The Night Rider

Chapter 51 - Torecaster

A flash of candlelight brought Hawkins to a haze of monochrome. It was a clearing he didn't recognise but somehow knew, shaded in trees bigger than he'd ever seen. Candles were placed much like the small pocket of earth they had just conjured but empty and devoid of any flame that stretched long past his vision. The Glowing Fields.

This time, he had the awareness to know it was a memory frozen in time but it didn't make it any less daunting to experience. It was a mass grave untempered by the elements but still worn away by an unknown force, soulless and not a Trollian in sight. Shuriken.

"I guess, now we do."

Rin's gentle solemn voice brought the Mediator back from the edge of his mind, as if experiencing a daydream he had no control over. Struggling to maintain his composure, Hawkins Smoke Trait burst from his hands and surrounded the area but soon a reassuring claw reached out to temper it. Hack.

"Do you see them?"

The Sand Wraith's voice was barely audible, his claw pointed towards a peripheral Hawkins couldn't detect. But the scarlet thread he had pictured before flickered into life, weaving its way into the sea of Trollians. He darted from side to side, almost expecting the frozen form of Mantis mid laugh, Rin close by her side with her head on her shoulder to dodge a sly bullet mid air and strayed from his target. Hack and Hawkins were the only one's present to see the smoke trolls now.

They were nothing more than a party trick for the Enforcers, dancing jovially with others of their kin around the sombre stone of growing gravestones. Until the lowest point of the day washed over them in peeling darkness giving way to a brief flash of light with the guiding light of the Hanging Sun.

Like a Light Traited changing filter on a light show, the smoke trolls became almost drawn to the light and warped into a translucent form unlike any other. Hawkins nodded at his mentor, his movements slow and pronounced like he had momentarily forgotten how to move.

The Trollians he had grown up with so fondly in his childhood took on an entirely different meaning as their spirits portrayed who they used to be. Dragonic. Traited. Enforcers. With the sunlights rays, they became undone with the necromancy, the betraying Pulse that repeated against his heart. The Truants were no more.

Part of Hawkins had hoped to see his father's spirit among the collection, the celebration of the Soulcatcher Grove becoming more and more vibrant as they grew in number. Hawkins watched intently, Hack's eyes mirrored with emotion as his gaze fell upon a young woman chatting to an aquamarine dragon no bigger than the stone it was perched on.

The wrinkles under her eyes seemed to shimmer under the grayscale light on her face, every detail of her black hair and grey greenish eyes smiling back at him. It was eerie yet comforting to know a necromancer could become such a carefree spirit but the Sand Wraith's haunted, troubled reaction niggled at his brain. Hack knew her and somehow he did too.

His eyes drifted away from his mentor's melancholy, the familiar sight of a woman nursing a small baby in her arms. She smiled unlike anything he had ever seen, her purpose fulfilled just by holding a young child in her arms. It was like she had never smiled before, her long hair pulled back into a messy bun as she pulled away the straggling, mist made strands of hair from her fringe.

Hawkins' breath escaped his lungs, the dreary, grief ridden Organa now looking upon the very child she had fought so hard to save. Safe and warm nestled within her grasp like all the pain and suffering of her Trait had now left her. The water pooled beneath the nooks and crannies Reina's rainstorm had left them, unperturbed by the ex Blood Traited. She didn't need blood anymore.

"I see them. I see them, Hack."

The relief that left his lungs were more joyous than any amount of rest he could've gotten right now. The broken forms of the Truants now faded into the background as forms of the Trollians, awakened from their simplistic visions.