson flower on its back skittered out from the safety of the branches and obediently perched on her hand. Mother’s expression turned sad for a moment as she crushed the creature in her hand, then handed its remains to Elinyra.

“A sacrifice to keep the First World safe. Dip your arrows in its blood, and aim true.”

Elinyra gently took the dead creature in the arboreal claw of her right hand. A potent poison. Whatever was threatening the forest, it was not the usual sort of wanderer.

“I shall,” she said with a nod and went to prepare herself for the hunt. Normally Tir Na Nog’s residents were swift to deal with threats on their own, either adding trespassers to the humus that fed the forest or by mutating them into residents themselves. What, she wondered, was so worrisome that she herself had to intervene?

 

[Xián Yuè]

Many fae were attuned to the wilds, the untamed greenery blanketing lands untouched by man, elf, and dwarf. Xián Yuè was no different, being born of the Falwood as a beast of nature. Though his elemental masteries fell within the domains of air and light, the woods were the first home he knew. The leaves and branches brushing against his silver scales and passing through his moonlit mane were nostalgic reminders of childhood, though, in truth, other fae may have considered him a child themselves.

Keener ones felt went the life of the land waxed and waned, when sickness seeped into it. The feeling of blight was an indescribable thing to some. To Xián Yuè, the blight felt something like a disease of the spirit, its source invisible, but the effects very much the opposite. The qilin felt it creeping farther into this place, something that concerned him. In his naivete, he ventured in alone, confident he could've kept himself out of harm's way with his power over light. He may not have been duanann or sidhe, but he was capable of defending himself.

The qilin stood tall and proud as he stepped into the blighted forest, only he was in the guise of an ordinary stag. The air was heavy as soon as he crossed the treeline, a miasma of decay permeating it. It was suffocating, threatening to flood him with dread. His ears swiveled, and he pawed at the ground. The stag's nostrils flared, and he turned his head this way and that, like prey searching for a predator. After all, that was what a deer was: prey. As he walked, his antlers brushed past boughs and heavy vines. It made him shiver, as if they were about to ensnare him in a deadly trap.

While Xián Yuè could fool one's eyes, those sensitive to magic would've felt something odd about the deer. Most ordinary mortals would've been none the wiser, but those touched with the gift of magic, and, more importantly, practiced in it, could've felt something. They might not have been able to pinpoint his exact location, but there was a vague aura filling the area around him, a mystical feeling.

Snap.

His ears stood taut, and he went completely still. The beast stared into the darkness for a second, then looked around again for the source of the noise.

---

Up to you if you want Elinyra Derwinthir to be the source of the noise. I wanted to keep it open: could be a random animal, could be her, could be anything!

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

A rustling of dry leaves followed the sharp noise, and from the darkness fluttered four hummingbirds. They paused as one on the decaying branch of a shrub to stare at Xián Yuè with tiny, dark eyes that seemed to reflect the forest's very aura of animosity. Weird and ugly things, with leaf-like grey feathers on shriveled wings, bald wrinkled heads with equally grey skin, and some sort of bulbous growths on their necks.

The birds turned their heads this way and that, sizing up the stag, all the while pecking anxiously at their perch with long, narrow beaks. One of them chirped and hopped around onto a closer branch, but dared not get too close to this unusual creature. Baffled by the inimical power radiating from this seemingly-ordinary creature, the birds loosed a terrible shriek before taking off through the leafless trees, almost comically, on their stunted wings.

Elinyra heard the cries of the ofnadwy and shuddered inwardly. Nasty parasites. They must have found some warm-blooded thing to harass.

She altered her course towards the source of the disturbance. Around her the lush forest had deteriorated into what she called the Dead Path, a swath of Tir Na Nog where the forces of Death were especially potent*. Beyond that, she was somehow certain, the world merely turned back around on itself. Where these occasional intruders came from remained a mystery.

A splash of warm color caught her eye ahead, and she ducked down behind what little cover there was to be had. Tawny hide shone gold in the dappled sunlight. Elinyra resolved the stag's form among a grove of gall-infested trees and questioned if this was really what she sought. Why would Mother send her all the way out here to kill a common deer?

Yet there was something to this one that struck her as profoundly supernatural; something that filled her with a sense of wonderment that collided with an instinctual disgust. As the two feelings wrestled within her, she nocked an arrow and sighted her shot.

Her arboreal arm ached to send that arrow straight into the beast's heart. Something deeper within screamed out in protest, and for a moment she froze with the bowstring pulled and its poison-tipped projectile shaking as her arms tired from holding the tension.

Her right hand went numb for a moment as it released the arrow, sending it speeding towards the deer. With a loud plunk, the arrow embedded itself in the trunk of a tree, just short of the animal.

Elinyra sucked in a breath, believing that the beast, like any other, would take off running.


*The ring of blight at the periphery of the expanding 'First World' where the existing forest is being transformed

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

Xián Yuè's gaze was so fixed on these abominations, a bastardization of the beautiful and vibrant hummingbirds he saw flitting around flowers, that he failed to notice there was another danger stalking him through these blighted woods. The dead trees. The qilin finched at their horrid scream and watched as they fled.

The whistle of an arrow in flight and burying its head into the decaying bark was enough to break his hold on the glamour. The illusion shattered like glass, revealing the radiant, scaled qilin underneath. Xián Yuè's carp-like scales shone like moonlight, a soft halo of silvery light framing his dainty form. He reared up on cloven hooves, and his long, whiplike tail lashed in fright.

He tried to call upon the ley, but its presence was weak in the blight, or he simply wasn't able to take hold of it here. The very air around the qilin shimmered like a mirage, and parts of his form indeed disappeared, but the illusion fell again as the ley slipped out of his grasp. Xián Yuè whipped his head back and forth, frantically searching for his attacker.

While he couldn't take hold of the ley magic to bend light, it was enough to whip up winds around him, being a less complex magic to will into existence. Still, it was weak enough that the most it would've done was set another arrow off course only slightly. Thin branches swayed and creaked around him.

Xián Yuè did what his hunter expected, though, taking off into a gallop away from her.

Elinyra Derwinthir​

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra was only able to stare in awe and confusion as the deer's form shattered to reveal the truth beneath the illusory veil. The miraculous creature glowed and shimmered like a waking dream. Or a nightmare made manifest. Even as aspects of it faded out of her vision momentarily, its aura was unmistakable, like a discordant note in a familiar melody.

And then it was gone. Hazy-eyed, Elinyra looked off into the trees in the direction the creature had fled, only to see a still, dead forest. Its tracks - light though they were - seemed to almost be burned into the ashen landscape. Its energy lingered like stinging smoke in the air. Nightmare. It seemed a fitting name.

Elinyra shouldered her bow and started to follow the trail, wondering at her reluctance to shoot this threat. As if she was fighting a battle within herself. She believed Mother when she said this nightmare was somehow harmful to the forest that Elinyra protected, but for some reason she had faltered. The nefarious guile of this trickster, she reasoned.

Seeing a turn in the nightmare's trail, she turned her thoughts back to the task at hand.

Where would it go? She wondered. Eastwards, towards Luminous Falls and its whispering pool? North, to Trees like Stars and its living tunnels? Or West, into the very heart of Tir Na Nog?

More importantly, her wandering mind persisted, what was it?

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

The qilin didn't choose any particular direction for any reason, but his path led him east. As Xián Yuè ran, he still struggled to call upon the ley magic that should have been so easy for him to take hold of. He may not have been as magically gifted as the upper echelons of the fae, but it was so alarming how difficult it was for him to grasp it now that he frequently came to halts, desperately focusing on trying to draw upon the ley lines. In his panic, he didn't realize that the better choice was probably to simply keep running. A qilin could outpace any unmounted human, or an ordinary one without some magical ability to run swift as the wind.

As light on his feet as he was, he barely even bent the blades of grass under his hooves. He whipped his head this way and that, trying to decide on a path. His white scales and mane were so glaringly obvious amidst the murky woods, a fact he was painfully aware of. The fae's heart raced. It felt like the air hanging over the woods was heavier, and he found it harder to harness that magic now, too. The wind died down to a gentle, harmless breeze, at which point Xián Yuè simply let it go, and it dissipated completely. His tail lashed and he scraped his hooves against the grass.

He heard the roar of a waterfall as it crashed against the rock. When he arrived, he found both the falls and a sheer cliff face that he never would have been able to scale without his power over air. Xián Yuè felt a lump form in his throat as the realization sank in. He stopped for a moment, inclining his head to stare up at insurmountable obstacle before him. The qilin then turned to his left and set off at a gallop, but, unused to any sort of prolonged chase and cut off from the ley, slowed to a tired trot before long.

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra wasn't confident at first that she could catch up to her quarry as it fled East, but she soon realized that the beast's tracks were getting closer together. It was slowing, even stopping from time to time... as if lost. She kept up a quick pace even as she tried to call upon the skills that Mother had shown her; tapping into the connection between herself and the plants and creatures of Tir Na Nog to feel beyond her own senses.

Unpracticed as she was, it was a fleeting and confusing mixture of sensations, but enough to tell that even the bolder creatures were avoiding this interloper. Yet the whole forest seemed to be seething from its presence. She couldn't sense the beast she hunted directly, but every now and again she had a vision of an aura that stood out against the landscape like a fire in the night. Her heart fluttered in dread as she realized her 'nightmare' had moved towards the Luminous Falls.

She had spent many nights by the falls. Sometimes it was to watch the soft nocturnal glow of the enchanted water as it crashed against rocks and into the wide stream below, but mostly it was to listen to the voices that occasionally drifted from the quiet downstream pools in the dead of night.

The cloven-hoofed tracks were growing even closer together as they headed downstream. She was tiring it enough to gain some ground, but she wasn't sure it would be enough to catch the nightmare before it could do its harm - whatever that was.

But maybe she could slow it down. Shifting her consciousness outwards into the briars and trees, she urged them to action with her will, fighting the reluctance everything had to be near the creature.

"Amddiffyn ly goedwinn. Amddiffyn ly dilyniad..." she uttered the words, though she didn't know what they meant. Only that her purpose was to protect the forest; a purpose she sent into the woods around the strange creature she hunted, to tangle and ensnare it until she could catch up.

Something happened up ahead, but she wasn't quite sure what. Rushing on, she braced her bark-skinned side to break through a thorny thicket into a clearing. A ring of hunched trees with tar-colored leaves on weeping branches dipped into the water of a murky pond. Off to one side of the clearing, Elinyra heard a crashing noise.

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

Xián Yuè cursed every moment he remained in this forest. His blood ran hot both from fright and frustration. Even the water felt to the qilin as if it flowed with poison. The very lifeblood of the forest was tainted, feeding the roots with blight. How naive of him to think there was anything he could have done. The Valen Wilds were too far gone, but Xián Yuè had so dearly hoped that he could have helped prevent another forest from falling to it.

Now, it seemed he would fall along with it.

The woods themselves seemed to have tired of his presence. The dark, gnarled roots of the trees unburied themselves, and his delicate hooves caught in the tangle of roots both thick and thin. A startled cry echoed as pain shot up his leg and he slammed into the blackened bark of one of the trees. The qilin pushed himself away and staggered, panting. Xián Yuè quaked where he stood, eyes darting between the bare patch of earth and the deep, dark woods that threatened to close in on him.

He was easy prey for the hunter regardless, so it seemed going back into woods was the worse notion, especially considering what had just happened to him. Xián Yuè's heart rose into his throat as he hobbled out into the open, clearly favoring his right foreleg. His ears were turned back and his head lowered in exhaustion. The qilin's once pristine form was now dirtied by twigs, dirt, and leaves tangled in his hair and stuck to his scales.

"You've bested me, hunter," he called. "I am here at your mercy. What is it that you want of me?"

​

Elinyra Derwinthir​

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Something like an elf in a tattered green cape took a cautious step towards Xián Yuè; an elf that had been turned halfway to blighted wood. In her hands she held a bow with an arrow nocked but pointed down at the ground. For a long moment, she only stared at him like any mortal who set eyes on a myth.

It wasn't the sight of her defeated foe that struck Elinyra, but the voice. Besides hearing a man's voice speaking distantly from time to time, she couldn't recall having heard anyone else speak to her but Mother. Though she called it company for lack of a better word, the tangled, phantom voices from the pools spoke to no one in particular. Hearing another voice, another real voice, filled her with a strange pain that she couldn't identify.

"You... speak..." she said haltingly, as if she was terrified she would shatter a dream by naming it. She took another slow step around the pool towards Xián Yuè, relaxing the bow's tension despite the fire in her veins that demanded his demise.

"What manner of creature are you?"

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

The fae's silver eyes lit up in surprise, both at the appearance of his hunter and at her own bewilderment. Xián Yuè's heart sank as he took in Elinyra Derwinthir's own blighted form. The cursed forest wanted him out, and this was the champion they put forth to accomplish that task, yet… it seemed she was not quite a willing one.

Xián Yuè's trembling leg threatened to give out from underneath him, so the fae lied down onto the grass,

"I am a qilin," he answered. "My name is Xián Yuè." His voice was as smooth as a gentle stream coursing through a forest and soft as a breeze caressing an open field. It had an ethereal sonance, not quite human, but for most, it was a soothing voice that promised health and good fortune.

Xián Yuè sighed, extended his wounded leg and lowered his head to touch it to his injury. The horn shone like a sliver of the moon itself. It was an awkward angle, but Xián Yuè managed it. The horn glowed with a white light, and the pain melted away. It was the one magic even the blight couldn't take from him, it seemed, though that didn't necessarily mean it would also heal the blight.

"I am a healer of the sick, injured, and cursed. My kind are similar to the more renowned unicorns."

He got to his feet as steadily as if he hadn't been harmed at all.

"May I ask your name?"

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Elinyra had never heard of a qilin before, but as she watched Xián Yuè heal himself, she felt a faint spark of recognition of the soft, healing light that he emanated - like an old, almost-forgotten enemy who made her bones ache. The plants around Xián Yuè, however, grew subtly taller in response to his life energy. Branches and leaves and tendrils reached towards him until Elinyra willed them into a momentary repose.

"My name...?" Another thought crossed her mind, as quickly as a bird's shadow streaking across the sky, before moving on. She glanced over at the dark pool as if it could offer an answer. "I have no need for such a thing."

A few nearby bitterblooms, urn-shaped and crimson, turned their flowers to face them. Mother used such things to see far and wide across the world, and Elinyra knew without a doubt that Mother was watching them now. For the moment, she sensed no hint of displeasure. Only expectation. Curiosity, perhaps.

She glanced back at Xián Yuè with mixed feelings. A part of her wanted to continue this conversation, but she could feel the forest becoming hungrier with this intruder's continued presence. If he stayed, the forest would undoubtedly consume him. His voice would be forever lost.

"You do not belong in Tir Na Nog, Xián Yuè the qilin. This land is not for you," she explained, motioning to the deep shade of the glen made duller by an overcast sun. "I swear I will not harm you, but I must guide you back to where you came from."

She felt a tiny shudder in the bitterbloom stems. Somewhere in the distance, something uttered a wolfish cry. Elinyra ignored it, instead unstringing her bow in a gesture of peace.

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

Xián Yuè flinched as the monstrous sound reached his ears, but he relaxed slightly as the huntress unstrung her bow. Still, he was tense, tail and ears twitching in anxiety. This elf—so she seemed to be to him, anyway—was taken by the blight, but it seemed she hadn't succumbed to it completely. Perhaps she had no control over whatever creature cried out in the forest. Xián Yuè's mind raced as he tried to think of some way he could cure her.

"You have my sincerest gratitude, huntress," he replied, extending one leg and inclining his head in a bow. "I will follow your lead." He raised his head and stood straight again.

"It seems a lonely life to lead if you have no need of a name," he continued, frowning. "After all, the reason we're given one is so others have something to call us by."

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

She was glad Xián Yuè agreed to go with her, for her devotion to the land was balanced by a deep desire to see this creature returned safely to wherever it was he had come from. After all, he had not harmed the forest: She couldn't see any reason to harm him in retaliation for something he hadn't yet done. That, and, she'd never had the opportunity to ask trespassers how they found their way into Tir Na Nog.

"I do not know exactly by what path you came here, but I can take you close to the place I first saw you. Whatever passage you took to get here shouldn't be too far. I will help you find it again, if I can."

She led her strange guest away from the pool. The trail she'd followed here had been a meandering one; though it was too dangerous to take a straight path back, she would take him the most direct way she could manage. With the forest seething and hungry, she would have to be extra cautious. A meadow of canu angau in bloom was dangerous enough to the forest's other denizens.

It seemed that Xián Yuè had given a name; not to her, but rather to the weight she felt so often in her heart. She thought on this as they walked along a game trail. Below them, the stream shone in glimmers of color as it tumbled across mossy stones. She'd given a name to this stream, as she had given names to each of the plants and animals she'd come across. But she had not saved one for herself.

She shrugged. "I don't think it matters what you call me."

The clouds overhead were growing thicker, bringing gusts of chill wind that made Elinyra's skin tingle. She sensed no storm brewing, but the weather always had a tendency to follow its own whims. She hoped it was a gentle whim today.

"I think that I have seen the magic you possess before," she admitted, although it was merely a vague sense of déjà vu. "Where is it that you came from? How did you come to this land?"

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

Xián Yuè turned his head toward the huntress and blinked when she told him it didn't really matter what he called her. He gave a surprised snort and opened his mouth to say something, but couldn't figure out how, exactly, to respond. It almost seemed like good luck that she turned the subject back to him.

The qilin looked skyward as the huntress asked more about him. The lupine howl from earlier still stuck out clearly in his mind. Predators were not monsters, but this was a cursed land. Whatever that was, it very well could've been a predator warped into a monster, or a beast that the woods spawned. Xián Yuè shivered, but it wasn't the cold that caused it. The qilin's long strands of silvery white hair making up his mane flew in the wind, shimmering like silk threads.

"Well… we qilin can purify corruption in addition to mending physical ailments. I originally came from the Falwood, but I roam the wilds. There is something different about this forest—Tir Na Nog. The magic drew me to it."

Xián Yuè looked away, torn on whether he ought to have been more upfront about his intentions. Would the nameless one seek his death if he so much as spoke of purifying the blighted woodland?

"I was compelled to investigate."

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Falwood. The name had such a ring of familiarity to it. Another half-remembered myth that slumbered in the back of her mind. She thought about asking more about this place Xián Yuè mentioned until he explained his reasons for being in her home.

"Mother told me that you'd come to bring harm to Tir Na Nog. It was why she sent me to find you," she said matter-of-factly, turning her gaze out into the surrounding forest. Here the weeping trees they'd seen near the pond gave way to taller trees with spindly, finger-like limbs that looked to be overgrown with fungus rather than leaves. Elinyra couldn't see very far into the tangle of growth, but she felt the ysegrimm and its pack following them. She couldn't be sure yet whether they had the same sort of horrified curiosity as the other animals, or if she and the qilin were being hunted, but she decided against mentioning it just yet. Xián Yuè already seemed nervous enough.

Something troubled her about it as well. She couldn't imagine anything being wrong with Tir Na Nog, nor could she imagine Tir Na Nog being... anything but what it was. Yet there was definitely something missing from this story.

"Is there something in Tir Na Nog you are looking to 'purify'?"

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

The huntress prodded further, and Xián Yuè, like all fae, was incapable of telling a direct lie. He furrowed his brow as he ran through all of his options. He couldn't say no to her question, because that would've been a lie, and he couldn't evade it, either.

"I thought I sensed blight," he answered with a sigh. "I sense the forest watching and listening to me, and know it does not welcome me. Forests are normally at ease in my presence, but not here."

Xián Yuè lifted his head, silver eyes looking toward the canopy as the trees stretched taller. There was an aura of menace about the forest. He knew he was being watched by these woods. "Mother" must have been the master of this blighted wood, whatever "Mother" was. If there was a mastermind behind this blight that could be identified, then that meant there was a chance the blight could be slowed or even halted in this forest. Unfortunately, this woman seemed to have fallen victim to the blight. Xián Yuè was no duanann, and he lamented his powerlessness in this situation. He just needed to escape. Maybe he could've tapped into the ley lines if he got closer to the edge of the forest again.

"Huntress, you know these woods and its creatures better than I do. What was that howling from earlier?"

He spied more of those monstrous birds again perching on the branches far above. The qilin quickly looked away, and the tiny birds darted back into the woods to flee the fae.

Elinyra Derwinthir​

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

thought I sensed blight, he answered with a sigh.

Something buried deep in Elinyra's subconscious bobbed to the surface for a moment when Xián Yuè
said this; a sadness, an anger, a feeling of despair that had wound its way around her soul. Though it was but a shadow of a feeling, it rang a quiet truth through her bones, assuring her against all reason that the qilin was not her enemy.

Trust given is trust earned.

She turned to look at Xián Yuè with a thoughtful expression as she walked along the trail. She recalled what few answers she'd received from Mother when she'd asked about her homeland's mysterious origins.

"Tir Na Nog is a place of transformation and rebirth. It consumes the old and makes it anew as part of the forest. Perhaps it does not welcome you because you are not ready for such a change?

"It is a strange thing, though," she agreed with his observation of the forest. "The fauna are loathe to come near you, as if you are somehow anathema to them, but the flora thirsts for your magic. I've never seen it react to those from the Otherworld in such a way."

She mused on that conundrum as something like a dragonfly, scaled and gleaming in shades of violet, buzzed past them. Mother had once told Elinyra that Tir Na Nog was the creation and resting place of a wrathful god, but she was sure that was just another of the willowy matron's dark tales; probably not the sort of story that her shining guest would care for. Still, it was an amusing thought that such a being didn't take kindly to the qilin's presence.

What was that howling from earlier?

"Ysegrimm. They are cunning hunters, roaming in packs to prey on the wounded and weak," she explained grimly, returning to a state of alertness. She'd warped her bow back into a staff and had been using it as a walking stick that she waved back and forth occasionally to sweep aside a creeping root or snapping flower.

"Majestic animals, but worth respecting, for they are near fearless when they're hungry. I've only ever seen them retreat from one creature."

The shadow stag. She remembered hiding in the crook of an ashbood tree, watching from a distance as a pack on the hunt scattered before the huge beast, their terrified howls cutting through the silent woods. She'd felt some sort of connection to the wapiti that moved effortlessly through the thick trees, but when she followed its trail, she found only a set of tracks that disappeared seemingly into thin air.

"Don't worry though. I think they're only curious, which means they are unlikely to follow us for more than a few miles," she assured Xián Yuè once she'd dispelled the strange memory.

A few hundred yards ahead of them, the trail ascended a moderate slope strewn with granite boulders up to a ridge, cutting its swath away from the stream. At its crest, a dense thicket of the same fungal trees rose on their left. A meadow spread across the gentle descent of a hill on their right, dominated by a mass of vines and wide leaves glinting with dew: like a pumpkin patch without the pumpkins, blanketed up to its edges in a stagnant mist.

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

Xián Yuè nodded silently when the huntress suggested he may not have been ready to make the change. No, he certainly wasn't going to allow himself to be blighted. He wasn't sure if she had submitted willingly to the blight, but few creatures did. Only those foolish enough to be swayed by promises of dark powers thinking they would somehow find a way to overcome it when their predecessors had not. She did not seem to fit that image, but people of all species put on guises quite readily.

He usually wouldn't fear a predator in the woods, but while the ley escaped him, he may as well have been exotic prey. Questions ran through his mind: exactly how cunning were they, could the qilin outpace them without his magic, and if not, could he fight them off? He deftly hopped over protruding roots and veered out of the way of snagging branches and the same snapping flowers the elf brushed away, almost without a second thought.

"Perhaps the flora are drawn to my light as they are drawn to the Sun," Xián Yuè replied, a hint of playfulness in his tone despite the tension, tossing his head.

He looked up the slope as they ascended and stared at the clustered trees reaching to the sky. The qilin turned his head to the right, silver eyes surveying the meadow. With the very trees having assaulted him earlier, the creeping, twisting vines held more menace than they would have if it had been an ordinary forest. The qilin may have roamed the woods, but he was not truly a forest fae. No, he did not commune with it the way dryads and others of their ilk did. Xián Yuè narrowed his eyes as he stared at the patch, but broke his gaze after a few seconds to look over the ridge.

He reflected on what she said about the plant life's affinity for his fae magic. Xián Yuè pondered if the blighted flora sensed a way to purify themselves in him, reaching for him as they did the Sun. Magic was more potent in close proximity, after all. Perhaps the originator's control wasn't quite so absolute as he thought; magic had limits, even for duanann. Did that mean he had a chance to save the woman ensnared by blight? But then, the fauna didn't sense the same healing, purifying magic. Fled from it, in fact. Blighted plants needed light and water the same way unafflicted ones did, did they not? His hopes were those of a naive fool, surely.

"I do hope these ysegrimm are as hesitant to be in my presence as the other wildlife," Xián Yuè said. "You seem to be a druid, but judging from your words, I gather these predators may not heed your voice so easily should they grow bolder. Would it be safer to have you ride? We would both be able to flee swiftly that way, should the need arise."

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

"Perhaps the flora are drawn to my light as they are drawn to the Sun,"

"That is quite possible." It seemed a reasonable deduction. She'd never met a creature like him before - not that she could remember, anyway. Perhaps this was what Mother feared; something that could so affect her plants. Something that could challenge her control over them. For wasn't that what it was? Was it truly affection that Mother had for her garden, or for the forest's champion? Or was it domination? She wasn't sure she could tell the difference.

"You seem to be a druid, but judging from your words, I gather these predators may not heed your voice so easily should they grow bolder. Would it be safer to have you ride?

A druid. It wasn't the first time she'd been called that. It was a word the Pools had whispered to her on nights past. A word spoken by many voices, disjointed through time, shapeless like water. It brought Elinyra an uncomfortable sensation bordering on terror. Terror and rage.

"The druids have forgotten their place," she said spitefully, to her own surprise. Words spoken by another; an echo of the past that still burned within the frame of her body. Shaking her head, she came back to her senses.

"I don't know what that was," she admitted, confused. "But no, I think I will be better able to guide you on my own two feet. Just be careful not to disturb the vines as we go and don't heed any strange desires you may have to change course."

She paused for a moment to fully collect herself before leading the way around the edge of the vine-choked meadow, taking care not to step on any of the meandering tendrils that stretched out from the main plant well into the trees, and pointing them out to her companion as she went. The lingering mist imparted a feeling, a desire, a need to run into the meadow's heart. Elinyra was able to block it out fairly easily just by dint of the usual emptiness that settled in her chest like a stone. She hoped that her guest could likewise resist it - or be protected by his strange magic.

So long as the draigwort stayed asleep, they would be fine.

The mist thickened around them as they made their way forward, casting their surroundings in a white sheet that glowed uncomfortably in the sunlight. Elinyra's grip on her staff tightened as something buzzed in the back of her mind.

Why are you leading an enemy around our home? What is this insolent streak, mer'fille? She cringed involuntarily as Mother's voice rattled every root and every branch around her, carried in a sudden gust of wind. Apparently she had reached her limit of patience.

"He is leaving!" she hissed into the woods indignantly. She was keeping her word, just in her own way.

Suddenly, the snaking vines that had been dormant moments earlier lashed out at her, catching her limbs and torso in their grasp before she could react. They yanked her to the ground hard and started pulling her towards the middle of the meadow, where the carnivorous core of the plant lay in wait.

If you refuse to end that accursed qilin, I will make others do it for you! Just be grateful that today I will discipline you, and He won't destroy you.

The vines wound around and over her, nearly sealing out the sky. She had seen this plant feed before; the slow strangling of its prey as it pulled it into the central fleshy bulb to be digested. She didn't intend to become its next victim, but she couldn't move her arms or legs, and the closer to the center she was taken, the deeper beneath the stems and leaves she would be.

She tried to cry out, but her voice was cut off as the vines squeezed the air from her lungs.

The draigwort's vines likewise reached out for Xián Yuè's nimble form, seeking to drag the fae under with her.

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

Xián Yuè’s ears turned back and his tail twitched at his guide’s sudden outburst, but he calmed at her admission. Although… such an admission was actually worrisome. Words she spoke, yet were not her own, it seemed. ‘Twas never a good sign. And then there were words spoken to one who was not there. Xián Yuè frowned.

That foreboding feeling that the meadow gave was warranted, even with its strange allure. Xián Yuè’s silver eyes widened as the elf was dragged away. The ones without prey in hand sought the qilin next, but even when he couldn’t harness the wind, he was fleeter of foot than any human or elf. Xián Yuè leaped away, leaving the first set of vines seeking to entangle him empty-handed, but more still followed.

As the master of the woods seemed to exert her magic over the flora, so too did he feel the ebb and flow of the ley start reaching him. It was faint, but it was there. Just not enough for Xián Yuè to harness. A frustrated growl rumbled in his throat, and his tail lashed. Still, though the qilin wasn’t a warrior, he also wasn’t totally defenseless. He whipped his head around, the bladelike horn atop it cutting clean through a vine poised to strike.

He continued his race toward the elf, wildly hacking at vines, wrenching his hooves away. Without magic, though, he effectively only had one blade at his disposal versus an endless mass of writhing, hungry vines. In a last-ditch effort, Xián Yuè slashed at the mass of vines holding her in its vicelike grip before the others wound around his legs.

Elinyra Derwinthir​

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Submit to your despair. Submit to your anger.

What had once been only distant whispers in a nightmare now screamed in her head as the draigwort dragged her down into a sea of lashing vines. Into the embrace of a darkness that rivalled the inky abyss - that dread of sailors. Elinyra had no ship to reach for, but for a moment she caught sight of something that shone like a pearl moon in a starless night.

The bright crescent plunged down into one of the chthonic tendrils that imprisoned her, severing its hold in a splash of dark, ichorous sap. It was the qilin's horn. Her right side was freed!

Still the other vines pulled, intent on their purpose. She tried again to yank herself free. As her feet neared the central bulb, it opened to reveal a maw of teeth and acid. She winced as she felt the first burning drops of its digestive juices sizzle through her boots.

Her right hand still held her staff tightly. Little good it would do as stave or bow, but there was another weapon waiting there within the shroud of her wrath. She called upon it, and it obeyed.

Forged of shadow and death, a curved blade formed around the staff. She brought it down beside her prone form as best she could, carefully avoiding what she could make out of Xián Yuè. With a series of snaps, the vines tore free one by one until she could move a little more. Enough to sit up and cut her feet free from their caustic torment.

The vines attacking Xián Yuè slackened, as if the creature had suddenly lost its resolve. Its leafy limbs continued to writhe about, but it seemed more random than a moment ago - as if the plant was capable of feeling panic.

Elinyra felt nothing as she stood from the mass of plant. She merely glanced over at the bulb like a gardener might an offending weed, and with a vicious arc of the scythe, cut it in half. Clear juices bubbled out from the maw onto the ground, eating through a stray leaf in the process. After a few moments, the vines went limp, and all that lived in the meadow was Xián Yuè and the shadow-cloaked visage of his guide.

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

Tendrils ensnared the qilin and yanked him toward the wretched maw. Xián Yuè’s struggles intensified as searing droplets of acid warped and ate through his silver scales, but no matter how hard he kicked and thrashed, he couldn’t free himself. He couldn’t reach the vines coiling around his back legs, only awkwardly try to cut the ones at his front. More vines wrapped around his torso, crushing him in their grip.

His gamble paid off, though: the huntress freed herself from the monstrous plant's grasp and cut herself free. The vines wrapped around him slackened as the scythe cut through the bulb, leaving Xián Yuè gasping for breath that had been stolen from him moments before. The qilin stumbled out of the coils of now-dead vines and raised his head, multiple scales either marred by acid or ripped away when the draigwort seized him.

Xián Yuè’s eyes widened at the sight of the reaper before him. “Are you hurt?” Though his question was sincere, his voice wavered. The qilin shrank back from the dark magic that covered the elf in its ghastly shroud. His magic may have purified and healed, but there existed magic and curses far beyond him. The being that stood before him seemed to prove that much, making him doubt he could cast away the darkness even if he had a fair chance at trying.

Elinyra Derwinthir

 

[Elinyra Derwinthir]

Within her mind and body, Elinyra and the Reaper were battling for control, but unlike the last time her mind was lucid enough to resist. Still, she might have tried to cut the qilin down then and there if not for the memory of her journey over the last few hours with Xián Yuè and her promise to take him safely to the boundaries of Tir Na Nog. She held onto those thoughts as a reminder that he wasn't an enemy.

Sounds had become mere echoes reverberating in her surrounding shadowscape. She couldn't make out his words. She only saw the strength of his nwyfre, his lifeforce, tied to the currents of the Ley, and the tinge of color and light she recognized as fear. She didn't know what to say: nothing could change what she was, nor offer comfort in light of what she did. Even now she could feel the shroud pulling. Taking. Reaping the life from the plants and animals like a farmer harvesting her crop.

The air around her grew cold. She tried to will the power to cease, but found she could only slow it as a warm day might stall the inevitable creep of winter. How could she hope to restrain a force of nature?

Elinyra couldn't be sure how this was affecting Xián Yuè. She had no memory of her last encounter with a fae, nor how that one's connection to the leylines had prevented his life from withering away in her presence. As the last of the draigwort's vines wilted away into compost beneath her feet, she grew afraid of her destructive power. In that fear she could feel her precarious control slipping.

That wasn't the only thing that worried her. They had drawn something's attention; not Mother's - no, her presence was strangely absent after the draigwort's death - but something much more powerful. She felt it like a growing storm on the wind, or the rumble before a landslide. She could only wonder if Xián Yuè sensed it too. The ysegrimm, still somewhere nearby, must have, for a series of growls issued from downhill in the dense trees.

"Keep following the trail until it turns, then go down into that valley. Somewhere in there is your doorway. I must stay behind. Go!" she pleaded, pointing up the trail towards a ridge that descended into a dip in the landscape. Her voice was distant, but its gravity was apparent.

It wasn't far now to the place where she'd first encountered the qilin. No more than an hour at a leisurely pace - much quicker at his running speed. Whatever secret doorway he'd taken to get here from the Otherworld, she hoped it was still there. She hoped he wasn't too injured to make it on his own.

---

Xián Yuè

 

[Xián Yuè]

The cold air of death sent a shiver down Xián Yuè’s spine, and he backed away as he felt the life around him wither and perish. Even the forest the nameless huntress protected wasn’t safe from the ravenous maw of the death magic that was evidently not fully under her control. The qilin’s cloven hooves scraped at the ground, tail lashing. A menacing aura surrounded him, but he sensed it wasn’t from the reaper before him. Even as the shroud of death gnawed hungrily for his own life, something else occupied his mind. His very domain was life; his own could not be wrested from him so easily by death magic. No, he felt the ley magic that so evaded him in this evil forest twist into a dark force, one far beyond his own power.

He turned his head to and fro, torn between staying behind to try to aid the woman gripped by death magic and the terror of the being that was closing in on him. One of Xián Yuè’s pointed ears turned toward the growling ysegrimm, but he only made a mental note of them. He recognized they weren’t the real threat to him right now. His eyes followed the trail, and he gave a hurried, vigorous nod.

“I regret that I didn’t have the chance to do more,” he said. “But please… leave this forest if you can. This is no place for mortals.” The qilin exhaled and took a heavy step forward, slowed by the dull ache that racked his entire body and the sting of cuts and scales torn away from his delicate form. But his legs still worked. Xián Yuè just had to push past the pain until he escaped this cursed realm.

With all the energy his shaky legs could muster, he took off into a sprint. A silver blur disappeared into the still-living trees, speeding along the trail to make his way out.

Elinyra Derwinthir