#╚»★ Every tear contains a memory ;; ( In Character )

[a03heralding]

Unbound

★ Please note that this piece of writing contains spoilers for the second act of the game! ★Read under the cut for more :)

★Prompt: A moment with Shadowheart after deserting Shar ★Characters: Shadowheart. Other Characters are only mentioned in this piece ★Tags: SFW, slight angst ★This is just a short draft I wrote a few days ago and likely won't be expanding on. ★Enjoy :)

It's a little past midnight when Shadowheart breaks away from the camp. 

With her bedroll neatly tucked and footfall light, she doesn’t dare glance back at her slumbering companions. She notes how the smoldering campfire illuminates the crease in Lae’zel’s brow, how the embers pop and fall so closely to Karlach’s face she questions if the woman attracts flame, and how Halsin’s bare feet are set solidly against the soil even as he slumbers.

She moves beneath the guise of darkness, the realm that she’s outcast from; just as she has deserted Shar, Shar has in turn deserted her. The cool breeze bites her exposed skin, the long loss of the memories she once cherished now a weighted stone of regret nestled deep within her gut. She knows that one of her comrades, her fellow disciples, or perhaps even a lover long forgotten will emerge from the shadow, gifted by the cover of night and press a blade to the delicate skin of her throat. Penance for her unfaithfulness, penance for her weakness. 

Her feet are bare, enduring how the thickets tempt her skin to crawl and the pebbles jut into her soles. Even when she’s greeted by the shallows of the Chionthar and a chill lances through her body sprawling up her legs into her torso, her feet do not cease their undying march. Shadowheart’s breathlessness isn’t from the way the frosty water nips at her skin and tugs at her clothes, nor is it from the great rippling ships that pass through the night meters away from her. 

It’s the moon that sits expectantly above her. It gazes down at her and weeps its diamante tears into the black of the sky, casting its own visage onto the once azure waters of the river. She feels bare beneath its stare, not even her submerged lower waist and legs safe from the brilliant white beam Selûne skunk stripes through the water and the subsequent land beyond. Shadowheart feels the urge to say something, perhaps to solidify her abandonment of the tyrant that plucked her away from her parents and cast her long lost memories away from her. 

Though when she goes to speak her tongue lies flat in her mouth, her lips uselessly opening and closing as if she’s suddenly choking on the stone in her throat that she struggles to swallow around. 

Instead, Shadowheart weeps. She weeps for her sudden loss of direction in her life, the loss of her once cherished memories. She weeps for the sorrow her parents must have felt when she didn’t return from the forest. Then she weeps for Lae’zel, hunted and scorned by those who she once fought alongside and entrusted with her life. Then for Karlach, who doesn’t want to die but cannot live a life free and worth living. Then for each and every one of the band of merry folk waiting for her back at camp, all deserters in their own right, all wishing for a better life than the ones they’ve managed to slip away from.

Hot tears born of frustration and nurtured by both fear and anguish embark on a scalding path down the cleric’s pallid cheeks and hang suspended on her jawline. Each tear evokes the water around her to ripple, and Selûne's visage to shimmer. 

When she glances up her chest feels raw, and her eyes tender. Where Shar delights in her anguish, Selûne pities her. The water encompassing her waist becomes bearable, and the breeze dissipates in the night’s eerie silence. A gentle hand caresses her wet jaw, beckoning her to gaze upon her reflection, to see what her decisions have wrought. 

it's Selûne who guides her, encourages her to glance up at the white wisps that seep through the roots of her hair. It’s with a stuttering gasp and a glassy disbelieving stare that Shadowheart realizes that the moonlight goddess seeks to cleanse her, ready to take her into her open arms and embrace her with her blessing. And so she stoops to the water, head tilted and framed by the thickets coating the bank, her fingers combing through her silken hair as she wades further and lets the chill envelope her scalp. 

Shar leaves her just as the black in her hair does, the inkiness once inhibiting her locks slipping out into the ever black reflected in the water never to be seen again. She doesn’t need to speak; her ashen hair that crowns the top of her head and scales from the tips of her hair conveys what she tries to voice. And, for the first time in her sentient life, Shadowheart is unbound.