Archive of Our Own

You pay to have Teir Evron restored. It's not exactly out of the goodness of your heart, but you make a large donation to Oldsong too, most of which goes to the priests of Hylea who remain displaced because of the dragon you didn't kill. Hopefully it's enough for the gods to look the other way, if they happen to be paying attention, and if the many happy blessings of the priests are any indication, Hylea's favor resounds throughout your life's song. The souls of the Hollowborn now reside in their intended bodies, so you think that's probably true.

You maintain ties between Caed Nua and Twin Elms and make allies of the brîshalgwin, learning what they know. You carry the soul of a Builder and speak fluent Glanfathan, though you don't mention that you learned it from an exile long ago.

All in all, your name is spoken favorably in Eir Glanfath, and no one protests when all you ask in return is to make pilgrimages to Teir Evron.

"Back again, Old One?" a voice asks, when you stand at the foot of the tower for the first time since you and your friends had dug your weary way out. The passage down to Sun in Shadow stands hidden but repaired, and you stand unmoving before the entrance to the tower. You feel more than see the delemgan sisters emerge from the towering elms on either side of you, until all of a sudden the concentric rings of Rîhenwn's eyes are boring into you. "Come to chase another soul?"

You turn your gaze first to one, then the other. Neither of the delemgan are hostile, and neither stand quite in your way. "Are you going to stop me?"

"Not at all," Sîdha says. "You killed the defiler and undid much of the evil he wrought." She extends a root-woven approximation of a hand towards the tower. "Go on, Old One. Some might say that it is your right."

"But the slayer of Woedica's favored does not come to claim any birthright, does she?" Rîhenwn says, circling you slowly, and though her voice is as caustic as you remember, you get the sense that you've risen in her estimation since the first time you'd stood here. "Why have the trees brought you here this time?"

You follow her movements calmly, but you don't move with her. "Why don't you ask them?"

Rîhenwn smiles. Her teeth are root-like and sharp, and as she completes her circle, her head swivels to follow the arching roots that jut out from the ground to join the great trunks. "Well," she says, returning to her sentinel's position across from Sîdha and returning her attention to you, "who are we to argue with the elms?"

Sîdha shakes her head, a swaying of thin, twisting boughs. "You would argue with the sunlight that sustains you, sister, if you thought it amusing."

But as you step past them, offshoots like roots snake around your arm -- not tight enough to hold you back, but warning enough to make you pause. You look back, and Sîdha withdraws her hand.

"Be careful, Old One--" Sîdha says.

"-- if you mean to steal something from the gods," Rîhenwn finishes.

You go to answer, something hot on your tongue about how you aren't afraid of pretenders and you'll take what you please, and then you let it die in your throat. The warning isn't lightly offered, and you nod instead, before making your way to the hidden passageway. With your cipher's senses, you tug at the soul traces left by Thaos and uncover the mechanisms for opening it, and then you disappear below.

With no rubble to dig through, with no injured and weary comrades in the aftermath of a long battle and a longer journey before it, the trip down to Breith Eaman takes much less time than the trip up from Sun in Shadow had. Still, impatience has you setting a pace just short of hurrying. Your thoughts tumble about in your mind, whirling and restless, and their agitation spills over into your feet.

Your torch lights the way. Long-cold braziers line the winding, timeworn tunnel, meant to glow with something beyond fire, but no light beyond yours exists until you draw nearer to Sun in Shadow. The pendant at your neck responds to the presence of adra veins, its own adra taking on a greater sheen the closer you get. Soon enough, the faint, cold glow of the veins soaks the tunnel, and soon enough, you emerge into the city, into the network of underground caverns more massive than Twin Elms above.

You take a moment to extinguish your torch and tuck it away into your pack, and then your tumbling, tense thoughts are occupied with finding the way to Breith Eaman. Last time, you hadn't come at the prison from this direction, and it takes you a few turnarounds to find a way in. You are so engrossed in the search, in quieting your restless mind with it, that you are mostly unprepared to actually enter, to find the only occupied column of adra right in front of you.

The soul prison looms, cold and silent, adra cut off from the flow of the world like a severed limb. A sensation of wrong wrong wrong scrapes across your mind upon mental contact with it, sending prickles down your spine. Only the spark of light within it seems right. Essence, small but steady, burning at its center as if to replace the larger whole from which the adra has been cut off. Essence that draws you back as inexorably as all souls are drawn ever downward.

Iovara's surprise flows into your mind as you approach, and when her spirit coalesces into the form of a woman standing before you, just outside the adra prison, her mouth hangs slightly open. "... You're here," she says, as you come to a stop before her.

You gaze at her, her face beautiful and scarred and soft as she regards you, and you realize that you have no idea what to say. Somehow, in all of your deliberating over this, you never managed to think of a satisfying way to start the conversation. Hello, I'm here to visit because I think I'm still in love with you? Hope you don't mind? Ridiculous.

"I had Teir Evron restored," is what you say. A simple fact, woefully inadequate in light of all that you want to say, but easy and careful. "I have implicit blessing to disappear under it whenever I want."

It's not much of an explanation, but Iovara's translucent eyes grow warm. She considers the words with a slight tilt of her head, then folds her arms, thoughtful. "And why would you want to do that?"

It's soft and teasing, and you're seized with a very old desire to sigh with it. You remember that about her clearly, as if it were only yesterday -– approaching everything with a question, and pulling answers out of anything she could. You shrug, still cautious, even though Iovara doesn't seem opposed. "If you're going to stay down here," you say, "I thought you could use some company every now and then."

It's all you can do to keep from fidgeting. You feel as though you might burst with tension. You're half expecting Iovara to tell you not to bother, and you aren't sure why.

Iovara grows very still. Only her arms move, unfolding to hang rather uncertainly at her side. "You want to visit me."

You mirror her stillness, as if you could ruin this with the wrong move. "If," you swallow and nod, "if you'd like that."

She regards you solemnly. You don't feel any objection from her, any rejection, but something about her is troubled. You don't delve any deeper into her thoughts, even though a part of you is desperate to, if only to know that you aren't making a fool of yourself. You quiet that part of you, fiercely. "What makes you think that I wouldn't?" Iovara asks.

"I'm not the same person you knew," you say. You try to quell the immediately uncharitable thoughts -– how someone like Iovara could fall for the spineless coward you'd once been, could still love her and forgive her. You haven't. "I didn't know if that would... change things for you."

"You continue to surprise me," Iovara says. "You are so very different from her. I would have thought that it would change things for you."

You could tell her that it has, that you're just here because you don't think she deserves to sit in loneliness for eternity. You could tell her all sorts of things to offset the truth, and maybe she wouldn't believe you, but you know that, for all of her dedication to truth, she wouldn't push the issue, either. But you say, "It hasn't," and you push the words out before fear can chase them back down. Your head spins, dizzy, when they're free.

Iovara's eyes grow soft again. Her hand makes as if to reach out, to trace along the lines of your face. You feel her energy ghost across your skin, feel the way the edges of your soul and hers are tangled, interwoven. You are connected to her, and a little too much of your past has irreversibly bled over into you, because all you want to do is follow those threads. But you don't mind. Far from it, and it takes effort not to lean into the touch and break the delicate illusion. "I am glad to hear that," Iovara says quietly. "But it isn't fair to you. You still have a lifetime ahead of you, and many more after that."

"And I'll live my life," you say. "With occasional very long walks to get here."

Iovara smiles. She looks at you intently, as if trying to read things in your face, your soul, and then she sighs, a musical, affectionate sound. "You want to know if it changes things for me," she says. "I don't think so. I see your soul, and I know it, and I love it. I always have. That doesn't change." Something in you tentatively relaxes, as Iovara continues. "I don't know this new you very well. My Amanara was a follower, you see. Brilliant and righteous, but always looking for the right thing to throw all of that brilliance behind."

Slowly, you lower yourself to the ground, letting your pack slip off of your back and sitting cross-legged in front of the adra prison. The projection of Iovara mirrors your movements as she speaks, and you think about the kind of interplay it requires -- a spirit called forth by your power, manifested more so in your mind's perception than in the world, its will transmitting to you and then reflecting back in its movements, your thoughts tangling and manifesting in two different languages and no language at all. It's as close as you'll ever be to her.

"I think that is why our great conflict caused her so much anguish," Iovara says, as she folds her legs beneath her. "Should she follow me? The gods? Thaos? Something else entirely? But you... you are no follower. I can see that you answer to no god or kith, only to your own mind and heart. You are so very different from her," she says again, soft and wondering. "But it tells me that your soul is free. That Amanara forged strength for herself, even if it took your emergence for it to fully manifest."

"She betrayed you out of cowardice," you say. I betrayed you is on the tip of your tongue, but you bite down on it. She isn't you, as more than one person has tried to tell you, even though you still wake up sometimes, shaking with everything she ever did. "It would have been one thing if she'd been under Thaos's thumb at the time, but she wasn't. She was with you, safe. And she still did it. That isn't strength."

"There's more than one way to be under someone's control," Iovara says.

"It's no excuse," you counter, because someone's going to hold your past self accountable. "Not when it hurts someone else."

Iovara smiles sadly, fondly, and looks at you with reminiscence in her eyes and in her thoughts. "I have missed this," she says. "Talking with you. Amanara, too, was always ready to argue the point. And perhaps you are right that it isn't an excuse. But I can accept it, particularly when I see how her regret led to someone like you."

Her voice is fond and admiring. Any and all words die in your throat, and your face grows hot.

"So it doesn't change things for me," Iovara says. "You have the best of Amanara in you, and the rest that is Kit is... someone I would like to get to know."

You sit very still for a moment, and you know that every bit of your nerves and your relief must be apparent to her, but she says nothing about it, only watches you kindly. You don't know why waiting for her answer had left you more scared than facing down a dragon. Maybe because you've never really done this before, not a kind of reciprocation given wholly. Not a kind of reciprocation that will always be just out of reach. "I'd like that too."

"Then come as many times as you like, my love," Iovara says warmly. "I'll be here."

You nod. You don't realize that one of your hands has wrapped around your adra pendant until your relax your grip on it, and its copper edges no longer dig a little too deeply into your skin. You flex your hand and lower it, trying to keep both of them still in your lap, but you've never been good at that. You should have brought something to tinker with. It's a note to make for the future.

Absent that, your mind starts wandering in that way it does -- wholly focused on Iovara, of course, but more inclined to pick up the stray threads of her thoughts, though as always you refrain from looking too deeply. "I'm sorry I didn't come back after Thaos was dealt with," you say. "I had my people to think about. It was... a rough battle."

Iovara shakes her head. She sits perfectly composed across from you, hands in her lap like yours, but much more still, as only a spirit can be. "And tending to them was important. I understand." You feel her interest stirring, reaching for you and examining you, and her eyes look you up and down. "Only great loyalty could have led someone to venture to this place with nothing to gain. Another way in which you are different from your past. Amanara followed, and now others follow you."

"It's... a first," you say. "I'm still figuring it out."

The interest in both thought and eyes turns appreciative. "You carry it well," Iovara says. "And it looks good on you."

You flush again, and amusement glitters in Iovara's eyes, but it's only teasing and gentle, and she says nothing further. You think that maybe you're still waiting for her to change her mind and tell you to leave, and that's why you can't relax, but there's nothing of that in any part of her. Only a kind of caution, but its threads lead back to you, and that's probably because you sit like there are spikes beneath you.

Well... as your mentor had always said, the mind follows the body. You stretch out, leaning back on your hands instead and forcing your shoulders to loosen up. "I know," you say. "I've already gotten marriage proposals."

Iovara smiles and tilts her head. "And yet I'm the lucky one who holds your attention." And she's definitely better with words than you are, because while you're still trying to figure out what to say to that, she adds, "I'm not going to ask for your hand, but may I ask you a few questions?" Her interest resurges, a hungry kind of curiosity -- both an aching desire to know you and a lonely desire to engage with the only person here. You would have come here to see her even if you weren't still hopelessly in love with her, you think. "There are some things about our last meeting that I have wondered about, since you left."

She's beautiful, you think again, with her ghostly eyes intent. "Anything," you say.

Iovara's back straightens a bit, a natural movement like settling into a long-missed routine. "When I told you the truth of the gods," she says, "your reaction was not what I expected. Not from someone carrying Amanara's soul. You seemed... eager. I would say satisfied, even."

You find yourself mirroring her again. Your shoulders are no longer quite so stiff with nerves, but you hold yourself a little prouder. "I mean, it changes everything I know," you say, and you can't quite keep the exhilaration out of your voice. "I've thought for a while now that there's... something more out there. Beyond the gods we know. And now that I know what they are... that door is wide open, more than it's ever been."

Iovara nods slowly as you talk. You feel the way your words fascinate her instantly, and how pleased she is to hear them, and you'd be lying if you said you didn't enjoy it, just a bit. "And what if you find nothing beyond the gods?" she asks. "The Engwithans didn't. What then?"

"What did they know?" you ask scornfully. "Did they leave this planet?"

Iovara smiles and raises an expectant eyebrow.

It's hard to put the things that drive you into words, because it isn't Galawain's seeking or Wael's secrets -- especially not now that you know what they really stand for. Maybe it's something in between, something a little too accepting of the unresolved and a little too certain of what lies ahead for either path. "I know I won't find nothing," you say, choosing your words carefully, "because I could spend my entire life searching and not understand a tenth of the universe. What I know is that I'll find some answers, and then I'll die with a hundred unanswered questions. And that's fine. But the unknown, by definition, can never be nothing. The Engwithans were arrogant fools, to stop and think they had it all figured out."

Iovara likes that answer too, for the way it turns the question on its head, but she says, "And what if the unknown remains just that, and there are no more answers to be found?"

You shrug. That, you're less at ease with, but: "That's statistically improbable. I have too many questions."

Her mouth twists in a way that only just conceals a laugh. "That is something you share with Amanara," Iovara says. "But she could not bear a question without answer."

"That's why the question of the gods stayed with her, I think," you say. That's what you'd been able to glean at the end of your long road to Sun in Shadow -- the same question always on your mind, the same desire to dig to the heart of all things, but anguished and betrayed, instead of curious and driven. "Why it drove me to Thaos again and again." And maybe that is why you are the way you are, seeking for things beyond gods, even if you're loath to owe anything to her.

You feel Iovara's attention shift, redirected. "And in your pursuit of these questions," she says, her face and her thoughts a little more grave, "Thaos would have been an obstacle. What did you do with him?"

You hesitate. You wouldn't do it differently, given the chance, but you don't remember enough of Iovara to know how she'll react. What does it look like, in light of all of the terrible things that Amanara ever did? "I... destroyed him."

Iovara's gaze is pensive as she arrives at understanding -- and further questions. "You shattered his soul," she says softly, and you don't think she's bothered by it, exactly, but you don't know how you look in her eyes. She doesn't know, either, and she is someone who needs to know, needs to figure it out. Not unlike you. She studies you, her face smooth except for the scar striped across, but her thoughts are a little more unsettled. "Is that because he was in your way?"

"He was in my way," you agree, because you're not going to lie, even if it makes the shape of you more unsettling, to her, "and I was angry, and I wanted to make sure that he could never hurt anyone again. It was a... safeguard, equal to the threat."

Iovara absorbs these parts of you and studies them too, and you think a new picture of you forms in their wake. You can almost see it beyond the border where you bleed into her, but you stop yourself from looking any further in. "Safeguard," Iovara murmurs, as if in realization. "You look to the future."

"I didn't always," you say, because it seems important. "Before this, I was... aimless. I couldn't hold on to anything long enough to see a future. But I have a home now. I have a-- a child to raise, and friends, and power and influence. I have to look to the future. I have to protect it." Growing understanding threads through the point where your soul and Iovara's connect, and a sense of familiarity with it, like things have slotted into place. "Was Amanara like that?"

"Future-oriented?" Iovara asks, reminiscence creeping back into her voice and into the point where your souls twine together. "Oh, yes. Perhaps too much. Her fear of the future only made her struggle worse."

"I'm not afraid of it," you say, and this time, you don't hesitate. "But I won't let anyone threaten it."

Across your connection, it's as if a new set of eyes looks at you, or the same eyes through a different lens. You think it's mostly a positive thing. "You have carried a great many futures with you, and I have no doubt that you will continue to do so," Iovara says. You know where her thoughts turn before she voices them, as the threads light up in your Watcher's eye. "What did you do with the souls that Thaos stole?"

This answer is a little less fraught, but you still contemplate it for a few moments before you speak. Your reasoning hadn't been simple, and it had been rather disjointed at the time, pieced together in a haze of your Awakened memories growing worse and worse. "I returned them to their bodies," you say. "Hylea agreed to help me reach this place even though I didn't do what she wanted. Talking to her... it wasn't so bad, and she suggested restoring the souls."

"Interesting," Iovara says, and she dips her head at your chest, where the adra wheel hangs. "I would have thought you'd turn to Berath."

"I've... always respected Berath," you say. "Or I did, once." The gods aren't exactly sitting high in your estimation, these days, and you'll be happy if you never have to talk to any of them again. "But... I don't know. They weren't what I thought."

Another little smile plays at the corners of Iovara's mouth, almost mischievous. "Is it presumptuous to assume that you spoke to as many gods as would listen to you?"

"I didn't know which ones to trust," you say, and Iovara's amusement is warm against your thoughts. "I got a much better idea of that, afterwards."

"But you would not do something just because a god suggested it," Iovara says, like she's known you all her life. She has and she hasn't, but she seems to be closing in on some understanding of the parts unknown to her. "Or because one appealed to you more than another."

You shake your head. "I thought about it for a long time. About sending the souls back to the Wheel. But restoring them was the only way I could fix some of the harm that had been caused." Not erasing it, no. Nothing could do that. But some harm reduction had been better than none and had been better served by giving back to kith than by giving anything to the gods. "And... there was someone I'd made a promise to. She was afraid that her child would be Hollowborn, but... I couldn't find a way to help her. And then I realized that I had no idea if her baby had been born hollow or not. But this way, well... she stood a chance." You shrug, a little helplessly. "So... maybe it was for one person after all."

Iovara's head tilts again as she regards you, and it's as if you are caught in the spotlight of her gaze. You don't mind being there, even if it makes your fingers twitch. "You think bold, even when you think small," Iovara says, like she's presenting her findings to you. "You destroy one person to protect a thousand others from the harm he could cause, and you undo the harm caused to a thousand for the sake of one person." She smiles, in a way that leaves you feeling shaky and centered all at once. "You restore a sacred site just to ensure that one person isn't lonely. It would appear that you are a woman of grand gestures."

You face grows warm yet again, and your eyes slide to the soul prison just beyond her. It wouldn't be hard to crack open, you think. You'd need some time to study it and the empty ones nearby, but you could do it in a few trips. "That's... I wanted to ask you something, actually." Your hand creeps back up to your pendant, fingernails tapping against the copper. "Do you... want to be free of this place? Not back the Wheel, I mean." Your fingers trace over the adra at your neck. "You don't need a body to house a soul."

Iovara's face grows serious, her scar more pronounced. She knows what you mean, because the threads of your connected souls spill over into each other, but a knot of reluctance twists somewhere in the convergence. You know that she stays here in defiance of the gods, but what you're thinking wouldn't be giving into them. The opposite, in fact, and you don't understand until she speaks. "This prison was made to hold fast," she says, "by the gods, and by people whose knowledge still outstrips the world they left behind, in many respects."

"Yeah, well," you say, "they hadn't met me." And Iovara smiles, a quick, sudden thing, like it's been unexpectedly tugged out of her. "Besides, I've seen their animats,” you continue. "And I've seen better made by animancers today. I... had a friend whose soul was attached to an automaton. It's not an ideal process, but animancy keeps improving every day. I could make something like that for you. Some kind of artificial body." The housing of kith souls in things outside of kith bodies isn't quite your forte, but you could learn. You learn a new thing every week or three, when you get bored.

That piques Iovara's interest. Her eyes drift to the adra pendant around your neck, studying it, before lifting to meet your gaze again. But that reluctance churns somewhere within her, unabated. "There is still the matter of the gods," she says, and you don't understand why she treads carefully around them now. "Woedica may not take an intrusion on her justice lightly, particularly when you have already thwarted her."

"Oh, fuck the gods," you say, more to let off steam than anything.

Another quick smile is drawn out of Iovara, but her caution bubbles just underneath. She gives you a solemn look, and you feel her desire to impress the gravity of the situation upon you. "Their power is not inhibited by the fact that they are constructs of kith," she says. "I do not wish to see you suffer for my sake."

And then you get it, and your heart thumps painfully in your chest with it, so much that it drowns out your answer before it can leave your mouth. But you swallow everything you could say about how Amanara didn't care if Iovara suffered. You still don't understand her forgiveness, but you're not going to keep arguing the point, at least not right now. Some arguments are well worth the trouble, but some will only ever go in circles, and you think you have a sense of which ones are which, with her.

"Then... what if there was another way?" you say, and your stomach lurches with anticipatory loss even before you say it. "I think I could... disintegrate your soul." It's an achingly final end for someone you've known for centuries and yet only for moment, and you don't know if that loss would ever fully ebb in this life. But this isn't about you. "I wouldn't be stealing anything from Woedica. You'd cease to exist, and you'd be free without needing to repent. Free of the Wheel and the gods."

Iovara looks old, then. Old and tired, and this time, her hesitance is not entirely centered on the gods. You think that maybe they hardly even matter anymore, that she's been clinging to something else all this time, and that to let it go is inconceivable. "Like you did to Thaos?" she asks.

"Not at all," you say, and perhaps it had been vengeance too. You'd been very, very angry. You'd made it hurt. You want to say: I would never hurt you, and perhaps you, Kit, wouldn't, but Amanara would, and so the words stay stuck behind your teeth. "For you, it'd be like going to sleep."

Iovara sits contemplative and troubled. Her eyes glimmer with thought, her hair hangs like you could reach out and touch it, the scar on her face is old and raw both. The things that betray her ghostly nature are the translucency and absolute stillness of her form, and the fact that she doesn't quite ring in your senses like a soul housed in a body. Her eyes are distant, her thoughts turned inward, and you don't listen to what dwells beyond your connection to her.

At the horizon where the two of you meet, you sense an unrest, a war between exhaustion and determination caught in a perpetual twilight. But you don't say a thing. It's for her to decide, and you to offer.

Iovara's gaze re-focuses on you, and softness takes root again, crinkling at the corners of her eyes, smoothing out the harshness of her scar. "I would like to think on it," she says. "And now that you have a path here, I would like to share your company for a while yet." She smiles, fond and wondering. "If you'd like."

"Of course," you say softly, and you become very interested in your surroundings, then, though the only good thing here sits before you. The adra all around is wrong, wrong in a way that digs claws into your spine. Even the living veins threading throughout the city aren't quite right. You don't know what it is yet, but maybe you will one day. You drag your eyes back to Iovara and clear your throat. "I'm still going to work on that artificial body," you say. "And if you don't want it... maybe I'll stick my soul into it instead, when I get old. The idea of going back to the Wheel has become very unappealing."

The war raging just beyond where your soul meets with hers goes quiet. Iovara looks at you with something very much like love, and the ever-present instinct to run and drift and move itches somewhere beneath your skin, because you've never loved anyone before, not like this, not because the past had bled too much into you. Not because someone with a few simple words had been able to illuminate a vast unexplored space beyond the divine and you'd wanted to listen until the Wheel turned to dust.

But you're not running anymore. You decided that as soon as you claimed a keep and loved the people who found themselves in your orbit with a frightening kind of intensity.

"It would give you more time to pursue those questions of yours," Iovara says.

Something so very fond squeezes in your chest. "And still find only half the answers I want."

The thing in your chest is mirrored in Iovara's eyes, in her thoughts. "But that is the appeal of turning one's eyes to a universe beyond gods, is it not?"

The unknown in all of its glory, a macrocosm to the microcosm of the woman before you. She will always be just out of your reach, but you have a cipher's ear and a Watcher's eye, and that brings you closer than most to things outside of a kith's ken. "I think," you say, "that it's almost worthy of worship all on its own." You frown, and her words from the first-last time you'd met echo in your memories. "You know, I've never really thought of it as a faith until now."

"Truth, and the universe," Iovara says, mischievous again. "We've certainly picked gods that will never answer us back."

"They'd be less appealing if they did," you say, and Iovara laughs. It's a beautiful sound, that rings in your head throughout the rest of your conversation, that echoes when you bid her the second farewell out of many, that follows you even after you start the long journey home.