MARIA

I'm running out of room in this ledger, and I'm no closer to trying to predict these expulsion waves. Days she spent pouring over huge tomes of old information and adjusted knowledge built her to this single moment of miraculous audacity. Yuven's attention wavered along the waves of the rocky roof, and she checked the timer on her crucible for his next round of nutrition. Stardust measured and laced into the herbal treatments and mushed meats to boil into a palatable broth. One he could hold down for longer than ten seconds. Maria sent another glyphic burst into the starter before moving to his side. "Your food will be ready soon." Her hand rested on his chest. "I made a little extra in case an expulsion brings it right back up.

"Hm." His hum came out a weak, birdlike croak. "Let me guess, mush with a side of mush, added with a dash of mush. I wish I could eat something with actual taste — I think I would even take Fenrer's odd tolerance for stuffed liver." He adjusted his knees underneath the blankets and pressed his cheek into the pillow. Thin trails of tears swept down his nose, and his violet gaze traced her. "Maria... he is not doing well, is he? I know he is not. He is my Oathbound." His lips parted to reveal his too pale tongue, drained of the blood the core swallowed for magick before leaving a corrupted ooze instead.

"Both of you need to learn how to worry about yourselves." Maria patted his chest and put the cover on the crucible to gather the steam. "You two have a feedback loop between each-other. You should know that better than I. It is why I've been insisting you rest so when the time comes, you can fight." Her fingers clumped the buttons on his shirt, and a fearful little girl clung onto her confidence in her research. "So, I know the mush is unpleasant, but when this is all over... you can eat whatever you want."

Yuven's pupils widened into lavender moons. "Anything I want? Anything, and I will not have to worry about the fact that all food tastes rotten and fermented to me?"

"That's the prevailing theory that I'm hoping for." Her hand moved up to his shoulder, touching the base of his collarbone. "Of course, I think it'd be safer for you to stay on your restricted diet and work our way up, but how about we focus on what's in front of us?" she said to herself more than Yuven, who needed the little pieces of hope she could provide in a death sentence. "I've drawn up a lot of possibilities pertaining to my research, but the big hurdle..."

"Tipping the balance of my soul," Yuven said with a wet cough. "To counteract the pitch dark, you must pierce it with blinding light. Fenrer would laugh. He has always told me the world will always seek equilibrium, the fundamental tenant of the Ancient faith, and for every Corruptor it means erasing us, because by the time we expel it... there is nothing left of light." He brushed his brow with his forearm. "Maria..." She frowned at the soft sob on his voice. "Do you believe as he does? Faith in some higher power with so much control, but without the wherewithal to act upon it. How does that make the Ancients any better than monarchs?"

Maria studied him as he wiped at his tears. "I believe only what is right in front of me, what I can find about the world," she answered, and he lowered his arm onto his chest. "If we act like the answers are eternally out of our reach by divine providence... then we will never get anywhere, but Fenrer finds his answers through them, and if that gives him the light in this world made out of darkness, then who am I to argue the truth he made for himself?" Maria tapped her fingers against the desk along with the weighted metronome for keeping time of Yuven's life, entranced into the texts of Healers with a lack of understanding of the Corruption, but with her insatiable curiosity on finding an answer when most gave up on the answer. 'Death is a constant. Death is not our enemy. Derelicts are our enemy, and they are not the comfort of death. They are depravity incarnate. We forestall its embrace,' Yuo instructed. 'But it is a reprieve in itself, a new start. A new definition.'

Her fingers curled into her palms as she chewed on her lip. And I am committing him to its doorway. Maria turned and quivered underneath her expectation and magick was no miracle. Yuven twiddled his fingers with his eyes closed, soft Navei leaving his lips as she forced him to wait until the final moment. "Yuven." Out of her chair of the ultimate truth in the end, she crept to his side, not as a Healer. Not as someone who danced with death, but as someone who treasured his life above all else. He opened his eyes after long seconds, his pupils formed into violet, vertical slits. Knees scraped for her effort. Tears stuck behind her eyelids, she knelt beside him. "I want you to know that no matter what, you made me happy. I want you to keep doing so, and I want to return your love in turn." Her fingers hung in the air, for the fleeting comfort. "I don't want you thinking that I would've chosen anything else but this, and I'm willing to fight for it."

Yuven drew his gaze over her fingers, then back to her with a weary blink before it drew down to the necklace she kept around her shoulders. He raised a hand into hers, lacing their fingers together. A soft huff of laughter escaped through his nose when he covered his mouth with his free hand which clung onto the fresh cloth. His fingers slipped out of hers, and laid flat across his heart. Maria went to return to her desk, but a soft whispered word left through the fabric. Her name, and the Avaerilians reverence within their meaning, their most powerful tool in a voice. Drawn to the inflection, ensnared into coming closer once more in trust and his reserved warmth, he overturned the clenched fist over his heart. Fingers unfurled, her heart stuttered with wonder when flames chewed up onto the petals of a snowrose made out of his white embers embedded in ice — the spirit within the man she found a world in. It finished with a winged flourish on his shimmering, fever glyph, rising with a mist of a dawn.

Maria cupped it into her hands.

It turned into a cascade of melted snow.

His own hand slipped off his mouth and brought the cloth with him, revealing the thick rivers of black ooze slipping past his lips. Droplets slipped down her fingers, and she lunged out of her chair to grab onto his shoulders and pressed two fingers on either side of his neck to feel a pulse.

It dissipated with his breath, as wilted as the snowrose he gave her made out of what remained of his strength and hold on the flow. "Yuven," she said and brought her gloved hands up to his cheeks, where his eyelids fluttered for revival, until they went still too. "Yuven Traye." Burrs stuck themselves to the chambers of her heart as she found her own breath stuttering against the close quarters of the looming threat. The core's ooze continued to slip past his half-parted lips as she tried to send bursts of her magick through his skin to tickle at his senses and nerves. Gods! Maria let go of him to grab onto the airstones.

It spun against her gloves, straight to her skin as she let them spin in wild motion to pulsate the air straight into Yuven. One glyph over the heart where the snowrose bloomed, she scowled at the eerie silence left in the flames. One more second, but death lurked around the corner as she shoved the air deeper into his systems, forcing more ooze to come out from its webbed entrapment of his soul. We're almost there, Yuven, so don't leave me now. The dam behind her eyes cracked, but she focused on what she could change.

Irritation and rage built in her throat at the lack of response he gave, but she continued until her body ached from the overusage of her magick. All to fight the inevitable. Her attention snapped back to his face when his brow squeezed, and he snapped open his eyes in half-life. Maria spun the glyph out into the air to support him when he lurched up and choked out the rest of the thickening mass out onto his blankets and her gloved hands to replace the water of the melted snowrose. Whiter than a wraith, he shook his head with one last, dying chuckle crossed with a whimper, and Maria flattened him against the bed and held onto his face once more as the violets started to disappear.

"Remember what I said," she begged for a chance. "This will be over. Just hold on for one more bell."

One way or another, and now we are at the end of the line. Maria stomped to the entrance and threw open the door, causing the Healers at the other end of the hall to peek at the commotion.

"It's time," she barked through her tears. "Prepare the essence pool for a concentration of light." And there is no magick more attuned to the flow... then an Anima's, with the supposed ability to turn even the largest Derelict to stone, but I can't work with myth. What I have is what I have.

Without waiting for their acknowledgement, she returned to his side and emptied out her crucible of food into covered mugs. Steam hissed out of the corners, but she drew out the heat and dropped a wet cloth into the center to clean off the remnants. Books closed, she piled them into the corner for retrieval, when she tread into unknown territory without the support of knowledge, to seek new answers. Tireless nights spent in a single room, playing the endless game with death. One Healer joined her in the room to take the dirty towels and buckets away, with another retrieving the fresh ones to put them on a cart with a nod in her direction.

Volcanic energy slipped past her own lips as she bit down with a taste of blood when she squeezed his forearm. "Yuven?" she said and tried not gasp out the late-night terrors of doubt and failed comprehension of someone else's research. Any little piece to reach a conclusion most thought already determined. Gloves off and thrown into the burning trash, she clung onto his cheeks with her bare skin, and longed for a return to their routine - with the death of the old and the start of the new. His eyelids fluttered with a questioning affirmation when he tried to force them open. "No," she said and pushed her thumbs into his brow. "Catch your breath. I'm going to have you moved to the essence pools in a bell or two. I just need you to hold on for a little bit longer."

"I need him," he murmured through weary words. "Myl'la..." He pushed his palm into her elbow. "Is it... too much to ask to have him there?"

"No?" Maria frowned. "Would it help you?"

It took Yuven a second to reply, but he nodded in one, slow burst. "I can hold on," he wheezed and held onto her. "For a little while longer. For you... my love."

"I won't make you wait any longer, and I'll get Fenrer down here even if I have to carry him myself," she promised and ran her fingers through the white waves which curled on the ends. "We're going to finish this obscura hell you've been living," she choked out her hope mixed with despair. "We're going to finish this and I won't stop fighting for this, no matter what." Her first promise to him, when he revealed his small dream, for no other child or person to suffer the death sentence, not without a fight, not without being given up on. I am a Storm Warden, I will never give up the light to the dark.

"Good," he whispered. "Either way... it'll be nice to sleep without disruption. Hofva'sedylon, Maria Ollain, I hear your voice and your name," he muttered out the Naveeran adage. "And I will listen to the end."

His hand drifted out of hers to sit limp against the blankets.