Cross Effects > Areas
The Citadel of Sorcery
YOLF:
Edelgard
Magic is mad. It's unpredictable. It's what ruined all of them, and she only learned it because she needed help, but in the Nexus it had not helped her even once yet! All she had to show for getting involved with sorcery here was pain and anxiety.
The drum of Sakura's heart was distant in Edelgard's ears. Her breath was erratic against the mage's skin, and her posture drew in on itself. "Don't know," she said, tightening her fist around the remnants of the nameless spear again, pushing it lightly against Sakura's belly. "You do these things. You understand better. Why did it break? Look at it."
She did not look up to meet the girl's eyes.
SINIB:
Sakura
"Rin." She ordered curtly. The familar pulled herself out of the wall and bowed. She walked forward and took the remnants from Edelgard's outstretched hand.
Secretly, Sakura was relieved. Edelgard had gotten herself into something dangerous, and she was too simple minded in her thoughts, or too focused to care about the consequences.
Sakura lifted Edelgard up and began walking to the couch. "I'll do my best." She answered softly. "My honest guess would be that its creator is no longer with us in this realm, however."
YOLF:
Edelgard
She winced like the sword that had been pointed at her gut all this time was finally driven in, and came out the other side. Its weight sank into her iron stomach, and mechanically she followed Sakura to the couch.
Edelgard had been sitting there for too long before, pondering useless things like her future, and implausible things like what she could possibly do for the young mage in this citadel, before her thoughts melted into restless sleep. If she sat down it was all going to come rushing back again, but she couldn't avoid it.
She swayed awkwardly on her heels. Her heart should be roaring, her hands tensing for blood, her very self furious for this deception. All those grand plans, those great promises and that refuge of purpose, and it was gone, just like that?
Yet the only thing Edelgard wanted to break was herself. She saw nothing else.
SINIB:
Sakura
Sakura laid her friend down on the couch, wishing this news would hurt her less than it had. She sat down herself, and placed Edelgard's head on her thighs, resting her there.
She began gently petting her hair. Silently, she thought back to when she'd lost everything she believed in. She remembered the dagger that was buried into her heart when she'd found out she wasn't needed or wanted by her own family. She recalled the feeling of fear and loss upon finding herself in a foreign country across the world, where day and night had been swapped. Where night lasted forever.
And then, she remembered her sister. Her auroa borealis. The one beautiful thing in her life.
"You're not going to be abandoned, Edel. Just take deep breaths, and remember that."
She was afraid more complicated words would unnessecarily confuse her.
YOLF:
Edelgard
She breathed in, and her throat trembled like it was frostbite and sharpness that invaded it. It was what she expected. The only thing Edelgard remembered from growing up was fierceness, and gentleness was so distant that these gestures felt new.
Gentleness from afar, reflected but not felt, given shallowly but not received, those things she understood. But the Forsaken were not soft, their land was not kind, and they could not breathe without armoring even their innermost parts. They would have suffocated in the pit they dug themselves, had they not torn out what was unneeded. But it hurt to do so, every day and then some. Edelgard's failures were a thesis written on these premises.
Did comfort have the right to be anything but illusion? Was refuge anything but a complacency? Was self-sacrifice not a poison? Edelgard could not change these things. She was more prisoner to them than most of her kinsmen; and when she remembered this today she hated them too.
She scoffed at Sakura. "Swears who? Thoughtless."
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version