Renegade’s End

The Placidium — Ionia

The Great Room lived up to its name well enough, Akali thought. She enjoyed the night-and-day thematic elements, which she likened to a mobile of the sun and moon, but she felt the throne too gaudy for her taste. Opalescent and sleek, the majority was heavily sloped to the right side, spiraling upward and inward like a conch shell. She imagined it looked like an expensive hairstyle, one that might have involved witchcraft. The banners, black, white, and purple, had real stars sewn into them to serve as natural light sources; Lucia adored natural light, no matter the cost. Sand-colored columns held up the temple, probably sturdy enough to vault off of, and the streaks of sunlight painted between them looked like a summer’s wheat harvest. Two exits, the one she came through and the one near the throne, unless she was counting the circular hole in the ceiling.

“Akali. The balance has brought you back to me once more. Grace be.” Lucia’s radiance was maddening, intoxicating. Her dress, flowing and lavender, fell off her collarbones like she’d seen on women far east of the sea. She was draped in stones and bark and ornamentation, all jewelry she’d made herself. Her crown of animal bones sat immutably still on her head. Akali did her best to stay composed around Lucia. She yearned for her in a manner she herself couldn’t decipher. Akali had resolved to never fall for Lucia a fifth time, but she was wearing a different scent today. Sandalwood? No, what was it? “Akali? Still with us?”

“Grand Seamstress. My… room is small.” She wrung her hands, eager to be anywhere else. Lucia extended a slender arm and lightly placed a hand on Akali’s shoulder. “As all are, my light. How could we hope to contain ourselves in anything grandiose?” she asked, waving at the vaulted halls of the Great Room. They began walking toward the Upper Garden after joining hands. “You make no sense as always, Lucia. It’s good to see you intact.” Lucia stopped, pulled her hand away like she’d touched fire, and glared at the warrior. “You shall never levy such a gross insult at my person again, Akali! I am, in all truth, shattered. How you might have forgotten this is beyond me.” She strode away defiantly, picking up her pace as she approached the exit.

Akali caught up to her outside, where she found her companion pruning a small bushel of wildflowers. As she snipped, the colors of the flowers darted from violet to chartreuse to black as night, stopping on a deep crimson as Lucia placed the bundle back into the soil. “That’s why you asked for me, isn’t it? The kids in Pennoh.” Akali still hadn’t heard the specifics, just a rumor of unrest. Still, that was uncommon enough for it to be news. “Yes, the unfortunate matter. Pollock’s village rises again to prove itself worthy of due consideration. Sadly, they bear this for all the wrong reasons.”

“So I’m summoned as an errand boy. You really do think so little of me, Luc. What’s the punishment?” Both crimes and punishment seemed foreign enough, but reality had a way of interfering with idealism in Ionia. “We don’t deal in such things, Akali. Remember where you are from. You are not your training, nor your home, my light. Take note of who you are from time to time, not just what you’ve done or how you’ve done it.” Akali rolled her eyes at the stern-looking woman. “If only you danced in such abstract circles as your tongue.” She responded in kind, sticking out her tongue in a manner unbefitting of her station. “Then perhaps I would’ve found myself an easier rule. Though, to be understood is to understand. I deal in all sorts of currents so I might know them, eventually.”

“I’m assured, Lucia. You may rest.” Akali turned to leave, but Lucia grabbed her hand and squeezed. “There’s one thing, Akali. One rule you may not break in your endeavors. If you take a life, the value of this mission is forfeit. Avoid violence at every cost. Suppress any such impulses, even if they come easy. You must swear on the balance.” Akali groaned and stretched out her open palms as if to hold the universe within them. She looked up and said, “As it is seen and done, I part with violence for this day.” She heard Lucia’s breathing grow steady. “Good, thank you. I await your safe return.”

~

Firesign Eyes

Look and see the blaze, it has consumed me

Was it your hand that did this?

I might have misremembered for

It’s all growing close together now

And Maybe I Would Have Consumed You Too

Who but the arbiter of justice, heathen

Or whatever you have now become

A hired arm, a play-pretend pacifist

You cannot even reach the end of your rage

And Maybe My Rage Would Have Proven Greater

I wept for myself, I wept for my people

And their slow death, ever-incumbent

I slunk into the role I knew you’d approach

Only slashed at the shroud you left

And Maybe My Knife Can’t Be That Which Fells You

~

The Placidium Lower Garden — Ionia

The spark danced across her fingertips, finally bursting into pieces and settling back amongst the dirt. “I know this soil too well. In some ways, it taught me how to be a mage. These scraps of aura were enough to cast simple spells and incantations. I always brought the ripest tomatoes to the Sunspire Feast. No one ever knew how, with my limited green thumb. Imagine that, a world where magic was used for simple things. Growing, healing.”

“I’ve always found it gets in the way of things. Intention grows clouded and magic strays from its purpose.” Lucia crushed the spark in her hand, giving off a slight plume of smoke. “Intention?” She turned her back. “I felt it. I felt his life fading, Akali.”

“How else should I have acted? He threatened their lives, did you not see that as well?”

Lucia’s voice was almost inaudible as she strained, “You promised this time, you invoked the balance.” She collapsed forward, placing both hands on the earth and weeping. “It was not my promise to keep, Grand Seamstress. My hand was forced-” Lucia whirled to face her, spitting “Then promise nothing! I trusted you with this.” Her voice broke and she took a shaky breath. She clenched a fistful of soil in her hand, then stood. “I regret to see it, but you are still the same impulsive, ego-driven liar. Go. Leave Ionia by the morrow.” Her foreguard was quick to make sure Akali understood her own situation. He stood between them, saying, “You may leave, to never return, or you may stay and cause the Grand Seamstress further distress. I shall only interfere with the latter. You may now make your decision.” Akali looked the man up and down. She could take him, but Lucia would never forgive her. She turned, let out a soft “goodbye, then” and went to retrieve her pack.

As she left the capital, Akali was stopped by a distressed, clearly motivated old man on a cart. As she was accosted and tried ducking away, she noticed the symbol on his arm. A tattoo, nearly a foot long and beginning at his wrist, stretched up into his sleeve. Akali recognized the crest as the Vassa’s. The man was now waving a stone at her, beckoning for her to come closer. When she obliged, he placed the stone in her hand and pointed her into the desert. He did this several more times before Akali understood him.“Thank you,” she said, unsure if she meant it, and began walking in the direction he had indicated.

~

Azaezel’s Depths

Privy to the forest path, I have seen you

Quoth the river unending

I have seen the sky behind you

And the steel in your belt

And I know what you have come to do

Spare the world this flirtation

And despise me if you must

But a river, a river remains

And a killer the same

Take the stains upon your tools the other way

I might bargain if you stay

Quoth the river unending

I might grant an old wish of yours

You could see the magic of this world

If you were lent my gaze

And they, the eyes of a killer,

The eyes of a life-giver

Would only serve to wake

~

The Oasis — Ionian Wilderness

Akali’s shelter had worn thin. The firebush in the center of the Oasis, nearly out of fuel, was sputtering and sighing as it had when she was a child. The noise was tied to the woods near her family’s home, the pagoda where they’d sown the firebush seeds, and the long nights of philosophical debate or training by firelight. Akali had been long for the comforts of home, but there was a strange pleasantness to roughing it. She felt as though Ionia was taking care of her, one of its own. The earth embraced her at night, shrouding her from the elements. At dawn, she woke to find herself beneath a pear tree which she might’ve sworn bore no fruit the day before, but as she turned her head to the horizon, she saw rapture. In each cardinal direction lay a scene unique to Ionia, a spectacle you could view nowhere else in Valoran. She walked in wonderment toward the first of the four quarters, a thin line separating the forest at her feet and the sand dunes before her.

To the South, cliffs and mesas fell into one another, disappearing and reappearing like waves. Colored sand sprayed into the air in plumes; as it fell, it was picked up by the wind, whipping it into ribbons following the air currents. The new sun cut through the airborne particles, coloring the light with the hue of the sand. If she reached the edge of the oasis’ trees, Akali could bathe in the tinted sunlight. Her skin glowed crimson and copper as the wind changed. However, as she tried to step forward into the desert’s light, she saw a flash of black and reappeared twenty meters behind where she had stood. She turned to the West.

The sea was raging before her eyes, foaming up and crashing down in ways that seemed impossible. It was molded like clay before collapsing as lightning struck, imitating the shapes of sea monsters, deities, and creatures of myth. As they reached their peak, the clouds would open and release a single, blinding bolt that would shatter their formless forms. They fell into the bay and on the rocks, crashing into the waves with a great thundering sound as the sea rejoined itself. Akali’s face had grown damp from standing in front of the spraying mist, but again, she could go no further. Any attempt sent her hurtling back to square one.

She grew uneasy, restless, and frustrated as she moved to explore the cave system to the North. Above Akali’s head, the cavern had begun to change itself again. She braced against the tree beside her, the stalactites dissolving back into the cave ceiling as the whole structure began to shake. As the cave began to collapse, she stepped inward to be rubber-banded back into the oasis, but it took longer than it had before. She was standing beneath the rubble as it approached her head, making Akali ask if her last waking moments would be spent in an illusion.

Still, she reappeared in the Oasis, this time in front of the only way left unexplored. To the East, a single tree clad in fall colors stood at the top of a knoll, steep and rocky. The grass on its sides was fading from a clearly-traversed path to the top. The moonlight, brighter than she’d ever seen it, shone through the red-orange leaves and dappled her face. Before Akali could try to enter, she saw the tree begin to vibrate slightly, the moonlight shifting around her features. She watched in awe as the thousands of leaves ceremoniously left the tree and swarmed in the sky; it took her a moment to realize that they weren’t leaves at all, but migrating birds from Shurima. As they soared and dove and cheered, Akali felt a strong, deep sense of belonging. This was what she was meant to see, this was why she was here. As she stepped into the scene before her, she felt the night air on her skin and the moonlight, now filtering only through branches. She breathed a sigh, relieved, but was immediately carried back to the side of the Oasis.

“Why?! What do you want?” she asked whatever angry God had imprisoned her here in this facade of a paradise. “Please just let me leave.” Her ankles grew numb from standing. With a trickle of clarity feeding into her mind, she turned to the true center of the Oasis, a vast expanse of water that occupied the center of the space. She had not yet touched the water, not even to drink, as it held a secret it wouldn’t divulge. Akali looked at the sky above, the sand beneath, and dove headfirst into the water.

~

Prize Fight

Polemarch presiding, have you seen all of my deeds

Did you watch over the times I took a life

Did you rage and spit and seethe

Have I gravely disappointed

Is this place to be my lasting grave

~

I carried you away for this, to see the broader image

To let the world rest upon your shoulders

To have no say in its many happenings

It is in your eyes that I see you say

“Oh Old one, I am not ready”

~

I stand to grow and serve, what else may I offer

Than a glimpse into the body and machine I have made

The secrets I have guarded, the lives saved

You cannot say it amounts to nothing

You cannot know so much and yet so little

~

My light, then you might hear it from my lips

You speak of service but serve yourself

You are a guard, but no protector

You are blinded by your own ability

And your swinging hand upsets the balance

Now come, my light, and sit a while

Let us watch the mountains live and die