Word Count [4,625]
< - [Previous Chapter]
Eloquii woke with a start, shivering and alone, drenched in sweat. He lay curled on his side.
...Where...was he?
Too often. Too often, lately, he woke up like this: lost, confused. No memory of what he’d been doing before, or if he’d ever gone to sleep. He was cold, he realized. Not just shaking but shivering, extremities numb and chest racked with uncontrollable shudders.
(Panic rose like a tidal wave, building and building.)
El sat up. Beneath his questing fingers, the ground was cold and hard - a frozen layer of topsoil covered in crumbling rocks. He was outside, then. His skin felt unpleasantly tacky - dried sweat? His hair felt matted too, though, and stuck to his skin in places. Distantly, El thought of the sea, of the salt that would crust his skin and tangle his hair after a good swim.
(Building, building.)
He groped at the top of his head, found his hat (his captain’s - Aurius’s - hat) missing, and swallowed. He looked around, eyes squinted. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing except an oppressive darkness. For a panicked moment, he wondered if it wasn’t dark at all - if he’d just gone blind, somehow. As he turned, though, he could make out the faint glow of moonlight, a thin, silvery light at the end of a tunnel.
Where was he?
He opened his mouth to call out, then hesitated. Who would be here to answer him? Did he really wanna know? Another shiver racked his body, and El got to his feet, mind scrambling. What had happened? What did he remember? (Maybe he was just dreaming? He did that a lot, lately.) He reached for his bond with Felo, but their connection seemed strained, weak. Wherever the ottercat was, he was too far away for Eloquii to feel him.
...He remembered being hungry.
El prodded at the memory as he staggered towards the light. Disoriented, his shoulder knocked into something hard and unyielding, and his feet tripped themselves. He fell against a biting, uneven surface - the wall of a cave? Was he in a cave? Why would he be in a cave?
He sucked in a ragged breath. Another. He tried to run a hand through his hair, but his fingers caught almost immediately in a messy tangle. He stopped doing that, and started to make his way towards the moonlight again, one hand guiding him along the edge of the cavern wall.
Hungry. He pushed at the memory, working at it. He’d woken up hungry, and when he’d failed to find any of his so-called guildmates, he’d gone out job-hunting. He remembered that. He’d been impressively unsuccessful. Then, just about when he’d given up, someone had approached him.
(Building, building, a painful pressure on the back of his skull, down the length of his spine.)
El reached the mouth of the cave - it was a cave - and found himself squinting up at a dense white forest canopy, evergreens and pines piled heavy with snow. Snow blanketed the ground as well, pockmarked and dimpled beneath the tree branches. A single set of tracks trailed their way up to the mouth of the cave where El stood. His tracks, most likely. El’s breath fogged in the air before him.
He realized two things at the exact same time.
One, he’d gotten into a fight.
Two, it wasn’t sweat or sea salt he’d felt on his skin.
Eloquii raised one shaking, shivering hand up. It was impossible to make anything out against the black of his feathered forearms, but his shirtsleeves more than told the story. They were stained dark with dried blood. His eyes followed the blood splatter up his arms, to his chest. A distinct arterial spray stained the front of his shirt - a hundred splattering droplets peppering the edges of a single heavy streak. Somehow, he knew it was blood on his skin, on his scales, in his feathers. Clumped in his hair.
Distantly, El felt like he was going to be sick. He pressed a hand to his mouth and took a step back. Then another.
No.
No.
What...
What had he...
The panic submersed him, all at once. Blood pounded hard and heavy in his veins. Irrationally, he felt anger twist in his gut, and that was when he realized a third, final thing.
His lockkey was gone.
You should have known. The words came out of nowhere. They lanced through his skull, a stranger’s voice in his head. Eloquii sank to his knees, clutching at the cave wall. Liquid fire spilled down his spine. Lightning snarled in the marrow of his bones, threatening to snap them from the inside. Agony spread like a poison with every pump of his rapidfire heartbeat. It set his skin on fire, and a delirious, feverish panic infected his thoughts with wordless dread.
His vision went fuzzy and gray at the edges. The world tilted. The voice sighed. You should have known.
It went dark.
___
El is falling.
He thinks.
Or...sinking?
Something is ruffling at his hair, softly buffeting his clothes. He can feel it passing between his fingers. He takes a slow breath, but he can’t tell if it’s air or water he pulls into his lungs. He opens his eyes.
He is lost in an endless void of thick, velvety black and deep indigo, splashed with a radiant nebula of colors and liberally freckled with distant winks of starlight. Like the night sky had opened its maw and swallowed him whole. It’s beautiful...but he doesn’t understand. He’s still drifting - falling, headfirst. A wide, empty expanse of dark and stardust drifts past his wide, dazed stare. He sucks in a gasping breath, fills his lungs to bursting with air, then exhales, and a stream of bubbles escapes his mouth.
Abruptly, and with an overwhelming sense of vertigo, his equilibrium reasserts itself. He twists in the air (water), flips over and gets his feet under him just in time to come to a feather-light landing on...nothing. The void of space stretches on beneath his boots. A branching stream of stellar-pinks and purples spills out across the darkness below. Yet, when he shifts his weight as if to take a step, the nothingness beneath him ripples lightly, like water.
El inhales - air.
Exhales - water. He looks up, watching the bubbles rise until he loses them in the canopy of what, had he not been entirely surrounded by it, he would have assumed was just a particularly beautiful night sky.
“Right,” he says. “So... Dreaming.”
Something more than dreaming, a voice whispers. It’s a soft yet powerful voice. Deep. Rumbling. The sort that resounds in El’s chest. There’s something calming about it - something sated, lethargic. El whips about, but, of course there’s nothing there. There’s nothing anywhere. He’s not anywhere.
“Then...what?” He looks down at his hands. There’s...something. Something he needs to remember. Something had happened. “...Wait.” He looks up, around. “Are you the reason I can’t get to sleep lately?”
Too loud, the voice replies instead. Your voice, parvulus, is so loud.
“What?” El frowns. “But...”
I am right here with you. Beside you. Inside you. Speak as though to yourself. I will hear it.
You’re the thing that I keep dreaming about, El says, an accusation this time. He’s trying not to think about how crazy this is.
...Yes, the voice agrees.
When nothing else seems forthcoming, El huffs a loud sigh. He spins in a circle in place, watching the space beneath his feet shiver and ripple in response, and spreads his arms wide. ...Well? he tries. And?
There’s a twinge - a sense of disappointment. You don’t really want to know, parvulus. If you did, you would, already.
El winces. ...I don’t think not knowing is really an option anymore, he admits nervously. There’s...there’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?
The voice says nothing.
Is it you? El guesses. Are YOU what’s wrong with me?
A matter of perspective, the voice says, lazily. ...Mm. But. Ask what you are really wanting to ask.
El crosses his arms. Fine. Fine! I...I’ve been... I can’t sleep well, anymore. And I’ve been...angry. I’ve been getting so angry lately. Randomly, suddenly, and... And I can’t control it. I’ve hurt people. El’s arms fall to his sides again, limp, as a memory threatens at the edges of his thoughts. I think I hurt somebody again, actually. I think that’s why I’m here.
No reply. El presses a hand to his forehead. It feels like a headache is threatening, just behind his eyes. But that’s...it’s all you, right? he says.
A deep, rolling laugh washes over his mind, and apprehension curdles in El’s gut. No, whispers the voice. No, that is you.
“Liar!” El blurts. He can’t stop himself. His hands curl into fists, his jaw clenches. I - I’m not...That feeling - that isn’t me!
You would call me a liar? the voice drawls. You, who don’t even know who you are? What you are? Where you are from? Those who were sacrificed so that you may live? ...Or even the name your parents gave you?
El’s breath catches. “...What...?”
You think you want answers, the voice sighs. The star-strewn sky around Eloquii shimmers and begins to change. Sometimes, the voice says, ignorance is better. Let me demonstrate.
___
The stars blur and twist. The greater moon shifts through its phases until it is little more than a sliver of silver in the sky. Heavy breathing, hoarse. It’s not his own, but he can feel it as his chest shudders, and he can nearly taste the thick, humid air. He sits up, movements sharp and jerky, head darting left and right as he catches voices shouting nearby. A deep dark swamp surrounds him; he's at the bottom of a vine-strewn gulch.
The scent of blood is strong, fresh.
[SUB]"There!" [/SUB] A woman’s voice, shouting, startles him upright. He turns, spots a dark form skidding down a steep incline towards him. Silver flashes at her hip and he reacts on instinct, snarling and lashing out. His arm is heavily-muscled and covered in deep black fur, clutching the haft of a broken mace. The woman twists just in time, letting the blade of her slender sword lead his impromptu club away. She's lithe, fit, with deft talons and feathery hair.
She follows the parry with a lunge, but he catches her blade on a jagged dagger, growling out in a voice that's not his, "You should have left well enough alone!"
(He can't make out her face. Why can't he make it out?)
___
El reels back, blinking.
“I - I don’t... What was that?” he asks. He feels dazed, disoriented, still half-submerged in a memory that clearly isn’t his own. He flexes his fingers, somehow expecting to feel the weight of a weapon in his hand. "A memory? Your memory?”
Too loud, hisses the voice.
"Oh fer fuck's sake- " El’s fingers curl into fists, claws biting into the flesh beneath his feathery down. He takes a deep, steadying breath. Was that you? he repeats.
That was us, the voice agrees.
Us...? El echoes. Shakes his head. Er...No, no, that’s not what I said. Whoever that was, it's definitely not me, he insists.
It may not be your memory, but it is ours, the voice says, chiding, a teacher scolding their student for being deliberately obtuse.
El combs a nervous hand through his hair, staring hard at the void of space that stretches out before him. You’re doing this on purpose, he accuses. You’re just, what, trying to confuse me? I mean, it’s working, but...
Do you want your answers? the voice asks. If you do, this is how you will get them.
El isn’t as sure, anymore. He feels anxious, apprehensive. His head hurts, and his hands are shaking. Still...Of course I want answers! I just don’t see how--
You will, the voice assures him. Again, the world shifts. El teeters, then falls.
___
Thunk! A bolt sinks into his shoulder and then the woman’s thick leather boot slams into his chest. Pain punches through him, and he staggers back; the woman’s own momentum puts some distance between them again. He hurls the broken mace at her, reaches up to snap the bolt shaft - and lets out a sharp snarl of pain as the whole thing tears free instead, barbed tip and all. Fresh blood pours from his shoulder, the metallic tang thick and heady. He rushes after the woman, thrusting forward with the bolt and his own dagger.
At the last moment, both smash impotently against a steel shield. Its wielder carves his way between the two.
"Don't get sloppy!" yet another person calls, hidden somewhere on the ridge above, and another bolt whistles by over his shoulder.
[SUB]"I won't!"[/SUB] the shield-holding man calls back. There's something achingly familiar about his voice. He wears a set of sturdy armor, with light, tousled hair, fin-like ears. His face, like the woman's, is distorted, impossible to make out. The man and the woman share a look before setting their sights on him.
For a moment, though, all he can focus on is their matching pendants, glowing, sending a wave of nausea through his core. Pendants that, for some reason, he feels a deep hatred for - a dark familiarity. A prisoner’s familiarity with their cell, or a hostage’s familiarity with their bonds.
"On your right!" yet another new voice calls out, and as the duo in front of him throw themselves to their left, a fourth assailant appears out of the darkness, swinging a huge, two-handed hammer. His strike hits home. Bone crunches under the force of the swing. He can feel something (several somethings) break.
In the shadows of his hood, the man bares his teeth, laughs. This one has another pendant.
(Why is this one’s face so clear?)
___
Why- El gasps out. He’s on his hands and knees, arm curled tight around an injury that isn’t really there. Phantom pain thuds high on his shoulder, curls tight around his ribcage. Why can’t I see...? He shakes his head, thoughts scattered, unable to finish the question.
I wonder, the voice murmurs. Perhaps you’re protecting yourself, it suggests. I told you. If you’d wanted to know, you would already.
El blinks back tears, shakes his head again, raggedly. Why is this happening to him? What did he ever do? He hadn’t asked for this! He just wanted --
He just wanted --
Vis, what did he even want?
Show me! he snaps. And don’t -- don’t bring me back until it’s over!
He hears the voice snort, and then the unpleasant twist of time, space, and memory.
___
The enlil spurii woman is on him again, ducking around her partner's shield to sink her blade in just above his hips. The man slices overhead with his sword. Just barely, he manages to catch the blade on his dagger. It still cuts in deeply, but at least he hasn't lost an arm. There's no question, though, as a third bolt hisses by and takes a chunk of his ear with it, that this is a losing battle.
But he can't go anywhere. (I can't escape) He’s heavily injured. (I can't escape) Growing sluggish. (They won't escape)
His heart pounds.
And then he ignites; a fiery aura blazes to life around him, painting the surrounding foliage in shades of vibrant blues and throwing deep shadows across the rainforest. He bares fangs in a ferocious snarl. The hooded man rears back, squinting, momentarily blinded.
He drops his dagger and lunges forward, and he sinks his fangs deep into the soft flesh of the hooded man’s throat. The man heaves a gargled, disbelieving shout. The heavy hammer slips from his grip and hits the ground. The other three all yell out as hot blood gushes around his teeth, pours down his chest. He bites down, ripping out the hooded man's jugular with a deep, animalistic snarl.
[SUB]"You monster!"[/SUB] The armored man slams his shield into him, crunching his nose in. He staggers back to the taste of someone else’s blood in his mouth and his own pouring down the back of his throat.
The woman darts around behind him, whispering, some kind of prayer on her lips, but he spins. His hand comes up, covered in fur and slick with blood. His claws catch under the leather plates on her front and tear into the flesh beneath. Shallow, too shallow, but still deep. As he follows through, his fingers tangle in her pendant’s cord, ripping it away and whipping it into the dark underbrush. The half-avian sinks to her knees, groaning and clutching her stomach.
A bolt slams into his back, but he's ready - barely feels it through the surging wildfire illuminating his body. The velen’s sword slices in, misses, then the shield follows. He grabs it with both hands, wrenches it from the man’s arm; he hears the ugly snap of bone as he does so. Another bolt hits the mud at his feet, but he ignores it in favor of seizing hold of the velen’s sword, lunging ahead, teeth snapping. He and the half-velen hit the mud. He wrestles against the man's surprising strength, feels the heat of fury burning against the creeping cold from his wounds.
Then, a rapier blade punches through him and juts out the front of his ribcage. All at once, the fury is gone.
His aura flickers, fades. The rainforest goes dark again, but before it does, he turns his head and catches the enlil woman’s eye. Bright. Warm. Gold. Exactly the same as-
In that moment, he sees her.
And in that moment, he can tell that she knows what is going to happen next.
___
El sits there, shaking. “That...that was...” There are tears in his eyes, running down his cheeks. He stares at his dark claws, curled loosely in his lap. He still half-remembers the feeling of them tearing at the flesh beneath leather plates; the rush of ugly, violent pleasure. “That was my...?” He can’t bring himself to think the word, much less say it. He swallows. “Then the other one, the one with the shield? The one I couldn’t see? He’s...?”
He feels lost. Finally, he gathers himself enough to ask, Why did you stop? Didn’t I tell you-
There’s a gap, the voice says, in my consciousness. I was momentarily...resisted.Overpowered. I can’t show you, it explains, what I did not see.
Realization comes to El slowly. ...You possessed her. El can’t...can’t quite believe it, for a moment. This thing in him. It had...
“You-!” Anger swells up without warning, thrumming in his veins. “You possessed her?!”
You’re too lou-
“You possessed my - my mother!” El snaps. He staggers to his feet, fingers flexing. He makes a fist, releases it. Again. Again. He is itching for something - for a fight, for something to hit, for someone to grab at, scream at. “You...you...! But I don’t - I don’t get it. What happened?” he pants. “What did you do? What--”
There’s a sensation, like he’s been seized by the back of his neck. Then he’s shoved downward - face first into another memory
___
“Max?”
The voice comes as though from a great distance. It’s a man’s voice; worried. Afraid. She licks her lips, takes a deep breath. Don’t! cries another voice, buried just below the surface of her mind. Stop-! Stop, damnit, stop! Don’t you - don’t you fucking dare-!
“Maxine?”
She blinks. The half-velen from before swims into view; pale blue hair and scales, light grey skin. He...he looks like-
They’re knelt together on a cobblestone path, a cozy cottage off in the distance. There’s a hint of dawn threading the horizon with a soft purple and orange haze. Her injuries from earlier are mostly-healed, mended with Castus magic.
“...No. You're...” Whatever the spurii sees in her eyes is enough to give her away. “Vis, Maxine, fight back! You can do this! I know you can!” His voice breaks. He is gripping her shoulders, and his own pendant still glows bright at his neck. “I know you can fight it. You’ve been-”
The voice struggles, suddenly, and seizes control. “Livy,” she gasps.
The velen startles, then grasps her on either side of her face instead. Presses their foreheads together. “Max!” His eyes are fever-bright. Desperate. “Max, just hold on, just--”
“No. It’s...” she pants. “Too late.” She reaches out, digs deep into the corners of the voice’s mind; floods them both with rich warm fire. She jerks in the velen’s hands - one talon reaches up to dig into the pulse point at his wrist. “Too late,” she growls, this time. “I thought I could... But I can’t. It sucks. I know. But you need to do it. Now.” Her eyes dart up and over the man’s shoulder; the cottage sits, waiting. Light spills from its windows. “We brought it here, damnit. If there’s a fight...”
There’s something unspoken in that sentence. She pries into it immediately, digs, hunting for weakness. She finds it. The voice snarls in response. “It knows,” she hisses out before she can stop her. “It knows he’s in there. Livy.”
“I - Let me give you mine." There's raw fear in the man's voice now. He reaches down, grips his pendant in one hand. "Then you can...you can-"
The enlil jerks her head. "Don't you dare." Her fingers curl over his, and the proximity to the pendant’s glow makes her growl. "We swore. Don't...don’t make me go through this, Livy."
The velen spurii’s throat works in a swallow. "...Okay.” He sounds resigned. Like he’s already mourning. His pale blue eyes are bright with unshed tears, but something in them hardens as he releases her and straightens.
Sensing danger, she wrestles control back, forcing the voice under again. She tears herself free of the velen’s grip and stumbles back a few steps, her sharp enlil teeth bared.
The velen’s sword is in his hand. “I love you, Max,” he says. “Wherever you’re going - wait for me there, okay?”
Something painful, agonizing, twists in her chest.
Snarling, blinking back tears, she draws her rapier and lunges forward.
___
El pulls back from the memory so hard, so fast, that he physically rears back. He stumbles and lands on his ass, heart pounding, head swimming.
Instead of returning to the empty nowhere-place, however, El remains stranded in the memory as it continues to play out. His father fights the vistra his mother is becoming. The sound of their swords clashing is dull, muted. Muffled, like El is submerged. Even the memory’s colors are slightly off.
Helpless, El watches the scene unfold.
His father is fighting. He knocks his mother’s rapier aside with his shield and steps in with a follow-up sword strike. His mother steps neatly back out of range with an enlil’s trademark nimbleness. Her eyes are no longer golden but a fiery, blazing blue - the pupils slit like a cat’s.
His father is struggling. He ducks and dodges and blocks just enough to prevent any fatal blows, but again and again the vistra’s blade finds blood - on the inside of a forearm, the curve of his hip, just below his breastplate. Again and again his mother dances out of the way of his attacks. It’s not that his father is a worse fighter - but he’s tired. Hesitant. And she burns blue, glowing with energy like the vistra had back in the thick of the jungle.
His father is losing. El sees it. The vistra sees it, in the desperate heave of his shoulders, the sweat slicking his hair. A sharp, humorless grin spreads across her face, and her fiery aura spills down her arm, curls around the length of her blade. She moves in to strike, to kill - then snarls and throws herself backwards. A bolt cuts the air where her jet-black hair-feathers had been, not a moment before.
A demvir has appeared from the distant treeline, crossbow in-hand, several reinforcements at his back. He calls out, says something to Livy. Livy shakes his head, lips pressed together in a grim frown. The two exchange words - El can’t make them out, but it’s not like it matters, he realizes.
“...Stop,” he says.
He knows how this has to end. Can picture the lifeless bodies, the bloodstained dirt and grass, as clear as day; in fact, he’s not sure if he’s imagining it or if it’s the pravum’s own memories surfacing in his mind.
“Stop! I’ve seen enough!”
One thing is painfully clear.
This thing killed his parents.
And it’s been in him ever since.
___
As the memory fades away, crumbling into the air, scattering like ash - leaving him back in the middle of an endless expanse of empty void - El remembers.
El remembers every time anyone had ever accused him of being a vistra. How he’d smiled. Laughed. Ridiculous, he’d said. Impossible, he’d thought. I’d know if I were a monster.
...He’d know if he were a monster, huh?
Gods, it seems so obvious now. He feels ashamed. Had everyone known but him? Had Keydis known? Annora? Had the captain known?
El’s stomach turns.
Do you really want to remember? it asks. You don’t need to.
I can keep these memories for you, it promises. Lock them away, somewhere deep down.
This doesn’t have to be a burden for you to bear. It can be like it was before, it whispers. We can be like we were before. Content.
Content? El whispers. Then, more focused, I was never content! You just - you just made me--
Yes, it says. I made you content. I kept these things from you, and you were content. You could be, again. The way people look at you, it doesn’t have to bother you-
It ALWAYS bothered me! El objects.
You think so? it asks.
Abruptly, El is shaking. His pulse is pounding, his head swimming. He is furious. It’s a wild, thoughtless, wordless anger, and he can barely breathe through it. He can’t stop it, can’t control it. He wants to hit something, break something, shout, cry, scream.
It brings with it an undercurrent of dread. Every time he’s felt this, in the past, bad things have followed.
...so don’t feel it, it murmurs in his ear. Let me have it instead. We can both have what we want. There’s nothing wrong, it says, with returning to how we were. I am alive. You are content.
No one gets hurt.
It’s that last one that El latches on to. Because El, El remembers the taste of blood in his mouth.
“No one gets hurt...?”
He remembers the broken look in his father’s eyes.
“No one gets hurt!?”
And now, now, he remembers the look of shock on Canor’s face, right before El’s sword cleaved through his arm and halfway into his chest.
Fine, the voice sighs. Then we do it this way.
.