#but it seems to mostly be addressing the aftermath

[aparticularbandit]

Episode 6 takes on cancel culture and the devastating effects it can have on mental health.

It starts with a mental health and suicide content warning and ends with the number for suicide prevention.

So.

That's a thing.

They did a VERY good job.

[bird-inacage]

Only Friends: Sand's Reaction to Ray VS Boeing

I know some people will be annoyed that Sand wasn't more forceful in telling Boeing to leave him alone. In my opinion, this isn't really surprising. Sand's biggest strength and weakness is his kindness. He'll make concessions for people, even those who hurt him. Ray is a prime example. Why would his ex be any different?

Boeing's Dubious Intentions

It's glaringly obvious just how uncomfortable, stiff and exasperated Sand's body language is during their second exchange. This is someone he shared his ultimate dreams and passions with, which must have made the betrayal even more devastating. We still don't have the full context as to how this all went down, but I'm sure Sand hasn't forgotten that Boeing chose to leave him. Compared to their first re-encounter where Sand appears rattled and somewhat flustered, here he seems to display a more resolute lack of patience, possibly after reminding himself of Boeing's true colours.

This doesn't erase the fact that Sand had feelings for him once, cared about him once. Sand didn't choose to end the relationship, Boeing did. So there would have been unresolved feelings that Sand had to process alone in the aftermath. For Boeing to have the audacity to swan back in rightly warrants a less than lukewarm response.

Even so, Sand shows Boeing an incredible amount of grace when he certainly doesn't have to. He tries to calmly but firmly ward Boeing off. "State your business". "Just forget it. I don't think I'll go." "Just friendship. That I can give you." He makes it very clear that Boeing can find him at the bar but nowhere else. He's trying to establish a distinct boundary, which Boeing swiftly disregards.

Sand's Unease: Where Past & Present Collide

The way Sand is reacting says to me he desperately doesn't want Ray involved. He seems eager to keep him well away from Boeing. Sand could have chosen not to mention his ex's sudden reappearance, but decides to be upfront with Ray about it. I think Sand's turmoil is a sign of worry over what Boeing may do, rather than an indication of indecisiveness over his own feelings. The reason I say this is because Sand doesn't show any warmth, residual affection or happiness in seeing Boeing again. He looks mostly wary, unnerved even.

I can also see why Sand would try to refrain from openly displaying his feelings for Ray in Boeing's presence. If he exhibits just how much he cares about Ray, whose to say whether Boeing may pull another stunt like he did with Mew/Top and try to pursue Ray instead just to be messy. The way Sand looks at Boeing is laden with suspicion and uneasiness, particularly when Ray is around. This is really noticeable when Boeing first addresses Ray - Sand's whole demeanour gets much colder and standoffish.

We don't know precisely what Sand is afraid of - that Boeing may target any ill will at Ray? Or that Ray may be affected by his ex flaunting details about their history which could cause jealousy? Things are going really well between Ray and Sand right now but it's possible Boeing could try to stir up a misunderstanding or create conflict between them.

Ray's Protectiveness: "Deal with him or I'll do it."

Ray knows better than ever what Sand is like. He's all too aware of just how painfully kind and caring his boyfriend can be, often to his own detriment. Boeing is keen to exploit this very fact by trying to appear imploring towards Sand, "You never yell at me." Ray is also acutely familiar with how Sand struggles to say no to those he cares about.

Whilst Ray observes angrily, I like to think this comes from a place of being mad for Sand more than anything. If he's seen their entire interaction play out, he'll notice that Sand has not once initiated physical contact with Boeing. He doesn't shirk him off, but he certainly doesn't respond either. He keeps his arms firmly planted at his sides, and yet Boeing keeps trying his luck. Something about the way Boeing behaves with Sand feels like he treats him as a plaything - someone he used to have wrapped around his finger. Perhaps he thinks that the power he used to have over Sand still remains.

Sand's expressions also feel loaded with shame, as if he's repeatedly chiding himself for being foolish enough to love someone like Boeing, who so cruelly tossed him aside. That somehow he feels partly to blame. Maybe this is a Sand he doesn't want Ray to see. Yet here Ray is, on the side-lines, taking all this in.

From their very first interaction, Boeing is trying to undermine Ray. You can see Ray's growth as he doesn't confront or make a fuss, but chooses to respect Sand's wishes and instead stays quietly hidden to keep watch. He looks to Sand for confirmation he'll be okay on his own before leaving. Though he can detect something isn't right, he allows Sand the opportunity to handle this first.

As soon as he sees Boeing trying to cross a line, he steps in. He's not going to permit Boeing trying to drag Sand off somewhere alone, he'd rather keep the enemy directly under his nose.

What I'm hoping to see in Episode 12 is protective Ray to come out full force. I've said this before but the entire series has been Sand looking after Ray. Whereas this would be a great opportunity for Ray to look out for Sand, and to teach Boeing a lesson at the same time.

That eye contact in the last scene was so loaded. Ray's gaze is a silent threat- 'That's my man you're looking at, don't get used to it. If you're really stupid enough to try anything on my watch, I'll tear your neck out.' Don't ever underestimate Ray, he's small but feisty.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

A few days ago, you wrote about Harry's (Meghan's) red flags that would make them a security threat. Which got me thinking ... In the past 3 weeks the level of security risk for William and Catherine (and the children, by extension) must have gone up considerably.

When this forat started off as a joke, it was mostly about handling Catherine's privacy and her medical history. And someone somewhere must have realized that the London Clinic would be an easy source of security breach. I'm assuming that the hospital has top notch NDAs and everyone is expected to be absolutely discreet since many many high profile patients get admitted there. Maybe even some, whose medical diagnosis and history, if disclosed, would rightly tilt the world on it's axis.

So maybe that was this angle was not top priority, because the agencies assumed they would be discreet. Everyone also assumed that actual news agencies and media outlet wouldn't print any info obtained illegally from hospital sources, even if they had the capacity to pay the source for the info.

Nobody thought some two-bit Instagram influencers would gleefully pounce on the chance like vultures.

Another angle, and this is very very serious IMO, is that once the conspiracies started all blame was falling on William. He was the villian who had allegedly done dispicable things to C to put her in the hospital and was then hiding things. The number of threats he received from randoms of social media must have been mind boggling. He is the heir, he has to be physically protected and kept safe at all times. And doing that effectively, without addressing the rumours head on would have been very difficult. Especially if they still wanted to maintain Catherine's privacy and dignity while doing so.

(And I said dignity because how you handle your own medical diagnosis is absolutely a matter of your dignity and boundaries and space)

Not to mention, nosy people would have started stalking the kids at the schools and playtimes. If at all that happened it would never be disclosed.

I think the utmost priority for people someone like William and Catherine their safety, merely based on their constitutional significance. And handling a looming PR crisis was not at the top of the palace list. Blaming the "palace" for not handling the PR crisis better is just wrong IMO.

The palace is not some big bad shadowey shady entity. The palace is essentially the principals, their immediate staff who work for the pricipals, and that includes different agencies that work towards ensuring their safety and security at all times.

If the palace was keeping their cards close to the chest, then that means it was Catherine and William who were keeping their cards close to the chest. Mainly because as normal humans their priority was to understand and absorb what was happening, what could happen and how to plan their lives in the immediate aftermath of this devastating news.

Their priority couldn't and wouldn't be to make sure they look nice and are seen doing nice, cute things together just so some lame Karen sitting in a dark, damp, mouldy room likes them. Karens will Karen on. So catering to Karen's sensibilities will never ever be part of the palace PR and crisis management strategy.

What I don't get is why were the British press baying for William and Catherine blood. From what's come out in the last 2 days, it seems that at least some journalists had an idea that this was a very serious matter. That it was absolutely not about W being an violent abuser or a cheater or Catherine wanting to look pretty, nor was it about KP staff giving up on W+C because they are secretive exasperating, inept bosses.

It was simply about a family trying to come to terms with a devastating news that was drastically going to affect the lives of all 5 of them for a long long time. It's something that you never plan for, no matter who you are.

Knowing that, why were they so cruel, so callus. Where was their sense of nationality or even simple human decency?

They stood by Catherine when she was wrong called a racist. So why did they not stand by her when she is going through the worst time of her life emotionally and physically?

They made a mountain out of a molehill, to the point that from a security POV the powers that be concluded that the best way to mitigate the security risk would be breach her emotional safety, to ensure her and his, physical safety. I truly think this was the #1 reason on the list of reasons why they disclosed it the way they did.

Old ask from March 24th.

Simple. It all boils down to whom the press declared their enemy.

When they were defending Kate over the racism claims, they were defending her from Meghan, UK's Public Enemy #1.

When the Waleses were dealing with Kate's health crisis, the press didn't do anything, and even joined in on the attacks, because Kensington Palace was the enemy since KP refused to give updates on or access to Kate, which the press didn't like. So they stood by and piled on.

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

Moon-chosen, Moon-guided - Part III

Fandom: Baldur’s Gate 3 Characters: Dame Aylin/Isobel Thorm, with guest appearances by Jaheira, Shadowheart, Halsin, Ketheric and Balthazar Length: ~27000 words Rating: M, for canon-typical violence and sexual content, along with mild body horror

It's been a minute, hasn't it? Please enjoy this absolute monster, longer than the previous two parts of the fic combined. I just had a great many things I wanted to address, bits and pieces I wanted to explore, and many loose ends I wanted to tie up.

This part spans the post-game - or how I've decided to envision it for these two, at least. Features yet more hurt/comfort and dealing with trauma, including the two classics of Isobel's back-from-the-dead issues and Aylin's apparent immunity to the idea of self-preservation, but also much building and rebuilding, some dinners (romantic and otherwise), some important discoveries being made and villains being thwarted, a lot of love, and a whole lot of feelings.

Summary:

There is a part of Aylin still in that cage. There is a part of you still in that grave. From that night of your coming-of-age ritual when you astounded all of Reithwin with the uncanny speed of your return from the woods, to your desperate flight away from your own grave, one thing has remained true. The guidance was granted, no matter the harshness or difficulty of the path. But it has always, always been up to you to walk it.

The brilliant, defiant Beacon of Last Light many revere from afar. Isobel Thorm they do not know at all.

Part I Part II

Also on AO3.

—

Part III - Everlasting Light - The Future  

A battle won; an invasion thwarted.

Days later, you and Aylin lie together in a warm bath in a lovely and, miraculously, mostly untouched inn suite. An endlessly grateful proprietor adamantly rebuffed all your attempts to refuse the accommodation after you cleared a clutch of Absolutists out of it, so you linger in the city well after you thought you would, even when the most pressing crises and celebrations have both been dealt with.

It is in this surprisingly comfortable aftermath and hard-won peace that the two of you discuss plans, both immediate and distant. A future, a life: the first in an array of luxuries you can scarcely believe you have been afforded.

You feel lightheaded from the incense you've been keeping lit around your rooms. The scent mixes headily with the cocktail of smells wafting from the countless little bottles of oils and tinctures - an impressive collection that manifested in the bath chamber when you expressed the slightest interest. The steam rising off the surface of the hot, perfumed water is warm when it hits your skin, and Aylin's solid presence against your back is warmer still. You insist on breathing it all in deeply, in slow, steady, lengthy inhales, Aylin's hand pressing reassurance into your chest as soon as there is even a slight rasp to your voice.

"We can stay until the enclave is back on its feet. They seemed glad enough to have us, and there is a lot of good we could do there, I think," you murmur almost absent-mindedly and lightly trace a line of gold over Aylin's knee and down her thigh, pressed between your left side and the wall of the tub. "Though, of course, who could deny the daughter of the Moonmaiden Herself--"

Aylin makes a small sound at the words and you stop immediately. It is an almost-scoff that contains a touch of all of the messy, knotted-up feelings about the way she gets treated that she has ever confided in you: the flattery of it, and the honour, and the always alienating feeling of being so set apart. For all her acknowledgement of and insistence on her role as a radiant divine emissary, you have had ample chance to see Aylin is not one keen to remain sequestered on a pedestal for very long. 

It is another thing you find yourself grateful for. Another segment of the uniquely beautiful and complex marriage of the mundane and the divine that is your beloved. An interplay you would gladly spend the rest of your life (Moonmaiden and all the gods willing, a bit longer this time) trying to truly understand and fully appreciate.

After a moment of contemplation, Aylin rallies and fires back. "Anywhere the Moon shines is the place for Selûne, and so too for Her daughter. And who could deny Her esteemed cleric, Her daughter's beloved, the chosen of Dame Aylin's heart--"

You let out a derisive little snort at "esteemed", at having yourself placed side by side with such lofty company in the age-old adage of the faithful. But you say nothing when Aylin leans over your shoulder with a questioning look. A damp curl of hair sticks to her temple, with another one draped around her collarbone rather enticingly.

The mild distraction of temptation helps you swallow down that particular set of nascent doubts, and you try to turn your thoughts back to practical matters. "I will talk to Shadowheart, see what her plans are. And…" Here you yourself hesitate, a chill coming over you despite the stubborn heat of your surroundings, "and Halsin, who is going back to Reithwin. He asked for our support."

Aylin's hum of acknowledgement vibrates against your back. Yet while the state of your erstwhile home, even uncursed, throws its long shadow over you, it is Karlach's fate that hangs most heavy on Aylin's own heart.

Spread out on the city-turned-battlefield as you all were, you only heard the news afterwards. Karlach, engine molten and about to blow, rushed to Avernus at the last possible moment, without even having a chance to say goodbye to anyone not in her immediate surroundings. Aylin fumed at the unfairness of it all for days, and the thundercloud has lately turned to moroseness.

As you run down the list of your companions, trying to find who would most benefit from your presence, you can pinpoint the exact moment Aylin's thoughts turn to her once again.

"Aylin," you start, but trail off uncertainly. Instead you take her large hand between both of yours, rubbing hopefully soothing circles into the dewy, soap-sudded skin.

"I was not much of a friend to our fierce Karlach," Aylin says, despondent. "She took time and care to comfort me with words of insight and I - I was not there when she won her vengeance against her tormentor. Nor was I there in the aftermath. And neither was I there when she--"

"She'll be back," you rush to reassure in the pause, turning a bit clumsily in order to properly face her. "And she isn't alone this time! Wyll and her, they're a force to be reckoned with. You'll see."

Aylin shakes her head, droplets of water chasing each other down the furrows of her frown. Her eyes trail restlessly over the gently sloshing water your movements have just stirred to life. "I still wish I could--"

You squeeze her hand. "Aylin, my love. One thing at a time. Please. Neither of us are in any fit state to go to the Hells, of all places."

To your surprise, Aylin quickly and quietly acquiesces, sad but calm. Like she's reached some unhappy understanding and seen that raging against it will only help burn her own heart out. "The enclave, then. And Reithwin to follow after. There is much to be done indeed." 

She doesn't sound defeated, not exactly, as she reclines back into the water. But it is not spoken in a tone that you are used to hearing from her.

-

You find Jaheira in the tragically compromised Harper hideout underneath Danthelon's Dancing Axe, where half-hearted attempts were made at scrubbing odd-looking doppelganger blood from the floorboards. 

It is completely unsurprising to you that the High Harper seems to know your plans, somehow, after apparently doing nothing but taking one good look at you. Or perhaps, discomfitingly, she simply knows you and so knew what your decisions would be before you even made them.

"After we left, chasing an army back to Baldur's Gate, I left a small contingent of Harpers on cleanup duty around Moonrise," she begins without preamble, almost as a response to your quiet greeting. "Just to make sure nothing was left to come after us right after we turned our backs on it, you understand."

You nod, and she waves at a pile of paper, parchment, and what can only be termed scraps littering one of the several desks pushed against the walls of the cellar.

"Their scouting reports - take them. There is indeed much to be done there. You and your paladin will have your work cut out for you, when you get around to it. Halsin and his company as well, for all that the curse is finally broken. My Harpers got a start on some of it, but thanks to Orin's machinations I've had to pull everyone back here. Our numbers are… lacking, to say the least."

You wince at that stinging, burning little coal of guilt that you seem to have swallowed, that reignites in your gut every so often. None of this would have happened if you hadn't… And then, after storming the Towers and the long, costly battle against Ketheric, to have ever-pragmatic Jaheira dedicate what little agents she had left to Reithwin - it makes you feel indebted, almost.

"We are going back to the enclave, first," you point out and choose not to deny anything. "Aylin and I. They could use our help rebuilding, as could the city, and honestly, we could use the rest, and the change. We've taken a few days here to recover, but…"

"I would tell you to take your time before tackling Reithwin and all it entails," Jaheira smiles that sharp smile again, "but I know you well enough by now to understand you will not be idle for very long. I remember fearing you'd storm off into the shadows and straight to Moonrise Towers to confront your father with some righteously blazing moonlight whenever the scouts returned with a particularly grim report."

A wince, again, at the reminder that Jaheira, apparently, knew that little tidbit all along, too.

"And your Aylin, hah! Even worse, that one. A matching pair indeed."

What a thought - two beings, so vastly different, yet so utterly meant for each other. It feels good to think, to turn it over and over in your mind: no matter the foul circumstances of your return and the stain they have left on you, you and Aylin belong together, and it is so plain and clear and true for everyone to see.

"You are… staying here?" You ask tentatively, basking in the unexpected warmth and probably completely unintentional encouragement, leafing through some of the documents on the top of the loose stacks.

Jaheira smiles wryly, then opens her arms as if trying to encompass the whole of the Gate. "It is my city, after all. My home, I shudder to say, but finally admit. It is what it is, and it is mine, just as that place is yours."

The memory of a golden little nugget of camp chatter comes to you then, reinforced by a fascinating detail you noticed during the preparations for the city's defence. Your lips curl into a smirk, and you cannot resist. "I wonder what Astele would think, to hear you say that."

Jaheira harrumphs. "I know her followers are gifted diviners, but I didn't know Selûne had taken gossip into her portfolio." Then she sighs, shaking her head. "Nine-Fingers Keene is handling her turf as well as can be expected - she's lost many people as well. Their efforts and contributions to the cleanup are… valuable."

"I'm sure they are," you agree diplomatically, then straighten out the various documents and start putting them away in a satchel. 

"Thank you, Jaheira, for all of this. And… for everything."

She merely nods. There is a catch in your throat when you turn to finally say goodbye the best way you know how. "May the Moonmaiden guide and protect you. In- in all that you choose to do."

"She has already given me a great deal, through you, even when my own decisions may have been lacking," Jaheira replies, stepping out of her report-laden nook at last and coming to stand before you. "But you have given me a great deal of yourself, as well, Isobel. I will not forget it, and neither should you."

A hand on your shoulder, a little less awkwardly rusty than that time in Moonrise. "If you ever get bored of the country life and frolicking around with that impressive angel of yours, remember the Harpers could always use someone of your calibre."

You laugh. "I'll keep it in mind."

-

You cross paths with Shadowheart once more before your departure - and, apparently, hers. She is bound for Waterdeep, she says, the House of the Moon. The two of you take the chance to turn a practical outing for procuring alchemical supplies into an extended farewell. 

The late morning sun plays around both of you as you walk down streets that are slowly regaining their bustle. It is almost as bright as the glow of the mace Shadowheart is so fond of using in battle. An appropriate blessing for new beginnings, indeed.

"I have many things I wish to see, and many questions I will have to find answers to myself," Shadowheart elaborates with an air of determination, as you pass by lines of hawkers who seem unconcerned that most of their wares are displayed on crumbling masonry and the odd nautiloid fragment. "And my parents… I wish to learn about them, where they came from, the beliefs they held so dearly - I thought it would be a good place to start."

Her words call to mind the warm silver shade of a mother you can barely remember leading you by the hand, and the vague impressions of an awe-inspiring dome looming so high above you it might have reached the Moon itself.

"I have no doubt it will be," you reply softly. "Aylin and I are bound elsewhere, I'm afraid. But we will certainly visit there eventually - I'm surprised they haven't called for her already. Perhaps one day we will see you there." 

Your smile is genuine, and so is hers; pure warmth, no cutting undertone or hidden edge to it anymore.

"Oh, Aylin told me of an excellent inn to visit while I'm there. She said she spent quite some time based in Waterdeep, a long time ago - I had no idea."

You wonder, with a private smirk, just how detailed Aylin's recommendation truly was, and if among tidbits such as fine ales and excellent rabbit stew she deigned to include originally founded and run by Selûne Herself. That part of your beloved's - of your Goddess' - life is certainly somewhat of a curiosity, and you quietly decide to let Shadowheart have fun learning of it on her own. It rankles just a bit that Shadowheart's a long time ago was only a little while before you and Aylin met.

As you round a corner and the cracked stained-glass dome of Sorcerous Sundries comes into view, Shadowheart lets out a chortle. "Can you imagine though, her and Gale having to get along within the boundaries of one poor city?"

You cannot help a wince at the thought. "I'm sure Aylin doesn't hold all wizards in contempt. It's just--"

"--the excessively, unwisely ambitious ones?" She cuts in breezily.

"What is Gale up to, nowadays?" You ask with only traces of a grimace and a feeble prod at moving the conversation to a slightly different path.

"Trawling the river for any trace of Mystra's priceless artefact, last I heard. What he plans to do with it once he finds it, well," Shadowheart squares her shoulders, tilts her chin up, and puts on her best Aylin impression, "that will be up to him."

"Well learned," you grin, but it fades quickly when you see Shadowheart has grown serious.

"I hope, for his sake, he chooses well," she says, quietly enough that it is a bit hard to catch her words over the din of the city. "Whatever… whatever that ends up being. It's not exactly obvious, sometimes."

You remember Aylin's eyes growing distant, her voice so very low and soft, when she spoke of what exactly she'd ended up doing, that nasty little Sharran you'd bickered with and dismissed at Last Light. When she laid a merciful hand on my shoulder - the first friendly touch in a century that broke the infernal cage, I… that feeling of falling, of release. It is indescribable.

Thinking of it all still makes your throat catch, and so you take a moment to speak again. "And I thank you again that, for Aylin's sake, and for mine, but most of all for yours, you did."

"Are we going to be thanking each other for the rest of our lives?" It's said lightly, jokingly, almost dismissively. But, upon actually meeting Shadowheart's eyes, it is easy to tell there is a vast array of feelings brewing there. You realise the two of you have stopped walking, and are currently blocking the better part of a nondescript Lower City stairway - hardly an appropriate setting for sharing a moment of sincerity.

You decide you don't particularly care. You throw your arms around her, and she takes less than a heartbeat to hug you back. "Absolutely. If that is what it takes," you mumble into her shoulder, "and then I'll find a way to pester you from Argentil, after."

Moonmaiden, keep your watchful gaze on her, you think as the glint of Shadowheart's little moon-pendant catches your eye, jostled out of its hiding place by your movements, and you do not care if the prayer is redundant or the protection already promised. Do not let anyone steal another moment of her future again.

-

The attack comes a mere tenday and a half after you and Aylin arrive. It happens at night, in that pleasantly busy hour just after midnight when a Selûnite enclave is, by nature and by tradition, at its most active and lively. The fact the intruders did not know this, the surprise in their eyes when they do not, in fact, fall upon easy, confused, sleep-addled prey, speaks volumes about their lack of leadership and preparation.

Most in the ill-formed ranks around you as you rush to the defence are wearing now-familiar Absolutist garb, but many of them are adorned with Myrkulite triangles and bone fragments, their ash-painted faces peeking out from under deep hoods or behind skull-like masks. Some of them come puppeteering undead contingents - a few shambling skeletons at most, nothing that doesn't collapse into a pile the moment you call down some light and call out a prayer. Even if there is a rasp in your throat and a stubborn chill gripping you at the sight of them, they prove rather less than a challenge.

"Selûne, Moonmother," you hear the familiar invocation just behind you, from that cherished voice you'd once resigned yourself to never hearing again. Though you cannot help but focus on the subtle shift in it, the lowering, the slight gravelly quality it did not have before. 

The silver flame flares up next to you, and it almost feels like it will burn you with its intensity. You have never been so much as singed by it. You are used to cradling its like in your own hands, cupping it and using it to warm and to purify - and flinging it at foes. But now, for a moment, you feel the sting of fear at it, at its ferocity.

"In Your name."

One attacker falls before Aylin, reduced to ash in a beam of moonlight before he even has a chance to scream. The next one parries the first blow she aims at him, then tries but fails to entirely evade the second, just as radiant. His cries echo in your ears well after he has died.

The third one to make towards her goes down just as swiftly - but not without exacting a price. Their putrid Myrkulite flail, on a final desperate backswing as they fall, smashes into Aylin's jaw from below with enough force to snap her head backwards and knock her helmet off. Horrified, you watch it describe a glistening arc and disappear into motes of moonlight at the apex. 

A blow like that could have easily felled a man, and yet it does not come even close to stopping Aylin; it barely sends her into a stumble, eyes blazing. She recovers her slipping grip on her sword within a heartbeat, rolls her shoulders and her neck with a crack and an annoyed growl.

You step forward and call out her name, pale silver healing magic coalescing around your fingertips, but Aylin has already dashed-flown out of your reach, into the thick of the battle, growl turning into a roar of fury. Dazzling moonlight follows her, enveloping, wherever she goes, and holy fire scorches the ground in her wake. It is one of those moments when she becomes so clearly divine, unstoppable, disregarding whatever might dare tie her to a worldly, mundane, merely human existence.

All of this you behold from a distance, forcing yourself to focus on the blessings, the protective spells, and whatever healing is immediately required around you. You do not manage to catch up with Aylin until the battle has dwindled down into nothing, the invaders reduced to a few stragglers surrendering or failing to flee.

She is surrounded by fallen foes. Her bloodied sword is still out, silver flames stubbornly licking up its blade. As you step closer, it is painfully obvious even your allies are giving her a wide berth.

"Aylin," you call out tenderly, softly, voice barely rising above her laboured breathing. She draws a final, loud, slightly wheezing and unpleasant-sounding breath before turning to you with a proud tilt of her head that does end in a wince, despite her best efforts. In one movement she blinks the moonlight out of her eyes and flicks her sword free of gore to sheathe it.

Rich, silver-flecked blood is smeared across the lower half of her face, generously mixed with a splash of deep red you know is not hers. It hides most of the damage, and your gut churns at the sight of the beloved face subjected to such violence.

Aylin crouches down without protest when you tug on her arm and gazes up at you almost expectantly, the look of doe-eyed trust a ridiculous contrast to the warlike countenance of barely a second ago.

It is a matter of mere moments to heal her injuries, to encourage and tease the bone and cartilage all back into place, as if nothing had ever happened. She doesn't so much as twitch, even as some rather ghastly re-stitching happens before your eyes and under your touch. You release a breath you weren't even aware you were holding, and forge ahead with a well-worn sentiment: "You shouldn't be so careless with yourself, Aylin."

"The vagaries of battle. It is nothing," she says, back on her feet before you can even begin to protest. One of her hands keeps almost lazily feeling along her freshly-mended jawline and up to her nose, making an even bigger bloody mess of her face. "The fight was soundly won - my Mother's faithful have been kept safe. The rest is a mere trifle. I've had far worse than this."

The frustration in you mounts at this dismissal, and you try to wipe away the worst of the mess coating your gloves. "That does not mean you should… should invite more harm."

"Come, Isobel, what is the worst such a gutless miscreant could ever do to Dame Aylin?" She grins, tone mocking, arms wide as if presenting herself. "Kill her, perhaps?" At this, to your horror, she laughs. "If this was their finest attempt, I pity them, truly." 

Her teeth, where her wryly curled lips show them, are tinged both blood-red and glistening silver. The smallest of gold lines has curled beneath her chin where the spikes of the flail must have broken skin - and you know it to be new, for you know every single one, have made it an almost holy duty to map them and memorise them, no matter their staggering number.

"Aylin, that's not--" you begin, but find yourself bereft of words. Instead you shake your head, look away, and let your hands curl into fists. It feels like you had this argument a dozen times a century ago, and like you've had it a thousand times since your reunion. 

In the immediate grim aftermath, you tend to the wounded, and then the dead. The losses on your side number blessedly few - the attackers were desperate, ill-equipped and ill-prepared, and certainly not counting on Aylin being here. There is some damage to a few of the buildings, some broken windows, a handful of attempts at setting fires; nothing unmanageable. You offer up a quick, almost furtive prayer of gratitude that you were guided back here in time. 

As a pyre mounts and you help sort through the dead foes in a mostly futile quest to identify them, you are faced with an unpleasant reminder that not all in the cult of the Absolute and the army surrounding it were tadpoled True Souls. That you and all of the allies you have made would likely be rooting out remnants for many years to come.

-

You do not broach the subject again until much later that night, almost before dawn, when the time finally comes to attempt to get some rest.

Sleep is, of course, elusive. The rush of battle and danger has only had so much time to settle down, and in your case all that has welled up to replace it is concern and sadness.

You do not very often have theological discussions with Aylin, though it is… tempting, to say the least. But there is something so heart-rending in the way she spoke of herself today that it draws your thoughts in a very particular direction, down a swirling whirlpool that refuses to let go of you even as you twist yourself and your sheets into a tangled mess.

Being the living sword of the Goddess who most praises and holds up free will and choice - how does that truly work? Did she herself ever have a choice, Selûne's own aasimar daughter, silver-blooded and divine of flesh, so very purpose-made?

Was a different path ever even offered to her?

And you feel, deep within, around that wellspring from which your loyalty and faith all derive - you feel that there must have been. That there must be. That Aylin, stubborn and wrought of pure determination as she is, adamantly refuses to consider it. But you know, as surely as you know your Goddess's name and the prayers you've recited since childhood that have so often been answered, that if Aylin wished to stop, Selûne would not be the one standing between her and that choice. It would only ever be Aylin herself. 

Oh, you love her for it, you truly do - her fierce sense of justice, her passion for her duty, her unflinching pursuit of goodness, her endless, glorious drive - but you love all that she is, and that is not all that she is.

She is a luminous and terrifying weapon and protector both, but she is also a person, and you fear she is more loath to admit to the latter than she has ever been, now that she needs to most, all in her utterly understandable rush to reclaim what was torn from her over the past century.

What will you do, Aylin? You want to pull her face down to yours and ask. Will you allow yourself more than this?

With me?

Instead, you merely turn to look at her, wide awake and sitting against the headboard next to you, unnervingly still in the face of your tossing and turning. She meets your gaze quietly, and for a moment you imagine she almost looks guilty.

The silence stretches taut, until you finally break it with a very simple question. "What did She ask of you, that night?"

Aylin blinks at you, clearly having expected something else, and says nothing.

So you elaborate, scrambling up rather inelegantly to rest against the headboard yourself. "During the last full moon, at that beautiful clearing. What was the important divine mission Selûne called you away to convey?"

As the words sink in, Aylin seems almost bashful. Both her hands are busy toying with the soft edge of a fur-lined blanket, once folded at the foot of your bed in case of a mid-night chill. "I am… to stay at your side."

"And?" You prompt, very pointedly. You have intuited some of it, of course - you were there, even if not completely part of the conversation, the holy communion. But Aylin is stubborn, and so are you.

"And rest, and… shore up a bulwark. Isobel, I--"

Even as she trails off into a long pause, you stay silent, this time, because you can see clearly that she understands why you've brought this up. You pry one of her hands off of the blanket and hold it between yours instead. 

"I will try," she offers, finally, and you hate that it sounds so much like she is admitting a defeat. But then she frowns, and a bit of steel creeps back into her voice and bearing. "I must."

-

The members of the enclave hang on Aylin's every word, and she, in turn, instructs them to defer to you.

As you advise and direct the various efforts - where to take the wounded, which repairs to prioritise, which avenue of trade for essential supplies to pursue - you find yourself reaching deep into that well of a governor's daughter's education, where the Moonmaiden's clerical teachings prove not enough. Aylin remains by your side throughout, and her eyes quite noticeably refuse to leave you, filled to the brim with naked adoration and admiration. To call it flattering feels like a woeful understatement.

She is very intrinsically charismatic, of course, and a force of nature to boot. But you know Aylin much prefers to fill the role of a vanguard rather than a general. A knight-errant travelling the realms to perform great deeds in her mother's name, an emissary charged with doling out blessings and protection - and punishment.

But she is also clearly fond of being a strong pair of arms when building materials needed to be hauled or when fields needed to be worked. And then that same pair, now armed with exquisite tenderness, helping to transport the injured and the infirm and herd unruly children. So much of Aylin seems to be blossoming before your very eyes now that she is striving to give herself permission, in a matter of days: gentleness, and care, and helpfulness, and diligence, and thoughtfulness, and all the other parts of her that withered unused in the Shadowfell for so long. 

The casual touches between the two of you are endless, the constant stream of tiny reassurances for the both of you that you are alive, that all of this is indeed real. You do not go half an hour without a hand brushed against a shoulder; a kiss pressed to your temple in passing; an arm wrapped around your waist lightly but insistently as you stand; a warm, wide palm against the back of your neck, tracing down, then resting on the small of your back as you speak.

You've also noticed a habit she seems to have picked up, reserved for when her hands happen to be free of you. If there is something soft nearby - a blanket, young grass, a cushion, and, on one memorable occasion, a surprisingly agreeable cat - Aylin will press her palms against it, keep it in her hands and fiddle with it, touch it over and over again seemingly without thought. 

You do wonder if she's even aware she does it. It is rather endearing and never fails to cause a warm bloom in your chest whenever you notice; it is also heartbreaking and makes your chest swell with the drive to protect, protect, protect.

All of which amounts to your heart feeling ready to burst when, one afternoon that's been judged to be too warm for any strenuous outdoor work, Aylin musters up the courage to ask you for a very old favour. It has taken her a while, for reasons you shudder to think of and hate to know; months of completely understandable reticence to once again indulge in what you would be prepared to call one of the heights of intimacy. 

"My wings," Aylin states, then stops. Clears her throat. Fidgets with something she's holding in her hands - the edge of a brush, and something you cannot quite make out. "If you would… I would like it if you would kindly assist me…"

You graciously spare her the trouble of spelling out the rest of the request, because you know exactly what she wants. In no time at all you sit on the bed in your chemise, she in front of you in only some of her underthings, as you get started on preening, cleaning, and generally pampering Aylin's wings. She is tense, at first, as you feared she would be - but your own nerves at the thought you might not remember how to do this right disperse near-immediately, you apply yourself diligently, and she is melting into your touch within minutes. The undercurrent of desperate eagerness to replace grim memories and sensations with something far more pleasant is a new addition to the proceedings you do your best to disregard.

Vanes, fluffy down, stray pin feathers coming in to replace feathers lost in the battle against the Absolute - you work through them all with unparalleled care. Aylin has procured a gentle, sweet-smelling oil to smooth over the topmost feathers, and to spread on and between her shoulder blades. You have some limited experience with falconry, acquired when a travelling delegation from Cormyr spent a few months in Reithwin - and this is nothing like the care for plumage they instructed you in. In fact, you are fairly sure none of this is truly, strictly necessary. But it became a treasured indulgence for you both anyway, a long time ago, and you value this unique chance to spoil Aylin rotten. When you are rewarded with a low hum of satisfaction from her, you feel a swell of pride, as well as deep-set reassurance that she does not mind your cold hands at all.

It does take considerable time and effort, and it gives you ample chance to muse about the odd in-between nature of the wings themselves: a magical sign of Aylin's divine parentage that she can manifest and dismiss at will, while also being very real and physical, a part of her just as much as any other limb. She has spoken to you of the rare occasions of encountering other aasimar in her travels and finding some understanding, but also finding so much that set her apart even there - and being met with envy and pity both. Another singularity of your darling, straddling the borders of several worlds.

The two of you are mostly quiet throughout, save for when you murmur quick questions to gauge Aylin's comfort and she encourages you to carry on. But as the afternoon draws ever onwards, this is not all she seems to be keen on, if her increasingly eagerly roaming hands and glances over her shoulder at you are any indication. She manages to sit still until you are almost done; or until merely trailing fingers down your calves becomes too little for her, and then she turns in your arms to kiss you, rather insistently.

"Aylin. Are you sure?"

She buries her head between your neck and shoulder and breathes against your skin. "My love, my sweetest, brightest light of my heart. Isobel. Your touch… nothing else can calm the raging storm. The furor. Please."

"How could I ever deny you, when you ask so nicely?" You tease lightly, reaching over to put away the brushes and oil containers. Aylin insists on making it all far harder than it needs to be by nipping at your neck and refusing to let go of you. "My darling, a veritable poet." 

You smirk at her squirming as you pry her off and urge her to lie down, stilling her movements - all of that sheer strength and latent power - with but one slight press against her hips. That determination burns in you again: nothing but a loving, gentle touch for her now. Cherishing. Tenderness and care.

It is a special relief every time a piece of you comes back to you so readily: a firm press with the flat of your tongue, and Aylin is lost in an exhilaratingly familiar way. To find the unchanged between the two of you has become something of a fixation. A century of darkness has stolen many things with it, but some things persist. Like the feel of Aylin and the taste of her and the little sounds she makes and the way she throws her head back in delight.

She manages an almost petulant whine in the back of her throat, thighs shivering against your feather-light touch as you move away. Her breathing is still strained, great loud gasps, and it is a special, private delight to see her so undone. You kiss up one of the golden lines as it bisects her stomach, snakes up her chest and neck, until you reach her lips.

"Let me…" Aylin mumbles through the kiss. 

You stop her surge forward with the gentlest touch of your hand to her chest, shaking your head. Instead you lie down against her and bask in the wondrous feeling of simply existing together spilling like warm honey all over your insides.

Your hair is a mess from where her fingers had been curling in it, running through it, but you only care enough to smooth it back from tickling and sticking to your face. The afternoon sun is balmy enough to have you kicking away the covers as you fall into a comfortable, utterly lazy doze. 

Every so often, a kiss is pressed to your face - forehead, cheeks, lips. Large, calloused fingers carefully trace your features. Soft murmurs only half-meant for your ears reach you; mostly meant just for Aylin herself. Precious, beloved, cherished - she names you all of this and more, and then - safe, at my side, alive, alive, alive. A hand cups your cheek and another comes to rest on your chest, feeling the beat of your heart.

"No sleep?" You mutter, barely awake, to Aylin who is hovering over you. She looks blatantly enraptured, even as you squint through sleep-caked eyes.

"I do not feel like closing my eyes to your beauty. More entrancing and delightful than any dream could ever hope to be. Isobel."

The way she says your name, with a note of reverence mixed into the sheer longing, never fails to make your heart clench with deep, almost painful feeling. None of the beautiful, startlingly poetic epithets for you that she so likes conjuring up can quite compare to the simple adoration she imbues those few syllables with.

The setting sun paints the room and all of her in glittering gold. And for all that she is made of and meant for her divine mother's moonlight, Aylin bathed in sunlight is always a breathtaking sight to behold.

"Mmmm," you hum, stretching languidly. "Look at that. I've been sent an angel."

"That you have," she responds, just as softly, smiling so very tenderly. "Yours, Isobel. Forever."

-

When a message comes from Halsin and the contingent of druids that travelled ahead, you know your inevitable return to Reithwin draws near.

The land is already healing rapidly; after a century of futile attempts, it is a wonder to behold, they claim. The road has been cleared of the remnants of a marching and pillaging army and secured to the best of their ability. The first of the refugees have already started to come upriver, eager to work the land and build homes.

The satchel with Jaheira's reports awaits, stashed in the corner of the small living quarters you and Aylin have grown so comfortable in.

When she returns from one of her errands to find you sitting on the bed, pointedly frowning in the corner's general direction, Aylin's question is simple and succinct.

"When do we depart?"

-

You deliberately avoided it all the first time, only briefly visiting the throne room after the Harpers took over. Now, however, the long shadow of Moonrise Towers looms inescapable, and its fate has been left up to your judgement.

Climbing through the ravaged library and seeing the defilement of yet another one of your erstwhile sanctuaries is just as painful as you anticipated. But it is nothing compared to what you find when you make it all the way up to your old rooms.

The bones of a dog, in Absolutist regalia.

You fall to your knees next to them. Undamaged, painstakingly reassembled into this macabre display - you can see the shape of her in there, still, your Squire. It almost seems like she simply laid down to sleep before withering away. The last dregs of magic wafting from the awful pile feel horrifyingly familiar and just as sickening as the thought that Squire died for you, was brought back an undead mockery, then died again. Surely, surely no more horrors were needed here, on your father's seemingly endless tally?

But then, the niggling thought comes: if you yourself were not undone like this, upon Ketheric's - Myrkul's - defeat, then perhaps you are not so far gone, unfixable, wrong?

Aylin's hand upon your shoulder rouses you from your stupor, and you realise you have no idea how long you've been here, if you've given her cause to worry. You know only that your legs have grown numb, your knees hurt, and you feel very cold.

Her voice is unusually quiet, like the respectful and solemn whisper of one attending a funeral. "Let me take her and remove these foul accoutrements from her. Then we can lay her to rest wherever you wish."

The tears on your face have dried into sticky tracks that make your skin pull when you sniff. You grimace and nod, wordless. 

Aylin takes your hand, helping you to stand up, and you turn to leave immediately. Moonrise Towers you deem to be a hollowed-out, unsalvageable husk, and you resolve to inform Halsin as soon as possible.

You have run up and down these stairs, snuck around these landings and rooms - as a precocious child, as a wilful teenager, and long into adulthood. It has ever been your domain. You have died here.

You do not want to spend another moment here.

-

It is far more convenient this way, you say to yourself. Everything you need is easily accessible from the inn that is once again to serve as your base of operations, and your home - for there is hardly another liveable structure readily available in the region. Jaheira even left you with all the keys. You're certainly not going to impose on the refugees, and you do not think the druids would be a very good option. 

So Last Light it is.

Aylin performs amusingly mundane little tasks and lounges on the bed while you spend evenings going through the Harpers' documents. You imagine, fleetingly, how easy it would have been to do all you did here with her at your side. How damned close she was the entire time. How he lied to your face and called it love, called you family--

Your very first night back, you took the bust from your room - insisted on hauling it down all the stairs personally, no matter how long and how many coughing fits it took - and left it in the cellar. There is very little you want to ask him anymore. Papa, father, Ketheric - whoever he might have been. The burden of undoing his grim work is more than enough evidence of his presence and the shadow he has cast over the life and unlife he has saddled you with.

Instead you bring up some of the relics and remnants of clandestine worship stashed in the cellar by a handful of brave souls. You didn't have a chance to visit this part of Last Light, in all the chaos and revelations that happened around Ketheric's defeat, around the curse being lifted. The discovery of a hidden Selûnite shrine just underneath where you had set up your own makeshift altar felt fitting, but hardly an emergency. And then - the Absolute conspiracy revealed, the city, everything else… it was, sadly, set aside.

In this mostly quiet aftermath, now that the time has come to start picking up the pieces, you begin there. It is a veritable treasure trove, though it pains you to think how many paid with their lives for it. The Harper reports paint a vivid picture for you despite their brusque, businesslike delivery: the faithful, doomed pillars that the brothers Morfred and Halfred chose to be, and a Selûnite resistance that ended in death, sulphur, and hellfire. Was it worth it? you want to ask them, even as you know, with a certainty that seems to reach to your very marrow, you would have done the same. That all the free will and choice and fear in the world could not keep you from opposing the darkness.

Aylin, as if feeling your eyes upon her, looks up from what must once have been a lovely silver chalice that she is attempting to polish back to glory with great determination. When she meets your rather intense gaze with her own questioning one, you merely shake your head and go back to your reading.

One cannot rip out the foundations of a building and expect it to remain standing, states your home's architect himself in faded ink on century-old paper, and you nod along, poring over his words, committing them to memory. It is the least you can do.

There is good masonry still to be found in those parts of Moonrise that have not been burrowed through completely and infested with illithid flesh; excellently-hewn stone that will make for fine homes, laid anew as a foundation for many lives. A far better way to attempt to dry Selûne's tears than a tall, proud tower, you think.

Once you have exhausted the cellar, you follow the trail towards the Mason's Guild, Aylin stalwart but silent at your side. Neither of you had much chance to truly observe the remnants of the town proper, either before or after the lifting of the curse - you, fleeing your grave and your grave-hollowed father, and Aylin, rocketing towards her promised reckoning. The sunlight now lays bare so much of the truth of what was done to Reithwin, and though you can see where good work has begun, where dead vines have been pulled away and burned, paths and roads cleared, and so many old, old bones laid to rest, there is such a staggering, overwhelming amount still left to do.

Your mental tally of the houses and their state of disrepair grinds to a halt as you realise the presence at your back is gone. 

"Aylin?" You call out, looking all around you to find where she's suddenly disappeared off to - only to spot her already at the grand gates and remnants of arches that mark the entrance to your destination.

There is something heartwrenching about the way Aylin kneels down and picks up shattered pieces of a statue of her own mother, the way she fits them together in her hands as if she can will them back into wholeness and splendour. 

As her fingers gently and reverently trace a marble cheek, you remember, unbidden, an inconsolable young girl doing the same. Still small enough that her grieving father had to lift her, holding her to his chest with such desperation, in order for her to reach the carved likeness of her mother, sleeping forever in the cool, incense-sodden air of the mausoleum.

You decide there and then to have one of the statues made part of the restoration efforts. Your Lady returned to her rightful place in the heart of Reithwin, as you pour your all into rebuilding life from rubble and ruin. 

It feels more and more like the right thing to do, as you go on. As the two of you continue to pick up the pieces, chasing down the various loose ends from Jaheira's reports, an increasingly detailed portrait emerges of Selûne's soft, guiding, subtle touch; of the faithful clinging to her teachings that there is always hope and light to be found in the darkness, that they themselves will be found and led to a safe path; of terror, oppression, and torments inflicted upon them by Ketheric Thorm and his Dark Justiciars - and, chillingly, their own neighbours, friends, loved ones. Defeat after defeat, attempt after attempt, in an almost-cycle of waning far more than waxing. Culminating in hastily dug Selûnite graves right in front of the entrance to the Thorm family mausoleum - a place at whose twisted, burst-open gates you yourself choose not to linger very long. 

Final casualties of the war on the side of the Harpers and druids, or later additions sent to combat the shadow curse, to perhaps try and find Aylin - impossible to tell. But whatever they were, would this be reassuring evidence that the Moonmaiden did care, that Aylin's mother did try to reach her - or merely fodder for more guilt and anger, that people she was sent to protect instead died in her name?

Your thoughts are interrupted when Aylin finishes paying her respects and comes back down the uneven cobbled path to the graveyard entrance, ducking under branches of trees that are still crooked and gnarled, but now sporting rich canopies of leaves for the afternoon sun to dapple. She takes your hand without a word and leads the two of you away.

"They are safe in my Mother's halls, righteous champions all, savouring their justly earned respite," Aylin finally speaks up when you are halfway across the wide town square, and the inadvertent reminder of your own oddly lacking afterlife makes you shiver. 

-

Then, a barkeep and a brewer who claimed to be Ketheric's son, Jaheira's notes say. But you know for a fact you never had a brother. 

Or did you?

An acquaintance, a distant relative bearing the family name - but there were so very many. And the Waning Moon had never been one of your preferred haunts, in life. Doubly so now, as you need to put a cloth over your face to even be able to approach its entrance; so strong and unbearably foul is the miasma that wafts from it in all directions.

A poisoner, a murderer, an informant, a rat; one who knew Ketheric's secret, who knew both Aylin and where she was, what had been done to her. One of the first real clues to her whereabouts - to her existence - Shadowheart and the others had found. 

Your blood? Ketheric's? How? And why kept so hidden, secret? Would you have wanted such a man for a brother?

You scour the ruins of your former life and realise you will never know.

-

Aylin may have been granted a respite, but there could be none for you. 

Taking stock of the lands destroyed by the curse or ravaged by your father's armies only serves to spur your determination -  a century or a month ago makes little difference in your mind. What you caused in death, you would repair in life, all of it - you vow this with the ardour befitting a paladin.

"You are not to blame," Aylin repeats and repeats, and you understand, of course. And understand that she is correct - you hardly chose to die and drive your own father to… this. It is a patently ridiculous thought. But still, the weight presses down on you, and ignites all of those instincts that make you so potent a healer.

And besides - there was no other Thorm left standing, was there?

After you've worn yourself down to the bone yet another day, you return to your rooms long after night has fallen to find Aylin waiting for you, perched very formally on one of the chairs, another one set very conspicuously right across from her. She's lit candles everywhere, you notice. There is a basket of fresh fruit on the table next to her - one of the druids' doing, no doubt - a few slices of bread, and a small plate of cheese.

Aylin looks deathly serious when she nudges the chair in front of her with a foot, angling it towards you. Her eyes pointedly refuse to leave yours. So you sigh and sit down, surrendering to whatever this is about to become.

Instead of launching into a passionate tirade, however, Aylin uncrosses her arms, reaches over, and puts the plate in front of you. Then, after a moment, she grabs the bread and a small bunch of grapes from the bowl - dark, rich purple, and you recognise them as your namesake and favourite as their sweet smell hits you - setting them before you just as expectantly.

Only once you've taken a few bites of each does Aylin seem satisfied. She takes a deep breath, pulls her chair closer to you, faces you, and begins. "My darling, allow me, for a moment, to cast your own words back at you. You are no tool or instrument either, to be used until nothing of use is left."

Those blue-silver eyes bore into you, as if looking through and into you. You curse yourself for letting yourself underestimate, or forget, just how insightful and attentive Aylin could be. "I see how you blame yourself for things you had no part in, and how you endeavour to take on all of my own burdens besides." Then she smiles, with the slightest twist to it, and inclines her head in a gentle mockery of defeat. "And though I might be capable of great feats indeed, dissuading you from striving for a cause you have taken to heart will never number among them." 

"Aylin," you begin, awkwardly, after conquering a stubborn mouthful of bread and cheese - a wonderful dark rye, still a bit warm, and a lightly smoked cheddar you've always been particularly partial to, and where did she even get these?

But Aylin shakes her head and presses on. "Nor would I wish to," she draws even closer, all trace and pretence of strictness gone from her as she nuzzles against your cheek and presses a kiss there, "my fearsome, brilliant Isobel."

You blush at the praise, clear your throat, and feel quite ill-equipped for the turn the conversation has taken, the lengths Aylin seems to have gone to set this all up.

"And so, though my Mother has been clear in Her instructions for me - as have you in your intent to see them followed through, my love - I believe taking care to ensure a more even sharing of burdens is in order. Would you not agree?"

"I will try," you reply at last, feeling only slightly chastised and mostly just very cared for, very loved, and far warmer than the single barely-aglow fireplace warranted. "I must," you add, not quite sure if you meant it as a wry little jest or not.

Aylin pulls her chair as close to yours as its wooden frame allows, until the two of you are sitting thigh to thigh and one of her arms is comfortably around you. 

"Will you have something?" You ask, a bit embarrassed you only thought to do so after almost half the plate was already gone.

She shakes her head. "I took my evening repast with the others downstairs. It was a pleasant enough affair, even as deprived as I was of my favourite company. No, this is all for you, and it is more than well-deserved."

Your appetite has been quite lacking since your unpleasant return from the grave. But for once you happily eat your fill, buoyed by the light, simple fare that is an enticing combination of some of your personal favourites, and Aylin's steady and undeniably proud presence at your side.

"How did you even manage to get any of this?" You ask when you are done, head resting on Aylin's shoulder, feeling both pleasantly full and lighter than you have in a long while. "When? I do not think anyone even noticed you were gone, or they would have told me."

Aylin chuckles, and you feel it reverberate against you, so very reassuringly familiar. "What use my wings, if not to fly off on a whim to spoil my beloved?"

You laugh at that, turning to press your face against her chest. "Magnificent, resplendent Dame Aylin. If only the world knew how sweet she was, too. Thank you."

"Sweetness…" Aylin starts, slow and thoughtful, then trails off. You can tell you've inadvertently prompted something she's been pondering for a while, so you rest your palm against her thigh and rub small circles with your thumb, and let her wrangle her thoughts into words in her own time. 

"For a while, after our reunion, I thought - I feared - that perhaps the old taste of happiness had grown too heady and sweet for Dame Aylin. That after a century so starkly bereft of it, instead of indulging, I would have to deprive myself of it and grow slowly reaccustomed to it, lest it make me ill."

She pushes you away from her shoulder gently, turning so she can fully look at you, and tilting your chin up with two achingly tender fingers. "But I know, now, I was wrong to fear it. And I know you should not fear it, either."

"We have nothing to fear," you state with immense resolve rushing from a wellspring you aren't sure you can name. And while you know this cannot possibly be true even after the defeat of so many foes and villains and schemers, it feels like the truth, for at least this one calm night in a simple candle-lit room.

-

The dinner is only slightly awkward, as far as these affairs have gone in the past. The most notable thing about it is that your father, it seems, has learned from last time.

First of all, Balthazar isn't here - wasn't invited, or had to beg off due to some undoubtedly important business. What your father sees in that man and why he holds his advice in such high esteem is quite beyond you. It is an amusing thought, however, that he, too, might have suffered from the horrible awkwardness and simply invented an excuse for this occasion.

Second - oh, Lady Arianella Bormul had been lovely, the very picture of elegance and rather breathtaking grace. With a crown of curls you felt a stab of envy over, and a perfectly cut gown that accentuated every curve of her and every dark blush shade of her skin. Carrying herself like a queen in the dining room, but perfectly polite and amicable in the conversations you two were inevitably forced into afterwards, with intriguing flashes of a cutting wit. But you shared so very little. And she was beautiful like a work of art whose objective qualities everyone agreed upon, you included, but that just were not to your personal taste.

Now you wonder just how obvious you'd made it.

As your father shoots you pointed glances from across the table and over a deliberately placed carafe of wine, you allow yourself, briefly, an entire slew of unkind thoughts. About how maybe things would be different if your mother were still here. About how much easier it would be if you had siblings, so that the entire future of Reithwin and the Thorm family and your father's heart didn't rest on your shoulders. About how selfish you truly would like to be. 

Then you shove it all back down and smile at the guests around the table, and offer your opinion about the most excellent skills of your local mason's guild and their potential for expansion.

The young Lady Jana Whitburn is strategically sat right across from you, as her father and yours conduct the important conversations on venison and marble and slate trade that this visit was ostensibly arranged for. She is tall and broad and clad in a marvellously fetching brocade suit of dark green. Her mother, rather obviously focused on you since their arrival in what is clearly a tactical division of duties agreed upon in advance, talks about Jana's successes in the tournament arenas across the Coast and her pending performance in Waterdeep's Field of Triumph. She herself, in a pleasantly deep yet melodic voice, mentions being interested in jousting, as a means of keeping her riding skills sharp while she is not out and about keeping her family's lands safe. Tilts her head at you with a winning smile at the conclusion of one adventurous story or other, the sharp cut of her chiselled jaw accentuated in perfect candlelight. You smile back, and poke half-heartedly at your tasteless dessert.

Later, you take her for a walk in Reithwin's small but well-kept gardens. She very gallantly offers you her arm, and you take it. Your father and her parents beam, and you contain your sigh. But when you look up at your companion, you are slightly surprised to notice that there is something brewing behind her eyes as well.

As soon as you are out of eyesight and earshot, you stop, take your hand off her arm and turn to face her.

"My apologies, Lady Whitburn…"

She almost winces when you address her, and shakes her head as if she is trying to physically shake off the formality and the trailing remnants of the dinner atmosphere. "Jana, please, Lady Thorm." 

"Jana, then," you smile your most agreeable smile, "and so I must be Isobel, no?"

"Of course, Isobel," she smiles back, but it is clearly strained, and you feel nothing so much as pity.

"Listen, Jana, I…" You hesitate, struggling to put your words into polite, inoffensive shape.

All this does is highlight the lack of Aylin, the lack of the connection and utterly natural understanding between the two of you. The ease. Even when there was supposed to be some fundamental and unbridgeable rift between you, according to your father.

"I'm afraid my father has misled you and your family - not out of any desire to harm, nor with ill intent. But, you see, I… I already have a lovely woman courting me. Well, rather further along than mere courting, I would say…"

To your surprise, Jana bursts into laughter, light and clear, and you are spared the embarrassment of elaborating further.

"Isobel, you cannot believe what a relief that is for me to hear."

You pause, a bit taken aback by the enthusiasm of her response. "Oh?"

"I'm afraid I count myself taken as well. Now, make no mistake, you are perfectly charming, and a delight in conversation. But," she waves a dismissive hand, "the heart wants what it wants and all that."

"That it does," you agree, and this time your smile is genuine. A tension you had gotten so used to seems to melt away from your shoulders, and the two of you resume your stroll among the gardener's latest offerings. "My father, well… he's a shrewd man. You and my Aylin would get along splendidly, I think. You seem very much alike in many ways."

"As would you and my Iona. She is training to be a cleric too, an acolyte of Ilmater. I swear, the realms have never seen a more patient and kind creature. Whenever I visit her at the temple I take a moment to observe her finishing her rounds - the way she all but glows with compassion is--" Jana halts both her words and her steps, slightly embarrassed, as if she has only now caught herself in her charmingly lovestruck enthusing. "Ah, but I've gone off on a tangent, haven't I?" 

You cannot help but smile at the sight of someone so utterly, beautifully enamoured. It is, after all, a feeling you happily know all too well.

"Please," you gesture at a bench behind some conveniently tall rose bushes - one of your favourite spots. "Don't stop on my account. Though, of course, now I can't help but wonder… what is your family's objection to the match? If you don't mind me asking," you add hastily.

Jana gives a wry smile as she takes a seat. "My parents would prefer someone of much higher birth for me." 

"I think mine would prefer I set my sights lower," you chuckle ruefully.

Jana's interest seems to be piqued. "Is that so? I've heard some… rumours, since our arrival. I've been wondering about, well, what kernel of truth spawned them."

"Have you, now?" You arch an eyebrow, allow a bit of bite into your tone. "You've barely been here a day - I wouldn't have taken you for a gossipmonger."

"You'll have to forgive my natural curiosity," her grin is as easily charming as it was during the dinner, but now, in the unexpectedly pleasant atmosphere of friendly understanding, you allow yourself to fully appreciate it, and to grin back. "But you must admit it's a bit unusual, Isobel. A celestial paramour… I suppose your father wants you to look lower than the very moon in the sky?" 

Her dramatic gesture in the general direction of said moon earns her a giggle, which she seems to take as encouragement.

"Is it true she single-handedly took on a score of Nightcloaks and won?"

You think back over the many rousing tales of victory Aylin has shared with you, and when nothing rings a bell you realise she must be talking about the raid last summer.

"You mean here, when the Sharrans dared to attack Reithwin?" It's hard to contain your amusement at her eager nod. "Well, it wasn't exactly single-handed and there were no Nightcloaks among the Sharran forces, but I can confirm she was certainly impressive."

You decide to leave out the part about Aylin dying and coming back right before your eyes. It is something you've yet to discuss with her, more than a full year later. Something you've no idea how to bring up, and something that inspires in you feelings you cannot quite define.

Something you know you will have to confront, one day.

For now, you sit on a secluded bench and shirk familial duties with a fellow highborn daughter. The two of you trade stories for the rest of the evening, and by the end of it you feel like you've known both Jana Whitburn and Iona Bluewater for years, and find yourself rather invested in the future of their relationship. In turn, you hope to have painted a picture of an Isobel who is more than just General Thorm's daughter, and of an Aylin who is something besides her divine silver bloodline.

You part amicably when the time comes, even promise to write to one another. Later on, the leave-takings complete, both of you having played your respective parts well enough to buy yourselves some very brief reprieve, you go to retreat to your room. Every stair you climb still seems to drop your heart that much deeper into a listless moroseness.

The air in your room is heavy and stale after the garden's freshness, so you decide to take your brooding out to your balcony. You may have won a friend today, but your father will be in a dour mood when he finds out his attempt has once again fallen through. And then how long until he plans another? Or turns to something else? No, this was simply untenable--

A gleaming Aylin alights on the balcony and pulls you into an embrace in a single, elegant movement, and it is like the Moon rising to dispel the dark of a cloudy night.

The first thing you notice as you are subjected to one kiss after another is that your beloved seems to be of a rather amorous disposition. You still wear your jewels and your finest silver-blue gown, the picture-perfect lady. But with the way Aylin's hands are wandering you sense this might not be the case for very long.

You place a hand on her chest, the metal pleasantly cool against your palm, and she stops, looking at you both questioningly and with blatant yearning.

Which should be ridiculous. You were barely apart for a day! You've gone longer without seeing each other when Aylin flew away on some divinely ordained quest or mission or another. But the feelings you read on her face are a perfect reflection of your own, and you are sick of the very thought of denying them. Instead, you throw your arms around her and draw her close once more.

"I missed you," you murmur the truth into her neck, just above the edge of her gorget, into that bit of unearthly pale skin that is always so conveniently available for you to kiss.

"I have dutifully stayed away, exactly as you bade me to," Aylin doesn't sound too disgruntled, and for that you find yourself both grateful and relieved. "But your guests are gone at long last, and so I consider my duty done."

You suppress a scowl at the bitterness that rises in you - because yes, you did pull Aylin aside and request, against the palpable wishes of every fibre of your being, that she not show herself around Moonrise today. All in the ultimately futile pursuit of appeasing your father, in a way so shallow and childish and stupidly obviously temporary that you feel a flare of anger - disgust, even - at yourself for not standing your ground. For going along with it all in the first place. But the slight yet audible disdain Aylin puts on the word guests is too conspicuous, too intriguing, and so your curiosity trumps your rising guilt.

"Do you have something against the Whitburn family?" Surely, if there was something objectionable about them, your father wouldn't have invited them the way he did. Aylin would have warned you of anything sinister. But then, suddenly, a different, more darkly amusing flavour of thought arises. "Or do you merely not like Lady Jana Whitburn?"

Aylin huffs, tilts her head with an unconvincing nonchalance. "She seems a fine woman. A knight with several deeds to her name - in particular some courageous outings against a local Cyricist offshoot, very recently. I hear she conducted herself with utmost skill and bravery."

"You've looked into her, I see?" You ask teasingly. Aylin's frown alone is an entire hundred-page novel. "Aylin. Are you jealous?"

The tinge of possessiveness in the way she holds you against her chest is clear to you now. You also find you have no complaint to give.

"I cannot help but feel this latest attempted match is… rather shrewdly targeted. Do you not find it so? Why, I would near take it as a slight."

With some reluctance, you pull away the slightest bit in order to face her properly.

"Aylin, look at me," you tilt her chin up, make her meet your eyes, reaching over to smooth the thundercloud away from her brow. "Forget about it, about them. I would have none but you - you know this by now, I hope. Only you."

Forever, you dearly wish you could say, sometimes. Your fingers trace down her cheek and to her lips as you watch her ire pour back into fervour. 

"Isobel, I swear, from the moment our eyes met, I--"

You interrupt her with a kiss - she is too striking and too beautiful and too achingly, passionately devoted not to.

The entire situation is a problem to solve, and a mounting one. You can tell by your own rising annoyance and resentment each time the subject comes up that you cannot entertain your father's attempts at denying your relationship for much longer. But you can sense in both your and Aylin's current moods that any discussion will be anything but productive.

You break apart, but stay close enough for you to whisper against her mouth. "Why don't we stop wasting time, and instead of wallowing in misery, you take me to bed."

A different frown creases her brow now as she inclines her head towards the door you left ajar behind you. "Your bed? Here?"

You glance back as well, almost drawn in and through the imposing towers of Moonrise and all it represents.

"Yes," you reply with little hesitation. You decide then and there to be done with this farce. No more flying away to stay at Last Light, or utterly unsubtle attempts at sneaking off, slinking back before dawn only to present yourself downstairs come morning, unacknowledged but fooling nobody. There are other methods in your arsenal besides pointless subterfuge. "And tomorrow - if you wish to join us, of course - I would like to invite you to breakfast. Where you will sit at my side."

Where you belong, you swallow back, keeping your mock-proclamation formal. Where the world should and will acknowledge you belong.

Aylin's smirk reassures you she understands fully how you intend to play this. "How could I decline my lady's invitation?"

You tilt your chin up, the picture of a lady issuing a decree, even as your lips curl into a smile. "Despite any slights, intended or not, and protests from my family, it is an honour to have you here. I will see that it is better demonstrated, as it should have been from the start."

Or perhaps it would be better to say how it was at the start, before Ketheric Thorm's welcome for Selûne's emissary cooled down to an icy, formal tolerance - of course, exactly as your and Aylin's relationship blossomed, decidedly informal, regardless.

Aylin's mouth is hot on your neck as she effortlessly lifts you up and carries you inside. You feel her grin through her kisses. "I think, Isobel, you'll find the honour is all mine. And so is having you. Here or anywhere else."

You cannot help but laugh, taking her face between both your hands and peppering it with kisses in return, always delighted by her utter lack of both subtlety and hesitation.

Once Aylin plants you on the bed and herself between your thighs, your dress lost to some darkened corner and her gauntlets lost to the aether, she leaves little room for thought or speech. Relentless and utterly driven, she refuses to stop until your legs are jelly, your head is void of all concerns, and your heels have all but left dents in her backplate. 

Her face both glows and glistens when she rests her cheek against your stomach at long last, alight with some private amusement and sheer pride. You thread your hands through her hair and catch your breath, and for a little while simply bask in her presence.

She stretches out a bit, unfolds her wings just enough to let fluffed-up, ruffled feathers settle back into place, and you sigh at the sight. So magnificent in her devotion, your angel.

Aylin next makes a show of licking at her fingers with a pleased smirk, then her lips for good measure. "I may not have been invited to the evening's festivities, but my darling, ever caring, ever thoughtful, provides bountiful nourishment nonetheless. It is the height of honour, to have such a delight saved for me alone."

You flush and squirm, and would like to state something rather precise and factual about moon cycles and the workings of your mortal body. "Aylin!" You throw an arm over your burning face instead. "Gods, you say such things…"

"But you take such delight in it when I do," she replies, tilting her head faux-innocently.

"I adore it. I adore you. Come here and I'll show you just how much."

This is what prompts her to finally take a moment to dismiss her armour, bringing her next to you in a heartbeat. You take another precious few seconds to marvel at how perfectly she fits into your arms, like she was made to be there, instead of for any divine mission.

You spend the night curled around each other in a too-small bed, both of you choosing to be utterly brazen.

-

Inevitably, as though waiting for the two of you to settle into something resembling the beginnings of a bearable enough routine - if not exactly comfort and peace - there is a shift in the air. 

It starts rather inconspicuously. Jaheira sends her regards - still busy with her city - along with a warning that Reithwin should prepare to receive a significant number of new hopeful residents, as word about the lifting of the shadow curse keeps spreading amongst the many displaced. This bit of news calls for a proper war council meeting with Halsin, and so you convene on the large balcony of Last Light that offers the best view across the quiet water, towards the town.

"I think, for the most part, we are well-equipped to receive these people; to house them, feed them - our progress has been good," Halsin states, clearly proud, but still visibly held back by some worry. "There is something very particular that concerns me, however."

You have an awful, growing suspicion you know what it is that troubles him, but you wait for him to continue. A small, selfish part of you hopes it is something mundane and simple to solve, like a question of drinking water purification or field irrigation.

"The Gauntlet of Shar," Halsin says grimly, and your heart sinks in time with Aylin's expression. "The entrance to the Shadowfell. We cannot leave all of that right underneath us, not now when more and more civilians are coming. With children, at that. These people have already been through far more than their fair share." 

It is a perfectly correct statement and perfectly reasonable argument. It also has Aylin near vibrating with tension where she sits, gripping the armrest of her poor chair so hard you can hear it strain under her fingers.

"I will do it," you pipe up when the silence stretches on for too long, and two heavy gazes come to rest on you immediately. "I am… the best qualified, I should think, if what we need to do is purify and seal some grim den of Shar's. And the most responsible. For… for the lands, and for… everything."

"I would argue against that claim, my darling, but I readily admit I have no great desire to see that place again," Aylin grumbles next to you, frowning and glaring at some far-off scene you cannot see. Then, she reaches for your hand. "Thank you. I am not foolish enough not to see what you are doing for me, Isobel. And--" She makes a choked sound in the back of her throat, discomfort and frustration sheer and evident, "and though my pride chafes sorely, I am truly grateful." She raises the hand in her hold to a kiss.

You muster up your best brave smile and pull her hand back towards you, kissing it in turn in the finest courtly gesture you are capable of. "I promised you well-earned protection, didn't I? A shield to your sword, always."

"You will not go alone," Halsin promises. "I will come with you and support you with all I have and all the Oak Father sees fit to grant me. Send for me as soon as you are ready, and we shall meet at the mausoleum. The source of the century-long stain on this land will be cut off once and for all."

The mausoleum. 

Your breath stutters, catches for a moment. The shadows feel like they are drawing closer, suddenly, though you would have sworn there were hardly any to be found in the bright mid-morning light. 

-

While it is not the long, seemingly inescapable reach of Shar's curse, something heavy and oppressive still blankets all of Reithwin with the sun setting. Just as the reality of what you are preparing to do settles in your bones. 

As the night comes and drags on, the rot you've been stalwartly and by now almost casually beating back clenches in a vice-grip around your heart. All of your joints seem to lock up in an aching stiffness, and the fit of coughing and chills and shivers sprung upon you simply refuses to subside.

Aylin is awake next to you throughout, the concern and sadness and blatant fear on her face enough to make your heart shatter, if it weren't for the feeling of it being constricted and crushed already.

"Isobel, I- I will ask. I will pray for this mercy, at least. I will ask again."

She sees the question in your eyes, even as you can't quite manage to speak it.

"When you died," Aylin begins, haltingly, her painful clarification, "I prayed to my Mother, begged Her to bring you back to me. But She could not. When I was imprisoned, I begged Her to save me but… but She could not, in the Shadowfell, so far from Her light." 

There was a far longer hesitation there, and despite your every breath requiring concentrated effort, you can read her, your Aylin, your angel, like an open book. Selûne, Moonmaiden, Lady of Silver known to always answer Her devoted, did not reply. 

"A third time," Aylin insists. "I would beg Her a third time, for surely now, with this, She can… She can…" 

What Selûne can do, you wish you knew yourself. But the growing desperation in Aylin's eyes as you gasp for breath after breath terrifies you. Instead of facing her, you stumble to your feet and move outside to stand in the sliver of moonlight coming through the clouds. There you manage, finally, to draw a proper breath.

You are on your balcony. At your little altar. And for a horrible, sinking moment, it feels like nothing has changed since your endless vigil. Like the past few months have been a strange, fleeting dream, and now the time has come for you to return to your customary nightmare.

Aylin refused to hear any of it, when it spilled out of you, on the road to Baldur's Gate: your fears, your doubt, your certainty of inadequacy and of unfixable taintedness. Instead, she devoted herself in her most resolute, stubborn, and indomitable fashion to pouring waves and waves of silver healing magic, of precious, potent moonlit blessings all over you - and she has continued to do so ever since.

This time is no different. You feel her warm, solid presence against your back, her hands aglow around you, holding you up. "You said you feared my Mother could not want you for hers - you could not be more wrong, Isobel. She has not given up on you - do you see? And neither will I."

Eventually, when even the impressive well of Aylin's light flickers a bit and sweat beads on her gold-laced brow, you breathe - deep, steady, finally calmed.

"I should spirit you away from this place," Aylin mutters, anger scraping in her words. "You should not need to bear its taint again."

"Aylin, I don't-" you wince as your voice rasps unpleasantly. "I don't think it's like that. I do not think that would truly help."

"A pilgrimage, perhaps? Do you remember," she pauses for a moment, pain flooding her features. "Do you remember the plans we made, just before you died? To glorious Waterdeep, and all the way past Neverwinter… There is much to be discovered in the realms, and much that could help you be rid of what ails you."

You shake your head, hand pressing against your sternum. You fear, or know, that the answer is far simpler, even as Aylin looks rather sceptical. "I do not think it is a curse, to be purified and removed by ritual or some elaborate spell. I think it is just… something I will have to live with. As I have been -  as you have been helping me do."

Live. One of you marked in gold, glistening for all the world to bear witness. The other in inky black - unseen, insidious, on the inside.

You think of it every time you feel as cold as a corpse, when your fingers tingle and lack circulation, let down by a heart that had forgotten its purpose; when a careless movement makes your joints pop and resound with the crackling of cartilage that had long disintegrated before being hastily reformed; when your lungs so often prove unused to housing the breath of life once more; when the rotting remnants of your old, long-dead self roil around within you, never properly cleared out by whatever rebuilt you.

You bear some scars yourself. There is a little cut on your left cheek right beneath your eye from a childhood accident you can't remember and only know of from stories. A notch on your right knee came from a sharp rock that had hidden beneath the surface of the river one unusually hot summer. Embarrassingly, a pale line on your right palm speaks of a training mishap while wielding your own spear.

The story of a life - but no trace of your death. You looked, traced fingers around where you would have sworn the blade had pierced through your ribcage. Tried to find the laceration through which blood flooded, flowed out, in those brief glimpses of it you can still remember. You strain to gaze through the misty veils of memory that keep undulating, hiding and revealing in turn. But there is nothing to be found. Pristine, untouched skin. Like it never happened.

Like your home was destroyed on even more of a whim of fate than it had been. It is maddening.

Aylin is quiet for a long while, and you continue your careful inhaling and exhaling against her, the unique and familiar smell of her serving as a balm. It is as if her very presence keeps purifying the air around you, and so also within you, stubbornly beating back and subduing any reaching remnant of shadow and rot. You feel certain it must be some inherent property of her divine being, or some ability finely trained paladins are wont to exhibit, or both. But as she holds you in her arms, so careful and gentle and endlessly patient, even as you know her first drive is to act and do and rush ever onwards, you feel like crediting something else for your relief, as well. The sheer lightness that floods you at the soft words spoken in between kisses pressed to the top of your head only strengthens that belief.

"Then whatever comfort I can keep bringing you, I will. I swear it."

-

The chill of the mausoleum assaults you the moment you step foot over its threshold. But the warm hum of Aylin's protection keeps the worst of it at bay; a blessing she draped over you like the softest, finest blanket, when she pressed her lips against your forehead in a very adamantly temporary farewell.

The last time you were here you scarcely had a chance to take any of it in, beyond the most immediate and most foul desecration. All of the bone effigies have been cleared away in the meantime, and you make another note to thank Jaheira.

Now, it feels… 

You pause, and look, and breathe, and ponder, as the little motes of moonlight you are using to light your and Halsin's way dance all around.

It feels like an old, dusty, unmaintained mausoleum full of the sadly forgotten dead. With none but you left to mourn them, a century displaced.

"Let us move on," you state, resolute, and Halsin nods his agreement. The two of you make the very short journey from the entrance quickly enough, with only a brief pause for you to bow your head and mutter a quick prayer at your mother's mercifully untouched resting place.

And then it is there, right before you, gaping open.

You do not know what you expected to feel, confronted with your own grave, your own name carved into its stone. But you step towards it all the same, and you do not stumble or hesitate.

You lean forward and look inside, trepidation rising, tension locking your icy hands around the matching cold marble. But there is no pull. No familiarity. No feeling that you will be swallowed whole and returned to where you should have remained. 

There is nothing. 

Stone, scant remnants of long-rotted funerary accoutrements, melted wax from overturned candles. And your breath, echoing loudly in the quiet. That is all.

Halsin places a hand on your back, solid, warm, reassuring. Alive.

Just as you are.

Light slays darkness - you run your fingers over the fine carving, well-maintained, clean, untouched, so unlike the rest of the mausoleum - Here lies Isobel Thorm.

How had Aylin put it? The very Moon, full to bursting, cried over the beautiful, heartrending ceremony. And here you are, the Moon-touched girl born as the full face of her Goddess climbed the sky, buried much the same.

And then, another conversation comes to mind in the contemplative quiet, along with bits and pieces of decidedly non-Selûnite scripture. Shrink not so from death, grave-touched cleric, Withers had said in that weighty, fateful way of his.

An empty grave is just that - nothing more, and nothing less. But for every grave there is the sacred hand that reaches from it, say the faithful of the far-fallen pretender-god Myrkul, whose power - what little of it he yet maintains - comes from making people fear death, and him.

And so it becomes quite simple, somehow, in that moment, to straighten your back and steel yourself and say no. To say, I will not be an anchor for you, nor conduit, nor vessel, nor any way for you to extend your vile grasp. You may have taken all of my father, but you cannot have any of me.

"Death has its stubborn claws in me still," you admit - to Halsin, to the ghosts around you, to yourself. You are surprised to feel the fist around your heart and the ice in your chest loosen, here of all places. "But its grip is perhaps not as tight as I feared. Nor so unshakeable."

-

The way to the pool-portal is quick enough and well-documented, and the temple itself is already quite thoroughly scoured both by the efforts of Shadowheart's party and Aylin's blazing escape. Perhaps most importantly, it has been abandoned as useless by Shar herself.

The entire place is strikingly empty, but with none of the horribly penetrating and overwhelming void and absence of Shar's touch. Some insects scurry about, and you spy a few dead rats, but little else. The quiet is utter - but also utterly ordinary - and you feel like you and Halsin could be scouting any of the many vast caverns carved into the mountains of the Sword Coast. The two of you stop here and there, pausing for Halsin to coax some mushrooms and plants into faster growth, helping them be more thorough in their consuming and reclamation of the miserable remnants.

The air of mundane abandonment is lost once you reach your destination: the chamber where would-be Dark Justiciars performed their final prayers and contemplations before descending the carved stone steps into a pool. Here, overseen by a looming statue of the Nightmother herself, they would sharpen their knives and swords and axes and arrow-points along with their own resolve to viciously murder a restrained prisoner in their lady's domain. The depraved birthplace of an entire army.

Spill the blood of Selûne and rise a warrior of Shar, proclaims an incongruously finely-carved plaque beneath your feet. Any trace of fear is washed away by a violent wave of anger roiling in your gut. Seeing it all framed as an act so willful, so very deliberate, obliterates any thought you might have harboured of pitying those caught up in Shar's insidious manipulations who chose to go through with it.

The water before you is clear as a pane of glass and perfectly calm, and you can imagine it being so thick and viscous that diving headfirst into it would do little to disturb it. Even with all other traces of otherworldly power gone from this place, there remains an ominous pull to it. You shake your head and blink to regain your focus, then get started on closing off this particular grim chapter of history for good.

You have brought wine - perfectly aged vintage from the cellars of Moonrise that somehow survived - and milk, to pour into and out of freshly restored silver vessels, to consecrate and seal. Halsin hands over what he has been carrying, then plants himself a watchful but respectful distance behind you to allow you to work unimpeded.

As you murmur your prayers, only a few drops each of pearl-white and blood-red suffice to spread and run through the pool entire, rendering it dull and opaque and completely inert.

You kneel down on the first of the steps, hands resting palms up in front of you, and close your eyes. The cool liquid soaks your robes but does nothing to chill you or harm you.

"Hear me, Moonmaiden," you begin, and instantly, before your mouth has even closed around the last syllable, you know you are heard.

It comes naturally as breathing: to envision your own body as if it were made of transparent crystal - no murky core or stain of corruption in sight, merely a precisely-cut focus for a moonbeam to hit, for the light to fracture and meld and overlap and build in power. Then, feeling the silver dance all over your skin, you picture it collecting in a great sphere of radiance surrounding you, and you drive it outwards, on and on and on, further away and far more bright and searing than you had ever made it while protecting the Harpers. You push and pull and push again even farther, until it has washed over and burnt away the residue of ancient corruption lying thick upon every inch of the Gauntlet, the temple complex, the forge, and everything Shar's lost, misguided faithful ever dared build here.

The channelling is easier than it has ever felt, the moonlight rushing through you in a great surge, as if it - as if Your Lady - was just waiting to unleash upon this place. You are a perfect, unmatched conduit, and, for a moment, it is difficult to think you might ever need to stop and be anything else.

Until a soft, caring hand alights on your shoulder; deep concern communicated in nothing but the slightest, briefest touch.

You blink the glare out of your eyes and come back to yourself. 

Before you have a chance to entirely settle back into the burden of a mortal body, into the reality of strained breaths and aching knees and sodden boots, a tendril of the milky water reaches out and wraps around your spear where it lies forgotten beside you on the ground. 

You manage an awed little oh as the weapon transforms before you, with an insistent glow you've had the honour of seeing only a handful of times, during the grandest Full Moon ceremonies. The scrounged-up but passable replacement for the long-lost and much-loved spear your father once had made for you is gone. It has been spun into a wonder of keenly sharpened, finely-wrought silver filigree mounted upon a beautiful pale ashwood shaft, with alternating phases of the moon depicted down its entire length. The light recedes from it, but doesn't leave it completely, instead dancing over it in a perfectly periodic ebb and flow.

"Thank you, My Lady," you murmur, reaching over to close a tentative hand around it to an overwhelming sensation of approval. There is both a lightness and heft to the spear, and you stand up effortlessly. You grab it in both hands, turn it this way and that, and feel almost as if another pair of hands is on it alongside yours, guiding your movements, making sure your intent with it is followed through and you strike true. 

"It is done," Halsin says with grim finality, and all your senses agree. The thinned, barely-there barrier between this place and the Shadowfell - what your father and Shar once tore to shreds and used to destroy so much - has been made into a reinforced wall. 

"And yet I can't help but feel… help me, Isobel." Halsin frowns, strains to focus on something unseen around you, then wrinkles his nose as if there is a stench in the air. "Someone was here before us. Your Goddess will help us see if what I fear is true."

With small shreds of your awareness still not brought back all the way to the material plane, with the way moonlit residue still seems to be simmering just under your skin, it takes no effort at all to unmoor a bit more of yourself. You simply extend your senses over the room, peek at your surroundings through lowered lashes, with eyes carefully unfocused, and follow the easily-missed trail. It is something in turns dark and sickly-green that seems to start at the pool and lead out of the chamber, to the elevator platform. Blurry, mostly obscured, unidentifiable - but undeniably foul, and worryingly fresh.

"It is as you feared," you tell Halsin, rubbing at your eyes to refocus them. "Something came out through here, recently at that - but I cannot tell what. Whatever it is, whatever farewell gift Shar has chosen to honour us with, we will have to hunt it down."

You wonder, perhaps, if this is what you have just been armed for.

-

Last remnants of rotted flesh and writhing worms and bone picked clean. Polished; gleaming, somehow, in utter, utter darkness.

There is nothing else. Wherever you look, nothing but perfect inky depths and the dome of a bone-white cathedral, looming, long-promised.

Your fingertips are grey and bloodless, like your hands have been dipped in the ritual ash of a funeral pyre. And as you stand, your feet are already lost to your sight in the swirling darkness, held in place by means you cannot recognise or see. You cannot lift them, you cannot even attempt a step. But you can look down, head bowed, and so you do.

All of you, sloughing off and disappearing, skin first, then muscle and sinew and fat, blood but a distant thought, all perfectly painless, sensationless, until nothing but bone is left.

You gasp awake - and continue gasping, for the air simply refuses to reach your lungs. Ribs straining and chest heaving, all of it working in perfectly synced motion to achieve nothing at all.

It is just a nightmare. It need not mean anything.

All it is is the last, futile attempts of a dead god to keep a foothold in the realms, to keep a hold of you, and through you whatever else he can reach.

You will not fear him, and he will not have you.

You breathe.

-

You are not the only one plagued by nightmares.

The horrors Aylin slowly confides in you when it is your turn to hold her close after a sudden, painful awakening would be enough to supply several lifetimes. To hear her describe the feeling of knives and cruel unidentifiable implements cutting through skin and flesh, dismantling, picking apart a joint, snapping bone when this was not enough…

You try to hide your wincing from her and push down the bile that rises in the back of your throat, as burning and sour as your surging anger. To do such things to anyone is monstrous. To do such things to Aylin…

Instead of finishing that thought, you hold her all the more tightly to you, as close as you can manage, and murmur promises of protection into her skin.

"I have been angry," Aylin confirms after one such night, slowly and carefully and painstakingly turning over every word before voicing it, eyes fixated on the ceiling above your bed as it grows grey with the coming dawn, "and I am afraid. Some of the rage undoubtedly stems from the fear." She takes a long, shuddering breath and turns to look at you, and you inch closer to her on your pillow. "It is not shameful to admit this, not to you."

"Of course it isn't," you rush to reassure, feeling a swell of pride, even as she still phrases it as if it were a question.

"And so, I… I would confide in you, my dearest Isobel, what haunts me the most. What my unconscious mind has decided it should foist upon me, night after night, poisoning the very idea of sleep."

"I'm listening, Aylin," you murmur, tracing her cheek with a barely-there brush of fingertips. "I'm here."

She leans into the touch, chasing it, until you cup her face and she can press a kiss into your palm. It takes her a little while to muster up the will to continue. "If another one were to come seeking me..."

If or when? Gods, you hope it isn't when.

"Seeking to harness the Nightsong," she almost spits it out, imbuing the word with such disgust it is palpable. "If they were to threaten you, my love… how could I…"

You want to cut short any lines of thought in this direction; you want to rage and make her promise, make her swear never to even entertain notions of bargaining or - gods forbid - surrender, not on your behalf. But you realise before you even have the chance to begin how futile it would be, for you would do the very same for her.

A shield, your mind rings out. And you wonder, for a moment, if it is truly your notion, or if it has been spoken to you.

But it is the segment of a thought that has been percolating in your mind, in and out the back of it, twining in between plans for rebuilding and thinking of avenues of investigation to follow up on what you and Halsin discovered.

The soul cage.

If some two-bit wizard with the right connections got his hands on enough knowledge of it, enough knowledge of Aylin to be able to implement it, who else might try?

And so, in the midst of all the still-nascent restoration efforts set into motion, you write to Rolan. You ask him for Lorroakan's notes on the soul cage, on the grim research he scrounged up, or wheedled out of, or stole from Balthazar. 

They are in your hands within a day; a thick stack of parchment and paper of several clearly different provenances, along with an overly wordy but surprisingly sincere and encouraging letter from Rolan himself.

'Best to start with Ramazith's original foundations,' he writes at the end.

-

The steps of the binding, broadly outlined in figure 5f, must be performed strictly sequentially. Note that establishing the precise requisite sequence hinges on extrapolation from several facts of the nature and extent of the subjugation sought.

At first, the disgust and rage that boil up at the very sight of the words make it hard to even read, let alone comprehend any of it. But you push through, and instead of focusing on the wretched ideas presented, you think of how thoroughly you will be able to dismantle them. 

If a creature thus bound should die via any means, the soul (or its equivalent) is prevented from moving on, and remains anchored within the limits of the constructed glyph.

Glyph modifications to adjust the amount of awareness the creature within will be permitted follow.

Then, as you move into the more technical parts, it is the very strange writing style that acts as a barrier; a slew of peculiarities of wizards and those who devoted their lives to the arcane arts. At least three of whom seem to have contributed - albeit unwillingly or unwittingly - to the collection before you.

Thus prevented from traversing the planes and arriving at the City of Judgement, whatever power the soul itself contains (and might, under normal circumstances, provide a god as a successful petitioner) is instead left to the caster to utilise as they see fit.

After what feels like days of bashing your head against incomprehensible arcane walls and magic frustratingly unlike everything you've studied all your life, you arrange with Rolan to work together with you to pick it all apart and find some weakness, devise some countermeasure. Anything to help Aylin rest at least a little easier. Anything to help you protect her. For good. 

Even when you are gone.

In theory, such a binding could last indefinitely and with very little maintenance, assuming the initial construction was properly done. If the soul-matter is of sufficient density and quality, the author suggests, in lieu of a standard phylactery, the application of just such a soul cage, i.e. connecting oneself to a bound creature of appropriate power. An illustration comparing the different flows of lifeforce exchange that can be made possible by altering the outermost circular barrier is given in fig. 47. 

You'd accrued a considerable amount of book-learning, when your father was loath to have you leave Reithwin for other, more lengthy and strenuous modes of clerical training. The library at Moonrise was mostly your mother's material and private, but the House of Healing had a library that was the envy of the region, once, and you spent many a day and night lost in it. A spare room in Last Light converted to something of a study is nothing in comparison, of course, but it is what you've got.

You and Rolan think, and talk, and discuss, shooting messages and sendings back and forth - so very academically, so gloriously detached from the horror you are studying. And then, finally, comes a breakthrough - or rather a dawning understanding of one basic underlying principle - and it finally starts just making sense.

You draw the outer outline of a magic circle on the floor, moving to scribe the first rune along its rim, your mind already on the second and third and fourth and the particular order the glyphs need to be applied in in order to properly interlock, to apply their effects on the very essence of a soul.

It is, in some of its theoretical underpinnings, not that far removed from the revivification magics you yourself trained in--

Then you freeze as you realise what you are doing and the chalk drops from suddenly nerveless fingers. You rush to cover the thing with a dusty tarp lying nearby, and lock the door on your way out of the room. Leaning against it on the outside, deep breaths catch in your still-protesting lungs.

For three days after that, you try to come up with avenues that do not include replicating the soul cage itself. But there are none. Rolan agrees. Magic, he says, is ultimately an empirical art.

It takes you another day to dredge up the courage, to settle within your own self what you are going to do, and what this means you are going to ask Aylin to tolerate. Aylin, who you have yet to consult - even truly inform of your efforts. Aylin, who has so stoically borne your dour mood these past few days, who has not pried, even when worry has creased her brow and clouded her beloved, handsome face. 

It all tastes so bitter, suddenly - you are doing this for her, presumably, yet you haven't even asked her? No, no, no, it is all wrong - making choices for her, deciding things about both your lives without even the courtesy of telling her--

You are your father's daughter after all, Isobel, a nasty little voice pipes up and bile crawls up the back of your throat, as you twist and turn and sleep not a wink.

The very next morning you sit Aylin down in the improvised study in order to do your best to explain your efforts and your reasons to her, the necessity of it all, all too well aware of the tinge of desperation that colours your voice. 

Once you are done, you are not quite sure what to expect from her, which is an unusual occurrence within the span of your relationship. But it is certainly a relief to see Aylin in some mode of acquiescence to start with, once she finally starts to speak. 

"I knew in great detail and intimacy every rock and pebble and scuff on the ground of that miserable, minuscule place. I studied every rune and line of that accursed circle, burned into my eyes, in hopes I could devise a way to break it."

Her breaths are deep, steady, and very deliberate. Her gaze isn't upon you, or on anything in the room, really. Rather, it is focused on somewhere far away, somewhere deep below.

"There was nothing else, Isobel. For a hundred years. Sorrow, that you were gone, and rage, at… him. Them. Dreams you would be returned to me, and bloody schemes of vengeance. Nothing else. No moon, no light, no respite or mercy. For a hundred years it was mine to suffer, to bear the indignities and the pain, and to wait."

She sounds ashamed, almost. Like the proud Dame Aylin was forced to bear the sting of defeat unlike any she had ever known, and even now she despises the very thought of it: "Never, in a hundred years, did I find any weakness in my bonds that I could exploit." She looks up at you then, eyes shimmering with the barest traces of hope mixed with trepidation. "But perhaps… perhaps together, we can."

"I'm afraid it's cruelly simple, really," you manage, at last. "We cannot work to comprehend something that just isn't there. Well, we can, to an extent - we can theorise all we want, but it will never be certain, complete understanding. This is… this is the only way to make sure. To make failsafes, contingencies… and to test them." 

She bears it all very stoically, though you see her throat working, and it is impossible to miss the twitch and curling of her hands into fists, kept very carefully still in her lap up until the moment you finally move the covering away and reveal the nascent research.

Wordless, Aylin rises from her seat and walks over to the beginnings of the circle. She takes one deep breath and steps into it before you can even react, her entire being a picture of near-vibrating tightness. She turns to face you, gazes at you almost imploringly. "I trust you, Isobel, above all others in this world. If you believe this is what it will take, then this is what we will do."

You cannot speak through the tears and tightness in your throat at the incredible display of love and trust. It burns even more painfully bright and heavy in your chest as she steps outside once more and you see the shiver in her, the discomfort at the very sight of the runes on the floor, even feeble and unfinished.

You throw the tarp back over it, take Aylin's arm, all but drag her away, unprotesting, and lock the study door behind you again.

Then, you spend the rest of the day very determinedly pampering her and cherishing her in whatever way occurs to you or her, no matter how whimsical or how demanding, until spells and cages and imprisonment are the furthest thing from her mind.

-

From refugees displaced by the many Absolutist attacks in the region to the still-wandering people of Elturel, from druids drawn to a recovering land that needs their fostering to simple fortune-seekers, more and more people arrive and start building and rebuilding lives around Reithwin. As numbers grow and swell, an increasing amount of your time is in turn spent acting as the local healer. Addressing everything from work-related injuries and accidents to simple aches and pains and illnesses, giving out blessings, even handling mild druidic and magical mishaps - it is standard, simple fare you find you've missed quite a bit. A lot of it harks back to what drew you so strongly to clerical training in the first place, a century and a half past.

There are a handful of acolytes and trainees in Reithwin now, working by your side, but no other clerics. You are particularly grateful for the few adherents of Ilmater who have travelled from the Open Hand Temple after the gruesome events that transpired there. They speak openly of seeking to disabuse anyone and everyone of the notion they harbour any misgivings towards the refugees of the Absolute crisis. They tell you, also, of simply going where they feel their calling would be most needed.

Something you would, perhaps, finally get to fully understand and experience yourself. One day, you promise yourself, when Reithwin is back on its feet.

This is not the striking, dramatic, awe-inspiring work of the favoured of a goddess, of a divine conduit that is the only hope of an entire region. But it is deeply fulfilling and rewarding all the same. 

Healing, rest, relief, from your hand, to many. 

It is the least you can do.

-

You make camp to the east of Reithwin, close to the now clearly marked entrance to the bowels of the Grymforge. It is still warm and dry, the very last dregs of a long summer, and so bedding down under the stars is a rather charming prospect. The thought lifts even Aylin's spirits somewhat, freshly returned from her airborne scouting of Moonhaven to follow up on one of Jaheira's reports.  

Her quick investigation found no traces of any recent activity. There is nothing left there, it turns out, but age-old devastation that it hurts to hear her describe: the odd serenity in the utter, utter quiet of the dilapidated temple that was once a grand and beautiful place of worship; the small pockets of ruins that the goblins didn't quite get to during their occupation - but that the Sharrans had. Aylin is uncharacteristically subdued after witnessing the sheer petty desecration of a place and a community she once knew, with no new knowledge to show for her efforts. 

You've ranged just a bit too far, it seems. Reithwin, again, is the wellspring and cradle of whatever this new-old threat is to be, and where you should be refocusing your efforts.

As the sun sinks below the western hills, you coax a small fire to life, sheltered in between two mostly collapsed walls of what was once a quaint farmhouse. The home of a beekeeping family, surrounded by thickly, perennially flowering meadows that had ever been a joy to behold and walk through. Reithwin's main suppliers of rich, golden honey; a treasure all its own. Coming here to acquire candles - something no temple or altar could ever, apparently, have enough of - had always ranked among your favourite errands, with the sweetest side benefits by far.

You speak up to interrupt Aylin's restless pacing, just as much as your own rush of memory of when you saw this place last, whole and alive. "I'll keep watch for a while. You should get some rest after all the flying you've been doing." 

Aylin agrees only somewhat begrudgingly, which serves to confirm to you just how tired she must be. She partially dismisses her armour, but does not move to go to the bedroll. Instead, she sits next to you propped up against the still sun-warm stone, sinks lower, and lays her head on your shoulder. 

"I would prefer to take my respite right here," she mumbles, a small smile finally making its way to her lips, and you offer no protest.

You summon motes of moonlight, letting them swirl and dance around you both in the darkening twilight. Aylin presses her smile against your neck and turns it into a kiss before settling back down.

What starts as a peaceful, restful night under the stars is sadly not destined to remain so. 

Were it not for a pale beam cast by the face of Selûne just barely peeking out above the horizon, the scouting party would have entirely escaped your notice, outfitted in dark leathers and grim webbed sigils professing them as Lolth-sworn. But you - your fire, your silvery spells, your beloved's gleaming armour and countenance - do not stand a chance of escaping theirs.

"Aylin," you nudge her off of you and out of her shallow doze. The sight of her blinking away sleepy confusion would be endearing and one to be savoured, were the danger not far too immediate.

You hear the telltale thwang of a crossbow firing before you can do much else. The bolt hits your shoulder, so very close to where Aylin was resting mere moments ago, and the burn almost immediately coursing through your arm lets you know it was definitely poisoned. 

A flash of light blinds you as soon as you cry out in pain, and then Aylin is gone. The roar of her fury echoes and reverberates among the stone ruins. You blink rapidly, eyes watering, until you can see again at least somewhat.

It is difficult to concentrate with the rising throbbing in your head and the burn in your lungs, and you have always been far more proficient in healing others than yourself. But you still manage a simple restoration spell through grit teeth, forcing the poison to wear off within moments. The bolt, however, is lodged far too deep, scraping against bone, and the wound itself you leave for later. Instead, you look around, a sense of foreboding flooding you even as the adrenaline carries you through pain and the beginnings of blood loss. 

You are just in time to witness Aylin burying her moonlight-inflamed greatsword in the gut of the last drow scout - the others either dead or fleeing. Then, before you manage to stumble to your feet and make your way over, she flings him to the ground. She pulls out the sword with a horrifying sound and equally horrifying cry from the man, and replaces it with her boot. "How dare you raise your hand against--"

"Aylin. Aylin! Stop," you stagger over to her, lift your uninjured arm and place what you hope is a calming hand on her shuddering back. "I'm fine. I'm going to be fine."

"They shot you, Isobel," she retorts without looking at you, boot still pressing down, and the ensuing scream makes you cringe. "Assaulting my beloved. Defiling my Mother's temple. I would know what madness possessed them to make them believe this was a course of action leading to anything but express and painful ruin by the hand of Dame Aylin."

"A- a scout. I don't-- they said to find… necromancer…" The man gurgles incoherences, at death's door.

"Leave him, Aylin. Please." You pull on her arm, but you might as well be trying to move a mountain for all the effect it has. Her breathing is still loud and heaving, her eyes blazing in the dark with licks of silver moonlight, fists clenched and bloodied - you don't quite know what from, and you are not sure you want to. 

You love a weapon, Isobel; a creature of unyielding steel and divine retribution. Yet you think you can make of her a woman, docile and pliant, by your will and paltry affections alone.

Old, ancient, long-resolved doubts, barked at you in your father's voice - how dare they creep back into your mind, when so much still remains lost to you?

"I do not need any more horrors committed in my name," you snap, surprised by your own anger. Then you close your eyes, and take a deep breath. With the adrenaline wearing off in the relative quiet, your shoulder is starting to turn to agony. "Forget about him, Aylin. Help me instead," more softly, still hanging heavily onto her arm, "please."

"Very well," Aylin relents after a long, long moment, stepping away from the ill-fated scout. Dismissing him with a wave of her hand sends droplets of blood arcing through the air. "Flee, if you even can. Run to your mistresses and tell them you tried trifling with Dame Aylin, restored to glory."

Glory. The word rattles around in your mind as the man hastily drags himself away from you, fishes out and drains a potion, then stumbles off into the darkness. Aylin is terrifying, awe inspiring, breathtaking and, indeed, glorious, all at once. But her edges are sharper, more ragged, and you do not know--

You sink to the floor at her feet, past caring that your robes are getting stained with blood - both yours and not. Aylin, you note, seems to be completely unharmed as she quickly kneels down next to you.

But her hands are shaking as they hover around the shaft of the bolt, in a state of indecision you have never seen your beloved in. The familiar silver-blue light starts forming around her hands, then sputters out. "Isobel, I…"

"Shhh," you manage, somehow, even though your shoulder and arm throb with waves of agony. And what a position to be in, the one wounded trying to soothe your would-be caretaker. "Calm, now, Aylin. It will be alright, just… focus."

"I- I've…" She clenches her hands into fists, then stops to gulp down deep breaths. Some haze is lifting from her visibly, leaving her wracked with guilt, face absolutely anguished. "Isobel… I should have looked to you first, taken care to-- you could have…"

"I'm going to be fine, Aylin, just…"

But it is not reaching her at all, her distress persistent. "Instead, I raged off… like… like a rabid dog! I… this is not…"

You cut her off by half-falling and half-leaning forward to place your foreheads together, and for a few precious moments all the two of you do is breathe.

-

Hours later, approaching dawn, you rest against Aylin, your back to her front, her legs to either side of you and her arms around you as if she is trying to form a bulwark out of her own flesh. You haven't bothered to pull your robes back up over your shoulders after the bolt was removed and your wounds healed. Instead, you choose to focus on the feeling of the fresh nighttime breeze on your skin on one side, and the pleasantly cool press of Aylin's armour on the other.

Neither of you have slept. After Aylin's garbled, half-sobbed proclamation that she cannot lose you like this again you haven't spoken, either.

The two of you gaze at the sky, watch as Selûne makes her slow way on her well-known heavenly route across the heavens.

"Necromancer, he said," you speak up after a very long silence, breaking the tension like throwing a pebble into a dark, still lake. "It makes some sense, I suppose, that there would be some activity from that ilk when so many have died. And I'd wager all the Myrkulite regalia at the enclave attack was no accident, either."

Aylin hums, visibly grateful, eager to think and speak of anything other than the real crux of the night's events. "Here, however?" Then her face twists in disgust. "I know of only one who claimed that title. Ketheric's worm-eaten lapdog. And he has, thankfully, been disposed of. Perhaps one of his lackeys has survived by slinking under a rock, and now seeks, like all vermin, to crawl back out and continue to harm."

You twist a bit to see her better, and cast your thoughts back over endless Harper reports - and the familiar, if initially surprising, name you saw mentioned over and over. "Balthazar? What happened to him? Did you defeat him when you stormed Moonrise?"

"Ha!" Aylin exclaims, "would that I had! The wretch was sent careening into the bowels of Shar's domain when Shadowheart and her allies came to find me in my prison. He put up some resistance, hiding behind puppeteered bones as is his cowardly wont, but stood no chance against their combined might. My one regret is I did not get to take part in ending him."

"He died - in your prison? In the Shadowfell?" A horrible sense of foreboding is mounting in you, and your mind immediately turns to the image of you and Halsin at the ominous pool, at Shar's long-standing, freshly sealed portal, at the sickly - necromantic - nature of that trail you found. Something made it out through here…

"If one could call what that monstrosity was doing living, then yes, he died. I do not think Shar had much use, or much affection, for him."

"I think--" you swallow back the rot with some difficulty, your breathing suddenly shallow and the furthest thing from natural and effortless. "I think it's him. Before we sealed the entrance, he must have… He escaped, somehow."

"Well then," Aylin's hand lets go of your knee and tightens into a fist. "Perhaps I shall get my wish after all."

-

The last time you saw Aylin, before that streak breaking across a shadow-cursed sky, is a memory slowly floating up through murky waters.

It starts like this: being peppered with kisses, half-asleep still in the grey light of a nondescript dawn. 

"I must away," Aylin says softly, sounding almost apologetic as she untangles herself from the soft covers and your clumsy attempts at sleep-addled clinging. "I will not be half a tenday, my darling. It is only Moonhaven."

It is not unusual for her to be called away. Your days will be full of duties and welcome distractions, while the nights will be lonely; but it will all pass in a blink and she will be by your side quickly enough, with a new tale to share while cuddled in front of your fireplace. And then, soon, so very soon, you will leave with her and write your own.

Parting words with your father ring bitter still, but you know it is necessary. For both your sake and his. Perhaps he will see it too; perhaps the frosty avoidance of the past day will melt into something more amicable by the time you and Aylin depart.

You mumble a sleepy string of sweet, heartfelt words of love and smile into another kiss. Already your fingers brush against armour instead of warm skin and slip clumsily, dreamily into soft feathers.

"I will see you soon, beloved Isobel," Aylin murmurs finally, tearing herself away with evident effort and one last kiss upon your hand which she then lays softly back upon your pillow.

You sink back into sleep.

It is the last conversation you have with her for a century.

-

With the work in your improvised little infirmary finished for the day, you find Aylin in the room you have both taken to calling the study, frowning at a set of papers strewn about the desk before her. One of them bears a rough sketch of what you immediately recognise as the operating theatre and long patient-housing wings of the House of Healing. She sits with her back very deliberately turned to the corner filled with soul cage-related paraphernalia. 

"There is another waiting to be recovered and put to rest," Aylin begins when you drape an arm over her shoulders and press a kiss to her temple to announce your presence.

"In the House of Healing?" You can't help your grimace at the very thought of it, the sheer twisted perversion of what that place of preservation of life had been made into - though you keep indulging your reticence and have yet to witness it yourself. "I would imagine there would be many there, sadly."

Aylin nods, then taps a bit of parchment to her left. "This one… Olam, his name was. The Harpers found him in the morgue and retrieved his journal, but got drawn into a long conflict with a swarm of undead before much else could be done. Some of them almost fell to poison-laden traps." Her mouth pulls down as if she is remembering something particular, and particularly unpleasant. "A note was made of it after the retreat, but they did not have a chance to return. He was one of their own, from the time of the first war, hiding there to escape the shadows as well as seeking a way to combat them."

Aylin nudges towards you several of the papers on the table, and the acid-singed leather-bound little volume that must be the aforementioned journal. 

'All beings should walk free of fear', I was taught, read the final words on the page it is open to. Oh, if only were I granted such a fine fate.

A noble sentiment, to be sure, and a heart-wrenching statement to leave this world with. But there is still something more there that Aylin is not telling you. You step around the chair, put both your hands on her shoulders, face her, and wait.

She licks dry lips, sighs, and lifts one hand to trace your cheek. "He was an aasimar," Aylin says finally. Then grits her teeth. "It is why it took him so very long to succumb. I would not have him linger in that foul place. And - you must admit, my love, if we are to find a necromancer, a morgue is a fitting place to start."

"Of course," you agree immediately, turning your hold on Aylin into a tight embrace. The idea brings you no joy - but purifying a defiled hospital morgue feels like exactly the kind of blow to the long pale hand of death you wish to deal. "We will go at first light."

-

The first sign that something is very wrong is that the door the Harpers supposedly beat a hasty retreat through is locked, and Aylin has to invest a considerable amount of effort to smash it open.

The foul smell hits you as soon as the splintered wood hits the ground. Rot. Cadavers. 

(Your tomb. The mausoleum. The horror of waking up in it--)

You put a hand over your nose and mouth and steel yourself, make to step forward and hasten this grim duty somewhat, but Aylin extends an arm to hold you back. When you look up at her questioningly, you see her face is set in an expression of deep abhorrence, her nose wrinkled and her eyes watering. She blinks and a blaze of silver washes over them.

"Be wary," Aylin says, followed by a disgusted sniff. "There are undead about."

You send motes of light out into the chamber before you, and your heart sinks at the sight they reveal. 

The large hall, the one the Harpers were supposed to have cleared out, is filled to the brim with shambling corpses. Their full number is hard to grasp, as more shadows seem to be milling about in the miasmic fog, further away than your pale silver moonlight reaches.

Their variety, too, is staggering. What was once an armoured Absolutist soldier and a large tiefling in burnt scraps of bloodstained Bhaalist vestments take notice of you first, and their disintegration in the moonbeam you call down is enough to alert the others. Several drow in yet-unfaded Underdark armour rush to attack you, but their sluggardly movements make their strikes easy to avoid, and they burn in the swirling vortex of your conjured guardian moon sprites.

Then, a duergar, whose handaxe splinters as Aylin bears down with her sword. Half a gnoll, dragging itself towards you along one of the gutters cut into the stone floor, filled with stale blood - until it meets its second end at your spear-tip. Finally, horrifyingly, a few Dark Justiciars - though there is not much to them beyond skeletons propping up ancient, rusty armour. Aylin takes one's head off in a single swing as soon as it hobbles close to her.

You are a third of the way into the room when doubt starts creeping into your mind. Though none of your foes so far have proven much of a challenge, there are just so many. Any retreat you might wish to make will be severely hampered by there being very little of the floor left free to walk on. At least you've noticed no poisonous traps so far, but that might be more of a downside--

Suddenly, all movement around you stops, your assailants freezing in place. Perfectly in sync, as if… commanded.

And then comes a cavalcade of mismatched body parts in visibly different states of decay, stitched together to form the vague suggestion of a hulking humanoid. Its master strolls into view right next to it, staying well within the reach of its protective shadow. He saunters around his miserable creations with the casual, relaxed air of joining an evening council session with your father.

Balthazar. A rather distasteful man who'd wormed his way into your father's confidence not long before your death. Far from the only disagreeable ambitious creature to ever attempt to do so, really - merely the last in a long line - but an unusually successful one. You have long suspected - and felt the gnaw of doubt and guilt despite yourself - that the growing distance between you and your father, your increasingly frequent and public disagreements, your grand or petty rebellions all, helped create a perfect storm and served as an excellent in for him. And then your death - a tailor-made opportunity. An easy angle for anyone to work and ultimately nudge what could have at worst been a lonely, bitter old man off a monstrous precipice.

Balthazar was a shrewd politician who never failed to raise your hackles within the span of but a few soft-spoken words. You also never cared much for his occasional displays of highly esoteric knowledge, the extreme vagueness and reticence whenever attention was called to the matter of his history, nor the blatant interest and almost surgical curiosity he exhibited whenever the subject of Aylin happened to come up. 

Jaheira's reports about him are gruesome, and Aylin's stories even more so, but for all the talk of necromancy and flesh golems and Myrkul worship, you never imagined the sleazy man from your memories looking like this. Symbols flayed into his skin and cut into his greying flesh, one of his hands larger and lighter-coloured than the other, with stitches showing from underneath a ruined sleeve. Fragments of skull and bone decorate the ragged remnants of his robes, shaping familiar Myrkulite emblems. His blood-red eyes seem to almost glow with delight from underneath his hood when his gaze alights on Aylin. You shiver.

"I see not even Shar could bear your putrid stench for long, necromancer," Aylin calls out, loud and mocking, though you can tell her heart is not truly in it. Instead, her focus is on you. She keeps shooting you concerned glances and then, with a more determined mien, stepping away, putting more and more distance between the two of you. Drawing attention. You want to scream for her to stop.

"Now, now, Aylin - we had some wonderful times, you and I, during our little getaway." The sight of his decaying grin makes your insides churn, and the sound of each of his words clawing up his throat like something unpleasantly moist makes your skin crawl. But it does not distract you from following the casual gestures with which he is raising the corpses around him once again. He frowns when he reaches one that Aylin has left with neither arms nor head. "Though I do see a bit of discipline wouldn't come amiss. Another lesson is long overdue, I think, to teach you the proper manners and respect your absent mother has so tragically left you without."

You wince. The words visibly hit home, and Aylin's teeth grit in fury, in time with the tightening of her hands on the hilt of her sword. "It is you who will be taught respect, maggot-ridden cur," she growls. "For my Mother, whom you insult with every undeserved breath you draw. For me, who will be the one to end you, abomination."

"Please, Aylin," Balthazar waves a dismissive hand, his countenance exuding mock-disappointment. "Not even you can be so dull, so uncomprehending. I have accomplished what so many dream of: I have no end. Not even Shar could snuff me out in the very heart of her domain. The two of us - so alike in so many ways."

Aylin barks out a laugh, forced and mirthless but brimming with scorn. "I wager our petty Mistress of Pain merely did not deign to try. What reason has she to care if a common graverobber be dead or undead?" She throws her arms wide, voice growing even louder, resounding against the high, vaulted ceiling of the morgue. "Ho, would that fierce Karlach had taken your head off instead of that arm, and spared me the grating sound of your voice!"

"It would have mattered little. Though your guests did indeed cause me quite a setback," Balthazar admits. "That fiery brute with the axe cost me a perfectly serviceable dominant hand." He flexes the visibly mismatched limb, the grey skin that still retains some of its golden lustre bulging oddly along the seams.

"I've taken the liberty of borrowing from your kin, over there," he points to a dais behind him, upon which you see another body laid out - and little else, through the dim shadow shroud. The unlucky Olam, you suppose - ill-fated even in death. "He will not be needing it anymore, after all. And it would be such a shame to waste good material, especially when divine-touched flesh is in such woefully short supply these days. Did I say kin?" He tilts his head, contemplative, and raises a pointed eyebrow at Aylin. "Not quite so close a bond, perhaps. His lineage seems to have stemmed from one of the Morninglord's retinue." 

The derisive way he says that makes Aylin's scowl turn into a growl of simmering rage, but he seems to pay it no heed. It is like he is used to this, like this back-and-forth has been going on for untold ages, and the implications make your own blood start to boil. Still, you make use of both of their distracted states to position yourself further along Balthazar's flank, behind most of his minions. Your spear is wonderfully light and eager in your hands.

"He could never hold a candle to you, of course, Aylin. The finest specimen to be had in all the realms - perhaps I should be thanking your mother! Such a pity you still so stubbornly dismiss the honour I bestowed upon you, and all the breathtaking work I did."

"Honour?" Aylin roars, eyes blazing. "What would a wretch like you know of honour? Striking from behind my back, concocting a lie to lure me into a coward's trap? Never in a hundred years having the courage to truly face me, but taunting and assaulting and mauling me, outnumbered, restrained, chained--" Her bared teeth turn from a vicious threat to a wild grin. "Were there truly no spines to be found in any of the tombs you plundered, Balthazar?"

Something about that particular tirade does seem to hit a nerve - though you doubt any of his still truly function - and Balthazar adjusts his tone and bearing, attempting to cut the conversation short. "Come now, enough of this pointless bickering. There are higher purposes you can serve. I am prepared to look past your ingratitude - both of you."

The sudden acknowledgement of your presence throws you off, and you look to Aylin, trying to coordinate a strike, or an escape, or anything at all. "Aylin--"

"Ah, the prodigal daughter speaks!" Balthazar exclaims, his attention fully on you now. "For a moment I feared I had made an error - unlikely though that may be - while tinkering with your vocal apparatus."

You feel overwhelming nausea as the thought of those hands working on you blooms in your mind: gathering up whatever remained after a century in the grave, splicing together, reassembling - is everything that makes you up now even yours to begin with? Of course it would have been him, performing whatever disgusting, profane rituals his god required. Your father, you imagine, drove him off before you awoke - coveting all of you for himself even then.

"What did you do to me?" You blurt out, awkwardly pointing your spear in his general direction.

He seems entirely unperturbed by the weapon. "Very little past what the general required and demanded, regrettably. But rest assured, you would not be here without my intervention. So I reiterate: gratitude would, in fact, be in order."

Another horrifying, revolting thought rears its ugly head as you struggle to breathe and grip the spear in shaking hands: you as one of his creatures, finally here where you belong, among your kindred.

For a brief, breathless moment, you rather desperately want there to be some simple explanation, and some simple fix for everything that continues to ail you. A spell component missed, perhaps, a ritual not-quite-correctly finished, an incantation misspoken. But of course there isn't. There is only this vile man, his vile god, and the villain your father turned into, who let them do unspeakable things to you. To Aylin.

And there is the two of you left to live and grapple with it all - and ready to erase their blight from the face of the earth. It shocks you, for a moment, how well the sudden desire and determination to destroy this creature focuses and sharpens you. You look over to urge Aylin to action.

But then Balthazar speaks again - words that slip your comprehension entirely, as there is something about the intonation, the simple sound and shape of them, that makes your head swim and the ground shift beneath your feet.

Because you remember, as if a page is being turned back in your mind, allowing you to finally read it: when you lay cold and dying a century ago, choking on painful, blood-wet, shallow gasps for the air that wouldn't come, the only sounds left for you to hear were scattered words to dismiss meddling accomplices, followed by grim incantations intoned in that unmistakable voice. And then the stretch of endless, soundless dark.

"It was you," you speak the realisation softly, blinking away the puzzle pieces, using your spear to prop yourself up and stop yourself from collapsing on the ground. "You helped them. You helped them get in to kill me." 

Balthazar seems only slightly surprised at your words as he regards you with eerie calm. "A necessary step. A bit of encouragement, you understand, to make the general more receptive. A convenient little… inciting incident."

What did you and your god whisper into his ear? What putrefaction did you work so hard to fill Shar's void with, even as she was still busy hollowing it out?

A green glow in the corner of your eye as another corpse rises behind you at Balthazar's command. A now-familiar segment of a glyph, necrotic in nature, that he repurposed, redesigned to chain together, interlock, form a prison.

It all slots into place with such grim clarity. Your soul, released in death, that never made it to the City of Judgement - because it was captured. An anchor. A cage. So like Aylin's. A precursor, a modification, an evolution - it matters little, now. Readily available for being pulled back to some sort of life, whenever the time was right, whenever Ketheric, despairing, took the deal and Myrkul's word was given - but not a moment before. 

"And then you trapped me."

Aylin gapes at you. Balthazar regards you with mild interest.

"Well, of course. It would hardly have been very effective if your father could have simply procured some diamonds and brought you back, would it? Or if Aylin here could have just begged mother dearest to intervene. No, we couldn't have that - and so, a simple yet ingenious precaution."

This man, grinning so proudly at you, and all his co-conspirators - Sharran or Myrkulite, alive or undead or even divine themselves - chose to reduce your entire self, your entire life, your very soul, to a piece in the game they were playing. You, Isobel Thorm, everything you ever were or could have been, everything you ever did or could have done, were utterly immaterial. It was your oh-so-convenient connections to the two people they were truly concerned with that sealed your fate.

The anger you feel surging in you at this realisation might just rival Aylin's most potent displays of divine fury.

Aylin, who, you note, is merely a few steps away from Balthazar, his flesh golem all that stands between them.

Aylin, who dispatches the golem in one utterly enraged swing, smiting it into nonexistence in a strike so violent it makes even Balthazar stagger backwards, breaking his mask of infuriatingly superior calm. 

Her eyes turn towards him.

"No, Aylin," you stop her, miraculously, with a mere hand half-raised. The wild silver blaze of her remains in place, and you hear her drawing in great breaths to keep it under control, the leather of her gauntlets creaking as her hands clench around the grip of her sword. But there she stays. The show of trust infuses you with a heady mix of both love and courage.

This is not what she needs: another tormentor crushed by her hand, one more fragment of an endless mass of those who would do her harm. You want her to know, viscerally, that she can be protected, too. And you want to take back a little something of yourself, as well. 

"He is mine to judge," you state imperiously. You tilt up your head and steel your spine and try not to think of the man you learned this from.

"As the sole heir to the holding of Reithwin, final scion of the house of Thorm, lady of Moonrise Towers, I sentence you to death for crimes against its people, in life and unlife, for desecration of burial sites," the rotten thing writhes in your gut, sudden and violent in its struggle against light, and it feels like it will climb up to choke you, "and murder. As a blessed cleric of Selûne, Moonmaiden, Our Lady of Silver, for crimes against Her devoted, against those in Her holy service, and against Her very bloodline, my sentence is the same, with Her as my witness."

Moonlight burns next to you and reinforces, bolsters, fills you with determination to overcome any clinging shadow.

Balthazar chuckles, a sickening, decay-filled sound from what he decided could pass for a throat.

"Here I was, recuperating, regrouping after the inconveniences your meddling adventurer friends caused me. On the cusp of taking back what is mine," he throws Aylin a disgustingly covetous look. "I readily confess, I spared the little village healer no thought whatsoever - her apparent pinnacle was tending to cuts and bruises on her peasantry, wasted dregs of flesh and blood even my idiot acolytes would find insufficient. But I think I'll keep the two of you together after all," the eyes flash towards you, looking over you with a sickening combination of hunger and fascination at a pinned insect. "I did not get as thorough a look at you as I would have wanted after you were brought back - a most unusual, intriguing resurrection, well worthy of study. A pity General Thorm had other priorities."

He claps his hands together. "A matched set! Won't that be quite the charming accomplishment?"

You barely hear Aylin's roar of fury over the roaring in your own ears. A third attempt on Aylin's freedom in barely as many months? You simply refuse to allow this. By the time the last of the moonfire fades from your fingers, the necromancer is gone - mostly. A burnt husk smokes at your feet, and then you take your spear and stab into it for good measure. All of his creations have collapsed around you, puppets with cut strings.

Aylin stares at you, eyes wide and glowing silver to match the flames licking up her sword - but she hasn't moved.

As you try and fail to steady your own breaths and stifle your burning, scratching cough, you step back from your grim handiwork to observe it, and the realisation slowly dawns. "It will not be enough," you murmur. Then, a thought bringing with it growing horror and growing hope combined. Souls. Imprisonment. A cage that nothing, neither a god-child nor a necromancer well on his way to lichdom, can escape. "But I know what will."

Aylin listens, and when you break into a run, breath wheezing sickly, she follows.

-

It does not take long for him to return.

You know his intentions; you know he will come for you. But still, you send out a warning to Halsin, and via him to everyone in Reithwin, to stay indoors and remain wary, until the matter is settled once and for all.

Aylin waits, poised and alert at the door to your rooms, thrumming with tension. You light candles and torches as the late summer night slowly begins to fall, as shadows lengthen, and keep a moonbeam trained upon the place as if it were a beacon. Huddled in the corner, on all fours on the floor amidst scattered research, you finish another modified rune for the circle, then another. You are so very close.

He arrives as soon as the sun is fully gone.

"My personal interests and projects aside," Balthazar's voice comes from outside in the hallway, just beyond the door. Continuing your conversation as if the interruption had been a group of servants bringing in refreshments, and not you striking him down with holy fire. "We do find ourselves with a convenient little power vacuum. My lord Myrkul may have lost his Chosen but he has his eye on this place yet. Shar, meanwhile, is off licking her wounds. And Selûne… ever so slow to respond. Meddling only now, is she? I hear sometimes it takes a century for her to make a move."

Aylin steps forward, so much like in the morgue. This time, at least, this is what you both agreed upon. You let out a long, slow, calming breath through your nose, and wrestle your focus back down, trying to keep it on your work.

"Silence," Aylin barks, her slow, heavy steps resounding through the floorboards. "You and your general took my armour, and my sword, and my wings, and my Mother, and my very name from me. Imprisoned me, body and soul, and inflicted torments untold, deaths beyond counting. Only for that would I judge you beyond clemency. But to have taken Isobel away from me--"

Her voice shakes on those final words in a way you've never heard before, even at the heights of emotion. 

"You would reduce the daughter of Selûne, her paladin, her sword, to a caged beast for slaughter?" Aylin takes another step forward, sword at the ready. "Then slaughter you shall have indeed."

"My, my. Stuck on the gory revenge fantasies, even now?" Balthazar tuts. "Poor, limited girl."

Whatever high opinion he has of himself and his self-proclaimed genius, it is all too easy for Aylin to keep his attention away from you. For just long enough.

"Aylin, now!" You cry as you complete the inscription, moving away from the corner, and she springs forward into action. 

Instead of raising her sword aloft for a glorious smite, Aylin casts it aside. She tackles the necromancer who barely makes it up to her chin, grapples him, pulling him towards where both of you know the circle now only waiting for its trigger-rune lies ready.

But then Balthazar sees it too, and you take the widening of his eyes to mean he understands what you have prepared for him. He stops his struggling immediately, aware he stands no chance of overpowering his mighty adversary that way, and instead mutters some incantation under his breath. Conjured from beneath the rags of his cloak come long claws and spears and scythes of sharp, vicious bone. With impeccable familiarity and accuracy, each of them hits a weak point in Aylin's armour, and punches through.

"Aylin!" You are already halfway to her side, curative energy coalescing in your hand, the circle and the necromancer and the plan you concocted utterly immaterial. 

Aylin cries out in pain, hunches over and staggers, but does not release her grip and does not stop. "Stay away!" She all but orders in your direction. You want to argue with her so badly when she glares sternly at you, preempting any attempt at assistance and healing, then growls, "on my word. As planned."

It is one of the hardest things you've ever had to do: containing yourself and letting her struggle on before you - but you will not squander her suffering and her effort. A wet trail of silver-flecked blood has formed between the door and the magic circle by the time she's finally reached it. Aylin almost falls into it with a pain-filled groan. "Now, Isobel!"

You launch yourself forward to play your part as quickly as possible, desperate to cut this agony short, but then you freeze in your tracks.

Balthazar is in the circle now, yes - but so is Aylin. And you see her struggle, briefly, against the points and shards impaling her - and fail. She slumps over, defeated, then meets your gaze.

"Do it, Isobel," she begs through grit, bloodstained teeth. "Please."

The trust, again. In her eyes. Burning.

You step forward, scribe a final line on the floor between you, and activate the circle. You see the shudder rush through both of them as the soul cage takes effect, but Aylin is the one horribly familiar with the sensation, and thus the one to quickly recover.

She pulls the claws and bone from herself, rips at herself with such force in her movements it makes you wince and cover your mouth. Then she shoves the writhing mass of Balthazar to the floor, bloodied gauntlets tightening around his throat until they sink into the bloated corpse-flesh.

The moonlight you and Aylin both call down with loud, ragged, pleading voices pours over her but does not touch her. The necromancer beneath her hands it reduces to dust, then a black residue upon the floorboards you wish was not so familiar. And then, finally, not even that is left.

Only after he is well and truly gone do you realise Aylin is still screaming.

You rush forward and throw your arms around her and let all of the healing you've been holding back surge over her, into her.

The circle dissipates instantly. Its power washes over you, rushing out in a great gust and sending paper and parchment flying, blanketing the room like so much snowfall.

Aylin buries her face in your shoulder and lets out great, heaving sob-gasps for breath. A potent mingling of horror, pain, rage, and relief, all in one - there is nothing for you to do but hold her tightly and run a hand through her hair, until the storm subsides.

Your arms are filled with Aylin as you wish so ardently for nothing but the ability to envelop and hold and protect her being entire, while in your mind a dam seems to have broken, allowing understanding to flood - or perhaps this is what a bard would call inspiration. You twist and turn searing-bright arcane runes as their residual glow around you fades, rearrange sigils in your mind's eye, and grasp the beginnings of the well-hidden fatal flaw and weakness of it all, underpinning the very concept of magical imprisonment and allowing for the escape clause of the one friendly touch, one mercy granted. It will take more work and thought and extrapolation on your part in the coming days, certainly, but there it lies - the start of a shield for you to craft, a blessing to arm your beloved with. To ensure there are no chains she cannot break.

-

What the masons hid and salvaged a century ago proves to be just enough for your purposes. You have the statue of Selûne repaired with gold inlays along cracks and seams, filling in what scant stone is missing. Silver would have been the more common, obvious choice, considering the subject goddess, of course. The craftsman asks you so many times if you are sure, and if you would not still want some pearl and alabaster, encrusted with iolites, and perhaps some touches of indigo, or cobalt. 

"Why not silver?" He exclaims, confoundedly, after you have turned down the suggestions one by one, and you just barely manage to stifle a laugh - you would never be able to explain the reasons behind your mirth to him. The effort prompts from you a brief cough instead, and you lift your handkerchief to your mouth - one of a lovely little set Aylin recently had made for you, embroidered with both of your initials and a design of tiny sparkling stars. 

Aylin's joyful guffaw from so long ago, from another lifetime for both of you, echoes in your ears. It is a delight to remember hearing; an even bigger delight to know you will provoke it once again. And again, and again, and again, for as long as you are given.

But now you have a statement to make and enough clout to ensure this one indulgence, so marble and gold the statue stays. The rest of your share of whatever earnings the adventuring party decided were rightfully yours, and the Absolute cult's ill-gotten gains you found squirrelled away all around Moonrise, you aim towards the restoration efforts.

You don't tell Aylin any details. She knows only that the scaffolding in the main town square hides work related to removing a Sharran hideaway and the old statue of Ketheric Thorm - worn stone that was more like the father you remembered from a hundred years ago than the man who drew you from the grave mere months past ever could have been. Once the work is done, you arrange with the head craftsman to wait and remove the scaffolding on a day you know Aylin will be away on some business for her mother, and to do so only after she has left.

As soon as she returns, you take her by the hand as if for one of your customary late-day strolls timed around moonrise, and subtly lead the way. In the mild chill of the autumn evening, you draw close to her, and she happily takes you under her arm as you walk, letting you leech away at her endless fount of warmth. 

It takes a while for the two of you to reach the square even though the distance is negligible; your pace is leisurely, and you indulge in telling each other of your day in great detail, discussing everything and nothing. The second her eyes alight on the new centrepiece, Aylin's words flounder on her lips mid-syllable and her boots scrape to a stop on the freshly laid cobblestones. 

She is as still as the statue. You let go of her, make a small retreat of barely half a pace. For a moment you fear you've overstepped; that in wanting to praise and encourage healing, you've instead dug pointed claws into her heart and dredged up a sea of horrid memories, and enshrined them in stone forever.

But then you see her lips curl into a smile, even as her eyes grow visibly misty with tears. "My beloved has decided to call attention to the family resemblance, I see," it is phrased as a light joke, but the catch and slight rasp in her voice betray her.

You nod, and keep your hands folded demurely in front of you. You itch to hold her, caress her, reassure her with your presence - but you wish to give her a moment, as well. So instead, you deliver a speech that isn't exactly practised, but that you've certainly given much thought to. "A monument to resilience I found fitting. We do not wish to hide the past, all that happened to this place. What was done to it, to its people. But nor do we live and die by the past alone."

Aylin steps up to the statue, all the way up to the plinth, and reaches towards it. You watch hands cut through with lambent gold slowly trail along matching lines laid deep in the marble.

"There will be a future for Reithwin, we've made sure of that. And a future for you, as well. Here, if you want it," the courage seems to be leaving you, and your voice falters when you least want it to. "With… with me."

"Isobel…" Aylin sounds breathless, awed, in a way you can't quite recall seeing before, though some dear memories come close. Like the first time you told her you loved her in so many words - an entirely unassuming day at an entirely unassuming spot by the river, in the middle of what could and would have been one of many similar perfectly enjoyable and perfectly unremarkable outings. Aylin, wide-eyed and beautifully open and vulnerable, stricken, almost, by your simple but endlessly heartfelt statement. A rare sight, reserved only for you. 

The very thought floods you with fresh resolve. You step closer to her once more. "When duty calls you away, when your Mother sends for you, I would go with you. I would offer my aid, whatever gifts I have been given. I do not care about the danger - I am not leaving your side. I am not letting you face it alone, ever again, for as long as I am able. But here, perhaps, we might also have… a home. Somewhere to come back to, always, no matter how far the road takes us."

A life, resounds your mind, insistently. We will live. I will live.

"Isobel," she takes your hand and raises it for a kiss. "Fair Isobel, wise Isobel," Aylin shakes her head with a tender little smile, as if she is loath to leave your name off her lips for very long. "True and only love of my eternal life. It would be my greatest honour."

Aylin drops to her knees before you, and you are startled, for the briefest moment - but her air is solemn, special.

"I swear to you in turn," she speaks her words with such great and pure intent, without proclaiming or shouting, but in a way that simply compels one to listen. "My devotion, undying and untarnishable. The Moon may wax and wane in Her eternal cycle, but my love will not, my ardour will not, my adoration will not. The full strength of my mighty resolve and all the fervour I can muster. For you, my Isobel."

It is yours, then, to draw her back up, and seal her lovely oath with a kiss, followed by another, and another. And though it has been months, you are flooded, again, with the sense of wonder and incandescent joy at the miracle of having her returned to you - and if it prompts a few tears to escape, well, what harm in them? Your heart feels like it will burst with immense feeling. 

Love, pure and simple and worth everything.

[ambasingresident]

Map Of America At The Height Of The Second American Civil War And Toppat Activities In The Territories

(Decided to do some mapping again after a long time (former mapper in Reddit), this is based on the Hearts of Iron 4 mods (Kaiserreich and TNO: Last Days of Europe) and takes place in @crown-of-roses-thsc 's THSC universe mixed with some TNO characteristics)

"The Divided States of America"

Lore: In the turn of the 21st Century, the Germans have abandoned the ways of Nazism in favor of democracy after the cabinet loyal to the old and bigoted ways was overthrowned by a democratic opposition group with help from the US, Russia and her allies, finally restoring peace and harmony after years of being under the fascist boot. In Russia, after having unified the Motherland under the democratic banner of Shukshin have successfully reclaimed their western territories and the sacred capital of Moscow from the Germans, going so far as to reach all the way to Germania (Berlin) and humbling their ideas of being the master race with help from their allies and the Organisation of Free Nations. In Italy, although elements of fascism remained within the Italian Empire have managed to liberalise and relax their ideals, allowing democracy and prosperity to continue functioning as it is to preserve their empire and their colonies. In Japan, after years of claiming the title of "Hegemon of Asia" has finally been humbled by a coalition of Russians, Americans, Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, and other oppressed groups and within the Japanese Empire and allies, forcing themselves to give up most of their lands and submit to a joint CSTO-OFN occupation. Establishing a reformed constitutional monarchy with democratic characteristics. In West Africa, after coming on top, the French Military Alliance have re-established French rule over West Africa in preparation for their liberation of the French homeland from the Germans. After their inevitable defeat, the newly restored France aimed to democratise West Africa and relax their grasp over their Francophile native allies in West Africa. The world seemed to be on it's path to a democratic and bright future.

In the US, after strings of authoritarian and progressive presidents have managed to stay intact and lead the free world to a bright future. However, despite the light of the future shining a dark shadow of misfortunes would dampen the light as certain issues oppositions of the presidencies have not yet been addressed. Adding to the burden are the efforts of those opposition groups and politicians to remain prevalent, even resorting to ruffled the government with scandals and misdemeanors. All would be good until a certain group called the Toppats have emerged in the 2000s, wreaking havoc across the US and some parts of the globe through criminal activities from stealing artifacts to partaking in minor terrorism. Efforts have been made by the US military and OFN-CSTO troops to contain the group and to bring justice to the criminals. However, they would prove to be difficult in handling but they would be mostly idle for some time which did not concern the government, until during one event in Washington DC the Toppats under Terrence Suave had successfully assassinated the US President at the time along with some of his cabinet members through their airship and proceeded to raid the capital. After some time the airship was forced to flee after the US military pushed them back to international airspace. The aftermath of the assassination would be everlasting as not only another president was assassinated during office, but was done in the very capital of America with such technology. Seeing the opportunity, opposition, seperatist, and other non-affiliated groups rose up and declared their legitimacies to the "true" US, depose the weakened federal government, or separate from the decaying body of the United States. It is now the present, and the United States has be dragged into another civil war, adding to the burden of the Toppats who have taken over Las Vegas during the chaos and used as their new HQ to raid the territories of the United States. Allies in the OFN and CSTO have occupied the overseas American territories such as Russia occupying Alaska and establishing a military government and Italy being trusted with administrating the Panama Canal along with other OFN members to prevent the lands from suffering the chaos the mainland is currently facing. The questions for now are who will succeed the United States, will the US comeback or become a footnote in history and who will be the one who will deal with the Toppats once and for all.

"The Onslaught Of The Toppats"

Lore of the Toppats: Since the start of the 2nd American Civil War, Terrence Suave, Chief of the Toppats have claimed responsibility for the raid in Washington DC and the death of the US President as a form of boast to those in the government and to the other factions about the wrath of the Toppats and his. As Las Vegas was contested territory and left to succumb to anarchy, Terrence led the Toppats to Las Vegas and claimed it for the clan. With the riches of Las Vegas under his grasp, he would loot the city and repurpose the businesses, luxury resorts, and casinos to generate income for the Toppats, although some claim that the services were either excellent or terrible and the staff were abused (despite most of them being Toppat themselves). Even when having Las Vegas under his grasp, the Chief of the Toppats is still not satisfied with the riches and luxury, so he formed a system where small to large dispatches of Toppats would be assigned to a certain territory and are given certain assignments such as stealing a valued artifact, corrupting the bureaucracy of the local government, smuggle weapons and illegal substances, and steal certain ships. Even factions the belong to the government have declared the Toppats as a terrorist group and Terrence as an enemy of the state. While the onslaught continues and his rule over Las Vegas tightened, he would slowly not feel himself and would become a tyrant who purges his fellow clan members in the same vain as Joseph Stalin and the Great Purge. This would go on until Ellie Rose and a group of rebel Toppats will overthrow Terrence as Chief and have Las Vegas be besieged by General Douglas Stickmin (Father of Henry Stickmin) of the USAF Central Command.

(Idk why I did all of this, I was bored and inspired by my current gameplay in Hearts of Iron IV. Check out the TNO lore for more context of the other half of my thingy)

[genesisvirus]

What is the ending for your brainrot au? Does max get in a relationship with nugget? Does nugget address their problems? Does sick TF win?

there isn't exactly an ending to the interp / au since it's following along with the shorts atp, so ig the ending is whenever mdp decides to stop making shorts lmao. so ig i'll explain more of the timeline here.

uhm so i don't exactly know when the whole twiddlefinger incident takes place, my heart wants to saying during those 24 omega nugget shorts cuz i REALLY want to make those noncanon, but idk. actually i can't even do that cuz of One short in between those and the first twiddlefinger cameo that has max still in school. with how mdp's uploading works it's hard to kinda slot that incident in a place and have it make sense so like. just bear with me. cuz i'm gonna say fuck it we do whatever LMAO

either way obviously it happens before the first cameo. the ending to the whole incident is basically, nugget gets help in the form of his hat, which clues him in on what to do; singing. so he starts singing, which does help 1) activate a memory in max that makes him stop and go wait uhm. what's happening lmao. and 2) like i've said before, their singing reverses damages caused by brainrot, so it does heal max just slightly. either way max does go unconcious, which gives nugget enough time to get him to a hospital.

happy times! except max is still very much sick and delirious and amnesiac. he pretty much spends time at the hospital recovering physically, with his family visitng to see him + help recover lost memories. when he's in a more stable place physically, he does get sent home so that his family can help him recover his memories and stuff. nugget doesn't visit often, only becuz max is still heavily delusional when it comes to nugget, so it takes a bit for max to be Normal around him again. it takes a while but as you can tell based on what i JUST posted, he does eventually regain his memories - atleast his main ones, the memories surrounding the twiddlefinger incident are still messed up and mostly missing.

hope does come back home when she found out about max and helps with the recovery process too. i think at some point there'd be a big blowup about how their parents put everything onto max, including the care of his brother, and they can't be doing that becuz it was part of the reason this whole thing got so bad to begin with (cuz again they didn't notice!! like what!!), so their parents start actually being parents and start looking after jimmy more. things start looking Mostly normal on the surface and seem to go back to normal, atleast enough for max to start uploading videos again.

ofc the situation caused alot more problems than they thought. for one, max is still infected with brainrot it's just in a more managable position, but it does afect him mentally and emotionally at times still. namely evil max starts popping up more and is completely unstable after the situation. max and nugget both suffer nightmares from the ordeal and their relationship got a LOT more awkward after everything. at this point in the shorts they're in a "acting like bfs despite not being officially together" weird relationship that they're not really touching upon yet, but give it time they'll actually talk it out. also i think evil max IS stabilizing a bit but we'll see with new shorts, rn he seems to be toning it down a bit (ignore him trying to kill jimmy..).

realisitically evil max isn't going to go away but at some point i think he'll ease up given time. we'll see tho.

i may be forgetting other aspects of the aftermath but y'all can ask about certain things like other characters and such and i'll answer it there, especially since this is already getting too long lmao.

[miqolena]

My first-final thoughts on Dawntrail

My opinions and spoilers for the entirety of 7.0 under the cut.

Overall I enjoyed this expansion immensely. There was no point at which I thought to myself, "I can't wait for this part to be over," or "This is really dull," or "I want to move on to the next thing right now." There was no character I did not enjoy and feel at least something small for. Characters I kind of didn't like initially (Bakool Ja Ja mostly) ended up being some of the characters that I loved most. Wuk Lamat was a joy in her development. I wasn't annoyed by her initial faults and I liked that she retained some of them even at the end, after she had grown so immensely. Zoraal Ja's dimensions were revealed a little late into the game, but I had already sort of gotten a notion of them by the time that happened, so I didn't mind, and I find the idea of struggling with the legacy someone leaves you with the best of intentions to be really compelling. I adored Gulool Ja Ja to pieces. And Wuk Eva. And literally everyone else. I'm serious, there's no one I didn't like.

The area that affected me most was Living Memory, and if that was like kicking me in the shin, then Heritage Found was the winding back of the leg. I have dealt with my own losses in life and the whole thing with reusing souls and resurrecting people and preserving them based on their memories was grotesque to me. My loved ones are gone, and we had wonderful relationships and I loved them dearly, but I would never want to speak to them again. Because they are dead and should stay that way. But the scene with Wuk Lamat speaking her last words to Namikka was terribly upsetting because I couldn't help imagining the things I would say to my loved ones if I could see them again. It struck home with painful precision and there were tears.

The themes of love, legacy, war, redemption, death, and loss were poignant to me, and I think they were handled really well.

As for the encounter design, the dungeons were fairly difficult but I never died in a Trust run, so they must not have been too hard. Same with the trials. I can see myself doing these things over and over again without getting too tired of it for the next two or so years. The single player duties were great except for the one QTE in the duel with Gulool Ja Ja, which stressed my hands to the point of forcing me to take a break for a few hours.

For gathering, I appreciate the new action Revisit that the game added to the two gatherers, it's always exciting when it procs. Fisher seems to be sitting pretty too. I haven't done all of them yet but so far the Wachumeqimeqi quests have been great, and I haven't done any of the role quests yet, so no opinions there. For crafting, I haven't really delved into the potential of the new actions, but I know they're probably going to shake up the game a little.

Music was spot on as usual. The game's graphical update has done wonders for the visuals as well. I'm lucky in that I'm completely enamored with Lena's updated appearance; a lot of people aren't so happy. I hope that their concerns can be addressed over time.

This might be new expansion smell filling my head, but I think Dawntrail might be my favorite. I can't wait to see where they're going with this, the aftermath to the threads they made in the MSQ. I want more of these characters and places and I know I'm going to get it, and that's the most comforting feeling.

As for fic, though… I think it's going to be hard to put Gaius in there with Lena. The entire first half the WoL is providing a role of mentorship for Wuk Lamat and I'm going to have to think really hard about how I write the MSQ so that Gaius is there and not just nodding his head and going 🧍‍♂️. There are a few moments when I was playing where I thought to myself "Gaius could respond to this with something relevant to his character," like for example when Zoraal Ja remarks that the Empire was full of idiots, but those were just a few moments. It'll be hard to fit him in with the rest of it and depict the MSQ in a way that's both not boring/retreading what viewers have already seen to much while still getting the information of the plot AND my changes across. We'll see how it goes. I'm not super hankering to start, so we'll see when I get to that.

That's all. See you ingame!

[dangerously-human]

🩻: Has writing a fic ever led to you discovering something about yourself?

Oof, my anonymous bestie, that's rarely a question we want to ask ourselves. Dangerous business! Anyway, yes: a few years back, when I was writing mostly for Continuum - I think it was Just Once I was working on at the time - I was trying to work in some stuff about trauma for Alec, specifically around the aftermath of having killed an alternate version of himself. And it was a while after the fact, but it seemed important to me to address that often, it's when you've been out of the situation for a while and things are calmer that your brain finally feels safe enough to show you just how UNsafe you felt before, when you had to just keep pushing through. All of which I eventually recognized as exactly what I was working through (mostly in therapy, but also apparently via creative writing) myself at the time, having left a job traumatized and really questioning who I was and what I was doing after all of it. Some of the manifestations of Alec's trauma response were thus pulled directly from my life, especially the exaggerated startle response to loud noises, which I don't think I'd fully recognized as a trauma thing until then. At the same time, I did give Alec some of the healing I'd been working so hard at, too.

[cuntylouis]

Oppenheimer was one of the most viscerally upsetting movies i've seen in years. I'm not even sure why it effected me so strongly, maybe because i had just been talking with my mom about the subject matters this movie touches (she works at the refugee reception services so war is often in her mind especially now with the influx ukrainian refugees) and i've been thinking a lot about how our history and future seems to be endless cycles and even though i want to believe the world will get better i'm not sure it will. I often feel fear and hopelessness when i think about the future.

I think this is Nolan's best movie. It's like he carefully took notes of everything he's been criticized for over the years (plot, dialogue, incoherence, characters, sound design) and systematically improved them all. Unfortunately his writing of female characters still sucks though Emily Blunt does her best. This is also an overwhelmingly white movie, i think i saw one darkskinned person in the background lol. Technically it's nearly perfect. It's 3 hours of mostly talking yet i was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Ludwig Göransson's score is phenomenal. Cillian Murphy is mesmerizing and RDJ is also coming for that oscar.

I think this is probably the most smart and respectful version of the movie you could do about Oppenheimer - unless you think such movie shouldn't be done at all which i think is valid. Oppenheimer doesn't really portray its protagonist as a 'flawed great man' like you'd expect and is uninterested in pitying him - it actually posits many times that Oppenheimer's remorse may have been performative manipulation to get people to pity him, and as he wryly suggests at the end it worked. This movie is also unusually unambiguous about the reality of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their motives. The bombings are usually depicted as horrific but at least ambiguosly necessary, like 'it was a difficult choice'. Oppenheimer is refreshingly clear that the bombings were a completely pointless exercise of cruelty and posturing that caused not only unfathomable suffering but caused a chain reaction that is still going on to this day and will quite possibly eventually destroy the world.

However, i wish the effects of the bombings would've been addressed more directly. I think not showing Hiroshima was a good choice, but it also kind of removes the victims from the narrative. And since the movie focuses so much on the Trinity test i think they could've addressed its effects as well. It was clearly a conscious choice to omit what doesn't directly affect the main characters, it reflects their callousness and in Oppenheimer's case also his tendency to look at the world in abstract way and overlook the reality and real people. I still think Nolan could've and should've found a way to include at least Trinity's aftermath in the movie in some capacity, especially since many people aren't aware of it and this would've been a great opportunity to make it more known

[total-drama-takes-takes-2]

aftermath 3

A flashy intro sequence reading “TTA Aftermath” flashes across the screen as a merry tune plays. A clip montage of scenes from the past four challenges play- mostly the humiliating ones. 

The screen glitches, and the camera pans out and down to a swanky studio. Former contestant Caesar is sitting on a suede couch in front of a clearly cardboard back wall. Former contestant Bonnie is seated next to him, holding an electric cattle prod. In the bleachers off to the side are every camper who hasn’t made it back, or who’s been eliminated so far- Courtney, Ass, Julia, Staci, Mal, Frollo, Kelly, Austin, McLovin, Michela, Sha-Mod, Joner, Patrick, Kitty, Fren, Max, and Peter. 

“Are we on?” Caesar whispers off to his side. Bonnie shrugs. “Alright, then! Welcome back, ladies and gents and everyone in-between or outside- I’m your host, Caesar Flickerman, and this is Total Takes Action: The Aftermath! Joining me today is my lovely co-host, Bonnie,” Bonnie zaps the air with the cattle prod for emphasis. “And our lively peanut gallery.”

“What’s that thing for?” Max asks pointing at Bonnie’s right hand. 

Caesar rolls his eyes and points behind the shorter boy, to where Patrick and Julia are holding hands behind them. Both are covered in little zap marks. 

“Anyway, we’ve got a great, action-packed episode today, so don’t tune out on their behalf!” he says. “For our first segment, let’s invite our newest peanut gallery citizen, Peter!”

Peter stands from where he’s seated beside Alistair and carefully maneuvers down the steps and into the hot seat- now a comfortable pink armchair. 

“Peter, darling, we all lost our minds back here at the studio when you willingly took the fall for Scruffy, stranding O- what inspired that decision?”

“Well,” Peter shuffles nervously in his seat. The camera focuses on Julia for a moment, who looks away uncomfortably. “I just felt like it was the right thing to do.”

“Brilliant. To hell with the competition, today let sportsmanship take the lead! We do have a question from our “frequent flier fan”, River: What’s your girlfriend’s name?”

Peter seems to relax at the change in tone and smiles, holding out his front-pocket picture to the audience. It depicts a short redhead. “Lois,”

The audience aws and Caesar grins. “It must be nice having your sweetheart at home instead of on national TV, huh?”

“It’s a huge relief,” he says. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being on TV, but-”

“Of course, I understand. I know I’ve had my fair share of… inopportune moments that are immortalized forever! Isn’t that right, Bonbon?” he turns to address the co-host. They nod. 

Caesar thanks Peter for his time and the squat gentleman returns to the stands. “Let’s see… Scary? Has anyone seen Scary?”

An intern rushes up and whispers something in Caesar’s ear. He nods curtly. “Okay, then- our next guest is known for his flair and fabulous talent- Alistair!”

The pink-haired gentleman comes down from the stands, taking a seat with his legs crossed in the chair beside Caesar and Bonnie’s couch. “Happy to make it,”

“You’ve been here since noon,” Bonnie says dryly. They are ignored. 

“From fan-favorite with your own bustling “frendom” to an underground method actor- how does it feel?”

“I wouldn’t call myself “underground”,” Alistair starts, chuckling nervously. Crickets from the peanut gallery. He clears his throat. “Well, it’s been a complete and true honour being able to test out my improv skills on this show. Though, I do prefer the stage.”

“Understandable. Let’s see some audience questions, shall we?” Caesar shuffles the cue cards in his hand. “Alistair- what are your thoughts on Patrick and Julia, and what are your thoughts on Patrick? Do you think he’s cute?”

The audience oohs and Alistair turns a little red. He chuckles. “I’m a bit out of his league, don’t we think?”

“You take that back!” Julia stands and points at him. “That’s my boyfriend you’re talking about!”

“You… want me to be attracted to your boyfriend?”

“Everyone should be attracted to my boyfriend! It’s how I know I’m winning!”

“Yeah!” Patrick chimes in. “Everyone knows the best way to rate your attractiveness as a man is by how many gays are into you.”

“Exactly!” Julia says. 

Alistair rolls his eyes. 

“Speaking of couples,” Caesar says, standing. “It’s time for the first game of the episode! If we could have Julia and Patrick, Michela and Max, and Sha-Mod and McLovin join us on the stage…”

The furniture begins to roll back by itself, and a large section of the floor disappears below before popping back up with three loveseats. The designated pairing give each other nervous glances, but none look more bothered than Patrick and Julia. They’re the last ones to arrive on the stage, and definitely the last to sit. Patrick puts his arm around her for good measure. 

Caesar paces the stage in front of them. “Welcome to Wedding Watchers- the ultimate compatibility test, designed by yours truly,” he places a hand on his heart, and then clears his throat. “Here are the rules.”

Bonnie weaves between the seats as he speaks, handing a white board and marker to each player. 

“I will ask a simple question based on compatibility- the partner in the right hand seat (my left, your right!) will have to guess how their partner answered it. For every correct answer, you get a point,”

“What do we win?” Max insists. 

“What happens if we lose?” Julia talks over him. 

Sha-Mod and McLovin are thumb-wrestling silently in their seats, as if they’d already forgotten what was going on. 

“Winner gets to choose something from our mystery voucher basket!” the camera pans over to a wicker basket full of envelopes. “The loser gets humiliated on national TV. Is that not enough? Or…” Caesar grins. “Should we bring out the sharks again-”

“NO! Humiliation is enough!” Julia snaps. 

“Kidding, kidding. Only teasing, Jules,” Caesar chuckles, then sighs. “Ready?”

The couples look between each other. Patrick leans in to whisper in Julia’s ear- “Follow my lead.”

Max sighs and Michela pats his shoulder. Sha-Mod and McLovin are arguing about who can draw a better T-Rex on their whiteboards. 

“Alright- first question. At what age did your partner have their first kiss?”

“WHAT does that have to do with compatibility?!” Max snaps. 

“Oh, nothing. I just love drama,” Caesar chuckles. “You have thirty seconds.”

A large metal divider slides up from the bench, separating the lovebirds. Patrick curses to himself and Julia whispers- “I can’t see over your shoulder- what now?”

“Guess,” he murmurs back. 

“And… time! Let’s see those answers, folks! Julia and Patrick?”

The metal dividers slide back down and Julia and Patrick stare, flustered. Finally, Julia holds up the board- in shaky handwriting- “never.”

“WHAT!” Patrick shouts. He turns around his board- 16. 

“Wait,” Julia reads the neat Expo marker handwriting. “Was I your first kiss?”

The audience aws. Patrick turns red. “No! Of course not! It was… someone else,”

“Either way,” Caesar cuts in. “No points. Maxchela?”

Max holds up his board- 12. Michela turns her around- 12. 

“I had a summer camp fling once,” she laughs nervously while Joner freaks out from the audience. 

“Sha-Mod and McLovin?”

The two look up nervously, then hold up boards with sprawling mathematical equations on them. “We forgot the question,”

“Hm… Peter, can you-?”

Peter is already jotting down notes on his hand from the audience, then looks up, flabbergasted. “I can’t believe it- both answered 14,”

“A point for Shalovin!”

“WHAT!” Julia yells. Caesar ignores her. 

“Next question- where is your partner’s dream wedding destination?”

The metal dividers slide up again, cutting off the pairs once again. After 30 seconds of hurried scribbling and thinking, they disappear once again. 

Patrick and Julia are first. 

[IN FRONT OF HIS MIRROR]

Patrick squints. “Why, you little-”

“Trouble in paradise?” Caesar pops up behind them. They both force smiles and shake their heads. Patrick turns around his board- [Cabo]. “Shame- zero points! Maxchela, you’re up!”

Max holds up the flimsy whiteboard again. [Vermont.]

Michela turns hers. [Trinity College Library]

“What?” Max asks. “I thought you said that was impossible.”

She shrugs with a smile. “I’m coming around to it,”

The audience aws. Caesar places a hand over his heart. “Adorable. But, unfortunately wrong. Shalovin?”

[the shadow realm]

Caesar blinks. McLovin turns around his board- [the shadow realm]

“Well. I guess that counts!”

"WHAT?! HOW?" Julia shouts in frustration. 

“How would that even work?” Bonnie asks from the suede couch, leaning against the back and casually watching the proceedings. 

“Our evil shadow world twins would be our best men!” McLovin states, matter-of-factly. Bonnie rolls their eyes. 

“Okay, next question- “What is your partner’s favorite color?””

After another hurried half-minute of scribbling, Julia holds up [NONE. BECAUSE COLORS ARE GAY]. 

“Patrick?”

[Red]

He stands and slams his board on the ground. “I DO NOT TALK LIKE THAT!”

“You called the color orange gay LAST WEEK!”

“That’s an objective fact!”

“Why do you say that every time we argue?! It literally isn’t a fact, it’s the actual definition of an opinion!”

“Like you would know, female!”

“I swear, call me ‘female’ one last time…”

Caesar holds back a chuckle and turns to Maxchela, who are watching the display curiously. Finally, Max turns back to the camera and holds up his board. [Black.] Michela turns her after another second of listening to Patulia scream and throw things at each other. [Black]

“Another point for you two- and Shalovin?”

The two look up from their boards in confusion, as if they’d again forgotten they were playing a game. They hold up matching drawings of a T-Rex with laser eyes. 

“Huh. Well, it’s the same, so I’ll count it,”

Julia turns. “OH MY GOD!”

"Why should we even have to play this dumb game? We don't have to prove ourselves to these freaks!" Patrick insists.

"You couldn't be bothered to ask one question about me since we've started dating and all you do is talk about yourself!" Julia snaps. "I don't care about your Valentino, gaywad!"

"Your hair is fake blonde!"

A little "I knew it" comes from Max.

"It is not! You're a terrible liar, a terrible contestant, and a terrible person! And guess what- if Scruffy were here, I wouldn't have even TALKED to you in the first place, loser!"

Patrick gasps. "You take that back!"

"Make me!"

We’ll be right back. 

---

“Welcome back to Total Drama Action- The Aftermath! I’m your very charming host, Caesar Flickerman,” he grins. Bonnie sits beside him, pointing the cattle prod at Julia every time she swipes at the pair. “And this is my lovely co-host, Bonnie.”

The stage is now back to normal, bar from Patrick and Julia being kept on either sides of it. 

"So, are you two finally calling it quits?" Bonnie asks.

"NO!" They both shout. They sigh and Caesar giggles with delight.

“Next up, we have a very special treat-” Caesar starts as a few interns roll in an outhouse. “That’s right, with just a few days before the big finale, we’re having all the former TTI contestants, and all the failed TTA contestants cast their votes for who they’re voting for- team O, or team Scruffy! Inside the outhouse, you’ll find a few more audience questions to, um, ponder on while you’re writing. Let’s go alphabetically, shall we?”

---

Alistair sits in the outhouse, flipping through a few dozen letters. He sighs. “Junk mail, junk mail, bill… my, my, how I miss my fictional frendom,” he tosses away the envelopes, completely ignoring the ballot box.

---

Austin grind the tip of the pen between his teeth while grinning, reading through his fan mail and giggling. He chews too hard and the pen explodes in his mouth. 

---

“You know who I’m rooting for? NO ONE! This entire cast is just a bunch of miserable hungry piglets sucking on the chapped teet of the talented,” Ass snarls. “Not me! I’m not letting this show run me dry!”

---

Bonnie shrugs. “I guess, O. I feel bad for Scruffy but they need to get a grip. Then again… maybe I’m not one to judge. I mean, I wouldn't start getting up at 5 AM to run laps around the studio, but I'm also not known for handling things very maturely. Maybe... I don't know, maybe Scruffy just needs some support,”

---

“Obviously O,” Courtney starts. “He’s dedicated, kind, generous… he’s an excellent person, and he knows how to put his foot down. I respect that! Now, what’s up with all these letters about me and… them?”

---

Frollo sits silently in the confessional, flipping through his Bible and drinking tea. His massive stack of letters sits untouched. 

---

Joner hums to himself as he sorts out his mail, laughing out loud at a few. “Man, these are crazy,” he pauses. “How much time do I have left in here? Oh, well- for the record, Jonah Boner was McLovin’s idea. He’s really good at coming up with nicknames,”

---

“Everyone here sucks. Everyone,” Julia snarls, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. “But… I guess Scruffy deserves the win.”

---

“O, easy,” Kelly says. “We need a little more compassion in the world.”

---

Kitty sits in the confessional, chewing on the letters they’ve received. 

---

Mal sticks her tongue out at the camera. 

---

“O, I think?” Max says. 

Michela confirms with a nod. “Definitely O,”

---

“Tough. It’s tough, everyone’s so nice,” Sha-Mod ponders. “Scruffy? Or O?”

“You do one and I’ll do the other, so that way it’s even!” McLovin continues. 

“You’re so smart babe,”

---

“Whatever,” Patrick mutters. 

---

“O. No, Scruffy’s worked so hard- but O is my friend…” Peter thinks aloud. “Fine! O it is. Going with my gut.”

---

“Scruffy. What?” Staci asks. “They have some serious reps, they’re way smarter, and they’re doing it for a cause. It’s a no-brainer,”

---

“Looks like O is in the lead,” Caesar reads aloud the poll results as Staci leaves the confessional. “Not surprising. But, as luck would have it, this segment concludes today’s aftermath- don’t worry! We’ll be back again soon to host the thrilling end of Total Takes Action. For now, I’m your host, Caesar,”

“And I’m your other host, Bonnie,” Bonnie says from the couch, turning the cattle prod on Patrick as he growls from the stands. 

“And this has been Total Takes Action: The Aftermath!”

[grecoisms]

title: a heap of broken images (3/4)

pairing: kim wexler x lalo salamanca

rating: M

summary: 

"If she wasn´t driving, she´d close her eyes. Let her imagination run amok. Then she could see the outlines of him, a haunting: dead and dark, like the path she used to take home when her mother was drunk and she would not sit next to her in the car, the act more out of defiance than fear."

"—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed" t.s.eliot - the waste land

.

Four in the afternoon finds Kim at her desk, paperwork done, eyes burning, brain foggy. Adrenaline from the aftermath got her so far, but eventually she bought herself a sandwich and a coke from the vending machine downstairs to give some energy, lest she lose the rest of her bravado. And she has to work, because when there is nothing for her brain to do, the darkest of thoughts comes a-visiting. 

The fact that Jimmy still hasn't called does not help.

She eats her cold turkey sandwich more as a duty than hunger, but takes her time to savor the coke which calms her squeamish stomach. Objectively, she is done for the day. De Guzman has his new cell, she put in a good word for him in the report and plenty of written requests on his behalf - mostly asking for extensions regarding the trial. Her and her client's ways are now seemingly separate, until, of course the prosecution decides to sink their teeth into this particular narrative. And that moment will come for certain. What's more: Lalo threw in the family card, so when (if-if-if) trial comes, she would need to be ready and play onto his hands. 

Son of a bitch of a case, she thinks around the billionth time she got that call in the morning. 

As she finishes the last of her drink, she opens the case file Jimmy has put together, and searches for the family he has created out of nothing. Flotsam, jetsam. He spurred a solid story. A wife, two children, a mother-in-law. A house with a lawn. Dream come true. 

The number she finds goes straight to voicemail; the email bounces back. Her only hope now remains an address, near Bellehaven. Deep in thought, she plays a rhythm with her pen, and weighs her options, but in her mind's eyes, she is already planning the journey. The whole thing could be over in two hours.

  No harm in trying, is there?

.

According to the file, Beth McKinnon lives with her two children and her mother - the children's maternal grandmother - near Bellehaven Elementary school which the older boy, Christopher, and the younger girl, Ella, has been attending since 2001. 

Looking around at the neighbourhood while driving, Kim has once again has to grudgingly congratulate Jimmy's taste: it's a better part of town, with freshly painted playgrounds and newly renovated, stocky little houses in a neat line, tinting both the faces and the sun a bit brighter. Even the grass seem greener in the yards, pun intended. One could hardly imagine a murderer living here, no siree. 

The McKinnons live at the far end of Princess Jane's lane, in a yellow house radiating joy even from afar, with windowpanes and the doors white as baptism day. It's a house which Kim has only seen in magazines, and she understands not why her heart grows so heavy as she gets out of her car, May sun unrelenting on her bare neck. 

It takes her two knocks and the bell to get an answer. 

Then a woman opens the door, probably Beth: harsh expression on an otherwise kind face. Behind her, a small hall, with a small mountain of shoes leaning on each other, alongside the height chart on the wall, with Tom and Jerry stickers on it, and from the slight smell of popcorn Kim knows at once that this family is, at least, a real one.

"Yes?" Beth sounds suspicious, and Kim cannot blame her. If a sharp-looking woman in black and white would turn up uninvited at her door after work, she might have difficulty opening her doors.

"Mrs. McKinnon" she says. "I´m here to talk about Jorge de Guzmán."

It´s the flash of a second, but her eyes widen, just so. Deer in the headlights, caught at a crossroads. She can sympathize, she can wait, while Beth bites on her lower lip.  It takes a bit of scrutiny, but then something must speak for her, because despite her hesitation, Beth opens the door wider.

"You better step in." 

Inside, there are more shoes, just at the corner of the entrance. 

Two of them, Kim notes, are brand new. 

Beth leads her to a room just adjacent to the hall. A kitchen, which is so far from Kim's childhood experiences that for a second, she feels lost. Almost forgets to take off her shoes. 

It is a cramped up little thing, with yellow walls and warm lights, with handwritten notes and childish drawings on the fridge, jam-smeared and juice-spilled with fingerprints. Cups and plates in the sink and the smell of stew with vegetables - holy halo. The clock above the door has the shape of a cat, its whiskers serving as its hands.

"Want a glass?" Beth asks but is already pouring her some water from the faucet.

"Sure." Kim answers, glass already in her hand, watching the mother's hands pale from squeezing another glass. 

Neither of them drink. They just stare at each other across the room. 

"So, what about him?" Beth's voice is defiant. She is trying to guess who Kim is and what she wants. 

"Saul Goodman sent me." lies Kim, handing Jimmy´s card to her. "Everything is fine, but we might need your help again."

"If everything was fine" the woman points out. "You wouldn't be here."

A clever woman. Kim decides to play it straight.

"We may have to continue with the trials. You won´t need to undergo any unnecessary hearing, just show up, like you did before. No speaking, just your presence."

Beth does not move. Does not blink.

"I do not know what you uhm, arrangement entailed with Mr. Goodman, but I can assure you the same compensations. Or more, regarding the urgency of this matter."

Still no blinking, but a lot of brightness and wetness in her eyes. 

Tears. 

Kim looks away, tactful. 

The cat whiskers ticks twice as loud in the silence as it usually would. She wonders if it ever kept Beth McKinnon wide awake at night. 

Then something touches Kim's elbows and she winces despite herself. 

"Mom" says Ella, fair-haired and yawning. "Can I have a ginger ale?"

Her fingers have a layer of salt on them, which she wipes on her white cotton pants. She has no socks on. Beth, who must have turned her head away for tactical reasons, does not notice any of this.

"You already had one, so no." she says, strictly to the cabinet.

"I'm thirsty."

"Here, have my water" says Kim. "I haven't touched it."

The girl looks up at her, eyebrows knitted in a very adultlike manner. 

"But you are holding it." she says. 

Kim smiles, again, despite herself. 

"It means I didn't drink from it" she explains, then hands her glass to Ella carefully.

"What do we say?"

"Thank you" repeats the girl dutifully, after having had her sip. "Why are you dressed like a penguin?"

"Ella!" Beth exclaims. "That is not a nice thing to say!"

"I'm a lawyer. This is how we dress sometimes."

"Do you get points if judges laugh at you?"

"I wish that was the case" laughs Kim. "Would make my job much easier!"

"Here" Ella hands the glass back. "We will have to dress in black and white soon."

"We?" asks Kim. 

"Me and Chris. The end of school is here, silly." she beams up at the lawyer twice her size. "Are you going on a vacation too?"

"Ella - " starts Beth in a tired voice. "Give the lady some rest, please."

"It's okay, it's a good question actually." Kim crouches down. "I have a lot of work to do, but I have always wanted to visit the Grand Canyon."

"That's a good one" Ella agrees with a serious nod. "I will add it to my travel list. Do you want to know where we are going?"

But before she can whisper the secret to Kim, her mother intervenes. 

"Ella" her voice is sharp, bearing no disagreement. 

The little girl falls silent, and Kim stands up, her linen shirt rustling, crumpling in the movement. 

"I need some time alone with the lady now" says her mother evenly. "You remember what I told you about adults talking?"

"That I can join in when I´m older" It would be comical, the disappointment of the girl, but she is so serious in her curiosity, with clever, round eyes. "But Mom...."

"No, no. Put up some socks and clean Chris´desk. He will be home soon."

"Can I turn on the radio?"

"Yes, but only till the fifth volume, okay?"

"Okay." 

Ella leaves, but not before tiptoeing towards her mother to hug her clumsily, lovingly, careful not to touch her mother´s shirt with her salty fingers. Then suddenly, it´s the two of them again: Beth and Kim, heaviness like a rope around them. In what must be their shared bedroom, Ella turns on the radio, the song playing but a murmur: slow and thick like honey, and hazy like a dream. 

It is Beth who breaks the silence first. 

"Mr. Goodman assured me it was a one-time thing" her voice is softer this time, if Kim seeing her daughter broke some of the ice. "Assured me that the man who we will be helping is an innocent man, wrongfully put to trial. He called me, that lawyer of yours. Said we would get a nice sum of money which he then paid us in advance. No questions asked, just smiling in court." She waves her hand around the kitchen, with an open, beckoning expression. Hopeful, despite hope being a hemorrhage - once it starts, you just bleed and bleed.  

"You would think once you buy a house, it´s all easy. You made it, you think foolishly. Have a family, a house with a backyard, a job nearby, no worries. But reality is harsher, no? You have a mortgage on the house, and the two incomes become one when your husband dies. Strange, how nothing is how you planned it."

Her hands tremble as she touches her forehead with them. 

"You are not going on a vacation, are you?" it isn´t a question. 

It all makes sense now: the shoes decked in the hall, ready for inventory. The cleaning and packing. The sudden shush, the mood swings. Big changes. 

"If I didn´t have children, I would accept" whispers Beth, lowering her hands from her face. One of her nails is chipped, and is painted a different color than the rest. Ella must have done it. "But then again, they are the reason I accepted this farce in the first place."

"We can meet each other halfway, still." Kim suggests. "It doesn´t have to be like this."

"Like what?"

"Black and white. You are obviously under great stress, and we tend to make hasty decisions when we feel there are no other options." Kim steps a bit closer. "We can arrange so that your children wouldn´t have to go to court next time."

Beth narrows her eyes. 

"And the next? Or the one that comes after? Can you give me a guarantee that it will be over the next time?"

"I can only guarantee you will be well compensated each time. Might be one more time, might be two. But we can promise you immunity, just like at the beginning."

This makes the mother laugh. It is a joyless sound.

"You cannot promise anything like that."

No, she cannot. Jimmy promised this woman something that he could not fulfill. A familiarity. 

"Are you afraid of the police - is that it?"

"Police is one thing" Beth complies, fidgeting with the hem of her navy-blue shirt. "It´s the man I would be defending I'm mostly worried about."

Kim feels her throat and mouth dry. Yes, she can see how Jimmy sweetening the deal with reassuring this widow would make sense then, when he only had to worry about one trial, and not several. Strange, how nothing is how you planned it.

"You have..." she starts, but she finds that she cannot finish the sentence. Hears how empty she sounds all of a sudden. 

"Nothing to fear?" Beth's spine goes rigid. "I might believe you - have I not seen that man in the courtroom. My god, you can make him act as polite as he needs to be, but I knew him by a single stare. He is a vile one. " 

The blame in her look is blatant: perhaps blaming herself for believing, and blaming Kim for trying, for her mere presence here. 

"Would you deny it?" 

She would not. 

Or worse, she cannot.

  Then the entrance door opens, and before she can register, a lanky boy around twelve dashes across the kitchen, jumping up and down, fists closed before him. 

"For God´s sake, Christopher!" Beth snaps. "How many times do I ha... what is that?"

Kim, who was born and bred near the tough sandhills of Nebraska countryside, already knows what that is. 

A scream proves her hypothesis. 

"I found it just next to the door" Chris holds up the lizard like a prize. "His name is Nepomuk."

"Bethany" the grandmother turns into the kitchen, panting, grey hair in disarray. "I´m sorry, I tried to stop him, but he wouldn´t listen."

Feeling more and more like an outsider, Kim decides to make her exit the exact moment the lizard lurches forward the open sink, just inside the pile of dirty plates and cutlery, followed by even more screaming.

When she looks back, she sees Ella, with her crown of hay, peering out from her window, the sun blazing her face so that she resembles more like an angel than a child.

As for Kim, she waits for self-hatred to reach her around the same time she gets to the car.

Gets in, lets her head fall on the wheel, and tastes shame like a medicine.

.

It doesn´t come as a surprise that her phone is dead. 

Time to go home and hope. 

Driving home is a rare challenge today. Kim has always commended herself on her work-ethic, but what she feels now is a bone-deep fatigue, licking at her innards. Full, that is how she feels, spilling over the edges. Meanwhile, the sky stares at her sordidly in a solid, sturdy sort of blood red as if it was running a fever all along its spine that separates earth from the heavens. 

Horizontally consistent, vertically vast. 

She wants to lie down so badly and let go. Just for an hour. Half an hour. Around her wish and her figure, the terrain changes, but she does not heed it - has started driving unaware: white line fever taking over her, and underneath it all, perhaps a real fever is on its way. Her skin feels hot all over, wants to crawl out of her own skin because staying in it has become quite burdensome as of late. Crossing that infamous bridge will soon become relevant, and is already on fire, however she tries to look at it. 

If only Jimmy was here. It´s not a need, but a wish, a want. He could make this problem light, or at least lighter - would be experienced where she is not - would know the words that she lacks. 

Worse still, there is also the question of him, and how much viler he will become if he knows the plan won´t hold up perfectly. Yes, it is obvious he is dangerous - obvious not just to lawmen, but to an outsider as well. Beth McKinnon got so afraid, she decided to run in the opposite direction. A question begs itself: why doesn´t Kim feel the need to do the same? There was a choice to be made a day, no, two days ago: to be seen or not, by Lalo Salamanca. She chose the former path and, in turn, could have a glimpse at him - the mercury face, the shrewd smile, the tense intent behind his masquerade. Nonchalant at first glance, but Kim is experienced in facades. Knows a well-crafted disguise when she sees one and beholds Lalo as he is: ambitious and passionate, calculating and cunning - a man with a sea of fire for a mind. 

Still. Beth was right: right to reject her, right to run. No use of denying:  he is a violent man, Kim could see it from his stance, the slope of his wide shoulders and the column of his thick neck that he cradled ferocity from a young age; below the blood, bordering on the soul.

If she wasn´t driving, she´d close her eyes. Let her imagination run amok. Then she could see the outlines of him, a haunting: dead and dark, like the path she used to take home when her mother was drunk and she would not sit next to her in the car, the act more out of defiance than fear. 

Is this defiance then? she wonders, reaching the outskirts of Sawmill Village Apartments. During the journey home, the scarlet of the sky turned black, day turned to night. Against whom exactly? Or what? 

Defying her limits, her expectations? True, she wouldn´t have done anything close to this six months ago. Not even three. Now here she is, jumping right into danger, consequences be damned - all thrill, no thought, no care. Some stubborn part of her always wanted to stand out, stand apart from the crowd, ever since she was a girl with gangly legs. After, around the time her eighteen-year-old self realized she did not merely want to survive but succeed, she learnt to fight differently. Because you need to adapt then and overcome your nature, which Kim found the hardest for people to do. 

Or maybe, says her bolder voice growing stronger each day, you´re revolting against banality itself. Isn´t that why you hooked up with Jimmy in the first place? 

Started as a hookup. Became something more. 

Unnameable. 

Until, well, until Lalo named it, smiling as he said so, a smile that did not reach his eyes, not really. She wondered if anything reached those eyes, really. Anything of substance. Even as a prisoner, even in chains, he was putting together pieces in a game only he saw and understood, a game which Jimmy and her got caught in accidentally. 

Briefly, she hopes. 

Lalo named it, what she dared not. 

You love him. You love him. You love him.

A fact.

A weapon.

There was a thrill in it, this chess game, this haunted hunting. The knowing and yet not. Boredom was revolting to Kim - but was it always? She tries to remember if her wish to stand out as a teenager was her way of getting some excitement , but as she contemplates this while parking her car, she has a dawning sort of realization, and suddenly,  she comes back into her body, alert and awake, as if though shaken from slumber.

Stops the engine and looks into the rearview mirror, as if it was a wishing well.  

A woman nearing forty looks back at her. 

How she resembles her mother!

And just how alone she was as a child. 

There was no other way, she realizes, tired hand over tired face: she has always stood out, having been a pilgrim between schools, dreading the summertime without friends, a father who was a ghost, and a mother who should neve have given birth. 

And given what she inherited from her parent; she had never managed to revolt against shit. If anything, she followed in her steps obediently, doing exactly what she had done.

Running, always running. 

And now what?

Now Jimmy is in the desert, and she can transform Jorge de Guzman into Lalo Salamanca.

A fact.

A weapon.

.

The lights are turned on in the apartment.

Now this is a surprise. 

She can see it from below, the warm glow of the living room licking at the terrace, and an almost irrational fear floods her. 

Maybe the police found out their ruse. Or it´s already the cartel, sniffing around. Or another group, the people who tried to kill Lalo, perhaps waiting for her in the dark, with a shiv or a gun. And her phone is dead. 

A shudder touches her, top to bottom, head to toe. 

Her fickle and frequent visitor: Adrenaline.

Eyeing her car keys and thinking of the spare mirror and nail clippers she usually keeps in her compartment box; she shuffles through her chances. The power of surprise is with her, but nothing much. Cannot call the police, for various reasons - and who else is there to call now?

Kim takes a deep breath and with it, the risk as well. 

.

Upstairs, just before the apartment, there is a static sort of silence.

When trying to push the keys in, she finds the door open.

The car keys - Kim holds those in her right hand, fist closed, so that two of the keys can peek out from in-between the triad of her fingers. 

Index, middle, ring. 

Very slowly, almost softly, she yawns the door open, heart hammering in her chest, proof of life. The hammering is so loud in her ears, she fears it will betray her. 

And then just as softly, if not more slowly, she tiptoes to the living room, holding her breath, peeking to the left, towards the sofa. 

"Kim" says a raspy voice from her right, from the kitchen.

Kim would recognize this voice, his voice, anywhere - and turns to see, dropping the keys on the ground, forgotten.

Yet Jimmy´s voice does not match Jimmy´s face: he looks like Kim feels, there is a haunted look on his sunburnt face and dry eyes, eyes that have a thousand-mile stare. 

She opens her mouth to speak, but her words turn into tears, she is crying in earnest now - hot, honest tears. 

Holds her shaking shoulders while she holds his - is it possible that he got thinner in these two days?

"Hey" her husband says; her other half. "I' m okay. We're okay."

Whispers it with such conviction that Kim almost believes him.

.

Although it is not exactly a lie he tells her, it is a quite colored and censored version of the truth.

He went out to the desert, the plan went amiss, crashed his car, got lost, spent one night under the stars and another at a motel near Claunch. But he isn't sure where he was exactly, not until he reached Camino Cerrito.

And though Kim has an argument to each of his stories, and twice as many questions to ask, she doesn´t. Not tonight.  Not when Jimmy looks so pitiful, so pitiable: apart from his legs hurting, the burns and tidbit cuts, Jimmy also has a big bruise on his forehead, just below his hairline - blooming already into an angry, purplish color. 

When her eyes carve a question mark there, he tries to rebuff her in advance:

"I fell" and looks down, like a child caught in the pantry. 

Smiles, but even his smile seems to be in pain. 

Only when he is naked in the bath, all bare and vulnerable, does Kim dare to ask her first question, the first in her mind after ordering her heart back in its place.

"Did you bail Lalo out?"

Is he out? is what she wanted to ask, but thought it too crude, like she was asking whether an animal escaped its cage. 

"Funny story" says Jimmy, nodding, and looking anything but entertained. "Mentioned you have met. Knew your name and everything."

Kim rolls her eyes. She doesn't know it yet, but in a month, she will miss this lightness with every atom of her being. 

"Did he call me Mrs. Goodman?" 

"Yeah, he did" Jimmy´s mouth is a thin line. "But he is out and will be gone soon. Probably fleeing to Mexico after the stunt he pulled. Hopefully for good."

Silence follows, the comforting kind, the one you can sink into. Domesticity has many blissful corners like this, bus stops, as she calls in her head, where you can put down your baggage for a bit. She had never known a silence like this, not before Jimmy. 

She washes his back with care, but as she tries to wash the back of neck with the wet sponge, Jimmy´s hand grasps hers, cutting the motion. 

"Kim, I´m sorry." His voice is small - but his eyes are big. "You never should have had to go there, to him."

"Does it matter now?" she replies, sensible, reaching to cup Jimmy's face. "Went to the Detention Center on my own accord, it's not as if someone put a gun to my head."

Though the sentence comes without a thought, she regrets the words almost instantly. It's almost as if someone closed the blinds on Jimmy´s face, painting it dark, shallow. 

"It was like he was gloating" he shudders, refusing to look at Kim, staring at the wall, eyes glossing over. "Like he knew. Knew that he has in his pocket now that he has met you, now that he knows you."

"He better remember me," Kim replies. "I saved his ass today."

"What?!"

"They tried to murder him in his cell this morning. With a home-made shiv."

"Jesus" this makes Jimmy look at her, sudden-pale under the sunburn. 

"Oh, I guess he omitted this part when you talked?"

"Well, it wasn't a long chat. Kept staring at his neck, though. I thought he had had an accident, or I don´t know, some... nasty action."

Kim laughs despite herself. 

She missed Jimmy so much. 

"Nasty action?" 

"He strikes me as a man who has a taste for deviance."

A muscle jumps in the inside of her thigh. She ignores it. 

"Well, I am not sure whether he liked being choked or not, but pleasure wasn´t exactly the aim of the assailants."

"Who knows these days?" Jimmy mutters, repressing a yawn. "Wait, so did you..."

"Represent him against prosecution? No, but I was about to. They sent Khalil, from the DA's, another lawyer from the center, and a detective, too."

The water cools while she recounts today´s events, some part of her soul hoping that it will encourage Jimmy to open up as well. 

"... and then I wrote to NMC, asking for extension. By the way, Khalil is furious with us, so there's that."

"Well, hopefully it won't matter anymore, I guess - with Lalo being gone."

Strange thing, the double entendre: gone as in distance, gone as to death. Kim feels the hair on her arms stand, trying to imagine Lalo Salamanca´s body in blood, but finds she cannot.

"You think they will try again?" she asks in a low voice.

"Dunno" says Jimmy slowly, as if tasting the words with care. "But that's not our problem anymore."

Ache in his eyes, but not his heart, surely. 

This man of hers, he survived, he always did. 

"Was it worth it?" she whispers, passing her hand through his dry hair, lighter by a shade.

"See for yourself" grins Jimmy, and lets some more water into the tub, while Kim goes through the duffel bag on the couch.

Inside, there lies an unseen amount of cash and a coffee mug, with a hole in its middle.

.

In her dream, Kim is balancing a duffel bag with innumerable shoes stuffed in it and a shiv that is made out of keys. In this world of dreams - as it goes - there exist dream laws, according to which the duffel bag and the shiv have the same and equal amount of weight.

No questions asked, especially because Kim has only one leg in her dream, so this balancing act is close to a well-versed miracle. She doesn´t question this, obviously. She is too busy balancing and making sure none of the items fall, because in this world, in this state, that is the worst thing that could happen, surely. 

She can´t let it go. 

Can´t let go.

Can´t.

Then - because this is a dreamworld, and not the real one - Jimmy comes to help her quite quickly, no questions asked, and she feels so relieved, that she might just fall on her knees herself.

Oh, but wait: that would defeat the purpose itself.

"Jimmy!" she says, loud in the syrupy texture of the dream space. "Quick, take the bag!"

But as he steps closer, it becomes apparent that he has no hands and thus cannot help her.

She says his name again, and in turn, Jimmy opens his mouth to speak.

Surely, to console her. 

It's not consolation, however, that comes out of his mouth. No calming words. Kim is not sure it's a human voice, a human noise - it's something subhuman, a shriek, a shrill noise that´s like a...

"Someone's ringing the bell" she groans, reaching for Jimmy in the dark, shaking him up. 

Jimmy whines into the pillow, frustrated. 

"What time is it?" he moans, words muffled by linen.

"Four forty-two." 

They hadn't eaten dinner - just went straight to bed, clothes discarded on the floor, worries forgotten. Now, in the early hours of the morning, half their soul still in sleep, stiffness in their joints, it's hard to stand up straight. 

A phone starts to ring - Jimmy´s, in the kitchen, thrown just next to the aquarium. Kim doesn´t have it in her to ask. 

"I'll get it" he mutters. 

Half-awake, Kim staggers to the front door, barely aware of her surroundings - and therefore forgets to ask who is standing outside their door.

Opens the door, trusting and blind.

"Hey" says Lalo Salamanca, smiling his wolfish smile, eyes alight. "Can I come in?"

[oneunexpected]

This, I think, is my best chapter-by-chapter playlist so far, especially in the last eight or so songs. It's for Marks of Secret, and I hope you all enjoy! Listen along here.

1 - Symphony no. 5, mvt II by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - This is a looooong chapter. It mostly establishes where Gregor’s family is at after the events of Curse of the Warmbloods. I didn’t really have a song in mind for it, and I still don’t. Maybe one day I’ll come back and change this, but for now it’s the second movement from Tchaikovsky’s second movement, because it’s got a little sadness, a little contentedness, a random jumpscare (like the Bane), and this chapter has all of that.

2 - Paranoid Android by Radiohead - The Bane is moody and unstable and so is this song! When Thom Yorke sings, “When I am king, you will be first against the wall,” I think about the Bane and Ripred. Another line I like is “Ambition makes you look pretty ugly / Kicking, screaming Gucci little piggy.” Pearlpelt’s our Gucci little piggy, deluded on all the things Twirltongue’s promised him.

3 - No Surprises by Radiohead - Back to back Radiohead! I struggled with this choice because this chapter covers a lot and has three pretty distinct tonal shifts. I related the line “A job that slowly kills you” to Gregor’s increasing anxieties about his role as the Warrior, both in regards to Ripred’s request he help him kill the Bane, and the specter of the next prophecy, which he asks Nerissa about. The song’s lyrical content is pretty dark, but the tune is sorta peaceful, so I hope this song doesn’t take you out of the chapter’s happier moments.

4 - Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac - I wanted a song about some sort of dark temptress for Twitchtip. I don’t know many. It was either this or Jolene, and Jolene doesn’t seem quite as shadowy as Rhiannon does, so here we are.

5 - May I Have This Dance by Francis and the Lights ft. Chance the Rapper - This song is so sweet, and so is this chapter. It’s about setting down any burdens you carry to just enjoy someone’s company.

6 - Cover Me by Björk - “This is really dangerous / Cover me” are good lines for the first time Luxa really ever asks anything of Gregor. I chose this version over the album version because I like the arrangement more, but you’re welcome to check out the other version, or the remix, which is longer.

7 - You’ve Been Flirting Again by Björk - Luxa and Gregor fight a ton in this book, and I could have chosen this song for any one of those times, but process of elimination sort of led me here. The last verse in particular, “How you reacted was right” followed by “Give her some time, give her some space,” fit well in this chapter. You can almost hear Ares telling Gregor that in the dialogue.

8 - Reptilia by The Strokes - While I chose it mostly just because it sounds like a fitting song for a combat scene, I like the repeating prechorus lines, “Please don’t slow me down if I’m going too fast / You’re in a strange part of our town.” Seemed like good lines for Gregor’s out of control raging here. Lyrically, there’s plenty here to imply the narrator is sort of struggling with himself, and that his partner (or whoever he’s addressing in the song) is losing patience with him, which fit close enough with the aftermath of what Gregor does here.

9 - Just a Game by Birdie - My obligatory Hunger Games soundtrack song for this book. Chose this song for the date subterfuge — Gregor doesn’t know how much of his quick lie reflects how he really feels.

10 - Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap - “All those years / They were here first.” You might know this song from the Lonely Island/SNL digital short “Dear Sister,” one of the greatest gifts to the internet, or from its sample in Jason Derulo’s 2009 classic “Whatcha Say.” Mysterious, creepy, heartbroken, it’s everything I wanted for the picnic bunch investigating the Fount.

11 - Earth by Sleeping at Last - This is probably a little on the nose, since this is a song that uses an earthquake as an extended metaphor, but I think lyrically it works with Luxa really well here. She’s got her tough walls, but like the narrator saying, “Fault lines tremble underneath my glass house / but I put it out of my mind / long enough to call it courage / to live without a lifeline,” this is the chapter where she learns she has to rely on the people in her life, namely her cousins. She needs Hazard the same way Gregor needs Boots. But she needs Howard, too, because as tough as she is, sometimes she needs someone to take care of her sometimes.

12 - Your Best American Girl by Mitski - Gregor and Luxa talk about the date subterfuge, and they both sort of mutually imply that if they weren’t (very literally) living opposite lives, they’d be interested in one another. This song captures that sort of cultural divide and yearning in spite of it.

13 - Shout by Tears for Fears - I’m jumping the shark. I had no clue what to use here. I went with this to try to represent Howard as a moral compass. I got nothing.

14 - Running to Stand Still by U2 - Consider this my return to form, because this was a song I knew I wanted to use from the beginning. This song is about a woman in a lot of turmoil deciding that she’s “gotta do something about where we’re going,” and, well, this chapter is about that, too. On a personal note, this song has been one of my favorites since I was a child, and I really hope you enjoy it. The last verse is so haunting: “She is raging, she is raging / And the storm blows up in her eyes / She will suffer the needle chill / She’s running to stand still.” Luxa’s decision is going to have horrific consequences. But in her eyes, it’s what’s necessary to finally be still.

15 - Joan of Arc by Arcade Fire - Luxa is the Joan of Arc in question here, the Regalian’s “muse,” as the song puts it. Gregor’s upset with Luxa, and he questions his place in the upcoming war, which I thought fit well with “I’m the one with the heavy heart / ‘Cause I’ll follow you.”

16 - The Ruler and the Killer by Kid Cudi - Thank you once again to the Hunger Games for delivering me a song about themes Suzanne used in both series. This is a great song for the version of the Bane we see in this chapter, who is a compelling orator rallying his troops to do something unspeakably evil — even though we don’t know the extent of his atrocity yet. “When I talk, you should listen / All of you belong to me / Come on, we should get it going / Now what I want is specific, hey hey.”

17 - Butchered Tongue by Hozier - How kind of Hozier to release this song last week! We learn a little more about the extent of the Regalians’ colonizing behavior here, and since that’s done largely through discussing the different languages in the Underland (and how not knowing English can be a death sentence for other creatures, as it nearly was for the Scorpions), I thought this song was a good fit. Also, it sounds cool.

18 - Ribs by Lorde - I chose this song for the moment Luxa and Gregor have here, when they’re just enjoying one another’s company, feeling very far from the war waiting for them. Gregor reminds himself soon he’ll leave her land forever, but it’s no comfort. Lorde laughs with a favorite friend “‘til her ribs get tough,” but like Gregor, she knows “that will never be enough” to sustain their relationship in the face of lost innocence and the passage of time.

19 - Redbone by Childish Gambino - Since this song is about paranoia in a relationship and the sense of being surveilled (or even stalked), I chose it for the discussion about the rats that attacked Gregor under the palace, and Luxa and Howard’s anger at Ripred and Gregor for not taking the gnawers’ omnipresent threat.

20 - The Night We Met by Lord Huron - This is Gregor and Luxa’s biiiig fight, the one that clues in Ripred to Gregor’s attraction to Luxa. I chose this song for Gregor’s haymaker, the suggestion that Luxa and Gregor could forget that they ever met each other, mirrored in the repeating line, “Take me back to the night we met.” I also like the lyrics, “I am not the only traveler / Who has not repaid his debt.” When he’s cooling down from the fight, Gregor thinks about how much he and Luxa owe each other, how interconnected their lives have become and that reminds me of those lines.

21 - Never Tear Us Apart by INXS - I think this is a good song about the relationship bonds have and their devotion to one another. I particularly like it for Ares and Gregor, especially because the chorus reminds me of the circumstances of their bonding. “I was standing / You were there / Two worlds collided / And they could never tear us apart.” This chapter is one of the most important moments for Ares and Gregor’s relationship. Ares has to give his trust up completely to Gregor to “let him fly for a change,” as Gregor says, and I think Gregor’s behavior is so touching, whether for his insistence that he be the one to bring Ares in, or the way he rambles reassurances to keep Ares calm. Ares begging Gregor not to leave him is like a punch to the stomach every time I read it. I wanted this chapter’s song to reflect how unshakable their relationship has become.

22 - O Children by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - I won’t try to analyze this song too much because I’d be here too long, but I encourage you guys to go read the lyrics to it, because I think they’re all impactful. One of the verses that led to my selection was “Poor old Jim’s white as a ghost / He’s found the answer we lost / We’re all weeping now, weeping because / There ain’t nothing we can do to protect you.” I see Cartesian as Jim, finally getting the horrific proof of what he always suspected — the gnawers are trying to kill all of the nibblers.

23 - Mothers of the Disappeared by U2 - This song was written about the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the mothers of the activists and political dissidents forcibly disappeared — that is to say, kidnapped, tortured and murdered — by the United States-backed Argentine military junta that ruled from 1976 to 1983. I encourage you all to read about the Madres, because they were remarkable, and if you’re American, I think this is a historical event you need to know about. I think it is up there among the worst things this country has ever been responsible for. But I digress. I chose this song for its lyrics, a very poetic depiction of witnessing political violence, and the beautiful expression of grief in the music. The last two verses are haunting: “Night hangs like a prisoner [God, what a line] / Stretched over black and blue / Hear their heartbeats / We hear their heartbeats / In the trees, are sons stand naked / Through the walls, our daughters cry / See their tears / In the rainfall.” The picnic squad are the only witnesses of what’s happened, the only ones left to “hear their heartbeats,” and it sets the course for the rest of the series — and really, each one of their lives.

24 - The Unforgettable Fire by U2 - On the nose, but I chose this song to use the volcano itself as the unforgettable fire in question. “Walk on by, walk on through / Walk ‘til you run / And don’t look back / For here / I am” reminded me of Gregor when he’s trying to find the rest of his party or a way out of the ash or… anything, really, to save him from his situation. I don’t know what I’d interpret the “I” to be in that situation. The nibblers? The volcano? His despair? It all seemed to fit.

25 - Fly On by Coldplay - When Pandora dies, Luxa tells Howard that she’ll “fly with him always,” which is what reminded me of this song. The song goes, “Fly on, right through / Maybe one day I’ll fly next to you,” which to me fit well with Howard teaching Hazard how to carry the memory of his loved ones.

26 - Orphans by Coldplay - I don’t know why it seems like any time I use the same artist more than once for one book, I use them back-to-back, but I love this song for this book. Get ready for some serious lyrical dissonance. It’s a happy-sounding song, but it’s about how war tears lives apart. I chose it for the refrain, “I guess we’ll be raised on our own, then / ‘Cause I wanna be with you ‘til the world ends / I wanna be with you ‘til the whole world ends,” which reminds me of Gregor and Luxa at the end of this chapter. The idea of kids who sort of have to raise themselves fits well for both of them, too.

27 - Trouble in Town by Coldplay - Okay, I know three in a row is a little ridiculous. I mostly liked the way this song sounded for Gregor and Ares speeding back to Regalia to warn the city about the impending attack, and because it’s from the same album as “Orphans,” it was already on the brain.

[blorbologist]

Cat’s Cradle - Chapter 9

Ch 1 … Ch 8

[Hey y’all!! A heads up - in this chapter there’s the aftermath of a car strike.

The animal survives and will experience a full recovery, but if this is distressing to you, you can jump to the vet office at “Mr. de Rolo?”. The AU resumes its more fluffy nature after this brief two-chapter dip into trauma for Percy and the animal - I promise you no animals die in this fic.]

Percy’s going over his schematics one more time before casting when the doorbell rings. 

Frowning, he double checks on the kittens - sleeping soundly after their last feed - before turning down the hall. Time enough for two more rings. It better not be a delivery, or -

“Hey - oy! You’re one of Scanlan’s buddies,” says the short woman at the door. Percy has to wrack his brain to put a name to the face - mostly because he sees a lot of his friend in the eyes and broad mouth. Kaylie - Scanlan’s daughter. He hadn’t known she lived close by. 

Percy opens his mouth to greet her, but Kaylie immediately sobers, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “Well, this sucks. Do you have a cat?”

He furrows his brows. “In an auxiliary capacity, you could say. Why?”

Kaylie sighs more heavily than someone her size should. “Right. So.” She runs a hand over her face. “Fuck, just - come with me? I think - I think it got hit by a car.”

Percy’s stomach drops. He does not think to put on his jacket or shoes, striding out after her in his shop slippers. The puddles soak through them before he’s halfway to the lot, before he sees the shape Kaylie points out. Carefully pulled to the side of the road. 

“Fuck,” Percy breathes, when he can. The exhale hurts because he’s running and he needs that air, but fuck, fuck, fuck - 

It’s Curio. 

“Bastard hit her, stopped and kept on goin’-” he thinks it’s Kaylie huffing behind him. Distant.

The gravel chews at his knees through his pants as he kneels. Percy hesitates to touch her, hands shaky and hovering closer than they've ever been. 

Curio purrs - a desperate attempt at self-soothing. The damp head lifts, blue eyes blown wide and whiskers trembling. Her face is black, but for the rust brown on one cheek.

She looks almost as he remembers, but the hints of what lays hidden on her other flank. One hind leg has an angle fit only for wrought metal. The weeds are red in spots, space between the rocks shiny with worse than rain.

Her chest heaves - stuttering and uneven and huge for her little body. She's so small - not skinny, just small. Lanky in the limbs. No more than a kitten herself, he realizes. 

“You poor dear,” Percy rasps. On a hunch, he tries, “Tsk tsk tsk.”

Her purring picks up its pace.

“Help me get her to my truck - we’ll use my jacket.” It’s bitterly cold - half soaked, laying on the side of the road for gods know how long, the poor cat has likely had it worse. Kaylie hovers, saying something about finding the address of the nearest vet.

Curio damn near screams when Percy touches her back to move her. He flinches, hard. His hand comes away rust red. “I’m sorry - be brave, please be brave.”

The rain lapping at his eyes and cheeks make it difficult to see what he's doing as he eases her onto the makeshift stretcher.

He'll manage. He's seen worse. 

(It stopped raining hours ago.)

--

“Mr. de Rolo?”

It’s forty-eight minutes after he’d handed Curio off to a vet when someone takes him aside. Or tries to - Percy can’t quite stop pacing, and flinches away from the hand on his shoulder to continue his trek. Back and forth through his personal hell. 

The too-clean scent of the emergency vet is not helping. 

He can’t make a call. He can’t make another phone call. Not like last time. Gods, not like last time.

“She should make it,” she says first, no-nonsense. Percy half expects it to fly in one ear, out the other - instead it rattles around almost painfully sharp, splintering into a tension headache. “It seems the car grazed her back end.” She crosses her arms, giving up on offering comfort when Percy keeps pacing. “A lot of what you saw was road burn. Looked worse than it was, though it’s unclear if they can save her leg.”

“Good - good.” Percy finally stops when he feels he needs to, to have enough breath for a response. He can guess why they might have sent someone to talk to him, and this is - this is good, good, better. “Don’t worry about the cost - whatever it takes, just do whatever it takes to save her.”

The woman - she has curly hair, resisting the bun it’s pulled into - nods, letting out a sigh he was not supposed to hear. She hands him a sheet of paper - initial cost analysis, his eyes glaze over familiar expenses in new context. “This is the best we can estimate so far, though with surgery-”

“I know,” says Percy. 

Another nod. “Thank you, sir. We did want to make sure you are capable of bottlefeeding her litter while she recovers. A crash course can be offered, no charge, but the sutures will be delicate, and -”

“Wait.” Percy lifts a hand. The headache is almost twisting, digging in deeper, interlocking with buried hurts to churn and curl. A storm, or turning cogs. “We have her kittens - she’s a stray, she had abandoned them in my workshop. I’ve been feeding them for a week and a half, now.”

Furrowed eyebrows are never a good sign. 

“Are you sure?” The technician, or vet, or intern, or whoever this person in white smelling of blood and antiseptic (mortician, mortician, mortician) presses. Presses, like fingers into the wounds. 

Because she says: “There are clear signs she’s nursing at least one kitten. Dirty areola, missing belly fur.”

“Fuck,” Percy breathes. 

--

He calls Vex outside the emergency vet, as far as he can get from the clinical white and buzzing lights and everything he had meant to leave behind. Under a tree, with the gasoline stench of cars masking the worst of what clings to his clothes. There was wherewithal to leave his credit card, just to assure them he was still here, he wasn’t running, please don’t stop working on her, please don’t think he abandoned her.

Ringtone is different. Sights are different. Smells are different. Percy takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes - everything itches with unshed, panicky tears.

“Hi, Vex,” he says, before she can even breathe a hello. “I’m sorry - I know you’re at work-”

“Percy.” Somehow the firmness is soothing. Grounding. “Percy - what’s wrong?”

“At the emergency vet, on Cloudtop Av.” Her inhale makes him spin - she must think the kittens, clear up quick - “Curio was hit by a car. They think she had another kitten, hidden somewhere.”

“Darling, breathe.” Vex’s voice drifts away for a moment - hard to be certain if it’s a trick or her moving the phone away for a moment. “Breathe with me, alright Percy?”

“Time is-”

“Not that desperate, not yet.” And, because she knows him so well: “You won’t think clearly like this, Percy. Just try it, for me, alright?”

He tries.

He’s no good at it.

He gets very good at it.

In, hold to Vex’s silence, exhale long and low with her. A cycle that repeats until it’s the only thing turning, not his head or the world and there’s some semblance of control over him. The shaking won’t stop. That’s fine, it rarely does. Just gets worse, like now.

“I’ll handle it,” Vex says. “You stay there - I don’t want you driving like this, Percy. When did you last feed the little ones?”

He counts. “Hour and a half, two hours ago.”

The shifting of cloth and hair speaks for her nod. “Alright, alright - not perfect, but doable. I’ll be by to pick up your spare key soon, darling. The kittens will be okay. Focus on Curio, and yourself.”

“But the -”

“Kittens,” Vex repeats, with emphasis. She grows quiet, though the phone tattles on the racket around her - a door slamming, things being shoved into a purse, her shoes on laminate. “I’ll find her.”

[mortemoppetere]

TIMING: sometime before this. FEATURING: various npcs written by the lovely @ohwynne & @mortemoppetere LOCATION: the shores of moosehead lake! SUMMARY: emilio investigates the aftermath of wynne's departure from their home. CONTENT WARNINGS: child death, sibling death, child abuse (cult + hunter variety)

It was funny, the way his heart was in his throat. There was nothing scary about the job he was imparting on now. There were no punches to be thrown, no real threat of bleeding out over someone’s blad, something’s teeth. And yet he never felt nerves like this when heading into a vampire’s den, never felt this uneasy outside of a pit of undead things. This was a farmer’s market; he had no idea why his nerves were telling him it was the gates of Hell.

Well… all right. Maybe that wasn’t entirely true. He had some idea. Wynne’s face flashed in his mind, sad and desperate. There were answers to be found here, he knew. And he didn’t know if those answers would be good or bad, but he knew they needed to have them. He understood that much. He thought of the massacre back home, of Juliana and Rosa and Edgar and Jaime and Flora. He’d lost everyone, but at least he’d known what had happened to them. Even if he could never get the image of it out of his head now.

Mind made up, he squared his shoulders and walked into the market like a man marching into battle. He flittered around for a while, using his minimal people skills to give his best impression of a man who knew how to socialize. He wasn’t very good at it. He was stilted at best, awkward at worst. But people seemed to accept him as a man without much experience in the people department. A few well-placed questions here, a few sly inquiries there, and he was standing in front of a booth. There was a woman sorting fruit behind it, looking distracted.

“Uh, hey,” he greeted, letting his accent hang heavy on the words. People underestimated immigrants; Emilio used it to his advantage sometimes. “Isn’t there usually another booth next to here? Thought I remembered them from last time.”

—

The farmer’s market in Greenville, Maine was a place of rhythm and routine. Though the produce and products changed with the seasons and whims of their sellers, there was still something about it that remained the same. Similar faces. Similar scents. People knew not to stand on the East corner of the market, because that’s where Meg Bushway always put her stall — and you did not want to piss her off. Emily was fond of it all.

She had worked with the local fruits and vegetables for quite some years, her first job having been helping set up and her current one being one of the smiling faces that helped customers. She liked the old, familiar faces, with their growing-wrinkles. When they asked for recipe ideas, complimented last week’s wild blueberries. 

Emily even liked the booth next to her, which tended to house the people from up north who were a little strange. One time, she had caught one of them slipping a clean, shining bone in her bag. They sold produce, much like her, as well as cuts of meat and a fair amount of eggs. They had been pretty absent as of late, though, and when they’d appeared they had not had much to offer. The man she liked best – Rhys – had looked tired, harrowed. Emily had offered him some fresh strawberries that she hadn’t sold at the end of the day.

But life went on. She had sales to make. So when a stranger – which was strange, as there were mostly familiar faces here! – addressed her, she looked up with a bright smile. He didn’t ask her about the sweet potatoes though, nor the cranberries. “Oh! You mean the one from the estate up north? No, they’ve been here a bit more sporadically. Don’t really know why? Seems they have been having less stuff to sell.” Emily stopped rearranging the apples. “Were you lookin’ to buy something of them? Maybe I can redirect you to an alternative.”

—

His intel that Wynne’s old community tended to set up in this spot was good, then, though Emilio wasn’t sure he liked the implications that they’d been around less and less lately. At first, he hadn’t been sure he believed the ideology they’d sewn into Wynne’s worldview. The idea that there were demons out there who were so concerned with the goings-on of humanity that they might demand the occasional human sacrifice had seemed absurd, even if demons themselves were things Emilio had always believed in. 

But then came Levi. Then came Teddy. And, suddenly, demons with a vested interest in humanity hadn’t seemed so far-fetched after all.

So he was nervous about the implications here. He didn’t want to go back to Wynne and tell them that something terrible had happened when they’d left, didn’t want them to carry the weight of it. Emilio knew about survivor’s guilt. He bathed in it every morning, wrapped it around him like a blanket at night. It was heavy, it was suffocating, and it wasn’t something that Wynne deserved. Not in the way he did. Unlike Emilio, Wynne had done nothing wrong in their survival. They didn’t deserve to be punished for it.

“Ah, not really looking to buy. Actually hoping to reconnect with someone from there. Guy named Rhys? I spoke with him last time I was here, wanted to follow up on a few things. You know when he might be back?” 

—

Emily thought about Rhys, that bearded and funny man. A little gruff, rough around the edges. Sweet. “Yes, yes, I know him,” she said. “He was here a week ago? Might be here again next week.” It was hard to imagine any of those people having connections to those in the larger world — even with Emily, they were reserved. As if they tolerated her. They always glared at her phone, as if it was offensive to them. “They’ve not been coming weekly for a while now, but they tend to do more of a biweekly schedule. Monthly, sometimes, you know? Ah, but I’m sure he’ll be here next week. It’s a good month for harvesting.” 

She smiled brightly, gestured at the fruit on display, “Meanwhile, maybe you’d like –” But the look on the other’s face made it clear that he would not be nibbling on any blueberries soon.

— 

He was tired. Rhys somehow chalked it up to his age, but maybe it was something else entirely. He’d spent over five decades with the Protherians, having been born into its confines and not wanting to know much else. He’d seen four young people lay down on the altar, one of them a friend of his, someone his own age, the next three all seemingly younger as the years passed — and three times all had gone as it should. But this last one, where the wrong kid had let himself be tied up and down, it had been wrong.

Not wrong in regards to the demon – never that – but wrong, because Iwan had not been prepared. Iwan had cried, because he had not been primed and groomed as his sibling had. Wrong, because gythraul had not thought it enough. He had expected one soul and gotten another. And so he’d taken. Iwan. All the lambs, and the rams too. Half of the hens, and their trusty rooster. Gythraul had made Itself a bloody feast and left Its community reeling, once more afraid to step a toe out of line. Even he, who thought himself as hard as stone, had become scared.

This was reprieve. Greenville, that ugly town where people came to gawk at the people dressed as if they came from a time long gone (as if their neons and microplastics were any better). Rhys was glad for them, though. They reminded him of why he was here. He polished one of the eggs, one of the very few the remaining (and traumatized) hens and laid. At least with spring long past them, there were new hatchlings. He was disrupted from his steady work by a new arrival, a customer with a face wholly unfamiliar. “Afternoon,” he hummed, voice a gruff rumble, “What can I help ye with today?”

—

A week in the cheap motel room he’d gotten for himself was better than going home empty-handed, because Wynne would have questions. They’d want to know what he’d found, and Emilio didn’t want to tell them that the answer was nothing. He didn’t want to go back until he had something to give them, some kind of answer to the questions he knew plagued them. So he hunkered down, he watched bad TV, he took out things that went bump in the night a little farther away from his apartment than he was used to. 

And, a week after his conversation with the woman at the farmer’s market, he went back.

This time, when he returned, the booth Wynne had spoken of was there. The offerings were sparse. A few eggs, some crops, but nothing bountiful. Nothing that seemed to sing of a community so blessed by a demon that they didn’t mind sacrificing their children to it. (As if any amount of blessing could excuse such a crime. Emilio thought, as he had been all week, of Flora. Of the ache that her death had burrowed into his chest, of how he would have given anything to save her. There were things not worth sacrificing. He wondered why Wynne’s parents hadn’t known that.)

There was a man behind the booth, and he seemed to match the description Wynne had given well enough. Emilio nodded at him. “You Rhys?”

—

People that he didn’t know, didn’t know him. It was a simple thing. Rhys’ word was small and limited — there were the people at home, known well and deeply, those deserving of his loyalty. There were the people in Greenville, the locals he sold to and dealt with, with whom he traded. And there were patrons, who didn’t know his name but perhaps remembered his face. This man belonged in none of those categories. 

His defenses spiked. Gythraul was supposed to keep them protected from outsiders, from people that came sniffing in their business. Their traditions were theirs, not to be meddled with by local authorities — and it never had been. But maybe the demon had become less invested in that, too. For how long would the ripple effect of y dewisedig’s betrayal continue? Rhys nodded. He was not a man who lied, generally speaking. To himself, though, he did so very often.

“Yeah, that’s me. Who’s asking?” He placed the egg he’d been polishing back on the carton, which only counted about three dozen. 

—

He could see it, the way the man’s defenses went up. He’d known this would happen. People who lived their life in seclusion didn’t often respond well to strangers saying their names. Emilio would know — he would have been just as on edge as Rhys was now, had their roles been reversed. 

But that was all right. He’d had an extra week to think on this now, and he’d come up with a plan. It was deceitful, it was manipulative, it wasn’t nice, but what did Emilio care about any of that? Not one of these people, Rhys included, had stepped in to stop Wynne from being sacrificed to a goddamn demon. If they hadn’t saved themself, they’d be long dead now. Rhys didn’t deserve an ounce of kindness from Emilio; none of them did. So his plan was a little cruel. So what? They deserved much crueler. 

Leaning forward, he glanced around as if to ensure no one was listening. “I think you know,” he said lowly, “who’s asking.” He glanced to the eggs, noting how few there were, and he thought about how Rhys hadn’t been at the market at all the week before. He made a gamble, a guess. He was good at those. “Been short lately, haven’t you?”

—

Frankly, he did not know who was asking. His jaw set at the other’s movements, at the way he leaned forward and lowered his voice. Rhys looked at him, trying to deduce something from his face. Was this a family member of someone who had joined their community, who had left their previous life behind for a better one? It could certainly be, but the face didn’t remind him of anyone at home.

“Not sure I do know,” he said gruffly, though there was a tenseness to him. Not fully hidden, either, as his tiredness made his defenses lower. Eyes continued to scan the stranger’s face, who didn’t ask him a question directly but in stead commented on the amount of eggs that were present on the stall. Not a lot. Not nearly enough. Rhys’ mind flashed to the dead chickens, the smears of blood. The way some of the ones not killed by the demon had died all the same, from fear. 

His head shook. “Nah. Sometimes the hens just don’t wanna lay. We don’ make ‘em. It’s part of the philosophy we practice.” Sure, the chickens were free creatures — but there had once been plenty, and now there were few, with many of them stressed still. “Did you want to buy any or …?”

—

Unfortunately, Rhys was a little slower on the draw than Emilio would have liked. Ideally, this would have been more subtle. He could have implied something without telling a direct lie, let Rhys’s own assumptions work against him. But it seemed not everyone was as paranoid as the detective. Not everyone was as on edge as he sometimes banked on. That was all right, though. He could use the details Wynne had shared with him to his advantage. Lack of paranoia was a hurdle, but it was a good thing, too. If Rhys wasn’t paranoid enough to assume a stranger was with the demon, he probably also wouldn’t be paranoid enough to assume Wynne had sent someone to scope the compound out. Emilio could work with that.

Scowling, he leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Gythraul,” he said simply, and though he stumbled over the pronunciation with his accent, he was confident he would be understood. When you molded your entire life around an entity, you recognized its name no matter who was saying it. Emilio knew that. Maybe a little better than he’d like to.

“I don’t want to buy anything, no. I need to talk to you. All of you. So I can tell It that what happened was a one-time thing… or so I can tell It it wasn’t.”

—

A stranger knowing his name was one thing. A stranger knowing the term Rhys’ community used to refer to the entity they all owed their life to — now that put fear into the old man’s bones. His back straightened and he took a closer look to the other, now really trying to put a name to the face. But he came up empty, again. 

There was no logic to it, but when had logic ever applied to his ilk? Protherians followed an entity and the doctrine surrounding it blindly, not questioning the youths that were ritualistically sacrificed time and time again. What the elders and patriarch said went. Rhys was born in that doctrine, that approach to life — he did not have an instinct to question, just an instinct to follow and fear. And maybe one to sell eggs, but that one wasn’t coming in so handy these days.

Besides, this man, he referenced the failure. The source of gythraul’s wrath, the common cause to the lack of produce on the stall right now. “Lower your voice,” he hissed in stead, eyes flicking around the pair of them. Privacy, that was one of the pillars on which his society was built. Outsiders keeping their nose out of their business. Rhys bent closer, voice lowered. “What … are you?” Then, not wanting to come off like perhaps he wouldn’t trust someone who spoke for It, he continued, “You want to talk to us today? You can — I can give you directions. A ride, even, if you ... I need to clean this up, of course.” 

—

“I tried to do this subtly,” Emilio pointed out, shrugging a shoulder and putting on a mask of nonchalance. In reality, he was relieved. Glad that his shot in the dark had worked, happy that he could do this without doing something Wynne might not like him for later. He was bound and determined to get them the information they wanted, but he’d rather do it without hurting anyone. This allowed him a chance to do just that.

He leaned in as Rhys spoke, trying to determine how best to answer the questions. “It doesn’t matter what I am,” he replied, voice just as low as the other man’s had been. “That’s not for you to worry about.” Levi and Teddy both looked human, which told him demons were capable of that, but he had no idea if Rhys knew this information, so… claiming to be another demon was probably a no-go. Letting Rhys decide what he thought Emilio might be was a better shot, especially now that he’d said enough to convince the older man he was with the demon. If he had to guess, he’d wager that Rhys wasn’t going to question him too much. If they were in the business of questioning the demon, the community wouldn’t have been sacrificing kids to it. 

Emilio immediately discarded the offer of a ride. No way in hell was he getting in a car with this guy behind the wheel. Even if he had Rhys on the ropes, he couldn’t trust the guy not to get scared and do something stupid. Besides, thanks to whatever the hell Nora had done to get it for him, he had a car of his own now. It was parked nearby, just waiting for this. “Directions will be fine. And it will be today. I’m sure you know what might happen if It’s kept waiting.”

—

Though entrusted with the responsibility of going out of town and talking to outsiders (something not all Protherians were permitted to do), Rhys was still a mere cog in the machine. Low-ranked, nowhere near the status of mentor or elder. So he listened, he followed, he nodded his head, and most of all — he didn’t question. Not Siors or Alys or Padrig, none of them, and not this man either. “Right. Understood.” 

He didn’t know the specifics of what might happen, but he knew enough. The stories of a century ago, when the youths had all been killed in one fell swoop. The blood in the chicken shed. He nodded. “Directions it is.” As there was no map to use, he ended up giving the stranger verbal directions. North, pass between the lake and Spencer Pond and then dip South again. Rhys had driven it a hundred times, if not more. Besides, if there was one skill he had working in his favor, it was his memory. 

With the instructions given, the stranger trudged off. Rhys stared at him, the muscles in his arms tense and the hairs in his neck standing up. Had they not offered enough? Suffered enough? For a moment, he closed his eyes, and then looked down at the little bit of harvest he still had yet to sell. Though instinct demanded he return home, the lack of sales he had made demanded he remain.

—

The verbal directions, along with the things Wynne had already told him, were more than enough to get Emilio to the compound. Parked his car near the entrance, hiding his limp as best he could as he trudged in. It made the walk more painful, but it also made him more nondescript. When he left here, it would be better if none of the people who saw him had anything to identify him by. He doubted they’d come looking for him, but on the off chance that they might, it was his job to protect Wynne from all of it. He’d failed to protect them from so much already. He wouldn’t add to that.

They seemed to know he was coming, which wasn’t a surprise. He’d given Rhys enough time to finish up at the farmer’s market, gone back to the motel to prepare himself for the situation ahead in the meantime. He’d convinced one person he was in contact with the demon; let Rhys convince the rest. Save Emilio the trouble. So they were waiting for him, when he got there. The two that led him to meet with someone named Padrig were younger. Close to Wynne’s age; he wondered if they’d played together as children, if they’d been friends. He wondered if they’d all been just as okay with what was expected of Wynne as the adults in their life had been. He’d never resented kids before; for a moment now, he found that changing.

They stopped just outside the door. Emilio didn’t know if they weren’t allowed inside, or if they just preferred not to enter. He said nothing to them as he ducked in the door, critical eyes finding a man who could only be Padrig standing there, staring right back at him. “Pleasure,” he said flatly. “How about we skip to the meat of it?”

—

Padrig Conway was a tired man. A failed man. Siors had told him as much, but he had also told him he was a man capable of redemption. That was the road they were all to take now, after all — one of redemption. Pave the road with good intentions with gythraul and all the rest too. So this message Rhys had brought could be promising, but it could also be something else entirely. Padrig had looked at Siors’ face as he’d called his elders together to inform them of the news, and he had looked steadfast. But even so, there had been an edge.

There was always an edge. Always a surprise. Wynne Hughes had been the perfect lamb, so docile and sweet and ready for the slaughter. He had made it so, or so he thought — but then on the morning of the blue moon they had been nowhere to be found. Left them all to scramble to find the next best option, someone unprepared and just as youthful. Someone It would still be satisfied with. It had left them all to watch Iwan weep as he bled out, had left them all to cower in front of the demon that showed Itself this time. 

If he couldn’t predict what the child he’d prepared for their inevitable sacrifice might do, it seemed nothing in life was predictable. So this might as well happen. An outsider, who knew some of what had occurred, who knew their word for demon. It works in mysterious ways, he reminded himself as he waited. Eirwen and Fionn brought the man to him, and he thanked them both for their duty. They stared at the stranger, because outsiders were strange. “Leave us,” he said to the youths, his gaze then falling on the newcomer.

Padrig was a pious man. Dutiful. Strict, when he needed to be. But part of him had been undone when his mentee had ran. Still, he was straight-backed when he faced the other. Proud. The book he’d been reading (old scripture, written by Corwyn’s own hand) was abandoned. “Sure. Sit, if you must.” He gestured to a chair, waited to sit himself. “Rhys has informed me that you and It need an ensurance of sorts, that what happened won’t again.” Hands folded in front of him. “Right?” 

—

Anger swelled up in his chest at the sight of Padrig. It was a familiar feeling, more familiar still the more people from the compound he met. How many were here? Wynne had spoken of a few, and he’d seen evidence of a fairly large community as he’d been led to Padrig’s home. And it was infuriating. Here was this entire community of people, and not a single one of them had stepped in to help Wynne when they’d been a calf fattened up for the slaughter. None of them had so much as called out just how wrong it was. It had been one thing with the kids who led him here, or with Rhys who seemed to be little more than a foot soldier. But Padrig? Padrig had power in this community. And what did he use it for? Nothing good. Nothing decent. He hadn’t saved Wynne; no one had.

Luckily, he thought, anger made sense for his cover, too. Let these people think their demon was angry with them. Let them cower in fear, let them mourn their own deaths in advance, let them feel a fraction of what they’d made Wynne feel for their entire goddamn life. Emilio’s only regret was that he wouldn’t be able to instill them with all of it, that there would be no laying Padrig down on an altar when all was said and done to give him a real taste of what Wynne and children like them had been forced to face. Wynne wouldn’t want it, but he thought it might make him feel better. He was selfish enough to wish he could feel better.

He didn’t sit in the chair Padrig offered him, though his leg screamed with a yearning to do so. Let it ache, he thought. Let the whole world ache. He would take nothing this man was offering, and this man would find no comfort in believing he’d made Emilio’s stay easier. 

(They both deserved that discomfort, both earned the pain. After all, hadn’t Emilio failed to save Wynne just as much as Padrig? He’d tried harder, at least, but how much did it matter if the end result was the same?)

“Yeah,” he replied, tone hard and full of a righteous anger. “I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that It isn’t happy. So tell me everything that happened. Your version. And I’ll decide what happens next.”

—

The man who didn’t offer a name didn’t sit and Padrig watched him. It seemed something radiated off him, something like anger. Warranted, perhaps: there had been a failure, one that the community had not seen before, and there was no excuse for it. He’d said as much to Siors. There is no excuse for this, and I’ll search for an explanation within myself, so I can rectify my shortcomings. He had said a demotion would have been warranted. But Siors hadn’t made him work in the field.

He was a grateful man, too. Grateful for the forgiveness of Siors, of gythraul. Because this was forgiveness, even if they had had to burn more animals than ever before, even if something seemed undeniably shifted in people’s attitudes. 

He was, above all perhaps, a scared man. And this stranger who refused to sit, who spoke with anger that he felt was warranted, made Padrig waver. He tilted his chin up, slightly and remained standing himself. “Right.” He had hoped all of this was in the past. That the slaughter, the replacement sacrifice — that it would be enough. A bad mark on their record, a slip-up, just once. Hadn’t they been punished and forgiven? It seemed not, and that made this demon-fearing man afraid.

His hands remained folded in front of him, thumb rubbing the skin of his other hand. Chink in the armor. “Everything was set up, as always. According to plan — there were no signs that something was to go amiss.” But the bed had been empty. I don’t want to die, the child had written. Padrig remembered them saying such a thing before, but it must have been years back. He’d taken their chin, ensured eye contact. It is the most beautiful thing you could ever do, he’d said. If there had been signs, they had stopped years ago. He thought he’d taught them better than to be a liar. 

“Y dewisedig ran. We woke up to them having abandoned us all, leaving no hints as to where they’d gone. Took money, papers … it must have been planned, but we missed it. Some of us searched, but the main focus was on the ritual itself — preparations, you know, to ensure all was ready.” Lips pressed together in a fine line. “It was me who suggested the replacement. If not the child, why not their sibling? Similar blood, similar lineage – a signal to the parents, as well.” Where was his punishment? Padrig wondered that. Maybe this was it. “Which doesn’t take away the fact that I am to blame, too — I should have noted the signs. If It is cross with me … I’ll do whatever, to make it right.”

—

He had to focus on his anger in order to avoid giving in to the nausea tugging at his gut. The way Padrig spoke — it was clinical. As if Wynne was not a person, not a child, but an object. Emilio fought to keep his mind from wandering, fought to keep himself from thinking of his mother’s firm hand and the way she’d spoken about Victor after his death. Not as a mother who had lost a child, but as a woman whose favorite knife had broken off at the handle. As if the death of her oldest son was an inconvenience instead of a tragedy.

And Padrig was the same. Wynne wasn’t a person in his mind — how could they be? If he’d let himself view them as they were, as a child over whom he held a position of authority, would he have let himself go through with what was expected of him? Was it necessary, somehow, for him to separate himself from the reality of what he was doing? Did that make it okay?

Emilio thought of Flora, of the way he’d been unable to do with her what Padrig had done with Wynne. He had put no form of clinical distance between himself and his daughter, had allowed himself to see her as a child instead of a weapon. He’d doomed her with it just as Padrig had attempted to doom Wynne by doing the opposite. Were they both irredeemable, then? Was it just as bad to make a child of an object as it was to make an object of a child? 

And then, Padrig continued. He spoke of a replacement, and Emilio felt sick long before he delivered the fatal blow. If not the child, why not their sibling? He remembered how Wynne had spoken of their brother. He remembered that they loved him. And he thought again of Victor, thought of being twelve years old and wondering why him? He thought of being an adult, of standing in his living room across from Rosa as she looked at him with tears in her eyes. I wish you had died instead of Victor. He remembered thinking that, every day of his goddamn life. Victor died, and he was supposed to. Victor died, and it would have been better if Emilio had instead. 

And now, Wynne’s brother had died in their place. Bloody and afraid and unnecessary. Why hadn’t their parents stepped in? Why hadn’t they burned the place down? Why hadn’t Padrig? Why had no one protected these children, why had they let what they needed eclipse what their children did? What kind of parent put anything above their children’s own lives?

He didn’t realize he was moving until he was already across the room, face inches from Padrig’s. His hand was fisted in the man’s shirt, his other raised and trembling. He wanted to bash this man against the wall until he stopped moving, wanted to do for Wynne and their brother what no one else had ever done even if it was too late now. They were children, he wanted to scream. How the fuck could you do that to children? 

But what good would it do? Wynne’s brother was dead. He would have to tell them that. And if he killed this man, if he did what he so desperately wanted to do and ripped his throat out with his fucking teeth like a rabid animal, he’d have to tell Wynne that, too. They might already hate him for the first; he wasn’t sure he wanted them to hate him for the second, too.

“You are a shitty person,” he told Padrig, voice quivering just a little. “With shitty views and shitty ideals. And when this compound burns, the world will be better for it.” He let go of the man’s shirt with a shove, sending him into the wall. “I need to speak to their parents.”

—

It was an age old equation. Even Padrig knew of the trolley problem, that philosophical question that kept being repeated, that kept being altered as if the answer would ever be the same: you would sacrifice the few to save the many. What was one body in the face of it all? What was one less youth if it meant all the rest of them could live into old age? It was an equation, a mathematical problem — one of ethics, even. Kill the one, save the rest. It wasn’t pretty, but cold logic hardly ever was.

This was why he had been able to climb the hierarchy of the commune. They claimed that there was equality amongst all members, but they all knew of the way there was an order. It was mentors, then elders and then the patriarch — and all the rest of them fighting it out underneath them. Padrig had gotten this position, one of a mentor, of a wiseman, by applying a levelheaded and pragmatic mindset to all he did. 

It helped that the late Corwyn Prothero’s blood moved through his veins.

So no, he felt no remorse, not for the death of Iwan. Not for that of Jac. Not that of Evan, which was to come in a decade — it was necessary. All of this mess had proven that much: it was necessary. Even offering a replacement had not been enough to please the demon, who had in turn taken more. It wasn’t a farce, a figment of imagination, it was real. The dead chickens had been real. The dead lambs, the beheaded ram. Real. What was real too, was that it could have been worse. There had been a bigger massacre, once.

Maybe that’s why he told it all so calmly, as if it was nothing but a math problem. Lose one, you find another. Give the suggestion. Be willing to take off your shirt for flaying, if such retribution was still on the menu. Endure the sacrifice, with the wrong child. 

The one thing that shook him – that even shook him now, faced with this stranger – was his own failure. Not because he felt for Wynne Hughes, but because he was angry. They had given. The community had given that wide-eyed lamb all, from reverence to the best cuts of meat to the softest plaid. They hadn’t had to do the labors did. Their hands remained soft. They had been given comfort, the kind that not many saw in this place — they had been given it all, and they had turned on their heel all the same. Selfishness was an ugly thing.

As was this. Whereas Padrig kept his composure, despite his unease, despite his willingness to go on his knees for forgiveness, the other man burst at the seam with emotion. With violence, even. He was too slow to back away, and so he was on him, a hand hovering in the air. He breathed in, tightly and limited, and exhaled just as fast, staring at the other and waiting for the punishment that didn’t come.

The words, they didn't align, they didn’t quite make sense. “Whatever do you mean? We paid our debt — It got the boy, It took the chickens and sheep, too. If there is more to collect, collect it. I’ll offer it.” He’d do it. Get on his knees for that forgiveness. “There needs to be no burning. The future – we can have a bountiful future together, no?” Padrig inhaled sharply once more, still waiting for that punch, scared in the way he thought was holy. Fear like this could be beautiful. To have something this powerful to be afraid of — it was privilege. He let himself be shoved into the wall, caught his breath.

“And we are — we are for It, because of It, in honor of It.” If this man spoke for the demon, then why talk of their ways like this? Padrig felt his guards rise, straightening his body. “No. I think you need to explain what it is you need and want from us. I —” Fear, that divine thing, demanded him to speak with more respect. “Please, that is what I ask, what I think is best — they have no answers for you. I can get you an elder to speak to.” Or, he thought, I’d rather have you leave. 

—

Emilio searched the man’s eyes, looking for remorse, for doubt, for anything that made sense. Because there had to be something, didn’t there? There had to be some part of this man that understood what he and his community were doing was wrong, had to be some inclination that they might be in the wrong. How could someone believe, so wholeheartedly, in the slaughter of children? How could they excuse it, how could they enforce it? 

There was no honor, he thought, in the way this commune operated. They didn’t give those children a chance. Hunters raised their children as knives, yes, but wasn’t it better to be the blade than the thing it was cutting? Wasn’t it better to be metal destined to rust and break and die on a battlefield than to be a lamb fattened and led to the slaughter? His mother gave him a chance, at least, trained him to take care of himself, to protect himself. If he failed, it was because he didn’t try hard enough. Wasn’t that love? Wasn’t it closer to it than whatever it was Padrig had given to Wynne?

But there was nothing behind those eyes. They weren’t even cold, the way he might have expected them to be. There was no malice, no rage. There was… confusion, if anything. A perplexed expression, as if he couldn’t understand why someone was angry with him. As if he had no idea what he might have done wrong. A child was dead. Many children were dead, generations of them who were snuffed out before they got the chance to live at all. Killed by people who were supposed to protect them, slaughtered in a way they were led to believe was love. And this man, this weary-eyed man who had seen to it that all of those children would die passive and bleeding, saw no issue with the things he had done.

It felt unjust, somehow. Emilio hated himself for his daughter’s death, carried that burden every day as if it had been his hands that had killed her. And these people, with generations worth of blood on their hands, felt nothing. They felt justified. 

Emilio’s stomach churned.

He let out a sharp laugh as Padrig spoke of fetching an elder. “Now you choose to question what you are told? Now? Not when there are children beneath your blade?” He’d given himself away, he could tell. Padrig no longer saw him as an ally. He ought to feel worse about it than he did. It would make the rest of what he wanted to do here harder, after all, but… The idea of this man seeing him as a friend felt sickening. He’d rather fight his way out than shake a hand coated with the blood of children. 

“I will find them myself,” he said lowly. Then, he reared back and hit Padrig hard on the side of his head, letting him crumple. He dragged the man’s unconscious form to a closed door, opening it and shoving him inside the small space. Some kind of a storage closet, it seemed; Emilio broke the knob once Padrig was inside to keep him there. It wouldn’t hold him forever, but it would keep him quiet and contained long enough for Emilio to do what he wanted to do.

A wiser man would have left then, knowing that he had what he needed to tell Wynne the truth. But Emilio had never been one to go with wisdom over rage. He ducked out of the house, spotting one of the kids who’d led him there and waving them over. “Padrig said you could take me to the Hughes house.”

—

Padrig was ill-prepared for this. Sometimes there were trespassers, certainly, but they were dealt with easily. To outside eyes, this place was nothing but a self-sufficient community that lived in a traditional manner. They received a tour of the place, could taste some of the produce and food and were often send on their merry way with a full belly. There were newcomers, people that heard of a naturalistic and close-knit community and wanted to belong, and they were welcomed into the fold after a certain amount of time and influence.

But this? No, none of them ever came in with knowledge that no outsiders were privy to. This man had known Its name, this man knew of the things that weren’t supposed to be public knowledge — and of course, they had assumed he was because of that a man sent by the demon Itself. Gythraul was supposed to keep them all safe from such outside sources, after all, and to question Its influence was unwise.

There was a hole in the net, though. Information was leaking. Padrig was ill-prepared for this, and as the other laughed, as the other berated him he knew he’d made a miscalculation. Again. (The largest miscalculation was, of course, the one he would never see as one: the one where he assumed all of this was right.) He got ready to jump into action, needing to find a way to raise the alarm bells — to make all alert that this stranger was an interloper, not a voice for the demon. That there was trouble, again. That perhaps gythraul had ceased Its protection of them, opening them up for trespassers.

Or, somehow maybe even worse, that his former pupil had started talking after their escape. That his failure would cost them again.

His mouth opened to retort but in stead was met with a fist against the temple, the move effective in its suddenness and swiftness. Padrig fell, slipped into darkness, his last thought of how it wasn’t by his hand, that the children died. 

— 

Zahra Hughes had no knowledge, thus far, of the man at the market who had approached Rhys, nor of his presence at the compound at present. Knowledge at the commune was contained, and she and her husband had been pushed to the sidelines where nearly no knowledge reached them. It had been different, once. No less than a year ago, she had been at the center of it all — enjoying the fruits of her child’s impending labor. And before that, she had been the newcomer, an outsider who had been invited into the fold. Gareth had held her hand then, his own lineage in the commune holding weight, the welcoming arms and words of all those around her making her certain that she would stay.

And stay she had. She had stayed when her stomach had swelled with the life that would eventually be known as Wynne. She had stayed when Siors had kneeled at her maternity bed and told her of her child’s destiny, the way that her little bundle of joy would save them all. She had stayed and watched her child grow, knowing that an expiration date hung above their head. She had brought another child onto this world, knowing that she’d get to keep this one, and so she had loved that one better.

Now, Zahra was a woman with no children left, and yet she stayed. Where could she go? After Wynne, who had abandoned not only their duty but their parents, their brother? Back to the family she had once had, the people she had been raised with who had offered no kindness and warmth — who might as well have driven her into the arms of the Protherians?

She stayed. In this empty house. In her shame and failure. In the rage she could not permit herself, because they were watching — they were watching. They had asked her if she had helped Wynne get out, and though they had said they believed her, Zahra thought they had taken Iwan as a repercussion all the same. Her boy: the one who was supposed to live. The one she hadn’t spent all his life mourning.

There was a knock at the door. She dragged herself from the potatoes and their peels, opening the door. There was Fionn, who’d ran around with Iwan. There was Eirwen, who shared a surname with her. And there was … a stranger. “Hello.” She wiped her hands, wet from the potatoes. Zahra looked at the man, confused. “How can I help you?” 

Eirwen, the snotty wisenose, spoke up: “He’s here to talk.” Zahra deeply despised her niece in that moment, and not just because she was alive.

She let out a sigh. “Sure. Come in.” She was, these days, too fatigued to fight — whatever this was, let it happen.

—

She looked like Wynne. It was the first thing he thought when she opened the door — she looked like Wynne. Or, rather, Wynne looked like her. They had their mother’s nose, their eyes were shaped as hers were. Some features were different — he suspected those were the ones their father had given them. But he thought Wynne must look more like their mother, because he could see them in her features, looking back at him with an expression he’d never seen the kid wear themself. 

(Flora had looked like him. Juliana had commented on it once, rolling her eyes. I carry her for nine months, I spend hours pushing her out, and she still looks more like you. A slayer, too. What am I, then? She’d laughed as she’d said it, nudging his shoulder. It had been in the early days, when Flora was still too small for Emilio’s hesitance to drive a wedge between him and his wife, when she was almost an infant instead of a blade. The early days hadn’t lasted very long.)

He couldn’t decide what he wanted to say, looking at Wynne’s mother now. Here was a woman whose child had been lost to her, but Emilio felt none of the empathy he normally might. He didn’t feel a connection to her the way he had to the weeping father outside Wynne’s hospital room, didn’t taste her grief the way he did then. Her child had been lost to her, but hadn’t she chosen that? Hadn’t she raised her eldest like a lamb for the slaughter, hadn’t she offered her son in their place when they protested their demise?

It wasn’t right, he thought, to compare this loss to his own. He would have given anything to save his daughter. He would have fallen on the blade himself. This woman might as well have held that blade in her hands, might as well have been the one to slit her son’s throat. Perhaps even calling her a grieving mother was giving her more kindness than she deserved. Mothers fought to save their children, didn’t they? The way Juliana must have fought to save Flora, the way his mother had tried to save him in the training she’d drilled into him. Mothers saved their children, but this one had killed hers. It wasn’t a crime Emilio knew how to forgive.

“Go,” he said to the kids who’d brought him there, and they did. They were afraid of him, he suspected. Because they thought he had a connection to the demon that loomed over them, because they thought he was a part of it. Would they fear him more or less if they knew the truth? Would they see him as a threat instead of a marvel once Padrig made his way out of that closet? He wondered, idly, if they were dangerous. He suspected they weren’t. At least, not to him. People who sacrificed children probably weren’t used to fighting someone who knew how to fight back.

He stepped inside the Hughes home, glancing around. Had Wynne grown up here, he wondered? Had they sat between these walls contemplating their life and how short the people who were meant to protect them were intent on making it? Had they loved the woman he was staring down now? They must have. Children loved their mothers, even when they shouldn’t. 

The silence hung heavy between them for a moment, and Emilio was the one to break it with a question. One he’d been wondering, one that had been eating away at him ever since Wynne told him about their past: “Did you love them?”

—

The door fell shut behind them and Zahra had half a mind to simply turn around and wordlessly lead him to the kitchen, where conversations were better had. But even this house was no longer a place under her control, it seemed, with the newcomer posing a question so broad yet so narrow, so pointed and confrontational.

Did she have to ask who he meant? No — for all her shortcomings, Zahra Hughes did have some maternal instinct. He was asking after her child, perhaps children, as that was the only thing she couldn’t be certain of: whether the them referred to just Wynne or the two of them. Irregardless, he meant Wynne, the one that had gotten away, that had brought such shame and disgrace upon their family, the one who’d ruined it all, the one who had refused to stay. 

Something about her posture changed, desperation revealing itself like a book opening. Did this man know Wynne? Had her child somehow found their way to a place outside of here, alive, where there were people? Or had they been like their mother, running into the arms of a community who’d entrap them, make everything seem like an impossible puzzle with no possible solution?

“Yes.”

What other answer was there to give? Mothers loved their children. Even when their children were destined to die, even when they were not given even a day of living in ignorance, even when their children skirted duty and ran. Zahra loved Wynne even in their absence, in their insolence, in their disloyalty. She hated them too — but that went better unsaid. That was an ugly thing to do for a mother: to hate their child. To not only envy them, but to despise them. 

It was childish and weak, the fact that her child had thought themself capable of outrunning fate. It was a despicable, selfish act. Somewhere, Zahra must have fallen short, for something like this to happen. She knew that now, and she hated herself for it the same way she hated Wynne. Sometimes it was easier to focus on that rage than the actual grief she held.

Zahra still did what she had intended to do and walked to the kitchen, that question looming over her like a shadow, the same way the stranger might. She looked at the peeled potatoes and sat on her kitchen chair, that old wood beneath her old bones, eyes drifting up to the stranger. She hardly considered the knife on the table.

“Do you know them?” The question was asked with a certain level of hunger. Maybe she was not entitled to these things, but she wondered. She laid awake at night, wondering where Wynne had ran to. Where they were now, if they even were anywhere — the world was dangerous and treacherous, and they had no knowledge of it: to survive it alone would be quite something. Maybe the demon had taken them anyway, besides, and found it irrelevant to mention.

“What is it you want?” Best get it over with.

—

Yes. 

Somehow, it was the worst answer she could have given. Yes, she loved her children. Yes, she’d doomed them anyway. The air in the house felt suffocating, like the goddamn world was on fire and he couldn’t see through the smoke. But there were no flames here; no heat, no crackling. There were only two parents with no children left between them, a mother who had sacrificed one child and driven the other away and a father who had done everything he knew to save his daughter and failed her anyway. 

He wondered which was the worst crime. Was it more forgivable to fail to save your child, or to never try to begin with? It made no difference to the child, in the end. Flora was as dead as Wynne’s brother, regardless of whatever efforts Emilio had made. How much did it matter, what he’d tried and failed to do? He was in the same boat as Wynne’s mother now, was just as guilty. It was an irredeemable thing for a parent to outlive their child, an unnatural one. No one should do it.

Wynne’s mother had loved her children. Emilio had loved his daughter. And love, in the end, had saved none of them. So what was it worth? Was there any point to a love too empty to build a liferaft? This love, it was little more than an empty precursor to grief, a pointless prologue. 

Had Zahra felt superior, he wondered, in the years she’d raised her child to die? Had she walked around this compound with her head held high, proud and mighty? Had there been dread there, or anticipation? Had she wanted to cling to the days she’d had with her child, or had she only ever been waiting for it to be over? 

She moved into the kitchen, and Emilio followed without thinking, angry and grieving and a walking contradiction of a man who both wanted answers and desperately wanted to avoid them. She asked if he knew them, and it was almost funny. “Do you?” Had she ever? In all the years she’d raised her child like a thing already gone, had she ever bothered to get to know Wynne? Or had she distanced herself from them, held them at arms length to protect herself when she should have been protecting them instead? 

And then, the unknowable question. What is it you want? Emilio didn’t know the answer. He never really had. He wanted better for Wynne, for Flora, for himself, maybe. He wanted to find something in this woman worth redeeming, because if he did maybe he could find something in himself worth redeeming, too. He wanted for her to have been a good mother, and he wanted for her to have been a bad one. He wanted them to be the same, he wanted them to be different. He wanted a thousand things that were at war with one another, and none of them mattered because none of them were possible. 

He wanted a better world than this.

But how could he say any of that without sounding as insane as he felt? How could he communicate how he felt when the only language they shared still felt so foreign to him? He didn’t know the answer, so he turned the question around. “Is this what you wanted? For yourself, for your children? You let them kill your son. You would have let them kill Wynne. And — And for what? What loyalty do you have to these people that’s bigger than the one you should have had for your children? What kind of a person — what kind of a parent does this?” He was shaking. His hands, his legs, his voice. He was trembling like there were earthquakes moving up and down his bones, and he didn’t want to be, but he couldn’t stop it. He was louder than he meant to be; yelling without realizing it, hoarse with the force of the voice being ripped from his lungs. “You should have stopped it. You should have done a better job. You should have saved them.”

(And maybe part of him knew that it wasn’t her he was speaking to anymore. But maybe it was easier this way. To give your grief a face, to assign your rage to someone else… It felt better. It made it into something tangible you could hate, let you aim outward instead of inward. He liked that, sometimes.)

—

She hadn’t known Wynne and it had been purposeful. Gareth and her had fought about that sometimes, the favoritism she showed to Iwan — but then he had showed favoritism to their eldest, and the argument would hit the same wall it always did. Where her husband looked upon their child as their chance to make the Hughes line a more important one within the commune – one that would be immortalized upon Wynne’s passing, with their name among all the martyrs – Zahra had looked upon them as something dead. 

It was a ghost in the crib, a ghost that yowled at the breakfast table in their high chair, a ghost that ran through the fields with their cousins and peers their age. Zahra had fed the ghost, had read them stories and sang them songs before bedtime, had taught them the things a mother was supposed to teach a child — but they had not gotten to know them. 

Whenever Wynne had tried – and the child had tried – she had gotten harsh and cold, as if she was more wall than mother. The dead had no interests, no puns, no crushes or friendship squabbles. So Wynne ran to dadi and Zahra let them, coddling Iwan in stead. Iwan, who was flesh and bone and not destined to lay down like Jac and Enyd and all those before them. Iwan, who she could love without being afraid of losing all she got to know.

She had watched Gareth run around with Wynne in stead, their laughing faces blurring against the fields. It had been Gareth who would discipline Wynne too, who would take the brunt of parenthood — because Zahra couldn’t even be angry at this ghost-child. All she could be was the cold that was promised to come when they were dead. She watched them, father and child, and did not envy them. She thought her husband a fool and the child … well, the child was like the lambs raised for slaughter, the squealing piglets. It was a farm rule: you couldn’t get attached to the livestock that was destined for the slaughter. Save your affections for the hens and the cows. For the Iwans of the world.

But there had been such misplaced resentment there. What was one to do, though? She was a woman with nothing to her name, shunned from her former family and entangled with a man she loved, a community she served — she resented nothing but chance, that it had funnily enough been her to put a child on the earth at the wrong time. She didn’t resent the elders, nor Siors, nor Gareth. Zahra, at the end of the day, resented herself and Wynne the most.

Which left only one external target. A target who was supposed to die and take her resentment with them, but even that hadn’t happen.

Gareth would often ask her for more children, that two was too few — but she refused him time and time again. She wasn’t sure, now, if this had been the right or wrong idea. Would they have been taken, too? Or would she have a bunch of young running around, now? Would she be able to love them right?

She was taking too long to answer, she knew. She shrugged. “Does any mother really know their young, especially at that age?” It was a non-answer, a way to say no without really saying so. Zahra had failed as a mother in a multitude of ways. She could tell this stranger Iwan’s favorite color and animal, the names he wanted to give his children, his favorite song to hum while working, the way he laughed — but she could do none of that for Wynne. 

She was tired. This man, in her kitchen, was an ugly and angry thing. He seemed to be bursting at the seams with it, and then he did. Didn’t he know? There is no room for rage here. You take your rage and you bury it. You put it in the labor. In the cooking, the work in the fields, the washing and the ironing. You do not get angry because that is like confessing there is something to be angry about and that simply would not do.

Zahra watched him, this outsider. He had to be an outsider. These weren’t questions the people in the commune asked. These weren’t things you spoke out loud. She watched him and then watched her potato peels, the rest of the unpeeled things that still had to be finished before the workday was done. His words kept going though, echoing violently through her mind, like a hand at the back of her neck pressing her down, forcing her to look at all her failures and sins. There were no successes to be found. She had not done her Protherian duty, had not done her motherly ones either.

Her hand splayed on the table, with hardly a slap but some kind of noise, “You — I don’t know who you are, but you come in here, in my house and you talk about want and should have and loyalty …” Her voice was a bristle. Instinct demanded she cowered, but this wasn’t an elder and this certainly wasn’t Siors. “What I wanted was no longer relevant – has not been relevant, and that is fine, there is a higher cause that I’m more than glad to answer — that they should have been glad to answer as well.” Zahra felt her voice grow venomous, but she remained seated. “This is larger than one child. I have known that all their life, so has their father — it is an ugly truth, but that’s the truth of it. This is larger than just one child. Every cycle a mother has to watch —” 

She cut herself off, inhaling sharply. The image of Iwan on that altar had not quite left her. “I am no different than the women who have come before me — but you’re right! I should have done better, I should have made sure their duty was fulfilled … that we wouldn’t be in this situation, recovering still from their – their insolence.” Wynne was supposed to die and now they lived, outside her grasp, and Iwan was supposed to live and now he was dead, along with so much of their livestock. If there had been someone to save, it was her son, because her other child … well, she’d mourned them already. She’d never allowed them to be real in her mind. Which begged the question of who Wynne was now, out there, and if they had brought this man here.

—

Zahra, Emilio thought, was something close to what his mother had wanted him to be. The choice she had been given wasn’t entirely dissimilar from his own — like her, he had been handed a child and told that it was his duty to mold her into something else. Make her a weapon, they’d told him, fashion her into a knife. Don’t hold her when she cries; she needs to learn to be a thing with no tears to shed. Don’t read her to sleep at night; just put her in her sheath and turn out the lights. Feed her, clothe her, but do not love her. Love is the worst thing you can give a weapon. Love turns a hunting blade into a butter knife. 

But love had burrowed into his chest the very first time he’d held his daughter in his arms all the same. Love had clung to his fingertips as he’d let her suck them to soothe her aching gums, had dripped from his chin when she’d thrashed and splashed and squealed as he bathed her, had hung from his neck when she’d wrapped her arms around him and draped off his shoulders like he was a tree and she was built only to climb. He loved her, and he wasn’t supposed to. 

Would it have been easier, he wondered, if he were more like this woman in front of him now? If he’d built some sort of wall between himself and his daughter, would the story have ended differently? A toddler couldn’t have turned the tides of the fight that took place in his living room while he was absent. Even in all his unreasonable guilt, Emilio knew that. But if he’d taught her something, if he’d begun to shape her into the weapon she was supposed to be, could it have shifted things just enough to make a difference? Could she have survived long enough for Emilio to reach her? Could her limited competence have been enough to ensure Juliana was able to fight with no distraction? Could it have provided enough of an inconvenience to convince her murderers to go somewhere else and return again later? 

Maybe he’d doomed Flora by loving her. Maybe Zahra had doomed Iwan by not loving Wynne. Maybe all parents were capable of, in the end, was finding new ways to make ghosts of their children. Raise a child as a lamb, and watch them kick the gate down and run away. Raise a child as a weapon, and watch him rust and dull until he was little more than a broken hunk of metal and rage. Raise a child as a child, and cradle her body where it fell on the living room floor. Was there any winning? Was there ever any hope for any of them?

Still, any camaraderie he felt towards Zahra refused to soothe his rage. If anything, it intensified it. He was angry at Zahra because he was angry at himself. He hated Zahra because he hated himself. It was a mirror that he desperately wanted to shatter, a reflection he wished to tear to shreds. If Emilio deserved what he deserved, so did Zahra. If Emilio had earned a quick trip to whatever afterlife existed for people like him, so had Zahra. And it spoke volumes, he thought, that part of him wanted to deliver her there now. It said all that needed saying about the kind of man he was that Wynne was the only thing that stopped him. They’d lost a brother. He’d have to tell them that. He wouldn’t tell them that they’d lost a mother, too, even if he thought Zahra didn’t deserve to have ever been called such to begin with.

So when she replied to his question with one of her own, Emilio’s laugh was bitter and brutal. “You are not a mother,” he told her. “You don’t get to call yourself that. Mothers protect their children. You offered yours up for the slaughter. Did your son beg for his life when you let them kill him? Did he look to you for help?” It was a cruel question, a twist of a knife he knew had probably been sitting in her chest since the day Iwan died. He couldn’t bring himself to care. He hoped it bled her dry. He hoped she choked on it.

But he didn’t think it would. She was more statue than woman, the outline of a mother drawn by someone who had never known one. If she ever loved her children at all, she’d loved them wrong. And maybe Emilio, who’d loved his daughter wrong, too, couldn’t judge that, but he was judging anyway. He was here, he was angry, he was a hypocrite, and he’d keep prodding at the bruises on her skin until one of them cried out for mercy because there was nothing else for him to do. It was a pointless act, he knew; no amount of sneering and screaming would bring Iwan back or soothe Wynne’s grief. But for Emilio, mourning and rage had always been synonyms. He didn’t know how to have one without the other.

“Nothing should be larger than one child when that child is yours,” he snapped, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he was wrong. After all, his examples of parenthood were closer to Zahra than his own philosophy. His mother did what she did, raised her children the way she had been raised, and Rosa did the same. It was Emilio who was the outlier, Emilio whose love for his daughter was bigger than his duty to his family when he knew it always should have been the other way around. Zahra chose duty over love, the way Emilio was supposed to. His mother’s teachings would insist that she’d been right to do so, but how could she be? How could this be right? How could any of it? 

“Your children,” he said, “deserved a better mother than you. They deserved someone who would fight for them. You should have gotten them out. The moment you were told to make a sacrifice of them, to use their body as a thing to make your lives easier, you should have gotten them out.” It was an echo of the thoughts in his own head, the ones that haunted him. You shouldn’t have waited. You should have left with her the moment it became clear that she was to be a weapon instead of a girl. You should have run without stalling, should have taken her far far away. You should have saved her. You should have saved her. 

What was left for him now? For either of them? His daughter was dead. Iwan was dead. Wynne was alive, but to this woman, they never had been. They’d been born dead in the eyes of the person who’d brought them into the world, and Emilio thought of the way his mother never wept for Victor the way he couldn’t stop weeping for Flora. He wondered, for a heartbeat, if Elena and Zahra were the same, and then he shoved the thought from his mind so violently that it burned. This couldn’t be about that. Nothing could be about that. Not now.

His hands shook, because she still had it wrong. She thought her mistake was the child who had lived instead of the one who had died, that she should have done more to force Wynne to a fate she had allowed to be chosen for them. Like her greatest sin was not allowing one child to be bled dry, but allowing the wrong one to be. He thought of Victor, dead before twenty. He thought of Rosa, her words harsh and honest nearly two decades after the fact. I wish you had died instead of Victor. And he thought of Wynne. Wynne, who was kind and quiet, who made food for him even though they knew he didn’t eat it, who tried to make sure he was all right even when they were drowning. He thought of how many people had failed them, about how he was one of them. He thought of the mother and father who had refused to save them, of the community who thought them a means to an end, of himself and the blood he’d let flow from their throat because he was too slow, too stubborn, too stupid. He thought of what they deserved, and what they’d gotten instead. 

And he was angry. He was so fucking angry.

“You should have been a mother,” he said, “instead of an executioner. Maybe you didn’t hold the knife that bled your son dry, but don’t kid yourself. It was your hands that killed him. Not Wynne’s, not some demon’s, not anyone else’s. It was you. It was just you.” 

Swallowing, Emilio took a step back. “I hope you get everything you deserve,” he told her. “I hope this house burns to the ground. I hope you lose everything you’ve built here. I hope you bury everyone you love. And I hope you do it all knowing that Wynne is so much better without you in their life.”

—

This man was hurt and he was lashing out. It would be good for him to look within and see what was truly bothering him, Zahra thought, and then reconsider if it was worth getting this worked up over. These were hardly her own thoughts, but rather repetitions of the things she had been told and told herself over the years — part of the way emotions were treated when they reached levels like this. This was a community build on serene peace and togetherness. Making your emotions so big that they had to take up an entire room was not okay, and yet here the other was. Filling her house with it, with his hurt. 

It might be her peeling knife on the table, but it was his verbal knives ending in her gut, attempting to splay her open and reveal all the twisted truths of the past twenty something years. The stranger – who had not offered a name, still – asked after Iwan, after that fated day.

What a day it had been, to wake and find Wynne’s room abandoned, that small note scrawled with their words of goodbye (I don’t want to die, I’m sorry) the only thing they had left behind. It hadn’t even been Zahra who had realized that their child had ran, but rather the elders — Alys had creaked open that bedroom door and found absence, had pulled the strings that had seen Zahra and her husband looking down not only Siors but a few elders as well, wondering how this could have happened. How they even knew where the money was. 

What a day it had been, of groveling and claiming ignorance, because that was the truth. Zahra hadn’t known her child, so how could she have known that they would do such a thing? They were to keep their mouth shut, as a straggle of men went into the forest to search for the betrayer, Gareth among them. And eventually Padrig had come, with the news. Eventually Padrig had come and he had taken Iwan and there had been no room for arguing. But she tried. For Iwan, she had tried, to open her mouth and protest — but she’d been shut down. And she’d fallen in place. 

I tried, she wanted to argue, but the words died on her tongue. Because Iwan had cried and he had screamed and struggled. He had not been as subdued as Wynne would have been, because he lacked the preparation — because he wasn’t supposed to be laid on that altar. He had begged. And Zahra had watched, digging her fingernails in her knees until the half moons bled, clenching her jaw until a headache formed. 

She had screamed into her husband’s shoulder, who had held her tight and then forced her back upright again, refusing the comfort she seeked. Gareth had been all quiet anger, tightly-wound, with no direction for it to go. Zahra had been nothing but despair, and had sobbed in stead.

Maybe this man was right. Maybe she wasn’t a mother, at least not any more. What claim to motherhood was left, with one of them having turned their back and the other having begged for his life, while his mother watched and sobbed? The demon had taken the sacrifice and then some, proven that its wrath was a true thing to fear — but what did it matter, when it came to her? Was it regret she experienced, or was it just a bitterness at the powerlessness?

And he just kept going, raining judgment after judgment as if he lived in this world. Where a demon raged through their livestock if the soul it was given was slightly different. Where not even a century ago, it had killed all the youths just to repay an escape attempt. The rules were different here. They had to be. The rules weren’t as simple as motherly instinct saving its child here. They couldn’t be.

Zahra had abandoned her former life for this one. For herself. Then, for her husband. Then, for the demon, for the community, for all there was. The luscious fields. The euphoric celebrations. The closeness to death, the healthy awareness of it. It couldn’t all be beautiful. It couldn’t all be kind. But it had purpose.

Iwan, even as he had squirmed and wept, had had purpose. Wynne, in their betrayal, had discarded their purpose and only served to be a thorn in everyone’s side. I don’t want to die was a plea she could only answer with a motherly: we all do things we don’t want to for the greater good sometimes. 

She watched him speak. She let him speak, her hard and angry, her walls growing higher. She lifted her hand, pressing it against her sternum to remind herself to breathe easily. In the back of her mind, the words of elders repeated. She couldn’t — no, she wouldn’t hear this and let it mean something. Zahra had loved and lost, had performed her duty. She had failed when it came to Wynne, but when it came to Iwan she had persevered and done what the mothers before her had done. 

And when he was done, confirming that he not only knew Wynne but knew where they were, she opened her mouth. “Either you get out of my house right now or you tell me where they are.” Zahra pushed herself off from the table, raising to her full height (which wasn’t a lot, compared to the stranger’s). “You’ve said your piece, haven’t you? So go, get out — take your judgments and your opinions and get out of my house. As if – no, I don’t need to justify myself. I don’t need to explain myself to someone so – so blind, so —” 

She inhaled. “You speak so easily of things you don’t know. So get out. I don’t need to hear it. It’s wasted breath.” Her arm raised, limb trembling, and she pointed at the door he had come from. “Get. Out.”

—

She was upset. It was clear in the way she was looking at him, the way she pressed her hand against her chest, the way she tried and failed to breathe easy. She was upset, and some bitter part of Emilio was glad for it. Why should she know peace? Why should she get to sit here, safe in her home, and peel potatoes? Her son was dead, her eldest child broken by the life she’d forced them into, and she had the audacity to look at him as if he was the monster, as if his intrusion into her home was a heavier thing than the rooms that she had emptied, the blood that she had spilled. 

He didn’t know what he was looking for here. He had the answers he’d promised Wynne he’d bring them, even if those answers would weigh heavy on him as he carried them back to Wicked’s Rest. He’d had those answers even before he came to this house, even before he’d started this conversation. He could have left after Padrig told him what he’d needed to know. So why hadn’t he? Why was he here, why was he screaming at this woman, why did his chest feel so tight?

Emilio was not a man who understood his own emotions. The fact that he had them at all was a failure, a sign that he’d messed up somewhere along the line. He was meant to be a blade, a weapon, a wooden stake: something someone held in their hand to use and discard when it was too dull to function properly anymore, an object designed to spill blood and do nothing else. Emotion was useless, but it was something he’d struggled with all his life. At some point, his mother had recognized that she couldn’t remove it entirely, so she’d taught him to utilize it instead. To take grief and confusion and uncertainty and to turn it into anger instead, to let rage be the only thing that made his heartbeat quicken. Anger was useful. Everything else was pointless to keep around.

He no longer knew how to recognize if the anger burning inside him had another name. He couldn’t color code it, couldn’t call it what it was when what it was wasn’t something he had a name for. Let it be rage, then. Let it be a fury that burned instead of a grief that ached, let it be something he could make use of. If you have to be anything, his mother used to say, be angry. And so he was. 

But useful wasn’t the same as productive. Useful let you slide a knife between ribs, but it wouldn’t ease the pain that radiated up your wrist from the force of your grip on the hilt of it. He could scream at this woman until his lungs ran out of breath, but he couldn’t put the blood back into her son’s body, couldn’t save Wynne from decades of living knowing they were only alive to die. No amount of screaming would change her mind, no amount of venom would make her realize she was wrong. If her son’s death didn’t turn the tides, what would? If years of watching her child grow hadn’t convinced her that their sacrifice was not worth whatever ‘honor’ it would bring her family, she was lost already. Let the demon have her. Let it all burn.

The idea that she carried some pain within her that he couldn’t understand was a laughable thing, a joke without a punchline. As if she should be allowed that pain, as if she’d earned it. You weren’t allowed to grieve something you’d chosen to slaughter. You weren’t allowed to hold your head up high and claim victimhood for a situation you’d gotten yourself into all on your own, for something you could have prevented if only you’d tried. It was her fault, what happened to her son. 

(It was his fault, what happened to his daughter.)

She didn’t deserve to mourn.

(Neither did he.)

She deserved whatever grief tore her open, deserved to spend the rest of her life with her son’s cries and pleas echoing in her ears.

(The image of his daughter’s corpse would lurk behind his eyelids until the day he died. He deserved it as much as she did.)

“I know,” he said lowly, “more than you could imagine. But there is a difference between us. I would have died for my daughter, but you asked your children to die for you. You’ll never see them again. I’m going to make sure.” She wouldn’t make sacrifices for Wynne, but Emilio would. He would have died for Flora. He would have died for Wynne. A blade could be used to protect, too.

But she was right about one thing, at least — he was wasting his breath here. He shot her one last disgusted look, anger still burning in his chest. He made his way over to the door, and it opened a heartbeat before he reached for the knob. The man who stood there looked surprised; Emilio could see Wynne’s features reflected in his face the same way he’d seen them in Zahra’s. Their father, he realized distantly. This is their father. 

There was little thought behind it. It was rage that clenched his fist, rage that reared his arm back, rage that collided his knuckles into the stranger’s face without saying a word. He didn’t feel better as Wynne’s father stumbled back, didn’t find relief in the blood that gushed from the man’s nose. Everything felt painfully empty as Emilio shook out his hand and stepped out the open door. 

The sun was shining; he thought it shouldn’t be. No one said anything to him as he sulked towards the same gate he’d come in, though a few people whispered as he passed. He didn’t know if it was because they still thought he had some connection to the demon or if it was because they now knew that he didn’t. It didn’t matter much one way or another. No one tried to stop him, and part of him almost wished they would. His knuckles yearned to meet more flesh, the fury burning inside of him begging for an outlet. But when he got to his car at last, all that was left to do was drive.

This had been the easy part. The worst, he knew, was yet to come.

[mtdthoughts]

Shadow Pt. 2 (Migi & Dali Analysis)

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

Keep in mind *spoilers* throughout the whole story are discussed below.

In the previous post, I argued that Dali hid in Migi's shadow to punish himself for what happened to Eiji and perhaps for the aftermath of the revenge quest that he started. In this post, I will attempt to prove this theory.

First, let us establish that Dali had a suppressed desire to live his own life with the Sonoyamas. Though Dali has mostly shown behavior unlike that of a typical 13-year-old boy, he was still one himself, and had his own desires and interests (e.g. reading, eating omelets, laughing at Migi, etc.). He suppressed this side of himself due to his duty to get revenge, but there were always moments where his true self slips, allowing the Sonoyamas to identify him as an intellectual child and the viewer to build an accurate caricature of Dali's true self. His nightmare also showed his fear of being left unloved and unable to live his own life as well as his craving for love and affection from the Sonoyamas. Also, the scene with Fidelite waiting to eat food is an indicator of Dali's desire since Dali can be associated with Fidelite via symbolism.

Thus, Dali wanted to live his own life with the family. Furthermore, Migi and the Sonoyamas wanted Dali to live together with them, so Dali knew that he could have it if he chose to take it. Hence, it is reasonable to conclude that the reason he initially didn't take something that he not only wanted but was also offered to him was because he believed he didn't deserve it.

In addition, we note the strangeness of Dali's decision when put into context. The revenge quest was finally over, and from the previous post, Dali seemed ready to go back home with Eiji and live with the Sonoyamas as triplets. However, Eiji surrenders himself to the police and is arrested, and the next we see of Dali is him sitting sadly under the table.

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that Eiji's arrest was directly correlated with Dali's clear reversal in attitude from hope to despair.

The theory proposed here does indeed address both observations sufficiently. Now, I want to list the evidence to support this theory.

It was really Dali who wanted revenge and it was Dali who orchestrated all of the plots. Sure, he uncovered the truth behind his mother's death, but there was a heavy price to pay: Migi was hurt and almost killed multiple times, Micchan was captured and later killed, and Eiji's life was potentially ruined after he killed Reiko and was arrested. Dali's revenge had significant consequences, and it wouldn't surprise me if Dali was aware of this.

Dali's scar is highlighted when he tells Migi why he can't come out. The scar is what remains after the revenge quest concluded, so Dali may have viewed his scar as proof of his sins, his failure to bring Eiji home and ease his suffering, and perhaps as a mark of the monster he saw himself as.

Eiji's arrest was likely the most significant factor. At first, Dali wanted revenge because his own family was destroyed, but he later sympathized with Eiji and realized he was a victim of his parents' sins just like himself. He tried to save Eiji and began to see hope in redemption for them both, but Eiji turned himself in. Now, it was Eiji whose family was destroyed and it was Eiji who was forced to be alone, and Dali likely couldn't forgive himself for this, as if he was taking revenge against himself.

As hinted by Dali, he and Eiji are similar in many ways, such as having a strong sense of justice, being tough on themselves, and rejecting happiness. Eiji tried to burn the house and himself to death after killing Reiko and later turned himself in because of his overwhelming guilt. It wouldn't surprise me if Dali forced himself to be Migi's shadow for a similar reason. Furthermore, Dali said he hated Eiji because they were similar, so this could hint at Dali hating himself as well.

Dali living in the shadows while Migi lives in the light highlights the light/dark motif of the twins. Dali likely sees Migi as blameless and pure-hearted but sees himself as a monster stained with sin. He likely became aware of this after he had almost killed Migi and consequently began to resent himself. It wouldn't surprise me if he felt that he had no right to live in the light because he might continue to hurt others.

Hopefully, this is enough to prove this theory. In the next post, I'll go over some alternative theories I had and why I rejected them.

Next part:

https://www.tumblr.com/mtdthoughts/737972664496521216/shadow-pt-3-migi-dali-analysis?source=share

[jerzwriter]

In the What's forever for series, why did Tobias & Casey divorce?

Hey Nonny,

Couple of things, we know they filed for divorce, but we don't know (yet) if they go through with it. The things that brought them to that point haven't been addressed yet. But I'll write flashbacks over time that will give you a better picture. As with most marriages that end, it's not one thing but many that bring them there. Some insight:

While they were very much in love, people were shocked when they married because Tobias never seemed to want a domestic life. But he was very happy being married to Casey.

Adjusting to being parents didn't prove to be as easy. Tobias adored Kyle, but missed his old life a lot. Casey adjusted better but felt the weight of parenting more, as many mothers do. Some of that was Tobias's fault, but mostly it was her own preconceived notions of what a mother "should be."

Casey wanted a second child, but Tobias was struggling with things as they were and did not want to add to it. After many long talks (and some arguments), Tobias agreed they'd have one more.

Casey became pregnant and miscarried. The aftermath of the miscarriage was when things really started to fall apart. Casey took it very hard, and she didn't think Tobias cared. That wasn't true, and it hurt him terribly that she believed that. Casey wanted to start trying again as soon as they could; Tobias asked her if they could put it on hold for a bit. He felt they should have time to heal from the loss; plus, their marriage was not going that well, and he thought they should focus on that first. Casey flipped out. She didn't think their marriage was bad. She thought they were just having issues, and every couple had issues at some point. So she was crushed.

Tobias became very unhappy and started hanging out with friends one night a week after work, and Casey was resentful. He told her to do the same with her friends, but she didn't want to. This grew into more and more problems.

Tobias had a very good friend, Miranda. She was attending but had been an intern/resident under Tobias. As such, she really looked up to/idolized him. Casey never minded when things were good (she had male friends, too), but when the marriage became rocky, Casey resented their closeness and became jealous. She suspected there was more than friendship between them. Tobias denied it (and he wasn't lying), but as time went on, Casey doubted him more and more. This became the breaking point. Tobias said any relationship has to have trust to survive, and if she didn't trust him anymore, their marriage was over. Throughout, lack of communication plays a factor. They never stopped loving each other, but they stopped showing that they loved each other for a time. Tobias was the one to say their marriage was over but never filed for divorce. As time dragged on, Casey, who didn't want a divorce initially, was the one to file. Even though Tobias said they were over, Casey's filing for divorce crushed him. Again - bad communication on both parts.

So there you have it. There is more to it, but these are the main factors. Thank you for asking, Nonny.