The Doom That Came To Myrken

[Glenn]

No

It was Never

You have No Business

Not like this

"No."

They have traded these, teacher and student, Unlikely Baroness and Inevitable Governor. Weapon and Monster. No. No. No. One denial after the next, and what better defense than that? Defiance, devastation, fire and strength and pride. All of that, but now, now? Now there was hurt. Not when he spoke of being abandoned, not when she spoke so wrongly about training monsters. But now? Now there was hurt.

He had been ready to tell her so many things, how Myrken had refused to acknowledge her, refused to admit her change, her growth, how it actively denied her, how it tortured them so, how it prevented her from being who she had truly become. He wanted to show her how the New Myrken would be different, how...

...but no, she still didn't understand. She said such things and for the first time in three years, the man who Glenn Burnie had become writhed in pain, not outwardly, but she was one to look in the eyes. Look into his eyes, Aleksei River had said. What did she see now? "Not that, Ariane." How could she? "Never that." Anything means Anything But That. "You will teach them to be better, better than that, better than the old Myrken, better than who you once were, and better than who I am now. It will be a New Myrken and it will be made with those things you say, if it must, but so that they won't have to be monsters. I am breaking the cycle. I am building an Ending!"

The flame was reigniting in his eyes, fire born of hurt and pain, one that fueled assurance, necessity, something more. "I have no right to teach them, but I have every right to shelter them, to cross every line for them. So that they won't have to, so that they will never have to, like we had to! That's why I need you to teach them to be better, Ariane, because I am not, but you are."

This was her reward. She was his teacher, his muse. She could have the happy ending, the happy ending that he won for her with bloodless atrocities, with well-managed sacrifice. "It's done, Ariane, so much of it. We're past the tipping point. We've built the bridge already. You were gone." That something more? Desperation, but so different from the sort that Giuseppe came to her with an eternity ago. Myrken denied everything that was good. It denied her, but no more. He had seen to that.

Desperation softened his tone, his words becoming a whisper, tears welling finally in stubborn, youthful eyes. "Don't you see? I did this for myself, Ari, for them, but most of all, I did it for you."

[Carnath-Emory]

Look into his eyes.

With which Aleksei had charged her, less a command than a challenge and unnecessary in either case. Long ago, months and years, an architect and a swordswoman had spoken about the different ways in which they approach people. Friends, strangers, threats; a weapon and a master of spies had delighted over what was so different, what was so very much alike. Eyes that see right through me, that man had said, and though she'd laughed at the irony of just such words from a man with just such vision, she had not once disagreed. How closely she'd watched her former student throughout this encounter, as if the man would be known better from the set of his mouth than the words which it spoke; how carefully she'd observed, as if it were lessons all over again, a teacher attentive to poise, to stamina; equilibrium, and the way in which a boy will balance upon one thought and then the next. They could not be further removed from training rooms and swordsmanship but her watch of this man has not changed at all, and to look into him now -

Glenn Burnie's eyes are a holocaust.

'Self-centered', he had said. Moments ago, lifetimes ago because to speak of these things at all is to live and die from one moment to the next. 'Self-centered', like a confession which also accused, but mightn't he have as easily leveled that charge at his teacher? The things she'd said. Instructing him in how to kill but also how to conquer; that it's good enough to win but better yet when you make a meal of it. Ideas, philosophies, that had a teacher for one moment focused not on her own pride - or her terrible fear that a thing so brilliant, so very fine, might some day still fall - she would surely never have instilled into so young a heart.

It is still possible to walk away. Knowing this, knowing the full magnitude of what she has done, of what fuels the furious desperation of those eyes; it is still possible to walk away. It would be one difficult step and then the easier next. It would be a shoulder turned away from a thing for which she has no answers, no remedy at all. It is as possible as it was in a border tavern months ago, where the Governor's assassin had urged her to do exactly that. To spare her this hurt. To spare every other that she loves at the cost of just one: a single, necessary sacrifice. One step and then the next, and she's right: the first was an agony but it does become easier after she's begun. Another, and then again, and Aleksei, do you know this? That when you are Ariane Emory and your student is bleeding his heart out all over your world -

To look into the thrashing pain of Glenn Burnie's eyes is to burn there too.

It is the fifth step - impossible, wonderful - that brings her near enough to touch. His words are a whisper, her fingertips a breath upon his cheek. "Glenn Burnie," and it is so quiet; there are tears in his eyes and her voice makes hardly a sound. It doesn't matter; he'll hear. He can't help but hear. "What a thing it is you'd do for us. You'd make yourself into the monster that you think Myrken requires, just to spare the rest of us such pain. Is that it? You, of all of us: you would spread yourself like a sacrifice on an altar, calling for the knife; saying Kill me, and Kill me, and Kill me again - because you know that you're clever enough, strong enough, to bear the weight of a thing which should never have been yours to shoulder. Because you can see a single, clear line between here and the future you want, and all it requires is that you burn."

Her palm is light upon his shoulder when its steel has fallen away. And to stand so close, to touch at all, is to risk everything; it is dreaming with monsters, it is drinking twice of an assassin's wine; it is taking a madman in amongst all her strange, hothouse flowers just to hear the songs that he might sing and it is infinitely more valuable than any of these things. This time, it is she who hasn't hesitated. Because:

"Glenn Burnie. What sort of an Ending is this? In which I turn my back upon everything that you are. In which I concern myself with what Myrken will become while my student, this brilliant, beautiful young man gives himself over to the hungers that Myrken owns now. No. Ask me if I would do it." And even now her eyes have not left his, a cool, grey contradiction to his furnace. "Ask me what I would sacrifice to see this new thing which you would create, knowing - knowing - that even when I say Anything there are exceptions, and that one stands before me right now.

There are never only two ways.
And Glenn Burnie, I will never surrender you."

[Glenn]

"Ariane,"

Back and forth went she. In with steel at her fingertips. Back with shock. In with the full breadth of her not insignificant heart. And this, this was staggering.

"No." Hand upon his shoulder, cool gaze crashing into the dying embers of his flame. "Ariane, you don't understand." Hurt had given way to something else, desperation had given way to panic. "It all went wrong down there. All of it. When I came back, it was.. you have no idea. You think you do. You don't. The only thing I had was..."

A breath, a long, hard breath. She didn't understand. "You can't take this from me, Ariane. I'm not becoming a monster for everyone. I already became it. You died and were reborn, a second chance. When I died, it all rotted. I came back a monster, as bad as any of them, Dhrin, as bad as that; but for who I was, for my people, for you, I channeled it. I forced myself to be something better, something more." His hand went to her shoulder now, a mirror image of hers upon his own. "But this," his eyes, flickering, faltering, went around the room, "is as far...

"If you don't let me do this, if you don't let me see it through, I'll end up burning it all to the ground." Devastation, not in his panicked, pained, lost eyes but as a far-off phantom within his voice, until his hand fell back, until his eyes started to freeze over once more. Fire and ice. Control. Desperate, desperate control. She could feel it even in his stance. "Ari, this is yours, what I have made for you. The Myrken to come. The children: see to them. The school: see to it. I'm not fit to teach them, but I am fit to make them a better world, no matter the cost. You have a part to play. Play it. Thrive. Be who you have truly become. Myrken will bend to you now. I promise. Be it, for all of our sakes." For her own, but for his sake most of all.

[Carnath-Emory]

Proximity confuses the lines between his hand and hers, between a boy's desperate protests and all the contradictions she sets directly into their midst. It is a collision of swift, soft words, one tumbling into the next -

"You're right. I don't know. I can't. All I know is what it is to lose everything - beginning with everything out there and ending with your self, until what's left is nothing you can bear. A killing thing, a living poison; worse than that, worse by far."

The words which a swordswoman never speaks. Not here and not in the training room miles from here; not even in the small, secluded cottage that has been more a home to her than Darkenhold could ever hope to be. Whispered things, soft and fervent, and blunt because that is their nature and there is no other way to say this.

"And what is necessary then, Glenn Burnie, is not - second chances; not when there's no hope of absolution, no chance of repaying the harm that was done. It was never about rebirth, but abolishing a thing gone so absolutely and irrevocably wrong that there was only one possible solution.

It was an execution."

It is the quiet, cold truth at the center of her world. And it is breathed so softly into the midst of his panic, with a hand grown gentler upon a shoulder drawn furiously tense, and it is just a step towards him, quiet with its smile as her brow rests light against his own.

"Glenn - it's not like that for you. And it will not be." Promises from a woman who speaks no promises, who wears so many smiles but this one is only warmth. "I will be whatever you need me to be. And I will not step away from this. We accomplish our ends without those we care about getting hurt. Yes?" His words. Hers. "It is why we better ourselves daily, it is why I am here now: because it is never only one thing or the other, it is never only murder or perish. And if it seems like that to you now, know that this is only because I have not found a better way.

"Be what you must be. Today. Tomorrow." And it is an echo of every day that they'd spent together upon steel and worn stone and grueling, exhaustive drills. It is an echo of every fervent word, and this is how she will step away from him: with this, and so slowly now. "But do not imagine for one moment that I will allow you to fall."

[Glenn]

Control. If she had drawn back in horror, all would have been well. Control would have been retaken. The smile covering up the rot, and more than that, not just a mask but a self, everything he had to be standing in front of all of the darkness. Control.

She advanced and all the control in the world fell apart in the face of a teacher's love and a woman's determination.

Argue with him. Disagree with him. Yell at him. But do not forsake him so

Her words to him years before, when Cinnabar had become Governor, and they lived in her, lived and breathed, and so much more. Cinnabar was a monster, literally, but she did not come to him like this.

Her head did not press against his own.

One year ago, a soul, a spirit, something within him was reattached to his body, but only as a trickle. Literally. Metaphorically? Did it matter? For the days, the weeks, the months that followed, it did not grow. The rest of it was shielded, protected. He was shielded protected. Little hints of it would slip through now and again.

In the face of this though? All he had was spent, and she had not relented. Instead she drove in, and that head upon his own turned Glenn Burnie into a man without air. He wanted more, he needed more. The tension was too much, the emotions too tangible, like very little he had ever felt before, and he had felt so much in so many ways in so many places. Even before Underdark, though, nothing had been like this.

There were no more tears. They had nowhere from whence to come. It was too much. It was all too much. It hurt! Didn't she see? She was killing him. He no longer possessed enough of himself to experience this, to endure it, to cope with it, to process it. Every breath was agony. The world became dark before him, and in the midst of it all, his hand reached out.

A pen, the tip of it deadly sharp. Only the best for the governor. One thrust, into him, no, into her, and it could all be over. The pressure could relent. Of course it would be with a pen. A stab, a twist, and it would all be over.

You will bring nothing but pain for everyone, yourself most of all. No good can come from this. Nothing good. Nothing that is for the best. Nothing that is necessary. It's not Myrken. It's You.

Did she see the pain she caused him now? A drowning man, gasping for every breath and finding none. No hope. No relief. Save one. All it'd take to breathe again would be to plunge this pen into her heart, into his own, an end to this torturous tension, forever. A choice.

The necessity of one need balanced against a dreadful other; everything a two-way choice? Was that how it was? Had fate driven him to that? Had nature?

He did it all for her. His work was left undone. You didn't need to change. Myrken did. He couldn't leave her like this, with the blood on her hands, for kindness unlike she had ever shown. He had been better for her, had pushed away from being a monster for her. He could endure this for her as well. No matter how it hurt. For a man with no soul, this woman's love was far worse than any wound.

...for her, though, he could endure, could fight against fate and nature forever more. All such things carried such a cost..

Glenn Burnie collapsed back down into his chair, pained, pale, sweating. His heart was a ball of molten agony in his chest. "We need.." He swallowed, pushing down the pain, placing the pen on the table. "A teacher.... but more than that, I need a bodyguard Ariane. I'm sorry." His voice was a rasp. He had no more tears he had no more screams, but he wished upon wishes that he did, that he had release. "I need you to guard them from everything. Most of all, I need you to guard them from me. Marshall Emory."

[Carnath-Emory]

If she had known. If she had thought to guess. If she were capable of imagining what this might do to a spirit already tight-strung to breaking point, the swordswoman would surely have relented. Could surely have found another way, even if meant turning her back on the young man trembling so beneath her hand, and not with anything like fear but only the terrible tension of desperate restraint. Her intentions have never been better, nor her instincts so absolutely dangerous - for her, but very much for the young Governor she'd been so desperate to save. Perhaps she begins to realise when his hand breaks free, blindly gropes only to emerge clutching -

The smallest thing, really.
A stab, a twist.
And he had learned to be fast but she had trained him to be precise.

In the end, does it even matter? To look into this man's young face - pale with terrible strain, pale like consumption - is to know the answer to the question Calomel posed that lifetime ago. And it is only this: Come what may. Even when he stands so near. Even with his fingers clenched around a killing-thing and her eyes softly closed. Throughout all the words that her heart demands she speaks, and through the terrible hurt which courses through his body, until it is time to step away; time to let the ragged thing which was her student collapse back into his seat.

There is a moment in which the woman believes the sight of him is more than her heart can bear. Until he speaks again, and teaches her otherwise.

"I need - " And it is barely a sound, just as this backward step is barely a stagger - but nearly so; nearly so. The frown which creases her brow is a thin disbelief; everything she'd promised him and still could she have imagined it would amount to this? It is implications larger than the mind can manage. It is Coran D'zir, sweet and gentle and so solemnly requesting that when the day come, it be her hand that -

All of her promises. All of his terrible need. So that her mouth has breathed: "I think on this," but her head has nodded its assent, and she is away then. One slow backstep and then another, because he had sagged into that chair and his face is pale with a cold, sickly sweat; to touch him now would shatter him all apart, and how, how does one walk away from such suffering? Only like this: by creating the necessary distance between them with one slow step and then the next, by making room enough that the lungs can breathe even when the spirit cannot, and she does not quite turn from him until she's reached the doorway; not quite, until her fingertips have come up against the worn wood of it, and then, then.

But not without this backwards glance. Not quite without lips parted upon the verge of something: of word or sound and all of it coming to nothing but the long watch of her eyes, before she turns to make her escape. It is a measured stride, and it is no less an escape because of that, and as the door closes behind her with such awful finality, what should hang stunned in her mind but words spoken so long ago? So long ago and so lightly, when it was still possible to laugh.

"You shall train his body; I, his mind. And then in a year, we shall say: What have we done?"

[Glenn]

Two and a half years.

The untouchable, unassailable Governor of Myrken Wood. The Governor that Myrken needed and the Governor that Myrken deserved. The young man who charted maps from yesterday to today and into tomorrow, with no blind spots, with no holes, no fears, no worries, no doubt. Who sent his stalwart troops where there be dragons to make those things he cared about safe. With lapses, yes, but fewer and fewer with each day; who wielded bloodless atrocities, but with less necessary each day as his golden vision of Myrken started to come into focus.

Ice around his heart. Fire in his eyes. A tongue of silver. A pen of acid instead of ink, sharper than any sword.

The ice had melted washing away the flame. The tongue had rusted silent and the pen had almost killed a woman for her compassion.

Glenn Burnie writhed in his seat, his head pounding, his chest in agony. His heart wished to leap from its encagement, and he hardly blamed the thing. Ariane had retreated. If he had anywhere to go... but he didn't. This was his purpose. He needed this chair as thoroughly as the chair needed him. Without this, he truly would be a monster. Control, then. Control, just once the pain stopped.

The youthful, well dressed but no longer immaculate, Governor of Myrken Wood thrust his body forth in the chair. He placed his elbows upon his desk, his head in his hands, and rubbed at all too dry eyes with his palms.