#ysgrimarcy

It was hard for her not to think of him poorly at times. She’d thought him perhaps younger than his claims, but judged by what he’d told her that he hadn’t necessarily had much time to be a sapling. She’d thought him unnecessarily stern, but knew he came from a life of discipline. She’d thought him selfish and angry and all too quick to condemn another for things he himself blindly did, but realized he’d been carrying a lot of pain for a long, long while. Perhaps most cruelly she’d cast him onto the pile she’d thrown her entire race on when she was a yearling: He didn’t understand her, wouldn’t understand her, because he was just another spoon-fed Dreamer fawning over the bloody Avatar without the capacity to think for himself.

Athrë bowed her head in the snow with a sigh. In tandem with all that she had a terrible and creeping fear that out of the two she was the one who bore the most love. She had thrown away her libertine ways and her dearly cherished independence in exchange for his love, something she always felt in short supply of. It was sure that Niamh was partly to blame for that, but now that he’d given up being a Warden, would things really change? Maybe it was pessimism, but she knew better than to expect that.

Sometimes she wished she’d never met the prickly bastard. She had very few illusions that Marcy would somehow suddenly transform into the man she was lonely for: That wasn’t how this worked and it wasn’t fair to either of them to expect it to. She had sworn her love to him for as long as he would faithfully have it, not to some made-up man. She would do everything she could and whatever it took to fulfill that promise.

But if he could not give back, if he could not yield, if she was doomed to spend the rest of their days together freezing in a city she didn’t care for swallowing his rage, she knew something was bound to give. He’d pushed her to the brink of leaving him again and again in their fledgling days. Athrë loved him well and truly, but she was a woman, not an inexhaustible well. If only he knew how little it took to pacify her; one gesture, something that she did not have to initiate, could render her disgustingly smitten for days.

She was well aware that the people closest to him had a habit of dying or leaving him, but there was only so long she could continue to pay for things she didn’t do to him and kiss wounds she did not create. If she and all she had done could not be enough, she figured they’d both turn up empty handed sooner or later. He had to commit in one way or the other, and driving her out of his home was a decisive step in the wrong direction, if an accidental one. She hoped he’d remedy that eventually.

By the time he returned to the dreaded present the marshy ground had yielded to sand and grass. After wandering beneath a small natural overpass he peered up into the drizzling rain and smiled at his discovery: a great magic tower. I could make a hut at the top, he decided. No one would bother me there. He couldn’t actually climb it, however; he could tell from there that some of the gaps between platforms were too long for him to jump. I’ll build bridges.

First, though, he wanted to sit and rest in view of the tower’s majesty. To the bridge he strolled then crossed to find a modicum of shelter beneath the nearby cliff face. Soon he was dozing peacefully in the shade.

He woke to a distant uproar. By straining his ears he could make sense of the sounds haunting the air: screaming, shouting, and the ring and scrape of steel. Gnarled roots of fear closed on his heart and for a moment rooted his person there in the safety of shadows.

Curiosity got the better of him, but not by much. Filled with dread, he dragged himself on his stomach across the ground to peer out over the beach. What he saw was one sylvari locked in combat with multiple others but winning, slaying them all indiscriminately. He jolted with excitement. He’d seen this before in his imagination, but this was real. That hero, that underdog, the outnumbered, would slay them all, he knew. After all, that’s how the story went.

Yet as the last one fell he landed a blow on the heroine. His sword bit deep into her stomach, sending her to her knees, clutching at the wound and groaning. Finn’s amber eyes widened. She’d pull through, right? She had to pull through. His fingers clutched in suspense at the sandy weeds.

From a cove opposite the tower strode a single dark figure. I have to help her, thought Finn, yet his body remained still as stone, petrified. He wasn’t armed. He’d never even handled a weapon. Instead of striking the heroine down, however, the man tenderly took her face in his hands. It seemed to Finn that he smiled at her, and after some seconds, her head bowed.

From the west came sprinting another sylvari, this one white. When he looked upon the field he crumpled to his knees and drew his despairing hands to his face. Soon he was folded on the shore, his face hidden against the sand. Finn glanced back to where the pair had been, but they were gone from his sight. When the sapling’s eyes returned to the lone figure he was drawing his blade deliberately across his chest, cutting through leather and skin alike. Sap bled quick and free from the wound. I have to help, he thought again, but still could not bring himself to move.

A detachment of Wardens was soon behind the bleeding man, thankfully. Most took to aiding him, some to peering grimly out over the corpse-littered shore. Finn crawled away unseen, and as soon as he was safe to rise, tore back to the Grove with frequent frightened glances shot over his shoulders.

That night he strode up to his mentor, stark and serious.