Kourtnie McKenzie

Chapter One: The Princess

A snake slithered through the maroon leaves of a nearby willow tree. Eleanora’s eyes shifted to those of a cat as she watched it strike a spider half the size of her. She held her breath. The spider folded inward and the snake opened its mouth around its meal. Eleanora exhaled and rubbed the goose bumps from her arms.

She dared a second glance while the carriage passed by. Six of the arachnid’s legs sprang back to life and her heart jumped. The snake twitched and fell limp.

Eleanora’s kennari had told her about the Red Briar many times, but he failed to mention the blood that’d stained it had also turned it vicious. The invaders Gandymede faced now didn’t have blood; she didn’t know much about the current war beyond that.

“Lilli,” Eleanora said. “Look at the woodlands. Aren’t they beautiful?”

She couldn’t deny the marvel of an entire forest changed to red, even if its inhabitants seemed harsh. The deep crimson of the Red Briar’s outlying roses fluttered her insides, and village girls didn’t get that kind of a rush often. Lilliputian refused to show himself though, so he must’ve disagreed with her.

Eleanora knew he lingered above. She stood and reached for him, but the carriage foundered and thudded her head into the green-cushioned ceiling. She collapsed in a heap of fabric on the floor and grabbed the door’s filigree handle to balance.

“Lilli, get down here.”

Her best friend gave in and started to glow. He floated downward and cast the wooden floor with amber light. Stories made will’o’wisps out as vile Spirits, but Lilliputian never fit the stereotype.

Eleanora wrestled with the baggy sleeves confining her arms. The lace around her wrist caught on a splinter of wood and she bared her teeth. Lilliputian fired a thin streak of lightning, releasing her with a crackle and pop. He rang with singsong chimes of pleasure.

They’d trundled down this path for over a week now. Another one of the king’s scroll-bearers—father’s bumbling fools—had arrived at Verdante with a rolled parchment for kennari. Most of the time, the messages were addressed to Eleanora, with pointless garbage like, “How’s your Artistry doing?” and “Your sister just came back from [a place we know you'd rather be] and sends you her regards.”

But a whole mess had erupted from the last moldy-smelling canister.

Eleanora’s to be transported from Verdante to the fortress of Azikan.

She will act as a representative to her people.

Sincerely,

King Rubent of Gandymede

What’s he thinking? The sounds of the birds poured in, cackling over the bantering of her dozen guards. Eleanora lifted herself back to the window. The whole reason mother sent me to Verdante was so kennari could hide my shapeshifting. How’s that supposed to happen miles away in a military fortress? She closed her eyes and listened to the clicks and chirps of animals she hadn’t heard before; they washed out her thoughts. She’d almost forgotten the miserable predicament until the carriage hit an abrupt stop and rolled her back onto the floor.

Eleanora sat up just in time to watch the door to the carriage shake, warped by the smoking wood. One of the younger guards forced his way through and grumbled.

“What’d you do to this frame?” he asked.

Eleanora blushed. “Nothing.”

The guard’s eyes widened. “What’s that…?—a Nature Spirit! A cursed Nature—“

Eleanora glanced up at Lilliputian and lifted her hands. “No, no, it’s fine. He’s fine.” Lilliputian’s light winked out into nothingness and she continued, “He’d never hurt anyone.”

The guard pointed a finger towards the cinders. “How’d you figure?”

“Please,” Eleanora replied, “just trust me on this.”

The guard frowned and helped Eleanora to her feet before wriggling the door closed and calling to resume.  Lilliputian reappeared again. She smiled at him and plopped back into her seat.

For ten years, Eleanora had lived in the confinement of a little village nestled outside of her kingdom. Her mother forbid anyone other than kennari to know who she was, or rather, what she was; the villagers thought the royal family sent her there to study her budding Gifts. A “partial truth,” her mother called it, though “partial lie” sounded way more appropriate. Not many other sixteen-year-olds lived in Verdante—and the ones that did already had their memories of Eleanora’s shapeshifting erased several times—but she’d grown accustomed to her life. It’s not like she’d find other people with multiple Artistries to make friends with, anyway. The messenger might as well have handed kennari her death sentence.

She lifted her hands to practice when the carriage came to another halt and winds howled from the Red Briar’s edges. Only a moment had passed since the first stop. What’s the problem? Her skin jumped as the young guard burst back through the door.

“Stay quiet, princess,” he whispered.

She started anyway, “But I don’t understand—“

“Something’s here,” he retorted. “Whatever you do, do not make a sound. Stay put.”

He eased the door closed. Lilliputian shifted to violet.

“It’s okay, Lilli,” Eleanora said. “See, look; it’s still light outside. I imagine dusk’s another hour away.” She pressed against the window. “It’s just those hills casting a shadow—”

A billow of black fabric whipped on the other side of the window frame. Lilliputian shot a bolt of light at it and startled her away. She watched in stunned horror as a single row of humanlike teeth emerged from the cloak’s dark folds. It lunged through the window pane.

Good gods, what’s—

The cloaked creature’s shriek filled the carriage with musk and splattered Eleanora’s face with spittle. She screamed and scrambled backward, tripping on the edges of her robe and toppling out of the carriage. The gray fog the creature breathed had already blanked the world outside. None of the guards were around; not even the neigh of horses. Eleanora tried to cry out for them, but her throat felt tightened and dry.

Then she heard the young guard’s voice telling her to run.

Lilliputian zipped past her and towards the forest. She hesitated. She couldn’t leave the guards!—but she couldn’t risk losing Lilliputian’s light in the murky mists, either. Since the war had started, the villagers told her that traveling alone in the darkness wasn’t an option.

She leapt to her feet. Just as she gained momentum, she stumbled on a jut in the ground and landed on her palms, scraping across sharp stones hidden in the wet grass.

She looked over her shoulder at what had tripped her and swallowed. A clean rack of rib bones protruded from the earth with a bloodied tunic caught in the middle; the young guard’s tunic. Her stomach turned sideways. She forced herself after Lilliputian, running into the Red Briar’s maw.

The high-pitched howl she’d heard from the forest returned, echoing all around and drowning out her thoughts. She pushed quickly through the dense trees, a shred of hopelessness suffocating her as the cloaked creature swerved into her peripheral. It drew closer, the smell of flesh carried on its musk.

If this thing’s the reason father’s sending me to Azikan—

She pivoted around and held both of her hands equally apart in front of her. Kennari had trained her to take this stance many times, but fighting suddenly sounded like a bad idea. No turning back, though. The cloaked creature twirled around her arms and Artistic light seared from her hands. The creature shrieked and pulled away.

Eleanora watched critters flee into the woodland depths and towards the sky. Lilliputian darted in front of her and shot lightning at the cloaked creature’s burnt edges. She took off again, following the illuminated path.

She ducked under branches and twisted around hanging vines. The blood pumped too loudly in her ears and the adrenaline pushed too hard on her legs. She counted the steps in her mind. One. The thoughts made her move faster, four, faster than she knew she could go, and then she glanced down at herself and paused. Eight, nine, ten. The tendons in her legs started to change. Her muscles strengthened, her body sleeked, and the nails in her feet retracted and thickened. Her arms shifted into another set of legs.

This was her sin. Her secret.

A skrímsli—a shapechanging monster—had beguiled her mother and brought a sinister half-breed into the world; now his daughter could shapechange just the same. The dragons, the law-makers of the world, considered children conceived outside of marriage just as sinful as their parents. They wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter the exposed half-princess on sight.

But this hardly seemed like the time to hide secrets.

Eleanora fell to her hands—her second set of feet—and took off like a cheetah, dodging lithely through the forest’s curves. Her sleeves tore apart as she went, her paws ripping at whatever fabric it touched. She thought about the last time she did this, growing wings in front of all her village friends. She didn’t speak to kennari for days after he told her she couldn’t see them anymore.

Just when Eleanora convinced herself she’d escaped, the icy breath of the cloaked creature tickled the back of her neck. She stopped, dropped, and slid backwards. The cloaked creature flew in uncontrollable haste overhead and arced back around. Eleanora hesitated and choked. Her whole body ached and her lungs screamed for air. Her arms turned to normal, then her legs, and she pounded her fists into the ground. Cursed, unreliable—

She tried to get her hands equally apart in front of her again. The cloaked creature encased her left arm before she could steady herself. It threw her to the ground. The teeth bit hard into her elbow and she screamed. The cloudy jaw gurgled with her blood as the ends of the cloak dodged Lilliputian’s frantic bolts. Eleanora’s other hand reached for the dagger she’d been given as a child, slapping against her wriggling hip. She stabbed once at the creature and it swatted the weapon away.

Dear deities, I don’t want to die!

Lilliputian rammed himself into the cloaked creature’s side, sparking with dozens of bolts. Branches caught fire and dried leaves turned to licking flames on the ground. The cloaked creature jerked away and Eleanora balanced herself, tears and sweat caking her face. The mist struggled to quaff the burning and smoke.

Then an animal’s growl startled the three of them. Eleanora glanced at the distant foliage. A large reptile skittered off into the maroon shrubbery, scaly tail curled in the air. She thought it looked bronze—odd color—but perhaps it’d deceived her in the growing haze of the fire.

The cloaked creature hesitated, circling around. She tried to lift her hands, but the wound in her left arm hurt too much.

The cloaked creature descended down on her.

She flinched.

A great roar billowed from the darkness and Eleanora looked up just in time to see a bronze dragon’s stomach. They flew overhead, baby razor talons scratching the black fabric and musk fogging the air. The dragon tore the bodiless creature apart and cast it aside, its lifeless row of teeth scraping through the charred leaves.

Oh, no.

Eleanora knew the dragon could see it: the mark of a child born outside of the sanctity of marriage, invisible to Mana Spirits like her. Dragons, like other immortals, had a second Spirit that let them see the criminals of common law from the other mortals of the world. Hiding her shapeshifting had only served to keep other mortals from talking about the princess of a human king and queen acting, well, inhuman; there was no veiling the truth from this beast.

The dragon leapt atop her. Eleanora’s back slid over the gnarled roots and fallen vines of the forest; she felt the warmth of blood at the base of her neck. She gritted her teeth and kicked at the lion-sized creature, but its claws pierced her flesh and her strength came pouring out in a wail of agony and saliva.

I can’t die! I can’t!

A slashing whir resounded in her ears. She knew she couldn’t use her Artistry to control the wind, not with her hands splayed to the sides; yet the dragon let out a grotesque howl as if struck, coming down on her and knocking the air out of her chest. She turned her cheek to prevent its bodily fluids from getting into her mouth.

Then someone rolled the dragon’s body off her.

She felt light-headed from the loss of blood in her shoulders and arm. She thought she should be convulsing, or doing something, but all she managed were choked breaths. She reached for the two hands that broke through her blurry haze.

Foreign fingers interlocked with hers. She heard a deep voice say, “Look into my eyes.”

The man hovering over her had silvery mirrors for irises. The woodlands had dirtied his brow and his brown hair clung to his sweaty cheeks. A scab ran along one of his hands and scratched against her wrist, but the tips of his fingers felt soft and warm. It filled her with a sense of ease.

“Hold still,” he continued.

Her whole body rushed with heat. Sudden, unnatural heat. A priest must be healing me! Eleanora breathed in and out. She dug her fingers into the silver-eyed man’s knuckles. If his hands were there, someone else must be treating her injuries.

She lifted herself and the man leaned away to give her room. She glanced around until she discovered his companion sitting behind her: a boy with bright green eyes and sandy hair woven into dozen of braids. He didn’t look older than thirteen, not with how stubble had never broken through his chin. While an elf would’ve looked that way, his skin seemed too olive for an elf, and his cheekbones didn’t appear that thin.

“You okay?” the boy asked.

“She’s probably in shock,” the man returned.

“What’s your name?” the boy pressed.

“Eleanora,” she managed.

The boy put a hand to his chest. “I’m Melidor. And this is Trin—“

“Princess Eleanora?” the man interjected.

Tautness ran through her spine. They hadn’t seen her shapeshifting had they? Who cares? They just saved my life. They’re cool. Just stay calm.

Melidor looked up to the man. “She’s the princess? Really?”

“Doesn’t she look the part?” the man replied. He turned back to her. “Sorry, I interrupted Mel earlier; I’m Trinsen. Why are you alone?”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “I got attacked—chased—by that thing.” She pointed to the shreds of the black cloak. “Then the dragon—”

“It’s one of those damn cloaked creatures,” Melidor started, pushing the dragon aside to inspect.      Eleanora couldn’t believe at how they didn’t acknowledge the sacredness of the dragon’s corpse—good gods, how they’d killed the dragon!—the severity of the crime they’d committed for her sake. She watched as Melidor sifted through the torn fabric on the ground and tossed the row of teeth into the forest’s darkness.

“Nothing.” Melidor huffed. “What the hell are these things?”

Trinsen touched Eleanora’s face and brushed the dried tears from her cheeks. His fingers felt wet; he must’ve used Artistry to create water.

Artistry?

Eleanora checked Trinsen’s silvery eyes again, stole a glance of Melidor’s green gaze; the light of their Spirits shone through both their irises, just as it did hers. They had the signature mark of Psychic Artists. Melidor had healed her, though. He can use two Arts, like kennari!

“Something the matter?” Trinsen asked. “Weren’t guards taking you from Verdante to Azikan?”

She nodded.

“Where are they?” Trinsen pressed.

“If there’re survivors, they’re outside the forest,” she replied. “One of them told me to run, and then it—I just ran!—do you think it spared any of them? To go after me, I mean? Can we go look for them?”

“I’ll teleport to the fortress and ask a scouting party to look for them,” Melidor said. “We should get you out of here though before momma dragon smells baby dragon’s corpse.”

She lowered her eyes. “I would’ve run somewhere else if I’d known dragons lived here.”

“It’s alright,” Trinsen returned. “You’re fortunate this one was small.” He shot a look to Melidor. “And I’d rather you stay with me and we take her back to Azikan together. If there are other dragons around here, they’re going to sense you teleporting; I don’t want to be by myself when they come searching the area.”

Melidor frowned. “It’s not like we can teleport her to Azikan when she’s injured though. And I can’t hear Entrys’ voice until next sunrise; you really want to leave the survivors to fend for themselves for that long?”

Not only could Melidor use Two Arts, he used a different Sacred Art than she did. She leaned forward, intrigued. Her Sacred Arts had manifested as druidism, the understanding of Nature Spirits’ songs; priests, on the other hand, were the only ones left that could hear the deities since the Great Silence. The heavens blessed them.

“We’re only half a day’s ride out,” Trinsen said. “It’s not long at all.”

“Aren’t you curious why it attacked her?” Melidor asked.

Eleanora could feel her cheeks grow cold as color drained from them. She caught Melidor’s watchful eyes and she swallowed, staring back at him. Lilliputian drifted into her arms and she cradled him back and forth.

“It was probably just hungry,” Trinsen answered in her stead.

She let out a held-in breath. “How’d you kill the dragon? I never even saw a weapon. I only heard it.”

Trinsen perked up. “I can show you if you’d like; it’s—”

“Let’s find the Seer’s Root first,” Melidor interrupted, glancing at him before re-fixating on her. “I’d like to get what we came for and get her out of here.”

Trinsen furrowed his eyebrows. “You’re worried about taking too long getting a reconnaissance team out, yet you still want to look for that damn herb?”

“You need it, don’t you?” Melidor waved a hand at Trinsen. “Go look. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Trinsen smirked and took off into the trees.

Eleanora lifted a hand after him and started, “I can help,” but Melidor’s penetrating gaze stilled her.

“So that will’o’wisp is docile or something?”

She eyed him up-and-down. “Lilli’s my familiar.”

He knelt in front of her. “That’s a strange familiar.” His lips parted into a welcoming smile as he reached out towards Lilliputian. “Can I?”

“Sure.”

Lilliputian drifted away from her, circling around Melidor’s head. She watched Lilliputian taunt Melidor’s curious hands for awhile before slouching. She took a stick and traced sigils in the ground; the green glow of Melidor’s eyes surrounded her and she looked up, catching his gaze again.

“I’m sorry if I make you uncomfortable,” Melidor said. “You remind me of someone is all.” She shifted her weight and he added, “She wasn’t as shy as you, though.”

“Are you two from Azikan?”

He smirked. “Yeah. Well, not from there; but we’re stationed there. Kind of like you.”

“Where’re you from?”

He winked. “It’s a secret.” He offered her a hand. “You should stand and see if you’re dizzy. It’ll help me know if you’ve lost too much blood or not.”

“Thank you for healing me,” she said. She regarded his hand with reluctance, but he extended it further and she took it with pursed lips. “I can find the Seer’s Root.”

“Just try to walk in a straight line for now,” Melidor returned.

She stumbled forward and he steadied her with two firm hands on her forearms. She stood an inch or two taller than him; but she had gotten use to that at six feet high. She turned around to face him and he smiled sheepishly at her, his grip softening.

“Thought you were going to fall for a moment,” he said. “You’re still not one-hundred percent.”

“I’m fine,” she replied. “I’m always this clumsy. It’s embarrassing.”

He laughed; the lilt in it made her second guess whether or not he had elf blood. She wished she could see his ears, but they never peeked out from the mess of swiveling braids. “I thought you’d be so much more arrogant and brandish than you actually are.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m sorry.”

“It was meant as a compliment,” he returned.

She flushed and stumbled away. Lilliputian zipped into a distant clearing and she followed his light.

“We should stick close together,” Melidor called out from behind her. “In case it’s not just klutziness.”

“Lilli sees something,” she said.

She wandered over a streambed that clicked with frogs and continued into a widening clearing. She could hear the breaking of leaves from Melidor following behind her. They continued in silence until Lilliputian’s path opened to a grove of pink blossoms and streaks of captured moonlight. Trinsen had already found the area, circling around thorny plants that Eleanora recognized as cousins of the herb he looked for.

Melidor moved past her. “Hey, Trinsen!”

Trinsen spun around. “What’re you—I thought you were going to keep an eye on her.”

Melidor shrugged.

Lilliputian’s eerie echoes grew louder. Eleanora stood underneath her familiar and scanned her surroundings. She spied the bulb of a pale gray bush and skipped towards it, opening her arms for balance

“Here it is,” she called.

They followed behind her and stopped abruptly as she knelt down. She pulled a root from the gray bush and pivoted around to present it to them.

“I’ll be damned,” Trinsen said. “I’ve been looking for days. How’d you see it in all of the shadows?”

“I have good eyes.”

“I’d say so,” Trinsen returned.

Melidor nudged him. “We should escort her to Azikan now.”

Eleanora folded her hands in front of her. “You told that you’d show me how you killed the dragon.”

“Oh, right,” Trinsen replied.

“Can’t we do that after we get to the fortress?” Melidor asked.

“It’ll only take a moment,” Trinsen said.

He pulled a chakram from a large leather pouch at his side. It had three blades that extended from a wide, sharp ring, like a triangle overlaying a circle. In the center, a small red stone shone with Artistic light.

“An enchanted ruby?” she asked.

“It’s a bloodstone.” He turned his hand fingers wrapped loosely around the stone’s edges. She moved in to get a closer look, but he returned the strange weapon to its pouch. “The bloodstone makes it fly.”

“That’s extraordinary.”

“Now can we head back to Azikan?” Melidor pressed.

Trinsen reached into another pouch inside the tunic that hung over his black robes and pulled a fist out. “Yeah, yeah, we’re going.” He unraveled his fingers, revealing a horse-shaped onyx figurine in his palm.

Eleanora glanced at Melidor and saw he fetched a marble figurine just the same. She bit her lower lip and pointed. “What’re those?”

“Our mounts,” Melidor replied.

She repressed a laugh at the comical notion, but before she could jest about it, Trinsen tossed the figurine on the ground, and there it grew, until it became a full-fledged dark stallion that neighed at its birth. Melidor’s figurine turned into a white steed just the same. Eleanora blinked and leaned over, trying to touch the horse’s mane. She fell through the neck and nearly collapsed into the red soil, saved by Melidor’s grasp on her arms.

“They’re not real horses,” Trinsen explained. “We store a little bit of our Psychic Arts into the figurines, then we manifest them with our air quintessence in order to fly. We sit on them and off we go, kind of like,” he paused to look at Lilliputian, “how your will’o’wisp flies.”

Eleanora glanced over her shoulder at Melidor. “I fail to see how you can sit on it.”

Melidor laughed. “You only can if it’s your Artistry that makes the horse. It’s not like we can use our Psychic Artistry to make someone else fly; you should know that.” Her eyes drifted sideways. Melidor scooped her up in her arms. “But I have an idea. If I carry you while I’m riding, things should be fine.”

“Alright,” Eleanora managed.

Lilliputian floated into her lap and chimed thoughtfully. She rested her hand on his fluorescent, spongy skin and took in the evening scenery with widened eyes. As they galloped to the other side of the forest, she lost herself in the stars that washed over the night. She found a rhythm in the thrumming of Melidor’s heart and the twinkling of the sky that steadied her through the bumpy ride until, after long hours, the fortress finally broke the horizon.

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