So, been a while. Had trouble figuring out an approach to this introspective transition chapter, and I'm afraid it shows, in the awkward writing and somewhat extraneous digressions into pseudo-worldbuilding. After agonizing over the structure for months, though, I finally decided it was better to post what I had than to scrap it all and start again from scratch. Constructive criticism still welcome! ‹nervous smile›
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Allora, Magari
Rainsong
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A month and a half after Baction, Raven let the hot sands of Mantaic's oasis sift through his fingers and wondered what he was doing with himself. He'd bought passage on the first ship departing from Aurnion and ended up in Nordopolica. Which, while far preferable to Zaphias or Dahngrest, was still not a place he could stay indefinitely without attracting notice from Palestralle and, in a turn he might've otherwise appreciated, fans of Estelle's book or his Coliseum victories. A couple nights of troubled sleep at the Fomalhaut, a courtesy message to Natz that he was on personal business, and he moved on.
Traveling down the peninsula and through the Weasand of Cados, his pace progressively slowed until he had to remind himself he wasn't monster bait. (What monster could kill him?) Between Palestralle and the Hunting Blades based in Mantaic, there weren't many monsters to brave, at any rate.
So, here he was. Dribbling away his gald day after day, to the delight of the Antares's manager. Though he spent a good part of his nights with his back propped against a palm tree at the oasis, staring unseeing at the glass-smooth water that was too shallow to really swim (drown) in, instead of enjoying the comforts of the bed he paid for.
Raven would sit on the bank as the sun rose, sometimes, the predawn chill yielding to a dry, scorching heat that the residents of Mantaic ducked indoors to weather. He found the afternoons pleasantly warm and quiet. It was the nature of his blastia to run cool when he wasn't forcing it into overload. Alexei had explained it (hands on his skin, voice in his ear) as a side effect of the energy conversion; the power requirements to sustain the life of a single person were well below the normal operating range of this Hermes model, the inscribed formulas more closely associated with wind and water than fire or earth.
Breath and blood, he thought. Easier to focus on the continued whoosh of air in and out of his lungs, expanding and contracting, and to trace with the tip of his knife, steel flashing, the blue-green forking of veins along his arm than to remember the dead crystal in his chest or the man who put it there.
He could journey on to Temza, the path not unfamiliar to him. Since he brought a fire lily for Casey and received by divine accident or judgment her compact, Raven had made a solitary pilgrimage on every anniversary of the Great War to throw another bloom from the cliff overlooking the old battlefield and pour out a small flask of the finest rice wine he could afford for his comrades. The second bottle of lesser quality he saved for himself, as he watched the sunset paint the cratered land red, the moon and stars silvering the eroded ridges into a filigree of light and dark clasped around the mountain's neck.
Becoming a hermit in the wilderness of Temza was always an option. He smiled, and it was not entirely without mirth. There was already a whole community of recluses living in the rebuilt Krityan city, immigrants from Myorzo and Zaude, to hear Judith tell of it whenever she was calmly frustrated by how her and Estelle's attempts to coax their people into taking an interest in the outside world were met with gentle bewilderment and, from the Elder, stories about magical vegetables. Would he be able to avoid Estelle and Judith? Neither the Krityans nor the Children of the Full Moon could keep a secret from those two. And there were also surveyors and miners from the Soul Smiths working Temza's everlight deposits, Yormgen transformed by its revival as a port and tourist destination.
It was too crowded. Raven grimaced. He could barely tolerate Mantaic as it was, and its population was less than the Sagittarius's patrons on a busy night. The disappointed pouts of the children who expected him to play with them come evening were equally amusing and painful to bear. Before Belius's death and the Don's, Alexei pulling on his leash (fingers circling his false heart), he could pretend at the sort of merry kindness that'd exhaust itself chasing a bunch of giggling kids around in a game of tag or giving them piggyback rides all across the village, their indulgent parents chatting and watching under the bursting color of fireworks.
Now, well, it felt like the slightest touch would shatter him into jagged pieces that'd only prove a danger to others as well as himself. He'd long known he was a bloody mess, his life a patchwork of lies stitched together with the unraveled guts of a dead man, but this was definitely a new low. One even he (traitor, murderer, whore) couldn't conceive of or, rather, hadn't wanted to believe.
Maybe the best thing to do was to walk into the Kogorh and not return. Raven imagined his bones picked clean by scavengers and bleached by the sun in the shifting dunes, wind sweeping the sand over his scattered remains until he was buried in a grave time itself would forget. At least he wouldn't be cold during the day. That some intrepid desert treasure hunter might stumble upon his blastia centuries later, deem it a priceless relic of a bygone era, and send it to some eager, brilliant researcher for study was a surprisingly cheerful prospect.
A place time's forgotten, he pondered idly. Suddenly, he straightened and jumped to his feet, dashing back to the inn. There was somewhere he could go, if it existed still. He set out immediately, after purchasing supplies and settling his bills. Both the Antares's manager and the sprightly grandmother who owned the corner kebab stand were sorry to see him leave.
By sunset, he'd reached the rock spires that used to be Phaeroh's craggy perch. What he wouldn't trade for Judith's ability to call Ba'ul in that moment, looking up the sheer cliff face! With a sigh, he made camp. He had a hard climb ahead of him tomorrow. If he dreamt (a mouth pressed to his naked shoulder, hot breath panting), he forgot.
Dawn was just pinking the eastern sky when Raven woke. He breakfasted on dried strips of meat and fruit, then repacked everything save his bow and quiver, his drinking gourd looped to his belt, into a bundle he tied to one end of the large coil of rope he'd bought the day before. The rope's other end he secured to one of his arrows. Its head was engraved with a modified version of his mine arte that would drill into the ground but not explode unless he fed it more mana.
Raven was glad he'd hung Casey's bow on its wall rack in his Dahngrest apartment, for fear of tainting it with his memories of Baction, and opted instead for the strange metallic blue bow from the Garden of the Waning Moon. The sheen of its spiked edges was bright as a burning gas flame. Its magical boost would be helpful. He paced a distance away from Phaeroh's crag and eyed the angles, testing the wind speed and direction. No more than a light stirring in the air, thankfully.
When he was satisfied with his position, he shut his eyes, slowed his breathing, and concentrated on the perception of firm earth beneath his feet, its powerful solidity pressing up through his soles to collect in his bones like glittering flecks of mineral in rock. Raven had never asked Rita, Estelle, Flynn, or Patty how their magic felt to them, without blastia.
Of the four, Patty's casting style was most similar to his, incantations rough and improvised, but her spells were so varied in effect, he wondered whether the Amrita had mutated her body in ways beyond the obvious. Estelle's connection to the spirits was the deepest, and Rita and Flynn were among the first to master the conversion of mana to elemental magic, the formulas held in the mind and body of the mage. Uncomfortably aware his magical education was lacking compared to theirs—if a few nights' conversation with a lady friend over drinks and dinner could even be counted as an introduction to the principles of magic—and of the complication lodged in his chest, Raven kept his silence about his own experiences. He had no desire to learn there was another thing wrong with him. Good enough that his spells did as he intended.
Part of him wished to ask, however, and be reassured. He pictured the formula for his arte in his mind's eye and was answered by a tug towards the arrow nocked to his bow. Around him there was the prickling consciousness of what he could only assume were spirit observers, their gazes like a soft rain of dust upon his skin. Would it be like a scouring avalanche of sand and stone rushing past him should he cast a more potent spell? How did Rita bear the inferno of her favored fireballs? In the cage of his ribs, a massive presence loomed, heavy and patient as the mountains. Hey there, Gnome.
Was he oversensitive to the spirits, the four great ones especially? Raven didn't know. Though, in hindsight, perhaps it'd been very foolish of him to offer his unnatural life in their resurrections. He activated the spell and bound it to the glyphs on his arrow in a crack of mana and energy, like splitting a boulder, that echoed in his bones. Gradually, the spirit presences faded. Next, he thought.
Centering, focus on his breathing, the brush of air over the fine hairs on his arms and the nape of his neck, a fleeting breeze riffling through the folds of his clothes. Again, the impression of curious watchers—stronger this time, wind his element. Each spirit was a dizzying, teasing spin of sensation, until he felt certain his feet would float right off the ground and his head into the clouds. Swooping weightlessness, like a bird in flight. At the heart of the storm, Sylph, twisting and turning in a dance with the force of a tornado in a bottle. Magic rose to a gale howl. The bow thrummed in his hands, amplifying. He opened his eyes, aimed, and shot.
His arrow flew true in an impossibly high and tight arc, rope trailing and wreathed in ribbons of glowing green magic. Up and up and up it went, cresting the flattened top of Phaeroh's crag, before falling point down on the plateau's edge. Thanks, Sylph. With another surge of magic, his delayed spell took effect. Hopefully burrowing the arrow, shaft and all, into the rock securely enough to support his weight. Raven slung his bow over one shoulder, tied his quiver to the bundle of the rest of his supplies, and gave the rope a couple determined tugs, chuckling nervously. It held.
Gingerly, he gripped it with hands, knees, and feet and let himself dangle for a while a short jump from the ground. It still held. "Nothin' ventured, old man..." Yuri's wide smirk, challenge glinting in his eyes, was so familiar Raven could almost see it. He stretched thoroughly, shook his whole body loose and, with a deep breath, started to climb.
The sun crossed the blue dome of the sky, beating the air above the expanse of sand spread to the horizon into ripples of heat, like waves on an invisible ocean. His pace was steady, and he stopped often to sip at his water. The rope he knotted into a crude harness so he could more or less sit and ease the strain on his arms and legs. It was quite the view, though he carefully didn't think about how high up he was. (Not a bad way to die, quick and cool streams of wind the last to touch him.)
It was sometime past noon when he finally dragged himself over the plateau's edge, sprawling onto his back and gasping in exertion. He wiped at the sweat on his brow with a sleeve, then shaded his eyes with his arm, deciding he'd earned a little nap. The rock was worn smooth and pleasantly warm under him. No people, no animals, not even a scraggly weed rooted in a crevice—all was hushed, yet clean and crisp as the sounding of a tiny silver bell. Raven felt... good (safe), as he hadn't for months.
Much as he wanted to, he couldn't doze the afternoon away. Not if he planned to get any use out of his supplies, rather than leaving it all like bait at the end of an unattended fishing line to feed passing critters. With a groan, Raven pushed himself up. His bow and dagger, his empty drinking gourd and, after a moment's consideration, his robe he heaped on the ground. Then he settled in for the long haul, sleeves rolled to bare his forearms and rope looped around the anchor of a convenient jutting rock. Hours later, the sun sank beneath the horizon in a blaze of color. Gold limned the thin wisps of clouds against the sky, lacy gauze embroidered upon a swath of finest red silk.
Night's first scattered stars had winked into existence overhead, though the air was still warmed by echoes of the day's heat clinging to sunbaked stone, when he at last pulled his quiver and supplies atop the plateau with him. He forced his rubbed raw fingers to undo the ties securing the hefty bundle. With aching arms, he wound the rest of the rope in neat coils around its rock anchor before hoisting his belongings onto sore shoulders, dagger belted back in place, bow in hand, and robe knotted by the sleeves at his waist. Raven had come this far already. He refused to sleep another night in the cold.
Of course, he thought, he might not have a choice... But there at the base of the looming spire Phaeroh had once claimed as his perch, ringed by other lesser spires like the points of an eroded crown, was what Raven sought: a distortion in the air, a hanging seam, as if a mirage in the desert seen impossibly up close. His chest tightened—had he a heart capable of such, it might've turned over with a hard thump—and he sucked in a breath, a bit giddy with relief.
He did not know what magics preserved this strange oasis of the distant past, especially now with Phaeroh transformed into Efreet. Brave Vesperia and, he supposed, Duke had visited, slept in Yormgen's beds and eaten Yormgen's food, with no ill effects or everything disappearing soon as their gazes wandered, ghosts banished by morning's light. Well, at least none of the vegetables they bought here wilted into dust at the bottom of their packs.
Would there be an entire town of people going about their daily lives, completely unaware their time was a thousand years gone? He hoped instead for the sole company of the Krityan sage. Bizarre as the sage's tales were, his presence was calming and muted in the detached fashion of so many of his kind. Raven swallowed, hesitating at the rift's edge. Would he be stranded, unable to leave, were he to stay too long? (Would that be so bad?) How long would even count as too long? He couldn't know.
There was only one way to find out. "Nothin' ventured, old man," he muttered. Yuri would either blandly complain that he hadn't been invited on this latest adventure or, Raven reflected ruefully, throttle him for running from his troubles and his friends, too. Always was a coward. That much hasn't changed. He stepped through the rift, a silent apology on his lips.
· · ·
Yormgen was a weird town, at least this illusory version. Not that Raven was positive Yormgen was an illusion, when the very real treasure chest Brave Vesperia retrieved from the Atherum had been successfully delivered to a girl long dead. Yet it was not as if he were truly living in the past either.
For one, every couple of weeks, give or take a few days, in an oddity nobody had noticed during previous shorter stays, time just... rewound. It was a curious thing Raven didn't really have the words to better describe. He might've carried on ignorant even, each day dawning clear and bright in an unbroken spell of perfectly mild weather, were it not for his stomach and his occasional bouts of desperate boredom.
The first task he'd set himself, after waking from his exhausted sleep on a grassy verge at the edge of town, was to look for food. He had several weeks' supply of dried meat and fruit, rice, flour, and oil as well as packets of assorted seeds—herb pancakes and the minnows he was sure he'd seen swimming off the shore would, he figured, tide him over while his crops grew—but he couldn't live indefinitely on his stores and was lazy enough that the prospect of trying his hand at farming wasn't a particularly attractive one. Years of serving in the Knights and boarding at inns, guild coin at his disposal, had spoiled him with easy access to vendors.
Luckily for the hapless plants that otherwise would've had to suffer his attempts at gardening, Raven rummaged around in the shop's stockrooms until he turned up baskets of onions, carrots, and potatoes, heads of cabbage, and a half bag of rice. All of which magically replenished no matter how much he used, fresh as the day the townspeople abandoned Yormgen presumably centuries ago. Stashed away in cabinets were jars of oil and soy sauce, flour, sugar, salt, and pepper. Behind one house, a chicken coop and a fenced pasture. The hens pecked greedily at the feed he spread, flapping about the yard. A search of the docks yielded fishing line and some small traps. The water drawn from the well next to the grove of orange trees was cool and tasted of a spring. His needs met, he couldn't help wondering at the how of it.
Was the food he ate real? Prior experience suggested that it was and, certainly, the omelettes and vegetable stir fries he cooked sated his hunger. It was hard to imagine the wriggling of fish in his nets or a chicken in his hands, the crack of its neck, plucked feathers strewn on the sand, blood and entrails spilling over his knife as he gutted the poor bird (black lined his nails, his skin scrubbed pink)—that everything was in his head. Where then did the replacement chickens come from?
Raven felt simultaneously foolish and unnerved by the question. Try as he did to keep a close count, going so far as to stake out the coop overnight, there seemed to be another hen whenever he blinked, the new arrival sidling through a patch of taller grasses or loitering in a far corner of the yard, innocently clucking, until they returned to their original numbers. And the baskets he moved to a kitchen he'd appropriated? The jars and bag of rice? They disappeared, sometimes emptied and sometimes not. Always to reappear in their original locations, untouched, as regular as deliveries made by a grocer sneakier than him.
Maybe he could've pretended that nothing was amiss—what were a few extra chickens or lost cabbages to a well-fed man?—but manners demanded he announce his presence to the sage and tedium drove him back. While the sage recalled Brave Vesperia, he acted as though the others had just left or were still in town, ready to ask him more questions and hear more of his long-winded tales. Raven didn't have the heart to tell the man, whose name he learned was Sordeth, the world had forgotten him and spun on uncaring.
Doubtful whatever he said to that effect would leave a lasting impression, anyways. "Is there something else you require?" Every time, the same words of greeting and the same polite Krityan smile, expectant yet faintly puzzled. Judith, Raven knew, would've done this on purpose, had she chosen to play such a game. Sordeth, however, was completely unaware of how he repeated himself. That Raven wanted to spend a couple hours or the evening with his stories came as a pleasant surprise to him every damn time despite the fact that they'd rehearsed the conversation or one very like it enough to stage a comedy about it.
Strangely, the sage never told the same tale twice. Raven was in truth grateful for this testament to the man's ability to ramble; it was his one reliable source of entertainment here. Outside of manual labor, that is, wandering, and sunning himself on the beach, stripped to his knee-length underpants. Though all the signs of Yormgen's weirdness did make Raven more curious about the magic responsible for it than was his habit.
He walked deep into the fields surrounding the village, until farmland gave way to forest, then into the woods, until he spotted a trail in the tangled brush which widened and flattened into the road that led into town. Several attempts later with no different result, the trail somehow impossible to avoid from any direction, he concluded warily that he could only leave by the rift. And he found himself thinking of Duke.
You could change Yormgen's past, within hidden limits. If Duke hadn't destroyed the apatheia from the Atherum, would it have been installed as Yormgen's barrier blastia and the town remained inhabited to the present? Or was that not an outcome in the cards regardless of how they were shuffled? No chickens, fruit trees, or vegetables could've survived hundreds of years untended in the desert, so did it truly matter whether Raven ate them, anonymous thieves looted them, or neglect and nature rotted them?
Was it simple coincidence that he was faced with an unpopulated Yormgen, as he'd hoped, or did the illusion take on characteristics based on who entered it? Duke had seemed pretty familiar with the other Yormgen and at ease there. His choice, to revisit a brief window in history free of both blastia and monsters? Raven thought himself to a headache but, in the end, not a single answer.
Finally, he consigned Yormgen as a mystery he needed a brain big as Rita's to solve. Life settled into a routine. One that unfortunately left him time to really start brooding. About Alexei. About himself. Neither Schwann nor Raven was much for self-reflection, except in the contemplation of his death. He couldn't decide whether it was progress to swap that morbid topic for an equally harrowing reassessment of his memories.
Some things were clearer. When he returned to Dahngrest at Alexei's bidding after... after, he'd been tense and unhappy. (A used whore, broken to the bit of Alexei's touch.) Jumpier than a bunwigle, Whitehorse judged, scrutinizing him with canny eyes. "Your Imperial masters mad?" the Don asked, light but probing. He fought not to shudder at the ghost of Alexei's hand on his bared skin.
Raven had let his gaze stray to the ceiling and along the guild emblems on the walls, arms hooked behind his head in a show of casual disinterest, and said, voice low, "You got a job for me, boss, or not?" He carefully didn't dwell on how crowded the halls were, Union members talking in quiet, anxious tones as they awaited the Don's command in knots of three, four, seven, more that he was forced to shoulder through. Their knowing glances pressed at him, stifling. An Altosk guildsman moved to approach him, then veered off sharply; Raven would've slit that man's throat right there in the entryway if he'd laid a finger on him. It was a relief to be sent alone into Ghasfarost, away from the throng gathered to assault its gates.
Infiltrating the tower was easy. Too easy almost. He was no slouch as a spy, yet never had his senses been so keen, honed to a razor's edge he feared he would cut himself on. Barely had the scuff of a guard's boots reached his ears before his body was ducking into the shadows of a large gear with no conscious effort on his part. A then unnameable horror set his blood pounding, a cold sweat prickling the nape of his neck and his hands trembling uncontrollably. This heightened state of alertness, which he couldn't shake even in deserted rooms, the din of battle distant, made his bones ache from his teeth to the tips of his toes as he searched for evidence of Barbos's suspected double dealing.
Worse still, the Don released Raven from his service much sooner than anticipated given the scores of rousted bandits in the cells for interrogation, Barbos already angling for support among the other guilds to base the Blood Alliance in Ghasfarost. "Go report ta that commandant of yours," he suggested with a shrug, "or whoever's business it is ta watchdog me. I can spare you." Raven had felt painfully exposed. He wanted both to run from the Don's concerned stare, shed Raven's robes for Schwann's pristine uniform, and to beg on his knees that he be allowed to stay a few weeks, a few days longer.
He knew, he realized with a sickening jolt. He'd always known it was only by Alexei's will that he could've fallen victim to those drunkards (they raped him) that night. The informant who failed to meet him as arranged, the ill-timed stutter of his false heart—it was too convenient, far too deliberate. But he had to forget. Had to ignore the new looks Alexei pinned him with, eyes dark and hungering. Captain Schwann would not be permitted to tender his resignation. Raven choked on a bark of a laugh.
Alexei probably would've killed Schwann on the spot had he at all hinted he sought to betray him, and there were tools Alexei could use to coerce him: his blastia, his brigade, his connection to the guilds, and his shrinking terror at how Alexei might choose to punish any future transgressions. While his mind was determined to block from view every memory of what had been done to him, his body remembered on some raw animal level. The whole journey back to Zaphias, he was plagued by a mad compulsion to scratch at his arms and neck, a crawling itch like insects burrowing beneath his skin, until he had to wrap himself in bandages to stanch the bleeding, his flesh torn off strip by strip. If he could please Alexei, he thought, would he at last be safe?
Suddenly glad he'd supped early enough that his food wasn't in danger from this evening's insights, Raven threw another of the smooth, flat rocks he'd idly collected during his afternoon stroll on the beach across the water with an expert flick of his wrist. It skipped a gratifying number of four times before it sank with a muted splash. Was he complicit in Alexei's deeds (his own abuse), for being too weak and too scared to escape or resist? His apathy definitely didn't excuse the murders he committed for Alexei, and rarely did he enjoy acting the assassin.
Because Alexei didn't hurt him. Not truly, no. Not in the violently intimate manner Raven had been taught sex could be wielded as a blunt instrument to grind a person down. (Did he enjoy it?) Alexei handled Schwann gently, with a delicacy usually reserved for courting ladies and his experiments. Raven could admit that, to Alexei, Schwann fit the latter category, if not the former. (Acting the whore?) Touch was so precious, a kindly meant one even more so.
That so many of the touches which had marked him the deepest, which weren't intended to maim him, came at Alexei's hand was a wound in and of itself. How readily he was manipulated, by so simple a thing! And he continued to crave scraps of affection, no matter what twisted and grotesque forms it took. Raven would've welcomed a dozen more punches from each member of Brave Vesperia to assuage their deserved anger; their paroxysm of feeling was proof they cared, after all, and that he could earn his place with them again.
Most damning, he missed Alexei. There was no point in lying to himself now. Alexei had pushed his way into Raven's head as steadily and surely as he'd fucked Schwann open, cracked his ribs apart, and grabbed hold of his heart. He would never be free of Alexei. No relationship of his could go unmarred by echoes of Alexei's tender cruelty. (Enough.) It was good as a brand of ownership, seared into the marrow. Fingers twitching, Raven scrambled up from where he sat in the sand and walked to the house he was sleeping in, an awful, nameless tension winding tighter and tighter around his throat. Enough. Curled on his side in the gloom, it was a pathetic comfort to feel in his palm the familiar hilt of his knife and know that its blade was sharp.
· · ·
Raven had two visitors, though neither stayed long. The first he didn't even see, actually. Mere minutes after he entered the rift, a wave of sweltering heat heralded Efreet's arrival and that the spirit was not best pleased at his intrusion.
Sweating at the possibility that he might shortly be reduced to ash in a wrathful burst of flame, Raven hurriedly dropped to his knees, head bowed over his folded hands, and said, "O Efreet, sorry 'bout callin' on your greatness unannounced like this, but I gotta beg you for sanctuary here." He swallowed, mouth dry. "Promise ya I'll be a good guest. Just need a quiet place ta rest for a bit."
The smoldering press of Efreet's still invisible presence drew away a little, as if in consideration. Raven waited with bated breath. Which turned into an undignified yelp at the lash of fire that lightly scored the back of his wrist, a rebuke and warning in one. "Yeah, I hear ya," he answered, rubbing at the singed skin. "I'll behave myself. Swear on my heart." Apparently satisfied with that, Efreet departed, the molten weight on Raven's chest cooling into something less like the maw of an erupting volcano before lifting entirely.
"Nice ta see Phaeroh's his ol' grumpy self," he muttered, when he was certain Efreet wasn't around to hear him. Then again, he supposed he had Efreet to thank for this Yormgen's continued existence. For all his professed hatred of humanity's ignorance and callousness, Phaeroh had spent what must've been a great deal of magic and effort on creating and preserving this illusory window into time. A past where the desert bloomed and no war with the Entelexeia had yet happened. "Guess the big guy has a soft spot." It was oddly reassuring.
His second visitor introduced herself politely. One morning months into his strange new life of leisure, a strong breeze blew in from the direction of the sea that didn't smell of salt or water so much as lightning and storm clouds. The air in Yormgen was always placid as the mirror-bright surface of a high mountain lake.
It was no surprise when the unseasonable wind coalesced next to him in spirit form. Raven didn't bother to sit up or open his eyes, sprawled in the grass under a canopy of rich green trying hard not to think of anything more troubling than what was for lunch. He'd taken to mushroom hunting in the woods and diligently cultivating a planter of herbs for the distraction.
"Sorry, Sylph," he said, "but for once I ain't lookin' for the company of a pretty lady." No reply. Only a sense of contemplation, like watching a distant bird soar. For a fleeting moment, he wanted to listen to another voice aside from the sage's and his own. He reminded himself that no spirit would seek him without a purpose—he wasn't Estelle, friend or student—and this purpose probably wouldn't be to his liking. "So if ya wouldn't mind vanishin' back into the air or whatever it is you spirits do when you're not visitin' with us mortals, I'd be grateful ta ya."
Of course, Sylph wasn't deterred. She intoned gravely, as though he hadn't spoken, "Yuri Lowell searches for you." Raven squinted open one eye, shock that he really shouldn't have felt given Yuri's character thrumming along his nerves, half panic and half a dangerous warm glow he was tempted to wallow in. "Do you wish for him to find you?" Sylph wondered, head cocking curiously.
"No." That was an easy question. Another thought occurred to him, and he warned her, "Don't be gettin' any funny ideas either 'bout tellin' him, Estelle, or the rest where I am. I don't wanna see any of 'em." They would naturally ask why he'd suddenly ditched his responsibilities to the Union, Knights, and them. And Flynn at least was entitled to an explanation that wasn't some terrible joke, a right he might've chosen Yuri to represent him in. Panic won. Raven jerked up into a crosslegged position that almost passed as casual. "Swear it, Sylph," he all but growled, "upon your duty to keep the balance of this world." His hands, propped behind him, fisted in the grass.
Framed by windswept yellow hair, brilliant as a bird's plumage, Sylph's impishly pointed features were serious. Raven let himself relax just a bit. "Very well. I swear." Hoping that meant the end of their conversation, he made a show of stretching his arms and yawning, scooting around so he could sit with his back to Sylph. She didn't take the hint. After a lengthy pause, during which a sinking suspicion about her motives crept up on him, she whispered, "You are not the only one who knew Alexei well," a mournful note in his name.
The blood burned cold in Raven's veins. "Khroma," he hissed. He wasn't prepared for this. Shit. He tensed, shoulders hunching. Was this her idea of revenge for his prying about Duke? Bile rose in his throat. It wasn't the same at all, and if she couldn't understand the difference... He was frightened of what emotions he might see reflected in her inhuman gaze—pity, empathy, jealousy, disinterest—each was as cutting as his wind blades, and he would surely be shredded down to the bone by any one of them.
A gust of wind ruffled his hair. "That is no longer my name," she said airily. Raven snorted, finding that argument about as convincing as his own denials that he wasn't Schwann. "It is true nevertheless that I hold her memories," she admitted. That's exactly what I'm afraid of, darlin'. Maybe if he didn't react to her words, she would eventually tire of pursuing the matter. "I know what you were to Alexei."
Raven's tentative plan died stillborn. Anger welled bitter in him, frothing like a sauce left to simmer too long: thick, indigestible, and charred black on the bottom. "A useful tool?" he spat out. "A dog ta run 'round doin' his bidding?" Gritting his teeth, he finished, "A whore?" and immediately wished he'd bitten his tongue rather than admitted that, the taste of it gagging.
She already knew, he told himself, whether as Khroma or via a magical feat of insight, the world's boundaries permeable to a spirit of her power. No apology for her presumption, not that he expected one, but neither was she offended by his hostile temper. Instead she said, calm as Khroma ever was, "When Khroma first entered into Alexei's service, she considered briefly enticing him as only a beautiful woman could into her bed. A man might lower his guard to entrust a lover with secrets he would keep from even his personal aide."
He did not want to talk about Alexei. Sylph, Khroma, or whoever she called herself wasn't going to leave him a choice, however, and there was nowhere on Terca Lumireis he could run to that she wouldn't be able to follow. "Khroma was quick in the end to dismiss sex as a tool to gain the information she sought," she continued, blithely shrugging off Raven's glare, "for Alexei showed none of the appreciation for her body that she'd grown practiced at seeing in other men."
Khroma was rumored to share Alexei's bed from practically the day she was appointed his adjutant; there were many in the Knights and on the council who couldn't credit Alexei elevating a young Krityan woman of no history within the Empire to such a position elsewise. Schwann had no opinion one way or the other—it was not his place to question Alexei's decisions—and while Raven noticed Khroma's icy beauty and poise, he wasn't so foolish as to imagine she was an object to be pursued. Now she waited with the nigh inexhaustible patience of an immortal for him to respond. Raven grunted, inwardly cursing. "So you're sayin' Alexei was interested in just men?" he said harshly.
"No," she corrected, "he had no interest in taking anybody as his lover." Raven couldn't stop the ugly sneer that twisted his lips, hands clenching the fabric of his robe in spasms. Lover. What an ill-fitting word! That would've required Alexei to treat him as a person, not a possession he owned. A soft breeze stroked his cheeks. He closed his eyes, swallowing. "Schwann was often away from the capital, but Khroma's place was at Alexei's side during council meetings, state receptions, and the Commandant's annual tour of inspection.
"Alexei was a powerful, handsome man whose stellar reputation was famed throughout the Empire." A fact Raven was fully aware of, as anyone could've guessed. In the wake of Alexei's coup and his death at Zaude, releasing the Adephagos from its ancient prison, one of the thorniest issues facing Ioder's fledgling regime was whether to inform a confused populace of the late commandant's crimes in light of his decades of service and the civil reforms for which he'd been broadly admired.
Estelle had insisted that the truth of the Adephagos's origin, the Entelexeia, and nature of blastia be disseminated far and wide to protect against a repeat of the shortsightedness that corrupted the Empire from custodians to exploiters. On the strength of Flynn's testimony and Schwann's about sentiment in the ranks, Ioder's backroom dealings with the council, and the ultimately quite expedient detail that it was Alexei's blastia network which made Rita's worldsaving solution achievable, they cobbled together a semi-fictional official account that painted Alexei as a misguided visionary whose secret investigations of Zaude drove him to desperation, extremism, and madness.
It solidified support from the moderates and, coupled with Estelle's riveting portrayal of her time as Alexei's hostage in her book, ensured he would not be a martyr to those who shared his militarism or distrust of the guilds while justifying His Majesty's and Flynn's refusal to overrule Alexei's better progressive policies. Raven honestly couldn't say how he felt about this politicized version of Alexei's life. Part of him thought, after all Alexei had done, he deserved no less than to be used thus, more monster than man.
Somehow, Raven doubted Khroma's aim was to debate Alexei's public legacy. He didn't like where this was leading. "Do you truly believe he lacked for offers of companionship?" she asked, blunt as Karol's prized golden hammer. Well, he mused sourly, at least he could always depend on his pessimism. Too bad it wasn't much comfort.
"Noblewomen sought his hand in marriage or hoped for an exciting dalliance while their husbands were away. Those noblemen who were so inclined saw the same opportunity for influence Khroma did. Or perhaps they were simply attracted to his commanding presence." (A thumb pressed to the underside of his jaw, firm against his fluttering pulse.) He didn't want to hear this. (Captain, you've done well.) "Commoners of every description fell for his charms as the champion of their cause, and you know well how highly regarded by the Knights he was, even without the prospect of winning his favor and a swift promotion up the ranks."
The one small mercy of having Khroma dissect the rotten corpse of his tortured ties to Alexei was that Sylph's voice wasn't precisely Khroma's, richer in reverberation, her face and form so utterly alien Raven could trick himself into accepting her as an impartial observer. "Alexei had better choices than you," she concluded, relentless, "that would have supported his political ambitions and safer choices, as well, that would not have compromised his military assets, especially one so deeply embedded in the enemy's confidence as you." His stomach turned, a squirming lurch like it was infested with maggots that threatened to crawl up his throat.
Could Alexei have...? No. Raven shook his head hard, trying to knock some sense back into it, then stood abruptly, too restless to stay still any longer. Sylph's brow furrowed in the most obvious display of emotion he'd seen from her, and when she spoke again, it was slowly, every syllable picked with care. "There was an uncharacteristic irrational sentiment in his relationship with you."
"Gee," said Raven flatly, "that makes me feel a whole lot better." He crossed his arms, fighting the impulse to fidget and pace, to curl into a ball over his weak, vulnerable heart, or just to scream himself hoarse. "I hope, darlin', for your sake," he went on, tone light but teeth bared in a rictus grin, "that you ain't about ta claim what Alexei had with me was a romance in any sense of the word."
She graced him with a thin, wry smile, her eyes kind. "I would not insult you so," she said. "He was not capable of that." Suddenly, Raven was back in the stone halls of Baction. The light of a blastia lantern cast in stark shadows the rumpled blanket upon the cot and reflected from Alexei's intent eyes in a flickering glint. He shivered. Alexei's displeasure with Schwann showed clearly in the tight, downturned corners of his mouth. If this death is what you desire, then I shall grant you it.
At the time, Schwann had hardly noticed the way Alexei's voice dropped lower, softened, numb to the core as he was (bled dry, wrung out) and braced against the lash of Alexei's chilling anger. I can do nothing to dissuade you, it seems. Could Raven trust his memories? He tried to follow the elusive thread of feeling that wound through those clipped words, among the last they exchanged that day. It was like wading hip-deep and barefoot into a fetid swamp looking for a shattered vase; he couldn't peer to the bottom with all the muck, and chances were good he'd only find the pieces he sought by stepping on them.
"Khroma could not guess what dwelt in Alexei's heart for certain, but she thought you should hear from another he was close to that you were..." Sylph paused, before finishing quietly, "You were not nothing to him." Raven grimaced. And what would it prove, for there to have been some genuine emotion at the root of Alexei's actions? He shied from putting a name to the possibility. Not yet.
Betrayed, Alexei had sounded. Which Raven could've chalked up to disappointment at Schwann's contrariness but for the... bitterness lying beneath. "Alexei regretted your death at Baction," added Sylph. "Though how he felt at seeing you again, in open consort with his enemies..." No, I was disposable. He must have been.
If Alexei hadn't wanted Schwann dead, why didn't he demand otherwise? Schwann (broken to the bit) would not have had the will to resist him, if he'd pressed hard enough (fingers gripped bruising on his hip). A strange moment for Alexei to decide to respect Schwann's choice, when his habit for ten long years was to use his tool (his dog, his whore) however he wished.
Even you, Alexei had lamented at Zaude. Once, before he was Raven or Schwann, he'd admired the new commandant as an unapologetic self-made radical who was upending the calcified order of things in a way that left the priggish nobles of Zaphias frothing at the mouth. Was an equal really what Alexei needed, to challenge him unhesitatingly? Where did he—they—go astray? A woman's face, scared but determined, swam to the surface from the depths of Raven's mind. He covered his eyes with a shaky hand.
Schwann met her atop a sunny seaside cliff, the breeze bowing the grasses and flowers at their feet. She hadn't been surprised to see him, he remembered, calmly placing aside her basket of herbs and assessing him with a cool professional regard. His secret was safe, she told him. She had written no notes nor discussed her wartime service with anyone, her family included. Desperation tightened her voice for the first and last time as she begged him to spare her husband and children, her expression easing only after he nodded. I hope one day you'll be able to forgive me in that heart of yours, she said, showing him her straight back to gaze across the ocean. We've done you a great wrong. He snapped her neck. It was quick. Painless.
Whatever Alexei was searching for, Raven thought, he could never have found in him. While Schwann understood Alexei's goals, even supported the means when it came to meting out justice to smug snakes who'd conspired to murder their fellow Knights, he was too empty then to truly believe in any cause. Raven gnawed at his lip viciously, drawing blood. He could never have loved Alexei, if that was Alexei's expectation, terrible as the very idea appeared in his head. A slim hand perched lightly as a small bird upon his shoulder. He jerked away and glowered at Sylph until she floated back (safe) past arm's length.
"Yuri Lowell is not one to surrender without a fight anything he deems his," she pointed out. Rather gratuitously, in Raven's opinion. Which of them had traveled for months with Brave Vesperia? "You would do well to consider how best to explain your relationship with Alexei to him." And after those ominous parting words, Sylph rose into the air and vanished in a crisp green whirl of magic that set the wind tugging at Raven's hair and clothes.
A throbbing ache built at his temples, a matching burn in his chest. "Thanks a bunch, Sylph," he muttered. Lunch was out of the question now, his appetite fled along with any energy to cook or move at all. Raven sagged limp as an old rag against the trunk of the nearby tree and, eyes squeezed shut, tilted his head back (bared his throat), swallowing wetly. He stayed like that until his thoughts finally hushed to whispers he could pretend didn't exist. Just a temporary reprieve, he knew. With Yuri coming to drag him out by the ear, he wouldn't get many more openings to escape from the others or himself.
· · ·
TBC