#ruinali

Have you recently made amends with someone?

“I think I’ve finally come to terms with Ruinali. Now it’s a matter of practicing what I preach so she doesn’t see my apology as empty words.”

What is the closest thing you’ve had to “love at first sight?

“I was introduced to Maedryn by my friend Jaen. Well, really it wasn’t intentional. Mae came to our guild house looking for Jaen. But at any rate, the moment I saw Mae, I thought that he was beautiful. He was vibrant, apple green skin and golden hair. His smile was more radiant than the sunlight. As we got to know each other, I learned that he was just as beautiful on the inside. So kind, so generous.…Sorry, I’m getting sentimental.”

Who currently occupies your thought?

“Oh, so many people. I worry about Ras, of course. I leave him by himself far too much. He’s so private in his thoughts. I hope one day he can trust me to help him carry that weight. I wish that he were here too. I long for his company.

Del is injured, like me. I’m trying to stay strong and keep her company while we recover. I’ll ask her if she wants to walk around the manse later.”

There’s also many people I am grateful to. Airia for her comfort and for opening her home to me. Yhedda and Bakari for their gentle, swift care, despite have risked themselves on the same mission.”

I’m very lucky to have such strong allies and friends.”

Do you honestly find intellect attractive, or just admirable, in a person?

“I certainly don’t find it unattractive! But I think that there are many different types of intelligence. I’m a bookish type, for example. I tend to gravitate toward those with street smarts or survival skills. I don’t know why.”

What makes you feel at peace?

“Staying the night at Airia’s manse or Ras’s house. There’s a lot of pleasure in domestic tranquility, sitting down to breakfast with your loved ones after a good night’s sleep. Drinking coffee, reading the paper. It reminds me that there’s life outside of work and war.”

Ideally, how would you like to tell somebody you are romantically interested in them?

“That’s hard. I prefer to let someone come to me. I couldn’t handle the possibility of rejection. That said, I like rather physical declarations of love. Like kissing. Your partner pulls you into their arms and lays his lips on yours. It’s great.”

Which of your friends have you seen the least recently?

I told Phi about what we found, and about the journal as well. He’s worried. He’s promised his help, should I need it, but the person I truly needed to talk to was Oaken. I finally got around to that today. The coalition has been exceptionally stressed. I didn’t want to add more to Oaken’s list of worries.

Except that I did, of course. Ruinali was in the room when I explained--and predictably--abused me for my desire to chase up after the ones marked ‘passed’. 

Oaken can’t offer any help. Not until I have something solid. All I have is a stupid journal and nothing else to go on. I’m going to acquire warden reports on missing saplings, cross-reference and see where that gets me--it’s all I can think to do. 

I know the subject bothers Oaken and that he’d help if he could. But I can’t help feeling that I’m out on my own with this. I can’t let it go, I have to do this. 

I don’t know how to feel. They’re all mad at me—and rightfully so—but I can’t bring myself to think of what I did as wrong. It wasn’t what I intended to do, there’s no way I would have taken others with me if my sole purpose in going to see Mavern was to kill him. I really did want to find a way to save him. My magic delved so deep into his breaking body that I felt it all—I could feel the cells wither and die, the agonising slowness of it all, the breath that grew shorter and harder to draw. I knew it was only a matter of time before he was trapped in a cocoon of pain, for minutes or hours or days, I don’t know. They weren’t even making him comfortable. No trace of pain relief in his system, he’d been abandoned to a bed to die, however drawn out and horrid the process. At first I wanted to stay with him, wait it out. Soothe the process as it happened, make it easier and peaceful. 

I guess that’s what I ought to regret. Not asking for that time. Instead, someone decided we ought to leave and that I should say my farewells, and my mind was abuzz suddenly with the knowledge that I couldn’t leave him here suffering as he was. That I had to do something. A tap to his heart was all that was needed, a quick death, an ending. The hospital staff knew I was there as his physician. They expected me to practice magic on him. Like most of the coalition, they thought I was ridiculous for bothering with a criminal. I just wanted him to stop hurting. I knew they wouldn’t care, and if anyone bothered to question my actions—what I did could have just as easily been explained as an attempt to start his heart as it was to stop it. 

Only I warned the others first. I let them know what I was doing was deliberate. 

Why?

When he died, I felt it. The emptiness. His shadow no longer looming over me, a vague and terrifying freedom. I moved his body to a peaceful position as I had been taught, kissed him goodbye. For just a moment it was as if my dreams had become a reality, and here was I, a daughter saying a last farewell to her father. Even though my arms still tingled with the sensation of his execution. Even though my heart felt shot to holes at his absence. There’s no one to whom I can explain that feeling, not without being reminded of all the reasons that my feelings toward Mavern and this grief are wrong and strange, and especially not now that those who I would usually confide my more honest feelings in are… unavailable.

I want to explain to them that there was no risk to them directly. That the split second assessment I took of the situation before carrying out the actions was enough to be sure that if the axe fell for anyone—it would be for me as a medic. There was no room for others to be blamed. It would always have been me. Except to explain it makes it sound like a planned event, something I tricked them into. I didn’t. I would never have allowed them in with me if I thought this would be the outcome. 

I never wanted them to see me like this.

But I ended his suffering, and I can’t bring myself to regret that. My hunt eased as soon as it was done. The looks, the silence, and the anger in their words though—that burned a wound as deep as the grief I carry for Mavern, as painful as the physical ache that plagues me. I don’t know how to make it right or even if I can. If I deserve it. 

Virtuosity wrote me a letter with an address. Ruinali and Oaken scoped it out before they took me there. They didn’t find anything, so they hoped that I would spot some sort of clue. It was the home of the Elonian girl, more pressure relieved from my hunt as her parents wheeled her out of the house. Alive. Missing her leg, but alive. Oaken and Trisbaine went to talk to them, I couldn’t bring myself to approach. What if she remembered my face? I tried to get Oaken to take fuzzy hat over for the girl, but the timing was off. We’ll send it later. I’ll send money, too. As much as I can. They can build ramps and make sure she has a nice chair and the best medical care she can get.

Sleeping was too easy after all of that. Even the pain wasn’t enough to pull me out of slumber, my mind drifting toward neither dream or nightmare—but memory. 

I was there. Shackled to the dining chair, the Elonian girl on the table. The guard slicing at her leg, hacking at it with a meat knife. I screamed and roared, fighting the restraints that held my limbs in place, but even the sickening crack in my arm and the sharp pain that flowed from it was not enough to stop me. Though I fought with strength borrowed from my purpose, it was no match for the shackles. I screamed with pain and helplessness, the guard shoving chunk after chunk of her flesh into my mouth. I needed to do something.

I had to do something.

She was suffering.

I had to fix it.

I had to make it stop.

I pulled myself from the wildness, long enough to focus a stare at Virtuosity. Stop her suffering, stop her suffering, the thought wouldn’t leave. Wouldn’t dull. Just as it wouldn’t when the sylvari had been on the table days before. 

‘Bring. Her up here.’ I said to him. 

Virtuosity had no need for a human except as a plaything, she was bleeding out, like the sylvari she couldn’t survive this. If he brought her up, let me reach her with my mouth, I could finish it. I couldn’t help her, but I could end her suffering. I could give her peace. 

Except she lived, and on waking I knew that. If Virtuosity had done as I asked—she wouldn’t have. Virtuosity saved her from me, not the other way around as it ought to have been.

And this is what Vilathara and Trisbaine have seen in me, now. The monster. They’ve seen it so clearly they can’t make excuses anymore, they’ve seen me for who I truly am. They will turn their backs and so they should, I’ve no value to them.