Chosens
Two years old and Uncle gives her gifts, but he only comes when the moon is missing. He tells her she’s been Chosen for something great. He makes her laugh while Auntie clucks and scowls in the kitchen, but she’s enthralled by shiny baubles and a grin broken by sharp teeth.
He follows the whispers through his home, turning corners looking for a voice with no mouth. The warmth in his chest holds tight, but he’s clever and curious and his nanny is distracted for just a minute. He follows the voice to a window and climbs up on the seat and closes his eyes, listening, waiting. He catches it again, just a moment, and just as he turns he falls. The warmth goes out.
Uncle gives her puzzles, little trick boxes with treasures inside. Sometimes it’s a sweet from afar, sometimes it’s another pretty chain he places between growing horns. This box is crystal and seamless and she wants the shiny swirling gem inside, but no matter how she pries at it it won’t budge. She growls, a soft imitation of Uncle’s thunder, and chucks the box at a wall. Crystal falls in shattering rain across the floor and the little gem rolls to her feet as Uncle laughs. Sometimes, he tells her, the best trick is the obvious one.
It’s dark and he’s alone and everything is cold. He feels smooth stone and smooth stone and smooth stone and his voice is the only thing he hears as he screams. No one comes running. Who should come running? There’s a void in his head and his heart and he can’t remember who should come to his aid but he wants them desperately. Every inch is a battle, but the stone gives and slides and he is still achingly alone. He pulls himself out and shaking to the floor, more cold stone, but the glimmer of magic torch light gives the illusion of warmth. He wraps his arms around his knees and something else wraps its claws around him. Not warmth, not quite, but another illusion easy enough to believe when he can’t remember the real thing.
Training with her sword is a daily practice, much to Auntie’s dismay. She has a way with the physical arts that don’t compare to her paltry dabbles in mysticism and magic - though curses, those come natural. She’s thirteen the first time her skill earns her a chain and Uncle takes her away from Auntie’s for the day. She pulls loose the neck of her tunic and he takes a black crystal to her skin. It’s fire and ice in her nerves, but he tells her it’s an honor to wear the mark of the Chained One. So she digs her claws into her knees in silence as the first chains of her mantle are bequeathed.
He’s alone but he isn’t. A boy with a name found on a tomb and no family to claim him, but a presence that watches, always watches. He’s on his own until he’s found and the group that finds him is very good at finding lost things. He’s just another one for awhile, but it’s almost like family. They don’t know about the claws that caress and hold him tight and he doesn’t share his secret. They’re almost family, but the claws pulled him out of his tomb first and told him he was Chosen for a reason.
She wears a mantle now, her arms sleeved, and there is no denying her destiny. She is a sword and she cavorts with demons. She is their Chosen. She doesn’t question her purpose but she does. She rides out to villages where they don’t know her and she laughs and she flirts and she gets caught. Uncle is disappointed, but she throws off his growled threats. It’s just a little fun before it’s gone. He cracks a hand across her face and spines erupt over her skin until he’s the one howling. She is the daughter of Murmur, how dare he. Know your place, he growls and she bares her teeth and warns him that she does.
He finds things he shouldn’t. Lost information, lost names, a lost stick and with it lost memories. Tucked away, forcibly forgotten, there’s a new voice now, trying to slip in between him and the claws. But there is a price, there is always a price. There is blood on his hands that isn’t his and he runs again, like so long ago, but he’s not alone. There is a place for him out there on the surface that abandoned him, he just needs to make it.
There was a test and she failed and her leg is bare. There should be chains adorning it now and she can’t figure out if she’s mad at herself or everything else. She feels empty and lost, the first time in her life she doesn’t know who or what she is. She is Murmur’s daughter. She is a witch’s ward. She is a girl with a sword and no idea what she is doing. But Uncle is furious and Auntie’s home burns and she is alone. She screams into the night and it doesn’t scream back, but she keeps going until she can’t. She grabs her sword, she digs the blade into her shield until she and it bleed and maybe it’s not enough. Maybe she’s not enough. But she’ll need to be put in her grave before she gives up. And maybe not even then.
She is lost looking for a tower that might not even exist. A seeker of knowledge, of magic, of power, who sometimes chases tales that are nothing more than dust and rot. Across the sky lightning flashes and she takes shelter in a ruined temple, her consolation prize. It might not hold the secrets she’s after, but it’s dry and safe and stokes new curiosities inside her. She traces carvings on the wall and paces around a broken altar and feels magic alight beneath her skin. That night, she dreams of a voice and of a deal and of power that follows her even as she wakes. It’s not an ancient tower, but maybe there was only ever this.
He makes a name for himself, several in fact. He’s still not sure who he is but he knows what he’s doing. He thinks. The cane trusts him, encourages him. The claws don’t seem so tight anymore. He is a boy wearing a man’s mask, a different one each night, but he smiles and he charms and maybe one of those masks will stick. There are legends and seals and he will do what he can to keep the claws from digging their way through him and into the rest of this world. He can save them.
The voice is only with her in dreams, but his presence is a constant now. She has power she never knew and she seeks more, so she follows the voice, the pull in her heart. He has a job for her and she does it, every bloody step of it. She should feel regret, she might have once, but power is intoxicating. Every step brings her closer and the dagger in her hand is inadequate beside the one she’s chasing in her dreams. She spills blood and breaks the seal and claims a destiny not made for her, but hers all the same.
The demons keep calling but she meets them blow for blow now. She might be their Chosen, but that isn’t her destiny any longer. Seals and knives and ancient rituals can all rot without her now. She covers her chains, she wears new ones with pride and intends to use them to keep that old bastard locked up for good.
She was not a fighter before the pact was struck, she didn’t know how to use a blade. She kept her head down in the shadows and she watched and she waited and she took what was hers when backs were turned. Now he traces a bloody path across the map with her hand around the hilt. A revenge plan, something that echoes her own past deeds, but it’s something else too, she just isn’t sure what. She strikes the blade, her blade, into stone and a piece of god shrieks and dies at her hand and now she seeks more than power, she seeks answers.
His mask of confidence cracks with the first seal. All his carefully laid plans in shambles now as he struggles to reset and regroup. He thought he knew the game, he thought he saw all the pieces. But he’s not the only one those claws have sunk into and as they pull at the shreds of him he knows that he has no idea what he’s doing, so far in over his head he just might lose it. He can’t save them, not like this. But he has to try.
Fury boils in her hollow chest. Pacts within pacts, he wants to be freed, says the blade, and I want chaos to choke this world. And for a time there is regret in her. For a time she leaves the blade alone. She wants power, yes, but when the world is plunged into chaos and void and nothing - what power remains? But she knows the shadows, she knows to keep her head down, to play a part, and though she questions, she does not stop. She follows a broken bird into a coal mine and she breaks another seal on the demon’s cage before that bird sings. The blade demands blood and silence, a noxious whisper that threatens her hand, but she lets him live. For now, he’s useful to her plans.
She gets a visit from a demon, but it’s not as common as it was. Uncle hasn’t bothered to show his face since she broke his horns. Instead he sends his dogs to bark at her now. Always the same, always ignored. You can’t avoid destiny - she can. You’ll realize how wrong you were - she won’t. This little tantrum can be forgiven - kiss her ass. But it’s different now. The demon in her campsite isn’t extending an open hand back into the fold, but kicking dirt into a wound she didn’t realize was still fresh. You’ve been replaced, he tells her, and oh, you should see her - everything you were too weak to be. She’s on her feet and reaching for his throat but comes away with smoke in her grasp and laughter in her ears. She was their Chosen, she’s not anymore, and somehow that stings more than anything else they’d done to her.
There is a book that she wants, that her blade’s cult misses. They yearn to see the world in chaos and this little book was a piece of the puzzle, stolen from within. She adds it to her list, an elf to hunt down, a book to reclaim, a seal to find, and she knows a boy with a crown that is so very good at finding lost things. She shows her hand, just enough, and sends him hunting for her. He should know better than to cross her and when he does she twists her blade between her fingers because maybe, he’s not so useful to her anymore.
Betrayal stings more than he expects it to, but there is work to be done yet and he cannot mourn what he’s lost when the list keeps growing. Heavy is the head that wears the crown when it digs and cuts and bleeds, but he has a mission and it’s still his to see through. He finds a girl adorned in chains and who speaks with her fists curled tight and he lets her know she’s not alone, that the Chained One is coming whether they like it or not, but she has allies whether she likes it or not. Enemies too, but it seems she already knows. They kill a demon and send a message and she doesn’t trust him, but she doesn’t have to. She just needs to listen so they can make it through this. One of them needs to make it through this.
The little bird comes to her with a plea and she laughs with poison on her tongue. He says it’s not too late. She smiles because oh, it already is. There is power at her finger tips she could not have dreamed of before this. What fool would walk away? There is, of course, a fight and it is bloody and it is savage and only one Chosen is left with a gory crown curled in her fist. But something is wrong, she isn’t sure what. She calls a shadow that doesn’t come and looks for a stick that won’t be found. At some point she’ll have to deal with that, but for now he is dead and she is not and there is a seal she needs to break - and a god she needs to kill.