The Changeling

EPILOGUE

"Where's your brother? Why can't you bug him to play?"

The cat purred again and trampled over his lap a few times. She rounded wide, leapt at his

leg, clamped her massive teeth around his boot, and tugged at him. Being such a large, healthy cat, she dragged him out of the pen without a problem. He thrashed and cussed at her imaginatively too, but she was undeterred. He swiped at his pitchfork. The clattering it made drudged up a reaction out of the deer. It gave a distraught bleat that made Beets relinquish his foot and dart away with a wild, swinging tail and flailing back legs.

He grumbled his way to his feet with the pitchfork in hand, ready to give the cat the best damn scare of her soon to be brief life. As he faced the long hall, open to the world outside himself, he spotted riders coming up his path.

They chaperoned a cart displaying several flags dyed bright Copper, Indigo, Gold, and Silver.

The Imperial Clan's colors.

He gripped his pitchfork tighter and trudged down the long hall. Emerging from the stables, he allowed a brief and rueful appreciation for Beets as several soldiers came plodding onto his property without announcement.

When they reached the bottleneck of an entrance to his keep, Aedom stormed in front of them with a bellowing roar, swinging the pitchfork in a frenzy. It sent most of the horses and soldiers into a ruckus of terror. They had been so surprised.

"Get the fuck off my land!" Aedom slashed at the man in front who almost fell off his frightened horse. Aedom was careful and good enough to not put the beast in danger. They didn't have a damned choice about where their owner forced them to tread.

A boyish voice came out bleating, "We're here on Imperial Order!" Everyone was huffing and anxious as they tried to calm their animals.

"You think I give a shit!?" Aedom spat and backed up, still holding the pitchfork high enough to jab it into the shaking young guard before him if need be. It had been a long while since he left the Citadel behind. He still found the place wretched and boring. He wanted

nothing more to do with Imperial Orders or courtly bull shit.

"We are looking for Vau Cetlali on Imperial Order!" the soldier screeched in response, his face going red with frustration.

Aedom stepped forward, swift as ever, spinning the pitchfork in his grip before he hooked it rather luckily into just the front of the soldier's leather plackhart. He hefted him up off his horse and over his head like a pile of hay and flung him into the ground. Aedom lifted his pitchfork in both hands and jammed it down with a vicious snarl. The pointy end pinned the man's thin neck between the wide prongs of the shit stained farm tool.

Aedom stepped a foot on to his chest. He leaned forward to place an elbow on his knee as he sneered down at the soldier beneath him. "I would have let you ride off if not for mentioning her name..."

"Wh-what will you do now?" The man swallowed while speaking, breaking up his words into anxious croaks.

Aedom smiled a very old smile and reached down into his boot. He yanked out a knife that was clearly far too large to be safe in a shoe. He opened his mouth to speak, but another voice interrupted.

"Aedom Tate, knock that shit off

immediately!" A furious screech ended up as more of a pleasant lilting from how far away it came from.

Both heads swiveled towards the sound.

They saw her bright red hair first, spun into thick braids hanging far past her broad shoulders and down her back. A rather plain purple smock hung haphazard off her shoulders as she came stomping forward. A passel of baby ferrets hung in her arms like sausages and a golden conure hid in the braids at her shoulders.