Chapter 7 #2
“All recruits will rise at the height of midday for the Unmaking Ceremony by the blessed light of the sun. Attendance is mandatory. Failure to appear will be considered forfeiture of life.”
A ripple of tension rolled through the room.
Ky croaked, “That sounds … bad.”
“Yes,” the soldier confirmed dryly. “Forfeiture of life is … bad, you nitwit.”
“What—” Rion began.
“No questions.” The soldier dismissed them in a bored voice. “Sleep while you can.”
Boots marched out, and the door slammed. Silence settled thick and heavy. Eiko didn’t even hear Chasin leave; he was so quiet. She sank backward onto the thin, pillowless mattress, exhaustion swallowing her whole.
Unmaking Ceremony.
Perfect. Wonderful. Very comforting name.
Her eyes drifted shut, but they were jerked open again what felt like only a few seconds later. She jolted up, the world exploding in a bright, cacophony of colour and shape and razor-sharp, painfully vivid detail.
Bodies. Cots. Stone. Boots. Eyes—so many eyes. Some passed over her. Others held on to each other.
Grey blankets.
No windows.
Long, auburn hair sweeping fretfully around a face with light oaken eyes. Freckles, pink lips, feverishly flushed cheeks. Rion, so beautiful. More beautiful than Eiko could have ever imagined.
There were flashes of bright, canary confusion and bleeding, carmine exhaustion. Ruby pain sparkled, bold and shining and shimmering.
Ruby pain was everywhere. Everywhere.
It coated Eiko’s own hands. Desert sunset skin and dirt-caked fingernails, dipped in red.
There was a flash of dark around her fingers. There and then gone.
She glanced up again, completely flooded with imagery.
Messy hair, water trickling down a stone wall, bars on the window.
Kaito. Ruby pain slashed his face, so much like their father’s.
Broad shoulders. Heavy walnut responsibility, hard and burnt as bark.
Burning coal eyes with a film of frosted white disorientation, fighting against the lingering ochre of heavy sleep.
High cheekbones, floppy black hair. Tall.
He was so tall. It was so hard to see past the colours, to make sense of what was real and what was emotion.
The room was dank and dark, the stone walls and floors painted with moss, the colours of their fear and exhaustion and confusion mixing into the filament, the cold an actual, icy vapour that curled and swirled around torn sleeves and scuffed boots and bruised, half-awake faces.
A fist against the door caused the colour of bright white shock to skitter through the room as everyone jolted. Eiko was frozen.
Someone had knocked to wake them up—that must have been why everyone woke at the same time, looking so disoriented and confused.
Eiko felt like she was still dreaming.
Ren was standing. Ren. This was Ren. Oaken skin with golden undertones, veins standing out below hastily rolled sleeves.
Charred brown hair, with a few tinges of sunlight.
Hair she had stroked. A stubbled, dimpled chin she had traced.
Strong features. Eyes creased with laugh lines.
A flash of white teeth as he winced. Feet were bleeding.
Skin was bleeding—no, it was just the ruby colour again.
It washed him entirely. Pain, so much pain. It screamed from him.
The closer she looked, the darker the red became. It danced with an undertone, twisting with shadow. The truth was layered. Their pain was also darkness.
Which meant … it meant … She struggled to make sense of it all, but then the truth settled into her bones with unnerving clarity.
Their monsters were torturing them.
And then suddenly, Eiko wasn’t just seeing it; she was experiencing it. The pain crippled her. She winced back from the colours and the visions, allowing it all to fade into blurry darkness, the agony slowly dulling to a throb. Exhaustion tugged at her again, making her head swim dizzily.
Blindness was a stark relief.
We’ll get better, Hymn promised weakly. Again.
We will, she agreed faintly. I guess sleep helps, right?
“You can see sometimes,” Ky accused, from right beside her, the words so low it took her a moment to truly register them.
She jolted, turning in his direction. How had she noticed so much and not noticed him sitting right there?
Seeing is hard, Hymn attempted to console her.
“I …” She floundered. “Sort of. Hymn said not to tell anyone.”
Ky hummed a small sound of agreement. “Probably for the best. If everyone around me spoke a second language that I secretly also knew, I would hold off telling them for as long as possible.”
“It’s really not that substantial.” Eiko heard the others gathering and filing from the room, so she stood with Ky, and they joined the back of the line, Ren and Kaito speaking quietly to each other a few paces ahead of them. “It’s just a few flashes. It’s very confusing.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Ky said in a hush. “And everyone is going to think that bloody baby gave you nothing.”
I gave you everything, Hymn said distractedly. He seemed to be busy circling and circling her wrist, trying to find the most comfortable way to coil his body.
Eiko frowned, leaning closer to Ky to lower her voice further. “What did yours give you?”
He hesitated, and then, “A shield.”
“What kind?” She bumped her shoulder against his.
He was shaking his head. She could sense it. Even if he wasn’t, he wanted to. “Whatever evil is done to me, the doer will also feel.”
“But the commander made us walk all the way here. That was a bit evil.”
This time, he chuckled. “I think it has to be more direct than that.”
“Well … that’s pretty cool.”
“You think so?” There was something in his tone that she couldn’t quite place, and she wished she knew how to turn on her second sight to read the colours collecting on his words.
“Do you not think so?” she asked instead, already out of breath from climbing the two stories of stairs back to the courtyard above.
“I think she—Mirebell—used my trauma against me,” Ky admitted. “I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
Eiko didn’t have time to answer, as the other recruits were being herded closer together. No, she realised, after a moment. They were deliberately huddling together.
Because Chasin was there.
It was horrifying and astonishing, the effect he had on people. All without uttering a word.
“I am Chasin Goldmoor,” a voice declared.
A soldier is translating, Hymn quickly interrupted.
“Commander of the Godsguard, and third son to the King of All,” the soldier continued.
“This is the last time I will allow a translator.” He didn’t go on to explain what that meant, exactly, but Eiko could only assume it was a warning to learn his specific language and learn it fast. Yay for her.
“To my left, you will find Alessandra, Haneul, and Takoda. They are the section leaders for Crescent banner. Their captain is Alessandra.”
“Night dawns on us all,” that honeyed, accented female voice declared, and all around the courtyard came a sudden, synchronised sound that had Eiko almost jumping out of her skin.
Even Ky flinched. It was as though dozens of silent soldiers had just materialised and shouted “Night dawns!” and thumped their chests at once, without a single one of them moving or sounding off-beat.
It was more like a single person amplified and repeated over and over.
The Godsguard has come out to witness this, Hymn told her. They’re surrounding us.
“To my right is Eirik, Ilara, and Tenzin,” the translator continued. “They are the section leaders for Half-Moon banner. Their captain is Ilara.”
“Steel and sound!” a female voice boomed, followed by another eerily synchronous echo of “Steel and sound!” and thumped chests.
Even though she should have expected it, Eiko still jumped again.
“I am the captain of Eclipse banner,” the soldier translated.
The soldiers belonging to the Eclipse banner remained eerily silent. No chest thumping or repeating of a motto. It was somehow even more frightening.
“You will not be sorted beneath a banner immediately,” the translator moved on with the slightest shiver of reverence in his tone, “you must earn that. First, you must be unmade. Unnamed. In the Godsguard, names are earned.”
Love this for us.
“Now strip,” the translator boomed, causing her to do a double-take, “and place your old clothes in the fire.”
Well, that escalated fast.
Ky whispered into her ear, “Oh, to be blind right about now.”
She elbowed him and waited until she was sure the sounds of hesitant undressing around her were actually happening and not a figment of her horrified imagination before she removed her own dress.
She couldn’t fight off the sensation of eyes on her body, searing into every inch of bruised skin she exposed.
The King of All is here, Hymn commented. The Eclipse bannermen were covering him, but they just moved. He’s sitting high in the stands, watching.
What? Eiko internally squeaked back, her fingers stalling in the straps of her cotton corsette—simpler, thinner, and cheaper than a proper corset—as it hung loosely from her shoulders, the strings at the back already loosened.
The princes are here too. Hymn was shrinking back into her chest. And the queen.
I can feel someone watching me, she seethed in a panic. Who is it?
She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she could tell that Hymn was unwilling to peek out and check. He just wanted to hide away.
Chasin, he answered, and … the others.
What others?
The royals. They seem to recognise you. And your friend.
Right.
How awkward.
They had been sitting at the same dinner table three weeks ago, and now here they were, laid out quite literally bare.
He seems interested in Rion too, Hymn added. King Grigori, I mean.
Eiko tried to school her frown as she divested herself of her remaining undergarments and gathered everything to her chest with one arm. She kept her cane to the side of Ky’s ankle as she trailed him, both of them pausing as heat from a crackling fire began to lick across their naked, pebbled skin.
Rion sidled up to her, whispering low, “Just a little towards me, and toss.”
Eiko turned slightly and flung her clothes, rewarded by the woosh of air as they hit the flames, and then she switched her cane to Rion’s ankle, following her back to stand with the others again.
Brace yourself, Hymn managed to quickly say, before a stream of water suddenly blasted towards where they were all standing in a line.
She flinched, even though she only caught the edge of the spray.
When it passed over her, showering her head to foot with a brutal, stinging pressure, she could only stand there and shudder, her arms wrapped protectively around her exposed chest. When the blast reached the end of the line, they were instructed to turn around, and it began anew.
Vana stumbled forward when the stream hit her back, sprawling onto the stone, her mutterings—which had been low and unobtrusive since they woke up—suddenly rose in volume, clattering about the courtyard.
“Such c-cold, such w-wet, like a s-storm, like b-bathing a p-pet—”
“Silence!” someone shouted, the authority in their voice hinting that they might be one of the section leaders.
She couldn’t place a male voice with any of the names that had been announced, only the female captains.
Alessandra had spoken with a clear Goldmoor accent, while Ilara’s accent had sounded more Suntide.
Eiko gritted her teeth as the water hit the back of her head with the force of a swinging boulder, forcing her forward just a step.
The water blasted down her back and legs, threatening to buckle her knees, before moving on.
When the assault finally ended, they were told to turn around again, and they stood there, shivering and shuddering as the fire threatened to take its sweet time warming them back up.
“You are no longer who you were,” the translator boomed, the words echoing off stone.
Eiko jerked towards the sound. “As your clothes burn, so does the person who boarded the Kingsweep. Whatever life you had before this moment is ash. Your kin, your comforts, your loyalties, they did not follow you here. The Godsguard is your family now.”
Not exactly true, but okay.
“Feel the heat,” the translator continued, oblivious to the fact that Eiko was standing there with the entirety of her family and friends.
“That is your weakness burning. That is your shame burning. That is every failure you have ever carried, purged in flame. What remains will be remade. You will be remade. Earn your place … or burn like the rest.”
“You no longer have a name. You are now recruit,” a voice announced, a few paces away, and then, “You are now recruit.” Directly to her right, she felt Ky’s arms reach out for something.
“You are now recruit.” A bundle of clean cloth was thrust into her arms, and she hastened to unravel the fresh set of clothes, finding undergarments, trousers, a tight-fitting undershirt and a button-up overshirt.
“You are now recruit.” This was said to Rion, on Eiko’s left, as Eiko hastily dressed. The uniform obviously wasn’t tailored, but it was roughly in her size, and the fabric moulded to her in a comforting way. It would be easy to move in, with no excess bulk or hindering fabric.
There were two thumps of sound before a pair of boots dropped at her feet, clean socks tucked within. She quickly pulled them on as the other soldier reached the end of their line, dubbing the final recruit “Recruit”—big shock—before stalking away.
Now that they all had the same name, the same clothes, the same boots, and the same trauma memory of stripping naked in front of the entire royal family, she couldn’t help but feel closer to the other recruits.
Even Vana, whose buzzing was so low and constant it had become a type of invisible background noise.
“If any of you make it into Half-Moon or Crescent banner, you will earn your name back,” the translator told them, something in his tone expressing a sliver of doubt. He didn’t mention Eclipse banner at all. “Good luck, recruits.”