It felt like hours before the massive pain in my chest subsided, my body relaxing from the sudden lack of effort it took to breathe. The downside, however, was that I was back to being damn exhausted, as if I hadn't been already. The rain and wind stung my flesh like a swarm of angry bees, and my body shook from the icy temperatures desperate to tear apart any last warmth that remained.
Shivering, I pulled myself to my knees, examining the marks that dotted my arms - remnants from being held by thorny vines in the nymphtan's lair. How could everything have gone so wrong in so little time?
I climbed to my feet with a grimace, dazed and confused at the turmoil of emotion my mind couldn't quite shift through.
"Fuck," I swore, leaning against the wall behind me. I resisted the urge to look around the corner, where I knew I would see a lone, motionless figure hanging by wooden beams. The Circle would leave her up there until the night's end, her body exposed and feeding the deadly plant that grew within her-
I shook my head, scowling at the sudden tears that bit my eyes. Tired. You're just tired.
Tired of living, perhaps.
Groaning, I pushed myself from the wall, heading in the direction of Craen's house. I wasn't at all in the mood to converse with my fellow peers and higher-ups, but if I didn't go now, they would simply bombard me once I found the time to rest. Might as well get it done and over with.
At some point between the city buildings and Craen's house, Bogdan appeared next me, still as solid as he had been over the past few days. No, was it a week, now? Two? How much time had passed between my near-confrontation with Rhoe, when Orik successfully used auzir in front of me the first time?
"Go away," I mumbled. If I'd had the strength, I would have swung my sword at him, lesson from days earlier be damned. Did Mutnya's necklace protect Bogdan from death, too, or just me? Could I kill him and be just fine, myself?
No, no, he risked himself fighting Rhoe for you.
Well, the bastard also had me lined up to do an execution.
The rain slowed back down to a drizzle. Bogdan decided to ignore my demand.
"It looks like some of your humanity's returned," he remarked curtly. I curled my fingers around the hilt of my sword. Maybe, if I dug down deep enough, I'd find a last-minute surge of energy to lop his head from his shoulders.
Or at least lodge a gash between the neck and shoulder. Removing heads from bodies wasn't as easy as people made it out to be. I'd never seen Bogdan bleed, but if he kept pushing-
"Songbird." A simple word, uttered in pure certainty. It shouldn't have had much power behind, yet it was enough for my breath to catch in the back of my throat.
"Stop calling me that," I snapped, refusing to face him.
"I think it's fitting," he responded, just as cold and frank. "A play about a bird with broken wings, unable to fly, so to survive on land, she learns to sing. Sounds a lot like you."
"I know what the play's about," I interrupted.
"Do you?" The spirit mocked, and from the slightly maddened haze in his voice, I was reminded that while he certainly had his sane moments, he wasn't at all stable minded. I sighed.
"I'm not in the mood for this," I mumbled, unsure if I wanted Bogdan to hear or not. Why was he bringing the play up now, of all times?
"Tell me, then, why it doesn't fit," he demanded.
"I am not fighting you, Bogdan."
"But you want to, don't you?"
It was beginning to look like this was a conversation I wasn't going to be able to avoid. I felt his cold presence behind me, sending an unnatural chill up my back.
"You want to know what I've seen in you even before you pledged your oath?" He hissed. I scanned the area in front of me, hoping to see a semblance of a white cloak or someone else waiting for me at Craen's little cabin - anything to warn me against getting into a confrontation with a pissed off wayguard.
There was, in fact, no one waiting for me. Just an expectation of me knowing that they demanded my presence, even if I looked and felt half-dead on my feet.
Very well. Bogdan wanted to dance, then I'll dance.
This is not a good idea.
Without another word, I unsheathed my sword, swinging it around with both hands in hopes that if I did nab him, it would be with the full force of whatever strength that remained. Unfortunately, I stumbled, my boots slipping over the muddy ground . . . And Bogdan was no longer there.
I'm not strong enough. I grinded my teeth and planted my feet, straining my senses for any sign that the spirit was about to materialize. My sword felt unusually heavy, my legs barely keeping my body upright . . . So why was I doing this?
There was a slight mist in my peripheral, something that didn't come from the rain. Again, I swung my sword, and this time I didn't miss. No, this time I managed to ram the flat of my blade against the side of his head.
Now that was a good way to give yourself a brain injury.
I must've blacked out, because I went from standing on my own two feet to sitting flat on my ass in the mud, sword a little ways next to me, with a sprawling pain taking up a good measure of my left eye. Vision blurry and my left ear ringing, I could do nothing but sit there and wait for the sudden vertigo to pass, hoping Bogdan was feeling very much as miserable as me.
He wasn't, or perhaps he just didn't care, because as I was gathering my bearings, he sent me sprawling to my side with a none-too-gentle kick to the ribs - ribs that were still a bit bruised from when I'd hit him the first time back at the mines. I blew out a steady stream of air through my teeth, and Bogdan stumbled back with a pained grunt.
I need to stop doing this to myself. I closed my eyes, my body nothing but a world of hurt, but damn was it a good distraction against everything else. My breaths were more of a strangled wheeze than not, my ankle throbbing from . . . What? When did I hurt it, again? I groaned, struggling to pull my knees up beneath myself in the mud. A strange, foreign warmth sprouted on the surface of my chest, so I looked down to see a faint glowing through my shirt from where my necklace was pressed between cloth and skin.
The last time it glowed, I had been close to dying . . . And Chros, a death god, was waiting to confront me. Now, I was freezing my ass off and I barely had the strength to keep my head up, but surely I wasn't on death's heels for a second time in the past few days . . . Right?
I looked up, and through the frantic pounding of the rain, I could see a figure standing within the falling liquid, not quite solid, but not as wispy as a standard spirit. The chilling sense of something that was quick to overwhelm my senses told me that I wasn't facing a simple monster, either.
That's not what this is. In fact, the longer I stared, the more I recognized the figure. The stark white hair, the piercing green eyes-
Fingers dug into the back of my skull, curling around my hair before jerking my head back with all the strength of someone not caring whether or not my neck remained in one piece.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, loathing the cold, unnatural sensation of Bogdan's fingers being pressed against my skull.
"Just like the bird," the wayguard whispered savagely against my ear, "you're waiting for your chance to escape - waiting for your chance to fly, but you never will." I winced, unable to fight back when his grip on my hair tightened. "The sky no longer wants you, the wind no longer desires to carry you. You're stuck here, singing your tunes, desperately trying to persuade the world around you that you're something more than meager prey. But you're not, are you?"
He stilled, and I wondered if he knew who was watching us at the moment. Especially with his next statement.
"There is always someone greater, someone mightier. No matter how far you run, no matter how much you fight, you are just an outsider that was never meant to live this life, but has no way out of it." With that, he released my hair. "The best part about it? The way the bird broke her wings. The way it all started in the original play. Do you remember?"
Chros watched me from the shadows, motionless and silent. The hatred behind his gaze should have been enough to catch the breath in my lungs, but a part of me felt a certain . . . satisfaction . . . knowing that he was seeing this. Let him see the kind of person I was - see who his mother sought out to play as a piece in the game she was laying out.
I didn't have anything to lose. There wasn't a thing he could threaten me with that would make me fear him greater than the life I currently led. Sure, I could have gone without having to ponder about what the wrath of a death god entailed. But if he thought he was the greatest threat I'd ever faced, I was more than happy to take his ego down a couple of notches.
Through the rain, I met the god's eyes, keeping them there as I grabbed my sword and rose to my feet. It hurt - my ribs were on fire, and the world spun from the pain ricocheting across my skull - yet somehow I was able to keep my balance.
"She killed her sister's eggs," I replied duly. "Tossed them from the nest before they had a chance to hatch." I turned to face the spirit, who regarded me with an expression I couldn't read. Chros's gaze burned at my back.
"I am very well aware of the sins I've done," I said, lowly but surely. The exhaust that rested so heavily in my voice somehow made my body feel worse. Anyone with working eyes could see that I was far from being in proper shape for a simple walk to the market, much less handling a physical altercation with a wayguard. That did nothing to deter me from saying what I needed to say, though. "You don't need to remind me why I'm in this shit show of a life every time you're pissed at me."
He curled his lip in a snarl, a bit of madness still holding his otherworldly body taut.
"You think the Circle is so horrible," he mocked. "You hate Bonosoli for teaching you. You hate the gods for not holding your hand. But how many more people have to die before you're convinced that you're no better than them?"
An older, sickly-pale woman came to mind, frail and small as she struggled to knit a pair of stockings for a babe she didn't know was gone. Hell, she didn't even know what I'd just done, having been kept within the confines of her own home for days on end because she wasn't strong enough to leave. I couldn't remember the finer details of her face, but I remembered the concern I saw when she looked up at me, when I came to see her in what neither of us knew to be the last time with her alive. She'd known something was wrong, but she just assumed it was the Circle's way of life getting to me - even if I was covered in a bit of blood, just as I was now.
"Go make the world a better place."
She didn't quite understand why I was doing what I did, but she had trusted me, all the same.
"I know I'm not," I grunted. "The Circle knew about the nymphtan. They have copies of all my contracts. But you see, there's one difference between me and them - between me and the gods."
"Oh?"
It was my turn to lean in, setting myself barely inches apart from Bogdan's face.
"I don't let people place their hope in me."
I shoved past him at the last of my words, stumbling slightly from the dizzying pain pulsing within my skull. My ankle wasn't making it any easier, either. Was it getting infected?
"No, you just let people die in betrayal," Bogdan shouted after me, always one to have the last say. Orik was the first person I thought of - he'd seen what I was doing before he was unceremoniously ripped to shreds. But as quickly as he came, he went, to be replaced with another, more powerful memory, one of churning snow, of distant smoke and silent cries. Standing in front of a cursed wooden post, too scared to look up into the eyes of the young woman that hung there.
Then there was the sick older woman, who'd wrapped a noose around her neck in her own bedroom, a pair of finished wool stockings lying where her grip had failed her as she choked to death. Both women had died due to my actions when they were all I had been trying to protect - trying to save.
Bogdan could stay pissed at me for all I cared. I'd spent my childhood trying to get into the Reftin Circle, and then not long after I joined, I'd further spent - still spending - my adulthood trying to get out of it by killing and capturing and taking from what everyone else deemed were monsters. I had the chance to put a dent in the Circle's order by letting the nymphtan attack Canden, so I took it - even if I did end up failing, anyway.
Even if I had been, if not slightly, under the influence of something greater.
~ 2387 Words ~
Ah, so I actually rewrote this chapter quite a few times. I was torn between wanting to subtly explain why Bogdan likes calling Wrenva 'Songbird' or explaining a little more about who Rhoe is, and ultimately 'Songbird' won, haha.