*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
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Starlight is twinkling gently through the shuttered windows, scattering over Lei's loose hands, his night sleeves, and the hard table beneath them. His head is down, pressed against the cold surface, and his eyes rest on the still figure lying, inert, across from him.
He is so tired. He feels half dead, and wants to sleep but can't seem to quite chase it. Instead he watches the figure, watches the near imperceptible rise and fall of her chest.
It is good Fae is here now. Good—yes, that's the right word for it, good, when everything recently has not been. Good, among the varying shades of bad.
He sent the message to Hiran three days ago—on wings, but not through wings, the middling risk between the quickness of communicating through birds and the long wait of a trusted human courier taking it by hand. It should be there soon, if not already, depending on the winds. And in three, four days, he will have an answer.
Lei feels like he is setting up little building blocks—a flimsy little fence, surrounding a large house with a breaking foundation.
"I broke it."
The last words she had uttered flicker again into his kind, as they had often done these past few days. Broke what? Her horse? Her sword? Solveig? Herself? Did he even want to know?
Lei turns into the cold embrace of the table surface, huffing quietly so his warm breath puffs out along the ridges of his face. He never liked puzzles, never liked these kinds of games of deduction, divination—
[They were Isi's games]
It was just better—it is just better—when everything is plain, simple, and straightforward. The Queen of Keesark arrives: prepare food and set up the encampments. Allayria is ill: fetch the doctor. These are things he understands. Allayria won't wake up and Lei isn't sure she would want the Queen of Keesark to know, but who else can Lei turn to?... What path here is correct?
"You will have to deal with people when you lead," Lei remembers Beinsho telling him once, after he had voiced this frustration. The older man's features had been stern, but something like a smile had snuck around their corners. "And people are complicated, Lei."
Lei presses his head harder onto the surface of the table.
[You are so weak.]
He hears the rustle and his limbs freeze. For one, joyful second he wonders, thinks, (hopes) it came from the form lying on the table in front of him, but only a second later its location clicks into place and a chill crawls up his spine, like cold fingers playing on the ridges like keys.
It came from Allayria's things. It came from the sack behind him.
He doesn't look, not at first. He just stares straight ahead, not really seeing, just hearing with every fiber of his being, willing it to be a trick of the night, a trick of exhaustion.
Something slides fabric around, quietly slinking it off.
Lei's hands curl into fists in front of him as he hears it shuffle onto the floor. His first thought is of his sword, lying uselessly two stories up from here, in his room. His second thought is the wooden bracelet on Allayria's wrist.
He fixes on it, reaches out without moving, feeling the form yield in his mind, and breathes one, quick breath, before yanking at it and whirling around.
On the floor behind him sits... a thing. Creature? His brain can't seem to process it, this gray, crouching form, patched green in odd places, like moss. It has long, ropey limbs, almost humanoid in the way they bend, but rough, undefined. It is... indistinct but for those wide, luminous eyes, white and glowing in a way he had never seen before in a living creature.
He watches as a long line suddenly forms beneath those eyes and a gray, gaping mouth drops open, nothing but a black void within. Even so, he hears a voice—not with his ears but in his head—say to him:
Take me to her.
Lei becomes aware he is trembling. The wooden bracelet is a thin dagger in his hand, but it shakes like a branch.
Is this what had been in the bag? The thing that had moved? The thing he had not dared to ask Allayria about? Or is this something new—something from Solveig? Maybe the thing she broke?
His brain starts to whirl about that but he doesn't get very far before it speaks again, low, distorted, more of a symphony than a clear voice:
We cannot help her unless we touch her.
The thing raises its arms to him, like a child, and the hair on Lei's neck spikes up.
It wants me to touch it, is the first, wild thought and then: It wants to help Allayria.
It stands there for a moment, and then almost seems to sigh.
You are a loyal subject, the thing says to him. We have seen that on the journey to this old place. You are the one she trusts. Prove yourself again. The Paragon needs us once more. Bring us to her so that we might bring her back.
He watches those glowing, blank eyes for a moment longer, and then kneels down, and reaches out.
It is not flesh he touches—no living creature feels like this. If he divorces himself from all senses other than physical touch, he might think it is stone, but the screaming roar of his Skill overwhelms that sensation. There is a tidal wave of every impulse, every instinct, when he touches this thing, when it—gods no, please no—clings onto him like a babe. It is an instinct to throw, hurl, launch it somewhere far away, to drop it like an adder, to shriek and shirk away because every fiber of his being tells Lei this thing is DEAD, whatever is inside it is DEAD, whatever it brings will be DEAD, and he shakes worse than ever as he stands up and turns and sets it on the table.
He can't help it; he pulls back, putting space between himself and it, wondering in catastrophic fear if he has made a horrible mistake, if he should not have listened, but it is already touching her, already touching inert, vulnerable Allayria—
The creature's false mouth hangs open again, its eyes glow brighter, and in Lei's head he hears a loud, reverberating gong.
And Allayria's eyes open.
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A/N: I'm sure everything is fine and Lei had absolutely no reason to be concerned.
Chapter Notes: Lei's memory of this mother's words are first uttered in Partisan's "Choice;" the thing in the sack is first mentioned in Progeny's "snoitarebrevereverberations."
