Chapter Twenty-Six
Avelina
Avelina didn’t expect to wake, so doing so in her childhood bedroom was…
strange. She sat up slowly, pulling back covers.
The sound of Tala snoring to her side made her jerk.
Her best friend was spread out, starfish style as per usual in the canopy bed, and still barely touching Avelina who curled up like a ball. The warlock stared.
And stared…
And stared as if there was no way she could be there.
Tala was in Eshorion, off on some adventure, saving lives and kicking ass.
Yet, there she was, like they were days before her father arrived.
Back when her mother was still alive, albeit barely.
This is in the past. She turned away from her slumbering monk to scan the room.
It was drenched in early morning sunlight.
Little dust particles glittered as they floated through the room.
Avelina slid to her feet, walking across familiar carpet to her bedroom door.
If this is the past, then my mother is… She glanced across the hall to the master room. The door yawned open.
A dark, shabby patch of lace darted into the shadows and Avelina followed.
Her body was sluggish, weighed down by some unseen force but it didn’t hinder her.
It forced her to move to the beat of her heart.
The steady, soft beat in her ear moved her body, a puppet on invisible strings.
Her palm touched the bedroom door and it creaked eerily.
The room beyond was drenched in shadow. Heavy curtains drawn to block out any sunlight.
Only a candle, a singular pillar of white wax with a shy flame dancing over it at her mother’s bedside.
Avelina slid her toes along the floor. They were cold like the grave.
In fact, the whole room was icy. Tiny clouds formed in front of her nose as she breathed.
Avelina feared what she would find behind the curtains on her mother’s bed, but couldn’t stop herself.
A moth drawn to its holy pyre, she picked up the candle and held it near her face as the fabric peeled open on their own.
Laid out in her bed was her mother, draped in her burial shroud.
“No, she…she wasn’t dead yet,” Avelina whispered. She looked at dirty, crusted over lace. Not the golden fabric her father draped her in, nor the humble organza Avelina tucked around her in the coffin.
“Why do you care?” Catalysta’s voice tickled the back of her ear. The candle trembled in her hand, but she didn’t move. Someone else stood behind her, their boney chin digging into her shoulder.
“I don’t,” Avelina answered. She heard something like paper shorn from a book and it drew her gaze away.
Her breath caught. Instead of her mother’s room, she stood in the library at their house in the middle of the night.
Her father loomed in front of the fireplace, an angry cloud, shredding paper out of books.
“Filthy. Disgusting. Revolting!” he chanted the words over and over as he tore through everything he deemed lesser. Anything that was mine.
“No! Stop!” Avelina moved like she might run to stop him, but the resistance was thick as tar.
She fought to no avail, it was too dense to clear.
Her father foamed at the mouth, his armor glinting in the candlelight as he tossed book after book over his shoulder into the grand fireplace.
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she was forced to close them. “Stop!”
“You mourned books more than your own mother? What a cold hearted child you are.”
When her eyes opened, she was pinned to the train cabin window.
Her back against the glass as heavy rain pelted it.
Everest Dalethorn stared at her, wide eyed, mouth slightly ajar.
Blood trickled out from behind his teeth before it spilled from his sides.
The outlaw who stabbed him with spinning eyes full of madness, glanced up at her.
He charged, but this time she didn’t flinch.
She didn’t scream.
She didn’t…fear him.
“Because this isn’t me anymore,” she murmured as the ruffian put the tip of his blade to her belly. Avelina exhaled heavily. He was frozen in time standing on her dead father like he was a stool.
“Any more?” Her goddess cackled, loud and frenzied in her ear.
“Have you considered this was always you? An illusion you wore, to protect yourself from harm. You and Tala have always been two sides of the same coin, two types of angry hearts beating in unison. Now that you have lost your shackles of obedience, let your heart bleed openly, bare your teeth my blessed one. You need not fear anyone. You are fear. You are now the monster at the end of their stories. Show them who you are, who you truly are…”
Avelina’s hand struck, like a viper, to his face. The murderer screamed out in pain. Ichor crawled through his veins, killing him painfully.
He collapsed over her father and Avelina blinked. She wasn’t in her home anymore, not in the library, not the train, or even the swamp. She sat at the bottom of that endless oblivion across from Catalysta. Her patron smiled, lounging on a throne of bones.
“You’ve done well, blessed one.”
“You are a menace,” Avelina grumbled, shaking her head.
For the first time, Catalysta chuckled. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Are you here to steal another one of my bones?” Avelina arch a brow. She wondered if it would be one of her toes next? Or her femur? Maybe even her collar bone?
“Steal? Dear one, you exchanged them.”
“Exchanging without asking is still stealing. It’s just more complicated,” Avelina spat.
She wasn’t sure why being pedantic with a goddess felt like the right move at that moment.
But she’d had a long, rough day. The man she thought she loved rebuffed her, she got her rib bone ‘exchanged’, chased through the swamp, punched by a dick head, walked into a trap, escaped said trap only to walk into another, escaped that trap only to have her skull cracked on a wall by aforementioned dickhead… and now, she was probably dead.
“I like you so very much, Avelina.” Catalysta’s shoulders trembled. She folded a leg over the other, both her hands clasped on top of them. A queen on her throne except instead of gold or rubies, she was surrounded in death and endless night.
“Glad someone does,” she murmured.
“You worry that the rogue does not care for you? That he does not love you with the same poisonous passion?”
“That sure is one way to put it.” Avelina dusted off her hands on her skirt.
The stitching on her finger was angry and red again, the thread more visible than before.
“It doesn’t matter if he loves me when he doesn’t choose me.
He chose to set up his crew, to set me up!
He betrayed me. And left me to rot. I frankly don’t care if he thinks I’m the sweetest girl in the world.
I don’t want someone who doesn’t choose me over their own selfish gain. ”
“And you think he’s abandoned you…”
Avelina rolled her eyes. This was going nowhere and she didn’t want to spend eternity discussing her piss-poor love life. She harrumphed, tossing her hands about. “What does it matter? I’m dead!”
“Not in the least bit.”
“What?” she blurted out.
“You are very much alive, blessed one. You only need to…”
Wake up.
Avelina gasped for air. She sputtered and spit and coughed as the world came into stark clarity. The Temple of The Last Pheonix surrounded her. “Shit.”
Someone chortled, “Welcome back!”
Avelina stood on a pyre of wooden planks; her hands bound in chains around a familiar pillar.
Of course. Because they couldn’t simply behead her, why would they ever do that?
No, they strapped her to a giant marble column in the temple and opened the skylight.
A large, sun shaped door over the front of the temple.
It faced the rising sun. As the temple was up higher than anything else in the stronghold, the walls didn’t get in the way of its view.
The sun would rise and hit the special crystal pane in the window.
That beam of light would ignite the wooden planks around her.
Back in the day, when plague tore through the country side, Paladins dragged the dead into the temple and used it to burn away the sickness.
Not doing so is how the Wastes filled with undead.
SunBringer demanded the cleansing to keep the continent safe.
The Paladins built a temple in her visage.
The whole room was meant to withstand the flames of SunBringer’s mercy.
“Which means you two assholes are supposed to burn with me.” Avelina glanced at Grahm, then at Daggertooth Dan.
They were both strapped to yellow, discolored marble pews with wood piled up to their knees.
At least she was merely bound by her hands.
The other two were strapped in three layers of chains. Must have tried to fight too hard.
Grahm scowled at her with great disdain. “I wouldn’t have to, but your little light trick brought them right to us.”
“Wouldn’t have been caught with me if you didn’t try to kill me,” she countered.
“She’s got you there,” Dan sighed, letting his face lull to the side. He sported a broken nose and one of his tusks was only a nub of jagged bone.
“Oh yeah, and what’s your excuse?” Grahm spat.
“Shame on me for thinking the Paladins had more honor than Cottonmouth,” Dan sneered.
“Ha! Yeah, alright,” Grahm snorted, rolling his eyes. “Trust the assholes who stomp through the swamp lookin’ for a fight at every turn. They burned down buildings lookin’ for you before, why would they give a shit about if you ratted us out?”
Avelina let the men bicker as she inspected the temple. The inside was all enchanted marble. While most of it was yellowed and there were a few cracks, it’d lived through most of time since the plague. She hummed thoughtfully, “Odd that they chose to burn us.”
“What was that?” Dan called out.