The chamber was in ruins. It had been in ruins two days ago, when Ash and I had finished with it the first time. What it was now required a different word, and even I did not have one.
Of the black pillars, none still stood. The floor was more crater than floor and the white light that had once filled this place had thinned to something closer to dusk. The mana here was hardly denser than the air outside. We had spent much of it.
The Ember Core ground beneath my ribs. Ren, Corin, and Alisa stood before me in a rough line. Ren was still smoking faintly at the shoulders. Corin swayed where he stood though now he could have stood here without any assistance. Alisa's uniform now looked like nothing fine. Ash stood at my side. Sol sat between my horns, warm and quiet.
There were words that needed saying. I knew their shape. I had known their shape for the better part of an hour, and they had sat in my throat that entire time. Ash's shoulder bumped mine, lightly.
"I wish to commend you all," I said, "for your... assistance in my training." The words came out one at a time, each one costing more than the last. "Your contributions were unasked for." I paused. "But perhaps they were adequate."
The silence lasted only a moment, before Ren’s fist came up, shaking."Adequate? What the hell is that supposed to mean? We've been getting thrown around this damn chamber for two days and all we get is adequate? Why I oughta-"
Corin caught her arm before it could climb higher. "Ren. I, um- I think that's supposed to be a compliment."
Ren paused. She looked at Corin, then at me, then at Corin again. "Seriously? What the hell kind of compliment is that?"
"Any statement from me is a compliment," I said. "To be regarded by me at all is the greatest compliment of all."
Sol let out a mighty chirp from atop my head. It rang off the broken pillars. It was, unmistakably, agreement.
Ren's shoulders slumped. "Half-demons," she muttered, "really don't make any Divine-damned sense."
Alisa folded her arms. Her chin found its accustomed altitude. "Well? You're not about to disappoint me in the morning, are you?"
"I would not have regardless."
"Good." She huffed and turned half away, though I still caught her looking from the corner of her eye.
True to her word, Alisa had not used her mark once. Not in the sparring, not when Ren's flames had come too close, not even when a falling pillar-half had nearly claimed her and Ash had had to save her. She had still been useful, even in our unarmed sparring. Not that I would tell her that.
"So," Ren said, dragging one hand back through her hair. "You're really just gonna try and outlast her, huh." There was something under the words that I recognized, a hesitance that lived in the space before all battles. Odd, to hear it directed for another. "I mean, it's not a bad plan, what with the crazy shit you can heal, but..."
"It is the only logical option," I said. "The Tenet is a trump card with a rather finite time limit. If this Lena is not as capable as you, as you say, then I will have an easier time of it.”
Ren sighed. It was a long sigh. "Well. You better not fucking lose, then."
I had almost gotten used to the girl’s crassness over these two days. "I was not planning to."
"Well. Alright then." She looked around the chamber. "Can't do anything more now anyway. Man. Wonder what the old man's gonna say when he takes a look at this place."
I assumed that by old man she meant the Archon. I looked at the chamber and found I could not fault her wondering. Then again, he had said we could use this place.
"The three of you may leave," I said. "We are going to stay here."
The three of them paused, in three different ways.
Alisa recovered first. "Is my rival planning to keep practicing into the dead of night? So that she may arrive at her actual duel too exhausted to lift her arms? I didn’t take you for that particular breed of fool."
"That will not be a problem. I will be rested enough. I would stay here." I looked at Ash. "Unless you disagree."
"Fine by me," Ash said.
We looked at each other. It was a long look, one that ended when Ash smiled. Ren's face had gone the color of her hair.
"L-let's leave them!" she said quickly, too quickly. She seized Corin by one arm and Alisa by the other and began hauling them both toward the door.
"Ren, what's the rush-" Corin managed.
"Unhand me!" Alisa did not manage anything further, because by then they were through the threshold, and the great door groaned shut behind them, and the chamber was quiet.
"Huh," I said, into the quiet. "That girl is rather effective, when she is of the mind to be."
Ash made a sound. I turned, and caught the tail end of an expression on her face - something stricken, there and gone, her gaze flicking once toward the satchel by the far pillar where Sol's cushion was kept.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing," Ash said. "Nothing at all."
It tasted like a lie. I did not press.
Ash looked around the chamber, rolling one shoulder. "So…you really don’t want to go again?"
I shook my head. "I doubt it would matter." I looked down at my own arms as I said it.
The red and green Lines had gone dull two days ago, I had thought that was the final stage. I had been wrong. Sometime in the last few hours, the ends of both Lines had begun to curl. Just the smallest fraction, at the very tips.
That's the real last stage, Ren had told me, when she had seen it. When they start curling, it means the Line wants to branch.
Wants to, but is not. I knew what I lacked. Insight. Two days of battle had carried me to the very edge of the Line, and the last step was not a thing that battle could take.
"So what are we going to do?" Ash asked.
I crossed to one of the shattered pillars -whose fallen half made an adequate seat- and lifted Sol down from between my horns. She chirped once and permitted it. I set her on the ground, retrieved the small stack of tomes we had carried from the Athenaeum, and sat with my back against the pillar's stump. "I am going to read."
Ash nodded. She came and sat down next to me. Then she shifted, and shifted again, and by the third shift her side was pressed against mine from shoulder to hip. She was very warm. She was very soft, in the places where she was not iron. I opened the book on Insight with more haste than the opening warranted.
Sol began her patrol. She waddled the length of a fallen pillar, three steps and a pause, three steps and a pause. At the end of one circuit she stopped, considered the ground, and then -for reasons known only to her- tucked her wings and rolled. She rolled the way an orb rolls. She fetched up against a chunk of rubble, righted herself, and resumed marching as though nothing had occurred.
I stared at her. I reached for the bond and found only contentment. I decided not to investigate further. Some mysteries were not meant for mortal understanding, and evidently not for near-immortal understanding either.
I read. I had done plenty of it over the last two days, such that I had little left to read of the tomes we had brought. I picked up the tome on Insights. I had not read much of it in the Athenaeum itself and that had been enough for me to consider the whole useless. I had hoped the rest of it would be different. It was not. I found another verse, three pages on from where last I’d read.
The body is a home I was given before I could refuse it. I wasted my years repairing walls that were never broken, and knocking at doors that were never locked.
I read it twice. I set the book down on my knee with rather more force than the book deserved. Or perhaps exactly as much as it deserved. "This book," I announced, "is a waste of the paper it is printed on."
Ash leaned over to read the verse. "I don't know," she said. "They definitely tried."
"They tried poorly. Not one of these fools can properly name and explain the thing they did. They can only dress it in enough poetry that no one notices they have said nothing." I glared at the page. "If I ever meet the compiler of this volume, I will use the Requiem."
Ash laughed, and it moved through her shoulder into mine. Perhaps I would leave the compiler off with only a harsh warning.
We were quiet for a time. The thin light of the chamber lay over everything like dusk. The Ember Core ground on beneath my ribs, as it always did.
"Lys."
"Hmm?"
"I want to try something."
I paused, and looked at her. Her jaw had set again. Her left hand was curled loosely in her lap, and her eyes were on my chest. "You want to try what?"
"I want to try severing your pain," Ash said. "From your core, I mean."
I stared at her. For two days I had caught Ash swiping her hand at nothing. In the corner of the chamber between bouts. I had not understood why then, I did now. She had been practicing.
She had seen the way I had paced myself, and she had practiced. I had not asked it of her. I- I was not displeased that she had. "Very well," I said.
Ash blinked. "That's it?"
"If it's you," I said, "then it is worth a try."
Her breath caught, just slightly. She nodded once, slowly, and then with more purpose. She turned to face me and raised her left hand, and held it sideways over my chest, a hand's width from the fabric. The hand trembled.
"Follow the line of my power," I said. I drew a thread of the Cradle up through my left hand, pressed it past my skin, until it traced the shape of the thing that ground beneath my ribs. It was a strange thing, to search within myself so. "Just as you did with Corin."
Ash licked her lips. Her eyes closed. The trembling stopped. She took a deep breath, and then she swiped. The humming faded.
For one breath there was silence beneath my ribs. Silence of a kind I had not heard since I’d made the third thing catch. It was so very quiet, and it was so very-
The Core snapped back and the pain that came was not the grinding I knew but something whole and total. My hands hit the stone. I was coughing before I understood that I had bent over, and there was copper in my mouth, and then there was blood on the broken floor.
"Lys!"
Ash's hands were on my shoulders. The pain crested, held, and then slowly, very slowly, began to settle. The Cradle pulsed on my left arm without my asking and the pain receded back down into the old familiar grinding, no worse than it had been an hour ago, no better than it would ever be. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. A Queen did not bleed.
"I'm sorry," Ash was saying. Her voice had gone thin. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"What-" I coughed wetly once more, and forced my voice level. "What are you sorry for, fool? I asked for this."
I pushed myself upright. Sol was in front of me. I did not know when she had crossed the chamber but she was here now, directly before my knees, chirping with a fury that shook her whole small body. Her wings were flared to their fullest span. All four of them.
I reached for her. She buried herself into my hand, pressed her head hard against my palm, and kept up the furious chirping the entire time, as though the pressing and the scolding were the same gesture. Perhaps for her they were.
"I am fine," I told her. "Do not worry about me."
Sol pecked my hand. Hard. Any harder and she might have drawn blood. I looked at her. She looked at me. Her golden eyes did not blink. "...Point taken," I said slowly.
I leaned back against the pillar. Sol arranged herself against my side, between Ash and I, and settled into a low ongoing grumble of chirps that I chose not to interpret. "That did not work," I said.
"I'm sorry," Ash said again.
"Ash. If you apologize one more time, I will show you another of the [Hundred Submission Techniques]."
She laughed at that. It was a strained sound, but still unmistakably a laugh. "You're impossible."
"You have said that once before. It is only natural for the Demon Queen to be impossible."
There was silence again, different from before. I did not doubt my Hero’s ability. She was new to this aspect of her power, but she had gotten the feel for it, as she had said. And her power had dulled the humming, even if for only a moment. Yet the Ember Core had started its grinding again. Why this was the case, I could not guess.
My hands idly brushed over Sol. Her chirps had faded, and in its place was only the sound of her faint breathing. It seemed her series of chirps had tired her. It was Ash who moved first.
Ash drew her knees up. She rested her arms across them and stared upward. Sol stirred between us but did not wake up.
"There was once a girl, a very long time ago," Ash said quietly, "who woke one morning to a Class that should only ever come to a male." I went still. "She was only a child at the time and she didn't understand what the System had given her, only that every adult in her village went pale when they heard it. The [Chosen] Class was rare. It marked the path for the ones who might someday be granted the Hero's Class, if they proved worthy." Ash's voice was even. She was telling it the way one tells someone else's story. "There were expectations and they came before she had even finished her first breakfast. The priests arrived that afternoon. By the end of the week, she had been taken from her home and placed somewhere else."
I said nothing. I watched the set of her jaw. It had gone rigid. "The Class was only for men, you see. For it to be given to a girl was..." She shook her head. "The priests didn't have a word for it, or maybe they had too many. Blasphemy was the one they used most. They said the System and the Gods were never wrong, so if the System had marked a girl, then the girl must have done something. She must have tricked it, somehow. A child had tricked the System, and they actually believed it." Her mouth pulled into something that was not a smile. "But all Chosen were sacred. They couldn't just be rid of me. So they taught me to how to hide."
Me. The story had changed hands somewhere in the last sentence, and I did not think she had noticed.
"They gave me many lessons. They taught me to how to walk differently, speak differently, and use [Disguise] on my appearance. I learned fast." She said it flatly, without pride. "By the end of the first month, I was better at it than the priests who taught it to me. By the third, even they seemed to have half-forgotten who I actually was."
"And you hid yourself," I said. My voice came out lower than I intended. "For your entire life."
Ash nodded, slowly. "I did. I was bound not to tell anyone. Not that it mattered, I suppose. I wouldn’t have known how to even if I could."
I was quiet for a time. My hand had found Sol without my asking it to, and I brushed the line of her back while she trilled in her sleep.
"Why?" I asked at last. "Why bother at all? If becoming a Hero demanded that you erase yourself to do it then why do it all? Surely you could have escaped. Done something." I did not know if Ash could have done anything at all. I just guessed, and hoped.
"Because of the stories." Ash finally said.
"Because of the…stories," I repeated. “I do not understand.”
Ash nodded. She was looking up at the high ceiling, but her eyes were somewhere much farther away. "My mother used to tell me stories, you see. Of the great Heroes and Warriors and their greater deeds. You know the ones. Aldan the Godshield. The Twin Phantom Blades of Ashia. Rhaenia the Giant Tamer. Other ones, more than I can count.” I knew these names. I had slain Rhaenia myself. Ash likely knew as well as I. "My mother was... not an expressive woman, you see. She worked, and she prayed, and she worked again, and by the end there was too little left in her to do anything but exist. But when she told those stories-" Ash's voice caught. "Her eyes would sparkle. Like she was somewhere better than our village. Like the world was bigger than it was."
Her arms tightened around her knees. "And I suppose I wanted to be the reason they looked like that. Just once, you know?” She turned her head and looked at me, and her face looked almost torn. "Well Lys? Get it over with."
"What?"
"You're going to tell me that's a silly reason. Aren't you? You’re thinking it, so you can say it. It’ll be something like ‘these foolish mortals and-’" She trailed off.
I shook my head. I pressed myself closer against her side instead, shoulder to shoulder, until there was no gap left to speak across. "The only one who can judge," I said, "what reasons your life is worth, is you Ash. If the reason was enough for you, then so be it. I have heard many reasons. Most reasons were far uglier."
Ash was quiet at that. Then she sighed, and the sigh moved through her whole body and into mine. "You know I've never told anyone this," she said. "I didn't think I ever would. Feels strange to say it all now."
"You didn’t even consider it?"
She shook her head. "Not seriously. I always felt guilty. What right did I have? I dealt in lies and called myself a Hero. Heroes were supposed to be true. That's what the stories said. So I tried to be like the stories. I told myself that was enough." Her thumb moved once across her own wrist. "That's how I used to think, anyway."
"And now?"
"Now..." Ash let out a long breath. "Now I wish I'd told them."
I nodded. Sol woke, chirped, looked about, and yawned wide enough to show the small glow at the back of her throat. Then she regarded Ash for a moment and waddled from my side to hers.
Ash's reached down and gathered the phoenix against her knee. "Hello, you. Did you like your nap?"
Sol chirped. Ash began idly brushing her feathers, and Sol permitted it, and the two of them sat there in the dusk-light. I did not mind the sight. "Ash," I said.
"Hmm?"
"Did you see it?" She looked at me. "You said you wished to be the reason your mother's eyes sparkled, as they did for those stories. Did you ever see it?"
Ash smiled, but there was something in it that was not a smile at all. "I saw it once," she said. "The one time I ever went back to my village. There was a harvest festival. A bard was passing through then and he sang some of the new songs of the time. The ones about the new Hero, the youngest Hero in generations. The bard got my name wrong, I wasn’t that well-known at the time." Her hand kept moving over Sol's feathers. "I stood at the back of the crowd in a traveling cloak, and I watched my mother listen. And her eyes did the sparkling. For me."
"She did not see you herself then?"
"No." Ash's voice was very soft. "She never found out, Lys. That her child was the one in the songs. I wanted to someday. If I ever actually succeeded." She shrugged, and the shrug was the heaviest thing I had ever seen her lift. "She died the winter before your fortress fell."
The chamber was very quiet. Something moved through me then. I knew guilt now, in the shape of gardens I did not see and Demonbloods who did not stand at their full height. This was grief, and it was not for me. It was grief for the years of a girl folded small enough to fit inside the legend of a man. It was doubtless just a small part of Ash's story, but it was enough.
It was one of the cruelest things I had ever heard, and I had authored much of it. I should have erased one more nation from this world. The one that had made her something lesser than what she would have been. But they were gone to dust already. And I knew Ash well enough to know that she had not told me this story so that I could burn something.
I reached out, gingerly. The way one reaches for a thing that might startle. I put my arms around Ash and pulled her closer, and the motion was stiff, and my hands did not know their stations, one landing too high against her shoulder and the other too low against her back.
Ash froze. Then she leaned in, and her forehead found the place between my neck and my shoulder, and she stayed there. Sol, pressed between us, let out one tiny chirp and did not move.
We stayed like that for longer than the moment required. Considerably longer.
When Ash finally straightened, her eyes were wet at the edges and I pretended not to see. She reached up to push her hair back from her face. I blinked. "Ash."
"Hmm?"
I pointed. At her right arm. At the purple Spark that sat there -that had sat there, since the day the Ink first found her.
A thin purple line ran down her forearm. Ash raised the arm slowly and stared at it. She turned it in the dim light. The Veil had advanced, and neither of us had seen it happen. At some point during the telling. At what point, it was impossible to say.
We looked at it. Neither of us said the word Insight. What this Insight had been, I still did not know.
Ash let out a breath that was half a laugh. She was still staring at her own arm. "Maybe I should write my own verse about this," she said.
"Ash." I said. "If you do that, I will relieve you of retainerhood."
But I said it warmly, and she must have heard the warmth, for her laughter filled the ruined chamber until even Sol joined in, chirping at a joke she could not possibly have understood and the sound of it was better than any verse in that entire useless book.