4. Ashes

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Tw: death, blood

*Moiraine's POV*

The burned ground underneath my shoes sunk in ever so lightly. Foreboding, I noted. Feathery light our bodies strutted past the remnants of tents. The smell of ashes still so very prominent in the air. The Whitecloaks camp was burned down to its very existence. The bodies were now the grey dust I walked above. Immutable? I hoped not.

Lan's eyes traveled the place as did mine. Disgust pooled faintly in the depths of his core and I sensed it no matter how hard he attempted to cover up. His sword was clean as the sky above us would have been if the thick cloud of smoke were nonexistent.

"Oh, she is still mad," my Warder spoke and I scoffed. His attempt to loosen the mood was rather useless, nevertheless quite appreciated.

That was an underestimation. He made it appear as though she had not been the cause of... a few earlier ended lives. Raena was full of rage and although I believed four years after her leaving she might have calmed down her actions showed the opposite was the case. Thirty four eliminated Whitecloaks camps littered her way. It seemed she was on the run, but looking deeper into it I sensed a mission she was after. Was she wanting to kill these people? Would she stop before all were gone? It was a surprise to say the least, that a representative for the Whitecloaks found himself at the White Tower seeking help after the ninth burned down camp. The kind hating ours was seeing now what they wanted to see all along, yet they reached out. The wildest accusations were thrown at the Amyrlin Seat. Although... some of them were not so far off from the truth. Dead bodies... burned to ashes.

The lump in my throat was swallowed as I eyed my sight ahead. A wooden stake, not burned yet, was stuck in the middle of the circle of ashes. With a steady foot I reached the stake and noticed at my touch the colder chain on top. More golden rings with embedded stones of various colors hung on it. Red, yellow, green... blue. I did not support Raena's wrongs, these people hated our kind and still we had no right to slaughter a single one of them, but that sense of... Oaths were binding and so our hands were tied. However, looking at how many rings were on the chain, my stomach sunk at the knowledge of not being able to prevent the death of my sisters.

"How many?" Lan asked from behind me.

The warmed up metal laid in my hands as I eyed the jewelry. "Twelve at least."

Twelve of my sisters had not made it home. One of the reasons I had stayed far away from the tower over the years. Aes Sedai were coming and going, but almost half of the novices die and are never found. How many had ended up in the hands of our fiends?

I handed the chain to him, and sensed the deep empathy he felt. He set to speak, when a pained whisper met the shells of my ears. It was so soft I almost did not make note of it.

With the eyes of an eagle I observed the place and almost turned to leave when even minutes later I heard no response. Imagination? Madness? But under a pile of ashes movements took place. I feared to find the image of her underneath, but something told me she was too clever to go down in-between her own doing. But the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. Always and if she did not decide to change her mindset there might be a chance I'd find her in a pile of her own blood, beyond my help. And instead of my redhead's face I saw a bloody and dusty one in the grey. Burned flesh, I smelled.

"Lan," I said and he was immediately helping me to free the man from the ashes. Once freed, the wounds were too fatal. My hand stroke along his chest and revealed the cloak of him. White, no embroidery. He was a no one. Why would she let him live? Yet, once he set to part his lips and speak he instead drew his last breath before I had a chance to heal him. Smoke erupted from his lips. Was she burning the, from the inside out? Teeth clenching I stepped away from the dead body. "She is going too far."

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