Ashan 123, Arc 719
"What have you done!?"
Little did Eliza know that this was how it would always begin. This was just the start of it, only trills after everything fell apart. Everything. Trial after trial, night after night for a season or more to come, this dream, and Emea's never ending lament would keep haunting her. Or for arcs, until the cycle was broken.
Her eyes fluttered open and peered out at a colorless wasteland. A desert. What she'd shouted was the last attempt she'd made to stop the inevitable from happening. To no avail, as if asking could have stopped or unwound it. She was bent over, elbows above knees, her long dark tangled hair hanging over her face like a curtain and her hands clapped over her ears. Trying to silence the requiem with its eerily discordant notes that never stopped. She couldn't stop it, no matter how hard she tried. A man. Vri, standing there, pointing at no one but everyone. Demanding, expecting. The Immortals crying out in anguish, including her own father. And then...This.
Tears had been streaming down her cheeks. But now there were none. No one who knew her well would ever believe it. She'd run out of tears. Eliza remembered. Everthing. In fact, she remembered more than everything. Once, she'd been split strangely in two and now was one again. She remembered it all. The place like a classroom, desks and chairs in a row. The One. Vri. The Immortals. Her father. She'd met her father for the very first time. She'd been marked by him, by Pier and by Pre, and as a mortalborn had received a new domain. Ironic, considering the nature of her other previous half had sacrificed.
And....Auya. She'd died. But she was resurrected, Eliza remembered. Auya was an Immortal. The daughter of Ymiden smiled only briefly, but sincerely. At least Auya's sacrifice hadn't been for nothing.
Looking out at a world that, from an artist's unique perspective, resembled much more a mezzotint, created in shades of gray and pressed onto cream colored parchment, than watercolor or oil on canvas. In fact, that was exactly what it looked like. Like a three dimensional rendering, a desert landscape done in the intaglio style, and she'd just stepped into it. The tune in her head had stopped hounding her, for now. But in it's place was an unsettling, deafening silence. Still, a second look at the scenery stopped her up short. It wasn't very different than the place where Auya had died; except that there weren't cyclones in the distance or bodies scattered all over; in the hope that Hart, Wren and herself could go on. Wren....
"Wren!?" she cried as it dawned on her. The young boy who'd once been Anthropos, tormented by the Twins until Hart had rescued him, wasn't there. He'd been holding on tight to her hand, and now he was gone. But somehow, in a way she couldn't begin to figure out, Eliza suddenly understood as if on a whim, that he was safely tucked in to bed on her fainting couch in Caervalle Town. Sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware and not remembering. Eliza envied him.
In one hand, she held a heart shaped crystal and she smiled again though sadly, remembering Auya. In her other was the brightly colored whirligig. It had somehow retained it's natural hues, just as she had. As a result, it looked unreasonably cheerful and unconcerned in contrast to their gray surroundings. And it was unnaturally cold. A thick cloak or a half dozen blankets wouldn't have made any difference. Shaking her head, Eliza frowned accusingly at the whirligig. "A lot of help you were. You had...just...one...job. That's it. One." She'd tucked the whirligig into her hair before they'd entered the cathedral, and given it a single task. Just one. If danger was approaching, it should act as a warning.
If a single individual, or two, bent on the absolute destruction of...everything, didn't rate as a clear and present danger, a case of impending doom or even just something mildly amiss, then what did? "What would you have done if it had warned you?" Eliza knew that voice. "Eberhardt!" she said, looking around her desperately for her tiny primate companion. Her dark hair fanned out from her shoulders as she turned, and..."Hey! You're making me dizzy! Help me!" Reaching up, the mortalborn breathed a deep sigh of relief as the tips of her fingers brushed against Eberhardt. It was the first conscious breath that she'd taken since she'd arrived.
