Chapter Text
Halfway down the cliff-side ruins, Darian was struck with nausea that slowed his descent so greatly he couldn’t hope to avoid rousing the others’ concerns. Devin had enough frustrations for now, and Darian didn’t want to add further fears. But then he vomited everything he’d eaten that day, perhaps even more, and couldn’t bring himself to move on immediately.
The others came to his side and he shrugged off Rogier’s casual suggestion of taking a break and Devin’s anxious questions about his health. Darian tried to keep going, even as he was overwhelmed with heat and illness. He made it a few dozen meters before the fever gripped too tightly and he stumbled. There were long stretches of time that he could not recall anything of, others still that seemed unreal to him. He thought he remembered Devin with his hands covered in blood. He thought he remembered Rogier holding deathroot, the vines wrapping up his arm and roots burying themselves in his heart. He thought he remembered laying in the snow and the shuffle of reindeer, the pounding of horse hooves, beastly war cries of Kaiden riders as they butchered the unbothered herd.
When he was next lucid, he was somehow in a bed, with a roof above him. Devin was in the room with him, gnawing on his fingernails as he sat in the other bed, staring blankly at the wall. “Don’t do that,” Darian muttered, his voice rough and awful as it crawled out of his raw, scorching throat like dragonfire. Everything was a bit blurry, his eyes having somehow become replaced with coals smoldering in his orbital sockets.
Devin surged to his side, hands sinking into the flimsy mattresses as he desperately sought his brother's face. “Darian! Are you alright?”
His mouth was dry and he couldn’t swallow properly. He asked, “Where are we?”
“The Hold. I rode without stopping for anything,” Devin told him, hand clutching his sleeve.
“Perfumer?” he asked, too tired to dredge up a whole sentence.
His brother nodded fervently. “He’s seen you. He said you have to drink water, and this.” Devin searched the room briefly before finding whatever he was looking for on the table between the beds. It was a vial of some dark and unappetizing fluid. “One of these. Every morning and night.”
Against all protesting from his anguished body, he tried to roll on his side to drink the tincture. It was foul, but he didn’t expect anything else. They always were. He got it over with quickly, and was relieved to lay back down. Still he didn’t close his eyes just yet, turning them to Devin. He seemed clean and unhurt, but still Darian asked, “You’re okay?”
Devin nodded.
“Rogier?”
Blue eyes turned stormy, and Devin’s lips flattened into a thin line. “You ought to focus on yourself. You could have died!”
Darian felt too light and dizzy to argue much, instead letting his eyes fall closed as he barely mustered the strength to shrug his shoulders. He had lived through much worse. Had died to much worse. And there was far too much work left for him to do to quit now.
He slept and it did little to cure him of his illness. But the fatigue lessened marginally. He could stay awake longer, focus better. Still his mouth was dry and his thirst was terrible. Nothing seemed to quench it, and too much water too fast was less of a help and more of a hindrance, leaving him sick again. A maiden came and brought him bitter, awful broths full of garlic. He forced them down, though more often than not they came back up. A perfumer left him with more medicine. Devin fretted and watched and when he spoke it was always with an edge of anxiety and fear. Darian hated that he’d been careless enough to fall ill enough to cause that much concern.
So he did his best to distract Devin from it. It was difficult, his focus as weak as the rest of him. He couldn’t make it through a round of cards, or even an easy chat. Still he tried, this time asking, “Your ride back, was it alright?” Of course, Devin was here and unharmed. But the notion that he’d had to travel so far alone left Darian with an uneasy feeling that had nothing to do with his sickness.
“It was long, but nothing attacked. I saw soldiers on the Eastern highway, but none gave much chase.”
“You took Mistral,” Darian confirmed.
Devin nodded.
So Rogier was making that same trek back, but by himself. That hardly sat right with him, either. But it wasn’t like the man had had a retinue with him before traveling with the twins. He wasn’t helpless. Far from it, if he’d spent his days sneaking into bloody Leyndell and out again. Darian sighed and closed his eyes. “How many days since then?”
“Today would be the third,” Devin answered.
He hadn’t been unmoored from reality as long as he’d feared, at least. “Has Rogier come back-”
“Would you like to ask about anything else?” Devin snapped.
Darian felt his brows twitch. He opened his eyes. Everything was a little blurry for a moment, but he still focused on Devin’s face. “I only want to be sure he makes it back alive.”
“And if he didn’t? You’ve said yourself before. People come and go. And all we need is each other.”
He looked at his brother and saw him as he did in his nightmares, hungering and desperate. Before, Devin had been miserable with the prospect of Rogier abandoning them. Now he flirted with the hope of his injury or death, something to keep him away. How could Darian fix this? He didn’t think Devin was insane enough to kill Rogier himself. But if he needed help, would Devin give it? “You need someone with you on the hunt while I’m ill.”
The muscles in Devin’s jaw bunched and he avoided Darian’s gaze. It was uncommon for hunters to work alone. There was simply too much danger in what they did. Still, their numbers dwindled each year, with fewer soldiers left to replace the ones who had fallen. He lived in constant anxiety over the imminent arrival of the day when they would be forced to part. “You’ll be better soon.”
“You can’t be idle simply because I am,” Darian told him. Much as he wished otherwise, he knew the Order wouldn’t allow it. Their work was too important for them both to pause for long. “Have you been given new orders yet?”
Devin’s nostrils flared as he took a few quick breaths. “We leave for the Third Church tomorrow,” he spat finally, every syllable soaked in resentment. But not for Darian.Darian let his eyes fall closed. “Thank you. I’ll rest easier if I know someone is with you.”
“You’re with me. Always.” He felt Devin’s hand clutch at his own, and gave a squeeze back.
In the evening, sometime after Darian managed to choke down a little more of that hideous broth, and as Devin ate a meal that was as appetizing as it was nauseating, a knock came at the door. Darian hardly had it in him to sit up and eat, let alone raise his voice enough to be heard. Instead he turned his eyes to Devin, who sighed but ultimately stood to open the door.
It was Rogier. Nepheli Loux was with him. “If you wanted a break from traveling, you only had to say,” he teased as he stepped into the room. He’d barely crossed the threshold, instead staying posted by the door at the foot of the beds.
Nepheli came nearer, and said, “Devin said you were a bit more lucid. I’d feel remiss if I didn’t spare a moment to wish you well.”
Darian wondered briefly if this was a hallucination brought on by fever. But no, Nepheli had been kind to them both since that day they first exchanged words. Had once even risked her life for him. She was too noble to mock someone this way, even a cursed creature like himself. So he accepted her sympathy as genuine. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“Oh yes. Intermittent bouts of unconsciousness and vomiting is always a clear sign of good health,” Rogier said.
It earned a small smile from Nepheli, and a spike of glowering resentment from Devin. Darian was caught between that and his own relief at seeing Rogier whole and uninjured. “I’ll be ready to hunt shortly, I’m sure,” he said.
“It’s important to have your rest. You’ll be poor help in the field if you don’t permit yourself that,” Nepheli reminded him. “I can’t help wondering what brought you so low. The perfumers were quite worried for you when you arrived.”
Darian was exhausted, but not delirious enough to admit to her they’d been to Leyndell. He was no liar, but saying that to her was like speaking it to Gideon Ofnir himself, so he'd just as soon say nothing.
Rogier, fortunately, saw it just the same as Darian. While he may have been fine with telling every crone in the Hold that he’d traipsed into the city no Tarnished was allowed to enter, he knew Darian and Devin could not bear to do the same. “If you’ve ever caught a whiff of the stagnant waters in the catacombs, then you’d know exactly how he ended up this way. The only mystery here is how Devin and I were so lucky as to avoid a similar fate, really.”
He made no disagreements with Rogier’s lie, and let Nepheli believe it to be the truth. That did not stop his guilt from resurging.
“Tombs aren’t a place my business oft takes me, thankfully,” Nepheli said. “We leave such matters to the experts.” She nodded her head to Darian. “If there’s aught you need while you are stuck here, you have only to ask. I know how difficult it is to be confined to a bed when there’s yet work needing taken care of.”
“That is kind of you,” Darian told her, unable to meet her eyes. Whether it was out of shame for lying to her when she showed him such kindness, or simply the kindness itself, he wasn’t sure. It was still strange to have friends, after all.
She and Rogier left, likely to their own dinners out in the Hall. Darian glanced at Devin, who’d turned his attention back down to his own plate. He must have felt something of what Darian was about to say, and sought to get out ahead of it. “I’m fine here. There’s no one in that blasted hall I’d rather spend a meal with than you.”
Darian didn’t argue, or say much else at all, too tired to put up a conversation. But Devin didn’t ask for one, and they fell into the familiar comfort of simply sharing in the other’s presence.
Another three days passed with him bedridden and bored out of his skull. He thought it may be the path to madness. Between the inability to shuffle more than a few steps from bed without vomiting his guts out, the quiet without Devin and Rogier to fill it, and the lack of work for his restless hands, he could feel his mind turning to mush. Crawling in sh*t-soaked drainpipes to see the f*cking Erdtree, what had he been thinking? Of course he was ill. How were Devin and Rogier not?
The gnawing at his stomach was probably anxiety this time, not nausea. The thought of Devin fighting alone terrified him, even if he was no pushover. He was plenty strong, and knew his weapons well. But he was easy to rile, his judgment clouded quickly, and he made more mistakes than Darian did. Maybe he’d be fine regardless, but Darian slept marginally better knowing someone with a clearer head was at his side. Unfortunately all he had was time and no distractions, so all he could do was worry.
When someone came to his door around noon, he tried to sit up to speak to them. It was a man some years older than himself, dressed in the simple clothing of the Brethren save the odd wheel around his neck. They were supposed to serve as a symbol of warning, a sign of one afflicted with dangerous prophesies. Still, the Order was in need of all the hands it could get, so Darian supposed it was a compromise for both parties. The prophet had a place to serve the Order in spite of his unwanted transgressions, and the Order had a faithful servant that all knew to approach with caution. The man said, “I’ve heard you’re ill. I’ve just taken over Maiden Falina’s post for the next two weeks, so I’ll be tending you for a while. My name is Corhyn.”
He knew of Corhyn by name, but had never much spoken with him. “Darian,” he answered.
“One of our great hunters, yes,” Corhyn said, setting broth on the table between the two beds. He had to push some of Rogier’s books aside, and he hummed in interest as he did so. “Principia Mathematica, the Summa Astronomica, and Botanicum Medicinale.”
Darian’s head spun. “I don’t know the high tongue. Those are a friend’s.” Ofnir had practically thrown the books at Rogier the morning he left for the hunt, calling him a useless, freeloading vagrant in one breath then asking him for information about one of the Rises in Liurnia the next. Darian held onto them and a few others while their owner was away.
“Your friend has wide ranging interests.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Darian muttered, rubbing his eyes and trying to sit up. He failed, the world spinning too quickly for him to catch up with it.
“Maiden Falina gave me a brief summary of your condition. How are you feeling today?” Corhyn pulled the chair from the table, taking a seat in the narrow space between the beds.
“Like hell,” Darian said. “But less like death than before.”
“Ah, progress,” Corhyn said cheerily. “Let’s try to sit up. This broth is milder than Falina’s typical fair. She believes in...let’s say a firm hand, but we’ll compare notes.” That was a polite way of saying the woman swore by the curative powers of bitterness. He felt Corhyn’s hand at his arm, another bracing his back. He was too exhausted to try to shrug the man off and obstinately drag himself up on his own. His arms felt too light, like they were made of trembling jelly. Corhyn at least let him have some dignity, giving him the spoon while he held the bowl.
For once, the smell of food didn’t make him nauseous. The steam from the bowl was warm and comforting. Nothing strange or chunky floated in the mostly clear broth. He smelled ginger, another miracle not found in the Northern Wilds. The broth was thin, a little salty, with watered down chicken stock. He got down half of it before he was too tired to keep eating. “Better than hers,” Darian muttered, laying back down.
Corhyn laughed a quiet little chuckle as he set the bowl on the table. “I’ll leave this here for a while, should you get a second wind. Otherwise, I’ll bring you a fresh bowl in several hours, after you’ve had some more rest.” Darian nodded, but watched his nimble fingers inspect the books once more.
It must’ve been fever or encroaching madness that made him ask, “Can you teach me my letters? While I’m here. May as well do something useful.” That would be his rationale, that he couldn’t bear to just sit idly. But how was reading really useful to him? He’d never done it before and had gotten by perfectly fine.
Corhyn hummed thoughtfully. “I should have some time in the late afternoons before evening duties and prayers. I would be delighted to help you then.” He stood and put the chair back in its place. “But take care. Rest first. There’s time enough to learn when you’re more hale.”
Darian wasn’t so sure he’d care enough to bother then. Once he could make it more than a few steps before succumbing to illness, he’d likely lose interest in reading. Still, he nodded and let Corhyn go about his other duties, whatever they were. There were always Brethren and Maidens coming and going from the Hold. Mostly they tended the wounded and ill like himself. Others cooked meals for the passing Tarnished, still more maintained the Hold itself. A very select few held audiences with the Fingers, and Maiden Enia, but they were private and kept all that they heard to themselves.
His eyes wandered to the books at the table, and he tried to remember the titles Corhyn had called them by. Something about a prince, astronomy, he couldn’t dredge it up. But he thought it’d be good if he could read their names before Devin and Rogier came back. That’d be decent progress, right?
After a few days of studying with Corhyn, he was beginning to think that was a lofty goal after all. His hand ached from copying the alphabet over and over onto blank parchment brought by his tutor. “Knights rely often on muscle memory,” Corhyn had claimed. “So you will learn better by doing!” Darian had no idea how true that was. But he could vaguely remember now that an ‘a’ was quite a bit different from an ‘s’, though he couldn’t pick out ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘b’, or ‘d’ if he’d had a blade to his throat.
But then four more days had passed, and he could name a word for every letter of the alphabet, even ‘x’ (xiphias, the massive sea fish with a bladed snout). He stared at pages from one of the books, and for every word he didn’t understand, there were four or five that he did. Not just the simple ones, like ‘the’ or ‘an’, but meaningful ones. That was how he knew one of the books was about plants, not just because of the pictures in it. He saw the words seed, leaf, fruit, and flower. In the other he read star, sky, and moon. And for whatever reason, he wanted to read more.
Yet he didn’t share that with Devin and Rogier when they made it back to the Hold the next day. It felt like some dirty secret he ought to hide from his brother, which terrified him because they’d never kept secrets before. And if Rogier knew, it’d simply be a humiliation somehow. Rogier breathed through his books, so he would surely see an illiterate fool like Darian trying to muddle through them the way one watches a dumb animal chase a shadow on the wall.
It was unfair to both of them. Devin may have no desire to learn his letters, but what would he care if Darian did? And Rogier had outright offered to teach them once. He surely wasn’t going to mock Darian for trying to learn, and he’d probably be encouraging.
Still he said nothing of it on their arrival. He didn’t want to speak of himself anyway, not after the agony of being separated from Devin for so long. Devin seemed to feel much the same, once more gluing himself to Darian’s side and breathlessly recounting the hunt and trip to Caelid. He made repeated complaints about Rogier. That he was too dainty and fragile to hunt death, that he asked too many questions, that he laughed too much and took nothing seriously. “Are you well again yet?” Devin asked. “Then you no longer need to worry about me hunting alone, and he can walk his own path.”
Darian was careful not to argue, largely because he didn’t know what to say. He’d never had a friend before, certainly not one he felt so strongly for, and was in no hurry to lose Rogier. But how could he bear to disappoint Devin? If he’d decided suddenly that Rogier was simply unbearable company, how could Darian demand that he stay with their party? It’d be utter selfishness. So he was cautious with his response. “The perfumers say I’ve improved, but would have me stay abed another week at the least to ensure the illness is past. It will give me time to recover my strength.” He’d lost some weight, and while he could eat again and walk without falling ill, he still felt fatigue creep up on him quickly. He’d be like dead weight to the others if he returned now.
Devin sighed, a sound that always pressed at tender places in Darian’s heart. “This isn’t fair. It wasn’t your idea to traipse through the sewers. Why should you get sick?”
He’d already thought of it as divine punishment, even if it was simple cause and effect. He had, after all, defied the dictum of the Fingers and entered Leyndell without his lord’s permission. Touched the Erdtree itself as if he were worthy of such a blessing and not some worm hardly fit to toil in the dirt beneath it. Devin had merely followed his example, and Rogier had simply risen to Darian’s drunken and foolish challenge. “Take it for the lesson it is, then. Defying the Golden Order, even in some way so trivial as this, reaps no reward.”
“Do you regret seeing the Erdtree, then?”
He shrugged and wrinkled his brow because he found that no, he did not. Sometimes, he thought he still felt its golden rays dancing beneath his fingertips, like he’d been imbued with something holy when he’d set his hand on its bark. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
Devin laid his head on Darian’s shoulder. “I know that I don’t. I know Lord Morgott has his reasons for denying Tarnished into the city. Yet he, too, is but a servant of Marika, and she called us back for a reason. It is to her grace we are beholden.”
“As it is willed,” Darian said, because that much was true. They belonged to Marika before anyone else, didn’t they?
Once more, Rogier and Devin set off without him, and once more, he ached with a foreign emptiness. It wasn’t as though it was the first time he’d had to stay behind. All of them had suffered injuries in the time they’d hunted together. Yet things had shifted profoundly since Leyndell, and the change made the distance harder to handle. His concern was no longer simply for Devin and Rogier’s safety, but for things he wasn’t used to ever fearing to begin with. Devin never had the chance to despise someone Darian cared about, because there had never been anyone but him before. So what was Darian meant to do about it? And he’d never felt such affections for another as he did for Rogier. He could not hope to contain those feelings forever, and what would Rogier say once they were finally spoken? Did such notions of courtship even belong in a life surrendered to the service of the Order?
He knew too much time spent idle was a mistake for a reason. It left him with nothing but thoughts. His strength was now great enough that he could put more of it into pondering things he wouldn’t normally have time for, yet it wasn’t enough to put him back on the road. But he desperately needed to put it somewhere.
So he asked to be put to work around the Hold. There wasn’t much he was skilled with that didn’t involve a sword, but he could move a crate from one place to another, clear up cobwebs, carry linens to the laundry. None of it was glamorous, but the Maidens and Brethrens didn’t hesitate to give him menial tasks and he didn’t hesitate to undertake them. When he became too tired to be effective with manual work, he took to his lessons with Corhyn instead. He’d probably written an entire tree’s worth of alphabets and practice words by the tenth day of studying. The routine this and his other labors provided when he’d been abruptly taken from the one he’d built for himself was comforting. Having specific goals to focus on made him useful. He found it easy to pass the time now that he had something to pour some of his effort into besides his own thoughts. On the thirteenth day, he held Rogier’s journal in his hands and wondered if he was crossing a line. Rogier had said he was free to look through it, but it was a permission given with the knowledge that Darian and Devin couldn’t read. Darian was, of course, hesitant to claim outright literacy. He still didn’t know most of the words he read in those books on the table beside his bed. Corhyn said that was nothing to be worried about. He’d called the books “highly technical”. Darian thought it was a polite way of saying “for brighter minds than yours”.
So what about someone’s journal? How technical would that be?
He opened it at random and stared down at a passage, struggling with the handwriting which was so very different than the neat texts Corhyn had trained him on. Rogier’s handwriting was not as elegant and pretty as Darian might have assumed. It was not scrawled and ugly like his own was turning out to be, but it was quick, so very quickly written, like the man was worried he’d forget what he was trying to write in the middle of writing it, so it must be done fast.
He saw the word death. He flipped a few pages, and picked out random words. It was nice to be able to recognize the letters and put the parts together into a whole that meant something. That’d been next to impossible with the books about maths and plants and astronomy. Darian was half convinced most of the words in there were made up just to fool people, or a cipher one had to decode before unlocking the real meaning.
A few pages more and he stopped, spotting his name for the first time. He knew the shape of it well now, even in Rogier’s hasty script. Corhyn made him write it often, said it was important to be able to do so, though Darian couldn’t imagine why. He’d come this far in life without knowing how to do it. “Darian was...” he muttered to himself, narrowing his eyes at the following word. “In- inde-” He pressed his lips together. Why’d Rogier have to be so bloody eloquent? He breathed in through his nose and tried the trick Corhyn had mentioned. Slicing the words into smaller sounds may clue him in on their meaning. It didn’t always work, since he’d slice them in the wrong spots, but it was worth trying. “Inde. Fati. Gab. Le. Indefa- Indefatigable,” he muttered. What a word! But he didn’t mind it. He knew it was something positive, after all, someone who didn’t give up. “Darian was as indefatigable as he was-”
He stopped and stared at the word, and it wasn’t because it was a challenge. He recognized it easily enough because of the strangeness with which it was spelled. So it’d always stuck in his mind since he first read it. Beautiful.
With his cheeks burning, he slammed the journal shut. It suddenly felt as though he’d very much violated Rogier’s privacy, even if Rogier had said he was allowed to flip through it. Again he thought of the context of that allowance, the fact that Rogier had said that knowing Darian couldn’t read any of it.
Rogier thought he was beautiful?
He closed his eyes and muttered a prayer for patience, and for help quelling his curiosity, no his need, to see more of what Rogier thought he was. He clutched the worn leather book a little tightly, forcing himself to think about how disrespectful it was to look into someone’s private thoughts that way. He couldn’t hide behind that fake excuse of being given permission. It was rude, unfriendly, and Rogier thought he was beautiful.
It didn’t matter! Maybe the sun had just been on him in a specific way or something. Who knew? Nobles and aristocrats were fanciful. They said everything was beautiful. Storm clouds in summer were beautiful but they brought floods. Wolves on the prowl were beautiful but they tore open throats. Beautiful could mean anything, but it didn't have to mean everything. So he needed to stop dwelling on it.
Darian put the journal back on the table. Clasped his hands uselessly. Turned back to the table and stacked the other three dry and hideously boring books on top of it. If he could read through all three of those, and understand the contents, then he was allowed to read more of Rogier’s journal. That was the deal he made with himself.
He was asleep before even finishing the first paragraph of the Principia.
Within a few days, Devin and Rogier would be returning to the Hold from Liurnia and Caelid. There was no way for him to know how they fared, only that he still felt Devin's vitality and focus in that space where their half-souls touched. He supposed that must mean nothing terrible had happened. Even so, the anxiety was driving him mad. He was used to experiencing it, but not used to being unable to do anything about it. He couldn't look over his shoulder and see that Devin was perfectly fine, he couldn't hear some glib comment from Rogier and know that he was in high spirits. All he could do was wait.
It was hideous. Learning his letters had been something of an excitement at first, probably for the novelty of it. And the first steps of an endeavor like this were often so simple that it was easy to feel accomplished. Now Corhyn was trying to teach him something about verb tenses, parts of speech, and it felt dizzying. He knew how to speak and he hadn't had to learn any of that, so why did he need to just for reading? Maybe that was why he sought for a distraction from the lesson when he asked, "Corhyn, what do you know about Eochaid?"
Corhyn looked up from the parchment Darian had scrawled some of his writing exercises across. His expression was surprisingly sour and he said, "It is a godless country, though that's hardly surprising. It was founded largely by Tarnished from Caria, after all."
Darian nodded as if he understood. But then he asked, "Why do you call it godless?" Rogier had insisted the same when Varré had traipsed into their camp all that time ago. Had it been almost a year?
"Oh, you know of the Carians' bitterness over Radagon's abandonment of Rennala for Marika?" Darian nodded. Rennala had been utterly broken by this. A very shameful corner of his heart beat with some pity for her, and it was likely his most blasphemous thought. Marika called on Radagon for a reason. He had to trust that. "Well, they never forgave her for it. Caria and Liurnia both suffered due to Rennala's collapse into feebleness, and many of them came to despise that she ever drew their country into the Order’s fold to begin with. So they were perhaps the most embittered of all the Tarnished when they were exiled. They rejected the Greater Will and the Golden Order in their new country, and for a time they held only to the wisdom of the stars and the moon, just as they did in their heathen days. But then the heavens were arrested, and they did not know the cause."
Darian wrinkled his nose. Carians were a scholarly sort. Of course every person in the nation couldn't be brilliant, but intelligence was something they valued. "How could they not know what Radahn had done?"
Corhyn shrugged. "It happened a world away, across foggy and stormy seas. News did not come often or easily. And they quite forcefully rejected all contact from our Brethren and Maidens." He lowered his voice and it was laced with disgust. "Know you what they do with their convicts? It's savage for a people so obsessed with their own intellect. They wrap them in briars and thorns. It's hideous."
Darian hadn't known that. He thought of Rogier, who confessed once that he had been put to death by his country. Maybe death had been a relief, in the end. He pressed his lips together as he tried to decide what he’d been asking any of this for. But before he could ask anything further, Corhyn continued. "They took this entrapment of the stars as a sign of an impending doom. They found deliverance in the form of other Tarnished. Numen, not so different from Marika herself in many ways except that which mattered most: they were not divine. They took up what should have been her place among these credulous fools and promised that Eochaid would flourish and persist under their rule. They gave over sacrifices to these monsters in an effort to stave off their supposed undoing. Can you imagine? Their salvation was always there just beneath their prejudice for our Eternal Queen!"
"Sacrifices," Darian echoed and why had he asked anything about this? Why was he still asking?
"Oh yes. For centuries they surrendered their own kin to keep their false idols sated." Corhyn lowered his voice as if sharing some salacious bit of gossip, and he leaned towards Darian. "But do you know, some few decades back, one of them was slain by their own offering? It is the Greater Will at work, I simply know it. Marika's grace will be known there, one way or the other."
"What happened to them?" Darian asked. "The offering, I mean."
Corhyn shook his head. "They were put to death. We can only hope for other brave souls to emulate their actions. After all, we struggle to keep our heads afloat in these lands. It isn't within the Order's reach to unmake the heresies of outsiders. Not yet. But soon. When the Golden Order is restored and Marika's Will put in place, we will rain down our righteous fury upon the wicked, and this world will know peace and abundance again, yes?"
Darian nodded, but all he could think about were the rope burns on Rogier's throat.
