Private Tales A Step Into Death

[Ventress]

"Of course not."

Ventress stood from the chair, her languid rising matching Isbrand's own when she had sat across from him those many years ago. Her hands slid up to the small of her back, clasped there in military fashion. Heel...toe...the slow steps of her dress shoes as she began to walk around the table.

"You understand that the day will come when you must make a choice." Given the way Ventress spoke, it was difficult to tell if this was a statement or a question.

Regardless, she continued, "This choice will be the single most important decision of your life, Initiate Edric."

She stood behind him now as he sat.

"Tell me what choice I am referencing."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric's fingers tightened slightly at his side as the woman spoke.

His eyes followed along with every single step she took, his lips thinning. He knew exactly what she was talking about, following every word.

He wasn't the smartest of his peers, and certainly not the most studied, but he wasn't a fool either. Edric knew what the Academy was for, what decision the Initiates had to make in order to find their place beyond the world they lived in now. "Where I go."

The Initiate said quietly.

"When my time here is done." When he stood victorious upon that tower. After he slaughtered one of his classmates in cold blood.

As so many other Dreadlords had done before him.

 

[Ventress]

"Correct."

And then, close to his left ear, "It is an inevitability."

A shifting behind him, and then her voice was close to his right ear, "Your first free act as a Dreadlord."

Ventress walked around the opposite side of the table and returned to where she had once been seated. This time, she did not sit. No, now was the time to stand. Subtle messaging. Nonverbal cues.

Hands appeared from behind her back and glided onto the table, palms upon it, and she leaned forward just slightly. Her eyes bored into Edric's own, as if through sustained contact she could impress her own will upon him.

"The Great Houses are not equal, Initiate Edric."

One of her hands slipped into her pocket. Extracted something metallic and flat which she pressed onto the table. A coin, her two fingers atop it obscuring its face. She slid the coin in an unhurried, precise manner across the table, as far as her arm would stretch, and then she lifted her fingers.

Upon the coin's face: the insignia of House Sirl.

She tapped the coin's face with her gloved forefinger. Two small yet commanding taps. "What do you know of this insignia."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric froze.

His entire body was a mass of coiled muscle ready to snap. The whisper of her words in his ears practically made him want to jump. Somehow though he managed to keep himself still, unmoving. Hands settling on the table and curling into fists.

He still expected a knife to be slipped through his ribs. Impaled into his heart.

It was what the other Proctors would have done. Even if she wanted to speak, even if she wanted to tell him something. Some others would have done it just to see if they could. To see if he could somehow bring himself back.

When she flickered back in front of him Edric frowned.

His eyes darted to the coin. "I don't..."

The boy immediately cut himself off. Studying had never been his best habit. He was hardly one to crack books or learn...well much of anything, but even he recognized the symbol on the small piece of metal. He glanced up at her, and suddenly things made more sense.

"It is the insignia of House Sirl." He said cautiously.

Was that what this was? He knew they came for Initiates, had heard the rumors about some approaching upper-classmen like Ein.

Was that it, or another sick game?

 

[Ventress]

"Yes."

With her foot she hooked the leg of the chair and pulled it close, sitting down in it again. Her extended arm slowly retracted but did not take the coin with it. She would allow it to stay on the table. The insignia upon the coin was the fulcrum upon which they had been drawn together into this room.

Her elbows were on the table, arms crossed. She was leaning forward. Engaged.

"Soon you will graduate," she said. It did not matter if he knew at present what was required of him to graduate or not. "You have come too far to fail. You will not allow for it. Yet this will be only the beginning. You will see that your potential remains to be expanded upon."

Ventress gazed at him for a time. All the emotions he currently felt had all been felt by his predecessors, and would be felt by his successor Initiates. Among those who reached graduation, however, a common thread. If it were in some way possible, not one of them would give up their power. Not a single one. Not after all they had been through. Most especially, not after they had indulged themselves of the taste of it.

"Other Houses will squander your gift. Succinctly put, they mishandle power. Their ineptitude will ensure your potential withers and dies. House Sirl's guiding hand, on the contrary, sees not only its Dreadlords prosper, but all Vel Anir."

A long pause.

"You may ask me a single question. Demonstrate your worth by asking one befitting your promise."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Three years. That was how long it would be until he graduated. He was fifteen now, and the test most often came at eighteen. Sometimes it was shifted by a few months, but more often than not that was when it came.

Was that soon?

It did not feel soon within the hell of the Academy, but in the real world perhaps it was. His fingers curled on the table as he looked at the coin. Fingers tightened into fists as he took in a long slow breath. Listening to her was...

He didn't know what to make of it. For a brief moment he let his eyes rise, meeting her gaze as she prodded a question from him.

Was that how this was supposed to work? Was he supposed to beg to join them. "Why?"

It was the only thing he could think to say.

"Why should I care?" His senses fled him. "All I've known here is beatings. Pain. Death."

How many times had it been now? How many times had they thrown him into that Abyss only for his magic to wrench him back. Why the fuck would he want to continue that? Why the fuck would he want to serve a House who condoned that? "Why."

He demanded, his voice echoing in the room. Simmering with rage.

 

[Ventress]

Ventress did not rise from her seat. She did not come around the table with aggression nor utilize her magic with a mind to punish nor did she place her gloves upon the table as means of a threat.

"Your despair is not unique." She spoke the words without judgment nor condemnation. She spoke them as if she herself was familiar with the subject in question. And she had been. Sitting in that very chair across from Isbrand, she had been.

She glanced over her shoulder, only enough to spy the closed door to her back. Then she returned her gaze to Edric.

"I could come back tonight," she said, "and offer you a permanent solution."

Her quiet words a strange thing, tone like a soft cushion sitting atop a firm steel, the juxtaposition of gentle assurance and unbending force.

"It would be painless."

She had to discern if Initiate Edric should be pursued. The sooner, the better. If he was defective, it was the least she could do for the boy to end his suffering, if it tormented him so. Isbrand had made her a similar offer...and she had very nearly accepted it. In this stage, Initiates, broken as they were, were delicate. To be made strong, they needed to be made whole. Rebuilt. Graduation weeded out those whose rebuilding did not happen satisfactorily.

A mercy. But one that came too late. Edric could spare himself if he so chose. And Ventress would provide him the option.

"Do you seek an end," she asked. "Or will you refuse...and endure."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric stayed quiet for a long while.

A minute.

Two.

Five.

For some reason he expected her to interrupt him. To press. To ask something else. To force him to give an answer, but she never did. Ventress simply sat opposite him, watching, those cold eyes staring as though she already knew the answer that he would give.

He could feel his heart thunder in his chest. Could hear it in his ears. It rang in a slow steady beat, almost hypnotic in a way.

A part of him wanted to sit there forever, to enjoy the calm. The Quiet. Was that what true death would be like? Silence...no.

That was never how it was. That was never how it felt. Edric had crossed that line so many times. He had been in reach of those grasping hands. He had touched them, he had almost seized them. Edric had stared death in the eye. Had watched that cold figure reach out for him.

He knew he didn't want it.

Knew that embrace was too much.

"I don't want to die." He never did. "I just want to know why."

Why keep going. Why endure. Why keep putting himself through all of this.

What was the point.

 

[Ventress]

His question of why ran deeper than what had been discussed earlier. It went beyond serving Vel Anir, serving a House. It was more elemental than these concerns--this Ventress sensed.

"You are wrong to pursue that answer from me." Again, spoken without judgment or condemnation. It was appropriate for her to shift her method, and so she did. This, perhaps, the sole difference between their current conversation and the one she had with Isbrand a decade prior.

"That answer is not mine to give to you."

Ventress sat back in her chair, her posture as straight as the chair's back and her shoulders squared. She lifted a gloved hand and touched her palm to her chest. "Place your hand upon your chest, Edric."

She would wait until he did so. Would wait some more, letting the steady rhythm pulse against his palm, this as she clearly felt her own. As it was before, in the night following her conversation with Isbrand, as she lay in her sterile dormitory room upon the bed with the itchy, rough linen blanket, her head resting on a flat pillow made damp with tears, it felt as though she held her very life in her hand.

"Why does your heart still beat. Because it must." Perhaps he would find her change in demeanor from stern to less so, however subtle it was, to be odd. He would not be used to it. But, she was not a Proctor. She was not bound to what bound them. Hers was a different task. And at present, hers was a different motivation, as well. She was not here to break the boy nor to rebuild him in the manner prescribed by the Academy. She was not even necessarily here to ensure his recruitment into the fold of House Sirl--that was still a matter under discernment.

So she could be as stern or as a gentle as she pleased.

"But you must find your own satisfactory answer. There is no other way for the world to be. There is only this way. What you have endured, what you may yet endure, is a part of this one way. There is no other life you could have lived. It is upon you to reconcile yourself with that."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric listened to every word.

He almost seemed to cling to them in fact, as though he were lost in a massive sea and Ventress was the only thing to hang onto. The words resounded within his skull, echoing again and again as he tried to sift through the puzzle she had posed for him.

He listened to his heartbeat.

It thundered in his chest, echoing out in a steady drum.

It did not race. No. It never did now. He had died so many times. Been brought to the edge of death over a hundred times. It was almost expected now. Almost as though his body had grown used to the constant stress of this place.

Something seemed to settle in his mind as he sat there. It clicked. Fell into place, and yet he knew he could never speak of it. Not here. Not to her. Not to his peers. No one could know.

No one.

"Okay." He said, his voice firm. Strong. "I know what I have to do."

 

[Ventress]

He took his time. As well he should. This was not a matter to be rushed, for his very life hung in the balance. Not merely the continuation thereof, but the quality of said continuation. Isbrand had seen in her a need to serve something greater than herself, a loyalty needing a worthy cause in which to pledge. House Sirl provided precisely what she was looking for, and with them she was content.

She would serve House Sirl until her dying day, and nothing would break her loyalty. Nothing. In the capable and powerful hands of herself, she like Isbrand before her (now Archon Isbrand) would see House Sirl grow and prosper.

Edric's purpose might be the same. Or he might serve some other House. He might even entertain the idea that he, like other rogue Dreadlords before him, could escape from Vel Anir and vanish into Arethil and never be seen again--unless, of course, it became the mission of Ventress, or another solver of such problems, to correct this notion.

When he did speak, it was clear that he had found what he was looking for. If not in total, then in certain part.

Ventress simply nodded. "Your tone is admirable." And, not a command, not even advice, but something more personal. Amicable. "Keep it that way."

She reached across the table and plucked the coin and pocketed it. In one fluid motion she rose from the chair and stepped with a satisfied air of finality toward the door. She did not look back at him as she said, "We may see one another again, Initiate Edric."

Ventress knocked upon the door, staff on the other side unlocked it, and she stepped out.

Edric