 
# Alphabet Soup for Sylphs

#

by L.J. McDonald

Published by L.J. McDonald at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 L.J. McDonald

Cover by L.J. McDonald

Editing Assistance by C.A Szarek

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

## Table of Contents

Introduction

A is for Allowed

B is for Blocks

C is for Cold

D is for Devotion

E is for Eyeball

F is for Forever

G is for Grass

H is for Hate

I is for Ignite

J is for Jeopardy

K is for Killer

L is for Lift

M is for Moo

N is for Nag

O is for Outrage

P is for Pissed Off

Q is for Questions

R is for Ruined

S is for Secret

T is for Temptation

U is for Undone

V is for Victory

W is for Welcome

X is for Xenolith

Y is for Yellow

Z is for Zen

Afterword

Books by L.J. McDonald

Connect with L.J. McDonald

## Introduction

As of the writing of this introduction in March 2012, there are three full-length Sylph novels and one novella published. They're titled The Battle Sylph, The Shattered Sylph, and Queen of the Sylphs. There's also a novella titled "The Worth of a Sylph" in the anthology A Midwinter Fantasy. All of them are published by Dorchester Publishing and available as either eBooks or trade paperbacks.

Back in the middle of January, I came across a writing challenge on the Internet where the author writes a series of snippets based on the alphabet. I hadn't been able to release anything about the Sylphs for a while and thought it would be a great idea to keep me in practice and be a gift to my readers. So, over a period of time that lasted somewhat longer than twenty-four days, I released Alphabet Soup for Sylphs on my blog. Each day was based around a new word in alphabetical order. It was both a lot of fun and a source of periodic frustration for me, and the pieces went over well.

While I was working on the challenge, I decided that once it was over, I'd take the whole thing, clean it up, and release it as an eBook for people to keep. As I'd originally handed it out for free, I never planned to charge for it, so if you paid money for this, I'm sorry. You shouldn't have.

Smashwords has let me turn this into an eBook that's available over a wide range of formats, which I definitely like. Hopefully you'll like it too. I've gone over the original blog entries and tightened up the prose. I've also put a section at the end where I go into some detail about what I was thinking with each section, for those who are interested in that sort of thing. I even created the cover art, which is something I don't think I ever want to try and do again. At least, I really don't want to try and draw any more sylphs!

Before you start, keep in mind that this was done as a companion piece for the books, not a stand-alone. The individual sections offer a wide range of styles and characterizations, but also assume at least a basic understanding of the universe. I didn't put any spoilers for the unpublished books, but there are some that could be taken that way for the books that are out. To decrease the number of spoilers, I've gone through this version and changed a few things to try and keep from giving too much away to someone who perhaps hasn't read the books.

Oh, one last note. I used Canadian spelling in this, so my American readers should expect a lot of strange appearances of the letter U.

I do hope that you enjoy.

L.J. McDonald

7 March 2012

## A is for Allowed

Blue still couldn't believe it was true.

He was here now, in this strange, harmless world, bound to a woman who felt like a Queen to him. More, despite how there was a hive, he wasn't nameless in it.

"We're allowed to do whatever we want?" he asked, staring at everything and still amazed by all of it.

"Yup," Heyou said, grinning. "Anything."

Blue turned his head to look at the other battler. He felt light-headed, drunk, stunned. "We can belong to females of our own?"

"Absolutely. That's one of the best parts."

"And change shape to whatever we like?"

"Sure. I recommend 'handsome man.' That one's always popular. It's way better than 'giant eyeball' or 'multi-armed snake creature.' Just ask Dillon."

"And we don't have to worry that the Queen will reject us?"

Heyou shook his head. "Solie would never do that." He raised a finger. "Mind you, she won't sleep with you. You have your own master for that."

"So we protect this valley now?"

"Yep." Heyou was starting to look bored. "We really are free here, you know. Honest."

"So I can kill any man I want?"

"Uh, no." Heyou frowned. "We're not allowed to do that." The grin returned. "But the rest of it makes up for it!"

## B is for Blocks

"No!"

Betha wanted to pull her own hair out in frustration. "Lizzy, you're ten years old! You're too old to be playing with blocks. You should give them to your little sisters."

"No!" Lizzy shouted again, tears of rage in her eyes as she shook her head in vehement denial. Betha found herself wishing her husband were here. Lizzy never misbehaved when Leon was around. A moment later, she steeled herself. She could deal with this without him.

"I never raised you to be so selfish, Lizzy Petrule."

Lizzy shook her head again, her pigtails flying. "No! They can have all my dolls and the wooden rocking horse and even my paints, but not the blocks!"

Betha was startled. "You'd give all your other toys away? Just to keep some baby blocks? Why?"

Lizzy wiped her eyes. "They're important to me," was all she would say.

Betha would never understand this child. "Fine," she snapped, wishing she didn't feel as if she were giving in. "Keep the blocks, but you will share all your other toys, understand?"

"Yes, mama!" Lizzy cheered, all her tears gone as she hugged her mother. Betha sighed and hugged her back.

A door opened. "I'm home," Leon called.

"Ril!" Lizzy shouted, tearing away from Betha and pounding down the hall to the front door. A few moments later she came back, having essentially ignored her father in favour of taking his red-feathered hawk on her arm. Ril sat with his sharp claws not even dimpling Lizzy's skin and his vicious eyes locked onto her face. She chattered to the battler non-stop as she headed for the stairs.

Leon came around the corner behind her and smiled as he saw his wife, his eyes flickering towards the girl while she headed upstairs. "It's so nice to have a daughter's love," he laughed.

"Well, you certainly have mine," Betha said and went to him.

###

Upstairs, Lizzy headed to the nursery and into the corner she'd sectioned off for her own, by way of a hanging blanket and dire threats to her little sisters. She let Ril perch on top of an old, battered chair and dug out the blocks her mother wanted her to give up. They were old and worn, the paint chipped and faded.

"Mama wanted me to give these away," she said as she spread them out. "To my sisters. I talked her out of it, but I had to give up all my other toys." She looked at him. "It was worth it. Do you think it's worth it?"

The bird hopped down to the ground, his body swaying from side to side as he walked over to the blocks and used his curved beak to pull certain blocks to him and lay them out in order.

ALWAYS, he spelled.

## C is for Cold

It had been snowing all day, just as it had all week, and the cold was bitter.

Airi didn't feel it. Cold didn't mean anything to her, but the winds came from the northern glaciers and when they reached the bluff the community built its home inside, they swirled the snow in wild patterns she wouldn't see again once they moved south in the spring.

She danced in the erratic winds, along with a half dozen other air sylphs, all diving and darting over and around each other, and it was wonderful. Claw floated by, dark and ominous in his natural form while he guarded the bluff, and they swept around him in play. He flinched and swooped away as the air sylphs laughed.

It was fantastic, so utterly glorious. She lost track of time until she finally noticed someone trudging his way through the thick snow, masked in a heavy fur cloak as he made his way to the edge of the bluff.

Airi left the other sylphs and flew down to him. _What are you doing out here?_ she asked.

Devon peered up at her from out of the cowl of his cloak, squinting against the snow with white already frosting his hair and beard.

"I c-came to k-keep you company," he stammered.

Airi laughed in absolute delight and danced around her master.

## D is for Devotion

Five-Eighty was tending the fields when the new Queen rose.

He and a half dozen other battle sylphs had been pacing through the rows of crops the lesser sylphs tended. Locked into their tall, green, mouthless forms, they looked for weeds to cut, pests to kill, thieves to destroy. The smell of the growing plants was rich in his nose, their leaves damp with the moisture the water sylphs sprayed on them. The earth was soft and dark underneath his clawed feet, so different from the endless sands just beyond the edge of the field.

For decades, he'd tended these lands. Since the day he was drawn through the gate by the lie of having a woman as his queen, he'd guarded them, silent and sad. Just one more battle sylph in a kingdom that held over seven hundred of them.

He was shocked when he felt the Queen ascend, the pattern of her flowing into him and filling the empty place where his first Queen used to be, the place where the men here had staked their own claim, crippling him with their rules and commands. She washed all of that away, giving him back the gift of himself in a rush of emotions.

_Rise!_ A battler's voice cried. The lead battler, he realized. The battler of the Queen. _Rise and destroy them! All their rules are gone, all of them!_

Five-Eighty stared towards the city. He could see the battlers rising, hear the screaming and sense the fear of the humans. The other battlers with him leapt into the air, changing shape to those of dark clouds as they swept forward to join the battle.

They were free. Free to inflict vengeance, to destroy their oppressors. Entire buildings were falling and the floating island over the city was being harried by hundreds of his brothers towards the ocean.

He could have revenge? He didn't care. He only wanted one thing.

Five-Eighty leaped into the air, shifting his form from that horrid, green thing to a black cloud filled with lightning. He raced for the city, darting around the crashing ruins and the blasts of destruction fired by outraged battlers tasting their freedom. Air and fire sylphs swirled around him, frightened and wailing. Thousands of sylphs were headed for the edge of the city and the queen, moving through the air or along the ground.

He went the other way. He raced for one of the vents into the underground complex where the feeders were kept and slipped inside.

Thousands upon thousands of humans were trapped down there, held in cages with their tongues cut out, bonded to sylphs so as to act as their food supply. Each sylph had five of them, but Five-Eighty didn't go to the ones that belonged to him. He went deeper instead, into levels of the pens that had been specifically forbidden to him before now. He passed signs of battle as he went, but he didn't care. He passed still trapped men yanking on the bars of their cages while soundlessly screaming and didn't slow.

He went into levels of the pens that were filled with women, feeders made for the elemental sylphs, not the battlers. They were cowered and broken, sick and lost. He stopped there and focused, listening, feeling, trying to find...

A familiar scent came to him, one he hadn't smelled in thirty years. Not since the day the guards realized that a battler was in love with a concubine from the harem and took her away to be a feeder, forbidding him to ever see her again. For thirty years, she had never left his thoughts, and as his brothers wrecked their terrible revenge above, Five-Eighty raced towards her.

She huddled in her cage, her once glorious hair grey and tangled, her skin sagging and pale. Her face was covered with wrinkles and her eyes filled with madness. Five-Eighty shifted to a human form and wrenched the door off the hinges, tossing it away as he took her unresisting form into his arms. She didn't react as he stroked her hair and kissed her cheek.

"Fareeda," he whispered. "It's me, it's Five-Eighty. Do you remember, you used to call me Haru? I'm here, sweetheart."

She didn't react, but that was all right. "I'm here. I've come to take you home. I never forgot you." He cradled her to him and felt her start to shiver, one hand rising to cling to him with feeble, desperate strength.

"I'm sorry it took so long, but I'm here. I'm finally here."

## E is for Eyeball

Battle Sylphs were the perfect lovers.

Not that Moreena had anything to compare them by. She'd been a spinster for thirty years, until the Widow asked her if she'd be willing to become master to a battler. She'd leapt at the chance, even as she tried not to look too eager. She'd never had a lover before, not even a beau; not with her limp hair and unattractive features, with her too large nose and her too small chin and the freckles that covered her everywhere.

Battle sylphs didn't care. They were kind, protective, and supportive, and oh, what lovers they made. What perfect, wondrous companions they were, never straying, never complaining, always there, always loving and true.

Moreena drifted into her cottage, feeling sensual and sexual in a way she never had in all the years she'd been alone. The years before Dillon came into her life. She could sense him in the bedroom and went in that direction. She knew he'd never deny her, that she didn't have to be shy around him, and that he loved her for all her flaws. He was perfect.

She opened the door to find herself facing a five foot wide, floating eyeball, its bloodshot, unblinking stare fixed on her while the nerve trailed underneath it, wagging like a tail. It gibbered something horrible and inhuman at her.

Moreena screamed, slammed the door, and ran.

Inside the room, Dillon stared at the door. He'd been quite happy with the new form. It took a lot of control to be something so unusual and that was solid but still floated in midair. He'd wanted to surprise Moreena.

She had no appreciation for talent, he thought with a sigh.

## F is for Forever

Leon was dying.

It was the best time to accept it. After all, life in the Valley was good. Their lives were peaceful, their trade agreements with their neighbours both solid and lucrative. They'd expanded their borders, spreading from the original Valley and far out into the Shale Plains, replacing the dead ground that used to exist with rich, living farmlands. Humans and sylphs worked together, no one caring if a person was a man, a woman, or a sylph.

Eighty-one years old and tired, Leon Petrule looked up as the door to his office opened. He'd been working on reports, a half finished mug of willow tea steaming beside him. Five years or so earlier, he'd needed the tea only once a week. Now, as his hands cramped painfully around his writing quill, he needed to sip it all the time. He'd hidden the arthritis from his family, though he suspected Betha knew and he was pretty sure Lizzy did, if only because there was one person he couldn't hide it from at all, and he would have told her.

His battle sylph came in, glaring at his master. Ril knew about Leon's pain. He knew of the weakness and weariness, the recurring pains in his chest and arm. There was simply no way for Leon to hide it from him, but neither of them had spoken about it. If anything, the battle sylph had begun avoiding his master, not that distance had been enough to stop Leon from feeling his tumult of emotions, both the rage and the worry.

Forty-two years it had been since Ril was freed, another fifteen before that since Leon became his master, and even after fifty-seven years in the world, Ril looked the same as he had the day he first took human form. For him, looking at Leon must have been a constant reminder that his master's health was failing. Leon missed having him around, but he hadn't been surprised. Sylphs handled the mortality of their masters poorly and Ril needed to come to grips with the reality of Leon's eventual passing on his own. Leon always knew that Ril would come to him again when he was ready.

He'd also suspected that Ril wouldn't come alone. Leon smiled, setting down his pen as another sylph followed the battler. This one was female, her hair short against her head, her body beautiful and sleek. Where Ril was dressed in his formal uniform, she was garbed like any normal woman, choosing a dress with an embroidered apron over it.

"Good morning, Autumn," Leon said as he rose painfully to greet the healer sylph. He couldn't hide the pain from her any more than from Ril, but he could stop himself from wincing when it hit him, crawling though his joints and up his left arm to his chest. "It's good to see you again. I'm afraid I don't have much time to give you today though. I'm quite busy."

"I cleared your schedule," Ril told him. "No one's coming."

Leon blinked, turning to him. Bringing the healer wasn't a surprise, but it wouldn't take that long for her to block his pain. He should have gone to her himself, but he was stubborn and worried it would get back to his wife Betha. Autumn's master was a bit of a gossip and she often spent time at the house with Leon's wife. More, on a very real level, Leon hadn't wanted to see the healer. He knew he was dying. He didn't need the look in Autumn's eyes to confirm it. Nor did he want the temptation to ask her how long he had left. "You did?"

Ril nodded and started moving the items on Leon's desk to one of the side tables.

"What are you doing?" Leon asked. His battler's emotions were angry and tense now. Ril moved a half dozen items, but when Leon took a step towards him, his hips throbbing from the arthritis, Ril snarled and swept the rest of them off the dark wood, letting them crash to the ground. The mug Leon had been sipping from shattered, spraying liquid everywhere. "Ril!"

"I need you to sleep now, Chancellor."

Until she spoke, Leon had put Autumn out of his mind. The instant she did, he spun back towards her, just in time for her to lay her hand against his bearded cheek.

His legs went out from under him. His head sagged, his arms suddenly dead weights. Leon fell towards the ground and Ril caught him, his arms warm around his body. "It's okay, Leon," Ril whispered. "Just let go."

Leon really didn't want to do that. His first instinct was to tell them to stop whatever they were doing, but he couldn't get an order out. He'd been hit too fast to do anything, which had to be part of their plan.

With Leon silenced, all of Ril's anger and stress changed to contentment and a very real sense of relief. Leon certainly didn't share the emotion. His body was completely limp and his vision blurred, his mind fuzzing into sleep. He fought it, using all of his fading will to hang onto consciousness, even as his battle sylph put his arms underneath him and lifted him up, cradling him as gently as a child before he laid him down on his own desk and Autumn started unbuttoning his tunic.

"Go to sleep," Ril whispered. "Trust me."

Skin was bared, Autumn laying her hands on his chest, and where she touched him, Leon started to burn. He still couldn't move, only a thread of consciousness hanging on, terrified and struggling, but Ril was still whispering for him to let go. He massaged his temples, and he felt the battle sylph lean over and kiss his forehead just before Leon gave in and did what he wanted.

Leon slept.

###

Later, Leon woke up lying on the padded bench in the corner of his office, Ril's coat rolled up under his head and a blanket laid over him. His boots had been taken off and his feet rested on top of the bench arm.

He was weak, sore everywhere and barely able to open his eyes. In fact, he felt as if someone had been beating him and it took a long minute to remember what happened. Before he could, Ril was there, whispering reassurances as he lifted him up enough to sit behind him. Leon found himself elevated, his upper body resting against Ril's chest while the battler held a mug of lukewarm soup to his mouth. "Drink this."

The old man did, swallowing the soup in tiny sips. It was bland but good, mild in a mouth that was utterly dry. Never had Leon been so exhausted and his eyes slid shut again while he drank, his hands lax in his lap.

"It was as hard as she said it would be," Ril groused. "You're too old. Lizzy only took two hours. She had to work on you for more than sixteen. She says you'll be tired for a while." He paused, both of them aware he was babbling. "We'll have to tell Betha you came down sick or something."

_She said? Who? What?_ "What did you do to me?" Leon gasped. The rest of the words sank in and he struggled to sit up. "What did you do to Lizzy?"

Ril's free arm looped around him, holding him firm against the battler while he lifted the mug to his lips again. "Drink."

Leon drank, unable to resist, and a bit more strength flowed into him. He was remembering now, remembering Autumn and his own battle sylph attacking him.

"What have you done?" he demanded, with more than just a hint of command in his voice. A feeling of betrayal flickered in the back of his heart and Ril's arm tightened around him.

"I did what I had to," the battler told him. "Autumn's been studying humans for decades now. She started with her own master, wanting to keep her alive as long as she could." He paused. "She's made it so you won't get older. She can even make all the old parts get younger again, to a degree. It's not easy and I don't think a healer who isn't half queen could manage it. She had to exhaust herself for you, you old idiot."

Leon froze, the implications of that too great for him to absorb yet as more than a sudden panic. Ril waited him out, holding the soup ready. "She can make everyone live forever?"

"Not everyone," Ril told him. "She won't. Says it will mess up the balance. The queen agrees. But she did it for you, and for Lizzy. A few of the other sylph masters too. The ones who were young enough and who had souls flexible enough to accept the change, and where Autumn was worried the bond was too strong and their sylph wouldn't be able to deal with them... with them dying." He whispered the last word.

Leon's mind reeled again at the realization of just how worried his battler had been and Ril took the opportunity to feed him a bit more of the soup. Leon didn't even taste it. Why had he never sat the creature down and talked about this? He'd known Ril would outlive him and his increasing pain made it obvious that his life was slowing to an end. Yet they'd never talked about it and his feeling of betrayal vanished into horror at the thought of how Ril would take losing him, especially if Autumn was willing to go to these lengths to prevent it.

"Am I going to live forever?" he whispered.

"No." Ril sounded resentful. "We don't know yet how long any of you will live." He hesitated. "You didn't have enough time left for us to find out first."

Leon groaned, pain starting to stab through his back, and Ril adjusted himself behind him. Leon forced his eyes to open and stared at the pattern on the blanket covering him. His body felt as if he'd been pummeled, but his joints no longer ached and his heartbeat was strong. The reality of that hit him. He was going to live a lot longer than he'd thought when he dragged himself out of bed this morning. Would it be for decades? Centuries? Longer?

_Betha!_ his mind screamed.

"How many," he swallowed. "How many are like this?"

"A dozen. Maybe a few more. Autumn only felt she could actually do it recently, but as I said, she won't do many. It took a long time to convince her to save both you and Lizzy. Lizzy yes, but I had to fight for you. Your soul is flexible enough, but she was afraid you were already too old." His resentment towards the healer was obvious. "Her master finally had to order her to do it."

His eldest daughter would live, but what about his other daughters? Their children? His beautiful wife Betha? Was he supposed to watch them all grow old and die? "Why didn't you ask me?" he whispered, his eyes stinging and already knowing the answer. Why knock him out and just do it without even giving him the chance to protest? _Why?_ Because if they hadn't, he wouldn't have given up his human life. He wouldn't have agreed. He would have loved Ril to his dying breath, and wanted to die in his arms, but he still would have died. Humans weren't meant to be immortal.

Ril was quiet for a moment before he set the soup down, and when he brought his hand back up, he wiped away the tears Leon hadn't realized he was shedding.

"You killed my queen," he said, and Leon shuddered as he deliberately tore an old wound wide open, flooding them both with an ancient pain. It came from both of them, born in the memory of a terrified young woman, tied down to an altar and staring up at Leon before he killed her. Leon had hoped that old regret was long since put to rest, but it wasn't. Not for either of them. "You made her helpless and you killed her to force me to be your slave."

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

"You owe me a life," Ril told him. "Hers is gone, so I take yours. As much life as I can wring out of you, and I'll keep you with me forever, until the stars fall out of the sky and this whole world dies around us both!"

Leon was crying, too weak to lift his hands to cover his face. He'd known battlers were possessive, for decades he'd known...

"Never leave me," Ril whispered in his ear, his breath tickling hair that had been thinning but would eventually regain its thickness and colour. "You and Lizzy both. I belong to you."

Just as Leon belonged to him, and yes, he did owe him a life. He'd owed him for a very long time now, and given the man he'd become, the only life he could ever consent to give in payment for his crimes was his own.

"It'll be all right," Ril told him. "I promise you it will."

Ril carried him home then, wrapped in the blanket and going down back streets in the darkness so that no one in the Valley would see the Chancellor being held in his battle sylph's arms and weeping most of the way like a child.

Betha was there when Ril bore him into the house, and he proclaimed in the face of her dismay that Leon was sick and needed to rest. Both Betha and their youngest daughter Mia had been worried, frantically preparing the master bedroom for him while the battler took him upstairs, but Lizzy was there as well, so ageless and beautiful – as she always would be now - and she smiled at her father before he closed his eyes, too tired to speak.

Ril laid him down, brushing his lips over his forehead again when Betha wasn't looking and straightening up. He was calm and collected once more, his aura happy. He didn't have to worry now about his oldest master leaving him. He nodded and left.

Betha bent over Leon, muttering to herself as she got his shirt and pants off and helped him into a pair of pajamas. "Foolish man," she told him. "If you felt yourself getting sick, why didn't you come home sooner? You're going to work yourself to death!"

She was still so beautiful, even with her face covered in wrinkles and her hair a pale grey. Leon reached up to cup her cheek and then pull her to him, wrapping her in a hug.

"What?" she gasped.

"Just let me hold you for a while," he whispered. After a moment she relented, lying down on the bed beside him and letting him hold her for as long as he could.

## G is for Grass

"Why can't we put down anything pretty?" Shore asked. Her voice was a watery burble, so soft even her master could barely hear her.

With anyone else, Loren would have snapped for them to speak up, she wasn't deaf. She smiled down at her little water sylph instead, even if the expression was a bit forced.

"I know. I'd rather be working on a real garden too, but it's Solie's orders." She gave an exaggerated sigh, which the small sylph echoed.

She really would have preferred to be working on the gardens in the middle of the town. They were among the greatest in the world, a combination of her creativity and Shore's abilities. Already people were coming to the Valley just to see them. She had so many ideas for how to make them even greater, but instead she was here, standing on the edge of a dead landscape of shale and dust that stretched to the horizon.

"I hate it out here," she grumbled.

"Me too," Shore said loyally.

Loren sighed again. There was no point in going back until she made at least a token effort. Solie would be asking, and despite the fact she was quiet and demure, the woman could make a person feel guilty beyond belief with just a disappointed look. She reached into one of the pouches on her belt and pulled out a single seed, so small that she had to squint to see it. Shore looked up at her while she stared at it, her form shimmering water but otherwise exactly like a younger, smaller version of her master.

"Life to life," Loren whispered to it, an incantation for only her and Shore's ears. She tossed the seed down and Shore spread her hands in the air above it. Water flowed into the earth, dampening the grey soil and churning it, feeding it with Shore's pattern while it drew the seed down. Loren took some fertilizer out of a large sack she'd brought and threw it to join the mix.

"Sprout to grow," she said.

"Green is growth," Shore squeaked.

"We make it so," she returned.

"Live the earth," Shore said.

"Love the soil," Loren added.

"Grant here birth," from the sylph.

"Sweat of toil," she finished.

A hint of green pushed up through the dirt. Both of them bent to examine it. A tiny, spring green blade of grass, barely poking up, it was the first greenery to touch the Shale Plains in centuries beyond count.

"One down," Loren sighed and looked out towards the heavens. "Who knows how many billions to go."

Shore grinned at her.

## H is for Hate

Thrall had stood at Alcor's side for decades, all while he waited for him to die.

Maybe he had another twenty years to be patient, perhaps only ten. It would certainly have been less if he weren't under orders to protect the King of Eferem from any direct attack. They came too, for Alcor was not a popular king, and each time they did, Thrall resented having to protect the corpulent waste of skin, just as he resented having to keep silent and not tell his master what he thought of him, in extensive, thorough detail.

The only thing he could do with any impunity was hate, and Thrall made of it a work of art. He threaded it into his aura and projected it, and as the years passed, he worked on the subtleties of his hatred, growing and nurturing it with infinite care. It was his masterpiece and Alcor didn't even realize what it was, just as he didn't know what he'd made the grand mistake of trapping all those years ago. Thrall would make sure that he regretted tricking him into coming here. He would make every last soul in Eferem regret it with their dying breath.

Because of his hate for his master, Thrall had been thrilled when the little battler killed the prince and escaped with his woman, regardless of the fact that the infant was weak and not of his hive. He luxuriated when the king's man turned traitor and joined the enemy. He rejoiced when Alcor's generals were slain and their battlers banished.

The rage those events flooded Alcor with, the fear and hate they caused him, were what finally gave Thrall his grand idea. He could wait as he had been for Alcor to die, doing nothing more than what he was commanded, or he could cause his master to be destroyed without even touching him. The choice was a simple one.

So Thrall the battle sylph stood at his master's side and overlaid the man with his hate, slowly, subtly, driving Alcor's own paranoia and hatred, patiently remaking his master into a madman bound for war, and Alcor had no idea it was happening. There was no way he could, after all.

Alcor had no idea what he had in what he thought was just another battle sylph.

And Thrall had no reason to feel anything other than hatred.

## I for Ignite

It was the earth sylphs that made the chamber, forming it deep in the ground below the heart of the town itself. Air sylphs were needed to pump air into it while water sylphs made sure it stayed dry, but despite all that, it belonged to the fire sylphs and they rejoiced. None of them had ever had such a place before, not to call their own.

Ash followed her sisters down a shaft that led off the corridor near the queen's throne room. It was only a foot wide, but that was more than they needed. A dozen little balls of flame tumbled down the shaft, fire sylphs laughing and dancing as they travelled deep down under the Valley.

At the bottom of the well was their chamber, the one that only fire sylphs came to. Ash sighed happily as she fell into it, joining the warmth of the other sparks of light already there. Around them, the walls were shiny smooth and black from their heat while overhead were hundreds of openings, not just the one that they used to get in and out. They dotted the rock like mouths, shuttered off with metal plates.

_The Queen says it's time,_ Ash sent. _The first storm of the winter is blowing in._

A miserable thought for the humans, an annoyance for the battlers, something to be avoided or played in by the other elementals, but for the fire sylphs of Sylph Valley, it was time to burn.

They'd kept their heat low and the shutters closed for the summer, a sweet, quiet enjoyment of each other's company, but now...

The shutters over the vents opened and they came together, laughing still, balls of fire filled with the joy of their purpose. Together they ignited. Together they burned, and in their joy they flooded heat up through the ducts and into pipes underneath the Valley, keeping the entire town warm despite the winter.

## J is for Jeopardy

The hive was destroyed.

The walls had been breeched, the defenders slaughtered, the Queen broken out of her chamber and devoured. Fires from the battlers that tried to save both her and the hive burned everywhere, billowing smoke that obscured the ruins and the monsters still scavenging through them.

Deep in the egg chamber, one sphere that had been overlooked by the hunters rocked back and forth. It wobbled out of the bed that held it and across the floor, fetching up against a rock before a black tentacle burst through the side with a spray of birthing fluid. It stretched out, triumphant and sure, and then flopped down as the owner took a nap.

###

While he slept, two more nearby eggs hatched, dropping an infant earth and water sylph to the ground. They lay there, peeping for someone to come and care for them. The only one that heard was the baby battler and with a furious struggle, he forced his way out of his egg and hovered over the two of them as if he hadn't been sleeping on the job.

They peeped at him in hopeful hunger.

He blew a raspberry back at them.

Now what? The battler wasn't sure, being only minutes old and a bit wobbly, but instinct said someone should be here. That obviously wasn't working out so well and after a minute of staring around at the ruins, he reached the decision that if they just stayed where they were, someone would show up.

His sisters peeped at him again and shifted hungrily, blinking at their surroundings in growing fear. They started to back away towards a corridor that was less smoke filled than the egg chamber and he flailed his tentacles at them, garbling in fury. He was the battler, he was the fearsome one. They would stay where they were because _he_ was in charge.

Behind him, something reached in through the obscuring smoke and swept up a score of unhatched eggs, pulling them away to be devoured.

The two elemental sylphs shrieked and turned, fleeing up the corridor.

The battler blinked and started flailing in outrage. Didn't they listen? They were staying here!

The roof fell in.

He blinked and turned around, looking at the carnage. He glared at it for a moment, then flailed his tentacles, blew a raspberry, and ran after his sisters.

###

He caught up to his sisters halfway up the corridor. Both of them were tiring already and he lashed at their backsides, driving them up the corridor despite their peeping protests. The corridor they were in led to one of the breaches in the side of the hive and out into the flat croplands in front, now burning and destroyed. The flames were spreading out there and the smoke obscured everything, including the massive hunters that had conspired to bring down the hive.

The battler was starting to get the idea there was something wrong here. That made him afraid, and feeling afraid made him angry. So he flailed and squeaked and broadcast his absolute hatred in a circle a whole foot wide as he chased his sisters across the fields. They kept up with the whining and that just made him chase them harder, shrieking as loud as he could. They wanted to know where he was taking them.

How was he supposed to know? Wait, they weren't supposed to question. He was the battler! He was meant to protect. He wasn't supposed to get hung up on minor trivialities such as the fact that he couldn't see anything through all the smoke and flame, except for a glowing circular thing that had no colour he could name, not that he had words for anything.

There! They would go there! The battler hounded and beat his sisters towards the gate, squeaking and blowing raspberries, his tentacles flapping everywhere so hard that he nearly landed himself in the dirt.

The hunters heard. Still hungry, they turned towards the sound, feeling blind through the smoke to try and find the morsels, and all unknowing, the three baby sylphs fled for the gate, escaping through it before the closest could reach them. That monster felt through the gate for the trio, lashing on the other side, and yanked back as a blast wave of pure destruction came through and the gate closed.

In the Summoning Chamber of Sylph Valley, while the humans ran around in a panic at what had almost come through their gate, the baby battler hid underneath a bench in the shadows, lying on top of his sisters, who were already asleep. He looked at the battle sylph who'd just poured enough energy through the gate to turn the ground underneath it into glass and blew a raspberry.

He could take him, but first he was going to take another nap.

## K is for Killer

His sisters were hungry.

Wedged inside a crack in a stone wall, the two elemental sylphs peeped demandingly at their brother. The baby battler roared and flailed his tentacles at the outside of the wall, but they were insistent. They wanted food. They had no more idea than he did about what qualified as food, but they still expected him to provide it. The two of them had decided it was his duty to feed them and they would be happy with nothing less.

The baby battler blew a final raspberry at them both and turned, heading out on his quest for something edible. It was annoying. He was a battle sylph, he should be conquering this place, not acting as an errand sylph to a couple of whiners. The fact that he was hungry too was irrelevant. He was strong!

The baby headed unnoticed along the wall and into the town, gliding along just above the ground and glaring out of the shadows at the various humans and animals. Were they food? He passed behind two men labouring to load a cart with sacks of grain, went around a pile of firewood, and behind a heavy barrel.

There, he came face to face with a beast of evil eye and sharp claw, easily as big as he was. For a second the baby froze, recognizing a fellow killer, and then with a roar of challenge, he hurled himself without hesitation into his very first combat.

###

One of the carters lifted his head. "What's that noise?" he asked.

The other carter shrugged. "Cat fight."

"One of those cats sounds sick."

They kept on loading the cart.

###

He was triumphant! Victorious, the baby watched the tomcat leap up onto the barrel and proceed to lick itself as if it hadn't just been defeated in glorious battle. The baby blew a raspberry at it and continued on his way, confident in his supremacy.

## L is for Lift

His sisters were impossible!

He'd brought them food. He _had_. He'd carried them blades of the green stuff that stuck out of the ground and the hard, splintery stuff that the people with the two legs cut into pieces, and even the soft brown stuff that the people with four legs dropped behind them. But no, none of that was good enough for his stuck up sisters.

Their indignant peeping chasing behind him, the baby battler headed back into the town. He hated this! He should be conquering the world right now! Hungry and frustrated, he shoved half a dozen tentacles into his mouth and sucked on them as he flitted around the cottages and between the slats of various fences. He'd find his sisters food, then he'd beat them to death with it for being annoying, then he'd take a nap, and then he'd take over the world.

His plan fully in mind, he was distracted by something large, black, and familiar appearing in the sky over him, headed towards the cottage ahead. A battle sylph! An enemy!

The baby raced after him, intent upon battle.

###

Blue headed eagerly to his master's cottage. It had been hours since he'd touched her and he could feel Casi's desire. She lusted desperately for him.

Okay, maybe she didn't lust desperately for him, but she was filled with desire for his presence.

Okay, maybe she wasn't filled with desire for him, but it was the lure of her needs that drew him from his duty to be with her.

Okay, maybe she had no needs just this second, but she was never loath to have a mid-afternoon tumble.

Okay, maybe she was loath, but she'd give in to some heartfelt begging, wouldn't she? She had to. He hadn't had sex since before breakfast!

He dove in through the open window of the kitchen, where she'd just set two pies on the windowsill to cool, and shifted shape to human. There he discovered to his delight that she was in fact willing to accept his advances.

Either that or she figured it was the quickest way to get rid of him for a while, but Blue wasn't picky.

###

The baby battler followed Blue to the open window and rose up enough to peer between the two pies and see him doing something lewd with a female right on top of the kitchen table. It seemed to involve a lot of writhing and moaning.

He had no idea what they were doing.

Well, he couldn't attack now! Not when the other battler was already involved in combat. He blew a raspberry at them both that went ignored and let his attention drift to the two pies.

Food?

Was it food? It was smelly and hot and just the right size to whack a sister with! Ecstatic, the baby grabbed one of them with his tentacles - minus the ones he kept wedged in his mouth - and lifted it mightily off the windowsill.

He promptly plummeted pie first to the ground below.

A raspberry echoed up. Absorbed in each other, the two lovers didn't notice.

Heavily pie stained, the baby floated back up, flaring his aura and sucking his tentacles. He glared at the second pie and braced himself better as he lifted it up and dropped down again. This time, however, he was ready and didn't end up embedding himself in the middle of the thing. Blowing a raspberry in triumph, he sucked on his tentacles and started to drag the pie, tin and all, across the ground and back to his ungrateful sisters.

###

"That was wonderful," Blue sighed, staring up at the ceiling.

"Easy for you to say," Casi grumbled. "You don't have a splinter in your arse."

She didn't sound mad, so Blue didn't worry. His Casi was a woman of frequent moods. He continued to smile at the ceiling as she sat up on the table, grumbling, and looked towards her fresh baked pies.

Her scream nearly put him straight through the ceiling.

"My pies!" she shrieked. "Someone stole my pies!"

"Um," Blue said, pretty sure this was about to become his fault.

Casi glared at him. "What kind of battle sylph are you? They stole my pies while you were five feet away!"

"I was distracted?"

Her face turned red with fury and then white in horror. He hadn't realized a human could change colour that fast. "They...gods, what if they saw us? What if they saw me? I'm naked!"

"I'm sure they were overwhelmed by your beauty," Blue assured her.

It was the wrong thing to say. "Get my pies!" she screamed.

## M is for Moo

The ungrateful little bitches still weren't happy!

Half his tentacles shoved in his mouth and the other half flailing around him, the baby shrieked in outrage at his sisters, both tucked in and comfortable in their hole in the wall. They squealed back at him, demanding he bring them something they could actually eat.

The baby screamed in absolute fury, beat at the outside of the wall, and turned, racing away from them and, yet again, into that stinking, useless town. He'd destroy it. He'd raze it to the ground, burn it to ash, and conquor it and everyone in it! Then he'd nap. Then he'd beat up his sisters.

Tired, hungry, and frustrated, the baby went in another direction, ducking around and under things and going unnoticed by anyone other than the odd barking dog and a little girl standing beside her mother with her thumb in her mouth.

She sucked her thumb and stared at him.

He sucked his tentacles and stared at her.

Both their eyes started to cross. Finally, she pulled her thumb out of her mouth and stuck her tongue out at him. Happy with his victory, the baby blew a raspberry at her and continued on his way.

His irregular route took him to a barn. He flitted into the shadows inside and studied a man seated on a stool and milking a cow. Was that food? The cow chewed contentedly as the man milked her and a cat sat nearby, ears up and tail lashing. The baby tensed, ready for more fighting, but the cat ignored him, staring at the man, who pointed a teat at it and squeezed. A squirt of milk leaped out and the cat caught it in its mouth.

Food! Finally, food! He'd take it, he'd bring it to his sisters, he'd get them to shut the hell up for a while, and he'd take a well earned nap. He was ready to attack, but before he could, the man stood and patted the cow's side before walking out with the bucket. The cat followed him, meowing for another taste.

Once they were gone, the baby lunged forward and up to the cow, which watched him with a placid expression. Eager, he grabbed one of its teats and yanked as hard as he could.

The cow kicked him.

###

Bessy was a good cow.

She was always calm and gentle, always gave milk, and didn't panic when the battle sylphs did strange things that usually seemed to involve mass destruction or sex. Or both. They didn't pay any attention to her anyway. Not until now.

Bessy was used to being led around, but not like this. Now she walked slowly at the end of her lead, the other end of which was held by a small black cloud with pinpricks of light flickering in it. It had most of its tentacles jammed into its mouth and was grumbling and blowing raspberries as it towed her along, floating a few feet above the ground.

Bessy really wasn't sure about this. She was used to humans with warm hands, not whatever this was. Still, being out of the barn meant grass, and when she saw a heavy thatch of green on the side of the road, she tossed her head and trotted towards it.

The baby battler shrieked as he was suddenly thrown up in the air and back, the cow dragging him on the ground behind her as she trotted over to the greenery and happily began to eat.

Flat on the ground behind her, the baby still hung onto the tether with one tentacle, the rest jammed into his mouth, and groaned. This really, really wasn't worth it.

While the cow ate, he took another nap.

## N is for Nag

Blue slouched down the road away from his master's cottage, his hands shoved into the pockets of his pie-stained uniform. Sympathetic to his mission, Dillon sauntered beside him, looking more normal than usual, except for the tails.

"Casi threw the pie at you, didn't she?" Dillon asked.

Blue sighed. "It's not my fault. She said 'bring me my pies.' Well, I found one of them right away, but was she happy? No."

"Ah." Dillon thought about Blue's master. Given her temperament, he was just as glad that Moreena was his master. She was far more likely to cry than yell. He preferred the crying. Well, not really. There just seemed to be more hugging and less throwing involved with Moreena. "At least you were able to bring it back to her."

"Yeah, but she wanted it in one piece. With less dirt."

"Kind of picky, isn't she?"

"Yeah," Blue sighed. "I should have known better. I love Casi, but she's such a nag about some things. I have to find the other pie. She... she said she wouldn't sleep with me if I didn't."

Dillon shuddered in sympathetic horror. He couldn't imagine a fate worse than that. "Maybe someone's seen it," he suggested and called along the hive line to his brothers.

Hey, has anyone seen a pie?

_What do you need a pie for?_ came the immediate response.

_I don't need it,_ Dillon clarified. _Blue does. It's Casi's. It was stolen and she threatened not to sleep with him if he didn't bring it back._

No!

That's horrible!

I'm sorry to hear that.

I thought you were still cut off from last month.

Blue hunched into himself. _No, she forgave me for the sheets._

Really? Even after what happened with the pink dye and the chicken feathers?

_Can we get back to the stolen pie?_ Blue whined. _Casi's nagging me. I really need to find it._

You know, I'm looking for stolen goods too. A basket of yarn.

You too? I'm hunting for some missing toys.

A whole bunch of lefthand socks here.

I'm looking for a cow.

Suddenly, Mace's voice silenced them all _. How many people are looking for stolen items?_ he demanded.

A chorous of _'me'_ and _'I am'_ and _'I wanna blow up a thief too!'_ sounded. Dillon and Blue looked at each other. "It's an epidemic."

"Why would anyone want to steal socks and cows and toys?" Dillon wondered.

"I dunno. Humans are weird."

_Battle sylphs!_ Mace boomed. _We have a thief in the Valley! We will find them and destroy them!_

Blue sighed as the cheering echoed. "Well, if it's not just her, do you think Casi will be less angry?"

"It's Casi. What do you think?"

"You're right. I'm screwed."

"I thought the whole threat was in how you weren't going to be."

They started trudging again, following the road as it curved around and away from Casi's cottage. Blue glanced down at his feet and stopped. There was a pie sized drag mark in the dirt, a faint indentation that led away from the cottage, across the road, and out of the town.

Blue felt hope start to bloom in his chest. "Look! That's got to be the pie!"

"Why would someone drag it?" Dillon asked as his friend ran ahead, pumping his arms and jumping for joy as he shouted that he was going to get some. Finally, he shrugged. "Humans are weird," he agreed and hurried after his friend.

###

Together, Blue and Dillon stared at the little patch of meadow that the town's outer wall ran through. It was filled with spare socks, wood, toys, sacks of grain, manure, ladies undergarments, a bone comb, several stunned cats, and a cow.

They looked down at the sadly broken remains of what had once been a perfectly baked pie. The cow had stepped on it.

_Um, Casi?_ Blue sent to his master. _I found your pie._

###

Casi was unimpressed with their success.

"What's wrong with you?" she screamed at Blue. "It's a pie! How hard is it to keep someone from stealing a bloody pie?"

Blue kept his head down, shoulders hunched and apologizing profusely to the love of his life. Dillon kept his own mouth shut and stood back against the wall, trying not to attract her attention.

Something tickled at his senses. There was something hidden in the wall that was trying very hard to avoid his notice. Dillon blinked and hunched down, peering in through a crack to see a small hole where two tiny elemental sylphs huddled, staring at him in silent terror. They weren't of the hive. Dillon snarled and lifted a hand, his palm glowing with destructive energy.

"What do you think you're doing?" Casi snapped, distracted from her nagging.

"Couple of baby sylphs in here," Dillon said. "I'm going to kill them."

If Dillon had thought to ask him first, Blue could have warned him that using words such as 'baby' and 'kill' in the same sentence near Casi was a mistake.

## O is for Outrage

The two baby sylphs lay in Autumn's arms, peeping happily while the healer gently fed them wisps of Solie's energy, edible to them now that they'd been brought into the hive.

"They're so cute!" Solie squealed, overcome by the adorableness of the two while a half dozen other women crowded them and cooed. "How did they get here?"

"Through the gate," Autumn said. "I dread to think what must have happened to their home hive to let them wander around on their own."

"But how is it no one noticed them?"

Autumn smiled down at the two, who burbled at her. "Baby sylphs don't have much of an aura. They're easy to overlook. We keep them in nurseries inside the hive until they're much older, to keep them out of trouble."

"Well, they're safe now," Solie smiled. She'd make sure of it. They'd have to be very careful indeed picking masters for these two.

That thought reminded her of something. "How did they even manage to be in this world without masters?"

Autumn looked at her evenly. "Because they hadn't tried to take any of the energy of this world in, so they weren't really part of it. If they'd eaten anything, they would have been poisoned and rejected back into their own world. They're lucky they're picky eaters."

Solie smiled and bent over the two. "You're so clever! Yes, you are! Yes, you are!" The two babies squealed in happiness and she wriggled her nose at them before she turned to regard two battle sylphs cowering nearby against each other, both of them covered in dirt and pie filling.

"I can't believe you were going to kill them!" she snapped. "Thank the stars that Casi was there!" Casi smirked and Blue and Dillon cowered some more.

The Widow reached down to stroke a gnarled finger along the edge of the two's bodies, her expression soft. "It's amazing how much they managed to steal."

Autumn looked down at the two, communicating with them. "It wasn't them," she said at last. "A battle sylph came with them. He's the one who's been trying to steal food for them."

Mace had been standing nearby. At Autumn's words, the big battler stiffened.

_Battlers!_ he sent along the hive line. _There is a foreign battle sylph invading our hive!_

Roars started up around the Valley, battle sylphs rising in the air to hunt and kill their enemy. Autumn looked at Mace, one eyebrow raised.

"He's from the same hatching as them," she said. "Are you seriously going to raise the entire flight to track down and kill a baby less than a day old?"

Mace looked at her and at the other women, all of them glaring at him with thunderous outrage.

_Battlers!_ he sent. _Never mind._

## P is for Pissed Off

They had his sisters!

The baby battler had returned to the wall after his latest attempt to find food to discover everything he'd collected gone, along with his little sisters. He dropped the piglet he'd been carrying and the animal ran off, oinking, while he squealed, flailed, and blew raspberries of pure hatred.

His sisters!

Furious, he reached through his pattern for them, and while he did find them, they were different somehow, changed. Their pattern was new and unlike his. Something had been done to them.

Only he was allowed to do anything to them!

The baby turned with a squeaking roar and raced straight towards his sisters, flailing with the tentacles not jammed in his mouth and blowing raspberries as he went. He made no attempt at stealth but flew straight down the middle of the road, his aura arching out a whole foot around him while he thrashed in front of himself. He'd find them, he'd find who took them, he'd beat them all to death, and he'd save his sisters! Then he'd beat them for being so stupid as to get themselves caught when he wasn't there to defend them!

He passed dozens of people, blowing raspberries of warning at them as he passed. They respected the danger he represented, moving out of his path and making strange ha ha sounds that must have indicated fear. At the same time, they slapped their hands together to appease him or made high-pitched squealing sounds. He kept going. He was a battle sylph. He was the most dangerous battle sylph in the world and there was nothing that would stop him now!

###

Dozens of feet above his head, fifty adult battlers floated together in a mass cloud and watched the baby racing to storm the palace.

_There he goes,_ Dillon said. _Does he really think he's going to succeed? He's a moron._

_Well, technically, he is going to succeed,_ Heyou laughed, _since we're all under orders to let him._

He's still an idiot.

_Is he?_ said a larger battler floating above them all. _How is he different from the rest of us? He's attacking despite the unknowns of it, despite the odds and the danger. If it were us down there instead of him, would any of us act any different?_

There was a moment of silence while the assembled battlers considered that and the squealing, tentacle sucking, raspberry blowing baby vanished inside the palace.

Finally, Blue sighed. _Battle sylphs are stupid,_ he said.

###

The baby burst into the throne room, flailing and sucking in fury. The room was large and filled with echoes, bigger than even the egg chamber he'd hatched in. Ahead of him, he could see a single two-legged person standing on a dais, other two-leggers off to either side, but at the lone one's feet was a basket that held his sisters.

Death! Destruction! Lots and lots of conquering! The baby uttered a shriek of challenge that turned into a raspberry and charged, racing straight up the runner to the dais, passing the pillars that held up the ceiling so far above. He'd kill her! He'd get his sisters back! Then he'd damn well get something to eat because he was hungry, and if his sisters didn't like it, then tough!

He flew past a pillar and a healer sylph stepped out from behind it. She brushed her hand across his backside and immediately tied him into the hive line, just as she had his sisters.

Solie opened her arms and the stunned little battler crashed into them, mouth hanging open and tentacles dangling.

"Oh, you poor little baby!" she cooed, giving him a hug. "You've had just a horrible, horrible day, haven't you?"

The baby blinked. Down in the basket, his sisters chirped greetings and the Queen smiled at him.

"Tthhpptt," was all he managed to say before he fell asleep.

## Q is for Questions

She'd always worked in the far fields. The hive was a barely visible shape against the mountain while her fields were nearer the foothills. Just a few hundred feet beyond where her crops grew, the land dropped abruptly into gorges that emptied out onto the plains far below. She spent her nights in or near the hive, but her days belonged out here, tending the plants they relied on.

The sylph never really considered herself to be different from any of the other water sylphs who worked near her. She was nameless, she was busy, and she was content. She was well fed and had friends she giggled and gossiped with. She knew her place in the world and enjoyed it.

He was a battle sylph, a guard placed to scout the end of the fields and watch for predators. He was there to protect all of them and she certainly had no problem with that. Just knowing he was near kept her relaxed, not worrying about what might crawl up out of one of the cracks in the ground.

Perhaps that gratitude was what made her start talking to him. It certainly wasn't forbidden, but it was unusual for a water sylph to have anything resembling a regular conversation with a battle sylph. The breeds mostly kept to their own kind. Still, he sometimes looked lonely as he floated along the edge of the crops she tended, gazing towards the hive that his duty kept him from.

_Hello,_ she said to him one day. He was so surprised that it delighted her and she resolved to keep doing it.

He didn't react the second day she greeted him, or the third. He gave her the barest nod on the fourth. It wasn't much of a reaction, but it pleased her and she kept doing it, greeting him in the most outlandishly silly ways she could think of. It gave her a bit of entertainment beyond endlessly tending the fields, but she didn't think it had any effect on him until one day when he was floating past and she gave him a particularly high-pitched and cheerful hello. He stopped and rolled over in midair, regarding her with one eye made from ball lightning.

_You're silly,_ he told her.

_Of course I am!_ she replied. He laughed.

From that moment, he would detour his route to make sure he passed her, even when she was in the middle of the field, and it became a challenge to see which of them could call out their hello first.

They kept that tradition for seasons, while the crops grew and were harvested, planted and grown again. Every day, until he was the first thing she looked for when the suns rose and she left the huddle where she waited out the most dangerous hours of the night with her sisters.

On the latest morning of their tradition, she saw a black shape passing along the edge of the field, far away from her. She darted towards him, hoping to cut him off before he came looking for her, and crashed out of the rows of lush purple plants with her hello ready.

The water sylph was nearly obliterated by the battle sylph she startled. The strange battler. He reared back and yelled at her, calling her stupid.

She barely heard him. _Where is he?_ she gasped.

What? Who?

_The battle sylph who was here yesterday,_ she said frantically, _and the day before. Where is he? Is he okay?_ A panic she'd never have expected filled her, confusing her. Why was she worried about a battle sylph? Battlers were fighters. Fighting and guarding was all they did. They didn't need a single water sylph worrying about them.

The battle sylph obviously agreed as he looked at her as if she were mad. _He was sent with the gorge hunt teams,_ he admitted at last.

_Why?_ she thought in horror _. Why him? Why now?_

Why did it matter?

He was a battle sylph. He fought and defended, he strove to be worthy of the Queen. She was a water elemental, passive and pacifistic. She took care of the growing crops the hive depended on. For all they lived in the same hive, they belonged to different worlds. So why did she feel as if the core of her had been torn out?

There were ten thousand sylphs in the hive, all speaking on the same hive line. There was so much noise that no one used it except when close together. There was no way that she could single out a single battle sylph, no matter how hard she tried.

_Which gorge?_ she wailed.

The battler was already turning to continue his rounds, uncaring of simple games and friendly hellos. _The river drop,_ he said and was past her.

The river drop. She'd heard horror stories about it. It was deep, twisting, and dark, a channel down to the jungles below the mountain and a route for predators to climb up to the hive. There weren't any fields nearby, even the Queen judging the risk too great for her sylphs. Battlers constantly scoured it for danger.

Battlers frequently died in it.

She found herself racing across the ground before she even understood what she was doing. She couldn't fly the way that air and fire sylphs could, or healers and battlers. She could change shape, though, and dropped her usual rather amorphous form for something with many legs that galloped her across the ground.

No one stopped her. No one had ever considered they'd need to stop a water sylph from going into a gorge. She reached it and forced herself down into the dim light, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the rough ground, the dirt dampening from her nervousness.

She kept thinking of his laugh, and his surprise, and the sound of his voice when he said hello. All the conversations they'd had about so many different things. Secrets she never felt like talking about with her sisters. He'd told her secrets as well, admitting that he trusted her more than anyone else.

Now he was here, in the dark. She kept going down, listening and straining to sense his pattern as the shadows closed in and the temperature dropped. The gorge was wet and narrow, small rocks and pebbles shaking loose with every step she took.

She heard a hiss in the darkness and turned to see something segmented and luminous, long and skeletal, coming her way through a wide crack. It hissed with hunger, its pattern one of murder.

She squealed as it snarled and when it lunged for her, she leapt high into the air, over its head and down to the ground past it. She ran and heard it chasing, snarling and hungry.

She was going to die down here. That thing would catch her and devour her energy until nothing was left and all she could think about was that she'd never see the battler again. It was unfair.

A blast of destructive energy hit the predator. It exploded and she was thrown forward, tumbling over and over until something warm and dark caught her, something that flickered with friendly, welcoming lightning.

She looked up into the swirling eyes of her battle sylph.

_Hello,_ she whispered.

_Hello,_ he said back, his tentacles wrapped around her and holding her safe. _I missed you._

She sighed and nestled against him, not questioning it. She'd missed him too.

## R is for Ruined

"Kal? I need you to move the barrels in the hay loft today."

Kal paused in the midst of buttoning his blue and gold coat in order to look at his master. Nyla sat on the edge of the bed, running a comb through her long brown hair.

She was so pretty, as always. So frail, so delicate. He loved being with her, but his duty was clear.

"I can't today. I'm on guard duty for the Queen."

She put the comb down and looked up at him, a line forming in the middle of her brow. "Again? You've been guarding her all month."

"It's my turn," Kal told her, fastening the last button at his throat as he bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "I have to go."

"But I need you here," she protested. "There's so much to do to get ready for winter."

"Winter's weeks away," he promised. "The Queen needs me. I'll be back tonight." He gave her a quick hug and went out the door. Nyla felt disgruntled but ultimately accepting to him, just as she always was, and he did have to go. The Queen was the Queen, after all. Battle sylphs were supposed to protect her. No one would ever want to hurt Nyla.

Outside, Kal shifted to his natural form, lightning flashing through his cloud body, and he took to the air, headed for the palace.

###

Kal stood with Blue at the back of Solie's office, both of them conversing in silence while they guarded her. She didn't pay much attention to them, busy writing with a quill on a piece of parchment. Some sort of missive to the leader of Eferem, he gathered. She'd been inside all day, but Kal didn't mind the lack of action. He was a battler. He could stand there all day.

_Are you going to the reading class tonight?_ Blue asked.

_I suppose I should,_ Kal said. The Queen wanted them to all be educated, after all. Some sylphs took lessons with the human children during the day. Those who couldn't join in took classes at night instead. They were more haphazard, being taught by sylphs instead of humans, but still worthwhile. _I should spend some time with Nyla, though. She doesn't like that I'm guarding the Queen so much right now._

_Neither does Casi,_ Blue agreed. _I try to make up for it by bringing her flowers._

Does that work?

It did at first. Now she expects it. I need to figure out what I'm going to do when all the flowers are gone for winter.

Kal smirked, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. Solie's quill scratched on the parchment. Maybe he should get some flowers for Nyla, just as an apology for leaving her alone so much lately.

In his mind, he was always aware of his master, their link constant despite the distance between them. She felt busy to him in much the same way that Solie was busy, but with an overtone of physical effort. What was she doing? Whatever it was, he could tell she was at the limit of her strength. Was she trying to move those barrels in the hayloft by herself?

Kal shifted in place, his gaze on the back of Solie's head. Blue looked at him sideways, his eyebrow quirked. _What is it?_

Nyla's moving some barrels. They're too heavy for her.

Huh. She should have waited for you.

_Yeah._ A tinge of guilt hit him. She shouldn't do that; it's what she had him for.

Solie sensed his emotions and looked curiously over her shoulder at him. "What is it?" she asked.

Kal opened his mouth to say it was nothing when everything changed. Nyla's frustrated exertion changed abruptly to terror and then to pain and nothingness so fast that Kal only had time to go rigid with shock. The link between them, that precious bond between battle sylph and master, snapped.

He barely realized he was screaming, that he was shifting to his natural form and deserting his duty to shoot out the door, taking it off its hinges as he did. He saw without caring as Blue threw himself over the Queen, protecting her from Kal's mad rush.

He crashed his way out of the palace, howling, while battlers rose up all over the Valley, bellowing as they responded to his screams. He ignored them, didn't even see them, rushing instead for home. Home, where he should have been.

Kal reached the barn behind the cottage and shifted to human in the doorway, running to kneel next to the slight form sprawled on the floor with a low, agonized moan.

Nyla had fallen from the loft, right off the edge where they would toss hay down for the horses, and broken her neck. She'd died instantly. How? How did this happen? Kal began to shake, pulling her up into his arms to cradle against him. He started to rock her, keening.

Something buzzed by his face and he looked up. A wasp flew past. There were more, dozens of them up in the air around the loft, and suddenly he understood. Nyla had gone up there alone while he was off guarding the Queen, and while she was moving the barrels, she'd disturbed a wasp's nest. They'd swarmed her and she'd stumbled...

Kal howled and thrust a hand out and up. Energy boiled in his palm and exploded outwards. He took the entire roof of the barn and the loft off, vaporizing them and leaving a storm of splinters and cinders to rain around him where he knelt and rocked his master. Nyla, Nyla, Nyla...

A footstep sounded behind him and he heard Mace's voice, rough with compassion. "The Queen is asking what's happened," he said.

The Queen. The miserable, now hated Queen he'd been protecting when he should have been with his master, with the woman who loved him. Pain and anger flooded through him and he was ruined inside, as broken as the woman he held.

"Damn the Queen," he whispered and bowed his head over his lover.

## S is for Secret

It was night, the skies lit by the dozen moons, the rivers of light that flowed above them sparkling with their faint greens, reds, and blues. It was nearly as bright as early morning, when only one of the three suns had risen, but still it was the most dangerous time for the hive. Predators were out in force, flying overhead or crawling up from the crevices and cracks in search of prey. Battle sylphs were out as well, fighting their nightly battles to protect everyone while the elementals, healers, and young stayed with the Queen inside the hive.

_Most_ of the battle sylphs were outside fighting, the little water sylph thought with both a bit of a giggle and a guilty feeling. Up near the apex of the dome's roof, she nestled in a cavity underneath the thick, protective roof, close to one of the currently sealed exits. It was cool there, so far from the heart of the hive, but still she felt warmth pressed up against her back.

_Shouldn't you be guarding?_ she asked. She liked to have him there, but wasn't he turning his back on his duty? What would happen to them both if he were caught?

_I am guarding,_ he answered her easily. _Someone has to watch the entrance here to make sure nothing breaches it._

She looked over her shoulder at him through her many eyes. _Aren't you supposed to guard it from the other side?_

Well, yes, but then I wouldn't be able to snuggle with you.

She giggled and pressed against him. His tentacles went around her, his bulk pressed against her back. It felt nice and she lay there for a time, just enjoying his presence. It was different from being with her sisters. He was definitely not a water sylph and he felt strong and forceful against her where her sisters were just damp. He seemed happy to be with her as well, but still, she felt bad. He was a battle sylph, bound to protect and woo the Queen. She was a water sylph, neuter, and there were things she couldn't provide him, desires she could sense in him but had no ability to feel herself.

_Do you regret this?_ she whispered, despite her promise to herself that she'd stay silent. He'd remain with her until he left. That was all she could wish for. It was just that, despite all the things she couldn't do with him, she didn't want him to leave.

_Regret what? Meeting you?_ He pressed closer against her, warmth along her side. _How could I regret that?_

Well, because I can't be with you... the way the Queen would.

_Ahh..._ He was quiet for a moment and then, unexpectedly, gave a snicker. _You might not have noticed, but I don't exactly have the Queen's favour. I don't think of you as a substitute and I'm happy with whatever you can give me._

_Really?_ she said, happy and sad and wishing she could be more all at once.

Yes. It...it did bother me at first, but honestly, I realized I loved you. That goes a lot deeper than anything physical.

She leaned against him, the happiness outweighing her sorrow. _I love you, too._

A tentacle stroked the edge of her pattern. _I'm glad. I'd trumpet it to the whole hive, but...._

_The Queen,_ she said.

_The Queen,_ he repeated. The Queen, who had their absolute loyalty, but who was petty and jealous, and who would resent a battle sylph who found love with a water sylph, even if she never intended to touch him.

_Our secret,_ she said.

He pulled her close. _Our wonderful secret,_ he agreed.

## T is for Temptation

His love had died and he didn't know how he'd ever get over it.

Nameless like everyone else in the hive, save the Queen and her consorts, he'd howled his grief alone. His brothers had sympathized and comforted him as much as they could, but most didn't really understand. Most of them held themselves pure while hoping for the love of the Queen. Only a few could find it in themselves to find affection and companionship with one of their own. Those who did find understood what he'd lost, and clung to their own loves in desperate denial that it could happen to them.

He should have realized that it could happen to _him_. He and his love were both battle sylphs. They took the fight straight into the crevices below the hive plateau, they hunted monsters in the darkness and up in the skies. They even ventured out into the jungles on the flatlands, fighting against enemies that lived to destroy and consume them. Always there was the risk that one of them wouldn't come back.

Why did it have to be him? Why did it have to be his sarcastic, opinionated, noble love that was killed? He'd have accepted a thousand deaths of his own in order to see his love survive, but no. A moment of distraction when a beast he hadn't seen leaped out of a fissure at him, a start of surprise as he was pushed out of the way by the being he loved most in the world, and suddenly he was alone.

_It'll get better,_ his brothers promised him. _This is what we do. We fight and we die. There's honour in it. He sacrificed himself for you._

Yes, he knew that and hated himself for it. It should have been him.

_You'll find someone else,_ they said. _Maybe even the Queen will notice you._

Never. It would never happen. He was small and young and the Queen was known for growing bored and driving away even the mightiest of battlers when she was done with them. The only one who'd wanted him was gone now and he felt so painfully, horribly alone.

He started to avoid his brothers, finding the sight of them a painful reminder. He took to guarding the far end of the fields instead, talking to no one while he wondered if this was to be his future; this horrible sense of something missing he didn't know how to get back.

The misery wasn't enough to make him miss seeing the gate.

It opened in the middle of his field, hovering over the ground and humming, driving the nearby elementals away with its non-colour. He charged right in, flaring his hate in warning, but there was no life to it. It was something like a door and after he made sure it wasn't about to attack or explode, he circled it, staring through with growing fascination.

It led somewhere, someplace strange and closed in, like the inside of a hive, but there were no sylphs there. Right underneath the gate, he could sense the pattern of a fertile female instead, something so like a Queen that it shocked him. She was an unbound Queen, which shocked him more.

His love's cynical, suspicious, dead voice sounded in the back of his mind, bringing a familiar wave of pain that stopped his instinctive urge to dive through the gate.

Careful. Looks good enough to have something with teeth hiding behind it.

He hesitated, peering not just at her, so appealing but so different from what he'd lost, but also around her.

There was something there. Off to one side, nearly hidden, certainly easy to miss if he hadn't been so cautious, there was a male presence. He felt the confidence, the courage, the strength, and the cynicism. It was different indeed from the female, who reeked of fear and a desperation that drew him.

This male reminded him of his lover.

Ever after, he didn't know what brought him through more. The woman tied down on the altar or the man behind her with the knife. He did go through, however, chasing something he had no words for, and the man's arm came down, sealing his imprisonment with a single stab of the blade.

"Black!" the man shouted. "Your name is Black and you're mine!"

Yes, Black thought, floating over the ruins and staring at him. Yes, he was.

## U is for Undone

Solie finished the week's work with a sigh, tired and restless for all that the audiences went well. It just felt lately as if she'd been doing nothing except meeting with people, listening to their entreaties and requirements, and handing down her judgments. She didn't mind the work. It was her duty and she accepted that, but sometimes it drained her and she only wanted to get away.

She walked to the back of the throne room, where a hidden door built flush with the wall was unknown to anyone who didn't need to know it was there. Her battle sylph guards followed her as she pushed on one side and it silently opened to show a corridor beyond, one kept clean and simple in contrast to the opulence of the throne room. It led to offices belonging to her and the members of her Council. Opulence wasn't a requirement back here, where the majority of the administration of the Valley was done. It was kept purely functional instead, with the walls themselves as angular as the earth sylphs could bring themselves to make them.

Solie didn't pay more than a glance to the closed door of her office. She certainly had work to do, but no desire. Her desires were very different right now and she felt itchy and uncomfortable, tight in her body and distracted. She frowned at the door and continued on, headed to the very end of the wide corridor, where a set of stairs led up.

Her guards stopped at the bottom. They would accompany her in the throne room and even in her office, as well as wherever she went outside, but she drew the line at them following her into her apartment without a very good reason. There was only one sylph allowed free range in there and Solie took the steps two at a time, her skirts held up so she wouldn't trip over them. Skirts weren't mandatory in the Valley for women, but she liked the feel of them swirling around her legs.

Most of the time she did, at any rate. Now they felt constrictive and the minute the door to her apartment closed behind her, Solie stripped off her robes of office, dropping them over the arm of a chair as she crossed the room, undoing the laces of her dress. It slithered down her body and off and she turned her head from side to side so she could feel the luxurious wealth of her red hair against the skin of her back. She then undid the knot that closed the wrap holding her breasts. They came free with a sigh of relief and she pushed her smallclothes down and off as she headed towards the gardens, as bare as the day she was born.

Doors made of pure glass that were unique to the Valley led out onto the lush grass of her walled garden. The roses were in full bloom and she took a deep breath of their perfume as she stretched her hands over her head, turning in place and feeling the soft breeze against her skin.

She heard the thud of Heyou's boots hitting the ground and completed her turn, her arms behind her head and her breasts outthrust as she smiled at her battler. She hadn't needed to call him. He could feel her emotions as well as she did, regardless of the distance between them, and he'd known what she wanted.

He rose from his crouch, his eyes never leaving hers as he came towards her. Between the first and second step, he shifted to his cloud form, letting himself be intangible so that his clothing fell to the ground. Between the third and fourth, he was in human shape again, as naked as she, his length already erect and straining for her.

Solie stepped into his arms, feeling them go around her as his mouth dropped to press against hers. Her breasts pushed against him, and she burned all the way down to the core of her sex.

She wanted to get away, needed to escape this place she loved so much but that sometimes pushed her down with its demands and responsibilities. She wanted to be free, to be able to let everything go.

Heyou understood. He balanced and supported her, but he was her opposite, the wild thing that even she couldn't tame. She'd have him no other way and she sighed against his lips. She didn't have to tell him what she wanted. He knew.

Heyou's mouth brushed kisses against the side of her throat, his hands flat and warm against her spine, and with a breath of a laugh, they were in the air, her battler carrying her up and away from her home and kingdom and sometimes, from what felt to be her prison. He took his natural form to do so, but even as she lay within him in the darkness of his warmth, his touch was everywhere around her, a hundred hands on her flesh that all belonged to him, all cherishing her.

They flew for a time, fast and high, and then he was descending, and as her heart leapt into her throat, he shifted again, his arm around her waist and his long, dark hair tangling with her red, a shadow against her flame as he landed them both on the ground.

They were atop a plateau beyond the edge of the Shale Plains, surrounded by green with moss thick as a bed on the ground they stood upon. A warm breeze tickled across her bare skin and the music of the birds filled their ears, singing of love and life and want.

Solie pulled Heyou's head to her and kissed him again, loving how his mouth was warm and wet against hers. She kept her eyes closed, her hands flat against his cheeks as she kissed him, feeling every inch of his soft lips and the tip of his tongue slipping against hers. He drew her tongue into his mouth, sucking on it as he brought his hands up along her hips and side, to stroke the swell of her breasts and cup their weight, his thumbs curving to press against her hard nipples and send her rising up on her toes with a gasp. That broke the connection between their mouths and his arms wrapped around her, pulling her hard against him, breast to chest, hip to hip, and his mouth back where it belonged, pressed against hers.

His love flowed through her, and his lust, his utterly masculine desire for her that made the heart of her sex wet and aching for him. Solie twined her fingers through his long hair, her soft moans the only utterance she could make as she kept kissing him, not wanting to breathe unless it was through him. Not wanting to exist without him. His hands skimmed up her back again and his energies swept over her, the barest edge of his power sparking across her skin.

The pleasure of it was incredible and her back arched as she cried out. He chuckled and moved his kisses to her neck, the same electricity sparking between his lips and her throat while his hands moved down her back to cup the firm globes of her backside, sparkling with energy that arched across the fine hairs on her skin and - oh gods - down to the lips of the arousal between her legs.

It was too much, not enough. She wanted more of this, she needed something else. Heyou was close to her, his body flush with hers and his emotions deep in her mind, but he wasn't close enough, not nearly.

Solie rose up on her toes and hooked her right leg around his body, pulling him against her as hard as she could while she gripped his head and continued with that wondrous, fiery kiss. The movement pressed the thick, satiny length of him hard against her pelvic bone, and with a groan, he pulled her up enough for him to slip in between the folds of her sex, find her, and pierce deep into her burning core.

Solie threw her head back and wailed as Heyou filled her. His breath stuttered against her neck and he pulled her close, his tongue laving the groove at the base of her neck above where her collarbone lay as he began to move, sliding slick, wet, and burning in and out of her.

It was phenomenal, a direct attack against the tension that had been building in her as she dealt with work and the frustrations it brought. Heyou thrust into her and every rock of his hips sent a spike of pleasure both of them could feel in the core of her soul.

She felt his love too, his all consuming desire for her, his passion, his readiness to sacrifice everything he was to her, and that feeling only inflamed Solie's passions higher. She clung to her lover, no longer able to tell whether she was herself or if she was him as his love and lust filled her as surely as his phallus did, one feeding the ache of her body, the other the needs of her soul.

They moved together, burning with heat, kissing, loving, and the bliss within her coiled into a knot in her belly that drew in every last bit of tension, every doubt and random thought, everything in fact but her indomitable love for the being that held her. Then that knot exploded outwards in a wave of pure pleasure that shocked her to her toes.

Solie cried out again, her entire body quivering, and Heyou held her through the wave of her climax, his hips moving against her once, twice, three more times before he followed her into pleasure that her empathy let her feel as a renewal of her own joy.

Exhausted and satiated, the two lovers slumped to the soft moss below them, a smile on both their lips as they pressed them together in another, lingering kiss.

## V is for Victory

Even after years of effort, most of the Shale Plains were still dead.

A slight smirk on her face, Rachel sauntered across the grey ground, sharp edged stone shifting under her boots. She ignored the sound of it as much as she did the periodic grey bush, or the endlessly blue skies that stretched to the distant mountains. Instead she focused on the line riders on the road leading south from the Valley, all of them over a mile away and small. There were a lot of them. It was a large delegation, though of course it always was when the Queen rode. Rachel made a very unladylike sound. They also moved too slowly when the Queen rode.

Heavy footsteps sounded, a massive form lumbering up behind the slim girl, and though he looked as if he was nothing less than a monster, with thick fur and heavy limbs, his body lethal and corded with muscle, Rachel leaned against him, pressing her back against his warm fur while she reached up, her fingers scratching the thick skin of his heavy neck. He rumbled in contentment and a long, pink tongue kissed her arm.

Rachel smiled and turned towards him, burying her face in the long, blue fur of the creature, who was in the shape of something that was a mix of a cat and a bear and so large that her cheek pressed against his shoulder and his head towered over her. It didn't matter what shape he took; she'd always know him because he'd been with her for as long as she'd been alive.

"That's my Claw," she cooed and heard his deep, rumbling purr. She scratched under his chin, working both her hands into the deep fur of the ruff beneath his broad, flat head, and moved them up to the long, tufted ears. Pulling his big head down, she pressed her cheek against his.

Claw was her battle sylph, a shape-shifting spirit brought from another world and bound to her on her tenth birthday. For three years she'd been able to feel his emotions, and she felt his nervous happiness now at being out here with her, away from the protection of the rest of the hive. During her childhood, before he was given to her, Rachel had been drilled on the importance of being gentle with Claw, of never forgetting the horrors he'd gone through before her birth. Still, she knew what he liked and as she reached up higher to massage his ears, his head bowed nearly to the ground in order to let her. Rachel leaned against him while she rubbed his ears, invoking more of that great purr.

"You want to run with me, don't you?" she cooed, feeling his almost sleepy submission. She could just order him, but a co-conspirator was so much more fun than a servant.

_Yes,_ he sent, his voice a whisper in her mind. Claw only spoke to her.

"You want to run with me all the way to the forest," she continued, her hands still scratching. He started to tense and she hugged him with her entire body. "So you can pick apples from the trees for me. Don't you, Claw?"

He hesitated, not wanting to disobey the order to stay near the convoy, but that order hadn't come from the Queen, who he couldn't disobey. Instead it came from the lead battler, who in theory he could. He didn't like to, but Rachel had been convincing her battler to do things he didn't want to since before he'd been bound to her.

"Imagine those trees, Claw," she whispered. "All green with bright red apples. You know how much I love apples."

He sighed and she knew she had him. Rachel grinned and pushed herself away from him, her long black hair swinging to the small of her back as she ran around to his side. Claw lifted a foreleg and she used it and a double-handful of clasped fur to pull herself up onto him. His back was broad, well padded with bright blue fur, and she spread her legs to straddle him, grasping his fur again with both hands. A thrill of exhilaration filled her. Claw felt her emotions with his empathy and tossed his massive head up with a snort.

Rachel leaned over to his ear. "Run," she whispered.

Claw ran, his talons digging into the ground and pushing him forward as he raced across the dismal ground, broken shale kicking up with every footstep. For all his size, he was incredibly fast and Rachel laughed in delight as her hair streamed behind her. Claw charged across the ground, muscles bunching underneath Rachel's legs as he picked up speed, galloping parallel to the convoy on the road. They were still distant, but they'd been traveling for several days now and at the speed he was going, Claw would reach the border and the forests she longed to see in an hour. Rachel could hardly wait, even as she loved the feel of the wind in her face and the strength underneath her.

_The Queen suggests that we rejoin the convoy,_ Claw told her, a bit uncertain.

Rachel smirked. Her mother would never give Claw an order. She gave them rarely enough as it was, but to Claw? She considered him too fragile to command. To Rachel, Solie just didn't know how to be a proper commander.

"Don't you dare!" Rachel laughed, leaning over him, her face close enough to his fur to smell the battler. He always smelled faintly reminiscent of tall grasses and clean winds. "She can make me be all stuffy later. For now we're having fun!" She slapped his neck, urging him to greater efforts, and with a sigh he redoubled his speed. They flew across the sands, Rachel drinking down the adrenaline of it as surely as Claw fed off her energy to fuel his run.

Her mother wouldn't order Claw, but over at the convoy Rachel disdained to ride with, someone broke free from them, heading on a trajectory that would intersect with her own.

"Faster!" Rachel shouted. Claw could outrun just about anything. Battler strength increased with age and he was older than more than two thirds of the Valley's flight.

Claw made a herculean effort, but it wasn't a battle sylph running to catch them. Instead, a beautiful blonde woman rode a mare at an angle to cut them off, the white horse galloping across the shale towards them as though it wasn't dangerous for an animal's feet.

The moment Rachel grew close enough to recognize the woman, she knew the race was lost. Still, she pulled her lips back from her teeth in a snarl, refusing to give up. "Fly!" she shouted at her battler.

Obedient, Claw changed shape. In his natural form, he was a black cloud filled with lightning, with ball lightning for eyes and jagged lightning teeth. He could carry passengers inside of his mantle, but Rachel didn't like riding that way. She couldn't see anything and Claw knew her preferences.

His form flowed underneath her, fur shifting and becoming hard and scaly. The handfuls of fur she held turned into curved spikes jutting out of his shoulder blades, easy to grip, while massive wings erupted outwards, spreading to show thin sails of skin. His bulky head pushed outwards, his neck growing long and supple, and his entire body became sleek and thin. Rachel pulled her knees up, her shins resting now along the length of his massive, reptilian wings.

Claw leaped into the air, his wings sweeping down and throwing him up as he did. Used to it, Rachel whooped as she felt the air pressing her against his spine. Inspired by storybooks, the massive dragon flew into the air, his entire body still coloured a gorgeous, iridescent blue.

Below them, the ground grew tiny at a furious rate. The white horse reared, forelegs pawing at the air while the woman on her back looked upward, her hand shadowing her eyes, her hair blowing all around her. Rachel just laughed and waved as they flew past, still gaining altitude. She didn't bother to shout anything. Whatever words she said would have been lost in the roar of the wind and the heavy beating of Claw's wings.

_She's coming,_ Claw told her, his mental voice clear in her mind.

Rachel looked back, one hand braced on Claw's spine, the other gripping the spikes he'd grown for her. She saw the woman and horse standing on the ground behind them, the more distant convoy still trudging along even farther back, and then the horse changed. Annoyed, Rachel watched her turn into a pearlescent white dragonfly, her wings sparkling like the sun shining off the thousand sparkling droplets of a waterfall. She went straight up into the air, her master sitting just behind her head, and came after them.

_I'll never outrun her,_ Claw said.

"Well, try!" Rachel snapped.

Claw did, his wings beating rapidly as he flew for the forests, his head stretched out before him and his long tail streaming behind, his legs held along his body. He put all the strength he had into it, but there was no outrunning Autumn. Battlers were quick, but Autumn was a healer sylph and she was fast. No one could outrun her when she put her mind to it.

Still, she had her master on her back, and the woman had to be at least as old as Rachel's mother. Rachel started grinning. "Shake her loose!" she called to her battler, even as she leaned her body down against his, gripping the sides of his spine with her legs as tightly as she could while she hung onto the spikes. A moment later, the spikes changed to tentacles that wrapped around her forearms.

Claw barrel rolled and dove. The height he'd gained he shed in seconds and pulled up, rocketing along just above the grey surface of the plains before angling his wings into a sudden, warmer pocket of air and shooting back up into the air in a different direction.

Rachel laughed ecstatically, dimly aware that if Claw hadn't secured her, she'd likely have been thrown off his back. It didn't matter. The wind was roaring in her ears, deafening her until she couldn't hear her own laughter, and her stomach was flip-flopping as she was pushed against him, then away as he turned abruptly, banking, then against him again as he leveled out. She didn't understand physics, but she did understand adrenaline, and she loved this.

"Faster!" she shouted, almost forgetting about the healer and the woman chasing them.

_I'm not sure I can go faster,_ Claw said, his voice mournful as he furiously beat his wings, climbing upwards at such an angle that Rachel hung along his back, his tentacles the only thing keeping her from falling along the length of his body and off. Rachel ignored his tone. She could feel his emotions and under all the nervousness and uncertainty, he was having fun. As long as she could keep him from thinking about after, when her mother inevitably gave one of her lectures, he might actually realize he was enjoying himself.

Claw climbed, until the air started to turn cold as winter around her and the ground was so far below them that even the convoy was next to invisible, everyone small as ants. Autumn followed them, her wings a blur as she climbed, gaining on them. Claw was barely moving at all, it seemed, going almost straight up but so slow where the dragonfly could just hover and rise.

"I said go faster," Rachel hissed. His tentacles around her forearms were starting to ache and she couldn't get any purchase with her feet.

_I am,_ he protested, and then he rolled over and dove.

Rachel gasped, her scream torn from her by the same wind that filled her eyes with tears. This was speed! Claw had his wings and legs tucked close to his body as he dove, the air roaring all around them. Rachel couldn't hang on. Only Claw's tentacles wrapped around her arms kept her from coming off him and even with them the rest of her body lifted off of his, and she felt weightless as she hung there, both of them plummeting towards the ground that was rising towards them so fast.

They blew by Autumn, racing past the healer and her master so fast that Rachel was barely able to acknowledge them before they were gone. She didn't care anyway. This was exhilarating, better than she could have imagined, and already she wanted Claw to do this with her again, so many times again.

_I like this,_ Claw admitted shyly. _It's fun._

The ground was rocketing up towards them, the details of the rock and sand coming into focus with amazing speed. Rachel sucked in her breath, hard though it was to breathe at this speed, and then Claw angled his wings, the sail coming away from his body just enough, and they pulled up, their flight leveling out no more than fifty feet above the ground, and suddenly they were shooting along above it, still at that incredible speed, and Rachel was howling with excitement and laughter, her body still parallel to Claw's, stretched out from their speed in her own flight.

Claw's acrobatics had changed the direction they were flying in. Rachel barely had time before they reached it to realize they weren't heading in the direction of the forest anymore but instead towards her mother's convoy. She saw horses rearing and neighing in terror on the ground, their riders fighting to control them, while the black clouds of battle sylphs flew over them, roaring and getting out of Claw's way as fast as they could. They nearly clipped one, and Rachel felt her own battler's embarrassed misery at that. She only laughed.

"Head to the forests!" she shouted, though she wasn't sure he could hear her past the roaring of the winds. They'd slowed a bit, but they were still moving with incredible speed. They'd be in there before her mother got her horse under control enough to even think about yelling at her.

Just when Rachel was sure of her victory, Autumn blew past them. She'd swapped her dragonfly form for a giant hawk, her wings short and pulled back, and she went by them so fast that the air itself exploded in a massive booming crash that even the greatest storm would have envied.

## W is for Welcome

Galway brought his family to the Valley in the summer, months later than he'd originally hoped, but he'd needed a house for them first and it took that long to get one made. Given the sheer number of dwellings that had to be built, it still would have been incomplete if he hadn't told Stria she could do whatever she wanted in its creation. The temptation had been too much for the earth sylph to resist and on her own time, she'd made for him a house six times larger than anyone else's. It was bizarre to the point of caricature, but he didn't think his large family would mind moving out of their former, tiny little cottage and into it.

He went and got them, and the excitement at seeing the new house went a long way towards making up for the long winter and spring where his wife and children hadn't known if he was alive or dead. Iyala, however, assured him that he would not be doing that to them ever again. Given the new position in the Valley's Council that Galway had been offered, that was a promise he could keep.

"Dad, it's so huge," Nelson gasped, staring at the mushroom shaped monstrosity while his various younger brothers and sisters crowded around him. Half of them ran squealing to explore, the others looked more dubious.

A boy stood by the entrance to the house, his hands in his pockets while he watched all of them with bright-eyed interest. He was a beautiful lad, even in the plain tunic and pants he wore. Leon had suggested they put the battle sylphs into uniforms so that people would be able to recognize them, but Galway was of the opinion that wasn't necessary. He could tell what the lad was. Still, he thought with a smirk, he hadn't known when he first met the boy back in those woods.

Nelson and a few of the other boys saw Heyou and looked at him with the immediate suspicion of teenagers. Iyala did as well and glanced at her husband.

"Who is this?" she asked, with a tone to her voice that said she already knew the answer.

Galway smiled. "Meet your newest son."

Iyala shook her head, but she was used to her husband bringing home foundlings and most of the youngsters running around them now were adopted. She loved them all and he didn't think it would matter to her that Heyou was a battle sylph.

Nelson puffed up his chest and stalked towards his newest sibling, who was grinning back at him in a way guaranteed to make a boy want to fight to prove who was the leader. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Heyou. Who are you?"

"Nelson. I'm the oldest so I'm in charge. You have to listen to me." The younger boys watched, eager to see what happened.

Heyou grinned even wider and Galway could feel his delight through their bond. He hadn't ordered Heyou not to hurt anyone, but he trusted the battler not to and Heyou was aware of that. "Nah."

Nelson blustered, all indignant at the slight, and within seconds, he and Heyou were pummeling each other while the other boys circled them and shrieked encouragement.

Iyala sighed, leaning against her husband. "This does seem to be the sort of welcome we give, isn't it?" she said, sounding amused.

Galway put an arm around her shoulder. "It is." He chuckled. "Come, my dear. Let's leave them to work it out amongst themselves. There's something I should probably tell you about Heyou."

## X is for Xenolith

The battlers were in the sky, playing in the winds with air and fire sylphs. Even the healer was out there, flitting around them faster than they could react. Below was a lake and the water sylphs tumbled in it, leaping into the air and crashing back down with fun loving splashes.

Stria stood on the hill overlooking the lake and watched. She appeared to be a small, mostly featureless mud creature, her head wide and flat, her mouth broad, and her nose nonexistent. She watched the other sylphs do what she couldn't and the earth elemental rubbed her hands together with a wide, toothy smile. She couldn't fly through the air or swim in the water, but she'd never felt the lack.

Instead, she dove. The earth elemental fell forward and dropped into the ground as if it were no more solid than the water in the lake or even the air overhead. Blind but fully aware of the feel of stone against her mantle, she flew downwards, a long, sleek shape undulating through the spaces between the stones.

To be in the earth was to return home. Everything around her was right as she dropped down past layers of shale covered in fecund dirt, down to the bedrock and below, to deep stone that had never seen the surface and wouldn't for thousands of years.

Stria kept dropping, letting the heart of the world pull her towards it and ease her travel. It would be harder to swim back up, but the depths so sweetly called for her.

She passed through the roof of a cavern that had no connection to the surface. She saw crystals in it, growths as large and strange as a madman's dreams, and then she hit the floor of the cave and was falling happily through the stone again.

It wasn't a single, solid piece. She dove between plates, feeling how they were sandwiched on top of each other and the different stones that made them up, all formed by varying processes that couldn't help but fascinate her, and as she went down, she listened to the earth sing to her.

Stria laughed, singing back in the same rhythm with her own, small voice. There was so much more down here than there was on the entirety of the surface and she longed to explore it all, to dive until the rock around her became liquid, where the continents of the world floated on a sea of magma. She could feel that massive sea, but it was deep, deeper than she could go and return for, much as she loved it, she was an outsider here and the energies of the world wouldn't sustain her. She needed her master for that and this was one place where he could never follow her.

She could, however, bring part of this world back to him, tokens of her love that he crafted into marbles for her as a token of his. Stria cast around for a trinket to bring back and there were so many. Finally, she settled on a rock that she easily slid loose from the bed it lay in. It was a simple, ordinary rock, but she could feel where an entirely different type of stone lay inside, a present waiting to be discovered.

With her prize in her grasp, Stria swam back up towards the surface of the world, leaving the endless depths and the singing of rock behind her. She surfaced, no longer sleek and fast, and stomped her slow way back to her master's home. Hers too, she supposed, except where she'd just been felt more like home to her. Except for the fact that her master was here. Because of him, she'd always come back.

Stria opened the door and went inside, tracking dirt as she always did. Her master wasn't back yet and she set the rock on the kitchen table. She felt tired, but it was a good tired. She looked at the ordinary rock she'd brought back and tapped it with her finger.

It split in two, revealing the other rock that had formed inside so long ago, hiding inside it like a new life inside an egg. Stria ran her blunt fingers over the surface of the grapefruit sized diamond she'd found and went with a happy sigh to check on the status of her marbles.

## Y is for Yellow

"Yellow is the colour

Of your slinky tongue..."

"Tongues aren't yellow," Heyou said helpfully.

"Can tongues be slinky?" Dillon asked.

Blue sighed and tried again.

"Yellow is the colour

Of your tiny teeth."

"I thought you wanted to write her a poem, not get her to murder you."

Blue sighed and threw down his rather battered piece of parchment and quill. Both of them immediately fell over the side of the ledge the three battlers were sitting on. It was debatable which would get to the ground a hundred feet below first. Blue morosely watched them fall.

"Why does poetry have to be so hard?" he asked. "All I want to do is write her a loving poem about her favourite colour."

"Maybe you're putting too much effort into it," Dillon said. "Why not just bring her something, like maybe yellow flowers?"

"Nuh uh. I'm not getting her anything she can turn around and hit me with."

"Poetry's easy," Heyou assured him. "All you have to do is make it rhyme." He stood up on the narrow ledge and cleared his throat.

"When I see you, lover,  
I can barely hack  
How yellow is the colour  
Of the stripe upon my back.

It's too bad you hate purple,  
For that colour is the best,  
For I am such a pansy  
And an utter wretched mess."

Blue pushed him off the ledge.

"Well," Dillon said after a long moment. "At least it rhymed."

Blue shoved him off too.

## Z is for Zen

The beautiful blonde woman sat cross-legged on the grass in the garden, her hair tumbling down her back to the grass. She looked very peaceful and zen as she sat there, her eyes closed and her hands resting on her knees. She wore a simple linen dress that did nothing to hide her beauty, as well as a baby sling strapped so the infant was nestled against her chest.

Rolf leered at her from the edge of the grass. "She's gorgeous," he said. "I want her."

Beside him, Lal nodded, but he looked nervous. "What are you, mad? There are battle sylphs all over the Valley."

"Not right here or right now," Rolf said with a belch and a scratch of his gut. "Besides, there's nothing wrong with appreciating a beautiful lady. I'll just go an' make my acquaintance with her."

"But she's got a baby with her," Lal protested. "She's got to have someone already."

"Nah, she's single. Everyone knows that. She's babysittin'." Rolf smoothed back his greasy hair and hitched up his pants. "Watch an' learn, boy. I'll have her eatin' out of my hand."

Dubious, Lal watched as his friend sauntered over towards the woman. She blinked up at him when his shadow fell across her.

"Can I help you?"

"Hey, gorgeous," he leered. "How about we go an' get naked so we can get to know each other better?"

The woman recoiled. "I...uh, no, thank you."

His grin widened. His teeth were hideous. "Come on, sweetheart, spend some time with a real man."

He bent over her and the sling strapped to her chest exploded. Miniature black battler tentacles flailed out of every gap in the fabric, battering at the man, while hate as strong as a bit of dandelion fluff washed over him.

Howling, Rolf ran for his life, Lal wailing and chasing after him. The sound of a raspberry followed them both.

The babysitter stared after them and then looked down at the baby battle sylph. "Aww, Razz, you're so clever," she cooed. "Such a good baby, yes you are! Yes you are!"

Razz sleepily blinked up at his babysitter, blew a faint raspberry in reply, and jammed his tentacles into his mouth. Sucking on them and happy, he went back to sleep, ready as always for battle.

###

## Afterword

When I started to write this series of snippets, some of them were planned. Others were spur of the moment, and some were pieces I'd written already that were either rejected out of novels for various reasons or that wouldn't fit into the flow of a book. A few are teasers of things to come.

_A is for Allowed_ is simply poking fun at the battlers' way of viewing the world (I do that a lot in this book). What are priorities to them aren't to regular people. This is just a tease towards that.

_B is for Blocks_ is a scene that could have been included in the first two books. Lizzy's use of the blocks to communicate with her father's silent battle sylph is canon when the series opens and the scene where he uses them to talk to her in The Battle Sylph is one of my favourites. It was nice to touch on that connection between them again here.

_C is for Cold_ would fall between the first and second books. I decided I wanted to make sure I wrote pieces from the point of view of each of the four elemental sylphs. This is the first. It was also a chance to show the love that Airi and her master have for each other.

_D is for Devotion_ is a bit I've wanted to write for a long time. It goes back to how women loved by battle sylphs are treated in Meridal during the second novel, The Shattered Sylph. The answer is "not well". I spoke of it indirectly in the novel, but never used a concrete example. It wasn't necessary there and would have drawn away from the emotions I was building in the book at the time. However, while all the action was going on, this one battle sylph did choose to instead follow his own path, and find his way back to the one he loved the most.

_E is for Eyeball_ is pure silliness. Dillon is my resident battle sylph who can never pick one shape to stick with and Moreena is his long suffering and periodically terrified master.

_F is for Forever_ nearly didn't make it into this book. If a huge rush of writer's block hadn't broadsided me for F, it wouldn't have. Forever is a piece I wrote over a year and a half ago, a possible prologue for a future novel. I even showed it to my editor and he loved it. The problem with it is that it feels too deus ex machina to me. I don't want to pull the "oops, everyone's made immortal, no one dies" card. But at the same time, I loved the piece. It's all hurt/comfort, which is my guilty pleasure. So it's in, but it isn't necessarily canon. The concepts behind this entry are still in the back of my head, and if I can figure out a way to work them in without going all Mary Sue in my readers' minds (or my own), then I'll use it. The likelihood is strong, however, that if I do, something somewhere is somehow going to go wrong.

_G is for Grass_ is just to explore the relationship between two of my minor characters, Loren and Shore, and to show the sheer magnitude of the project the people of the Valley undertake when they decide to revitalize the Shale Plains.

_H is for Hatred_ is to show how tricky and utterly amoral a sylph can be. Plus it's a chance to write Thrall, who is one of my favourites. It's also an unabashed teaser for a later book, because one large loose thread right now in my series is the king of Eferem, and where the king goes, there's Thrall.

_I is for Ignite_ is one of my elemental pieces. Central heating ala fire sylph just makes sense to me.

_J is for Jeopardy_ went over much better than I ever thought, leading into an entire sub storyline of its own within the challenge. I'm rather pleased the story of the baby battle sylph and his two little sisters was so popular as it's been sitting on my hard drive for a long time now. I wrote the story of the three of them about a year ago and couldn't do anything with it. The reason is, in its entirety, it has so many spoilers that it would have given away the rest of the series, whether published or not. Chopped into pieces, however, with the spoiler scenes removed or changed to hide the guilty, it works. So Razz got to charge to victory after all and is so popular I already have people asking for more.

_L is for Lift_ continues Razz the baby battler's adventures. It's a bad pun for how he lifts the pie off the windowsill and lifts as in steals. Yeah, I'm not so good at puns. It's also a chance to see Blue from A is Allowed again, and meet his dear, sweet, holy-crap-don't-piss-that-woman-off master, Casi.

_M is for Moo_ could have been M is for Milk, but Moo won the coin toss. Razz's adventures continue.

_N is for Nag_ brings in both Blue and his best friend Dillon on the hunt for Casi's stolen pie. It's more fluff that was utterly fun to write, especially when Dillon finds the two baby elemental sylphs.

_O is for Outrage_ is the reaction of the Valley's residents to the newcomers and my chance to poke fun at the always stoic and in charge Mace.

_P is for Pissed Off_ has the end of Razz's adventure as he tries to rescue his missing sisters. It's fluff as well, but I did like having the older battlers watching his furious charge and realizing that they're looking at themselves in microcosm.

_Q is for Questions_ started off as my water elemental piece and grew a life of its own. With it, I brought the reader back to the hive world because I wanted to show some more of what it was like. I also explored the idea of how one elemental might end up interacting with a battle sylph. I've had a lot of people asking me if elementals can get romantic with a battle sylph. My answer has always been "Physically, no," but this piece was to show that when you set the physical aside, there can be a lot of love there indeed.

_R is for Ruined_ is all about a character suffers a tragedy and is fundamentally changed by it. This is a concept I've wanted to explore and in Kal, I have a whole lot to play with. His story has to wait, however. What he does after this and how he deals with his loss relies on events that haven't happened yet.

_S is for Secret_ brings us back to our unnamed couple from the hive world and is just a bit more about their relationship and how they keep it quiet, written because a number of people nicely asked me to.

_T is for Temptation_ is a piece I've wanted to write for a long time. but was never sure how it would go across. Male/male relationships are something considered controversial for all sorts of reasons that personally never made sense to me. However, I wanted to write this. Black and his master had their origins in Leon and Ril. Those two always had a very sensual relationship with each other, but I wanted to push the envelope. I did with Black and Umut, his master. This is their first meeting.

_U is for Undone_ is the only adult piece because I was all the way up to S or so and realized that while the Sylph series is marketed as romantic fantasy, I hadn't written anything with sex in it. So, here it is. Sex.

_V is for Victory_ was originally the prologue for a sylph novel that I started and abandoned because it wasn't working for me. I kept a lot of the ideas in it, that will hopefully find their way into a better book in the future, but this piece I put here, purely because I liked it.

_W is for Welcome_ is a chance to see Galway again, one of my favourite characters, and to bring in a scene we didn't get to see before; the introduction of Heyou to his new family.

_X is for Xenolith_ was one of the easiest pieces to write. I had people when I started this going "oh my god, what are you going to do for X?" but I had X planned out before I even wrote A. A xenolith is a fragment of rock inside of another rock, so here is my earth elemental piece, featuring Stria.

_Y is for Yellow_ is another silly piece. After completely forgetting I had some poetry for G, I decided to write some. The poem for Y is of a rather different nature than that for G, however.

_Z is for Zen_ is a piece I felt had to make a statement, or at least give the reader a giggle, as it was the last one. I was fun to take the serenity of the first paragraph and utterly turn it on its head. Plus it was a chance for everyone to see Razz again, and that can never be a bad thing.

## Books by L.J. McDonald

The Battle Sylph

The Shattered Sylph

Queen of the Sylphs

A Midwinter Fantasy

## Connect with L.J. McDonald

My website/blog: http://ljmcdonald.ca

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