And so, it began.
Rory kept his lonely vigil, some 50-60 yards from the Spire, where the Ascended had converged. The breeze had carried the sound of voices, but not their words, but he saw them move, trace patterns of a sort on the black granite. He shivered in the dark, as if a spectral hand lightly dragged its fingertips down his spine, and then hooked its nails in his heart.
Then something shifted. For a split second it was subtle, until it wasn't: a bolt of lightning, vivid and pure and burning into his retinas, snaked up the black length of the lonely tower, striking the shield that had caged them for years and years.
The earth rumbled and bucked, as it had that day in the Outskirts, when the Outlanders had just arrived and he'd just met them.
He was afraid.
He was watching his world end.
His loyal sleepers did not wake from their machinated dreams, remained oblivious to the plight they had failed; Rory watched Aedion disappear into the Spire, but he found that he didn't care. He only had eyes for Wessex, wanting to commit her to memory before she was bound to slip into the dark mouth yawning at the Spire's base.
Solitary, ferocious, lovable Wessex.
People came running. Of course they did, drawn by the rumble and the flash, and with a twinge of annoyance he noticed that they did not drop into slumber the moment they crossed into what paltry fortifications the human shield had set up.
Among those who stormed towards its base was, of course, Roana, hungry for her glory. Vai's daughter too, all lightning and jet-black. On that night, when they rushed to slip the dagger between the ribs of his life, he found it in his dark heart to hate.
ThenEdrei of all people came up to him, snarling, eyes dark. The look he leveled at her was even, unforgiving, uncompromising, but he couldn't silence the fear snaking around his bones. "No," he said, his voice about as friendly as the rocks and bones around them. He completely ignored the arrival of Zariah. "I'm not down there with them, am I? Look around you-" His pale hand flashed in the dark of the night, indicating the bodies that slept peacefully around them, unaware of what was transpiring. "They're all asleep. It was me and five Ascended in the dark."
He was tired, uninterested in her threats and barbs and the fire he knew she could light around her hands, but that other miserable fuck of a woman chose that moment to open her mouth again.
"Is that what you said when it was-" and his voice stumbled over Ronin's name "-the Northaveners risking their lives down there?" Rory asked sweetly, fully aware of the fact that he was tempting death. Edrei's threat from earlier that day burned starkly in his mind and he had no idea who this woman was to her, but fuck, in that moment, Rory's fire burned hotter than his reason. "Oh, yeah, more or less, it was. You despicable fuck of a vulture."
And then, if Edrei hadn't already set him on fire, he tried to walk away from them both.
Their company was not the company he wanted, there in the dark.
Rory kept his lonely vigil, some 50-60 yards from the Spire, where the Ascended had converged. The breeze had carried the sound of voices, but not their words, but he saw them move, trace patterns of a sort on the black granite. He shivered in the dark, as if a spectral hand lightly dragged its fingertips down his spine, and then hooked its nails in his heart.
Then something shifted. For a split second it was subtle, until it wasn't: a bolt of lightning, vivid and pure and burning into his retinas, snaked up the black length of the lonely tower, striking the shield that had caged them for years and years.
The earth rumbled and bucked, as it had that day in the Outskirts, when the Outlanders had just arrived and he'd just met them.
He was afraid.
He was watching his world end.
His loyal sleepers did not wake from their machinated dreams, remained oblivious to the plight they had failed; Rory watched Aedion disappear into the Spire, but he found that he didn't care. He only had eyes for Wessex, wanting to commit her to memory before she was bound to slip into the dark mouth yawning at the Spire's base.
Solitary, ferocious, lovable Wessex.
People came running. Of course they did, drawn by the rumble and the flash, and with a twinge of annoyance he noticed that they did not drop into slumber the moment they crossed into what paltry fortifications the human shield had set up.
Among those who stormed towards its base was, of course, Roana, hungry for her glory. Vai's daughter too, all lightning and jet-black. On that night, when they rushed to slip the dagger between the ribs of his life, he found it in his dark heart to hate.
Then
He was tired, uninterested in her threats and barbs and the fire he knew she could light around her hands, but that other miserable fuck of a woman chose that moment to open her mouth again.
"Is that what you said when it was-" and his voice stumbled over Ronin's name "-the Northaveners risking their lives down there?" Rory asked sweetly, fully aware of the fact that he was tempting death. Edrei's threat from earlier that day burned starkly in his mind and he had no idea who this woman was to her, but fuck, in that moment, Rory's fire burned hotter than his reason. "Oh, yeah, more or less, it was. You despicable fuck of a vulture."
And then, if Edrei hadn't already set him on fire, he tried to walk away from them both.
Their company was not the company he wanted, there in the dark.
