Started my Cohost with this, and that turned out pretty well overall, so here's hoping the luck holds, have some doomed critter romance:
Oh Ye Whom Wrath Consumes Kydav of the Burning Arrow, Shield of Varr and Stallion of the Vale of Iems, limped towards the circle of firelight, his left hind-hoof dragging along the ground. In the distance beyond the fire, fully a third of the writhing sky was missing, obscured by the dark corpse of a God. That was the only landmark; all else was night.
The creatures around the fire must have heard his laboured footsteps, but they made no move to greet him, and so it was only when he paused just outside the light that he discerned their forms. This handful of survivors did not surprise him. Few could bear the sight of the sky seething with hatred. He was relieved, though, that none rose immediately to strike him.
Oricar, Chosen of the Seven Lands, Mistress of the Final Host, Who Blinked Only Once, lay belly-down in the sand, her long, segmented body stretching away into the darkness, her legs folded up into two neat rows along her back. Beside her squatted Ratri, Queen of Blades, King of Shadows, Assassin of Wars, the long spines on her limbs and back lying flat, indicating fertile rather than virile phase. Kydav took particular and sad note of that detail.
Opposite Oricar and Ratri, much closer to the fire, lay Uelho of the Earth, Mage of Bone and Sulfur, Peacemaker. The helix of their shell towered skywards still, but down in the sand, the grey hill of their flesh looked faded and old. Pale blue blood dripped gently down from the wound where their flank met their shell. It was a tiny break in the skin, fine like a papercut and less than a fingertip in length, but the wounds left by the accursed knife of the Cardinal of Bethwa never healed. For years, Uelho's bond with the Earth Spirits had preserved them, but the muddy patch of dirt where their blood now fell – the only patch of moisture Kydav had seen in hours – paid testament to the sacrifices that had brought them to this moment.
Facing Kydav through the flames was Scivin Godslayer, Mistress of the Lance, once called The Tender, Who Raised The Green Wall. Her blocky body rested more or less upright against a boulder. Although the season had been spring, the crags of her bark sprouted no new growth, and the ridges of her crown were charred.
Once they had been thirteen. Could the others all be dead? Lost for what to say, Kydav took another step. Scivin looked up, but held her peace. None of them spoke, as Kydav settled slowly to his aching knees, his scarred breast to the fire's meagre warmth.
After a very long silence, Kydav let out a low whinny of a sigh and said, "I have a stupid question."
Ratri began to bristle, a shiver running through her shackle-scarred spines, but Oricar spoke first: "Let him ask." Her eyes rolled heavenward and winced, "What harm can it do now?"
Kydav's face softened as he looked down at his former general. The light of the fire was kind to them all in a way that the rasps and gurgles of Oricar's voice could not be. There would be neither the speeches that could inspire stone to march nor the ice-cold orders that had punctuated the purge of the cult of Elsti any longer.
Again it was a long time before Kydav spoke. "Is it really so... No, that's not a stupid question." A rueful smile slipped up his cheek and fled into the gloom below his ear. "Did anyone ever figure out what the Witch of Uthpe was actually after?"
That was a stupid question. Again, Scivin raised her head, eyes baleful in their crags. Neither Ratri nor Oricar moved. The Witch of Uthpe had haunted Oricar's campaigns of unification across four continents, seizing a succession of minor but valuable territories at their margins and flanks. Even after unification, as the Elsti rose and were put down, the Witch had popped up again and again like vermin.
Scivin's glare had not faltered. The crevices in her bark swallowed the firelight, but Kydav saw little violence in her. Like Oricar, her voice was ruined. Where once she had spoken in breezes, now she sounded like a distant landslide. "Did you have to fight her too, after-?" She seemed to run out of interest, as much as energy to finish the question.
"Does it matter?" hissed Ratri. Even tense with hostility, her spines stayed layered almost completely flat. She had avoided her virile phase since escaping captivity, and now Kydav could see only hints of the King of Shadow in the dull grey scales of the Queen of Knives. Her voice was all hiss, no roar. "Let her claim whatever square of dry sand she chooses, the Gods will finish the job we never could. None of it matters now."
Uelho moved gently in his place, just enough to draw all their eyes. "Not all that matters is victory, Assassin of Wars." Their voice slid slowly, gently, over the words, without any sign of weakness. If their wound hurt, or the Peacemaker felt the steady approach of their long-delayed death, they gave no sign. "Nor for that matter is survival. Why are you here, Kydav?"
Again, Kydav gave a fleeting smile. "Don't all creatures seek light and warmth, in such circumstances?"
Uelho turned two of their eyestalks toward the Burning Arrow. "Beneath you are more who would shy from light than have ever seen it."
"I'm sorry. That was thoughtless of me," Kydav chose his words carefully. Then, after a long pause, his bitter humour returned. "Hardly the first time."
Uelho gave one of the silent ripples the others had long since learned to recognise as a chuckle. "Perhaps your rashness will die with the world, Faithful, but I would not be surprised if it endured."
Kydav winced. "I relinquished that title."
"Did you think we would let you forget?" Snarled Ratri, drawing a flinch from the centaur.
"No, I... No." He shook his head, lank mane barely shifting with the movement. "But there are ways and ways of remembering. Let this be my way of asking that you remember my remorse as well."
"Can a name make such a difference in these circumstances?" Scivin lifted a bough to indicate the sky, and Kydav saw that all her twigs were mere nubs of char. "Surely the Gods will see to it that all is forgotten."
"They're not here yet." Oricar glanced toward the dead mountain. "Your victim took three decades to arrive."
"And should we sit in darkness for another three pondering the guilt of that one?" Ratri had anger only for Kydav, it seemed.
"Perhaps we should," Uelho said, and they sounded a little surprised to find the words passing their snout. "Perhaps now it matters more than ever that our deeds are accounted for."
"Then will you execute me?" Kydav's voice took on a peculiar edge. "There can be little doubt as to my guilt."
Oricar rippled again. "One more death would serve us little. Perhaps we might talk of titles instead."
With another wan flicker of his once-mirthful lips, Kydav said, "Where is Idmow? Doubtless he would want to be here for the occasion."
"Varr's Bane is dead," Scivin answered. "Struck down as he took up the Lance of Illbe."
Kydav lowered his head in understanding.
Quietly, Oricar said, "Would that the task had not fallen to him." Her eyes flicked between Uelho and Scivin, as if wondering whose forgiveness she should ask first.
The Godslayer made a pointed silence, turning her attention back to Kydav, but it was Ratri who spoke. "Are you not pleased at your foe's passing?"
"Shall I prance?" Humour fled Kydav's voice. "I, too, wish that the weight of the Lance had not fallen – not on any of you. Were Idmow here, we might stand trial side by side."
"None of us has a shortage of deeds to answer for, if it comes to that." Oricar still kept her voice maddeningly low, bereft of anger, and Kydav wondered if it was easier on her ruined throat that way.
"Then why single me out? For treachery alone?"
"As if your cult was not the worst of all our doings," Ratri snarled, "Or do you defend them even now?"
"That stopping the Dedicates of Elsti was a necessary evil," Kydav placed his words with the precision of a bricklayer, "does not make what was done any less evil."
"And what of what we found in the crypts of your citadel?"
The Burning Arrow snorted, a chuckle utterly without joy. "Desperation breeds ugly sacrifices." He made a shrug that encompassed the whole scene; Uelho's slow wound, the charred ruins of Scivin's spring growth, the scorched earth, the heaving sky.
Ratri subsided, chastened, but Oricar took over the attack. "You would suggest that comparison." There was heat in the Mistress's voice. "Does it not ring hollow in your own ears?"
"Our sacrifices were no less ugly," said Scivin, and Kydav heard in the rustling of her voice all he needed to know of what had befallen the Gardens at Illbe. "Were they any less futile?"
Oricar rounded on the Godslayer, but Uelho beat the words out of her mouth. "Peace, Chosen." Uelho's warm tone held them all still. "Speaking for the sacrifices, I am grateful for this last view of the stars, even trammelled as they are."
Scivin made a sound that was almost a sob. "Forgive me, Uelho."
"You have asked me that several times already, dear friend." The Mage of Bone and Sulfur paused. "And I know your heart already knows my answer."
Again there was silence.
Eventually, speaking directly over the fire, Kydav asked, "How many tried to lift it, in the end?"
"Oricar. Ijamd. Ennesh never touched it. Uelho. Ycehea, then Idmow. Then me." Scivin mumbled the list. "When I saw the Light Before Dawn fall, it changed me. I know not why. I saw the need of sacrifice. Had I but seen it sooner…"
"Had you indeed," Ratri snapped. Her spines rattled, the black patches of their scars dancing like spots in Kydav's tired eyes.
Scivin let out a noise that began as a high, whistling laugh and fell into a windy moan. It seemed to take her a moment to assemble breath afterwards. "Even now I do not know if I could spare you the Oeander-"
The Queen of Knives uncoiled faster than Kydav could track, and a blade flashed the light back at him as it flew past the fire. Scivin made no attempt to move or shield herself, allowed Ratri's knife to find its mark.
The blade passed through her eye, lost deep inside her trunk, and Scivin the Tender was no more.
Ratri did not settle. Spines lifted to full virile phase, he stood by the fire, facing the Godslayer's corpse. For the first time, Kydav saw the extent of the wounds left by the Oeanderan shackles. Wounds that Scivin could have prevented, had she the will to kill the King of Shadow as he was dragged away.
Well, who was to say there was no justice in this, either. Kydav watched Oricar, and wondered how the Chosen of Seven Lands felt now. Were her thoughts of the lover who stood over her, facing the darkness, or the old and treasured ally just departed to it? In her liquid, murky face, there was nothing to hint of an answer.
The night wound on, time marked only by the occasional faint breaths of a breeze. Oricar fuelled the fire with her old, dainty humility, passing brushwood up the ladder of limbs on her back from the darkness and tossing them into the light. She neither touched nor spoke to Ratri.
"My time comes." Now, at the last, Uelho's voice weakened. Kydav's head reeled suddenly, heat flooding through his body and up to his eyes. Oricar lurched to her feet, the ripple of her unfolding legs thrown awkwardly off rhythm. But she hesitated, rather than approach the dying Mage.
"Do you expect a speech?" Clearly now even those few words taxed Uelho. "I'm dying, there is no wisdom in this! We pass, and the Earth remains!" His stalks straightened, pointing the beads of his eyes to the sky. "If that…"
Then Uelho of the Earth, too, died.
Oricar moved forwards, seemed to trip, and landed in the sand with her face mere whispering inches from Uelho's. The motion exposed a good eight feet of her gelatinous body to the firelight, and Kydav saw what the Istnov poisons had done to her. Where once she had been clear as fresh springwater, so that she almost vanished when still, now she was riddled with black blotches, deep inside her body. It made her look lumpen, like frogspawn.
Ratri finally shifted her rigid pose, and Kydav watched her sink to the ground, eyes unblinkingly heavenward. If there had been anything left to say, it was surely gone now.
The fire burned low, low enough that the embers could no longer shame the suffering of the trio around it. So they sat, until the terrible, sunless dawn finally came.