Severed
Reality snapped around them and unfolded again in the shape of the aircraft's deck. Gasping for air, Anwen straightened and frantically looked around her, searching for her companions, relieved to find them all – disoriented but unscathed – on the floor around her.
“Brace yourself! It's gonna blow!”
The aircraft steered away, leaving the collapsing city far on starboard, as a blinding light engulfed the tetrahedron and a deafening silence shrouded the world around them before a thundering implosion. A hot dry wind swept the deck, a smothering scent of ozone drowning them before the salt and iodine from the sea returned, bearing a cold heavy rain and the constant whimper of the wind.
“Subtle.”, Sayida remarked. “I like your style, Commander.”
Anwen let out a breathless chuckle.
“Thank you. Is everyone alright?”
“I'm deaf.”, Braham shrugged. “But it could have been worse. Remind me again why I followed you through this?”
“Something about saving the world, I believe.”
“And destroying a good chunk of the bay at the same time.”, the corsair remarked. “You just won your friend the cactus quite a lot of money there, Commander! I never thought you'd manage to bring back everyone unscathed. Your new friend seems a bit disoriented, though.”, she noted, considering the sylvari, standing awkwardly apart from the rest of the group.
Anwen nodded pensively, the sudden weight of Braham and Meryw's gaze on her nape almost crippling.
“Meryw, would you escort our two guests inside? Taimi must be very anxious to meet them.”
“Dame Anwen... are you sure you’re alright?”
She let out a breathless chuckle. “No, but I will be... I must. I... owe him that much.”
She turned to Braham, his features drawn and his eyes darkened.
“Braham...”
“Go, now.”, the young norn offered with a forlorn smile. “I don't know what I would give for a second chance like this, Commander... so you better seize it.”
“I'm sorry. It's unfair.”
“Yes it is.”, he breathed shakily. “Life often is. So you gotta take what little it gives.”
Anwen nodded pensively and offered a reassuring smile to her shieldmaiden, who proceeded to escort the two rescued Inquest inside, where Taimi waited for them, while she crossed the deck to the prow and reached out to place her hand on Trahearne's shoulder.
A shiver ran him through at her touch, a painful confusion darkening his eyes and shadowing his glow.
“Everything is silent. The voice of Mordremoth is gone, but... The Dream–... Dear friend, you must tell me everything.”, he beseeched, turning a distressed glance to her.
“I don't know where to start.”, she murmured, a weight settling in her lungs as she struggled to breathe. “What do you remember? What's your last memory?”
“The defeat of the fleet, and... a prisoner caravan. Mordrems leading Destiny's Edge and myself into the jungle. They said Mordremoth had plans for us... What happened? Are Zojja and Captain Thackeray... ?”
“They're safe. We rescued them both.”
She took in a deep, quaking breath.
“We... defeated the dragon but... It came with a price.”
“Our people survived.”, he reasoned, a sudden dread overwhelming him. “Did our Mother...”
“She's alive.”, Anwen hastily reassured. “And, she was on the path of recovery, the last time I visited. But... The death of Mordremoth took a toll on her. On all of us...”
The evident relief on his face shattered her heart a little more.
“Trahearne, the attack on the Pale Tree, the loss of the Fleet, Mordremoth... That was three years ago. I searched for you after you disappeared. And I found you. But I was too late to save you. We defeated the dragon but... it had dug its claws too deep in you... it had claimed you as a Champion and... your last will was..." Her voice died in her throat. "You sacrificed yourself to destroy the dragon to the root... To save us all.”
An expression of grief and confusion shadowed his face, immediately enlightened by pensive resignation and relief.
“My greatest fear was to see my people in the clutches of this monster. If by my life, or my death, I could avoid it, I must not regret.”
She let out a broken breath. That sounded like him – of course it did! It was him. Except it wasn't... Trahearne was dead, dead by her hand, and yet he was here, right in front of her, breathing, thinking, remembering everything that made him who he was and... so confused, so pained, so forlorn that it broke a heart she thought his loss had already shattered.
He hesitantly shifted and reached for her, as if testing his own physicality, laying a warm, comforting hand on her shoulder. She blinked, furiously willing her breath to still as the pouring rain drowned away the tears burning her lids.
"Anwen..."
Her name was soft, almost silenced by the wind.
"If I... died", he hesitated, almost tasting the word as he said it. "how... How am I here? How did I return? How did I end up here, in... Elona?"
"The pod- ... The pod you were trapped into, it... served a purpose, other than to hold and detain. Mordremoth... We have found months afterwards that it had attuned Zhaitan’s magic... After the Pact defeated it, its domain was left unattended and the other dragons feasted on this magic, and claimed part of Zhaitan’s power to themselves."
Truth. Hardly ever pure and never simple. But it was a grounding notion. Familiar and reassuring, to see his interest piqued, his head tilt so slightly as his eyes lit with a spark of curiosity. She could have rambled on for hours, just to imprint this image of him, listening intently, his features drawn sharply against the setting sun filtering through the heavy storm clouds, his glow shifting with every touch of the rain.
“Mordremoth... used this to make his minions... turn our dead into soldiers for the dragon's army... and honed his power of creation to make his army undefeatable. Every time we felled one of his lieutenant, they reappeared, returned to torment those who had known them, the comrades who saw them die, who drowned in the guilt of being unable to save them... of having to kill them themselves..."
The last words turned to ash, the pain of burns never quite healed – scars that glistened and shifted on her skin where she had held him as he burst in flames – strangling her.
"When we entered the heart of the dragon's domain... we were faced with such clones... Logan... Zojja... And, now..."
His eyes darkened with clarity.
"Me..."
The sudden dimming of his glow filled her heart with dread.
“A weapon to a dead dragon... A revenant, come to haunt you..."
The Orrian had a saying – the dead return for either love or revenge.
"I am sorry, Anwen... I never meant to..."
"I'm not."
A gust of wind swept the deck of the aircraft, and a shiver ran her through even as she closed the gap between them.
“You haunt me, Trahearne – my every waking moment, my every dream, my every nightmare – ever since I lost you. Your absence haunts me. And if your presence must haunt me now, I will gladly accept it."
The words died on her lips... but he already knew.
"Anything rather than lose you again.”
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Happy anniversary, Æthnen!
Two years ago, today, I made this beautiful fern for my Trahearne lives AU and I've never looked back!
More pics and some lore and creation details under the cut.
The choice of face preset has been a real pain in the arse (Trahearne's facial features in creation mode when, Arenanet?!) and took a good long time staring at my Total Makeover Kits, but I'm quite happy with the result.
The loss of the dark thicker leaves framing his face to Mordremoth's corruption left furrows in their stead, and his once violet glow has turned golden due to the fusion with the dragon.
He lost his left arm to the dragon's possession and ultimate attempt on the Commander's life and arbours a complex prosthetic, a combination of asura and exalted technology fuelled and activated by his hard-earned control on the draconic magic that remained after Mordremoth's defeat.
Nightmares and draconic magic were not the only reminders he keeps from his possession - as the Dragon's unwilling Champion and Vessel, he retained some hold onto the Mordremoth's domain, and if the fact that flowers endemic to Caledon seemed to grow wherever he went was easy to ignore, the entanglements and coils of vines that armoured his necromantic minions called for some reconciliation with the darkest hours of his existence.
He also develops a strong bond with Aurene/ First, a connection through the energy he was once the vessel of, filtered and diffracted through a prism to allowed the Egg to hatch.
And an evergrowing attachment for the little dragon he and Anwen consider as their daughter.
He rarely - if ever - returns to The Grove after Maguuma.
It never felt like home to him, his heart turned towards the shores of Orr long before he left to complete his wyld-hunt, and the divide between him and his kin too deep already when the darkness shrouding him called to the deep ingrained fear of the dragon of shadow and death... irreconcilable now that his mere presence called the memory of the shadow of a dead dragon within them all.
To conclude... I really need to get back to writing for this verse as most of the development has happened in conversations between @lilypixy and I, in my head or via answers to asks, so... if I have as much time on my hands as I expect this week I'll try and actually finish one or two of these WIPs!
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