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Emmrich Volkarin/F!Rook 5k+ wc | SFW but heads up if you're squeamish, this one is a bit bloody Three years into her tenure in the Mourn Watch, Agnes begins to realize she has been recruited for one very specific task, in particular. But Emmrich becomes gravely wounded during an expedition into the Grand Necropolis, it calls everything into question. ________

EXCERPT: There was panic and shouting and they were lifting Emmrich out of her arms, setting him on a levitating bier someone conjured to better get him to the infirmary. Someone was asking her questions—shaking her shoulder—but she was still dizzy from the lyrium and the effort of her magic, and the sudden action and noise was disorienting. But she folded one leg underneath her, then another, and rose to her feet, stumbling after the group of other Watchers. She needed a better look at Emmrich, to see that his chest was still rising and falling—

“Agnes. Agnes.”

Johanna, taking her by the shoulder and shaking her roughly. “Agnes, listen to me. What happened?”

“Uncatalogued anomaly,” Agnes replied, automatically. But as the other Wtachers began to carry Emmrich out of sight, the stunning shock of what was happening began to clear, replaced by a dawning horror at her circumstances. “I tried to—but it just grabbed him, Johanna, and it wouldn’t let go.” Her words came faster, her voice rising. “I tried to heal him—I did what I could—there was so much blood—”

Johanna looked at her, then back towards the elevator from which she came. All the color drained from the Commander’s face. ‘How much blood did we leave behind in the lift?’ But when Agnes turned to follow Johanna’s gaze, a sick feeling in her gut, Johanna held her shoulder fast, steering her out of the commons and into the hallway so that she could not glimpse backwards.

“You got him back up here, Agnes, that’s what counts. You did good,” Johanna praised her, but it was an empty praise; there was an uncharacteristic lack of confidence in her words that made Agnes feel only greater dread. “Emmrich will be in the healer’s hands soon enough, if he is not already. There is nothing more you can do for him. Go clean yourself off, and get some rest. When there is news, we will send for you.”

9:33 Dragon

When Agnes had received the invitation to join the Mourn Watch, it had come as a great shock to her. It had not been because she was unaccustomed to accolades and excellence—at the Circle of Magi at Perendale, Agnes had been at the very top of her class. But out of all the subjects she had studied while at the Circle, necromancy had been far from her strongest. She had no natural curiosity about nor inclination towards the subject; in fact, much to her embarrassment (for even young, she had been a mage to whom magic had come with ease) it had taken her twice as long as the other students her age to master even the most basic of necromancy spells. When she finally managed it, it had felt more difficult and unnatural to her than any spell she had ever cast. She was an exceptional wielder of combat magic; she had an instinctual understanding of healing magic that easily could have been nurtured into a great talent. She had never had any doubt of her power and right to claim her place among the Mortalitasi… but the Mourn Watch? The very position, perhaps, to which she was least well suited?

It had been inexplicable. Flummoxing. Confounding. Had her family given her no other alternative, Agnes might have even tried to refuse the position.

But three years into her tenure a Watcher, it had become abundantly clear to Agnes that, when it came to the reason she had been called to the guard, her necromancy skills were entirely immaterial. She had not been initiated into the Mourn Watch because they expected her to become a necromancer of any great skill or use.

Agnes had been initiated into the Mourn Watch to protect a necromancer of great skill.

Because it had become clear to her within weeks of joining the Mourn Watch that Ser Volkarin, junior to many of the other Watchers though he may have been, was by far the most talented among them. His skills in sub-astral manifestation were second to none; he could summon spectral shades and thralls impressive in both number and strength. But what set him apart above all, perhaps, was his insatiable curiosity: his constant desire to venture into the Grand Necropolis’ unexplored depths, to unveil the secrets of the dead to the living. To those same dead rest easily, when his position called for it. Such skill might have inspired envy among his peers, but not so for Volkarin. He seemed to be universally well liked and admired among his peers. He was entirely remarkable, the Mourn Watch’s greatest asset.

And so they had found him someone young, agile, and capable, to keep him safe when he himself could not.

Volkarin had begun as her mentor—but once Agnes had completed her Initiate training, she became his bodyguard. If there had been any question in her mind that she had been chosen explicitly for this role, it was swiftly resolved when Commander Johanna had called her into her office, and confirmed just as much to her on her first day as a fully fledged Watcher.

“It isn’t that Emmrich is incapable of defending himself,” Johanna had told Agnes, hands folded over the top of her large, oakwood desk. “When the danger is present and clear, there is no one you’d rather have fighting alongside you. But he is so…” she chose her words carefully, “ scholarly. ” She made a face like the word tasted foul on her tongue. “Sometimes, he gets so swept up in his study—in his fascination—that he fails to notice how clear and present that danger really is. We—the other Watchers—decided it would be better off if he had a partner to work with, who would not hesitate to do what was necessary should trouble arise.”

In other words, when it came to the anomalies in the Necropolis and any threat they might pose to Volkarin during his research, Agnes had been brought in to shoot first, ask questions later.

Agnes might have resented him for that. Because with that revelation, it became clear that her suspicions were correct: she had never really been meant to be part of the Mourn Watch. Were it not for Volkarin, and the great need she had been initiated to address, she might yet be living her life in Nevarra City above, among the living, in the sun.

Agnes might have resented him for it, if she did not so love every moment she spent working with him.

It honored her, to assist a Mortalitasi of such great talent, to have such proximity to such a keen mind. Necromancy may not have been her favorite subject, but it was still terribly exciting to be on the cutting edge of the field. Though her explicit responsibility may have been to protect Volkarin, Agnes had assisted him in his studies just as often (perhaps more often) than she had to work to preserve his safety. She helped him with his experiments, debated him and served as his thought partner in his studies. On their many journeys down into the Grand Necropolis below, they shared the responsibility of keeping records of their journeys. And after Johanna had made her revelation, all of these tasks became twice as satisfying—the honest admission that you had not been hired to match Volkarin’s skill or enthusiasm for necromancy reduced the pressure considerably.

But there were more reasons yet that Agnes took such pleasure in working with him. He was kind, and gentle, and gentlemanly. He possessed such empathy and tenderness for the dead that might have bordered on the ludicrous, had Agnes not found it so deeply touching. His curiosity, which so often got him into trouble, also made him lively and exciting to be around. When they descended together into the cold depths of the Necropolis, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time, Volkarin often had a way of making those vaulted mausoleum halls feel as warm as spring, often by his cheer alone.

In skill and in spirit, there was no one else in the Mourn Watch like him.

So Agnes did not mind, being the brawn to his brains. It meant that she was allowed to be with him. To bask in the brilliance of him. And to protect him, of course, when necessary; to pull him out of danger before his curiosity got him too deep into it. It was a duty she excelled in.

Which, of course, made it all the more devastating when she finally failed in that duty.

Agnes had been drawing when it happened.

(She had never been satisfied with her ability to draw flowers, fauna, or organic shapes, but she could draw a line straighter than anyone else she knew, measure angles and proportions with her eye in a few thorough glances. When Volkarin had figured this out, he had swiftly procured her several boxes of charcoal in various firmnesses, and a large sheaf of parchment, and encouraged her (bullied her, really) to turn herself into a serious draftsmen. The effort was almost entirely self-serving. If, on one of their many excursions into the Necropolis, they should encounter a crypt or ossuary that was not yet documented (or, just as likely, not yet documented thoroughly enough to meet to Volkarin’s satisfaction) he would ask her to sketch it for him while he explored about the room, making observations, taking notes of his own to supplement her illustration.)

They had been exploring among the lowest levels of the Necropolis when they had happened upon it. They had passed through a doorway that had opened up into a gargantuan room—Agnes might have thought it a cave for the faint breeze that seemed to stir from its depths, but the walls that stretched into the darkness were of masonry, not hewn or eroded stone. Before them stretched a wide mouth of dark, still water, large as a lake. No matter how they brightened their magelights to offer additional illumination, they could detect no sign of the opposite shore.

But behind them, the doorway through which they had come revealed itself to be a portico designed in one of the most rare and ancient styles of architecture that was to be found in the Necropolis. Wide arcades stretched out on either side of the doorway, with exquisitely detailed corpses carved into the colonnades, climbing up the facade. Like insects frozen in time, skeletons carved of marble climbed over one another, a massive hulk climbing the sides of the portico, all hands grasping for the massive rose window of colored Serrault glass that had been set above the door… casting a colored glow about the room, unquestionably from some feat of magic, as the chamber through which they had come had been utterly dark.

All it took was one sight of the uncatalogued room, and Volkarin was smitten.

So there she was, her portable easel propped up on the ground in front of her, using her whole arm to cover the parchment in lines, trying to make as quick a job of the sketch as she possibly could without being careless—she did not like lingering too long in the uncatalogued parts of the Necropolis. She had laid the whole of the entryway in with quick, light structural lines. Documenting the intricate detail of the sculpture that decorated the architecture was much harder, but Agnes did the best she could, knowing Volkarin would later wish to return to the drawing, comparing it against his notes, looking for themes or motifs within it that might date the construction or tell him more about who had ordered it.

A few paces away, Volkarin was taking notes, muttering to himself under his breath. He often spoke to himself like that while he was working—by now, Agnes was used to it.

And then there was a soft, deflated “Oh!” of surprise, and all Volkarin’s muttering ceased.

“Oh!” And from then on Agnes’ memory was nothing but flashes, freeze frames. Alfred’s moan of alarm at the sight of the slick, green-black appendage clawing at his master. The visceral thud of Volkarin’s body as the creature jerked his feet from beneath him and he came crashing to the floor. But—and this Agnes was sure of—until that point, Volkarin had been nearly silent, surprised or too stunned to react to what had happened.

It was not until the feeler had sunk its sharp claws into his body and began to drag him, by his wounds, across the floor, towards the pool, that Volkarin began to scream.

The strange glow of the magelight on Emmrich’s face. The wet, gleaming scales on the tentacle of the unknown creature that held him. The cold, sickening terror at the sight of Emmrich’s body being dragged across the floor.

The colder, calmer, almost spiritual-like clarity of purpose that came over Agnes a moment later, when her adrenaline finally flooded her veins.

‘Fire will not likely be any use against it. Lightning would work wonders, but he is in the water, too; I cannot risk shocking him.’

She was on her feet and sprinting for the water, pulling two spherical silverite foci out of her belt and clutching one in each fist. But Emmrich was already so close to the water’s edge; Agnes did not care to take the chance that he would reemerge from the pool once whatever it was that had a hold on him and sucked him beneath the now-boiling black surface. Like necromancy, ranged magic had never been Agnes’ strongest suit, but she concentrated an arctic chill of mana around the foci in her palms, then thrust it forward, freezing the surface of the water at the pool’s edge, seizing the retreating tentacle and holding it in place.

It bought her some time—but not much. Within seconds of casting the spell, the ice was already cracking, the tentacle thrashing violently to free itself. The clawed edge of the appendage was swinging Emmrich’s body around like a rag doll.

By now, his screaming had stopped.

But in two more strides Agnes had reached the water. And (easy as dancing, easy as breathing) she use the foci for their intended purpose, shaping the mana above her clenched fists into two dagger blades of the coldest magic, deadly and precise.

Then she plunged her fists downwards, burying the magical daggers into the monster’s flesh to the hilt.

Emmrich was no longer screaming—but the creature, whatever it was, did. Black blood geysered forth its wounds; Agnes kept her mouth closed against the foulness as it sprayed into her face. She kept her left dagger buried in the flesh to maintain her grip on the creature, then wrenched her right fist upward, pulling the knife out of the flesh with a wet squelch before driving it right back in, widening and savaging the first wound she’d made.

Another ear-splitting shriek bubbled up from beneath the pool. Agnes raised her right fist once more—but before she could drive it home she was tumbling off the tentacle, pulling her daggers out with her as she dodged the creature’s sharp, three-pronged claw. It had rounded back towards her, and even as she tumbled away it followed, snapping after her as she sought to evade it.

But if the talons were free to come after her, that meant it had released Emmrich. Her eyes scanned the space and saw him lying, motionless, not far from where she’d scattered her parchment and charcoal when she’d leapt up to defend him.

Only the adrenaline kept her heart from leaping out of her chest at the sight of him there, lying prone.

Agnes raced towards him, keeping her left dagger raised to defend herself as she unbound the magic in her right hand and returned the silverite foci to its place on her belt. Just beside it, her fingers closed around a slender phial. Agnes seized the combustible, taking a second to remind herself to close her own eyes before she threw the phial to the floor, stomping it beneath her boot for good measure.

Staggering brightness filled the chamber; the monster beneath the pool gave another aggrieved shriek. As it writhed, breaking up the ice Agnes had magicked to contain it, the surface of the pool sparkled. And beneath that artificial sun, Agnes saw the vastness of the shadow lurking beneath the pool—the great, writhing mass of it—and knew that the time for fighting had ended, and it was time to flee.

In the blinding brightness, the claw flailed about, fumbling for its prey at the pool’s edge. Agnes wasted no time. She rushed to Emmrich’s side, ducked her head under his arm and pulled him to his feet. He made an awful groan—a sound of pain she’d never heard from him before—but selfishly, she was glad he had made any sound at all. A surge of warm wetness met the palm she held around his waist, supporting him against her.

“Emmrich,” Agnes said, softly, sweetly, daring at last to call him by his given name. “Emmrich, come on, we have to go.”

He gave no response, no sign that he understood, but when Agnes stepped forward, half-dragging Emmrich out of the chamber, his feet stumbled to match her pace. Very well. If he could not keep up for long, she would carry him out of there, if she had to. If that was what it took to deliver him to safety.

But Agnes was missing something. (Or as Emmrich would argue: someone. )

Emmrich’s thrall, Alfred, was twenty paces behind. When Agnes turned to see what had become of him, she observed him lingering still in the sunlit chamber, stooped down on his unsteady legs, and with his even more unsteady grip was attempting to gather Agnes’ sketch and drawing supplies.

“Alfred, just leave it behind!” Agnes shouted, but she did not wait to see if the thrall would listen before racing away, back to the lift to the upper levels. She had made an effort, but she was not about to let Emmrich bleed out on Alfred’s behalf.

He was losing more blood with each step….

By the time they arrived at the elevator, Agnes was fairly certain the immediate danger had passed. There had been no sign nor sound of the creature from the pool pursuing them back through the Necropolis: only the sounds of Emmrich’s breathing at her side, growing more shallow by the second, and the faint echo of Alfred’s shuffling steps, emanating forth from the halls far behind them.

Agnes gathered Emmrich into the elevator, then helped ease him down, gently, so that his legs were stretched out to the side as she held him upright in her lap. Her free hand returned to her belt, feeling around for a sphere-shaped flask of lyrium. Alfred had five minutes, tops, before Agnes finished whatever paltry healing she could manage under such duress and began their ascent into the upper floors; if the thrall had not caught up to them by then, she would leave it behind, and face Emmrich’s disappointment when she must.

(She hoped, hoped he’d have the chance to be disappointed in her—)

Lyrium in hand, Agnespulled the cork loose with her teeth and tipped the flask back. A shiver worked its way through her body as the tingling, metallic taste slid down her throat, and though her heart was pounding (from the sprint, from the exertion) she felt that clear calm return with the surge of mana, the temporary swell of power.

Agnes did not know if it would be enough. Then, she refused to let herself consider whether or not it would be enough.

Carefully, she pulled back Emmrich’s leather overcoat, trying to locate his wounds beneath his clothes, but it was impossible. His waistcoat was a torn mess, utterly soaked through with blood and the grime from the shores of the pool. Wasting no time, Agnes pressed her magic against him, into him, compelling all of the cells in his body with everything that she had:

Heal! Mend! Live!

But she felt the color draining from her face, a spell of dizziness coming over her as she worked her magic on him. His wounds were too brutal, too deep. Agnes might have managed to close them, but it would do more harm than good. Through her magic she could tell that he was bleeding just as badly within and without. If she sealed his wounds, he’d only swell from within from all that trapped blood. By the time she had exhausted herself, she had only managed to heal the worst of the punctures—and not entirely, at that.

Her bottom lip trembled, and Agnes fought a wail in her throat. “Alfred!!” More weeping, really, than calling for him with any optimism; his name simply an excuse for the primal, lamenting howl that was building in her chest.

And yet, incredibly, her call was answered by one of Alfred’s characteristic mournful moans. Out from the darkness the thrall emerged, shambling into the magelight near the elevator, carrying a messy, disordered stack of all the supplies the Watchers had abandoned in their hasty flight.

The study needed a new candelabra. Agnes was tempted to knock Alfred to pieces and used his bones for parts.

Instead, she lifted herself onto her knees, high enough to fist her fingers through Alfred’s rib cage and around his sternum, wrenching him bodily into the elevator. As soon as he was securely inside she slammed the gate shut, and punched the lever into gear. Finally, with the squeaking of gears and torturous slowness, the elevator began to ascend.

And then it was quiet. Just the creaking of the lift as it rose, level by level, back to the surface. Impossible to tell how long it would take: impossible to know if or how the floors above had reshuffled themselves in the time they’d been down among the dead.

Agnes was combing her fingers through Emmrich’s hair, watching the too-slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, when Alfred moaned beside them.

“What?” Agnes asked, sharply, turning to the thrall.

The vacant pits of Alfred’s eyes bored into her, and he clutched his skeletal hands over his sternum, looking like the very picture of an old Orlesian woman clutching her perils. Then he issued forth another low, pathetic cry.

Agnes bristled. “Yes, I know you didn’t consent, but you are too slow and the need is too great. If it makes you feel any better, I took no pleasure out of it.”

Alfred made another low moan, utterly unsoothed, but Agnes paid the thrall no mind, turning back to Emmrich. In the dim of her magelight, still hovering above her, the floor of the elevator was shining—a steadily widening pool of blood reflecting the twinkling green light.

Agnes held Emmrich as gingerly as she could, but he murmured in her arms—something too low for her to understand, a discontented sound—but then he was coughing, great wet hacks, blood bubbling out of his mouth and down his chin. Agnes wiped his face clean with her sleeve, holding back a mounting sob.

“It’s alright, Emmrich,” she told him, putting all the confidence she did not feel into her voice. “We’re on our way up. We’ll get you help soon. You’re going to be alright.”

Emmrich gave a feeble shake of his head, cracked his eyes open to look at her. His gaze implored her to come closer, so Agnes dropped her head until she felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek, ducking her ear close to his mouth to make out his labored whisper:

“A-apologize.”

Terrible lump in her throat and her eyes swelling with tears. She could barely breathe around the sob in her chest. ‘ Get yourself together, Gallatus.’ But the rush of love she felt for him was so overwhelming, then. Who else, on death’s doorstep, would waste breath on the feelings of a thrall? But that was Emmrich, all softness and tenderness, even for the weak spirit that animated Alfred.

Agnes was putting as much distance as she could between herself and the thought that there was a very real possibility that she was about to lose him, and it would be entirely her fault.

She blinked tears from her eyes, swallowed the limp in her throat. No, no room for that. Apologize. If she didn’t do it now that he had asked, Emmrich would not easily forgive her. She croaked the words around the sob in her throat:

“I’m sorry, Alfred. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

‘If I was not more frightened than I have ever been before in my life, I never would have done it.’

Agnes was silent for the remainder of the ascent. Listening for Emmrich’s breathing. Hold his wrist for the reassurance of feeling his pulse flicker, faintly, under her touch.

But when the elevator arrived at last in the Mourn Watch quarters, and the gate sprang open, the world exploded into cacophony.

There was panic and shouting and they were lifting Emmrich out of her arms, setting him on a levitating bier someone conjured to better get him to the infirmary. Someone was asking her questions—shaking her shoulder—but she was still dizzy from the lyrium and the effort of her magic, and the sudden action and noise was disorienting. But she folded one leg underneath her, then another, and rose to her feet, stumbling after the group of other Watchers. She needed a better look at Emmrich, to see that his chest was still rising and falling—

“Agnes. Agnes.”

Johanna, taking her by the shoulder and shaking her roughly. “Agnes, listen to me. What happened?”

Then, with one not-so-gentle push in the direction of the dormitories, Johanna left her, turning on her heel to follow the other Watchers down to the infirmary.

Scratch-scratch-scratch. The harsh scrub of the brush against Agnes’ bare skin echoed in the vast, porcelain-tiled chamber of the communal washroom. It was unusual for her to have the whole space to herself, and it felt too big, too quiet, too empty. Her mouth was pulled into a tight line, her face set in an expression meant to stand against the threatening tide of her tears.

Her blouse had been so soaked through with Emmrich’s blood she had needed to quite literally peel it off of her body. By the time she had at last stumbled, numb and senseless with fright, into the washroom, the blood had already begun to congeal, sticky and crimson. She scrubbed her body down once with peony-scented soap until her skin was stinging, then began a second time, top to bottom. She crammed the brush’s bristles beneath her fingernails, desperate to clean imagined drops of dried blood from the beds of her nails.

Stepped under the spigot, Agnes and pulled the chain to release a flume of warm water from the central tank above that fed the ring of showers below. Until that moment, she had managed to keep herself together. But as the water rinsed the soap from her body and after her second wash and still ran away pink—when Agnes realized that somehow she had managed to get some of Emmrich’s blood into her hair, as well—she broke.

A keening wail pulled itself out of her throat, and she collapsed on herself, dropping into a squat, clutching her bare arms around her bare legs, rocking herself on the cold, wet tiled floor. How much blood could Emmrich have left in him, if he had bled out so badly she was finding it dried and crusted in her hair? Her fault, her fault! The whole point of her being a Watcher to begin with had been to protect him and she had failed at even that straightforward task. How far gone did someone need to be before the healers could do nothing for them but help them pass comfortably? The possibility of Emmrich dying drove her to her feet—she should be there, she should be at his side—but found she was too much of a coward to endure the experience of watching him breathe his last. The thought of it alone made her sob like a child, right there in the washroom where anyone who might happen by to brush their teeth or take a piss could plainly hear her.

Her fault, her fault. Agnes could not say what was more terrible: how much she feared to lose Emmrich, or the guilt at how completely she had failed to protect him. When she returned at last to her dormitory, she caught sight of herself—wet and pathetic as a starved alleycat in the rain—in the looking glass over her wash basin. Before she was fully aware of what she was doing, her fist struck out and made contact with the silvered glass, and sent shards like dazzling rain into the washbasin and onto the floor beneath.

What to do with all the hours that followed? With that dreadful waiting? First, when her fit of frustration and self-hatred had passed, Agnes seated herself at her desk. With a pair of fine tweezers and the aid of a magnifying glass, she picked each of the sharp, sand-sized granules of broken mirror from her knuckles. She had split the center knuckle extraordinarily well, nearly to the bone. She grimaced, but did not whine or flinch, as she had to root among the blood ligament for the sharp shards. There was no doubt in her mind that for her spectacular failure, she was thoroughly deserving of whatever hurt she had inflicted upon herself.

When her wounds were cleaned to her satisfaction, Agnes wrapped them. Then, draped in her evening robe, she paced the room. Heated water for tea, then left it to oversteep, forgotten, in the pot. Considered the bottle of fine Antivan brandy she had in the drawer of her desk, but feared it would make her drowsy enough to sleep, and that, she did not want. She would have no rest until she knew what had become of Emmrich.

When the knock came at her door hours later, she nearly toppled the chair she had been sitting in out of haste to answer it. Anxiety squeezed at her throat, and Agnes felt herself becoming watery-eyed all over again, but she blinked away her tears as she wrapped her hand around the knob and opened the door.

Pink, healthy flush of his cheeks. Brightness— aliveness— in his eyes.

“Hello there, I thought you might like your drawing materials back—”

But before he could finish the thought, Agnes flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and dragging him into a tight, desperate embrace. Fighting for her words around the sob mounting in her chest, “Emmrich, I’m so, so sorry—”

He stiffened in surprise, caught off guard by such sudden, unprecedented affection. But when Agnes began to weep against his neck, he relaxed in her arms, wrapping his own around her to pat her back paternally. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, Agnes, dear. You did wonderfully, and it is over now. We are both unharmed.”

Catching the hint, Agnes released him, retreating to return a respectable amount of distance between them. But that gave Volkarin the space to look at her, and as he did, his eyes narrowed.

“Or at least, I thought we were both unharmed—what has happened to your hand?” Volkarin lifted her right hand, looking critically at the gauze she had roped around her knuckles, already nearly bled through. “And you are terribly pale… you look awful, Agnes, perhaps you ought to head down to the infirmary yourself. Would you like me to accompany you?”

Agnes shook her head, lifting her wounded hand to hold against her chest. She hoped Volkarin would not notice the shattered glass on the floor on his way out and intuit how exactly she’d managed to hurt it.

But was that not something? That he could notice? That he was here to notice, breathing in her room, looking at her, blood singing life in his veins?

“I’m alright, really,” Agnes told him, with a contrite smile. “I was more worried about you than anything else.”

“Then I too am sorry, to have caused you such a fright. But you have nothing to worry about now,” he told her. Jovially, he added, “Alfred may still be feeling a bit sore over the way you manhandled him, but I’m sure it isn’t anything I can’t smooth over for you.”

At that moment, Agnes could not care less what the thrall thought of her, or what she had done. “Why can’t you teach him that your life is of paramount importance?” she said, trying not to let her frustration with Alfred show. “That it is far more important than our research, nevermind our supplies?”

“Is it? I don’t know that’s the case,” Volkarin answered, expressing the very same dubious lack of judgment that had made Agnes’ protection of him (and indeed, her very induction into the Mourn Watch to begin with) necessary in the first place. He walked over to Agnes’ table, setting down the leather folio that contained her parchment and charcoal, and opened to the first sheet.

A chill ran down Agnes’ spine at sight. The sight of the half-completed drawing transported her right back to that chamber in the Necropolis. She did not want to look at it, did not want to revisit the moment when tranquility had turned to terror.

But, “Glorious,” was all Volkarin said, tracing his fingertip along the neat lines of her sketch. “You have an incomparable talent, Agnes. If only I hadn’t caused all that trouble, perhaps you might have finished this drawing…” his fingers hovered over the blank space in the bottom right corner, where the rest of the facade had not been fully rendered. “Now, we may never see it again.”

Volkarin sounded genuinely sad about that. But to Agnes, that did not seem so terrible—in fact, if she never saw that cursed pool again, she’d count herself lucky.

Not so lucky, of course, as she was in this moment: to have Volkarin with her, alive, unscathed.

Later, after Volkarin had left, Agnes took a dustpan and collected all the shards of glass off of her floor. Took paste and sat at her desk, cutting her fingertips on the edges of the glass pieces until she set each shard back in its proper place, like a puzzle. Smiling in satisfaction when it was done, Agnes wiped the blood off her hands, checking her hands for the last time for any remaining granules of mirror glass.

Tomorrow, she would hang it back at its place on the wall, above the washbasin. And she was resolved to remember, every time she looked at her reflection in the shattered glass:

Memento mori. Nothing lasts forever. Hold tight to what is beloved for as long as you are able.

‘Protect him as fiercely as you do your own heart, or you will never again be able to look yourself in the eyes for as long as you live.’

#oh my gosh this is so good #the description of the beast whipping Emmrich around is so visceral and well written #and agnes’s calculated actions during the fight vs completely breaking down afterward? delicious

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