Mistakes. Pain. Trauma. Negative experiences somehow taught lessons that, while harshly earned, stuck with a person. Their responses and attitude, as caught in the moment, did not necessarily reflect the changes they would undergo, but served as an underpinning for the evolution of self. What happened after that was up to them.

Chapter 43

Trynneia stared out over farmland as far as the eye could see. Her second floor vantage seemed a world away from the room she’d occupied so briefly in the Atrium, yet felt more serene than the holiness she should have experienced in that place. Her bay window jutted out above the entryway courtyard, and she lounged there, tracing the imperfections of the sash with her fingernail.

Like lightning arced its chaotic path through the sky, cracks riddled the putty holding the glass in place. Looking closer, she could see it had been applied inexpertly a second time, and it resulted in a draft as the wind pattered with temperamental gusts against the window frame. She reached for the totem she had bound with a leather thong and wore now like a necklace. It grated against the witch’s mark, yet inexplicably it helped her heal there where nothing else had succeeded.

The frequency of the colors lurching about untamed in their chaotic dances diminished, and it left her grateful. Auras had begun again to bloom around people and objects intermittently, but her coughing spasms remained. Peace, and four weeks of rest and decent meals had done wonders for her health. Far down the road, dust kicked up. Someone coming to the estate, she reasoned, then looked at her door with a prescient sense of foreboding.

Someone knocked. -seize the pain and embrace your loneliness- -they take and take and take- -wound them- Incessant voices still chattered away in her mind, taking much of her focus from the present moment. “Come in,” she said, brushing them aside.

“Ready for another sparring session, Your Grace?” Shallin asked mockingly. “You look rested,” she commented, seeing Trynneia’s lounging figure in an unguarded pose.

“Again? It’s barely been an hour since we stopped,” she complained. “Can we talk instead?”

“Suit yourself,” Shallin acquiesced, pulling a chair across to the bay window, seating herself with a carefree flounce. “I can suffer your ramblings now since I know you’ll suffer my beatings later.”

“Light, am I really that bad?”

“Insufferable,” Shallin chuckled. “Your hair is growing in nicely,” she complimented, tossing a casual glance at Trynneia's longer hair, though it tufted out untamed.

“Thanks,” Trynneia muttered, looking at the other girl, unconsciously running her fingers through her thickening yellow hair.

“When I became a Hunter, I never expected to become a therapist,” admitted Shallin as she tightened up the leather bracers on her forearms. “Not really part of the gig.”

“I was more just worried about you, Shallin. I can’t get over stabbing you.” -stab her again and again- -her pain is your pleasure- -take your measure-

“You kept me alive, Light knows what for. I’m over it. You should be too,” Shallin snapped, clearly uneasy at the painful memory. “If this is what you want to talk about I’d rather just beat you. Again.” Her aura pulsed faintly an amber shade, and Trynneia felt her runes itching.

“I’m sorry, it’s just-”

“You can’t get over it. Tough. You did what you needed to do to survive.” She glared, sulking. “What do you want me to say? Thank you? You fucking stabbed my heart.”

“I’m sorry,” Trynneia replied, trying to discern how the aura shifted around the other girl, speckled with tiny greens and reds that seemed to reflect her aura’s glow.

“You should have let me die,” she spat. “This is impossible. How do they expect me to train you?”

“Which one was it, Shallin? Who put you up to this?”

“Who? Who put me up to this? You did, Your Grace. You let me live. This is my punishment. It shouldn’t matter to you, because it’s my penance, not yours. Stop acting like you give a shit.” Shallin tilted her chair onto its back legs, leaning at a precarious angle.

“Sorry I asked,” Trynneia sighed. “I just want to be your friend.”

“Hilarious way to go about that, Your Grace. What makes you think that could ever happen?” -pull the legs out from under her- -teach her a new lesson- -embrace us-

The two young women fell silent. Trynneia looked to her lap, tasting the forest green of her own trousers, a curious mixture of burnt chicken and marigold. Keep it together, Tryn, she thought, the synesthesia beginning once more. Her relative peace hurt more knowing she had no friends here. Surrounded by Hunters who hated her, with Ditan’s death weighing daily in her conscience, it bore her heart into the ground. Why did you have to be a shaman, Ditan?

“I killed the last one I had. When he betrayed me.” She looked up at the other girl. “I basically killed you too. Practically makes us friends.”

Shallin gave a weak chuckle. “That’s pretty fucked up.” The front legs of her chair clicked to the floor, and she leaned closer. “I’ve heard rumors. He was a shaman too?”

“Yeah,” Trynneia acknowledged, still cringing inwardly at the implication that she was one as well. “Modius told me the dark side of what a shaman could become. Ditan proved it by keeping us stranded in the desert. It was his fault the whole time.” It seemed so obvious now, but during the journey all it did was seem to sporadically keep the caravan from moving forward.

Did you mean to do it, Ditan? She wondered at his motives now that she’d had unfettered time to reflect, unsure when he’d truly lost control of his abilities. Had it been early on, or later? Or did you ever lose control at all? That last thought haunted her the most, almost calling into question if what she’d done to him were necessary to begin with. She squinted her eyes at her unbidden tears. Should I hate you for what you became? For what I seem to be becoming?

“I can’t believe he sent Modius. Man was a sick bastard. No one here trusted him or his squad. Couldn’t argue with his results or reputation, though.” Shallin spun her dagger upon its tip on the floor. “I guess I’m glad he’s gone. All of them? Eilic too?” she asked, a look of unease hiding behind the golden tresses that framed her youthful face.

Trynneia nodded, but with Ditan’s demise fresh in her memory, neither of those men crowded her memory now as much as the woman. The witch. Sariam. She stared at the dagger, hearing the wisk-wisk-wisk sound as it whittled a shallow cone into the wood. The witch’s last night, a creepy undead thing with no eyes and an unhealed slash across her throat, disappearing into the runed carriage where Ditan was imprisoned, and the explosion of energies that tore it asunder in the goblin’s last moments. When had she become that…thing? More importantly, how?

Shallin let out a slow whistle. “He took out a whole squad. Better them than a village. Or a city. Your friend must have been mighty indeed.”

“Ditan barely knew what he was doing. He’d been practicing in secret and hadn’t explored the extent of his powers.”

“Until it killed him,” Shallin pointed out.

Trynneia pushed at the sepia sparkles around the tip of the dagger, kicking it out of the hollow it had dug and dropping it out of Shallin’s loose grip. “Ditan went crazy, but I’m the one who killed those men,” Trynneia admitted in a low undertone.

Shallin glanced up, smug. “So which are you, Your Grace? Lightblessed or shaman?”

Sepia and ash colors twinkled up between Shallin’s legs, drifting lazily up above both their heads. Trynneia tried to ignore them, but the way the azure breeze gave off the taste of a faint orchid scent as it wrapped around the sepia and ash fascinated her. Shallin watched her with amusement even as she retrieved her dagger from the floor. Her aura pulsed amber once more.

“I think I might be what they believe me to be. An abomination in truth. I’m starting to consider it, at least,” she said, pulling her gaze down to look at her empty, scarred right hand. “Do they hurt?”

“Does what hurt?” Shallin asked, looking at Trynneia’s hand, confused. “Your scars? How should I know? All scars hurt. You tell me.”

“Not mine.” Trynneia traced at the whorls of her fingerprints, imitating the same scars that covered Shallin’s own. “Yours. When you earn them. The blood runes.”

“Is that what you’ve got on your mind now? Light, your mind runs to everything doesn’t it?”

-run run everywhere you’re shunned- -you cannot run- Trynneia coughed until her voice was hoarse. -never accepted- -nowhere-

“Are you alright, Your Grace?” Shallin moved to sit beside Trynneia even as she was being waved off.

“I’m fine,” Trynneia lied unconvincingly, seeing the lime green and blood red colors popping like miniature explosives everywhere she looked. She gripped the totem at her chest to calm herself. “You’ve helped me get a lot of my health and strength back, but these fits-” she halted as another wave of coughs hit her.

“Lord Elanreu says you’re dying, Your Grace,” Shallin looked concerned. “I hadn’t really believed it before.”

Trynneia chuckled weakly. “Well it’s the price I paid to get rid of Eilic, I suppose. His mother’s vengeance lingers still.”

“Sariam did this to you,” Shallin realized. “I should have realized it sooner. Her blood magic was strong. The witch was some sort of good luck charm for Modius. His squad always did have an exceptional record against shaman. Even in their failure, they’ve brought you low.”

Trynneia laid back, reclining on pillows in the alcove of the window. Unexpectedly, Shallin lifted the prone girl’s legs up and put them across her own, staring across the room. Trynneia marveled even as she tried to catch her breath. -rip the drip, drip drip- -we come to your call, hear us- Shallin laid her hands down, palms up on Trynneia’s thighs.

“It does hurt. Before, and after,” she whispered. “Before, when you’re looking at the destruction that comes for you as you strike them down. It hits like a bolt of lightning,” she said wistfully, looking at her fingers. “There is always blood you can’t wash away.

“Sometimes they give up when they see us come for them. Someone always has to do the deed. Finish them off. With their last breath, the blood on our hands ignites. Gloves don’t help, cloth doesn’t help. Doesn’t matter.

“It’s a heady rush,” she continued, staring unfocused into nothing. “Feeling all that power just…end. Makes you want to do it again. And again.” Shallin looked down at Trynneia. “It makes us stronger, each time. Our powers blend. Killing them improves us, makes us withstand them easier.” Trynneia grabbed one of those runed hands, caressing it while Shallin continued.

“I’ve been the one to do it sixteen times. The ones that fight back make it fun. I love the challenge to it, when the wind hails all around you, and lighting strikes your brother or sister. A squad has a better chance of success. Fire explodes all around us, or the earth drags us down. Those fights stick with you. I’ve lost twelve sisters and thirteen brothers in our Hunts.

“Lord Elanreu, now, he’s a wolf, always alone. He hunted harder prey,” she explained. “Lightblessed like you, Your Grace. The marks on his soul are deeper, invisible.” Trynneia listened, rapt. “I don’t know what he sees in you.”

“Some challenge of a different kind, I think,” Trynneia mused sadly.

“Perhaps.”

“So you’ve beaten sixteen shaman. How many have beaten you?” Trynneia observed Shallin’s aura shift to a deep gold flecked with crimson and blackness.

“I’ve killed sixteen shaman. I’ve been present for many more than that. You’re the only challenge that’s bested me, Your Grace.”

Trynneia looked at the side of Shallin’s face, how her hair draped down over her ear to graze her shoulders. The other girl had a hard look in her eye as she tensed up. Her chest rose and fell in deep breaths, far apart. Trynneia could taste the menace even if it wasn’t directed at her. For the moment. A faint blush came to Shallin’s cheeks.

“How do you justify all that death to yourself, Shallin? You work at the behest of the Light. Do no harm.” Trynneia braced herself even as Shallin yanked her hand away. “Don’t you want something different with your life?”

“Listen here, you shit,” the harsh tone in Shallin’s voice was unmistakable. “I serve the Regency, not the Light-”

“They’re one and the same,” Trynneia countered, braving Shallin’s ire as the golden hue turned blood red.

“I don’t need your fucking Light platitudes thrown in my face, Your Grace.” She stood up, nearly flinging Trynneia to the floor. “Your Regency is a sham. I work for their money, and a place in society away from all that. The more of your fucking kind I get rid of, the better.”

“I thought you almost had a heart, Shallin.”

“I thought I could almost see you as a friend,” Shallin called over her shoulder as she walked out the door.