There was no end to the raging squall. By now a time had passed, I could not tell how long, for the icy coldness and gibberish voices that were louder than the wind constantly gnawed at my mind. My wit bedeviled, yet I could tell that by now the clamor must have roused the alares in the rooms adjoined, if not the whole quarterdeck. And yet no help came. Though faintly I did hear dull noises coming from outside, mostly suppressed by the confined storm as they were.
Again and again, the collective voices of Marigold echoed in my ears, spouting speeches of madness and darkness, of thoughts and deeds unthinkable by aught in touch with sanity. All to me was gibberish, while I pressed both hands to my ears and groveled on the floor to shield myself from the tearing squall. But at length, Valerian raised herself from the now dampened floor with a started look, as though ready for a confrontation. The voices grew.
“That day I saw the truth! My misery multiplied at that instant. It brought me joy! When moments before I was alone in this world of strangers, that light showed me my agony is not singular! Valerian, Valerian, know you that the dead grieve too? That they grieve for themselves and for those who live and pained by their demises? In the hundred sparks of snuffed lives there born in the final hour an agony keener than the deepest lies. Those who did not depart in peace but in regret lament their fate, tormented by those whom they left alive. So tell me not that I did wrong! Tell me not that destruction is not the answer to eternal suffering! Why live on in pain? A way out is offered!”
“Is that your cause?” muttered Valerian. Her voice so low even I who knelt right beside could hardly catch. “Are you come as our savior, to relieve us who live of pains? But what of yours?”
“You still get it not,” the voices answered, “Unlike you, these pains of mine have become companions, my true pledges! No more do I find my loss unbearable, no more may the lingering sorrow of hers be a source of pain. It is sad, it is terrifying, but it is her! I hear her wailing at night, her voice comes if I but close my eyelids. These voices don’t cease, but they alone comprehend, they only provide comfort. And ever she will be with me, so long as I satiate the need for destruction, so long as I feed the unending despair!”
“And yet you dared call me a fool,” cried Valerian as her pale hand clutched my shoulder. “And yet you dared remind me of my true anguish! You cling to a thing more pathetic than memories - mere vestiges of what has once been! To speak of Primula is to speak all that we had shared in our joyous hours! It is the touch, the taste, the sound! Do I want to wallow in the dark and dodge the world I may even as you slide into the realm of memories. But that is no real hands, nor lips, nor laugh, nor flesh of hers, but pathetically flawed creations! All you do is settle with a substitute! Compare not your suffering with mine! I run no more from the truth. Justice I have faced, sins I admitted! So do I mourn my lost love, can you say the same?”
The hundred voices rose to a piercing pitch, overriding even the gale and breaking planks. More and more did the wall fall apart, at each shriek revealing a greater patch of the gray sky. “You have nothing, Valerian! Absolutely nothing but a gaping void to confront for eternity. What good have enduring your loss done you, godless saint? My course is right!”
Valerian said through gritted teeth, “So observant, Marigold! You mark in me a trodden dog who will not outlast her wound - a thing plain to the eyes that even an azure could see! I told you, my pledge, I have many grievances. My wound I give leave for either Fate or Death to heal. But this time I amend what I had once done wrong, and atone for but one of my many regrets.” The knight’s hand clawed on my shoulder. “Shoot her, Aster! She is your murderer! She’ll not cease her destruction until it is all wiped out. Not only us but as many as she could until she is put down.”
“Nay!” my voice trembled, and refused with a foolish obstinacy, “can you not see it, Valerian? It is clear to me who is an outsider: you are the one at fault! You dodged Marigold when she needed the most someone to share her pain, to provide a little comfort! You reasoned that your existence only caused her further suffering. But it is not true. ‘Twas the absence of a living being that made it so. Your absence!” I could hardly convince myself, and yet I wanted it to be true. Marigold did not hate me or any of us, and if hatred it was, then a different kind that one could not grudge a woman in anguish. ‘Twas our existence that she wanted to extinguish. We were strangers and monsters to her worldview of darkness. And if we could but show her the light, even as Litzia had shown me then... “All is not lost, talk to her!” I pleaded, “Tell her you can work it out together! Talk it out, try to understand her! It is my failing that I cannot empathize with my sister, try as I might. But you are not an azure! You can connect with her, sympathize with her, do you not? So try!”
“Are you mad?” Valerian bellowed, her both hands seized me. Even as she spoke a hail rose and brought pellets. “She is too far gone! She was willing to kill you, and all of us besides, and would have, if not for Galanthus! Think you someone like her could still be saved from madness?”
“But you do not know without trying! All you want is to-“ but at that moment a rain of pellets assaulted us, and struck at my head and face, toppling both of us over.
“I shall not retreat to my wants of comfort this time,” the knight howled and snatched the runestaff from my trembling hand. “It must be done. So if you would not spare me this deed...”
And so said, she leaped to her feet, training my staff on the vague figure in the heart of the storm. And yet she wavered, and when the blast shot out it was but a feeble thing, at once battered by the nearest wind. And the rune of Will never shone upon my staff.
“Why?” the knight wailed, “why is my resolve still lacking?”
“Can you not see?” I shouted at her as my hand found the hem of her robe, “She is still your pledge, deny it as you might. You must strive to understand her! Is that not what the pledge is about? To support each other till death do you part?”
“She-“ Valerian stammered, “She is mad! She is beyond comprehension.”
Even as her conviction flagged, the storm died all of a sudden and no more did the wind howl, and the harsh rain became but tiny droplets. All were quiet, save for the distant shouting beyond the door, who tried in vain to burst through it. But here they were alone. Not even I existed in the two’s visions. Marigold stood as her own person. Their eyes met.
“How could you...” Valerian’s voice sounded hollow in the dead silence between them, “Even now you do not care about my feelings, you selfish creature.”
Marigold was shot through the heart. Cleanly, precisely. A controlled and measured shot that tore a hole in the wyverness’ chest and at once took the spark of life away without pain. And as she fell the squall rose anew. But though the rain tore at me it was far softer, less portent, and died before long. For it was a cleansing rain.
Just as quickly as it came, the new downpour dissipated, leaving a broken room of misshapen remains accented by the strong, unshielded light. And gone were Marigold’s all traces, save a tattered piece of thin cloth in Valerian’s hand, that was once a part of the wyverness’ mourning veil. The blonde knight, erstwhile saintess, knelt where Marigold had fallen before the swift wind had taken the body away. What she felt then I need not describe.
The gray morning shone upon us through the broken hull.
Marigold made no escape, obviously, for no wyverns could fly without a knight. And yet escaped she did, from all mortal pursuit.
Upon the runestaff held in Valerian’s hand, situated neatly within the circle of the Hierogram of Lost Azure were half a dozen freshly graven strokes, even as the ones that had glowed in Marigold’s hateful darkness.
And that was it. That was the end of her story, and perhaps Valerian’s also.
But for the rest of my life, I could never conclude whether it was a happy or a sad ending. Only that it was an end. And there was not much else anyone could do about it.
How could it be anything but sad? Some may ask. Had I gone mad? Some may wonder. Those questions would make more sense if posed for someone who was not an azure. But I am one who is full of warped thoughts. Nevertheless, at that moment, as Valerian groveled on the ashen floor, stricken by the knowledge of what she had done, I was deeply amazed to find myself filled with a perplexing relief. All because the terrible fate I had witnessed had not happened to me and mine, not Thea nor Litzia, but someone else I could afford to lose. And unlike Valerian, my hands were clean.
How’s that for a cruel, selfish creature? All because I was untouched by guilt, and my own precious people unharmed. The sight of Valerian was to me unbearable. And yet never so strongly was I glad that I had been myself and not someone, anyone else.
Such was the person I was. This very event, then, should cast away all doubt that I might in any way resemble a human. For what calibrated person would be so cold-hearted as to think only of themselves and theirs when before their eyes a person had just ended their own life? For it was indeed to me a suicide. Valerian had only been a means to an end. A conclusion sought by the victim. And I the witness.
And the lesson to be learned from this story, I think, is not of human nature, or wyvern, or even azure, for that matter. Some may argue that cruel and heartless humans exist, like the duke and the townspeople in Valerian’s story. But I did not consider them humans, rather some forms of base animals in human shapes. In that sense, they are no more human than I, though their appearances lend them some social advantages. Even the respectable Valerian might not be considered a human, nay, not even her. For she did not accept herself so.
To conclude, if an azure was as far from a proper person as someone in resemblance to one could be, there are also many creatures who dwell in the middle realm between a soulless azure and a proper person. Of those true living people, I think there are only a few. Most of us, like Thea, or Litzia, or Valerian, the good folk, belong to the upper part of the scale, though not quite the proper extremity. But the heartless, cruel, and murderous ones, who use their nature and circumstances as excuses for their beastly acts, should not be considered much better than I, and so not entirely entitled to enslave an azure; nor shall I ever again see fit for them to look down on me, no more than one writhing worm is allowed to scorn another of its likes.
As for an epilogue, the aftermath of the event was dealt with swiftly. Valerian was summoned to the captain’s chamber, and there the truth was extracted. Marigold, out of grief, had in vain sought to corrupt reality by way of senseless murder. The Hierogram she secretly crafted during the second hunt of the leviathan had been the source of the contained squall that took my life. Valerian, her pledge-sister, naturally sensed that it was her doing the moment she sprung the squall upon us during our patrol. But the blonde rider chose not to confront her, but holed up in the sickbay, using my need for treatment as an excuse. Guilt assaulted her all the while, and in the end, the chance reminder of her past, the Aurumare Order, had recalled in her the past sins she could no longer ignore. She could not Marigold be, lest she killed someone else. This time, Valerian had been able to overcome personal feelings to do what was right, and so ended Marigold’s life.
That changed nothing, of course. Marigold’s last words rang true. Valerian’s former pledge-sister was still dead, and now she had brought death to another. It was to avoid this outcome that she had brought me along to spare her the haunting deed. But I had failed her, and because I had mistaken pity for empathy, I had driven Valerian to a deed that would follow her to the grave.
For my part, I didn’t think that I would be so affected by these events. But in the following days, at night in particular, when no one was about in the sickbay, and Valerian had retired to her new cabin, I lay alone in the dark. And loneliness and darkness and guilt do many a thing to one’s mind. For all my years on the Daybright, I had always shared a room with at least another person. Not this time. And when all about was still, I thought deeply about what had transpired. Too deeply perhaps.
After another dreadful week, Salvia allowed me to return to my cabin with Litzia.
My first night laying with Litzia across the room in over a star cycle, I could not sleep. The strange ceiling arrested me in deep anxiety. And I thought and thought. Shapeless things played games with my head until it hurt and sweat dampened my brow.
I stirred and sat up. My shoulders squared as I peered through the thin curtain to Litzia’s sleeping silhouette. The rustle roused the wyverness – I had not attempted to conceal it. Seeing that I was awake, she parted the curtain, and gave me an inquisitive look.
“Litzia…” I began.
All I wanted was to ask her quietly a question that had been burning in my mind. And one that had scorched it black after many bitter nights. Yet in a last stand of my conscience, the words stuck in my throat. I should not, after all.
“Do you wish to talk about Valerian?” she asked, thinking that I was worrying about our ala-sister.
I ended up sitting there dumbly. She was half-asleep, and that was the chief cause of her frown and disagreeable look, but then, suddenly, I strongly felt as though she wished nothing more than for me to just disappear. Just like that.
“Litzia, tell me,” I asked, “You think of me only as Begonia’s substitute, do you not?”
Silently, deadly, she sat up. I could not tell what kind of face she was making, for I was only looking at my naked feet, which I planted shakingly on the floor. My hands clenched the mattress edge.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked simply.
What indeed. What words should be said that would pacify my racing heart? If I were in her shoes, how would I comfort the anxious person with a friendship at risk, what lie would I tell, what falsehood would I utter?
Then, “Don’t say anything,” I said, and lay down.
As I turned towards the wall and curled myself into a trembling ball under the counterpane, I begged her wordlessly to ruin not my reality. And I clawed at my own skin, embracing my own knees for a little comfort and warmth.
For as long as could be, and if possible, until the day one of us is gone forever, let us not wound each other with the hurtful truth, dearest sister.
There was no end to the raging squall. By now a time had passed, I could not tell how long, for the icy coldness and gibberish voices that were louder than the wind constantly gnawed at my mind. My wit bedeviled, yet I could tell that by now the clamor must have roused the alares in the rooms adjoined, if not the whole quarterdeck. And yet no help came. Though faintly I did hear dull noises coming from outside, mostly suppressed by the confined storm as they were.
Again and again, the collective voices of Marigold echoed in my ears, spouting speeches of madness and darkness, of thoughts and deeds unthinkable by aught in touch with sanity. All to me was gibberish, while I pressed both hands to my ears and groveled on the floor to shield myself from the tearing squall. But at length, Valerian raised herself from the now dampened floor with a started look, as though ready for a confrontation. The voices grew.
“That day I saw the truth! My misery multiplied at that instant. It brought me joy! When moments before I was alone in this world of strangers, that light showed me my agony is not singular! Valerian, Valerian, know you that the dead grieve too? That they grieve for themselves and for those who live and pained by their demises? In the hundred sparks of snuffed lives there born in the final hour an agony keener than the deepest lies. Those who did not depart in peace but in regret lament their fate, tormented by those whom they left alive. So tell me not that I did wrong! Tell me not that destruction is not the answer to eternal suffering! Why live on in pain? A way out is offered!”
“Is that your cause?” muttered Valerian. Her voice so low even I who knelt right beside could hardly catch. “Are you come as our savior, to relieve us who live of pains? But what of yours?”
“You still get it not,” the voices answered, “Unlike you, these pains of mine have become companions, my true pledges! No more do I find my loss unbearable, no more may the lingering sorrow of hers be a source of pain. It is sad, it is terrifying, but it is her! I hear her wailing at night, her voice comes if I but close my eyelids. These voices don’t cease, but they alone comprehend, they only provide comfort. And ever she will be with me, so long as I satiate the need for destruction, so long as I feed the unending despair!”
“And yet you dared call me a fool,” cried Valerian as her pale hand clutched my shoulder. “And yet you dared remind me of my true anguish! You cling to a thing more pathetic than memories - mere vestiges of what has once been! To speak of Primula is to speak all that we had shared in our joyous hours! It is the touch, the taste, the sound! Do I want to wallow in the dark and dodge the world I may even as you slide into the realm of memories. But that is no real hands, nor lips, nor laugh, nor flesh of hers, but pathetically flawed creations! All you do is settle with a substitute! Compare not your suffering with mine! I run no more from the truth. Justice I have faced, sins I admitted! So do I mourn my lost love, can you say the same?”
The hundred voices rose to a piercing pitch, overriding even the gale and breaking planks. More and more did the wall fall apart, at each shriek revealing a greater patch of the gray sky. “You have nothing, Valerian! Absolutely nothing but a gaping void to confront for eternity. What good have enduring your loss done you, godless saint? My course is right!”
Valerian said through gritted teeth, “So observant, Marigold! You mark in me a trodden dog who will not outlast her wound - a thing plain to the eyes that even an azure could see! I told you, my pledge, I have many grievances. My wound I give leave for either Fate or Death to heal. But this time I amend what I had once done wrong, and atone for but one of my many regrets.” The knight’s hand clawed on my shoulder. “Shoot her, Aster! She is your murderer! She’ll not cease her destruction until it is all wiped out. Not only us but as many as she could until she is put down.”
“Nay!” my voice trembled, and refused with a foolish obstinacy, “can you not see it, Valerian? It is clear to me who is an outsider: you are the one at fault! You dodged Marigold when she needed the most someone to share her pain, to provide a little comfort! You reasoned that your existence only caused her further suffering. But it is not true. ‘Twas the absence of a living being that made it so. Your absence!” I could hardly convince myself, and yet I wanted it to be true. Marigold did not hate me or any of us, and if hatred it was, then a different kind that one could not grudge a woman in anguish. ‘Twas our existence that she wanted to extinguish. We were strangers and monsters to her worldview of darkness. And if we could but show her the light, even as Litzia had shown me then... “All is not lost, talk to her!” I pleaded, “Tell her you can work it out together! Talk it out, try to understand her! It is my failing that I cannot empathize with my sister, try as I might. But you are not an azure! You can connect with her, sympathize with her, do you not? So try!”
“Are you mad?” Valerian bellowed, her both hands seized me. Even as she spoke a hail rose and brought pellets. “She is too far gone! She was willing to kill you, and all of us besides, and would have, if not for Galanthus! Think you someone like her could still be saved from madness?”
“But you do not know without trying! All you want is to-“ but at that moment a rain of pellets assaulted us, and struck at my head and face, toppling both of us over.
“I shall not retreat to my wants of comfort this time,” the knight howled and snatched the runestaff from my trembling hand. “It must be done. So if you would not spare me this deed...”
And so said, she leaped to her feet, training my staff on the vague figure in the heart of the storm. And yet she wavered, and when the blast shot out it was but a feeble thing, at once battered by the nearest wind. And the rune of Will never shone upon my staff.
“Why?” the knight wailed, “why is my resolve still lacking?”
“Can you not see?” I shouted at her as my hand found the hem of her robe, “She is still your pledge, deny it as you might. You must strive to understand her! Is that not what the pledge is about? To support each other till death do you part?”
“She-“ Valerian stammered, “She is mad! She is beyond comprehension.”
Even as her conviction flagged, the storm died all of a sudden and no more did the wind howl, and the harsh rain became but tiny droplets. All were quiet, save for the distant shouting beyond the door, who tried in vain to burst through it. But here they were alone. Not even I existed in the two’s visions. Marigold stood as her own person. Their eyes met.
“How could you...” Valerian’s voice sounded hollow in the dead silence between them, “Even now you do not care about my feelings, you selfish creature.”
Marigold was shot through the heart. Cleanly, precisely. A controlled and measured shot that tore a hole in the wyverness’ chest and at once took the spark of life away without pain. And as she fell the squall rose anew. But though the rain tore at me it was far softer, less portent, and died before long. For it was a cleansing rain.
Just as quickly as it came, the new downpour dissipated, leaving a broken room of misshapen remains accented by the strong, unshielded light. And gone were Marigold’s all traces, save a tattered piece of thin cloth in Valerian’s hand, that was once a part of the wyverness’ mourning veil. The blonde knight, erstwhile saintess, knelt where Marigold had fallen before the swift wind had taken the body away. What she felt then I need not describe.
The gray morning shone upon us through the broken hull.
Marigold made no escape, obviously, for no wyverns could fly without a knight. And yet escaped she did, from all mortal pursuit.
Upon the runestaff held in Valerian’s hand, situated neatly within the circle of the Hierogram of Lost Azure were half a dozen freshly graven strokes, even as the ones that had glowed in Marigold’s hateful darkness.
And that was it. That was the end of her story, and perhaps Valerian’s also.
But for the rest of my life, I could never conclude whether it was a happy or a sad ending. Only that it was an end. And there was not much else anyone could do about it.
How could it be anything but sad? Some may ask. Had I gone mad? Some may wonder. Those questions would make more sense if posed for someone who was not an azure. But I am one who is full of warped thoughts. Nevertheless, at that moment, as Valerian groveled on the ashen floor, stricken by the knowledge of what she had done, I was deeply amazed to find myself filled with a perplexing relief. All because the terrible fate I had witnessed had not happened to me and mine, not Thea nor Litzia, but someone else I could afford to lose. And unlike Valerian, my hands were clean.
How’s that for a cruel, selfish creature? All because I was untouched by guilt, and my own precious people unharmed. The sight of Valerian was to me unbearable. And yet never so strongly was I glad that I had been myself and not someone, anyone else.
Such was the person I was. This very event, then, should cast away all doubt that I might in any way resemble a human. For what calibrated person would be so cold-hearted as to think only of themselves and theirs when before their eyes a person had just ended their own life? For it was indeed to me a suicide. Valerian had only been a means to an end. A conclusion sought by the victim. And I the witness.
And the lesson to be learned from this story, I think, is not of human nature, or wyvern, or even azure, for that matter. Some may argue that cruel and heartless humans exist, like the duke and the townspeople in Valerian’s story. But I did not consider them humans, rather some forms of base animals in human shapes. In that sense, they are no more human than I, though their appearances lend them some social advantages. Even the respectable Valerian might not be considered a human, nay, not even her. For she did not accept herself so.
To conclude, if an azure was as far from a proper person as someone in resemblance to one could be, there are also many creatures who dwell in the middle realm between a soulless azure and a proper person. Of those true living people, I think there are only a few. Most of us, like Thea, or Litzia, or Valerian, the good folk, belong to the upper part of the scale, though not quite the proper extremity. But the heartless, cruel, and murderous ones, who use their nature and circumstances as excuses for their beastly acts, should not be considered much better than I, and so not entirely entitled to enslave an azure; nor shall I ever again see fit for them to look down on me, no more than one writhing worm is allowed to scorn another of its likes.
As for an epilogue, the aftermath of the event was dealt with swiftly. Valerian was summoned to the captain’s chamber, and there the truth was extracted. Marigold, out of grief, had in vain sought to corrupt reality by way of senseless murder. The Hierogram she secretly crafted during the second hunt of the leviathan had been the source of the contained squall that took my life. Valerian, her pledge-sister, naturally sensed that it was her doing the moment she sprung the squall upon us during our patrol. But the blonde rider chose not to confront her, but holed up in the sickbay, using my need for treatment as an excuse. Guilt assaulted her all the while, and in the end, the chance reminder of her past, the Aurumare Order, had recalled in her the past sins she could no longer ignore. She could not Marigold be, lest she killed someone else. This time, Valerian had been able to overcome personal feelings to do what was right, and so ended Marigold’s life.
That changed nothing, of course. Marigold’s last words rang true. Valerian’s former pledge-sister was still dead, and now she had brought death to another. It was to avoid this outcome that she had brought me along to spare her the haunting deed. But I had failed her, and because I had mistaken pity for empathy, I had driven Valerian to a deed that would follow her to the grave.
For my part, I didn’t think that I would be so affected by these events. But in the following days, at night in particular, when no one was about in the sickbay, and Valerian had retired to her new cabin, I lay alone in the dark. And loneliness and darkness and guilt do many a thing to one’s mind. For all my years on the Daybright, I had always shared a room with at least another person. Not this time. And when all about was still, I thought deeply about what had transpired. Too deeply perhaps.
After another dreadful week, Salvia allowed me to return to my cabin with Litzia.
My first night laying with Litzia across the room in over a star cycle, I could not sleep. The strange ceiling arrested me in deep anxiety. And I thought and thought. Shapeless things played games with my head until it hurt and sweat dampened my brow.
I stirred and sat up. My shoulders squared as I peered through the thin curtain to Litzia’s sleeping silhouette. The rustle roused the wyverness – I had not attempted to conceal it. Seeing that I was awake, she parted the curtain, and gave me an inquisitive look.
“Litzia…” I began.
All I wanted was to ask her quietly a question that had been burning in my mind. And one that had scorched it black after many bitter nights. Yet in a last stand of my conscience, the words stuck in my throat. I should not, after all.
“Do you wish to talk about Valerian?” she asked, thinking that I was worrying about our ala-sister.
I ended up sitting there dumbly. She was half-asleep, and that was the chief cause of her frown and disagreeable look, but then, suddenly, I strongly felt as though she wished nothing more than for me to just disappear. Just like that.
“Litzia, tell me,” I asked, “You think of me only as Begonia’s substitute, do you not?”
Silently, deadly, she sat up. I could not tell what kind of face she was making, for I was only looking at my naked feet, which I planted shakingly on the floor. My hands clenched the mattress edge.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked simply.
What indeed. What words should be said that would pacify my racing heart? If I were in her shoes, how would I comfort the anxious person with a friendship at risk, what lie would I tell, what falsehood would I utter?
Then, “Don’t say anything,” I said, and lay down.
As I turned towards the wall and curled myself into a trembling ball under the counterpane, I begged her wordlessly to ruin not my reality. And I clawed at my own skin, embracing my own knees for a little comfort and warmth.
For as long as could be, and if possible, until the day one of us is gone forever, let us not wound each other with the hurtful truth, dearest sister.
