#oriaen

Mangrove roots squeeze in against her pelt, trapping her tail. Ahead, wardens. She dips her head low, cheek to the muddied ground to cover… what? She has no glow in this form. The Fanged Dread hovers above her, the mask both mocking and comforting.

  ‘Escape. Comrades. Together.’ it hums, a stilted lullabye of promises that fill her with warmth. Together. Yes, Together is important. A rustle beside her, a beak. Behind the roots, the faintest outline of elemental construct, the beak dips its approval. Together we are stronger. Always together. She crouches, seeking her opportunity. Reddened water and lame grass sprout before her, her eyes water at the heady copper scent milling around her paws. Together. The Fanged Dread moves first, darting to the next shadow. The beak flickers and is gone, followed by the briefest brush of a thick tail. She is last. A bird calls overhead. Hurry up, hurry up. She steps from the concealing roots. Lights blind her and rip away the last of the protecting shadows. The rest are gone. No sound or smell left, just the shouts of wardens and eager saplings, rocks in hand. She is dangerous. She is wrong. Her shadow is gone--where? How can there be so much light and now shadow? Her paws dig into the soft sand, turning herself about, straining to see. But no dark form attaches itself her feline shape, only light surrounds her. A rock stings her shoulder, another on her hide. The saplings laugh. ‘We’re not afraid. She can’t do anything.’ they jeer. Her wrists feel tight. Clamped. She is chained. Shifted to the shape of herself cross-legged, dodging stones. They heard she broke a warden’s nose, they’ve come to prove their strength while she cannot fight back. Her mind roars, feelings unfamiliar in this new solid body, the connection too close and too invasive. What is her own and what is not? She doesn’t know. Why do they have shadows and she does not?

  ‘Get up.’ a gruff voice. ‘You’re a sylvari. Not a dog.’ She stands on shaking legs, reaches with a hand to push back the hood of the one standing over her. Is it Fanged Dread? Has he come back at last? But it disappears to smoke. The Reach winds out around her, sharp cobblestones beneath bare feet.

  Paws.

  Paws again?

  The tavern is north. She moves for it. That is where shadows are. The Golden Sun shines and casts shadows across Kryta, she has found them here before. Found them. Loved them. Revelled in all that made them different. Hope blooms, but all she finds are corpses. Tree-mounted macabre displays of Gin and Crow. The beach, again. The red sky she’s always known and rivers of sap, oceans of blood. She looks down at her paws, forcing one ahead of the other. She makes them walk until the sand runs to smooth stone. A gathering. Colours and shapes she recognises. Family. Stood above them, a figure in pale green. It speaks. Waves its arms.

  ‘Grom.’ it says. Her paws begin to thump against the stone, racing toward him. ‘Grom is.’

  No!

  She lunges. Knocks the teal one from his perch, silences him. Looks up. There. The shadow lingers on the edge of the group. She pushes her way through. The others notice, grabbing for her ears and tail. Slowing her. Wanting to stop her. She tears through all the same. One of the gathered grabs the Shadow. Her shadow. Squeezes it until the sensation of pain radiates from the shifting form. She yowls from it. Feels it from nose to tail, and only at the realisation of her pain does the other stop. Tosses the Shadow to the side like a rag, lets it fall limp to the ground. She is left with it .The Shadow. It slinks away from her, and she follows. Slowly, not wishing to spook it. She doesn’t notice the black nothing until it’s swallowed the ocean and sand. It tugs at the Shadow, pulls it closer.

  No.

  The nothing creeps closer, the Shadow loses grip on the smooth stone. Slides toward it inch by inch. She claws at the Shadow to hold it in place, but her claws catch nothing but air. She tries again, and again, grabbing for it with desperate paws and teeth.

  No. Don’t let it go to the nothing. Don’t let it be sucked into uncertainty. The space between them widens suddenly, miles of stone appearing between her and the Shadow. She runs. Bounding on four and then two legs, her breath in ragged sobs. She runs to the edge where the Shadow teeters to the nothing, stumbles to her knees and grabs for the Shadow once more.

  No. It’s gone. Absorbed into the void. She stares into the black.

  And she screams. ----------------------

  She makes no sound. Her eyes open, head pressed against a saturated pillow. She reaches for him. The couch is narrow, her hand falls on Spinach’s head. He whines, and Elzy growls in soft warning. The heavy jaguar is sprawled across her legs.Why? That’s what she does to him, not to her. She reaches again. No, he’s gone.

Firstly, Vailynt is not to blame for what happened. He made a mistake.

Secondly, there's a chance that Vailynt saved me from a fate much worse when he blew out his empathy.

Following the attack on Oriaen, when the mesmer decimated my mental defences, I was running on very little. Oaken gave me some support, but the slightest touch of any empathy was like running rusted nails through an open wound. Even the touches that should have been calming felt like knives, and I resisted them all. I was open enough about the state of my empathy. That's not where my fault was.

That was in my decision to not immediately act on the song infiltrating my mind. When the pain was high, it was easy to ignore, but sleep or meditation to ease the empathic troubles and help rebuild my defences only quieted my own thoughts and let the courtier's song run free. It tortured me, so I chose to remain awake and in pain. I chose to leave the infirmary and pretend that I was functioning, rather than insisting on treatment from someone more familiar with this sort of thing.

So when Vailynt's empathic blow-out threw me from barely-functioning to near brain-dead, it really was for the best. It's hard to describe what happened in that moment, and my memories of it are vague and mostly half-lighted flashes of smell and colour. There was ice, there was pain. So intense I felt that I was exploding piece by tiny piece. Then there was no pain, no weight, nothing. Just a big black void, and myself floating aimlessly among it.

I was a soul. A tiny seed of emotion, separated from a body. I was still Sadrienne. The body (which Keiranon, Trisbaine, and Scamall moved to the Omphalos Chamber to be tended to in Mother's presence) was also Sadrienne. But we were not one and the same as we normally were. The body did not think, and the soul could not feel. If there was pain then, I didn't know it, and the body did not know the courtier song that sang loud in the space where my soul ought to be. Vailynt tore me from myself and offered me one last form of protection.

I'm told that Mother helped them to sing, that she encouraged them to fight the courtier song within my body so that the rest of me could return. I don't remember. A soul doesn't have ears to hear the world outside. Their empathies I saw from a distance, Keiranon's rolling water and Scamall's burning fire. Trisbaine, a griffon! And the courtier song, a melodic wolf stalking about in my body. Beckoning. Lashing out as she was fought.

I don't know at what point I came close enough to reach them, or how or why. It seemed for a moment that my song answered to the wolf, following along so perfectly it made sense that we ought to join melodies. But Scamall burned it, Mother picked at it, and Trisbaine attacked on high until the call for my answering part was no more than discordant half-notes floating in the air. I know then that I reached for the running waters of the most familiar empathy there, the one I've used often in times of discomfort. I latched onto Keiranon, a thin and dripping clarinet solo carried by the stream, while the courtier wolf threw it's last notes out in vain and shattered away forever.

The first night I spent in the infirmary, the night of Oriaen's attack, was the most painful. I went to sleep well, buoyed by the unexpected level of care with which my comrades had tended to me, but as my mind quieted and the sedatives took their toll, the song of the courtier mesmer started to plague my dreams.

It called to me. Soft, seductive, sharp around the edges, it wanted to hook me in until I couldn't help but follow. It twisted images of those around me, painted a better existence outside of the Dream, and when I resisted it reacted in fits of horror and terror so severe I jolted myself awake several times before giving up. At the time, I thought it just a stupid reaction to the stress of the fight, a memory biting me while my defences were down. My empathy was wounded from Len's direct attack, it twisted on itself and hurt all the more. I crawled out of bed at some ridiculous hour and started to write an addled report detailing the night's events.

I didn't want to sleep. Sleep came with those images. I let the empathic pain in my head rage to keep me awake, and I must have been up an hour or more before Scamall wandered into the infirmary.

We talked for some time, but the words weren't important. It's what he did. He sat there with me, offering himself as an anchor to reality while my broken mind tried to sort what was true and what was illusion, what was fact and what was merely a trick of perception. And he sang to me. A strange song, a song I don't know well, but have heard him sing before. A song I can still hear him singing low in my ear now, if I focus. A song that temporarily drowned out the courtier's song in my head, and allowed me to close my eyes with peace. 

He sat there with me, cradled in his arms, for the rest of the night. When the horrors in my mind woke me, his presence soothed me. Even asleep just the gentle rise and fall of him against me was a reassurance, and while I slept awkwardly, I slept safely. Securely.

I answered a call on the bells today. It was Oriaen, he needed help. I found him in Wychmire, two courtiers circling him. The details of the battle from there are barely important, we were let go with minimal injuries, it was Oriaen's barely breathing form lying over Siria that sickened me more than any poison. I'd done what I could on the fly, and yet poison and tranquilisers still ran thick in his sap.

He just lay there. Both his pets collapsed, three bodies and none of them could I have moved on my own. That's when it hit me, that I was out here with no backup and at least two courtiers in the area that could reappear at any time. One more touch of that mesmer's mind and I would have been done, but it was Oriaen that I feared for. Already dosed multiple times with poison, his breathing was so soft and slow, shuddering like it might stop at any time and I would be unable to start it again. It would be a mercy, then, if the courtiers came back and finished the job. Anything would be a mercy compared to returning to Watchful Source with nothing to show Caoilhian and Skoryy but a corpse.

Procyon woke, stumbled on four wobbly legs and fussed over Oriaen and Siria; every sound he made might as well have come from me. Somehow through the agony and exhaustion I constructed an earth elemental, taking a page from Trisbaine's book. He looked so small and frail on the elemental's shoulder, Siria draped over the other shoulder and Procyon walking beside me. Each step jolted Oriaen, but slow steps were longer moments away from the infirmary where I would be able to treat him. All I could do was walk as fast as I dared, channeling water magic through him just to keep his breath steady and abate the spread of the poison.

He looked so peaceful when the elemental laid him out in the infirmary. It was chilling, as if he'd already died and was simply arranged for viewing as the bodies of lost soldiers are for their grieving families. I panicked. Used the emergency purge, held him as he convulsed and vomited into a bucket, his eyes cracking open slightly toward the end.

He said my name, and I cried.

He was okay.

I'd come so close to losing him out there, my mind was a quivering mess of fear and agony, but I've never been so overwhelmed by any single emotion as I was with relief in that moment. I kept him close, cradled against me as I finished the last of the patching up, we talked some, but all I cared for was the sound of his voice and the reassurance that he was there. He slipped away to sleep when I was done, a picture of contentment even after what we'd just been through. I couldn't help but smooth his fronds back, kiss his forehead the way I'd seen mothers do their children, pulled a blanket up over to his chin to make him comfortable.

And I sat then, against the wall of the infirmary, simply watching the rise and fall of his chest as he slept. He might never know how much I care, or how frightened I was of losing him tonight. But I love that kid, fiercely, the world is a better place for his sense of wonder and right.

Sleep tight, Oriaen. I'll be there in the morning.

The first one is tear-stained and simply reads, "Dream well, Wynn."

The second one starts, "For seven months, ever since I first emerged from the pod, I have not stopped. I woke up with an incredible Dream and a feeling I had to do something. I have been crossing Caledon and Tyria and even Orr bringing hope to the hopeless where I could. I fell in love. I've fought to keep my love from falling. I've been fighting to hold on to my Hunt, my beloved, and even you as well, Oriaen. In one decision - my decision - it all slipped from my fingers, and it all went horribly wrong.

You are right. I have wandered too long. I need time to think, to just stop. To have anohter warm home full of those who love me is a delightful thought that really thoroughly excites me.

I cannot wait for Caoilhian to come to us, though. Her first sight of me was exactly how she found Len..."

The last word trails, there's a water mark or two on the paper, and below in smaller shakier letters is written, "How could I have done this to her."

After that, his writing becomes firmer again. "She tried coming to Len and Zephel already. I know she will not come to me. I have to bring her with us. I do not know what to do, but I have not fought this far to lose her now. I will hold on to you, Oriaen, you have become so much more to me, but I have to hold on to her. I have to. Don't take her away from me."