The Sleepless One (D&D fanfic)

The last piece of the ward went dark.

One moment, broken light hung between the roots. The next, Rishi could see past it into a hollow that had not been there before.

He kept one arm firm across Nessari's back. Her legs were still locked around his waist, and every breath tightened her fingers in his collar. He shifted her higher without taking his eyes from the opening.

The forest inside was no different in any way he could name. The same wet ground. The same old trunks. The same night air moving cold against his face.

Yet the hush began at the vanished boundary and did not reach beyond it. Water dripped somewhere among the roots. Rishi saw it fall and waited too long for the sound.

Elenya stopped beside him.

The Root-Mother did not reach for a weapon. She straightened, head lifted, and watched the hollow with the care of someone approaching a grave whose name she knew. Sirael held her bow low, an arrow still ready between her fingers. Thiarel planted both feet and seemed to listen through them. Faelar stared into the dark without blinking.

Elenya led. Sirael and Thiarel spread just far enough to keep clear lines between the trees. Faelar stayed near Rishi as he followed with Nessari. They did not close like hunters. They walked slowly and left room ahead of them.

The elves began speaking under their breath in Elvish.

Rishi watched their hands instead. Sirael's grip eased by a fraction. Thiarel lowered her uninjured hand. Elenya gave one small answer that ended three questions at once.

No one looked away.

Ahead of them, Maeril stood alone.

The Living Staff rested across her palms. Its carved lines held a low green light, but the light was not what had caught her. Her shoulders had gone still. Her head was bent as if she felt something moving beneath the wood.

The staff pulsed.

Rishi felt the answer through the ground: one slow beat, then silence.

Maeril took a step.

The shape before her resolved as the last ward-light faded. A figure sat upon a root-thick rise of stone, hands resting open at its sides. It was roughly her height, narrow through the waist and long in the limbs. Pale wood followed the shape of muscle and bone. Darker plates covered the shoulders, chest, and joints. Nothing had been nailed or strapped into place. It looked grown.

Its face was smooth and still. Faint light waited behind its eyes.

Maeril stepped closer.

Nessari loosened her legs. Rishi set her down, but she stayed against him with one hand in the folds of his robe. She spoke quickly in Elvish and pointed at the seated figure. Her voice shook. Sirael answered without turning.

Faelar moved nearer to Rishi.

"They are afraid to name what is here."

Rishi looked at him. The storyteller's face held no fear now, only the strain of an old memory brought too close.

"Name it for me," Rishi said.

Faelar watched Maeril raise the staff beside the figure.

"The High Mages made works that had to outlive them. The oldest stories speak of watchers set beside those works. Guardians who did not lay down their vigil when a household slept, or when a grove changed, or when every living keeper had forgotten why the watch began."

The figure's head remained bowed.

"A guardian bound to remain," Rishi said.

Faelar nodded. "The one who does not set down watch. In the trade tongue, a Sleepless One."

The name passed through the elves in a whisper.

Maeril stood close enough to touch the being now. The staff beat again beneath her hand.

This time, something answered.

Wood creaked under no wind. The seated head turned a finger's breadth toward her, and the light behind its eyes gathered.

Nessari stopped speaking.

Every person in the hollow held still as the Sleepless One looked back.

---

The staff was not warning her.

Maeril knew its warnings. She had laid the abjuration lines into the grain herself. She knew the hard recoil of a ward under pressure and the quick sting of hostile magic testing for a seam.

This was recognition.

The pulse rose through both palms, crossed her wrists, and settled behind her ribs. Slow. Steady. Not her heartbeat, though her own had begun to chase it.

Voices moved behind her. She heard none of the words.

The Sleepless One sat a step away, its brightening gaze fixed upon her. It did not brace when she lowered the Living Staff. She set the end against the earth and left it standing beside the stone. The runes along the wood dimmed to a thin green thread. The beat continued.

Maeril reached for the figure's face.

Her fingertips met living wood.

Not timber. Not a carved shell. The surface held fine growth lines, ridges so small she felt them before she saw them. Pale grain crossed the cheek and deepened at the jaw. Old damage had thickened into smooth calluses. Narrow veins of golden resin traced the healed fractures beneath her fingers.

She followed one line toward the throat. The body changed under her hand. Slate-dark and jade plates overlapped the collarbone like hard leaves. Beneath them, vine-fibres flexed where a person's tendons would have moved. Script lay under the surface: curves and cuts grown over by later rings without being erased.

At the shoulders, a mantle of small leaves rested against the wood. A few dry seedpods hung among them. Her sleeve brushed one, and it gave a thin chime.

Maeril swallowed. She had studied constructs made to imitate life. She had studied wards that responded to intention and old magic that endured long after its maker. None of them had prepared her for a purpose that had grown a body around itself.

Her fingers reached the centre of its chest. Living wood curved inward there to cradle a moonstone acorn. Green light rested inside it, dim as an ember under ash.

The moment she touched the cradle, the ember moved.

Light gathered at its centre. The Living Staff answered beside them. One beat crossed the ground; another rose beneath Maeril's palm.

They matched.

The Sleepless One's fingers flexed against the stone. Maeril did not pull away. Its head lifted. Resin-bright eyes found hers and held them. There was no sudden awakening, no start of breath. Attention returned by degrees: the turn of the neck, a minute adjustment through the spine, the careful testing of one hand.

That hand rose toward hers. The fingertips touched her knuckles first. They were cool and firm, with a faint movement beneath the grain that felt like sap travelling through a branch. The hand followed hers upward and rested against her cheek.

Maeril's breath caught. She had entered the hollow hungry to understand. Under that touch, the hunger fell quiet. The Sleepless One traced the edge of her cheekbone and a strand of hair caught there, as careful with her skin as she had been with its face.

Her eyes burned. "Hello," she whispered.

The being did not answer in words. Its mouth softened, almost a smile, and its palm stayed where it was.

Maeril leaned into the touch.

Then she put both arms around it. Living leaves brushed her temple. Stone-bark pressed hard against her forearm. Beneath both, the body held a low, patient warmth.

For one beat, its arms remained at its sides. Then they closed around her.

The movement was slow but certain. One hand settled between her shoulders. The other rested at the back of her head, holding without force. Maeril let out the breath she had been keeping since the ward broke.

Beside them, the staff kept time. The light in the moonstone acorn steadied. Maeril's breathing steadied with it.

---

Rishi waited until Maeril's arms loosened.

He had picked Nessari up again when her knees began to shake. She lay heavy against his shoulder now, awake but spent, one hand still twisted in his robe.

The Sleepless One held Maeril with one wooden hand at the back of her head. Its gaze moved once across the others and returned to her. Rishi saw no challenge in the motion. He also knew better than to mistake gentleness for safety.

He turned to Elenya and bowed.

The Root-Mother studied him, then looked from Nessari to Maeril. Rishi waited with his hands occupied and his question left unspoken.

Elenya nodded.

She beckoned to Thiarel and Sirael. The sisters came to either side of him.

Then Elenya faced the kin gathered behind them.

Her Elvish was quiet. It carried through the hollow anyway. Faelar joined her when she called his name. The two hunters followed them back toward the wounded, leaving Rishi and the sisters with Maeril, Nessari, and the Sleepless One.

Rishi approached with Thiarel and Sirael.

The air grew dense around the stone. He felt no pressure against his skin, only an awareness of the weight in his own steps.

Sirael watched its hands. Her bow stayed lowered, though the arrow had not left her fingers.

Thiarel crouched and set her uninjured palm on the earth.

She closed her eyes.

The hollow stayed quiet while she listened. Rishi saw the tension leave her jaw first. Surprise crossed her face when her eyes opened, followed by a care she did not try to hide.

"They feel safe," she said.

Sirael glanced at her.

Thiarel looked at Maeril, still close enough that her shoulder touched living wood.

"Safe with their mother."

Maeril heard that. Her mouth opened, but no answer came.

The Sleepless One moved instead.

They released her and placed both feet upon the ground. Maeril retrieved the Living Staff, then offered her free hand. Long wooden fingers closed around it, and they rose.

Their joints gave soft creaks as they straightened. They stood a little taller than Maeril, willowy and balanced, their leaf-mantle settling across their shoulders. The first step was careful. The second carried more weight. By the third, they no longer watched their own feet.

Maeril led them toward the others.

Nessari lifted her head. Wonder widened her eyes, but she did not hide her face this time. She said one soft word in Elvish.

The Sleepless One looked at her.

Sirael waited for her sister to say more. When Thiarel only gave a small shrug, Sirael's brow tightened.

"That is all?"

"It is what I can hear."

Rishi looked back along the path. Beyond the hollow, the wounded still needed hands. The grove had already endured one broken protection tonight.

"We return."

He bowed to the Sleepless One, then turned toward the homestead.

Maeril walked beside him, her hand linked with theirs. Thiarel and Sirael took the outer edges of the path. The trees gave way by slow degrees to the night's damage: webbing burned black against bark, trampled moss, dark drops of spider ichor, discarded cloth already stiffening in the cold.

Voices reached them before the lights did. Water was being carried. Bandages were torn into strips. Someone cried out when a wound was cleaned, then bit the sound short.

They crossed the outer roots of the homestead.

The nearest healer looked up, her hands stopping over an open jar of salve. A hunter followed her gaze, then the wounded turned where they sat.

Maeril entered the clearing with the Living Staff in one hand and the Sleepless One holding the other.

Rishi stopped beside her with Nessari against his chest. Thiarel and Sirael stood at their flanks.

For one held breath, no one spoke.