29 Vhalar 722
Early Morning
Continued from these events.
Tristane watched the light break out over the plains outside the city. His breath blew from his lips and nose in airy wisps of vivid vapor rising toward the sky. His skin beneath his layers of clothing prickled but not with cold. Bright blue eyes, now dead, watched the rays of sunlight grow in intensity as the bright spheres climbed the horizon. All was so eerily silent. Perfectly, peacefully, preferably...still.
He knew this land well. When he was a younger man, before the responsibilities of politics, soldiering, and family business became his, he frequented this wilderness often. Game stalked through these lands hungry for the scraps farmers left unprotected in their fields. He hunted plains just like this one with his father and his brother Benjamin. His sister Quinnley never liked the killing but she enjoyed the fruits of their labor: the hearty meals and gifts of fur. He took a deep breath of this place and was reminded of arcs long passed when his family was still whole.
Father. Mother. Brother. Sister.
Wife.
All gone now.
Only Tristane remained. He roused himself slowly from his seat on the small stool he'd brought here with him. The horse he'd ridden so far out this way he'd shooed when it was still twilight. The chilling shadow of the tall, looming tree hung over him. He gave its rough trunk a pat and moved his attention to the plains. He allowed himself another moment of pause. Then he set to task.
He moved his stool away from the base of the tree and threw his tied rope around the strong branch looming above. The Dorrick man got up on his stool with two firm feet. His rough hands worked a new knot, one he'd never tied before, and dropped his head through the slack. He swallowed against the scratchy twine. Then he tightened it, a fashionable tie that complimented his fit clothing.
His breath shuddered. He twisted his wedding band around on his ring finger and his chest caved all over again. His mind raced toward what he'd lost: family, wealth, future. It was all gone now. Even his dignity.
He hadn't known Yin was still at the cottage when fate came for him, refusing to heed his orders and commands as she had so many times before. He was a man and he let fate take his woman while he rode away an unwitting coward.
He found her, beaten and slain, on the floor beside the bed they'd shared in a home they vacationed to. He could see her brutalized death mask with more clarity than the way he wished to remember her. Long, elegantly straight black hair...marred with blood. Intelligent brown eyes...swollen and dulled with death. He closed his eyes and tried to see her in a more favorable light but he could not.
Tristane fought the wetness that came to his eyes. He opened them, staring upward and pressing his lips into a hard line. He exhaled a shaky breath and shifted his chin under the noose he wore. There was only one thing left to do.
It was nearly afternoon when Maxine emerged from the light wood to the plain. She stood some yards away, watching the Dorrick man his post on the stool with the rope necklace at the wait. She raised a brow and silently watched. After a few moment she saw him shudder but the man did not dare take the fateful, final step he'd come here to take. When Maxine's cruel laugh barked he nearly jumped by mistake.
"You can't do it, can you?" Maxine observed darkly.
Tristane stared at her, bewildered and eyes wide. His cheeks flushed.
"That is it, isn't it?"
The Rusalka wandered closer so that Tristane could see her standing at his flank. A sword hung in his waist but he did not draw it. He swallowed hard and though his temper flared in his eyes, he adverted his stare.
"I'm working up to it," the surviving Dorrick corrected, clearing his throat. "Just enjoying a final sunrise that's all."
"Sun's risen."
"I see that."
"How long you gonna stand there until you give up?"
"Why? You plan on waiting so you can gloat?"
"Pretty much."
"What do you care if I take some more time? Jealous a notch on your belt will be stolen by some string?"
"I've got a notch for every branch on your family tree I've snapped off. You think I give a shit if you do my dirty work?"
His hands snapped to his sword. His seething expression found her, nostrils flaring while she regarded him coolly. Her arms crossed her chest. He let his anger pass and his arm dropped limp back to his side. Tristane moved his toes closer to the edge of the stool.
"Please. Feel free to prove me wrong, but you're not gonna do it. Don't blame my company either. You never were."
"Will you shut up?"
Max smirked and made a gesture of sealing her lips. Then she beckoned him to go about his business, falling silent with an expectant expression. Tristane huffed. He looked out at the plain again, away from the wretch he blamed for all his misfortunes but had given up taking the sword against. His fingers played with his wedding ring again, a readying ritual. Then his feet moved...
And with wide eyes and panic, he shifted back before the noose tightened. The stool tipped back and forth before he managed to balance it firmly back down on the ground. His chest heaved, hands gripping the rope and neck craning away from its threat. Sweat beaded his forehead.
"Your ego is too fucking big, Tristane," Maxine said with a shrug. "You love yourself too much to kill yourself. Even with nothing. Your shame, your guilt, and your sense of worthlessness are worse than your death and you'll still suffer before you do it."
"Rich," Tristane spat when he regathered himself. "Coming from a junkie addict always playing on the brink."
"Different fruit, same poisonous tree."
"You killed my life. You going to draw your sword now or what? Do what I can't?"
"I didn't know what exactly I was going to do when I found you. Fight you and kill you, probably. This? This I didn't expect."
"So?"
"Now that I see you as you are I see another way. A curse given to me that I should pass on to you."
"You're no Immortal to pass your blight upon me."
"No, it's a different kind of curse. You're too proud and vain to die by your own hand, but the suffering that remains for you in this life is worse than the end death promises. I shouldn't save you from it. All of this is your own doing, and you deserve to suffer it."
Max turned from the man and wandered from his peripheral back toward the way she came. What little dark hope Tristane had left vanished with her departure. He hung his head in the noose and his shoulders began to quiver. A deep despair made a home in his empty core, and the heaviness of it all began to crush him. Only a selfish flicker of relief remained from the moment he chose not to step off the stool. Somehow he loathed himself his cowardice all the same. Maybe there was something from this terrible ash that was his life that could be salvaged.
Maybe...
His thoughts were cut off with the tightening of the noose the moment the stool was kicked violently out from under him. Tristane flailed in the hold of the necklace he tied, twisting, pawing at the rope for reprieve, his head coloring red and then purple while he asphyxiated. Maxine stood just out of his range behind him. When his fighting spun him around to lay eyes on her, she stared back with a set jaw.
"I wanted to do different this time," Maxine admitted coldly. "I shouldn't spare you but...you hurt her." The flailing started to die in intensity. Maxine took another step closer while he choked. "And I've seen you. I know you. You'll just come after her..."
Whatever response he had to that was inaudible. His head nearly popped with the bulging of veins and reddening of his eyes. She took his hand but only to yank the wedding band off his finger. Max turned from him then and truly left him to his lonely demise.
"Goodbye, Tristane Dorrick..."
-------------------------
"Goodness!" the slick stranger Maxine hadn't seen since Ashan exclaimed, leaning back in his seat at a table in the tavern.
"Goodness?" the Rusalka raised a brow. "Really? Goodness?"
"You came in in quite a flurry. I hardly remembered who you were, and I had half a mind to pull my dagger or call someone else to do the same."
"It's done."
"What's done?"
Maxine pitched Tristane's wedding band onto the table between them. The stranger frowned his suspicion but gingerly plucked it up. He leaned forward, pinching it between his fingers in the low light provided by the candle between them. As he rotated the ring, noticing the inscription inside, his jaw loosened.
"Onyx."
"Now wait just a moment..."
"You had a Dorrick problem. It's very completely solved. You said there was a reward in Onyx."
"You...Who are you?"
"Onyx."
"I'm sorry," the stranger shook his head incredulously, leaned back and staring at the ring he now possessed. "I deeply underestimated you, I'm afraid."
"Praise is nice. Reward is better."
"It's a shame. I would've liked to see her smolder when my installment succeeded instead of hers..."
"Yeah, yeah, back to...wait, what?" Maxine turned her head, regarding this stranger in a new light. Then she sprung up from her seat. Her dagger was halfway pulled from its sheath when the stranger made a calming gesture.
"Easy. It's a rather public place, wouldn't you say? More eyes to see and race outside into broad daylight and busy streets before you can do the deed. Sit down."
Compelled not by a curse, for the sun was still in the sky, Maxine eased down into the seat out of curiosity. The stranger raised two fingers and a bar maid swiftly brought an ale for each of them. He paid her in kind, a smile and a drink his hope of sating the seething killer across from him.
"You're one of them."
"A Guardian? Yes."
"You undermined your own people. Why?"
"Oh, don't throw a fit. I meant most of what I said about the Dorricks and all their dastardly deeds and lies are anything but fiction. I would know, wouldn't I? Anyways, I disagreed with him as our choice. I saw his flaws and I knew Yin for what she was. This was merely a large chess game and Yin was moving too quickly to checkmate for my liking. The position in this city and our organization she would've won was meant for me. I'm more fit. She just had more support."
"You played me..."
"Don't take it so personally. You've done this city a great service. Don't diminish the astonishing fruits of your labor! Your misplaced thinking may paint the Guardians the villain of your story, but that thinking is shallow. Even if it were true, I am the lesser of the two evils. My choice will do what Tristane was never capable of, all of them will see. I do regret the deaths of my own peers. Shrewd, but I admired Yin in many ways."
"You're no different."
"That may be so. The problem is, the Guardians are like a snake with many heads. Cut off Yin's, and now I take my rightful seat at the head of the table. Cut off mine...well...who knows what devil you'll get to take my place. Ideology is immortal. There are people like us everywhere, and there will be more that emerge in our place long after we're dead, dissolved, and forgotten. It's just the nature of things."
The ale from Maxine's cup sopped all over the stranger's front. He paused, wiping the liquid from his face with his hand and observing how wet the front of him now was. The scent of cheap ale was nauseating. Max was up before he could say a word. She stormed out of the tavern, penniless and disenchanted, head swimming while she retreated into the daylight that remained.
Battling dangerous corruption in politics, dismantling an entire family and their wealth, and all the deaths and killings justified and unjustified in the name of saving another Council or unwitting society...was all a lie. Again she was manipulated. Again, she was not any whisper of a hero but a villain like all the rest. Another more clever and conniving than she was had risen in rank upon her bloody labor. The ripple effect of what she'd been doing and the devastation it caused was...
All.
For.
Nothing.
--------------------
"Max!"
The Rusalka shifted the bag on her shoulder but her feet kept walking.
"Max!"
The foot steps behind her picked up in pace and urgency.
"Maxine!"
She felt the hand on her shoulder and the tug that followed. She stopped her trudging and allowed herself to be spun in place. Sabrina searched her eyes and shook her head.
"So that's it?" the dancer asked incredulously. "You're leaving? Just like that?"
"I can't stay here," Max sighed. Flames from the torches lining the walls flickered across her face. "I have to go."
"After all that? Everything we've been through. Everything you put us through, you're just walking away?"
"You know it's not like that."
"It sure looks that way!"
"Well it ain't."
The Rusalka moved to turn back around and Sabrina gave her a hard-earned shove. Max stumbled forward but didn't let it prevent her from falling back into her sleuth toward the outside world above the Etzori underground. The dancer would give her no quarter.
"Why?!" The hurt in Sabrina's words echoed in the tunnels and especially in Maxine's ears. "Tell me why."
"You know why, Brina. We talked about it all night. I don't know what more there is to say. I told you a whole fucking lot. It should make perfect sense why I gotta go, and you should let me."
"Change your mind. Just come back. We can talk some more!"
"Time for talking is over, Brina. I have a ship waiting."
Maxine adjusted the bag again and started further down the tunnel. She could feel the energy building in the space behind her. Each step she took, steps taking her further from the place a selfish part of her wanted to be, put weights in her feet. She sniffed and steeled her eyes on the way out.
"Just say it, Max!"
"For fuck's sake! Say what?! Huh?" Max dropped the bag, turned around, and threw up her arms. "What the fuck do you want me to say, Sabrina?"
"I know you, Maxine! Don't you dare play the fool with me!"
"I'm not doing this with you..."
"You could stay here, be with me, and instead you're..."
"Getting out of this shit city?"
"...Going off to die!"
Maxine's face fell at that accusation. The dancer caught the moment of weakness and seized it. She wandered closer and took both of the Rusalka's hands, her piercing blue eyes held the woman's with ease.
"I know you feel like you have to. You don't. You can just stay. Forget all of it, everything you told me. Fuck Etzos, too. We can go anywhere, clean slate somewhere else."
"I can’t! Look at us! Look where we are! I’m just as bad for you as you are bad for me, that’s a fact. It sucks but it’s just how it is. I thought coming here was going to be my fresh start, and it wasn’t. It’s just been more of the same vicious cycle. I haven’t changed. Me staying here won’t be good for anybody.”
"Its over! They’re gone and dead. You can try again!”
"There will always be another.”
"Your alternative is what? Becoming some sort of sick idea of a martyr?”
"Brina..."
"Call a spade a spade, Max.”
"I’m not walking off to die like some sick dog.”
"Enough with the lying for the both of us. It’s exactly what you’re doing. If even half of what you told me was true, what else are you expecting?”
"I never expected you to understand.”
"How could you ever ask me to understand this? To just let you go?”
"I’m expecting you to because I’m asking you to. For me. I want this. I need this!”
"Just think--."
"Stop."
"You'd rather march to your death than be with me?!"
"It's okay." She dropped the woman's hands in favor of the bag. She hoisted it over her shoulder, and a hand reached out to brush the hair from the dancer's face. "Thank you."
Sabrina didn't fight her anymore. She let her hands fall to her sides, watched Max don her bag and glance toward the dark to never be seen by her again. Her mind instantly began its stupid racing. She knew when she danced tonight her blue eyes would overlook the captivated crowd, searching for a constant that would no longer be in the audience or waiting up for her.
"Fuck."
The whispered curse wasn't one to be thrown. The dancer turned from Max, a hand over her mouth while she reined in her own mind and willed her expression into stoicism. Max heard it, felt the same sadness that radiated from two twisted people who shared more toxic baggage now than they ever did affection. She hadn't wanted to be the reason for any more pain though. Each step toward the future, this future, was intended to avoid that. She had caused enough. But still...she couldn't help herself.
"Sabrina?"
The dancer looked up, lowering the hand from her face. Even in the flickering light Maxine could still see the glimmer in the woman's eyes she'd been trying to hide. Wrong as it might've been, she imposed upon Sabrina the Hand of Truth when she spoke her words.
"Did you ever love me?"
Tears flowed freely now from Sabrina's eyes. She took a moment to wipe them with the backs of her hands. After a couple blinks she settled on Maxine again and nodded, smiling softly.
"Of course I did."
Maxine caught the involuntary, telltale twitch of Sabrina's dominant hand at her side. Her head hung toward the floor for a moment. When she looked back up at the dancer, she offered her a genuine, kind smile before walking away from her likely forever.
"Take care of yourself, Sabrina..."