Disclaimer: The Old Kingdom and all related characters are the legal property of Garth Nix. I am merely borrowing them for my own amusement.
you
betrayer
you didn't
It screamed, a high, wild, railing shriek that cracked the young earth beneath and rattled the net of sound encasing it. For a moment the song faltered, the singers already weary and broken, and it arched in an increased frenzy, twisting, wheeling, winding. It raised its own voice in the brief quiet, and spat a song of stilted, grating notes, danced a macabre whirl that defied rhythm and beat and constraint.
But for its fear they had sorrow, for its panic they had mistrust, and for its anger they had hatred. Their song grew once more, louder and stronger and spreading, choking it into a raging silence.
why couldn't
we needed
brother
you didn't
The song pulled, pulled it tighter, and its next cry was agony. Contracted and condensed as it never should have been, it bucked against the binding with all that remained of a frantic desperation, but nothing gave. It scrabbled for something to brace itself against, some leverage, but the song soared and it slipped.
Its song was strangled, crushed in the coils, leaving it only a single wail of nothing, I did nothing!
They watched with coldness, and it knew that was why they were here.
we needed you
we lost her
we called for you
A final chord, a harsh harmony, and everything fled from it. Blind and deaf and senseless, weighted and dulled and helpless. He screamed, thin and exhausted and mortal, and they let him fall.
you didn't choose
A/N: Long, rambling explanation time again! I have always viewed the Shiners and their ilk to be something more than mere people, or even the average Free Magic beings seen here and there in the series. Abhorsen speaks of them choosing worlds, of weaving worlds together and tearing them apart. That is more than your regular magic-wielder playing around with fire. Thus I've always seen them as more ethereal entities than physical beings, and I imagine going from a formless freedom to a bound existence would be excruciating. Yes, I'm aware Mogget obviously has a shape when unbound, but I think that long under that strong a binding would shear away quite a lot of his essence as is—he is now like the Dog, a leftover of what he used to be. And understandably cranky about it.
I also think the Seven wouldn't punish someone for merely being neutral. Perhaps one day I'll go more into my thoughts there. As for the lost she very briefly mentioned? A possible take on Astarael; "it is her fate, that her knowing self will be forever outside what she chose to make." Perhaps it was a necessary choice, a sacrifice that was a part of Orannis' binding, something that meant part of her was left behind in the making of the Charter. Or perhaps I'm talking out my left ear. Either or.
