Star Sent

Sirona drifted through darkness and the scent of blood until it started to clear. She was alone and her head was pounding. She was hungry enough to eat a horse, she was sure. She sat up slowly and got out of bed. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but she hoped not long.
What had happened? She remembered being in the forest, then there had been screaming. Her heart lurched and she stumbled through the house towards the front door until she arrived outside. Arawn walked towards her from down the way with a smile.
“The hero awakes,” he teased. “How are you feeling? Hungry?”
“What happened? The attack? T-The bandits?”
Arawn reached her, placing a hand on her shoulder to steady her before speaking.
“You killed the bandits,” he said. “And everyone is mostly fine. Some scrapes and minor injuries.”
She’d killed them? She shuddered. The faint scent of blood on the wind sent a chill through her and made her blood run cold.
She’d killed them? How? She didn’t remember it. Would it always be like that? Had she hurt anyone else? She hadn’t meat to kill any of them, just subdue them.
Slices of memory came to mind. She’d been some strange vision about how her father died. Blodeu had been there. The Herald of Anu had been there and the king had his sword lifted over her father’s head.
There had been other nobles there, simply watching and enjoying the spectacles, but not all of them. Had she killed them too? What had that vision been about?
“Hey,” Arawn called, lifting her head so their gazes could meet. “Calm yourself. You did what you were meant to.”
“I killed people,” she said, turning from him. “That’s… That’s not what I’m meant to do.”
He sighed, “You killed bandits and defended people, then. You did it to save lives. Does that make you feel better?”
She bristled. It did, but his tone didn’t.
“How could you be so cold about the deaths of all those people?”
His eyes narrowed and hardened. All the teasing warmth evaporated in a moment as he looked at her. For a moment, she didn’t recognize him. He seemed older, more world-weary, and harder than he had been before.
“Should I weep for people who mean me harm?” Arawn asked.
Sirona swallowed she supposed when he put it that way, then no, but he didn’t need to sound so cold about it. No matter what their intentions had been, they were people. They likely had a family and loved ones too. They might have turned to this kind of life out of desperation instead of wickedness.
What right did she have to murder them? Surely, she could have just subdued them and taken them to the palace to be dealt with, right?
She didn’t ask these questions of Arawn, but Arawn could almost hear her thinking them. The troubled look on her face just made her seem more innocent than before.
They walked slowly through the town and Sirona was amazed to see people around rebuilding. The bloody mud that was streaked everywhere didn’t seem to bother anyone. Everyone seemed so happy and relieved.
Was she just overthinking it or was no one else thinking enough about it?
“Look, Sirona is awake!”
“Star Sent and Arawn’s Will, a blessing upon our lives,” someone cried.
A round of cheering went around the town and clapping. Sirona felt frozen. There was something wrong with the scene. Something that she should remember, but she couldn’t quite recall it.
“It has been such a bleak year, but things are truly getting better it seems.”
“We may even beat the quota this month and have enough to stock up for winter!”
Sirona was glad that they all seemed so happy, but she was troubled.
“Arawn,” she said looking up at him. Someone gasped nearby.
“Arawn? Did she just call him, Arawn?”
“I knew she was a saint.”
“No, a god. The goddess who walks beside Arawn.”
She shuddered at the way the energy inside her seemed to shift so quickly and so drastically. Her headache was gone. The weakness in her limbs lessened and her hunger seemed to subside.
If this is what happened to her from one little town, she could understand why Arawn didn’t need to eat.
“I… I killed them, but I don’t remember how?”
Arawn’s lips twitched, “A sword. Though seeing you eviscerate them would have been entertaining as well.”
She shuddered at the thought.
“You worry about the use of your power too much,” Arawn said. “Didn’t you want to save these people?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“If you had simply fought them off, what was to stop them from coming back and trying again when we are gone or raiding another town?”
She couldn’t answer that. She knew that he was right, but that didn’t mean she could simply accept that. She didn’t even remember how many people she killed. At least the knight she’d killed when she escaped was forever burned in her memory.
These bandits, the people she’d killed, were no more than a fact of her murdering streaking.
“You will learn to mourn the deaths that you should and forget the ones you shouldn’t,” Arawn said, “For now, focus on how much more powerful you are and let’s keep going? Maybe a bit of fresh air will do you good.”
She nodded shakily and walked with him through the town. People were still cheering and greeting them, but no one asked them to help them in any way.
The longer they walked, the more power she felt filling her then something caught her eye. It was a small altar it seemed, shaped a lot like the temple-altars that had been in the other city, but without a statue. There was a bowl of burning flowers and a loaf of bread. It looked a lot newer than the altar it stood beside it with a different bowl of burning flowers and a goblet of wine.
“What’s that?”
Arawn was speechless for a moment. It had been centuries since he had seen another altar beside his own. Long ago, he and Anu were worshipped in the same cities, but Anu’s greed and pride had caused her to smash every temple that had once been him and strike his name from history.
When he had gone to the southern continent, he had never bothered to mention her with the start of the cult of the Arawn.
He had never wanted another deity’s altar to stand alongside his, but the sight of Sirona’s altar with a star carved in the altar’s top warmed him and made him smile. It was a bittersweet and hopeful feeling that he pushed away before it could blossom any farther.
“It’s a temple,” he said. “I believe you’ve found your first believers.”
Her eyes brightened as she looked back at the little temple.
“Well, I’m not completely settled with the killing, but I think you’re right. I’ll… come to accept it in time. Does this mean we should pick up my training again sooner rather than later?”
His lips twitched and he gestured through the air to conjure a new sword. Instead of wood with a metal core, this one was all metal and dulled.
“I think you have at least graduated to using an all-metal sword. You torched the wooden one.”
They left the town to continue rebuilding and Arawn led her back into the forest for a bit of dueling. With the new sword, it was easier to channel more of her energy through the blade without worrying about destroying the materials.
They fought for a bit of time before he challenged her to cut through a series of rocks with her new sword. When it was clear that she could maintain a proper amount of energy to make the dulled blade cut through a rock of sufficient hardness, he smiled at her. She had the basics of wielding her power through a weapon down.
It was time to move on to channeling elements and more freeform uses of her power.
“Let’s start with fire,” Arawn said, conjuring a ball of fire. “I think we’ve had enough swordplay for the day.”
She looked warily at the fireball in his hand but set her sword aside. He beckoned her closer and offered her the ball of fire.
“But I’ll burn myself.”
He chuckled, “The same way that you channel power through the blade, you will channel it to your hands. Pool it in your palms so that the fire sits on it instead of on your skin.”
She looked up at him strangely, but worried her lip and concentrated on her hands. He watched the power slip through her arms and pool in her hands as he deposited the fireball in her hands.
She gasped staring into the little flame with wonder and surprise. He imagined he had once had an expression like that on his face.
“It’s so warm,” she said. “It feels… a bit like you.”