It had been one week already. The season had officially changed from spring to summer and for once, the hills surrounding the Wall were devoid of Charr growls. Despite his earlier noble thoughts of staying behind to help the men rescued from beyond the wall, Rurik had been summoned away by a messenger from King Adelbern. One week, he had said. One week was all he would need to be away for and that she should remain at the wall for that amount of time.
From there, she should leave and make her way to Nolani and the Academy of the Arcane Arts that waited there.
Cinching the last strap on her pack closed, Rayne stood and shouldered the bag. Her destination lay many miles to the west and the road would not be easy to traverse. It was for that reason that she had turned down a horse and a small contingent of soldiers that had been suggested to accompany her. Her superiors were of a mind to not let her go regardless, but they could not argue with the prince. In the end, they all had settled on one temple monk to go with her on her journey.
Rayne couldn't help but tap her foot impatiently on the stone floor outside of the guardhouse. The monk was late and she was eager to be on her way. The arrows in the quiver on her back jiggled against the sides of their container as she fidgeted, providing the only rhythmic beat to be heard that morning.
I'm going on an adventure, she thought to herself while she waited. I'm going to walk the same trails as my mother, for the most part. Maybe I'll run into her on my trip. The thought brought a smile to her lips. She had missed her mother in the time she had been gone.
A voice shouting her name brought her sharply back to reality, blinking in a dazed manner as if the voice alone had been enough to slam her head into the brick wall behind her. She looked around wildly, rigidity spreading to her limbs and a faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she noticed the unmistakable course brown habit of a female monk making her way through the thin crowds of the morning.
"Ashe!" Rayne called back, waving as the little monk trotted over to stand beside her. "They're sending you with me?"
"Yes," Ashe replied. "Serenity Temple has its hands full at the moment and I'm all they could spare to send along. I hope that's alright with you."
Rayne felt her lips twitch into what had to be the closest thing to a smile she had given in two long years. "Of course! There's no one I'd trust more!" Ashe's face lit up like a fireworks display, making Rayne feel that much better that morning. The day was turning out to be far more enjoyable than she had hoped. Things can only get better from here on out, she thought, nudging Ashe with her elbow to silently challenge her to a race out into the wilderness.
****************
"My brother used to tell me stories about this place."
It had taken them two days to travel from the Eastern Wall to the Breach, and from there to Piken Square. In his campaign, Duke Barradin had seized control of the little outpost, turning it into a small fort inside the wild Northlands territory.
"He said it was beautiful, with pearl white stone and little flowers and a big tree in the back there." Rayne pointed toward the end of the foot in the L-shaped fort. "And it was only home to the rabbits and the squirrels and the wild hogs that roamed the area. That even the Charr couldn't destroy its peace."
"I'm sure it was lovely once," Ashe agreed.
"Yes. But there's nothing lovely about red dust and soot scared walls. There's nothing lovely left in all of Ascalon now." Rayne leaned against the railing around the raised beds that had once held flowers, only to have the rust smitten metal buckle under her touch, falling to the earth in flakes and crumbs. She sheepishly straightened, but of all the people milling about the courtyard, she was certain that the snickering Ashe was the only one who saw. She elbowed her friend in the ribs.
"Oh, I don't know. I think 'lovely' is all a matter of perspective." Rayne suddenly felt like her legs were trapped in quicksand and that the rest of her was sinking rapidly, greedily sucked down to a suffocating end. She knew that voice.
Standing to her right, smug features stretching a grotesquely scarred right cheek, was the one person Rayne had hoped she wouldn't have to see again. There was no one else in the whole world that could look at her with as much contempt as this woman, tossing her customary fishtail braid back over her shoulder with that much disdain in her features, hardened by years of living alone in the open air. Alianne Longbranch had returned from her memories and nightmares to taunt her again.
"We meet again, Little Dalca." In the year she had been away from Ascalon, Alianne had acquired several creased lines on her forehead and an ever deepening nest of crow's feet accumulating around each of her eyes. She looked so much older than nineteen, but there was still enough life sparkling and dancing like a flame in her eyes that she could just as easily have been twelve.
"I have a name, you know," Rayne said tersely. She shook her head at Ashe's silent inquiry, keeping the rest of her attention on the woman before her.
Alianne threw back her head and laughed—a sharp, barking sound that suggested that she was laughing not because she found the situation to be funny, but rather because it was something to do to keep herself occupied. "That you do, and a title to go with it now I hear. Lieutenant Dalca." Rayne shivered at the force in the words, trying her best not to recoil entirely. "What a pity. The Ascalon Army must be desperate indeed if they're willing to draft the last member of your family into its ranks."
"What do you mean?" Rayne asked, licking her lips. "I'm not the last. There's still my mother. And it's possible that…Gai is still alive."
"Are you sure about that? You haven't heard from either of them, have you? My, my. That would certainly seem to bode ill, wouldn't you agree?" It was true. She had asked Duke Barradin for news upon her arrival of her mother's troop, but he had had no word either.
"I don't believe you," Rayne said quietly, fists clenched tightly by her sides, quivering as she fought to keep herself from hitting her brother's old friend.
"You don't have to," Ali said with a shrug. She sauntered over, crossing in front of where Rayne and Ashe were standing, passing them by very slowly. "But tell me this, Little Dalca," she continued, stopping an arm's length away. "Will you still defend this godforsaken country even with the knowledge that there's no one left here that you care about?"
Rayne closed the distance between them with a single step, staring at the corner of the older woman's eye showing from her exposed profile. "Ascalon is my home," she said with a deep growl, eyes the color of water surrounded on all sides by ice, frozen in place.
"You're far too noble," Ali murmured. "And foolish." She shoved Rayne in the chest, pushing her back over to where Ashe was still waiting. "Ascalon is dead and there are no homes to be found in tombs." Without another word, Alianne stalked away, absentmindedly shifting the quiver on her back as she went, completely oblivious to the murderous daggers Rayne was sending her with her stares.
Only after she was completely out of earshot did Rayne finally explode, fists jerking angrily as she stormed up the stairs leading to the world outside, Ashe following behind her helplessly like a lost puppy.
"Rayne…Rayne…. What's wrong? Who was that? Are you alright?"
There was no answer she could put into words. Her anger burned like a wound, stinging as the tender flesh under the outer layer was exposed to the bitter air and seeped blood in the tears of frustration that she could not bring herself to shed. They had their packs, so there was no need to return to Piken Square. Now was as good a time as any to get going, she reasoned. There would be no looking back. Not with that demon Alianne Longbranch behind them.
Eventually, Ashe fell silent, plodding along in Rayne's footprints with her head bent down toward the earth. The thin wisps of hair falling from the center of her twin buns swung back and forth like little pendulums as she walked. She didn't complain when Rayne rashly decided to take the trail down through the sludgy, tar-like river, wading along diligently even though the grimy water lapped up around her thin waist. She didn't chide when Rayne told her to stay put while she took care of a couple of stray Charr that had wandered too close to their path. Rayne had to bite her lip as Ashe cleaned and healed the wound she had taken from a Charr arrow in the encounter.
"I'm sorry, Ashe. I didn't mean to be such a jerk," she mumbled as her friend tended to the small cut on her forehead.
"It's okay. I understand," she replied with a smile. "I don't know that woman or what her relationship to you was, but she said some things that really were uncalled for." Rayne winced as the magic from Ashe's touch zipped across the cut, sealing the two flaps of skin back in their place without any seam left behind. Rayne thanked her, and stared around at the cliffs towering around them and guiding them along their chosen path.
"How far do you think we've come?"
Ashe looked around, slipping the small cloth back into the messenger bag she had slung across her right shoulder. "I'd say we've made it to the edge of the Diessa Lowlands probably. Do you think we can make it all the way to Nolani before dark?"
"Probably not. I think it would be best if we stopped in Grendich for the night tonight and continued to Nolani first thing tomorrow." The strawberry blond head bobbed in agreement and Rayne gingerly pushed herself to her feet, swaying lightly as she readjusted her balance. "C'mon. Let's get going or we really won't have anywhere to stay tonight."
They tromped along, legs brushing through the prickly bracken in the late afternoon sun, packs bouncing from side to side as they went. Rayne had never been that far west before, yet found herself in the lead of their two man procession, carefully scanning the road for signs that they were going in the right direction. They became increasingly harder to see as the afternoon wore on due to the thick fog that had started to accumulate, hovering in misty clouds of white vapor around them.
"There should be a fork around here somewhere," Rayne heard Ashe say from several feet behind her. A quick glance back showed her the ghostly silhouette shrouded in the fog stomping her feet down to prevent the burrs from sticking quite so much. "If you see it, we need to go to the right."
Rayne swiveled back around to the front, swatting away a patch of mist in a feeble attempt to make it disappear. She would have been stunned had the trick actually worked, but the fog just seemed to get thicker and thicker.
Suddenly, out of the gloom, Rayne noticed the split in the path. The two roads ahead of her met in a V, one snaking off into the hills on the right while the other meandered away toward the flatter land on the left
"Right, you said?" she called back to Ashe with a flick of her head to glance over her shoulder. Satisfied that her friend was still there, Rayne turned back to the front and felt her legs turn into lead, stopping her in the very middle of the road. Ashe crashed into her back, but Rayne didn't even flinch at the contact. She couldn't.
In between the two paths, shadowed in the foggy gloom was the outline of two people. Their outlines were hazy at best and seemed to absorb the fog swirling around them. There was an ethereal quality to them that made every hair on her body stand on end.
"Oh…Dwayna bless…," Ashe breathed, peering around her shoulder. Rayne's lip quivered and her right foot lurched forward awkwardly in a hesitant step.
"Mother," she murmured with a stutter. The two women seemed to notice they were not alone anymore, muttering between themselves before gliding over to stand a few feet from them. Even up close, both of them were see-through and pale. One of them was dressed in a noble looking traveling dress that ended above her knee in the front and almost dragged the ground in the back with thigh-high boots. The other was dressed much simpler in tight fitting hose with a whiter turtleneck and a jacket the same dusky hue of the hose.
That was the woman that Rayne couldn't take her eyes off of. She had met the young noble standing beside her before once or twice, but she had been much littler in those days. But the one that had always been there, the one she had known from her first day alive was hovering before, opalescent and misty and altogether no longer the woman she had been.
"Mother," she repeated, reaching out her right hand to try to touch the apparition in front of her and gasped when her fingers passed through what felt like liquid ice. "Mom. No…."
Fiona Dalca smiled faintly, returning the gesture of her daughter, but stopping just before her ghostly hand met the living flesh before her.
"It's me, Rayne," she confirmed, voice light as the whispering wind. "I'm glad I finally found you, my precious little girl."
Rayne stumbled forward another step, staring hungrily into the face of the woman facing her.
"I wanted to see you again…one last time before the Mists claimed me."
Rayne shook her head violently, her red hair whipping her cheeks to leave a pale rusty pallor behind.
"But we lost our way and couldn't get back to you."
She stumbled again, both arms outstretched in the hopes that her mother would catch her, just like she had so many other times before. The gesture was there, but the solid warmness of flesh and bone was gone—forever.
"Mom!" Rayne sobbed. "What happened?"
"We were attacked by a Charr warband," Lady Althea Barradin said, taking a step forward to be even with Fiona. "They seized those of the troop that they could and took us to their Flame Temple in the north where we were burned alive."
Rayne gasped, tears finally escaping the ironclad hold she had placed around them. They clouded her eyes, streaming down in thin trails through the dust coating her cheeks. She reached out a third time, but again, her hand only passed through the ghosts.
"Do not weep for me, Sweetheart," Fiona crooned, doing her best to lay a comforting hand on Rayne's head. "I have lived and I have loved. Dying wasn't so bad since I had those to help me through."
"Mommy, don't leave me!" Rayne shouted, fingers clawing through the hazy air, grasping for something that was now forever beyond her reach.
"I'll never leave you, Rayne-y. Wear the necklace I gave you, and I'll always be right next to your heart. I promise." Rayne grasped the half locket greedily in her right hand, tracing the familiar lines of the face of Lyssa with her thumb. "Promise me one thing though, Rayne. Promise me that you'll not think of revenge and that you'll leave Ascalon and live a happy life away from this war."
Rayne spun around to Ashe, a great fear and madness devouring the liveliness of her gaze that had been there before. She grabbed her friend around the shoulders, arms trembling violently with the effort. "It's not true, right? They can't be dead."
Ashe took a deep breath, wrapping her arms around a now inconsolably sobbing girl. "As the blessing of Dwayna guided your steps in life, may Grenth guard your shadow now in death," she murmured to the two women, bobbing her head in place of a full bow since Rayne had her pinned in place.
"My thanks to you," Fiona said, clasping her hands.
"If I may make one last request," Althea said, voice already fading some into the mist. Ashe released Rayne and together the two stood in front of the ghostly women, waiting for their last words. "I would ask you to take word to my father and to my beloved, Prince Rurik. I know it will grieve them to know the truth, but they deserve it." Both girls nodded to her, unable to find the words to convey the same meaning. Althea smiled, mouthing the words 'thank you' and the mist around them billowed, dissolving the thin outline of the young woman with it.
It swept over, blowing at the edges of Fiona's frame like a particularly strong gust of wind. In one last effort, Rayne charged forward, committing herself wholeheartedly to touching her mother one last time. She flung herself forward, passing through the mist and landing heavily on her shoulder in the dust. "I love you," Fiona whispered as the last of the fog reached up, wiping away the lines of her mouth with one gust.
And they were alone once again, standing at the fork in the road between the utterly silent hills.
"Rayne!" Ashe cried, running over and dropping down to place a hand on the weeping girl's shoulder. "Rayne, listen to me. We have to get moving." Rayne shrugged her off, leaping to her feet and racing off as if she had wings on her heels along the right road. Ashe sprang after her, but trailed behind quickly when her shorter legs couldn't keep up. Rayne ran all the way, ignoring the cuts from the numerous bushes she passed in a flurry and trudged through the lake of sludge that waited for her. She was following in her mother's footsteps.
The Flame Temple was up there. All she had to do was pass through the little corridor and she would be there. She strung the bow Cale had given her while pumping her legs as hard as they could go and released the catch on the lid to her quiver. Her mother's ashes were waiting at the end and she wasn't about to leave them to the Charr.
Those beasts had their sanctuary. It was there in that dismal place, surrounded on all sides by a flame that they tended with a care more devout than of a mother to her child. There were many, but she had just as many arrows, and they all had Charr written on the heads. She could not miss their great hides as they strutted past.
The first warband fell to her sniper shot from around a corner, as did the next. By the time Ashe finally caught up with her, she was already working on her fourth warband, relishing their grunts of agony as they dropped like furry weights. The monk tried to calm her at first, but there was nothing that could sate her anger. Not even the blood flowing freely like the newest river of sludge along the ground could appease her for long.
They all fell to her. Every last one. They came and they came and they dropped and they dropped until the tips of her fingers blazed in agony and her own blood trickled out from under the custom glove. She ignored the pain—all of it, including the few nicks from a blade and the newest arrow wound in her upper arm that made holding the bow taxing.
At last, the top of the altar in the center of the temple was under her feet, soaked in a torrential puddle of blood that ran toward the edges to create a sickening waterfall. Ashe had done her best to heal her as she went, but her limbs were still shaking from the effort. Close to a hundred Charr, all downed in a single burst of inhuman rage. It had brought her this far.
She stumbled forward toward the sacrificial bed, dropping to her knees as her weary fingers groped for the urns that the Charr had yet to discard. Her hands found the one on the right, drawing it in close to her chest.
"Mother!" she shouted to the now night sky, howling through her pain and her grief as the tears fell relentlessly to land on the plain earthenware jar cradled lovingly against her chest. It was all over.
