Valleyborne

VALLEYBORNE: To Arlaine, My Chosen Hope

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. In the decade before you were born, my men and I found three of them half a continent away, wounded and hooked up to wires, with a steam siphon drawing out their life and magic to fuel the archanics of the empire’s southern province. Anyone would tremble to hear such sadness as held in the whimpers between their roars.

Retrieving them was our last sound victory in the war.

A few weeks later we lost over two thousand soldiers escorting the nymphs from the burning of Raedell Forest. That’s where I met your mother, a nymph stronger than the dragons, like a bobcat and a spruce mixed into the unrelenting fury of a powerful woman too stubborn to let the rest of us die. While I froze from the shock of the surrounding death, of my comrades and friends, of the men I admired and the ones I couldn’t suffer, your mother remembered how to lead. Falidelle kept us moving to safety.

But the devastation was heavy. Our enemies kept fairies in cages on their backs, wired to fuel cannons small enough to hold in their arms. Fury and swords and old dying magics were not enough. We survived with only six hundred men, a dozen Nymphs, and the handful of fairies that we could free while our forces were decimated.

We had such little left, but still fewer returned to the king and advised that he surrender the Tarché Crown. The rest of us built your Valley, the Feyhaven, when we chose to abandon our efforts to protect the world and to instead preserve just a piece of it for you and the other children. By now it may be the last home of pure magic.

Magic changes when it’s passed through the smithery of modern archanics. As it becomes tamed by the wire, it forever loses a portion of the chaos that empowers the wonderful creatures of this world. As it continues across decades, all future life, from beast to fabled creature to our own posterity, will suffer from the damaged magics flowing within us all.

This is the weakened world we left for you. But make no mistake my son, however daunting the challenges facing you may be, you must remember it is the world that is weak, not you. There are already places where children are born with less than enough life magic to fuel the full human mind. That is why many of the other soldiers and I have put together the Fayhaven, to ensure that you and our other children may be born and raised flush with life and able to reach the highest of potential.

It is also why I’m writing you this letter, in case the worst has happened, so that you will understand why I am gone, in my hope that you will forgive me for courting danger as often as I do.

We could not bear to leave three wounded dragons whimpering and weak without taking arms for them. We risked and lost thousands of lives trying to rescue the nymphs of Raedell Forest. But what could we have done after witnessing an empire orphanage full of human children with vacant eyes and a sterile laugh?

I venture into the cities and throw words and stones into the great void of civilization, desperate that somebody will listen to what I have seen about the harm that our archanistry is doing to our humanity.

I am human. I remain driven as always by my helplessness.

I pray that you, Arlaine, will have your mother’s stubbornness. Her leadership. Her strength. If you are anything like Falidelle, you will not be helpless. You are your mother’s son, and I have faith in you.

When we told the nymphs our intentions, they told me that one from your generation would be the chosen one. That the arc of fate bends towards passion. But those words mean nothing. Do not look for the world to bend before your own sense of justice. We are too late for destiny to do the right thing by this world.

But you are my chosen one. And I have chosen to give you everything.

I have built for you a land of magic and power, of monsters and grace, of legend and lore brought home, the most precious and beautiful powers that were dying from the world.

Safeguard them. Treasure them. Protect them. Bring them back to the world. Nurture the magic here. Let it empower you. Become one with it.

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, but you’re going to need them. Your home may be the last source of pure magic, and it will need your generation and all the magics available to you to protect it.

And with all of this may you find a worthwhile place in the world that I tried but failed to abandon.

Yours even beyond life,

Ser Elra Filwerth

3rd Arcbrigadier, Kingdom of Tarché

Arcmajor Francis’s lip twitched from the hot smoke in the air as he crumpled the note in his hand and tossed it across the hard ground. Damn fear-baiting fool. The child whimpering in front of him looked to be about three or four years old, with green veins and red highlights to his hair. Half nymph? That was alright. Who could turn away from a child whimpering in need? He would be sure to do right by the boy.

Francis turned without a word and stepped over the mother’s still-bleeding corpse to leave the odd little hut, made from a thick copse of trees bent and twisted and tied together into living, leafy bark walls. He gestured one of his men, an older bearded lieutenant with an archanofire cannon in his hand and a well of pixies strapped on his back. The man pulled back his cannon so that it stopped shooting smoke at the winged squirrels in the underbrush and came forward.

“Yes, Arcmajor ser?”

“Have we finished subduing the third dragon?” Arcmajor Francis asked, his throat soar and hoarse from a day of starting fires and barking orders.

“It flew up one of the mountains after we brought down the other two, but you saw how we got its wing.” The lieutenant’s lips curled into an eager sneer. “Two days and we’ll have it."

“Good. Burn this little village like the rest of the Valley,” he ordered, gesturing at the many bound-tree huts. “Make sure any child under seven comes back with us. Kill the rest.”

His Lieutenant nodded, then repeated the order to the flame-archanics to search and torch the buildings. Arcmajor Francis closed his eyes, took a deep breath of the smoky air, and smiled. Finally he could expect to sleep in peace that night knowing his terrorists were silenced at last.