Archive of Our Own ^beta

Onni had found his grandmother, and she had let him live - for now.

This close, Onni had no way of blocking out her voice - and that of many others, screaming while it spoke - from his head, when she asked him about Lalli, which he answered with stubborn silence, and Tuuri, which he could not help answering when he remembered her farewell.

Ensi sucked at the memory greedily - a weakness, a way into his soul, but he held on with all his power, and when the screaming of the other voices became too much to bear, he wrestled the memory from his grip and closed his defenses.

Silence fell in his mind with a thunderclap, and there was silence in the clearing all around him, too, as his awareness returned to the world outside. Not even the wind rustled the treetops that night; the sky spanned far overhead with cold needlepoint stars.

First frost lay on the blades of grass at his feet. The houses of the abandoned city's edge hung behind him as he stood facing the forest that was creeping up toward the buildings.

At the edge of the forest, the Kade stood watching. Onni could sense its - her - presence, without having to look. He gripped his spear tighter. He had dreamt about stabbing out her eye, extinguishing the orange glare, ending the threat that had kept him locked away in Keuruu, safe from the outside world behind its walls, and content again. But Tuuri… she had been a captive more than anything until she broke her shackles and never returned.

The Kade was at fault for that, too, and Onni was about to say it - until an idea came to him. It gave him, maybe, the inkling of a chance to have her back. His grandmother had always been ambitious, sneering at death and defeat.

It was a ready-made trap.

Onni turned, shielding his eyes with his hand and squeezing them shut for good measure.

He wrestled his fear, and won, and called out with his throat dry and his tongue like sandpaper in his mouth. It felt like nothing short of a betrayal, though he wasn't certain, later, of whom.

"You should have Tuuri. She is family. The Swan took that chance from you."

The words barely made it through Onni's throat. Tears were leaking from his tightly closed eyes, and any moment now he would be suffocating in his breath mask, or the way his chest was constricting - it'd crush him. He'd hear his ribs snap, and that'd be it.

He'd tear his mask off because he couldn't breathe, and that'd be it.

The Kade took its time answering, and before it did, it came closer. Onni could hear the rustle of its cloak through the grass, if nothing else. No breath, no distant thrum of heartbeats, no voices in his head. His mental barriers held, but barely.

Then its hand was on his face.

Hardly still a hand, the skin inhuman, hardly tangible without his mage senses screaming that this was not real, and still was - the feeling and texture of a withered apple, the musk of long-dead and wrongly-alive things even through the mask filters, on his cheek, lightly.

Incorporeal, clawed nails raking softly, softly, softly over his skin.

And even so he could tell that it was Ensi's body, if it might still be called that, the touch so rare that it had become immediately familiar, the few times Ensi had ever touched his cheek that way when he was very young and his then-uncontrolled mage powers had frightened him.

Then - comfort, with a sense of wariness even then. Now - one nick, and that'd be it.

The whisper of a sleeve of moth-eaten wool where the hand had been. This, tangible, real, and all the worse for it.

A glare of red light visible even through his closed eyelids - the spiritual aspect of the Kade reaching for him, the red ready to curl tendrils around his mind…

I am sorry, Tuuri. I am doing it all for you.

He kept his eyes stubbornly closed, but he had to ask. "Do you accept my offer? All this way I came to find you, to tell you this."

The terrible malice of the Kade's gaze came to rest on him. Somewhere in there… somewhere in there he could feel his grandmother's sharp glance, caught in a web of darkness spun around the kernel of her soul like a spiderweb that kept her true self locked away. It might even be of her own making.

If it was, this whole endeavour would be doomed to fail. Perhaps he had taken too much on trust, taken too little heed for his own life in his single-minded purpose, perhaps his hope wouldn't match the one from Reynir's story. The pastor they had met - Anne - inconceivably still her own soul even as her body had turned troll. Onni could barely believe it now, if he hadn't felt Ensi in there, somehow the driving, terrifying force in this amalgamation of souls. Whatever - whoever - the original Kade had been, Ensi had overwhelmed it.

He should have known that he would not have the same luck as Reynir. The gods weren't smiling on him; they generally seemed not to. Perhaps he had gambled too high and lost it all.

The Kade's hand cupped his cheek briefly, something his grandmother would never have done, then withdrew, and the creature was gone like a breath of wind.

Its parting words floated through the haze of terror on Onni's mind. He only understood later that she had humored his defenses, perhaps for her own amusement.

You are right. You all belong with us.

Relief, dread, grief, despair. The wave of emotions overwhelmed Onni, and his knees buckled, with only the mossy ground to break his fall.

* * *

Darkness had settled over the city when Onni woke. It fazed him for the first few breaths - nighttime was the time of trolls and spirits, and he could hear, from not too much of a distance, the screaming of trapped spirits inside the trolls waking in the town, but none of them seemed to be hunting in his direction.

He shivered, and his eyes followed the mist of his breath billowing up into a cloudless night sky with needle-sharp stars from where his mask must have slipped while he fell.

His heart stuttered in a panic, just a moment, before he realized that whatever trace of the Rash the Kade might have left on him would have vanished by now. If it hadn't found a way in. If…

He needed to run.

Onni blinked his eyes rapidly, then stopped still as the realization came.

If he ran, his grandmother would find him, but more than that - if he ran and against all odds made it to a protected area, he would have no chance of ever seeing Tuuri again. If his grandmother had taken Tuuri, he would need to fight to free her.

How would he fight an incorporeal body, perhaps no more substantial than a breath of wind?

The chance that he would come away infected - or be absorbed - were higher than coming away unscathed, but at least then they would be together. He had to try. For Tuuri's sake.

It dried his tears immediately. Resolve settled heavy into Onni's bones and muscles. A cold, hard ache that hadn't been there before, one that he hadn't felt since Lalli had burst into their home that day of the harvest festival, back on the island.

One that he had hoped to never feel again, though never as consciously now that he did.

It should have made him free. It should have made him unstrap his mask and fling it away, what they had surmised Tuuri's last living action had been before her dash to the sea.
It didn't; his hand was frozen, his fingers locked, until Onni slipped the mask back into place, tightened the buckle, and rose.

That resolve said: I want to live.

It said: Everything will be alright.

Onni knew a liar when he heard one.

* * *

Onni found a troll-free house, to wait. He expected that It'd come find him, at some point, unless something went terribly wrong. Or, terribly right.

He couldn't make up his mind about what he would be doing now, and he had never been this tangibly alone since leaving Keuruu. Even on the boat, on the train, in Mora and then in Iceland, there had always been people around him until he disembarked and rowed out onto Saimaa.

The solitude in the house was gnawing on him. Because the windows were all whole there, he made camp in the kitchen, quietly grateful for the small, cramped space. It made him feel a little more secure than being out in the open - at least here, with the door closed, nothing would be able to creep up on him.

He made camp and went back to sleep, expecting that his owl form would make the solitude easier to bear, but even that echoed with unquiet thoughts.

I don't want you to be all alone.

I can't be alone.

And his sister winking out into the stars.

Onni took wing before he could help himself, the dream sea gliding by under him until a valley meadow and a waterfall coalesced out of the swathes of mist on the water. Even as he alighted on one of the rocks among the herd of sheep now fading into existence, Onni could see the shapes under the water outside of Reynir's haven, moving and twisting, and almost thought he was picking up a glare of orange light… but when he willed his gaze to sharpen, there was nothing there. Just a figment of his overwrought mind.

He let his owl shape go, and waited. Always waiting.

Arms grasped him from behind suddenly, blue-white diamond-pattern sleeves coming together before his chest. Onni stifled a yelp, even knowing it was Reynir before he had even registered the touch, but even so…

"Onni! You're alive! You're okay!" A pause, pregnant and heavy with worry.

"Are you okay?"

Reynir let go of him and walked around him to sit in front of Onni on the grass, patting the ground next to him. Reluctantly, because there was no point in perching, Onni went and sat next to Reynir, his heart beating fast and high in his throat.

"No." He couldn't help remembering that he had had to cross much less distance to find Reynir than anticipated, than if he had been away in Iceland in the waking world. He was close. "I know you are looking for me. Don't come any further, you'll all meet a bad end."

"And you?" Reynir bit his lip, frowning.

"I'll be… okay."

"I don't believe you. If there is anything we can do to save you… let us help you, okay? We came all this way to find you, and it's going to break Lalli to lose you, too. You should have seen him when he worked out that you lied to him. He said you don't always tell the truth, but you're not usually a liar. He's worried sick about you!"

Onni suppressed a guilty face. He had told Lalli to stay with his strange Swedish friend. He had wanted to spare him. Lalli, having come, would have to carry his own guilt if everything went wrong, as it well might. And the rest of them...

"It's too late, Reynir. I've already found my grandmother, and if you ask Lalli about her, he'll tell you that you won't want to meet her. He won't want to meet her."

"... I know. There was… a dream. On your island. We followed you there. We saw what happened when Lalli had a dream-memory about it. I know what your grandma is. Or at least what she became."

Onni had been overwhelmed by memories himself often enough on his journey, and never more than when he made his way home. The gardener had been an unpleasant surprise, but at least he had left Onni alone when he said he was one of the survivors of the island and needed time to contemplate and grieve. He had lent him the tools to carve a marker stone for Tuuri.

And Lalli, too, apparently, remembered every little bit of that day, much more than Onni himself could remember; he'd not been there for the events that unfolded before they were forced to run. That had saved his life. And Tuuri's, at least for a few years.

"Do you also know what she can do?"

"No... ?" Reynir lifted his head from the contemplation of his fingers. Dark clouds were crowding overhead in his haven, and while he and Reynir they sat sheltered by the hillside, the sheep up on the crest of the hill were staggering in a sudden, heavy wind. It needed no mage to see that Reynir was deeply upset, and when he began to cry, fat drops of rain spilled from the sky in time with Reynir's tears.

Onni bit his tongue to keep from responding, and clawed his fingers into his clothes to keep from gathering Reynir into his arms. He was not… that person. Should not be, although he wanted to.

Reynir's lie. He needed to think of that. Of Reynir's unfair survival the day that had spelled Tuuri's death. Of Reynir's no-good-shouldn't-be-there-carefree-joy attitude, because he had never known anything at all like the world outside Iceland.

"My grandmother is going to bring my sister back."

The downpour stopped in amazement, a trickle. Reynir hiccuped, reddened eyes on Onni. Again, Onni fought the impulse to reach out. To kiss the lips that Reynir was biting, hard.

He might still turn Reynir's fate, at the very least, and through him, Lalli's and that of the others, save their souls at the very least, if he failed to bring Tuuri back. Since he wouldn't be able to make it any other way… since Reynir had overcome all the hurdles Onni had thrown at him and followed regardless…

His face set. If hurting Reynir meant saving him… "Tuuri, do you remember her? The girl you failed. I don't need you here. I don't want you here. Go home, you're useless." Onni rose.

As if it'd been the killing blow to Reynir, he sat, shoulders sagging, and didn't make a move to follow Onni as he walked to an open spot in the hillside, took wing, and soared back over the water, his wing-beats hasty and irregular, frantic with loathing for himself.

Behind him, already distant, lightning flashed in Reynir's haven, and a rumble of thunder followed Onni across the water, growing fainter as he flew.

It rained in his haven, too.

* * *

In the morning, Onni woke to screaming that had him bolt upright, heart pounding.

Keuruu, the early days. Upset children, and Onni overwhelmed, sleeping more than he had known was possible. Waking to Tuuri shrieking up a storm, banging her fists against the inside of the wardrobe Lalli had locked her into, and thrown the key into the lake, because she had been annoying.

It was the same sound, the very same.

And his mind was not playing any tricks on him out of some dream.
It was all around him, Tuuri shrieking, trapped and nearly suffocating in her panic.

Onni remembered. The soft bundle in too-large army-issue clothes tumbling into his arms out of the wardrobe when he wrenched it open and the lock gave, the tousled hair sticking to a tear-streaked face pink with terror and lack of air.

Sitting on the floor and rocking her and crying into her hair, and promising that this would never happen again.

Another lie. Another broken promise.

The shrieking wouldn't stop.

He had made a mistake, he'd made a mistake, he'd made a mistake.

He'd never meant to cause Tuuri pain. He'd not thought far enough. If he failed, if she was trapped forever… the thoughts swirled in his mind. Onni's head and heart pounded, and the fear of the Kade made him grab for his mask blindly, fumbling it on until the noise of his breaths through the filters finally helped him settle down, the faint pang of antiseptic calmed his nerves.

The screaming, Tuuri's screaming, continued, but came punctuated now by pauses of exhaustion, confusion, moments that the other voices took to make themselves known. He thought he heard Hilja in there once, a trollish gurgle of no-longer-human vocal cords, but terribly recognizable all the same.

When Onni's eyes adjusted to the morning light, and he could prise apart his tear-stained lashes, he was not surprised to see his grandmother in the corner of the kitchen - or, a thing that looked like his grandmother. There was more broiling under the surface of her cowl. So he kept his eyes on those to avoid looking in her eye.

She stood still. Onni sat, feeling foolish, and so close to the edge that he might plummet if he failed to stop the screaming. Any thought of an ambush that he might have had in the early stages of the journey, kill her from behind without her having a chance to infect him…

The back of his neck itched, and he reached to scratch. It had been less than a day, hadn't it? Or was he this weak, this susceptible to the Rash, or had his grandmother corrupted him this easily?

He didn't know how dangerous a Kade could be. No one strictly knew, or at least very few survived to tell the tale.

Had their contact the day before been enough already?

He scratched, feeling bumps on his skin, tiny boils, and sucked in a rush of disinfectant-tinged air.

Some quiet, faint, but all the more desperate hope that he couldn't believe in: Perhaps it was merely a cluster of mosquito bites, from some late one that had survived the first frosty nights, perhaps there in the shelter of the house? Perhaps his grandmother hadn't managed to infect him, and there had been something, some other time on his journey that he hadn't been careful, some vermin beast had slipped his defenses?

Did it even matter?

Whatever it was, he would have to assume that he was infected. He would have to make certain to go before his mind no longer was his own.

But first -

Tuuri's screaming had quieted.

It should have come like a relief or a thunderclap, but it only made Onni's mind churn like the lake in a storm. His grandmother waited, patient like a rock at the lake's edge. His fingers closed around his spear. He called to mind all the runos he could think of to fight…

… but he had another choice now, hadn't he?

Try and kill her, and free Tuuri?

Or join them, and calm her? Have Tuuri's soft, small spirit tumble into his arms the way she had done that day he'd freed her from the wardrobe, that small, dark space where she had nearly screamed herself unconscious.

It had felt so good to hold her then.

He thought for a moment. If… if he even attempted and failed to kill the Kade, it would retaliate. He might lose Tuuri again, or it might take revenge on her and make him watch. Onni had never known trolls to be sadistic any more than nature made them, but with this… he did not want to rule it out. Could not. Not with his grandmother's almost-human conscious still there, still as sharp as ever, and probably beyond any human impulse of kindness.

He could not lose Tuuri again.

That left only one choice if they wanted to be together again. If he wanted to calm her, if he wanted to be with her. Perhaps he might still fight, then, before he lost himself.

If he was infected already…

Slowly, still sitting on the floor, Onni lifted his gaze. His muscles wouldn't cooperate, his eyes lingered on the folds of the clothes, on the terrible movements concealed by them, where incorporeal trollish skin might hang on his grandmother's lean frame, tentacles, limbs that should not be there. It gave him a sense of trollish forms superimposed on one another, the way the robes shifted, like there were different forms overlaid, all the victims the Kade had claimed rippling to the surface.

He raised his head a little further.

There.

The Kade's gaze, its eyes burning that terrible orange light of hostile magic.

Onni held its eye.

It took him willingly, easily, painlessly.

Dimly, Onni heard his own body collapse with a hollow sound on the floorboards, his souls all three pulled forth. He could see his luonto beat his wings frantically, before it vanished into the glare.

His henki shrivelled into nothing, ash and smoke.

He was dead. The thought was disorienting, remote.

He still was: His self remained. Perhaps he could - his itse, his luonto, together, might fight his grandmother from inside her. Perhaps they might escape - with his sister.

What was her name again? Was it important?

Tuuri.

Of course.

He felt around the ever-present orange glare for Tuuri's souls. Found the, her itse a tiny kernel of brighter light, and her luonto curled around it, all her hedgehog spikes standing up for defense.

It quieted, calmed, uncurled, letting Tuuri free. He had the sense that it would only be a moment he could talk to her - there was something dark already gnawing on the edges of his mind, and it would be trying to take Tuuri, also.

He reached out - for the light. He wanted that light.

Why?

Because it was Tuuri. His sister.

They were together. They were together, and nothing would ever part them again now. Two spots of light in a glare of orange darkness, holding on to themselves until they found release.

Tuuri. He had found her. They were together. He could feel - hear - a little voice reaching out, a noise that came out half amazed, half hesitant. He could sense his owl spreading its wings around them, shielding them for a moment longer, although its feathers shrivelled as if some fire was eating away at it, the same way it was eating at the edges of his self.

Tuuri lifted her eyes to him - might have, if they had been in their bodies.

tEaR It aPaRT fINiSh It

"-nni! Onni… is that you?"

He wanted to answer. He wanted to. His memories choked him. Tuuri was there. Tuuri was right there. He had found her. They might escape.

He wanted… he… wanted...

His sister.

He wanted to…

AnSWeR

He… who?

With a snarl, he dove down at the bright spot of light before him, to rend and devour, end the voice, end the pain and memories and all.

There was shrieking, the distant sound of fists banging against wood, a memory before the dark took that, too.

The kernel of light bled away.

qUiEt, FiNAllY.