Chapter 108: A Satyr’s Tale

Long before anyone called him Ravelhorn the Reveler...

Before the black pipes, the broken oaths, the burned villages and the name whispered through Moonveil Forest with fear...

There had simply been a child beneath a silver moon.

............

Ravelhorn was born during one of the Deep Moon’s brightest seasons.

Moonwells overflowed until silver water spilled into the surrounding grass, flowers bloomed in colors that did not exist beneath Valoria’s sun, and enormous moths drifted lazily through the forests like pieces of the night sky had broken free and learned how to fly.

His mother always claimed that he had laughed before he cried.

His father insisted this was nonsense.

His older sister simply agreed with whichever parent happened to be holding food.

Those were the arguments that defined Ravelhorn’s earliest years.

Meaningless arguments.

Wonderful arguments.

He grew up inside a large Fey household surrounded by music, teasing, food and relatives who seemed physically incapable of respecting personal space.

His father taught him how to carve his first set of pipes, though the instrument produced noises so terrible that several nearby sprites fled their grove and refused to return for three days.

His mother called every awful note beautiful anyway.

His sister was less charitable.

"You sound like a Mooncat choking on a frog." She told him one evening while sprawled across a tree branch.

Ravelhorn, still a young Satyr with tiny horns barely visible through his hair, puffed out his cheeks. "Father said I’m improving!"

"Father loves you."

"So does Mother!"

"Exactly. Neither can be trusted."

Naturally, Ravelhorn chased her through half the forest afterward.

That was life.

They danced beneath moonlight, swam in Moonwells, followed wandering Fey caravans whenever festivals crossed their territory and returned home several days later with stories that became increasingly ridiculous each time they were retold.

Ravelhorn loved crowds, loved laughter, and loved watching strangers become friends after enough wine and music removed whatever foolish reason they had possessed for remaining apart.

Perhaps the nature of a Satyr had always been inside him.

Revelry, freedom, passion, and chaos!

But back then, chaos meant his sister replacing Father’s ceremonial wine with berry juice.

It meant Ravelhorn convincing several dryads that somebody else had challenged them to a dancing competition.

It meant waking after a festival with flowers braided into his horns and absolutely no memory of who put them there.

The Deep Moon was enormous, beautiful, and to a child who had never truly lost anything...

Eternal.

Then came The Grand Fey War.

............

Ravelhorn never remembered exactly when the world stopped feeling safe.

There was no single morning where everything changed.

First came arguments over crossings, then soldiers appeared along paths where travelers once moved freely.

Fey caravans vanished and human patrols disappeared in return.

Both sides accused the other.

Retaliation became justification for retaliation, and before long the same crossings that once carried merchants, musicians and wandering families carried armies instead.

Ravelhorn went to war because everyone did.

He was young, powerful and angry enough to believe that courage was the same thing as understanding what was happening.

At first, the fighting even seemed glorious!

Drums echoed beneath impossible skies while Fey warriors charged through shimmering passages, Humans raised banners upon the other side, and magic painted battlefields in colors that would have been beautiful if men were not dying beneath them.

Then Ravelhorn discovered what war actually was.

It was mud, screams, finding someone you ate beside yesterday with half their body missing today, and watching frightened creatures kill one another because somebody several hundred kilometers away had decided a patch of ground belonged to the wrong people.

His first real lesson came during a temporary ceasefire.

A Human force had become trapped near a damaged crossing while a larger Fey host surrounded them. Their commander approached beneath a white banner and swore that if allowed safe passage toward the eastern road, his soldiers would withdraw from the region.

An oath was made that was clear and simple, and Ravelhorn argued that it should be honored as per fey tradition.

Some Fey distrusted the humans, but he remembered merchants who had once crossed freely into the Deep Moon.

He remembered human musicians at festivals, human children staring at Moonmoths, and human women laughing while drunken Satyrs attempted impossible dances.

Humans weren’t heartless monsters!

So they opened the path, and the soldiers marched out peacefully.

Then, they immediately attacked once the Fey formation relaxed.

Anti-fey arrows came first, then hidden Mages with spell volleys followed.

The rear guard collapsed before anyone understood what had happened.

Ravelhorn watched one of his closest companions fall with an arrow through his throat, and something inside him changed from that moment onward.

The human commander who had sworn the oath was still shouting orders when Ravelhorn reached him.

"You promised!" Ravelhorn screamed, striking aside a spear.

The man stared at him without shame. "I promised my children I would survive to take care of them."

That answer remained with Ravelhorn for centuries.

He slaughtered them all regardless.

When the last human soldier attempted to flee, Ravelhorn chased him through the trees and killed him too.

Afterward, he stood among the bodies shaking with fury while blood dripped from his hands.

For the first time in his life, the kindness taught to him by his parents disgusted him.

............

The war eventually ended.

Though, when said like that, it was as though any war would possess a neat endings, with an award ceremony for the heroes of the rebellion and an end credits scene.

No, wars never ended. The actual fighting may cease, but the smoldering hatred, the damaged lives and the ruined property would always remain, festering until the next conflict.

Here though, the armies stopped marching, treaties were signed, and new boundaries were drawn.

Formerly free Fey crossings were regulated, restricted or closed, and every side solemnly promised that the new rules would prevent another disaster.

Ravelhorn returned home, and thankfully, his family had survived.

For a while, that seemed enough.

His mother lovingly hugged him until he complained that she would break his ribs.

His father pretended not to cry that his darling son was back safely.

His sister mocked the new scars on his body before spending the entire night sitting beside him while rubbing ointment on them.

Perhaps life could return to normal after all the blood and hate?

Unfortunately, it didn’t.

The Deep Moon began changing.

At first, the signs were small enough to dismiss.

One Moonwell receded slightly, a familiar migration arrived several weeks late, and flowers that normally bloomed for half the year wilted early.

One crossing failed, then three, and soon twelve.

Fey communities that had relied upon resources moving between realms began crowding deeper into the remaining fertile territories.

Naturally, the predators followed prey, causing crowding and hostile ecosystems where hunting surpassed the replenishment rate.

Territorial disputes grew between communities, escalating into armed conflicts, and atop all of this, the Moonwells continued shrinking.

Ravelhorn became frightened.

He traveled constantly, gathering reports and bringing them before the Wild Court.

Five Archfey sat upon that elder council.

Ravelhorn argued with them so often that eventually even walking toward their hall made his blood boil.

"Open more crossings!" He demanded again and again.

The answer remained the same.

They talked of ancient treaties, old obligations, consequences, the danger of provoking Valoria’s human races, and the possibility that the Deep Moon might recover naturally.

Ravelhorn hated every answer.

"The realm is dying while you debate whether dying politely is preferable to offending people who signed treaties centuries ago!" He shouted during one particularly vicious argument.

The Wild Court still coldly refused to budge.

So Ravelhorn tried everything else.

He moved Fey from failing regions, he fought monsters driven mad by hunger, and he escorted caravans between surviving Moonwells.

He learned which plants could survive thinner Fey Essence and which creatures could be relocated without collapsing another ecosystem.

He worked, he fought, he begged.

And every year the Deep Moon became a little dimmer.

Eventually, Ravelhorn broke the law.

He forced open an ancient crossing, and for nine days, many fey poured through into Valoria.

Thousands escaped before fighting erupted around the passage, people died on both sides and the crossing collapsed.

The Wild Court named him an oathbreaker.

Ravelhorn laughed in their faces as they exiled him.

............

Exile should have hurt more.

By then, Ravelhorn possessed very little left for the Wild Court to take.

The Deep Moon continued starving, and eventually starvation reached his family.

His father weakened first.

There had been a time when the old Satyr could carry Ravelhorn beneath one arm while carrying a barrel beneath the other.

Near the end, he struggled to stand.

His mother followed, then his sister.

Ravelhorn searched everywhere for a solution to their problem.

He crossed failing paths, raided abandoned sanctuaries and fought things he would once have avoided simply because someone whispered that they guarded concentrated Fey Essence.

Nothing was enough.

The Deep Moon was not suffering from one disease that could be cured with one miracle.

The very world itself was starving!

His family understood before he did.

"No! Never!!" Ravelhorn roared when he realized what they intended.

His sister smiled weakly, and for once, she didn’t make a joke.

"You always were the stubborn one, Little Brother." She chided gently.

"No! Don’t even think about it!" Ravelhorn protested with bloodshot eyes.

However, they ignored him, gathering their remaining Fey Essence.

Ravelhorn backed away.

"Don’t you dare! I-I won’t take it!"

His father laughed softly. "You sound exactly like your mother."

His mother slapped the old Satyr’s arm despite barely possessing enough strength to lift her hand.

Then the light entered Ravelhorn, and the young satyr screamed in agony, not from physical pain, but emotional.

Their remaining Fey Essence flowed into him, reinforcing a body worn down by years of fighting and travel.

He resisted, but they continued.

He begged, but they still continued.

His sister was the last, her fey essence slightly stronger than their parents.

Ravelhorn held her as her body began fading into purple motes.

"P-Please... don’t... Sis...!" He whispered through tears, his voice cracking.

She touched one hand against his face. "Keep walking forward little brother. Live and laugh for all your life."

Then, she disappeared.

Ravelhorn remained on his knees in his old home for a very long time.

When the young Satyr finally stood, he found that he was now all alone.

............

Centuries passed, and Ravelhorn wandered Valoria because there was nowhere else to go.

At first, he certainly hated humans, but soon he realized hatred became exhausting when applied to an entire race.

Some Humans cheated him, while others fed him.

Some attempted to kill him, while others invited him into their homes without knowing his name.

He learned human languages, human money, and human laws.

He even learned human tavern etiquette, which turned out to differ surprisingly little from Satyr etiquette once everyone became drunk enough.

He watched kingdoms change borders, villages become towns, families rise, disappear and leave nothing behind except surnames carved onto old stones.

He learned human music too.

Some of it was terrible, but annoyingly, some of it was excellent.

Gradually, the hatred left him, but the grief never did.

Eventually, Ravelhorn found Moonveil Forest.

At this time, Rosewood Town did not exist yet.

There were only scattered tiny settlements many kilometers away, with a few occasional hunters and an enormous stretch of Fey-touched wilderness surrounding old crossings most Humans had forgotten.

Perfect.

Ravelhorn decided that this would be where his story ended.

He wanted nothing to do with the Wild Court, wars, or crusades to save anyone.

He would live quietly beneath the trees, play his music when he wished, and eventually fade whenever his time arrived.

For many years, that indeed worked for him.

Then, one evening he smelled blood.

Ravelhorn followed the scent through the trees until laughter reached him.

Redcaps.

A group of them crowded around a corpse.

Ravelhorn stopped and saw that a White Fox lay dead between them, her six tails spread across blood-soaked grass.

The Redcaps were laughing while they tore pieces of flesh away, dipping their caps into the Fox’s blood until the cloth became dark and wet.

Ravelhorn’s expression hardened, but was about to shake his head and leave.

Then he heard something else, a tiny whimper.

Several Redcaps were trying to drag something from beneath the dead Fox’s body.

An infantile pup with one tail.

She was till so young that her legs shook when she tried to stand, and her eyes had barely been open long.

The little creature clawed desperately at its mother’s fur while the Redcaps pulled harder, too young to understand death but old enough to understand that something horrible was happening.

Ravelhorn stared in silence.

For a moment, he saw himself kneeling alone inside the Deep Moon.

His usually dead heart suddenly began to beat again, and he walked into the clearing with a cold expression.

"Leave, now." He commanded.

The Redcaps turned to see who dared speak to them like this, but several recognized what stood before them and immediately froze in terror.

One stupid creature lifted its weapon, and Ravelhorn simply gave it one look.

That was enough, and the weapon dropped to the ground.

The Redcaps scattered into the forest, abandoning the corpse and the trembling pup without argument.

Ravelhorn waited until their footsteps disappeared, then he approached.

The pup tried hiding beneath its mother’s body.

"It’s alright." Ravelhorn said quietly.

She trembled harder.

Ravelhorn paused, then rubbed his head and crouched.

"Hey little one, I’m not going to hurt you."

Large frightened eyes stared back at him.

Ravelhorn extended one hand with a gentle smile.

The pup hesitated for a long time before crawling forward and pressing herself against his palm.

She was tiny, warm, terrified, and alone.

Ravelhorn swallowed.

"...Yeah, just like me."

He lifted her carefully.

The little Fox immediately buried herself against his chest, shaking beneath his arms.

Ravelhorn looked once toward the six-tailed body behind them, then down at the pup.

"You’ll need a name."

She made a small sound.

Ravelhorn thought for several moments.

"Mirelle."

The pup shifted slightly, calming down significantly.

He smiled.

"Mirelle, then."

Ravelhorn turned away from the corpse and walked toward the depths of Moonveil Forest, the one-tailed White Fox curled tightly within his arms.

For the first time in centuries, he wasn’t alone anymore.