"Is the security really necessary...?" I ask Sister Pymonsia, looking her way as she ties up her Moonrim Emerald in her hands and in a freshly spun bow. She looks my way, flashing me her beautiful smile while offering her a little tease of her own. While her fingers pinch the half-done bow, her free hand snaps to her sheathed blade, her expression suddenly serious.
It breaks apart like most of the things around this half of the city, only it's joyous. Giggling away for all to hear. Even the honour guards take a moment to break away from their usual severity, light chuckles coming in. It comes to a stop, her glossy lipped smile being all that remains.
"No, it really isn't. But people can't really feel divine power. Having a crowd makes you stand out more." Sister Pymonsia explains, and I look down at my occupied hands. One filled with a piece of divine armour. The other treating a god's weapon as a walking stick.
"Do I not stick out enough already?" I ask and she offers me only a giggle again. She leans back slightly, looking at my backside.
"With everything you have? That sticks out more," she points out, her finger floating towards my cape. The cape of a Valkinvar-Imdvarce, one still soaked in her dried out blood.
"I felt it appropriate. A reminder to remain humble." I say, letting her tug at it where I cannot.
"We can always get you something fancier." she shrugs, her words a knowing tease but still an actual offer both ways.
"Thank you, but, no. This one will do. I lost my original one grand-cycles ago. I don't remember when, be it the defeat outside of Giant's Victory. The osibindah hive or anywhere past that. It doesn't matter, but this is as close as I have to *my* cape." I explain, not too sure how good of a job I'm doing of it.
"I guess it's funny, ... Sister... Vapooliar," she struggles to say, her tongue catching on the casual title, I smile it off and she joins me, "I guess it's funny, you know? Knowing my promise probably didn't amount to much. But you still wear it with pride."
"I wouldn't say that. You did all you could, helped me where you could. It just turns out what you promised initially was not... Well..." I say, coming to a halt to look around at the temple grounds. It might all be mostly standing, but that means little. The destruction is so much finer. A painting doesn't need to be smashed, picture and frame to be destroyed.
It can just be the painting getting scratched at...
"Not quite what any of us expected." Sister Pymonsia finishes, her nose flaring up as she looks around. The honour guards keep their heads down, almost ashamed of it. I look up and find a once rare sight that's now even rarer. Brother Valkinvar, carrying the bodies of the fallen. Both brothers and esteemed sisters. Even traitors, actually.
"Have you and the other two decided on how the funeral preparations will go?" I ask, not all that involved with everything. I might now wear the armour of our patron god, our Husband-to-Be, but I'm no leader. I'm just a Valkinvar-Imdvarce, but a feather only a decade or so ago. My time as a wing-head didn't even last that long. Though, the demotion certainly turned out alright!
"With the removal of our greatest hinderance. We're more so inclined to push for military action. Whatever we can get away with these cycles. Our losses were severe, but we have more than enough for some actions. Perhaps we will even achieve more than we assumed possible." Sister Pymonsia goes on, waving her hand as old frustrations tense her hands here and there.
"I'm doing what I can to write down the stuff this gives, but, as you can see, it's an overwhelming experience." I say and she looks towards the Crown of Conceptual War.
"I imagine such power is." she comments, her emotions quite flat, but curiosity is everywhere in her subdued tone.
"It's not the power. You know? Well... I... It's just not the power. It's power, sure. But, the power of the artefacts themselves, what they do. It's not what you might think. It's not an enchanted ring or a sword that is always alight or even like the arcane-science powering the airships. It's a responsibility. This armour is... responsibility. It's a constant reminder of what war is. I have this power, but there's no special gimmick or anything, nothing that gets to my head, anyway. It's all... Sombre. Mournful." I say, my shoulders slumping.
Sister Pymonsia's hand finds my shoulder, its silk-gloved touch warming me even through the war-bronze, "Such is the burden of the God of War. He is not just violence. Not strategy alone. He is loss, absolute loss. He is the one place in All-That-Remains where good and bad people all die. No one is safe from him and although we might learn so much... There's always a price in blood and lives. It's not theologically complicated or a philosophical nightmare, it's war. Plain and bloodily simple."
"Hear, hear." I say, finding myself at the entrance down into the dungeons. A place that is now being appropriately used for its name. As will the Chamber of Traitor's Judgement, soon. Whenever.
"You two, get to helping out around the city. We need to make sure that Thurnmourer-Thunlanann is as in order as here is, too." Sister Pymonsia orders, the fact the honour guard are Ordoar Wiswipide suddenly becoming apparent to me again. I watch them leave, their sudden burst of speed across the Redstone Canyon so... Trackable now. Everything is so easy to follow. While my power is not world-ending, or, maybe it is, it doesn't feel like it.
Such change in power feels so natural. Yet, it vanishes every time I sleep. Though I've not been tired since I died and came back, my eyes need rest. Rest from all that has been destroyed and more.
"Down below we go." I mutter, making sure Sister Pymonsia has room to keep to my side. Our footsteps echo ahead and back behind us, the noise increasingly becoming trapped one way and desperate for the outside. Darkness settles in quite comfortably. The flickering of candles only do so much to keep it back. The ground turns expansive and I make the final step down.
I look to my left, towards Exalsonarden-Valkinvar Styadesx's office. No clues hint to her being in there, however, the echo of the tense silence of the dungeons says otherwise. I look the other way, watching the looked-for Valkinvar approach. Her expression surprises me, if only for the fact it now plays the part of my long gone expectations of her.
"Sister Styadesx." I greet, not sure how to greet the normally cheerful Valkinvar. For once, her face is grim with anger and all manner of hate. She firmly looks the part that all her heavy, ornate armour is giving off. A prison master... Spiteful of all of her prisoners.
I look their way, approaching the edges of the cell. It's not packed anymore, but what is inside of it certainly makes it feel like it. There are a few Valkinvar-Staguiffmani traitors. Not all of them escaped, not all of them got pushed back to the Valkinvar Gate. Some got cornered and died fighting, others were put down and dragged here.
Some quite violently if the blood splatters on the wall mean anything. The nursing heads only makes it clearer. Though, with how the traitors treated even the wounded, it would not surprise me if they tried to butcher wrongfully imprisoned Valkinvar. One in particular, I know her.
"You. Approach." I order, leaning Waionr's battleaxe ahead and she strides into view. An odd confidence to her walk, even with how she's now in chains. Already branded by a hot iron across the face.
"Sister Vapooliar." Sister Dannatili greets as she adjusts to the presence of Sister Styadesx's rage. I turn towards my friend, urging her silently to put her magic back in place. She snorts in contempt, slamming her way into her personal office.
"Would you mind?" I ask Sister Pymonsia quietly as she vanishes, going after our sister Valkinvar. I wait for the door to close again, lingering the last of my kindness on her and I turn towards the traitors. The battle-axe feels my killing intent and quickly spells it out for me. Cycling through each of their names in an oddly helpful manner.
"Not here to execute us?" Sister Dannatili asks and I frown, lingering on my thoughts as old habits die hard. I shake my head, looking back up at her as my frown turns angry. But a simple shift in the brow, but enough to make them all flinch ever so slightly.
I'm not some Valkinvar-Imdvarce anymore, I'm the Champion of Waionr. And here I am, bearing all the proof I need for it and more. His armour. His axe... His lion.
"Why?" I ask the traitor. The Valkinvar-Staguiffmani that I and so many others counted on at the Long Battery Fort. One who helped us all the way to the end, even as we were nearly defeated. When the act was still up. Before we even got caught up within the walls of Thurn's Forge and the First Siege of it.
"Why what?" she asks back, her tongue clicking with all manner of feelings. I knock Cenotaph forward, easily cutting through the magic-dense, black iron bars. She doesn't flinch, but the rest of them do.
"No games, please." I say, my voice strained with ruined patience. I'm surprised I can even pronounce the word. It's a simple word, 'please,' one I've known since I was what... Five? Younger? It's such a simple word and I'm struggling so much to say it. Even now, in my thoughts, I hate the fact I did.
Before me is a traitor, all of them are. Actual traitors.
"... You wouldn't understand." Traitor Dannatili tells me, looking away as who knows what suddenly shakes her body. For all the gods and goddesses above the world, however. Every single one of them in the heavens... I hope it's shame she's quaking with.
"Try to tell me, anyway. You watch all of your sisters and few brothers die battling Prince Jhrartur. And you betray us to save your life. Even now. ALL OF YOU! Surrender to us, to save your lives..." I say, barely able to keep my temper in check as the traitor's expression flares up.
She strides forward, smashing herself against the bars with her ruined attire. The proof a Valkinvar-Staguiffmani once called her spirit a safe harbour. Where that Dannatili has gone, I do not know. I do not even know if she will be executed or tortured. I'm not wearing the Crown of Conceptual War purely so I do not know what the best way to do this is...
I don't want to know a thing.
"You think you can just get the answer out of us? You think you can just understand what happened that night? What happened since then? You've not a clue what was going on inside of the Ordoar Staguiffmani! Those of us left, before this all happened, we're just there because of it. Those who so much as tried anything were silenced, casualties to cover up what was going on!" she goes on and on and I raise my hand, gently.
"And were you such a person?" I ask and she goes dead silent, her teeth grinding, her jaw put forward. I shake my head steadily, slowly. I look towards Dannatili again and then the rest of the traitors. The traitors in this part of the dungeons, but one of five parts to it all.
I step away and turn slightly.
"You will all have a chance to speak and admit to your guilt in the Chamber of *Traitor's* Judgement. I suggest you all start getting your thoughts together. We will be going through with it regardless of how our plans to carry on the war you lot sabotaged play out. Pomp and ceremony be damned." I tell the lot of them, though my eyes stay on Dannatili exclusively.
I leave the lot of them be, heading into the office to meet up with my two friends. The pair looks up at me, Sister Styadesx's eyes red and puffy from the strain of her tears. I close the door behind me and set Cenotaph down, the other artefact joining it. I put myself down on the chair before the pair and huff long and hard.
"So... How's the weather?" I ask, hoping to bring some light into this dark, dark dungeon. A place that is finally filled with those who actually deserve to be here. The other two try to offer their smiles, and I know even such a simple joke is pushing things too far. My hands squeeze my bare thighs, squeezing tight as my mind fills with all manner of hectic thoughts.