From Grace

Primus: Omnes Une Manet Nox

Hello darkness my old friend
I’ve come to talk to you again.
-Sound of Silence-

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...she dropped me into the boiling sea, the salt water hissing and surging about my hilt, no tarnish yet for the blade, no salt rime to grit and grind against me, sizzling and sinking and wondering why she had let me go, why she had dropped me...

Her eyes opened almost unwillingly, peering into the darkness of her silent home, the silent bedroom and the voice in her dreams receded to a soft mumble, then nothing at all. Shadows from the window cut glaring tracks in the sharp moonlight that flooded in from outside, throwing the furniture of her bedroom into relief, pools of shadows gathering about her tangled bed sheets and limbs. Her eyes skittered across wearily to where the sword lay propped against the wall, silent.

Bhryn sighed, sitting up slowly in bed and bending her back forward, hands curled slightly in her lap, and then she looked at the propped sword once again. “How come you seem to think it’s hilarious to wake me from my sleep?”

*I don’t get nearly enough sleep to replace the lack of energy I’m taking in each day.*

Fretting was going to do her absolutely no good, so she slung her legs over the side of the bed and pulled on a soft bathrobe, glancing one last time at Ragnarok as it stood propped on the wall, stilted in the moonlight, a slice of black. Her eyes narrowed at the lack of answer from the sometimes incurably intractable sword, possessed of a fine intellect itself and reasonable capabilities towards common sense; but it had some maddening habits. Barefoot she left her bedroom and stood shivering on the small convergence of a tiny hallway into a spacious living room, sparsely decorated.

When she had been young, her mother had loved lace and ruffles, her father’s armour smelling of oil had graced the room and there was always the sounds of cooking, of her brother practising his incantations. Now, all grown up and with no one to bother, Bhryn was alone. Alantie was living in accommodation for her Bard courses, and Riyon had left long ago to find his path as a knight or whatever it was he felt impelled to do. Of her two children, Riyon had inherited his mother’s wild and free-spirited temperament. Alantie was almost sweetly grave in comparison.

She didn’t even have time for her friends recently; everything had been a large blur in the passing months. Only now, when there was some silence, did the sword start up, nagging and whispering when she sought the solace of her dreams.

Not that her dreams had ever been entirely safe, not like those times when Jalil had been active. She adjusted the cover of the bathrobe uncomfortably and passed a hand over an oil lantern, the wick slowly catching light. A tut escaped her lips before she could crush it mercilessly – her ability with magic was still unpredictable and inferior to her weapon skills. It was small wonder that Jalil had frightened her so when she had brought about the ability to dream-walk and cause all kinds of havoc. The flame guttered and Bhryn watched it with flat, unemotional black eyes.

Where was Dragona these days? What had happened to Kier? Where the hell had Davon vanished off to? A thousand questions for a thousand faces she knew, but pressing fingers to her temples, the celestial collapsed onto the couch and sighed heavily.

“No real use, worrying it over now, right?”

On the low table was a bottle of half drunk whiskey, the glow of the oil lantern glittering off the depths of the alcohol, sparkling at her teasingly. Biting her lower lip, she almost reached for it, then drew her hand back, pressing it instead inside her robe, fingers stroking along the ridge of scar tissue that had remained for years uncounted. It rode from just over her left hip and up, through her ribcage, pausing just over her heart. The similar, fainter silvery mark adorned her back.

...he wanted you dead, he wants you dead, and she wanted you dead... everyone wants to see you die...

“Shut up,” she said irritably, jerking her thoughtful fingers from the scarring. “Do you think any of this is easy?”

No, the weight of it, that will kill you one day though, that will carry you off... then it will crush Alantie, then her daughter, then her daughter’s daughter... and so on... and on...

“I know, Gods, don’t you think I know?!” She was losing her temper, at the voice that belonged to Ragnarok, invasive, pervasively whispering to her again. She flopped against the back of the sofa, tilting her head backwards so she could make out the grain in the ceiling, the fine planks of wood and jousts that lovingly made up her home. Bhryn forced her hands out of fists. “What’s done is done.”

It’s not done. Break your back. Splinter your fingers. Bleed your heart. It’s not done.

“Will you shut up just for one night?”

The duties were crushing, the day was too bright and with another irritated jerk, she passed the lamp on the way back to her room, the light blowing out much quicker than it had sprang to life. Almost wild, she threw open her door so it jarred loudly against the plaster wall, to look at the sword. It was still.

Her robe whispered as she stormed past it and tore open the shuttered blinds to stare at the celestial plane where she made her home, the silver moonlight of a weeping heaven, the rising spires of the seven mounts, and somewhere in the distant horizon was a misty glow where the ghosts of yesterday leeched and festered. She pulled the robe off, looking down past her unspectacular bosom to the flat line of her stomach, the cruel scarring vivid and starker here in the moonlight than a lantern glow.

“He killed me. He just wasn’t competent enough to destroy me. There was enough of me left to return. There was enough will in those who cared for me, to walk the planes again.” Her eyes were hooded with memories, “But the second time, ripped away from my rightful place.”

The scar has never faded. It could, if you willed it in conjunction with the magic of the God you follow so fervently.

“And lose the reminder of when I was foolish? Not likely; this scar is part of me, others may come and go, and this one reminds me to stand tall.”

Bhryn’o’vyl, have you not felt it?

Her eyes lifted a fraction from the scar where trembling fingers still stroked the spine of twisted, pale flesh that was such a contrast to her deep golden skin, and then she looked up through the uneven, spiked fringe of white hair and across the celestial plane. “Yes.”

You do not know what it is, do you?

“No, I don’t.”

A deep unease and unrest that made her feel as if she should be running or screaming had been lingering in the back of her brain for the past couple of months. The kind of nervous energy that usually accompanies fight or flight symptoms was still filling her. She might snap and take out her temper on Ragnarok, but the truth was that this kind of energy was what was keeping her from sleeping soundly. She felt his fingers long before they made contact with her shoulders, dead, cold and distant. His hands just rested there, and she turned a little, to look over her shoulder at the shadow touching her, his blazing green eyes and dreadful veins of acidic fire running down his face from them, the perfect teeth and the disjointed, imperfect voice as if vocal chords were never made for him.

Ragnarok, her dark sword, was this shadow given form.

“They are out there, and they are coming. Unlike any before, your death is not simply a stepping stone to be passed along the way. Your death will mean everything to them, your death will give them access to...” his voice grated and paused.

“Give them access to?”

“...to me.”

Her dark eyes watched him, pursing lips to ask the inevitable as she was drawn back into gazing out over this plane. “That kind of fun then, I see.”

You will die, Paragon.

“Don’t count me out just yet, Ragnarok. I can handle whatever it is.”

She didn’t see the pitying look, she didn’t feel his hands retract or the soft whisper of the sword becoming whole again with the dark spirit of destruction. Only her fingers tracing the scar had any feeling, and her voice, darker yet with conviction, added vehemently, “If I can be Kinslayer, if I can survive countless wars and horrors, then this will be nothing. I’m not ready to give up this time... so just you wait and see, Ragnarok... wait and see...”

...and the shadow blade was mercifully silent...