(A/N: Hello again, it's me the author of that fic sitting in your "fav list" or your "to be read list" or your "put on alert just in case it's not as dead a fic as it seems" list. Maybe you don't list out the fics you are reading currently like I do, but the point is, hi. We're back with a new chapter and a bit more narrative setup in this one before we leap on into some movement in chapter 16. I've gotten maybe a fourth of the next chapter written but hope to get the rest knocked out in the next half of this week. I've made some schedule changes in my life that are going to allow me so much more time to write (and not just like a few months to do it this time either!), so I truly want to finish this story before Spring this year. To everyone who has read from the first day or just starting now, what few of you remain with me, thank you tremendously. Rate, review, fav, whatever it is that you can do on this site, Auntie Swift has a chapter to write. :D)
Last time our heroes took shelter in Garth's old mage tower and discovered that the old man really needed to join "Hoarder's Anonymous: The Club You Join When You Just Can't Throw Away This Flyer" club in Bowerstone (absurd name though). They joked and bonded and then shit got real when Reaver admitted that he didn't really think his life was that important (beyond providing sex and art to all of Albion, I mean that chin, right?). Meanwhile Theresa had a temper tantrum in the Spire and a man kicked a chicken.
"All lives matter to me." Sparrow said. She held Reaver's gaze in a show of confidence she could hardly feel. It wasn't a lie, she did believe that all lives mattered their unique ways, but it wasn't entirely true. Reaver was chaos manifested. He did what he wanted on his own terms and he was bad, or had been or would be again she couldn't quiet tell. Reaver was her opposite, the person she used to pride herself on not being, but were they so different? Her desire for revenge had blinded her to Theresa's manipulations and the result was a trail of bodies and unbelievably powerful Old Kingdom artifact falling into untrustworthy hands. If Reaver's life didn't matter, than what did that say about her own?
"That so."
Sparrow tossed her hands up in frustration. It was a good cover for the red tinging her cheeks too. "They do now. You think I wandered for two years and just pretended that everything over the past 20 odd years didn't happen? I couldn't. Theresa is hold up in the Spire with Light knows what kind of power and I can't trust anything anymore. My whole life was a game for her and, and-" Sparrow sucked in quick gasp of air. There it was. The familiar thrum of the Spire hammering into her skull and buzzing down her spine. How could he not feel it too this time? The force of it rattled her teeth. No thought of her adoptive Aunt or the Spire went unpunctuated by the destructive hum of the Spire. It was as if she had never left the prison, that all this was a fever dream and that one day she would wake to a stone sky and a stone floor and stone walls, the cold heartbeat of the Spire possessing her until she could only breathe when she felt its beat pounding in her skull.
Sparrow curled in on herself, her body tensing with each powerful beat. A minute or years passed like this, she couldn't tell but there was no fading of the noise, no release as there had been in the past.
"Open your eyes, Sparrow." Said a voice and it wasn't Reaver. The voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but strong, as if each word were backed with the weight of a thousand years of certainty. "Open your eyes, girl, the illusion cannot last."
Sparrow resisted only until the pounding in her head became too much, each beat reverberating tenfold in her skull, and then she opened her eyes and vomited onto the floor.
"Fool." Cold fingers brushed her forehead and neck, gathered her hair back from her face and held tightly onto her shoulder as she retched again. Was there a hint of fondness in the seer's voice?
"Theresa?" Sparrow panted weakly, the pulse of the Spire had subsided to a dull beat in the background of her mind. She could think again, feel herself again. Garth's dusty old tower had disappeared and in its place was a misty landscape. In the far distance was a tall towering outline of a castle though its form shifted and swirled with the mist. "Where are we?" Sparrow asked as she shook the older woman's hand from her shoulder.
Theresa stepped away, half her face hidden away by the low red hood she had always worn, though there were a few new coins added to its rim. "In-between."
Sparrow bit her lip, stopping herself from asking anything more, she would get no answers from Theresa and really the less said between them the better. She felt the bitter resentment she had been stuffing down inside her rise inside of her. It tasted like the bile on her tongue, rotten and acidic, making her throat and nose burn. Sparrow spat on the ground, though truthfully she wasn't even sure if there was ground beneath her feet. The mist swirled in thick eddies, obscuring the true nature of this place and leaving them both bathed in a soft grey light.
Sparrow stood and held her balance through sheer force of will.
"We must speak. If you had kept the Guild Seal this would have been easier." Theresa chided, her bony hands folded thoughtfully in front of her. She appeared calm, unruffled by her own display of power or the obvious discomfort of her ward. It was like the crone was just a mother, not immortal seer, coolly reprimanding her child for a minor oversight.
"I've had enough of your orders."
Theresa's head twitched to the side, "The time for wallowing is done, Sparrow, I indulged your retreat. While countless suffered in Albion in your absence I said nothing, I accepted your…," She paused, the coins on the edge of her hood tinkling with the slightest movement of her head. "Need for space." It was obvious from the old seer's tone that she did not, in fact, accept or understand Sparrow's need for time away from Albion.
Sparrow rolled her eyes and turned away. "Leave me alone, Theresa." There was so much more that she wanted to say, but couldn't find the words. You used me, you manipulated a child, what did you raise me for? Was there even a point in saying those words to her? Theresa had never been accepting of outside input or perspectives in the years that Sparrow had known her. Sparrow had admired that once.
"A darkness threatens Albion. Come to the Spire, it is time that Albion's Hero returned." Theresa waved her hand and a misty replica of the Spire rose before Sparrow.
As if she had forgotten what her prison looked like. Sparrow had spent 5 brutal, tortuous, slow years in that pit.
"I'm on my own quest." Sparrow turned away from the ghostly rendering of the Spire. "If Albion is truly in need of a hero, I have every faith that you will conjure up just the right individual."
Theresa scoffed, "A quest with Reaver? A doomed undertaking. Return to the Spire there is real work to be done. You have wasted enough time playing to the Pirate's fiddle."
Sparrow clenched her fists, a strange new feeling washing over her. She couldn't quite identify it. Anger and fear and humiliation all wrapped in one dark swirl in her gut. Was Reaver manipulating her? She had accepted that at the outset, it was his nature now. No matter what innocent or quasi-innocent beginnings he boasted. It wasn't so much the possibility, but that Theresa would judge her relationship with Reaver as one in which he held all the power without any hesitancy. A relationship where Sparrow couldn't have possibly anticipated Reaver's duality.
Theresa had continued her tirade while Sparrow stewed, silently sorting her emotions into something she could process.
"Perhaps I underestimated the effects of a pretty face. Few have escaped Reaver's ministrations unscathed, yet I thought more of you. I believed my teachings would insulate you better…."
The mist at Sparrow's feet boiled, but Theresa seemed not to notice. Ministrations? Pretty face? Unscathed? Theresa's insinuations that Sparrow was like all the other simpering associates of Reaver was a thousand times more infuriating. She truly thought so little of Sparrow's abilities? That she would allow a pretty face to influence her? That character and intention and circumstance and having a common goal were all lesser qualifications in Sparrow's mind?
"Return to the Spire at once. There is a quest for you."
"I'm stronger now, Theresa. I don't need saving. I don't need your protection or your guidance. I am no one's puppet. I have played to someone else's tune, true, but it was never Reaver's." Sparrow said, staring straight into the blind women's milky eyes, barely visible beneath her hood. She felt the heat of her will fire at her feet and hands, the flames steady and controlled. Theresa believed her incapable? Let her see the creature she had forged then. Let Theresa see the Hero she had bestowed upon Albion. She felt her skin crack and split open, a thousand wounds opening over her body as the light of her will shined through. It was more power than she had ever called on before, more than she had ever thought she could possibly handle, but still she let more pour into her.
"No! Fool!" Theresa shouted, but her voice was thin, nothing more than a fearful whine. "Stop! Sparrow, you have no idea what you are calling to this place!" her hood fell back revealing stunned blind eyes, the skin around them deeply scarred.
The workings of Theresa's illusion were suddenly so clear. Sparrow could see the spider web of will, thin delicate threads of silver that stretched from Theresa to herself. Another thread of solid black that extended far into the distance and Sparrow knew that this thread lead to the Spire. Theresa's illusion wavered, the world shaking as Sparrow flexed her power in a way she never had thought to before. Why had she never tested her limits like this before? It was exhilarating to feel her will burn through her veins, to see her skin peel back and rise into the air as ash. Sparrow envisioned the ghostly blades that she summoned only rarely in combat. She willed them into existence and then threw them against the thin threads that tied her to Theresa and the Spire. The blades sliced through them easily and the strands drifted up and apart, like broken cobwebs. Sparrow felt the break in her chest like a knife. Strange that she would feel the breaking of these ties when she couldn't remember how it felt to have them forged. In a final act of defiance, Sparrow shredded Theresa's illusion, casting them both back into the real world.
From the corner of her eye, just as the misty world faded, Sparrow saw a flash of crimson. She turned her head towards it but the world was already gone and darkness filled her vision. Somewhere ahead of her Theresa screamed.
Reaver watched, waiting for Sparrow to finish her thought at first. She was staring at him in that defiant way. Her green eyes leveled at him and her brows lowered into a firm line. It struck him then, as she insisted that his life not only mattered but mattered to her that Reaver understood how annoyingly good she was. Pure. How she could believe that after everything, and she did believe it. He could see it in the stubborn set of her jaw and earnest insistence in her voice. It was almost enough to change his mind, almost. He lifted his drink to his mouth and swallowed another bitter mouthful. If his life mattered at all in this world, Reaver had a feeling that it was not in the positive way Sparrow meant.
The change in her demeanor was quiet but quick. The bottle of Hobbe's Water was still raised to his lips when a shiver seemed to go through her, like the temperature around her had dropped suddenly. Her pupils dilated and her head dropped, her arms went boneless. As quickly as she had engaged him in conversation, Sparrow was gone.
"Hero?" He put the bottle down, a needle of worry stabbing his heart. There was magic at work in this, though whose was what worried him more. He had seen the shivers, the twitches that seemed to roll through her on occasion and leave her irritated and wary. Reaver straightened, searching the dark shadows of the tower for movement, his eyes attuned to the unnatural creature he was expecting to find. He saw nothing, just cobwebs collecting dust and shoved aside furniture. The Shadows had not come to the tower, or if they had, they were content to watch events take place.
"Sparrow?" he reached out to her now, gently placing a hand on her shoulder to shake her awake.
She moved suddenly, startling him, and turned to the side, bracing her palms against the cold stone floor, and vomited.
Reaver recoiled initially, luckily he avoided getting any sick on himself, but he found himself almost compelled forward again. He moved from his spot by the fire and positioned himself behind Sparrow, holding her hair back from her face as she retched what seemed like every meal she must have ever eaten onto the floor.
"Well I'm never eating again." He joked dryly as he cast about for something she could wipe her mouth with. She might actually be happy they found the Hobbe's Water now so she could at least burn the acrid taste of bile from her tongue. He pulled a rag from the lopsided table behind them that Sparrow had previously used to prep their food. "Here." He offered her the rag, letting it dangle well within sight and reach, but Sparrow made no move to take it or thank him. Reaver had assumed that Sparrow had come back to herself. His lips pressed together into a thin line, the needle of worry quickly transforming into a pulverizing mace. He had experienced his own haunting visions, but they were merely that, distractions that pulled his attention away from the real world. They didn't pull him completely away not like…Reaver held Sparrow to his chest, if only so that he could see her face without letting her hair get completely covered in sick. He gently wiped her slack mouth with the rag, her eyes were still vacant.
In the next few minutes Reaver came to several conclusions: first, he believed in Sparrow's heroic invulnerability, second, someone was interfering with Sparrow (which he considered to be his responsibility), and third, one day this would be a very amusing story, provided Sparrow ever woke up. He transferred her to her bedroll and laid her down in a position he liked to call the "party went well" position. She was on her side, left arm bent and tucked under her head and left leg bent to prevent her from turning onto her stomach. If her eyes hadn't been wide open, Reaver could have believed that Sparrow was sleeping and experiencing an active dream.
"Well," he sat back, a little nauseated by the sick feeling in his chest, and studied the shadowy tower room once more in the flickering fire light. "This is highly irregular." He saw nothing there, but that didn't mean he wasn't being watched. It was as he was studying the shadows again, his tired mind wandering towards darker thoughts that Reaver noticed a blueish light illuminating the particular dark corner he was glaring at. It was a familiar shade, Sparrow's shade of blue, the color that cracked through her skin when she lobbed fireballs at the enemy (mainly at him). He turned his gaze back to the entranced woman who was now covered in more will lines than he had ever seen and floating several inches off the ground. Her brow was furrowed into a hard line, her lips pulled back into an angry snarl. Her new will lines etched themselves into her skin in intricate swirling patterns as he watched, their blue glow pulsing against her skin. The warm orange glow of the fire retreated and the tower filled with the cool glow of Sparrow's power.
Reaver rose quickly to his feet and reached for his gun, the engraved golden handle fit perfectly into his palm. The tower began to shake as the power continued to build around Sparrow. Dust sprinkled onto his head from the rafters above.
"Hero!" Reaver called out.
Her pupils snapped back into focus, the blue will lines faded and she slammed into the wooden floor. She groaned and raised her hands to her eyes, pressing the heels of her palms into them.
Reaver eyed the rafters, still nervous that they might collapse on them before dragging his attention back to the woman on the floor. "Care to explain?"
"I think, I think I just told Theresa to fuck off."