Aylin/Isobel Week

Aylin was the perfect sword. Her body unbreakable, even to the ravages of time itself. Her skills honed to perfection, until no one could stand before her. That was what she was destined to be; a weapon to be wielded by the Moonmaiden, enacting her vengeance upon the mortal plains and giving both the innocent and the wicked what they rightfully deserved.

It seemed almost too fitting when she met her love, a mortal woman bold enough to declare herself as Selûne’s shield. Someone who would take up the cause not as a weapon, but armor. Armor strong enough to protect all held close to her. A wonderful sentiment, one that only made Aylin love her more.  

But in the act of protection, shields are struck, and it did not take long for the pair to be reminded of that fact. Aylin had not even been beside her beloved when it happened, as was often the case in the chaos of battle, but the way Isobel cradled her arm in the aftermath told her all she needed to know. She raised her hand in an instant, calling forth enough magic to dispel her pain, but Isobel refused. It was just a minor blow, she said, an errant swing of a mace that had missed one of their allies and connected directly to the cleric’s shoulder. A painful injury, but not a fatal one; their healing magic would be better spent elsewhere. As always, Aylin trusted Isobel’s judgement and settled for tying a quick sling around her arm, before they got to work healing those who had bravely fought beside them.

It was only when they retired to the privacy of their tent, that Aylin found herself wishing that she had healed Isobel anyway. Her love lay on the cot before her, back finally bare, revealing the full extent of her injury. It looked far worse than the cleric had let on. Her shoulder was completely misaligned and swollen, marked by a dark red bruise larger than Aylin’s hand. And that was only what existed on the surface, there was no telling how much she had broken underneath the skin. It hurt to even think about.

Still Aylin had a job to do. She reached into Isobel’s pack, following the cleric’s instructions to the letter, and pulled out a jar of numbing balm. The medicine felt cold to the touch, but she applied it liberally; ghosting over skin that she would normally caress. Even that was too much for her darling, as Isobel’s grip tightened on the covers at the touch.

“I know how much it hurts.” Isobel said, between gasps of pain. “Seeing me like this.”

If she were in a better mood, Aylin would have laughed at the suggestion that she was the one hurting. Instead, she simply hummed, knowing exactly what Isobel was getting at. “This is not the same.” She replied, reaching into the jar for more ointment. “I would have healed by now.”

She couldn’t see Isobel’s face, but Aylin could sense her rolling her eyes. “And I will be healed by morning, Selûne willing of course. So, no harm done then?”

Of course not. Aylin thought, but didn’t say, unwilling to cede such ground so easily. Because truly, their circumstances could not be more different. Aylin could take on any foe, go into any battle, with absolute certainty that she would live to see the end of it. It would take an act of the gods themselves to keep her down forever. The same could not be said of Isobel. She had come mere inches away from being killed today, from a hit not even intended for her. The simple fact that she could fall so easily, shook Aylin like nothing ever had. Her love was truly so fragile; so long as Isobel fought beside her, Aylin could no longer be sure that she'd escape any battle with her heart unscathed. 

Eventually, Isobel sighed, filling the silence since Aylin refused to. “I just want you to remember this feeling, the next time you fly off into danger. I see you like this far too often.”

Aylin thought it through and leaned down to place a gentle kiss on her love’s cheek. “I will be more careful in future.” She meant every word. For if anything happened to her, who would protect Isobel in her absence?

“That’s all I ask.” Isobel turned around, her gentle smile shining as bright as the moon itself. Her spirits lifted for now. “Well, that and a handsome pillow to sleep on, perhaps.”

Aylin smiled back.

They shuffled around slowly, careful to avoid any pressure on Isobel's back, until Aylin found her place beneath her cleric. Strong arms wrapped around the much smaller woman atop her, as they began their rest together. But Aylin did not sleep that night. She waited. Her hands ran through short silver hair, as she counted down the seconds. Until at last, she felt the familiar jolt of her magic returning. Wasting no time, she shifted her hands, until they rested just outside the boundaries of the bruise. Aylin whispered, a portion of her magic draining as easily at it had come, and Isobel sighed, finally relaxing fully into her touch. The injury made a thing of the past, but the memory would stick with Aylin forever.

"Of course!" he spat. "I am wasting my time. What would you know of this, creature? Of life, of love, of loss? Child of endless dawns, on whom the sun will never set." His ravings grew more and more unhinged by the minute. "She should never have stayed here… I should never have allowed her into service at all…"

Aylin swallowed, with some effort, the repeated stings to her own pride, and decided to defend Isobel - who could not defend herself. "It is not on you to allow or disallow her having faith and choice in how to live her life."

"The life I gave her!"

"Yes, gave it! It is not yours anymore, but hers! Or have you misunderstood the very concept of giving?"

"It is no one's now, don't you understand?" Ketheric roared. "No life at all. She is gone."

In lieu of further managing her anger, or his, misaimed or not, Aylin spread her wings and took flight, until she couldn't hear his cries over the mountain winds anymore.

-

The next time they spoke, he was differently distraught. He claimed the Blood of Lathander had been damaged in the attack, that one of the alien invaders had managed to get to the deepest parts of the temple, all the way to the vault in the heart of the mountain. That he needed her help to reconsecrate it—blood for Blood.

Of course she acquiesced, and marched down immediately, spear in hand and the now-grim Dawnmaster in tow.

When Aylin stepped over the lanky body of the githyanki raider and into the powered-down safekeeping mechanism, the relic was not there.

A burst of vivid light came from behind her back, where she'd—so trustingly, so foolishly—let Ketheric stay. He wielded the holy mace with some expertise; his own armament of choice was a hefty war hammer and so, of course, the necessary stance and motion to master the swing of the top-heavy weapon was not new to him.

All of this Aylin's mind could clearly comprehend and catalogue as the gleaming mace arced towards her head.

The next and last thing she heard before her life briefly slipped away was the mechanism whirring to life around her.

-

Visitors were turned away at the gates of Rosymorn, at first. It was said the Dawnmaster would not stand for more incursions, more risk; protecting the relic, he claimed, was more important than prayers of passersby or letting folk marvel at the mastery of stained glass windows and trade "donations" for wine. In this, as in all things, there was hardly anyone left to oppose him.

Soon enough none bothered to dare the long road up the mountain to even attempt entry, and the Dawnmaster, it seemed, was left alone.

-

A red dragon with a green rider, again. The horizon darkened.

Ketheric made his way down, down, down, through holy seals, into the bowels of the mountain, pulling levers and turning dials as he went.

Aylin did not deign to lift her head when he entered the deepest chamber, suspended as she was in the rotating, circling gold and brass rings, like her Father's blood lay suspended in the amber of the relic, mounted in its own containment not a few paces away. Four drops there, and a fifth one here.

Ketheric spared her barely a glance as he pressed down the final switch on the mechanism. 

Her own amber-lined spear moved, propelled inexorably forward in its mechanical mount, then burrowed slowly into her—an agony she had become used to. She would never be extinguished; she would blink her eyes shut, as near to death as it was possible for her to get, and then in the same blink she would rise once more, as inevitable as the sun rising in the morning. It was wrought into her very being. Her purpose.

The wound bled molten and gilded her rags, dripping into the grooves carved into the floor, funnelled into shapes, circles, runes, all aglow with power unwillingly given. Just like the gold that knit her together now, blazing from within.

Hitched-breath, for she hated to give away any sign of pain before her tormentor, Aylin did her best to sound mocking. "Who is it now? Who threatens Rosymorn so horribly that this is required?" She swallowed hot, bitter blood and tried to manage a steady inhale. "Or is there no one at all? Is it only for your own sick enjoyment, Dawnmaster Ketheric, that you steal from me again?"

"If your father," he spat the word with such venom, "did not deny me the blessings I was promised, that I am owed after my life of service, none of this would be necessary. I must defend—"

"Defend what?" Aylin barked out an almost-laugh, mostly-cough. "You have let the place fall into utter ruin. I can see, even from here, more than you could ever fathom."

Somewhere far above them, the Lance fired. The dragon fell, its rider reduced to ash.

"I know not who bends your ear now, Ketheric Thorm, but I know it is not my Father." 

"Are you certain?" He all but threw the words her way, over his shoulder, as he turned to depart once more. "Then why are you still here? Why has he not lifted one holy finger to help you?"

"This is not His plan, His design for me! I swear, Ketheric Thorm, I—" she pulled and strained against her restraints—the finely crafted mechanism familiar, merciless, adamant all in equal measure—always, always, to no avail.

-

The monastery was no longer defended or protected, but, thanks to her, unwillingly or not, it was armed. Githyanki dragon riders and illithid nautiloids alike were shot out of the sky into burning ruin by the Lance.

Among their wreckage, Rosymorn stood, quiet and pilgrimless.

The passage of time became impossible to tell in her predicament. Aylin could always track sunrises by pure feeling well enough—no seal or distance, she thought, could take that connection away from her. 

Until she lost count, and all her mind acquiesced to spin for her were memories and reveries and dreams of Isobel, resplendent in the early daylight coloured by the stained-glass masterpieces lining the walls of Rosymorn. Isobel, Isobel, Isobel.

One day, years, decades, centuries or millennia into her imprisonment, Ketheric reappeared. Preceding him: a foul, overpowering reek, a miasma any paladin worth their salt could smell from a mile away. To a paladin of Lathander, one of His own blood, the change was more obvious than if he'd written it plain in bright red letters on parchment.

Undeath.

And on his robes, his once-fine accoutrements, no more pretence: beautifully stitched rays of rising sun perverted into triangular designs, skull and bone displayed in honour instead of in subjugation.

Aylin spat. Watched, with some disappointment, as it hit the magical barrier around her and fizzled into nothingness.

"So that is whom you have chosen to yoke yourself to. I'd have placed my bets on Shar herself and her miserable doctrine of loss—but no, Ketheric Thorm has lower lows to fall to. Of entire pantheons of wretchedness, you choose a foul, shameful pretender god. Why, when I hear of his name spoken in the same breath as my Father's—"

"Silence, Aylin," Ketheric cut off, approaching and focusing on the control dais. Then, almost as an aside: "There is a dusk to follow every dawn, inevitable. And we are long past highsun. You have so little comprehension of your own father whom you so loudly proclaim to represent—you have no idea what you speak of."

"Do I not?" Aylin scoffed. "Myrkul? Truly? That failed necromancer is not fit to—"

"Silence!" He thundered once more, yanking on the switch and sending the spear into Aylin's gut. "He has given me so much more than you can possibly comprehend. Something your venerable, glorious lord father never would nor could. A god of foolish youth, of starting things and never finishing them, abandoning whatever he has grown bored of—like yourself?"

Aylin sputtered, stubborn, refusing to die. "Traitor," she managed. "You know as well as I, I cannot be extinguished. Your reckoning will come—"

Ketheric continued as if she'd said nothing. "And all for the small price of my complete devotion. I need merely aim my weapon at slightly different targets…"

"It is not yours," Aylin growled, gargled around a mouthful of blood. "I am not yours."

But he had already gone, and there was nobody left to hear her.

A moment or an interminable amount of time later, the miasma of necromancy assaulted Aylin's senses again, jarring her from her dull reverie. 

"Ketheric," she growled, stirring stiff and unused muscles into action, to at least glare at her captor with some dignity, "how I have not missed the sight of you. Why, I'd nearly thought myself forgotten in—"

The very air was driven from her lungs, as if the spear had lodged there of its own accord.

For it was not Ketheric who stood before her, wreathed in his air of undeath.

"Aylin?"

-

"What has he done to you?" The words came in the familiar, cherished, dearly missed voice, but then devolved into a hideous, rasping cough.

What has he done to you? seemed like the only possible response, as what could be none but Isobel trod wearily and carefully over the narrowed passage and into the chamber, horror dawning on her face as she took in the sight before her.

There was nothing visibly… wrong with her. Not to any outrageous extent, at least. She seemed paler than Aylin remembered was her usual, true, but it could have been little other than a passing illness dulling her features, her eyes, her hair, slowing her step and rounding her shoulders.

But to all other senses her presence felt unbearable, even as Aylin's heart felt ready to pull free out of her chest to rush towards her, under whatever power it itself had.

The smell was what struck her as the most wrong, as Isobel slowly but increasingly surely made her way forwards, disarming mechanisms and switches. It was not Isobel's heady scent so often tinted with strong incense, but something still, preserved in viscous embalming fluids. The temperature, too, as she finally drew close enough to touch; some trace of living warmth, but distant and retreating, as though buried deep. Aylin's divine nature recoiled, every mote of instinct and training both screaming abomination, destroy it, cleanse this.

For a moment, all Aylin could see were the bountiful portrayals of her Father, young, handsome, eager, with her by His side, grinning skulls crushed underfoot, restless bones crunched to dust.

In death, new life, always. 

Always?

But Isobel's hands, cool even through gloves, cupped her chin and traced her cheek and held her still so their eyes could meet, and then her voice broke on Aylin's name the way it always had when she was overwhelmed by feeling, as she worked with trembling fingers to undo the restraints.

The moment her arms fell to her sides, Aylin clutched Isobel to herself, forcing down the deep roiling in her own gut. She all but collapsed into the embrace, both of them falling to their knees.

"Not an apparition. Not a trick. It is you… oh, it is you, my darling, beautiful, brilliant Isobel," tears flowed freely from her now, evaporating before they could leave Aylin's and hit Isobel's skin. The visceral disgust crept up the back of her throat, utterly irreconcilable with this being her Isobel—though it clearly, truly, provably was in every way that should have mattered. "Why would he do this? Why would he turn to the very thing we were made to stand against? Why would he…"

"I'm sorry," Isobel whispered, "you should not touch me. You shouldn't have to—I'm sorry I am… like this… but I ran from him as soon as I could. I had to come and save you. If you… If, afterwards, you would do me the honour of returning me to the grave, I…"

"What?" Aylin managed, tearing her mind away from the feeling of Isobel being here, being in her arms, with great effort. The love shining from her eyes, the beautiful, familiar lines of her face, her soft touch once again on Aylin's cheek-chin-neck… surely it made the death-touched miasma a distant, nigh-forgettable thought. Insignificant.

Insignificant—it burned to even think this.

"Is that not one of your most holy duties? His indignation? His Lance, to strike the necromantic back to their graves?"

"His lance… I…" Aylin felt agonised, grasping at Isobel's shoulders, at her arms, at the worn hems of her robes. "I have… for too long…"

I have no wish to be that any longer seemed like an impossible thing to pass over the threshold of her lips.

-

Isobel feared drawing too close, at first; thought she—or Aylin—would recoil, or worse. But the yearning and promise of her love proved too strong, and her fear proved unfounded, at least in this; being close to Aylin, touching Aylin, kissing her—it did not cause Isobel any pain. It did not fill her with terror and drive her to maddened, mindless, desperate fleeing, like the undead she'd seen Aylin rout so many times.

She had rehearsed her plea on the long walk down, the precise words asking Aylin to do the very thing she was divinely made to do. It had seemed very clear-cut, necessary, and correct.

It seemed considerably less clear now, with Aylin's arms around her.

But the smallest sense of comfort and the pale, burgeoning bit of hope were not to last.

"We should… we need to leave," Isobel said, her hair standing on end, a chill running down her spine—he was close, and hurrying closer. She knew. And he knew, of course he knew, where she would have gone at the first opportunity. What—who—he could never keep her away from. "I need to get away from him."

The furrow between Aylin's brows deepened. Her expression was twisted to agony.

"'Him'? Isobel…" but Aylin got no further than that. A familiar figure darkened the narrow passage into the chamber.

"Of course you are here," Ketheric said, with the air of a long-suffering, exasperated parent about to yank an unruly child back to her lessons.

"Papa—" no, "father, I…"

"Please, Isobel, it is time to stop this nonsense." He sounded so collected, so reasonable. As if Isobel wasn't kneeling amidst the evidence of all the torture he'd wrought. "There is nothing for you here. Let us leave—I have had your old chambers repaired and readied."

A sickly green glow flickered behind Isobel's eyes, insistent enough that she could see it in the murky, distorted reflections in the ancient brass that surrounded them. She shook her head, trying to shake off the grasp of—whatever this was.

"No," she tried, but her defiant refusal turned out a whimper.

"Come along now, Isobel."

"No!"

Her own limbs disobeyed her, and her own body betrayed her, tearing her away from Aylin's side.

Aylin spared no moment. "Monster! What have you done to her?"

"A safeguard. A guarantee. She will not do something as foolish as last time."

"I will not!" Isobel cried, "I will—"

As soon as Isobel's feet made their first steps toward Ketheric, Aylin grabbed her wrist, then the other. She was not so weakened, even after being chained, to be easily outmatched. The greater challenge was holding on with gentleness, careful not to hurt the most precious ray of light in her life, still, even as fury burned in her eyes.

In the struggle, Isobel's gloves were pulled off, exposing her cold, pale skin and darkened fingertips, the rays inked carefully on her hands emanating from blackened suns.

And then came the spark of an idea as she cast her eyes wildly around them. "The Blood," she gasped. "We need the Blood. Please, Aylin."

Slowly but surely, with impeccable, steely determination, Aylin pulled her away from her father and towards the carefully contained relic instead.

"No!" Ketheric cried, commanding fist clenched before him, "what you need is for this interloper to leave you be once and for all, and to listen to your father."

They struggled there for an indeterminable span of time, at an odd impasse—Isobel's body fighting itself, Aylin holding her, and fighting her, and Ketheric as well.

When Isobel's hand finally came around the handle, Aylin's own larger hand around it, helping her close her grip, there was a moment that felt suspended in the golden ray the Blood always seemed to simply manifest around itself. Isobel felt suspended herself, awaiting judgement, but refusing to shut her eyes before whatever was to come.

Would it destroy her as it did all undead, or recognise her as faithful?

As golden light erupted around them, Isobel felt some invisible hold around her shatter and a cruel tension leave her limbs so rapidly it almost caused her to fall—but instead she came to rest against Aylin, a sturdy pillar behind her, refusing to relinquish her.

The warmth that suffused her stung, at first, and the light made her eyes water, but it stopped short of scorching her to so much ash.

The endlessly tempting little voices sprung up in Isobel's mind at once: if the relic could behold her devotion before the state of her flesh, could recognise faith regardless of the vessel, surely the Morninglord could as well? Surely He did not care about Myrkul's claim, or her father's. Surely she was not theirs, but still His. And Aylin's.

Her hands singed, palms blistered, Isobel took firm hold of the mace and lifted it up, caring little for the ache in her arms. She turned fully towards the entrance to the chamber, to where her father, adorned in the heraldry of horrors she'd fled from immediately upon awakening, still roared his futile anger.

Light poured out before her. Lathander's presence filled the chamber, blinding and terrible. It was not the light of a young, promising dawn, but noon at its most merciless, exposing, and unforgiving.

Isobel thought, for a moment, of a prism rotating to show the glimpse of a different godly face: that of a luminous judge, strict and lawful to the last—and wondered.

Then she wilfully unleashed the power of the Blood of Lathander, and burned her father to ash.

-

They fled the depths, stumbling up rough-hewn passages and carved stone stairs, clinging to each other, breaths escaping in great gasps, sweat beading upon brows, but neither daring to pause. Using Aylin's spear—pulled with great effort out of the mechanism and once again in her own hands where it belonged—as a walking stick to lean on more than a fabled weapon.

And then the sad, twilit remnants of Rosymorn lay before them, illuminated by the glowing mace still gripped so tightly by Isobel that her knuckles were bone-white.

The trappings were all still there, untouched by thieves but tarnished. The gold no longer lustrous. The portraits of old dawnmasters neglected, left to decline in disrespect. Luckily, Isobel still knew every crevice of this place like the back of her hand—newfound unfamiliarity of her own hands notwithstanding—and made quick work of scavenging what little of use or worthy of preservation beyond memory could be found in the place. Then she led them outside, around blocked gates and collapsed walls, onto the crumbling roof.

With one final determined bloodletting by Aylin, one final act of the Lance, they aimed the magnificent apparatus inwards, and let it fire.

-

They caught their breaths lying tumbled in the wreckage of a long-overgrown vineyard hill, heads turned away from the tail end of the spectacle of destruction they'd left behind.

Isobel coughed and rasped her awful death-rattle-cough, then calmed against Aylin's chest, breathing slowly, deeply, and carefully, as if still becoming used to the concept.

Clad in scrounged-up robes to replace ancient rags, tarnished gold adornments made of worn thread instead of her own dried blood, only one word rattled around Aylin's tired mind, an inkling slowly growing into determination.

Apostasy.

My daughter. My lance. My light made flesh. The words resonated in Aylin's bones, in the very core of her being, before she could so much as think an angry where have you been? or the rest of what had become difficult to completely dismiss as merely the ravings of a man broken by grief.

You would forsake your purpose, rather than forsake her?

"Forsake her?" Aylin struggled to form the thought fully, to wrap her mind around the sheer impossible weight of it. "I… I cannot. Father, please. Hear me."

She is a death-touched abomination, wrought in direct mockery of Me. She is everything you were made to destroy. The sun rises; the undead fall. This is our way, is it not?

"It is," Aylin agreed. "But surely there is more to it; surely she is more. Her death undone and incomplete, yes, but also…" She struggled, grasping at any thread of argument she'd gleaned from long discussions with Isobel herself. "Father, she fled. She turned from death and back toward life, toward You. Is that not… is that not a kind of renewal? I struggle to think of a precedent. Is that not also Yours?"

The silence stretched, on and on, and felt longer than her captivity. To banish the notion, Aylin allowed herself a moment of appreciation for the feeling of fresh air against her skin.

Renewal? The word came back sceptical, testing. You would call fleeing slavery to a death god 'renewal'? She remains what she is, her noble martyrdom undone by something I have yet to truly fathom.

"Then let us fathom it," Aylin almost begged. She remembered a different argument, from who knew how long ago: instead of unusual, why not name this new? "She did not choose to rise, but she chose to act as she did, on nothing but her own will and her faith in You, with Your Blood in her hands and Your light upon her face, and she burned her father to ash for what he'd made her." A ragged breath escaped her, and then she felt a spike of concern as Isobel did not stir against her chest; the moment almost suspended, ironically, in time. "And if You cannot see something worthwhile and new in that, then, forgive me, Father, I am not certain I know who I am speaking to."

There was a long pause, and Aylin felt a shift in the air, as a spark of angry rejection breaking through the clouds turned instead into curiosity.

Interesting, Lathander mused, with the first stirrings of that terrible, zealous enthusiasm that had once tried to reshape an entire pantheon in His image and spawned a thousand endlessly ambitious projects. You are suggesting she is not some ghoulish stagnation but… disruption.

"Yes," Aylin breathed, as nothing moved, but the far east horizon began lightening.

Unprecedented, Lathander mused. Utterly unprecedented. I cannot foresee where this leads.

With the same determination she'd felt the moment she cried her first newborn wail and in the same breath swore her oaths, Aylin grasped at the conclusion placed so tantalisingly before her: "Then let us find out. I have been Your lance long enough, Father. Let me not be wielded by another. Let me be her love instead. Let us begin again, both of us; for is that not the most sacred of all?"

A new beginning, yes, I see it now! The divine presence was suffused with excitement so intense Aylin felt her chest ache, even her great, sturdy frame too small to contain an echo of it. You would lay down everything—your purpose, your power, your place—and start fresh with nothing but hope and love.

"I… yes?" Aylin ventured, and then, recovering more of herself, "Yes. I would."

And her—fleeing from death-worship to life-worship, seeking renewal even in what most would deem an impossible state, striving towards something better even if the destination is unclear. It is marvellously audacious.

As His godly presence seemed to warm more and more to the idea, Aylin felt herself bristling at how quickly this had become an interesting experiment rather than an agonising choice for her to make. But she looked down at Isobel, precious, held tight against her, and kept her peace.

So be it. There was something almost eager in it now, that energy Aylin had always felt thrumming through the monastery at dawn, right after the first prayers, when the full potential of the pending day was still unrealised on the horizon. Then lay down your lance, your duties. I shall take them from you, and consider it a mercy. You cannot represent me, and neither can she. But you can live, or not, however you see fit.

The prospect of this completely new venture, never before seen or attempted; of embodying the most Lathanderite concept possible even as she divested herself of being His, was enough to draw a tired smile.

"So be it," Aylin repeated in murmured response.

I wonder what will come of this, Lathander added, and He sounded deeply, genuinely intrigued. I leave you with the keepsake. Do keep me apprised.

She'd braced herself for something immense, but the light faded surprisingly gently. Aylin's blood still glowed molten where it stained her hand, but dimmer now—gold fading to brass, rose-red to simple blush, brilliant white dulling to cream. The echoes of the morning song sounded more distant. The fiercest sting she felt was still the one of her own pride, but that, too, was surprisingly bearable.

Aylin expected to feel smaller, somehow. But what she found instead was that she was merely herself.

She reached for Isobel's hand in place of speaking, and did not even for a moment recoil at its chill.

-

The first change Aylin found truly grating was the unreliability of her wings. Summoning them to her back was a struggle, and they refused to manifest for more than short bursts of time. Thus the two of them were doomed to do most of their travel on foot.

They still made good time down the pass, joining the Risen Road, stopping to rest and recover in small towns where innkeepers raised eyebrows at them but decided against asking too many questions; where they learned, somewhere along the way, that they had been robbed of an entire century.

It was hardly luxurious, but it was movement, and progress, and life, in some shade and hue or another. They had very little save for the clothes on their backs and what they'd taken from the ruins of Rosymorn that they could still barter away. But though she felt pangs of hunger for the first time in her long life, Aylin found she needed very little sustenance still, and Isobel—to some distress—found her own appetite extremely lacking.

Aylin found, too, that most of it did not trouble her particularly, as if she, wingless, was oddly hovering somewhat above it. For Isobel's part, casting her radiant spells caused her some discomfort and left her feeling drained—but she could still do it. The Blood of Lathander still readily bent to her will.

There was a night Isobel spent very still, upright upon her bedroll, in some kind of breathless dread, but with her hands folded in her lap and her face upturned in a way Aylin knew well. And so she did not interfere or interrupt this preparation for prayer, but hoped to remain a reassuring enough silent presence.

When dawn finally came, the quality of Isobel's profile in the dark shifted from anticipation to active communion, and then her shoulders sagged in unmistakable immense relief—that she could still pray, accompanied by a deep knowledge that she was being heard. Aylin closed her eyes before Isobel could turn and find her watching.

Then there were coincidences as they travelled: a growing list of small, deliberate mercies. Sunflowers sprouting unannounced and flourishing anywhere they settled for more than a tenday; the rays of sun rising behind them, getting in their foes' eyes when they were attempting to hide or pass unaccosted, or else resorting to a fight. They carefully catalogued each precious instance of this, and held them tight and close against the unspoken: what if He loses interest, or else changes His mind?

For a while, the first few months of their new lives, Aylin woke at dawn, reaching in her sleep-addled state for a connection that was no longer there. The expectation she would feel the sunrise resounding deep within her as it had, the silence where divine certainty used to be, were disorienting more than painful, at least at first. Mentioning this almost offhandedly to Isobel, however, made some great pain flash across her face.

The first time Aylin slept long and sound and missed the sunrise entirely, upon her late awakening she found Isobel curled in their bed but pulling away to the very edge of the lumpy mattress, trying to stifle quiet tears and shaking with the effort.

Her first awakening after the grave, as Isobel had told it, had been unpleasant. Painful, even. But this was something else entirely.

"Isobel?" Aylin asked, softly, reaching out to hold her, to pull her back into sheets, blankets, and an embrace. But Isobel resisted—shrugged off even a gentle hand on her shoulder. Aylin felt as if her own spear had lodged in her chest once more, and all trace of sleepy calm rushed away from her.

"I'm sorry," Isobel muttered thickly, through tears that simply would not stop. "I have… I have pulled you down into this… this abyss with me. I am ruined, and have ruined everything…"

"You are not. You have ruined nothing," Aylin cut in sternly, rising from the bed and walking around it to be at Isobel's side, then taking her face between both hands. This allowed her to unflinchingly meet Isobel's eyes, red and swollen, the shadows under them darker than usual. "If you must cast blame, lay it at wretched Ketheric's feet. Isobel, Isobel, you could never do wrong in my eyes, in my heart. This I swear, and you know my word is no less a solemn bond now than it ever was."

Isobel's despondency was roused into a grim anger. "I would happily name myself fatherless, after what he did—to both of us. But I… I did not want that for you, and yet I've forced it upon you. Even the dawn, the sunrise—it's all been taken from you, and you can't feel it, and I can't either, and—"

"No, I cannot," Aylin agreed, and took Isobel's hands in her own, then raised them to her lips for a careful lining of kisses, and wondered how long has this been building up, without me noticing, or wishing to notice? "But nobody has ever taken something from Dame Aylin that she did not want to part with and lived to speak of the attempt. In this I include my heart, which belongs to you, and was freely given. And now I can watch you in the sunrise instead, should we feel rested enough to wake in time to witness it. An exchange I would name worthwhile."

Isobel made a little sound that was almost a scoff. Then she buried her face in Aylin's shoulder and stifled a wrenching cough. Aylin ran a gentle hand up and down along her back, then in large circles, in a soothing rhythm.

"Please, Aylin, tell me one thing," Isobel murmured, still hiding in the embrace. "Do you truly not regret it at all?"

Aylin shook her head, and pressed a kiss to Isobel's head in the same motion. "How could I possibly? The greatest treasure Rosymorn ever had was no relic, or great destructive apparatus, or its patron's divine child choosing to take roost there. It was you, Isobel, wise and sweet and magnificent in every way."

Isobel was sitting up fully, meeting her eyes now—this was good progress. Aylin pressed a grateful, relieved kiss to her cheek, and found it perfectly soft, if not as warm as before.

"What of your purpose? Your mission? And my own?" Isobel heaved a deep, heavy sigh, then wiped at her eyes with an only slightly trembling hand. "What are we doing, Aylin? How long do we even have? Will you still… outlast me?"

"I do not know, but I suppose we shall find out, together. And I would still rather have this without knowing its length, than know its length without having it."

In place of any spoken response, Isobel leaned fully against her, and reached around Aylin's neck to hold her even closer. Aylin, in turn, ran the tips of her fingers over the old tunic Isobel was wearing, where Lathander's own holy symbol was embroidered—a winding road travelling into a bright sunrise. There were a few snags, a loose string or two Isobel had done her best to mend, but the worn depiction was no less vivid for its flaws.

"As for how to spend that time, well. There are always adventures to be had, wrongs to be righted, discoveries to be made—whatever catches our fancy." Aylin's awkward perch on the edge of the creaky bed undermined her delivery somewhat, but the more she spoke, the more she found she believed her own words, and the more she found she liked them. "And I shall have to share with you some of the many wonders I have seen. We shall wake up to sunrise, or not, in a hundred different places. If that is what you would like, my love."

"I would," Isobel said, finally, with something resembling a smile lifting the edges of her mouth. "I am sorry, Aylin, I am hardly at my best at the moment, but… after all you've suffered, and given up, I really should not be so… selfish."

"Perish the thought," Aylin retorted simply, choosing to focus on peppering gentle kisses on whichever part of Isobel happened to be closest, until the nascent smile on that cherished face fully bloomed.

Then Aylin reached over to the crooked little table that passed for a nightstand, rummaging through the pack she'd leaned against it the day before.

"Here," she said, handing Isobel a flask and a small pouch, nudging her over on the bed so they both had space to sit. The half-full flask contained all the firewine they had left. The other half she'd bartered for the sunflower seeds, salted and roasted.

"Oh, Aylin," Isobel sighed, nestling closer into a much more comfortable embrace. She took a sip of the wine and made a contented little sound.

Aylin felt satisfaction well within her as Isobel's expression lightened further. "I had thought to save this for a more suitable venue. Some spectacular sunlit vista, perhaps…"

Isobel plucked a single seed from the pouch and bit into it with a satisfying crunch and a quiet hum. Then she met Aylin's gaze and her entire self seemed to soften, and relax, and be lifted by the airy buoyancy of stubborn optimism that could never truly cease to be part of Aylin's very being. "But we must not deny ourselves the little joys, no?"

"No indeed," Aylin smiled, then kissed Isobel's smile in turn.