72. The Choices We Make
Chapter 72
The Choices We Make
21 st Day of the Blood Moon
Mythníril, Aravell – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
The drain sapped at Chora as she wove threads of Air through the wheels of her chair, pushing herself ever upwards along the staircases that led to the platform near the top of Mythníril. Two of the Dracur?n mages walked behind her, funnelling threads of Earth and Fire into the stone steps, forging them into a ramp as she moved, then back to steps as she passed over.
Before she’d lost Daiseer, she would not have needed their aid for such a usage of the Spark. But she was weaker now, and the towers of Mythníril were as tall as mountain peaks. Besides, before she’d lost Daiseer, she hadn’t needed her chair either. She was a different person now, in a different world, and she’d come to terms with that… until she’d met Calen Bryer.
After what seemed like an eternity, she finally reached a landing that entered an enormous circular chamber. She paused for a moment, slowing her breaths as her lungs begged her for more air. She grunted and stretched, the pain in her lower back burning as though her bones were on fire. If Daiseer had taken her pain as well, she wouldn’t have minded. How thoughtless of him. With a soft cotton cloth she pulled from a pouch at her waist, she wiped the sweat from her brow.
“Rakina.” Hanvar, one of the Dracur?n who had helped her climb the tower, moved to stand beside her, his fist pressed to his breastplate. “We will wait for you here.”
“Du haryn myia vrai, Hanvar.”
You have my thanks, Hanvar.
“Din vrai é altinua atuya sin’vala, Rakina. Palín det er myia haydria ar myia thranuk.”
Your thanks are always welcome here, One Who Survived. But it is my honour and my privilege.
Chora inclined her head and wheeled herself past the two elves.
Gaeleron Athis and five more Dracur?n stood guard at the wide arch that led out onto the platform. Each of them wore fine steel plate, white dragons emblazoned across the breasts and purple cloaks clasped at their shoulders by golden leaves. Finding that young smith, Valdrin, had been a stroke of luck, but the way Aeson had played the Triarchy against each other to contribute their own smiths had been masterful.
On the other side of the arch, Valerys stood tall, wings spread and head high, only Calen’s lower half visible past the dragon’s bulk.
“Rakina.” Gaeleron bowed and gestured towards the arch.
From the platform, Chora could see for miles in all directions. The forest swept outwards in brushstrokes of deep green, dark clouds blotting the morning sky above. Here and there, rocky peaks burst through the dense canopy and fell away into sweeping valleys.
For centuries this woodland had remained untouched, a bastion against the carnage of the world beyond. A place that had been both her sanctuary and a prison. Now, streaks of black tore through the green, miles long and hundreds of feet wide. The dragonfire had scarred the land. What had once been vibrant and thriving was now ash and bones and char.
Her sanctuary was gone, her prison destroyed… and she wasn’t sure which she missed more.
Only the subtlest of sounds alerted her to the presence of the two Fenryr Angan who stood on either side of the platform, watching with those golden eyes. Chora had spent hundreds of years around the Dvalin, but these Angan were different creatures, harsher, sharper, and more dangerous. She expected no less from creatures born of a wolf god.
Calen looked over his shoulder as Chora approached, and Valerys twisted his neck and lowered his head.
She paused and reached up a hand so that her fingers brushed the bottom of the dragon’s jaw. Warm air rolled over her face from Valerys’s nostrils, and she closed her eyes, feeling the rough, scarred scales beneath her fingers. It had been so long since she had seen a dragon whose fire still burned so bright. She would never grow tired of it.
Chora gasped as a wave of emotions flowed from Valerys - sorrow, loss, grief. She snapped her eyes open and stared up into those of the dragon. Without words, she knew Valerys’s heart; she knew his sympathy for her pain, knew the ferocity with which he would protect her if he was ever called to.
She looked to Calen, and the young man stared back at her. In his eyes, she saw he had felt whatever had passed between Chora and the dragon. Something had shifted within him since Ilnaen. Something deep at his core. The simple fact that he had found his níthral was evidence of that. Most mages went their entire lives without being able to summon that weapon. Chora herself had never achieved the feat, and now, with only half a soul, she never would.
Calen frowned, realisation dawning in his eyes. “My head was elsewhere, Chora. I apologise for asking you to make the climb.” His lips formed a regretful smile. “I should have come to you. La?l sanyin.”
I am sorry.
“No apologies are needed. It was a simple thing,” Chora lied. Her back still ached with a fury, and her lungs still burned. “Well, you asked me here alone, and now here I am. I’m assuming you’ve made a decision then?”
“I have.”
Just over an hour earlier, as the sun broke the horizon, word had come from Coren Valmar in the North that a Lorian army some forty thousand strong had encircled them and that they called for Calen and Valerys.
When the Angan had relayed the message, Calen had asked for time to think. Time that Chora had granted him. She knew all too well how painful these decisions were. Duty to oneself against duty to a cause. In truth, Chora had expected the decision to take far longer.
“I don’t mean to rush you,” she said, twisting her hand so that her nail clacked off the chair.
Calen turned and stared back out at the vast expanse of the Aravell. “Dann and the others should be arriving in Salme any day now. I promised them I would be there, that I would fight by their side.”
So that was his choice then. He would fly to protect his home, to protect the ones he held dear. Chora couldn’t say she was surprised, but she had not yet given up. The young man had a sense of duty in him. It was simply buried beneath the fear of loss. “And what of Coren and Farwen and the five thousand souls who stand alone in Tarhelm? They have given everything to this rebellion. We cannot abandon them. If Daiseer still drew breath, I would fly myself, but he does not, and I cannot.”
Without turning his head, Calen dropped his hand to a patch of silk knotted between his belt loops. It was deep red in colour, but plain. She’d noticed his brother – the knight, Arden – wearing something similar, but his was woven with vines of gold and cream leaves. The pattern mimicked that which Valdrin had marked into Calen’s armour. It was a memory of something the two brothers shared – a loss, perhaps. That would seem the reasonable thing.
“I cannot be in two places at once,” Calen said. Valerys craned his neck down and brushed the side of his jaw into Calen’s shoulder. “No matter what we do,” Calen said, looking to the dragon, “we abandon someone.”
“Such is war.” The words left a bitter taste on Chora’s tongue. A time had once existed when she had not been so apathetic towards such things. That time was a distant memory, but she yearned for it so, just as she yearned for the touch of Daiseer’s mind.
“Does it ever get easier?”
Chora shook her head. “Not in my experience. The choosing of who you save and who you do not should never be an easy thing. We must accept that we cannot save everyone and move forwards.”
After a few moments passed, Chora nodded softly and clasped her hands together, resting them on her lap. In her many years roaming this land, Chora had learned that life was a fleeting thing. And there were things that were playing on her mind, things she would use this moment to say, lest she forever remain silent. “I know I have been harsh, and cold, and perhaps a little cruel in the way I have spoken to you since the battle for the city. But I want you to know it is only because I am afraid.”
“Afraid?” Calen looked down at her, confusion on his face. “What is Chora Sarn afraid of?”
Chora ignored the mocking tone of his voice. He was young, and false arrogance was the shield of youth. She let her breath out in a long sigh. “I watched over hundreds of young souls who were tested for the Calling. It was my honour, my duty, and my privilege. I watched their soulkin hatch and stood by with pride in my heart as their bonds strengthened and they became everything I knew they could be. My heart was so full it was bursting.”
Calen continued to stare back at her.
“There is something unique and special in watching a person grow – as you have.” Chora pursed her lips as though this might hold back the tears that threatened her. When Daiseer had been taken from her, she had wept for almost three days and three nights without break. Her stomach had turned, her eyes had been dry as sand, and a hammer had pounded in her head. But after that, she had not shed a tear. This day might change that. “I watched every one of them die or have their soulkin be torn from them, their soul shattered. They were, each of them, like my own children. And there is nothing more savage, and brutal, and soul-rending to a parent than watching their children suffer. Aeson is the last, and he has lost more pieces of himself than any one man should be able to bear. Yet he perseveres. By some form of divine will, he puts one foot in front of the other, and he refuses to stop. Do not tell him, but he is the pride of my life. He should have been what you are. Do you see that?”
Calen raised a curious eyebrow.
“Aeson was the greatest prodigy we had ever seen. The bond he shared with Lyara was akin to the bond the moon shares with the stars. He was all pride and arrogance but equal parts honour and strength of will – much like someone else I know. He would have been a champion. His name would have danced in the greatest songs of the Age. He was destined to be Archon one day, to grace the skies with Lyara until time wore away at their hearts. That was taken from him. Everything was taken from him, and still he never faltered. Not once. His name will never be sung, his story seldom told, but if we win this war, it will be on Aeson’s back we were carried.”
Chora studied Calen, hoping her words were being heard. Understood. Calen needed to know who and what Aeson was. He needed to understand that no matter what strength flowed in his veins or how many marched at his back, he had been granted it all by the gift of Aeson’s unwillingness to lie down and die. And he needed to understand that loss was a part of life.
“When I look at you, Calen, I see all of their faces. All of those young souls I failed to protect. I see the pride and hubris of youth, the hope and the fire. And it terrifies me, because I do not know if I can survive losing that hope again.” Chora’s gaze met Calen’s, and a deep rumble resonated from Valerys’s chest. “There are two shades of hope, Calen. One is the light that guides you forward, the other a noose around your neck. The more hope you let into your heart, the brighter the light, the longer the noose.”
Calen gave a long sigh and nodded, more to himself than to Chora.
“Four hundred years ago, I would have stood here and I would have argued and roared and demanded you fly north to Tarhelm. Because without you, every soul in that mountain will die. Because it is your duty as a Draleid and your responsibility as a leader. But now I find myself in a place I have never before been, a place where I am afraid, and uncertain, and simply not myself. Because I have once more allowed hope into my heart. What if you fly to Tarhelm and Coren is wrong? What if Helios stands in your path, or Karakes, or Seleraine – or any of the elven dragons? Coren’s message said the armies are alone, but what if she is wrong? If she is, then you will be dead and that hope will be gone, and I will see no more point in trudging through this world any longer. When hope dies, the light fades and the noose tightens.”
She clicked her tongue off the roof of her mouth and shook her head.
“If I listened to myself, I would keep you sheltered in this place where you are safe, just as I have done to myself for these past four centuries while Aeson and Coren and Farwen refused to give in. So I will not listen to myself, and I will actively try not to tie you with those same chains I put on myself. I have been less than I am, and for that, I am sorry.” Chora allowed a deep breath to swell in her chest, and she straightened her back in her chair, taking one last look at the woodland. “I will inform the others that you are to fly south to Salme. Perhaps there is something we can do for those in Tarhelm, perhaps not. As I said, this is war.”
“We are going to fly north, Chora.”
“North? You couldn’t have led with that?”
“I didn’t want to interrupt.” Calen gave her a half-smile before reaching up and touching the scales of Valerys’s neck. He stared into the dragon’s eyes, going silent for a moment.
“Rise so that others rise with you.” The words left Calen’s lips in a whisper. Chora recognised them. Coren had repeated them over and over in those first years following The Fall, like a creed.
“Did you know a Draleid called Tarast?” Calen asked.
“Tarast?” Chora did little to keep the surprise from her tongue. “How do you know that name?”
“I watched him die.” There was awe and admiration both in Calen’s voice. “In the western hatchery tower, the night Ilnaen fell. He fought like a man possessed. He could have run. Could have taken Antala to wing and fled. But instead, he stood shoulder to shoulder with his brothers and sisters and faced his end. With fire and fury. He was a guardian until his dying breath.”
Chora wanted to speak, but her voice twisted in her throat, refusing to come forth. She had not known how Tarast had died. She had simply never seen him again after that night.
“And Kollna, there was not a piece of her soul that considered doing anything other than save those eggs. She knew she would die, and yet she accepted it. That was why I did everything I could to bring them back, because it felt as though, in some way, it meant her death was for a reason.”
“Calen, Calen, do not hold that weight.” Chora knew she had been too harsh when he had returned with the eggs and left Alvira’s possessions to the knights. She knew, and yet her own pride forbade her from saying so.
Calen shook his head, turning so he stared out at the morning sun that still hung low on the horizon, the Blood Moon beside it like a horrid mirror. “This Gift – if it is truly such a thing – shows me the darkest of memories. But there is something within them… I watched a Drac?rdare refuse to allow fear to control him because his faith that the Draleid would protect him was so unshaking.”
Those words sliced deep into Chora’s shattered soul and carved into her pride and her guilt. The Draleid had not protected them. The Draleid had failed. She had failed. The city had fallen.
“When you told me I had a lot to learn about the world, you were right.” Calen drew a long, slow breath. “I asked you here, Chora, not simply to tell you I will fly north, but because I need something from you first.”
Calen’s tone grew sombre, and his gaze fixed on hers. Above him, Valerys let out a low rumble that seemed to resonate in the stone around them. “I need you to allow Tivar and Avandeer to fly at my side.”
Chora stared back at him. “We have already voted, Calen. You know this.”
“I do. And if Farwen and Coren die at Tarhelm because I cannot save them alone, what then? I need Tivar and Avandeer at my side if I am to fly north and stand any chance of making a difference. And for that, I need you to change your vote. I need you to grant them life.”
Chora gripped the rim of her right wheel reflexively, the muscles in her jaw tensing. “You ask this of me, when you know what they have done?”
“I do.”
“Do you know how many of those young Draleid Tivar and Avandeer slew? How many of my friends? My family?”
Calen looked away for a moment, then turned back, his stare unflinching. “No, but no doubt countless. I don’t ask this lightly, Chora. I understand the gravity of the decision. I understand what I am asking you to do.”
“And what of Farda and the others?” Chora squeezed the rim of her wheel even harder, the knuckles in her hand and fingers growing stiff, her skin paling as she relived those moments from all those years ago. The night Ilnaen fell burned through her mind. Dragons shrieked as they were torn limb from limb, as their soulkin were ripped apart and slaughtered in their sleep. Screams echoed off white stone as the citizens she was meant to protect were savaged and butchered in the streets. “What of the man who murdered your mother, Calen? Are you as quick to forgive him as you ask me to be with Tivar?”
“I’m not asking you to forgive. I’m asking you to allow her to live so that she may die trying to save those who deserve saving.” Calen drew a short breath, and as he did his eyes began to glow with a purple light, luminescent mist drifting outwards. “I’ve gone over this moment a thousand times in my head.” His voice trembled with anger, and above him, Valerys pulled back his lips in a snarl. “I want Farda dead. I want to carve the black heart from his chest. And maybe one day I will…” Calen gripped that patch of silk hanging from his belt once more, twisting it in knots. “But not this day. You were right a thousand times over. My loss is not greater than yours. Tivar’s hands are just as bloody as his. And if we do not bend, both of us, we risk everything we love breaking. Is punishing them more important than saving the others? If I can look past my hate and my pain and this rage that blazes in me, Chora, can you? Can we make that noose a little longer?”
“You would set Farda free as well?” The words were less a question and more a stunned realisation.
Calen nodded, clenching his jaw, the glow from his eyes redoubling. “If it means you would set Tivar and Avandeer free and allow them to fly with me… then yes, so long as they swear the same oath. Forty thousand strong lay siege to Tarhelm. I cannot even those odds alone. And if those men and women die because I could not look past my own hate, well, then I am not fit to be a Draleid.”
“Do you truly trust Tivar to fight by your side?”
“If not for her, Valerys and I would already be dead. She came when she had no cause. I trust her shame, and her grief, and her guilt.”
“And you have spoken to your sister?”
“She was the first person I spoke to. She does not like it, but she understands it.”
“She doesn’t strike me as the ‘understanding’ type.”
“She’s trying.” Calen pulled at that patch of silk so hard Chora thought he might tear it in half. “I need an answer, Chora. If Tivar swears to fight at my side, to give her dying breath for this cause, and to not rest until the empire is nothing but ruin, will you change your vote?”
“And if she breaks her vow?”
“Then I will bear the weight of it, and I will kill her myself.”
It was in that moment that Chora realised Aeson was wrong about Calen. He didn’t have Alvira’s heart. He had something stronger. She nodded. “I will do as you ask. I will change my vote.”
Calen closed his eyes, a last rush of glowing purple mist slipping between his eyelids to drift upwards. He gave a short, bitter laugh and shook his head, then whispered, “Thank you.”
“Is this not what you want?”
“What I want?” He pressed his fingers into his cheeks and ran a hand through his hair. “I have just arranged for the life of my mother’s killer to be spared. A man I would strangle with my bare hands. It is the furthest thing in the world from what I want. But it is the choice I have to make.”
“I will inform the others,” Chora said. “There are many amongst the Rakina who will not be happy. I will keep them in line – for now. But if this decision goes sour, Calen, it will be you they turn on.”
“I am aware.”
Chora nodded to herself slowly. “Castor Kai, Aryana Torval, and the others. They will not be best pleased that you are leaving after all their time spent waiting, and I dare say I do not blame them.”
“I go to speak with them now. After I fly to the North, I will go to Salme. I have asked the Illyanaran leaders to move south towards Drifaien. Alleron Helmund requires our aid. I will need someone to march with those armies. Someone I can trust. A Rakina, a warrior of legend to show them they do not fight alone.”
“It is you they want, Calen, not me.”
“They have seen me, they have seen Valerys, they have heard what I have to say. You are wiser than I and have far more experience in these things. It’s time we start thinking about what we want the world to look like when this is all over, and I trust you to make those choices. Chora, if you truly want this world to change, it is time you leave this place and make that change happen. Let us not allow hope to die.”
Chora gave Calen a soft smile, then nodded. Before she wheeled herself back towards the arch, she watched Calen for a moment. The young man turned back to look out at the woodland, his fingers still twisted in the silk scarf at his hip, his other hand resting on Valerys’s side.
“Calen.”
Calen turned back, his eyes still misting purple light.
“We are defined by the choices we make in our darkest hours. It is easy to be honourable and dutiful when it comes at no cost. In my darkest hours, I chose to hide, and it has shamed me for hundreds of years.”
“There are plenty of dark hours left,” Calen replied, finally releasing his iron grip on the patch of red silk. “You made the same choice I did today – the lives of others over your own pain. The same choice Tarast and Kollna made. The choice of a Draleid.”
Chora gave Calen a nod, then turned and left. The two Dracur?n bowed and proceeded to funnel threads of Earth and Fire into the stairs, moulding them into a ramp. Chora thanked them and wove threads of Air around her wheels to slow her descent. At first, only her jaw trembled, but after a few moments, her eyes stung and tears fell, soft and soundless.