Heir of Iron

"I do not understand, should not such a thing be as to me as the light of the sun or moon?" he asked, and Cithara let out a sigh.

"I said you had not the understanding, and I cannot wholly impart what It is to even you as you are now," she sighed ruefully, her tail whisked and she drew one of her forelegs up to her chest. "It is... God himself, a bit of Him and His Realm. His Breath. A Whisper from His lips. It is Truth." she said, her voice resigned. She looked between the five of them; "None of you, not a one can withstand the unmitigated, unfiltered magnitude of Absolute Truth. Bart?" she said pointedly, tasking her attention to him.

"You have nearly been unmade by it once before." she breathed and met his gaze. "Once before, you gazed into Truth, for only the smallest fracture of a moment."

Bart's mind reeled back to The Glade, looking beyond, into the Cycle of Things. He shuddered and went pale as he nodded, and she nodded in return.

"In that moment, you glimpsed the very barest edge of Truth, you brushed its furthest corner with fingers clad in thick gloves of my love and caring, and yet and still it nearly reaved you apart," she explained, looking between the others. "Such an experience would have torn them asunder, unmade them utterly bereft of my protection."

"That is why I needed the mantle." he mused, and she nodded.

"I am a creature of the Divine Realm, my mantle sheathes you in the stuff of the Astral, and buffers you between its all-defining, all-unmaking Truth," she said.

"Why use it against the fell ones then, Lady?" Gram asked, the quiet cavalier leaning thoughtfully on his bec-de-corbin nearby, the question taking everyone off guard from the normally taciturn manner of the Darrowmite soldier; "It seems quite an enormous expenditure for something that dies well to steel and muscle," Cithara smiled at him, and there was a sadness in her face.

"It is a mercy," she explained, drawing herself up. "I hate not the minions of the Queen for being, merely for what they are, what they do — but they have no choice. No escape. Those slain by the Light of God, exposed to Truth — are reaved from the Queen's broken cycle." she let out a little shuddering breath.

"It is but a drop in a sea of billions, but those few are allowed at last the rest of oblivion." The party fell silent at that heavy moment, Cithara dipping her head with a shiver as she turned to Bart again. "That is why it is not for you. I will not teach you to call upon it, I will not hand you the keys to unmaking yourself, no matter the power it grants," she said with finality, her chin high.

"If God decrees you worthy to wield his Light directly, it will not be I who grants it. That is for Him to choose."

Bart nodded, he could accept that. Lidia looked over at him, hugging herself a bit.

"Ye dinnae tell me a lot o' things about yer time with the Lady, definitely nae bit o' bein' almost obliterated," she huffed at him with an accusatory tone, the big Paladin shrugged, smiling sheepishly.

"It has been a busy day, I was getting to it."

~ ~ ~

The return was a quiet thing, everyone deep in their own minds on the events they'd witnessed. Bart suspected this was intentional, Cithara was a noble, loving thing that filled his heart — but she was also a master manipulator. He had an inkling she'd engineered this excursion for some grander purpose with his friends. To look at them now, he imagined she had accomplished whatever she sought to, and now led their sober little band back to the gates, always a few extra steps forward of the group, just outside of easy reach. It did little to deter Bart, finding himself astray of his friends with the unicorn, her eyes distant.

"They are so young," she said to him apropos of nothing. The phrase hung in the silence between them. Neither turned to meet the other's eyes as they walked, Bart's gaze ahead on the familiar shapes of men at work around the gates.

"You are all so young," she said again, and there was an ancient pain in that voice. A surrender to vulnerability as she lowered her head, tucking her face away beneath the veil of her silky mane.

"It never gets easier, Bart," she breathed, her pace resolute. "Yet every time I see a face so young, so new. So untouched by time as theirs carrying such weight of knowledge, such scars." she shuddered with a sob, Bart was reminded of the specter of the First Paladin, his words:

Her emotions are larger than ours brother, she loves, hates, and mourns with the power of the Astral Tapestry. All about her is cosmic, even her sadness.

"To be forced to add to it. To do so knowingly, it is a burden that never grows lighter," her voice was resigned, the pain was fresh but familiar. Bart smiled, it was however a rueful expression: He was one of those things. He had not missed that little verbal tripwire. Too young, too new for the things he'd seen — even he knew as much, knew the weight of what he bore. But he saw the glimmer behind the pain, the steel in the broken parts. He opened his mouth, chest full as he thought to speak — to assuage her fears — and found her shoulder bumping his chest, air puffing out of it in a sudden, uncomfortable exhale. She sighed at him.

"No, No Bart," she murmured, nuzzling his cheek. "This isn't a problem to solve, this is just a time to listen. I am no frail, myopic immortal. I know you are a durable people, but much like any mother it still hurts to watch you trip and fall, even as you must needs do it — and I sometimes simply need to just feel that, in the open." she explained, making the young Paladin once more feel a bit sheepish. She pressed a bit closer.

"Just listen, and then tell me you love me at the end."

"Oh, if that's all," he mused wryly. She smiled at that gently if a bit wan at the edges, simply leaning on him as they walked. Bart was as asked of him — present, attentive even as he watched her wrestle with her memories. Herself.

"I have been gone from the world a long time, Bart," she said after a long pause. "The last I strode these green hills, they were dark with the fires of war... and so it is again when I emerge anew," there was a bitterness there he had never heard from her. "I have never laid eyes upon mine own world, a world my very essence is bound to, in a state of peace. Only in my idyllic, shut-away corner. Distant and far away." she continued, golden eyes unfocused, staring past the fortress to the mountains beyond. She closed her eyes in a sudden grimace, a shuddering breath drawn in as she burst out, voice hoarse:

"I want to see my children flourish, I wish to see their joys, not merely their tears! I want to see my babies grow!" her voice a strangled wail of pent-up anguish. Bart's mute attentiveness seemed to be exactly what she needed, as the cosmic being never missed a stride, even as she sniffed and tossed her mane to one side. A flare of her orbit crisply flicked tears from her glimmering golden eyes and over a series of seconds, Bart watched her rebuild her imperious composure, as if her sadness were an uppity child to be humored and then sent along. Each bit was put back into place until she drew one more breath and stopped, turning to Bart.

"I want to see my babies grow up, Bartholomus," she breathed, her tone neutral, strong. Eyes on his. He saw the distance there, the necessary distance she had to maintain. A distance he would have to learn himself, she smiled — and there was resignation in it, a submission of sorts.

"I already missed it once. Please, don't make me do it again." There was a pleading in that tone, a quiet vulnerability. Beyond their companions grew closer, the long walk back from the battlefield reaching its end as the great white walls of the Fort loomed above them. Bart felt pressed to answer, to say... something, but he had nothing he could begin to say to this eternal, cosmic creature and the very idea of the loss she'd felt. He was a small thing, he was one man. He only had one thing to offer.

"I can only love you," Bart said, honestly. Genuinely, touching her cheek; "Everything else... I am but a man, I have but one heart, one life. I give them both to you as you need." he said, and with a catch in her voice — the unicorn laughed.

"God's Light, Bart," she said, her warm, buttery laughter washing the last dregs of sadness from her; "I said you did not needs fix it, and yet you try in earnest still."

"I merely did as you asked. I listened," he said, turning back towards the wall as their companions closed the gap.

"Then I told you I loved you."

She smiled at that, and her eyes glimmered as she needed not give her answer in return. He felt it surely enough.

~ ~ ~

The walls loomed ahead of them as each of the companions was pulled from their introspection by one another, and by the time the gates once again swung wide, the five were warmly chatting anew. Gram advanced ahead of the party at a clipped pace as the doors opened ahead of them — the remains of his outriders filtering in behind them.

"Sir! The scouts have reports!" came a man in similar cuirassier armor to Gram, the marching cavalier gesturing for him to continue as the massive windlasses thundered their din to swing wide the gates — in the gap, a pair of familiar shapes.

"Ah, we were just talking about when you would arrive," Naima said, hands fiddling with saddlebags on fresh, bright-eyed horses; Rashid stood nearby, a steady, stony presence to his wife's clinical motion.

"It is early yet, we need not rush." He mused, and Naima shot him a glance.

"If you knew how much of our travels were owed to my preparedness and not your faith in the Learned One's prophecy, you might be more thankful," she said with a wry tone as the tall Cavalier strode past them. Rashid smiled widely.

"I am thankful as frequently as you can manage, my Heart," he said to her in that rumbling, basso voice of his, and the small woman darkened two shades deep at that, and she smiled at him with unsubtle warmth.

"Perhaps I can stand a bit more..." she answered playfully as the companions joined them, Gram's sergeant still rattling off a series of reports to him as he moved past the pair... to a line of soldiers and horses, ten wide and ten deep. Bart's eyes widened at that — more to the point, so did Cithara's.

"My child, no..." she began, and Gram looked up, the sergeant pausing in his delivery as his commanding officer straightened, and bowed.

"Respectfully, Lady," he said with a salute. "I will have to refuse that request."

"I will not have you throw your lives to the winds on this account!" she rebutted stridently, stepping forward, bulling past Naima and Rashid on sheer presence, but Gram remained unshaken.

"Lady, not a man here is not of the Faith," he said, and each of them raised their hands in the smooth gestures of the Eye and Horn in unison, a hundred hands offered in supplication. "We are not paladins, but we are men of this land, all of it and we would fight for you," he said, and then with an uncharacteristic lapse of his rigid order, he spread his arms.

"More to the point, Lady — you have no means to stop all of us." he said, and there was a resounding 'HOOAH' from the assembled cavalry behind him, Cithara's face screwed up in first anger, then frustration... and settling on an agonized set of her teeth

"I cannot ask this of you..."

"It is good then that we did not seek permission, Lady," Gram noted, folding his arms into a parade rest again. "I will formally accept responsibility for any indiscretion my rank disobedience causes, it was my idea — the men simply followed orders," he said, though the way he shot a sidelong glance at the soldiers, and the faint ripple of chortling laughter that echoed through the ranks put good-humored lie to those words. Cithara's face crumbled. Bart, ever the hero — came to her rescue.

"A hundred men? We have but a fortnight," he said, skeptically. Gram's eyes locked with his in challenge.

"My men are rangers and longriders, The Ivory Spears may be heavy cavalry, but each of us is born to the saddle and is comfortable living from it as dying in it," he said proudly, gesturing. "We carry our lives on our backs, we need no supply lines or squires," he said, and his eyes met Cithara's again and they glimmered with zeal.

"With the Lady in White's loving presence filling us with strength, we can press limits. Ride harder, ride longer," he said with fire in his soul. "Beneath her banner, a fortnight for my men is but an energetic jog." Bart's eyebrows raised, he had not considered Cithara's orbit and its effects on others quite that way, and the way she blinked back tears made it clear she had not either.

"You know what that means for you, do you not?" she asked quietly. The tall spearman simply shook his head.

"Nay, Lady. We are simply soldiers. We fight for a cause, and just in case you forgot where you are — you, are that cause." he said, truly unknowing and uncaring of the risks. He struck his breastplate loudly, his voice raised in a sudden crack of thunder the soft-spoken Darrowmite seemed incapable of as a rule — and yet it rang out with authority.

"WE SERVE!" he prompted, and a ringing din of fists on armor answered him back, from the assembled men — from men at the walls, from commoners at the edges of the Wards, from every soul gathered to witness the answer was returned:

"UNTIL THE PALE DAWN CALLS US!"

The sensation of that sound, that unified wall of noise thrummed through Bart's body from his nose to his boots, his companions as much seemed in awe, conversation halting, eyes up. Cithara choked on a quiet sob, a glimmering tear darkening the earth beneath her muzzle.

"My beautiful boys," she said, her smile devastating as she stepped up closer to them. "Such valor deserves a better divinity than I," she breathed, her voice was quiet and yet found its way to every ear.

"I will love you twofold in return, ne'er have I asked of men more than I was willing to give, and ne'er will I as long as I have flesh and form. I promise you," she said, stifling another sob. "I... have missed you all so terribly..." she breathed, and then — openly weeping in front of them, she pressed into the assembled line of men-at-arms, brushed past them all, every one of them was given in turn — a moment with her, tears and smiles following in her wake as she blessed the hundred-strong force in the only way she knew how: with her love.

"She is a sight to behold," Rashid said, a familiar sparkle of wonder in his eyes. "I have borne witness to a pair of divinities now, blessed be my days, and neither outshines the other. They simply made room for themselves within me." he murmured something in his lyrical speech; "True in the Beginning, True throughout the Ages"

"You never truly become accustomed to them. There is always fresh awe, if only for a moment," Naima echoed, "Their humanity continues to surprise me... so great and vast, and yet they speak with mouths and hearts like to ours." she rocked herself in her own embrace a moment, eyes fluttering closed. Bart had nothing to add to this moment of wonder, so he simply stood there with them.

"We prepared horses for everyone, including yourself," Naima said after a few quiet minutes. "We guessed you would be eager to leave, considering Mihai's brand of threats — and that the Lady may wish more autonomy in our company than being your mount would allow."

"Oh, quite. I hadn't thought of that." Bart admittedly quietly, Naima smiled.

"You were other-focused," she murmured, her own golden gaze still fixed on the Unicorn, as she was slowly, lovingly swarmed by battle-worn, smiling faces. Kisses were doled out on brows and noses, hands touched and shook with awe... she seemed to literally burst with the love she bathed in, tears glimmered on her cheeks as she met each one.

"She is lonely," Bart said after a moment. "Look at her," he breathed, eyes wide as he took in her glee, her joy. "She craves this, craves us. How could I do anything but love her? She asks nothing more, wants nothing more, and is so very, very alone..." he was crying himself now, tears rolling from his one functional eye. "If she is to destroy me with her love, what greater bliss could I ask for?"

"It is not for us to say, Bart," Naima murmured, placing her hand on his arm as they stood apart, the companions all silent, not a single set of eyes entirely dry as the sheer metaphysical weight of the unbridled, undiluted joy of the Queen of Love washed over them, bathed them in her fleeting happiness.

"Let her burn me alive in that love, let me be a torch bright as the sun," he breathed, fingers tight around his helm held at his waist, around the crown it wore — the crown he wore as her laughter echoed back to him, "I would bear any burden if it meant I saw her forever like this. Burn me on that pyre of love, burn me to my soul." Naima and Rashid both exchanged knowing looks, and the rest was quiet.

The silence reigned again, and for a time — there was naught but joy. The air warmed, the very trees flowered along the edges of the forest, fresh grass peeked through the trodden battlefield — life surged outwards. Rose up, renewed, and returned with the laughter, the blissful presence of The Unicorn.

"Oh... my dear, dear boys." Cithara breathed after what felt like an eternity, having walked from one end of the troop to the other and back. "I won't forget this sacrifice, I will endeavor to deserve it. I will remember each of you, your names. Your faces. Your hearts." she said to the crowd of soldiers.

"Know that to walk at my side is to be undone from time, I am sure you feel it — the gaiety of step, the energy and pep," she said, her smile turning sad. "It is my doing, my mere presence pours the essence of life into all around me, bathes you in it — drowns you in it," she explained, and met all of their eyes.

"Each of you, if you continue — will live long, your life extended unnaturally so. Right now it is perhaps a year or two longer in your prime, perhaps old pains will bother you naught or old scars fade early," she said, looking between them in a slow pan, raising her head, chest outthrust stoically. "But if you dwell with me overlong, it will become decades, centuries. You will outlive your friends, your family, your place in the flow of time."

The soldiers murmured among themselves a moment, but nary a single eye strayed from her as she spoke.

"Any man who quails at such a notion is not a coward. He will not be shunned or thought less of for doubting in the face of the unnatural horror that offers. I welcome you, o beautiful boys o mine — but I offer any man here the chance to stand down in honor," she said and added in final note.

"I love you all too dearly to demand of you such sacrifices." The men murmured again, milling about themselves, and one young soldier simply stood at parade rest and struck his breastplate with one fist in salute. Beside him, another paused and followed. Then another. Down the line it went as each man weighed his choices, until a hundred glittering mailed knuckles stood upright in honor, each soldier's eyes hard as steel and full of fire. Cithara's eyes welled up again, both in joy and sorrow as she dipped low on one hoof, lowering her horn to the ground before them all in almost meek supplication.

"Thank you, thank you all, my sweet, beautiful boys." she drew herself up with a shiver, looking back and forth between the others, a look of trepidation on her face for a scant moment as her eyes met Bart's, reaching out to him silently, desperately for aid — her heart warring with itself on extending this moment's joy forever. Bart however, had no chance to swing to the rescue, as the buttcap of a spear rang out on the pavestones.