Cats were great. Cats were, simply put, the best animal on the world. So, when his daemon settled as a magnificent cat, he couldn't be happier about it. He loved to feel the daemon’s soft fur against his legs on the summer, whenever they explored the fields outside his little home. He loved whenever he woke up snuggled against a warm, purring ball tight against his side. Loved to watch his cat’s eyes, sparks dancing on two golden ponds whenever they sat in front of the hearth at night.
(Some nights, he remembered one of those blessed Zemnian summers. It was a long, prosperous one. A merchant caravan had decided to stay a week on their sleepy town. They had so many shiny trinkets, beautiful tomes in foreign languages, exciting food and exotic clothes. Vater’s daemon looked over them from the skies, so few things escaped those sharp falcon eyes of hers. His mother’s daemon ensured that they didn’t stray too far. He was an imposing black goat, loving but temperamental. He liked to walk on loose circles around them, far enough to let them explore but always ready to ram any danger away.
It didn’t really matter for Bren. His father’s eyes on the sky, his mother’s presence surrounding him. Summer breeze playing with his hair. The familiar weight of his daemon on his arms. His parents, arms linked, just one step behind him. Why would he have gone anywhere?)
He had felt so many terrible things on his life. The cold steel of a knife against his neck, fire devouring his skin, crystal embedded into tender flesh. The horrible sound of a person begging for his life, piercing his ears and his soul. Endless nights battling with his conscience, getting the weird feeling at the back of his head that he was being scammed. That he was doing terrible, terrible things in the name of nothing. That he was enduring terrible, terrible things all. for. nothing.
(Some nights, if the training had been especially brutal, he had trouble sleeping. He turned, and turned, and turned. Without fail, those nights he always remembered a conversation he had had with his father that summer, so long ago. His father’s wise words waved in and out, lulling him to sleep)
Such traitorous thoughts always left his mind swiftly. Doubt makes you weak and the Empire needs to be strong. That’s what Master Ikithon taught them, and in that moment, there was no one stronger than his pupils.
(“boy, beware of scammers. they’ll sell you anything, everything at the best price you’ll ever see, but you’ll be paying it much worse later. the bad ones will give you an incredible price from the start, but the good ones…. oh, those are the dangerous ones. they’ll make you believe that you have paid just enough for the smoke they’re selling. they’ll make you believe that the sweat and blood and tears you’ve just wasted on nothing were worth it. that every platinum, gold, silver and copper piece was hard earned, but well invested. always count your money, boy”)
The night Bren died, his soul broke. He felt the soft fur dissolve into almost nothing, barely clinging to the Material Plane because as much as he felt he had died (and Bren did), the man in Bren's body hadn't.
The asylum would have been hell, if he still had a mind to understand the torture that it was. His fingers searched instinctively the soft fur of his daemon, but didn't find anything. Were they being kept apart? In the mist of his mind, he knew that something was very wrong.
Later on, when he escaped the asylum leaving a crazed innocent cleric behind him (one more sin), he understood just how bad it was. That night he cried himself to sleep, curled in a tight ball under a bridge.
Even later on, in a damp and cold prison cell, he clinged to Frumpkin like a drowning man would cling on a rope. He would have clawed at him if he were a normal cat, but as he was not, he endured the death grip without complaint. The Bengal cat was purring against his shivering chest when the door opened abruptly.
"Get in there, scum. We don't like your kind here", sneered a guard as he threw a dirty bundle of clothes inside with just one hand before leaving.
The bundle in question growled and hissed in response. Now that he was more awake, he realized that they had put a small goblin on his cell. He stared at the newcomer silently, ready to jump into action if necessary, but not doing anything else otherwise. The goblin had stood up and was looking frantically inside a bag when he noticed that a small leather pouch had fallen near him. He reached for it and his movement alerted the goblin of his presence.
"Ah! Who are you?", her bandaged face couldn't conceal her race, and even if she had done a better job covering it, the glowing yellow eyes and crooked teeth were unmistakable being as close as they were.
"I'm just another prisoner, friend. Who are you?"
"I'm just a little girl, friend."
"Were you looking for this?", he showed her the leather pouch that on second glance, he saw it had a few picks inside.
"Looking f-? Oh, yes! That's mine!", she said. With a calculating gaze, she added "May I have it back?"
"What are you planning to do after you open the cell?"
"What do you think I'm gonna do? Have some tea with the guards? I'm going to get the hell out of here!"
"Well, of course. But I'm asking you: what are you going to do with the magic alarm at the entrance of the prison?", he asked, pointing to a half-hidden glyph at the end of their hallway.
"The what?", she pressed her head against the bars and after squinting for a few seconds, cursed in a language he didn't understand. "What kind of place is this? Why do they have a magic alarm on this shithole?"
"One of the guards here has taken a liking to magic. He is an apprentice and practices here. Their boss doesn't mind the extra security."
"Fuck!", she slumped against the wall opposite to him, clutching the bag crossed over her shoulder with care. A shift on the bag prompted Frumpkin to look at it, curious.
"I don't know a lot about locks, but I know a thing or two about magic", hearing that, the goblin looked at him with a tilted head. "I think that if someone could open the door, I'd be able to disable that shoddy glyph over there."
"Well, I don't know anything about magic, but I can open any lock. Now, how can I know that you're not lying?"
"It wouldn't do me any favour to escape only to have a bunch of guards at my heels, would it?", with a raised eyebrow, he invoked a small flame on his hand. The orange sparks reflected on the goblin's yellow eyes, like a perverted reflection of his childhood.
"If you're so good at magic, why haven't you escaped by yourself?"
"I can't open this door without alerting the guards, and I can't subdue them when they bring food."
"Well, if that's the case, I can help", she hesitated for a moment before extending her hand. "I'm Nott the Brave."
He looked at her eyes, doubt mixed with awe mixed with something else underneath that he didn't recognise. He took her hand carefully and handed her the bag. "Caleb Widogast."
In the blink of an eye, she was already by the door prodding at the lock with deft hands. She hadn't lied, in a matter of seconds the door let out a defeated click and opened with a faint creak. She looked back at him, then at the glyph, and back at him once more. The request was clear.
With Frumpkin on his shoulders, he walked quietly towards the end of the hallway. The cat was looking back at Nott, but Caleb didn't bother with that. Kneeling down, he examined the carved symbol and decided that yes, the guard was definitely an apprentice still. It was not a terrible job, he thought, but if that was the best he could do, then many a prisoner would escape without no one noticing. He murmured a few arcane words and the glyph glowed blue for a second before dying out. He looked back at Nott and waved a hand to call her to his side.
The hallways were dark and Caleb couldn't see well, and so he sent Frumpkin ahead to see if there were guards before them. Nott was just before him, one hand covering her crossed bag and the other dragging along the wall. When they reached a sharp turn to the right, he stopped briefly to see through Frumpkin's eyes but the goblin didn't notice this and followed the cat into the darkness. Before he could alert Nott, a yelp was heard, followed almost immediately by a soft thud against the wall.
"The goblin is out! Help!" Caleb stepped into the hallway to see a dazed Nott holding herself against the wall and a guard about to pull his sword out. He extended his hand towards the other man and snapped, making a small flame fly from his fingertips to the guard's face.
"Fuck!", the guard covered his singed eyes for a moment before looking at Caleb. "You!"
He reached once again for his sword, only to discover that the weapon was on the hands of a very pissed off goblin.
"I'm going to fucking kill you", she said as she stepped forward and stabbed the guard on the belly. With a grunt, he fell to his knees and unto the floor as Nott and Caleb watched him. A small sparrow fell near the guard's face, flapping his wings weakly.
They looked at each other, panting, and started to run towards the nearest exit. Caleb and Nott barreled through the entrance and came to face two more guards, who had come into the prison area alerted by the noise. One of them pointed a crossbow at Caleb, but before he could pull the trigger, a Bengal cat climbed up his legs. The guard's fox daemon chased Frumpkin as Caleb extended a hand towards the guard and muttered an arcane word, sending the man crashing against the wall with a gust of wind and knocking him off. Nott rolled on the floor and took the weapon as she stood up. Without looking, she fired a bolt against the general direction of the other guard and hit him in the hip. He threw his lance to the ground as he grabbed the bolt with a yelp of pain, and Nott and Caleb rushed in to the cover of night.
After a while, once they were hidden in a dense forest, they stopped for a moment to catch a breath.
"That was close", said Nott. "But you weren't kidding when you said you knew magic."
"Well, you weren't so bad either. You're very quick", he said, taking Frumpkin in his arms.
Nott looked at him with a weird expression on her face. "Do you know more magic? Apart from the fire and the wind, I mean."
"I specialise in transmutation, but I know a bit of everything", he took a deep breath, his heart still beating too fast for his liking.
"Transmutation, uh? You use magic to change things into other things?"
"Among other uses, yes. I still have much to learn."
"I've never met a wizard before. Would you mind if I went with you?", her yellow eyes were piercing him, unblinking. "I can help you. I have other skills apart from picking locks".
Caleb looked at her for a moment. It was better to not get involved, that he knew, but still. She was quick, fast on her feet. She could be useful. Moreover, he liked her. It was stupid, but he felt like he could trust her. Why was that? Was it because of her yellow slit eyes? The reason mattered not.
"Alright".
Veth knew she was an odd one. Even if she hadn't heard her gossiping neighbours whisper on her back, she still could see their mocking glances every day.
Half of those times, Bunsen would become a terrifying, huge thing to intimidate them; he would snap crooked crocodile teeth in the direction of their tormentors, let a low snarl as a direwolf or press against Veth's side in the skin of a grizzly bear. It would certainly be intimidating, if it weren't for the fact that they still were children and a baby crocodile isn't as fearsome as the adult counterpart. The rest of the time, he would adopt the smallest, softest possible form and burrow against Veth, comforting her with company to chase away her loneliness.
Veth and Bunsen would ran away to the forest and spend long hours walking there, playing with rocks and sticks, making jokes and talking amongst themselves. "One day, we will show them. I will be the biggest, most dangerous daemon on this town. Everyone will be amazed by you, Veth. They will see us and wish they hadn't been so mean to us." Bunsen would change his shape and become the scariest thing they could imagine at the time.
Years passed, and they learnt that most of the times, it was better to run away than to fight back. They became experts on the art of vanishing without a trace. Bunsen usually took small shapes to fit on Veth's clothes, and also took a liking to felines and owls of all kinds. Veth grew taller, but puberty wasn't as kind to her physique as to her neighbours’. The mocking never ceased, and her isolation grew. Both the halfling and her daemon spent long hours talking with each other, avoiding people their age but still feeling the urge to get close to them anyway. They sat by the river, where they could see the other teenagers play and talk, wishing to be with them, to be part of them, but knowing that it wouldn't end well if they went there.
One day, a nervous boy approached them at the river's edge. Veth felt the nervous energy that told her to runrunrun, but something about the way the boy was looking to the grass at her feet stilled her legs. Bunsen gripped his talons lightly on her shoulders and watched suspiciously the area.
"H-hi, Veth." The boy, Yeza, she remembered now, was the son of a teacher who had moved to Felderwin a long time ago. His mother was a stern woman who worked on the general store and didn't like nonsense or trouble on her shop, including spiteful remarks aimed at quiet girls who were just minding her own business.
"Hello, Yeza." She tried to keep a calm expression on her face, but her voice betrayed her with a mighty crack. Her cheeks were on fire.
"I was wondering, well, you know", Yeza stammered as he reunited the necessary courage to look at her. His clever green eyes crossed paths with hers and nailed themselves to the floor once again. "I wanted to ask you something?"
"Sure, you can ask me something". Bunsen readjusted his weight and looked over to a bunch of snickering shadows hiding behind some bushes a few meters away. He scoffed. Amateurs. Half of their bodies were visible from where Veth and he were standing, and they even had the advantage of the trees' shades. If it were Veth and him, they would be completely invisible.
"Could I... Can we... Do you want to kiss me, maybe?" A small salamander peeked from his shoulder at her, tail twisting just like Yeza's fingers.
Part of her wanted to say no. She knew it was a joke, that she was being mocked once again. But she had talked a bit before with Yeza. He had been kind to her and had even tried to stop his friends a few times before. She also desperately wanted to be kissed. She yearned to feel a boy's lips on her and wondered how it would feel. Even if it was a joke, she knew there wouldn't be many chances to be too prickly about it. And as far as boys went, she could do much, much worse than soft spoken Yeza.
"Okay," she nodded. Was this really happening? What should she do? Did she have to close her eyes? Keep them open? Bunsen threw a calculating gaze towards the salamander, who likewise looked at him.
"Okay, yeah". Yeza didn't move an inch. He seemed frozen to the spot and his face was as red as his daemon's back. Veth admired the way the blush contrasted with his tan skin and dark hair.
A tiny sigh escaped her. Veth licked her lips instinctively (couldn't help but see Yeza's eyes following the movement and feel satisfaction at the shades of red gained) and made the distance between them disappear. Her eyes closed when she felt his soft lips against hers. She enjoyed the feeling more than she imagined she would. It was a chaste kiss, barely enough to notice the warmth behind the boy's thin mouth, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. Yeza pulled away for a second, eyes closed, before cradling her face with a soft touch that made her heart beat faster. They kissed clumsily for a few seconds before Bunsen heard the snickers again. Yeza and Veth broke the kiss abruptly, and she would've bolted that very same moment if not for his expression. He was looking at her, really looking at her in the eyes with a look that she didn't quite recognise. One thing was for sure, however. There wasn't any cruelty there, no hidden venom waiting for her. Their daemons held one of those secret, silent conversations reserved only for them before quietly looking at the other halfling.
With a shy wave, Yeza began walking back towards his friends. His daemon kept looking at her from his shoulder, her eyes piercing through her, not unkindly. Her own daemon twisted his head in impossible angles, not breaking contact with the boy. She sat by the river, wondering what did all of that mean, when she saw him touching his lips gently. Only then did she realise that she was doing the same.
Fjord knew the feeling of being a nuisance like the back of his hand. The adults at the orphanage didn't bother to mask their rolling eyes whenever he approached them with a bruised face or a bleeding wound. The kids around him didn't hide it either when he tried to play with them. The annoyance on their eyes was painful, but not as painful as the indifference of the adults who came to the orphanage to adopt any of the poor souls gathered there.
When there were visits to the orphanage, everyone put on their best behaviour. The competition to get a free ticket out of hell was brutal, every kid tried to charm or endear the visitors in any possible way. Fjord wasn't any less. Vathí changed into the most gentle and harmless looking animals they could imagine; long-eared bunnies, clumsy puppies or soft chinchillas were their usual choices. Fjord sweetened his words, complimented the potential parents left and right and made himself look as innocent as possible. However, he always saw how the adults' eyes lingered too long on his tusks, on his chubby arms or his amber eyes. Usually, the adults who came to the orphanage weren't good enough actors to mask their disgust at seeing green skin.
He grew up knowing that he was unwanted. No one around him let him ever forget that he was a mere stone that everyone threw away as soon as possible. The only one who ever comforted him was his own soul, who, without the prying eyes of the adults around, changed into cold blooded animals to coil around his tired body. At night, he slept curled around pythons, iguanas or crocodiles. The other kids and their daemons were afraid of his orc blood and his cold soul. The only response he received to his attempts at befriending them were jabs on the good days, and punches on the bad ones.
One night, after a particularly vicious assault from the other kids, he dragged himself to the bathroom's mirror and took a good look at himself.
"I wish I was a half-elf." They were the most adopted kids, no doubt. Their long ears and youthful smiles charmed all the parents with insulting ease, while he had to fight hard just to get a nod of acknowledgement from the most sympathetic visitors.
"We can't change what we are, Fjord", said the iguana on his shoulder. Their eyes crossed on the mirror.
"But we can. You can change into something that the other will like. Or at least, something that won't get me in trouble here."
"You know I don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable to change into those things for a long time," Vathí averted his gaze.
"And I don't like to be beaten up", Fjord looked at the file he had stolen from the storage room of the orphanage.
"Don't do it. Please, Fjord. Don't do it."
He took Vathí from his shoulder and settled her on the sink at his left. He looked at himself once more. What wouldn't he give to make the green on his skin disappear. He couldn't change that, or the amber on his eyes. But the tusks could go away.
"Fjord, listen. It can be dangerous. We don't know anything about-"
"Hush."
He took the file with trembling hands.
"Fjord," Vathí's eyes were filled with sorrow, her head bowed down.
"Hush."
It was an unpleasant process. The grating sound made him shudder, but he pushed on. After a long while, he stopped to catch a break. Orc tusks are strong, made to endure hits and tough meals, and he only had a blunt file to wear them down. His jaw was tired and his arms were getting sore, but he didn't seek comfort on Vathí. He couldn't look her in the eye. He carried on, eating away the teeth one millimetre at a time. The third time he stopped, Vathí looked devastated.
"I'll change into anything! Don't do this, Fjord. You are going to hurt yourself," she said, changing shapes into a beautiful monarch butterfly.
Fjord ignored her and took the file once more. The sunlight was beginning to creep into the sky, pitch black giving way to dark indigo.
He continued to scrape his increasingly sensitive teeth. Once or twice he slipped and cut his lips, but he didn't care. The tusks had to go. When a butterfly landed on his hand, he just paused to put his daemon aside and kept going.
His tusks were beginning to hurt. The file caught on every jagged splinter and stripped away layers of hard enamel, making a subtle pain sink into his gums. He had to be careful now, or he would break into the pulp of the tusks and bleed all over the place.
Vathí, now a little mouse, climbed over him and trembled on his shoulder. Fjord hesitated for a moment, before bringing the file once more to his mouth. He let Vathí press against his neck, however. He couldn't deny himself the comfort of his daemon's skin against his any longer. On the sky had appeared a few strokes of salmon pink, matching the trails dripping on the sink.
When he caught a nerve and the file clattered to the floor, the little mouse closed her eyes. She put a paw on Fjord's face and looked at him in the eye.
"Stop," it was a quiet plea, but to Fjord it might as well have been screamed into his ear.
He put both hands on the sink's edge and looked at the pink pool gathering at the bottom. He was breathing heavily, both from the effort and the pain. When he looked up, a green half-orc was looking right back at him. Green skin, amber eyes. A bloody mouth. No tusks. He should feel happy, triumphant. Instead, he didn't feel anything at all.
Vathí was still looking at him, her shiny eyes glistening in the bathroom's dim light. He washed his hands in the sink and dried them on his sweaty shirt. Only then did he take Vathí between his hands and press his daemon against his chest. He didn't cry, he couldn't cry for something that he had brought upon himself like that. But he felt like he would shatter if he didn't press hard against Vathí.
After a few moments, he took the file and cleaned it up in the sink. He pocketed it in his trousers, and with heavy steps, they made their way back to the dormitory. They slipped between the still sleeping boys and looked at the ceiling, both of them shivering in the summer warmth.
They didn't know how much time they spent like that, it could have been a second or an hour. When one of the workers entered the room shouting something about getting their asses up, c'mon, this ain't a hotel, Fjord and Vathí looked to the side and got up without complain. They were the first ones to sit down at the table and waited quietly for their bland breakfast to arrive. A few of the kids looked at them strangely, maybe noticing their unusual stillness and the dark bags under Fjord's amber eyes. Or most likely, noticing Vathí's soft shape and Fjord's cut lips.
Whatever it was, they left him alone that meal. The boys around them were noisy as always, shouting and hitting each other. However, something unusual happened that day. After cleaning the table, all of them went outside to pass the hours until lunch, as usual. Fjord sat down on the grass, Vathí a short distance away from him in a Zemnian shepherd's body, and looked at the sky. Vathí turned her big ears towards the side and barked when she noticed a pair approaching them. They tensed, ready to take a beating, but strangely enough, the boy before them wasn't threatening them. It was a human boy, all gangly limbs and scrappy clothes. His hair was a black nest for the small robin sitting there. He gave them a calculating gaze, looking at his tuskless mouth for a long second.
"Hey, you want to come with us? We're going to the port." The robin perched on Vathí's muzzle and looked at her with a twitching head.
Fjord's gums were aching and swollen, his splintered tusks hurt his tongue and were poking painfully the interior of his lips. He offered the boy a tight-lipped smile and got up.
Genevieve didn't hate her name. It was pretty okay, considering how many awful names were out there. One of her Mama's clients was named Fok Yemom, which was twice as funny considering her own situation. However, she didn't feel it was a good name for her. Radost agreed with her. "Names hold power", she told her one time, at night while she was waiting for her Mama to come back from work. Radost was draped across her neck in the shape of a ginger weasel and her low voice tickled her sensitive skin. "A good name should be a hundred percent you."
"Me? What do you mean by that?" She petted Radost behind her ears, just like she liked.
"I mean that a good name takes everything that really matters about you, and shapes it into a word. It should tell everyone what you like, what you want and what you are."
"I like... bearclaws? But you don't mean that, do you? I like the sea! It feels nice when we go with Bluud. Do you think one day we will be able to go with Mama to the beach?"
"That would be amazing, but you know how she and Ariya get when they are outside. I do not want them to be sad", Radost got up from Genevieve's chest and laid down closer to her ear. The thin sheet of frost on her fur crunched quietly but didn't leave any mark on the sheets or her clothes. The girl just hummed, melancholy creeping into her thoughts before she batted it away with a shake of her head.
"Should we ask the Traveller about names?" Now that she wasn't petting Radost, her hands itched to do something. She considered getting up from the bed to fetch her paints but decided against it when she looked outside and saw a crescent moon shining in the sky. It was too late and Mama and Bluud wouldn't be happy if she stayed up much longer.
"We could. He is a god, so he must know what is the best name for you. And he is too cool to give you a lame name."
"Yeah, he is. But... I don't know. I think I want to do it myself, kind of. Well, me and you of course! We will find the best name ever!", she grinned at the ceiling.
"Oh, at the very least we will do better than Fok Yemom", cackled the weasel.
Marion opened the door quietly only to find her daughter and her daemon stifling their laughter against a pillow. She smiled fondly as Ariya flew to land near Radost. The shama malabar nudged Genevieve's arm before nuzzling against Radost.
"Mama!", a blue blur launched herself from the bed to her arms.
"My little Sapphire", she kissed her daughter between the horns lovingly. "I came to wish you a good night. Tomorrow we can have breakfast together, alright?"
"Okay!"
"Okay, okay, okay. Everything is ready". Genevieve looked from behind a column near the Château's entrance with a white stoat on her shoulders.
"This is going to be epic", Radost looked at the lion daemon laying down at the feet of the human man. Weirdly enough for a human, both of them were male. Not weirdly enough for the kind of man that Lord Byron Hillside was, both of them were jerks.
They had been terrorising the staff at the Château for a week now. Always demanding, always rude. They had even made poor Brocc cry for bringing the wrong wine for dinner. They were clever enough to not do it as overtly as before after the angry puff that Bluud gave when he saw the incident, but they were still terrible guests. It would do them good to receive a bit of chastising, of the Traveller variety.
Radost perched down from her shoulder and changed into a spotted hyena before letting a hysterical laughter. As it usually happened before a good prank, she was too excited to maintain just one form. Genevieve wanted to do the same, but she limited herself to an excited swish of her tail.
Lord Byron and his daemon, Damasco, exited the room where they had passed the last hour eating and walked proudly through the garden. He admired the tasteful fountain in the middle of the entrance as he waited for Marion to walk down the stairs to bid him farewell from the door, as it was customary with clients of his status. Genevieve clutched the symbol on her waist, and with a quick prayer to the Traveller, mimicked the sound of a bunch of rats squealing behind the man.
The lion let out a roar and made a quick turn to watch behind them, only to find nothing. She had been casting the spell for three whole days with increasing frequency after hearing from one of the secret passages how he cried about rats on his sleep. He was terrified of them and after the past few days, more on edge than ever. She had even whispered via thaumaturgy about the "rat king" and how he was "coming for you" for one whole night, at least until he woke up sweating and gasping.
"Where are you!? Show your face!", yelled Lord Byron. He looked frantically at his ring, enchanted to glow if a rat ever came near him. "I should have killed you when I had the chance!"
Genevieve and Radost looked at each other quizzically for a moment before shrugging it off. The ruckus had attracted the attention of a guard and a bunch of people, among them part of the staff and clients of the Château. Seemingly realising that a lot of people was now looking at him, he waved and smiled awkwardly. He faced once again the fountain, this time taking out his watch with a quick flick of the wrist. His host should be there any minute now.
When the man's daemon laid down at his feet to lick his paw anxiously, Genevieve struck again. More rat squeaks, this time from inside the fountain. They were quiet enough that the only ones who heard them were Lord Byron and Damasco, and this time his reaction was far worse than the daemon's. He let out a loud yell and pulled his sword from the scabbard. A harmless strike towards one of the fountains' streams only managed to splash some water on the floor and part of his purple jacket.
More people looked in the direction of Lord Byron, and more of the staff came in case the lord wanted anything. The guard called for another one and both of them lowered their lances a bit, ready to go if it came down to it.
"Sir! What's going on?", asked the oldest guard. His moustache was trimmed to perfection and matched the brown spots on his dog daemon's muzzle.
"Nothing! Nothing, I thought I heard rats, I'm sorry", he put away his sword once again and put on his best smile. "I will be on my way in no time."
"Rats? Here?", the first guard looked at him, sceptical. His grip on the lance didn't relax. "Alright."
Marion Lavorre walked down the stairs with practiced grace and let her hand caress the handrail elegantly. Ariya was perched on her horn, tiny embers making it look as if her colourful plumage was embedded with rubies. It was a sight to behold. Everyone but the guards looked at her in awe.
Just as her Mama was approaching the last steps, Genevieve gave the last touch to complete her prank. "He's coming" resonated in quiet whispers on Lord Byron's ears, a bunch of rats squealed behind Damasco and a light tremor occurred just at their feet. The lion jumped back terrified, bumping into his human and throwing him inside the fountain as the man tried to free his sword from the scabbard.
The staff was laughing at the proud lord's downfall, most of them trying to hide behind their colleagues or turning their backs to the scene, although a few of them couldn't help but laugh openly. Their clients were far less constricted on their behaviour and some of them laughed loudly at the incident. Even her Mama was concealing her smile behind a discrete hand, and Bluud was smirking with satisfaction from behind Marion.
Genevieve herself was laughing from behind the column, her high-pitched giggles complementing Radost's as the daemon, now a red fox, wiggled on the floor. Genevieve looked once more at the people around her, and something just clicked.
Later that night, as she was drawing, she felt a familiar presence behind her. The sound of a billowing cape alerted Radost of their new companion and she jumped excitedly from the floor where she had laid, at Genevieve's feet. With a cheerful whoop, the hyena circled around the Traveller as the tiefling jumped to hug him.
"Traveller! Did you see that?"
"Of course I did, I'm always watching."
"It was so fun! The look on his face, oh. I've never seen anyone walk away so fast from the Château. Although I'm sure that his friends already know what has happened."
"Word does get around fast, especially among their kind". The Traveller's mischievous smile peeked from underneath his hood.
She felt her own mouth curve up as well. "He was being a dick, anyway. Did you know that he made Brocc cry?"
"There is nothing better in this world than taking an arrogant down a few notches, Genevieve."
Hearing that, she paused for a moment. "Hey Traveller", she took a step back and looked at her god, "you know that tieflings sometimes kind of choose a name for their own?"
"Yes, I do", his smile was still there, a reassuring anchor.
"Well, so I've been thinking and I don't believe that my name is good for me", Radost pressed against her leg with a light chuckle. "And Radost here told me that a name is something powerful and something that must be a hundred percent myself, right?"
"Absolutely."
"Okay, so I've been thinking what I like and what I want and what I am... And I've realized that I really like to make others laugh. I want to bring joy to other people. Like today", she looked the Traveller in the eyes, lilac clashing with emerald green in the darkness. "So, doesn't that kind of make me a... jester?"
"Is that what you want to be called?", the Traveller looked at her, uncharacteristically serious. His youthful face seemed ancient at that moment, and the powerful presence underneath his usual joy bathed the room in a solemn tone. "Words hold secret powers on the right hands, on the right tongues. And there is no more powerful word than a name. They are not to be taken lightly. So let me ask you one thing, little jester. Is that who you are?"
"Yes", she said without hesitation. The Traveller smiled.
"Then it is a perfect fit for you, Jester."
She sat on top of a tree branch, hidden from the world and scowling at the floor. In a few weeks it would be her father's birthday and she wanted to give him something good. Maybe then he would stop being such a pain all the time.
Lately his patience had been diminishing a lot. He didn't even talk with her anymore, just grunted in her general direction before looking at his papers once more. The only books he gave her were boring tomes on economics and merchant routes, nothing to do with the ones that interested her. She didn't even remember the last time they spoke that didn't end with either Thoreau marching off from the room or them screaming at each other. Her mother told her that it was just a teenager thing, that she shouldn't speak like that to her father and she should try harder to maintain the peace in the house.
Callimachus was climbing up the tree, his heavy body making some branches creak in protest. She reached down and caught him from below the front paws to heap him up.
"Thanks, Beau."
"Don't mention it. You should stay clear of Maggi's pastries, though. Your heavy ass is getting harder to drag along with me."
The wolverine snarled at her with a sound that would have earned her a disapproving look, courtesy of her father. Beau just pulled his ears with a smirk on her face and they rough housed for a bit, balancing precariously on their branch.
Eventually, they stopped and Beau frowned, petting Callimachus between the ears.
"You're still thinking about what to give him."
"Well, yeah. I want him to be not pissed off for once. Just for a week. Am I asking too much?"
"We're talking about Father here. So, pretty much, yeah," said the daemon, barely changing his voice tone.
"Look, I will just put on a fucking dress and be the most polite and plain 'young woman' you can imagine. Then, we'll have them out of our asses for a whole week. Now give me some ideas for a good present, Callim."
Callimachus sighed and closed his eyes, thinking. "Okay, so you know that the Greywood family is in town."
"Yeah."
"And that they're from Deastok."
"Yeah..."
"And we know that Father has been trying to break into the coastal market for a while," he said, elongating the last word with a bow of his heavy head.
"Oh, okay. Alright. I like where you're going. So, we just need to sweet talk them a bit and give them a bit of our wine and if they like it they might talk about it with their contacts on the coast. You know, word of mouth."
"You got it."
"If we present him some clients, he will be happy for a while, don't you think?"
"I hope so. I'm getting tired of seeing Dignitas giving me the stink eye, man."
"You and me both," she played with his ear, deep on thought. "Whatever we do, it can't be worse than it already is."
(It could be. It was.)
"I can't believe what you have done."
Beau was clenching her fists and looking at the floor. "It's not what you think, let me explain-"
"I know very well what you were doing. Do you even understand the consequences of your actions? Is this all a game for you?"
Despite being a short man, Beau felt like she was facing a hill giant. "I wasn't sneaking the wine for fun, it was to expand our market! You wanted to-"
"You took a bottle of our best wine for what? Tell me, Beauregard, tell me exactly what you were doing." The cobra around his father's neck moved silently, her beady eyes unblinking while they pierced Cal's hide.
"I-I... I was going to give the Greywoods some wine to expand our market to the Menagerie Coast," she looked at Callim for support. "They are merchants, they trade with the coastal ci-"
"The Greywoods. You were going to give our best wine to the Greywoods. Do you pay attention to anything I say to you? They are just a bunch of charlatans! You were going to give our best wine to a bunch of nobodies."
"But they are on the border, they travel to the coast and back every year! If someone from the Menagerie Coast likes the wine, they will ask them where they got it fr-"
"The Greywoods don't have a high enough status to gather the interest of a good client. I've explained to you many times that the first client is the most important one. But how would you know that if you don't pay attention to your lessons. Your tutors have told me that your studies are lacking, and I can see that clearly. You take everything for granted, I have spoiled you rotten."
"I listen to them all the time!"
"Don't you dare lie to my face," his eyes were carbon copies of Dignitas' black beads. Beau was paralysed, she had made the worst mistake possible: looking him in the eye. Callim leaned against her leg and the pressure on her chest vanished for a moment.
"Callimachus, a Lionett must learn to stand on his feet without help," said Dignitas in her cold, soft tone. She raised her head above Thoreau's, her gaze piercing the wolverine. None of them moved for a minute, but eventually Callimachus dropped his gaze and put some space between Beauregard and himself.
"You think you're so clever, but you are still a child. I've spent a lot of money to give you the best education possible, and yet you appear to not have learnt anything. How are you going to carry our legacy? You are Beauregard Lionett. I expect you to be better than this", his voice was ice cold and she felt the chill in her heart. Her eyes, however, were burning with unshed tears. "You need to stop taking everything I give you for granted and start taking this seriously. You are not a child."
Callimachus whined and squirmed quietly, but Thoureau and Dignitas looked at him immediately. Dignitas’ soft voice cut through the silence. “Or are you?”
Beau felt her eyes widening as the pressure on her chest came back in full force. A cold sweat began to gather in her hands, and she felt dizzy all of a sudden.
"You are fifteen years old, Beauregard. How come your daemon hasn't settled yet?"
Beau swallowed and tried to speak, but her voice had abandoned her. Head spinning, mouth dry, trembling hands. Her daemon, too far.
"Callimachus, did you think you had fooled me?", Dignitas lowered her head to Thoreau's chest, leaning there to have a better view of the wolverine.
"I'm not stupid, Beauregard."
She regretted having looked at her father in the eye. It was like facing a titan. Although his age was beginning to show through white splashes along his black hair, his eyes were intimidating as always. There was not weakness there, only cold anger and disappointment. Her gaze dropped to the floor, alongside her spirit.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice that Callimachus has not settled yet? I know he changes every few days to other forms, however briefly. I will give this to you, if I were a complete idiot, I would have bought your little play. I didn’t know unsettled daemons could maintain a form for so long, but then again, you never were known for your imagination.”
Beauregard wanted to hold Callimachus between her arms, bury her head in his coarse fur until her chest stopped hurting. Instead, she clenched her fists and refused to let the tears on her eyes fall.
“The issue here is that you are not a child anymore. You are going to be sixteen this winter. Practically an adult, and yet you still refuse to mature. Our family needs you to grow up, Beauregard. Perhaps I have been too lenient, but I will find a way to fix this.” He turned around and faced the window on his study, Dignitas coiling around his neck once again. “Go to your room.”
As Beau and Callimachus left the room, Dignitas hissed softly and looked at the closed door. Thoreau turned around once more and opened a drawer on his desk. He took a letter from there and his fingers slid easily beneath the already torn blue wax seal. He read the letter one more time before putting it away again.
“What do you think, Dignitas?”
“We have given them plenty of time. Maybe they just need some more discipline.”
Thoreau hummed as he petted the cobra’s head absentmindedly.
“I was thinking the same.” He sat down on the only chair in the room and took a blank piece of paper. “Maybe a new approach to learning is just what they need.”
Beau and Callim were perched on top of a tree, in the limit of the household’s terrains. It was an old tree, one with twisted branches and hidden in a particularly dense part of the woods. Beau was holding Callim on a bone-crushing hug that the daemon reciprocated by digging his claws into her. It was a painful hug, but they didn’t care.
“This is the last time, Callim. I swear, this is the last time we try to do anything for him,” she managed to mutter between sobs.
“I’m sorry, Beau,” said Callim. “I’m trying, you know I am. Father is right, I should hav-”
“No! Fuck him, I don’t care. I don’t care if you never settle. And he doesn’t know shit. You know he doesn’t. We have like three bottles of wine on our room, and he only noticed one missing.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” he said, pressing his broad head against her slender frame. “You know what, we should drink it. All of it.”
“We should sell it at half price. I bet they would hate to sell our shitty wine for cheap.” She tried to say it with a smile but couldn’t quite manage to strike one.
They stayed like that, hugging each other, for a long time. When they were ready to let go, they looked at the dark sky one last time before climbing down.
“I was serious,” said Beau as they walked down the gravel path to the house. She looked at Callim and found his gaze staring back at her. They stopped. “Back there, when I said we won’t do anything else for them, I was serious.”
“I know. I love you, Beau.”
“I love you, Callim. Let’s go."