#ishtar mercuralis

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OC-tober Day 7: their favorite thing

Is their favorite thing stargazing, or each other? (let’s say this is before Ishtar had kids).

Ryn should definitely have more tattoos I just don’t have ideas.

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(Some of) the people trying to take over the world

Overthrowing a government is always dangerous, no matter how many decades you’ve spent preparing for it. What better way to prepare yourself and your family for possible death than with a game of monopoly stolen from the Human World? They are normally much better behaved than this. It’s just this family assumes that madness is the core mechanic of monopoly. (It would be too boring otherwise, right?) The coup was successful, for the record. These losers are the first family of an entire elf world. Now they’re going for the human one.

The woman in the back, wearing the crown, is soon-to-be Apex Ishtar Mercuralis. She should be taller, and built like a truck, but a meme format is a meme format. She is throwing monopoly dollars onto her second in command, Ryn Stormson Mercuralis. She is a noblewoman from the second most important genus, and he is a commonborn sailor turned advisor. They have one son, Fen Mercuralis, who is the noble elf equivalent of seven years old. He’s holding the microphone.

The biological father of the other two children is in the cardboard jail. He’s Arjuna Mercuralis, and they’re a former assassin and current stay at home parent. His two kids with Ishtar are Suen Mercuralis (female, ten, facing away from the camera) and Chandra Mercuralis (male, eight, lying on the floor). Lastly, the old white guy is Ryn’s seneschal, Callum. He’s about 60. Seneschals are elite human servants of the nobility who are part secretary and part emotional support. Callum has served Ryn for nearly 40 years now, and will be retiring soon. Ishtar also has a seneschal, but she doesn’t view hers as a person in the same way. Ryn’s closer relationship with his seneschal (but still one fundamentally based around ownership!) is a direct result of his commoner upbringing.

Of these characters, Ishtar and Ryn are the most important and will get their own posts soon.

You know what, screw it. glossary of terms below.

Apex: the elven title for the ruler of their entire planet. Has always been either the head of Gens Mercuralis or Gens Sondaica.

Genus (plural Genera, shortens to Gens): In the real world this is the term for a group of similar species. It’s derived from a Latin world for descent or lineage. I am using it instead of House to describe noble bloodlines because elves aren’t normal about nature or evolution.

The Human World: Here. A planet without any natural magic, populated by a whole lot of humans. Parallel to the elf world. It’s June of 2019.

The Elf Word: A parallel world to the Human World. It has the same continents and the same rough evolutionary history, but is populated by the naturally magical elves. And humans that they abducted a long time ago to do work.

Nobility: approximately one percent of the population of the Elf World. They form the genera, and those born into the nobility have the most magical aptitude. They reach adulthood at about 100, and die at around 600. Especially powerful nobles (like Genus Mercuralis) will age even more slowly. It is also possible, but very difficult, for a commoner to join the nobility through merit. This does not give them any additional magic.

Commoners: all elves who are not nobility. Around 60% of the population of the elven world. Depending on magical potential, they reach adulthood at 80-90 years old and die somewhere around 500.

Seneschal: elite human servants of the nobility who are part secretary and part emotional support. Some nobles view their seneschals as trusted companions, some more like service animals, and some like walking printers. It depends.

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Long Character Bio for Ishtar

Name: Apex Ishtar Mercuralis

Pronouns: She/Her

Species: Elf (High Nobility)

Age: 260 (late 20s)

Special skills: brute force, powerful magic, leadership and tactics.

Appearance notes: 6’3 and built like a truck. She has middle eastern features (though no elves exactly fit human ethnicities) and dark eyes that glow indigo when she uses her magic. Many scars. She wears a noble vambrace on her left forearm that is almost entirely covered in little red marks. She has sharper canine teeth than a human, and long elf ears.

Ishtar Mercuralis is the Apex of the Elf world, but she’s trying to not be a tyrant. The foundational law of The Gap Years is that magical people live for a long time, but magical people are also supposed to be fragile. Ishtar is an extremely powerful magic user, and she is 6’3” and built like a truck. The Mercurali have always been strong by the standards of the high nobility, (their symbol is an aurochs, an ancient type of bull) but never strong like this. Ishtar fights with a warhammer. She has killed another elf with her bare hands and no magic at all. She is not normal.

But Ishtar is also the mother of three. They are all older than she was when her own family was murdered in the last coup, but she wants to make a better world for them. She wants things to be better. She is so strong and has suffered so much. It had to have been for a reason. Ishtar and her allies overthrew Genus Sondaica to take the throne of her entire planet a few days ago, and tried to not make it personal. Mercuralis and Sondaica have been fighting back and forth for a little over four thousand years now. It is nearly guaranteed that her children or grandchildren will be themselves overthrown. Or at least that’s how the story usually goes. This time, Ishtar and her councilors have a plan. They will change the twin worlds like they haven’t been changed in four thousand years. They will end the pattern, return to outer space, and oh yeah, conquer the human world. Ishtar has little to no respect for humanity and is treating the whole situation like a particularly annoying logistics problem.

Ishtar is a fan of science fiction, mostly thanks to Ryn. She has read Three Body Problem in two languages and lost so much sleep thinking about it. (Maybe she does feel a bit uncomfortable about her own plot to conquer a world…) She watches alien invasion movies and critiques the evil schemes. The song I associate the most with her is Eight by Sleeping at Last.

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Being Alive (The Gap Years 2x4)

September 19th

The Elven Capital

Ishtar's life is a miracle. She is alive, the ruler of an entire planet, happy, even. There must be a world where it stays like this forever, but she has a job to do. The war has begun, and her family must be ready for it.

Navigation Guide

Previous

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There is one other Mercuralis alive who remembers living in the palace. Enli is the same height as Ishtar, but shorter than her eldest son. Neither of them have a fraction of the scars she does. Kishar saw death for the first time this week, but his mother has no excuse. The only three Mercuralis adults sit in a room that she hasn’t tried to make match the way it was before, complimenting her husband's tea and pretending their relationship isn’t mangled like a broken limb. 

When the previous coup left her and Ishtar as their family’s last survivors, Enli was left with nothing but a legendary name, an orphaned cousin, and her own trauma. Maybe she could have given Ishtar to one of their allies to raise, but their family were symbolized by an ice-age bull and just as stubborn. Genus Mercuralis would endure, even if it meant a half-grown girl playing the role of a mother. “Playing” is the precise word. Ishtar came of age as a vengeful ghost and fell desperately for the first person to seem to live in the world, instead of occupying space. Is it worse to be like her predecessor, Emer Sondaica, who had such a full life but gave it all up? Or is it worse to have been empty from the beginning? 

Enli has been a much better mother this time around. Her cousin must have needed a test run. Ishtar, for her part, is genuinely shocked to be alive at all.

“The attacks in the human realm,” Enli begins. “I believe you that the Sondaica prince wasn’t supposed to be there, but it’s not him I have a problem with. It’s his humans. There are rules to war. Those three have never heard of them”. 

“Oh yes. Those same rules that left us as the only survivors out of nineteen Mercurali? Marin’s humans shoot to kill at times, but they’re young and desperate. Students at the Conservatory try the same thing”. That’s how she’s explained it to her council, and the lords, and everyone stunned by the trail of destruction three rich kids have wrought. “They are the children of human nobility. That society is as cutthroat as ours, they just don’t do the killing themselves. This must be cathartic for them”. Taking her first prisoner -knuckles against bone, an enemy slung over her shoulder- was like the sunrise. 

Kishar folds his hands. He doesn’t have the grim gray eyes of his cousin Chandra, those are from her husband’s family, but the grief of their world weighs on him just as heavily. “It’s not only them. The scientists were better trained than we expected”. Then he turns to his mother. “They were the threat to my life, not the prince or his servants. I told you he was happy to retreat”. 

Enli turns her head. “Well, the scientists are dead now”. 

There were twelve attacks two days ago, ten of them successful, including in the salt desert city where Marin unexpectedly appeared. They don’t know exact casualties, but she suspects three hundred humans dead across the world along with eight citizens of the elven world captured as traitors.

“Not all of them, but more than the old apex was ever able to do”. 

It turns out that even the void-cursed and gifted can only be in one place at once, and yet the university Cai Sondaica materialized to protect wasn’t even the mission with the highest cost. Ninety-five soldiers died across twelve attacks. They expected some casualties in the underground labs where soldiers could not switch worlds to retreat, but one dead elf for every three dead humans? By tradition, none of them but the handful killed by renegade sparks and royals can be properly honored on a kill list. This is why she’s talking to her cousin. When she says “Ishtar, what have you done,” she hardly notices. 

Most of her high council is thrilled, but that almost feels worse. Arjuna is decidedly neutral on human affairs, and Ryn… Ryn is not talking to her. It’s not as bad as it sounds. He was at the table during the creation of the plan and his firefly seal (the symbol they chose as teens back when her first officer decided it just wasn’t right to drag the Stormson hurricane into noble crimes) is on the document. He’s out at sea. Her vambrace chimes a steady heartbeat of data. He’s alive. He’s safe. He’ll come home when he’s ready.

Enli asks if her daughter is out with Ryn. She saw the boys today, but not Suen. Ishtar keeps her expression level. She does not fidget or shift her stance. “Oh. I can call her back in, if you’d like?”

She sends her daughter a brief message. Devana Marolak thinks she's been watching too much human media, but she has a pager. The Sondaica twins may have been picking pockets in the human realm at her age, but that was centuries ago. She can't afford to take extra risks. Then, with a broad grin, the apex of the twin worlds throws open the great windows of the parlor. Waves crash against the rocks stories beneath the balcony. This face of the building is an artificial cliff with nothing else beneath them. She stands to the side and looks back at her cousins. “You should move out of the way. She’s still working on landing”.

“Impossible. Who taught her? The assassin?”

“My husband would be honored that you think he can fly”. 

A shadow flickers far above them. Something with the wingspan of an albatross plummets out of the sky more like a meteor than a bird of prey. Her heart catches in her chest. Suen rolls out of a dive and rises back to their level. She stretches out her arms, the drag on her spectral feathers slowing her down to only about a sprinting pace. She is an indigo blur between the older Mercurali. Then her clawed boots catch on the carpet, and Ishtar does not look away as her only daughter slams into the floor with a thud worthy of an aurochs. Their mugs of tea rattle on the table. 

No one moves. Suen’s wings fade as she sits up but her eyes stay magic-bright. Whatever impossibility gave Ishtar her toughness wasn’t heritable. Her daughter’s bones are as fragile as the high nobility can get. She looks it too. Ishtar thinks it’s fitting that the first Apex of the united worlds will have the body type that humans expect of elves or fairies. Or maybe her little satellite is just young. For thirty silent seconds, Sue, a decade short of puberty and fifty years away from the start of her gap years, barely even glances at her. She’s running a diagnostic, looking for fractures and sprains. 

Ishtar feels the sparring mats under her sandals. She can take a punch better than even the sparks and could snap an elf’s neck with a twist of her arms. It would be quick, like a scepter through the heart, but there wouldn’t be blood and there was so much-

“Just like in the basketball videos!”

Suen giggles and holds a hand up to her mouth. There’s a small canine tooth on the ground and Ishtar remembers that she is the mother now and she is gloriously alive. “It had been loose for a month, Ma”. 

Kishar kneels down to meet her eyes. Suen towers over most kids her age, but he’s a true Mercuralis giant. “Pretty tough”. She beams and folds her Voyager pilot’s scarf to stop the bleeding. 

“Moonlight. Cousin Enli is asking who taught you how to fly”. 

“His Grace, Hierax of Genus Tiercel,” her daughter says with perfect royal poise, then giggles again. 

Enli raises an eyebrow and mutters in an old language the children don’t know. 

“I thought you were against betrothals”.

“I am. Don’t make this weird”. 

The floor still has a bit of a phantom bounce when Sue gets back to her feet and puts the tooth into her mother’s. In Ishtar’s oldest memories, her own mother says to keep her feet on the ground. Strength comes from leverage. You swing a hammer with your legs to hit an illusionist you’ve sensed through vibrations in the earth. Suen’s been learning to tell where her father invisibly goes since before she would walk, but the human world plays by different rules. She’s seen the tactics in their films, the heroic ones, and checks them against humanity's own list of war crimes. Mercuralis strength is enough to break through the nobility, but wild humans throw money at sports where bones shatter in every game. The children of the wildblood staff pick Suen first when they play as teams because she is lightning-fast and clever and knows how to lead, but those kids are never older than thirteen. An elbow to the jaw from a trained adult could do more than knock out a loose tooth. The butt of a jammed rifle, held by a conscripted boy who would’ve been an athlete if not for their war, could kill. 

So she’ll learn to fly. Maybe Chandra will too, or maybe he’ll keep learning how to weave charms and disguises until even Ryn’s family, impenetrable as the screaming rain around the eye of a storm, will tell him everything. Fedran is a little weaker. His colors are more muddled. He was born eighteen years ago, but only looks a bit younger than his brother. In a few decades they’ll seem the same age, and then Fen will grow up and look like the older sibling for the rest of their lives. A royal family made of a spark, a slightly unstable assassin, and an apex who could stand up to the three-hundred-pound titans on a gridiron football team. And to think it was a scandal when Emer was made apex! As if a weird twin and a habit of running off to jazz clubs was anything compared to this. 

Ishtar puts the tooth into her pocket. They’ll bury it under a tree and some little thing will appreciate the calcium. Not long after, her daughter takes a running start and vaults over the railing of the balcony much faster than Ishtar could manage. Kids these days. 

Back in the Problem Room, Ishtar sees a different sort of triumph. They’ve been chasing young runaways for months, but finally they’ve made an attack of their own. Devana Marolak’s fear of wild humans with guns has been validated, and Amedi is just happy to have done well. The councillors were both in the field on two separate missions. Actually, Ishtar was in the field as well. One of the laboratories on their list of targets was right over the fault line parallel to the capital, and they needed someone with a gentle touch to collapse it without making a bigger problem. The last big quake there was about a decade after Arjuna and her had married. There was a fire. Total mess. Not wishing to burn San Fransisco again, she and Amedi made their exit with only two elves dead and the faintest whisper of a category two earthquake behind them. Across the world, Devana set off a bomb and nearly collapsed a stop of the Moscow Metro. She can’t speak Russian, but the councillor seems entertained by the story of coordinated terrorist attacks. 

Gullin Eburos spent the fateful night in his laboratory instead, testing his project against another dozen overlapping conditions and tinkering with fatality rates. She’s lent an old Mercurali word to the plague: diasu. It’s a dead language, so the meaning can be whatever they need. Really though, it means “to thresh”. As an ancient agricultural term, it meant to separate the grain from its stalk. As her new political tool, it means to remove the useful from that which is dry and brittle and best used to feed an animal or a flame. 

When her first officer asked (declared) if it was wrong to talk about wild humans like that when they’ve taken such a stand against elven eugenics, she reminded him that human religions have used the metaphor for longer. Besides, their love has nothing to do with conquering a world. Their son is a symbol, but not of that. By the time Fen is old enough to have anything to do with politics, the human world will be theirs. 

(Why does Ishtar know anything about human religions? Well, it’s important to know the traditions of a place you’re trying to conquer. Ryn also convinced her to read Moby-Dick and she didn’t want to feel like she was missing half of the context).

Anyway, noble superiority has never done her any good and Ryn could pick Devana Marolak up and throw her if he stopped wanting to play nice. Fedran is her perfect firefly and if any nobles have issues then they should address her as Your Eminence or better yet not talk at all. 

Magical power is tough to predict. At best it’s like height: certainly there is a basis in family history, but it also depends on childhood circumstances and chance. Her exceptional power and Ryn’s…well, he has humans in his family tree, don’t cancel to average. Their son is on even footing with most of the lower nobility, including warriors like Amedi Kebero. Magically, that is. Fen still has almost all of his baby teeth, and Amedi has half a dozen kills to their name. He’s a good kid. Observant. Not in the same empathetic way as his brother, but more looking for systems. A few nights before the coup, Arjuna whispered that he had the mind of an assassin. He’s also really into trains. 

So things feel pretty good in the room named for the fact that it’s where things go wrong. They’re at the bleeding edge of a new era and it’s all too easy to imagine all of that metaphorical blood belonging to their enemies. She keeps the new casualty reports on the table as they discuss everything else. Devana talks about a drought in Asia. Amedi and their seneschal present on commoner resistance where Marin is likely to travel. They talk for hours as though two nights ago they didn’t set off the first rumbles of an upheaval that will lay dormant and stutter but never stop until they’re directing the clean up of a decimated human realm. As she’s preparing to dismiss the council (almost time to sit on her throne and hear petitions), Gullin’s doglike seneschal returns with five cups of spruce beer, even though there’s only four elves at the massive table. Seneschals don’t miss details. Gullin gives his human an amused nod and the young man smiles back with fangs and chugs a glass. They all toast to better luck and easier battles. 

She looks down to her vambrace. Her partner says air pressure is dropping and there’s clouds to the west. He’s already weathering a political storm, and doesn’t need another. The dot on the screen turns back home. 

…………

Suen is like 10 in elven years. Chandra is 8 and Fen is 7.

Ishtar uses the word decimated to describe what’s in store for the human realm. I’m afraid her actual plans have a far higher fatality rate than one in ten. 

The nobility are not big on recreational substances. (looking at you, Zerada). I’m using the word “beer” like in root beer. It’s non-alcoholic and a Canadian thing.

@lokiwaffles @reggie246 @wishndreamer

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OC-tober day 13: Fantasy Star Trek AU

Welcome to the bridge! The background is largely traced from a Deep Space 9 screenshot. Sadly, even in an AU, this crew are at war. The uniforms don’t line up with the timeline though.

Lore thoughts below.

Ishtar Mercuralis is the captain of one of the most influential ships in the fleet. She’s an earthborn Human with some illegal genetic enhancements. However, due to the early deaths of responsible party (her parents) and the fact that the changes were strictly physical, Starfleet decided to make an exception and let her in. She’s no stronger than the other species in the Federation, anyway. There’s a betting pool that she’s the most likely captain to get captured, and then resist assimilation, by the Borg.

As always, Ryn is her first officer. Commander Stormson, actually. I think he’d make a good Orion, if the writers actually cared. He trained as a science officer first, and has held command positions, but requested a transfer to Ishtar’s ship after exploratory missions were delayed due to the war. They’ve been best friends for decades. His actions got at least one rule added to the Starfleet Academy rulebook.

The chief science officer is Commander Gullin Eburos. He would be some sort of alien and at least twice the age of the rest of the bridge crew. He has some questionable holodeck preferences, but everyone knows he’s trustworthy. Eburos is trained as a doctor as well, but has changed career paths a few times in his long life. Devana Marolak would be the tactical officer, and a Klingon. She hasn’t betrayed anyone in this AU, but being a Klingon in the Federation around the this time would be a bit similar.

Lastly, Lieutenant Junior Grade Amedi Kebero, reporting for duty. They’ve earned a promotion ahead of schedule to the surprise of no one, and they’ve already landed a vague position on the bridge after only three years in the fleet.

(Esther’s the communications officer and also a Lieutenant Junior Grade. Maybe they can be real friends with Amedi this time around, now that they’re equal ranks and both over-achieving babies on the same bridge crew.)

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OC-tober Day 8: In Their Favorite Outfit

It’s my October prompt list and I get to make the rules (it’s not I did not make these prompts). Notes time.

Clay: He prefers dark colors and sturdy, breathable clothes. He doesn’t wear printed shirts, but he likes simple patterns. Clay’s favorite outfit is dark jeans, running shoes, and his leather jacket over a lightly patterned shirt. He’ll usually fold a bandana into a fancy pocket square and put that in the jacket, just in case he wants to hide his face.

Brian: He got a windbreaker from his baseball team, and likes that more than his actual varsity jacket. He’s not really into clothes. T-shirt and shorts type of guy. He’s probably the best of the three at applying makeup, a skill he acquired as a bit and from various girlfriends.

Sierra: Her workshop gear! Gray baggy cargo pants, a heavy-duty utility belt, steel-toed boots, and a dark blue sweatshirt with the drawstrings tucked in. When it isn’t a safety hazard, she wears copper wire around her wrists and a pair of blue headphones with stickers. She doesn’t like wearing tight clothes and always cuts out the tags.

Marin: He’s loyal to Sondaica emerald and gold. However, Marin has fallen in love with human printed shirts, especially the ones that are a little cliche. His favorite is a dark green one that says “not all who wander are lost”. Maybe if he wears it, that will make it true. He’ll wear sandals with socks if it’s cold. It’s more acceptable in the elven world I promise.

Ryn: When Ryn was a young prodigy, he’d seize any opportunity to walk around in just loose pants and lace-up boots to show off his Voyager tattoos. Now, he’d rather have a shirt on. Ryn likes bold designs, and still has a soft spot for the grids and map-inspired patterns of the Voyagers. This man would order the deaths of thousands while wearing a Hawaiian shirt if he could.

Ishtar: Ishtar’s favorite outfit is a long indigo robe with too many layers to fight in, and a decorative silver cover over her vambrace. She faintly remembers her mother wearing something similar.

Amedi: Ceremonial combat gear. High reinforced boots, detailed armor with the veins glowing red, red war paint and a helmet shaped like the head of a jackal. Can do killer makeup.

Esther: Her favorite outfit is a long skirt and blouse, like what a working woman might have worn a hundred years ago. Her favorite colors are cool jewel-tones, but she’s been trapped in Mercuralis indigo and Kebero rust for basically the rest of her life. Esther also prefers to tie her hair back.

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A Road Trip and a Coup D'état (The Gap Years)

The first chapter of the Gap Years was so bad even by my standards that I couldn’t stand it anymore. Here it is again, rewritten.

this is the worse original version. link

…………………

San Francisco, or it’s parallel place in another world

June 10th

The letter will never reach her. Marin Sondaica is a prince, but he’s never been one for confrontation. He'd rather write a letter and be gone before the consequences can reach him, even if his mother ran away to spend years in the human world when she was years younger. He's confident no one will be able to track him down.

Marin has been trained in illusions and controlling minds, and can speak most human languages he’ll come across. He doesn’t look particularly striking either, minus the golden earrings in his pointed ears. He's just another teenager, not an eighty-six year old elf. His hazel eyes don't seem odd against his dark skin, except for when they glow with magic. Even his shoulder-length locs don’t cast a particularly notable silhouette. The letter says to not contact him unless it’s an emergency, so the odds are no one will bother to look for the spare prince. He's used to being ignored.

He is still a prince though. Marin's gathered human clothes, but only in the natural colors of Genus Sondaica. Marin picks up a messenger bag (bigger on the inside) and turns himself invisible before walking about the door. He leaves an emerald silhouette for an instant after disappearing. Soon, he will be in the human world.

Switching between the two is as easy as breathing for a nobleman like him. The human world is a shadow dragging itself forward with hydrocarbon fuels and messy democracy. The true, magical, world it reflects is Marin’s home. The continents are the same, if you ignore the faint craters of aerial bombardment and the missing islands swallowed by ancient rising seas. The elven capital is built on the shores of a bay with the palace encircling it’s southern side. When Marin steps from it to the human world, he appears just outside of San Fransisco. In Marin County, to be specific. He thinks it’s a good place to start.

His absence is noticed, but not cared about, until regional leaders shut down their communications one after the other. Soldiers descend on the palace and on a dozen other centers of power with unforeseen orders to capture instead of kill. That mercy is not universal. Marin’s mother, the Apex of their world, duels a stronger woman by her throne and dies to a shattered skull. Her scepter clatters to the ground, and her eyes go dark a moment later. The new Apex, a woman named Ishtar Mercuralis, picks it up like she will pick up Marin’s note a few hours later. Carefully, with respect for its importance and dread for what it means. No matter how little the Sondaicas cared for Marin before, he is an heir on the loose.

……………

In the midst of the celebrations and the arrests and the grief, Ishtar Mercuralis makes her way to the roof. There is a short man leaning against the balcony, looking out at the dark sky or the dark sea. He has a weathered face that would belong on a human who had lived for about forty difficult years. However, the figure’s pointed square ears mean that they are an elf, and no younger than two hundred. His armor is bulky and gray, more like something a human would wear. It’s fitting. The man is Ryn Stormson Mercuralis, a commonborn prodigy with barely enough magical aptitude to spark a candle. He is also the man Ishtar trusts more than anyone else in the worlds.

Her footsteps shake the earth as she moves to stand beside him. Ishtar leaves a few inches of distance so her soaked armor doesn’t drip blood onto his patch of balcony, but he places one hand onto hers.

“We did it”. It bears saying.

“Never again,” Ryn replies. Does he mean the fighting that’s driven them, especially Arjuna, halfway to madness, or does he mean the violence of the nobility as a whole?

“Well, at least you aren’t chasing hurricanes anymore”.

Ryn smiles weakly, then bursts out laughing in the pained way that soldiers do. Fireworks burst over the city in the colors of their genera. Mercuralis indigo, Eburos gold, Tiercel blue, and even Kebero rust red for their newest councilor. She tries to remember if there were this many when her parents were murdered.

Ryn speaks quietly. “Does it feel like victory, or like coming home?”

“It feels like both to see you”.

Ishtar continues, “Arjuna is well, considering everything. He has so many kills to mark. Kavec Adust included. I guess that means I should have killed him when I had the chance”.

“It was worth it to try. It still is". This coup had lower casualties than any other. What would she have done otherwise? "I take it Arjuna is with the little planets?” Her children. She had Suen and Chandra with Arjuna and Fedran with Ryn. None of them are older than primary school.

“I’d rather they don’t see me like this”. She lifts her arms to emphasize the blood. Tradition dictates that she can’t clean it off until the sun rises.

Ryn nods, but they’ve had this conversation before. “There will be time. We have time, centuries of it. Every day for the rest of our lives in a world that’s better, for once”.

“Both worlds, actually”.

“Eventually. That’s going to be tedious”.

“Oh the kids are going to hate it”.

…………

Marin is not the only heir seeking a break, though his magic did give him an easier way to take one. High school ended a week before at a particularly fancy private school in San Francisco, and three technically-adults survived the graduation party by the skin of their teeth and want to be far far away. The car they’re shoving bags into is heavily modified and one of a kind. Sierra Bracken built it out of one of her father’s tech expo prototypes. It’s electric, with solar panels in the top and falcon-wing doors that swing up instead of out. She calls it The Audacity for the amount of her time it dared to steal with broken brakes and faulty wiring. She’s wearing a sweatshirt despite the heat, and copper wire flashes under the sleeves. A billionaire’s daughter is not supposed to be a mechanic. A billionaire’s daughter is not supposed to have a frame that heavy or skin that brown. She’s her parent’s favorite, but not the media’s.

She slides into the passenger seat and begins fiddling with the music. Her friend, Brian, absently adjusts the mirror. He’s a full foot taller than Sierra, and loved by the same tabloids that have given up with her. He’s eighteen now, which means they can get a lot less subtle about the blond heartthrob with sky blue eyes who’s also the son of Governor Whitaker. Brian has a mean suntan for the beginning of June, a baseball cap from a team that made the state tournament this past year, and a Whitman poem inside his head. (To leave this steady unendurable land//To leave this tiresome sameness of streets). He’s the driver. He’s the shortstop. He’s damn good at all of this.

The final boy is technically in the backseat, but he’s leaning forward with his long arms around Brian and Sierra’s chairs. His name is Clay Shepard, and he got a perfect score on his SAT after spending half the previous night exploring an abandoned building. He’s from exactly as much wealth and power as the two of them, and on close examination that’s easy to see. His leather hiking boots are the best quality, and his clothes are perfectly tailored. They just look unassuming. His tortoiseshell glasses are also, illegally, not made of colored plastic. There’s no way anyone would find out though. The frames are decades old, and he cares more about whether things are ethical than whether they’re environmentally friendly. The sea turtles will die to rising temperatures anyhow.

Sierra has the faintest idea that magic is real, but none of them know that their home is parallel to the capital of the elven world. None of them know that there has just been a coup, or that the prince of the elven world has treated the three of them like a favorite reality television show for the past year. It turns out that even if they dodge the paparazzi following their fathers, someone is still always watching. It’s foggy and cool, as San Francisco usually is, when they park the car downtown and sit in some fancy coffee shop to decide their first moves. They want to cross the entire country, but the details are vague. Should they take Route 1 north along the coast, or go south to LA? They could get on the interstate and go straight west all the way to New York City.

Their thoughts are interrupted by a visitor. He’s a young man about their age with dark skin and bright hazel eyes.

“It’s nice to see all of you here!” he says so confidently.

The humans are all surprised, but happy to see him. Brian remembers him from a baseball tournament years ago. They laughed at some incompetent umpire and became instant friends the way that only ten year olds can do. Sierra thinks that she’s stood beside him in an engineering lab, and Clay is sure that there was a gala where they ran away together from the flashing cameras and overbearing adults.

None of them notice that his eyes flash emerald green as he sits down. None of them notice that they’ve never met him in their lives.

………………

Navigation Post

@lokiwaffles @reggie246 @wishndreamer

[winterpinetrees]

Navigation Guide for The Gap Years

The links are going to go here because tumblr’s tags do not tag, and the search function does not search. The number of subheadings is evidence of how much time I have devoted to this. Making ocs is certainly an activity that you can do with your time. Do I recommend it? Yeah actually, it’s been fun.

The Introduction

Worldbuilding

Societal Structure

Character introductions

Genus Mercuralis

The Human Protagonists

Long Character Bios

the road trip kids

Brian Whitaker

Sierra Bracken

Clay Shepard

Marin Sondaica

Zerada Adust

elves on the run

Jezero Adust

the world-conquering council

Ishtar Mercuralis

Ryn Stormson Mercuralis

Amedi Kebero

other :)

Esther Tzedek

The Story

Book 1

Part 1 [new version] [original, worse, version]

part 2

part 3

The High Council

part 4

part 5

Ryn prologue

part 6

part 6.5? I messed up the numbers

*The end of the janky part*

Lakeside Ghosts -part 7

The Carnival -part 8

Council minutes -part 9

Vya -part 10

A car chase? In my sci-fi fantasy story?? -part 11

Zerada Adust of the Las Vegas Strip -part 12

Mid-Year's Night -part 13

Robbing a bank is easier than conversation -part 14

Weighing the risks -part 15

Project Excalibur -part 16

mid-season break

The calm before the storm -part 17

Into the honest desert -part 18

Nerd behavior -part 19

The Ambush -part 20

Finally, adult supervision -part 21

Ishtar deals with other people -part 22

Sierra conducts an interview -part 23

Independence day -part 24

Marin has Opinions -part 25

Patience -part 26

The Wilderness -part 27

Jailbreak -part 28

Voyager Country- part 29

A phone call - part 30

Interrogation - part 31

Finale- part 32

Book Two

Time Will Pass Anyway - Chapter 1

Esther - Chapter 2

The Nuclear Engineering Department - Chapter 3

Being Alive - Chapter 4

Assigned Reading -Chapter 5

Assorted nonsense

Fanart of Ryn

The Uquiz!

[winterpinetrees]

Ishtar deals with other people (The Gap Years part 22)

July 3rd 2019

The elven capital

Ishtar Mercuralis has an empire to run, a conquest to plan, and three children to parent. Some other people in her life are making those things a bit more complicated. Not necessarily worse, but more complicated.

……………………………

“That would have been a simpler resolution, yes? Anticlimactic, but we’ve bigger plans”.  

Apex Ishtar Mercuralis and her High Council are back in the Problem Room, discussing what succeeded and what failed about the last ambush. She tries not to scowl at Devana for her bloodlust. The elf has a hatred of the human world, despite having hardly been. She briefly pretended to be a soldier and fought alongside a Soviet battalion during the Second World War. Apparently she enjoyed it, despite the horrors of industrialized war and being far too magically powerful to hold her vodka well. She still sometimes mutters in Russian or Kazakh but doesn’t like others mentioning it. Devana’s loyalties are towards keeping humans in their place, not trying to drag their society out of Lazarus’s dead hands and into a kinder future. However, she gave that woman a council seat for a reason. Devana has a genuine talent for reducing other people to problems that need to be solved. Marin is a problem, but Ishtar would prefer if they could capture him alive. 

What worked about the ambush: Amedi used their tracker’s mark to find the exact location of the party,  mostly by seeing a sign through the human girl’s eyes. They then spread out their troops to block every exit, and confronted the heirs once they left the next morning. 

What did not work: The five of them easily fought off their attackers. 

In addition, the last soldier, a commoner with minimal training, shot Marin with a concussion rifle set to kill. The prince is alive, but if he’d ducked at the last second they’d have a corpse to deal with instead of a missing royal. It would certainly have been simpler that way. 

“The ambush was only about a hundred miles away from old gens Adust territory,” Amedi adds. “Do we think that they’ll hide with Zerada’s family?”

“Who’s even left?” Devana replies with a signature fanged grin. She’s been overseeing the keeping of prisoners, and knows full well who they’ve left free. 

“Many people, actually. We didn’t bother with most of the elves cut from the line of succession by the last renewal,” Ryn has a very matter-of-fact way of talking about noble matters, like it’s still foreign to him. The old Voyager quite literally could not get closer to noble matters. He sired a prince. “The scions will likely be more problematic, and all of the commoners who have gotten attached to the human world and aren’t thrilled about a plan to cull the population like they’re invasive sea urchins”. 

Ishtar winces theatrically. The plague is a plan they’ve inherited and all agreed to keep.

They turn back to other matters, but Ishtar’s mind continues to circle around their plans. She’s been reading and watching human speculative fiction since Ryn gave her a copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. (The novel was in French, which apparently all Storm Coast Voyagers knew but she didn’t. Her new position was slow compared to the Conservatory though, and with magic it wasn’t too difficult to learn). The alien invasion stories came a few decades after. There were shapeshifters who could assume human forms like ancient human stories of changelings and gods, or like the elves who helped inspire those myths. There were stories centered around sheer firepower, no doubt inspired by brutal human conquests of their own world. Then there was plague. 

She pointed the frequency of stories about disease out to Gullin when they first decided to risk a coup. He’d been working in his own laboratory then, smoothing out a few new mutations. She’d vaguely mentioned a time travel film and asked if all these movies would be a sort of cultural practice against a real plague. He’d laughed -genuinely laughed because while Devana can see anyone as a problem to be solved, Gullin sees all humans as data points and toys- and in turn vaguely mentioned the sheer scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic to shut her down. 

Gullin is a conscientious councilor, probably because he wanted nothing to do with the nobility in his youth. The doctor likely only survived the coup that destroyed Ishtar’s family because he was off practicing medicine with commoners and no one, himself included, imagined that he would ever hold power. He didn’t begin this plague scheme, though he would have loved to, but he’s been with it since it was renamed to Project Diasu to please traditionalists. All he does is oversee the project. Well, he’s been refining a breed of domesticated human for the past several centuries, but Ryn might punch him if he mentions that or any of his less legal hobbies, so that topic usually stays out of the Problem Room. She’s starting to think that Ryn loves Amedi so much because they’re the only other councilor with politics he can stand.

With perfect timing, the youngest councilor swears and slams a fist on the table. Ryn mutters to be careful around the projectors. Any tech that can last around palace magic is a pain to fix. 

“Someone is trying to break my spell!” 

Ishtar turns to look at them. Amedi’s eyes are a violent red and their face is twisted with effort. 

 “Someone?” 

“An old elf. Powerful. Warm colored magic”. They glare at the papers strewn across the table. “Probably an Adust. I’m going to use psychological warfare”.

Ryn blinks “What?”

“I am going to make that old man regret messing with politics that so kindly left him alone,”

“Amedi, projecting a traumatic mental image will also hurt you,” Devana says, keeping her voice level and disinterested. 

“It’s been in my brain for thirty years. I’ll be fine!”

Ishtar waves to Alyse, their middle-aged seneschal, and tells her to have Arjuna make an extra pot of tea tonight. They should also go fetch Esther. The High Council are a few steps behind the missing heirs, but her family are also a few steps behind the raging wildfire that is Amedi’s mind. She adds her voice to the shouting match trying to get Amedi to do anything else and sighs when they grit their teeth and unleash something horrible across their mental link. Amedi slumps back into their seat, looking satisfied as though this was a legendary sacrifice instead of bad planning. 

“It worked!”

The four of them clarify they should never do it again. 

Ishtar takes a breath. Was she like this in her hundred-twenties? (She was teaching herself French to read a book her crush gave her). Ishtar sends Amedi out of the Problem Room as soon as Esther arrives. They are being sent on an apex-mandated break. Esther must not let them drink any more coffee until tomorrow morning. The rest of the council, in all their worlds-shaping glory, only laugh a little. 

It’s not worth it to bother chasing the heirs now. Humans may be endurance hunters, but elves know to wait for opportunities. The heir has lost his momentum. They’ll catch him soon. 

……….

Alyse is too secretive for an ideal seneschal. Maybe she wasn’t socialized properly or maybe it was a matter of genetics, but Ishtar thought the girl would grow out of it when she chose her twenty years ago. Alyse didn’t, but she can relay orders and keep an empire running. Her husband gets the message to make an extra pot of tea. It’s not for guests. Amedi is surely sulking in their quarters or practicing archery to feel productive. It’s for her, because life and death she’s had a day and her family are going to hear as much as they can. 

They all sit around the table where they sometimes play games. It’s an ancestral piece of furniture, and a bit taller than it should be to fit colossal Mercurali. The three kids sit on mismatched cushions on the carved chairs, and Devana carried over a higher chair the one night she came to join them. Gullin is a more frequent visitor. He lost all of his own children, one way or another.

Amedi might as well be another cousin for the kids, and they’re all amused to hear that they’d been put in timeout. She skips over anything too boring or disturbing for children (warnings issued to Betrayed enclaves who refused to follow the new edicts), and shares the story of how the prince got himself shot. The three of them are going to grow up as the first generation to rule the human world. Wilders are fanatical and easily swayed, but the first few centuries of unification are going to be rough. She needs them to know that humans, like all animals, are most dangerous when cornered. That’s the excuse she gives about all the human media she watches. It’s educational and shows how wild humans view themselves and imagined conquerors. 

“What’s going to happen to the soldier?” Chandra asks. He’s her older son, quiet except when he’s befriending enemies. He has his father’s silver eyes, but Ishtar doesn’t think his kindness comes from blood. 

His younger brother, Fen, is more in tune with how things are. “If he’s a commoner, well, not a noble commoner like Pa, but a common commoner, he’ll just get sent home,”

If he’d killed Marin, his unknown name would be published on a casualty list, and some Lazarin loyalist would probably kill him by the end of the year. Luckily for the soldier, the heirs are alive and he’ll just be discharged for failing to stay calm under pressure. 

“Tar, you should send for him once the unification really gets going. No one will mind a few accidental casualties then,” Arjuna says. 

Everyone turns to stare. Ryn sets his tea down on the table. “Now that isn’t very nice”.

“We’re not very nice,” Arjuna curls his hands into claws and growls like a cat (a skill that every member of a Genus with a feline symbol learns). The children laugh. They distantly know about his old job, but he’s a father first and a killer second. His past was hardly in the picture at all until a few months ago, but he earned a dozen more marks for his vambrace in the coup that he couldn’t explain away with elaborate stories. She also decided to be honest about the stakes of the coup before they attacked, no matter how much the conversation hurt. 

She sighs. Her husband is many things. He is graceful and loving and knows every birdcall around their home. He is not good at talking. “Your dad is right. It’s not always good to be nice. Someone can be nice, but hide awful things. Lazarus did that, and everyone followed him. You need to be kind, and strong”. Arjuna and Ryn look at each other sheepishly.

Fen elbows his brother. “ ‘Ra is too nice. He’s spending all his time with Maven”

“You could come with me? Mav is nice too”. 

Suen giggles and points. “That means he’s trying to trick you!”

Chandra looks betrayed (hurt, not betrayed. Do not even think about one of them being Betrayed). “No! he’s not! He’s my friend!”

Ishtar starts to wonder whether she should break this up. He continues. “Maybe Hierax is trying to trick you into falling off the roof!” Suen's eyes flare indigo with some complex preteen girl emotion, and all three adults move with all of their elven speed. 

There is a reason why high nobility try to not have more than one child a decade. Maybe the advice should be wider. Three kids learning magic at once is not something she’d recommend. 

………

The time travel plague film that Ishtar once watched is 12 Monkeys. 

Arjuna is Ishtar's husband and Ryn is Ishtar's best friend who also fathered one of her children. This is normal enough by noble standards.

[winterpinetrees]

It is good? No. But it is. (the gap years part 1)

I have not written any fiction (barring school assignments) in four years. I do not remember how to format dialogue. This is some hybrid of Silmarillion-style summary and normal fiction writing. 

Someday I'll look back at this and cringe but that means that I'll have done something better by then. This is tumblr after all.

Anyway, here’s the start of The Gap Years.

June 7th, 2019

The Elf capital 

Marin Sondaica -the son of Apex Emer Sondaica- and a prince of the entire Elven World, leaves a note by his bed. It reads “To all it will concern. Like my mother before me, and our highest ancestor long before her, I will be spending some time in the Human World. I will be back in about a decade. Don’t look for me unless it’s an emergency.” Marin is a lean, athletic boy with mostly African features and dark brown hair styled into shoulder-length dreadlocks. He’s trying to dress like a normal American teen, which has led to a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, black elven boots, and cargo pants. He’s taking a gap year. Ten of them, actually. He picks up a messenger bag and casts an illusion to become invisible before walking to the ground floor. He leaves an emerald green silhouette for an instant after disappearing. Soon, he will be in the human world. 

Not even twenty-four hours later, as Marin wanders San Francisco, a Gens Mercuralis soldier stomps into his old room and finds the untouched note.

…………

The evening after the soldier finds the note, Ryn looks out at the night sky. He’s trying to look at the stars, but the city and the fireworks are throwing off too much light. He shouldn’t care. He just pulled off a coup, after all. Ryn is looking at stars he can barely see from a balcony of the palace, and he’s reached such heights without losing anyone that he really cares about. The next morning, as dictated by tradition, Ryn’s allies will announce the elves who died in the attacks. Ishtar will not be named, and neither will Arjuna, or any of his new council. or his children.  Everything is going great and he should not care about light pollution.

He hears Ishtar behind him. He’s never met an elf with louder footsteps, and her ancestral armor isn’t made for stealth. Blood drips off of it onto the balcony. Tradition dictates that she cannot remove her armor until the next morning. Ryn thinks that most noble traditions only exist to make everyone miserable. That being said, he is a noble too. Just one that swears on old astronauts instead of Lazarus and his void. Ishtar leans over the balcony and stares down at the water. Her eyes still glow like indigo embers hours after the end of the fighting. 

“We did it.” She says, exhausted. “I thought I would enjoy it more. Getting proper revenge? Doing what I was made for? I guess we gave up feeling that sort of good a while ago”. 

“We did do it.” It was an amazing thought. After decades of planning, they’d taken over the world. “And we decided a long time ago to forget what we were made for”. 

Fireworks burst over the harbor. This wasn’t just any coup. They had public support and an actual vision! This was uncharted territory. Ryn was the first Voyager in thousands of years to do anything new! He took Ishtar’s hand. It was bloody, but who cared. He’d planned half the scheme, might as well own it. 

“And Izzy, we have time to feel good. It’s over. The human world is going to be tedious -we’re going to be working on that for the rest of our lives- but we can't lose.” The hard part was over. She was the Apex now, and he was a Councillor. Another impossible height he’d reached.  “We have all the time in the worlds. Us and Arjuna and the kids in a universe that is going to be better, for once.”

She smiles faintly “Our kids are never going to feel like this”

…………

June 10th 2019

San Francisco, CA

Brian, Sierra, and Clay finish packing their heavily modified car and drive towards the center of the city. They’ve given their parents a similar message. “We’ll be back for the holidays. We’re not going to do anything that causes a scandal.” 

None of them, not even Sierra, know that their home is parallel to the capital of the elven world. None of them know that there has just been a coup, or that the prince of the elven world is now walking the city like a tourist. 

It’s foggy and cool, as San Francisco usually is. The rich kids sit down in some fancy coffee shop to decide their first moves. They know where they want to go eventually, but don’t have any sort of plan. A boy about their age with long dreadlocks and bright hazel eyes sits down next to them. They are all surprised, but happy to see him. Brian thinks he met the boy at a baseball tournament years ago. They laughed at some incompetent umpire and became instant friends the way that only ten year olds can be. Sierra thinks that she’s stood beside the boy in an engineering lab, and Clay is sure that there was a party (a boring one for adults, of course) where they ran away together from the flashing cameras and overbearing adults. 

None of them notice that his eyes flash green as he sits down. None of them notice that they’ve never met him in their lives. 

[winterpinetrees]

The calm before the storm (The Gap Years part 17)

June 29th 2019

The elven capital

It’s been a while since I mentioned the elves. Ryn’s having a pretty good time, but he’s knows that it can’t last. I love writing stuff about my own ocs. Free serotonin.

………

Even after decades, Ryn Stormson Mercuralis is still a little surprised to receive a call from his brother. Consciously, he knows that he and his family will visit his birthplace in about two weeks. However, something in his heart can’t understand why anyone he grew up with would want to speak with a killer like him. His oldest brother, Procyon, is calling to update him on a bureaucratic mess that he’d helped to manage a few months before. One of Cyon’s mostly human descendants was expecting triplets, but ten-thousand-year-old law says that a human cannot have more than two children without explicit permission. Ryn pushed some papers around and gave them that permission, so now Cyon’s calling to say that Ryn officially has three more great (great great etc) grandnieces. 

He does the math in his head. The girls are barely even related to him at this point, with dark skin and eighty-year lifespans. If they were abandoned as changelings in the other world, they’d never suspect anything at all. In less than a decade the girls will be the same age as Fen, then they’ll age past him, and probably have children of their own before his son hits puberty. What will it be like for them to live in the world he’s making? Every Voyager for the past eight thousand years has grown up knowing that their ancestors lost the technology to leave the Earth. Ryn was told that they would someday make it back out there, but doesn’t every culture have its prophesied vision of paradise? He only dreamed of being a stormson because there were no more astronauts. 

He didn’t have to dream for long. Ryn really was the best of his harbor. He was smarter, more skilled, just better than anyone else they’d seen. He led his crew around the three capes at the bottom of the globe, sailed a hurricane by sixty, and when the scouts came to offer him an invitation to the Conservatory (more out of duty than hope that a Voyager would accept), he took it gladly and walked back into the storm. And it wasn’t like he really met his equals there either. He was the first Voyager to accept in decades, and there wasn’t a single noble who knew how to handle him. Who else could have breached an enemy castle in a hurricane, or fought while one of the Betrayed enforced a magical ceasefire? Only a stormson who had barely enough magic to spark a candle. Ishtar officially won their final wargame, but the two of them knew that Ryn deserved to share the crown.

Ryn doesn’t fight anymore. He is decades younger than Ishtar, but a human looking at them would assume he was at least a decade older. His lighter skin hasn’t been worn by salt and wind like his siblings, but he does have wrinkles from stress. Izzy is the voice and fists of their administration, Arjuna was the silent killer, and he’s the brains. The greatest Voyager in living memory manages paperwork now, and by all the stars in the night sky, there is a lot of paperwork. 

The problem is a matter of simple physics. You don’t need to be a Voyager to know that objects at rest stay at rest, and the elven world has spent four thousand years- forty generations, eight elven lifetimes- utterly stagnant. Lazarus Sondaica led an uprising and to unify the elven realm and no one’s done anything since. The nobility dream of bringing the human realm into that union like Voyagers dream of space: it’s at the foundation of everything, but also a lot of work to get started. Ishtar says that it’s a good thing that plagues have such natural momentum. Once they unleash it, there won’t be any other choices but to keep moving. The mortality rate is so high though. The Black Death in the human world led to the Renaissance, but their world is so much larger and more fragile now. Elvenkind retreated from space because their society started to collapse under it’s own weight. What if his actions drag another civilization back down to Earth?

That’s all so far away though. Ryn remembers the first time he found himself facing the worst storms in the world. There’s a moment when the sky is black with rain and the boat crashes over mountains of water where nothing is real but salt water and rope and the cold. It’s not like combat at all. Sailing the southern ocean is a matter of skill over hours and miserable days. Bureaucracy from the top of the world is about the same, just drier. He is first mate and Izzy is his captain, but no amount of experience will make the seas themselves any calmer. He’s just has to ride it out. As a spark, Ryn is more enduring than most. He hasn’t properly taken a day off since the coup, and he won’t until Moon Landing Day in another two weeks. His children have been spending a lot of time with their friends. 

Ryn accepts a cup of coffee and a stack of papers from his seneschal and walks out of his room. Marin Sondaica is still at large. He’s somewhere in Las Vegas with his betrothed, but she knows the city well enough that they can’t stage a raid without revealing magic to the human world. There’s simply too many humans around to charm their memories away. It’s infuriating to know their location and have nothing holding his forces back but their own rules. 

Several days ago, staff at the virus lab in the Nevada desert reported a mangled pressurized door and footprints in the sand. An alarm caught the broken seal quickly enough to salvage some of the samples, but there’s really only two elves within a hundred miles of the site good enough at illusions to slip in and out without noticing. And of course, there were more than two sets of footprints in the dirt. There were five. Ryn remembers human sailing crews and NASA missions and helping humans escape north along the Underground Railroad. They’d have caught the heir a long time ago if not for his servants. 

As evidence for this, the other missing heir, Kova Marolak, was finally arrested a few days before. It ended in a shootout that burned several acres of Russian steppe, but eventually a squadron brought her down. The girl has spent the past forty-eight hours howling curses at her treacherous aunt, who honestly deserves all of it. Devana is a die-hard Hunter, and views everything as secondary to keeping human hands away from shiny new inventions like nuclear bombs and the internet. The coup certainly wouldn’t have happened yet without her on the High Coucil, but Ryn can’t stand the woman. She’s a cutthroat killer who betrayed her entire bloodline, though he sort of did the same. All three of Ryn’s siblings are still alive though, so that’s a point on his side. 

Someone let slip to the rest of the family that Kova had been captured though. Ryn can’t guess whether it was as an assurance or as a threat, but little Maven has been worked up over it and that means that Chandra is sad too. His older son and Mav have been nearly inseparable, despite all the times Ryn had spoken with Ishtar and Arjuna about the fear that one would kill the other at the Conservatory. He’s seen the two boys pretend to be wolves under the watchful, dead-eyed gaze of a Betrayed guard. His son hardly flinches at the lack of magic, but Suen and Fen have been careful to stay far away. The other prisoners have been far less friendly. It’s understandable. No new regime has ever had so many enemies in custody at once, but every genus still suffered casualties in the coup. Mav’s father, both of Zerada and Jezero’s parents, and most Sondaicas older than their gap years died in combat. The list of kills has never been this short, but he knows that is an empty thing to say. If Ishtar led a coup not two hundred and fifty years after the massacre of her own family, what’s to stop his current enemies from doing the same? 

Even with their new policy (one that Gullin Eburos hates, as if that slave-trading plague doctor has any conscience at all) of training commonborn Betrayed as well as nobleborn ones, they barely have enough guards to keep their prisoners in check. Kova has been placed far too close to her old friends for his liking, but there aren’t any other options. Ryn glances out a northwest facing window as if he can see all the way to the mountains and glaciers where the heirs are being held. Ryn never had good odds of seeing his five hundredth year, even if he had chosen to live a Voyager’s life. He was raised with long-dead humans and half-elves, and expected to die young like the Voyagers of ages past. However, if Ryn wanted a glorious death, he has lived too long. He has something to hold him to the Earth now, but Marin and Zerada are still free, and the palace does not feel like home. 

He hides this doubt. Ryn has three kids looking up to him. Well, more than three kids if he counts all the other children of the allied nobility, a list that includes the blond young elf approaching him. He’s not giving Councillor Amedi Kebero enough credit. They’re a full adult, a killer, a leader, and a councilor, but he sees so much of his younger self in them. They don’t look at all alike, but he recognizes the desperation that drove him time and again into the storm. Amedi greets him and pauses by the window. The city stretches into the distance outside.

“I saw your daughter this morning. I’ve been teaching her how to shoot,” they say. Ryn notices a bit of hesitation on the word daughter. He understands. The nobility care so much about blood and he certainly had nothing to do with her prodigious magical talent. 

“I’ve heard!” he replies, maybe a bit too enthusiastically. “She’s always loved that sort of thing. Arjuna had to start training her after she kept stealing his throwing knives”.

They laugh for a moment. “I don’t know how you handle children. I mean, Suen and Hierax were on the roof a few days ago? I could hardly manage those three humans outside Vya…”

That’s true. Gens Tiercel specializes in flight magic as well as speed, and Suen did convince her friend to bring them onto the roof. They had to get the boy’s father to fly them both down.

“Children aren’t actually much like humans,” he explains. “Children are wiser, and harder to convince. Speaking of, have you managed to get any sleep? Or are you still trying to fix that spell?” He guesses the latter. The dark circles under their eyes match his.

“Some. The spell isn’t something I can fix without meeting her again. I’m just maintaining the connection and hoping for luck”. 

Their tracking spell isn’t all broken. It does just enough to keep the High Council in the loop about Marin’s movements… and keep Amedi up at all hours trying to get a connection. There’s no shame in being worse at mental magic than a Genus Adust prodigy, but, well, they chose Amedi for the council because of their focus. 

“We’ll catch them soon enough, Amedi. I’m sure Esther has been trying to get you to rest, too”. Amedi has a wiry frame that makes them look even younger than they are. Mentioning their seneschal always gets quite the reaction. Possibly too large of a reaction. 

“She has, but I have so much to do! You remember the war games. It’s not over until you’ve captured all of your opponents, even if they seem powerless”. Every noble with a vambrace carries the same memories and the same trauma. They all remember some underdog enemy from a conquered Army coming back to cause trouble when the game was almost done. It could end the reign of a student who couldn’t keep an eye on the details.

“Those late-game wildcards are actually encouraged by the Conservatory staff,” Ryn replies. Amedi cocks their head a bit to the side. “It’s part of the culture, so they pick a lone wolf with potential and support them. That sort of comeback rarely happens on its own”.

“For real? It’s rigged?”

“You haven’t looked at the records from your class yet, have you?” he asks, then hesitates. Amedi won their fourth year and did exceptionally well in all of the others. This isn’t just a shock, it could be heard as an insult. “You won by your own fitness, of course, but I think there’s some details you’d like to see”.

Amedi twists their vambrace and gives him a daring look. “Alright. Show me”.

The nobility claim that all of this is natural, but he’s seen their systems from the outside. Amedi killed another student during their Midnight Trial, but he knows that right of passage took generations to properly introduce. After all, survival of the fittest means fittest in a given environment. This environment, with Lazarus’s genera and the coups and the dead kids, is about as representative of “untouched nature” as a golf course. It was made, and it can be remade, but who among the powerful wants to admit that it’s all a lie? The High Council is made of four who do. They are a Voyager turned councilor, the too-strong survivor of a coup who reclaimed the throne herself, a gifted scientist born to the high nobility, and a traitor to her bloodline who truly sees the big picture. Perhaps Amedi will be their fifth. They’ll have to convince everyone eventually. He tells the young councillor that they have time to waste. He also tells his children that they have nothing to worry about anymore. He lies to them both.

..................

Welcome back to “Book” 1. I have finally worked out what the next bit of plot is supposed to be. Insert that “I’ve connected the dots” meme here.

An elven week is nine days and the current elf year is 4121.

The triplets are named Mary, Dorothy, and Katherine after three NASA mathematicians and engineers from the 1960s. (They’re the women from Hidden Figures.)

Elves, especially nobles, almost never have multiple children at once. Twins are very rare, but Emer and Cai Sondaica were ones. Triplets are an exclusively human thing.

[winterpinetrees]

Patience (The Gap Years part 26)

July 13th 2019

The Elven Capital

Ryn's a bit underworked right now and he isn't thrilled about it. These things (conquest, arresting protagonists, etc) take time.

......................

When Ryn first began spending time around the highest nobility, his new classmates would ask how a short-lived spark like him could have so much patience. He had over a century less time to work with, so how could he sit so still and focus so completely? Ryn would always say something poetic. That’s what they expected from a Voyager, wisdom about wind and waves. Underneath the wisdom though, he’d be shocked. Voyagers weren’t all about curiosity and spirit. Perseverance was a virtue as well, and that needed patience. 

To make the situation even stranger, Ryn was an awful model of patience as a boy. He was a stormson (a title that most achieved around when they might become parents) at sixty-eight, equivalent to a human no older than twenty. To an outsider, that sounds like prodigious talent, and it was. Being a stormson isn’t just a badge of quick reflexes and daring adventures though. It means leadership, compassion, and the mastery of a dozen skills. He became a stormson as a teen because of his dedication, a nearly supernatural skill at everything he touched, and because he had an utter lack of patience. 

His classmates didn’t know that though. All they knew was his epic “last name” and the chronicle of accomplishments tattooed on his skin. He wasn’t the only student with scars, but he’d earned every last one of his. No clean, purposefully unhealed cuts from sparring for him, only that one time he got bitten by a dolphin and punched it in the snout because the cursed thing already took his gun. (He never trusted Genus Celeron because of it. Of course a Lazarin genus would pick the only truly malicious animal as their symbol). They also saw him wait all night to ambush an enemy, play quartermaster to keep them on schedule, and pin the heir to Gens Adust in a sparring match as if he were any other elf. They thought he was relentless as the tides and unstoppable as a storm in the Southern ocean. So when Ishtar Mercuralis, heir to the first Ishtar Mercuralis four thousand years before, declared him her roommate and they began to scheme, there was no opposition in their army. They didn’t win every simulated war, but, well, he’s read the files. The Sondaicas were rather worried that he hadn’t accepted their sponsorship years before. 

The young councilor sitting next to him had a different story. They entered the Conservatory as one of the crowd, without fancy sponsorships or high expectations. Amedi was Spring-Army-angry, just as spontaneous and violent as a forest after a long winter. They lost and won with the same passionate intensity and never, not even once, stopped to let the seas calm before casting off on a voyage. They have tattoos and scars as well, but with the exception of two surgical scars across their chest, the stories they tell are mostly defeats. Amedi won their fourth year wargame by blitzing across the field, but everyone rallied in the years after. They still finished very well, but he knows that Amedi gets nervous when someone mentions the wildfire smoke that occasionally blows over the capital. 

Before the coup, Amedi had a lot of questions for Ryn about his legendary career. They’d been antsy then, clearly lacking patience before the biggest day of their lives. Lately though, they’ve been tired of the fun facts and crewmate adventures. Amedi has been tracking Marin and his allies with a spell that Ryn could never cast, but their forces are just a bit behind. The humans have caught on and they’re sharper than nobles want to admit. He can tell pressure is building, and there’s only so much their seneschal can do. Ryn’s meeting them in their personal living room, with cordial instead of coffee. They’ve decorated the walls a bit, but it still feels like a cabin that is passed through instead of a home. 

“I’d like to invite you back to my harbor at the end of this week,” he says. “The fiftieth anniversary of the human moon landing will be on the twentieth, and it’s going to be a huge party. Izzy, Arjuna, and I will be visiting, so not much will happen here”. 

They have a decent poker face, but Ryn can guess it’s been a while since they’ve been to a party. The coronation after their coup doesn’t count, not with the recent executions and combat injuries. That’s only a celebration for their more distant allies. Lower nobles, or the fringes of larger genera. Genus Mercuralis doesn’t have those anymore. 

“I’m honored, Ryn, but the fiftieth anniversary? That’s a very… human timescale to celebrate”.

“It is! The humans got to the moon this time, so we decided to have a big celebration while the human Voyagers who watched were still alive”.

“So this is a human celebration? Should I bring Esther?” They ask with a glance towards the girl’s connected room. Amedi was raised by a subculture that is more self-sufficient than most. They’ve had a lot less contact with humanity than Ryn, or even a high noble would. 

“Izzy and I are leaving our seneschals back here to keep everything running, but if you have her alert the rest of the servants, I’m sure it will all work out. Truthfully, no, it isn’t a human celebration. It’s a Voyager one. We’re celebrating that somebody got back to the moon after eight thousand years. The fact that it wasn’t us is irrelevant”. 

Amedi nods slowly. “She’d like that. Esther had a weird childhood for a seneschal, you know? I think she’s a bit lonely now that everyone is below her on the chain of command. Every human, I mean”. 

Now it’s Ryn’s turn to nod without understanding. Of course the girl is ‘a bit lonely’. Seneschals live lives of devoted service, and there is a reason why they are trained from early childhood and come from ancient bloodlines. According to her files, Esther began intensive training late at twelve, and her mother was a kidnapped wildborn who won her own freedom. He places less importance on ancestry than nobles do, but there must be some sort of inherited trauma. He just doesn’t get why Amedi chose the girl.

 (Ryn once found the seneschal system creepy. He has grown to accept it, just like he accepted the Conservatory, and the coups, and the plague. He’s had two seneschals, both dependable and, he desperately hopes, satisfied with their lives).

He says none of this out loud. “Either way, you deserve a break. I don’t think I could survive the mind of a human girl for this long”. 

Amedi looks away. It’s been close to a month without contact. The tracking spell won’t last much longer.  

“Oh it’s not so bad. As long as the prince is running, he’s not gathering allies. Think of how secretive they’ve been! Even if we hadn’t pounced on the old Califex, he wouldn’t have had anything to share with others. It’s like human endurance hunting!”

He wonders if that benefits them or Marin. Humans are more enduring than elves, but in the end, they do die faster. He has a feeling that he won’t get an answer for a long time. 

“Then let’s hope they stagger on until after the twentieth. I’d hate to miss the party because we were so busy with the heirs. My children would never forgive me”. 

That gets a real smile out of them. “I’ll tell Essie -Esther, to have everything in order for us to leave on the…”

“The eighteenth. We’ll return on the twenty-first. My harbor is very close to a voidport, so travel shouldn’t be an issue. Bring white and gold to wear,  if you have it”. 

“I understand, Stormson”. They say, and he stands to leave. Ryn shouldn’t linger in their quarters. He’s taken responsibility for Amedi, but he doesn’t want them to feel like he’s their father. 

He’s already completed his work for the day. Nothing is urgent enough to need settling after sunset at the moment. Ryn has complex opinions on Lazarus Sondaica, the first apex, but he does approve of how the legendary elf decentralized the government so it would be possible for them to take a vacation. He knows that it would be impossible to rule an entire planet with an iron fist, but from his council seat, the details of it are impressive. The council makes rulings, which are supported by regional rulers and their faithful undercouncils. Those decisions are then heard and enforced by the common folk. It’s surprisingly direct when it has to be. The system also works in reverse. If a citizen or subject has a problem, local officials try to fix it. If they lack the authority (or are the problem), then it goes to a higher level, and another, until the largest issues reach the High Council for them to settle or for them to permit a violent feud. As absurd as it sounds, he might have less work as second-in-command to the Apex than he did as a regional overseer. No one wants to bother the high council. 

While he may be receiving fewer matters to settle, Ishtar has been making more declarations than any new Apex in a long time. Through the council, she has dissolved Betrayed enclaves in the human world to run new voidports that they have begun to construct. She has common tradesfolk working with Voyagers to dig up blueprints of rockets and satellites. No fewer than a thousand professionals are at work to see if there’s anywhere they can mine without wrecking the carefully balanced ecosystem. Travel between worlds has been restricted. All feuds and wargames other than the Conservatory have one year to resolve themselves, because infighting cannot be tolerated while conquest begins. Ryn is excited to see his family, but he also misses the feeling of movement. He’s pushing bills from the palace while their civilization shakes off its rust. His people have dreamed of this for thousands of years. He has to see it to believe it. 

His vambrace, engraved and detailed with lead built into the case even though his magic is too weak to mess with the technology, chimes quietly. Most elves can’t decipher the system of bells and whistles that he’s had coded to the alarms, but a Voyager could guess he’s receiving a message from his captain. In this case, his captain is Ishtar. 

Heirs almost certainly in central Montana. Few hours drive from Agate. Should we be worried?

Marin found the lab in the ruins of Project Excalibur pretty easily, but that’s a whole different situation than their largest prison. Perhaps Zerada had heard about it before in her noble education, but a partying youngster wouldn’t know the exact location. Besides, the prison is located in the elven world, and far higher security than some hijacked human base. 

Negative. We will reevaluate if they get closer. <3

……………………

Students at the Conservatory are drafted into eight armies, one for each season, then Day, Night, Wildfire and Storm. Each is loosely associated with a personality trait. Think Hogwarts houses but with more interesting choices than hero, nerd, boring, and bigot. Storm Army is endurance and Spring Army is passion or rage. 

I want to be a Voyager so bad you guys.

We are getting close to the end of book/season/arc 1. I’m so excited!

@lokiwaffles

[winterpinetrees]

Robbing a bank is easier than conversation (The Gap Years part 14)

June 22nd 2019

Las Vegas, NV

I don’t love this one. However, I want to write this chronologically and literally no one cares if it’s bad. Huzzah for tumblr.

…………

When Marin says that the human race doesn’t stand a chance against his world, he isn’t trying to be rude. It’s just the truth. Marin and Zerada steal a million dollars from a secret Vegas vault with all the difficulty of tired parents walking into a pillow fort. Between her mind control and his illusions, no one notices when two striking young adults follow a staff member into the vault and start shoving money into the voidspace within his messenger bag. They follow the same staff member back out, leaving absolutely no evidence other than a stolen hundred dollar bill slipped into his belt. (Zerada has lived for nearly a decade by manipulating wild humans, but she has standards).

That being said, Marin still has a lot to learn about the human world. He’d thought that just recruiting rich humans as his companions would cover the issue of capitalism, but it turns out that money is complicated! Just because the adult Brackens and Shepards are rich enough to buy entire nations doesn’t mean that their kids have access to much of it, and apparently money can be tracked by those freaky computers. So he and his companions have been limited to using a non-suspicous amount of money for non-suspcious purposes in non-suspicious locations. They still have more cash than any kids taking a gap year should, but it’s not enough to take them across the country and into restricted areas. It’s not enough to buy power. So Zerada led him by the arm on a bank heist, something she has down to a science.

Zerada grabs him again and shoves him behind a huge stone pillar. Marin checks himself, but his illusion is still up and stable. Why are they hiding?

Zerada whispers “Two Eight-Points ahead. I know them, but they’ll report you”.

The indigo auroch is the symbol of Genus Mercuralis, but their whole aligned faction are represented by an eight-pointed star. They were the allies who fought back when Lazarus Sondaica tried to take over the world. He won.

“Why are they here?” he asks desperately. Hadn’t she said they would be safe here?

“Can’t say. Stay down. I can handle it”.

And with that Zerada sizes up the two elves with a glowing orange stare. They have no vambraces, and their eyes glow muted colors. They’re probably commoners who just work for the nobility. He imagines Ishtar and her allies spending years gathering supporters. How had his mother not heard anything? (Had Marin been raised as an heir, he would know how every coup in history gathered its soldiers. He was not raised as an heir.)

“I’ve already robbed these wilders blind. Go find someone else to bother unless you want them waking up”. She speaks English, not Lazarin, and her voice is full of malice.

The commoners look at each other and they look at her. They say toothless insults, that Zerada is lucky to be alive or that she’s a drunkard who’s only free because nothing in this damn desert matters.

She smiles “It’s good to have somewhere for the deadweights. Keeps them from bringing down the gene pool, yes?”.

One commoner stutters and the other elbows him in the side. “This whole city is going to rot, Vixen. You’ll rot with it”. Then they’re walking a bit too fast past her and into the deeper parts of the building.

“It’s the dirt or the void, Ulric!” She waves at the commoners as they leave.

Marin blinks. “Oh, you knew them, knew them”.

“He tried to fight me. It was right after the coup and I guess he didn’t get that the Auroch wanted to keep us alive.”

That has been strange to him. “The casualty list was so short. I can’t stop wondering what she wants”.

“She had a son with a spark, Mari. She’s as much of a reformer as Lazarus was. Probably wants to sway us to her side as a show of progress”. She shifts her shoulders back. “I beat him soundly”.

“How’d you get the list?”

“From Ulric. After I beat him soundly”.

They walk in silence back to Zerada’s massive suite in one of the hotels. The two elves draw looks on the street from passers-by. Neither of them bother with illusions to hide their ears here, but its the rest of their appearances that draw attention. Well, her appearance. Marin is a graceful boy with long black locs, but that isn’t anything too special. The woman who seems to be his girlfriend is a statuesque goddess with bright amber eyes and the perpetual sense that all of this is beneath her. It is, of course. These are her gap years. In five years she’ll be at the Conservatory with the best and brightest of their world, and for all Marin knows, she might win.

The humans of the city (prey animals, though they won’t admit it) flow around the pair. Zerada clearly loves this city, the glamour and the power and every sort of vice, but Marin is feeling a bit sick. The whole place is artificial to its irradiated bones. His mother brought him to the human world a lot when he was young. There was a music festival in a park, a carnival somewhere further south, some huge gathering in their capital city that Emer had watched, invisibly, from the roof of a monument. That felt different though. The music was foreign and the people were strange, but he wasn’t in a city of plastic trees. Marin remembers the descriptions of the void and how a mind stranded inside might manifest an entire imagined world. These painted skies and windowless halls are just as disorienting as the place outside of time and reality. Also the smoke is going to give him cancer.

Detour to the humans’ room first. Zerada plants a foot on a chair and dumps the bag of money onto the table. A deck of cards and a few pens also tumble out of the void space. Brian picks up a stack of hundred dollar bills. Clay folds his arms and glares through his glasses.

“You robbed a bank?” Sierra asks cautiously.

Zerada sits on the bar with her arms behind her. “Sure did”.

Sierra looks back to the boys for reassurance. The deep red magic in her veins has started to creep down her shoulder. The tremors have gotten worse. Zerada is strong enough to break the spell, but she doesn’t know what it is. Countering unknown magic can be dangerous for the victim. Clay begins counting the money, and Brian fidgets with a rubber band. She rolls her eyes and turns back.

“Alright. You robbed a bank. What do we do now?” Clay says.

That’s a great question, and Marin doesn’t know. They should figure out what happened to Sierra. They should find more allies. They should learn why there’s so many elves with strong political leanings in the city.

The always-skeptical human sighs “You don’t have a plan, do you?”

Marin shakes his head “Honestly, I didn’t think I’d get this far”.

Zerada actually laughs at that. “Mari, you can’t say that”.

“Then you make the plan!” She raises her eyebrows. “Fine. Well. We need to figure out why there’s so many elves here who actually care about noble politics,” he decides.

The nobility live and die for their bloodlines and their honor, but commoners rarely care. Vegas especially should be full of elves who couldn’t care less about a coup as long as they’re allowed to stay in the city. For Zerada to see Ulric and his friend, and for them to both immediately try to kill her, is pretty strange.

Brian has balanced several hundred thousand dollars in a neat stack on the table. “The last time we went into an elf town, Sierra got cursed, and the time before that, Clay got brainwashed. We need a better plan”.

“You only had Marin then. Now you have me,” Zerada adds. “My suggestion is that Marin, Brian, and I go exploring, while the two of you stay back”.

Brian blushes red. “Why me? Clay’s better… at talking to people”.

“Yes, but you act less suspicious.”

“I was the reason the whole car chase even happened! I tried to defend Marin and got brainwashed!”

“It was my fault,” says Sierra. “I was staring at the soldier. You were just…obviously human”.

“And I am still obviously human!”

Zerada raises her voice. There’s magic in it, but Marin isn’t sure if the humans can tell. “Brian, elves here travel with human escorts. Clay is too skittish and Sierra is cursed. You are the best option”.

Brian looks like a trapped animal. She smiles at him. “If someone tries to charm you, I will stop them. All you need to do-“

“Is sit there and look good. I get it! I’ve been doing that my whole life,” he snaps, but stands up from his chair. The stack of money falls over.

“I’ll go put on a suit”.

…….

The suit isn’t tailored right. Marin’s seen styles change over the decades, but Brian’s pale gray jacket is a little too tight over the shoulders. It has to be deliberate, like how the Eburos wear their clothes loose to not damage them when they rage. Did he make that choice? If not, then why bring it on the trip? Is that really all he has? Marin is the son of the Apex. He’s a link in a four thousand year long chain, and that was supposed to be it. He’ll mess around for a decade, attend the Conservatory without making a fool out of himself, and then have a few kids with Zerada who might actually make a mark on history.

Marin adjusts his tie and sits down at the bar. He wears a subtle illusion, but it’s simple enough that his glowing irises are hardly noticeable. He’s changed Brian’s appearance too, just to make sure that his family doesn't find out about this. The boy is essentially bait. Brian is the sort of broad and strong that elves never are. He’s more attractive to elves than he is to human society, and that’s saying something. His job is to play decent blackjack and flirt with elves. Brian doesn’t have any reason to worry though! An individual can only be charmed by one person at once, and Zerada is more than strong enough to break any opposing spells.

There’s far more elves here than there should be, and few of the elves milling around the casino floor look like the Vegas type. They’re put together and dignified, with cheap formal wear or the faint shimmer of clothes created by illusions. The elves seem more like businessmen stopping by the city for an evening than elves that have devoted their lives to the game. Conversations go silent as Zerada, high elf prodigy, moves from table to table. She casts the entire room into her shadow.

She confirms his suspicions. “I’ve been in Vegas four months now. There were not this many elves when I arrived”.

“Were there this many before the coup?”

She shakes her head, then continues looking around the room. “I think most of them are shift workers too”.

Elves live for centuries. They have humans to do the undesirable work and live on a planet that has been all but mastered over ten thousand years. The concept of a “work week” hasn’t been the elven norm in millenia. But sometimes things have to happen on a schedule, and that means that civil servants and a few types of workers punch in and out like humans do. Conveniently, it is the elven weekend at the moment.

“I’d been thinking that, but…”

Zerada gets a short glass of something furiously alcoholic from the bartender. Another very human thing to do. “But you didn’t want to insult me by implying that I’m a lazy slacker?” She lifts her glass for emphasis. “I know, and I am”.

“But why would civil servants come here?”

They both notice at the same time that Brian has wandered off. Thankfully, the boy’s pale jacket stands out from the crowd. He’s at a different table, playing cards against a few humans and a too-pale elf in a suit. Brian’s eyes are a normal, uncharmed, shade of blue, which means that either everything is fine or that the elf is much better at magic than he thought. Does Brian know what he’s talking to? Marin stalks closer.

Brian laughs after his turn. The human boy says that he could never handle organic chemistry, “bio-chem majors are insane”, whatever that is supposed to mean. The elf he’s speaking with looks like a human in his early twenties, so Brian asks where he went to college. Marin stands nearby and hopes that he isn’t being suspicious. The other elf is so pale that he can easily see the veins under his skin, and his eyes are a haunting, pallid green.

The elf says a name that means nothing to Marin, “I’m actually working in Vegas this summer. Lab work”.

“I didn’t know there was lab work happening in Vegas” Brian replies. Marin suspects that he does know he’s talking to an elf, because Brian backs away from the question, “I don’t know much about the city though. I’m just passing through”.

The elf smiles. “There’s so much more to the world than you know”.

Marin looks over at Zerada. Lab workers certainly would work on a schedule, and he can guess the details from there. The list of casualties blamed a few on Gullin Eburos, lord of Genus Eburos and the face of the endless war against genetic mutations and antibiotic-resistant disease. Nuclear bombs were tested here once, but no one would be monstrous enough to use those for conquest, even if elves are resistant to radiation. Ishtar Mercuralis needs a new weapon, and like his mother before her, she has chosen plague.

…he should probably grab Brian.

………

An elven week is nine days long. Six for work and then a three day weekend. The nobility love the number nine.

“Pallid green” is my little riff on the greek word khlōros (χλωρός) which is often translated as pale, but can also mean ashen or yellowish-green. It is also the color of Death’s horse in the original Greek description of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. pretty neat!

[winterpinetrees]

Mid-Year's Night (The Gap Years part 13)

June 20th 2019

A nice cliff in the elven world

In spite of everything, the Mercurali are a family. Their world is built on extreme violence, but it is not only violence.

.........

Mid-Year’s Night is a holiday in the same way that “high noble” is an identity: technically correct, lacking detail, and really only ever used to avoid arguments. The official laws made by Leda Sondaica four thousand one hundred and twenty-one years ago say Mid-Year’s Night only because calling it the Summer Solstice would exclude half the planet. It’s one of three truly global holidays, but what elves actually do is up to them. 

As a Voyager along the Storm Coast, Ryn called it the Brightest Night. They’d cover the trees with nets of glowing filament and catch the fireflies that got confused by all the lights. For Amedi, the end of June was also the start of the rainy season in the highlands, and a storm rolling in on the solstice was very good luck. (Ryn and Amedi have been bonding over that. Sooner or later there will be a Pacific hurricane and Ishtar does not want to wrangle both of them at once). The nobles of Genus Kotija had their own celebrations and Arjuna carried the ones he could with him to the palace. It’s a different night for the farmers in the shadow of the rocky mountains, and for the nomads in the Arctic circle, and for the wildblood humans who brought traditions from another world. 

Ishtar had nothing. She was the last daughter of Gens Mercuralis after an unspeakably brutal coup, and four thousand years of conflict had left her family with little culture but violence. She was raised by her last cousin (who was only half-grown himself), and the two of them were too traumatized to bother reenacting holidays they barely knew. Ishtar remembers decades of just waiting to grow old enough to earn some scrap of vengeance or power with her almost-human strength and devastatingly powerful magic. Then she met Ryn, and he showed her that there were fireflies in the grass around the Conservatory. The Storm Army gave her power and prestige, but it was also something to be a part of. There were traditions and stereotypes and all the little things she’d never gotten a chance to enjoy. She spent six years in that little world. They didn’t all make it out alive, but Ishtar did. 

Needless to say, her three children have been raised with a culture. It’s her violence and Ryn’s curiosity and Arjuna’s grace, but it’s something. It’s too cutthroat for the Voyagers and too rustic for the nobility, but it’s theirs. Someday the kids will attend the Conservatory and face the same Trial as their parents, but they will have a meaningful childhood before it and meaningful lives after. Ishtar has also taken it upon herself to help her newest councilor. Their name is Amedi Kebero, and like her, they won a major war game at the Conservatory. Unlike Ishtar, they’re having a bit of trouble figuring out what to do after. It’s really quite common. Most victors burn out. It’s the secret final test. Did you find some way to live afterward, or will you destroy yourself like Lazarus once he had nothing left to conquer? 

Ishtar found a way. It’s been one hundred and fifty years, after all, and she’s still alive. She stands on a steep rocky incline as the last purples and reds of the sunset fade over the cloudy horizon. With her stand nine others. Her husband, Arjuna, the quiet elf who she married after decades of wrestling with her official betrothal. Ryn, the commoner with dusty brown hair and stormson tattoos who saved her life. Her three children, all older now than she was during the coup that took away her childhood (To a human observer, they look ten, eight, and seven, but they were actually all born a decade apart. The nobility age slowly). And Amedi, her youngest and scrappiest councilor. Their three seneschals, Alyse, Callum, and Esther, are also present. The group are all wearing fluorescent paint on their faces and arms, a tradition that Ryn brought from home, but Amedi thought was familiar. 

Twilight is long on Mid-Year’s Night, but it’s finally dark. Arjuna pulls a bundle of thin metal rods from a bag. He is slender and graceful even by high noble standards, and his long hair flows in the wind behind him. His eyes flare lavender as he lights two sticks with his magic. They burn white and gold -sparklers, a simple invention that both humans and elves have made. The paint on his face and arms is geometric, with elaborate florals on his wrists. Genus Kotija designs from his family. He holds a sparkler in one painted hand and passes the other to Fen, her younger son. The boy is just barely starting to use his magic, but fire is beyond him. 

“Esther needs one too!” He points a small hand at a short red-haired woman. 

Esther is Amedi’s young seneschal. She is human, of course, but the yellow-green smudge of paint makes it almost look like her eyes are glowing. She must have forgotten she was wearing face paint. Ishtar suggested Amedi choose a calmer seneschal, but they didn’t listen. She takes the sparkler and smiles, but there’s fear in her eyes. Her own seneschal, who has been dealing with this for decades, goes over to help. Aren’t humans so nice when they aren’t trying to kill each other?

The sparklers are distributed. Suen proudly lights hers, as well as ones for the other two humans. Ryn insists on setting a fire himself. He’s barely strong enough to spark a flame, but he can manage. That’s the origin of the term “spark”, after all. The glowing paint on his bare arms looks like waves or wind patterns. Amedi has copied it along with spirals of lightning and a line over their eyes. The sparkler part is entirely new to them though. They seem to like it. 

“I hope Mav can be here next year!” says Chandra, her oldest son. He’s a sensitive boy, the sort of sensitive that can’t exist in high nobility without being corrupted. He mostly takes after his father in appearance, just with a broader build. Of course, he’s still just a little kid.

Ishtar smiles. “Me too, Chandra, but his family have been our enemies for a long time, even if Devana is our friend. Would you want to celebrate with the old Apex and the Sondaicas?”

He hesitates, but then shakes his head. Ishtar has been trying to end the ancient war between the two clans of high genera, and part of that has meant encouraging the children of her allies to meet the elves they’d always thought would become their enemies. Of course, most of those children are currently furious, grieving, and under the magic-suppressing gaze of a Betrayed arbiter until they calm down. 

Mav is a young boy from the core of Genus Marolak, and Devana is his aunt. He’s pale with wolf-blue eyes and is almost exactly the same age as her son. They’ll attend the Conservatory together. In another life, they’d be enemies like she and Kavec Adust were. Somehow, miraculously, her son has started to befriend him instead. Her daughter, by contrast, has refused to go anywhere near one of the Betrayed. It’s understandable. Ishtar wouldn’t either when she was her age. Bad memories. 

Despite their new friendship with her son, the three imprisoned children who viewed Devana as their cool aunt (even if the Councillor is technically the mother of one of them) are too volatile to be released. They have a sister at large, and their father was killed last week. No matter the optimism of little boys, these things take a long time to bury. Ishtar is supposed to say that things take a long time to heal, not bury, and she does say that out loud. In her mind though, she knows that some things are only ever handled. All that buried trauma is why Amedi nearly sets the field on fire when a shadow dashes past the group. It’s nothing, but the new councilor hasn't learned that yet. She smiles at Arjuna. 

Arjuna is an illusionist, and a very skilled one at that. It’s common knowledge that illusionists eventually suffer from hallucinations… and that their skillset can make those hallucinations a public issue. However, they’ve hit Arjuna early and they’ve hit him hard. He blames his job as an assassin. He spent so many decades looking for dangers around every corner that his magic (perfectly honed to create distractions and notice threats) began to make problems where there were none. He’s retired now. 

The whole family, humans and elves, go through a mental list. Is anyone else around? Did they hear anything or just see it? And of course, who would be stupid enough to attack them here? They all reach the only reasonable conclusion: sometimes, magic is just a pain. Arjuna pats Amedi on the back and they quietly laugh.

They’re used to it though. They’re all used to reaching for weapons they don’t carry, or drawing ones that they do. They’re used to scaring away birds with eyes that glow at loud noises and to constantly checking what the other world looks like in case they need to run. No matter what she wants, this is the world that is. Her children will attend the Conservatory, and the odds are that at least one of them will kill. Even conquering the human world won’t be enough to change that. Still, Mid-Year’s Night is a time to dream. 

The sparklers burn out and they all sit down on the rocks. Ryn’s old white-haired seneschal, Callum, looks up and identifies a bat in the dark sky. Six months ago, she was the Adversary, and Emer Sondaica was the Apex. She and her council and her family were half a year away from a coup decades in the making, praying to fate or nature or some commoner's god that no one would turn traitor. Ishtar asks her family about their hopes for the next six months. It’s a painfully boring tradition, but it’s all she can offer. 

Amedi hopes that they find the missing heirs quickly. Despite the failed attack in Vya, their spell is working after all, and they now know that the heirs of Sondaica and Adust are both in Las Vegas.

They raise their painted hands in exasperation. “It’s a void-cursed desert, honestly. What kind of idiot civilization sets off a thousand nuclear bombs without being able to metabolize radiation?” 

Ryn explains that the elven world did its fair share of stupid stuff, mostly heating the atmosphere a few degrees when they were already at the natural end of an ice age. He hopes that their conquest goes smoothly, and to start looking for a new seneschal. 

Callum approves of that. He turned sixty this past year, and he does not want to deal with a second planet’s worth of paperwork. 

Esther wants to become more at home in the palace. The staff don’t respect her yet, but half the world’s bureaucracy reports to her one way or another. The other two humans say something in their shared language. They’ve probably all felt that way. 

Alyse, her own seneschal, hopes to find the heirs as well. She always dodges questions.

Arjuna agrees with Ryn. They’ve lost enough friends this year, but hopefully their plan to take over the human world won’t cause any more grief.

The children have smaller goals. They want to see Rise of Skywalker in a human theater. Fen says that it actually releases on the new year, and doesn’t count as a Mid-Year’s hope, but they ignore him. Chandra wants Suen to meet his new friends, and Suen wants that Gens Tiercel boy to teach her more flight magic. Ishtar should probably stop that. 

What does she want? Well, the high nobility don’t believe in anything after this life, but some of Ishtar and Ryn’s old friends in the Storm Army did. Sometimes Ishtar sees a little brown-spotted raptor watching her and wonders if it’s proud of what she’s done. A hundred children still die every year at the Conservatory. One of her soldiers killed a Sondaica girl during the coup. Some nights Ryn sits her down in the Problem Room once Devana, Gullin, and Amedi have gone. He puts his head in his rope-burned hands and talks about typhus on sailing ships and what plague actually looks like because no one in the elven world has ever seen it. 

Other nights it’s Gullin Eburos who talks, and he tells her about what life is actually like for the Betrayed who monitor their prisons and voidports. He tells her about his youngest child, a little boy with ivory hair and sharp teeth who would be about her age by now if he hadn’t been Betrayed, and if that life hadn’t driven him to throw himself into the sea. And still Gullin (who holds hundreds of wildborn humans captive in laboratories across the world) codes genomes to design a pandemic that will kill billions, and Ryn (who would do anything, anything, for his children - for her children) speaks to convince commoners to hold their Betrayed to the same standards as nobleborn ones.

What does the Apex hope? Well, Apex Emer Sondaica seemed happy at the end, right before Ishtar crushed her heart with a war hammer. Not happy to die a glorious death either…just happy it was over. Ishtar is pretty certain that she’ll still be alive in six months, but if Emer’s son comes back to kill her, she hopes that it won’t be a relief. 

.............

Chandra’s fits the noble naming style and the Voyager one! He is named after a god of the moon, but also after Dr Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a real-life astrophysicist who defined so much of what we currently know about massive stars and what happens after they die.  

little picrews of Suen, Chandra, and Fedran. They're 10, 8, and 7, but actually like 36, 25 and 18 (those are rough numbers)

[winterpinetrees]

Council Minutes (The Gap Years part 9)

June 18th 2019

The Elven Capital / Interstate 82

zooming the third person narration out a bit. I have ground to cover and no need for consistency.

……

Though the dual desertion may seem like it would allow for a higher chance of survival, we belive that both monitors were lost to the void soon after they abandoned their posts. 

While the High Council searches for three missing heirs, the rest of the elven world keeps turning. They have ceremonies to attend, disputes to resolve, children to parent, and as the report explains, huge breakdowns of infrastructure to handle. The report is clinical, concise, and catastrophic. Two of the monitors responsible for maintaining the very existence of the Nile Delta Voidport abandoned their posts and pushed off into the void, where, based on previous incidents, they almost certainly ceased to exist within a few hours and cannot be recovered. A Volunteer Watch has been assembled until new monitors can be brought in, but until they are, a centuries old hub of trade and travel is in a very precarious situation. 

Apex Ishtar Mercuralis, the most important woman in the world, puts her head in her large hands. She has a plan. It’s both extremely good and extremely bad. Ishtar knows why monitors have such a high rate of desertion. Ishtar also knows that this is a supply and demand problem, and that her plan to increase supply is, well…

Councillor Gullin Eburos, Plaguekeeper, Lord of Gens Eburos, clenches one hand into a fist. “I still dissent. For thousands of years, the positions of monitor and arbiter have been at least somewhat voluntary. We are making enemies of the same group that even Lazarus dared not anger”.

Ryn shoots him a glare. “Do you have a better plan? We are dragging this planet out of a stagnant period that has lasted since the north star was in Hercules. We need better infrastructure”.

“I cannot condone our soldiers going into settlements that have provided sanctuary since the north star was in Hercules and conscripting children! They’ve already been Betrayed!”

“So kidnapping and coercion are only a problem for you when elves are the victims? Without a stable void, humans outperform us at trade and production. Either we start preparing now, or we’ll end up scrambling once we’ve been unveiled”. 

There are five human seneschals on the edges of the room. In their indigo and gray uniforms, they almost look like part of the room itself. They vary in age from twenty-one to over sixty and have little in common other than their purpose and their intelligence. All five look at Ryn, then at Gullin, and then at each other. They will gossip about this later. 

The Plaguekeeper composes himself. “A spark like you cannot understand that the void, and the Betrayed, are not things to treat lightly”.

Ishtar’s eyes flare indigo. “Enough. We agreed on a plan and we will see it through. Besides, we’re already pissing off every other enclave by conquering the human world. We’re not doing this for popularity. We’re doing it to save the worlds,”

The council falls silent. The Apex has spoken, and this is not a democracy. They will stay the course. 

With too much to do, the council does not break for lunch. Their seneschals bring in food, (and coffee for Ryn, an uncouth commoner habit that Amedi has started to adopt). Discussion continues. 

“Shouldn’t this issue have been resolved by the Harbormasters?”

“Have someone from the undercouncils pay her a visit”.

“That’s a serious violation of section four of the Lazarus Reforms”. 

“I always hated Lachlan, but it is still a bit strange to know that he’s dead”.

“If the situation gets any worse, then our job in the human world will get a lot easier”.

And then the ever present topic of the missing heirs. Councillor Devana Marolak, traitor to her bloodline, representative of the Hunters, somewhat recently divorced (she got to keep the pet hawk) brings them back to it.

“The older Adust heir legitimately does not know where his sister is. That line is skilled in telepathy, but even they have limits”.

Ishtar had ordered that there would be no torturing of their noble prisoners. She seems to have been ignored. “Unfortunate. And we lost your niece's trail somewhere in the Great Plains?” The subtle insult is more effective than telling Devana off directly. 

“...Yes. I typically avoid human turns of phrase, but we’re trying to find a needle in the human world’s largest collection of haystacks”.

Ryn smiles in spite of himself. “Noble culture is built on deception and survival. It shouldn’t be surprising that we can’t catch anyone. They’ve been raised for this”. 

The four nobleborn councilors grumble and shift the arms that bear their vambraces. Ryn’s statement would make more sense if they were chasing nobility-by-merit, but the three lost heirs are all children. Children from the high nobility, yes, but none of them had ever really been tested. That makes it even more insulting how Kova and Marin escaped capture. Marin and his band of humans even killed a nobleman. His name was Kiper Chrysos and he fell to one human boy with a makeshift club and another with a concussion rifle set to kill. It’s not just a death, but a disgrace. 

The nobility are tied together by a great web of violence. They all know that the elven world prospers when the fit survive and the strong conquer. The names of those killed by another are announced with great ceremony, and kills are marked on vambraces as trophies and burdens. All five of the high council have new marks from the coup a few weeks ago. However, the rules are very clear. Names are only declared for the elven dead, and only long-lived elves can suitably carry the weight of killing an equal. Legally speaking, Kiper was killed by no one. He might as well have been mauled by a bear. One of the other soldiers, a young Gens Tiercel elf with an undercut and a very promising future, was also shot. The impact crushed his spine, an injury that would paralyze without magical treatment and will still take him months to recover from. Speed and movement are everything to the Tiercel. The injury is a more devastating blow than the human responsible will ever understand. Marin’s survival is impressive. He’s clearly very fit, and worthy of his noble birth and Lazarus’s bloodline. That doesn’t mean anyone is happy about it. 

“We’ve secured the town of Vya, at least. And our troops are being subtle about it. If Marin comes back, he shouldn’t notice anything is off until it’s too late, '' Councillor Amedi Kebero, only here because every good council needs a scrappy upstart, explains. They all know that Marin was in the suspicious car now. The analysts did some great work and confirmed the car as belonging to one Sierra Bracken, a billionaire’s daughter that matches the description of the girl from the fight. Where would the High Council be without humans to handle the data!

 “Amedi, your time at the Conservatory proves you have a skill for killcraft.” Ishtar adds. The young elf turns to her excitedly (their ears literally perk up). Six small marks on their vambrace catch the light. 

“The nobility won’t admit it, but they're frightened of Marin’s band. We need to prove our own bravery before asking them to risk their lives against the human world. Will you join the strike team?”

“I’d be honored to, Apex”.

“Good. You’ve been overseeing the operation, so you should already know the team. Esther will stay here and keep your affairs in order, but you should be back soon”. The human girl nods. Amedi smiles at her, the sort of smile you give a dog that’s been very good, and Esther smiles back.

“Should I use Mercuralis colors?” they ask. “Marin may recognize me. My signature is…well it’s from a regional, lower genus, and I did win my year”.

“That was quite the way to brag, Amedi,” Devana says.

Ryn is more serious. “Use whatever colors are your strongest. We cannot truly begin until the heirs have been captured”.

“And try your best to bring him in alive. We’ve already killed enough elves,” This is Ishtar’s penance. She is many things, but at least she isn’t killing children. In that small way, she is better than the Sondaicas who killed her parents and her brother and left her with nothing but a legacy and a betrothal.

In her name, if not by her direct actions, tens of thousands of Betrayed will be conscripted and three billion humans will die. But of Sondaica and its allies, only a single elven child has been killed. Marin’s death wouldn’t be a catastrophe. There are other heirs to Gens Sondaica safely imprisoned, and Marin is already old enough to be in those strange gap years between the thresholds of legal adulthood, but Ishtar just doesn’t want to. He seems like a good kid.

Never mind that Ishtar killed her first elf during those same gap years, that Amedi killed three, or that the old Apex murdered her own star-crossed love in a coup when she was about the same age as Marin. Never mind that her brothers never got a chance to grow older than her children are now. Never mind that the nobility prosper when the fit survive and the strong conquer, and that there really isn’t any room for good kids.

What’s the point of taking over the world if you can’t even try? Ishtar is trying. She has a plan that is both extremely good and extremely bad. Things are going to be different this time.

…………

In the human world a few hundred miles away, Sierra receives a call from an unknown number. She ignores it, but then the caller leaves a voicemail, and curiosity gets the best of her. The message is not in any language she can understand. Sierra puts it on speakerphone once they are back in the car.

“Is this your girlfriend!” 

Marin takes the phone from her hands so quickly that she barely even registers the movement. 

“Yes! That’s her!”

Clay leans back over his seat. “Are you sure it’s her and not a trick? What if she was captured? What’s she saying?”

“This is real. I left some codes in my message. Little things only she’d know. If Zerada had been captured she’d have found some way to tell me”.

“Well what’s she saying?”

“When we were kids, we sometimes climbed this really big statue on Mid-Year's Night. It’s of my oldest ancestor, Lazarus Sondaica. He took over the world a long time ago. We’d sit on his shoulders and watch the fireworks”.

Sierra interejects. “So it’s like the Statue of Liberty, but for the opposite of liberty?” 

Marin takes a moment to understand the question. “Yes. Anyway, she says to meet her in Las Vegas on that same night, by a different Lazarus”. 

“When is Mid-Year’s Night? Is that the solstice?” Brian asks.

“Actually yes! Well, the night before. This year that is the night of the 20th, or two days from now.”

Sierra tries to take her phone back. “That’s a huge drive from here. How does she know we’ll be able to make it?” 

“It’ll be rough,” Brian explains. He’s gotten a feel for driving distances. "Fifteen hours, at least."

Marin sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what she means by a different Lazarus”.

“Is there a big statue in Las Vegas?” She has cell service for once, and types that exact question into the search bar. (using a VPN of course. They don’t want to be tracked.)

“Not that I remember. There’s a lot of little ones,” Clay says. 

“Google’s telling me about the Statue of Liberty replica? Does that work?”

Brian pulls the car around and starts driving south, “Emma Lazarus!” 

Marin looks at him. He seems to recognize the name. “Who?”

Brian looks over at Clay and Sierra, who both seem confused. “No one? Emma Lazarus wrote the poem on the Statue of Liberty! ‘Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame /With conquering limbs astride from land to land; /Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand’?”

Marin blinks like he’s been awakened from a dream. He looks down at his feet. “‘A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame /Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name’”

Sierra looks at them, “What the hell guys”. 

Brian and Marin meet each other's eyes. “‘Mother of Exiles’”.

He accelerates the car. That 15-hour time assumed that they sped a bit. “We need to get to the Statue of Liberty replica”.

The elf has one more thing to add. “Vya is about half way. We could stay the night there, if it’s safe”. 

Clay looks skeptical. "If that's half the drive, we'll get there in seven hours. It'll be getting dark by then. Are we sure we should risk a potentially hostile ghost town at night?"

"Then we'll visit first thing tomorrow"

"Fine."

………

The poem in question is "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus. I am so close to plot events I’ve been imagining for years! It’s so fun. Unfortunately, I am also doing the writing equivalent of hacking through underbrush to figure out how everything else fits in.

[winterpinetrees]

The Gap Years part 6.5 or something. I messed up the numbers

Councilor Amedi is not doing particularly well and they never have been.

The worlds are bigger than they think. That’s what Amedi Kebero, the new councilor to the Apex, decides as they sit on a desk an hour after midnight. A satellite map of the human world hangs on the wall opposite them. The daylight portion (stretching up to circle the entire arctic) looks almost identical to the elven world. They recognize the missing sea south of the Urals and the slight differences in the coastlines, but all together the geography is the same. In contrast, the dark portions of the map are entirely foreign. The nights are covered in a web of roads and fluorescent lights, tens of thousands of square miles lit with a sickly yellow glow. In their lifetime, Amedi has seen the suburbs sprawl and the highways creep. The growth of the human world is unsustainable. Amedi and their council plan to stop it.

Not yet though. Amedi is still getting used to their new schedule. Apparently Voyagers don’t even sleep like the nobility! Ryn had a habit of sleeping for a few hours just after sunset, waking up after midnight, and then sleeping again closer to dawn. He insisted that it was the best way, and that you could get so much done during the watch hours in the middle of the night (And it helped a lot with the little children). More importantly though, he’d convinced the Apex to try back during their first Conservatory war game, and she’d never stopped. Amedi has to admit that it’s not too bad. It is easy to focus, and there is something beautiful about the full moon reflecting off of the ocean. Overall, the young councilor is surprised by how much the Mercurali have tried to bring them into their family. Councilors Marolak and Eburos seem more like professional partners (though they’ve been getting along great with both) but Amedi keeps being invited to things. This week is the summer solstice, half-way point of the elven year. Amedi planned on traveling home for a day or two, but recent events have made that impossible. Instead, they’ll celebrate with the royal family. It’s weird. They are used to the political power they wield, but having little kids asking about their favorite Star Wars movie is something entirely new. (It’s The Phantom Menace, for the record. They think it’s fun, and Ishtar is furious).

There’s only one downside to the new schedule. It’s that Amedi is on their own during the night. Like all high level officials, Amedi has the help of a seneschal. There would just be too much paperwork otherwise and the leaders of the elven world have more important things to do. Amedi’s seneschal is a young human woman named Esther, with curly rust-red hair and a biological mother who was born and raised in the human world. Unfortunately, the girl can’t get the hang of Ryn’s sleep schedule, and a tired seneschal is really a waste, so Amedi is completely on their own for those few hours each night. Do they miss her help too much? A seneschal is meant to be a companion, but the palace staff keep whispering that the new councilor has gotten too attached. Well, that’s not a problem. Esther’s barely 21. It’ll be forty years before Amedi needs to find a replacement. That’s a future issue. Right now the problem is that a prince is gone.

It’s been quite the day for the High Council, and Amedi reviews the notes that Esther helpfully organized before she went to sleep. After six days of silence with no leads after Marin Sondaica disappeared into the human world, they finally have news. A little town called -seriously?- Eagleville, reported an incident a few hours ago. A lone adolescent human (“Carter”) not matching the description for any of the prince’s allies entered town and spoke with a tamed human resident. The human wanderer expressed interest in another elven settlement nearby, but it isn’t clear if he knew who really lived there. The tame human annoyingly warned “Carter” away, but they hope the warning will just make the mystery even harder to resist. Following new protocol, an elf attempted to charm the human into staying in town. The entire incident wasn’t anything worth reporting. Humans are curious to a fault, and they travel through elven settlements a hundred times a day. The reason the file ended up on Amedi’s desk was that the human resisted the spell, sprinted back to a gray car not matching any designs on the market, and drove off into the dust. Most interestingly, the speeding human car went completely unnoticed by most of the town, suggesting some sort of illusion. The Apex has already sent troops to try and track it down.

Esther has written in neat handwriting that the other settlement is called Vya, and attached a file on its demographics and history. Vya is a true ghost town in the human world, but home to a few hundred hidden elves. It reacted positively to the coup, and has very little connection to human culture nowadays. It’s a strange place for the prince to hide, but then again, it’s not like Marin knows any of this. As far as they know, the prince hasn’t even seen a casualty list from the coup yet. He knows his mother is dead for sure, but the boy is running on seriously limited information. He could very well go back to Vya just for the chance of learning what in the worlds is going on.

This all seems great, right? They have a lead, even if it might be false. No. No it’s not. What they have is a wild chase across the entire Western half of North America, and Amedi knows as well as anyone that humans are endurance hunters. A convenient comparison is that the last coup took place within a few years of the founding of the United States. In the nearly 250 years since, that rectangle of conquered land has been covered with four million miles of roads. A human can casually drive from ocean to ocean in five days, or cut that time to less than three if they’re desperate. Elves have the infrastructure to go faster, but it’s a shocking change from the last coup when it would have been nearly impossible to get from one coast to another at all. What this means is that the car’s six hour head start is enough for them to get hundreds of miles away before the Apex’s soldiers even begin looking. Amedi would have an easier time looking for a single cow in the entire rift valley. At least a cow needs to follow water.

They file a a few reports, fill out their schedule for the next day, accidentally set a note on fire with magic, and go back to sleep.

………

Meanwhile, in the human world, the four teens set up camp by a lake that was once a volcano. Crater Lake National Park is about 150 miles from Eagleville as the crow (or elf) flies, and significantly more by car. They have made absolutely no evasive maneuvers. They do not know they are being followed. They’re just having some fun.