Welp, here we go! Starting this is a bad idea, I have two other fics I'm supposed to be servicing, and the odds of finishing aren't great. But I have backstory, I have song references, and most of all I have prodigious amounts of spite, so HERE I GO.
Fair warning! It's probably a little stranger than you'd expect Lilly's backstory to be. It's not gonna get any less strange, either. Buckle up for weird times.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, settings, or premises in here! Fair Use laws, and all that.
Cold sandstone scraped Lilly's chin as she clawed her way to the top of the wall, but she did her best to ignore it. She ignored the ominous fabric-catching sounds coming from the knees of her playclothes as well. This was the closest she'd ever gotten to seeing the world outside. Just a little higher, and she could really get a good look . . .
"Lilly!" called a calm but commanding voice. Lilly froze, gulping, then finally groaned and slid down from the wall again. The left knee of her pants did catch on the stone and tear open as she landed.
"Lilly," sighed her father. "I'm not going to say it again."
Lilly hung her head, sighing as well. He didn't need to say it again, she'd heard it enough. The woods outside were dangerous. There were creatures hiding out there. She knew.
"I worry about you, Lilly," said her father as they started to walk. "Why are you so determined to look past the walls? Are you going to be climbing out next? Do you realize how much danger you could get into?"
"The postman makes it here all right," mumbled Lilly sullenly.
"He's the postman. He's immune."
Lilly sighed yet again, scuffing her feet as she walked. She cast a longing glance over the walls, and the treetops swishing above them, bending over the castle borders till they nearly blocked out the sky.
"Daddy," she said. "Why do we live here?"
He gave her a questioning look.
"Out here in the woods," she clarified. "Why did you build a big stone castle right in the middle of the dangerous woods? Why not build it somewhere safe?"
"What makes you think there's anywhere out there safer?" said her father.
Lilly bit her lip and didn't reply. She realized, a little too late, that if her father learned about the stories of the outside world she wheedled out of the postman, she might be banned from talking to him.
Luckily, her father didn't press, although he did seem to make some guesses. He sighed, looking to the treetops overhead as if searching for guidance.
"I don't know what you've heard about the rest of the world, Lilly," he said. "But just because it might sound beautiful and kind in stories, doesn't mean that it is. The world outside can be cruel, Lilly. Even beyond the woods, there might not be actual monsters, but you might find even worse monsters in the hearts of other humans."
"But humans can have friends," said Lilly. "It's not just in books. What if I could go out there and make some friends?"
Her father slumped, resigned.
"Sweetheart," he said, turning around and crouching to be at her eye level. "Right now it's a little too complicated for you to understand. But the people out there? They're dangerous to us. They hate me. They want me dead."
"You, Daddy?" Lilly looked at him with frightened eyes. He could be stern at times, or distant, but she couldn't imagine anyone hating her father.
"Yes, Lilly," said her father, a strange, bitter smile on his face. "That's why we have to live here in the woods, where nobody can get to us. If they could get at me, they would hurt me. They might hurt you too."
"They would hate me too?" said Lilly, her voice small.
"If they knew who you were . . . yes," said her father quietly. "I'm sorry, Lilly. But that's the way it is. We must hide here to be safe. Do you understand?"
"Yes Daddy." Lilly stared at the ground for a moment, then whispered, "Is that what happened to Mommy?"
Her father turned back, confused.
"Did the people out there . . . get her?" said Lilly.
A flicker of something strange passed across the Master of Earth's face. Deceit? Oh, but he wouldn't lie to his daughter, would he?
"Yes," he said at last. "I'm afraid they did. I'm sorry, Lilly."
It was lonely for a child, growing up in a sandstone castle in the middle of savage woods. Lonely and boring. She used to seek excitement by sneaking out of bed at night and creeping around the inner castle perimeter, listening for the creatures screaming outside the walls. But soon even that grew commonplace. She could identify eight different kinds of screams, though she had no idea what species any of them belonged to, and she knew what time of night and which side of the castle they preferred. There was no more thrill to it.
She read her small collection of books over and over. Every birthday she got a new book, carefully chosen by her father to not give her too many ideas about the outside world. Still, she lived for the intricacies of normal life, the complex interactions that people seemed to have out there. She greedily drank in all the dialogue, and all the parts where characters became friends, fell in love, had fun, were happy or kind to each other. She read those passages over and over, often memorized them. They were her only substitute for real human warmth; a closeness and openness that she couldn't get from her father, and certainly not from her brief chats with the postman.
For her seventh birthday she got a new book, as usual. This one was about knights. She fell in love. Only a few weeks later the pages began to come loose from the binding after all the times she'd flipped through them. She loved the descriptions of castles—somehow they sounded so much more majestic than the plain sandstone walls of her own home. They glittered, in her imagination. Spires miles high, made of pure white stone. They were probably encrusted with jewels.
She loved the feasts, the adventures, the fairies and wizards, the dragons. Sometimes when she heard the creatures howling outside the walls, she thought about how a brave knight could slay a dragon thirty times his size. How would it be if she went out there and slew a nasty screaming forest creature? That would be something else again. Her father noticed that she was putting a lot more effort into her warrior training, and assumed she had finally reached the age where she could apply herself. He was a naive man.
She loved the theatrical emotions of knighthood. Chivalry, loyalty, betrayal and all that. The brotherhood between knights who died for each other; the towering love between kings and queens, knights and fair maidens. Knights throwing themselves into deadly impossible quests to win the hand of heartless maidens, or maidens glimpsing knights through their windows and dying of longing. What she'd give to have a handsome, dashing warrior risking his life for her without a shred of hesitation. Heck, she'd even settle for the dying-of-longing angle, it seemed romantic. And it all seemed so different from the cruel, dangerous outside world her father described.
But what caught her eye most of all: vengeance. Knights didn't screw around taking other people's nonsense. When you insulted one, you had to duel. When you wronged one, they'd come after you and maybe even your family too. You couldn't just hurt a knight and get away with it. You couldn't terrorize or imprison innocent people without a knight coming along to make you pay.
Now that was something she could get behind. Somewhere out there, in the real world, there were people who hated her father for no good reason. They hated him so much they wanted to kill him, and forced him to live in this drab, lonely castle in the woods. By extension, they forced her to do the same.
And was she going to take that?
Heck no!
She asked the postman some skillfully angled questions. She waited till her father was consistently impressed with her training, which in her mind meant she was as good as she was going to get. She held her breath every time her father walked close to the overhanging branches in one corner of the castle, the ones that she'd found allowed her to actually reach the top of the wall. He never noticed them.
Then she smuggled a dagger and a shield out of the armory, waited for twilight, and climbed out into the woods.
Holding her breath, she skirted the outside of the castle walls, heading for the front gate. There was a little bit of a path there. She'd glimpsed it over the postman's shoulder as he left one time. She tried to focus on the sandstone exterior of the walls, which looked boringly similar to the interior, but still seemed preferable to the dark, tangled masses of plant life on the other side of her. The trill of crickets and peepers seemed so much louder out here, up close.
She circled around to the front gate. Now she was forced to turn her back to the castle and look out into the woods.
They could have looked friendlier. There was a narrow trail worn into the grass, by which the postman presumably came and went, but it seemed to vanish quickly among the twisted hulks of trees. The last scraps of sunset filtered eerily through branches and creepers. Things seemed to whisper out there.
Lilly gave it some thought. For a minute she entertained the idea of turning around and banging on the gates to get back in. Still an option, although boy, would she be in trouble.
Eventually she threw out the idea. She would be in so much trouble that it would permanently toast any future hope of sneaking out. And if she couldn't sneak out, how could she get out of the forest, track down the people threatening her father, and exact vengeance?
So now was her only chance. She swallowed, reminded herself that she was a knight now, lifted her shield and dagger a little higher, and stepped out onto the path.
She had taken exactly three steps before a sudden horrifying chill crashed over her. It was like stepping through a portal from summer to winter, and the winter was full of nameless evil and dread. She came up short, shaking. What was that?
She couldn't have known (her father never mentioned it), but the castle had numerous protective spells cast in a sphere around it. The things that lived in this forest, you didn't keep out with mere walls. She'd just stepped past the edge of the protective field, into the untamed viciousness of the forest.
She waited a few seconds, composing herself. Aside from the lingering wound to her courage, nothing else seemed to happen. After a moment she pulled herself together and walked on.
No big surprise, it only got darker. As Lilly trudged through the woods, chucking her too-heavy shield back and forth to stop it getting caught on things, she had a harder and harder time keeping sight of the narrow path through the undergrowth. She was also keenly aware that she didn't seem to be the only source of noise out here. Now and then when she stopped to rest, she was sure the rustling continued longer than it was supposed to.
She picked up speed, till she was half-jogging. Now and then she tripped over a root, but she always managed to catch herself at the last second. Although she never saw anything, she felt watched.
This had been a bad idea.
Then, as her ears strained for the sounds of whatever might be out there, she suddenly heard something that seemed deafening in comparison.
"Lilly."
The voice almost didn't seem to come from outside her. It was almost inside her head. It was neither masculine nor feminine, neither rough nor smooth; it was like a breath, a whisper. Like the sound of ice breaking beneath your feet.
Lilly froze, shaking. She wanted to look back; she couldn't.
"Lilly, let me in."
Something prickled at the edges of her mind, like bird claws brushing a finger, seeking purchase. Throwing aside her shield, she took off at a full run. She lost the path and stumbled into the underbrush, clawing against bushes and branches.
"Lilly." The voice still seemed to be right at her shoulder, not winded, not faltering. Independent of the leaves thrashing around her. "Lilly, let me in. I'll keep you safe. I'll give you everything you ever wanted, Lilly."
"Go away!" gasped Lilly, stumbling over a tree root. "Leave me alone! I've gotta knife!"
Something told her the knife was useless, though.
"Don't you want a friend, Lilly?" the voice breathed in her ear. "Let me in. I'll be with you forever."
She could feel the creature full-out slashing at the edges of her consciousness now. Burning rifts seemed to open in her mind, and flickering, shimmering light wormed its way through. She thought she glimpsed glowing eyes. Malevolence rolled off the entity in waves.
"Help me!" She could barely run anymore. The flashing in her mind's eye was mixing with the darkness of the real world and she couldn't see. She had no idea how far she might be from the edge of the woods. Was there any chance anyone would even hear her?
"Help! Somebody help!"
Now everywhere she saw only strobing light. The world spun. Dimly she was aware of falling, of something towering over her, but it wasn't really there at all. Her mind crumpled and shut down, pulling her eyes closed even as her small body shook violently. A warm, drowsy buzzing seemed to fill her ears, though it did nothing to drown out the creature's voice.
"Forever, Lilly."