#Chasing 'bout my head like the wolf that found the sheep.

[cloudbattrolls]

Drowned Sorrows

This drabble is preceded by As Mayflies.

Epsilo Volant | Spring Court | Present Night

The pair tumbled from the clouds into a cool pond, landing with a great splash as bubbles rose around them.

Epsilo turned back into a troll as he easily kicked his way to the surface. He treaded water as Ullane hung off him, unconscious again.

More white in her hair. It was half pale now, half dark. Was that slight webbing he saw between her hands?

He cursed softly as he held up her limp, lean body, keeping the woman’s head above water as her long locks splayed out behind her.

At least this time they hadn’t been greeted by an ambush. Yet. 

He looked around. 

This time they floated in a pond full of giant lily pads, large green frogs with multiple eyes watching them but making no move. Perhaps they were regular wildlife - well, regular for the fae realms.

“Weeper and werebeast.”

A voice came from one of the frogs, its mouth hung open and still. Clearly, something else was speaking through it.

“The spring court sends our regards. So long as you do not damage our realm, you may have safe passage back to the troll world. However, we will not allow you to reach Sunrest. We know you wish to bring back the Varzims banished by the winter queen, and we will not let the malediction happen. You understand.”

The voice, while pleasant, became mildly condescending at the last two words.

Epsilo kept a stony silence as he paddled to shore, away from the frog. He knew better than to speak to the fae unless he had to.

He knew better than to trust their supposed promise of returning home. May have safe passage - it was not guaranteed.

The winter court had been frozen in mourning. The autumn court had been violent, eternally obsessed with their own fall.

The spring court, it seemed, were manipulators. More like the fae one read of in wrigglers’ tales, twisting words and stretching the truth to its limit.

He finally reached the shallows of the pond - it was not deep, overall, but it stretched wide from bank to bank, and it had taken him several minutes of swimming to get this far. For once, he was grateful to not have gills; the fresh water would have played havoc with them.

Epsilo’s feet sunk into deep mud as he slogged through clouds of waterweed and pond skaters to finally step on the reed-filled shore. The reeds rustled despite the lack of any wind, and bent toward the trolls as they passed. He ignored it, used to such things by now.

He laid Ullane down carefully, then sat down heavily himself beside her, taking deep breaths as he pushed his wet, wavy hair out of his face.

So. They weren’t to be touched unless they tried to reach the summer court, then?

He was hardly going to put all his faith in that, but the lack of aggression or traps they’d run into so far led him to believe that the spring court didn’t want to fight them unless they had to. 

Perhaps they’d heard what had happened to their fellows.

Good. He and Ullane needed to rest. Sleeping in the cold winter cave now felt like it had happened an eon ago, though it had probably been less than a night. Time was strange here.

He looked around. No obvious place to shelter came into sight; all he saw was a field with some trees and another pond some ways off.

They might be ‘safe’ at the moment, but he certainly wasn’t going to sleep in the open. They’d have to search elsewhere. 

He was used to wet clothes, but he didn’t need mud caked into them. Still, if he stepped back in the water his feet would simply sink in again.

The highblood resigned himself to living with it for the moment. 

He laid down on the damp ground. It felt comforting to the former seadweller. Just a few minutes, and…

When he woke up from his accidental nap, he was lying on a bed of reeds, his clothes now clean and dry. He blinked, and sat up; there were reeds above him too, woven together into what seemed to be a small, freshly made hut.

“Hello?” He called.

“Hello.” He heard back in a familiar tone, and he slowly got up and wandered outside of the structure.

Ullane sat in a chair of reeds, fishing on the shore, eyes on her makeshift line but flicking an ear in his direction. She looked the most content he’d ever seen her, but…

He noticed her irises were almost completely violet now. Hardly any threads of their original yellow remained.

“Wait. Why are you fishing? We don’t need to eat.” The eel-dragon troll asked, puzzled.

She smiled. “Not for food. Study.”

The medic yanked her line up, splattering him with a few stray drops as she reeled in a…

What was that, thrashing on the hook?

One moment it looked like a turtle with fish fins. Then a dragonfly nymph with fangs. Then -

Epsilo looked away, feeling he’d be dizzy or ill if he watched the creature’s flesh ripple and shift any longer.

“The spring court were the most understanding of Uryali.” Ullane said.

“They both share a need for growth. Spring changes…and now it never stops.” She said. “Look out at the frogs, Epsilo.”

The violet looked at the creatures sitting on and swimming around the lilypads.

Tadpoles with back legs but no front ones clung to the lilypads. Tadpoles who were nearly frogs. Masses of eggs. All slowly shifting to different stages of life as he watched.

“No stability.” Ullane murmured as she enclosed the creature in a bubble of violet membrane and reeled it in, then put it to the side next to her. 

“If things never stay the same for long, there’s nothing to grieve, nothing to dwell on.” 

She smiled darkly.

“The court doesn’t need to attack us. They just have to keep the summer gate from settling so we can use it.”

“They can’t get rid of it entirely.” Epsilo pointed out. “Surely you can track it by its growth, or…something.” He said with a sigh, very much unsure of exactly how her powers worked. 

There wasn’t really an ‘exactly’ when it came to horrorterrors to begin with.

Ullane looked amused. “They’ve thought of that. I’ve tried to sense the gate, but they must have it warded.”

“Then we find the wards.” Epsilo said, determined. “Ones that intensive have to require the efforts of several fae, or a very powerful one, like a royal.” 

The yellowblood looked intrigued by his words, her tail waving back and forth as her expression became heavily contemplative; she was clearly thinking hard. 

The shapeshifting creature wriggled in its translucent bubble.

Epsilo looked at it. Ullane followed his gaze. Then she grinned.

“You have an idea, don’t you?” He said, with a trace of grim humor. “Please tell me it’s less dramatic than your last two.”

The medic laughed.

“If I can’t guide us,” She said, her fingers and half-black horns crackling with sparks that were, for once, more reddish than violet. “Then I’ll make something that can.”

She picked up the membrane and it withered just as the ones that saved him from falling had, and the creature stopped wriggling. It stopped shifting, too.

It looked at her with what Epsilo could have sworn was fear in its currently rat-like eyes.

Ullane paid it no heed. She focused, humming, and her power sunk into it with a crackle of energy.

The violet shut his eyes, but it hardly mattered. 

He could still smell the rich and slightly rotten scent of torn-open life, feel the power that washed over him as she rearranged its body.

Did it understand what had been done to it, he wondered, as he opened his eyes and saw it now in the form of a firefly-like creature.

It clung to her arm placidly now, thin legs gripping her skin, and Ullane looked perfectly at peace with that.

“I fed it my blood.” She said. “It will grow, be able to pick up the smell of the wards as even I cannot. My senses don’t reach that far.”

Yet, Epsilo did not retort. They didn’t reach that far yet.

How much longer could she hold onto trollhood? Did she care anymore?

He supposed there wasn’t time to discuss it right now. All he could do was watch over her.

As he watched, the insect rippled and expanding to a length of a few feet, and Ullane lifted her arm to set it free. It hovered in the air a few moments as its clear wings beat rapidly, moving this way and that, then abruptly turned and pointed in one direction.

She grinned at him. 

“Will you carry me?”

“I am not a horse.” The violet grumbled, but he dutifully turned back into a werehyena anyway and Ullane climbed on.

It wasn’t as if he’d refuse, well aware of the ticking clock. He loped after the firefly, not at his fastest pace but a steady one he could maintain, trying to avoid the muddiest parts of the ground.

Their guide flew several feet ahead of them, but thankfully always within his sight. 

At least, he thought as he raced across the water-meadows, avoiding clumps of flowers wafting thick pollen clouds, this was the third court. 

Once they made it through the wards and the gate, there was only summer left.

What sort of hellish greeting waited for them this time? Did Ullane have a plan to fight them? They could be running right into another ambush for all he knew.

Yet it was almost silent. Not a peaceful silence, he thought as he kept going, but a heavy one. A pause that held its breath, waiting for something to happen soon.

He didn’t notice the wisps of fog at first, so thin were they, until they began flowing together above and around him, twisting into low streams of cloud.

Golden pollen mixed with the water vapor, floating in lazy swirls among the mist, and Epsilo felt himself growing…tired…

“Help…” he murmured, speech slurred. “Help me, medic…”

The world tilted, shook, his paws clumsily scrabbling and slipping over the mud, and he -

- gasped, throat on fire, his brain unable to make sense of what he saw.

The spring court had become a muddy wasteland riddled with fae corpses cycling through life and decay, rippling with mold and fungus one moment and visible, living organs the next. 

They did not attack as he stumbled past. He couldn’t see the firefly anymore; he had no idea where he was going. He couldn’t feel Ullane on his back.

They simply stood or laid there, staring with empty sockets - rotten eyes - and as one, they opened their bony jaws and disintegrating pincers to sing. 

Flee, now, weeper and werebeast

Go back now, run to the realm that you came from

Ours will not suffer your touch 

No malediction will warp our souls

As yours, diseased, comes to dust

Ignore it…he knew he had to ignore it…

Weighed down with mud, he struggled to lift his limbs. Every breath was sharp in his mouth. His lips foamed over as his lungs began to give out.

Was this…was he going to…

Ullane suddenly stood in front of him, manifesting from nowhere, her back to the werehyena.

Epsilo was struck with terror. He did not want to see her face.

But he could breathe again. He spat out the foam, his lungs still painful, but working, working again.

Ullane walked forward - her arms now mottled black up to her elbows - and with every step lifted from the mire, the footprint overflowed with dark water.

The footprints burgeoned with spiny starfish flesh.

Curling vines rose from them, thick with insect chitin and porcupine spines.

The corpses’ song cut off. Their bodies were…even further changed, unstable, growing into one another, their flesh fusing, screaming -

Wake up, he heard her whisper.

The highblood gasped again, and shook himself to consciousness back in the real world as he blearily looked up at…

…the gate. A shifting, twisting heat mirage that shimmered before him, radiating summer warmth. It almost blended in with the fog around them, but not quite. 

He really was covered in mud, he realized, and it was now baking onto him. He turned back into troll form and backed away a few feet. 

He looked around to see Ullane, still feeling that twinge of instinctive terror.

But her face was…mostly…the same.

Her eyes were all violet now. Not a trace of yellow remained. 

She didn’t seem tired. The lowblood came over to help him up, and no mud clung to her at all. 

“What…did you do?” He said, voice still rough.

“I turned their own dream-weaving rotten. Gave them daymares.” She murmured with a hint of amusement. 

Her firefly landed on her arm again. Ullane stroked it fondly…and then ripped it in two, but it did not die. Its original wriggling, unstable state fell out of the insect and fled from her.

Epsilo watched and she smiled at him. Her teeth were sharper now, too. 

“It belongs here.” She said softly. She rarely spoke above a whisper now, yet he had no trouble hearing. He could feel her voice too, deep in his bones, a faint vibration.

“It deserves to go home.”

Epsilo nodded and, despite his fear, his reservations, he held out a hand to her.

Ullane blinked in surprise, and stepped closer, taking his thick-fingered palm in her slim digits.

Her hand was cold - colder than a lowblood’s should ever be, slightly webbed and damp.

He squeezed it anyway, and shut his eyes against the blast of heat as they both stepped through the gate to the last court of the fae.