3 days, 3 months, 3 years

The clash of swords under a blood moon.

The burnt smell of smouldering corpses, fused to their molten armor. 

A moment of silence, and then a curse, wafting from scaly, peeling lips. 

Veleste von Viamont had dreamt of such things for three nights in a row, but as a fireball the size of a truck camping hurtling towards her, that seemed to be the least of her concerns. 

She briefly contemplated her life up until that point - arriving quickly thereafter at the conclusion that it has all started to go wrong this morning. 

When the day had started, she had only been briefly aware of her going ons. Groggily, she had half opened one eye as she awoke from the usual night sweats and terror of her recurring nightmares. 

“Another Nightmare, Milady?” A shrewed, feminine voice had rung from across the room. “Shall I call the high saint to tell you a bed time story?” The voice continued, her tone bouncing with a playful canter. 

Veleste then swiftly turned her head to face the voice, and greeted the woman with a warmth that came naturally to her, even as her eyes remained half closed. “Good morning, Josephine. Shall we start the day?”

Her limbs felt light as she lifted herself free from the smothering rose pink cotton comforter and leapt onto the floor, leaving the darned thing to slump and fall to the floor behind her. Landing on the smooth white marble flooring, her body shuddered before her mind caught up to her new reality. ‘Oh yes,’ She mentally chastised. ‘The temperature here is always so… perfect. I don't feel cold anymore. Or hungry.’

She had briefly wondered if this was heaven, then, after her lifetime of sorrow. 

Catching herself briefly in the oval mirror that levitated above a gem in her room just next to the wide white dresser, she almost gasped as she gazed upon her new appearance once again. 

Her bare body, once unremarkably plain if not outright frumpy, was now lithe, almost slender enough that her bones were visible. Like her maid, she had long, pointed ears that stuck out of the flowing cascades of long white hair that dropped down her back and pooled at her feet. Hair much unlike Valerie, the sickly girl she has been back home. Her maid, a slender woman with silver white skin and a mane of hair as dark as the blackest night changed her into the thin white embroidered robes they all seemed to wear, and took her out to the garden for training. 

If only she had realized what she was in for then. 

The vast meadows that surrounded them bloomed with fragrant stark white lilies, and the strange purple glass dome above them cast the pair in an eerie violet haze. This dome, as she has learned in the past days, was inlaid with magical crystals that allowed them to cast their spells freely. 

“You'll need to have a quick wand and a quicker wit if you wish to be queen!,” Her maid said from across the pale brick stoned terrace with an excited smile, casually brushing a tuft of silken strands behind her face before she suddenly launched into motion, leaping at the shorter girl with her wand drawn. “Let's see what you've learned! Fireball!” The tip of the maid's pencil thin white wooden wand glows red, then flashes with sparks as a ball of fire the size of some rotund housecat. It bounced around the point of the wand, basking in the red glow before launching itself at the girl alongside its master. 

It was then, as the fire and fury came rushing at her, that Valerie realized that she hadn't learned any magic. 

She had spent her days eating cakes and the strange red Jakoma fruits the other ‘elves’ seemed to love, but she was new to this world - she didn't know what Veleste Viamont no doubt knew. 

Valerie was no quitter, and with all her resolve, she stood in the face of what seemed to be certain death. The fire arced towards her, and time seemed to slow to a frame by frame as Valerie’s former life flashed before her eyes. The messages from mom. The first day of school. The bullies who towered over her.  Her first kiss. Her first vomiting after the kiss. The towering hospital bills and sterile white rooms. Chemo. 

But Valerie stood calm 

Even as her maid realized a moment too short that something was wrong, even as the warmth of the incoming inferno caressed her skin, Valerie swore never to fear death again, whether as herself or as Veleste. 

After all, she was in a fantasy world, right?

At the last second, as a plume of red enveloped her and she thought it'd be her last day in her new life, a flash of pure light white sprung from around her, shielding her from the impact as the flames danced harmlessly around her forcefield. 

Veleste looked down at her hands, and a slow smile began to light up her features. “I've done it,” She began incredulously. “I actually did it… I used magic!”

“No, I'm afraid not,” Her maid, who's rude self she still didn't know the name of, interjected mockingly. “That was simply an effect of your robes. Don't you know that?* She accused swiftly, her fast paced gaunt coming to a slow amble in front of Veleste. 

“I forgot.” Veleste said dumbly. 

“You've forgotten quite a few things these past days,” Her maid pointed out, now circling the girl like a predator ready to pounce. “Your arranged marriage to the king of Fluorence in the south. Your country of Viamonton. By the sisters, you've even forgotten your name before!” 

Veleste shrunk back under her maids disapproving, accusatory glare. “I've just been… sleepy. All my nightmares keep me up, you know?” Seeing her usually somber demeanor, the maid softly smiled and took her hands into her own. 

“I understand, your highness. It is a great privilege to be future queen and sister of the high saint, but it requires great sacrifice too. Now, let us resume our training, and we will have you remember yet!”

As the maid stepped across the room and assumed her fighting position once again, Valerie wondered just how much she would have to sacrifice, in this strange land of magic and elves. 
—-

To the South of the Northern Elves, past their luxurious green pointed top castles, a young human man sits at his desk in a small wooden office, sipping from a teacup while his friend recovers from a recent explosion. 

—-

The clash of swords under a blood moon.

The burnt smell of smouldering corpses, fused to their molten silver armor. 

A moment of silence, and then a curse, leaving scaly, peeling lips. 

That was all the papers seemed to talk about, in Robin's humble opinion. 

Setting his stack of papers down on the long, oval shaped wooden kitchen table, the thin, lanky oval eared man turned across the table and scoffed. “Can you believe this dreck, Mr Beaver? A royal wedding, in times like these?” 

Across from him, an oval eared, suit and tie clad rotund gentleman with a single blonde puff of hair atop his head and a wooly mustache parked beneath his button nose swept up a small mess of fine porcelain teacups that had fallen the night prior. “Oh, and why not, Mr Robin? It would be a wonderful occasion, if only I were invited,” Mr. Beaver snorted derisively. “Anyhow that's light news now, old friend. Seems there's far worse news coming from the northeast. The gold mountain prisoners all broke free.” 

“Broke free?” Robin asked, half unsure. 

“Yes.” Mr Beaver replied   

“...How?” Robin asked, even less sure. 

“With about a hundred tons of magic crystal dynamite. Blew the mountain right free from the mainland.” Beaver concluded. “Seems the sparks of revolution are in the air.” 

Robin paused. “Is that what shook the house last night?”

The two men stared at each other, then let out a short round of barking laughter. 

“Really though,” Robin said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye on the sleeve of his red leather jacket. “Who're the gold mountain prisoners?” He asked, much to Beaver's annoyance. 

“Pick up a book about something other than science and law now and then, would you! Don't you know about anything outside of Fluorence?” Beaver said firmly - he was not a man to tolerate an uneducated companion. 

“Oh, come off it! Besides, you know I-”

A gentle rasping knock comes at the door, interrupting Robin mid sentence. 

“Come in!” The two men call out in unison, scarcely able to hold back their excitement. In walks an average height woman, with fair skin, oval ears and soft brown hair braided into a ring around her head. 

“Is this the B&R detective agency?” She sheepishly asked, one hand caught fiddling in her white linen apron. “My name is Ms. Cuckoo, I'm a maid, and I need your help, please. Or rather, my lady does.”

Robin, determined to come off as a noble gentleman, swallowed down a gulp of coffee to brighten up, and rose from his seat so abruptly it fell over. “Please,” He said, offering the girl his arm. “Come in. Tell me, what could we do for your lady? Or for you?” He added, hopeful. 

Mr Beaver rolled his eyes and snorted in response to the blatant display of simpery. (If Shakespeare can make up words, why can't I?)

The girl took Robin's arms with a soft smile and sniffled while she took a seat in the chair across from Mr Robin, next to where Mr Beaver swept. 

“Well you see, she…” The girl paused, then buried her face in her hands and sobbed. 

“She what..?” Mr Robin said, digging around his pockets for a napkin or tissue to offer the poor girl. Finding a white length of soft fabric in his left breast pocket, he offered it to the grateful Ms. Cuckoo. 

“She exploded!” Ms Cuckoo cried, then blew her nose with such great force the napkin billowed out like a sheet in a hurricane, leaving the mucus to fly out into Mr Robin's nice leather jacket. “Last night, when she was blowing out her birthday cake, the flame blew back and swallowed her up! Why, the great fireball rocked the whole neighborhood!” 

Ms Cuckoo blew out into Mr Robin once more, while the poor man stared off into the distance, refusing to look down at his coat. “I assure you, Ms Cuckoo,” He said softly, gently taking the napkin from her hand and tossing it onto Mr Beaver's dustpan. “I will do all I can to pin the tail of justice in this proverbial pony of evil. Assuming of course that it wasn’t an accident.” Clasping both her hands in his, Mr Robin did his best attempt at a suave face in an attempt to woo the oblivious Ms Cuckoo. 

Mr Beaver cringed. 

“Thank you, Mr Robin. Both from your kindness, and your… metaphors. But I fear it was no mere accident,” Ms Cuckoo hesitantly pulled out a scrap of paper from her pocket, with ink scrawling out a short poem. “Read it for yourself.”

[Look high, Look low
Look at the show 
Excitement grows at the peacock ball
Look nigh, look near
Her burning tears 
Burns all who lie in the peacock hall
A woman dies, a woman cries,
Through burnt red eyes,
As she builds her tomb
I confess to yours truly, 
Though my punishment seems unduly,
I, the killer, am inside the room]


Mr Robin and Mr Beaver both gave each other a quick glance. 

“Well, Ms Cuckoo, it's just a feeling, but…” Mr Robin dug through his pockets once more for nearly a full minute while Cuckoo and Beaver watched in silence, until he finally pulled out the pipe he'd been searching for. “It seems the flames of revolution are in the air.” 

Mr Robin attempted to puff on the pipe, before recalling that it was entirely unlit. 

“In the air, but not in your pipe, old friend,” Mr Beaver said with a half grin. The woman and Mr Beaver laughed, much to Robin's dismay. “Now, Ms Cuckoo, why don't you lead us to the scene of the event? I understand it must've been traumatic for you, but nonetheless we must see.” He offered a hand to Ms Cuckoo, and she smiled at the gesture. 
 
—

To the South, at the stony jaw - named for its viscous, sharp mountain cliffs and the sharks that patrol the surrounding waters,a young dwarven woman awakes the feeling of the sun dancing on her face. 

—--

The clash of swords under a blood moon.

The burnt smell of smouldering corpses, fused to their molten silver armor. 

A moment of silence, and then a curse, leaving scaly, peeling lips. 

That was all the man formerly known as Aidan had known for the past three unrelenting years. 

But today was different, because today was a blessed Sunday. 

Aidan shielded his eyes from the unceasing light of the harsh summer sun, palms stretched out as if to catch it in his hands. He groaned and stretched out the full length of his body on the straw mat that served as his bed, but when he went to lick his lips he froze. 

“Ah, right,” He mentally recalled. “No tongue.”

Tongues, as he quickly learned in this world, were a luxury his people - the dwarves - could scarcely afford. When he arrived in the world, all those years ago, he had awakened to what he believed was a dream - lush fields of long green grass, billowing in the wind. A sun that floated lazily in the sky like an egg yolk, just waiting to spill its yellowy warmth upon the world. Seaside cliffs and tall rocky mountains, capped with short flowers shaped like little embers that burned all the colors of the rainbow. The smell of the sea had been strong then, he recalled, back when his colorblindness mistook a red light from green and ended up crashing head first into an island paradise he assumed to be the afterlife. 

“If only.” he grimly thought. 

The sounds of angered stomping and goats bleating roused his attention away from his misery and towards the ruckus going on outside. Throwing on a pair of brown burlap trousers, Aidan stepped outside to find a familiar sight: a ruddy skinned, stout old man as wide as he was tall, with two wide circle shaped dwarven ears. The man stroked his long grey beard with one bony hand, and in the other he held a thin rope lead that led to a struggling white goat. 

Upon seeing Aidan, the man stopped in place, then stomped his foot three times, followed by an irritated hum - with no tongues to speak, the dwarves had developed their own language, Aidan had learned. 

“You forgot to feed the goat,” The man tamped out. “He cried of hunger all night. And have more respect for your grandfather. You hurt my soul when you show your breasts in public, you know that.” He quickly followed. 

Looking down, Aidan initially didn't recognize what his grandpa meant, up until he recalled that he was no longer ‘Aidan’ in this world - he wasn't a man at all. 

He was Kroka. 

Mahogany toned, stout little dwarven girl Kroka, the girl with a mousy mop of black hair that curled into wild knots on her scalp, and two little black button eyes Aidan couldn't recognize in the mirror most days. She was cute for certain - but she wasn't Aidan. 

“I was busy,” Kroka stomped out in reply. “Besides, it's just a goat.”

Her grandfather nearly fell to his knees in shock. “Just a goat?” He stomped. “Just a goat??!” He stomped closer, causing Kroka to back up. “Have you forgotten what a privilege it is to have a goat at all? You are the granddaughter of the Great Ginou, and that alone is why you have a goat!”

Kroka simply rolled her eyes and turned on her heel - she could feel the rhythmic pounding through the ground even with her back turned, but her disrespectful intent rang clear to the furious old man. 

“You are showing impetuousness! Ungratefulness! Spoiled as a rotten egg on a garbage heap on a hot summer day!” Though his anger was great - and greatly annoying - Kroka could certainly understand the root of his anger. Three long years of bloodshed, poverty and near daily hunger had seen to that. Spotting a familiar figure from the corner of her eye, Kroka decided she had enough of her grandfather's repetitive tirade and walked off mid ‘speech’ to greet him, much to her grandfather's chagrin. “Dayil, how goes the southern exploration team?”

The man, Dayil, was a lanky man with pallid skin and no ears. He scrunched up his stubby nose in response, and tapped out a quick pattern in reply. “You should listen to your grandpa, Kroka. To have a goat is a privilege many can not have.” 

“Oh please,” Kroka tapped back, while her grandfather continued his angry tirade in the background. “Spare me the lecture. And don't avoid my question, Dayil. What is the toll?”

Dayil’s gentle smile slipped from waxy, peeling thin lips. “Three dead, five more wounded, and that's just from exploring the area near the southern shore.” 

Kroka paused, and her grandfather stopped with her. Three good men, stripped of their lives without any value. The survivors may linger on, but most would succumb to disease. 

“Anything I can do?” Kroka stamped out  

“Maybe. You aren't old enough to practice the healing ritual yet, but-” Out from his pockets, Dayil pulls a short length of black string, with three shells attached. “It would be helpful if you could go down to the river and pray for them. Would you, Kroka?”

“Yes,” She replied, without a moment of hesitation. “I'll pray as hard as I can.” Kroka’s grandfather stopped upon seeing the gesture, and silently headed back inside.

A half smile formed on Dayil's face before he could stop it. “Thank you, Kroka. Blessings be to the Sacred Six Sisters.”

‘Blessings be.” She faintly tapped in reply, mind snagged on her task. 

Kroka returned the kind gesture, and set off onto her path. The path to the shore was long and the day was hot even with heavy grey clouds rolling in over the horizon, though the wise fronds of the Jakoma fruit trees did their best to block the direct rays, and the pleasant, faint scent of their fruits ached in the back of her throat. Looking up for a moment, Kroka wondered briefly what the strange, foot ball shaped red fruits that grew from them tasted like. 

“Guess I'll never know now.” Aidan thought, bitterly cursing the strange country he was forced into and the lack of a tongue it came with. 

By the time she reached the shore, many of the women would have already arrived, so she took the long scenic route down to the stony beaches, down by where the southern exploration team made their huts. 

Brown and green grass that get houses, and similar to her own, stood in rows along the sandy white shore. Children played by the beaches, collecting sea shells and comparing to see who has the largest, the prettiest, the brightest, as children do. It was all so normal, and yet Aidan felt it was all anything but. In his world, he was just an average Joe, working at some draconic company with too many heads for long, coffee fueled hours of chump change, but now? Now he was in a fantasy hell scape, and those were all the oblivious people trapped here with him. 

With his mind lost in thought, it wasn't long before he came upon a high grassy cliff, sectioned between two of the many massive mountains that surrounded the dwarves on all sides. 

There the women of all colors and creeds, all shapes and sizes sat, huddled together in their grey and brown linen robes like rock statues resting in the flowing green streaks of long grass. They hummed there together, a deep, sullen tune that resounded through the earth and rose only when the grief grew too great to withstand it. Those with hands gripped countless shell necklaces taut between dried, dirt stained fingers, though all women carried them on their being. They cried and hummed all together, for the sons and brothers and husbands they had lost and would surely lose in the coming days. 

How many had been lost? Kroka wondered. How many more would die before anything changed? 

Clutching the white shells and black string tight in her palm, she joined among the swaddled mass of women, who welcomed her own grief filled melody as they sang their sorrows to the pink and orange hued bleeding sun setting in the sky and casting it's bloody glow on the stormy clouds around it. Tomorrow they would be back - back in the dungeons slaving away with only the hope of death as reprieve. 

Kroka wept. 

Aidan wept. 

The women wept. 

The sky wept. 

But in their hearts, they thundered. 

And soon enough, the mourning retreated from the stormy blackened sky, and the moon bathed the women in the blue glow of night. 

“Best be getting back,” One woman patted softly into the sand, her weathered features hardened into a grim frown. “We'll need to get good sleep for tomorrow.”

The women said their goodbyes and scattered like petals into the night breeze, leaving to their grass strewn huts and dirt mat beds. 

The walk back home never seemed longer in her life. 

She passed silently through the doorway into her house, the hut she had come to call home since her home had been ripped away. Her only greeting was the soft bleating of her goat, and grandfather's heavy snoring on his side of the room, while he laid out on a brown straw mat. Her entire world, here in this room. She laid down on her side, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep. 

“Are you alright?” Her grandfather rasped into the soil with his fingertips. 

“...Yeah.” Kroka replied. “Just tired.”

Maybe her world wasn't so bad, she thought hopefully. 

Hopefully indeed. 

With that thought, she closed her eyes, prayed once to the night mother, and fell asleep.