3rd Yearsend, 998 NE
He cried out for her, and the sound of his voice still had the power to move her. It was pathetic, and she was pathetic for caring. She knew she no longer felt anything for him – in fact, the thought of him, being close to him, repulsed her – but he was still human. He’d been mistreated in the same way by the dragon.
The second time he called for her, projecting his voice into her room this time, she just crossed to her waste-bin and retrieved the little chalk-covered square of tile Xastur had given her, that first day, when she’d fallen for Kastyr. She sat on the bed, looking at it again. An ogre, a fanged orange blob, chomping down on a unicorn, a yellow blob with a sharp stick on top.
Why am I still crying? she thought. She knew it had all been one huge deception on Tyr Kayn’s part – she knew it was all over now.
So why do I still feel this way?
She moaned, the air pulled from her lungs in a long, voiceless sob – she fought against it, straining to hear the words coming now from the front doorway –
“I’ve changed? It’s your daughter who changed. You know she’s a killer, don’t you?”
She clenched her fist, and Xastur’s tile shattered into fifty pieces.
“Whose fault is zat? You made her zis – zis champion!”
Oh gods… oh gods…
She went to her bedroom door, intent on throwing it open, barrelling down the stairs at him – but she was paralysed at what she heard next:
“It was before that! Maybe if she let me tell you when she died –”
“Vot?”
Oh, Mama…
Papa’s initial disbelief, his sheer astonishment; that was the worst thing.
“You let her die? You – let – her – die!”
Thwack.
Panic gripped her at the sound of a fist smacking into flesh; she tore open the door.
Crack!
She was at the top of the stairs when Kastyr Mortenn struck down her father. When her mother screamed, terrified.
When she made up her mind to strike back, with everything she had.
She flicked a trail of electricity at him from her hand as a distraction, simultaneously pulling down half a thundercloud from the sky to fry him where he stood.
He evaded both attacks and took the fight into the air. She hurled a healing potion to Mama and followed, not meeting her mother’s eyes, knowing what she would find there. Accusation. Bewilderment.
The look of someone staring upon a stranger, a stranger they thought they once knew but never in fact did.
She burned into the night air, and she was in her element. Literally.
Now he will die.
She sent more weak rays crackling towards him, enough to distract him from the great spell she was performing on the air, the slowly-building vacuum in which he was soaring.
“You, Feychilde, leave me vith no choice!”
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“Come on, tell me you’re not enjoying this,” he shouted back. “We’ve always been waiting for this, you and I!”
She wanted to laugh. “I don’t even know you, sorcerer! And you do not know me! Henthae explained everything! Ze lie, it is over!”
His immature smile finally started to fade. “Say again?”
He stopped running, so she slowed down and finally halted. They were high-up now. His wraith would be working double-duty to keep him from the nausea.
Perhaps he just won’t notice until it is too late.
“It voz Lovebright! It voz always her! She had plans for you, plans zat never saw ze light of day… I voz to be instrumental in vot you became… and so I have been, to my regret.”
She loosed a curtain of lightning that pulled away his defences, the wind fizzing and popping where her power rippled through it, spreading through the empty space he’d been warding.
Reducing the amount of effort required to suffocate him by magnitudes.
He looked confused now, wiggling his fingers more furiously than ever. “What was Lovebright?” He gave a fake little laugh. “You’re not making any sense now!”
She swallowed, and fixed her own grimace on her face. “Lovebright, who made me love you! She – she made Henthae do it to me… Eizzer vay, I do not love you, Kastyr Mortenn. It is undone, now. I do not, and I never did!”
She was almost ready. Almost ready to kill him, circumvent all his clever little protections.
“You’re serious,” he said at last.
“I am serious,” she replied, trying to restrain the shuddering threatening to grip her. “You… you need to understand, before zis happens. Thinking of you – it is repulsive to me now. I voz never… never vith you to begin viz…”
She gazed over at him, waiting for him to accept it. She couldn’t kill him until he understood. She wouldn’t want his soul to go to the next world burdened with lies.
“Em, you must be –“
“You cannot call me zat.”
“No, listen, Em, I don’t –“
She looked back to him. “I vill be happy to meet with you at noon tomorrow at ze bank in Blackbranch Square… And yes, you may call me Em.” She said the last part rather timidly, looking down at the drop at his feet. It was the most forward thing she’d said to someone in… ever, really. If he’d been waiting for a sign she liked him, there it was.
“Do not speak to me!” she cried, screwing her eyes shut.
The storm – the Storm – it heeded her unconscious call, drowning him out.
Orovon Ovrobo, Birdlord, praised be your winds!
It was like the god’s blessing was upon her. She could feel Feychilde moving towards her, of course, but now, right now, she could sense even his expression, the aeromancy granting her near-perfect blind-sight.
She could sense his fury, his confusion.
She could answer it with her own.
“And now you are mine, heretic,” she whispered grimly to herself.
It might've been that Kastyr heard her, because he veered aside, but it was too late for him. His shields left her no choice but to let nature take its course. It would have to happen again to him – it had almost killed him last time, hadn’t it? – but this time it would occur under controlled conditions. No way his sylph could save him this time.
“For vot it’s vorth, I am sorry it has to be zis vay.”
He sank, between one moment and the next, dropping out of sky.
She pointed her finger, sending a tornado down, a whirling hurricane-beam to help propel him by circling him, keeping every last breath from the airless sphere in which he fell –
And he vanished into a green gateway.
Si garal!
Emrelet pulled on the Storm once more, sending a thousand forks of lightning coursing across the clouds.
Where is he? Where will he come out?
She’d been underestimating him, thinking that in his grief, his lack of preparation, he wouldn’t fight the same way he’d fight an enemy.
That’s what I am to him now. That’s why I – why his shield hit me – I’m his foe. He could be anywhere – he could kill me in an instant if I don’t spot him first –
The realisation of what she’d bitten off with this self-appointed assignment began to dawn on her.
I need back-up.
“Stormsword!”
A voice, not so far behind her, inside the cloud, lifted in challenge –
She turned and lashed out in the same motion, bringing down her arm, lightning condensing in her hand only as the blow fell, electric blade making dust of flesh and fabric and memory –
One of the welcome but unintentional consequences of her attack was the attendant burst of wind that blew aside the fog, exposing the glowing-edged parts of Copperbrow’s body, just for long-enough that she could recognise them for what they were. They fell away like Kas had done, dropping towards the ground –
These objects weren’t going to just vanish into another realm, were they?
She caught them, gusts of wind bearing them aloft.
He was dead, far more dead than he had been when the eolastyr wrapped him up tight in her whip. He was gone.
She stared at them for a long time.
Then incinerated them until every last trace of him was gone.
Another of your victims, Kastyr Mortenn.
And now you will pay.
She took out her glyphstone as she flew, and reached out to Timesnatcher.
“I believe you,” she said. “I need you, Irimar. I… It has happened.”
And his reply.
“Feychilde is a heretic.”
* * *