Luther's Pride Chapter 1 Part 1 (Rough Draft)

The following is the opening scene to a new project I'm working on, a HaremLit medieval fantasy: Luther's Pride. Let me know what you think!

Luther watched the dancing flames lick higher into the dark star-speckled sky above and did his best not to contemplate their source. His father, Cerebrion, was always kind to him. Their relationship had been that of a single father and a rebellious son. Luther could admit that now.

As an adult, he could look back and see his father’s rules and restrictions had been for his benefit. As a child, Luther considered his father a tyrant, one he couldn’t wait to escape. Now, as Luther watched the flames of his Cerebrion’s funeral pyre, he knew it was too late for any offer of gratitude or his apology for being such an unruly child.

Luther was now a man. Standing in the first row of people at his father’s funeral, he stood slightly apart. His father had no surviving family members. At least, none that talked to him. Luther’s father had been one of the fey, though he had never been to the other world. His mother had been as human as they came, and to Cerebrion’s family, such love was a perversion. He had been disowned, cast out, and his parents had long since traveled to the other side of the world to live out their lives together.

Unfortunately for Cerebrion, Luther’s mother did not survive his birth. Luther had never met his mother, but he felt he had through stories from his father, who never took another lover after Luther’s mother. As one of those descended from the fey folk, his father had an extraordinarily long life. A human being might live seventy to a hundred years before dying of old age. The fey in their world did not age at all and did not die from it. Yet in this one, they aged one year for every ten. This year would have been his father’s 765th birthday, a respectable but not quite ancient age for one of his folk.

Luther, for his part, aged more or less like a human would, at least until he’d reached adulthood. His father had told him to expect a longer life than any human he might come to know and was sure his aging would slow the older Luther became until it finally reached its steady pace, and then he, too, would die.

Thoughts of mortality were so easy to come by, given the dancing flames that filled Luther’s vision. Yet he knew that, according to tradition, he ought not to be thinking about himself. He ought to be thinking about his father’s life and love. He ought to remember his father’s words and advice and thank his father’s spirit for the lessons taught and the love given. Then he was to release the spirit, to let go of his father and wish him well in heaven, just as the flame released the sparks that floated out and drifted skyward on the wind.

“Why are you leaving, Luther?” He remembered his father asking him the day he left. Standing there, outside the stone tower, they called home.

Luther looked down into his father’s warm blue eyes and smiled softly. He did not know how to make his father understand. He could tell him, say the words and define his reason, but that could not make his father understand why Luther was leaving, his bags packed, his horse saddled.

“You do not have to.” Cerebrion reminded him. “You are welcome here. You can study here, with me, as you have done.”

“That’s the difference between us, Father.” Luther announced. “You believe you can learn all you need from here. You can sit in your tower and read the books others bring you, learn whatever you wish, and hone whatever arcana you wish to practice! I cannot. I don’t have the talent for such things that you do-”

“Your arcana is fine.” Cerebrion interrupted. “You might not be as talented as I or some of the other mages your age, but that does not mean-”

“I am not as talented at it as others.” Luther admitted. “As yourself.” He continued. “I need to find new ways to learn, new teachers, new places. I want to travel. I want to see the world you’ve seen and learn the way I want to, not the way you want to teach me. Do you understand?”

Luther and Cerebrion looked at each other for a long moment. Time around them ticked on. Birds in the nearby tree, where Luther once learned to climb, chirped and sang, ignorant or uncaring of the moment whose silence they filled.

His father did not answer. He hugged Luther tightly around his middle, pinning his arms to his sides, and squeezed. There were no tears shed between the two of them, but each had them ready in case the other began to shed any. The hug ended with firm grips on each other's shoulders as they stood apart and looked each other in the eye.

“Goodbye, Father.” Luther said.

“Make me proud, son.” Cerebrion replied.

That was the last time Luther saw his father. They’d exchanged letters several times since, but the last time Luther had seen his father alive, the last words he’d spoken to the old man were a goodbye. There was some closure in that, despite the man’s passing.

It was strange to Luther to remember how his father had looked so vividly in his memory. Even older than seven-hundred years, he’d looked to be a man of around forty, with an apparent fey beauty and grace despite his penchant for wearing old, sometimes too well-worn, clothes. They’d burned him in the traditional burial clothes of the fey folk, green cloth wrapped over his features like leaves hiding his body, bound with string on the pyre. It all burned away as they watched.

Beside Luther stood the sixth and final priestess whose duty it was to speak and chant the prayers of the temple over his father’s body as it burned. The six-hour ceremony was a long process, and the singers rotated every hour, each taking a portion of the Song of Farewell. He’d heard it in full seven times in his life, and if he was honest, Luther never expected to hear it sung for his father.

He listened to the old language pouring forth from her in a steady song and closed his eyes against the dry air that swept out from the heat. The melody was sweet and gentle now, singing of twilight, remembrances, and absolutions. He understood most of the words or would have if they were on the page, but the sung foreign language was as strange to him as if he didn’t know it. It was the high draconic speech reserved for ceremonies like this.

On his other side stood Criella, an Asmodean. She was taller than the last time he’d seen her, the day before his departure. The ram’s horns atop her head were longer, curving back over the top of her head from her forehead and curling around so the tips came to the bottom of her earlobes. Her red skin was the shade of a blushing rose, her canines more pointed than a human's, and the narrow, prehensile, spade-pointed tail was something humans didn't have. Otherwise, she looked perfectly human, young, and even beautiful by human standards.

He’d known her since childhood, and it didn’t surprise him to learn that she’d been working for his father while he was away. It also didn’t surprise him when he felt her eyes on him. She’d been closer to him than anyone else and knew his heart in ways no one else ever had. She worried for him now, even as she mourned their shared loss. Luther and his father had never despised her for being Asmodean, as some of the more provincial rubes of the area did. She had not chosen to be born as she was any more than they had.

Luther stood there even after the burning was done. It was Criella who finally pulled him away from the pyre. Her hand felt small in his, and he looked down at her with a soft expression on his face but unsmiling. He didn’t have to smile with her, even as he stood at the end of the procession, smiling for those who came to say farewell to his father, nodding to them in greeting, clasping their hands, hugging them, patting their shoulders and backs, and being assured that he had their sympathies.

It was a rote, empty process that left Luther exhausted when it was finished and the last of his father’s mourners had left. Only Luther, Criella, and the young priestess remained. She was dressed in the plain white robes of her station with the gray threads embroidering the edges with the symbols of her order.

“Your father was a good man.” The priestess assured him. “I am sure he has been welcomed in heaven.”

Luther nodded his thanks. It was not the first or the last time he’d been assured of his father’s final resting place.

“If you need anyone to speak to for counsel with your grief, the temple is always open to you.” The priestess assured him.

“Thank you.” Luther nodded again. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I know you. Were you and my father close?”

“He was a regular visitor at the temple and a generous supporter of my education there.” The priestess explained. “It was an unfortunate honor to participate in his final rites.”

“Ah.” Luther said. “Yes, he was an ardent supporter of education. I’m glad he was able to help you, priestess…” Luther did not know her name, so he could not supply it.

“Jowangshin.” The priestess supplied her name with a bow. “But everyone calls me Jo.”

“Thank you, Jo.” Luther gave her an empty smile.

“Luther?” Criella’s voice into their conversation. “Forgive me, Jo.” She addressed the priestess with a hand, taking hers and squeezing it as if they were old friends. “He’s been away for some time and met the procession on the road. He has yet to rest from his travel, and it’s been a long and wearisome day. Would you mind terribly if I took him home?”

“Of course.” Jo bowed and backed away from the pair. “Farewell, Luther. I hope we meet again in happier circumstances.”

Criella released Jo’s hand and took Luther’s, guiding him away as he answered. “Farewell.”