Chapter 26 | Uncontrolled.

The hands were cold.

Strong too, like shards of ice bending around Aire's warm throat and locking tight. The pressure was immediate, Aire's body jerking in panic. Such grief, such anger poured from the spirit. Her mouth strained against the bindings, muting a bottomless scream. It was just a choking, pained groaning sound that seemed to cut from her throat like someone was sliding her vocal chords over sharp rocks.

Her face, grey and gaunt, was twisted in such dark hatred that Aire knew that the hands around her throat would not release until she was dead.

"Stop," Aire choked.  The nails were cutting into her skin.

Aire's knees began to weaken, buckling under the weight of the spirit's hold, under the weight of her rage. It terrified Aire – she had known many spirits and none were bothered by something as humane as pain. They had no mortal body to strike, to hurt but they felt emotions as vividly as if they lived.  The anger terrified her too, when she had been so used to the warm friendships of her spirits – who had never seen them as anything other than benevolent. Even the spirits like Daria, who had died torn apart by dogs, who had been sold to the fighting pits for refusing to marry the man her parents demanded her to, had never been violent in death.

The children who died in Lower Irial, gaunt and mere brushes of air, who had never known warmth or safety had always been smiling.

"Stop it!" Aire choked out.

Blackness ebbed in from the corners of her eyes. Her lungs screamed, rattled. Dry. 

"Stop!"

She was going to die here, on the side of a mountain. A thousand miles from home.  It was enough to stoke an ember of rage and Aire held onto it, remembering the Bloodbound's words. Joy to grow flowers. Fear to rot the earth. What could her anger do?

Firmer this time, as her vision trembled, she choked out another, "Stop!"

The spirit lurched.

Under Aire's skin, her Wield hummed. Her anger was still there, sizzling through her. Stoking the magic in her blood. Her thoughts looped, desperate and insistent. 'Step away from me. Away. Away. Away."

"Step away," Aire wheezed.

The spirit's thumb pressed harsher into Aire's throat for a fraction of a second, before she wrenched away with a gasp. Aire reeled back, her breathing harsh and desperate.  The spirit watched her with her face spliced in such wrath that Aire took another step back. Given a choice, the spirit would have ripped out her throat and danced with joy over her cooling corpse.

Aire straightened, the wind pulling at her clothes. The trickle of magic sunk into her bones. Her magic. It was different from when the rot had poured into her, or when she had commanded the thorns to bind the Bloodhound. This Wield now, was colder. As if commanding the spirit had left a chip of ice behind her heart. But – there was a comfort in it. Like that ice was there, sliding down into her chest on a warm, summer's day.

Like this, Aire knew she could pull on the spirit. Not in the way she had always done – by asking them, by befriending them. No, this was forceful. Like the simple utterance could force the spirit to dance to her tune. That sickened Aire.

"I do not mean you harm," Aire breathed, her voice rasping painfully. "I do not mean you any harm." 

Blood eked from the claw marks on her throat, leaving splatters on the crisp snow. As it soaked through, the mountain that confined them, protected them, gave a great ringing groan. Like a gigantic beast waking from a deep slumber.

It shuddered through Aire's bones, the awareness of the earth so strong that for a moment she felt as if she could be standing anywhere within the mountain. That she was the very stone around her, from the black-glass road, the ground beneath the stamping feet with music thrumming the veins and then to the jagged slopes that led to the sea. The soil that bound the roots of the evergreens.

The very earth hummed in response to her, pulsing in time with the rapid beat of her heart. Aire wished she knew how to answer it. How to split herself into so many pieces that she could be everywhere at once.

Terror slammed her back to reality and she hugged herself for a moment, feeling her body solid. There. Her Wield longed to pull again, yanking on her. Power, raw and wild, lashed inside of her. Only fuelling her terror, Aire swayed as she tried to reign it in.

"Go away. Go away."

Her Wield would spread her consciousness across the Crown of the World, but where would that leave her? Lost in the earth, in the roots of a tree and unable to get back to her body.  As she struggled, her fear ripe, Aire barely noticed the snow turning yellow around her. Barely noticed the way the rock beneath her began to vein with thick ropes of rot.  It slithered around her ankles, an insidious, malicious thing.

Only as she felt that rot in the pit of her chest, did she realize what she had done.

A sob choked her. Burned in her aching throat.

The spirit was still there, her rage draining as she watched Aire.

Aire wiped the tears from her cheeks, swallowing another sob. The helplessness perturbed her and she wished for just a smidgen of Eoban, if only to control the pull of her Wield.

"I am sorry," Aire wiped at her cheeks again, settling herself. Her, on this precipice of howling wind and ice, she would not be ashamed of her tears.  "My Wield is...well, it doesn't seem to listen very well."

The spirit tilted her head.

"I do not mean you harm," Aire continued. "I am sorry for commanding you and for whatever ties you here in this place. I am sorry for what drives you to rage and that you cannot tell me what it is."

The spirit touched the threads woven through her lips, a low moan scraping from deep within her chest. This time, Aire reached for the spirit. Her hand hung between the space between them and the spirit eyed it, unsure.

"I mean you no harm," Aire repeated.

Hesitantly, the spirit reached for Aire's hand. As Aire enfolded her hand within her two own, the spirit's skin burned ice-cold. "My name is Aire."

The spirit looked pointedly at Aire's hair, wild and silver.  A low laugh slipped from Aire's mouth. "Well, Aire was a nickname before. I was named after my grand-mother and it never felt right to use her name when she had been so brilliant and brave.  She gave me the nickname Aire, but that was our little joke." 

Aire didn't know why she was telling the spirit about herself, why she would have any reason to believe that the spirit had known her grandmother enough to realize that Aire was a poor imitation of the great Éalaire Aryshalin who had always seized the moment, who had always taken action. Not Aire – who had been content to let life slip by, to work her grubby fingers to the bone in the catacombs of Irial.

The spirit squeezed a hand over hers, meeting Aire's eyes with such grief that Aire could have wept for her. With the sky as dark and beautiful as it was here, the North Star gleamed with brilliance. And in that brilliance, it mocked the spirit that couldn't reach the gateway.  "I am sorry that you are stuck here," Aire whispered.

The burn inside of Aire's chest made the spirit's form solidify further. She clutched at Aire tightly, sound eking from those bound lips. Drawing back, she pressed a hand to her chest. The hand was no longer claw-like, just broken fingers mottled and blue.  She then pointed to the sky.

"I – I do not know what that means."

She was not to be stopped. She drew further away from Aire, bending down to the snow. As she pressed a hand to the snow by her feet, it did not shift.

The spirit groaned in frustration.

"I could help," Aire shifted, a strange feeling blooming inside of her. This was her time. To finally be useful. To take control of her Wield.

Or would it take control of her?

She knelt beside the spirit, trying not to let the fear cloud her. She lay a hand on the spirit's shoulder and closed her eyes. She tried to imagine how this would go. She could feel the spirit beneath her hand, solid unlike those in Irial had been.  She needed her solid enough to interact with something beyond Aire.  She breathed out, imagining a spirit crafted with sinew and bone, crafted by something more than the whisper of memory and pain was left stained on the living world.

Her Wield soaked through her skin, spilling out onto this precipice of rock. She was pulling from deep within her, trying to ignore the call of the earth, the well of life that seemed to press in all around her.

Aire opened her eyes, giddy on the power that was weaving through her. From her. It shimmered before her, a near invisible thing; holding it here was another problem. Already Aire felt her strength waning, the Wield's power flickering. The spirit ignored it, her hand moving quickly as she wrote into the snow. She wrote in long lines, with the notches along the lines representing letters.  An old Cearnain script.

"Geala."

"Born of the moon."  Aire murmured. "You are a Cearnain girl. Well met, Geala."

Gaela's eyes filled with tears at the sound of her name. She sat back on her heels and now, her weight left imprints in the snow.  In her moment of happiness, she seemed transformed. Younger, with hair thick and silken like a horse' mane. She remained like that for a moment before beginning to write again. 

Aire's Wield began to seep back beneath her skin. Aire felt exhaustion seeping into her bones – as if she had spent another full day walking in chains, instead of mere minutes trying to wrangle her Wield.

Gaela had barely managed to write more than half a sentence before she could not move the snow any longer.

Aire's cheeks darkened. "I have not trained to use my Wield like this before."

The message in the snow was quick, rushed and half-done. As Aire read it, her confusion mounted. The long script that the spirit had written in was Cearnain, but one of two Cearnain writing styles. This long script of Ogham had been used for signs, posts and usually cut into stone. The horizontal script was used for books and letters – two different ways of writing, pulling letters from the same alphabet.  Aire's tutor had been driven half-mad trying to teach Aire both and Aire had been driven to annoyance when she simply couldn't remember the letters.

The message here was clear.

"She ate my Wield. Blood."

Aire sat back, digesting that. It could be no one other than the Pretender.  Aire didn't know anyone in Valherin well enough to suspect another soul. "She ate your Wield?"

Gaela sighed, a mere brush of air now and Aire could see through her to the dark world beyond. She touched a hand to her mouth insistently.

"A strong mouth?" Aire guessed.

Gaela rolled her eyes and Aire laughed, glad to see the rage that drained from Gaela's face. "A bad joke," Aire hummed. "But you pointed to your mouth? Do you have a spoken Wield?"

There had been Wielders who had sang and caused storms, whose cries could shred the eardrums of others. She had known of a story of a lady long ago whose keening cries struck such terror into the hearts of those who heard her that they dropped dead. Her daughters and her granddaughters had gained the same ability but now they were nothing more than myth.

Gaela nodded, obviously frustrated.

The wind howled again and she realized how long she had been there. Her absence would have been noted and if it hadn't been, it would be soon.

Aire rose, brushing a foot over the message in the snow. "I will regain my strength and you can write me more messages. I promise."

Something powerful burned inside Aire's chest. She couldn't let Gaela linger, so full of pain and agony.  If she was talking about the Pretender, then Aire needed to figure out what exactly she meant.  She ate my Wield.

She left Gaela on the precipice, closing the door behind her. Hurriedly, she wove her hair back into the shawl and fixed her collar to hide her burning throat.  Her footsteps echoed as she ran. Every part of her ached, as if that simple Wield had drank all of her energy. She passed the corridor with hanging chains, marked by the crying lady.

The exhaustion of Wielding caught up on her as she stepped out into the street.  She swayed, before keeling over as she puked out her dinner.  She groaned, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Foolish drunk."

Aire closed her eyes, cursing her luck. "Am I not allowed to enjoy a simple drink, Sloane?"

Of course, it was the young Aether soldier who distrusted her so much. She strode across the black-glass street, with the distant glow of the bonfire illuminating her.

"Why have you wandered so far from the party?"

"I did not realise I needed your permission to do anything here."

Sloane cast a scathing look over her. Aire spoke again, "And you can repeat that you do not trust me as much as you want. That will not make me care anymore."

"I do not trust you."

Aire straightened, feeling as if stones had been tied to her hands. She sagged, blinking at Sloane as the young woman's form shifted.   "And I do not trust you."

Sloane looked offended by that. "I am a soldier of Aether. I saved your life."

"You and your people set the camp on fire." Aire pointed out. "And you aid us out of some convoluted idea of honour. If I did not make my position clear before, I will make it now. I do not trust the Aether just because they are the Aether. The Aether betrayed the Aryshalin throne, they ran from the palace as the Crimsons butchered everyone within. I am thankful, grateful even that you and yours aided us and gave us sanctuary here, but I will not bow and scrape at your feet."

"The Aether inside that castle had been warped." Sloane's jaw ticked. "And our Princess Ríona would not invite soldiers into her circle if she did not trust them. She has forgiven the Aether."

"That is not her place," a headache drummed inside of Aire's skull. "Those who watched their friends turn on them..." her throat choked. Moons, she could only imagine the shock on her parent's faces. There had been Aether slain inside the castle – those who had stayed by the Aryshalins side until the very end but that could not wipe Aire's mind of the traitors in Aether garb advancing on her family.

Aire refocused. "She has no right to forgive the Aethers' sins. Their cowardice helped to topple a Kingdom."

"Cearna has fallen, but she can be rebuilt."

"How?" Aire scoffed. "In twelve years, any attempt at rebellion has been brutally crushed. Kaelara will not raise her boot long enough for Cearna to raise her head from the mud. They wouldn't be foolish enough to allow it – a single breath would spark more rebellion."

"And that is all that Cearna needs."  Sloane's brow was dark, her tone defensive. "And what would an honourless street rat know about it anyway?"

"Honourless." Aire hung on the word. "Honourless."

"You speak of the Aether as if you understand any of their honour," Sloane spat. "You had only a thimble worth of their honour. You cannot possibly compare."

Aire's tone turned cold. She shifted, facing Sloane head on. "Do not speak to me about my honour." 

"Your honour doesn't exist." Sloane spat at her. "You sneer at the Aether soldiers who want nothing more than to see Cearna reborn and by doing so, disrespect those that died in the attempt to free you at that camp. You have lived your life hiding when you should have been seeking out pockets of rebellion. You shoved your Wield down, hid it somehow and expect to be welcomed back to Cearna."

"You know as well as I do that attempting to join any rebellion would have led me to death long ago."  Rage sparked inside of Aire. Honour was an unshakeable value amongst the Cearna and the Aether.  The scar along her palm, the promise spoken as her blood soaked into the earth. If anything, she had tried to live by the ideals her father had instilled in her. To keep her honour even when she was so far from home.  To question it, to doubt it, was nearly unforgiveable.

How dare she?

"And you would have died having done something," Sloane hissed. "Our actions here are small, but they are something. You sit by, taking the blows that life has dealt and doing nothing!"

There was a kernel of doubt inside of Aire.  Death for Cearna was the ultimate honour and she had done everything to evade it, hiding her name, denying her country at every turn. Shame wormed inside of her, but Aire shoved it down.

"Do not speak of me and my life," Aire hissed, furious.  "You and I know that an accusation of honourless demands that it is defended. I may not be as skilled with a blade as you are, but I will defend what honour I have."

With her blade. With the strength of the Danann in her veins. Without the aid of her Wield. The duel had to come as close to fair as possible. Sloane was more skilled, Aire was sure; if Aire was fully rested, she was stronger.  She doubted that gave her more of an advantage, but it was something.

Sloane choked.

Aire jolted, her attention snapping back to the woman in front of her. Rot was leaking from Aire, creeping up Sloane's bots. Sloane could not make a sound, shock choking her.  The smell of flesh, old and decayed, began to heave in the air.

Aire reeled the Wield back, but Sloane was collapsing.  Her jaw was gritted, her face screwed in pain.   Aire knelt beside her, horrified. The smell was wretched and eyewatering.

"My... my legs." Sloane gasped.

"I -," Aire tried to ease off Sloane's butaisí to see the damage on her feet, but as they moved, Sloane's skin seemed to slough off with it, clinging to the boot.

Aire retched.

For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, an apology spilled from Aire.  There was nothing Aire could do for her – only one soul in Valherin might be able to reverse what Aire had done.

Aire lurched to her feet.

Another choked apology.

Then, she turned on her heel and ran back to the bonfire, shouting for Brice.

***** ***** ***** *****

Welcome back to Aire's World!

Poor Aire just cannot catch a break. It's like the universe is trying to tell her something. Thank you for reading! Tell me your thoughts, theories and conspiracies.

1. What do you think of Geala and why she's stuck here?

2. Did Sloane antagonize Aire on purpose?

3. What do you think is going to happen to Aire now?

Until next time - Saoimarie.