When the Illuminari Regency made its pivot to blood magic, there existed a between time that seamlessly melded itself with the tenets of the Light. As the transformation progressed, the Regents espoused a Purpose of love and support for each other. The populace adopted it willingly, even as rites of worship began to incorporate the pricking of a finger to show care and nurture towards their fellow men and women.

Chapter 37

Trynneia huddled in a corner of her room, the feel of the warm carpet below her a distant comfort from the battlefield in her mind. The incessant thrum in her chest crescendoed and held itself, driving her to look up again. Streaks of blue colors - azures, cerulean, turquoise - twisted and spun before her sight, zooming up near the ceiling before breaking apart and coming together again in various shapes. Most often she saw birds as the colors darkened to black or brown, never becoming an actual object but close enough for her to believe.

“...You can never be Lightblessed…Shaman…Corrupted…Abomination…” The words nattered at her, leaving a scummy taste in her mouth both bitter and tart. “You are a shaman. -shaman- Skytouched -shaman-, never Lightblessed.” She wept at the words that taunted her in the silence of her confinement, running her fingers through her cropped hair as she hung her head in shame, averting her eyes from the sights above her.

“Everything’s gone sideways,” she mumbled to herself. Her encounter with Regent Shingto in the baths had stolen from her the last of her perceived identity. “All this time I thought I was Lightblessed. Momma…was it all a lie?”

-What is a lie?- She heard that, felt it in her skin as the hairs on her arm pricked up. It smelled of soot.

“What?” she asked shakily, looking back up.

-The liar has told its tale, and at every turn snares you further.- Unmistakable that time, from all around her a warmth drifted down to settle upon Trynneia’s skin. -Denial and half truths are riddled throughout. Choose what to believe. Make your own truth.-

“That makes no sense,” she said. A pull and a push forced her to stand, and she looked around trying to find the source. “What are you doing?”

-Hope fades. Find it.- Mint’s scent coaxed a chill from her flesh. -Or are you not the one?-

“What do you want of me?” Trynneia grasped at the colors surrounding her, but they slid from her control. She clenched her fists. “Just keep talking, I’ll find you,” she raised her voice with a hint of menace, trying to be brave.

-There’s the fire you need, but how long will you have it, shaman?-

“I’m not a shaman,” she denied, her eyes following a torrent of colors pulsing like a rainbow above her, sending tendrils of light streaming in every direction. “I’m not.” The colors crashed around her, dousing her with water and soaking her clothing through. She shrieked in anger.

-Easily put out, it seems.-

Four knocks came at the door, followed by a muffled, “Your Grace, is everything alright?” It cracked open, and her appointed servant Lelis gasped and shuffled in.

“Lelis, please. I don’t-”

“Now, Your Grace, you’ve gone and soaked yourself, and I'm not asking how.” She gently grasped Trynneia’s arm. “Come over here, Your Grace, we’ll get you some new clothes.”

“I’m not a child, I can do this myself,” she complained.

“Well, if you’re not a child then you’re a petulant young woman who can’t take care of herself. You clearly don’t eat and all you do is make messes,” Lelis pointed out. “Or do you intend to convince me otherwise?”

Trynneia jerked her arm free and walked over to her closet in a huff. “I’m fine, Lelis, really.”

“Oh, and just who were you talking to, Your Grace?” Lelis began looking behind curtains and under the bed. “It’s just supposed to be you in here, I saw to it myself.”

“No one’s here, just me,” she explained as she began to remove her sodden clothing. “I was just talking to myself.”

Lelis sighed, pinching at the bridge of her nose. “This won’t do, oh no, it won’t. Your Grace? I suggest the dinner dress, it’s nearly that time anyway.” She directed Trynneia to a white and beige ensemble with a cream sash with a pleated underskirt.

Trynneia quickly dressed while Lelis busied about, pulling furniture away from the soaked corner. “Not even a container. How did you get this much water up here?” She asked as her feet squelched in the flooded carpet. “Your Grace, is it your goal to destroy everything you touch?”

The older woman struck a nerve Trynneia didn’t even think she had. After the conversation she’d just had about lies, Lelis hit on a hard truth. -Where is the lie?- pulsed a sensation in her mind. Did she imagine it? For months, she’d known only destruction, one way or another. She tugged the last bit of the dress into place roughly. “I just want it all over and done with, that’s all. Over and done.”

“Your Grace?”

“Everything. All of it. I don’t even know what this was all for anymore.” She kicked her dripping discarded clothes at Lelis. “They came. Maybe they came for me, or maybe they came for Driver. It doesn’t matter. Everyone I’ve ever known or loved is dead, Lelis. Everyone!”

Anger and frustration rose unbidden. “I took the punishment for a just crime, and I was banished. What for? To be tortured for months? I hurt him bad! My best friend. Blood every day,” she stared back up at the ceiling where the colors coalesced into a rotating pool of light. As she spoke, Lelis looked more and more horrified.

“At first I just wanted to escape, to get myself and DItan out of that hell. But we were in the middle of a desert. Nowhere to run. They made me hurt him, then heal him. Over and over. When I didn’t, they hurt me instead.” Tears streamed down Trynneia’s cheeks as she poured her memories out, seeking catharsis.

Her voice grew small. “They made me think he was my enemy, Lelis. I believed them. I…I still believe them. A shaman as my enemy,” she chuckled sadly. “Who knew?”

“Your Grace-” Lelis tried to calm her ward as well as herself.

“And now I’m here,” Trynneia continued, glaring at the older woman who had bent to sponge the carpet with some towels. “Here to offer myself to serve the Light. And why? To seek Light’s Judgment. It’s to be my punishment. Momma!” She screamed in frustration. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I think you’re getting a little worked up, Your Grace,” Lelis offered meekly, trying to hide her growing terror.

For just a moment, Trynneia saw the glimmer of an aura around Lelis, beige with dark red streaks, before it vanished and more dots of color popped into view around the older woman. She clenched her fists as rage built up. -Put her in her place- felt like slivers of rough bark rasping at her flesh. The colors pulsed around the woman’s middle and Trynneia’s instincts took over.

Lelis looked startled as the towel she held wrapped about her midsection and jerked her back against the wall, where she fell in a splash to the ground.

“Light help me, Lelis!” she raged. “None of this makes sense to me! Make it make sense!”

That was enough for the old woman, who grabbed what she could and scurried out the door. “Go then!” Trynneia yelled, feeling rejected. -There it is.-

Trynneia’s chest constricted, forcing her to breathe shallowly. She looked around the room, following the colors streaking and billowing with no direction around her. Orbs of light ensconced upon the walls held no auras nor colors, but lit the room with a gentle warmth.

Wanting to calm herself, she tried to look at the embossed footboard of her bed, and the masterful carvings of an elk and some rabbits upon her wardrobe. A chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, and large windows let in the light of the twin suns. “My room,” she scoffed as she glared uneasily. Her eyes landed on the dagger she’d received from Lord Elanreu sitting on her bureau.

-Carve yourself a new path- scented the reeds from the pond back home. Colors wrapped around it like a cocoon, and she pulled them towards her. The dagger flew to her bandaged hand and she caught it, the pain stinging her palm once more. Stunned, she stood in the center of the room, wondering what she’d done. -What is your truth, Lightblessed? What is your truth, Oathbreaker? What is your truth, Shaman? What is your truth, Trynneia?-

On her chest, the witch’s mark burned, the runes giving off the scent of decay as they began to bleed once more, staining her fresh dress. Colors shimmered everywhere, and halos burst around every object in view, causing her to squint at the visual assault. She curled her fingers and felt the air around her, bending it to her will. Light swelled around the sconces and she gripped that too, focusing it on the bed.

Trynneia’s mattress sizzled, then caught flame, and she pulled more and more of the heat down until the floating orb crashed into the bed, buckling the frame. Wind buffeted her, threatening to knock her down. -This is what they left for the Lightblessed. Who do the Regents serve?- She screamed as the smell of ozone surrounded her, and the bed splintered, hurtling out the large window and plummeting in flames to the cobblestone ground outside.

-Do you seek absolution?- colors pulsed around her. -Unmake what they expect of you.- Trynneia began to rip through the carpet with the dagger, then shredded what remained of the curtains before turning her pain and frustration to the wardrobe. Over and over she stabbed at it, chipping away the fine details until the elk and rabbits were no more. Chunks of debris surrounded her when the dagger finally dropped from her numb fingers. -How do you feel?-

“I don’t know anymore,” she answered.

-Pity- came the reply. The wind and the flames guttered out where they had stubbornly clung hold.

She looked around at the damage her fit had wrought, recognition coming slowly as her anger subsided. When Igol had shown her in, he’d explained that this room had been kept for the reigning Lightblessed who served all under the Light. For over a century it had lain vacant in hope that the Regency could locate another Lightblessed and welcome them back to the Illuminari once more.

Instead, they had found her. Colors danced about, hovering above every object, and she’d understand things now, just for a moment. Then the understanding would flee as if it had never been. A communication of sorts. The briefest of connections. “I’m like royalty here,” she whispered, hating to acknowledge it once more. “Is this worth the price I’ve paid?”

Trynneia walked through the detritus, feeling the burning of the marks bleeding through her clothes, joined now by her ruined Lightblessed runes. Even as she stepped through splintered wood and shattered glass, she winced at the deeper pain within her heart, her emotions searing just as much as the gashes in her injured feet.

From the window it was a long fall down. Servants already busied about gathering and sweeping up the wreckage of her incinerated bedding. She began to cough, spitting up blood and yellow-green phlegm. The need to cough intensified, doubling her over and leaving her out of breath, wiping her mouth with the bloodied bandage on her hand.

“Looks like you missed a spot, Oathbreaker,” Lord Elanreu said from the door, which had also been torn from one of its hinges. For a wonder, there was a hint of mirth in his voice, though his eyes remained hard set. “Care to explain why you’ve terrorized the help?”

“No,” she muttered, looking out the shattered window, coughing again. Tears came once more to her eyes. She listened to his booted footsteps as they approached, crunching through the mess. Trynneia felt his hand settle on her shoulder.

“We’re all of us puppets in the Light, girl.” He looked down to the wreckage below. “Life hasn’t treated you kind of late, and I admit I have my share of the blame.” Elanreu stabbed the dagger into the wood of the windowsill, causing it to splinter apart.

Trynneia looked at the deep red aura that permeated the dagger, pouring forth and surrounding the blade where it wedged before her. Unchanging, solid. Immutable. She looked at him.

“Perhaps none if this is meant for you. I don’t know. That’s a pretty long fall.” He squeezed her shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I think there’s more for you to prove to yourself. All this?” He turned her around, pointing. “Whatever you are, Lightblessed or Abomination, doesn’t mean shit to me.”

He leaned close to her, and the colors swarmed about, purples and blues and reds. She blinked. “Maybe I could make use of you, if you wanted,” he growled, before leaving her alone at the window with the dagger. Trynneia pulled it free and felt its edge, accidentally pricking her finger. One more drop of blood made all the difference.