Category: The Tiered Tower

Original Fiction, The Tiered Tower

The Man in the Runic Kerchief

Mertiya (AdmirableMonster)

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Moderate Violence

Summary: A deal goes wrong on the yellow tier. We are introduced to a kitsune prince and his terrifying lover.

Short Tail tried to stand a little straighter as she entered the conference room at the end of the line. She did not want to make any mistakes on her first day of duty, particularly not as a guard of the illustrious Leopard family. She was still unsure as to how she, Short Tail, the runt of the parade, had made it this far, and she damn well didn’t want to disappoint, even if she was only serving as the guard for the youngest son, Leopard Paw, and according to all her squad mates, today’s meeting barely counted as guard work at all.

“Final meeting with the kitsune prince?” Sharp Fangs had smirked. “I think you’ll be fine.”

All the same, Short Tail was curious. There weren’t many kitsune on the yellow tier, and Bee of the Wolf family was one of the only ones coming from princely blood.

When they entered, he didn’t look like anything special. Seated at the head of the table and sprawling a little, feet up, he looked like any other troll prince, his dark hair gathered in small, beaded braids close to his head. There was something strange about the wide set of his eyes and the glitter of yellow in the depths of his irises, but Short Tail would never have noticed if she hadn’t already known. Far more striking—and simultaneously surprising—was his companion.

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Original Fiction, The Tiered Tower

New Beginnings

Mertiya (AdmirableMonster)

Summary: A young kobold who has followed his wife to a distant Imperial posting brings his egg to the clan and discovers that he doesn’t understand as much about his new society as he thought he did.

A/N: Rated general audiences, no particular warnings.

Pale morning light caressed the creamy yellow shell of the egg, speckled with blue like Morning Daughter’s eyes. Third Son rearranged the little puffs of cotton warming their egg for the fourth or fifth time. “It’ll be all right,” he’d told Morning Daughter before he left their rooms at the far end of the compound, and she’d nodded bravely. It was the egg—it was harder than they’d thought it would be.

The rest of their move from the violet tier to the black had been difficult, but it was a good opportunity, and it hadn’t been more difficult than expected. There was the journey, which, thanks to some complications during the crossings, had taken nearly two weeks, and there was the tier itself—although this had made up for its cave-like qualities by turning out to be startlingly beautiful. Third Son had heard that the seasons on the lower tiers had more to do with location than with time, but he hadn’t really understood what that had meant until they had arrived in the middle of a raging snowstorm that gave way within a half hour’s walk to a warm, quiet spring-like day. There was also getting settled, half their furniture being lost somewhere on the green tier, and finding out just exactly how different a shared language could be.

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