Ashes

The fire cracked and popped.

Sparks drifted upwards, the scent of cedar smoke in the air.

Dinner was an open affair, Sthuna learned, taking place under the stars. There was a small gathering, consisting of Eyna, her two little friends… And, most unpleasantly, the Tree Warden and the Fae Beast. The beings Eyna referred to as ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’.

He curled his lip. He wouldn’t be caught dead calling either of them that.

Eyna had petitioned on his behalf, but the Tree Warden refused to release Sthuna from his cage. He was still considered volatile and dangerous. So he had no choice but to observe, curled up in the prison of roots and branches. No matter how many magnolias the Warden grew to soothe his agitation, it failed. The fragrance was just cloying to him.

Food was placed inside of the cage. But Sthuna rejected it. He wouldn’t eat, not while his enemies were surrounding him. Eyna tried and tried, until the Tree Warden called her away to discuss something nondescript.

Sthuna was silent. Brooding in his prison.

‘Father’ approached Sthuna.

Sthuna snapped his head up as the Fae Beast seated himself right next to the cage. Father stared into the flames, eyes hard. The dragon watched him, a serpentine coldness reflected right back. For a time, no words were exchanged.

Father slowly turned to him. And what Sthuna saw in the beast was just as he’d expected. The churning darkness of rage.

“I know what you did to earn that curse.”

Sthuna was staring into the same snarling face of his Keeper, Aarik. Of the Executioner. Of… Himself. The same eyes. Those eyes. No surer a rebuttal to Eyna’s naive optimism than those eyes.

“You murdered an Xolotl. The blood of a sacred being is on your claws. I see the mark. I know it. You deserve to rot for your crimes.”

"... The skin shall rot from your bones. Yet you shall live. Every breath shall be pain. Yet you shall breathe. Every waking moment you will suffer. You will beg for a death that will never come. This is your punishment."

As the creature spoke the words, it fell to the cold, blood-soaked ground. Malformed arms reached out, as if they might claw at their assailant. As if they might tear the still beating hearts from his chest.

“N-No-”

He felt the curse as it pierced him. All the horror and dread and at the bottom of it all, the sharp sting of tears.

The Xolotl turned to him. Sightless eyes, empty eye sockets, on the head of a canine. The skeletal dog moved, blackened bones shivering in the low light. It stepped towards him, claws clicking on the stones below.

“... Child. Come to me.”

Sthuna gave a low hiss, like a hostile crocodilian. Father's words were jarring. Too much like the icy claws of memory, the time that came just before his arrival in the Heartsprings.

Father gritted his teeth in a half snarl. “You deserve the curse you earned. But Eyna-”

Father's canines sharpened and glinted in the flames. Flickers of a feral nature. Bloodlust. “-Eyna doesn’t. She’s an innocent. You dragged her into all of this. I don’t care what your story is. You’re going to take care of her. Because this curse of yours? It will repay every pain you inflict on her tenfold. And I will give you a hundredfold that. I will flay the scales from your body. I will rip open your ribcage and squeeze the chambers of your heart until they are but putrid filth.”

Sthuna laughed bitterly. It was a grating and guttural sound. “You think you can? You’re weak.”

He felt the urge to lash out. To sink his claws into this fae beast, to have them fight it out with blood on their teeth and rage in their hearts. “And you’re dying.”

Father stiffened.

Sthuna had not been certain up until that moment. But that reaction confirmed it. Whatever this creature had experienced, whatever battles left iron wounds upon his skin, they were permanent. The only marks that did not heal on fae were killing ones.

Father rose to his full height. His crystalline antlers glimmered like crushed diamonds in the flickering light. "You dare."

Sthuna parted his jaws. He displayed all of his teeth and, further, stretching his jaw to a horrifying degree, the acid that simmered within his maw. The message was clear. Sthuna wasn't impressed by the provocation. He'd meet it. He'd deal out worse.

The Beast's hands curled in tight fists. Sthuna half expected the Beast to lash out at him, even with the dragon trapped. But he didn't. Instead, he turned on his hooves. He stormed off into the dense woods of the Heartsprings, taking his rage with him.

That's right, flee, Sthuna thought. Hide with your tail between your legs.

Sthuna, for his part, just curled up. 

Eyna returned eventually. But when she did, he did not respond to her prompting.

Undeterred, Eyna sat next to him. She studied him with a quiet intelligence in those vibrant green eyes. She saw too much of him. It made him feel exposed. He watched her eyes trail from him to the earth, where cloven hooves had torn at the soft ground.

She knew. Somehow, she knew.

He wondered what she was thinking. But he was too agitated and wound up to ask.

The Tree Warden returned. This time to coax Eyna to rest. Her branches curled around Eyna, drawing her to the flower fields that composed Eyna's nightly bed. "Give him time, my delight. A heart once hardened is not so easily made soft. Tomorrow is another day."

Hypocritical, Sthuna thought. The Warden blamed him for his standoffish behavior, when her own steward was just as bitter. With a heart just as hard.

Eyna leaned in, whispering softly to him. "I'll be back later. Promise. When Mother's asleep."

Sthuna gave a little grumble. He doubted the Warden was going to let her. Since when did trees sleep?

As Eyna disappeared, the Warden coiling her up, the rat and the little fae departed on their own. The rat cast one last look over at Sthuna, looking like he wanted to say something. But he decided against it, shaking his head and slipping into the night.

The flames of the campfire snuffed themselves out on their own. Sthuna had only his thoughts to keep him company. The dark of his mind was an unpleasant place to be. Sthuna made a point of spending as little time alone with it as he could. But the Heartsprings was so peaceful, woven from moonlight and ethereal beings, that he had no choice but to draw inwards.

He did not sleep. His mind would not permit it.

And so it was that he sensed when something began to change in the air. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Sthuna lifted his head.

His sharp senses picked up on... Something. His tail lashed, pupils dilating. Something was coming. Something... Familiar. His instincts picked up on the harbingers of a dark tide far before it reached the tame and unknowing wild creatures. The naivety of the Heartsprings was such that it was slow to rise. Slow to realize. Slow to react. Things that cost the Heartsprings dearly.

There was something unnatural in the air. Beyond the gentle campfire that Eyna's little circle had used for their meal. True flames were burning, imbued with a rigid flow of controlled magic.

His imperial unit was here.

Sthuna should have been glad. Filled with righteous triumph at the arrival of his hunting party. They were going to purge the wretched magics. The cursed beings. They would celebrate the bounty they had returned to the earth with great festivities.

But, instead… He felt something he did not permit himself to feel. Something that wasn’t right, something that wasn’t allowed.

Fear.

Sthuna was afraid.

The fae here did not fight. They were not like the creatures of the wilds. And he knew, with a sinking sense of dread, that the taste of their blood on his tongue would give him no satisfaction. The scent of it spilled would garner no hunger. And the loss of their lives…

This would not be a conquest.

It would be a massacre.

It was already beginning.

His hearts pounded in his chest. He began to writhe frantically in his cage. Trying to claw at the magically imbued roots, even knowing it was fruitless. And he called out, voice laced with desperation, for the only person who might actually listen to him in this place.

“Eyna!”