More to come...

"Hey!" An excited Livronauge leaned around one of the pillars on the second floor of the Tavnazian Safehold, maintaining his balance only by an arm flung around the pillar, and waved energetically to the two young men on the central rope bridge. "Esterimond! Alby!"

"Quit calling Alberic 'Alby,'" the shorter, blond Elvaan of the two drawled, elbowing the other in the side. "He's already got enough issues without you confusibng him with a girl's nickname."

Alberic, as tall and dark as Esterimond was fair and petit, allowed himself a disparaging snort, his face splitting into a wide grin that made him seem more like the boy he had been than the man he was becoming. "At least I can get a date, Testy Esty," he noted in his cocky tenor voice, attempting to return the elbow but missing as his friend leapt nimbly to the side. "Oy! Livronauge!" he yelled back up in response. "Best get your ass down here and quit your yelling, you know how the elders feel about it." In a lower tone, he said as an aside to Esterimond, "Last thing we need is to be accused of bringing up the next generation to be just like us."

Esterimond laughed, then imitated Elder Despechaire's querulous voice. "Bunch of shiftless troublemakers! Layabouts with no proper Tavnazian pride or industry!"

Alberic pulled a face, scrunching up his fine aristocratic features in a sardonic grimace, leaning against the rope handrail. "I wasn't bred to be industrious. I was bred to be the SPARE."

Esterimond's smile vanished, as it always did whenever Alberic referred to himself as such, but he never had a chance to say his rebukes as Livronauge ran up to them, panting from having sprinted down from the second floor.

"Where's the fire, Livvy?" Alberic tousled the younger boy's short white-blond hair familiarly.

Esterimond rolled his eyes. "Again with the ridiculous nicknames."

Alberic sighed, shooting Esterimond a Glare of Death, then turned back to Livronauge. "Where's the fire, O Honorable and Esteemed Livronauge M Revonet, heir to the baronetcy of Misareaux?" He punctuated his speech with a courtly, florid bow.

Livvy grinned widely, staring up at the older boys, both only a year or so away from attaining full adulthood, his eyes filled with the usual admiration. Only two years old at the time of the evacuation to the Safehold, Livvy tended to look up to the older teenagers who actually remembered the invasion of the Marquisate, as if they had participated in grand adventures and noble defense of the city rather than having fled through the sewers in terror, leaving only death behind. "Prishe saw it too, Alby!" he announced, with the air of someone imparting a juicy tidbit of gossip. "She saw the black dragon too! She said it was be biggest dragon she ever, ever saw--bigger than the ancient wyrms, even!"

Alberic raised his eyebrows, then turned back to Esterimond. "You owe me fifty gil--told you it was real!"

Esterimond handed over the coins with a grumble. "You ALSO said you'd capture or kill it."

"So I did," Alberic acknowledged with a broad grin. "Now that Prishe has seen the thing, maybe the others will let me go out after it--well, for the safety of the Safehold, of course." He put his features hastily into a grave expression, though the excited sparkle in his blue eyes gave him away. "Wouldn't want a beast that large to nest near the Safehold, or so on or so forth."

"What are you going to do about the elders, though?" Esterimond asked warily, lowering his voice automatically and glancing around. "Prishe may not care whether or not you risk your own skin, but you can damned well bet that Despechaire will. He may not like you, but you're the last known living member of the Tavnazian line, and the heir to the Marquisate."

Esterimond and Livronauge both glanced down at the large, worn signet ring on Alberic's left hand, the former enviously, the latter more wistfully. Encrusted with a small fortune's worth of jewels and engraved with the royal crest of the Marquisate of Tavnazia, it was battered and ancient from generations of wear by Alberic's ancestors. He wore it on the third finger of his hand, whenever he even bothered to wear it, and rarely cleaned it so that it was smeared with traces of mud and grime from the young man's secret explorations outside. Noticing their glances, Alberic's expression flashed quickly to an artless uncaring, and he slid off the ring, rolling it around between his fingers before closing his fist around it.

"Don't worry about old man Despechaire," he announced grandly. "I'm sure he'll see reason. Trust me."

"Alberic!" a worried voice came from behind them on the bridge, and all three boys jumped. They whirled around to be suddenly face-to-face with Ulmia, Cirece, and Prishe--the first two being renowned as the prettiest girls in the Safehold, and the last being the Safehold's own firebrand leader, a young girl with a temper as quick and hot as dragonfire. Esterimond quickly put on his best charming smile for the redheaded UIlmia--it looked more like a smug smirk, Alberic privately thought--but neither she nor the silver-haired Cirece looked away from Alberic. Prishe's arms were akimbo, her face twisted in a fierce scowl fit to make all three boys recoil slightly.

"You weren't planning on going outside again, were you, Alberic?" Ulmia asked, her musical voice tinged with worry. "It's too dangerous--you know how Granpere worries about you--"

Alberic tried to hide a grimace. Ulmia was Despechaire's granddaughter, and had taken it upon herself to become the Safehold's mother hen, even though she was his age. "Of course I wouldn't do such a thing," he lied easily. "We're safe in here, and I haven't Prishe's powers or skill to keep in one piece."

"You lie like a drunken Hume, Alberic I Tavnazia," Prishe snapped, "which is to say--often and poorly! No matter how many times I catch you or beat the tar out of you, you always do. I don't care how many times you wanna risk your neck, but don't expect any rescue parties when you don't come back!" She rounded on Esterimond and Livronauge, who quickly turned tail and ran. "And YOU two--hey! Come back here!!" She tore off after them, with Ulmia trailing after her like she always did.

Alberic turned to escape while he could, only to feel a slim pair of arms encircling one of his. He looked down, only to see Cirece's wide hazel eyes, gazing up at him and filled with worry. "Please, my Lord," she murmured hesitantly, lowering her eyes shyly away from his and half-veiling them with thick dark lashes, "Don't leave the Safehold again... I die inside every time you do...."

He reached up hesitantly to smooth her long, thick silver hair a moment, marveling at its softness and how it managed to not get caught in his suddenly clumsy, rough hands. Unlike him, Cirece had such sweet, pure eyes, and her beautiful yet angular Elvaan face was taut with earnest anxiety for him. He managed to force out words. "It's for the good of the Safehold, darling. That dragon could raze us all and destroy everything we've worked so hard to build. I have to go--to protect us all. It's my destiny."

She hesitated, glancing back up at him at his words, then looked around to make sure they were momentarily alone before twining her arms up around his neck and pressing her warm lips to his. He scarcely had a moment to reciprocate, to savor the fullness of her lips against his and taste their willingness, their supple surrender to his own, before she tore herself away and fled with a low sob.

*** *** ***

"A land survey?" Despechaire sounded inordinately suspicious, which made Alberic wonder if Ulmia had alerted him to what Alberic was planning. "And you say you noted a dragon of uncommon size near the Safehold?"

"I'd just stay to the holdings nearest the Safehold," Alberic promised in his most mature, calm tone, keeping his face carefully blank. "It is important to all Tavnazia that we mark where the beast is nesting and keep it away from our lands, it is a great danger to us all."

The old man fixed him with a stare, pointing a gnarled finger at him. "You are to be the Marquis of Tavnazia, Lord Alberic--"

Alberic's temper began to flare at the beginnings of an all-too-familiar lecture. "The Marquisate is gone, sir. We're never getting it back, especially not if we stay cooped up in this prison of rock, hiding from our own shadows!"

"You go too far!" Despechaire snapped. "This so-called prison has kept us alive and safe for ten years, and it is all we have! You have seen for yourself how tenuous life outside can be--we've lost three lads your age in the last year alone, off on scurrilous adventures such as the one you propose, their heads filled with idiocy about taking the Marquisate back from the beastmen--"

"They were sick and tired of being cooped up here, not even allowed to set foot outside!" Alberic protested.

"You have a responsibility to the people of Tavnazia!" Despechaire shouted back. "Lord Altedour never would have flouted that responsibility by doing as he pleased; Lord Rochefogne wouldn't sneak out so much and worry us all half to death; Lord Aldebert--"

Alberic cut him off harshly. "Well, they're all dead and you're stuck with the SPARE instead. Won't you open your fool eyes and see--this IS for the good of the Safehold! There's a dragon half the size of a castle out there that could obliterate us all in a minute, even Prishe has seen it, and she thinks we should--"

"Don't talk to me about what that abomination thinks!" Despechaire roared, bringing his hand down onto the table angrily. "No one, least of all you, is to leave the Safehold--and that's final!"

Alberic stormed out of Despechaire's quarters and into his own, slamming the wooden door so forcefully on its hinges that it bounced and needed another swift kick to latch shut properly. That damned hidebound old coward! How could he think they were safer rotting to death in here? Alberic would rather die than live his entire life cooped up in the Safehold, too frightened to move, his existence bounded by stone walls with none but frightened elders and naive children for company. He was meant for something more, something great--not as Alberic, son of Aldebert, the spare heir, but as a warrior renowned throughout Vana'diel for courage and ability. Not just the Safehold, he reflected bitterly, but all Tavnazia was a prison; he was trapped into an empty lordship of a destroyed land by the deaths of his uncle and cousin in the war. What good was there in staying? Prishe was the real leader of these people, giving hope and guidance to the younger generation, while the elders clung to him for no reason other than the Tavnazian name and that he wasn't Prishe, whom they hated.

Cirece came to his rooms late that night. Her eyes said she knew he planned to sneak out anyway, but she said nothing about it, using her lips and tongue for a far more sensual purpose. She offered herself up to him freely, mutely, aned he gladly welcomed her need, losing himself within her quiet pleasure and burying both of their worries in a tide of pleasure. Exploring her, the lines of her warm flesh, the unexpected softness and welcome of her body, took his mind off of his restless captivity, and he was able to forget the future, if just for a short time. In the dead of night, Cirece's warm nakedness pressed up against him and her body stilled in the rhythms of sleep, Alberic took one last stock of his fortunes. It would be easy--so easy--to submit to his role as the future Lord of Tavnazia, to wed Cirece and work within his assigned place to bring change to the Safehold. Or--he could hunt that dragon and bring back its head, proving to everyone that there was nothing to be feared by going outside, that there was more to life than crouching behind stone walls, that they could take back this land and earn honor and respectability in confronting their terror head-on. Resolved, Alberic slid the heavy signet ring from his hand and hid it inside his pillowcase.

Tomorrow, he would have Esterimond and Livronauge stage a diversion for the guards by the door, then sneak outside in pursuit of glory.

*** *** ***

Alberic I Tavnazia lay choking and dying under a golden sunset.