Fairyland Chronicles - Character Side Stories

[Yurrechire]

“Let me tell you a story, daughter of mine-- before the last dragon flees from our skies, and there is nothing left to tell.”

She heard that voice whispering in her ear, sometimes. Especially when the world was sleeping. Or when the last surges of adrenaline fled from her limbs, and the glory of battle dissolved into sweat, and blood-slicked hands grasping the spear, and smell of a fallen enemy’s voided bowels.

For the story was a lie, as were many things in McWren’s life-- merely a thing that a failed knight told his child in moments of self-deception. Of weakness. She saw these for what they were, now, and hated both with a burning passion.

It was a tale of a man who went to slay dragons, and capture the heart of a princess. Of a man who wrestled with trolls, diced with a necromancer, played 100 questions with a coven of witches, and won. He was still alive, this man- a drunken lecher and philanderer, living in the slums and squabbling daily with the much-suffering, ham-fisted woman who became his wife.

Growing up in relative poverty, those tales had been a welcome escape. The first time she rode a bird (awkwardly, falling off even before the loaner began to gallop), she’d been reminded of them in a startlingly visceral manner. For that was what the girl-child wanted to be- the slayer of dragons, destroyer of orcs, rescuer of … (surely, there were princes that needed rescue, on occasion?).

She grew up, wanting to be a hero.

Life thought differently.

Dark Legion was not a choice as much as the default state- Catherine swore her first oath for love, and lived with the bitter consequences of it to this very day. The bureaucracy of the union grated, and the string of increasingly frustrating bosses she’d been serving under, following the fall of Lady Silver, was less than satisfying.

The most recent events did not help- the poorly organized fey rebellion was barely a step up from Melot’s politics and Ciar’s incompetence. She stepped into it for another kind of love: a sisterly one for a boy named Soraya Jasne, who, for reasons unknown, chose to go under the alias of “Ezekiel Stalker”.

The real Soraya had been dead for almost a decade, of course- a casualty in a squabble between two mages of no great consequence. She’d found what was left of his body in the depths of the Glast Heim sewers. Most of it was scattered over some fifty feet of passage. But not his right arm. That fact bothered Cat for almost a minute, before her mind, tired of bending under the magical influence of a necromancer and continuous stream of comrades' deaths, broke entirely.

For that was how such things went.

There were many kinds of insanity in the world- ranging greatly from homicidal axe-wielding maniacs, to drooling imbeciles, encompassing everything in-between. Her madness was a slow and gentle thing, conceived in the darkness an age and a half ago. McWren held it close to the heart without being much aware of it, using it as a shield against the knowledge and acceptance of reality.

“Let me tell you a story..” She murmured to the desert landscape in the present, steering the massive bird down a barely visible track. The camp of gypsies, merely an hour’s ride out-- she’d told Reilinn of it, some days ago. It was time to see what Tyrfing and his current owner left alive. Maybe, pick off the remainder. Cookie needed targets to keep in fighting shape, and McWren simply needed a distraction to keep the sanity at bay.

“A story about a whirlwind that descended upon your camp, wiping out the strong and the weak alike. Spearing children, and making sure that the less desirable elements of the society did not live to procreate further.”

When one could not be a hero, a killer was the next best thing.