Quill of Thieves

Prologue: Unmasking the Thief

Excerpt taken from Unmasking the Thief. Volume 3: The Purge
Penned by: N. B. Verilibros

The elemental threads were killers.

That was, perhaps, the only thing the thief had in common with them. She remembered a time when she had bled with the hope only the magic of the seven elements could birth. But the death of her hope had extinguished her heart, snuffed it out with a single handwritten rejection years ago.

It had been from those who had not believed in her.

Look at her now.

The Fables of Monverta's latest setting lay beneath the thief's feet, a quill made of unicorn's hair and willow bark held in the hand of the Author beside her. It was not the particular quill that the thief currently sought. No, that one was a unique utensil, forged before the Days of Old, as old as the first Author herself. Back in a time when creatures like nymphs, dragons, elves, faeries, and water sprites ran abundant throughout the seven realms. But time was a futile thing, a century barely a blimp on its radar. Gone as swiftly as a line of ink striking through a sentence.

Her Author's less significant quill hovered over the blank pages spread across the young man's lap, and the thief paid him half a glance before turning her attention to the creatures scurrying amongst, between, and within the story of their lives.

It was a village made in the trees of various roots and seeds: tall, narrow cypress sentries stood at attention, wooden limbs crossed like two swords of a warrior. Thick-trunked oaks guarded the outskirts from the rising threats of a rumored invader. But it was the Earth that ruled here and the Elven folk who wielded it, and the elves were relatively peaceful Elementi. Willows drooped their branches over the entrances to its dwellings carved in their trunks. Limbs themselves joined hands with branches to form a canopy of bridges and pathways that floated above the ground. Everyone who had the chance to behold the tree city of Galandréal marveled at its beauty, and it was beautiful, the thief supposed.

When it wasn't burning.

Flames licked up the bark, devouring the screams it left in its angry wake and the wooden homes that interrupted its path. It was an inferno of ash that smelled something sweet. All it would take to put it out would be one swish of the quill, a new ending to the chapter that the thief and the Author had plotted so meticulously. Instead, she took the quill from the man beside her and neatly placed it in between the pages of the book, closed the cover, and placed it to the side.

The thief laughed, a short sound that seemed to force the flames higher.

"Fire," she called to the elemental threads.

The ancient Scribal word tickled her tongue. The fire's elemental threads spread higher. Words were truly the sharpest of knives, the sturdiest of weapons that could slice into humanity, undo them, leave them grasping for something to hold onto, and this young woman would become the power they would learn to hold onto.

She breathed words with blood of ink.

From the west, she imagined the priestesses of the Elementi Temples watching this destruction, somehow seeing the dark smoke from this inferno tucked safely behind their Soleitian island walls, and she hoped they knew that this was all their fault.

Fire roared, clashing with the wooden armor of the cypress sentries.

If she couldn't be their fated saviour, she'd make herself into one.

The Author beside her placed a large hand over the book, his skin burning brightly. "It is almost done," he said.

"Good."

She didn't miss the regret in his gaze as his eyes met hers, so she placed her hand over his. It was hot with the power being absorbed from the land, into the book, and thus into them.

"We are good, my love."

He gritted his teeth and bowed his head in submission because he understood this destruction was necessary. To fulfill her prophecy. To save her kingdom. To preserve a young woman's potential to be the prophesied saviour of a splintering Earth.

"It is here, yes?" she asked.

The Author nodded. "I can feel it. The Black Quill is close."

"Then this will hardly have been worthless."

She was hardly worthless despite what the Soleitian priestesses had claimed all those years ago.

No. She was worthy and would be the redeemer of the fated Saviour's prophecy:

Yet a redeemer is born from a motherless womb,
The quill reforged to rewrite the realm's tomb.
Saviour of mortals and creatures of seven,
Confronting the thief and lies that have leavened.

Redeemer and sinner can rise Earth or descend;
Though only one lives while the other must end.

And she would not be the one to end.

She refused to die at the hands of the elements that had betrayed her.

So, the thief hated the elements, and she sought to take them.