The Secret.

It was a brisk night as autumn was slowly giving its way to winter, shepherding in the death of an old kingdom with a white coffin blanket. They would bury the dead under snow and ice. The season's beginnings clouded the breath in front of Alessia as she breezed onto the balcony, her footsteps silent as the early snowfall collecting on her hood. It was enough to hear the song of a falcon, to watch it's wingspan disappear from her peripherals, to know that its master was nearby too. This building did not belong to either one of these trespassers.

Just behind Alessia was the empty skeleton of someone else's lost luxuries. The roof above her that her brother perched himself upon was crumbling with disuse. One of these days the halls of this abandoned mansion would be filled with mead and music again, but it wouldn't be their's. Alessia smiled and glanced over at Alrik as he landed beside her. Or maybe it would be? Maybe Alrik would fancy himself into a Jarl just to prove a point. Alessia was half inclined to do that herself; it would take some time for her to accept the new King was everything they hoped he (and his other half) would be. But she, like her differentiated bloodline, would be found moving from one border to the next - no crown but that of her braided hair.

She sighed and threw an arm across Alrik's shoulder, pulling her brother close. She was counting the days until her journey back to Eterna with bittersweetness. Duty called, but most of her heart would remain behind. "I can't wait to tell your future kids that their dad beat up a god dragon, just to fire up the forge again," she teased.

he landed, with a thump, feeling his sister's arms around him a moment later. a chill from above still holding to him while another wrapped itself around alessia still. alrik shivered, then embraced her warmly.

"winter in lysara spoiled us." alrik complained. it was unlike him to be so contemptuous of the cold, but he'd grown accustomed to the sort of luxuries that he and alessia were denied for most of their lives. even as kids they'd never gone hungry, but life was as hard and as brutal as every other iskaran who called the south their home. it took a stubborn breed. lysara had comfortable work, more gold than he'd ever spend, warm fires, a good-quality and soft bed. alrik's stomach was softer now than when they'd started this, but victory looked good on him in the wake of the resignation he'd taken to before.

“I like my forge.” quick, sharp, but lighthearted. “i'll take an apprentice, or a few. someone to mind it and the shop while we're off.” because there would never be one without the other; they had names to hunt down. the present was secured, the harts would attend to the future as well. “and there are much worse things you could tell to your future nieces and nephews about me.”

where: we're out and aboot

when: current timeline

note: get thy lick back part 2 electric bugaloo

“I have more money than I'll ever spend. More than my children will ever need, and their children's children even.” His hammer struck once more, sparks arcing across the surface of the anvil from the heavy blow with the blacksmith's substantial arms behind it. He'd struck a niche in the place, and if nothing else a skilled smith in times of war was profitable - far as Alrik saw it, he was serving in another way. One that kept the collars away from his throat, the witchers off his back, and the iron coins from falling in from the open mouths of ravens. For a moment, Alrik's eyes drifted to the hammer mounted on the wall, the layer of dust and soot evident even from here: months without knowing the touch of its master's hand. Those same obsidian hues landed on Lothar, a warrior he respected and a man he loved just as much as Prospero and Asbjorn. “Why should I trade my future for theirs?" He gestured with his chin toward the open wall.  

"...No." Alrik amended, not clearly misunderstood. "But you can sit there and keep me company while I do." An offer, if Etienne felt so inclined. He canted his head idly to the side, empathetic to what the other was going through - what they'd all been through. "How are you holding up, friend?" Might be old friend soon enough: though Alrik didn't know what that might mean.

And when she saw what had awaited them, it was like a proverbial blow to the stomach. Alessia touched her fingers to her throat to ensure she still drew breath. And then… And then. Steeled herself. One hand laid upon her heart to quell its pounding. She had been living off nothing but rage to survive, and it had all been for nothing. The anger had not prevented this. She could hear the change in Alrik's breathing, she could feel her brother's horror like a second blow to follow the first. But the world did not narrow the way it had the first time she had seen Prospero's corpse, because now there was another body to worry about beside her, one that still drew breath. So she followed behind Alrik, her legs feeling like lead and her heart heavier still.

Alessia did not speak, following in the request to let down the man that they had... let down. Who had let Alessia and Alrik down too, with his lies, perhaps, but whose faults had made him no less the caretaker and substitute father that he had been for many months. Hot tears began to roll onto her cheeks as she shuddered and wrenched a nail free from Prospero. Her breaths grew ragged as she listened to Alrik, a broken sound ripping from the tightness in her throat, muffled quickly by her bloody palm. Trembling with the effort to steady herself, she turned her thoughts inward to the air in her lungs and the waves of physical pain. When her eyes landed on Alrik beside her, untempered anguish flickered over her again before she shook her head. "There's nothing we can do," she murmured. The siblings always found a way, always made it out intact. "Not this time." Today, they'd leave a piece of themselves here.

Prospero was similar to all of his family in a way. Then again, he was also different from them as well. He had his mother's ambition, but not her fearlessness. He had his brother's extroverted personality, but he was not carefree. He feared like his father, but he didn't always say what was on his mind.

That was just them though. Then there was his found family. Alrik. Alessia. Lothar. They all had qualities about them that he wasn't sure if he even had himself. He wanted to have the strength that Alrik and Alessia had. Their survivability, too. He wanted Lothar's ability to not let things faze him as much as they did. He wanted…them. He wanted all of them.

As his eyes shut for what he felt like the last time, he saw everything he could have had. Alrik and Lothar roughhousing like he always expected. They were both just two meatheads that probably could communicate with only grunts. Alessia was sitting next to him, arms folded, looking like she wasn't enjoying any bit of it. He could always see the hint of a smile that reached her face though. It was the same smile that was blatantly apparent on his own. His mother and father were there sitting together in the field just as in love as they had always been.

However, as he looked around there was one face missing. It was very like Damakos to run off to do who knew what whenever he wanted to. Nobody ever knew when he was coming back, but they always knew that he would. As night fell around them, it was just Prospero outside when he saw him. There was a darkness that shrouded his brother, one unlike any he had seen before. The smile that had lifted onto his face had dissipated and was left with despair. The shadow of his brother looked at him and Prospero looked back as if there was something to truly look at.

'Death is light as a feather; duty, heavy as a mountain.'

The whisper in his ear woke him with a start as the daylight filtered into his vision. His brother's voice had been so quiet, but the words had felt so loud. Death was easy. Duty was much harder. Prospero knew, in that moment, as his fingers curled around the bottle he held in his hand like a vice, just what duty his brother had pulled onto his shoulders. There was a sharp inhale as he felt the tears start to fall. The tears that he had held in for so long felt like they were lifting a weight off of his own shoulders, one that he could not take for granted. But how was it fair for him to live while his brother suffered because of his actions?

As the tears fell, he heard a voice that felt like it was next to him and not next to him at the same time. Alrik. Alessia. For all he had done, for all he had caused, they still wanted him around. They still wished to have him in their lives.

Duty, heavy as a mountain.

That was Prospero's duty. When he looked up, it felt like he was in the Arches again. The way back only came but once. His gaze flicked towards the bottle in his hand, the hat on his head, the pistols at his sides. Tears still falling, he stood up from his seat, the bottle dropping from his hand. If he could, he would spend the rest of his entire life making up for what he had done to protect the memories of those he had lost. Now he had new memories to protect, a new family that didn't need him, but wanted him.

There was a wheezing breath that left his body as he opened his eyes just below where he had felt himself fade away. The crucifix was a reminder of his sins, of the weight that his brother had taken off of his shoulders. Wetness settled upon the peeling skin of his face as his eyes closed gain. He felt Alrik and Alessia's presence and it felt like floodgates being opened again for tears he had always felt back. A sob wracked his body and he wasn't sure how many times the words left his mouth, but, at some point, he wasn't sure who he was saying them to anymore. It was just three words over and over and over again.

That quiet stretched as the sounds of the uproar did something to worm its way into the space, the ocean slapped against the sides of the dreadnought and from between the Hart siblings the charred remains of Prospero began to softly glow. Faint, radiant light threaded and stitched the battered frame back together: ligament to ligament, skin to skin, and with a broken croak the apologies seemed to spill from Prospero's lips.

Alrik was still in the same place, looking down at the man as his face burned hot with the filthy cheeks streaked-clean by the steady river flowing from his eyes. The glow caught his eyes, drawing his focus as he felt the breath in his lungs suddenly still as every cell within his body seized.

"Dad-"

A squeeze that came like an iron vice, the afterthought came that it'd be too tight, but Alrik couldn't steady himself to care in the moment.

"He won't take you."

Alrik steadied his focus on the old man, drawing back but keeping his hands firmly planted on Prospero's shoulders and repeating. "He won't."

Alrik didn't know how, but from the druid he looked toward his sister - the horrors they'd seen, become, they still walked this road together. All of them now.

“You’re going to kill yourseif if you don’t stop,” she warned quietly, although she wouldn’t be altogether foreign to the concept of that being the point. When undeath had granted her a second chance, she would have slapped it’s decrepit, boney hand away if given the option. Being a vuldak certainly wasn’t her favorite, but this? This was a considerable several steps down. Her own shirt was in poor condition, but it was better off than the blood and dirt soaked tatters around Alrik’s bloodied knuckles. She tore a strip from the bottom and approached with the clear intention of attempting to patch him together–a meager and pathetic attempt with all of his injuries, but she had little to offer.

Dark green eyes met his own darkened ones and her fear of their reality was apparent. “I don’t feel much like a hero,” she admitted, a brow raised as if asking if he felt like one. Then again, if they cared to live, each would have to figure out how to be a champion in their own right. But she choked on her own unworthiness and the rot within her bloodstream. She had wanted for so long to merely be okay, to do no more harm in the world than her neutral or good deeds–that felt impossible. Heroics? A Kossith might as well slay her where she stood. “I think maybe you need to choose to stop breaking your body down fighting that thing,” she suggested, but she made herself small and flinched away from him, expecting her opinion was less than welcome.

Alrik’s head tilted slightly as Juneau tore a strip from her battered shirt. His lips pressed into a tight line. He waited a long breath, motionless, only watching her from the deep-set dark of his eyes - half-wild, half-wary. The hand she reached toward was hardly a hand anymore: scarred, cracked, fingers stiff with old breaks that never healed right. A body more battlefield than man at this rate, but one that still clung to its pride like battered armor. Pride was stubborn among the Iskarans and Alrik was no exception - too foolish to know when he’d been beaten past salvation.

"Alder said the same, you know," he muttered, the words almost casual in their exhaustion. "Said he never felt like a hero, or that he even liked to be called one." He shifted slightly, allowing Juneau to wind the strip around his torn knuckles, though he didn't meet her gaze at first. His eyes drifted somewhere beyond the walls, beyond the confines of the collar biting into his neck. "I didn’t know him as well as you," Alrik added, his voice softer now, more careful. "But all any hero ever was, was someone who did what needed doing... at the time they were needed."

A twitch of a smile, a memory passing over him like a colder wind, crossed his face. He exhaled slow, as if forcing out the ghosts that still permeated his past - he chose to believe that cool breeze was Asbjorn, some aspect from the world beyond to remind him that this life was a temporary one.

"There was this drunk in Hrafntun," he said. "I’d see him in the street when my father took me down to the docks. No one ever paid him much mind and my father always told me to stay away from him. He died of smoke inhalation," Alrik continued, voice turning distant. "After a fire spread to an orphanage. He kept going back in to make sure all the children were out." His gaze flickered up as a pair of dark, obsidian orbs found Juneau’s through the dim of the brig. 

"He was a hero," Alrik said simply. "And I don’t even know his name. We don’t know where we’ll be when the flames are highest," he finished, his voice low and steady. Maybe he had changed, but she had too - whether she wished to see it or not. "But I’ll go in as many times as it takes. If that means pulling at this thing until it turns me inside out, so be it: the pain means I’m still fighting, still here."

The moment the new rahaat's eyes clouded over and he fell silent was the moment Ilmaveth stepped into his mind, pulling him into a deep, dark sleep. It would be his first and last nearly a day, but his mental breaking would be well underway when he woke. Ilmaveth could bring forth his greatest fears, prime him for the horrors that would await him should he resist his natural purpose, and snuff out any places in his mind where hope was allowed to fester. Ilmaveth had been doing so for some time now and had grown quite adept at this practice under his sul'dam's command. His touch always left a specter of himself behind in the minds of rahaats infected, ensuring that the work would continue until the sul'dam he was assigned began his true training. Thanks to Ilmaveth, this boy would not suffer as he did. Hopefully, all notions of resistance would be destroyed by the nightmare.

Awaken.

On command, Ilmaveth's incorporeal form dragged itself from the mind of the rahaat he helped to torture. Lethargic limbs sprang from his forehead as bit by bit the rahaat infecting his forced sleep pulled himself out and became material. He could not be certain how long had passed since he was last permitted to do so, but as the cloudy haze of his continued sleep faded from his eyes, the increased volume of the screams echoing in his mind from nightmares he was still actively fueling told him Valkessh had been busy. There wasn't time to dwell on that though, he had new orders.

Understanding her will inherently, she invoked his name and he vanished from view and reappeared in step with the rahaat from the Heart of Flesh. The rest of the village can burn, he was there only to relay pertinent information a village elder would have to Valkessh. "The path in front of me is all I've been permitted to see. I make nothing beyond my objective." Pacified in his subservience, Ilmaveth speaks directly into the mind of the other rahaat. He prefers being awake and wants to spend as much time as he can with his eyes unclouded. That's why they do not waver from the house ahead. In fact, he's unsure if speaking to the other is wise but this sliver of autonomy is rare indeed. "Be blind to all but your orders. If I suspect you're distractible, I would have to report as much to my sul'dam," he says despite clinging to the chance to speak to another. It hurt, though he couldn't tell if the ache came from his a'dam or something else, so he continued, "Everything and everyone in this village that cannot be put to use will be razed, so a darkfriend watching our moves is inconsequential. Do you see a specific threat they pose to our objective?"

Alrik did not stop moving forward as his boots pounded against the cracked stones of the village square, the elder’s house now looming before him - target and objective. Fharzai’s voice slithered into his mind, Ilmaveth, as the other was now called and it felt as though a ghost had come and leaned against his bones. There was no room for himself here, but Alrik was too large to be contained with ease and his body habitually flexed and tensed as it resisted the compulsion that overlayed his frame. 

"No." The word was clipped, mechanical, a hammerstrike instead of a thought. His hands flexed at his sides and then curled into fists.  "He is not a threat to the objective." His voice was low, almost guttural, forced through the thick presence of the a'dam. "Prospero is already contained and he watches because he cannot do otherwise.” Another beat passed as Alrik’s head fell, shadows obscuring his eyes and the same dark, tousled hair he’d always worn hung limply on either side. His pace drew slower, intentionally so while progress was still being made, no sul’dam was monitoring closely enough to force his feet to move quicker. 

“I’m sorry,” he said into the stale air along their deliberate march to the home atop the hill, “for waking us that day: for not giving us the story you deserved.” In their next turning of the wheel, Alrik would make up a better one. "This one will be over soon."

"I've tried to be more, Alrik, I've tried to be better. For you, for father, for myself. But if I believe in destiny, then I have to believe that I'm working against it." Her voice quieted slightly. "I don't know if I'm strong enough to keep doing that. I don't want the world to turn me into something that I don't want to be but if I had to give up all the progress I've made just to make sure I don't lose what matters more than my fucking autonomy..." She shook her head, knowing Alrik could find the answer quite clearly in her eyes: She didn't know if she could not do it.

"We are the power, the light shines through us. That is the truth." Fharzai was an unfortunate influence on him, it seemed, but he knew Asbjorn would have approved. They had bled too much to not know the shape of the instruments used against them, years in the mines shrouded an already delicate psyche but Alrik was stronger now - and more certain of self - than he'd ever been. "We have always walked this path together, if you stray I'll be the one to pull you back." Just as he had no doubt she would do the same for him.

His sister was a perpetual student, seemingly finding unconventional mentors wherever they went - distilling knowledge, power, insight, and wisdom even through adversity. Magic from a neighbour, poison from the witchers, fey powers from an archfey, and more from the life she'd lived when that mark on her chest was earned. They were not who they once were, this turn of the Wheel gave them a chance to be better than the heroes of old, he'd said it once already to another of the rahaat, and he'd say it again. "We are the heroes of this age, these Kossith have inserted themselves in it, but they will not dictate how it ends."

The odds had been against them from their first breaths, but that had never stopped them before.

"That's the point isn't it," she nearly growled. Another deep breath. The one gift that the blasted cursed ring had given Alessia was the nearly unending exercise of self-awareness that she'd had to practice. These were not intrusive negative thoughts borne from a dark entity - this was all her. But the practice of quelling it was just the same. It helped if she would actually look at Alrik, and so she did. Alessia managed to meet her brother's gaze, finally, and felt immediately drawn to the flicker of concern that she felt. He looked as he always did, but she knew what turmoil he might be masking. "Fuck the Pattern for a second, we've always been alone, Alrik." Her voice was low and cautious, her eyes darkened. She looked eerily composed now, but it was too quick a change to be more than a practice of fake-it-till-you-make-it. "Do you know the person you could become if you suddenly lost all that you've gained? All that we've gained?" She thought of Alfhild. They took her bone mask but she swore she could still feel the weight of it - her own bones hooked at her waist.