3.5 Bound by Love

General Summary

Day 31

I’m dreaming...but it’s less abrupt than my usual flashbacks.  

A soft, comfortable bed in an opulent room. Mistress is running her fingers through my hair - just the two of us. She looks at me with an almost sad smile.   “I’m going to miss this. I’m going to miss having you to myself. I’m so proud of you, and you’ve come so very far. I sometimes wonder...do you miss the farmgirl you were so many years ago? Would you have been happier there? For all the things I’ve dragged you through, would you have had it another way?”   I shake my head, and it’s almost automatic when I say “No, Mistress” and she laughs.   “Remember something tomorrow, remember tomorrow and every day after: The things that bind us, for all the oaths and duties and obligations, when you begin your own Seeking, and you start assembling your own circle, remember that each of us is bound by love. Without it, none of the fight matters. It’s so easy to become nothing more than a soldier. I think there’s something coming, and it will ask a lot of all of us. I don’t know what it will be, just a vague premonition of dread. And I would be sad if you didn’t take the love you shared with all of us, and find others you could share it with. It doesn’t mean anything to have loyalty without love. Tomorrow, things change, but you’ll always be my little one, and you’ll always be in my heart,”

    I feel so much younger in this memory, not the first memory with my Mistress...I’m older than an apprentice, but still it’s a very fresh and young feeling.   It fades into a different one,    

I’m riding a horse down a dusty road with soldiers following after me. None of those soldiers feel like mine, though they are assigned to me. I am wearing crisp, new robes. It feels like the first time I’ve been in the world with my own status, not the status of someone I’m apprenticed to. I’m bound as tightly as ever, but free in a way I wasn’t just days ago. As I ride, I find myself at a familiar farm. It’s a place I haven’t been in over a hundred years. The orange trees are older, and the orchard is bigger. The smell of blossoms fills the air. The farmhouse and fields are still as they were.   There’s a young man overseeing a gaggle of rambunctious children playing tag through the trees. I get off my horse and walk up to him, and the first thing he does when he sees me is wave the children over before dropping to a knee. They file in behind him and bow uncertainly.   In that moment, I recognize him as my brother. I laugh and say,   “You can’t do that, not to me! Not ever to me.” and he looks at me with shock and surprise. His eyes widen, “Sister?” and he stands and hugs me, sweeping me off my feet. The kids look confused. He steps back,   “What? When? How? Wait….come inside. Mother and father will want to hear,”   The memory fades as I’m ushered inside and handed a cool glass of orange juice that has the nostalgia of home. My family sits me down and asks to hear everything.

  These are gifts. To know that I was not taken from my family, but chose to walk away and then chose to return. To know truly that I was beloved...I feel more at peace.   I wake and find, to my surprise, Lyssa. She is snuggled close beside me and for a split second I wonder if I am dreaming again. But she feels real...until I see the lush forest beyond my windows, and realize that while it may not be a dream, it’s not as real as I’d like it to be.   Lyssa

• When you sent me across the mountains, you told me to go South and seek the shackled, to remind them of their oaths, and to prepare to bring the aid they could give us because we’d need their strength.
• I found them, and they’re a mess. A thousand years ago, the dwarves gave themselves to the Empress, and she bound them. Something happened, something terrible. While the Empress took all of us with her, the dwarves were left behind. They’ve been here, trapped away from her shade, left to find their way in darkness that is cold, without the warmth of her love. They have built lives on oaths and obligations without love. Those placed high have no love for those they bind to them in service. Those who are low toil in darkness, bereft of love of their masters.
• In the Valley of Storms, I found dwarves that broke free of the cold shackles, and this is where it is complicated. The old magics are still there. The oaths they’ve forgotten would bind them still, but they’ve risen up against those oaths because the oaths are hollow. Now we have chaos and civil war between oathkeepers who have forgotten the meaning of their oaths - who have twisted them into something sinister, and oathbreakers. If I’m to put things right and make any order of this chaos, I can’t do it as just an arrow in your quiver.
• I’ve come to ask for the standing to accept oaths in my own right, because I need to. If I can’t forge bonds that are built on hope, safety, and warmth, then the oathbreakers will never come back into service. The oathkeepers will never be anything more than cannon fodder. It has taken much of my strength to come this far and meet you here. I wanted to ask if you have the strength to take me further. I know that you should present me to the Empress and her great shadow in person, I know that I should swear those oaths in person, but it is so very far. I feel like this is the only way.

I feel the shadow of who Lyssa is, and who I know her to be. Not a mere soldier, not an arrow in my quiver, but someone who will be bound to lead and protect just as I have. I have to fight a sense of inadequacy and helplessness to ask her, “What were you training to become?”

• I wanted to be nothing more than a soldier. As a soldier I had a simple life, with direction. I could be pointed at an enemy and told to march. That was all I ever wanted. When the magic woke within me, and I was sent to the academy, I felt like I had to become something bigger than I ever wanted to be. It went so very wrong. I killed people because I couldn’t control what I was. You pulled me back and told me that you’d teach me to love myself and what I would become.
• You taught me to lead, and to protect the people that matter. I’ve trained soldiers for you, I’ve led parts of your army for you. You always had a way of stepping back just when I so desperately wanted you to solve the problem for me. Never abandoning me, but kept moving the bar so I’d reach further. When you sent me, you told me I’d need to build an army like no other, and you trusted me to bring them to you.

  It’s a good answer. Probably a better answer than I could give for either myself, or her, or my new apprentice. Of course she is ready to swear her own oaths and lead her own people. Perhaps more ready than I am, at the moment.   I take her hand and somehow...by some magic...we travel together to the Empress, dressed in my ceremonial robes and her uniform of a sworn soldier. The Empress touches my cheek in greeting before I present Lyssa to her.   In the ceremony, the Empress uses my blood to draw arcane symbols in the strange language I keep seeing - in the tomes that took me across the barrier, and the temple that Rosalia found.   "This night I name you Lady of Storms. I name you, and I give unto you the Valley of Storms. Lead your people well, always and in my name, and in the name of your own Lady, for all the oaths that bind us together. I grant unto you this emblem. Rise, Lady of Storms."   Through her magic, I can feel my bond with Lyssa change into something deeper, stronger, and yet...lighter. She is her own person, but we will always be tied together.   And now she marches under her own banner - a bow that shoots lighting. I wonder who will end up in her quiver, only to be lovingly released to seek their own oaths.   She vanishes, and I am left alone with the Empress.   "I can feel you awakening. Tell me, are you finding yourself, or losing yourself?"   I am finding myself, I think. I am finding most things. The people I travel with make me stronger, and I strengthen them as well. I trust them, but there is still a distance. I sent my chosen family away from me to die on the far side of the barrier, far from my love and my Empress’ shade. I will not ask these humans to walk with me into death and danger, yet I know that they will do so even if I forbid it. No formal oath binds us, but they would do it anyway. This is what it means to be bound by love.   The Empress offers me a secret that Lyssa is not yet ready to hear. The dwarves that swore oaths to the Empress were never bound with love at all. Their chains were forged before the Empress knew love. When they are bound again, it will be done properly.   And then she offers me a gift: One set of memories to settle myself. Part of me wonders if she holds all of them...and why she doesn’t return them all. The greatest act of faith I have is to trust myself and the process that brought me here, like I trusted Dal when he refused to answer me. I have to believe that there is a reason for all of this.   The Empress gives me memories of my pedagogy,

• Hours spent with my apprentices. How different it was from how I was trained.
• For me, there was a sense of pushing and challenging, being kept off guard and off balance. My Mistress trained me to flexible and adaptable, to thrive in chaos and grow in adversity.
• I taught more with breadcrumbs and setting challenges, puzzles, and just out of reach tasks. Mostly I give them gentle guidance as they figure it out for themselves.
• I remember watching them struggle for weeks sifting through arcana and doing things I know won’t work, and every now and then I’d ask them a question, and eventually they’d ask why it wasn’t working. And I’d tell them why it wasn’t working. But I let them discover it for themselves.
• Sometimes I gave them truly impossible challenges and saw them grow from the challenge. They never knew whether I was giving them something impossible or something difficult. Sometimes they succeed at the impossible.
• Lyssa was not my apprentice, but I get memories of her as well. She needed to be taught how to love herself, and teaching her to harness her magic to fly instead of kill...that was exactly what she needed.

  She leaves me the memories of Alwen, whose talent was doing things at such an inconveniently large scale that he struggled with things that would normally be simple tricks. I watched him weave emotions over armies to give them courage.   Tira could stall armies for days with her intricate traps and contingent enchantments. She was fiendishly clever with her weaving.   Another piece of the puzzle slides into place - I remember bringing them to the ruins of the First Camp, where the Empress first sought refuge after coming to this land. It is a sacred place, full of old, powerful magic. On the Empress’ orders, we came to recover the books that would help us send people to safety across the mountains. It took all three of us: Alwen’s massive enchantments, Tira’s cleverness, and my guidance...but we began shepherding our people across the barrier.   And then the dream...or whatever it was...is gone.   I wake in my bed again, with the scent of orchids at midnight and...Lyssa. I’m wrapped in their memory, for a moment. More than anything I want to close my eyes and desperately fall back into their presence, but I have people here who need me just as much, and I have a duty to them now.