A Thousand Pyres

[Xarkly 12618]

A THOUSAND PYRES

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

The flames cast fitful shadows on Villorik’s face.

 

I’ll do it to save Elizaveta, mother! Even now - decades later - he remembered those childhood words. I’ll get God to bring her back.

 

Villorik released a slow breath. He reached forward, palm outstretched, and watched as the rising flames flashed against the scratched surface of his black-iron vambrace. He wanted to feel the heat for himself; he wanted to feel the cottage burn. Beneath a darkening spring sky, the wind whipped flurries of snow across the ridge where the warpriest stood atop Saurizyr, his Aaunish thoroughbred. Beneath his faceguard, he stared forward as the flames climbed to the thatched roof of a lone cottage a mere dozen feet away.

 

I’ll do it for Aleksandra and Stefaniya, too! His own childhood voice echoed in his mind as he closed his eyes. And - and Petra! And Viktor! And you and father, of course! He shakily inhaled the fresh mountain air, tainted by woodsmoke. I’ll be the greatest servant God has ever had, and … and he’ll have to listen to me, then! He’ll save anyone I want!

 

Thirty-seven years, he told himself as he listened to the flames crackle, and the beams groan. Thirty-seven years since I made that stupid promise.

 

Slowly, he opened his eyes. As the snowfall swept over the ridge, he watched the fire he had lit consume the cottage hungrily. He watched the spars glow red; he heard the roofbeams beginning to crack; and he listened for the screams of the devil inside, but they never came. Thirty-seven years, and yet I cling to it still.

 

As one of the roofbeams finally splintered from the heat, it collapsed inwards with a surge of heat and cinders. As Saurizyr whickered nervously, Villorik raised a forearm to guard from stray embers, and glanced over his shoulder at the two other horses that stood on the ridge with him. On one sat his adjutant Rhys, his platemail agleam in the firelight, and the grey-black tassels of House Ruthern flapping from the shaft of his lance. A woman was unceremoniously lumped across the back of Rhys’ horse, her wrists and ankles shackled together, but where other women wore ornaments in their hair, the white locks of Sermi were crowned with the stubs of demonic horns. She only watched the burning cottage with wide-eyed disbelief.

 

Villorik spared her a lingering look. She, too, was a Devil, and one that had been his enemy for no small amount of time. …but no longer, I think. Not after today.

 

The third horse ferried only children - one a bastard-born prince with a sneer cold enough to freeze water, and the other a girl who cradled a rock the size of her head in her lap. At the sight of the prince, Villorik instinctively felt the dull pain of a sword-scar on his left cheek - a token of his duel with Andrey’s father for the very sin of siring the boy. Villorik spared them as much assurance in a glance as he could, though he doubted it counted for much; a chill jolted through him, and he burst into a fit of coughs.

 

Light-shunned potion, he cursed to himself as he sagged against Saurizyr’s neck for support. It was not the smoke that made his lungs heave nor his skin crawl, but the effects of Abyssal Blight - a gift from Laelia.

 

He glared into the flames as smoke enwreathed the burning cottage. It was here that he and Rhys had tracked that devil to, and here they confronted her; though she now hid in the basement from the fire, she had not done so before setting off that infernal concoction. Though the smoke stung his eyes, Villorik could picture her red eyes and horns, like full lips on a bloodless face, vividly.

 

He remembered that face from his brother’s castle of Morteskvan, when she had been imprisoned and begged for salvation so that she might leave in peace with her sister, Deia. He remembered that face when he felt his heart twinge at her words, and the relief when he allowed himself to be convinced … and he remembered that face when he had returned to Morteskvan, hours later, to find the healer Ilaria cradling the bloodied corpse of Deia after Leila had stabbed her and fled.

 

Laelia had stabbed another, too - the one soul that Villorik would not see harmed.

 

A cold fury blazed in Villorik’s eyes as he scowled at the fire. It burned on and on, roofbeams and thatch collapsing, but still he heard no screams from Laelia in the basement. It matters not, he reminded himself, if she flees judgement once more - if she survives another pyre. He and Rhys had tracked her here, in the depths of the wilderness, and he knew they would find her again.

 

Wherever she hides, he vowed as his glaring eyes teared from the smoke, I will find her with fire. His gloves creaked as he tightened his grip on Saurizyr’s reins for some vain support as the Blighted coughs wracked his throat again. For thirty-seven years, that stupid promise he had made to his mother had held him on his path - to serve the Light, and fight the Shadow.

 

Old as he was now, he knew the words from his childhood were vanity. No matter how well he served the Church, the Light would not answer any prayers to bring his long-dead family back from the grave. And yet … It drove him all the same. That was why he would light the next pyre, and the one after that, and however many more it took. Not just for Laelia, but every servant of the Shadow, for every harbinger of suffering.

 

Villorik was too far down his path to stop now, but he had no desire to abandon it nonetheless. He had seen a great deal of suffering and evil alike in those thirty-seven years; he had seen those like Sermi and Laelia, broken by their service to the Shadow; he had seen depraved vampyres like Florian, bargain with children to save their lives; and he had seen the twisted spires of the Hexicanum cast its shadows across Nor-Velyth. For a time, he had obsessed in the hunt - in finding Shadowspawn, and laying them to rest. It had been a lonely mantle, but he had expected that - he had accepted that.

 

And yet … somewhere along the way, that had changed.

 

Now, his grim memories were infused with different faces. He could picture the wide-eyed eagerness of Tatiyana and Siegmund as they sought tutelage from him, of all people; he could still hear Marian call him a ‘friend’; and he there was even a soul he felt true love for - not for her body nor blood, but for her heart.

 

And she was almost slain by a Shadowspawn. Villorik’s eyes narrowed to near slits at the razed cottage. By Laelia.

 

And so that was why it mattered not to him whether she died in this fire, or not. Whether it was her or another, there would always be another Shadowspawn to burn.

 

“Rhys,” he managed through his Blighted throat and the roar of the flames, “let us be done with this place. I have no intention to die here.”

 

Rhys acknowledged him with a creak of metal as he nodded, and flicked the reins of his mount. “Hup!” Sermi let out a startled grunt as the horse moved beneath her, and the children, too, began to guide their mount down the slope with youthful concern painting their expressions.

 

As he guided Saurizyr around, he spared one last look for the burning house. It was completely consumed by the inferno, now; the encroaching night was kept entirely at bay. He only looked for a moment - it mattered little, now. He shoulders his halberd, and spurred Saurizyr into a canter behind Rhys and Andrey.

 

It did not matter how many pyres it took for Villorik to walk his path.

 

A dozen.

 

A hundred.

 

A thousand.

 

[ContestedSnow 778]

Viktor recalled the words he had shared with Villorik, and with that elf healer as well, as he peered out over the northern reaches of the Kareninas from the high walls of Morteskvam. He wondered... had he said the right things to his brother? He'd hardly said anything at all, now he came to think of it again. Had anything he did say had any worth to that man? He had never been one for advice, nor the philosophies that his brother had spent decades pondering. Though he had long held his siblings dear, he knew only his own experiences, of bloodshed, back-stabbing, politics, violence. When they had been robbed of Elizaveta, he had been so sure such would only be his own cross to bear, and he'd sworn so to himself. It was not to be. Still.

 

He was sure Villorik had greater aspirations than anything he might offer. And still... perhaps he should have said more. Perhaps he should now.

 

"Ea've still the time, surely."

 

His olive eyes, shadowed as they were, sunken and set on an increasingly gaunt face as the years wore on, surveyed the far reaches, and he thought for a moment that he spied distant wisps of smoke catching the updrafts in the far, far distance.

Edited March 9 by ContestedSnow

[sarahbarah 5021]

With prayer beads wrapped tight about her knuckles, Amaya prayed.

For Villorik, and for the people of Haense. 

 

The fight was only just beginning, and the Queen was eager to pick up her blade again - one last time.

No deed would go unpunished.

[UnBaed 8953]

A lavender elf wracked with fatigue, and with her sleeves stained with blood, stared out into the windswept snowfields that the Ruthern Hold loomed over.  Villorik had just rode off, in search of Laelia; leaving her alone with that poor woman who had been mere inches from Sokar's embrace.  Only a miracle had stabilized her.

 

She stood as quiet as a forest would after having been ravaged by a merciless storm; left in the wake of grief and turmoil.  All she could do was reflect.  The chill of the air hardly disturbed her anymore, for something greater had left her numb.

 

"If you would have let me strike her, there would be no more of this matter.  Both lives could have been saved," uttered something within.

 

"She is lost; to strike at her would kill any chance at hope!  She would only be scarred," uttered something else within.

 

Ilaria closed her eyes and relinquished a heavy sigh.  She was silent.

[Mady 3037]

 

Overlooking the Haense square, the Ruthern heiress would be forced to quietly swallow the building anxiety which welled within her small frame, the events of recent months still etched within her youthful mind as she went over then repeatedly to herself, not yet able to sleep. The bright flames enveloping the cabin upon the mountain and the sickening thud of her great uncle falling off his horse seemed to ring throughout her mind day in and day out. What could a girl as young as she do in circumstances such as this? Could she wash away the stain of blood upon her castle's walls? Or could she cure the guardian she so admired from his illness? 

 

"No."

 

That was the answer Tatiyana has to face herself as she grew to analyse the world around her - its cruelty and darkest sides. That evening, the young Ruthern girl would sleep unsoundly, the sickly noises of the world bouncing within her skull as her vision of rose coloured lands soon dissipated into a bleak and dreary reality. 

[ivery 106]

It had all happened so fast. An innocent chance meeting on the street that turned an especially merry day into a nightmare. In her heart, Deia knew it had begun long before that- from the moment her precious sister was taken from the field of flowers- but she'd so firmly believed there was a chance at happiness. A chance for everything to return to what it was, and simply be, forever-lasting.

 

Now, sitting in the clinic bed alone, long after everyone else had gone to sleep, there's a hollow feeling in her chest where she'd poured it out. A slow trickle in the garden, years ago, a steady stream in the low light of the Basilica, and finally the waterfall that soaked Ruthern's keep in blood. What could she have changed, for a different outcome? Should she have trusted less, or said more? As she lay awake, staring at the ceiling, she has no answers- only those last words echoing in her ears.

 

She glances to the side at last, through the lattice at the man sleeping in the next cot.

 

("My darling sister. I will not let the wolves take you for his sins," Laelia whispered, and sealed the promise in blood.)

 

With a dour frown, she rolls over to face the wall instead.

[Karina 412]

Villorik had always been a clever hunter. Someone worth respecting. Truthfully, Sermi envied him. He took the path she could not. He was proof that her life could have turned out differently. That in some world, somewhere else; perhaps she could have been the ‘good’ she so desperately wished she was.
 

She remembered the hand on her shoulder. Offering herself as bait, to draw the woman she once cared so deeply for, out of hiding. The threat of finality sent adrenaline through her veins. Bound, if either the Cardinal or Rhys truly did wish; it would have been as simple as a knife to the throat.
 

That would have been a good death. Nothing she could have done, really. There was honor in losing to someone so skilled at their craft. Instead, grief laced her words. She screamed hoarsely, hoping that the Devil downstairs would have heard.
 

"Why? Why?"
 

Sermi didn’t find the answer in the burning wreckage of that house. She didn’t find it, standing next to Deias bedside. All the sacrifice, and in the moment she truly needed her; the Devil wasn’t there. The failure would haunt her, for some time, certainly. Yet, there was some relief as much as sadness. Beyond everything else, she had once more been denied that destined death.

She had convinced even herself that, perhaps, there was still a speck of good in her heart. Her thoughts trailed back to wheat fields.

Ash had long choked any hope of growing grain, it sat thick on the ground of her mind. Eschew the doubt, there was a long road ahead, she thought. Sermi had promised to burn the world to ash, if only that she might offer the spoils to those she loved. The Devil had promised herself that she would never be as helpless as she once was.

When Rhys freed her from bindings, surprise settled in the back of her mind. Someday, they both would regret this moment. Her betrayal would be even more complete than Laelias had been. Someday, she would slip that blade into the Cardinals throat. All she could offer for all her respect was only a quick, meaningful death. But that day was not today. They had a Hunt to attend to, and the smell of blood never sat uneasily in her mind. This was what she was made for.

It didn’t matter how many pyres she’d have to escape from to walk her path.
 

A dozen.
 

A hundred.
 

A thousand.