*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...
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The pain is almost like a noise.
High-pitched, ceaselessly ringing, it shimmers down locked limbs and over frozen fingers.
And then he lets her go.
When she lifts herself from her rubble she stands, sweat slick across her face, arms shaking in the pale candlelight.
"Again," she orders.
It's her turn to take the advantage, her turn to seize the edge and chase it, burrowing in quickly, savagely. There is no violence on the surface, just outstretched fingertips, but beneath it all is ruin.
It's like punching steel, like launching into rock, and she presses harder, hits harder, Skilling at this invisible wall, narrowing down in a pin-point of command, a needle thread of dominion:
Kneel.
On the outside his knees are quaking—this is the shimmer before the fall. On her end, she can feel the clamming shivering over her, the slow locking of her limbs. She hits harder.
Kneel.
He's trying to yank the hand away, trying to tell her blood and bones and muscle and skin to disobey her mind, to falter, fall aside, but she's burrowing harder and, even as her hand starts falling, her fingers are still pointed at his face.
KNEEL.
It's a pop, a crack in the wall, and he doesn't yield so much as crumple, thrown back as if the blow hit his forehead.
And then Allayria's knees hit the floor.
It's gasping that toes the line of sobs, soft and hitching to the beat of the trembling, flinching fingers on the floor. He's always a bundle of nerves when he loses, a shuddering mess of messages.
She is always quiet.
It takes a while for her to truly come back; him, longer.
When he does, when he sits up, he is wan and peaked, like someone has pressed thumbs underneath his eyes and left a bruise.
It didn't start out like this. They were much more hesitant at first, the fear of harming, the fear of damaging at the forefront. But the time to fear damage has long past, the time to spare feelings is gone, now that they stand in the shadow of Vatra.
"You need to be faster," Allayria tells him. "You will be faster next time."
Finn nods, all thin limbs and wide eyes.
The time for innocence has long gone.
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