20. Legends Untold

20. Legends Untold

Niles

“Fuck the Chandelier City, ithurts like a bitch!” Marilynn howls, gritting her teeth against the tears.

There isn’t much we can do. Dessin said that harming fingernails is a form of torture because they’re the source of so many nerve endings.

“Is that a phrase now? Fuck the Chandelier City?” Warrose smirks down at Marilynn. “Can we make multiple variations of that? Fuck the Emerald Lake Asylum. Fuck the Slaughter Circus. Fuck the Mazonist Brothers.”

“We can determine how much pain we’re in or how pissed off we are based on which noun we’re feeling,” I add, trying so hard to make Marilynn smile.

“Alright, fair. So, what’s the rating for each?”

I tap my chin, thinking. Failing not to look at Marilynn’s forehead wrinkling as she bears down against the pain.

“Chandelier City is mildly hurt or pissed. The Mazonist Brothers are tolerable but still painful. Slaughter Circus is ‘I’m about to explode’. Emerald Lake Asylum is an apocalypse.” Dessin sits across from us in a dark corner of the stadium seating

We’re huddled away from the other prisoners, sitting on the floor, tending to Marilynn. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this mad at myself. I didn’t notice she was gone, didn’t even look behind me to make sure she was still by my side. She’s just so quiet. But of course, that’s no excuse. We bantered here by the stage while she had her fingernails ripped out by that psychopath.

I still taste the blood of that bastard’s scalp in my mouth.

It’ll probably give me nightmares for years. I’m not like Skylenna or Dessin. My brain doesn’t protect itself that way. I scalped a man in front of my family and nearly blacked out. The only thing keeping me moving was the adrenaline, the image rotting in my brain of her bloody fingers.

It crushed me to hear her say that no one came looking for her. Because, if I’m being honest with myself, we would have noticed Skylenna’s absence immediately. Dessin would have found her before her nails were touched.

“Fuck the Slaughter Circus,” Marilynn clarifies her statement.

We all blow out a breath.

“We need something to dull the pain,” Skylenna says with a frown.

“Like this big bitch?”

I look straight up from my seated position to see Helga Bee and Gerta hovering over me, carrying a huge tin bottle.

“What is it?” Dessin asks.

“What is it, Beetle Brain asks?” Helga Bee elbows Gerta with a cocky chuckle.

Dessin sighs with lowered lids. Skylenna grins next to him.

“It’s Mother Nature’s cure to depression! It’s God’s apology for making life so shitty! It’s—”

“We get it. Alcohol,” I say.

“Give it,” Marilynn begs with red-rimmed eyes. “Oh wait…I can’t have it.” She looks like she’s about to sob all over again.

“Not alcohol, you nincompoop! Honey of Sweet Nectar Valley! It makes you feel good and relieves pain! Even safe for the kiddies!”

Ruth boops my nose with a wry smile. “Nincompoop.”

“Give it to her!” I snatch the bottle from Helga Bee’s stubby fingers, practically diving in front of Marilynn to help her drink it.

She covers the lid with her red, swollen lips. And it looks like…my cock twitches, pulsing with pressure as I watch her gulp down the, uh, sweet valley stuff.

Damnit. I dart my eyes away as she meets them. Twin sapphires. Deep blue lagoons. They contrast with her freckled skin and vibrant hair. And those plump lips…I wonder what they would look like wrapped around my hard—

“What happened to her anyway?” Helga Bee asks.

“She got jumped when we weren’t looking. They ripped out her nails,” Skylenna says, still seething.

“Ah. That’s a gang territory marking ritual. It’s a way to show other males in a group that they want your females. They were challenging you boys to a good ole’ fight to claim your women!”

Dessin looks like he might have an aneurysm.

“So it could have been Skylenna or me targeted, too?” Ruth asks.

“Yeppers! It’s just a pecking order. Nothin’ personal.”

“It’s pretty damn personal.” I grimace at her to stop talking now. Fuck this place. Fuck these inmates.

“You want to tell us a story, Marilynn? Get your mind off the pain?” Ruth rubs a hand in circles over her back.

“The only stories I can tell you, I’m not allowed to tell you.” Her eyes lose focus for a split second, and she shudders. That pearly white, freckled face converts back into her usual grouchy scowl.

Hmm. What other stories does she have on me?

“Do you know the story of DaiSzek and Knightingale?” Skylenna asks with hopeful eyes.

Marilynn’s lips twitch into something close to a smile. “I do. The whole story. Not the watered down one they put in a child’s bedtime story.”

“Aren’t DaiSzek and Knightingale the two scruffy mutts back at home? How do they already have stories?” I ask.

“They were the fae and elven warriors from a long time ago! They ended a war and saved their people,” Skylenna explains with fondness. “Can you tell us the story, Marilynn?”

“Gerta loves a good story time! We have some good ones, too. Remember the mountain orgy four winters ago?”

“Oh, god,” Dessin grumbles.

“Tell us, Marilynn!” I beg with panicked eyes.

Ruth and Warrose nod with wide, help-me eyes as well.

Marilynn takes another swig from the tin bottle, which helps her hands tremble a little less. She licks her lips, blinks sleepily, and nods with a relief-filled sigh.

“DaiSzek wasn’t always a warrior king. Didn’t always have special abilities. At the start of his journey, he was only a stonemason’s son. He lived in a country across the world called Neslanox. A civilization of honest, hardworking farmers.” Marilynn pauses to lean her head back, getting comfortable. “Knightingale was the daughter of a war chief in Dementia. One afternoon during training, she hit her head on a rock and said an archangel came to visit her. The angel showed her a vision of DaiSzek cutting stone and told her that the two of them were very special…”

“Ohhhh, I like this story! This is good. Would be better with a couple orgies, but I’m here for it!” Helga Bee bursts, making us all jump.

Am I that annoying when I’m inappropriate?

“The archangel told her that when there is battle of great evil, God sends two warrior angels. These angels are born with the truest forms of love, friendship, and pain. When under pressure, they don’t turn to dust. They turn to diamonds.”

“Wow,” Skylenna breathes, eyes glistening in the sunny circus lights.

“These angels were created by God to wield ethereal power that emerges from strife, from heartbreak, from hardship. They were cut from the same cloth, beings of a twin flame, a star split down the middle. Warrior soul mates that can find each other across time and space. And Knightingale knew she had to find DaiSzek. From the mere glimpse of a vision the archangel gave her, she knew her heart belonged to the stonemason’s son. The humble fae that was kind to his neighbor, gentle to his flock, and had no idea the burden that sat on his shoulders.”

And fuck, now I’m tearing up. It’s beautiful.

Marilynn takes a few shallow breaths, glancing down at her raw fingertips.

“In the time it took Knightingale to sail to Neslanox, she was abducted by pirates, sold into slavery, beaten, tortured, and starved. DaiSzek watched a plague overtake his country. He nursed his family and friends as they all died slow deaths. He was the only one immune. In search to find more fae who had survived, he took a boat and sailed to the nearby country of Rouzella. He was treated like a king for being fae, given his own legion of servants to care for him. Elven servants. In Rouzella, the elven race was hated and forced to serve in order to stay alive.

“DaiSzek made many enemies by freeing those in bondage. One day, he was captured and brought to the public executioner’s block. Moments before the blade was swung, an elven servant emerged from the shadows and unleashed a scream so powerful, it woke the ocean. A tsunami drowned every fae servant master, carrying them out to sea.

“Knightingale told DaiSzek of her vision from the archangel, shared her knowledge of the war that was going to erupt between the many species across the world. Fae, elf, Druid, shades, beasts, dwarves, trolls. They left with the small army of loyalists they gathered along the way, setting sail for Dementia, the country where the fighting was the thickest. Seven divided races. All out to destroy each other. Over the years, DaiSzek learned of his own divine abilities. Portals to transport him through great distances. And when Knightingale was in trouble, threatened or harmed, he could shift the skies, bring darkness to the land, and call upon a dragon so magnificent, so devastating in war, it’s unclear if its existence was real or a metaphor, and its final resting place is still not known.”

I turn to glance at Skylenna and Dessin. They steal each other’s gaze multiple times. Silently communicating. Questioning. Admiring.

“On quiet nights sailing to Dementia, they would make plans to return to Neslanox after the war was over, living their life together in solitude, growing old in peace until they could return to heaven together. But the war had grown out of control. The seven races were threatening to destroy this world with the combat between light and dark magic. It was because of their different forms of magic that this world was imploding, turning them against each other. The archangel had returned to Knightingale to tell her of a world where the seven races could live in harmony. Where their separate natures wouldn’t be the cause of their fighting, where their magic could be at peace without rebellion.”

“What happened?” Ruth asks, leaning forward.

“DaiSzek and Knightingale arrived at the peak of the war, where their magic had spun out of control. They learned of a way to open an interdimensional portal together, giving each race a choice. Stay and live at odds with their magic, or go back to a world that would accept them. A world without humans.” Marilynn takes a shaky breath, blowing a shiny red strand of hair from her eyes. “It’s said they gave their lives so their people could return to their own world. They never made it to their own private island. Never got to grow old together.”

Something like fear and desperation flashes across Skylenna’s sharp features. Is she worried that’ll happen at the end of this road for them? That they’ll give their lives for this prophecy? This war? She’s always been so selfless. Always puts us before herself. I can’t imagine a world without her, without Dessin (even though he can be a dickhead). They’re my family.

“That’s so sad,” Ruth murmurs. Just like me, she looks at Dessin and Skylenna. We all do. Assessing their reaction to this story. Adjusting to the way they perceive it. But we’re all thinking the same thing. This story, in a way, sounds like a mythical version of what they’ve been through. Their traumatic pasts, hardships to end up together, and the way they literally would summon a dragon to save each other.

Their lives mirror one another.

Beautiful and tragic.

Hopeless and romantic.

My heart winds itself together in a spool of barbed wire.

“You’ll have your happy ending,” I announce, watching the way Skylenna and Dessin’s eyes return to reality and shift to me. “Unlike DaiSzek and Knightingale, you’ll make it to your Neslanox.”

To my surprise, Dessin’s eyes brighten. He smiles. He actually fucking smiles.

“To growing old together.” Dessin raises an imaginary glass.

Our group mimics his motion, holding our hands up as we say, “To growing old together.”