Drayya ordered the slaughter of her weakest thralls with no remorse for their passing. Rot Behemoths lifted their obedient husks into the air above the blood-stained barrel and squeezed until every last drop of congealed blood had been wrung out, leaving nothing but a parched husk of ripped skin and crushed bone to be discarded like trash.
The first time she had witnessed such a cruel abstraction of death was in her childhood, when the sight of blood and the stench of iron terrified her to no end. She would curl up beneath tables, covering her eyes and ears until the deed was done. But Sokalar never tolerated her cowardice for long. Whenever she tried to shy away from it, he would force her to participate in the slaughter herself, slowly desensitising her to the sight of gruesome murder over the course of many tear-streaked years.
The only exception to that emotional torture was Lieze, who was allowed to bawl and hide for as long as she desired. Drayya shouldered the burden of apathy for her sake - when the girl's innocent smile was her only saving grace in a world stained with constant violence. Eventually, that burden evolved into a sensation of superiority. Even as Lieze herself became desensitised to the Order's ways, she proved herself incapable of the most basic tasks on a daily basis. Drayya stopped finding it endearing, and began to view her behaviour as tiresome.
The ground between them cracked, and in the following years, grew into a tremendous chasm separating them both physically and emotionally. Suddenly, they were enemies, and Drayya went from anticipating her warm smiles at the end of every day to delighting in the girl's cries of pain whenever her hair was pulled or her pathetic aptitude for necromancy was brought up in conversation.
Another Gravewalker was twisted open above the barrel. Its expression remained docile and unperturbed even as the dark force animating its vessel was extinguished. Drayya wondered why the act had even bothered her to begin with. Thralls were nothing but empty husks, after all. But no matter how much her body and mine matured, Lieze always lingered at the back of her thoughts like a curse.
The shunted and uneven doors connecting the antechamber to the gardens creaked open. Drayya first thought that it was Marché or Roland coming to file a report, but recalled right away that the two of them were off gallivanting in the north. She sighed as the number of potential visitors dwindled, and found herself hoping more than anything else that it was Lüngen.
"Drayya."
But of course, it was Lieze.
"...What is it?" She asked, trying to sound unperturbed.
"What are you doing?" Lieze walked up to her side and watched the thralls lining up neatly to be murdered.
"Some of these Gravewalkers are worse than useless." Drayya answered, "You said that it would be better to rely on a smaller, but more powerful army. I'm currently liquidating the weakest thralls into our blood supply. Those with promise, I'll fuse with the Rot Behemoths to improve their resilience and strength - and we can always recycle the blood into Flesh Elementals, if we so desire."
"That's good." Lieze replied.
"Mm." A beat passed between them, "Did you want to talk?"
"Uh, yes." She blurted out, "I spoke to Lüngen."
"I'll bet he had plenty to say about us." Drayya replied, "-And by 'plenty to say', what I mean is that he probably yapped on without saying much of value at all."
"That's true, but he has a habit of inserting a simple meaning into his spiels." Lieze nodded, "I was looking for a single answer that would solve the problem, but I've only just now realised that nothing is ever so simple."
"So… you don't know what to say, is what you're trying to tell me?"
"I wouldn't say that." She placed her hands behind her back, "We're talking now, aren't we?"
They certainly were. The first layer of ice had been broken between them. It was an occasion that - though she would never admit it - Drayya had been looking forward to.
"Well… I still don't know what to say." She admitted, "I'm always so hopeful of these little conversations we have. I take every one as an opportunity to say something profound, but almost always end up accomplishing the exact opposite."
"What were you planning to say this time?" Lieze wondered.
"I was going to tell you how much Sokalar was to blame for how I acted when we were younger." She said, "I wanted to explain how much control he had over my actions, and why I felt the need to torment you to gain his approval. I wanted to tell you how much my lineage meant to me - how much I respected my father, and how important it was that I remained near the pinnacle of the Order's food chain."
"And you aren't going to tell me that now?"
"No." She shook her head, "Because… it isn't true, is it?"
"What is the truth?" Lieze asked, "I want to know that."
"The truth is… that I tormented you because I wanted to." Drayya confessed, "I can't quantify how much one particular factor contributed to it, but when I consider all those years as a single, unending sequence of events… the 'reason', at its very core, was that I felt like hurting you. So I did."
Lieze paused, "...Why?"
Drayya sighed. She couldn't hold in her frustration - her anger. Her voice rose involuntarily, "-Do you think I wouldn't have already told you if I knew the answer!?"
"I have to know." Lieze insisted, "Even if it hurts you to say."
"Because- I don't know! I'm wicked!?" Evil!?" She snapped, "Of course I am… I'm a necromancer. If something interests me, then I take it. If someone bothers me, then I remove it. I'm selfish, prideful, abusive; deathly vengeful, filled with spite, and only interested in factors I'm in complete control of. That's your 'why', Lieze - I'm a terrible person. Who knew I had it in me?"
Even admitting that much was a tad too self-aware for her heart to handle. She breathed in to ward off the heaviness in her eyelids and the stop-starting of her throat. She tried to find comfort in observing the thralls being messily exsanguinated, but that didn't mask Lieze's presence in the slightest.
"...Hurry up and say something." She pleaded.
"Hm." Lieze lowered her head in thought, "What do you want me to say?"
"Uh… would an 'I forgive you unconditionally, Drayya' be too much to ask for?"
"If I said that, would you believe me?"
"Of course not." She shrugged her shoulders, "But… it would make my heart jump a little if you did."
"Is that really what this is all about?"
"Ah, see - now we're getting into the juicy part." Drayya smirked, "I've been waiting for this."
"You have to understand one thing." Lieze began, "If I were to completely reject your admission, and destroy what remains of our relationship, it would be one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in my life. I have every right to inflict you with just as much pain as you did to me for all those years."
Drayya stepped to the right and nudged Lieze with her elbow, "But you won't, will you?"
"Yes." She nodded, "I will."
Silence. Even the Rot Behemoth froze as Drayya's had a sudden lapse in concentration.
She exhaled - the remnant of a chuckle, "...What?"
"I've decided that it's time to put an end to this." Lieze replied, "Drayya - don't ever waste my time with these pointless conversations again. I won't tolerate another break in my studies. If you remain insistent on repairing what's already been broken for more than a decade, then I won't hesitate to exile you from the city."
"...What?" Drayya couldn't help but repeat herself. She was no longer smiling, "What do you mean?"
"Don't waste my time, is what I mean." Lieze's expression remained unfettered, "Dedicate yourself to the Order's goals or make yourself scarce. You're a useful asset to have around, so I would rather you chose the former, rather than the latter."
The two of them exchanged glances. The key difference between their reactions was that Lieze couldn't have been more certain of her decision, whereas Drayya was so shocked by the revelation that it took mere seconds for tears to begin welling in the corners of her eyes.
"No…" Her voice lowered, "That's not-"
"Uh…" Lieze recoiled, "Drayya-"
"I'm sorry…" She placed both hands on the girl's forearms, "I'm sorry… so please…"
She leaned forward and nestled her head into Lieze's shoulder, barely (if at all) resisting the urge to weep. Between tearful sobs, she repeated her apology endlessly, desperate to prove herself as capable of change to the one person in the world she couldn't let go of.
"Drayya." Lieze said again.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" She blubbered, "I'll do anything… so please forgive me…"
"Drayya!"
Lieze forced herself into a state of concern - the emotion would no longer come to her naturally. She peeled the sobbing girl from her shoulder and stared into her eyes.
"It…" She struggled to finish her sentence, "It was… just a joke. I was joking."
She cringed with a surprising amount of guilt. She supposed that her devotion to resolving the issue with Drayya was enough to reveal that anything so cruel had to have been a joke, but the girl had taken it as if Lieze had just ordered her execution to take place the following day.
A maelstrom of emotions toyed with Drayya's already-sensitive heart. Lieze's straightforward expression made it impossible to tell whether she was being truthful.
"What?" She sniffed, using one arm to wipe her eyes, "...What?"
"It was…" Lieze's voice trailed off, "It was just… a joke."
-And not a very funny one, as it turned out. In fact, it was so manipulative and heartbreaking that she was now standing on the brink of dismantling every step of progress the two of them had made up to that point. There had been no upset so poignantly tone-deaf and unaware since the day she and Drayya had first met.
"A joke…" Drayya repeated, "It was just a joke…"
"Yes." Lieze's expression remained unchanged, "Sorry."
"...If I hit you now, will it be justified?"
"I would rather you didn't hit me, full stop."
"That was also a joke." Drayya said, "Not so funny anymore, is it?"
Lieze paused, "...No."
She grimaced as Drayya extended both arms and pinched her cheeks.
"You are a very difficult girl!" She said, "Always looking for trouble! Always causing problems!"
"That hurts."
"I'll bet it does!" Drayya chuckled, "Honestly…"
Her palms came to rest on Lieze's rough cheeks, corrupted by overuse of her regenerative abilities. Drayya leaned forward to place their foreheads together, discovering the girl's flesh to be cold and syphoned of humanity. She lowered a hand to her waist and intertwined their fingers, finding a strange pleasure in the pain of having her skin pierced by tiny thorns.
Drayya parted her lips and moved in, only to find her head being pushed to the side a second too soon. Her frown was just as betrayed as a minute before, but founded in a welcome playfulness rather than despair.
Lieze averted her eyes, "No."
"Really!?" Drayya exclaimed, "What do I have to do!?"
"You don't have to 'do' anything." She replied, "There's still work to be done today."
"Ugh!" Drayya would have melted into a puddle if she could, "Fine!"