"All war is deception."
Sun Tzu
-x-
"Its unacceptable."
The words were dooming in the sense that both the siblings knew what they did was wrong. An act of war, regardless the violence or lack thereof it would bring. As the two oldest Elders they had made the executive decision to let the Prims know of their life. Nora glanced to her brother, always in their primitive natures when before the council. So many of them had been witness to the turmoil brought over them by the ice and the fact that they could stand to reprimand them had Nora on edge with her passionate misunderstandings.
"It was the only thing to do. They would otherwise find us and slaughter us in our ill state. The bigger we make ourselves the more likely they are to back do-..."
Cut off by the motion of her older brother she just stared at him while his own gaze watched the other Elders intensely.
"With or without the numbers we have been people of peace for eons. If now is when they decided to bring war upon themselves then war it will be, though we don't ever know for sure that this was on purpose." His words were calming, his tone like whiskey. Always so aware of his surroundings and logical where Nora lacked. Finding it difficult not to roll her eyes in the back of her head she just watched them all with distaste.
"You say you two will travel?" The third Elder member stared between them. A gentleman younger than Nora on the council by blood, same as the other two. Five total council members leaving Nora and Derek outnumbered to vote.
"Yes, we will meet them where the dawn meets the night and the ice meets the land. Right down the center. We have only given them three days otherwise they forfeit the truth and war will be ensued." Her brother spoke with authority and while he was meant to sit at the head of the council he was too humble. It was usually Nora's word that was law, but never without Derek's consent. Where she was body he was mind and vise versa. Nothing in between.
"Fine. But if you aren't back in five moons we do this our own way."
The Elder's declaration was in place before dawn rose on the next day, Nora and Derek long on their journey as the orange and pink tinted skies painted even past the grey clouds. With every step they took the plains of Earth became larger and more full of life. Green spread over the black and dark, replacing light and warmth to the existing world.
As they crossed plains of rubble and parched lands they were shrunk to the size of pebbles, having to find their ways over canyons that once would have been mere cracks to them - unable to grow any larger than the trees around them. So when there were no trees, there was simply no height. Once across the cracked deserted land and into the woodlands they stretched to their full height and made their journey in easy time, coming to stand just before the line where the Prims would no doubt emerge in the falling snow.
The perfect separation of kinds.
Looking to one another the siblings shrunk to their mortal forms, even with the snow feet away the chill was uncomfortable, their usually bare bodies wrapping in moss and vines to keep them warm, pieces of tanned skin peering through. It was easy enough to build a fire with the logs produced from their powers, wildlife still curling up the long trunks of the willows, the water in the lake beginning to rise where there had sat nothing but death moments ago. The softest of breezes washed over the two of them and Nora created a rooted bench of oak for the both of them, leaning forth and staring into the sparks of flame.
"What's on your mind?"
Derek could tell when she was stuck in her emotions, trapped in her ongoing war against her heart. He had told everyone when she was going to leave before even she knew she would. He was every half of her she didn't like to admit she needed and yet still to be without him was impossible. Those 9 years of loving Henry had been difficult without him at her side, one of the loneliest stretches of life and yet all fulfilling.
"What do we do if this turns to war? What if they try and come for us across the line?" She spoke softly in case they lingered behind the soft flakes, Derek's lips pulling into a rare snide smile. He wasn't often a man of egotistical proportions but he was old enough to know that war was inevitable. They had trained their entire lives. Everyone thought them weak because they didn't spill blood over all their valuables like the Prims. That they didn't slaughter meaninglessly.
"Come now, Sister."
The words were simple but true and she gave him the faintest of smiles back, listening to the small noises of the logs before them burning and crackling. The warmth of the fire bringing her an inner peace - even if only momentarily. Soon they would come.
Soon everything would change.
-x-
Calla stopped her horse just a length behind Jax refusing to move another foot with the way that he was acting, if he was going to kill her then she was going to go out by her terms edged on by her tongue. His head whipped around the second her horse stopped and he reached out with his hand to grab her reigns, the hood of her freshly made and unwanted deer cloak fell off her hair letting the thick sheets of ice to start coating her skin and head. Though she had argued that it would be easier to travel in flurries Jax had been stubborn in the fact that he would go with what he deemed 'class.'
"Move or lose your head Calla." He sneered at her and she saw the hatred and fury rising in his gaze, she'd already pushed the famous temper that he carried within him. The council had voted against him completely in his suggestion that they go and meet their old enemies if they were truly back as the council had decreed. It was like Jax had switched everything that he normally was, where they wanted to let the war come to their door Jax had wanted to push the threat back but Calla knew the truth.
Whatever they wanted he was against.
"Cut off my head then, you've almost pushed my horse to death because you have something to prove to whoever wrote you this letter. Killed the poor deer and for what?" She hissed at him, if she had been walking she would have planted her ass in the snow and refused to move this way. He could tug and pull her horse with his more regal war horse but she'd just slide right off or try to attack him.
"Why can't you just do what you are told once? I brought you along instead of saying that you are a possible traitor so you'd be locked up in the jails...but you still want to fight and drag your stubborn heels in because why?"
The rage that he brought forth in her wanted to spill over and in that instant she just closed her mouth firmly shut and glared at him.
Jax watched her as she wouldn't even tell him why she was being a stubborn bitch to ever tell him that. Knowing that she would throw off any plans that he had to talk to the Dŭrvos before it even got time to talk to them. Trying to decide between killing her off or tying her to the back of his horse and gagging her to shut her up Jaxon decided on a new tactic with the whore he had taken as his bride to be. Giving her the most saccharine sweet smile Jaxon pulled her horse to be even with his own.
"You don't want to behave, you don't want to follow and despite being adamant about me killing you I propose this ironic since I never proposed marriage; you behave and go along with all of this until we are back at the castle? I'll set you free and you never have to see me informally again Calla."
Her blue eyes widened in shock and he could tell that he had her on his hook just dangling and wriggling. Time to drop her from it to the hungry mouths of whatever enemies he had would soon be within reach.
"Deal?"
Calla knew it was a trap, she knew there wasn't an honest or decent bone in her body but the logic in Calla's mind ceased the struggle that she gave him. In that instant she saw freedom and her wrist locked around his forearm giving him just as much of a toothy grin but hers was almost feral much like a direwolf.
"Deal."
Jax caught her smile from the corners of his whiskey brown eyes, the joy that he should have felt from gaining her 'trust' was dropped just like that. Jax knew the surroundings for miles around what should have been a divot and dead weeping trees was life; a lake, animal life breathing in the distance, and the sound of a crackling fire. He looked up and tilted his head to the side like one would ready for battle.
Yanking Calla off her horse and grabbing her by the upper arm he dragged her towards the unwanted beings on his land, knowing that he was coming in as anything other than a proper King there was not a single bone in his body that cared about what they thought of him and the possession that he had brought with him.
Swinging back his arm he dropped Calla to her feet just to where the line of grotesque green sprouted, her fingertips just edging past the frost and he saw pink start to creep up the digits. Proof enough that they were true Dŭrvos.
"And which one of you was the asshole who wrote me the note I was supposed to be quivering in fear from?"
It was in the instant that the howling winds across the way were chopped up that Derek brought his steel blue gaze from the fire and towards the line. In an instant Nora could feel it too, her body moving as his did to tuck just barely against the line of the willow to see what it was coming forth. Would it be the King and all his men? An army? Derek kept his arm extended before his sister as a guard to make sure she didn't dart.
But as they watched the girl in the white fur cloak hit the powdered snow, it was Derek who struggled to keep from moving forward. As if on cue a voice followed through the dusting frost and Derek's gaze narrowed, glinting like the owls they were told to be in mortal folklores. Mere stories to stop children from chopping down the trees of the forests near and far.
Little did the world know how true those stories were to become.
"I did." His voice was a deep grumble as he stepped forward, his bare chest moving in a roll of muscles before his sister stepped just behind him, both of them staring at the male. Derek was attentive of the woman on the ground and her state of health but he didn't waiver from watching the King. Spurts of crystal and ice came from his head in the shape of a crown and it took willpower and serene breaths to contain his own antlers. His point was not to instill fear. Not in the letter nor in the meeting.
"It wasn't meant to have you... Quivering." Derek lingered on the word and then motioned to the snow around them. Clearly shivering wasn't something they did, the logical humor falling from his lips as dry as the Earth behind them had once been. "It was meant to get the attention of you and your council."
He could feel Nora seething beside him and he simply turned his attention to the blonde on her hands and knees before it moved to the King once more.
"Is that how all of you treat your women?"
Calla curled her fingers up to avoid the cold, it was more of an uncomfortable shock to her system than painful. The longer her fingers had sat there the less it ached, but she had been too enraptured by the others to move backwards at first. They were golden and warm, smiles carved by the lines in their face every bit of the tree that they were rumored to be.
"All? No just me I had the misfortune of being volunteered to marry him." Lifting up to her feet Calla shed the cloak on the ground showing off the arms covered in frost and the bodice that was highlighted by evident snowflakes only her fanned out skirt from her knees was made of any cloth of perfect silk.
"I really would suggest that you both stop trying to insert dominance because well look at you." She said softly and under her breath more than anything, her blue eyes traveled to the woman who was being held back by the man a tiny frame of a smile highlighted her face before she shifted back to the man who seemed to be in charge. Bowing her head in neither direction but towards the both of them Calla cleared her throat and paused for only a moment. "I've never actually seen one of you in person."
The whole time that Calla was trying to save face he was watching the woman who stood at the same height, but she was more bountiful in her curves highlighted in her next to nothing form of clothing. He had one of the darkest hides than that of his people the almost entirety of them looking like Calla. It was what made him lock eyes on the woman and not look away even as the elder man who screamed just that. Elder. Had spoken to him about how he treated Calla and his other comment that had fallen on his idiotic tongue.
"And you? Do you just come for decoration...mine has a mouth on her that I haven't been able to put a bridle on, but something tells me that just like those melting brown eyes of yours that you just don't stand in place long." He smirked at her and then snapped his fingers at Calla who he noticed looked at the other man before she stepped backwards to him.
"Please tell me you talk creature."
"Why do you want to know?" Her voice left her body like the silk that ran across the lower half of the ice woman. Derek's hand dropped away from bridling her as he realized the fight to keep her down had been lost. Locking her eyes on the male she stepped forward to the edge of the lined snow and stared at the Prims before her. She had seen many in her life, whereas the girl hadn't seen the Dŭrvos. Such strange differences between the two and yet... so similar.
"Does it entertain you when women speak? Does it give you a form of pleasure, King?" She spat the title with distaste, her breath forming a small cloud over their line as her bare feet dared to send sprigs of grass just towards their own toes with her near nature.
"You think yourself monstrous with your powers but we've come down to your height to be cordial. My antlers are larger than your crown, and on my side of this world we don't have cordial kings - we have men of honor that lie in bed with women of power. The same power she will one day slit your throat with." She eyed the ice woman and then gave a sharp grin much like that of her Arctic Fox form. Unforgiving and hungry.
Taking a few steps back to her brother before she gave the slightest of reflective glints towards the betrothed to-be Queen, a small part of Nora wishing she could save her from whatever fate lied ahead.
"We came..." He reprimanded Nora with his gaze and then naturally stepped just a few inches in front of her to show he was protective by default. "... To ask what happened while we slept."
The words were simple enough and to the point, watching both of the Prim's faces to see if they would lie or otherwise cheat themselves in or out of a coming war.
Jax just rose a brow towards his hairline as the blades of grass started inching towards their toes stopping just at the outline of his boot tip. She was just as feral as he was but on her it was more dangerous and more pleasing. His gaze drifted toward Calla who smartly chose to put her blue eyes on him instead of the man in front of her. He wouldn't take outright disobedience.
"Just like your...whatever she is to you said while you disgusting creatures ruled for so long with your power my people got tired of getting the fallout from the winter so we just killed everyone off and made the winter longer. Frost is what it's called; Just like you should know my name Jaxon King of the Neprimirims and this is Calla Liliya my bride to be. If you have enough civility in you introduce yourself if not then we just leave it at that don't we and see how many more words you can form out of your earth loving mouths."
Reaching for Calla he again pulled her toward him, just in front of his shoulder so that he could reach up with his left arm and cover her chest with the massive muscled part and cover her throat completely with his hand.
"Anything to add sweetheart?" He asked sarcastically.
Standing still was one of their best qualities but like always the emotions ran wild in Nora and she found herself moving in front of her brother with teeth snared and her body ready to shiver into whatever form necessary to cut the man's throat.
"The Frost is what everyone has called it. Our lost loved ones and our saplings will forever know it as their last chance to come to life. Our children could not resurface. Our sister..." Nora cut off her words, the accent of her homecoming forth thick on her tongue while she felt the rage in her veins bring forth warmth she hadn't felt in a long time. The King in front of her was nothing but a vile leader with vile plans for the world.
"I am Nora Brŭshlya and this is my brother Derek Brŭshlya. We?" She stepped close to the edged line again and sneered over the hold he had on the would-be queen, her voice lowering to a hiss of a snake. "Are you worst fucking enemies!"
A screech like a harpy and she was being tugged back by her brother to keep her from tipping the edging line of freezing and blazing, his hands finding her face as he centered her to the Earth, an anchor in the midst of their anger.
"They choose war, why do you stop me?" Her words were pants as she attempted to calm in his hands, his own blue eyes turning to the others. The intensity of his stare only grew before he let her go and nodded.
"War then, Jaxon."
Calla's body was rigid with the heaves that wanted to disrupt her body, Jaxon's claim on her was for nobody but the people in front of them. To prove that he had power that he couldn't see that when she had looked for some kind of acceptance from the man that he controlled her with an iron fist. The hand much like iron branding against her throat had been the final straw that was dropping down against her back.
Reaching up with her hand her small digits locked back around his wrist her nails slipping extra length as crystal daggers sank in enough for him to hiss and release her. With a fumbling move forward her mind stopped her at the invisible barrier that was the two lands.
"Why can't any of you ...any of us get the fuck along?" She hissed out her own accent slipping free.
Derek's muscles twitched as the woman sprang forward from the king's grip and nearly found herself on their side of the equator, watching the woman with cautious eyes - their color reflective as he bored his gaze into her honestly.
"What peace do you suggest then Liliya?" He paused his words and softened his tone. "When we have already lost so many of our own, what would be considered peace anymore?"
Jax was in a fury to begin with but Calla already breaking the promise that he had intended to sever was his boiling point. He made a noise in the back of his throat that he knew to catch her attention though at first, it didn't. Her attention span was too far entwined on the man in front of her to notice him. But when she looked he raised his hand and cracked it down on her cheek the force enough to send her falling to the ground.
The resounding sound resembling a boulder crashing through the ice.
It happened so fast that Derek didn't have time to react but when he did it was out of a rare moment; Pure and undignified emotion. In an instant, Derek was kneeling to the ground and his fingers were sinking into the Earth, watching as vines moved like burrowing groundhogs in and out of its surface until it reached the fallen ice woman whose name so ironically meant Lily.
A lily in a land of frozen waste.
As the vines wrapped around her Derek yanked them from the ground and pulled towards himself, bare heels digging into the soft plains to drag her towards him. His Earth cocooned her into safety, waiting until she was entirely at his feet for the curling moss to peel from her skin so that burly hands could bring her to her feet.
His eyes never once looking towards Jaxon for acceptance or anger in the situation, his only concern there between his arms as he looked her over, thumb and forefinger holding her chin as the red sting was eased in the warmth of their home, the sun overhead melting away the frigid cuts their ice brought them.
"And we thought they treated the animals poorly, Nora." His words were stern and full of hatred he didn't often show, never once meeting the eyes of his enemy.
Jaxon had regretted hitting Calla, she had been the woman who listened to the nightmares of his father's brutal passing, and not a word of it had ever reached her rebels. While he was a brutal bastard who had given her more than enough reason to react the way she had there was no doubt in the inner workings of his mind that she would harm him back.
It helped naught that Derek had seized her from the side of the ice and brought her over to where he couldn't go, not without announcing war itself in doing so. The show of powers had instantly flowed out from the elder much like Jax's own when he allowed them to be witnessed. Opposite sides of the chessboard but there were similarities that neither one would easily claim.
"If you treat her like a spoil of a war not yet fought then you better be giving me something of equal worth to what you think she is Brŭshlya." He hissed out, ice whipping in the wind behind him the thick white background becoming more and more evident.
Everything was happening for Nora in some strange slow motion. With the crack of the smack over the stilled air, she thought she would see Jaxon's head roll but instead, her brother's powers were seeping from him like she had never seen. The comfortability in the ice woman's eyes giving Nora a strange sense of familiarity though she couldn't place its whereabouts given the chaotic moments, when her brother spoke she was brought out of that same stilled time.
Staring at him with parted lips just as the Prim King spoke from his side in dripping hatred. He wanted a trade for the woman now in her brother's arms. A pawn of war? Pieces on some kind of game? How little were those on his side viewed? How beneath his boot did he believe the rest of the world? Nora felt her heartbreak, swearing she could hear it over the whistles of the sharp ice behind Jaxon.
Moving with easy steps she was suddenly standing between the three. Derek and Calla encased on her one side, the red mark on her face starting to darken from the still echoing hit. On her other stood a man of power and darkness she had only heard in the tales of her mother so long ago. About the hatred of the world, the Prims held deep in their souls.
"Myself." She said it so quietly even she second-guessed if it had really left her lips. "I trade myself." Her eyes met her brothers and she swallowed a ball that had formed in her throat, showing him that they couldn't argue there in front of the enemies.
"In exchange for Calla and her safety, I will come with you under the same circumstances. Until war is initiated we will be tokens of peace as the Lily has suggested." With a cautious step towards the ice her nature moved over her to wrap her in large leaves and sprouting cotton to keep her warm in the frigid weather, gasping as the feel of ice hit her face, her body hidden by green before she bent to grab the white cloak that once kept the nearly Queen warm, shaky fingers wrapping it around her own shoulders.
"Derek, go."
A final plea before she would disappear into the storm.