Losing the Light

[Sunny]

OOC: This is Jaryd processing his grief. It's likely to get depressing, morbid, dramatic...I have no plans for how it goes, I'm just writing what comes out. So yeah...read at your own risk.
Jaryd

Kaia!

He bowed over his lover until his head touched the floor, his fingers curling into red lace. His throat burned, but he could not stop screaming as grief ripped up from his very soul and lashed about him like the winds on the Sea of Storms.

...Let me stay…

The last words he had heard from her echoed and shattered, then reformed only to shatter again. What purpose did her death serve? Why? Why? WHY? He begged for the mercy of the Light, pleaded with the Creator for grace, begged Kaia herself to move, to speak, to show him it wasn’t real. He covered her face with kisses, pressed his lips against hers again and again in a vain attempt to pass his life to her.

Please, please, Light please come back.

Something tugged at his shoulders with inexorable strength, slowly pulling him away from his lover. As their bodies separated the edges around the hole in his soul began to crumble and break. It spread wider, deeper, darker as he teetered on the brink. He felt hands on his, slowly peeling his fingers back one by one. Voices echoed about him, but he could not understand what they said.

Alone.

He collapsed to the floor, sobbing like a child, bloodied hands pressed to his chest in a vain attempt to ease the heavy weight of agonized grief that had bloomed there. It ground everything he had ever been to powder, then wound it back out and ground it again. His breath came in quick gasps now, the salt of tears flooding his mouth, choking him with their bitterness.

This cannot be happening.

His eyes fluttered open, staring across endless space to a spot in the corner where he could see shadows moving, struggling, pulling at marble. Figures moved about above him, he could hear voices as if through many spans of water, and yet none of them seemed to notice the movement there.

Watari lay on the ground where she had fallen, her curved blade glittering malevolently. He pushed himself upright, long fingers reaching for the knife.

They did this.

He exploded upward, darting past the well-meaning intruders who tried to stop him, five steps carrying him to where he wanted to be. Scarred fingers wrapped around a throat he could barely see, and steel buried itself into struggling flesh with satisfying solidity. The thing howled, and he felt savage satisfaction. Good! Again. Again. Loss morphed to agony morphed to grief morphed to anger morphed back to loss, and he could not stop.

“You killed her!” He gasped. “You stole her, you took her from me!” He ripped and tore with his fingers and the claw-shaped blade until he bore the assassin to the ground. Dark splatters registered in his vision, but he could not make himself care. “You killed her, and for what? Why?” His voice was broken and harsh even to his own ears.

Abruptly the air itself wrapped around his waist and arms like sinuous vines. The lines yanked Watari away and then he flew backward without ceremony. Even the force of impact did nothing to lessen the pain in his chest. He slammed against the wall of hardened air before him with all his strength, over and over, desperate to get back to the stranger in the corner.

His eyes fell on the still figure in red on the floor, and he forgot to struggle as he stared at her. Someone had pulled her straight and closed her eyes. She almost looked as if she slept now, save for the streaks of darkness on the floor.

Mi cueran.

His rage filtered away as suddenly as it had come, replaced by utter emptiness that brought with it a fresh wave of tears. They blurred his vision and burned his face with salt. His legs could no longer bear the weight of his body; his back slid down the wall until he sat on the floor. Then he hunched forward with his face buried in his hands and pretended, as hard as he could, that it had all been a dream. Perhaps he still wore a collar. Perhaps Regann had decided to teach him a lesson.

He could handle that pain. She would get tired eventually.

[Jenn]

Zeen

Dull pain shot through his shoulders as the scars between them protested, but he could not bring himself to straighten. The brown haired man pressed himself back against the wall as hard as he could, hoping, wishing, that the pale stone underneath the tile would part and let him fall through into oblivion. No one seemed to pay him any mind, his body bowed forward, hunched in on itself, elbows digging into his thighs.

She was gone. The Lady was... gone.

“Kaia!”

The hands clamped around his head tightened, his fingers gripping onto his skull with white knuckled tension. The way Jaryd had cried her name... the screams that followed... Grey eyes were already squeezed closed as tight as they would go, and still the Amadician tried to shut them further. Red’s screams... Light, his screams... Please... please... make it stop... It had been the sound of utter despair and misery made tangible, and it echoed and echoed in Zeen’s skull, deafening and reverberating, and it would not stop.

His chest burned. His arms burned. The assassins had been very skilled, their blades wickedly sharp, and he still bore the livid red scores on his flesh as proof. Some of the cuts ran to the bone, but he would live. He would live. A low keen of anguish caught in the back of his throat. He... at least he had managed- managed to keep their blades from Jaryd after... after... Light! The world compressed around him and grief and horror spiked like a hot brand through him. He gasped and lowered his head further but the tears that blurred his vision and choked at him refused to fall.

Voices and gentle hands prodded at him. He did not glance up, did not move, merely ignored them until they finally moved elsewhere.

“What in the flaming Light are you doing still sitting here?” The incredulous voice of Rodric Amadeo broke through the shroud of numbness after what felt like an eternity.

The Amadician shifted slightly, feeling... dizzy. “I... do not know,” came the slow unsteady answer. His head ached, he realized abruptly.

“Look at me, boy.”

Silver-grey eyes finally opened, Zeen recoiling from the harsh glare of light bouncing off pale tile. His gaze slowly rolled up, followed by his face, but he could not seem to pry his hands away from his skull.

“You were there. Tell me what happened.”

His nostrils flared in response and he was having difficulty breathing. The grey eyed man did not recognize his voice as the words lurched out reluctantly, looking desperately at anything and everything else instead of the imposing Captain General that stood there, right in front of him. Where is Red? The Lady had killed one assassin. Zeen described that in full detail, as best as he was able to. He spoke of how he had liquefied the marble stone to trap another one. He glossed over how he had kept Jaryd safe beneath a dome of hardened Air after Kaia had been- after she had been... He choked and fell silent for long moments. When he continued, it was to speak of how he had killed the third with coils of Earth and Air, crushing bone as if it was nothing more than paper. The Amadician remembered being able to pinpoint where the assassin was because of the ineffectual strikes against his shield. But the Lady... oh Light... Red... the way he had cried her name... Red’s screams...

Zeen did not hear what Rodric said next, distracted and oddly bemused that he was suddenly pitching forward. When the world righted itself again, he was blinking up with bleary confusion into the familiar blue gaze of Fiona Trakand. “I want Healing,” he told her groggily, “and tea. Please.” Light, please! Make it stop...

[Jenn]

Katrie

The details mattered.

Katrie shook herself free of the hand that tentatively grasped her elbow, the tall Cairhienin jerking violently away. No... no... she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to drink it. Her breath was sharp and rough as it hissed out past clenched teeth. Her jaw ached. Her cheeks hurt, streaked with burning lines of moisture. The delicate skin around her eyes was inflamed, raw, and stained with salt.

The Brown couldn’t form coherent thought. She couldn’t form coherent words, couldn’t push sound around the piercing ache in her throat that stole her voice away. A sphere of jagged pain had lodged itself into her chest, hot spikes driving outwards, pulsing in place of where her heart should have been. Every shallow breath was agony.

How long had it been since- since...? Mama!! Katrie clamped her eyes shut, the heels of her hands lifting to grind down into closed eyelids. Bursts of coloured sparks blossomed against the darkness as she pressed down against her face as hard as she could... as if by force alone she could stem the unending flow of tears. The tide was relentless.

Hours? Days? Did it matter? Time had distorted, slowing to a crawl, an Age stringing out between seconds, only to gallop past her, sunrise and sunset blurring together in one endless smear. Time had no meaning. Her arms fell, limp, all strength gone. The Wheel had taken her mama back. Her fingers twitched involuntarily. The wail that lurked just beyond her next breath threatened to burst forth. Katrie bit down hard on her lip. She tasted blood.

But the details... they were important. They... were the key to everything.

Mama had been in her favourite dress. Some of the buttons along the expanse of stained translucent crimson had been sheared in half. No no no, don’t think of why that was, or what had been done that would’ve caused such an occurrence. Don’t think of why the sheer lace was stiff and... and... A fresh wave of tears spilled down Katrie’s face. She crammed her knuckles into her mouth. The sting of teeth piercing the first layers of her skin barely registered.

The simple golden chain with the black stone had been missing from around Mama’s neck. An empty sheath for some kind of knife had been at her hip. The decorative comb and the pretty jeweled pins had been missing from the thick raven tresses, but every strand was tamed and knew its place. No wrinkle or fold marred the clinging silk. The small Domani woman had been nothing less than perfect, laying there for all the world as if she was sleeping.

That stubborn stray curl of hair fell forward to rest against Katrie’s forehead but she made no move to push it aside. She gasped for air around her fingers. The walls were pressing in on her... too close, too much... Light, why? WHY? She couldn’t breathe... oh Light, she couldn’t breathe! Twin trails of glistening wetness ran down her face. She staggered unsteadily to her feet, her hands clutching at the sides of her skirts as her panicked gaze took in everything and absolutely nothing at all once.

“Katrie -”

Wild brown eyes glazed over with pain swung to Naera, then to Dax, the empty wound in her chest filling with inexplicable rage.

“NO!” she shouted, plucking the cup of tea off of the tray near her. She spun and hurled it as hard as she could against the wall, heedless of the liquid that sprayed out. The porcelain sailed through the air, then shattered. She was panting, her chest heaving. Katrie grabbed the tray and threw the entire thing across the room, watching as it smashed into a thousand little fragments against smooth fitted marble.

She did not recognize the sound that rose up to fill the room. It was harsh and ragged, a keening wail of unending anguish. It was not until her head tilted back that she realized that it was coming from her. It was her. Something ripped free from somewhere deep inside of her soul.

Fingers brushed against the small of her back. She bolted away, a Gateway snapping into place. She ran through it. The tip of her slipper caught against the delicate hem of her dress as the silvery portal rotated shut. The sound of fabric tearing was abrupt, startling, and she went sprawling face first into a field of grass. It was dark, so very very dark to her dazzled bloodshot eyes, but she did not need to see to know where she was. Katrie pushed herself up and ran headlong into the ruins of the old Tower.

There, amidst the broken remains and toppled pillars, the tall Cairhienin screamed. And screamed. And screamed. She punched stone. And when her voice finally gave out, and her fingers broke, Katrie collapsed in on herself. She sank slowly, legs crumpling beneath her. The world listed oddly, and she slumped over sideways. The ground was cool against her flushed skin. She pushed her face further into damp grass, curling up into a ball, her arms pulled up close to her body, hands cradled against her chest.