Chapter 75 The Announcement pt2
Like wraiths, we climb the stairs to the alicorn roosts, walking through the barracks as the other slayers watch us in sadness and respect. The losses we’ve faced these last couple of days seem insurmountable. Yet, we must endure.
Sylvain’s hand trembles in mine. She’s barely holding it together. I’ve never seen her like this; so broken, so alone. It’s breaking something in me, and bonding me to her more than I’ve ever imagined possible.
She opens the doors to the roosts.
It’s strange, stepping over the threshold as if I’m supposed to be here. Seeing the roosts unfold in front of me as if I belong here as if I’m just another slayer coming up from my barracks. A feeling I might never have known if Sylvain or one of the others never led me past their barracks' powerful defenses and up here.
All around us, the wounded survivors from the pit of doom are milling around. Their flanks shake, their eyes wild and untrusting. The air of unadulterated fear permeates the air like something I could physically touch.
But with the fear and uncertainty came the calm of the alicorns raised with love and care. Not a single wild creature is left to mourn their freedom alone. Every single one of them has been paired with a tamed alicorn, a friend in this friendless world.
“She’s over here,” Sylvain whispers, tugging me slightly toward the captain’s alicorn stalls.
My eyes scan the herd for the stallion that chose me, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I try to hide my sadness that he’s not here as we approach Shivvers’ stall. I gasp as Sylvain pushes the door open, the vision before my eyes all at once breaking my heart and healing so much pain for both Sylvain and me.
Shivvers is lying on the floor of her padded stall with her head and wings laid gently over the filly Sylvain bonded with.
Tears prick my eyes as I watch the filly shudder in silence and pain. The creature is sobbing as only an alicorn can, and Shivvers is doing everything in her power to comfort the young alicorn.
Sylvain releases my hand and slips to her knees, slipping under Shivvers’ wing and lying on her alicorn’s shoulder. Tears fall from her green eyes and dampen the dappled filly’s shoulder as she whispers apologies only the three of them can hear.
I sit beside them and gently stroke Shivvers’ mane as she stares at me with pain-filled, emotional eyes. It hits me that these creatures are much more than beasts of burden, much more than a way to fly like the dragons do. They’re sentient creatures of great intelligence.
What Silas did to this herd is unforgivable. What we were forced to do to save our lives is unforgivable, even as it was unavoidable. We were forced into an impossible situation and had to act accordingly.
I look longingly at Sylvain as she mourns with her alicorn.
I know how she feels.
She had to do something terrible to survive and she hurt someone else in the process.
I can feel the weight she carries just as I carry my own.
“I’ve named her Luna,” Sylvain whispers. “She’s old enough to ride, but I’m not sure…”
Luna slowly picks up her head and rests it against Sylvain’s shoulder, as if to comfort and assure her rider that she’s there for her, no matter what.
“There’s a…a sort of connection?” Sylvain tells me. “I can’t hear her thoughts or communicate directly, but…it’s like we both just know…” She sniffles, wipes her nose, and sits up to face me. “She wants to serve me, but I can’t understand why. Not after what I did.”
“She saw it all, Sylvain, she knows you didn’t mean to. She knows we did what we had to do…”
Sylvain only nods as she sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and tries to suppress more tears.
“Alric?” she asks, her face contorted in agony.
“He…he passed peacefully,” I lie.
“Did he tell you the truth? He told me he had something to say, something that would change everything, but never told me what.”
I lean closer, desperate to know anything. “You two are both from Flamepeak. Did you know him before you came here?”
“I knew of him, but no, I didn’t know him.” Sylvain sniffles again, but she reaches forward to take my hand. “For people who've never been, Flamepeak seems primitive, as if we’re less civilized somehow. It’s this unreasonable belief that allows people to treat us as lesser. They assume we know everyone, that we’re like cave people living in the volcano, uncivilized heathens left without a ruler, but they’re wrong.”
“I’ve never thought that,” I say, making sure she knows how I feel with the inflection of emotion in my voice.
“I know, Anara, but you’re not really one of them, are you?” She pauses, seeming to look inward and debate with herself over whether or not she should speak further. “You grew up in Obsidian Reach, but you didn’t belong there. You spent your recent years in Stormcoast, but it was never your home.”
I nod, keeping silent, not sure where she’s going with this.
“In Flamepeak, foundlings aren’t rare. Orphaned children show up from the wilds often, inserting themselves into our communities and being raised among us. They are fae, and everyone knows it, but we accept them. We’ve become one with the forests, the wilds, and the unknown. Alric, he…”
“Syl, please…” I whisper, barely holding my self-control.
She sighs, her face taking a determined gaze. “Alric was a shaman of sorts. It was his job to rear the foundlings, but there was more. Secrets he would never share. He lived high on the volcano, only really coming down when a child wandered out of the forest or the fae sought him out.”
She chuckles, dashing a wayward tear from her face. “He knew Whist already. He knew so much already. Too much. When I realized who and what he was he swore me to secrecy. The only higher power than Alric in Flampeak is the chief, so it wasn’t something I could ignore. He had to seem like just another denizen of the flame, like me. But now? Without him? I don’t know what will happen to my home.”
“If he was so important, why did he risk everything by joining the Slayer Trial?”
Sylvain’s bright green eyes turn to me, the severity in her gaze bringing back that heavy feeling of fate settling on our shoulders.
“He wouldn’t tell me, Anara. But he said destiny was winding through the fingers of a young woman’s hands, and he had to make sure she grasped them before the fabric of everything we know frayed and withered in the wind.”
For several long minutes, I feel like I can’t breathe.
Sylvain and I keep our eyes locked, both of us knowing way too much and yet nothing at all. Over and over again, people who hardly know me tell me I’m important. That I matter. I’m the gravity at the center of Amaranthine's fate.
But why?
What is it about me that destiny entwines its plans according to my existence?
What have I done, or what will I do, to earn such attention?
You have been destiny’s plan since before time, my child. It’s inevitable, you are a force that cannot be stopped. You are the future, or the destruction, of everything you see.
But what if I don’t want it?
All I ever wanted was to be happy, to love and be loved.
I want to avenge my friend.
I need to kill the silver dragon.
I need to end the fiery turmoil of this kingdom I love so much.
Destiny doesn’t care what you want, Anara. Destiny weaves her design and we all must follow her path.
Tomorrow, daughter. Tomorrow, you fulfill a vital part of destiny’s design, whether you are ready or not.