*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A marvel of metal lays smoldering in ashes on the scorched side of a sloping hill, brilliant even in its smoking ruin. His people in red surround it, moving around, collecting what they can, setting about to gain what they need.
He stomps through it, unseeing, the chaos nothing but blurs of meaninglessness to the blood pumping through his brain, the white noise buzzing in his ears. It's in his mind and it won't leave, that image: her, so beautiful and bright in the sunlight; her, with her arms out, shielding him, shielding that yielding, weak dog, that knave, that—
"Bind him," he barks at one of the recruits who has their prize in hand, that old, wiry man with wide eyes and blood-stained cheeks. "Set a guard."
It is hidden at the ruin of ambition, the other one with blackened fingers had whispered in fevered dreams as he lay dying. Abe, Abe...
Ben won. He got what he needed, what he wanted, all he set out to accomplish. This was a victory and a vicious defeat for her—more vicious than she can anticipate, than she will know until it is too late. He kicks a fuming helmet out of his path.
She looked at him like he mattered. Like she would give herself up for him.
This should be useful, a cold, useful fact to file away, to keep inside a bag of ploys, but it drives him to distraction, it needles in ways it shouldn't—ways he no longer deserves. He knows that. He understands that.
She's letting him touch her.
He doesn't hear the pound of feet until it's too late for escape.
"What the fuck was that back there?" Meg hisses, her hand shoving his arm, her eyes flashing.
"I don't—"
"You know exactly what I am talking about," she spits back. "The plan was to get the old man. The plan was to do things quietly. The plan was to avoid her—"
"It was unavoidable," he replies, finally halting but not quite managing to look her in the eye. "She pursued—"
"You lured her out there," Meg accuses. "You lured her out there and then you touched her face like some lovesick—"
But she bites her words off at the look he shoots at her, her face an ugly grimace even as she spares him the rest.
They stand there for a moment, silent, teeth clenched against the ugliness between them. But her words and their pointedness have fractured the strange haze inside him, have punctured it with the memory of his purpose.
"Go back to Solveigard," he orders, casting a glance at their troops. "I will take the man and a small team. Take down the Urilong bitch and I will come back with something to take on the Paragon when she returns."
"Go back?" Meg repeats. "Without you? Ben, are you mad? The people there, they need you. They need you to lead them—"
"Lead them?" he retorts, his head snapping back toward her, his tone ice in the buffeting wind. "We're not doing this for me to lead them, Meg. I am not their next king, their next god. I am just another face in this sea of people trying to be free. If they can't go on without me, then none of this means anything."
He throws his arm out at all of it, the wreckage around them, the muscles in his arm straining against the hard clench of his fist.
"I will not become everything I am fighting against. If they need me so much then they deserve to be enslaved."
Meg's face is a hard mask but she doesn't contradict him, doesn't defy the truth in his words, and he takes his bag of powder and dynamite and throws it to her.
"Set it all alight," he tells her, "And give the Paragon a city of ashes to return to."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A/N: Ah, Benny boy, we aren't looking so good...
Some housekeeping notes: just want to give everyone a heads-up that this month is nuts for me. I'm just buried under a lot of work and intense stress (and occasionally some not-so-bad other stuff, like graduating) at the moment. Going to do my best with chapter updates, but it might be pretty hairy/sporadic until after Memorial Day. I will keep track of all I owe (1 already) and will try to get us back on track by at least June. Bear with me here.
