#wilred

A’loq stares, frozen in disbelief at the gruesome sight of Wilred’s lifeless body, lying in the shallow waters of Urth’s Fount. The boy bleeds profusely into the surrounding red waters, blood running slow and thick from gashes covering his front. A closer look reveals the brutality of his death, flesh cut away by a blade revealing more and more unsightly gore beneath his cold skin.

The sight sickens him.

“Gutted like a hog,” Hoary says after he arrives with Coultenet, voice taut. Wilred was slaughtered and left to die a horribly lonely death like an animal. He died so young, taking all of his hopes and dreams of a better life and the liberation of Ala Mhigo with him. 

With the image of a mutilated corpse embedded in A’loq’s memory, he numbly listens to Riol with unnerving steadiness as the man finds reason within the madness of it all. In the halls of the Rising Stones, far from the other Scions and Crystal Braves, he catches Alianne mourning the loss with her heart on her sleeve. She holds onto him and weeps for what feels like bells. 

Moons later, in the aftermath of Ilberd’s treachery, Alianne grieves again in A’loq’s company, the old wound having been torn wide-open.

“They spared us,” she tells him through heaving breaths, “and they killed him.”

A’loq nods wordlessly, his throat tight. He still struggles to comprehend the loss just as much as her. Rationally, he knows that Ilberd saw use in keeping the Champions of Light for his schemes, but what of Wilred? Was having a soul not enough to justify his existence? He had friends too- people who loved him dearly, forced to bury a boy they were going to outlive. Did his killers assume that he wouldn’t be missed? There is no shortage of bitter thoughts that course through his mind.

Alianne’s tears run freely, flushed cheeks soaked wet as she cries into her hands. A’loq’s tears never fall. He wishes they would. Sorrow would be better than this encroaching rage. It makes his heart pulse uncontrollably, and for days on end, his fingers itch for an arrow to put through the throats of the ones responsible. Even as everyone adjusts to Wilred’s missing presence, A’loq carries the burden of remembering- another ballad for another name and face lost.

Time passes, and Ala Mhigo is free. A’loq returns to Little Ala Mhigo to share news of the nation’s newfound freedom. Gundobald returns Wilred’s prized blade to A’loq, and he and Bertliana travel to the liberated nation with the first group of refugees. She authors the passage home while he composes another melody and wonders if Wilred’s story is his to tell. Even as he performs at his monument to honor his memory, lyre in hand, he questions whether he’s doing his tale justice or if empty words are merely spewing from his own mouth.

Most nights A’loq remembers the ones he knew personally. His memories are often dyed blue, lost in the winter blue of his beloved knight’s eyes and hair. Other times all he sees is the ice blue of a heretic’s sweeping hair, the deep azure of a Champion of Light from another shard, the ocean shades beneath a thaumathurge’s little monocle, the cerulean roughed-up hair of an archon and fighter, a lost leader’s sapphires against her rose pink attire…

But tonight, all he can remember is Wilred’s rich auburn eyes, daring any foe to challenge his mettle. It is strange for his mind to linger on the face of a boy he never knew too well, but it isn’t strange for him to dwell on hate- on the rage that he felt years ago.