Sealed in Silence [fic]
Jun. 30th, 2014 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morriganfearnTitle: Sealed in Silence
Series: Pre-Game Elibe, (FE6/7)
Characters: Bramimond, Roland, Durban, Hanon, Athos, Hartmut, Elimine, Barigan
Pairing: Bramimond/All (asexual, but romantic)
Rating: T
Word count: 7,825
Summary: Bramimond has been walking through the void for longer than they can remember. Probably not before the war began, but certainly for a long time. These are the friends they love and remember.
Prompt: FE7, Bramimond -- Their descent into losing themselves
Warnings: Mention of genocide (of dragons on Valor), not Hasha compliant in the slightest
The first step is taken when a hand reaches out, to help a shaman stand from his seat on the verge of the road. A hood falls off, and several people in the party cry out.
“His eyes!”
“Roland, careful! Even here—he might be a sympathizer.”
“Stars bless us, is that possible? His eyes—has his soul been consumed, Athos?”
“I'm not the right person to ask on matters of the soul, but elder magic leaves other marks than onyx eyeballs. For all we know, those might be—”
“I believe I lost their proper colors due to a spell,” he says, still feeling the palm in his own, ungloved, and he can feel all of the lines and rough areas, and the hand is warm, whispering of a bright flame of compassion and love inside the compact body of flash and bone. “I don't really remember any more. It was a long time ago. But they function perfectly well.”
“Glad to hear it,” and the smile is as dazzling as the sincerity that echoes from this stranger. “Would you like to talk lunch with us? The party was planning on stopping anyway.”
He knew he would take any invitation this hand and that person offered. “Thank you. I am Bramimond.”
“I am Roland, of the New Human Kingdom of Lycia. Well, compared to dragonlands, I guess it's not really a kingdom. It's more like a single village too close to the mountains to be seen from the air, but it's a proud territory.”
“I am honored.” It feels like the right thing to say.
Hanon sights along her bow at the patrol wing flying high in the starlands. Bramimond always wonders why she does that, even though the wings are inevitably too high and far away to hit, even if the arrow could hurt them.
Hanon sings of earth and awareness. Her mind is always awake and roaming among the dreams of the earth that come through the cracks. He finds standing next to her at times to be a little trying, because she is a dream person and he thinks knows more about him, from the secrets that the dreams have whispered to her, than anyone else in the party. It is like hearing an echo of himself, when she thinks about him, and he would rather not be thought of at all.
“They can drop out of the sky, you know. Come in fast and snatch a horse from the middle of the herd,” Hanon says matter of factly, keeping her bow trained of flashes and sparks in the distance. “But if you keep your bow focused, you can hurt them. I took out a young one's eye once.”
“Did it really hurt him?”
“Wounding and maiming may be all we can do. But it's something at least,” Hanon is the voice of the sky, determination and courage. “I would rather kill cleanly. It is horrible to take something so ancient with all of that knowledge and experience from the world, but that is better than losing all your food and being enslaved to their whims like the mountain people.”
She hears him, and tells him by not telling him, that the echoes they sing together are all right. That is the second step.
Athos studies, constantly. He is what Hanon calls a sympathizer, Bramimond thinks. Maybe he is not. He is obsessed with dragons, certainly. With their destruction, perhaps. With their lives, maybe. Athos feels like energy and silver fish, ideas and thoughts spilling around out of his head. Bramimond has taken to listening to the earth far from his presence, lest he be overwhelmed. In the shadows, Athos is raw power.
The third, damnning step is taken one night when the camp fire is low. Bramiond comes out of his nightly trance to hear Athos and Elimine the Terrifying speaking in hushed tones.
“I can pray, you can study, these brave warriors will fight, but it accomplishes nothing, Athos. We must create something. An idea, a future—I don't know, something. Meanwhile, in any place where dragons believe humans are too prolific, fires burn and people die. One day we will circle back around and probably discover that Roland's precious Lycia is as in need as any of these cities and towns that we find over and over again. These pine forests and grand mountains are lovely, and well protected by the ice dragons here, but the entire world is not as lucky as this little corner.”
“And what would you have us build, Elimine? We can't talk to the dragons. They deem us insignificant. Our needs are less important than the least of their children—why should it be otherwise? We will never have half the experience of the world than their babies get from the hatching to toddling. And none of us are orators, much as Roland is charming, or I am learned, or you are charismatic. That is not how dragons value things.”
A whisper in the vast darkness in the earth.
“You could build something the warriors could use,” Bramimond says, waving a hand at their small party.
Elimine with her sun searing soul turns her attention on him. He feels the fear radiate from within, an echo all across the void of earth. “You heard the suggestion, too, then?”
“Just an echo. That the warriors need something to work with.”
“Weapons,” Athos says slowly. “We could make weapons that kill dragons rather than chip away at them and merely make the dragons angry.”
“There is great sin in spilling blood! The stars weep, even for dragons. They remember when the world was new. That is years of thought swept from this world, just so that mankind may be masterless.”
Athos nods. “It is a serious undertaking. But both you and Bramimond arriving at the same conclusion? I do not believe in fate, but I will take that as a sign from your god to my world, lady prophet.”
“Do not call me that and mock me,” her voice quavers with her love for and exasperation with this man of rapacious greed. Bramimond wants to shut his ears against it, but they both are filling him with energy and thought and feelings to the brim until the bright swirling mass will spill right out of his meager vessel and be collected in the hollows of the earth.
In the courts of the mountain kings, uncaring of the human subjects who tend to their needs, they meet another ally in Barigan's austere mold. Bramimond feels too many echoes from him, and hides under the shelter of a tent in the pouring rain. Usually Roland will come along and jolly him out of the stupor. Bramimond does not tell him that the echo of his purity is as welcome as the terrible jokes about all the great tall fellows and that the normal sized folk must stick together. Around Roland, Bramimond can sometimes feel like a hero.
But he cannot tell the knight with his endless love for all living things and codes of rightness that his soul burns so beautifully. He thinks both Elimine and Athos have realized that Bramimond is never entirely in the physical world. He knows Hanon, who smiles at him and calls his advice the Voice of the Mother, knows how deep he travels into the void of dreams, though he doubts she knows the extent to which he functions even while immersed in the whispers of the universe. The rest of the party should never know how far he is from human. Roland will worry. Barigan will be nervous. Durban will be unpredictable. All the others will fear him.
It is not Roland who finds him huddled under the canvas of a tent, however, but Durban. The massive exile stands outside the tent for a moment, and then beckons. “It's not safe, little witch.”
Nothing about Durban is safe. He can not tell friend from foe, when his soul gathers its great tumultuous way of going about the world, and feeds that whirlwind into pure strikes of power. But he has asked Bramimond to leave the tent, in his own way, and Bramimond will accept the invitation.
They stand on an ugly rocky slope covered in scrubby pines not like the stately northern giants, but twisted and grumpy, as though survival has been a chore, rather than a victory. The rain beats down hard enough to make pebbles dance. Thunder growls overhead, and lightning flares pink white against the black sky.
Durban grins down. “See? That is God Sword. It cuts down the tallest, like the trees, that tent, and anyone who sheltered under them. Not safe. Even for witches.”
Another shattering crack arcs through the sky. Something echoes through Durban. The lightning, the thunder. He spreads his massive arms under the rain, and laughs, his soul reaching through his body, through the dreams of the earth and sky, into the very creations of light and power, where everything is one, and everything is insignificant.
Turning from this revelation given to him in utter innocence by the great berserker, Bramimond rushes head long into the forth step, and the way a dragon slaying weapon must be built.
Elimine has always terrified Bramimond. She is a pillar of light and surety that reaches beyond the void, beyond the heavens, and every day she fills her vessel with more of that pure light. In the end, Bramimond believes she will become a sun. It is Roland magnified a thousand fold, and almost too much for him to bear. If you go to the gods for knowledge, that is one thing. It is quite another to ask the gods to come to you and to receive their blessing.
They work together, now. Athos has set up a work space in this Lycian forge and with all of the materials the have gathered, he shapes metal and creates weapons. Gangling and happy with the work he shouts over the clanging steel that he had been apprenticed to the task before his village burned and he was brought to a dragon's university in reparation.
Elimine and Bramimond stand on the rune diagram they have created. Elimine prays, her soul reaching, touching, trying to become like a spirit herself, despite the flesh that imprisons her. Bramimond seeks inward, wading into the void, trying to find the heart of things and the souls big enough to encompass the insignificance and the glory of all creation. Durban is first, because Bramimond knows the storm is there, waiting to be given shape and form. He stands between them, looking more and more worried, as Elimine chants and sings, while Bramimond sinks into whispers.
Bramimond spread through the void, encompassing the bolt of power that is Durban offering. He has found it. He gives the offering to Elimine's incandescent hands. Athos yells suddenly, jumping back from the forge, his tongs looking a good deal more melty than tongs should. Something is taken shape amid the coals and heat. Bramimond can feel spirits of rage, anguish, joy, and blood thirst all battling among the embers. Athos manages to fish out the implement, and toss it into the cooling bucket with hissing water, and then the air setting rack. He looks at the creation, almost distrustful.
“The steel just folded itself.”
The same thing happens with every viable candidate. Hanon's weapon is the most spectacular, as the arrow arrow heads not only reshape themselves, but the shafts of ash materialize out of the furnace when Bramimond gives the collected soul memory of fields and wind song over to Athos. Elimine and Bramimond stare at each other, and allow Athos to be excited for them. Surely, something is wrong here.
Roland's sword does not go out. There is the ever burning flame at the heart of the earth inside the steel and by the second day of work, Athos has to set the thing in the nearby streambed. Several children are scalded by the water, and the washing women herd the villagers higher up the mountain.
Barigan's spearhead is a wicked thing. The justice of his homeland which he had known and loved has become ashy and bitter in his soul now that he sees what it is to live without ice winged protection. The fire blazing deaths of the riders he was training did not make him cold as Bramimond has always supposed, but woken a spring of sorrow in his heart that gushes forever into the void. With that sharp edge Athos will not need to hone, the spear of ice is also one of grief, and Bramimond begins to have an inkling of the danger these weapons bring into the world with them.
Hartmut, newly come into the circle and not a certain ally, is the last to volunteer. He stands, looking at the woman who convinced him that it was better to help the losers of the war, than continue to serve the indolent masters who had been so good to him. After Barigan, Bramimond thinks he is ready for whatever echoes of betrayal the mountain man has in his soul.
Elimine's voice is scratchy now. Her hymns have filled the world for days, as she asks for guidance in making, and the powers of creation. Bramimond begins to drift, walking towards the echoes, and in that instant he knows he is wrong. Hartmut has the pure fire of Roland, it wraps around that overwhelming lightning Durban knows so well, it sings as high as Hanon's proud windsong, and spills out of him like certain sunlight. But at his heart the void with the well of knowledge that it contains slumbers on vast and eternal, reaching out to touch every spirit that he has ever met, holding in it the capacity for Barigan's grief and Athos' joy in creation. He has all their essence inside him, or they were all one with him, and maybe, stretching back to their first breaths, all of them knew him. Bramimond feels the echoes multiply and knows he is going deeper, deeper, ever deeper, and this manifestation of the void would give him the silence, the peace at the heart of things he has needed for so long.
Sunlight and energy, the essence of creation, stab through him like spears and he is back in a black smith's forge, hearing the echoes of Athos' shouting and rather mystified by the sight of Elimine supporting Hartmut's sagging form.
Two long rods hiss in the cooling bucket, one wide and oddly spikey, one slender. Elimine hustles the downed warrior off to the house of the healer. Athos kneels next to Bramimond, pushing his hood back, and feeling his forehead.
“Can you describe what happened?”
“The—he was made to be part of that magic we have been using. Everything is equal inside of him. Everything is significant. Everything is insignificant. Are you ready to finish fitting all of the weapons together?”
Athos sighed. “I am not sure about the large one Hartmut created. It came out of the fire with mechanized parts.”
“Oh,” Bramimond does not comprehend, and Athos heads over to the bucket to look down at the cooling weapons.
“The smaller blade is not even the right size for him. Goodness knows he's half the size of a baby dragon, and he could probably handle the big one with ease, but this little blade,” he tutted.
“We will make of it what we must, when everything is finished,” Elimine says, entering the forge room. She passes Bramimond a book bound in clean vellum, give Athos a second, and keeps the third. “Magic is still the most potent weapon against dragons. Are you ready?” Her eyes land on Bramimond longest.
But he needs to enter the void again. He needs to find that peace once more. It is not even the greed of knowledge that whispers through the blackness. There in the center, there is calm and silence. So Bramimond takes the fifth step at Elimine's instigation, and begins to write, ink spreading black runes over clean vellum.
When they are done writing their souls' worth onto the pages, Elimine takes the new books somewhere, and Athos begins to affix arrow heads to their ashen shafts, and oil down the bow. Magic dies back for a while, and the forge becomes just a forge.
When the weapons are finished, Elimine looks them over with a critical eye, before turning to Athos. “You have knowledge of dragon magic. Both Bramimond and I are practitioners of human magic. I can tell you what I think, but I wish to hear what you think about these things that we have made.”
Athos looks at the new red cover of the tome. He picks it up, smells the pages, and then ponderously returns it to the array. “There is a price for using these.”
“I thought so, too. Bramimond?”
“They are the manifestations of the excess of our spirits, an excess of anything is dangerous.”
Elimine picked up Roland's warmth radiating blade. “I see consequences in this thing, and in all of these things,” her voice echoes with starshine, but Bramimond is no longer afraid. “Bring everyone in.”
Athos calls their soul bright warriors in, one at a time. It is right that Elimine warns everyone, her voice still raw from the days they have worked, and her eyes shining with the future.
“For you, brave knight. Your love will always be the curse of this blade. It will rush to protect everything you value, and in doing so, it will also be the instrument of destruction.”
“For you, wind talking non-believer. This bow carries your pride, and you are cursed never to have your achievements with this bow recognized as anything but an accident after you are gone.”
“For you, kinkiller, and exile. Your destructive spirit made this axe, and it will bear that destruction upon you. Yours will not be a pleasant end—though I think you accepted that long ago.”
“For you, paladin and shield of the north. This spear is cold and deadly, but its doom lies in the sorrow that created it. If you take this spear, and fight the dragons, it will lead you on a path that will cause you to betray people you hold dear. Regret is etched into this weapon.”
“For you,” Elimine paused, and her expression warred with itself for an instant, before settling, “commander and first human king of the mountain lands, we have made two blades. The golden broadsword is the mark of a ruler. This second one,” she paused, and glanced toward Bramimond, “this is a sword of silence. I cannot see much here, due to its interference, but one day, you will have to choose between these swords.”
She moved on, handing Athos his tome. “You, incorrigible mage, have made a thing of power. You believe your knowledge has given you control over these hellfires, and beware, for that knowledge and control will blind you towards real evil, until it is too late. There is more to mastering your own arrogance than simply controlling magic.”
“And you, the shy, tired stranger who has forgotten more of the war than many of us have seen, you made a weapon that could decimate a city, if you were the one to wield it with intent. I see that you who can bring death, and who wish to be taken into the embrace of final sleep, will outlive us all, because of the weapons we have made.”
“And what about you?” Bramimond asked, nodding at the shining tome by his pious friend's side before Roland could be shocked, or Barigan could try to convince him of the joys of life.
“I have made a weapon of holy light when I should have made a totally different thing. I think it will be far too late, when I realize what I should have done.”
The sixth step does not happen because a group of the war dragons attacked Lycia.
At dawn, Hartmut rouses the others, practically pulling Roland through streets to the wooden stockade protecting the area from human monsters, but little else. The mountain people know dragons, and he squints into the distance before frowning. “War dragons. Twenty of them.”
“Exactly what does that mean? I thought dragons found human forms intolerable for travel,” Hanon asks grimly.
“These things can't maintain dragon forms for long. They're little better than sending a squad of wild wyverns against us. Sir Roland, what defenses are at our disposal?”
Roland peers around the gates. “Can they all breathe fire?”
“Of a kind,” Hartmut replies, shrugging. “They're like, like, dragon copies. Not very good ones. They have very little free will. But they can breathe fire, and fly in dragon form. These ones must be new. The ones at the front transformed more smoothly than the last one I saw. Funny, I was told that their creation is outlawe—”
“But they can breathe fire. We must evacuate everyone. This place could go up like a tinderbox.”
Even with the new weapons, the war dragons are definitely harder to deter than wild wyverns. Wyverns can be chased away with enough pot banging and shouting. By the time the last of the war dragons has been killed, the valley is burning. High in the starlands, Hanon sights on another patrol wing flying fast. The human lands around the half circle sea, and the seat of draconic power, are at last due for an extermination.
The sixth step does not happen because they realize that the final day of weapon making came too close to the attack, and decide to plead for justice on the island of Valor, where the dragons sit enthroned. It is a last ditch attempt, one Hanon opposes, and Durban does not see the point of, but the rest decide that whatever human rebellions from the plains to the norther sea the humans who would have peaceful lives under dragon law should not be harmed.
The third day on the island, and they have been told again and again that no one can see them, until they are dragged, unceremoniously before a minor sitting of the dragon governing council. The ruler of the Valor Throne is not even present. Something about a death in the family. The great speakers try to give their side of the story for days. Those not inclined to speech wander Valor, visiting temples and the places of learning.
Athos is troubled about the reports of magical poison in the air. He disappears among the books. Barigan, too, much happier with a horse to train, or something physical to do, wanders with Bramiond, playing the old game of “do you remember anything like this?” Bramimond decides to pretend to regain his memory at one of the libraries, just so that they can go in, and have respite from the pressing heat.
Elimine finds them there, looking impressed at the fact someone managed to get Barigan to put his nose in a book.
“We are enemies of Valor,” she states baldly. “Hartmut, and Athos have betrayed their former masters and broken oaths of service. Hanon was recognized for having taken the eye of a young dragon, barely out of his first adult moult, which had her arrested with the others. I am only at liberty as there are no laws against spreading the knowledge of false gods, but I am asked to appear before a council of learned teachers tomorrow. The ice dragon at the assembly spoke up for you, Barigan, that you were only following the mandate of the great dragons of the north to help the humans in lands on their border, so you are safe. Right now everyone is discussing exactly how much land the ice dragons can claim as their flight territory, but we must get the others out of prison, and off this island! Barigan, are you—”
Hanon the dream whisperer. Athos the energetic mage. Hartmut the carrier of silence. They are imprisoned. Chained. The idea prickles at Bramimond's dry black eyes.
“Remember how Hartmut said he thought War Dragons are outlawed?” Barigan says very quietly, putting down his book. “I'm not the quickest reader, but I think I know how to make them. You take a corrupted dragon and have them perform some dark rites involving a lot of body parts—most used for snacking purposes, I understand—and elder magic.”
Barigan, Elimine, Roland, Durban. They might all be next.
Elimine snatches the book, flipping through the pages. “A corrupted dragon? Dragons have always been fond of separating themselves into ranks and difference but—Moon and stars in his mercy!”
“Doesn't sound good, does it?”
Their disgust echoes and from a long way off, Bramimond thinks he can hear something screaming into the void. But he has thought that before, even without the words Brigan has been sounding out for the last two hours. Sometimes he thinks it is just a reflection of himself. He lets them pull him to his feet. He lets them drag him to the meeting point. He lets the announcements wash all around him.
“The dragons must be stopped.”
“How? We delivered ourselves—”
“Don't be icebound, Roland! Why did we make those weapons? We have the upper hand, even if the dragons do not know it—”
“Barigan, calm down. We have—”
“They are doing an evil thing, Elimine. I know and have served dragonkind far longer than any of you, and this is twisted. We have to act!”
“I am not saying that I don't think we need to investigate the War Dragons, but right now our problem is our friends who have been arrested.”
“That is what we need to solve,” Roland agrees, pushing Barigan back into his seat next to the dark mage, putting all the fear, all the anger in vibrating proximity to him.
Barigan and Bramimond leave the meeting together, and that is still not the sixth step. The sixth step happens at night when everyone is exhausted, and Barigan says: “If it will save them.”
“Then I will do it,” Bramimond finishes the thought crackling in the air between them, and he opens Apocalypse, taking the sixth step into the void, and his final step as a singular human being.
Valor is deserted in the dawn light. Fury fills the vessel, echoing with familiar passion, fire meeting water cool regret, but refusing to be quenched.
The vessel opens its eyes, but they are already open, and there is no need. The guiding spark whispers through the void, trapped, listless, insignificant. It has lost the happiness of silence, that dream of the center of void calm at the center of the earth. Because loss is so achingly icy clear running in streams carving their way through Barigan's thoughts the vessel wants to cry.
“How could you! How could you?” Roland yells again and again and his rage pours into the vessel too, echoing and bouncing in confusion. What is Barigan and what is Roland and as Hanon's wind voice follows the vessel feels uncertainty, feels the fear.
“Mother Earth would have needed a quake to accomplish this much destruction. We were not meant to have the power of gods.”
“Bramimond wasn't allowed to have that power, either.”
“You said he would live beyond us all!”
The voices pile up and around the vessel and it is too hard, too confusing, to catch just one. A heavy hand falls on the vessel's shoulder. “Little witch? You should not breathe while dead.”
Yes. The vessel loves Durban more than anything. Durban and his horrendous power. Overwhelming at close quarters, this is what he needs. “Not dead. Yes? No tears. No death.”
The world is simple, once more. The vessel is an echo, a single clear echo.
Elimine's voice is strangled, and her sunlight is dim. “No, Bramimond. There has been a lot of death.”
“You are sad,” the sunlight is too dim, it can barely stand up to the lightning racing through it. So much confusion echoes along with her. The whispers in the dark war with each other, trying to fill the vessel. “Please, Elimine, explain to me what happened, by the god above, or at least—”
“I should have made a healing staff, not a killing tome,” she laughs briefly, taking the vessel's hands with tears in her eyes. “I told you that it would be too late. And you are gone, Bramimond. Living, but gone.”
Roland and Athos both step closer at once, and the vessel cannot bear it. It wants somewhere dark and quiet, where it can think and be singular once again. Four people is too much. Not enough. The vessel could hold a thousand more.
“But, you survived, you cannot be—”
Fire and lightning and light and energy and it echos off the space inside.
“Listen to him closely, little knight. Whenever he speaks, one of us is speaking through him,” Athos sounds as though he wants to fly away, and his horror is stronger in the void, his whispers of thought all echo with revulsion. The vessel winces.
“Is it uncomfortable?” and the void at the heart of everything touches him. He becomes the still mirror, and realizes that out of everyone, Hartmut asked the right question.
“When there is more than one of you near by, yes. It is easier to be one than many.”
“Then, come, we have to leave this desolate place. Walk with me, or one of the others. We will space ourselves out.”
The vessel knows this is what true friendship is. Walking with through a wasteland of dragon bodies and dead plants with the person that created them all, and might create it again. But still they walked so that the vessel was comfortable.
The dragons are gone. Bramimond has not destroyed that many, but what has happened to Valor rings across Elibe. At first there is fury from the mountains, the final dragon kingdoms uninterested in human rebellions because they have never lost before take wing. Then the world rages in a winter harsher than any have known.
Hartmut captures a war dragon, brings it before the mountain lords, however, and everything is broken. The vessel is not clear why, though Hanon tries to explain in her direct way, that apparently not all dragons knew, and some dragons would have preferred never to have known, while others cannot let the sin stand, and still more defend it. In the end, in the resulting chaos between a mass slaughter, a great crime, and the very sky itself seeming to turn against them, the dragons decide to leave.
A few stubborn hold-outs remain, some believing that they must protect the stranglers, others unwilling to concede defeat. It does not matter. They have found the temple prison at last, and almost all the dragon generals lie slain.
Barigan has already betrayed. Elimine has made a healing staff in secret. Soon other dooms will close upon them.
Now, amid the clamor and clash of too many people in the void, the vessel is filled with rage, pain, and a betrayal too raw to be forgotten. They will kill her. They have to. For as much as she hates the ones who made her, that hate has transformed into a burnt, twisted monster that hates the whole world even more.
Areola cannot hit her. She shrugs off the fires of Forblaze. A lash of her tail sends Durban flying. She nearly cracks the ice spear. Hanon's arrows all fall wide. Roland leaps, but his eagerness sends him crashing into a wall with a buffet of a wing, and redirecting the attack straight to the vessel. Her black magic slams into the vessel before she can raise the tome.
The echoes of the dragon's torment ring across the void right into the vessel. She is at once a girl, young and curious, fascinated with human things, a dragon great and proud, in love with her pretty feathered wings, and a demon, these other shadows ripped away and her loss trailing through the void in dying cries of blood.
They are all doomed, with each part of their souls that they gave up to kill dragons. The last champion standing holds all of her attention. He raises the slim blade that has not left its sheath since it was made.
Everyone echoes pleasantly in concert as they walk away from the temple, discussing the friends they will return to, and the decisions they will make. The unison is relieving, though the vessel still hangs back. They are too close, and the vessel still prefers only to reflect one person at a time. Hartmut is busy being very sick in the bushes.
“You want to give up that sword?”
He turns, looking confused. “I—Bramimond?”
The vessel breathes out, and offers the water skin he knows Hartmut is dying for. “The void at the center of things is where all thoughts fall eventually. I can hear their whispers. All the time, now.”
Hartmut swishes the water around, and spits it out. “I don't think I should be allowed to hold on to something that could revive her. Do you?”
“I don't think so,” but the vessel is not sure whether that is his sentiment or his. At least he is finding it easier to fill himself with the thoughts and personalities of others like that waterskin. He knows who he is, whn he does that. Right now, he is Hartmut, and the buzzing echoes will make him Elimine in another moment, or make her Athos. It no longer matters, really.
“Too many people look to me for guidance, and I am sure that somewhere along the line I could have done something better with my choices.”
“You choose to order people about, though. It's not their fault that they respect you enough to obey,” Bramimond observes, bringing up the terrible ambition of his that Hartmut wants and does not trust.
“What can I do with this thing? That scepter sword we made—I could break its mechanism and hang it on the wall of a kitchen for decoration if I wanted. This thing sealed a dragon in slumber. I just wanted her to stop crying.”
“So, you heard it, too,” Bramimond thinks Hartmut's voice is the best for studied reflection. It sounds better on the air than even Athos' studious excitement.
Hartmut swallows. “What do you want to do, Bramimond?”
“Sleep. Sleep for a long time, in a dark place, and find the part of the void where no whispers or echoes haunt me. I want the quiet.”
“That is exactly what this sword grants, doesn't it?”
“I think so. Elder magic seeks the root of knowledge, but when the root of knowledge is too great, it seals the seeker into the void. Your sword took form from the part of you that resonates in sympathy with the void, where everything is one. It is meant to guard against excess, while your scepter sword is the physical expression of your excess.”
Hartmut nods, curtly. “If you take that sword with you, I will give you that dark place.”
“And that is your choice?”
“One of many. I know which of my temptations are dangerous, after all, dark druid.”
For one of the last times in his life, Bramimond smiles. “We are one, then. But I like Durban's name for me better.”
“True, it makes you sound like a kitten,” Hartmut laughs. “Come then, witch, let us see if there is some sort of feast that we may organize.”
They take the seventh step together.
Sometimes, the vessel wakes in its dark crypt. There are moments it cannot miss, even if everyone else must.
Durban is the first to die, on the rocky shores of his home, where he returned as a hero, his blood debt expunged. The vessel arrives in the pelting rain to see a mountain of a man reduced to a pin cushion of weaponry. The echoes of other friends and battles rage through the void, a tingling energy of life slipping through the cracks. They are too far away, however, to add more to the few drops of urgency that leak through. Instead, the vessel allows the sky to fill it full, until the storm washes everything, blood, dirt, and tears, away. The storm closes sightless eyes, and lays a soft kiss on a hard cheek, because both forehead and mouth have been too disfigured for even a storm to draw comfort from them.
Barigan has battled the ice that over took his home in the ending winter. The task is cold and lonely, and even if he can teach new riders, and even if they can bring in food, he is struggling against the changing times and the turning of the world. The ice dragons, if any are left after the exodus, no longer show themselves. Ilia, the land of peace and prosperity, will never be the same. One night in the snow he collapses into the arms of a cloaked figure. There isn't much else to do at this point, but when Barigan asks for forgiveness, he is forgiven. His sorrow breaks and they mirror their grief and happiness until dawn breaks, and Bramimond realizes he has been holding a frozen corpse for some time now. He delivers the food for the town as Barigan meant to, and requests proper burial in the chamber where they locked away the deadly spear so long ago.
Hanon is drifting the Plains the night the vessel finds her. She laughs a crackling old woman laugh, and invites her into the tent. She was never Hartmut, she says, pouring Bramimond tea. She never needed to lead. But if she would not be allowed to be war chief of her tribe as a woman, she might as well cast off all roots, and do what she must. You're here to do what you must, aren't you?
She grips Hanon's hand as the old woman dies peacefully, but alone. There is still enough of Hanon's life left inside her for Bramimod to dig the grave by hand, and say the right things through a mysterious flood that fills the vessel without a rainstorm. Hanon's spirit leaves gracefully, with a lingering embrace, promising in echoes and reflections, that nothing, even death, lasts forever.
Roland dies in his sleep, as his children bicker over land and his legacy. The healers say that bright heart of his gave out. They do not know that a druid arrived in the bedroom, to witness the last breath, and the last happy chuckle of a man pleased to see beloved friends.
Bramimond forces themself to stay awake for a whole week, as those remaining gather to mourn. Elimine presides over the funeral, and the four of them accompany the body to the same cave system where Bramimond sealed the blazing sword with the life blood of the loyal. The vessel has promised not to cry, as Roland asked, but the world is less bright, and the echoes of the void are dull. They just wish to hold the brave knight with his sagging skin and bright blue traceries of veins once more.
Elimine, white haired, laughs when Bramimond appears in her tower. “Just lead me up these last stairs,” she says, tapping the way forward with her cane. “Roland took far too much effort to bring into that volcano, you know. I intend to be better about it.”
“You could have lived,” Bramimond says quietly. Magic has preserved her body at the age of her great destruction, and Athos has begun to ignore time's pull. She could feel it at Roland's funeral, he had found the point where the body and time were insignificant.
“Why do that, when not every single one of my followers could live?” Elimine has grown more forthright as she ages. “I am not a dragon. Immortality makes you forget the importance of things.”
“You will never forgive them? The weapons were a mistake. You were right.”
“We made those in fear, but we sacrificed ourselves to do so,” Elimine waves her stick under Bramimond's nose. “Their weapon was a child taken and sacrificed in fear, and I do not forgive that. They believed their skins were worth enough for that crime to be ignored, because they were mighty, because they were hard to kill, because they were just. No. Elibe is better off without them.”
“Humans are not so different.”
“You and Hartmut can regret what we have done, I have better things to do,” her voice is querulous, but when she reaches the top of the tower she sighs, and sits with creaking relief on the altar, looking and her beautiful city of stars and water. “Look at that, Bramimond. There is the future, in people and the things people make. I am happy.”
“I find it loud.”
“Yes, there's that, too. And smelly. But it is still wondrous. This is what Father Sky wishes for us to see: the beauty of his creations, lit by the light of our love.”
She sighs her last, and Bramimond waits until they are sure that she is gone, before neatly arranging stiff limbs, and touching one cold forehead to another. A tear splashes in her lap. They do not attend the official funeral.
In the dark they wait, tired and worn. Just two more, and then they can sleep.
Hartmut takes years to die, and he is healthy and energetic to the very end. When a plague finally brings him low, his children erupt in an argument that is worse than the long term bickering that is still tearing at Roland's Lycia. Lady Justina wishes to be named queen, as the one who has served Bern the longest. Her younger brother wants her older brother, a dark lad with a bent for theology and little interest in world affairs to inherit, as he is the eldest. Both of the twins think that it is not a good idea to put a wyvern rider on the throne, but at least Justina wants the job, as opposed to Julian.
Hartmut ignores it all, telling Bramimond that his scholars and soldiers and priests can make the decision. His breathing bubbles through liquid lungs, and he smiles. “I had wanted to outlive Athos, you know. Just to let it be you and me, at the very end.”
They both know Athos finds Bramimond's lack of self too horrible to deal with, even indirectly these days. “You almost did.” But that is a lie.
“Why weren't you at her funeral?”
“We said good bye earlier. The death of a saint would bring too many people.”
“I wanted to outlive Athos,” Hartmut murmurs again, his once keen eyes looking vague. “I wanted to see what happens when the seal finally fails. Promise me, the world will be better, then.”
“It will be different.”
Hartmut laughs. It is so good that they all were the kinds of people who could see the humor of life in their old ages. “I always was too honest for my own good, so of course, you will fling it right back at me. Tell me about my friends. I miss them so much.”
But Bramimond cannot, because, like with Barigan, the sorrow echoes and reechoes across the void between them, wanting solid Durban, determined Hanon, faithful Barigan, certain Elimine, clever Athos, kind Roland, and shy Bramimond with a fierce ache.
They remain together in silence. Sometimes strangers burst into the Kings' chamber demanding audiences. Sometimes the perspectives heirs ask their father to make a decision, but Hartmut just smiles, and says he is done with that. Bramimond wonders if the kingdom built on mountain villages and wyvern caves is going to fall apart on the hour of the king's death.
“The law will be based on primogeniture,” the queen, iron haired and more lined and scarred than Roland or Hanon put together, comes in still in her flying furs. “With an added caveat. The eldest child who has passed through a vigil, and whose spirit can light the gem at your resting place, Bramimond Dark Druid, will be the ruler.”
Hartmut sighs. “Bramimond is not to be disturbed.”
“He will not be. But we all know that the fire emblem reacts to those who have the potential to make divine weapons. There may be a time when those rituals are needed again. There is at least one gate on the Dread Dragon Isle of Valor, and gates can be opened to admit was well as to leave. Father Sky willing, it doesn't happen in our life times, but this is the will of the wyvern riders, the scholars, and the artisans.”
“And my priests?”
“Their circle voted to have the Holy Tower decide the next ruler. The good saint not dead for ten years, and already they are misinterpreting her will. If she wanted her church to have power over kingdoms she would have named herself queen of that bright city of hers.”
Both Hartmut and Bramimond laugh, because the mountain queen is right. She gives them a look that says the synchronicity of their laugh was too unsettling.
“And who do you wish for ruler?”
“Either of our two eldest will do. Damien is too in love with laws. At least he knows he is inflexible and thus supports Julian. The twins do not even know what they want to do with themselves, much less a whole kingdom of goat herders and wyverns.”
Hartmut nods. “That is good.”
In the end, Bramimond does not care who becomes the next ruler of the land. That it the problem of the queen. Bramimond does not care about anyone's problems, once they have kissed Hartmut to rest and let the tears dry on their cheeks.
The next time he is awoken, it is by Athos looking like a sunken old man. He wants to sit and talk with someone about friendship and loyalty and the joy of knowledge. His outlook on life is so bleak, though, that Bramimond only remembers how much he wants other people to be there and how harsh the world outside is, with its many brightnesses and joys.
Athos stops. “You really do not care, anymore, about any of it.”
Because the echoes are disgusted with himself, at his blindness, at his arrogance, Bramimond sneers. “It is not my world, old friend. Why did you ever think it would be?”
When Athos dies in his arms, eyes seeing more clearly than Elimine, Bramimond regrets those words. But at last, they are gone, all of the people who loved them, and they can happily retreat into the belly of the earth where they belong. It is a long awaited end to to the journey he has walked, and the curses were not so bad.