Ayre
“If you gave her up willingly, I could convince my Goddess to spirit you away from this foul place and everyone who has hurt you.” Astraea’s voice is a pleading one.
But it rings so hollow of anything but resignation in my ears.
As if there is anything that could make up for what has already been said.
In spite of all my talk of no longer doing things alone, am I already so willing to discard my Sworn Blade?
Would I be right to? After this?
If I were to take her at her word, would she not be acting in service to an existential threat? A goddess, and one attuned to the night no less.
My lessons in history and the world’s religions in order to serve as a Vylian prince were frankly rushed. Even without a cursory understanding, I would be willing to assume there is a less than stellar relationship between this goddess and the Lunarians based on names alone.
My focus should remain on Astraea. In regards to this goddess, I’m far more likely to recall the petty cries of the faithful cast into the Castellan’s depths than anything taught to me after being elevated to Prince.
Astraea has to know that I would never agree to this.
So why frame it like she has?
Why lead with a demand I would never agree to?
I still don’t understand what she would stand to gain. Not when she is so quickly willing to threaten the trust she has earned.
My voice turns bitter. “Why wait?”
“Because I should know better.” Astraea’s reply is accompanied by a growl.
When has that stopped me?
Or at least that is how I feel compelled to respond.
My chest aches as I recall the events of the day.
Even Astraea showed restraint after I chose to spare the Howling Watchers. It is the kind of realization that makes me almost willing to hear her out.
But the answer can never be willingness on my part.
So why am I bothering?
I feel my fists clench as a willingness to give into my ever present hunger begins to feel like an unbearable weight.
I’ve been tense since Astraea pulled me from my sleep. The potential for so many different kinds of violence and their varying circumstances are more than enough to put me uneasy.
But knowing I won’t be able to feed on my enemies and that Astraea is presenting herself as an enemy is just…
“Was any of it true?” I say through clenched teeth, so close to spilling my own blood. “What you said in the carriage.”
Astraea’s gaze fixates on my teeth, but she doesn’t hesitate. “Every word.”
And yet Astraea was the one who claimed that this would not fundamentally change who I am. Is she not now going back on those words? “I can’t let you take her from me.”
Her voice softens. “You know I don’t want to.”
My voice strains as I fight against seeing myself again as a broken and unworthy wretch of a creature that still has everything to prove. “But I haven’t even committed to a plan. Let alone seen it through or made a mistake. No one has gotten hurt! Not yet.” Well, taking a javelin to the heart aside. The words that come next are bitter enough to burn my eyes and throat. “And already you would treat me like the oaths you have sworn to me and the confidence you have earned mean nothing to you!”
“Ayre, I-” Astraea lets out an exasperated sigh. "This is bigger than both of us! You don't even understand the weight of the history you would seek to undo."
"How could I?” I shout before fumbling for words. I find only frustration and rage. “Why is it that I’m being punished for even considering something that feels right?”
I can’t even give Astraea the benefit of the doubt.
Any passion that makes its way into her voice begins to feel performative. “Because you don’t even know how much they would curse your very existence. Even if you could save them, they would deny you over something as simple as changing the language you use to present yourself!”
There is disbelief in her expression now.
Why can’t I read it as anything but a lack of faith in me?
“We are talking about stones that barely grow or change at all during the length of either of our lifetimes. You would make demands of entities long ago set in their ways!”
I feel myself shake with disbelief at how all of this context and insight is only now being revealed.
Where is all this coming from?
And why now?
Why not at any point during the privacy of the carriage ride here?
She knew what this task of ours would eventually ask of us. She could have prepared me for this! I am starting to think I would have accepted a subtle manipulation over the cruelty of the final moments before the Full Moon’s rise.
“By that logic, should I not make my case anyway? To give these stones the chance to live long enough to begin to change for the better? To show them that I am not their enemy?”
Astraea’s laugh is a bitter thing. “It’s not even a matter of whether or not you could save them. Please believe me I would much prefer we be having that conversation.”
Reading her words as disengagement, I turn away from Astraea to make for the enclosure of the walls that will protect us from the moon’s influence.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
A slender hand cast in a familiar tone of lilac manifests out of thin air to bar my path. Not Astraea, but something like her?
Astraea’s voice falls into resignation. “Because this is you, I can’t even let this course of action be on the table. To propose the idea alone would alienate everyone around you, claiming the lives of you and Cerya for nothing.”
I narrow my eyes at the auspicious disembodied hand that dares get in my way. The feeling of dread that I have felt since feeding on Cerya rises until it embraces the futility Astraea demands I acknowledge.
Even still, I can’t spare Astraea more than an utterance of quiet disbelief. “There’s no changing this outcome?”
“The only reason no one has sealed your fate already is because you have only hinted at leaving room for the idea in front of the once Nineteenth Thorn before presenting yourself as someone who would not so easily cast him aside. Were he to interrogate what you have in mind and come away with the slightest of doubts, he would scream of it to anyone he could find!”
That’s not an answer to my question. Although the inevitability of even a discarded Seedling being taken seriously was likely intended to be an answer enough.
“So what?” I hang my shoulders in resignation. “All this time spent slowly following in your footsteps and finding some worth in myself means nothing because I dared to consider something outside of what every Vylian and Lunarian already expects of me?” I whirl around, thrusting an accusing finger in her direction. “And here I was under the impression that you expected better from me.”
Astraea responds with accusations of her own. “There is too much at stake to leave this to chance! Maybe if the Seed Seers imparted upon you the capacity to quiet your emotions and see reason.”
Her words cause me to visibly flinch.
She continues, showing no remorse. “And I still do. I’m just not willing to let you make a mistake like this.”
My fangs sink at last into my lips as I accept that this conflict will not be resolved by anything short of giving my all in this moment.
We feel emboldened as our every thought and feeling about this entire exchange becomes magnified.
It all becomes so clear.
We only have one question.
“What gives you the right?”
We are expecting something reductive.
Something about her having been in the same place as us.
Or there being no putting this off now that my siblings are about to arrive.
We don’t get that.
What Astraea offers us hurts in ways we struggle to grasp.
“What keeps Lenore and you alive in such a state is a divine blessing I know well. When it was mine to share, I bestowed it freely to alleviate the suffering of others, knowing full well that not everyone could benefit. And when that gift could no longer be shared, I mourned for all the suffering that could no longer be alleviated. Any other faithful willing to suffer the indignity of bending a knee to the Castellan who robbed this world of that blessing would have stripped you of your gifts the moment they could get away with it. Whether you like it or not, I’m your only option.”
We are all at once made aware of every fading scar and wound upon our shared person.
Our parasite demands more blood than we can naturally produce.
We crave a hunger for what lessons others in ways that terrify us.
In this state, we exist only at the expense of others. Even if it is an expense that we negotiate with those who are willing to trust us.
That our parasite might have originally been something kinder and gentler inspires all kinds of possibilities in our mind.
“And yet this gift has produced you.” Astraea says, her voice at last regaining a sense of impossible patience and familiarity with us and what we have been through. “Someone who could, given time, demand Vylia spare the world from far more than this fragment of a blessing could restore.”
Astraea’s mouth tightens into a line.
And we can see that there is more she wants to say before following through with what her Goddess demands.
We give her a push, knowing that this might push her forever out of reach as someone we can trust. “Just… call us a wretch and forget about us. Don’t… Don’t subject us to this.”
And yet we feel a burning need to know what would push her to hurt us.
“What you and Lenore are becoming is a precious gift. I would rather take the both of you together, and welcome you like a kindred sister into a position where you could heal instead of harm.” There are tears in Astraea’s eyes now.
The truth hurts too much.
We have seen so many permutations of the kinds of bonds that can form between those who are forced to become siblings. Contrasted now with those who choose to form those same bonds with care and affection is a kindness that we are being denied.
We hold our breath as we brace ourselves at last for the exception that burdens her heart.
“Whether you know it or not, you now seek to share this gift with those who have long paid the steep cost that it demands. A gift in unchanging diamond stone has long been a small price to pay for bringing the dead back to life.” Astraea jabs a finger in our direction, even in anger she stops far short of touching us. “Would you not bring Lenore back if all it cost you was the corpse of a gemstone that would spitefully deny you your lived existence? Could you honestly admit to me that you would be willing to waste your breath on someone who would be unmoved by multiple lifetimes of pain and suffering that could be alleviated with the shedding of mere fragments of themselves? How much have you bled to spare your Dolls from harm?”
Astraea is in our face now.
And we feel ourselves shrinking in our own estimations.
Astraea wills herself to halt before we can again bring ourselves to meet her gaze. But she is nothing if not dutiful and relentless, even when her voice is gentle. “What if someone else would kill the gem in your stead? Would you let the corpse go to waste? Imagine if there was a never ending source that Amari and those like her would be willing to provide to facilitate the widespread preservation of every life that everyone who is entrusted with this divine gift of bestowing life held dear.”
We feel ourselves growing sick as Astraea steels herself to unburden yet more of this wretched history upon us.
We can’t take this.
But we can’t refute any of this.
So we reach for what we know, even if it is venomous and cruel. “No wonder my family widely considers the parasites that gives them their power to be such wretched things. I thought we were monsters.” But we feel our gaze and anger solidifying the longer we stare at Astraea’s perfect and unblemished lilac skin. “But you. All of you. You’re so much worse, aren’t you?”
Astraea’s laugh is thick with derision. “You would not believe how many Gods sought to twist me into their own image.”
She exposes herself to us so freely.
Like we could do anything in this moment short of sharpening our words into a finely tipped point. Like a good little Prince, we drive that point straight into Astraea’s heart. “What about the one who succeeded?”
Lilac hands manifest at Astraea’s shoulders.
The tension in them immediately relaxes before Astraea allows herself to frown. She allows disappointment to color her expression and voice. “She is the only one who would be willing to redeem you. Just like she is the only one who gave me a say in how my sense of self could be redefined. Unlike the lengthy series of rituals the Seers would offer you, Lady Midnight could remake you with a touch.”
“Sure.” We say, showing our teeth in an attempt to emulate Amari’s predatory grins. “Of course your god-thing is the only exception amongst countless others.”
Again Astraea pauses, before deciding to again show vulnerability. “She and I were both monsters once.” Her voice tightens as she at least reaches for a reductive and overly familiar argument that certainly would not have swayed us before. “Much like you are now.”
Now though.
We step confidently forward, our tone a derisive one. “Of course. We can be redeemed for the many unforgivable acts we have committed. For being the Castellan’s children. For defending ourselves against the countless faithful consigned to the Castellan’s depths who would spear us for being made into a monster. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s unforgivable that I now know my mother might be right about how all the gods deserve to die.”
A crack in Astraea’s facade. The words that spill from her lips fall short of anything meaningful. “You’re not being fair.”
We seize the advantage, our voice growing vicious. “We’re not being fair? Tell your goddess that we hope the Castellan claims her life next.” We spit bitter words and needlessly shed blood at Astraea’s feet.
Predictably, her goddess takes offense.
And she is not the only one.
A coldness cuts through the air around me as shards of ice resonating with bitter emotions pierce through the space at my sides.
Lilac arms reach out from nothingness to embrace Astraea, shielding her from a flurry of impaling shards that bury themselves in divinely crafted limbs more real than any of us.
As I back away, the breath expelled from Astraea’s lungs takes on a tangible weight that can be felt despite the distance. “It was you who are irreplaceable. Ayre, Lenore, please know that I am truly sorry for what I must now do.”
It is Cerya’s voice that has my back, assuring me that I am not alone.
“The Castellan herself has promised this Princess to me. Who are you to challenge the prior claim of a Lunarian Seer under the light of the Full Moon?”