When the Illuminari removed the Lightblessed from power, it became an insular organization. Reforming, it soon proclaimed revised doctrines similar in many respects to the old, but just different enough that the general populace couldn’t tell the difference. The religion of the Light continued onwards, unmoored from its sanctity.

Chapter 27

Ditan’s ribs shattered with the first of Trynneia’s attacks. He grunted, more from the compression of his lungs than out of a sense of pain. She saw him search the air around him, lips weakly moving. Skytouched! Trynneia struck again, coming back across his body and shattering his ribs from the other direction. Tears of hatred, love, and betrayal streamed down her face. Ditan’s own contorted in pain, yet his eyes followed those unseen sights she could not comprehend.

Shame spilled forth from her as a cry when blood began to drain from his lips. “Look at me damn you! You’ve killed them all! Everyone!” she screamed her anguish to a disinterested audience. Ditan coughed, or tried to. A third strike, and a fourth followed. His right knee bent at a crooked angle, and bone protruded from his right arm. But her long day had exhausted her, and she dropped the club to the ground. Ditan’s body hung limp, barely breathing, if he could even manage it at all.

Warring, confusing emotions assaulted her, and Trynneia stood distracted. Betrayer, she thought, but now was not sure if Ditan or she herself was the betrayer. Ditan’s goblin fragility and shaman power, now the bane of all she held dear, was helpless before her. Am I his judge now? His executioner? He is to face Light’s Judgement, she resolved, sobbing. Same as me.

“Finished already, Trynneia?” Modius called from the doorway. He took in the scenery, a disappointed look on his face. “You’ve not punished yourself enough.” His accusation buried itself in her heart.

“I know, Modius.” Color returned to her sight slowly, the red fading. Shadows seemed darker, and the light dimmed within the wagon. “But I cannot punish him more tonight.” She slumped to the ground next to the club. “I still must heal him,” she whispered, exhausted.

Birthday resounded in her head, and Sariam climbed into the wagon. Her movements were sluggish as she pushed past Trynneia and grabbed Ditan’s broken arm with her shriveled, claw-like hands. She wrenched at the bonds and tore his right hand free. Trynneia screamed. Sariam ignored her as she babbled words under her breath, and the bleeding stopped. Using her dagger, she cut the bonds and Ditan dropped insensately to the floor.

“That won’t be necessary,” Modius said as he reached in and pulled Trynneia out. Her cries of anguish continued as he closed the door to block her view of Sariam, who had begun cutting into Ditan’s flesh.

“I need to heal him! Let me go!” she yelled while kicking and punching at Modius. Her blows flailed uselessly, and he smirked.

“You had your chance with him, Trynneia. Use this passion for other things.”

“What other things?” She asked. Around them the crates burned, and flames began to consume the remaining wagons. In the distance she heard the panicked whinneys of the horses outside the circle. She punched once more, then gave up.

“Plead your cause in Praxoenn, that the Illuminari may acknowledge what you’ve done for the Light,” he said as the runes on Ditan’s wagon lit from the power within them, then burned as flames wicked up the sides.

“I can still save him, let me go!” she kept sobbing while his grip tightened across her bosom. “He wasn’t dead!” Even as she pled with him, the flames engulfed each of the encircled wagons.

“Watch, Trynneia. Observe the death of a shaman,” Modius whispered, emotionless.

Unlike the nearby wagons that also burned, that lone runic wagon erupted with additional flames from every window. Colors whirled in violent tornadoes of smoke and ash, and a loud keening forced her to cringe. The fire built to an inferno, white hot as wind kicked up all around her, feeding the fire to new levels of intensity. Earth began to shake beneath the wagon’s wheels, bubbling and twisting as the ground began to consume it. Rock and sand began to melt, an inelegant fusing of distorted glass.

Trynneia observed thousands of motes of light in every shade and hue churn in conjunction with the hellfire consuming her friend. She thought she felt him then, a whisper and a hum in the air, an inexplicable essence in the thrum of the destruction. Almost as he had once described it, a voice seeking acknowledgement and eventual understanding called to her, indecipherable. Then it too, was gone, and the brightest light went out, leaving behind a melange of charred wood, ash, glass, and molten rock.

“Come, we are done here,” Modius urged, grabbing supplies that had been removed from the wagons for the night’s encampment. The horse tender flitted about the site as well, and Trynneia wondered at his exclusion from the ceremony as she wept and thrashed on the ground.

“You’re sure she’s the one?” the tender asked, his red hair tending gray in the flame’s light.

“Completely certain. We needed more time,” Modius acknowledged, upset.

“I see that. You’ll have to make do,” the man said. “She’s bleeding?” he asked, noting her mouth.

“Sariam’s magic worked too well,” Modius spat. “Bitch yanked the dagger out of her own mouth while we tried to let the visions take hold. She shouldn’t have been able to overpower the witch like that.”

“You’re losing your touch, Modius,” the horse handler said. “If you cannot make one girl compliant for the ritual,” he intimated, his glare withering the other man, “Then perhaps I must subject you to the Light’s Judgement as well,” he finished.

Cowed, Modius fell to his knees. Trynneia only caught snippets of the conversation as her attention turned to these men. “Lord Elanreu, forgive me,” he pleaded, though the harshness in his voice did not convey obeisance but familiarity. “We still have days of travel. I can make her ready.”

Elanreu scoffed. “You’ve had months in this fucking desert already. Look at you, you’re as weak as she is. You are out of time,” he said, leaning close.

“I did exactly as requested, Lord. Every person connected to the traitor has been punished, and the abomination was retrieved. She will be ready.”

Lord Elanreu looked down in judgement, searching Modius’ face. Squinting, he sniffed derisively. “You have four days.”

I’m the abomination, aren’t I? She realized, unsure what she was hearing. One more thing piled into the torment of her mind. Trynneia couldn’t concentrate as her feelings flickered from unbearable sorrow, to hatred that had no true lock anymore. “What is happening to me?” passed through her mind more than once while she tried to figure out the night’s events.

Rational thought was difficult at best. Everyone is dead, she thought, staring inertly at Modius and this Lord Elanreu as they gathered up the few supplies not destroyed by the raging fires. Not one person from home was spared, no one at all. I’m alone. The twisted wreckage of Ditan’s wagon bore the strongest affirmation to her. There was no way he survived that, and the way the fire differed from all the others bore the truth of his demise. It actually felt somewhat restrained from what she had grown to expect, but at the same time, Driver’s home hadn’t raged like that. She had no other basis for comparison of a shaman immolation. She also thought it odd that it had happened twice in her life now.

Clutching her arm, she sat up slowly. Lord Elanreu noticed and approached warily. He had the air of someone who expected his orders to be followed, and if he made a request, it was a command. Graying temples belied his middle age, though it was difficult to tell as the flames burned around them. In the new light, she saw he was dressed for travel, and while his clothes were well-tailored, they were also much used.

“I’m taking you under my care, Trynneia. You’ve been ill-treated on your journey, and I’ll see you safely to Praxoenn,” he explained, pausing to ascertain her reaction. She stared at him blankly, grief writ large upon her face as she hunched in exhaustion. “You’ll be safe,” he offered.

“I don’t want to go to Praxoenn,” she muttered under her breath, wiping tears from her cheeks but smearing soot across her face as well.

Elanreu knelt down and lifted her chin with his gloved hand to look into her eyes. She couldn’t tell what he was searching for, but it seemed he was memorizing every detail. “You have your mother’s eyes. Beautiful, amber eyes. There are differences. Hers had a yellow glow that lit the night. Yours are just dark, and you have a ring around your irises that she didn’t have. There’s beauty in that too,” he mused.

Who is this man, to have looked so closely into my mother’s eyes, she thought, and remember them so vividly?

“I’ve gathered you were banished from your quaint little village, and sent to Praxoenn anyway. Our destinations align, if not our purposes. Would you, under the Light, disregard your punishment, to seek the Judgement of the Light?”

Yes, she thought. “Those who set that order for me have all perished. I have nothing to prove to them.” Trynneia tried to sound like she almost believed herself. Elanreu smiled, amused.

“So I name you Oathbreaker then, Trynneia. But tell me, where would you go from here? What do you want to prove to yourself?”

“Lord Elanreu, the horses and supplies are in order. We should leave before others come. These wagons are a beacon that can be seen for miles,” Modius interjected. Elanreu waved him away.

“What do you think, Trynneia? Unlike your villager friends, I would let you depart with the clothes on your back. But then, whoever shows up here may not be as charitable as I.” He continued to gaze into her eyes, and she looked everywhere but back at him. He did not smell unpleasant, and a sure bit better than she knew she did. Unclean, that’s how he made her feel, the way his nose wrinkled, the lightness of his touch through the soft leather of his glove. Unwilling even to touch her directly, as if such a thing were beneath him.

Where Modius unnerved her with his cruelty and inhuman acts, Elanreu disarmed her with civility, and an arrogant honesty. Every instinct urged her to flee, to take this opportunity to avoid Praxoenn and in time begin a new life somewhere. Practicality told her these men would never give her the chance. She knew from her captivity how Modius would treat her if she tried.

Trynneia knew she had no choice to make. Modius terrified her, and Elanreu filled her with dread. But Modius had kept her safe, mostly, and-

“I asked you some questions, girl. Do not keep me waiting,” Elanreu pressed her.

“I’ll go with you,” she said, conquered by the events of the evening.

“That answers one. That’s fine for now. You’ve had a...difficult evening. Think about what you want to prove to yourself. We go.”