Oh, dear, it seems I've done it again. 13k words and then some. :x My apologies once again for a MASSIVE chapter, and for the delay on it (my target release date was Valentine's Day). Hopefully this chapter will answer some of your questions... but if it doesn't raise some more for you to wonder over, then I haven't done my job properly. :3 Thank you in advance to my loyal readers and reviewers!
What had I done, indeed.
The flames born from my Ascension began to fade as I examined myself in their flickering light; aether coursed through me so powerfully that it made the tattered edges of my vision throb, but in that new illumination every lean line of my hands and arms seemed perfectly sculpted, the play of tendons under my death-pale skin full of an endless fascination, such that it took me several long moments of contemplation to realize that the gauntlets I had worn had charred themselves into nothing more than ashen smears. I felt intrinsically connected to all things under Aion's grace in a way that my mortal mind had never imagined possible - I sucked in a winter-cold breath, suddenly desperate for air, and the world breathed with me. I could sense the hot, thrumming pulse of the earth beneath my feet, felt like pinpricks against my skin the steam that rose from the melting snow, curling and coiling upwards into the air and taking tiny pieces of my soul with it.
I had been cold, before - even warmed from the exertions of battle with the osprey and with the forces united under Carcarron's banner, I had been aware on some level of the chill that emanated from the landscape, of my breath dragoning out from my nostrils with every motion, of the minuscule crystals of ice that threatened to form in my hair and on my borrowed armor. The winter could not touch me now, except as a gentle caress at my cheek, a thing so ephemeral that it was more known of than felt.
But I had delayed it long enough; I turned my head to glance over my own shoulder, muscles tensing and flexing in my back that I had until that moment not been aware that I possessed, and my breath caught in my throat as I examined the wings that immortality had bestowed upon me, rather than allow me to chase Terekai's portal into the dark. Where the gyre's were sleek and pointed like the blades of knives, mine were ragged, the wing-arms themselves powerfully built while the body of feathers was broad and fan-shaped, triangular coverts and flight feathers the deep iridescent blue-black of a raven's, fading into a rich cobalt at their arrow-shaped tips. Enthralled, I spread my new-fledged wings wider to examine them in all their wonder, I saw that my secondaries were bright cerulean, bluer than a newborn sky, interspersed with long-vaned feathers that trailed luxuriant azure eyes fringed in black, as if a handful of feathers from the tail of a peacock had been dark-dyed and then placed there in my wings by the hands of Aion himself. I was startled to discover that their span rivaled that of Oros's own wings, and that when I flexed them experimentally, allowing myself to acclimate to their heft and weight, the cobalt tips left phantom arcs of aether in the air behind them, ghostly traceries of themselves that drew the eye and left my jaw agape in wonder.
They were unmistakably the wings of a phoenix, extravagant and proud - but it came like being dropped in glacial waters the realization that they were just as unmistakably the wings of an Asmodian, and that though I still wore the coraline and bore Terekai's illusions wrapped lover-close about my frame, no Daeva with the eyes to see could mistake those wings for anything other than what they were.
"Oh," I heard myself say in a quiet, small voice, as distant and detached as if I were standing across the Abyss, "we're in a lot of trouble, aren't we?"
"You have no idea the kind of trouble we're in," growled the gyre, and I startled, remembering his presence, my wings hunching in upon me in an instinctively defensive pose as I sent my wide-eyed gaze in his direction. In a series of fluid movements that I saw as clearly as if in a series of paintings, each motion individual and perfect, he rose, banished his fog-grey wings, slammed home the Last Word and its pale mate in their scabbards at his hips, and stormed towards me with such thunderous intent of purpose that I expected him fully to deck me crost the jaw when he reached me. But though I could see the desire to do so etched in every graceful line of the Assassin's form, he refrained from doing so - in fact, he stopped just shy of easy reach and easier temptation, gesturing sharply with the flat of one hand while the other clamped about the crossguards of his swords, a gesture that seemed a physical manifestation of his need for self-control. His black eyes burned in his snarling face, his gaze burrowing into mine, and I could not have looked away even had I the inkling to do so. "What in blazes was that, you daft woman? You could have killed us both! Not to mention," and his free hand pointed back behind me, at the ruins of the portal, the stone bubbling and melting slowly into volcanic ooze, "that you've almost certainly injured Terekai, if not outright killed him or anyone standing too close to the Gate - or the fact that we are now stranded in bloody Asmodae, with the entire army of the White Dragon half a blinking mile away and ready to murder us both in cold blood!"
He threw up his hands with a wordless noise of aggravation, whirled on the balls of his feet, pressed hard the heels of his strong hands to his eyes as he attempted to regain some measure of discipline; I, who had seen Oros in worse temper before (and not terribly long ago, at that), was instead caught by imagining the fate of Terekai Nameless, who by all accounts had poured all of what he was into the creation and maintenance of the portal, that those who crossed into Carcarron might make it safely home again. What would the destruction of such a massive working do to a Sorcerer caught unawares by it, his mind and soul wrapped intimately and inextricably around and through it? Terekai was old and powerful, but could even he survive the wanton destruction that the Gate's destruction - and my consequent Ascension - had wrought?
And moreover, why did I feel fear for the safety of Terekai Nameless, when by all rights I should revel in his suffering?
I wanted to believe that it was only because I desired to know the secrets he held behind his quick, enigmatic smile, but I could not claim it honestly, not even within the sanctuary of my own mind.
"I am sorry," I blurted to the gyre's back, and though for what I was apologizing was eminently unclear to the both of us, he dropped his hands, rolled his shoulders once to force them to relax, and then let out a breath that was too even and too slow to be a sigh.
"Don't apologize. It isn't your fault that you Ascended, nor the manner in which you did it, or how Aion chose to respond." He turned somewhat, so that he stood in profile to me, a lithe sliver of a man gilded in orange and gold by the dying fires all around us. His expression was inscrutable, but I saw my own face reflected in his black eyes, tasted desert wind and autumn air more crisply and sweetly than ever before, detected nuances in it - and him - that I had never thought to search for. "That was a brave thing you did." A pause, as the corner of his mouth quirked so subtly that it might have been a trick of the light. "Stupid. Unbelievably so. But brave."
"So glad that I have your vote of confidence, gyre," I shot back at him, a crooked smirk to gentle the blow summoning a matching expression on his hawkish face. Aching and unable to determine why, I pressed one of my palms to the place where Sryddan's spear had nearly ended me - but instead of a rush of scarlet and the drain of dying, as I expected, I felt only raw-seared flesh, where the fires of my rebirth had cauterized the wound. I had no doubt that it would scar, and nastily, but at least I was not in any imminent danger from a wound untended. I glanced downwards at it, turning my palm upwards to examine the soot smeared across my hand, and just like that the gyre's entire body language shifted, the bulk of his temper excised as he put his quick mind to better uses than chiding me for my idiocy.
I did not expect him to lay hands upon me, but he took the last step to cross the threshold into my personal space and put his hands to both my shoulders just below the pauldrons, forcing my gaze directly to his face, no longer full of anger but instead blazing with intellect and purpose; for a moment I was not even consternated by being touched without my permission, distracted by the determined frown that fret his white brows and frowned his mouth. Perhaps that had been his original goal, to deny me distance and the room to flee an important, but impertinent question. "Do you trust me, Jaya?"
Aion help me, I knew the answer to that inquiry, but I would not voice the truth of it, instead lifting my chin in defiance. His aether felt frigidly cold where it arced through and interacted with mine, and if I concentrated I could almost delineate where each of his fingers lay upon my borrowed armor. "That depends on what you ask me to trust in you."
A slight mistake on my part - I heard the faint creak of his leather gloves as his grip on my shoulders tightened fractionally, and my wingtips fluttered in response, but his face remained the same. "Let me amend that statement, then. Do you trust me to get the both of us out of this alive?" I hesitated a breath, then nodded slightly, the movement a fraction of an inch but enough, at that close range, that he could not mistake my agreement. His mouth pressed itself into a thin white line as the gears turned behind his black gaze, but though it felt an eternity before he spoke again, it could not have been more than a moment, a handful of heartbeats yanked free of tempo. "You said that Rivenstone is abandoned, that the keep will be empty. Are you still willing to stake our lives on that assessment?"
I frowned up at him, the difference in our heights small enough that I did not need to crane my head to do so. "What are you planning, gyre?"
"We need to regroup. I'm unfit to fly, as much energy as I spent in that skirmish, and you -" He finally released me, stepping with unconscious grace backwards out of my sphere of influence, and I felt the hole where the sense of his aether had been as keenly as if a draft had blown across me, "Well, you are bleeding enough aether that if we don't find a place to hide, and swiftly, the Dragon's trackers will be able to find you like a beacon in the night." He sent his obsidian gaze in the direction of Carcarron, our eyes both adjusting to the fall of night now as the last of the fires guttered out and died, leaving us cloaked in complete shadow, no moon or stars to dilute the sudden beauty of the darkness; I acclimated to the dark as quickly as any Asmodian, but I was startled to see that not only did Oros compensate for the lack of light nearly as quickly as I did, if I focused upon his face as he looked out across the trampled snow, I could detect a faint iridescent shine in the backs of his eyes, his pupils become ovals of dark grey ringed by black irises. I counted it a minor blessing that he did not seem to notice my sharp intake of breath, his mind likely awhirl with the things that must come to pass in order than we escaped the predicament we found ourselves in. "We have twenty, perhaps thirty minutes before the Dragon's Daevas are able to fly again - they expended as much aether as I did, and the Dragon committed all of his forces to the taking of the portal. Cocky," he noted, one white brow arching.
I found my voice, eager to distract myself from the worrying sight of the gyre's eyes and their grey false-glow that reminded me uncomfortably of an Asmodian's scarlet eyeshine. "He will not make that kind of a mistake again, if he is even half of the leader that Ariel and the Fidelis seem to think that he is."
"Unfortunately for us, but that can't be helped." He paced to one side so that his back faced me and sent his gaze the other direction, to the distant outline of Rivenstone, the structure cloaked in snow left undisturbed, no lanterns lit, no signal-fires burning, even in the aftermath of the battle for the Gate; it was as fortuitous a sign as I could have hoped for, for surely if there were residents in that accursed keep, they would have roused themselves to the call of the Dragon and his armies. "But the Daevas aren't my concern. We only have a short window before the Dragon rallies his soldiers and marches them back here. They routed once, yes, but they won't do so a second time." I could not see his face, but I could hear the grimness in his tone. An aether-tapped Daeva and a new-fledged immortal could not hold against those armies, not without surprise or the tactical advantage of the outpost, now fallen down all around us. The only option that was not plainly suicidal was a retreat, and I could read in the set of his shoulders that Oros did not enjoy the thought of fleeing like a coward. "We need to reach Rivenstone, and hide there until morning, at the least. Once we have the luxury of space to breathe, we can decide where to go from there."
The very thought of dwelling in that accursed place once again, where my mother and Raum both had died, but with the extended and raw senses of a newly-reborn Daeva, shook me to my core. Though Ashura Aether-Born's death was safely enough in the past that I could cope with it if need be, I knew in my heart that I was not ready to face the spectre of Raum, who he was and what he could have been, if not for my weakness, my failure. My wings shuddered with a noise like the leaves on a tree caught in a gale, and if my voice trembled, it was only because my frame was shaking beneath the borrowed armor of a Chantress, and not from fury, nor from the frisson of chill that accompanied the snow that had begun once again to fall. "You cannot be serious." Don't ask me to do this, gyre. Please.
He flicked a glance my way, and I saw, just for a moment, naked curiosity on his stark-angled face, unable for a heartbeat to conceal the thoughts close-held behind his night-lit eyes, as he wondered why I might be so afraid of walking halls that I had already professed to knowing well - but then the mask returned, the faint shine of his eyes seeming to bore straight through me, and when he spoke, his voice was unwontedly kind, though the words could easily have been impelled into harshness. "If you have a better idea, phoenix, I'm listening."
Phoenix. The thought made my throat choke and my head spin, that until I either fell in battle or chose to Fade that I would be forever labeled as such - but I was in no condition, or any position of safety, that could allow me to come to grips with the idea that I was no longer mortal, and never would be again. I screwed shut my eyes, forcefully pushed away all distractions, and focused upon what was eminently and undeniably true: that if I could not summon enough strength now to see this through, that I would not have enough time to grow accustomed to the concept of forever. "How exactly do you propose we reach Rivenstone?" I allowed my eyes to open again, set them upon the distant keep, unable for a moment to look at the gyre in all his terrible grace. "You said yourself that you are unfit to fly."
"Me? I have no problem with walking." The morbid smile he wore crept into his voice on cat's feet, subtle as mist. "I am still an Assassin, even grounded. They won't be able to find me, that much I can promise. But you..." The smile widened into a rictus-grin. "You are so full of aether right now that I doubt you could find the bottom of it. It's always that way with the newly Ascended, until the excess burns off. But it also means that if you take to air, there is no chance that they can catch you."
I stared at him, for a moment my mind refusing to accept what it was that he wished for me to do, and then - "You want me to fly. To Rivenstone. Alone."
He tilted his head, birdlike, and gestured with one hand. If I had a better idea...
Light spilled across the steppes, interrupting the perfect dark, and the grey half-glimpsed ovals of his pupils vanished even under that tentative illumination. The both of us snapped round to attend the source, and we saw that the signal-fires had been lit in the towers of Carcarron, with answering flames arising all across the distant landscape, dots of orange and white as far away, I thought, as Beluslan Fortress itself - but no bonfires leapt in answer at dark Rivenstone, and cursing under my breath at the gyre and his gall, I spread my wings as far as I could make them go, attempting to concentrate not so much on the appendages themselves, but what I wanted to do with them. Nico had once drawn parallels between an unflighted Daeva and a virgin on her wedding night, remarking that it was easy to know what one wanted to do, but a bit more difficult to decide how, precisely, to do it; feeling rather like the victim of an arranged marriage, I did not appreciate that metaphor now, consternated further by Oros cheekily vanishing into the landscape, cloaking his form with a ripple of aether like water, our time for planning and advisement come abruptly to an end.
A handful of experimental flaps of my wings provided me with nothing other than several gusts of wind and an eddying of newly falling snow; feeling like a fool, I called to mind the many times I had seen the shining wings of the Furiae and attempted to remember how it was that they left the ground so easily. In the end, I decided upon a running start, and backed to the very edge of where the portal had been, before bolting across the ruined outpost and attempting to bodily hurl myself into the air. The attempt went about as one might expect, for I had yet to compensate for the added weight of the wings, and I ended up skinning my palms across the frozen ground to prevent myself from breaking my nose upon the rocky soil. Full-fledged Daevas reading these words are laughing now at the picture I present, but I say that if none of you have Ascended upon the battlefield, with naught but a fickle Assassin to advise you, then remember that all of us were young and mortal, once, and thus allowed the gracelessness to make our mistakes.
Angry with myself, and cursing fluently the name of the gyre, I trudged back to the top of the hill and tried again. This time, I gained the air for several wingbeats before my kicking feet scrambled across the ground, and heartened, I persevered; after several such of these brief jaunts into the sky, hopscotching across the landscape, I stumbled across the notion to engage aether into the process of flight. I was untrained with it, of course, and efficiency was far beyond my grasp - but I was the daughter of a Sorceress, one of the most powerful to ever live, and sister to an equally powerful magician. Though I had not been blessed, as they had, with the ability to harness aether for destruction, I could yet learn from their examples, and tapped every store of knowledge I had upon the subject. It was not, as others may tell you, like binding all Hell with a hair - rather, it was as if I held a roiling, burning star between claw-fingered hands, and what slipped through my grasp was lost to the Abyss, but what I could yet retain my grip on, I put to use through sheer stubbornness of will. Brutal and inelegant, yes, but effective enough, provided what Oros said about my temporary store of aether was true.
The next attempt I made saw me well and truly, if haltingly, into the air, though it took all of my concentration to maintain it - though the Furiae and other such Daevas I had known made flight seem a simple thing, for a fledgling learning it with pain and death as the price for failure, it was hardly the simplest task I had ever put my intellect toward. With the spike and bulk of Rivenstone as my compass, I labored to remain aloft, snow and wind assaulting my face, aether and effort burning in the muscles of my back, phantom sensations of both a bottomless chill and a searing molten heat warring across my skin, as the aether coursing through me fought to reshape the world to its own whims. A near-miss with a stand of snow-tipped trees, their uppermost branches scraping hollowly across my borrowed armor, provided the inspiration to aspire to greater loft, and my teeth grit so tightly that it made the muscles in my jaw twitch and jump, I forced myself to rise higher, up and up into the eddying snow in a lightless sky. On the downstrokes, I could see plainly that the tips of my aching wings were still trailing aether in their wake across the night, the cobalt seeming bright as comet-streaks in the dark; any archers abroad in the black would find them easy targets, and thus all the more reason to hurry for Rivenstone, the snow-heaped keep slowly growing larger on the horizon.
I suppose now, with the benefit of both observation and hindsight, that new-fledged Daevas are allowed the time to explore their capabilities, their reach and boundaries both, not to mention conditioning their bodies to the rigors demanded of Aion's chosen; I had been given no such luxury, and by the time Rivenstone grew close enough that I could number the darkened windows of the keep, or rake my eyes across the undisturbed snow that betrayed no sign of inhabitance, my entire frame was sore and aching as it had never before been in my life. As a youth, I had been gradually introduced to the sword - it felt now, as I closed in upon my destination, as if all the years I had spent were thrust upon me all at once, my back aflame, the muscles in my neck and shoulders wound tight as hot-forged wire, knotted so thornily that I might not be able to raise my head from my chest with a month of time to recover. I kept track of my progress in spurts, slices of perspective tenuously chained together - a span of wingbeats, a lift of my chin and a risked glance at the silhouette of the keep to guage its distance, then a lowering of my head, bullish in my stubbornness, as I repeated the process once more.
I did not land, so much as I failed to continue flying.
My wings gave out abruptly, perhaps a hundred feet from my destination, and I dropped from the sky like a stone, plowing bonelessly into the snowdrifts, tumbling end over end before finally skidding several yards to sprawl in the banks as a graceless pile of limbs, feet in the air and the bases of my wing-arms half-crushed beneath me, no thought in my mind other than a certain gratitude that I seemed to have come through the disaster of a landing with all of my limbs intact. My strength left me in such a sudden rush that I felt swept hollow, empty from the lack of it; the chill of the snow spattered on my face and sinking down through the mail to soak into the pads of my ash-streaked armor should have iced me to the bone - but ridden by the fiery nature of my aether, it felt remarkably good, cool meltwater kisses smoothing the fever from my veins, cleansing with slow deliberation the soot and blood from my cheeks, and perhaps from my soul as well.
Despite the oddness of my position and the discomfort in my feather-tangled wings, I lay there with my eyes shut, allowing my breath to level and the tremor to quiet in my limbs, for far longer than I ought; when I rose, it was hobbling and awkwardly done, floundering in the snow as I stumbled to my feet with stiff motions and sore muscles, combating both the ache in my frame and the added weight of armor and wings, such that in hindsight I am unsure where I found the balance or the ability to rise from the drift. But once I had gained both feet, one arm wrapped around my midsection, the opposing hand pressed to my throbbing temple, I was disconcerted to see that where I had lain there was now an unmistakable outline of wings in the bank, a snow-angel in the most literal of senses. Alarmed, I scuffed the silhouette as much as I could with the heels of my booths, not daring to kneel or bend for fear that I would not rise again afterward, tamping down the snow where I could and scattering it where I could not. But now no longer in active use, the heat of my phoenix-aether had begun to dissipate, and I was most of the way through the process of disguising my fall when a vicious wind kicked up - a Carcarrese wind, the frozen fangs of winter making themselves felt, piercing through the faint streamers of steam that wafted off of me to lance straight to my core. I began to shiver under that gale, my grasp of the mechanics of aether manipulation as yet too shallow to allow me protection from the cold, and knew that I needs must find my way inside.
A swift sweep of my gaze across Rivenstone's walls proved my worst suspicions, that the great double doors of black steel that marked Rivenstone's main hall were fully blockaded by a bank of snow wider than the span of my new-fledged wings, and twice my height and more; perhaps were I a fully educated Daeva, secure in the control of my aether, I could have cleared it without freezing to death, but I was yet a glorified mortal with delusions of grandeur, and so instead sent my eyes along the wall, searching for one of Rivenstone's many side entrances. A simple wooden doorway tucked into a crevice appeared promising, and I began to stagger towards it, my gaze on the goal, willing myself through sheer effort not to notice the ice beginning to refreeze in my wet hair, or the sharp trickling of halfmelt as it dripped down the back of my neck and infiltrating through chinks in the mail, or the sloshing of water in the armor's underpadding and squishing underfoot in the soles my boots with every step. My leg was beginning to rebel even under the pressure-bandage of my boot lacings, and the scar at my shoulder (Through and through, echoed my memory, until even I was uncertain of the voice that spoke it) was pulsing fire with every heartbeat, making its presence known in the form of red-hot pins and needles that tingled all the way down my arm to the tips of my fingers.
As I stumbled for the doorway, I heard more than felt the tips of my feathers dragging across the snow, the silken rasp seeming incredibly loud in the open silence of the winter-clad steppes. A quick glance over my shoulder saw that I had unconsciously, and awkwardly, cowled my trembling wings behind me, their span too large and ostentatious of feather to neatly fold without a concerted effort, one that I could not yet find it in me to muster; for several moments I was at a loss as what to do with them, their weight unnecessary and upsetting my sense of balance now that I was aground, but they seemed a burden not easily dispersed, for when I turned my thoughts to banishing them in a flow of aether, as I had seen the Furiae do many a time, I could not duplicate their results.
I grit my jaw and continued onward, fixing my sight upon that narrow side-door, shuffling the problem of the wings to the side for the nonce. There was nothing to be done for them now, with more important issues at hand that I needs must hoard my strength in order to take care of. I was tired, and wet and shivering in a Carcarrese winter, and while I did not know if a Daeva could die of exposure, I was unwilling to find out.
A morbid chuckle escaped into the air from between my clenched teeth, my breath pluming in the night. It would be just my luck, to come so far, only to fall victim to the winter.
The side door, half-rotted from near of a year left untended against the elements, gave easily under a sharp kick from my boot heel, and the resulting burst of wind and snow skirled lightly across the floor of what appeared to be the kitchens, dark and cold and full of unfamiliar shadows; I stood in the doorway for a contemplative moment reorienting myself before I moved fully inside, finding myself within seconds leaning heavily on the nearest wall, my knee trembling under my weight, it and the muscles of my shoulder twisting themselves into tangles of heated wire. Moving among the cooking tables, the racks of pots and implements hanging undisturbed after so long unneeded, I wanted very badly to sink to the ground and not rise until Oros joined me - but ah, then there was the thought that not only was there a chance that we were not the only creatures who had found shelter in abandoned Rivenstone, but also that I could not bear to allow the proud gyre to see me in such a state, collapsed on the ground just barely out of the harshest reach of the icy wind - and that not even mentioning that if the Dragon's armies had followed me instead of the gyre, that I would be easy prey for capture, and then we would be right back where we had been before our daring rescue of Kit Brightwing.
Further into the keep I ventured, limping through the dark towards the far doorway of the kitchens, seeking both to clear the territory and find a more defensible position to hold; snow-shedding footprints and the silken scrape of my wet wingtips across the stone trailed in my wake, the only sounds in what had once been a thriving keep, now dark and full of silence and grief.
It was not until I emerged into the hallway just beyond the kitchens, and smelled the scent of smoke and burnt stone, that I began to shake, and not entirely from the cold.
I knew where I was. I would have known it in my sleep, tied upside-down and drunk; the horrid knowledge poured over me like a bucket of icewater, and thought I huddled my wings close, hunched my shoulders and bent my head, I could not refute the memories, nor hide from them. My feet began to move of their own accord, down the hall, around the corner, through a side hallway, and I could not cease moving no more than I could cease to breathe, could command my heart to finish beating - I did not want this, I did not want the memories, but I could not prevent them, my mind and my body locked in a struggle against the past that I was doomed to fail. My body walks in Rivenstone in winter, but my mind is somewhere different altogether -
I dream awake.
I remember the keep as it was, the halls outside the kitchens full of activity, the servants bustling cheerfully past me as they prepare the dishes for a feast, and Rivenstone smells of herbs and greenness. I am walking the corridors, as I always do, clad not in armor but in simple livery, a belted tunic of Rivenstone's crimson red with the heraldry of the Twinned Duchy picked out in white thread at my breast, soft black breeches and my favorite boots, the ones with soles so soft that they make no sound when I pace across the dark grey flagstones. It is a time of celebration in Carcarron, a festival to greet the summer; there will be a brax roasted whole over the firepit, and gamebirds hunted and served, and Raum has gone out of his way to ensure that even the lowest caste of dwellers in the keep will have a meal fit for Asphel's own table, generous as he always is, with the benefit of a thoughtful nature and the wealth of a Duchy to make certain that all goes according to plan.
But the Lord of Rivenstone is sure in his bones that there is something amiss here in his pleasant keep. Anxiously, his fingers tapping a rapid legato along the surface of his desk, he asks of me to go out among his soldiers and his subjects, and to report him all that I should see out of place. Though I doubt that there is anything at all flawed or faulty in the keep - and I do not scruple to tell him so, a trait I know he values well in my post as his guard-captain - he is so like a brother to me that I cannot deny him his wishes; after all, Raum is his father's son, and heir to a duchy that emerges prosperous even when the worst of the winter spends its wrath against the landscape. It is his duty to worry for the safety of his people, even if that means he must leap to defend them against shadows of threats that are not truly there.
The stench of old smoke grew stronger, the further I went into the keep, the air stagnant and musty, full of undertones of mold and mildew and dust. My breath came in rattling gasps as I limped along the halls, turning corners, following the same path that I had followed on that day so long ago; but the going of it was slow, as I needs must maneuver around the obstacles that blocked the halls - broken chairs lying forlornly on the flagstones, silken twists of fallen tapestries destroyed underfoot or by fire, lamps made little more than pools of shattered glass, glittering faintly in the perfect darkness of the keep. My vision was such that I could see the evidence of flames along the halls, on the ceiling - soot stained in black, black as Oros's eyes, and while the outer walls and much of the inner ones were made of stone, the beams in the roofs were hewn from wood, and burnt black and spare where the fire had gnawed at their doughtiness.
I am completing a circuit of the lower level of the keep, patrolling in the direction of the great hall, when I hear a woman's scream; I spin on the balls of my feet and stride back towards the kitchens, but there is smoke pluming through the hall and seeking every doorway, and some fool has the notion to shout fire and within moments there is a panic, servants fleeing in all directions, pouring out of the kitchens like rats deserting a sinking vessel. My heart leaps to my throat, and for a moment I am seized by fear; my mother died by fire, the flaming licking hungrily at her slender form, and I recall it only too clearly despite the decade that separates me from the memory - but I am Raum's captain of guard, and command comes reflexive to me. I begin to bellow for order, for my guardsmen, for chains of aid and for buckets of water, and the churning chaos slowly begins to organize itself under my direction - but the screaming has not stopped, and plunging into the choking smoke, the fabric of my tunic held to my nose and mouth, I search for the source of it.
I find the head cook at the foot of a wall near the cooking fires, with one of the serving boys unmoving in her arms, screaming and weeping so that I cannot understand a word that she says - but when I crouch lightly on my feet to examine the boy, thinking that he has inhaled too much smoke, I see instead that his eyes are wide open and blank, that her hands are pressed tightly to his chest, and blood the color of good sherry is pouring out between her fingers, soaking his linen shirt and her white apron. There is no saving him, for the wound is too deep and too broad, a killing stroke if I have ever seen one. But it was not struck by a mere kitchen knife - no, this is the work of battle-steel, a sword at the least, and icy horror steals through my veins, draining all of the color from my face.
And then I hear a clatter of arms, from the direction of the great hall, and I know with cold clear certainty that the fire is a distraction, and I have been tricked.
To reach my destination, I had to cross the great hall, though I desperately did not want to do so.
Once, it had been a vast and open hall, the largest single room in the keep, its walls lined with murals and tapestries, its beams hung with pennants and flags, with space enough beneath for a dozen trestle-tables and benches, enough to seat every man, woman and child that had lived in the keep. Now, its ceiling was collapsed, ruining its chapel-like grandeur, and the cracked, disheveled tiles were open to the night air; someone had been kind enough to cart away the bodies long ago, so that the stones need not be forever etched with the putrescent outlines where good men had fought and died for the Lord of Rivenstone, but even if it were only a figment of my imagination, I could still smell the blood under the blanket of snow, no longer fresh but dried from its tack, and run to rust where the rain had not washed it away. And though the dead were long since gone, a single risked glance into the open air of the hall revealed that the evidence of their passage yet remained, outlined in humps of white - piles of scattered weapons tarnishing across the blackened floor, their tips like pine needles poking out from rounded hillocks of snow, a helm that had rolled into a corner full of white and wet, soot-coloured beams collapsed across the floor like the trees they had been in life haloed with the evidence flurries. If I focused too hard, I could almost see the cinders still burning beneath them, an obscene and feral parody of the tame fires that crackled merrily on hearths all over Atreia.
I turned my shoulder to the spectacle, shuttered my eyes against the memories of the men that I had commanded, and moved on.
My guardsmen, bless their steady hearts, are already beginning to rally in the hall against our attackers when I arrive; there must be a dozen of them, helm-masked one and all, head to toe in armor painted white, with the hated symbol of Sanctum marked across their chests and the white band tied around their upper arms. Elyos, then, and merciless as the stories paint them, Rivenstone's small complement of guard doing their level best to hold the line against their onslaught, shieldmates with the edges of their bulwarks locked in place, flanking those without defensive talents. The battle is already pitched, but Lieutenant Rhais shouts when she sees me enter the hall, and when we find each other behind the line she gives me her offhand blade, her indigo hair falling into her enormous green eyes, and asks me where in the Abyss they all came from.
I do not know, and even when I have the luxury of contemplation, much later and after all is said and done, I still cannot claim to know. But in any wise, I do not have to be the perfect tactitian to understand that it does not matter; there are Elyos assaulting Rivenstone, and there is a fire blazing in the keep, and Raum is in untold amounts of danger. The nearest sergeant is charged with the holding of the line, and I grab Rhais by the shoulder and say that we must reach Raum, and quickly -
But in the center of the mass of white-armored Elyos, a slim figure holds up one gauntleted hand, points towards the ceiling, his whole arm writhing with living flame -
I have just enough time to shout in alarm before the roof caves in upon us in an explosive shower of sparks and embers, and men and women on both sides of the battlefield are too slow to get out of the way, the ceiling beams relentlessly crushing them under the greatness of their weight. Rhais and I hit the floor, arms up over our heads to protect them, and I hear the spit and crackle and crack as the fire takes hold of the massive, ancient beams, blazing as hot and wicked as a sentient thing as it gleefully tears into the wood. When we stagger to our feet, Rhais and I bracing each other with our open hands, we realize that the Elyos have cut us off from the main stairway, the one that leads to Raum's rooms -
But there is a rear staircase, the narrow one that the servants use to tend the rooms of the Lord of Rivenstone, and with my heart pounding in my throat so loudly I can barely hear my own words, I roar for my men to rally to me, for Lord Rivenstone, for all of Carcarron and the Twinned Duchy.
I can only pray to Aion that this rescue will come in time -
The stairs proved the worst of my challenges. Though the stone walls still stood, the stairs themselves had collapsed into little more than splinters and rot, speared through by the fall of another ceiling beam, one that has fallen at an awkward angle just shallow enough that I had a slender hope of climbing it to the second floor. Digging my short, blunt nails into the wood, I scrabbled for footholds in the charred wood, the balls of my feet finding precious little purchase as I labored, inch by inch, up that incline; I lost my grip near to three-quarters of the climb upwards and, in my haste to regain my hold on the wood, flared my wings out to compensate for the loss of balance and ended up striking them both quite painfully on the walls, claustrophobically close with the span of my feathers spread to take up all of the available space.
Tears pricked my eyes, against my stubborn will, and dizzied by them I lowered my face, pressed my forehead to the cool wood and my frozen hands; the sharpness of the pain in my wings was further insult to injury, and the only solace I could muster was that there was no one present to see me struggle to retain my dignity, crawling like a worm on hands and knees up a half-burnt slab of wood, soaked to the bone, shivering from cold and old horrors and the kind of razor-edged grief that defies explanation, to those who have never felt its sting.
I pressed my wings once again to my back, fought my way to the top of the beam, and from there limped up the rest of the steps, as ever the while the smell of smoke grew so thick it clotted in my throat.
The fire is already roaring on the second floor when Rhais and I charge up the narrow steps; heat licks at my face, makes the stray strands of my raspberry hair curl, and the smoke forces my eyes to water and my lungs to seize, even as I struggle to keep from breathing too much of it. The Elyos pyromancer has been hard at his malicious work, attempting through brute force to find his way to Raum's chambers and burn him to ashes within it - there are melted holes in the stone walls, ringed in red where the mage has made the stone run to liquid, and when I see them I cast a worried glance upwards to the rest of the ceiling beams, even now catching fire as the blaze spreads further, cinders and ash raining down on us as we run through the halls. I hear cries, and a crash behind us - a part of the flame-wreathed ceiling crushing in the stairs, as simply and brutally as a man smashing a bottle with a club - and Rhais and I are now alone in the burning corridor, the rest of the guardsmen cut off by the blazing stairs. We exchange glances over our shoulders, our faces white and our mouths grim, but we do not speak and we do not falter. We cannot afford that luxury now.
A small blessing - we take the Elyos by surprise. Raum, smart man, has barricaded himself in his rooms at the first sign of commotion, and the white-clad soldiers are attempting to break down the door when Rhais and I fall upon their rearmost rank, Rhais screaming in fury and I as silent as the grave. Half of the Elyos turn to face us, the rest forming up upon the door, and the attempts to reach within; but though Rhais and I thin their numbers with every stroke of our blades, cutting them down without mercy or pity, they are more than we, and in the taking of narrow quarters, the defenders always have the advantage.
The flame is spreading to the ceiling; the beam cracks lengthwise with a noise like thunder, and Rhais and I and the Elyos all, we stop to look upwards, to consider how long that great width of wood might hold steady against the living blaze that the pyromancer has conjured. It cannot be very long, and so I take the opening and strike like a viper, the tip of the borrowed sword shoved through the visor-slit of an Elyos soldier, pulled back before it can bind in the skull or the helm. The Elyos falls, and two of his comrades surges forward to take his place as the rest break in Raum's door, and trample like wild brax into his chambers. I am too far forward to easily evade the rearguards' blades, and Rhais hauls me bodily back, earns a sword in the chest for the trouble of saving my life. The surprise does not fade from her face even when she goes to her knees, and the Elyos who killed her lifts a foot to kick her body free of his sword.
The ceiling-beam cracks again, visibly bowed now under the acid teeth of the blaze and its own weight, and I am screaming deep in my chest, exhorting Raum in a snarling roar to hold steady, that I am coming.
There wasn't any smoke up in the corridor, of course, but I saw the evidence of it everywhere I dared to tread; I kept close to the walls, not entirely trusting the floor, and everything was caked in a layer of cold black soot so thick that my footprints were smeared grey ovals, the trailing edges of my wings soon rimed with wet ashes and my borrowed armor smudged rather more grey than pearly white. The final obstacle left between myself and my destination was another fallen beam - it had blocked much of the hallway once, and though the remains of it had since lessened and settled it was a trial forcing my shaking legs up and over the unsteady mess of blackened wood, one hand on the stone wall, bowed and curved from the heat of the fire that had been required to fell the beam in the first place.
The closer I came to the epicenter of my memories, the weaker beneath me felt my knees, and the harder and sharper stung the old pain in my shoulder, until every nerve seemed twisted and writhing in agony underneath my skin, my arm hanging from my torso as if a dead thing. I leaned heavily upon the stone, and knew when I reached the place in the hallway where I had once been unable to go any farther; there was a hole in the stone, a diagonal chip just under two fingers' breadth wide, mere feet away from an open and gaping doorway, and I shut my eyes against the sight of it, lifted my hand instead to explore the smoothness of the hole's carving.
With every beat of my staccato heart, my shoulder threatened to tear itself free of me, far more painful now than it ever was back then, because with the terrible wisdom of the past, I already knew what was coming.
I can hear the scuffle in Raum's rooms, mere yards down the hall, hear his shouting and the ring of steel on steel, but though I fight valiantly to win free past the Elyos and reach him, they are standing with malicious stubbornness between myself and my goal. Screaming, full of murder and rage and the creeping terror that one feels only when faced with one's worst nightmare come to life, I cut down one of my assailants, hacking at his armor with broad, hard strokes, finding chinks in his protection at the knee, then the neck. The last one squares up against me, and I am prepared to do something utterly foolish in the pursuit of reaching Raum with all speed -
The ceiling-beam cracks again, one last, resonating time, and the wood falls in upon the Elyos, his startled cry swiftly silenced by the roar of the flame and the heft of an ancient Carcarrese tree. I am of a sudden alone in the burning hallway, only the bonfire-bright wood between me and Raum, but it is blazing hotly and I am afraid, I am terrified, and just for an instant I feel it in my bones that there is no force in Atreia that can persuade me to leap into the fire, not when it was fire that killed my own mother, not when I had to watch her die choking, the flesh boiling like water, peeling like curls of birch bark away from her slender frame -
Raum is calling me - just my name, over and over again between the clashes of his weapons against that of the Elyos, and I am rooted to the spot by fear, my gorge rising in my throat and sweat running in rivulets down my prickling skin.
I cannot do this.
I cannot.
The moment of truth has come, and I am hesitating; Raum screams for me with all his might, howling for the one person in all Asmodae who he can trust with his life, and I am not there when he needs me, trapped in my own cowardice, the smell of smoke rank in my lungs and my heart full of fear. I stagger backwards, my eyes shut, my free arm cast up over my face, struggling with every inch of me to fight my terror and win, because Raum needs me and if I do not go to save him then no one else will, no one else can -
The heel of my boot hits the wall, and before my gut can change my mind, I take a breath, hold it, and run for the blazing beam, leaping only when I can no longer bear the heat upon my skin -
I clear the blazing beam, my fate in that moment entirely in Aion's hands; I land on my knees and one splayed palm on the other side, holding my sword clear of the floor, panting with exertion and fear and exhilaration, but when I lift my head it is to see that there is a white-helmed Elyos in that hall beyond the inferno, and the bottom falls out of my stomach when I see that the blade in his hand is radiant with aether, burning white-hot, and wreathed in living flame.
Forward I surge out of that crouch, and the Elyos is laughing as our blades meet. I do not want this fight, I want only to win past him, to reach Raum, to make up for the mistake that I made in allowing my fear to control me - but it is not to be; I am outclassed, outmatched, and when the Elyos slams me into the wall and shoves home that white-hot sword through my shoulder and into the stone beyond it, I am overwhelmed by the pain, the stench of my own charring flesh burning the insides of my nostrils, my vision spotting in white and black and red, and feebly I attempt to pull free of the wall and the sword that pins me to it, but six inches of blazing steel may as well be a mile -
My sword clatters to the floor, and I slump against the wall, dizzied and nauseous and struggling to remain conscious; the Elyos stoops to pluck my borrowed blade from the floor, rises with a little mockery of a bow as if in gratitude, and then he slips through the doorway only feet away from us, where Raum is screaming still, bellowing for me in a voice grown hoarse with desperation, but I am unable to go to him or even to cry out, trapped against the stone, pinned like an insect made ready for a shadowbox display.
I am forced to listen as he bravely fights them one and all, forced to listen to the ring of metal as they disarm him, the thump of weight as they knock him to the floor, forced to listen as he continues to call for me to come to his side, even faced with his doom.
The last words on his lips are my name, and then there is no more sound at all from within his chambers, save for the popping, sparking crackle of the fire that consumes his legacy whole.
And after that, for me, there is only darkness, and the fathomless depths of my grief.
They found him facedown in his chambers, afterward; his head had been struck from his shoulders, gone with his murderers, a trophy-skull for the barbaric Elyos and whatever savage lord they served, with his body left a bloody symbol to the Duchy as a whole. That the flames had not consumed us both, nor choked the life from my butterfly-pinned frame, I can only blame on the whim of Aion Himself, though why he chose to spare me then, and not the greater man that was Carcarron's heir, I have not the capacity to understand. From the Elyos dead around him, he had fought well and valiantly, a death worthy of the Asmodian princeling that he was - but such knowledge was cold comfort from within my cell, first at sickbed as my shoulder healed remarkably cleanly, then in a Carcarrese dungeon once I was well enough to be moved. I remember little of that time, immured in my sorrow as I was.
There was no prison that Avarran Carcarron could concoct, no punishment more dire, than the one that I had crafted for myself.
Or so I had thought, until he had denied me the death that I so richly deserved, and so desperately craved.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself on my knees in Raum's doorway; here too the carrion-thieves had been hard at work, removing the bodies and all the evidence thereof, but no mere corpse-hauler could remove the pooling spread of blackness across the worg-fur rug that had covered the floor of that open suite, nor disguise the violence that had taken place in those rooms, a story told in overturned furniture, charred walls and mildewed tapestries. I could not bear to look upon it, and when I lifted my hand to my face I discovered that I was weeping, openly and without sound, gulping down great lungfuls of air as I sob so deeply that my entire frame shook like a leaf in a hurricane. Feeling had begun to return in my left arm, and I flexed my fingers, then wove my arms across my belly, bent double around the sudden knot of sorrow that felt like an iron weight in my belly, fit to break me in half if I allowed it.
It was in such a position that I became gradually aware that I was not alone in the ruined keep; with studied care, I wiped my face with the heels of my hands, though I fear I did nothing more than smear about the ash and dried blood and the winter-chilled evidence of my grief, and when I was ready I braced a forearm against the doorway, used it to help myself to find my feet. When at last I turned, I saw the gyre standing respectfully some distance back from me in the hallway, water dripping from his hair in places and riming to ice in others, his leathers smudged with soot and his face seeming even more ashen and pale in the lightless depths of Rivenstone, eyes enormous and endless in their blackness, save for a brief reappearance of those distressing grey ovals in the centers of his irises. He said nothing, expression carefully blank, and I was more grateful than I could properly articulate that I need not face his wicked tongue at that juncture, spared his barbed comments and cynical words.
I pushed myself free of the doorway and traced the way that I had come, leaning somewhat less heavily upon the wall now that I had recovered some measure of myself, though I was careful that my guiding hand gave wide berth to the heat-carved mark in the wall. "There was something that I had to do," I said into the stillness, by way of both explanation and tacit apology, my voice full of gravel and low with grief; Oros nodded only once, and did not yet question me upon it, another small kindness of his for which I was absurdly grateful. Instead he turned as I reached him, leading the way across the fallen beam and back towards the collapsed staircase, giving me both his back and the benefit of his blindness in order to collect myself.
"There's a cupola with a fireplace, easily defensible," he said into the quiet without turning to look at me, his tenor hushed as if he were hesitant to disturb the deathly stillness of Rivenstone all around us. "You can warm up and collect yourself there." Briefly I wondered what had happened to the gyre, that he should respect so keenly when another mourned - but then we reached the stairway and its broken steps and angled beam, and though he slid down it with an agility and grace that I both hated and envied in that moment, all of my energies were soon devoted entirely to reaching the first floor still in control of all of my faculties, a process accomplished with decidedly less flair and skill than that of the gyre.
The cupola the gyre spoke of was the old armory, its treasures all plundered, long since removed, but the room itself was situated within spitting distance both of the great hall and my former suite a corridor over; I squelched the morbid urge to go a-hunting for my old things, recognizing with a resigned sigh that they belonged to a different woman, from another life, and instead I dragged my tattered carcass to the hearth and eased my bones down upon the worn stone, doing the best I could to fend off the other memories, faded somewhat about their edges but no less painful for it, of the many nights I had sat there before. Oros, to his credit, asked me no questions, only knelt with a creaking of wet leather to kindle sparks in the hearth, wood for a fire already laid, though the snow-wet bark was reluctant to take a flame even directly from his flint and tinder. In hindsight, I suppose he could have kindled it with aether - or asked me to do so, given my patron bird and unwanted affinity for the element - but I believe that he feared then that the slightest tug on the nodes of aether innate to the land would alert the roving Dragon to our presence in Rivenstone's heart; while the night would disguise the smoke from our fire, the telltale traceries of Elyos magics were more difficult to hide, and had a wider impact on the web of energy as a whole.
The half-lit ovals in his eyes winked out of existence as soon as the first spark was struck, and once again I found myself doubting their existence, for the moment so laden down with other troubles that it was preferable to pretend that I had never seen them at all.
Only once the stubborn wood had accepted the flame, and the door to the armory locked and barred from the inside, did Oros finally sit, his long legs sprawled before him and his back and side to the growing embers. First he removed the Last Word and its nameless silver mate from the sword-belts at his hips, laying the blades between us on the hearth; then, with an air of ritual, he began to remove all of the weapons secreted about his person, dozens of blades all told, most of them smaller than the length of my hand and many lacking hilts and crossbars, instead exquisitely balanced for throwing. Seeing the sheer number of them piled there between us, I felt it the sheerest miracle that he did not jingle whenever he so much as breathed. As he doffed himself of his weaponry with the careless air of a man stripping naked yet unaware of an audience, the fire grew behind him, and I turned to it to give its warmth to my face, rubbing my hands and watching the gyre sidelong for there was nothing else to watch; I was caught unprepared, then, when the metaphor my mind had chosen began to manifest, as he yanked open the buckles of the strap-harness that crisscrossed his lithe frame, tore open his leathers at the throat to expose his shirt and a triangle of pale skin, then began to wriggle out of the top half of them in earnest.
My eyes shot to the fire, hoping the flickering uncertainties of the light would disguise the sudden leap of colour to my cheeks and ears, while the feathers of my haphazardly folded wings shivered and shirred, betraying me in a much more tangible way. I had seen the gyre in all his ferocious beauty, at that last stand at the portal; it was not a thing so easily unseen, though I cursed myself for so easily becoming rattled by it. I have never denied that the Elyos were crafted lovely and lovingly by our shared deity, perhaps moreso than my own people, but before that moment I had never been so ashamed of it, nor ever so irritated by it. Oros, to his credit, did not so much as cast a glance in my direction, tossing the strap-harness to settle in a tangled pile, then more deliberately spreading his close-fit jacket to dry, leather side up on the stone floor between us. When he settled back against the hearth, feeling uncomfortable in the silence that contained only the mild crackle of the flame, I braced for one question and received quite another: "Why do you still wear your wings?"
It was said with mild curiosity, and without a hint of sarcasm or scorn. I studied the fire and warmed my hands before it, rather that risk looking at him. "I have not had much of a chance to practice with them, Oros," I said crisply, sensing more than seeing the stiffness in his back at my tone, even though I had not meant to offend him. Confound the gyre and his monumental pride. I let that statement lay between us for a moment, as much of a blade as the Last Word, before I cleared my throat and amended it. "It would be more precise to say that do not know how to unwear them."
The stiffness began to recede, slowly, as if it cost him great pain to allow it to leave. "Of course. I'd forgotten how difficult it can be, in the beginning." He shifted his weight to lean forward with his elbows on his thighs, ran his hands through his white mane to sleek the wet hair back from his face. His shirt was soaked through to the skin, grey linen clinging to the muscles of his back. "Your wings are a part of you now, no less than your legs, or your arms. They respond best to physical cues, not mental ones. Rather like how you don't need to think about lifting your arms - it merely happens."
"Will transmuted into action," I said, thoughtful, and I chanced to glance at him, saw his head bob in the affirmative, allowing his hands to drop as he contemplated the floor.
"Exactly. Although there are variations, and exceptions." He rolled one shoulder absently, a gesture that seemed a habitual loosening of his muscles even though every line of him said that he expected no trouble, or at least, not the kind of trouble that could be solved with the sword. "Kit, I know, summons hers with a particular note of song. And Trist -" He paused, sat up somewhat, his shoulders rising as the bow of his back reversed itself. "Archery aside, Trist is almost entirely a creature of mental faculty. Given his flaws, I suppose he has to be."
"He would have made an excellent Sorcerer, then," I remarked offhandedly, thinking not of Terekai but of my keen-minded mother, of the burning-bright intellect of my brother; Oros lifted one shoulder and turned his head, prompting for elaboration with the slight arch of a brow - but I shook my head and allowed the subject, and the conversation, to drop. The gyre made a low noiseless exhalation of breath, somewhere between a sigh and a huff, and I retreated into myself for long minutes, flexing muscles in my back and shoulders, lifting and folding and refolding my wings, attempting to zero in upon the mystic combination of motion and intent that would banish them from my back. When I hit upon it, it stole over me suddenly, a wash of heat and aether - the feathers of my wings dissolved in a hot flood of energy, tumbling across my back and sides exactly as if someone had overturned a bucket of water above my head, right down to the crawling sensation of water rivuleting down my skin, pooling around my thighs and at my feet, before evaporating into wisps of steam.
In the wake of my wings came a rush of adrenaline, the victor's reward for a job well done - but when it passed, a pattering of heartbeats later, I began to shudder and shiver in earnest, the water soaked into my underpadding chill against my skin and the tentative heat of the little fire far from enough to banish the cold. I began to understand why Oros had shrugged out of part of his leathers (although wet leather, I grant, must have been quite uncomfortable, perhaps even chafing delicate Elyos skin) and studiously, carefully avoiding the gyre and his terribly interested black gaze, I doffed Kit's loaned armor, one piece at a time. The plate was surprisingly easy to pull away, segmented and articulated as it was, designed as much for ease of movement as it was protection - the straps and buckles were designed in such a way that, even aching and sore as I was, I did not require help in order to rid myself of it. Each piece was given a perfunctory swipe with my bare hands, to rid it of the worst of the damp; it was hardly the proper way to store armor, even for the briefest of times, but with the both of us wet and cold to the bone, I had not the luxury of dry cloth, nor the time and inclination to spend longer in the care of the pieces. The mail undertunic was the hardest part, ice grinding in the links from my exposure to the elements and not yet melted, and three-quarters of the way through the process of hauling it up over my shoulders I was out of breath and exhausted, ready to quit entirely - but then the gyre deigned to help me, and both furious and humiliated, I allowed it. I would not have won free of the damned mail any other wise, and when he stood briefly to lay out the chain tunic on the floor alongside his own jacket, his face impassive as the stone walls around us, I watched him do so and did not comment, though acid burned on my tongue to do so.
Even then, there was rapidly forming an unspoken agreement between us; we were strangers in a strange land, hunted and outnumbered, and if either one of us wished to survive to return home, we needs must rely upon the other. I wondered if it stung him to know that, as much as it stung me.
The underpadding came off last, all of it soaked through to the simple woolen clothes I wore underneath, and the padding I ranged out along the hearth, surrounding the gyre's store of weaponry but not daring to touch any of it. If I meant to wear the armor again, the padding would be necessary, but it would have to dry in the meager warmth of the fire, as much as it could be made to do. Bereft of the weight of the armor and all its varied accouterments, I felt both naked and oddly free; I missed the reassurance of the heft of plate, but I was well tired enough to be pleased that I could draw a full breath without fighting the mail every step of the way, and without the wet padding to anchor me, I could feel the fire beginning to thaw the ice from my hair and the water from my shirt and breeches.
But there was one last thing that needs must be attended, before we could proceed so much as a step further.
"What do we do now?" I swung my head to face the once again seated gyre, saw something flicker across his sharp features that he swiftly and carefully tucked away, favoring instead the solemn expression he had prepared in face of our dilemma. He leaned forward again, away from me, lacing his fingers together between his knees and training his dark eyes upon the armory door.
"Our options are rather limited, aren't they?" he noted in an ironic voice, tilting his head somewhat to the side, as if he had glimpsed something a long distance off, but had yet to decide if he liked it or not. "There is the Abyss, of course - not a place I would want to risk even with the entire Furiae and a score of allied legions at our backs. There is addressing the Dragon directly - either as defectors in our own right, or as prisoners of war." He grimaced, the motion making his black eyes narrow to slits. "But then, there's your damned geas."
"If the Dragon catches us," I noted softly, watching his face as I spoke the words, "we will wish that we had risked the Abyss."
His eyes fell briefly shut, white lashes stark against his pale cheeks, and he could not, or would not, muster an argument to that.
"Nico suggested we ride the rifts," I suggested next, uncomfortable with the notion, and even before I had finished the sentence he had begun to shake his head and straighten, to then glance back over his shoulder at me and lay a hand upon the Last Word, as to underscore his point. When he touched it, black and red aether began to swirl along the runes carved into the Balaur blade's surface; in the back of my mind, I felt something in the sword shift and clarify, and if it was not quite an awakening of whatever fell thing haunted the sword, I was that much more grateful for it. But Oros's gaze was steady, the slant of his white-lipped mouth grim.
"If our straits are so dire that it's come to that, I would rather we made a stand here. We'll be safe enough here for the night - if I were hunting two Daevas, I'd expect them to be in the air, not gone to ground." He lifted his long fingers from the blade, and the sense I had had of a thing rising and unfolding receded, coiling back into its corporeal fetters. "But come morning, we'll have hours, at best, before they find us." He did not need to elaborate for my mind to spiral out the natural conclusion of such an action; we would hold the armory for hours, perhaps a day at best, assuming the Dragon's troops did not merely collapse the decaying castle down around our ears. Perhaps we would even take many of his warriors with us, but unlike the stand at the Gate, there was nothing here to protect, nothing to remain and fight for. It was suicidal in the worst kind of way.
But then, Oros seemed to regard the rifts as little better than throwing ourselves upon our own blades, and neither of us were willing to cross the Abyss, or treat with the Dragon.
Oh, Jareth, how I wish you were here. You always had a better head for strategy than I did -
Jareth.
Jareth, my brother, the other half of my soul, the last man in Asmodae who was willing to do anything to help me, because we were a part of each other - Jareth Azhdeen, a mage in full command of his considerable faculties, at the Academe at Synedell, surrounded by casters of all stripes and the library-collections of generations of Sorcerers and Summoners, some few of them Gate-casters in their own right. My own words echoed in my ears: It is several weeks by foot from Carcarron, up in the mountains, but only four days from the keep as the crow flies -
"Oros," I said, a fox-crazy, insane idea crawling like spiders up from the base of my spine, "how much do you trust me, exactly?"