9:20 Dragon
The Sheltered Lake, the Asariel Forest
Leto awoke, the cold morning air shaking him from sleep.
He stretched out his legs and arched his back. He was only eighteen, and a night spent on the ground only left him feeling a little stiff and groggy. He opened his eyes and looked up at the sky, which was a pale yellow, the early morning sun having not yet had time to build up to the to the searing temperature of a Tevinter summer's day. He didn't stand immeadiately, preferring to watch the sky, waiting for the light to become less milky as the sun rose. He put his hands behind his head and let his mind wander.
He was relieved that Callum was leaving in the next few days. The incident with the nug, though he accepted that Callum probably hadn't realised the animal was there, had nevertheless highlighted those aspects of his friend's character that Leto was beginning to find unpleasant.
He was also worried about the tension that had been present between Callum and his sister. He suspected that something was going on between them. It hadn't been difficult, given how sulky and aggressive Callum was whenever his sister wasn't present.
As Leto gazed up at the sky, he accepted the fact he now truly regretted the morning two years ago when he had stumbled on the mage. Not only had he exposed himself, but he seemed to have also pushed his sister in the way of someone who was powerful, spoilt and increasingly aggressive.
Cheeks burning with shame, Leto reflected on his own behaviour since meeting Callum. He knew Varania was right about him. She'd always been right about him. He's held the elves of his clan up to the human and, for his own sense of purpose, found them lacking.
A guilty embarrassment fell over him as he realised he had allowed himself to become yet more distant, even more aloof. Callum had for a long time seemed so strange and fascinating – so far removed from the life of the clan, that Leto had allowed himself to see similarities between them, when in truth there was only differences.
Leto sighed, and decided that, once they had begun the trek away from Tevinter, he would put real effort into overcoming his natural lack of social skills and seriously work to make friends with his clansfolk. He also swore that he would repair the relationship with his sister, as it was the loss of that friendship that hurt him most keenly.
He realised as he lay there, staring up at the sky, that he had for years thought of Tevinter in the same way as he had Callum; as some kind of mystical land that had the power to heal him, to make him feel like he had a home. In fact, Tevinter was just the same as anywhere.
He chewed his lip. He could admit that he had been wrong about both Tevinter and Callum, but he couldn't deny the sickness that he felt the further he got from the Imperium. Was that caused by his imagination as well, or was it genuine? Even if the sickness was real, perhaps if he told someone, the Keeper for example, they could help him.
When he thought about the Keeper, he felt another wave of shame wash over him. His sister would be Keeper one day, and how would he be able to help her, to support her, if he did not learn to overcome his trepidation and involve himself with his people? No, instead he had actively sought out someone he could build a friendship with who had absolutely no connection to his tribe.
Someone who had turned out to be arrogant and aggressive; and not, I must confess, too dissimilar to myself.
But Leto had a second chance. The summer was ending, and Callum was leaving for a new life. Which meant that Leto could reclaim his old one.
It was with this new resolve that Leto rolled over to wake his sister and Callum, and suggest that the all head back to their own homes.
Frowning, Leto sat up.
Looking from left to right, he jumped up to his feet.
The extra height made no difference; he was definitely alone.
He could easily see the patch of black earth where the fire had burnt out, and could just make out in the dry earth what looked like the outline of a body, which he guessed was where his sister had been sleeping. Callum had been feigning sleep about three metres from the fire when he had returned last night, so he decided to check the earth around there for any signs or tracks. It was extremely unlikely that an animal had decided to attack the group – especially unlikely that Leto would have slept through it – but not, he supposed, impossible.
Sighing heavily, Leto huffed his way around the site, looking for clues in the dusty earth. After a brief search, he managed to find a set of footsteps that must have been Callum's. They were too large to be his sisters, and the flat, smooth quality of the print suggested that the walker had been wearing shoes, something elves didn't do. They footprints headed away from the forest, and Leto assumed that the mage had at some point decided to go home.
Perhaps he and Varania had had a fight? Maker knew the tension between the two of them had reached fever pitch over the last few weeks. Leto had half expected when he returned last night to find them at each other throats, one way or the other. Looking around him now, he guessed that wasn't a possibility any more. Still, there was something strange...
It was easy to imagine Callum running off in a sulk, but Varania would have woken him up, wanting to argue. So where had his sister gone?
He looked around the camp again. His eyes drifted back to one spot, and his heart started to beat faster. He swallowed thickly, trying to push down the rising panic.
There's only one set of footprints.
He started to follow the footprints.
When he realised the direction they were taking him in, he broke into a run.
o0o
In just fifteen minutes Leto had covered the greater part of the journey back to his clan's campsite, he had run so fast.
His lungs burning and his eyes streaming, he slowed down his pace. There was something wrong, but he didn't know what.
Something…
something smelled wrong...
He closed his eyes, and tried to slow his breathing down, tried to focus his mind – but he couldn't.
His throat was tight and stinging, and his heart was beating so hard in his chest he could feel it.
"Something's wrong, something's wrong."
He was talking to himself, his lips shaping the words running through his head. He had to get a grip, to calm down. He tried again to centre himself, to let his instinct and his training take over. His couldn't silence the voice in his mind, something's wrong, something's wrong, but he was able to quieten it. Again he smelled it: a smoky, sweet smell that set his teeth on edge, and a new swell of anxiety rolled through him.
He knew when he had smelled that smell before: in the forest, when Callum had electrocuted the nug.
His legs were shaking, and he was still speaking to himself, his normally deep voice cracked and dry. He walked slowly towards the camp site, and now he knew what he was looking for he saw it everywhere:
The leaves on the trees were blackened and burnt, the earth beneath his feet had long, thin gashes carved into it, and the trees were tarnished black with soot. The smell got worse the closer he got to the camp. He could hear his own voice; he had no idea what he was saying, only that he couldn't stop babbling. On jittery legs he stepped out of the forest and into the camp.
Everyone was dead.
Tears rolling unnoticed down his face, Leto walked through the camp, circling what was once the central tent.
The smell was unbearable.
He glanced to his left and saw the charred body of… he couldn't tell... it's too... it looks like.. oh Maker, the smell…
And suddenly he was spewing, bile and last night's fish rising up against the sights and the smells that surrounded him. He hadn't been expecting it, and his body jerked forward quickly, instinct trying to stop him from choking to death on his own vomit. But all this did was bring his head closer to the cooked remains and he heaved again, and again, and again. Eventually, the spasm slowed, and he could breathe. Rubbing the back of his hand against his mouth he stumbled backwards, his eyes stinging as tears fogged his vision.
They were all dead.
And yet he forced himself to keep checking the bodies, just in case, somehow, someone was alive. He had no idea how long it took him. He had had to stop again and again to throw up. His ribs ached and the taste of bile in his mouth mingled with the sickeningly sweet smell cloying around him. He hadn't stopped crying. At one point he had heard a dreadful sound, a wailing, childlike cry that reached into his hindbrain and had him running to where he thought it had come from, but after frantic searching, he realised that the sound had come from him. He had been screaming, and he hadn't realised.
Eventually he stumbled back into the forest, and walked as far away from the burnt earth as his enfeebled body could carry him. He lay on the ground and fell asleep.
He awoke a couple of hours later, and for a second didn't understand where he was, or why he was sleeping on the forest floor. Then he remembered. But he felt calmer now. He should go back, check again to see if Varania, his mother and father were among the dead. He felt his throat constrict and panic rise at the thought of seeing their bodies, but then the feeling subsided again. He knew he had to find out.
Slowly, he made his way back to the camp. This time he blocked out the smells, and looked down at the burnt, sticky bodies of his clan dispassionately. He wasn't sure how he was able to do it, but he managed to see them as objects, and he was able, this time, to walk through the camp checking each body thoroughly for signs of who it had once been. He found himself looking for minute clues, as he would have done if he were tracking.
He knelt down to exam each body, and some separate and distant part of him wondered why he wasn't still screaming.
Ah. Of course. I'm deranged, he reminded himself.
He found his step-father. It had been on the second or third sweep, but he was sure it was him. He had always worn a very distinctive belt buckle, made of silver woven into an intricate, snaking pattern which Aryion had made for him some years before. Initially, Leto hadn't notice it because the silver was melted onto the corpse, but when he went round again the sun had caught the silver edge that wasn't... that was still exposed, his mind supplied helpfully, shying away from what his eyes were seeing.
He knelt down by the body and, very gently, peeled and pulled the silver shape from the body. His brain shut out the crisp, cracking noise that accompanied the moment the buckle tore from the skin, but he found he was crying again.
Wiping his eyes with his forearm, he studied the deformed shape that now rested in the palm of his hand. Squinting, he could make out the original pattern, and what looked like it might once have been a name, engraved in the centre. He balanced on his haunches next to the body of his step-father, and allowed the wailing sobs to wrack through his body. He must have been there for an hour or so before tiredness overwhelmed him, and he went back into the forest and slept.
When he woke again it was night. He didn't know what to do. He was alone, completely alone. All his life he had always had his home to return to. He had been able to explore the world, secure in the knowledge that he was safely tethered. Now that line had been cut, and he was drifting loose.
Well. He couldn't stay where he was. The smell of cooked meat still hung heavy in the air, and, he realised with dreadful certainly, would soon attract wild animals. He tried to order the thoughts that were dancing across his mind.
I can't stay here.
Everyone's dead.
It is too dangerous.
My father's dead.
I need to get higher, I am alone in the forest at night.
They're all dead.
I'll walk back to the lake.
He killed them.
I can sleep in the tree next to the lake.
It's all my fault.
Tomorrow, I will travel to the human city.
Will I see my mother again?
I will find Callum.
Will I see my sister again?
And then I will kill him.
Did I kill them?