#ampara

Instead, she pivoted on a hoof, and her ear flicked in the wind of a claw that sliced through the space her head had just occupied. Lunging with animal abandon, the beast now flew forward, carried and left unguarded by its own momentum. She held her mace high and bellowed as she brought it down with both arms upon the back of the creature’s neck–a crack as her blow connected, and another as its skull bounced against the stone floor. She brought a hoof down, turning the cracks into a crater, cutting short its wailing and leaving it lifeless beneath her.

She heaved a sigh, allowing herself half a heartbeat’s respite before reaching to the tome strung to her hip by waxen cords. She flicked it open with a practiced motion, though this was more a habit than a necessity: without reading from the book, she recited a verse that engulfed the abomination’s corpse in a crackling, amber-tinted flame. Anointed pages fluttered as the embers spread across the ground, scouring the cellar of any trace of the beast, and ensuring that its remains would not poison another living thing. Bile and blood blew away, venom vanished, and even the marks left by its talons seemed shallower, less ragged, in the wake of the Dawnsister’s cleansing fire. She snapped the book shut as the last of the remains blew away to ash, and turned toward a nervous voice from the top of the stairs.

“Is it done?” the dog woman called down, shoving her pup behind her as he tried to peer around the doorframe, full of anxious curiosity. The ewe nodded over her shoulder and turned to climb and speak to her, the armored pleats of her scapular clanking as her hooves thunked on each step.

“It is. I apologize that I cannot restore your food stock,” she condoled, gesturing at the wreckage below, “nor assist you with the mess.”

“Assist us? Good sister, you have assisted us aplenty! Please, is there anything we can offer you? There is food elsewhere in the house, or perhaps some coin–”

“No,” she stopped her. Accepting a reward treading the righteous path always felt… selfish. What’s more, she could do without. “But thank you.”

“...I see. Well, you’re welcome here if ever you’re in need, or even if you happen to pass by!”

“My good woman,” the ewe intoned, her face turned past the lady of the house, “are you safe here?”

“Why, whatever do you… O-oh, I understand.”

The ewe would have been surprised if she hadn’t understood. The Dawnsisters had gone to great lengths to educate the citizenry of the nature of the devils that had plagued them for so long. While they were once mistaken as the cause of most of mortalkind’s evils–the idea of possession made for strong accusations and alibis alike–observation, born of the Dawnsisters’ vigilance, had shown the opposite to be true.

Creatures of the dark were spawned of (or perhaps simply drawn to; nobody could be sure) the darkness that lived in mortal hearts. Lesser evils begot lesser beasts; a personal betrayal might be repaid by the sadistic pranks of an imp, and those who cast others out as “lesser” or “depraved” for the sake of inflating their own egos often met similar misfortune.

The greater the trespass upon one’s fellow mortal, the greater the abyssal reprisal. Avarice and hunger for power were favorites of demons: guild heads who cheated their laborers and patrons frequently had to contend with supernatural sabotage at even far-flung outposts of their trade, and kingdoms reigned by cruel monarchs were often beset by legions of fiends. Such times of crisis were the driving force behind the formation of the Dawnsisters, and eventually, it was their ranks who drove these evils out at the root. Though they strove to bring light to the world, one could just as rightly call them Kingslayers or Shacklebreakers–and one could just as easily call upon them for a task as simple as providing an impartial third party.

All of this meant that, on occasion, bringing a demon to light meant bringing one’s skeletons from the cupboard. Even a particularly forceful or jealous husband could, given time, draw a devil from the depths.

“Well, nobody living here has done anything base enough to bring that into our home.” Footsteps, small ones–the boy was scurrying off, probably either bored of adult chatter or having had his fill of action for the day. The woman tried to meet the Dawnsister’s eyes, but found only cloth. “We have enough faith in you that, if we needed your aid, we could ask freely. Especially after how easily you handled that–” She checked around her legs to see whether her son was still there. “–That bastard,” she chuckled.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on the affairs of your neighbors, it seems,” the Dawnsister sighed. She trusted that the woman would come to her, or at least to the abbey, if anything else happened to her and her son. 

“Are you certain there’s no way for us to repay you?” The boy’s footsteps returned from down the hall as his mother spoke.

“Fully certain. I have no need for–”

“Momma!”

“Dear, Momma’s talking to the–oh! Oh, go right ahead!” She interrupted herself, pushing her son forward. He stood in front of her for a moment before his mother cleared her throat.

“Oh, um! For you, miss Dawn… Dawnsssister,” he ventured the (apparently new) word. Bless his heart, he didn’t realize she couldn’t see that he was holding something out for her. She hesitated, but couldn’t bring herself to decline such a sweet gesture. Without even knowing what was in the child’s paws, she took it, turning it over and carefully feeling it. She had all night to puzzle out what it was, though, and very little time before the next person in need would call upon her.

“Be safe, friend,” she wished the mother, “and thank you, little one.”

“Blessings, good sister!”

“Buh-bye!”

With that, she led the blindfolded woman to the door. It was dark out. It made little difference to the Dawnsister, but this was far from her first house call of the day, and she was certain it wasn’t to be her last.

As she did, she brushed the gift from the young boy. She had examined it more closely as she patrolled. At its center was a rough-hewn circle; radially arranged were slender, oval shapes, tightly packed and layered over one another. It was a small carving of a sunflower. A fitting gift, she mused.

She tied on her blindfold and began attending to her duties around the monastery. Ordinarily, she would fetch something from the pantry that would be easy to eat while traveling and begin her patrol anew, but she had decided that she would set today aside for herself to reflect and pray. First, to tidy up her own room: the bedlinens could stand to be used for a time longer before being thrown in with the rest of the monastery’s washing, she flattened the sheets and straightened the blankets by feel, long used to doing so without the convenience of sight.

She turned from her bed and, feeling for the doorframe, started for the kitchen. The halls were lined on either side with handrails–one round and one square, so that a Dawnsister could know which way she was walking without doffing her blindfold–but she had paced the abbey so many times that she could find her way without them. She hauled out a large cast-iron pot, each Dawnsister leaving it in the same place so the next could find it, and went to fetch some coals for the stove. With the stove set, she flicked her wrist and listened as the fire crackled to life; then, as it grew to a proper cooking flame, she lugged the pot to the well to fill it with water, and slung a sack of oats from the pantry to lug both to the kitchen.

As she stirred the oats, she heard her sisters stirring in their quarters, several doors down from the refectory. They chattered sleepily in the early light of day, asking each other how they’d slept, discussing schedules and bartering chores with each other. Those who could still see (the youngest initiates, especially) would take advantage of the time apart from their elders to groom their fur and neatly array their habits before finally putting on their blindfolds. She smiled faintly at a distant memory of doing the same, reveling in the changes to her appearance that came with her rise up the ranks of the faith.

She had offered herself up to the Dawnsisters’ cause when she was just a lamb. She was eager, then, to help others around her, to be a force of change within her community and–in her wildest dreams–the whole world, living up to the legends of smashing tyrants and beating back profane hordes for the good of all mortal folk. Her sight was a small price to pay for the good of so many!

The blindfold was threefold, according to her elders: first, and most practically, it protected a Dawnsister from bearing witness to the foulest evils the abyss could conjure. Second, the blindfold served as a symbol to those who depended on the Dawnsisters. She and her peers held themselves to impartiality, and as well as making them easily identifiable, the blindfolds served as reminders to the people of the lengths that the Dawnsisters would go to earn and keep their trust. Finally, they were a constant exercise in faith, and it was from this that the Dawnsisters drew their wondrous strength. After all, as corruption welcomed calamity, from virtue and conviction were born incredible boons–even in combat, where the loss of one’s sight might seem insurmountable, a Dawnsister’s faith would guide her blows and deliver her from those of her foul opponents.

The most righteous and zealous Dawnsisters were granted the greatest graces. The ewe’s holy fire was one such gift, as were many of the features that defined her form. While most Dawnsisters could not bring themselves to offer such weighty commitment, the renouncement of her eyes had earned her the aspect of a lion, to match her lionhearted bearing. She was granted mighty claws, nimbler than her old hooves and able to rend her fell foes without a weapon besides; a long tail, better able to help her hold her balance (a godsend in the face of learning to fight without sight); and a proud, thunderous roar, a crystal-clear voice with which to sing songs of war, an instrument to galvanize the courageous, to assure the innocent, and to rattle demonkind to its very bones.

These were not the only changes her faith had earned her, of course. Every morning, when she could still steal glances at her own countenance, she sprang eagerly from bed in unbridled anticipation to measure the changes that were bringing her closer and closer to her true self. In the mirrorless abbey, brief visits with her reflection in the window before the sun fully rose, or in the water of the well or the washbasin, were the greatest joy she had ever known. She could never bear to rid herself of her horns, though. One pair curly and one pair tall, she bore them upon her head with great pride.

Better days.

The other Dawnsisters greeted her as they passed the kitchen, and the oats were nearly ready for them. She seasoned them with a few spices–meting out the proper amounts without vision was yet another practiced motion–and a touch of sugar, which she knew the younger initiates would appreciate. She sat with them and broke her fast with them, speaking little, for she had given herself something of a headstart on reverie for the day. When the hall was mostly empty, and her sisters had either spread to other parts of the building or out into town, she cleaned up after herself and made for the prayer hall.

It was a wide room, furnished with a few solid, varnished benches and a modest lectern at the far end. The pulpit was not raised, since the speaker could be any one of the Dawnsisters, rather than one definitive authority among them. In fact, the room was rarely used for sermons; more often, one Dawnsister would volunteer to lead her peers, juniors and seniors alike, in meditation and prayer, or the room would be borrowed by members of the local community for their own announcements and the like.

The walls and floor were constructed of smooth stone, into which sprawling, linear patterns had been carved. A Dawnsister sitting in a pew near the edge of the room, or kneeling in prayer, could appreciate the craftsmanship of the room by running her paws along the grooves, and in fact many eschewed prayer beads in favor of ruminating upon the carved patterns. The windows were similarly adorned; they were broad panes of glass, permitting much warmth-giving sunlight, that the blind congregation might still appreciate the splendor of nature, and their frames and bars were twisted into filigrees even finer than the carvings in the masonry.

The ewe knelt in the midmorning rays shining through the largest window, entering high above the pulpit and landing near the center of the room. She lowered her hood (an involved affair, given her horns), shook out her wool, and took a deep breath.

Then another.

Her shoulders, broad and steadfast in battle, now sagged and shrank. Normally a head above her peers, a beacon amidst the crowds and even among her sisters, she felt small, and not for the splendor against which she now stood.

Then another.

She dug deeply within herself for her faith in her fellows and her townspeople, for her hope that the world might continue toward peace, and what was left of her resolve to make it so.

Ampara, my champion, spoke the sunlight-in-the-leaves. It has been long since last we met. How fare you in your endeavors to protect your kin?

I… tire, Ampara replied, measuredly and practicedly understating herself even in conversation with the very idea of “empathy”.

Of course you do, my child. Do you even know how long you toiled yesterday? To say nothing of the days before.

I understand that I have been pushing myself lately, the ewe began, but–

But when is that not true, hm? The bond-between-brothers was, as ever, understanding.

…Indeed. Still, I mean that I begin to tire of… of my duties. Even thinking it felt like sacrilege to her–a betrayal of her personal code.

Ah, I see. Is it finally time to take up the mantle of Dawnmother, then? The proposition, somehow, felt even worse. To abandon her sisters in the field, when she knew how much good she could do as their shield…

I do not believe that that would be right for me, either.

Why ever not, my strong one? Surely your wisdom ranks you among your elders, now. At the very least, it was true that she had more experience than the average person could ever hope to accrue. Longevity numbered among the many blessings she bore, and if nothing else, her knowledge was valuable. You could lead, easily.

I could. But I have never asked for a higher station.

This is true. Your ambition lies not with power, but with doing good. This is precisely what would make you an excellent leader, my child.

I simply cannot accept. I cannot go on living knowing that I am leaving my gifts unused. It goes against the very moral fabric within me into which you so lovingly wove those gifts, does it not?

You have already made splendid use of those gifts, Ampara. The world is brighter, I am brighter, for your deeds.

I cannot disagree. With your strength, I have waged wars for our cause, slaughtered countless devils, saved countless lives. With your wisdom, I have helped dismantle systems whose oppressions are so egregious as to entice those hellborne vermin. With your love, I have healed the sick and wounded, and taught people to strive for our ideals. She drew in a shuddering breath. But the enemies of mortalkind are endless. I cannot go on living without fighting, but I cannot bear to fight any longer.

Then what do you seek, my dear one? Passage to the afterlife is a foregone conclusion for one such as yourself. Your respite has been hard-earned.

Ampara choked at the thought. To be reunited with the sisters she had lost, either to battle or to age; those she had spent her life protecting, but whose time had come to leave her behind anyway. But accepting a reward for performing the good work, especially when that work was yet incomplete, gripped her heart.

No, she protested, I implore you, send me not to your coveted afterlife.

Coveted? Child, there is no avarice in seeking what you are owed. She dared not think it, but felt it in her heart of hearts: she was not owed. She knew she could keep giving, if only she could find the strength. She knew she needed less than others, and she knew she herself was needed. To leave, in spite of that… she couldn’t fathom escaping the guilt, even in paradise.

I want to remain at the Dawnsisters’ disposal, she forced out. I have always been able to do what is needed.

But? The nurturer’s-love prodded.

But… She inhaled, mustering up the courage to make even this compromise. I am at my limit. I cannot do this forever. Instead, I humbly request that you seal me away. Return me to this world only when I am needed, and I will continue to be my people’s shield.

She heard nothing for a heartbeat. Then another, and another.

Your dedication truly is boundless, Ampara.

A breath’s breadth.

I cannot say whether that is a blessing or a curse. But you have more than earned nigh-anything I could offer you, so I will honor your request.

Ampara nearly wept.

Thank you. I will not let you down. I swear it.

You have never let us down, my dear. May you understand that, one day.

And thus, in the peaceful dark and quiet, she waited for her day to come.

When life finally returned to her paws, she clutched the sheets on which she laid and thrust herself bolt upright. She gulped down air as the sounds of Edelyn’s shelter came into relief in her ears. The bedsheets–now full of ragged holes beneath her claws–and her wool were both damp with her sweat. She reached out, feeling which way she could stand from the cot, but lightning arced through her flank and up her spine as she twisted. She reached down to find bandages wrapped around her torso, and gauze packed over the wound dealt to her by the mercenary. There were smaller bandages peppered across her body, stuck down against shorn patches of skin–lesser wounds that she hadn’t noticed. Such was the danger of her work.

The Dawnsister did not let it stop her; she gritted her teeth and rose anyway, feeling her way around the slapdash infirmary with measured, slow steps. Her blindfold hung on a hook near her bed; she was uncomfortable at the thought of it being removed by someone else, but she supposed that whatever apothecary or chirurgeon had treated her was simply doing their due diligence. She suspected she already knew to whom she owed thanks. Tying on the blindfold once more, she tapped her way into the main floor of the room.

“Sun above, you don’t know when to quit, do you?” Ah, and there she was.

“I cannot quit,” the ewe replied plainly.

“Do you have the slightest idea what it took for me to get you back here?”

“An inkling. I asked you not to follow me.”

“You’d have died if I hadn’t!”

“And I am grateful for your help. Still, you should not be involved in this.”

“Pardon?” the mouse huffed.

“I cannot ask you to put yourself in danger; in fact, I must do the opposite. It is my place to risk myself. Not yours.”

“You forget that we’ve survived this whole disaster thus far! You’ve walked these streets twice; I’ve ventured out for food, for tools, for medicine, more times than I can count!”

“And there is nothing wrong with defending yourself when necessary. It is no longer necessary.”

“I can do more than defend myself. Most of us here can!”

“I can undertake this alone.”

“You couldn’t before!” the mouse spat.

“I was close,” the ewe growled. “And I must return to my task as soon as I can. The longer I remain here, the more time the devils have to return to the city. If it is not kept clear, it will not remain clear, and it will be so until those would-be dragons are separated from their hoards.”

“Then let us keep our own streets safe!”

“You know I cannot allow you to contend with demons.”

“I slew the one that made to sneak up on you.”

“I would have survived such an ambush.”

“But you would have been wounded!”

“That does not matter.”

“It would make the rest of your devil-hunting harder.”

“It would not stop me.”

“But I made it easier for you! Why should you choose to suffer the pain of a fiend’s bite when all it would take to avoid it is another pair of eyes at your back?”

“Because I am willing, and I am able, to bear injuries in the stead of one of my kin.”

“Well I’m willing to risk injury! I’m able! What gives you the right to make that decision for me? From any of us?”

“I can tolerate that pain! I can fulfill my duties even with grievous wounds, and they will not last for me as long as they would last for you! My magic will stitch this gash in my side in two day’s time–any one of you would be bedridden for more than a week, and surely could not fight for another month!”

“But you’re still suffering!”

“My suffering does not MATTER!” erupted the Dawnsister, quieting the whole of the storehouse. “Look at all of you! Look at yourself, Edelyn! You are surrounded by dear friends; some of them are here with their partners! You have people who depend on you! Who love you! To ask you to make such sacrifices would be to take you away from them–perhaps even forever.”

“But there will ALWAYS be sacrifices to be made,” she continued, a flood in place of her fire. “And if I am able to save another soul the pain of making such a sacrifice, I will, and I will do so as many times as I can bear. THAT was the oath I made when I became a Dawnsister: to give myself up. I have need of less than you, and I have more to spare. Some of my sisters could not give as much, and this was no fault of theirs; some of them chose not to, as was their right; but as for myself? I have forged myself into a tool, a weapon, to be wielded in the service of others. I have forsaken such bonds, that there might be more of me to give, that others might have to give less. And I will give all that I have.”

She could feel the eyes of the whole encampment upon her now, and her face burned under their gaze. Edelyn made a soft, strangled noise, as though she had changed her mind just as she began to speak. She couldn’t wait to hear what she would eventually say–she had work to do. She began to turn, to look for her mail and another weapon.

“Ampara–” Edelyn finally mustered. She flinched at the sound of her own name, doubly disquieted by the concern in the voice of its speaker. She was acclimated to neither.

“Please,” she choked. “I am a Dawnsister.”

“Yes, precisely,” the mouse began, taking a step closer. “Your sisters–they took that oath as well, didn’t they?”

“They did, but–”

“Which means they were willing to give of themselves for your sake.”

“...Yes. Still–!”

“Did they ever leave you alone on the battlefield?” Another step closer. The Dawnsister was frozen, unsure whether to face her or keep turning away. A long moment passed.

“No.”

“And did they force you to care entirely for yourself? Did you clean your shrine by yourself, cook and eat by yourself, hone and polish your own weapons?”

“They did not,” she managed, her voice wavering. She thought back to her last breakfast with her sisters; aspirants and superiors, shoulder to shoulder on the benches. She had eaten standing, in the kitchen by the pot, as she served portions to them–she had already sequestered herself in her contemplation, by then–but she realized now how she had cherished the lively sounds. “I did not.”

“Then you already know what it means to accept when others give of themselves. You might’ve tried to live a solitary life, Ampara,” she said, and still the Dawnsister winced in spite of the gentleness in her voice. Edelyn took another step forward, and the ewe closed herself off, curling her arms about herself. “But you never have. None of them could do everything, so they all did what they could, and didn’t expect it of only you. And though you wanted nothing more than to give to your sisters, they wanted to give to you as well. We want to give to you.” She put a paw, gently, on the ewe’s forearm.

“It matters not,” she whimpered, wet spots blooming on her blindfold, shoulders bunching up nearly to her horns. “I still did not give enough. If I had returned sooner, perhaps none of you would have had to endure everything that’s happened. Perhaps…” she choked. “Perhaps my sisters would not have all perished.”

“No one woman can change the world, Ampara,” she reassured her, her name eliciting another sob from the ewe. “Not even you. And you’ve done things no other mortal could do–do you know how long you were out there?”

“No,” she sniffed.

“TWO damned weeks! I didn’t see you sleep once! It’s a miracle the Dawnsisters aren’t subtle, or it would have been dreadful trying to track you down when I lost you overnight!” The ewe giggled, despite herself, and Edelyn grinned warmly. “But it goes to show, doesn’t it? Even someone who can call the very sun down to the earth can’t do this alone. We have to rely on each other, don’t we? After all, we’re all we have.”

“Wise words,” came the warbling reply as Ampara whirled and embraced Edelyn. The blubbering ewe dwarfed her, and though she tried to reciprocate, the mouse could hardly get her arms around her. “Very, very wise words. I am sorry.”

“We’ll make it up, sister. Together.”

Having finally relented, Ampara agreed to rest properly, at least until her largest wound healed. It weighed easier on her mind knowing that she would recover faster than most, but it made little difference; resting by no means meant that she couldn’t help in other ways.

She was still the most experienced, at least in demon-hunting, by decades; she set about educating anyone willing to pick up a weapon in the defense of their neighbors. She stressed that most of them would be better suited to learning self-defense and staying as far away from devils as possible, there were exceptions among their community. Edelyn, clearly, was intrepid enough to at least play the role of scout, and some among them, like the watchman, were veterans who had no home to return to upon the conclusion of their tours. Under her tutelage, she could see them keeping at least the streets around the storehouse free of demons–and perhaps, with greater numbers, they could maintain the safety of even more homes.

In addition to her knowledge, she shared her strength with the other sick and injured who came to visit the shelter; at least, to the extent that Edelyn would allow her before she began to fuss about how Ampara would keep up her own magical healing act. She also began recounting the history of the Dawnsisters and discussing the intricacies of wielding the light to anyone who would listen. Soon enough, she had many new inquirers–with fewer monsters in the streets, the people could meet and speak more freely, and news spread quickly about the source of all the demonic disappearances and extraordinary lights that had swept through the city.

The pair snuck around what demons they could–easy enough for Edelyn, but more difficult for Ampara, bedecked in clanking mail and clacking hoof–and the Dawnsister made quick work of the ones they couldn’t. They arrived late into the night, but arrived nonetheless: the two now stood before a wide, low building, whose walls were thick stacked stone slabs plastered with mortar and crisscrossed with heavy timbers. Metal grates filled small cutouts in the stone, well above even Ampara’s prodigious height–they were secure, clearly more for ventilation than for the light or the view, not that the ewe cared for either.

Her mouse companion approached the tall, broad oaken doors and knocked an odd rhythm on them. Footsteps followed from within, then a grunt and the grinding of a large bar as the occupant cleared their way. One door cracked inward two paces, enough for Edelyn to pass through.

“We’ve a visitor,” she said to her friend within, and Ampara heard a stifled exclamation as they turned to look at her. The door creaked open a touch wider, and she nodded politely in their direction in thanks. Murmurs of conversation flitted around what sounded like a mostly-open room; a grunt and a distant PAFF as someone set down a heavy load; rummaging and rustling, then the scratch of charcoal on parchment. There was even a fire crackling in the corner nearest her and Edelyn–she assumed it was under one of the small windows–since it likely wasn’t safe to cook outdoors as one normally might. Edelyn directed Ampara around any seating arrangements that the occupants of the makeshift garrison had pulled up for themselves, and found a spot for the two of them a respectable distance away from her comrades.

“Now then,” Ampara inquired, seating herself on a crate that Edelyn had pointed out to her, “How did our predicament come to be?”

“The summer’s been most unkind to us, Ampara,” the mouse replied, raising the ewe’s hackles by a hair yet again. “It started when the mountain opened its damned maw. It may as well’ve been a portal straight to hell.”

“An eruption?” She asked, and the mouse nodded.

“Imagine the misfortune. The city’s stood for centuries, and nobody had the slightest idea what we were building ourselves atop!”

“Terrible, indeed. Pray, what city is this?” She didn’t recognize the name when Edelyn spoke it, and the sound of it was about as foreign as the mouse’s manner of speech. She knew not the mountain, either, and she wondered just how far she had been willed from her own monastery.

“Millie!” called Edelyn to someone nearby, at the ewe’s urging. “Do you happen to know when that statue was erected at the Dawnsisters’ shrine?”

“No,” came the reply, “but it’s been there longer than I can remember.”

“My granduncle told me it had been there since he was a boy,” chimed in another voice.

“The sisters spoke of it more like a myth or a saint than a real person, didn’t they?” asked a third.

A chill wind blew through Ampara. She felt undeserving of such reverence, especially having earned it by derelicting her duties to her sisters. And her sisters–to tend a statue, dedicated to her, for so long… Even if it had served as an inspiration to some, surely it was a reminder of her absence for others. Shame burned her cheeks; she hadn’t considered how they would feel about being left behind.

More chilling still was the revelation of how long she had been away: names and language flowed like molasses, but flowed nonetheless. Was it possible that the mouse’s truncated words were not a dialect, but an evolution? She could have heard of this city, in her own time, even lived within traveling distance of it. She had never stood in the shadow of a mountain, so she couldn’t know the one that sheltered the burg now, but even if she had, would she recognize it after it had so violently shed its peaks?

“Tell me more about the eruption, if you could,” she asked, soberly, eager to put the idea out of mind.

“Right. The damned mountain spat so much smoke and ash that the clouds grew darker than a boar’s hair and even thicker than that, and they’ve stayed that way since. Without proper sun, the harvest failed, and well… people started to get desperate.”

Ampara frowned. That would be where the monsters entered the scene.

“They turned on each other.”

“That they did,” Edelyn said gravely.

“But even that would not invite such profusion from the pit. People acting out of desperation–it is not the same as betraying and stealing with evil in their hearts.”

“But wouldn’t you know it,” the mouse bitterly began, “the ones with evil in their hearts made all the difference. The ones who owned the land, and the ones with enough money to hire themselves some swords, they took what they could snap up and they hid themselves away with it. Did the same thing in the wake of the eruption, too, when the earth shook and buildings fell on people–you left your arm and leg in the rubble, or you paid with them for your medicine.”

“Despicable.” The ewe’s frown curled into a sneer. A fire in her own chest crackled in time with that of the makeshift hearth. “At least you have all been able to keep safe, in spite of the powers that be. How did you come to take shelter together?”

“Most of us’ve known each other a long while. The first lessons any of us learned were in turning to each other in times of need–that’s what you do to survive, when you’re cast out.”

“May I ask?”

“Oh, none of us are ashamed of where we come from. Some of us have bad blood with family–they didn’t like our friends, or our lovers, or the names we chose for ourselves.” Ampara nodded, understanding fully. “Others couldn’t find work, or couldn’t work to begin with. Some simply met misfortune and were left out in the cold. When it all began to go to hell, we all knew we’d have to ride it out together.”

“This little fort of ours used to be a storehouse,” the mouse continued. “Once all those ill-bought brigands picked the armories clean, they moved on to apothecaries and granaries, like this one. But you can’t steal a building! And while they’re off protecting some miserable manse for their miserly master, we’re using the place to stockpile the goods that we can still find in the city, and anything we can buy or beg from the merchants who come close enough to the outskirts to barter, and to provide shelter from the beasts. This is one of the only places in this lightforsaken town with doors still open to those in need. We’re all we had before,” she said, sighing, “and we’re still all we have now.”

“Wise words. May the rest of the city remember that soon.” Edelyn said nothing, offering only a pensive little hmph in response. Ampara turned her thoughts to the room. Though late, someone stirred a pot over the fire in the corner. A cat and a crocodile sat across from a beetle and a rat, talking amongst themselves. A hound and a deer sat, shoulder to shoulder, against a rack that was once used for backs of grain, repurposed now as a stand for scavenged weapons. A squirrel, perhaps a bard or busker when there were still people on the streets to perform for, pestered the watchman and told jokes to others who passed by.

Their camaraderie was plain to see, even for one who could not; and though she could not feel them, she envied them, most of all the ones who shared bedrolls to stave off the dark of the night and the hopelessness of the disaster. The Dawnsisters took no oaths against being wed, and in fact, many of Ampara’s sisters had families outside of the monastery. They stayed there for some of their days, out of convenience (it was easier than making the trek to work every day, and sharing one’s chores always made them easier) and out of necessity (as the minutes saved on that trek could be the difference between life and death in an emergency).

Ampara, for her part, had simply been too zealous to spend time taking a lover or forging a friendship. Her studies, her training, and most importantly her duties, all took the lion’s share of her youthful vigor. As she got older, and as she approached the nadir of her weariness, she had thought that such connections would ease her mind, but, well, by then it was simply easier to push forward. To invite someone into her heart was to track the mud of worry into theirs, whenever she was called to action. To relax in the arms of another was to turn away from people in need for a time, and she could not… she could not bring herself to lower her guard.

Her mind drifted back to the sisters she had spent every day with, who confided in her about the horrors they had beaten back for the sake of their fellows, who she broke fast with each morning and bread with each night. She thought of the townsfolk she served; everyone from those who did business with the monastery and whose routines and habits she learned by proximity, to those she had had to save more than once, whose problems and lives she had become intimately acquainted with. Surely, any of them would have accepted her, had she reached out. But it was too late to lament a path she had turned away from.

“On the subject of reminding this town of the way that things should be,” she began, eager to take her mind off of her abbey but unable to escape her sisters, “where can I find the Dawnsisters of this city? I must join them in dealing with these so-called ‘lords’ of yours. I am sure I can convince them to part with some goods to aid you; elsewise, we would be able to offer you shelter with them.”

“Ah,” Edelyn mumbled.

“Surely, you were at the shrine seeking their aid. You must know where they are, or at least where I could begin my search.”

“No, I simply… I was scavenging, and was taken by surprise by those devils. I needed somewhere to hide, and—damn it all.” Ampara turned toward her, concerned. “Well. Pardon me for this, but in the shock of seeing you stride out of a statue to my rescue, it didn’t occur to me to let you know. The Dawnsisters were spread quite thinly for a while after the eruption, leading reconstruction and caring for the sick and such. Their hands were still full when food got scarce, and when the first real wave of devils emerged… They weren’t prepared. They were our first line of defense, and…”

“That’s impossible,” Ampara insisted.

“As far as we knew, there weren’t any left. You’re the first we’ve seen in months.” The ewe’s mouth hung slightly open, and she turned her visage to the floor. “Things haven’t looked up at all, either. With the Dawnsisters gone, those damned thieves grew even bolder. More mercenaries, more hoarding; and then, with no other option in sight, people started joining up just to have some protection, even if it meant leaving their neighbors to starve.” She bunched up her shoulders and forced herself to exhale. “I’m sorry, Ampara–”

“Dawnsister. Please,” she nearly spat. She took a deep breath and drew herself up from her seat. “I understand the situation now. Your watchman is still at the door, yes?”

“I–yes, he is–”

“I will relieve him. You will all be safe under my watch. Then, at dawn, I will set out to begin making things right.”

“Make things right? How exactly–you’re one woman,” Edelyn sputtered, standing to follow the Dawnsister.

“It is what is needed. I will do what I must.”

“Do you plan to kill every damned fiend in the city by yourself?”

“If I am the only one who can do so, then yes. I have not any other choice.”

“That’s–” The mouse watched as the Dawnsister stopped before the weapon rack. She held out a paw, hesitating over the selection–most rusted or bent–and hefted one in her hand seemingly at random. Evidently satisfied, she turned and marched toward the door, where the watchman looked to Edelyn with uncertainty. She nodded at him, and he left his post, leaving his seat open for Ampara to take.

“I will not be swayed,” she said with finality. “You are in need, and to help you is why I am here.” Edelyn opened her mouth to protest, but the Dawnsister had already unslung the book from her hip, and was reciting hymns to herself. She could feel an otherworldly warmth radiating from the ewe–perhaps these were mantras to bolster herself through the night, or perhaps she was simply calming herself after receiving admittedly crushing news. Whatever the case, the mouse didn’t foresee making any further headway in conversation, and returned to her friends to retire for the night.

The Dawnsister did not sleep. One could say that she had awoken late the previous day, and the rhythms of life were untethered from the light of day for one such as herself regardless. She set out, as she had planned, at dawn, with her borrowed weapon in hand. It was a warhammer–a sturdy, leather-twined iron rod nearly as long as she was tall, topped with a solid chunk of steel as thick as Edelyn’s torso. It had felt right at the time, and this was the basis by which her faith most often guided her. She liked staves as much as her scriptures anyway, as far as a focus for her magic went, and the handle of the hammer would serve her as well as any other rod. Thus equipped, she set out for her first task: to clear the area around her new wards’ stronghold of devils and inform anyone she met where they could find aid.

She ruminated between meetings with monsters. These people truly had no other hope left–the full weight of the city fell squarely on her shoulders, and once again, the noose of necessity rubbed rough on her neck. But she had asked for this, she scolded herself as she whirled the great hammer around her body. It was SHE–she swung, taking the head of a fiend clean off its shoulders–that wanted only to be returned when she was needed. She simmered, stewed, seethed, at the twisted joke, the cruel MERCY–she brought her hammer down, splitting a beast from crown to crotch, and with enough force to spare that she leapt straight over the carnage and pounced on her next mark–of being allowed to “rest” until there was absolutely no other recourse but to return her.

Perhaps if she had stayed, the situation would have been different, she fretted as she left the stronghold again, having provisioned herself for a good few days. The first few blocks of buildings had been easy work; Edelyn and her friends had picked a safer part of the city to work from, and they and their neighbors had been vigilant in reporting and disposing of any wayward demons. She ventured, now, even further into the city. While she could not completely cleanse it without striking at the source of the corruption that compelled these creatures, her first priority was to make it safer for the people trapped there, and in any case, a clearer path would make for easier work later.

What good their statue did them in your absence, she berated herself. How inspired they must have been. What of your experience? What of your skill, your strength? Had you not FLED, perhaps you would have been able to travel to this city and reinforce the Dawnsisters here. Their blood is on your paws, she concluded as she withdrew her claws from the throat of a pit-dweller. She set it ablaze and followed the trail of the next. If you had just pushed through–if you had remained strong, and kept to your duties, not only would things be easier for you now–they would be easier for this entire CITY.

She had rested only when absolutely necessary. Some time ago, her stock of food and water had depleted, and now her pauses included time to scavenge as well as time to eat. She hadn’t slept–at least, not that she could remember. She was nearing the heart of the city, now, and the demons grew denser and denser. She hardly encountered a fellow mortal anymore–most here were living in the fortified complexes run by the bastards that had buried the town to begin with. She cut closer and closer to these as she went, aiming to leave herself a safe trail to storm them later. Now, she pushed: she stood before a column of demons that filled the entire thoroughfare before her, and she did not waver. She took a wide stance and grasped for control of her breathing, haggard and wild. Drawing up as much air and strength as she could muster, she loosed a roar that shattered the glass remaining in the boulevard’s windows, and a jet of fire erupted from her maw. Panting, she puffed the smoke from her lungs and marched over the ashes of the devils.

She hunted near the gates of the town’s lords, now, and they rightly reckoned that she was a threat to their hegemony. Mercenaries had been sent to seek her out in the buildings surrounding the walls of their holds; she bested them, easily, even when outnumbered, but she fought with much greater care than when she was dueling with demons. Some of these folk, she recalled Evelyn saying, felt they had no other choice. Surely some among them fought for medicine for their loved ones, or a roof over their own head, rather than for greed and glory; such was the evil of these lords, that their will bent even good people to play by the rules of their suicidal rat race.

One, however, had wounded her as she tended to his incapacitated troupe. The fruit of your inattention, she rebuked. Your INDOLENCE. Your NEGLIGENCE. She had bandaged herself up with scraps from her robes. You must remain VIGILANT. She would not allow another underhanded attack like that; in fact, she would keep these foul men at bay entirely, and then she wouldn’t have to worry about sorting the desperate from the dirty.

The Dawnsister now turned black night into brilliant day. The air itself hissed at her passing; the paving-stones steamed, and the steel of her warhammer and her now-decrepit mail glowed red-hot. The mercenaries knew better than to charge her now. The monsters did not. As they leapt mindlessly at her, their rotten hides charred and bubbled, and they hissed and keened as they roasted to nothing. Her lungs burned, and even her own wool singed. Push. Through. She half-chanted, half-choked, hymns and verses, leaning on the warhammer like a walking stick as she went.

Hired blades retreated from her advance across a city square, passing through the shadow of the great spire of a cathedral. She doggedly followed them, pressing their lines back, further back, hoping to drive them within the walls of their foul fortresses so that she could scour their city for them in peace. She heard cries from among their ranks–barked orders and confusion. A deafening FWOOSH sounded overhead, and her ears snapped toward the sound of a fireball emerging from the roof of the church. Then, crack after crack after CRACK, and the sound of a church bell clattering wildly against its housing as it began to fall. They had laid a trap for her, planning to bring the spire down on her head, but something had gone wrong. She was on the opposite side of the square, well clear of the jaws of the trap as they snapped impotently shut. Above the crashing, one more sound reached her ears: the panicked screams of someone standing, paralyzed, beneath the crashing steeple.

She released her wall of fire in an instant and dashed for the center of the square. Someone else–perhaps one of their own, perhaps a scavenger who had ventured out of their stronghold–had been snared in her stead. Perhaps they were bait, part of the trap itself, the victim of a fumbled matchstick or misread signal. It didn’t matter who they were. She had only one thought, over and over: push through. Protecting her kin was her job. Her purpose. She held her arms aloft, and that pillar of her very being flared out above her, a shield like the golden rim of the horizon at the break of day flickering to life above her head, and stopped the tower dead in the air. Every muscle and joint wailed. Her knees began to buckle. Push through. Her shoulders bowed. PUSH THROUGH. She pushed with all her might, keeping the tower from sinking any further, and shouted over her shoulder.

“AWAY WITH YOU,” she thundered. “TO SAFETY. MAKE.  HASTE.” Her rescuee found their bearings, and she waited for their footfalls as they ran for dear life.

She pushed, one final time, and gasped as the weight of the church tower slid from her shoulders. It fell to her side, rattling the stones of the street and jolting her bones. Her own weight followed to the ground thereafter, and on her knees she choked on plaster dust and saltpeter smoke. She wheezed and huffed, pawing at the ground to remain upright, fighting to stay conscious. And then, once again, she returned to oblivion.

“What in–” they cried, fumbling onto the floor away from the ewe. “Who… How–” CRACK.

“What?” rasped Ampara, pointing toward the buckling door. Her tongue sat thickly in her mouth.

“Demons,” they replied, after a beat. “Many, many demons.” Ampara nodded, straightened, and drew in a breath. Even her lungs felt leaden. She exhaled, growling, and stretched yet more as she approached the locked door. The Dawnsister reached out, feeling for a handle, and instead felt a fat wooden beam barring it shut. She cocked an eyebrow–the need for fortification was a bad sign. Muttering a prayer to herself, drawing upon any source of vigor she could muster, she hefted the girder over her shoulder and swung the door open.

The handful of devils that had been pounding against the timber fell forward onto their repellant faces. She dropped the beam onto the neck of the first, swift as an executioner’s axe, before leaping into the air and stamping her hooves into the skull of a second with her full weight. Roaring, she seized the last fiend by its spindly tail and hoisted it over her head, flinging it bodily into its fell companions and knocking the unholy host away from the door of the prayer hall.

With a menacing rumble in her throat, the Dawnsister took up a defensive stance before the rest of the horde and recited a verse from the anointed pages hung at her hip. She clapped her paws in front of her, then spread her arms wide; rising heat and swirling air rustled the tome as a ring of fire encircled Ampara, warding the entry to the sanctuary as would a ring of pure salt. The lesser ghouls scattered before the light–problems she would have to attend to later, she begrudged herself, but out of the way of more pressing matters for the time being.

And press those matters did–a hulking devil lumbered forward, unfazed by her fires. It reared back, more teeth than face, and shot forward with the bloodthirst of a viper; Ampara rolled backward, grasping for the beam, and braced it before herself just in time for the beast’s maw to SNAP shut around it. It snarled and spit; its hot, fetid breath washed over her, singing her whiskers. Ampara pushed, rising from her knees, and began to force the beast back. She heaved a step forward, digging her hooves–caked to the ankle in foul, sickly-purple blood–into the earth, and fought for every inch she could put between the abomination and the threshold.

Once she had pried the demon out of the doorframe, she could take the offensive–the vile thing couldn’t keep its body out of her reach any longer. She forced it back, further back, up against the wall of a building opposite the shrine’s entrance. There she held it, pinned by its own jaw with groaning timber, its gangly neck bent and twisted unnaturally. Ampara’s paw darted from the beam to the creature’s underbelly, and she levered her claws between the plates of its hide before it had the chance to reclaim a foothold in their deadly tug-of-war. Bellowing, she found purchase and tore with all her might, laying bare the poisonous heart of the heart-poison hound. Her claws plunged forward again, digging into the sinuous chambers of the dreadful organ, and pulled. The beast wailed a horrible wail, clenching and thrashing and kicking, and still she pulled; its jaw tightened, innumerable teeth cracking the wood and biting closer to her occupied paw, and still she pulled. She tugged and yanked and wrenched until finally, vein and grain both yielded with a sickening SNAP, and the hellspawn slouched onto her.

She cast its carcass from her corpus with contempt.  With no more monsters to drive off, and with her chest heaving, the Dawnsister sank to her knees a pace away. She had awakened. Why was this so? Ampara had hoped she would never awake again. DAMN it all! She beat the ground with her clenched paw, only to splash herself with her latest kill’s foul ichor. She felt no less drained than the day she had left, but this, at least, she understood: she hadn’t pleaded for a reprieve, but for a deferral of her duties. It was her constant vigil that had worn her down, and while she welcomed a chance to not need to watch over anyone (for as great a folly that turned out to be), she had never allowed herself time to let her guard down.

Ultimately, she also knew why she was awake–she had consigned herself to a conditional oblivion, and the terms of her resurrection had clearly come to pass. Some poor soul had been in the right place to receive her aid, and at the wrong time, to have need of her at all. She wondered whether she would disappear again, having finished the job. But no, what called her back to this world must be greater than that; for demons to gather in such great number without any resistance, her sisters must have been completely occupied elsewhere, or worse, utterly overwhelmed. In any case, her job was not actually done until she had assured the safety of her charge. Standing, she–

Her ear flicked. The twang of a bowstring, and the whistle of point and plume slicing the air. She whirled, relying on faith to guide her paw, but instead of plucking an arrow from its arc, she found only empty air. Above her, an imp gurgled and slid down the wall. Not all of them had fled, it seemed, and in her preoccupation she had failed to sense it. She trudged back through the sturdy gate of the sanctuary and addressed the one who had recalled her to this world.

“My thanks,” Ampara said, flatly.

“The thanks are all yours,” came the reply in a calm, but shock-stained voice. “You–what are you?”

“I am Ampara. A Dawnsister.”

“I gathered that from the inscription.”

“Inscription?”

“Well, when you touched me and I looked back, the statue’d gone–”

“Statue?” Ampara tromped past the voice–a mouse woman, she could see, with her senses now about her again–to the end of the room, feeling about for a dais from which she might have stepped down.

“A touch to the right, there,” the mouse guided her, and indeed, her paws came upon a smoothly-cut slab of stone, set with deep-carved letters spelling out her own name. She thought it ironic that the will of the divine was not to do away with her entirely until her return, but she supposed it brought her comfort to know that she may have inspired her sisters and their wards even in her absence. More than that, she felt the tiniest bit justified–she hadn’t had to be around to have been of use.

“Interesting.”

“So, do you care to explain how a memorial–” The word twisted the relief in Ampara’s chest into regret. While she had been confident of the wellbeing of her sisters in her absence, she hadn’t… Did they think this her grave? Perhaps when she left, it was not quite as painlessly as she expected. “–sprang to life and saved my hide?”

“I was needed,” the Dawnsister replied, bluntly. A few silent moments passed between them, and the mouse’s raised eyebrow went unseen.

“Can’t dispute that.”

“Apologies,” began the ewe, without turning to face the mouse. “I know not your name.”

“Edelyn.”

“Would that we could have met under brighter circumstances, Edelyn,” said the ewe, politely biting back that she would rather not have met her at all. “This place could be fortified again, had we something to bar the door, but for now–have you anywhere safe that I could deliver you?”

“The folk staying at the encampment’d surely rejoice at the sight of someone like you, Ampara. ‘Tis safe, but surely they’d feel even safer with you in reach.”

Ampara bristled. The woman’s speech was unfamiliar to her, and overfamiliar all the same. She made no insistence about her title, but to be addressed so personally was… a distant luxury. What’s more, she acutely felt the weight of being needed. A single task had seemed daunting enough, but to return to her watch…

No matter. She had sworn herself to this, both when she first became a Dawnsister and when she had made her plea to the divine. So long as there was need of her, she could push through; no price was too great for her to pay in service of mortalkind. Perhaps, when this crisis had passed, there would be no need for her, and she could return to her so-called slumber. She stepped aside and gestured for the mouse to lead the way.