Fell Champions

Vex hadn’t been in the dark long, but it already brought up bad memories. Memories of an endless sleep, memories she knew she shouldn’t have. Or maybe they were nightmares. Nightmares of the dark, taken in the night and forced inside a steel coffin. 

The chains didn’t matter to her, even though they dug into her sides, and her manacles scraped at her wrists. She didn’t mind being stuck on the floor in an empty room. She didn’t mind being distrusted, didn’t mind being a prisoner to Silayan paranoia. Didn’t mind being locked away by those that distrusted her simply because she was strange and unexplained. 

But every noise outside the darkened room was louder, sharper than before. The new ears made hearing almost painful. She wasn’t used to them. 

And every time she heard footsteps outside, she flinched. The loudness of them made her think of something bigger outside. Something made of steel and glyphs and war, coming for her again in the night.

She never should have allowed herself to be taken by these people. But she was completely out of Will, and Leilynn had begged her not to run, not to fight back.

Not like she could. Without her Pact backing her up, she was a joke in a fight. 

After the carnage, after Il-Su’s escape, it hadn’t taken long for soldiers to descend on the house. Some of them Juala’s. Some of them Sureya’s. Some of them even Leilynn’s. There’d been so much noise, especially with those lightning bolts Juala had been tossing about, that there’d been bound to be someone who’d heard what was happening.

They’d kicked in the doors, secured Rua’s mansion, cleared nearly everyone out, and tended to the wounded as best they could. But Vex had been a large question mark for everyone. No one knew who she was. 

All they saw was the collar.

They didn’t know how or why she had it, but they knew what it represented. And she was an unknown. Even with both Leilynn and Liaru speaking up for her, still she’d been put in chains and escorted back to this house.

Something about the place tickled her memory, but it was all so muddled. This was one of the gaps in her head. Something she should know, but didn’t. No amount of focusing helped. She just didn’t have the part of Rua’s mind that knew it.

More loud footsteps sounded outside the bare room that served as her prison. The door cracked open, and light spilled into the room. Vex flinched at the brightness, and as she did, a figure slipped inside. 

The lisuna eyes were good for darkness as well as light, but not that great at adapting to quick changes between the two. 

The door clicked softly shut, and then there was silence. But not complete quiet. Vex could hear the breathing of the newcomer, as well as their heartbeat. It was quick. Maybe too quick. Scared? Excited? Angry? Vex couldn’t tell. She had no experience with her new senses, no knowledge on how to navigate the information she was privy to. 

“Who’s there?” Vex asked, hoping for Leilynn’s calming voice in response.

“It’s… the person whose life you saved.”

“Reyna,” she asserted.

A pause. That heart beat a little faster. “Yes. Reyna.”

Vex’s eyes adjusted, and she could out the silhouette of Reyna, the well-muscled and curvy former bodyguard of Juala. There was a purple aura around her, a sheen of light where there should be none. Some kind of trick of Vex’s new vision, some new sensory output she didn’t know how to interpret. 

“Hello then, Reyna. Did you want something? Or did you just come to chat?”

Reyna’s face flickered, as if in pain, before coming to a neutral mask. “I need you to fix me.”

“I’m pretty sure I did? You’re welcome, by the way.”

“No, you didn’t. You… I was dead. We both know it. I was dead, I felt the Flow. The Calm Waters of the After. I could’ve swam in them for eternity. And then you yanked on my soul and brought me back.”

Part of Vex wanted to hide, to run away from the unsaid statement. The implication, the damning remark that she’d played at god, just like her old self probably had before she’d been locked away in a suit of armor for everyone else’s good, entombed in steel and prayer for a better tomorrow without her.

“My Will pool is empty,” Vex said. “Come back after midnight.”

“No! You have to fix me now! Nothing feels right! I didn’t come back right!”

Vex didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to have to listen to another failure of hers in a sea of failures that had been her new shot at life. She just wanted to yell there was nothing she could do about it right now, that she didn’t have the power. She just wanted to be rational, or barring that, very small, and bury herself in her mama’s arms.

But Rua wasn’t there, and rationality looked like the last thing on Reyna’s mind.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Vex said quietly.

“I’m cold, is what’s wrong,” Reyna snapped. “My hands and feet are cold, when they should be warm. My tits feel too heavy, and it’s like I’m half-dead, like I don’t have the same drive I used to. I keep tripping over my own stupid feet. I was never this clumsy before. I can’t even piss right!”

Vex opened her mouth to protest, to try to explain she hadn’t had a lot of options to work with in the moment, but instead sank further into her seat and her chains. “Sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry! That shitspittle kills me, and the woman who literally brought me back from the dead is ‘sorry?’ The Crio cunt has the nerve to be sorry!”

Reyna made a growl of frustration, and then kicked the wall, and when that wasn’t enough, she began to punch it, over and over, her fist beating against hardwood until her knuckles were a bloody mess. 

“I tried for a Pact, you know,” Reyna said, face leaning against the wall. “Soon as I hit adulthood. The Dreamer didn’t respond. What does that say about me, that my Dreamer didn’t give me the power to protect those around me, while yours gave you one of the most powerful Pacts available?”

“Maybe mine hated me,” Vex said.

“What?” Reyna turned to face her once more. 

“Do you know what it’s like being a Fleshcrafter? Seeing people recoiling away from you whenever you use your abilities? Being so powerful, and still failing? All of the time? Power is a curse. You shouldn’t envy it.”

Reyna paused, considering her, and then growled and punched the wall again.

“I hate you,” she muttered.

“I know. I hate me, too.”

“You still need to fix me.”

Vex rattled her chains a bit. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll probably still be here. Speaking of, are you even supposed to be here?”

Reyna snorted, and then spat into the corner of the room. The place wasn’t an actual dungeon, just a bare room that had no windows or furnishings, and that one simple act felt enough to evoke the general sliminess that all dungeons seemed to have in Otter’s memories of them from movies. 

“I’m not supposed to be anywhere. I don’t have a purpose anymore. Ain’t no one can tell me what to do anymore.”

“What about Leilynn?”

A frown. “What about her?”

“Maybe you can, I don’t know, look out for her? Il-Su tried to kill her. She needs someone watching her.”

“I couldn’t even protect… fables. I’m such a fuckup. She was my friend, you know? She fucked just about anything that moved, and the Dreamers know I thought about it. But she was the closest thing I had to a friend, and I didn’t want to screw it up.”

“Are we still talking about Leilynn?”

“What?” Reyna said with genuine surprise. “No. I’m talking about… you know…”

“Right.”

“I can’t believe that Il-Su fuck killed her. And now, here I am, stuck–”

Vex’s ears perked up. Sounds outside. Boots echoing in the hallway. A single pair, but it sounded like a monster.

“Someone’s coming,” she said.

The door opened again. More light. Vex winced, but this time the door didn’t shut again. A silhouette stood against the light, and when Vex’s eyes adjusted, she quickly wished she wasn’t seeing what was in front of her.

She was tall for a Silayan, which was short for a woman on Earth, and had an imperious air about her. Though she was in her fifties, she bore her age very well, and none would describe her as matronly. She had black hair, save for one stripe of white on her left brow, and had the figure of an aged warrior who’d seen her share of battles and survived them all.

Sureya Asuega, Burden of Culture, Seat of House Asuega, and adopted aunt of Rua. 

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