Etherist… Becomer… Monster.
Hands trembled, long and slow scratches to her battered neck, and Llyr tried to remember all her studies. The brief whirlwinds of text and information, of lectures given by the never-ending stamina of Lucretia - the very woman whose body he now wore in totem form - and of her warnings about flaying. She’d spent nearly an entire trial on the topic, and by the end, she seemed disappointed in the young mage though why…
…Zarik hadn’t understood till now. He hadn’t listened, not really, not enough to draw on those warnings in a meaningful way.
Instead, he heard the hunger. Not as quiet as he would’ve liked, but still bone-gnawingly there. Present in his marrow and blood and very soul. His sparks were starving. They needed ether. They would die without it! He would die without it! He would die without it! Nothing felt more certain. It felt so obvious, nothing could be truer than a mage needed ether and he was a mage and he’d gone for nearly sixty trials without. Or whatever! However long it’d been. He’d lost track. The little bit of ether he’d stolen from the spiders, and from Duncan, in Westguard hadn’t been the same, those hadn’t been souls, but he had the strongest inclination that a soul would be so much more fulfilling than those weak attempts.
How could he dare to deny his spark of Transmutation?
The spark he’d allowed into his soul for one reason and one reason only: Power.
He’d driven himself alongside the spark, driven himself to the point of exhaustion and then beyond again and again, tirelessly worked in service to the mere idea of power. Of strength. Of no longer being pushed around and kicked down. No longer shouted at or spit on. To command respect. To demand loyalty. To become something other than the squeaking and scrounging filthy rat that his father preferred him as. He had seen what magic could do, beyond neat little tricks and parlor games, he had seen the sheer destruction and the vast difference between a meager sword and a single spell. As much as he felt himself crushed under the grimy bootheel of civilization, Zarik had always found scraps of hope in his heart. When he’d seen magic, truly saw it for what it could do, he recklessly hurried into it like he did most things.
Reckless… his teacher in Emea had called him that, more than once. Nothing truer probably had ever been said about the young mage. He was exorbitantly reckless. But he was still alive. And he had sparks that demanded to be fed.
How could he dare?
Because Zarik Ki’Enaq never did anything but dare.
But if yeh do… we’re done.
The Etzori’s words flooded over him, and he barely heard them. Stuck in the weak and trembling body that was not his own, feeling things that were not his own, the rush of blood in veins even felt detached and separate from his own mind and from his spark-laden soul. Part of him wanted to rip away his skin, if only so he could figure out if he was even still himself anymore. Too many trials, too long… he didn’t want to be in any body but his own.
Llyr scratched, nails scraped over tender and inflamed skin, broken open under how fierce her scratches had gotten. Her wide and hungry eyes, filled with flashes of green and gray and blue and all manner of natural colors found in a lakeside forest, darted between Kasoria and the dead man who wasn’t dead yet.
He would be though. He’d be dead soon enough.
If not by her hand, then… she glanced at the dagger. Kasoria’s fingers flexed around it. She bit at her scabbed lower lip, the blood welling fresh again. A silver streak trickled down the center of her chin. The biqaj didn’t seem to even notice or make an effort to stem the tide of lost life force.
Through the haze of ether-starvation, she could hear the shorter man’s anger. Barely restrained… but the young mage knew the fury of a man. Better than most things. She stared at her hired sword, eyes locked no matter her hunger, and she looked the very picture of a mangy wolf pup standing proud against an old pack master.
“You… looked for your Spark, and found it?” she retorted, voice icy as the coldest Cylus day and dark as it too. Whatever might’ve come after that, she got deterred and put off-guard by his next comment though.
“Why dint youse tell me y’still couldn’t use yers?”
Her breath caught in her chest. She hadn’t? She hadn’t… shit. A torrent of realization hit her in that simple question; she’d lost track of what she had said or hadn’t said. She didn’t know where she landed anymore. What lies she’d given or what truths she’d held back. A bad place for someone who depended on the precise placement of their words and another’s perception. Any control she thought she still had, rushed away, as if turned to sand and then water in her hands and through the spaces between her fingers.
“I…” she stammered. The worst of it was that she felt as if she wanted to apologize. But why? Why would she? Kasoria was the initiate. He was the hired sword. Sure, he was older, but age never meant anything to the impoverished torturer’s son. Not in that way. Masters didn’t have to explain themselves, employers didn’t have to apologize, and… youth… youth meant that there was more ahead in the future for Llyr than for Kasoria. That’s all it ever meant. More time to spend, if one didn’t squander it by getting killed. Hazel crossed Llyr’s mind, for a glimmer of a thought.
Beckoned, she could do little else but follow the motion when Kasoria brought her to a corpse. Her mind reeled, still caught in the spiraled loss of presumed control and reasoning and the hunger - the hunger didn’t abate. It only grew stronger.
Kasoria was… he was making a deal? An… ultimatum? About this?
Dizzy, Llyr ran her long fingers through her dark hair. A dry-throated laugh wheezed from her when Kasoria kicked over the husked corpse. Did he think the macabre display would put her off from it? Did he think she cared? She surveyed his face through the night, and noticed the taut furious lines in the weathered face…
...even if she didn’t, Kasoria cared.
After the little speech, was it a warning? Was it… what was it? A request? It wasn’t mere information. It was meant to persuade? If the sight of the corpse wouldn’t do it, then the threat of lost control… but what control did Llyr have anymore? For all the young mage knew, they’d arrive in Etzos and for her married connections, she’d be tossed in a prison cell - even that one, what had he called it? The Forgotten? Everything, all of the travels, could have been for nothing but that, to lose her adopted daughter to plague and then be tossed away to rot.
Llyr’s teeth chattered then. She shivered. Her scratches went to her wrists, though her scars were not present in this totem, she scratched as if they were - as if she were still in her natural born body. Kasoria’s comments weren’t terrible, nor awful, nor far from the mark but… he didn’t understand, it was obvious, that Llyr couldn’t distinctly tell who me was anymore and no flaying required for that loss of control, only a dash of involuntarily extended Becomer magic.
Silence, then. She gritted her teeth to keep them from audibly clacking in her shivers. The trembling had little to do with cold, though most of her upper body was bare without her shawl. Her gaze flicked to the coat, then the purse, when Kasoria tossed it on the ground between them. Next to Caw. That woke the biqaj some from her cold reveries. Coin had that way about it.
Could she make it to Etzos Prime without him?
She could see the lights of battle in the distance, a general direction to head toward… Could leave the others behind. Could take a horse. Just as likely I’ll be able to squirm into something upon arrival, as much as getting tossed away. Wouldn’t have to worry about anyone but myself then. Have I ever gotten to do that? Ever?
Kasoria was talking again… talking more than he usually did…
“…girl… Don’t be stupid now. Find yer Spark, yer own way. Cuz once y’start flayin’, road only ends on-”
“What do you know?” She snapped in a high-pitched shout, not even letting him finish the statement. “Find my spark?! FIND IT? Do you think I haven’t been trying? Do you think I have been simply sitting about, happy to let my magic wither while this land and your people suffer around me? You think I was praying, splitting my skin open, for good health and fortune like some daft little bitch? What do you take me for, old man?”
Llyr picked up the purse of coins and squeezed the contents between both her hands. She continued in a shrill way, uncaring for Caw, uncaring for Duncan, uncaring for Oceta, or anyone else that might’ve heard her outburst. Her accents blended, both of Lucretia’s Rynmerian dialect and yet, Zarik’s southern accent started to break through.
“You don’t know anything about me! I don’t give a shit about these corpses. Oh yes, alert the heralds, people fucking die! They get their throats slit and hearts punctured and limbs cracked and guts hung up and brains splattered and flesh skinned and heads torn off and those are the lucky ones! You think I care about some drained out dead folk? Why!? Why is a blade any different than a flay? I’ve seen what it can do, blades can make a man as mad, maybe even madder.”
“Look at yourself!” She threw the bag of coins at Kasoria, directly aimed at his chest. “And I’m not. A. Fucking. Girl!”
Llyr looked about to cry. Her black-eyes shone wet in the moonlight, but nothing fell. Her freckled face had flushed with the color of anger. She wiped the back of her hand over her blood-dripped chin. Her eyes narrowed into shadowed slits, then she let out an anguished wordless cry. She kicked violently at Caw. Her bootsole made impact with the inebriated man's nose and the bone cracked underneath.
Kasoria had prepared to bear witness… but perhaps not to this.
The young mage didn’t stop with the one kick.
Caw had fallen backward, injured and weary, but tried to get onto his side. Llyr kicked at his shoulders, to force him on his back, then stomped her boot heel into his cheek, his eye, his face, his skull, his brain. Stomped and stomped with all her might until the crimson blood of human coated her boot.
She turned a furious look onto Kasoria and snarled, “There.”
Her arms outstretched, as if to present a banquet spread, palms faced upward. She said, “No flaying! May his soul rest in peace!”
She spat on the dead Etzori’s ruined face.
And then there was a moment, a trill after, in which the young mage stepped backward. The anger drained out of her entirely. Her face went pale. She grimaced, then whispered in a quiet low voice, “You don’t know anything about me.”
The biqaj turned on heel, and strode away with long swift steps. Her skirt fluttered around her knees. She ignored Oceta, and especially Duncan… as much as she could, though she could feel his uncertain gaze survey her. Llyr walked away from the camp, just to get away, she didn’t know where to go… but she only wanted to get far enough until she didn’t have to look at any of them. Until she could feel alone again.
Zarik just wanted to be left alone.
