YUVEN

Spires of alabaster marble touched the heavens. Thick clouds of soft greys fluttered with colour across the curvature of the streets. Staircases wrapped around the smaller peaks and wove into structures tucked close to the towers. Alleyways shone through lights in the windows. Small beds of snowroses were given a flimsy shield in the windows. Massive mountains towered ever higher than the built structures of Avaerilian design, longing to take flight.

Energy poured from the streets and dug into the cracks of the white cobble, sprayed with snow.

In the crimson rapture, blood splattered with a scream.

Snowroses wilted in the pressure of clanking chains, echoing deep within the mountain's heart. It twined around his fingers and expanded his power beyond comprehension, into a soaked bubble of writhing, slicing teeth. Any who fell upon his might tore to the bone from their flight from Irimount, the city of death. It grew, a tumour on the scattered stones. Teeth grew out of the bulbs behind him, snapping at the heels and feasting on the cries of the trapped Irimount folk.

His song, a piercing, ripping chord.

Wind distorted, and the blizzard watched on in cruel coldness. Shapes slammed into the barrier. Skin flayed when they tried to claw their way out. On the other side, golden light, safe from the desolation, but trying to fight their way into the sphere of obscura.

It was no more than a dream, and he knew it — deep in his screaming soul.

Why can I not wake up?

A shadow crept onto the street with a twisted smile. Their teeth drove through their jaw, and a sense of urgency pulsed through the city of longing.

"You never left," it taunted as Derelicts wrapped around the spires and crushed them to nothing but ancient dust. "You will never leave. You did this. Look at your power."

It burned with a wildfire from the sun.

Look at what you've done.

His solace of a prison cell, no less a prisoner than the monster near his bed. It slathered its tongue against the stone. It groaned and howled. Its dissonant screech cracked the world with bloody raptures. Ooze slipped down the walls around Irimount, becoming a giant prison as the bubble ripped into all who tried to escape its confines. It distorted their beings, and left them naught but piles of visceral bone.

It was not me. It was not Yuven Traye. I am Yuven Traye. You never were. You stole from me.

Yuven lunged from the rapture with a single breath when it stifled the air of Irimount, and he scooted across the mattress until his back hit a frame. Ugh... He raised his hand, ashen from the sickness left behind in his body. He drove the tips of his fingers into his palm, then brushed a stray feather off his cheek. It fell into his hand. Images faded as he checked the window at his side, where no snowroses spread their petals to catch the fallen snow. Only his reflection stared back at him. Violets pale of life, the stars sprinkled across the night sky clouds tried to stifle. The shrine. He used the window to smooth out his frayed feathers, sensing the shift of wind slipping through the wood walls. Yes... we were on the path when... Another pulse went from temple to temple, and he scowled at the dimming lights outside. Myl'la.

He reached out to the lamp full of fire, to touch a sensation of her between the bridge of his fingers when he took a small shard of it into his palms. It flickered and died with his breath, and it sent a wave of shadows with its departure. On its tracks, a shape sat in the corner of the room by the door, head lowered with their hands resting in their lap. In the lamplight, a metallic pin hanging on a small braid of brown hair caught the last embers by his golden crescent blade and two seax's for his secondary weapon of choice, conductive to ice magick.

Fenrer rested against the wall, and Yuven timed his own breaths whenever Fenrer made his long, slow ones. "Idiot," he tasted the word after testing the timing, and folded his arms to gaze at his Oathbound, who dozed off in his vigil.

Heat wrapped around his legs and raked nails across his legs when he stretched them off the plush mattress sat in the small wooden crevice on the floor. Remember. He knocked his knuckles against his temples, but it raged flames against them in return and burned the bridge held by hippogryphs in his hands. Remember. Remember the moments which brought me here. Remember.

Remember my name.

It wedged into his skull and bled his mind.

Another vigorous shake gave him no clarity, and fuzzed the remaining down between his feathers. One more self-assured pat to straighten them out, he tugged on the shirt and sighed at the loose fit. A skeleton is more pronounced than I am. At least necromancers wouldn't get so far with me, I suppose. He tied the free strings to cover the rest of his chest, tearing off the herbal patch placed at the base of his neck. Phials full of the reflected night sky sat beside the candles, but he left them to investigate the still sleeping shape of Fenrer across the room. Now...

"Fenrer," he invoked the power of a name.

Fenrer gave a slight twitch, but zero response — which indicated many things, and none of them he particularly enjoyed.

"Fenrer Pyren," he brought the full power off his tongue.

One last breath weighed Fenrer's shoulders, and he lifted his head. Heavy shadows from the light of the lamp flickered on his cheeks and the warm undertones of his skin.

"Yuven," he said after a couple of confused blinks. "You're awake."

"How long was I asleep?" He scooted off the mattress, then scowled when his legs refused to lift him to his proper height. Left on the floor from the betrayal of his strength, he refused to give quarter to the call of the bed he tried to stand out of.

Fenrer tipped his head. "Hm. A day, I wish to say."

"Oh, you wish? You do not know? You did not think to look out the window?" Yuven pointed through the glass to the star-speckled grass fields which hid the path home. "Many sorrys," he said the rhetorical Common way of apologising — and lacking in meaning he found. "Let me reword my question, how long have you been sitting at my sickbed?" He grabbed a clump of white hair and resisted the urge to tear it out. "Also... what happened while I was out?"

Concern creased the brow of a man who ignored any anxiety for his own well-being. "You don't remember?"

Yuven groaned out the pressure in his throat and tried to tug it further back, but the spires grew and crumbled to pierce the mirror. "Words... Pieces of it in my hands. Ach... as if it is anything new for me. I forget only my breakfast on better days." He studied the shadows digging deeper into Fenrer's cheeks when he lowered his head again and his eyelids fluttered with another weighted breath which escaped through his parted lips. "Do not tell me I am the one who took only bed in this place. I thought roadside shrines prepare themselves for world-weary pilgrims." Annoyance sent a surge of energy through his knees, and he took his leap to get up. Waves curled in his sight, and he rested his hand on the desk near him. "What? Did you expect me to move?"

"You just did," Fenrer said and rested his hands deeper into his lap.

"I mean move while I'm half-dead," Yuven bit.

"You're not half-dead, no need for that." Fenrer nodded at the phials. "I had those prepared for you when you awoke, but I thought it best to keep watch after..."

"You can't keep your eyes open." Yuven scowled at his silence when Fenrer rested his chin back against his chest. "Fenrer, I remember you left the Anima to drag me through the rain."

"I apologise." His eyes closed, but not for sleep. "I needed to check something, but after all that... maybe I shouldn't have left either of you." He lifted his head once more, and a faint smile pressed into his cheeks, but never moved his eyes. "We are safe now, though, from the storm and any wayward Derelicts." Back into his shoulders, he breathed deep, and set his cheek in his hand before he dug it into his scalp to crush strands of dark brown hair. "You need more rest, Yuven."

Avoidance, as was Fenrer's wont.

Yuven scoffed, causing Fenrer to straighten his back against the corner. "I have rested enough." He sat down in the chair at the desk, nudging one of the phials out of his way, but it leaned on the bridge of his finger, and he tucked it closer to his palm. I took it as directed, the proper doses. Every day, for eternity, it feels... is your effort wasted? It dug claws into his throat and spread the stale rot, and he tightened his grip on the curved glass. If it cannot even help me remember...

"Yuven... you're buzzing again," Fenrer mumbled in his lonely shadows without raising his head from between his shoulders.

"I will take much effort to silence my thoughts for you." Yuven opened up the paper drawer at the side. Yellow stained the parchments at the edges, but it would do for his needs as he tugged a free one out of its spot. "Where is Anima?"

Another lacking response.

"If you are going to fall asleep, go to your own room." Yuven tested the ink in the well before dotting the parchment with the last of his determination to live and experience happiness.

Fenrer raised his head. "What are you doing?"

"Writing letter. I want to tell Maria the medication's effectiveness dims with each pass of the sun." He steadied his hand to curve out the Navee letters — to get across what he was unable to in both Hanekan and Common. Its runic swirls carved out a truth he choked on with the hunger of home and her warmth. "I must tell her to be ready for... several possibilities."

In the haze of exhaustion within Fenrer's brow, a spark of realisation lit in the greens and brought his Oathbound back into the waking world, and Yuven stopped mid sentence when Fenrer pushed himself to his feet, regarding him with naked suspicion. "What do you mean to tell her? Can it not wait until you've rested further?" Yuven leaned in his chair when Fenrer made the cautious approach. "I know in these moments you want to say your thoughts in an instant, but that only leads to pain more oft than not," he insisted, and Yuven placed the feathered quill back into the inkwell. "Maria will try her best no matter what comes, you know that."

Yuven lifted himself out of the chair, and longed to drive a dagger into his own soul to rip out the crimson crystal the Derelict left as a gift for his 'service'. "That is what bothers me," he bit. "Do not presume that I do not appreciate her efforts. I am lucky. Others are not. I wish to tell her many things, but I have not the time or the life for that." Claws dug into his heart. "She... should have a happier life with someone than one whose life is so short as mine."

"She would not like to hear that, and would disagree. And I do not think you should write this letter until your thoughts are unmuddled," Fenrer pointed out.

"I don't think you have room to talk." Yuven folded his arms. "You should worry more about yourself. You haven't slept, I can tell. Shadows weigh heavily beneath your eyes. But, if you're so adamant, you can write the letter for me."

Fenrer narrowed them once more. "I'm not going to do that. I apologise for trying to advise you to consider a recourse." One small, respectful bow, and he reached for the door.

Yuven slammed what magick he had into the hinges and through the runic circuitry lock from afar and caused it to rattle from the force of his unseen grip. Frost grew along the wood and metal handle, causing Fenrer to draw his hand back with a sigh growing from his chest. "Rude to walk away when we're having a discussion, Fenrer."

"Argument, Yuven, and I don't feel like arguing with you." Fenrer kept his back to him.

He drove a wedge of ice through the core of the entrance into the room. Fenrer tipped back with a quiet groan. "Uotheniim," the word slipped out in Hanekan, but it cleared the air when Fenrer turned from the door, trapped in his avoidance. Yuven refused to release the pressure off the hinges when Fenrer's brow creased in frustration, but nothing broke the passive mask Fenrer wore behind a second shield of a hopeful smile everyone believed in.

"Yes, I know I'm intolerable," Yuven responded.

Fenrer scrunched his nose with a lukewarm scowl. "Impossible, Yuven."

"Surely you can scowl at me with more effort."

Fenrer's expression flattened and he brushed the bridge of his nose. "I know you want a fight," he said, and Yuven sucked his lips in when Fenrer forced the smile back on his face. "We can get moving come daytime."

Before he could open for a retort, a burst of flames slipped into his fingers. Forced to let go of the inferno, the door opened to Adara, a basket of laundry on her hip as she used her leg to open it the entire way, causing Fenrer to take a step when it bumped into his shoulder blades, and a quiet apology left Adara's lips as she dropped the basket in the other corner of the room. "It's all clean," she said, and gave Fenrer a way out in her ignorance, frowning. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Yes—"

"No," Fenrer interrupted, firmer. "I was just leaving. Thank you for your kindness, Adara." He sent a lighter smile in her direction and gave a deep bow. "You needn't go through all the effort you have on our account."

Adara waved her hand at him, and Yuven scowled at the flush in her cheeks. "It's nothing, really. I had to give myself something to do before I went back to bed. Auro Tiana gave me some advice on how to weave my fire into water to get a deeper clean into the fabrics." Her attention drew to him, and he scoffed at her handy aplomb when she pointed at the basket. "As you'll notice, none of your clothes are singed. Guess I'm not utterly helpless after all."

"Yes, the next step will be making a well of flame without watching it die," Yuven grumbled, then caught Fenrer's sneaky escape attempt. "Where are you going?"

"To pray for the coming journey across the steppes at Evyriaz's shrine," Fenrer mumbled and wasted no time in taking his opportunity. "I shall come check on you in the morn. Take your medicine and do what you will."

Adara dropped her hand and frowned after him when he all but stomped out of view. "I guess I did interrupt something."

It fell into silver wisps in his hands, he crushed it in his palm at her pure power and unawareness to open doors left closed. "Yes, you did."

"I'm sorry."

Apologies never mattered, or changed the course of life. "If you're so confident in laundry, then you can spend the rest of your time making a magelight while you're up." He shooed her out of his room. "I need space to think, and I can't do that with constant chatter in my ear."

"Right," she drew out before nodding and leaving down the flame-licked corridor of sputtered silver. It twisted to follow, but whether she noticed the inherent call of the flow around her, she gave no attention to it.

Look at your power, it licked in his ear.

Yuven closed the door once she was out of view, then rifled through the basket to check all his effects. Nothing was found out of place or wanting for dryness. Doors stayed closed, and he folded them back into the pile to ready himself for what came next.