Mema

(Messenger)

"Regardless, we need to be ready," Lexa tells the small audience standing before her, and Indra shifts impatiently to her right. "Once the Mountain Men have given their entire population the Sky People's bone, they will be out of the Mountain."

"They will no longer be behind their unbreakable metal door," Fio grunts. "We can fight them directly rather than be slaughtered by the reapers and fog, especially now that the fog is down for good."

"Yes," Indra agrees. "But they have the stronger firepower, and they can control the reapers by will. They have maps and technology we do not."

"We know the forest better than they do," Lexa cuts in. "The majority of them are simple civilians. If we kill their armed forces it will hold them off inside the Mountain if it does not destroy them."

Fio eyes her critically. "We do not plan to kill them all?"

Lexa shakes her head. "Their children have no part in their sins. But there are sins. Jus drein jus daun."

"Jus drein just daun," the rest of the table echoes in agreement.

"Now," Lexa continues. "Indra is right in that they control the Reapers, but if the Mountain Men decide to leave the Mountain altogether, we may be able to-"

"Heda."

Lexa turns, letting the irritation show on her face at the interruption. The man before her is kneeling, face cast in shadow, and for a moment, Lexa is unsure who it is beneath the furs and armor.

"What is it?"

The man lifts his head and Lexa recognizes Penn. Her heart jumps into her throat, but she keeps her expression neutral as he explains, "You wanted me to scout the Mountain and see what became of the Sky People."

That had been three days ago. After the second without his return, Lexa had been sure she had sent Penn to his death. But here he is, and his expression is troubled. "And?" she demands, covering the growing dread in her stomach with impatience in her voice.

Penn swallows hard once, twice, before he answers, "The Mountain has fallen, heda."

A sharp silence greets his words. Then Indra hisses the word that passes through every single one their thoughts: "Impossible."

Penn merely shrugs, and Lexa feels her brows drawing down, a thundercloud boiling behind her eyes. Penn must see it because he straightens when she snaps, "Explain."

Penn nods and begins, "The skai heda left into the reaper tunnels after our retreat. About three quarters of the hour passed before she came back through the front door, and all of her people were with her."

Clarke, Lexa thinks. How in the world did she…?

"I tracked them after checking the inside of the Mountain," Penn continues, cutting off Lexa's thoughts. "They returned to their camp, but the skai heda did not follow."

"Where is she now?" Lexa can't stop the words before they tumble out. She just manages to make them sound demanding rather than hopeful.

Penn shakes his head.

Lexa bites her lip. At her side, Indra snarls, "That does not prove the Mountain is fallen." Her belief in the Sky People's abilities is low enough as it is. She cannot believe they felled their enemy of nearly one hundred years.

"You said you went inside," Lexa recalls.

Penn nods again and licks his lips. "I did. I checked each level and found them all on the fifth. I-" He stops and shuffles on his knee, looking uncomfortable. "There were no survivors, heda."

Lexa feels something go slack inside her chest. "None?"

Penn shakes his head.

"That is impossible," Indra insists. "They couldn't have killed them all. How could they? Did they shoot them all, slice every single throat?"

Penn shakes his head once more, but doesn't answer. He finds sudden interest in the pelt he kneels on, and he is unusually pale. Lexa does not know what he found in the Mountain, but he is in his own right a hardened warrior who has seen extremely cruel manners of death and torture.

Lexa does not want to know what he found in the Mountain.

"Penn," she says, because she must. She is heda. "Speak."

Penn swallows again, but he will not look up. "I do not know how they did it, heda," he tells the ground. "Every man, woman, and child inside the Mountain had been burned. They were covered in welts much like what those who are caught in the acid fog suffer from. None of them breathed. They all seem to have died at the same time. Most were sitting for the beginning of a meal and were still at their tables where I found them."

Another silence, this one heavy and full of implications. Lexa cannot believe this, refuses to believe this. Clarke could not have done this. Not only is it a physical impossibility, it is a moral one as well. Lexa knows Clarke was wrathful after the missile and Tondc, but she also knows the blonde was hell-bent on ensuring their rescue mission did not become a slaughter.

Seeing is believing, and Lexa will not believe Clarke did this unless she sees it.

"Show me."

"Heda, I believe-"

"I know." Lexa gives up trying to force her horse through the entrance and pulls back from the silver corridor in front of her. Despite trying to urge the animal through the metal door for nearly two minutes, it will not continue, whinnying in desperate protests that make Lexa ill at ease. She dismounts, handing the reins off to Rivo. Indra, Penn, and Ryder follow her action, handing off their mounts to the others not entering the Mountain. She nods at Penn, and with a quick swallow and a nervous nod, he steps through the metal door. Lexa follows him, Indra and Ryder to either side of her.

Their footsteps echo hollowly down the metal corridor, and Lexa feels unease creep through her stomach. Indra and Ryder seem equally agitated, both of them snapping their eyes to every tiny noise, hands gripping their weapons. It doesn't help that Penn is acting strange, tapping the hilt of his sword and walking with a gait that makes it seem as if he is slogging through mud.

There is a storm inside Lexa's chest. When she first became Commander, she never imagined the Mountain would fall during her reign. The dream of her people, the dream of being free of the Mountain, had seemed closer than ever with the completion of the Coalition, but Lexa had never allowed herself to become obsessed with the idea like many others had. There were too many dangers, too many threats, for her to focus solely on the destruction of the Mountain. Now that it has fallen, it seems too good to be true, even if it was not by her hands.

It also feels, strangely, as if Lexa does not belong here, that none of them do. This was the home to the Mountain Men, the Maunon, their absolute enemies of nearly a hundred years. They had killed too many of their people, destroyed too many lives between their fog, their reapers, and their bloodletting…

Lexa shakes her head slightly, trying to throw off the feeling of trespassing. If what Penn says is true, there is no one left alive here in the Mountain, meaning it is free for the taking.

The dead are gone, Lexa reminds herself. The living are hungry.

Penn leads them to the end of the corridor and turns to the right. He swings a steel door open and steps through, leading them onto a long flight of stairs that shoots down. He takes first, Ryder last, and soon they are to the bottom. Penn once more leads them through a steel door. It is when Lexa crosses this threshold that the smell hits her.

Behind her, Indra sucks in a sharp, disgusted breath, and Ryder grunts. Lexa has to resist the urge to gag. She can practically taste the death in the air, the smell is so thick. Lexa is no stranger to mass graves, but they have always been outdoors. The scent in here has nowhere to go.

Penn has gone pale, glancing back at Lexa as if begging her not to make him continue. She ignores him, simply nodding for him to carry on. With yet another swallow, he moves forward, down another corridor, this one wider and taller. As they progress, the smell only gets stronger and stronger.

Penn stops at the stone arch at the end of the hallway. Lexa steps up beside him and she can't help the small sound that escapes her lips. Suddenly, the smell is not so noticeable, shoved to the back of Lexa's mind. Even Indra falters at the sight before her.

It is just as Penn described it. There are hundreds of them. Men, women, and children, slumped over their meals, covered in red welts and blisters as if they had all been burned. To their right, Lexa spots a man and woman on the floor, right beside each other even in death. It is not until Lexa looks more closely that she sees they are wrapped around an equally lifeless child, as if they spent their final breaths trying to protect the small boy.

Penn clears his throat and turns away, looking as if he is about to retch. Now Lexa understands his reluctance to return here. A battlefield of fallen warriors is one thing, but this…

"Goufa," Indra hisses, eyes on the boy wrapped in his parents' arms. If she did not hate the Sky People before, she does now.

"Another massacre," Ryder comments. His voice is hard.

Lexa swallows hard, unable to take her eyes off the figures slumped in their chairs. None of them has a liking of the Maunon, not after a century of killing and bloodshed. All of the clans hate the Mountain Men. Lexa does not regret that the Mountain has fallen, but Clarke had said it herself. It was a rescue mission, not…

Clarke… Lexa grips the hilt of her sword so hard her hand aches. How did you do this? Why did you do this?

But Lexa already knows the answer. Clarke did this to save her people. The death of Finn had shown her determination. The misslie had given rise to her fury. But when Lexa turned her back on her that night, she saw the shattering desperation in her eyes. After everything she'd done to get to where she had, the lives she had given up, Lexa had doubted that Clarke would just lie down and accept defeat. She hadn't been wrong.

Like Lexa, Clarke had sworn to get her people back, no matter the cost. Lexa had betrayed her alliance and heart to get her people back, and she had given Clarke no choice but to destroy the Mountain, and with it, her soul. Lexa had given her no choice.

This is on you, too.

Lexa let out a breath and runs a hand through her hair, feeling the weight of a mountain settle on her shoulders on top of Clarke and Tondc and the past five years of sacrifices. She hates the Maunon, but she is a twenty-year-old girl who is centuries old. She is heda.

Lexa takes in the room once more, then murmurs, "Yu gonplei ste odon."

Indra shoots her a look, but a life is a life regardless, and the chief seems to accept that despite the century-old war just as Lexa does. She nods once, almost in agreement. With that, Lexa turns away, images of Tondc and Nnati flashing behind her eyes. She looks Penn in the eye. "Do we know how they did this?" she asks him.

Penn shakes his head.

"It must have been the skai heda," Ryder grunts, looking away from the dead to meet Lexa's eyes.

Lexa nods in agreement but that does not explain how Clarke did this. Lexa isn't entirely sure she wants to know. Regardless, the Mountain is dead, and with it, the Maunon. This is good, but it presents a new problem. The Coalition no longer has a common enemy, and blood cannot bind forever.

"Mochof, Pen," Lexa tells the man. He nods, still avoiding looking at the room behind them. With a motion of her hand, she starts down the hall with the other three surrounding her. She will hold on to the knowledge that the Mountain has fallen as long as she dares, but the word will get out eventually, and if she does not tell the other commanders herself, it will not be a good start to the post-Mountain Coalition.

It is not until they are outside the Mountain and back on their horses that Lexa really breathes. When they arrive back in Tondc, she wonders what will greet her in Polis, or what might have happened had she chosen not to take that deal, despite the fact that she would go back and do it again if she needed to.

It is only three days later when word of the fallen Mountain has spread throughout the ranks. It is four days later that Lexa first hears awe in the voice of one of her warriors, speaking of the blonde girl who fell from the sky and slayed the Mountain singlehandedly. On the seventh day, Lexa first hears the word that will make her heart clench. Not just the word, but the implication, and the images of death and blonde hair and blue eyes that it brings to mind. Lexa goes back to her tent and sits down the first time she hears it.

Wanheda.

"Jus drein jus daun." - "Blood must have blood."

skai heda - Sky Commander

maunon - Mountain Men

goufa - children

"Yu gonplei ste odon." - "Your fight is over."

"Mochof, Pen." - "Thank you, Penn."

Wanheda - Commander of Death