Zander worked as he waited, reveling in the exertion of his body. Soldiers with experience logging the Red Forest or apprenticed as carpenters in Brighton lands labored to reconstruct the burnt and broken segments of palisade around the encampment and they needed muscle to carry their loads. Zander was happy to oblige in a task that required no extraordinary thinking or wise leadership. He became one with his task: lifting logs, carrying them to the carpenters, dropping them with a resounding thump, lifting lumber, carrying it to the framework of the new palisade, holding it upright while others hammered it into place.

He glanced up at the sun. Alfread would arrive soon. Or he would not. Zander didn't know which he feared more.

Zander enlisted a squire to help him don his iron. He regretted it at once. The sweating in his underclothes created an itch that he could no longer scratch. Wishing he could separate staff and sack from his inner thigh, he squatted and tried to waddle himself comfortable. Naturally, it was in this state that Alfread discovered him.

"Alfread."

"Zander."

No ribald jest nor even a pedantic reprimand for Zander's circumstance. Zander dared a look at the person who had been his ever-reliable companion, his best friend. Alfread's face was devoid of the warmth or kindness it had inherited from his mother or the spark of wit and zest for life he had received from Sir Evan. The tall soldier folded his arms over his chest and leaned away from Zander.

This distance between, this separation, felt like being worlds apart. In fact, Zander wished that physical distance were the barrier. He could cross distance in miles and reunite with his best friend. This emotional distance felt farther than all the miles in Leveria.

They rode beyond the eastern gate of the encampment, cantering over the repaired drawbridge into Mirrevar. Into the lush fields teeming with life and vibrant color, Zander felt the vibrancy draining from himself as every meaningful relationship in his life seemed to be failing. In the midst of Alfread's silence, Zander ruminated on how this was always the way of things.

The worst of it all was he didn't know how to stop it. He only knew that this was his fate. He bowed his head and dropped his eyes, neglecting his duties. Zander passed through mystically beautiful lands beneath a setting sun feeling only the ugliness of abandonment.

*************

They traversed the distance from outpost to outpost. Zander received the reports while Alfread pretended to look warily for danger. Rather, Alfread studied the idyllic wonderland and felt as though he were a character drawn into the illustrations of a fairy tale set in a fantasy world.

Bear's Crossing and the lands near Urzport were normal places with normal vegetation. Mirrevar beneath the falling sun was anything but normal. The vibrancy of the colors that emblazoned everything below the horizon were otherworldly. Each flower that sprouted from the earth was immaculate. Every tree was resplendent and swathed in multicolored leaves and fruit. The streams were of purest blue or dazzling greens and when Alfread drank from them he was revitalized in body, if not his defeated spirit.

The ground wasn't the limit of the wonders either. Covademara was divine, its branches reaching above the eye's capabilities and stretching over Mirrevar. Those great, unreachable limbs were colored by billions upon billions of flowers, and seemed to make a pattern of peace and prosperity.

Alfread did not wonder at the Leverian Dynasty establishing their kingdom here with the bounty of this most fertile of all land in the entire world. He recalled a thousand stories about this place: histories of the Leverians, tales of epic heroes, and mythical sagas that used Mirrevar as their setting flourished in his mind. Alfread traveled into those stories to escape the one he lived. He imagined Elior and Pelianna, Alexia Leveria, Maddeck Eckhard, even Trolltongue's bumbling Sir Pendipity, for their stories were better to experience than his own was to live.

Alfread tried to kill the feeling before tears and lament conquered him again. Yet, the carriage was already down the hill and his thoughts raced after his broken heart.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

My father was wrong. It isn't better to live the story than to tell it. I could live countless lives rather than this miserable one. If only…

Alfread chased after his regrets. If only he had listened to Zander and followed the scholar's path to Erudition or even Leverian University. If only he had stayed home and been with people he knew would never reject him. If only he had driven away his beliefs on love and engaged in tribute. If only. If only. If only.

If only I had never met Asa, I wouldn't feel like a worthless failure.

The thought hung in the air swinging like corpses from trees. Misery permeated through him, spoiling the magical beauty of this land touched by Covademara and the Divine Goddess Leverith. Alfread lowered his eyes to the horse's mane and felt a weight that crushed his soul. If only I had never come here.

Alfread surveyed this land, knowing that his story here was at an end or this pain would swallow him. He couldn't see Asa every day and not be with her. He couldn't see Zander every day and not have his soul turned black with envy. Not only did his best friend have the love of Alexia Bluerose, the inevitable hero of their world's story, he could've had Asa as well. Zander's years of tribute smacked Alfread in the face now with sharp regret as they seemed to overwhelmingly confirm that the beliefs he had eschewed as indoctrination were founded in reality. Such was Alfread's misery that he couldn't look at Zander when he returned.

"That is the last of the outposts along the north. Now we're to head down the Cardian and round back to the encampment." Zander's words were rote and hollow. Alfread's shame didn't stir him fiercely enough to overcome the envy.

"Aye." Alfread set Rubi into a gallop, his bitterness unable to give more than that.

He plunged himself into his misery as he sped south along the central stream of Mirrevar. Alfread pictured the maps. Leveria was shaped like a heart turned upside down and Mirrevar was the heartland of Leveria. The Cardian cut through Mirrevar, severing it in two. The imagery played with Alfread's mind and he felt a melancholy that he should ride the line of broken hearts with his own sundered core beating in his chest. The storyteller in Alfread attached himself to the symbolism and it made his emotions resonate more intensely. How fitting that this line of heartbreak served as the border and battleground of Leveria for over seven centuries?

His own father had nearly died along these waters. Sir Evan had been traveling under Wayn Bearbreaker's command with a dozen knights and twice as many squires. His mother had been the sole medican on their expedition to assault an outpost that the Sapphire had taken from them on the other side of the stream. The night before, Evan and Mirielda had danced beneath the stars and confessed their love, conceiving Alfread.

Alfread sighed, thoughts of his failed attempt to remaster the story invading his remembrance. He dove back into the stories he preferred rather than dwell on his own.

A brutal battle left many dead, their blood flowing through this untainted source. Alfread's father took a wound fighting alongside Wayn, turning a blade that had been intended for the future archlord. The Sapphire steel had been coated in one of the world's deadliest poisons: Isihlan Eclipse.

Evan of Astoria slew the Isihla-descended woman wielding it before she could strike again, but he fell face down into the Cardian no later than his assailant.

Mirielda dragged her lover out of the stream. Her emotions more turbulent than the Eagle during flood, her tonics slowed Evan's blood flow and nearly stopped his heart, stalling the spread of the infection. Still, black serpentine lines spread from Evan's leg, slowly slithering across his body. Wayn Bearbreaker answered Mirielda's desperate pleas that Evan be taken to Master Emmalyn. The knight-captain lamed the fleetest horse in the platoon, breakneck galloping back to the encampment with Alfread's half-conscious father. Mirielda followed as fast as she could and shouted for her master to use her magic to save her beloved, citing an incident over hundred years before where Cianna Torrent had cleansed Isihlan Eclipse from the dragon warrior Syraxyz.

The cognitive-affectomancer denied that her skills with Leverith and Dalis would be able to save Evan. Emmalyn claimed that she lacked the prowess of Cianna Torrent who had attempted the impossible when the dragon warrior Syraxyz had been infected with Isihlan Eclipse nor was Evan as robust as the superhuman Syra had been.

Alfread's mother refused that ending. Mirielda shared the dream she had last night that Evan had given her child. Mirielda called to the sky and to her master, begging, willing to trade anything in the world for her life's mate's life.

Alfread studied the serene blue waters, knowing that his father's life had been saved by a miracle. His life would have been steered along a different road as the fatherless bastard of a highborn woman had Emmalyn not used the first panacea mixed in over a century on his father.

Alfread's first thought was one that brought him enough shame to make him tremble from the poisonous bite of self-hatred. Had his father died, he might never have experienced the pain he felt now. He shook it off, admonishing himself. Had his father died, he would have experienced far more pain. His eyes drew to Zander who knew that pain well. Seeing an enemy, Alfread drew an arrow and set it to his bowstring.

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