Still in This Endless Nightmare
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.
Summary:
"I just wanna take us back."
The Kenriths were starting from scratch.
They were once children, uncoloured by failure.
They had parents, now reduced to memory.
Bedtime stories impart moral lessons, and woven into each innocent enchanting tale is the mark of something dark. An omen crackling with raw, explosive potential. For example, a symbol. The strange eclipse great minds quarrelled over, that shattered Rowan's childish illusions and ruined her homeland of Eldraine.
Will says they can't put things back the way they were. Maybe he's right, but Rowan takes it he's icing her out.
He isn't from a diplomacy standpoint, but off in her own world, Rowan's temper twists Will's outreach into an expectation of blind obedience.
This was never the case before. They could never not be in the other's world by virtue of their shared planeswalker spark.
Loyalty, knowledge, persistence, courage, strength…
What mattered was power, transcendent and terrible. Promising to herself to surely find it.
What did peace matter when, with her new power, she could manipulate the Wicked Slumber into something advantageous for all the Realm? Her people living painless dreams.
Rowan is picking up the scattered pieces Will doesn't believe can be fixed. A lonely fight.
More than a wedge, a blade had been driven between them. Twin swords that were one soul. One spark she frustratingly couldn't access.
Happy endings ended.
Happily ever after, a lovely yet stillborn sentiment.
Rowan is so tired.
The shadows of blood one stands in…Father's glaring dignity. Mother's strength to sacrifice. The twins' aunts three. The Blood Avatar.
She and her brother were living proof the dead could come back.
Once upon a time, Rowan was scion, sparkmage, and scholar – a castle of hands there to support her and to guide her. Her brother, always holding hers – their talents meshing and reconciling.
But now she's huddled up. She's not fearless. The hands are grey and cold, conducting a grim search. Smearing knights' blood across her face.
This is how she fell apart.
Wickedness is a curse, but to Rowan's traumatized ear, here an upside. Eriette's tempting whisper lulling her inward. Lingering on the long, long lingering smoke of war.
What began with the Wildered Quest…
Rowan, still in this endless nightmare.
The storm dispersed on the pieces of Castle Ardenvale. On the pieces of their family.
The truth reflected in broken glass.
She, Will's broken mirror.
Charmed apple of Eriette's eye.
Ashiok's caged bird yearning to be set free.
"I just wanna take us back."