[A/N]: the chapter title belongs to Ashe O'Hara, a man whose voice I have been in love with for so long.
Fire raged all about her. The wooden beams of the building creaked above her, threatening to come falling down. The stinging smell of something burning pricked at her nose, and off in the distance she could hear people screaming, swords clashing and bows thwanging. Humans and elves dying.
For half a moment Gwen thought she was asleep, and that this was a new variant of her nightmare. Now not her mother but she herself had gotten stuck inside a house that stood alight.
Only when a loud crack filled the air, followed by a piece of burning wood that collapsed to the ground next to her, its hotness burning her feet even though it did not touch her, did she realise this was reality. Suddenly she remembered where she was. That's right. Flotsam.
The half-elf had tripped and had somehow managed to knock a torch from its sconce and into this building. She had gone after it, half in a daze, half numbed in fear that she had managed to fuck up majorly and wanted to rectify the situation, but the fire had been too fast. It had started small, but even that had been enough to petrify her. Now there was nothing she could do but take in a shallow breath and search for an exit, her arms shaking visibly as she held them up in front of her. As if they would stop the rubble from burying her.
Fortunately, her feet had remembered the path she had taken and they led her towards the light even as the flames consumed everything around her. Squeezing her eyes shut while making her way to the barn door, she could not even find the energy to feel guilty. They deserved it.
And then, a small voice at the back of her head, There was nobody in there.
The fresh air outside hit her like wattle and daub, and Gwen gasped before sinking to the ground, crawling away from the fire behind her, her entire body trembling as she did so. People had gathered around to investigate the fire, gawking at the building. The humans glared at her, men with broad shoulders that approached her, whereas the elves shied away from her, afraid.
At the end of the street she saw two guards appear from around the corner, most likely coming for the fire as well, and so she quickly pushed herself off the ground again. She ignored the townspeople surrounding her and pushed her way out of the gathered crowd. Straightening her back, she dusted her hands off her breeches and feigned confidence, just in case the figures ended up being enemies.
"Oi, who's tha'?" one of the guards asked. He held a crossbow in his hands, ready to shoot if he saw anything that he didn't like. If that happened to be one of his own kind, then so be it.
"Looks like one o' those bloody elves to me," the other muttered, brandishing a sword. "This one's a woman, though. Pretty stupid, if you ask me, letting one o' the fairer sex all on their own."
They spoke as though she could not hear them. Her hand sought the hilt of her sword, fingers tightening around it as she readied herself for battle. The only reason why no other elves accompanied her was because she had attempted to find a boat after all, that nagging voice at the back of her not letting her be. All the boats she had found, however, were far too large for herself to captain, and she did not feel the need to hold an entire crew hostage in order to sail it.
Before either of the men could come any closer, Gwen let go of her sword and instead released her bow. At the same time, she took an arrow out of her quiver. The few people surrounding her and paying attention to the situation gasped and moved back, some of them screaming as they fled.
The guards, on the other hand, froze. The one with the crossbow raised it in defence, but by then she had already nocked and released. The half-elf watched the arrow pierce his forehead, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he sunk to his knees.
The dead man's comrade let out a yell of rage before charging, but before he could reach her, Gwen had loosed another arrow. Because of his movements she missed her mark, grazing his ear instead. The guard stumbled and cried out in pain as blood ran down his neck. The half-elf did not allow him to regain his balance, for by then she had pierced his chest with an arrow as well. He fell to the ground, writhing about in the mud, still alive. His anger was evident in his dark eyes as he watched her kneel by his side, but she put an end to that by running a knife along his throat. By then, the crowd by the fire had dispersed.
In the silence that followed, Gwen took a moment to look at the two men she had just killed. Though she had murdered many people in her life, both elves and humans, the last time someone had died by her hand had been quite a while ago now. She had wondered whether, after so long, the feelings of guilt and remorse might return.
Surprisingly, she felt nothing at all. After all the hatred and despair from before, the respite that the Scoia'tael had offered her had made her so very tired of it all. She had feared that returning to Flotsam after what had happened would prove too much for her, but it seemed that she felt strangely exhausted. As though she had realised how destructive her feelings had been. And after all, she had the self-inflicted scars to prove it.
She wiped her blade clean on a patch of grass before sheathing it again and checked whether she could take her arrows back, but she could only retrieve one of them. Without looking back, she left the burning barn and the bodies like that, and ventured deeper into town despite the fact that she just wanted to go home.
Spread about the slums, elves and humans fought. So engaged were they with one another that Gwen could sneak by without anybody noticing her. The guards were no match for the elves, however. For one, the Scoia'tael trained far more, and the emotions that drove them into the woods in the first place strengthened their blades and their bows, or so it seemed. Furthermore, the flurry of swords of a single elf wielding two blades was too much for a lone guard to keep up with. Watching them as she went by, Gwen realised that it almost looked as though the elves were dancing, waving their arms around in circles as they spun around their targets. And then it became obvious which humans had encountered Squirrels before and which hadn't, though most of the time it ended much the same way: with yet another dead dh'oine.
Even while she avoided the elves and humans battling, Gwen came across a large amount of corpses that littered the streets. Though many of them were elves, it took her but a few moments to realise that these did not belong to the Scoia'tael. The rags they wore indicated that they had lived in the very slums where they had died. Gwen knew that the guards of Flotsam had done this themselves; the elves would not murder their own kind, even if they had decided to live alongside the humans instead of joining the Squirrels. Even so, the villagers lay about, filling the air with the putrid smell of death. Rats had already begun to feast upon the bodies. The sight of it all almost made Gwen sick, and she used that feeling to awaken her desire to draw blood.
Gwen nocked an arrow as she crept towards the centre of Flotsam, where the noise of the tumult was loudest, taking down the first lone guardsman marching through the streets she laid eyes upon before he could blink. A far less painful death than he deserved, though Gwen did not have the time nor the energy to fulfil that wish. She had done so enough times in the past to know that it did not satisfy her enough to be worth all the trouble.
As she came closer towards the gate separating the slums from the town centre, the amount of elves clashing with guards grew, until she could no longer pass without attracting any attention. The first human that raised his sword, however, fell before her without the half-elf having to raise a finger. When she looked up, her saviour had already moved on.
All the while the noise of the fighting grew louder, coming mostly from behind the heavy doors that held her back from the town's centre. She tried to open them, but they wouldn't budge. The smell of blood hung in the air, almost suffocating Gwen. Her lungs, still squeezing from the fire, did not appreciate it.
A drop of liquid fell on top of her head, and Gwen froze with her back pressed against the wood of the gate, startled. Even when she noted it was but water, her heart wouldn't stop racing in her chest. It took her a few moments before she realised it had started to rain all of a sudden.
She frowned up at the sky, squinting as raindrops assaulted her eyes before she quickly looked down again and wiped a hand across her face. Soon, the smell of blood mingled with that of wet earth and grass, making for a strangely nostalgic sensation. Before she could contemplate that thought any further, she saw another door leading through the wall a few paces farther down the path, towards the edge of the town. Having no idea where else to go, she unsheathed one of her borrowed swords after putting her bow back and walked over to it, finding that this one had been kicked down.
It was almost as if she had stepped into a completely different world. More fires raged here, albeit smaller ones that dwindled when the rain began to pour down on them, and everywhere people were fighting. Elves clashed their swords with those of guards while others stood from a distance, aiming a bow or a crossbow at the crowd. Bodies littered the place, and civilians cowered in all possible corners.
Gwen had no more time to take in the scenery, for somebody to her side yelled, and before she could comprehend the situation a human soldier was upon her, slashing at her with his blade. From the manner in which he swayed to and fro, the half-elf realised that this man was drunk. At least they had managed to take the town by surprise.
Raising the sword in her hand, Gwen easily parried the blow and pushed the guard away from her before stepping after him. Whereas the other elves used a style more akin to a dance, Gwen had received minimal training from the royal guard in Vengerberg before continuing on her own. Thus she preferred a more practical approach, one that favoured speed and strength over elaborate strategies to get closer to the enemy.
The guard tried to hit her again, but she sidestepped it before lunging at him. The man's hand flew through the air, and he fell to his knees, screaming and cradling his arm to his chest. She left him like that and moved on to the next target, which happened to be a guard with a crossbow, just about to take down one of the elves who was too busy with her own target to notice him.
In one swift movement, Gwen had grabbed his head, the smell of his sweat penetrating her nose as she slid her sword across his throat. A strange gurgling left his body before it sank to the ground, lifeless. The crossbow Gwen made unusable by cutting its bridle before she left it on the ground next to the dead soldier.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Ciaran standing on the platform of the gallows, fighting off three humans by himself. Those gallows were where that young blonde elf would have lost her life. She did not recognise any other elves surrounding her, yet still she shared a strange sense of comradery with them, something she had not had in a long time, if ever. Every now and then their gazes would meet, not with hostility but simply acknowledging each other's presence. Occasionally they would help each other. For a heartbeat, Gwen found herself enjoying the moment, but all too soon it came to an end.
Pain burst in her shoulder, and she realised that, while she had been concentrating on the others, she had left herself wide open. An axe now bit into her arm, cleaving through the leather that covered her torso and arms, without which she might have lost the limb.
Gwen cried out and turned to face her attacker, gritting her teeth together. Yet another gruff man with a beard covering the lower half of his face stood beside her and glared at her. He pulled his axe back, jostling the half-elf once more, but she used the moment of reprise to swing her sword at him. Though he saw it coming and even tried to dodge it, the edge of her blade was faster and it grazed his face, slashing a diagonal cut into the flesh. The man yelled as blood covered his face, but still he refused to drop his weapon, and so Gwen swung the butt of hers into his stomach. He sputtered as he doubled over, his blood splashing onto the ground beneath him, mingling with her own that slid down her arm.
Pressing her hand against her wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding and biting back a wince, Gwen fled. Suddenly she noticed that more elves had started retreating, and with her arm throbbing like this, she followed them back the way she had come from, through the smashed door that led them to the slums again. There, the smell of the fire she had started hung heavy in the air, and for a moment Gwen contemplated whether she preferred this to the smell of sweat and blood from before or not.
Fortunately, she was not left with enough time to ponder this, for she realised that more elves had started fleeing. They streamed through the streets, the guards following as best as they could, attacking the elves closest to them without second thought. Apparently a few more elves had gotten wounded, and those mostly unscathed took it upon themselves to protect those unable to do so themselves.
The half-elf managed to take out a few more guardsmen, even with her arm hanging uselessly by her side. Just like that, she had saved the life of yet another elf who thanked her before running off.
It seemed that the fire still wasn't done raging on, though at least no other buildings had started burning as well, since the barn stood on its own. Villagers had lined up, passing buckets of water between the person who dumped the water onto the flames and the person refilling the buckets with water. The guards, who were supposed to protect these people, only got in their way by trying to rush after the elves, bumping them to the side. Gwen could only watch them fall as she rushed by.
Suddenly, a new sound filled the air, one that differed from the screaming and the fighting that could already be heard. She recognised the shrill crying of a baby, and she came to an abrupt halt, the blood in her veins freezing. In the blink of an eye she was back in Vengerberg, almost a hundred years ago. Her legs shook beneath her, threatening to give out any moment now, whether due to the strain of childbirth or due to her shock. A new-born child – her new-born child – was crying, screaming even.
Pain all but exploded in her back and abdomen. When Gwen lifted a hand to hold it against the hurting spot, she felt liquid seep through her fingers, and the reality of her childlessness washed over her.
"No, no, no, no…" She whimpered as she sank to her knees. She fell forward, nails digging into the mud. Tears welled up in her eyes and she willed her body to get up, to run after her child, to save him, but she felt weak and drained and she ached from… from what, exactly?
Instead, it took her all her might just to stay awake. A sob tore itself from her throat and she cursed herself for already having failed as a mother. Her crying only worsened the aching of her body, but in that moment she believed she had deserved it.
"What are you doing?!" a voice hissed in her ear, and suddenly she was in Flotsam again, in the midst of the skirmishes, the running people, the crying townsfolk. The head of an arrow stuck out of her stomach, and Gwen could only stare at it for a few moments before realisation dawned on her.
Blinking the tears away, Gwen looked up only to be greeted with Ciaran's scowl. His eyebrows rose at the sight of her face, though he hid his emotions well as he helped her off the ground, almost dragging her up by her torn sleeve. Too late did he notice the wound there, but then again, she had not made a noise as he hauled her up, too dazed and detached from her body to feel anything in that moment.
For whatever reason, Ciaran didn't release his hold on her arm as they followed the stream of Scoia'tael out of Flotsam. With his other hand he held his sword, slashing here and there to fell a guard still chasing them. Somewhere at the back of her mind, Gwen asked herself why he didn't just let her go. The two of them held no love for each other, and her body, sluggish and refusing to cooperate, only slowed them down, the gap between them and the others growing with every passing moment. If he had left her back there, he would have already been outside, safe and sound.
A few times she dug the heels of her feet into the sand and tried to pull herself free, but he would only grunt and tighten his grip. The sound of the fire raging, of the guards yelling, of the town screaming faded behind her, yet that of the baby crying echoed in her mind. She felt her heart beating in her throat as it tightened, though the sadness she had expected did not come. It never came.
Not when Ciaran dumped her amidst the regrouped elves, some wounded and others simply ragged, but all of them tired. Not when Iorveth dropped himself to the ground, her blunder from before all but forgotten. Not even when she remembered how he had spat out her full name only hours ago, or when, after closing her eyes, she once more thought back to the day that had changed her forever.
"Give him to me."
"N-no! What are you going to do?!"
"Gwenfrewi, my dear, while your naivety was rather adorable in the beginning, it has become quite a nuisance. Now give him to me."
"He's my son!"
"As he is mine. And I believe that, at this moment, you are unfit to fulfil your duties as a mother. Therefore, I will take care of him."
"How… how can you do this to me?"
"Did you truly believe, for even a single moment, that I reciprocated these feelings you have for me? You have seen the worst that humanity has to offer your kind, yet still you trust me. That, my dear Gwenfrewi, is being gullible."
Instead of the anger and despair that usually accompanied all of her memories, Gwen felt nothing. Empty and tired, she let herself go, and all went black.