* * *
Ebrelle
* * *
Mother grabs me by the hair and twists her hand in that special way that she likes to use to get my attention. I manage a hazy blink, but I really can't concentrate on her all that much. There's something looming over me, something that's dark and quiet and yet hates me so much. It'll eat me, though. I've already been enough trouble for it that it'd be more satisfied with killing me than using me.
I never knew Nul hated me so - I assumed that his actions towards me were typical of his treatment of anyone put in the position I was in. But I'm not that surprised. I can't put the effort into it to be surprised. I'm dying, after all - so whatever Mother is trying to tell me can't be all that important.
"Think you'll escape like Eistinn, will you?" Her voice hitches up at the last note, and I wonder if he was her favorite. Then I tell myself: of course he was her favorite. He's dead.
I nod like an idiot, but it's the only reply I can give her. Yes, I'm dying like Eistinn did. And Alestere is well on his way to follow us - she'll have an empty nest. Who knows if Mother can even make more children now?
What will she sacrifice to Nul then? I muse on it, my mind starting to drift away. Maybe one of the Kommissars. Would anyone even find them worth that much? But there's no accounting for taste...
Something pulls at me. Mother. She's resorted to tugging at my very soul to get my attention. I've let Nul take so much of my energy that I barely notice even that. "Yes?" I don't know if I say it aloud or mind-to-mind. I don't even know why I bother speaking, but by this point it's something to pass the time until I die.
"He can't kill you unless you let him." Her voice is acid, every word spoken as a curse.
I think I manage a shrug - or she reads my reaction through her grip on my soul. White Lords can be so perceptive about those things... and twist what they can perceive so horribly. I once aspired to be a Green Lord, but now I think I'll content myself with being dead.
"Oh, you're letting him. You're letting him now, because he'll take your body and kill you - he doesn't want your soul. He considers it a vile thing that he'd just spit out." He voice grows louder. She's leaning in closer. "But he'll take your little brother's soul. He likes the taste of it, but only the part that's still in his body. The body you stabbed with the same knife you stabbed yourself with."
Time goes strange as you're dying. There's a pause filled with all the silence in the world, where I have as much time as I need to contemplate what she's getting at. But in death, I am a slow thinker. I don't realize it until she finishes.
"You didn't wipe the blade before you struck yourself... did you?"
I finally feel something. I feel her hand press against my chest before it slides down to the wound I've dealt myself. It slides under the bandages, against the skin. A finger slides into my wound and reminds me of what pain is. I didn't realize I could still feel it.
Mother whispers words I can't understand, and my blood feels as if it's turned to ice.
A blood bind. I try to fight it, but I'm too far gone to have the strength. I've already made it too easy for her by willingly mixing Alestere's blood with mine. I was too stupid in my assumption that we'd both simply die to think of what Mother might use her skills as a White Lord to do to us.
I feel it happen - I don't need her to explain it to me. But Mother is smug and triumphant, and she is happy. She tells me what she's doing to us.
"Your life is tied to your life's blood just as easily as your brother's soul is tied to his blood. Seeing as you've mixed them together, it's child's play to link one to the other. So go ahead and let yourself die - you'll meet the oblivion you seek, but you'll feed your brother's soul to our King in the process."
I can't die.
I feel Nul's rage as I shrink back from it, as I withdraw my consent for him to take my life. I can already anticipate how much punishment I'll endure for such behavior, but I don't care. He won't have my brother. In the end that's all that matters... and it's all I have. Everything else is Nul's. I might catch a glimpse of my life from time to time - in glimmering times, I take most of the control back, but never all of it. I never have that control again.
"You're heir again, Ebrellin-i." The name is poison to me - I don't want the throne title attached to it, but I certainly can't pass it to Alestere now, even if I had the liberty.
Now that I know what it really means...
"You may name your brother now." Mother giggles, and I wonder with dread just what she could find amusing about this. "He can't keep the same name, now that he isn't heir anymore. He's your possession - yours to name. So go on. Name him."
I want to open my mouth myself, say the words I want to say - that Alestere is not mine, that he can name himself and be free of me. But my King doesn't want that, and Nul opens my mouth instead, and bids me speak on his behalf. I suppose it's his first act through his new puppet of a King.
"His name is Eleth-travente." I feel a pang of sorrow. No... that's not right at all. Alestere meant "gift" or "gifted one". I always thought it was a pretty, fitting name for someone who had so much to offer the world. Now I know he was intended to be Nul's gift. This new one means...
"The little broken gift?" Mother, even, is confused.
"We shall make him whole, one day, with the piece of him you have given me. Then he shall be fit to take the throne of Radia. Until then, I shall hold that piece of him in my own lands. I shall make it ready."
I don't understand anything, but there's nothing I can do to stop it - and soon, Nul helps this confusion slide away from my mind, and the whole incident blurs out of my memory. There is only the throne to keep, and my brother to keep as close as possible.
When he runs away to Radia, I protect the only connection I have to him - this little piece of me. When Nul takes everything else that's me, this part remains. This part that keeps Nul from taking Elete's soul. Now Elete is dead.
I should just let them take me, now.
* * *
Lyric
* * *
I'm not aware of holding Ebrelle until I'm already lurching to the side, dragging him just far enough to evade Edward's grasp. I hear the man curse, I even see him glare at Ebrelle with perplexity - but he doesn't see me, somehow. And then I realize something that, if it was true before, I never noticed until now.
Edward's irises are solid white.
I don't know what I've done, but I've pulled Ebrelle just far enough out of reach--
Everything lurches.
We open our eyes. We're in Faun's forest again, in the waking world.
When I started this, I was writing on the tree with a quill that had no nib. Now I'm hunched beside Ebrellin-i, holding him for dear life as the towering black dragon that is probably all of him by now looks down at both of us. Its breath wisps out in hazy tendrils that smell of incense that's burned thick and long in too small of a space.
I remember to breathe. Ebrellin-i, as beaten and bloody as he is, stares up at his own soul. He shakes, either out of fear or sheer physical trauma.
I can't move.
The dragon doesn't eat us - it looks at Faun, wary. The animism gazes back at the dragon unblinking, then turns that eerie gaze on me.
"Did you find anything worth keeping?"
I tighten my arms around Ebrellin-i. "He's all worth keeping. It's just what to do with him that's always been--"
The dragon makes its decision - it dives down and its jaws consume me once more.
* * *
Ebrellin-i
* * *
There are so very many ways to end yourself, or take a large amount of the world with you while you're at it. I've studied them all very meticulously, and am quite sure that the list I've made of them is as comprehensive as one could get it in the lifespan I've been allowed, with the tools I've been alotted.
It's been a busy life, though not necessarily a happy one. There were daughters, yes. Lovers. None as sweet as you, J'Lotus, but the Jhe o'Radia did come very close to the mark before I broke him. Oh, he wouldn't call it a break. And maybe it was more of a burn, in retrospect. Perhaps if he'd been as sweet as you...
Ah, but then, I broke you too. I break all of my toys - or at least keep them in line. Otherwise, they run away. And see, when they run away, they aren't safe anymore. See what my poor little brother did to himself by running off to Radia? It took years, but eventually he got himself killed. And I--
I...
I wouldn't have let that happen to him, J'Lotus, I really wouldn't have.
I know a lie like that when I hear it, Jhe Ebrellin-i.
So formal you've turned, and after you started out so cheeky. After all we've been through. I just wanted to say goodbye. It's simply my time to end. Master beckons.
It's your choice whether you live or die.
Goodness, your voice is so pleading! Such a lovely tone, really, but not to my taste at the moment. Those dalliances are for the past days... my future will be simple oblivion, I think. But J'Lotus, I do wonder - why do you even care? I've bitten you in so many ways by now. Haven't you learned your lesson? You, who came to me with a pedigree of experience training animals. You should know what cases are beyond your control... you should know when to let go.
When to let the animal free, you mean? After all, I can't protect you.
I laugh. The sound is so strange, in this mental landscape... not really a landscape, not really land. It's Nul, but not Nul. Not quite yet, but it soon will be. And then, I'll finally be nothing. I'll finish that deed of so long ago, and be at peace.
Except, he keeps nagging at me. Why? There's no value to my life for him, likely no bounty he could claim. There's nothing of worth to me at all. There never was. Mother taught that to me early, and Nul finished the instruction. What I tried to make of myself turned to ruin in the end.
Just as I will, now.
And so I turn to him, that great sea of nothing at all, that strange King that wears armor so powerful that none can see past it... or at least, no one that I've heard of has. I turn to him... but he eludes me, in this final hour, and I don't know why.
...
Boy, insolent boy, are you denying me this death? How?
I have my ways. His voice betrays a lot of fear, but nothing of what his method against me is.
And then, I feel it. The touch of my brother. His methods, his ways. He called them his skills as a Time Lord - he made up that term just so there'd be a word for it. He was so gifted... he was so many things. Jhe Lotus has this ability too? How? I would have known if he was a Poet. He was with me the whole time, after all!
Jhe Lotus is silent, but I know he senses my thoughts, and my suspicion. And that knowing is what confirms it for me - that Jhe Lotus is a Poet, and likely was all this time. But how? He wasn't one of my brother's spies! I'd have sensed that!
Does it matter, what I was? His voice is broken, now. He's crying. I've hurt him somehow in my suspicions, in some way I can't even be aware of - and for some reason, I feel ashamed of it. I wonder why? But then... I felt shame for all the Poets I hurt. The Armed as well, though a little less so. They were a true danger to me and that which I loved and protected... still, had I not been a puppet...
I would have let them go, if not particularly in the best of shape...
The Poets, though, the little children and students of Elete... those I truly mourned. And to think, Jhe Lotus would have been one more--
It's Lyric! His voice cuts through mine. My name is Lyric, damnit! If you're going to kill yourself then at least you'll die knowing who was to blame!
I'm silent for a moment.
You can die cursing that name, if you wish! My parting gift to you!
I am confused as to how my death could be this boy's fault. My demise has, if anything else, been truly my own invention.
It's all my fault! This would have never happened if it weren't for me. I wish I had never answered your invitation in the first place!
Pure dramatics. I have been the sole mastermind here. All of this had to have happened... wait, no. No, I think this really is your fault, Jhe... Lyric.
Re-really? There's a tiny indication of a sniffle. He almost seems placated by the blame.
No, but it was enough to loosen your Poetry's grip on me--
Something unexpected happens, then.
He hits me. Somewhere in this expanse of nothingness, somehow, I feel it. As if he's struck my cheek. The... the gall of it. No, it's more than a simple slap in the face. It's an outright attack. He's actually trying to fight me, this strange boy...
I find myself growing angry, and I don't know why. But I am tired of this dragging out. I want to die, damnit. There's nothing left for me.
Coward! Coward King! Coward father, coward trainer, coward keeper of everything you claimed you'd protect! It's all still there, damn it, and it's broken because of you, and you're just going to leave it because you're too scared to come back and--
Then, whatever skill Jhe Lyric was using to seal me away from my unmaking slips, because he screams. I feel, for the first time in what seems like an eternity, panic. Not him. Me - I'm supposed to die! I can be hurt and kicked and whipped and--
Not him!
I lunge forward with everything I can, everything I have left of me, to attack whatever it is that's gotten after my Lyric. And then I realize, fool me--
He'd been pretending.
* * *
