The feeling of loss is one of Life’s ways to combat the Void. Not all things perish in death, as memory lives on in those who remain. Those who are gone live in memory, live in deed, live in what remains of their work, long after they have departed. Death is never instantaneous.

Chapter 34

“You sleep like the dead, Trynneia,” Lord Elanreu said, gripping her hand reassuringly. “Wake, and eat.” Trynneia stirred, uncertainty flooding her senses. Her synesthesia had faded long before she woke. Touching her face, she felt her sallow cheeks faintly crusted with dried tears. Bandages encircled her arms and legs, and a soft, overly-warm blanket covered her body.

The aroma of fresh baked bread came to her, and she looked warily at Elanreu. He sat beside her with a tray of food, mostly fruits and bread, and a glass of something she couldn’t guess. He smiled.

“You’re in my vacation home in Praxoenn. I wasn’t long down the road when I heard you screaming, and I rushed back. I don’t know what you did to yourself, but you’ve been unconscious ever since. I found you in a puddle of blood and dirt. I brought you here, Oathbreaker. You owe me.”

She looked around, remembering the totem. A heavy linen bandage bound her right hand up. Dots of white light slowly pulsed away from it. “Where’s…” She stopped, unwilling to voice her concern. Had he taken the totem? Did she want it if he had?

“I gave your bundle of sticks to the Regency,” Elanreu offered after following her gaze. “I had to peel them from your flesh. I still can’t figure out how you got them so embedded.” He reached behind her back to tilt her up, and let her drink from the glass.

Trynneia sipped slowly, relishing the warm, creamy taste of thin honey cider as pips of orange and amber billowed up amidst the steam. Feeling his support, she recognized the weakness in her limbs, and couldn’t remember the last time she ate or drank. A lethargy dwelt in her, matching her sorrow, frustration, and growing despondency.

“The Regency is more eager for any news about you than I expected. I was commanded to bring you to them with immediacy, but I told them you were in no condition.”

“Thank you,” she nodded at the words, not quite comprehending. Trynneia’s mind emptied, and all things dulled. She sat there just breathing, trying to feel any emotion after her experience. “It’s all numb,” she whispered.

“What’s that?” Lord Elanreu asked, leaning closer to hear her faint voice.

“I’m ready now,” she muttered, slowly pulling the sheets from her body. As she struggled to sit up on her own, the world spun about her. “I need the Light, Lord. Please.” Trynneia clutched at his arm to pull herself around in the bed. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“You don’t have to go today,” he began, but Trynneia didn’t hear him. Instead, she saw herself attacking Eilic, murdering Modius, punishing herself through Ditan. She heard her own tortured screams and the ravings of Driver. Above all, she heard her mother’s trembling voice saying “You’re so very close.”

Only resignation remained, an acceptance of the twisted fate that brought her here, to the doorstep of Light’s Judgment, in search of an absolution she knew she did not deserve. Hands trembling in her lap, she looked at him with pleading eyes. “Please,” she whimpered, “I can’t do this alone.”

Lord Elanreu rubbed his face, taking in the rail thin girl before him, her piteous shorn hair and bandaged body. He stood and walked out the room, leaving her to watch the purple and black dots follow him through the door he slammed behind himself. She glared after him, rage unexpectedly flooding her veins.

“Fine,” she muttered, lowering her feet to the floor where they collapsed beneath her. With every muscle weakened or numb, she fell uncontrollably to the ground. Her head cracked the tile where it smacked down, sending an unpleasant tingling of nerves through her body to match the headache she already felt under her fever. Sheets slid down around her, the slow creep of fresh blood tainting their purity.

Lord Elanreu returned with a wheeled chair and an assistant, and cursed when he saw the blood. The puddle had seeped into the cracks and ruined his sheets. She floated at the edge of consciousness again. “Bandage her head. This girl…” he trailed off.

Trynneia ignored their ministrations as they bound her fresh injury and got her bleeding under control. Between them, they managed to dress her in a clean, simple servant’s dress that she meekly accepted. Instead, she focused on the bloody rags and sheets they piled into a corner, concerned that she couldn’t see the color.

When they finished, the assistant wheeled her through the home, clearly more opulent than anything her mother had ever exposed her to. Even the Coinlocks’ home had been spare compared to this, but she wasn’t sure if that was due to their frugality or simply the lack of extravagant commerce in their distant village.

An intricate carpet ran down the center of the short hallway, not covering the well-polished wood beneath. Metal grates dotted the walls in intervals where she saw different rooms peeling off to the sides, each with the same colorless gray tone in her eyes. Thickly carved wooden moldings expertly hid the joins from ceiling to wall, and orbs floated above wall sconces to illuminate each room. Those above all things drew her attention, but Lord Elanreu rushed past them, and the opportunity to examine the orbs further was lost.

The two loaded her limp form into his personal carriage and they drove slowly through the city. She floated between sleep and wakefulness under the watchful eye of Elanreu. At some point, Trynneia awoke and thrashed weakly; the jostling incited traumatic flashbacks of her two months of traveling in the caravan was inescapable.

“You’re not ready for what is to come, Oathbreaker. You think you are, but you’re not,” he offered as he tried to calm her. “But we go. Shh.”

Propping herself up, she watched as they passed pedestrians shopping in an open-air market. Indescribable wares were sold in every booth and corner. Colored flecks surrounded everything, flavoring the gray base of her muted view with renewed interest. Different hues danced while others remained stagnant. Some moved as if in a current, swirling and dipping in whorls of rapid chaos.

“This is a real city?” she asked, leaning against a window.

“Seat of the Light, the Lens of Civilization itself, Oathbreaker. Praxoenn has stood for a thousand generations, it is said. It’s far younger than that, but I don’t argue with its reputation. It’s been rebuilt before, most recently a few hundred years back when a rogue shaman burned it to the ground and ruined the land for miles around. Some of the scars still remain,” Lord Elanreu explained.

“So that’s why shaman are-”

“Outlawed. A danger to everything. I dispatched my men at the request of the Illuminari Regency to bring in your friend. Finding you was…a perk,” he continued.

“Why did Modius call me an abomination?” Trynneia’s toneless voice remained low and quiet, her inflection making it seem more statement than question.

Lord Elanreu bowed his head. “It’s not my place to answer that, child. Your importance to the Illuminari Regency cannot be overstated.”

Trynneia traced her unbandaged fingers along the side of the window, glass that had been inlaid with small gilt runes that shimmered in the light of the twin suns. It twisted through the glass, a strange calligraphy that reflected beams in differing angles, but in a language she did not know. Where her fingertip lingered, the surrounding script glowed white, yet curved in upon itself with deepening shadows. The side of her mouth edged slightly upward, amused at this distraction as she watched the perturbation follow her gesture.

I haven’t felt this calm in a while, she thought to herself, not sure if it was the lack of overall feeling due to the numb weakness of her body, or the strange lack of emotion and concern she had in light of her circumstance. The hatred of a few days prior still simmered within, but it remained somehow detached like an untamed beast lurking inside. Gray tones shaded her world now, the only colors she saw were the stippled hues that enveloped all things, moving in their own currents.

Each bump of the road, she felt the phantom knocks once more of crates bouncing in a wagon, containing the unblemished heads of everyone she’d ever known. Those memories elicited no more response, just limp acceptance. Yet they remained, repetitious, one more reminder of days gone by.

The shops gave way to a large avenue. Fewer people, horses, or carriages passed to distract her from the scintillations of silvery golden light reflecting from the window script. While she traced it, Trynneia ignored Lord Elanreu completely, though he continued to talk about the history of the Illuminari Regency. She simply didn’t care. The same menacing thrum slid under his voice as it had before, which interested her more than his words ever did.

As the carriage passed under a portcullis and past the adjacent gatehouse, the dimming shade heightened her awareness, pulling her from her distraction. A circular courtyard surrounded them, fashioned as a roundabout. In the center stood the figure of a robed woman, hand outstretched to the sky above. Water cascaded down around her, fountaining up through her palm and leaving a faint mist in the sky as it rained down to a basin of water littered with corroding coins.

Various doorways loomed under the shade of a maroon canopy that encircled the perimeter, and one other carriage sat idly parked in front of them as the driver reined the horses to a stop. Trynneia looked about with uncertainty as the driver opened her door and assisted her in getting out and into a collapsible wheeled chair.

“Do I want to know why you have a wheeled chair, Lord Elanreu?” she tried joking, but her delivery fell as flat as her mood.

“It comes in handy, from time to time, Oathbreaker,” was his only reply. “This is the Atrium of the Illuminari, and for the immediate future at least, shall be your new home.”

Trynneia tried to take in the sight of the building, hidden from her view by the angle of her seating during the ride, but the canopy obscured much. Within, marbled floors shone with the reflected light of more sconced orbs, polished to an immaculate gleam by servants that bustled everywhere. The crescent-shaped entrance rose at an angle to a second and then third floor, but her eye was drawn to the massive girded doors that stood open to an atrium that dropped away in a ring of benches out of sight.

Lord Elanreu paid it no mind, instead turning right down the hallway, leading her away from the most interesting spectacle so far. She trundled along behind as the assistant pushed at his own pace, as if he himself were taking in the sight for the first time. Elanreu stopped at a door and glowered at her while straightening his outfit. He noticed some spots of blood and swore before running his fingers through his hair, then knocked.

“Stay here,” he directed the assistant, and entered. As they stood by, others passed, and more than a few locked eyes with Trynneia before hurrying away. Not a one left without an extreme change in demeanor, smiling and cordial at first, then waves of contempt, horror, and even fear. The assistant also tapped his foot and tried to look anywhere but at her, and she sat in silence.

She heard muted yelling from behind the door, and a whispering thrum all around her as the colors danced through the air. Trynneia focused on that sub-current of feeling which accompanied the thrum, ignoring the growing volume within. The stippled colors formed patterns which resembled butterflies and other insects, becoming more intricate as she attended to them. She smiled towards the ceiling at what only she could see.

The door crashed open, and Lord Elanreu flung a shorter man through as they continued their yelling. All noise ceased when the new man’s eyes fell on the stricken girl, and he stopped.

“You were serious,” he muttered, doing a double take between her and Lord Elanreu.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” the Lord said, thrusting the man forward. “See to her, Igol.”

Trynneia watched the same look of terror come across Igol’s face, fighting a different impulse. He began to kneel, but Lord Elanreu wrenched him back up. “None of that, man, just confirm it for yourself.”

Igol looked at the Lord, then back at the girl, then slowly approached her, clearly uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, your Grace,” he began. Lord Elanreu slapped him across the shoulders and he whimpered. Puzzled, Trynneia glared at Elanreu as Igol gingerly peeled back a bandage to the side of her face.

Shuddering, he took one look and stepped back, unable to stop himself from prostrating himself before her. “Light save us all!” He exclaimed.