Chapter 14: Certain Uncertainty
Older than Lafleur. Older than life. Older than souls or goddesses or any other force, the sapphire light was an undying force. And my hostess had seen it firsthand. She had been born from it after all. No others knew what I learned from her. We had been so very wrong about those we called "our own".
The Debrief
"She was there," I fought back tears as everyone tried to console what they thought was some sort of snow-induced madness, "I know she was there. She protected me. She protected Jasmin. Please, Jasmin, tell them."
"I don't know what it was," Jasmin admitted, "but something was there. It burned with a passion that felt like safety, and it engulfed my whole body at one point before Delia took over the fight and took out one of the beasts like some sort of mad skirmisher."
We hadn't returned to the smithy, instead opting to regroup in the ruins of the Violet Cathedral. Nyx, Em, Tal, and Tenebra were staring blankly at my claims. Roisin was there. She saved us. And then she was gone.
"You don't have to believe me," the tears were streaming, freezing to my cheeks in the cold, "but you can at least believe your eyes. Look at these things."
Moving over to the gold lizard, I began pointing out signs of the fight.
"Precision strikes, each to a vital point, each just deep enough to draw blood and not close up." I demonstrated the hundred or so cuts along the full length of the thing, landing finally at the point where its neck had been cut to the bone from all sides, severing its life without harming its bones. "And a near razor-clean cut to kill it."
I crossed over to the black one, pointing out the clean cut separating its body from itself.
"An intense strike like a woman gone mad," I described it as though I'd seen her fight, but I knew all I'd seen was the flashes of her cold-flame. Roisin had never had cold-flame when she was a child, but Jasmin told me it manifested in Blue Stone. "She bounded around the thing like she was driven by something greater than herself."
There was no point in checking with the group. I just moved on to the third. The silver one.
"When she fought this one, her attacks seemed to do nothing, and then it swatted her away. I had to fight. I had to win. So I did." I pointed at each wound I'd inflicted. Unlike the strikes Roisin had made, most of my early strikes looked like long-healed scars. Only the later and more intense ones had seemed to stick. "Each cut is a testament to what I was doing. Something drove me to fight faster and harder, and it was a need to get to Roisin's side."
Silence. No one wanted to be the one to say I was losing it. I would've been with them if I hadn't seen it myself. But Jasmin's silence was the most telling. Her eyes were dark, her mouth not quite able to form words. It felt less like betrayal and more like a loss of faith.
My eyes searched for something. Anything. Some glimmer of hope that they believed me. At the last, Nyx let out a long sigh.
"I wasn't sure I could believe what I was seeing, if I'm honest with you," Nyx said at the end of her breath, "but there was something. Up there on the wall where we fought the red one. Blue, silver, faster than thought. Faster than life. It kept pushing my warhammer a little to the left or right."
"Mine too," Em admitted softly, "I thought I was losing it when my attacks kept landing a little too perfectly." Jasmin barely gasped at the description. She knew something, I could tell, but she kept just listening, hoping against the fear of the impossible truth.
"To be entirely honest," Tenebra sat down on a rock, "I almost died up there fighting the white one. I know I don't look much worse for wear, but it took a chunk out of my leg at one point and nearly burnt off my arm." She uncovered her leg, revealing what looked like vicious bite. That hadn't been there before. I should know. "Something pushed us apart up there and I was suddenly fully healed."
Jasmin's hand found her lips as the first tears formed. "It — She kissed me. She smelled of oil and sweat and rocks soaked in summer rain and joy."
"Not to put an irrevocable damper on things, but there are still some problems here," Tal walked toward the spot I'd told them Roisin fell. "First, we still have no idea what those things were. We may have some notion of how to fight them, but not even Deona has heard of them." As she arrived where the body should have been, she knelt down and began inspecting the scene. "Second, those weren't just Devouring or cold-flame. They were something entirely different. Nyx says she's seen it before, but she wants everyone to be together to tell it once.
"Most importantly, though," she picked something up from the snow, or at least mimed doing so before walking back to the group, "if Roisin is back, she's missing. And if she's back, we have no idea how." She stood in front of me, her hand still apparently gripping whatever she'd found. "And I keep saying if because I don't want to give you false hope, but," she held up the hand in front of me, a fine sapphire thread barely visible in the light of the sun and pinched in her fingers, "unless one of the others has returned, I think it's safe to say it was your sister."
Interrupted Terror
We resolved to keep quiet about Roisin until we knew more. How would Asha and Sage react if we were wrong? Beside that, as Nyx made clear when we arrived, there were more pressing issues then a possibly not lost family member.
"Not to be a pain or a droning annoyance," Nyx began as everyone was milling about, "but we need to get everyone together. Talking about this is difficult, and I only want to do it once."
Despite her uncertain tone, her words caught the attention of everyone, and word quickly went around to get everyone in one place. Eleven bodies spread about the first landing of the smithy.
"A long time ago," she said, almost as though she was telling a children's tale, "things were different than they are now. The fell-queen made her way around the country and actively stole people from their familes. She took with her a dark Shadow that served as both shield and weapon.
"But long before that even," she glanced over at Em, a quake interrupting her words, "she was just a woman. Both the fell-queen and the Shadow. A woman who loved. A woman whose love was taken from her. And in her rage, the Shadow destroyed everything around her. The whole eveward region was levelled.
"No grass. No trees. No animals. No life." Nyx stopped and offered me a hand, pulling me to my feet when I took it. "Your great-grandmother. Actually two different great-grandmothers were involved in this conflict. On the one side, Linna. A near goddess level threat to the world. On the other side, Afina. An incompetent sister, but a deadly warrior hero.
"You are a lot like both of them, in your own way," she smiled and pushed me toward Davian. "But what Linna did to the eveward region left it nearly a dread beast of its own. A Devouring land that tried and succeeded in killing both me and Em.
"But Em is a wiry soul, and they kept going. They burned out their entire soul to save me." Nyx was actively crying. She wasn't sobbing yet, but her breath was getting heavy. "If not for their wife pointing them to an answer and my obsessive over-planning, we wouldn't have survived the journey. Em only sort of survived. They lost their cold-flame."
All eyes turned to Em, whose eyes were directed at the wall, to the same board they'd been staring at so many moons before. The same one Nyx told me a different story about.
"It didn't come back to them for a long time. What brought it back was Afina's foolishness." She lit her own cold-flame in one hand and shaped it into two humanoid figures. They were standing in aggressive positions. "Afina tried to kill me. Not through violence, but through neglect, and Em stood between us. As a bid to hurt Em, Afina claimed Deona never loved them.
"Em wouldn't stand for it." The cold-flame figure on the left lit up brighter and bigger. "They burned with rage and love, in conflict with everything, yet supporting it all the same. Instead of a white cold-flame, Em burned in white and shadow. And they moved like thunder to attack Afina. It's not like Afina would stay dead."
The whole room was filled with a mutual gasp from all except Tenebra and Em. They knew the story, certainly.
"It wasn't Devouring, though Afina called it that. It was something worse. And my cold-flame only fed it, only made it worse. I gave up a lot to protect Em from themself." She ruffled her hair for a moment. "I don't think Deona would've appreciated if I saved the world but lost their wife."
An uneasy laugh was the reaction. It died on stale air, choking us on the implications.
"It came from inside," I said, working through what we knew, "something like a soul-deep contradiction in terms. But that shouldn't be possible in animals, only intelligent beings capable of such contradiction."
"Even so," Em said, leaning their head on Tenebra's shoulder, "that's definitely what it was. My bigger concern is why cold-flame works sometimes, but not others."
"Why and how did Roi— the blue and silver streak," my correction was to protect the ones who didn't know, "so easily take down four of them? There are two many questions."
"And that brings us back to the biggest larabrin in the room," Tal stood and moved to her wife's shadow, her favourite spot, "what happened to the streak, and how did she get involved?"
A beat of confused silence from the corner. Kovar and Nico exchanged a look. They had been following the story of soulfire and lizards, but this was a new thread entirely. "The streak?" they asked in unison.
"It's complicated," Tenebra answered quickly. "We think something big is happening. Something in Lafleur is changing, and whatever is happening was there to save our collective necks."
Nyx clapped once, a booming sound drawing attention back to her. "Right," she said softly, "so that brings me back around to Afina. And the streak. Possibly, the two are connected. Afina couldn't stay dead as long as I knew her. Something she stole from one of her sisters. And I think she may have passed it on to her successor."
Jasmin made some manner of sound. This was new information and a potential change of perspective for her. Her whole body seemed to vibrate with possibility.
"This is getting a bit too big for my experience," Davian admitted. "I'm going to take the kids up for their nap time. Let me know when things get back to the skills of a craftsman." He stood, then leaned down and took my face in his hand. "I love you, Delia. See you in a bit."
Our lips met softly. For a moment, the smithy and the whole of Lafleur shrank to that one point of connection. A golden spark, a fleeting anchor, a lover deeper than any despair. And I was engulfed in something beyond me or Davian or even the cosmic conflict of the goddesses.
I couldn't quite explain it, but I needed to stay with him, so I let myself be pulled to standing. "I suppose I'll go with you. Extra hands never hurt." Turning to the rest of the group, several were blushing or averting their eyes. Tenebra had a lecherous gleam in her smile. "We can pause this until the kids are down, or we can continue later?"
Tal was the one to answer. "Go. There's no rush unless the shrieking happens again." She was tugging on Nyx's belt. "I need cuddles with my wife anyway. And I'm sure after seeing that kiss, Dee and Em are about to have some manner of rendezvous."
Our steps up to the third landing were heavy as we carried the children up, squirming against the oncoming nap. My free hand found Davian's, and I felt something like comfort from the sensation. "I've missed you, love," I mumbled, hoping he would hear anyway. "And I'm not quite ready for sleep," I continued to speak quietly. "But I wouldn't mind a bit more physical intimacy."
Davian stopped moving, holding my hand tightly. "Not much would make me happier. But can we at least wait until the kids have their own space?" He giggled about something before he began going up again and dragging me along behind.
We didn't get to nap. No one got the break they were longing for.
A body was situated cosily in the bed I'd been sharing with Jasmin. Small, but definitely an adult. Slender. Covered in sapphire scars on every surface of her body. Breathing peacefully. Naked from the look of things – under a blanket, but her shoulders were bare. Her sapphire hair was cut in that same manly fashion she'd always worn.
I would've run to hug her had I not been carrying Asha. Both the kids had fallen asleep on the way up the stairs. The whole moment seemed to swirl around me as Roisin opened those shining silver eyes.
"Oh, Delia," she said with sleep still solidly in her voice, "you're here too?"