Chapter 17: Leaving Lost Causes
Ruby and sapphire, a flame within peace
Ivory and opal, whispered quiet speech
Distance too great, what shall become
Please return, please let me love you
Love Lingers Lately
Micah wasn't in my arms when at last the sun rose, blinding. They weren't in the temple or bathing in the lake. Across the expanse of Elder Valley, they were nowhere to be seen, yet I knew they were safe somehow.
I, meanwhile, was not. Over my shoulder, no matter which way I looked, I could feel eyes settle upon me. Blood red, just beyond my perception, a predator lurked, lingering, waiting for the chance to pounce. And I was alone. If not for the two weapons sitting on the phobward altar within the temple, I would have been defenceless.
Something told me to stay within Vaelis's temple, to trust in the safety of her sacred space, but listening to that voice was never my strength. I took up both warhammers, one in each hand, and stepped out to face whatever it was.
In a breath, I was overtaken with sorrow. In a blink, the world dissolved to Shadow. In a heartbeat, those eyes were before me. It was her. The Fiend. But before I could respond, she was gone. I wasn't who she wanted.
"Micah!" My voice carried far. And they seemed to appear from nowhere.
Micah's hand touched my face. "You're freezing, Nyx. Are you okay?"
"Look closely at me. What colours do you see?"
"Fire, ivory, and earth, Nyx. As normal," they said, hesitating, "why?"
"She was here. The Fiend. The Shadow." I dragged Micah back into the cover of the temple. "She's looking for someone. Did she find you?"
Micah's eyes went wide. "I think you know that answer. And I think it's officially time to leave for our next stop."
I knew they were right on both counts. "Where were you?" I didn't have to make other comments. They knew.
They opened their pack. "I went to get herbs from the cliff. All the ones you were drying. You left them behind."
How had I forgotten them? Were we really so rushed to leave our safe camp? It didn't matter. "Thank you, Em." Micah smiled at the use of the new nickname. I grimaced around it. I wasn't really a nickname person before meeting them. "How are you feeling?"
A sudden slump told me enough, but they spoke anyway. "Stronger, but still no cold-flame. Still no idea what happened with the landaax and the lake. But inside, I'm feeling more whole than any of the last moon."
That was something. "Ready to carry a bit more weight?"
"No," they replied. "I tried lifting the thing this morning before you awoke. Still won't budge."
"We'll get you there, Em. I'll stand with you until it returns." I smiled broadly. "And then I'll let you carry me again. Okay?"
"Perfect."
A wide dirt and stone path of sorts existed just a short ways phobward of the lake. It led deim-by-morn and was to serve as our road for the next three moons as we made for the deimward region of Lafleur. It was the one place I couldn't see from the Aerie and played host to Aurelin's garden, the Shallowroot Thicket.
Legends of the Thicket tell of pilgrims from the city finding the temple and leaving their goddess's flower. More recent tales of the place say that pilgrims leave whatever is most valuable and beg the goddess for insight. None of the supplicants pray to Aurelin, the Lady Gideon, but instead speak of the faceless goddess of Lafleur. The queendom's favoured entity.
Three moons of presumably scorched earth and fell beasts, no food and little water, and almost no view of the moon for the first while thanks to the near constant rains. That's what separated us from the region border. Then another two moons of utter uncertainty to reach the garden if we were fortunate enough to survive that long.
Micah was slower than I'd ever known them to be, short of breath and only able to walk a mile or so before stopping for a rest. That was fine with me. It gave me plenty of opportunity to think.
What was the Fiend doing in Elder Valley? Why hadn't she done anything when she found me? Who was she looking for?
Once Micah had plenty of breath in them, we were back on our feet and moving along the path, only to stop another mile or so down and rest again. It was a frustrating rhythm, but I wasn't about to force Micah to overdo it. They'd done too much already. And slowing down was good for both of us.
The first sevensun proceeded as expected. Nothing to see but devastation and despair, but we stood together within it. Each night, we sat around a cold-flame campfire – not enough sticks to have a real fire, but it was still warm enough that cold-flame would suffice – and swapped stories.
"Long ago," I began one night as we finished eating, "there was a great man called Tarys."
"Story time already?" Micah smiled as my white cold-flame dimmed between us to set the mood. "Tell me about this Tarys."
"Of course, like all great men, Tarys wasn't born great," I continued as I looked up to the stars. There was a constellation named for Tarys. At least, tradition in Greywatch Spire was to call it 'the resolution'. "He was the son of a goddess, or so the story goes. The tales are inconsistent. Some say the goddess had violet hair. Others say sapphire. Others still say that Tarys wasn't born but simply created."
I pointed up at the huntress constellation, tracing my finger along the bow and then down to her feet. Just a short way from her back foot was a bright blue star called Moni.
"He followed his mother into the stars when he passed, standing just behind the huntress and protecting her back from danger." Micah's gaze followed my finger across the stars as I traced the constellation. "Tarys was a precocious youth – as youths tend to be – causing trouble for his divine mother at every step. She loved him in spite of all that. And one day he fell in love with a woman."
Micah made a knowing sound at the possible implications. Love was always to blame. No matter the trouble in the old stories, there was love at the heart of the conflict.
"Stories tell of a fight between the woman and Tarys's mother. A flower of a woman fighting a great huntress. And Tarys caught in the middle, uncertain where is loyalty should lie. So instead of taking a side, he stood his ground, taking strike after strike from the women he loved until they'd exhausted themselves." I pointed at a small yellow star in the constellation, right around where the figure's back would be. "Until at last an arrow struck him that he couldn't defend. Neither woman knew who loosed the killing shot. Both women longed to take it back."
"So love killed him," Micah said, "but that's not really special. Happens all the time."
"That's the thing, though," I said with a smirk, "he came back. He and his wife. It was like he couldn't be killed until it was his time. They had a child. A healthy son. And that son was just as hardy as his father. It became the way of things generation after generation. Men who would stand for love and fall for nothing but time."
"Cute story. But how did he eventually die?"
"He and his wife travelled back to her homeland. They never returned."
"And they rode off into the sunset," Micah laughed, "never to be seen again. Terrible ending."
"Feel free to tell a story of your own, Em," I shot back, "it's not my fault the people of the Spire thrive on ambiguity. Hells. Tareth loves that story."
A startling discovery awaited us during the second sevensun. Sapphire hair and silver eyes. Blood pooling about her body. Afina the Mavi. Dead. Again.
But that is lighting a fire without kindling. It's far better to step back and explain.
The night I told Micah of Tarys the Resolute, we were up until almost dawn laughing and enjoying the ritual of ridiculing the old stories. Our next sun was miserable tiresome, but we made it much farther in between rests than normal, so I took it as a win. Several more suns passed with a similar routine. And then we found the city.
What was left of the city.
I hadn't known there were more cities in the eveward region, so the things that looked like houses were as unsettling as the smells coming from them. Death. Rot. Copper. Salt. It was an unmitigated disaster of destruction and desolation.
Micah couldn't step beyond what was apparently the remains of a gate. I made the fool's choice and decided to look around, hoping for survivors. This was worse, I knew, than what Micah had faced while they carried me. Micah had only faced bones then.
Each house-like structure had its doors and windows shattered, revealing the chaos and carnage contained within.
But the worst part, by far, was the moment as I approached town centre, when I almost stepped on a body. She was leaned against the town's well, blood pooling from a localised point in her chest down around the rest of her. I knew the clothes. The same ones she always wore. The same hair, the same waifish build.
It was enough that I ran full sprint back to the town gate and bowled Micah over. Apparently I was screaming. Crying. Horror gripping every part of me.
Sure. I'd seen death. Funerals happened in Greywatch Spire. That was a given. But this was a whole town, wiped off the map in a single attack. And a friend – mostly – caught up in the destruction. Or possibly the cause of it.
When I recovered the small bit I could be expected to, I set to the task of burying the lost. Micah couldn't bring themself to set foot in the town, so it was up to me. Almost two sevensuns of work. It was worth it. They deserved the care.
But I left Afina there. She would find a way back, I had no doubt.
I'd found trinkets, mementos of the people who had been taken, and left them as grave markers, best I could. One thing caught me though. A diary in the bedroom of a young girl. Stories of the boy she hoped one day to marry. That, I put in my pack to honour her love. Her story should be told.
And then we continued on our way, mourning the lives of a hundred souls we'd never had the joy of meeting.
We put as much space between us and the lost village as we could – two full sevensuns of travel at a pace that almost killed us – before we forced ourselves to really confront it. At the last, it was Micah's turn to tell a story and mine to really listen.
"You know me as Micah of Ivory, wife of Deona the Wanderer," Micah said as I lit the night's fire. My mind latched onto the word 'wife'. I'd always assumed Micah preferred spouse, but I suppose I never asked. "But before I was 'of Ivory' or 'wife of', I was someone else entirely. I lived in the capital city for most of my life, but before that, I was from the mornward region, the city of Blue Stone."
I gasped at the statement. In a rough way, it recontextualised my knowledge of Micah as a person. But more than that, it recoloured everything about their interactions with Eliana over a year before.
"That's right. I'm a city child through and through. I never went into the woods. That forest is haunted. The signs even say as much. 'Desecrated Grove of Evil'. What sane child is going in such a place." They pulled up a sleeve to show me a scar I'd never noticed before. "The one time I did, I nearly died."
Faint grey lines traced a terrifying web along their wrist. It was especially prominent in the light from my cold-flame, and I wondered how I'd never noticed it before. They'd been poisoned.
"Stories say that silverthorn poison has no cure, but that's apparently not entirely true. When I was wandering in the woods against the guidance my parents had given me, I tripped and fell, cutting up my arm on a plant there." They finally lowered the sleeve and pulled the front of their shirt low. "And my chest. The thorns were sharp, and the pain ran deep. My screams caught the attention of a hooded wanderer. 'You don't belong here,' she told me. I could see her green eyes glowing under the cover of her hood."
I tried to picture Micah as a delinquent child being held by a vagabond in the woods, but somehow the image evaded my conjuring. Micah was a delinquent, sure, but never helpless. And they certainly wouldn't be caught out so easily.
"She was a stunning beauty, and she put her hand on my chest. 'This may hurt,' she said, smiling softly, 'but this is early enough you should be fine'. Everything went green, then darkness, then I woke up in the manor house of Afina Thornleaf, the local noble woman." They stood up and started pacing as they told the story. "She looked like our Afina, but less battle hardened. And her hair was a deep brown instead of sapphire. As I came to, she laughed. Not a bitter laugh of a noble, but the laugh of one in hysterics, relieved that the stressful part was passed."
Micah stopped, looking at the mornward sky toward some star I couldn't see. They took something from a pocket and held it up. A coin of some kind, I assumed.
"There's a story in Blue Stone about how the Thornleafs became the local nobility. A sapphire haired warrior and an emerald eyed goddess built a house there from nothing but fire and love. And then a villainous beast showed up and shot the goddess with a scarlet bow." They looked at me and smiled. "Anyway, Afina Thornleaf sent me off. She said I was meant for something great, and that I'd find it in the capital."
A few steps separated us, and Micah closed the distance sitting next to me and leaning against my arm, their head resting gently in the curve between shoulder and neck.
"Years later, I met Dee. I thought that was the great thing, but I think it was just the bridge that brought me where I am." A shudder erupted from within them. "Powerless, but on the greatest adventure I could've imagined."
"Not quite powerless," I chuckled. "I mean, you have me. And you have a killer attitude. Plus, I'm sure that your power will find you again in time. Meanwhile, you can keep me company."
"I never thanked you, by the way," they said, "for taking care of all those poor souls."
"You would have done the same, Em," I was confident in the words. "But it was a lot. And you've been through a lot. It was only a matter of time before limits were reached."
They grabbed my wrist and set something in my hand. "This was a gift. From the green-eyed woman all those years ago."
It was a small glass snowpetal. Crystal clear and sturdy despite itself.
"Lady Thornleaf found it with me in the woods and told me it would guide me where I needed to be," they said as I returned the flower to them. "It never once did anything like that, but I hung onto it. And when we reached the Aerie, everything sort of clicked into place."
"Everything?"
"You know what the goddesses looked like, right?"
"Why do you ask that now?"
"The green-eyed goddess. She saved me. She founded Blue Stone. But all the goddesses are supposed to be —"
"Dead," I finished the sentence for them, chills running down my spine. "Well. That's yet another mystery for future Nyxara to worry with."
"And for future Micah to let future Nyxara figure out. Because I'm tired of goddesses and mysteries."
"Same. Let's go to bed."