"You're taller than when I last saw you, qu'essan."

Sabal's eyes flickered open, but there was no flinch like when Ryld stalked up on so many drow. She'd been aware of a presence without needing to rely upon her eyes. At the moment, her room was dark and empty. Each of the three had gone their own separate ways for their last hour at home in the Academy. The option to remain with the priestesses was certainly open, of course, but Sabal had declined. And now it seemed for the best.

"I doubt that, Ryld. Watching people is your business."

He chuckled softly, taking a seat on the floor next to her. His features had gotten no more beautiful since they last spoke—if anything, his twisted and misshapen face seemed to be sporting even more disfiguring scars. "Perceptive, aren't we? Then again, I would be disappointed with anything less."

The amber-eyed drowess made a noncommittal noise. "You are here for a purpose. Is it Xullae's, or Yvonnel's?"

"My own," he said, face contorting into a gnarled grimace that might have been a smile. "We should talk, as we used to. I told you many things that Xullae did not. And I trust you found my lessons more useful at the Academy than you did among the Yath'Abban."

Sabal nodded and kept her eyes on him with just a hint of wariness in her gaze. He approved, though it could hardly be registered in his mostly immobile expression. It was not always easily apparent that she had learned as much as she had.

"Then perhaps you will pay attention to what I have to say now, if you will hear it," the scarred male said, smoothing his ragged tunic and scraps of battered armor with his claw-like hand.

"I am listening."

There was a little gleam in the darkness as his crafty eyes focused on her face. "Good," he said, voice rasping in that old, familiar tone. "You are at the edge of something you do not understand, Sabal. You have a choice ahead of you. No one can make it for you, but once you have made it you can never change your path. You need to decide what matters to you the most."

"Duty," she said automatically. Xullae had drilled that into her for most of her life and it made sense. It was something that never changed.

"And your friends?" he countered. Beneath his light, teasing tone was a deadly edge.

Sabal's brow knit slightly in confusion. "They have no part in this. We are speaking of becoming an inquisitor, yes?"

Ryld chuckled slightly, but his usual humor was lacking. "Qu'essan, what a child you are still. The Goddess's path is dark and treacherous. Perhaps you can choose both them and your duty, but only for a time. Then one day, perhaps House Druu'giir will earn the Spider Queen's displeasure. Could you strike down Nedelyne? Or maybe it will be Alystin Kenafin who falls prey to the whispers of another god or goddess. Do you think you could drive your blade through her heart on the Goddess's altar as easily as you drove it through Nhilae's?"

"It will not come to that," Sabal said harshly.

He leaned back a little and scrutinized her stony features with a careful air. "No, it may be far more simple. You will spend a lifetime rooting out heresy, hunting for it everywhere. How long until you are always looking over your shoulder, never trusting anyone? Perhaps they will never stray, but your paranoia will drive them away all the same. It is suffering to be alone, yes. But it is much less suffering than trying to hold onto a life that is not yours."

The wilder could not hide her agitation now. She stood abruptly and started to pace restlessly, movements as smooth and graceful as a trapped hunting cat's. "What would you have me do? Refuse my vows? I do not have a choice! If I say no, they will bind me anyway!" she said, an edge buried in each word.

Ryld's face seemed more serious now than she had ever seen it. "Then you know what you need to do."

"I cannot do this," Sabal said, fingers flexing and curling as she moved. "It will do too much harm."

"More harm than letting these ties deepen just to be torn asunder? I know how it pains you, qu'essan. But you are no child any longer. These sacrifices are what it means to be an inquisitor. The things that a normal drow might have you cannot steal for more than a moment. You will never have a consort. You may take lovers to bed, but you will never be able to share anything more with them. You will never have children and raise them as your own. You will never have friends outside the order," Ryld said, his voice as soft and gentle as he could make it.

The space behind her temples felt like it was exploding, her pulse pounding in her head. "I will be different," she said. The feeling was beginning to burn white-hot in the center of her chest. She knew what it was, of course.

"Everyone who is told that says the same," Ryld said quietly. "And those feelings will destroy you, if you give into them. You know what you need to do."

Breathe. Return to center. Wall it all away. Think of cold. Sabal clenched her fist hard, nails cutting into her palm. "I understand, Ryld. But that does not mean I agree."

"I've done my part," he said with a shrug. "From here forward, you will be Yvonnel's problem. But that also means I won't be around to protect you, qu'essan. Enjoy your graduation."

The wilder pulled in a short, sharp breath as he left and then exhaled it in a ragged sigh. She needed so badly to break something, to crush it into powder with her psionics. But that wasn't an option, as usual. She made a note to grievously harm the first person who had the nerve to sneer.


"Don't look so nervous, Aly," Nedelyne teased, nudging the mage with her elbow. "You're graduating. Taste that freedom?"

"Almost makes me want to kiss the Matron on both cheeks. Still, I don't like not knowing things. Where's Sabal?" Alystin asked, gray eyes somber as she glanced around anxiously. It was hard to be comfortable near so many priestesses, particularly in the chapel. It was a discomfort beaten into her long ago.

"Behind you," Sabal said quietly. She'd slipped into the crowd behind them without a sound, fingers toying with the amulet around her neck. Something about her seemed quieter, more subdued. However, even without psionic powers, Alystin could feel something amiss.

"Everything alright?" she murmured softly, pausing in her stride so that she was even with the wilder.

"No," the amber-eyed drowess said with her usual bluntness. Her odd tendency towards truthfulness hadn't changed much, though Alystin had finally managed to piece together the reason. Why lie, if you've spent your life under the tutelage of someone who could simply pluck the truth straight out of your thoughts? "I just need some time to think things over. Much as you do, I imagine. You didn't sound eager to return to House Kenafin."

"Oh, come on. It'll be at least as much fun as that time Ilivarra broke every single one of my fingers very slowly. Or that time Nedelyne stabbed me through the foot," Aly said with a certain levity that she really wasn't feeling at the moment. She was slightly more reassured with Sabal near her, if only because bad things tended to think twice with the glowering wilder hovering nearby protectively.

"First, we have to get through this."

"Promise me you won't abandon me in here?" the mage muttered, looking around. "Damn it, I just lost Nede."

"She can look after herself," Sabal said as they stepped through the doors into the chapel. The sudden surge of feelings were overwhelming, almost smothering her thoughts. It was a thousand times stronger than she'd felt that time with Yvonnel in the temple. Wantneedgivemehardfast—

She was fighting with herself, ignorant of the sounds and smoke around her even as they hijacked her senses. The air was hot and dizzying, the cloying incense driving her heart faster and faster. It was like suffocating. Emotions, sensations that weren't hers taking over. Sabal had never felt so out of control in her life, and it was terrifying. She did the only thing she could think to do, operating on the part of her brain that had ruled her in the House of Abandonment.

No. A shockwave of cold flooded out from the center of her chest, drowning out every sensation. The world went dark as she forced her mind away, folding it in on itself. Don't think. Don't experience. Don't remember. Just shut it out.

It was strangely appropriate, that her youth should end in dark silence, much as it had begun.