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After had no pain.
Asterin had felt the flesh strip from her limbs, her bones sunder from within as her Yielding obliterated all. Had felt herself end, spiralling down into nothing as her long life winked out like a tired star in the endless galaxy.
Wasn’t death a sleep? The slow realisation that you were gone from the world, and why, like rousing from a particularly deep slumber. There was no such obscurity for Asterin Blackbeak. The moment she awoke on something soft and smelling of earth, so familiar yet so foreign, she knew how she had come to be here. As natural as the quiet breaths she sucked into her dead lungs.
There was no pain. All the wounds she had collected from the days of the staggering, ferocious final battle were wiped clean. Not afraid, yet not daring to open her eyes, Asterin had run her fingers over the smooth, bare skin of her arms. All her rent, gore-flecked armour was gone. And what remained was not a bump, not a scar. Not the barest whisper of the aches, the stings or pains she had borne day in and day out on that Ornythian plain, a cut here, a sprain there, up until her final moments. The Thirteen’s last stand.
They had assembled for that last time, drenched in the blue blood of their sister-enemies and the black of their worst nightmares. No man, darghan, rukhin, Fae, Crochan or otherwise, could stop that witch tower. The path that turret of death beat to the stained Terrasen walls was one that none survived. They all knew it, with one look at their fearless Wing Leader’s fair face. Sorrel. Vesta. Faline. Fallon. Edda. Briar. Thea. Kaya. Linnea. Ghislaine. Imogen.
And they all knew, when Asterin turned to them as Manon occupied her gaze elsewhere, sword still dripping blood. Battered, bruised, broken bones but not broken in spirit. Not yet.
Manon had always hated that about Asterin. That her emotions ruled her head, rather than logic- strange, for a born killer, forged into a living lethal weapon by scars and steel and a Matron’s iron will. It had gotten her into a wealth of trouble over the centuries- Asterin’s crooked nose could attest to the amount of times Manon had been forced to discipline her. She’d never apologise for feeling.
But there was a sliver of humanity in witches, too, that Manon’s grandmother had forgotten. When her cousin could sacrifice her title of Heir to save Asterin. When they could put aside all the bad blood and give it all for the Crochans allegiance. When they could fight alongside Fae and men alike the the slimmest hope of ridding the world of a great evil, despite the fathomless cost.
That was worth fighting for. That was worth dying for, if their unfaltering Wing Leader and Queen could lay it all on the line for their future.
At the end of all things, facing defeat as death and sorrow sang their maudlin melody of metal blood and screams all around them, she hadn’t even needed to say the words to her coven, her sisters. Too many years together, and all could be communicated with just a glance.
Witches weren’t pious, but Asterin had prayed that Manon would forgive her Second for this final act of defiance. That she could see their sacrifice was for love, and loyalty.
Narene had flown like the gates of hell lay behind her, her eleven wingmates in formation behind as they charged through the sky. Impenetrable, unbreakable. In all their practice manoeuvres in the Ferian Gap or around Morath, Asterin had never seen the Thirteen move like this. An arrow of iron death speeding straight towards witches, Matron and tower, as Manon’s coven made their last stand.
There was feeling. Sorrow, mostly. But overlaid by determination, and courage as sweet as the blood of their enemies of Asterin’s lips, even as another part of her shattered every time she felt a coven member fall behind her, not to rise again. Her brethren, her sisters, swarmed by wyverns and witches, but laying down their lives for no nobler a cause.
Manon’s last, wavering scream of raw grief had burned in Asterin’s ears, but she had urged Narene on. Her beloved wyvern’s aim had always been true. A final whisper of farewell, a last caress of fingers upon gleaming blue scales before Narene too met her end, dashed against the tower’s face so Asterin could jump free, tears streaming from her eyes.
There was no nobler way to go than to do so for a better world. For the home they had never stepped foot in, for the Wing Leader who had sacrificed it all, faced down her own Matron all those months ago for the black letters that had been branded onto Asterin’s womb. The rendering of Asterin’s might on that the final witch tower and all, friend or foe, who battled upon it. The sheer force of their twelve bodies Yielding had ripped at her immortal body until naught remained, summoning all of her essence, all of herself into one final gift. One last act of love, of loyalty. For a land they had never set foot in, for a time of peace they had never known. For Manon. There was no other she would rather have died for.
Maybe wherever she was, she’d see them again. Hopefully Manon would not soon join them, as much as the sorrow of their parting shredded Asterin’s heartstrings.
Asterin .
A silent call flicks open her keen eyes, as traitorous tears leak from her eyes. A forest canopy whispers above her head, flickers of blue sky laced between thick foliage.
She wished for clothes, then. Not for discomfort- the temperature, if there was one, was not uncomfortable. But something familiar, in this new plane of happening. Her sleek black flying leathers, unmarked by battle, blinked into existence on her body.
Strange, she mused. The Afterworld wasn’t some hellscape, after all. So, where was she? Surely some god would have a few bones to pick with her, after the trail of blood she’d left in her wake for century upon century.
Asterin .
Louder, this time. There’s a tug within her chest that startled her. An unseen thread stretched from her chest to someplace unknown, and someone or something was pulling on the other end not painfully, but enough to to make her aware.
There’s an inkling. But she can’t hope. She won’t.
Asterin .
Asterin’s still heart seemed to thunder a beat. Ever so slowly, she turns around.
The cabin she’d know blind takes form within the embrace of the overgrown trees, not even a hundred feet away. The ramshackle roof, the neat boxed windows, the lacquered railings she had helped to cut down and chop into shape, while she was carving a new ironwood broom of her own after that dreadful storm.
It had to be a vision. It couldn’t be real. No, no- she couldn’t give herself this slim, false hope.
One silent step, and then another.
He was wearing brown. He always did, better to blend in with the undergrowth, and now sat on the porch stoop of the weathered home, leaning against the boarded front wall. The small whetstone he held in callused, worker’s palms rasped against the hatchet perched between his carelessly spread knees, and somewhere underneath his breeches, his left would have a small pink scar he’d gotten from a boar they’d hunted together. A strong brow, thick head of hazelnut hair and a long, straight nose, dark eyelashes tilted down as he focused on the task at hand.
He looks exactly as he had, the very day they had met- frozen in youth, much like Asterin herself. But if she had’ve been breathing, she would’ve forgotten how, staring unabashedly at the object of her deepest, darkest dreams. The one regret, the one wrong choice that had haunted her every second of every day despite thousands of other missteps in her immortal life.
Was this some sick joke, to see what she could have had? Which god would be so cruel?
Unconsciously, she brushes a hand over where the brand should have been beneath her clothes. Yet without even feeling her bare skin, the realisation booms within her.
It’s gone.
She’s silent, incapacitated by the very sight of him when he looks up. She’s close enough for the reaction. Close enough to see his eyes widen, and a swallow descend down the elegant column of his vulnerable human throat. How often she had marked it, gently, when they lay together. But she’s not thinking of that right now, frozen in the path of his electrifying blue gaze. His mere presence seemed to wound and heal her, all at once. It’s more terrifying than anything she’s ever faced.
But he doesn’t move. Neither does she. The hundred feet of space between them could be a metre, or a mile. No blinking.
Looking upon his fair face is like holding a breath, after so many centuries apart. Yet for a moment, Asterin worries. That his solid eyebrows would furrow, and his gentle mouth, so good at whispering her name, kissing her skin, smiling so sweetly that it crumbled her cold heart just a little, would tighten.
Witches didn’t feel fear. But as Asterin stands before him, her hunter, her lost love, she is afraid. Afraid, that it truly was too little, too late. That this was some sick punishment, to face the only man who she had loved, and left, too cowardly to return with the truth of her failure.
He got to his feet with those well-muscled thighs that could chase down a buck, push him up a tree, or provide the perfect seat for her on passionate nights. The hatchet fell to the floor with a dull thud, forgotten by those hands that fired arrows faster than a blink, skinned animals with a precision even she couldn’t muster, and once, many moons ago, worshipped her body with a vigor and intensity she’d never forgotten. The man who had grown old waiting for her to come home, and she never had.
Asterin.
The sound of his voice matches the one in her head. A weak whine escapes her, despite her sturdy stance. And she knows what those sky-coloured eyes are telling her, what she’d dreamt of for thousands of lonely nights.
A high voice “Papa!”
Then a child slammed through the door, smock stained with childish disregard, floorboards bumping beneath bare feet as she badgers him with rushed, stumbling words. He smiles, so tenderly Asterin’s heart breaks clean in two as he takes the tiny girl’s soft hand in his larger, roughened one.
But in the quiet, noticing his stare, the small girl turns her blonde head.
She couldn’t be older than seven, maybe eight, face softened with youth. The very blood in Asterin’s veins seems to still, this time.
She had his eyes.
There’s a long moment. Another knowing. It feels like another Yielding, except this time, Asterin’s very soul is disintegrating into small flakes, burning ashes floating away on a cool summer breeze.
There’s a beacon of recognition burning in two sets of blue eyes, and two wide, genuine smiles that make her eyes burn relentlessly with unshed tears.
But her hair. And her nose.
Asterin.
A breath of innocent wonder. ‘Mama,’ her little girl breathes.
A choked sob leaves her lips before Asterin can stop it, as she staggers with relief. No iron nails, but soft, shiny human cuticles. And straight, blunt, white human teeth.
Her legs were running, running, running, tears blinding her eyes as Asterin galloped across the thicket towards her forever, waiting on a cabin’s creaky porch in the dappled forest sun.