Loreheart

Was featured on the front page 7/21/20

This night couldn't have been better, thought a young skydancer. There wasn't a single breeze in the air, nor cloud in the sky. Stars twinkled over the lavish party celebrating spring's arrival in Sornieth. The screeches of the Shrieking Wilds were distant to the chatter of gathering dragons. Lanterns strung across the humongous treetop ballroom gave off an incandescent glow.

The skydancer smiled. This party was going to be fun.

He spotted him, a colorful wildclaw. They talked once before on the day before the party. What was his name, ****? Peter? Pinecone? It was something that began with the letter "P," but whatever. Not that it mattered, anyway. He would find out when they talked again. On his way to the wildclaw, a large coatl stopped him in his path.

"Would you like a drink?" she asked.

"I appreciate it, but I'd rather not—"

She pipped off her list of beverages. "We have sparkling cider, berry juice, watermelon punch..."

The waitress could not compete with his growing anxiety as he watched the wildclaw merge with the crowd. He looked her straight in the eye, and with a chill in his voice, said, "Thank you, but I will have to decline."

She froze, taken aback while the skydancer stepped past her. He scanned the crowd, searching desperately for his target. Right in the corner of his eye, he caught the sight of a bright blue tail waving in the air. He made his way through the multitude of dragons, ignoring upset complaints from the bodies he bumped into. He found the wildclaw, who had just finished delivering a joke to his friends. They reacted with uproarious laughter that visibly irritated the skydancer.

"Excuse me?"

The wildclaw's eyes lit up. He wrapped an arm around the green dragon's neck and pulled him to his side. "Hey, I didn't expect to see you here!"

"Pinesong, who is this?" A bulky Guardian loomed over them. According to the records, Pinesong was his Charge. The wildclaw could not have found a better bodyguard.

Pinesong released the skydancer from his grasp. A good thing for him because Pinesong was already getting on his nerves. "This is Beryl. We just met yesterday!"

Beryl wasn't his real name, but it had been for the past week. His eyes found Pinesong's cup in one hand, which would make things easier for Beryl. Now he needed to draw Pinesong and his friends' attention away to something else. Especially the Guardian; that giant's glare alone could pierce through his hide.

"It's nice to see you again. Say, do you know what song is playing right now?" Beryl asked. Off to the side, a chamber group performed on an elevated platform. The current song was slow and legato, yet there were no rest notes for any musician to stop at.

"Nope, no clue. Why?"

He pointed Pinesong in the direction of the chamber group. "It's called 'The Stream', and it was composed by a harpy. Some say the song is so old"—he took out a small, purple vial from his overcoat—"that it was first played in a time before dragonkind." He uncorked the vial and poured its contents into Pinesong's drink, then slipped it back inside his coat.

"Wow, I never would've guessed." Beryl smiled as Pinesong downed the rest of his drink. "It's awfully pretty for a harpy!"

The song ended. The air was quieter for a brief period before the next song began. "Well, I best be going now. So long!" Beryl waved goodbye before making his way to the buffet table.

While he was in the midst of gorging some escargots, several party-goers screamed. Beryl rushed to investigate the commotion and saw Pinesong at the center of it. The wildclaw was lying on the ground, desperately scrapping his claws across the floor. His breathing had into harsh wheezing. Soon, his head dropped to the ground, and his body stilled. Dragons with medical knowledge pushed through the crowd and inspected him.

"Is he dead? I can't feel his pulse!" one of them cried.

A second one sniffed Pinesong's snout. "He's dead alright, I smell poison in his mouth. Get the guards!"

At the sign of murder, the ballroom erupted into a cacophony of screaming dragons. Most flew away, while the land-bound booked for the exit. Footsteps thundered across the floor while flapping wings shook the treetops. Beryl stood basking in the glorious chaos until someone shouted at him.

"The skydancer, it was him!" Beryl turned his head to find Pinesong's guardian. Beside him stood a dozen armored guards, and Beryl knew more would be coming soon. At the thought of having to actually fight, he sighed in disappointment.

The opposing side fired their magical projectiles. Three green lanterns manifested on either side of Beryl, flying in front of him to create the six points of a large, hexagonal forcefield. The magic bolts ricocheted off his barrier.

"And here I thought I could get away without conflict tonight," he muttered. At his command, vines broke through the floor and shot from the trees around him toward his enemies.

~ ~ ~

A single soul strode across the ballroom, now a graveyard strewn with corpses. The light green skydancer everyone tried to stop remained the last one standing without a bruise to even show for it. He weaved around crimson pools of blood. The thought of even touching the blood-splattered floor made him grimace. He may have been an assassin, but he still liked to stay clean.

On his way out, he frowned upon reaching a familiar guardian's body. The vines that chocked him to death were still tightly wound around his neck.

"This is all your fault," he sneered.

He moved on. When he reached Pinesong's corpse, he stopped and pulled out a dagger. After contributing to the bloody mess one last time, he sealed Pinesong's tail in a waterproof bag and pocketed it in his satchel before making his way to the exit.

His disguise wore off, revealing a white body with green, butterfly-pattern wings. Green stripes clung around his neck, back, and part of his tail. He took out a piece of paper from his coat. It contained the notes detailing his mission.


Target: Pinesong

Height: 4.4m
Wingspan: 7.6m
Male Wildclaw. Shiny, iridescent blue body and magenta wings. Leader of an organization dedicated to protecting endangered and sacred species in the Viridian Labyrinth.

Client has a lodging company that wants to harvest wood from the Behemoth, but the tree is sacred to Gladekeeper worshippers. Pinesong's organization is an important line of defense. Eliminating him will allow client's company to harvest wood from the Behemoth and profit off of its believed medicinal properties.

Bring back head tail for proof.


That last part he crossed out himself.

He shoved it back inside his coat pocket. All he had to do now was meet with his client one more time, and he could finally shed the name Beryl. The skydancer wondered would titles would be in stock at the bookstore tomorrow morning as he sauntered into the cover of jungle foliage.





Loreheart is not his real name. Every mission during his career as an freelance assassin constituted of nothing but fake aliases. By the time his career was over, he could hardly recall the first letter of his birth name, which was either J or L.

Before retirement, he lived in the Shrieking Wilds. Unlike other skydancers, who were usually social by nature, he preferred a solitary lifestyle. He built a tree house within the seclusion of the jungle's thick foliage. He was completely self-sufficient, and only left his property to either do this job, or buy new books, which were the only things he his money on. Since reading is his only hobby, he amassed so many books that he ran out of shelf space. He began piling them in stacks, but even those grew out of control, and space in his house grew increasingly tight.

He always disguised himself whenever he went out for leisure or for work. His magic cloaked him with a different appearance every time. On his final job, he was hit with an magic-negating spell that tore away this disguise and revealed his true appearance. Out of fear, he finished the job in record time, but with his cover blown, he believed a target had been placed on his head, and he was no longer safe in the Viridian Labyrinth. At last, it was time for him to retire. He took as many of his books as he could, tore down his treehouse, and flew far away from Nature's territory. To this day, he still doesn't know what frustrates him more: the fact that his carelessness ruined his career, or that he lost his priceless collection of books.

Though he would have loved to, heading to the flight of knowledge, Light, wasn't an option because it was too close to nature's territory for him to be comfortable. He went with Arcane, his second option, because the Tourmaline Archives seemed exactly what he was looking for.

When he was halfway across the Starfall Isles, a grey coatl in scuffed up ivory robes approached him. The coatl introduced himself as Luceat, head librarian of the clan Rêves Infinis, and due to his curse of misfortune, he had lost his way home. With Loreheart's map, they found a route back to Luceat's clan. The coatl offered Loreheart a place for him to stay for the night as thanks. Little did either of them know, the room that Loreheart stayed in would become permanent.

After visiting the clan's massive library, he found himself unwilling to leave. The magic-infused tea they served also tasted better than any drink he had before. However, what led him to stay in the clan was when he inquired Luceat about the Tourmaline Archives.

"Oh, you don't want to go there," Luceat answered. "They don't tell you this, but a lot of books will give non-arcane dragons nasty curses just for opening them. And there's no way of differentiating those from the safe ones."

Loreheart quite enjoyed not being cursed and decided visiting the archives was not worth it. With the clan leader's permission, he became an assistant librarian at the clan of Infinite Dreams.

xxx

xxxx