A/N: Nayar (No-vor'), Lananga (Lah-nong'-uh)
There was once an island where forty giants lived. They were the brothers Nayar who guarded the Lananga, the mirror of sight. It was said the Lananga exposed the deepest strength and the greatest flaw. Quest-seekers came to stand before the Lananga to prove their courage. It broke the spirit of many warriors. It changed them all.
The brothers vowed never to look into the mirror so they would not be changed. They kept their vow, guarding the mirror of sight, until one broke the covenant in secret.
The Lananga saw Rinian.
Rinian ran from it, quaking in fear. He told no one what he had done. But the image preyed on him, and he began to embrace what he had seen. He wanted to return. He dreamed of the creature reflected there. Sometimes he spoke to it. There must be greatness in such a being, he thought. He wanted the Lananga.
Rinian's lust drove him to deceive himself, to believe that the mirror was kept from his eyes out of cruelty. He closed himself away until his bitterness became a seething hatred. He murdered ten of his brothers along the mountain to the Lananga.
With bloodied hands, he stood before his image reflected in the clear, jade stone, knowing his would be the last. He meant to drive his spear into the Lananga, to shatter it that none would see their reflection in it again; but as he gazed with admiration upon his mighty, monstrous self, he espied a second pair of eyes. The eyes mocked him.
Furious, he rammed his spear against the shining stone. The surface of the mirror broke. Tiny fractures traveled upward as the spear point sunk into the rock. He tried to draw the weapon out that he might attack the Lananga again and again until the eyes that watched him were too fragmented to see him flee. In frenzy he broke the spear's handle, and upward the Lananga continued to crack until her tapered shards fell, sinking into him exquisitely, as though his stony flesh were as soft as his mind; for he had courted evil.
The agony of the shards imbedded in his adamantine flesh overwhelmed him.
"The water!" he cried, running down the mountainside and casting himself over the cliff into the salty waves. The water gave no respite from his pain. He writhed, feeling the points of her emerge from his flesh. He twisted to touch the spiky scales that shredded his fingertips. I must end this, he thought, and his body sunk downward, downward until he could go no deeper into the black, inky bowels of the undersea.
"Now we will be together always."
The voice woke him. In the deeps it was night. He was engulfed in relentless, searing pain and horrified to see the trunk of some illuminated beast of jade in the depths beneath. He thought to swim away, but he was too heavy. He saw the body of the creature move, and his heart sank as he recognized the shining flesh. He did not doubt what he was: the image of himself he had first espied in the Lananga.
Suddenly, a brilliant light swept by him, and he knew he was hungry. Ravenous. The glow of that pure light darted away, skirting his vision. He shivered in anticipation and moved forward sluggishly, intent on following the light through the water. Two beams intersected, and he scanned the depths. There were many of them. The glowing ones innervated him as they charged by. This he liked.
But how am I to overtake them? he questioned. They flashed through the water quickly, his sight becoming unfocused until he wandered into his second head to follow them.
"Stay here with me," she told him.
A mass of burning anger moved up his neck. He shifted into his first head and veered round to look at the beastly countenance beside him. He saw her watery eyes in the deep, the eyes that had mocked him.
His mouth opened and showered the horrid, pale green face with flames. The water swirled and became a cloudy froth. He saw the serpent's face peering through before it opened its wretched mouth and covered him in oily flame.
He writhed in the dark water and groaned. The rumble filled his belly and broke from him in a lowing shudder. He could see nothing now; his eyes had been burned away.
After days of blindness, he capitulated, shifting to her perspective to see.
"Now we must eat," she told him. He looked out from her eyes and saw the glowing ones. "The light is essence. It will sate your pain, Rinian."
Essence. Glowing Faellyn essence drove him to the hunt. He yearned for it as a reprieve from his continual agony. Faellyn moved between the land and the water, taking on the form of any being. Their dwelling was beneath the waves, and it took little time before he found it. He fed on those who fled, devoured them and feasted on their energy. His great pain was numbed for a time, and he retreated into the bowels of the earth, into the caves beneath the water.
Soon the Faellyn came to free the essence imprisoned within him. Faellyn essence called to them. He traveled farther in and waited. His prey would now come to him.
Knixi came centuries later. His might challenged Rinian. He had the flesh of Rinian's Nayar brothers and the force of Faellyn essence. He was the first of his race, and his sword was his undoing. He decapitated Rinian, and Rinian's perspectives multiplied.
Rinian crushed his many teeth on Knixi, impatient for the essence within. Knixi drove his sword into Rinian's jade belly, and the clear, green shards of his flesh sunk into Knixi. As Rinian watched the life escape Knixi's dying body, the warrior gave to the beast his first fear.
"I am but the beginning, Icyla."
Icyla. It was an old, old word. Rinian remembered it from long ago—before he had been enslaved by the will of the Lananga who broke him. It meant 'anguish.'
A/N: This one-shot was originally written to introduce the races found in Daughters of the King's Forest. The Kiss of the Gobboling King's Cylla was inspired by Icyla. Thank you, coolcat12345, for wanting to know more!