Chapter Text
“I am enough. I am strong enough. I am kind enough. I am. I am enough. ” A’alish stood looking into the bathroom mirror with his hands resting on the washbasin. He no longer sounded like he was trying to convince himself of anything in saying these things, but it had become habitual after a year of it. Two years ago he’d appeared as a short, oaken sylvari woman with briar-like hair and grey bark-like skin. Now he was as tall as his Magister, a man who stood at six-foot-six, and his body was a patchwork of the old form and the new. Now the old grey bark sprawled across fresh, smooth green-yellow bark like an ugly rash. A quarter of his face was still haphazardly grey, but thin delicate branches like that of a willow had replaced the briar-like hair, and his form was decidedly masculine. His body was well on its way to his idea of perfection.
He touched his face, tugging on the grey bark, hoping to see more of that fresh yellow beneath it, but there was nothing new today. Thurston had laughed when he’d seen him do it the first time and compared it to looking for new facial hair.
It took me five years to actually look right, the man had said. It’s been less than two years for you. And you spent a year unconscious for it. Give it time.
But he didn’t want to give it time. He wanted to look right, and he wanted to look right then and there. With a huff, he resisted picking at the grey bark and pushed away from the basin. Even if he looked awkwardly slapped together with part of his body still being that of the grey woman and progressively more of him becoming the yellow-green man he wanted to be, he felt a hell of a lot better about himself. After all, he could see now a man in the mirror looking back at him. He stepped away with a smile to finish readying for the day.
It was winter in Lornar’s Pass, and a heavy snow blanketed the ground outside of the Priory, but he felt no chill when he stepped out. Nehma Brokenhammer was a charr forgemaster, and even in the cold mornings when the sun had barely risen, her station was always warm. She had become one of A’alish’s first friends at the Priory and had made both the weapons he carried and the armor he wore. He paused a moment to watch her work, as she fanned the coals of the furnace to bring it to temperature.
His hand wandered to the knife resting on his lower back-- it was a specific tool meant to catch the incoming blade of another duelist’s sword, and she had been the one to make it for him. And it had caused her a great deal of frustration, as Thurston had hovered for the entirety of its creation nitpicking at the form of it. He didn’t know why the magister had taken him so fully under his wing, but he was grateful for it. He’d brought him home. Given him a home.
A’alish was still lost in thought and smiling when the smith looked up, saw him, and jabbed her hand out to an empty bucket.
“If you can stand to watch, you can stand to help. Go fill that with snow.”
“For you, Nehma? I would do two.” He lifted the empty bucket, grabbed a second one, and headed towards the stairs where he could start filling the buckets. He was packing the snow down hard in the first bucket when he heard a sound like rolling thunder break through the clear sky and rumble through his chest, but unlike thunder, it hurt. It sounded wrong. He looked up, already facing the east, and saw a massive violet shadow on the horizon. It seemed to inch across the sky, but he knew, logically, something that large and that far away was moving impossibly fast.
“Nehma!” He shouted. “Nehma!” But he needn’t have. Members of the Priory were already pouring out to see the source of the noise, some of them excited but most of them horrified.
“Kralkatorrik’s awake...” “First Jormag and Primordus, then Zhaitan, now this?” “How many are there?” “Theoretically, seven.” “There’s MORE?”
A’alish watched the violet shadow pass over the horizon before turning back to the Priory. To the smith. Nehma was standing with her tongs hanging limply from her hand, her jaw agape in horror. He darted through the swiftly growing crowd to her.
“The... the Citadel is that way. My homeland...” She dropped the hammer to grab onto A’alish’s shoulder, but she did not look away. “That dragon bastard just flew over my homeland... I have to go. I have to go home. I need to know--”
“Nehma!” He grabbed her wrist. “I’ll come with you.”
“No. Other charr will come with me. You will keep doing your job. Protecting your team from the dragons and learning from the past. Besides,” she scowled. “The Black Citadel is about to be flooded with people. We don’t need a bunch of clueless outsiders mucking around.”
He wanted to wince, but he held himself still. “Well I. I’ll be waiting. I look forward to when you come back. I hope no one you care about is hurt.” He had no idea what to say, but he was fairly certain it was something like that.
“I might not come back.” She sighed, her breath fogging like smoke in front of her. “There’s no telling what happened, and if my people need me more than the Priory does, then I will stay with my people. ‘Honorless gladium’ and all. To hell with their pride. I’m a damn good smith.”
“Believe me,” he pounded his armored chest. “I know it well.”
She looked at him thoughtfully before reaching around and drawing the dagger from his back and inspecting it. “Let me look over your gear before I go. I don’t trust anyone else here to work on this knife.”
“Then you’ll either have to come back, or I’ll have to hunt you down. I’d hate to have to use a regular knife, and I’ve never been to Ascalon before.”
A’alish spent the next several weeks trying to whip his team into shape, but they resisted him. They didn’t want to fight or to really risk themselves, and he didn’t want to waste time on what was safe and easy. After three months of this and of watching charr and Ascalonian humans charge out into the field to learn what they could, he’d had enough. He either needed to be assigned to a different team or to go on a recruitment mission, and the person to decide that was the same person who’d hired him.
Magister Thurston Rowell: an administrator whose precise role remained a mystery.
A’alish walked down the curving halls of the Priory to Thurston’s proper office deep within while building a case for himself in his head. He should have written down his reasoning for wanting a different team, and all the specifics from the months past were slipping from him. The old oak door was slightly ajar, which was usually Thurston’s way of inviting people without needing to knock, but when he placed a hand on the wood, he stopped. He could hear Thurston’s voice-- the man sounded concerned, nearly frantic, but clear. The Magister had company.
“Rory,” he was speaking to his husband, then. “You can’t round up the Hunters. Gunther isn’t the only one with children now. The younger of us might rejoin, but we’re in our forties, Rory. What about your leg?”
“I never belonged here anyways, Thursty.” Rory’s voice was warm and steady. “I followed you here to have something to do, but four of seven elder dragons are active, and two are awake! I can’t sit here with you and do... whatever it is the Priory thinks is useful. I hate to say it, but digging up artifacts isn’t helping the people living next to the brand. It’s not helping the people fighting Risen or the destroyers. I have to do something too...”
A’alish didn’t want to listen in. He didn’t want to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. He sat outside the door with his back to the wall like a student waiting on a professor during office hours, but even so he felt a nagging guilt. He should knock and make his presence known. He did no such thing.
“If you don’t belong here, then neither do I.” It was a loud declaration. An almost proud one.
“ Thurston... ” And a chastising response.
“I mean it, Rory. You are my Sunlight. The warmth on my shoulders and the heat in my chest. If you don’t belong here, then neither do I.”
“You’re not leaving the Priory.”
“Not yet. But I don’t think recalling the Hunters is a good idea. There’s... something else...”
“That army of people coming together north of Lion’s Arch?” This caught A’alish’s attention. He’d heard idle rumors, but nothing to confirm it.
“They... could use people like us if they’re to succeed... And perhaps like a certain someone outside the door.”
The sylvari jumped to his feet, scrambling and confused at how the Magister had known he was listening in. He cracked the door open and sheepishly stepped in. Rory wasn’t grinning, but there was the ghost of a smile on his face.
“How did--”
“Your glow. Were you listening, or do I need to catch you up?” Thurston didn’t look angry. Just... tired.
“Not intentionally.” He looked at the desk in front of Thurston between where the man stood and his husband sat, unwilling to look either of them in the eye. “You plan on leaving the Priory.”
“Nope.” Rory stretched his arms, cracking his back at the shoulder. “Thurston’s staying here. I’m going to check out this ‘Vigil’ and see what it’s made of. If it’s worth joining... they’ll be glad to have a connection with the Priory like Thurston.”
“ Rory, ” Thurston warned. “Don’t you dare to presume to make decisions for me.”
“I’m not. I just know you. And I know you will stay because I’m right; if the Vigil takes off, then they’re going to need Priory support. And how better to support your meathead husband?”
“By being there with you. So if a dragon kills you, I’m at least there...” It was the second time A’alish had seen open pain on the man’s face. It looked like a mixture of disgust, bewilderment, and grief.
“We’re born alone, and we die alone, Thurston...” Rory’s voice grew low and quiet, as he took Thurston’s hands in his, and whatever he said fell on his husband’s ears only.
A’alish began to back towards the door. His questions about his future assignments were no longer important to him, but getting out was. Before he could escape, Thurston turned his sharp cold eyes on him and held him in place.
“Son, you’re the sort who would join this Vigil. I want you to go with the next supply caravan to Lion’s Arch. While you’re there, find out what you can. Sunshine here has already made up his mind, and I want as many perspectives as possible.”
“I haven’t made up my mind...”
“Haven’t you?” They locked eyes. Thurston’s defiant and Rory’s mischievous.
“Well they could be horribly disappointing...”
“In which case you’d start your own. With our former guildmates.” Thurston’s shoulders fell. The tension and resistance falling from him.
“I’ll go,” A’alish said, desperate to escape the room. “I was hoping to be assigned to a new team anyways since my current one won’t leave the Pass. Maybe I can recruit some of them for my own team. And for what it’s worth, I promise you they won’t poach me. Not without poaching you first, Magister.”
When he left, and he all but ran before Thurston could speak, he heard Rory say, “He’s a good kid. We did good.”
A’alish doubted that this Vigil would amount to much without people like Rory, but if it was already attracting a mob of survivors and other people desperate to take the fight to the dragons, then maybe he would find enough people for his own team at the Priory, and with any luck, these people would be his match.