An'owyn

Clinging to Burning Embers

Foggy grey darkness surrounded her. It was warm but uncomfortable, a stifling claustrophobic pressure that made her feel queasy, sick to her stomach. Yet she still forced the energy into her lead-heavy limbs, even as a searing shot of pain blazed through her skull. A faint voice was only just audible over the buzzing white noise that rang through her ears.

“Mother…”

Darlaniette fought back the clinging, persuasive hands of her unconsciousness, the exertion forcing a light, sweat out of her pores. Words of self-sabotage wound themselves across her vision in blurred cursive script – wouldn’t it be so much easier to stay in the dark, dank depths of her coma, perhaps not to wake up at all? It would be so much less effort…

But she pushed these thoughts aside, her body moving awkwardly in comparison with her usual fluidity, like a piece of Gnomish engineering with a desperate requirement for a can of oil, a marionette with half of its strings severed.

“Please wake up…”

The voice became more insistent, louder. She fought towards it as if swimming to the surface of an impossibly dark, warm and oppressive lake, tendrils of pondweed catching her ankles, trying to pull her back. Slowly, the blurry grey blanket was retracted from her eyes In its place settled the sharp image of two vivid-blue eyes, brimming with tears and thickly surrounded by sooty black eyelashes, barely inches from her face.

“Mother, you’re awake! It’s me, Cerelia…”


Darlaniette instantly struck out with disgust, catching the girl above her with her fist, despite the jolts of red-hot pain compressing across her ribcage, skull and right arm. Cerelia flinched backwards, her hand going to her cheek, eyes watering with pain.

“Dor, how many times have I told you not to call me that!” Darlaniette snarled, her upper lip curling with distaste as she settled back against the headboard of her bed, her energy dissipating.

“I’m sorry and I know you tell me these things. Knight-Lieutenant Haephestin told me to come find you and check on how you are, Mother.”

The last word warranted an angry hiss as the Elf in the bed lashed out, her knuckles colliding sharply with the girls cheekbone, causing an angry, red-sore mark to stand out vividly against her milky complexion. At the exertion, Darlaniette clutched at a fresh slice of pain in her ribs, burning her lungs raw like acid and forcing her shoulders to spasm in disapproval. Swiftly stepping off the bed with the air of one resigned to her suffering, Cerelia bit her lip nervously to force the tears from her eyes before bowing deeply, keeping her eyes fixed determinedly on the ugly woven mat covering the floor by the side of the bed.

“I apologise, Shan’Do, I was concerned for your – “

“You needn’t be concerned, child, it is not your business,” Darlaniette interrupted, her tone harsh like a steel knife and loaded with vicious mockery. “And listen to your accent, Dor. You drop the ‘R’ like common scum.” She relaxed against the headboard, the low candlelight masking her eyes with silk shadows.

”Your wounds are… they’re – uh… extensive, Shan’… Dor. I was told to check on you,” the girl faltered, lightly chewing on her lip again as possible sentences fluttered through her brain and out of her grasp like elusive butterflies.

“My injuries are only superficial. I’m the best there is, you idiotic excuse for a child. They will heal,” she raised her chin proudly, although the movement sent stirrings of pain along her spine, chest and temples. At this, the young Elf snapped and moved forward with worry.

“It broke two of your ribs Mother, your wrist was fractured, the Knight-Lieutenant said you suffered... extensive trauma and damage to your chest, arms and head. The wounds are tainted as well, the fel taint will be in your blood…” Her jumbled, panicked words were cut short to a cry of pain as her mother grabbed out, winding the girls silky indigo sheet of hair twice around her palm. She yanked her daughters face mere inches away from her own, a vein trembling dangerously on her forehead and partly hidden by light wisps of sweat-drenched ice-blonde hair, clinging to her skin in damp curls. The loose linen of her robe fell back to reveal an arm covered in bandages. Tendrils of black, like growing roots, were nevertheless visible, snaking underneath the bandages.
“Mama – ah… Shan’Dor, please, it hurts,” Cerelia pleaded, tears brimming and dripping freely down her nose and cheeks.
“The sooner you understand, mongrel, that we are not family, the less I will have to punish you.”
Another voice cut through the air, an invisible smirk carried along with the words.
“Well well, look who’s awake.”


Leaning against the doorframe, a lazily chuckling figure watched the scene with no apparent worry or shock. The man stepped out of the shadows of late evening, through the gaping front door of the house.

“Did you not shut the door properly, foolish creature?” Darlaniette snarled at the young girl - who merely whimpered in return as her mothers fingers dug deeper into her tender scalp - before pushing her harshly away. Cerelia fell back with surprise and landed with an injured cry at the feet of the stranger at the door. She looked up pleadingly, expecting little… and she wasn’t disappointed.

The man looked down with piercing, slightly luminous silver eyes, partly covered by a silver fringe. The colour hinted at his age better than any other would-be signs. His elaborately-made leather chest armour skimmed over a deceptively lean, muscular torso and was adorned with charms and war medallions that proclaimed his status almost as much as the self-important air of pride that surrounded him like a pungent perfume. After only the briefest of glances down at her, his eyebrow arched imperiously and he strode past the sobbing figure on the floor towards the bed.

“I sent her here, you know. I wouldn’t dream of enforcing your parenting skills, but there was no need to beat her,” the smirk widened as his hand, quick as a falcon swooping for its prey, snatched up the woman’s arm from amongst the sparse bedclothes, “Oh, forgive me. I forgot, you don’t want to be reminded that she is yours. We all have to pay for our mistakes.”

Mercilessly, he stretched her arm outward, his probing curious fingers tracing along the length of the bandaging despite her struggles of protest. He pulled it aside a fraction of an inch.

“As I thought. The taint is spreading, the wounds were deep. Deeper than you would admit, Darla?” His eyes bore no pity in their intense gaze, and he shortened her name tauntingly, as if welcoming her hatred.
“So you say, Knight-Lieutenant.”
“These wounds will kill you,” Haephestin stated, as blandly as if discussing the weather. The curled-up form of Cerelia backed against the simplistic, rough-hewn chest of drawers by the door, hands clamped stubbornly over her ears.
“Death is for the weak.”
“Then you are weak, O mighty 'Demon Hunter',” His words dripped sarcasm like raw meat drips blood. He casually, insensitively pushed her arm back toward her, disregarding the shockwaves of pain that this clearly caused. Darlaniette glared at the man with ill-disguised loathing, nursing her arm under the bedcover again. The venom in her eyes appeared only to spur him further on.
“Verishia has begun her training, if your sister had not told you. I notice she chooses not to associate herself with you, as she hasn’t for – what is it? Must be many years now. Many, many years,” the words rolled off his tongue in a sadistic, amused drawl, his smile sardonic. He fingered the medallions on his chest absent-mindedly before adding, “I believe she will make a fine hunter, when the time comes. Perhaps even to my standard.”

He backed away to lean by the door again. As a final verbal knife-wound, he eyed her with thinly-veiled delight and continued, “Your family line clearly holds great potential, dear Darla. It looks like you threw that away, breeding with scum. What a waste.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left the house, his laughter echoing the room long after he had gone.

Silence reigned, for several drawn-out minutes. Even Cerelia’s weeping had hushed as she stayed curled against the chest of drawers, her hands pressed desperately over her ears.

And Darlaniette stayed motionless, sat poker-straight against her headboard, staring blankly at some point on the far wall. A ghostly pallor settled over her face, and in her mind she felt the strangers heavy body against her, remembered screaming, trying to lash out, sobbing for the help that never came in the empty forest at night.