#marin sondaica

[winterpinetrees]

OC-Tober Day 24: Flowers

The daffodil can symbolize many things: joy, resilience, deceit, death, rebirth. Likewise, Marin Sondaica has the chance to become many things.

[theveganmothership]

Major extinction events are nothing new for the planet, but species are now dying out at an alarming rate thanks to humans.

We are presently losing dozens of species every day, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Nearly 20,000 species of plants and animals are at a high risk of extinction and if trends continue, Earth could see another mass extinction event within a few centuries.

“Unlike past mass extinctions, caused by events like asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions and natural climate shifts, the current crisis is almost entirely caused by us — humans,” explains the Center for Biological Diversity. “In fact, 99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities, primarily those driving habitat loss, introduction of exotic species and global warming.”

While there is no single international body that declares a species or subspecies extinct, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List is a widely-recognized authority for keeping track of threatened and endangered species.

“The main focus of the Red List is to stop species from going extinct,” a Red List manager told the Washington Post in 2011. “But, by default, we became the standard international list for extinctions.”

Below, find 11 animals that have all gone extinct in the past two centuries thanks to humans.

West African Black RhinocerosWikiMedia:Yathin skThe West African black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis longipes) was a subspecies of the black rhino that was declared extinct in 2011. The subspecies last existed in Cameroon, but an extensive survey in 2006 did not find any signs of living West African black rhinos. According to the IUCN, “it is highly probable that this subspecies is now extinct” thanks to increased poaching and demand for rhino horn.

Pyrenean IbexWikiMedia:TaraguiThe Pyrenean ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was a subspecies of the Iberian wild goat that went extinct in 2000. Once found throughout the French, Spanish and Andorran Pyrenees, the population was severely thinned by hunting. In 2009, scientists were able to clone a female Pyrenean ibex using DNA from preserved skin samples. Due to lung defects, the ibex died shortly after birth, according to The Telegraph.

Passenger PigeonWikiMedia:FunkMonkThe passenger pigeon may have once constituted 25 to 40 percent of the bird population in what is now the U.S., according to the Smithsonian Institution. As many as 3 to 5 billion of these birds were alive when Europeans arrived. The birds’ traditional habitats were the large forests of eastern North America. As settlers cleared the forests for farmland, the pigeons turned to the new fields for subsistence. “The large flocks of passenger pigeons often caused serious damage to the crops, and the farmers retaliated by shooting the birds and using them as a source of meat,” explains the Smithsonian. The 19th century brought widespread hunting and trapping of the birds, which severely diminished their populations. The last passenger pigeon, named “Martha,” died at age 29 at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

QuaggaWikiMedia:FunkMonkThe Quagga (Equus quagga ssp. quagga) was a subspecies of the common plains zebra and a native of South Africa. Known for its unique stripes, the Quagga was hunted for its hide and killed by ranchers who believed the animals competed with livestock for grazing area, according to PBS. The last known Quagga died at the Amsterdam Zoo in 1883.

Caribbean Monk SealWikiMedia:FunkMonkLast seen in the early 1950s, the Caribbean monk seal (Monachus tropicalis) was declared extinct in 2008 after a five-year review by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The seals had been hunted by European explorers who began arriving in the late 15th century, according to NOAA. They were later exploited for their fur, meat and oil by fisherman and whalers. Coastal development and fishing also impacted their traditional habitats in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. “Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them in the wild,” a NOAA biologist said in 2008, according to Science Daily. “Unfortunately, this lead to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes.”

Sea MinkNew York State MuseumThe sea mink (Neovison macrodon) once lived along the coasts of Maine and New Brunswick, but was prized for its fur and was hunted to extinction in the second half of the 19th century. (Image: New York State Museum)

THE MORNING EMAILStart your workday the right way with the news that matters most.

Tasmanian TigerWikiMedia:FunkMonkKnow as Tasmanian tigers due to their stripes, thylacines (Thylacinus cynocephalus) were the largest modern carnivorous marsupial according to the Smithsonian Institution. They once existed across the Australian continent, but their habitat had been reduced to the island of Tasmania by the time European settlers arrived. According the National Museum of Australia: Thylacines were believed to kill livestock and were often shot and trapped. They were a convenient scapegoat for poor financial returns and high stock losses at a time of rural depression in Tasmania. Thylacines were declared a protected species in 1936, the same year the last known specimen died. Unconfirmed sightings of Tasmanian tigers continue to this day. Using preserved specimens, a team at Pennsylvania State University has successfully sequenced the animal’s mitochondrial DNA.

Tecopa PupfishWikiMedia:PmaasThe Tecopa pupfish (Cyprinodon nevadensis calidae) was native to the Mojave desert in California and could survive in waters as warm as 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Human development around the Tecopa Hot Springs in the mid-20th century and the channelling of two springs together left the habitat unsuitable for the small fish. The Tecopa pupfish became extinct by 1970 or soon after.

Javan TigerWikiMedia:Dre.comandanteThe Javan tiger (Panthera tigris ssp. sondaica) was a tiger subspecies that likely became extinct in the mid-1970s, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Hunting and a loss of forest habitat led to their demise. Although the tiger was last seen in 1976, the head of East Java’s Meru Betiri National Park announced in 2011 that he was “optimistic” that Javan tigers were still alive, according to the Jakarta Globe. Camera traps were set up in hopes of confirming any tiger sightings.

Great AukPAThe great auk (Pinguinus impennis) was a flightless coastal bird that bred on rocky islands around the North Atlantic, including in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles and Scandinavia. They were slaughtered in huge numbers until the late 18th century, according to the British Natural History Museum. Although hunting declined, the rare birds became a prized specimen for collectors and they were driven to extinction by the mid-1850s. In this photo, Dan Gordon, Keeper of Biology at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums, holds a stuffed juvenile Great Auk at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle.

Bubal HartebeestWikiMedia:P.S. BurtonThe Bubal hartebeest, or Bubal antelope, (Alcelaphus buselaphus ssp. buselaphus) was a subspecies of African antelope that lived in North Africa. The animals were hunted to extinction and the last known Bubal hartebeest was killed in Algeria sometime between 1945 and 1954, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

[winterpinetrees]

Character Bio for Marin

Name: Prince Marin Sondaica 

Pronouns: He/Him

Species: Elf (high nobility)

Age: 86 (18)

Special skills: Illusions, mind control, fighting with a staff. Generally very athletic and smart.

Appearance notes: Marin is 5’9 and stereotypical elf skinny. He has dark skin, mostly african features, and black hair styled into shoulder-length locs. Marin has hazel brown eyes that glow emerald green when he uses his magic. 

Marin Sondaica is the only child of former Apex Emer Sondaica. He’s only sort of the heir though because…well… because he wasn’t good enough. He had cousins who were better than him at everything. Marin was a spare, and very much not qualified to lead a counter-coup. However, he’s the only Sondaica not in custody or dead, so that task has fallen to him. Before everything went wrong, he made a plan to spend a decade or so on earth for mental health reasons. It’s not going the way he planned.

Marin is keeping his story very close to his chest. He was born in 1933 and spent some of the 1960s vacationing in the human world with his mother. He likes rhythm and blues and old science fiction. The kids don’t know much about him, so neither do you. 

[winterpinetrees]

Esther (The Gap Years 2x2)

September 14th

The Elven Palace

The word hubris can mean excessive pride, or it can mean defiance against the gods leading to an inevitable downfall. This 5'1" secretary is doing both.

Previous

Navigation Guide

………………

Esther does not expect deliverance. She would like to be free, of course, but no help will find her here, not when her grandmother, mother, genetic model, whatever Rivka was to her, had to claw her way out with political intrigue and legal loopholes. Half a billion humans look at her and only see the bringer of justice. They see a savior in her red curls and the shape of her eyes. She’s the one who watches and saves. Prince Marin Sondaica would be dead without her. And yet, these are all background thoughts. Most days Esther is only delivering letters.

She is a glorified secretary. The humans workers have their own hierarchy to keep things smooth, and elves will only serve each other. There has to be a go-between. A messenger that humans will respect and elves will obey. She argues with staff, balances costs, and does the work to figure out how closely wild humans are really paying attention to their security cameras. As a girl, she was told that the position meant so much more than paperwork, and it sometimes does. Esther is the first person Amedi will ask for help and their last line of defense. A seneschal is a secretary, but also a personal servant and a trusted companion. That’s where her and her grandmother’s fates diverge. A kidnapped wilder getting her revenge against her enslavers is one thing. A seneschal turning traitor is another.

Truly she was made for this. Not even in the proverbial sense like if she had been raised from birth to serve, but literally made. Most seneschals descend from a few ancient bloodlines, but Esther was a custom model. Rivka Tzedek- may her memory be a blessing- had the sharp mind, empathy, and focus that any future apex or councillor would want the help of. She was also unfortunately as stiff-necked as the stories said, driven by revenge, and already had a history of resisting the nobility. Some of that was trauma, but the elves weren’t taking risks. It means Esther isn’t exactly a clone. She was supposed to be more accommodating. She wasn’t supposed to fight back. Her grandmother’s indomitable will was impressive, but would only be a pain for a servant. Not trying to change it would be like keeping a sled dog in a city apartment. That’s not what it was made for. What she was made for. Elves usually remember not to call her “it”. Dee always gets it right, at least.

So in the end she was grown in a lab and handed back to the Tzedeks to raise, in case a rustic human upbringing was essential to Rivka’s genius. Esther has someone else’s nose, skin a few shades darker than a typical Ukrainian Jew, and brighter red hair, but otherwise she’s the perfect image of the woman who escaped slavery by getting twenty elves arrested for human trafficking. Elves usually comment on her eyes. They shudder and ask if she knows all of their darkest secrets too. Esther is the head of Councillor Amedi Kebero’s staff. On some level, she runs a fifth of the whole elven world. Of course she knows.

Esther knows that Plaguekeeper Eburos keeps two wildborn humans captive on his estate in the north, and that they never last longer than three years. She knows that Daphne hides bruises under the cuffs of her uniform because Councillor Marolak will never, ever, trust a human with tech. She knows that the Apex and Councillor Stormson have a shared account on a human fanfiction website. Her mother brought the elven world to its knees with just gossip. This should be more than enough. As for Amedi? Well, like all nobles, Dee will start staggering if they sleep for anything less than a full third of the time. The night is hours without an apex predator breathing down her neck. That is, except for the nights when Amedi screams themself awake. Sometimes they want to talk, but more often they’ll stumble wordlessly into Esther’s room, long ears folded back, and fall back to sleep on her small couch, secure that they aren’t the last soul in the worlds.

That hasn’t happened in a bit, but Amedi’s been spending more time on the shooting range or taking missions. With so many Lazarin nobles on the loose, it seems like everyone is realizing that they can fight back. Even the former Apex’s twin sibling, Cai Sondaica, has reemerged to warn scientists and cause trouble. The councillor is some sort of soldier again, and they come back tense and bristling with magic. Esther offers a shoulder to lean on when Dee vents over all of their problems she has so casually caused. They should have been sweeping away the last resistance, but instead there’s dozens of prisoners loose. Sierra Bracken should have been captured, which would have split the other humans’ allegiances, and left the heirs without emotional support and tactical advice before very long. Esther, of all people, knows how much the nobility rely on the humans they keep around.

The other two parts of her job, servant and secretary, haven’t stopped even while her role as emotional-support-human has grown harder. In the chaos she’s caused, Esther has even more to manage, and she’s been trained too well to slack off. A girl doesn’t become a seneschal by being a quitter. Rivka did more with less. It’s made worse by the beautiful weather. The capital is warmest when the winds change around the equinox, and Ishtar’s council had been expecting a smooth autumn before a mad winter. Instead, everyone, elf and human, is working until they can hardly hold a pen. Of course, the threshold for human exhaustion is a lot higher. The five seneschals to the high council aren’t too close, but there’s no one else to lean on. Other humans have to obey them, and their charges are counting on them for support. Still, considering her past and her plans, Esther has to be desperate to crash in the break room.

The break room is a well-kept secret, though the elves know it must exist just as surely as Esther knows an army requires a supply line. She even jokes about it on occasion, but no one reveals the location. Seneschals are trusted with the secrets of kings. They can keep their own. One night Esther manages her work (not finishes. The busywork of an empire never stops) enough to climb though the maintenance tunnels and join the other four in their lead-lined den. They’re talking quietly while an American political drama plays on the largest screen. The technology here is worse than what she’s stolen for herself.

Ryn’s seneschal, Callum, waves her over with a bold smile. He’s as old as her father and near retirement, though genetically speaking her own “father” is more like a half-brother. Damn elves with their century-long generations didn’t care that cloning a woman in her 70s would tangle the family tree. Esther’s a bit shocked to compare the two. Callum likes to think of them as a family, but that isn’t right. He doesn’t know any better though. Seneschals are raised collectively. They have to be socialized properly, after all. A seneschal with issues isn’t good for anyone.

He’s genuinely happy at least, and not as creepily dependent on his charge as some older seneschals she’s seen. Callum’s oddly argumentative, probably because it made Councilor Stormson more comfortable to have a slave that didn’t act like one. He’s sitting with Alyse, who serves the apex, and they’re nearly as close as Ryn and Ishtar are. Esther suspects Alyse will follow him into retirement in a few years. By the time she’s in her sixties and Dee has to pick a new human, half the wild humans alive now could be dead. Maybe she’ll be one of the bodies. If she is caught committing treason, will Amedi be the one to put her down?

It would probably hurt them more than her.

She closes her eyes and breathes slowly. Four different clocks tick on the walls. Even late at night, the air still smells like the good Voyager coffee they got at midsummer. Her chair is covered with an embroidered blanket. Esther knows it’s a landscape scene with a sabertooth prowling through the grass. There was another High Council, with their own staff, four months ago. This space is still scattered with things they left.

Perhaps the elves' mistake was giving her back to Rivka’s family. Maybe this rage is all nurture, not nature. She was raised like a Tzedek, not a servant, and only joined the rest of her seneschal kind once she was twelve. It’s nearly unprecedented, but the only other active seneschal to not grow up in their academy is right beside her. That doesn’t mean they get along. His name is Quarrel, like a fight or a crossbow bolt, and the altered musculature in his neck around his ID collar lets his jaws crush bone. A wilder seeing him on the street would probably remember. His long white hair is closer to fur and his fuzzy ears swivel at every sound in an almost elvish way. He’s also twenty-six and meticulous about paperwork even by their standards.

Quarrel is Eburos’s seneschal and pet project, with the project being to selectively breed a pet. Eburos wanted a secretary, not a companion, and he certainly didn’t want human empathy getting in the way of a good time, so a standard seneschal just wasn’t going to work. Quarrel’s smart as anything and brings a new meaning to human determination, but Eburos never bothered to teach him the social parts. He didn’t do anything wrong, but to Esther, he’s like a different species. Lazarus knows he’s the product of enough generations of selective breeding that he might actually be one. He’s nice though. On some bone-deep level he doesn’t feel it, but he’s compassionate, and will hold the door open.

Devana Marolak’s seneschal is the opposite. Daphne’s perfect, but it doesn’t do her much good. The break room is the only place where she so much as casts a shadow. Esther is mostly a clone of Rivka, but the modifications weren’t drawn from a database. Elves think artificial genes are a recipe for disaster, so instead of consulting their massive genetic library, they grabbed DNA from the meekest servant they had. That infinitely forgiving seneschal had a brother, who had a daughter, named Daphne. If the modifications count as equal to fathering a child, then they’re first cousins.

There’s some visible resemblance, but the similarities end there. To put it bluntly, Daphne has been scared out of her mind every day for the past ten years, while Esther acts with the mad courage of a woman who’s been raised as the heir to the most spiteful woman in history. Esther thought Daphne would support her plans to defend human freedom, screw with the nobility, escape, etc, but in fact Quarrel (who is complicit in trafficking and torture) is less likely to rat her out than she is. If Esther had been raised on anything other than stories of defiance and survival, she’d understand. The truth is that hope is a skill, and not one seneschals are taught. Why should they need it? Their jobs are to handle the details, and provide support to the elves that really need strength.

She makes conversation, says a few points about the black-market economy that the seneschals occasionally have to arbitrate, and excuses herself after an hour. Esther takes a winding path back to her own quarters. Human workers bow their heads as she passes, and those returning from work without anything to carry show her their open hands as a deeper show of respect. The elves she passes give her a nod or nothing at all. She makes no effort to walk quietly through Dee’s chambers. Better if they hear her returning home now, instead of wondering what she’s up to. The councilor’s bedroom is far enough from the main entrance that they probably can’t hear her anyway. She was trained to not make her presence known.

Her own few rooms are cluttered in the careful way of most seneschals. Esther touches the mezuzah the doorframe and slips inside her study. Yes, there’s hardly a bare space large enough to put a coffee cup down, but she knows every last notecard on the tables. There is a cabinet in the back that reaches almost to the ceiling. It’s full of paper, but she can just barely push it to reveal a false wall behind. Obsessively, she wonders if the rebels have sent her an urgent message, and the few hours between right now and her safe hours will be what kills them. Esther pushes the thought aside. If she did wake up Amedi, then they’ll check and say goodnight. It wouldn’t be good for them to hear her breathing inside the wall. More than that, routines are natural to her. She learned it in her training, and before that from the prayers her grandmother recited daily for sixty years after she doubted that anyone was listening. It’s also practical. Phone call time is when when Dee wakes up like Voyagers do and practices their archery outside. She’s not calling sooner. Esther takes a final fifteen minutes to review the day's work, places her collar on a little hardwood table, sets a timer, and crawls into bed.

Tonight, Amedi does not wake her up. They’re off in a courtyard somewhere shooting magic curses at a target and Esther’s burning moonlight. She makes her bed out of habit, gathers treasonous documents, and shoves the filing cabinet to the side until she can squeeze behind it. The rebellious humans would have an easier time with this part. Sierra Bracken is only a few inches taller than her, but strong. Even Clay, who evidence shows leans more towards running and shooting, probably has more strength. There’s a pulley system inside that makes covering her tracks easier, but like before, it would be suspicious on the outside. The hidden cupboard wouldn’t matter much if it were discovered. It’s filled with crates full of basic palace contraband, and the other four probably have their own. Part of arbitrating the black market requires keeping their own stock. Esther also wouldn’t be a good seneschal without hard drugs of both wild human and commoner varieties, for her and for Amedi once things go further off the rails. The part that would leave her and her family with glowing, dead eyes or slit throats is underneath the unlabeled containers of stimulants. Some day once she’s free, she’ll find ex-Councillor Celeron’s old seneschal and thank them for building an off-the-books crawlspace within a more expected crawlspace. The cupboard has a false floor, and under it, wrapping around a servant’s passage and the water pipes, is a ventilated room five feet square. Or maybe Celeron’s seneschal didn’t make the space, only inherited it, because it was empty when she found it. Esther’s added a phone, a wi-fi router, a desk, and a computer underneath that. It’s undecorated and she needs to replace the strip of LED lights around the ceiling with something less depressing. Amedi might notice if her few trinkets went missing though. She knows they’re trying to connect by asking questions. Seneschals aren’t supposed to come with a culture built in.

The humans haven’t left any messages for her, which is a good sign. The expected call comes at 1:15. She lifts the receiver smoothly and activates the distortion. The voice on the other side of the phone is painfully Californian. “Have I reached my emissary?”

Brian likes to play along with the theming. He sometimes refers to himself as a knight. Sierra’s taken Amedi’s title (without any understanding of it’s context) and is the artificer. Clay’s just Clay, or dirtboy if he’s been a pain.

“You have. Did you visit the Betrayed settlement? Has there been any trouble?”

They talk. She listens. It’s just like her work, except Esther is nameless and faceless and no one’s clone. She shares truths that might as well be miracles. Sierra jokes that she’s their guardian angel. She smiles. A flaming sword wouldn’t fit under the desk, but then again, she wouldn’t have to hide like this with one in her hands.

……………………

Esther got more explicitly Jewish with each draft of this chapter. She is also doing some sort of spiteful apostasy, but these things happen when your grandmother/genetic model has unbelievable trauma. Anyway, I recently learned that the word apostasy is derived from the Ancient Greek for revolt or defection and I’m having a lot of fun. She’s living her best life. (She really isn’t)

She is also so mean to Quarrel and I made this decision but I still feel bad! He’s just as much a product of circumstances as you are girlie!

@lokiwaffles @reggie246 @wishndreamer

[winterpinetrees]

The Time Will Pass Anyway (The Gap Years 2x1)

After two months we are so back! It’s time for Book 2, formatting-wise. Brian, Sierra, Clay, and Marin continue their quest to gather allies and not die. However, they’re all known threats now, and the balance of power is getting precarious.

navigation guide

dramatis personae

🐴🐎 (those are for you @wishndreamer. welcome to the party)

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September 13th

San Fransisco, CA

The elves know their world well. After eleven thousand years of civilization, they do finally have better maps of the ocean floor than the surface of the moon. They have looked backwards into ice cores and ancient ruins to discover their past, and they have a story. It is an origin myth by a different name, now that religion is out of fashion. 

Tens of thousands of years ago, after they mastered fire but before any cave paintings they’ve found, the worlds were one. Then, by chance or by fate, the worlds were split and the residents of one found themselves surrounded by long-since-faded magic. Or maybe a small group gained magic while still among those without, and split the worlds themselves in an act of unimaginable power. The new elves lived longer than anything else that walked on land, and forgot little. They aged too slowly for evolution to help them, so they shaped the unforgiving world themselves. Left behind, the humans survived as all other living creatures do. They stayed alive from one generation to the next, adapting and enduring until finally the glaciers melted and the climate was stable enough for such short, forgetful creatures to figure out agriculture and hygiene. Poor things. Why shouldn’t elvenkind give them a hand? 

When Marin tells this story to Brian, Sierra, and Clay on their way back west, they’re caught between amusement and horror. Then Sierra mutters “what do we call ‘white man’s burden’ for a bunch of elves”, and the tone shifts so fast they can’t breathe through their laughter. Marin gives them a disapproving look. This isn’t like human racism, he says with disgust. His mother fought slave traders in the Caribbean. This isn’t a made-up justification for elven rule. They’re actually superior this time. The humans remind themselves that keeping Marin’s trust is important for saving the world, and drop it.

This is, of course, a justification. It’s one that the elves need because no matter how cutthroat the nobility are, no elf is eager for a desperate human to end their magical life early with a lucky bullet. After four thousand years of stability, no elf wants to suffer and die in a burned-out field or a city reduced to rubble for a world they do not need. They would rather wait like they’ve waited since Lazarus died. Humans are tough, but they’re outpacing themselves. Let the climate change and the bombs fall. The elves can clean up the aftermath.

Marin’s mother took a different stance. Isn’t it cruel to allow for all that pain? The humans don’t know what’s good for them. The majority of their civilization doesn’t even know things can be different. This is altruism, see? They are acting for the greater good. Most elves love humanity. Even the Voyagers don’t want to watch their coasts sink again. Every year they face cyclones that are still erratic from carbon emissions ten millennia years before. They’re in the height of the hurricane season now. 

So when Apex Mercuralis declares that conquest is imminent and that sacrifices must be made, her subjects listen from all of their decentralized corners. Travelers and hermits return home, even entire towns retreat from their human neighbors. A civilization shakes itself awake. There is resistance, of course. Half-elves warn human spouses what is coming. A leading physicist is handed data explaining the mechanics of magic by an unsettling elf with all of the stars in her eyes. Betrayed elves fight in the hills, refusing the Apex’s decree and killing any soldiers who dare fight them without magic. And of course, the spare Sondaica heir and his gifted friends coordinate their army from within a few miles of the palace. If humanity learns the truth and attacks the elves first, then their strike on the elven world will be as devastating and brief as a tidal wave. Better not to risk even a hint of magic where they can see, not with four thousand active nuclear bombs on the table. Amedi Kebero shot an arrow at the runaways once. It struck Sierra’s window while she was working, but even they wouldn’t risk anything more. The elves watch and wait. The humans adapt to impossible circumstances. Every story has a grain of truth to it.

It’s the end of summer and the winds are changing by the bay. This is a seasonal shift, the same as in the elven world. In the end though, the city will either change hands or change climates. The old story doesn’t have a third option. There is no way for power to change. 

Brian, Sierra, and Clay know this well. Life at home is identical to what it was before they left on this quest. They play game after game of Pandemic as if the specialized cards will tell their futures, and lose track of everyone else. August fades into September without summer reading to finish or classes to choose. Their now-distant friends post photos of their new dorms. How can Brian talk to a teammate who could be dead of smallpox in a year? Someone who thinks elves work for Santa Claus and that they are all alone in the universe? What good are four seasons on the same team compared to weeks spent fighting for the fate of the world? He can imagine himself wearing the sabertooth tiger of Genus Sondaica or the burnt orange of Genus Adust, but not the Princeton Tigers jersey waiting for him next fall. Their emissary, Essie, the human girl serving in the elven palace, says the plague will come this spring, or maybe in the summer. Disease thrives in the heat. 

Essie understands though that her allies know how to fake a future. They may not have been raised as secretaries, but children soak up information like healthy soil. Unrestricted internet access. Eavesdropping as their fathers sway policy. Fliers about saving the whales. The deadline for their despair has become more concrete, but the three slip back into their lives as if they aren’t hiding an alien prince along with them. When a man’s eyes flash neon blue at a self-righteous gala, Brian hides his flinch and smiles for the cameras. Sierra tells everyone she caught a bad cold, even as smallpox scars creep across her shoulders. Clay meets back up with his friends, the artists, and outcasts, but he can’t quite tell them what they should be afraid of. Then the sun sets and Sierra fiddles with bolts until her fingers are stiff. Brian spends every night in Zerada’s arms, or so exhausted he can barely reach a bed before falling asleep. Clay, well, he’s quieter than he used to be. This time under the neon lights he’ll have the words to bring a few more friends into this world. 

Other nights they are far from any status quo. Zerada and Jezero sweep in with scratched-up clothes and scandalous news. Trying to align the Lazarin nobles is like herding cats, (sabertooth ones, to be specific), but the siblings are as good messengers as anyone. Her charms, magical and otherwise, don’t hurt. Back in San Francisco, the humans coordinate with nobles over phone calls and covert drop points. They might spend a day on mundane personal projects, only to end it with a midnight call to their mysterious emissary. “Climate change”, Clay jokes “might have been dooming them for years, but that took a lot less work”. He has a paper straw in his coffee anyway. It’s nothing. It’s a symbol.  The media coverage for performance will make the elves think twice. 

Sierra had asked for deferred admission first. Of the three of them, she deserved her acceptance the most. Sierra’s work with electric engines and all the pieces that made The Audacity was exactly what the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wanted. Her father was a footnote. She got in. There was something compelling about the college. She’s read stories of MIT students: a police car on a roof, a cannon stolen from Caltech, the first hackers. Maybe she’ll finally find someone who can make code speak to her like metal and wires do. It’s a continent away though, Besides, it would be wrong to leave Brian in New Jersey without a goodbye. 

He wasn’t in the same situation. They’ve heard Brian quote Wordsworth from memory before dragging his surfboard down to the shore, and his grades are downright stellar, but the world is more blunt than poetry. Their fathers all graduated from Princeton, supposedly the best school in the nation, the same year. Now, thirty-nine years later, Brian is doing the same thing. He got in because he’s a Whitaker, basically. Being good at baseball didn’t hurt either. There’s a team waiting for him, but the trio have been inseparable since birth. He can’t not join them on the road. 

Lastly, Clay is also off to Cambridge, Massachusetts, two miles from Sierra. He wanted to go somewhere big and lively, like a state school in California, but the money had to come from somewhere. Once Clay’s acceptance to Harvard showed up in his inbox, Mr. Shepard wouldn’t pay for anywhere else. That means he’s off to fancy nerd school, and who would listen to him complain? Why not defer a year, if Sierra won’t be going east until next September. He can tell what neighborhood of San Francisco he’s in by sound alone. It would be nice to have another summer. 

As for Marin, well, delaying his life wasn’t an option. He will attend the Conservatory when he is ninety-nine unless he is too dead to do it. Even Cai spent her nine years enrolled and pretending to fight. However, he could have been preparing, not walking away to chase strangers in the human world. The prince has never sat at a folding table in a gym that smells like rubber and sweat filling in dots with a number two pencil, but he’s been caught between the pages of his history for a long time. Now, he’s found himself impossibly close to holding the scepter in his hands. Never once when he climbed the one-handed statue of Lazarus overlooking the harbor and leaned his head on Zerada’s shoulder did he imagine they could actually rule. It’ll be embarrassing to tell his mother just how right she was right about the human world. 

The scepter isn’t in his hands yet, so they plot. They coordinate. Marin starts teaching Brian how to speak Lazarin, Sierra runs countless tests on their guns and gadgets, and Clay trawls missing person reports to find who the elves target. It’s a scattered operation, and their emissary helps where she can. Essie has sent them information through a dozen methods, but most of it is aggravatingly vague. There are the 1 am phone calls, but Sierra has spent much of her August dealing with encrypted emails and PDFs that appear spontaneously in her photo reel covered in shorthand. It seems like their ally has access to anything and everything with an internet connection, and after one off-color joke about Brian’s search history, she begins pretending that she doesn’t. Brian and Sierra also, cautiously, ask their fathers if they think humanity is alone in the universe. If the government has any suspicion that magic is real, then the most powerful man in California will know about it. Sierra’s dad is on the bleeding edge of technology modeled after science fiction, so he might know as well. They know less than the kids do. 

Their families are more helpful in other areas. Over six weeks, they put their out-of-context understandings of power into place. The Marolaks are hunters who want to go on the offensive, so it’s James Shepard’s history that suggests they keep the soldiers occupied with a minor task. The Celerons are content to gather their allies in Eurasia and wait out the pandemic, but Travis Bracken has a history of luring hesitant parties to action. Zerada and Jezero are fielding a genus of tricksters, and two Sondaicas have better claims to the throne than Marin. They need another win, and quickly, or else Rhiannon or Lir will take his role. 

That is why, after six weeks of doing what they told their colleges they would spend their gap years on, the kids hit the road again. The car is better than ever, with shielding under the exterior and spare tires in the back. They’ve brought things they couldn’t easily buy on the road: stronger headphones, barely legal body armor, and a camera that is far more sensitive to magic than Sierra’s makeshift device. Buried underneath all of that is another box. It’s unlabeled, but that can’t truly hide its contents. N95 respirators. Disinfectant. Plastic gloves. The three of them have faint circular scars across their shoulders, but that won’t guarantee immunity if the elves change their strategy. They won’t be caught dead if it all collapses when they’re on the road. 

They tell the Adusts to keep an ear out for a rendezvous point after they’re done up near the border and take the 1-80 north through the central valley. The grass is literally greener than usual, and contrary to their fears, no wildfires interrupt their plans. Clay had wanted to get as far from home as possible before the elves knew they’d left, but Zerada was sure they were being tracked too well for that to matter. She argued they should stay close, in case either group needed backup. Brian turns their radio to a sports broadcast and drives them all the way to the shores of Lake Tahoe. They stretch their legs, but when Brian steps back into the driver’s seat, he’s turning the car to the north. 

As the driver, it’s his prerogative to do whatever he wants for ‘evasive maneuvers’. It’s not until the road signs start saying “Susanville 50 Miles” that the other three put the pieces together and start to have a problem. 

Marin swings his arms around the back of the driver’s seat and leans in close. Even with Zerada gone, he’s not getting passenger seat privileges back.  “What are you even going to do there? You barely knew the kid, and anyone left certainly doesn't know you”.

“How did you…Am I that predictable?” Brian laughs. 

Sierra shrugs. “Every time someone had a little league game on, you mentioned that the Betrayed guard had played baseball, so yeah”. 

“His name is Sebastian”. 

She rolls her eyes. The boy in the glacier prison had said he was from Lassen County, California. It’s a sparsely populated region. Marin says that the Betrayed usually attach themselves to larger human settlements, so their destination is almost certainly the only city in the area. That place is Susanville. Brian is following his paper maps straight towards it. 

“As for what I’ll do,  I’ll look around? I want to find some evidence that he was here”.

“Evidence?” Clay replies. His feet are on the dashboard. The others turn to him in shock. He’s been quiet during the drive. 

“I don’t want to just think of him as a guard. He had a life here”.

They drive through irrigated farmland and dry ground.  This is high elevation desert, again, just like where Sierra was shot. It’s bright and hot in a way that feels mentally worse in September than in August. It’s technically summer until the 20th or 21st, but who cares about the equinox? Elves? They’re doing all of this to not follow an elven schedule. 

“It feels like a bad omen for the Betrayed to settle here,” Clay says once they start to get close. 

Marin sits up in his seat and looks at the houses. “Why? The river still runs. That’s saying something, for humanity”.

“This is a prison town. Rural industry dried up, and then it was the nineties,” he scowls, “and the US was building a prison every two weeks. There’s three nearby and half the population works at one of them. If there are Betrayed here, then odds are that they’re doing guard work too, just like the Mercurali ordered”.

The car swerves slightly as Brian reacts “Working at a prison doesn’t just mean guard work, and the Betrayed were forced. He was like fourteen, Clay. He didn’t have a choice about any of this. And twenty years is nothing for an elf. They couldn’t have known our politics would happen”. 

Sierra looks out the window. “They couldn’t have known elven politics would happen either”.  

Brian parks the car in town. He and Sierra are going to sneak into the high school and maybe the community college to see if anything is out of place. Marin and Clay will stay near the car. Then, as they all step out and kick up clouds of dust, Clay puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“Wait, I need to talk to him”. She lets him go. 

With a baseball cap on and his backpack over one shoulder, Brian looks like he’s stepped out of a smaller story. He wishes he had an old address or family records, but even Essie wasn’t sure of details. The Betrayed were understandably not willing to report census data. It seems almost like someone grabbed Sebastian off the street without any procedure at all. Clay runs over. There’s a contrast between the two of them. Clay hasn’t picked up a suntan, and his straight brown ponytail would fit better on a lost adventurer in the wilderness than a boy taking a gap year. He’s wearing hiking books to Brian’s sneakers and long loose sleeves instead of basketball shorts. Clay has a human pistol on one side of his belt, concealed well enough that a stranger wouldn’t even see it. Brian knows to look. 

“You shouldn’t do this. They don’t want us here,” Clay explains with deathly certainty, and Brian looks around for an unseen threat. 

“We share an enemy, and this is a real city. People come through here all the time”.

Clay sets his jaw and his eyes lose focus behind his glasses. “We’re outsiders. Elves are secret, remember? We used to make fun of Sierra when she mentioned them. They’re not telling us anything”. 

“We know what to look for now, and I’d bet people here know too”. 

“Christ, Brian! We’re not rich kids out here”  You can’t keep expecting solutions to just fall right into your hands”. He practically snarls the words. 

“I’m not, I’m trying to do research-”.

“You’re running head-first into an isolated backwater while looking like the boyfriend from High School Musical. The Betrayed might not like the Mercurali but that sure as hell doesn’t mean they like us”.

“Are you okay?” Brian replies without thinking, then realizes his mistake. In his mind, it’s reassuring. They’ve known each other for eighteen years and Clay has been acting strange for weeks. His tone of voice betrays him. Of course Clay is trying to stop him from adventuring. Clay, who’s disgusted with all of human society, not just the United States’s prison system. Clay, whose hands don’t shake when he holds the rifle. Clay, who he feels more and more every second must have shot the Betrayed in his cell block. 

“Am I okay? I’ve been the one holding this whole thing together since you lost your mind!”

“What are you talking about!” 

Clay tilts his head back and sunlight flashes on his glasses. “I haven’t seen an ounce of restraint from you since Montana, at least. You keep racing from one thing to the next and falling apart! You had a panic attack after Sierra got kidnapped and I had to help. I murder a person, and you get a girlfriend”.

“You can’t blame me for freaking out that our best friend had been abducted by aliens! Sorry that I’m not some perfect killer. I’d rather live my life if you’re right that we’re all probably going to die”. 

“Killer”. A long horrible pause. Brian almost feels blood sticking to the back of his neck. Hollow elven bones shatter under a club he swings. Adrenaline and victory. Clay’s never done worse than fire a pistol. 

“…You’d just confessed. ‘Murder a person’”. 

“That was the plan. That was always the plan. We had to get out. We had to win, or else everyone dies. I kept it together”. He clenches his fists and walks forward. “I’m the only one keeping this together. You play carnival games and talk about the hero's journey… our people are already dying, Brian. This isn’t badass. All of this is miserable! But you are right about one thing. We are probably going to die!”

They stare at each other under the desert sun like Old West outlaws preparing to duel. Brian glances at the pistol in Clay’s belt. 

“Tell me you would have killed that boy, and stop looking at my gun”.

“I would’ve. I’d have done it with my hands”. He stares Clay in the eyes. “I may have strong reactions to the likely end of the world and the fact that we can literally save it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not as good as you”.

“Let’s get this over with”.

They walk into the local high school easily. They’re only eighteen, after all, and people hold doors open. This is not a place with security, or much funding at all. In this part of the country, school has been in session for almost a month. They find the library and the clunky computers that Sierra would love like old friends, and take yearbooks from the shelves. No one gives them a second glance, but they stare at every person nearby looking for pointed ears and too-quick movements. 

They’re all high school students, in all their teenage diversity. There are boys with sports jerseys and band patches, girls in short shorts and cowboy boots. They observe the cliques from the outside. A single thought rattles through both of their minds. Smallpox used to kill thirty percent of those it infected.

“Do you think we should have checked the middle school instead? He was young”.

Brian says no. Sebastian had taken engineering classes that wouldn’t be at a middle school, but could be at a rural high school like this. There’s no one familiar in the yearbooks, but maybe elves don’t let themselves be photographed.

A girl their age wearing hunting camouflage catches a bundle of pens thrown from across the room and sits down nearby. Her ears are hidden by her hair, but Brian thinks there’s an inhuman reflection in her eyes. She also doesn’t look strictly of european descent, but he won’t say that outloud as reasoning for thinking she’s from a different dimension.

“Odds I go say hi to her in Lazarin?” he asks, and Clay looks at him like he’s doomed the world. 

“Right. Impulsive behavior”.

Instead, they cross-reference names online. There’s a lot of teachers in last year’s records that are gone now. It could just be high turnover, but Clay can tell a few were hasty departures. Brian scans Clay’s face for signs that he has seen one of his victims. Then the bell rings loud enough to thrown them back to middle school, not a bloodstained glacier prison. 

Clay elbows him in the side and gestures to the girl. 

“Put your sunglasses on first”. 

Clay stands and leaves with the flow of students. Brian approaches the girl from a distance, nods his head, and says the most basic Lazarin greeting he knows. The girl looks up, shocked and slightly afraid, and hesitates before giving the exact same reply. 

“I don’t speak that well. Are you new here?” She says in English.

“Visiting. I have a message though. If you knew him, Sebastian’s doing fine, all things considered”.

Her eyes go wide, but Brian walks out of the school without looking back. He drives deep into Oregon before they feel safe stopping for the night. He hopes what he said was true. It’s been weeks since he saw the kid. He could have been punished, relocated, or worse. Maybe the Mercurali aren’t as against killing as the casualty list implied. Maybe only nobles get their mercy, not anyone out in the desert.

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

@lokiwaffles @reggie246

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[winterpinetrees]

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.

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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

[winterpinetrees]

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.

[winterpinetrees]

Finale (The Gap Years part 32)

July 24th 2019

Las Vegas, NV

The end of the season, or book, or whatever this is. 4.5 k words. Marin's new allies go rescue Sierra. They still have a lot to resolve afterward.

thank you @lokiwaffles and @reggie246 for tagging along for the ride.

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

They answer his call. For eighty-six years now, Marin has been given every reason to think otherwise. Before he was their last chance, his allies weren’t even kind enough to whisper. If his green eyes (not true Sondaica emerald, just hazel) were any indication, then he had his mother’s bleeding heart and love for the human realm. Perhaps his father’s complexion and frame were more telling, and the prince was a push-over intended only to tie Zerada Adust into the family tree. Sure, he’s quick on his feet and good with a staff, but not like Rhiannon. He’s well-trained with his magic, but Elyan could give weight to the void itself. So every time he makes a phone call summoning a cousin or aunt or ally to Las Vegas, he does it expecting to hear that they’ve all actually run off behind his older cousin Lir and wouldn’t come back so close to the capital if Lazarus himself demanded it. Instead, he gathers an army. 

Rhiannon kicks her feet up on his coffee table and twirls a pen between her fingers. She’s always been prone to nervous habits. Her father is in the next room over, scowling at the sound of a human party stories below them. The rest of Rhiannon’s close family, a mother and two brothers, are missing. Her little sister is confirmed dead. So is Elyan, a grandson of the apex who reigned before his mother. Lir shares the same grandfather, but different parents, and she holds the toy tiger that Marin earned at a carnival a month before up to the light as if it’s something more than cheap fabric. Her husband is dead as well, and they have no information about her young son.

The pattern continues through the elves of gens Adust, Celeron, Marolak, and the rest of the Lazarin faction. No one looks younger than fifteen or so in human years, as they were held at a different prison, and equally few are older than middle-age. Anyone who fought in the last coup would have been executed as a matter of revenge. Between those extremes, the family tree has been haphazardly pruned. There’s no pattern to who adds their magic to the illusions keeping them all hidden and who’s been given back to the ecosystem according to each family’s traditions. Nature never picks favorites. Luckily, their mysterious contact has cut through the fog of war. They know Sierra is being held in observation room three, down the hallway where the smaller offices used to be. The guards rotate their shifts every two hours, the human test subjects are fed at six and fourteen each day, and bodies are brought in or out every three days at sunset. For two dozen of the most powerful elves in the worlds, it doesn’t even feel right to call it a heist. The only real plans they need to make are about who dies once they’re inside.

Marin insists that they follow the new Apex’s lead and keep casualties low. The statement feels hollow with so many missing faces around him.  

………………………

It’s not getting easier, Clay thinks, as he points his rifle down a hallway at a surrendering guard. Clay and Brian insisted on being part of the team to free Sierra, but they’re hardly more than mascots beside the nobility. He’s used to feeling like an outsider, but there’s something in the reflective eyes of the elves that catches him off guard every time. Zerada’s brother is one hundred and six, not twenty. Marin’s cousins all clearly remember the civil rights movement and the moon landing. Even Marin has gained new life now that he walks beside his real friends. Clay knows how to walk quietly, but these elves stalk through the halls. 

He’s in a squad of four. Kova Marolak, niece of the traitorous Devana Marolak who their emissary confirmed was on the new High Council, is reckless but tough. She walks directly to his left and taps an axe across the floor. Marin walks ahead with his cousin, Lir, beside him. According to Marin, she’s his most likely challenger to the throne. According to the family tree, they’re second cousins. The guards here are commoners who were trained to handle defiant humans, not the best of the nobility. They surrender quickly, and Marin has to tell Kova off to keep her from slitting any unjustified throats. 

Clay doesn’t have much to do, but Marin yields the floor to him after they corner a certain doctor at the end of a long hallway. The fluorescent lights flicker overhead and he stomps towards a thin figure kneeling against a heavy sealed door. It looks like a proper Tolkien elf in the wrong genre, slender and pale with straight black hair in a properly hygienic bun. It doesn’t wear a noble vambrace with its pale green scrubs, but raises its head to look at him without any particular fear. (Eburos? Lir mutters beside him). He raises the rifle. It should be easier now that he’s put a child into its sights. 

“The vaccines are stored behind you?” he snaps. The elf thinks of Sierra as a test subject, so Clay will call him an it. So what if Brian freed his cell block with the power of friendship and hugs? 

“Yes, but they’re all still in development”.

“You’re plotting global conquest for like, next year. Get up and open the door”. It does. Kova holds her axe under his neck while he and Marin file into the room. Clay barks orders back at the technician. Which of these have undergone the most testing? Which have side effects? Which strain will be used for the final attack? Clay makes it gravely clear that no matter who winds up on the throne in a few years, Marin can and will avenge him if he dies of smallpox from a sabotaged drug. He grabs vials by the handful and places them into Marin’s messenger bag. Clay’s read that there’s no real danger to getting several flu shots, so their immune systems can probably handle a few of these? Once again, side effects are better than actual smallpox.  Basically everything is, except for rabies.

“What did you infect Sierra with? Where’s that antidote?”

The elf looks down. “She was given a strain derived from variola minor. It has a low fatality rate. We haven’t developed an antidote".

“You have got to be kidding me”. Kova grabs the elf’s soldier with her claw-like nails and lifts the blade higher. “Is it airborne?”. 

The lab tech shakes his head. “Only through close contact”.

Marin sighs. “Kova, please don’t make the casualty list any longer. And Clay, calm. We have healers now”. 

Right. Humans may have eradicated smallpox, but that achievement is probably nothing beside what elves have done. 

Kova lowers the axe an inch and gives Marin a disappointed look. She has a strong elvish accent and layered brown hair down to her waist. “Just say the word”.

Clay lowers his rifle in turn. “Don’t. Let’s get out of here”. 

She shoves the technician to the ground a little too harshly and hefts the axe back over her shoulders. Then they stalk back out. There are dozens of prisoners in this laboratory. A few lift themselves up to the windows of their cells and look out at him as they pass, but Clay keeps his head forward, even when the shadows seem familiar. Everyone here is already contagious. They’re also presumed dead, if anyone even noticed that they went missing. His father always said the same things about the people on the streets. Clay hesitates by a second hallway. The whole world is at stake and Sierra is locked in a cell. He can’t waste time. His family’s money won’t fix this. 

Clay catches someone’s eyes anyway, a woman about his age. They had said they wanted a way out, any way out. They were cursed and Betrayed and couldn’t control it, and the Mercurali’s new rulings only brought them more pain. The jailbreak had to happen. It was a simple decision. Clay knows that the fate of a human who survives a place like this can’t be anything good. He grabs the handle of a door to a cell that used to be an office and pulls. It’s locked, of course. He looks away and laughs to himself. Marin asks what he’s doing, and Clay shrugs. He was lost in his thoughts. The rifle shakes in his hands. 

………………

“Sierra!”

This… this is some sort of trick. Elves are illusionists. She knows this. Brian can’t actually-

Someone bangs on the other side of the two-way mirror. She can see a faint outline of his hands. “Sierra! We’re here to break you out!”

She sits up on the cot and listens carefully. The voice is quiet, but she guesses her cell wasn’t as soundproof as she thought. The door slides open, and she sees Brian standing in the hallway wearing an elven chestplate and sneakers. The vein-like lines that usually glow are dark, and he’s holding a baseball bat. The choice of weaponry is confusing until she sees Zerada and two unfamiliar elves behind him, all armed to the teeth. Brian’s just here for show. 

“Say something that the elves wouldn’t know,” she replies. 

“Eighth grade, when we had that freaky English teacher who made us read the book about seagulls? Like, quantum physics, hippie philosophy, seagulls? And the seagulls all had the last name ‘Seagull’?”

He’s actually here. She’s being rescued. She jumps to her feet and cheers (the world spins a bit. She tries not to think about Kebero’s threat of symptoms). “She wasn’t that bad”

“She was awful”. Brian looks back at her fearfully and stays in the hallway. “Wait, tell me something the elves wouldn’t know”.

She sighs. “In seventh grade, I tried to convince you to skip field day so we could all go hide in the supply closet and play Minecraft, but you didn’t want to let your team down and ratted us out to the teachers”.

Brian winces. “It’s been five years. I thought we were over that”. 

“They made me play dodgeball, Brian. Me. Age thirteen. Dodgeball”. 

She runs to hug Brian, but Zerada grabs her by the arm. “Cute story, but we need to leave. Clay’s team is working on grabbing your things, but no promises”. 

She breaks free from her grip and mutters that he had better get her stuff. “How did you even find me? I mean, thank you, obviously”. Brian still keeps his distance. Is something wrong?

“We got a phone call from an informant in the elven palace. She’s human, and told us to call her an emissary. Essie for short, I guess. All of her information has been accurate so far”. 

“Seriously? I’ve wanted to talk to a human for a while. Kebero let me speak to her seneschal, a personal secretary I think, during my interrogation but I barely got to say anything”. 

One of the new elves, a twenty-year-old looking man with ombré red hair and Zerada’s pale freckles gives her a lopsided smile. “You speak to humans all the time”.

“You know what I mean!” 

They start jogging. The new elves introduce themselves. The red-haired boy is Jezero, Zerada’s sibling. The other looks more alien, and is Sothea Celeron. The elf explains that Genus Celeron was more liberal with genetic engineering than most as a way to explain her webbed fingers.

The prison continues to look familiar. The lights seem cleaner and bluer than human ones, just like the ceiling lights at Project Excalibur did. 

“Where even am I?” she asks, not expecting her guess to be right.

“The ruins of Project Excalibur,” Brian replies too quickly. “Have you been experiencing any symptoms? Clay says that smallpox takes over a week to show symptoms, but…”

Sierra looks sheepishly at Zerada. She had the right idea to hold her back. “I’ve felt a bit off lately, but I assumed it was just from being in a cell. Kebero did threaten me a few days ago… They said, uh, ‘it might be hard to take you away from Eburos once the symptoms start’”.

The elves mutter to each other. This Eburos seems to be a hated figure. Sothea pauses the group and pulls Sierra into a side hallway. She places a hand on her forehead and her eyes begin to glow the blue-green of an anglerfish’s light. 

“She has a mild fever. I can’t tell anything else yet”. 

Sierra focuses on the cracks in the ceiling. She’s out. They have allies. No matter how many lies Marin has told, he isn’t going to let her die. 

…………….......

She holds a dagger up in front of her eyes. Perfectly straight with no chips or cracks, but it’s always a good idea to check after any sort of engagement. Engagement. She means a battle, but it’s probably a good idea to check one’s weaponry after setting a betrothal as well. Her betrothed is not as reliable as the metal of her daggers. He whispers with his cousin in old Lazarin, and Zerada makes sure to keep her ears back and give no sign that she’s listening. 

“Lir, you led your army at the Conservatory. I know you want power, but we’re going to have to be united to take back the crown”. He waits for her to reply, but Lir just leans back in her chair. She looks more like a proper Sondaica than him, with looser curls and true emerald eyes. 

“Certainly. Lazarus himself was known for his allies. Did your mother ever tell you about him?”

Now this is a rumor she’s heard, but never quite believed. Zerada makes herself busy with another task. 

“Did she tell me about…Lazarus? He was the first apex and the founder of our line? He has the massive statue overlooking the harbor? I could probably list every battle he led, you know how much time we’ve spent studying. Unless…”.

Lir nods.  “My father ruled in your mother’s stead for a decade or so, just before you were born. It wasn’t official, but he wore the helm and wielded the scepter”.

He did, and it was scandalous. For Emer to take a vacation from the throne… she’s always been impressed that the apex retained power once she came back. However, it did have a precedent. 

“Once she returned, my father all but threw the regalia back into your mother’s hands. Everything about the old apexes drifting off into the void rather than abdicating… that’s not a euphemism”. Lir pauses. The nobility do not believe in life after death. 

“When Lazarus emerged from the void with the power of a god, he left a piece of himself there. It’s an entire afterlife, and the scepter and helm are anchors to it. For those ten years my father was consulting with His Ascendance himself, and our ancestors did not approve of him”.

The void is pure magic and thought outside of time and space. With enough willpower, anything is possible. It’s still a shock. Life and death are the only sacred things the nobility have. If anyone was going to break those rules, yes, it would have been Lazarus Sondaica . He was a troublemaker, a psychopath, and completely unbound by any rules. The only person he ever truly cared for was a human soldier, and when he died of a bioweapon, Lazarus was never the same. Human stories tell of him abandoning his kingdom to search for eternal life. Elven history explains that he threw himself into the void after that, then not only survived but emerged to conquer the world. The idea that he succeeded in finding immortality… is nowhere near as unbelievable as it sounds. Jealousy hits her like Marin’s quarterstaff, which she knows has precisely the same weight as the scepter. He’ll see his mother again. 

Marin is asking why he’s hearing this information. They’ve managed to manipulate the humans, but that seems to be the limit of his charisma.

“My father said it was awful if they didn’t want you there. It’s the highest council there’s ever been”. 

They both pause. 

“So who’s the heir then? I mean, some previous Lords have kept the regalia in exile, but I sure don’t have it on me”. 

“Like you said, we’re going to have to be united to take back the throne. Your mother proved herself during the last coup. We’ll do the same. Survival of the fittest”. 

Zerada’s bet is on Lir. Her betrothed is capable, but the truly impressive acts and plans have come from the humans. Before the void-blank judgment of Lazarus, there’s no way he’ll come out on top. The thing is, she’s never found gambling to be much fun on its own. It’s really about the players and what they lose. Too bad she’ll only get a seat beside Marin. 

…………...........

“Crazy to think that I’m the champion wrestler, but you’re the one who’s good at hurting people”. Brian says it as a joke, but Clay freezes for a second while putting bandaids on his arm. They’re red, white, and blue, which he might deserve after all the politics he’s talked about these past few weeks. 

“You cracked someone’s ribcage like a pumpkin. These are not equal acts". 

Sierra has a mask (from their stash of makeshift radiation gear) on and her arms crossed. They never did get her favorite sweatshirt back from the elves. She has three dinosaur bandaids on her left shoulder, which has apparently gotten all of its movement back. “Seriously, where did you learn this?”

Clay only shrugs. He’s wearing a leather jacket and those reinforced jeans despite the heat. It’s been a pattern since the jailbreak. “How’d you learn to build a car?”

So he learned through some combination of sneaking into classes, his parents, bribing grad students, and the internet. Fair enough. 

Somehow, they are all back in Las Vegas in one piece. No one has any injuries more severe than bruises and they’ve added dozens of nobles to their growing army. Their emissary seems confident that the Mercurali, and the rest of the Eight Points faction, still won’t make any overt moves against them in such a populated area. If they move a bit and stay sharp, they can stay here until the elven world reveals itself. Of course, that reveal will be an apocalyptic one. Brian has always loved that bit of etymology, but it’s less fun with actual doom on the horizon. 

Sierra relayed her full interrogation to the two of them, including the brainwashed gaps. They’re staring down the barrel of a fifty percent casualty rate. Brian had taken a moment to clarify that it seemed like those deaths weren’t just from plague. The wording included anyone alive now who would die due to the elves, which meant deaths from plague, but also war, starvation, normal disease, or elven abuse. He’d felt a bit detached while he said it, like he wasn’t sitting on the tile floor of a Vegas suite, but actually drifting a few feet behind. He then clarified that this was not better. Either way, the plague is clearly meant to bring humanity to its knees. That means a high death toll, and as soon as it starts they lose their safe zone. 

So, in reality, they can’t stay here at all. The three of them may be immune to the plague (or will be soon) but no one else is. They have a year, maybe even less, before humanity screws up a pandemic response so badly that they’ll never be able to convince anyone that human independence is a decent plan. 

And he’s still drifting. Brian can catch a baseball moving at nearly a hundred miles per hour but his hands move like claws as he picks up a full vial. 

“What if I drink this?” Every year, they announce the team roster with a sheet of paper by the lunch room. Last name, weight class, class year. Team members hear directly from the coach, but it’s always his time learning his new brothers in arms. Brian sees the gym empty and the mats rolled up against the walls. He sees smallpox scars and draft notices and crushed bones from concussion rifles. He looks out at San Fransisco from a stage before Ishtar Mercuralis puts him down like an old dog. He hopes Zerada would bail him out before it got that far. 

“It would taste like salt water and do nothing,” Clay replies. Sierra mutters that he should totally try it.

“We should probably go home for a bit. Do something productive as an alibi,” she continues. 

“That would put us within a literal stone’s throw of the elven palace. We can’t risk it,” Clay replies, then he blinks as if realizing something. “And there’s no way we can convince your family to get injected with a mysterious elf drug. This thing could genuinely kill us”. He doesn’t seem convinced by his own argument.

Brian is more offended by the idea. “Remember the ambush? Without elves, we’re completely vulnerable. They can find us anywhere”. 

Six weeks ago they’d walked with Marin. The fog grew thicker and suddenly they had blood on their hands and a quest to complete. They need to stay together. 

“We could hide Marin in that spare room Clay always used?“ she suggests. Brian laughs it off, but Clay seems to consider it. 

“I’ll ask. I’m sure some noble would be willing to watch us for a week or two,”

“So what, we’re calling a timeout on our mission to save the world?” Brian replies. 

Sierra leans back. “I thought I was going to die in elf prison until like twelve hours ago. We deserve a break”.

“And we all might be smallpox carriers now. We should quarantine here for a week at least. Might as well go home after. I want to give my friends some sort of warning, too. They can keep secrets”.

That gets a laugh out of the two of them. Brian rests his chin on one hand “Dirtboy, you are not getting back in touch with your ex to give him a suspicious elf drug”. 

He blushes under his glasses. “...that wasn’t what I meant. I was talking more about social stuff. I swear I recognized one of the test subjects back at Excalibur. But now that you mention it, maybe we could convince Paige?”.

Brian’s thought about doing the same and warning his friends, but what can he say? This is all so unimaginable, and there’s not much they can do. Clay’s friends are more likely to die of this than his private-school teammates though. Brian also feels no instinct to protect his older brothers, but good on Clay for caring about his sister.

Sierra nods. “I wanted to run some more advanced tests on some of these elf gadgets too. Seems like there’s stuff elves don’t do with tech because magic can do it better. I’ve been thinking of a personal shield, like how Kebero deflected that shot during the car chase”. She turns to Clay. “Can you get someone to analyze the vaccine?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Smallpox would set off global alarms, and that would probably move the timeline of this invasion to, uh, right now”. 

Which would end their grace period and get all of them captured. Going back home feels stifling. He’s spent the past month on the run, spending time with the most amazing people and living by his own merits. He doesn’t want the world to burn, but a smaller transformation instead? He could get behind a rebirth from the ashes if it’s just for him. 

………………..

Even the meekest seneschals are spectacular liars, but Esther has more to hide than most. She is careful to act shocked, even horrified, when the Apex breaks the news that Marin’s new army broke the human girl out of captivity with ease, then adjusts that horror to a more personal type of fear when elves begin pointing fingers. Councilor Mercuralis, the Voyager turned backstabbing nobleman, declares that she was only rescued because Councillor Eburos was stupid enough to imprison the girl in a place the heirs had already infiltrated. Eburos snarls that there was no feasible way for the heirs to know she was hidden there, and questions if Councilor Marolak is having second thoughts about her change of allegiances. She accurately retorts that she had suggested holding Sierra on the other side of the planet, in one of the heavily guarded facilities where new human shock troops are raised. The details of that proposal never made it to the shining steel council table. The paper was misplaced in the shuffle, and when Daphne finds it a few days from now, she’ll surely hide the thing to save herself the blame. 

She doesn’t have anything against the other woman. They’re cousins through biological fathers they barely know, and Marolak is a crueler master than Amedi, but if she doesn’t act, they’ll write the last lines of human history in this very room. Daphne will be fine. The only thing Marolak hates more than having a human handling her most secure documents is the time every few decades when she has to choose a new one. 

She blinks up into the skylight. The room is cluttered and monitors cover the walls, but the glass ceiling lets in the sun. When she was younger, it felt almost holy. Now that she’s used to the nobility, it feels like a memorial. In the same way that water becomes a six-pointed snowflake, this is the shape that history takes when it crystalizes. No one has gotten enough sleep lately, least of all her. She doesn’t speak with the humans every night, but it’s enough that she’s not functioning as well as she should. Esther shouldn’t refer to them like that. They aren’t just any humans. They might even be friends, some day. Maybe that’s how this will end. Amedi will realize just how much she’s “taken a liking” to Marin's allies and charm her into revealing every secret she has. 

The councilors take a vote. Ever since Lazarus Sondaica declared to the first Ishtar Mercuralis that he would not rest until her throne was his, the nobility have liked to call their mortal enemies, “adversaries”. The apex rules, and whoever has the strength to talk back receives the other title. Ishtar was the adversary once, and now she makes the proposal. Does Marin Sondaica deserve it? Have his actions, surviving their attacks, freeing his kin, rescuing that girl, warranted elevating him to this new height? Ryn almost laughs. Marolak recites a line from The Artificer, then says that maybe the humans can share it. The vote is unanimous. Marin is nothing more than a runaway.

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

this thing is now on indefinite hiatus. it's been very fun! I’ll probably be back someday but who knows. In total, this “season” or “book” or section of the story is about 75 thousand words. That is the length of a novel. I wrote the awful first draft of an actual novel chapter by chapter and I am quite proud!

The book Brian mentions is Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I also had to read it in middle school. It truly is that weird.

[winterpinetrees]

Character Bio: The Adust Siblings

Zerada and Jezero Adust are the two adolescent heirs of Genus Adust, a major noble family who have worked for and with Genus Sondaica for four thousand years. At the end of Book 1, they are both free and supporting Marin, but their motivations aren’t quite aligned with the human heroes. Things will only get worse.

………………………………

Name: Zerada Adust

Pronouns: She/her

Species: Elf (high nobility)

Age: 94 (19 in human years)

Special skills: talented in mind control and illusions, very charming and manipulative, skilled in politics and the games of court. Her primary weapons are daggers which can be thrown.

Appearance notes: Zerada is 5’6 but frequently wears very high heels. She looks ethnically ambiguous in the way that many elves are, with lighter skin and wavy dark brown hair. She has pale “freckles” on her face and shoulders, a genetically modified Adust trait. Her eyes are light brown or amber, and her magic is a burnt orange color. Zerada is very attractive by Western standards and dresses to make the most of it, but has a more athletic and thin build than a stereotypical model.

Zerada is Marin’s betrothed, but would be a more capable ruler than him and everyone knows it. She’s spent the past decade hanging out in among the rich, famous, and desperate of the human world and having a pretty good time. She’s the younger daughter of Kavec Adust, who was Ishtar and Ryn’s mortal enemy. Zerada projects an image of being a genius, a femme fatale, and a vixen like the symbol of her family. In some ways she is. Zerada will beat you at poker and then use mind control to steal the rest of your money.

However, Zerada’s parents were murdered in the coup as well as a few other family members. She’s more worked up about it than she wants to admit, and deep down she is just a teenage girl going through the motions. Zerada is currently in a weeks-long situationship with Brian, though she has ulterior motives (manipulation) and it won’t last much longer.

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

Name: Jezero Adust

Pronouns: He/they

Species: Elf (high nobility)

Age: 106 (20 in human years)

Special skills: Jezero is a skilled warrior specializing with curved swords. He’s also a capable politician who has survived and done well at the Conservatory for seven years. They are good with mind control and illusions, but their real talent is identifying when other people are doing the same. Even for an elf, Jezero has very sensitive hearing.

Appearance notes: Jezero is 5’10 with long limbs and the classic slender elf bodytype. He has darker skin than his sister and features that lean more East Asian and African than hers. They have tightly curled hair that they currently wear in twists dyed ombré red. Their eyes are light brown or amber. Jezero has sharp canine teeth like many elves.

Jezero Adust just got broken out of prison and he had a bad time there. Also one of his best friends got recaptured or killed in the escape while trying to be cool and rescue Sierra. They are the new Lord of Genus Adust after the murder of their parents and grandfather, and had been seven out of nine years through the Conservatory (the noble school that is also one giant shared trauma to bond the nobility together with mutual guilt and grievances) before the coup. Jezero is perceptive and bold. He hates being bound or having something weighing on him. Unfortunately, being a Lord is a pretty big weight, and so is revenge.

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

Fun fact! adust is a word (archaic English with a latin origin) meaning "burnt or having a scorched color", among other things.

[winterpinetrees]

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.

………………

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@lokiwaffles @reggie246 @wishndreamer

[winterpinetrees]

The gap years part 3

June 10th 2019

San Francisco 

Today on tumblr, winterpinetrees attempts to juggle four characters in a conversation.

..........

Clay knows proper gun safety. He knows how to safely navigate a lot of things. He’s pointed the barrel of his sleek science fiction rifle at the ground and his finger is off the trigger. He is the reason why Sierra didn’t get caught stealing batteries from one of her father’s R&D labs and why Brian didn’t get mauled by a bear back in Sophomore year. He has a first-aid kit and a satellite phone and has spent the last four years getting ready to run. So no, Clay isn’t particularly distressed that he probably just killed a man. 

“Did we just kill that guy!” Sierra yells. They did. The armor on the soldier’s back crumpled like it was hit by a cannonball. Well, Brian and Clay did. He didn’t do much. 

Brian crouches down and rolls the soldier over. There’s a fresh cut on his chest that’s staining his shirt red with a worrying amount of blood. “I-I think he’s dead.”

Sierra ignores him and wheels around at their acquaintance. “You’re an elf, aren’t you?” 

Not-Martin leans against his quarterstaff. He has long ears and glowing eyes, but he doesn’t seem majestic or otherworldly. Clay noticed how confident he was back at the cafe, but that can just be a symptom of growing up rich. Maybe it’s just that the boy is wearing tan cargo pants and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off that’s getting in the way of any awe.  “Yes, we call ourselves elves. Well, that’s the current English translation.” 

Brian looks up at Sierra “How the hell do you know anything about this.”

“Not important right now! Ten years ago, a top-secret laboratory in the Nevada desert was destroyed by a whole crew of glowing people wearing armor like that. The one in charge glowed green and kept teleporting or whatever the hell you were doing! I want to know what you are doing here, who just tried to kill us, and why we thought we knew you.”

Clay sits by the head of the soldier. He finds a few latches and manages to pull off their helmet. The face underneath looks male and about forty, with dark skin and features that Clay can’t easily categorize. He isn’t prepared for its empty, half-open eyes. He tries to keep his voice steady. “Sierra, don’t threaten him.” 

The elf smiles, but it’s too wide and a bit strained. “It’s alright. My name is Prince Marin Sondaica. The leader of the attack in the desert was my mother, although, according to those soldiers, she’s been murdered.” His ears twitch downward. Oh yeah. He’s definitely not okay. “You thought that you knew me because I knew you’d never speak with a random stranger. I’d been watching you three for a while. I thought you were interesting.”

Immediate outrage.  

Clay recovers first. He’s going to ignore the stalking for a minute and take this one step at a time. “You didn’t answer the question about the soldiers. What did they say to you?”

Marin hesitates a bit. Lying or just emotional? “They told me that there had been a coup. My parents were dead, and he was going to kill me as well. Elves don’t kill eachother while invisible. It’s not respectful”. He pauses. “If they’ve gotten bold enough to attack in public, then things are happening more quickly than we expected.”

Sierra puts her head in her hands. “You are so bad at giving exposition. What is happening quickly?” 

Marin walks over to the side of the body. He retrieves his strange tardis bag and stares down at the soldier's face. “Global conquest is happening quickly. My family didn’t want to take over your world, but I guess the people got tired of waiting. The elven world… it is like Romeo and Juliet, except the two familes are far more powerful. I am a Sondaica, they work for the Mercuralis. The coup replaced my mother with a leader that would make war. You probably have a year or two before anything changes, but not much more.” 

Clay honestly thinks that wouldn’t be so bad. “And how do we play into this?”

“You were never supposed to. I thought you three were interesting and I wanted to meet you. But then we were ambushed. That soldier was a nobleman. They’re not going to forget about this”. The elf looks down at Clay. “I’m sorry. I thought they would let you go when you ran. Now it’s too late”. 

“So what, we’re just supposed to let you walk away and accept that we’re dead?” Brian asks. His face is red with anger, which is good, because it means that he hasn’t lost too much blood. “We’re geniuses and crazy rich. We’re going on this road trip already, why can’t you come with us? We’ll have a better chance of survival together, and you’re a prince! If your house-“

“Genus”

“If your genus controls half the world, then you’ve got to have allies. Coups are always complicated. If there’s half a chance that you can get your throne back and stop the Mercuralis from taking over the world, we have to try!” He rises up to his full height, which is a good half a foot taller than Marin. 

“Wait, Brian, are you seriously saying that we go off on a quest to save the world?” He’s smiling a bit.

“I’d rather die fighting. At least like this we have a chance.” 

Clay sits back on his heels. This was all typical Brian behavior, really. “We graduated high school last week. We have a fancy car and a lot of money, but that isn’t enough to overthrow a government. This isn’t Star Wars. Four people and a vehicle can’t defeat an entire empire”.

The elf stared down at him, but now it felt metaphorical instead of just physical. “You killed a nobleman, Clay Shepard. They are not going to forgive you.” 

“I killed a nobleman in self-defense after being brainwashed by a renegade prince into traveling with him. We can walk away from this if we want to, and I’m not going to risk my life for you if you keep being this vague.” He glared at Marin. “How can I know that you aren’t using your magic on me right now?”

Marin shrugs off his question. “Mind control doesn’t last. You’d just hate me later. The truth is, I don’t want to die. You three are uniquely capable of keeping me alive, but only if you do it of your own free will”.

Clay isn’t going to die for a maybe-elf that he knows next to nothing about, but he does need his friends. He knows that Brian wis a golden retriever of a man who already bonded with their new friend. He knows that Sierra would never pass up a chance to see real magic, and that the entire idea for a road trip began with her. Either he helped his friends and they all died together, or he went home alone. Or he went back home and hoped that powerful people would ignore him. 

“Fine. I’m in. Are we still going to Redwoods?”

..........

next time, Ishtar, Ryn, and their council discuss some problems.

@caliburn-the-sword @lokiwaffles hi! You rock and I think about you a lot! Thanks for stopping by.

[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 Human Protagonists

Hey wait, I thought The Gap Years was about some rich kids on a road trip? It is, I just like them less than the rest of the cast. Whoops.

A few days before the story begins, three extremely rich kids graduate from private rich kid high school in San Francisco. They have all been accepted to outrageously prestigious universities, but they’re taking a gap year first. They are tired of this life and they want one year of pretending to be normal before being dragged back to fundraising galas and tabloid news. So they’re taking a road trip. Money isn’t an issue so they’re going to drive off and not come back until they feel sane. It doesn't go to plan.

They are...

Brian Whitaker, a humanities kid who’s been declared a himbo by everyone but his closest friends.

Sierra Bracken, a quiet tech genius who actually knows that magic is real.

and Clay Shepard, the cynic who can keep a budget and pretend to be normal.

The intro said that there are four kids on the road trip. That wasn't a typo. The fourth is the true protagonist of the story. He's an unexpected addition to the party, Prince Marin Sondaica.

Name: Brian Whitaker

Pronouns: He/Him

Species: Human

Age: 18

Special skills: Strong, fast, and well-coordinated. A D1 level baseball player, wrestler, and skilled surfer. Solid knowledge of history, literature, and politics. Charming and liked by the media.

Appearance notes: 6’3 with a lean, athletic build. He is as tall as Ishtar, but takes up less space. He is a very conventionally attractive white boy with blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a significant tan. Brian is even more attractive by elven standards, which is a benefit and a problem. Brian has calloused hands and a few scars from various sporting accidents. Specifically, he has a small scar on his jaw.

Brian Whitaker drives the car. He endures constant jokes that he’s a himbo. Despite this, he is a humanities kid who gets nearly perfect grades. Brian is the third son of an old political dynasty. However, he thinks that gerrymandering is bad and can talk about all the ways that American democracy is broken for an hour on end without needing notes. Brian is charismatic, but he isn’t going to go into politics because he is a kind and honest person. He likes to think that he would sacrifice for the greater good. Brian was pretty neglected as a child but found that he could get noticed through sports. Now Brian is a varsity athlete and surfs all summer. This backfired, and now everyone thinks that he’s a dumb jock. They also think that he’s a playboy, which really isn’t accurate because he respects other people. Brian does live his life in search of feeling though. He’s a thrillseeker, a frequenter of high school parties, and a hopeless romantic. Next year he plans to attend Princeton as some sort of English major and join a fraternity.

…………

Name Sierra Bracken

Pronouns: She/her

Species: Human

Age: 18

Special skills: Genius mechanic and engineer. Skilled but not prodigious programmer. Upper body strength. Has a tiny bit of background knowledge about magic.

Appearance notes: 5’3 with a heavier build. She is half white and half latina. Light brown skin, black hair, and dark brown eyes. She is rarely seen without a pair of teal headphones and wears copper wire wrapped around both wrists.

Sierra Bracken is the oldest child of a Silicon Valley tech magnate. She has a genuinely positive relationship with both her parents (she’s the only one in the trio who does), and a complicated one with the media.

She is a tech genius who can build anything and hack… most things. She also has a special interest in nuclear physics, which means that she essentially has a special interest in magic. Sierra has spent enough time in university physics departments (In this world, being a physicist is a direct path to adventure…and sometimes death) and on tiny Internet forums to know that magic is real. She doesn’t know any of the details, but she knows the basic fact that humans are not alone in the universe. She is snarky but not particularly good at it and doesn’t have any close not-online friends other than Brian and Clay. She’s going off to MIT next fall. Sierra’s more nervous about this than she wants to admit and is thinking of the road trip as a way to say goodbye.

…………

Name: Clay Shepard

Pronouns: He/him

Species: Human

Age: 18

Special skills: Amazing liar and very good at reading people. First-aid. Wilderness survival skills. Street smarts. Sees the world the way it is and can make it work for him. Very accurate with a gun.

Appearance notes: 5’10 and skinny. He is white with sharp features and a perpetually tired expression. He has straight chin length brown hair, brown eyes, and ‘tortoiseshell’ glasses.

Clay Shepard hates his father, and his father hates him. His family earned their fortune relatively recently from America’s terrible healthcare system. He’s the middle child of the family, which is very helpful because he’s trying to be forgotten. (He’s thankful for the money, of course, but other than that he wants out. Clay has a strong moral compass. He’s also gay, and his father is both very corrupt and somewhat homophobic.) Clay wants to be a real doctor, and actually do no harm. As a result, he’s doing first aid on this quest. Clay also has extremely good people skills, honed by spending his nights and weekends around normal teens. He is an amazing liar, and knows how to say exactly what people want to hear. Clay's miserable home life has been getting to him, though. He doesn’t have much faith in humanity. The only thing keeping him from true cynicism and despair are his friends. Both the ones on the quest with him, and his more secret friends, a loose collection of lower class teenagers who by some miracle adopted him into the group as they explore the abandoned parts of the city and try to make adolescence work. Clay supplies them with money. Lots of money. As much as he can take from his father. He’ll attend Harvard next year as a pre-med student.

In a classic fighter-rogue-wizard-cleric D&D party, Brian is the fighter, Sierra is the wizard, Clay is the cleric, and Marin is the rogue.

[winterpinetrees]

The Ambush (The Gap Years part 20)

July 2nd 2019

Coconino National Forest, AZ

After three weeks on the road, Marin's luck runs out. They're on the run from an entire empire, remember?

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

The car lurches to a halt, and if Marin hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, he might have died right there. Well, not really, but his chest is going to be bruised. He’s about to ask if there is a deer or something in the road when Sierra calls out a magical glow. Only humans can sense magic on instinct. He looks behind his seat to see a cord of light clinging to their rear bumper. It’s about 9am on State Route 87, a narrow road with scattered pine trees on either side. There isn’t a single other car in sight. In a human story, the lack of other cars would mean safety. Here, the isolation means that there’s no reason for elves to hold back. They’ve planned for this, but they haven’t practiced. It’s time for their first real ambush. 

Unable to escape, Brian spins the car right to put a human and automobile shield between Marin and their enemies. The cord of light ties back to absolutely nothing, but the nothingness shimmers a slightly tan white. Colored light combines to white. That’s basic magical theory. He calls to the humans that they’re fighting multiple opponents of equal power. Sierra jokes that they’re all nothing compared to the power of gun. The fact that she’s kind of right is part of how they got into this situation in the first place. Seven billion wild, fanatic, humans armed to the teeth is a threat to anyone with a brain. Marin casts a spell over the car. It’s mostly an illusion to hide their actions, but should protect the car as well. Then they move.  

Clay’s job is cover fire. He sweeps the hair away from his eyes and balances the concussion rifle on the windowsill. It’s difficult to keep up an illusion when you’re being shot at. Honestly, few elves outside of his family have the skill and the raw power to pull it off.  As magical weapons, concussion rifles are especially dangerous, because the only thing that can reliably stop them is a magical defense. The soldiers will have to choose invisibility, or risking broken bones at the hand of the human boy who already killed a noble. The invisibility spell flickers for a moment and then breaks completely once the soldiers realize it has started to crack. There are five of them in dark gray armor and featureless helmets on the side of the road. 

Brian kicks his door open and crouches behind the front of the car. It’s electric, and there isn’t really an engine there, but it’s something to hide behind while he shoots with a magical pistol. The weapon is Zerada’s orange now instead of his green. He can tell from the sparks that it’s set to stun. Clay’s gun isn’t. However, Brian is drawing more of the fire. Probably because he looks more dangerous. Brian is a stereotypical wild human. He’s big and muscular and the scar on his jaw makes him look like a soldier, even if Marin’s learned that he got it tripping down the stairs as a toddler. Marin slips out of the car as well, and Sierra passes behind him to take the driver’s seat. The Audacity is her creation. She’s better behind the wheel than swinging a baseball bat. 

Are there more soldiers behind them? Probably, elves traditionally fight in teams of nine, but maybe the soldiers looking for them are spread so thin that there isn’t a full squad. Marin looks over his shoulder at the other curb while he climbs onto the roof. When he was little, he wondered why Lazarus Sondaica, the first Apex and the founder of his genus, chose to master illusions while on campaign. He fought with a staff and a greatsword, so wouldn’t strength or speed or a ranged ability be a better skill? There may not be soldiers on the left side of the road, but if there are, they don't see him judge the distance, plant his quarterstaff into the ground, and vault across the pavement. Now he knows that Lazarus chose the signature of his line because illusions are real magic. The Mercurali and the Eight-Points who follow them have their tricks, but the only thing that can truly stop an illusionist is a more powerful one. With the rest of his family in custody and Arjuna probably retired, he’s about as powerful as there is. 

Marin lands as quietly as he can and swings his staff in a wide arc.  He’s testing to see where his opponents are, and holds a dagger in his left hand. A soldier appears, then a second, and Marin moves quickly to get behind his target. On the other side of the street, Zerada flies through the air and pounces like the fox that is the symbol of her family. The humans probably need more help than he does, but it still stings. She’s fast, and her skill with charms means that she’s hard to keep down. Marin remembers a thousand- really, they’ve been doing this for decades- sparring matches against her, and the way he would always lose focus at the end. She jokes that he just can’t bring himself to hurt his betrothed, but Marin knows there's magic at play.

It’s not too challenging to stay alive though. Marin just keeps hidden and stays moving. The faceless gray armor has weak points, and these are commoners he’s fighting. They may be more physically capable of fighting with a few flesh wounds than he or Zerada are, but they heal slower, and they aren’t afraid to run. His mother would talk about commoners some nights, when he was quiet and she’d had a long week with the High Council. She told him how they didn’t care so much about legacy, and that even the Voyagers, who built their culture around hurricanes and rocket ships, didn’t worship danger like they did. Marin was struck by her wording. He’s been training since he could walk, but did he revere it? Marin weaves between three skilled soldiers without even being scratched. He certainly isn’t this good at anything else. 

Marin manages the final soldier with a strike below an arm. His dagger is short and he angles the strike to be less damaging, but they’ll have to get medical attention quickly. He’d have loved to capture a soldier instead, but his tutors were always clear that mind control only delays problems instead of fixing them. They can get intel from Zerada’s allies to the northeast without holding someone captive. Besides, a gun set to stun would be more helpful than a dagger for taking prisoners. A conscious elf can always switch worlds, unless they’re within range of one of the Betrayed. After a final check of his surroundings, Marin lets his spell end and walks back to the car. He leans against the now-dented front and smiles at Zerada. Her twin daggers are soaked red. There’s a splash of blood on her chest as well. It’s not hers. He can recognize the consequences of a messy strike. 

“Is anyone hurt?” Marin asks, looking at Brian, who has a history of injuries. The human can take it though.

He runs a hand through his blond hair. “I could feel a few shots, but I’m alright”.

“You messed up the car though…” Sierra replies. 

“I needed something to hide behind! There isn’t an engine in the front anyway,”

She rests her head against the steering wheel and sighs.

“And one of you needs to charge this rifle once we get on the road,” Clay adds.

The gun’s emerald detailing is duller than it should be. He hates charging gadgets. It burns him out and takes hours, but it’s the only way for Clay to make himself useful in a fight. Marin opens the back left door, which swings upwards instead of out like most car doors, and moves to step inside. Then there is light behind him, and he turns to face it, and something shatters. It isn’t glass. The bone in his upper right arm bends and snaps. He roars like one of his family’s sabertooths before he even registers the pain.

“GET IN THE CAR!” Clay yells, lifting the rifle to aim behind Marin.. They’re all yelling, but he’s the only one saying words. 

Marin has always been the son of the Apex. He was never expected to wield the scepter, but his quarterstaff feels like part of him, and Lazarus knows he can fight. That’s why the prince is able to keep his footing, even as a shot from a concussion rifle strikes right below his shoulder with the force of a cannonball. The shock is white-hot and familiar. Marin throws himself into the car and lifts his head to see the ninth soldier backing away. Brian fires a shot, but the enemy has gone to the other world before it can connect. In eighty-six years, Marin has broken several bones. High nobility are fragile like that. He knows how the next few hours are going to go. 

The shock will last a few minutes. He’s filled with adrenaline (so much more than from that easy fight), and the world is tinted green from his glowing eyes. That’s part of how Marin knows it’s bad. Usually the mind filters that out. He’s in the middle back seat with Clay to his right and Zerada to his left. The boy pulls supplies out of his messenger bag. There’s fear in his brown eyes, but his hands are steady. Brian may look more like a warrior, but Clay is a far more dangerous human. 

“I’m going to splint this and then we’ll figure out our next steps,” he says, holding a roll of bandages. His dying gun is forgotten beside him.

Marin closes his eyes and tries to focus. His arm burns and he can feel something shift when he breathes, but he’s a nobleman. He controls his body, not the other way around. Marin focuses on the break in his arm. Clay’s hands are cool, and he distantly realizes that he has begun to cry, but he needs to look deeper. The bone has broken into three pieces. One has shifted to nearly block an artery. He lets his magic coil around the break.

“Zerada better still have allies where we're going. You need more than my first-aid. An x-ray, at least”.

“The bone is in three pieces. I can hold them together, but it will take some of my magic,” Marin explains calmly. 

“Three pieces… that’s a segmental break. You need surgery,”

Zerada shuts him down. “He has magic. High nobility heal quickly. And I will have allies. Genus Adust is huge. They can’t have killed or captured everyone. It would look bad”. 

No one talks for a long time. 

“Normally people are in a lot more distress about a break this bad,” Clay says.

“I’m a prince, Clay. Pain is just your body giving a warning”. He remembers training with his mother. The scepter of his genus isn’t gold or bronze or any metal that existed outside of Lazarus’s void-cursed dreams, but it is dense and heavy. He flexes his left hand and thinks of proper form, and how long it took to learn. 

“How did you learn this anyway? I’d thought that the powerful human families were…” the first word that comes to mind is unfit. Unfit to rule, and maybe even unfit to live. Survival of the fittest. A proper plague will decrease the human population, but unless Ishtar has some tricks up her sleeve, the richest humans will fare better than the subjects they want. He finds a better word. “Soft”. 

“Some of the other kids I climb with taught me. Sometimes someone falls”. Clay narrows his eyes. “Calling an ambulance is a great way to get caught somewhere you shouldn’t be. They’re expensive too. That’s not an issue for me, obviously, but it is for them. And I can only throw so much of my father’s money at issues that are a whole lot bigger than us”. 

“You want to be a doctor?” 

“Whatever helps people when and where they need it.” 

“Well then you’re off to a great start,” Sierra adds.

“I was thinking more about general medicine at a lower cost, and less being a field medic for an elf prince with hollow bones”. 

His bones are not hollow. 

Brian scoffs. “Oh please. We’re off on an adventure. Try to enjoy it!” 

The humans don’t have all the details, but they certainly have found themselves on an adventure. Shooting soldiers, defending the last free heir to the throne, driving across their country just before it changes forever… they’re in a legend, really. 

But his injury is worse than he’s letting on. It’s going to take a lot of focus and magic to hold his humerus together, and his illusions have been their strongest asset this whole time. Still, Marin lets himself imagine a world where they win. One where they rescue Zerada’s brother and all of his cousins, and prove his grandparents’s lineage wasn’t a waste after all. He’d retake the throne with Zerada by his side and create a new age, and he wouldn’t even have to go mad within the void to do it. With the elven world revealed, Sierra would have all the elven tech she wanted. Brian would love the thrill of noble courts, (seriously, Zerada is a lot)  and Clay could finally fix the systems he hates instead of just kicking at the edges. 

Zerada told him a few nights ago that the humans all took a gap year because there was something they couldn’t face about the rest of their lives. It wasn’t just a joyride like what she planned. Well, win or lose, if they unite the realms or die trying, the humans will never have to face the world they grew up in. They get to matter, and they have hope. It’s not a gift equal to saving his life back in San Fransisco, but it’s the best he can offer from this deep in the woods. 

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

long ago I imagined this fight taking place in a Denny's parking lot. That wouldn't make sense with new lore though.

[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

Assorted nonsense

Fanart of Ryn

The Uquiz!

[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