[EP:01] Svetlodyn (Valdricht POV | Night I | Bound Mode)

Here is the first of many alternate POV scenes, this one from Valdricht. Subsequent scenes will alternate POV from Valdricht & Serax in linear fashion, though I may shift modes between Bound/Unbound modes. I’d also like for players to submit their character profile screenshots. In the order they’re received, I’ll insert player characters into the scenes, including your character’s physical description and name. If you’re uncomfortable submitting them here, you can submit them anonymously on the blog. Feel free to add any tidbits you've imagined that make your character unique and I'll accommodate them as I'm able.

This scene takes place in the Zealot route, if the MC chooses to flee from the sithrak in Kalat. Valdricht's POV is largely the same regardless of the mode, route, and the MC's choices in this scene. It is written for the canonical MC, Amilia. There is light NSFW content, so don’t read at work unless you get a thrill out of the possibility a coworker might see you reading the word cock.

★★★

Svetlodyn.

The solitary trail isn’t svetlodyn.

It is not a flower blossoming in Ergalt.

Nor a hurricane in the desert.

Nor a fire on the open sea.

Svetlodyn is when the gods intercede, making the impossible merely the improbable. It is the divine hand that hurls a lure into the mortal realm, waiting for a fool to—

‘Just one? That’s unusual. Look how far its trail goes. Why is it headed that way? Nothing to eat down that way for days. They don’t usually head this far south so early in the winter.’

Valdricht holds up a hand, and then wonders why he bothers. As always, it does nothing to stem the stream of consciousness that flows into his mind.

“You are standing beside me,” he reminds Serax.

His progeny glances over at him, shrugs, and then asks, “What are you thinking? Should we go after it? It can’t have gone too far.” He turns in a circle. “Where are we, anyway? I thought we were three nights out from Thyrmgard, no?”

“We are north of the ruins of Kalat.”

Serax rubs at the back of his neck. “Ah. Well, definitely nothing down there to eat.”

“You already said that,” Valdricht points out, turning his attention back to the trail.

The twin gullies in the snow span the length of the valley, stretching north to south for as far as Valdricht can see. The uneven path would speak of a sithrak’s shambling gait, even if it hadn’t left behind wisps of its sulphuric scent.

Sithrak never travel alone. It’s a fact that anyone brazen enough to hunt them knows well. Some make the mistake of believing them to be pack creatures, but Valdricht knows better.
Their minds most resemble those of a darksinger coven. Yet rather than a network of interconnected minds, the sithrak’s network is the mind. Each body is little more than a tether for the web, devoid of individual thought or agency. A sithrak pod is like a hand, each creature moving in tandem to achieve a task, and each pod part of a broader—

‘Maybe its pod was killed,’ says Serax. He’s back in Valdricht’s mind, his message carrying the subdued blues of skepticism, threaded with the sickly yellows of wariness.

“It wouldn’t have survived this long,” Valdricht says, making a point to speak aloud. “There must be some sort of strain on the pod. A missing resource that necessitated it venturing out alone.”

‘Could be looking for a female.’

Valdricht’s upper lip curls. Few things are capable of rousing his disgust quite like the barbaric mating practices of sithrak.

“If he caught the scent of a female, the others would know.”

‘True. What do you want to do?’

It’s early in the winter. Come midwinter, there will be plenty of time to hunt sithrak by the dozens. Assuming he even cares to do so this year. There’s no reason for them to go out of their way to track down a lone sithrak.

Svetlodyn.

The word remains lodged in the forefront of his mind. It masquerades as a thought, but he knows better. The voice that whispers it is not his, and yet it belongs to him. His mother called it aevyrvenaeth. The part of his consciousness that sings from the realm of the divine. In his younger years, he likened it to a twin. At times, he could even see it peering out at him through his reflection.

It pushed his head out of the path of his elder brother’s blows and stalled his hand as he lifted a chalice tainted with poison. It taught him the language of his father before his tongue could form words, and later held that same tongue when his impulsive nature drove him to say something that might inflame Adonir's wrath.

Long gone were the days in which he could sit for hours conversing with his higher self on the nature of men and the wisdom of ages. For decades, Valdricht had drowned the voice out, choosing instead to submit to the will of his sire and the lust of blood. When the fog of materialism and carnal desires had finally lifted, the voice had been reduced to a whisper, carried on the wind across a chasm of cynicism. When he looked in the mirror, Valdricht saw only his own tired eyes and the hollow shell where divinity had long-since been salted.

Svetlodyn.

He considers ignoring it. It would hardly be the first time. In fact, he’s been ignoring it since he woke on the first night of winter with the long-dormant aevyrvenaeth buzzing in his mind.

“It will not have gotten far,” Valdricht hears himself say. “We lose little by investigating. Come.”

He turns and trudges back toward the drivagn.

Serax’s words are the color of bile, belying his neutral song. ‘We’re already a night behind schedule. Damn summer lingers longer each year. I’d like to get to Thyrmgard sooner rather than later. I’m overdue for a—’

Valdricht clamps the pathway between his mind and that of his progeny, exhaling at once as glorious silence fills his inner sanctum. He manages to draw in a breath before Serax catches up to him.

“—a laugheim, even a tepid one with clove water will do. If we only follow the trail for an hour, we should still be on course to arrive at Thyrmgard before the week is out. Any more than that and we’ll lose a night, no? We’re practically going in the opposite direction. Actually, now that I think of it, the sithrak might have been chasing the reindeer. They migrate to—”

Without warning, Valdricht slips.

Suddenly, it isn’t Serax walking alongside him, but Nefuri.

Valdricht hardly misses a step. A century ago, the slips were a rare and jarring occurrence. Now, they happen every day.

“Snow deer!” Nefuri’s violet eyes are wide. She jabs a finger at the horizon, urging him to look. “Have you ever seen so many, master?”

He knows better than to answer her, and he doesn’t look away from her. Instead, he drinks her in. The slant of her eyes and the unruly wisps of her pale hair. The lilac tone of her skin and how it flushes to orchid along the bridge of her delicate nose. The way she nips at her plump bottom lip before murmuring, “I wonder what they taste like.”

Valdricht blinks, and Nefuri is gone.

Serax walks beside him, staring at him with his lips pressed in a grim line.

He doesn’t ask anymore. In their early days, a slip of mere seconds would send Serax into a panic. It was one thing to clamp their connection closed, quite another for their mental connection to vanish entirely.

Serax remains quiet as they climb onto the drivagn. Valdricht directs a mental push at Kerach. The tanulf grunts and rises from his slumber. He shakes snow from his shaggy fur and then pulls them into a wide turn, heading southbound.

Valdricht turns his gaze to the sky. The stars are bright behind the waning moon. The next slip is gradual. He watches as the constellations reform. The air warms, and then turns humid and scented with magnolias. He’s on the balcony of his mother’s bedchamber. Her hand rests on his shoulder as she traces the patterns in the sky and tells him stories of other suns and foreign skies.

As with Nefuri, he makes no effort to communicate with her. The pattern of this night, this conversation, it was set two thousand years ago. His mother, the palace, the dogs barking in the gardens below, they’re nothing but dust. Silt dredged up by the tremors of an ancient, dying mind.

He lingers with her for a while, and when he returns, Serax’s head rests on his shoulder. Valdricht resists the urge to comfort him, but doesn't push him away.

Despite his earlier complaining, Serax doesn’t protest as the moonday passes them by. It’s late in the day when the tanulf begins to slow, his irritation a crackle of sunset across Valdricht’s mind. Sometimes he thinks the sithrak frighten Kerach more than he does. He gives the beast another mental push, urging him forward as they ascend a high slope.

Serax lifts his head as they come to a stop at the peak overlooking the ruins. Valdricht makes a point of keeping their link tightly clamped as Serax climbs down from the drivagn. Serax unstraps his bow and pulls an arrow from his quiver.

“Should we check for more trails?” he asks quietly.

Valdricht takes in the slope as he climbs down. Only the single trail mars the snow. The scent of the sithrak is thick in the air. Down below, its trail winds through the frost-covered ruins of the ill-fated village. Whatever drew it to the south, it’s down below.

Svetlodyn.

“Tread carefully,” he tells Serax. “This feels wrong.”

Serax sighs. “It’s just one sithrak. And if it felt wrong, why did we even bother coming this way?”

Valdricht follows behind him as he heads down the slope. He moves his hand to the hilt of his sword, and then he slips.

He stops on the courtyard steps, his heart lurching at the sight of Adonir standing before him.

These are the slips that make him glad his life is nearing its end. Soon, his soul will sink into Yndral, the divine waters purging the final traces of this abomination from the world.

Adonir regards him with an arched brow.

Valdricht's maker is beauty personified.

A god in perfect symmetry.

His every movement is the fulfillment of a prophecy.

Each word from his finely wrought lips is a divine proclamation.

Celestial eyes move from the hilt of Valdricht’s sword, up to meet his gaze. “Did you come here to kill me?”

He gives Valdricht a radiant smile as he lifts his chin. “Go on, then. Swing hard. Make it a clean strike. Oh, do not look at me like that. I will not stop you. Here.”

Adonir laces his hands behind his back.

“You are going to do it this time, na’unsyn. I can taste my death in the air.”

Valdricht closes his eyes, inhaling and exhaling until the cold darkness returns. When his eyes open, the present moment comes crashing back in. Serax is running, his bow drawn taut. His shout reverberates across Valdricht’s mind.

‘A woman! It’s hunting a woman!’

Valdricht surges forward, galvanized before reason can dictate why.

The sithrak crests a slope of snow and begins its descent. Detached from its pod and fixated on a female, it’s oblivious to its impending demise. Valdricht passes Serax just as the younger man’s first arrow is lodged into the sithrak’s skull. Two more arrows find their target, and the creature slumps over, its large, ungainly body falling atop the slight figure of a female.

A shudder runs through him as a new scent enters his nose. At the same time, Serax’s emotions jolt through him. He clamps the link, stemming the flow of Serax’s confusion and anticipation as he approaches the fallen creature.

Kicking the sithrak aside is easy. Making sense of what is beneath is not.

Huddled in the snow is a woman, slight of build, with golden skin and silver hair. There isn’t a stitch of clothing on her. She moans and trembles as she’s exposed to the frigid air.

Valdricht kneels at once, pulling her into his arms before he can think better of it. He pulls his cape from his back to wrap it around her shaking body. Eyes squeezed shut, she rubs her head into his chest and whimpers.

He knows what she is, but it doesn’t make sense.

Svetlodyn.

“What are you doing here, little darksinger?”

When he speaks to her, her eyes crack open. They’re the color of the summer sea and flecked with undercurrents that threaten to drag him down.

Her lips, plump, bowed, and turned blue from the cold, part as she attempts to speak. He can’t make sense of what she says, but he knows that her body’s spasms aren’t mere shivers.

She’s newly made. Her eyes, lovely though they are, still possess the muted tones of a body not yet sated by her master’s ichor.

“Do you thirst?”

He knows the answer, but he speaks anyway, needing to feel the words pass through the thickness in his throat. She watches, suddenly attentive as he brings his wrist to his fangs and bites down. Her lack of a response at the sight of his blood only solidifies his suspicion.

This will be her first feed.

Were he a merciful man, he’d hand her off to Serax. While his blood runs thick in the veins of his progeny, it is tainted with Serax’s own, humble ancestry. Valdricht is reminded of that each time he sinks his fangs into Serax’s neck, seeking the blood of gods and tasting only their bathwater.

It isn’t cruelty, but selfishness that has him bringing his wrist to her lips. He watches, entranced, as confusion clouds her gaze. His awareness flares as her lips part, and in that moment he touches her mind.

It isn’t a full connection.

That isn’t his place.

Moreover, the last thing he wants is another juvenile darksinger, with all their roiling emotions, passions, and cravings having a bridge to his inner sanctum. It’s enough to simply brush his mind against hers.

He can feel the instant she tastes him. His awareness thrums with the distant rumblings of the cataclysm in her mind. Pleasure and desire ricochet through his body as she swallows him. With it, comes the unexpected.

His cock hardens.

It happens so quickly that he grunts at the sudden strain in his leathers. He’s about to chuckle at the bizarreness of his reaction when she bites down on his wrist. Her small fangs puncture his flesh, and it’s as if his cock is puncturing her flesh. He grits his teeth against the abrupt onslaught of lust and the compulsion to pin her down and bury himself within her.

“Slow down.” Valdricht says the words to himself as much as to her.

She draws in another mouthful. Sweat beads on his forehead.

“I said slow down.”

This time, he pushes against her will, locking her jaw. Taking control of her is easy, as it is with all newly made darksingers. What he doesn’t expect is how natural it feels. As if he had a map to the canals of her mind. He didn’t make her, and yet she feels like she belongs to him.

Before he can analyze that, he feels her anger flare. She growls, and then moans as she tries in vain to break free of his mental hold. It only makes him want her more, if such a thing were possible.

He doesn’t react, and after several seconds of his blood slowly trickling into her, she seems to resign herself to accepting what she can get.

Valdricht’s need isn’t so easily sated.

His thoughts skip ahead. He pictures bringing her back to the tent and laying her beside the fire. He imagines keeping his wrist to her mouth, allowing her to drink him in as his other hand untethers his pants, liberating his aching manhood. The feel of her soft skin beneath his hand as he draws up her bare thigh and positions himself between her legs. Of connecting with her as he plunges into the soft, tender passage, feeling himself enter her while feeling her experience his entry.

Just imagining it makes him want to come.

That, coupled with the sound of Serax stepping toward him, is enough to break Valdricht from his madness.

Or at least, one form of the madness. Another quickly takes its place. Lust flees, replaced by a rash of possessive fervor. His jaw clenches as he clutches the woman more tightly to himself.

Serax makes no effort to push into his mind, and for that, Valdricht is grateful. All it takes is one violent thought, one image of tearing his progeny’s head from his shoulders, to finally sober him.

He looks down at the female, regarding her with new eyes. There’s a smudge of ash on her forehead, and he focuses on the scents of sage and clove.

Svetlodyn.

The beautiful, naked darksinger who seems designed to pull at his every masculine impulse is svetlodyn. A light in the darkness, meant to draw him in. In the archives of his memories, he sees a thousand instances of svetlodyn. Of the old gods trying their damnedest to draw him into their conflicts and to coerce him to do their bidding.

He sees them all, and yet he doesn’t slip.

None of the memories hold any pull.

If anything, he’s inextricably rooted in the present.

Bound to the lovely demon suckling at his wrist.

★★★

Oh my goodness, there's so much in here I want to explain, but you'll actually start learning more about things like the mental connections of darksinger covens in Night VI, so I won't spoil that any further. Aevyrvenaeth is another important concept the MC will learn about later. Valdricht's slips will also be explained in a future episode, but essentially as he's gotten older he's been struggling to remain oriented in the present. Our MC will (hopefully) fix that.

As I've said before, I'm trying not to overwhelm readers with too much lore/worldbuilding upfront. We'll learn it little by little as the story progresses, so don't feel bad if there's something you don't understand yet.

The next episode will be from Serax's POV and will pick up right where this one left off. Little by little, we'll get inside their heads, learn what they're thinking, what they're talking about, and what they're doing while the MC isn't with them. Gah! So fun!!

I originally wrote A Dark Song (OG Bride of Shadows name) to be a 3 POV story, alternating between the MC, Valdricht, and Serax. Losing their POVs was the hardest part of writing an IF so this is awesome to be able to share these perspectives with patrons. Most won't be quite this long. This one took a few hours to write (almost 3,000 words!) and I don't want to take too much time from writing the IF, but I think it was important to really orient readers into the new POV.

-Mortish