YUVEN

Sentinels stood in the blizzard mist and changed his name with the clang of their glaives against smooth white stone. Yuven Traye. Yuven Traye. A name repeated, his own as his love blurred when he tried to look upon Maria when she left with a softened, noiseless word. Her fingers trailed his jawline, and he changed his name instead when the expectations tried to build a wall around him to keep out the warmth — the curse of the Avaerilians deep in his soul. Healers wheeled him through the magma-carved corridors of his home, past the essence pit and into one of the smaller rooms with a pool of the wondrous blanket of liquid magick. It released puffy little clouds, and his soul slavered for the feeling it left in his senses. The flow pulsed in his ears and the worms danced in depraved glee when they brought him closer, chewing at the mist it released when they laid him inside the liquid, but soft and fluffy confines. It brushed against his skin, the same gentle touch of Maria instead of cold water.

Just give me one thing, let me say goodbye. Let me commit their faces to my last memory... Blood swelled into his nose, but he lost the strength to choke out the death which made its way through his entire body. The parasite which left its core in him, an unwelcome piece stuck to his soul and three became too much of a crowd for his taste. He failed to count his breaths, a flimsy revitalization as the corruption burned at the last threads of his grip. It darkened in the dome's deepest corners as gemstones cried their lustrous glitter. Healers pushed the buckets to the side in preparation, but once it was over there would be no need for them — no need for him to taste blood. He twisted his head around to the door when it pulsated a silver truth. Adara and Neven. Both came through, staring at him in tortured concern, his Miesero, a font of strength, finally acknowledging his tears. Adara carried a steely sense of resolution she must've learned from Fenrer. Both wanted to make him laugh, but his lungs and chest hurt too much.

It will finally... end. Yuven focused hard on Neven's face first when he knelt at his head. Name chanted while the blizzard tried to down it out with his own. Neven Lotayrin, the pale-haired Storm Warden who carried two children through their tormented life without complaint. Neven drew out his fangs with a tortured flare of his nostrils, his ears flicking against his feathers as he sank to his knees, bereft of all the strength he gave to them instead. Miesero, always have you been a true Sentinel, and not those metal peacocks you thought worthy of your devotion. No. He moved to Adara, a newer face as she loomed over him, fists clenched with a force to her stance. Silver flames bit at her arms as she held them out, and cascades of viscous rivers caught the clouds of liquid flow and took it for its own, returned to the world, balanced tipped.

He repeated her name all the same, against the blizzard wall.

Adara stepped over him and sat at his side, and he breathed deep at two definitions of the sun. The morning dawn into its highest, brightest peak.

Maria, and over her shoulders, in perfect clarity, Fenrer Pyren.

Maria sidled up to his side with a quiet, weary breath as she knelt down and lowered Fenrer beside him. His Oathbound's features shone underneath the dim, rainbow light as his chest rose and fell in strangled waves. Look at what I've done to you. He willed Fenrer to open his eyes, but faith proved as fickle as his life. Pinpricks swept up his arms as he focused on the bound soul beside him, the choice Fenrer made though he knew the consequences. Yuven cried against the crimson worms, and he shut them tight when they swallowed their faces all at once, a burst of crimson blood.

"I am pathetic, aren't I?" Yuven opened his eyes to the sea of twilight stars, with Fenrer unawakened to his soul. He switched his attention to his own feet when they scattered into starry particles. "I never wanted to disappoint you, you know." He wriggled his fingers, then raised his hand to smack his fist against Fenrer's chest, who gave no acknowledgement to his weak prod. "But we both knew this was going to happen." He chewed on his lip when the ghostly mirage crawled up to his knees in slow motion. "I just wish... you would've been spared my pain."

His heartbeat jolted when the wisp went past his knees, and he bit on late fear, daring to reach out at the end of his life. "Fenrer," he said his name, pressing his hand against his cheek to give Fenrer the warmth of a family a tyrant stole from him. He pinched his cheek, frowning at the thunderous reminder of the piercing beams of light. "I wish you could say something right now... you were always excellent in guiding the dead to their rest... and I could use it right now." He withdrew his fangs when it tickled at his hips. He breathed once, then returned his attention to Fenrer instead of the frayed ends. "I don't know what else I could say, I don't even know if you're hearing me like this... but I'm sorry." He let go of Fenrer's face to put his hand back into the swirl of stars. The longer he counted, the more his torment and childish terror returned as it moved past his hips.

I will take anything. I'll do anything.

Yuven lifted the starlit twine through his fingers which connected him to Fenrer as his own heartbeat faded in his ears, replaced by coursing blood as he squeezed the connection, and found his willpower to break it to spare Fenrer disintegrating the more he hesitated. "You've really done a number on me, Molvisaliz. Here I kept saying... your compassion would be the death of you. Fool me." He let more tears escape, and he clung onto Fenrer's hand. "Nevermind, you don't need to say anything, I just need to know that you're there. You have always taken the brunt of all my anger, and you barely complained. I'm your family, and I don't think I deserve you as my friend, let alone my Oathbound." He sighed deep when the ghost went past his hips and licked with crimson tendrils, committing Fenrer's face, name, to burnt, corrupted memory. "But... if you're going to have faith all the same, even with all of that, even after knowing... then I will too. Just this once, because it's not like I have much to lose but this short life that I've led with pride." Yuven readied himself when it swirled closer to his heart, but stopped at the warmth, the piercing light.

Confusion danced with the slow crawl of acceptance as he squeezed Fenrer's hand, and used the last of his strength which clung onto life to see the truth. Morning mist curdled around Fenrer in deep flames, under his skin, and glowed underneath him. He became nothing more than a wave of intense, sunlit heat.

What—?

Yuven jerked when the sea crawled over his body, and he no longer had any time, nor room for questions. "Fenrer," he said and held on tighter to the flames of life. "If this doesn't work out, I know you'll be hurting, but... you can be happy, you idiot. Let yourself be happy for once. It doesn't make you selfish." The feeling in his fingers disappeared with the spiritual remnants. "So... I know I don't say it often, but thank you." Yuven turned his head away from his best friend. "For believing in me."

Lost in the light, he sank into the shadow and Fenrer's fingers once more slipped out of his weak ones. Bubbles burst into bulbous masses as he fell, floated and he held his breath for death, the invitation fleeting when he scrunched up his body at the viscous liquid lapping against his skin and pants. Upwards, he raised his hand out as red tendrils clung onto it and tried to drag him deeper. If this is the death world... It's disgusting. He flicked the goo off the tips of his pale, ghostly fingers, but slowed to a stop when a fallen star spun its way to him, then came to a slow stop beside his head. It was the same, warm flame which followed him through his breathy fatal knell. It had stopped its pulsating, but continued to extrude a familiar, kind warmth.

"You tried." Yuven found his knees and hauled himself out of the red shallows. Toothed lightning coursed through the inky blackness of his soul and connected to the dead lake of his soul. He went to move, but stopped when the flame bounced along and hovered over his shoulder, its light dim against the oppression of the core. He licked his lips, and found himself without breath. Off the shallows, it sank closer to his knees, and he stopped at the sharp, stabbing screech of a Husk. Ahead, underneath another white light, a child of snowswept hair, curdled with black tendrils. Their soft cries of pain sent shockwaves of discomfort through his own throat.

"Miesero," the boy sobbed through a terrible film of fangs too large for his jaw. He dug his fingers deep into his red-veined cheeks as distortion ripped the plane asunder and made it bleed. "I'm scared..."

"It'll be over soon..." Yuven found the words slipping past his own fangs. He took a breath, and readied himself for the end as he made his way to the familiar child.

The child is a monster now.

He slowed to a stop when the soul lake bubbled with the child's tortured tears. He shivered when a cloaked mass grew from the liquid at his feet, stepping back into the tiny flame which attached itself to his unseen aura. "It's a child," he argued for some unfathomable reason. "It's not a monster. You're the one who put him into that situation." He released the venomous hiss out of his nose at the cloaked figure who spoke sharp, cold Navei. "You're the one who wanted to use a child for your own gain, to further the inane machinations of a cult!" Anger ripped him through the bubbles as he withdrew two seax's which the tiny flame bounced into his hands. "And I may die here, but I'll take excellent pleasure in having the last laugh."

The cloaked figure let out a softened scoff, and when he readied himself for an attack, he froze when they lowered the hood. Gray feathers, splattered with crimson tendrils raised higher against their ears. Lavender fields bled out into the bloodshot paths within their eyes, a twisted swirl of the Husk's expression, as chained as he was, and a child showed compassion, and suffered for it. Yuven held his seax's close. "I showed you kindness back then in that cell," he whispered. "And the only monster I can see here is you, and as a Storm Warden, my last act as one..." He took a step forward. "Is excising the brutality of your existence, and you will let that child go."

The Husk copied his movements and created mangled seaxs built with crimson teeth. "As if the Storm Warden's haven't failed children before. But come, Yuven Traye, let's see if you've learned your lesson in death as you couldn't in life."

Yuven lunged through his spatial distortion. It coiled across the crimson lake in a single, powerful pulse when his blades clashed with its teeth. Bubbles burst upwards, and he avoided a near miss into his eyes when they slashed through the cascade of red rain. He grunted when their foot found his chest instead. His lungs screamed and refilled with blood, and he choked on its approach, but balanced himself on ice around his feet as the Husk made its way to him. He wiped his lips with his arm, dodging out of another lunge when they leaped into his magick, only to come crashing down with a thick, mangled glaive into where he stood moments before. As he gasped, he stumbled back when a pillar of pain screeched out from underneath the water's waves, and sent disruptive waves into his legs.

I just need to get to the child, and I can end this. Yuven held on tight to one seax, then sent the other into their next lunge. Walls of ice clashed with water, and he used the wave to skid around, catching the lavender eyed beast as they bared Derelict fangs.

"You can't fight this." Their foot went into the side of the cracked ice wall, and Yuven grunted when it smashed into his side and sent him tumbling back into the darkness below. The little flame stuck close to his side, a breath of fresh warmth among the endless, cold hands of death in front of him. Another burst of spatial distortion, another pillar which screamed out his worst memories and left a stain on the air. He found his footing once more, sending a glance at the child when they sank to their knees with a quieter, weaker gasp.

"You're pathetic."

Yuven twisted around at the Husk, whose sneer shifted back into a scowl. "Even in your own body, your own soul, you are powerless." They sent a kick into the water, and Yuven widened his eyes when glyphs burst upon the power of his magick. Glaives lunged out and sent a thick mist into the air. Crystals formed, and Yuven sent up a broken shield when the icicles took aim, and fired into his magick. One shattered off the edge, and he ducked his head from the impalement into his throat.

Yuven tried to catch his breath.

"All it takes is a step."

Jaws chewed at his memories, and he failed to grasp onto the words Neven said to him, where it faded with his voice the more the Husk connected its terrible attack. "You're nothing more than a depraved, little creature that flinches at the sight of crescent blades and hungers only for magick!" Yuven snapped, and he jumped back when it lunged forward. A tendril slapped into his cheek, and he raised one hand to cover the cut when a roll of a tongue bubbled over the surface near his feet. It slipped back underneath the surface. "And the last thing I'm going to let you do is get me on my knees."

He ran forward through the pillars, ignoring the shards it ate for the ultimate goal in his price. He dropped his seaxs into two glyphs, before gathering them into one large one. It spun with might, and he threw his soul through it. A glaive burst through the Husk's chest. Bulbs of red slipped through the opening when he tore it out from the side and left an exposed ribcage behind. A pebble skipped across and sent a bundle of golden stars deeper into the mire.

The Husk smiled. "If only it was so easy."

Yuven held on tighter to the glaive when they reached their flayed hands outwards, scarred with black wounds.. He withdrew closer to the flame when it exploded with a dissonant screech, into nothing more than particles to rain down back into his soul. He threw the glaive back into the water with a huff and a small kick to where he forced the Derelict into reformation. "If only it was easy," he echoed, then went for the child, who pressed themselves against the ground and remained silent as their distortion spread out past the crimson tendrils. And so, the end of my Oath.

He froze when tiny waves rumbled the lake of his soul. He turned around at the low call, and he scowled when the bubbles of breath became larger, wider as whatever was within the center of the lake came close to the surface. Seaxs back in his hands, he widened his eyes when two claws dragged themselves upwards on surface tension, all his strength and will to fight leaving him in an instant when a long neck coiled out of the surface. Its tongue lolled out of its jaws as it swung around with a gasping screech.

A wyvern, coated with tar.

"Oh, come on. I've had my fill of ugly lizards!" Yuven panted for any sort of reprieve, with the child fading inch by inch, and the failure of his Oath to prevent anyone else suffering as he had. He braced himself when their neck snapped to him with a snarl, and their third eyelids opened wide.

Violets, piercing purples against an unseen tundra expanse. It shook, convulsed, then screamed once more, in tune with the cry of his own soul. It hobbled its way to him, and he dived into his spatial distortion when it lunged out to snap him in two. He caught his footing, and he frowned when it stood in front of the child, hissing with rage. Feathers of gray splattered snow slipped past the tar, shivering with cold agony.

"If only it was so easy..." he repeated once more, then shook his head at the mirror life gave him. "... I see now, Fenrer Pyren... this life that I refused to look upon. This life which held all my suffering and everything that ever made me truly happy." He raised his head to its gaze, and he reached out to grab onto the flame to pull it close. He squeezed it tighter. "Very well, Fenrer Pyren. If that is the gift this life will give me, then I have but one last wish at this end of mine. Let me look upon it once more," he nuzzled his nose into the flame's center. "Besides, I can't fight in this damned mire anymore."

He squeezed the flame until it popped with a thunderous snap as he stood where Fenrer once stood, lost in his confusion, his conviction, his dogma. Fiery waves pushed the ooze out of the way, and grew spires out of its magnificent sun. Marble pillars shielded yards, names written upon the air and music rang out. Snowroses bloomed to follow the light. It sprinkled the dawndust over the wyvern, and he scowled when the tar disintegrated into stone. Wind caught the feathers and it tickled his temples when the beast choked out a cascade of crimson, then refused to kneel to inevitability with another ascending call, with the child still behind it.

Yuven met it in the eyes. "Come then. Come!" He threw aside the seaxs and withdrew his crescent blade instead. "Show me what you are!"

"Let the song hear your voice!" the wyvern screeched with the fury of its kind. It extended out its wings and raised its neck to sing. He ran forward, but found himself locked in spatial distortion as the wyvern took flight, and tossed him into one of the crevices of the cradle. A mobile twinkled in his ears at laughter and the softened hush of love he failed to recognize the voice of. The wyvern spun around the circumference, creating a glyph with a breath of white flames. It snapped its jaws shut, and he scrambled down the rocky path when its claws dug into where he had been moments before.

It bounced off its own momentum and sent another glyph to stack with the last, the death bubble made of light.

Yuven dodged out of its lunges and its teeth as he skidded back down into Irimount's streets, full of the ghosts of happy lives ruined by a simple butterfly effect. Children played in the streets with wooden wyverns, sending them flying on their magick. He shuddered at the familiarity, the deja vu, with no time to try and gather up his burnt memories when its tail smashed into his body and sent him careening down the street, farther away from the one who needed him the most, the last survivor of Irimount's song.

The wyvern blocked the street once more with a deep hiss of fury. He walked towards it when it convulsed, choked, and spat another glob of blood into a bed of snowroses. It twisted its neck to him, persistent in its useless rage.

What is there left I can fight... except myself?

It sent scattered glyphs through the cracked streets, but he dodged the upended rocks it dragged through its magick. He jumped onto one of its glyphs, then springloaded his own legs with magick to aim himself at its snout, crescent blade at the ready to strike down his enemy.

You're not as big as Evyriaz was.

His boots hit the snout, but he put his hands on it instead of his crescent blade to look deep in the mirror — to view the person everyone he ever loved saw instead of his bitter, angry mask.

"There is nothing left here," he whispered and hung on tighter when it shook. "Let go." He bit on his tongue when the wyvern's eyes widened from their shared agony. Snow flaked off its wings, and Yuven landed on the ground when the cloud swept around him and hugged him close to his skin. Left with nothing else, he headed to the fallen child, accepting of his fate.

He knelt down to them as they raised their tear-soaked face, cut by teeth, but no longer blood-stained and flayed to the bones. "Miesero..." they sobbed. "I want my Miesero..."

Yuven blinked, then shook his head with a smile. "He's waiting... let's try not to disappoint him. We've already made him cry." He reached forward, then hugged the child close as he sat his back against an obsidian stone, hand reached out through the light to give the child hope he was once bereft of.

The hope a single person extended out to him, passed down the line of life.