Reunion

[Softpaws]

ACTIVATED

My stealthy toes are in full power, though we don’t really need the stealth. Myra keeps low as we stalk through the corridor and find, at its end, the single vine coated cell that Seneca is entombed within.

Myra meets the Glenmaiden guard at the door, but still hasn’t noticed me even as I pull up beside my confident partner.

“Myrathellon,” the pale elf guard states. “Your shift doesn’t begin until –“

“I’m taking over here,” she interrupted. “Mistress Palka has instructed me to be the one to guide the prisoner towards her fate.”

The guard narrows her eyes. “Right now?”

Myra’s eyes meet hers, and she inches just a little bit too close to the girl’s face.

“You’ll leave this to me, Anarathols,” she says in a voice just as cold as the one she used when facing me during our first fight. “Unless you want more bloodshed this day.”

After a few seconds of stalemate, during which I genuinely think one of them’s going to slice the others’ head off, the guard finally shrugs her shoulders and relents.

“Go on and speak with your old master then,” she says. “I am sure you have some catching up to do. But I will remain here. Make a single move against Senecalthis, and your life is forfeit.”

Myra makes a dissatisfied pfft! as she moves past her Sister to the dark chamber beyond. I follow her with my head bowed, still managing to avoid the gaze of the guard. Maybe she’d let Myra in, sure, but there’s no way she’d be fine with me being here. Looking at her grim features, I know Palka’s probably told them all to not let me mess up their plans.

Regardless, I wouldn’t wanna go toe to toe with Myra if I was her. And I’m speaking from experience…

We enter the cell and instantly my [Lycan Eye] activates. I’m looking at a decrepit old chamber with a set of oaken bars concealing our little captive. She’s bound up in glowing threads of vines, and barely even acknowledges us as we close the door behind.

“I was wondering when you’d come see me, my little apprentice,” Seneca says.

She turns then and fixes me with her creepy, alien smile. The same smile that showed all her bark-coated fangs when we first met on the Plains of Rowan.

“I see you’ve made a friend,” she chuckles hoarsely. “You never were the best judge in character.”

“He has more honor in a single paw than you ever did in your whole body, Senecalthis.”

“Do not call me that,” Seneca spits, rushing at the bars like a rabid animal. “I gave up that name long ago.”

“It’s your only name,” Myra says, and I’m touched by the genuine heartache that’s in her voice. “It’s a name I once respected. A name we all would cry as we ran into battle.”

“’Battle’,” Seneca scoffs. “You had more of a stomach for it than the rest of them, I suppose. That’s why you were my greatest failure.”

As Myra closes her eyes, seemingly unwilling to bite back, I decide I’ll do it for her.

“She’s no failure,” I say. “She’s the best damn swordsman this place has, and one hell of a teacher.”

Seneca laughs, ignoring me completely.

“You’ve taken to training dogs now? Oh, how the glory of Glenheim has truly fallen. We’re doing you a favor, finally putting you all to the torch.”

“Why?” Myra asked the creature bound in darkness, who laughed after her every word. “Why…why come back at all? Just for revenge? Is that it? Is that all you care about now?”

“It’s all I have now, slave,” Seneca replies.

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“You’re wrong. You loved this place, once. And we loved you. I…I loved you. Do you not remember?“

While I’m just jumping around in the tennis match of this conversation, Seneca’s next word hits us both like a crashing carriage:

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Senecalthis! I know you d-“

“Are you deaf, girl? I said no!”

She flies against the bars again, her flaring tongue shooting out as if to strike at us both. Then, all at once, she bows her head.

“I – no,” she whispers. “No. I don’t remember. I don’t remember the love I had for this place. I tried. Long ago, when I first left, I tried to remember. I tried to remember your face, Myra. I tried – and I failed. Only in dreams did I see you, and you always rejected me again, and again, and again. The only memories I have are of betrayal. Of hate. Of you all kicking me and leaving me behind. So don’t come here and try to play pretend like nothing ever happened. Because that I do remember. And I’ll crush you all for it.

Seneca erupts into mad, joyous laughter again, and then her eyes turn to me and light on the sword on my back.

“So, if your plan was to turn me to your side, you’ve failed. Are you going to kill me now, little mutt?”

I look to Myra’s clenched hand, and her stiff lips. I say nothing.

“No,” Seneca continues. “You’re weak. Just like the rest of the pathetic Elves. I get it, believe me - once I was the same. I didn’t know the truth. I didn’t know that there’s a Master out there that actually believes in us. One that lets us be who we are.”

“Your Master will destroy you,” Myra whispers. “If she cares about you so much, why has she allowed you to be captured?”

Seneca sits back, still giggling manically.

“You don’t know what’s coming for you,” she chuckles. “You’re all going to die here, tonight, and you’ll have only yourselves to blame. And I’ll be the one to drive a dagger through Palka’s heart. That will be what I’m remembered for, Myra. You’ll watch it all unfold as you die. Then the true Mistress of this world will raise you and I’ll cut you down again, and again, and again!”

“Myra…” I murmur. “I think we’ve seen enough, huh?”

The eyes of the predator latch onto me again.

“You’ll be the last to die, you wretched little beast!” she roars, flying to try and claw at me through the bars of her cage. “You can watch, this time. You can watch as we gut your new friends in front of your pathetic little eyes! They’ll scream even more beautifully than your giant idiot did. I’ll make sure of it!”

I turn away, swallowing the desire to end her here and now. Myra, however, lingers.

“You sorry creature,” she tells the still cackling beast. “Had you walked a path of honor, you could have earned your way back here. You could have walked among us again in beauty as you once did. I loved the person you once were, Senecalthis. You were everything I wanted to be. But I see nothing of that person in you now. You are Seneca. And all that awaits you is death.”

She hurries out after that, slamming the cell door shut behind her and storming off ahead of me. I only just make out Seneca’s quiet reply as I run to catch her up:

“We’ll see, my little apprentice. We’ll see.”

…

The little *ding!* of my [Softpaws] leveling up to four barely even registers as I chase Myra up the elevator and back outside.

“Myra!”

Some of the commune girls milling about outside the shrine, offering prayers to the wooden idols, catch me as I chase my wayword master.

“Raz,” their ginger-haired leader says. “J-just so you know – we’re rooting for you! We know you can do it. You can save us!”

A few of them start petting me relentlessly and I have to stop myself from relaxing into it.

“I – uh – thanks!” I cry. “Now – just – let – lemme pass!”

I hurry away from them as they cheer me on, singing my name as they go back to their prayers.

From above, another voice then calls my name.

“Give ‘em hell, Lightborn,” Arthelia shouts from within her shop. “Let’s see what ya can really do.”

I nod up at her, remembering that she hated the whole plan from the start, and chase Myra to the edge of the still pure, untouched pool beneath the sacred waterfall.

“Myra!” I pant.

She stiffens and then bends down to wash her face in the pool of radiance, letting her fingers remain in the pond and sending little ripples down its surface.

“She was once the best of us,” she says quietly. “She was everything I wanted to be.”

I come to sit beside her, giving her arm a gentle lick. “I know.”

In the silence that follows, the sounds of the Glenmaidens preparing themselves for possible battle emerge from nearby. They barely pay us any heed as they walk out from the sacred grove towards Seneca’s prison.

“Guess even our heroes can fall, huh?”

She keeps her attention on the pool, and the lazy, absent-minded ripples radiating from her fingers.

“The last time I saw her,” she says slowly. “I was cruel. I cast her aside like she’d meant nothing to me at all. I was a stupid, stupid child. Maybe it’s my fault that she…”

“Nah,” I huff, watching her ripples cease. “Most crazies have crazy in ‘em before they start killing folk. Trust me: I’m a dog. I know people.”

She stands over the pool and looks down on me with a morose smile – the same smile she’d worn as we camped together in the forest outside.

“Thank you for being there with me,” she says, and although I expect to see her blush as she says this, she’s nothing but serious, even giving me a little scratch under my chin. “If you weren’t, I think I would have…I don’t know,” she trails off. “But thank you.”

I tap my own paw on the surface of the waters as the Glenmaidens descend into the shrine, and I hear Swiftrunner call from above.

“The General comes!” he cries. Then he begins running down to meet me.

“Hey,” I say to Myra. “Do you think I can do this?”

She regards me with a mix of cautious optimism and fear. I can see it in her eyes.

“Whatever happens, I will stand beside you,” she says, before taking my paw in her hand and giving it a little squeeze. “And when we have slain the evil one, and banished this corrupted army from our doorstep, I will tell you my answer to the question you asked me earlier.”

Though the whole stronghold’s in an uproar, and though I see the entrance flicker with burning light as my target emerges through the eaves, still I manage to smile back at her.

“I’ll hold you to that.”