War of Dawn - Chapter 28

Chapter 28: Anguish

Date: 1004 After Dawn, January 1st

The way back to Valarheim is beset by a heavy silence, Hilda stunned in resignation while Paula’s demure eyes lay locked upon the ground. As soon as Eliza brings them back through the Flowing Crystal, she waves her hand with nary a word and transports the girls elsewhere. When the light of her portals fades, Hilda and Paula see where they were – Valarheim’s dungeon.

Set beneath the keep itself, dozens of stony, dark corridors lit mostly by faint red torches stretch throughout the terrain. From what Alexandra told, this place was used the most during the War of Twilight, where Necromancers were kept for interrogation. Now, it’s mostly used to house rowdy Scions while their fate is decided… merely being here triples Hilda’s dread, the lump in her throat making it even hard to swallow.

The cell itself is some three square meters wide, solid Alterium enclosing them in a featureless box of smooth metal; only a small, barred window at the top of the chamber gives a small view of the outside. It’s still night, as the moonlight seeps into their dark corner and breaks into white rays as it touches the Alterium’s mirrored surface. Hilda has half a mind to try and manipulate the metal to get them a bigger opening but fear of further angering the commandant binds every piece of her hand and forces it to pipe down.

Paula herself looks as though the ordeal has sucked the life out of her, sitting upon a corner and wrapping her hands around her knees. Her face, still marked by the tears that flowed not too long ago, sinks between her risen legs. She does not move or speak – even her breathing has been reduced to almost nothing. Hilda wishes with all her heart to say something but the words refuse to come. What could she say when she herself is terrified of whatever punishment Eliza may see fit to impose on them?

The minutes pile on, slowing building up to a whole hour of nothing. No words, no answers, no reaction from anyone. Barring the soft sound of small gusts of wind blowing across the tundra outside, this cube they stand in may well be a sectioned off portion of an empty world. Every passing moment feels like an eternity, as Hilda’s inner worries keep piling up. What will happen to them? Locked away for a long while? Expulsion? Is there even such a thing in an organization as the Corps? What will Hilda do if she’s tossed out, sent back to the emptiness of her old life? Worse, how could she face Henrik in the next world if that happened?

Her mind is brought back to the present as she hears faint, but rushing, steps coming towards them, echoing across a hallway outside the cell. Ripples stretch across the wall to the right of Hilda as the Alterium gives way, taking the shape of a dozen thick bars. On the other side, a sight for sore eyes: Owen, appearing more than a little worried.

“Hilda! Paula! Are you alright?” he asks, the flames around his feet still fading after what must have been a mad dash down here.

“We’re alive, though it’s soon to say if we’re ‘alright’…” Hilda sighs, rubbing her temples as she inches over to the newly made opening. “They tell you what happened?”

Tension starts leaving the lines across Owen’s face as he sees that they’re fine, though a critical glare takes its place immediately. “Only that you two attempted an unauthorized attack on a Necromancer camp and nearly died… What in blazes were you thinking? Have you any idea the trouble you’re in?”

“Owen. Not now… please.” Hilda raises her hands, not in anger, but begging for him to stop. Taking a quick look back at Paula, the girl’s stands immobile, though her arms have tightened around her legs. “You know what Lady Eliza’s doing?”

Owen’s eyes glance upon Paula in her darkened corner and his anger is quelled – he looks back at Hilda, mounting concern washing over his brow, and all she can answer him with is a defeated shake of her head.

“I… I’m afraid I do not. I spoke with Lady Vanessa, briefly, and she said Lady Eliza went straight into her office. She… looked quite angry, apparently,” he says, slowly, as his gaze shifts back and forth between the two girls.

“‘Angry’… My lady is angry…” Paula finally breaks her silence, her voice flying across the cramped room in what’s barely a whisper. “Of course… After all, she is saddled with this worthless excuse of a Scion…”

Paula hugs her legs even firmer, her arms trembling as if trying to crush her own bones. Her breathing grows loud and courser by the second, entering and leaving her lips in uneven, strained gasps.

“I was working… so, so hard…” she whimpers, sinking her eyes into her self-bound legs. “I only wanted to h-help…”

Paula’s faint voice struggles to maintain itself amid the sobbing that begins bearing down upon it once more; every word cracks under its weight, all but crumbling away as they touch the air.

“Paula…” Hilda calls out, trying to take her mind off that. Still, she is ignored.

“I only wanted to help… but I messed up… everything… everything… Oh, gods…!” Paula’s hands, firmly grasped around her knees let go and shift in quivering bouts to her head. “My lady is angry… It’s all my fault… My fault… Mine… mine, mine…!”

Paula clutches her head like she’s holding a piece of fruit, her nails scratching and digging into her scalp. Deep blue sparks of the dark elemental erupt across her fingertips, popping and tearing cuts about her skin. Small trickles of blood run down her pained brow and nose, intertwining with the stream of tears that once more runs down her cheeks. Hyperventilating, she shakes her head back and forth as her lips mouth words that no longer emerge under her breath.

“Paula!” Hilda rushes over, grabbing her friend by forearms to stop her self-flagellation. “Calm down! Please!”

“How in the gods’ names can I calm down?!” Paula explodes, her eyes bloodshot from crying, while despair and self-hatred mark her twitching gaze. “My life – all that I am – exists solely by my lady’s grace! If she… if she loses faith in me… then I’ll have nothing – again…!”

Paula slumps forward, tears like a spring drizzle pouring off her eyes to cover the ground in dots, her body only held aloft by the grip of Hilda’s hands around her forearms. Her pained wails hammer at Hilda’s spirit, the tortured notes summoning a surge of overwhelming terror from the recesses of her mind. Chills run down Hilda’s spine, sending ripples throughout her body; she feels numb, and as her own hands begin quivering like mad, she forces herself to pull Paula into her arms lest she fall to the floor.

“You cannot allow yourself to think that way – it’s absurd,” Owen speaks from across the room, kept away by the unmoving bars. “So many care for you, within and beyond the Corps."

Hilda struggles to move her tongue against the raging emotions whose claws attempt to crush her throat. But her worry for Paula speaks louder, providing a tether for her to hold on to. “And not just us. There are the other generals, Julius… your friends in Porto, too, yeah? What would they, or that Madam Doroteia, say if they heard you talking like this?”

“Nothing… They’d say… nothing,” Paula says under her sobbing breath, raising her stained, crumpled face to look at Hilda. “Madam Doroteia… Lúcio, Marcelo, Gabriel, Clara… they… they’re dead.”

“What…? But you told us that—” Owen’s eyes widen in surprise, interrupted as Paula shakes her head amid faint whimpers.

“I lied…!” she stammers, fighting against powerful sobs. “When I was… ten years old, a-a fleet of pirates raided Porto and… and came to our home. They killed… everyone…”

“Oh, gods, I’m so sorry…!” Hilda gasps as her brows furrows with pity.

Paula does not answer. Her tears and sobs continue, though fade away little by little; her eyes begin emptying out, looking not at Hilda but past her. “But they spared Clara and I – we were… worth more alive…So they took us to Ballena, a pirate town off the Spanish coast and sold us to… they sold us to a brothel.”

Hilda feels her stomach churn, sickened to her soul. Owen closes his eyes in sympathy to Paula's suffering, though the pulsating veins in his neck paint a clear picture of his outrage. Paula's stopped sobbing, though Hilda still feels her body shivering around her arms and chest; the girl's limp hands rise to clutch at her shirt like a lifeline, struggling to keep herself steady against the past trauma that bears down upon her.

“They kept us locked up in a room even smaller than this one, with another three girls all around my age; this fetid, poorly lit wooden chamber with a lone bed… ‘La pocilga’, they called it – the pig sty – where they kept half breeds like us. We were only allowed out when it was time to… work. Clara tried to run and they… they cut her head in f-front of us…! For one year, five months and twenty two days, I was there… stewing in filth and disease and suffering abuses that I… I… can’t even…!”

Paula’s voice breaks apart and Hilda, as she wraps her arms tight around her, feels her uneven breath on her neck and the flow of tears running down to her shoulder. Paula’s sobs are silent, as if the memories she’s recalling have taken away even her voice. Hilda can barely contain her own tears, held only in check by the enormous hatred she feels right now – more than she’s ever felt for another human being. Sniffling, Hilda hides her misty eyes from Paula and tries both to calm her down and keep her own voice from crumbling. “Ssh… ssh… Don’t say anything else.”

Paula keeps going, though, taking in a long, trembling breath that fills her voice with a tiny tinge of hope. “But on that last day… she found me. The one who rescued me as a baby after the Valnr killed my parents… my guardian angel…”

“‘She’… the commandant?” Owen asks.

Paula’s trembling subsides, as do her tears. “Yes… My lady was the one who found me a home with Madam Doroteia while I was but months old. After I was kidnapped, she searched across Portugal and Spain for me. What happened next is a blur, like much of that time. I was malnourished, catatonic… by the time I came to, she’d already taken me to our embassy in Lisboa. But the stories said she rescued the other girls, before a torrent of fire incinerated that hellhole and every monster within…”

“She did?” Owen raises an eyebrow in confusion. “But our code states that it is not our place to pass judgment on the crimes of humans, so long as they are not colluding with the Valnr.”

“And yet, she broke her vow… for me – the one time in her entire life. My lady healed me, worked out of the embassy for a month while the spells undid a year and half of torture. I owe all that I am to her, including my very soul… It was then that I decided I wanted to join the Corps.”

Hilda clears her dry throat, running her hands over her eyes to clear her sight. “To pay her back?”

“Not just... I wanted to help her but, above all, I just wanted to be with her. I was allowed to live in the embassy and convinced one of the Scions to teach me how to use a halberd. When my prayers were answered and the Altr recruited me into her brigade… it was the happiest moment of my life.”

Hilda can see that she is not exaggerating; the light in Paula’s eyes, as she speaks of Eliza, strikes brighter than even the moonlight pouring through their tiny window. It is pure adoration, the likes she’d not even seen from the most pious men and women in Litnir; and it is only matched by the distress that creeps once more into Paula’s gaze as she’s brought back to her current situation. “But if I’m unable to support my lady’s struggles, if I lose her trust… there’s nothing more horrifying. The mere thought of it makes me feel as hollow as I did back in Ballena…!”

“No, no, no,” Hilda raises her hand and gently presses Paula’s lips shut with her fingertips – just as her brother did whenever circumstances overwhelmed her, “stop thinking that right now. Lady Eliza’s just a bit mad but there’s no way she’d toss you to the curb.”

“I agree. Someone who searched through two nations to find a person wouldn’t forsake her so easily,” Owen adds with a confident nod.

Hilda nods back, wiping away the tear tracks in Paula’s tawny skin and cradling her cheeks between her hands. Strings of violet energies pour off her palms, covering and healing the small wounds in Paula’s head. “What he said; plus, you’re strong, smart and so dedicated. We made a huge mistake here but I know she’ll forgive you. And, then, you can keep on helping her… she might just have us help Greta for a month, first.”

“That… that wouldn’t be too bad, I suppose…” Paula laughs, a weak and breathy chuckle but still a step in the right direction in Hilda’s eyes.

“Still, do remember that we are both here; we care about you and wish to see you happy. As you search for your path in life, Lady Eliza notwithstanding, you may always count on our support. Right, Hilda?” Owen asks.

“Absolutely. Forget about her for a bit and get it in your head that, whatever happens, you mean so much to us… Oh!” Hilda gasps at a sudden burst of creativity, letting Paula go and quickly turning to Owen. “Hey, you got your weapons?”

He reaches behind his back, pulling out his chakrams. “Always; why do you ask?”

Hilda doesn’t answer, reaching out between the bars and pressing her thumb and index fingers against the edge of one of the weapons. A smoking, bright flash of electricity burrows through the metal as she carves out a very small piece of it – no bigger than a lentil. Owen frowns and gapes in astonishment, staring at the newly-created notch in his weapon.

“Oi, what was that for?” he raises his arms in befuddlement, demanding an answer.

Hilda shushes him, retreating back into the cell and grabbing her own blade from the corner. “Relax, blondie. You can fix that real easy.”

Just as with Owen’s weapon, she grips the tip of her weapon and yanks out another small piece. Holding one in each hand, Hilda presses her palms together; like molding clay, she rubs the pieces one into another, willing the Alterium to bend and take shape. When her hands come apart, the two pieces have merged together, taking the form of a heart-shaped pendant held by a fine string. Three marks rise atop the sparkling red surface: the letters H, P and O.

Stepping back to Paula, Hilda places the pendant around her neck. “Here… Take this with our promise that we’ll never stop caring for you. So chin up, yeah?”

Paula stares at the pendant, its red glow reflecting off her black eyes; clutching it in her small hands, she lets out a long, deep sigh. A grateful smile forces its way onto her countenance, overpowering the dark feelings that filled it, as she lifts her head to look back at Owen and Hilda. “I… I’ll try, my dear, dear friends…”

The sight of her smile would make it easy for the worry inside Hilda to disappear – Owen’s relieved sigh shows that. She wants to do so, too, and believe that her friend’s alright now. But she cannot bring herself to feel that way in full; she knows it is not that easy. The worst memories are the most resilient and tend to hang onto the bottom of the heart like mud. Sorrow, guilt, anger, torment, hatred… they carve at the soul, rot it from the inside until it is wholly sick. It takes a long, long time for their grip to loosen. It may never happen, even.

But Hilda won’t poke at that poorly-healed wound any further. Instead, she’ll simply focus on making good on her promise. And she meant those words more than any other she’s ever uttered. The pity she feels for Paula intertwines with her rage over the uncaring whims of fate; where is the fairness in all this? Why did a kind person like Paula need to suffer as she did when there are others far more deserving?

Hilda’s insides burn with silent anger, knowing full well that there’ll be no answers to her doubts; there never are. Wondering about it does not matter at all, even – humanity can only make do with the hand they’ve been dealt, for better or worse. Whatever Eliza decides, if Hilda can ease the pain that fate’s foisted on her best friend even by a small bit, then she’ll see to it for as long as she lives. That is fair.