Chapter 1

Awakening

The Royal Wood

Location: Outside Urskmunsay

Country/Territory: Gelvsland

Continent: Tikims

Planet: Shuuyer

3030 [505] : 04 : 21

Consciousness takes her. Air fills her lungs, and she gasps, exhaling sharply. She coughs and splutters. Her breath is ragged. Her lungs burn. She rolls on her side, finding it easier to breathe at once.

Peiken.

What in the bowels of Crobe's hellfires happened to her? Where is she? Who is Peiken? Why does she know that name?

Oh.

That’s right.

Her.

Her name is Peiken.

That’s good.

She knows that much.

She keeps her eyes closed. She can see, or maybe feel, the red warmth of Bora far above through her eyelids. It seems to permeate her. Her breathing eases as she focuses on it less and on the nearby star's heat instead. It’s strange. It’s as though she’s never done so before. But of course she has breathed before. She must have.

Mustn't she?

It's sort of essential to being alive.

She allows herself to breathe on her own. It’s a soothing sensation. It’s one less thing for her brain to focus on at the moment. Instead, she takes in the scents. The air is thick with moisture. She can smell the must of the forest's undergrowth behind her. it's a strangely comforting smell. It's a smell of life.

Find them.

She still doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t want to. She wants to just lie here. The grass blades cushion her, thick and soft. She knows without looking they’re a beautiful mixture of reds and blacks and purples, best to capture the energy from the red glow of Bora and the unseen ultraviolet rays of nearby Kvum overhead. It’s like she was born to feel this.

She turns her hands, pressing them down to the grass and soil beneath her. The dirt is soft and even a bit crumbly feeling. She manages to pinch some grains with her fingertips. They're large and moist. It's good soil, fertile, alive.

Shuuyer. She’s on Shuuyer, right?

Peiken puzzles. How does she know this? What day is it? At first, she doesn't know. Then, certainty strikes her. It's Wisday, the twenty-first of Kvum's Reign, or the fourth month, and it's the three-thousand-thirtieth year (five-hundred-fifth cycle). More things she knows but has no idea how because it feels like she can't remember anything else.

There’s nothing for it, she’ll have to look around. Perhaps getting her bearings will help her focus.

Her arms shake as she begins using them to push herself up, trying to get into a sitting position. They ache, and she fails the first couple of tries. It’s as though she’s never used them before, or perhaps she’s used them too much. It’s hard to tell.

Halear.

Her eyes open in the attempts to sit. Instantly, pain stings them, and she slams them shut, collapsing again. Multicoloured orbs of light linger and dance behind her lids. Waiting for them to recede, she reopens her eyes, but much more slowly.

Little by little, reality comes into view. Lying on her back, she’s looking straight up into the sky. Even though Bora, the nearby red sun, is full in the sky, its red light is dim enough that once her eyes have adjusted, she can look at it fairly easily. Much of the sky is taken up by the swirling brown, white, and red orb of Kvum, but everything around it is a deep purple. Kvum does not give visible light the same way that Bora does. Not visible to her, anyway. But combined with Bora, he does give out sufficient heat to help warm this little ball orbiting it and its three sisters: Shudo, Shuerash, and Shusheva.

She raises her shaking arms as best she can and presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. How does she know these things? It doesn’t feel like the knowledge is truly hers. It’s as if it’s just coming to her as she takes things in. Or like it’s being written into her mind as she processes what she hopes is reality.

Was she in an accident of some kind? Perhaps she’s struck her head in a fall. That would explain some things, wouldn’t it? Maybe it’s knowledge she’s always had, and seeing them is just turning the information in her brain back on?

Peiken drops her arms to her sides and resumes looking up at the sky. Off to one side of Kvum, she can see a spot of light. If that’s Shudo, then it means her feet are facing south and her head north. If it’s Shuerash, then it’s the opposite. Something deep down tells her it’s Shuerash. It looks a bit too bright to be Shudo. Maybe that’s it?

Dolse.

Peiken grunts trying to sit up again. It’s slow going, but she manages. Almost every movement burns. At least the first time doing so, though it does linger. Once she manages to sit the burning passes. She takes slow, deep breaths, which seems to help.

She takes in more of her surroundings from her new perspective. She’s right on the edge of a forest. Behind her is the Before her is a vast plain, which is the panoply of reds and blacks and purples she knew it would be. It almost looks like a mosaic rather than grass. There’s a small pond nearby as well.

Some blades of grass fall from her arm and back. This finally alerts her that she is, in fact, naked. She reaches back as best she can, her arms still a bit tremulous, trying to brush some of it off. While she had been lying down, it was comfortable, but just sticking to her bare skin, it’s become irritable and scratchy.

She pauses. There’s something on her back that isn’t grass or dirt. She can feel it as she touches the base where it's connected to her back just inside her left shoulder blade. Not just with her fingertips brushing, but whatever it is also feels the touch. It’s part of her. She furrows her brow, trying to look back, when suddenly whatever it is on her back buzzes. What’s more, there are two of them, one per side.

Peiken practically hurls herself to her feet, flailing her arms back trying to take hold of whatever it is hanging off of her. She gets a grip but gasps and shouts in pain, letting go at once. Gripping it hurt. Badly. She doubles over, panting. The buzzing continues sporadically as whatever strange growth is on her back keeps trying to move. What the fuck is going on? What’s wrong with her?

Ki.

Slowly, she stands back up. Her legs are trembling, and not just from the random buzzing. As with her arms, it’s like she’s never used them before. Yet if she never has, how does she have any sense of balance at all? Everything’s wrong, but for some reason seems to be working okay.

She grunts a bit as strands fall into her face. They’re soft and light but tickle her nose. She reaches up a weary hand brushing them aside. Oh, right, hair. It’s her hair. It’s quite long, she finds, coming down to her waist. It’s a dark, chocolatey brown. She finally starts looking at her hands.

“The hells…?” she mutters, studying them closer.

Her hands are incongruous. That doesn’t seem right. They are both the same shape and size, with four fingers and a thumb each, but her left hand is a dark brown, much like her hair, and her left is… golden. That definitely can’t be right. Because it doesn’t really look like skin.

She softly brushes the strange hand. It certainly feels like skin. It’s soft and warm to the touch. But it looks smooth, too smooth. She can’t make out any texture. It shines slightly, though not quite mirrored. It’s the skin of an elf.

She studies her hands more. If they’re shaped like this, with small nails and not claws, then it seems natural she’s an elf. A siken by the golden hue. But if she were an elf, all her skin would be that colour. The rest of her skin seems more human. Or maybe a faiblin born off Shuerash?

She moves her attention to the rest of herself. Her shoulders are narrow and sloped. Her chest is flat, which is odd. Whether she was an elf or kith, she should have breasts. She’s not a child—she’s certain of that much.

Shery.

The strange skin patterns continue on the rest of her. She is mostly dark brown, but there are mottled splotches of golden skin all over: down the left side of her torso, on her left shoulder, the underside of her right arm, her thighs, lower legs, and feet. What in the Vau?

That’s not all that’s confusing. She has a penis. That can’t be right either. Her figure’s clearly more feminine. Her sense of self is definitely feminine. And yet, that’s certainly what that is down between her legs.

Peiken turns her eyes back to the pond. She has to see. Perhaps the pond will be still enough to see her reflection. She takes slow, deliberate steps towards it. Her legs threaten to collapse under her with each motion forward. It’s like she has the information in her brain on how to balance, but she’s never truly done it before. Like trying to perform a task after only being told how to do it once.

At last, she reaches the pond. The mud of the bank is slippery and she nearly falls in. She instead manages to lower herself to her hands and knees and inch her way to the edge.

She nearly laughs. The pond is still enough to see her reflection, but her hair has fallen back in her face again. She raises one of her arms as best she can, her control steadily returning. It’s as though her muscles are remembering how to work at the same speed her mind is remembering things.

She brushes her hair aside and looks down. Overall, her face shape seems typical of an elf or human. It’s definitely not faiblin. It’s roughly heart-shaped. Her cheekbones are high with a pointed chin. Her ears definitely aren’t human. She’s not sure at all what’s going on with them. They’re long and pointed rather than small and round, as one would see in a human or the Simsian and Obnian elves. They appear vaguely faiblin, but they droop a bit instead of pointing up and out.

Lecsi.

Unlike a faiblin, her nose is small and narrow, with an upturned tip. Faiblins have wide, flat noses with soft, wet tips that are usually black in colour. Their eyes are also overly large and widely set. Hers appear more like a human or an elf's. Yet they are more kith in their composition than elven. Her sclera are white, with coloured irises and black pupils. Strangely, her irises are purple. No kith she can think of have naturally occurring purple irises. Were her eyes elven, she would have black sclera with white irises and differently coloured pupils. If she remembers correctly, the Bargans have black pupils, the Meltians have blue ones, the Obnians’ are brown, Siken pupils are green, the Simsians have orange pupils, and lastly, the Tanese have red ones.

The purple does twinge something in her memory. At certain times in history, the gods, be it Bora, Kvum, or both, will create an important elf and give them purple pupils. These individuals are called Paragons. There have been rumours of kith Paragons, but never confirmed. Yet, something deep in her mind tells her that such legends are probably true. She’s not sure why she thinks so. It just feels correct to her. But she can’t be a Paragon. Paragons are born that way.

As she’s come to expect, the strange mottling is continued on the skin of her face. Yet… she doesn’t mind it. The skin over her left eye and the left side of her nose is gold, but the rest is dull, dark brown. She’s mostly just caught up in the mystery. Tanese elves have a skin tone close to this, but if it were Tanese, then it would shine like the golden parts. She may vaguely know who she is, or at least knows her name, but now she’s primarily starting to wonder what she is.

The different peoples of the elves can interbreed. But in such cases, the offspring will be the same people as the mother. There may be tiny tells like a slightly different ear shape or such, but otherwise, they don’t truly “mix”. Interbreeding between elves and kith is entirely impossible.

Lidsej.

Isn’t it?

Something moves on her back, and she gasps again. She’d almost forgotten. She looks back properly, and something thin and gossamer flashes across her vision. She starts and nearly falls into the pond again, catching herself with a loud squelching as her hands sink into the mud. She sees her reflection again though now distorted in the ripples where her hands disturbed the mud. She stares, waiting for the water to settle. She can make out something light blue on either side of her reflection’s face.

The ripples abate. Her jaw drops.

Wings.

She has wings.

They’re not large, but they’re definitely wings. She tilts her head side to side, shifting her shoulders, trying to get better looks at them. The only thing truly extraordinary about them is that she has them, she supposes. They’re fairly small, certainly not large enough to fly. They wouldn’t even be large enough for a faiblin to fly with them. Maybe a faiblin child.

Maybe.

Why the hell does she have them?

They aren’t much to look at, really. They’re a faint translucent blue. Were they proper faiblin wings, they would be almost transparent and resplendent with blues and greens.

You.

Peiken sits back on her knees. She gives her mind a shake, trying to refocus. Who is she? She has a name. She knows that much. Peiken… a strange name for her to have. It’s Soimen, she thinks. The native language of a southern region of the Zlilzhen Empire. It means “tear/smash open”, something along those lines.

She leans down, rinsing the mud off her hands in the water of the pond before splashing some of the water onto her face. She needs to get a grip. Again the way the knowledge pops into her brain unbidden is disturbing her. She needs to find out where she is. She needs to find out when she is. Most importantly, of course, is who she is. Maybe even what she is.

There’s a sharp sound in the distance. Her neck cricks as she spins around, looking towards the forest. The trees and bushes are still, but the darkness within them is ominous. The leaves are mostly purples and reds, and the trunks are black, adding to the darkness under the canopy. There are no birds or animals.

Her chest tightens sharply as she hears the noise again. She’s fairly certain it’s an animal. It’s a sort of… yip? Maybe more of a yap. It’s getting closer. And there might be more than one.

She squints, thinking maybe she’s seen movement.

It happens at once. Something almost as large as her, white and grey in colour, bursts from the edge of the trees, heading straight towards her. Its sound is deeper now, not the sharp little barking sounds. Now it’s loud and booming, mixed with clear snarls. Peiken gasps and staggers backwards, slipping and, at last, falling back into the freezing water of the pond. She gasps and shrieks in shock, only vaguely aware that the act of vocalising makes her throat burn, that fact pushed out by the sight of the oncoming creature nearing.

She tries moving back, but the water is nowhere deep enough for her to evade such an animal, and she doesn’t have the strength to swim at the moment anyway.

There’s a sharp whistling and a shout. The beast halts at once, almost supernatural in the rapidity with which it obeys the obvious distant command.

Find Danel.

Peiken stares at it. The creature stopped right at the edge of the pond. It stares at her with sharp, yellow eyes, inquisitive and studying her right back. As with so many things, the reality comes to her at once. It’s a honal (or more properly a ḥônhal), a creature from Shuerash, long domesticated by the elves. Its face and undersides are furred, with the top being dark grey and the bottom being white. Its back, legs, and tail are covered in large, overlapping, leaf-shaped plates. It tilts its head side to side as it looks her over, its pointed ears turned towards her, its long snoot sniffing.

Then, despite its ferocious and rapid approach, its mouth opens, its tongue lolls out, and it begins panting, fully at ease. It sits down on its haunches, still watching her, its broad armoured tail thumping on the ground a bit. It’s… happy. Whether that’s because it doesn’t consider her a threat or it thinks it did a good job in finding her, she doesn’t know.

“Rattler! Rattler, come!”

The honal merely looks back over its shoulder to the woods. The shouting and the name Rattler are Gelvsian. By the accent, she deduces that she must, in fact, be in Gelvsland. Peiken looks back and forth between the woods and Rattler. The beast seems content to ignore the obvious calls of its master and returns its attention to Peiken, merely watching her intently. Somehow, in spite of all her shock and discomfort, she feels the strange compulsion to pet it.

There’s the sound of pounding feet nearby. There are more shouts of “Rattler!” but again, the honal ignores them. If anything, he looks a bit anxious that his owner has not arrived yet to see the interesting thing he’s found in the pond.

He’s the one.

Peiken suddenly remembers, as she begins shivering, the fact that she is indeed naked. A new feeling she’s never had, or possibly just forgotten, comes to her. Shame. She kneels a bit in the water, keeping at least her hips hidden from immediate sight. Rattler’s mouth opens again, and his tail starts thumping once more.

There’s more movement in the trees. Something far larger bursts out now, bounding onto the plain. Peiken shrieks again at the monstrous sight. The beast that’s emerged is nearly as tall as she is standing. It moves on many legs, too many for her to count at a glance. Its front half is almost bullet-shaped, covered in a hard, smooth carapace. Its nose is pointed, with two large compound eyes on stalks and a sharp, mandible mouth underneath. Two long antennae flare out as the new creature comes to a stop. Its tail is long and stiff, covered in segmented armour. Beneath its body, two openings close and open, clearly intaking and expelling air, allowing the beast to breathe.

Peiken’s eyes rise as the beast moves up next to the honal, which thumps its tail rapidly, making a rattling sound as it does. Peiken now understands the name “Rattler”.

It’s then she becomes aware of the truly strange feature of the new horrifying arrival. Atop its back sits a woman.

The woman’s tall, or taller than her at least. Her look is somehow imperious and confused at the same time. She wears a black waistcoat over a white shirt with a ruffled collar. There’s a feathered cap on her head. She wears tight, tan slacks tucked into tall riding boots. There’s a black patch covering her left eye. She's also missing a substantial portion of her left ear. At first, Peiken thinks she’s wearing a grey glove on her right hand before she realises that the woman’s right hand is, in fact, a prosthetic.

He’s my champion. But he’s forgotten...

The woman’s skin is shining and a deep blue. Her hair is a shining golden colour. Her lone good eye is unmistakably a blue pupil in a white iris surrounded by a black sclera. An elf. A Meltian elf at that. They’re the second most populous race of elves across all the four planets that make up The Vau.

“...Who in Crobe’s hellfires are you…?” the woman asks.

Her accent’s strange. It sounds Gelvsian, but not quite. She’s not entirely local. Mewnolish maybe? It isn't Brian.

“I…” Peiken tries to stammer.

The woman shakes her head and seems to come to her senses. She swings a leg up and off her mount, which Peiken now recognizes as a kozien, and lands easily on her feet. Peiken notes that the woman’s prosthetic hand is fully functional—a rare thing to have in this day and age. The woman is clearly one of high society.

“Come out of there, girl, you’ll catch your death,” the woman says, holding out a hand to Peiken.

Peiken is shivering. Her tiny wings are folded down flat against her back as though the cold has shrunk them.

“I… I…” Peiken keeps spluttering, her tongue fighting her in trying to form words.

She can feel the woman looking her over. She’s clearly just as confused at Peiken’s appearance as Peiken is herself.

“I… don’t… know…” Peiken manages to stammer.

All at once, she’s beginning to feel overwhelmed. She’s cold, naked, exposed, scared, lost, and for all intents and purposes alone.

She will lead you to him.

The woman’s face softens. She takes a step into the water, her own feet protected by the tall boots.

“I’m not going to hurt you, lass… are you lost…”

“I… no… don’t… know…”

The woman nods.

“It’s okay… my name is Liutre… let’s get you some clothes and some warmth inside… take my hand…”

Peiken looks at the hand. She’s offering her proper hand, not the false one. Trembling from the cold and sheer emotion, Peiken starts reaching out a hand.

“You… are a girl, yes…?” Liutre asks.

Peiken flushes, realising the water is too clear to really do a good job hiding her unexpected phallus and definitely not hiding her flat chest.

“...Yes… I… think so…”

The woman nods slowly, lone eye dancing back and forth between Peiken's. She reaches out a bit farther, taking Peiken’s hand. The sense of contact with another person is electric. She allows Liutre to pull her fully out of the water. She shrinks a bit as one of the tips of the kozien’s long antennae brushes her side. Liutre pats the beast scratching the shell behind one of its goggly eyes.

You’ll awaken him.

“Back now, Kraw̃…” Liutre says. “I know, she’s new and interesting, but she doesn’t need your sniffing and prodding. You either, Rats.”

Peiken can feel something nuzzling her free hand. She looks down to see the honal, Rattler, sniffling her hand curiously. She admittedly doesn’t find him nearly as unsettling as the kozien, though she knows the shelled beast is almost as harmless.

Liutre reaches back and pulls down a thick blanket from behind the saddle on Kraw̃’s back. She unfolds it and wraps it around Peiken’s shoulders and upper body at once. The sensation is immediately soothing and Peiken can’t help but melt into the woman’s arms. She feels Liutre’s arms wrap around her. They’re awkward in their movements, as clearly the woman doesn’t know what else to do.

Peiken doesn’t care. Tears sting her eyes as the woman guides her to Kraw̃’s saddle and lifts her up onto it, surprisingly strong for her size. Peiken feels Liutre swing herself up into the saddle from the stirrups, sitting behind Peiken and holding her close with her true arm and taking the reins with her false one. On his many legs, Kraw seems to float as he turns. Liutre makes a couple of clicking sounds, and at once Kraw springs into motion. His feet thunder as he propels himself rapidly across the ground. The many feet move so rapidly and in such perfect rhythm that it feels more like the kozien is flying rather than running.

Despite having only just gained consciousness, exhaustion begins taking Peiken. She looks up at Liutre, who’s looking off into the distance as she guides the shelled mount. Peiken looks down, seeing Rattler doing his best to run alongside and keep up with the kozien’s rapid pace. Despite his struggles, the honal looks to be having the time of his life. It’s a comforting sight. A gentle pet living its best life. Who can be afraid in such company. Peiken closes her eyes, rests her head on Liutre’s shoulder, and knows no more.

Find Danel.