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Shionne remembers what it was like to be small and alone in a research lab, left there with only a ragged doll and a cursed body. The scientists are warm at first, giving her their approximations of sunny smiles, but even at her young age, she can see the trepidation lurking in their eyes, tense and wary. It reminds her of how the family cat looked at her after the thorns had first manifested, how she reached for that soft patch of fur under its chin; the way it bunched into an arch of coiled muscle, hissing with fear when it used to purr and press itself into her small palms with delight.
She’s small, but not stupid, and she can hear the murmurs from the rest of the research team past the reassuring expressions. Should we leash it? How will we clean her? What is she holding? Is it disinfected? Don’t touch it. The last one, she recalls, stings particularly bad, her tiny heart threatening to collapse in on itself. Tears welled up as she remembered the discovery, how her mother leapt back as if she had kicked a beehive, howling in agony at the sparks. All for trying to hug her daughter.
The scientists had formed a sort of circle around her, herding her down towards the lab, examining and poking and prodding at a safe distance. Collecting fluids and tissue, scanning and testing, observing behavior and mental state. The first time she cast an arte was when they took away the doll, to see if her curse would react in tandem with her emotions. “You’re a bit too old for that sort of thing,” (but the right age to keep as a lab rat.) The thorns had practically leapt out of her skin, lashing out like an electrified whip. Shionne felt her head spin with horror at the scream, her eyes igniting to draw in the ambient Astral energy in an attempt to soothe the researcher’s pain.
They let her keep the doll after that, but stopped all pretenses of compassion. The experiments grow frequent, ranging from dull and endless hours of having her touch myriads of objects, to the stress of food being withheld for days as they push her to the brink of her physical limits. When she collapses, her heart grinds to a halt after being made to run for hours on empty, they panic, and an icy dread creeps into her gut as she feels the thorns creep through her veins to start it up again. She grows proficient in healing, which becomes a necessity when they escalate their cruelty after realizing she can’t die.
Shionne begins to hoard snacks and food, parceling aside scraps from every meal and individually wrapped treats. The first thing she learns to store in the pocket dimension is a single cookie, her reward for learning to conjure flame—although mastery and control would have to come later.
She’s about twelve when they start teaching her how to properly fight, as befits someone with artes as powerful as hers. By now, Shionne completely lives in the research lab, a young heiress forgotten and discarded by House Imeris, spending her days being shuffled back and forth between various examination rooms and experiments, prodded with needles and tubes and implements she didn’t care to learn the purposes of. They stopped trying to lead her around by a leash after she burned it to cinders in an outrage, opting instead to push her around with poles and batons.
For what it’s worth, a handful of these doctors are kind, speaking softly and gesturing around as if she wasn’t an untouchable monster in the shape of a girl. It is one of these adults that guides her towards a large atrium, hovering around her like a recording drone. “Go ahead and pick one.” He tells her, indicating the holo-dais. The transparent cyan screen flickers to life as she approaches, displaying simulacra of the various trainer weapons the lab had at its disposal.
She fidgets with the hem of her dress with her left hand as she browses through the options, the silky skirt and embroidered lace creasing and wrinkling as she chews on her lip, trying to decide if this was some sort of trap that’d lead to another painful experiment. “You guys gave me a lot of choices,” she stalls.
“Then take your time.”
No escape, then. Shionne runs an antsy hand through her long hair. It was a pain to keep neat, but she didn’t want to hurt the innocent stylists they’d bring in, and her thorns lashed out badly when one tried to shave it off.
She scrolls through, examining the weapons seriously. Axes with wicked edges, lances with all kinds of regalia, and who knew there were that many kinds of swords? There’s things she didn’t even know could be used for fighting, like the varieties of staves and wands, ring-shaped blades, sets of throwing knives, or more archaic weaponry like warhammers. It’s only after what feels like an eternity of scrolling does her eyes finally fall upon a firearm.
Modern Rena had seen simple guns start to fall out of fashion in favor of the efficiency of gunlances or gunblades or whatever else the leading weapons manufacturers were managing to put guns into, but the slender hunting rifle seems perfectly made for her. A few taps on the screen to confirm her selection, and the holo-dais spits out the weapon, almost as long as she is tall. Shionne marvels at its sleek, polished exterior, the cool metal seemingly thrumming in her unsteady grip.
“Let’s start with the basics.” The kind researcher begins.
They lead off with teaching her how to hold the weapon, how to stand and align the sightsl when taking a shot, how to empty and reload after exhausting the clip. She snarls in frustration as her fingers stumble over each other, strawberry hair sometimes catching between the parts. “Patience, Shionne, Lenegis wasn’t built in a day. Do it slowly now, and the speed will come later.” She presses her lips together in a hard, straight line, willing her face and shoulders motionless. It’s the first time she had been called by name since her family left her behind. The barest hint of a tear leaks, but does not escape her eyelashes. One deep breath in, then out, and her hands are steady as the tides.
Her days become seamless, a cycle of waking, painful tests, and then the comfort of her mentor and the exercises he puts her through. They flow from the basics into more complex tactics. How to charge a bullet with Astral energy, how to cast while keeping the rifle at the ready, how to create and infuse explosives in the time of a single breath. “Why go to all the effort of teaching me?” She asks in the middle of what’s become a regular disassemble-reassemble habit, a motion so fluid and practiced she’s assured she could do it blindfolded. That first lesson, on how to square her shoulders and plant her feet, it all feels so distant after what she assumes has to be years worth of routine by now.
He doesn’t reply, which isn’t unexpected from the adults around her. She is an untouchable girl, after all. Rather, he waits for her to finish the reassembly—she had become quite proficient in the short time he spent training her—and only after the last part clicks into place does he finally offer a non-answer. “You became of age, someone had to teach you.”
“So it ended up being you? Aren’t you scared?”
He shrugs, snapping his fingers to command the holo-dais, which flashes a multitude of moving targets in the atrium, flickering in the evening light. She easily hits all of them, glancing at his face for approval. A flash of pride glints over his eyes, quick enough that it could’ve been imagined. “Again.”
By her nineteenth birthday, they deem her strong enough for Renan society. Not long after, her instructor is dismissed from the cohort of scientists assigned to her observation, and Shionne is just as surprised as the rest of the staff members when her thorns try to swallow a whole wing of the facility in retaliation. In response, the researchers finally declare their attempts to devise a clue or divine the origin for the curse a failure, and Shionne herself is pruned from the laboratory as well.
She was let go with the clothes on her back and anything she could fit in dimensional hyperspace, which wasn’t a lot, outside of her rifle. She had her doll, of course—which was more threadbare and ragged than when she had first had it. Shionne was adrift in the streets of Lenegis, wandering from street to street. The artificial sky was warm on her back, even in the dusky light. Under the silent regard of city lamps, she grits her teeth as she feels the thorns prickle beneath the surface of her skin, coursing along her veins and nervous system. Enough to hurt, enough to dredge up dark nightmares she’s usually able to clamp down on—but not enough to break her stride or give her any pause.
Her wanderings take her to what she thinks might’ve been her family’s estate, and when familiar maids open the doors for her, she bites back a sigh of relief at her homecoming. It wouldn’t do for her to get comfortable in a home that didn’t want her, and she stares unflinchingly as the heads of House Imeris recoil at the sight of their wayward daughter.
“Welcome.” Her father offers, and the lack of any affection in the greeting isn’t lost on her. Not a welcome back or a welcome home or a we’re terribly sorry for leaving you all alone, we love you.
“I can leave by morning,” Shionne murmurs, breezing past her parents towards their guest room, who are all too quick to step out of her path. Nothing had changed in the decade since she was left behind, simply that she was more aware of her isolation. When she had first left, the loneliness was fresh and bitter, everything was all too confusing for a girl at that age. Now, it felt like an old wound lodged inside an icy cage, forced to lock it away for her own survival. At night proper, Lenegis dims its lights and sets aside its artificial sun, allowing the distant beauty of Dahna’s moon to shine through, she crawls into the guest bed, caring only to kick off her shoes and tie up her hair, in anticipation of another restless sleep.
Her dreams are the same as usual, a clutch of thorns swallowing the Twin Worlds and all the stars in the sky, searing pain that’d burst out from her flesh like seeds from fruit. But this time is different, before they can reach the stars to wink them out, a rush of searing flame roars all around her, erupting from her chest. It hurts, so much so that she gasps awake, vainly clutching at the sheets and pulling at the skin above her heart as if the motion could appease the writhing thorns. Shionne grits her teeth in the smoky light of pre-dawn. Inhale, exhale. Once, twice, then again. If fire was the key to saving herself, she knew where to find a source.
Surprisingly, the “escaping a satellite” part of her heist ends up being almost too easy—which isn’t a fantastic sign, since it’ll definitely just get harder from here. That giant brute had briefly stopped by in Lenegis just last night before returning to descend on Dahna, and it’s during this timely visit that Shionne breaks into the hangar and hurries aboard the Lord’s skycruiser, cramming herself into a maintenance closet. If there’s anything to be grateful about, it’s that she won’t reek of anything other than a light floral scent when she gets out. The flight would take a long few hours, and she was determined not to fail before even getting started.
After some time, Balseph stomps back aboard his personal starship, grumbling and seething, his massive tail-like chain rattling and dragging across the floor. She strains to listen, but can only make out murmurs of frustration about the slaves of Calaglia, how it was the laziness of those animals being why he couldn’t get an edge over the other Lords. Shionne sinks down to a sitting position on the floor of the closet, too wired to properly rest. In spite of knowing that they’ll never open the maintenance closets mid-flight, the gunslinger tenses up enough to pull a slim knife out of negative space, gripping the handle until it’s slick with sweat and her breathing goes quiet and shallow.
It was going to be a long trip down.
Shionne was never good at letting herself relax, years worth of experiments and failed treatment attempts had seen to that. She couldn’t ever really let her mind wander, and the isolation led to missing out on a myriad of vital experiences she’d seen in movies and read about in novels. Her education was comprehensive, albeit informal, and one of the few things that helped her calm down when her head was stormy was her training exercises— was. Not that there was much she could do in such a cramped space, and every sensory input (or lack of) threatened to send her to that awful place of loneliness deep within her heart. Her knees ached from stiffness and the light floral scent of cleaning solution was starting to make way for the heavier bleach smells, and her stomach started to complain, all of which was too reminiscent of the laboratory. If she listens too closely, she can imagine hearing the singed crackle of the thorns, in awful tune with her heartbeat, an inharmonious union.
Shionne focuses on what she can. She counts to ten, feels her pulse settle, and returns the knife in a shimmer of particles, the noise of the engines and Balseph’s endless ranting to himself serving as cover for the sound it makes as it dematerializes. Her hands reach up to her hair, thumbing through the long strands in an effort to ground herself. If she had time to prepare, she could’ve come with more supplies and proper clothing, maybe even begrudged a haircut. At the very least, she wasn’t lacking in bullets. The amount of rounds she had stored away wasn’t endless, but it would be more than enough for the time being.
The ship eventually lurches to a halt after what was probably the fifth time she had braided and unbraided her hair, and she falls still as she strains to listen. Balseph’s exit is obvious, she swears the ship’s center of gravity literally shifted to accommodate him and his vacancy. The soliders following after are what causes her to tense up, rubbing at her knees to warm up and prepare, the clanking of armor and chainmail groaning and rattling down the starship’s ramp. Shionne is patient as she waits for the humming of the engines and batteries to cease before exiting the closet into more darkness, groping around until she finds the hatch.
She jumps down from darkness into what can only be described as hell, just absolute hellish levels of heat and smoke; a far, far cry from the climate controlled comfort of Lenegis. Lord Balseph was so kind as to have the ship land directly above his throne room before taking off towards a hangar, and so arrogant to build his palace directly within Calaglia’s volcano. The sheer heat was enough for the palace’s chambers to have entirely open ceilings, and the reduced visibility from the smoke meant she’d be able to sneak along the stony rafters unopposed.
It was ridiculously easy to find the Fire Core, and easier still to embed the mass of energy-infused crystal within herself. Sovereign bless that idiotic Lord, choosing to leave his precious Master Core resting atop a silk pillow in his bedchambers rather than keeping it with himself. It spirals, drill-like as it burrows within her chest and integrates itself into her body’s systems and neural pathways, the rush of flame almost pleasant with how it warms her bones. She could’ve sworn it even made Calaglia’s infernal climate more bearable.
But no sooner than that gentle warming sensation vanishes does an alert ping through all the holo-displays hanging from the walls, chirping alerts of a runaway from Lenegis timely coinciding with the sudden loss of transmission from the Fire Core—Shit, how do they know all this already? Gritting her teeth, she draws her rifle and it shimmers to reality in a shower of lavender, yanking back on the bolt to ready her next shot. Translucent targets in the atrium were one thing, but this would be for real.
As Renan soldiers charge into the Lord’s bedchambers she begins firing, aiming at weak spots in their armor, chinks at the knees and elbows, laying traps of both elemental and explosive variants as she sways around heavy broadsword swings. Whenever a soldier boldly comes too close, she lashes out, clumsily swiping with her right arm or thrusting a kick, and the thorns are all too eager to cleave straight through the thick plate with pure pain. Even against trained soldiers, pain was enough to bring them down and out, but there’s just so many of them, and her strength and spirit were beginning to wear out.
One misstep was all it took, one wrong step and one of the commanders bashes in her gut with the rounded part of his heavy lance, knocking the wind straight out of her lungs. The rifle clatters to the floor and she barely manages to dematerialize it as they lift her with spears that slip under the straps of her dress, coughing and gasping for air, tearing up as she remembers the rods the researchers used to prod her from place to place.
Balseph saunters in, his massive footfalls causing her blurry vision to shake. “I expected a Dahnan rat, not a little girl from home!” He roars at his forces as they move to cuff and chain her. Shionne tries to stagger to her feet, failing to catch her breath in Calaglia’s horrifically dry climate, every shallow inhale setting her throat on fire as her vision swims before fading out altogether.
In spite of carrying the literal manifestation of pure fire within her, she feels cold as ice as she’s shuffled from interrogation to train, then finding herself rescued from the train to be thrown in a pit, being screamed at by a Dahnan who had too much hot air in his head. She’s surrounded by strangers with scars on their hands whose faces blur together, all but two of them. Their leader was one—she’d never heard of any successful rebels, and couldn’t fathom how one would live to an age like his in such a dangerous situation. The other was a man in rags, the one they called “Iron Mask”, but he’d only left an impression because of his cluelessness and how he’d fumbled his way into joining the rebellion when they had attacked the train scant hours ago.
For once, she’s grateful for the curse. It was thanks to her thorns that she had been able to fight off Balseph’s forces long enough for the core to complete its’ integration; and it was because of the thorns that none of her adversaries, be they Renan or Dahnan, were barely able to contain her.
Shionne is patient, her mind retreating to its newfound icy clarity as she ignores their attempts at questioning, counting the moments until Balseph would launch a counterattack. Leaving a nuisance of a resistance active was one thing, but a resistance holding hostage his precious Master Core? Balseph would definitely raze the entirety of Calaglia if that was what it took to reclaim what was now undeniably hers. Still though, even if she was able to break free from these so-called Crows, what would she do next? She’d need to escape past the infamous Gates of Fire, and then what? Break into every castle and integrate more cores into her body? Could her nervous system even handle that much? Not to mention that the other four Lords were surely much smarter than the oaf, and would all be on high alert now that her actions and appearance had been broadcast to all of the Renans deployed on Dahna. All of that on top of needing a proper meal and clothes, which she was starting to feel desperate for. The shredded slip she had left home in was hardly appropriate, it would barely protect her against dirt and sand anymore, much less the raw power of Astral Elements she was sure to see across her journey.
At long last, a tremor rips through the mines, lanterns swinging wildly on frayed ropes, and Shionne snaps back to reality as the resistance flocks out towards the exits and entrances, seeking to stem their enemy’s approach. She stands, drawing her weapon as she races along the tunnels before encountering the commander who’d hit her hard enough to thrust her into this whole damned situation with trains and crows and mysterious masked men without spirit cores, and Frankly, she thinks as she cycles the bolt, I’ve had enough of everything and everyone today.
Inhale, to chamber the round. Then exhale, to line up the shot. Shionne’s finger moves to pull the trigger her heartbeat slowing in time with the world as she anticipates—
—doesn’t anticipate an unscarred hand yanking back on her left shoulder, warm with flesh and blood and callused from labor, thrusting her into a rearguard position as the masked man boldly steps forward into the van, raising a slat of slag that imagined itself a broadsword in the same instant her thorns recede from the contact, ignoring the last lingering motes of pain as if they were sunlight on leaves.
How— the thought abruptly cut short by the Renan soldiers rushing to meet her temporary ally. No more time to think, simply to aim, to fire, to repeat. The Dahnan fights like a demon, his swings unexpectedly elegant and effective, but Shionne’s admittedly horrified at how he takes blow after blow, his blood spraying onto rags and dirt, muscles straining all the same as if he’d never been hit in the first place, almost as if he were…immune to pain…
The man they call Iron Mask grunts with effort as the last soldier before them crumples, before letting out a softly surprised “Oh,” as he takes in the sight of himself, bloody and bruised and sporting what should’ve been a debilitating broken wrist. Shionne doesn’t hesitate to heal him, but bites her tongue for the time being, following him along the drafty path in search for the exit.
They’ve been together for a little over a week now. Shionne secretly marvels at her new companion’s sturdiness, how he’s able to simply tank through every physical challenge placed before them. Every burn, every break, every cut, all of it is completely numb to him. If she reached out, she would…would be much too close to another person for comfort, and isn’t ready to risk more rejection and recoil. So she settles for dropping her emotional guard, instead.
“I’m going to defeat all the lords,” She eventually confesses to him and Zephyr, “I need to win the Crown Contest.”
If Shionne and Iron Mask were power, raw and explosive, then Zephyr was the whetstone that honed them, gave them direction with his keen leadership, guiding them like ships pointed towards a north star.
(Admittedly, she wouldn’t have any faith in these Crimson Crows or their coup d’etat, but something about the firm intonation and baritone of Zephyr’s commands reminds her of another kind soul in a differently harsh environment, and she can’t help but trust him.)
Iron Mask, however, is a puzzle to her. When she heals his blisters and burns, astral energy knitting together his torn flesh and shattered bones, her throat tightens in a strange sort of way, like she isn’t sure whether or not to laugh or cry at the good fortune. How lucky, to steal the Fire Core with such ease. How blessed, to have found an ally that could bear the Blazing Sword without a shred of hesitation. He’s earnest, with how he continually throws himself headlong into every fight, constantly stopping to hear if he could solve everyone’s problems, always taking time to pause and appreciate the smithy, even doing his best as a first-time chef—not that Shionne is any good at cooking herself, but she certainly appreciates that he’s willing to try hard to keep the both of them fed.
The namesake mask is an oddity in of itself. From time to time she catches him idly knocking on the side of it, as if probing for any dents or chinks he could take advantage of. The insulating fabric of her Renan dress worked miracles to keep her comfortable, and she couldn’t possibly fathom how the Dahnans managed the heat, forget having a whole can on your head on top of all of that. Though none of that was to say she resented the new company. Of course, they hold her at arm’s length, a distance she’s resigned to keeping for life, but it’s a weight off her shoulders to be spoken to as an equal.
Not long after they return from the Fagan Ruins does Zephyr extend an invite to her and Iron Mask to a strategy meeting with maps and ink and the rest of the flock of Crows. They spend hours poring over gaps in the castle, cross referencing knowledge from first-hand accounts of escaped slaves and Shionne’s recent infiltration, circling gaps in its defenses and marking rendezvous points as they settle on a plan to shatter the Gates of Fire. Zephyr looks to each and every one of his rebels—for her vanguard, towards the mask, and for Shionne, he unflinchingly gazes into the stars in her irises—nodding solemnly as they all agree to the battle plans.
In that moment, Shionne decides to truly throw her lot in with these rebels.
In the back of her mind, useless questions and old ghosts are still determined to haunt her, and Shionne decides that they’ll probably stay with her forever until she dies with them. The glare of researchers intermingling with the memories of long healed cat scratches, profane shouts, the locked away recollection of her family’s disgust. Although lately, there are small (worrying) bursts of light thanks to the little “family” they’ve gathered together and built in Zephyr’s absence.
Whenever she takes first watch, her gaze flicks from person to person, pausing to rest on the dancing flame of the campfire before peering into the shadows past it in search of hostility. Then back to the sight of resting bodies. Everyone is so kind to her in spite of it all, that it almost physically pains her knowing that she has to keep almost all of them at a distance. Her heart aches at these secrets kept quiet, but to have them heard would simply make it hurt more.
In her dreams, she dares to imagine casual touches, something she’d firmly refused to allow herself the pleasure of before she came to Dahna. To hug Rinwell and smooth the back of her hair, a high five with Law. Gently stroking the soft feathers under Hootle’s tiny little chin. A firm handshake with Kisara. Traditional Renan dances with Dohalim. And Alphen…
Alphen—what a sweet name, the way it softly rolls off her tongue and slips out harmlessly between her teeth—is a restless sleeper, albeit only when she’s on watch. She’s pretty sure of the reason as to why, but any time spent dwelling on it would only complicate matters once she wins the Crown Contest, so she shoves those thoughts and feelings into a box and throws it down the well in the back of her mind to intermingle in the depths with the rest of her ghosts and memories.
Of course, she knows the truth deep down, but doesn’t want to let herself catch on. In the same way that they pretend he didn’t stare slack-jawed under the mask whenever he had first beheld her—once in the train break, once in the mine, and once again when she had found proper clothes in Calaglia—the same way they pretend that she doesn’t always stop herself from reaching out to touch him on the shoulder or the hand.
One of the many secrets that she’s determined to carry until she drops dead is the week he spent unconscious as a half-charred body oozing blood and pus and ash. For seven days she wore herself ragged between healing him and the rest of the flock of Crows, blearily shoving gel after gel into her mouth to keep forcing herself to muster up the energy to continue to tend to everyone’s wounds, eyes glowing nonstop to the point she remembers wondering if she’d somehow make herself go blind. For six nights, she remembers how his arm would flail out towards the stars in spite of its owner’s comatose state, injuries be damned. For six nights, with only Zephyr and Tilsa as her witnesses, she’d tremble as she took his hand in hers, pouring as much Astral energy into him as she could, commanding the wounds to seal and dissipate like ephemeral seafoam breaking against the shore, every selfless incantation accompanied and undercut by the greed of wanting to touch the one person she could. At the break of dawn of the seventh day, when every cell of his down from skin to muscle to bone to blood is as new as the gash in the Gates of Fire, she lets go of his hand for good, for her own good.
Alphen aches.
His friends have been nothing short of lovely, doing everything they can to rally his spirits in spite of it all. If it weren’t for the weight of it all, he would’ve marveled at the discovery of range, that there could be so many ways to hurt. The small sabotage of a pebble concealed within a boot, the tension that remained in his palms after a battle, the occasional twinging protest in his shoulder in the aftermath of their parley with Dohalim, a myriad of battle injuries from bruises and cuts up to fractures and burns. When they fight their way through the hostile jungles of Ganath Haros, Kisara yanks back on his scarf seconds after he murmurs “I feel weird,” before promptly vomiting poison all over the undergrowth.
“You’re pushing yourself too hard.” Rinwell chides him as he grits his teeth and firmly spits out the last of the bile.
“We don’t have time to take it easy.”
Dohalim’s eyes shine through the humid air as he applies requisite healing artes to Alphen. Then, softly, “I know you’re relearning how to fight after regaining your senses and memories, but Shionne wouldn’t want her rescue party arriving half-dead.”
“Okay…You’re right, we’ll rest for the day.” He admits, noticing the palpable expressions of relief on his companions’ faces.
The greatest pain, Alphen decides while keeping watch, is definitely the emotional kind. Old echoes of anguish from his time being branded as Sovereign haunt him, his own screaming at the mask lowering over his head with the shock of devastation still ringing in his ears. The memory alone of the thorns’ is enough to make his usually steady hands tremble, and he has to grip his wrist to cast off the lingering agony. The heartbreak of watching the Blazing Sword shatter into countless motes of harmless gold is still fresh in his mind.
He had been content to keep waltzing alongside Shionne in their symphony of steel and bullet, drawing to each other like planets in orbit, infinitesimally close but inexorably far, dancing just out of each other’s reach. They’d skirted the line often before, every time Shionne let her hands drift too close when healing his wounds, every time Alphen would leap to intercept an attack for her. They’d broken the unspoken rule before, when they had been first attacked by Vholran, sending Alphen rushing to catch Shionne before she collapsed into a bloody heap in the grass. He remembers the sound of the sparks angrily attempting to ward him off, but all he could focus on was that she was still clinging to life in spite of having been run clean through by that bastard’s sword.
Was it a mistake, to ignore all those times she’d reached for him, and faltered? To reach out to her and fail to hold onto her when it mattered the most?
Alphen shifts, settling into his skin into his armor onto his seat on the crate. He’s sore and hurting and nursing more than bruised pride, and it gives him a steely resolve he knew he wouldn’t have been able to muster while still bound by the mask.
Next time, he wouldn’t let go.
lenegis, being a colony built on one of rena’s moons, didn’t have much variance in terrain. simply a mass of metal and hard light with the occasional smatterings of lush parks and glittering fountains, lit up by a synthetic sun. when they board the ship, shionne is thankful for a lifetime mainly spent in odd, discomforting situations, keeping her safe from any possible agonies incurred from churning waves.
as part and parcel of her training, she was prepared to be able to swim, to build a fire, to cobble together a meal in times of need, all of which had been invaluable in their journey across dahna.
she was expected to be able to fight in close quarters, to ward off enemies who’d attempt to disrupt her focus. the basics of hand to hand combat combined with her thorns were supposed to be more than enough for protecting herself from such foes, but vholran igniseri was no ordinary adversary.
shionne treads water for what feels like must be countless hours, replaying the last minutes aboard the gradia in her mind over and over again. they had felled almedria, and then—and then…
she couldn’t free herself from that madman’s grasp,
alphen couldn’t touch her,
she couldn’t stop picturing it in her mind’s eye, again and again and again and again, the cold panic tracing along her spine from the hairs on her neck down to the small of her back as vholran tightened his grip around her waist, laughing maniacally as she struggled and shoved before reaching out to the one person she couldve trusted in a last resort, reaching, reaching—
—and he couldn’t hold onto her, screamed like all the others as the thorns tightened around her guts like an iron maiden, spiked and slow torture, pulling her heart back under into that deep abyss
in the distance, shionne feels tears slip down her cheeks.
it had become a mantra, waves would crash, wind would sail through trees, storms would come and go, and through it all she would always be left alone, untouchable, unwanted.
in the distance, shionne hears herself scream in protest.
in that lonely darkness, endless chants and whispers of ghosts insist she does not deserve softness, kindness, companionship, that her value is to simply die and take the accursed thorns with her.
pinpricks of light and heat press against her body, hesitant in that first moment but confident for the next, and then for all the moments thereafter, and Shionne finally opens her eyes and awakens in the cathedral within Del Fharis, arms wrapped tightly around inky armor in mutual embrace. Alphen smells of sunlight, and like the dawn, he had returned to break through the long night of her worst fears engulfing her.
“We’ll bear your thorns together.” He had shouted it at first, before repeating it quietly in her ear like a confession, his voice so rich with emotion it could’ve been intimate. “I’ll always come back for you,” her partner whispers, blood trickling down his cheek and running into the ends of his snow-white hair, crumpling in her arms as they both fall to their knees.
His dedication had become so much more real now that the mask had been broken, here he was, here they all were, weary yet determined to fight their way through Pelegion for her sake. On tiled palace floors, surrounded by ashes of Thorns made real and burned raw, Shionne’s eyes alight with both tears and Astral energy. How blessed she was to have been saved. How fortunate to have found herself such a loving family.
Dahna’s spirit was warm and inviting in its embrace, welcoming her even if she wasn’t one of Her’s. She couldn’t hear its voice, but she could imagine what it said. Hello, wayward child. Hello, beloved one. When she’s thrust back into consciousness, she feels a strange heat permeate her, as if the Master Core were humming.
Rinwell turns around to the rest of them. “Did you feel it too? Did you hear it?” The young mage asks, her voice wavering in the stale air, tears streaking down puffy cheeks. In all her years, she’s never wanted to touch another person more, wants to hug Rinwell to her like she held her little doll in the lab all those years ago, stroke her hair and tell her yes, yes I did and dab away at fat tears until she was ready to let go.
In the dead of night, Shionne is caught as she tries to slip away, the chirping of the ship’s console waking up alerting Alphen from his stupor, having dozed off on night watch.
She’s a passable actor, the way she needed to handle her rifle and put on the mask of a cold Renan had become instinctual, as basic as needing to scratch an itch or drinking to slake thirst. This is the first time she truly hates it, putting on the airs of independence in desperation as her partner demands answers, heart thumping so hard she’s sure the skin around her neck and wrists are visibly pulsing, thorns in chest churning in searing agony and lungs threatening to cave in.
“Move.” She commands, her traitorous voice imperious and unwavering. “I’m going alone.”
She lines up the crosshair over Alphen’s shoulder, the same one he used to take the blow from Dohalim for her. She’d pull the trigger, she really would. She didn’t have the time to spare for sentimentality. Please, she prays, to no named god in particular, Please let me do this, let me make a world for them to be happy.
The scope wavers, ever so slightly. Alphen advances. No, no no no, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Her finger slips from discipline to at the ready, “I’ll really do it,” she warns.
“Then shoot!”
Shionne squeezes her eyes shut the same instant she means to squeeze the trigger. Her head wanted to hear the reliable bang, feel the shot’s recoil in her shoulder. Her heart wins out as she drops the rifle into the grass, hearing instead the shimmer of particles as it re-enters negative space for safekeeping, keeping them all safe from her selfishness.
On the viewing bridge of a distant satellite, Shionne takes in the sight of Alphen’s profile framed by space and stars and a crystallized rose, and it reminds her of the silly “bouquet” he gifted her at the wedding in Pelegion. Shionne blushes at the memory, but it was a sweet gesture nonetheless.
“You have to promise me that you’ll do whatever it takes. Even if it means I don’t come home.”
“I promise, Shionne.”
She raises her hand up to his face, an infinitely small distance separating them, before letting it wryly drop to her side. “And you have to promise me the kitchen tiles will be white.”
“They will be—wait, what?” His steely eyes widen in surprise and confusion as a smile plays at her lips.
“For the house we’ll have together, remember?”
Alphen softly laughs. “How could I forget?” as they warmly hold each other’s gaze in the starlight. Some previously dormant part of Shionne longs to embrace him, but their safe distance would have to do for now.
They stand there, looking out onto the sea of stars, comfortable in their silence. It feels like not so long ago that they had to fill every conversation with awkward topics, and Shionne decides it’s nothing short of a miracle that they were able to come so far.
Her body was worn out, but still alive and well. Shionne remembers pain, the agony that linked her and Alphen and the planets together, the sheer rush of Astral energy intermingled with that pain as he slowly thrust the Blazing Sword back to its origin, the remnants of the transformed Fire Core eagerly swallowing the combined energy of every living being on the Twin Worlds. As the Core consumes the sword and the world explodes into blinding light, the greatest pain she’d ever experience gave way to her freedom, thorns dissolving out of her every synapse and vein as she nearly crashes against Alphen, finally able to whisper her last ill-kept secret before their lips meet.
“I love you.” She says, and it lights something up in the both of them, as if they were dying men given water. Shionne couldn’t stop herself from pulling away with laughter from the kisses meant to make up for lost time, running her hands over whatever she could reach of her partner, convincing and reconvincing herself it was all real over and over again.
Their house had come first, built in a quiet corner on a field of blush and blue roses, cozy and warm, and the kitchen was proper and tiled as promised. Neither of them wanted for a crowd, and after a lifetime of isolation or being lauded as a hero more than a man, Shionne and Alphen were both eagerly looking forward to a quiet life together.
The proposal really shouldn’t have been such the surprise, but nonetheless, when Alphen had circled around the kitchen table to gracefully drop to a kneel in front of her chair, Shionne had flushed so deeply that the skin down to her shoulders was the same complexion as her hair.
He can barely get out the start of the question before she cuts him off in a flustered rush, practically yelling as she blurts out a heartfelt “Yes!”
Her vanguard-turned-partner-turned-Fiancé grins bright enough to rival the sunny walls of their home, sliding the slender band of metal onto her finger. “Side by side, forever.” He declares.
Weddings were surprisingly exhausting, although Shionne suspects it had something to do with the extensive guest list, which had an equally surprising number of names, mostly due to Alphen’s insistence of needing to stop and help anyone with anything for the duration of their journey. If she’d had her way at the start, they wouldn’t have helped anywhere remotely near the amount of people they did—but neither would they have managed to save all in existence if they hadn’t.
“We sure made a lot of friends.” Her husband murmurs, tucking the sheets around the pair of them as Shionne presses into the crook of his arm. The quilt had been a wedding gift, featuring patches from everyone they had met and befriended across the formerly twin worlds and even farther, all carefully stitched together by Kisara.
“All thanks to you.” She whispers into the oyster shell of his ear. The pair of them were a mess of tangled limbs and long hair in the bed, and she wasn’t looking forward to the arduous process of unknotting it in the morning. Alphen presses gently–though ravenously— against her lips, and she discovers she isn’t nearly as tired as expected, and content to let the pieces fall where they may.
As the night sails on, Shionne finds herself finally content and comfortable in her own skin, safely embraced by the man who gave her everything.