This story was written as a surprise gift on November 9 2017 for dancingonapinetree at Tumblr... largely because Episode 17 was still fresh on the fandom's mind, and her angst-filled Leiftan fan comic was too good not to do a spin-off of.
...It's entirely up to you whether this story has a happy ending, or not. It depends on how much you trust Leiftan.
The Daemon's Offer
Somewhere in the stir behind me, Nevra's hiss cuts sharp above the others: "Erika. What the fuck are you doing…?"
I don't answer him. Because Leiftan's chest has coiled tight like a spring under pressure and warmth now dots my neck and shoulder, slipping liquid through my hair. And in the beat before his arms finally find me, and in the beat after, all I can think of is how the heat of his skin, the peculiar cadence of his heart, the paper-thin tension in his shoulders whenever they close for me, has never changed. Not even when the color of his eyes has.
His whisper wavers like struck water a mere fraction above my hearing: "…Just know that I'm sorry". Suddenly his hand on my shoulder tightens into a vise, and he roughly wrenches me into a spin, my back colliding against the plane of his chest. One hand closes tight around my right wrist, the other at my throat, and what words I have for him gutter out like candle smoke at the end of a night.
Alarm sounds in the clamor of curses, the tramp of steel on marble.
"You have exactly five seconds to let her go, you bastar–!" But Miiko's threat dies on her tongue when Ashkore's dagger flashes out of the corner of my eye.
"If you attempt to cross this space, by foot or by fire, you'll see what my associate is willing to do." A spider web of cracks lingers in Leiftan's voice, but his counter-threat still rolls out as cold and sedate as a glacier in deep winter.
Nevra's only answer is a flash of his fangs. But the vampire's hand reluctantly uncurls from the kunai at his belt as Leiftan pulls us sixteen paces back, past the spire of the Grand Crystal bruised black with corruption, to the western periphery of the chamber. Our shadows stream across the tiles lit amber by the late evening light, unrecognizable under the new silhouette of his wings.
"You will all remove yourselves to the southern wall. And you will wait until my associate and I have left this chamber, and this fort. If we so much as glimpse a sign of pursuit before sundown, your friend will be returned to you. Prematurely."
Ashkore gives a neat flick of his wrist. His peshkabz spins once in the air before it's caught again, the curving tip now pointing between my fourth and fifth ribs.
"And what makes you think we'll wait for you to deliver her back to our doorstep?" Ezarel's words lash like fresh sleet.
"Because, Ezarel, I suspect you value the possibility of her keeping her life more than you value the certainty of her demise."
I can't feel my stomach. He's weighing out their options as though he's choosing between fabrics in the bazaar.
"You've given us absolutely no reason to believe your word," comes Valkyon's response, falling as leaden as a casket's lid. His axe pivots in his hands, the shearing edge turned to us. "And regardless of what you do to her, we will have you and your 'associate' answer for your crimes. So I suggest you cooperate now. Before the charges get any worse."
The way his sun-bleached eyes refuse to look at me, and the way he shapes the word 'regardless', looses a low tremor in the backs of my knees. I feel my body begin to sag in Leiftan's grasp.
Suddenly, the daemon's voice cracks like a whip from just over my ear. "My people made the mistake of believing in the 'justice' you have to offer. I'm not interested in prolonging your ruse."
Miiko flinches once, her expression washed indigo under the glow of the Grand Crystal.
"Now if you can own up to the claim that you value her life, you'll step aside. Or you'll learn precisely what a sacrifice looks like."
His hand at my throat shifts, half-turning my chin to the side, fingers spreading to expose my jugular to the point of Ashkore's blade. The dragon-masked guerilla obliges: the whisper's edge of steel coming to rest on my pulse.
They're answered by silence.
You came here today to vouch for him. Salt finds the corner of my lips again, collects and drips past. And the day before that, you were willing to tell him that you loved him.
Rage suddenly sears a hole through my chest like a tongue of Greek fire. My eyes clench shut; the tips of my free hand dig through his grip on my throat. And a second instinct catapults me out of the moment, out of the boundaries of my body held by weight and the rictus of fear, and through the crack in Leiftan's psyche that collapses inward like fresh mortar in a wall.
There is no such thing as an impregnable mind, so Huang Hua taught me. Even less when it's distracted by another source of peril.
Leiftan's breath hitches sharp, his body spasming from neck to sternum even through the numbness sheathing my skin. But I continue to barrel through his psyche: grasping at the thick tendril of poison and anguish leading from this moment, and tracing it deep through the woods of his mind. Skirting shafts of light and shadow, ducking through wills tangled in claustrophobic snarls and mists that nip at the heart, until the edge of my mind falls against the door embedded in the core of his memories, sealed tight for a decade and more. The singed wood– or so it appears on this state– recoils, bristles, and burns under my touch like a living fire wyrm.
I hesitate. My anger pales as the blackened door begins to scald the tips of my psyche.
Please, don't do this. My voice echoes for the first time through the thick darkness of his mind.
Because this door isn't strong enough, not for the memories still seething just under the panels. In a heartbeat, I can open it. And force him to relive that horrific day in full force.
Ashkore might well slit my throat before I return to my body. But nothing can check the infernal force of Leiftan's memories once this barricade breaks wide open. The rest of the Light Guard will seize their chance, launching their counter-attack the moment he crumples in pain, and my own body falls to the floor.
Four against two. Or less than that, once he's fully-incapacitated by his own mind. I'll kill him.
"…What would you have me do?" Leiftan's answer comes at barely above a whisper, clipped and precise, but the shadows shake like the first breath of a storm. On instinct, I brace myself for the psychic counter, fastening my grip on the burning door. But nothing arrives.
"…What?" comes Miiko's voice from impossible leagues away, pitched sharp with bewilderment. And then I knew.
"Here, there's only one possible outcome for me, and you know this. You know what happened to my family, my people, and every other soul who dared to confess to be on my side!" Now his voice is rising in a crescendo I've never heard before, his chest heaving at my back, anger thrumming through me from both outside and within.
He doesn't know how to navigate the mind like I can. His reply can only come through his physical voice.
"It's a rift too deep to be bridged by a few pretty words– dug by hundreds of crimes over generations of zealots! And you expect me to turn my back on it? To forget what's been done within my own lifetime, and pledge allegiance to this farce? No, I cannot– will not– forgive them. If they wish to talk about duty, then I will tell them that it's my duty to the ones I've lost to never forget. To never surrender– to never accept!"
His voice splits like glass at that final word. And I realize then that no compromise is possible.
I withdraw from the door. The gale-force of his grief continues to buffet the dark.
Leiftan, I don't know what can be done. My voice wheels as brittle as a moth under the shadows still trembling around the base of his memories. But I know that I don't want to lose you like this.
For a heartbeat, it seems that the dark grew still.
I seize that moment to slip away from that door, treading back to the brighter reaches of his psyche.
There's a trick closely-guarded even among veteran empaths, the basics of which Huang Hua taught me before she was called back to her temple. Now I use what I know to scrabble and twist through the wild green labyrinth of his mind, bracing against the mist whipping past like risen ghosts, hunting for the pockets of light that I know are there: imperfect mirrors of the same moments I hold. And one by one, I wrest them out of the barbed undergrowth.
The spasm of grief that stiffened his ribs only moments ago, his collar damp where it met my cheek, his own tears coming to rest on my neck.
The open curve of his smile on the night I straddled him in the privacy of my room, dressed only in shadow and what slivers of moonlight penetrated the velvet folds of the curtains.
The warmth of his arms when they drew me in for the first time, summer light searing through his coat flung over both our shoulders. The faint calluses on his fingertips prickling my chin as he whispered comfort: that despite what happened, I could always find a place to rest in him. Because the last thing he would want to see in this life was me learning to hate.
By the time I drift to the peripheries of his mind, drained to the width of a wisp, there's not a breath of wind stirring the woods.
"…The moment your party arrived, I knew my time here was up," comes Leiftan's murmur at last, slipping almost shyly through the dappled understory, all thunder gone. "And that leaving you would be the hardest thing I've had to do by far."
There's little to be said. I think of those sooty wings flaring in the Grand Crystal Chamber, and marring the clouds over El like a black fracture in the sky. An unlikely event, and not by our choice.
I know. Though a shield only lasts so long. Few emotions can possibly be hidden where minds meet; I let him see the full tartness in my answer.
"That I'm aware of… yes." He has the grace not to defend his actions, at least. "But if there's another way… would you take it?"
Shock jolts my pulse, breaking the last threads of my concentration. Like what? The question escapes before I can help myself. But already, I feel my body rouse, rally, and reel my mind back to earth.
"All I ask is that you trust me. Now more than ever. Can you do that?"
My psyche winks out from his before I can reply. Like a torrent of sand filling a tomb, the weight of my body resettles around me. Then there's the heat of his mouth by my ear; the curious triple-time rhythm of his heart behind mine, the pressure of his hands at my wrist and neck. Looser than before, I notice absently.
"Look, Leiftan…" Nevra's voice emerges from a long way across the hall, as ginger as a fresh bruise.
I force myself to blink, the wash of sunburnt colors and blurred silhouettes sharpening with every beat. Leiftan stirs behind me, his spine straightening by a fraction as he too returns to the moment.
The dark, lanky shadow ahead of us resolves itself into Nevra: one foot forward and hand outstretched, a grave look dominating the sliver of his expression past the eyepatch. It can't have been more than a minute since I left.
"I'm the last person to question which sides we pick in this life," the spymaster continues, the steel edge now missing in his voice. "But Erika never did make a choice when she arrived; she has no right to be involved in this feud."
Maybe not at first. But choices continue by the second, by the instant.
"Now if it's free passage you want, we can offer it to you… for today. All we ask in exchange is to know where and when we can expect to find her again. You care for her… at heart. We can see that. Would you continue to put her at risk out in the hinterlands?"
At my back, Leiftan's chest stiffens for a beat; Nevra's words might have been the first to hit home all evening.
Miiko's staff suddenly cracks against the floor, punctuating his offer; the foxfire in the censer glows three degrees brighter. "We do not negotiate with terrorists, Nevra!" the head of the Guard bristles, tails lashing. "Have you lost your mind? Once we grovel to this… traitor, who knows when the ransoms will end?" Her lips are thin with rage as she returns the glower to her former right-hand man; her staff whips our way, sparks spitting from the censer. "Now you know more than anyone here what we're willing and able to do to keep this Guard– and our recruits– safe from scum. Do the arithmetic. Our patience is fraying."
And I know more than anyone what you're willing to do for a promise of peace. I think back to the secrets hoarded by the Light Guard. My own family winking out of my life: in a different way, but no less permanent.
"With all due respect, Miiko, your patience is no longer my concern." Leiftan's reply now rolls off his tongue like fresh snow melt. "I ask for fairly little, in exchange for the safety of a young woman you claim to value. Now you know by now what my associate and I are capable of: a significant amount over the years, despite the concentrated efforts of you and the people you call your Guard. I suggest you reconsider testing us."
Ashkore crosses his arms and shifts his weight to one hip, somehow still managing to keep that serpentine dagger poised at my throat. He hasn't moved an inch from his spot since I burrowed into Leiftan's mind, to explosive effect.
How much have you both done, and how much more are you willing to do? For what ends? Once, I thought I was beginning to open Leiftan like a book. Except each page was covered with a fine print that I never even saw.
"Daemons like you don't frighten us," Miiko spits.
"Nor are we frightened of you," my lover counters. "And that is a fact you will soon come to regret."
The silence stretches taut across the shadow of the Grand Crystal, lit to a surreal, violet twilight from where the sun strikes its manifold faces. The remnants of the Light Guard stand in a tight wedge– Miiko behind Valkyon, flanked by Ezarel and Nevra– like a living crossbow bolt aimed our way, ready to fly at word from their leader.
A ball of flame is twisting just above the kitsune's palm, its core glowing whiter by the moment. Ezarel's mouth has compressed to a thin line, the whisker-thin point of his rapier shivering above the floor. Valkyon has flung one arm out to check Nevra's progress, urging him to stand down, but his gimlet gaze is fixed dead on Ashkore.
I don't dare to shut my eyes, or even to blink.
They'll start with Ashkore– that much I can see from his former victim, his knuckles pale around the grip of his long axe. And the moment the masked rebel buckles under his and Miiko's assault, Nevra and Ezarel will ricochet to where Leiftan and I are. If they can't convince him to flee– because nothing will persuade him to wear manacles in their dungeon, his wings clipped to stubs– then they'll run him through, without hesitation.
I wonder which of them will do it, and which one will wrench me away from him.
I wonder where they'll inter his body if that happens. Quietly, no doubt, without ceremony; without even informing the world that the last daemon of the realm has joined his brethren. The only evidence of his betrayal given in a separate, unmarked plot far from the fallen heroes of the Guard.
I wonder what they'll do if– by a miracle– he and I both survive this night. How many days will pass before Miiko summons me here, and enlists me in the hunt for El's most vilified fugitive: ordering me to use my knowledge of his mental signature, his memories, the way his heart beats at the back of mine, to track him down across the dreamscape like a hound. And then cripple him; level him for the others on the one plane where he cannot retaliate.
On the day they ask me this, I wonder how discreet they'll be with that silent question, or if it'll be poised like another dagger against my throat: help them and the Guard, or be thrown into the same lot as him. Because there is no abstention in this fight.
My eyes have dried beyond all help. With an effort that wrenches at my jaw, I force my parched throat to swallow, and curl my fingers once again into his hand around my neck. To onlookers, it probably looks as though I'm fighting for air. But to Leiftan, having left a hair's breadth of space between the curve of his palm and my throat, it means something else.
A ghost of a breath escapes him, kissing my ear. One blonde braid falls against my cheek as he swivels his head to the side, his voice at its quietest yet, and starched smooth. "I'll admit: I didn't foresee this development tonight. Would you accept my apology, my friend?"
For a long moment, Ashkore doesn't move. But eventually, the peshkabz lifts from my throat by the width of a nail.
"It's definitely not the first time I've heard that," he remarks, in a dark rasp that scrapes the base of throat. I frown at him– why is he speaking that way? His free hand comes to rest at the back of his belt, elbow cocked almost petulantly. "So I'm used to it, by this point. Fuck you, by the way."
"As charming as ever." Leiftan's foot slides back, pulling me with him.
Ezarel blanches; he steps full out of Valkyon's shadow. "Wait!"
In a flash of silver, Ashkore's dagger suddenly cartwheels across the chamber, burying itself into the elf's right shoulder and wresting a different cry from him.
His rapier clatters to the tiles, steeped in red. But Ashkore has already drawn the twin knife hidden at the back of his belt and sends it streaking towards Nevra as the vampire lunges. The recurved blade tears through his ribs when he swivels at the last instant, just sparing his stomach, but the rest of him drops to a roll, blood streaked along the marble.
The tiles tremble under Valkyon's charge; blue fire blasts the air; Ashkore backpedals. I catch a black canister flashing into his hand, uncorking in an eldritch burst of green that burns like a livid cloud of phosphorus, before Leiftan propels us both backwards through the window.
The evening splits with the sound of shattering glass and screams. Then the turret is falling up into the seared sky at a sickening speed, the wind thick in our ears and shrieking through his wings speckled with blood and bright shards of glass, folding in tight like a peregrine's as we plummet.
My mouth is split in a scream– whipped soundless under the wind; his powerful arms are twisting me around, bundling me tight against his chest as we both corkscrew down to the earth. Until he suddenly finds the updraft: primary and secondary wings snap open with twin cracks, jerking us sharp in the air like tackle at the end of a hook, my stomach lurching, my voice cut in mid-cry, the smell of pine, hearth-smoke, and the sea already welling up to us from below as we finally wheel away from the edge of the cliff.
A choked gasp escapes me; his hand bows my head to his neck, holding me there as his wings beat once, twice, and half a dozen more times, each with an electric spasm and heave of breath that rocks his entire body as he fights for altitude, compensating for my weight. Then with a sudden skip and lurch of vertigo, we catch the next current that rises from the sea, the cold salt wind suddenly bearing us up the height of the tower with an Olympic surge. And at last Leiftan's wings level out, coasting silent on the high wind; the line of his body curves like a hook, left-hand wings dipping as we enter a turn.
Ash chokes the air; I dare risk a glimpse. Out of the corner of my eye comes a flash of azure flame and bright smoke, streaming from the punctured eye of the spire.
But already we're clearing the arc of the tower-wall, the line of the horizon slanting deeper as we turn until the resting sun burns bright in our faces. My eyes flinch shut again. But Leiftan hasn't so much as cringed, his eyes trained resolutely to the west. And as his hand rises to guide me back to his neck, I finally realize why daemons' eyes look the way they do, green upon full black: it's to meet the sun's glare, and conquer it.
Where are we going? I want to ask, my stomach pinched into a painful snarl below my ribs, daring another peek past his face. But we're tilting again in the air, and the sea breeze is dropping as we cross deeper into the peninsula. Leiftan's arms around me tighten in warning, before his wings crack again to climb the sky, angling us back to the line of the coast to catch the next gust that rises from the sea– funneling up the cliffs in a blast of cold and brine, and buffeting us again into the cinnabar sky.
Every ounce of his breath is now being spent to keep us both aloft; I don't dare to ask for more.
Trust him, I tell myself instead. My arms curl fierce around the nape of his neck, cold and vertigo prickling my skin, my knees drawn up and twined tight around his waist like the night he visited. Warmed only by the damp heat of his chest as it shudders with the currents, and the triple-time beat of his heart lying thick across from mine.
Trust him. The smell of feathers wet with blood and ocean vapors cloy my nose; a thick patina over the scent of his skin. The high wind bites at my limbs and the skin of my back, slowly leeching the strength from my grip as the clouds turn colors from pyre to midnight shroud. His bare arms bracing me against him don't even deign to shudder.
Trust him. My eyes shut one more time against the threat of the ground, against the receding point of the tower to the east, against the unknown miles that we've already crossed, and those we have left to cover, suspended between worlds and creeds.
Trust him. It's all that is left for me to do from here on.
FIN
Disclaimers:
- So far, as of Episode 17, we have no idea what will happen to the Grand Crystal down the road. For this story, I chose the 'gradual corruption!' theory.
- Based on the X-Mas 2017 illustration, Ashkore's preferred weapon appears to be some kind of (gigantic) two-handed broadsword. But in this story, I outfitted him with a pair of peshkabz- a type of Perso-Afghan recurve dagger- because it's a lot easier to sneak around and surprise people with those than an impractically-massive sword.
- We have no idea what the inside of Leiftan's psyche looks like. But I chose a (creepy) deep forest as the setting to fit the theme of secrecy and deceptive-calm for his character. Also, forests are violent places when you least expect them to be.
- We don't really know what daemon's eyes can do, but in this case, I portrayed them a bit like eagle's eyes- an apex aerial predator- because, well, they say daemons are one of the strongest fey species in history. Why not?
- The Guardian/Erika is not a master Inceptor, I mean, er, mind-burglar. Not yet, at least.
If you enjoyed this story, and even if you didn't, don't hesitate to leave a review. My inbox is always open for feedback.