#achillon

The next, Pallessa is struggling with emotions not her own, horror and betrayal and so much more that boil over one another into a toxic mix of anger.

It is as she grapples with those emotions that her own horror seeps into her.

Achillon is not coming back from his final trial. He is not going to ascend at the ceremony.

Worse than that, selfish as it is to think, he will not be there for her. He will not be there to spar with in the village, will not be swooping overhead and showing off his wings, assuring her all the things she needs to hear about how the path will eventually lead to them soaring through the skies together.

He was always so sure of the path, and now he is so sure that the path is wrong.

Pallessa cannot follow him, however. Despite his surety, she still remembers before. She remembers what she has been through herself and how the path hasn’t failed her.

Not yet.

She tries to reach out to him, to offer him assurances and hope and whatever else he might need to come back. Whatever might be needed to turn those coveted feathers white.

But if he feels her reaching out, he does not react.

Their bond is not broken, but she almost wishes it were.

In the past, whenever she was frustrated with her training, his thoughts were there to ease her own, to calm her and help her find her center. Whenever he was frustrated, she would sit back on the training grounds and watch his form, letting her thoughts reach out to him as a balm to tell him that he was not so lost, that his time for ascension would come and all would be well.

Even on his grumpiest of days, when she reached out, Pallessa could feel Achillon reach back. It was a quiet acknowledgement that needed no words.

After his fall, however, there was no acknowledgement. She reached and reached into a void between them, stretching herself so thin that she half expected herself to fall into nothingness somehow.

She needed him. Even if he couldn’t see the path as he had, she needed him to reach back.

And he didn’t.

His absence was like someone had carved out a piece of her. Their time in Olympic Village has been long, made all the longer with the drought, and just as surely as he is gone, he is everywhere. Every duel she partakes in falls short, even when she wins. There is no assurance in the back of her mind, no quiet pride that she landed a tricky hit or stood her ground against someone she usually wavered against.

Pallessa’s feet take her north. She’s not quite aware of where she’s going until someone’s offering her a purian fruit outside the Temple of Wisdom. Food has lost its appeal, but she takes a few slices from the steward offering them, if only to make the creature relax itself.

Those at the Temple of Wisdom are acutely aware of how close they are to the forsworn. A stone’s throw, some mutter when they dare speak of it.

Patrols are constant. Anxiety runs rampant among those present. The forsworn are so close. It would not take much of a push for them to reach the Temple of Wisdom and then what? Will there be broken chimes and bodies strewn across this temple’s grounds like at the Temples of Purity and Humility?

Pallessa imagines that if Achillon were there, he would suggest they go back south. It’s not true, of course. If Achillon were actually there, he’d snort at her thoughts and assure her that they were where they needed to be. He’d join the fray, protecting those who needed it—

Except that the people who need the most protection aren’t in Bastion.

They’ve been abandoned in the Maw, discarded by apathetic ferrymen.

The thought is so strong, so clear, that Pallessa doesn’t realize it isn’t her own at first.

And then it sinks in that for whatever reason, Achillon has finally reached out.

His surety is there, within reach, just as she’s longed for since his fall.

But it’s…wrong.

Or maybe she’s wrong.

Souls unjustly going to the Maw is wrong. But so is the carnage the forsworn have left in their wake.

Perhaps neither side is right.

She feels his surety, that confidence reaching out to her, but she lets it hang there in the emptiness between them.

It is almost a day before the feelings fade.

When they’re gone, she cries until there are no tears left, and she finds a quiet place to sit, away from the bustle of the temple. It is not safe to stray far, but she stays just close enough that the patrols can see her well. Just close enough that if they worry they will lose her, they do not show it.

Pallessa can feel Achillon more and more, almost like a call. She knows if she gets up and walks away from the Temple of Wisdom, he will be waiting for her. He will meet her halfway and welcome her with open arms.

There is a place waiting for her in the Temple of Loyalty. A place next to him.

Yet even knowing that, she knows she will never take it.

Perhaps it would be better for them both if their ties were severed. Neither of them seem willing to yield, and the path that she always knew they would walk down together is gone.

It might be better to let go, but that’s a step into something she’s not ready for. Achillon has been a part of her for so long and she can’t imagine that he will truly never come back to her.

“I’d never abandon you.”

It takes her a minute to realize the words aren’t in her head. Pallessa looks to her side to see that she’s not sitting alone anymore.

Achillon is there, wings tucked back behind him, hand resting on a knee almost close enough to brush her own.

There’s a sensation that sweeps through her, one that’s not her own.

A fear.

A fear that if he reaches out, she will pull away.

So instead, they sit there together, inches between them that might as well contain the void in all its entirety.

Forsworn are flying over head, heading toward Elysian Hold.

“The Archon has agreed to hear us,” Achillon says. “There will be change.”

There is that surety bubbling inside of him, that confidence that he has been correct this whole time and that he is seeing things made right.

Perhaps in regards to the path, he has been right. If what he saw was true, then something did need to change.

At the same time…

At the same time Pallessa cannot stop the hurt in her heart from the rift that formed between them.

For the first time in possibly all the eons they have spent together in Bastion, Achillon’s confidence wavers. It is such a shift, such a nuance.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

There is sincerity there.

And there is pain.

The damage has been done, but Pallessa doesn’t want this to be the end.

Achillon sits beside her, looking so completely alone.

She reaches out and takes his hand in hers, surprised by how quickly he turns his hand to lace their fingers together.

“I know. I just wish your path hadn’t…”

The truth is, there’s no need for words. They both know what is unspoken. Pallessa isn’t sure whether its her hope or his that bubbles up the second their skin touches, but it is an assurance that she has needed dearly in these last few months.

“Will you come with me? To Elysian Hold? There’s going to be a new paragon, a new temple, too.”

Pallessa squeezes his hand and rises to her feet. She offers him a nod as he rises with her. “I think it’s time to move forward, don’t you?”