but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams

[ Continued from here. ]

Och jag följer dina gnistor under tunga moln
Och jag vet exakt vart du ska gå
En lögn blir lätt en sanning när den kommer inifrån

A bleak and bitter sun had risen over their journey. The moon had fallen from her perch in the sky, dethroned by the first arcing spears of sunlight as one by one the stars caved in beneath the pressure of the Sun. The navy backdrop of the sky grew lighter and lighter, until it, for a moment, matched the bleakness of the light. Mauja's crowned head rose. A dismal morning to match the dismal mood of the trio moving painstakingly across the face of Helovia.

He wasn't sure where it had gone wrong, or even if it had gone wrong at all, but the fact remained that his memories were full of little girls arguing and crying.

And that blasted illness that made his blood boil with anger. How dared the Gods expand Helovia at the price of lives? How dared they butt heads with corrupted Gods and then just leave their subjects to take the blows, and reap what the divine had sowed? His teeth ground against one another for a moment. It was hard to shake the image of a dead Aviya, of all those blistered, bleeding sides, of black mucus dripping down muzzles—

It was hard to forgive the kind of short-sighed foolishness that had broadened the horizons of Helovia with little thought of how it would affect the inhabitants.

But anger was an ineffective cure. If the flames of his fury could purify, the world would've burned a long time ago.

Irma came gliding in with the morning light, a silent ghost descending through the slowly warming air. Mauja paused where he was. The ground had begun to slope gently upwards towards a horizon of evergreens and fog, but they weren't there yet. And already, they had gone far, and both of his travel companions were young. One was ill, the other tired. His 'brows drew together.

Well, fuck that. There wasn't much he could do about it, except what he was already doing. When they burst, some of Areli's boils bled water as well as pus—the aftermath of Mauja silently numbing the afflicted areas with ice. He wasn't sure she would've agreed if he'd asked her—hadn't he caused her enough already? But he couldn't escape the lodestone of guilt that had begun to sink towards the floor of his soul, and if he could ease just a little of her pain...

He turned back to his owl; her wide wings blocked out the rising sun, cast his face into shadow as her talons briefly touched the bridge of his nose.

I will find her, the owl said, her voice a cold whisper in the back of his mind. "Go," he murmured, and she disappeared, leaving behind a single drop of red where his skin had broken. She sped away with the same eerie quiet as she had come, gone to hunt the forest for a white lion and his iron bride.

Mauja turned back to the girls—Areli, and Galiel. One who smelled of the Falls, and one who had come from beyond Helovia.

And both had had the inexplicable stroke of bad fortune of running into him.

"It's just up ahead," he told them, falling back into stride, heading towards the treeline and the broken glass wall he knew laid beyond them. And perhaps they would be close enough, if she happened to be out on patrol—

"NYX!" he yelled at the looming forest, voice piercing the fogs. "NYX!"

[ @Galiel and @Areli first please! Tagging @Nyx because he's yelling for her. Shady, if you want me to change his using magic on her let me know and I will! ^^ Basically, he's just forming small ice crystals in the affected areas to numb her nerves. ]

man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same