"Avad?" For a moment, he contemplates how much trouble he'll be in if father finds out he was up here. Looking around below, though, he sees nobody but his cousin.
"Up here." He answers from the edge of the rooftop he's taken refuge on. Fashav looks up, and the look that crosses his face says that yes, Avad is in trouble. But not with father, Fashav was no snitch.
"Avad, why do you insist on trying to get your neck broken?" The teenager asks with a sigh.
"Kade taught me how to climb." The eight-year-old defends himself. "He says it's smart thinking to hide up, nobody ever looks there."
"And what are you hiding from this time?" Fashav asks, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Helis says I need to learn the sword." Avad bites his lip; a bad habit his governess has as of yet been unable to break him of. Fashav glances upwards with an expression that Avad is too young to identify.
"I will be teaching you the sword, or Kadaman, not Helis." He declares, gaze sharp.
"Helis won't like that, he says anyone else is unsuitable. It would be too bold to make him angry." He worries the edge of the scroll in his hands. He didn't see why he had to learn to fight, he wasn't very athletic, like his brother, or big and strong, like his cousin. He was skinny and he liked books more than toy swords.
"Sometimes we must be bold to seize the worthwhile things in life." His cousin shrugs. "Now would you boldly get down from there and give me my scroll back before someone sees us? Sun knows they've already heard us."
Reluctantly, the young boy scampered back down the same way he'd gotten up, his older cousin watching in trepidation as he did so, ready to lunge forward and catch him if need be. Once he was safely on the ground, he sulkily relinquished the scroll to his kin. "Why are you reading about Iriv's campaign, anyway? Father says that the tactics of the past are irrelivi-irilli-"
"Irrelevant?" Fashav rolls his eyes. "Well, that's not necessarily true. We can learn from the past to make ourselves better. That's why we spend an unholy amount of time listening to our tutors drone on about it all."
"Kade says you don't listen to the tutors." Avad pointed out, face scrunching up, and the older boy shuffled his feet.
"Kadaman has bees for brains, you shouldn't believe everything he tells you." he said nervously, before looking at his cousin slyly. "Besides, nothing the tutors teach us has to do with the treasure."
"Treasure?" the young prince queried. He was learning about past Sun Kings at the moment, it was why he'd taken Fashav's scroll. His cousin, being older, had access to texts meant for more advanced readers, and Avad preferred such scrolls to the 'age-appropriate' ones his tutors tried to make him study sometimes. His aunt said he was gifted, back when she was alive. Father said that was just another word for unusual.
But no tutor had ever said anything about treasure.
Fashav put a hand on his shoulder and started guiding him back to the palace, keeping slow pace as he grinned and spun his tale. "You see, when Iriv went west, he didn't just take his Champion or his sister; he took riches and heirlooms that should have stayed in Meridian. His sister, the great healer, went west wearing the Moon Diadem, which was only to be worn by the eldest princess; the Night Falling to the Dawn's Rising, and no princess has possessed that title since because of her selfishness."
"Iriv himself wore Araman's original crown, and wielded his sword, which was said to play a haunting melody whenever it was drawn. Fellsong, Araman named her, the fairest blade ever to smite a foe, pulled from ruins back east and said never to grow dull. Her steel was black as night, and no machine or shield could break her; she could cut metal like it was unarmored flesh, and her song struck fear into those who opposed her wielder. All Carja blades are designed to emulate her, though none yet have come even close to being her equal."
"If the sword was so good, how come Iriv was lost?" Avad interrupted.
"Well, Avad, a blade is only as good as her wielder." his cousin shrugged. "Strength is nothing without a keen mind to back it up, and Iriv's folly is what led to his disappearance. Even with Fellsong, even with the great bow he crafted with his own hands, he fell, and our most precious heirlooms remain lost... for now."
"You think somebody will find them?" he asked eagerly, tugging his cousin's sleeve. "Is that why you're researching him, you're looking for the treasure?"
"Maaaybe." the teen said coyly.
"Can I help?" Avad begged. "Please, please, pleeeease! I wanna go on an adventure like in one of those scrolls, with witches and evil kings and fire-breathing machines and machine spirits and-"
"Yes, by the sun, you can help!" Fashav asked, giving up under the bombardment. Avad's eyes shone, and he pumped a fist in the air before charging off along the bridge to the palace, startling several nobles and shouting as he went.
"Kade! Kade, where are you? We're gonna help Fashav find treasure!"
Adventures weren't what the scrolls of his childhood had made them out to be. In those scrolls, the hero went through all his pain on the journey, but always triumphed, and in the end lived happily ever after. Avad's adventure started with pain, while the journey had been the best part, and he could honestly say neither he nor Ersa got any sort of happily ever after.
Happily ever after would have meant they could be together, after everything they had gone through. From being lights in the dark for each other in a palace of gilded knives, to roughing it in the wilds as they gathered an army and risked their lives in the name of peace. And it was in the name of peace that they were forced to stay apart; the Carja would have rioted if he wed her, and the Ealdormen would have had strokes if she wed him(which was not as big a problem, but still a problem). And sun forbid their child ever sat on the throne; a half-Osaram Sun King.
Happily ever after would have been Fashav returning home in one piece. Spend a few days just getting used to his cousin being alive, show him around the new Meridian, because some things had changed after the attack last year. Let him rest and reacclimatize. Rejoice in having at least one of the people he'd looked up to as a child back, someone he could ask for advice without feeling the judgement of 'does our king know what he's doing'?
Happily ever after would have been Aloy finally resting and enjoying a few moments peace after getting thrown around in that battle, letting those who'd come to care for her look after her. Revel in what little spoils a pyrrhic victory offered. Process fully that Helis, and Hades, were gone. Breath in a few moments of peace after a long storm.
Nobody ever got the happily ever after they deserved.
It had been two weeks since Fashav was brought home, and it feels like he wasn't left his cousin's tomb since the ceremony. What use were empty platitudes about his honor and courage? What use was there in putting him in this burial place of high esteem? Like any of it could bring comfort? Like any of it was supposed to bring closure?
He felt no closure. Up until yesterday, he thinks he hadn't been feeling anything except numb. Fashav had been murdered, mere feet from Barren Light's gates.
Yesterday the runner he'd half-mindedly had sent to the Grove had returned.
"Unless he is willing to stride into the Grove himself, through the dangers I dare not send an easily-spotted party through and back again with objects of value on their sleds, I cannot continue our exchanges."
Off all Chief Hekarro's words, those ones had chosen to stick with him. Not the condolences, more of those platitudes he'd been getting so tired of, but that little jest, that little challenge. An exchange of knowledge. He could do that. Chief Hekarro was fighting a machine army; Carja had more knowledge an experience in that regard than any tribe had any right to have.
"When you left, you told me not to do anything stupid." he found himself saying out loud. "I think my response was something along the lines of 'you're taking all the stupid with you', and given that you defected and literally became half Tenakth, I guess that statement was more accurate than I thought it was. Thing is, you must have brought all the stupid back with you."
He placed one hand on the pedestal that lay before the tomb, where a statue of his cousin was planned to be carved. There is already an engraving, of Fashav's name, titles, and deeds.
"Fashav, I'm about to do something that you might consider monumentally stupid. It will either progress peace with those you've lived with for the past few years, or blow up in my face and get me killed." he took a breath. "But you used to say we must sometimes be bold for the worthwhile things in life. This peace... it's worth it. It has to be."
He stood up, and brushed the dirt off the Vanguard steel he'd taken as his disguise. Shouldering the heavy burden he'd chosen to present to the Tenakth Chieftain, he cast one last glance into the reflective surface of the obsidian plaque next to the pedestal. "I'm not sure what I'll do if it isn't."
Confident that he looked nothing like a Carja Sun king, and every bit the part of a wandering Freebooter, Avad left the tomb- and for now, his real name- behind, and set off west.
I posted this chapter on A03, but somehow posting it on here slipped my mind. Ah, well.
Fare Thee Well!
