*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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Sometimes there has to be violence for there to be peace.
A turtle told him that right before she ate Gug, the beetle. That upset Finn tremendously; Gug had been his friend.
There have not been many friends in Finn's life. There have been friendlies—creatures nice enough, the straying tadpole, the cross mole. They lingered for a while, told Finn things he needed to know, but their paths led them somewhere else, somewhere Finn could not follow.
He understands how that is now.
It's a tomb of rocks and roots and stones that lie behind them, burying Finn's friends. Or maybe he is only a friendly of theirs, his path leading him somewhere else.
It's just us; no one else can know.
Maybe Finn has only ever had one friend.
They walk in this tunnel like moles in the dark, following intuitively, knowingly. Inside here, inside his mind, Finn is a firefly, flickering in the darkness, abdomen blinking a weak green-glow, and every time he goes out faces flash in the gloom, white with frozen grins. Melting, screaming.
Bad memories, Hiran might say, might tell him because he is clever about these things, clever in ways Finn is not. Bad moments in the past, Finn. Just the past.
But they aren't.
He could feel it, how the clowns had struggled underneath his grip as they burned, as they melted, how their wills had fluttered and scrabbled against his own.
It was awful. Worse than watching a wolf take down a fawn, worse than a snake in a rabbit hole, worse than one of things chasing after him, leering, holding a glint of metal in its hand. Because it was his fault. He did it.
It's not really their waxy faces that haunt Finn in the dark; not the brittle hollowness inside their wills, like something powerful and ugly had carved them out. It's him holding on, him holding them down, letting them burn alone in the black, until they're nothing but cinder.
Sometimes, the turtle says to him, breaking Gug between her beak, there has to be violence for there to be peace.
Finn doesn't know about all that anymore; but if it's true, he thinks he might not be cut out for it.
It's up to us. Up to you. Are you listening, Finn? You need to—
"—concentrate."
He blinks wide in the darkness.
"Do you feel anyone? Anything?"
It's a game of hide and seek, where he reaches out without a hand, grasping for a thread, a flutter of breathing, and they hide, wills and minds that don't want to be found, don't want to be caught. The cleverer they are, the harder to find.
