XXIX.

Trust

Perhaps I've been too trusting.

The rusted chains held her tightly on her toes. They held her arms up toward the ceiling, toward the black stones splattered with blood. Some of it hers. Some of it not.

This is my penance. This is how I pay.

The shadows of dungeon bars danced across her in orange torchlight. Someone was crossing the hall.

An image stained her mind: the image of a young girl with long teal hair, rolled over in a ditch. Dead. Her once-pristine body was covered in dirt. Her well-complexioned face was broken and blood-smeared.

She couldn't even be sure if the image was real anymore. She couldn't remember if that girl had died or ran away or vanished into some pocket of magic or whatnot… Did it matter? What's done is done. And Faunia was done.

She tried to collapse. The chains held her taut.

But if I had one, I'd be dead already.

One what? She couldn't remember. But she remembered that if she had one, she'd be dead already. And she remembered that she'd already thought that.

Then she remembered Cedric—his face, at least. The details were muddy.

Damn you for getting me into this mess.

But it wasn't his fault. It was her own. She could have stayed with him, fought that group… which one was it? The Hunters? I'd rather be fighting them…

And then the chains of her cell door rattled. She hadn't seen the figure approach.

She didn't even bother to flinch.

"Alright, Faunia Vleren. You'll be heard now."

She gurgled something back at him. She still couldn't see his face.

He seemed to wipe some of her stray slobber from his cheek. "You'll speak before me, first, and if we like what you have to say, we'll see you speak against Svek in the Capillary tomorrow. You'll be treated to a meal and a bath, so speak wisely."

"Aa…" she tried.

"What is the name of your daemon?"

"Baz…"

"Speak up, girl. Your life depends on it."

She hung her head.

"You think I'm bluffing?" he pulled her head up with a knife tip jammed into her cheek. He couldn't reach up to her hair, or he'd likely be tearing at that, too.

"That's enough, Casico." demanded a voice from the door.

The man stepped back from her.

"I already told Vorez not to… twelve fucking hells…" He lost his composure as he approached her. "Lieutenant General Vleren. This is… Unshackle her. Immediately."

Next she remembered, she was on the floor. And then she faded out.

X

"Seven days. That's how long they locked you up for. And the torture… I'll have Vorez's fucking head for this."

Faunia silently ate the watery porridge between them. She was tightly wrapped in a warm blanket. The white fur had already begun to stain red.

The prisoner visitation chamber was large, quiet, and smelled of mold. There were rounded wooden stools around rounded wooden tables all over. The azar certainly seemed to be fond of circles, in her mind.

"One scare—mention the word Etheria once and they lose their shit. First the scare from Calamon with the Petal and now you come barging in, killing the First Line and coming right up to our damn gate…"

Faunia paused momentarily. Then she continued to eat.

"I don't blame you. I don't, truly. How could you have expected… But Uco sent us information. He said you'd be here, you were dangerous. So we pulled your Etherian, we sent her away. She can't harm you anymore. I told Vorez and Dans and Uela not to bother you, let me speak to you at the gate. That damned fool Ylbek probably saw you coming, thought 'Silver Sword' and sounded the alarm. Am I right? Or, how far did you make it, anyway? Because their devices, they could subdue any Etherian. Shut them down like that." He snapped his fingers, causing Faunia to flinch. "Sorry."

Then Faunia gently put her spoon down. She slid the filled bowl away from herself, toward him. She didn't make eye contact, but she knew who it was.

Grand Marshal Lezat.

"Tirolith."

"What now?"

"That's her name. Tirolith."

He sat back and stroked the grey mustaches stuck to his wrinkled face.

"I need her."

"Need her? What business do you have... She can't threaten you anymore, Faunia. You're safe."

"If you don't… Kogar will tear through this place like paper."

"The device, Faunia, it can disable any Etherian—"

"I don't care."

"This is a safe place. This menace must be exterminated, and Alisa has that power."

She went quiet.

Lezat folded his hands atop each other on the table. He sighed, "There's nothing I can do. I'm practically a guest here, even as I sit upon their council and advise their military. I'm nothing. Our titles in Kylinstrom may as well have been made up. We were playing pretend."

"I was never playing pretend."

"There are things you don't understand—"

"It's you who doesn't understand… These Etherians, they—" she locked up. Her eyes widened. "Daemons. You didn't call them daemons."

Lezat shuffled uncomfortably.

"You knew."

"Working so closely with Akvum and Ivalié, there's many a secret that spills out."

"That's how you escaped… you knew the Rejoining was coming. You knew all along…"

"Faunia—" he began, but she had already leapt across the table and thrown her hands around his throat.

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"You saved your own ass to let us all suffer and die!"

"N-no!" he protested.

azar guards came from the corners of the room and drew their swords.

"Stop! It's fine, just subdue her!" he waved their swords down.

The azars resheathed their swords and used the covered blades to push her back into her seat. One of them struck her in the back of the neck with it, to which she groaned and slumped over the table.

Lezat sat forward and placed a hand over hers. She pulled away.

"I'm sorry, Faunia. This abuse must be so hard on you… and the torture… I don't know how you endure it."

She was quick to sit up, and even faster to retort, "Isn't that why you always swung that baton around? To harden us?"

Lezat twisted his lips. He had no answer for that.

But before he could answer at all, soldiers charged through the chamber, moving around their table. Lezat watched them, then stood as another group rushed past.

"What is this? What's going on?"

Not an azar—the man Lezat had stopped was unlike any man Faunia had ever seen. His flesh was purple, and grew rigid as it left his forehead and curved into two rounded horns. His eyes were yellow in not just the pupils, but their entirety. He wore chainmail armor with a dull red cloth around the neck, and another around his waist.

"A daemon has escaped." he answered plainly. "Jasival will have someone's head, if the she doesn't have it first."

Lezat glanced to Faunia and then pulled the soldier aside.

"Return to your seat—"

"Which was it?" Lezat stuck his bulging eyes nearly against the man's own. "Which Etherian—daemon—escaped?"

"Sir, return to your seat." The soldier jostled the hilt at his hip.

Faunia narrowed her eyes. She stood from her chair. The guard escaped when Lezat turned back to her.

"Faunia—"

"I'm going. I don't have the patience for your company anymore."

Lezat turned to the azarian guards, already coming back toward her.

But he held up his palm to call them off.

"Go. Do what must be done, but know what cannot. We have no power here, you least of all."

She left without another word.

Panic.

First throughout the halls of the stonewise barracks, then through the streets as she finally emerged. It was overcast and gray, darkening even the jungle trees which had once seemed so vibrant and lush. The grass appeared almost as though it was losing its color.

Chainmail, red-scarfed soldiers marched the widened roads, roads so wide that siege machines could easily march alongside them. And they did. They were preparing for something.

The townsfolk, of every size and shape except for those of man, shuttered away in their fantastical wooden homes. The streets were reminiscent of a battlefield before the fighting, though she'd never quite seen one aside from those in Cromerian paintings.

She began forward into the fray of soldiers.

This is more than just an escape—what's going on?

"Oy!" She turned. Another purple-skinned soldier was approaching her. "Return to your home! It's not safe to be out!"

"I'm a soldier—not here, but… tell me what's going on. I want to help."

He scanned her up and down.

"Wait, you're…"

"She's with me and mine." Lezat interrupted. He approached both of them and handed a sheathed longsword to Faunia. "She'll fight."

The horned man only scowled and spat at Lezat's feet before jogging back into line with his fellow soldiers.

Faunia shied away from the blade. She put her foot firmly before herself, squared herself and spat, "Lezat, I've come to stop this war, not to join it." She couldn't help but watch in horrible apprehension as he gently bent down to pluck a flower from the grass and held it up to wither away within seconds. "What is this?"

He calmly sighed, "This is our enemy, Faunia. This is Calamity."

X

A harsh gasp.

"Throkos—"

Rykaedi was shocked beyond belief. Stunned.

"—By Evra's divine beauty… it's perfect."

She pulled the body close. A beautiful, slender woman, with a perfectly weighted shape and dark tan skin. Her black hair was long in a way that gave her stern, cold face a gloomy and unkind appearance, and the demeanor of a disgruntled teenager.

The wounds had already begun to heal themselves by her presence alone. Rykaedi laughed with a clatter of her bone teeth, and slipped the corpse onto her body like a hand into a glove.

Throkos did not react, except to look away as though giving privacy while the change underwent. When he turned back, Rykaedi had become the woman, and stood almost a foot taller than him.

"This one's name… Miriam, right?"

He nodded.

She flexed the body and stretched in every direction. "I knew you had some sense of taste. And humor!"

Then she contorted her face in every direction, trying out all of her favorite expressions. The jaw was more square than she was used to, the lips too puffy for her liking, and the eyes narrow as they should be from one of Ruin's inhabitants—far more narrow than her old ones had been.

|But it's delightful!|

Throkos said, "Vekzul never returned."

"And? You're surprised? Calamity probably shot through him like a thousand spears and ravaged his mind until it was incomprehensible. If he returns from the wellspring now, he'll be a different man altogether."

"He didn't fight anywhere near his full strength."

"He did as he was told 'til the end. Though, it is a somewhat disappointing way to go."

Throkos only nodded again.

Then, the door to the meeting chamber was heaved open. Jirtu walked in with his hood pulled low over his face. He asked, "You've moved the schematics?"

Her nod was excited, though her joy was more than likely meant for her new figure. "Castelbre wants them."

He laughed. He couldn't help it—after all, what good are Liara's schematics to a barbarian from Kylinstrom?

Throkos asked, "I trust we are prepared if he attempts an invasion?"

Rykaedi laughed too, then. "I'll close the gateway to Haketh if it makes you feel any safer, darling. Tartys watches our halls and Calamon and the Alisan Way and Aeonia. Should Cedric do anything he considers uncouth…" She punctuated with a slice of her fingers across her neck, and stuck her tongue out like she was dead.

"And Ivalié?"

"Working on Dyosius." Jirtu noted.

Throkos thought about it all for a long moment.

"Are you afraid, Throkos?" asked Rykaedi.

"No. I'm not afraid. Not of him. Not of death. Not of Kogar or Hemah, and least of all do I fear Tartys. But Castelbre has something that I need. And I'll kill him for it if I must."

She lit up in glee. "I wish you luck, Throkos. You know I'm not one to get in the way of fate."

"Thank you." He bowed, then turned and left the room.

Jirtu exhaled sharply from his nose. "And if he kills the boy, we just use our own device to kill Kogar. Once Ivalié is done."

"So long as he doesn't kill us first." she said with a smile.

Jirtu watched her walk around the round table, running her fingers all along the glossy surface.

"I trust that the stage is set to protect Evra?”

“Mm.” Jirtu replied. “I’ve done all that was needed from me. Now we wait.”

“I’ll be going into hiding. Just for a while, I’d rather not have to worry about Kogar killing me before the finale.”

“Where are we headed?”

“We?” She cast him a sly glance.

“Our work isn’t finished. You intend to leave me here?”

“I need you to monitor Ivalié, boy. You’re not fit for such a journey as I am wont to take. And we don’t know that he’ll pull through.”

“Is Throkos not fit for such a petty task?”

She stopped before the head seat of the table, where Kogar once sat. She craned her neck back to let out a loud, chortled laugh before turning her cold eyes upon him with a stare that was much too grim, much too cold for the young girl she had inhabited. “You do as your queen commands.”

And her bone crown stretched from the skin of her scalp…