by Patrick Odren
in Issue 134, March 2023
The boats fell from the sky in an explosion of blue mist and dust. The Mage’s Highroad had stood for one thousand years, but today in the realm, it rained wood and flesh. In one instant of genuine madness, Rillos let a burst of laughter escape his lips as he fell through the sky he previously soared over. Reflecting that the universe truly must have a sense of humor, to take the choice he had spent weeks building himself up to make, away from him. His ride upon Quisillare’s Pass–or The Mage’s Highroad as the commoners called it—was supposed to end with a fall, but Rillos intended to be alone in that too, much like he felt alone every day.
He felt a tangle of nets work their way around him, wrapping themselves into a vicious embrace, not at all like the warmth of his wife and children. He had asked for this. Yet as the land underneath him grew closer and his end drew nearer Rillos confronted the realization he did not wish to meet that end today. In a fit of pure survival instincts, he extended his body outward as much as he could, forming his limbs into an X-shape. His youth had been spent perfecting the trade of acting, not scientific arts. However, he remembered an old man he’d performed for one evening, drunk off one too many glasses of hard wine. The old drunk regaled the bar patrons with a tale of him surviving a tumble he took over a cliffside, by slowing his body’s descent as much as possible. Rillos fought with every natural instinct to put the teachings of this drunkard—who was probably lying or exaggerating the truth—to use.
He had not traveled much in the years since marrying Lilly and starting their family together. But Rillos’ trade as an actor had taken him from the cold lands of the north, through the swamplands riddling the south. He knew at this time of year, Sweet Tooth Hill, which should be described more aptly as a small range of mountains rather than a single hill, had a decent layer of snowfall upon their highest peaks. Somehow he maintained enough clarity to realize those mountain caps offered his only chance at undoing the choice he’d tried to make.
The last thought Rillos spared as his body rushed towards the snow-covered trees on the side of Sweet Tooth Hill, was for his family. He thought of how desperately wrong he had been to try to leave them, and how thoroughly he longed to kiss and hold his wife Lilly again. He thought of embracing his daughter Lillette, named for his wife. He distracted himself from the splatter he’d make upon the white peaks by remembering his son Alexander, and how his smile lit up any room he entered.
Now he was back in his bedchamber with Lilly comforted by the thought of waking next to her. He felt her auburn hair invading his side of the bed as it did so many mornings. Just as he began to roll over and wish her a pleasant morning, he realized the beauty of the moment could not be reality. He had chosen to leave their simple life behind, to take one final trip. Rillos went up into the sky on a beautiful morning exactly like this dream, intending for it to be his last day on earth.
He woke to a pain so sharp it put any sadness he felt from his dream back to sleep. The nets tangled around him during his fall now wrapped themselves around both him and a mess of branches in a tall tree. He dangled high above the ground; his head pounding in defiance as his brain began working to catch up with his surroundings. When he lifted a hand up to wipe whatever obstructed his view from his right eye, he found that he was looking at a terribly bloody hand.
The simple brown clothes that recently protected his body were now lost to the wind, probably decorating some mountaintop or the other. The tatters that remained reminded Rillos of the costume he sported during that play about the beggar knight everybody in Alexandria had obsessed over years ago. The blood that spilled out of his head had to be his first order of business. His body began processing the pain of the other wounds he felt on his arms, legs, and feet. Rillos had given up on life, and earlier today nearly flung himself from the highest point any man could climb to.
Now, he was refusing to die hanging in a mess of nets, crimson blood, and snow.
He struggled against the nets and tore one of the remaining tatters from the waist of his trousers, attempting to tie it around his head to staunch the flow of blood. For now, that would have to do. He needed to find a way out of this net, and fast. Sweet Tooth Hill boasted one of the friendliest and most charming names of any natural landmark in all of the realm, but it was misleading. Rillos had put on many a play where the bandits or wild wolves of this exact mountain range plagued unsuspecting and innocent travelers. For once he did not wish to trade his life with that of the plays he put on.
Rillos looked down at the one valuable that he had not lost during the fall, the necklace his wife and children had all pitched in and given him for his birthday a few years ago. The pendant consisted of three triangles all intertwined with each other in a knot, made of a silver too expensive for them to normally afford. The circle fastened around the triangular knot usually shined with an emerald green color when the sun sparkled off of it. Currently, it was duller than the gray mountain peaks surrounding him, but Rillos swore he could make out a faint shimmer of blue mist seeping into the pendant. He felt himself slipping back into a sleep ridden with memories of a time far more pleasant.
“Mama, you mean there used to be more magic?” Lillette’s voice echoed off the stone walls of the castle, and drew Rillos towards the room his wife was teaching in. He stopped when he got to the doorway, wanting to see his family simply living, without their actions tainted by the knowledge of his presence.
“There used to be all kinds of magic! Father and Mother tell me and Matteos that knights used to fly through the sky and do battle, without using the Pass!” Willos, the youngest son of Lord Perros and Lady Jamie Sonnington, chimed into the lesson. A man was not supposed to play favorites over his own children, but Rillos suffered no qualms admitting Willos was his favorite person outside his own family. The young lad would be a great soldier someday; he was already a dutiful and loving younger brother.
It was Matteos who offered some input now, the oldest son of House Sonnington, future Lord of Alexandria. “Gabrielle and I saw a picture in one of the library’s crumbly old books, it showed knights that did not even use their swords in battle, but wielded magic with their hands!”
His wife was attempting to reign the young ones in before their excitement bubbled over the edges, and they began to reenact one of these battles in the classroom. Though it made for an endearing tale for his wife to regale the Sonningtons with later, she knew if they started jumping off their desks, there would be no getting their butts back in them again. Lilly took great pride in educating the future lords of Alexandria, but also took great pride in knowing when they needed a firm voice.
“Alright my loves, let’s focus back in on our original thought here, Lillette do you remember what my question was?” Lilly said.
Rillos loved the way his wife always knew how to talk to the kids. They were so young now, barely any more than toddlers, but she treated them with respect and a firm voice. She knew when to encourage their questions, and when to instead guide them back towards order.
“You were reminding us about the principles of magic, even though you’ve told us a bazillion-jillion times.” His daughter’s sassiness and ability to exaggerate never failed to impress him. He let a laugh escape his lips, revealing his hiding place just outside the doorway to his wife, children, and the young lordlings who he thought of as his own kin.
The sounds of greetings and laughter infected him as his daughter ran over to hug him, and his wife chided him for hiding.
“Been spying on us long there skull-head?” The smile on her face told him she did not mind at all how long he had been listening. She usually reserved that name for when they were in private.
He knew when the end came someday that would be one of those moments flashing before his eyes; the first sentence his wife ever uttered to him. Rillos met her when he first moved to Alexandria, his head shaved bald for the play he’d been in. When he spied Lilly, walking out of the library he was to meet his playmates at, he decided immediately he had to connect with her instead. “Accidentally” bumping into her emerged as the only excuse he could think of to begin a conversation with her, and though it worked out in the end, his wife’s first words to him had been, “Watch where you’re walking skull-head!”
He had immediately known she was the one for him.
“Well, which one of you rascals knows the answer to your beautiful teacher’s question? Huh? Matteos I know you remember.” The boy smiled excitedly for a chance to impress Rillos, the young lad really seemed to look up to him. The future Lord of Alexandria’s fondness for him was baffling, but he would be lying if he said he did not love him for it.
“Well, Instructor Lily always says that the primary rule is that magic can neither be created nor destroyed. It always has to transfer somewhere!” The boy said it with profound confidence and self-satisfaction. Rillos could not help but smile with adoration for the child who was not even his own. The lesson for the day ended quickly after that. The children—Matteos, Gabrielle, Willos, and Lillette—all scampered out into the yard to play. Alexander was too young for classes, but they talked loudly about getting the ‘baby’ for their games too.
Rillos, in that moment, had every reason to be happy. His wife Lilly hanging upon his arm and telling him about the details of the day before his spying. The laughter of the children echoing through the halls, but when his wife asked how his day had been, he balked. He had awoken that day with that same feeling of emptiness, and he knew she could tell. Lilly knew him better than he knew himself. In that moment, Rillos wanted to be the version of himself that could admit his suffering to her, could admit he had no idea why he felt the way he did, or how to fix it. But when he responded the only words that left his lips were, “It was fine my love, but better now that I’m spending it with you.”
It was not fully a lie he told, but as he had made a habit of doing lately, it was not fully the truth he spoke either.
The sun pierced through Rillos’ slumber like the voices of his children shouting to wake him and Lilly up for the day. The blood from the wound in his head had more or less stopped, but the wooziness and pain persisted. Though this morning could not have been more clear—the gray of the day before melted beneath the sun’s rays—he felt like he was gazing through a fog when he opened his eyes. Some hue of blue shone through his vision, tainting the bottom of his sight with colors and visuals all too similar to the Highroad before his fall. When he looked down, the pendant upon his neck was humming with an energy that had not been there before. He thought back to the lesson highlighted on that morning in his dream.
Magic has to go somewhere.
When he remembered that morning though, he also remembered how he ran from the chance to tell his wife the pain that ate him up inside. He’d wanted to die that day.
Today was different, Rillos did not want to die. He was moved to tears with the realization, overwhelming himself with the fact that this had not been the status quo for his mornings, for a very long time. Before he even realized what was happening, the blue hue of his pendant began radiating with an undeniably magical force. The harder he cried, the more strongly the pendant began to pulse, matching the sobs and increased rapidity of his breathing. He did not care about that right now though, his thoughts traveled to his children, his wife, his family that was not his through blood, but by bond.
Rillos was paining himself thinking over what had driven him to this point, what had brought him up to that boat in the sky. Wondering how Alexander would ever make it through life without a father, he remembered the vow to himself he had made. He would be better than his father. Yet his own actions were struggling so hard to undo that promise he had made to himself.
As his thoughts continued spiraling, the pendant pulsed faster, faster, faster.
The pendant burst with light in tune with his emotions and sobs. Rillos barely noticed a considerable surge of energy that shot out from the jewelry blowing away the net.
He fell from the tree.
The landing upon a shift of snow proved much more comfortable than his crash landing into the tree. Though, it seemed his pendant had decided to blow away more than just the net, he was naked as the day he was born, save for the jewelry that had just saved his life.
‘Magic can neither be created nor destroyed….’Rillos thought as he began to pick himself up and figure out what the hell his next steps should be. /The magic from the Highroad had to go somewhere when it burst, guess my pendant absorbed a fraction of it?/
Currently, he was naked, injured, tired, freezing, hungry, and completely lost on the top of a peak of Sweet Tooth Hill, miles from his home in Alexandria. Not to mention altogether confused about what was going on with his pendant. He thought of Alexandria, and of Lillette and Alexander, and how scared they must be. They knew their father was traveling by the Pass to Nissandria—the closest neighbor to their home—and surely saw the burst of magical energy exploding in the sky. Did they worry for him, or had Lilly managed their expectations pushing them towards grief instead of hope? She would have found the letter he had left for her by now, explaining his intentions when he made it up into the sky.
He could not think about that too long, else he would break down again, and he needed to stay sharp. His mind was working more clearly than it had in a long time.
The peril he felt at his current state seemed meager next to the rush of excitement he experienced realizing he had another chance at life.
Rillos noticed a slight tug upon his neck and peered down at his naked body. There he saw that his pendant was pulling him in the direction of a cluster of trees. He kept his thoughts upon his family—the pendant seemed to like that—and he followed its urging. The cluster revealed a skinny path leading down the mountainside, surely big enough for mountain goats, and maybe for him too.
It was the only chance he had.
Just as he was about to begin taking the path, he thought on how Lilly would laugh at him when he regaled her with the tale of him climbing down a mountain naked. The pendant pulled at him to turn around towards the trees at this thought, and he could think of no reason to deny it.
It had already done him one magnificent favor, maybe it had more in store.
Turning around, Rillos spied a broken open chest hidden underneath some snow and behind a few of the tall brown tree trunks. He examined the trunk more closely, and deciphered it must have belonged to some nobleman. The wood chest boasted carvings of ornate fashions along the edges of it. The fall must have busted the lock open because he did not encounter any trouble when he lifted the top off of it.
‘So, I just keep my thoughts on my family, follow the pendant’s directions, and I will make it down’ Rillos thought, sifting through the clothes in the chest. Though he had worn many fine costumes when acting, he never had much of a taste for finer clothing when playing the part of himself. He could tell the pendant agreed with his choices, beating slightly as he made his selections: a deep brown wool overcoat to fasten over some gray trousers and a tan jacket.
The cold winds whipped desperately at his new clothes, attempting to pierce through them and remove him from the side of the path he had found. A newfound confidence in himself and his actions kept him defiant to nature’s urgings. He huddled as close to the side of the mountain as he could, noting how the stark gray of the stone, and the white of the snow, contrasted distinctly with the sun’s rays.
The pendant continued to reassure his movements, letting him know when to pause because the wind whipped too strongly at his body to keep moving. Urging him to push forward through pulls upon his neck. Had anybody told me I would have this determination to live yesterday, I would have thought them a madman, Rillos reflected making his way down the mountain. The pendant pulsed a few times in what he knew was emphatic agreement.
Eventually, the path opened up into a wide trail, and the mountainside spread out before him, leaving behind the steep and intimidating cliffs he braved before. The wool of his brown overcoat clung to his neck, comforting him. Though the pendant was metal and should have grown cold to the touch during his descent, it somehow kept his chest warm. After traveling for the better part of the day, he had to stop momentarily. His stomach rumbled outrage as he leaned against a tree to rest his exhausted legs. The pendant appeared content to rest as well because it did not pull him up as he sat down. Rillos took that as approval to doze off for a moment. He did not intend to sleep for long, just a quick second to rest his eyes. But the snowy cold had finally given way to a more manageable chill and so sleep and dreams came for him instantly. The warmth of his pendant soothed his chest and his body.
Rillos managed to sneak out of their chambers before Lilly had fully woken up. His boat did not leave until later in the day, and he told himself he would say his goodbye to her later. Part of him knew when he closed the door to their bedchambers, however, that he was too weak to say farewell. It would take all the wind out of his sails, rendering him unable to see his plan through. He lingered outside the door, a part of him hoping his wife would burst through it, and force him back to bed with her.
When no such interruption came, he kept walking down the hallway.
Alexandria never slept, the city bustling about him as he made his way through the castle. Servants, guards, and noblemen and noblewomen alike spoke greetings to Rillos. Lord and Lady Sonnington were never too proud to be open about their fondness of and friendship with Rillos and Lilly. The castle folk treated him with a respect he thought well above his humble station. He responded with his customary greetings, not wanting to raise any questions about his departure by showing his melancholy.
This was easy for Rillos. He spent his days as an actor, but he did his best work when playing the part of the happy version of himself.
He had plenty to be thankful for, a loving wife and beautiful children, but he asked himself: what good could he possibly do for them? The question plaguing Rillos’ mind for many days besides this one. He tried convincing himself as he walked through the castle yard that he was actually doing something quite noble. Planning to free his family from the weighted chain around their leg, stopping them from rising up. Lilly would find a nobleman to marry, one who would give his children more opportunity to climb in this world. She would grieve for a while, but after that, her life would be better without him pulling her down.
All these thoughts occupied him so much that he did not even notice he had made his way to the viewing pavilion overlooking where the children played. Lingering a moment, watching Matteos teach his younger brother Willos how to swing a practice sword. Gabrielle and Lillette danced around the boys, taking turns between distracting them, and playing with wooden swords of their own. Rillos was smiling while he watched them, and soaking up what he realized would be his last look. He meant to head straight for the lift from here, not allowing himself any more time to second-guess his decision. Realizing for the first time his bag was slung over his shoulder; he must have brought it from the room this morning without even realizing.
The walk to the lift only occupied another few minutes of his time. He would take the lift up to the Highroad, and linger upon the boat until it began its flight to Nissandria.
But he still held the note in his pocket.
An answer to his predicament presented itself as he walked up to the lift. The attendant was Chizik, who doubled as a castle guard. It would be an easy matter for him to get it to Lilly without any notice. Chizik began shouting his greetings as Rillos was walking up.
“Ho Rillos! Taking the lift up a little early today aren’t we, your boat isn’t set to leave for another hour or so.”
“Aye, but a man has a heart for travel today Chizik, I mean to take in the view of our city before departing.”
“Well Nissandria isn’t nearly as pretty, you best soak it up while you can!” Chizik said, laughing heartily.
Chizik tried continuing on, asking Rillos what plays he meant to put on for their neighbor, but Rillos stopped him short. “Actually, Chizik I have a favor to ask of you, I’ll tell you all about the plays when I return, if you could leave Lilly with this note? And don’t open it lest you want to read some sappy love letter from a man to his wife!” Rillos had to summon years of training to stop his voice cracking when he spoke the favor aloud, taking a step closer to the reality of his decision.
The lie hurt him, but he would not be around much longer to deal with the consequences.
Chizik spat his agreements out and promising not to invade his privacy. Rillos politely moving past him, Chizik crossed his name off the passenger list.
On the lift up to the Highroad Rillos found an abundance of time to reflect on his choices. It was a simple magic, the passengers needing only to stand upon a plank of wood, no larger than the bedchamber he had awoken in this morning. A rail around the side stopping those within from falling over the edge. The blue mist making up the ancient magic of Quisillare’s Pass had little pockets of vents throughout the realm that acted like the hot air springs Rillos had encountered in his journeys to the south during his youth. A few times a day, a burst of the blue mist would escape from the ground, and the lift would float atop it riding up to the Highroad in the sky. The lifts never moved locations, making it an easy matter for the captains to anchor their flying boats along the edge of the Pass, so the guests from the ground could board their rides with ease.
Rillos rode up into the sky, the blue mist becoming an ocean of bursting wind. Though he was soaring high above the ground, the funnel of magic propelling him upward kept him contained. Eventually, the Highroad itself came into vision. There were fewer ships today than there had been in his youth, and seemingly fewer each day. The perils of Quisillare’s Pass seemed to become more and more dangerous each day, with reports of ships being struck by bursts of magical red rocks flying out of the sky from nowhere.
Rillos had made a joke about it to Lilly, saying he wanted a little bit of a thrill. After all, peril was what brought him to the skies. Boarding the ship solemnly, he waited in silence until they took off. A silence filled with the wailing sounds of uncertainty.
The boat departed, riding a gust of wind out of their anchored station. Rillos waited against the edge searching for the right moment, his body fighting the decision with every natural instinct he had.
Questions raced through his mind: why was he hesitating? Was he too weak to even do this last thing? Would anybody miss him when he was gone? How long would it take for his family to move on? The questions dominated his thoughts so thoroughly, he did not even see the streak of red light that burst through the magical ocean made up of wind and moisture.
The choice was taken from him in a split second.
Some unknown red color had invaded the blue, a mass of pure red steel hurtling through the sky. The red seemed to mean it was more than just steel or stone. Some other kind of magic destroying the Pass and robbing him of his choice. The dangers travelers had been telling tales of, became startlingly real all at once. But this seemed much more vicious than some random rock slapping a ship out of the sky.
The entire Highroad exploded.
People screaming for loved ones, crying for safety.
It was not the loss of one ship, but the loss of the entirety of magic that kept the ancient skyway together.
As he kept falling, he was realizing how grateful he was for the intervention. He had been begging for something to come along and stop him this whole time. A magic older than Alexandria itself, and maybe older than the world as he knew it was vanishing.
The greatest calamity of his time was offering him a hand of salvation. His death would at least now be remembered as an unfortunate product of a horrible accident.
Until he remembered the letter.
The pendant beating urgently against his chest, woke Rillos with a start. His dreams seemed intent on throwing his follies into his face. The pendant beat along in disagreement as he thought about the dream. It seemed to speak to him, willing him to his feet; that had truly just been a dream. His actions in it may be true, but the dream did not have any power here. He could make up for what he had almost willed himself to do. Rillos just had to make it off this mountain. He still felt a corner of his heart, overwhelmed with darkness. But he knew now that he just had to listen to the other part of himself, the side yearning to return to the safety of his wife’s and kids’ love. /I’m going to keep pushing, there’s nothing on this mountain that can stop me, and nothing in myself that I’ll let discourage me/. The conviction of Rillos’ thoughts yielded a few flashes of light from the pendant.
He started walking again knowing his family and his future waited at the bottom of this mountain.
He had slept for a few hours, but not through the night. The sun had gone away during his restless nap, but the pendant kept providing all the light he needed to steer his course. He kept his thoughts upon the smile of his daughter, the laughter of his son, and the kisses of his wife. Rillos thought of how Lilly would hug him when she saw him all the while cursing him for his stubbornness. Would she have read the letter? If she had, she would be angry with him. But her relief at his being alive would surely outweigh that. He would have survived a catastrophic event, she could not be too mad.
Rillos thought about how sweet it would be to perform for Lord and Lady Sonnington, joining them at their table afterward. Imagining how restless the children would get at the table, eventually becoming the performers and the parents the happy audience.
Rillos knew that his thoughts were not the only peril in these mountains. There were raiders and wildlife that could stumble upon him and put this journey to an end without his say. Just like Quisillare’s Pass had tried to. His guide could not be aware of these perils in particular, just the ones in his head, and he would have to navigate those waters himself. The mountain grew smaller, and his path less steep. The moon hung high in the sky and kept a watchful eye on his descent.
Eventually, as he forced his body onward, the moon betrayed him and shone a light on a pair of glistening, non-human eyes in the bushes ahead of him.
The wolves had found him first, instead of the raiders. He could not say which he would have preferred, but he knew that either option meant peril.
Rillos dashed away from the bushes; knowing that where there was one set of eyes, a pack was sure to follow. The first wolf darted out of the bushes, a grey coat of wool shining in perfect complement to the gray light of the moon. Rillos tore through the forest with all the speed he could muster. He had no weapons, and certainly could not call himself much of an athlete.
He did the same thing he had been doing for years: he ran.
The wolf’s pack joining in on the hunt, one strand of danger quickly became a knot of turmoil. It was overwhelmed facing the thought of just one adversary; certainly now he was doomed.
Though Rillos ran through the woods alone, he felt like his current actions were mirroring the days he’d spent in Alexandria. He had been running from his problems his entire life; fighting by any means necessary to bury his emotions, his fears, his doubts.
The woods had grown thick with glistening eyes menacing at him through the trees, but they thinned out dramatically as he approached a cliffside. If I could just make it to the cliff maybe I could descend where the wolves can’t climb. The thought was cut short when he realized the edge of the cliff was too far from him. The pack would catch up to him before he made it. Their razor-sharp teeth chomping and snarling at him from behind, sounded like taunts at him for running away.
Rillos realized there was only one thing he could do: turn and face his fears head-on. The wolves would tear him apart, but he would be damned if he spent his last moments running from them. He had fled from too many battles already, and that was what placed him in this horrible situation to begin with.
Turning, holding his necklace with both his hands, he grasped at the only connection to his family that he had.
His last thought was for his family, trying to comfort himself with the thought of them running to embrace him, rather than this unfair end that sped towards him. His mind went to his wife’s red hair, his daughter’s mischievous smile, his son’s crying for his father when he woke with a nightmare.
He thought of spying on his wife while she taught the children.
He thought of how his family had beamed when they had gifted him the very necklace he was clinging to.
The wolves emerged from the trees slowly, sauntering up to their kill. For the second time in the last few days, he fought the urge to laugh in the face of his demise. It had only taken him a lifetime to realize the satisfaction that came from confronting one’s fears, but as the wolves stepped closer Rillos felt the gift from his family bursting with ancient magic. A light so fierce it put the moon to shame, emitted from his pendant.
The wolves, howling and snarling, were momentarily blinded by his pendant. He reckoned it had not only been pulling him towards the bottom of the mountain all day, but also towards facing his doubts. He took his chance and ran so quickly and hastily that he tumbled right over the edge of the cliff.
As he rolled down the side of the mountain, he heard voices echoing through the night.
“The blue light! Follow the light!” He heard a man booming, a voice so rich with authority it could belong to one man. The voice of Lord Perros Sonnington.
His pendant seemed just as tired as him, both of them lie in a heap of fatigue, blood, wooziness, and pain at the bottom of the hill. He had hit his head on the way down and felt fresh blood gliding down his cheek. The wolves would recover from their blindness eventually.
As he lay there, he noticed the voices searching for him seemed to be moving away.
He summoned all the energy he had left in his body and did something he wished he had done years ago: he called out for help.
When Rillos woke this time, it was in the bedchamber he had spent his entire adult life waking in. Before his senses could even catch up with his sight, he saw them. His wife Lilly with their own children Lillette and Alexander smiling down at him. Matteos, Willos, Gabrielle, Lord Perros, and Lady Jamie, all standing above him too. It took one look at Lilly to know she had shown his note to no one; it would remain their secret until he was ready to speak it. But as Rillos was gaining his senses, he knew secrets of his past would serve no part in his future. His children would eventually know what had taken him on that journey, and his friends would immediately. He would live his days working to push that darkness out of his heart. There was far too much light and love in his life, to let the darkness take up root in his heart again.
His pendant beat a few quick notes that sang of approval and pride before it went back to its normal shade of silver. Rillos understood this to be a sign of trust. That he could follow his own lead from here on out.
He no longer had any need for the pendant. He knew where to find his light now.
©March 2023, Patrick Odren
This is Patrick Odren‘s first appearance in Swords & Sorcery and in print. He is a student at the University of Delaware.