Lalauri Imafenduwell

The Old Aureate Wing

Imafenduwell Hall

 

Lalauri tried her best to calm herself down—to stop the tears from flowing so freely from her eyes—but it was almost hopeless. The darkness was not only surrounding her, but it was suffocating her, and added to that feeling of suffocation was the smallness of the closet. With not even enough room to fully stretch out her arms, Lalauri started hyperventilating almost immediately.

“Deep breaths!” She told herself. “Deep breaths! Slow breaths! Do not pass out! Do not pass out!”

With her heart practically slamming against her chest, the Daughter of Twilight tried to think of anything she could use to get out of this situation.

When I get out of here, I’m going to remove the door on every single small room in this damned Hall!

Looking back, Lalauri was kicking herself for not taking such measures much sooner. But how was she to know that a child could be so devious?!

Lalauri was just about to shout out again for Keridwen to come back and release her when someone giggled mirthfully behind her. Spooked and on high alert now, Lalauri swung around to strike whoever had snuck up on her. However, she had forgotten that she was in a closet and just how small that broom closet was. Without meaning to, Lalauri smashed her hands into the wall so with such force that she yelped and her hand instantly bruised.

This proved to be a problem for a couple of reasons; first, her hand was badly injured and would from that point on act as a handicap that might hinder her escape from this closet. The other issue was the state of the closet itself…

It was pitch dark in the closet, but even just by feeling the wall that she had struck, Lalauri could tell that there was no damage to it at all. If she were a regular human or any other of the weaker races, this would be an obvious result. However, she was an elf, and while elves themselves were not the most powerful race on Enchantyon, she should have been strong enough to break down the walls and door of a simple broom closet.

“No doubt this is also thanks to the little brat’s magic.” Lalauri said to herself. “Wonderful. When I get my hands on her next—”

Another giggle sounded from behind her, and Lalauri had to catch herself from hitting the wall again. It was a high-pitched laughter. It was almost like a child’s. There was more than one voice in the laughter as well, and it sounded like the giggling was coming from all around her. It sent chills down her spine as they grew louder and louder.

“No…I know that laughter…it sounds like…it’s the faeries…no. No, they’re all gone, they’re all gone…” Then the laughter grew louder and louder, and as it grew in volume, Lalauri’s resolved withered more and more. “KERIDWEN! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT!”

Within seconds, whatever calm, rational Lalauri had kept a hold of had altogether vanished. Her mind swirled and suddenly the walls of the broom closet quickly turned from wood to cement. The floor itself had turned to cement as well, and when Lalauri looked up—where she should have seen the shattered remains of a broken light-bulb—there were the metal bars locking her inside her small prison pit, and beyond those bars was an overcast sky.

“No…” She was back. Her past had been made manifest in the form of this waking nightmare.

Once again, laughter filled her ears, and Lalauri watched in horror as someone stepped into view from above the prison bars of her pit; the skin of the High Faerie prison torturer was iridescent. His hair was silver, his eyes were a solid plum colour, and like many other Fae creatures, this one had a silver, forked tongue.

“Hello, my little pets.” Said the High Faerie, addressing Lalauri and the other prisoners who were in similar prison pits alongside hers. “It is with great pleasure that I announce to you that my people’s beloved Mother has personally chosen me to oversee your never-ending stay here in the Phlemestillon Pits. For your war crimes against the Faemother, you will all be subject to various forms of glorious torture. One example of this will be live dissection, followed by careful reassembly so that we can begin the process again! Another activity will be the melting of your bones while they’re still inside your body. One project I’m personally looking forward to is when we will be assigning you roles to play in the re-enactment of the final battles of your pitiful resistance when we were still taking this world. However…today, my pets, we shall begin with feeding time. I have starved the acid oozes for weeks just for you.”

“Oh, don’t worry though,” continued the High Faerie over the sound of begging that could be heard from the other prison pits. “There’s nothing to worry about at all! As I said before, we plan on this being a never-ending stay for you all…so you won’t die. Whatever pieces of you get melted off and absorbed by the slime creatures will be grown back with magic…eventually. Now, let the feast begin!”

It was then that a fizzing, popping orange ooze poured through the bars of Lalauri’s pit. And as the slime creature poured into the pit, Lalauri could hear it say, “I’m sorry. So sorry…they’re making me…I’m just so hungry…”

Lalauri couldn’t respond properly, though. She was too busy screaming—screaming from the pain of having the acidic ooze of the slime creature eat away at her very flesh and bones.

 

*

 

Keridwen of Khar Vell

The Old Aureate Wing

Imafenduwell Hall

 

Keridwen and Thumper ran down the halls of the Old Aureate Wing, their laughter echoing off the walls now that Lalauri was safely locked in the broom closet. They wanted to get away as far as possible before Lalauri eventually found a way out of the broom closet.

“Did you hear her?” Keridwen laughed as she looked over at Thumper. She put on her best Lalauri impression and said, “Keridwen! You let me out of here this instance!”

“Yeah, I know.” Thumper laughed back. “Who knew a grown-up could be so afraid of the dark?”

“I know! I haven’t been afraid of the dark that badly since—”

Keridwen gasped, and they both came to a grinding halt when they saw that standing in their way of the front doors was none other than Miss Ophelia.

“Children?” Miss Ophelia regarded them both with a single raised eyebrow. “Going somewhere?”

For the briefest of moments, Keridwen took a glance at Thumper—who glanced at her for direction also—before she finally said, “We were just going to go outside for a little bit.”

“Yeah,” Thumper chimed in. “Before it was dark.”

“Right! We just wanted to go out before it went dark.”

“Hmm…I see.” Said Miss Ophelia. “Well, before you two run off, Keridwen, I’d like to have a quick word with you for a few moments.”

“Uh, why?”

“Because, my dear, I have yet a chance to get to know you, and I would like to. And please dear, as long as Lalauri is going to be your moth—er, well, your guardian—call me Grannie.”

With that, Miss O—er, Grannie—steered Keridwen away, and the two left Thumper to journey back down into the Hall to talk. They talked about what Keridwen and Lalauri had been up to since they arrived in Aureate, and briefly about how she’s found things since arriving.

“It’s been alright I guess,” Keridwen lied, being careful not to look Grannie in the eyes. “But…I just don’t…why does Lalauri hate me?”

“My dear,” said Grannie softly. “Why in the world would you think that?”

“Because! She keeps getting mad at me! First she tells me not to use magic, then she gets mad at me when it’s just an accident and she doesn’t let me explain it was just an accident, then I find out that she uses magic herself all the time! She’s just hating on me for it for no reason!”

“What? Who told you that Lalauri uses magic all the time?”

Keridwen almost answered, but then quickly thought better of it. Somehow, a part of her knew that telling Grannie that she learned this information from a talking stuffed animal that had read Lalauri’s personal diary would probably lead to too many questions. Questions that she admittedly didn’t have all the answers to.

“I…heard it from someone when we were downtown.” Keridwen lied. “It was when we went to that statue unveiling they were having.”

Grannie sighed loudly. “Little One, Lalauri hasn’t used magic in a very, very long time. She can’t anymore. Without getting into the details, her magic is gone. Forever.”

This revelation made Keridwen stop in her tracks completely. “What?”

“Yes, it’s true. Although, I hesitate to say much more, because it’s not entirely my story to tell. What I will tell you, though, is that my granddaughter’s past—as far as her experience with magic goes—is the main reason she has been so strictly against your use of magic.”

“I know, I know.” Keridwen rolled her eyes. “Magic always costs something. It always comes with a price. I’ve heard!”

“Yes, my dear. And she’s trying to warn you of the consequences that she herself has faced. Trust me, there’s a reason the White Faun warns against magic—or anything regarding the occult. It’s because it opens up your life to disaster and unseen powers that would seek to destroy you, either from within or external forces. Plus, magic in itself has its own catastrophic effects. Especially for the untrained. So, trust me when I say that whenever Lalauri tries to instruct you not to use magic, it’s not coming from some sort of moral high ground. It’s because she’s experienced the consequences of using magic herself and she doesn’t want you making the same mistakes as her.”

“…She never says that, though. When she talks to me about magic, it’s always just, ‘Don’t do this, Keridwen’ and ‘Don’t do that!’”

For a moment, Grannie said nothing to that. She merely chuckled, frowned, and then said, “I’ll be honest with you, Little One. Conversation has never been Lalauri’s strong suit. And I do mean never. Especially when it comes to people she’s only just getting to know. She’s very reserved in that sense, and has only become increasingly more so over the past several centuries. With that being said, I think what the two of you need is to sit down and actually talk to each other for once. Have an actual conversation and tell each other how you feel about how things have been going since you arrived.”

This notion did not appeal to Keridwen for a variety of reasons.

When she didn’t readily respond to this suggestion, Grannie nudged her and said, “Well, Keridwen? What do you think about that?”

“I guess…” Keridwen muttered. “I don’t know how, though.”

“Well, just start by saying, ‘Lalauri, can we please talk for a minute? I want to discuss with you how things have been between us.’ You can put that into your own words, obviously, but that’s how I would do it.”

“…When, though?”

“Well, why not right now? Where is Lalauri right now, anyways? Ugh, I swear, it’s so easy to lose a person in this place. And to think, the little elves of Valley’Lo grow up listening to bedtime stories about this Hall as if it were some sort of wonderland. UGH! I remember this one time I managed to get myself stuck in a room that had been terribly haunted by a robber that had broken in at one point, got lost himself in these damned corridors, and then died in that room. I then had to—”

As Grannie went on about her experience of getting lost in Imafenduwell Hall, Keridwen had stopped dead in her tracks. She had forgotten entirely about where Lalauri was at that moment and had only remembered when Grannie had asked about her whereabouts. And it was in that moment of recollection that Keridwen instantly knew there would likely be little chance of reconciliation between her and Lalauri.

“Um, Grannie…”

“Hm? Yes, my dear? What’s the matter?”

“Well, um…I kind of…might have played a…prank on Lalauri a little while ago…” Keridwen then told Grannie about the talking stuffed animal telling her that Lalauri was being a hypocrite about magic, how Lalauri was allegedly being that way because she hated Keridwen, and how the stuffed animal told her that the best way to get back at her guardian would be to lock her away in a small dark broom closet and then magically keep it shut.

The more Keridwen explained to Grannie, the more her face twisted with horror, leaving Keridwen with a sense of dread.

“No…” Grannie finally said when she was done. The elder elf grabbed hold of Keridwen’s arms forcibly, got right up in her face, and demanded, “Where is she, girl?! Where is Lalauri?! Take me to her right this instance or else—”

Whatever threat she was about to make was cut off, though. Overhead, a wailing alarm sounded with a metallic voice uttering the same two words repeatedly.

“INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!”