Chapter Text
The spires of the Holy Sight stabbed skyward through the heavily pregnant overcast skies - opening them up to a torrential rain the acolytes wer beginning to call apocalyptic. The winding streets of Her blessed city began to flood, forcing the doors to close and bags of sand and gravel to be placed in front of doors; the acolytes hoisted the white hems of their robes higher as they bustled across the courtyard to the dormitories. Everyone called to be the Goddess' Kept, the beloved children gifted with powers beyond the ordinary. Though that could be interpreted as simply being especially good at reading and working out numbers, or as exceptional as being able to read the future in tea leaves lying at the bottom of a simple clay kiln-fired cup. The rain pounded the ancient windows of the Abbey below, raging winds rattled the shutters and lightning flashed in the stained glass windows, illumating the pillar of Her Holiness in garish relief. Everyone was eager to get in out of the terrifying weather, so why then did one cloaked figure indistinguishable from the rest remain by an open door, staring out longingly into the rain - vibrant black eyes soaking up the scene with such nostalgic sorrow, it made the angels in the courtyard weep.
Not everyone who noticed the rain noticed the girl. She was no older perhaps than thirteen, tall and wiry and almost androgynous in feature and action. Everyone among the youngsters that did notice the girl sneered, clutched their robes closer, mumbling among themselves. "It's her," they said. "She displeases the Goddess, and so the rain has come to cleanse the abbey of its percieved impurities... that girl." "Never should have taken her in, that one. She is outside of Her sight." 'That girl' was perhaps one of the most devout of all of them - to a degree that put other acolytes to shame. Those whose families boasted strong ties to the church itself sent their children here in the hope that they may one day serve the Holy Sight, but even those children did not pray as hard or as long or as frequently as young Chiaroscuro did. No one needed answers like she did. No one needed guidance as much as she did. In the flashes of lightning and in the waning flames of the torches along the walls, one could see even then that her lips were moving soundlessly.
Please, she said. Goddess please, if you hear me at all, if you even hear anything, please help me. Help me to be like them. To be what they want. To do what they ask of me. I'm trying so hard. I read the scriptures, I study the paintings, I learned the hymns. What is wrong with me? Tears began to join and bond to the splashes of rain that landed on her pale, wane face, upturned to the raging heavens. She'd stepped outside from beneath the eaves, and now the storm soaked her through as she openly wept, cursed, yelled again. Defied the very goddess she entreated for aid.
In a few months, she would be asked to leave the safety of the Abbey, after a hearing consisting of the Head of the Theocratic Studies and several of the priests and nuns tasked with the guardianship of the acolytes. On the grounds of her strange behavior and use of illicit magick that was considered outside of the Goddess's powers. Tearfully betrayed, full of rage, Chia paced around in her room with her few things gathered in a literal burlap sack, yelling at the top of her lungs.
"You promised me!! You promised HIM that I could stay!! Until I was eighteen, at least!!" She flung her hair brush at the wall - the fragile wooden tines shattered, sprinkling everyhere. She screamed again. "It's not my fault! I can't... I can't help it!"
"I did everything I was legally able to, Chia. But once your blood's power begins to show through... you're not longer safe here. The Church itself will send inquisitors and do... unthinkable things. As it stands, you can barely control your temper and when you lose it... one of these days, the ones that suffer are going to be the other acolytes. Not because you hurt them, but because they'll try to protect you."
"They fucking hate me."
"You know that's not true. Adelia is fond of you."
Chia bit her lip and let her rage trickle away, and a soul-devouring, total sorrow took hold of her again. She had befriended Adelia in the library and they kissed between the shelves of books and whispered to each other at times, giggling at rumors about the Abbottess and the other teachers. And now Adelia was sent away, and Chia was... oestensibly... banished.
"Adelia was stupid," Chia said, hating herself for it. She dropped to the edge of her plain wooden bed, covered in straw and a cotton sheet - humble furnishings for a young woman living in an abbey. She rubbed her hands into her face and sucked in her breath. "Where am I gonna go now...?"
"Before the hearing... I had a feeling, so I sent word for your old friend to come back. He'll be collecting you at the tavern but you'll have to go there and meet him on your own. Once you're outisde of the abbey's gates, I can't be seen with you or I'll be ex-communicated. And I can't lose my position here as councilor; I'm the only informant they've got."
Chiaro took a moment to hear what was spoken, to collect her thoughts, then replied, angrily, moodily, and rightly so: "He isn't my friend. He abandoned me here."
"He did the only thing he could do, under the circumstances, Chia. He was your mother's only connection. Now... you've got until sixth candle to finish packing and get going. I'll give you the directions to the tavern. Do you think you can manage it?"
"I'll have to, haven't I?"
---
The girl's footsteps sloshed muddily along the path. Her cloak was weighed down in the back with water, black with the water. Chia had no contacts outside the abbey - and for the last hour, she had been alone in the city and following the instructions scrawled onto parchment clutched between her black-tipped fingers. The ink was running now; the rain that had begun, flooding the abbey and the town, still steadily drizzled. She cursed colorfully; the girls at the abbey would have lost their heads to hear such language coming from the dark-haired girl. The weird creature that had joined them some years ago... she'd just been a child then. Too young to understand what was happening but old enough to decide she didn't like it. Any of it....
- - -
Reddor smelled the acrid stink of blood and fear. The townies had the area blocked off with the local militia, with literal torches and farming implements, guarding the doors to the small house where the terror was coming from. It was eerily silent, except for the idle clucking of the odd chicken as it moved about, unbothered by the drama, pecking for food.
He was a local woodsman, just a common retired sellsword, who served the nearby towns when there were monsters or bandits or escaped cattle needed rounding up, but this was a different scenario altogether. The small round iron-wrought door creaked open slowly at his touch, and as the wintry light bloomed into the scene, Reddor had to blink to clear his vision a little bit more.
A woman lay on the floor in a pile of broken furniture, a short, bloodied dagger in one hand, and a bundled object clutched to her breast, and there the body of a man on the floor too, somewhere - face down, in a pool of blood that looked black in the colorless wane winter's day. The woman stirred at his arrival, moaned in agony, and raised her dagger one last time.
"Easy, now. Easy." Reddor stared at her; she was unbelievably stunning. She had vibrant green eyes, dark black wavy hair, fae-like features - but surely she was merely human. Witch, he thought. She's some kind of a witch. "I'm not 'ere to hurt you." His eyes fell to the bundle, protective. A soft gurgling rasp told of the woman's breathing. She wore a bloodstained jerkin; her face, lovely enough, was also far too pale. "What happened, my lady?"
"My baby." The dagger wavered. Then she lowered it, hearing the tenor of the woodsman's voice. "Tried... my daughter. Don't take her." Tears of anger brimmed at her eyes.
"No one's goin' to take your babe, milady." Any man who wanted to steal a woman's infant child was surely up to no good, but that did not explain why the townsfolk held back from the humble shack in fear... surely they would want to hasten to her aid. But nobody did. She was alone in defense of her child, and struck by the situation, Reddor stepped in, moving around the broken chair and knelt. "The babe en't hurt, is she?"
"No. Never in life would I let--!" The woman cried out softly, then sank back again. Panting, weeping. The sleeping babe stirred and whimpered. A tiny little fist appeared from the bundled wool blanket, raised as if in defiance. "Please... I can't... please help her. Don't let Erra take her."
Reddor's blood drained. "Erra?"
"Please. Save her. Her name... is Chiaroscuro. Please. Take my blessing, man, and go... Far away. Please." Her eyes dulled, and her desperate breathing grew still and quiet, and the child began to wail.
Reddor stared hard at the woman, then reached to shake her shoulder. "Woman... lady. Wake up!" But she was gone. He saw it then - a deep, ugly bladed wound that spilt her blood around, a lake of brackish ichor all around. He was kneeling in it. He gently took the bundle - the bloodstained baby bundle - and took her outside into the cold.
He was numb with shock.
"See that woman gets a proper burial. A proper one, do you hear me? And the next bloke to come for this child loses both his fucking arms. Come on now, a pyre! What was her name? Can anyone tell me?"
"Nobody knew her, Red," said Timoth, a middling-aged man who was among the few not armed to the teeth. "She came with the babe, and the stranger followed. A battle happened, and ... we were too late." Timoth paused, scrubbing at his stubbled face thoughtfully with his hand. "She's a Witch, en't she?"
"A witch. And a mother. And now, a corpse." Reddor shifted the fussing babe. "I'm no substitute for a proper mother, Tim. What am I supposed to do with her?"
"I'll talk to my wife. Surely she knows someone who could serve as a wet nurse, at least. In the meantime, got some boiled water cooling. Maybe that will slake 'er thirst till she can get a nipple."
With that, the village seemed to come back to life under Reddor's singularly commanding voice - which boomed so that it quieted the little infant who stared up at him in awe with the same sort of eyes as her mother's - but black. Black as ever midnight was.
----
Kea barely remembered the slog through the rain-drenched town. Her boots were soaked to the very tops; the mud was thick and sticky, threatening to unshoe her at every step. The rain still fell; clinging to the yellowed page as the ink ran, making the address almost illegible. She was lost. She was hopelessly, stupidly fucking lost. When was the last time she'd seen him? The man who had saved her from her dead mother's arms-- what was she gonna do when she can't find him?
Not that she was afraid to ask for directions, but it was WHO you asked for directions. She was well aware of people - their capacity for good and devastating evil. She crumpled the soggy paper and scoffed, her hands shaking, eyes watering with unshed tears.
"Stupid, idiot girl," she whispered again and again. A mantra. She walked. Then she ran. Stumbling through the alley ways, shoving past disgruntled yard workers. They cussed at her, called her ugly names. "Oi, cunt," called one of them, who clawed at her robes - pretty and dark and expensive, because the church spares no expense on their richly dyed linens, not even for their precious Abbey girls. It ripped, all the same, and it seemed to trigger a sort of carnal response in the man. He followed after her, leaving his work. They were digging up the mud and trying to untrap the water - to make the street drain. It was hard, dirty, thankless work.
"No," she panted. "No. Fuck." Kea ran, hit a wall and turned around, her hands clinging to the stonework behind her as if it would suddenly melt and let her sink into it. But it didn't. She didn't. She was trapped.
"Where are you goin', so far from home, lil church mouse?"
"Th-They'll be looking," she lied. "The Abbey. They'll be lookin' and it won't be pretty if you soiled me."
"Either way," the man said, reaching for his trouser belt. "It won't be pretty for you, girl."
And then, inexplicably, he fell down. Dead, she thought. But no - he was rolled over by a muddied boot, and Kea never thought she would be so happy to see that grumpy bastard's face.
"Reddor!" "Got lost?" "My paper-- the ink. Fuck!" "Fuck, indeed. Come on, girl. Let's get you warm and cleaned up. This place is a shite hole even in the best of times. Hurry up."
She followed him, grabbing onto his arm and stepping over the mud and muck. She was exhausted just from this little adventure - having to yank her boots out and drag her tired, heavy legs out and over and through. Then, with Reddor's meticulous silence, she found herself finally within the comforting walls of a well lit, warm tavern with her boots drying near the hearth with the mud drying and cracked on them.
"So that's it then, eh?" He rubbed at his face, and scoured her with a long look. "Thirteen be damned, girl, you've gotten tall." "Yeah. That's it. Gone, from the Abbey. For all the lot of fucking praying I did, it sure didn't help."
"It wasn't supposed to. You were there to so's you'd be safe, and you were. But... not any more." "Clearly. It's like nobody ever's seen a woman's fucking ankles before in this place!" Kea scoffed. Reddor spoke up again: "Hush, girl. Listen. You can't stay at the Abbey any more and I'll get into the why of it as soon as you've had something to eat. There's... things they en't told you yet, about your mother. Things I told 'em to keep secret."
"You?" Kea's sense of betrayal rekindled. Her hatred curdled. "Why not? Don't I deserve to--"
"She said a name. Before she died. A name I won't repeat out here in the tavern, because it isn't good. But we can't let him find you. Not ever. Do you understand? If he knew you were at the Abbey - and he'll find out, he has spies, not even her bloody Goddess can blind his sight - he'd burn the place to the ground to getcher. So we've got to move you."
"Move? WHERE?"
"Anywhere."
"But surely... I can't fucking run foever."
"We don't got a choice."
"But--"
"No buts. Eat up. Then we're leavin' tonight."
Kea's exhaustion began to wear down on her. Her eyes watered, but she refused to cry in front of this... this coward. This son of a bitch. He claimed to know her mother, but refused to explain anything else. Like who her father truly was, where she came from, who she belonged to. She sank back into her seat, her dark hair a dampened mess where it had escaped from her habit, stuffed as it was daily, for the Abbey. Realizing where she was, she no longer needed it - and tore it from her head, and hand-combed her hair with her fingers. Reddor was as much a mystery to her as her own mother, and offered only further mysteries than answers.
"I pulled you from your mother's dying bloodied embrace," Reddor said, as if reading her mind. He sank back, wetting his lips with a tankard of warm mulled wine. His eyes grew distant, that heavy darkness in them shining with a fresh coat of memory. "I didn't even know her name. I s'pose it didn't even matter, because they wouldn't have put a name on her headstone anyway. Decades ago, I would have left you both there to die, let the village have their way with a heretic and her spawn." He set aside his drink, mopped at his face with tired, rough hands. "But... after awhile, time has a way of... softening you up. It en't like me any more. I'd had no wife of my own, but... you, just a wee babe, you looked right through me. An' I knew I would've taken out an entire village just to protect you."
"Why?"
"Why?? Oh, why else? Because I was turning into a lonely old fucker, and now, I am just that. Sentimental..."
"I don't even know you. I hardly know you. I just know... you saved me, and you brought me here. I'm sorry, but how am I supposed to be grateful when my life is turned upside down again?"
"I en't asked you to, brat." Reddor glared at her from under his heavy, brooding brows. "I know it's hard. You're right to be upset. But I can think of worse folk for you to be stuck with, on the run for your life."
"Fine. But you'll tell me what you know. Right? Promise me."
"I'll tell you everything I know, lass. Everything I've found out. But not out here, as I said." The huntsman's eyes scanned the homey tavern, and he sighed, rose - the floorboard creaking as he distributed his weight. "Let's getcher up to the room. I got you a change o' clothes. They see the Abbey's plain black robes and yer not where yer supposed to be, they'll be suspicious. So... go and get changed and get to bed. We'll be gone tonight."
----
Seven nights spent out doors was seven nights too long to a girl who was sheltered within the comfortable walls of the devout. The boots were not quite her size, as Reddor had to guess what she wore, and they rubbed her heels so badly she got blisters, the leggings were snug and weird, the tunic hung so low it touched her knees, and the woolen cloak - though warm - was scratchy and smelled like goats. Still she bit her tongue and traveled with him - and listened well to his words. As he promised, he told her everything he could discover about her mother. He knew that she had been a Witch to an ancient and secretive clan. Blood Witches, a forbidden clade which dabbled in such magics that were as close to necromancy, to healing, as one could make it. They were manipulators of the waters of life. And as far as one could tell, persecution of the ruling theocracy drove the clan into near extinction save a select number - sisters and their distant cousins. Together, they honed and kept their craft alive in absolute secrecy - driven into the woods, fens, caves, swamps that lay fallow and unwanted by the rest of the world. Kea's Mother was one such descend of the remaining sisters. Well, she stumbled on some ancient runic magic that she had no business messing with. Being a studious and curious, stubborn woman, she fiddled about with said runes and circles until she danced on the edge of one world and the next with as much giddy gormless joy of a child - playing with things she did not understand. People died; suffering unending. Weeks later, she was far from her fallow fields with a child - with Kea.
"That's how I met yer mother. Fighting off a mercenary or some sort. Although I later come an' find out he wasn't 'just' a mercenary. He was a Death's Head assassin. And she said somethin' specific... she said, 'don't let him get her'. I don't know who. Perhaps yer father. Don't know how he got enough coin to hire a Death's Head assassin to chase her down... but... he wasn't after yer mum. He was after you."
Kea didn't understand how someone with any kind of means or coin could feel threatened by a baby - but reading enough books about inheritance, of power and bloodlines, she had an idea. Maybe she was an unwanted loose end. And whoever it was would go to any length to see her cut off.
Reddor insisted she start learning to protect herself. He gave her a dagger as blunt as a kitchen spoon, but told her to practice stabbing and making movements with it. Once, they were hunting something and their hunger was real - no inn or tavern for days and their bellies rumbled - and he made her cut the deer's throat to feel how flesh felt beneath a blade. She didn't throw up, didn't feel anything. Just dizzy. He was a surprisingly patient teacher, not that she was especially difficult. She used a shortsword as deftly as a dagger, and during practice she had cut him by accident - or, on purpose, as fighting was the point. He laughed as blood poured down his arm, and declared his training a success for now.
"But the real classroom's out there- in the world. Whether you come away with all yer bits is how you get yer grade."
They traveled across, following but not quite using the main roads that connected the fiefdoms, villages, and farms, until Kea saw something she had never imagined she'd see in her lifetime: the ocean. It was so vast, so gray and big, and endless, it beggared belief. She could taste the salt when she licked her lips, the sea spray coming up along the gulf to meet them.
"Where are we going now?"
"Charter a trip. Going even further north. I been thinkin'... there's a lot I can teach you about soldierin', and yer not bad at it, but..." Reddor scrubbed at the growing patchy beard on his face. "We need to find yer people." "My people?" "Aye. Maybe we can find yer clan. What's left of your aunties. See if they'll teach you what they know."