*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.
Dust
to dust
to dust
to dust
to dust.
It seeps into his eyelids, threatening to push in further if he cracks them open; dust cakes itself between his eyelashes, his lips, his teeth.
All the screaming, all the shouting and the shrieking seems so far from here, this plot he's buried under. This strange resting place.
And rest he wants to, to lay his head back, give in, let go. Enough is enough.
We'll be there soon, an old voice promises, and when you get there, you wish you had more time left.
Hiran opens his eyes.
Ruben.
His world is rubble, brown, muddled rubble, and he sifts through it, unearthing slowly, painfully. He's expelling his limbs from the dirt and the dirt from his lungs, clawing out like a thing out of quicksand, like one of Finn's moles from a mucky hole.
Kneeling doesn't seem to be in the cards right now; standing is right out. So he crawls, Hiran Baulieu, esteemed son of Regalius, lord of this and that and everything else. He crawls, like a baby who doesn't quite know how to use his legs, up a newly formed mountain, or maybe out of a newly formed hole.
There's tingling in his toes—a good sign—as he reaches the crest, rolls over it, sliding down the other side. Its rock, not dirt here, and he topples over.
Boulders litter this side of things, big, ugly, red asteroids not from the sky, but the deep earth. Hiran is looking around them for a different color, a different shape, lying down like he is, strewn out over top of a wobbling few—
But Ruben isn't on top; he's underneath.
"Shit," Hiran whispers, whimpers, twisting onto his belly, clutching dirt and pulling himself forward toward the prone body. "Shit, shit, shit—"
The rock is big. It's fucking big, and shit—
When he pulls himself close, the old Skillmaster's eyes open.
"Hiran," he croaks.
"Just don't move," he says. "J-just don't move and don't look—"
"Hiran," Ruben repeats. "It's okay."
Hiran looks down at him, at the lined face and the calm, blue eyes.
"None of this is okay," he throws back, his voice cracking. "You're— you're—"
But his throat can't work the words out. He changes tracks.
"And Dost," he says, "Dost is gone, Tara's— Tara's— shit, and Lei is missing. It's not okay."
