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Elisar opened her eyes to darkness.
She inhaled sharply, realizing that she stood in waist-deep water. Her heartbeat quickened. Another vision, she realized.
Something was different this time: a ways before her, a man floated face-up in the gloom.
She waded forward.
He was light-skinned and light-haired. His face bore a scruffy beard. Peering down into his rugged features—he appeared to be similar in age to her, perhaps in his thirties—Elisar noted that he was unfamiliar to her. Had she known him before she was petrified?
She reached down for his wrist. He bore no pulse. His chest lay still. Elisar took a slow breath, unease stirring in her own breast.
A child’s cry pierced the air. She started to turn, to seek them out—Where are you?—but then, the man lurched upwards. A gasp tore from her lips as he reached for her, his lifeless eyes blinking open. He began to decay before her, his skin tightening, then rotting, then falling away. “Why?” he rasped as the child continued to scream somewhere around her—all around her?
She sat up with a gasp. Blinking, she was blanketed in pitch-black, then in dark greys as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of her room at the Black Hail Respite. As she registered the sound of a light knock ringing in the air, Elisar could not shake the feeling that she had done something terrible.
“A moment!” she called, hauling herself out of the bed. She grabbed the blanket and hastily covered her hair before opening the door.
She stared into the empty hall and realized, bemusedly, that the knocking had been on her window.
She crossed the room and parted the curtains to peer at Resir, who was clung to the side of the inn.
He flashed a small smile at her as she opened the window for him. “Would you like to join me on the roof?” he asked.
A flutter stirred within her, even as the dead man’s rasp echoed in the back of her mind.
Why?
“Yes,” she said, banishing the image from her thoughts. “I would.” She glanced down at herself—in her nightclothes and her hastily-improvised hair covering.
“I’ll give you a moment,” he said swiftly. She poked her head out of the window, watching him fling himself—with no small amount of effort—up the wall, towards the roof.
She drew the curtains together and dressed quickly, then nimbly made her own way into the chill of the night and up the side of the building to join him.
Resir was reclined when she pulled herself over the edge, his gaze pointed upwards, towards the night sky. “Look,” he said, pointing.
She came to sit beside him and looked. As she strained her sight at the stars, she saw a faint, unexpected burst of light like a tear in the heavens. It shimmered with a myriad of vibrant, refracting colors—before it faded. Elisar blinked, craning her neck to look for it, before it appeared again—and again.
“Ether darting, it’s called,” said Resir beside her. “It’s rare. It happens when an ether storm doesn’t fully form.”
She had never seen its like. “It’s… wondrous,” she breathed.
“Yes, it is quite incredible.”
She heard him settle as he lay back to watch the sky. Elisar remained seated up, propping herself with her hands. They were quiet for a time, enjoying the lovely anomaly in the stars.
Her stomach tightened. She considered the advice she’d received from Evelina a few days prior: be more direct. Would that it were so easy. She so often found herself arrested by his presence; she did not otherwise stumble over her words, but with him... She lowered her gaze to look out upon Nyström’s skyline, gathering her resolve.
“Resir, I… don’t know what we’re doing,” she said. She felt his eyes turn upon her, but she did not look at him. “I’ve had flings, but I’ve never done… this. I’ve never felt… this for anyone.”
“I’m… flattered.” His voice was quiet.
Elisar winced. “I don’t know what I want. Or—what you want.” The words sounded odd to her ears; they weren’t what she’d meant to say. She tried to gather her thoughts.
Then he said, “Can I ask you something?”
She looked at him and waited.
“I’ve never seen your hair. Is it… the custom where you’re from?” His tone was light, easy.
A humorless smile flickered across her face. Was he coming to her rescue, saving them from her awkward attempt at a deeper conversation? Or was he deflecting the topic for his own benefit? It was always so between them; every time she tried to question the nature of their relationship, he batted her inquiry away, guided her back to little flirtations, to safe questions about customs and travels.
She sighed, running her gloved hands over each other. “No,” she said. “I don’t really know why I cover it. It feels… safe.” Elisar glanced at him. He appeared to be listening intently. “I think it must be a habit from the woman who was petrified. It’s one of the only things that—calls to me, from her.
“There are some people who… Sometimes I feel comfortable enough to—” She reached up to her headscarf, intent on removing it. She chuckled to herself. “I suppose I don’t really need it here.”
Her fingers had just sunk into the fabric when she felt, dulled by the gloves, Resir’s hands take hold of hers. “Wait,” he said softly. Breathlessly. “Please, don’t. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
Elisar stilled, letting her hands linger in his. “You didn’t,” she said. He had gotten quite close. “I was only—realizing that I am comfortable.”
“Are you?” His face was a breath away. Silvery eyes framed by silvery lashes. “Comfortable?”
Her own eyes fluttered shut. “Yes,” she whispered. “I think I am.”
His lips were upon hers.
She had been kissed before. She had been more than kissed before—but this felt different from any of those times. He was softer. She was softer. A sigh slipped from her as an alien contentedness washed over her shoulders.
She pulled back to say something, but she stopped short when she opened her eyes and saw the naked, petrified shock in his face.
Her hands fell from his. “Resir?” she asked quietly. Her chest tensed. Unease settled like nausea within her. “Are you alright? Should I not have…”
“I’ve deceived you.”
He turned from her to stare down at himself, at his feet. A sneer tore across his lovely features. She watched his shock give way to a deep, horrible rage.
“What?” she breathed.
“I’ve deceived you,” he repeated numbly. Something in the way he avoided her gaze, in the way he could look only upon his form, indicated to Elisar that the fury plain in his face was directed at himself, not at her. The tightness around his eyes—two pools of liquid silver—seemed… remorseful?
He reached into his coat and fished out a charm of some sort. Elisar did not look carefully at it, did not study its shape or its make. Instead, she could see only him as his features changed: his skin turned nearly to black; his hair turned fully to black, shortening to fall upon his shoulders; and his eyes, too, became two solid voids, devouring the light from the stars. He bore two dark horns, and Elisar caught a glimpse of a long, thin tail, with an odd protrusion of the bone at the end. He seemed older, now, too, but perhaps only slightly.
“I lied so well I started to believe it myself,” he said flatly. He seemed disbelieving, which might have struck Elisar as funny, were it at all appropriate to be amused; he was the one surprised to find himself here?
A ragged breath escaped her. She had met this man—this tiefling. She’d caught a glimpse of him, chasing him invisibly through the Nyström estate. He had come back later to escort the girl Pandora safely out of the town.
“You’re Brevi’s father,” Elisar realized. He was the man Erris, whom they had been hunting. At once she felt ridiculous. How many signs had she ignored? How many suspicions had she entertained, only to push them aside—because he’d made her feel nice? Because she’d enjoyed his company, his humor, his attention? She had known he was lying to her from the start—and here she was, following him like a lovesick girl onto the rooftop.
“Yes.”
He did not seem to know what further to say, so she pressed him: “Why? Why did you do this?”
His fury fell away, and then he seemed only to be tired. “I was trying to get closer to the party to acquire the Arx… I think.”
Elisar scoffed, disbelieving. Rage clawed at her, but she fought it down. She tore her gaze away from him. “You know it’s in Ignatius’s bags. You could have just—broken into his room at any time.”
“It’s not in Ignatius’s bags. He keeps it on him.” Erris seemed to be far away from his voice, like he was watching the conversation from a distance.
Something crumpled in Elisar’s chest, ground to dust by the emptiness in the man beside her. Her voice dropped. She didn’t even need to fight the rage anymore; it dissipated completely. “I don’t want to be angry,” she whispered. “How did making me look like—like an idiot get you any closer?”
“I don’t know.”
They were quiet for a long moment. Neither of them seemed to know what to do; they were frozen upon this rooftop, paralyzed by their shame and despair.
Finally, Elisar cut through the silence. “Do you work for Serval, then? Are you Serval?”
She watched his face move; she watched the way his expression schooled as he prepared to lie to her. Then it fell again, and he said truthfully, “I am Serval.” Erris stood, and then so did she.
Her chest felt so heavy. She ran a hand over her head and suppressed the urge to wail. “Please,” she said quietly. “I don’t understand. Make me understand—please. The Arx—why do you want it? What is it for?”
“It is a tool to force out the Virduc Legion.”
The Virduc Legion: the secretive, oppressive ruling body of Pexus Novus. These were only words to Elisar, a foreigner; she scoured them for meaning and found none.
Erris was walking away now, approaching the edge of the building. He pulled out the charm again, and he transformed: not back to Resir, the silver-haired, silver-eyed aasimar, but into an unremarkable human man. “I won’t bother you again.” He crouched low and began to climb.
She knelt over the ledge as grief surged within her. She had liked him. He had intrigued her. Vexingly, she found herself still intrigued. She was still desperate to understand what had transpired between them, and to understand what it was he wanted. “That’s not what I want,” she said, her throat tight. Her cheeks were damp—when had she started crying?
He stopped and blinked up at her, and she caught tears in his eyes, too. “Don’t you understand I was using you?” he snarled.
“You were doing a poor job of it. I saw that you—cared,” she said, forcing the word out of her lips, juvenile as it sounded.
He looked away. “I only ever loved one woman before. I only ever wanted to love one woman.”
At the mention of Noella, her resolve shattered. She pulled back, away from the roof’s edge, and let him crawl away into the night.
Elisar lingered upon the rooftop, staring at her hands. There was little to reflect on that she hadn’t already done. Even her grief fell away. It slunk off with Erris.
“Oh, you stupid girl,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
Elisar returned quickly to her room, but it took hours for sleep to come. She ached: in her chest, in her throat, behind her eyes. Her head would not rest, either, tormented by sorrow and regret.
Finally, exhaustion defeated her, and she slipped into the verdant forest glade of her celestial guardian.
Neva’s shimmering form awaited her within the clearing. As Elisar approached, their warmth washed over her. Before she’d fallen asleep, her emotions had overwhelmed her, eating her alive; now, in the dreamy warmth of Neva’s glade, they felt less severe, like a blanket had been placed over them.
A calming echo sounded in her mind. “You are troubled, child,” they said.
Elisar closed her eyes. Even the sharp pain in her throat was eased by Neva’s warmth. “Yes,” she whispered, “I am.”
She tried to focus her thoughts, to push past the events of the evening; she searched for her dream of the watery gloom. Yes, she saw him clearly now: the dead man. Why? he’d asked.
“I fear that this body—that I—may have done something terrible before I was petrified,” she said. “I do not know why, or what I may have done, it is only—a feeling that I have. These… visions haunt me in my sleep.”
Neva lowered their radiant form to lie on the grass. “Do you feel that you are responsible for these deeds, if they happened? Do you wish to correct them?” they asked.
A rabbit came shyly out of the underbrush. It darted towards Neva, nuzzling their radiant light.
She watched it, the sight dissipating the unease that fluttered through her. She let a long breath escape her. “Yes, I feel that I must. I must.”
Exhaustion crept upon her again. For the few years of her existence, she had only loosely been interested in investigating the woman she had been before. It had always seemed so far out of her reach—almost mythical.
But something in these dreams tugged at her intuition. They lingered in the back of her head. “I only hope that whatever harm I caused is not beyond repair,” she added quietly.
“What will you do if it is?” Neva asked, maintaining their even tone. Elisar glanced at them. “Will you be able to make peace with it? Do you think you will be able to stand tall after witnessing some terrible truth?”
She faltered, considering this. “I… don’t know,” she said. She knelt on the grass beside them. “I think perhaps I would have before—before all this. Before I traveled with this group. But now I find that the idea alarms me.”
She felt a warm pressure by her neck as light filled her vision, like a head resting on her shoulder. Closing her eyes, she leaned into their embrace. “I would recommend caution. You have developed as a rather useful person for others to rely on. It would be unwise to shatter that needlessly. There are many good deeds yet to be done and paths of virtue to be walked.
“If you don’t think you will be ready to withstand any truth that would come from such an investigation, I recommend waiting.”
They were correct, Elisar knew. She sighed. Her heart was delicate tonight, and perhaps it would be for several nights to come, after such a betrayal as she had endured. “Thank you.”
She allowed herself a moment to enjoy their quiet embrace. Then shame burned behind her cheeks, and she gathered her resolve. She knew she must tell them. “Neva… I have been a fool.”
Their glowing form pulled away to examine her. “In what way?”
She tensed at the loss of Neva’s embrace, then sagged, her arms wrapping around herself. “I have allowed myself to be fooled.” Her throat tightened. She swallowed, and the pain—the ache—surged. “I knew it was reckless. I knew from the beginning that he was suspicious—that he was hiding things, lying to me. But I allowed it to continue. It…”
She could not bring herself to say it, but it hung on the tip of her tongue: it felt nice. She had denied what was plain to see before her because she’d liked his company, his attention.
“Is this the man you asked about previously?” Neva asked. As it ever did, their tone remained even.
“Yes. His true name is Erris Altrix.”
“What damage has been done?” The rabbit nestled within their form seemed to sense a tension in the air and darted off into the forest. It stopped once to look upon the pair of them before vanishing.
Elisar sighed. Then she frowned, considering Neva’s question. She did not suppose Erris accomplished very much with his courtship. She would check in the morning, but as far as she knew, Ignatius still bore the Arx.
“I suppose… only damage to my own heart,” she said. Though it ached—though she was angry with herself for allowing it to ache—Elisar knew she would move on. “Perhaps I should not trouble you with this. Only, I do not wish to share this with my—friends.”
Friends. She stumbled over the word. Had she called them as such before? She supposed that was what they were; “associates,” “group”—none of these words felt quite correct anymore.
“Brevi, particularly,” she continued. “I fear that learning of this would hurt her. Is that wrong of me?”
Neva’s shimmering form cocked its head. “Wishing not to harm others is not a desire that should ever be wholly ignored. Do Brevi and your friends deserve to know of this deception?”
Elisar was quiet for a long moment. “Perhaps… not if it hurts them,” she wondered. She peered into Neva’s light, regarding them. “I strive to be worthy of your guidance, bright one.”
She felt a pressure against her chest, and an explosion of warmth pierced her. Heat and energy pulsed through her veins. At once, it felt difficult to stand still through the burst of radiance.
“My counsel is not something you can be unworthy of. It is for your benefit, as it has always been. You are in pain. You are wounded. You are vulnerable. These prove that you felt connected with someone. As they have left, you have been made bare, like a tree whose bark has been torn away.
“For a season, you will be in the elements, exposed and raw. But, come the spring, a new layer will grow, this time greater, as you continue reaching towards the heavens.”
Neva’s voice rang in her ears, a musical crescendo, all-encompassing, but not overwhelming. Heat rippled through her, and the radiant light grew in magnitude until Elisar found herself in her bed once again. The divine warmth faded, leaving her in the cold of the morning with her troubled heart.