"Amaeliya Blackheart is more like it," muttered a nondescript voice from the jeering crowd. A cheer went up at this comment, but Amaeliya did nothing but turn away and close her eyes. Her wrists were rubbed raw against the harsh bonds holding her back, and the tendons of her fingers had been slashed so that she would be unable to motion any spells into existence. Crusted blood, salty grains on her pale fingers, clung as proof to the futility of flight.

"Amaeliya Sylvanheart, daughter of Mando Goblinslayer and Arryliana Spiritcall, you are accused of the most grievous crime any being can commit," growled the Mayor in his own tongue, his voice low and breathy. "You have killed many town members of Rivervale, are connected with the enslavement of several others, and you have committed deeds so vile I dare not say them aloud even to you. Do you deny any of this?"

"No, Mayor," the Druidess replied calmly, opening guarded oak-green eyes to meet his. "I do not deny it." A murmur rippled through the crowds, reaching back to the very youngest child perched atop the rocks that guarded the Rivervale Town Hall. A somber Halfling, clothed in common garments and three buns of ebony wound into coils on her head, stood watching the proceedings stonily. Amaeliya glanced over to this figure, and for a moment their eyes met.

~flashback~

"They will kill you, you know," Daleen hissed to the young Druidess who crept unseen to the Leafsway Farm. The elder Halfling circled around her adopted daughter, blocking the doorway from anyone else who might see the darkly-swathed Druidess. She hastily swung the door shut, and then stalked forward to clutch at Amaeliya's arms in anger. "How many times have I told you, don't come back to Rivervale?"

The younger Druidess watched her coolly. "No doubt they would kill me," she replied in her soft, husky voice. "I need to see that document, though. The one written by... by... what's his name. I can't remember. I'd recognize it, though. I remember reading about the Balance there, and..."

"Don't you understand, Amaeliya?" the older Druidess shot back. "They're watching the Farm now. They know you come back here. They know what you did, and they're going to make you pay for it. The Balance needs to be protected, yes, but you can't protect it if you're dead!"

Amae shrugged, refusing to let the ire bubbling quietly beneath her eyes rise any further. "I'll be gone soon enough. Just help me find the document. And don't tell me that I was wrong to kill those Halflings," she challenged when her surrogate mother's mouth opened. "Halflings are creatures of the Light. You have taught me nothing else ever since my seventh harvest." She turned back to the bookshelves and rapidly scanned the titles.

"Yes, but... but Halflings, Amae?," Daleen demanded. "Halflings from Rivervale? Couldn't it have been a Koada'Dal, love, or..."

"Listen to yourself"! Amaeliya snarled, whirling on her mentor. "Do you hear what you are saying?"  Daleen stared at the younger Halfling, her jaw slack in disbelief. "The Balance is everything. It is existence itself. Without the Balance, existence dissolves. And with too much Light, there is no Balance. Do not speak against everything that you have taught me for thirty harvests, Daleen!"

"I don't believe this," the elder Druidess whispered. "I can't believe this. What happened to the little Amaeliya I raised all those harvests ago? What happened to the sweet child of my memories?"

"Child, the time of the Darkness ends," Amaeliya ground out sardonically, reciting the words from memory alone and yet each syllable sang verbatim to what Daleen had said to her over thirty years before. "Prepare yourself for the shadows, for in them is the only hope for the Balance. Do not lose yourself within them, for the way is one of danger and of treachery. The light will be your enemy, and within these shadows will be your only sanctuary."

She turned to look at her surrogate mother directly, a quiet fire burning deeply in her emerald eyes. "Do those words sound familiar to you, Daleen?  I certainly remember them. Very, very well. And you were right, all those harvests before. I walk in the shadows; I fight for the Darkness you know that. The way of Good, the path I treaded for nearly my entire life, was no less treacherous.  Given that, I utterly cannot comprehend the fact that you just asked what had happened to your sweet little Amae.

"That sweet little Amae hibernates, just as you had taught me."  She turned away, brushing light fingertips along the place where the mark of her servitude had once rested. Scars decorated the pale skin where the collar had chafed and burned, creating a decoration nearly as remarkable as the band that had caused it.  "She will revive when the world turns too steeply to the Darkness. My lessons of Hatred will clear and melt into those of Love. Distrust will again become trust. The will to kill become the will to protect life. I say nothing now that you have not known your entire life."

Daleen jumped fretfully when she nudged the post of the bed, her entire compacted body trembling in fear for her daughter.  "They call you traitor, Amaeliya," she begged. "Get out of here. There is no safety for you in the Light, not after what you have done."

"Of course I am called traitor," Amae snapped, tiring of her adopted mother's timidity. "They are Good. I can be nothing else to them, not even if they were to be told how much Evil is needed to maintain the Balance and existence itself. They cannot understand. That is their nature."

"Yes, Amae, but..." The elder Druidess stopped abruptly, her gaze snapping from Amaeliya's burning eyes to stare at the doorway in horror. "Go," she whispered hoarsely. "Go. Now."

Knowing that she would easily be able to return later to gain the texts that she wanted, Amaeliya swiftly twisted her hands in a brief dance.  Writing runes in midair, matching word with voice, she chanted softly to transport her body through the fabric of reality and transport to a favored spot of peace.

A sudden force exploded in her chest, hurtling her backwards into the wall and interrupting her spell. She yelped in surprise, slid to the ground, and then lay very still.  The back of her head welled thick scarlet from where it had struck against the stone walls. Her skull had, in that instant, snapped forward, biting deeply into her tongue and hacking jaggedly to allow blood sluggishly fill her mouth with over-sweet heaviness. Sitting against the wall, dazed, struggling to focus her eyes, Amaeliya did not notice the masked Deputies that had swept in until they grabbed her shoulders and hurled her to her feet.

"Amaeliya Sylvanheart," one growled harshly, his eyes glowing angrily from behind his mask. "You are arrested in the name of Mayor Gubbin, leader of Rivervale, follower of the god Greatfool, Lord Fizzlethorpe Bristlebane. You are to remain quiet at penalty of a spell used to silence you, and any attempt to escape by running or by magic will be dealt with in a swift and final manner."

Her mind churned over the events that had happened so rapidly, too quickly to understand, and a headache thudded against the back of her head.  Amaeliya turned and dazedly looked to her surrogate mother's eyes.  She stumbled from the house, arms gripped harshly by the two Deputies, bewilderment and disbelief encasing and following behind her like a cumbersome train.

~end flashback~

Those same eyes were looking at her now. Daleen looked away, unable to bear the burden of the truth. Her adopted daughter had been too willful, too impetuous, she tried to convince herself. The young chit knew nothing of the Balance, could not understand it, could not see that the Light must always prevail in some way...

Her mind trailed off, silencing itself when it realized what it was thinking. Daleen hissed a curse under her breath, closing her eyes. She refused to look at her adopted daughter, no, Amaeliya. Only Amaeliya.  She lost her name of daughter when she slaughtered those Halflings of Rivervale, Daleen told herself fiercely. Think of Arryliana, her mother. Think of how she would have gone mad to see her daughter walk the Dark path. Think of anything but the fact that Amaeliya could be right

"Daleen...?"

The soft voice, husky and tentative, brushed by her delicately pointed ears. The words, a telepathic gift of the winds, were meant for her to hear only.

"What's death like...? I..." There came a sudden pause, in which nothing could be heard. Absolute, unnatural silence curled around the elder Halfling's ears as if every one of the screaming towns-members, gathered for the execution of the traitorous Amaeliya, had abruptly stopped. "I... don't know what to expect... Don't know... whether... to be scared."

She turned, stunned, to stare at Amaeliya. The Keeper of the Balance had closed her eyes, refusing to look at the Deputy that held the sword at her throat. For once, the old mentor had nothing she could say. She was a woman of many gods: birthed by Bristlebane, raised by Karana, educated to the Balance, and still she knew little of the afterlife.

The sword's bite was not long, but the wound cut deeply to clip the edges of the spine in the back of Amaeliya's neck. She gasped, her eyes flying open, trying to cry out at the pain, but nothing could be said to drown out the bubbling sputters at her throat. The crimson snaked down the Halfling's pale skin, a cruel mockery of the viper-shaped collar that had once lain coiled there.

Her glimmering forest-green eyes stared forward into the swift death that led her heart into empty beats of eternity.  They saw nothing but her god, nothing but the faith she upheld with a love and a passion unparalleled by even the most zealous of other faiths.  Elsewhere, somewhere that felt so far away, her unhearing ears were filled only with passionate cries of traitor.

~

Alluring the beckons to shadows near shade,
Strange world of mirrors on edge of the night
Haunted by phantoms who gave all and stayed
Guarded in realm of sweet two-toned twilight.

Outcast from falsehoods men call time and space,
Unmapped and lost, cool eves deeper darken
Wanderlust swallowed by the call of this Place
Sliding and crossing with spirits low harken:

Shadowslipping,
Shadowslipping

Narrowed dark eyes hold no traces of fear,
Too proud to weep from the rape of the light
Gaze into darkness so pure and so clear
Respite in realm of sweet two-toned twilight.

Ages in moments and seconds in years
Time lost all meaning for freedom is key
Sweet haven of onyx, obsidian-shade fears
Alone and yet bonded, I call this to me:

Shadowslipping,
Shadowslipping

Those of the bloodlust, and those of the night
Those of the hatred that turn from the light
Here is your safety, and here is your death
In seduction of Shadow that steals your last breath.