Sarah Z. Creates

In this World-Building Wednesday series, I’m doing just that: using writing prompts to flesh out Talah, one of the worlds in The Sundered Realms. This month’s series is sketching out a few scenes from an origin story!

She was fire and agony. Endless power and endless pain. She no longer remembered her name or why she’d been imprisoned. Sometimes, thoughts and visions that weren’t hers flitted through her mind, and she clung to those like a drowning woman. They were the only things that kept her sane.

A tree. An oak, ancient in years by the measure of its girth, but wretched in its age. Gnarled roots erupted from the ground as if they’d sought sustenance from the air that they couldn’t find in the earth. The bark on the trunk was blackened and oozing a foul-smelling sap. 

The tree’s grotesqueness wasn’t the worst, though. That was the brief glimpse of vibrant green leaves among the half-rotted ones that still clung to warped branches. It was the warmth of the healthy bark slowly being overrun by that sickly sap, which leeched any remnant of health from the bark it touched.

“This must be it, then,” a man spoke, his voice surprisingly light for the size and strength of him. He was just as golden as his twin, perhaps with skin slightly duskier, as if he spent more days beneath the sun than his brother. The other ‘hmmmed’ as they both circled the tree opposite each other.

“I can’t imagine anything healthy coming out of that,” the first said as he completed his circuit and stopped before the tree “How much stock do you put in that witch’s words, Abyl?”

The other’s lips twisted. “Not much, Cayne, but we’re out of alternatives. So we’d both best pray that she was right.”

“Right,” Cayne said. “Tomorrow at midnight, she said?” His tone was wary. This topic was one he was loath to broach.

“That’s what she said,” his shadow said. A golden shadow, how odd. He sounded weary and sad. 

“Right.” Cayne said again and nodded crisply, though his face was as shadowed and weary as his brother’s voice sounded. “We’ll decide in the morning, then.”

She lost time there: the dullness of dreams did nothing to quell the agony of these flames. Something else, though, pulled her back. A different kind of fire …

Cayne lay bundled in his cloak, a ragged thing that looked even more so in the firelight that flickered over him. Abyl was sealing over a note as someone limped out of the shadows.

“You are ready, then?” it whispered, its voice crackly with age. It pushed back its hood to reveal a faerie — old, misshapen and graceless, but still fae. Abil showed no signs of fear. He handed over the letter, ignoring the two other notes that sat at his feet. His eyes picked up the embers of the firelight, like amber caught sunlight.

“I am,” he said. “The binding, if you please, and we will be done with it.”

The crone took the letter, but her hand hung there in the air between them. It was gnarled and clawed.

“He will follow your instructions?”

“He better,” Abyl snarled. “Else he’s really going to regret my revenant haunting him. Seal it.”

The moment hung between them, heavy with promise and power. The briefest glint of a faintly glowing lace crawled over the parchment before whatever magic had been cast vanished, something that seared flesh that should have been ash ages ago. She screamed, voiceless and tearless. There would be no end to this agony for her.

The crone handed the letter back. “It is done. Until she is given permission to speak by the First Daughter, this secret will not pass her lips. This is a hard burden you give your line.”

“Living beneath this burden is better than dooming us all to death beneath that bitch’s heel. ‘The heart’s blood of her power’s mate.’ What a fae kind of binding is that?”

“An effective one. To free her, you must destroy the one thing that would give her control enough to defeat the Dark Queen.”

“Don’t call her that. She is not my queen, and her curse will come back to bite her in the ass. I guess we’re lucky Fae don’t breed twins. Don’t let Cayne get guilty over this. It had to be me. I regret a lot of things, but this isn’t one of them.” He took a deep breath, unsheathing a wicked knife from his belt. He stood at the base of the tree, and raised the blade at an angle from his chest.

She knew then, the cost of her freedom. But agony was enough to make her numb to the sacrifice. And then she knew nothing but darkness.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into The Sundered Realms! There’s plenty more to enjoy. In addition to these World-Building Wednesday posts, you can sign up for my newsletter to get a FREE short story: The Ruin of Ehslyng. Or stay connected via my Facebook page.