Arboreal murmurs sang on the wings of the wind, rustling away fresh spring leaves. They clung to sturdy trees, to strong woods bound to creak and bring the forest alive around the river banks and the soft clearing. The light of the sky was beginning to fade away as the afternoon neared its glorious ending, hidden as it was in ocean blue turning pale, then red and bruised, to supplement the dark and the first sprinkles of stars, direction to the north.

A brisk air sharpened the nostrils awake and the last grace of a warmth on her cheeks called out Azaras' sigh.

With her eyes opening, the grass her head rested upon danced alive; it has been anxiously waiting for its mirror and kin, long forgotten into the map of her eyes. Spread across the bare ground, caring not about the mold-like stain the stay will imprint upon her day dress, Azaras awakened as from a dream.

It has been a good dream.

The nature about turned to a faraway music, allowing her attention to focus to whom she turned her head towards.

Azaras, the first born daughter of the Lord of Arcapan, a small keep right under the Dragon Mountains curve towards the Blue Mountains, a kingdom of the North which stood as an ally of the kind that could always be overlooked and forgotten. It gave the people there a peace riddled with a crippled, almost poverty. Their agriculture and resources were limited, but sufficient and constant; it was the prospect of conflict with any bigger monarchies, or lord forbid, a call to arms from their liege which pressured them a guillotine.

And Azaras had a brother, younger by just a few years, Sylvain. This day was theirs, because it was the last day of the week and the warmest weather they have had for a while now. The winters froze their river and it was only today that some of the ice began to melt, releasing the waves, the thrill, the life.

Sylvain and Azaras were alike in many ways beyond their stark features or the ebony strong hair. The tiredness of court and thirst for freedom rooted them to trust each other with these rule breaking days, with hours on end of letting loose of formality and living their youth with the joy they should have had all along as children, without boundaries.

While she was staining her dress, becoming one with the gentle newborn grass, a cold, sturdy blanket to ever lay down on, Sylvain was knee deep in a stone cold river, drenching his trousers. Their mothered cared more about these useless objects, clothing, jewelry, carpets, than she ever did her children. And though the old Lady of Arcapan was senile for the most part and hardly to blame, a taste of rebellion was welcomed.

Sylvain was bent over his knees, hands amongst the tumbled rocks, digging and searching, sometimes even flinching away from a little fish following the course of the river or being diturbed from its home by his curiosity, nurtured from childhood. He liked to find the most colorful rocks.

So far, in over ten years of genuine search, he had gathered almost all the colors. The odds were against him for ever finishing his little project, but just then, it was a purple rock he was looking for.

Azaras loved the watch. There was so much noise in the castle. Were it not the pushy servants, then surely it was her courtesy teacher, followed by the arguments of parents and even whispers she could not tolerate. Her times of silence were rare, but easily enjoyable, no matter how short. Baking, joining Rodkah in the yard and... this.

She still remembered so very vividly how happy Sylvain was when he had found, by some odd miracle, a ruby clear rock, tumbled by the river and surrounded by fish. He could not contain his smile for days in a row, theorizing at dinner discreetly how perhaps it was a sorcerer's stone.

"We'll have more luck next time," Azaras' voice carried melodious over the breeze, meeting halfway the sigh of her brother. She had sat up, grass braided and rangled into the hair she had so carefully brushed through in the morning. Factually, it was known that Tyma would not be happy to have to wash her mistress hair once more, of all the dirt unsuitable for Arcapan's royalty.

"We could move downstream," Sylvain's sorrow of defeat did not last. If anything, a defeat without consequences by the river was a relief, compared to the stress his Lord father subjected him to ever since he could remember. Having an older sister was his only blessing, amongst the pressure of one day living up to be a ruler for this land.

To live, to rule and to die, on the same piece of the Continent that he was born on, while his sister would be married away to distant neighbors. That was how their duties have been cut and shared and perhaps the only reason why he had been born after her so early.

There was a founded rumor in court that the Lord and Lady did not love each other. But she knew better than to not deliver him a son.

Sylvain stepped over the bigger, slippery rocks and back on the grass. Beneath his step, the ground, humid already, was turning muddy. Another pair of ruined leather shoes. "I have a good feeling about that direction. Geoffrey's old man can guess the weather by throwing trinkets on a plate and he said next week might be storming for a few days. It means all that has been dropped up in the mountains will find its way down and fast too. We might be able to find the purple stone."

"How is Geoffrey?" Azaras knew the true meaning of her question and why it was necessary for her to smile. Geoffrey was a young lad, about Sylvain's age, who joined, by some guard's reference, the knight ranks as a trainee. He was doing formidably well in practice and Azaras' casual trainings have led them to clash swords a couple of times, just enough for, a few years ago, Sylvain and Geoffrey to get introduced.

Sylvain bowed his head in a chuckle. The waves of his dark hair giggled too in little tremors, dripping some drops of water from the tips of otherwise dry mane. "He's alright."

"You'll have to give me more than that," Azaras laughed at the red tint she spotted on her brother's cheeks. "Or am I not the one who sneaked you two to the yule festival...?"

"Alright, alright," Sylvain pondered quickly through her tease. He dried his right hand on his white shirt, then offered it away to help Azaras off the ground too. "I am eternally grateful for your support, it is simply not so easy to pretend all the time and then suddenly remove all masks. You know how it goes and the amount of chaos it would commence were we to be ourselves at the wrong time. Father would kill me."

"He'd never kill you, Sylvain," Azaras held his hand a bit longer, giving him a warmth that the sunset would no longer be granting them on the way back to the keep were they not to start walking right away. In the hinge of one second, letting go of his hand, Azaras' senses got pinched by a feeling.

Her head turned back to the river, past its ever flowing banks, into the depth of a forest that did not go too far. As sudden as it came, the unsettling feeling with no meaning left her as a ghost would.

"You're his only son," Azaras finished her reassurance.

Each step away from the water, helped the sky above build its darkness unnotice, helped cover the path behind them in the benifts of doubt, in the melancholy of a memory never to be forgotten as it creeps away and further through uncharted futures.

Their minds were entertained with quiet gossip, with news of Sylvain's lover and promises from Azaras to bake her famous bread for Geoffrey's old man, currently struggling with a seasonal cold. Faint were the thoughts of those on the scale of mad relaxation; relevant as it was, it cut away the strings of everything they knew and they have been forced to learn.

The chatter of the market past the entry gates of the keep was turned to a morbid silence just after a few steps past the guards.

At first it was a creak.

Then it came the instinct.

Azaras turned out and looked up towards the noise, meeting a beast unlike anything she had ever heard of, anything she had ever seen. A dark creature's claws dug into the wooden walls of the gate, and being as tall and slithering, when the monster opened its wings, the wood must have cracked somewhere around the lower hinges.

Another instinct, thoughtlessly put motion while the monster clearly eyed its prey, a kingdom with not enough action surrounding it for it to matter whether or not they would all be eaten.

Azaras pushed Sylvain out of the way of the thick wood which fell over them. It only captured her, under its weight while the beast landed inside. It spun and the sharpness of its wings cut in half all which moved or stood too tall: civilians, guards, man or women, old or young.

Blood splattered over the wood which trapped Azaras underneath. It sneaked through the cracks and warmed her skin, while her head was turned to the side, trying to remain still, fear making her wide eyes attentive in hope of not dying. She watched through that opening made by her presence under the fallen door, until the monster noticed someone escaped and wasn't already in pieces ready to be eaten.

The ones he followed... more exactly the boy.

Having been pushed away, Sylvain stumbled and fell back, just in time to be rained over by horror, but untouched by the wings of death.

It didn't last.

Azaras screamed, half her face dug inside the dirt by the weight of the door. No matter her squirming, she was too far away to do anything while her eyes were glued to a gruesome scene.

The beak of the moster bit into Sylvain's left leg, pulling him closer. It tore his ankle open and skinned him up to the knee.

Carnal screams echoed right into the desperation of his sister who has crawled towards her opening only enough to get her right hand out. Aimlessly she gripped the ground, scratching and pulling so hard, through dirt and blood, that her nails bent back and cracked from flesh.

Sylvain was being eaten alive, before her eyes. The monster was swallowing her brother's flesh, sucking on his bones and cracking them in excruciating sounds. She felt like she eas dying herself and when her voice failed, his died out.

Arrows flew from the high towers and disturbed the monster from his eating. They must have drove it away, because it left behind the still body of Sylvain, an unfinished meal for it and a maddening sight for her. The pressure of the door on her chest left her breathless between the cries, Azaras was half buried in the ground.

Were it not for her trembling hand, they would have never even know she was there. Her own wounds did not matter, as soon as the sturdy people from her father's army moved the doors aside. She pushed everyone out of her way and crawled towards her brother, whom she did not leave out of her sight, not even as he bled and her brain was playing tricks on her mind: was he still breathing or did he pass.

Azaras held him and suddenly knew that it would have been mercy from destiny to take his life, rather than play the strings it laid out for them to dance on.

Sylvain survived, but he lost both his legs. What ruler would be so crippled...? The Court's mage advised the Lord to find another heir or name his daughter, but obsessive, Azaras lost her strength of watching her father and mother think first about their pride; she couldn't watch them choosing to condem Sylvain to a life of a weakened outsider, ruin their future as a house beneath the mountains, ignore the pathos, lick wounds that would never heal.

And if she was to stand against them, she'd die for sins that were not hers.

No. The sinful master was on the horizon painted red, on the darker path she made for herself. Unsteady, the ways of vengeance; uncertain, the paths forged in hateful blades.