Private Tales Home is where the Heart is

[Ania]

Thorne

Vel Odwyk

During the revolution Ania had been hellbent on ensuring that the old ways persevered. That Vel Anir survived exactly as it had for thousands of years prior. It was like a religion to her. Like a cultish devotion that she had to serve lest the entirety of social order perish.

At no point was Charity ever consulted.

And eventually, as luck would have it, the young woman was knocked unconscious and captured by a brigade of the Anirian Guard which didn't believe in executions for every single Dreadlord they encountered. Instead, Ania was shackled and transported to Vel Odwyk. A facility several miles west of Vel'Anir proper which served as a refuge for recovering Dreadlords. The ones who couldn't serve the new Republic or work as Proctors at the academy. Either they were severely disabled or they were like Ania.

Their mental state was so deteriorated that they were barely human anymore.

And there she sat, in a room alone, tied down entirely. Her eyes covered by fabric to ensure she couldn't glance at anyone. A note on the front of her door to ensure no one touched her so that her hallucinogenic powers couldn't be used on any visitors. This would've been the remainder of her existence had someone not found the locket of House Whispergrove on her person.

The discovery resulted in a letter and at this point the matrons of Vel Odwyk just hoped that someone from the disgrace house would eventually respond. Until then they'd take turns cleaning the spittle from Ania's mouth, changing her soiled garments, and working feeding shifts for the patient that was deemed "exceedingly dangerous."

 

[Thorne]

How many months had it been since the revolution had come to pass? Gideon Thorne hadn't been sure. Time had very much become a muddled blur since then. The old veteran had expected to die that bloody night. He was an old soldier, and one who had very little to lose. He had thought he'd be instrumental, that perhaps he'd have sacrificed himself to ensure the others could succeed in freeing Vel Anir. Instead, that dreadful responsibility had fallen onto the Dreadlord Sloan. She'd given herself to finish the monster that was Archon Isbrand, and Thorne was able to do nothing but watch.

After that, the revolution had been a haze. He'd killed many loyalists, doubled and tripled his list, though he hadn't bothered with names this time. By the end of it all, his home was finally free. He'd heard talk of the reorganization of the Houses and the balance of power, he'd heard of the changes that would sweep the Academy, and he'd guided his charge, sweet Autumn Whispergrove, back home to love in peace and security at last.

Since then days seemed to come and go like the tides. Thorne was no Dreadlord, no politician, no proctor; he was simply a soldier and a freedom fighter, and now those jobs were done. There was no place for him in Vel Anir except as a caretaker to his adoptive daughter. There had been only one thing nagging at his mind, one constant reminder of one of his greatest failings: the young woman plagued by cruel delusions that had visited him that night in Alliria with the intent of ending his life, Ania.

Thorne had told Autumn what had happened. When the letter came, he'd asked Autumn if she wanted to come. The young noble had politely declined, preferring to take the time to reacquaint herself with her home as it was being rebuilt. Thorne would go to meet Ania alone. Perhaps today he'd finally find closure.

The facility he found himself in at Vel Odwyk didn't feel like the place he'd imagined getting that closure at. It was...darker than expected...but as he was shown by staff to the room of the girl he'd once met in that bar in Alliria, a flood of memories washed over him. The question was, would she sink under those same waves? He cleared his throat.

"Hello, Ania..." The old soldier rasped hesitantly, standing near the door and carefully observing Ania, even as she sat strapped in place and blindfolded like some death row inmate. "My name is Gideon Thorne. Do you...remember me at all?"

 

[Ania]

The mind was capable of bending to accept the most egregious of situations. It could twist itself around shifting worldviews as society adjusted to new ideals. All of this was the mind's way of preserving itself. Ensuring sanity and lucidity reigned supreme. But if stretched too far, if the boundaries were tested too harshly, the mind could break entirely.

Since arriving here Ania had struggled to comprehend what the nurses and aides told her. The Great Houses were no longer in charge? Lies. A trick being sold to a prisoner of war. As days turned to weeks though it grew more challenging to accept that House Weiroon was negotiating for her release. That she even mattered. And the isolation just made it all the worse. After the first few who attended to her were shown nightmarish realities from her magic she was blindfolded and a warning plastered on her door that skin-to-skin contact was strictly forbidden.

Now a days she had no visitors. The attendants who came by fed her with gloved hands, cleaning her appropriately, and whispered in the hallway as to what should be done with her. She expected an execution but it never came. Sweat would pool on her forehead for hours until someone would come and dab it off. Her clothes would be changed once a week. It was misery.

Then a voice. Pouring in from outside her room.

"Gideon Thorne?" she whispered with before her brows tightened and rage seeped through her cheeks. "The traitor that evaded capture in Alliria?"

Lips pressed together for a fraction of a second before slowly curling into a crow's grin. "Are you here to carry out my execution?" That would be fitting. A man she was sent to kill for the glory of Vel Anir here to behead her. It was a preferable solution to her going insane or believing in some fanciful reality of a republic.

 

[Thorne]

It didn't seem possible for someone so low to have fallen so much further. Ania was a sorry sight in her current condition. If he hadn't known exactly what she was capable of he would've been incredibly critical of the people running this place, but Thorne was cursed with knowledge. If they hadn't done this then Ania likely would've driven several others to join her in her madness, or simply escaped, caused even more havoc, and gotten herself killed.

Thorne hated the idea that she'd had to suffer like this for gods knew how long, but...well, so far as he knew her life had been characterized by suffering. This was likely no worse than anything she'd gone through in the Academy.

The veteran furrowed his brow as he stepped into the room and heard her response. The other Ania, the real Ania, had been suppressed, that much was obvious. Even so, she'd held on to the pendant all this time...she was still in there, and that was enough to prompt Thorne to come.

"Are you here to carry out my execution?"

He stepped closer, worn, heavy boots falling on the barren, stone floor.
"In a sense." Thorne deadpanned back to her. He knelt in front of the chair she'd been strapped to. None of what was about to happen was going to be pleasant in any sense, but he was ready for it. Thorne was much the same: he was no stranger to pain and suffering. That, at least, would prepare him for the inevitable here.

It was time to wake her up, and though he knew her reaction would be volatile at first, he wanted her to at least have her vision when she came back. The old soldier hooked a finger beneath the girl's blindfold with one hand and placed the other on the bare skin of her forearm. He slipped the fabric on her face up and would give her a moment for her vision to adjust. Then, with a sympathetic look in his eye, red lightning would begin to dance across the hand touching her forearm. He grimaced as that familiar, burning agony wracked him, letting his magical poison course into the girl in spades.

 

[Ania]

Saliva hung in her throat as the murderer of proud Anirians approached her. There a brief milisecond of contact on her blindfold which was swiftly replaced by light. Her azure eyes struggled to adjust, blinking at the sunlight as if it were a long missed companion. His bare fingers grasped at her forearm and she prepared to send a hallucination into his mind only for something else to happen.

Her magic died before she could truly will it to begin. Fuzzy vision self-correcting from bright whites to focused shapes. "You will," he'd what? A flash of red and then a wave of confusion hit her. There wasn't a projection of some hellish landscape she had spent the past few days dreaming up in case someone like Thorne came too close. Instead it was just a room, her limbs bound, her vision seeing something other than darkness for the first time in weeks.

And a grizzled man who was... something?

"I don't understand what you're doing right now but," her jaw locked and strength left her. The last time Thorne had inflicted his powers onto her it had taken several moments for the part of her psyche created at the academy to recede. The part of her that was forged to deal with the horrors she saw, the part of her that was created as a defensive mechanism.

This time it ended after a few seconds of fluttering pupils, a quivering chin, and a few flustered words. She remembered everything, she'd seen everything that she'd committed, and she recalled the last few months. The revolution and the asylum she found herself in now. A passenger in her own body, watching it carry out new atrocities each day. "Th-thank you."

Words were softer now. Lacking the bite they carried when the man had entered the room. "Is it true that the Great Houses are gone?" The nurses had effectively told her that but the other Ania didn't wish to believe it. Denying it with every fiber of her existence.

 

[Thorne]

While the searing pain lingered in the old soldier's arm, at the very least Ania hadn't had the wherewithal to induce one last hallucination in him before he was able to suppress her. He studied the girl's face as the negative magic took effect; anger and vitriol gave way to confusion and discomfort, and that, in turn, gave way to recognition.

Weathered skin turned up in a way that showed no wrinkles, despite the man's age. Even beneath the scruff of his facial hair, one could make out a remarkable occasion. It was so rare these days...that Gideon Thorne actually smiled.
"Welcome back." He greeted her, the real her. Not the fractured fake that had been programmed into her by the Academy, and not a moment too soon.

In an instant, Thorne had pulled a knife from his boot and was cutting the young woman's binds.
"The Houses are...different. Many of the old lords and ladies were killed or deposed. But most importantly..." He explained in his taciturn way as he freed one of her hands, then the other. "Vel Anir as you knew it is no more."

 

[Ania]

"As I knew it?" Ania had no idea what even meant anymore. Even with the lucidity that Thorne had granted her there was still fragments that didn't make sense in her head. It was difficult to parse which parts of her life had been real, which had been imagined. And the things she'd seen the other her do had been... well, she couldn't forget some of them. Likely never would.

Ania massaged at her wrists which had been worn down and seemed to burn a bright scarlet from the weeks long time in the bindings. Her limbs felt heavy from lack of use and a pit in her stomach grew as she tried to take in everything that had happened. How many nurses had the other, the part of her that was still somewhere inside, fantasized about killing? How many people since the last time she regained her sense of self had Ania slaughtered?

Her left hand ran across her forehead, wiping away sweat and squeezing her eyes tightly as she tried to dismiss those sorts of thoughts.

They wouldn't do her any good, not in the here and now. "So, what happens now?" Her words weren't aggressive, simply filled with curiosity. Did Thorne intend to slay her? That might be a blessing in itself. To know that your body wouldn't be used to harm anyone else ever again. Or, perhaps, he was taking somewhere to lock her up permanently. Somewhere more secure than this because the various doctors and attendants had deemed her too far gone.

 

[Thorne]

"As I knew it?"

Right. That would be a tricky verbal habit to navigate.
"As it was, I mean." Thorne corrected himself, grunting as he bent over to begin cutting Ania's ankles free in turn. There would be a lot of informing he'd have to do, a lot of making up for lost time. Thorne hadn't been much of a conversationalist in the last decade and a half, but an old dog could always learn a few new tricks.

"Now," Thorne replied as he sawed across the fabric, watching as fold after fold gave way. With a few more slices the bindings fell to the ground, freeing the once-Dreadlord completely. "We go home. Unless you've come to fancy...this."

He eyed her as he rose to his feet. There'd be more questions, more concerns, of that he was sure. It was about time he got her out of this bloody asylum, though.

 

[Ania]

"Home?" That was a funny concept. For much of her life home was the academy. Then, after graduation, home was whatever House Weiroon estate she was stationed at. For the past few months home was this asylum, this prison.

And now, with lucidity since the first time after Alliria, the question was less confusion with the concept and more one wishing for clarification.

Ania cleared her throat, it was still scratchy from her time bound and gagged, "I don't fancy this place. I'm glad to go with you but I only wish to know... where we are going?"

Her azure eyes stared back at him. The haze of her old reality still washing away slowly but with every passing moment her mind became clearer and clearer. She felt focused now, she remembered him. The man who had spared her, showed her kindness. In a quick motion her hands darted for her pockets, feeling them up and finding nothing.

"Where is my, or your, pendant?" It had become something of a memento to the part of her that had been encaged. Ever since he had gifted the Whispergrove crest many months ago.

 

[Thorne]

"Aye, home. As I knew it. Whispergrove Manor." Thorne said, looking wistful for a moment. The place had been burned and crushed to nothing what must have been two decades ago by now, but the new Anirian Republic had deemed it fit to restore it as an act of reparations to Autumn.

"Where is my, or your, pendant?"

Thorne frowned slightly. The letter had only said that the asylum workers had found it on her, but not what they'd done with it.
"Did they take it from you? We can get it back on our way out. Also..." He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It is yours, Ania. I gave it to you. I'd hoped it might some day lead you back, and...I'm glad that it has, in a sense."