Runesight

3 - Mist

--- Aymiae, twenty-two years ago ---

"They're all dead. Every last one of them. Tell the widows and mothers and let them mourn."

The words echoed uselessly in Aymiae's mind, replaying like an annoying child who didn't quite understand what they meant yet. A child who thought she understood. Aymi didn't know how to banish the thoughts, only remembering that she was useless.

The world around her played out like it was happening to someone else. Usually when something terrible happened to someone she cared about, it gave her strength and bravery to stand up and make the world right.

But you can't solve death no matter how hard you try.

Aymi felt the tears bite her eyes. "Tell the widows and mothers and let them mourn."

What about the sisters? The friends? The daughters? How many people would simply not know the fate of their loved ones because they didn't realize their brothers and fathers had been in that battle?

Aymi wished she'd been someone who didn't know, that way she would have the strength at least to join the group scouting out the battlefield to make sure that Foralen was right. But in her heart she knew that if her brother had lived, he would be here by now, reassuring her worries and joking about how weak the other army was compared to him.

Slowly the reports trickled in, a battlefield of ash. All of them were dead.

The only good thing from this whole mess was the fact that it gave princess Steris the chance to seize the throne. Aymi watched with hollow eyes, swollen blue from crying, as the crown was placed on her head and she began to make order from the chaos.

The rest of Reiaran seemed just as shocked by this turn of events, everyone assumed that prince Talein would win in the end. But most of his army had been destroyed by Foralen.

They started calling her the hero. She'd ended the war after all, only a year into the carnage. Aymi wasn't sure how to feel about that yet, it brought another kind of grief to think of it. No one had seen the hero since she'd come through the gates and started shouting to people about the fallen. Didn't...didn't she care? Aymi hadn't really seen any emotion on her face when she'd said that.

Aymi was more concerned though that now she was alone. Eventually someone remembered to tell the sisters, but Aymiae already knew he was gone. She already knew that she had to take his dream for herself.

And so it was that Aymiae, devoid of family and devoid of peace, removed herself from the city of her birth for the first time in memory. She brought all her meager money and all her things, traveling south and east, toward something more.

--one year later--

Aymi felt her face melt into something else. It was a feeling that used the sense she had of her own mana rather than her nerves, but it was similar, like a creeping up her spine that was...somehow centralized on her face? Not sure how accurate the illusion looked, Aymi peeked out the deserted tavern's window, trying not to scream as she watched the bloody group of Pitten marching through the village.

They looked horrifying to her, though she knew plenty of humans thought the more rough Tuvei were disgusting. A Pitten was just another kind of person, except they had gills, webbed fingers, and their hands were strange shapes as they were designed to move water more effectively. They had strange proportions and stranger minds.