[smokeytehmonstr]

Synopsis: Athena contemplates her fate. Prologue to a forthcoming story.


Athena of Camphor had always thought she was prepared for death. She was not one of those naïve people who cannot bear to consider their fate, who waste away their days, ignorant of death lurking underfoot, around the corner, or in their wine goblet; nor was she was one of the paranoid wanderers of Crater Town, always looking to the sky and the cliffs, from whence their impending doom might appear. Death was not a particularly morbid or pleasantly distant idea in her mind. It was merely a fact, a natural occurrence that would come for in time. This she knew. She had seen it.

She took another sip of Nicoran cabernet from a glass goblet, frowning at the taste. It was a bad vintage, of course—difficult to expect any less from war wine. Vines grown of blood cannot bear sweet fruit, the saying went, and a truer thing was never said. She swirled the last vespers around and remembered. Had it really been only ten years since the Vineyard War ended? She had been young then, impressionable… idealistic, even—or as idealistic as one with knowledge like hers could be. Freshly graduated from the University, she booked passage across the sea to the Nicoran side of the frontline. She had expected to use nearly all of her graduate stipend on the trip alone, but tickets to a warzone were cheap. Vera Cerrazzo had not known Athena was coming, and had not been exactly welcoming—but then Athena had awful timing; fresh fighting fifty metres west of the border led to this particular cellar being full of ripe wounds and low moans. She set right to work on the nearest patient, a poor fellow with a gash on the side of his abdomen. Clipped by an incoming pike, most likely. She anointed his head with a drop of blood and began to whisper a mantra of unintelligible syllables. Eyes closed, she tried to find her center, to concentrate in the silence of her mind on the spell that would begin the healing process. A moan distracted her; a scream discouraged her. Athena pressed on, resolute.

Sometime later, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Exhausted and weary, she opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder. Vera knelt there, a sad and knowing frown in her eyes. Athena did not need to see the stained sheet over the soldier’s body to know that he was long since dead.

He was the first man who died on Athena’s watch, but he certainly was not the last. Though Vera’s lessons and directions did wonders for her ability and capacity to work the healing magics, there were some wounds that simply would not heal, some soldiers who had too little of themselves left to salvage. Athena saw death many times over, in cellars and deserted, smoky battlefields across the Winelands. She saw it more times than she was able to count, not that she would have wanted to.

“Believe it or not,” said Vera one night, “it’s good that you are here. Honing your skill and your resolve in this place is the best choice you could have made. Some wander the Seven Nations for years as Journeymages, learning much, beholding wonders and horrors. But few ever confront death, and fewer still in the manner it has confronted you. Count yourself lucky. You have seen death; you are prepared.”

Athena was prepared in this way for four more years, until the Revasti warlords were skewered in their own halls by Nicoran lances. The end of the Vineyard War signaled the end of her time as a Journeymage, at least in the eyes of Vera. She was given three casks of war wine as a gift from the Nicoran winelords for her services and sent on her way back to Arctia, back to the University.

The final sip of wine slipped uneasily down her throat. More than ever before, it tasted of iron. She set the glass goblet down on the blackwood table beside her and rose from her chair. The stone floors felt slimy and cold. Her feet would never get used to the feeling of it. More quickly than she had intended, she moved to the spiral stair and descended. The fourth floor, then the third, and then the second were ignored, until she reached the first floor. Constructed of blackwood planks and decorated with rugs and tapestries imported from Omsk, it was the only room in the place that was truly hers. Leather bindings called to her from their shelves across the room. A faint smile on her face, Athena started across the room towards them.

Three sharp raps brought her to a stop. No one from Camphor climbed the Dread Steppes anymore, and especially this long past sundown. Her smile turned abruptly to a puzzled frown as she made her way toward the door. Her hand hesitated at the knob; she attempted to ignore it. Fist closed tight, she turned the knob and opened the door.

A young girl, black-haired and violet-eyed, stared up at Athena. She could not have been more than thirteen, breasts barely budding under her heavy black cloak, emblazoned with the insignia of the University.

“My name is Iris Hirao,” the girl said. “I’ve come to study under you as a Journeymage.”

Athena had thought she was prepared for death—after all, she had seen it. She just hadn’t expected it to come for her so soon.