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After one hundred years of loneliness, there wasn’t much Ardbert found that could bring him joy. Watching in silence as the world moved and suffered around him, he had become pretty numb to the goings-on of the people he had, ostensibly, sacrificed his life to protect.
It was one of the things that baffled him the most about the Warrior of Darkness: that he hadn’t.
M’ren Aaylis was a young man on whom the fate of two worlds depended. He was the only hope for the salvation of a star struggling for air against the dying of the night. He had taken in so much poisonous light that he was, almost literally, falling apart at the seams.
And he was singing.
“She’s painting the roses red,” he said, sitting cross-legged by the fence overlooking the amaro keep. “There’s many a tear she’ll shed.” He stretched his arm and pulled a length of shining, silver thread. He shifted the fabric he was working from one side of his lap to the other. “Because she knows.” He flipped the thing over. “They’ll cease to grow.” He brought his needle down. “And soon they’ll both be dead.” He repeated the entire motion again.
M’ren held up the thing (which seemed to Ardbert to be a tunic, perhaps? Maybe a shawl?) and peered at it with a knowing eye. “Well, that’s disappointing,” he said, and he shoved it into the large basket sitting by his feet. It was that motion that made him catch sight of Ardbert.
“Oh, my ghostly friend!” he said in greeting, indicating the empty chair at his table with one of his gloved hands. “Watching me sew, are you? Sorry to leave you disappointed.”
Bemused, Ardbert took the chair. “I never learned how to sew. Lamitt kind of handled that for all of us.”
“She was very talented, by all accounts.” M’ren leaned over and began rifling about in his basket. “Can’t imagine she was too pleased none of you bothered to learn, though.”
Ardbert laughed. It was nice to be able to talk to someone about his friends. It was even nicer to be able to do so with someone who actually knew them. “Renda-Rae could field dress a wound, but—”
“That hardly counts.” M’ren’s voice was muffled, coming from under the table.
“I feel like she’d have disagreed.”
“I feel like you could get Renda-Rae to disagree with you on anything.” He straightened for a moment, shooting Ardbert a look. “That’s you, specifically, by the way. The Echo has revealed you to be a man quite obstreperous in temper.”
“I am not… that thing you said.”
“Means ‘obnoxious’,” M’ren clarified, hauling some metal thing up and placing it on the table between them. “Which you are.”
The present tense warmed Ardbert a little, though he wouldn’t say it. “What is that thing?” he asked instead, pointing at the brass orb the size of M’ren’s hand.
“An experiment.” M’ren leaned down again and pulled up a box of tools, which he set next to the orb. He flicked the little box open, pulled out a slim metal rod and began working at the orb, all without clarifying.
Ardbert rolled his eyes. “An experiment for what?”
A panel on the orb’s side flicked open and M’ren swapped out the rod for a smaller one. “Don’t want to say,” he answered, as vague as ever. “In case it doesn’t work.”
“Who could I possibly tell?”
M’ren shrugged, already bent nearly in half over the thing. “Call it suspicion. You never know who’s listening.”
Ardbert tried to lean in a little closer and see what he was doing. “You think your enemies are here, in the Crystarium?”
“I think,” M’ren said, jabbing into the orb and wincing when something sparked, “that if I am visibly working on something, everyone and their dear grandmama will fall over themselves to help the poor, overwhelmed Warrior of Darkness and I won’t actually get anything accomplished.”
“You chose to be their hero,” Ardbert teased.
M’ren looked up from his slouch over the orb. “I don’t know that I chose this, so much as—”
“I meant being approachable and dressing like a tramp.”
M’ren snorted gracelessly. He sat up and straightened his back, firing a smirk at Ardbert. “Ardbert of Wherever-the-Hell, are you overwhelmed by my breasts?”
Ardbert snorted just as inelegantly. “You look like a drowned rat.” He pointed at M’ren’s shirt, which was open to the sternum as usual. “I’m sure the young maids and their shy brothers find you very handsome, but I’m made of sterner stuff.”
M’ren laughed, his mouth open to make another retort, but then his laugh got caught in his throat. It went sharp and short, and then he was wheezing at the table and Ardbert cursed the fact that he couldn’t reach over and assist.
Eventually, the coughing fit subsided. M’ren smiled again, but it was weak and wan. It had been a joke, calling him a drowned rat, but Ardbert couldn’t help but notice how thin he’d become. His skin was almost grey, and his ears drooped even when he wasn’t angry or upset. He seemed halfway gone; threadbare, like the cloth he fished out of his bag to wipe at the orb before getting back to work.
Ardbert couldn’t see the light tearing him apart, but M’ren looked as though he was wiped away little by little, with each pass of the cloth.
“Yeah,” said M’ren, shoving the cloth into the front of his shirt. “Don’t want anyone getting teary over me while I’m trying to work.”
“They’re just worried about you.”
M’ren grunted, picking up one of his little tools again. “Can handle worry. Can’t handle crying.”
“Is that why you’re hiding up here by yourself?” Ardbert played with the sharp spikes of the fence. They were meant to keep the rare visitors to the allure safe from plunging to their deaths, though they seemed a bit too spiky to be quite safe. Naturally, his ghostly fingers passed through.
“You’re here,” M’ren muttered, back to work already. “Nobody ever leaves me alone ‘less I hide.”
“Do you want that?”
“Dunno. Sometimes. Right now? Ask again later.”
Arbdert leaned back, watching him work for a while. “If you’d like, I can leave you be. If you truly wish to be alone.”
M’ren looked up, such genuine surprise in his eyes that Ardbert instantly understood that he’d misread his apprehension. “You were alone for a century. Even if I did find you taxing, I could handle it to keep you company.”
“Oh. Well.” Ardbert looked out across the bridge. “Who are you hiding from, then?”
M’ren grunted, but Ardbert didn’t have to wait long to get his answer.
There was a sound like a lone maiden exhaling into the wind, and M’ren’s shoulders pulled inwards. He leaned even further over his work, a scowl marring his pretty face.
“Ahh,” called a condescending voice, “the Warrior of Make-Work!!”
The Ascian was upon them.
M’ren did not respond as the Ascian swanned over, standing a fulm or two away from their table in his signature slouch. He examined M’ren handiwork with an apathetic eye. “Such fun this must be,” he drawled, waving his hand around airily. “Sitting here, working on your trinkets, while the poor souls of Novrandt suffer under a rising light that you seem particularly ill-equipped to handle.”
M’ren turned the orb over in his hands and prodded at it with his tools. He did not reply.
As anyone could have anticipated, that did not have the off-putting effect M’ren was hoping for. The Ascian stepped closer.
“If only you could see yourself right now. You are akin to a waterskin overfilled. After you devour the next Warden’s light, do you suppose you’ll pop?”
M’ren jerked a little bit of wire out of the orb, tossing it off-handedly down to the ground far, far below.
The Ascian stepped even closer, peering down at the metal thingamabob with slightly more interest than he had before. Granted, the “before” had been none whatsoever, so it wasn’t a high bar to clear.
“What is it that you work so fervently on, up here in your forlorn solitude? Some other Allagan monstrosity?” He reached out a finger to poke at it, which got his first reaction out of M’ren when he swatted it away. The Ascian barked out an unpleasant laugh. “You sit here fiddling about, Warrior, while your friends below struggle mightily to try—oh, how they try—and find a way to save your poor, beleaguered soul. So, really, indulge me: what are you doing?”
“Go to hell.”
The Ascian simpered, the half-smile not coming anywhere near his dead eyes. “You do prove your barbarity with every action, Warrior. Is a conversation beyond you? Are the niceties of polite society too much for subhumans?”
M’ren’s left ear twitched.
“I should have expected as much.” The Ascian dramatically turned his back on M’ren. “Your utter lack of decorum is emblematic of all you… halflings.”
“What do you want?”
The Ascian cocked his head back over his shoulder. “A conversation, Warrior. A diversion. Something to while away some infinitesimal part of the boredom of immortality. Do keep—”
“No you don’t.” M’ren paused in his ministrations, the little metal tool held precariously between his thumb and forefinger. “You don’t show up just to talk.” His eyebrows drew in as he frowned. “What do you want?”
The Ascian turned fully around, coming to loom over M’ren’s table with a sardonic expression. “Oh, you have some understanding of my motivations, do you? Please elaborate. I am sure it will be both wildly inaccurate and spurious of character.”
M’ren tsked, but did not look up. The Ascian was almost close enough to kiss M’ren’s head, though Ardbert couldn’t imagine a single reason why that would ever happen.
“You only show up,” M’ren began, turning the orb onto its side, “to browbeat us for a decision you dislike, or to manipulate us down a path you want us to take.” He dug the tool in deep and something metallic went chunk. “I am not making any decisions. There are no plans in the offing for you to inveigle.” A whistling sound came from the orb, so M’ren whacked it with the flat of his palm. “I’m sitting alone, working on a doodad you don’t care to recognize, purely for something to do. There is no tactical benefit to this conversation. You hate me. And yet, you’re here. What do you want?”
The Ascian sneered again. “You really do think yourself such a clever little worm, don’t you? Do you believe you have me well and truly pegged? That, somehow, you alone possess some measure of insight into the machinations of millennia? That you have pierced the veil your dear Hydaelyn has draped across the sight and understanding of the sundered fools who worship her?”
M’ren snorted, which Ardbert could see infuriated the Ascian more than anything else. His nostrils flared.
“Mass murder is not a particularly inscrutable motivation to parse.”
“‘Murder’ implies a level of sapience and humanity you do not possess. ‘Mass culling’ might be more appropriate. Comparable to livestock. Or a parasite, perhaps, long past due for the slaughter.”
“I think,” M’ren said, jamming his palm against the orb with a final click, “therefore I am. Being ancient and supercilious does not give you the right to ascribe or deny sapience. You are not better than us.” He set the orb down and pulled out his needlework again. “You are, as a general rule, manifestly worse.”
“And how many of your ‘beast tribes’ would say the same of you?”
“Oh, you have pointed out the inequality in the society I inhabit,” M’ren said, with a voice utterly devoid of emotion. He yanked on a particularly stubborn thread. “My point is invalid. Genocide away.”
“Genocide,” began the Ascian, who, to Ardbert’s surprise, actually seemed to be enjoying himself, “implies a singularity of focus. Omnicide, however—”
“I don’t care,” said M’ren. “I really, truly, do not care. Say whatever incomprehensible nonsense you came to say and begone.”
The Ascian’s expression, which had begun to show some level of interest, flattened. “You plainly have no idea the sheer amount of understanding you are throwing to the wolves, Warrior. I am here, offering you succor, and you deny it out of pride.”
M’ren pulled at his thread. “Everything you tell me is a lie. Every word is a trick.” He held the needle aloft. “There is no truth to be found in you. So piss off.”
“You wound me,” the Ascian droned, eyes following the shine of the needle as M’ren worked. “Have I not been helpful?” The needle dove. “Have I not illuminated the dark recesses of your comprehension?” The needle rose again. “Do you speak to your friends in such a tone?”
“Don’t suppose you’d know,” M’ren muttered.
The Ascian leered. “I can only imagine you speak from experience. How many have you led to their doom, now?”
The needle paused in midair.
“Your strength is vast, Warrior, but those who follow in your wake lack your particular skill in keeping themselves alive. And yet, throw themselves into the abyss they do, following their hero’s lead.”
M’ren’s mismatched eyes looked at the Ascian for the first time.
“It is truly unfortunate,” he went on, stretching out every syllable in the word, “that you inspired the great love of your life to sacrifice herself for a world she didn’t know.” He folded his arms, as M’ren’s ears flattened against his head. “You had her back for a fraction of a heartbeat, and had to say goodbye again. That must have hurt.”
The Ascian’s eyes were alight with vicious glee as M’ren set down his things. Ardbert winced; the bait had clearly worked.
“Ah,” he said, voice soft and dangerous. “You’re lonely.”
The Ascian scoffed. “Lonely?! Surely you—”
“It does explain why you continue to harangue me, despite my clear and utter disinterest.” He cocked his head. “You have literally no one else to talk to. Why else make me suffer through this farce?”
“Why indeed?” said the Ascian, eyes somewhere far away.
“Who else could you talk to?” M’ren went on, eyes razor sharp. “I suppose there’s whoever is puppeting Zenos’ ramshackle remains, but he didn’t seem like much of a scintillating conversationalist as I beat him into the ground.”
The Ascian snorted rudely.
“And he does seem to be the only other one left, doesn’t he?” M’ren said, cutely castigating. “As I have summarily wiped out the rest of your coalition of imbeciles. So you have to turn to me. How sad.”
The Ascian tilted his head back and stared down his nose at M’ren. “You fail to grasp so much, little insect. Whatever small victories you feel you have claimed are insignificant. All the souls lost to your miscreancy can easily be replenished. You fight a losing battle, and are too myopic to realize it.”
M’ren leaned forward with his chin on top of his interlaced fingers. He smiled at the Ascian, but there was none of his warmth to be found. “I wonder,” he murmured, “when I kill you, will you beg like Nabriales? Cry like Igeyorhm?” He bared his teeth. “Or scream like Lahabrea?”
Fury bloomed on the Ascian’s face. “You know nothing of which you speak, you puerile little worm. You create ebullient fictions to mask the mountainous vacuity that is your existence, and then you presume to condescend to your betters. You make claims so spurious, you cannot possibly see them through—antagonism is the sole and final bastion of the impotent.”
M’ren met his furious gaze unflinchingly. “Lahabrea withered away to nothing right in front of me. I will watch you wither as well.”
The Ascian leaned back. “Feh,” he said, making a disinterested gesture with his hand. “This is a waste of precious time. Enjoy your craftwork; you will not have the wherewithal to do it for much longer.” He began to walk away.
“Emet-Selch.”
The Ascian paused, turned back around, and caught M’ren’s metal orb square in the face. Some foul liquid splashed out of it across the Ascian’s face and hands, as he lifted them to wipe it away, and his skin began to hiss.
In barely a breath, M’ren was upon him, the silver thread wrapped tightly around his hands as he dug it into the Ascian’s throat. He clung to the Ascian’s back, legs wrapped around his waist, fighting with all his strength to garrote the taller man.
The Ascian was not going quietly, cursing M’ren and clawing at him, despite the silver wire cutting a thin red line into his neck and the awful bubbles that burst out across his skin. The two of them struggled, M’ren’s weight pulling the Ascian further and further back towards the fence, until he tripped over M’ren’s unattended bag.
The sound of spikes piercing the Ascian’s chest was viscerally unpleasant, even for a man like Ardbert.
M’ren, who had leapt off the Ascian’s back as soon as he’d started falling, got unsteadily to his feet. He looked over at the impaled Ascian—whose eyes had already gone vacant—and walked closer.
“M’ren,” Ardbert began.
M’ren stomped down on the Ascian’s chest with such ferocity that it shocked him. Though two spikes had already pierced partway through the Ascian’s torso, M’ren did not stop until they stood high and clear of the corpse, blood-soaked tips glistening wetly in the afternoon sun.
Chest heaving, M’ren glared down at what had been the Ascian with a savage expression of victory.
“M’ren,” Ardbert began again, “what was the point of that? Won’t he just come back?”
“The point,” M’ren hissed, spinning on Ardbert with a wild look in his eye, “is the message.” He glared down at the corpse again. “The point is to make him understand.” He said a word Ardbert didn’t recognize, and an old tome appeared with a flash in his hand. “The point is to make very, very clear that I will not tolerate this.” He said another foreign word. A great blue dragon fizzled into existence behind him. “The point,” he said, one final time, as the dragon opened its maw, “is to make him aware, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is not worth my time.”
The dragon roared, fire burst from its jaws, and the corpse of the Ascian burned to ash.
When it was done, the dragon and the tome vanished just as quickly as the body had. M’ren kicked the last few cinders off the tower and into the wind.
Ardbert watched him, warily.
M’ren took a long while before he spoke. “I have no time for Ascians. If this all goes sideways, I don’t have much time at all.” He spared Ardbert a glance as he swept his craft bag up and over his shoulder. “I refuse to spend it entertaining a maniac. He understands that now.”
Without another word, he walked away.