OvidLemma
Hi, everybody! As always, thanks for reading! The image below is a portrait of the Eatherfines, Duchess Aleida Eatherfine of House Wuhricht is the current Duchess of Aurilicht. having recently been officially invested after the death of her brother, Ansibald, at the Battle of the Cafernine Valley. At only 16, Aleida led a sheltered childhood and is still a bit naïve - it was never expected that she would be duchess. However, Ansibald's death before siring any legitimate issue have cast her into the spotlight. Aleida is pleasant and eager to please most of the time but she is a fast study and has a strong sense of right and wrong, which may soon bring her into conflict with the real power behind the throne, her mother, the Dowager Duchess Hyacinth Eatherfine. Val once noted that Aleida resembles a stereotypical 'fairytale princess' as described in the books she read as a child.
Considered a great beauty in her youth, the dowager duchess wed into the duchy from a the middle nobility (her father was a baron, and the title has since passed on to her brother) and soon proved herself to be a great political mind and a Machiavellian manipulator, gracious to her allies and ruthless to her enemies. Hyacinth frequently wears a fortune in jewelry, much of which is thought to be enchanted.
-Ovid
37. The Departed
"Our line does not end here," Val's mother said.
They were in the kitchen of an old country home, the smell of bread wafting up from the old wood stove. Val wore a blue dress, worn but well-mended. She had a silken ribbon in her hair. Her hands were ghostly pale with flour, which she wiped off on her apron.
"This is a dream," Val said.
Her mother smiled sadly. When Val saw her in the corner of her vision, she wore a glorious crown upon her head and great, snow-white wings extended from her back. But whenever Val looked directly at her, she was a country woman, beautiful but simple, her frame outlined in the golden glow of the late afternoon sun. She headed out the door and Val followed after her, only to find herself in the ruins of Verdenlecht.
Fully-grown trees jutted from the sides of crumbling buildings, grass and weeds covered most of the cobblestone road, and the ducal palace lay beyond, half-strangled in ivy, most of its spires fallen into the stagnant river below. A cracked skull lay to the side of the deteriorated road. In the distance, a herd of deer wandered across the street, paying them no mind.
"Verdenlecht will fall?" Val said.
"All cities fall," her mother replied. Her smile was wan but beautiful. Her sad eyes were the same violet hue as Val's. "Many years from now, even Kelsudris will succumb and slide into the sea, and some day, there will be nobody alive who remembers its name, nor any book in any library that utters it in distant memory."
With a wave of her hand, the ducal palace reassembled itself, the ivy retreating in a heartbeat, and suddenly carriages and pedestrians bustled past them. The carriages were odd because they moved without horses or mules to pull them, and the people were dressed strangely. One of the young women that passed them had spiked-up hair dyed bright pink. An old man sat by the front of a bodega listening to a talking box. None of them paid Val or her mother any mind.
"These are possible futures," Val said.
"I see many possible futures, but only one will happen. Each person nudges things this way or that… some nudge much, much harder than others…" she gave Val a meaningful look. She took a colored strip of paper from her purse and handed it to the old man at the bodega. He handed her a newspaper, which she then passed to Val.
"Empress Val to visit for Mittsommar address," Val read. The black and white picture showed a woman who looked a lot like how Val might look when she was Ginn's age. "That sounds like a good future."
"The dead in Nillishelm don't care about the future, for they are cold and insensate. They shuffle in the dark and mumble endlessly of what might have been, turned upon the past and never seeing tomorrow. But we do not all share their fate. If you care to see this future and not the last, it would be best to avoid visiting my kitchen too often."
Val caught a glimpse of white wings studded with silver and jewels in the corner of her vision. But when she turned back, her mother was human, her hair intense and red just like Val's, her dress the simple but elegant garb of a prosperous country woman.
"You're not really my mother, are you?"
Her mother shrugged. "I am, but I am not only her. Divination is a complex science, Valkyrie, not given to easy explanations. But I do love you. I have since before you were born. Call on me when you can, and I will meet you where you are." She bent forward and kissed Val's forehead and the world expanded into infinite color and light.
+++++
Val awoke to sunshine, summer breeze, and the chirping of birds. The room was beautifully appointed with a tapestry on the far wall illustrating a menagerie of animals and a bust of some long-dead duke upon the mantel. Ette lay hunched over, snoring heavily, his head rested upon the foot of the bed. Val nudged him with her foot, giggling when he demanded five more minutes from Ginn - who wasn't even there and who usually woke up after Ette, in any case.
"Where are we?" Val asked.
Ette snapped to alertness, instinctively reaching for his knife. His eyes slowly focused on Val, and he shuffled over to her, pulling her into a hug that would have made Ginn proud. "The palace," he said. He kissed the top of Val's head. "The duchess insisted that you stay here until you recovered. How do you feel?"
"Headache," Val said. It hurt to talk. But somebody had left a healing potion on the bedside table, which she unstoppered and sucked down. She waited a moment for the pulsating warmth to chase the ache of energy depletion away. "Better…"
"Good. We've got important things to do before we leave town."
As Sabine lay dying in the street, Ette had called her 'sis', but she wasn't his sister by blood. But Val knew well enough that family ran deeper than blood, perhaps much deeper.
Visibly trying to keep his composure, Ette told Val about how he'd met her. It had been thirty years ago, when Rusfol, a friend of Ette's father, had taken him in as an apprentice bondsman. At the time, his daughter, Sabine, was a woman of twenty-three and well on her way to inheriting his father's business. When Rusfol died in an altercation with a bounty two years later, she took over the family business and continued with Ette as her own apprentice. She'd taught Ette everything he knew.
In that time, he'd come to think of her as an older sister - Rusfol had sometimes jokingly referred to them as siblings, and Sabine had taken it to heart. She didn't have a little brother of her own and her sister was bound for the priesthood. Neither did Ette have any siblings, so they became family to one another. He worked under her for six more years as apprentice and journeyman before he and Ginn left to seek their fortunes in Wayfair. She'd been vow-keeper at their wedding and had written to Ette every week the whole twenty years he'd been in Wayfair.
Now she was dead because of Val. If Val hadn't gone to Wayfair to rescue Niko and Ette, Sabine would still be in her secret room waiting for the Righteous Army to leave her house. If Val hadn't taken it upon herself to charge the barricade like a damn fool, she wouldn't have overexerted her magic and Sabine wouldn't have had to sacrifice her life saving her. It was a wonder that Ette hadn't disowned her right then and there and declared her to be an orphan once more.
Val teared up just thinking about it as they walked to Sabine's pyrefest. It was being held in the Temple of Hale Vescal because their own temple on the east bank had been desecrated and was being converted into a church of the Pale Order, as if the world needed another one of their godsforsaken churches.
"Are you crying because of Sabine?" Ette asked.
Val nodded, wondering how Ette managed to keep his utter disdain and disgust for Val to show on his face. After what she'd done, she deserved it.
"She died because of me… I… I understand if you don't want me anymore."
Ette took Val by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "Val, honey, no. I'm never going to say that. You're part of this family now, do you understand?"
"Why aren't you mad at me?" Val couldn't stop crying. She felt like a stupid little kid. Galvan was probably going to tease her about it.
"Because you did nothing wrong, Val. Even if it turned out badly, you came here looking to save your family and, when we were in trouble, you didn't even think about what to do. You ran right into danger and you killed the bastard who was making the trouble. It was a foolish thing to do… and I'm so proud of you…" Now Ette was tearing up, too. "Sabine would have been proud of you. She jumped in front of that bolt because she knew you were worth it, and she wouldn't have done it if she hadn't meant to. Do you understand me?"
"Yes…"
"Yes, dad?"
Val managed a smile. "Yes, dad," she said.
"What you did was pretty amazing," Galvan added.
Ette nodded. "It was. Now let's go see my sister off to Sturmhalle."
+++++
The pyrefest wasn't until sundown, but there was lots to do before then. They had to bathe the body, build the pyre, open the temple's ceiling, and help Oestel with preparations.
At the duchess's insistence, the ducal guard had retrieved Sabine's body an hour after she'd died. After the unexpected slaughter at the hand of their small group, the Righteous Army had drawn back to regroup for what it thought was an enemy offensive. No, it had just been two bondspeople and five kids (well… Levin was basically an adult). The ducal guard had retrieved her without opposition and turned her over to the temple at Ette's request.
For the bathing, they had Sabine set upon a stone altar, clad only in a loincloth, as was customary. They had water from a special spring for the occasion - Val couldn't sense anything special about the water, but maybe she was just too distraught to perceive it.
Sabine looked like she was sleeping, if you ignored the sizable wound in her upper chest. Val thought she might cry again as they sponged her down, helped Oestel with the chants, and clad Sabine in her armor. Ette insisted on doing the clasps and attaching the sword himself. Val thought she might cry, but she didn't - Sabine might have looked like she was sleeping, but she wasn't. That body wasn't a person anymore - it was just a thing. The person had died and, gods willing, gone off to Sturmhalle to be with the gods and heroes. She'd died in valiant combat, so if the legends were to be believed, then she'd almost certainly gone there. But all Val could tell you in the moment was that nobody was in Sabine's body any longer - it lacked the distinct sense of being that all people, even those without the Gift, seemed to be able to sense. But maybe Sabine was up in Sturmhalle, looking down and admonishing them not to critique her physique because she'd been fifty-four years old.
Not that there was a lot to admonish. She'd kept herself very well put-together for fifty-four years, right up until a bastard with a heavy bolt-caster had decided to pull the trigger with her in the way. She'd killed him, but the Righteous Army still held the eastern city. Val wished she was a goddess, because she'd have killed every last one of them and consigned their crooked souls to the coldest depths of Nillishelm.
"If you'd like to make any remarks, I suggest you draft them ahead of time," Oestel said. She'd been given run of the temple for the duration of Sabine's pyrefest.
Val didn't know what to say. She'd never written a eulogy before and was afraid hers would come out poorly. Hopefully, people wouldn't judge her too harshly if she just stood near Ette and looked sad. Part of her still felt guilty, no matter times Ette had to tell her that she shouldn't.
People started filing in at sundown, and there were a lot of them. More than Val had expected. The whole Hale Jerob sept had about five hundred active members, but this looked to be about twice that - a thousand people all packing into the temple, somber and stricken, offering Oestel and Ette their condolences before lining up along the temple hall - there were no pews or other seats, so everybody just had to stand. Just when Oestel was about to order the doors closed to begin the pyrefest, two dozen members of the ducal guard marched in, followed by Duchess Aleida in a dark gown jeweled with onyx and jet.
Oestel teared up as she gave the service, talking about Sabine, her service to the gods, her bravery, and most importantly her love for her city and her people. Ette spoke. Some of Sabine's friends spoke. And even the duchess spoke. She stood atop the dais, looking very regal, indeed. In Val's opinion, she'd have made a better queen than her brother would have made a king. The spoke of Sabine's bravery, of her contribution to the city's defense, and of the admiration she had among all in the community, including the duchy. She announced that, at the end of the war, she would found a school in Sabine's name that would teach girls to fight. Val had to wonder about that, because she and Ette had already started a school for this exact purpose. Maybe she could speak with Aleida to make some tweaks.
"Are there any others who would speak before the burning of the pyre?" Oestel asked.
Nobody said anything. The temple was quiet. And, for whatever fool reason, Val found herself ascending the dais to stand next to the priestess. Oestel put a hand upon Val's shoulder and whispered: "it's okay."
Val cleared her throat. "Sorry, I'm not very good with speeches. But I'm angry, and I hope you are, too. I knew Auntie Sabine pretty well and I was there when she died. She died because she was protecting me - I won't go into the details, but she knew it was risky and she did it anyway, because she thought it was the right thing to do. That's what she was like. She did the right thing, even if it was the hard thing… and the way I see it, we live in a world where half the people want to take the easy way out. Maybe more than half. That's the problem.
"The so-called Righteous Army that killed my auntie sure takes the easy way - for them, this world is only a shadow and all we're doing is living for the hereafter. Nothing here really matters. But Sabine was alive, and she loved life and she loved her friends and family, and she mattered, and the Pale Order took it from her. I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of those utter bastards taking everything that's good in this world and giving us nothing but ashes and dead heroes. So I'm making a promise before the gods, before all of you today, and before Sabine, who's in Sturmhalle even as I speak: they're going to pay, and I'm going to end them, and anybody who tries to stop me is my enemy. So what I want to know is who else is angry and who's going to help me do something about it?"
Val unsheathed her dagger and held it high, and the congregation cheered. She held it higher still, and for an instant some artifact of light made it look like her dagger was glowing. And, sensing that a truly dramatic moment was unfurling, Priestess Oestel lit her sister's pyre with magical fire. The fire spread over about five seconds, casting the temple in an orange-white glow, engulfing Sabine's body. The flames crackled high and swept up toward the ceiling, up toward the open peak of the temple's ceiling where the stars blazed in the night.
Oestel stood before the pyre, arms raised, a great flagon of mead in one hand. "Our sister Sabine, we shall see you in Sturmhalle! Until then, we shall praise your name and remember your deeds!"
The gotkosens passed out mead, and even Val got a decently-full stein, and she gathered around Ette and Oestel and toasted to Sabine again and again as they told stories of her life. And, that night, in the quiet hours after midnight, she was utterly unable to sleep. Val wandered out from the room she and Gavin were sharing in the temple for the night, wandered out to where the remains of Sabine's pyre still stood, its embers still warm. There, she smeared a mark of ash on her forehead and prayed aloud for the first time ever:
"If anybody's listening, please help me avenge Sabine. She deserved better than this. Her line does not end here."
OvidLemma
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-Ovid
OvidLemma
Hi, everybody! As always, thanks for reading! The image below is a portrait of the Eatherfines, Duchess Aleida Eatherfine of House Wuhricht is the current Duchess of Aurilicht. having recently been officially invested after the death of her brother, Ansibald, at the Battle of the Cafernine Valley. At only 16, Aleida led a sheltered childhood and is still a bit naïve - it was never expected that she would be duchess. However, Ansibald's death before siring any legitimate issue have cast her into the spotlight. Aleida is pleasant and eager to please most of the time but she is a fast study and has a strong sense of right and wrong, which may soon bring her into conflict with the real power behind the throne, her mother, the Dowager Duchess Hyacinth Eatherfine. Val once noted that Aleida resembles a stereotypical 'fairytale princess' as described in the books she read as a child.
Considered a great beauty in her youth, the dowager duchess wed into the duchy from a the middle nobility (her father was a baron, and the title has since passed on to her brother) and soon proved herself to be a great political mind and a Machiavellian manipulator, gracious to her allies and ruthless to her enemies. Hyacinth frequently wears a fortune in jewelry, much of which is thought to be enchanted.
-Ovid
37. The Departed
"Our line does not end here," Val's mother said.
They were in the kitchen of an old country home, the smell of bread wafting up from the old wood stove. Val wore a blue dress, worn but well-mended. She had a silken ribbon in her hair. Her hands were ghostly pale with flour, which she wiped off on her apron.
"This is a dream," Val said.
Her mother smiled sadly. When Val saw her in the corner of her vision, she wore a glorious crown upon her head and great, snow-white wings extended from her back. But whenever Val looked directly at her, she was a country woman, beautiful but simple, her frame outlined in the golden glow of the late afternoon sun. She headed out the door and Val followed after her, only to find herself in the ruins of Verdenlecht.
Fully-grown trees jutted from the sides of crumbling buildings, grass and weeds covered most of the cobblestone road, and the ducal palace lay beyond, half-strangled in ivy, most of its spires fallen into the stagnant river below. A cracked skull lay to the side of the deteriorated road. In the distance, a herd of deer wandered across the street, paying them no mind.
"Verdenlecht will fall?" Val said.
"All cities fall," her mother replied. Her smile was wan but beautiful. Her sad eyes were the same violet hue as Val's. "Many years from now, even Kelsudris will succumb and slide into the sea, and some day, there will be nobody alive who remembers its name, nor any book in any library that utters it in distant memory."
With a wave of her hand, the ducal palace reassembled itself, the ivy retreating in a heartbeat, and suddenly carriages and pedestrians bustled past them. The carriages were odd because they moved without horses or mules to pull them, and the people were dressed strangely. One of the young women that passed them had spiked-up hair dyed bright pink. An old man sat by the front of a bodega listening to a talking box. None of them paid Val or her mother any mind.
"These are possible futures," Val said.
"I see many possible futures, but only one will happen. Each person nudges things this way or that… some nudge much, much harder than others…" she gave Val a meaningful look. She took a colored strip of paper from her purse and handed it to the old man at the bodega. He handed her a newspaper, which she then passed to Val.
"Empress Val to visit for Mittsommar address," Val read. The black and white picture showed a woman who looked a lot like how Val might look when she was Ginn's age. "That sounds like a good future."
"The dead in Nillishelm don't care about the future, for they are cold and insensate. They shuffle in the dark and mumble endlessly of what might have been, turned upon the past and never seeing tomorrow. But we do not all share their fate. If you care to see this future and not the last, it would be best to avoid visiting my kitchen too often."
Val caught a glimpse of white wings studded with silver and jewels in the corner of her vision. But when she turned back, her mother was human, her hair intense and red just like Val's, her dress the simple but elegant garb of a prosperous country woman.
"You're not really my mother, are you?"
Her mother shrugged. "I am, but I am not only her. Divination is a complex science, Valkyrie, not given to easy explanations. But I do love you. I have since before you were born. Call on me when you can, and I will meet you where you are." She bent forward and kissed Val's forehead and the world expanded into infinite color and light.
+++++
Val awoke to sunshine, summer breeze, and the chirping of birds. The room was beautifully appointed with a tapestry on the far wall illustrating a menagerie of animals and a bust of some long-dead duke upon the mantel. Ette lay hunched over, snoring heavily, his head rested upon the foot of the bed. Val nudged him with her foot, giggling when he demanded five more minutes from Ginn - who wasn't even there and who usually woke up after Ette, in any case.
"Where are we?" Val asked.
Ette snapped to alertness, instinctively reaching for his knife. His eyes slowly focused on Val, and he shuffled over to her, pulling her into a hug that would have made Ginn proud. "The palace," he said. He kissed the top of Val's head. "The duchess insisted that you stay here until you recovered. How do you feel?"
"Headache," Val said. It hurt to talk. But somebody had left a healing potion on the bedside table, which she unstoppered and sucked down. She waited a moment for the pulsating warmth to chase the ache of energy depletion away. "Better…"
"Good. We've got important things to do before we leave town."
As Sabine lay dying in the street, Ette had called her 'sis', but she wasn't his sister by blood. But Val knew well enough that family ran deeper than blood, perhaps much deeper.
Visibly trying to keep his composure, Ette told Val about how he'd met her. It had been thirty years ago, when Rusfol, a friend of Ette's father, had taken him in as an apprentice bondsman. At the time, his daughter, Sabine, was a woman of twenty-three and well on her way to inheriting his father's business. When Rusfol died in an altercation with a bounty two years later, she took over the family business and continued with Ette as her own apprentice. She'd taught Ette everything he knew.
In that time, he'd come to think of her as an older sister - Rusfol had sometimes jokingly referred to them as siblings, and Sabine had taken it to heart. She didn't have a little brother of her own and her sister was bound for the priesthood. Neither did Ette have any siblings, so they became family to one another. He worked under her for six more years as apprentice and journeyman before he and Ginn left to seek their fortunes in Wayfair. She'd been vow-keeper at their wedding and had written to Ette every week the whole twenty years he'd been in Wayfair.
Now she was dead because of Val. If Val hadn't gone to Wayfair to rescue Niko and Ette, Sabine would still be in her secret room waiting for the Righteous Army to leave her house. If Val hadn't taken it upon herself to charge the barricade like a damn fool, she wouldn't have overexerted her magic and Sabine wouldn't have had to sacrifice her life saving her. It was a wonder that Ette hadn't disowned her right then and there and declared her to be an orphan once more.
Val teared up just thinking about it as they walked to Sabine's pyrefest. It was being held in the Temple of Hale Vescal because their own temple on the east bank had been desecrated and was being converted into a church of the Pale Order, as if the world needed another one of their godsforsaken churches.
"Are you crying because of Sabine?" Ette asked.
Val nodded, wondering how Ette managed to keep his utter disdain and disgust for Val to show on his face. After what she'd done, she deserved it.
"She died because of me… I… I understand if you don't want me anymore."
Ette took Val by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "Val, honey, no. I'm never going to say that. You're part of this family now, do you understand?"
"Why aren't you mad at me?" Val couldn't stop crying. She felt like a stupid little kid. Galvan was probably going to tease her about it.
"Because you did nothing wrong, Val. Even if it turned out badly, you came here looking to save your family and, when we were in trouble, you didn't even think about what to do. You ran right into danger and you killed the bastard who was making the trouble. It was a foolish thing to do… and I'm so proud of you…" Now Ette was tearing up, too. "Sabine would have been proud of you. She jumped in front of that bolt because she knew you were worth it, and she wouldn't have done it if she hadn't meant to. Do you understand me?"
"Yes…"
"Yes, dad?"
Val managed a smile. "Yes, dad," she said.
"What you did was pretty amazing," Galvan added.
Ette nodded. "It was. Now let's go see my sister off to Sturmhalle."
+++++
The pyrefest wasn't until sundown, but there was lots to do before then. They had to bathe the body, build the pyre, open the temple's ceiling, and help Oestel with preparations.
At the duchess's insistence, the ducal guard had retrieved Sabine's body an hour after she'd died. After the unexpected slaughter at the hand of their small group, the Righteous Army had drawn back to regroup for what it thought was an enemy offensive. No, it had just been two bondspeople and five kids (well… Levin was basically an adult). The ducal guard had retrieved her without opposition and turned her over to the temple at Ette's request.
For the bathing, they had Sabine set upon a stone altar, clad only in a loincloth, as was customary. They had water from a special spring for the occasion - Val couldn't sense anything special about the water, but maybe she was just too distraught to perceive it.
Sabine looked like she was sleeping, if you ignored the sizable wound in her upper chest. Val thought she might cry again as they sponged her down, helped Oestel with the chants, and clad Sabine in her armor. Ette insisted on doing the clasps and attaching the sword himself. Val thought she might cry, but she didn't - Sabine might have looked like she was sleeping, but she wasn't. That body wasn't a person anymore - it was just a thing. The person had died and, gods willing, gone off to Sturmhalle to be with the gods and heroes. She'd died in valiant combat, so if the legends were to be believed, then she'd almost certainly gone there. But all Val could tell you in the moment was that nobody was in Sabine's body any longer - it lacked the distinct sense of being that all people, even those without the Gift, seemed to be able to sense. But maybe Sabine was up in Sturmhalle, looking down and admonishing them not to critique her physique because she'd been fifty-four years old.
Not that there was a lot to admonish. She'd kept herself very well put-together for fifty-four years, right up until a bastard with a heavy bolt-caster had decided to pull the trigger with her in the way. She'd killed him, but the Righteous Army still held the eastern city. Val wished she was a goddess, because she'd have killed every last one of them and consigned their crooked souls to the coldest depths of Nillishelm.
"If you'd like to make any remarks, I suggest you draft them ahead of time," Oestel said. She'd been given run of the temple for the duration of Sabine's pyrefest.
Val didn't know what to say. She'd never written a eulogy before and was afraid hers would come out poorly. Hopefully, people wouldn't judge her too harshly if she just stood near Ette and looked sad. Part of her still felt guilty, no matter times Ette had to tell her that she shouldn't.
People started filing in at sundown, and there were a lot of them. More than Val had expected. The whole Hale Jerob sept had about five hundred active members, but this looked to be about twice that - a thousand people all packing into the temple, somber and stricken, offering Oestel and Ette their condolences before lining up along the temple hall - there were no pews or other seats, so everybody just had to stand. Just when Oestel was about to order the doors closed to begin the pyrefest, two dozen members of the ducal guard marched in, followed by Duchess Aleida in a dark gown jeweled with onyx and jet.
Oestel teared up as she gave the service, talking about Sabine, her service to the gods, her bravery, and most importantly her love for her city and her people. Ette spoke. Some of Sabine's friends spoke. And even the duchess spoke. She stood atop the dais, looking very regal, indeed. In Val's opinion, she'd have made a better queen than her brother would have made a king. The spoke of Sabine's bravery, of her contribution to the city's defense, and of the admiration she had among all in the community, including the duchy. She announced that, at the end of the war, she would found a school in Sabine's name that would teach girls to fight. Val had to wonder about that, because she and Ette had already started a school for this exact purpose. Maybe she could speak with Aleida to make some tweaks.
"Are there any others who would speak before the burning of the pyre?" Oestel asked.
Nobody said anything. The temple was quiet. And, for whatever fool reason, Val found herself ascending the dais to stand next to the priestess. Oestel put a hand upon Val's shoulder and whispered: "it's okay."
Val cleared her throat. "Sorry, I'm not very good with speeches. But I'm angry, and I hope you are, too. I knew Auntie Sabine pretty well and I was there when she died. She died because she was protecting me - I won't go into the details, but she knew it was risky and she did it anyway, because she thought it was the right thing to do. That's what she was like. She did the right thing, even if it was the hard thing… and the way I see it, we live in a world where half the people want to take the easy way out. Maybe more than half. That's the problem.
"The so-called Righteous Army that killed my auntie sure takes the easy way - for them, this world is only a shadow and all we're doing is living for the hereafter. Nothing here really matters. But Sabine was alive, and she loved life and she loved her friends and family, and she mattered, and the Pale Order took it from her. I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of those utter bastards taking everything that's good in this world and giving us nothing but ashes and dead heroes. So I'm making a promise before the gods, before all of you today, and before Sabine, who's in Sturmhalle even as I speak: they're going to pay, and I'm going to end them, and anybody who tries to stop me is my enemy. So what I want to know is who else is angry and who's going to help me do something about it?"
Val unsheathed her dagger and held it high, and the congregation cheered. She held it higher still, and for an instant some artifact of light made it look like her dagger was glowing. And, sensing that a truly dramatic moment was unfurling, Priestess Oestel lit her sister's pyre with magical fire. The fire spread over about five seconds, casting the temple in an orange-white glow, engulfing Sabine's body. The flames crackled high and swept up toward the ceiling, up toward the open peak of the temple's ceiling where the stars blazed in the night.
Oestel stood before the pyre, arms raised, a great flagon of mead in one hand. "Our sister Sabine, we shall see you in Sturmhalle! Until then, we shall praise your name and remember your deeds!"
The gotkosens passed out mead, and even Val got a decently-full stein, and she gathered around Ette and Oestel and toasted to Sabine again and again as they told stories of her life. And, that night, in the quiet hours after midnight, she was utterly unable to sleep. Val wandered out from the room she and Gavin were sharing in the temple for the night, wandered out to where the remains of Sabine's pyre still stood, its embers still warm. There, she smeared a mark of ash on her forehead and prayed aloud for the first time ever:
"If anybody's listening, please help me avenge Sabine. She deserved better than this. Her line does not end here."
OvidLemma
An Obligatory Message from the Author
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-Ovid
