A-Side
While the village grew a lot of wheat, it was mostly just to give the more bored faeries something to do with their time. The Fae didn't need to eat in the same way humans did, and while this newfangled 'restaurant' craze was starting to take off in the southern cities, it simply didn't provide enough demand for the abundant supply. The result was large fields of crops that were grown with tender loving care, and then left to wither where they stood. An outside observer may call such a practice wasteful, but these large fields were good for at least one thing…
SCHWING-!
The Staff of Selection hissed through the air; the glowing tip moving so fast as to be a blur. Not that there was that much force behind the swing, regardless. The faerie who was wielding it was shorter than the staff itself, and weak even by the generous curve one might measure a teenage girl's martial prowess… as the citizens of Tintagel were fond of reminding her every chance they got. Still, as the weapon travelled in its arc, it had force enough to separate the heads of the wheat stalks from their bodies, and the blonde girl smirked in triumph as the air around her was soon glowing with the floating kernels of her victims.
"That's one Mors down!" Altria declared proudly, puffing out her chest as she spoke of the creature she'd just imagined slaying.
Wait, was it a Mors she'd just imagined striking? The unbidden question caused her smirk to waver slightly, but she shook it away as quickly as it arrived. Despite her many, many, MANY weaknesses, Altria Caster was a hard faerie to keep depressed.
Of course she was imagining herself slaying Mors! It was her duty to save everyone, after all! She corrected her earlier doubt with a firm nod. Thanks to her fae eyes, she could see through the lies of everyone else she gazed upon. It was a useful, though cruel and isolating power… but it also meant that the only person who could lie to her was herself—it'd be a shame to waste the opportunity to do so.
"Take that! And that! And a few of these!" Her internal debate settled, she hefted the Staff of Selection once again, and resumed her murder of the innocent stalks before herself. All the while imagining the army of Mors she was protecting her village from. Mors!
She definitely wasn't pretending to give a good smack to that awful 'friend' of hers, who got Altria whipped by her mother when she lied about who snuck into the granary. Oh! Or that awful fairy who ran the dry goods store, who made it a point to call her a 'disappointment' at least three times a day. Which reminded Altria of the gossipy village elder who started her day by telling her she was the most pathetic fairy he'd ever seen in her life, and wishing she would save them all trouble and just die already.
SCHWING-! SCHWING-! SCHWING-!
The staff travelled faster and faster as Altria began to catalogue each of the villagers she was assuredly not fantasizing about smacking over the head. Sending stalk after stalk of wheat flying into the air, until the girl was standing alone in a circle of flattened greenery.
"Geez, do you mind calming down a little bit? I've been here for five seconds and I'm already dizzy. A-also, are you sure you're not some kind of demon!? I could swear your teeth were pointed for a few seconds back there." A carefree male voice echoed from the tip of her staff, causing Altria to jerk in surprise.
"Ahh!" The fae girl shrieked, her grip loosening enough to send her weapon sailing through the air. It landed a few feet away from her, the jeweled crown half-submerged in muddy soil.
"Ah… well, I suppose this is all the dignity the great and mighty Merlin deserves, isn't it?" The male voice was as carefree as ever, though a pouty edge had creeped into his tone.
"Merlin! I'm so sorry! You surprised me." Despite herself, a warm wave of excitement flowed through Altria as her brain finally processed whose voice she'd just heard. She was practically humming under her breath as she pulled her weapon free of the muck.
'Excitement' was an emotion she'd never had occasion to experience before meeting him…
"No helping it, I suppose. I tried to get your attention more subtly, but you were so focused, back there." Merlin chuckled, the jeweled tip of the Staff of Selection flickering with the sound of his voice. "You, uh… you realize that magic staves aren't intended to be bludgeoning instruments, right?"
"Well, you know better than anyone that my magic power is kind of pathetic. If I weren't willing to smack things over the head with it, I wouldn't be able to use the Staff of Selection for much at all." Altria scratched her reddened cheek, a bead of nervous sweat pooling beside her temple. Her ineptitude with magic was something that surprised everyone who heard about her destiny, but even a lifetime of having it pointed out to her didn't take the sting of embarrassment away from thinking about it.
…Oh!
The Child of Prophecy worked the bottom of the staff into the dirt so that the weapon could stand on its own, and then took a step backward, sitting cross-legged in front of it as she gazed into the crystal. Her moment of self-deprecation suddenly completely forgotten—she was gazing up at Merlin's proxy with excited, starry eyes.
"That's right! It's been three days! Is that why you came back?"
Confident laughter echoed from her staff. Altria could almost imagine the annoying smug look the kind incubus spellcaster was making on the other side of the connection. She wasn't sure how, but somehow her staff was able to function as a radio tower, letting him communicate with her even from his prison in Morgan's garden.
"Was there ever any doubt? They don't call me 'Merlin, the great and powerful' for nothing." The magus let out a confident snort. "Sorry to keep you waiting for so long, I had to work out a way for you to conjure a warming flame without putting you into position to accidentally burn your stable down."
"Oh come on! You don't think I'm that careless, do you?"
"Yes. Absolutely."
"Y-you didn't even hesitate." Altria whined and puffed out her cheeks, exaggerated tears running down her face as he lowered her head to her arms.
"Now, now! My perfectly valid fears for your clumsiness aside, I came to visit today because I figured it out. Since you're pretty hopeless when it comes to fae magical energy, we'll just ignore that whole aspect of you altogether, and do magecraft the human way."
An interested hum vibrated from Altria's throat as she immediately forgot her pouting, her posture returning to its lax position. She'd seen a few humans over the years, but it was hard for her to imagine one conjuring magic.
"Will that work, though? Doing magecraft like a human?"
"Damned if I know…" Merlin muttered so quietly that Altria didn't understand a single word, but before she could ask for clarification, he was quick to recompose himself. "Er, I mean, yeah! Of course it will! I'm the premiere teacher of magic, after all. Your cold nights are over, Altria."
"Hmmm…. I feel like you're trying to distract me a little bit there, but okay!" Altria sprang to her feet, extending an arm across her chest and stretching the muscles in her shoulder. "I'm feeling extra 'Child of Prophecy'-like this afternoon. I've got so much energy I could probably figure it out even without your help."
"You do seem a bit more hyper than you were when I first found you, it's true… and it 'would' be a amusing to see you discover magecraft by yourself… but I did come all this way. May as well help you out."
The sun continued its journey across the sky as Merlin explained, eventually beginning to fall under the horizon and lending a golden hue to the coral skies of Faerie Britain. Altria was proud of the fact that she was able to keep her eyes from glazing over as he went, but it was difficult to grasp. Magic circuits, conduits, foci… compared to the innate magic that the fae were privy to, it sounded like humans had to jump through a lot of hoops just to have access to basic spells.
Still, when she tried to focus on channeling mana in this way, she felt warm energy flowing through her veins, which was something new. It took her a bit longer than she'd hoped to start getting the hang of it, but after the first hour, she was able to draw the energy up into her palm, causing sparks of flames to crackle from her calloused fingertips before fading away.
"Ugh! So close." The blonde fae frowned, her brow crinkling. Her narrowed gaze remained fixed on her palm as she stretched and retracted her fingers.
"it makes sense that you're the type to learn better by doing, huh? I should lead with that next time." Merlin mused thoughtfully. Altria found the mystic glow of the staff's gem hauntingly beautiful in the twilight. "Really, you're closer than you think you are! You're the kind of person who likes to think 'yes! I'm doing it!' when she's about to do something cool, aren't you? You get 90% of the way there, and then your concentration falters at the last second."
"That…huh. Is that what's going wrong?" Altria sighed and drew the back of a gloved hand across her brow. The exertion of the magecraft had her running hot, even despite the crisp autumn evening.
"Hey, I'm not criticizing! I get it. You deal with so much of the villagers' nonsense that I figure having something turn out well is an alien concept for you. We've got this 99% figured out, though. We should get it with one more push!"
"'Alien concept'? Does my life seriously look that depressing from the outside!?" The scowl on Altria's face was broad and exaggerated for the sake of coming across as comedic, but she couldn't deny that the way he phrased it struck a chord in her.
Growing up here, she'd long since learned that even the most cautious of optimism would only ever get her punished for having hope. She hadn't seen the world outside the village, so perhaps the faeries of Tintagel were just uniquely awful… but by Avalon were the fairies of Tintagel awful. The sorts of people who would surprise you in the worst way every time.
You'd catch yourself thinking "well, that was a horrible thing they did, but at least it's rock bottom, right? They can't do anything worse than that, surely!" Then the very next day they'd find a new way to be selfish, or spiteful, or cruel.
Altria felt a hot stab of anger and frustration knot her stomach.
…and these were the faeries she was supposed to sacrifice everything to save…
!
Another shake of the head, another wipe of the brow, and her expression was neutral again. No sense letting herself stay down over something she'd known forever. More importantly, Merlin was right! She HAD started letting herself think that she was going to succeed at the spell before she had finished casting it. Perhaps it was a sign of how unguarded she had become during his visits.
"Right, this time for sure." She finally nodded in agreement with his words and began to channel her mana once again. Heat spread up through her forearms, and she did her best to guide it along her fingertips, blinking as sparks of flame began to form.
Inhale. Exhale. Focus.
The flames persisted, but still she focused, using the magical energy that fueled the fire to draw the lashing flame together. The core of the fire grew brighter and hotter as more and more matter was forced into it.
Inhale. Exhale. Focus.
Finally, the core swelled and smoothed into a circular state, magical energy crystalizing around it like a glass film. By the time it stabilized, it had become a ball of glowing heat, the same size and color as an overripe orange. Finally, Altria's concentration wavered, but even as her hands fell slack and her eyes unfocused, the ball remained, beginning to slowly orbit around her as if it were a planet in her solar system.
"I… I did it…" Altria felt more happiness than her tired voice could muster, the faerie girl panting as she watched the orb float around her. In terms of magical accomplishment, this was barely a parlor trick, of course. The sort of thing a normal fae would be able to conjure with barely a thought. Still, she felt no inadequacy at that comparison. As the warmth of that little ball radiated against her skin, she closed her eyes and smiled.
To any other faerie it would be nothing, but to her it was an important milestone: the first time she'd ever successfully cast magic.
"Look at you go! As a magical senpai, I'm so proud I could burst. I'd give you a reaffirming pat on the head, but alas, I am but an armless stick." Merlin was a man whose voice implied a soul that could never stop teasing, but even he was sounding more sincere than usual. "The membrane traps the flame and lets the heat escape. Just set it up in the corner of your stable, and it should keep you warm and cozy all night. You've lost your last toe to frostbite!"
"Oh right, I told you about that, huh?" Altria scratched her chin with an embarrassed chuckle. Not that remembering the shameful things she admitted to during her rambling was going to dampen her feeling of accomplishment. She was suddenly feeling too energetic to sit still, and had risen to her feet, pacing back and forth as her fireball continued its orbit.
"Well, what's passed is past, as they say. Never mind the catalogue of embarrassing things you've told me that I'm keeping in a notebook for moments when they'll most effectively fluster you! What's important is that you solved one of the problems in your life. From what I've seen we only have… a few thousand more to go?" Merlin hummed. "What do you suppose we should teach you next?"
The Child of Prophecy was preparing to attack her own staff in response to the threat of further embarrassment, but his question stopped her dead in her tracks.
"Wait… you're going to teach me more?" Genuine hope edged into her voice, the girl pivoting on her heel to look up at the ersatz face of her only friend.
"That was the deal, wasn't it? You tell me the magic that could make your life better, and I'll teach you how to do it. Sure, if you couldn't pull off a little fireball, we may have had to admit defeat, but I'm impressed by your aptitude, honestly." He paused for a moment. "I went into this assuming you were completely devoid of magical talent, but it turns out you're only mostly talentless."
It was funny, he was teasing her again, but she couldn't find the desire to even feign outrage over it. This was a situation so far removed from any she'd ever been in that her brain was struggling to process it. In all her years of life, no faerie had ever offered her an act of kindness that wasn't either a naked attempt to exploit her, or a setup for some greater cruelty later.
Merlin had changed so much for her. She would never admit it, but the day her staff had randomly started talking to her was a dark one. The villagers had ground her willpower down to an all-time low with their spite and abuse… their words and actions like howling winter winds that cut through her skin, forcing her to withdraw deeper and deeper inside herself. She considered abandoning her fate—abandoning all of them to their much-deserved damnation-, curling up in a ball in the field, and just letting herself die.
After their first conversation, she'd gone to bed that night, and awoke to find that, for the first time in her life, she was excited about the future. Her thoughts about their time together were warm, light, and wonderful… but also terrifying. He was a stranger, an unknown factor, and because he didn't appear personally in front of her, she couldn't even use her fae eyes to confirm his intentions. Opening herself up would mean courting the possibility of greater pain than she had ever felt in her life.
… and she was so glad she'd taken the risk.
"Hey, come on, now! I was kidding, y'know? If I hurt your feelings, I'm sorry… you're just usually so quick to give as good as you get, when I quip at you." Merlin was more defensive than she was accustomed to seeing.
"What do you—oh…" Altria's question was cut away by the realization of how hot her eyes felt. Something salty and wet had flowed past the corners of her lips, beading at the underside of her chin and dripping onto the front of her white dress. "I'm… crying. Why am I crying?"
"That's what I wanted to know! What a world we live in where a mage of flowers can't say something mildly insulting to a child of prophecy." Merlin was trying to play it off, but he couldn't help the worry in his voice. Even that was strangely comforting to Altria, who was as inexperienced with someone worrying about her feelings as any other positive sort of social interaction.
"No, it wasn't that. I already know how hopeless I am as a caster. It's just… I don't know how to say it." Altria inhaled deeply through her nose, holding the breath in her chest for a moment before exhaling it. "Hey, Merlin?"
"What's got you down, my number one pupil?"
A moment of silence.
"Listen, I know you're probably just going to all this trouble to help the Child of Prophecy fulfil her duty, and whatnot, but…" She brought the heels of her hands to her closed eyes, drying her eyelids before turning to face her staff. The downward curve of her lips reversed into a broad smile, and a sincere light brightened her gaze. "Thank you. I don't think I could ever repay you for the way you've made me feel this week."
A sound escaped from the man behind her staff, something between a thoughtful sigh and a pained grunt. The light of the gemstone flickered for a moment.
"I'm not a reliable man, Altria. You'd be wise to never trust anything I say too far. I'm such a dishonest fellow that if I tried to tell you the reasons I'm helping you, those reasons would become lies purely because I said them." Merlin's voice finally echoed through the staff, carrying a somber seriousness she'd never heard from him before.
"However, even despite all of that, I want you to believe one thing. As long as you're disgusted by this world from the very bottom of your heart. As long as you hate every faerie in Britain, the land they walk on, and the civilization they've created. As long as you spend every day drowning in negative emotions, but keep forcing yourself to march forward anyway… I will be the one person in this world who understands you."
A strange mélange of emotion washed over the young Child of Prophecy.
On the one hand was kinship. The realization that there existed someone, even a strange incubus locked away in a distant garden, who hated this world as much as she did… it brought a sense of peace to her soul that she had no frame of reference for. From the day she'd washed up on the shore of Tintagel, she knew she didn't belong here. Not in this village, not in this nation… every day was a torrent of hundreds of reminders that she and the people who lived here were fundamentally incompatible.
That, however, led to the second strong emotion she felt: confusion. She'd never allowed herself the luxury of calling her feelings toward the villagers, "hatred". In part because it wasn't quite correct. Sure, they were cruel, conniving, and vindictive. Sure, she didn't have so much as a single positive memory with any of them, but she didn't hate them.
…did she?
"I…" She felt a strong urge to say something to him. To share some thought or feeling with the first person she found who might finally understand her… but it was like a comedy routine where several people try to rush through a door at the same time. The thoughts kept jumbling in her brain on their way to her mouth, and nothing but silence escaped from her parted lips.
"Haha, I went and made things a little too real, didn't I?" Merlin chuckled; his puckish demeanor now returned. "Sorry about that! I was just trying to let you know that I'm in your corner, y'know? Cool and dependable, like a good senpai. Can't be a good feeling to think you're all alone, right?"
"Oh, no! No! You didn't say anything wrong at all, I appreciated the sentiment a lot, really!" Her breath was so rapid and giddy as to sound like giggling as she recomposed herself. "I don't know for sure that I feel that way about the world, or anything, but I'm definitely glad I met you, Merlin."
"Likewise, Altria! Now then, the sun's about to set, so our time draws short. What say we get your next lesson lined up before then?"
The pair of them continued to banter for a few minutes more… a span of time the young faerie wished could last forever.
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[THIS IS A TEXT BREAK, RESUME IGNORING IT]
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O-Side
"Item creation is the most logical place to go from here, it sounds like. Not only will it make life easier for Tintagel's chore girl, but it's one of the trademark skills of casters everywhere! Let's see… Gimme five—no, I'll make it work in three—Three days! I'll be in touch once I have everything prepared. Take care of yourself until then!" Oberon had to resort to tensing his fingers to keep himself in-character, with his fingers curling into fists and relaxing repeatedly as he finished his performance. The moment he completed one of Merlin's trademark flippant farewells, he waved a hand, severing the connection between himself and the Staff of Selection.
"Why do I insist upon imitating that annoying bastard so thoroughly? She's never met him before!" Oberon sighed melodramatically as he sank back against a nearby tree, he closed his eyes as he caught his breath, only to open them as he realized he'd slipped yet again. "Oh, right… that sort of language doesn't suit the king of the faeries, does it? I've been playing so many roles it's hard to keep them straight."
The pretender smiled wryly as he hefted himself back up to his feet, the silence allowing him to focus on the chittering of insects that was a permanent component of life in his Welsh Forest. His 'subjects'… they never could shut the hell up for even a minute, but it wasn't horrible. He unwound himself by walking among trees for a while, finding the eternal autumn aesthetic of his domain to be an acceptable palate cleanser to the hours of pretending to be some annoying demon or another.
"Still, what a terrible way to end my day! Talk about a mood killer. Got me feeling all angry and restless…" He shrugged.
Rapid wingbeats disturbed the breeze behind him, and a great white moth emerged from the shadows, perching herself on his shoulder. He gave the new arrival a crooked smirk, extending his neck slightly to allow her to nestle against him.
"Blanca! Your timing is impeccable. I was just thinking it might be nice to swing by Oxford and blow off some steam."
"…" The princess of the insect faeries puffed herself up against him, her antennae twitching as she looked him over. She had a unique talent for communicating with him without speaking… which, if he was being honest (an impossibility, to be sure) was a refreshing contrast to the unending chittering of his other subjects.
"What do you mean you've never seen me looking so happy? Didn't you hear me a second ago? I'm so angry I could practically shake my fist with rage!" As the two of them walked through the evening twilight, he would occasionally stop to observe the odd pill bug or ant fae, who skittered along the bark of the trees to try to keep pace with him.
He was an entity of deception. A creature who could turn truth into lies simply by giving voice to it… but he was the only person in all the world he could be honest with, it would be a shame to waste the gift. And speaking honestly, this Welsh forest that was his personal domain… he only mostly found it revolting. He didn't hate 'everything' about it.
"Well, if, hypothetically, I was to be in a good mood, could you blame me?" He took a deep breath, conjuring his riding coat from behind his wing and folding the garment over his arm. "I'll admit that my last incarnation a thousand years ago went a tad… poorly, but this time will be different. Have you ever had one of those days where you wake up and you think 'today… TODAY everything is gonna go right!'? Well, that's been me lately. If all goes well, I may even not get my throat ripped out by a rabid dog, this time."
Gloucester, Londinium, Camelot, Oxford, Edinburgh, Orkney, Manchester, New Darlington, Norwich…
Faerie Britain. The realm that should never have been born, which clung to the face of a dead world for 14,000 years. The nation of faeries so twisted by their apostate lives that they could no longer even return to Avalon. An entire tiny world that yearned for death from the bottom of its heart.
From the moment his conscious will was given form, he was overwhelmed by this constant desire for destruction. To rend asunder everything around him was his reason for existing… and after a few centuries and a couple of rather nasty deaths, the finish line was finally in sight.
…As long as you hate every faerie in Britain, the land they walk on, and the civilization they've created. As long as you spend every day drowning in negative emotions, but keep forcing yourself to march forward anyway… I will be the one person in this world who understands you…
How was a being like Oberon able to say something so honest to another person? Was it because of the inherent deceit of pretending to be someone he wasn't? The way she'd been looking at him in that moment left him in such a haze of emotion that he hadn't given it much thought, at the time… his mouth had just started moving!
"Ugh."
He found his thoughts returning, unbidden, to that pathetic Child of Prophecy in that tiny, rotten village. She assumed he was Merlin, teaching her magic to prepare her for her role as the Faerie of Avalon. If Oberon had been pressed to tell someone else why he was teaching her, he would say he was preparing her to fill her destined role in the destruction of the world, for his own benefit.
However, even he would then admit that he'd told a terrible lie. Altria Caster was strong. If she hadn't been, she would have shriveled up and died long ago. Even if he left her alone until she departed on her journey, and even if the rest of her years were as dismal and lonely as her first years had been, she would keep charging forward out of pure spite and pride. Teaching her how to conjure a tiny fireball, create a basic ward, or manifest a rake wasn't going to meaningfully improve her ability to be useful to him.
So why in the hell did he…?
He thought back to the face she'd made after she successfully conjured magic for the first time in her life. Eyes bright as the sun, and lips curved so wide across her face that her mouth seemed ready to split her entire head in half. Anger, frustration, and other hot emotions he didn't recognize flowed into his core all at once, and he frowned thoughtfully, his hand coming to rest at the center of his chest.
Why indeed…
"Don't smile at me so earnestly. Don't look at me like that." He muttered under his breath as he unfurled his coat, drawing it over his shoulders so that the soft, furred fabric was spread over his slender frame.
"It makes me wanna wretch."
