Yelena

She sat on the edge of a spacious balcony she managed to find when she staggered out of the main Hall where the great feast was still ongoing.

Come to think of it, there wasn’t much in the way of food in the feast at all. Drink, however – now there was plenty of that.

She closed and opened her hand absent-mindedly, feeling the rough edges of the battlement wall beneath her feet, and looked out at the night sky still streaked with the strange purple tendrils that dominated the cloudless void above them in this Layer.

In the burning distance, like a monument challenging them all, sat the Don’s palace – brightly lit and looming large over the realm that he called his own.

Countless had probably died under his brutal regime. Thousands, maybe? If the Red-Priestess – this Anthethra – had really been here since the Everloft was first formed, did that mean that the others living under the Blackbird’s yolk were the same as her? Had these Gnolls also been here since this vile abyss was first torn open in the earth by the Magisters of old?

Jael had been here. That she did know. He had been here, and he had called the Blackbird his brother-in-arms. Just like that butcher, Knox, or the fiendish Nils who now lay beneath the dirt. The people of the Everloft – for that was what Anthethra and the others were, real, tangible people – they hated Jael. They cursed the name Argent, and Yelena was forced to stare blankly at her own shaking hand as these thoughts traveled through her mind and wonder, why did Jael allow this to be? Why…

“’He was never the same when he came back after his First Dive’” she said aloud. “Wasn’t that what you said, Azran?”

She asked the question to no one and expected no answer. But when a voice did come, her booze-addled head genuinely thought it was her old Proctor himself scolding her for thinking too much as usual:

“Some people say that talking to yourself is a sign of madness, Argent.”

She turned to see the red-headed girl in the balcony doorway, staring at her with the same fiery, crimson eyes that she wore with a confidence far beyond her years.

Yelena let her arm drop to her knee and reclined back on the battlement wall.

“Well,” she said. “The Lightbringer has decided to grace me with her presence.”

Amara stiffened and then started towards her. But, Yelena noticed, she kept her arms crossed, not battle-ready. If this Glancer was truly a danger – and she was a danger – she wasn’t about to attack her.

“Don’t call me that,” she said with a grunt of disdain. “You’re from Averix. You don’t believe in any of that nonsense.”

Yelena blinked. “Nonsense?” she parroted. “As I understand it, the entire religion of these Gnolls depends on that title. On you.”

“Religions are stupid.”

She saw the girl loosen herself slightly, craning her neck and sitting herself on the battlement by her side. Her thin legs dangled down the side of the castle wall, and Yelena noted the scars that marred her pink, emaciated calves.

A Southern girl, she noted. And one who’s probably never had a proper diet in her life.

“Let’s make a deal, then,” Yelena said. “You don’t call me ‘Argent’ and I won’t call you ‘Lightbringer.’”

A flash from her eyes. Not a look of respect exactly, but maybe something like curiosity. A new opinion forming behind her eyes?

Either that, or the booze and night air was just making her dizzy.

“Deal,” Amara replied. “But only as long as you don’t try to cut my throat.”

Yelena sniggered. “I wouldn’t make it out of here alive if I did. And I cannot die here.”

They both took in the night air with silence for a moment.

“I heard you gave Mendax a beating,” Amara said.

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Yelena shrugged. “He challenged me to a duel. It would have been dishonorable to refuse.”

“Warriors and their honor,” Amara replied. “It kills a lot of you.”

“You sound just like my companion,” Yelena chuckled.

Amara scoffed. “I sure hope not. I’ve met plenty of men like him. Most of them burned up good.”

Is she trying to scare me? Yelena thought, watching the lack of movement in the girl’s eyes. She didn’t appear poised for combat. In fact, she simply stared just as nonchalantly out at the Shifting Sands with the same lack of feeling as Yelena did.

“He’s not so bad once you get to know him,” Yelena replied. “Though, to be fair, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to.”

The girl spared her a sidelong glance now, the long threads of her hair flowing in the wind. She pointed one finger at the palace of gold in the distance.

“When you were in there, you were captured, weren’t you?”

Jumping from one topic to another. What’s the point in all this?

Had she all her faculties right now, she probably would have stopped the conversation here. It seemed the girl was simply here to waste time. But Yelena answered her, following her finger and lingering on the sight of the golden towers.

“Yes.”

“What did they do to you?” Amara asked.

Yelena breathed in the night air, feeling her skin prickle at the memory.

“They tortured me,” she said. “They cut my skin. They beat me. They tried to make me join them.”

Amara considered that for a moment, looking back at her now as though she were assessing the truth of her words.

“But you’re already an Argent, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Yelena replied, head held high. “They might have worn that title once, but they are nothing more than bandits, now.”

“So, you’re ok with killing them, then?” Amara asked her coyly, flashing her a thin, sly smile. “I guess ‘bandits’ are just another bunch of people the Argents say are all evil.”

Yelena’s lip stiffened. But she found any potential anger rising in her instantly abate.

This was not a situation where she needed the demon that dreamed within her to rear its ugly head.

“There’s a story I heard when I was a little girl,” Yelena said calmly. “I don’t even remember the title. It was told to me by someone who tended to forget the details of things like that. In fact, I’m almost sure he changed up some of the characters’ names just so I’d think he was telling me a new story each time. He was like that,” she added with a thin smile.

“Anyway, the story goes like this: there are three murderers being tried for their crimes in a court. The judge asks all of them to plead their case so he can determine the extent of their crimes. The first murderer says, “I only killed corrupt politicians who were skimming tax money”. The second murderer says, “I only killed to protect my family.” The third murderer though, he says, “I killed to make this world a better place.” The question is: which murderer killed the most people?”

Amara narrowed her eyes at her. “Does that really matter?”

A telling answer, Yelena thought.

“No,” she said with a smile. “It doesn’t. All of them are hanged for their crimes, equally.”

“Pretty crappy story.”

“Told by a pretty crappy storyteller,” Yelena agreed. “But I think it’s one of those stories that’s supposed to have a point. Not one that’s meant to be entertaining.”

“And what’s the point?”

Yelena met her stare. “Evil is evil,” she said quietly. “But evil will always try to justify itself. The people over there probably think they’re in the right, just like we do. They’d probably try to justify their crimes just like the murderers in the story would. I’ve never met a Glancer who didn’t try to justify the killing of all the innocent people whose lives they ended.”

Amara didn’t move an inch. “The first person I killed was my father. He raped me.”

Yelena said nothing.

The girl’s breathing was deep. She was watching for Yelena’s reaction. She was watching for – what?

“He tied me up and forced himself on me every night,” Amara went on. “For months. I lay in our basement in the dark, on a bed stained with my blood and his pee.”

Yelena tried to hold her gaze, but she couldn’t. As much as it shamed her, she looked away.

“You Argents weren’t there to help me,” Amara said, leaning forwards, trying to force her burning gaze into Yelena’s cringing face. “But the Glance was.”

Yelena’s eyes flicked back to meet the girl’s.

“It came to me and gave me the power to save myself. I felt the fire run through my hands and fingers, and then I let it out. I melted his skin and watched his bones crumble. And it felt good. Is that enough justification for you?”

Yelena gulped back her fear. Because that was what she felt, now. The emotion had managed to claw its way up from her chest and coil round her neck like an adder cutting off her air.

“Well?” Amara asked. “What do you say to that, Yelena?”

She shook her head and said the only thing she could say, “I’m sorry.”

The girl looked like she fought against the desire to slap her pale face. Her mouth quivered with suppressed anger. Why she was even trying to suppress it, Yelena didn’t know.

“Don’t give me your sympathy,” she said. “I don’t need it. I’ve got power now. I’ve got these people behind me. I don’t need to ever be afraid again. Look at what I can do.”

She snapped her fingers and Yelena saw a flash of light, followed by a sensation of intense heat radiating from her hip. She looked down and drew her blade, seeing that it was wreathed in threads of billowing, brilliant fire.

Incantation: Infernal Armament

GLANCE type: PYRO

Effect: Weapon applies status condition {BURNING} to opponents. Burned opponents take 1-5 pts of fire dmg for 5 secs

“The Elder taught this to me,” Amara explained as Yelena stared with mute fascination at her enhanced blade. “Because I don’t want anyone else to die who aren’t evil. I want the people around me to be able to protect themselves so that what happened to K – to someone I know – doesn’t happen again.”

Yelena watched the flames slowly die away, crackling to nothingness amidst the chill night air.

“With a snap of my fingers I’ll help you all kill this Don Revok or Blackbird or whatever,” she said. “Does that make me evil?”

She let the question hang, and when Yelena couldn’t answer her she simply stood up and started making her way back to the castle interior. Yelena watched her go, following the folds of her robe as they swayed from her hips.

Just before she left however, she bumped into someone who, by the look on his face, she definitely didn’t want to see.

Marius grinned at Yelena as he came into the light of the balcony.

“She’s a real firebrand that one, eh?” he said. “Sorry if I interrupted. Were you making a new friend?”

Yelena looked at him, sat back against the hard stone surface of the castle walls, and sighed.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think I was.”