RP:Yet You See Me

Part of the What You Leave Behind Arc

Part of the What Dreams May Come Arc

Summary: In the wastes where the alliance bore witness to the end of the Ouroboros, Lionel seeks Mulgrew for answers desperately needed. Instead he finds Valrae, who has found him, too.

The Farthest North That North Can Go

Where once there were flowers with petals colored like chrome, the ground’s now bare but for smoke without end. Where once there were songbirds blue as oceans sweetly trilling, the wind-swept trees harbor life no longer. And where once there were giants, ancient and proud, thrust into harsh destiny by beings beyond their reckoning, now there is the flatness of soil and mounds of white snow pierced by the dark red streaks of dried blood. Lionel stands at the epicenter of the end of the Ouroboros. He looks to the east, where their great forge vanished into thin air. He looks to the north, where their bountiful thatched huts did the same. He looks to the west, where the fighting was thickest. And he looks to the south, where his allies came in valiant rescue. But he stands where she stood, and he kneels where she left that crystal skull, and as the gusts of the frozen north rush over him like a banshee’s scream, he reaches out and places the strange artifact down upon the earth. He waits, the wind blowing his hair into a mess, the chill seeping through his scarlet silk garb, the Ishaarite spirit of fire within his blade keeping him alive despite death-dealing cold. Nothing happens. “Damn you.” He cannot hear his own voice for the gale. “Damn you, Mulgrew. Tell me what game this is. Tell me what you’ve done to me and why.” Lionel’s mind is on hot pincers with obsessive thoughts about the skull, about its hopeful role in reviving a witch, about the very witch herself reaching out to him in the night. He cannot afford to lose himself utterly; not in the midst of open war. But still she will not come. The dull red sun vanishes behind a cloudy slate gray sky, as if the gods have mocked his effort.

Valrae’s spirit curls among the smoke as the clouds hungrily swallow the last of the sun’s light. The wind pulls at her, a sensation unlike any she’d felt before the night she’d been drawn to Frostmaw. What was she doing here? As she was drawn up, away and toward something, the question followed her. Why am I here? She moves through the smoke and ruin, over the blood marked earth and the final resting place of the Ouroboros and feels the sorrow steeped land calling to her. Rest here, come. The pull was as sweet as a siren’s song, nearly as irresistible too but for what had been demanding her here in the first place. He stood in ruin and spoke words that the wind tore away with greed. She remembers the smoke, the fire and violence of the night and she hesitates. Tentatively, her spirit pulls and collects in a way that simply wasn’t possible before. She siphons herself down into the smoke again but hesitates to move any closer. Can you see me? She asks again, though there would be no real sound.

The wind takes Lionel’s sigh, too, as he reaches out to the skull to retrieve it. His left and dominant hand brushes up against the emerald crystal, gingerly despite his environs, and he pauses. The ground seems to swell, or perhaps to distort, but a blink later and it’s gone. “Is that you?” The gusts die down for but a fast few seconds, and he repeats his query. “Is that you?” Lionel asks, but all at once he’s hoping it isn’t Mulgrew. His heart skips a beat as the smoke billows to portend. With haste he grabs the skull and returns it to his pack; Mulgrew shall not take this from him, no matter that he came here for answers. Something resonates. Hellfire, strapped and sheathed to his thinly-clad back, pulses and illuminates… but not with the maroon sirens of danger. The sword can sense evil, and for as long as he’s wielded it Lionel has never known it capable of sensing anything else. So why, then, after fifteen years with the blade, is it less than warning him, more like informing him, of something warmer, something sought? Lionel feels this serene rush as the blade’s magical steel courses green with life. How can this be? Who could compel such change? He’s approaching the shape even as it forms. Before the span of three paces, he already knows who she is. By six, he sees her face. By nine, the wind’s returned, whimpering, moaning, clamoring. By twelve, it’s a wail he does not hear. Instead he hears Valrae -- soundlessly, she’s called to him. “I see you.”

She watches him with sorrow swelling in her as he puts away the skull. Was it this that pulled her here? Or was it the man who neared her now? His answer sends a wave of fire through her and the question is no longer important. A longing fills her, threatens to drown her and pull her down. Through the lazy rolls of smoke, her image slowly forms under a haze of thin white. It started with the eyes, almond shaped and wide, as green as the skull he carried with him and lined dark. The shape of her lips, slightly parted in surprise and wonder, the arch of brows. The curve of her neck, the line of her jaw. Hair of spun gold, long curled ends snapping in the wind that in truth only moved through her. With each footstep more of her formed, until the image of a woman who no longer truly existed, and one that hadn’t long before violent the end of her life, was standing before Lionel. The smoke clothed her and moved through her all at once. “Why can you see me?” Her voice sighed like the wind. Her hand moved, though it couldn’t even stir the air, and the echo of the witch moved to reach out to him. For a long moment, the very smoke around her held still. Where was the fire? She waited for the flames, the taste of smoke to return to her, but nothing came. “I am dead.” A frow bowed her translucent lips. “Yet you see me.” Her hand retreats uselessly. “Why?”

He watches her coalesce, his azure eyes a thousand sorrows of their own. Was it Mulgrew that pulled him here? Or was it the woman who neared him now? Her figure sends a wave of fire through his thoughts and the question is no longer important. A passion fills him, the burned martyr herself defying the fates. He’s never met her. He’s always known her. He’s never seen her. He can’t stop seeing her. He never spoke a word to her in life. In death, he wants to thank her, for all these strange things catching in his throat. For renewing his spirit; her spirit stands before him. Would that he could only say the words, but they’re heavy with abounding grief; grief for her loss, grief for all the loss in Lithrydel. Boundless grief like the deepest sea, ever on the verge of drawing him to tears, for all his yesterdays and the private fears that fewer tomorrows remain. Valrae speaks and the wind abides. Beyond the edges of any map, Lionel still hears the stranger’s sigh. His hand moves, stirring the air to reach her. Hellfire’s green glow softens ever further, but he’s heedless to it. He feels what he feels, with or without its beacon. “Would that I could say.” A tiny smile tugs at his lips, daringly. “I’d blinded myself to your suffering. I ran to every other enemy, but not to yours. The world remembered the Dark Immortals… and, in turn, I forgot Larket. And then you died.” His voice dips and the sorrows in his eyes seem almost to cascade. But his voice then rises higher and the sorrows turn to ardor. “In death, you’ve galvanized me. You’ve galvanized so many. The whole realm knows the truth of your sacrifice. Your oppressors’ days are numbered. But that won’t bring you back. We never met but your life echoes mine.” The word is ‘echoed’, but he cannot stand to say it. “Of all the men and all the women I have never known, there has never been one like you.” His voice is stronger now, it’s fire of his own making. If this has all been one of Mulgrew’s manifestations, he will kill her where she lurks. “So if this marks me crazy, then I’m crazy. I’d sooner be crazy than deaf to what you’ve suffered. And I tell you now, and urge you to hear me: hang on. Just hang on. To anything you can. Because your fight’s not over, Valrae. It isn’t over. Everything’s fraught. Kahran, Macon, Jaize, Vermilion. War without end. I need you.”

His answer pierces her. Looking at him now was as before, like staring into the sun. She didn’t know why. She’s never met him. Before he even begins, her frown is slowly moving into a mirroring smile. She’s always known him. She’s never seen him and somehow now he’s all she can see. “You could not save me, you could not fight my fight,” She says, interrupting him as a knowing pulsed through her. Knowing that her story has unfolded the way it was always written to be. Knowing that he would feel responsible for the fate that had been decided for her from her first wailing birth cries. She looks at him now and feels as if she’s standing on the precipice of something, ready to fall. “You cannot save everyone,” Valrae’s hand, or the image of it, is suspended a breath away from his. Her eyes, emerald pools of longing and sorrow, watch as she moves closer. There, palm to palm the living and the dead met. She felt nothing and she felt everything. Fire burned through her. “And then I died,” She said with him, her voice only a whisper on the wind. Regret. Regret that she didn’t understand was filling her up. Her hand falls as he speaks. Her image is still the way nothing living could ever be. “Because you have never known me,” She answers, her smile suddenly playful as she tips her head. “You cannot truly know if none are like me,” But she could. She’s never known another such as the man before her now… And never would know. Her spirit moves around him, curling smoke. “You cannot say such a thing as truth.” The ghost is before him again, her smile filled with regret. He asks her to wait, to be still and hold on, and her smile turns rueful. She feels no hope stir in her. “The living have no need of the dead.”

She sighs, moving again to touch him. Her hand only whispers through his cheek and leaves the cold. “But they have need of each other,” Her image hazes, the veil grows darker. “There are those who live and have need of you yet. My people. All of those Kahran and the rest threaten,” Something dark rolls over her, the smoke churning grey and black. Power rushes through. “They’ll never understand, those who traffic in the dark.” The veil lowers again and the truth of her is before him. The woman who was tortured and lead to her death. Her hair gone, jagged and covered in blood and filth. Her face gaunt, bruised and pale. Her eyes wide and harrowed, her lips cracked and bleeding. “They will never truly understand love or light or the power that comes from self sacrifice. They cannot understand it. They cannot understand you.” The bloody, truthful image of her fades again. The golden, soft one returns but it’s weaker. A spear of sunlight blazes through. “A weakness,” She wants to stay, to reach out again and to feel more than regret and fire. “I’ll hold on, if only for a moment longer. If only for you.” But could she? Even now she could feel herself slipping farther away, leaving pieces of herself behind.

Her smile was in his mind when he stood his ground against Larket’s Queen. He wanted so desperately to see it that he’d imagined it down to the curve of her lips. For justice in this world to exist, she should be allowed to smile. Why then does her smile seem so sad? It’s a half-metered justice at best. She wants him to know and to believe that he cannot save them all no matter how many times he throws his hands into snow, his head into wind, his heart into eluding the odds. Were anyone else to say it, he’d outwardly shrug and inwardly compartmentalize. He’s idolized a dead woman. And now she weaves within smoke to say all these things he’d never heed from the living. Worlds apart, their palms touch and his woes drift away like the ice vapors in the frozen pond behind him. In this moment, Hellfire cannot help him from feeling cold. He’s cold with the fear that she’ll drift, too, and that his plot to unchain her from this ethereal coil might falter. Yet there is also warmth; to him, she radiates it, and not for the flames that burned her. Her smile turns playful and the warmth seems almost to kiss it despite his chill, and it’s all he can do to listen and smirk. She envelops him, strings and strands, curving and coiling like a cat who’s found home. His coldness fades until her ghost reemerges, until her hand hints upon him. He hints in response, lifting his left fingers in a rush over hers.

Lionel’s torn to see her transformation, twisted to gaze upon the terrible things committed to her person. The cold subsides for fear of fiery rage. The nerve of Queen Josleen to place Larketian troops beside the living witches she inspired; the nerve of her to ask him to stand beside the evil of Macon to bring down the evil of Kahran. To see Valrae in this way, to feel her pale gaunt pain, to know who did this is to know vengeance. If he can’t save everyone, he will save as many as he can, but he will do it without compromising with tortuous despots. He will do it without the people capable of doing this. “Valrae.” His throat is parched but not for want of water. Her words are the inspiration that he thirsts for and she’s filling him for the road ahead. He’s stunned to see her ethereal form once more. Too caught up in escaping the truth of her suffering, he does not notice her weakening. She’s too auroral for the spear of sun to pierce him either. “Valrae,” he repeats, like a chant. The red sun rides higher over the clouds, threatening to take her from him, aggressively portending her fade. He’d give anything for the moon to take its place. “You’re coming back.” He smiles. “I know it.” His smile is forced. “Believe in me as I’ve believed in you.” His smile implores. “Then we can meet, again and for the first time.” His smile is warmer. The sun covers them both in sanguine light. “You’ll stand with us against the darkness.” His eyes are pools of pleading blue. Never in his life can he recall wanting something more than for this woman, deserving of life, to live. “You’ll illuminate them as you’ve illuminated me.”

The truest testament to the all consuming power of time was the hold it kept on even the restless dead, those who have stepped beyond the flowing river of it. Even as unchanging as Valrae seemed, the longer time churned on the weaker she became. She was leaving pieces of herself wherever she went now, like a child leaves stains from sticky hands. Echos of herself in all the places she found her soul called to… Left empty with the sudden, forced departure of her husband. To places of change her soul would cling, leave her muddled and confused… Until she stood before Lionel and suddenly she was herself, whole and clear of mind. He says her name and it shines through her like the ray of sunlight… But she’s fading fast. The sorrow of the land has pressed around her, pulled at her with cold, bony fingers and threatened to pull her down to a final sleep. The smile she gives him now is filled with sorrow. “As long as I am able,” The image of her is suddenly pulled thin, hardly distinguishable through the smoke that curled from the land around them. Frustration wells in her. Her own eyes are the emerald reflection of his. If she’s ever wanted anything so desperately before she cannot recall. “I’ll be near,” The spirit promises, the sound far away and aching with loneliness. The image of her fades as she’s pulled away from the call of both the land and the man. She spiraled to home, empty but for the weeping of an old woman. She walked the halls and dying fields and through the grove. She thought of her husband, lost to her now, and of the man who somehow called to her in death. And everywhere she moved, the witch left pieces of herself behind.

Lionel is alone and the sky churns greyer still. As the wind howls, snow flurries over and carries across the forest, blanketing the trees in pure white. But the trees go red when the dried blood of the fallen Ouroboros blankets them, too. Lionel is covered, red-and-white folly on his face, but oblivious to the cold, oblivious to the dead, thinking only of Valrae as if she’s still alive. Yet a painful feeling grabs hold of his spine, forcing him to recognize the inclement weather that would kill any man without Ishaarite blessing: she -is- dead, and there’s no guarantee her revival will succeed. “Mulgrew,” he says. At first it’s a whisper, but then it’s a scream. “Mulgrew. Tell me this will work. Give me a sign she’ll return, or else I damn you, I name you as dire as Kahran.” He doesn’t mean that, not really; he knows, deep inside, that a warlord responsible for the deaths of millions cannot compare with a trickster whose only recognizable slaughter has been to the enemies of the alliance. But Lionel, for all his experiences, can still prove impulsive. And the impulse to decry her for playing him like a fiddle overwhelms him in the blizzard in the absence of Valrae.

“You lash out,” Mulgrew answers. Lionel whirls around to spot her standing behind him, arms crossed, in feather-and-leather attire despite their environs. Lionel opens his mouth to speak, but instead he merely trembles. His eyes well up but go crimson instead of spending tears. “Tell me,” Lionel begs. Mulgrew shakes her head like a mother scolding a son. A very condescending mother. “Where’s the fun in that? Things will work or they won’t. I’ve given you something, and I will one day ask for something in exchange. Fight your battles, champion. Bring her back if you can. She is, after all, a champion too. Dwell not on if, because your nemeses do not harbor such weak conviction as all that.” Lionel wants so desperately to strike her down, to bring a real answer from the enigmatic woman, but all he can do is stare as the wind roars once more. A tiny piece of him dares to wonder if his inability to act is because she has a hold over him, and it scares him almost half as much as the fear of losing Valrae for good. Such fear, however smaller, remains unquantifiable, and it grips him like a stilled heart. He wants to ask Mulgrew about so many things -- the dungeons she mentioned, the murder of the Ouroboros, the crystal skull -- but he can’t. He just can’t. His every waking thought lingers on a witch who heeds his call in her sleep of death and finds pathways in the netherworld to stay near.

“Oh, to be young again,” Mulgrew mutters suddenly, and then she cackles like she’s in on some one-woman cosmic joke. Perhaps she is. “If I had a mirror, I’d show you your face right now. I’d will you to remember it always when doubt clouds your soul. Would that I had a mirror…” She vanishes, just as surely as Valrae vanished, leaving Lionel alone to the grey-churned sky for good.