The first thing she thinks as she comes to is 'cold', because she's closer today to the icy peaks. The dusk is masked by the clouds, and snow starts to clump in her eyelashes. She dimly thinks that it's good she's awake now, because she could have died.
The second thing she thinks isn't as coherent—it's more a mixture of cursing and pain and loneliness, rolled into a single word. She tries to pronounce it, but her tongue feels too heavy to work properly. She wets her lips, and is relieved by the bitter tang of blood. It reminds her of herself, it's familiar. It's comforting.
She screams as she tries to sit, a hoarse wail tearing through her throat, and she can't stop it. The cry rips through her, a mixture of excruciating pain and guilt. A seed of hate blossoms in her mind, its inky veins disrupting her thoughts. 'oh no,' she thinks. 'I thought I was healed.'
The snow speckles the ground, not thick enough to blanket it. The numbness starts in her toes and fingertips, and she waits for it to cover her before trying to stand up this time. It's easier this way.
The thing that gets her, as she scrapes her hand against a tree to keep from pitching to the ground, is that she never falls asleep in the daylight, unless she's really, really drunk. But the ache in her head doesn't suggest spirits, it suggests exhaustion.
It occurs to her that she's bleeding, and it's odd, because she doesn't remember fighting anyone when she left the Sigils Sanctum, but they look like battle scrapes. Like the kind she used to get fighting the crypt walkers in Crescent Reach. Nothing too serious. Then she wonders why she hasn't been attacked, lying unconscious in East Karana. Her mind puts two and two together, and she turns around.
"Oh."
The sound escapes her before she thinks to keep cover, but the display before her makes her nostalgic. The Splitpaws must have chased her, but there's not much left of them anymore. An ear here, a head over there. There must have been around thirty before, but they've been so mutilated that she would have to put them back together to count them, and it's not much use, them being dead and all. A brief regret pulses through her, when she realizes that she's eliminated the chance of foraging supplies off them. She can't see anything larger then a leg in the pile of blood and bones.
It really takes her back, the scene, except they're gnolls, not orcs, and it's cold. For a second she's reminded of Nelaij and the others, but then it occurs to her that she doesn't see the body of any friends in the mess, so it's not the quite the same. The pure part of her breathes a sigh of relief that no one followed her as far as she could see, that she didn't kill anyone human.
She shakes her head woozily, and her priority has changed from figuring out why she hurts so much to finding her sword. After an hour of lackluster searching, she sees it protruding from the torso of a particularly large gnoll. She sits next to it and picks up a hand, not caring if it belongs to the bloody sheath in front of her. She pulls the ring off the stiffened fingers and strokes its palm, and she pretends that she's talking to Trellana, when she had her strung up and gagged. All the monk could do was stare at her, curse her in the silence, but speaking to her was comforting, those wide eyes and the way she didn't say anything.
"I never was good at this, you know."
She sighs because she knows it's true, all her hate and fury and darkness was flung out the window when she claimed her Sigil. Somehow she knew it would come back to Shadow Knight or Paladin, but sitting cross-legged next to a dead gnoll, holding its hand and speaking in a hoarse voice, it seems clear her choice in the end. She wonders how Karilis does it, because he seems so content. Iksars were remarkable. She couldn't decide if they just didn't care, or if they held all their guilt inside, swallowing and swallowing until the kill didn't matter anymore.
It almost looks as though there are tears streaking down her face, because the snow is melting on her eyelids and cutting a watery path through the grime on her cheeks. It still seems so white, though, because the snow is picking up, swirling in a deranged dance around her. It's easy to remember why people die in this stuff, the way it sticks and flirts around her body reminds her of a mad man, born without emotion or remorse, killing because it can.
"I wouldn't be like this if I hadn't met them," she says to the gnoll, patting its nose. She decides to call it Harram, after her best friend when she was five. Harram the first died when the plaguebringers came. Harram the second died when the deathbringer came. It's fitting, even if it makes little sense. Maybe she just wants to think that Harram is still around.
It's true, though, what she says. She never told them about what happened after Nelaij died, just said she was in a coma, having fits or something. She'd have made a fine Shadow Knight, if guilt hadn't gotten in the way of things. She can still see patches of blood on grass through the snow, and remembers all the people that begged before her sword.
And she laughed.
Laughed and laughed and laughed, her teeth clicking together in mania and bitter cold. She thought they were pathetic, the husbands that begged for mercy for their family, the women that screamed and held their children close. But she knew—she was the most pathetic of all, smiling like a jester in the face of their terror. The strength to resist had left her, and she was a mindless puppet. Pathetic.
"They made me like this, all weak and scared," she says it loudly this time, needing someone to blame. She leans over Harram and strokes his brow, imagining feverish heat so vividly that she can't discern whether it's actually there or not. "There, there, Har. The guards'll win, you'll see. They'll bring you a remedy and you'll be all better and you can braid my hair again." Even at five, she knew he wouldn't live. Bertoxxolus was going to steal their city from the arms of Antonius Bayle, and he'd die like these wretched children in the street. At nearly twenty, she felt anger for the deaths that would have been avoided if they'd had more money.
The snow covers Harram the second's muzzle, and she stands stiffly. She braces herself and tugs her sword out of his stomach. "There, all better now?" She smiles at him, earnest and sincere.
Her mind is catching up to her now, and she knows that she'll need to find shelter somewhere if she wants to live out the night. The snow is so nice and soft, but she still thinks that maybe she can figure all of this out tomorrow. Death's spiny fingers hold her so tenderly, so sweetly, but she's got a weakness for riddles, and this one is just a long, confusing one. She spins away from the idea, rejecting the specter as it sighs in regret. A giggle escapes her throat, calmer than before, but in her mind the world has turned green, and it's funny how Highpass looks in the distance, like a city made of emeralds. Everyone knew that cities weren't made from jewels. They were made from betrayal and pain.
As she giggles and dances with the figures and phantoms that flit in from her memory, her hands snap branches off trees, laying them meticulously in a log cabin. A small part of her mind screams for help, help, I think I'm going mad.
A coherent thought bubbles up, and it's one of those automatic ones, the kind you only think at a certain time of night. 'I wonder if Akierra's free for a drink.'
"Akierra," she says out loud, abandoning her fire and furrowing her brow in confusion.
"Akierra," she says again, shaking her head slowly, concentrating on the way the loose strands of hair brushed against her face.
Who is Akierra?
It's a valid question, because her mind is shutting down and she can't even remember why she's here. 'Sigils,' her mind supplies, and she makes a despairing, confused sort of sound. Her tongue rolls the word around her mouth, liking the way it sounds. She draws out the 'S', skipping over the 'I's as fast as she can, and then she's saying it again and again and again, and laughing because it's fun. She remembers something—The couple living in that hut in the Commonlands had funny names, too. Celia and Jerick. She said their names over and over again before she killed them. Maybe she's supposed to kill the Sigils? Her mind answers with a firm 'No.'
Her eyes flick downwards to the now snow covered pile of wood. She brushes them off, her body reacting automatically as she attempts to light the damp bundle of sticks. They're too big to catch the feeble sparks she makes, she needs something that will light quickly and easily, and there are no leaves around.
What was that old saying? The one her mother would sing to her when she was young? Before the drink took her and she couldn't remember?
"The mountains always will prove perilous," she says to herself, but it feels like there's more, because she's not in the mountains. She's in the…
'But the danger lies in the valley', her mind whispers back to her, and she feels a tightening in her chest. It takes her a moment to remember that it's called fear.
The snow falls thickly now, and she knows that she'll die, because it's too far to the Sanctum, and the barbarians won't let her inside Halas. She needs something to burn, but her mind is a traitor, and instead of brainstorming, she thinks about a snowstorm of years ago. She pretends Tenjou and Camarye and Sabeth are here now, braving it out with her. She carefully takes out the meager rations she has left and gives and passes them out to the apparitions around her. She gives the biggest portion to Tenjou, because she's so young. A kid, really.
An image of Camarye sits before her, caught in the moment the high elf lifted her hair out of her face, trying to stop it from whipping into her face. She remembers thinking that it was a good thing it was pulled back, because hair catches fire so easily.
Her eyes widen in surprise, and she thinks that maybe her mind isn't a traitor after all. Sabeth fake-smiles at her, mocking her for not getting it earlier. It's all in good fun, though. They did this a lot, pretend fighting and staged arguments. It annoyed Camarye, and that was good enough for them.
Her hands find the dagger clipped to her belt, and she remembers how dull it is.
Camarye had a lovely heart, she remembers. She'd cry at all the unhealed wounds, but only when she thought no one was looking. Sabeth always noticed, too. Nelaij laughed when she found out, and scolded Camarye for being weak.
She holds the steel to her neck, and imagines it's cold. It's no use, because she's so numb she can't feel it.
But Nelaij cried too, sometimes when she was frustrated, or really hurt. Once when her hands were burned and she couldn't hold her spear, she sobbed that she wasn't strong enough to live.
The blade slices upwards, and she screams as it moves, her mind is crawling back and she doesn't understand how she forgot so much, and red strands are falling all around her, she's holding a clump of them and she throws them into the dying sparks and it's huge and roaring and beautiful. The lightness in her head isn't from lack of food, now, and the back of her neck tickles as the loose strands fall against it. She screams and screams, trying to convince herself that she can be forgiven for what she's done. All the pain and emotion in her hair is released now, twisting and torturing her. Everything she's done for six years is filling her mind and killing her.
She gags, dry heaving in pain and pure shock. The warmth from the fire is her reward, but she knows she doesn't deserve it. How could she have entertained such bleak thoughts? Such horrible things. But her mind reels and whirls around one thought, and she thinks that maybe because of it, she doesn't have to decide just yet, she can still be a Sigil.
It's just a memory, just a few small moments, but it's hardly inconsequential.
She's just remembered that she never killed a child.