Testament to Time - darklina fanfic

Chapter 4 - Ashes

content warning - This chapter features children's remains. No carnage just bones. Their deaths are not featured graphically but it's heavily implied and explained they were burned alive.

Seated on the hard surface of the hay wagon, Alina watched the landscape change from hills to forest to fields. The man driving the carriage had been nice enough to take pity on a young girl walking alone on the road. He said she reminded him of his daughter and Alina tried to forget that she was likely older than his father.

She continued on her pointless pilgrimage across Ravka, she had no destination, merely floating from place to place tired and aloof. Her stays never lasted longer than a week or two, exceptions only made when she needed to hold some menial job long enough to secure the next few months of travel.

Ensuring she remained far from the border did little to keep her away from conflict, it seemed the war always managed to find her one way or another. Luckily, she hadn't run into any more of Aleksander's nichevo'ya, her shoulder still ached bitterly in the cold and at the end of a long day.

She hadn't spoken nor sought him out since that time in the inn, but she would see him when her heart ached the most. He would appear across a room or on the other side of the street, he would never interact past staring, and after a few short minutes of ignoring him, she would turn to find him gone.

Alina still hadn't found the courage to return to the estate even years after Mal's death, she wondered if she ever would. She still felt his loss, an inescapable lonely feeling set deep in her chest. Perhaps that was why she found herself on the way to Keramzin, where she hadn't set foot since she was just a child. Part of her wondered if even with the boy gone and the girl grown, the meadow would have remained.

The man stopped just a town before Keramzin, she hopped off the wagon and thanked him for his kindness. He attempted to convince her to settle somewhere safe and keep away from the war, she smiled and bid him a good day, and after he wished her the best of luck, Alina continued to Keramzin on foot.

She knew it would be silly to expect the village to stay a mirror to her outdated memories, but she did not expect to find it gone.

Where once stood shops now only their burned skeletons remained, the husks and half walls were burnt and still steaming, close to collapsing on each other. The bakery she and Mal had liked to visit late at night when Ana Kuya was fast asleep, had been flattened to the ground. She could only hope the baker who had always given them the bread leftover from the day had not been home when his property had been torched. The streets themselves were empty, the battered earth littered with holes and debris from the surrounding shops.

Alina walked every street and alley looking for anyone who might have survived, trying to keep a healthy dose of hope in order to push back the awful feeling of desolation. She found not a single person, not a horse nor a cat, not even a mouse.

When she reached the end of the town, she looked to where once had been a meadow, where she had hidden and played and ran with Mal, and instead found nothing but scorched earth. She was so used to seeing horror she was completely unprepared for the sick sensation of searching for something and slowly coming to the realization it simply did not exist anymore, where before she could see the shadow of the orphanage over the horizon she now saw nothing wherever she looked.

It was an effort not to fall to her knees, not to weep and thrash, but at the same time, she couldn't bring herself to find the will to do so. Instead, she felt it build within her, the steady movement of something coming undone, like a spool of thread being dropped on the ground and rolling away just before she could clutch it.

She screamed loud and frayed, feeling her power build into a crescendo so loud it matched the roaring in her ears, thus, she hardly noticed the first knock. The third soft thud snagged her attention, diverging her thoughts away from waste and letting her power sink away untouched.