Chapter 1: We Don't Need Words!
Tiche, daughter of the dreaded Alecto, Ringleader of the Black Knife Assassins, was stumped. This hadn't been a familiar feeling to her during her long and adventurous life—the feeling of being stuck in a rut, particularly confused about one thing or another. Certainly, the work of assassination was not brainless, and even with the immaculate blueprints laid for each hit by the Black Knives' cunning matriarch, Tiche was used to thinking on her feet. Scheming for the sake of her own survival was just part of the lifestyle. Think fast or die stupid.
Or, Tiche thought sourly, get trapped for eternity in a damned Evergaol.
The seasoned assassin had been less than wholeheartedly appreciative when she had "returned" to "life." After all, that god-forsaken tarnished was to blame for waltzing into her mother's perpetual prison, slaying her in cold blood, and to add insult to injury, stealing Tiche's cremated ashes from the pouch at Alecto's hip.
The Lands Between were full of warriors and always had been. Assassins were not exactly known for being the most honorable among those, to be perfectly fair. But in equal fairness, Tiche had never in her life (or afterlife) seen anything so deplorably irreverent as someone casually plucking the ashes of a deceased child off her mother's corpse.
This tarnished, Tiche's internal grumbling continued, has got to be the most dishonorable, morally bankrupt, culturally insensitive psychopath to ever walk the planet.
This was the typical train of thought she found herself riding when her consciousness, usually dormant in peaceful, almost-death, was forcefully jerked back into the real world for another gruesome round of direct combat. That tiny, softly-chiming bell would pierce through her deep eternal slumber like the world's loudest alarm clock, and before she knew it, Tiche would be slung into the fray against some frighteningly powerful demigod, knight, dragon, or—God help—another fucking skeleton in a canoe. She would appear begrudgingly, fight efficiently, as that was the only way she'd ever known how, and after a brief period of respite alongside that strange tarnished man, return to her silent solitude, always feeling somehow, for some reason, a little reluctant.
The fear of death. She reminded herself. No matter how many times I return to it, it's still death. That reluctance means that my human instincts are still working—that's all.
She felt it again, then, after the protracted fight with Rennala, Witch of the Full Moon, was finally over. Tiche let her sharp-toed boots click to the ground, catching her breath at last, and prepared herself for the return to nothingness.
"Thank you," came a soft voice between ragged breaths. He was hoarse and soaked with blood—had those creatures not been illusory, after all?—no, but even still, as his knees shook and his weapon fell to the floor, that strange man found the time and energy to turn toward Tiche, bow his head, and thank her.
This was generally when she would disappear. She took it as her cue—he didn't need her assistance anymore. This time, though, Tiche was given pause by the circumstances. All she could do is watch as the tarnished warrior who had summoned her stepped to Rennala's side, barehanded and with his helmet opened, and helped her to sit up. In spite of the ferocious battle the two had just waged, they spoke amicably, if a little nonsensically. Tiche could tell that the queen wasn't all there, but regardless, the tarnished was humoring her with well-timed nods and interjections of understanding. At last, he stooped and picked up what she had dropped: some kind of large, amber egg. He gently handed it to the witch queen, and she took it tenderly in her arms like a child, and they spoke no more.
"You hate to see it," he murmured, perhaps to himself, rejoining Tiche in her place under the shadowy eaves of the library shelving, "what power does to caring people."
Tiche, intrigued by his unexpectedly profound quip, tilted her head.
"Oh, hello." The tarnished smiled. "So you can hear me."
The assassin scolded herself for reacting at all and resolved not to do that again. She wasn't sure if she could even speak in this form. Oddly enough, her weapons couldn't touch the man who summoned her—she'd tried that almost immediately upon her first summoning, hoping at least to try avenging her mother. But no, she couldn't interact with him physically at all, much less kill him. After that, she'd neglected to try so much as talking aloud in his presence, which seemed fine with him before that day, as he hadn't tried speaking to her, either.
It wasn't the custom of an assassin to let her voice be heard, anyway. In fact, Tiche reflected on the harshest training she ever had to undergo, which cultivated that very skill of hers at a young age. Her mother had tied her to the hitching post outside of their small home on the capital outskirts and, for two days straight, tormented her with unexpected physical violence at random intervals. The assaults ranged from light smacks across her exposed knuckles to fierce blows into her kidneys from behind, and at some points even drew blood as her mother delivered quick swipes to her arms and legs with the duller knives from the kitchen—meant to cause pain, not to injure.
Silence. Tiche fumed, thinking back on it. That was all her mother had asked of her, and then it would stop. She never thought of Alecto as a cruel parent. She never thought of her as a parent at all, frankly. From the time she was old enough to wield a knife, Tiche and her mother were coconspirators; a leader and a subordinate. The torture didn't even register with Tiche as abusive—it was educational. At the end of those two days, when her mother flogged her shoulders, or pulled at her hair, or stepped on her toes, or even touched the orange-tinged fire poker to her empty, cramping stomach, Tiche found that she could grind her teeth together and fix her eyes somewhere past the horizon, and she could be silent.
So, needless to say, the feeling was a bit novel to her when she felt the urge to open her mouth and reply to the tarnished. It was like learning that same, painful lesson all over again. She kept her mouth shut, though, and turned her head away from him.
"That's okay." He relented, still somewhat winded, and despite his victory against Rennala, sounding slightly defeated by her scorn. "You can go back, now, if you want. Thank you again, Black Knife Tiche."
How stupidly decorous, she rolled her eyes, he might as well call me 'Serial Murderer Tiche.' 'Domestic Terrorist Tiche.' 'Accessory to Violent Revolution, Tiche.' Have some tact, for God's sake.
But once again, as Tiche was just beginning to ready herself to vanish, the onset of unignorable reluctance grabbed her. She looked across the room at Rennala, entranced by the strange egg in her arms. Motherhood. She looked down at her tarnished host, now sitting with his back against a stone column, as he pulled off stringy chunks of cured meat to feed himself. Self-preservation. She looked down at her own dubiously corporeal body, clad in the same armor in which she'd died. Violence.
I can't go on like this, she realized very suddenly. It wasn't a thought that had struck her before, and she was shocked by the immediacy and potency of the thought once it finally arrived. I don't want to be a spirit ash forever. I don't deserve to return to the Erdtree. I don't deserve a hero's burial. But I don't deserve this personal hell, either. Something's got to change.
"Hungry?" The words broke her trance, and she was glad for the hood obscuring her face as she looked down at the tarnished. He smiled kindly up at her, a piece of meat skewered on the end of the small carving knife he used for crafting and cooking. "I don't know if spirits can eat," he admitted, "but even if you can't, you're welcome to pretend, if it makes you feel better. Got plenty to go around."
Pretend? Tiche wrinkled her nose. You think I want to pretend to eat that disgusting piece of uncooked meat? Why would I do that?
As if he could read her mind, the tarnished shrugged, taking the piece of food back and eating it himself. "Never mind," he mumbled with his mouth full, "that was dumb, sorry."
He took to admiring the great rune that Rennala had granted to him upon her admission of defeat. This one radiated a different kind of power than the rest. That was another thing that had taken Tiche off guard about this man—when she'd met him, he already had two great runes. This was his third. As one of the few other mortals who'd actually slain a demigod in her lifetime, Tiche understood very well what an accomplishment it was to claim those runes, and it made her wonder all the more how this man came to know such strength.
"I just had a crazy idea," he said slowly, looking back and forth between the blue-tinged great rune and Tiche, "but it probably won't work. So I'm not gonna tell you about it, because I don't want to get your hopes up. Okay?" His crooked, beaming smile just begged for a reply, and it took every ounce of Tiche's hard earned discipline to deny him that.
At long last, burdened by considerations of her own existence and the mysterious inclinations of her new partner, Tiche let herself succumb once more to nothingness, and to dust she did return.
End of Chapter 1