Rinwell: Casting an Arte (Part 2)

"Wh-what was that?"

"Who cast an arte?"

"Calm down, everybody calm down!" Rinwell's father stepped back out of the tent. "Remember, Grandpa had plans for this!"

"... y-yeah. He did."

"Everybody pack up! Back to your homes! Live off the stock piles, let everyone think we abandoned this place. Go, go!"

It was a flurry of activity from the adults, Rinwell watched as everyone took down the meeting camp, putting out the cook fires and burying them, taking the stones and rolling them down the mountain. Sage was picked up by one of her moms and packed onto a sleigh, Engel stuck by Rinwell's side, waiting for their Pop. Nobody talked, everyone was silent as they worked, but almost every adult that walked by Rinwell gave heated, hateful glares. Mom held her close as her dad packed up their sleigh - little more than two sleds strung together, piling their tent and wools and blankets on it, hurriedly packing the dried meat they had traded for, dumping books into rucksacks and sacks. Engel was scooped up and Rinwell was lifted onto one of the sleds. Someone stayed behind, taking pine boughs and brushing down any indication people were there.

Rinwell knew she had done something wrong. Something bad, and she shivered in her coat and waited for her parents to yell at her.

It was a three day trek to and from the meeting place. This journey took four, dad making them double back and take other paths while mom made cold camps and rationed out food. Still nobody talked, Rinwell felt the pressure to keep quiet, and too she was afraid of what would come when she opened her mouth, and the mountain winds were picking up. She mustered enough courage when they finally saw the cabin, mom darting ahead and moving inside while dad started unpacking the sleds. Rinwell took her spell book and watched, uncertain what she was supposed to do to help. Even four days later there was an anxious energy to their movements, mom and dad looked at each other with tense nods or quick gestures. Whatever they were doing they knew how to do without saying a word, and Rinwell wondered when they had practiced to get so good.

Mom and Dad moved down to the root cellar, disappearing and leaving Rinwell up by the stove. She shuffled on small feet, uncertain what she was supposed to do. Up and down they moved, taking bedding and blankets, pots and pans, hunting knives and leathers. She watched, afraid to interrupt the routine, afraid of what would happen when they finally decided to talk about her casting an arte, afraid of the trouble she would be in. The house slowly emptied, personal effects disappearing and the only thing left was furniture and kitchenware. Finally, her father touched her shoulder, and she squeaked, looking up and knowing it was time to face her punishment.

He gestured, still silent, and Rinwell went down to the root cellar.

Below ground was earth and stonework, rows of shelves of supplies, dried foods, oils, waxes and firewood. One corner had been turned into a new living space, their bedding nested in a corner, stone and dirt shifted to make a firepit, two wood benches that used to hold mom's learning books, and a string that held a bolt of old linen to hide them from the cellar door. Mom was placing lit candles in the darkness, and dad disappeared, Rinwell hearing the stove be put out and the faint creaking of curtains being drawn before he returned.

"Rinwell," her mother started to say, and the stress of the last four days finally hit Rinwell, and a tear spilled down her cheek.

"I'm sorry," she said, uncertain how bad it was going to be. She looked down at her knees, rubbing her mittens. "I'm sorry. I know I did something really bad."

"Oh, baby," her father said, sitting next to her and pulling her close. "Bad isn't the right word. Just dangerous."

"W-what's going to happen?" she asked, more tears starting to leak. She buried her head in her father's chest. "How bad? I mean… how dangerous?"

"Hopefully not bad at all," her mom said, reaching over and putting a warm hand on her back. "We're all hoping this will blow over and nothing will come of it. When this is over we'll have a great laugh and have license to tease you for years." She smiled, a strained thing, and poked at a ticklish side. Rinwell missed the tense look between her parents. "But for now we have to prepare for the worst."

"... what's the worst?" Rinwell asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Don't you worry your pretty little mind about that," her dad said, running hands through her dark hair. "We'll hunker down here for a week or two, see if anything happens. This is an adventure."

"Yes, baby, this is an adventure," her mom agreed quickly. "I know how you love your fairy tale books. Remember the one where the hero had to dig under a city for safe passage? Well, this is sort of like that, right? We're underground with jerky and water, just like the hero. She stayed underground for a whole month digging under that city. We'll only be here for a couple of weeks."

"That's right," her father said, nodding sagely. "We get to pretend to be the hero."

"But didn't the hunter follow her underground?" Rinwell asked.

"Yes he did, baby," her mother said, "But we prepared for that. Come look here."

Rinwell looked up, saw her mother lifting the blankets of their bedding nest, underneath was the trap door to an old dry well - that's what her parents had always called it. Mom lifted the latch and, grabbing a candle, gestured for Rinwell to look. She crawled out of her father's lap and stuck her head in. The candle gave weak light even for Cyslodia, but Rinwell was used to the darkness, and her eyes saw it didn't go deep enough to be a well, it was just a circular pit with a rope ladder for climbing that extended maybe a dozen feet.

"See?" her mom said. "If the hunter tried to find the hero here he'd be hard pressed to find her."

"We thought about it when you were born," her dad said. His voice was strained but he was trying to sound jovial. "Nobody looks in wells, they just draw water out of it, it was the perfect hiding place. If we hear bad things coming, if the hero hears the hunter, then you pack yourself in here and hold your breath. Don't come out for anything, no matter what you hear - that hunter in the fairy tale was right tricky, so don't ever come out unless one of us comes to get you. That way the hero is safe."

Rinwell didn't know what to say: they were trying so hard to make this a fun adventure, but she wasn't a child anymore. She knew she had done something big - "dangerous" maybe but definitely bad, and she didn't understand what the bad thing was. And she didn't know if she wanted to know. She wanted very badly to believe that her parents were right, that nothing would happen and they would all laugh over this later.

But…

But…

But…

The three slept together in their nest that night. Rinwell was pressed between them, safe in their arms. Their love made her feel safe in spite of everything, and she drifted off.

Well, until she woke in the middle of the night, feeling her mom sobbing, and her dad murmuring something to her. Rinwell rolled over and pressed her face into her mom's chest, wrapping her small arms around her. "It'll be okay mom," she said.

Her mom moaned, and hugged her so tight it hurt. "It will be, baby," she sobbed. "It will be."


The next morning nobody went above ground, dad explained they wouldn't be for quite a while. Rinwell hurt inside. "Is this because of me?" she asked, trying to eat her jerky.

"Oh, baby," her mom said, reaching out and cupping her cheek. Rinwell remembered last night's tears, and wondered how her mom could be so soft when she was so worried. "No, not the way you think. Any one of us could have caste that arte, and we all would have done the same thing. That's the thing about mages - Dahnan or Renan - they don't care who cast the arte, only that it was cast."

"It's only gotten worse since the invasion," her father said in his gentle voice. "Now artes are permanently linked to the Renans, and they do horrible things to Dahnans, mages or not. Now if a Dahnan sees the arte, they think we're these terrible people, and they'll hunt us down and-"

"Dear," her mom said quickly, cutting him off. "They don't like artes, baby," she said instead. "They'll give us nothing but hate, and we don't deserve that hate. You, Rinwell, don't deserve that hate, okay?" She was hugged then, warm and tight, and Rinwell could hear her mom's heartbeat, beating so fast it was like she was running. "Hate isn't a thing you should see."

Rinwell nodded, tried her hardest to understand. "What does hate look like?" she asked. "I want to know it when I see it, so I can tell it to go away."

Her father's hand ran through her hair again. "That's the thing about hate," he said softly. "It shows in a lot of ways. It simmers softly under the surface, and over time it grows to a boil. After three hundred years of boiling it'll bubble up out of just about anyone - Renan and Dahnan alike. Those water artes you studied, the water boils and then it evaporates, out in the air and poisoning it. Then it travels on the winds and spreads to everything around it. All it needs is one spark, and then everything the hate touches lights up, and suddenly everything's on fire."

"We're all talking about nothing," mom said, shaking her head, rocking Rinwell back and forth like she was a child. "This'll all blow over, and we can all laugh at the next meeting."

"Of course," dad said, smiling in the weak candle light. "So long as we're lying low down here, let's get some work done. This is the perfect time for you and your mom to teach me sewing. I've been trying for years, but maybe this time my big fat fingers will finally know what to do!"

Rinwell tried to play along, but she saw how shallow her dad's breathing was.

The whole day was spent in the root cellar, everything they needed already brought down with the frantic packing the prior day: sewing, yes, but also cleaning: all three of them scraped the cookware of rust or incidental damage. Lye was used to scrub out stains in smallclothes and shifts, the floors were all swept and mom led Rinwell and her dad through reorganizing the shelves. "So long as we're here we might as well make things better for when this is over."

That night they heard the birds screaming and flying up. The winds had only increased, and at one point mom straightened, saying she caught the scent of smoke.

Dad risked going up to the house and peaking out a window. When he came down he said he didn't see anything, but Rinwell knew it was a lie. She stayed up as late as she could, pretended to be asleep to hear what her dad was going to say to mom, but she finally fell into a doze. She woke up to mom crying in bed again, and dad wasn't there this time. Rinwell lifted her head to see where he was, and found him sitting at the door of the root cellar, hunkered down in a blanket and glaring up the stairs, waiting for something.

That morning the wind was even stronger, Rinwell could hear it whipping around upstairs in the house, and she could smell snow in the air. Neither of her parents spoke, and every time she tried to ask a question they shushed her. They took turns hugging her, rocking back and forth with one hand on the latch to the "well" while the other stood guard at the door upstairs. Rinwell felt the pressure, and she held herself as still and quiet as possible.

That night, so quietly Rinwell wasn't sure she heard it:

"We should run."

"No, we won't make it."

"You said half the mountain was gone."

"Half the houses, we don't know if anyone survived."

"But-"

"No. We survived here as long as we did because we all stuck together."

"I want our baby to live."

"I do too. The well will keep her safe."

Rinwell's next memory is waking up to her dad shaking her. He was saying things but she wasn't awake enough to understand, only that she was being tugged out of bed as mom opened the latch to the "well." They lowered her down, told her to climb down all the way.

"Remember, don't come out for anything. Wait for us to come and get you. You don't want to face the hunter."

Rinwell was then covered in darkness, not even a candle to keep her company, as she listened to the blankets be rearranged above her. Then there was silence.

So…

… much…

… silence.

Rinwell was scared, she could hear her breath shortening, and she clasped her hands together, closing her eyes and trying to will her heartbeat to slow down. It stretched on and on, so deep in the earth she couldn't hear what her parents were doing up in the root cellar. With the silence came a dark suspense of anticipation. All she could do was sit in the darkness, alone and isolated, waiting. Waiting.

waiting

She cried in the well, sniffling and rubbing at her eyes, wanting so badly for her parents to hug her and tell her it would be okay, even if it was a lie. She wanted someone down here with her, help her tune out the astral energy buzzing around her.

… wait, what?

Rinwell paused, rubbing her nose and looking up. She placed her hand on the dry earth around her and closed her eyes. Yes… yes… the astral energy around her was swirling in a way she'd never felt before. Earth astral energy was quivering, the water astral energy was retreating, and the wind… the wind… She frowned, trying to figure out what it was she was sensing, before she realized she might accidentally touch the astral energy - she didn't want that, not after what she did a few days ago at the meeting camp, not with all the tension in the air now. She held her breath and clamped down on it, squeezing her eyes closed and rubbing her temples, trying to tune it out.

But now that she knew something was off it was all she could hear. There was a gust of wind, high above her, so strong she could hear it all the way down in the well and she shivered in the cold. The energy was crying, and roaring, and ripping and tearing, and Rinwell covered her ears, trying to turn it off.

Then, the crack of wood.

Startled, she looked up again, surprised to see a blink of light, and then another. Then a scream, then scraping, then thudding, a laugh that would haunt her for the rest of her life, and a mighty roar - louder than any zeugle she had ever heard in the wild. There was more screaming, and eleven year old Rinwell finally recognized they belonged to her parents. She gasped, starting to climb the well before remembering their instructions: don't leave no matter what you hear. Wait for us.

Tears were streaming down her face, but she crouched back down and bit her lip, rocking back and forth as the noise creaked and groaned above her: laughter, roars, breaking wood, thuds, screams, so many screams, wind, a gust of heat and the smell of smoke, and what was she supposed to do it sounded so bad up there

It took a while to realize the noise had finally died down. She sniffled, gulping her breath and moving up the well. She wouldn't leave, but she needed to look, to see.

The latch on the door had held, but the wood had creaked and split, leaving small filters of light, and she pressed up to those cracks, wanting to know… but there was nothing to see, the space above her filled with smoke and a husky laugh. The low breathing of a zeugle came with heavy, dangerous footsteps, along with the softer sounds of what must have been a human. There was a glow, and Rinwell squinted through the cracked wood and smoke to understand what she was looking at. A crest…?

The crest turned, moving, and fear like Rinwell had never known made her duck further into the well, gripping the rope ladder and holding her breath, squishing her eyes shut and praying, praying, that she hadn't been seen.

She waited and waited, listening to the zeugle and the footsteps, understanding now why she had to wait for her parents.

The sounds eventually faded, elated laughter drifting away on the wind.

She waited still, climbing back down to the bottom of the dried out well, knowing her parents would come for her.


Rinwell woke with a jolt, shivering in the cold. The astral energy was quiet, her body was numb, and she needed to get a blanket. She felt fuzzy, did she have a fever? She felt around the well and climbed up to ask mom and dad for a blanket. She knew she wasn't supposed to come out, so instead she knocked softly, rubbing at her eyes in the darkness.

The door crumbled under her hand, raining splinters down and startling her. She looked up in confusion, the surprise of the break flooding her brain and waking it mo-all at once it hit her. The energies, the noise, the screams. Adrenaline started to fill her limbs, and she pushed at the door, the wood crumbling as it lifted up.

It was dark, it always was in Cyslodia, but the day cycle was bright enough to see… see… all of it.

The cottage was gone. Utterly gone.

The root cellar opened up to open sky, Rena peaking behind the clouds, and jagged and broken bits of wood that was their home jutting up into the sky like broken ribs. The stove was overturned and split in half like someone had cut it open, the quilt she and her mom had made together was drifting in a light breeze. The earthen floor of the root cellar was upturned, and parts of it were covered in ash, others in ice. She climbed further into the space to see what might have been their bedframe crumpled into a corner, four gouge marks that could only have come from claws embedded in a stone wall.

"... mom? Dad…?" she whispered, and speaking seemed to break the horrified spell over her, and she jolted fully out of the well. "Mom! Dad! Where are you! Mom! Dad!"

The stairs were half ripped away, she had to balance precariously on a wobbly chair and hop up to the remaining steps, climbing up through the threshold of the doorway - door itself long gone. The house proper was little more than rubble: wounded wood and stone crushed to pebbles, scattering down the mountain for so far Rinwell couldn't comprehend the power necessary to fling it all that far. The mirror her dad had gotten as a present was shattered and slumped against a tree, shard embedded in the bark. Smoke lingered in the air like an infected wound, and the air was oppressively silent. "Mom! Dad!" she cried out, filling the air with noise, desperate for something to respond. "Mom! Dad! Say something!"

It was ten minutes before she found them, Rinwell darting around the edges of the property, afraid to go further but afraid to investigate the ruins of her home. It wasn't until she had made her third loop before she found the hand: strong wide fingers peeking out from under some rubble. She shrieked, ran over and tugged at the earth around it. "Dad! Dad! Mom! Help me! Dad's been buried!"

Nobody came, and Rinwell ignored how cold the hand was and how loose the fingers were and as she dug underneath it, trying to get an angle to dig in and under the hand just… fell forward, with nothing else attached to it.

Rinwell froze, tears already streaming down her face, and in horror she studied the appendage, unable to comprehend what she was looking at. She looked up, confused, and saw her mother's zeugle-skin coat, soaked in a dark red, flapping in the light wind of the snow, bits of… meat… clinging to the inside fur lining.

She screamed then, curling into herself and unable to think of anything else.

Eventually… somehow… it occurred to her to beg for help from the clan. Something sparked in her mind, and she found the energy somewhere to get to her feet and stumble further up the mountain. Her body wasn't her own, she moved sluggishly, swaying and falling against trees or into the snow. She cleared the treeline and turned, struggling to remember how to find the other settlements from this distance, afraid to listen to her mother's voice in her memory for fear of how her body would react.

Only… the entire mountain was devastated.

The overcast cleared briefly, Rena and the tip of Lenegis visible in the sky, and the mountain was nothing but upturned earth and trees, the line of destruction zipping back and forth like the drawings of tornados she saw in her books. Smoke drifted from certain spots, just like her home, and there, two mountains away, she saw a spark of light. She turned to face it, saw another spark, another and another, and then a tower of refracted light - ice - shoot up into the sky before breaking apart, a massive green burst of wind energy visible even from this distance.

The hunter… the crest… that hadn't been a dream… someone had… with a zeugle…

"... why?" she whispered, watching the destruction of someone from her clan. "Why?" she shouted, falling to her knees. "Whyyyyyyy?"

"Who caste an arte?"

Her eyes snapped open, and she looked up in horror, eyes locking on the distant destruction.

"Any one of us could have cast that arte…"

But… she was the one… she… she…

It took her a week to go to every home on the mountain range, every cottage, every bolt hole. They were all the same, and eleven year old Rinwell came to intimately learn what she had done. What she had caused. What she had broken. What she had destroyed with her own hands.

She gathered every piece of her clan she could find - mostly bits and pieces, and once she had been to every location she set up the pyre, sobbing after days of gruesome work, and she mourned.

And she hated herself.

… and she hated the Renans.

Law: Friends

It took… well, a while, for the group that had found him - the group that had staged the train robbery - to trust him. It had boiled down to Law asking, "So, let me get this straight: You think the guy in darned linen, completely unprepared for your freakishly cold weather up here, didn't even know the word for snow, is somehow a plant from the Bright Eyes for a long term game to… what? Don't tell me you have a secret heir of the Sovereign stashed away in the mountains up here," for them to realize how stupid they were being.

Cyslodia was like nothing Law had ever experienced. Perpetual night, perpetual snow, and so cold. Sandals and woven grass were not adequate protection from the elements, everything was this itchy wool and fur-lined boots and knit mittens. They had put him to work right away when they learned he could weave, putting him with some women who taught him how to knit and sew. He did it gladly if only because that was how they could justify feeding him. Food was still zeugle jerky - some things never changed it seemed - but there were also stews and soups to combat the cold.

Law did not cotton to the cold at first. His thin linens did nothing to protect him and it took a while to learn how many layers he needed before he could function - maybe not be comfortable, but function. Like Calaglia, there wasn't enough to go around and everyone had to make do. Nobody trusted him because he didn't have a jewel in his hand, and no amount of explaining he was born in secret made them feel better, at least until they brought in a freed person and Law sat the poor girl down to explain exactly how the sign of ownership was going to be removed, how much it would hurt, and held her hand through the entire process, something his mom had him do more than once with the Crows.

Once they learned his mother was as close to a medic as a Dahnan could get they put him in this one hut with scraps of cloth, needle and thread, and jars of herbs he'd never seen before. Law had to sew up a rebel two days later from a failed raid. Sword strike, damn near cut the arm off and Law had no idea if he was doing it right but he tried to remember everything his mother ever taught him. Nobody questioned when he asked for cilligan, nobody seemed confused when he cursed for not having a specific cactus, and somebody figured out the exact kind of tweezers he was looking for to pick out the debris before sewing the poor guy closed.

"Look," he said, "her lungs were really bad by the end, and I wasn't exactly her number one assistant. I can't claim to be good at this."

"Doesn't matter," Jonrill said, "If he lives long enough to see his family you've done more than any of us were expecting. What outfit did you say you were with?"

"Crimson Crows."

"Never heard of them."

"Geez, you guys are so suspicious I could say I'm the son of their leader and you wouldn't believe me."

"Well, are you?"

Law looked away. "No," he muttered.

After that Law was trusted with more. Jonrill and Lebeth were the two leaders and stupidly in love. Seventeen and all grown up, Lebeth was the fighter and Jonrill the strategist. One of them always led the patrol - mostly to take out wild zeugles for parts and foraging, but sometimes they would do surveillance on a work camp.

"Out in the sticks we're used mostly for farming," Lebeth said as she took Law to one of their hide spots. "The real labor is in Cyslodan and the floodlights. That's where they harvest the sun. Rigel, he's a survivor of the towers. It's the ultimate punishment and where the Snake Eyes send you if they find you. See there? That smoke?"

"That's a cookfire," Law said, "Small, meaning it's only got about four people there and is probably a Renan scout party. Over there," he pointed, "That's the slave pens, you can tell 'cause it's at least ten cookfires burning at once to make that much smoke."

"Well, you can read the smoke," Lebeth said with a smile.

"Grew up in Calaglia, remember?" Law said, insulted that it was assumed he didn't know something, "You'd have to be an idiot if you didn't know how to do this."

"Point taken," Lebeth said with a laugh. "Alright, what else do you know?"

And Law explained the Crow's tactics - freeing Dahnans and removing the slave jewels, treating burns and heat stroke and heat exhaustion, how to find water in the desert. He talked about raiding trains for supplies, sneaking up to Bright Eyes and taking their packs to mess with them.

"You can do that?" Jonrill asked, incredulous.

"It was my specialty," Law said with a dark grin. "Only got caught once, and when I did I took the Bright Eyes out."

"You what."

"Broke his armor with my fists," Law explained, lifting a fist up and flexing. Well, he couldn't really show off his strength in long sleeves, but the two leaders glanced at each other.

"One thing at a time," Jonrill said. "Let's test you out on zeugles, first."

Law needed only one encounter with the local monsters to learn the wolves were just as much of a nuisance as back home, but there were these larger ape-like creatures that had massive forearms that paled in comparison to the armadillos. Jonrill and Lebeth were slackjawed to watch him punch a meaty arm off of one of them, ducking a swipe and uppercutting the thing to submission.

Well, then one of the floaty artes casters hit him with something and he was stunned just long enough to take a hit to the chest. Stupid, amateur mistake!

"That just means you have some training to do," Lebeth said, clapping his shoulder. "We can bulk up some of our armor without sacrificing warmth with this - zeugle fur up here is tough as well as warm. Here, we'll line that thin shirt of yours."

It took a year to get their trust, on top of getting used to the perpetual darkness and the cold and the sickness. Law was down four times in a season with some kind of cold or sniffle or nausea, but he proved himself more than worthy against zeugles, and he could see the lovers slowly relax as they realized he wasn't some kind of stupid Snake-Eyes-Bright-Eyes-secret-plant-traitor-thing.

"Okay," Jonrill said, "We need to go into town, Law, and we're taking you with us."

"Sure," he said, rolling his shoulders. "What's the plan?"

"Resupply and intel," Lebeth said. "We're just about out of real meat and salt to cure it; wool of course, needle and thread-"

"We've got a shopping list, got it," Law said with a wave of his hand. "Blah, blah, blah. What's this about intel?"

"Depends on how good a listener you are," Jonrill said. "The thing with Cyslodia is that anyone could be a Snake Eyes, anyone could turn you in to the floodlights for punishment - the lord's made it so we're all cagey around each other. The best thing you can do is sit and listen, can you do that?"

So, basically the quiet game. Law nodded. He could do that.

"Okay, then let's go."

There were five of them, Jonrill and Lebeth, Rigel, Law, and Sherne. After a year together they were tightly knit, and Law was a little nervous to go out on his own and just stand and listen. He had a measly ten gald with him, a gift from the lovers to spend on himself, and he moved around the market of the town - Cyan 324 or something equally stupid like that. Everyone was in thin wool to battle the cold, snow was drifting down in light squalls. He'd never… he'd never been to a town before. The Crows always foraged off the land, the only time they went to populated areas was for raids, and if they did go to town, Law never went because he was too little.

He realized he wasn't really sure what to do, wasn't sure how people acted in groups that weren't freedom fighters. He leaned against a wall, mostly, mouth closed and ears open, trying to figure out if this was natural or not. Too many people eyed him though, so lazing probably wasn't a thing. Frowning, he ducked down an alley and climbed a roof - the slant and the snow made it hard but he was able to do it quietly. The woodsmoke comforted him and reminded him of home as he looked around.

People moved together in clusters through this one street that had a lot of stalls. He saw Lebeth moving through it and talking to several people, exchanging things. Oh, that must be a market? Law slid back down to ground level and moved to the location. Several people immediately accosted him, looking for any gald he had for their wares: stone flatware carved myself!, fish caught from my secret pond!, only the finest wool for the best bargain!, and Law moved around slowly, saying nothing and closing his eyes, just listening to the words. The selling slowly washed over him, there was a tenor to the noise that was the same no matter who was talking. He was more interested in the haggling:

"Please, they sent my uncle to the floodlights, I don't have any gald to trade with."

"Don't talk so loud, someone will hear you and think you're a rebel."

"Careful how you word that, you never know when a Snake Eyes is around."

"They accused my youngest of treason, sent her to the floodlights. It'll be two years before I see her again, if she's even the same person."

"See that red head? Looks suspicious, doesn't he, just standing there?"

Uh, oh. Law clapped a fist into his hand. "That's what I was supposed to get!" he announced, and moved further down the market, hoping that sounded okay. Ears still open, he moved to one of the stalls and started picking up wares, picking through the wool and running his fingers over the texture and the lining. "What kind of zeugle did you use for the lining?" he asked, and started talking about weave and texture. Nothing struck his fancy, but he didn't hear any more noise about him looking suspicious.

He moved to the next stall, saw an impressive tanning knife that was way too expensive for him, a few tools that were well made but used crap material. After that was a stall for gauntlets and shoulder guards, and he found one that was shaped like a wolf's head, made not of silver but of much cheaper nickel, paired with a set of gauntlets. The piece caught his eyes as he picked it up. With the right straps it could probably fit on his shoulder… the snarl looked really cool… "How much is this?"

"Twenty gald."

Law frowned. "All I have is ten," he said. "How do we haggle?"

The merchant gave the flattest gaze Law had ever seen before shaking his head. "Boy big as you and you act like a child."

"What?" Law growled.

"Fine. Ten gald. It'll get a temper like yours out of my sight before someone up and decides you're a Snake Eyes."

Law opened his mouth to retort before he remembered the quiet game, and he growled, looking down and forking over the money. Picking up his new gear he moved to a corner of the market and sat in the snow, ostensibly to inspect his purchase and giving him a better excuse to be in one place and listen.

"Bright Eyes said they were going to up their quota this season - as if they haven't already stripped the land of anything that isn't a zeugle…"

"What do they expect? There's no light here that isn't harvested to the capital, nothing grows here that's nourishing…"

"Shh, not so loud…"

"... Mom got sent to the floodlights, I don't know how I'm supposed to take care of the little ones…"

"Can't you take up the business…?"

"How? She never showed me her fishing hole. We're going to starve…"

"Look, I know a spot up the mountain. Haven't used it in years since they chucked me to city maintenance…"

"Really? You would… do that?"

"I clean windows in subzero temperatures for the chance to maybe have a scrap of meat once a week. I used to live off your mother's fish. The northern most campsite on the back road… there's a dead pine about a half mile west of it, from there…"

Law figured a fishing hole was good intel, and he finished buckling on his gauntlets. Didn't have a harness for the wolf head, but he could wait. Definitely needed lining, the metal was going to freeze his arms off if he wasn't careful, but he could forage that later, when they were back at that hovel of a camp.

Day-night cycles were dictated by the streetlights - on for day and lights out for night. The teens all gathered together at the edge of town as the lights started to wink out. There wasn't even starlight to guide them, but Jonrill knew the paths and over time everyone's eyes adjusted to the darkness. "What'd we all find out?" Lebeth asked.

"There's a fishing hole up the mountain," Law offered. "Half mile west of a campsite, there's a dead pine and an old game trail that leads to it."

"Oh, I know where that is. Good, we have a new source of food. What else?"

"Snake Eyes upgraded their uniform," Rigel said. "Packs are on their backs now - dunno if that makes it easier or harder to steal."

"Probably harder," Sherne grumbled. "There's a new overseer, meaning the quotas are all upped."

Jonrill nodded in the dark. "Probably means there'll be another transport, too," he said, rubbing his scruff. "They have to supply for that. We could try and take a train again, like when we got Law last year."

"Yeah, let's not," Sherne said. "No offense to getting Law, but if we try to knock over another fuel train we might not survive the scouting."

"Noted," Lebeth said. "We need better intel if we're going to do that."

"Why not look at the markings of the train?" Law asked.

Everyone turned to look at him. "What?"

Law blinked. "What? You didn't know? Calaglia trains are metal, and their cars have the lord's crest on them. I noticed Cyslodia trains are trimmed in blue and are mostly wood. They'll be easier to knock over I assume, I don't know how you did it last time."

"... We're in a country of perpetual night," Rigel said in disbelief. "How did you even notice?"

"I didn't, not here anyway. We knew about it in Calaglia."

Jonrill and Lebeth exchanged glances. "Law," Jonrill said, "with you around we might actually make a difference!"

Law felt something in his chest bloom as Jonrill stared at him, and his cheeks flushed with more than the icy weather, making him cough and look away. Was that… pride? Had he done a good job? He found himself smiling, and for the first time since his mother he dared to have hope.

Shionne: The Renas Alma

thorns death void black hunger empty

Shionne gasped, eyes snapping open and a hand going to her head. The dream again. She sighed as she got up, changing and pulling her hair back. The clock said it was well after hours, the doctors had most likely all gone home; and her instructors had left hours ago, wishing her well in her treatment as they thought she was ill.

Maybe she was.

She hadn't told the doctors yet about the dream - how could she? They had probed every other piece of her, analyzed her down to the genetic and microscopic level. This was a part of her that she didn't want to share, she wanted one thing - even something as dark and foreboding as the dream - for herself. Her schedule said they were going to try another surgery in a few days, try and see if they could cut the thorns out of her. This time, the lead doctor said, they were going to try to do anesthesia only on the site of the incision, in hopes of tricking the thorns that if Shionne was conscious and alert they would not activate. She knew it would be hopeless, but she had consented because she wasn't allowed to do anything else.

Sighing, she stood and moved to the lab, putting up lights as she did. Maybe she could do some school work - she didn't see much point in it if she risked everyone around her by accidental touch, but at the same time she craved stimulation. Connection. …anything.

Someone had left a viewer on, station set to some kind of coverage of something. The fancy clothes caught her eye, someone with red hair was on camera and they were dressed immaculately.

Moving to the screen she pulled up a chair to see red curls and rich, earthy skin, talking to someone. She looked around for a moment before finding a controller and turned the sound on.

"... and that was Lord Dohalim il Qaras of Elde Menencia's report on the harvests on Dahna. Tell me, professor, what do you think of what you heard?"

"For such a young lord he seems to have the work well in hand. Rather controversial policy, what he's doing with the Embedded, but the numbers don't lie - he's far and away the biggest producer of the five so far. But of course there's still room for an upset. We know Cyslodia-"

"Hold on a moment, professor: speaking of upset, word is just coming into the station: Lord Hildris of Ganath Haros has been reported dead."

"What?"

"I repeat, this just in: Lord Hildris, three term Lord of Ganath Haros, has been reported as deceased by his majordomo. There are no details as yet, but this will certainly upset the race for the Renas Alma…"

Shionne perked. Renas Alma? She didn't hear anything about that when she had been studying the crown contest, had she? She frowned, thinking back to when she was much younger: Lords were chosen from Rena and Lenegis to harvest astral energy from Dahna, the smaller, lesser planet they were twinned to. Lords gathered the energy from the savage indigenous people and from the land itself… Hm… She stood and went back to the other side of the lab where her instruction took place, looking through her older workbooks and projects. She finally found the unit, from when she was ten.

"Rena needed a new Sovereign," she read, "and a new system had to be created."

Dahna was a planet of untapped resources, unused left to rot by the Dahnan natives who were too uncivilized to do anything other than war with each other. Using Lenegis as a staging ground, Renans conquered the planet and bestowed a more benevolent administration. Dahnans met them with little more than sticks and rocks, so primitive were they, and the Renans brought peace and culture to the planet. They recultured the land to make use of its abundance, and the planet's population was congregated to the Great Continent, the largest land mass on the planet and used as labor as the five realms were created. Ten years later, the Crown Contest was created to determine the new Sovereign.

"That's nothing," Shionne murmured. Everything had been dumbed down for a child, and at fifteen she wasn't a child. She moved back to the viewer and shut the news feed off, instead moving to the information network, the innet. A few key word searches later and she found much more information.

The Last Lined Sovereign deigned that passing lordship by the blood was inefficient and ill equipped for a world as elegant as Rena. He determined that a contest should be held instead, that the one with the most astral energy should win and lead the people to greater glory and efficiency. An administrative council were the first members of the Crown Contest, and it was a bloodbath. The First Elected Sovereign announced that Renans were above such barbarism, and that was when the untapped potential of Dahna was discovered.

There were several accounts of the conquering of Dahna, but Shionne ignored them in favor of what the next Crown Contest was like. There was little to be said, however, because the Lords had been in charge of their realms for ten years, still putting out rebellions, and still learning how to harvest astral energy. It wasn't until the fifth Crown Contest that the master cores were introduced, and the Eighth that the Spirit Cores were invented. Crown Contests were much shorter then, only lasting three to five years. Thirty years into the conquering and settlement the Tenth Sovereign announced that the Crown Contest needed time to harvest the energy, and mandated that a minimum of ten years and a maximum of fifteen be used to fill the Master Cores to their fullest. The next Crown Contest the master cores were gathered for the final measurement, and it was then that the Renas Alma was produced, and the terms of the contest were at last finalized.

Every contest since then was roughly ten years and very rarely up to fifteen, the lords tiling and harvesting Dahna until the final measurement. The Renas Alma appeared to the next Sovereign, their crest was rewritten, and they sailed to Rena to administer the kingdom.

"The Renas Alma is the accumulation of five master cores worth of astral energy," she read, "and is the most powerful manifestation in the known world, the only item worthy of choosing the next Sovereign."

It was early, early morning now, and her eyes burned with the weight of no sleep. She leaned back, rubbing at them and wondering about going to bed.

She knew she couldn't, however, because the idea of the Renas Alma was in her mind now: the most powerful manifestation in the known world. The most powerful. Maybe even…

Maybe even…

… more powerful than her thorns.

All of that astral energy, all of that power. She could hardly imagine the power contained in a master core, she could scarce fathom the power of the Renas Alma. Maybe that would be the thing to change her existence. Maybe that would be the thing to satiate her thorns, let them decide she was safe and leave her, let them stop hungering.

She did finally go to bed, rested even if her mind would not quiet. The next morning she got up with the alarm and moved to prepare her breakfast. Once she had turned thirteen the doctors had given her some independence - she ordered her meals from the innet from a nutritional document that stipulated her diet, and she could dress however she wanted. The innet was wonderful in that regard, giving her several creative ideas on how to present herself and make herself feel fancy. Normal. Able to interact with people without fear of hurting them at every accidental touch. When the problem of her thorns were solved she wanted to debut to the world in such a way that everyone could stare - everyone would want to be her friend, be near her, be her friend. Image was everything, the innet said, and she wanted to make sure she presented perfectly.

Lead Doctor Stein arrived right on time.

"Did you sleep well, Shionne?" he asked, adjusting the glasses against his dark skin.

"I'm fine," she said.

"No new dreams?"

"... No," she said. She may have told the doctors about her dreams before, when she was younger and more naive about their concern for her health, but that had been before the starving experiment. Dr. Stein was prone to giving them credence, and always asked every month or so if they had manifested. Shionne, however, knew they were more than just dreams - and she knew that they didn't care what they meant in terms of the future. They cared only in terms of how it was connected to her thorns. Her thorns were all that mattered: an astral energy manifestation that needed to be studied in any way possible.

"Duly noted," the doctor said. He looked at his clipboard. "How have your studies been going?"

Shionne pursed her lips, but answered. "My medical studies are going well," she said, "and my healing artes are getting stronger for it."

Dr. Stein nodded. "To be expected," he said. "Studying the skill you have gives you a more adept hand at the skills. Most of our medical artes are the result of centuries of study of the human body."

… including hers, she thought bitterly.

"We saw you logged on the innet early this morning. Any particular reason?"

"No," Shionne said. "I woke up early, and someone had left the viewer on. One of the Lords of Dahna passed away, so I was reading up on the Crown Contest."

"Ah," Dr. Stein said, nodding in easy dismissal. "It was on the news this morning. Lord Hildris was very popular here on Lenegis, and easy bet on the contest. I know a lot of people lost money with his passing. They were saying a new Lord has already been sent down."

"Really?" Shionne asked. "Who?"

"Volron Igniseri. Pitifully small house, nobody expects much from him."

Shionne looked down. Her house was small, too, and she was reminded yet again that stature was something she would never have on Lenegis, even if her thorns were removed.

"Regardless," Dr. Stein said, "Physicals are today. Change into your gymwear and we'll start with cardio. That will take all morning, and after the assessment we can analyze the data and decide what we can do next to try and remove your thorns. After lunch the instructors come in, and after that is a cognitive assessment."

"I don't like those," Shionne said.

"I know," Dr. Stein replied, "But they're necessary to make sure you're ready for the next phase of study."

… the next phase of pain.

Shionne nodded her head in lieu of answering, and she moved back to her room to change.


Author's Notes: Poor Rinwell! We're really not kind to anyone in the cast for this fic. The destruction of Rinwell's clan always seemed a little vague in the game - well, all of them are, really - but if she can recognize the Lord's Crest but not the Lord and be so traumatized as to hate the Renans with such a burning passion, then we had to hit some buttons really, really hard. This is what we came up with.

Law has a slightly brighter moment after all that angst, mostly because we're setting up the second time we break him, and Shionne's scene is more of a tool scene than any emotional beat. We get a lot of little bits of information, but the biggest is her idea about the Renas Alma.

Next chapter: More Law and Rinwell