Stone Hearts Beating On

Stone Hearts Beating On

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Stone Hearts Beating On

It was time for Hedvig to wake, and take her turn keeping them both alive. Vetle knew she'd be upset at him for letting her sleep in, but she had spent her free portion of the day mountain climbing with Maroia. Surely she would realize she needed a lot of rest. Walking into the cabin that evening seemed to have been hard on her, for how exhausted she was. Vetle decided he could get an hour less of sleep, to make sure she was plenty rested.

It wasn't like sleep did him much good anymore. It seemed he was tired most days, no matter what he did. The truth was that he wasn't tired in a way sleep could fix, not the type of sleep that let Hedvig keep going. So Vetle kept sculpting for another hour, to let her rest.

As the moment he should have woken her passed, he spoke a small prayer: “Infara, bless this charity, Tratem bless this change, let her be rested and I less so In exchange.” Hedvig wasn't one for extravagant signs of appreciation, but Vetle knew she'd be grateful, somewhere deep down in that stone heart of hers. Vetle was wrong.

Hedvig was an obsessive individual, according to her late wife, and existed in a world of precision. She hated it, but fact was, things being out of place to how she was used to gave her a great deal of anxiety. What exactly she was anxious about, she couldn't say. Perhaps it was her time in the military. If something wasn't precise it could cost lives.

A screw up in patrol assignments had led to the rebels taking the city of Itsargi early in her first war. Maybe it wasn't her military life, maybe it was what happened when her life was a mess (or as her Late wife would have said “normally and reasonably chaotic”). Healthy and stable people don't have nightmares about forgetting to lock a balcony door, and the things that got to her wife through it. Whatever her reason for obsessing over the details, an entire hour of extra sleep, with the precise system she had set up with Vetle, was just as nightmarish.

“What the fuck were you thinking Vet? Now we both lose a free hour, you selfish s-,” Hedvig began to berate at Vetle.

“I was thinking I'm fine with a lost hour of sleep, and you climbed a freaking mountain yesterday,”He interrupted, “you hardly got in the door last night. I had to basically move your legs for you. One hour of sleep won't change a thing for my sedentary days, but maybe it will make sure you're rested enough to keep both our hearts beating Viggy!” Vetle knew that last bit might piss her off, so he capped it off with her favorite of his little nicknames for her. It seemed to work, as she didn't say anything else, but made her little grumblings of acceptance as he laid down to take her place in bed.

Hedvig was pissed. Vetle always made these selfish little decisions and somehow convinced her that it was for the best. How exactly letting her sleep an hour extra, and him sleeping an hour less was selfish?

Well she couldn't articulate it, but she knew it was true. The one thing she had liked about leaving military life, other than her loving partner, was no one making unilateral decisions for her. She made the choice to climb Mount Gilthyra so she could feel alive again.

She made it knowing the consequences and that little bastard took those consequences from her.

Hedvig wouldn't bring it up when she woke Vetle, but she wouldn't forgive him either. For now, beyond just grumbling and letting herself get more upset about the hour, she continued writing her memoir. She once would have laughed at the concept, the Stone Sword of Gilthyra writing a fucking book.

Vetle had written things for Maroia when she was little, but he'd never convinced Hedvig to join in his endeavor. The girl (or rather a woman now, Hedvig realized) had to pull the guilt card on her to get this started. Hedvig would never admit to her adopted daughter that she actually started to love the process of writing. She had told stories to entertain the girl for most of her childhood, as Hedvig had done to pass time during most of her life in the military.

But she always thought stories to be best as a personal thing, something you had to be there in person to truly get. The fact that Hedvig acted things out and made fun voices for her stories tended to prove to herself that it was the better medium. Maroia had to be the little bastard she was and say “But you owe me a full explanation, and I don't have the time to sit down and listen to your ramblings.

I want an explanation I can look at when I'm ready, and by the time that happens I expect even your immortal ass will have left this world, though I hate to think of it.”

Maroia had accepted the facts around her adoption years ago. She had gone through the rebellious phase of hating Hedvig for what she had done over a decade ago at this point. Hedvig tried her best to explain everything so many times.

Why the girl's father killed the love of Hedvig's life, why she in turn killed Maroia's mother, why Vetle and her took the baby in. It was so simple and yet so complicated. Maroia hadn't pushed Hedvig on it for a long time, and so now that she made this simple request, Hedvig had to give it to her. Vetle offered to write it out for her, since he had far better handwriting than she ever did. Maroia even said she'd be ok with Vetle writing it out, but Hedvig knew that wasn't what the girl wanted. Maroia, whether she knew it or not, needed Hedvig to do this personal intimate thing for her, as a mother.

The memoir had been going well so far. She had explained her childhood in a decent bit of depth, a full length chapter on her youth, even if she hardly remembered much of it. It was far less interesting than Vetle's years of religious traveling. She explained how her parents were from the heart of the Imperium in Thirea, but she was born here in Gildren. Her father was an armorer for the imperial peace forces, and her mother a seamstress for house Rau. Hedvig went into all the boring little details about her life. Maroia probably thought it as boring as her, but she would hate to disappoint her daughter with too little information instead of too much.

She finally got passed writing about her early years in the peace forces, which she had rambled on about in great detail. She was about to start the next section, before she was struck with grief upon realizing just how little of this memoir would be about the woman Maroia was named after. She began to weep in a way she hadn't in some years.

Vetle, mostly asleep, turned over on the bed and held her lower left hand. The gesture would have been sweet if that hand hadn't been the one on his chest keeping his stupid Boulderbone riddled heart beating. She only realized this after a few seconds, in which she cried further at his caring for her, before diving head first into the panic of restarting his stupid big stone heart.

Somehow the little bastard hadn't woken up from the brief moment of death, which Hedvig suspected was thanks to the medicines he took to sleep most nights. The panic of Vetle dying luckily distracted Hedvig from her late lover for long enough to focus back on writing.

By the time Vetle was to be awoken, Hedvig had written of her and maroia's (her wife) relationship up until the Sundering began, which she had tried to write about and restarted a dozen times over. She kept feeling the need to explain herself. She partially thought that might be the right course of action, but then realized (correctly) that her fighting against the revolution was not the explanation Maroia was wanting from this memoir.

They all knew why she fought on the losing side of that war, her fears of her wife's safety in the new nation, her loyalty to the old imperium. Her rambling on about why she did it wouldn't be useful to anyone, so she finally managed to keep it a brief explanation. As she finally figured out the right wording, she realized it was time to wake Vetle. At first she thought to just wake him already so she could get back to this and finish this section.

Then she realized it'd only take her another 10 minutes at most, and he'd appreciate an extra 10 minutes of slumber, unlike herself.

Vetle woke with a start, being one of the first times he was awoken from a dream in some time. Immediately he regretted taking an hour from his sleep, but that's the price of generosity he thought, and at least Hedvig probably appreciated it. She did not, but he didn't suspect as much. He rose from the bed and grabbed her hand from his chest, as he always did. He squeezed her hand in care and appreciation, and she squeezed back the same.

He knew she would never tell him she loved him, but every minute he spends alive is in thanks to her, and every little gesture returned, a different form of “I love you”. She went back to her writings, seemingly ignoring him for the time being. Obviously she wasn't entirely over him messing up her meticulous schedules.

He got up from the bed and readied himself for the day. As usual the sun was high in the sky by the time he awoke. He did his stretches and exercises in the yard for a half hour, before tending to the garden. This day he decided to begin purging his garden of any particularly normal looking plants.

Vetle had started gardening to give flowers and pretty plants to the people he cared about. Then as he grew into his charity and medical work, more and more practical plants ended up in his flower bed. Just as Vetle had evolved over the years, so had his garden.

He had started selectively breeding herbs for stronger medicines, but now it allowed a diversity of flowers and herbs often only seen in universities or palaces. Today he would split the unique from the normal, and give a little charity to the apothecary who always hooked him up with quality Nightcotton. He spoke Infara's name and asked the goddess which oddities to favor this morning, and promised to donate whatever normalcy he purged from the garden. His eyes drifted to any rose with a red complexion, or with thorns in the right places, and they went in the basket. Any white Fangpeppers, green Goeberries, or mild Numbrot were cut away for the basket.

With the sudden decimation to the garden, Vetle suddenly saw the abundance of weeds infesting his little world. He hooked the basket onto the mail line and sent it zooming towards the city below. Then he got to work. He had been trimming away weeds for some hour and a half before Maroia of all people emerged in the distance.

He thought she'd be spending the day away from their house, after her adventures with Hedvig the day prior.

“Now what would my darling daughter be doing all the way out here in the middle of the day?” he curiously messaged into her mind. She had always liked him using his Arima magic with her, even if her mother didn't entirely approve of the inherently secretive nature of telepathy. Hedvig in general didn't seem comfortable with Arima casting. Even though the both of them only stayed alive because of another type of magic. He suspected the fact she was so familiar with one form of magic, while the other was likely only ever used against her during the war, probably explained the oddity. While she was so far away Maroia didn't answer him back mentally, but he could feel her excitement from there.

Perhaps it was only because he raised the girl, or perhaps it was just the nature of mentally connecting with a message spell. Whatever the reason, they tended to understand more than just the words of a message when they spoke mentally. It made things easier, not having to break everything down into clunky words. Finally Maroia reached a close enough distance to respond.

“I'm here to return mom's walking stick, and introduce you to someone!” Maroia yelled to him from the gate. From that distance a younger man, with better eyes than Vetle, would have seen the “someone” Maroia was speaking of. Vetle wondered if it was the newest of Maroia's partners that he was going to be introduced, with how excited she seemed to be.

From within the house Hedvig yelled: “Now who'd you bring all the way out here Mar?”

“Yeah, and why do you seem so excited about it?” Vetle decided to mentally ask Maroia. He walked out of the garden as Hedvig met him in front of their home. Maroia was bright in her armor, she must have polished it that morning, after yesterday's adventures. The shorter Bravin who she had her arm around was weaning an odd looking armor, of a dull red-gray material.

Maroia said: “This is Nils. He was a student of mine at the university last year. I stayed in contact because he was a great student and was going to be an assistant this year, before he had a major discovery that changed some things. He is a Worldsinger. Pretty late in life discovery, and really needs someone to teach him some things.

I thought you guys were basically the best options.” The boy meekly smiled from behind his helmet. A tiny little thing to the wide wild grin on Maroia's face. The boy was clearly trying not to stare at the hand both Hedvig and Vetle had pressed to their chest. That alone gave away that Maroia had explained their situation to the boy.

All of them knew this was a little insane. There were schools for this stuff, where you registered your abilities. Schools where you didn't get lessons from people who can hardly move most days and were 4 times your age.

Hedvig gave Vetle a look of 'what the fuck was their daughter doing?', which Vetle returned in kind.

“Mar… why do you think we of all people should train him? There are places for this kind of thing y-” Hedvig started, before being interrupted.

“My Songbone is a transplant. If I go to a school for it, I'd have to register, and then I'll be imprisoned,” the boy blurted out. Maroia gave the boy a dirty look, while her parents shared a confused and dirty look.

“I, well, you know there are reasons for those kinds of laws dear. This was your choice and you have to live with the conseque-” Vetle began before he got his turn in being interrupted.

“Papa, he didn't have a choice in the matter. His uncle thought it was the only way to save his life. He has a weirder form of Boulderbone than any other Bravin we've ever seen before.

You of all people know what Boulderbone normally is like, high mineral content, basically stone. The thing is, his is mostly Iron. It's rusting from inside him, slowly poisoning him.” Maroia explained. She had clearly hidden a desperation behind excitement when she first arrived. She really cared about this kid, and she was right about her parents being her best shot.

As she scanned her mother and father back and forth she finally continued: “If you are concerned about the law, his uncle was already arrested for buying an illegal Songbone. You guys know more about controlling boulderbone than anyone else on the continent, maybe in the world. Please, you have to help him. He is a good kid, who got a shit place in life.”

“We'll do it.” Hedvig declared, not consulting Vetle whatsoever. Vetle agreed with her, but had wanted to discuss some details before declaring as such. In the end, they were going to help this kid. It was the greatest sense of purpose either of them had felt in well over a decade.

“Thank you. I cannot express how grateful I am… I know we don't exactly have long lives, but I really thought this curse would halve the short straw we already get. I won't let you down, I'll train every minute that I can, won't let anyone down!” Nils began to ramble to them.

Vetle said, “Calm down, we don't make any promises. We'll teach you everything we can, and we'll all do our best. I know it's hard to take things slow and steady when shit like your life is on the line, but that's the only way you don't end up breaking the line.

You two come inside and we will have a lovely little brunch to figure things out.” The boy was clearly nervous, so he broke into his bedside speech to hopefully calm things a little. Hedvig had so much energy, she might explode. Vetle had to balance things out, else everyone would overload before anything got done.

—

The four of them had been eating for about an hour. They spoke mostly about Nils, and how he knew Maroia, what his life was like. Hedvig grew attached to the kid quickly. Vetle thought it rather curious that she seemed to like him, Hedvig wasn't one to easily connect with more intellectual types.

What Vetle didn't realize is that he and Hedvig were seeing two different Nils. Hedvig latched onto the boy's time with the Stone Legion, working as a mechanic and armorer, and his parents' service in Thirea. Vetle had latched onto the boy's talent for Runeforging, and his academic career. He had been one of Maroia's top students, and even helped her work on her research for the university. Maroia seemed to play both of her parents to build up their attachment to the boy, until it was nearly as high as her own.

Maroia explained how she wouldn't have finished the first part of her Eizrum research if not for the kid's input. It was left unsaid how she had become a surrogate mother for the boy, but Hedvig recognized the look in both Nils's and Maroia's eyes.

Over an hour of enjoyable conversation was interrupted by Nils asking a question he didn't understand the weight of. “So are you guys disappointed that Ms. Roia's lack of getting your Worldsong abilities? Or is that not really how it works? It just seems like both of you having it would up the chance in your kid, ya know?” He realized he'd said something wrong based on the ten seconds of silence alone. A number of looks he didn't quite understand flashed between the three others at the table. Vetle shot a look to Hedvig of “How much detail do we explain here”, while Hedvig shot a glare meaning “Why did she not tell him if she brought him here”. Maroia glanced between the boy and her parents with hesitant and apologetic looks.

“We are her parents in that we raised her. We aren't… She was adopted, she is not our biological child. So no it wasn't a surprise that she didn't get the Worldsong from us. She got basically everything else from us though.” Vetle gently explained to the boy.

He kept looking between Hedvig and his daughter to make sure they agreed with what he said. They both smiled at that last part of his explanation. Vetle suddenly put some pieces together as he continued to speak: “The mother she was born from died when Maroia was only an infant. The two of us took her in. I suppose that's an awful lot like what happened with your parents in the war, and your uncle taking you in, right?”

The embarrassed young man responded: “Oh, I, well, yeah, I guess, true, we have that in common. I didn't know that Ms. Roia. That actually makes a lot of sense.” Nils had always wondered why his favorite professor had done so much for him. He had suspected she just felt bad for him, which he despised, but couldn't afford to not accept her aid just because of that. He had long ruled out her reciprocating the initial teenage crush he had had on her at first. It dawned on him just how weird she'd have thought that was, seeing as she seemed to have been taking a sort of parental mentor role for him… not an academic or romantic peer. Trying desperately to stop thinking about that situation, he gave his mentor an understanding look. “You really saw something of yourself in me?” Nils questioned to Maroia.

“What did you think? That you were actually a good student?” Maroia sarcastically threw back at the boy. She liked the kid, he was about as resilient as she had been at his age, and probably quite a bit smarter.

Of course Maroia knew the brilliance was partially thanks to her teaching talents, she wouldn't give the kid too much credit. She thought of Nils as somewhere between a friend, a colleague, and a little brother. She knew he had some sort of crush on her at some point, but she suspected that, luckily, it had passed by now. The thing that she honestly thought connected her and the boy most wasn't his resilience, nor his intellect, nor his dead parents.

It was his complicated relationships. They both very minorly resented an adopted parent for their actions. In that way, his resentment towards the uncle who had saved his life and gone to jail for it, was he the most like Maroia was at his age.

Maroia had moved past it, as best she could, and she wanted to help this kid who dealt with that same thing not struggle as much with it as she had. She looked to Vetle and Hedvig, saying: “I, again, am sorry to put this on you. As much as I mess with him, he is a learner. He knows jack shit about Worldsinging, but he'll learn quick… Because if he doesn't, he's fucked.” Nils had begun to blush before his expression grew dour. She looked to her parents and then to Nils. Grabbing him by the shoulder, she said, “But if there are any two people who understand working as hard as you can to just survive, it's these two. Nils, you're going to be ok, I promise.”

The four of them spent the next half hour working out details of when Nils could come by the cabin, and if Maroia would be joining him each time. The cabin would have a visitor every other day, and their daughter's presence every other visit. After they finished their planning and eating what had turned into a late lunch, the four split up. Maroia checked out the carvings Vetle had been working on for her class room (each one of different runes' or chemicals' molecular structures) and how far Hedvig had gotten on the Memoir. She read the first page of Hedvig's book, but no further, out of both respect for her and not yet being ready for that.

Hedvig helped her gently place the carvings into a pack to take to her classroom. While they did that, Vetle did a medical examination of Nils's Boulderbone. Nils didn't expect much to come from this initial medical look at things, since he'd seen some of the best healers and doctors in all of Gildren. Nils did not grasp that most of those physicians likely learned their crafts from Vetle or those he personally worked with. As the sun grew low in the sky, Nils and Maroia began their journey back to the university.

There were under two hours left before Hedvig would go to sleep. She spent most of that time on her Worldsinging techniques. She had obviously used her Singing daily for decades now, but there was a difference between daily use and skill enough to show others. Her daughter had asked this of her, and she would not fail, herself or Maroia. After about an hour, she grew too tired to keep up that pace of practicing, having been moving as if she were only 60 again. So she laid in their bed and used her two upper arms to Sing shape into the lower left arm. The lower right arm was, of course, on her chest, keeping her heart beating and lungs breathing.

While she had spent that first hour moving around, Vetle had made a lovely little dinner. After which he joined Hedvig on their bed, laying against her, reading his old medical journals and taking new notes for Nils's specific condition. They didn't speak, but they didn't have to. Both understood how this clearly motivated the other, more than much had in the last few years.

Eventually it came time for Hedvig to sleep, and so she spread out across the bed. Vetle stopped writing notes, but continued reading, so he could place his hand on her. The last thing Hedvig heard before slumber was Vetle thanking his gods for sending this odd kid for them to help. Soon she was asleep, and Vetle's heart beat for the both of them.

For the first time in ages neither Vetle nor Hedvig wanted to sleep. There had been plenty of occasions where one or the other wanted to stay up longer, though it rarely happened thanks to Hedvig's strict schedules. This however was the first time that neither of them wanted a break from life, wanted to sleep it all away, because the next day they would start having purpose again beyond each other. Hedvig gave Vetle a heartbroken look as the time came for her to rest. She had spent much of the day trying to explore her abilities.

Having been Worldsinging for so long, it was largely instinctual. She needed to figure out how best to explain it beyond those instincts. It is hard to explain how to breathe or walk unless you yourself break it down as you do it. She still didn't entirely know how to explain the most important part, controlling one's own boulderbone.

Vetle had spent years researching the Worldsong of Boulderbone. The two of them had concluded that the ability to magically control the deadly growths as if they were normal skin was entirely unique to the two of them. Thus all of the literature explaining how to do Worldsinging spoke specifically about external materials, stone, iron, water, etcetera This was the first time they had met someone else whose worldsong would control the material of their own Boulderbone condition. Though Nils was rare in his boulderbone mutation and not his worldsong abilities, opposite of the two of them.

Vetle hugged Hedvig and said: “You're going to do great, you've trained hundreds. The boy is gonna get here, and it will just snap into place. But you can't do that if you don't rest… and hey this is your twelve-lovin system Viggy, use it.”

Hedvig appreciated his words more than her slim smile let on. She responded, “I know you're probably right, but I trained people to fight, to kill, to do whatever it took to survive. You're the teacher, the one who invented a half dozen medical thingies, the one who taught the most brilliant girl I've ever met. I'm just a rocky old soldier” Her lack of confidence shocked Vetle, and open vulnerability shocked herself.

“You taught people how to survive anything, do whatever it takes. Is that not what this boy needs? You understand more than anyone else in the whole of Caerica what it means to keep going no matter fucking what. Sure I'll teach him about his mutated Boulderbone, but you're the one who'll instill survival into him.

Also…” He paused a moment, debating whether he should continue. She hadn't been like this with him in some time, and he didn't want to break her trust by bringing this up. Her confused and curious looks pushed him to continue anyway. “I know you're more than what you think, because I remember you thinking yourself unable to be a mother. You said that maroia, your maroia, was the mother, and that you weren't prepared for that. And look at our girl, you mothered the shit out of her. Also you're not just a soldier because apparently you're a fucking author now!” Vetle knew the little joke about the memoir would help soften the blow of bringing up her wife.

“Heh, yeah a real Rau myself, writing all sorts of literature now,” Hedvig responded, smiling. She wanted to be upset that he brought maroia up, but his words had actually done a little good for her. He was right.

Hedvig had joined in parenting their daughter more out of a sense of responsibility for her situation than anything else. Her current feeling of underpreparedness was miniscule to the mountain of dread at the idea of raising a child. Her smile shrank and she continued to him: “What if this goes wrong Vet. What if it turns out like Leonora? I can't do that to Mar, not again.”

Vetle was struck with emotions as he heard the woman's name again. He guessed it was a fair trade for his mentioning Hedvig's maroia. It took him a moment to recollect himself, which Hedvig pretended not to notice. He finally said, “I don't think it will go that way Viggy. We've grown so much since then. If something does go poorly, which I really insist it probably won't, then it will be ok. Maroia knows we will do our best, and she is a strong woman now.” Hedvig seemed appreciative but unmoved by his words.

Thus Vetle pulled her in close, grabbed 3 of her hands with his, and said, “Viggy this is not you taking her mother all over again. This is us doing our best and she will appreciate that alone more than we'll likely know. She does not, and will not hate you!”

“It's time for me to sleep. Don't let me sleep in again” she said to him. Vetle knew she appreciated his words. She tried to take his words to heart, and repeated “she does not and will not hate me” in her mind as she dozed off. That night she had dreams.

She likely had dreams most nights, but this time she would remember them vividly in the morning. She dreamt of an ursine figure covered in blood. When Hedvig reached out, trying to save her, she instead held a Bravin woman, holding a child. The woman's hands were red with blood as she handed Hedvig the babe. She slit the mother's throat, and suddenly it was her love's instead, the large Urbaxa body dwarfing the tiny bravin babe she was handing to Hedvig. The dream went on and held more images of her past, mixed together, truth and fiction, a roiling storm of emotions.

Even with his third of the day keeping the slumbering Hedvig alive, he hadn't finished his research. He had looked through every tome and text there was on Boulderbone. Half of them were useless. They just restated obvious knowledge he already knew over and over.

He knew that it was a genetic disorder that the entire Bravin race suffered. He knew it spread from wounds, where scabs were made of a high mineral bone like material never went away. He knew the material wasn't actually bone, nor stone, but a mineral concentrate akin to both. And he damned well knew that it slowly spread across the body, metastasizing.

Vetle needed studies or examples of it mutating. He needed examples of what removing Boulderbone and keeping the wounds from healing did, but he himself had written most of that research. Eventually he switched from Boulderbone research to Ironsong studies on controlling the iron within a person's blood. Those gave him far better results.

Things weren't solved of course, but it was a start. By the end of his eight hour shift, he had just started a tome on cases of Iron poisonings that seemed promising for Nils.

“Hedvig, you'll be upset if I don't wake you, but I'm not going to sleep here for a bit. I'm almost done with this last bit of research” Vetle explained to the groggy Hedvig. As usual, she quickly awoke and rose up in bed, slowly replacing his hand on her chest with her own. Then she stretched one of her other hands over the one Vetle had searching for something in the book.

She said gently and firmly, “Go to sleep Vet, you'll finish it up in the morning while I'm working with Nils.” He was going to argue, but Hedvig used a dirty trick. She hugged him, and held his hands holding the book, before using her 4th hand to grab the tome from him, slipping the bookmark out from it, and closing it, in one swift action. With that Vetle cursed her name, and used Regnir's name in vain, before he gave in and went to bed. Though Hedvig let him hold her hand until he fully fell aslumber.

Hedvig tried to continue writing the memoir. She was finally able to write about her wife maroia. She explained that her wife was the kindest, most caring person she ever knew.

Hedvig's tears wet the pages, but she continued to explain the love of her life. That is when her struggle began, she was unsure of how much detail to put. She feared she was going on too long about her, and so she erased and started over. It was on the fourteenth rewrite that she decided she was allowed to ramble. This woman was the crux of Hedvig's entire life until the girl she was named after came along.

She couldn't explain the important part of the memoir, the part about why she had done what she had, without this basis for all of it. By the time sunrise came along, she had gotten to the point where maroia first proposed to Hedvig. They had been together for some decade by that point. Hedvig would have been satisfied going on the rest of their lives that way. Marriage didn't mean anything special to Hedvig. The most she thought about it was having an excuse to playfully call her friends bastards.

The thing was that they could only legally adopt if the two of them were married under Thandrian law. Hedvig hesitated to explain that she said no the first time because she didn't want kids. Well because of that and it being such a sudden huge thing put upon her that she couldn't help but instinctively say no. If Maroia could handle Hedvig killing her birth mother, she could handle hearing that Hedvig hadn't wanted a child. Thus, she continued on with her writing.

It was an hour before she was to wake Vetle, when a knock came to the cabin door. “Uh, I, well, sorry if I am too early, I wasn't sure when exactly you had said to get here, and I guess perhaps I am late, but I did mean to be here on time, I promise, and if you give me a time then I promise I'll be here right then on the day after 'morrow,” Nils rambled from the other side of the door.

“Nils come in. There is no lock” Hedvig replied. The kid sheepishly opened the door and walked inside. She continued: “We had only said to come mid-morning, so you didn't forget anything. Take a seat anywhere you like. There are leftovers in the Frostove, or I can make you a fresh breakfast in around an hour.”

Nils finally noticed the sleeping Vetle on the bed, and quickly said, “Oh am I being too loud? I'm sorry, I don't want to mess up your schedule, Ms. Roia told me all about it. Should we talk outsi…. Nevermind stupid question.”

Hedvig loudly laughed and snickered: “You could scream for your life and there is only a half and half chance of Vet waking up.” Relief washed over Nils's face as he sat at their dining table. Hedvig explained, “He takes Nightcotton in the mornings when he goes to sleep. Has a whole medical explanation for you if you wanna ask him about it.”

“No, my uncle takes it too, I understand. Since you can't exactly move far from him, can I get you anything?” the kid questioned. Hedvig thought it was very kind of him, while suspecting it was just to curry favor with her. The truth was Nils would have offered the same to anyone, but would have offered to do literally anything for the people who had promised to save him.

Hedvig simply smiled a headshake in response. After a pause that only Nils thought felt awkward, he said, “I think I'll rummage through the frostove for something to eat if that's alright. Thank you.”

For a little while, Hedvig made edits to what she had written in the memoir that morning, and Nils ate honeybread with stew as if it was his first meal in a year. Finally, after she finished her edits, Hedvig asked the kid: “What is your armor made of, and how did you make it?”

The kid gleamed with pride as he worked out his response. Hedvig was satisfied with this reaction, as she had been working out how best to connect with him. She and Vetle had both noticed his odd armor when he had shown up the other day.

She knew he worked as an armorer for the Stone Legion, like her father once was, so she suspected there was a story there somewhere. Finally he began to explain, “Yes I made it while working with the Stone Legion before university. The company commander was friends with the man I apprenticed for, and he was friends with my parents. Anyway, the commander asked the armorers for a favor. See the commander was a part of the expeditionary force way back when, during the imperial war, towards the start of the sundering.

He fought all over Thirea with the rebels. He was at the battle of the dozen's tears. He ev-”

Hedvig excitedly interrupted the kid to ask: “Was this commander by chance named Andreas Gorthand?” She had a feeling she knew where this was going, even if the kid had a tendency to ramble.

The astonished Nils replied: “You knew commander Gorthand?” Nils knew Hedvig had fought in the early years of the Sundering, but the chances of her knowing someone he did were astronomical. Hundreds of thousands fought across decades of different wars, what were the chances.

Somewhat smugly, Hedvig explained, “Yeah I know that bastard from two wars. Only one of 'em were we actually on the same side. I don't know if he got the credit for it, but he won the revolution.

Only reason I didn't retake Itsargi with the 82nd was his force capturing our reinforcements. Back to your story, I assume you were going to bring up how he brought home one of the tears? You're not telling me that armor is made from a fallen star are you?” Hedvig was fascinated by the idea.

Hedvig had heard stories about the battle many times. On a field only a day's march from the imperial city, Thandri itself, a massive storm wrecked the collected armies. However, more than just rain fell.

Hedvig had always heard the event described as the heavens themselves falling upon the battlefield. Fireballs from the sky shattered the ground, and wiped out a third of the Thandrian imperial army. There were stories abound of members of the battle bringing back some piece of the fallen stars, but Hedvig suspected most of them were exaggerations.

“What are the chances? Ms. Roia had said you were a veteran, but I had no idea. Wait… does that mean. Holy shit,” Nils exclaimed as he started putting pieces together in his head.

The kid had grown up around the military thanks to his parents' service. He heard hundreds of stories about the legends of the early Sundering. Most of the legendary stories he heard were of events and characters from his country, Gildren. There were around a hundred good characters, who he assumed were mostly based on real people, across the numerous stories. One of the more interesting ones it seemed was sitting across the room from him right now.

He finally caught up to his racing thoughts and began blurting out: “You, we're in Gilthyra, of course you, and the singing, yeah, wow. You're the Stone Sword. You sailed the legion from the Frostclaws to the sea without a single outpost noticing. You killed a hundred men at the battle of Kestral. You were in second command of the Stone Legion when my dad joined. You're a living legend!”

Hedvig said, “Thanks kid, but most of the things you've probably heard about me were exaggerated, or the collective achievements of the legion at large. Let's get back to you telling me about your armor.” Hedvig thought of it that way, as she could never have done anything without those beside her. Both she and Vetle had noticed the trait whenever she told war stories to little Maroia before bed. Vetle had never decided why she did it. Was she truly being modest, giving all her companions as much credit as possible. Or was it that Hedvig couldn't let it have all been on her, else she'd have as many glorious victories to her name as bloody grief-fueling defeats.

Nils shrunk a little as he realized how excited he had gotten. The young man had just endeared himself to the Stone Sword of Gilthyra, and he, for some odd reason of his character, felt embarrassed by the event. He finally continued his explanation: “Well few smiths have ever really gotten the material from the Tears to work with them.

The meteorites were too dense and hard and brittle and generally annoying. Having been a part of the battle, and commander of the Legion, and friend of the general Pirmansy, and all that, Gorthand had gained possession of an entire Tear. Not just pieces of it, the entire meteorite, the size of you or I. He wanted us to make him armor with it. If we managed to do it, then we could use the rest of the material for ourselves. My master armorer was also a part time tinkerer, a Runeforger in his free time.

He managed to get the material hot enough to work into the crucible thanks to some runes he worked into the rock. We ended up working it like Wootz metal, but it kept coming out too brittle-”

Hedvig interrupted to ask: “What did you use to carbonize? Hilfyr wood has too much sulfur, that might have been your problem.” Hedvig wasn't one to engage in such scientific detail, to Maroia and Vetle's chagrin. Vetle would have been taken aback by the vocabulary at play, but he was yet to be awoken by the two speaking in his bedroom.

“That makes sense actually. I… I'm not sure what wood we used, that may have been it. But I will tell you the insane solution I came up with. My own blood!” The kid exclaimed to the Stone Sword of Gilthyra.

It took a moment for Hedvig to put together the pieces, but quickly she exclaimed, the Iron!”

“The Iron!” Nils responded, “It was perfect, I don't entirely know why or how, actually been researching it some at the university, but the weird makeup of my blood with my odd Boulderbone made a perfect binding for the insane meteorite star alloy whatever stuff.”

“What about iron?” said a very groggy, now conscious, Vetle.

“Oh shit, sorry. We didn't mean to wake you Vet. I was just getting to know Nils some,” Hedvig explained to Vetle. She continued to say, “How about you tell him about your armor Nils!”

—

It had been a few hours since Vetle had woken up. Nils had the basics of Boulderbone and Worldsinging explained to him. He obviously knew it, but Vetle, when teaching, liked to make sure there was a common understanding of things before making any assumptions. He went over the different Song organs of Bonesingers, Bloodsingers, and Breathsingers, and how each unique organ has natural runes patterned throughout their structure allowing a specific field of energy to generate through them. Vetle compared it to a magnetic field, and Hedvig appreciated the simple comparison.

In reality much research had shown Magnetism was entirely unrelated and unlike Worldsong fields, but the comparison was a good way to teach it. The biggest detail that Nils actually needed clarification on was how it related to touch. Vetle explained that even in Breathe and Bonesingers, bits of the rune covered material flowed through a singer's blood, meaning the energy field was largely the shape of the entire body. The field could only extend out from the body if it was in contact with the material of the Song organ.

Nils asked, “What does that mean for us though? We are always in contact with our material, how do we control it if not extending it out like normal?”

“Well it is somewhat complicated, see normally a worldsi-” Vetle began, before being cut off.

Hedvig interrupted: “Vet I got a better idea than just wording this whole thing out. Do you know where that silver serving tray is?” Both of them were confused by what she could possibly plan to do. Both of them helped her search for the tray for 12 minutes without questioning that plan. It took a few minutes more for Nils and Hedvig to polish the tray, until it was essentially a mirror. Hedvig finally explained, “Put this between your left arms and your right, to where you don't see your left, and see both your right and their mirror selves.

Now use your right sky arm to move the elbow back and forth on the right ground arm. Now in sync do the same on both sides for me.” Vetle had caught on to her little ritual when she called the tray a mirror. He had used this type of therapy to help even normal Bravin deal with Boulderbone.

“Woah, I can move my left lower elbow! I haven't been able to in a decade! Thank you,” Nils exclaimed.

Vetle continued his earlier lecture: “Yeah it's a good trick. The reason it is working for you specifically is because it's tricking your brain. You see it work in the mirror and you feel it in the real ones.

Normally it just helps with pain and minor movement, but your brain has more going on with it now, it's got runes growing in it for that ironbone you have now. This is perhaps a bit esoteric, but the brain really is just an incredibly complex natural rune, just like the Songbone. It is incredible what a brain can do. You feel like you are controlling and moving that boulderbone in that elbow, right? You aren't. It is in fact you worldsinging it using the movements of the rest of your arm.

Imagine your Song field is a rope. When you shake that rope, the movement of that flows down the rope, like a wave. That is somewhat like how you control material of the song field, your body's movements flow down the field like it is that rope, and the material within the field moves like it's attached to that rope. The key is figuring out how to extend your field. Just then we tricked it to include that section, so maybe we can just do that for everything, but I have a feeling that won't be the best method.

Then you have to understand how your movements affect the field. This will all take time, but you clearly have potential here.”

Over the next few hours Hedvig spent a great deal of time helping the kid figure out ways to extend control to the areas struck by Boulderbone. She had an incredibly detailed level of control for the Boulderbone parts of her body, which amazed Nils. Vetle continued his research while they worked. Soon Nils could move that elbow as if there were no Boulderbone at all. It was an achievement. Hedvig felt rather satisfied from her work with the kid, but it was hard work, and she grew exhausted. She let Vetle take over for the rest of Nils's time there that day.

She spent the rest of her time awake watching the other two work. Vetle had Nils remove much of his armor, so he could examine his Boulderbone. Normally boulderbone appears as a rocky scab-like thing across a Bravin's skin, but Nils's was like rusting nails.

“Does it hurt? The oxidizing into your blood?” Vetle asked. He knew the answer, but he wanted Nils to corroborate his theories.

“It feels like a constant burning. Think of sitting on something too hot on a summer day and it overloads your senses, so hot it's cold. You get used to it.” Nils explained. Both of them knew the last part to be a lie, but Vetle pretended he didn't.

After an hour or so of more questions and testing his Boulderbone, Vetle felt the energy of the day leaving him. As tired as usual, Vetle said, “We won't be able to start on this until you have a better skill at Worldsinging. I know every day we don't fix this is worse off on your systems, so I collected some rustweed for you to start taking. It tastes all kinds of awful, but it will help with the iron poisoning.

Otherwise I think that is enough for today. When you come back I can start on slowing the spread and removing the larger portions of your Boulderbone.”

“I know Hedvig is going to sleep soon, but could we still talk for a bit? Is she a light sleeper?” asked Nils.

“Just don't be too loud and I can ignore your voices,” Hedvig replied. If it had been a decade prior, that wouldn't have been the case. Hedvig sleeps light thanks to her time in war. If she couldn't trust her surroundings absolutely, any sound would wake her up.

Around half an hour after Hedvig fell asleep, Nils stopped asking about ideas for treating him or stories of the Stone Sword of Gilthyra. At this opportunity to change the subject, Vetle asked the boy, “What do you think of the university?”

“I enjoy it enough. Work is hard though. I know a lot of students who had problems, many understand how boulderbone affects you, but my unique case has put a particular strain on things. Ms Roia was the only professor who was willing to take my work so late. Even when it wasn't my condition, when I just had fucked up, she forgave me and went on like normal. That is the only reason I have been able to continue my studies,” Nils explained. He felt he'd done well hiding how emotional he was about all of it. He had spent much of the last year feeling like most of his life was dealing with a body that seemed to hate him and the late work of professors who he knew hated him.

Vetle wanted to push further to really get to know the boy, but he was clearly a little emotional about the whole thing, so he decided otherwise. Thus he moved onto the last major curiosity he had about the boy, asking, “What is your area of study?”

“I am working on Runeforging, focusing on material science. I might be switching my focus to Rune Systems and Integration, though,” Nils answered.

“Why systems and integration?” Vetle asked, suspecting he knew the answer.

“Of course you know Ms Roia's research is in that field. Obviously that's one part of it, I have worked so much in her projects that I know it better than the material stuff sometimes. It isn't why I'm going to switch though.

I like systems, not just runes, all kinds. Big puzzles coming together. I liked materials because working with alloys for armor feels like a puzzle, a system of different materials working together to be something bigger.

It was like the legion itself, a big system of different jobs and units and people all doing different tasks as a part of big actions. Rune systems are the most interesting out there. One effect goes through another and another until suddenly you have a chunk of metal that you can control the temperature of near perfectly.

Or Ms. Roia's Eizrum project. You said earlier that the brain is like a natural rune, well we might be able to implement systems like a small basic brain into things. It would change the world,” Nils passionately explained.

Vetle asked: “You think you can change the world?”

“You don't?” replied the boy.

“Not exactly. You can mold the world, shape it, but you can't change it. The Twelve above can hardly even change it. I have done a lot and seen a lot in my time, and I've shaped the way things move and exist in this world, but I haven't changed anything. I don't think mortals can, but damn can we hammer this place to our liking.” Vetle explained.

Nils responded: “I.. huh… I kind of like that way of putting it. That does beg the question about people though.”

Vetle noticed the exhaustion on the boy's face. He now more than ever could relate to the young man. He appreciated the company in the early part of his shift, but the boy had been there since before Vetle had been up. It was a long trip back to the university, so who knows how long the boy had been awake.

Nevermind how exhausted his condition alone made him. Vetle finally grabbed Nils by the shoulder and said, “You've done very well today, and it was great getting to know you. You have a long way back to the dorms, and I'd like to start experimenting with some of those newly discovered runes you showed me. Please be safe on your way back Nils, Tratem guide you. And do tell Maroia we love and miss her.”

Nils was disappointed to realize the day was over. They hadn't yet solved all his problems, and yet he had hope, for the first time since his uncle was imprisoned. The boy felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him. As he collected his things to go, he suddenly remembered the phrase Ms. Roia had told him to use as their goodbye: “I'll be safe, see you later, and try not to die!”

There was an intimacy between Hedvig and Vetle that few understood. The two had friends, though most had now passed, who could never quite figure the two out. An old war buddy of Hedvig's had, of course, compared it to their own relationship with Hedvig: “bonded through the hardship of a shared mission”.

The confessor, a childhood friend of Vetle's, told Maroia in confidence that the two were “traumatized individuals surviving through shared coping mechanisms”. Maroia had reworded the jargon to “they lean on each other to deal with their problems”, leaving out the fundamental part about their “trauma”. One distant relative of Hedvig's had claimed the Dozen deities had personally made the pair for each other.

The thing is, as much as Vetle might have liked the idea, they then implied Hedvig was never meant to be with her wife maroia, so she broke the relative's jaw. A research paper that a colleague of Vetle's published, without the two's permission, claimed they had a “biologically codependent relationship”. Maroia always thought she understood it. That understanding tended to shift back and forth, over and over, but no matter what the current theory was, she knew it was right about them. Somehow, she was usually right.

Anyone else in Hedvig's position would have been dreading trying to explain the situation between her and the one she currently kept breathing. Hedvig hadn't had a second thought about it. She in fact had skipped ahead in her memoir, as to avoid thinking about the part she truly dreaded. They were simply stuck with each other, bound by a child who needed them, and abilities they both needed from the other.

Vetle always thought about how their Worldsinging brought them closer, but Hedvig didn't believe that. Hedvig still, decades later, associated her controlling the boulderbone of another bravin, with ending a life, doing a duty, and protecting her people. What had made Vetle one of 'her people' wasn't him pumping her blood and breathing her lungs while she slept.

It was how he noticed beauties in the world she hadn't put together, and chose to share them with her. It was how he couldn't imagine her as the terrible person Hedvig knew she was, even after Leonora. It was instilling a kindness in their daughter that was stronger than anything the Sundering could throw at her. She didn't need or want a word for Vetle, for whatever he called it, or their daughter, or their friends now gone. He was one of her people, and that was all that mattered.

What angered Hedvig about Vetle claiming their duty to each other was what made their bond, was the lack of specialness to it. Both Vetle and Hedvig had used their Worldsinging to keep others alive while they slept long before they met. Hedvig knew that he had been doing it since childhood, thanks to his religious fanatic parents. He gave thousands of people just a few days more, so what was so special about giving each other a few decades.

The first person she had kept alive was the biggest asshole in the entire imperial army. Kethyr Nurau had criticized and mocked Hedvig since she joined, how she needed her unholy powers to keep up with the real soldiers. He had miraculously survived a lance through his ribcage.

Even though it had missed his heart, the boulderbone of his healing wounds would kill him in a number of days. Nurau was an asshole, but he was also a brilliant strategist, and as long as he lived then imperium had a chance of retaking the colonial capital. She had stayed up for nearly 9 days, just keeping his heart beating. The bastard had screamed for her to keep him alive every time she near fell asleep.

By the end of the 9th day, his screams couldn't keep her up any longer. She later learned that rebel Arima casters had snuck through camp that night, knocking people out on their espionage mission. The official report puts that she was knocked out by enemy forces, that Nurau's death was on their hands, but Hedvig knew it was a gracious lie.

Hedvig knew that there was simply a point in which she couldn't keep hearing his screaming and berating. There was always a point in which an exhaustion, outside of just the physical, couldn't be overpowered by any commitment or motivation or duty. A point Hedvig knew all too well.

Hedvig realized she had let her memories drift onto the page. She had jumped from speaking of Maroia's third armoring day, straight to describing Kethyr Nurau's last words and the report she wrote the next day. The memoir needed to be written and finished, but she couldn't bring herself to keep thinking about what she had to. It was her duty to Maroia to finish it, but then she remembered the new commitment her daughter had lovingly forced upon her.

Nils would be back the next day, and she needed to prepare as best she could. For the first morning since she started, Hedvig stopped writing in the memoir. She couldn't exactly get up to practice her worldsinging.

Hedvig didn't want to mess up their schedule, wake up Vetle early. He needed his sleep far more than she did. Then it dawned on her, Vetle was the perfect way to practice her worldsinging.

During the civil war, Hedvig fought a lot of Bravin Bonesingers serving the Statue King. She had learned the most about Worldsinging during that time. She hadn't known you could transplant a Songbone until she learned of the Statue King's Choir. The Choir was a special force of soldiers loyal directly to the noble house of Kawtor, who were implanted with the Songbones of sacrificed Worldsingers. Naturally it is extremely rare for multiple Songbone's to exist in one body, but when it happens, each is made of a different solid compound, iron, stone, amber, or silk. The Choir were specially trained to wipe out larger forces using their implanted Worldsinging. Hedvig was tasked to protect the Stone Legion from Choir attacks. She usually just occupied their attention long enough for the rest of her comrades to overwhelm them, but not always. Usually she could just hold onto them long enough to spread their boulderbone through their body, to lock them in place. One night however, she couldn't manage to get a grasp on a few Choirmen, and was forced to improvise. She used the wide spread boulderbone in the one she had managed to take down to control his worldsinging.

It was extremely difficult, but she had gotten lucky. The man was already trying to worldsing his way out of Hedvig's grasp, but she could manipulate his body to change the motions of the materials. It was a rather gruesome death for the Choirmen, as they wore Iron armor for the purpose of being able to manipulate it… the lot of them were crushed in their own armor by the hands of their own man.

Hedvig continued to live for Vetle, but she also began to move his arms through his boulderbone. It was an odd experience. Her goal was to control his arms, to Worldsing the boulderbone of his left leg into a spear like shape.

At first the leg contorted right to her will, but she realized she had done it with her own worldsinging, and not Vetle's. If she could just figure out how to do it, then she could use that to show or explain it to Nils. She continued trying for some time, and still each time she was just extending her own worldsong instead of manipulating his. Then Hedvig had a wretched thought. Perhaps they had been connected for so long that his Worldsong, his energy field or whatever, was merged with her own.

She hated the idea. Not only because it meant she couldn't practice in this way. She long feared losing part of herself in this way of living. There was part of her that saw the romantic beautiful perspective of sharing a worldsong with Vetle. That part wasn't her, it was the pieces of Vetle's being that somehow wormed their way into her.

She needed to figure this out. She needed the idea to be wrong.

After an hour of messing around with Vetle's body, she hadn't gotten anywhere with his Worldsong. She had even done the tiniest bit of blasphemy and prayed to his twelve gods for the first time since she abandoned that bloated faith years ago. Nothing was working. Then she accidentally moved the tiny portion of boulderbone within his head, and suddenly she had done it. She giggled with delight at the victory, and then at the ridiculous image of Vetle with a Legion spear instead of a left leg.

She repeated the process back and forth, shifting from spear to leg and back again. Hedvig methodically felt out how she was moving his body to sing. Hedvig didn't realize it, but Vetle dreaming had allowed her to achieve this. Vetle had taken a lower dose of Nightcotton than usual.

It meant he was more awake during both the day and the night. He dreamed that it was the start of the Sundering, he was working across the sea in Thirea. His father had connected him with the Horned-Crows sisterhood, who did charity and aid work across the imperium. He dreamed that he had actually joined the sisterhood, instead of just volunteering.

The idea was ridiculous, he was a Mendacist at that point in his life, no belief in the dozen deities whatsoever. In the dream he was helping the goddess Infra herself, working through his odd gifts, to save the victims of the Sundered coast. In his dream the tidal wave that started it all just loomed in the distance. It didn't matter how many lives he saved, the wave would return, and they would all drown.

He dreamed that he Worldsang the water out of a victim's lungs, though he was not a Bloodsinger, a miracle of Infara's doing of course. Then the oddest thing happened, and his legs turned to spears, pinning him to the ground as the wave finally crashed upon him. He was drowning, but he kept diving deeper, as he was tired of the weight of land. Hedvig finally noticed Vetle's eyes twitching in the theater of dreams, and hoped his dreams were kinder than hers ever were.

—

Vetle spent his morning with a weird feeling in his boulderbone, an odd thing for a material that usually had no feeling in it whatsoever. Hedvig had said something about practicing on him while he slept, and surmised she meant that passing mention of it to be some sort of apology. It was like being aware of and manually breathing or blinking, though he had been dealing with the former for years now, but across all his limbs. For decades now, moving the statue like bits of his body only took the most minor of muscle twitches. Today those little twitches were more like the movements they were in his youth, contracting whole muscles and stretches of skin, contorting whole lengths of his body.

Worldsinging was like the moons rolling out the tides, except the tides were an unnatural cosmic energy flowing across the body, and the moons the Song organ and body itself. It was a bad analogy, but Vetle hadn't been awake long, and Nils had seemed to understand when he'd said it to the boy. For some odd reason whatever Hedvig had done with Vetle's body last night had messed with his Worldsinging. As he often did, Vetle spent the first bit of his morning stretching and exercising, this time helping to fix his strange state of Boulderbonesinging. Within a half hour it returned to normal, but it was as if his muscle memories had been replaced with those of another. Now that it was finally all back to normal he could focus on the night prior's research. That was until Hedvig interrupted.

“Now what are you doin' Vet? Ain't you supposed to be praying, it's Sompanthei,” Hedvig asked him, while handing him a plate of stuffed Fangpeppers and eggs. She largely knew why he wasn't going about his weekly day of prayer and rest. If she still worshipped that lacking set of so called gods, she'd be ignoring the order to not do shit today too.

Vetle somewhat taken aback replied: “I think she'll understand, I mean, she sent Nils to us after all.” One of the smaller reasons, among many, that Vetle liked the boy was that he seemed heaven sent from his prime goddess. He had restrained himself from bringing it up until now.

She couldn't help but grin, at both the genuine faith in the man, and the stupid little smile that bloomed on his face. She lovingly responded: “You really believe that, don't you.”

“Can you blame me? Infara loves an oddity, and what is the boy's condition but that? Our daughter forced us to give the fatebreaker a little worship and do this case of charity for that odd boy in need. It just matches so perfectly. I know it sounds stupid and like I'm grasping at this, but surely you understand,” He began explaining to her, before her kind smile crumbled into a hidden look of disgust. His hope and pride shattered upon her disapproval. Before Vetle could continue, she cut him off.

“Is that why you are doing this? Because the Fatebreaker wants you to, so you can be her bestest little believer?” Hedvig hadn't meant to spit to him with such venom. She couldn't explain why she suddenly felt so passionate and upset about it. She'd been a Dodecanite for more years than Nils and Maroia's lifetimes combined.

She understood what he meant clearly, the idea actually spooked the young dumb temple thumber in her, always trying to pull her back to the faith of her youth. Hedvig wondered if that was why she was suddenly upset, the idea that this all was the actions of the gods, not will of the universe, her own choices, or even mere happenstance. Truth was she often disliked thinking of her own Mendacist beliefs due to that same stupid voice.

The voice that told her she converted for the wrong reasons, that fear, grief, desperation, and anger had pushed her away from her 'actual' faith. The voice that said only guilt really kept her in her current one. In reality she had come to truly believe in life after death being rebirth, in one way or another, and that nothing of such power as the gods could both truly exist and be worth worshiping.

Perhaps her path curved differently than the norm of Mendacists elsewhere, but it was no less correct then the path her maroia had walked years ago. The little voice in her mind often ignored the words of the Great Revealer: “Many spirits return to Sahti Tiangi for fear of death and hope of reunion with those gone, just the same as those seeking purification and enlightenment.” Hedvig tried to suppress the out of the blue storm of emotions, but they both knew she was failing the attempt. Finally Vetle's words came out.

“Do you really think so little of me?” Vetle bit back at her. He hated it, but on the “really” his voice cracked, just the tiniest fracture, still enough to catch Hedvig's attention. Vetle knew exactly why it happened, why her simple wretched question crushed something soft deep in his heart. Decades of his life to help those he'd never met, when it was lucky to have scraps of food and a night's shelter possibly be given in return. She saw the one time he followed religion over faith in the world itself, in its people. The statue king haunts his memories just the same as hers. Just because she let Dozen's guilt push her to action, just because she fought on the wrong side of a religious war, doesn't mean he only acts when the heavens command it. He wanted to yell it to her, that she was being unfair, that they both knew the type of person he was, that he didn't need to be forced to do the right thing by gods or mortals alike.

He suppressed the urge to snap at her like that, but in doing so showed clear the intent on his face. It didn't help her simmer down by any means.

Hedvig purposefully and meekly answered: “No. You just… I misunderstood.” It wasn't true. She understood completely, but her emotions and words often fought like Vedair and Aotheosians. He just seemed so smug, and confident about the will of the gods. She just couldn't imagine doing something so personal, so important, as answering Nil's pleading call for help, in the name of the gods and not the name of their daughter. Even if clearly it wasn't the main fuel in his forge, to even have it in the same hearth as Maroia's request felt wrong to her. She continued to speak, through a cracking and crumbling voice, “It just feels wrong, to place any responsibility for this on them!”

“I…see,” said Vetle, who felt the scorn on that last word of hers. With Hedvig's anger boiling to distress, his own began to simmer down. He wasn't quite sure what she meant. He guessed at first that she was just still angry with them, more than he'd thought her to be after all these years.

To be fair, she'd seemingly been betrayed, how else does it look like when you fight in their name for nearly a decade and still lose, then lose your wife a few years later after having held onto faith. For a moment he wondered if it wasn't actually resentment for the twelve above. Maybe it was more about the idea of this situation being a good thing, she never did seem to get over the idea of messing it up for Nils and Maroia. He laboured in thought for half a minute before Hedvig grew tired of the silence.

“Mar made this happen, she found this kid worth saving, she admitted she needed help, and yet she still did everything she could for him on her own. She didn't just stumble across him and bring him here after a conversation with a fucking crow. And that kid's shit, what you've been researching day and night, it's not some oddity, some gift, it's just a shit hand of 'Ekaluka, full hand of stones.” She cried out. She was raging again, but not at him, rather herself for letting her composure fall apart so quickly. She didn't mean to blow up like th

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