Through attrition, Death stole away the servants of Life, depriving the Light of its most ardent followers in the war against Darkness. The Void proved ever triumphant, consuming the subtle matrices of Energy through time. Energy continued its disruption of the Void, shifting even in its weakness to find new resilience.

Chapter 39

Second sunset draped the land in twilight, yet Lord Elanreu’s carriage traveled on into the dark as the last scraps of light faded behind it. Trynneia clenched her totem with a death grip, unwilling to let go. Her perception had returned to something normal, not the absurd synthesis of her senses she’d experienced of late. She had no desire to go back to that, and relished the silence and normalcy of it all.

“So, Oathbreaker in truth,” Elanreu said, disrupting the silence now that some distance had been placed between them and Praxoenn. “No absolution, no Light’s Judgment. Just tucked your tail and took the way out I offered you. Why?”

Trynneia sighed. “I don’t trust you any more than them. But you’ve been fair with me, and you don’t coddle me.”

“Don’t treat you like a God-queen, more like,” he interjected.

“Yes.” She looked out the window at the blackened landscape, lit dimly by a single lamp above the driver. “We are going to your real home?”

“Yes,” he replied smugly. “Guess I was wrong about that being your home for a while.”

“There was never a home for me there, and you knew it. I don’t know if there will ever be a home for me ever again.” She held herself close as another coughing fit took her. Lord Elanreu handed her a kerchief. “Thank you.”

“That’s a rather defeatist attitude, girl. I’ve seen that fire in you, Oathbreaker. Why do you sit on it?”

Trynneia watched his aura, orange, yellow, and white, speckled with spots of red that arced away from him. Her chest stung, as always.

“I don’t know. Everyone has these expectations of who I want to be, or who I’m supposed to be. Momma wanted to shield me from being Lightblessed, and never taught me what I’m meant to be.”

“She was a fine woman, your mother,” Elanreu said, watching the girl. “You’ve lost what she had, I think.”

“I haven’t the faintest clue what that might be. The only thing I ever got from her were these runes, and look at them!” She pointed at the ones on her arms, and traced at those on her face. “Wilted, ruined.”

“Like I said, lost,” the Lord continued. “Lost it within yourself. Who do you want to be, Trynneia? A failure to your mother? Betrayer of your friend? Royalty to your flawed religion?” Trynneia bristled as he continued. He leaned across to her. “Today you made a choice. Your choice. Stay in the Light, or come with me. Maybe it wasn’t really much of a choice. But what made you decide?”

The carriage hit a bump. Thump thump, thump thump. Like heads knocking around in crates. Inescapable. She rubbed her forehead.

“Many reasons, I guess. They only see me as a monster,” she began.

“You are,” he affirmed. She waved his comment away.

“They have blood on their hands.”

“So do I. As do you,” Elanreu interrupted again.

“For them, it's different. Do no harm. Care for others. Serve yourself. I could see their auras, Elanreu. Blood red, all three of them. They as good as cast me aside from the Illuminari, yet do worse to hold their power?”

He clasped his hands around the one which held her totem and looked into her amber eyes. “They keep their consciences clean by employing people like me to do their dirty work. The Light couldn’t function any other way.”

“That’s just it. They shouldn’t have to.”

“You’re so innocently naive, girl.” He squeezed her hand with his. “So, you saw their auras. What does that mean to you? Or to me?”

The totem thrummed in her hand, warm and comforting. Its own aura lit the small cabin, at least to her senses if not in physical fact. She felt safe.

“It's complicated,” she hesitated.

“Try me.”

“I don’t really know myself. It’s like I sense intentions, feelings, about things. Whether something’s good or bad. It comes and goes; I can’t control it.”

“Can you see mine? What does it show you?” She watched as it flashed through several colors, beginning with black, purples, and blues before spreading through reds and oranges, on into yellows, and whites. Red striations remained present as the aura fluctuated.

“You’re safe,” she said.

“Ha! Me? Safe? You trust my aura? Girl you’ve got some learning to do.” He leaned back, palms behind his head. “You’ve read them well enough though. The whole Regency, and the Illuminari itself, is rotten to the core. Bunch of fucking hypocrites, the lot of them.”

“Please, great Lord Elanreu, enlighten me,” she mocked, feeling a bit more at ease as he opened up with her.

“I knew your mother, years ago.” With that opening he had her attention. Pinpricks of color popped into view around him, and hues decoupled themselves from him. “A true priestess of the Light, keeping her head down and her hopes up. She tried to hide it even then, but the true believers knew she was Lightblessed.”

Trynneia felt her heart catch as a question entered her mind unbidden. “Did you love her?” Elanreu harrumphed.

“Who didn’t? She made an amazing tea, would talk with you, and leave you feeling better when all was said and done. But no, she wasn’t for me.” Elanreu was amused by her disappointment. “Sorry if you thought I was your long lost daddy.”

Trynneia shrugged. “A fool’s hope,” she conceded. Colors zipped away from Elanreu, a kaleidoscopic scintillation that began to drag her eyes away, upward as she tracked them.

“Even then, Shingto employed me, made me the Lord that I am. You’ve seen what my men do.” She shivered, huddling onto her bench and rubbing her arms, remembering the warmth of Eilic’s piss as he poured it from a mug onto her head, even as she tried to lick it up for the moisture. “She’s the worst of the lot, but comes across the softest if you listen to her.”

“Hunting shaman?” Trynneia asked, shaking her head to avoid the distractions of her memories and the shifting auras about the Lord.

Elanreu smirked. “A pretext, mostly. More of them around than there are of you. Lightblessed, I mean. Times have been shifting.”

“What do you mean?” she asked as the lights began to shimmer and pulse around him, his aura becoming darker once more. -You’re not asking the right questions!- broke into her thoughts.

“She fled when I told her the truth. She managed to winkle it out of me, but at that point I didn’t care.”

“You were hunting Lightblessed,” she guessed.

“That hasn’t been a profitable occupation for nearly two decades now,” he acknowledged.

“But Regent Shingto said the Illuminari hasn’t seen a Lightblessed in over a century. My mother wasn’t exactly hiding, and neither was I.”

“Here’s the thing, girl. Why did they treat you with such deference yet argue about what’s to be done with you? I’ll tell you. The Lightblessed are dead, every last one. Except you.”

Trynneia reeled, putting together everything he’d just said. “Why spare me? Why keep Modius from killing me? You knew I existed, didn’t you?”

“The Regency stays safely nestled in Praxoenn, away from the larger world. If the Lightblessed just…vanish, they can keep up their charade and retain their power. Throwing you at them was my way of bucking their system.”

The two fell silent. Trynneia watched as Elanreu’s aura curled underneath itself, the darker purples and red striations matching her mood. She remembered her mother going about her day, working as a Priestess of the Light, and then joking with her in the evening. She’d never imagined a day she’d be without Rendrys to lean on.

The Lightblessed had been a whole people, servants of the Light, forced out by the Illuminari and then hunted to eradication. A whole history Trynneia had been kept ignorant of as she grew up carefree in a nameless village away from the larger world. She studied Lord Elanreu even as he studied her back, a man who had done the hunting himself in his youth. Had employed others to do the same.

“Why did you participate in this?” Her whisper sounded faint even to her ears. She coughed.

“Trading morality for wealth and land seemed logical at the time. Until I felt it wasn’t worth it anymore,” he returned. “It’s their religion to preserve, not mine.” His aura brightened to bright white, then vanished into nothing, replaced by colors swirling around him like dust motes that responded as she reached for him. They caressed her skin, infusing her with a warm tingle throughout her bandaged hand, surrounding the totem she still held.

“You don’t serve them anymore, do you?” -Getting closer-

“I haven’t for years, not that they’ve noticed,” Elanreu admitted. “I’d be ruined if they had.”

The carriage continued to bump along, but the sound of the heads knocking around in her memories dimmed somewhat. Colors delaminated themselves throughout the carriage around her, hovering above each surface, disturbed with each bounce like oil on the top of water.

Lord Elanreu scratched at the gray hair of his temple, and tucked some stray hair behind his left ear. “They fear you. You’ve seen that. ‘The Abomination.’ They want you to think it’s because of your shaman powers, but it’s more than that. They’ve been led to believe there were no more Lightblessed. Yet here you are. You represent a threat to their power, and now I’ve drawn their ire by taking you away. Rather, you chose to come with me.”

White once more crept its way up behind him, dimming to gray, but surrounding him with its rays. Her hand trembled while it held the totem, itself thrumming with heat. She averted her eyes, looking out the window before the imagery drew her eyes to the roof of the carriage once more.

“Lord Elanreu, I cannot set aside the hatred I still have for what you’ve done.” The words tumbled out of her mouth, unsure of how she still felt after their discussion.

“I do not ask you to,” he asserted. “Embrace it.” Elanreu pointed to the dagger at her waist, its red aura boiling out of its sheath. “You know my place in all of this. You know who the true enemy is, now. You possess power they cannot ignore. All I ask is for you to decide what to do with it.”

Unconsciously her hand drifted down to the dagger, her amber eyes shifting between the Lord and the approaching buildings that surrounded his estate. Coughing shook her body worse than before, and she doubled over, covering her mouth with her hands.

“You might want to decide soon. They weren’t able to heal you any more than you’ve been able to heal yourself.”

Trynneia tried to focus on the lamps lining the street as they passed, floating orbs suspended below short arms, each with a pale glow but no Light aura. One followed after another, a great causeway as the Lord’s mansion came into view, lit from within and awaiting its master. She shivered again, rubbing her arms as well as she could, though it was her illness more than the temperature that chilled her.

“This is…quite palatial for a single Lord, Elanreu.”

“I may have never taken a wife, but I do have my children,” he grinned. “Wait till you meet them.”

“You told me you didn’t have children,” she recalled as more colors popped into view and began to swirl like water in a drain, and whispers began their soft murmur.

“Well, there’s children, and children. None of the former, and many of the latter.”

She detached the sheath from her belt and handed it to Lord Elanreu, dagger and all. “I’m dangerous enough right now without this. I don’t want to put your children in danger.” He declined, pushing it back to her.

“Hold that thought, because you might reconsider.”

“I’m not a fool, Lord Elanreu, just…” she sighed. “Just give me time to think.”

“Always a thinker, just like your mother. I think she’d be proud of the woman you’re becoming, Trynneia Oathbreaker.”

The carriage pulled around the front, and a doorway opened up, framing two figures, their features obscured in the shadow cast by the light from behind them. As they approached, she looked at Elanreu, who smiled back at her. “I wonder, will you be proud of yourself, girl?”

“I hope so,” she said.