21 Light as a feather, hot as the sun #2
“An aedari has been here,” he hissed. “Recently.”
Well, that wasn’t comforting. “Wait here. I’ll check the bedrooms.”
Footsteps creaked the porch.
Fi reached for her sword hilt—then froze. The farmer stood in the doorway, dressed in work clothes and hair in a messy bun, eyes very wide. He paid Fi little mind, staring instead at the daeyari in his living room.
“Easy, easy!” Fi held out a hand and put on her best soothing voice. No simple task, with a predator beside her. “We aren’t here to hurt you, we just want to ask a few questions.”
A growl rumbled Jazst’s chest.
He shifted onto the pads of tense feet, claws curled into black sickles as he stared at the man in the doorway.
The man stared back at the daeyari. He, too, shifted his boots to a wider stance.
Another chill raked Fi’s neck. Fear slipped off the man’s face, replaced by something harder. Keener. In the dim light, his dark eyes glinted, a flash of…
Gold.
Syvr had called them… shapeshifters?
Jazst lunged.
The man moved faster—immortal fast. He dodged a snap of teeth, twisted around claws coated with searing red energy.
Gold smoldered in his eyes. A brighter flash sparked in his palm as he drew a sword from nowhere.
The sleek blade was fully metal, edge blazing with golden light so bright, Fi had to squint.
When Jazst reeled, the man grabbed an antler.
His sword slashed like a vengeful sunbeam.
One clean stroke severed the daeyari’s head.
Jazst’s body slumped to the ground in a heap of claws and limp tail. His head fell separate, antlers clattering the boards, red energy sizzling over severed flesh and bone. Fi staggered backward, too slow to even draw her sword in time. Everything happened so fast.
Then silence.
Black blood pooled across the floor. Burnt ozone coated the air—an immortal body broken, energy sent back to the Void, doomed to reincarnate as a beast. Yet the aedari showed no remorse. He circled his kill. When the corpse lay still, his sword faded back to normal metal.
Golden eyes snapped onto Fi.
Fuck.
He didn’t lunge at her. Didn’t even unhinge his jaw for a monstrous shriek.
The dreaded immortal foe of all daeyari straightened slowly, standing several inches taller than before.
His features had shifted, cheeks higher, skin tanned.
His eyes were bright gold, glowing with energy, a sweep between Fi and the dead daeyari.
He stepped closer. Fi backed away.
He paused, hand raised.
“Aive, bretiri,” he said, soft and slow. “Aive.”
Fi didn’t know the words. She knew the tone, the hand gesture: calm.
Tough sell on that one. She appraised the cramped space, the dead immortal on the floor. The aedari advanced slowly, more soothing words in a language she didn’t speak.
“Ase-su selgu isi atec ne dusven?” His head tilted, unnervingly human apart from the eyes.
A curl of fingers beckoned her closer.
Another predator, with a face to disarm his prey.
He tensed when Fi dug into her pocket. Not for her sword, because fuck that in close quarters. After how swiftly he’d beheaded Jazst? She grabbed a fossilized shell, polished carnelian smooth in her palm. Transport stones. A bitch to replace after she’d lost her first set.
When she cracked the two halves of the shell apart, they hummed with energy, eager to rejoin. She hurled one half out an open window. The other half, she held tight, activating it with a pulse of her own energy.
The aedari lunged, just as Fi’s stomach lurched.
This was sharper than Antal’s teleportation.
More molten than Voidwalking. Transport stones used dematerialization, a process mortal bodies could only bear in short bursts, before melting.
Fi reappeared where the other half of the stone had landed in the farmhouse yard, skin covered in invisible fire ants, gasping a curse at her fickle human flesh.
Now, she grabbed her sword hilt. A lesson Fi knew well: never run from an immortal. She palmed a daeyari energy capsule from her pocket, Shaping the burning cold current to form a crimson blade. The yard was empty.
Then it wasn’t.
The aedari appeared with no static on her tongue. Different from a daeyari teleport, a low snapping sound, a burst of heat as he was suddenly in front of her. He eyed her sword. Lifted his.
Then shouted as an arrow impaled his arm.
The metal projectile lodged clean through his bicep. A long metal ribbon attached to the end, trailing several feet along the ground. He had only a moment to stare at it.
He dodged a spear thrust. A flash of red energy, silver armor.
By the limitless Void, Fi never thought she’d be glad to see Ixli.
The daeyari moved with lethal focus, another thrust of her spear at the man’s head, the shaft metal and blade Shaped of coral energy.
The aedari parried. Slashed. A dance of blades.
His metal sword had strange symbols carved down the length—glyphs, Syvr had called them.
They lit up as he swung, coating the edge gold, hissing against Ixli’s red.
She blocked with her spear shaft then swiped with a free hand, metal-tipped claws raking his cheek. Fi needed to raid a daeyari armory.
Even the aedari’s blood was gold, bright as sunlight. He pushed two fingers to his cheek. A tattoo on his wrist lit up, another glyph, then his skin knit together with a gilded flash.
Static struck Fi’s tongue as Antal appeared at her side. He grabbed her shoulders, eyes wide as he looked her up and down.
“Fionamara,” he breathed. “Are you—”
“Fine! Let’s go!”
The aedari pushed backward, as if to teleport again—then jerked to a halt.
He snarled as the arrow in his arm flared red. So did the attached ribbon. Ixli had grabbed the other end, winding it around her fist, fangs bared as she held them tethered. The aedari tried to rip the arrow free, but his hand recoiled from searing red energy.
He lunged at Ixli.
She dodged like a slip of moonbeam. Thrust at his throat. The strike should have hit.
Red screeched against gold as the spear glanced sideways, deflected by a wall of gilded light, a barrier of glowing…
Feathers?
Wings appeared at the aedari’s back, feathers made of golden energy, cloaking him like a shield. His features shifted again, the glamor dropped to reveal ears tapered longer than a daeyari, fanned with more energy feathers. His fingertips curled to triangular black talons.
Fi gawked. All this talk of the fearsome aedari, the bane of the Planeverse, and not a single person had bothered telling her they were bird people?
Time to test how sturdy those wings were. She readied her sword.
Then howled, when Antal grabbed her around the waist.
“We have to help Ixli!” Fi shouted.
“I’ll fight with her. You stay here.”
She writhed against his grip. “Why did you even let me come?”
“I said you could hunt. Not fight.”
Liar. Wretched, coward daeyari. “Antal, let me go!”
Ixli shouted as the aedari’s sword caught her shoulder. The blade cleaved under armor, a smell of cauterized Void ether, black blood drenching her silviamesh.
Fi Shaped a current so swiftly, her arm muscles cramped from the leeching cold. She slammed the pulse of energy into Antal’s stomach. He released her, hunched with a snarl.
She ran.
Ixli’s spear sagged. Before she could heal her wounded arm, the aedari’s sword sliced at her neck. Fi lunged between them and swung, crimson against gold, parrying the strike.
His magic tasted like sunbaked sand. An energy wing grazed her cheek, scorching hot, but she ignored the sting of burnt flesh.
A pause would have been nice. A break to gawk at the brazen human entering the fray.
No such luck. The aedari swung again. Fi raised her sword to block.
The weight of the strike threatened to buckle her legs.
She gasped as her sword snapped back, nearly hitting her in the face.
Her blade flickered beneath the onslaught of energy and strength.
Ixli had made it look easy. Four glyphs were tattooed up the aedari’s wrist, including the one he’d used to heal himself earlier.
Now, a different glyph glowed as he bore down on her with unreal force.
He pushed. Fi bent like a leaf.
A spear slammed against the aedari’s sword, relieving the weight.
Ixli leaned in, shoulder braced to Fi’s, red energy snapping over her wound as the Void-ether flesh knit back together—but the two of them were enough to hold the aedari’s strength at bay. Ixli gritted her fangs, eyes locked with Fi’s.
An understanding. For now, at least.
Another flash of red struck from the side. The aedari reeled as claws buried in his throat.
Antal.
Fi wouldn’t call it elegant. The aedari twisted to throw Antal off him, feathers beating hot against the air. Antal pulled back, tail lashing, claws dripping gold. The aedari took distance, a flap of wings balancing his retreat as he appraised three opponents.
Then, the tether laying across the ground. Ixli had dropped it when she took a hit.
She lunged for it. Not fast enough.
With a snap and a flare of feathers, the aedari vanished. Gold flashed inside the farmhouse. Then again, on a distant forest ridge.
“No!” Ixli shouted.
She vanished in a sizzle of static—Fi assumed to give chase.
Fi locked eyes with Antal. A weighted pause hung between them, the apology in his gaze worse than a sword through the chest.
“Antal. Take me with you—”
He disappeared before she finished speaking.
Gone without her.
Fi screamed after him, filling the empty yard.