Turmoil and Trickery

WYVERN MOON 19, COMPREHENSIVE YEAR 902. SOMEWHERE NEAR ABÓBORA, PRESIDING SETTLEMENT OF THE COURT OF HARVEST.
RADIANT TWILIGHT breaks through the dense canopy of orange and gold, air heavy with the stench of apprehension. A young man - elven, in his early second century or so - inhales softly as to not alert the Ones Who Reap to his presence.
Mercutio Soldhom, Second Son to Emperor Lucio Soldhom of the Temporan Soldhom Dynasty, was never meant to leave his palatial home, nor was he meant to ever find himself stumbling about in the Wild Realm. A plane parallel to his own; a place where all are beholden to their own unrestrained emotion, an unnaturally chromatic landscape that dazzles the eye and frees the heart. The pale elf has his back to a tree with abnormally smooth bark, allowing him to flatten against the mahogany wood completely. Leaves of autumn tremble in the overhead foliage, shaking on a breeze that comes from all directions yet wanders in none. Strange music - hollow, almost like that of a calliope - resounds faintly amidst the disconcerting countryside.
Mercutio squeezes his eyes shut tightly, a single tear of frustration and fear sliding down the side of his face. The music grows louder and more imposing as he tries to focus his breathing, and a shadow of an immense Creature - hulking, antlered - lumbers heavily into his peripheral vision.
“I’m ever so grateful that the Grand Hunt this Moon is proving to be quite entertaining. The last few have proven… boring. It’s so much less interesting when the mortal lacks the self-preservation drive of true prey.” The Creature’s voice is silky smooth, a deep bass register that causes Mercutio’s knees to turn to gelatin. His legs wobble and he slips, momentarily losing his balance.
The Creature’s antlered head snaps towards Mercutio. For a second, the elf can make out the grim eyes of his pursuer, the rest of his visage obscured by shadow. Its eyes are the color of the Harvest Moon, a hungry shade of gold that ascends into the heavens once a year by light of the goddess Melancholia's lantern. She, Mother of the Harvest, is often depicted with a wickedly sharp scythe and a motherly smile - for it is she who reaps the souls of fall. Those who live in the Court of Harvest follow her doctrine without question, and the Creature hunting Mercutio is no different - though his countenance lacks any of the warmth found in the Mother’s smile.
The Second Son’s flight response stirs within his stomach, and Mercutio sprints from his hiding space amidst the foliage to escape the lumbering grasp of this Creature. A bellowing laugh cuts through the chilled air. “You can run, boy, but even the swiftest of mortals grow exhausted in time. Come dawn, I shall have a satisfying meal - that of a feather-footed mortal, quivering and helpless!”
Mercutio darts from tree to tree, bush to bush, making full use of his slender frame and quick feet to escape. Although his older brother - a dashing, athletic man named Lysandre who just happened to be the named heir to the Soldhom throne - often shamed him for his scrawny arms and slight appearance, Mercutio took great pride in his stamina and dexterity. From what little Mercutio understood about those who live in the Wild Realm (what most mortals call fae folk), there were two rules to understand, lest you risk your longevity. One: you should never ‘give’ something away, and two: physical combat with any of these beings is simply asking for an early demise. Mercutio’d always assumed that these were just silly tales to coerce your children into going to bed at a reasonable hour, but as he finds himself fleeing for his life from a Creature, his skepticism has worn off quite quickly.
Time and distance are nigh impossible for Mercutio to accurately judge in the Wild Realm. The chromatic scenery is homogenous, yet imperceptibly shifts every time his attention drifts over some aspect of the landscape. Fractal patterns spiral in tree bark; the birds sing a hypnotic song as the Zodiac Court awakens from their slumber to ascend into the skies above. A minute could be an hour, a mile could be a yard. Nonetheless, Mercutio runs.
Footfall after footfall, step after step - the feather-footed Son flees through the Wild Realm. His breathing grows labored, his muscles exhausted; nightfall has come, imposing its slight shadow upon this Realm of infinite dusk. He feels his body begin to give, and the words of the Creature ring true in his ears - all mortals tire, regardless of their physical prowess. Mercutio continues to run, as quickly as he can through the maze-like wood that stretches boundlessly. The soft earth, layered with the fallen leaves of the canopy above, seems more and more inviting in the Son’s every pace.
Mercutio inhales sharply, feeling the crisp air of Autumn painfully swell in his lungs. His body falls slowly through the air and towards the ground, as if he were descending into his warm palace bed laden with blankets and pillows. The impact with the ground doesn’t hurt him one bit, but the embrace rather provides his body with a sense of comfortable stillness he hadn’t felt since before the Hunt began. He closes his eyes, as if to fall asleep in the swaddle of the Wild Realm.
A voice comes from behind the Son. “Dumbass, get up!”
Mercutio squeezes his eyes tighter. “Am I dead?” he asks himself, trying to tune out the odd voice.
“No, dummy, you’re lying face down in the Harvest Court where any little ol’ Faerie can come and whack you upside the head.” The voice coming from behind Mercutio has all of the verve of a woodland creature, yet carries the rich baritone of a soloist from one of the finest theater troupes ever hired by the Imperial Court.
The jarring contrast in tone from being chased through a haunting wood of perpetual autumn to hearing this cartoonish, almost comical voice was enough to break Mercutio from his trance. Soldhom’s Second Son begrudgingly rolls over from his stomach to a seated position, only to see a bizarre sight. Before him is a large, rather chubby creature clad in robes of deep gold that he could only describe as a hybrid between a raccoon and a dog, but its most distinctive feature is its massive scrotum. Mercutio balks.
“Can I have your name?” the strange raccoon-dog asks.
“You can’t have my name, but I don’t mind telling you my name,” retorts the feather-footed Mercutio.
“Wise guy, ehー guess that means you’ve got a chance out here after all.”
Mercutio attempts to keep a straight face, but he hasn’t gotten much in the way of praise for quite some time. Inside, the Second Son is beaming with joy, despite his conundrum.
“My name is Prince Mercutio Soldhom, Second Son to Emperor Lucio Soldhom of the Temp-,”
“I’m going to cut you off there, Merc. See, even though I’m technically part of the Harvest Court’s inner circle, I think that all of that stodgy crap is pointless. The name’s Pom Poko, and they call me King of the Tanuki ‘round these parts.”
“K-King?” Mercutio asks, immediately shifting his position from sitting crosslegged to kneeling.
“Oh Gods, do you want help or not? Formality bores me, and you seem like a nice guy… but I don’t take kindly to the verbose and flowery.”
The Second Son nods again, reverting to his seated position. “I’m being hunted. It called it the Grand Hunt, I think? If I remember right, it was a lumbering creature with eyes of hungry gold.”
King Pom Poko sighs. “Life around here would be so much easier if that bastard Erlkönig would just keep an eye on his kids. I get that he has to deal with the politics for two Courts, but…,” Pom Poko continues to ramble about the intricacies of the Harvest Court for several more minutes, at which point Mercutio interrupts.
“So you know what I’m talking about, then? What exactly that Creature is?”
“Folks in my territory have taken to calling him the Barmanou - it basically means big hairy man in our native tongue, but yeah, a real piece of work.”
“How do I stop him?”
“Merc, take one good look at yourself. You ain’t stopping anything. Our job is to depose the bastard for just long enough so you can slip out of the Court territory and find yourself one of those little gateways back to - what was it called? Timpani? Tempura?”
Mercutio doesn’t respond, instead fiddling with the small pendant of balancing scales hung around his neck.
The tanuki spots the necklace and immediately begins guffawing. “Really? You follow Truth? Gods, we gotta get you out of here before someone else sees a token of Enaldir in the goddamn Wild Realm.”
Sheepishly, the feather-footed Son shoves the dangling pendant beneath his soiled linen tunic of lavender. “So what do you suppose we do?” he asks, his voice shaking a little.
King Pom Poko smiles, his fat furry cheeks extending slightly. “We prank him. Prank the bastard.”
Mercutio stares in mild disbelief. Pranking? What kind of wild plan would Pom Poko have to concoct to pull something over the head of that Creature?
“See, what tanuki excel at - far more than any of Those Who Revel out here - is the art of making people, spirits, even Creatures look absolutely stupid. And, hear me out, should we bring Barmanou's absolute idiocy to the attention of his father, he might instead choose to Reap his child.” Pom Poko’s eyes gain a merciless glint, and the Second Son begins to notice things about the King that he hadn’t as he had groggily come to. The tanuki’s teeth were each razor-sharp, honed to a savage point. Spots on his robe seemed to be darker than others, almost like a stain had been scrubbed out by a hapless servant.
Mercutio places all of his worries aside in that moment, and immediately focuses all of his intent on returning home. He mutters a vow to himself, swearing to no deity in particular - if his family (or heaven forbid, even the woman he was put in an arranged marriage to) failed to realize that he was gone, he would leave the dynastic life to start anew. No more royalty, no more gods - just the independence only wilderness could bring.
“What was that?” asks King Pom Poko innocently, his fur gently shifting in the night’s chilled breeze.
The feather-footed Son subtly unclasps the chain of his pendant, the symbol of the Truth God falling to the mulchy path of orange and gold below. “Nothing.”