Swan Outpost, Isendel
Winter 217, immediately after losing Talith
She steals away before they head out, a ghostly flit of gray. Aloysius glides over her shoulder, pulling ahead, circling, returning back, making slow spirals around her—a creature in his element. She envies him that. There is hardly anywhere she can imagine feeling more out of place right now, far in the wilderness, with only earth and sky and trees around.
She makes her way toward the ruined outpost, smoothing her way with flicks of her hand. The earth and stone shift aside at her gesture or hump up to form ramps. Her path wends through the fallen walls until she finds herself in front of the largest pile of them all: the remains of the central keep.
There, she simply stands for a time, breathing. Thinking.
“I failed ye,” she says quietly. “Mayhap I should hae gone into the chasm after ye. I dunno. Mayhap ‘twas I was too much of a coward to do so, or mayhap ‘twould hae been throwin’ away my life wi’ no purpose. I just know I left ye to go alone intae the dark, and that feels like a failure.
“I han’t forgot what I said before—the Sufferin is wrong, the wrongest thing I’ve ever seen, and I mean to end it. This ent the end of it. I have to believe ye’re still alive. I don’t know many stronger’n ye, after all.”
She shuffles her feet in the rubble, pushing aside a rock. Almost without conscious thought, she continues to clear a space with her feet, until a patch of dirt lies bare amidst the broken rock and rotted timber.
In the midst of the circle, she raises a hand. Subtle light shimmers in her palm, and the earth beneath responds, lightening and shifting until a pale line of raised earth snakes across the soil, forming an angular glyph. Ahlav. Vow, in the language of the skyfolk.
“Mayhap there’s naught I can do just now. But I willnae forget, and I will keep workin. Just… keep fightin. Dinnae lose yourself.”
She spends a handspan of breaths longer, staring down at the glyph, before turning on her heel and walking away, the ground buckling over her tracks behind her as she goes.
A candlemark later, the glyph shimmers and fades, leaving only dust behind.
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