Welcome to Layman-upon-Waters. Elliot is the city’s new overseer for the Office of Municipal Integration, and his days are spent encouraging the region’s secretly inhuman denizens out of hiding and into cooperative citizenship.
Usually, each chapter is a stand-alone event with only a subtle through-line, so there should be no issue with reading them out of order.
Having said that, this final chapter is quite story heavy. You may want to read up before diving in!
Chapter 10 – The Necromancer
At the end of the street lies a house. It’s only a single storey, built of old wood and rain-pocked tile. The newer Low Town abodes on either side draw the eye away and leave their roughshod neighbour obscured, as if its dingy materials were blending it into the morning shadows. The darkness pools thickly around the little shack, dripping from between planks and refusing to soak into the muddy road.
Such was the sight that met Elliot’s eyes. A wind gusted at his back, and he shivered, pulling his jacket tighter around his shoulders. The garment insulated better than his uniform coat, but a seasonally inappropriate chill had descended over Layman today, following the sudden summer rain that still lay heavy on the Low Town roads. The wind gathered in his wake and hastened him onwards, and Elliot, breathing a resigned sigh into the quiet, acquiesced on heavy feet.
In the weeks following the Elf King’s Ball, Elliot had found himself with an abundance of time. At first, and with custom at the Office of Municipal Integration experiencing a welcome lull, he had spent that time sitting at the window, staring west towards the forest of Ilvarith. His pattering heart had been sure an armed elven contingent was about to march upon the city and cart him off to their dungeons, either as punishment for his new improper friendship with Princess Miriham or, more likely, for the way he had treated her cousin.
Days later, when that did not transpire, Elliot’s anxiety faded and his thoughts were allowed to catch up to him. He wiled away the hours instead thinking on Miriham’s words that festive night. She hadn’t known his mother, so that piece of Elliot’s history remained an unmarked page in an already slim tome of records. But she’d said ignorance was no curse, no limitation, and Elliot had been thrilled to believe her.
But while he wasn’t supporting a Low Towner or traveller with an application to enter the city, or meeting with Lantern to discuss the year’s immigration trends and future goals, or spending time with his adoptive father in the Castle, that ignorance returned over and over to the centre of his thoughts. The void itched at the back of his skull. It kept him from sleeping. It distracted him from his duty, to the point that Mathilda had demanded he take at least one day away from work to reorganise himself.
More time to himself had not helped. It had drawn him here, following whispered rumour and sinister hearsay, to the doorstep of a witch.
Elliot swallowed his fear, or at least some of it, as he neared the eerie shack at the end of the road. The whistling wind was the only sound accompanying his wet footsteps. Elliot didn’t see any people in the windows of the houses on either side of him. But Low Town was home to more than just people. That sense of being witnessed could have been from his overactive imagination, or it could have been from the eyes of ghosts. That wind, their hushed mockery for the foolish man in their midst. That gentle singing…
Singing?
Elliot stood before the shack’s door. It was slightly ajar. His limited vantage gave him a glimpse of the gloom within, and also of a stack of wooden crates like the ones Lantern used to ship bottles around her tavern, piled on one side of the entrance. A doorway on the eastern wall of the interior let out the playful crackling of flame and a whistle of steam. Someone was brewing tea. Someone was singing.
“I’m a soldier’s daughter, but wish that I was bolder,” the voice sang. “Wish I’d listened to my mother, the way she said I ought-a. Lost my heart along the coast, and now that I am older, I’ve forgotten what it looked like. It may be underwater…”
A smile played along Elliot’s lips in full defiance of his previous nerves. The jaunty song suited the youthful, feminine voice of its meister. He wanted so much to see the owner of that song that his hand rose to the door unbidden. He rapped his knuckle on the old wood in time with her beat.
He regretted his decision at once, as the girl’s song stopped dead. In its place, a shy intake of breath. Elliot waited, listening to the hesitant brush of soft shoes on stone, the occupant’s cautious pause on the far side of the door. And eventually, a black-gloved hand pulled it slowly open, revealing a peeking face.
“H-Hello?” it asked.
The girl was perhaps a year or so younger than Elliot, by his guess. She had round, pink cheeks flushed with colour, and her thick blonde hair was tied back into a practical tail with black cord. A spattering of freckles underlined her wide sky-blue eyes. Fearful eyes, Elliot was dismayed to see.
He reached up to fix his own hair and set what he hoped was a confident smile onto his lips.
“Good morning,” he said. “Sorry to disturb you. My name is-…”
“Elliot of Layman!”
The gasp was quite unexpected. The girl’s fair face lit up, even as she covered her mouth with her free hand.
“O-Oh,” said Elliot. “That’s right. I’m sorry, have we met?”
“No! N-No, never! But I’ve heard that you… U-Um, that you are…”
The occupant placed her hand on her chest and composed herself with effort. She closed her eyes, took a breath, then returned to him with an intentional set to her lips.
“You will be here on business from the Office of Municipal Integration, is that right?”
Her voice tickled Elliot’s ears. The crystal-clear tone was an unfamiliar song here in the Low Town. It would have been more at home in the city proper, perhaps near the rich abodes of the heights. His curiosity only grew.
“Not today, actually,” he said. “I’m here unofficially. Um, on a personal matter.”
The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Here?”
“That’s right. I think.”
She licked her lips, inspecting him carefully. She opened her mouth to speak.
The whistling kettle in the kitchen spoke over her and made her jump. She hopped away from the door with a whispered curse.
“P-Please, come in!” she said as she retreated. “Would you like tea?”
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” said Elliot. “I’m not even sure I’m in the right place anymore.”
“Please, I insist. I’m supposed to be polite to government officials, am I not?”
“Like I said, I’m not here in an official capacity.”
“O-Oh, that’s right,” she giggled from the kitchen, girlish and manic in a charming brew.
Elliot stepped into the shack. The pale light from outside blended with the warmer illumination of a heavy lantern hanging from the ceiling. The centre of the room was taken up with what Elliot could only describe as an altar, a bed of stone four feet off the ground and five feet long. A white sheet had been laid out atop it to cover what looked like thick, circular markings carved beneath, and the stone base of the altar melded seamlessly with the stone floor and foundation of the building.
Around this ominous centrepiece were more of those shipping boxes. Elliot spied an attempt at organisation; bound papers were stacked in containers in one corner, jugs and mugs in another, a crate of books reinforced with leather to protect them from damp in yet another. When the pile of boxes on his left didn’t immediately reveal its purpose, Elliot peeked inside the top container to reveal cotton-wrapped statuettes of gurning stone gremlins. He sealed the box again at once.
“I don’t have a brilliant selection of teas on me, I’m afraid,” said his nervous host from the kitchen. “Would southlands black be alright?”
“Yes, of course,” said Elliot, stepping through the doorway to join her. He took up a lean against the doorframe.
The owner of the shack didn’t look much like a fearsome witch. Her bobbing ponytail was very cute, and her body moved in nervous jerks and jumps as she assembled tealeaves into matching mugs. She didn’t look at all like Cassia, who was the only witch Elliot had ever met. Then again, this girl’s dress was long and black like a mourner’s gown, and though the sleeves were short, she also sported those black gloves up past her wrists. Not the traditional garb of a lady about town.
She was unadorned with jewellery or makeup, and the dress’ design was simple and pragmatic. What Elliot first took to be embroidery was in fact a seam underlining her bust. Thanks to his friend Hawthorne’s love of showing off her talent, Elliot knew this meant the dress had been re-tailored when the wearer’s shape had changed.
The girl turned at his entrance, and Elliot fought not to stare. That bust was seriously impressive. It pushed at the confines of the tailored dress like an overfull waterskin. Elliot tried to speak to cover his lewd fascination, but in his mind, he was trying to determine whether this girl or Lantern was bigger.
“A-Are you…?” he tried, then cleared his throat. “I mean, might you be… the witch Cytonia?”
The girl sighed, eyes moving down to her shoes. “I am not. U-Um, you may not have heard, but… Cytonia passed away recently.”
Elliot’s chest lurched. But was that dismay he felt, or relief? He couldn’t work it out. “May I ask how?”
“That isn’t something I’m allowed to say.”
“Goodness, that’s ominous,” Elliot chuckled with effort. An effort that was all too obvious when the girl didn’t join him.
“I did not even see the body myself,” she continued. “All I know is what my mother told me. She had a frightful dream a few nights ago and came here to investigate, and she found…”
Tucking her locks over one ear, she shivered. “As mentioned, I cannot say.”
So, Cytonia was dead. Elliot ran a hand through his hair and let out a breath from his lips. Low Town would buzz when word got out. Cytonia had been a living legend, a local bugbear and famous last resort of the desperate. And if this girl’s family wasn’t divulging details, the imagined stories of what had managed to kill the ancient crone would be farfetched indeed.
“Did you… know her?” the girl asked, peeking up at him through her fringe.
He shook his head. “Only by reputation. Today was to be our first meeting.”
“Oh. Well, good. I mean,” she amended with a nervous wriggle of her gloved hands, “that you likely won’t be grieving.”
“I suppose not. May I ask who you are, then?”
“Oh! O-Of course! My name is Cynthia. It’s, um, nice to meet you.”
Cynthia skipped across the stone with one hand outstretched. Her enthusiastic advance caused her to slip on her soft shoes and punch her fingers into Elliot’s sternum. They chuckled awkwardly as they arranged themselves into a cordial, if slightly goofy handshake.
Cynthia… Cytonia… “Were you two related?” Elliot asked.
“Cytonia was my… Let me get this right.” Cynthia released his hand and began to count on her fingers. “My great-great-great… great aunt.”
“Wow. She was old.”
“Yes,” Cynthia giggled. “We never understood how she managed it. Some dark and awful ritual, if the manner of her demise is any…”
Realising she had overshared, Cynthia shot an anxious look at Elliot’s eyes, then away again.
“You said your mother had a dream about her?” Elliot asked. “Does that make your mother a witch as well?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Cynthia, tucking her hands behind her back. “Mother and I live in the Silk District, where she takes custom from city folk who have, um, questions.”
“Questions?”
She nodded, a sharp up-and-down that made her hair dance. “Questions… for the dead.”
Elliot stared. “She’s a spirit medium?”
“Mm-hmm,” Cynthia replied. She still wasn’t meeting his eyes.
“Can you do the same?”
She turned away, tucking in her arms and putting her attention on their tea. Elliot, undeterred, took a step towards her.
“Could you do that for me, Cynthia?”
“Are you asking… unofficially?”
“I’m not aware of any law against contacting the dead,” he replied, “but yes. I’m asking for me, not for the office. Nobody else has to know, if that would make you more comfortable.”
“It is generally regarded as unseemly, what the women of my family can do,” she said, peeking at him over her shoulder. “What I can do.”
Elliot took another step closer and leaned around her at the counter. “I don’t think so. I think it’s a gift, and I would be very grateful if you shared it with me.”
She stared up into his eyes, cheeks red and lips parted. She sighed out a breath and, perhaps unintentionally, leaned her weight against Elliot’s chest. She smiled a sweet, lovely, rosy smile.
“My, Elliot of Layman, propositioning me for work in my own kitchen. The girls in the city won’t believe it when I tell them.”
He grinned. “Will they be that impressed?”
“Mm-hmm. When I said I was visiting Low Town to collect my great-aunt’s belongings, they had all manner of things to say about you.”
Though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, Elliot asked, “What sort of things?”
“Oh, you know. Just that I should watch out for you.”
“Watch out for me?”
Cynthia’s eyelids fluttered. Her weight against his chest grew more insistent. “They said that if I wasn’t careful… you might…”
She came to with a start, face red as beetroot, and quickly rolled herself around him and towards the door.
“T-Tea!” she spluttered. “I-It’s there! Take it!”
Elliot smiled down at the steaming mugs. He took them in hand, then pursued the medium out into the altar chamber.
Cynthia got straight to work. Removing her left glove, she retrieved an inkwell and brush from storage and began to draw on her palm. The circles and loops were familiar arcane symbols, which Elliot knew by sight thanks to Cassia’s tutelage. The steam from his mug recalled to his mind an afternoon in the heat of a shared tent. He placed Cynthia’s mug on the stone beside the covered altar, and he sipped from his own as she worked.
“Now, communicating with the spirit of a deceased individual is not difficult in and of itself,” Cynthia said in the methodical tone of a sales pitch. “Two key elements are required, consent and connection. Let’s discuss the latter first. Who is it you wish to contact?”
“My father,” said Elliot, leaning against the kitchen doorframe. “His name was Eli, if that helps.”
“It’s not necessary, but… Eli? I know that name from somewhere.” She looked up from her work with a smile, one Elliot returned.
“Eli of Layman was First Ambassador to the Elves.”
“Ah, I remember now! It seems celebrity runs in your family just as dour magic runs in mine! Well, that simplifies things. I would usually require an item belonging to the individual to connect you to their spirit, but in this case, you are the item of connection. I shall simply need…”
Cynthia’s smile faltered, she chewed her lip and put her attention on her inked palm. “…your touch,” she whispered.
Elliot took another drink, hiding a smirk.
“N-Now, consent. Of the deceased individual!” stammered Cynthia. “How likely is your father to accept the call?”
“Honestly, I have no idea,” said Elliot. “I’ve never met him. There’s every chance he doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Hm. Well, I can push the issue with him if your need is-…”
“No,” he said firmly. “Please, if he doesn’t respond, don’t force him. We can just give up.”
Cynthia met his eyes, then nodded. “Thank you. That’s a relief to hear. Forcing the dead to comply is a messy business. The last thing we need is energy, but I believe, since we are here, the circle should be…”
Cynthia turned and tossed aside the white sheet covering the altar. Just as Elliot had believed, a circular arcane sigil had been carved into the stone. It didn’t look precisely like Cassia’s, the one that had singed his bare bum all those months ago, but it was very close. A different song in the same language.
But Cynthia let out a grunt. “Blast,” she said. “It’s gone inert. I thought Aunt Cytonia would have maintained the connection, but maybe we left it too long. This is no good. We shall have to manually…”
She stared silently down at the altar. The gloved fingers of her right hand fidgeted around the white cloth in her grip. Elliot spied the rise and fall of her shoulders, shallow breaths through anxious lips. When her silent contemplation persisted, he pushed off the doorframe and took a step towards her, recalling his friend Cassia. Recalling her honeyed voice.
“Cynthia?”
“Hm?” She turned, putting those gorgeous blue eyes on him.
“Do we need to have sex?”
The medium didn’t react right away. She continued to stare up at him, a gentle red like sun’s first rays suffusing her round cheeks. She drew in a breath that made her grand bust swell. Then her eyes widened. Her hands shook.
“Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-…” she said. “Wh-Wh-Why… Why d-d-do you ask?”
“Because the last time I was in this situation, the witch I was with said we needed to have sex to get the circle working.”
Elliot’s memory played out the scene in his mind, spurred into action by a hopeful twitch between his legs. He remembered Cassia straddling him above her own circle. They had made magic together.
Elliot also remembered fangs on his neck and pressure on his hips. Pollen in a verdant garden, lamplight in his new office, a writhing bath, a homemade nest, a dressing room and the feel of scale on his palms. This past year had been full of novel problems, and sex had solved almost all of them. By this point, he wasn’t even surprised.
His confident smile set poor Cynthia to distraction again. Elliot fancied he saw steam emerging from her ears, but that was just from the tea on the floor by her feet.
“W-W-Well,” she said, “s-speaking entirely practically, y-y-… yes. Sex would solve a number of logistical challenges with the ritual in this instance. It produces a-a-an energy, um…”
“Anima?”
“A-Anima, yes. Gosh,” said Cynthia with a bashful laugh, “you really do know all about it! A-Additionally, I mentioned connecting you to your family? There is little better way to do that than… th-than with your semen, bound to the concepts of legacy and reproduction as it is. But I couldn’t possibly!”
She turned, and one soft shoe bumped precariously against her mug of tea. Elliot dashed into a crouch to pick it up off the floor, then put both on a stack of boxes.
“You are here to connect with your dear father!” Cynthia put both hands on her cheeks, then pulled away when she realised she’d left ink on her skin. “Y-You didn’t come here to… s-sleep with a girl you’ve just met! How shameful of me! If my mother ever learned…”
“Cynthia.”
She turned slowly to regard him.
“We can find another way,” said Elliot. “But for the record, and I shouldn’t have to say this, I’m game if you are.”
Cynthia spluttered out an undignified laugh. “Then the stories of you are true.”
Elliot rolled his eyes. “Are you game, Cynthia?”
She licked her lips. Her fingers, one set covered in black, the other with looping curls of ink, steepled at her tummy.
“I-If you would have me,” she said softly, “then… I would… be amenable.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. Her beaming smile was devastatingly charming. “I’m sure. I would enjoy it.”
“Great.”
They assembled themselves with much awkward laughter. Cynthia sat herself on the end of the altar, and Elliot stood between her parted knees. She smelled of tealeaves and expensive herbs.
“Is this a common practice among spirit mediums?” he asked, running his hands boldly up her legs.
“N-Not common,” Cynthia said through a fiery blush. “This would only be for s-s-special cases.”
“Do you think your mother has ever contacted the dead like this?”
She laughed, eyelids fluttering. “How do you think I was conceived?” she said. “Now, please. Less about my mother. More about… m-me.”
As Cynthia pulled up her dress, Elliot, emboldened by the heat of her body and the rosy shine of her face, put his hands on her shoulders and ran his lips along her ink-stained cheeks. Then deeper, against her soft neck. Cynthia whispered out a sigh of shock and pleasure.
“Is this alright?” Elliot whispered.
“O-Oh, yes,” she sighed. “The spell works best if we… e-enjoy ourselves.”
“I’ll make sure you do.”
“Oh, I have no dou-…”
He kissed her neck and pushed himself between her thighs, and Cynthia’s voice broke into a startled yelp of stimulation. Elliot let her feel the mound of his cock on her inner thigh. He held himself against her with both hands.
“Can I begin?” he growled.
“Yes!” Cynthia hissed. “Please!”
Tucking his thumb into his trousers, Elliot tugged down and exposed himself. Then he delved Cynthia’s black skirt and found the practical cotton of a soft pair of undershorts. He snaked his fingers into the legs and found her wet slit. Good, he wouldn’t have to disrobe her. Elliot tickled her lips with his probing finger.
“Please!” Cynthia sang, looping her arms around his neck. “Elliot!”
“Cynthia,” he sighed, “here I come!”
He wriggled forwards, feeding himself into her clothing, then pushed. His tip penetrated her lubricated slit, then deeper. Deeper. Holding Cynthia against his shoulder, Elliot shivered into the depths of her.
“M-Mmmph!” Cynthia grunted. “G-Good!”
“Y-Yes, it’s good!” he moaned, tonguing her earlobe. “It’s good…”
Taking hold of her thick thighs, Elliot began to rub himself inside her. The stone altar was a sturdy foundation to his rutting, and Cynthia held herself steady to receive him. She panted against his jacket. Her chest heaved.
“W-Wow,” she giggled, hands firm on the altar’s edge. “M-My. Elliot of Layman, i-inside me! The girls-…”
A keening yelp left her lips as Elliot plunged her faster. “They won’t… b-believe me when I tell them!”
“Cynthia…” he whispered against her cheek.
“H-Hmm?”
“What is it your friends have been saying about me?”
The medium laughed. She pulled away and sat back on her hands, knees raised around his hips. She tossed some blonde locks out of her eyes. Her blushing smile stole the heart out of him.
“They say that Elliot of Layman co-owns a b-b-brothel in the Low Town, and he sleeps – ahh! – sleeps with the staff every night!”
“I just visit for work,” he retorted with a grin. It sounded hollow with his cock throbbing inside her.
Cynthia giggled. “Th-They say… he slays creatures of the night with his enchanted manhood! They say he… h-he commands the trees themselves with… a-ah! With an intimate touch!”
“That’s silly.”
“They say even the elves are in awe of his prowess!” She rolled her head along one shoulder. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her hips rolled in accommodation to his thrusting. “They say he isn’t human, but instead a fiend! D-Delighting in the theft of human women’s innocence!”
Her words pushed the smile from his lips. That one cut a little too close to home.
“Elliot?” Cynthia gazed at him. The motion of her body slowed to a gentle rock.
He shook his head to dispel his concern. “It’s nothing. I just got a little distracted.”
Cynthia chewed her lip, and Elliot experienced a spike of guilt. As if such a lovely young woman deserved any less than his full attention.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked him.
Elliot prepared a dismissal on his tongue. Then, eyes dropping from her face, he grinned. Cynthia followed his gaze, and the red of her cheeks intensified.
“You would like me to… bare myself?”
“Would that be alright? Your chest looks incredible.”
Acknowledging Cynthia’s rounded body inspired a renewed thrust into her, and Cythnia moaned through a loopy smile of her own. Placing her weight on her gloved hand, she reached behind her neck and tugged at the clasp of her dress. Then, even while Elliot was penetrating her, she peeled her clothes down her creamy shoulders.
“Is that better?” she giggled.
Elliot’s mouth went dry. She was huge. Her wide areolas bordered sharply erect nipples, which in turn decorated heavy breasts ripe for plucking. Unable to hold himself back, Elliot hilted himself inside Cynthia and took a double helping with his hands.
“Almighty be praised!” he whispered as he sampled her chest with his fingers.
Cynthia laughed, though the sound was made discordant by her pleasured grunting. “Y-You like them?”
“I love them.”
“G-Good. I like you… t-touching them, Elliot! Oh, Elliot!”
She opened her blazing blue eyes to regard him, gritting her teeth. “You have to enjoy yourself for the spell to work! P-Please! Take me!”
“Cynthia!”
One hand on her staggering chest, the other tight on her hip, Elliot ploughed the medium. Sweat beaded at his brow as he rutted against the deepest reaches of her pussy, and his gasps were plaintive and musical.
“C-C-Cynthia!” he groaned. “Oh… yes!”
“Yes! Elliot!” she sang in response. “Elliot! Elliot!”
“I’m going to come!”
She shuddered at his words. Elliot felt it through his palm on her bouncing nipple. “Yes!”
“I-Is that alright?”
“Yes!” she laughed. “Elliot, yes! Give me your seed! We need it f-for the ritual!”
His heart shivered. “But what if I…? What if you get…?”
She shook her head, raining little drops of sweat onto her collar. Her tail of hair danced back and forth. “I won’t. I can prevent it.”
Even so, anxious lightning leashed his heart and disrupted his brain. Pregnancy, fatherhood… His mind whirled.
“Come in me!” Cynthia’s singing voice dragged him back to lucidity. Her creased eyes bore into his. “Come in me, Elliot of Layman! Come in me!”
She was so lovely. So warm and soft. She deserved every last bit of him. With renewed confidence, Elliot slapped his cock into her at pace. Over and over. Again and again. Until the edges of his vision were white and his every breath was a keening shout of joy.
“Yes! Yes! Yesss!” he cried. “Cynthia, yes! Y-Y-Y-…!”
He fell against her, looming over her and sliding deep inside her, and he came. Elliot’s whole body shook as he disgorged his arcane ingredient into Cynthia’s waiting crucible.
“O-O-Ohhh! Yes!” Cynthia cried out as she was assailed by her own orgasm. Her massive chest heaved, her lips contorted and her knees gripped Elliot’s waist tight. Her head fell back and her eyes closed. “Yesssss!”
The circular pattern on the stone altar began to glow. Elliot’s dazed mind watched the pinkish light swirl and dance. Honeyed flame lit up Cynthia’s ungloved hand too.
Then she snapped her eyes open and fixed him with her full attention. She was scowling, and her eyes were burning bright with anima. When she spoke, her voice echoed against the edges of physical reality.
“Soul of humanity, grant the eyes that pierce the veil of eternity!!”
Cynthia slammed her burning hand onto Elliot’s forehead, and he screamed in shock as his soul exploded out of his body.
* * *
When Elliot opened his eyes, he was in a realm of white smoke. Physicality shifted and swirled around him, dancing in a formless wind. He looked down at himself, and he saw that he shared this realm’s inconsistency. His hands were wispy, letting the light beyond through to his eyes, and his legs ended in ghostly tendrils rather than the feet he was familiar with. He tried to take a breath, but he didn’t have any lungs, and there wasn’t any air.
This wouldn’t do. Elliot pulled himself together. He recalled his own shape and the myriad days of his own life. He recalled his friends, both human and not. He recalled the way they looked at him, smiled for him…
I am Elliot, he spoke into the cosmos. I am Elliot…
He blinked, transformed. Two legs, two arms; a definite start and stop of him. Much better. Elliot adjusted the collar of his jacket and kicked the toes of his boots on the smoky floor, producing a series of hollow thuds. He touched at his hair, his arms, his hands and fingers. All just as he remembered them.
One issue solved, he looked around himself. This wasn’t what he’d expected. Had Cynthia meant to send him here?
“Hello?” he called into the ether. “Is anyone there?”
At first, there was nothing. The stillness persisted long enough that Elliot started to worry. He’d never met Cytonia the witch before. He couldn’t have said if she was in truth a pretty young woman, not the old crone of his imaginings. A woman in need of meat to fuel her awful rituals, perhaps, and all too willing to prey upon the ignorant, love-struck Elliot.
But he pushed that suspicion down. Cynthia’s eyes, her smile, had seemed genuine. He wanted to trust her. It was too late to take back his actions anyway, so he might as well embrace his situation.
As if the cosmos was rewarding his trust, a hazy figure stepped through the fog. It had one hand raised to push against the smoke. It was just a hair taller than Elliot, and seeing the figure made Elliot’s heart thud.
Eli squinted at him through hazel eyes. Elliot hadn’t expected his father to match the painting hanging in the Castle corridor, since that had been commissioned before Elliot’s birth and Eli’s degradation. Still, it was a surprise to see Eli with grey in his beard and hair, and with wrinkles framing his eyes. He also wasn’t wearing his ambassadorial uniform, just a tunic of tan cotton, workman’s trousers and practical indoor shoes.
“Hello?” said Elliot’s father with a deep, kindly voice. “Who’s this?”
Elliot sighed. His fragile heart, all the more fragile in this realm beyond the material, shivered in his chest. “Father,” he said, “it’s Elliot.”
Eli came to a stop three paces from his son. He stared. “Elliot?” Then he looked about himself. “Oh. I’m dead.”
“I’m afraid so. Sorry.”
“No, that’s fine. It was due to happen eventually.” Eli smirked, raising a closed fist to his lips. “I keep thinking I should cough, but I don’t think I have to here. Is that how I died? The lung thing?”
“That’s right.”
“How boring.” Eli laughed. He stood tall for an older man, and his eyes shone as they regarded Elliot. “Can I hug you?”
The question made the act awkward, but Elliot approached with arms outstretched, and Eli met him with a tight embrace. The wispy nature of this zone between life and death didn’t prevent the two men from hugging one another tight.
“It’s so good to see you,” said Eli into Elliot’s shoulder. “And fully grown too. I remember you as such a little thing, but you’ve become quite a man. Unless… are you dead too?”
“No,” Elliot assured him. “Just borrowing some magic to talk to you.”
“Ah, good. How does that work?”
“That’s quite a story, and not part of what I wanted to ask you,” Elliot said, looking away.
“Uh-huh, alright. Keep your arcane secrets.” Eli laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. “You want to know what happens after death? I don’t really have an answer for you if so. I can barely remember the last days of my own life.”
Elliot shook his head. He held his heart in its shape with effort. “I wanted to ask… about my mother.”
Eli didn’t respond right away. He drew a needless breath through his nose, nodding slowly. “Of course you do,” he whispered.
“I know so little about her,” said a self-conscious Elliot. “Nobody seems to know anything. I even asked Princess Miriham, but she didn’t have a clue.”
The man’s eyes sparkled. “You’ve spoken to Miriham? Is she well?”
“Very well. She misses you. Honestly, I thought for a while that she was my mother.”
Eli grinned. To Elliot’s stark relief, his father didn’t laugh like Miriham had. “I wish I found that idea less plausible. I understand humans and non-humans can’t reproduce, but I do love Miriham. I would have enjoyed…”
He looked wistfully into the distance, but his smile faltered. “Hold on. You didn’t ask Miriham directly if she was your mum, did you?”
Elliot swallowed. “I might have.”
“Elliot,” said Eli, grabbing his shoulders, “you didn’t ask that in front of her father, did you?”
“N-No! No, not at all. At least, I don’t think so. He’s-…”
“More an idea than a man, yes, I know.” Eli sighed with relief. “Hard to say what he’s aware of. But he’s also easily distracted. If the forest didn’t tremble with his ire, then I reckon we’re safe. Thank the Almighty.” He laughed again, a merry sound. “I might be beyond consequence now, but I’d hate for Miriham to get in trouble because I made you go asking strange questions!”
Eli’s eyes reflected past victories, of days spent in the company of a lovely elven princess. Elliot put his hands on the man’s arms to draw him back.
“My mother, then?”
“Ah, right. Yes. Elliot, do you have to know any of this?”
Elliot frowned. “Do I… have to? I’d like to. Is that not enough?”
“You have a right, son, of course you do,” said Eli with a sad smile. “Your mother… was a very private woman. Very private. She… feared other people, is the best way I can say it. Lost much of her ability to speak, she was that afraid of us. She may be gone now, to wherever it is I went off to, but she wouldn’t want anyone else knowing about her. Especially now, I think, since we’ve just proven that life extends beyond death. She might be listening.”
His grin was coy, a fond smile for a loved one. But Elliot tightened his grip on Eli’s arms.
“I want to know,” he said. “I want to know about the woman who gave me life. I won’t tell another soul if that’s the price, but I… I want to know, Father. It’s keeping me up at night.”
Eli’s searching eyes moved between his. The smile he wore was warm. “Well then, she wouldn’t want that. She had been looking forward to meeting you. You’re right. Let’s have it out.”
Eli closed his eyes. Around them, the misty realm shivered, then flowed. Green grass, thick and rampant, below their feet. A grey-blue sky hanging over their heads. The unmistakable bark of Ilvarith pine. And at Eli’s back, a stone cottage.
“It was right after I’d seen Miriham off to that prayer retreat her people like to do,” Eli explained with eyes still shut. “I obviously didn’t know then that I’d seen her for the last time, but something was on my mind. I got lost in the woods. When I heard a crying voice, I followed it. And I found her.”
Elliot glanced to the side when a blurred shape burst from the phantom undergrowth. Eli’s impression of himself was a dark shadow, moving with steps like he was running through treacle. Elliot’s father pushed his way through the cottage’s door, ducking beneath the lintel and disappearing from sight.
“Your mother was an… apprentice, I think is the best word, to an elven sorceress living out her final days in the depths of Ilvarith. I hear elves do that when they get old and weird. They grow unpopular in the city, then they go hermitic. I never met Yvain for myself to confirm, since she’d just passed when I showed up.”
The day above shifted into grim night. Shadow-Eli was digging a grave beside the cottage’s little garden.
“Your mother was distraught. She’d known Yvain for decades, ever since she’d gotten lost in the forest as a child. That elf had been more a mother to her than any of her own family. She didn’t trust me right away, but it felt wrong to leave her by herself. After a few days camped outside her home, I returned to Layman to settle some work and gather supplies. Then I came right back.”
Shadow-Eli was stirring a pot of stew over a simple fire. The flame’s light matched the orange burn of a powerful sunset. He lifted his head from his work and silently called something into the house. Then he waved, but Elliot couldn’t see anyone else in the scene.
“She came to trust me only slowly,” said Eli with a smile on his lips. “She had a voice, but she barely ever used it. She didn’t speak to me save for two very special times, but we found ways to communicate. I loved the time I spent with her. I did a lot of cooking, more than any other time in my life. I chopped wood like a proper woodsman, I foraged for food in the forest. And I was closer to Ilvarith than when I was in the Castle, so I could still get some work done every now and then. Even so, being with her felt like a long, long rest. I…”
He swallowed. The dream wavered. Night fell across the cottage.
“You were born, I dunno, four years after I first met her?” Eli continued with effort. “I didn’t know what I was doing with the birth, but she looked… so excited… Moreso than I’d ever seen before. I had to… to…”
He breathed out. Elliot felt air against his cheeks.
“I had to say goodbye,” Eli whispered.
He opened his eyes. Eli’s dream faded back into mist without the man ever having seen it. Witnessing Elliot’s wide eyes, he put a fragile smile onto his lips.
“Then I brought you home to Layman, retired as ambassador, looked after you in the Castle as best I could, and then I guess I died,” he said. “That’s the story.”
Elliot took a step back. His mind was whirling, and he could feel a resonant whirl in the smoke beneath his feet. But in the end, Eli’s story hadn’t been much with which to paint a picture of his parentage.
“S-So,” he tried, “Mother was a… a sorceress?”
“Um, I don’t know if I’d call her that,” Eli replied with a twist of his lip.
“But she apprenticed under one.”
“She apprenticed under a hermit. Her apprenticeship was in hermitic living. Forest stewardship and the like. I never saw her do magic.”
“And she was…” He felt stupid having to ask, but he pushed through. “She was human?”
Eli nodded. “I don’t think you’d’ve been born if she wasn’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“I suppose she could have been a forest spirit or something, but again, I never saw evidence of that. She told me she was born in Layman, what would one day be called Low Town, and she died of something very natural. I’m convinced she was human. Elliot, what’s this about?” he asked, brow curving into a frown. “Why’s it so important to you that she was something else?”
Elliot licked his lips and ran a hand through his hair. “I could have sworn I wasn’t fully human,” he growled. The words sounded foolish, but they were all he had. “I was… so sure. I don’t get on with the people in the Castle, but I do connect with the kin of humanity in the Low Town. They’ve said things about me being…”
Special? How arrogant. Elliot gritted his teeth.
“You’re getting caught up in yourself,” said Eli, taking his shoulders. Had he just grown taller, or Elliot shorter? “Take a breath, son.”
That wouldn’t help him here. Elliot shook his head, then pointed at his face, the teal gemstone irises he’d assumed were elven. “What about my eyes?”
“Your eyes? Ah, they’re quite something,” laughed Eli. “But they’re not magic, are they?”
“My mother’s eyes weren’t like this?”
Infuriatingly, Eli grinned. “I’ve actually heard that eye colour isn’t passed down to children. It’s random.”
The word cut him like a knife. Random. A fluke.
“As for the other stuff, it’s great to hear that you have a rapport with the non-humans of Layman. I reckon they sense something in you that makes them trust you. It needn’t be magical. It could just be who you are or what you’ve lived through. Again, I could be wrong,” said Eli with a grand shrug. “Maybe you being born in Ilvarith did something to shift you away from humanity. But I’d rather believe who I am is something I’ve cultivated on my own, you know? Rather than something I was born with. I do see some of your mother in you, and I’m thrilled by that. But there’s a lot in there that isn’t either of us. That’s the stuff I’m more excited to see, and I know she’d agree. That’s the stuff you built for yourself. You’re uniquely you, Elliot, because of your own effort. Why not take a little pride in that?”
Elliot turned away. It couldn’t be that simple. Uniquely him? How could Eli say that, when he didn’t know his son at all? When Elliot didn’t know himself at all?
He thought of Layman, the city he called home. He thought of Lantern embracing him in the new office, her whispered promise of new municipal ventures together. He thought of Sycamore sharing her values with him, of nature and industry mirroring one another. Pippa and Roan, taking him under their wings as their queen had taken Thaddeus.
He thought of hungry fangs and mesmerised eyes, a complement of his taste again and again. He thought of rosy smiles and greedy touches. Teasing barbs and lustful gasps.
That wasn’t Elliot. It had to have been someone else, someone his father had known and then kept secret. He had to be someone else. He just couldn’t figure out who.
“Uh, son?” Eli had gone a shade of red. “You should know, there’s some queer visions playing out in the smoke around us.”
Elliot shot a look at their surroundings. A scene that looked a little like Mag’s attic nest-room was just fading from view. He hissed out an embarrassed breath.
“Elliot,” said Eli with a wry smirk, “how did you make this meeting happen again?”
“J-Just… magic,” he replied with a dismissive wave of one hand.
“Uh-huh? That’s interesting.” Eli laughed. “That’s neither me nor your mother, that magic of yours. Good for you. Is the girl helping you nice?”
He nodded bashfully. “She’s very nice.”
“Fantastic.”
The laughter grew. Eventually, Elliot found himself joining in. It was pretty fantastic.
And he had himself to thank for that? He could maybe, possibly, learn to accept that. Perhaps even celebrate it, in time.
“I should get back to the land of the dead, or whatever,” said Eli with another slap on his shoulder. “Elliot, I shall treasure this meeting for as long as I have the capacity to do so. I hope it’s helped you too.”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’ll have to think about it. Thanks, Father.”
He fixed his perfectly normal, entirely random eyes on Eli. “Thank you. For all you did.”
“I didn’t do that much,” said Eli. He was already vanishing at the edges of himself. “I just did what made sense at the time. Take care of yourself, Elliot. Get your lungs checked every now and then, okay?”
He pulled back. The mist swallowed him up, but his bright smile remained. Elliot raised one hand in a wave.
“Oh, can I ask?” he called into the ether. “What was mother’s name?”
Eli was almost gone from sight. Even so, his smiling lips curved around the shape of a name. Elliot committed it to memory, a fitting label for the woman now residing ghost-like in his mind.
“Thanks,” he said. Then the smoke swallowed him too.
* * *
Elliot came to with a great gasp for air. His limbs were shaking, and his skin was slick with sweat. His vision was blurred, chest pumping hard.
Cynthia’s inked hand slipped from his forehead and ran down his face. Her fingers curled between his lips before falling to the stone altar, and she fell back upon it in turn, her bare chest heaving.
“Oh… goodness…” she breathed. “Did… Did that work?”
“I think so,” Elliot croaked. Then, more surely, “Yes. I saw my father.”
“Good. I’m glad. I’m… glad.”
Cynthia began to giggle, and Elliot joined her. The poor girl’s skin was stained with sweat and semen, and Elliot’s hands had left red marks on her thick thighs. But her laughter was joyous, and her smile was sweet.
Elliot pulled his cock free of her and tucked it clumsily back into his trousers. Then he reached for Cynthia’s hand, helping her back up to a seat. Cynthia smoothed her black skirt over her knees, then gripped her dress collar where it hung from her elbows. But with another smiling look at Elliot, she decided not to cover herself. Even exhausted and dazed as he was, Elliot was grateful.
“So,” she said, kicking her legs and bumping his knees with her toes, “do you have any other deceased relatives you would like to contact?”
“No,” he answered at once. His mother didn’t want to be disturbed, Eli had said, and he intended to honour that.
“Oh.” Cynthia tipped her head to the side with a little pout.
“Sorry. I guess the next time we have sex will have to be just for us. I do still owe you for your services,” he said with a wide smile.
She beamed in return. “How about you take me out to dinner here in the Low Town? I’d like to know my way around if I’m going to call this place my home.”
Elliot blinked. “You’re moving to the Low Town?”
“If they’ll have me. I have to emerge from my mother’s shadow sooner or later. And with Aunt Cytonia gone, there may be folk here seeking to connect with forces beyond the veil. Better an educated medium like myself supports them with that, rather than someone of questionable morality like my aunt. Moving here worked out for you, did it not?”
He grinned. After a year of helping people cross the wall and make a life in the city, it was refreshing to find someone coming in the other direction. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” he said.
Cynthia stretched out a foot and hooked it around his thigh. “Good,” she said. “You can tell me more about the legendary Elliot of Layman. I would love to hear it.”
The telling of that tale would take some time. However unremarkable the circumstances of his birth, Elliot was a unique individual, the product of twenty years of experience. Some of that, a lot of it even, was rather dull. He was just a regular, run of the mill man, after all. A lay-man, you could say.
But the last twelve months of being him had been rather exciting.
He could tell Cynthia about the legacy of his father, the First Ambassador to the Elves. He could talk about Madam Lantern and the other denizens of the Low Town, their dreams for the future. He could talk about Ilvarith, the city of elves.
Yes, he was rather looking forward to it.
Something in his smile made Cynthia blush brightly, and she looked away with a silly giggle. Cute. Elliot let his pride have its time in the sun.
laymenstory
Ewan Stone 
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