Edis Lightblessed knelt naked and alone in his darkened cell, lost in meditation. Two Hunters entered, followed by three witnesses. Amber light cut the gap in Edis’ eyelids, providing just enough illumination for his execution. One Hunter shoved his spear through the man’s chest. The other beheaded him with her axe, then separated the rest of his limbs. The Regents nodded in the darkness, satisfied.

Chapter 42

Shallin stirred at Trynneia’s touch, feverish sweat covering her brow. The girl looked helpless as she dabbed at Shallin’s face with a damp cloth. Golden hair fell languidly across the pillow while the injured one slept. Behind her, the door clicked shut.

“Come to finish the job?” Desdemona asked. “Messy to leave that one alive. I can wait.”

“It isn’t like that at all,” Trynneia said, watching the older woman pull up a chair and sit down. Today Desi wore her hair in tight braids coiled at the top of her head, the gray and brown intricately interwoven. Gone was the lavish dress and jewelry, and in their place she wore a loose fitting, sweat-stained loose top and breeches. Trynneia envied the taut muscles she saw, and felt her own lack. Desi sniffed.

“So my stupid little brother wants you to train with us.” Desi lifted a canteen of water and took a pull. “Convince me that it wouldn't be a mistake.”

“I haven’t quite said yes.”

“You haven’t quite said no, either.”

Trynneia watched the rise and fall of Shallin’s chest, remembering so vividly how she’d recently pierced it with the girl’s own blade. Colors of mauve and lime green popped up and down over her left breast like a signal to draw her attention, before rising in a paired double helix she followed up to the ceiling.

“I can’t figure you out, girl. You’re Lightblessed, but you’re a shaman. That can’t be.”

“I’m not a shaman, Desi,” she replied, lowering her eyes to look at the woman.

“Tell yourself what you want, pup, but you were just staring at the roof. If you’re not Skytouched, you can be my brother’s mistress and I’ll leave.”

“Why does everyone think that?”

“Let’s just say you’re his type.” Desi drank again and gestured at the unconscious girl. “Found Shallin here skulking in an alley. Age of five. Lost her mother to the plague. Never met her father. Took her in. By the Light she learned quick.”

“Did she want to train with you?” Trynneia asked.

“Girl didn’t have a choice. She wanted to live. I gave her the opportunity. Look what you’ve done to her.”

Trynneia turned Shallin’s hand over between her own, and saw tiny pale red scars etched deep into the calluses of her fingertips and palm. “What are these?” The runes carved into her own chest began to itch and wriggle.

“Blood runes.”

“Why?”

Desi snickered. “That’s a story and a half, girl. Shallin earned each one the hard way. They’re a reward from the Regency.” Trynneia looked closer and saw they were etched halfway up both Shallin’s forearms. A surreptitious glance at Desi revealed the same stretching past her elbows, now that she knew to look for them.

Tracing the lines on Shallin’s wrist, -so many of them- Trynneia tasted bitterness that made her mouth water at the back of her throat. She coughed. -Death for each, out of reach, none to preach- “Was it worth the price?”

Desi repositioned her chair and rested her hand on Trynneia’s, holding on to her and Shallin both. “Shaman aren’t easy prey. A lesson Shallin learned last night.” She squeezed the two girl’s hands with her own. “The Light has given its blessing to us as Hunters so that we may strike the foes of the Illuminari. Each mark is a stain on our souls, a reminder to hold us to task.”

“I see,” Trynneia replied, considering. “How does a person…earn…one of these marks?”

“Is that a rhetorical question? You know the answer.” -snuff the light, full of fright- Trynneia nodded mutely at the older woman. “Shallin can be ambitious. She had never seen a Lightblessed before. I guess she thought you’d be an easy mark.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t.” Shallin’s face looked so peaceful as she slept, no hint of the malice she’d only briefly glimpsed last night before it grimaced in pain as the dagger pierced that chest. Trynneia felt sympathy for her, understanding how a shaman could be a threat, and perhaps how, just maybe, a girl could be made to think the Lightblessed were worse.

“After a dozen years, Shallin met her match. Shame. Now I don’t know what to do with her. Usually failure to kill a shaman results in the death of my Hunter. Sometimes even a whole squad. Honestly never had one live before. Kill or be killed. I was coming here to watch her die.”

Trynneia felt the strengthening blood pulse under her fingers and licked lime away from her lips. “She won’t. Not while I’m here.”

“Why protect her? She tried her best to kill you,” Desi questioned, brushing some hair away from Shallin’s forehead. -use us- Whites and sky blue lines of color orbited Desi’s fingers and arms. Trynneia resisted the urge to smell them, feel their pull to be used. Her free hand drifted unconsciously to the totem at her waist.

“I haven’t been the best of late,” she said, coughing. “But I follow the tenets.”

Desi chuckled. “Elanreu doesn’t think so. He’s watched you kill. Says you’re gifted at it. Are you?”

Trynneia’s pale cheeks turned crimson from shame. The rage and anguish she had unleashed upon Modius filtered into her memory, and she sucked her tongue. Eilic and Ditan were not directly killed by her, but had felt her ire as well. Desi wiped at the tear that crept out of Trynneia’s eye.

“No need to be ashamed, girl.”

“I did what needed to be done,” she admitted. Trynneia drew in a shaky breath. “And I…enjoyed it…every time.”

“Well isn’t that something. See? We’re closer than I thought after all. Perhaps that’s a purpose you can embrace.”

“I won’t embrace murder. I can’t.”

“Look at me, Oathbreaker,” Desi grabbed Trynneia’s cheeks and looked imploringly into her eyes. “It’s not murder. We hunt monsters. You’ve seen their monstrosity for yourself. Even taken action against it. You’ve done well untrained, but we can make you so much more than that.”

Shallin stirred again, her hand moving in Trynneia’s grip. “I can’t.”

“Then serve your tenets of the Light. Serve yourself. Learn to use the powers you have. Become something more than you’ve allowed yourself to become.” Desdemona gestured at Trynneia’s wasted form. “Care for those who serve the Light. Protect them from these monsters. My Hunters can only do so much against a shaman’s power.”

“Even if I could, I’d still violate the first tenet. Do no harm.”

“Everyone violates the first tenet. Even the Regency. Look, say one of these shaman lost control. Out in some rural village like your own. They could destroy crops. Homes. Cause death among people and livestock both. Do you stop them? Or do you rest your conscience in the graves of those who die when you fail to act?” -the will to fight , to do the right, envious might-

“The Regency. I can’t serve them like this. They…” Trynneia paused. What’s stopping me? She thought to herself. “I hate them,” she admitted.

“Do you hate what the Light is calling you to do?” Desdemona’s sweat reeked in Trynneia’s nostrils, the musky scent no longer covered by her faintly sweet perfume.

Trynneia hesitated, torn between the remnant of the innocence that strove hard to cling to her conscience, and the burden of her broken soul, shredded over months of degradation. Desi’s words bit quite hard, striking a solution she’d never expected. Join them! Everything tumbled in her mind like madness unchecked.

There would be glory attached, but her ego didn’t seek it. Being recruited to Hunt shaman meant accepting what she’d continually denied but knew to be true. Trynneia hated the idea, loathed that she was more than Lightblessed, but could also still be a shaman. -Focus our hatred, embrace it- Our hatred, the voices said, not your hatred.

She continued to watch Shallin’s breast rise and fall beneath the sheets. Another girl, a warrior, fighting a darkness she only just began to understand. Shallin acted. What did she herself do but cower and sulk, hiding from the pain and memory of her suffering? Trynneia envied Shallin in that moment, rising up to do what she felt was right.

Scarlet and rouge lights flickered around her hands, drifting in an unseen breeze. Her fingers grazed the totem at her hip, and she found a soft strength. She could do this thing, though it seared her to the core. No, it was more than that. She needed to do this. Nothing else could assuage her guilt if she did not fully commit, even knowing the hypocrisy of what she was, and what she might become.

I will seek my absolution, Momma. But I will not forget how the Light betrayed you. How it betrayed me, and used me.

Desi waited patiently for a response. “Well?” she prodded.

Crimson streams passed from Trynneia’s hands and wrapped around Shallin’s body. Emerald and blond dots swarmed all around, pushing into the prone girl’s mouth. Her breathing deepened, mouth parting slightly to inhale more air. The dots went in with each inhalation, coming out in navy blues and wisps of cream.

Trynneia watched the girl’s aura grow brighter, but suffused with maroon and blood reds throughout its tawny hue. Come back to us, girl. Forgive my hasty defense, she implored silently, feeling her intuition sink within the girl’s flesh, finding more injuries within that hadn’t been addressed.

Like stitchwork, piece by piece the unseen grew together whole, knit by an imperfect hand out of practice, but with a skill forged by trauma and necessity. Closing her eyes, Trynneia felt warmth behind her eyelids, and it flowed down to her chest, filling her body with comfort. She grasped hold, pulling out a darkness within Shallin, expunging it into the air where it sank rapidly to the ground, lost into shadow.

Her witch’s mark blazed, the bloody runes soaking through her outfit once again, unhealed, treacherous. Ignoring the pain, she devoted her will to serve the girl she’d struck with a killing blow, ecstatic that power filled her once more after being lost for so long. Was this the will of the Light, responding to her resolve?

She heard Desi hiss “Witch,” under her breath, but pressed on, touching her hands to the breast that had healed to outward appearances but bore sickness and death beneath. Ichor bubbled to the surface, a poison from the dagger she hadn’t realized had been there. The same color matched the ooze from her chest, her own body responding by expelling it there from when she’d been pricked in the back.

The ooze slid out, staining Shallin’s coverlet and soaking it through. Beads of sweat popped out onto her forehead, and she moaned. Trynneia worked harder, knowing she couldn’t fail, that she’d been born to this. Opening her eyes, she saw Shallin staring back at her in wonder, not pain. With thankfulness, not fear.

Blood runes stood out in bright reds all up Shallin’s hands and forearms, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Trynneia smiled, and Shallin returned it as the warmth passed through their hands, linking them in the powers of the Light. Tears of relief fell from her cheeks as she let out a soft chuckle.

Pain seized her chest like fire and the point of a spear together, and Trynneia gasped. Everywhere her Lightblessed runes scorched her skin with torturous rage. Blood pulsed out from each rune, trickling down the sides of her face, her ribs, her arms, her thighs. She released Shallin and fell to the floor, curling into a ball of agony. Her heartbeat fluctuated wildly, and she sucked in weak gasps even as a paralyzing coughing fit stole her breath.

-Betrayer- -Fool-

Through clenched teeth, she muttered, “Help me, please.” Lights and auras popped up around the bed, Desi, Shallin, the floor, the lights. Nothing brought her release. Nothing brought her comfort, and as she passed out, she wondered if the price was worth paying after all.