YUVEN

It tore into the chambers of his scarred heart, a crimson reminder of the normality he failed to return to — if there had been any normal before his corruption; before the Derelict took his body for its use and brought Irimount into ruin in a single night. Boots against cobble rang through his ears as he sat on the edge of the closed cliffs, with his failures in his lap. Waves slammed into the rocks below him, a cruel amnesty and Fenrer's lucky streak. He dug his fingers into the edge and puffed out a breath, trying not to imagine Fenrer's bruised and battered body if he had fallen anywhere else. A corpse. Underneath drowning waves, he curled in on his spine and sat in silence with the truth of his faults. Though he tried to focus as Neven bid him to do, everytime he attempted it, the same steps against stone echoed in his ears. A pin soaked red with blood. Fenrer's crescent blade trailing across the surface of mud, golden and bright.

A conviction of terrifying strength.

I don't need to do anything, Traye. Blackwall held up an auric orb while Fenrer suffered in his arms, his body and the cold, cruel environment of Naveera making it all the harder for his best friend to live. You'll do it yourself. Across the frayed stars, Yuven opened his eyes at the hush of wind, spinning across the ocean, rising higher into the clouds. Beautiful, sunny days within the house beside the sandy beaches, protected by a mountain's shadow. Halcyon memories. Normal ones. Neven by the oven, cooking meals. Kemal, though in and out, a constant, curious presence who asked far too many questions. Fenrer, who bounced along, happy underneath a lie of which Yuven knew. He stayed up at night, all alone, not the smiling figure he had been.

You'll do it yourself. You'll have no one to blame but yourself.

"I figured you'd be here if not at the Lodge."

Yuven kept his gaze on the unknown horizon, framed by two pillars of Haneka. Kings of old. "What do you want, Adara? Was it not clear before that I'm not in the mood to talk?" He hauled himself up to his feet and adjusted the buckle of his crescent blade on his hip. Adara stood off to the side, her arms crossed in typical fashion when it came to him. As the breeze brushed against his feathers, he shook them out and slid a hiss through his nose, though she remained unmoved, no longer the terrified magickae with the understanding of a babe, nor the magick control of one. "Unless you're so bold to assume that there's anything you can do to undo this. Undo me. Undo all the darkness in the world?" He waved his arms out before touching his fingers to his chest, drawing his fangs over his lips into a smile to match a Derelict. "Didn't I tell you once that this world isn't fair and isn't kind to people like you? That compassion will get you killed? How many times must you see it in action before you acknowledge what hits you in the face before it kills you." His hands dropped to his sides when she refused to bend or break.

"Are you done?" was her only response.

The cold breeze made his feathers stiff and he turned away from her, though kept Adara in his peripheral vision for the time being. Her own attention drifted back to the storage building nearby, and she pointed at it. "I used to tell myself that I had to be careful... everyone that I ever got close to would leave me, or die because of me," she said painful, burning words, and Yuven drew away from her and her verbal outreach. "You told me not to get too close, but I realised you were projecting." A huff left her lips when she turned to him. "You never let anyone but two people get close... and now after almost losing Fenrer and Maria, you can't even let them close either. Out of fear." Her head shook in rejection. "You have to see that's no way to live. You made a mistake, Yuven, but I refuse to let you try and trick me into thinking you're something we both know you're not." Yuven unfurled his tongue against his fangs, but stopped when she tossed her hand over her shoulder. "Because you risked your life for me here — risked your life for someone who you could barely tolerate, complained incessantly about when you were supposed to be the one teaching me."

"What makes you bring this up?" he demanded. "I failed back then, Adara. I failed my duty."

"Yet I still stand here." Adara pointed down at the ground she occupied. "Quite alive, last I checked. What is your definition of failure, Yuven? I think your problem lies there." Adara folded her arms and brought her crimson shawl closer around her neck at the breeze of the ocean. "You and Fenrer fought back then too... and still you two managed to work together when it mattered — when it counted. Doesn't that mean something?"

"This is different?"

"How?"

Yuven crept for the edge to stare down at the sharp rocks the erosion failed to dull. White foam licked for death, but he drew himself back. "I said something cruel." In the back of his mind, Auric orbs continued to pulse and hook into his memories, dragging them to a bloodsoaked surface of his tongue. "A generalized statement that was undeserved and not fair. Many times have I bore witness to others ostracization of Fenrer, woe'ing about mine own due to the Derelict taint inside my soul. Fenrer never complained." Yuven dug his heel through the dirt, then straightened himself out. A hand stretched through the darkness made of light. "He always simply just smiled, I couldn't understand it — what those people had done to deserve his tolerance. I realised that wasn't tolerance from Fenrer. It was an acceptance that people can't change just because they're shown otherwise. Even if he really wants them to. Neven once told me that for someone to change... they have to want it." He curled his fingers into his palm as he hovered behind Fenrer during one of their first missions — involving an Aurus. Many were all too happy to point at an Aurus for what a Derelict caused, though the symptoms overlapped, too many were far too different to ignore. Though he opened his mouth to bite at an individual who drew away from Fenrer like he was a plague-ridden corpse, it was Fenrer's hand which smacked against his chest and stopped his advance.

No... that wasn't tolerance of their behaviour... that was you saying it was never worth it. Not worth the energy or the time. It wasn't on you to change them, you couldn't control what you are — but they can control what they think, and simply choose not to learn... and even you knew that. Yuven loosened his fingers to stare down at his hands, once soaked with blood and black taint. Yet you were so quick to jump to my defense when people called me a taint-bearer, nothing more than a Derelict in a humanoid form. And you'd ignore me when I tried to tell you it wasn't worth it. You would keep on going, so full of conviction. So ready to jump to my defense, and I so willing to step back when you needed the same. I should've ignored you all those times.

Blood slipped down a pin to ripple visceral waves.

"Yuven?" Adara rudely drew him out of his thoughts.

Yuven clenched his fists again at her irritating voice. "What?"

"The fact you're out here moping says a lot, you know.
"Moping is a waste of time." Yuven turned on his heel to continue through the storage houses, on guard for any attack from the shadows from white-masked individuals. "I'm making sure the outskirts of the city are clear for our patrols and guard shifts."

"Right, and I'm a nuglet."

"Good of you to admit it, maybe you can stop calling me one — whatever a nuglet is."

Adara rushed her pace and stopped in front of him to block his path. "I understand that we're in a state of emergency—"

"Then this conversation can end and you can go about your merry days and enjoy your time with Fenrer." Yuven walked through her, carried on the wings and dreams of ghosts, but he released a plume of mist when she tried once more to step in front of him. "My mood hasn't changed, Adara. What would you like me to do? Apologise to Fenrer?" He tossed his hand back towards the heart of the city. "Have I told you how that turns out for me? You're the one who said I don't know how to be diplomatic, how to take a comforting approach. I only know how to fight." He bared his teeth at her, letting his fangs drive into his lower mandible. "SOmetimes it feels like I'm the only one who knows how. My father ruins himself with things he had no control over, swallowed by the responsibility of someone's life and death. My Oathbound, my best friend resents what he is... and now I'm starting to realise maybe he always has but it was my lashing out that broke the back of that horse." He pointed at her. "And then I have you. The Anima that's always so hells damned determined to use compassion as her strength instead of anything else that would keep her alive in this cruel joke of a world with beasts hungry for her flesh and magick and people who'd use her like a tool instead of seeing her like a person. I can't save people from themselves, Adara," he said, driving down the squeak rising in his throat. "I can't even save myself. I can take comfort in the fact that if I am a Derelict... I can kill those, I can fight those... and that is my way of saving people — because sometimes I don't think they deserve it... I left Naveera to the whims of Derelicts, after all. I'm very capable of abandoning those who need saving, but what to do when it's the consequences of their own actions that put them there in the first place? It's those types I am so very reluctant to save. Maybe they'd learn something if I didn't." He switched on his heel to get away from the storage houses, but her incessant footsteps echoed Fenrer's within the dark of his twisted memories. "Only reason I saved you, Adara, is because you didn't choose it. You didn't choose to be an Anima. You didn't choose to be a beacon to Derelicts." He slowed to a stop within the mud-caked stones. "You're not like those who refuse to put runefences up, then complain when they lose their belongings, or even worse their pets... they should be thankful to even have their lives." He sucked in his lips between his teeth and faced her. "Their pets are never so lucky... all because they couldn't be bothered to do one simple task even after being told, being warned. Things have consequences, Adara."

Adara stopped her relentless pursuit. Her head dipped low, staring at the ground between them instead of her determination she had before. "If this is your idea for taking the consequences of your own actions, it's wrong." She took one more step forward. "You can still make this right. I believe."

I believe.

Yuven drew away from the hand proffered to him, but when he looked up, it was Fenrer, naught but seven with his hand outstretched to him with a dumb smile on his face, so bright and full of life. "I'll be your shield," Fenrer promised. "I'll show you you have nothing to be afraid of! I believe!"

Molvisaliz. In the burn of his heart, starry twine tightened against the dark recesses within the frayed ends. I am not you, I've always been the more fearful of us, not so brave as to face the darkness as a shield. I was always more comfortable as a sword... but it is you who people will depend on, flock behind due to your belief. Me? I am like every other sword, meant to pierce the darkness, doomed to fail in its crusade, but you're all that stands between this world and the crimson apocalypse. If you fall, if a shield falls... that is the end. Yuven reached out to the nothingness of the light, Fenrer long gone. But what to do when a sword turns on the shield? All I've ever wanted is to see the world as you do — this accursed world that's done nothing but drive its teeth into my neck and remind me of what I could never have, and still, you believed in me. In it.

Left alone in the dark, he dragged himself out of the surface of memories to gaze at Adara, who studied him through narrowed eyes, the honey browns searching and examining. "Compassion will get you killed."

"I'd rather die compassionate than become the monsters of Garren's stories."

"Didn't I ever tell you heroes don't exist?" Yuven mumbled.

Adara shook her head. "Who said anything about being a hero? I just won't let myself lose faith in what this world could be. What the Storm Wardens fight for. I don't want to be a hero, Yuven. I want to live."

Her arms outstretched to a corrupted wyvern who would sooner eat her than listen. Tears rolled down her frost-bitten face as she spoke noiseless words, the echo a ripple across his feathers when the wyvern let out a single breath. In time with his own when he leaned against the skin-slicing scale which dug its teeth into his spine, but no pain compared to loss.

"I believe."

He curled his fingers, and took in that single breath. Back to her, he stomped further out of her reach, into the embrace of the ghosts while he grazed the boundary of light and dark with his fingertips, gripping onto the shield against it when Fenrer's hand slacked.