Tear Tarnished Angel

"How can I help you understand?" Joscelin asks of You.

But the King’s eyes flutter closed as he feels Master Riviria lead him through the countless millenniums of memory that Riq’ua possessed. By extension it is not only the two Elves, but You who see this glimpse into this ageless man’s long past in hopes of comprehension.

~

Riq’ua’s hands were clasped before him within the Mellim’disiel, the sacred Elven homeland, and to his left and his right there were rows of gravestones extending even further ahead. A graveyard within a graveyard and his eyes came up and head turned back beyond those gathered individuals to the Blade Dancing Academy through the trees. This grove beyond but yet close to the Academy where Master Sea taught and lived. Eyes returned and he starred at the freshly filled grave with simple headstone above it, sadness acute within the air from those presented. For there was no shame or dishonor in sadness in Blade Dancing tradition, it was believed that we should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression. There was a time to mourn and that was now.

-
Arrathian

(Blade Dancer)

&

Reliniel

(Vitin’e)

6546 Perditus
-

A single grave, a single grave marker and Riq’ua stepped back from the grave-site and he put up his hand and those that filtered into the picture by stepping forward bowed with him swords laid horizontally flat in the Blade Dancer’s formal bow. Nearly all of these Elves wore leathers and their blades were the Nyamase Miljem, they Blade Dancers. But speckled amongst them were Elven clerics, Elven mages, scholars and it could be seen also that a even few humans of different professions dotted this crowd who honored these two in death.

"We stand before the grave of a Protector and his Protected. But that is to simple, too plain. We are here honouring the love of two bonded, an Elf man and a human woman. As Elves and Blade Dancers both we feel more keenly the loss of our brother and the woman that he loved."

And Riq’ua through this memory allows You to feel what he meant by the gravity of those words. Just the tiniest sliver blossomed, for more then a splinter to un accustomed minds could be dangerous to fragile chalices. The webbing of the mind, the links that ran from the Blade Dancing Grand Master and branched out like tree roots and webs to his Blade Dancers, from the Blade Dancers to the students, and from Blade Dancers to their mates. From those outer edges it looped back, for all the mates were connected to one another through the students and Blade Dancers too.

"The loss of one life is like a trickle, and with each life this trickle grows stronger, for no life is more precious then another. We are all each other’s sworn brothers, fathers, lovers and friends. To live is to suffer, but to die, is to protect."

~

The gravestones are slow to fade away and Joscelin tries one last time to explain, a clear desperation at last in depths of lavender as they opened to once again look at You.

"We were always connected and we loved the mates of our Masters and our brothers.  Can You now begin to comprehend our loneliness? That Riq’ua and I are the last? The grieving that I fought through as I lead my brethren into War and felt, Oh by the Goddess of Mercy! Felt  inside the tearing of the roots from a great and ancient tree? The webbing cut from Our mind, Our Heart, Our Soul! We honored and respected, nay, we loved them, brethren and mate alike for they had been chosen by a Blade Dancer ire regardless of them being Elven or human. To be the mate of a Blade Dancer bonded them to us all."

It was the strength and the weakness of the Blade Dancers, the ability to move and act with one purpose and one mind. But to feel also the shocking pain and death of each and everyone of your brothers-in-arms. To feel too the overwhelming grief of the mate of the man lost to the beyond pulling you down to drown. The reasons the Blade Dancers had been respected and feared for millennial but in one savage war nearly lost everything.

Title: Blood and Nature
Prompt: Hunger
Rating: (PG-13)
Content Notes/Warnings: 16 years after the novels, Joscelin has recently been crowned King and has been forced into an arranged marriage for Peace to marry Jay, a vampire from the north lands he despises. No Warnings.

Vampires in my novels were originally created from torturing elves in hell for many centuries, the older vampires too strong to go on remained as spirits. These spirits can inhabit people’s bodies turning them into vampires, but the bloodlines also continued like a blood disease from the eldest. Because vampires were once elves they are hated in the very bone of most elf kind. Coupled with elvish immunity to infections and disease it makes it so that Elves cannot be turned into vampires. Elvish vampires are not 'supposed' to exist.

Main Character/s: Fa, Joscelin Quele Ante, Jay James Red Rose Quele Cross. Mentions of Nathanial Peter Quele Royale, Mentions of Damion Ante
Plot: After the novels, Joscelin an elf has recently been crowned King and has been forced in an arranged marriage for Peace to marry Jay, a vampire from the north lands he despises.
Location: illander Castle, Capitol of Camar'a.




Spinning the figure at arm’s length back to his body, Fa watched through the black and silver fringed mask. Did the young man realize who it was he danced with? Did the feel of another cold hand give memory to his dance partner of what he was?

Fa knew who it was he danced with, the masks were meant on this night to give an allure of mystery, but for some this was a useless endeavor. The one whose body was mere inches from his own was the newly crowned King Joscelin, son of the Boy-King Nathanial. The smell of the pine trees of his people and the soft undertone of rose soap alongside the leather of his usual ranger outfit was telltale. He knew with whom he danced, but did this young Elfling?