Yelena

Three days.

That’s how long she’d been given to prepare for the journey ahead. The journey that would take her inevitably to the end of all things.

At first, she’d thought it a judgement that was intentionally harsh, but she knew Proctor Azran better than that. His words had been spoken to the assembly to placate them. She was no hero. She was a condemned prisoner just like the others that were thrown into the great abyss. She was given enough time only to gather her personal effects, say her goodbyes and prepare her final wishes for those close to her.

She scoffed as she looked over her meagre backpack of rations for the trip.

‘Those close to her’? That was the biggest joke of all. Azran could’ve given her one afternoon for that alone.

Was he testing her resolve still? Allowing her the chance to escape? The opportunity to reject the Prophet and Her word?

Well, she’d be lying if she said she’d never allowed the possibility to enter her mind.

She drew her hand along the stone walls of her chambers, stroking the tips of her nails across her armoire, closet, and the bearskin rug that warmed her feet. Finally her eyes settled on her sword, and the silver mirror of its blade reflected her tired features. The tears that had streamed from her face when she’d returned to her room after the Denouncement was over had long since vanished. She was done crying.

And she was done with the rest of them. She’d sequestered herself in her room and taken her meals in here. They didn’t even bring knock when they brought them – they left the food outside like she was infected by some virulent disease. She’d sought out no one, avoided all eyes when she went outside for air. She’d even avoided Di. She couldn’t look at him. Despite it all, she recalled the betrayed look in his eyes when she’d declared her intention at the Denouncement. He said he could never hate her. But now? She didn't know.

A knock at her door interrupted her reverie.

"I’m almost done," she said dryly. "Give me one more hour."

"Lena," a familiar voice called. "It’s me."

Yelena stiffened. Then, with total composure, marched towards the door and threw it open.

She was brought face-to-face with the one she had called friend all these years. Her companion, and her accuser.

Agathae stared back at her.

"Lena," she said slowly, pronouncing both syllables of her name like a child learning speech. "Can I come in?"

Lena kept her arm in the doorway.

"There’s nothing to see."

"Lena, I just want to talk."

'You’ve said enough."

Agathae did not respond right away. She could barely even look her in the eye now.

"Look, Lena," she began, struggling to find the words, grasping for breath. "I saw what happened to Cynthia. I saw you. I saw what you…"

"And what, Aggie?" Yelena snapped back. "You did your duty? By following Virtir’s lead? By trying to have me caged like an animal?"

"At least you’d be alive!" Agathae blurted out, momentarily forgetting herself and pushing forward, laying her hands on Yelena’s chest and gripping the fabric of her tunic tight. "I’d have seen to you. I’d have kept you safe. Lena, I’m sorry. It’s just - It wasn’t supposed to be this way, honest! I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted to believe that maybe you could – I don’t know! – that you could beat this thing. Here. With us. With me."

Yelena took one look at her old friend’s reddened eyes before gripping her hands and pulling them from her chest. Agathae just stood there, lips trembling as she tried to read her face.

She turned and walked towards her sword, picking it up by its hilt and staring once again into its silver blade. She saw her own eyes reflected back again, but this time, something else danced along its edges. Runic letters dangling like daggers above Agathae’s head:

Class ability: Searing Strike

Activate?

Her eyes went wide, and she stumbled back, almost dropping the weapon. Behind her she could hear Agathae’s rasping breath.

With both her trembling hands she slotted the blade back into its sheath and instead picked up the necklace on her armoire.

Shew threw it into Agathae’s hand.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Here," she said. "You always wanted it. Take it. Wear it on your neck or sell it in town. Sleep with it for all I care. It was the only part of me you ever really cared about."

She felt her own lips tremble even after she said the words with such confidence. As she looked into Agathae’s increasingly pained expression, she knew that she’d said something she couldn’t take back.

"You know," she said. "It wasn’t just you that lost Cynthia that day."

She grabbed her backpack from her bedside table and pushed by the Tigran into the stairway.

"Lena…"

She didn’t turn around. But she did stop.

"Lena," Agathae whispered. "Please. Please don’t hate me."

"Goodbye, Agathae," Yelena said.

And she walked on without looking back again.

----------------------------------------

As she trudged through the courtyard she was met with only the staring eyes of those warriors who had kept training into the night. They stopped in their exercises and watched her from afar. She could feel their eyes.

Let them watch.

She shook herself suddenly, grabbing the base of her forehead with her gauntleted hand. These thoughts swirling in her mind weren’t hers. She didn’t hate them. They just didn’t understand.

They never understood.

She breathed in the cool air of night and kept on till she reached the cart at the monastery’s front gates. Proctor Azran, barely recognizable in his hooded cloak reserved for funeral rites, awaited her.

As did the one person she had been avoiding.

She sighed deeply as he emerged from behind the carriage and stared at her, arms crossed, greatsword glinting at his back.

"I’ll give you three guesses how I feel about this."

His bark was harsh, and guttural – like a gunshot being fired off into the night.

"It’s not your decision," she said. "It’s mine."

"That much we agree on," Azran said, eyeing Dimedrious out the corner of his sharp eyes. He then stepped closer to her and bent down low, placing one feathered wing on her shoulder.

"Do you have everything you need?"

Yelena smirked at him. "I have no idea."

He smiled back, and Yelena felt something bump itself against her arm. She looked down to find that Azran was offering her a book.

"Lord Jael’s Ruminations on the True Nature of the Everloft," he said. "I believe it’s a personal favorite of yours."

She stared back at him wide-eyed.

"You would let a condemned warrior take this from the monastery?"

"Yelena," he said. "Within the deepest layers of The Everloft, knowledge will prove more vital to your survival than your skills with a blade. Take this with my blessing, and return to us one day as a warrior who defeated a demon of the abyss."

He offered his hand to her and she shook it firmly, bowing her head with the Proctor’s so that both their brows met for only an instant.

"Thank you, my Proctor."

She stepped by him and approached Dimedrious with a heavy heart. Arms crossed, burning eyes staring into her, he was just as intimidating as he was the first time she could remember seeing him standing amongst the flames of her burning village.

"You really thought I’d let you go anywhere without saying goodbye?"

She looked up at him and saw that, actually, he still had that puppy-like whimper she saw in him when he was nervous. He could try, but he couldn’t conceal it from her of all people.

"Alright," she said. "You got me. Would you settle for a handshake and a ‘farewell’?"

And as she stuck out her hand he did nothing but chuckle under his breath.

"Oh no, buttercup," he said. "We’ll be saying goodbye for a while. After all, I’ve been assigned as your guardian."

Her breath almost caught in her throat. Her hand fell.

"'Assigned' is an interesting way of putting it," Azran sighed from behind. "I believe the more appropriate statement would be that you 'demanded' this role."

Dimedrious spat into the snow and jumped into the carriage.

"Who else?" he said. "I’m her squad leader. If I’m gonna be two men down, I’m gonna make sure my second-in-command at least makes it on her quest."

"Di…" Yelena began.

"Save it," he grunted. "And get your butt in here."

As she stared on, dumbfounded, watching the carriage sag under Dimedrious’ heavy form, she heard Azran whisper from behind her.

"You do not know how hard he campaigned for you to stay. He had practically set up a permanent residence outside my quarters for the past three days, even threatening to leave the Order altogether. The best I could do was talk him down to guiding you on your way."

Despite everything, Yelena managed a smile.

"I’d have it no other way."

She boarded the cart next to Dimedrious, who signaled to the carriage driver that they were to depart. The solid gates of the monastery opened to reveal nothing but a blizzard raging on the frozen tundra outside the walls. She looked back only momentarily to see Azran waving goodbye, and faces she couldn’t quite make out huddling round to see the monster off once and for all.

Finally, when they’d cleared the perimeter of the monastery, she saw the great gate shut again. Her gaze lingered on the stonework, the intricate patterns that lined its surface, for probably the last time. She kept staring at it till its image faded from her sight, and The Order of Argent became nothing more than a memory.

For Azran, watching her from the opposite side of that closing gate, the world had just become a place filled with more doubt than it ever had been before. He watched her go with a smile, letting her know that she had chosen the good path – the path all Argents chose when the time came, and they heeded the call to a greater destiny.

But in the small of his mind he wondered what fate awaited them all now that he had released his charge. Now that she was bound for that forsaken realm where all the living fear to tread.

"'The first beat of even the smallest wing must happen'", he said, reciting the old Jilae proverb.

Then behind his eyes he saw an image flash into being. A faded memory hidden in the depths of his mind: the image of his old Master – standing there in the snow-covered plains that lay before the great gate of his monastery, looking out into the forest beyond, his eyes straining to see passed the trees, through the mountains – always focused on the dark that dwelled beneath.

On the day before his Last Dive, he had stood there, just as strong as she just did, and asked him a question over his shoulder:

“What do you think, Azran? If we kill them all down there – if we burn every last Voidspawn and stitch up the great chasm in our earth – will we finally have peace?”

When Azran had not answered, Jael had smiled back at him. But there had been no joy behind the gesture.

“Is that even what we want? Or is it just a dream we have chosen never to wake from?”

Now he looked on as an older Jilae – older, wiser, but still uncertain. For one who flew in the winds of time, certainty was a luxury that could not be afforded. But he looked on the shut gate and breathed the cold air of night, letting it fill him with the promise that the world was always changing, like the wind.

He allowed himself a thin smile invisible to the naked eye. All his life he had done his part as a cog in the great wheels that spun behind all this world. But here, now, he had made a choice to throw the slightest spanner in the works. It was something, he chuckled to himself. Even a small rebellion was better than willful submission. It had to be.

With that thought to guide him on what little road remained on his path, he shuffled back inside to prepare for the inevitable.