Idi ko mne, moya milaya

[Michael Renne]

In the dense forests of Myrken Wood, it was not so difficult to find a solitary place to call your own. If one did not mind the snow, or the bitter winds, the woods were quite a pleasant place. A place of peace and solitude.

In the hollow of a once great tree, it's side carved deep from a long ago lightning strike, there was a place just large enough for a man to sit and watch the world go by, unhindered by weather or the footfalls of man.

It was there that Michael Renne, also called Brother Prime, sat; watched the snowflakes wind their way down from the canopy of branches above. His long cloak of white fur only tarnished at the hem from dragging across the snow and fallen needles of the trees as he had made his way here.

Eyes which seemed to reflect the sky high above, a dense and ever changing shade of grey, slowly drifted closed as he considered many things. Many things which seemed to continually return to one Ariane Carnath-Emory.

Fingers wrapped in fine thing leather twisted at a tatter of fabric, a slender strip of deep green silk. He had taken it many moons ago, from her torn shirt. One she had said had been a gift, from her employer. It was something she would not have missed, the shirt had been in such disrepair. As fingers moved across the fabric, thoughts moved across time.


~Dead is better. Don't you think? Dead is where the damned belong. Do you sleep well now, my dove? Knowing that your nightmare is no longer drawing breath? Does his body warm you? Does his heart sooth you? Do his eyes speak to you, as mine did? You can deny it now, for no one is left to call you a liar. We both know the truth. You loved me. You loved me, and would have saved me, if it would not have meant your own damnation. How could I blame you for choosing to save yourself?~

As his thoughts drifted out across the thin thread of their connection, he knew she would not know how, or why. For these things he did not care. What mattered was that she knew him to be dead, and it haunted her, he knew it did. He was gone, and still she thought of him. Still she reached for rememberances tied about her neck. It was torture, sweet and pure.

~ Would it have been different without him, Sweet? Would you have saved my soul? Would you have rescued me from my damnation, only to allow yourself to fall from grace? I think that you might. I think that the idea of waking beside me was just tempting enough to draw you away from the safety of your young governor. More's the pity that you never had a chance to taste that which you so deeply desired. ~

A smile curled the lips of Michael Renne, as his thoughts swam the currents which sperated them. Ariane was no lover of magicks, she would do little to try and understand where any of this had come from. Most likely, she would simply blame it on a guilty conscience, or a bad piece of mutton.

~What would you do, if given the choice to make over again, pet? Would you save him? Or would you save me? I think you know the answer. I think it wakes you at night, soaked in sweat, heart pounding against your breast. I think you wake wondering if you could have. If you should have. And then...alone in the darkness of your room, you cry. Don't you? Oh, sweet troubled, Ariane. How different it could have been. If you hadn't let me die.~

With that final thought, Michael's eyes opened, abruptly severing the connection. If he had accomplished his goal, she would, at this moment, be waking from what might have been a dream, hoping it had been nothing more than a nightmare.

[Carnath-Emory]

In the distant tower of mage Airestorm, Quincy and her unlikely sister sleep in a room most would consider far too opulent for the likes of them -- and rightly so. Delicately gilded, it had sung of aristocracy; richly appointed, it had made a very strange backdrop to the habits of the two girls, had become a place to stretch muscle, bare steel, work wonders.

Their stay there has so far been a short one, but Quincy has surely become aware of the fact that her sister suffers from regular nightmaring. Of course, she may have realised this long ago, in the years that they'd shared attic lodgings; blankets hung from rafters are marvellous for privacy, but do little to muffle noise.

Spare a moment's sympathetic thought for poor Quincy, who has suffered several quite remarkable experiences very recently, and now must endure a roommate who twists so, in her sheets. Who darkens them with sweat, and wakes with cries caught behind gritted teeth--


Because each night since their return from the Order's lair has been spent in this fashion. Each night, her mind has replayed the unhappy exodus of Ariane Emory and Altias Bromn; over and over it recreates the scene of their flight, reworks it, refashions it, torments and twists and distorts it as if there were some final sense to be made of it. The mind is a mathematician that insists that both sides of the equation be made even. The mind is a cartographer that insists to explore, is an unskilled artist, gripped by a fever for creation, but always falling short --

Each night. These caverns, musty and dry, acrid with the memory of Kerrak's fire. This gathering, a sea of platinum silk that her murders had hardly depleted. The Baie -- oh Ariel oh Magda we must speak of such things -- rampant upon his platform; crazed Dhrin at his side, and Altias as well, with his face a mask of blood. Ascending that platform, Renne-who-is-Prime; silent in his wake, Ariane-who-is-Lily.

In this dreaming world, we understand that Ariane is no less a monster than Michael; we understand that Lily once murdered as willfully for faith as Prime ever did.

Each night, it goes like this: this Perfectly-choreagraphed dance that sees Bromn entrusted into the hands of silken Lily. That sees Renne and Dhrin reunited with Him upon that lordly platform, the Believers gathering in devotion around them. Each night, the fleeing devotees reach the mouth of the tunnel that will ensure their freedom -- or the clearing that fills their lungs with fresh air that tastes of Escape -- and then she makes that terrible choice again.

And everything invariably goes to hell.

The clatter of an armoured body back through that thin tunnel sends its roof collapsing down upon them. Before she can run for the cavern's mouth, huge Simon sees his chance and crushes that hammer through her, through so that she and Bromn must perish alike. And there's a dagger for his skull, or a mob come for them both, or the Baie roused to murder and crushing bodies into corpses upon the cavern walls, for every night this choice is disaster no matter how her mind may struggle with it, but this once, this once:

[Carnath-Emory]

It's a gentle arc of travel that takes them past the rear of the platform, a slow circuit of the interior that brings them gradually towards what the crowd's parting had revealed: a narrow corridor with contours that hint at shallowness. It is their destination. Her grip upon Bromn's arm tightens, as she ushers him towards their escape, and at this last possible moment, she looks back. Upon Michael Renne fixes a gaze as grey as his own, and qutie as haunted; he is afforded a fleeting glimpse of features that are a halfway mirror for his own.

"Villain," she whispers, a cobweb's-weight of sound. Soulmate, she breathes, without any sound at all. Forgive me, for that is what lies at the heart of any such farewell, and angry, yearning tears sting at her eyes, her gaze lingering upon him until it grows wavering and imprecise. It's into the tunnel then, for she and Bromn, and it's not until they're given a first glimpse of outdoor light that their pace flags. It's not until they taste the life upon its air that her hands become claws upon Bromn's arms, upon his chin, the back of his neck.

"They will tear him apart," she whispers by his cheek, and even beneath her breath, there is clear certainty in her voice. There is acceptance. And there are hands in his ruddy hair, and a mouth that crushes his own as if she could steal his sweetness, his strength, and take them with her always -- and he is thrust from her now, towards that beckoning flicker of light. "They will, and I cannot permit it. Horses await; get you to Eriks, who will guard you for my sake; get you far from here -- "

And she is away then, unable to bear this, unable to tarry longer; Bromn is stumbling towards his freedom, and the iron is tearing free of her silken robes as she runs for the cavern proper. It is a cruelly-armoured juggernaut that plunges itself into the chaos that waits above, for they've discovered Renne's deception; they've descended upon him like the pack that they've always been at heart.

It is the mindless slaughter for which her soul yearns.
It will most assuredly be the death of her.
She plunges into it without hesitation.

Hours pass, in a blur of steel and silk and shattered bone. Cultists paint their robes crimson when they fall upon her armour, crumple unwillingly to the edged bludgeon of her sword. They carve fresh scars into the steel that plates her shoulders, and far more than that; what claws its way to Renne-who-was-Prime is a battered thing, bloodied at the mouth where a fist had struck true, limping for sake of a greave crushed flat across the thigh. In desperation, he is thrust before her as they flee, and there is some great confusion of torn bodies and tiny knives. There rises some angry shriek as she scatters burning powders into their eyes, and they are dying here, she and Michael, for they cannot possibly break free of this mob -- except that as they near the cavern's great mouth, there comes a gust of clean air, and light so brilliant that it blinds, and they run towards it, run --

***

For some fathomless time, the world is extinguished by the brilliance of white sunlight.

Ariane comes to know these things: the sweet, searing ache of a body battered beyond exhaustion; the nourishing warmth of Renne's embrace. The tang of the mingled blood of monsters, when his lips burn hers; the warm scent of amber, threaded through with campfire smoke. A heart that grieves for want of that stumbling body, those confused violet eyes; that thrills to the crush of this unfamiliar flesh, and stutters in terror of it as well. A spirit that embraces the outlaw life that will be theirs, these black-haired monsters -- but with so cold a dread that when she wakes to hands upon her throat one early morning, she embraces the inevitability of this too, and greets her death not with shock, but quiet, quiet relief....



Spare a moment's sympathy for poor Quincy, for her sister rises from this horror in such a commotion of fighting limbs and struggling breaths, that it's likely to wake her in turn.