YUVEN

Gods, I hate this music. I hate this endless darkness. I hate the fleeting ignorance. I hate the clanking plate wearing pincushions. On my oath I swore underneath the sunlight. I am a blade against the dark, a shield against the infernal abyss, for as long as I stand — no, as long as I exist — I shall give my all, my everything. I will stand strong, never shall I turn away.

No matter the cost.

His hand rested against his nose with the stone wall of his new cell for company, though with the added additions of blankets, pillows, and thicker prisoner garb. Frost rose in tendrils of smoke across his fingertips, a burning life in the ashes of the Echo Obscura. A death he longed to find against the Derelicts, against the creatures who slobbered and tainted the land for magickae blood and flesh. A single spark. His one promise. He clenched his fist and strangled it out of the world. Azure light flickered from the sconce, and he stiffened at the shadow's hungry moan. Chains burst bulbous masses across the stone, and he twisted his head at the slurp.

It flickered across the rustic haze. Red orbs bounced in the darkness. Teeth stretched further out of the gums of a force of nature. Air tainted. Stone crumbled, but the chains kept it locked down — kept him trapped. Smoke curdled his skin, and he gasped out with its reflected lunge. Snow blasted across the other wall and doused the sconce, spreading the darkness of the world — the world he swore to protect, no matter the cost. No matter his life.

No matter the bloodshed. Stop their advance. He coughed up his failures and left the crimson splatter on his clothes of those he threw into the horde, all to stop the endless advance. Their names dripped off his tongue, an incessant muttering of the ghosts. Ghosts he left behind with the fall of Irimount, with him its utter doom. Molvisaliz, you bid me look. As if I was not before. He drove his fingers into the cracks of the floor, swaddled in blankets with his face pressed into the tough pillow. Truly... I shall take your words to heart, to my grave. Music continued to play, stilted compared to Neven's gentle tones for rest against their pride of olden times. Of every song, Neven brought sound to the present, on the strings of a lute. You swore, Molvi. You swore to me. Was your regret truly so deep? Yuven tasted blood, and swallowed his Oathbound's cruel mercy. You are the one who wanted this, do you feel trapped? Maybe mercy is the better option...

Sweat froze on his skin when he lifted his brow out of the pillow. Worlds blurred. Names faded. Medication abandoned across the floor, he squinted through the haze when a slender shape came into view from behind the bars. "Who's there? Declare yourself." He leaped past the pain, and brought up the white flames, a meager spark against his relentless weakness, without enough power to tear himself into the spatial distortion of his magick. It chewed at his fingertips, and he scowled at the hush of the dress against the stone.

"It's me, Hayvala Travon," she said, and knelt down on his level. He gripped tighter on the icy fireball, but it fizzled into nothing, a powerless display. Frustration dug into his throat, with Adara Sazaka's voice putting words to the feeling. Fists loosened, he set it back down on the bed.

"What do you want?" he bit.

"I have come to tell you that you won't be in here for much longer," Hayvala said with a hopeful smile. "I am working on getting you and Adara Sazaka released, but it's a delicate process. I don't want Keeper Blackwall to know. For that, I am going to need you to cooperate, Warden Traye."

"I do not have a choice." Yuven scoffed and slumped back into the sheets. "I am stuck under other people's definitions of mercy. Including yours." He gazed at her, then threw the blankets off his body and let the cold do the work it was infamous for in Naveera. "You should've just left me in that chamber. I might be dead. It might be better if I was. There's not even any point in me taking the medication. I have gone without it for too long, and even if I did, I would run out eventually." He waved his hand at her, and suffocated the ice sparks dancing on his palm. "Look. I have no strength. I have no choice. It is either I rely on your word, or sit here with my failures. I would rather sit with them, at least they provide a fleeting comfort in life." Yuven rolled over onto his other side, and placed his back to her. "So, do what you will, as I had told Keeper Blackwall."

He scowled when Hayvala's shape drew closer. "You're not dead yet, Traye."

Fenrer, alive, full of resentment, hate, and conviction. Yuven shook his head, rubbing out feathers across the pillow. "I will be, soon. I do not need your pity, Princess. Allow me that one thing. Allow me my dignity in my last days." It truly is all I have left... I didn't even get to see her.

Hayvala sat down on the cold stone floor instead. "You're not alone, you know."

Yuven rolled over to face her, and she clarified, "I am going to try and get Adara to visit you. A reminder of what you still have, the choices you can still make." Her hands brushed against the stone, her own magick glittering into cold pearls. "If I cannot make you see, then maybe she can."

Yuven scoffed. "You do not know Sazaka then. She barely has the confidence in herself to perform magick, let alone pierce light into the abyss as deep as the Corruption. If you think her mere words will drive me to act, you are going to be disappointed, Princess." He coughed, and spat blood onto the blankets, then threw the last one to the side to join the pile. "Aren't you supposed to be dancing with some stuffed up nobles by now?"

Hayvala tipped her head. "Are you not a dancer?"

"I fight, Princess, I don't dance."

"Those two aren't so different," Hayvala pointed out. "It takes the same amount of skill to follow a tempo within the body, extending into a weapon."

Yuven laughed into the fabric of the pillow. "And who in the Hells told you that? It takes skill to fight, and takes an inner melody to dance. I have one, but not the other."

Her smile died. "You... can't hear the song?"

"The only song in my head is Molvisaliz's words unto me, in that nightmare of Irimount." He laughed and drove his fangs past the cloth. "He reminded me of duty, and bid me look, forced it upon me. Keeper Blackwall sought to use him, his memory, his image, and he ruined it." Yuven huffed against the fabric and fumed for his life. "He ruined my best friend. He ruined my Oathbound. He used him against me. The only thing I want, the only thing I can hear, is my desire to slam my knives into those accursed eyes and tear open his throat!" He slammed both fists into the rock, and scraped it against the edges. "I warned him. I warned him of the consequences. I told him I didn't want to hear Fenrer's name come out of his mouth, and he has the audacity to construct him to pierce my memories!" A sob left his throat. "What is worse... I still can't remember. He left me pieces. Left me with a piece of him. A starbound connection I should have never agreed to, but gods, gods." Yuven took his fangs out of the pillow and slammed his brow into it. "How could I ever say no to you, Molvisaliz?"

Hayvala reached out her hand, a reflection of the dark-haired Hanekan boy, with a wide smile on his face, cracked upon a surface of war and fear. Though when he dared to take the light, it slipped out of his damp palm and Fenrer fell into the jaws of mist of faith. Empty-handed, he screeched and ran after the enemy. It wasn't enough. He rejected Hayvala's offered hand and curled deeper against the mattress on the floor. "Go on, Princess. Dance. Dance to the tune of our people. We don't change. We can't. Whoever told you that is a fool."

Off her knees, Hayvala stood strong and proud. "He wasn't a fool, Yuven. Yokonei Traye knew and understood the words he spoke, even unto his death," she said with a low hiss. "Even as a king crushed him, he stuck to that single conviction. Though he had never seen the sun, he still believed."

Faith. Belief. Fenrer. Molvisaliz. Yuven groaned and threw his foot into the phial of his medication. It broke apart and spread the temporary relief across the stones and mixed with old blood. "He got himself killed, nothing more, nothing less," he growled. "You cannot tell me he just sat down and took it, took a king's justice without the bat of an eye. If he truly believed in change, he would've fought for it."

"He couldn't."

"Why is that?"

Hayvala rested her hands on the bars with a frown of grief. "Because he was a prisoner just as you are. A prisoner of his name," she whispered. "I was ignorant when I was younger. To me, he was my knight, my glaive and shield. Ignorant to how he truly felt. Homesick. He missed his family; missed his home. Though he would always deny it, and tell me he was looking for the sun. It wasn't in the direction of the sky he looked... it was eastward of here, to the mountain cradle where Irimount sat."

"It doesn't matter then," Yuven mumbled. "He would've had no home to go back to if he lived long enough for me to bring doom upon it. Me, who you say he put his life down for, a babe he probably never met, and the reason Irimount no longer exists." He tossed his forearm over his brow, and fought the stickiness across it. Screams rocked through his ears. Ribbons sliced and expelled blood from skin. Derelicts clawed their way through the plane, through magick unbound. It pulsed in his head and he screamed out to their myriad of voices, silenced in one single sweep. Each piece burned at his fingertips, and slowly, ever so slowly, the little Hanekan boy became a blurry figure, with his hand crumbling to dust. It's finally happening... I'm starting to lose all those little details... were you really smiling back then?

"I'll be your shield!" Fenrer said, but the smile shattered. "I promise."

You promised.

"Yuven Traye."

He closed his eyes, and Maria spoke out his name. He drew closer to her, hand raised to the mirror. Do not ruin her too. Please. Her fingers traced his own, and he came closer to her, a breath away. Around her neck, the necklace he gave her to remember him by, a singular desire. If I am to die, just remember me. Know that I love you with all that I am, Myl'la.

Her slender hands squeezed his, a sunny mirage across desert sands. "I'm not giving up on you," her voice sounded across continents, but whispered right into his ear and sent a flaming shiver through his magick. "Just don't give up on yourself."

On the pier with Fenrer bouncing onto the galleon, he hesitated from his duty, his goals and faced her instead, with the mountain's shadow overtaking them both. "I do not want you to give up," he said to the mirage. "But not because it's me, but because I don't want this Corruption to take away another child's life before it's barely begun."

Her smile brightened the environment around her. "You are kinder than you believe, Yuven Traye. Even if the world shall take our lives, I will not give up. I am a Storm Warden, after all, a sword in the darkness."

I am a shield against the obscurity of the inferno.

The abyss swallowed the sun.

She faded at his fingertips.

Bitterness and anger field the rumbling void at his feet, and he breathed deep of bloodlust. Yes... a sword in the darkness that shall pierce all that remains. Duty, Molvisaliz? Yes, you are right. I have forgotten too quickly. No matter the cost, we must stick to our duty. I don't need those memories, they no longer matter. He brought the tiny spark closer to his heart. All I need is one good moment to make do on your words, to show you my conviction.