Archive of Our Own

She pads barefoot through cavernous empty halls. Each step brings her ever closer to where all like her must one day pass. The ceiling and walls grow distant, until she is left feeling ever so small, in the face of something so great.

The sword-banner hangs over the final door.

She feels the divots they polished in the stone floor, her heels planted where theirs once were. For as long as it could be allowed, she had delayed this journey.
Some part of her, diminished by time and silence, hoped, up until the very dawn, that they'd count the years and come back. For her.
Even one of them by her side would have made the moments to come a blessing.

She lets her eyes slip close, curls her toes into the cool stone, sole bearer of her weight. She tries to imagine them behind her; quiet, steady, so unlike them in memories she grasps and pulls at for meagre comfort.
She buoys herself on the imagined feeling of their warmth, presences sure and solid, tries to recall something like pride on their faces.

She can't.

Her eyes are warm but dry when she opens them again.
One last moment of child-like weakness. Nothing more. After this, she mustn't allow herself such things again.

She crosses the threshold.
Within, lit by the incandescent mid-morning glow,

Only one blade remains.

The air is still and cold. The moment is almost as sacred as this place. Then,

The Voice is all around, it's in her head, it comes from the very marrow of her bones. It descends from the heavens; barely a whisper of wind, caressing stone. There is nothing to be done but heed.

Cold as the halls, steady as stone, certain as she is. She hears it for the first time, yet knows it as surely as she believes she knows herself.

Her tongue feels heavy, pressed against teeth. Her lips part and let free one word alone,

Low and cracked with disuse. Quiet and unassuming. A paltry offering, if only it hadn’t meant so much, once upon a time.

She raises her chin, not in defiance but acceptance, throat bared. There’s nothing to make eye contact with, but her gaze does not stray from the blade.
Show no hesitation, she recalls a stern voice telling someone else, of many years her elder. First among them. It matters not whether you are afraid, only that you show resolve.

For a moment, all is still. Another, she begins to feel her resolve thinning.

Then blinding light.
Merged with it, blinding pain.

She clutches and claws at her own throat, heaving breathes devoid of air as the animal instinct to makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitSTOP overtakes her logical mind. Her vision blurs, the sudden ache in her knees and palms sharpened by the biting cold of the stone below. Points of warmth spread to the back of her hands - is it blood? No, not red. Tears, then.

One last hoarse scream of pain is ripped from her throat as her voice goes, bled dry on the altar of the old Gods.

It's nothing like what she had imagined. It's no worse than what she had prepared herself for.

The light then fades, coming from beneath - no, from within. Cool air rushes into her lungs, she takes a gulp of air as fresh as the first she took in this world. The light rushes upwards, in lines given solidity to rival steel. She is embraced by petals shaped from light itself, warmth spreading through to her heart from where she is cradled. The pain in her throat eases, turns into a dull ache, then fades altogether.

‘Cheaply paid for what little use I made of it’, she thought.

The thought echoes around her, spoken yet unspoken, bouncing off the walls like a whisper echoed. By the power of the God sword.

Her knees ache from cold of the stone seeping into her.