Night and Day

Irrisorie knew what that was. It was life in a little blue syringe.

She looked at Vorian sweetly, like he was the medic come to chase all her cares away...

The needle pushed under her skin, deep into her arm, swimming in the paint. She felt the light pressure, then the slow dissipation as the plug on the syringe pushed in, and all the shining blue life rolled into her...

She held her breath.

One.... Two... Three... Four...

And then she felt it. Flooding into her brain, washing around and curling up the walls like a bit of rumbling ocean water.

“Oh,” she whispered. The water rushed down her spine, filling her chest. Iri’s back arched as she drew in a thick, heady breath. “Oh,” she hummed.

She took a shallower, gasping breath now, letting herself fall suddenly against the table. She rolled her head back, awestruck eyes roving the room. Their glow seemed to visibly rise in intensity, shining in the darkness. She hummed lowly as the water rushed into her arms and her legs, and her fingers and toes curled, whole body clenching. Iri swallowed hard as her eyes rolled every so slightly back into her head. Abruptly, her whole body relaxed again with a breathy sigh.

“Oh,” she sighed, and settled back into her restraints. She blinked deliberately, breathing still thick, and looked at Vorian. A smile of pure joy slowly spread across her face, radiating from the glitter of her eyes.

The room was suddenly full of creatures. There was no awareness of their coming; they simply were not, and then they were. Large ones and small ones, magnalui and wolves, birds flitting around the ceiling, a massive crocadilian on the floor. They moved through things, in and out of them, milling amongst the bricks of the walls. Through Vorian. So this continued for a few minutes, as Iri looked fondly upon them all, giggling as a butterfly landed on her nose.

But then they all melted. They all melted to a black mist that clung and swirled on the floor. As they did, so did the discarded bands of her restraints, loosed by the ethereal beasts. All disappeared except for the butterfly, who fluttered its wings and drifted away...

Irrisorie stood and stretched, eyeing Vorian. He remained still, and so Irrisorie drew close. She looked at him kindly, then cocked her head, listening to something. A slow smile of understanding.

“Your paint has a story to tell,” she said sweetly, like whispering a lover’s secret. She reached out and placed a hand on Vorian’s chest, then curled her fingers and drew it back. The paint followed her hand, glistening red as it curled in tendrils about her fingers, wandering faithfully up her arm. She stepped back from Vorian, broke the stream.

Then with her palms she fashioned the beautiful red paint into a sphere, and with all the fervor of a young artist, threw the sphere upon the wall. It splashed out, splaying droplets in every direction, staining the wall wet read. With a swipe of her hand, Irrisorie ordered the wetness into place, and it made a picture. A face. She drew her hand closed, and another appeared. Then another, and another, faces in red relief. And then a last one. Irrisorie knew this one.

“Kvothe...” she whispered.

Irrisorie turned back to Vorian, piercing gold eyes. “Their paint is mixed with yours. You took it. Why?”

Then a breeze, a whirlwind of air pushed through the room, sending Irrisorie’s black hair thrashing wildly behind her, and her cape taught like a wind-tossed sail. Whispers rose and fell on the wind, and Irrisorie closed her eyes and listened. Released from her bidding, the paint slid down to the floor, and in slithering streams, crawled back into Vorian.

The breeze faded, and Irrisorie took a few steps back, in absent bliss. She sat once more on the table, the black mist collecting to her, shrouding her body from sight.

When it faded, she was restrained once more. But the restraints had never been broken. Reality had.

Irrisorie’s hair had fallen across her face, and she peered between tangled black and gold strands at Vorian.

“Etherium is sooooo goooooood...” she thrummed, rolling her head and rubbing her cheek against the softness of her hair... She drew a deep breath, and the ocean washed around in the cavity of her lungs.

She laughed then, a sweet, charming sound. A child’s laugh of joy.

“So good.”

It didn't take long. She stretched and moved within her bonds, sighing almost contentedly. Then she looked up and smiled, of all things, at him.

And that's when everything got weird.

Suddenly the room was full of creatures, large and small. "What the hell?" Vorian said, looking around, his hand going to the hilt of the sword that rested easily at his hip. There were bird, butterflies, magnului... A flickercat sat at his feet, looking up at him and then walking through his legs. He even saw an Abonean terrorbeast, lunging at him before they suddenly all exploded into little particles of mist.

The mist fell, sinking to the floor and turning black. There it swirled around, silently, threateningly. Silence clung to the room as thickly as the mist clung to the floor. The syringe broke that silence when it fell out of Vorian's hand, shattering into hundreds of little shards of glass that were hidden by the black mist on the ground.

Vorian's black hair swayed around his head as he turned to look at the girl, who was now standing next to the table she should have been restrained on. Vorian gripped his sword's hilt tightly then, preparing to kill her if it came to it, but something wasn't right...

Before he could figure out just what that something was, he felt her hand on his chest and looked at her. Or down at her, rather. At six foot two, Vorian was a tall man, taller than most other people, but the girl was short. It didn't matter though, because she was making up for it in strangeness.

“Your paint has a story to tell.”

Vorian frowned. "Paint? What do you mea-"

It was a rare thing for yellow to enter Vorian's eyes. But when he looked down and saw the thick red liquid oozing out from him as her hand pulled away and the words died on his throat, that's exactly what happened. Little threads of yellow crisscrossed the grey as he instinctually jumped back. However, there wasn't any pain. None of the blood stuck to his clothes... it just hung there, near her hand.

Is it another one of her strange illusions? he wondered, trying to calm himself, as if he hadn't just seen blood pulled from his chest.

The girl continued on, seemingly undisturbed by the fact that she was handling a floating sphere of blood. She took the sphere and threw it at the wall, rubbing details out with her hand.

Those details continued to shift around, glistening red in the low light of the room, until it formed a face.

A face that Vorian recognized.

"There is one task you must do, Vorian Algaterra, if you wish to prove your allegiance to us."

Vorian looked up at the woman. Saine was her name. Saine Niirdassa. "I have taken your oath, sworn on my blood to follow you... What else do you need?"

"You will forgive us if we do not take the word of a teenager who's been beaten into submission with the most weight, Algaterra. No, if you want to prove that you are truly loyal to the Unum, you will find and kill a Stellar Mythic."

Oh, he found one. Vorian ambushed the man in Demas with the help of another Unum member, and under their watchful eye, he killed the Mythic. He'd never forget the way the blood splattered across the dirty floor in that basement, or the feel of it as it ran down his forearms...

"No," he whispered. "She shouldn't know that. How does she--"

Then another face started to appear. It was a woman this time.

"Very well done, Vorian," the old man crooned when the screams finally stopped echoing through the halls. "You've learned the process well, and quickly! It usually takes much longer to grasp the breaking process, but you've taken to it admirably."

Vorian looked down at the woman that was tied to a table. Even in her clearly tortured state, she was beautiful. He recognized her. Her name was Elia Ylonin. He remembered her from his days in the Tower.

How long had it been since he'd defected? A year and a half? No, two years. It hadn't taken long for the Unum to notice his potential, and the abilities that he already had. In the Tower, he'd been called a prodigy, the sort that's seen maybe once a generation. But they'd held him back, only growing stricter as he tried to push farther and farther ahead in his training. But the Unum? The Unum recognized his power, and they would cultivate it, while the Mythics hid their fear behind the veil of caution.

That was why he stood over her now. It was just another step on the road he'd chosen to walk, and he refused to stumble. The woman had been broken, and the information they sought, obtained. So, now, as the old man handed Vorian a dagger, he knew what had to be done.

He could not hesitate.

He could not waver.

The metal flashed across her neck, quick as serpent's strike, and then the blood came. It flowed out over her throat, staining her clothes and the table beneath her with a thick, dark red as the last of her life left her body.

But at least she was still beautiful, even in death...

"What the hell are you doing?" he roared at her. "Stop this now!"

'Before I make you,' he wanted to continue. But what would that do? Add another face to those that she could paint in the blood?

Another face formed, and it almost made Vorian's heart stop.

It belonged to his father.

The rain fell slowly that day, deep within the heart of the Culsu swamp. It made Vorian's clothes cling to his body, stuck his hair to his face. Kvothe was gone. After holding him for a year, they'd finally lost him when some Swords found out about their little outpost and organized a rescue strike.

Of course, those Swords were all dead now, after their getaway speeder got shot down, but Kvothe's body had been nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he wandered off into the swamp, hoping to make it back on his own. As if it would do him any good, with the condition he was in.

"A loyal traitor is still a traitor, Vorian," Kvothe's voice echoed.

Vorian's fists clinched, making long, hard cords of muscle stand out sharply along his forearms. "So you want to see how far my loyalty goes to the Unum, Ishar?" he muttered to the rain and the trees. "So be it."

A few minutes later found Vorian sitting inside, planning with some other men of the Unum.

"Tell your moles in the Tower to keep an eye out for Kvothe Algaterra," Vorian said, his voice low. "If he returns, then start observing Uriel Algaterra. Let some time pass, so that Kvothe can feel like some sense of normalcy has returned to his life and then..." Vorian made a sharp cutting motion with one of his hands. "End Uriel."

"STOP IT!" He yelled. But she didn't seem to hear him. She just went on painting. The sound of metal rasping on leather filled the room as his sword came out of its sheath. Red and yellow worked through his eyes as he glared at her. "I won't tell you again!"

Still, she paid no heed to him. She just continued making the faces in blood. The next face was different than the rest. As such, he recognized it before it was even done.

"I told you," Voian said quietly, leaning in to talk into Fides' ear as he pushed his sword deeper into the Selonian's back, until he felt the crossguard pressing against flesh, "that you are expendable." The blade twisted then, and Fides screamed as his blood ran down onto Vorian's hands. "I told you to stay out of it. I gave you a chance to avoid this fate, but you wouldn't listen." Again, the sword twisted within Fides' flesh. "And now you'll die, all because you were too stubborn to listen to me. All because you wanted to help dear Kvothe." He glanced over at his brother, who was helpless, held in bonds of the Mythos and watching with wide eyes that were rimmed with black.

"Fat lot of good you did him, huh?"

Vorian brought his boot up and shoved then, pushing Fides off of his sword and roughly down to the ground. He watched the blood pool out on the ground beneath the fallen Mythic for a moment and then leaned down, wiping the blood from his sword onto Fides' fur.

When it was clean, he stood up, looking back toward his brother. "Now, Kvothe, you and I have a trip to make."

He hadn't realized that he forgot to clean the blood from his hands until later, when they made it back to the Unum outpost in the swamp.

"I'm going to kill you," he said darkly. The darkened steel of his blade glinted dangerously in what little light there was in the room as he stalked toward her. "You won't make one more damned face, you hear me?!"

The sword came up, pausing in postion for a heartbeat before lashing out toward her back...

And then Kvothe's face was there.

"What?"

Vorian was suddenly back where he'd been standing, his sword in his sheath as if he'd never touched it. He stood there, staring at his brother's face. "What are you doing?"


“Kvothe...”

She knows him? No, wait, of course she does, she was there with him! Vorian shook his head, trying to wake up from whatever nightmare he'd been sucked into.

Kvothe ducked low, trying once again to break past Vorian's guard, but he should have learned by now that it wasn't going to happen. Vorian stepped easily to the side and slammed his practice sword into Kvothe's side, below his ribs. It would have been a killing blow, had they been fighting with real weapons.

That should have put an end to the practice fight.

But Vorian was determined to teach Kvothe a lesson today.

Everything started when he'd come across Kvothe and Fides in the halls of the Tower. Kvothe was, of course, moaning and complaining about Vorian, and about how he'd come so close to beating his big brother. Moaning about how it wasn't fair that everyone lauded on Vorian, while he was stuck in his shadow.

"Well, Kvothe, if you have a problem with it, then do something about it," Vorian had said. The challenge hadn't gone unheard, and so they'd met in the practice yards, in front of a small gathering of some of the other students that were out there.

Vorian dominated the fight from the beginning. He always beat Kvothe, but there were times when he just outright embarrassed his little brother. This was one of those times.

Vorian was going to teach Kvothe that, no matter how much he complained about it, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he hated it, he would always remain in his shadow.

And that was why, rather than stopping with the last blow, as he should have, he made one more.

The practice sword smacked loudly into Kvothe's face and sent him stumbling back, almost to the ground. A ripple of murmurs passed through the onlookers before a thick, heavy silence fell.

Kvothe glared at Vorian as a small stream of blood trickled down from his broken lip and off the edge of his chin. His eyes were solid red, with black rimming them.

That was when Vorian began to suspect that there might have been something more than just a sibling rivalry between them. On that day, fifteen years ago, Vorian realized that, at least on Kvothe's end, there was hatred.

There were too many other memories that wanted to come up at the sight of his brother's face. The Aethon, the time in the swamp, their recent fight in the mountains, any number of fights in the Tower...

“Their paint is mixed with yours. You took it. Why?”

She was looking at him, her eyes piercing, accusing. Or maybe he was just seeing them like that...

"What do you want from me?" he growled at her, meeting her accusing stare with a glare of his own. "You want an explanation? You want remorse?" HIs scowl deepened as his eye narrowed dangerously at this girl, this girl who had looked so incredibly harmless. "Whatever it is, you won't get it."

A wind arose before he could say anything else. Wind inside, where there shouldn't have been any. His shaggy hair blew gently around his shoulders as he held an arm up, shielding his face from it. Then the voices came.

They whispered on the wind, whispered to Vorian in tongues he couldn't understand. And through it all, that insufferable girl just stood there.

The blood began to ooze off of the walls then. It sank down to the floor and pooled into a great threatening mass that began to move towards him. "No," he whispered stepping back and away from it, "get away from me." The blood paid him no mind. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" he screamed at it. Still it came, slow and steady, splitting off into little rivulets that spread out across the floor.

They spread out around him and paused, as if looking at him, wondering what to do with him.

Then they all struck at once, leaping back into him like snakes striking. There was no pain, no other sensation to go with the blood as it reentered his body, but Vorian cringed nonetheless.

When he looked up, the girl was hidden from view behind a thick wall of the black mist that swirled around her....

...and then he was standing over her again. The syringe wasn't a thousand little shards on the ground, but still in his hand, unbroken. The mist wasn't black, nor were there any signs of blood faces on the wall or animals filling the room. Her bonds were still strong, unbroken.

Was it just an illusion? Vorian felt a drop of cold sweat running down the back of his neck as he looked down at the Mythic girl. The girl who'd seemed so innocent, so defenseless. Those faces, though... How did she-

“Etherium is sooooo goooooood...”

Vorian growled lowly in his throat as she looked up at him, giggling like some child.

“So good.”

A dark, carmine red bled into his grey eyes as he glared at her and fought the urge to end her then and there. Rather than pull his dagger from his sheath and cut her throat, he turned on his heel, walking back to the counter over on the side of the room.

"I'm glad you like it," he said darkly as he unlocked on of the cabinets, looking within for a container. He found it, sitting on a shelf and pulled it out. It was a small container, about the size of a soft drink bottle, but it was filled with Etherium concentrate. The amount that was within that little container could kill a man five times over if it was all taken in at once. Fortunately for the girl, Vorian only pulled enough to fill a new syringe; it wasn't even enough to make a noticeable difference in the level of the liquid within the container. He went about storing it once again and locked the cabinet back before turning back to face the girl.

"Because you're about to have a whole lot of it, girl." The red faded from his eyes as he walked back over to her, replaced by a dark, shimmering gold. "I don't know who you are, or what kind of strange, deformed mind you have, but I can promise you this." The needle went forward, sinking slowly into her flesh, and then the Etherium flowed out to join her bloodstream.

"One way or another, I'm going to break you."

"I'm glad you like it," Vorian said.

Irrisorie smiled, and watched him. He didn’t look very glad, or sound very glad.

“Don’t you know not to lie?” she asked, noting the red in his eyes.

“"Because you're about to have a whole lot of it, girl,” he cut back in. Then his eyes turned gold, and they shimmered, something like Iri’s own eyes often did. Except, hers did not change color -- they were always shimmering gold. "I don't know who you are, or what kind of strange, deformed mind you have, but I can promise you this.” Irrisorie’s watched the needle again. Like a hummingbird in a flower... “One way or another, I'm going to break you."

Irrisorie licked her lips; they were drying.

“You can’t break me,” she said, sounding as if she was puzzled by the nature of his statement, and explaining. “If I’m--”

“Already broken.” Gnare finished the sentence, the dark wolf lying at Irrisorie’s feet. “Broken into--”

“So many pieces,” finished a ghostly white bird, perched near her head.

“I’m not like a doll,” Iri gently explained. She swallowed hard then, and her eyes flittered, as it if was hard to keep them on any one thing. The Etherium brought everything into focus, but sometimes... sometime it was overwhelming. “You can break a doll. But you can fix a doll because all the pieces still fit together.” Irrisorie rolled her head restlessly, looking away and then back. “But my pieces don’t fit together anymore...”

She was in the middle of a wide plain. The tall grass tickled her fingertips, waving back and forth like ocean water. The sun was bright and the sky was blue. She looked around, spinning and spinning, her dress spreading out in every direction. Then her feet caught and she fell, laughing to the ground, tumbling the dizziness away. When she looked up, she saw him there, standing right above her.

“Father!” she cried, delighted.

He stood above her, holding the dagger with the lovely red paint on it. A perfect round drop slipped off the end, like a red, ripe apple falling from the tree. It splashed onto her face just below her eye, and rolled down her cheek.

“Let’s play a game!” she said, scrambling to her feet. “You’re it!”

Then she ran. She ran through the ocean of grass, until the grass became a flood of flowers, wild and purple as far as she could see... And a wind swept through the field, sending the petals flying wildly into the air, and they became rippling manes and thrashing tails, flared nostrils and arching backs, a whole herd of wild horses...

“Colors....” she whispered. “Red is the color of love and of paint... Father loved Mama so much. He loved her so much he let her paint out, so she could see all the red...”

Her breath lurched, a sudden intake that shook her chest.

“Your eyes change color,” she said. “Like your brother’s.” She grinned, as if self-satisfied that she knew something he did not know she knew. “Do they ever turn purple? I’ve seen all your colors but purple...”

As Irrisorie looked at Vorian, she could feel her mind gathering together to a point, driven and driven by the ocean in her blood, focusing because there was nothing else it could to. A magnifying glass to the sun, all of Iri’s perception was focused into a singular burning point.

Vorian.

Then all of Iri’s vision went white. Gradually, vague shapes came into focus, washed-out colors emerging from the white, like ghosts. Memories. One on top of the other, the colors and movement rippled like a pond. The colors grew brighter, and Iri could make out flashes of things she knew -- images of the temple, sparring gear, the trees outside in the mountains, bits of the cold walls of the icy fortress. Then, it must have been that her mind found what it was looking for, and one scene became sharper above the rest. They still fluttered and moved, superimposed over one another, but Iri could focus on this one. She saw a woman, beautiful, young. She was smiling. And within the memory, Iri could feel something -- though it was less feeling and more hearing, or tasting. She could feel joy, giddiness, butterflies. But then another flavor entered -- it smelled of sorrow and regret. Irrisorie’s mind recoiled violently, like the snapping of a taught rubber-band. These were the emotions, the states of being that threatened to shatter her fragile mind, and Iri’s presence imploded with an ear-wrenching thud!, flooding back into her and plunging her into darkness.

That is when his eyes had been purple. Red was not the only color of love, not if love was growling and angry faces and lunging and clawing, like Red was for Vorian. That sounded like anger, but maybe anger was love, because even anger cared.

Thud! like a bass drum.

Even the mist had receded back into its source. But then it slowly began to spread again. IIrrisorie opened her eyes, and the room was the same as it had been, except for the butterflies. Black butterflies, with shimmering red and purple in their wings. They were everywhere, gently shuffling, a rain of dust and shine...

Thud!

All the butterflies disappeared, trembled away by the sudden noise.

“The war-drums,” she whispered. “They’re coming to whisk us away, you and me and all the world...”

Thud!

“Faster,” she said, “They’re coming faster now.”

And the drums in her head beat faster, a strike and an echo, a strike and an echo. She could feel the ocean rush through her veins with every beat, swell in her heart at every thud, her heart beat, it beat fast and tight, it beat with the drums, it was the drums, her heart struck the beat and was the beat.

“Can’t you hear them?” she asked, her eyes wide and unseeing, cracked lips curling into a grin of pure awe.

The drums beat so loud that they consumed every thought like a wildfire, a fire that burned in Iri’s eyes until she saw the manes and tails and flashing hooves of horses. They galloped around her and galloped in her, and pounded with the drums until they trampled this too, until all that remained was the thudding of their hooves, growing in speed and tempo.

She swallowed, though it did not wet her dry throat. “Horses,” she whispered. Her eyes flicked back and forth, now, seeing something that was not there. “To take us away, you and me and all the world...”

Then her golden eyes rolled back into her head, until the lids fell down to cover them, and Iri, at last, was still.

“You can’t break me," the girl started as the Etherium emptied into her body, “if I’m--”

“Already broken.”

"Wha...?" Vorian looked around in surprise. That voice wasn't the girl's; it had been decidedly male. But he was the only man in the room. He took a step back, turning his gaze to the end of the table, and there he saw it. It was a wolf, a large, dangerous looking thing. But on further investigation, it had that same ethereal mistiness to it as all the other animals that this girl's brain portrayed. "Is this another one of your damn illusions?" Vorian growled. She didn't answer.

Broken into--”

“So many pieces.”

This time it was a bird that finished. It was a white bird, the same color as fresh-fallen snow up in the Itzli Mountains. Vorian scowled at it.

“I’m not like a doll,” the girl went on. “You can break a doll. But you can fix a doll because all the pieces still fit together. But my pieces don’t fit together anymore...”

Vorian sighed and shook his head. She's crazy. That has to be what it is. His thumb brushed across his sword's pommel, as some part of him considered that option. That or her mind's growth has been stunted beyond belief... But I don't think so. She's too dangerous for that to be the case entirely. But if it was, perhaps it might be better to just end her now...

He studied her as the second dose of Etherium took its effect on her. Her eyes flicked back and forth and her mind worked to find something to focus on. Her pupils were beginning to widen. That much was good; it was taking more of an effect on her this time than the first dose had.

Then she looked up at him, talking about colors. About his eyes, and Kvothe's, and the way they were ever changing, ever shifting.

“Do they ever turn purple? I’ve seen all your colors but purple...”

Vorian's eyes widened a little bit.

Red wasn't the color of love. Red was the color of fury, of rage and hate. Purple, though... Purple, deep and pure, was the color of love. Purple was the color of passion and lust.

His eyes had been purple once.

But why was this girl asking?

"That's none of your concern," he muttered, even as a deep, dark blue bled into the gold."That's not-"

Something slammed into his mind and in his shock, he recoiled physically. The syringe did drop to the ground this time, shattering on impact into a hundred little bright spots of reflected light.

Mythos help him, she was in his mind! Of all the things he was expecting, from her that was the last on the list. The probe that came from her mind had been so sharp, so focused... and he, in his assurance that the Etherium would work on her to push her mind past the point of being able to focus, like it did on all the others, had been completely unprepared. His defenses hadn't been down completely--they never were--but they'd been relaxed, as if on a sort of standby mode. Now his mind rallied as images flashed across his vision and he prepared to force her out...

...but she was already gone.

One image remained clear in his mind's eye, though.

One memory that he'd buried and kept hidden from the rest of the world replayed in front of his eyes.

It was a memory from a few years ago, when all had seemed right in the world.

It was a memory of when his eyes had been purple.

The wind blew in, calm and cool, onto the northeastern shore of Idzumo Lake. It was fall. There was the faintest chill in the air, and the world was beautiful, all shades of red and orange and yellow as the land prepared for the coming winter.

There was a couple on the water's edge. They were young, and to any outside observer, they were quite apparently happy. One was a man, with jet black hair and wolfishly handsome features, dressed in curious robes that left his muscular shoulders bare, exposing a symbol that had been inked onto them.

His eyes were a deep, dark purple.

The other was a woman, with a soft, beautiful face and thick, mahogany colored hair. Her eyes were the color of emeralds and the mirth that twinkled in them only added to the effect. That same symbol that was on the man's shoulders had been tattooed onto her cheeks, it a green that was the same color as her eyes.

She sat in his lap, with his arms wrapped around her slender waist as he whispered things into her ear. Things that made her smile and laugh; and when she smiled and laughed, so did he.

They stayed there for a long time, enjoying each other's presence, away from the cares of the world that pushed down so heavily on their shoulders. But eventually, they had to move elsewhere. Night was falling, and that chill on the air was only growing stronger...

"Roua," Vorian whispered. Why was there still pain, even after all these years? "My Roua."

He could feel his heart pounding in his chest as nearly jumped from his speeder before it came fully to a halt. His boots crunched loudly in the snow as he tried to run, but it was so deep. He fell once, twice, his cloak flapping about him, driven by the howling wind, but he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. Not now, when she needed him.

Roua needed him.

He was twenty seven now. He'd known her for four years. She was his love, his lover, and he'd thought that he could spend the rest of his days with her, fighting side-by-side with her as they worked with the rest of the Unum to bring down the Tower.

She'd been sent away, though. Sent out on a solo mission by one of their superiors. Out into the cold. Out into the blizzard. But that hadn't worried him as much as it might have; she'd been on many such missions before, and she always came back to him. Of course she'd come back this time.

But something had gone wrong.

A distress signal came in, but there were no details with it--no explanation, no specifics, just a location and a call for help.

Vorian had been the first to rush out into the driving wind and the cold. He'd raced across Aiaru like a man gone mad, and now here he was.

"Roua!" he called, hoping that she could hear him. There wasn't an answer.

The Mythos came to his hand, forming a soft ball of light that illuminated the area around him, and what he saw made him stop in his tracks.

There were signs of a struggle all around him. Branches in the trees were broken, and there were gashes in their trunks were something had bitten deep. Even though the falling snow was covering it, there were signs of movement in the snow; a depression here, a hole where someone had fallen there, a trench behind a rock that had obviously been thrown...

He continued to look around, growing more desperate to find her as his heart sank, and then he saw it. He'd never forget that moment.

There was blood on the snow.

HIs breath caught in his throat. "Mythos, no," he whispered, dashing over to it. There was more blood, leading away in a trail. There were footsteps along the trail, their patter broken and irregular. Vorian followed it on and on, until the footsteps faded, giving way to a long trench where someone had tried to drag them self through the snow. That trench led to the mouth of a cave, near the edge of a stream that had frozen over.

And in the mouth of that cave was Roua.

"No," Vorian croaked, running over. "Mythos please, no."

She looked so pitiful, lying there in the pink snow. He ran over to her an fell to his knees, scooping her up and taking her deeper into the cave, away from the wind's bite.

"Vor... Vorian," she muttered weakly as he crouched down, holding her close to him. "I had hoped that you... that would come to me."

"Roua," he said, his vision blurring with tears, "Roua, what happened to you?"

Her skin was pale and cold to the touch. She shook and gripped his hand, but her touch was weak. Even her eyes, always alive with green fire as they were, were dim now. Worst of all, there were bruises and little cuts all along her face and arms.

There was a hole in her stomach that was still wet with half-frozen blood.

"I..." she started, clearly struggling to find the strength to speak. "He ambushed me. I wasn't ready and he was strong... I tried to fight him, but he..." A cough violently shook her ailing form. Specks of blood painted her lips red. "He was too strong for me."

Vorian quickly unwrapped took his cloak from his body and wrapped it around her, desperately trying to keep her warm. Desperately trying to do something, anything that might help her. "Who?" he asked, his voice wavering, "who did this to you?" There were tears running down his cheeks now, wet and hot against the winter's touch.

Even dying, she had a smile that could melt his heart and make his knees go weak. She lifted a hand and brushed it through her hair, to the grey feather that had been woven into it with a green silk ribbon. It was his feather. He'd given it to her one a cold winter's night years ago, when they'd become intimate partners. Even as she brushed against it, he felt her touch through the connection he still had to it.

"Don't cry, Vorian," she said softly. That hand left the feather and went up to his face. Her fingers felt like ice as they gently touched his cheek, wiping away some of the tears, but he didn't care. He held her hand to his face with one of his own. "Don't cry for me."

"Who did this?" he asked again. The pain was raw in his voice now; his eyes were a dark blue, but still, the touches of purple remained there.

"The one with the..." She coughed again, more violently than before, and Vorian clutched her tightly, holding her against him. Now her breathing was labored. "The one with the red hair... The one I lured to you in the Aethon... The one with the eyes that change like yours. Kv... Kv..."

"Kvothe," Vorian finished. "My brother."

She nodded sadly and coughed again. This time, though, it led to a fit of hacking and wheezing, and blood flowed from her mouth before she was done. "I..."


"Shh... Save your energy," Vorian whispered. "I can try to heal you, with my abiliti-"

"Vorian." She smiled again, still gently rubbing his cheek. She laughed. It was a soft, weak thing that nearly tore his heart out. "Oh, Vorian... We both know that it's too late for me. If you try that..." she coughed again, "you'll die."

"It has to be worth trying, right?" He knew she was right. "Right?"

Roua shook her head slowly. "Live on, Vorian. Fight on without me... I love you, Vorian. You know that, and I'll be waiting for you in the next life. But for now, your duty is here."

They stayed together for the rest of that blizzard. Roua died in his arms that night, from wounds that were given from his own brother.

Vorian wept a great deal that night. He wept more than he ever had before, and more than he has in the years since. The storm left as the sun broke the horizon, and as bundled Roua's body, gently loading her onto his speeder so that he could take her away and give her a proper burial, he swore that Kvothe would pay.

Before then, Kvothe had been spared an early death because he was Vorian's little brother, and some part of Vorian still recognized that. But now Vorian would make him suffer. He would take away everything that Kvothe had, and then, when Kvothe was at rock bottom, he would die.

That was the time when Vorian's eyes turned black. Red was for anger and fury and hatred. Black was for all of those as well. But black had one thing that red did not.

Black was for a promise of death.

Vorian stood there, still as a statue as the butterflies flew around the room. His eyes were blue now. Blue for remorse and sorrow and regret. Blue for the pain in his heart that nothing could heal.

But for the briefest moment, the edges of his eyes were black.

The butterflies trembled as one and vanished. The girl spoke of drums, but he didn't pay her much mind. Roua... My Roua...

“Horses. To take us away, you and me and all the world...” the girl whispered. Vorian's shoulders fell as he brought his focus back to the here and now, just in time to see her pass out.

So that was that. She was unconscious now. Now there wasn't anything to do with her.

"I ought to kill you," he muttered, though he knew she could not here him. "I ought to kill you for playing your games with me." There was anger rising in him now. His fists clenched together tightly. "For bringing up things that are none of your concern, for looking where you have no right!"

The pieces of glass shifted at a motion from his hand, borne on a current of the air that he commanded. They sparkled dimly as they rode through the air until all were hovering over her, sharp edges turned to sink into her flesh. To gouge into her eyes and bury themselves in her throat. To dig into the sensitive areas to echo some of the pain that burned so hotly inside of him.

Then, as if on a whim, they floated away, to the garbage conatiner that sat in the corner of the room. "But I won't," he said with a sigh as he started for the door. "Not yet, anyway. That would be too easy. But mark my words, girl." He paused in the doorway, looking back to face her. "I will make you suffer before your time here is through. I promise you that much."

Vorian stepped into the hallway and walked off, away from the room and that accursed girl. Azeed, one of his underlings caught up with him as he walked.

"What do you want us to do with her, Vorian?"

"Return her to her holding cell," he said flatly. "Don't give her any Etherium, do you understand me? It only makes her worse, and not the kind of 'worse' we're looking for. We'll see what happens if we go the other way and deprive her of it."

"Right. Anything else?" The younger man glanced up to Vorian, those bright green eyes of his flashing in the light.

"Don't feed her until I tell you to. She's in good condition--she'll be able to go a few days without eating. Only give her enough water to keep her alive. Keep me updated on her condition."

"As you say, then... And Saine has sent word that she wants to speak to you."

"Of course she does," Vorian grumbled.

Azeed stopped at that and looked up at Vorian again. "Is everything alright?"

Vorian didn't answer the question. He just kept on down the hall, as if Azeed had never even been there.

Waking up was a very usual, normal sort of thing. One wakes up every time they go down, minus exactly one. So, then, it is the where of the waking up that is so much more interesting.

This time, the where was cold. Irrisorie stirred, but she did not open her eyes yet. She was going to guess. She was lying in the corner, at a crease between a floor and a wall. Where her hands were exposed, she could feel rough stone, with deep divets and sharp points. It was a scrap sort of stone, cheaply crafted, with utility in mind. The air was damp, and it did not move.

Dungeon...

Irrisorie opened her eyes, casting the slightest blush of light into the darkness. She could tell by looking at the stone, fuzzily focused a few inches from her cheek, that her eyes were glowing much more brightly than usual. It was the etherium, no doubt. Any human would have found the place tar-black, and even to Irrisorie’s heightened vision, it was dim. She looked around. The space was about ten feet by ten feet, and tall metal bars like orderly saplings formed the fourth wall.

Irrisorie put her palms to the floor and pushed herself into a sitting position. He head swam for a moment, and she felt like she was twirling in a stony sea...

But then the world set itself right again, and she continued to explore the place with her eyes. The stone had the faintest sparkle to it, and Irrisorie wondered if it was quartz, or if it was simply the wet that gave it a bit of shine. She shivered, though she felt no discomfort at the cold. The moisture in the air drew the heat from her skin, raising gooseflesh on her arms. She didn’t mind the cold at all until she couldn’t feel her fingers anymore, as she loved to be able to feel things.

So, Irrisorie tucked her cloak tighter around herself to chase the numbness away.

She stood and made a few exploratory steps to the bars, peering at the hall that lay beyond. It curved off in either direction, and as Irrisorie reached the open side of her cell, she saw two guards in the dim light, one posted on either side. On stood stiffly by the wall, the other sat on the ground, feet splayed out and shoulders leaning back against the stone.

“Dammit,” whispered the sitting one.

“You owe me fifty,” said the standing one, with no shred of emotion.

“There’s no way anyone real person comes back from a dose like that so quick...” He narrowed his eyes at Irrisorie. “I think I been played.”

“Doesn’t change the fact you owe me fifty.”

Irrisorie smiled. They must have felt quite lonely, being here in the dungeon with no one else but each other. Irrisorie never felt lonely -- she always had her friends -- but she preferred it when other people were not lonely.

“My name’s Irrisorie,” she said, settling down on her knees, a few inches from the bars. “What are yours?”

The sitting one appraised her for a moment. “I’m Jack, an this one here’s Tick. Sucks the fun out of just about anything.”

Tick gave Jack a glare, showing his disapproval of getting so ‘friendly’ with the prisoner. Jack shot back his own look, which said something along the lines of, ‘if you were better company, I wouldn’t be talking to her at all’.

Irrisorie smiled a good-natured smile at Tick. She turned her attention to Jack again, and appraised him a bit.

“You’re married?” she asked.

Jack looked surprised for a second, but quickly recovered. “We-- Yeah. Ring gave me away, eh?”

“What’s her name?”

He paused. “Marganita. Her name’s Marganita.”

“Do you have a daughter too?”

Jack looked at her oddly this time. “How’d you...”

“It’s the way you smiled. Men whose wives have borne them sons smile prouder, and men whose wives have borne them daughters smile with more affection.”

“Alright then.” He looked as if he could not decide between being awed or being slightly disturbed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Well aren’t you an inquisitive one?”

----=----

Jack’s laugh echoed down the halls, and his eyes twinkled brightly. “That right?”

“I do not lie! Mme Benadict had the pie filling all in her hair, and from that day forth, we were strictly forbidden from uttering the words ‘cherry’ or ‘pie’. If anyone did, it was meat-loaf for a week.”

Irrisorie was left with a particular sensation of warmth, recounting her days at the orphanage. Aside from the temple, it’s where she’d spent most of her life.

“Speaking of food,” she said, “Is there--”

“You’ll get food when we feed you,” Tank cut in. “Asking will only deter me.”

“Yessir,” she answered, reminiscent of her days as a school-girl. Jack shrugged his apologies.

----=----

Irrisorie had laid down and slept when Jack and a very-relieved Tick were replaced by fresh guards. She’d slept well, maybe seven, eight hours, and for the past two, she’d been pittering about, doing various things. These new guards were almost as stoic as Tick, and she hadn’t managed to get any good conversation out of them.

So, she and Octavius ended up playing checkers. Maybe that was why the guards wouldn’t talk to her. They’d been initially quite puzzled to see the bird and the gameboard in her cell, but eventually had remembered mention of her odd... method of telepathy and hallucinations.

Irrisorie would win consistently until Octavius decided to change some part of the rules, and then she’d have to figure them out again. It was really quite fun. When she tired of that, she played fetch with Rex, her puppy. That lasted until the bone they were playing with got caught on her Magnalui’s spines, and Rex sulked off to pout. Then, she quietly discussed Vorian with Gnare for a while, and he had some very interesting things to say.

This all lasted four hours or so, after which point, Iri lay on the floor of her cell and stared up at the ceiling. She thought, and pondered, but most of all, she was trying to find as many shapes as possible in the shadows of the rock.

It was really very serious work.

Morning found Vorian hastily going about his usual duties. Make his rounds to see if anything of note happened during the night, check on the situation of various operations across Aiaru... The wonderful duties that came with authority.

However, this morning was different than the others. Word had reached Saine of the absolute disaster the battle in the ruins turned out to be, and she had been far from pleased. Not that any of them could have known that five Mythics would be such a problem, but even so, she was never pleased to lose men, when the numbers in the struggle against the Mythics were already against them.

He'd already been troubled enough by the time with that strange girl, Irrisorrie, and getting chewed out by Saine only proved to make things worse. It took a long time for sleep to find him, and when it did, it was troubled--haunted by memories that he'd thought had been buried away. Haunted by grief and remorse. Worst of all, as the image of those faces painted in blood danced behind his eyelids, he found some part of himself wondering just what he had become. It wasn't the first time he'd had such internal conflict, but to have them come up now was troubling. He was devoted now. He wasn't turning back from the Unum, and nothing that girl did could make it so.

So now, his movements were hurried, his work swift. He took the time to make sure everything was right of course--he didn't need Saine riding his backside again, but he wasted no time.

His mood was also very noticeably sour, as a few of the Unum found out. After a while they realized it was best to leave him alone and stay out of his way. It probably had something to do with that girl what was captured in the mountains, anyway.

When his work was done, he started to make his way toward the dungeon where that girl was being held. It'd about a day since she'd been given her last Etherium dose, and it was time to see if depriving her of the stuff was having any effect. A fist clenched absentmindedly as he started down a flight of stairs to the dark, dank cells. One way or another, girl... He didn't have his sword today, at least. No, he had a dagger: the same one he'd rammed into his brother's side five years ago. The same one that he'd used to cut his chest open in the ruins. And, if this girl continued being difficult, he might slit her throat with it.

That strange mist was the first sign that he was nearing her cell, and then he found the two guards that were currently on duty. One of them, Allen, heard his footsteps and turned to look. "Vorian!"

"How's she been?" Vorian asked, ignoring the girl in the cellar for the time being.

"Strange. But from what I've heard, that's nothing new. She tried to talk to us some, played checkers with one of her weird illusion animals..." Allen shook his head. "She knows how to entertain herself, at least."

"Because she's flat crazy," cut in the other man. He was a Twi'lek, with dark blue skin and lekku that he kept wrapped around his neck. "Why are you so intent on keeping her alive, Vorian? It's obvious that she's out of her mind."

Vorian shook his head. Eiker, the Twi'lek was called. He was new. Brash. Impulsive. "I have my reasons, Eiker." Then he turned his attention to the girl, who was on her back, looking up at the ceiling. "Has she shown any signs of change since you arrived?" Both of them shook their heads. Vorian only snorted and moved to stand near the bars to her cell.

"Well?" he asked curtly. He made sure to keep the walls around his mind strong now; that girl wasn't going to be digging around where she had no business. Not today. "How do you feel today, girl?"

She had a breaking point. Everyone did.

And one way or another, Vorian would find it.

One way or another...

"Well? How do you feel today, girl?"

Iri continued looking at the ceiling. “You don’t really sound like you want to know. If you did, then I’d tell you about the face I just found...” She paused a moment, eyes searching the shadows in the rough rock. The lightest smile lay across her lips.

“But since you don’t really want to know,” she said, sitting up and stretching out her shoulders, “I’m feeling splendid.” She pushed herself onto her feet, and floated over to the bars, leaning against them.

“How do you feel today?” she asked, genuine concern in her voice. “And I really mean it.”

Something was implied by the slight furrow in her brow, and the subtle sparkle in her golden eyes. It was more heartfelt than curiosity, but somewhat... lost. It was like the Stonehenge to her, this thing, compassion, that she was trying to grasp. Trying, always trying, but its meaning slipped between her outstretched fingers. She could not feel disappointed. She couldn’t be frustrated, and yet, there was no joy or excitement in that mystery. In the vacuum of her sadness she was... empty.

Empty.

Did good really mean anything when there was nothing to contrast it to? Did white have any identity apart from black? Could there be light without darkness? What did warm mean if there wasn’t ever any cold?

This goodness, did it birth something, or was it nothing more than a Faberge egg?

Slipping through her fingers...

Empty...

How do you really, really feel?

“You don’t really sound like you want to know. If you did, then I’d tell you about the face I just found...”

Her powers of observation are astounding. Truly. Vorian folded his arms across his chest, trying to resist the temptation to reach through the bars of the cell and strangle the damn girl. That just wouldn't do, though, or at least not yet. She was a challenge. She refused to break, but Vorian would make sure that she did. Every prisoner that he'd been set to breaking had broken under his hand. Every prisoner but one: Kvothe, though his younger brother had been so near the edge that he would have fallen over had Lady Fortune not decided to smile on him with the timely arrival of his rescuers, even though that trip had been disastrous for them.

Irrisorrie would be different, though. The longer she held out, the harder Vorian would push until she snapped. He would personally take her already obviously-broken mind and shatter its remnants into a thousand pieces.

And then he would kill her.

Probably. Unless she proved to have some sort of use. But what were the odds of that?

“But since you don’t really want to know, I’m feeling splendid.”

Wonderful, Vorian though flatly.

“How do you feel today? And I really mean it.”

Vorian almost thought he heard what sounded like real concern in her voice--a genuine wanting to know how he felt. He closed his eyes, trying to keep the irritated orange out of them and shook his head. "I am fine. But we're not here to worry about me, remember? We're here for you."

His weight shifted from one leg to another as he stared at her, studying her. It was becoming more and more clear that the normal channels wouldn't work for this girl. Or, if they did, it would take forever. Vorian had been willing to go for a year to break Kvothe. There was more than just a job in that; there was something akin to pride in it, in showing Kvothe that no matter what he tried, no matter how hard he fought, he'd always fall before Vorian.

Things were different with Iri, however. Vorian didn't know her, nor did he really care about getting to know her. All he wanted to do was crack her, get whatever information might be waiting within that strange mind of hers, and be done with her. But, perhaps, to do that, he'd have to play the game a bit differently. She was nice, almost naively so, seemingly. Maybe it could be used to his advantage...

"I have a question for you, Iri," he said, letting his arms fall back down to his sides. He put on a bit of smile, tried to make his voice less... irritated sounding. "What can you tell me about the Mythics you were with at the ruins? I know you haven't been fed in a while." The smile grew a little bit, though the reason for that was hardly benevolent. "I can have something brought down for you, if you'll tell me what you can."

"I have a question for you, Iri," he said. He hadn’t used her name before, and she eagerly met his eyes. "What can you tell me about the Mythics you were with at the ruins? I know you haven't been fed in a while." His lip curved a little bit, sort of a smile, but not really. "I can have something brought down for you, if you'll tell me what you can."

Irrisorie didn’t look away. “No thank you. If you’re not feeding me, then goodness knows what you’ll do to them. Not all of them are as strong as I am when it comes to this sort of thing.” She smiled lightly. “Hunger and cold don’t bother me so much at all. But even if you’re--”

whispers in the air soft shreds of silk in her ears

-- more hospitable, I know that you and your friends don’t like me and my friends well at all, and you would dislike them enough to hurt them.”

sliding like hissing of scales and red

I don’t like to see them hurt. Or mutilated. Or Angry. They’re not so handsome when you make them Angry.”

the shadows make light and the light make shadows flashes

Irrisorie fidgeted, unheeding of the vague glimmer of sweat on her skin, even in the cold. There was a strange sensation, a billowing thunderhead of emptiness that rolled from her heart.

“Don’t make them angry...” she whispered.

white a face a rush a scream

Irrisorie knew this feeling, the glimpses, the flickering between worlds. She knew it and yet she knew nothing, nothing as numbness, real cold ate her shoulders and her spine and her ribcage and her heart...

“Don’t make me--”

shudder twirl and wicked stripes

Irrisorie’s body stiffened, her eye’s widening to show white all around. The black of her pupil expanded almost to the edge, the narrowest ring of gold remaining. She swayed, falling hard against the bars which clanged and shuttered. A moment later her hand groped for the rusted metal, clinging for balance. Abruptly her face contorted, brows pressed together and mouth open in a silent scream, soon filled by her lungs. Iri doubled over, clutching her abdomen until the sheer horror of her wail brought her to her knees.

The stone was rough and sharp and it dug fire in her palms. Fire, everywhere was fire, frozen fire! A strangled choked sob echoed off the ground as Iri tried to look around, crippled as she was.

Pain. She was pain. All that existed, all that filled the world was pain. Every touch was pain, every light was pain, every sound was pain. And fear.

Fear!

Fear snapped Iri to her feet even as her bones cracked and turned to dust, mummified limbs that could not move. Feet? she had feet because they hurt and burned, and she was moving, moving through the air like daggers but all there was was wall, wall, wall, she was trapped, enclosed, entombed.

But there! Air, a way, a way with bars, bars and a man. Not a way. Iri lunged towards them but her foot caught on the rough ground, sending her in a twisted fall to the floor. It rose and slammed into her, knocking the breath out of her lungs so only the tears could hiss like mercury down her cheeks.

A gasping shudder sucked air back into the frail body. Cold air, harsh air, air that stung and cracked. A hammer and an anvil struck up in her head, echoing through all her bones in waves of teeth. Her hands clutched her head, pounded her temple, the noise had to, must, needed to go away! Her lips made words past her ashy tongue. A word. Over and over again, until her breath found her voice in the dark. “Help” she said, then sobbed, then cried. “Help m--”

The vowel rushed into a wail as hands of ice tore Iri in half. It was a horrible, wretched sound, that of a child in horrible, unimaginable, insurmountable pain. The epitomic sound of suffering permeated into the pores of the rock until all the halls trembled in that agony.

Sheer, writhing, incurable pain.

“No thank you," started the insufferably stubborn girl. "If you’re not feeding me, then goodness knows what you’ll do to them. Not all of them are as strong as I am when it comes to this sort of thing.” Again, the urge grew within Vorian to open the bars to the girl's cell and wrap his hands around her throat. And again, he resisted it, tempting though it was.

“Hunger and cold don’t bother me so much at all. But even if you’re more hospitable, I know that you and your friends don’t like me and my friends well at all, and you would dislike them enough to hurt them.”

Well at least she's not completely oblivious, he mulled sourly. Something is going to have to change, though. He folded his arms across his chest, shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

Everyone could be broken. It was just a matter of finding out how to push them the right way, of finding the right lever within them and pulling it to make them fall apart. In a way, it was a puzzle; a puzzle that consisted of taking apart a puzzle that had already been put together. It sounded easy, but it wasn't. There was a certain touch, almost a sort of finesse that was needed to make it work effectively; you couldn't just bludgeon someone into talking. Well, you could to some, but not to others.

Find the weak point, he told himself, echoing the words of his instructor from so long ago. Grab onto it when you do and don't let go until they shatter. Vorian's golden eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he looked at Irrisorrie. She was a strange one, a different sort of puzzle than any other he'd seen before. She was so pure, looked and acted so innocent. He'd have her howling by the time he was done with her though. One way or another.

What will it take to break you, girl?

I don’t like to see them hurt. Or mutilated. Or angry. They’re not so handsome when you make them angry.”

Vorian was aware of her words, but at the same time, he wasn't; he heard her, but he did not listen. His attention will remained entirely on her, but it was differently so now; it was on her rather than her words.

She was sweating.

Perhaps that wasn't worth putting any stock into, but it grabbed his attention. Why should the girl sweat? The dungeon was quite cool, and he'd brought no torch or other source of warmth with him. He'd made no threats to her and even if he had, she'd proven to be quite unflappable thus far. Why the sweat, then?

Ah! There was something more. A shift, a slight fidget that ran through her. Ripples came in the Mythos, just on the edge of his perception. Something was changing. Fresh memories of the previous day surfaced within Vorian's mind and he prepared himself, raising his mental defenses to be ready if the girl tried something again. He'd had quite enough memories that were none of her affair turned up already; he would make sure that it did not happen again. Even so, the girl was proving to have a way of doing the unexpected...

“Don’t make them angry...”

The ripples in the Mythos grew stronger. Something was happening. Something was coming.

“Don’t make me--”

Irrisorrie stopped then, as if she' been struck. Vorian's brows lifted up slightly at the sight of her suddenly going stiff. He braced himself mentally. Here it comes...

Her eyes went wide then she slammed against the bars of her cell. Vorian watched passively as she did and then as she doubled over, clearly in some sort of pain.

And then the scream came.

It echoed through the dungeon, turning back again and again on itself until it sounded like there were copies of her hiding in the shadows and adding their wails to hers. Vorian could nearly feel the pain within it, but he didn't care. There would be no sympathy for the girl, not after yesterday.

She continued on, darting about her cell and then toward the bars again before she fell to the ground. She cried for help. It was a help that was turned into a wail of agony as another wave of pain struck her. Like the last, it reverberated off of the cold, uncaring stone walls, filling the dungeon completely with its sound.

There was no remorse to be found in Vorian. In fact, as he let his arms fall to his sides and took a few steps nearer to her cell, he smiled. It was a subtle, wicked smile, but it was there.

Find the weak point.

He made a hand signal to the two guards, telling them to restrain the girl on the ground with bonds of the Mythos.

Grab onto it and don't let go until they shatter.

Vorian produced a key to her cell. The old lock squealed slightly as he turned it and then the bars were eased aside. He took a firm grasp of the Mythos as he stepped to stand over, watching her with a twisted mockery of a look of pity.

It seemed that keeping the Etherium from her had done the trick. Her she was now, writhing in pain on the hard, rough stone floor. And no one could save her. Not his little brother, not any other of her Mythic friends. It was just the two of them now. Vorian nearly laughed.

"Shhhhh...," he started gently, as he crouched down near her. "I can make the pain go away." His voice was soft, soothing, as if he really cared about her. "I can make the horror and the screaming stop. With a snap of my fingers I can have some Etherium brought down here and put back into you and make this all go away." Not even years of doing this act, of pretending to be his victims' friend, could keep all of the malice out of his grin.

"Dear Irrisorrie, I'm here to help you," he went on, gently stroking away a tear with a lone finger. "But you make it so difficult, you see. I can still help you, though. All you have to do is help me." It was so hard to keep that dark laugh down. Her suffering was so good, though. I told you this would happen, girl.

"All you have to do is tell me about your friends. Tell me about your Tower." He chuckled softly--a low chuckle, held deep in his throat. "Tell me everything."

Her wrists and ankles were bound, prying her open, holding her against the ground. She did not like it. She did not like it at all, so she struggled and tugged. But the mythos was gone, it had ran from her. She was alone, alone and in the dark.

Being spread out like this, pulled apart, it was wrong, just wrong! There was a wound, or a vulnerability, or something in her gut that throbbed and pulsed with pain.

There was a man there, he was vague, distant. He was speaking... talking... she recognized him... but his words pounded like explosives in her skull, each word a mallet striking the horrible pressure in her head...

But then the pain in her body faded, and she heard his last words.

"Tell me everything."

The girl was still for a moment, her eyes staring bewildered at the ceiling. The only sound she made was the gentle rasp of her breath as it moved in and out of her throat. Her chest rose and fell.

Then her eyes began to flick back and forth. Minnows in a pond, they darted and rolled.

She wasn't seeing the rock anymore. She was in a room. In her home.

"I know this place..." she said, her voice soft but clear. "It's my home I used to live here."

Her mind's eye stepped around the corner, deeper into the room.

A look of pure horrified revulsion came across her face as she eased her resistance to the bonds, eyes still darting.

"It's... it's my mother. She's on the ground and there's blood... So much blood." The word was strange and foreign on her lips, but she spoke it.

"Oh mythos." Horror and agony in her voice. "She's dead. Mama's dead." Iri sobbed. "Why is she dead, why is there so much blood? I brush the hair of her face, gently, to make sure it's her, it is. She's dead, and there's blood everywhere and all over me... And I see father, he's coming through the doorway. I'm relieved, he's here to make everything right, but I'm scared -- maybe he'll think I did it, and beat me again. But he doesn't, because he has the knife, and he did it, he did it, he did it, he killed her." Another sob.

"He killed her!" she screamed, until her scream became sob after sob, and her tears made her air stick to her face. She pulled and fought against the bonds.

Her words were incoherent, but her vision as vivid as ever. She ran, ran through the field with razor-sharp grass in her feet. She fell and tripped and rocks cut into her hands but still she ran. Driven by terror, terror of the man and the knife with her mother's blood...

The word "Please" found its way into the wracking sobs, again and again. "Don't kill me... Don't kill me please, Please!"

Finally, she quieted. Her eyes went from staring to darting again.

"I'm at the orphanage... The other children won't look at me, won't play with me... They thought I was nice, but I overheard the Ma'am saying they all heard me screaming the other night, and now they're all scared... I talk at things that don't exist, so they won't look at me... Then Lauren finally comes up to me, I like Lauren, I'm happy... but then she says she hates me... hates me..."

Iri gasped and tried to bury her face in her hands, but her hands were bound, so she hid her shame in her shoulder instead.

"They took her... My favorite, my favorite doll, strung her up high on the wire... it's a joke, just a joke, but they stole her, and I never get her back, never never get her back and I can see her, hanging there and her hair is still golden yellow and her dress is tearing, but not enough, because she won't come down but she's my friend, my only friend and I never, never get her back..."

Iri rolled her head to the side and tensed her shoulders, making a pitiful moaning sound that blurred into words. "Oh make it stop why won't it stop..."

And then she gasped. "There he is, that boy. He works with the Mythos too. He's handsome and I like him, his hair his eyes his smile. I walk over, and I smile and say Hello. But the look he gives me..." she choked on her words. "Disgust, he looks at me with disgust." Her own face mirrored the emotion, twisting and contorting into the awful mask. "Utter rejection, revulsion, like I'm ugly, dirt ugly..." Irrisorie gasped back a sob.

"He killed her, he's holding the knife and he killed her," her eyes flickered back and forth, frantic now, no longer searching, but spasmic. "The blood is dripping off the blade and it splashes on the ground. I look at his face and he doesn't care, his face is empty and he doesn't care, all he cares is that I don't live to tell but he killed her. He killed her I saw him. Saw him with the knife. He killed her and he's going to kill me, oh Mythos don't let him kill me!"

Her wails became sobs, and her sobs quieted, but this time they persisted. She lay limp on the rough floor, shivering but covered in sweat, but her mind was tormented. Frozen in front of staring eyes was the image, the image of the man. The man and the knife, the knife that was dipped in blood, raised. Raised to strike.

To be fair, she spoke. She spoke a lot.

Vorian told her to tell him everything, and she endeavored to do just that. There was only one problem.

None of it was relevant.

Relevant to her finding the reason for her current state, perhaps, but not to Vorian's goals. He didn't care about her dead mother or her time as an orphan or the way others regarded her. She was worthless. She was a means to an end and no more. She'd be dead once he was through with her.

And the crying, oh the crying!

Vorian set his jaw stubbornly, forcing some of the irritated orange out of his eyes as he studied her. He knew coming down to the dungeon today that this girl would be difficult. She was different than any prisoner he'd ever seen before. The mind was a strange thing at best, and hers was stranger.

Focus.

Calm.

Patience.

Those were the things he'd need for this task. He shifted his weight out of a crouch, easing one knee down to the cold stone so that he was kneeling over her. She was still sobbing. Not gonna get anything out of her, he mulled. Not with her this out of it. Not willingly. Though she seemed more put together, perhaps, without the Etherium. I think that's the most words I've heard her say at once so far. One of the guards outside the cell started to move as if coming for him, but he held a hand up, telling him to stay where he was and focus on holding the girl down.

But what's going on beneath the surface? Vorian's golden eyes narrowed warily at the girl. He wasn't going to go rushing in. Not after yesterday.

Ah, she was still sobbing!

"Be quiet!" He yelled at the same time that his hand slapped loudly against the side of her face. He bit back a hiss at the residual pain that lingered on in his palm.

"I don't care about your life, girl, I care about your order. The Mythics. Tell me about them, about your friends." As he spoke, Vorian called upon the Mythos and eased his mind forward, toward hers. Tendrils of his awareness eased around hers, searching for places of entry. He found a few and pushed in slowly, cautiously. If the girl wouldn't tell him, he'd rip the information from her. But there was no way he'd go rushing into her cracked mind like some green fool. He'd test the proverbial waters first.

"Tell me what you know about them. Any of them."

Vorian paused.

"Even Kvothe."

“Be quiet!”

The words slapped her across the face, leaving stinging needles on her cheek.

“Hush that noise!”

The belt berated her shoulder, leaving ringing pain under its sear. The shadow that could not possibly be a man loomed.

“You want to cry? I’ll make you cry.”

The hand knocked her head, discarding the girl onto the ground. She whimpered even as she knew what it would bring, and so brought it did the boot into her spine, and crush it did the air out from her lungs.

Fear and pain battled in the buffet. Fear brought petrified silence, wide staring eyes; pain brought tears and whimpers and cries. By the burning word she was made to stand, by the shoulders she was made to crush against the wall, by the terror she was made to be silent.

Silent, with wide, staring eyes.

“Be quiet!”

The words slapped her across the face, time having found a scratch upon its record. In the jarring Irrisorie found herself laid out again on the frigid rock. Her pupils, black, had nearly overtook the whole of her eye, while her skin resembled a cold eggshell, pale and wet. Wisps of vapor spilled over cracked, bloodied lips that no more made a sound.

"I don't care about your life, girl, I care about your order.” The words scraped their way into her skull. “The Mythics. Tell me about them, about your friends." Their bloodied claws assailed her ears and in their fervor sent spiking pain about her mind.

"Tell me what you know about them. Any of them."

Ringing filled the pause.

"Even Kvothe."

“Kvothe.” She wretched the ‘k’ and bit the ‘t’. Darkness furrowed her brow. “I know he hates you,” she spat the word with venom tongue, “I know he hates you and I know why.” The last word stirred a passion that drove a hiss from her teeth, and moved all her body in unity to free her from her bonds.

But passion spent itself and yet was not enough, and the girl fell back to the stone, reproached with bewildered pain.

“Oh mythos!” she cried. “I will not be, I will not be--” she gasped suddenly, fingers clenching, “I will be if only you’d come back to me...”

Her jaw clenched tight to stifle the scream that fear had ordered quiet. “Poison in my ears,” she spat at Vorian. “Poison in my ears,” almost too low to be heard.

Then once more fear’s frigid wind froze her lips, and she stilled.

Save for the shivering, save for the black, staring eyes.

“Kvothe,” said she, with venom growing in her voice, "I know he hates you. I know he hates you and I know why.”

Vorian's eyes narrowed. Slightly. Dangerously. The girl's words were said in desperation. They were daggers, hurled in a moment of fear and fury. But these daggers brought nothing new with them. He knew Kvothe hated him; he'd been counting on it when he told Kvothe of his plans in the ruins. But the girl thought she understood, claimed as fear strangled her heart that she saw why Kvothe hated him. No, he answered silently, you don't know, girl. Maybe she understood a portion now. But there was more that she did not know. More that she could never know.

She continued to writhe on the ground, switching between screaming at him and speaking in a whisper that was so soft it could barely be heard. All the while, Vorian continued to press forward into her mind, letting his presence seep like a poisonous fog through the corridors of her mind. All he had do to was wait. Just get in far enough and then jump into action.

He glanced down at her. She'd fallen silent again. Her pupils were large, her skin wet and clammy looking. She looked so frail, so weak, so utterly pathetic, with her silent shivering and her tear-stained face. Vorian felt no pity. He'd never feel for Irrisorie, not after yesterday. She was lucky to still be alive.

But she would not talk. Not yet. The edge of Vorian's lip twitched.

"Your stubbornness is only going to make this worse for you, girl," he said darkly.

He leaned a little closer to her, watching her with wary eyes. As if to emphasize his point, the edges of his presence suddenly sharpened, turning the amorphous fog into knives that we meant to drag against her consciousness. To make her scream. To make her howl.

"If you will not tell me the things I'm asking you, then I will hurt you until you crack."

As he continued to push deeper into her mind, he paused for a moment.

"And don't think your friends will come to save you. They don't even know where you are. And even if they did, they won't come for you." There was some truth from experience in his words. The number of Mythics that got rescued from Unum captivity in the scenario Iri found herself in was dreadfully low. Unum hideouts were hard to find, and rescues were risky.

"Do you think you're worth the risk to them?" he asked, twisting his voice into a cold, jeering mockery of kindness. "Hm? Do you think they'd come to the edge of the world to save you?

"No, girl." Vorian's voice was flat now, as cold as the harsh subarctic winds that blew outside the hidden base. "They won't come. Not for you. You're stuck here with me."

He grinned toothily. It was a dark, hateful grin. The knives sharpened and pressed harder.

"Forever."

His words were hollow and dense, and bitterly they stuck like honey on her hands, tangled and muddled among her disarrayed thoughts. If they were even thoughts, anything more than flashing senses.

Crack, stuck, forever, these words echoed in her ears. And then a thought.

They weren’t coming for her.

A thought that wasn’t hers, but it was; it came from the voice, but really, what was different between the voice and hers, the voice that razed the most intimate parts of her soul?

They weren’t coming. The thought was not fear, it was certainty, and it became a blade in her chest, twisted until her whole body was caught upon the blade and wrung.

She screamed. A scream that pierced and shattered, chilled blood, and rung its way through the rocks.

But this was nothing new. What was new was the pain from outside herself, pressing every injury. But these blades were of familiar texture, a disease Irrisorie knew.

Her mind was and never had been common. It weaved itself into the Mythos, lapping as gently as the feather tip of an ocean wave, but still shifting the sand. But without the Mythos, this mind roiled and fought and tore within itself. It craved the Mythos, despised its prison.

At first the thunder of the turmoil drowned out the whispers of the surrounding presence. Subtle they had worked their way around the mind, and now, they came and crushed from every direction. But her mind, on a level as primal as electricity, felt suddenly the Mythos close. So it arced like lightning, this other mind its conduit, and a tsunami’s current roared along the connection.

In this rush it imparted a piece, a fraction of the anguish that seared her bones, the pain that tore its claws down her body. A shocking, writhing, incinerating pain; the same pain that fivefold wracked the girl. But a taste, a drop on the tongue that burned acrid and eagerly consumed the whole mouth.

With the fervor of a maelstrom, the tormented mind lashed itself to the tendrils, coursed towards the heart of the man, a deep whirlpool that, even at the lightest touch, threatened to pull the offender deep within the eye.

The blades pushed deeper. Their intrusions was swift now, now that the need for secrecy had been abandoned. On they pressed, ripping and tearing and clawing at the other presence as they moved. But they looked, too. As their master commanded them, they searched for images, clues--anything that might fulfill the need they'd been sent into the alien mind to find. So far they'd found nothing.

That was fine. It just meant they'd have to keep pushing in.

Push they did, past the peripheral layers of the foreign presence and deeper, towards the heart. That was when the resistance came.

For the most part, the intrusion had been simple and straightforward enough--a warning if ever there was one when dealing with the strange girl. Now that Vorian's feelers had made it deeper into the girl's mind, they found the sleeping beast, and they woke it.

The pushback came as a surprise, jolting Vorian's eyes wide when the other mind suddenly latched itself onto his own. Words of surprise came from his mouth, but he was too focused on the task to truly know what he'd said. He wasn't even really of the two guards beyond the cell exchanging worried looks.

A pain came with the touch of Irrisorie's mind. It burned him, imparted a terrible searing that struck through his consciousness and bled out into his body. Physically, he recoiled. Mentally, he might have, but he found that he could not; the other mind was holding his, making such a reckless, unfocused retreat impossible.

Surprise made control waver, and he felt himself being pulled along, deeper into the twisted recesses of the girl's mind as he struggled to regain composure.

Fury grew then, borne on a tide of frustration that his composure could restrain no longer. His hands clenched into fists, and driven by powerful arms, they pounded her side and stomach and face as his voice raged and yelled and hollered commands for her to stop. Vorian was aware of his physical actions in the way one can be aware that one is dreaming; he knew it was happening, but couldn't do anything about it. Wouldn't even if he could. His focus was in that ethereal plane now, where he fought to free himself from the girl's mind.

It was a struggle. He continued to fight to regain his focus after the sudden reprisal had shaken it so severely. His mind pushed back, stopping the advancing of the foreign mind toward his own.

"Breathe, Vorian."

The sound of his old instructor's voice echoed across his awareness.

"Focus."

For a moment he was younger, back in the time when he'd just joined the Unum. The old man was teaching him how to better probe the minds of others, teaching him how to better fight through telepathy. He'd ridden mental storms in those lessons. He'd fought with all the strength he could muster and yelled and screamed in pain when he failed.

But in a way, this girl's mind was different. Everyone's mind was different really, but Iri's was different.

His blows slowed and then stopped as he breathed in deeply, steeling his will. This was a storm he'd not seen the likes of before, but he couldn't escape it now.

No, as he fought back, tearing again at the mind that held so tightly onto his to try to force it loose, he knew that escaping it wasn't even a question. He'd have to weather this storm.

No, he would do more than weather it. He would conquer it.

Many men had drowned trying to conquer the ocean. A few had learned to navigate the expanse and to bear the squalls.

Irrisorie's mind was a kind of ocean.

A dark, churning, unpredictable ocean.

An unstable ocean. It had leapt at the vulnerable mind, enveloped it. Grasped it. But it was over-excited, over agitated, leaping too quickly from its foundation.

Disembodied, the blows were flaming fireworks in her mind. Surging through the ethereal, it warped and discarded the nerve impulses. Tiny capillaries had burst under each blow, leaking blueish blood under the skin. But such minor things could be handled by the physiological, and Irrisorie's mind moved on.

The mythos was close, her mind could smell it... but then the conduit began to rust. The other mind slowly froze over, so that Irrisorie's advance was halted.

Her mind lurched and folded back upon itself. The tendrils became tangled back upon themselves, confused. Instead of gaining new ground, they poured into the established connection, yanking the mind into empathy. A moment of unadulterated connection, where the line between his mind and hers was indistinguishable. But Irrisorie's mind turned and slithered on whim, and it began to slip. Confused, she looked back upon herself.

This one was that... no, that was this, but which way was it? If the pain would just go away maybe she could see this way from that...

And the Mythos had faded. It was gone, she could no longer orient from it...

Her mind folded and condensed, wrapping back in upon itself in a rapid implosion.

Freezing cold, rough stone, darkness, hovering faces, a shattering feeling in her limbs. Irrisorie was snapped back to the physical.

She gasped violently, then her breath returned, quick and forced. Her whole body trembled, exposed skin rough with gooseflesh. Desperate, she pulled against her bonds.

"It's s-so c-c-cold..."

Calm

The two guards outside the cell looked at each other. Vorian had been hitting the girl and yelling at her, but now he'd stopped. Now he just sat there, still as a stone. It was hard to tell if he was even breathing.

Focus

"You sure we shouldn't do anything?" Allen asked, looking to his Twi'lek partner. "It all feels weird."

The Twi'lek, who simply went by Fao, shook his head. "No."

Allen waited for moment, thinking Fao might say something else. He glanced back at Vorian, then to Fao again. "You sure."

"Yes, Allen," Fao growled. A deaf man would've been able to feel the annoyance stemming out from him. "Look, just focus on keeping the girl down. When Vorian tells us not to get involved, he means not to get involved. And I won't have him gettin' pissed at me cause you're still too wet behind the ears to follow a simple order, understand me?"

A flustered Allen broke his gaze from the Twi'lek, settling it back on the duo within the cell. "Sorry. I was just asking a question."

Fao just snorted.

Control

In the ethereal realm, the two minds battered and slammed against each other. While it was not a fight that could be seen, it was just as intense and dangerous as any physical battle could be. Through it all, Vorian stove to keep his calm.

Iri's mind was a wild, leaping thing. It constantly battered against his own, trying to envelop it and drag it deeper into chaos. But Vorian's mind was a force in and of itself, one that was directed with a steady hand and a clear goal, rather than lashing wildly about. It held strong against the wild thing's advances, fending off those leaps and grabs and lashing back out in counter when it could.

It was a defensive posture. Vorian was holding his ground, his advance into her mind halted temporarily as he worked to try to better figure her out. For a fleeting moment, he regretted that the situation was such that he couldn't just go plowing through and subdue her with brute strength--Mythos only knew it was something he had in spades. But finesse was needed here, not brutishness.

What a pity.

Irisorrie's mind leapt at his own again and he steeled his will for yet another onslaught. But no, it was different this time. The other mind had acted too quickly, jumped too eagerly.

Vorian saw his chance there. His presence lurched forward at her, grabbing out at it even as hers took his...

For a moment, the consciousness of two became one. His mind's eye filled with a blinding white light.

Images flashed before him. The Tower. There was a group of Mythics. Kvothe was one of them. There was a another man there, too, one Vorian didn't recognize. His face was concealed and he had a fair number of staves. There was another Mythic, a rodent looking thing with inky black fur.

The image faded, quickly replaced by others that flashed by almost too quickly to take in.

And then they were gone. The images faded, the girl's mind retreated back in on itself. It was over.

Vorian let the Mythos leave him and his awareness returned to the physical realm. He was dimly aware of a light sheen of sweat on his brow, but he paid little mind to it.

His brows furrowed. The images were still in his mind. Most of them seemed useless, at least at first blush. But there was the one of those Mythics, his brother included. Who were they? Friends, perhaps. Some time to ponder it all would more than likely prove fruitful.

"It's s-so c-c-cold..."

Vorian looked down at the girl as he stood to his feet. She looked so pathetic now, battered and restrained as she was. For a moment, he had the urge to free the dagger at his hip from its sheath and run it through her chest. Not yet.

Her time would come soon enough.

"Uh... Vorian?"

Vorian turned his head at the sound of the voice. It was Allen. "You can let her go." He looked back and his gaze lingered on Iri for a moment. Then he turned and left the cell, heading for the stairwell that led out of the dungeon.

"Give her some water if she'll take it. No food."

Allen looked as if he wanted to say something but looked back to Fao. The Twi'lek shook his head. Whatever it was the new recruit was going to say would have to wait, if it was ever said at all. He looked at the girl on the cell floor, and a look that almost looked like one of pity grew on his face.

"Wait, Vorian-"

He looked to the stairwell, but the Rilan was already gone.