teakay | Sneak-peek for Remembered Realms Chapter 8

The latest chapter's coming along slowly, but when I do finish it (perhaps sometime after I finish my finals) there'll be a lot going on in there. To prove I haven't been doing nothing in my free time but complaining on LJ and binging on clearanced Valentine's chocolate, here's a snippet from the current draft. Warning for language.

Theris and Ilithaine = reincarnations of Hoar and Shevarash, respectively. The whole drow genocide thing is not going over so well in modern-day Faerun and the reincarnation of Kiaransalee just sent over a nightmare in retaliation. (Tarlyn) Argith is the reincarnation of Selvetarm, and his view of the encounter was given in a previous chapter.

***

Ilithaine said “They said he was a tael.”

Theris thought back. Tael. Bladesinger in training, cultural cornerstone. Breakfast at the diner, with a flock of them. There was their teacher, who’d been sedate and polite all the while. There was the one who called them over, who’d had tiny horns just visible poking through his hair and holes neatly tailored into the back of his sweater and shirt to accommodate a small pair of batlike wings. Floshin, yes, he remembered.

And then there was the one with the long white braid and the zipped red jacket, far shorter of speech. At points he’d seemed to stare at them, though that could’ve been a natural consequence of where he was sitting in relation to them. The drow. Floshin had called him –“Argith?”

“Argith…? Yes. Him. Didn’t you see it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you saw it with me.”

He tried to recall any mental twinge at the sight of Argith, any whisper in the back of his head, and came up empty. “One… of us?”

“No.” Ilithaine’s arms wrapped across each other. “Another one. Not of us. Of them.”

“Of course I saw he was a drow –”

“Yes. Of course a drow. But more than that. I remember now. Got a reminder. The girl on Palace and Toal, you said. All black and rings. What would you call that?”

“The style?” Sharran caught a fucking arrow this morning. “Maybe sharran –”

“No. Not Sharran. I should know that. Don’t know what to call it but I know what not to call it. All her rings. Her rings.”

And now came the twinge, the image sudden and certain, but even as they came he was shaking his head. “I see but… it’s not the same. They’re not the same. I can’t say I know what to call her but it’s a woman, wearing the rings.”

“Not the same like that. Rings – that’s different. But same in their purpose. Now books call them the Dark Seldarine,” he spat, suddenly on his feet again, “aillesel Seldarie, they’d tear it all to pieces if they could. I saw how he looked at me back there.” Theris hadn’t seen that, and said so. “Like he wanted to bite out my throat.”