14 Broken Legacy
When Antal had left his father’s house fifty years ago, he’d wondered how long it would be before he smelled the Twilit Plane again.
When he’d fled just days ago, he’d feared he might never return at all.
He emerged through a Curtain. The chill of the Void gave way to that familiar sweet of lavender dusk, a peach horizon and stars crisp at the sky’s darkest apex. Energy hummed on his tongue from cool conduit lights.
And something else. Antal inhaled distant trees, and loam, and old stone, as ancient as his race’s immortality. Another place he’d not visited since his exile. This time, he had no Fionamara at his side. Too dangerous, this den of carnivores. And no mortals were permitted to walk the halls.
The next meeting of the Daey Celva would begin soon.
In many ways, daeyari were simple creatures, drawn to their ancestral forests more than cities and spectacle.
Here, the goal was all spectacle. Antal stood upon a plateau of dark rock, polished to a mirror sheen.
A cliff rose ahead, an arched doorway and decorative pillars carved into the mountain, wreathed in black ferns whose fronds wisped like Void ether.
But even more impressive: the antlers.
Dozens of black antlers were mounted upon the pillars, a tribute to every past member of the council—stone replicas, of course, bearing the same carvings their owners had worn, watching over this entrance for eternity.
Above the memorial, inlays of glowing crystal outlined every constellation in the sky of the Twilit Plane.
No city surrounded the citadel. It perched upon the cliff’s pinnacle, overlooking low marshlands and dusk-hued forest. Daeyari tended to live alone or in small packs, spread across territories to avoid depleting prey.
To serve in bureaucracy was an act of great personal sacrifice.
And great honor. The Daey Celva had formed after Veshri wove his Void-ether body, a new assembly to unify bickering territories, to guide the daeyari as they embraced immortality.
Antal’s family—an Old House—had served the council since its founding. His ancestors’ legacy. His father’s legacy, this scent of old stone that clung to him after centuries of duty.
Antal’s legacy. Shunned.
He lifted his chin, gathering resolve to act like a proper daeyari: silver caps on his antlers, a dark coat with iridescent vesper fabric draped like aurora from his shoulders. On leaden steps, he passed beneath the gauntlet of stone antlers.
The hall had no lights. Daeyari didn’t need them. He ghosted through the monochrome corridor, past offshoots and private meeting rooms, an exit ahead.
Antal stepped out into open air—a massive amphitheater, carved into the plateau.
The circular meeting floor lay below. Around it, gallery seating rose in a hundred stone tiers beneath the stars and purple sky, room enough for several thousand observers.
An alarming number of seats were claimed already—more daeyari than Antal had seen in five decades.
It was disorienting, a medley of too many smells and conversations in his native tongue.
Daeyari perched alone upon the tiers, or lounged in small groups, tails swishing and heads bent for gossip.
Some attendees hailed from the Twilit Plane.
Most were territory lords from other Planes, travelling here to keep current on news and carve out centuries-long alliances.
Technically, Antal had a standing invitation, as a territory lord himself. He’d never dared to test it, to risk his father’s ire.
As Antal stepped into the amphitheater, red eyes flitted onto him. Casual, at first. Passing glances for a new arrival. Their attention swiftly sharpened, narrowed stares and tilted heads, tails nudging neighbors. Daeyari lived long lives. They carried long memories.
Too many recognized him.
Avroz’s son, returned to these halls for the first time in over five decades.
Hyenas. Carrion feeders, always scenting for blood. After Antal had completed his travel years at the end of his first century, he’d prowled these corridors at his father’s heels, learning how to fight with words instead of teeth. Sometimes, the teeth came anyway.
He ignored the stares and descended the steps.
For a moment, Antal felt not himself, some passive observer as his feet carried him. He arrived at a cushion in the third tier: the seat he’d always taken. All those years ago, the hundreds of meetings he’d watched. Studied. Preparing for the life that was meant to be his.
The life determined for him. Avroz had always intended Antal to join the Daey Celva. No room for an alternative.
He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to flee this looming stone, these dissecting eyes, back to the life he’d built for himself. But his territory was threatened. An enemy he couldn’t protect them from alone.
Antal forced himself to sit straight, tail a perfect curl around crossed legs.
The meeting floor was stone as black as the Void.
Strips of inlaid light overlapped in lines of breathtaking complexity, hundreds of swirling hubs and connections—a map of Planes under daeyari control, and the Shard routes between.
Around the map, twenty-one pillows sat in a circle.
Half were filled already, the remaining members of the council still filing in.
Antal knew all of them. Qirza, the council’s head speaker—the youngest ever to achieve that title when she’d been five centuries old, her antlers now curved to seven points, an imperious daeyari with skin nearly as dark as her sclera.
She was always first to settle upon her pillow, dressed in a gossamer shawl studded in starry quartz.
A few pillows down sat Rel, one of the younger councilors at four antler points, visibly complaining to the daeyari beside him, Lyve, a svelte old creature who’d spent every second of his seven centuries scheming.
Lyve rolled his eyes at the rant—and landed on Antal in the audience.
He blinked. Then, a hunter’s head tilt that made Antal clench his teeth.
He and Antal had shared a bed for nearly two years, mostly because Avroz had wanted information from him.
And then came Avroz himself.
He entered the meeting floor in a dark tunic and cape of vesper fabric, golden bands glinting on his antlers.
Each smooth stride was a calculation. Every greeting to his fellow councilors, a touch of his highest antler tip to Qirza, honed to play this game of teeth.
Avroz settled upon his pillow on Lyve’s other side, cross-legged and tail neatly coiled.
Lyve met Avroz with a fanged grin, his greeting too distant to hear, sly from the sway of his tail. At Avroz’s quizzical look, Lyve nodded to Antal’s seat in the gallery.
It was slow, the way Avroz tipped his head up. So slow, Antal knew how intentional the motion was, outward calm even in the face of a surprise. They locked eyes. Avroz held the stare a long moment, barely a twitch on his tail. Antal’s flicked more notably.
His claws tightened when his father grinned.
Avroz broke eye contact just as smoothly, back to conversation with Lyve, nothing amiss.
That trick, Antal had never mastered. He fought to sit still, to keep his tail calm as more observers filled the tiers. He could still leave. Trust the council to handle the aedari, free himself from these smothering memories—
Antal tensed when a new smell hit him. Seafoam and mint, a breeze off a coastal cliff.
“Well,” said a bright voice behind him, “look what crawled out of the Void!”
A daeyari crouched upon the tier above, grinning wide enough to show fangs.
Their dark hair was shaved at the sides, the longer strands on the crown bound in a herringbone plait between five-pointed antlers.
They were slim-built, gray skinned, dressed in dark trousers and a soft blue tunic with silver embroidered up the sleeves.
“Syvr?” Antal said, barely able to breathe through the appearance of another ghost come to haunt him.
“Antal,” Syvr greeted radiantly, “it’s been ages.” They pointed to the neighboring pillow. “Do you mind?”
“I… suppose I don’t…”
They sprang down, claiming the seat. Contrasting Antal’s ramrod posture, Syvr sprawled upon the pillow, feet dangling over the edge of the tier, tail a contented sway.
Antal stared. He stared to a frankly impolite degree, too stunned by the sight of Syvr exactly how he remembered them, their grin so disarmingly warm that Antal contemplated fleeing this wretched Plane in earnest and never coming back.
Instead, he forced his guard up as high as he could muster. Another too-familiar face—this one even more dangerous than Ixli.
“Veshri’s high and sharpened antlers, isn’t this a fun surprise?” Syvr looked Antal over, eyes glowing a light azalea red. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Neither did anyone else,” Antal murmured.
Syvr glanced over the audience, several blatant stares honed on both of them now.
“Fuck them,” Syvr huffed. “Filthy gossip-mongers.”
The accusation was laughable—coming from Avroz’s spy.
Antal’s father currently kept two kezri. Ixli was an enforcer. When territory lords on more distant Planes had problems with derived beasts, bickering neighbors, or even rebellious mortals, they came to Avroz offering favors. He sent Ixli to settle their troubles.
Syvr was no warrior. They delivered messages, grew alliances, gathered information Avroz could spend like currency. Their warmth, as expertly crafted as his father’s glass facade.
“I’m hurt, is all.” Syvr splayed a dramatic hand over their chest. “You’re back on the Twilit Plane for the first time in decades, but I have to hear it second-hand? And I’ve heard endlessly. Your mother won’t stop talking about you. Keeps complaining you’re too thin.”
Antal scowled. “She worries too much.”
Not the worst thing Yme could complain about his visit. And his muscles were plenty toned. Fionamara certainly thought so, with how eagerly she ran her hands over them.
“No, I see her point,” Syvr said gravely. “Look at you. Nothing but antler and bone.”
“By what criteria?”