Completed The Cost of Closure

[Zinnia]

"Horns!"

Zinnia already knew it. She'd felt them. She might've come to regret letting them be seen later. But they saved her, gave her an opening. Soleil had seized up like a deer in torchlight, and Zinnia would not let the moment go to waste.

Her clawed and open hand made contact with Soleil's body, and instantly she could feel the connection between her battery and Soleil's inorganic mass. Zinnia's pupils tightened. The moment had come.

"Now DROWN like the RAT you ARE!" she screamed for all the heavens to hear, and channeled every last bit of water she had left in her battery. It surged forth like a torrent, intent on saturating every granule left in that wretched body of Soleil's with the thing she feared most.

All sound fell away but the beating of her own heart and her ragged breathing. Time stretched, the din of her lungs and heart echoing for what felt like an eternity. In that moment she could have sworn she felt Caeso's eyes upon her, no longer full of scorn.

 

[Soleil Verdane]

There was no escape. Nothing in Soleil's arsenal could have saved her from the suddenness, proximity, and power of the elemental water. The moment Soleil's lapse allowed Zinnia to land her grip, her fate was sealed.

Pain poured over the whole of Soleil's body as the blast of water completely enveloped her. She had no time to scream. She couldn't scream, even if she wanted to. Her body, utterly soaked, was crushed, crushed, CRUSHED under the weight of the water binding all of the magical sand together. It felt like all of Vel Anir had fallen upon her. Then all of Liadain. Then all of Arethil. An impossible weight that only grew and grew and had no end to the torment with which it could ravage her. In a manner perhaps poetic, it was as though all of the pain, all of the suffering Soleil had inflicted throughout her life had now come back round onto her, the great mass of collective agony of all her victims now pulverizing her in the same callous manner with which she had dispensed it.

What remained when Zinnia's torrent at last ceased was the prone form of Soleil upon the ground, lying on her back. Yet she no longer looked like a person, a human being, at all. It was as though a replica of a girl, a shallow imitation, had been fashioned solely from the materials of a desert. Arms, legs, body, head, a poor amalgamation of parts crafted of sand in a loose approximation of life.

Her eyes were nothing but sand, the orange of those cruel suns extinguished. She did not move. Save for her mouth. The tiniest little motions of her lips, her chins, or what passed for such.

She was trying to speak, perhaps. Or mayhap she was already gone, and these were but the final and futile throes of death.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Time slammed forward, and suddenly Zinnia could hear again. The wind blew through the courtyard, the guardsmen still trapped in the pit whimpered and quietly prayed to Kress, and Zinnia's own breathing was so hard she was shocked she hadn't started to hyperventilate.

More importantly, she saw. The aftermath of her own attack. Soleil lay before her in a barely moving pile of wet sand. She'd done it...she'd really done it. And now, what remained of her hated enemy almost made her feel pity. How different things could have been...but the Soleil that had come to exist was a monster, and if there was anything left of her, she was suffering.

Equal parts mercy and residual anger gripped Zinnia's heart. For as good as it felt to be rid of her, the act could not give Zinnia what she really wanted. It could not change what had already happened, return what had already been lost. Silas had been right.

"I told you, didn't I?" she muttered quietly, exhausted, unsure if Soleil could even still hear her. "That when I found who killed Caeso, I'd kill them myself."

With one last shout of exertion, Zinnia slammed her hammer into the mound that was what remained of Soleil's face, a wet slap and thud resounding through the training ground. Then she knelt and expended every last drop of fire and lightning left in her battery into the pile that was left. The water vaporized, the sand melted down, and in a minute, what remained was naught but glass.

"Murrick! It's done! I'm--" Zinnia stood and shouted, her voice hoarse. The adrenaline was wearing off and her vision was fading between light and dark. "I'm d-done. C-come help your men. Deal with what's l-left."

She staggered forward, unsteady. The horns that Soleil had called out the moment before she perished began to recede, Zinnia's physiology deciding that such a transformation was no longer necessary. Her fingers, too, began to retract their claws and lose their scales. She needed to go. Needed to find something to cover up with. She was just...so...tired...

 

[Soleil Verdane]

With that blow of Zinnia's hammer, the final bearer of the Verdane name was expunged from Arethil, and a justice, uncommon to the lands of Vel Anir, at last delivered.

 

[Zinnia]

The Next Day​

---

Zinnia woke with a start in her own bed, back at the Academy. Her head whipped about, searching for enemies or answers, but the only sight that greeted her was beams of morning light filtering in from the outside and the inquisitive face of Seri, sitting on her chest.

She grabbed the cooing caterpillar and attempted to sit up, but regretted doing so almost immediately. Her head still ached from the day before, and her body screamed at her for how much she'd exerted it, both physically and magically. Yet, despite everything, she was alive. Safe. Home. What happened after she'd blacked out?

Zinnia turned, carefully and laboriously, to palm a glass of water on her bedside table. The answer to her question came in the form of a note left beside it. Zinnia drank, swallowed hard, and unfolded the note.

"You keep my secret, I'll keep yours.
-M."
​

Murrick. Zinnia sighed a long breath of relief. He must've gotten her home. Zinnia had no intention of ratting on him at this point, but she'd happily take this little agreement over the alternatives. She just hoped he continued trying to make things right instead of sinking back into depravity.

The gold-eyed girl flopped back down into her bed, lofting Seri above her and staring at her pet for a moment. The grub cocked its head and wiggled about, and Zinnia couldn't help but smile at him before hugging the creature to her chest.

Caeso's face popped into her head. She thought of one of the few times she'd ever seen him smile, a brief glimpse she'd gotten of him at the dance. Instinctively, she reached out for him, blinked, and saw only her own ceiling. He was gone. There would forever be things left unsaid, and things said that could not be taken back. But now at least he'd had some small offering of vengeance, and hopefully with that, peace.

"Goodbye, Caeso..." Zinnia thought. "I hope you can smile again, wherever you are..."