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It started to pour again, heavier now... the rapid pattering against the carriage walls acting much akin to the incessant buzzing growing louder, thicker, in her own head. It was a buzzing of words, a buzzing of echoes... senses... instincts... that had long been stifled.

She felt the carriage give a turn, pulling into a long, sharp left that briefly crooked her right. Hearing beyond the storm and beyond the walls, the noisy bustle of the township began to gradually fade away, lost now, amidst the continuous downpour from above.

Further down south... exercise caution... great caution. Terra’s parting words accompanied her, like an open book hovering close by her ears... as if reminding her... urging her... warning her...

“What is there further down south?” Eshwlyn heard herself say, her voice unusually low from prolonged silence. “Master.” She added as an afterthought, resisting the revulsion distorting her lips.

But the man across from her did not seem to hear her. Gleaming red eyes raised to a random corner, seemingly absorbed deep in thought, rapping a single finger against the padding of his seat, as if futilely attempting to keep rhythm with nature’s rattling, chaotic melody.

Annoyance slightly boiled over inside her. How the human could so easily ignore her, and yet she in turn had no other alternative but to forcibly be subjected to every one of his long-winded drawls. Only for it to instantly pass, the moment his mulling gaze flicked back onto hers.

.....

Thunder loudly crackled from above, and then sounded a soft voice, audible in the skies’ dwindling echo.

“Is there something I should know about you, Eshwlyn?”

Wilvur’s words retained the smallest sliver of courtesy that his eyes openly failed to match.

“Should rephrase that...” He smiled, noticing her obvious confusion. “I meant to say-for example, should there be anything I must be made aware of in order for you to perform your due diligence? A condition, a caveat, anything about you I can latch onto and exploit. See, you showed great promise that day when I first found you, a spark of potential-potential, that I must regretfully say, you have not been living up to as of late.”

This was it. Finally, it had come. The true reason why she was here with him now. Eshwlyn did not need honed senses nor even keen instinct to feel the sudden palpable tension in the air stirring between them both.

“Subjugation is not a replacement for unwavering loyalty,” Wilvur continued. “The influence of spells can only extend so far. I have your body but not your soul, and sadly... you are surprisingly adamant about letting the both of them go.”

“Disappointed?” She asked him, letting her scowl show undampened.

“Inconvenienced-” He said. “-Would perhaps be the most fitting word to describe it.”

“Good.” Her lips contorted again. “Master.”

Wilvur did not react to this brazen display of defiance. Still smiling, still tapping, he spoke again, “Which brings me back to reprising the original question. Well then, Eshwlyn? What do you say? Is there anything you can think of that could serve as motivation for you to prosper in your duties? Because from what I hear of the bitter whispers beyond the Manor’s walls-pain does not seem to you a befitting nor learning teacher.”

It was strange to think how he could so casually, openly inquire her of her weaknesses and vulnerabilities in order to better manipulate her to his whims... and even stranger was the fact that she could not at all feel his influence, his will, already trying to forcibly pry out the answer from her lips.

Out of every instance, every situation so far, it was only for this that she was finally granted the stolen privilege of choice-and unhesitantly, burying the answer deep in her mind, Eshwlyn made her choice.

“There is nothing. Nothing you can use. Nothing you can exploit,” She told him, pure hatred dripping with every word like venom. “Until I am dead, until I am rotting and decayed, I will continue to resist you, defy you... despise you!”

The carriage quaked, quivering unsteadily as it began creaking down a rugged path... stirring dangerously the concoction of anger deep inside her almost ready to burst.

“You’ve only wasted your time, your efforts-courtesy! You should have just killed me that day! That would have been your wisest decision-not this! This!” Eshwlyn ripped the cloak off of her body with a furious swipe, aggressively flinging it to the slightly muddied, damped flooring. “I will never bow willingly to your arrogance! Your pride! Your vanity! You despicable, self-serving humans! And you wonder why we kill?! Why we utterly loathe even the stench of your kind?!”

“You kill and revile other species because it is solely in your nature to do so,” Wilvur calmly replied in the face of her ire. “It is simply just the way things are meant to be. As the Divines have willed it.”

“Is it so?” She spat, a sneer violently contorting her expressions in ways she never knew possible. “Then all the more reason why it is foolish for you to try and enslave my kind!”

“Not all of your kind,” He corrected. “For now, just for the sake of this regretful argument we are having, for now, just you.”

“Well, it won’t work!” She bellowed, and another boom of thunder echoed. “Not now, not in a week, not in a month, a year, a century! You can confine me, you can imprison me, do whatever you see fit to break my spirit, but know that I will outlive your treachery!”

“I disagree...”

“Disagree!” She howled in hysterics. “Frutol malar, nes’na! Loco’mur morthal vun’drak!”

“I have stressed to you that Elvish will not be tolerated in my-”

“Then punish me! Go ahead, then-punish me!” Eshwlyn challenged, the rain pouring and crashing heavier than ever. “Do your worst... do it, Master! And sincerely, I hope it kills me!”

Then the shouts gradually dissipated, a strained quiet ushering back in the thunder and rain to prominence. And Wilvur remained in place, his gaze a little colder, his smile a little smaller, and after another moment, he hunched forward, bending to pick the wrinkled, sullied cloak from the floor.

“No, I won’t kill you. Never kill you,” He quietly said, sweeping away the dirt clinging to the fabric with a swiping hand. “No punishment would ever need to come to that. You won’t die, Eshwlyn. I’ve told you before-you will serve your due diligence to me first.”

“And for what purpose?!” She was shouting again, demanding, asking – giving voice to a question that had eluded her all this time. “You’ve bound me, you’ve saved me, you tortured me, you speak to me now-all this-to accomplish what exactly?!”

“That...” He looked back at her, an equal sharpness in both the ways their gazes gleamed at one another. “...you will come to learn in due time.”

“When?!”

“A little further south,” Wilvur answered, his kindly smile reemerging once more. “But to go back to the root of all this. Eshwlyn, I must insist, I must know, is there truly nothing I can exploit to earn your allegiance?”

“You have heard my answer,” She spat. “And no matter what you say, no matter what it is you believe yourself capable of, my answer will never change.”

“I disagree.”

At once, a rippling rage began coursing through her once. “Then disagree as you see fit! Soon, you will learn to accept the bitter truth! Soon, you will understand that I will never change!”

“Never ever...” He whispered, leaning forward at her, and now clearer, closer, Eshwlyn could see his smile in prominence, and there harboring beneath the politeness, a wickedness at its finest. “Never ever... not when I’ve asked nicely... not when I provided you my sincerest courtesy...”

Eshwlyn then felt her fury grow to a stagnant chilling cold.

Wilvur smiled only growing wider still, the look in his eyes, a glinting, blackened scarlet glow.

“So now am I left to deeply ponder...” He spoke. “Would you only change then-if only for the sake of your own darling sister, Eshwlyn?”

The loudest, the most tumultuous rumbling from above shook the walls of the carriage, and as the shrill ringing fading back into silence, Eshwlyn could hear her own heart pounding, begging... desperate for the breath that she refused to take.

Finally, she understood, why now, of all times, of all instances, the truth was not forced out of her throat, why he permitted her this single illusion of choice. For he already had it, knew it... all this time.

“How... How do you...?”

“Further down south, I believe...is where you’ll find all your answers,” Wilvur interjected, settling further back into her seat, glancing over at the slight rattling of the carriage door. “But for now...” He smiled again. “All in due time.”