Moswen was trembling, face pale and breath rapid as he watched the tiny twig of a boy with mad eyes.
"…How?" He whispered in horror and she heard his knuckles crack in his grip. Bedona was ready to jump in and stop the giant before he crushed Tristan under his grip but Tristan spoke before she could.
"Wat-chth-ah neh-ek, y-uoo are brea-hin -ith." Sounds like words squeezed out of Tristan's thin bluish lips and squeezed throat. But his face remained in that sick grin and with barely a hint of pain he should have been in.
Moswen jerked his hand back like it had been in a fire all this while. Tristan's pale neck had turned purple with an odd twist of muscles where his hand just was and ragged breaths escaped from between Tristan's grinning teeth. Not waiting for even a moment Moswen again went back to Tristan's neck but this time his grip was gentle and with the utmost caution, his fingers traced the young boy's ugly bruise. And it was gone, blending into the pale skin with not even a sign it remaining.
"Ah!" Tristan sighed a deep breath, "Much better." He rolled his head from side to side as if to get the stiffness off his neck after an uncomfortable nap.
"How-how did you find me?" Moswen regained some of his senses back but his tiny voice still trembled.
Tristan's head turned to him his twisted grin seemed to widen even more.
"Someone touched something they shouldn't have." He said and giggled in a joke only he saw.
"No! No- it cannot be. I-I didn't…" Moswen uttered in disbelief pushing himself away from the boy with a sudden jerk of his hands. He heaved, his wild hair appearing even wilder as his entire body shook as his teeth ground against each other.
"Oh, don't be like that. I see you after so long and here you are not even happy to see me." Tristan or the one that looked like him whined and pouted.
"Please, Go. Leave. Disappear." Moswen softly whimpered, begged at Tristan.
And just like that the playfully twisted expression on Tristan's face was gone. The pale skinny face of the boy appeared calm as a corpse's and Bedona shivered.
"No." Tristan's icy reply grasped Bedona's heart in a frozen clutch. There was a pain in that answer, deep and old, and of longing and loneliness.
Bedona turned to Moswen who looked completely defeated and broken. And for a moment she felt like she saw a hollow husk of a corpse where the giant was kneeling. She felt her own heart sink with grief, so heavy she wanted to lie down. She wanted to ask him, to beg him to forgive. It was so… long ago… why could Moswen not understand? She just-
"STOP. THAT." Moswen roared and punched the sand, only missing Tristan's head by a few inches. The strike caused a small explosion of sand leaving a tiny crater by his head. It also blew her heart clean of any lingering pain.
"Ooh, careful. A bit more and you would have crushed the head."
Bedona blinked in surprise and silently crawled away from Tristan. There were no aftereffects of what she just felt but she remembered it clearly. She carefully shifted toward Moswen and only stopped once she was behind him.
"Why are you doing this?" Moswen asked again, so pitiful was his voice that Bedona thought he would burst out crying at any moment. "This is wrong."
"There is no right or wrong… you know better than that." Tristan clicked his tongue in reply and frowned his lips.
Meanwhile, being away from Tristan and without the oppressing need to listen to everything he had said, Bedona could finally think. She had never seen it happen herself before but seeing it now; it could only be that, a possession of a kind. By herself, she would have doubts but Moswen's reaction almost confirmed it for her. He knew whoever it was that was controlling Tristan. They shared history and by the looks of it not a very friendly one. Someone or something strong enough to terrify a Master Wizard like him. But Moswen had stopped trembling now and from behind him, he was beginning to look even bigger.
"Go away…" Moswen hissed and leaned forward to loom over the prone boy. "Please…" And then, just like he deflated, defeated. The previous anger and hardness gone from him. The giant mountain in front of her felt like just a tiny rock that she ought to protect and not the other way around.
"So like you to beg when you can get what you want by force." Tristan grimaced again, lips twitching like something disgusting touching his face. There was disdain in his voice, a fit of underlying anger and… disappointment. "What you are and what you could be… What 'We' could be…"
"I… I couldn't. I…" Moswen paused and took a shuddering breath, he reached out, taking Tristan's hand in his trembling one and caressed it. "Please leave." He begged again.
"Ugh! Fine, I will go. Only because I tire of looking at your pathetic face. You are a disgrace to the power you own. YOU DON'T DESERVE IT!" Tristan shrieked, shouted with a gnarled expression. Moswen on his side only dipped his head lowered, in shame or what else, Bedona didn't know.
Watching this all unfold before her, she could not help but sympathize with whoever possessed Tristan. Moswen Was being pathetic, and someone with so much power had no right to wallow like a Brocken man. So many questions she wanted to throw at him, insults and taunts to get a reaction out of him, to see validate the power she saw in him. But he was still a Master Wizard and her barely and adept.
Tristan was breathing peacefully now. His pale face tiny under Moswen's massive hand.
"That was-" Bedona uttered without thinking and winced as she found Moswen eyeing her.
"That was nothing." He said, "Just some delirious talking."
More than lying to her it felt like he was trying to lie to himself. As if denying it would make it not true. Oh, Bedona had tried that before. And it never worked.
"Of course." Bedona slowly replied.
"I… need some air." Moswen suddenly stood up. Towering over her that she couldn't even see his head. "Watch over him." He announced and without waiting for her reply started to walk away from them along the river.
"Eh? Wha-? But?" Bedona sputtered after him, trying to get up but fell face-first into the sand as dizziness gripped her from all sides. She was hungry, her bones felt they were made of jelly, no strength on her muscles to even straighten her legs. "Wa-WAIT! What if- what if he wakes again?" she shouted.
To his credit, Moswen paused but did not look back.
"He will not wake till I let him." and then started walking again. "I will return… soon."
YOU BETTER BE
Bedona let the shout die in her throat. She was too tired for that. She sat back with a sigh and looked at Tristan. She wasn't afraid that he would leave her there alone. Whatever it was, he cared deeply about Tristan. She saw it in his face, as bright as day.
Moswen wouldn't abandon Tristan as she did.
"I am sorry." She found herself whisper without realizing, glad that Tristan was not awake to hear her. She was not yet brave enough to face him.
It was not her fault, what was happening to Tristan. But he was still her sin staring back at her. What she had done to him she was beginning to get over it but fate seemed to disagree with that. That was why she found him in front of her again.
She laid on her back as soft dizziness claimed her.
Maybe she could right some wrong was done by her. Maybe it was a chance, a way to her redemption. She didn't know how to help him, exorcise him, but knew enough that Moswen would. And seeing how strong he was, he would have the means for it too. And she would help him freeing the boy, to the best of her abilities. One right to all her wrongs. That was better than nothing.
"I promise." She whispered. And suddenly she felt her broken life with a goal.
A good deed, not for her sake but for someone else's.