"You can let go now."
Anzel did release his tight grip upon my arm, though he continued to linger at my side as we took the stairs one by one. The tension between us tightened knots in my chest as I held in my exasperated demands for information.
"Apologies, Sara," the Vytian muttered with sincerity. He tugged his lip through his teeth, mind held by crucial thoughts unknown to me. "I shouldn't have asked those questions so brazenly."
"You mean about my father and my grandfather?" A measure of sarcasm laced my tongue as I spoke. "You know them."
He shook his head. "No, not personally, but you must understand how...rare it is for Vytians to be in Terrestria. I don't know them, but I have heard of them. Any Vytian trapped here would have at least heard of them."
"So that's why Elias is freaking out?" I asked in a wry tone. "I thought he was impervious to freaking out, and yet I just witnessed it."
"I don't understand what that means, love."
"It means having a fit!" I stepped in front of Anzel, forcing him to stop or have us collide. "Anzel, please. I'm not an idiot. Elias recognized their names."
Anzel exhaled and eased to the side, his eyes purposefully avoiding my own. "It's not my place to say. If Elias wishes to tell you, then that is his business. Not mine. I asked you only to satisfy my own selfish curiosity and didn't consider Elias. That was wrong of me. If you wish to know more, then please ask him later, when he's had a moment to collect himself."
His plea was given with genuine delicacy, so I didn't try to coerce more information from him. I decided it was best to ask Elias himself. Anzel could have told me as he obviously knew why Elias had reacted as he did, but I figured approaching the older Vytian would be more prudent and less rude.
I wondered how he knew my family. Friends? Acquaintances? Maybe even...enemies?
Anzel eased down a step, then another, his reflective eyes upon mine as he waited for my response.
I breathed with a measure of heat, but dropped the subject from conversation. "Do you really have an errand you need my help with?"
The Vytian's mood visibly lightened as we quickened our pace. "Yes, I do, actually. I've a small garden outside the cemetery where I keep some of the ingredients I'm able to cultivate. I'm running low on several items and need to gather more. I thought you might appreciate the excuse to go outside and I know Elias would appreciate the moment of privacy."
I did want to go outside. It had been weeks since I had last ventured beyond the manor's walls and had breathed the open air. I didn't consider sticking my head out a window every so often to be the same thing.
"Okay," I agreed as we neared the mezzanine and the foyer. "But I am going to ask Elias more about what happened later."
"Be my guest."
Together we descended the final steps and crossed the empty foyer. From the dining hall originated the blithe, content sounds of lunch being served, eaten, and enjoyed. One of the wolves—Thomas, if I was judging the timbre correctly—howled, setting off a chorus of yips and yowls.
Anzel rolled his eyes in disgust, muttering about "dogs at the table."
The Vytian and I exited the manor just moments later. I stood on the porch and braced myself against the unexpected chill as Anzel shut the door. The sound of the latch catching was lost to the wandering moan of the breeze and the steady croon of ravens hidden in the swamp's willows. The road lay before me like a piece of unwoven rope leading the way through the fog-clad moors.
"This way," Anzel said as he touched my arm and hopped off the porch. A plume of steam escaped his lips as he spoke. Had it really grown so cold? Had I really been trapped inside for so long?
The Vytian paused, eyeing my t-shirt and ripped jeans. "Are you cold? I can retrieve a coat for you."
"No, I'm fine." The weather was more than brisk, but I liked how the sharp, wet taste of the air plunged into my lungs and zapped my fatigue. The manor's warmth was omnipresent and often burdensome. It hung upon the residents in a perpetual, drowsy malaise, and I was glad to have a reason to be rid of it for a while. "Let's go."
Anzel nodded, then headed off the path toward the eastern swathe of land. We hurried onward into the mist, markers and tombs rising before us like the prows of ships upon a lost horizons. The manor was a perpetual blackness looming behind, but the details of its somber face and the glimmer of its waiting lights were soon lost to the dark.
The Vytians picked his path with practiced ease. He only wore a button-down with the sleeves pushed above his lean forearms and an open waistcoat, but the chill didn't perturb him. Where my feet sank in the peat moss and stumbled upon the bracken, his feet effortlessly trod. Twice I slid on the slick marble tops of graves and Anzel caught me by the arm before I could fall, a private smirk on his lips.
"What are you laughing at?" I demanded, sullen. Again my step stuttered upon a hidden lip of rock and again Anzel caught me.
"You're obviously from a city," he laughed, his voice shivering with velvet amusement. "You walk without any finesse whatsoever."
No sooner had he spoke than I sunk into a hidden pothole Anzel had avoided and crashed into the Vytian. I was surprised he kept his balance.
"You step expecting pavement or concrete when the moor has everything but pavement and concrete. It has heather and water and roots and clay. Walk with more caution, love. Keep in mind what you're stepping on."
"Easy for you to say," I quipped—but I managed easier from then on, minding the suspicious creepers and the shadowed gullies. We exited the final leg of the graveyard when we jumped over a low stone wall rift with soggy weeds and slippery moss.
The Vytian gestured toward a raised section of earth terraced beneath two towering willows. The area was drier than the bog surrounding it, divided into neat rows of vegetation. "Just there."
Anzel went first as I lingered, wiping my hands free of the dirt and muck they'd accrued during our brief hike. "I've got half a dozen scrapes now," I complained as I went to follow—only to collide with a solid wall.
No, not a wall. The ward.
My breath issued from my lungs in a swift, startled gasp. "Anzel!" I cried, wheeling backward until I collided with the crumbling graveyard wall. I slid down its face, wincing as my side wound protested the motion. "Anzel! The garden's beyond the ward?!"
The Vytian froze, confused by my exclamation as it rang through the stillness of the moor. "Is it?" he said, standing roughly two or three feet outside the ward's perimeter. He had passed through it without notice. How?
"I can't—," I managed to say around my pained breaths. "I can't leave the ward."
He eyed me sitting on the wet ground with mud splattered across my legs, then he eyed where the ward lay. "I didn't know it was outside the ward." Anzel lifted his hand and passed it through the obstruction, but nothing happened. His fingers freely cut the air. "I can't sense it. How can you?"
I wasn't sure how I could sense Peroth's ward, but I could only assume it had something to do with being shadeborn. Darius couldn't cross the barrier because his soul was loud and the ward was a line of pure stillness, stillness that repelled his overpowering noise. Perhaps, it was because I held a sliver of the creature's soul inside my own that I found it difficult to pass through. The ward could sense the anomaly in me.
Anzel sighed, tipping his head backward as if to find patience from the clouds. "Alright," he stated with deliberate gentleness. "If you won't cross the ward, I need to retrieve Elias." Again his gaze roved over my pale, bare arms. "And a coat. Just wait here, love. We'll be back shortly."
I didn't want to wait—but Anzel was already disappearing into the whorls of fog, affording me no other option but to wait. I wouldn't be able to find my way back alone.
Sinking more firmly into the damp earth, I ignored the rustling wind and the ominous croak of bullfrogs hiding in the briars. My arms trembled with the cold, so I rubbed them again and held my knees to my chest in a bid to retain my warmth. Overhead, the sky was a monochrome kaleidoscope of dancing gray mists.
I watched the clouds enraptured by their own silent music as I longed for the blue skies of home. I hadn't seen the sun in so long. I missed it terribly.
Minutes passed, slow but inevitable. Stray drops of rain plunked into puddles, but the clouds didn't unleash their torrent yet.
The wind rose again, colder this time. I uttered an oath as I laid my chin upon one of my knees. How quickly did Anzel think he'd be able to return? Should I try returning on my own? If I got lost, someone would eventually come looking for me...right?
As I weighed the pros and cons of ambling through the cemetery in semi-darkness, the wind tore once more through the amassing cloudbanks, sundering the mist from the murky landscape. More of the moorland beyond the ward's invisible barrier was revealed to casual observation. I could see the blurry outline of a tor upon the horizon.
In more immediate proximity, I could also see the silhouette of a person a dozen or so yards outside the ward.
"Anzel!" I shouted as I rose to my feet. Had he missed me in the fog? "Anzel—?"
The person began to turn just as I realized it wasn't Anzel. It couldn't be Anzel. Their silhouette was tall, but not quite as tall as the Vytian. They were lean but lacked Anzel's willowy figure. The person moved and they didn't have Anzel's casual grace.
They moved like a predator scenting prey.
My heart tripped over itself as it began to race.
He was there in an instant, an inch beyond the barrier with the ward humming in violent reproof. I threw myself from him, crying out when my wound met the hard, unbending side of the graveyard wall yet again.
"Sara." The Sin of Envy spoke my name as if tasting it. His eyes we the lone source of color in the moor's drab abstraction, burning chartreuse with vivacious and acrid bitterness. "Finally, we meet."
I was stunned, so much so I didn't immediately reply and wasn't afraid. I was simply dumbfounded. "H-how—?"
"How?" The Sin stared with unflinching attention, his face still wretchedly handsome with its endearing smile. Such an abominable monster should have been horrid in appearance, disfigured and as disgusting as his evil, twisted heart. "How, what? How do I know your name? How am I here?"
I nodded, clutching the wall as if its weight would keep me from being sucked into the venomous abyss of the Sin's gaze.
"Oh, I'm never far from you, Sara." Balthier wandered along the ward, trailing his fingers against it. Violet whorls awoken as his touch, creaking in warning as smoke marked his passage. He spoke in a voice like murmuring water, quiet and lulling.
"I spend quite a lot of time out in this horrid bog, my vile little human. Never far from you. Never far. So near when you wake, so near when you lay your head down at night. As you sleep, and as you dream, I'm just a breath—." He gave the ward a solid tap and the entire thing rippled. "—away."
My hands were quivering. The creature could see it.
The dampness of his suit spoke to the truthfulness of that statement. The bottle-green fabric was dew streaked as though he'd been walking in the mist for several hours.
"Call along your pet, mortal," Balthier chided, coming to a stop only feet from where I uselessly remained transfixed. "Call that whimpering animal out of his den so we can finish this."
He wanted me to summon Darius. If I let the fear build and break the disbelief holding my mind hostage, the Sin would come. He always did—but I couldn't allow it. I couldn't allow the terror to draw Darius here, straight into danger. The ward stood between Envy and me, but what if it wasn't strong enough? What if he could get through?
"Monster," I hissed with rallied bravado, clenching my hands into small fists.
"Creative," Balthier drawled as he began to rap the ward in a series of light blows like a carpenter knocking along a wall in search of studs. Envy was hunting for weaknesses. "I've never been called that before...."
I stepped nearer despite my trembling. My grip left the wall and I stood under my own power, feeling adrift and vulnerable before the immortal creature. If not for the ward, I would have been dead in an instant. I knew Envy didn't even have to touch his prey to kill them, but the ward blocked the power of the Tongue and his Original gifts.
Balthier paused, his gaze once more landing upon me.
"You won't have Darius," I told him, wishing my voice was stronger, that my will could be as ironclad and furious as my Sin's. "And I'll have retribution the terrible things you've done, monster."
The fog crawled nearer, attracted to the chill laying claim to marsh in Balthier's vicinity. His countenance narrowed as a flicker of ire darkened the liquid nature of his eyes and sharpened his sarcastic mien.
"Perhaps you and I should have a talk, mortal," the Sin spat, air whistling through his clenched teeth. "Because you seem to have painted me the villain of this maudlin little tale. That is a mistake."
"Mistake?" I echoed with incredulity. "There is no mistake. You are the villain. The monster."
"I beg to differ." He ceased his rapping upon the ward, folding his arms behind his back. I noticed the ugly, bloody blisters upon his knuckles before he hid them from view. "Tell me; what if I had stopped in that basin of blood? What if I had leaned forward and had whispered in your ear, asking what you wished? Would you have told me what you told Darius? Would you have had me turn and slaughter all those men and women celebrating your demise?"
My breath was calmer, quieter. My anger was headier than my terror, dribbling through my veins like undulating fire. "....Yes."
"Then what differentiates me from Pride? Nothing. You have cast me as your monster, have envisioned me the moral defiler—and yet, what separates Pride and myself is mere semantics. Our roles are interchangeable. Do you think for an instant that Pride would have turned down the Exordium had they summoned him in my stead? Do you?"
I refused to answer. I knew Darius would have said yes. Starving as he was, Darius would have said yes. I didn't hold that again him, because it wasn't what happened. Darius had saved my life. Balthier had taken it.
Balthier tutted as the eerie marsh light glowed upon the side of his rigid face. "He would have agreed. It would have been his hand on your throat, and he wouldn't have done it kindly. He wouldn't have used the dagger. He would have broken your neck, or ripped your heart out through your chest. He would have done a much more thorough job of killing you than I did."
Envy leaned nearer, not heeding the ward's presence by his face. "Did you never ask why I used the dagger? Why I showed mercy?"
"It wasn't mercy!" I shouted, hating the moisture accumulating in my lashes as I relived that horrid night. "You left me there to bleed out like a pig!"
"More's the pity," Envy sneered as he paced the barrier, bristling with repressed anger. "I should have done a proper job, but I allowed your innocence to sway my mind. You see, Sara, I kill those who deserve death at my hands. I hunt the evils of this world, and in letting you slip through my careless fingers, I've allowed your evil to prosper. You are the true villain of this story, mortal. You've no morality, no limits. You are a woman who kills in the name of vengeance, a woman who sows anarchy and waters the seeds in the blood of those who cross her.
"Don't you understand all villains believe themselves righteous? All villains believe themselves the heroes of their tales? You are not a hero, little Sara. You are a villain, and I have spent my entire existence killing things like you who would plunge the whole of existence into chaos for the sake of your petty pride."
Again, I refused to answer, though the Sin's voice crawled upon my skin and seemed to carve its scripture into my skull. Don't believe him, I told myself as I sank my teeth into my cheek and tasted blood. Don't listen. He'll poison your mind.
I denied the words in my heart, but a part of my soul wouldn't let them go. Villain, Balthier had spewed. Villain.
"If you're so convinced you're on the side of justice, why are you hunting your brethren? Why do you want to hurt Darius if not for your own hubris?"
"Hmph." The Sin touched the ward again, the whorls screeching as the pressure became more insistent. "Because that word you like to throw around—monster—is exactly what we are. We are monsters. We are defilers. We will ruin this realm as we ruined theirs. It is inevitable. We will destroy your kind as we destroyed them. I will stop it. I will stop us."
Theirs? Them? Was he...was he speaking of the Dreaming Children?
Balthier was tiring of our conversation. His pacing had become agitated, each turn whip-like in its speed and alacrity. "Call Darius out here," he demanded, refusing to meet my gaze again. I had the distinct impression Envy found my presence distasteful, that he fully thought himself honorable and I a vile, immoral cretin. "Now."
He was deranged.
Lifting my head high, I glared at Balthier as I said, "No."
The Sin struck the ward with such speed and force that what courage I had managed to scrap together was instantly obliterated. A deep boom reverberated through my bones, rattling my teeth. I clasped my hands over my ears as the sheer volume of the sound left me momentarily deaf.
The ward waved as the impact's momentum traveled through its invisible length. The entirety of the barrier became opaque, shimmering in a rainbow of color as the moisture in the air was caught between its twisting prongs. It bowed inward beneath Balthier's fist, threatening to dissipate.
I gasped, horrified as he hit the ward again.
A gust of ash and brimstone seeped through the scent of bracken and rain. Something solid struck the center of my chest, throwing me to the earth. Wincing through streaming eyes, the horrid scream of the breaking ward ceased as Balthier withdrew.
Peroth, positioned between me and the other Sin, blankly stared at Envy.
"Not who I expected," Balthier mocked as he ran a hand through his mussed hair. The hand that had struck the barrier was bloody and broken, but swiftly convalescing. The bones realigned with sickening pops while the skin flowed outward from his wrist to encompass the muscles and tissues. "But you will do."
"What are you doing, Balthazar?" Peroth asked, seemingly untroubled by Envy's manifestation outside his manor. He spoke with the same calm reassurance of an elder addressing a misbehaving child. "This is a pointless exercise."
"Is it?" Balthier cracked his knuckles and adjusted the smoking cuff of his suit.
Peroth rolled his eyes, frowning. Shadows writhed beneath his skin like living things.
"Perhaps," Envy agreed as he positioned his feet and bent his knees. My heart began to race again as I recognized what was clearly a combat stance. "But perhaps today is the day, Cuxiel, I prove your ward isn't as impenetrable as you think it is!"
Balthier lashed out, his fists striking the ward in a barrage of punishing blows. I watched as he targeted the weaker points he had investigated while we spoke, his hands breaking again and again upon the intractable obstruction though he continued to attack without pause.
The ward keened and wailed until the noise brought tears to my eyes and I wished for it to end.
Peroth waited without a word, his stance unmoving.
"Peroth!" I cried as violet fissures were born upon the ward's endless face. Envy stopped throwing punches and simply pressed forward with one arm—shoving and pushing with his considerable might until cracks spiraled outward from his touch like bolts of lightning. "Peroth—do something!"
The Sin of Sloth considered me laying upon the dirt behind him. Something black and insidious moved behind his features and peered through the Sin's amber eyes. I looked on with dread as that something became more definite, eating the light of the Sin's soul from within his very body.
Meeting Peroth's gaze was always a harrowing endeavor. The weight of his attention was uncomfortable at the best of times—but when Peroth receded, and that something regarded me with its faded, inhuman eyes, I couldn't control the immutable terror gripping my heart.
What in the hell is that?!
Peroth's lips parted. "Fine."
It burst upward like boiling magma breaking free of the earth's crust. The shadows crawled under Peroth's flesh until they bled from his skin, coalescing into a withered amalgamation of horror. I had seen the monster's form once before, in the room where the Vale's gate lay. It emerged from Sloth's back and rode upon his shoulders, its torso emaciated, its limbs grotesquely elongated, its skin drawn taut as aged leather.
Shadows poured from its jawless mouth as the monster writhed, throwing its head so its black eye sockets looked down upon me. A long, warped hand drove its black talons into Peroth's chest to keep itself anchored and upright.
Sloth did nothing to resist as blood welled and dripped down his front.
"Peroth!"
The monster wheeled, thrusting its other hand into the cracked ward. The moment its withered flesh made contact, the barrier gleamed with unflagging energy. The cracks melded into one another, leaching the violet color until pure, white light flooded the marshland.
I heard Balthier's shout of outrage.
Arms coiled themselves around my middle, jerking me from Peroth and the monstrosity above him. I screamed—and so did the monster. A hellish shriek rattled within its terrifying bones and flew from its savaged throat. Terrified, I clutched the arms around me when I felt the heat of Darius's chest against my back.
His breath came out in harsh, jagged drafts as he yanked me further from Peroth, Balthier, and the frightening thing Sloth had summoned forth.
Its sightless sockets roved. It looked at Darius, and Darius looked at it.
Pride's grip tightened to the point of pain. His breathing stopped.
"Tehgrair?!"