Session 23

Falling


I have no fear of falling
But I hate hitting the ground
	     -- The Badlees

He skidded down the sharp embankment, rocks jostled, a small landslide of stones and pebbles following him quickly down the slope. The appearance of his cousins, through magical means, only earned them a scowl; his attention was much too focused on one particular subject.

Maybe a hundred feet from them, the edge of the Abyss. Maybe ten from that, a crude and hastily constructed stone altar, upon which his sharp eyes made out the small, female form, the long brown hair...

His mind, usually more elegant in forming thoughts than his mouth in phrasing them, could only summon her name. "Bailes..." he mouthed, his nickname for her. He remembered her smile when he'd first called her that, in Ivory. That smile of secret sharing, that she showed no one else.

It was a smile Quentin had never seen from anyone before. Save, perhaps, his mother toward his Father. But never, until that one, fateful day in which she came through an ancient stone gate, had he been the target of such a gesture.

And as he ran towards the group of cloaked figures assembled there, some detached part of himself could only wonder at what kind of man he'd become, in such a short time. His shadow had destroyed the young man before; all things of him then were sundered, not only from loss of memory, but from the simple fact that death visited him every day of his waking life there. And as he slew those dark priests about him, was some part of himself not saddened that he must do so?

The Quentin of old did not care for those who died before him. The Quentin of old killed a man for shelter once, so that he would not freeze in the harsh winters of Alberta. But could there possibly be tears in him now, for the killing that took place?

And this rage that flowed from him, almost primal, yet controlled -- he felt it for a woman? This a man who had little in feelings, or caring? And when that figure dropped his cowl, to reveal an old enemy; and to find out that it was, in fact, an Ancient Enemy? He did not run? Not as he did back then, across half a continent?

He told the Serpent he would have no followers left to worship. It was no boast. And when that figure fell, carrying the only person who had ever loved him, and the only woman who'd he'd loved, the final ashes of the man he once was were blown away by Time and Circumstance.

He knew what he must do. For Bailey. For Amber, and Gwyn, and Ben, and his father, his mother, his cousins... For Sarah.

For himself.

Like a Raven, he stretched out his wings and flew into the endless night.

*****

Dusk falls now on the sons and daughters of Amber, shifting the arc towards the black of night. Or perhaps the arc shifts towards the grey of morning, and towards a new light...



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