Burnt Bridges
Note: I found this the other day while cleaning up my hard drive. While I've given it a quick polish, it's not been beta read. I welcome any and all feedback.
Azarath was just as peaceful - and desolate - as it had been on her last, frantic visit. Her footsteps echoed along the deserted streets as she strained her senses, trying to pick up any faint glimmer of life. There were few - mainly birds and vermin. The once thriving city, its houses and great temple, fields and farms, all its thousands of inhabitants, destroyed. She inwardly marvelled at the power and subtlety of the self-repairing magics that had restored the city to a shell of its former self from the ashes and fire. Even the sky was unclouded, still and beautiful, the deep and pure shades of pink and azure that she had only ever heard about. Clear skies had vanished from this place on the day she was born.
Her slow, meandering path eventually took her back to the temple, the place of her birth and sole home for the first ten years of her life. Here, in these muffled halls and cloisters, she'd been raised and trained and kept away from those she might harm, or who might harm her. There, down marble stairs and stone stairs, in the maze of rooms below the temple proper, lay the locked and warded room where she and Azar had spent so much time in meditation and training and talk. Her education had been esoteric but thorough at the hands of the elderly high priestess.
The door swung open at her touch. It was just as she remembered it; small and empty and unnaturally still. Silent. She ran her fingers over the control runes carved deep into the living stone on which the city was built. They flared to life at her touch, bathing the room in gentle blue light. She closed her eyes, head bowed in memory. Stern taskmaster, distant perfectionist, wise spirit-guide, understanding leader, fearless in the face of the worst lapses of control; Azar was thankfully dead long before she'd had to witness the destruction and death her pupil would bring.
Here, just a bit further down the crude stone hall, a tiny monk's cell that had hastily been pressed into service as a child's room. Her room. Windowless, austere, scored deep with control runes training room for when the tantrums and night terrors came, it was devoid of the usual trappings of childhood - such as she understood them - but instead held a small assortment of books and papers and meditation tools.
It seemed smaller every time she saw it. Maybe she was used to having so much space at the Tower. Maybe she was just growing bigger.
Up the stairs and to the left: the kitchens. She'd hidden here, sometimes, when she was very young, lost in the near-chaos of a room that served hundreds on a daily basis. Well, she'd never exactly been lost - the master cook's eagle-eyed son had often spied her lurking and scooped her out from underfoot to let her sit and watch him work, knives flashing. Sometimes he'd even sneak her the sweet pastries forbidden to her under the broad proclamation of 'no sugar'. She could remember now, basking in the warmth of his simple, direct mind, uncluttered by fear or judgement, much as the fat kitchen cat had come to lie in front of the great open fire, belly-up and purring.
Like so much else, it had not been to last. She'd been badly startled by something - she couldn't even remember what it was now - and had lost control of her powers, leaving breakfast, not to mention the kitchen, in ruins and several workers with bad scalds and cuts. The cook's son had been one of them, losing the use of one if his hands and an eye.
She realised with sudden self-reproach that she couldn't remember his name.
Leaving the dark ovens and desolate benches behind, she continued upwards and, finally, to the congregation hall, with its echoing floor and soaring pillars and shafts of strange light. It was here that she'd first seen her mother, a distant, sad stranger, standing out like a siren in the heart of a contented crowd. She'd felt the connection between them, even then, felt the woman's sorrow and pain and self-loathing as her own. That night, Azar, sensing her questions, had explained to her for the first time the circumstances of her conception and birth, and the terrible price Azarath would pay for allowing her continued existence.
She had been six.
She closed her eyes and bowed her head once more, swimming in the memories. The sharp smell of incense came back to her, the cool stone underfoot, carrying with it the vibration of a hundred voices raised in chant and song, the pressure of a hundred trained minds all focused on one goal, the, gentle guiding hand on her shoulder...
"Do not mourn them, Raven. They are at peace. They died for what they believed in."
"You don't die for what you believe in. You fight for it. You live for it."
Her voice echoed harshly in the sacred space.
"That was their way."
"It's not mine."
The hand lifted from her shoulder; she felt its loss as keenly as if her own hand had been severed from her. She opened her eyes, her mouth protest, only to find herself staring into a face so like, yet unlike her own.
"I know, daughter," Arella said softly. "I know. And I am... glad."