Chapter Five Xishlon Light

Chapter Five Xishlon Light

Wrenfir Harrow

Voloi

Xishlon night

Wrenfir glares at the purple moon.

The moon that’s wrenching his heart from his chest as he strides through the Mage-refugee encampment on the northern edge

of Voloi’s docks. A bag containing his apothecary supplies is slung over his shoulder, IV’s great canopy spread high above

it all.

Day after day, a steady stream of sickly, half-starved Gardnerian refugees stumble out of Verdyllion portals, haunted looks

in their eyes. All of them seeming thunderstruck to have made it to the East before they either collapsed from illness or

were slain by Shadow creatures.

The Red Grippe has been as cruel to them as their own Shadowed Magedom, all medical care in Gardneria having broken down,

along with the Natural World.

Two of Wrenfir’s rescued cats flank him, a gentle purple calico and a sleek silver shorthair. A sickly fluffy black kitten

rides in his pocket, but his kindred bobcat hangs back in the Forest just north of here so as not to frighten the Mage children

and the skittish adult Gardnerians who have yet to embrace the Forest.

Music kicks up not far ahead, its origin seeming to be one of the pockets of Forest that have been established throughout

the city, trees planted in every available space to fight the Shadow and help stabilize the East’s devasted weather system.

Wrenfir scowls and glares at Voloi’s purple-laden tiers as purple fireworks flash over the city. Because he has no use for

Xishlon love and romance. No use for the sliver of hope that arises with every new link to the Forest.

Because it’s too damned late.

The weather beyond Noilaan’s protective Great Tree and dome-shield is out of control, much of the continent a Shadowed wasteland.

Wrenfir blinks back the sting of emotion in his eyes, every muscle tensing against his firestorm of anger. Because Hazel is

forever lost to him, all the Death Fae absorbed into Nature to hold off a Reckoning, their sacrifice having made this whole

gods-damned purple idiocy possible.

Wrenfir experienced Nature’s terror firsthand as a child, almost lost to the cursed Red Grippe. His throat tightens at the

memories of those wildly frightening nights when he briefly lost the ability to pull in even a single, rasping breath.

His turmoil blazing hotter, he glares at the city once more and snarls an epithet under his breath. They’re deluding themselves

with this asinine revelry. Forgetting what the Death Fae did for them all. What Hazel and Viger, Sylla and Vesper, and all

the Death Fae creatures staved off.

A nightmare as terrible as anything Vogel could have ever rained down.

And it’s highly likely that their sacrifice will have been for naught. Just like the terrible deaths of his sister Tessla,

his brother-in-law Vale, and Edwin Gardner were for naught.

Because the Dryad’khin have sorely underestimated the power of fracture.

That will usher in the eventual triumph of the Shadow.

The sound of a child’s hacking cough snaps through Wrenfir’s tortured thoughts, yanking his attention back to the task at

hand. Forcing aside his grief, he strides toward the tent the sound is coming from, a painfully thin Gardnerian woman standing

in front of the tent’s entrance.

“Are... are you the medic?” she stammers as he approaches, clearly scared of his Death Fae spider tattoos, his pointed

ears and deep-green hue. Her look of fright takes a turn toward confusion as her eyes slide to the midnight-hued kitten peeking

out of his pocket.

Her gaze slides back to his with a look of wary concern, as if he’s planning on eating the kitten whole. A kitten he’s spent

most of last night nursing and crooning to. A kitten now glued to his side after Wrenfir empathically read, with his new Dryad’kin

abilities, images of the little feline’s terror and grief, memories of its mother and littermates being murdered by grayed

Shadowfire, this small one consumed with a trauma that Wrenfir understands on a bone-deep level.

He’s all too acquainted with soul-shearing grief, having lost Tessla, Vale, and Edwin to the Magedom’s cruelty, as well as his beloved childhood pet, a cat named Patches.

He’s named the kitten in his pocket Deathling as tribute to the Death Fae, in an attempt to infuse the little animal with

some of the strength and courage that managed to fight off a Reckoning.

Wrenfir draws a bottle of Norfure tincture from his sack and holds it out to the Mage woman. “This will cure your child,”

he offers tersely as his eyes flick over her conservative garb, her unchanged fastmarks.

She’s likely stubbornly glued to Mage dogma, even after connecting with the Forest.

Anger rises in Wrenfir as he and the woman stare each other down and she makes no move to accept the medicine. He struggles

to bite back the harsh words burning for release.

“Mamma,” a small, constricted voice chirps from behind the woman, drawing both his attention and the woman’s. A little boy

slips into view from behind her skirts and looks worriedly up at Wrenfir before breaking into a spasming cough.

Wrenfir’s gut tightens as he notes that the child’s entire mouth is ringed with red sores, his eyes reddened to a flame hue

by the cruel disease.

The end stages of the Grippe.

He can feel it in his own lungs once more, a muscle memory of those childhood nights gasping for breath, his sister, Tessla,

and his grandfather too poor to afford expensive medicine, until Vale Gardner and Fain Quillen intervened...

“Here,” he says, adamantly holding out the Norfure tincture to the woman—medicine he spent the entire night fabricating from

the flowers Elloren had sourced from the distant Zhilaan Forest, his eyes bleary with fatigue.

The woman finally relents and takes the bottle, a deeply conflicted look in her eyes. Wrenfir catches the child studying him

with similarly wary eyes before the little one’s eyes light on the kitten, then on the cats affectionately rubbing against

Wrenfir’s ankles.

“I had a cat,” the child blurts out, tears brimming in his eyes as he starts to cry and cough at the same time. “We...

we had to leave her.”

Pain strikes through Wrenfir’s heart.

He drops to one knee before the boy. “I lost my cat too,” he tells him. “During the last Realm War.” And suddenly the damned Xishlon moon is causing a tear to spill down Wrenfir’s cheek as he and the child take each other in. “Would you like to visit my cats when you get better?” Wrenfir offers. “I’m a medic for them too.”

“Thank you, but no ,” the woman hastily intervenes as she edges between her child and Wrenfir, gripping the medicine to her chest and tugging

the boy protectively behind her long black skirt.

Keeping him safe from me , Wrenfir bitterly notes.

“Isil needs to conserve his strength,” she tightly explains.

And Wrenfir can see it in her eyes. Her rejection of him as a Heathen Evil One. He realizes she’ll likely spend all her days

here in the East with a few other militantly dormant Mages, walling herself off from non-Mages and Dryad’khin Mages. Clinging

to the same madness that ripped Hazel away from him. That almost destroyed everything .

But then he meets the boy’s eyes again and the realization hits him...

The child won’t forget this kindness.

And Wrenfir will find a way to get a cat to him. A kitten just conveniently wandering by, perhaps. Accepted by the child’s

rigid mother as a gift from the Ancient One on high, instead of coming from a thoroughly Deathkin-corrupted, point-eared Dryad’khin

Mage.

And so Wrenfir perseveres, spending Xishlon eve handing out medicine and tending to the sick until he can’t take the agony

the moon is coaxing to life in his chest for one minute more.

He flees the refugee tent city and Voloi’s cursed purple revelry, veering north until he’s in the denser Forest bracketing

this higher stretch of the Vo River, surrounded by Noi Maple and Noi Birch trees. Until he feels himself to be truly alone.

And then, he falls to his knees and weeps for Tessla, for Vale, for Edwin, and for Hazel, feeling as if his grief will scour

his lungs straight out of his chest. He and Hazel had so little time together... but that smidgen was enough to show them

both that they had found their great True Love in each other. The type of love that never comes again.

The purple-moonlit world pulses Dark, tendrils of black mist swirling around Wrenfir.

He startles, shock catching the sob tight in his chest as a figure made entirely of the mist appears before him, down on one knee, his features solidifying slightly into...

“...Hazel,” Wrenfir rasps, lurching toward him only to have his hands pass right through Hazel’s misty form. Frustration

burns through Wrenfir like wildfire as he meets Hazel’s night-Dark eyes.

Eyes he could get lost in.

Forever.

“I’ll come back to you,” Hazel’s voice murmurs from everywhere at once, yearning in those beloved, full-Dark eyes.

“When?” Wrenfir agonizes. “How?”

“My link to the Forest,” Hazel explains. “The full Deathkin... if the Balance is restored, they’ll reemerge after being

bound for a full hundred years. But me... I’ll be bound for only a portion of that time, because I’m Dryad Fae, as well.”

A slash of intense emotion sharpens his features. “Wrenfir. Wait for me. ”

“I will,” Wrenfir promises, his throat closing in around the words. “I’d wait for you forever .”

Hazel’s misty form leans forward, and Wrenfir can feel the brush of a kiss against his mouth all the way down his spine, the

moon’s purple light seeming to swirl around them both, straight through Hazel’s tendrils of Darkness.

As they take each other as Xishlon’virs with that one, ethereal kiss.

And then, Hazel vanishes into the pulsing Darkness, leaving Wrenfir on his knees, alone in the Forest, the tears coming fast

and furious. Then lessening as a small black snake winds over his lap. Then another. And another. Before they slither into

the wilderness, turning back once, tongues flickering, as if conveying a strange, loving farewell.

Deathling lets out a small meow, and Wrenfir looks to the tiny animal. He swallows his grief and strokes the kitten’s furry

back, equal parts affection and trauma emanating from the small feline that takes a slide toward love as Deathling’s purr

vibrates against Wrenfir’s hand. He looks up at the Xishlon moon, wondering if its magic had a hand in allowing Hazel to come

to him on this Xishlon night.

So that Wrenfir could take him as his Xishlon’vir.

Deep in Wrenfir’s chest, hope blooms that, if the Natural World survives, somewhere in the near future, maybe even by the

next Xishlon... Hazel will re-form and come back to him.

“All right, you damned orb,” Wrenfir spits out at the moon as he cradles Deathling and wipes his tears brusquely away. “I accept your light.” His throat tenses with emotion. “Bring him back to me. Bring him back to me with your light.”

A small ember of purple-hued hope now lit deep in his chest, Wrenfir stands, his kitten in his pocket, his other two cats

trailing behind him, and makes his way back to the complicated, awful, beautiful purple chaos of Voloi.