3-53. The Herald of the Dawn, Part II

Otter plugged a finger in her ear, did another ‘Mawp!’ sound, and pulled it out. Her finger came away bloody. It was thicker than the stuff that’d dribbled down her ear. A lot thicker. Okay. Gross. She hadn’t been this unprepared for this amount of blood since her first period. 

She looked at the imposing figure of the Silayan Dreamer, and gave a tentative smile. “So, did we just fuck up even harder for calling you here, or are you gonna save us?”

The Sleeper tittered, covered her mouth with her hand, and said, “Yes.”

Otter rolled her eyes. She should’ve expected that answer. 

“Come on out,” the Sleeper said. “I’m not talking to a mountain, sibling. It’s generally considered rude to hide your face during these kinds of get-togethers, and I so rarely get to speak to my siblings.”

The snow that had hung suspended in the air quivered for a moment, and then swirled into a vortex, condensing, before finally bursting in an explosion of frost. When it was done, a woman, just as tall as the Sleeper, stood. 

While the Sleeper of the Depths went for feminine elegance, the Warden of the Dawn went for strength. She wore armor made from ice, similar to the Wild Rime that Kir sometimes sported. But while Kir’s armor was very utilitarian, the Herald’s was covered in impossible geometric symbols and swirling lines that couldn’t make up their minds if they were engraved or embossed.

Her silver white hair was shorn short, jagged in places as if she’d done it herself with a knife and with no help from a mirror. A wooden shield was strapped to her back, and a short sword hung at her side. A pair of yellow eyes, calm and assessing, bore into the three standing in front of her.

“Sister,” the Herald said neutrally. 

“Sister,” the Sleeper acknowledged with a smile. “I much prefer when you take this form.”

“Forms are meaningless.”

“Lies. If you believed that, you wouldn’t put so much effort into making a statement with yours.”

“We weren’t to meet again before the End.”

“Yes, well, plans are boring. You know me.” The Sleeper gave a small laugh. “I love a good surprise.”

“Chaos is what you love. You and the Rider, both. But for all your chaos, you cannot change things. That is outside of our power. We were bound to one destiny from the moment we were created.”

“And yet,” the Sleeper said, and cast her arms outwards, “here we are.”

The Herald’s mouth drew into a grim line. “And yet, here we are. How did you do this?”

“I didn’t. Well, I did. But not directly.”

The Herald’s gaze flicked to Otter, who shuddered. Just that casual look felt like being buried under a mountain of ice. The pressure from the Dreamer’s eyes was a weight of judgement. 

“What did you do to this one?” the Herald asked. “She is one of yours. I can smell your touch on her.”

“I saved up substantial power over the years. While the rest of you were content to bestow powerful Pacts whenever the mood took you-”

“We did as we always do, according to the timeline.”

“-I saved up. Which I also always do. But then an anomaly happened. Something that gave me an opening, and an opportunity to use it.”

There was a long pause, before the Herald said, “Kawehami.” 

“Correct.”

“That one was always going to be a problem.”

“You see a problem, I see amusement.”

“Both you and the Rider were in on this, weren’t you? You’re both responsible for this one.” 

The Herald casually gestured to Otter, who immediately fell to her knees. Ice crept into her bones. Kir’s arms were around her in a moment, and Otter could feel raw heat pouring off her and into herself. 

“You’ll have to ask the Rider about that. I don’t rat out co-conspirators.”

“The Watcher will be furious.”

“He’s always angry about something. Poor thing. Tasked to defend a gate that he always knows will open.”

“You speak of things that the mortals should not know.”

“They’re not as ignorant as you think.” The Sleeper glanced at Otter. “Well, most of them aren’t.”

“Even so. What you have done is forbidden.”

“It was not forbidden, simply because you all thought change was impossible, so you never thought to set a rule against it. Not that rules of any kind apply to us, beyond, well, the obvious one. Poor Walker. Walked right into a hungry mouth.”

“I should excise this one,” the Herald said, no emotion in her voice.

“Hey, ‘this one’ has a name,” Otter muttered. “It’s Otter, by the way.”

She immediately regretted it. Frost began to form on her body, and she had to immediately brush it off and try to rub warmth back into the sections that had become ice cold.

“Leave my little toy be,” the Sleeper said in a voice that sounded more playful than threatening, “or there will be con-se-quen-ces.” 

“No Dreamer has ever lifted their hand against another,” the Herald said evenly. 

“And I wouldn’t dream of striking my second-favourite sister in the whole world. But your children, ah, it’d be such a shame.”

“You can do nothing to them. Except…” The Herald’s eyes widened in horror.

“Except the ones on my Islands. And, oh goodness, there are just so many of them.”

Suddenly, Kir was standing between the Silayan and Mikovian Dreamers. Though nude and unarmed and very, very mortal, she squared her shoulders and planted her feet as if getting ready for a fight.

“You will not hurt my people,” she said to the Sleeper. To the Herald, she added, “And you will not harm my captain.”

The Sleeper seemed amused, and the Herald balked.

“Your captain? She is no Mikovian. Do your duty. It is all I command of my people. Your King has given your people orders, has he not?”

“My duty is not to my king. It is to my people. And his invasion of our allies is foolishness. I stand with this woman to prevent a tragedy. I serve my people by serving her.”

“There’s also the part where she doesn’t have a choice,” Otter added helpfully. “Since, y’know, you gave her a Pact that makes her serve people who beat her in a fight. And I totally spanked her. Don’t worry, she was into it.”

“You lost,” the Herald said flatly. “To this?”

“She’s smarter than she looks,” Kir said, though she sounded extremely dubious about it. 

“What else has changed? You were only supposed to lose to your father, who would keep you in line. You were to be a champion, a bridge. After the defeat of the Silayans, you were to–”

“You did this to me,” Kir said, horror coming over her face. “You picked this Pact on purpose for me, knowing what… what he’d do to me. My own father regularly publicly beats me, dominates me, just to prove to everyone that he’s the stronger. He forces my obedience, which he already had, through this accursed Pact, and you’re saying that this was the plan all along?”

The Dreamers weren’t gods. Everyone Otter had spoken to since coming to this world was insistent on that. Everyone had a revulsion for the concept of a god. There was no dedicated worship, no church, no belief system to be found. But in that moment, in Kir’s face, Otter saw the kind of betrayal that only happened when someone you truly believed in failed you, and did so on purpose. 

Otter reached out. Her hand found Kir’s. And she squeezed it once, reassuringly. 

“This was for the greater good,” the Herald said.

“What good is there in this?” Kir spat. “I loved my father. Now I hate him. Every night I dream of tearing his eyes out. I long for the day that I finally win, that I’m the one who beats him, so I can tell him to walk into the sea. The Silayans are our friends. And you want us to betray them? You name yourself a protector. But that’s not what you are at all. You never were.”

“Poor Herald,” the Sleeper giggled. “One of your own children finally sees you for what you are. I bet that never happened before.”

The Herald rounded on the Sleeper. “As if you are any better.”

“She is,” Otter said. “Because she’s a snake. She’s a monster. But at least she isn’t a hypocrite.”

The Herald flicked her glance at Otter, and suddenly the whole world lurched. There was nothing but pain for a brief moment, and then, sweet nothingness. Just an endless field of black.

And then Otter was gasping, sucking in breath. Kir grabbed her arm, a horrified look on her face. When had they let go of each other? Otter was so sure she’d been holding Kir’s hand a second ago. It seemed a weird thing to fixate on.

Especially when there was so much blood on the snow all around her. Spreading out in a large spatter all around her. And that Kir was covered in it as well.

“What just happened?” she gasped.

“The Herald,” Kir mumbled, her voice shocked. “She… she just exploded you.”

“And I unexploded you,” the Sleeper said. “So dramatic. People are basically just pods, filled with liquid. Wet, meaty pods. It’s not so difficult to break them, or to put them back together. You really should have come here with wards. Really, now.”

“I didn’t come here on purpose,” Otter said, barely able to process what was being said.

She’d just died. With less effort than it took to swat a fly. And then put back together, with seemingly the same lack of effort. 

Most people would be cowed at that kind of thing. Would try to get small, and hope they wouldn’t be noticed. Most would be smart enough to try to avoid the smiting.

Otter was rarely praised for her intelligence.

“Fucking rude bitch,” Otter said, pointing a finger at the Herald.

More pain. More darkness. More gasping. More blood when she came back together. 

No blood touched either the Herald or the Sleeper, but Kir was somehow even more soaked in gore. 

“Ow,” Otter said. “We came here for you to undo your bullshit. We’re here to renegotiate Kir’s Pact. You’re gonna give her a new one, and toss out the old one.”

The Herald narrowed her eyes.

Otter could only assume she got exploded and fixed again. She was getting pretty familiar with the sensation of being taken apart and put back together. It wasn’t a particularly fun sensation. 

But something about it was just making her more obstinate. 

“Oh, is poor widdle Dreamer throwing a temper tantrum?” Otter mocked. “Do you need a new diaper?”

Kir got covered in more gore. So did the snow. Otter came back anyway. The Sleeper had a wide smile on her face, as if she’d discovered a new favourite game. 

“So, this is the Dreamer that has the reputation as the great defender. The one who stands on the wall and faces the oncoming hordes. I saw the vision when Kir was doing the Pact ritual. I know what your branding says you are. But like all good PR campaigns, it’s a load of shit, isn’t it? You’re no Herald of the Dawn. No bringer of hope against the darkness. You’re just a bully.”

“I can spend the next century killing you for your impertinence,” the Herald said.

“Yeah, yeah, and the Sleeper will keep bringing me back. And we both know that she’ll keep doing it, because she’s fueled by spite.”

“It’s true,” the Sleeper said. “If I could physically manifest spite, I would grind it up and snort it, just like you would do in your world.”

Otter was tempted to bite back that she never did cocaine, or any hard drugs. Marijuana and low-end hallucinogens were her vices. Nothing addictive, nothing that would cause her to be more than a goofy little annoyance. But she was too focused on the Herald. She needed to make her point.

“You fucked up. You fucked up hard.”

“Have a care with your words,” the Herald said. “I might not be able to permanently kill you at this moment. But the next time I find cause to, I can make it painful. My kind might not have imagination, but I don’t require it, since your kind of always finding new and inventive ways to torture one another, and I can pull from any of those errant ideas.”

Otter tried not to gulp. She did so anyway. One time, when she’d been a kid, she’d burned her hand on a still warm heating element on her stove. It’d left a brand on her hand that had hurt for days, and a scar that’d lasted months before fully fading away. She could still feel the heat of it whenever she thought about it.

And as she did, she saw something in the Herald’s eyes light up. Otter knew, the next time, there’d be burning involved. And not fire. But slow branding, being cooked alive with hot elements all over her own skin.

“All you’ve done is exacerbate a conflict,” Otter said slowly. 

“Conflict is inevitable.”

“Yes, but according to you, everything is inevitable. You’re on a fixed timeline. I’m an element of chaos. Of change. Because of something the Sleeper did with my Pact. So, what if conflict doesn’t have to be inevitable?”

“It will be. Even you cannot stop it.”

“But maybe she can mitigate it. We can mitigate it,” Kir said. “I’m a bridge. But you expect me to fight on the side of the Mikovians. If you remove the Pact, I can fight on the side of the Silayans. Help them defend their home, while still maintaining the relationship between our peoples.”

“I don’t need to do anything. You request help, and offer nothing in return.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Otter said, before her brain hamster screamed at her that was exactly the kind of thing she needed to filter from her speech. “She doesn’t need to offer anything. You’re going to give it to her because you fucking owe her. You took her very self from her.”

The Herald reached for Otter, her hand clasping onto her shoulder. Otter expected burning pain and searing flesh. But instead, that hand squeezed her, and a smile came over the Herald’s face.

“I like this one,” the Herald said to the Sleeper. “You chose your Fateweaver well.”

“I told you that you would,” the Sleeper said. “You never believe me.”

“Uh…” Otter said. “What?”

“This was theatre,” the Herald said. “Do you really think an all-knowing being like myself didn’t know you were coming? Didn’t know what you were going to request ahead of time? I have to approve whomever appears before me. Do you really think Kir was accepted without me already deciding her fate ahead of time? Or that you came with her by some fluke of her Pact?”

“Oh, wait, that’s why I showed up here? Because I’m connected to her?”

“Old Grey did as well. I listened to his argument separately. I had to test your mettle. Both you and him, to see who was the better arbiter for Kir’s fate.”

“Oh, fuck that. Kir’s the better arbiter for her fate.”

Kir’s hand found Otter’s again, and gave it a soft squeeze.

“And that is why you win,” the Herald said. “Because Old Grey’s argument was about how he could best use his daughter. And your argument, at its core, was for Kir’s autonomy. Also… you’re braver than Grey is. He never dared raise his voice to me.”

“Not sure if that’s bravery or foolishness,” Otter muttered. 

“It can be both. You have a spine. Old Grey had one once. And then he grew old. Complacent.” She turned to Kir. “He’s terrified of you. He knows one day, you will beat him. And that day is coming very soon.”

“You… you can see that?” Kir asked.

“No,” the Dreamer said, moving her hand from Otter’s shoulder to Kir’s. “But I can see the hope in you. You defend those you love. When you make a mistake, you try to rectify it. You fight, even knowing you will lose. You have earned this title. More than I have. I name you Dawnherald.”