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A noble figure coats the sun with frost, although the next era of Natlan has yet to receive salvation.
The journey to Ochkanatlan was long, quiet, and tiresome, although it was not the first time the young woman had made it. For many years her “granny” or another family friend would take her on important days to pay respects to her heritage and to brush off any dust and plant growth creeping too near to the person who had sat there since she was an infant. These visits were of few words, of no tears, a ritual that she struggled to comprehend for years.
She had not seen either of her parent’s faces for the whole of her life, at least as much of a whole she was capable of remembering. Her mother died when her umbilical cord had not even dried, in a sudden fight that was also the catalyst for briefly awakening her father. According to Granny Itztli, Thrain only remained awake for a few days before needing to return to his position watching over the Ley Lines. During that time he had spent long nights awake, singing in languages from Natlan, other nations, and one that had not been heard by the waking world for many lifetimes.
“He would just come into my house, hold you, and stare,” Granny Itztli had said once over dinner. “Sometimes he would sing lullabies, which honestly kept me awake with how unsettling his deep voice was, but I usually caught him looking blankly with those blue eyes you inherited.”
Blue eyes. Dark hair. That was what she inherited from her father, and the only two things she knew about his appearance. Her mother’s face was everywhere—in woven scrolls, in photographs, and according to friends, in the curve of her daughter’s cheeks and eyebrows. There was nothing left in memory, but at least those images provided something to make up for it.
She climbed the last stair before the throne. She bowed with one hand to her heart, the other out in a fist.
“Hello, Papa…it’s me, Kara.”
As expected and as usual, the masked man before her made no response. She simply did this out of respect. Or perhaps some deep part of her hoped for a miracle where she would see a brief movement, hear the quietest of words in response.
Were they proud of her? Would they ever be considering the great achievements they had made?
“I wonder if you can hear me, from the Night Kingdom. If your body here is still ‘alive’, then maybe your ears still work.”
She discarded any formalities, sitting on the step closest to the throne. It was a cloudy day, with a vast expanse of gray rarely seen through the rest of Natlan. The air around her was unnaturally cold, almost unbearable, created by the seal that manifested in giant blocks of turquoise hued ice.
“If you’re part of the Ley Lines, perhaps you can hear everything else,” she continued, “but we still don’t have a new Archon. Granny’s starting to think we never will, based on her predictions. Whoever took the Gnosis from Mama truly meant to end it for good.”
The Shaman had spent the past nearly two decades searching for Mavuika’s soul. For all those years, no signs had been found of her presence or of her return to Natlan’s resting place in the Night Kingdom. Kara had made a couple attempts herself, stealing information and scrolls from Citlali’s absent-minded grandson, which always resulted in a scolding and no further information.
“I hope you’ve found her there,” she said. “I hope you’re together.”
She tried to imagine the man next to her, youthful and not clad in heavy black capes and armor, searching through the Night. Even in a time reserved for rest, he would still have to look for the Archon, her mother, who was ripped from the very fabric of existence.
“I shouldn’t say this,” Kara continued. “Not with all that you sacrificed. Not with all that you lost. I’m told I shouldn’t even say it but…sometimes I feel so angry that you both left.”
It was selfish. It was nonsensical–if anyone deserved her wrath, it would be the Harbingers who aligned with her father, yet went behind his back to take the Gnosis, who strategically fought her mother at a point of weakness. Or the Shades who cursed Thrain’s homeland, leaving him devoid of hope for centuries and were the reason the Fatui’s rebellion against the gods was such a necessary evil. The shattered sky above, the fate that bound them all to potential eternal separation, the Abyss which had left her birth nation torn for centuries. Anything but the people who fought for and wanted none of this for her.
“...So why did you have to leave?”
She curled her knees to her chest. Her armor was Natlanese in design, but she had tried to add her own flourishes with the few images of Khaenri’ahn patterns she could find. Some were messy from her first awkward attempts at denting and shaping the iron, although she never found the time to have them fixed.
“I know you said in your note to Granny that I should be told as little about your side of my lineage as possible,” she said, turning her gauntleted hand over in the dimmed sunlight. It looked even more amateur next to the dark scales which covered the Captain’s wrists. “I’m sorry. I’ve gone against that wish already.”
She turned back to look at his face. The illusion cast by his mask remained, likely to last as long as he did, leaving only the faintest outlines visible no matter how close one peered.
“I know you didn’t want any chances of me inheriting your curse, but I think that’s bound to happen if it's meant to. I want to know more about you both. I used to have dreams, where you would find me in a field of flowers. I don’t remember your voices or your faces, if I somehow could remember either.” Her eyes trailed to his arm, to the frigid steel sword planted firmly beside him. “I don’t even know how I remembered what I could for that long. Was that actually you? Was that you both? Did you find Mama so you could visit me?”
She stood, taking her next slow steps along the platform until she was right up against the throne.
“I just…want to see you.”
What would it have been like, to ask him to help her braid her inherited raven black hair? To help her mother set up a victory feast after a tournament? To nag them both until they caved for stories and legends from their childhoods? They certainly had so many, considering both were born well over five hundred years prior. She could have asked Mavuika what it was like spending years in the Sacred Flame. She may have even had a chance to prod Thrain into teaching her the Khaenri’ahn language. Heroics be damned, she did not want them to return just because they were powerful, not if it meant their lives would only be rewarded with cruel twists and suffering. For all the great tales she heard from elders, every real life story of the shujaa was to end in a cycle of tragedy.
She wanted them back.
All she wanted was for their lives, her life, to be fair.
These words she would never utter aloud, not even at the unconscious vessel of the Lord of the Night. They carried too great a shame, yet no amount of guilt could ever make her retract them.
Kara stretched a hand forward. The chill on her fingers grew. “May I?”
It was useless to expect a response. She just hoped it would be more than a meaningless gesture to ask for permission.
“I don’t want to disrespect you. I just want to know what you look like, even once, even if it’s broken and changed.”
She was met with further silence.
A pair of thick gloves had been resting in her pocket the whole time, ready and prepared before she set off even when she was still unsure if she would need them. Kara pulled them on, then reached at the mask.
The cold grew even more intense, the protective layer on Thrain’s body biting through the layers of fabric and leather, making her grit her teeth as she felt around the silver mandible. She moved towards the guards around his ears, finding where they snugly latched onto his face.
With one more apology and with the most gentle yet firm touch she could manage, she pulled back the veil.
The sound which escaped her throat was not entirely gasp nor sob.
He was hideous–there was no way to step around it. Nearly all the skin of his face was distorted in some way with deep blues and blacks that flushed like a bruise with light colored veins, or a pale color devoid of any life, trickling into scars like the fissures of a volcano. Frost settled on the ends of long eyelashes. She could discern his nose once was sharper, longer, like her own. Kara longed to see his open eyes and know whether theirs were the same blue. She worried she had already overstepped, though, as she tentatively removed one glove from her hand to touch his face. The tip of her finger had light symptoms of frostbite within seconds as she traced one of the blue markings to the side of his nose, to his mouth where part of his upper lip was broken.
There was still a softness in his expression. After the initial shock, Kara could start to piece together the fragments of the man he once was in her imagination. The man her mother fought once then fought to love. The people who sacrificed everything for Natlan and for the wandering souls of the departed.
Until they left one behind in the realm of the living.
For the first time after countless visits to those cold steps, Kara felt the warm stream of tears from her eyes. They quickly became cold and froze to her skin when exposed to the air. She held that mask to her stomach as she nearly doubled over from sobs that made her throat ache and her chest burn.
“I’m sorry. I miss you–I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I think–I can’t say, I can’t ever say, I’m sorry…I hate you–no. No! I’m so, so sorry! You both…you left–I’m so sorry–I shouldn’t ever say…I’m sorry. Papa. Mama. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She curled by his boots, near where his legendary sword Antumbra pierced, doubling over as she clutched the silver chains that attached to the metallic star on the forehead of the mask. She did not know if she fell asleep. When she opened her eyes the sky was darker. Some of the frost had settled on her own clothing, creeping along the dark fabric in shimmering patterns.
Thrain was still there. Still resting.
Wiping her eyes to the best of her ability, with her eyelashes dotted with crystals much like his own, Kara stood and placed the mask back on his face. She made sure it was positioned just like before with the illusion still intact.
“I’m starting to hope you didn’t hear all of that,” she whispered. “I hope next time I’ll have better things to say. I hope next time I’ll be able to hear you and her. May you wake to a world that no longer needs heroes.”
She was weary, though not willing to spend the whole night on the mountain. Citlali would surely be furious she was already this late. Kara began her trip downward, glancing over her shoulders every few steps to check on the throne. She listened closely to the wind in case it carried any voices.
She heard none, and she soon reached a point where she could no longer see him.
Perhaps he was just resting in that beautiful field of flowers with Mavuika, waiting for when their daughter would arrive.
Perhaps he heard everything and was incapable of saying anything in return.