Private Tales What Remains

[Faelynwë]

What had she done?

For the first time in what felt like years, it was Faelynwë who stared at her hands. Hands she no longer knew and not least because they were covered in a dead mans blood. How long had she lost herself in the persona of the Gleemaiden? How many moons had she spent drunk or barely conscious, barely thinking? It was like the touch of magic had hurled her out of her dark pit leaving her dazed and confused. Her whole body began to tremble.

You killed someone.

They weren't meant to kill, least of all with magic. Her people had not been warriors, but scholars, had argued for peace...

You killed someone.

Her violet eyes drifted to the body where blood pooled around him, soaking into the wood floor and coating her shoes.

Murderer.

She could barely hear the Prince over that word roaring in her ears so she merely stood, shaking, barely able to breathe.

 

[Avros]

"We have to go!" Avros repeated again as he finally stood in front of the near inanimate Faelynwë.

He did not, could not, know the confines of her mind in that moment. Her eyes seemed distant, far, as though she were peering through him. A mixture of horror and pure terror flickering through her features as he drew closer and closer.

The Prince's eyes followed her gaze, tracing to the dead man upon the floor. His lips flickering in a frown. "We have to go."

Avros said again, the words playing out for a third time as he reached the gleemaiden. His hand landing upon her shoulder just seconds later as he tried to shake her out of the stupor that she now found herself in. Touch falling upon her skin, drawing her hopefully back into the moment.

"Think later." He demanded almost cruelly.

She had taken a life, killed a man. Such a thing was an Anathema to her people. Avros knew that, he had been taught it growing up. Her nation had been a friend, an ally to his own. Her people as close as any had been. Their land and knowledge had been sacred.

Now it was stained with blood. "We don't have time."

He insisted, glancing only briefly towards the Innkeeper who seemed more confused than terrified at this point. Eyes staring directly at the two killers.

Avros' hand gently pushed the elf, softly guiding her more than shoving towards the kitchen. "Come on."

He whispered into her hear. "Before there's more of them."

 

[Faelynwë]

Faelynwë flinched as the Prince's hand came down upon her shoulder. Slowly, she dragged her eyes from the corpse to the Prince. She could see his lips moving but his words reached her through what felt like mud. She wasn't in control of her body anymore. Instead she floated above it, watching the scene unfold before her as though it were a play and she merely a spectator.

"Murderer, murderer!" The invisible crowd jeered as the Prince tugged the Lost Princess away from the bloody corpse.

"Somebody stop them!"

"Don't let them get away!"

Fae put up no resistance when Avros nudged her in the right direction. Her steps were wooden but she dutifully put one foot in front of the other in the direction he chose. She had enough of her senses to pause beside the bar to pick up the bulky canvas bag with her most precious belongings, and her fiddle. Whether it was the cold or the shock truly beginning to set in it was hard to tell as they stepped outside and she began to shake.

"I didn't mean... It just..."

 

[Avros]

"You saved my life." Avros said before she could even finish.

The weight of his words coming as he threw open the door to the kitchens and pushed her through without hesitation. He had absolutely no idea if there was a back way out of this place, but he knew they couldn't leave through the front door.

Almost instantly he whirled around, taking up a nearby chair and shoving it beneath the door-handle. It was an inconvenience, and he doubted that anyone was chasing them, but part of the reason he did it was to create confusion. The Innkeep would no doubt report what he had seen, he would have no choice.

Those Guards would need to report to someone, and that someone would come asking questions.

Four corpses would provide for an obvious answer, and that answer would create a trail. Avros knew that, he had been running long enough to understand how to cover his tracks. "Whatever guilt weighs upon you, let a piece of it be absolved."

He told her softly, and then peered around, finding what he was looking for.

"I need you with me." Avros continued. "Not mired in guilt, alright? That can come later, for now we have to survive."

The Prince said, never offering her a chance to stand and explain as he headed towards the backdoor.

 

[Faelynwë]

From the slightly glazed look in her violet eyes, it was clear that despite her nod her mind would not heel at Avros' order. Still, Faelynwë tried. She walked in less of a daze and her eyes flickered up and down the streets they crossed in a perfect imitation of a person looking for danger. Whether her mind registered anything she did see was another question though, and was not one even the elf could answer. It felt as though she were still watching the series of events far removed from her own body.

Once upon a time there was a Princess. Her mother had hidden her deep in the old crypts and told her to not turn back, no matter the screams she heard above...

Fae's gaze kept drifting to her still bloodied hands as they trotted up the deserted streets. They hadn't got far before a whistle sounded behind them; the guard had discovered their crime. Her crime.

 

[Avros]

Avros heard the whistle's call. Once upon of time the shrill whine would have been a welcome reprieve. He remembered when it had been his father's guards who had used it's call. He remembered when it had summoned men with honor who sought only to protect.

Now it was something else entirely.

”Shit.” He swore. A hand coming up almost immediately to throw his cloaks hood over his head. His hand coming out seconds later to gently grab his companion and urge her forward. Knowing if they didn't hurry the Guards would soon be on their heels.

”This way.” The once Prince whispered to the elven gleemaid, the panic in his voice now clear. ”We have to get off the streets, then out of town.”

As he spoke, he hasted their steps. Not a run, but a fast walk which carefully carried them towards one of the darkened alleyways in the little village. Behind them a cry went up in the streets, shouts of soldiers heading onto the road.

Things were moving quickly, too quickly. It wouldn't be long be-

“MURDER! THERE'S BEEN A MURDER!” Someone shouted, and Avros suddenly yanked Faelynwë to the side. Tugging her into a dark alley and pressing hand over her mouth as suddenly a rider rushed by the alleyway. The heavy sound of hooves striking against cobbles ringing out as he hid the two of them within the dark.

 

[Faelynwë]

Fae kept up with his hurried strides with liquid grace even in her dazed state. It was hard not to see what she was just from the way she moved and that was before someone could catch a glimpse of her pointed ears or violet eyes. It would be easy for someone to mention to a guard they had seen an elf. Getting off the streets was probably a wise idea, because it wouldn't be long before...

Murder! Murder!

Murderer.

The elf's body shuddered as though the words shouted out were a physical blow to her. Before she could bend over and retch like her stomach so desperately wanted to do, Avros yanked her into a side alley causing her to yelp in surprise. She muttered something that might have been 'get off' under his palm but her frenzied wriggling stopped as soon as the rider rushed past. She went slack against him, wide eyes following the messenger. No doubt they would be off to tell the guards at the gate to shut them.

"They're going to find us," she whispered once Avros released her and looked down at her bloodied hands. "You should... you should just go."

 

[Avros]

"No." The answer came so quick on the heels of her words it almost seemed that Avros had read her mind.

"I can't do that." He continued as he slowly backed away from her, his hands no less bloody than hers. A quick moment passed as he stood there, eyes flickering up and down her form before he took half a step to the side. Looking away from her and quickly taking a peek out of the alleyway before he slipped back in front of her. "We're going to get out of here."

Though there were no friends left, not that he knew of in the moment anyway, Avros still had his ways. Though the people might have forgotten it, this nation had once belonged to his family. The King and Queen had been good, and their parents even better.

His once great nation had been famed for it's beauty and forward thinking, and that included the construction of sewers.

Every city, even the smaller towns had them. A mark of brilliance designed by a man who now lay chained within a dungeon. Forced to make machines of war and fortresses, rather than things that allowed entire diseased to be wiped out.

"And when we do, you and I are going to have a very interesting chat." Avros finally finished, gently grabbing her hand as he headed deeper into the alleyway and towards a large metal slab in the middle of the cobbles.

His knife slipping free and between it's edges, prying the plate away with pure force of muscle.

 

[Faelynwë]

Faelynwë made a strangled noise in the back of her throat as he grabbed a hold of her hand and began pulling her deeper into the alleyway. His words sounded like little more than a threat. She had thought initially that he had helped her because he felt some sort of gratitude for what she had done, but what if she was wrong, what if he wanted her only for his own gains?

Once upon a time, there was a Princess who entertained a Prince for a day. He showed her how to lure butterflies so that they landed on your nose, and how to tie her shoelaces so she didn't fall...

Fae blinked the blurred memory away, shoving it back behind that iron wall where everything else from Before lived. The boy looked similar to the man before her but... the years had not been kind to her, were they any kinder to him?

As he wrenched the iron cover off the sewers entrance, a stench wafted up to greet them that made the elf gag. Her naturally enhanced senses only heightened her experience, causing her to tug her shirt up and over her nose with her free hand.

"We're really going down there?" she asked despite knowing the answer, her tone ringing with resignation.

 

[Avros]

Avros nodded almost immediately in answer. He did not like the idea of crawling through the sewers any more than she did, but it was as far as he could tell the only way they would be getting out of there.

”Gates will be shut.” He explained, looking down into the dark. ”The walls will be manned.”

Murder was a serious offense, murder of a guard? Much more so, but once rumors began to fly about who the Guards were searching for? This city would be locked down by the army, if they were lucky. If not the entire place might be burned by weeks end. Punishment for the failure of it’s citizens. ”The sewers will lead to the sea, from there we can skirt up the coast and…”

And what?

He had only just broken out of prison. Most people he knew were either dead or still in chains, the old networks were gone.

Avros frowned at the thought, his lips pressing to a thin line as he shook his head and tried to wipe away the spike of pessimism. He was still alive, there was still will. He just had to find a way, and…perhaps she could help with that.

”Come on.” He said, offering her a hand down before quickly following after her. The sound of the metal plate sliding into place above echoing out not long after the two fugitives slipped into the sewers.

Plunging them into darkness.

 

[Faelynwë]

Fae pulled the scarf around her neck up to cover her nose and mouth. It did little to dampen the stench but a little went a long way when wading through literal shit.

Before taking another step the elf rummaged in her large rucksack and withdrew a fat stub of candle. Down here an ordinary candle would do little, but the blue and purple wax betrayed the candle as being far from ordinary. In the Great Libraries it was these candles that had burnt day and night, never extinguishing or causing harm to the precious tomes they illuminated. She struck a match and lit the wick spilling the sewer with enough light to see a good few feet ahead.

She wasn't sure if it was worse or better to see what they were walking through. At least it gave her something to focus on other than the guilt gnawing through her gut.

"Why... were they hunting for you?" she asked to fill the silence. It was a question she already knew the answer to of course, but that made it safe territory. At least for her.

 

[Avros]

Light spilled through the darkness within the sewers, allowing them to few their fetid surroundings. Avros' gaze almost immediately flickering to it's source. His lips pressing to a thin line as he saw what Fae was holding. He recognized that candle.

Rather, he recognized those like it.

It brought back another memory, another flicker of that trip he had once taken so long ago. It caused that pang of sorrow, that regret that he and his family had not been able to do more. Fae's people had been struck first, but...

He turned away from her, and the thought that had been brewing. "I escaped from prison."

Avros said softly, hiding the strain that flickered over his features as he began to lead their way through the sewers. The words were not the entirety of the story of course, but he hesitated to speak the whole of the truth. Did she know? Had she guessed?

It was only a matter of time.

"And." Avros continued as he walked, never looking back towards his elven companion. "I was once Prince of this land."

He declared into the darkness of a sewer.

 

[Faelynwë]

Once upon a time there was a Princess who made friends with a Prince...

Fae hugged herself as best she could whilst holding the candle aloft. It was easier remembering the Before like a story. It enabled her to pretend it had happened to someone else and not to her. To lock it away deep inside of her and... forget. Of course the drugs and the booze had done that too. Sometimes it was difficult to tell what memories were real and what were stories that she had woven into her own. In this case, it seemed the memory had been true. She could recall his face in his youth and the eyes were the same, if more shadowed, the nose and the way he set his jaw when he didn't want to do something. Like when he hadn't wanted to throw sticks off the bridge with her to race them.

"Will you leave? The... Empire?"

 

[Avros]

Avros stopped.

The sound of his boot falling on the cobble seemed to almost echo down the hall. It's call ringing in his ear even as he stood there, his heart beating in his chest.

It was a question he had heard a dozen times before. One proffered by friends and enemies alike. He could have left dozens of times before they caught him, he could have even fled after his escape, but that was never an option. Even in his dreams, where he sometimes wandered, he knew it could not be.

"No." He said softly. Taking a deep breath as he turned to face her.

"Not now, not ever." Avros' gaze met Faelynwë's, a steel set within his eyes that spoke of purpose. "This land is mine, my peoples. Not his."

The Prince declared firmly. "I will fight and if I have to; die to see it brought back to them."

It was almost as though the words were casting out his own doubts. As though he spoke them to reaffirm who he was, what he was here to do. Why he had lived this long at all.

 

[Faelynwë]

Hope. He had hope, or its twisted deluded cousin. Either way it seemed to fuel him, make him taller, more imposing, more... Prince like. She wondered what it might feel like to have something like that to keep you going. Fae had nothing of the sort. She had no people to fight for; what few whispers she had chased when she was younger of other Nyárë Elves living as fugitives amongst the humans had turned out to be nothing more than that; whispers. If there were any of her people left they probably wished they had died alongside their families just as she did every morning.

No longer able to hold his gaze she looked away.

"You're a fool, then," she pushed past him and continued on into the sewers.

 

[Avros]

For a moment he stood there, as if rooted in place. Her words a dagger than had been stabbed directly into his chest...and yet had missed his heart. "I've been told that before."

Avros whispered to himself, a hand slowly coming up, fingers slipping gently against the collar of his shirt. Brushing between the linens and against his skin, as if searching for something that might have hung around his throat.

Finding the space now only empty.

Darkness enshrouded him by the time his feet unrooted from the floor. His steps easily catching up to the only source of light that could be founded within the foul place. For a moment, as he walked alongside her, The Prince stayed quiet. Only speaking his mind as he motioned for them to move around the next corner.

"Perhaps I am a fool." He said softly. "Then why are you still here?"

A gleemaid could earn enough coin to leave the islands, even under the eyes of the Gaunt. There were ways if one sought them, a fact he was certain she knew.

But he knew who she was, the fact that she was no gleemaid at all. If he was the fool, then what was she?

 

[Faelynwë]

"Have you seen what happens to a person with magic who tries to cross the barrier?" Faelynwë's voice had taken on an icy edge. The anger that thrummed through her made her lengthen her stride as though she were full of an energy she wanted to be rid of. Memories she wanted to escape from. When the Prince didn't answer straight away she filled in the answer for him. "It's like being set on fire. From the inside out. He did it to make an example of one of us who tried to help your cause," her eyes slashed to him. "He pushed them through the barrier and they wouldn't stop screaming until they were a burnt out shell. He put his boot straight through their body and turned it to ash."

For whatever reason, the Usurper had a true hatred for her kind. He wouldn't let them go even now, even when she was likely the only one left.

 

[Avros]

Avros visibly shrunk, his lips pressing to a thin line, his fingers tightening into white knuckled fists and a dryness passing through his throat. "No."

The Prince said softly.

"No, I hadn't seen that." He hadn't known it at all in fact. Everyone knew what he had done. Knew the genocide of her people and how thorough it had been. Many stories had spread of the cruelties, the pain and suffering that had been purposefully inflicted. But this? "I hadn't...didn't know."

Guilt flickered through his chest, the cruelty of his words from just a few seconds ago settling in his stomach like fetid bile. "I'm sorry."

He said, oh so uselessly.

 

[Faelynwë]

"Sorry doesn't bring them back," Fae snapped. She regretted the words as soon as they were out but there the hung between them, poisonous. The gleemaiden took a breath, regretting it immediately for the stench it drew into her lungs, and attempted to calm her erratic heartbeat and frayed emotions.

"I... am sorry. That was unkind. It's not your fault, By the Silver Bells you're probably the only person whose fault it isn't," she pushed a hand through her matted hair. He had lost as much as she had; family, a kingdom, his people. Yes they might still live unlike hers but those like that soldier had seemed almost eager to see him dead. Fae wasn't sure how she would have handled that from her own people. "This night has been... it has not been what I expected," her shoulders slumped with her sigh. The memories, the magic, the murder... Seven Hells she wanted a drink. Or some Kraa Root. That always eased the memories back into a pleasant blur.

 

[Avros]

Her words stabbed into his chest like a dagger through the heart. A pain of guilt flickering through his chest that had been with him all along.

When the Usurper had struck, he had come for her people first. Then the other two kingdoms, then the nation of Avelin at last. He could still remember as the skies had darkened, could still remember the fear that had run through his heart.

The courage that his father's words had instilled him.

He could still remember how those words had meant nothing in the end. "No."

Avros said softly, his fingers curling at his side. His head shaking as his boots came to a stop upon the small cobbles. A soft breaht drawing into his chest even as Fae apologized for the barb she had thrown against him.

"You have nothing to apologize for." He said softly. "We failed."

His knees felt weak, his body almost threatened to fold in on itself. "Despite everything...we failed."

He had been nineteen when the Usurper came. When the fight had begun and the Kingdoms began to fall. He still remembered it. Still remembered the death, destruction, and decay. Even now it felt unreal, just how much pain the Tyrant had brought to the door. "Our magics were nothing, our soldiers..."

Avros shook his head.

"I am sorry to have dragged you into this." He said, apologizing again. Knowing the night was not just what she hadn't expected, but a turbulence in a life already fraught with danger. "I am sorry that you could not be a simple gleemaid."

 

[Faelynwë]

"With these, I was never going to be able to be just a gleemaiden," it was hard to tell whether she gestured to her pointed ears or the unmistakable violet eyes that marked her as different and she didn't expand any further on the subject. They walked in silence for a time, each one lost in their own melancholy memories, until they came to a junction in the sewers. The sluggish flow of the waste ran down towards the right and out, Fae assumed, towards the seas beyond. The other way must have led further into the city. A whole warren of pathways she had never thought of before.

"Last chance to go on without me," she offered half heatedly.

 

[Avros]

It was true.

The marks of her people gave her away almost as much as anything he had done. She might have survived for a time, but there would always be trouble. For whatever reason the Usurper despised her kind more than any other, and that raw hatred would eventually bleed into the land itself.

Just as it already had in other ways.

As they walked in silence Avros thought on that. During his time in prison he had not been allowed much of a view of the outside world. The Tyrant had not locked him in a tower, but a dungeon deep beneath the earth. When he'd broken free, his people and the land almost seemed...tainted.

A deep etched depression seemed to cling to the people of Avelin, soaking into the very earth. The Prince couldn't wonder if that malaise would eventually turn to anger. A rage that the Usurper could eventually harvest to conquer and destroy even more of the world.

When they reached the small fork, Fae's words snapped Avros out of his thoughts. Gaze flickering from left to right before what she had said echoed in his mind. "My father always said that the greatest strength of our lands lay within their cooperation."

The Prince said softly.

"I still believe that, even though there is not much left of any of them." Even his own lands were a shadow of themselves. "If you come with me."

Avros said softly. "At least I won't be fighting alone."

 

[Faelynwë]

Alone.

When she was younger she would cry for days for the loss of her mothers hugs or her father's stories. But as she had grown and learnt the true cruelty of the world, that loneliness had become buried. She'd dulled it first with anger, then with alcohol and Kraa Root. What he offered therefore felt like some cruel trick to set her back. How much would it hurt to have to start all over again, rebuild her walls and dull the pain? But... what would it feel like if he wasn't lying? To have at least one person who did not look at her with scorn...

Fae swallowed.

"I'm not much of a fighter," she gestured to the lute strung over her shoulder and ignored the image of the sword plunging through the guards chest that rose unbidden in her minds eye.

 

[Avros]

Avros smiled. "Neither was I, once."

The people of his nation had grown up with the casual use of runes. Some of them had been for war, but most had been for things as simple as washing a pot. When the Devourer had come, things had changed swiftly. He could still remember old ceremonies turning into tactics, the haze on the faces of some of the soldiers.

Somehow even as the memories flashed before his eyes the Prince managed to keep his face steady. Not wanting Fae to doubt his confidence.

"And it's not always what you can do with a blade." He told her. "Sometimes, it's more about what you say."

A fact that he'd learned only in prison Ironically. There he had managed to sway many of the masses, keeping himself alive through the will of other prisoners until his jailers took him from the semblance of a following he had built.

That was when the isolation had started. "Come one."

He urged, an echo of the words he'd once spoken as a child; leading her once again into trouble.

 

[Faelynwë]

Faelynwë hesitated as he stretched out his hand towards her. The physical crossroads had become a spiritual one. Did she turn back towards her old life as bleak as it was, try to reinvent herself and drink herself into an oblivion to forget the magic she had briefly held in her hands, the blood that stained them.... Or did she trust a Prince, and the story he promised? She bit down on her bottom lip and worried at it as she debated. Then, almost when it seemed as though she would decline she put her hand into his and let him lead her on.

What was she now? It certainly not a Gleemaiden anymore. Rebel, then? Or did she dare to touch that wound and claim her bloodied crown? The thought made her physically flinch.

"Where do we go next?" she asked in an attempt to distract herself as they neared the entrance to the sewers. A faint ocean breeze wafted up to greet them, easing some of the foul stench.