---- The pyre was yet unbridged. Not rain, dirt, nor blood could douse it. Nor could the constant waves of bodies they had been throwing over. All actions simply acted to worsen the smell. Oak-smoked steel and man filled the clearing and must have spread so far as Duke's Crossing by now.
"The stars have gone out," her father whispered during her late watch. Ashtik descended the shabby barrier to stand at his side.
"It's the flame," she smiled. "It drowns out the lesser lights."
The pair of them stood gawking for a moment through the smoke, rain clouds and firelight. Barely a single star shimmered above them.
"Can't even see heaven's belt," Tilak bemoaned. "But it's still there, behind it all. At least we can trust in that."
-- "Trust in what?"
"Trust that despite the flames and smoke, clouds and chaos, the stars will still shine on. Even if we can't see them anymore, they're still there, just waiting to sparkle again." He wrapped his arm around her and held her close.
He felt so skinny, his arms were barely more than bones. She remembered what he had been like before. He could dash her across a room with a single flick or have her do pull-ups on his outstretched hand. Now, she wouldn't trust him to pick a flower without struggle.
"Is Ev sleeping?" She finally asked. His answer came as a snort. It made her snort, too, though she wasn't sure why.
"Aye," he smiled. "As should you be."
"I can't sleep right now," Ash grumbled.
She plucked her spear from the barrier and let the smith take her place as guard. Tilak guided her towards a sheltered mound of hay between the last surviving horses. They sat there together, beneath the blackened stars and lit by copper hues.
"Did- Did they tell you?" Ash asked.
-- "Tell me what?"
"Why they gave me charge."
"I- hadn't given it any thought," he chuckled. "You suit the role well; it's as if it was always yours."
"I'm a Champion, Dad," she said much too quickly, tucking her face into her knees and avoiding his jovial gaze.
"That you are, my little champion," he teased.
"No... as in; I'm a 'Champion' Champion." She swallowed some other dreadful words before they could burst forth.
"Oh..." he simply uttered. She couldn't see his slacked jaw or his widened eyes, but she could hear his hitched breath and the drum of his hesitant heart. "The... Champion of what?" he carefully asked, placing a hand on her back.
-- "I don't know yet, but nothing kind if today is to be taken rightly."
She didn't look up at him. Instead, she waved out her burdened left hand and wiggled her black steel knuckles.
"This is what I wanted to show you. This is my mark." The black abyss didn't cower this time. It stood proudly on her damaged flesh. The blood seeping over it seemed to fall into the endless pit.
"Oh..." was all he managed. It could have been awe, but it felt more like dread that plundered his words. "Oh, Snowy..." he finally muttered. The word carried a shaken tear and became sullied with sorrow soon after. "Look at me," he said.
She didn't want to, not under the candlelight. He looked so gaunt; so ill. The flames flickered around his hollow cheeks and the copper hue of the pyre wall struck him with an ill tone beyond even his sickly pale nature.
"That's a sparrow, Ash," he whispered, looking at the formless mark.
"It's nothing? Just blackness." She looked deep within the swirling, shifting, ebbing horror at her wrist, and saw no trace of bird nor wing.
"Then you are unfulfilled," he said. "When you know yourself, it will learn to know you, and you will see each other. Until then, trust me... It's a Sparrow."
"So, what does a Sparrow mean?" Ash asked.
"A great many things," he darkly said. "But sparrows carry dreams like ravens carry letters. I think it is time you were abed."
"But what does that mean?" she demanded. Tilak all but ignored her, placing his weight on her shoulder as he rose to unsteady feet.
"Sleep, Snowy. Hopefully the sparrows don't fear the pyre," he chuckled, throwing a blanket over her head.
---- She lay in that mound of pyre-lit hay for some hours to come though the sleep she had been ordered to denied her all the while.
The sheering breeze that battled through the cracks of the shack slapped her with a brace of rain. The hay beneath her held no heat and the blanket around her seemed no better. She sealed her eyes so tightly as she could manage with the determination to "Sleep."
Then... she was dead. Hot steel warmed her throat. Cold blood stained and sullied its beauty. She wasn't alone, at least. Another blade soon made off for Carolet, and he accepted it with a kind of drunken glee. Then he shifted, and wasn't Carolet any longer, but some grand blue knight of merit and majesty. He bore a blade of light and slashed through the darkness that had been her enemy.
Then he too was dead at her side.
It was no blade next, but a hammer, the hammer of a smith; a crafter. He took it up and smashed Ash's skull to dust, cursing and blaming her in words she was too dead to understand.
The flickering stars above were swallowed whole by a thousand-legged spider before it settled the power of each distant sun into the bandit camp, burning each man alive. It slaughtered men by the thousand, but so too did it slaughter some small part of the no-more-child who bore it.
Then the friend who was a foe did battle with the foe who was a friend. Red became blue; gold became green. Grasses and magic became steel and hate. A world of war. A world burned to ash.
But from the ashes rose a single stalwart. A lone vanguard, draped in darkness, though it battled on behalf of the light. She could see the thousand stars and angels which owed their lives to the stalwart.
They stabbed her in the back, each and every one, yet the warrior never flinched; never strayed from its post. It simply took up her place and battled its own kin for an eternity without relief or thanks.
Then the Sparrow came, and the dream broke.
---- The night was still thick; the pyre still pillared. It could only have been a few hours since she fell asleep, yet it was more than enough for tonight.
Ash didn't jolt awake. Amethyst peeled open slowly and she lay in place for a while longer.
The hay was dry at least, and it was alone in that. Her leather was slick to the touch and her hair was still soaked and bloody.
With a grand effort, she rose and made for the elder's hut.
Within was warm and happy. Lilacs dangled from each doorway and filled the 'fort' with their perfect scent.
A pile of children lay to the far end of the kitchen. All slept a peaceful sleep in a mass bundle of drooling and high pitch snoring.
"Sai-Weleg," the Smith's eldest son bowed as she drew near. He wore a fresh scar across his face. It made him look much older than he was, though he was still her junior.
The whole hut unsettled at the name spoken. Where he had said it with near reverence, all others heard it as a curse. Each shot loud glances at her and whispered silent questions to each other.
Ash didn't know the smith boy's name, so she nodded gracelessly and moved deeper into the room.
"Ashtik," a familiar voice beckoned. It was her mother, Miel, from a dark corner where candlelight seemed to afraid to stray.
"Mother," Ash replied as she shuffled closer. "You're hurt?"
There was a splattering of blood atop her dress and much more atop her apron and across her hands.
"No, it's not my blood," Miel cooly answered. "I was tending to the wounded."
"Sir Carolet?" Ash nudged. "Was he wounded?"
-- "Not terribly, but the Elder wanted it set properly before infection could grip."
"Where is he?" Ash asked with obvious worry.
"Resting, and he is not to be disturbed." Miel pulled away the side plate of Ash's armour and rubbed raw the wound beneath without a further word. Ash's attempts to pull away were quickly diverted when Miel took a grip of her marked hand and pulled her closer with a huff.
"I'm fine, you don't need to do that," Ash insisted.
"Sit down," Miel ordered.
--"I have too much to do. It looks worse than it is."
-- "Well then, you are more fortunate than all the others who caught blades at your order."
-- "I-"
-- "-And you are much, much more fortunate than your sister."
"Evara is hurt?" Ash nearly shrieked.
"Not physically," Miel said in a terribly casual way, "How many have you killed today?"
"I-" The near conversational tone of the question took Ash by surprise. She had to think the words over more than once before an answer found her.
"I- I don't know," she admitted.
"Not with the flame; with your spear. How many did you kill?" Miel pressed.
-- "I- Five... or six, I'm not sure. The first man this morrow and the rest in the battle."
"Did you enjoy it?" Miel asked. Ice seemed to flood the room; this was a conversation Miel had planned, expected. She spoke as though she had imagined this conversation a thousand times over.
"What? No, of course not!" Ash loudly insisted.
-- "But it made you feel powerful, no?"
-- "No!"
"Then what did you feel? Pride? Shame? Do you know some of your own neighbours worship you now? They think of you as a godsent hero. A grand Champion. The Sparrow-Knight, they call you," Miel said in a tone of vile accusation. "Do you enjoy their worship? Do you deserve it?"
"They won't even look at me! They sure as the hells don't worship me, mother, they hate me! They... fear me." She couldn't help but feel a heat rise within her, a passion and a supressed hatred. "I don't need to feel worse about what happened. What have you done? Did you fight? No, of course not!"
-- "How could they look at you? They think you are the Champion of Black, the harbinger of the apocalypse. Now answer me, Ashtik: How did it make you feel?"
"I felt like I had a job to do!" Ash screamed, unrestrained by proximity. "I felt like they wanted to hurt my Evara. I felt like I wanted to tear their hearts out through their mouths and ask them how it tastes! They can worship me, or they can hate me. I don't care... So long as Evara is alive, I will fight. I will kill.They will burn!" Her seething hatred boiled over. It pushed Miel back, it made her afraid.
"So Evara is your excuse?" Miel said, much more quietly.
"Evara is my cause," Ash spat. "Evara is my purpose. I will be the harbinger of the apocalypse; I will carry the end times on my very shoulders, so long as it keeps her safe! That's something you wouldn't understand though, isn't it? Love, undying and unebbing."
"You think I don't love her?" Miel laughed in disgust.
"I think your daughter has just suffered the worst day of her life I think your daughter has just suffered the worst day of her life. I think she has just nearly died a dozen times over. And I think you are standing here, judging her from behind the walls she erected to keep you safe. I think you despise me because Evara believes me a better mother."
Miel would have taken all of her insults and all of her pleas, but she wouldn't take the truth. It struck a deep nerve, and Ash knew it would. A hand flew through the air and landed with a heavy crack against Ash's cheek. Miel stood there, too indignant for words, as tears welled in her eyes.
"I carried you for nine months," she whispered, her head hanged and her face shrouded in shame.
"-And you gave up soon after," Ash interrupted
"You wouldn't understand. Something changes in you after you have a child. I was empty. I tried my best, but it was different with you. Your brother was... easy, love came easy. I gave everything within me to hold you in the same way; I swear it," Miel sobbed. "It destroyed me every day. Eventually, it got too much. You were no longer a babe, and nothing had changed.... I was a monster, Ashtik... A monster with a part missing that nobody else could ever understand."
She rolled her sleeves high up to her elbows in a slow and mournful way. It was the first time Ash had ever seen her mother's arms, and the marks she bore that seemed just so deep as Ashtik's own – though these were not granted by the gods, but by a simple blade. "It drove me to madness. You drove me to madness," Miel continued slowly. Her voice rasped and broke as she forced each word out of some deep, dark pit.
-- "I'd have tried again, I'd have succeeded, if it wasn't for Evara. If it wasn't for that perfect little babe. When she came, Ashtik, it was like never before. She was so perfect. I didn't hate myself every single time I looked at her. I saw myself reflected in those little silver eyes, and for the first time, my reflection didn't wear a monster's face. I knew, in her, that I wasn't incapable of a mother's love. But you... you wouldn't let me love her. The two of you were always so inseparable. I-"
"-Enough," a dark voice demanded. Ash turned to see who had spoken but couldn't see past tears she didn't realise had been shed. Through the blur, she saw a vision of a man past. He looked as he did in her memories. He seemed to stand a foot taller and thrice as broad.
Tilak placed a hand on Ash's reddened cheek, wiping away some of her tears, while the hunter looked down on his bride. "You dare speak to her like that?"
"You knew how I felt, husband," she spat through tears of her own. He didn't cry. He looked at her in the way he might have looked upon a rotten carcass.
--"I knew there was animosity. I believed you jealous of her youth, or envious that she had Evara's ear instead of you... But this? To tell your own daughter you never loved her but hours after she saves all of our lives? Miel this is cruel, monstrous. This isn't you."
"How the fuck would you know?" Miel shouted. "We hadn't truly met outside of the bed until this cancer caught you. I was alive before I was her mother. Now I'm just the monster who doesn't love. You were no better, husband. You never cared for Damen. Ash was always the apple of your eye. Why is this any different?"
-- "Because I loved my son. He was a warrior, not a hunter. So, I trained him to fight and saw him proudly off to war. We shared little, but I loved him. I love him."
"I tried! Gods know I tried to love her, but you cannot force yourself to love. Maybe the gods do know. Maybe they gave me this affliction, this... black depth within. Maybe the great Champion needed me to be like this. Maybe I was part of her plan." Miel paused and nobody spoke. She dragged down breath after teary breath. "Or maybe I'm just broken," she finally admitted.
"You're not broken, mother," Ash breathily whispered. "You love Ev, and she loves you. That's enough."
"And Evara wouldn't love a monster?" Miel forced a laugh through her tears.
"Yes... She would," Ash corrected. Her bloody gaze fell to her black mark, and the steel plates that surrounded it. Bloody, violent purpose filled her mind and with it, her mark became real. With a heart full of pain and a mind of madness, her mark took form. Not quite a sparrow, but closer. A beak and a wing; a limb to fly with and a mouth to sing.
"I must speak with Carolet," she said. The tears were gone and, in their place, was frightening determination. "Step aside."