13 Could everyone just chill the fuck out?
“What the fuck is an aedari?” Fi asked.
Antal had mentioned the name before, with frustratingly minimal details: a rival race of immortals from the far Planes, the prized quarry that had earned Avroz golden bands on his antlers.
But what did that mean? Both the daeyari had snapped from snarling teeth to grim as the grave.
Antal looked as though someone had cut the heart from his chest and held it in front of him.
Avroz looked to Fi with those skin-peeling eyes.
“You brought your vavraesa?” he said, seething distaste.
Fi would skin him. Add his gold-plated antlers to her collection.
She grabbed her sword hilt. One bristling step forward—then Antal snagged her around her waist. She snarled and squirmed.
“Let go of me, Antal!”
“Fionamara. Stop.”
His voice shook. Merciless Void, was it that bad?
In Fi’s momentary lapse of sympathy, Antal shifted her behind him, stepping toward Avroz.
“What do you mean, an aedari was here?” he demanded.
“The smell is masked by the fire,” Avroz said. “But unmistakable.”
“An aedari can’t have been here. Not on this Plane.”
“That seems to no longer be the case. A courier detected the scent at a Curtain nearby. And others. The council met urgently to coordinate an investigation.” He leveled an unimpressed glower on his son. “I was nominated to visit this particular territory. For obvious reasons.”
“And when was I to be notified?” Antal snarled. “No warning of your visit, no warning of what might be going on in my own forest—”
His voice rose as he argued. He spoke faster—a little too fast in daeyari for Fi to follow easily. She picked up the severity from the number of curses, the tremor in Antal’s words.
Whatever had happened here was bad, in a way she didn’t fully understand.
Fi backed away, letting the daeyari bicker as she inspected the clearing.
The scent of smoke itched her nose. All that remained of the structure were charred beams, long cold. Not a large residence. Probably someone living on their own, a yearning for quiet forest that Fi knew well, and instead it had ended like this.
Something cool nudged her shoulder. She spun, weapon in hand.
Two milky eyes stared back. Aisinay perked finned ears, tail swishing a friendly greeting.
“Don’t spook me like that!” Fi hissed.
Blind, but the Void horse had a keen memory for places. And her navigation off the Plane was unmatched, unseen energy currents guiding her way. The Glacier Crest Market was a short Curtain trip from Thomaskweld. Aisinay must have smelled their trail.
She dipped her head at Fi’s admonishment, ears swiveling. This prompted the requisite pat on her snout, an apologetic coo of, “no, it’s alright, good girl.”
Aisinay appraised the arguing daeyari. Avroz in particular. Her ears flattened.
“Agreed,” Fi said. A superb judge of character, for a horse.
Next, Aisinay’s ears perked toward the burnt building. She scented the air, then snorted, hooves pawing the snow.
Just like she’d done outside Calvariz, the burnt house they’d passed. Fi’s blood chilled.
“This has happened before. You tried to tell me?”
Aisinay huffed.
“Well, excuse me, how was I supposed to know that prance, prance, snort is code for suspicious immortal smells?”
Static snapped Fi’s tongue.
She looked up into the shiverpines. Red-orange eyes latched onto her. The lash of an agitated tail, charcoal gray.
Ixli dropped to the ground with the grace of a wildcat.
Fi had to admit, this daeyari had a superb cold-bitch glare.
And superb armor? Fi had never seen a daeyari wear armor, a silver chest piece nearly as pale as her hair, the latter cropped short and crowned in braids to frame her antlers.
Silver vambraces, silver greaves molded to toned calves.
All engraved with dahlias. Obnoxiously badass.
Aisinay snorted softly, ears perked with intrigue toward the new arrival.
“Stop that,” Fi whispered. “Not a friend.”
Nothing friendly in the way Ixli looked Fi over. Not in slitted coral eyes or the flash of fangs.
“What are you doing here?” Ixli said. “Don’t you have a bed to warm?”
Nope. Definitely not going to be friends. Fi didn’t balk, hand rested on her sword hilt. Ixli was armed as well, though Fi squinted to make sense of the weapons: a metal pole at her back, a bow, a single arrow with a ribbon tied around it.
“I didn’t realize Avroz was a gossip,” Fi said sweetly. Loose-tongued piece of shit.
“You think he needed to tell me? Why else were you in Antal’s room? Why would he want you to stay?”
Fi shrugged. “I’m delightful company?”
Jealousy wasn’t her shade. If Antal said he had no feelings for Ixli, Fi believed him. Had to believe him. This creature was all lethal elegance, a disarmingly round face with sharp claws.
What Fi wouldn’t give to have claws, some days.
“Bold, for a plaything,” Ixli growled. “Stay out of the way.”
She stepped away. Fi, in a fit of responsible behavior that Antal had better commend her for later, did not draw her sword and bury it in Ixli’s back.
The argument at the edge of the clearing paused. Avroz nodded to Ixli. Antal’s eyes went wide as a startled raccoon. He had Fi’s condolences. If she’d had two centuries to accumulate angry exes, she’d probably be dead. Just one had nearly done the job.
“No tracks,” Ixli reported. “No more scent trail. Whatever was here, it’s long gone.”
Kezri, Antal had called her. Not a servant, but a pack. Loyal to his father.
Avroz hummed. “You checked along the ridgeline?”
“Yes.”
“And the homes nearby?”
“Of course. Nothing.”
Fi locked eyes with Antal, attempting to mentally transmit a hundred questions. His pleading look was easier to interpret: stay out of this.
As if he hadn’t spent a whole year with her.
“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” Fi said. “There was another fire in Calvariz last week. How many others?”
A pack of predators stared back at her, silent, as if insulted that such a lowly creature would dare interrupt. Avroz narrowed his eyes to dark red slits.
“How many others?” Antal repeated.
For his son, Avroz offered a reply only slightly less frigid.
“The Dusk Council is still investigating, but there have been several reports from other territories, across all four Season-Locked Planes. Unsurprising, given their proximity to each other.” He approached the rubble, bending to scrape a claw along the charcoal.
He rubbed the ash between his fingers, smelling.
“Clever. Using fire to mask the scent of their magic. A daeyari wouldn’t notice without being close.
” A glance at Fi. “A vavraesa wouldn’t notice at all. ”
Fuck him.
Ixli cut a look to Antal—cold, quick—then back to the rubble. Antal wouldn’t look at her at all. Fi knew soul-crushingly awkward tension when she saw it. She couldn’t decide if she hated this, or wanted to dissect it under a magnifying glass.
Avroz stood. “Ixli, one more sweep of the ridge, anywhere the aedari might have used as a vantage point. If you find nothing, we call this trail cold. It won’t have lingered. We’ll return home to see what Syvr has found.”
She nodded with the swiftness of someone eager to leave. Was gone in a snap.
“And what am I to do?” Antal said. “Stand idle while an aedari might be near?”
Avroz turned to him with the most shitty, condescending tilt to his brow. “You, Lord Daeyari? Will see to your territory. The Dusk Council will decide how to proceed. We’ll hold an open meeting tomorrow to discuss this latest evidence.”
He stepped closer. Aggressively close, their chests nearly brushing. Classic daeyari intimidation, predators pressing how near they could stand before one snapped or retreated.
Antal held his ground. Good boy. Even Fi saw how much it shook him to do so.
“Good to see you again, virso.”
Antal flinched when his father raised a hand—an inquisitive brush of claw along the fabric of his collar. Mortal fabric.
“Hm,” was all Avroz said of it. Then, “Perhaps we’ll cross paths again soon.”
He vanished, leaving Fi and Antal alone in the clearing with nothing but rubble.
And a Void horse, flicking her ears between them.
“You have to let me try,” Fi said in seasonspeak. “One time. I can get the jump on him one time. Shave off an antler at least.”
“Fionamara…”
“Or a hand, maybe? Can daeyari grow those back?”
“You meet everything with claws. Please, not this.”
Her attempts at absurdity did nothing to lift Antal’s slump. His harrowed gaze didn’t break from the charred building remains. Aisinay bumped her snout to his chest. With a sigh, he stroked her neck.
“All we’ve fought for,” he said. “All we’ve built. Now this.”
Fi stepped closer, brushing her hand against his.
“What are they?” she asked. “These aedari?”
They’d fought immortals before. How different could this be?
“The aedari come from a Plane far, far from here,” Antal said. A slow recital. “As far as daeyari have ever travelled in the Planeverse.” He considered. “Aside from Veshri, perhaps.”
Mind-numbing to consider. Fi had heard the Shattered Planes described as infinite, a labyrinth of Shards and other worlds. She’d never dared venture beyond the four Season-Locked Planes, but there were hundreds more Planes under daeyari control, humans their primary residents.
A year ago, she’d learned what happened to daeyari when they died, reincarnated as feral beasts, pushed to more distant Planes where they’d not bother their civilized relatives.
But apparently, even farther beyond that…
“The aedari were also mortal once,” Antal said. “Then found immortality.”
“By coming back from the Void?”
He shook his head. “That was how daeyari did it. Veshri, the first daeyari to weave a new body out of Void ether rather than mortal flesh.” Raw energy, contained within an immortal ether shell.
That was the reason daeyari didn’t age, could regenerate despite absurd wounds, could Shape magic better than humans without burning themselves apart.
“The aedari found a different path, bodies woven from the dust of the Planes.”
“Ok. Immortal dust people.” Weird, but Fi could roll with it. “What’s so bad about them?”
“They feed on energy.”
“So do daeyari.”
“Daeyari eat energy and flesh. Aedari subsist on only energy. Mortal energy, mostly. The offerings of their supplicants.” Antal’s tail flicked. “But they can also…”
His silence was familiar, though Fi took a moment to place it. The restlessness of a predator, not used to being prey.
“They can eat daeyari?” she said.
Aisinay huffed at the raised tone. Her ears pricked toward the clearing, the rubble scented with aedari energy. One of those things had been here, and in Calvariz, and no one knew?
“Our species met millennia ago,” Antal said.
“Daeyari are travelers, as was Veshri’s way.
We found their Plane. Offered peace.” He bared his teeth.
“The aedari turned on us, captured some daeyari to feast upon, sought to destroy the ones they couldn’t control.
They’ve created more reincarnated beasts than any other force in the Planes, are ruthlessly difficult to kill. ”
Fi laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic, Antal. We’ve fought Tyvo, Verne. That reincarnated beast of a daeyari with bread knives for teeth. This aedari can’t be any worse?”
His silence didn’t reassure her.
“The aedari have never found the Twilit Plane,” he said. “The route has been a guarded secret. To my knowledge, no aedari has ever set foot on the Season-Locked Planes, either. This is the closest Plane cluster to the daeyari home world. If an aedari scout has made it this far…”
Then that was bad news. Enough to attract the urgency of the Dusk Council. Enough to bring Avroz here to poke through cold ash.
Fi enjoyed many aspects of sharing her life with an immortal. The silly way he laid on his stomach to protect his antlers. All the emotional quirks of his tail. His ozone taste on her tongue, so foreign, yet familiar to the scrap of Void she carried from her childhood brush with death.
She was decidedly less enthused about this aspect of immortals: the terrifying creatures and world-ending hazards, millennia-old wars with a species she’d never heard of.
She’d thought their world was getting too big. It just got a whole Planeverse bigger.
Antal looked terrified enough. Fi tipped her chin up and kept her voice steady.
“So what do we do now?”
Antal studied her, perceptive enough to know her defensive barbs. Shrewd enough to leave them be. He mirrored her, shoulders drawn up, a sigh through clenched teeth.
“I’ll attend the next meeting of the Daey Celva,” he said. “To hear what they decide.”