ELRED VALKALIN IS ON THE RUN. After narrowly escaping the Synketros prison, she finds herself in the scent trail of two notorious communities miles below the island's surface. When she stumbles upon a hidden gathering of fairies from different races...
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2412, Xavem 25, Kindreth
Elred sniffed, scrunching her nose at the stale smell of earth and damp air assaulting her senses. She had been underground for so long she felt the mud had lodged itself at the back of her throat and would be there to stay. She cleared her throat by pure instinct and dusted her loose trousers. It must have belonged to a renegade with the same height as her but not the same build. It hung too big for her waist, and being starved like a prisoner on the road to execution wasn't helping either.
Still, fairies were tenacious creatures. That much Elred realized as she refused to keel over and curl herself to sleep while hunger devoured every shred of her being. Among the creatures in Umazure, or by a stretch, Fantasilia, fairies were the only people she knew of to not want to die in vain, and to do it with honor and glory.
It's their downfall, not just as a set of scattered individuals, but as a race.
Before her thoughts could divert into a philosophical road of no return, she swung her stolen satchel around to peer into its contents. The bag of fairy potions had long been smoothed to the last vial, and now's the time of reckoning. Her stomach growled in protest when she thought of saving it for tomorrow. No. She wouldn't last until then.
With hesitant fingers and weak grip, she plucked the only potion left and dwindled on the cork stopper. The pale pink liquid sloshing inside couldn't have been an indicator of freshness, but the situation didn't call for her to complain. While the flavor wasn't to her liking, it was enough to quell the demands of her form.
Was there a way to get rid of all bodily functions altogether? By being dead, perhaps; summoned only as a fleeting essence by banshees. Not the way Elred wanted to go. With such fear in mind, she pulled the stopper out and dunked the potion, tilting her head back. The pink sludge traveled down her throat in slinky smoothness, disappearing down her gut in a flash. A few hours—that's how much time she bought herself.
She had to find a proper source of meals soon—a forest or a town—and being stuck under the ground wasn't helping. So, with her wounded feet and worn legs, she stumbled forward, running her hands against the crumbling walls of soil and, occasionally, of uncut stone. Her synnavaim thrummed inside her—the only companion she had in the dim caverns. If not for the steady hum in her soul, she would have gone mad from the sheer emptiness of it all.
Whether she wasted away in the tunnels or emerged out of it and into the real world waiting for her, a good chance was she'd meet her end. Through the sword or through the natural way of passing, Elred would start praying to the gods of Calaris if she ever made it out of this war in one piece. The same condition applied to her family. Savel and Reza—let them find happiness in the simplicity of things without the burden of being a prince or the Queen consort. Her friends, Reeca and, by extension, Xanthy—let them be free of the expectations of what their fate dictated for them. And...fine, her mother, the Queen of Helinfirth—let her find what she's looking for. May she survive this temporary but cruel onslaught as well. The same went for her father.
