And so they went to Veliki

With nothing but shame to their name.

Five would rather betray than die

They see All as some kind of game.

O, let them go we don’t need them.

They spat on creation’s breath.

And already have thus condemned themselves

To fates far worse than death.

- Ode written by an unknown bard following the desertion of All’s five greatest Chosen

The forest stood still down here. Blades of grass covered the ground despite the lack of light spilling through the canopy. There were shafts of illumination that speared down from above, but there really shouldn’t have been this much green. Another unnatural quality of this forest was the sound.

There were no birds in the trees. Nor were there any insects. There was no chirping or buzzing, no song to liven up the forest. There was life here, but there was no life.

I really, really hated that about this place. I hated standing still, and I hated being quiet.

The canopy did rustle, I noted, which was useful. If all was quiet as well as still, then I would have trouble moving undetected through the underbrush. I was allowing myself to be quiet and mostly still because I was on the trail, following something. I was hunting.

A deer had been separated from its herd by a well thrown stone. All that had been needed to accomplish that was placing it between it and the rest of the deer. Getting close enough to do that had been a torture in its own regard, but it had been worth it. Now, I was tracking it and it was growing tired.

Not unlike me, but I was here to escape. That’s why I threw the stone, to keep the hunt going. It would’ve been over all too quickly otherwise.

There was one very obvious trail leading through the underbrush. A creature much skinnier than me had fled through here, almost carelessly knocking the longer blades of grass sideways. It made tracking the animal much easier than it would’ve normally been. I followed its footsteps quickly, but only so fast. I kept an eye and an ear out so I didn’t accidentally spook my quarry.

Soon enough, but far too soon for my liking, I found them. The deer was grazing amongst the tall grass. Head down, ears up, listening for danger and completely oblivious to my presence. Far enough away that it wouldn’t notice me right away if it looked up, but close enough that I was certain I would hit my mark.

I moved slowly, hating the stillness. I stopped and unclenched my fist. No, I needed to move slowly. Slowly would make this take longer. That was the whole reason I was out here. Slowly, loving the fluid and unceasing motion. Making myself love it. I nocked an arrow and took aim.

After taking a moment to steady my breath, I pulled the string, really struggling to pull the arrow as far back as it needed to go. Strength wasn’t really my forte. Being quiet wasn’t my forte either. Yet here I was forcing myself to be quiet and pull the string on a bow.

The bending wood made a sound. Something snapped and the deer put its head up. I loosed the arrow but the deer was already moving. I hit, but I missed my mark. Instead of bringing down the deer, the arrow got stuck in its flank as it dashed off further into the forest.

“OH LAWD SHE COMING!” The shout came from above and foretold an explosion of fire that rang throughout the forest. The fire licked the trees and the leaves started burning as a man fell through the canopy right onto where the deer was just standing, landing and bouncing half his height before landing again, completely unharmed.

I stood, my cover no longer serving a point, and warily watched the canopies burn away. They burned fast, but the fire barely spread. The trunks were left untouched thanks to the influence of the tentative druid that had reinforced this part of the woods. To safeguard the surrounding land from the sole resident to this unnatural forest.

“Bubbles!” I called out as soon as the man finished bouncing. “You ruined my hunt again!”

“Hunt!” Bubbles sat up, but only his head and shoulders were visible above the tall grass, which was visibly growing now that sunlight was abundant. One of his eyes was bigger than the other, but the iris of the smaller eye was bigger than the one in the larger one. His hair clearly hadn’t been washed in the entire time that I’d been alive, and I could see one pristine sash wrapped around his shoulder that stood out from the unwashed ensemble.

“Hunt didn’t do shit to Bubbles!” He shouted at me accusingly.

I ignored his antics, and instead pulled another arrow from my quiver and jabbed it into the nearest tree. It was my way of counting how many times Bubbles ruined something for me. I’d lost a lot of arrows to this endeavour, and my dad didn’t much like that. But he kept supplying me with arrows, so I kept doing it. “There was a deer- not a dear, we’re not doing that again- that I was about to loose an arrow into, and then you did…” I gestured upwards vaguely. “Your usual shit.”

Bubbles wasn’t paying attention to me, however. He was instead more interested in casting a spell to manipulate the winds in such a way that made him stand up rather than go through the effort of standing up of his own efforts. Then he glanced my way, seeing me for the first time for the second time in fifteen seconds. “What are you doing here?”

Bubbles’ voice was forcibly high pitched. It wasn’t falsetto, I didn’t think. It was simply… very strange. Apparently someone had heard him speak normally, and they had become eternally smitten with the man. Though how someone could be attracted to this insane mess I saw in front of me, I couldn’t say.

I sighed. “Go home.”

“Okay!” He vanished with a crack, space rupturing as the sorcerer activated a teleportation spell that few ever mastered. I held my breath. Soon enough there was another crack as another teleportation spell sounded and a potted plant fell onto my shoulder.

I swore and stumbled to maintain my balance. Somehow the potted plant maintained balance where I could not.

“Hunt forgot. You are invited dear!” Bubbles told me, his voice piercing into my ear from scarily close. “Let’s go home!”

I spun, trying to gain distance from the crazy man, but no one was behind me. Then it dawned. Bubbles was the potted plant. He was muttering an incantation right now.

“No wait ple-” I was cut off as space ruptured for a third time in rapid succession. My body was shunted into a space too small for me, not that I was even sure here was actually a space. It couldn’t end soon enough, and thankfully it ended after a split second.

I was ejected from the subspace and sailed across the ground, landing in a heap and even rolling a few times. The rolling stopped as I hit a tree, a snapping sound accompanying the impact. I moaned until I realised I wasn’t actually in that much pain, then I opened my eyes.

The first thing I noticed was that this wasn’t ‘home’. At least not for me. I didn’t recognise the well maintained one room shack that stood in the middle of the forest, completely surrounded by mist. That meant I was lost. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The snapping sound had come from the wooden bow I was holding.

“You…” I broke off with laughter that didn’t make sense. I had just lost my one hobby. The one thing that was me. How was this funny? “You just…”

“Happy Birthday!” The potted plant, three ferns in a ceramic pot, spread to approximate someone spreading their arms.

I stared at the plant. “My bow!”

The ferns gave a bow.

“That’s not- you- take me back!”

“I can’t!” The plant announced.

“Do you know what you’ve done!?” I shouted pointlessly. This was Bubbles. It was entirely possible that he was fully aware of every single thing that he did and their implications, but the matter of him caring about it was definitively: he didn’t. But I was mad- angry. Raging, even. That he had done this at this exact time was just pulling at all of my stings, and I hated when people pulled on my strings.

“I, Bubbles,” One of the ferns curled in on itself. “Have delivered you, Amber Shepard, to your birthday present!”

That did it, I stood up and stalked over to the pot. I took a steadying breath then kicked the plant. “I!” I kicked the ferns again, but they had some unnatural constitution that let it whether my blows without bending. “Am!” Another kick. “Amber!” One final kick. “Jewel!”

The kicks weren’t doing anything, so I gripped the one half of the bow that I was still holding on to and stabbed it into the soil. When nothing happened in retribution I warily stepped back a few steps.

There was no reaction for a few seconds. Then the ferns turned ever so slightly to face me again. “Hello Amber! I’m Dad!”

The words weren’t spoken in his usual strangeness, and for a moment, just a moment, I entertained the possibility that these three potted ferns could be my father. Then I realised that was stupid. I knew my father and he wasn’t like Bubbles. I knew for a fact that my mother found Bubbles repulsive. Was this how that person fell in love with Bubbles?

I shook my head and turned to go, only to find myself face to face with a wall of impenetrable mist. The white mist floated ominously in a perfect square around the shack. It’s mostly white form coalesced in on itself, forever spreading but always retreating from an invisible barrier.

A cute yawning sound came from behind me as the potted plant returned to its normal form, only he had half of my bow sticking out of his shoulder. “Come in!” Bubbles told me, back to his usual strange timbre.

There was nothing for it. These were the mists of Du Sverenladen. The mists were a fey creation, a method of defence made so that elven land could not be trespassed upon. I knew that there was a region where these mists permeated around Veliki, and I had been conditioned to stay away from them my entire life.

When someone got lost in these mists, they lost more than simply their bearings. I couldn’t risk that. Somewhat awed, but still fuming, I followed the crazy sorcerer into his shack.

Inside the building was anathema to what I knew of the man. Bubbles was insane, no one argued that fact. He wandered from place to place, sometimes appearing in a place without actually moving there, as he had done to interrupt my hunt, but without any obvious translocation. His magic didn’t even behave. The shaft of my bow seemed to have been accepted by the man’s body. He was completely unconcerned with the casual mutilation.

I hadn’t meant for that to happen. Now I was worried that if I brought it up he’d do something similar to me. Regardless, the shack was barebones and spotless. He had a fire pit against one wall that had a too open chimney above it. It was basically a skylight, but that was the craziest thing in here. There were two rocking chairs facing into the pit, and there was a bed against one wall. Surprisingly, there was a small bookshelf against one wall, which I really hadn’t expected.

Finally, there was a weapon rack against the last wall that was stocked full of various things that Bubbles had probably collected when he had been an adventurer. Staffs, wands, orbs, and other magic things too, as well as an assortment of baubles that had clearly been arranged rather than put there.

“I’ll put the kettle on!” Bubbles proclaimed as he punched a staff that started screaming. “Water’s done! Do you have tea?”

I stood there, not knowing what to do with myself.

“Oi!” Bubbles picked up the staff and hit my shin with it. “Sit!” He didn’t stop hitting me, and I was forced to stumble over to the closest chair under his continued assault. Thankfully he stopped once I had fallen into the hardwood chair.

Once I was seated, he pulled two out carved wooden cups that he upended the staff into. From the staff came steaming water, as if he was pouring from a jug. He thought for a moment, then reached up into his nest of hair and pulled something out. They were only visible for a moment, and all I saw was that whatever it was was green. Then the objects were in the steaming cups of water and one was being handed to me.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to drink what was in the cup. Bubbles was drinking his without issue, and as far as I could tell he put the same things in each of them. But Bubbles was an accomplished adventurer, a Chosen that had lived long enough to retire. The things that slowed him down would likely kill me three times over.

The aged man looked at me with his smaller eye. “You won’t make it to the next eclipse if you don’t accept people’s hospitality!”

“The tea is too hot.” I said, because I really couldn’t think of anything else to say in this situation. That was evidently the wrong thing to say, because Bubbles waved his magic fingers and muttered some magic words, and my tea became too cold.

“Now drink!”

“But you froze it!”

“Of course I’m frozen! I’m cool!”

I just sighed and hit my forehead lightly with the now freezing cup. “You said you had a gift for me?”

“I did!” Bubbles vanished from his chair. Then he walked in the front door holding something shiny in his hands. I sat up. Bubbles wasn’t known for caring about shiny things. Yes, he had one clean piece of clothing, but that was because Vycar had forced it on him to represent Veliki. Bubbles literally couldn’t get rid of it unless he was naked from what I heard.

“You are about to enter the year of your life, where in my life, I got lost for the very first time!” Bubbles announced. “That turned out okay. It was the second time I got lost that things started getting fun! But the real adventure was the enemies you made along the way!” He held up the object, a small metal badge of silver and red. It was a letter V, with the right hand side of the red coloured letter fading into the silver colour on the left. The badge was small enough that it could fit in my palm, which I figured out because Bubbles put it there.

“You were part of the Vitorian Envoy?” I asked in disbelief.

“Were! Was! Are!” Bubbles nodded. “I hate them!”

Meaning if I was interpreting Bubbles right, he had been part of a group that was known as the left hand of the king of Kreg’uune. Only the scariest agents received an identification badge like the one Bubbles had just given me, meaning Bubbles had met the king and made a good impression. Of course, this was Bubbles, so any interpretation had a very real chance of missing the mark.

“What?” I shook my head. “Nevermind that. It doesn’t matter if you were a part of it or not. You can’t give me this! That would be treason!”

“Remember Bamber, the walls have toes and are always tasting!” Bubbles closed my fist around the badge quite forcefully. He leaned close and I smelt… nothing. When Bubbles next spoke he wasn’t using his strange inflection. Nor was he using his charming one. This one was… difficult to describe.

“When the walls close in is when things become truly strained. Options that should be useful, suddenly useless. Useless objects, somehow pivotal. When the abilities which you spent your life fostering are useless and you are reduced to something akin to Nothing, but are still struggling, that is when One pulls you back to Santoria. That is when you become…” He paused, his crazy eyes thinking in different directions.

“Lame!” He finished, back to his normal crazy self. He vanished again and appeared in his chair once more with a flash of mist. I stared at him warily. Whenever he flexed his magic was when the crazy shit happened. Thanks to me focusing on him I nearly missed the white horse trotting by the front door.

Once I was certain nothing else was going to happen, I cautiously opened my fingers and looked again at the symbol of the Vitorian Envoy. The resonating tone of that voice was still disturbing me.

“Oh!” Bubbles shouted, making me jump. “Happy Birthday! Remember, the badge destroys the way!”

“Thanks...” I said. For the first time I think I meant it. Of course, the moment I opened my mouth was the same moment that Bubbles let out a snore. But that was fine. Bubbles wasn’t like the others, simply because he couldn’t be like the others. Right now, on what was probably the worst day of my life, that was exactly what I needed.

The fucker still broke my bow and I wouldn’t forget that, but so long as he stayed mutilated, there wasn’t much more I could do.

I let myself just sit there, letting the ice in my cup slowly melt. After a short period of time, Bubbles muttered something in his sleep and dropped the staff, which let out a gout of flame that lit the fire in the pit that hadn’t been built until a moment ago. The crackling of the fire competed with the snoring of the sorcerer.

It was quiet, but not silent. It was still, but the rocking chair let me satiate my unending desire for movement. Sitting here might not have been Bubbles’ gift to me, but I found myself appreciating it far more than I thought I would have.

Which is probably why it didn’t even take two minutes for it to be ruined.

A crack sounded outside the shack and made me flinch. Bubbles also flinched, but he also jumped to the top of the skylight. A perfectly normal reaction for him. The sounds of someone walking with three points of impact sounded as someone favouring a staff walked in. A regal figure of authority stood in the doorway, the light catching their silhouette, even though the only source of light was the fire in the pit in front of them.

They had silver hair, and their eyes pierced through the silhouette. She wore a robe that had three layers, one of blue, one of silver, and one of grey. There was smoke drifting from the robes, evidence of a teleportation spell of a lesser calibre to Bubbles’. She lurched in the doorway and scanned the shack. When her eyes fell on me she relaxed.

“There you are.” She let out in a smooth voice and strode over to me, favouring her left side rather heavily. “You had us worried when the scrying stone disconnected. Your parents are treating their hair out. What are you even doing in the forest today? It’s your birthday.”

“Yeah.” I made sure I had my fist closed around Bubbles’ gift. It was the kind of thing that could cause some uproar, and I got the feeling that wasn’t the reason he’d given it to me. The badge destroys the way. What kind of advice was that?

The woman’s hand gripped my shoulder like a vice and pulled me up. “Come on, everyone is waiting for you.”

“You mean you were waiting for me.” I shot back with barbs on my tongue. “Or Avien is. Everyone is actually waiting for that.”

“Do not strike that tone with me young lady. This is your birthday, a day for love. Not this.”

I wanted to say something snappy to that. It was my birthday so it fell to reason that I could do whatever I damn well pleased, but instead I bit my tongue. I’d been here before. This woman was Mary Shepard, the father of Avien Shepard and the bane of my life. Normally I could get her to back down with pure belligerence, but some things she didn’t back down on. Me being present for birthday celebrations was one such thing.

Instead I looked to Bubbles, who was crouched on the roof with a bird actively making a nest in his hair. He crossed his arms in an X in front of him in an answer to the question on the tip of my tongue. I almost said thank you, but remembered I already had, so I didn’t. Instead I waved with the hand holding the badge.

Mary took me to the front of the shack and prepared to teleport. Bubbles decided to give us some parting words.

“It destroys the way!” He shouted from the roof of his shack. “IT DESTROYS THE WAY!”

Mary paused in her incantation to take in the parting piece of wisdom, then resumed speaking. This wasn’t the first time she’d teleported me somewhere. Normally we appeared in front of the Shepard house in Veliki. The incantation of a teleportation spell involved the uttering of coordinates, or details that were accurate and precise within the mind of the caster. There was a lot that I didn’t know much about magic, but I knew that. Mary wasn't muttering the normal coordinates. We were going to appear somewhere different from normal.

“Don’t you dare-” I was cut off for the second time that day by a spellcaster recklessly loosing their spellcraft. Mary’s teleport was both more stable than Bubbles’ spell, and more destructive to the user. Though I suspected Bubbles‘ spell had only been as disruptive as it was because he was casting it as a potted plant.

Regardless, Mary’s spell made my skin feel as if I was immolated for an entire second instead of squeezing me, and then we appeared on a podium in the backyard of the Shepards’ with smoke drifting off our clothes. Music blasted my ears from the bard that had been hired to perform for the event, and the talking of dozens of guests matched it for a moment before everything died down to silence.

The bard played a surprised little diddy that fit the tone exactly. Everyone was looking at me.

“Amber! You’re here!” An excited young voice shouted, and my face darkened. I aggressively pulled my shoulder out of Mary’s grip, which had loosened from being vice like now that she had brought me to my party. Then something shifted within me as something else took control of my strings.

I turned around and my face brightened significantly. My lips pulled themselves into a bright smile and a puff of air blew the hair from my face. “Avien!” I said, looking and sounding far more delighted than I was. Probably more beautiful too.

Avien was tall and well built. His hair was short and well kempt, and grew naturally grey. His eyes were a piercing silver that could only come from being born a Chosen. Overall his face was pretty okay, but I thought the chiseled jaw was a bit much. He had received blessings from above that ensured he grew strong, though the same could not be said for his head. The eight sages that had come to teach him magic had given him knowledge, and he had somehow held onto that, but that had done nothing to change the fact that he was a complete and utter buffoon.

He was so ridiculously happy to see me, and while I couldn’t be sure that wasn’t the Gods above playing at things, to micromanage his face like they were doing mine, I suspected he was genuine. Avien kept that happy face up even when he thought no one was watching, after all. All throughout Veliki, everyone put him and me together as an item.

It wasn’t because he doted on me and I played hard to get. No, that wasn’t how things worked here. Not in Veliki. What happened to cause this village wide game of matchmaker occurred long before I was born. My father Jaskair and Avien’s father Garner had met in the seventh border dispute between Kreg’uune and the Warring Sands of Eiar. The two had become fast friends, and shortly after Garner had become chosen he slapped my father on the shoulder and told Jaskair he treasured him like family.

The story went that the Heavens heard and loosed lightning bolts to announce that they would one day be actual family. Years later, when both had retired and moved here with their families, the Heavens intervened and synced Avien’s and my births, and thus interwove our fate. Consequently, we had the same birthday, but I had come at the end of the day while he came at the start. That meant I wasn’t born during the solar eclipse that he was born to. The three meteors that heralded change did not fly for me. I didn’t have any say in this arrangement.

I wasn’t even the older one.

Today marked fifteen years of having to deal with that shit. I let Avien get close and gripped the cold cup of tea Bubbles had given me. Heedless of the way my fingers protested at the cold.

“Are you okay?” Avien fussed, looking me up and down, bending his knees to get a better look at the down parts. In the end he decided I wasn’t obviously wounded, he returned to his full height which, as it had always been, was taller than me. “I was really worried.”

Weren’t boys supposed to be shorter than girls for at least a few years?

“I’m sorry to worry you.” I didn’t say that. But my mouth did, so that’s all that mattered. With the words leaving my mouth, I felt something shift within me as control was shifted back to me.

I let myself smile genuinely in anticipation, then punched the block of ice hard into Avien’s stomach. This wasn’t the first time I’d greeted him normally before doing that, but he fell for it every time. The best part was that his blessed body hadn’t made his stomach any less vulnerable, so this was one of the few joys I could exact from this.

He hugged himself as he fell to his knees before me, moaning all the while. “It’s good… to see… you’re well...”

I didn’t want to say anything, but the Heavens stepped in and made me fuss over Avien, yelling, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

“There’s our Duskchild!” One of the retired Chosen in attendance yelled with cheer, cueing the music to start again. About half of the remaining partygoers joined in while the other half gave me looks of disappointment. The dividing factor was social proximity. I could name each disappointed person and their dog, and saw them on a near daily basis, while the rest I only knew sparingly.

They were the retired Chosen that had eclipsed Garner in their haydays. I tried to talk to them at every opportunity, but they were viciously difficult to pin down. It was paradoxical because some of them had important jobs in Veliki, but they were somehow always around when they were needed so no one kicked up a fuss.

One such adventurer was more subdued and leaning against the fence. Wrenn Astorio, the town doctor. Something of a redundant position, but he healed as many people as the priests did for roughly the same price. The shadows around him were darker, and I decided that if I talked to him, it would be one of the last things I did today. He had this creepy way of never looking at anyone directly, but I always felt watched whenever I passed him.

From the direction he was facing, he shouldn’t have known when I glanced at him. But when I got control back and looked his way, he nodded acknowledgement and raised a cup in my direction when I did.

Another former adventurer was Gamil, who still wore the plate armour from his adventures to this day. Right now he was drinking rambunctiously and all those around him were joining in. I almost moved on, but then I realised he was drinking and Garner had said there wouldn’t be any drinks at Avien’s party. I looked over to the retired general to find him looking at Gamil with concern.

If he knew about it and was letting it slide, I wasn’t going to argue. Nothing could be better than this day being ruined for everyone else. Before I could get back to looking at the adventurers, Garner glanced at me. His expression shifted to let me know just how disappointed he was that I had punched his son and my promised lover again.

Well fuck him, I didn’t sign up for this. I gave him the sweetest godsdamned smile I could manage, which I knew was sickeningly sweet because the Heavens made me pull this exact smile almost every fucking day. Garner immediately grimaced, though he tried to hide it. That meant the smile was worth it.

Avien was starting to pick himself up, so I left his immediate vicinity as quickly as possible. I waved at my mom who just looked relieved that I was there. I didn’t sympathise, so a wave was all she got.

The adventurer that happened to be in my way was on the side that was amused by my treatment of Avien. He was a tall guy, much taller than Avien who had been blessed with height from the Heavens. The former adventurer had black skin, and had a face that ticked all the right boxes without seeming supernatural once you looked past the fact that dust was constantly wafting off of him, not unlike how smoke was wafting off of me, and how valuable stones grew on his skin like pimples grew on mine.

Three circular tables had been set up in the yard, and all of them were mostly full. One was the host table, and would be where I was expected to sit. I wouldn’t. The others were both set aside for the guests, though there were people following the bard around in a conga line, so half the seats were left unattended.

That let me slip into the seat next to Weylon and look with minor interest at the piece he was drawing on a handkerchief that Mary had been shouting about for the past two weeks. If she knew Weylon was defacing it like this, she’d try and kick up a fuss. It wouldn’t go far, since Weylon was much more popular than she was, and I kind of wanted to see that happen now that I thought about it.

“Hello Jewel.” He smiled, half an eye still on his drawing.

“You’re not gonna call me Shepard?” I asked bluntly.

He blinked, then turned to look at me fully. He frowned in confusion. “Did the wedding happen already?”

I scowled. “The wedding isn’t going to happen. Not if I have anything to say about it.” Weylon hummed at that. The problem with what I said was that I didn’t actually have any say in it. “What are you drawing?”

“Just what comes to mind.” Weylon deflected. I wasn’t about to have any of that.

“Let me see.” I pressed on the corner of the napkin and started pulling. Weylon could’ve stopped me, but he lifted his brush and let me drag it over. There were a number of tiny detailed sketches of the scenes that had probably happened shortly before my arrival. There was one of Wrenn leaning against the fence, but there was a tall hooded figure holding a scythe overshadowing him from behind. Another showed Gamil raising his mug in a toast, but there was a small and malnourished man curled up behind him, with the two back to back. The small man looked haunted, but both were lifting a mug.

There were more scenes of several other guests, hinting at things that I couldn’t see with my young eyes. There was a man chatting to a faceless crowd, and his shadow didn’t match. Instead, it was wounded with pieces missing, and it was trying to run from an unseen threat. One depicted a woman happily digging into a meal, while three other women crowded around her, screaming in her face. All four were of the same woman.

One drawing was unfinished, but from what I could see from the rough outlines so far, it depicted a man being punched in the gut. I looked at Weylon, who was whistling softly, pointedly not looking at me.

“Finish it and that’s your birthday present.” I demanded, pushing the handkerchief back in front of him.

Weylon coughed and picked up his brush. “Very well.”

“And do what you were going to draw before I sat down. I want to see that.”

“Are you certain you wouldn’t want something more…” He pondered the wording. “Flattering?”

“I want you to reveal the hidden one controlling my mind.” I told him.

Weylon stared at me.

I sighed. “Look at me, I’m smoking. There’s one thing I wanted today, and that’s already been taken away from me. Look at that pile.” I gestured in a random direction. “Is it big or is it small?”

Weylon looked. I didn’t know if there was actually a pile of presents in that direction but I also didn’t care. “It’s much bigger than what I got at your age.” He commented.

“It isn’t mine. It’s Avien’s. See the smaller one?” I was still guessing at the presence of presents, but from the way Weylon found something to look at, I was pretty sure I was safe in that assumption.

“Is that yours?”

“Nope. Avien’s. All my presents are at home because my family isn’t vain. And compared to him my presents wouldn’t even cover a small table.” And most of that was stuff I didn’t need or want. I didn’t say that because it wasn’t the point. Chances were Avien wouldn’t even look at his presents twice either.

Weylon chuckled as he started adding strokes of paint that suddenly transformed the mess of lines he was working on into something beautiful. “I didn’t know you were so utilitarian.”

“You haven’t spoken to me since I was nine.” I said bluntly.

Weylon paused. “No, I recall seeing you just last year.”

I scoffed. “You mean when the prophecy was unveiled? The only way you saw me then is because I was running away. No fucking way I want to spend my life attached to someone prophecised to wage a decade long conflict against an actual demon. All my normal exit routes were blocked, so I had to resort to the tunnel under the town hall.”

“A prophecy was unveiled?” Weylon asked.

“Wow, you’re out of touch.” The artist sagged at my harsh words. I thought about it, then leaned in closer, lowering my voice so only Weylon heard me. “Listen, I need you to keep me here for as long as possible. The bitch Mary is watching me, and the moment I’m by myself she’s going to pull me off to some celebration she dredged up from the depths of the Hells or the infinite abyss. Ask me about what’s happened in the town, I’ll fill you in. Make small talk or whatever. Anything would be better than having to deal with being stuck next to that thing.” I jabbed my finger towards Weylon’s depiction of Avien.

“I’ll do my best.” Weylon half heartedly promised, but he pulled through. He finished up my sketch soon enough and the way he painted Avien brought a smile to my face. The larger guy was reacting entirely to the blow I gave him, with his feet lifted off the ground, his expression pained, and his eyes almost popping out of his face. I, on the other hand, almost looked like a devil thanks to the wide sadistic grin painted onto my face.

It wasn’t what I wanted, but that didn’t matter. It was perfect.

Thanks to the way I guilt tripped Weylon, he staved off the worst of the festivities for as long as he could. Eventually Mary couldn’t let that get in the way of her celebration for little Avien any longer, and I got pulled away to the birthday boy’s table. Anyone who talked to me got a sour look and a monosyllabic response. If Avien asked anything he received a sick smile and the same response.

Eventually the time rolled around for the birthday song, and the bard lead the party in wishing Avien luck in the next year of his life.

Only Avien.

I was conveniently forgotten in the song.

A few people gave me concerned looks, but I ignored all of them. Instead I rubbed a thumb over the metal badge in my pocket, taking in all the curves and thinking on the words Bubbles had left me with.

The badge destroys the way.

It didn’t make sense, but the words kept repeating in my mind. It got me thinking. My only lot in life was to be some idiot’s wife, thanks to someone saying something long ago that had to be construed to make this ridiculous scenario. That was, through a certain lens, my way in life.

It would see me sidelined in another person’s story. Eventually I would become important again, but only once he decided to have kids. After that, anything could happen to me. Actually, that was naive thinking. Anything could happen anywhere along the way. When that feud with the demon prince started, I would be a prime target thanks to my proximity to the idiot.

I was not about to be some damsel in need of rescue. That wasn’t something I would allow myself to become. If that was my way in life, then I would destroy it.

A smile spread across my face as the party stepped up a notch around me. I sat there, out of sync with everyone else, planning out the things I would be doing from now on. It had to happen soon, and I would be finding a different path before long. If that way lead me back to Avien, I would destroy that one too.

I ran my finger over the badge and winced. Somehow it had flipped in my pocket and my thumb pricked on the needle. But when I pulled my hand out to look there wasn’t any wound. The badge thrummed in my pocket and I knew. Some things were about to change.