Toren Daen
I'd moved into a nearby building, keeping the light now as I laid Greahd's body on a sturdy wooden table. I kept the blanket over her face, unable to bear seeing her still-breathing corpse.
Wade was the first to enter the cold home. Apple the skaunter was perched on his shoulder, its tail wrapped around his neck in a steadying way. When his eyes found the dark blanket, he moved to the side, seeming to sense the seriousness. He slumped into a chair, his lanky arms devoid of strength.
Naereni wasn't far behind. She forced her way through the door, a frantic energy to her steps. "Toren," she started, her voice a bit too fast. "I… I went around. Told everyone that was a part of this place to gather at the old cookfire meetup; that you had some sort of announcement to make. But I–I couldn't find Auntie Greahd. When I asked around, I was told she was called away by some important-looking men a few hours back," she said, her voice cracking slightly as her eyes darted to the covered body. She seemed terrified of that dark cloth, her eyes begging for any other possibility. "Where is she, Toren?" the Young Rat asked with a small voice.
I walked over numbly, looking down at the blanket Seris had provided. The cloth was detailed with deep, purple patterns, creating a beautiful array of color and comfort. I imagined the loving Mother of Fiachra wrapped snugly in this blanket as she passed out her soups to those who could not feed themselves.
My knuckles clenched white over the rim. For a long beat, I hesitated. If I didn't pull back this cover, it didn't need to be real. It was just my imagination. Anyone could be under this dark cloth.
I wrenched it back, like ripping a bandage from a wound. I felt something inside of me tear once more as I bore witness to Agrona's casual victim, her chest rising and falling solemnly as her eyes were closed in what could approach peaceful sleep. Her buzzing, flatlined heartfire scraped my mind.
Naereni shoved me aside as she bolted forward, her hands shaking as they darted for Greahd's neck, checking for a pulse. She slumped in relief as she found one, but Wade gasped, digging himself deeper into his chair. His glasses slipped down his face, revealing unnerved brown pupils that sharpened to points.
Naereni turned to Wade, her body locking up again. Her eyes snapped to me, then back to Wade. "She's asleep, right? Toren, you can heal her of whatever caused this. You did it all the time these past few days. If it's a coma, then that should be simple for you!"
I looked away, unable to meet Naereni's pleading eyes.
"My… my emblem. It allows me to sense… minds. To connect to. But Greahd's…" Wade stuttered, seeming shellshocked.
Naereni oriented on him, her mana flaring as she bored daggers into him. "What?!" she snapped. "What's wrong with her?"
"There's nothing there," he muttered. "I can sense people while they're sleeping. When they were down in the depths of the rubble. My rats could–" he shook his head, his shoulders shaking. "But there's just… nothing," he said weakly.
Naereni turned to me stiffly, as if each of her limbs were made of ice and she had to force them to move. She silently begged me for an answer.
"Her body is perfectly healthy," I said in a low whisper. "She'll breathe just fine. Eat whatever you may try and feed her. But Wade is right. Her mind was… erased."
If there was even a smidge of thought left, a bit of perception I could latch onto, maybe I could've healed Greahd. After all, I'd managed a cursory healing of J'ntarion's bedraggled mind long before this.
But in Greahd's mute, monotone heartfire, there was no anchor. No beat I could sympathize with; no rhythm to attune.
I could not heal her.
Naereni raged. Her mana billowed outward in a black-cold nova, coating her fists as she threw them with wild fury. She left craters in the walls as she pummeled them, the rims of the wood creaking over with graveice. She picked up a chair, then hurled it at the wall. It exploded into a million splinters, the crack of wood not nearly as loud as her thundering lifeforce.
As the young woman raged and thrashed in grief, I kept my eyes glued to the table. I'd long since exhausted my ability to project such raw fury, the emotion beaten from me by the Lord of Alacrya himself. Wade, too, simply stared numbly, his intent reeling with shock.
Naereni panted, the air in front of her frosting darkly. Sweat beaded down her temples as she spun, her hand snatching my collar. My body was still coated in my own blood and that of Varadoth.
She pulled me close. "Tell me what happened, Toren!" she demanded, her voice raw and her eyes wild. "Tell me!"
I met her eyes with my sad, empty ones. "You won't believe me," I muttered.
Naereni shook me weakly. "Tell me," she pleaded instead. Feeling the wafting grief that she projected into the air made my own heart break in two all over again.
And so I told her the truth. Not the cultivated story Seris no doubt touted as an official recounting of the events, but the true incursion of Agrona himself.
At the mention of Agrona Vritra waiting for me in place of Varadoth, Naereni's breath left her lungs, her legs trembling as she stumbled back from me, grasping the table for support. But I didn't stop. I spoke of how, after Agrona had made my weakness clear to me, two chained forms had been dragged before the altar.
I glossed over Varadoth's execution. But language failed me when I explained how Agrona had held Greahd up, demanding she tell him what she had said in the wake of the Plaguefire Incursion.
My throat closed up as the event flashed through my mind again. I thought I had no tears left to shed, yet I felt them building along the edges of my vision, blurring Naereni's broken stare from my sight.
"It's my fault," I wheezed out, lowering my chin and looking at the table. "Agrona… he wanted to send me a message. Using those I cared for. If I had never… If I had never altered this world, then Greahd would still be alive. She wouldn't have been executed like an animal."
The fist that impacted my jaw was not unexpected. Naereni's knuckles cracked against my face as they drove me backward, causing my rough balance to crumble. I stumbled onto my back, but the Young Rat was faster. She mounted my chest, her eyes flashing with tears as she brought her fists down on my face once more. A streak of my blood stained the floorboards.
But the third strike never came. Instead, she grasped my collar. She limply pulled me up so that my eyes were forced to look into hers.
"Don't you fucking dare," she said through a stream of tears, "Don't you dare say that this is your fault," she croaked. "That's what they made us all think. That's the excuse that they used."
"What?" I muttered weakly, uncertain. My hands were limp at my side. I deserved this beatdown, just as I deserved the one Darrin had given me. This was supposed to be my punishment. So why did she stop?
"Every single mage said that it was the fault of us unads that we didn't awaken our runes," Naereni continued, her breath heaving. "The Doctrination told us we deserved our suffering for our weakness. And Greahd did everything she ever could to show us that that was wrong! And she did prove it! You proved it, too! You don't get to deny her that, Toren! You fucking don't!"
I stared up at the ceiling, dazed by Naereni's rant as she buried her forehead into my chest, continuing to weep once more. Eventually, Wade stood up, the calmest of us all. On shaky steps, he moved over to his lover, massaging her shoulders.
Gradually, Wade managed to peel his love's weak body from my prone form. He held her gently, sitting on the floor by my side as painful silence enveloped us all.
"There is a vial around her neck," I said weakly, staring at the wood-slatted ceiling. "It has a poison in it. One that acts quickly and painlessly for those who take it." I paused. "I did not bear the right to make any decision on my own."
Naereni pulled herself from Wade's arms, marching over to the body. She found the vial quickly, ripping it from Greahd's pale throat. She glanced at us with red-rimmed eyes, her face set in a mask of determination, before marching out of the room.
Wade and I were left alone. The temperature had dropped significantly as Naereni had expressed her ice-laden grief, leaving my breath misting as I stared numbly upward.
"You said Agrona killed Varadoth," Wade said numbly, "And then Greahd, too?"
Wade seemed strangely still as he stared at Greahd's body. I didn't respond.
"He fears you," the sentry said quietly. "And… he fears Scythe Seris."
My head lolled to the side as I looked up at the rat controller in mute surprise. "What do you mean?" I asked, disbelieving.
"Before Greahd started making changes in East Fiachra," Wade started, "Gangs were the greatest power in the streets. They controlled who did and didn't get blithe. They made sure certain people were safe and others were found in the empty canals," the sentry said.
"My mother," the young man said, forcefully modulating his words, "Was the daughter of a rough man. Maybe a bit too rough. My grandfather… way back when, he started making a name for himself. And the other leaders? They didn't like that. So they took my grandmother, and an uncle I would never meet, and…"
Wade shook his head, his curly locks swaying. "Simple, cruel gangster tactics. That's how they keep power. By making examples of the ones that scare them. It worked against my grandfather." The sentry clenched his fists. "Don't let it work on you." He looked at me from the side of his glasses. "Naereni was right," he said, his breath trembling slightly. "All Greahd ever did was prove that mindset wrong."
He walked after his lover a minute later, leaving me to stare blankly at the ceiling.
—
Naereni held Greahd's body as I stepped in front of the crowd. Already, I could feel the growing dismay and grief of the people as they saw the Young Rat clutching the form of the Mother of East Fiachra.
The only people present today were the long-standing citizens of East Fiachra. The same ones who had risen in defence of their city; who had risen in defiance of their oppressors.
Their quiet tension was only kept in check by my tired form.
"I wish I didn't have to call you here," I said aloud, my shoulders slumped and weary. Far above, night had finally gripped the sky in its blanket. Just like the blanket that covered Greahd earlier. "But you all have a right to know."
I hadn't changed. My pants were still caked in Varadoth's dark, black blood. My light shirt was soaked to the depths with my blood, and I had no doubt my eyes carried a quiet exhaustion. "Earlier today, High Vicar Varadoth offered me a challenge. And with the Scythe of Sehz-Clar, I rose to meet it."
I couldn't tell these people the truth. That Agrona had slain their Mother himself.
"But Varadoth had another purpose," I said quietly. "He wanted us to suffer. Wanted to beat us back down for daring to step up." I ground my jaw. "We slew him."
The crowd shuffled uncertainly. The news I gave was positive. I'd avenged the Plaguefire Incursion. But the shadowed form of Naereni behind me dampened that fire.
"But not before he could take something from us. Someone," I breathed, closing my eyes.
Naereni stepped forward, holding the body of her Auntie. I felt the roiling grief. Heard the pained cries. And I felt the boiling fury.
"The Doctrination is broken," I said, my sound-laden voice cutting through the crowd's surge. "But this is the price."
I walked away, my mind too tired to continue any sort of speech. The people surged forward, crowding around Naereni as they tried to see their Mother one last time. The person who had fed them; clothed them, cared for them when nobody else would.
The crowd began to grow into an unruly mess as shellshocked, disbelieving expressions traced toward the Young Rat's arms. Fear, denial, and anger became king once more.
I threaded through the mourning crowd like a ghost, moving to the canal. Clear water burbled through, unlike before. I looked at my sullen, wraith-like form in the reflection of the water, craving the warmth of Aurora's bond.
"They wanted us to break!" I heard a voice cry. I started, turning around with surprise. Naereni was standing atop a box, pure fury writ upon her face. "They wanted us to see her dead! To see her mind erased and feel despair! They can't stand to see us rise! To see us strong!"
Naereni slammed her foot down, her heel erupting in frost. "We'll show them why that won't work. Tonight, we cook! We eat! And we dance! Just as Greahd always had us do! Because this will not break us!"
The Young Rat continued to speak. Continued to talk of all the Mother of Fiachra had done for them. What she wanted in life, and surely what she would want in death.
The crowd thrummed. I watched in quiet fascination as people, even while they wept and stomped their feet, began to disperse into familiar actions. I was still as a statue as, gradually, wood was gathered. Pots were prepared. Food was readied, familiar stews steeping over a steady fire.
"How?" I asked out loud. Not to anyone in particular. I didn't understand how a single people could go through so much and just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
"They have hope," a smooth, familiar voice said from my side. "It takes so, so much to nurture that fire of hope. But once it burns, it is nigh impossible to extinguish."
I turned, surprised to see… Renea Shorn? I blinked, my eyes darting around. I hadn't sensed her approach, of course. But I was confused as to why the Scythe of Sehz-Clar would bother with her mask any longer. Her silver hair was once again navy-streaked black, and the structure of her face shifted slightly. But those eyes were the same.
"Is the answer that simple?" I asked, feeling… something in my chest.
Renea linked her arm with mine, shifting a bit closer as she observed the people milling about with grief-laden determination. I melted into her touch, feeling my stance shift as I finally had a pillar of support.
"It may be an oversimplification," Renea–Seris–allowed. "But that is what motivation can be simmered down to. One must have hope for their actions to matter. Even in the smallest ways."
Her petite body looked so small, but as I leaned into her, she was able to keep me standing without effort.
"Where do you find your hope?" I found myself asking. Where can I find my own?
Seris looked up at me, her onyx eyes deep and turbulent. Her hair–shifted black by her cloaking artifact–seemed to drink in the night. "More masks you wish to take away from me, Toren," she reminded coolly.
I turned away, feeling guilty. Seris shook her head, then conjured a small black fire over her palms. I watched as she lightly pressed it against my chest, the purple-tinged flames eating away at the grime over my vest.
In a bare instant, the sigil of Named Blood Daen returned, stark orange against the dirt and blood that caked my clothes. Seris' finger traced the glyph of a knife through a burning heart.
"You have what you need beneath the layers others try to burden you with," she said softly. Her hand rested for the barest moment where my heart was, feeling as my pulse quickened. "You have a light deep within you, Toren. You need to find a way to let that outshine the darkness around you. Look around at all the warmth you have helped cultivate." She paused, then pulled her hand away from my heart. "In essence, Varadoth was right when he spoke to you. Through perspective, we wield power. And by changing your own perspective, you gain power over yourself. A power none can take from you."
I released a shuddering breath. "Power over oneself," I echoed, watching as the unadorned of East Fiachra trudged through more hell. Could I… could I do that? Take control of myself in such a needed way?
Naereni marched toward us as if she were stomping to war. Her cold eyes flicked between me and Seris, narrowing in apparent annoyance.
"You two lovebirds aren't going to get out of working so easily," she snapped, pointing a finger at us. "Miss Beaker, the stews need someone to tend them."
My jaw gaped as the Young Rat ordered a Scythe to make stew. My eyes flicked from Naereni to Seris, disbelief threading through me. Seris simply raised a dark brow.
She doesn't know, I realized. Of course, she doesn't! Seris didn't exactly make it public that she's Renea Shorn.
I coughed nervously into my fist. "Uh, Naereni? Maybe you shouldn't–"
Naereni strode forward, thrusting her hand out. My words choked off as I saw what was in it.
A lute. Greahd's lute.
"We need music," she said, her voice suddenly small again. "And… and Greahd can't play anymore."
I hesitated. Then a gentle hand on my back nudged me forward. "Embrace the warmth, Toren," Seris' beautiful voice said. "Change that perspective."
I numbly took the lute from Naereni's hand, looking up at where a bonfire was slowly being cobbled together. I absently noticed Seris sweeping toward the stew area, her stereotypical grace having long since returned. The masked Scythe bore a light smile on her dark lips that belied her contentment.
I inspected the lute. "I'm not the greatest lute player," I said weakly. "Not as good as Greahd was."
Naereni shook her head. "You don't have to be," she said. "Just play your part. She taught you how to play in the first place, and this is all for her. To show her we haven't forgotten."
I swallowed, then stepped toward the bonfire. Greahd's lute felt heavy in my hands, the well-cared-for instrument far too precious for me.
I stood in front of the large accumulation of wood and tinder as the final pieces were set in place.
The men who had been depositing the fuel nodded respectfully, backing away as I neared.
I ignited a small speck of flame on the edge of my finger. I watched it dance in the night, quietly mesmerized by the jumping sparks of mana. Then I flicked it into the base of the bonfire.
In no time at all, a roaring beacon of warmth called the people forward. Quietly and solemnly, all present mustered in to feel this special fire.
I laid my hands on the lute's strings, strumming a quiet familiar tune. The only sound audible to the world was the crackle of fire and the vibration of music.
I knew what to sing.
I opened my hoarse, ragged throat, singing a familiar tune. One all these people had heard before. The chords echoed out on Greahd's lute as I played the simple melody, closing my eyes to the light.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne?
The emotions that flowed from me were deep and complex. The grief I felt at the loss of one of my anchors. The surety that I would lose more that were close to my heart. And the fear of pushing past my shell of layered darkness.
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup of kindness yet,
For days of auld lang syne.
And all around me, East Fiachra sang the same mournful tune. They lamented their loss. Lamented the days past, when their Mother cared for them. They lamented all that was gone.
We have traveled 'round the slopes,
And picked the daisies fine.
We've wandered many weary foot,
Since days of auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup of kindness yet,
For days of auld lang syne.
But they also felt a burning drive. A drive to be more; to be what Greahd hoped they could be. Knew they would be. Every man, woman, and child fell into the rhythm, embracing that dangerous hope. That fire that could not be quelled.
And as the song continued and I faced the fire, I felt that perhaps I might just be able to peel away that darkness, revealing the same fire underneath.