#zevryn

I hope you're happy with yourself. You made me write Zevryn for the first time in YEARS, but at WHAT cost. Look what you have DONE.

#52 Heaven's Light/Hellfire - The Hunchback of Notre Dame soundtrack

Spotify Wrapped - Short Story game

--

There it was again, the whispers, the incessant singing that calls her from the shadows. It is louder now and its song more violent, as if the drums of war were hot with the beating hearts of those who live below. 

She doesn’t have much time left. 

It is getting harder every day, but she needs to shake it off. 

“Let’s pause here for lunch,” Eryn says, getting down from her horse and dropping her backpack on the floor. “I’ll fetch water.”

Taking only the two waterskins, the mage doesn’t wait for her companion’s reply. She turns on her heels and descends a slope towards a body of water. The whispering follows her on the breeze, underneath her hair and into her clothing. Shut up, she thinks. Shut up shut up shut up.

Her breathing quickens as the shadows grow around her. They’re too close now. She tries to focus on the path in front of her, on the water glistening under bright sunlight, but her chest is heavy. She is not sure if it was a rock or if her feet gave up, but faster than she can realise, she trips and falls on her knees. 

Where am I? Eryn is not sure if she spoke it out loud, being muffled by the choir of darkspawn beneath the earth. If she digs the shore with her fingers, will she see them? If she screams, will they hear her? Will they catch her scent? Will they know where she is? Do they know where she is? Where am I…?

She lifts her head, searching for the light in direct rejection of the darkness. Then she sees it. She knows this shore, knows these waters. This is Lake Calenhad, and towering in the centre of it is the Circle where she was raised. The whispering runs down her spine as the memories of the cold stone of the circle walls catch up with her. She can’t go back there, not again, not ever. But if she had never left it, there would be silence now. They wouldn’t be speaking to her. No. No, she won’t go back. She won’t—but then, where should she go? To the darkness? Down the deep, deep roads to her death? After all this time, all she has done, the people that she found and that found her, is this really what fate has in store for her? Oblivion? No. No, no, no, no!

A humming breaks the cacophony in her mind. It freezes time, pulls her out of the water and breathes life into her again. It is followed by… a lute? Opening the eyes she did not know she had closed, Eryn can hear the wind on the canopies around, and the lake water crashing against the rocks, pebbles rolling here and there. She feels the warmth of the sun, and turns her attention back to the hill she came from. She sees the smoke of a fire, and catches the smell of wild mushrooms on a pan. 

Eryn stands up, takes a minute to clean the dirt off her dress and fetches water. When she arrives back at the newly improvised camp, Zevran is resting against a tree. He sings an old Antivan song while his fingers dance on the strings of his lute—which he insisted on buying years ago, on their first trip to his home country. 

With his hair loose and his shirt half opened, he smiles at her, and Eryn can only catch a few words of the lyrics. Warm, light, glow, amor. She really has to practice her antivan. 

“Lunch is almost ready,” he says during a break in the song. “Are you alright, mi amor?”

Eryn can’t help but smile back. She puts the waterskins on the ground beside the rest of their stuff, and she feels lighter. Much lighter than what two litres of water should weigh. 

“I am,” she joins him by the fire and rests her head on his shoulder. Closing her eyes, she feels his arm moving ever so slightly as he continues playing the lute. “I am now.”