Chapter Text
Maerwald withered before her, and his trembling sigh of gratitude became the great winds of a storm, that swept up a hundred thousand souls and left behind only crumbling husks, corpses falling away into dust, into nothing. Abscission, a priestess whispered, somewhere in the past. The storm battered an even greater machine, that turned and turned and turned, until it didn’t, until it cracked apart and the living machine of the always-turning earth beneath it cracked too.
She watched, with eyes that would not shut. You are a Watcher now, an animancer whispered, from an age past. And a Watcher you will stay.
The cracks spread, carried on each groaning revolution, on the inexorable pull between surface and center, between spinning body of rock and whirling body of fire. The cracks spread, dark fissures fracturing the surface of incandescence, pulsing pathogens traveling the length of stone vein and crystal spine. Rot, the priestess said. The cracks spread, and the radiance collapsed in on itself with a silent scream, and the light of incalculable souls flickered and went out, another final, shivering sigh as the earth that held them shuddered to a limping halt.
The storm it created enveloped her next, and the cracks found her too, liquid light in stone veins and her veins. She clawed at her skin as if to rip them out, but theirs was the only light left, and she could not find the seams, the fault lines at which she could use the sharp folds of iron thought and will to cut herself free.
She could only watch.
But as the incandescence collapsed and screamed, its echoes were flung outward, and the shards embedded themselves into the ground, into her, full of hot stinging metal. Light spilled from her, from the shards, and the earth trembled beneath her, drinking hungrily from the overflow. Regrowth, the priestess said. Inexorable motion crawled forward and filled her up too, and her thoughts spun with it, as the crystal spine at her feet convulsed and swelled with wakefulness, with light.
Its light, her light, the light of a hundred thousand million souls. The light and its relentless motion, buried underneath the surface of the world, underneath her skin, and it was no longer skin, but the same incandescence that writhed and collapsed and expanded outward into a void in which she saw the reflection of her face, watching, changing, too unbearably luminescent to look at, and–
Wake up, Kit, a voice said.
Kit opened her eyes, which had shut after all, to another reflection.
The face that loomed over hers was translucent and nebulous, like the souls that only her eyes could see. It spilled gold at the edges and was too much like her own face, before it frowned and flickered. The not-her was replaced with a gaunt and hooded man, who frowned and flickered again and became a woman, terrible and radiant and alone, three reduced to one, the gold at her edges fracturing and dissolving.
Kit reached up on instinct, but it was only an apparition, and she jumped out of bed, scattering disgruntled animals. Whispers of Spring lay tucked away in a corner of the captain’s cabin, and the adra in its pommel pulsated with uneasy light.
But as soon as Kit lay a hand on the hilt, the light stabilized, flickering with its unending oscillations.
Kit breathed hard and attempted to gather her thoughts, as she drew the sword out of its sheath and gazed down at the adra, her eyes traveling the length of the blade.
Just a dream, she thought. And yet, when was it ever just anything, with her?
The deck rolled gently beneath her, carrying its passengers slowly and steadily towards Neketaka. Kit missed a solid and vast surface on which to plant her feet, then, so fierce and longing that the dream flooded the edges of her vision, dizzying wisps of stone and crystal in the corners of her eyes.
She swallowed and turned with sword in hand and beheld the apparition that stood beside the bed, stable now. It was the only light in the room, save for the moonlight slipping through the porthole. It was still a woman, a Dawnstar, shining and lone and bereft. But as Kit gazed at her and tried to regain her bearings, she blinked and saw the guttering flicker of something else within the Dawnstar, a recursive bend of being into the shape of a hooded man, into the shape of something faceless and formless and impossibly contorted to fit into mortal dimensions.
Are you alright? Eothas asked, oscillations of essence and concern vibrating beneath Kit’s fingers, in the hilt.
“The, ah– the dream,” Kit said, and she returned to the bed and sat on its edge, laying the sword across her lap. She studied her own hands and arms next, as if the cracks of light would still be there. The bed sank behind her, as one of the cats returned. “Did you see it?”
The Dawnstar remained motionless. Yes, Eothas said.
“Did it, um–?” Kit waved a hand over the pommel and the adra.
I believe so, Eothas said, and the Dawnstar’s head tilted as she regarded Kit with eyes of white fire. Dreams are not an uncommon reaction to a divine presence, but… this was different.
Kit’s insides swooped, a dreadful curiosity rising up like bile in her throat. “You had it too,” she said.
Yes, Eothas said softly. The faint light within the adra churned uneasily again, though not in a way that threatened to come apart at the makeshift seams.
It couldn’t have been anywhere close to morning, and they weren’t very far out from Ukaizo yet, but Kit wasn’t tired. The dream played itself out in her thoughts, again and again, and she wondered, in the lunatic fashion of nighttime, if she might find the cracks and the light when she peeled back a few layers of skin.
“You called me Kit,” she said instead.
The Dawnstar’s head tilted again. That is your name.
Her name. The name she chose, the only name that was hers and no one else’s. It hadn’t been there, in the dream. She hadn’t known herself. “You’ve only ever called me Watcher,” Kit said. She didn’t really mind. Many others called her by that title, but very few said it like he did.
The Dawnstar’s form wavered, though not in the manner of breaking apart. The sword was warm in Kit’s grip. You’ve kept track.
Of course she had. She kept and catalogued details out of habit. But Kit didn’t answer. She studied the sword in her lap, the broken pieces of many reforged into one, and she thought about how it felt, the molten shards of light piercing her skin. Dreams like this were always a harbinger of something, ever since her eyes had opened to the cycle of life and death.
The Dawnstar knelt, then, to catch her eyes, movements not quite fluid or human, face not quite solid. She flickered and guttered and became a hooded man, a faceless force, and they gazed up at Kit as sorrow rumbled beneath her palm. Kit didn’t meet their eyes, her gaze fixed on the adra.
I did this to you, Eothas said.
“Shut up,” Kit said at once, and now she glared back at the face that looked up into hers. As if she hadn’t crystallized him into this fractured shape in turn, as if she hadn’t wanted to. “It’s annoying. Your whole guilt thing.” In retrospect, Edér’s patience with her and her woes all these years had been wondrous. “I don’t want it.”
He already knew what she wanted, even though she herself was not sure where her wants began and ended. She wanted everything. She always had. Hel and Eora and the void above, Here and Beyond and everything In-Between, laid out for the walking, for the finding, for the knowing.
She was closer than she’d ever been, and the reason knelt before her, deferential, almost too bright to look at. Kit had been just as radiant, in the dream.
Be careful, Kit, Eothas said.
Kit scoffed. Something furry brushed against her ankles, as another cat crept back, out from under the bed. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.”
The amusement beneath her fingers was a flicker of glowing warmth against her palm. The Dawnstar rose to her feet once more and stood before Kit, an outline of light sketched into the darkness of the cabin. I suppose you won’t let it rest until morning.
Kit wasn’t tired, and it wasn’t normal. She wondered how long it would take for exhaustion to return. “Actually,” Kit said, if only to prove Eothas wrong, “it can wait.”
Amusement flared again, a warm tremor down the blade. The Dawnstar dissolved, but only in the gentle manner of sinking back into slumber.
Kit sheathed Whispers and set it down beside the bed, then coaxed the animals back and attempted to recapture sleep. She wasn’t very successful at it, but it was the principle of the thing, and it was, perhaps unfortunately, easier to relax with the sword resting close by.