Chapter Text
"Come with me, Eraline."
His command to the young girl looking up at him was calm but direct. This time when he came to the underground base, there was no pause to ask how she was doing, no offer to tell her a short and very edited story of fighting the monsters that had turned her home into a city-sized nightmare factory. Aside from standing commandingly before her instead of bending over to be less imposing, his posture didn't give away anything that he might be feeling.
Not that it would be easy to read him anyway with the silver mask covering his whole face.
She looked up at him with a mix of curiosity and confusion, then she noticed something. "Mr. Taken, where're all your friends?" she asked as she glanced around to confirm that he was, indeed, alone for once. No squad of skeletons, no eldritch animals, no hulk of human-shaped offal.
"They're waiting for me to call them. There's something we need to do, and I don't want you to be distracted by them," he said before beckoning her with a green gauntleted hand. "Now, come. This is important."
Despite his firmness, he slowed his pace enough to match Eraline's, who walked just behind him. The other kids muttered something about her being "the favorite" as they walked by, causing her posture to slump a bit while the Taken acted like he didn't hear them. It wouldn't have surprised her if they were just afraid of him. Even without any of the things who Eraline called his "friends," he stood out everywhere he went with his silver mask, hooded skull-embroidered robes, and the scepter and sickle currently tucked into his belt, the latter of which glowed with sickly green and ghostly blue light respectively.
It helped that he was the one most responsible for turning the tide against the Aetherials here in one of their main strongholds. She'd heard him talking to himself once and saying something about how he was "here to cancel the apocalypse for the second time." In fact, thanks to him, more of the Resistance was able to leave the sewers and go to the base in the Steelcap District, which meant that she had less company, but she tried to stay strong and be glad it meant she might be able to go back outside soon, too.
Speaking of which, she noticed he was leading her to the stairs leading up to that district, which caused her to stop and say, "Wait. Kids aren't allowed up there. I'll get in big trouble."
"You won't," he replied, looking back at her. "Korinia says so."
She looked hopeful but still unsure. "You promise?"
"Yes. Would I lie to you about that?"
"...I hope not."
"Then come on," he said, beckoning her again and turning away.
"But she says," the girl interrupted him, "we can't go up because it's not safe for kids." She sighed. "We can't go anywhere because it's not safe for anyone."
The Taken stayed turned away from her for a bit, then he faced her and leaned over to be eye level with her. Despite being unable to see his eyes through the shadowy eye holes in the mask, she couldn't look away from him. "Do you feel safe around me?" he asked. When she nodded, he straightened back up and offered a hand for her to take. "Then stay by my side."
With a bit of hesitation, she accepted his hand and walked out of the base and up to the stairs to the surface.
Eraline could barely keep her eyes open as they approached the exit, given this was the first time she'd seen sunlight in...she didn't really know. Being huddled in that sewer for so long and having to rely on her own sense of time or just following when other people told her it was time to sleep made everything blur together after a while. But the sun was much brighter and sharper than the torches and lamps with which they made do.
Despite the pain it was causing her eyes, the smile on her face made it clear how grateful she was to see it again, and from how her smile widened once they stepped into it even though she flinched once the full midday sun was on her face, it was also clear she missed feeling it as much as seeing it. With all the impossibly terrible things that had happened over the last few months, it wasn't out of the question that the sun could have stopped shining at all, for all she knew. The first breeze she'd felt since a few months ago ruffled her clothes and hair, and while the air was hardly fresh given the state the city was in, to actually be outside again was such a world of difference that she forgot about her worry about being unsafe, if only for now.
The Taken stopped once they were out of the sewer entrance and stood at the ledge overlooking the Steelcap base. She hadn't been here since before Malmouth fell, and it had changed a lot since then. There once was a security checkpoint between the slums and the factories most of the slummers toiled in, and by "security checkpoint" it was more like "place where some soldiers and a couple of gates were put so the lawlessness in the slums at least didn't spill into the factories and disrupt commerce." Given its strategic location (mostly for suppressing riots if need be) and closeness to the sewer hub, it was the best place for the Resistance's only surface base.
Of course, the most attention-grabbing feature was the new - and unwelcome - Aetherial rift right in the center of the base. As soon as Eraline saw it, she yelped and spun around to run back to the sewers, only for her wrist to be held by the Taken's hand.
"Eraline-"
"I told you it wasn't safe! Let go! I gotta get out!" she shouted at him.
He kept holding her, standing unflinchingly. "Eraline, listen to me. Nothing is coming through there. I told you I'd keep you safe, and I will," he assured her.
"No! I don't care! What could you have wanted that's so important?!" she demanded, trying to yank her arm free.
"It's about your parents."
That brought a sudden stop to her struggles. She looked at him in disbelief, still looking torn between staying with him and putting as much distance between herself and the rift as possible.
"There's something you need to know, and we need to talk about it here." His grip relaxed, but he didn't let her go yet. "You'll understand when we're done. But I need you to come with me."
After a few deep breaths to calm herself down, she looked back and forth between him and the rift before her eyes settled on him. "How do I know it's safe here?"
He pointed at the rift, saying, "You see that circle of salt around it? That keeps the Aetherials from coming out, and even if they could, they'd be surrounded by the biggest heroes in the city," he tapped a finger on his chest, "and me. I can always bring my friends back, and in only a second, suddenly I have seven of them at my side. Less than a minute later, and I have fifteen."
That was how she'd almost always seen him, surrounded by the monsters he used to fight the worse monsters. Still... "What about the monsters already here?" she asked.
"I spent this morning killing so many of them that I've turned this part of the city into an open-air tomb, just to make sure they didn't interrupt us. They're not going to threaten this base for a while," he said with calm certainty.
Still nervous, but convinced she was safest with him, she stepped closer to him. "Okay. But...you gotta promise you'll keep me safe."
He nodded. "I promise. That's another reason I brought you here." He turned to the stairs, still hand in hand with her. "But we'll talk about that later."
As they walked down to the square and her eyes adjusted to the sunlight, she looked around at the changed scenery. She used to come through here with her brothers and father to get to and from the factories - a girl's got to eat, after all, and that meant earning the coin to pay for it - but a lot had changed. The gates had been broken down and were replaced with makeshift wooden barricades and platforms. Resistance members, a few of whom she knew from before the Aetherial takeover, now stood alongside some of the new soldiers who she'd seen coming and going in the sewer. She'd always thought the only way she'd see the Black Legion was if there was an uprising that gained so much momentum that it had a chance of unseating the aristocrats and they decided it needed to be crushed for sure, but now they fought to get her city back.
Eraline recognized a few of the important people among the soldiers. It was hard not to notice Commander Korinia with her colorful armor that made her stand out from the rest of the Malmouth Resistance. Then there were those people who showed up after the Taken did, who she'd seen pass through the sewers once in a while, but they never stayed long before they came back here. One of them wore the armor of an Inquisitor, which she mostly recognized from the couple of times she'd happened to see one in the Steelcap District; they were rarely seen in the lower-class areas without good reason and their time was never wasted on the slums. Another was covered head to toe in black and gray armor and who also wore a hood and silver mask, but unlike the Taken, the green light of the Aether flickered in her eyes. And then there was that older, mustached man in clothes that looked fancy but were tailor-made for quick, free movement.
The other thing that the girl's attention was drawn to, when she wasn't nervously eyeing the rift, was something in the square, well away from the rift, covered in black fabric. Whatever it was, it was raised off the ground about as high as her head and was mostly rectangular in shape, a little longer than an adult human on one side and maybe twice as wide as a human on the other.
"Um...what did you wanna talk about, Mr. Taken?" Eraline asked him once they were near the bottom of the stairs.
He finally released her hand and walked down a few more stairs before turning to her so their eyes were mostly level with each other. "Eraline, this morning, I was going through the Candle District looking for an Aetherial I was hunting. While I was there, there was a home I went into, and I found something else." He reached behind his back and pulled out the object he was talking about, offering it to her. "Does this look familiar?"
It absolutely did. He was holding out a sketchy, dirty, but still recognizable picture of a family of five, and under each person, names were written. Two of them were "Mom" and "Dad," and one of them was "Eraline."
She nodded eagerly. "Yeah! That's a picture Mommy drew of us once!" she said as she took the picture, her sudden optimism just as quickly dimming. "Mommy...Mommy liked to draw. She didn't get to do it much." When the Taken nodded back, she asked, "Where'd you find it?"
"In one of the homes. One that has red and green sheets for curtains, I assume because that's the best you could do." When she perked up a little again, he leaned in closer. "Because I'm also assuming that's your home, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, it is!" Then she noticed the words he chose and, a bit more glumly, added, "Was."
He straightened back up and there was a short but awkward silence between them until he said, "Come here." When she resumed following him, he led her to a few crates nearby and took a seat on one of them, offering for her to join him. After she did, he went on, "That's not all I found there."
She had a sudden, sinking feeling of what he was about to say, and if anyone else was talking to her, she might not be able to listen anymore. But she made herself be strong. Or at least act like it. "Y...Yeah?"
"There were a couple of people there. A couple of...dead people." Even without being able to see his face, his folded hands and the new hesitation in his voice made that chill that was washing over her body feel cooler. "People who looked a lot like two of the people in that picture."
Eraline had been hoping somehow, impossibly, she would never have to hear this, but she needed him to just say it. "Was it Mommy and Daddy?"
He nodded. "I'm sorry, but yes. I'm as sure as I can be without you telling me."
That was all she could take. She wanted to see her parents again, but she knew those hopes only ever got slimmer as time went on. Now that she heard it for herself that they were gone for good, from the same person who'd already told her the sad truth that even necromancers couldn't bring back the dead in the way she wanted...
It was too much.
She hunched over with her arms wrapped around her torso and let it all out. Her eyes were scrunched shut as she cried out her feelings from hearing that her parents, the only family members who just might have escaped the fate that her brothers fell victim to, were also gone. Before, she kept getting on with just trying to live, in the hopes that she might see them again. They always pulled through to take care of her and her brothers, so they had to make it through this.
But they couldn't. Now, she was alone.
The Taken didn't move to comfort her, or if he did, she didn't notice. Not with her eyes shut. Besides, she didn't want him to give her a hug, not when he was a faceless, nameless man who could be anyone under that armor and who she'd only known for a little while. It didn't matter how big of a hero he was, she wanted to feel her father and mother's familiar arms, not the cold hardness of armor or the soft fabric of well-made robes.
He was in no hurry for her to finish, and when her cries eventually died down to the point where he could be heard again without raising his voice, he spoke. "There's something you should know, Eraline, about how I found them."
She looked up at him, still choking up but wanting any reassuring words he could offer.
"Your mother hadn't been turned into a monster."
She nodded. That was a good start.
"From what I can tell, your father somehow got her away from the Aetherials before they could take her where he couldn't get her. Then, I don't know how long it took, but they tried to make their way back to your home." He sighed. "At some point, they must have gotten in a fight and managed to fight off whatever attacked them, but not before they got hurt."
"How...sniff...how do you know?"
"I don't know. But I'm guessing, from the blood trail that led to them from the door, and from some...marks I found on them."
"Oh..." she muttered, feeling newly sick again at the thought of it.
"But I brought you here to tell you for a reason. I didn't just leave them there."
She sniffed loudly, then asked, "You...what?"
"I brought them back with me so you could say goodbye to them."
She blinked, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "Where...where are they?"
He looked back at the covered-up thing in the square, then turned back to her before thumbing at it. "We made a funeral pyre, and I laid them on it, then I covered it up so you wouldn't have to see them."
She didn't feel at all ready to see that, but she bought a little time by asking, "What's that mean? A funeral pyre?"
Folding his hands, he said, "It's...a thing made of wood that bodies are laid on before it's set on fire with them."
Her eyes shot open. "You wanna burn them?!" she cried.
"I don't want to, but-"
"Why would you do that?! Why can't you just bury them?!"
"Because, Eraline, that hard truth is, even the dead aren't safe anymore and we aren't safe from the dead."
That was another hit to her spirit, and again, it was partly because she knew it was true so she couldn't argue. It still made her feel sick in a way she couldn't put into words.
He let out a quiet sigh. "Eraline, do you remember what you said when you told me the other kids were picking on you?" he asked. When she nodded slightly, he went on, "They made fun of you because your mom got taken away. They said she was going to get turned into a monster and come get you." She nodded again. "Well...it's too late to bring her back alive, or your dad...but it's not too late to make sure they'll never come back as something worse."
She couldn't look him in the face anymore and her gaze slowly drifted down to the ground as she tried to come to terms with what she was being faced with. She felt ready to break down all over again, but this time, it was just to fall apart, not explode.
He must have picked up that this was too much to take as he said, "If you need some time, take your time. Do you want me to stay here, or do you need to be alone?"
She couldn't answer out loud. She just shook her head.
"...I should leave?"
Another "no" shake.
"Okay."
The Taken sat in patient silence as Eraline sat in stunned silence. At least, she was silent in the sense that she couldn't speak; the occasional hiccup or sob still escaped her. Her head and heart were such a swirl of feelings that she felt a kind of numbness wash over her, like she couldn't let herself feel anything because everything felt so bad in a way that couldn't get better.
At some point, she picked up on footsteps approaching, and while she couldn't lift her head to look, she could glance over at the ground to see Commander Korinia standing nearby, or so she assumed from the familiar boots.
"Hey," she said quietly, "I don't know what he told you, but we're not just...throwing them in a fire. This is kind of like...a burial. But it's one that only heroes get."
Better that than throwing them in a pit with all the other dead, if there were any dead left here that hadn't been turned into monsters. They were still gone.
"We even have an Inquisitor to give them last rites."
That didn't boost Eraline's spirit either. The Inquisitors were supposed to be like the Empire's secret police and best monster hunters. They had more important things to do than to bother with people as poor as she was. The only reason he was here must have been because he knew the Taken.
Korinia waited for a bit, then knelt so she was level with the girl. "I promise, they're not going to get away with it. We won't let them." As she turned to leave, she asked the Taken, somewhat pointedly, "Still think this was a good idea?"
"I still know it's the right thing to do," he answered.
"And your other bright idea? Have you told her that yet?"
"When the time is right."
A small part of her mind that wasn't numb wondered what else he could possibly have to talk about, but that thought didn't last long. Whatever it was, Korinia didn't press him on it before she let them be.
Eraline wasn't sure how much time passed as her head slowly started to clear, or at least clear enough that she could think again. Even then, her mind ran away from her as memories of her parents replayed in her head. It was like she was reminding herself of what she'd lost and committing her most important moments with them to memory now that she couldn't make any more.
Eventually, she hit the point where she had one more memory to make of them: The last one.
"Mr. Taken?" she muttered, getting a questioning hum from him. "I'm...you can...do it now."
He stood up and offered his hand. "Do you want to say goodbye?"
She didn't take his hand, but she slid off the crate and onto her feet, still in a daze. "Can I...see it's them?"
"...I don't know if you-"
"You...you don't know it's them. If they're gone..." she sniffed, "I gotta know."
They walked to what Eraline now understood was her parents' final resting place, with Eraline's steps being much slower and less upbeat than before, practically shuffling. When they reached one end of it, the Taken took hold of the fabric covering it and looked down at her. "Last chance to look away," he warned.
As much as she wanted to be brave, she had to shut her eyes and turn her head. "Just...give me a second," she said. When she heard the fabric moving, she swallowed hard and counted down in her head, "Three...two...one..." before she took a moment-long peep.
That was them. She could only see their faces and that glimpse was all it took for her guts to clench, but the Taken was right.
Her reaction must have told the Taken all he needed to know. He covered them back up as she quickly turned away, torn from that feeling of going numb from being so overwhelmed and thrown back into all that emotional pain.
"I'm sorry," he said again. When she didn't answer, he turned to some of the people nearby, who then approached them. In short order, Korinia, the Inquisitor, and the well-dressed older man had come to their side.
The Inquisitor stepped closer. "Eraline," he said, "are there any final words you would like to say?"
Talking at all was hard for her to do, let alone say her last words to her parents. So, she looked over her shoulder at their covered bodies and said the only thing she could: "Goodbye."
He gave her a nod before he turned to the pyre. He started speaking in a language she didn't understand. She picked up the names of her parents amid the words, and from his tone, it sounded like he was giving them a final blessing. She watched over her shoulder, still turned away, as he spoke for some time. Then he raised a hand and, with a few more such words, a wisp of fire appeared above his open palm, and he reached towards the pyre.
"May you be granted the last mercy of a life well lived: A peaceful rest," he finished in normal speech.
The flame left his hand and flew to the pyre. Within a few seconds, it was alight.
That was all Eraline could stand. She shuffled, almost staggered, back to the steps leading to the ledge overlooking the base. She didn't need or want to be here anymore. There was nothing else she could do, anyway.
Once she got to the ledge, she slumped against the wall near the sewer entrance, then slid to sit on the ground, staring blankly. She couldn't see the fire from here and didn't want to either, but she could still hear it. Part of her wanted to get away from it by crawling back in the sewer and staying there forever, where she belonged, like that man who was already living there when they moved in. She just didn't have the energy to get up and do it.
Everything became a gray, numb blur as time passed. It was hard to even think about the memories of her family now, like those were turning to colorless ashes with her parents. She really had no one she could call family now, no one who was looking out for her because they cared about her; she was just another nobody.
She barely noticed when someone came up to her, unable to even look over to see whose boots they might be. Whoever it was, they sat down beside her.
"This isn't the end," they, or more specifically the Taken, told her. "I'm not letting it end here. I'm not letting you be alone."
She didn't answer. She didn't care. He wasn't going to stop fighting just to stay here with her.
"I've made arrangements to have you taken care of."
Still felt like an empty promise. There weren't any orphanages in the city, and even if there were, there was no one to run them. He hadn't told her much about how the rest of the world was doing, but from what she'd heard, while Malmouth was really bad even compared to most other places, there wasn't anywhere for her to go to be "taken care of." What could he offer to make sure she wouldn't be left to die in the sewers now that her family was gone?
"Eraline, I know I might be saying this too soon, and I want you to have time to grieve...but do you remember when we met, and you were fascinated with what it was like to be a necromancer? I know some people who can show you that death isn't something to be afraid of."
That made her blink and slightly turn her head towards him to look at his boots.
"I want you to come with me. I'll take you somewhere you'll be protected and where you can do more than just...wait for everything to be over." He set his hand near her, palm upturned. "You told me once that you wanted to be a necromancer. I can't promise you that you will be, but I can give you the chance."
She was still struggling to think through the haze in her head. Just getting her mind back in the present was difficult enough, let alone thinking about the future.
He must have understood that this, indeed, wasn't the time as he pulled his hand back. "I'll be back when I've finished the fight here," he said before he knelt beside her. "Just remember something."
When he didn't say anything at first, she finally looked up enough to look him in the face.
"You're not alone, kid. We're all in this together."
Having said that, he stood up and turned away. Taking his weapons in hand again, he raised his scepter, and a trio of skeletons climbed out of the stone ground through holes that closed as suddenly as they appeared. Then, in quick succession, a raven crackling with lightning flashed into the air near him, a horned dog wreathed in flames burst into existence from a star-centered circle, a bulky mannequin of diseased flesh condensed out of nowhere, and one more skeleton - or closer to a sort of human-shaped juggernaut made of many skeletons - didn't so much climb out of the ground as burst up from it.
A moment later, a portal like the one in the base, only red in color, opened beside him. He'd taken one step towards it, his minions at his side and following him, when Eraline found her voice again and mumbled, "What're you gonna do?"
He turned back to her, surrounded by his monsters, and answered, "I'll avenge your family." Then, he went on his way, disappearing into the portal along with his minions.
Alone again, she stared at the portal he'd disappeared into, and she had too many questions and not enough thoughts.
What was he talking about? Was he seriously going to give her a chance to be a necromancer? She'd been surrounded by death for months, but life in the slums sometimes had her going to bed and hoping she'd make it through the next day, and accidents happened at the factories, so she had some familiarity with death already. Did she have what it took? What did it take, anyway? What would happen to her if she couldn't learn how to do it?
And...why was the Taken so interested in her that he'd offer her a chance to try?
For the moment, there was only one thing on Eraline's mind. Everyone here knew and trusted the Taken, and he was always good on his word. So, if he said he was going to avenge her family, and he wasn't coming back until he had? She had even more reason than usual to look forward to seeing him again.