“In Ruins”
Dejiza’s breath saws from her throat, every muscle in her broad frame shrieking for her to stop this endless running, to rest, but she can’t. Not yet. The others won’t have had enough time to do their parts yet, so she must continue to do hers, and run.
The thick scar that curves just under her jaw pulls sharper and tighter with each desperate, hard-won breath, tingling-hot with the awareness of near. When her sister Nahlae had given her the scar, so many years ago now, she’d slipped a spell into the flesh, had coaxed magic into the cut that would make it so that she’d never lose track of Dejiza. Nahlae’d done everything in her considerable power to make it seem like just a flesh wound, nothing more, but some force had intervened, had awakened another unintended side-effect of the spell that made it ache and burn whenever Nahlae was near.
She is near now, but by the level of her scar’s discomfort, Dejiza knows she still has time before she’s caught. Not much time, the burn growing hotter by the moment, but hopefully it will be enough to make it to the ruins.
She shouldn’t have time or energy to reflect, but despite everything Dejiza finds her mind tipping back into the past, her steps steadily chipping away at the distance between her and her goal.
The memory of the wounding is hazy, but no less memorable for it. They had been waiting long years to find out who would inherit their mother’s seat at the Guild: Nahlae, firstborn but full of tempestuous rage; or Dejiza, secondborn but calm as the lake she’d been named for.
The seat went to Dejiza, in the end, and even though Nahlae had been given enough gold to live comfortably in the inheritance, their mother’s choice had torn between them and rent the love they shared. Nahlae had screamed her horrible rage at the reading of the will, freezing them all with fear. And then Nahlae had flung herself at Dejiza, toppling the smaller woman and splitting the delicate tan skin at her throat with a small blade.
“Give it to me,” Nahlae had hissed, pressing the knife in with sure and steady hands. “I’m eldest; it should be mine and you know it!”
“It’s what mother wanted,” Dejiza had managed to choke out, her heart shredding itself with grief. But she’d known even then that her mother had been right to keep something so precious out of her half-sister’s mercurial clutches. “I’m sorry.”
“Then you choose war and ruin. Remember, Dejiza, that it was your choice. Not mine.” Spittle had flown from Nahlae’s twisted lips, hitting Dejiza’s face in a sour mist, until the blood loss and the pressure on her windpipe had dragged her unconscious.
And now they are here, years later, and Nahlae is still as furious as the day it happened. She’s determined to make not just Dejiza suffer, but the whole damn world.
Something roars in the distance, the sound startling her so that Dejiza stumbles and almost falls, but she finds her footing just before she tumbles. When her eyes next lift to the path ahead she wants to weep in relief at the sight of the half-rotted cabin just ahead. When she reaches it she kicks the sodden, swollen wooden door in, diving into the yawning black of the interior, before flopping onto her back and panting. There are several places where the woven-reed roof has collapsed or fallen away, and in the gaps Dejiza glimpses shards of night sky.
The creature roars again, nearly invisible in the thin-mooned sky, but suggested in deeper swathes of dark and dimly-limned scales. Dejiza sees it bank, tucking in large wings, before she loses sight of it again. But she hears it land somewhere in the clearing that houses the old cabin and the other ruins.
Nahlae has found her.
Dejiza hears leathery wings stretch and flutter, heavy feet pawing at the frozen snow-covered earth, and Nahlae snaps something in the banished elven tongue at the creature. She is truly lost to darkness, then, Dejiza thinks, her heart twisting with grief in her too-tight chest. Her scar is burning now, so hot it feels like a brand, like it must sizzle and hiss as the cold air meets it. But if it does so she can’t hear it, the pounding of her own heartbeat the only thing in her ears for long minutes.
“Come out, Dejiza!” Nahlae calls, kicking at something that clatters as it skids over the ground. This is not the only ruined building in the clearing, and Dejiza knows that it will take some time for Nahlae to figure out that it’s this one she’s hiding in; the tracking spell, hastily done, can only be so precise. She is both grateful for and resentful of this bought time; it lets her recover, to find another well of strength to pull from, but it also lets her nerves mount. The preparations are all done, or else she would not be alone in this rotting structure, but she is nervous about what comes next all the same.
Dejiza listens to her half-sister, once beloved, picking over the rotted husks of the little village they’d spent much of their girlhood in, as her heartbeat slows and her breaths even out. She’s too tense and panicked to find full calm, but it is enough to return strength to her limbs and drag herself into position.
“I am no longer ‘sister’ to you?” Dejiza shouts, her limbs trembling and weak from her exertion. But she’s in the circle now, and even though the scar is burning, burning, burning, and she wants nothing more than to curl into a ball, she holds steady. She is calm, still, patient as a deep lake.
“You are not my sister. Your father spewed poison and made me an enemy in my own home.”
Dejiza flinches, but remains resolute. Nahlae has picked and chosen what she remembers, re-writing the truth to suit her. Reality means nothing to the self-crucified, and so she opts to try to sway Nahlae with the love Dejiza still bears. It is not too late to save things, she cannot help but think.
“We share a mother who loved us equally, without any regard for our different sires.” Dejiza licks her dry lips. “ I gave you my heart as surely as our mother gave you her blood. Why are you so determined to render that as nothing?”
Nahlae’s laugh is as sharp and cold as the wind needling Dejiza’s sweat-damp skin. “Why are you so determined to cast pity and duty as love?” She hears Nahlae spit into the snow, boots crunching closer and closer. The scar is now so white-hot it nearly drags Dejiza unconscious, but she manages to hang on. It must be finished now, Dejiza thinks, shrugging off the haze of pain. It is tonight or it is our doom.
Nahlae reaches the cabin at last, pausing in the empty doorway. She cocks her head, her face so dear and familiar even now. “Aren’t you going to at least get up?” she murmurs with frightening calm. Dejiza shudders, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes of the tears she can’t make sense of.
“I can’t,” Dejiza tells her, reaching into her calm center for what she needs. She finds the tether, the invisible thread of aether that connects to the spell circle she’s sitting in like a fuse, holding it tight in a mental white-knuckled grip. “I twisted my ankle when I fell here. So you–you might as well do whatever it is you’ve hunted me down to do.”
Nahlae draws steel, the rasp of metal rousing her beast outside; its call shudders through the ruined village, sending dust raining onto Dejiza’s head. “You know why I’m here, Day,” she says. “You’re weak, not foolish.”
“Maybe I hope that your tide has changed. It need not come to this, sister.”
Nahlae scoffs, the thin moon- and starlight silvering the edge of her sword as she crosses over the threshold and draws nearer. “Of course not. Why should I seek justice when you are so very comfortable in your position? How is it, dear sister, to hold the Mercenary Guildhall of Everstone high seat? Is the throne mother stole from me to gift to you everything you hoped it would be? You and your sire worked so hard to scheme for it, after all–I should hope it suits you.”
Just a few more steps, and Nahlaae will be in the circle, at the eye of the trap, but of course the infuriating woman stops just shy of it. Does she sense it? Dejiza wonders, scooting back as if she fears how Nahlae advances. But it is well-hidden, some of Jorichko’s best work, so Dejiza tries to make herself a more appetizing meal.
“W-we did no such thing. Your temper–”
“My fury is naught but a symptom of betrayal!” Nahlae lunges for Dejiza, the point of the sword sinking into the soft flesh of her belly–but it’s enough, and she yanks on the cord of aether, snaring Nahlae. Invisible bindings freeze her sister in her tracks, every muscle stilled so that there’s not even a twitch. But this means that Dejiza is pinned, an exotic insect preserved and displayed in a little box.
The others will be here soon, but it is too late, she knows–there is some instinct inside her taking stock of things that knows she will not be walking out of this rotting cabin, now her tomb as much as it’s her sister’s crucible.
Perhaps the most alarming thing is that there is not much pain–whether from cold or shock, the worst of it is still, somehow, the burning of her scar, and not her mortal wound.
“I still love you, Nahlae. I tried but…you didn’t care about peace…” Dejiza swallows, her chest feeling so heavy, as if something squeezes the air from her lungs. Her limbs are cold and weak, but she manages a smile at her sister’s face, frozen in fury. “I hope this is the end of it. We’ve both…we’ve both gotten what we wanted, in the end. May that soothe you in the hard years to…to come…”
Dejiza’s sight grows dark, but before she slips away she thinks she sees, for just a moment, a look in Nahlae’s eyes that should not be there–regret, or grief, or shame. Nahlae has long been a stranger to such things. But what brews within her mother’s other daughter is not for Dejiza to know.
The creature Nahlae rode in on shrieks, several voices ringing out in response to fling spells at the beast to subdue it. It is not much longer before Dejiza’s Guildmates arrive, crashing into the cabin to find Nahlae and Dejiza linked together by cold, gleaming steel. Their eyes are locked, but it is clear that only one of them still sees. Several in the group cry out, devastated by their discovery, and more tears fall to join the single trail of salty wet on Nahlae’s frozen cheek.
