*COMPLETE* There are whispers across the kingdoms that the Paragon, that strangely gifted person who can wield all four Skills, has been found.
They're wrong, of course. No one has caught the Paragon. Allayria should know: she's it.
But Allayr...
Boots thud against earth and fire glows against the long shades of tree and rock. Allayria wakes, peering through the darkness. She looks around at her companions, but Meg, Torkel, and even Keno are well asleep. When she turns to her other side, however, she finds she is not the only one awake.
Ben slides off of his branch, planting his feet on one below hers. He clambers over, his hand gripping the bark at her head, and he reaches over to steady himself with the branch underneath her.
"Jarles," he whispers, but he seems unafraid. "They have been marching through the woods for the past half hour. Looks like they are still searching for escapees."
"Have they come around here?" she asks.
"Yes, a couple of times."
Allayria looks over to where Iaves is sleeping and finds Rex's pale blue eyes staring back at her. The wolf looks extremely uncomfortable, perched stiffly on the thick branch with her mouth open in a silent, nervous pant.
"Good thing we brought Rex up here," she says to Ben.
"Yes, that could have been bad."
Allayria inhales, taking in the shifting scent of pine and bark, feeling the cool night air fill her lungs. Before she woke her dreams had been uneasy, filled with startled faces and slow, dripping blood. Even now, alert and sitting here, she feels pin-pricks of disquiet, a silent promise that if she shuts her eyes the nightmares will resume.
"Is everything alright?"
She looks over, and sees Ben examining her closely, an almost knowing look of concern on his face. She returns his stare, but then shifts, peering out into the night.
"I killed people today," she says, glancing down at her hands. "I haven't had to do that before, and I hadn't really had a chance to think about it yet."
She twists her fingers together, pulling back as if to wipe off blood that is no longer there.
"It just happened so quickly, and I didn't even stop, I didn't even process what I'd done. That's not normal. That can't be normal, can it?"
"You were fighting for your life," he reasons, and he places a hand on hers. "You did what you had to do to get out."
"But it didn't even faze me," she admits, looking up at him now. "I killed people, and I didn't feel anything but fear—fear that I wouldn't be able to take down the next one. Shouldn't I have felt horrified, sickened at least the first time?"
She takes a long breath and then asks it: "What does it make me if I wasn't?"
"It makes you human." He gathers both her hands in his. "You knew what had to be done, so you shut everything down—the horror, the disgust, the empathy—everything but that basic fear, and you got yourself out of there. You put it all away so you could do what you needed to do, but now you are dealing with it, Allayria. All that uncertainty, that horror and revulsion, you're dealing with it now."
She swallows.
"Was it the same for you?" she asks.
A shadow passes over his face and for once that keen intensity dims, shuttered off behind a door that suddenly closes.
"I did what had to be done too," he responds.
She looks at him, and her spine grows cold.
"And how did you deal with it?" she whispers.
He catches her gaze and a light seems to come back behind his eyes.
"I reminded myself that if I hadn't killed them, they would have killed me," he answers, his hands squeezing hers. "And then they would have gone on and killed other people who didn't deserve to die."
"And it makes you feel less awful?"
"Yes."
He envelops her in his arms, his hand comfortingly rubbing circles across her shoulder blade. "That makes it pass."
She presses her face against his neck, feeling the pulse in his throat drum against her forehead. The weight of his arms feels reassuring, and she leans into him just as, from the recesses of her mind, that tiny voice of warning comes forward and whispers:
Danger.
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Sometimes the scariest monsters are the ones that seem to look back at us in the mirror. I know we're on the shorter side this week words-wise, but we're coming up to a couple of long posts, I promise!
Note: A full view of the header art can be found on my deviantart account here: http://asimsluvr.deviantart.com/art/Girl-on-Fire-655473562
References: Girl: Marcus Ranum Fire: reincarnationOFfoxes
