Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rayla of sliver grove, apprentice assassin and very much not a morning person, slammed her head against the wall in frustration.

Thereason for her current round of wall abuse? An innocent little slip of paper sitting on her desk, clearly left there by one of her uncles (probably Runaan) detailing the change in schedule of her classes that was apparently starting… today.
Which meant, in the frankest terms, she had about half an hour to make it across campus to the main meeting/lecture hall for the weekly assembly, which some smartass had decided to move forward half an hour with next to no warning.

And she was not even dressed.

Nor had she eaten.

Needless to say that she was not in a very good mood at all as she swept the stuff she would need for today into her well loved backpack, making sure to remember her pencil tin this time around, and bolted downstairs, stopping only to give Ethari a good morning hug and to swipe some of his breakfast of his plate as he gave her a soft, sleepy good morning, and didn't even try to stop her blatant theft.

Then she raced out the door, into the morning sun, and made for the campus.

Being trained the way she was, to be fast, agile and sure-footed, the fasted way to get between the village that served as housing for the campus staff and personnel and the actual school campus was to cut through a small, yet dense patch of forest that bordered the arts building and the horticulture greenhouses, then to make a sharp left down past the sports pavilion into the main square, past the cafeteria building and into the auditorium.

On a good day, this would take her 15 minutes tops, which would leave 5 minuets to make it look like she did not just sprit her way across campus.

Thankfully, this was a very good day, with minimal fuss and no wandering artists, so she made it in 10.

She skidded to a halt, panting lightly, at the foot of the steps to the main auditorium, and merged into the crowd of sleepy teenaged elves making their way inside. no one gave her a second glance as she let her heart rate and breathing drop back down to a resting pace.

This assembly better be good.

--

Rayla had attended several assemblies in the past 3 weeks.

The Auditorium they were held in was a grand space, filled with padded benches for sitting, some of the best acoustics going and a stage front and centre, was slowly filling with sleepy students, and some slightly disgruntled members of staff, including her own beloved grump of an uncle, who had been asked by the campus head to bring some of his assassins to act as an extra layer of security around the campus.

Not that any of them were complaining about things. after the last, frankly ill stared mission, this was practically a vacation. The school paid them a (very) good wage, provided housing, and Rayla was even given the option of attending classes, which she did take up, if just to stave off some of the boredom she was suffering from.

Everyone had been on edge since that human king had brought down the king of the dragons over the winter.

Old Cassie back home had not let her grandkids outside for a month, in fear of some dark mage snatching them away, despite living in a hidden village, complete with an illusion barrier.
But now it was spring (ish) and a new school year had begun, and there was rumblings about peace deals being made out of Lux Aurea and other places of power, so at least there was that to look forward to, right?

Rayla scooted over to sit next to were Runaan was standing, almost blending in to the shadows at the side of the room.
“mornin’. any clue to why we have all been dragged in here earlier than usual?”

Runaan softly shrugged his shoulders.
“no idea.” he hummed evenly, eyes scanning the room as the last of the kids were seated.

Down on the stage, lit by one of the spotlights, the principle of the school was calling for quite so he could start speaking.

Rayla, in all honesty, completely zoned out part way through the long winded opening speech. The principle was a kindly older chap, an earthblood with a strong resemblance to the leafy oaks that made up part of the auditorium structure, but could waffle on for ages if allowed too. And oh, how he was waffling. something about changes and aceptance and yadda yadda..

Rayla resisted the urge to let her eyes droop, and instead decided to spy on her fellow students, who were (disappointingly) all doing normal teenaged things, which teenager are liable to do when dragged out of bed too early for there tastes and made to sit through a lot of dry babbling. A lot of others were clearly nodding off themselves, sneakily munching snacks, less sneakily drinking suspicious looking caffeinated drinks or just staring in to space.

Rayla could feel herself switching off again. perhaps staying up so late was a bad idea, in hindsight.

After a moment, when she could honestly feel herself nodding off, a sudden, sharp poke to the ribs from Runaan brought her back to her senses.

Apparently the principal had finally gotten to the point of his speech, and of the assembly

“….. to put it bluntly, my dear fellows, we have a new student joining our ranks today! Now, I’m sure you have all heard of the peace talks that are currently underway with the human kingdoms.” He paused to let the muttered round of weary affirmatives pass “good. Good. Now, this new student is attending as part of the talks under way. Callum, dear, would you like to join me up here?”

Rayla felt her eyes go wide as Runaan stiffened beside her, and the hall around her burst into life with gasps and whispers. the slim figure in a blue jacket that shyly appeared next to the principle was no elf. Brown hair, rounded ears, no horns to be seen.

She had never seen a live human before. Only in books and in the from of eerie mounted skeletons in the Highgrove museum.

the boy, clearly tense, gave a polite greeting, before stepping back to allow the principle to finish his speech about the reasons behind why he was here. She could see him scanning the audience of gobsmacked teenaged elves, a lot of them his own age, and wounded what was going on in that smooth, hornless skull of his.
And if he could feel the death glare that Runaan was shooting him.

-

Callum felt like a tethered lamb being led in front of an army of wolves.
An army of wolves with brains, opposable thumbs, that could also use magic.

Callum tried his hardest to swallow down the fear building in his chest.

If any of those elves out there in the audience figured out who he was, he was as good as dead. It had only been a matter of what? 5 months tops since His step father, King Harrow of Katolis had brought down him mothers killer, the king of dragons, thunder. or Avizandum, as the elves called him.
That was, to be a little blunt, a highly unpopular move in Xadia, no matter how much of a hero it made him in the eyes of the human kingdoms.

And then Callum himself had managed the impossible. He had taught himself primal magic! The look on Harrow’s face when callum had made it snow in the throne room, no less then a month after the kings return from Xadia, would be one that Callum would treasure forever.

But then the assassins happened, and His little family had nearly been torn apart at the point of a sword.

It was a relief to everyone when the peace talks started, and he had actually been kind of excited to be able to learn magic in Xadia, but now he was facing a bit of a reality check.

The kindly earthblood, professor Archie, as he had been introduced with a flourish and a honestly warm smile, was a calming presence to be stood beside, but he could feel the eyes on him, curiosity and more than just a bit of malice. His heart was beating like the wings of the hummingbirds back in the walled flower garden, and his throat was threatening to close up again.
To top it off, the scaring under his scarf was starting to itch

Thankfully he had managed to say the rehearsed greeting, and was not needed to speak again afterwards. Once Professor Archie had finished his speech, he was quickly ushered back into the green room behind the stage as the last of the days announcements were read out.

Callum found a wall, and slumped against it. The last months events were getting to him.

Breath, the voice in his head told him. Air in, air out. In. out. No need for a panic attack now. His arcanum flared briefly with in him, and the next breath out scattered a couple of small snowflakes, and a small crackle of lightning, across the floor as a figure came into view.

Marcos, one of the two crown guards from home assigned to him, knelt down to look into his face.

“are you ok, my prince?” there was no masking the concern in his voice, or the worry in his eyes.
“you an’t supposed to call me that here, Marcos.” Callum replied between deep lungfulls of air. It was too dangerous.“but I’m fine, it was just a little….”

The tightness in his neck that had been on the verge of cutting off his voice finally gripped, and Callum was left only making light wheezing sounds. Thankfully, he did not need his voice to speak.
-intense- he signed to Marcos, looking defeated.

Marcos chuckled lightly

“I think that’s an understatement”

-

Outside, in the hallway that lead back out into the plaza, they could start to here the sounds of a lot of walking and talking going on, as the auditorium emptied out, spilling students and staff back out into the morning sun.
Callum had a good idea to what, or more importantly, who they were talking about. And he was not excited about it.

he really hated being the centre of attention.

Chapter Text

Rayla filed out of the auditorium and into the too bright morning.

The crowd around her was buzzing over the big announcement. A human! A real like, flesh and blood human, at their school! And he was going to be attending class with them?
It seemed unreal. So very, very unreal.
Most of the elves around her sounded curious over anything else. It was interesting for Rayla to listen to what others around her were thinking, since she really did not know what to make if it all right now.

Runaan, on the other hand, looked absolutely livid.

The moment that he exited the auditorium, he had spun on his heels and stalked down the side of the building, towards the admin offices, where the principal would most probably be heading. Judging by the thunderstorm brewing over his head, Rayla was pretty sure that Runaan was going to tear the elf who let the human in a new one.
Rayla felt sorry for whoever that was. Runnan was a intimidating elf at the best of times, and was downright terrifying at the worst.

it sort of came with the whole 'master assassin' territory.

Rayla made the very wise decision to put some distance between her and the impending explosion, and headed off to class.
In the opposite direction. right across campus. just to be safe.

The campus was set up a bit like a clock face, with the auditorium at about 5 o clock, the sports pavilion at roughly 10 o’clock and the building she needed to be in at the 11 oclock mark. In the centre of the clock so to speak, in the middle of a vast circular courtyard, was a giant tree, trunk beautifully carved to tell stories from the different elven tribes. She stopped by one of the roots, and ran her fingers along one of the carvings near the very bottom of the tree. The story those carvings was the judgment of the moon, a story that every elf was told as little children as they sat in bed, clutching stuffed toys to there chests as they were the tale of the land being split in two, and the reasons behind it.

The humans being driven out of Xaida had been carved to look almost demonic compared to the elves.

She swiftly turned away, and headed towards her classroom, not wanting to connect the boy on the stage to the carvings on the tree, or the demons that haunted her sleep.

-

Xadian history was , tragic, a pretty dry class to have first thing in the morning, and especally first thing in the morning after a blissful weekend. It invoked lots of long lectures, interspersed with rounds of textbook reading and interdependent researching about events and battles gone by.

There were field trips lined up for later on in the year that the whole class were looking forward too, though. The mention of at least one outing to good old Lux A to see visit the war museum there had definitely peaked Rayla’s interest, so she was determined to stick with the class until then, at least.

She could bring back so, so many weapon ideas for Ethari to try to make.

It was not just the promise of future outings that made Rayla kind of enjoy this class, it was the fact that over the past 3 weeks since the start of the school year, she had made some friends!
They made an odd bunch, admittedly.

“I’m telling you! My uncle says he came face to face with some when he got tangled up in there fishing nets!” Mina, A bubbly aqua haired tide bound elf protested to the rest of the table.
“and they just let him go? Hate to tell ya this meeps, but I think he was pulling ya leg.” Tobius, a skywing who might as well be a (short) storm cloud personified, ruffled his wings in a disgruntled way.
“humans don’t have that kind of compassion.” he insisted.
“bet they do.” Mina stuck her tongue out at him over her text book.

Tobius returned the gesture with a sly hand montion to back it up.

Rayla and Arctium, a soft spoken earthblood elf, locked eyes in a silent look of amusement.

They were meant to be reading up about the judgment of the moon, a subject that would lead on to the first test of the year, but of course, it had brought up the subject of humans, which had lead into chatting about the one that had (legally) appeared on campus, which then had naturally moved on to the stories that each of them had heard about humans form varying family members.
Whilst pretending to study like good students.

“my gramps used to tell all us kids that humans have black blood due to all the dark magic they use, that it makes them rot from the inside out, even from a young age.” Arctium kept his voice soft, so the professor could not hear them."like apples left out in the sun, or something"

"what about you, rayla?" Mina asked, scribbling down some half hearted notes in her work book. "hasn't your uncle fought humans before?"

“ummmm…” memories of darkness and a black eyed, grinning human mage popped into her head, along with the sound of a fight and Runaan yelling at her to run. She shuddered.
“yeh, he has. he hasn't told me nothing that you guys haven’t heard before"

Rayla promptly picked up her pen, dunked it in her inkwell with a bit more force than was really necessary, and got to work to avoid any further questions.

The rest of the table all looked at each other , clearly not believing her in the slightest.

-

Rayla’s day went downhill from there.

After Xadian history, she had sports.

She liked sports, and was very good at sports, but the sunfire coach that she had to put up with seemed to have something against moonshadow elves in general. After 3 weeks, he was still referring to her as ‘the moon elf’ despite referring to the rest of the 13 or so teens in the class by name.

The others, including his clear favourites who could do nothing wrong in his eyes, had called him out on it repeatedly, but any protests they all had fell on death ears. Some days the only way Rayla could out up with the prideful twat was to imagine embedding Ram's throwing knives into various parts of the ass's anatomy, exact locations differing depending on how much of a prick the coach was being on any particular day.

Then, to top it off, when she got to the cafeteria for lunch, early so to miss the crowds, she found that the little pouch of meal tokens that she had had vanished from her bag at some point, despite being very sure that she had packed it in her backpack that morning on her way out.

it was an obnoxiously bright green pouch with happy rainbow adoraburrs printed all over it, and in fact the dang thing rarely left her bag to begin with, so where the hell was it?

She was still rummaging around in her bag and cussing up a storm when she felt a sudden looming presence behind her. with out thinking, her training kicked in, and she spun around to meet the person who had snuck up on her, only to come face to face with the last person she expected to see about campus.

The human jumped back in surprise, what ever he was going to say to her dying on his lips.

“what do you want?” she hissed with a little more venom than she really intended.
He stuttered in surprise, wide eyed.
“what?” she demanded, not even bothering to hide her annoyance “never seen a moon elf before?”

He was still stammering, and looked rather stunned. At her tone? At her looks? She did not give a damn about the opinions of a human. and unfortunately for him, she had some anger to get out.

“What are you staring at? My horns? Ears?” the human was backing away now.
“here’s some advice for ya. Go. away.” She snapped at him, spinning on heel to stalk back across the courtyard, fully planning on retracing her steps and finding her sodding token pouch.

“… you have nice ears?” was the only thing that he could apparently come out with as she marched off in a huff, leaving him standing there like the fool he was.

-

Callum stared after the elf.

She had been… rude.

He looked down at the little pouch that he had been trying to return to her, the same one that he had spotted falling out of an open pocket on her bag.

It.. would most probably not be the best of ideas to try and chase after her, with the way she had just spoken to him. she might actually, literally rip his head clean off his neck out if he did.
Which left him in a little bit of a pickle.

The pouch, and the tokens inside, were not his, and he was pretty sure that that other moonshadow, the lovely gentleman on the security team, was clearly already looking for any reason to try to kick him out of the school. Being caught with someone else’s stuff, without the permission of that someone, would probably do it.

It did not help at all that he could of sworn that he had seen that particular moonelf before from.. somewhere.
And he doubted that that somewhere was any of the peace talks.

At a loss, and starting to grow weary of the growing number of teen elves that were appearing in search of food, he decided to seek out the first teacher he could, and turn the pouch, plus contents in to them post haste.

Thankfully, the first teacher he found was the kindly moonshadow who was running one of the crafting workshops. He had been introduced to Callum as Ethari whilst Callum had been taking a facilities tour, and had been openly friendly to the very bewildered teen being dragged about gawping at everything around him like a largemouth bass. He would be as good as a choice as ever to talk to.

and thankfully he did not mind having his lunch disturbed.

“I found this in the courtyard," callum explained, holding out the pouch so Ethari could take it from him, "and I tried to return it to its owner but…”
“she blew you off?” Ethari guessed in a matter of fact way.
“…. Rudely, Yes.”

Ethari chuckled and accepted to pouch from Callum.

“I know the young lady in question. I’ll get it back to her, don’t you worry.” He tucked the pouch into his own bag, sitting next to him on the shady bench. Then he looked up at Callum with a slightly concerned look in his face.
“Aren’t you meant to have a guard with you?”

It took Callum a second to compute that he may of left Soren alone in the courtyard, as Callum had rushed after the young moonelf without saying a word, or giving a reason. Granted, both Soren and Marcos had ‘don’t mind me’ spells on them, which meant that the student body as a whole (minus Callum and some of the staff who were in the know) would just ignore their presence unless directly interacting with them, but this was Soren and Marcos he was talking about.

One was a trouble magnet and the other was …. Soren.

“I think you best get back to them, before anyone gets any ideas about kidnapping them.” Ethari hummed, making Callum snapped back to reality somewhat.

“good idea… thank you again!”
“no problem! Now go save them.”

Callum waved a goodbye as he jogged back to the approximate location of Soren, praying that the well meaning but a little dense blond had not gotten into mischief whilst he was gone.

Chapter Text

Rayla’s mood had gone from steaming to completely fuming by the time she made it back to the quaint house she shared with her uncles.

Not only had her token pouch not turned up, despite her desperate back peddling all the way back to her classroom, but by the time she had managed to nab a couple of tokens off of Runaan and gotten back to the cafeteria, the place was packed to the gills and all the good stuff that she was hankering after was gone.
As a result, She had scowled her way through her afternoon lessons, spooking more than one of her fellow students with her fowl mood and murderous aura, and continued her grump all the way home.

By the time she got back, kicking her boots off with a bit more force than was probably necessary, Ethari was already home, and was puttering around the small kitchen that came with the small two story earthblood style house that they were staying in, humming a merry little tune as he worked.

Interestingly, Runaan was also in the kitchen, haven taken over about 75% of the admittedly small kitchen table to clean his bow blade in the passive aggressive manner that he reserved for when he was ticked off about something (the human, if Rayla had to guess), but was also not in the mood to vent to someone about it. And the look of carefully controlled anger on his face as he wiped at a non-existent blemish on the mirror like metal warned off any attempts at small talk right now.

not that Rayla was in any mood to talk right now, anyway.

Both her uncles looked up from what they were doing as she entered through the open kitchen door, her best grumpy glow toad expression still etched onto her face. They both greeted her, one a lot more chirpy than the other, then went back to what they were doing.

Well, Runaan went back to cleaning his immaculate bow blade, now grumbling lightly, whilst Ethari grabbed something of the counter, and followed Rayla though to the lounge, dropping a kiss on top of his husbands head as he went past.

Rayla was slumped on the sofa as he walked in, grumbling about everything and anything. She had shucked off her bag, dumped out the homework she had acquired that day, and was just staring moodily up at the ceiling.

“rough day?” Ethari asked softly, sitting down next to her.
“you could say that.” She muttered.
“what to talk about it?” Ethari asked softly, reaching over to gently start braiding her dishevelled white hair.

Ethari had always had a calming way about him, and despite how angry she was at the world right now, Rayla found herself unwinding a little.

“not really. Well, kinda? That sports coach was being an ass. Again. You’d think he had something against me or.. something." she sighed, glaring up at the ceiling "And I lost my token pouch.”

There was a small smile starting to creep onto her face as Ethari’s fingers deftly braided small braids into her hair. It was impossible to be completely grumpy when Ethari was around. “did you now?” He asked, finishing a third braid and started a forth.

“yup. Must of left it somewhere. Even went to lost property. Annnnnd I now owe Runaan lunch.” She huffed. and Runaan would hold her to that.

Ethari shook his head at this with a soft laugh, and reached into one of his pockets, retrieving the small pouch that was inside and reached over to dangle it In front of her nose.
“This token pouch, by any chance?”

Rayla stared at it, then at Ethari in disbelief.

“what? where was it?” she asked, jumping up off the couch to quickly take it from Ethari's outstared hand. "did it
“Well, the strangest thing happened over lunch. A very nice young man found it and handed it over to me. Apparently he tried to give it back to you after it fell out of your bag, but you nearly bit his head off. Ring a bell?”

Rayla furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, running over the days events in her mind until she remembered the shy human boy approaching her at lunch, and the pieces clicked into place.
Oh.
Opps.

Rayla winced, mortified by the way she had acted, and looked back up at Ethari with a very, very sheepish look on her face.

“I was an ass, wasn’t I” she stated flatly.
“just a little, Ray" he agreed with her, patting her shoulder "just a little.”

-

The night was dark. The trees were blocking the moon and there was the sickly, metallic sent of blood in the air.

Rayla was running.

Running through the too dark trees, feeling the thick, sticky mud of the forest floor gripping to her boots as she ran. Somewhere behind her, monstrous creatures made of smoke howled as they gave chase.

Behind them, looming large with glossy black eyes and blood stained hands, the dark mage that had set them loose on them laughed a twisted laugh.

Runaan had been right there beside her, but he was now missing.
The others had fallen behind them.

There had been screaming. so much screaming that rose in the darkness before being cut short. The smoke creatures had ripped them to shreds.

It was all she could do to run, run, run and pray to the lady of the moon that she could escape.

Then, as if fate was mocking her, She tripped over a craggy root sticking out of the mud, leaving her spiralled out on the floor, and the mud held her fast, dragging her down, choking her as the beasts thundered up behind her.

Rayla let out a garbled scream as they fell on her, teeth flashing.

Rayla sat bolt upright, heart pounding and breath tight in her chest.

It took her a moment to calm her racing heart and realise that she was safe in her nice soft, bed, far far away from the events of her nightmares. Or the twisted memories that those nightmares liked to spawn from.

She groaned and flopped back into her soft nest of pillows and blankets with a sigh. after a moment, she peered over at the moon moth themed clock on her bedroom wall to check the time. It was, as it turned out, just going midnight.
She had only been asleep for two hours at the most.

And now her brain was way too frazzled from the nightmares to go back to sleep anyway.

The sky outside was clear, and she could see the crescent moon that hung in the sky, its warming light providing some soft. soothing comfort after the terror her mind had just put her through. It was just a dream, it told her, a twisted, fractured reflection of something that did not even happen that way.
Rayla stared out the window, at the dark woods and the lights of the flickering lights of the campus behind them.

she needed to go for a run.

-

slipping on some light clothing and shoes, over her pyjamas, she headed out.

Her uncles were soundly asleep as she crept out of her room and into the dark hallway . She could hear Ethari’s light snoring from behind the closed door with the silly ‘forget the moonstrider, beware the husband’ sign hanging from the doorknob.
Runaan hated that sign, but Ethari, who had brought it at one of the craft fares that he liked to go to, had threatened to paint a larger, gaudier copy on the front door if anything happened to the sign, be it by Runaan's hand or not.
The sign stayed.

She crept down the stairs, and to the door, remembering to grab her copy of the house key off the key hooks, and slipped out into the cool night air.

She took a deep breath, breathing in the smells of the small potted flower garden, the damp stonework of the house and path, and the fresh woods in front of her. she breathed out, and ran.
She zig zagged through the small patch of woods, bouncing off the trees and ground with no specific path in mind, just letting her mind take her where ever until she popped out the other side onto the sleeping campus beyond. Despite having been living here for at least a month now, she had never bothered to stray onto he campus proper at night before. The lamps that lit the pathways were still on, and so were some of the lights in the buildings, but apart from that the whole place was a ghost town. Still, quite, and ready to be used as an obstacle course.

Rayla took off again, hopping over the fence to the running track and bolting for the single story sports pavilion. She ran to the first solid wall she came across, and used the vines growing on it as handhelds to shimmy up the side, to the roof. Then she darted across the roof, avoiding the skylights, and used the top of the awning above the front entrance as a spring board, to propel herself into one of the skinny elms that bordered that part of the courtyard.
she perched there for a couple of minuets, watching the courtyard intently for any signs of movement, of anyone who could possibly bust her doing what she was. The custodians had no love for people bouncing off the buildings and trees like grasshoppers.
But there was none around, so she hopped down onto the smooth pavement and walked over to the unity tree.

The unity tree was lit up with a rainbow of lanterns, sourced from artisans all over xadia in its branches and a ring of glowing sunfire orb lights on pedestals around the base. she had over heard Ethari mention at some point that the placements of the lanterns on the trees was meant to be so that they lit up stories engraved on the bark that corresponded with the tribe that the maker of the lantern was from.

she had not bothered to see if it was true or not, but she had already spotted a couple of stories from her childhood, lit by soft blue light, so it might be true?

She sat under the unity tree for a bit, spiralled out on one of the benches, watching the glowing pollen spores that the tree's blooms let out drift in the night air. She had had her run. it was a nice run. ..but now what? she was not in the mood to sit and watch the pretty light show for too long, and if one of the night watch caught her out this late, than... well, Runaan would probably be understanding.

of why she was out, not why he would be woken up to deal with her.

She gazed lazily around the quiet campus. She was pretty sure that the library was not open at this hour, so picking up the next book in the ‘legends of Garlath’ series that she was reading was a no go, and the cafeteria was certainly shut, so she'd have to head back home for a late night snack of some sorts. perhaps the gym was open?

as she thought, she found herself glancing across the way, at the stately, sod roofed, admin building sat quietly in front of her.

The only lights that were on were the ones that she knew, because Runaan had told her, was the principal’s personal apartment. Something, something, better to keep an eye on things, something. But then she looked again. There, on the top floor, was another light, lighting up a window around the side of building. A light that was on the opposite side of the building than the aforementioned apartment.
Which probably should not be on.
Unless someone had been forgetful and left it on, but hey, It deserved some investigation at least.

Rayla hopped to her feet, and made for the out of place light.

Rayla hopped lightly to her feet and made for the building

Chapter Text

The window that the light was coming from was on the 3ed floor, the top floor. It was stupidly easy to climb up the side of the building, using the decorative stonework as hand and foot holds, and using the second story window ledge to volt up to the suspect window.

She crouched on the window sill, cupped her hands to the window and peered inside.

It was a bedroom. Simple, yet well appointed bedroom. The light was coming from a small lamp sitting on a writing desk across from the cushy looking bed. Apart from the bed, a desk and chair with a couple of school books sitting on it, and a wardrobe in the corner, the room was empty. Empty and apparently devoid of personal possessions, unless those books belonged to whoever had left the light on?

Rayla had heard whispers that there was another apartment in the admin building, apart from principal Archie’s, and it looked like she had found it. But… who was staying here? A guest speaker? Some dignity or such scouting out the school for their spawn next year?

She continued peering, trying to spot anything that would give away the rooms occupants when a sudden movement by the door made her jump back a little.
as she watched on in stunned silence,  a shortish, thin figure, with no horns and a messy mop of brown hair, yawned sleepily as they meandered over to the bed from the door, dragging their feet in the thick carpet.

Oh. Oh.

It was the human. the human who she could not remember the name of for the life of her. the human that she was meant to say sorry to for the way she acted earlier that day. or yesterday. Depends on what time it was right now.

that human.

the one and only human.

He plopped himself onto the bed, kicking off a pair of rather nice looking slippers and rubbing his eyes, apparently completely unaware of Rayla peering in on him like some peeping tom, and Rayla had to admit to herself that he looked, well, harmless. just a kid her own age, up past a sensible hour and on his way to bed. But she could not get Runaan's voice out of her head, with his constant warnings about how humans were untrustworthy by nature and so on ringing in her ears as the boy ticked himself in.

And.. he did have a point. Rayla could remember that mage she'd encountered back in Katolis only a couple of months ago……. Oh lady luna that mage. He had been so ordinary looking before he had attacked.

In retrospect, if she had, in any way, had been paying attention to more than the oblivious, sleepy person she way spying on, she would of noticed something a little odd about the window she was leaning against. As she would find out later on, when the building was constructed, this particular window had been installed wrong, by complete accident, meaning that instead of opening outwards like the rest of the windows in the building did, this one opened inwards. And since it had been a very pleasant evening, the latch was open.

So, as she lent against the window, deep in thought, it swung open, dumping Rayla onto the bedroom floor with as much grace and posture as a dropped bag of potatoes.

She scrambled to her feet, sending an accusatory glare at the traitorous wood rimmed sheet of glass, only to realise how quite it had suddenly become in the room.

Slowly, she turned towards the bed and locked eyes with a now very awake and very, very panicked looking human.

They stared at each over blankly for a couple of seconds, each unsure of how to act at the sudden presence of the other.

Then the human tried to bolt for the door.

In a move that would make Runaan proud, Rayla vaulted over the end of the bed, and tackled the lanky boy back onto the bed with a dense wump, pinning him down so he could not run off, and clamped one hand over the boys mouth, all preformed in the space of a couple of heart racing seconds. as the dust settled,  She found herself crouched over him, straddling his tummy, one hand pinning his hands over his head and the other covering his mouth.. She could feel his panicked breathing as bright forest green, panicked eyes locked onto her violet ones.

Rayla felt a feeling of pride bloom somewhere inside of her. it was a picture perfect capture move, after all!
And then realised that she had idea what to do next.

Ok, she had made sure that he could not scream or yell or run away, but she had failed to plan out what she was going to do next. if she let him go, he was likely to start shouting and running again, and Rayla was not sure exactly home many other people were in the building.
So, with her head completely empty of ideas, she fell back on the only thing she could do.

She started to talk.

-

Callum had no clue what was going on.

One moment he was dragging himself off to bed, after saying goodnight to Soren and Marcos, and ruminating over the rather exciting day that they had had between them, and the next there was a rather pretty young moonelf tumbling into his room via the bedroom window.

Ok, a very pretty moonelf. A very, very pretty moonelf who had pinned him to the bed before he could really react to, well, anything. Said moonelf was now straddling him, hand clamped over his mouth and babbling out an apology for.. something she had done. Apparently. At some point that day.

Callum's poor brain was still trying to catch up with what had just happened, and was clearly was not working probably.

he looked up, looking into a face was locked into that panicked look that people got on their face when they had backed themselves into a corner of sorts. Oh, how he knew that look. He had both seen and worn that face in the past an awful lot.

As the adrenaline faded from his system, and the aching memories of a blade shining in cold moonlight was beaten back to the dark recesses of his mind, he realised that he did, indeed, recognise this, beautiful, handsy, babbling moonelf.

she was the same moonelf that nearly bitten his head off at lunch time. uh.... hello then?

She continued to blabber on and on as she she straddled him, putting pressure on his ribs, hand still firmly over his mouth. Callum was having a hard time paying attention to what she was waffleing on about, as he was starting to realise that it was becoming slightly hard to breath. Just so slightly. Which was now starting to become problematic, since his throat starting was starting to hurt, and hurt a lot.

A memory from earlier that day suddenly popped into his mind, from when he was watching Soren and Marcos spar.  Wiggling one of his hands out from where it was pinned, being careful not to spook this elf, and tapped the side of her arm. She stopped her talking and looked at where he had tapped her in confusion. So, he tapped her arm again, deliberately and clearly, with a bit more force. It was a signal in sparing, used when you are pinned down, to ask your sparring partner to let off. He prayed she understood.

And thank the stars, she did. The hand restricting his airway was removed and he gasped, took an deep, deep breath. He looked up at her.

“apology accepted. .. Um, could you get off please” Callum winced internally at how rough his voice sounded, and he could taste the tiniest bit of blood in the mouth. brilliant.

She gaped for a moment, looking a little like a sliver koi, then seemed to realise the.. slightly suggestive way that she was straddling him. She went tomato red, and scrabbled off of him, muttering even more apologies as she did, scooting to the other end of the bed to let him sit up.
She refused to make eye contact with him, face getting redder and redder with each passing second. Callum was not sure if a moonelf could catch fire via blushing alone, but at the rate she was going, than she just might.

Then, before he could say anything to stop the imminent elven combustion,  she bolted right out of the window she fell in from, without a single sound.

He bolted out of bed and rushed to the window, afraid to see what the results of some one jumping out a 3ed story window was, only to catch a glimpse of white hair disappearing into the shadows of the court yard, off in the direction of the sports pavilion and beyond.

“well.” He said to himself after a while. “so that just happened.”

-

Rayla did not stop running until she was safely back in the deep shadows of the woods, with in bolting distance of her front door.

Her face was flaming in shear and utter embarrassment.
She was stupid. So, so stupid.

She slumped down against one of the trees and put her head in her hands and let out a huge sigh.

Please, please, please, dear sweet merciful lady in the moon, she prayed, please don’t let that human end up in any of her classes.
Please.

Chapter Text

-3 months prior, (2 months and 2 days after winter’s turn) -

Prince Callum of Katolis walked in a daze, eyes half glazed, desperately trying to hang on to the wiggling bundle in his arms.

It had been two days since the failed assassination attempt on the king- his step dad. A man that Callum was lucky to have in his life, and a man that Callum was very lucky to be able to call dad again.

It had been two days since the assassins, and since he had put himself between one of the elves and his baby brother.Two days since a blade was slashed across his neck, nearly severing his vocal cords completely. The physician on staff, a wonderful man that had looked after him since the day he had arrived in the castle as a little kid, had managed to save his life, and was pretty certain that, given time and medication, he would make a full recovery.

He should not be up and about. He was supposed to be on strict bed rest, with minimal movement.
But here he was, completely throwing all of that out of the window.

He needed to see his dad, the king. Right now.

Ezren was right next to him, acting as his voice when people acted shocked at the sight of him, at the sight of what was swaddled up in his arms. Callum was pretty sure that he was stating to bleed through the bandages on his neck too, which was probably not helping the reactions of the servants and guards they passed.

It felt like was floating slightly by the time he made it to the imposing wooden doors of the throne room.

Soren and Claudia were already there, heads hung low in shame. There father was in some hot water for his actions two nights prior, and was most likely being reamed out by king harrow and the council at the moment. Claudia’s makeup was running, she had been crying, but he could not tell what for.

Was it was fear for her father? Most likely.

Soren looked a mess too, eyes red with tears, and visible bruises on his face and arms. Callum prayed that they would not be punished for their fathers actions, especially considering what he was about drop on them.

“we need to speak to dad” Ezren announced to the guards at the door. “now, please! Its urgent!”

The world was starting to swim, and he could not make out the reply that the guards came out with, but Soren was right there, behind him in a flash, holding him up.
The smile that he tried to give in response came out as more of a grimace, but Soren seemed to get the message anyway.

Then there was movement, fuzzy, fast movement. And then suddenly He was standing in the sun drenched throne room, with the entire council staring at him in disbelief.
The king was trying to talk to him, a look of concern on his face, but Callum’s brain was so warped from the medicine and the fact that he was not meant to be up that he could barely make out what was being said to him. He just shuffled the ball of blankets around in his arms for a moment, making a little, blue, horned head pop out of the middle with a cranky chirp.

The silence that followed was deafening as the world spun in increasing circles.

Without warning, Callum felt his feet come out from under him as the world fainted away.

-

Present day

“and here is your timetable, classes start in half an hour.” The strict looking skywing elf in charge of admin gave him a cool, calculated look. “I trust that it is not to hard for you to understand.”

“no ma’am.” Callum replied politely, scrutinising the thick peace of parchment in his hands, detailing the bi-weekly timetable that he had been signed up to. His eyes picked up that he had double art this morning, and botany in the afternoon, followed by a free period, which he'd likely spend in the library.

“good, good. You would not believe the amount of people who fail to show up to classes because apparently did not understand a simple time table.” She fished what looked to be a couple of short, engraved wooden bookmarks, about the length of his palm, and a stack of round silvery disks about the size of copper 2 grain bit out of one of the draws on her desk.

“... and here is your school id, two copies of” she handed the wooden tabs to him, “and some meal tokens for the cafeteria. Please don’t lose them.” the sliver disks where tipped into a small pouch that Callum immediately stashed in his bag, and looped one of the id’s onto a lanyard that had been provided. it had an odd wight to it, but not enough to be an irritant.

“I will try not to, Ma’am. Thank you for your help.”

She waved him off, the smallest of smiles on her face. “you are very welcome. Now, you best be getting to class. Tawny is not the most strict of teachers, but they don’t like tardiness.”

-

Tawny was a willowy earthblood artist, the sort of character that Aunt Amaya might describe as a ‘Hippy’, who was more than happy to greet Callum as he arrived to class, a good 15 minuets early, and show him to his seat in the bright and airy studio that he taught out of. Images crafted by prior students covered the walls alongside colour and lighting charts, a rack of what was probably clay pottery sat drying on one of the walls near a window, and there was even a couple of bamboo and paper animal lanterns dangling from the ceiling.

Callum felt right at home.

Each student had there own desk, there was 12 in total in the room, 4 along, 3 deep, walkway up the middle, and Callum’s was in the front row, first on the left, with a good view of the black board and teachers desk. Arguably, it meant that Tawny could keep an eye on Callum with ease, but hey, Callum was not complaining one bit. He'd never been in a classroom like this- with other kids his own age. sometimes he and Claudia would share a tutoring session, but.. eh, it was not the same.

As Callum started to do some test sketches on his new school sketchbook (separate from the one his dad gave him) the first of the other students started to file in, and head to their own desks, completely ignoring the new addition to the room.
Maybe, just maybe, this would not be so bad.

-

Rayla had no idea, what so ever, why she was taking art. Apart from the fact that it was an 'easy' one to pass.

She had no talent in any sort of art, in her own mind, apart from dancing, but here she was, trundling into an art class, like she did every week, and was, secretly, kind of enjoying it. Prof’ Tawny was a very laid back professor who did not put tones of pressure on his students, and let them experiment with styles and mediums to there hearts content, as long as you stuck to the brief and turned in homework, and did not cause a ruckus in class.

No wonder He and Ethari got along like a house on fire. (much to Runaan's bewilderment)

There was still 5 minuets to go before class officially started as she pushed the door open, saying good morning to Tawny on her way in and plopped her bag down on her desk at the front of the class and started to drag her pencil case and sketchbook out, only for the latter to snag on something, sending her pencils flying after she gave it a hard tug to dislodge it.

Brilliant, just what she needed on this lovely morning.

Ducking under the desk, she scrabbled a little to round up the coloured graphite sticks as they rolled away from her, mentally cussing up a storm
Another hand, which was not hers, politely handed her a couple that had rolled under the desk next to hers. she started to mutter a thank you when she realised who said hand belonged to. The 5th digit on the hand was a little bit of a giveaway.

She looked at him. He looked at her. A very, very awkward feeling washed over the two of them, and Rayla refused to make eye contact with the surprised looking human. the fates were laughing at her right now. She could hear them.

After an eternity, he spoke up.

“I think we might want to pretend that yesterday did not happen.” He said, in a soft, kind voice, so that the rest of the still half asleep class that was filing in did not pay them any mind.
“yeh… that’s a good idea” Rayla replied slowly. Tawny was speaking to someone outside the door the rest of the class was still not paying the human any mind. They sat in silence, trying not to look at each over as the class filled up around them.

“I’m Rayla.” She blurted, to try to break the tension. It was not like she could jump out a window to get away from things this time around. Best face things head on. she was no coward.
“ Callum” He replied to her a smile, and shook her hand as Tawny made his way to the front of the class “ Nice to meet you miss Rayla”

Chapter Text

It had taken the rest of the class a hilariously long time to realise that there was someone new in class, let alone that that someone was not a fellow elf.

The fact that it was first thing in the morning probably had something to do with it, and the other fact that most of the class was concentrating on whatever they were working on. But as the morning wore on, and the caffeine infused whatever that they were consuming started to kick in, it someone noticed.

Rayla had to stuff the sleeve of the jumper she was wearing into her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud at the reactions that swept through the rest of the class once the tidebound across from Callum (who Runaan was convinced smoked manaweed on campus and in the dorms, but had not actually caught him in the act yet) woke up enough to realise who was sitting across the aisle

. The double take that one sunelf in the back corner did was spectacular to say the least.

As it turned out, even when confronted with a class of very shocked elves, Callum the human was a snarky fella, as the memorable response to one person’s slightly panicked question of “how long has that been there?” proved

“In this class, or in the world in general?” he replyed in a level, almost rehersed tone, eyes never leaving the drawing he was in the middle of.

Tawny had to slam a heavy refence book against his desk a couple times before the class quieted down after that.

But, to Rayla’s surprise, and Callum's clear relief, once it became apparent that the human was not causing any problems, and was not going to hurt anyone, the rest of the class settled down and got back to work, quickly being sucked back into whatever they had been working on before the ruckus started.

Apart from that one sun elf, sitting riiight behind him, who decided that repeatedly poking the back of his head was a good idea. You know. To check if he was real or not. Which went on for at least 15 minutes until the pencil he was useing to poke at Callum was suddenly, suspiciously encased in ice.

Rayla blinked in confusion, as did the sun elf who was now looking at the rectangular block of ice with a confused air, before spinning around and starting an impromptu interrogation of the skywing behind him.

Who had no clue what just happened, apparently.

Callum ignored the hushed discussion behind him in favour of what he was drawing in his book, some sort of landscape by the looks of things. The sort with pretty little trees lining the bank of a river, and some little people doing things by that river, such as washing clothing and apparently chatting.

Rayla had to admit, the boy had some talent.

-

Art class seemed to roll on forever, but eventually, the bell for lunch rung out across the campus, and the whole class promptly packed up and made for the door in a orderly fashion.

Rayla, token bag in hand this time, made it to the cafeteria in record time, and joined the slowly growing queue.

The food was set out in a self-serve buffet sort of thing, you handed the attendant your token, grabbed your tray and plate at the start, then worked you way around the different departments of deliciousness that were set up to cater for all, if most,  all diets. There was a stocked salad bar, plenty of veggies cooked in a couple of different ways, a couple of different soups (todays selection being a chowder and something with veg in, by the looks of things) a grill with a couple of cooks cooking meat, fish and other niceties to order ect..

Rayla happily snagged some jackalope hunches from the grill to add to the salad and soup mix that she had pick out that day, grabbed a bottle of iced moonberry juice from the drinks cart and was browsing the deserts when an explosion of whispers alerted her that a certain exchange student was most likely now in the area as well.

Ideally, she wondered if any of the food here was the sort that humans ate. Well, there was bread, so would that do? Humans liked bread, right?

Wait, when did she even care about this?

-

Callum slunk off to the side of the seating aria, food in hand.

The earthblood attendant had been a pretty cool lady, who was apparently highly amused by his existence, and was more than happy to give him pointers to the best stuff on the menu that day.

So, he had taken her advice, and was looking forward to the eclectic mix that he had picked up in in his slightly hurried trip around the room.

He had some Soup, some sort of flatbread that easilycould of come from Neolandia, a salad, some interesting looking, glowing even, fruit, and some desert with berries in it.

It was a good, well rounded lunch.

He squirreled himself off to the side of the room, finding a nice spot to sit next to one of the trees turned structal support pillers, and tucked into the rich fish chowder (not clam, but something similar), eating it with bites of the bread and salad. It was a slightly weird, but very good combination for a hungry teen to enjoy.

He was pretty sure that even Aunt Amaya would like this salad.

He was about 80% done with the chowder when a shadow fell over him.

Looking up, half expecting to see Soren or Marcos checking in on him, only to find a trio of elven teens, who he did not know, leaning over him.

They were clearly bigger than him, older then him, and had the sort of smiles that could only be described as ‘evil’.

“heyyyyy fella, what ya doing?” one, with intricately braded red hair, drawled in a thick sunfire accent.

Callum’s mouth was full, so mentioned to his food with his free hand in an attempt to say 'eating'

“… not very chatty, are you? What, don’t wanna talk to us?” another (skywing, arguably the tallest of the 3) asked.
“that rude you know. Hey, fellas, what do we do to rude people?” the third, another sunfire elf with charcoal black hair, who clearly the boss of the other two smirked, leaning in. “why don’t we show this rude little round ear.”

Before Callum could open his mouth to say anything the elf on the left grabbed the mostly empty bow of soup out of his hands and dashed it over his head, shattering the bowl, and cracking Callums’s head into the wall behind him.

Then the other dumped the fruit and remains of the salad over him before all 3 scarpered off back into the crowd, laughing as someone else came running over to him, shouting obscenities at the retreating delinquents

Callum’s head was spinning, and he was just starting to register the pain blooming in his temples when a pair of hands grabbed his face.

Blinking rapidly to try to get his eyes to focus, the face of Rayla, and a small group of other elves who he also did not know were leaning over him, a tidebound, skywing and a frankly huge earthblood.

At least they all looked concerned.

“…. Bunch of jerks! Why the hell did they do that?!” the skywing huffed shooting daggers at the way the trio had run.
“why do you think? Hey, hon? You alright?” the tidebound waved her fingers in front of his eyes.
Another movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

A young, slender sunfire elf, had approached, holding something in her hand, but Callum’s still fuzzy mind could not quite make out what it was.

“here, I saw them take this from him when they ran off.” She seemed to be talking more to Rayla than to him “should we get a teacher? He’s bleeding.”

Was he? Callum rased one of his hands to touch at the part of his temple that was stinging the most, and tried to groan to loudly at the sight of his bloodied fingers. Yep. He was bleeding.

Brilliant 

The blonde sunfire handed Rayla what turned out to be his bag, and the earthblood and skywing, one looking a lot calmer than the other helped him up to his feet.
Then, as a group, they helped Callum walk to the campus clinic, leaving the murmuring clouds of the cafeteria behind.

-

Marcos and Soren watched them go, after slipping a note into Callum’s bag telling Callum what they would be doing for a little bit.

They had tripped the group as they had tried to make there get away, with Marcos having to physically stop soren from decking one of them, only for the blond sunfire to scoop up Callum’s bag to return it before ever of them could make a move on it.

So now that little problem was out of the way, and Callum was on his way to be taken care of, the two of them had a new job to do.

Bully hunting.

The trio still had Callum’s school id, which he needed after all, and it would not do to the trio of ass hats get let them get away with picking on someone smaller and clearly younger than they were, be that kid under there protection or not.

It would be such a shame if someone had to knock there heads together and drag them to the headmaster’s office to face the music.
Such. A. shame.

They would check in on callum once they had finished.

Chapter Text

Callum sat primly on a bed in the cool, neutral toned medical ward, trying not to wince as the stocky dark skinned earthblood elf gently but very thoroughly cleaned the gash on his temple.

Thankfully for all, the cut was not too big or deep, but as the old saying goes, head wounds bleed like a bitch.

And, oh, did it bleed. All down the side of Callum’s face and onto his favourite jacket.

Callum was overly thankful that his jacket, a gift from his aunt when she found out where he was going, was made of the same marital that military tunics back in Katolis was made of, if a bit more embroidered.

Stains and fluids in general came out in the wash real easily, plus the fabric was decently slash and stab resistant.

Too bad those bullies did not aim for the jacket.

The doctor, who had introduced himself to Callum as DrJimson (“just call me Jim, kid. Everyone dose”) was humming a tuneless song as he gently dabbed a sort of liquid bandage onto to cut, pinching the sides of the cut together to seal it shut.

“zthere ” he said “that should do you. Now. Is anything else hurting? How’s your neck doing?”

At the confused look that Callum gave him, Jimson had to laugh a little.

“ya doc from back home sent me your medical files. You, young man, are one lucky kid”

Callum had to smile at that, and after a moment tilted his chin, pulling down his scarf up so that Jimson could examine the aching scar on his neck.

It was apparent that the scar was only aching because the act of being hit in the head by a robust soup bowl had, naturally, whipped his head to one side, and the scar tissue did not like that too much. But there was no apparent damage, thankfully, so he was good to go on that front.

He had been very lucky today, despite everything. His injuries could have been so much worse, especially if that soup bowl had been still full of piping hot soup when it had been bounced off his head.

Or if it had hit him in the neck..

Jimson finished his exam and sat back to jot some things down on a form as Callum shrugged his jacket back on and straightened up his scarf.

“so, kid, you want to file a complaint against the lovely young gents that did this to you?” the good doctor asked over his shoulder. "It would be a mighty shame if they got away with what they did to you."

Callum thought for a moment, then tried to answer, only for his voice to come out as a reedy wine. Jimson valiantly tried not to laugh at the exasperated expression on Callum’s face.

“is that a yes?” the amusement in Jimson voice was hard to hide, as was the half smile on his face

Callum huffed and nodded slowly, still pouting a little at the betrayal of his voice box. Why did this always happen to him?

“ok, ok, let me get the paperwork for you. I trust you have a pen."

-

The group that had helped him, including Rayla were all sprawled out over the well-worn future in the waiting room, talking quietly amongst themselves.If any of them had noticed that he had entered the room, they gave no sign.

Callum perched himself in a corner chair away from the rest and fished his well loved quill pen and ink out of his bag to start filling in the form that he had been given.

It was a simple enough form, asking for his name, student id, a description of what had happened, was there anyone else affected ect, all things that could be filled in quickly and efficiently, despite the school id he was wearing going missing. there were times in life when having a picture perfect memory was a real boon.

Things went smoothly until the point when he realised that he had no clue who the trio where, apart form being tall, mean and mostly sunfire.

Damn it, all he had to go on was descriptions. But he could work with that.

So, with a small huff, he got up and headed over to Jimson’s desk to ask for another piece of parchment.

He may not know their names, but he could draw each and every one of them a nice, true to life portrait of there smirking mugs.

He was finishing the second of the 3 when the relation struck him that the group was no longer talking, and the room had gone very quiet. And he had that undesirable sense that someone was standing really close to him.

Peeking up from the portrait he was drawing, he found himself nose to nose with the tidebound elf lass.

He jumped back into his char with a start and a short yelp of surprise.

The tidebound looked at him with big curious eyes.

“can.. I help you?” Callum asked, giving her a very weary look in return.

She did not reply to him, instead opting to tilt  her head to one side like an inquisitive dog, curious about something.

The moment that Callum opened his mouth to ask, again, to what this curious young elf wanted, she darted her hands forward to grab at his face.

“you don’t have black eyes. I thought all humans had black eyes.” She chirped.

“wha..?”

“and were are the fangs??? Papa always told me humans had sharp little fangs”

she literally was trying to stick her fingers in his mouth as she said that, making Callum splutter in surprise. Did she not know the meaning of personal space??

“and you don’t have dark blood… wow, dad was telling lies too....”

She was poking at his newly patched forehead now.

Callum’s eyes darted around, looking for help from anyone, and praise be, the slightly intimidating looking earthblood walked over to literally pick the tidebound by the scruff of her neck, dragging her away from her squeaking victim.

“sorry ‘bout that.” He said, sounding both apologetic and a little fed up with his friend “she gets over excited a bit too easily.”

“….its ok…” callum squeaked out, still a little stunned from the sudden attack.

An uneasy silence fell over the group, as no one quite knew how to respond to things. many an awkward glace was sent to the ceiling, or the floor, or out the doors into the courtyard. anywhere but each over. in the corner, Rayla had started to fidget and fiddle with her bag strap.

“sooo…” the skywing boy perched on the back of a chair chimed in once things had become too unbearable “what ya doing?"

It took Callum a moment for his brain to register what was being asked.

“oh, uh, OH right. I’m filling in a report.”

“about what happened?” the boy asked, hopping down from the chair back and loped over to taak a peek at callum's handy work

“uh, yeh. I.. don’t know the names of the guys in question. But I can draw them.”

“draw them?” the earth blood asked peering over the top of the tidebounds head to look at the paperwork that had been discarded on the table next to Callum’s chair, and the portraits that he had been in the middle of doing. “oh, yep, that’s them. hey, you are a very good artist!”

Callum felt his face heat up at the complement. Rayla, the only one of them that Callum actually knew in any way, had finally decided to walk over to find out why the rest of them had all gathered around, the blond sunfire trailing quietly behind her.

Callum felt his chest suddenly tighten at the realisation that he was surrounded at all sides, with his back to the wall, and his still sore voice box would most probably not let him get off more than one spell.

If any of them kicked off at him…

He retreated back into the chair more. He could feel the iron chains of the start of a panic attack start to squeeze his lungs tighter and tighter with each breath, and his eyes darted about, trying to locate any sort of exit from this situation.

Rayla seemed to pick up that Callum was starting tense up and was starting to panic, and quickly took action.

“hey, guys, guys! Give the kid some space already.”

The trio that was crowding him looked up at her sheepishly, and backed off, letting poor Callum breath. As Callum sat back to let his pulse settle, the earthblood glanced over at the abandoned paperwork, then back at Callum.

“so…” he started, “could we.. help you with the report? As witnesses, perhaps? Lunch is not over for another half hour or so.”

-

“I’m Mina, by the way” the Tidebound introduced herself as they all sat around, filling in the paperwork.

Rayla had poked Jimson into handing over some more copies of the incident report form, so they could all send in supporting statements or something like that. She reasoned that the administration could ignore Callum’s report, due to a number of bullshit reasons, but if several people all sent in reports about the same thing at the same time…

Well, they had less excuses that way.

Callum had to admit that it was a very good plan.

“nice to meet you Mina. I’m Callum.” He shook her hand in greeting.

“charmed! Anyway, big guy here is Arctium, mr stormy butt over there is Tobius, and you already know Rayla it seems.” Callum nodded along, saying hello to the others in turn “ and this is… this is… um, who are you hun?”

The sunfire elf looked up in surprise, apparently engrossed in what she was writing.

“oh, I am Tadala, nice to meet you.” She said politely, still slightly startled.
“don’t we share a class? Literature?” Tobius chimed in, chewing on the shaft of his dip pen.

“oh, yes, yes we do!” Tadala lit up “.. am I the only one who thinks the professor is a bit of a stick in the mud?”

A chorus of ‘no’ and ‘nope’ came from the other elves in the room, whilst Callum looked a bit baffled. Rayla looked amused at the look he had on his face, and chuckled.

“He’s an ass to most people, but don't worry, i doubt you are taking Xadian historical literature.”

This led to the report writing session turning into a timetable comparing session, with a side of chatting about the professors, with a little bit of report writing thrown in on top,  and despite how the day had been turning out for him, Callum had started enjoying the day a little more.

The chatting continued until Jimson collected the reports and tossed them out at the end of lunch, claiming that he was going to need the space for the fallout of the afternoon’s alchemy lessons.

-

Runaan watched the group leave the medical centre from the roof of a neighbouring building, quickly zeroing in on the human walking in the middle of them, chatting amicably to the sunfire girl, whilst his own ward stuck her head over their shoulders to butt in.

The thought of Rayla getting close that that human, in any way, made his stomach twist. Had she already forgotten what had very nearly happened to her at the hands of that dark mage? Or that mage’s apprentice, a girl the same age as her, eyes as black as her hair?

And as much as Runaan was sure that the powers that be would not let a dangerous human into xadia, he had not forgotten.

He would never forget 

The sight and sounds of that shadowy, Smokey abomination of a hound that had almost torn Rayla’s arm hanunted his dreams near nightly.

A faint shimmer in the air caught his attention, and his eyes darted to the left of the group. There was a shimmering haze about the size of large teen tailing the group, but try as he might, he could not make out anything other than it was there and it was very hard to focus on, like there was something forcing his eyes to skate over the space it occupied, and focus somewhere else.

Moon magic.

Runaan did not like this. Oh, he did not like this at all.

He watched on as group of teens all split off to go to their next timetable period, with Rayla and the tide bound heading one way, the rest of the elves heading another, and the human, after consulting with what looked to be his own timetable, shrugged and made off towards the admin building, where it was being housed.

and hopefully, staying in his rooms would keep him out of trouble. the less he had to deal with the boy, the better for both of them

The shimmer followed the human. Interesting. Very interesting.

He was not going to follow it this time tough, since a more pressing concern had just popped up, family some… less than savoury folks had just been spotted entering campus, the sort that were suspected in selling illegal substances to some of the students.

From what some of the kids were saying, the dealers were becoming very… persistent. To the point of violence in some cases.

Well, he could not let that happen, now could he?

Runaan hopped to the next rooftop, using hand signals to coordinate Skor and Ram into position for a surprise sting operation.

He would talk to Rayla about things later.

Chapter Text

Callum jumped a meter of the ground when Marcos dropped his id around his neck from behind him.

The short crown guard jumped back and laughed as Callum swung his bag at him in annoyance, before darting ahead to get the door that led up to the apartment that the 3 of them were sharing.

They trotted up 2 fights of stairs and along a landing, giving time for Marcos to fish out a key that had been provided to unlock the sturdy, solid wood front door.

The apartment was a cosy little place, with 2 bedrooms (Soren and Marcos were used to sleeping in barracks, so they were more than happy to share), a combined lounge and kitchen aria that was cosyness personified and a bathroom with a really nice bath attached, all looking like it had been organically grown out of the walls and floor rather than being built.

Which considering where they currently were in the world, might actually be the case.

all the rooms had some slightly battered, but still very stylish furniture and homely accents added in abundance. The rug in the lounge was so soft and squishy, that Soren had already made threats to take it back home with them.

And speaking of Soren…

The blond was sitting at the kitchen table, glaring at the letter in his hands like it had just insulted him.

A quick peak at the handwriting on the front of the letter, and the remains of the dark gray wax seal that was sitting on the table told callum that there was a high chance that it just might of.

“stars Soren” Marcos mumbled, peering over soren's shoulder “your dad again?”

Soren pulled a disgruntled face and nodded.

The already shaky relationship between Soren and his father had taken a nose dive ever since the night of the assassination attempt on king harrow and prince Ezren. Viren had been angry that Soren had not 'supported him'  agenst the accusations that had been aimed at the mage in the aftermath, and the resentment between the two of them had erupted into full on animosity.

Soren had called viren out on the blantent favouritism he showed between his two children. Viren accused Soren of being a traitor to his family, to the point of kicking Soren out the family dwelling.

Things had just .. crumbled from there. What made it worse for Soren is that Claudia, his beloved sister had sided with viren.

Callum was sure that one of the reasons that Soren had volunteered for this job was to get as far away from that whole shit storm as possible.

Marcos walked over and gave Soren a reassuring shoulder nudge which quickly morphed into brotherly hug that Soren just melted. 

Callum quickly dug the slightly squished pudding that had originally been part of his lunch out of his bag.

It was still edible, and delicious looking, and he was pretty sure that Soren would probably be in need of a sugary pick up more than Callum did.

It would have to do until they worked out how to get Barius’ famous pastries into Xadia. Callum was sure that it was only a matter of time before jallytarts started appearing on campus.

He pushed it in front of Soren, placing a spoon next to it, before throwing his arms around Soren's chest to join in the much needed hug.

The watery smile Soren gave the two of of them in return was something, at least.

-

Rayla was being followed.
She was sure of it.

Her shadow had been tailing her since she left the library after her study session was over.

The prickling, tingling sensation that told her ‘you are being watched’ had been going off randomly throughout the afternoon, but now, out in the open, all sorts of big red flags were being waved in the corners of her mind.

This would put any normal person on edge, but Rayla was not exactly normal (hello being raised by assassins) , and she had a very good idea to who it might be.

Well, 4 people who it could be, and she knew a good way to find out which one it was.

She took a sudden left, ducking into the grove of trees to the side of path back home. She walked straight for a minute, then took another sharp left into the underbrush, then another, looping back in a widish arc until she was behind the elf following her, silently laying down her backpack as she went.

Soon she had them in her sights.
She crouched in the ferns, eyes locked on the back of her target, waiting.

The long haired elf looked back and forth, clearly wondering where Rayla had gone, the chained cuffs on her horns glinting in the dappled light.

Rayla coiled the muscles in her legs, counted to 3, and pounced.

Andromeda’s eyes went wide as Rayla hurtled out of the brush with the force of pouncing shadowpaw, tackling her to the floor with a thud.

Rayla’s victory was short lived. Andy, as she was know to her friends, quickly flipping the younger elf over so she was on her back, and unleashed a devastating tickle attack upon rayla’s ribs, making her squeal and kick around as they wrestled in the leaf litter and dust.

They jostled and tussled, each struggling to gain an advantage on each over, but in the end, Andy, who was bigger and had more experience in fighting than Rayla, won the match, pinning Rayla face first to the floor with her hands held tight behind her back.

“got you now, trouble” Andy sing-songed into Rayla’s ear “what you gonna do about it?”

“gitoffff” Rayla wined, wiggling in protest as Andy laughed “why you following me anyway?”

“wellllllll, ya see, our grumpy leader gave us the orders to keep an eye on any suspicious persons on campus. And guess what? You be suspicious.”
“rude.” Rayla grumbled, watching a beetle scuttle across a leaf in front of her nose.

“hey, not my idea. You can thank Cass for that.” Andy drawled, smirking. “annnnd your lovely uncle wants to chat with you about your new friend.”

Rayla grumbled to herself and dramatically 'died' 

“which one?” she asked as Andy finally let her go, offering Rayla a hand to get back up to her feet. “I’ve made a couple lately.”

“the human, who else?”
“…………why?”

“why do you think? He’s suspicious of the kid.” Andy said airily, making her way back towards the path. “pouty pants is convinced the boy is up to something.”

Rayla pulled a discontented face, but scooped up her rucksack and followed Andy back out into the afternoon sunlight.

“besides, there is something odd about the kid, don’t you think?” she remarked, kicking a stray pebble off into the undergowth. “.. hes a good artist? And has something off with his voice, buttttt I can’t really say anything else. I don't know him that well” Rayla offered grumperly. “might see if I could poke some more info out of him tomorrow. If I see him tomorrow. I have no clue about his timetable.”

Andy just shrugged.

"just a quick warning, you might be in for an interrogation via grump anyway."

Rayla rolled her eyes melodramatically as two of them started chattering about the day, and of Rayla’s heroic rescue of the newest addition to the campus as the two of them made their way back home.

-

“it smells like a distillery in here.” Callum muttered “crossed with a pickle warehouse”

Rayla was pleasantly surprised to see Callum, and the rest of her small friend group gathered in the foyer of the auditorium attached to the small museum that the campus had, dedicated to the natural world, and all the weird and wonderful stuff it contained.

She had spotted some mounted skeletons and spectacular taxidermy in the main rotunda as she entered, but the foyer they were waiting in, along with the rest of the class, was lined with shelves full of jars of… things… that none of them could quite identify over ‘that one… it looks like a phallic fish’.

“well, apparently we are diving right into a practical to start, so.. maybe the smell has something to do with that?” Tobius mused tugging lightly on a loose feather in his wing. “wait…. How do you know how those two places smell?”

Callum’s reply was cut off by a sharp shove in his back as a group of snooty looking older kids barged past, laughing and sneering at him as they went. He spotted one of his attackers from the day before amongst the group. Apparently, whilst they were avoiding him from the verbal lashing they got the day before, they had no problem with trying to be intimidating from a distance.

Trying.

They looked like a grumpy, mildly insulted goat from where callum was standing.

Rayla shot the pusher elf, a hoity looking female skywing, an evil look, just as the door to the lecture hall swung open, and the milling students rushed inside.

-

The place was well lit, and set up the same way as the anatomy and natural sciences lecture hall back in Katolis collage, with desks set up on teared platforms around the professor’s work space.

The 6 of them managed to snag a front row line and happily took their seats as the rest of the room was filled with the sound of chattering students and bags being stashed under chairs, as per the instructions on the blackboard behind the teachers desk.

The room quieted down as the professor, an middle aged moonshadow elf with her white hair done up in a tight bun made her way to the front of the class.

She took a long hard look at them all, before cracking a smile, and starting her introduction.

“Good morning to you all! Its good to see you all looking so wide awake. Anyway! I am professor Aylin. Welcome to natural sciences! Or natural studies as some of your timetables might say. Todays lesson is best classed as a way to see who here is in the right class, and who might want a timetable change.”

Callum shot a couple of his friends very worried looks. Both Tadala and Mina gave him idencitcal looks back.

“so, you all might of noticed that you have covered trays in front of you. Please lift the sheets.”

The sounds of surprise and disgust echoed around the room as the student body lifted the sheets to the sight a dead fish, sitting glassy eyed next to a glass jar, a stack of notecards, some surgical tools and a bottle of pungent smelling liquid.

“This class, for all those who did not bother to read the bio next to the class description on the sign up form, has a lot, and I mean a lot of practical elements to it. Elements like prepping specimens for display. Which is what you will be doing today! Each of you have a fish, and the tools to prepare it.”

She flipped the blackboard over, revealing a list of simple, easy to follow instructions for wet specimen preservation.

“next to your fish, you will find a stack of species id cards. Use anatomical traits of you fish to work out what species it is, make a record of it on the label on the side of the jar, and prepare your fish according to the instructions on the board. If you get stuck, I will be on hand to help. and yes, you get to keep the fish if you prepare it properly”

Callum was not sure if he wanted to have a fish in a jar in his room. It would be a conversation starter, at least.

"OK! Begin!"

-

Callum flicked through his stack of cards, trying to match the frilly finned, sharp toothed ghostly pail fish the length of his forearm in front of him to one of the drawings on the cards.

The fish, to be honest, did not gross him out too much.

If anything, to brought back memories of summer fishing trips with his step dad, and camping out under the stars, eating fire roasted fish and being taught dirty marching songs by his aunt whist his brother caught fireflies and attempted to help bait steal all the marshmallows.

Fond memories.

Tobias made a slightly squicked noise as he poked his flabby red fish with the forceps he had been provided with.

“what’s wrong fluffles?” Rayla teased lightly, jabbing her eel looking fish with the needle

“……. I don’t like fish……..” Tobias grumbled, giving the fish in frount of him a unhappy poke , making his fish wobble in a very… suspect way, only to start blushing at whatever a snickering Mina promptly whispered in his ear as Tadala continued to very gingerly manipulate the long snouted gray.. something onto its other side.

Callum could of sworn that she muttered something along the lines of “its looking at me…” whilst both Rayla and Arctium were both trying to play match the fish with their own flounders.

By the looks of the perplexed face on one of them and the scowl on the other, they were not having much luck.

But then again, nor was Callum, so who was he to judge.

At least they were all still there. In the first 5 minutes of the lesson, he had counted about 8 or so of the student body, including some of the less than nice teens from earlier, slinking out of the room in defeat.

Oh, did that make him feel better about himself.

After a little while, he determined that the foot long white frilly thing in front of him was a cave dwelling giant betta fish. Well, he could see where the betta bit came from, it did look like a lot like the that's that lived in the botanic gardens of Durain. Just bigger. And toothier.

He wrote the name in his neatest hand writing, and he started to very carefully prep the fish, using the slightly scary looking needle that that provided to very, very carefully inject the fish with the preserving liquid, according to instructions, making sure to saturate all of it's innards.

At the same time, He was having to try his very best to ignore the strange looks that he was getting from the professor, who he was rather certain her had not seen on the initial tour he had taken of the campus. She looked.. confused, more than anything else. not hostile (like some had been) just generally mystified to why he was there.

But thankfully, she did not decide to ask him anything whilst he was, since he was trying his hardest not to stab himself with the needle he was using.

Callum was pretty sure that Dr Jimson would not be happy to see him in medical two days in a row.

-

“I never thought I would see a human in these halls. Well, a live one at least.” Aylin mused, as Callum looked at her in confusion.

“…. Live one?” Callum squeaked. she had pulled him aside as the rest of the students, including a very pale looking Tobias, all made for the door.

“yeh, live one, I’m guessing you ain’t been in the west wing of this place yet, huh?” Callum shook his head in response to her question. He had not really been in the museum at all, let alone the west wing.

“wull, word of warning, it’s......" she seemed to grasp for the right word "a bit morbid. Lets just say that my former boss, who I hope I never see again, like to comb through battle fields for… trophies. I hope you understand.”

Callum’s eyes went wide, and he nodded in frantic acknowledgment. He knew exactly what she was talking about, a certain dark mage was exactly the same, until King Harrow had put a stop to it a couple of years back, something about disrespecting the dead in so. Many. Ways.

Hell, Aunt Amaya was still sending the king some very, very strongly worded letters about having to chase away 'vultures' from the breach on a regular schedule.

“good, good.” The professor's smile came back to her weather beaten face “Nice work on the fish by the way. It should come out well. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to clean out the dustbin. Young Mr Tobius apparently did not make it out the class before he threw up."

Chapter Text

The next day came with the smell of kedgeree and the sound of shouting from the kitchen.

Rayla poked her head around the door to the sight of Runaan brandishing a very official looking letter and arguing with Ethari over the contents. Well, arguing would be an overstating. Runaan yelling with Ethari interrupting with dry statements and comments would be a more accurate description of what was going on.

“soooo, what’s this about?” She asked Ethari as Runaan’s attention was distracted by the kettle going off behind him.

“some sunfire noble is trying to track down a wayward teen. And they are demanding, not asking, for Ru to drop everything and help in the search for her.” Ethari mused, eyeing the steaming Runaan sitting across from hum “and apparently they are sending some knight to help.”

Rayla raised her eyebrows. Runaan was normally the one to jump on missions involving missing kids, but something about this one had apparently rubbed him the wrong way. And he was not happy about it.

Probably the fact that they had decided to tack his name onto it without his consent, and had already dispatched the person he was meant to be working with.

She prayed that this was not another case of abusive parents trying to track down a runaway. Runaan and others of his.. calibre ..had gotten requests like that before, and they never, ever ended well. For the parents. Or the kids. Just messy, messy missions all around.

“it’s not helping that they, whoever they are, will not say who they are, or why the child run away. Apparently that info is arriving with the sun struck jackass they are sending” Runaan sounded venomous in his anger. “who I have had the misfortune of working with before.”

Rayla winced at his tone, but least mr grumpy horns was now well and truly distracted from attempting to convince her to spy on Callum. Stupidly cute Callum.

.. wait, why did she think He was cute? He was human for luna's sake.

Rayla shook that thought out of her head and fully turned her attention back of stuffing her face with food.

Mina had organised a meet up for them all that morning, to just hang out or something. If anything, it was going to be a good way to get out of the house for a bit, ideally before the supprise guest arrived.

-

“What do you mean, you don’t have any more clothing?” Tadala gaped at Callum, who was rubbing the back of his head sheepishly.

-I could only bring what I could pack into a medium rucksack- Callum scrawled onto the small blackboard he was carrying. -between other essentials, there was not much room.-

In total, Callum had arrived to the school with 3 shirts, two sets of trousers and a miss match of pajamas and undergarments, along with a oilslin cloak for the rain and the jacket and scarf he was wearing.
And his boots. The slippers he'd acquired on his way to campus.

It was getting a little tedious having to wash food and mud stains out of them every night due to certain members of the student body using him as target practice or shoving practice. Sometimes both on bad days.

And Tadala in particular was having none of it.

Which was how Callum had found himself being dragged off towards the edge of the campus, to where there was a transport service to the nearest town, intent on getting him some more clothing.

And perhaps a hairbrush.

Tobius and Arctium were towing him along by the arms, whilst Mina and Tadala bombed him with questions about colours and styles of clothing, and Rayla just trailed along beside them all, looking highly amused at the panicked expression on Callum’s face at the prospect of clothing shopping.

The fact that a slightly unseasonal cold snap had made his voice quit working (again) the moment he stepped outside that morning, so all Callum could really do was try to drag his feet as much as possible, and make sad squeaking sounds.

And then to top it all off, Rayla had called said squeaking cute.
That had not helped things.
Not at all.

-

The stage coach driver gave him a funny look, but was relatively chill about it, especially after his carriage beast, some sort of Lilly pad green, shaggy, huge water buffalo of sort gave Callum a friendly snuffle and lick.

It smelt slightly like damp foliage, like the garden after a rainstorm. Strangely reassuring, in a way.

The coach itself was basically the same as the ones back in Katolis, but like so many things in this part of zadia, it was all natural looking curves and what looked like live plants adding to the structure

-You guys realise that I’m not aloud off campus, right?- Callum sat squashed between Arctium and Tobias, on a seat that was only really meant for two averaged sized people, not two skinny teens (one with wings) and their sturdily built earthblood friend.
(The girls were merrily taking up the opposite bench.)

“unless its an emergency. This is an emergency.” Mina chirped sweetly. “besides, it means you get to see some more of xadia!”

There were mutters of agreement from the rest of the assembled elves. Callum puffed his cheeks up huffily, and went back to staring out the window of the stage coach, leaning forward slightly to see around Tobias.

“and we get waffles. Or something. Anything that is not cafeteria food.” Tobius added.

The idea of more food made Callum perk up a little.

The country side outside rolled past peacefully, changing from woods to farms as they went. Before long, those rolling fields gave way to a lively town, that like so much of the school, looked like it had been grown out of the full of sights and smells that were familiar yet not so familiar to him.

He flipped his hood up to hide his lack of horns and ears and piled out of the stage coach after his gaggle of friends, thanking the driver as they went.

They had been dropped off at the edge of a busy market place, lit in a dappled light under the branches of the treehouses and stores that made up the bulk of the main square, and callum’s eyes were swiftly drawn to a stand full of plump, juicy looking fruit.

he made a mental note to swing back past the stand on the way back.

-

The actual fabric shopping was a fun experience.

The town haberdashery was owned and run by a pair of elderly skywing elves, who were just as colourful as the fabrics they stocked.

From felts to silk, cotton to fleece, they sold it all in more colours and patterns than they could count. And if there was something you wanted, but they did not have, they could always order it in.

The two of them had been suppliers to royalty and nobility all over xadia in the past, and had originally moved to town to support their daughter as she went though school, and had liked it so much that when said daughter was old and experienced enough to take the reins of the main business, they happily set down roots and open shop here.

Besides, they argued, the arts side of the school was growing year by year, and growing kids need clothing regardless of the season.

And the two of them were more than happy to help Callum pick out what he needed, once the initial shock of having a real live human in there store wore off, and took the opportunity to pick his brains about fabric in the human kingdoms.
The tailor, on the other hand...

“SON OF A fLEA RIDDEN, INBRED MONGRAL! I’LL GIVE YOU SKETCHY!!!” Rayla screeched as Callum and Arctium hauled her out of the shop by her arms as fast as they could possibly go, whilst the others brought up the rear, shooting dirty looks at the tailor.

They had been in there for less than two minutes (mostly consisting of the older elf being overly sweet, almost grandfatherly to Mina and Tadala) before he spotted both Rayla and Callum, and had flat out refused to serve them, spouting comments to the tune of ‘ the filthy human’ and ‘the sketchy moonelf’, apparently not realising that the bunch of teens were in a group together.

“Rayla, cork it, we don’t wanna alert the guard.” Mina hissed, leading the group around a corner and back to the main market place, where the majority of the food stands were.

“…. S not worth it” Callum huffed to her, finally letting go to rub the spot on his arm where she had walloped him.

Rayla grumbled and muttered to herself, but gave in. Callum was right, that jackass really was not worth it. there was another tailor in town that the could go too, after all. one which hopefuly did not have a xenophobic jackass in charge.

“… er, so, before we head off again… anyone hungry?” Tobias asked, trying to bake the tention “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m getting real nibbleish.”

After a pause, the sound of a tummy rumbling loudly made them all turn as one towards a blushing Tadala.

“so that’s two for food. Anyone else?” Rayla deadpanned, poking Tadala in the arm as the sunfire shoved her face with her hands to try to cover up her luminous blushing. “anyone else?”

-

As it turned out, none of them could agree where to go for food, since there was many nice smelling places to eat in and around the market, so after a very animated back and forth between the 6 of them, and a game of rock, paper, scissors, Callum opted to sit with the groups bags whilst the rest went to scout out the options, and to work out who would be most likely to serve him.

After the show at the tailors shop, none of them wanted to waste any more time dealing with hot air filled bigots.

So Callum sat him self down on the steps to a bandstand and watched the small group disperse into the crowd.

There was a light rain falling, gibing the bustling market a hazy quality, and making him tuck his well loved sketchbook up under his oilskin cloak to stop the pages from getting damp. It had been a while since he had last drawn a market place, and like hell if he was passing up the chance to capture some nice memories to show Ez when he got home.

The graphite pencil flowed in his hand as he sketched out the outlines of the market stalls, the venders and the people as they went about there business, apparently not noticing him sitting there on the steps, surrounded by bags fabric and lost in his own little world of art.

Before long callum was so engrossed in his drawing that he barely noticed the shadow that fell over him, until a strong, calloused hand grabbed hold of the nape of his neck and dragged him back into the ally way that he had pulled Rayla down just minutes before.

He didn’t even have chance to yelp.

One moment he was minding his own business, hunched over his sketchbook, the next he was pinned to the smooth bark of one of the tree dwellings, a powerful hand clamped around his neck, feet dangling clean off the floor.

“well, well, what do we have here?” a face that he had seen somewhere before leered at him from under beautifully braded and beaded amber hair. “a bit far away from home, aren’t we, princess?”

It took callum a moment to realise that the face, hair and voice belonged to one of the sunfire generals that had accompanied Queen Khessa to the very same peace talk that the whole ‘sending Callum to xadia for peace reasons’ was first mentioned.

He had almost immediately rubbed Aunt Amaya the wrong way (via bad atempts at flirting, which had made the golden Knight herself very annoyed) and had just creeped Callum and Ezren out to the point of refusing to go near him at any point, and that was before he started to refer to Callum as princess, seeming liking the way it made Callum react.

King harrow had picked up on this, making sure to stand between him and the boys, and heck, even Lieutenant Gren, who was normally friendly to anyone unless given a very good reason otherwise, was creeped out by the dude.

And now Callum was alone in an ally with him.

“what the matter” General Abasi hummed, fiery brown eyes looking Callum up and down in a way that made him feel exposed “cat got your tongue?”

Callum just wiggled and kicked, gripping Abasi’s arm in an attempt to get this gilded, armoured powerhouse of an elf to put him down.

As a response, Abasi just. Squeezed. tighter.

He continued until callum was seeing spots and stopped his struggles. Only then did the pressure lessen and he could gasp down air again, heart hammering in his ears.

“now, princess. None of that.” The deep, smooth voice was laced with something mocking, “I was told, as I am sure you were, that you were not to be off the campus. And look where I found you. Off the campus. Alone.”

Abasi tutted in disappointment, tightening his grip again.

“where are your babysitters, huh? did you leave them behind like a little fool? oh yes. yes you did.”

Callum gave no reply. The world was getting rather hazy. Things seemed to be slowing down and the black spots in his vision were starting to return. That was not good.

It was as Abasi started to speak something about misbehaving princesses needing to be punished for stepping out of line and the feeling of the clasp of his cloak being tugged on when a there was a blur of straw blond hair and silvery armour and the world went sideways.

Chapter Text

Being hauled in front of the school principal was not the way Rayla had wanted to end the day, a sentiment that was shared by the rest of the motley group that was lined up with her.

Tadala was staring at the floor, ashen faced, whilst Mina, Tobius and Arctium all shot each over pitiful looks.

Rayla glared as grumpaly as her bedraggled self could at her Guardian/ uncle where he was standing to the side, hoping to convey just how angry she was at the circumstances and him right now. After a while, Professor Archie spoke up.

“I hope you 5 realise how much trouble you have caused today.”

He waited to see if any to the teenagers in front of him had anything to say, before continuing.

“Young master Callum, as I believe you were all informed in the introduction assembly, was not, is not, allowed of campus unless under very strict circumstances, which may I add, do not include shopping trips.” He paused again, scanning all of them with stern blue eyes. “ regardless of how good intentioned said trip was.”

“sir?” Tadala asked, voice soft. “ Is Callum ok? We saw him being dragged off, and he didn’t seem..”

“well.” Rayla finished. “he looked very pale.”

They had all retuned from the food carts to the sight of abandoned bags, and the sounds of a fight in the ally nearby.

Rayla had bolted over in time to see a burly blond human deck a gilded sunfire general around the face with a bucket, whilst a second, slimmer black haired human was helping a very pale, gasping callum up to his feet.

The boy looked like he was just about to be violently sick.

Rayla, in a fit of enraged protectiveness, had lunged at the sunfire elf, slinging a roundhouse kick at his neck. Only, she may of accidently hit his head with her heel when the blond human made the elf double over with a gut punch.
The tall sunfire stumbled, blood gushing from a busted nose, and gave her a look that read murder.

And then Runaan had turned up, like the sliver haired phantom of bad times and justice he was. With the rest of his team as back up.
And he looked pissed.

Things had gone very much downhill from there on out, ending with the 5 of them being dragged almost literally by there ears back to campus by some highly unamused assassins.

Professor Archie gave her an unreadable look.
“I am told that he will be fine once the bruising on his neck has gone down, and yes, his shopping has been given to him.” (Mina put her had down.) “he will not be allowed to leave his rooms for the time being, mind you, until it has been decided on how we will continue with this. Understand that he was on thin ice from the get go, and that there is a chance that he could be sent home.”

The 5 of them almost immediately erupted into protests. Shouts of ‘why’ and ‘you cant do that!’ made Runaan’s ears go back by just how loud they were, and he quickly called for quite, allowing Archie to continue.

“thank you Runaan. I said chance. The fact that it was not Callum who started things will weigh greatly in his favour, but I am afraid that not all of the powers that be like the fact that he is here, and in the long run, the decision may be out of my hands already.”

The looks of guilt that marred the faces of the assembled teens made Archie’s hart soften a little bit. He was young and foolish once too.

“now, as for the rest of you…. 10 hours work with the janitorial staff. Each. Starting tomorrow. This infraction will stay off the official record as long as I hear no complaints from them, understood?”

They all dejectedly nodded.

-

None of them saw Callum for a good week.

None of them saw him in any of there classes, and he never showed up in the canteen at lunch, or dinner. Tadala and Mina, who had found out that they both had a knack for sewing, both reported that they had seen Callum’s fabric in the tailor’s shop that the embroidery club was held at , with a note detailing what was to be made with it pinned to it.

But no Callum. No flashes of brown hair on hornless head in a crowd, no shimmering illusions flashing in the corners of her eyes. Nothing. It was like he had never been there before.

And to make it worse, Rayla was not allowed out of the house, unless it was to school/after school stuff/ training, by firm order of a still unimpressed Runaan. (ok, he was impressed at her standing up for her friend like that, and that kick was well executed, but he was still none to pleased with her.)

Ethari had managed to bend that order a little by ‘making’ her accompany him into town on shopping trips, but it did mean that she could not sneak out after dark to slink in through Callum’s bedroom window to check on him. (and actually slink, not fall through the window like a complete moppet). and to top it alll off, Runaan had put the rest of the assassin squad on night guard duty, with orders to drag her ass home by her horns if they caught her outside when she was not meant to be.

And they were allowed to dunk her in the pond a couple of times in the process if they wanted.

Adding that to all of that joy and dancing, was the less then wonderful realisation that Sir creepy the sunfire elf was hanging around campus. Apparently he was A: a rather high up in the Sunfire military ranking, even for a General, and B; the person Runaan was meant to be working with to track down this missing teen that she had heard about.

Poor, poor, defenceless Runaan. Having to deal with that pompous, leering jerk on a daily basis. What ever could he do.

(Apart from complaining to Ethari over dinner about it. And pretending that one of the archery targets out back was the sunfire in question.
There was a lot of arrows imbedded at crotch level in that target.)

-
And all that on top of the punishment that she and her friends were receiving from the school.
-

“of all the things they’ve been getting us to do.” Tobius grumbled, nose winkled right up in disgust. “ shovelling shit is the very worst.”

The 4 other teens huffed and nodded in agreement with that very blunt, yet excruciatingly true statement.

Over the past week the 5 of them had been doing everything from painting the cafeteria walls, to scrubbing toilet floors, weeding flower beds, all under the watchful eye of the janitorial staff, who were honestly happy for the help, and more than happy to delegate the worst jobs going.

Today, which thankfully was the very last day of the extra curricula punishment, the worst job going was moving a whole stables worth of manure to the compost heaps at the edge of campus, on the warmest day so far that year.

They had to shovel allll the dung up into the a wagon, so it could be carted off, and then the had to shovel it allll into the compost heap from the wagon once it had reached its destination, ready to be turned into plant food.

The only up side was there was no other kids about to point and laugh. They were all at class.

It was a stinky, sweaty, thankless job. And it was their job for the final hour and a half of their punishment. By the time that the bell for 11am tolled out across the campus, they were all hot, sticky, and smelled like the most unpleasant parts of the otherwise very homely and welcoming stables that none of them ever wanted to be in ever again.

And to add some more bad news to the literally crappy day they were all having, the showers in the stables tack a room had packed up that morning, meaning that they would have to trudge back to where they were staying, in Rayla’s case right across campus, to wash up and change.

“its no point getting changed now.” Mina grumbled, trying to use a little magic to spray water from outdoor tap onto her friends “we stink all over.” the cloying stench was sticking to there skin and hair seemingly even more then it was there clothing.

It took an little while, and the small group starting to trudge back the way they came, for Arctium to remember a little factoid that he had picked up on induction day, when he had taken a tour of museum.

“guys, .. there is shower room in them museum. In the basement- students are allowed to use it, even if its not wildly known about.” The rest of them gave him a surprised look “what? It was mentioned in the museum tour. Induction day? anyone?”

“… I wn’t here for induction” Rayla muttered, but motioned for him to lead the way.

- The shower room was indeed in the basement, tucked in next to a simple cloak/laundry/locker room for staff and students to use when they were working in the labs, because sometimes things got… messy.

(tour guide had mentioned something about a past incident involving an exploding dolphin. that sounded like a litral and figurative blast in Rayla's mind)

The place was not as nice as the ones in the student digs, or the bathroom in the teachers house Rayla was staying in, and the pressure was not the best, but the water was warm, and the charcoal soap made short work of the stink and any stains, and a wandering Professor Aylin had happily showed them how the fancy new washing and drying drums worked, so they were soon clean, dry, and were dressed in now dry and nice ish smelling clothing.

The 5 of them then promptly made the unanimous decision to explore the museum for the afternoon, lessons be dammed for a day.

-

“what..is that even?” Tobius cocked his head from side to side, taking in the long necked skeleton that was mounted in a galloping pose. “its all neck and legs… what’s its name?”

Mina squinted at the sign next to the leggy skeleton.

“it’s a…. ja-riff? Oh, right, a Giraffe!” she giggled to herself “hey, it looks like the camelopard from papa’s stories.”

“really now.” Rayla drawled, looking over Mina’s shoulder to peer at the coloured portrait of the animal in life. “Huh. I can kinda see it? It has spots at least…. Where did they get ‘snake’ bit from tho?”

They had wandered into the galleries for the human kingdoms, and the hall of mammals was proving to be a world of wonders.

Yes, the deer and wolves and such were much the same, if with different coat colours, but some of the larger mammals were sources of complete and utter wonder. The wonderful weirdness that was a Hippopotamus (especially its… teeth…oh those teeth) was something to gawp at.

The very colourful and bloody story of how the Hippopotamus was caught in the first place on the other hand, especially the bit on what it did to one exceedingly unfortunate earthblood hunter, was a bit painful to read.

“that.. sounds… uh… oh my..”
“Messy.” Arctium monotoned, slack faced, cutting a blanching Tadala off. “that sounds like a very messy way to go.” For an animal that looked so round and friendly, hippos sounded completely terrifying.

“well” a voice drawled from behind them “those sods are faster and tougher than they appear. You should of seen the carnage when one got loose in downtown.”

The teens all spun around to the sight of one of Callum’s guards, the short, dark haired one, giving them a very amused look from where he was leaning on the gallery door frame.

“still don’t know who brought the thing into the city, but damn, there is still a hippo shaped dent in one of the inn walls near the library.” he mused.

They must of look like a bunch of owls, staring at him in surprise. Most of them had forgotten that there was more than one human on campus. The near constant use of illusions had something to do with it.

“….what?” He gave them a cheery, almost cheeky grin. “never seen a human before?”

The more Rayla stared at this human, with his black slicked up hair and slightly battered armour, the more she was getting a sinking feeling that she had seen him somewhere before, and not from that moment in town.

The Human started to laugh softly to himself as the teens continued to look like a school of surprised fish, the sound bringing Rayla out of her thoughts, only to stop as a rustling sound started from behind him. He spoke softly to someone in the next room and a very familiar brown haired head peeped around the guard’s shoulder, confused green eyes scanning the room.

Rayla’s ears perked all the way up when she released who it was.

“wu.. ?...CALLUM!”

Chapter Text

Between the 5 of them, they near enough squeezed the life out of poor, defenceless Callum.

It was a sudden, swift and deadly attack, with Rayla leading the charge- she never realized how much she had missed him over the past week, how much she missed having his quite snarkyness and just.. him. All of him. Wow, where did that come from all a sudden?
Eh, she’d worry about that later.

Thankfully, Tadala was just as enthusiastic when it came to hugging the life out of the poor, defenceless human who had resorted to making little squeaking noises of protest.

“where. Have. You. Been.” Mina asked, eyes shining in happiness “we all thought you were kicked out because of us!”

Callum, attempted to answer her, only to find himself having to try and duck out of a noogie form Tobius, who had flanked him whist the girls had been dispensing the anaconda level squeeze-hug of death.

“House arrest. I wasn’t aloud to leave my lodgings until they decided what to do with me.” He finally grumbled, swatting at Tobius, who had decided to use his wings to get a unfair height advantage on his opponent, much to the amusement of the others in the room.

“whose they?” Rayla asked, deliberately deciding to ignore Arctium grabbing Tobius by one leg and yanking the wickedly grinning skywing clean out of the air to get him to knock if off.

Callum clammed up, eyes darting off to one side as he tried to avoid the question.

“the grumps that are presiding over this whole peace deal thing. Half of them are flat out jerks” the blond human chimed in, looking displeased.
“and the other half spent more time arguing amongst themselves the addressing what they had been asked.”

The short one added with a sarcastic eyeroll. “it would of only taken them a day or so to come to an agreement if they did not stop going on tangents.”

"or making some really snide jabs at us" the blond interjected

"or just flat out insulting our existence." the short one sighed in despair. "no clue how those windbags ever get anything done."

Callum just nodded glumly.

“sounds like so many council meetings I’ve been dragged too in the past.” Tadala grumbled in sympathy. She only realised that she had said what she had said out loud when she noticed that everyone else in the room was looking at her with confused looks on their faces.

“ohm um… never mind me.” She stuttered quickly, voice tight and higher than normal “em, er… should we explore some of the other exhibits?”

she put tight, clearly fake grin on her face, making a slightly frantic motion to the doors leading out the way Callum and his guards had come in.

The sound of military boots on marble echoed from the hallway that Callum and his guards had been in just minutes before , cutting off any curious replies or questions that the rest of the teens may have had, and making the whole group fall silent.

The footfalls could be heard loud and clear by all of them, passing back and forth along the length of the airy corridor, clacking loudly on the tiles, apparently waiting for someone with a degree of impatience.

Callum blanched a little at the rich sound of General Abasi voice called out from just outside the door addressing someone that they could not seeor hear.

“You, sir, are late.”
“I am not. “ Runaan’s cool voice snipped back, making Rayla’s face pail as bad as Callum’s. oh, she was going to be in trouble if Runaan found her skipping classes, even if both of them agreed that her literature professor was a right old ponce.

Abasi made a low growling sound, clearly annoyed at the back chat.

“according to who’s clock?.” he almost snarled

“the school’s. that nice big clocktower tells me that I am, in fact, 5 minutes early.” runaan replied coolly, nonplussed by the clearly angry sounding sunfire elf.

callum's two gaurds made eye contact for the briefest of moments, seemingly communicating a plan between them telepathically.

Without a sound, they directed the teens via hand movements to make a move in the opposite direction of the slowly rising voices, towards the double doors that led into the anthropology studies section of the museum, as quickly and quietly as possible.

To the surprise of all of them, they managed it clean out the doors and away with out be noticed.

Granted, the fact that the ‘conversation’ between Abasi and Runaan was growing into a little bit of a shouting match, much to the annoyance of the pair of professors that completely ignored them as they swept past, grumbling something about causing a disturbance.

“better them then us.” shorty muttered softly to himself.

-

Once they were safely behind the thick doors of the western wing, Soren and Marcos, who had taken the opportunity to introduce themselves, were more happy to sit back and watch them from the doorway, keeping one eye on the way they had come, and basically told Callum to have fun.

Callum found the exhibits on Xadian culture and elven traditions as fascinating as the elves had found the animals in the natural history wing. He was full of questions about just about evrything, scribbling down his quires in his ever present sketchbook for the others to answer.

He showed real interest in the sets of armour and weaponry that were displayed on mannequins around the room, with each mannequin styled after the elf tribe who made the armour it was wearing, some set in action poses that showed off the detailing in the metal and leatherwork .

Watching him bounce between the different displays, sketchbook open and quickly filling with sketches, was just adorable.

Well, Rayla had to admit that the full set of royal sunfire armour, complete with a matching sunforged sword and dagger set in its own heat proof case, was spectacular to look at.

Even Tadala, who by her own admission, had been to every military parade and ceremony in existence, because her mother said so, found it fascinating.

“it think it’s from the golden knight before lady Janai.” She told Rayla as Callum and Tobias got into a hushed chatter about the possibilities of making toast with the dagger. “my aunt was trained by her.”

The displays on the many, many uses of primal magic were also highly fascinating, to all of them.

the average elf got a basic education on their own primal source in school, and learned some very basic bits to control the magic they were born with. (a classroom full of moonshadow kids working out there shadow forms was chaotic at the best of times, supervision or not.) but some of the stuff that they were finding out about was the sort of stuff that was normally reserved for mages in training.

It was Mina who discovered that some of the displays were interactive.

Once could use there latent magic to make crystals light up, or bells ring to work out how strong ones magic was, and even had some simple spells that one could learn. Naturally, this soon turned into a hot blooded contest between the elven teens to see who could make the crystals flash the brightest, or the buzzer go off the loudest.

They had a almost literal blast, and unfortunately, made quite a bit of noise. Nose that quickly stated to attract un wanted attention from out side the gallery they were in. It was not long at all before the sounds of a certain someone’s loud boots heading their way caught the attention of the pair of guards, who in turn quickly made to get the kids on the move before they could be caught.

Rayla caught the briefest flash of the sky primal detector lighting up as callum hurried past it, but they were hustling so fast, she did not get a good look at the display as she was out the door and down the next hall in seconds.

.

Callum couldn’t help but grin as he stealthily activated the sky primal display as his passed by it. He would have to come back and mess with it a little at some point, Tobius had been having a whale of a time with it, almost out doing Tadala on 'the making the crystal glow' challenge.

But truth be told, He was not comfortable with showing his magic to any of his new friends just yet, despite how much he had come to trust them in the short time he had known the group. It was painfully clear what elves thought of humans with magic, all you had to do was look at the carvings on the big story tree in the middle of the court yard, with its almost animalistic dark mages, or the pamphlets that he had seen going around in lux A, or any of the books that he had read in the library, or … well, just anything conserving human mages in elven literature.

He could see were some of it came from, though.

Viren, unfortunately, did fill some of the scary dark mage stereotypes. alright, a lot of the stereotypes, even Soren had to admit that, but for the love of the stars, even someone like him would not be caught dead preforming blood soaked ritual human/elf sacrifices on windy, ominous mountain tops under the dark new moon.

His buggered up knee would not let him anyway.

Still, who the hell came up with that?? And drew that in graphic detail in a SCHOOL BOOK?! A bleeding '11 and under' school book, for crying out loud. did they want to give kids nightmares or something??

But, his friends were nice, and had stood up for him before on more than one occasion, so he was kind of confident that he would be able to pluck up the courage to show them soon. Kind of.

He did want to show off some of the new spells he had been learning , thanks to that lovely sky mage that had taken him under his (mage) wing over the last week.

-

“so… I don’t think this part of the wing was ever in the tour.” Arctium muttered as they closed the door behind them, leaving them in a dark, cool, slightly dusty smelling gallery that they had ducked into to hide.

The windows were covered with thick fabric blinds that blocked a lot of the sun, and the lights had been deliberately dimmed down as low as they could, to the point that they might of well of been off.

After the well lit halls and rooms they had been in before, it was taking there eyes a while to adjust to the sudden lack of light.
Well, most of them were having trouble.

Both Arctium and Rayla had very good low light vision, one was from a subterranean mining town and the other was normally nocturnal moonshadow elf, so whilst the rest of the small group was fumbling around to find the spell work for the lamps, or the draw string for the blinds or just something so they could see more than an foot in front of their faces, the two of them set out to see if they could work out the contents of some of the cases near to them, because this gallery not one that any of them had been in before, and was very much calling to there curiosity.

Rayla really had to squint tough the slightly dusty glass panels, but in one of the cases closest to her she could make out some sort of round objects, with what looked to be dark holes in one side of them, nestled neatly in a row, all on what looked like cushions with ineligible labels set in front of each one. they were the only thing in the case, apart from what looked to be fragments of.. something light coloured that sat in shallow dishes next to a couple of the items.
Huh.

A triumphant noise and the sound of a switch somewhere near the door being flicked caught her attention, and she spun around in time for the lights to finally turn on, courtesy of a grinning Soren standing next to the painfully obvious switch labelled 'lights' in the wall next to the door, which apparently had gone completely unnoticed by everyone else.

momentarily blinded by the light, Rayla was suddenly struck by the sounds of shock that was emanating from everyone else in the room. As her eyes adjusted, she noticed that Callum in particular was starting with a look of horror at the case of round things on cushions that she had been trying to look in to just moments before.

She tuned around to look again, wondering what could be freaking him out so badly, only to look straight into the dark, empty eye sockets of a line of polished human skulls, grinning emptily up at her from there cushions.

Chapter Text

“what the fuck.”

Marcos’ flabbergasted statement was echoed by the other live occupants of the room.

Rayla was floored. She had heard rumours about the fabled west wing of the museum, filled with the war trophies and battle field finds of the former museum head had collected together over his lifetime. But she had dismissed almost all of them as childish whispers, told by kids living in dorms for the first time, trying to freak each other out with cheap campfire horror stories.

But some stories, apparently, were horrifically true.

She looked back to Callum, who was pail and tense, signing something franticly to slack faced Marcos as Soren stared blankly at another display case, this time with a whole skeleton mounted in a standing position

“W..what is he saying?” Mina squeaked out, voice tense and legs trembling. Her normally soft Cerulean skin was now a ashy blue/gray and she looked seconds from either fainting or throwing up.

Or both.

It was clear that the fact that she was leaning heavily on Tobius's shoulder was pretty much the only thing holder her up at the moment, and even he looked on the verge of collapse out of shear shock.

“Aylin… she told him that there was some war trophies in the collection” Soren intoned, voice near devoid of emotion “she never mentioned that they took up a whole gallery.”

Arctium quietly approached the case that Rayla had been looking in to, taking in the bleached white skulls, and the damage that they had apparently acquired. Most of them had fractures and holes punched in the side of them, the disks and shards of displaced bone on display in the small bowls next the pillows, so one could clearly the thickness of the bone.

Combined with information cards posted in the case with them, it was surprisingly informative.
Informative and creepy.
Very creepy.

And the rest of the gallery was not much better.

“welp.” Marcos squeaked, eyeing a display of what looked unsettlingly like pickled hearts n’ other squishy bits in jars. “time for a surprise anatomy lesson? I guess?”

“.. I .. guess..” Tobius sat down suddenly, looking very, very ill and on the verge of fainting. Mina knelt down next to him, holding his shoulders, shaking him lightly to try to keep him awake .
“or we could head for the door on the other sid

e of this gallery, post haste and try not to look to closely at anything.” Rayla offered.

“or that. That works” Soren’s face was a picture of discomfort. “lets.. just get going.”

-

The gallery was not big, especially in comparison to the animal halls, but it seemed to stretch on forever as they crept along, trying desperately to keep their eyes on the doors, and not look at the displays. Admittedly, all of the displays were well put together, clean, and surprisingly informative, despite the very morbid subject matter at hand.

The huge display on the digestive system- a mix of diagrams, painted clay models, and a series of huge bell jars with parts of a complete digestion track, all labelled with images and names of what was inside each one- was interesting though. As it turned out, humans did indeed have more guts then elves, just like the old saying said, or at least they had more in the way of intestines and digestive prowess than the average elf.

For example: Rayla found out just by glancing momentary at the display that humans had a much better tolerance to toxins then elves did, and could, indeed, digest bone in small amounts, and that same stomach acid could do … interesting things to metal.

That was… interesting in a slightly disturbing way.

-

The last couple of cases before the door where full of the strangest, creepiest things in the whole room.

“ok, having bones and guts in jars is one thing, but TAXIDERMY??” Tobius wisper yelled, sounding like he was officially on his last straw with this gallery.

Callum did not know what was worse, the strange, uncanny way that the taxidermy people looked, set in neutral, stiff poses and wearing armour that may or may not of been there own in life, or the fact that whoever had done that to them had decided to use shiny, reflective black glass eyes in place of the more realistic ones used in every other peace of taxidermy in the building.

He could feel them looking into his soul, like they were still there in some way, and were silently staring clean though him. It horrifying.

And then, just feet from the door. He saw her.

Soren, who was just about to open the exit doors, was the first to realise that Callum had stopped dead in his tracks staring into one of the cases with a look of flabbergasted horror plastered on his face.

“hey.” Soren let go of the door handle to walk over to Callum, shaking his shoulder to get his attention “hey, buddy? what’s the hold up?”

Callum just kept staring, and stiffly motioned at the figure, mounted with the armour of a high ranking general, with its decorative gilt over the very practical steel and iron, and a tussled halberd as tall as she was in her armoured hand.

She had pail skin, long, dark hair braded in a fishbone braid down her back, and the faint signs of a painful, brutal, lightning based death present on her neck, peeping out from under the collar of her padded shirt.

And then Soren saw the beauty spot on her cheek, just under her eye, and the pretty gold clasp at the end of her braid, the one that his own mother had gifted to a dear friend once upon a time, that it hit him exactly who he was looking at, and why Callum was now starting to shake and tear up.

“oh. Oh stars.” He breathed, grabbing the shaking Callum by the back of his tabard and dragging him towards the door with a sense of urgency.
“what-“ Tadala started, only to be cut off by

Marcos, who had also spotted what Callum had seen, literally shoving the rest of the teens out the door, muttering something panicky about someone going to war over this, and they had to go, right the hell now.

-

“That was his mother.” Soren told them, as they all sat under the story tree in sullen silence. “she.. she died saving people.”

They were all sitting around in a sad, listless way, poking away at the lunch they had collected from the cafeteria.

No one was hungry, no one wanted to talk, but everyone wanted to try to comfort Callum the best they could. He had completely shut down on them, head in his hands, tears rolling down his cheeks, barely acknowledging the efforts of his friends.

“her name was Sarai.” Marcos added, softly rubbing Callum’s back, “she’s kind of a big folk hero to us in Katolis, she saved a lot of lives before.. well....”

“she sounds amazing.” Arctium whispered, looked sullen.

“she was.” Callum managed to wheeze out, tearing up again. “she really was.”

They sat together under that tree, unable to really work out what to say, or if they should say anything, but they all wanted to be there for him anyway.

Rayla thought back to her own parents, the wonderful people who had gone to serve under the dragon king, with pride in their eyes and smiles on their faces, only for them to never come back home, all because of some king with a dark mage with a chip on their shoulder.

The pain had dulled down over time, they left when she was so young, and she had her loving uncles to fall back on after all, but the stabbing sorrow was still there, under everything else.

She did not really want to think about what she would do if she saw them like that. Dead. Stuffed. put on display for people to stare at. Or how Runaan and Ethari would react to the grim sight. Oh, there would blood to be sure. and it was not going to be their own.

And Marcos, who looked like he was going over some sort of frightening situation over and over in his head, had mention something about someone going to war over Sarai. And he looked like he really, really believed it.

-

She snuck out that night.

Ethari had dragged Runaan off to bed extra early to take his mind off of the less than pleasant day that the assassin had had. Apparently that sun struck jackass had managed to make Runaan walk all over the museum, stables, and at least half of the library, searching for something, before Runaan could escape from his grasp.

So they were well and truly distracted, and never noticed Rayla grabbing a bottle of home pressed star plum juice from the pantry, and slinking outside the front door into the night.

The night was warm, and Callum’s window was cracked open, so it was easy enough to push it open a little more and drop in.

He was curled up on his side on his bed, sniffling sadly under his blanket. He sounded so broken, it made her heart ache.

“hey dummy.” She whispered, aware of the voices coming from where she supposed the living area was. “you doing ok?”

He sniffled, looking up at her with big, wet green eyes, and shook his head.

“no” he whispered.

She sat down on the bed next to him, unsure of how to precede with things, so she just blurted out: “my mums dead too. And me dad.”

Callum raised his head to look at her with a confused look on her face. He was clearly not expecting that.

“I mean, it’s not like they were taxidermied or anything because ohstartsthatistheworstthingever.. but..”
she tried to backpaddle franticly, wondering for a flash if she had accidently insulted him, only for Callum to sit up, looking at her with sympathy, and offer her a hug.

She accepted, tilting into his arms slightly awkwardly.

“i.. i think she would of liked you.” Callum told her softly, voice hitching softly but he was smiling softly now. it was a sad smile, a small smile, but it was still a smile.

“you think?” Rayla asked, tilting her head to one side

“yeh… you both are fighty but kind and sarcastic and she never took anyone’s bull poop.”
Well, that was fair. She had been described like that in the past, just with a healthy dollop of mischief on top. And sass. One must never forget the sass.

“..what’s in the bottle?” Callum finally asked, tilting his head at the single bottle of juice in her hand.

“juice” she told him with full honestly. “thought we could both use a drink after today.”
Callum eyed the bottle with suspicion.

“what? Don’t you have juice back home?” she teased, offering him a sip.

“not stuff like.. that” Callum was not lying- there was not much in the way of drinks back in Katolis what was purple, sparkly, and somehow fizzy sounding all at the same time. “I’ll pass. Thank you though.”

They sat together on the bed for a bit, leaning on each over in an understanding silence. It was enough for now, to just be together, quietly supporting each over in there combined grief.
After a while, Callum started doodling away in his sketchbook letting Rayla watch him whilst sipping her drink and watching him work with interest.

This juice had more of a zing then she was expecting, but hey, Callum was looking happier now, and didn’t seem to mind her suggesting silly little things that they had seen going on around campus to draw.

Things like a bunch of earthblood elves sorting out a dispute via mudslinging match, a freshly awoken and cranky Runaan at 4am armed with his jackalope slippers and a mug of tea (that made them both laugh) and sunfire light orb juggling (a fun thing to watch! Very flashy.)

Her head was getting a bit fuzzy, probably because she had had one doozy of a day and was understandably tired, and Callum was warm and soft and was sooo nice to snuggle into.

She leaned into his side, smiling softly at the confused noises he made, and let her eyes slide shut for a little bit. Just a little bit.

Chapter Text

She was dreaming again.

The castle halls were all dark stone and ruby red fabric, in the form of endless carpet and billowing drapes. The blood red full moon coming in through the wide open windows was the only light source around, all the sconces and candles that she ran past in the halls had been snuffed out, with only wisps of lingering smoke showing that they had been lit at all.

She had the overwhelming urge that she was running from someone, or something bad.
And whatever it was, it was hunting her down.

The hallways were twisting, turning, never ending.
and yet all the same.
It was like she was passing the same hallways and doors over and over, never gaining ground, never finding the exit, but the feeling of dread just kept looming closer and closer the more she ran.

An then something changed.

A door to her right was cracked open, and she dove into the room without looking, to get away from whatever was chasing her.

The room was splattered red.
A deep, rusted, sticky liquid red.
The red was on the walls, on the door that slammed shut behind her, and was pooling over the floor, staining the pieces of paper that was scattered on the carpet.

There was a bed in this room. A beautiful, canopy bed, carved with oak leaves and little forest animals and birds the pillars and the panels that she could see under the thick bedding. The sheets on the bed were painted that horrible red too, flooding over the hypnotically patterned cover like spilt ink.

There was a figure on the bed, half under the covers, half uncovered, like they had been struggling violently against something just moments before.

Hesitantly, she approached the bed, feeling her boots squelch sickenly on the carpet as she did. The figure was completely unmoving, laying on his back, glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling, neck slashed brutally open.

Rayla jumped back, losing her footing in shock as she took in the ghastly sight of Callum’s pail face, completely drained of all blood.
She fell back onto her rear, landing with a wet thud onto the blood soaked carpet, and suddenly feeling like she was sinking.

And She was sinking.

The bloody carpet seemed to become like jelly, sucking her down down down into a sticky crimson pool, as a shrill ringing filled her ears.
Rayla wanted to scream.

The redness filled her mouth before she could.

-

Rayla jolted back to a form of awake-ness, grumbling, unwilling to open her eyes and address the annoying ringing noise that was going off somewhere to her left, the only part of her fading nightmare that had followed her to the world of the living.

It was loud, annoying, and was. Not. Stopping.

She fumbled and flailed, fighting against the thicker than expected blanket that was hindering her progress in the direction of the annoying sound. Not only was the blanket thicker than she was expecting, but the bed seemed squishier then she was used too and the pillows were all wrong and….

All of a sudden the bed was gone from under her, and she was face first on the floor with a thump.

“ow”

Rayla’s brain finally seemed to wake up enough to register that hey, that was not her bed, this was not her room, and that the light coming in from the window meant that it was morning. Wait. MORNING???? the last she checked, it was late in the evening.

Looking around, she found out that the ringing was coming from what tuned out to be a small, intricate time piece hooked up to a small, sliver bell.

She stared at it for a moment, wondering who the hell would have such a pretty looking audio torture device on there bedside table when a sluggish, flailing, 5 fingered hand popped out of the other mess of blankets on the bed and smacked the top of the time piece, switching it off with a final, spiteful ting.

Callum’s head poked out of the blanket ball, hair sticking up in every way imaginable. He looked around, blinking slowly like a tired owl, only to jump out of his skin when he spotted Rayla, peering over the edge of the bed like a startled cat.

The two of them stared at each other for a very long, very, very tense moment, both trying to play a frantic mental dot to dot to how and why they hand managed to wake up together. In the same bed.

“uh.”
“…….. um”
“good morning? I guess?” Callum squeaked out.

Rayla just stared at him for a little longer.

“what time is it?” she finally asked, heart rate finally dropping down to an acceptable rate.

Callum opened his mouth to respond, only to suddenly wince in pain. He groped about down the side of the bed for a couple of seconds, nabbing his sketchbook from where it had ended up on the floor.

“it’s just past 6.” He wrote. “I have a doctors appointment today.”

Rayla pulled a face, both at the sight of Callum's scars, which looked like they were redder, angrier than usual, and the ramifications of what would happen if her wonderful uncle found her here.

Runaan was a very early riser, and thankfully was not likely to pop his head around her bedroom door to check on her.

But He would, on the other hand, most likely be out on his morning jog, probably with Castello, or Scor. They were all morning jogging buddies, and none of them would not be impressed to find her trying to sneak back into the house at 6 ish in the morning.

“OI SLEEPY HEAD!” Soren’s voice sounding out like a sudden thunderclap from the other side of the bedroom door. “UP AND AT ‘EM”

Callum jumped a meter in the air, turning white and shooting Rayla a wide eyed, panicked look. As the door knob started to turn, He pointed rapidly and firmly at the window.

She did not need telling twice.

She shot out of the window like an arrow, landing hard on the ground outside with a muffled curse, and darted off though the dawn light.

-

She made it home, and back into her room in record time, with out being spotted by anyone, thank the moon and stars.

Runaan’s keys and jogging shoes were gone from inside the front door, and she could make out the sound of Ethari stumbling around half asleep in his room as she slithered along the landing to the bathroom, intent of getting to the shower before her uncle did.

Ethari was notorious for using up all of the hot water in the morning, and like hell was she letting him get away with it today.

-

Literature class was always a drag, especially since it was first thing in the morning, but finding out that Tadala, who was arguably a much better student that she was, was in the same class was honestly a boon.

The book they were studding today was some dreary, tragic love story between two 'painfully beautiful' elven mages, trapped on opposing sides of the great draconic civil war, set a good 300 years or so in the past.

There was some graphic battles described in the latter half of the book, and some lovely, flowery love poetry in places, but otherwise it was very, very dull. painfully dull even.

“and I thought reading ‘the lament of the sun’ was a drag.” Tadala sighed, turning the page to another long paragraph. “but this takes the cake.”
“and eats it.” Rayla agreed.

They had to read the, thankfully slim, book end to end, and write a essay on the main themes, characters and what message the the text was trying to convey to the reader. So far, in Rayla’s opinion, the message was that love between ‘enemies’ was bad, and would never, never, end well.

And that was a terrible message, to be honest.

-

History was a bit more interesting.

“What’da mean the lux. a trip has been moved up??” one of the sun elves at the back of the class blurted out. The whole class was in shock.
The week long trip was scheduled to take place over the early summer half term brake, and was the most hotly anticipated trip of the year. But now, with little warning, the trip had been moved up to next week.

They were setting off in 4 days’ time, to be very precise.

“due to the peace summit that is taking place in the coming month, it has been decided that it would be safer for the trip to take place before, rather than after the event.” Their teacher looked tired, like she had been up half the night trying to squish over a months’ worth of preparation onto just over a week. which in hind sight, she probably had. “hence, the trip will be leaving campus this weekend. Those who still wish to attend need to head over to admin after class- there has been some slight changes to the itinerary.”

“changes?” Mina hissed to Rayla. “what changes?”
“no clue. But I am going on that trip.” Rayla whispered back, determined.

Well, once she had manged to unground herself, that was. It was time to brake out the pleading baby moon strider puppy eyes.

-

Runaan folded like wet paper.

Rayla was not sure if it was her big dewy eyes, or Ethari whacking the grouchy assassin across the horns and telling him that she had learned her lesson, so let up already, but Runaan had folded, Rayla was ungrounded, and she was going on that trip.

Besides, she had already gone to the admin office, to talk with the slightly scary skywing lady who ran the office about the changes to the itinerary (there had been change in where they were going to be staying, a switcharoo with what days certain things would be taking place ect ect.) and to sign the little ‘I promise to be on my best behaviour on this trip, or I will not be going on any others. EVER.’ document that she read top to bottom before signing it.

“you know, you are the first of your classmates to actually read the document.” She hummed at Rayla, filing the signed parchment away with a stack of others like it "most just scan it over and sign the dotted line."

Rayla sat back in the comfy office chair, not sure if she should be happy at the kind of complement, or to be disappointed at her fellow classmates.

"Just to add," the skywing admin piped up again " you will need to bring your school id, and any spending money. Food will be covered by us, but any souvenirs you want to get will have to be on your own coin, understood?”

“yes ma’m.” Rayla replied without a single bit of snark in her voice.

-

As Rayla was leaving the office, she bumped into Callum who was on his way in, holding what looked like a couple of scrolls in his hand.

Rayla’s eyes were immediately drawn to the very official looking seal that adorned the outside of one of them in red and gold wax, and the way that the almost pearlescent blue-gray wax on the other scroll caught the light. The poor boy looked surprised to see her, cutting though the air of nervousness that he was giving off.

He was called in to the admin office before she could ask him what was up.

Chapter Text

She finally caught up to him at lunch the next day.

The whole campus was buzzing, and it was not just because of the upcoming trip, or the (huge!) hive of crimson hornets that had to be removed from the rafters of the theatre before the drama kids could start rehearsals that morning, but because there had been some.. excitement…emanating from the general direction of the admin, and facility offices.

Runaan had nothing to say about it just yet, but judging by the look on his face, the way he was stalking about, wound tighter than the strings on Ethari’s lute, Rayla could just tell that whatever was going down right now, it was something big.

And whatever it was, it was making the rest of the assassins… twitchy. And not a good twitchy.
Rayla had a sinking feeling that it had something to do with the horrific museum wing.

And one bit of that wing in particular.

-

Callum was sitting with the others under the story tree by the time she trotted up to them, delicious cafeteria lunch in hand.

“Are you going on the trip too?” Mina asked as Rayla flopped down between her and Callum, who gave her a happy smile as he shifted over to give her room

. He was wearing his red scarf tighter around his neck then normal, but he looked much better than he had the day before. his eyes still had a redness to them, but his over all demeanor was brighter than it has been before.

“yup. Managed to emotionally blackmail my beloved uncle into agreeing.” Rayla preened as her friends laughed “speaking of the trip..” she gave the rest of them a curious look.

“we are all going” Tadala piped up, brandishing her fork like a baton . “all. Of. us!”
“Even me.” Callum looked slightly anxious, but excited none the less at the idea.

“wait, was that why you were in the admin office yesterday?” Rayla asked.

Callum nodded happily, almost vibrating in shear excitement.

“that and I needed to send a message home about..” he trailed of, happiness seemingly evaporating in a instance. He did not need to finish the sentence. “..yeh. and I can’t use the main post office for reasons.”

There were nods of understanding all around. The post master was not the nicest of persons, and had been over heard in the past lambasting the idea of letting the poor boy in the post office at all, and to top it off the much nicer assistant they had was on holiday for another week or so.

They ate in silence for a couple of minutes, chewing on the delicious spring veggie curry that was on the specials menu that day. it was rich and flavoursome, and served with a heaping of steaming, fragrant rice, perfect for forgetting ones woes for a moment.

“… wait a second, how did you get permission to…” Tobius asked, clearly confused as his brain tried to work out how he’d managed that. He was not meant to be off campus last time any of them checked.

“dad.” Callum said bluntly. “Archie sent a permission to him attached to a description of what we’ll be doing.”

He swallowed another bite of food, wincing slightly as he did.

“he told me to go for it. In his own words: ‘why the hell not?’." Callum shrugged. "and besides, i've already wanted to go."

The rest of lunch was spent merrily chattering away about the upcoming trip, talking about the places they wanted to check out in there own free time, and pestering an increasingly flustered Tadala with questions about the golden city after she let slip that she was a local. Of sorts.

“I was never really allowed to leave the royal plateau, there are art galleries and such there but most of the museums are in the sunrise ward” She explained, looking a little put out. “the joys of slightly overprotective family, I guess. They meant well, but..” she trailed off, stuffing a big spoonfull of rice into her mouth with a huff.

“hey, at least you’ll get to eat some decent spiced honey buns again, right?” Arctum pointed out, softly nudging her in the ribs.

“ah, true." Tadala perked up again at the mention of her go to snack " The ones here are nice, but they never get the spice mix right…”

-

After putting up with the Gym teacher’s blatant racism for the entire of the afternoon, Rayla was very, very pleased to finally get home, and very quickly set about trying to poke some information out of her stubborn mule of an uncle.

But, alas, despite her best efforts, and some help from an equally curious Ethari, Runaan flat out refused to tell her what was going on in the offices, but the pallor on his face and the stack of very official looking letters that he managed to churn out over night for postage first thing in the morning told her that was ever going on, she was very glad to be getting the heck of the campus for a while.

He only ever got that look when there was a big storm on its way, and heading directly for them.
And she wanted to be well out of its path when it finally hit.

The end of the week could not come about soon enough.

-

The big day came with a heavy dose of rolling morning fog, covering the campus with a pail, hazy blanket that gave the school a slightly ominous air.

Ethari was, for once, up with the larks, and spent the morning fussing over her and Runaan like a mother hen, double and triple checking that she had her coin purse, her clothing and some snacks all neatly tucked into her backpack, along with some entertainment for the road.

Whist Ethari's back was turned, probably stuffing more snacks into Runaan's bag against his husbands loving protests, Runaan slipped her blades into her bag next to her pyjamas and first aid kit.

“just in case.” He whispered to her, removing a bag of spiced seed trail mix from his bag “something big is going down, and I want you to be prepared.”

-

Andromeda and Castello walked with them to the auditorium, where the meet up point was for the trip was, talking quietly to Runaan about some apparent updates to the mysterious situation that was brewing. They were being quite enough that Rayla could not make out what they were muttering about even if she strained her ears, and of course the two of them clammed up when she tried to move closer to them.

which was very annoying, as she informed them repeatedly. she wanted to know what the heck was going on, moon dang it.

But, as they reached the auditorium, where the rest of the trip had stated to assemble in pre dawn light, she did find out some titbits from Castello, mainly that Andy and Runaan were going on the trip as security- and Scor was pouting over it.

Apparently, somebody tall, white haired and pouty had wanted to escort the trip, something something sightseeing or something, only to lose the impromptu sparing match that decided who was going along with Runaan (who coincidently also needed to deliver some important news to the golden knight, or something. her uncle looked so happy at that little idea)

“creepy mc creepy is staying on campus, thank the stars.” Andy muttered to Rayla when Runaan started off towards the small pack of security folks that were forming by the adorable little, school branded covered waggons that were there transport for the trip. “which is just fine in my opinion. Still have no clue who he’s meant to be looking for.”

“really now?” Rayla yawned, watching Castello start to amble back towards the auditorium, and the pouting Scor that had turned up to see them off.

“apart from the fact that they are a teenaged sun elf? And about a 3ed of the student body, by volume, is a teenaged sun elf?” Andy rolled her eyes and shooed her into the auditorium, “nothing.”

-

The assembly was a quick affair, consisting of a simple combination of going over the rules for the trip, a rundown of what they would be doing, and a final call for them to check there bags to make sure they had everything they wanted/needed (money? Clean socks? A good book or something for the road? Are you sure?) and then about 30 sleepy teens were woken back up and headed back out of the room and to the wagons.

The little wagons could of trundled straight out of a quaint little children's story book, one with traders and bandits and surprise dragons saving the day.

They could fit 6 kids, plus 2 adults and luggage in each waggon, and the 6 of them managed to nab one all to themselves, with an un cloaked Marcos and a pretty young sunfire from campus security as the adults in charge/security, with Soren hopping up front with the earthblood wagon driver, who Rayla was sure she had never seen around before.

The two of them, by the sounds of it, were already friendly, chattering away about something over cups of strong tea, whist Marcos was commiserating with the sun fire lass about the early hour.

Tadala, who had been barely awake through the assembly and walk over to the wagons, clonked back out the moment she was settled on one of the benches, head landing with a soft thunk on Rayla shoulder, horns narrowly grazing Rayla’s ear. Apparently, she was not a morning elf in any way, and by the looks of it, the same could be said for Mina.

The tidebound elf looked dazed, sipping on a sugary smelling hot concoction that was probably not completely legal for a almost 16 year old to be drinking. Whatever it was, it did not seem to be working just yet.

Apart from giving her the jitters.

she was vertically vibrating in place from the caffeine.

The boys were not faring much better. Arctum had packed himself into the corner opposite the now softly snoring Tadala, and was already falling asleep curled up onto himself, hugging his rucksack to his chest like a stuffed toy. Tobius was opposite Callum, on the other side of Mina from Arctum, and was groggily looking out the back of the wagon, trying to focus on the docile looking pack animals being hitched up to the wagon behind them.

Callum was half-heartedly chewing on some sort military style ration bar, the sort with dried fruit and what looked like some sneaky chocolate mixed in.

His eyes were drooping worse than Mina’s.

-

At 6am on the dot, the convoy rolled out with a shout and a jolt.

The trip from the school to their inn on the edge of the grand golden city itself would take a day and a half once you added in the brakes needed to rest the animals, stops for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus the overnight stay in a little savanna town along the way.

No matter which way you cut it, it was going to be a long, long trip, with very little to do apart from read, nap and play endless games of i-spy out of the back of the wagon.

Well, that was until everyone had woken up properly, and the 6 of them (plus Marcos and Sabah) decided to start teaching each over a range of card games using the set of card that Callum had produced from somewhere in his bag.

Whilst the games themselves were interesting (turns out that every culture had some sort of hold’um game, if with different rules and saying) and the cards had the same suits and numbers on both sides of the border, apparently, if a stark lack of horns on the kings, queens and jacks.

And the artwork on the cards Callum was dealing out to them was amazing.

The 4 colour set were made of a kind of paper that was thick and almost velvety to the touch, the inks on the beautifully detailed kings, queens and jacks were vibrant, and when the cards caught the light, she realised that the borders and details such as the numbers and little things like the royal’s crows were actually picked out in shimmering metallic ink.

They were little works of art that were being used by 6 teenagers to play a mish mash game of poker.

As she marvelled at the harlequin that she was holding, tilting it back and forth so that the shimmering inks caught the light, Marcos looked over her at the cards with an amused, if exasperated, look on his face.

“Callum!” he jokingly scolded “did you pinch your dad’s playing cards?”

Callum glanced up at Marcos with an only slightly guilty look, but Rayla could see the underlying smugness. Yes. yes he did.

“what the actual hell dose your dad do to afford something like this?” Tobius blurted out, making the rest of the teens give him a series of disapproving looks.

“the sort of job that means people give you nice stuff as gifts.” Callum hummed, laying out a winning hand of cards for the rest of them to see, and curse at “one of his friends gave him these for yewltide a couple of years back.”

Rayla met mina’s eyes in surprise, but decided not to ask any more into it.

-

The savanna town, called redrock grotto, was surprisingly enough built into the walls of a delightful, scenic red rock grotto, just inside a small canyon within a stone’s throw from the main road though the seemingly endless grasslands that panned out towards lux a.

It was a lovely little town, mural clad and built around the freshwater spring that bubbled up in the centre in the main square, and was a lively little place, filled with traders and travellers from all corners of xadia that had poured in to the inns and enclosed camping grounds to avoid the dangers of the open savannah at night.

“At least in the day you can see the toothy things that are trying to eat you coming.” Tadala pointed out, stretching out her limbs and wincing as her joints popped, “and that’s before you factor in the fact that hot cats can attack from multiple angles.”

-

The inn they were over night in was a colourful joint, calved into the outer walls of the grotto with views out over the square and the bountiful gardens around it, with dazzling mosaics on the walls and floor of the lobby that were one part informative in regards to the local flora and fauna, and fascinating enough to keep a bunch of grumpy, tired kids occupied by looking at them for long enough for the adults to get everyone checked in, and for room keys to be handed out.

“clever strategy that.” Andy mused out loud as she trotted along side Rayla, corralling a bunch of girls off to drop there bags in there rooms, “do you think it was deliberate?”

Rayla tilted her head slightly as she thought about it, and shrugged in half agreement. It was just nice to be up and moving for the first time in hours.

-

After a power nap in snuggly bed, Rayla felt refreshed enough to wander downstairs to enquire about some dinner (she was hungrier than she thought she was) and to possibly poke around the square if possible.

There were beautiful, fragrant flowers out there that she was sure that Ethari would love to add to his flower garden back in the silver grove, and she was pretty sure that some of them had seed pods that she could possibly swipe for gifting purposes.

Runaan would most probably help if she asked him nicely enough, if he did not get to them first.

The evening air was filled with light and laughter as she tootled downstairs, and the smell of a medley of diner time foods that were on the go, wafting out from just behind the curtained doorway leading from the lobby to the dining room, was heavy with mouth-watering spices.
She had no idea what was currently being cooked, but it smelled delicious.

The dining room was built in much the same way as the rest of the inn, with its smooth stone walls carved to look like a semi natural cave, and verdant house plants dotted about, was filled with low tables and colourful cushions on rustic chairs and benches. There was as small buffet setup against the far wall, and menus on the table for ordering more complex meals direct from the open kitchen/bar she could see off to the left.

Runaan was already seated at a table near the door with a plate of food, eating a mix of curried yams and what looked like chargrilled veggie kababs with one hand and fending off Andromeda with the other, who was attempting to swipe bites of food off of his plate.

Ah, siblings.

She settled down next to them with her own plate of food, and promptly started to pester both of them for any interesting things that they might of seen whilst scouting ahead of the caravan, and to possibly start plotting a seed pod heist for that evening.

Chapter Text

The moon was still high in the sky when Rayla jolted upright, breathing heavily as she dragged herself out the tangle of blankets that felt smothering in the warm night air.

She had had another nightmare. Another brutal, messy pulse racer of a nightmare.

It was as bloody and violent as the others before it, full of imagery that she could not quite place but for some reason made her blood run cold as she jolted awake with a start. She put her head in her hands trying to rub away the visions that still danced away behind her eyes.

She hated her mind from time to time. really, really hated it.

Flopping back into her bed, she glanced over to Tadala’s bed, half expecting to see her friend sprawled out on her back, sound asleep, only to see that her bed was empty, covers cast to one side.

Huh, that was.. odd.

Sunfire elves were notorious for being heavy sleepers, and a quick glance over to the shared bathroom told her that she was not in there either. The door was wide open, and the lights was off. completely unoccupied. no stray sun elf in there.

so, in that case where was she?

Rayla, grumpily realising that she was not going to be able to get back to any sort of sleep any time soon, decided that tracking down her MIA friend, and getting a bit of a walk in the process would be a good idea. It might just tire her out enough to go back to sleep

The floor was cool under her feet as she padded silently to the door, slipping it open without a sound.

-

Tadala was not in the dimly lit hallway, or on the little tile clad balcony at the end of the hallway, the one that overlooked the cosy courtyard garden, nor was she in the garden from what Rayla could see from her perch on the balcony railing.

Granted, she could have been behind the gurgling fountain, or sitting curled up in the shadows of some of the leafy palms that provided shade in the day, But Tadala was by no means a stealthy elf, and Rayla had been taught from a young age to find people who were trying to hide.

It was crystal clear to Her that the only sounds drifting through the night air were the trickling of water and the soft chirps of some bugs in the foliage below.

Next logical stop for investigation was the dining hall downstairs.

The kitchen its self was shut until the morning, but the innkeepers kept the fresh water fountain going all night, and left out cups and mugs for the guests to get a drink should they need it.
it was still awfully warm at night after all

Rayla trotted down the stairs, watching the way that the light from the dimmed lanterns lining the halls play along the mosaics on the walls, flitting shadows making the animals seemingly come to life before her eyes. The inferno toothed tiger that guarded the bottom of the stairs, standing proud, mouth open in a silent, fearsome roar, was particularly stunning in the low light.

As she slinked past, hugging the railing, it almost seem to breath.

Poking her head around the door to the dining hall, she found it empty aside from the bubbling water fountain in the middle of the room. But, she could clearly see that the doors to the outdoor seating balcony was open.

And she could, clear as day, hear voices on the soft breeze.
She knew those voices.

-

Tadala was kneeling on one of the padded stools, leaning on the balcony raining, head propped on her folded arms, talking softly to Callum who was sitting on the stool next to her, sipping on a cup of water from the fountain in the dining hall.

“.. your brother sounds like a sweetheart, he really does.”
“yeh, he is.” Callum hummed softly in a, fond homesick tone “sweet as the pastries he loves. you know, He’d love the mosaics in this place. ”

“you have a brother?” Rayla butted in, making the two of them jump slightly as she plopped down next to the stool next to Callum.

“yes..” he blinked away his surprise “did I never mention that to you?”

She shook her head.
“so.. why are you both up anyway?” she asked.

Tadala tucked her head back down into her arms, and Callum very quickly avoided eye contact.

“well…” Callum stated, pulling a letter out of the handy dandy pocket on his new looking dressing gown “I just got this from home.”

Rayla raised an eyebrow. she could make out his name in a neat font, but nothing else that stood out about this particular letter.

“well… you see, its from my brother and ste- dad. My dad. Things are not going very well at home right now and they wanted me to know. Someone..” He rubbed the prominent scar on his neck “someone has been making some very.. um.. personal threats against them. and me.”

He was avoiding eye contact now, head bowed and voice becoming sticky in as he spoke, face distorting in pain.

“Rayla, dad made some very poor decisions in the past, and he admits it, and wants to fix what he can. But.. some people are not happy with the ways he’s trying to fix his mistakes.”
He paused for a moment, to cough and rub his neck with some more.
“I’m worried about them, I guess.”

Tadala glanced at Callum with concern, then up at Rayla with a sad look on her face. She was silent for a beat more, before speaking up with a thicker lux aurean accent than Rayla had ever heard from her before.

“I.. am worried too. About what might be waiting for me back home.”

She focused in on a stray floating lantern that had apparently escaped from the inn, or possibly one of the nearby buildings, and was now drifting with little care in the world across the square below, trailing bobbing ember bugs in its wake.

“i.. did not leave under the best of circumstances.” She huffed sadly.

“in all honesty, I ran away. Not because my family was bad.. or mean or anything but.. they were not too keen on me attending school outside of the city, despite my pleas. I hid my acceptance letter and left in the middle of the night, when my aunt was away on patrol somewhere in the Badlands and my parents were sound asleep, hopped on the night bus out to umber tor and…”

“and they are probably going mad with worry.” Rayla guessed. She could vividly remember the scared anger that her uncles had gone through when she had run away for a single day in a fit of 11 year old rebellion. And Tadala had been at school for a couple of months now.

Rayla had the sudden realisation that she might of just worked out exactly who sir creepy face was looking for. And like hell was she turning her friend in.

“I.. I just wanted to know what being normal felt like. going to school with people! Making actual friends, not just tag-a-longs that only want to be around you because they think they can get a foot up in the social hierarchy and.. and…” Tadala’s eyes started to water “aw, burn it all, I just wanted to live. Not just exist like a pretty little doll on a shelf for people look at and fawn over”

She looked back at the two of them, eyes welling with tears

"Is that too much to ask?"

-

They sat outside together, watching the wild lantern dance around the spring in the square below.

Tadala had broken down after her little moonlight confession, sobbing into her arms whilst Callum and Rayla, who were both determined to be good friends, sandwiched her in a slightly awkward hug.

They had stayed like that until Tadala’s tears had dried up, and she started making small talk about some silly little things that she had done in the past.

“- father still has that lumpy bumpy clay glow toad on his office shelves. I think it still glows in the dark as well.”

A bell chimed from somewhere in the mass of houses across the way, signalling that the night was now officially in the ‘early hours’ state of existence.

“we should probably go back to bed.” Rayla pointed out. “before someone finds us.”
“like your uncle?” Tadala guessed through a yawn.

“like my wonderful uncle” He would be awake soon, if Rayla had to guess. He was always a stupidly early riser.

So, as one, the 3 of them grumbled and stretched, dragging themselves to there feet. Callum paused before ducking inside, a thought suddenly hitting him.

“Tadala…um... you did leave a note or something for your parents, right? to tell them what you were doing?”
The way Tadala’s face dropped like a stone told him everything he needed to know.

Chapter Text

The next morning was still and warm.

Callum sat under the shade of a dramatic, frondy palm, sketching some of the flowers in bloom in the surrounding vines and bushes. His current muse was a vibrant, red to cream gradated lily like flower that seemed to be glowing slightly in the morning sun.

A small part of him was pissed at himself for not packing his little travel set of watercolours from home, having decided whilst packing that having his mothers portrait was more important- there was no room in the single bag he was allowed to bring to Xadia for both of them.

Not that he was regretting having the palm sized portrait of his mother with him, in the simple rosewood frame his birth father had made for it when Callum was a baby.

For one, It was proving useful for hiding the much more recent portrait of him, his stepfather and little brother.

But, hey, Lux Aurea was a city known for its artists, poets and fighters so he might possibly use a little of his spending money to buy a set somewhere.

He hoped.

A flicker of movement caught his eye. Turning to look, he spotted the stray lantern from last night bobbing near the spring, apparently snagged on a low hanging branch laden with swollen, amber potato lookalike fruit of sorts.

Callum glanced over at the small pack of students that was stating to mosey over to the wagons, dragging an assortment of bags along in there wake, then back at the lantern, which was, arguably, small enough to be sneaked into his now pyjama-less bag.

(Marcos had been in a very good mood that morning, and had manged to compress the pyjamas and spare clothing of all 3 of them into one bag whist humming a cheery tune. Soren was suspicious, both of his cheeriness and of his packing skills).

But stealing was wrong- so he would be giving it back.
Once he got hold of it.

-

“so.. why do you have a lantern, exactly?”

Callum shrugged his shoulders and watched his new ‘acquisition’ bob about the celling of the dusty wagon.

“apparently they did not want it back.”

“something, something human, something” Tobius deadpanned, poking the lantern as it came close to bumping his horns. “I did overhear most of it, ya know.”

The elf who had been supervising the front desk when he had trundled back in, freshy caught lantern in hand, was not the friendly, middle aged lady who had checked them in the afternoon before, but some surly, possibly hungover, just out of teen-hood lad who had taken one look at Callum, and had flatly told him exactly what he thought of humans in general, and that he was not accepting the ‘tainted’ lantern back.

In very colourful and derogatory language.

In front of a couple of the teachers along for the trip. And Soren.

Callum had, wisely, decided that not being in the room was a very, very good idea at that moment, and had trundled off out to the wagons, lantern in hand as the yelling started behind him.

At least the nice gardener that had helped him get the lantern down from the tree it had wedged itself in was polite to him, if a little shocked at the sight of a human trundling around.

So, he now had a beautiful floating lantern, with its wood and glass construction that looked a lot like the pretty paper lanterns that were all the rage in Duran at the moment, with colourful layered petals around a central ball that contained the little wisps of sun magic that powered it. The only thing it was missing was a tassel on the bottom, which was a frequent feature of hanging lanterns like this back home, and some sort of loop on the top to hang it from a fitting.

Or to tether it something to stop it from drifting off again.
Perhaps he could ask Ethari about the latter when they got back.

-

They finally reached the golden city just after midday, and in Callum’s mind the long bumpy trip was more than worth it.

The city of Lux Aurea sat splendid and sprawling, a great golden disk gleaming like a desert mirage in the noon sun, nested in the fortified centre of a vast valley plain. Its centre point, the sun forge, could be clearly seen from miles around, high atop its tower, its bright light acting like a shining beacon for travellers near and far.

It was even better, even grander than aunt Amaya’s stories portrayed.

Passing through the city’s eastern sunrise gate, Callum had to be held into his seat by Rayla and Tobias, to stop him from falling out of the back of the wagon as he tried his best to take in all of the gleaming gilt and stark white marble that made up the gate its self and the surrounding fortifications.

“you can draw it later” Rayla yelled playfully into his ear “don’t you go falling on us now!”

He gave her a sheepish grin and settled back down, but still vibrated with excitement in his seat as they rumbled along though the paved streets.

But His excitement was contagious, and by the time they reached the inn they were staying at, they were all under a cloud of pure, undiluted glee, a cloud that even the worried Tadala could not escape from.

Sadly, that feeling was not going to last.

-

Callum was on his way back to the reception hall from his room after dumping his bag and releasing his lantern in his room, where he could hear Soren and Marcos chattering to the innkeeper- apparently Soren’s blond hair was a bit of a novelty to their young daughter and Sabah (the lovely young lady that Marcos was very much enamoured with) used to work here part time whilst she was in school.

They sounded pretty lively, between rounds of Soren very kindly, but repeatedly, trying to convince a curious 4 year old to relinquish her painful grip on his hair.

He did not make it to the doorway separating the hall he was in from the reception room before he was suddenly blindsided and slammed against the wall.

One of the older sun teens, the same one who’s attack that day at lunch had earned Callum some new friends, learned down at him, one hand firmly gripping onto the front of Callum’s sleeveless shirt, the other placed on the wall next to Callum’s head.

And of course, he had his pack of cronies with him, all looking at Callum like he was just about to be the entertainment of the day.

“you have nerve, you know.” Jerk mc sunbutt hissed at him, loud enough for Callum to hear but low enough for the sound not to travel far. “real nerve. Do you know what we do to humans here in Lux Aurea? Huh? Do you know?”

Callum got a defiant look on his face as his captor snarled at him.

“guess you don’t, so I’ll tell you- we burn them. to. Ash.” He sneered at Callum mockingly, pushing him back into the wall with force. “so I watch you back if I was you. You and your.. guard dogs.”

Callum squirmed and growled right back at him.

Jerkface stared right back at him. Observing Callum’s silent resilience. And then he suddenly pulled his free hand back, balled it up and made a sudden move like he was just about to punch Callum right in the nose.

Callum flinched.

And just like that, he relinquished grip on Callum’s shirt, allowing Callum to drop to the floor with a hard thud. The pack followed there leader as he strutted off though the doors smirking triumphantly at his apparent victory, but not before one of them, the narrow faced skywing that brought up the rear, gave Callum a swift kick in the ribs, to the amusement and approval of the others.

Callum stayed where he fell for a moment, vaguely aware of Soren flatly asking to what the group of teens were finding so funny somewhere in the background. Ah, he thought to himself as marcos' worried face appeared above him, here i was, thinking jerks like that would behave when on a trip like this. how dumb I am.

--

“his name is Jamal and yes, he is a huge bag of ding dongs.” Tadala grumbled. “he’s big, mean, and has a annoying habit of neglecting to keep his hands to himself.”

“Tadala..” Mina staired at her friend “has he.. did he… you know..”

“pah! No.” Tadala scoffed with lashings of scorn “he tried to kiss me once though.. and I may have been the reason he spent the second week of term with a broken nose.”

“adda girl” Arctum hummed in approval.

The 6 of them, along with two very angry guards who had been told they were not do anything to the bullies by the rest of the trip chaperons, were now sitting in the lovely little park just in front of of the inn, munching on some takeaway curries and rice.

Callum sighed deeply and pressed the ice pack a little tighter onto his bruised ribs. this day had been going so, so well.

“It would be a shame if someone, oh, I don’t know, put some ground up burrwood seed pods in his clothing or something.” Rayla hummed wistfully “or stole all his left shoes and dumped them in the pond.”

“Why do I have the feeling you’ve done that before?” Tobius asked flatly. “but sprinkling sand in everything is effective too.”

“or chucking all his socks and undies in the sink and soaking them.” Soren added. “that’s happened to me before.”

“your sister is just a little bit evil.” Marcos agreed. “...but I don’t think the old ‘super-hot chillies hidden in his food’ thing would work, would it?”

“nah. He likes his spicy. Have you seen the stuff he slathers on his food?” Tobius sighed 

“that stuff is eyewatering even to us sunfolks.” Tadala agreed. "i mean, my aunt likes spicy stuff, but even she thinks that brand is lethal"

Callum pulled his sketchbook out and started jotting down notes of the plotting that was going on. Granted, there would be very little chance that he would be able to use any of it against Jamal or his pack of learning hounds, but hey now, you never know.

Some of the things being mentioned might just work on irritating nobles after all.

-

The messenger ravens that arrived just after dusk bore a letter for each of them, all stamped with the King's seal and clearly labelled to avoid confusion.

-

Callum.
How are you fairing?
I’m going to make an educated guess, and say that by the time this letter reaches you, you will be in Lux Aurea.

I have some good news and some bad news for you my son.

The good is that, despite yesterday’s attack being an complete surprise to us all, there have been no casualties amongst the guard or staff.

The bad is that your brother is missing.

At first we thought that he might of hidden in the walls again, like last time, but its become more and more apparent that his has vanish completely, as has bait and your fluffy little friend. Even more worrying is that the soon to be former lord Viren has also vanished on us- along side Claudia and a chunk of their personal luggage.

There are search parties out looking for them as we speak, and your aunt has be notified to keep watch at the border.

Please, Callum, be careful. Whatever is happening, I have all the reason to believe that said happenings may be heading your way.

Peace be with you my son,
All my love
Your dad.

Chapter Text

Callum loved museums.

Loved them loved them loved them. And the royal sunfire war museum was flat out fascinating to boot.

It was not like Callum was any sort of stranger to the world of the military, his entire maternal family, or at least all the ones he knew, was involved in the armed forces in some way, shape or form.

And he had also spend hours upon hours reading about battles and tactics as part of his princely education, but being able to learn about the majority of the 1000 year war from the other side was just.. well, fascinating. Intriguing even.

Walking into the atrium to the sight of a full set of dragon armour, posed on a carved ebony dragon in the middle of launching into the air, took his breath away, and also gave some justification to the rumours swirling back home of Xadian battle dragons.

Ezren’s little disappearing act was also sitting heavy on his mind, so that was probably not helping the growing feeling of dread that was building inside him.

But, as they walked from gallery to gallery, going between displays of armour and 3D maps of famous battles, He swore he could feel eyes on him. But he could not tell if the feeling was coming from- he was getting a lot of weird looks from some of the other people in the museum, being the only noticeable human about in a museum full of elves, and Jamal had given him the stink eye when he had noticed Callum standing next to Tadala, but..

No. it was not that.
He was sure of it.

But he tried his best to shrug it off, instead tuning in to the lively debate that was going on between a couple of his friends to who would win in an epic battle between some of Xadia’s greatest military heroes.

“…Garlath would kick the golden knight’s ass to the void and back.” Rayla insisted, folding her arms across her chest.

“not before she set his ass on fire.” Tadala pinged back. “let’s see he well he fights extra crispy.”

“or frozen solid.” Tobius added, having previously launched into a passionate speech about a famous sky mage who used to fight alongside the former dragon king.

“and then Amaya comes along and flattens them all” Marcos muttered to Callum in a conspiring tone, making Callum snicker softly.

Aunt Amaya would love this place.

.... but thinking about it, aunt Amaya and her armor nearly became part of this place a few short months ago, so.... hum. Something to bring up at some point.

Admittedly,  the mental image of his aunt poseing amongst some of the exhibits, with gren facepalming nearby was amusing. It almost chased away the dark thought of her being stuffed and displayed next to her sister...

Mina and Arctum were standing together just off from the arguing trio, watching the debate with looks of mild amusement as things started to get a little heated between Tobius and Tadala, as the former started to challenge the latter to come up with replies to some out right outlandish scenarios that a skywing mage and a sunfire general could possibly find themselves in.

Mina finally had enough of the game of bickering verbal tennis, and now wanted to move on to one of the other galleries before that attendant that was looking at them with a little bit of concern decided to come over and 'have a word' with them.

“ok puff ball, lets move on before someone yells at us.”
She grabbed a handful of Tobius’ shirt scruff and stated to pull him, squeaking in annoyance, off towards the next display of beautifully detailed maps. The rest of the teens met each overs eyes for a moment, before the giggling stated and they trotted off after the couple.

-

the feeling of eyes on his back was not going away.

It was bad enough when they found themselves in a well-guarded, gallery that was dedicated to dark magic artefacts that had been acquired in various campaigns.

Everything from amulets, from simple to ornate, to thick spell books, to heavy engraved, jewel incrusted skulls sat categorised, labelled, and locked away safely away behind inch thick glass with obvious anti magic wards on just about everything that could handle them.

Was it bad that callum knew what some of thses things were for, just from being around Claudia? Eh, possibly.

But at least Callum knew where that ‘being watched’ feeling was coming from- that silver haired sunfire soldier was eyeing him with heavy suspicion.

the feeling was still there when their little group met back up with the rest of the school trip to eat a very healthy lunch of fast food and iced tea in the war museum’s largest café.

Callum kept glancing around to try to pinpoint the ever present weight on the back of mind, despite the very distracting grilled veggie and spiced meat skewers that he was currently chowing down on.

And his friends were starting to notice.

He tried his best to play it off, but they all could clearly see that it was not just him acting a little twitchy. Soren and Marcos were both stating to act very tense, and had stopped joining in with the jokes, and were instead taking turns to vigilantly scan the crowded hall whilst the other ate some much needed lunch.

“um.” Tobius piped up after a bit “has anyone else noticed… “
“that there’s suddenly more armed guards about?” Arctum guessed. “yeh.”

By the looks of it, they weren’t the only ones to realise this.

A couple of tables away, Runaan had all but abandoned his lunch, and was now conversing in urgent, hushed whispers with some of the other chaperones, tilting his head all so slightly to indicate the increased military presence.

“why don’t I think we’re staying here much longer?” Rayla asked to no one in particular.

“because your uncle is paranoid sometimes?” Marcos drawled in a half whisper, eyes following Runaan’s back as he strode with authority up to the guard that looked like they had the highest rank going. “or the fact that the lovely lady over there is in the middle of setting up what looks like a dark magic detector over there?”

Rayla glanced at the tripod mounted crystal mirror thingy, hooked up to something that looked like a two handled mirror that was being manned by a pair of mages.

As they swung the first crystal mirror around on a swivel, scanning there surroundings, the second mirror would gain a faint purple glow as the first faced towards a hallway leading off somewhere back into the depths of the museum.

“so.. that’s what that thing is?”

-

After much protest, the cut short museum trip was extended just enough for a pack of teenagers with coin to burn and a craving for souvenirs to descend on mass into the gift shop.

Tadala was not too interested in most of the pretty arty stuff, or the more kitschy souvenirs with the city flag/symbol/animal on it (claimed she had seen it all before so. Many. Times), but the she was more than happy to help a gleeful Tobius and Mina conduct an organised raid on the snack display, zeroing in on some candied fruit in a lovely ornamental tin with an inferno toothed tiger embossed on the lid.

Rayla, on the other hand, was much more interested in the replicas of famous weaponry of times gone by that was on offer, and whist Callum investigated a couple of nice books on sunfire weaponry that aunt Amaya might just be interested in, he could clearly hear her trying to pester one of her older relatives to getting one for her.

Because she was only a wee lass, and one had to be over 18 years to buy such impressive things.

He was not quite sure if she was gaining any ground with her plea.

Arctum was debating getting one of the plush glow toads to send back home for one of his cousins- Callum could see why- the cutely grumpy plushies glowed in a charming way when you squeezed it, and to be honest, Ezren would love one too.

The thought of his brother, and the complete lack of news to his current state of existence, made Callum’s heart suddenly hurt in a horrible, wrenching way.

Callum tried to focus back on the books in front of him to get his mind of his pain.

-

In the end, he got one of the books, a hefty tome that could be used as a weapon itself and one of the plush toads- because why the hell not.

Now the book and plush were neatly packed and placed in his backpack alongside the sweets horde that Mina and Tobius had managed to acquire between them (they forgot to bring any sort of bag with them, and the gift shop was fresh out), and a small metal self heating drinks flask that Soren had taken a shine too.

Rayla met them outside the shop, leaning against a pillar, and she happily told them that she had managed to poke an exasperated Runaan looking into letting her have a replica of the eclipse dagger from the sunfire civil war. Callum had to admit that the blade was pretty cool looking, with its dark metal blade and ‘dragon’s breath’ opals imbedded ebony handle.

“I still paid for it.” She told them, bouncing a little on her heels in glee “just had to give him the money.”

-

Tadala tucked herself down in the middle of there group as they left the museum's front door.

It was becoming apparent that the museum was being evacuated, or at least closed early for a security reason. people young and old were streaming out of the doors at a leisurely, unhurried pace, walking past museum staff apologising for the museum's sudden and handing out little trinkets and tokens as compensation for peoples day out being cut short tragically short.

The little blue and silver, dragon shaped good luck charm that Callum managed to grab on his way past one of them was adorable, at least. It even had a little bell!

There was a small gang of Sunfire royal guards, in full 'bells and whistles' armour, hands on there sword hilts, clustered around the main gate.

They were eyeing people with an air of suspicion as they swept by, and seemed to take particular interest in Runaan as he went past with Andromeda at his side.

perhaps it was the fact that the two of them had materielised very scary looking weaponry between them leaving the gift shop and actually leaving the building, or maybe it was the fact that they were keeping watch over a large pack of teenagers that were being, well, teenagers, and noisy ones at that.

But as Callum felt Soren start to nudge him down the sidewalk back towards the inn, he caught sight of a tall, imposing woman with long dark red dreadlocks and an impressive, sunstone inlayed horn guard standing towards the middle of the soldiers, talking to an older gentleman who was probably some higher up in the museum management.

It suddenly struck him that, if the golden knight was here, and in charge of whatever operation was going on, then things were probably more 'interesting' than they appeared to be on the surface.

And it it was probably not the good kind of interesting.

-

There was a glow toad in the hallway.

Callum stared at the toad. The toad stared at him.

They had all piled back into the inn with a couple of hours to spare before the theatre outing that night- Callum was more than happy to get out of the sun for a bit, and possibly have a shower or something- It was way too warm for spring in his own opinion.

But there was a glow toad blocking his way back to his room, and he knew that toad.

“bait?” he croaked, voice extra scratchy from hardly being used that day. “that you?”
The glow toad, that was most definitely Bait, lit up like the morning sun.

Callum scooped the chubby land dwelling amphibian up into his arms and held him close in a hug as bait grumped and rumbled happily, and started the adorable little full body wiggle that he always did when he was really please or excited about something, turning a sunny orange as he did.

stars above, Callum had missed the grumpy little guy.

Callum ran his hands over baits smooth, slightly damp skin, checking him over for any injuries that he might of picked up, breathing a soft sigh of relief when he could find none.

But, if bait was here, of all places, then there would be a very, very high chance that-

Soren shouted a sharp warning from behind him as something large and heavy slammed into his lower back, knocking the wind out of him.

Chapter Text

Ezren looked a mess.

His clothing was mud stained, torn in places, and Callum swore that he could see smears of dark, dried blood on the cuffs of his shirt, but apart from that, it was apparent that the boy was just a little bruised and scuffed, with some strangely coloured leaves in in his hair.

And he was crying. Oh, how he hated it when his little brother was crying.

Soren had taken one look at the Ezren, at bait, and at the, large, violently wiggling bag that Ezren had somehow managed to sneak into the inn with him, and promptly tossed the group into the room that they were staying in.

He was going to find Ezren some new clothing, Marcos was to stand guard, and Callum was to get Ezrens side of what the heck went down back home. And give the kid a bath.

because Ezren really, really, needed a bath.

-

One dunking in the on suit bath, some soap, a warm fluffy towel and one less than happy baby dragon later, Ezren was bundled up Callum’s spare shirt and rain cloak, recounting his not so grand and very unpleasant journey to Xadia.

“…. We got as far as that inn at the running hare crossroads, you know, the one where aunt Amaya outdrunk that smuggler and got to keep his horse? Then Viren realised that we were being followed and he pulled some sort of spell .. thing.. out of his pocket, made Claudia hold on to him, and me, and bang!” Ezren made a ‘boom’ motion with his hands, making poor Zym jump a little, “we were in a biiig field of grass, and we could see the sunforge on the horizon. And Viren was saying some very bad words.”

Zym huffed softly from where he lay, head and half his body in Callum’s lap.

The little dragon had gone from the size of a decent sized lynx, to the size of a sub adult hunting hound over the month and a half he had been away, but his fluffy mane was as soft as he remembered it to be, and the little guy was still as snuggle happy as ever.

“I managed to grab zym and bait and sneak away when we got into the city- then I saw the wagons with the seal of the school you were going too and.. well.”

“you snuck in and found me.” Callum grinned. “you clever dummy.”

Ezren looked smug.
“it was Baits idea.” he chimed brightly.

-

“ay, Callum?" Marcos glanced at the time piece on the wall. " Gotta get going if we are going to go to the theatre tonight.”

Soren had returned from his spontaneous garment hunting trip with a bunch of miscellaneous clothing that was roughly Ezren’s size, apparently pinched from the inns lost and found stash, and had promptly stated to see if he could wash and fix up the outfit that Ezren had arrived in.

If the stream of profanity that he was levelling at his father in particular was anything to go by, Ez’s trousers might be a complete lost cause.

And apparently, between the story telling, snacking, and general lazing about, they had all lost complete track of time.

“theatre?” Ezren perked up “you're going to see a show?”
Callum nodded.
“wanna come?” Callum asked, watching his brother light up like a winter candle display at the thought- whilst both guards got looks of panic on their faces.

“callum..” Marcos started, worry in his voice “buddy, look..”

“how ya gonna get Ez past tall, pail and paranoid?” Soren deadpanned, not bothering to look up from his sewing. “If he can manage to sniff out the little baggies of well hidden manaweed that one kid tried to hide in his bag, he will be able find wiggle butt, the night light, and sir zappy very, very quickly.”

Callum paused, and Ezren’s face fell.
That was a very, very good point.
Runaan was scarily observant, and so was Andromeda for that matter. And it was already a small miracle that Ez had managed to sneak past them the first time to get in here to begin with.

How under the sun did Rayla get away with some of her hijinks?

Callum tented his fingers, and got a look of deep concentration on his face.

He was starting to form a bit of a plan, a crazy little plan that might just work.

To start, Zym was clearly too sleepy to come with them, and Bait had clearly had enough excitement for the day, and packed himself between some pillows on Callum's bed and clonked out, so that meant that they could stay in the room to sleep, and If Ezren was to put on that slightly too big red tunic, and get hold of Soren’s notice me not charm….

-

The theatre, as the little info pamphlet said, was designed by a joint team of sunfire and skywing mages and engineers, working together to make the sweeping building a palace of lighting and acoustics.

All of it meant that you could see and hear the epic work of high drama playing out on the stage clearly from every seat in the audience, even from where the school group was sitting, high up in the gods.

The play in question, a heart wrenching story of love, loss, and honour (and what happens when the first and the last collide and go so very, very wrong), was set in the bloody, turbulent civil war of 500 years back, and was arguably not the sort of play one should sneak a 10 year old into, even if the 10 year old is a bit more mature than one’s average kid.

But Ezren was entranced with the flashy magic that was going on onstage, and watching the way his eyes lit up as the mages on stage wove spells that conjured up the illuminated images of dragons and griffons swooping low across the audience, and made shining deer and antelope bound across the stage, Callum had to admit that it was a good idea to bring him along for the ride.

and that he was so very glad that some of the more 'adult' bits of dialog were going clean over ez's head.

Thanks to that charm, and some strategic blocking by Soren and Marcos, Ezren was barely noticed by anyone but the lovely little old lady who was running the stack stall just inside the theatre doors.

But even she had mistaken Ez for a young sun elf, apparently thinking that his horns were hidden under his floofy hair (a common thing to happen to young sun elves, apparently.)

Even soren humming ‘sneaky sneaky’ music the entire way out of inn had not, somehow, aroused suspicion from anyone.

(Runaan had, at some point, clearly realised something was up, but had decided to drop it in favour of making sure that none of the other teens snuck off from the main group in serch of mischief.)

-

“it was kinda sad how that poor knight thought he was doing the right thing, telling on Ziyad when he snuck out to visit Abayomi. He never meant to hurt them, just wanted to make sure his friend was ok.”

Callum nodded in agreement. That part of the play had been painful to watch.

The two of them wandered along behind the main gaggle of kids, on there way back to the inn.

They, as in the whole school group and not just the quartet of humans, were planning to check out a cluster of food stalls before they finally made it back, because no one could agree on a restaurant to go to for dinner (too many good options- not enough time to investigate them all.) And besides, Callum wanted to find some of the curry buns that Tadala had been singing her praises about earlier on that day, and he had promised Ezren something sweet to make up for having to eat Viren’s terrible cooking the day before.

-

The night was cool, calm, and the small park that they were cutting though to reach the food stalls was alive with the sounds of fountains and the breeze in the trees, and the endless croaking of frogs somewhere nearby.

Ezren glanced over to where the croaking was coming from with curiosity.

“they saying anything interesting?” Callum asked, following his gaze over to a water lily studded pond.

“hm? No. just bad flirting” Ezren giggled. “Like dad trying to ask Dr Dioica out.”

Ezren froze up a little at the sudden look of surprise that the other 3 were now giving him.
“… did he not tell you?”

Callum shook his head in amusement. His father had kept him up to date with various goings on back home, but this was a new one on him.

“wait. Waiiit. The king is trying to date Dr Dioica? Caleb Dioica??” Ezren nodded eagerly at Soren’s realisation “The cute, tanned, slightly androgynous, long haired military doc working in the castle infirmary? The one that your aunt sent to keep your dad 'out of trouble' after he busted his leg?”

“yep. The one and only.” Ezren was now bouncing on his feet, ginning radiantly.

Callum signed a small ‘about time’ to himself with a laugh, and Marcos begrudgingly handed Soren a hand full of coins from somewhere about his person with a grumble.

Callum liked the good doctor, having gotten to know him quite well whilst one of them was doing an amazing job patching up the other’s neck after the assassins incident.

He was funny, snarky, and pretty honest about things too. and after years of dragging reluctant military personal of all ranks in for medical treatment, that man did took no shit from anyone.

needless to say, between his personality and medical skills, He fully deserved the glowing recommendation that his aunt had given him when he'd been transferred to work at the castle last fall.

And Callum had slyly noticed the way the king acted around Dr Dioica since day one, all blushy and tongue tied- just like when he was starting to court mum all those years back.

Callum was kind of pleased for his father. No one would ever be able to replace mum, that was true, and Harrow would never stop loving her. But it was nice, you know, to think that Harrow had found love again.

And that he was still a complete and utter dork when it came to romance.

Callum tuned back into the conversation between the other 3 just as Ezren was recounting some meeting that he had had to sit through as part of his princely training.

“…. And Dad still won’t tell me what was in that letter he got, but he looked mad. Suuuper mad. And like he was gonna cry too.” Ezren paused, and looked up at Callum with curious eyes. “… it had the school’s seal on it, the letter. Do you ... know anything about it?”

Callum knew exactly what letter he was talking about- it was the one about mum’s less than dignified fate- and found himself unable, unwilling even, to form the words needed to tell his little brother what they had found, what they had seen in that dark, dark place.

Ezren did not need that horrific image in his young mind.

"callum?" ezren asked, worried at Callum's suddenly pale face and wide eyes ".. are you alright?"

The bone chilling howl that rang though the night air cut off the lies that he was quickly starting to form.

Chapter Text

Pandemonium broke lose, with panicking teenagers scattering away from teeth and the claws that were aiming for necks and chests, tripping and tangling with each other in there panicked attempts to flee.

Tobias and the couple of other skywings that were gifted with wings, all bolted straight up in a flurry of feathers, quickly gaining a safe height over the panicked mess unfurling below.

Even so, one of them, one of Jamal’s friends by the looks of it, was not so lucky- as He jumped, a wolf launched itself after him, grabbing one of his legs in its jaws and ripping him clean out of the sky with a scream and a sickening thud.

Rayla lunged at the beast, trying to draw its attention away from its stricken pray, only for Soren to get there first, swinging his broad sward stamped with the symbol of the Katloian crown guard at the beasts neck.

It passed straight through the smoke, and the wolf barely seemed to notice the attack, but still decided that the blond made a more interesting target over the still bundle at its paws.

“get him out of here!” Soren commanded her, swinging his blade again, and Rayla did not bother to argue. she ducked under the leaping wolf, and to the side of the fallen elf, praying that she was not too late.

skidding to a halt next to him, she could see that the skywing was awake, whimpering softly in fear and pain. Rayla could see no injuries on him aside from the bleeding bite wound on his leg, but she had a hunch that an impact like that would of probably broken something- but she really did not have to time to check him over right now.

She glanced back at Soren as she hauled the skywing back up to his feet, and started to part run part drag him out of the fray and towards the lake, and the small safe refuge that was forming there.

A lot of the students, lead by the tidebounds, had all, unsurprisingly, decided that they preferred being wet and cold over being mauled, and had leapt into the surprisingly deep water of the pond to escape the chaos.

Mina and another tidebound, a lad that Rayla was sure she had gym with, had pooled together all the magical knowhow they had to use the lake’s clear water to create a liquid solid, yet flexible, barrier that the smoky hellhounds could not get though.

(Watching one bounce off the barrier with a high pitched yelp, in hindsight, was highly amusing.)

Rayla tossed the injured skywing through the water wall as gently as she could, yelling for the earthblood he landed next to with a yeep and a splash to keep his head above the water.

She franticly smacked down her aversion to water, and was on the verge of leaping though herself when the big wolf grabbed the back of her jumper in it’s teeth, and yanked her backwards.

-

It dragged her back across the grass and path, towards the shadows of the trees and bushes across the path they had been walking along just minuets before, away from the safety of the water and the aid of her friends and elders.

She screamed and kicked, giving it all she had, slashing at the muzzle of the shadow wolf with her blades as it dragged her along like a child with a doll, seemingly making sure to bounce her head off the floor as it did.

As she struggled and thrashed, could hear faintly hear Runaan struggling with another of the wolves, trying to get to her.

Yelling her name.
Screaming her name.

but the wolves cared not.

The moment the big wolf had dragged her deep enough into the shadows to be blocked from any sort of moonlight it dropped her briefly, giving her a tiny window of respite, only to grab her again, this time around her neck.
The next thing she knew, she was being shaken violently. Painfully.

She could feel the wolf’s teeth as they started to slice though the skin of her neck, her horns scraping on the dirt.

It hurt, it hurt it hurt iT HURT.

Tears started to trickle out of her eyes and down her cheeks as the wolf suddenly stopped its vicious shaking, pausing for what seemed like eternity like it was waiting for an order.

Like an obedient puppy instead of a savage beast.

Out of the corner of her watery eyes, Rayla could make out the figure of a girl, no older then her, with purple tipped black hair and dark clothing strolling out from behind a tree, looking at the two of them with dark eyes.

She seemed to regard Rayla with a look of mild amusement, only for a moment, then gave the wolf a sweet smile and a thumbs up.

The wolf started to bite down again. Hard.

Rayla resumed her struggles, kicking and thrashing with what little strength she could muster into her increasingly sluggish limbs.
It was getting hard to breath, spots were starting to appear in her vision, she was sure she could taste blood in her mouth.
Just as inky blackness was starting to creep into he edges of her vision, her ears picked up the sound of someone running toward her.

Runaan? was it Runaan? she wanted to call out, to find out, but her head was swimming and she could not muster the air in her lungs to even whimper….

“ASPRO!”

The gust of wind that swept in was cold, brisk, and out of nowhere.

But.. the sharp pressure around her neck suddenly released, finally letting her suck in some much needed fresh air into her aching lungs. As she stared though tear blurred eyes, the wolf dissolved under the pressure of the sudden gust of wind, dispersing like.. well .. smoke in the wind.

‘huh. Whatd’ya know’ she thought to herself, squeezing her eyes shut to try to power thigh the pain she was in. she wanted to cry. Really wanted to cry, but the presence of someone leaning over her stopped her from doing so.

She blinked away the tears that had bult up in her eyes, and looked up to see a panting, bloodied nosed Callum leaning over her, panic in his eyes.

“you ok?” he croaked, falling to his knees next to her and using his ever present scarf to cover her bruised and bleeding neck.

She winced and nodded shallowly, faintly aware of more people running towards them, and Runaan yelling for her somewhere close by.
She looked up at Callum, trying to give him reassuring smile, but found herself slipping away from the world as the darkness that had been edging into her vison swept in like a cool summer breeze, and she slipped away into unconscious.

-
-
-

Callum sat back against the tree, throat burning and nose stinging, watching on as a deceptively calm Runaan guided one of the newly arrived medic to his niece's side.

By the sounds of the hushed, but calm talking, Rayla was going to be ok.

His own head was swimming from when something had slammed into the side of his head when the wolves had pounced, taking him by supprise and knocking him flat, leaving an opening for one of the wolves to steamroll poor Marcos- narrowly wiping out Ezren at the same time.

They were both ok, as Marcos had recovered almost instantly, and vanished into the fight to help Soren, and Ezren had weathered the fray by practically running up the tallest tree he could find in this part of the park, and staying there.

Ez was now pressed up to his side, still cloaked, shivering in shock, but thankfully unharmed.

But they were both shaken from what had just happened.

After all, it was not every day that you are attacked by an old family friend.

Chapter Text

Rayla woke up in pain back in the inn, safely tucked into her uncles bed in the small ground floor room.

The Inn itself was a flurry of activity, with the constant sound of voices and feet in the hallway outside, so it took a little while, and her throwing one of her pillows at Andy when she finally made an appearance, to be told what was the hell what was going on.

When the wolves had originally attacked her school group, some of the students and one of the chaperones that had been up towards the front of the group had managed to run out of the gate and into the market, getting the attention of a lot of people and a pack of city guard that had been patrolling the night market had descended on the park to aid the school group.

Their arrival had scatted the remaining wolves into the night, and everyone had been moved en-mass back to the inn to be given medical attention and to have their statements of what had gone down recorded.

"The only time that a minor pick pocket problem was a good thing", Andy muttered to Rayla in a tired tone. "that was the reason so many guards were around to help."

As Rayla knew all too well, those monsters were dark magic born.

And to make things worse, when some of the guard fanned out to try to find the mage responsible for the attack, they had found a ring of silencing charms, starting at the gate and enclosing the lake and the part of the park they had been attacked in- charms that meant that no matter how loud things had gotten, no one outside the circle would have been able to hear a dang thing.

“it was a trap.” Rayla realised out loud. "A fucking trap."
Andy nodded mournfully. “yes. yes it was. A well thought out one at that”

It was a flat out miracle that the majority of the other kids had gotten away with only bumps and scrapes, mostly from the initial scramble to get away from the wolves, including one gashed shin and multiple bloodied noses.

The skywing she had seen pulled out of the sky had some busted ribs, and a cracked thigh bone from the impact with the ground, and a deep bite mark on his leg that would need surgery to fix up properly.

He had been rushed to the nearest hospital in the early hours, but word had already gotten back that he was out of surgery and in recovery.
Apparently he was not looking forward to informing his parents about what had gone down.

But then again, she was not looking forward to explaining what had gone down to Ethari.

Rayla’s neck was bused, and had had shallow punctures from the fangs of the wolf- injuries that one of the sunfire healers that had been summoned to tend to them had made short work of whilst she was unconscious. Her neck was going to be painful as hell for a couple of days, and the shallow punctures had healed to shiny little scars that were predicted to fade in time, but aside from that, she was going to be ok.

Runaan had come off slightly worse.

When he finally came back from giving his statement, she realised that one of his horns had been broken in half, just within a couple of inches of the top of his horn cuff. The same side of his face was bruised, and he was sporting a split lip, and his left arm was in a sling due to a busted wrist that he was to rest whist the healing spells did its job.

Rayla suspected that he had been attacked by more than just smoky monsters.

He held her close with his good arm, muttering about her scaring him by passing out like that. she just lent in to him, and accepted the hug.

Moon damn it  they both needed this.

-

The sun had barely started to come up over the horizon, and Rayla was on the go.

Despite her uncle's insistence that she got a little more rest, she wanted to make sure that her friends were ok, and after downplaying all protests sent her way, she went to find them.

Thankfully for her nerves, she found them quickly.

Mina, Tobius and Arctum were together in one of the hallway lounges, taking up a low sofa and muttering to each over with an air of worry.

The moment they saw her, bedraggled and looking oh so lightly like death warmed up, they all leapt up and swarmed her, pulling her into a 3 sided squish hug of pure and utter relief.

“we were so worried” Arctum was the first to form words “we saw you get dragged off by that.. that… thing.” He squeezed her tighter with a small sob.

"we thought it ate you." Tobius whimpered. "we tried to ask, but no one would say anything.."

“where’s Tibs?” Rayla asked once she was finally let go. The stark lack of warm blond sunfire elf was highly noticeable, and slightly suspicious.

“Hiding.” Mina replied bluntly. “the golden knight is here, playing crowd control with the pack of reporters that’s tuned up in the last couple o’ hours.”

“Took one look at her radiance and bolted off like she’d seen evil incarnate” Tobius added. “I think she’s hiding upstairs somewhere”

“we’ve checked all of this floor already.” Mina sighed. “I hope she’s not in legal trouble or anything.”

Rayla but back a very truthful reply, and instead opted to just shrug like She did not know anything about why Tadala might be hiding, before suggesting that they started looking on the next floor up.

-

So upstairs they all went.

Most of the rooms were empty on this floor, since most of the kids and other guests were hanging around on the first two floors, talking to each other, or law enforcement, and dodging the growing pack of reporters clutching notepads and dragging around illustrators, trying to grab hold of any thread of information.

Rayla quickly found out from Mina's rambling that the district they were in was now under lockdown due to the attack, and was likely to stay that way until the mage (or mages) behind it were found and detained.

Which was why lady sunny cheeks was currently down stares, starting her investigation into the matter. Or tying to at least.

Even from up here, she could clearly hear the golden knight bellowing at someone to back off or face arrest.

By the sounds of it, She was not a happy lady today.

And honestly, Rayla could understand why.

-

As a group went room to room, calling Tadala’s name, checking everywhere they could, and getting no response, most of the way down the hallway, until they reached the room that Callum and co were staying in.

Rayla paused as she realised that could hear movement and unhappy voices from behind the door.

She reached out to knock, keeping one eye on Mina and Tobius as they moved on a little to check the last two rooms on this floor, only for the door to swing open revealing a tired looking Callum.

Callum looked like he'd had only a slight better time than her. his hair was sticking up in all directions, and his face and arms were coved in scratches, like he’d been dragged through a thorn bush backwards, the way his hair was sticking up on end and his skin was scraped.

and he looked so very, very tired. Relieved to see her, but tired. Rayla had to wonder if the poor boy had gotten any sleep at all.

“no one told us you were up.” He informed her

Glancing over his shoulder, Rayla briefly spotted Marcos poking at something under one of the beds. He waved to her with a smile from his spot on the floor and continued his argument with whatever was currently under wedged the sturdy wooded bedframe.
there was no sign of Soren.

“I tried to ask your uncle if you were ok.” Callum continued, now looking more than a little bit destressed “when we handed back the bit of his horn Soren found- but he didn’t want to tell us anything.”

Callum coughed sharply and winced. His throat had healed up massively since he’d arrived in Xadia, thanks to some of the meds that had been shoved down his neck these last months, but dang, did talking still hurt from time to time. And his little performance last night may of been ill advised.

“yeh.. sorry, he can be an ass.” Rayla subconsciously rubbed her own neck, fingers ghosting over the scared over bite. “an over protective ass. But still an ass. … are you ok?”

He paused, and looked at the floor for a moment.
“I will be.”

“ay, Callum?”

Mina made them both jump when she popped into the doorframe next to Rayla.
“have you seen tibs about? We've been looking all over, but can’t find her.”

Callum paused, opening his mouth slightly, then he closed it again at the sound of a loud thump and some hushed, but frantic, protesting coming from the room behind him.

Then he gave a soft sigh, and turned back into his room and made a grandiose motion to what, or more importantly who, Marcos was still having an argument with.

-

It took all of them to finally drag a dusty, protesting, and all around unhappy Tadala out from where she had wedged herself under the headboard, and into somewhere a little more private to have a nice, friendly chat.

“so!” Mina chirped once they had all seated themselves on the duo of single beds that were in the smaller 'kiddies' room just to the side of the main bedroom “why you hiding?”

Tadala glanced between Callum, Rayla (who gave her a 'im not covering for you here' look) and the rest of her friends, before looking at her feet with guilt on her face.
No one said a thing in the awkward silence that stretched between them, until..

”didya rob a bank or something?” Tobius blurted out, making Tadala jump and causing everyone else to look at him like he'd just lost the plot completely.

“WHA- NO.” Tadala sputtered. “no, no its not like that… it just..um.” she paused to compose herself As Mina swatted her newly minted boyfriend up the side of the head. “I just.. may.. of gone to school, a very, very, very long way from home.. without telling my parents about it.”

She gave a sheepish grin to the people in the room who did not already know this particular nugget of information.

“… and if a certain someone downstairs finds me, she’ll likely drag me back home by my horns.” Tadala mumbled, rubbing the base of one of said horns, "and that would be before my mother grounds me for eternity and a day. or finds a nice dungeon or something to lock me in."

There were winces and sympathetic mutterings from all sides. If it was one thing that was universal, it was that the rage of a worried parental figure was something to be feared and respected, and that ‘being dragged home by ones horns’ could get quite literal if said parental figure was worry/angry enough.

“that sounds bad” a small voice chimed in amongst the muttered agreements.

“yeh, it is.” Tadala sighed morosely, then paused in realisation. “wait.. who was that?”

-

Rayla glanced around the room.

The little voice was too young to be any of their peer group, way too young to be Marcos or Soren, who had been summoned downstairs to talk with someone anyway, and the only ‘little’ kids staying at the inn right now were the innkeepers kids, who all had broad sunfire accents. Which this little voice most definitely did not have.
They sounded like they might have the same accent as Callum, if minus the scratchy note Callum’s voice had.

... which made not a lot of sense right now.

And speaking of Callum, he was sitting cross armed on the other bed in the room, and had a perfectly neutral ‘I don’t know nothing about this’ look on his face. but Rayla, and the others, could see the way he was tapping his fingers against his arm, and he only did that when he was worried about something. Suspicious, that is.

Rayla’s ears picked up a slight rustle from under the bed that Callum, Mina and Tobias was sitting on, the sound of a bag being bumped up against, or moved about by something that was too large to be explained away by a stray rodent.

She slipped into stealth mode, sliding up to the side of Callum, taking full advantage at him being distracted by Arctum opening the storage trunk at the end of the bed to check for wayward children.

She focused her hearing, tuning out the sounds of her friends checking closest and poking there heads into the main bedroom and zeroed in on more very faint rustling noises that was coming from juuust under where Callum was sitting.

Callum was still not paying attention to her, and so was taken completely by surprise when Rayla struck, grabbing his legs and using them as leverage to tip him backwards, flat onto his back with a squeak.

Before he had even hit the blanket, Rayla ducked under the bed and grabbed at the source of the sound, quickly locking her hands on to warm clothing and triumphantly dragging what ever it was wiggling into the morning light.

For the briefest of moment, she thought she had fished a stray young sunelf out from the shadows under the bed, but quickly released via lack of horns and the fact that this child had small, rounded ears that what she was holding on to was a young, squirming, dark skinned human who did not look overly happy to see her.

“Callum.” She said, levelly not taking her eyes off the unhappy bundle “who the heck is th-“

She was cut off by a sound best described as a squeaky, high pitched baby roar of rage, and a bright blue and white blur shot out form under the bed, slamming into her legs with the force of a tiny, spark spitting, hurricane with sharp little teeth and claws.

Chapter Text

hello all!

wow, this fic is old, huh? i started writing it in 2020, and last updated it.... over a year ago now? thankfully my writing has improved so much since then!

so, for my own sanity and to make things better for all you who read this fic, i'm going to be going back over this cranky old thing in the coming weeks, fixing up glaring spelling, grammar mistakes, tweaking the story a little ect ect so i can helpfully start adding new chapters!! soon!! i wanna complete this thing one day!

thank you all who have read this minor train weck so far, and thank you for being patient with me over it!

(the fact that i now have a functioning spell checker on this grumpy old laptop of mine is sure helping)

so! onwards and upwards!

Edit: we done. Editing complete. New chapter will be out with in a week!

Chapter Text

“so.. this is my big brother” the boy, who had introduced himself as Ezren “He’s a dork.”

Said dork was now sitting back on the bed, head in his hands, apparently trying to distance himself from the current situation.

Rayla looked between the two. Ezren had an almost identical smile to Callum, and she could spot a dusting of freckles across the boy’s nose that did look a lot like the ones that had started to appear on Callums’s face due to beautiful sunny weather they’d been out and about in, but apart from that, the boys really did not look that much alike.

“Half-brothers.” Ezren clarified, apparently recognising the looks of confusion on more than one face in the room.

Ah. Yeh, that made a lot more sense, now Rayla thought about it. 

“this little guy is Zym!” Ezren continued, hoisting the ‘little’ blue dragon welp into his arms to show him to the combined group of slightly dumfounded (and slightly bitten) elves. “it’s short for Azymondias.”

“and the glow toad is Bait” Ezren finished, pointing to the current occupant of Tadala’s lap.

“…. Bait. The glow toad. is called. Bait.” Tobius said slowly.

“isn’t that a bit…” mina added, unsure of what to really say.

“inappropriate? Probably. For the record, dad named Him” Callum sighed softly, and finally made a reappearance out of his hands. “to be fair, he was not meant to be a family pet.”

The combined looks of horror that were starting to bloom on his friend’s faces made him quickly backpedal

“no, not like that! he was rescued from a smuggler, and was meant to be re-released back in to the wild once he was well again, but someone decided that we were keeping him.” Callum gave a knowing look in the direction of Ezren, who put an innocent look on his face. “and he is very spoilt.”

“no he’s not” Ezren insisted.

“… daily pastries are not meant to be a part of a glow toad’s diet, Ez” Callum pointed out

“hey! You sound a lot better! Your medicine is really working, huh?”

“…. Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not changing the subject! I’m making a practical observation.”

“… ok, now you sound like dad.”

Rayla huffed impatiently to herself, and very promptly butted in to the little sibling tiff.

“so. Boys. The dragon. HOW.” she demanded.

-

There was a quick round of whispering and signing between the brothers, before Callum rubbed his neck in annoyance, and straightened up to address the group.

“so… please understand that Dad is a good person, but he has made some… bad decisions in the past. And needs to learn to make better friends, because one of those not too good friends decided to do some egg napping over the winter.”

Zym, at this point, had clambered into Callum’s lap, chirping softly and asking to for pets.

“and .. well.. we accidently hatched that egg the same night this happened” he pointed to his neck “we were very surprised…. manly since we didn’t exactly find him until the next morning.”

“he hatched and almost immediately went back to sleep under Callum's bed.” Ezren butted in. “it was a smart idea in the long run! He missed most of the excitement.”

“and me almost dying. repeatedly.”

 “.. yeh that was scary.”
“you don’t say.”

Rayla scrunched up her nose. There was something bugging her. really bugging her.

That baby dragon was clearly a sky primal dragon. A powerful sky primal dragon. The little guy was round with baby fat and puppy like in nature, clearly well loved and taken care of, but the more she looked, the more she took in the short, wild mane of white fluff, the jagged looking horns, and the baby sky blue of his scales, the more the little dragon looked like a certain dragon that had died very recently.

Was murdered very recently. Brutally murdered.

And whose egg went missing, presumed scrambled, at the same time.

But… the human behind the slaying was a king. A king that had two sons. A king, admittedly, she had only ever seen in news prints (she’d never gotten that far in her mission before things went tits up), but looked very little like the teenager currently cuddling the dragon welp.

But did have some resemblance to said boys little brother….

“…, someone broke into our bedroom in the middle of the night- Callum was hurt trying to protect me- “ Ezren was talking to a highly interested looking Mina “then boom! Sudden indoor storm! Someone through dad’s friend’s primal stone at the assassin.. well dad called them an assassin”

“dad called them a lot of things.” Callum pointed out bluntly. “… and you are still not aloud to repeat any of them.”

The realisation hit her hard and fast like a runaway ore waggon.

There was a reason Callum had been appearing in her nightmares, when her mind transported her back to those endless stone halls lit by the full moon and blood on the floor.

She could see, clearly in her mind’s eye, a snapshot of that night, of when the nightmares had started, the sight of Scor’s blade with blood on it, a body slumping against a locked door, one hand clutching at their neck, and the other clutching a fizzing, flashing primal stone filled with a raging storm, in the middle of filing it at the floor.

A body with brown hair, wide green eyes, and there had been a red scarf draped over a chair by the big canopy bed and drawings lining the walls..

Suddenly Rayla felt sick. Physically sick.

She spun on her heels, and bolted out the door, ignoring the sounds of her confused friends calling after her.

-

Somehow, she ended up in the rainy courtyard garden, next to the fountain. Despite the chaos that was still radiating out from the foyer, it was calm, almost peaceful out here, amongst the verdant plants and steady rain.

There was no one around to witness Rayla as she stumbled over to the fountain in the centre of the courtyard, bare feet slipping on the slick paving stones.

She sat down on the fountain’s lip, head in her hands. She felt like, at some point, she had started crying, or was it the rain on her face? To hell if she knew. The rain in this city was warm anyway.

The soft sound of shoes on wet flagstones caught her hears, and she raised her head long enough to see Tadala carefully approaching her, holding Callum’s rain cloak over her head to keep the rain off.

“are you ok?” Tadala asked Rayla, softly taking a seat next to the sodden moonelf “you spooked us all by running off like that.”

Rayla just sat there, head nested back down in her hands and did not say a word.

Tadala carefully draped half of the cloak over Rayla’s head, cutting off the persistent feeling of fat, warm raindrops hitting her horns. it was too late to stop her from being drenched through by the rain, but it was a welcomed gesture all the same.

the two of them sat together like that for a while, just listening to the falling rain as the heat of Tadala's body stated to dry Rayla's clothing a little.

“Callum looked really worried, you know.” Tadala informed her after sometime had passed, before she tried switched tracks in an attempt to cheer rayla up. “.. I think he likes you.”

“what.” Rayla said flatly

“I think. Callum. Likes. You.” Tadala was smiling now, a sweet, teasing smile. “you should see the way he looks at you when he thinks you aren’t looking.”

Rayla could feel her ears heating up.

“and I think, juuust think, you might like him too.”

Rayla’s face lit up with the hottest, hardest blush.  oh this was the last thing she needed. it was true, but she was certain that she'd hidden her fleelings better than that!

so much for being stealthy.

“I thought so.” Tadala sounded triumphant, apparently she had caught on to Rayla's emerging crush a while back, judging by that look on her face.

“says the elf who likes to hang around with him after dark” Rayla zinged back after a moment of trying to get her brain in order.

“fine words coming from the person who came crashing through his bedroom window.”

“ye-wait, he told you about that?! The traitor!”

“apparently you looked like deer caught in lantern light” Tadala continued, “..after you faceplanted on the floor.”

Rayla glowered. it was suddenly getting awfully tempting to dunk Tadala in the fountain...

“and something about getting up close and personal, really up close and personal.”

Rayla, at this point, decided that, indeed, Tadala needed a sudden and inevitable dunking into the fountain, screw whether she liked it or not. Tadala laughed and rolled out of the way of Rayla’s lunge, and proceeded to doge the next two attempts to gab her as the duo slipped and skidded about, but the third time around Rayla’s attack hit home, and Tadala landed in the basin of the fountain with a high pitched yeep and a splash .

Tadala was a good sport about it at least, laughing heavily even when she was sitting waist high in cold fountain water.

-

“why did you run?”

They were inside now, drying off from the rain and the dunking.

Rayla did not make eye contact as she sighed deeply, and spoke in a weary voice.

“you know that my uncle is an assassin right? Well, shortly before I arrived at school I ended up going on a contract with him, and some others, as an observer rather than an active player.” Rayla paused to look Tadala dead in the eye. “It went downhill. very quickly.”

Tadala looked about ready to start firing off questions, but Rayla continued before she could.

“Callum was there. And he.. got between us and the one of the targets. his neck..”

“did you?” Tadala asked, voice hushed and border line fearful.

“no. but I know who did. And he’s not proud of it one bit.”

scor wasnt proud of it. he hated having the spill the blood of eccentric parties, but callum had started to make so much of a ruckus, screaming and shouting at them to get away, that he had honesty felt like his hand had been forced, to stop even more unnecessary bloodshed that would happen when guards inevitably arrived to find out what was going on. Rayla had to wonder if he'd recognised Callum around campus, and if that was the reason that he'd been volunteering to patrol the outskirts of the school grounds more and more lately.

Tadala seemed to think hard for a moment, clearly ruminating over what she had just been told, trying to come up with any sort of appropriate response. It was almost a relief when she finally spoke up again.

“I’m not going to ask for any more details, the less I know, the better. Callum clearly holds no grudge against you over what happened, so neither will i. just…” she looked at Rayla with an unreadable, if slightly mischievous facial expression. “please, no repeat performances?”

Rayla was more than happy to agree to that. After she gave Tadala a friendly shove in the shoulder.

-

They were half way up to Callum’s room when Tadala stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes locked on to a slim figure that was breezing along the hallway in front of them.

Rayla did not recognise the sun elf, but dang, that cape was fancy looking, with its stylised sol regum head picked out in shimmering cloth of gold against a matt black background. Rayla was sure that she could even pick out that had a inner lining as swished softly in time with the footfalls of the slim figure, as made his way down the hall at a brisk pace, clearly in a bit of a hurry to get somewhere.

His room, perhaps? Rayla had no real intention to pry, all she really wanted to do was to get back up to Callum to apologise for running off like that.

But Tadala was seemingly glued to the floor, eyes wide, face pale.

“what's wrong” Rayla hissed, softly tugging on Tadala’s arm to get her to move when she got no reply.

The figure, by the looks of it,  was now having a very animated conversation with someone in one of the rooms towards the end of the hallway, apparently not having noticed the two of them as Rayla stated to pull Tadala forward.

The stairway they needed to get to the next floor was through the doorway behind him, and if they were quite than there was a chance that he’d pay them no mind.

And to Tadala’s clear relief, he didn’t, barely flicking an ear in their direction as they snuck by, until who ever he was talking to said one, simple thing that sent the two of them bolting up the stairs at a breakneck speed.

“Hey Karim, isn’t that your missing niece?”

Chapter Text

Rayla slammed open Callum’s room door, and stood aside as Tadala hurtled past her, diving under the bed to the tune of all the boys shouting in surprise.

“what’s going on?” Mina asked from the direction of the bathroom, voice muffed by the closed door.

“We may be in trouble” Rayla intoned, making sure the room door was locked tight behind her. she could hear voices and heavy, running footfalls outside, closing in on them from the way they had come.

“no shit.” Tobius hissed, ears twitching. “what did you do.”

The boys, and apparently Mina, had been in the middle of a game of cards, if the way the deck was spread out over the bed was anything to go by. What ever the exact game was, they were using an array of sweets as playing chips, and Callum seemed to be winning.

Really winning.

“we..may of.. run into someone who recognised tibs and they were kind of chasing us.” Rayla informed them bluntly.

The room fell silent as everyone turned to look at her, expressions ranging from slightly concerned to full on panic.

“my uncle.” Tadala’s voice murmured up from her hiding spot.

The sound of voices calling Tadala’s name and what was clearly military issue boots on the hall outside was very, very clear now in the silence.

“that.. sounds like a lot of people” Mina whispered softly, as she sidled over to sit next to Tobius

Rayla did some quick mental maths. They had, in this little room, 6 teenagers, one of them human, one an apparent fugitive, one 10 year old human who was not meant to be in Xadia in the first place, a glow toad and a baby dragon who looked remarkably well for someone who was meant to of died in his egg 5 plus months ago.

They were…. Slightly screwed.

“where’s Soren and Marcos?” Rayla hissed to Callum, who was trying to hide Ezren behind him away from the door.

“one of the city guard was sent to get them, apparently the golden knight wanted to hear their sides of the story?” Callum whispered back. “they left just after you did.”

A loud bang on the door made them all jump.

“city guard ! Open up!” a strong voice shouted.

The kids all froze like deer in lamplight.

“Open up, or we open this door for you” the voice came again, louder this time.

Callum took a deep breath.

“welp.” He sighed. better rip the bandage off.

He stood up for where he had been sitting, signing something to his brother as he headed for the door. Ezren, in turn, slid off the bed and wiggled under it, Pulling zym and bait down alongside him, tucking themselves out of sight next to Tadala.

Rayla, thinking quickly, moved to take Ezren’s place at the makeshift card table as Callum unlocked the door and swung it open to greet the unimpressed guard on the other side.

-

“Just you kids in here?”

If the stoic looking guard was supposed to have the door answered by a teenaged human, then he did not show it in his face of posture as he peered into the room with an air of suspicion, hand on the hilt of his sword.

A chorus of ‘yes sir’ came back from the assembled teens, who were doing there damn hardest to project an air of angelic innocence.

Rayla was not sure that it was working.

His female partner soon came up behind him, and Callum moved aside to allow the duo in to have a look around.

“you kids part of that trip that got attacked last night?” the female guard asked them, note book in hand.

“yes miss.” Mina replied for them all.

“including him?” she tilted her horns slightly in Callum’s direction. He was standing next to the door, apparently deciding that standing still was the best course of action.

“yes ma’m”

She glanced over at the other officer who was checking the bathroom to see if anyone was hiding in there.

“have any of you seen a blond teenage sunfire elf? Female, tall, willowy- strong local accent?”
“I cant say we have, miss.” Rayla lied flawlessly, ignoring the soft meep that came from the sunelf in question.

“I mean, there are a lot of sunelves at school, but none that fit that description.” Tobius added, carefully preening one of his wings in apparent contemplation.

She gave him a flat look, and apparently opted not to write that down.

“just to let you kids know, someone will be along in bit to take statements about what went down last night, one of your chaperones will be up soon to take you down to the café.” The male guard informed them.

“why?”

“because that is where the golden knight has decided to set up the scribes.” The female guard paused, taking in the combined looks of apprehension and fear on the faces of the kids in front of him “.. you lot are not in any trouble, she just wants to know what happened from your point of view.”

There was a spattering of agreement from the teens, including Callum nodding along from his spot next to the door. The more witness statements they had in regards to what went down, the more likely it would be that a certain pair of dark mages would stay in jail for a long time, should they be caught.

“good, good.” She made another note in her little book, and turned to her partner “we done here?”

He nodded, and the two of them started back towards the door.

Only, they were met in the doorway by a shadow that quickly revealed himself to be Karim, Tadala’s uncle.

He was slightly flushed, and was breathing hard, like he had been running, and had look in his eyes that Rayla had only seen once in her life, when Runaan had finally found her again after that night of nightmares.

Fear, relief, and something else she could not quite place.

He greeted the pair of guards respectfully, returning the bow the pair sent him, taking care to scan the room as he did so. His eyes skipped over Callum and most of the teens, until his sights fell on the frozen form of Rayla, still perched on edge of the bed, Ezren’s playing cards still in hand.

She staired at him.

He stared at her.

“isn’t that the moonelf that was with he princess?” a voice chimed in from behind Karim, as the young lady that He had been talking to in the hallway earlier appeared behind him.

The atmosphere in the room suddenly took a turn for the worse, as all eyes tuned to focus on Rayla, who was now sporting a perfectly neutral face

In the started hush, a small, yet painfully audible sound slipped out from under the bed, making all of the adults, and more than one of the teens look in the direction of the sound. Rayla had to force herself not to facepalm, and facepalm hard as Prince Karim’s ears twitched at the sound, and his eyes narrowed in the direction of the bed.

“Tadala..” he all but growled. “you have 5 seconds to get out from under there….”

There was a muffled “make me.” from Tadala.

“ok young lady” one of the guards said in the now painful silence that followed Tadala’s challenge, carefully moving towards Rayla  “how about we have a little bit of a chat downstairs….”

-

“’a little bit of a chat’, ay?”

Rayla glared up at Soren from her new spot, handcuffed to the sturdiest chair in the café.

“no comment.” She grumbled back.

“so, do little chats in xadia normally end in punch ups or…”

“no fucking comment, Soren.”

In hindsight, lunging towards one of the guards with the intent of trying to cause enough of an distraction for Tadala  to escape had not been a very wise choice on her part, but it had been a better idea then just sitting back and letting both Tadala, who was apparently not just a runaway noble, but a runaway Princess, be dragged out from her hiding spot like a misbehaving moonstrider pup, and for young Ezren to be treated the same way.

No, instead the chaos she had caused let at least one of them slip away, with his glowtoad in hand and baby dragon at his heels.

Tadala had not been so lucky.

But she was at least able to make herself halfway presentable before her uncle had marched her down to the café himself, dragging her along by the scruff of her neck, to face the music, and anger of her aunt.

The dressing down Rayla had witnessed going down in front of her was a thing of legend. The golden knight had sat Tadala down in a corner, away from prying eyes of the reporters that were still lurking around, and made sure she was ok, and had a drink of water, before ripping Tadala a new one in ways only someone who is close family could.

Rayla could feel the drill Sargent side of the golden knight coming out in full force as she reamed her niece out bring up some very good points like the fact that Tadala failed to leave a not, actively hid from attempts to find her, not to mention that she had caused her poor, defenceless mother no end of worry- damn it child she thought you were dead in a ditch for the longest time.

Tadala had looked equal parts mortified and resigned, clearly wishing for the floor to open up and swallow her whole, especially when the Golden knight brought up the fact that Tadala’s mother, you know, Her radiance the sun queen, was going to want to have a nice, long, talk.

And that she would not best happy with her daughter.

But that would be after Janai played the part of the good aunt and got Tadala a round of sweet treats for managing to successfully hide herself away from all of attempts to find her.

“fairs fair, after all.” She insisted. “its an impressive achievement.”

Tadala gave her aunt a slightly hopeful look.

“buttt I should warn you that your wonderful mother has mentioned dumping your ass in the people broiler more than once.”

Tadala’s face fell again.

Rayla did not know what was meant by ‘people broiler’, and she did not want to find out.

At this point, Runaan appeared within her line of sight, did a double take at the sight of Rayla cuffed self, and promptly turned on his heals and made a bee line towards the captain of the guard who was still dabbing at his bloody nose.

Rayla sighed loudly and rolled her eyes. She could hear the lecture coming her way now. and that would be before Ethari got found out.

Across the room, away from everyone else, Callum sat back against the wall, and observed the latest in the string of fine messes he’d found himself in the middle of. Marcos had stopped by long enough to whisper that Ezren and company was safely tucked in the back of the kitchen storeroom, hopefully well away from any anyone who could find him.

Callum hoped.

Something in the back of his mind was sending up warning signals, though, and it was putting him on edge.

The café was full of guards that were bustling around, talking to the other students, taking statements and logging injuries, so there should be nothing to be worried about, right?

But there was something in the way the pack of reporters were milling just outside the door, seemingly ready to pounce on anyone they could in search of information, and in the way that some of the students were eyeing him as they passed by that was making him squirm.

And that was before the last person he wanted to see, ever, walked into the room like he owned the place.

General Abasi completely ignored the shouts of protests from the reporters that he’d just pushed his way though like they were nothing but irritants to him, and almost immediately locked on to Tadala and her aunt, and headed over to them, bowing to them in a surprisingly respectful way.

Callum took one look at him, and at the way he was gesturing to a slightly unimpressed looking Janai (and a slightly spooked looking Tadala) and decided that going and standing near the adults he knew might be a good idea.

Callum managed a single step away from the wall before that feeling of overwhelming danger washed back over him again, stronger than ever before.

Callum turned to look towards the doors to the kitchen, and paused in confusion at the sight of the glowing crystalline orb that was being lightly tossed into to the centre of the room.

The ethereal, almost soap bubble looking orb glowed softly as it drifted down to the floor, light as a feather, chiming softly. It was beautiful to behold as it drifted serenely. Every eye in the room tuned to look at the spectacle as it touched down softly, right in the centre of the cafe.

“what is-“ someone started to say, only to be cut off violently as the pretty outsized soap bubble let out a soft ting, and erupted into a dense cloud of suffocating smoke with an ear-splitting retort and blinding flash of light.

Callum yelped and recoiled away from the sudden light and sound, landing flat on his ass as the room around him dissolved into a mess of shouting and movement.

He scrambled to pick himself back up, only to be knocked back down again when a solid mass slammed into him.

Whoever the mass was, they quickly passed their hand over Callum’s head, took in his lack of horns, and promptly slapped a sickly sweet smelling cloth over his mouth and nose.

Callum knew that smell from his time in medical, and held his breath as he desperately tried to fight the person off.

But the cloying smell was too strong, too invasive, and despite Callum’s best efforts he felt his consciousness start to slip away as the stranger started to drag his weakening body through the concealing fog, though the eerily silent kitchen and out into the street beyond.

The last thing Callum saw before he backed out was the sight of a wiggling sack being loaded into the back of a nondescript wagon by inky black shadows.

Chapter Text

Callum awoke to a sky full of sky

The world around his slowly waking self was quite, with the only sounds that he could detect near him was the soft crackling of a campfire somewhere nearby, and the constant chirping of crickets in the long grass he was lying in.

He was laying on his back, bound and gagged to the point that he could only just move his head a little to follow the sight of a wispy black something that flitted across the far corner of his vision. He tried to focus on it, only for a wave of dizziness to wash over him.

Callum squeezed his eyes shut to try to force himself though the feeling, to stop himself from throwing up with the gag in his mouth.

---

--

-

-

He was in another place when he opened his eyes again, having apparently relapsed into slumber when he closed his eyes.

Oh, he hated this feeling. it reminded him way too much of the first couple of weeks of his recovery. woozy, dislocated, with no way to tell how much time had passed, and a strange, empty feeling in his stomach that made him fill sick from hunger and the after effects of the sedatives.

But this time, at least, there was a roof over his head. or at least a whitewashed ceiling. Not that that really made him feel any safer.

This time around, as he started to flex his cramping limbs, Callum found that he could wiggle around a little, as at some point whilst he was a was out cold, the ropes binding him had become a little looser. Or had been loosened just a bit.

Glancing around, he realised that he was in a room full of cages.

Cages to the left, cages to the right, even a couple of having birdcages suspended from the ceiling in the corners of the room (or at least the 2 corners he could see.) and they were all full of xadian wildlife.

Colourful sunbirds with their shimmery scaled feet tied to the perches they were standing on, a muzzled moonstrider pup that watched him wearily from the cage next to his head, huge snails, bejewelled tortoises, and so, so much more- all crammed into cages that seemed way too small for them, stacked one on top of the other like some twisted child's building blocks.

Callum had the sudden sinking feeling that he was potentially in a lot of trouble. Again.

But this time he was very much alone.

Not that that was going to stop him from getting out of here.

He wiggled and squirmed around in his binds, working the knot in the rope tying his hands behind his back until he felt it come loose. He quickly undid the rope around his legs, and sprung up to get a better look at where he was at, and how the hell he was going to find a way out of here.

Between the cages and boxes stacked two or three high around him, set into the wall, was a single door. Callum couldn’t see any windows, just slits in the wall just below the ceiling that might be the tops of boarded up windows for ventilation, and nothing else.

Callum tilted his head, attempting to hear over the grumbles and whimpered of the creatures around him if there was anyone around.

But the critters around him were being way too loud. He could not hear a damned thing over them all.

With no other options, Callum started towards the door. Only, as he started to take the first wobbly, pins and needles filled steps, the moonstrider pup let out a loud whimper and stuck one of its weird bird like paws between the bars of its cage.

The poor thing was thin looking, Callum could see the outlines of their ribs though thinning, dark fur, and the normally iridescent plumes that made up its long tail were mostly missing, with what was left being dull and jarringly short, like they had been cruelly chopped short with a pair of scissors. The moon strider pup was truly was a sad sight.

Callum’s eyes flicked to a notice pinned to the pups cage, quickly reading the grim fate that awaited the pup in the coming days.

How could anyone be so cruel?

He couldn’t leave them ..her? the note mentioned that this little pup was apparently female, here, not with he death sentence hanging over her little, run down head.

Callum looked around, at all the other animals stuck in there cramped cages. He just knew that he’d never, ever, be able to look Ez in the eyes if he left them all here, but lock picking (not to mention animal handling) was not something he was good at.

But where there was locks, odds were there was also keys.

-

The pup kept whimpering every time Callum left her line of sight.

Rayla had mentioned at some point that moonstriders could be highly strung animals, and nervous highly strung animals at that, so Callum was not going to fault her for that. He’d be a bit of a mess if he’d been locked in a cage and had goodness knows what done to him. It was all he could do to keep murmuring soft reassurances to her as he searched for a way to get her, and the others, out.

Partly hidden behind some of cages was a makeshift workbench, nothing much more than a couple of planks laid out on top of some old crates with more boxes full of things on top that were being used as an attempt to keep things tidy.

Callum quickly rummaged though the boxes, coming up with paperwork, random claws and feathers, a single penknife that he immediately pocketed for future use along with a handful of random gemstones.

Finally, under a stack of paperwork detailing something about uses for tidebound elf horns, Callum found a set of sturdy metal keys threaded onto a single loop.

He stared at them for a moment, unsure if he had just had a huge lucky break, or if the universe fucking with him, but he was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He tried the lock on the pup’s cage first.

He managed to get if open when he tried the 3ed key on the ring.

-

Once the little pup was up and moving, it was clear that she, somehow, looked even scrawnier that she’d first appeared, and she promptly glued herself to his legs as he worked to open other cages.

But she was brave little thing, despite everything, even growling loudly at a particular angry sunbird that was bigger than she was that made to peck at Callum’s head while he was trying to untie it from its perch.

“you remind me of Rayla, a little.” He whispered to the pup as she sat on his feet, looking up at him with big, soulful eyes. “she’s brave too.”

The keys, thankfully, also unlocked the door.

Callum peered out into the well-lit, but very, very empty hallway beyond. Aside from the sounds of the growing ruckus behind him, it was strangely quiet.

Suspiciously quite.

Nothing good ever came from things being this quite...

The left the door propped open with one of the now empty cages, and carefully, quietly, made his way out into the hallway. from where he was now, he could see that there was a couple of other doors, all made of the exact same smooth wood as the door he’d come though.

Logically, one of the ones at the end of the hall would be ones that would lead to another part of the building, whilst the couple of doors in front of him were likely other rooms, but damn it, with all the doors being near identical there was no way to tell.

the first door opened into a closet full of cleaning supplies, the second to a room full of barrels and hanging cuts of dried meat (some of which looked…. Suspicious.) the third was an empty room, with nothing in it aside for what looked like a tub from washing clothing on the floor, and a rope threaded through a ring mounted to the ceiling.

Something about the strange, clean yet jarringly metallic smell that emanated from that room made Callum back out of it faster than the other two.

That left the two doorways on each end of the hallway.

There was no way for Callum to tell where the doors led to, they could lead to freedom, they could land him in even more danger than he already was.

But Callum really did not have time to ponder, as he was startled by the sudden sound of a door slamming loudly somewhere close by.

Very close by.

That, and Callum could hear a very angry sounding voice shouting about ‘the something something animals getting out’, and he did not want to hang around to meet the owner of the voice.

Callum picked a door, the one slightly closer to him, and booked it.

The moment he go to the other side, slamming the door behind him and the little moonstrider pup that darted around his legs, it became slightly obvious to how the mysterious voice had found out about the animals getting out.

Some of the birds, including a pair of the sunbirds, had found their way out of the window slits, and were now singing and preening proudly up on the apex of the roof.

Looking around, Callum realised that he was now standing in a sunbaked walled courtyard. Granted, it was a nice looking courtyard, with a little seating aria next to a bubbling fountain and some long, low planters full of flowers and pretty, sun catching artwork and palms, but it was still very bright out, and Callum had to squint in the sunlight to see properly.

The place was apparently deserted, quite, and most importantly, as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he realised that there was a plate of cut fruit on a platter on the table next to the chairs, covered over with a cosh to protect the delectable, juicy looking morsels from the meandering insects that were buzzing around the sweet smelling flowers.

Callum carefully picked his way over to the fruit. He’d hadn’t eaten for… he had no clue. It was nearly lunch? he was pretty sure it was almost lunch time when he’d been swiped, and he had no idea just how long he’d been out.

and now his stomach was tying its self in knots from hunger.

Admittedly, Callum was very much throwing self-preservation to the wind as he took a seat and carefully stated picking at the fruit, but Compared to the cramped room he’d woken up in, this place was almost a paradise.

Almost.

Just like the clean, metallic smelling room he’d found, there was something about this place that was starting to make the back of his neck prickle, and it was not just the heat radiating off the paving slabs.

He spotted the first clue when he bent down to feed his new friend a handful of juicy, sweet starplum slices.

In front of the seating aria , imbedded in the what had first looked like a simple but beautiful floor mosaic of the moon and sun, was a set of sturdy metal rings, the sort you used to attach chains too.

Callum paused , chewing slowly as he took a second, slow, look around.

the door he’d left, and the one behind him both had locks, not unusual for exterior doors, but very unusual for doors coming off a very… well.. defended… courtyard.

The secretary spikes that ran along the top of the wall, designed to stop people from climbing over the wall,  continued onto the edge of the roof, and pointed inwards towards the courtyard. Not outwards, inwards. As if they were trying to keep something in, instead of out. What was probably at one point a gateway out of the garden had been blocked up and painted over, leaving only the outline of the arch.

Callum … did not want to be here anymore.

But he had no idea where to go now.

-

There was 3 doors leading into the courtyard. The one he’d come out of, and two others leading into to other parts of the buildings. One was locked, and had someone or something moving around on the other side- Callum swore it sounded like furniture being dragged around, and the other was unlocked.

The pup pressed herself to his legs as he carefully pushed the heavy wooden door open, and found himself in a hallway identical to the one he’d been in earlier, just without the animals anywhere, and a smell of incense hanging around in the air.

There was music playing too. Soft, lute-y sounding music that got louder the closer he got to the end of the hallway, and the single, blank wooden door that stood slightly ajar.

Despite his growing sense of dread that was eating at him from the inside out, Callum had to admit that whoever was playing, they were really talented.

-

the room beyond the door was a vision of luxury.

The walls were painted in rich colours, over laid with murals of animals and plants that were similar, but not identical to the ones he’d seen back in the inn he’d acquired the lanterns at, but somehow more detailed and with hits of gold glinting in the light of numerous stained glass lanterns that lit the room up in a rainbow of colours.

The parts of the walls that were not covered in the murals were adorned with tapestries of great hunts and battles, with elves riding on the backs of strange creatures and fighting with magic and weapons alike

Callum quickly wiggled behind one of the floor length tapestries once he spotted the occupants of the room, seated of plush cushions around a low table, covered in gems and coins.

The small group were deep in discussion, which was probably the only reason that none of them had spotted Callum when he first entered. No, clearly the talk of goods and the prices attached to said good was mush more important than the battered teenaged human and scrawny moon strider pup.

Callum really did not have to think hard to workout what goods they were talking about.

The animals that he’d just freed, horns, tusks and hides piled neatly next to the table, and the jars of .. something that were actually on the table, all of them were being haggled over like fruit in a market place.

Callum had been to a meat market before, buying cuts of beef and lamb with his mother for dinners long passed, but this was not that. This was so, so much worse.

.. the fact that Viren was one of the people of at the table was not in any way comforting.

Callum did not recognise any of the other people, one was a tall, stern looking neolandian woman with long, braided grey hair, a pair of earthblood elves, and a sunelf who looked unimpressed at the later two’s crass jokes.

There was no sign of Claudia anywhere, but Viren did had one of her snake bracelets on him, and he was fiddling with it absent-mindedly as he talked shop with the others.

Callum put every ounce of his will power into creeping as quietly as possible around the outside of the room, slinking from tapestry to tapestry, trying with all his might to stay invisible as he worked his way over to the next door that stood between him and a possible freedom.

Thankfully, the music being played by the dower looking skywing elf sitting in the far corner of the room covered the soft shuffling of his feet as he moved, but he was still very visible as he darted between his hiding places.

But none of them even glanced his way, not even once.

In fact, he got all the way to the doorway before he hit some very big, very unwanted resistance that was coming the other way.

Callum bounced of the solid wall of muscle and padded red tunic, landing on his ass with a loud thud and a small curse.

Momentarily stunned, Callum felt the pup push her wet little nose into the side of his neck, as she whimpered in to his ear.

As his mind cleared, he looked up to see who he’d crashed into. General Abasi blinked back down at him, a look of surprise clear as day on his face, and Callum felt a brief glimmer of hope. Yes, Abasi was a huge, very creepy, ass, but he was clearly here to bust this poaching ring, right? He hated dark mages as much as his boss, the golden knight, did, he’d been very vocal about that in the past, so he had to be coming to the rescue- if not for him, then for the poor animals,

That little bit of hope that had welled up in Callum’s chest sunk like a stone in the sea as Abasi’s look of surprise tuned into something that resembled sadistic glee.

Chapter Text

Rayla woke up angry, half naked, and suspended upside down.

She was hanging by her feet from a rope strung though a ring on the ceiling. her shirt was missing, leaving her only wearing leggings and bra, with her arms tied behind her back and hair pulled back into a painfully tight, messy bun, and to top it all off, there was a fowl tasting gag in her mouth.

She could hear music coming from… somewhere… nearby, but most concerning was the room she was currently hanging like an unimpressed bat.

The room was clean, clinical almost, with scrubbed clean walls and floors with drains in the centre (directly below her head) and corners. Tubs and buckets were stacked neatly near the door, and there was a table with jars and vials sitting next to a selection of wicked looking tools.

Knives and saws, scalpels and pliers, all squeaky clean and lined up like good little soldiers, ready for use, alongside sharpening stones and cleaning cloths.

Rayla had the strong feeling that she did not want to hang around to find out what those tools were going to be used for, since it was highly likely that they were going to be used on her.

She wiggled and squirmed, trying to unhook her feet, or to work her hands free from the tight ropes that tied her wrists together, so tight that the tips of her fingers were going numb. That was not good. She kind of needed her hands to get out of wherever the hell she was.

She’d just about managed to work the first knot around her wrists loose when the door suddenly popped open, and what looked to be the world’s perkiest goth bounced into the room, cup of something hot and bitter smelling in her hand and a big old grin on her face.

The teenaged human that flounced between the tables and the tubs, filling buckets from a spigot in the wall and placing her cup of something next to the jars, was dressed in gold trimmed black dress covered up by a leather apron and gloves. Her hair, black with what looked like purple tips, was braided and tied up in a neat bun.(which gave Rayla a good idea who had done her hair.)

she hummed a merry tune as she continued to set up whatever she had planned, dancing around a little to unheard music as she neatly kicked one of the larger washbasin style tubs directly under Rayla’s head.

Rayla watched her wearily, continuing to discreetly pry apart her binds apart.

This girl, who was clearly not much older than herself, was almost recognisable to Rayla for some reason. She could of sworn she’d seen this raven haired human somewhere before, but the lingering wooziness that was clinging to the recesses of Rayla mind was stopping any attempt to dredge up where Rayla could of encountered her.

To be honest, Rayla could count the number of humans she knew on one hand, and they were all guys.

Ok, one of them was a stupidly pretty guy, but still.

The girl paused for a second, ruminating over the selection of scalpels that she had to choose from, before picking out one of the larger ones, holding it up to the light to admire the blade.

She twirled it in her hand as she spun around to face Rayla, a bright smile on her face.

“oh!” she chirped “you woke up. Thought you’d be out longer than that.”

Rayla grumbled though her gag, and fixed her with a frankly evil glower.

“awwww. None of that.” The girl cooed, reaching up to run her finger from Rayla navel to her ribs “it don’t change much. You’ll still come apart nice and easy”

The girl raised the scalpel, pressing the blade to Rayla’s tummy.

“besides, it’s not like you elves ever show us mercy, right miss assassin?”

Rayla desperately kept tugging at the binds as the cold blade started to bite into her skin. this was not good, this was really not good.

“now, be good, and hold still for me, ok? I need to cut some things out intact for them to be useful.” she spoke in a voice that was almost soothing, underneath the mocking tone.

A sudden shout from somewhere caught both their ears- if Rayla was correct, than someone was shouting about animals being loose in a thick earthblood accent that was proving very good to curse in.

The girl paused and tuned towards the door in surprise- just in time for Rayla to finally, finally, slip her hands out of the ropes.

Her muscles screamed in protest from the sudden movement, but she still managed to move faster than the girl could react. She whipped the rope up, flicking the still knotted end at the girl’s surprised face. The knot made contact with her cheek, sending the girl stumbling backwards into the stack of tubs, sending them clattering all over the floor.

Rayla flipped up, remembering instinctively some of what Runaan had taught her in regards for getting out of binds like this and quickly got her feet loose as her new ‘friend’ stumbled shakily back up right, only to go crashing back down as Rayla helpfully introduced the wash tub that had been close to hand to her head.

The raven headed girl slumped motionless onto the floor.

Rayla was worried for a moment that she had killed her- but a quick check of the girls vitals told her that the girl was just out cold. Her breathing was level, her pulse was steady, and she was already starting to show signs of coming back around.

Rayla had no intention being there when that happened.

-

She grabbed one of the knives on her way out, wrapping it in one of the cleaning rags and tucking it into the waistband of her leggings as she booked it out of the door.

The moment she was on the other side, she slammed the it shut behind her and slid the locking bolt into place with a tad more force than was probably necessary.

Thinking quickly, Rayla pushed a low, heavy wooden table in front of the door, wincing internally at the painful scraping sound that it made of the tiles, then stacked a couple of chairs on top of it, just encase.

It was then, as the adrenalin started to ware off a little,  that Rayla released that she was bleeding. The sharp little scalpel blade had cut a neat line in along her stomach, and whilst the wound was not huge, barely longer then the tip to the first knuckle of her shortest finger, it had already bled a scary amount, soaking the waistband directly under the cut, and the act of getting loose had smeared more blood up her tummy a bit.

It was a bloody mess, but it was clotting over- that was the good thing. She was going to be ok.

All she had to do was to find a way to clean it, find a shirt, and work out where she was.

-

The first door she found landed her in a way too sunny, stupidly bright courtyard with lots of pretty plants and a bunch of unhappy elves chasing what looked to be a small zoo around, trying to herd them away from the bountiful flowers and plants that filled the space.

Apparently the hullabaloo was enough of a distraction that no one seemed bothered that a bloody teenaged moon elf had just appeared next to them.

Not that Rayla really wanted to hang around to let them spot her.

She slunk though the next door she found, closing it quietly behind her, and followed the sound of an unidentifiable string instrument further into the building that she had just managed to get out of.

The irony did not escape her.

But, as she got further away from the outside, the more she noticed that there was another sound under the soothing music.

The sound of someone in distress, an animal whimpering, and voices talking in brisk tones. None of them made Rayla feel any safer as she pushed open the interior door, and slipped soundlessly into the opulent room on the other side.

The first thing she saw was the looming shape of General Abasi leaning over a table, apparently using his hight and body wight to pin something against the table, whilst simultaneously debating with the other people sitting at the table about what to do with the something.

The something that was making some very unhappy noises.

The something with brown hair.

The something tha-oh shit that’s Callum.

Rayla called on the little magic she could muster in the daytime to turn herself translucent, blending softly into the background, and slowly, carefully, approached the situation.

“- and if I can take him today, I’ll throw the inferno tiger pelt in as an extra.” Abasi offered, completely ignoring Callum’s attempted flailing.

“he’s still needed, unfortunately.” One of the humans at the table sighed “if he completely vanishes now, than his father is going to know that we had something to do with it.”

“yes, annoyingly his guards got away in the raid, and they’ve probably already reported to there boss what’s happened.” The other human added, tapping her pen against the table. “and you are bidding against at least two noble families in the kingdoms who are very interested in him.”

“… for what exactly?” Abasi hissed “and what are they offering you that I’m not”

Rayla knew one of those humans. The mage that had been in katolis that terrible, terrible night sat with a slightly bemused look on his face, fiddling absent-mindedly with a snake themed bracelet, but the other human, and the elves, were unknown to Rayla.

“I think you know the answer to the first half of that.” the mage of her nightmares smiled in a way that twisted her stomach “and as for what they are offering-“

The door behind her slammed open, making everyone jump. Rayla barely managed to stay invisible as one of the elves that had been running after the animals barged into he room, covered in scratches and clearly out of breath.

“someone let a whole room full of animals out, and they are running riot! And those damned cuddle monkeys! they got into the stables and started opening doors!”

Rayla did not miss the slightly smug look that fluttered across Callum’s face, before Abasi lifted him up off the table and pretty much slammed him into a bank of pillows next to him.

“can you lot do anything by yourselves?!” he snapped at poor tidebound elf, who immediately cowered under his fury.  “fine.”

Abasi took a second to control his voice, and the rolling heat that was starting to radiate off his body.

“have the kitchens send up some fresh tea and accomplishments whilst I deal with this.” He ordered the tidebound elf, who immediately bowed and scuttled off out of another door. Rayla mentally marked that door as ‘possible escape route’. “I will be back shortly. Maackia, Calla, with me”

Rayla pressed herself to the floor as Abasi marched by with the pair of elves from the table following him closely, barely missing where she was crouching by a couple of inches.

And just like that, it was just her, the mages, the lute playing skywing and a dazed Callum in the room.

Rayla quickly ran over her options. She knew that the nightmare was a danger, even if he seemed to be unarmed right now, but the other human was a complete mystery. She had the air of a stately, refined dame about her, but the white streaks in her hair and dark, almost water stain like markings on her face and hands told her that this lady of wealth and means was a dark mage, and an experienced one at that.

So, two dark mages, sitting at a table filled with bit of creatures that could be used in dark magic spells, and a skywing elf that seemed disinterested in what was going on in front of them. and Callum, who was slowly rolling onto his side as his senses started to return to him.

If Rayla was going to do something, she was going to have to be very quick about it.

“Callum, my dear, where do you think you are going?” the nightmare watched on as Callum struggled to gain a footing on the pillows. “you know that you wont get very far.”

Callum got a defiant look on his face, and continued to his feet anyway.

From somewhere to his left, a small blob of an animal raised its thin muzzle and let out a soft whine. Rayla had to bite back a gasp of shock as the skinniest, most bedraggled moonstrider pup she had ever seen limped over to Callum’s side from where they had been laying near the wall.

Callum scooped the sad bundle of limbs up and locked eyes with the nightmare.

“needed?” Callum’s voice was rougher than Rayla had ever heard before, but his anger was palpable. “by who??”

“that is none of your business, young man” the female mage huffed, as the tidebound elf reappeared with the promised tea and what looked like yummy little cakes with dainty edable flowers pressed into the icing..

“none of that Clementine.” The nightmare waved her down. “it is, since he’s the one all this concerns.”

He accepted a cup of tea from the tidebound elf.

“you see, there are some Nobel families in evenere and neolandia who have some lovely young people who wish to get to know you better. And they are willing to offer quite a bit for you and your bloodline.”

“not to mention the interest in your talents.” Clementine added. “you are truly one of a kind, you know.”

Callum looked extremely uneasy as that information sunk in.

“..I’m 14.” He whispered “dad would never-“

“which is why the king will not be finding out. About the sale at least. No, all he will know is that you’ll be transferring to a new school soon, due to the issues that you are having here in Xadia. Sucuraty and what not. A nice, reputable, with boarding, nice and close to your new family’s land. And well, you’ll warm up to them by the time you are legal.”

He offered Callum a cup of tea, one that he had clearly just dropped something that was not tea leaves into.

“now, be a good boy and drink. You are clearly in need of sleep.”

Callum pulled a face. a 'i am not drinking that' face.

“… I’ll allow you to keep that scrawny thing if you do.” The nightmare motioned to the pup in Callum’s arms. “otherwise she’ll be render down later on today. You wouldn’t want that now, would you? Oh, Ezren would be so disappointed if he finds out.” the nightmare locked eyes with Callum. "when he finds out."

Callum faltered slightly.

“now be a good boy, and drink.” The nightmare insisted. "unless... you want him to know.."

Callum slowly picked up the cup, shaking slightly as he raised it up to his lips.

With all eyes (minus the skywing elf) on Callum, Rayla impulsively made her move. She slammed into Callum from the side, spilling the drink as he was sent crashing to the floor with with a comical yelp. In the same breath she grabbed the edge of the table and flipped it over, sending jars of unspeakable things, hot tea and pretty cakes flying into he faces and laps of the two seated mages.

The skywing elf let out a garbled scream as Rayla popped back into view, bloody and brandishing the knife at them, but the poor, terrified elf made no indication that they were planning to do anything about it.

Rayla grabbed Callum, still clinging to the surprised pup like his life depended on it, by his arm and booked it towards the door that the tidebound elf had exited though, leaving the stunned and shouting mages behind them.

Chapter Text

They ran, and ran and ran, barging though doors and scattering servants like skittles as they ran down seemingly endless halls.

She could hear Callum panting loudly as she dragged him along at full speed behind her, franticly trying to find a way out before any of the mages, or moon forbid Abasi, found them- all that shouting was likely to garner a lot of attention from the wrong people, and there was many, many more of them then she and Callum could ever stand a chance against.

So, they ran- though doors and around corners until they spilled out into a fancy looking foyer, and out the ornate doors into the sunlight beyond.

As there eyes adjusted to the bright sun and sudden bloom of heat, Rayla came to the sudden realisation that they were not in the golden city anymore.

No, instead they were somewhere out in the middle of the countryside, with greenery as far as the eye could see. The villa they had thrown themselves out of was settled on a hilltop, sitting neatly in the middle of what looked to be some sort of neatly landscaped gardens, leading out to rolling green grasslands.

Not that the two of them had any time to take in the beautiful views.

Instead, they picked a path that lead down the hill, though another set of gates, and out into the long, swaying grass beyond.

--

----

They ran, and ran, and ran some more, hearts pounding and lungs burning, the long grass whipping at their skin, random rocks and hidden animal tunnels making them stumble, until Callum caught his foot in a deep rabbit burrow, and face planted into the hard earth with all the grace of a kitten falling over.

The pup spilled out of his arms with a sad sound, but almost immediately popped back up onto her paws yipping and yapping at him, as if to ask what the hell that was for.

“ow.” He muttered into the dirt.

Rayla was bent almost double next to him, breathing hard and trying her best not to throw up the nothingness in her stomach. She strained her ears, trying desperately over the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears to work out if there was anyone, or anything chasing them. But all she could hear around them now was wind in the grass, the distant sounds of birds singing and crickets chirping.

She straightened up, wincing at the fire in her limbs. She was going to be feeling this for days.

“you alright?” she asked the still prone Callum, who was now being sat on by the concerned looking pup.

“m’fine” came the reply, still muffled by the dirt.

“you sure?” she asked. “your looking a little dead right now.”

“har har.” Callum twisted his head to look up at her. “says the one who is bleeding.”

Rayla looked down at her stomach. The wound had reopened at some point, and there was even more blood now on her leggings and midriff. Ohhh it looked bad. And it was only now starting to sting. And sting a lot.

“ yehhhhhh shit.” Rayla flopped down next to him with a wince. “they stole my shirt.”

There was a soft “I noticed.” From Callum, before he turned his head a little. “any idea where we are?”

Rayla looked around, at the endless rolling hills of grass, with only a sparce scattering of bushes and low, scrubby trees breaking up the monotony.

“well… I don’t think we are in Xadia anymore.” She confessed. “but aside from that, no clue.”

A soft breeze kick up a small cloud of dust, and Rayla watched it roll by as a crow or something wheeled above them in the air. The world around them was quite, and almost empty feeling, like they had run though some sort of portal that dumped them in a world where it was just them, and only them.

“the kingdoms have a lot of grasslands.” Callum informed her, propping his head up on his arms, “we could be anywhere from Neolandia to katolis, but its warm, at least.”

Rayla hummed in agreement. It was nearly June. Pretty much the cusp of summer.

“we should get moving.” She added, carefully moving the pup off of Callum's back. “they mentioned stables, and whatever they have will likely out run us.”

Callum grumbled, and pushed himself up to his knees.

“you got an idea on which way we should go?”

Rayla looked at him, looked around at the endless sky that stretched for miles and miles around them, and then back to Callum.

“any way except the way we’ve come?”

-

They went south west. Ish. Kind of.

They had no idea if that was really the direction they were heading, but it was a start. They both had their heads on a swivel whilst the trudged across small hills and ruts, swatting at flies. Odds where that the nightmare and co had sent someone out to capture them again, and the smallest movement on the horizon sent them scuttling in the opposite direction.

But by the time the sun started to set in the west, the two of them were tired, starving, and in Rayla’s case, really starting to feel the effects of her injury. Callum had used his scarf as a makeshift bandage to stop dirt or other such nasties from getting in the wound, but the woollen fabric was proving to be a bit of an irritant.

She was still thankful for it

But as the last light bled from the sky, Rayla spotted something that made her feel just a little bit hopeful that they might not be walking in circles.

 It was a signpost.

A sign post with a mile marker under it.

Callum really had to squint at the sign to read what it said, as it was in a dialect that Rayla could not quite read. it looked like common, but with some sort of heavy localised spelling or something that meant that the words were making little to no cense. or it could be the lack of food and water creeping up on her. ether way, Callum could read it just fine once his eyes adjusted.

“20 miles north-east to Bridgewater, and 2 miles southwest to Bracken hollow.” He read aloud, voice getting happier as he went on, crackling aside. “Rayla, my grandparents live in Bracken hollow! We’re in Katolis!”

“your grandparents?” Rayla blinked at him.

“grammy Arlyn and grunkle chess.” Callum was bouncing in place with glee. “I haven seen them since I left for xadia!”

He looked down the road that the sign pointed down.

“they have a smallholding, and there is a post office in the village, so we can tell your uncles that you are ok.”

“and your dad.” Rayla added.

“and my dad.” He agreed. “oh, he’s probably so worried..”

So, to bracken hollow they went.

The compacted earth road was easier to walk along than the hilly, rabbit burrow ridden grassland they had been picking there way though just now. the pup was safely tucked in Callum’s arms, and Rayla was now extra thankful for Callum’s scarf, since the thick fabric was acting as an effective barrier to the menace of nocturnal carrion flies that were being attracted to the smell of the dried and clotting blood .

“so…” she started, swatting at another of the large black bugs. “what's the name of that mage back there?”

“.. who, Viren?”

“yes, him. Thanks.”

Callum was sticking close to her, relying on her night vision to make sure they were going the right way.

“…. He mentioned a king?”

She audibly heard Callum wince.

“yes? uh.. what about that?” he squeaked out.

“…why would the king be interested in what’s happening to you?” Rayla did her best to sounds conversational, but it was obvious from the long pause it took for Callum to reply that he was not looking forward to telling her.

“please don’t be mad.” He whispered.

“why would I be mad at you?” Rayla reached over and squeezed his arm, “so what if you are some nobles son?”

“I’m not some nobles son. My biological father was a military medic who died when I was a year old.” He sighed softly.

“so what’s th-“

“my stepfather, the person who raised me, is the king of Katoils.”

“… oh.”

-

-

They didn’t talk again until the lanterns the framed the village entrance came into view in the distance.

“I’m not mad, by the way.” Rayla turned to look at the sullen boy beside her. “a little shocked, yes, but not mad.”

He gave her a slightly disbelieving look.

“no really. If you’d dropped that on me when we first met then, well…” she shrugged. She got a weak grin in response. Oh, Callum looked so tired in the growing lantern light.

“I didn’t mean to keep that from you, but no one thought that running around and telling people that I was the kid of the most hated human known to Xadia likely would of not of gone over well.”

Rayla had to laugh a little.

“yeh, no shit.” Rayla rubbed her neck, embarrassed “to be honest, I kind of .. um.. worked it out the other night?”

“when you ran?”

“yeh. But what Viren said back there sort of brought it back to mind… but thanks for confirming it”

Callum shrugged in a ‘eh, what can ya do’ sort of way, and led her into the village.

It was late out, so the lantern lit roads and paths were mercifully empty of people, so the duo did not have the added pressure of worrying about random people seeing them and having a bit of a freak out over the two filthy, bedraggled teenagers dragging themselves through the twisting streets..

But, the emptiness meant that Rayla could soak in the sights, sound and smells of the first human village she’d ever been in.

As they passed by cosy cottages, some of which were almost on top of the road, Rayla could hear the faint sounds of people talking, and the smell of delicious aromas of late dinners cooking. Some of the cottages, and as they walked deeper into town, businesses had night flowering plants in planters and window boxes outside, which were attracting moths, and in turn, those moths were in turn attracting the attention of bats. The little brown, squeaking shadows spooked Rayla the first time one of them zipped passed her ear, but the pup seemed fascinated with them.

Callum could not stop himself from laughing softly as her little head whipped back and forth.

He also pointed out various points of interest as they walked down the serpentine road that Callum called the high street. He pointed out where the post office was, with its sign bearing a raven with an arrow in it beak, and where the greengrocer was (and the butchers on the other side of the road), and the local temple, which had the smell of rich, woody incense hanging in the air around it.

 He told her about the village tailor who had his workshop in the same building as the village haberdashery, and about how the village blacksmith once outsmarted a passing duke in a battle of wits. (and won himself a handy nest egg for his at the time school aged daughter)

The village inn, the laughing fox, was a hive of activity, with music and laughter filtering out into the street from behind the frosted glass windows. Apparently the kitchen was cooking up some sort of amazing smelling stew, as the fragrant, slightly meaty smell of a cauldron full of goodness hung temptingly in the air around them.  Callum stopped just outside, head tilted to one side.

“you think that your grandparents might be in there?” Rayla asked. She did not really want to go in to an inn full of drunk humans whilst only dressed in a bra on her top half, but if it got her to food and a bed faster then so be it.

“no…” he replied after a moment of concentration “no, I can’t hear any of gran’s dogs. She normally has one of them with her at all times.”

“dogs?” Rayla asked his back as he stared off down the road again. “what dogs?”

“you’ll see.”

They continued along, until they reached a bridge over a small river that connected the high street to some community gardens, local mill and a strange building that Callum informed her was an brewers. At the bridge, Callum took a left, and guided her up the path that led along the river, passed some cheerful little boats on the water and more pretty little cottages, and into a small patch of trees.

On the other side of the trees, there was a gate, bearing the name ‘Hellebore farm” in neat, to the point letters, right above another sign reading “beware of dogs”

And those dogs made themselves known the moment the two of them approached the gate.

Rayla felt a little tingle of fear run up her back as what could only describe as a small, long tailed polar bear wearing a spiked collar trotted up to the gate, barking loudly.

Behind the bear, an small squadron of other dogs, mostly made up of other big, shaggy bear like creatures in shades of black and brown, appeared, all barking along as Callum passed the moonstrider pup to Rayla and yanked on the gate bell a couple of times.

“hi, hi, yes I know it late. No need to shout about it.” He huffed at the dogs though the gate, sounding well and truly unimpressed. “hi, yes its me.”

The lead dog wuffed at him again, but sat down, tail wagging, Whilst the rest kept up the barking until a stern voice shouted over the din

“who the hell is that at this hour??”

A shadow, holding a lanten in one hand and some sort of walking stick in the other, marched there way over to the gate. As they drew closer, Rayla realised that she was looking at a shortish woman, with long grey hair platted in a long braid, dressed in a simple blue dressing gown, and fluffy matching slippers.

“Callum?” she barked as she raised the lantern to get a good look at the two of them “what the blazes are you doing here??”

“long story grandma.” Callum sighed.

“oh really?” Callum’s grandma gave him an unimpressed look. “well young man, you better get your ass in here to tell me about it.”

She turned her head a little to look Rayla dead on, and Rayla had to stop herself from reacting. Whilst the right side of Aylin’s face was that of a wrinkled, old, pale skinned lady with a healthy scattering of freckles and the odd little, well healed scar, the left side stared at her with a milky, blind eye that was surrounded by flesh that seemed to of melted, warping the skin and muscle from just under her hairline, right down her cheek.

Rayla really didn’t wish to know what could case such a wound. But on the other hand, she could make a pretty good guess.

“and who’s this lovely young lady?” Aylin huffed “ … and why, pray tell, is she half nude??”

-

“so.. chess is your …”

“grunkle. Like .. grand uncle?  Grandma married them when I was 4, but the two of them go way back.” Callum mused, passing a fresh shirt over the top of the privacy screen. “they actually met back when Katolis and Evenere were having some issues.”

“issues?” Rayla relished the feeling of the soft, clean shirt.

“minor miscommunication lead to a dispute over who a certain number of islands belonged to. It got ugly for a while.” He shrugged. “she was a general at the time, and they were… uh… an espionage agent. I think. They don’t talk about it. Anyway, they were the bane of each other’s existence for a while, then became friends when things died down.”

Chess, who had greeted them at the door, was tall, taller even than Runaan, with dark sun kissed skin contrasting shoulder length, slightly wavy white hair and olive green eyes. they almost immediately pulled Callum into a tight hug, muttering a soft “we were all so worried” into the top of his head, before ushering them all inside.

In prompt order, the two of them were given chance to wash up, given new clothing, led into a cosy, warm living room, plopped on one of the trio of soft, well-loved sofas and promptly had mugs of juice lovingly shoved into their hands by chess as Aylin fetched some medical supplies.

Neither of them had realised just how thirsty, not to mention starving hungry, they had been until then.

Between mugs of juice, and mouthfuls of a quickly made dinner of cheese, crackers and a smorgasbord of fresh fruit, the two of them recounted there long, tragic tale of woe, starting with the attack at the park, and ending with the two of them breaking out of the trafficker/poachers/dark magic den.

“and then we walked our feet off and arrived here.” Rayla finished, and stuffed another cracker (garlic and herb) into her mouth.

Chess and Aylin shot each other worried looks. It was clear as day that the two of them were really not happy about some of the things that had come up, but at the same time they did not really want to keep the pair of increasingly sleepy teens up for much longer.

Callum looked just about ready fall asleep into his now empty plate.

“that’s enough for now.” chess hummed, reaching over to pull Callum’s plate out of his hands. “you two have had quite the adventure.”

“buut you both look like you are about to pass out.” Alyin added, smiling at the way her grandson blinked slowly at the empty space where the plate once was. “so, it’s off to bed with the two of you.”

Rayla was way too tired to argue, especially now she had a full belly. she gave no fuss as she was kindly shooed off the sofa, and trundled along behind Callum as he showed to one of the guest rooms up on the first floor, where a warm, cosy bed fitted with plush cushions, and a thick, quilt covered duvet was waiting for her. the last thing she heard before she passed out the moment her head hit the pillow was Callum murmuring a soft ‘goodnight’ as he shuffled off to the room across the hall.

-

Chess made a cup of strong tea, and met Aylin in the dining room.

In the time they had taken to get the kettle up to temperature, she had dragged out the map they had of the surrounding lands and was scowling at it as she used her finger to try to plot where the teens had come from.

“you think they’ll try to follow them?” they asked, pressing a soft kiss to there darling’s temple.

“Viren’s involved. And you know just as much as I do that that two headed viper won’t give up without a fight.” Aylin rubbed the bridge of her nose. “plus, there has been a major trafficking hub, complete with elven workers, right under out noses for goodness knows how long!”

“that would explain the fancy jackalopes that set up shop behind the mill last year.” chess mused, moving to sit next to there wife. “and the sunbirds. And the other weird critters that the dogs keep finding.”

“not to mention that pup that’s passed out on the window seat.”

“and her.” chess nodded.

Somewhere in the lounge, the time piece chimed, signalling that is was now officially the middle of the night.

“.. so, my brilliant general, do you have a plan of action?”

Aylin tapped her chin thoughtfully.

“in fact, I do. First up is to contact Amaya and Harrow, let them know that our beloved bookworm is safe, and that we have a serious nest of spiders that needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Plus, the lass needs to let her folks know she’s alright. Poor folks must be worried sick.”

“so, a trip to the post office first thing?”

“the moment they open. Then we inform the local garrison about the illegal activity, because I bet my remaining eye that those traffickers are responsible for them disappearing traders over the last couple of months.” Aylin tapped the location of the stately vineyard on the map. it was common knowledge in the surrounding villages that the place had been sold a couple of years back after the original owners had died, but aside from the fact that the estate still produced some frankly outstanding wine, no one knew much about the place.

“wouldn’t surprise me.” Chess huffed. “remind me to buy more crossbow bolts, whilst we are out tomorrow. If trouble decides to come knocking, we best be well prepared.”

Chapter Text

If there was one thing that Callum loved about his grandparents place, aside from his grandparents, was grunkle Chess’s second great love in life (ranked shortly behind there beautiful wife): there herb garden.

Tucked around the side of the house, with a low stone wall and dragonfly themed gate separating it from the patio and main kitchen garden, the herb garden was chess’s baby, and all the love they had poured into it over the winter and spring had resulted in a verdant flush of new, green growth, all studded with fragrant flowers that perfumed the morning air.

Callum perched on the little bench that chess had placed under the allspice tree that took up one corner of the garden, sipping a cup of tea and admiring the glittering, buzzing rainbow of insects that had gathered to take full advantage of the flowers.

Butterflies flitted between blooms, as a selection of bees buzzed lazily in the morning sun. there were more bees that there had been the year before, a statement that Chess informed him was because the brewery was trying to diversify into mead along with its usual selection of award winning beers and ales, and so they had imported a couple of hives of brilliant blue bees, and an experienced bee keeper, from Durain to kick off production.

"we've already met the lass." Chess told him as one of the aforementioned bees drifted attempted to gather pollen from the silk flower on chess's sun hat. "she's still settling in, but shes a sweetheart who's already won over the grumpy old miser that lives across from the chapel."

The fuzzy, sapphire and deep navy blue bugs stood out angst the amber and russet native bees that buzzed around the garden, accidently bumping into each other as they jostled for the best flowers. They sure were a strange sight to see this far away from there native range.

But another even more unusual guest had distracted Callum form his letter writing.

Darting around the bird feeders set up in the centre of the sage shrubs, a flock of delicate, graceful ruby throated humming griffs were sampling the selection of seeds that had been hung up, and clustering around the edge of the bird bath so they could drink without taking an unwanted swim .

“strange little things.” Chess hummed “ they appeared last summer out of the blue, and no one could figure out where they came from.”

Chess watched one daring youngster zip right over Callum’s head.

“guess we should have been more suspicious of how a creature from the moonshadow rainforest found its way out here.”

A sharp whistle caught both of their ears, heralding the arrival or Arlyn and an still groggy Rayla.

Arlyn marched straight up to her beloved, and cheerfully pulled chess's lanky form down to her height so she could kiss them properly, electing a slightly grossed out sound from Rayla, who looked very much like she was wishing that crawling back into bed was an option right now.

“going on a post run!” she informed them, guiding Rayla to sit next to Callum on the bench. “and to inform the local guard post about what you two got away from. How’s that letter coming, Callum?”

Callum sheepishly held up his mostly fished letter, which ended abruptly in a mass of doodles of the humming griffs.

“… yeh, thought so. At least harrow will know for sure it’s from you.” Arlyn snorted in amusement. she was way too used to getting letters from Callum that were full of drawings that may or may not actually relate to what the letter was talking about.

Callum quickly scribbled down the last little bit he needed to write, and handed it over to his grandmother.

“I’ll make sure yours gets to your uncles as well, young lady.” Aylin poked Rayla, who just grumbled tucked her head into Callum’s shoulder and refused to move. “ just might take a little longer to get there, mind. Whoever is running the exchange at the border needs to be given a boot up there ass considering how long it too anything to reach you at that school.”

-

Aylin let monty the dog lead the way back out though the post office door whilst the she quickly read though the letter that had arrived for her and her better half.

Harrow had indeed found out about the kidnapping, and was freaking out in the most kingly way possible.

In fact, the only saving grace to the situation was that Ezren had been returned to him by the guards who were supposed to be looking after Callum, complete with unimpressed glow toad and frazzled baby dragon, that latter of which was being set up to be reunited with his mother sooner rather than later.

Apparently Viren still doubted the intelligence of his son, because despite the fact that the two of them had been badly injured by the same assholes who had stolen Callum and his lady friend, Soren had been the one to connect all the dots, and report exactly what was happening back to the king.

Arlyin sighed. That poor man was going through the wringer. First assassins and an almost dead son, then finding out that the reason you never got to give your wife a proper funeral was because she’d been taxidermied and put on display like some sort of twisted trophy, then having both sons kidnapped on two separate occasions. By the same person.

Honestly, she had no idea how he was keeping it together.

She’d of thrown something at someone by now.

The streets on her way back home were bustling this time of day, as a travelling band of merchants had set up in the main square and had tuned the place into a bit of a fare, complete with someone selling that newfangled sugar-fluff-candy thing that Ezren liked.

Honestly, just the thought of eating straight up sugar like that made her teeth hurt.

Monty lead the way through the crowd, his hulking, shaggy brown shape parting the mass of people like a boat through water as they made their way over to the pharmacy to pick up some (hopefully elf friendly) antiseptics for the poor lass’s wound.

Chess was a brilliant herbalist, but even they were a little stumped to if the same blends they would use on themselves and Callum would agree with Rayla’s systems.

It would be better to be safe than sorry. It was clear as sun up that Callum was very much in love with her, and hey, she wasn’t going to judge.

-

There was an unwelcome sight waiting for her upon leaving the pharmacy.

Viren looked slightly haggard, like he’d not been sleeping much lately, but he still, somehow, managed to look almost regal perched on top of his horse. Clearly he was using the extra height that came from being in horseback afforded him to scan the crowds for something, and Arylin did not have to guess what that something likely was.

She had no way to tell if Viren had a way to track Callum, but considering what that man had done in the past, she wasn't going to put it passed him. although, she'd seen a tracking spell at work before, and as far as her not so brilliant any more eyes could tell, he wasn't in possession of the traditional jar of enchanted lightning bugs- so there was a chance that he had no idea that Callum had made it this far.

not that she was going to go up and ask him.

She dipped into the space between the apothecary and the doctor’s surgery next door, and took the longer rout back home, the one that led her down passed the library and across the river next to the brewery in time to see another horseback rider, this time from neolandia, meet up with him on the other bridge, clearly frustrated about something.

Monty raised his hackles, but uttered no sound at the sight of her, and a quick poke through the memory banks told her why.

The young lady with he high cheekbones and a face that was as full of anger was the infamous high mage clementine, one of the heads of arguably the most famous, and infamous family of dark mages in neolandia, and probably the whole of the kingdoms. Her branch, and bloodline, was known for producing some of the kingdom''s most decorated, and feared, battle mages, and if you believed the stories, deadly, dark magic wielding assassins.

And Arylin had several reasons to believe those stories. several painful reasons at that.

All around, that lady was bad news, and the fact that the she and Viren were apparently working together was even worse news.

Aylin sore under her breath and picked up the pace. She had to get home, and now.

-

Rayla was in fluffy heaven.

A fluffy, squeaky, wiggly heaven.

One of the farm dogs, a black and white sweetheart called Cookie had whelped a couple of weeks before, and the adorable potatoes had gotten to the age where they were just starting to explore the world outside the blanket lined den that they had been birthed into.

Callum had taken the calculated guess that after being dragged out of bed by his grandma and having a pen and paper stuffed in her hands,  the cuteness of puppies would be a good cure to Rayla's late morning grumpiness.

Cookie had given her a good sniff when Callum had, carefully, introduced the two, before deciding that the teens would be decent pup sitters whilst she took a nap in a sunny spot on the other side of the kitchen, leaving the duo to the mercy of 6 large, round balls of heartwarming adorableness.

“I remember Michi, Ethari’s shadowpaw, being this little~” Rayla squealed in delight as one of the pups wobbled its way into her lap “all round and happy. wee fluffy potatoes with legs”

Callum’s mental image of the baby version of Ethari’s ginormous, friendly cat like pet/mount was more kitten like than puppy, but dang, he must have been the most adorable thing in the world at the time.

“round and cute and fluffy~” Rayla continued to coo, besotted with the squeaking fluff ball “such sweet fluffy things~”

The front door slamming open caused them both to jump a little, and Callum caught the briefest sight of his grandmother hustling in the direction of Grunkle Chess, who was drinking some tea in the living room. He and rayla gave each over worried glances over the top of the puppy pile. He could pick up on some hushed, frantic muttering between the two of them, and suddenly chess was in motion- heading towards the closet next to front door with a sense of purpose.

Callum gave chess a look as they swept past, but was stopped from asking any questions by a soft, silent hand motion.

And the sound of all the dogs that were patrolling the farmyard suddenly bursting into rounds of loud barking, as a horse whinnied from the direction of the gate.

Chapter Text

They huddled in the corner of the kitchen, Rayla with a knife, Callum armed with the heaviest rolling pin he could find quickly in the draws, and waited for the smallest sound of trouble. the deal was that the moment that there was the smallest hint of danger, a wayward shout, the sound of a fight starting, the two of them where to run out of the back door, and book it as fast as they could to the guard station in the village, no questions, no arguments. they were to run there and they were not to stop for anyone or anything.

Arylin and chess could hold themselves in a fight, so the were not to worry about them. besides, they had the dogs for back up, they would be fine.

The dogs were still barking up a storm, blocking out any voices from outside, so instead,  Rayla had to focus hard to pick up on Chess’s soft footsteps as they paced up and down the hallway. 6 steps towards the kitchen door, 6 steps away, 6 steps towards the kitchen door, 6 away. She could picture them, in her minds eye, pacing up and down, still in there gardening overalls and hat, clutching a light crossbow in there hands, and with extra bolts tucked into there belt.

And they kept going back and forth, over and over, not helping rayla's nerves any.

Behind her, the pups were still squeaking away, happy and content in there box, with cookie standing guard over them, ears twitching as the racket outside continued.

Rayla wished she was a carefree as those little balls of fluff, unaware of the potential danger brewing just behind the door.

the two teens felt there hearts skip a beat  as Chess’s pacing suddenly stopped two steps from the kitchen door, as Arlyn suddenly shouted something over the top of the dogs, and suddenly they were moving towards the front door with some haste in their stride. Rayla heard the door open, but instead of Chess leaving, a new, heavier set of footsteps entered the hallway.

She could pick up what sounded like metal clicking together with each footfall. Armor? Weaponry? Arlyn had mentioned going to the guard to give them the heads up, but she’d tell them if the local guard wanted to talk to them, right?

Right?

Cookie, ever the sweetheart, started wagging her tail as Rayla tensed, ready to pounce.

She watched the door handle as it wiggled, turned slightly, and clicked.

The door swung open, and Rayla reacted on instinct, springing forward like a striking viper, knife in hand, ears blind to Callum’s slightly garbled yelp of warning.

Rayla saw blue enamel set into Katolian heavy steel armour, and then the world suddenly went sideways with quite a bit of force.

She thudded into the wall painfully, and slid down into cookie’s unoccupied bed with a sad thump, sending a cloud of dog hair up into the air.

Pain bloomed in her ribs and side, and it took a hot moment for her to blink the stars out of her eyes, but the moment her vision cleared, she was met with the sight of a tall, imposing, dark haired woman, in blue and sliver armour with traditional katolian geometric details picked out in gold on the edge of her tunic and shoulder guard. Rayla could see that she was armed, too.

There was a short sword still sheafed at her hip, and a huge, sharp looking shield on her back, which some bit of Rayla’s mind pointed out was big enough to be used as a sled in winter.

she blinked again, and Callum was already between the two of them, stopping any sort of fight before it could start. He was signing to this stranger rapidly, hands flying at a million miles per hour, and whilst Rayla had not clue what he was saying, she was sure that he was defending her.

As he did so, the tenseness that surrounded this armoured person lessoned, but didn’t go away entirely until Arylin and chess appeared in the doorway behind her.

Arylin smacked the tall stranger over the head, clearly realising what had happened by Rayla’s current location (and the Rayla sized splat mark on the wall above the poor, stricken moon elf).

“Amaya you block head.” Chess sighed and signed, “we told you Callum had turned up with a friend from school.”

This armoured juggernaut looked rapidly between Rayla and Callum with a look of confusion, before she had the decency to look very apologetic as the links connected in her brain between ‘Callum’s friend from school’ and ‘teenaged moon elf in a set of Callum’s spare pyjamas’.

-sorry- she signed, offering a leather gloved hand to Rayla to help her up. -My bad-

Rayla gave her one hell of a stink eye.

‘My bad’ her ass.

==

In the following couple of hours, Rayla found out 3 things about this strange creature know as Amaya over a couple of rounds of tea and cake.

The first was that she was Callum’s aunt, the youngest of Chess and Arylin’s two (as it turned out, happily adopted) children.

The second that she was deaf, and the reason the whole family knew sign language so well, and she was more than happy to have chess interpret for her for Rayla’s sake.

The third was that her arrival to the farm had nothing to do with the fact that Viren was in the area, in fact he’d rapidly left the village with his partner in crime when he’d spotted her riding along the high street.

-he skittered off like a startled rat- was her flat summery of Viren’s less than graceful exit. -or a cockroach.-

No, the reason she was here, and not at her post at the border, was that she had gotten orders from king harrow to get the family together to go to Xadia to try to find Callum. In the words of the king himself:

“please go and get them before they decide to go off on there own and cause some sort of international incident.”

Arylin pretended to be insulted by the mere idea of herself, a retired general, and chess, a former ‘intelligence officer’ of dubious origins, would ever do such a thing, whilst Chess pushed the heavily annotated map of Xadia that had been sitting on the living room table under a large book on carnivorous plants.

-shortest missing person search ever.- Amaya shrugged, ignoring her parents antics. – the second order was to get your ass back to the capital asap.-

That last part was directed at Callum, who looked up from the bowl of strawberries he was demolishing with frightening speed with a curious look on his face.

-not back to school?- he asked.

-ha ha no. not until this whole mess has been gotten to the bottom of.- the fond look of exacerbation that played across Amaya’s face was one of someone who was rather used to Callum prioritising books over his own safety.  -may I remind you that you were kidnapped?-

“and nearly killed before that.” Chess added. “and that the culprit for first is still at large?”

Callum dipped his head down in embarrassment.

“Besides,” Arylin huffed.  “you are not going anywhere tonight. that dumbass is likely still close by, and he’s both bold enough and dumb enough to try to snatch him off the road if he gets the chance.”

Amaya nodded.

-Gren is on his way with some back up, safety in numbers.-

Chess craned his head over to meet Amaya’s eyes.

“so, how many people are we feedin’ tonight, Amaya.” They asked

-…wouldn’t you like to know.-

“Amaya.” Chess’s tone may have been lost on their daughter, but the unimpressed expression on there face was not. “how many people?”

-5 including Gren.-

Arylin caught Callum’s attention and pointed off towards the bedrooms. Callum shot her a thumbs up in response and tugged Rayla up to her feet.

“time to grab out he blankets and futons out of storage.” Callum whispered as Chess launched into a ‘why didn’t you tell us about the extra people sooner you know those locusts devour the pantry’ lecture.

A small part of Rayla’s heart ached as the rather one sided chewing out started to echo Ethari’s reaction to finding out that the assassin squad had ‘invited’ themselves over out of the blue, but she shrugged it off.

“what’s a futon?” she whispered back, flowing him out of the room and up the stairs.

-

The back up squad arrived just after night fall, slipping in though the back pasture and stabling there horses whilst Ayrlin kept the dogs quite, just encase someone nefarious was hanging around, you could never be too careful considering who they were dealing with.

Callum pulled Lieutenant Gren into a tight hug as soon as he was though the threshold, soaking in the warmth as his honorary uncle greeted him with relieved tears.

“we were all so worried” the red headed ball of sunshine hugged him back

The quartet of people who accompanied Gren were all people that Callum knew. there was Ekkers, cheerful and spry the, old captain who was almost another grandparent to him, Andrews and Niva, who were both cavalry lieutenants and old friends of Amaya and Sarai, and in the case of Niva, one of the best horsewoman around. The final person, brining up the rear and brushing something off his clothing, was someone who Callum was not expecting.

“Corvus? I thought you were in Evenere?”

Corvus was, in the opinion of Amaya and quite a few of the higher ups in the military, the best ranger going, and, if Callum squinted, looked like he still had some swamp cherry petals trapped in his hair and under the strap of his bag. Out of all of them, he looked the most tired.

He had heavy bags under his eyes, and despite the fact that he was still moving with a sense of cat like grace and stealth, he was slumping, and eyeing up the sofa whenever he thought Amaya was not looking.

“was.” He replied, inching closer to the soft, squishy refuge. “but your safety is more important than rouge marsh toads.”

Well, if he insisted.

-

Rayla lurked in the shadows like a cautious cat as the group debriefed Amaya on what they had witnessed between the point they separated on the road, and when they arrived at the farm stead.

the report was as thus: There were groups of riders, some human, some not, roaming the grasslands outside the village, seemingly following the roads from a distance, armed with spyglasses, rope and what looked to be some sort of magic tracking doodads that none of them could positively identify at a distance.

“they kept disappearing every time we tried to get close.” Niva grumbled. “turned tail and ran like cowards”

“but there were separate groups.” Ekkers added, stroking his stark white beard “3 or 4, made of between 4 to 6 people in each.”

“the last group met with Viren and his new cohort.” Andrews reported gruffly, “and for some reason they left the aria back towards the old vineyard rather quickly.”

“gee, I wonder why.” Arylin sighed dryly, side eyeing a very innocent looking Amaya who sipped her tea like she had no idea what she was talking about.

“indeed.” Chess hummed, amused.

A timer dinged loudly from the direction of the kitchen, making Rayla jump slightly from her spot in the hall.

“ah, that would be dinner.” Chess neatly popped up to his feet. “Callum? Set the table please.”

Gren and a still very sleepy looking Corvus volunteered to help get dinner, which had been tormenting everyone by filling the house with a delectable smell for hours now, dished up. Rayla trailed behind them, fully intending to swipe some of honey roasted parsnips before they got to the table.

Everyone else, including Arlyin, dipped off in the direction of the cellar to grab up some drinks to go with the food.

-

Ekkers was up on late night watch.

The cool breeze that slipped though the crack in the window was refreshing after a long day of riding under the sun, and a heavy meal, and the fire bugs that danced across the yard was mesmerising to watch between rounds of scanning the yard and surrounding land from his hidden perch next to the upstairs window.

He had good view from here right down to the stream, where the far bank had a scattering of lanterns that highlighted the road that snaked off back to the rest of the village. Truly, a peaceful sight. Picturesque, you could say, but the idea of dark mages slinking around in the shadows sort of ruined the ambiance a tad.

The house around him was silent aside from the odd snore, the skittering of the a dog chasing a opossum across the yard, and the signing of night insects beyond the walls.

So, understandably, the sudden appearance of a teenaged moonelf, pale and weary under the thin moonlight at his elbow made him jump more than a little. Ekkers' fingers twitched towards the knife tucked under his shirt before he corrected himself with a mental admonishment, and he turned away front he window to face Rayla.

“you ok there lass?” he asked, watching her as she watched him. “little late for a snack run, huh?”

“.. I can’t sleep.” she told him quietly after a while, keeping distance between them but relaxing a little.

“nerves? Worried about Viren?” Ekkers guessed “never been around so many strange humans before?”

“sort of? And yeh.”

That was understandable. Having a bunch of adult soldiers, current and former that she didn’t know around was a different beast from just having Callum, and the dynamic duo who were not much older than Callum around.

Plus Amaya could be a intimidating lady at the best of times.

“it will be ok, lass, you’ll see.” Ekkers gave her a reassuring smile. “old lord twatface wont come close with Amaya around, He's rather afraid of her.”

The use of his old nickname for Viren made the young elf chuckle softly, breaking the tension surrounding her even more.

“now off to bed with you Amaya’s going to be up at the crack of dawn, and she’s going to expect us up not long after.”

Chapter Text

In all the time that Callum had been in Xadia, Callum’s critter riding had managed to improve.

Maybe it was getting the opportunity to attempt to ride animals that were not horse, mules, donkeys or the odd ox, maybe it was because the stable master was a more patient teacher than his old riding instructor had ever been, but aunt Amaya was impressed with the fact that he could stay in the saddle for more than 10 minutes at the time.

The fact that the handsome spotted hinny that chess plopped him on the back of was a well-seasoned trail and pack mule also, probably, had something to with it.

Eather way, they were all fed, watered and on the road by the time dawn broke the next morning, moving in a coordinated pack westwards towards the distant woodland and mountains that separated the heartlands from the capital (aka were they want to be).

Chess and Arylin rode alongside Amaya, whilst the rest of the group made a loose ring around the kids and there mounts, partly hiding them from view from the herds person or rider they came across as they discarded the roads in favour of taking the most direct route across the open, rolling hills.

Rayla’s animal of questionable origin (no one was sure if she was a horse or a mule) seemed to like her, and was happy enough to trundle along next to spots in the middle of the pack as the miles rolled on by.

“horses are weird.” She informed everyone when hey stopped for lunch, sliding out of the saddle stiffly. "weird and bony."

“is it the legs or the ability to see invisible monsters?” Ekkers asked her, slicing up an apple to add to his sweet gelding’s lunch.

-or the fact that they can’t vomit?- Amaya added as her grumpy mare took notice of the little veggie cakes that were appearing from a saddle bag.

“err yes and what??”

Callum rolled his eyes slightly as the cursed equine facts stated rolling in from other members of the travelling party, and set about tending to spots, who was currently having a good scratch.

-

The rest of the days travel was, in the words of Amaya ‘suspiciously quite’, considering they were dealing with Viren.

There was the briefest glimpse of what could be a hunting party on the horizon a little after they set off again after lunch, but they were a long way off, and moving away from them, so it was impossible to tell who it was without chasing them down.

Which they were not going to do.

They were not splitting the party for love nor money- that would be a prime opportunity for someone untoward to launch a surprise attack.

Instead they briskly found their way into the foothills of the katolian Alps, taking full advantage of Aunt Amaya's status to get themselves somewhere safe to sleep at a small roadside fort for the night.

Rayla was not exactly thrilled at the prospect.

Yes, the soldiers there were being very respectful, but it was clear that they were not expecting an elf to be amongst there number this fine summer evening, let alone a teenaged moonelf that was wearing some of the princes spare clothing and armed with a random kitchen knife as a weapon.

“now I know how you felt those first few days at school.” she grumbled to Callum, very aware that there were many, many curious eyes following her around as they bedded there mounts down for the night.

“weeks.” Callum corrected her. “ the first few weeks.”

The fort didn’t have much spare in the way of bed space, being a small fort with a small population,  unless you were willing to include the handful of cells under the main keep, so the duo got a front row seat to the great ‘who’s sleeping in what bed’ debate that kicked off between the members of Callum’s family.

Amaya’s squad and Gren all decided that they were good thanks, and packed themselves into one room the moment the ‘discussion’ started up, and Callum just flopped onto the other bed in the room, pulling Rayla down with him.

“I’m not made of glass Amaya! I’m old, not fragile” Arylin growled, giving her slightly taller daughter the stink eye. “I don’t need the bed.”

-I’m not letting you sleep on the floor mum.- Amaya shot chess a look that read something along the line of ‘help me’ -I saw how stiff you were this morning.-

“and???”

Chess, for their own part, watched the two of them with an air of bemusement. Then he grabbed the blanket and preceded to copy Callum’s bed flop, landing right in the middle and making themself comfortable.

“I think in know where you get some of your sass, Mr.” Rayla whispered to Callum, as the two ladies of war (one retired) continued, as neither was about to let the other take the bedroll on the floor.

-some of it.- Callum agreed. -the rest can be blamed on dad.-

“… so how long until one of them shoves your grunkle off the bed?” Rayla asked, propping her self up on her elbows to watch the show.

Callum shrugged and wiggled under the slight scratchy blanket. He’d seen these fights between mother and daughter go on for hours, and he was too tired to care. He'd find out how the fight played out when he go up in the morning.

-

The forests that filled the gaps between the mountains were thick, old and dense with plant and animal life, and Rayla felt like her head was on a swivel trying to look at all the birds and critters that cold be spotted from the road.

Callum had found a small, battered book on birds and small mammals in the forts break room, sitting half forgotten on a book swap shelf, and he was more than happy to help her identify anything that her sharp eyes spotted.

And they saw a lot considering how quite this stretch of road was.

Blue jays, tawny owls, red squirrels, sprightly robins and a rainbow of warblers in the branches above them, foxes and a couple of surprisingly chill deer between the trees, and even a small family of boars that crossed the road in front of them.

At the altitude they were travelling at, above the foothills, but below what could be consider alpine, the woods around them were mostly made up of deciduous broadleaf trees that bathed the road they were travelling down in cooling dappled shade, a refreshing change from the endless sun.

And Rayla was loving it.

Callum was also notably more at ease as the miles trundled by, chatting with his aunt and grandparents more freely the further they went. Rayla had to ask herself if she’d ever seen him this animated and joyful in his mannerisms.

But than again, outside of the trip to lux a, she hadn’t exactly spent long days on the road with him and anyone he’d call his family. Aside from Soren, perhaps? She could swear he’d referred to the slightly dense blond as his cousin at some point.

Or had that been someone else talking?

No matter, she’d ask when they saw Him again.

-

The town they stopped in for the night was one that Callum knew well.

Oaken burrows was know for 3 things: woodworking, which included some beautiful clocks, buildings and birdhouses, the bountiful song birds attracted to said birdhouses that were mounted in the trees around the town houses and woodlands, and the bustling art markets that popped up every month or so.

And as they awoke the next morning, refreshed from there much more comfortable stay in one of the many ornately carved inns, they found that one was setting up right outside.

-this is what we get for staying in the middle of town. Especially this town.- Amaya deadpanned at the growing crowds that were starting to build as stalls containing everything from paintings and sculptures, to all the things you needed to create such spectacular works of art. -Especially this town.-

Rayla peered out at the sea of people from under the hood of the cape that Ekkers had pulled out of his bag for her. from where she was standing behind a person sized carved owl that acted as a very pretty sign post for the inn, the crowd seemed vast in a slightly intimidating way.

But there was a nice distraction from the crowds, and that distraction was called ‘Callum and his wanting to go look at the art stuff’.

And the way his grunkle was having to hold the back of his tunic to stop him from trundling off into to crowd in pursuit of the siren song of oil paints and fresh pencils.

Callum gave Chess the wettest, saddest sad puppy dog eyes in existence, a silent plea to be allowed to look at just a single art stall, please? Just the one?

“no.” was Chess’s blunt response.

“no” was Arlyn’s equally blunt response when he turned the eyes on her.

-fuck no.- was Aunt Amaya’s reaction to the same trick. -we can come back next time. And pouting will not help you get your way. At all.-

Callum kept up the adorable pout all the way back out of town, and Rayla had the decency to laugh quietly at the audible sulking.

-

Ezren sat on the battlements, feeding the birds.

The small flock of wood pigeons, crows and song birds had a surprise guest in form of a woodpecker who was spreading some juicy gossip about some early fruiting berry bushes somewhere out in the woods behind the castle, by a big egg shaped lake.

Apparently.

There was a couple of lakes like that in that direction, so it might be worth checking out, even if this information was technically 3ed hand, as the woodpecker had heard the news from a goldfinch who heard it from… idk.

Hopefully not a racoon. Racoons had a sad, slightly annoying habit of being untrustworthy when it came to 'interesting things'.

Anyway, it was a peaceful, sunny afternoon, and Ezren was trying his best to enjoy life whilst the rest of the castle went slightly mad trying to figure out what had happened to Callum after the mess back in Xadia.

A mess that no one, and he really meant no one, would tell him the full details of!

Hed been spooked by a sudden noise and the sight and smell of smoke filling the store room he was in, forcing him to flee with bait in hand out into the inns little courtyard garden thing, where Soren and Marcos found him shortly afterwards. They both looked like they had gotten into a brawl with something, and Callum was nowhere to be seen.

Most of his friends were! But Callum and the moonelf, Rayla? Was it? Was not. And Ezren had been spirited back to Katolis within 24 hours, express postage, without any answers.

And understandably, dad was not having a good time of it. Ezren could tell that he was trying to be brave for Ezren’s own sake, but the cracks were showing.

A messenger crow from the mail room wheeled overhead, shouting loudly, shrilly that there were people! People on horseback in armour and a strange person with big ears approaching the drawbridge!

Ezren blinked. Well that wasn’t a flattering description.

He wasn’t far from the bit of the battlements that overlooked the drawbridge, and a quick sprint and a conveniently placed box meant that he could just about see the group that the crow was yelling about.

Admittedly, he couldn’t quite see who it was from this distance, but the sound of a bugle sounding as the group stated over the bridge gave him a big hint.

as did the sound of some page or someone somewhere below him yelling for someone to fetch the king was another.

Aunt Amaya had finally made it here with his grandparents, and they were not alone.

-

Ezren beat his father down to what was lovingly called the coronation courtyard, a place where many a ball, joust and yes, coronation, had been held over the centuries that the castle had stood in its current state, by a long shot.

It was also the go to place to greet guests, as it was close enough to the stables for mounts to be handed over to be fed, pampered and bedded down quickly, whilst also being grand enough to impress people from most walks of life.

Not that aunt Amaya cared about that.

She did, on the other hand, care a lot about hugging the life out of Ezren the moment he was in arm reach.

-damn it child, can either of you hold off on the heart attacks for a bit?- she groused in the most loving way possible.

“hey! I didn’t ask to be kidnapped.” Ezren huffed, trading an aunt hug for a grandparent double team hug. “that was all Viren.”

“as we know.” Grandma sighed. “you still gave us a fright young man.”

“you and Callum both” grunkle added. “speaking of your brother..”

They carefully turned Ezren’s head away from them, towards the small herd of equines that was already being tended to by a small army of grooms that had seemingly materialised out of nowhere. In the middle of the pack, flanked by a couple of Amaya’s men (and woman? Ez couldn’t tell from this angle) was Callum’s elf friend, looking more than a little surprised at the sudden appearance of all the people, Corvus, who Soren was likely to be very pleased to see again, and..

“CALLUM!” Ezren’s squeal of glee was loud enough to spook more than one of the mounts as he turned into a red blurr, barrelling towards his brother. Callum just got a resigned look on his face, and held his arms open to accept the incoming bundle of joy.

Rayla had the decency to laugh quietly as Ezren knocked him clean onto his ass with the shear force of the hug. Aunt Amaya did not.

Chapter Text

Callum's home had not changed a bit in the months he was gone, aside from the fact that the spring flowers that decorated the halls had been replaced by the summer ones, and there was no little blue dragon ambushing ankles from under tables and beds.

Which was a shame, because zym had been a big bright spot the entire time he’d been in recovery.

But than again, so had Ez, who was still very much around and very, very happy that his brother, and Rayla, had arrived home alive and in one piece.

“slightly morbid there, Ez.” Rayla informed him bluntly as she trailed behind the boys, following them as they gave her the ‘all the important bits and the interesting stuff too’ tour. So far they had shown her where the kitchens was (“very important to know.” Ezren insisted.) given a whistle stop tour of the crown guard barracks and training grounds, saying hi to a surprised, but happy Soren as they went, and the library.

“also know as Callum’s second sent of quarters.” Ezren chirped cheerfully as Callum fixed him with what could only be a withering glare.

“oh, really now.” Rayla laughed at the face Callum was making.

-And you’ll find him bothering the head baker when he’s not in lessons.- Callum shot back, not feeling up to grumbling verbally.

“I don’t bother Barus.” Ezren pouted.

-no, you just eat all the pastries before they leave the kitchen.-

Rayla tuned out the loving brotherly argument as she inspected the artwork on the walls. There was a lot of portraits of important looking humans in a rainbow selection of outfits, some beautiful sweeping landscapes that ranged from mountain peaks to flowing grasslands, and the ever-popular animal portraits, some of which were slightly cursed looking.

Some of them made her memory itch, reminding her that she’d been in parts of this castle before, and that her last visit had not gone well for anyone.

But hey, at least now she could appreciate the painting of fuzzy ducklings swimming with there mum on a pristine looking pond. With the shadow of a large, pointy looking fish looming just below them.

Hm.

As they walked and talked, the boys had let her in on a little secret that she was, probably, was not meant to know, and that was the little fact that there was more than one way to get around the castle.

First, there was the official way, which was the network of halls, rooms and stairways that connected everyone to everything like some great arterial network, but around that, spread though the stonework in and around the halls and rooms like a mycelium network, was many, many hidden passages that were used almost exclusively by the staff, and two princes who liked to get places faster.

For example, to get between the prince’s quarters (where they were heading) and the throne room was 3 staircases, too many halls, and at least two members of the nobility wanting to talk to them about something. But using the passages?

It took half as long, and there were no needy nobles back here to cause delays.

“There are even more tunnels once you get under ground level.” Ezren explained “Viren had a secret workshop down there.”
-don’t go looking for it. - Callum added as they finally made it to the top floors of the prince’s tower -it’s a maze down there, and the workshop locks from the outside, and not many people know where it is. -

-

Rayla had, after some adorable puppy eyes from both Callum and Erzen, aimed at the rest of there family, been offered one of the spare rooms in the prince’s tower for her stay, and the boys had been more than happy to help her get settled in.

Said room was the size of the lower floor of the house she shared with her uncles back at school, with the softest bed she had ever lain in, her own bath (the toilet was in its own little side room next to it!) and to top it all off she had free access to raid Callum’s wardrobe for some pajamas that somewhat fit.

“Thank you Callum~” she chirped, carrying her loot back across the common/ cozy as fuck living room that connected her room to his.

Callum stuck His tongue out at her from where he was flopped on his own cozy looking poster bed and went back to going through a stack of letters and leaflets that had apparently been sent to him over the last couple of months but had never made it to him at school.

In the time it had taken her to wander over to Callum's room and back, someone had dropped some fresh towels and some amazing smelling fruit that turned out to be soap in the bathroom for her to use, along with some hair care bits with a note from head housekeeper apologizing for not having any elf specific items for her.

Well, that was sweet. And unnessasery, since what they had given her was more than enough! If a little deceptive.

Who the hell made a realistic apple shaped soap to begin with?

-

It was raining the next day.

Really raining.

Did you bring a swimsuit? You gonna need it. Raining.

Callum honestly loved it when it rained like this, and not just because of his connection to the sky arcanum. The thick walls of the castle muffled the sound of the train as it poured down, blanketing the buildings and grounds in a peaceful hush.

It was still early in the day- the sun was up somewhere behind the rain clouds, but no one had called him for breakfast yet. Callum propped himself up on his elbows and continued to watch the raindrops marble together on his bedroom window, his mind at peace with the world.

Though the blurry glass, Callum spotted a dark blob that was a messenger crow darting across the sky, heading towards the rookery, the third this morning.

And if he squinted slightly, he could see a black and green blob that was pip, stubbornly insisting on his morning flight, weather be dammed. Callum couldn’t see his father’s balcony from this window, but he was sure the regal king of Katolis was holding his balcony doors half open, dressed in his dressing gown and slippers, trying to convince pip to cut sky time short (and being completely ignored).

That songbird was a sassy one.

A thump and a sigh from the next room over informed him that Ez had finally dragged himself out of bed, waking bait up in the process.

From her spot at the end of his bed, the still unnamed moonstrider pup yawned and rolled over in her sleep. the very same moonstrider pup who was meant to be back at the farm, but had somehow not only packed herself into a bag, but had stayed quite enough whilst they were on the road that no-one realized, she was there until she was found haunting the stables yesterday evening.

Rayla had managed to lure her into a basket with the aid of a sausage butty, and the three of them had spirited her up to their rooms before the little lady could get herself into any more trouble.

The attempt at some  sort of games night the evening before had been completely derailed by attempting to pick out a name for her.

Currently, the consensus was that neither Soren of Ezren was allowed to name anything, ever again.

Even if sneaky was a very apt description for the moonstrider.

-

The pup, who really needed a name darn it, followed Callum to breakfast.

She was a polite guest at the table, laying quietly at the fire side, only doing a minimal amount of whining until Rayla hand picked out some moonstrider friendly foods from the dishes at hand. Somehow the pup still looked graceful, even when she was face first in her bowl of fruit and scrambled eggs

Once she’d finished, she had a good stretch, popped up onto her feet and trotted, quite as a mouse and sprightly as a fawn, right up to the table.  It didn’t take two seconds before she zeroed in on the fact that Harrow was a big softy, and likely to be the one that she might be able to wheedle a second breakfast out of, and the bacon on the king’s plate looked mighty good ….

“Dad no.” Callum could see the soppy look on his dad’s face from across the table. “she’s not allowed anything too rich yet.”

The pup just amped up the sad baby puppy eyes, and the kings resolve quickly started to crumble.

Amaya snorted into her tea.

“This is going to be kiki all over again.” Arylin sighed, passing Rayla the jam.

“Kiki?” Rayla asked.

“One of our dogs.” Chess informed her. “Somebody gave in to the sad eyes repeatedly one summer, and she still begs at the table to this day.”

“And that someone was not me for once.” Ezren chirped.

Harrow flatly refused to reply, but did slide his plate away from the prying nose that was appearing over the edge of the table.

-

Two letters arrived that day.

The first, directed more towards Harrow than it was Callum, extended sincere apologies in regard to the apparent failing of the school’s security team in regard to the kidnapping and other incidents.

“It’s up to you if you want to finish out the semester there.” Harrow informed Callum, handing him the letter to read. “I won’t blame you if you don’t.”

The second was mostly from Tadala, with edits and side notes from Mina, Tobias and Arctum who all had their own things they wanted to say. All in all, it led to a rather crowded, slightly chaotic letter.

‘Turns out that posting this to you is going to cost a small fortune, hence we are packing as much into this as possible’ the letter, in Tadala’s neat handwriting explained. ‘Plus, we are all being watched like hawks encase the folks who took you and Rayla try again.’

‘What she means is that everyone on the trip is under dorm arrest until the perp is in custody’ Tobius’ messier hand writing added. ‘I’m bored.’

‘You are bored?? We all are bored’ Mina added in her trademark blue pen. ‘I wanna go swimming again ☹’

 The rest of the letter followed the same pattern- Tadala informing them of the various things that had gone down over the week and a bit that they had been AWOL, with the others chipping in with little notes and anecdotes.

In short, they were all back at school, and the school was currently on lockdown until the perpetrator of both the attack and kidnapping were in custody, or in the words of Arctum ‘until the persons head is on a stick.’

None of the student body was happy with the choice- neither was the staff for that matter- but at the same time there was an air of paranoia floating around over the idea that a pack of dark mages were lurking around somewhere, just waiting for a chance to snatch up some poor defenseless elf to turn into dark magic soup. Or something.

‘Jamal and his cronies have been rather quite lately.’ Tobius wrote with an air of amusement. ‘Especially after one of them, who I won’t name, said some unkind things about Rayla within earshot of Runaan.’

‘You both should have heard the sound they made when Runaan materialized behind them.’ Arctum added ‘it was the squeak of the dammed.’

It took half of the letter for one of them to say that Amaya had sent news of their rescue to Janai to be passed along to people who needed to know (school, various government bodies, a certain pair of moon shadow elves.) and she’d taken time to pull Tadala out of class to inform her of the news in person.

‘Ethari cried when he found out that you were ok.’ Tadala added. ‘I think Runaan wanted too as well.”

Callum was relieved that they had all gotten out of the mess intact and vowed to send them all an update as soon as he could.

“do you want to write one letter between us, or should we write one each.” Callum asked Rayla, pulling some parchment out of one of his desks draws.

“Well, they worked together to write this one- and they are not wrong about the cost of things, by the way.”

Callum made an indigent noise but handed her her own pen anyway.

-